52 While F’s addition of ‘Canst thou tell that?’ to complete the line metrically is consistent with its regularizing of lines elsewhere in the scene (cf. 120, 132, 180), the additional words do not enhance the meaning of the Q line.

  54–66 As Humphreys notes, the despair of the King’s speech here and at 222–67 echoes that of the King in Famous Victories, who fears that the Prince’s riotous behaviour ‘with grief will end his father’s days’ (3.38, also 6.4–5) and bring ‘ruin and decay’ to ‘this noble realm of England’ (5.65–7).

  52 accompanied?] Q; accompanied? Canst thou tell that? F 53 Poins] Q (Poines), F (Pointz)

  54 proverbial: ‘Weeds come forth on the fattest soil if it is untilled’ (Dent, W241). Cf. Lyly, Euphues: ‘The fattest ground bringeth forth nothing but weeds if it be not well tilled’ (92).

  fattest most fertile

  58 The blood … heart It was commonly believed that every sigh drew a drop of blood from the heart: weeps here means issues in drops, like tears (OED v. 4b).

  58–9 shape … imaginary imagine

  59 th’unguided without proper rule, riotous

  63 rage, hot blood roughly synonymous with unbridled passions

  64 ‘When licentious habits have the power to satisfy themselves’; means denotes both royal authority and wealth; lavish manners, unrestrained and lewd behaviour.

  65 affections inclinations

  66 fronting … decay the danger facing (fronting) him and ruinous (opposed) degradation

  67 look beyond misconstrue (OED beyond prep. 3)

  quite completely, entirely (OED adv. 1)

  68–78 Warwick springs to the Prince’s defence by echoing Harry’s own self-exculpation in 1H4 1.2.185–207, wherein he professes his intention to cast his followers off. Warwick also excuses the Prince’s proficiency in learning the base language of drawers, a proficiency Harry acknowledges with regret in 1H4 2.4.6 – 19. For an amusing analogue in which another royal learns immodest words (70), see Katherine’s English lesson in H5 3.5.

  68 companions pronounced as four syllables to ensure a pentameter line

  69 wherein, … language,] F; wherein … language: Q 71 learnt] Q; learn’d F 72 further] Q; farther F

  73 gross terms i.e. the immodest words Hal has learned

  74 in … time at the appropriate moment, when he is ready; perfectness suggests ripeness or maturity, as applicable to Harry as to time.

  76–7 measure … other Cf. Mark, 4.24: ‘with what measure ye meate, with the same shall it be measured to you agayne’.

  77 mete appraise, judge

  other a collective plural: others

  79–80 ’Tis … carrion i.e. one shouldn’t expect to find sweetness in a rotten place, because the agency producing sweetness will not have put it there. The King means that the Prince will be unlikely to renounce his corrupt pleasures: probably a reference to Judges, 14.8, in which Samson ‘turned out of the way to see the carkasse of the Lion: And beholde, there was a swarme of bees and hony in the carkasse of the Lion’. Elizabethans, however, might also have been mindful that the honey in the lion led to Samson’s riddle, ‘Out of the eater came meate, and out of the strong came sweetnesse’ (Judges, 14.14), a titillating promise that good things may come from corruption, readily applicable to the myth of Hal’s regeneration.

  79 leave deposit

  84 Scroop While some editors prefer the spelling ‘Scrope’, the QF spelling ‘Scroope’ probably reflects how the name was pronounced. Theobald’s regularizing the spelling to Scroop preserves that pronunciation.

  77 other] Q; others F 80 SD] F, Q (after 80) 84 Bishop Scroop] Theobald; Bishop, Scroope QF

  87 olive olive branch, symbol of peace

  90 ‘with each incident described in detail’. The word course has been variously glossed as phase, proceeding, or line of action; but as Melchiori notes, it was also a technical term used in bear-baiting to mean an attack, which would be appropriate in describing the rebels’ actions. Shakespeare uses it in this sense in KL 3.7.53: ‘I am tied to the stake and I must stand the course’, and in Mac 5.7.1–2: ‘They have tied me to the stake: I cannot fly, / But, bear-like, I must fight the course’.

  his its Cf. 1.2.117.

  92 haunch buttock; hind part; latter end. Shakespeare’s use of similar phrases is typically comic: ‘[t]he posteriors of this day’ (LLL 5.1.84) and ‘the buttock of the night’ (Cor 2.1.51).

  92–3 sings … day celebrates daybreak. Though no particular bird is identified, the lark was thought to be the bird that sang first in the morning and ushered in the spring.

  93 SD HARCOURT a name apparently picked at random from Holinshed; cf. GOWER at 2.1.131.1. The arrival of messengers in quick succession parallels 1.1, in which a string of messengers bring Northumberland reports from Shrewsbury.

  97–9 This brief reference to the Battle of Bramham Moor in 1408 is the last mention of Northumberland. Holinshed reports that the Earl fought ‘with great manhood’ (3.534).

  90 SD] this edn; [Kneels, and gives a Packet. Capell (after 89); not in QF 93 SD] F; enter Harcor. Q (after 93) 94 heavens] Q; Heauen F

  99 Shrieve sheriff

  101 at large in full

  102 sick On the King’s illness, see 1.2.109n.

  103 Fortune the goddess Fortuna, who personified the workings of chance

  104 *Q makes general sense if one assumes that good news (fair words) may be tainted – wet meaning daubed or soiled, as with ink – by unfavourable conditions (foulest terms). But F’s substitution of ‘write’ for ‘wet’ and ‘Letters’ for ‘termes’, the latter possibly a scribe’s attempt to correct the apparent redundancy of words and terms, has won many adherents; and even editors who prefer Q attempt to find a better word than wet. Hilda Hulme ingeniously suggests wit in its legal sense of bequeath, understanding words to mean that which is granted and terms as conditions (295); Cam2 offers ‘whet’, meaning sharpen, for which wet was an alternate spelling; and Oxf1 replaces wet with ‘set’ in the sense of setting out or putting down on paper. All these options are reasonable, but they do not necessarily improve on Q.

  still always. Cf. Ind.4.

  105–8 proverbial: ‘The rich man walks to get a stomach to his meat, the poor man to get meat for his stomach’ (Dent, M366)

  105 stomach appetite

  110 And but

  giddy confused, dizzy (OED adj. 2a)

  111 SD *The King’s giddiness suggests that he feels faint and, if he is standing, about to fall. His calling those assembled to come near him would seem to be the latest point at which he would sit on a chair, unless he slumps to the floor instead. The Oxford editors (Oxf) have him swoon at this point, and the alarmed responses of Gloucester, Clarence and Westmorland, compounded by Warwick’s calling the King’s sudden seizure a fit (114), seem to justify a dramatic bout of fainting. The King himself refers to it as swooning at 361. It is probable, too, that if the King has been wearing the crown, some noble would remove it here so that it would not fall on the floor. Thus the King’s instruction at 137 would be directed to the person who holds the crown.

  99 Shrieve] Q (shrieve); Sherife F 101 SD] this edn; Giving a packet. / Collier2; [kneels, and delivers it. Capell; not in QF 102] Q; F lines newes / sicke? / 104 wet … terms] Q; write … letters F; whet … terms Cam2; set … terms Oxf1 111 SD] Oxf subst.; sinks, and falls into a Fit. / Capell; not in QF

  113 Look up! Davison glosses this as ‘cheer up’, but that would repeat what Westmorland has just said. The context suggests that the King’s eyes are shut or vacantly staring.

  114 fits seizures, fainting spells. Cf. 1.1.142n.

  116 straight soon, immediately

  117 hold … pangs endure these seizures

  118–20 a metaphor for physical fragility in which the King’s flesh is figured as a wall (mure). Mental anguish has beaten so thin the wall which should contain such anguish that it has become transparent and life can see through it (i.e. life might leave the body). Shakespeare borrows from Daniel here: ‘paine, and griefe … / Beseiged the hold that could not long defend, / … Wearing the wall so thin that now the mind / Might well looke thorow, and his frailty find’ (CW, 3.116). F’s completion of 120 as a fully metrical line roughly corresponds to the final line in Daniel.

  120 On F’s addition of words to complete the line metrically, see 52n.

  121 fear frighten

  observe report seeing

  122 These portents announced the death of kings. Unfathered heirs are children monstrously conceived, either through miraculous virgin births (as in Montaigne, Apology for Raymond Sebonde) or through the intercourse of a witch with an incubus; loathly births signifies hideously malformed infants, often the result of such parthenogenesis. Other prodigies portend the deaths of Julius Caesar (JC 1.3.5–32) and King Hamlet (Ham 1.1.112–24), and, in Daniel, the deposition of Richard II (CW, 1.114–16).

  112] Steevens; prose QF 116] Q; F lines ayre: / well. / 117 out these pangs.] Q; out: these pangs, F 120 through.] Q; through, and will breake out. F

  123–4 Shakespeare uses the image of seasonal chaos resulting from a disturbance in rule in MND, when Titania observes that ‘the spring, the summer, / The childing autumn, angry winter, change / Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world, / By their increase, now knows not which is which’ (2.1.111–14).

  123 as as if

  125–8 Holinshed records that on 12 October 1412 there ‘were three flouds in the Thames … and no ebbing betweene: which thing no man liuing could remember the like to be seene’ (3.540), but no chronicler associates this event with the death of Edward III in 1377. Editors note the association as Shakespeare’s invention, but see 126n. for a correction.

  126 doting chronicles senile witnesses to history. By calling into question the reliability of the old folk who associate the floods with Edward’s death, Clarence mocks, rather than confirms, Gloucester’s belief in the people’s report of unnatural portents.

  128 sicked fell ill

  130 apoplexy See 1.2.109n. The King’s symptoms confirm the diagnosis of apoplexy as a sudden attack, caused by an effusion of blood or serum in the brain and preceded by giddiness, which arrests all powers of sense and motion (OED sb. 1).

  132 On F’s addition of words to complete the line metrically, see 52n.

  132 SD *Editions since Cam have tended to begin a new scene here, but Q and F clearly signal that the action is continuous: no SDs indicate exits or entrances, and it makes little sense to interrupt the King’s speech with a scene change. In most recent stagings, those in attendance carry the King in his chair to another part of the stage – or simply circle back to centre stage – and carefully move him to a bed which has been brought on, his head raised to face the audience as he speaks at 133. The bed was probably thrust through the curtains located between the stage doors (GWW). See 178 SD1n.

  124 leapt] Q; leap’d F 132 chamber.] Q; Chamber: softly ’pray. F SD] this edn; [Attendants, and Lords, take the King up; convey him into an inner Room, and lay him upon a Bed. Capell; not in QF

  134 dull slow, soothing

  favourable kindly, well-disposed

  135 ‘will play soft music to lull me to sleep’. Music was thought to have the power to soothe those whose spirits were overwrought: cf. KL 4.7.21–5. The King’s request for music is but the first of several details which suggest that Shakespeare closely followed a scene in Famous Victories as his source: ‘Good my lords, draw the curtains, and depart my chamber awhile; and cause some music to rock me asleep’ (8.8–10).

  136 the other room perhaps a music gallery or the upper stage

  137 Despite recent stage practice and the sanction of a SD in Oxf1, it is unlikely that the King, in his enfeebled state, would remove his own crown. Rather, a noble who has removed it earlier would now place it on the pillow next to the King’s head. Cf. 111 SDn.

  138 changes much i.e. grows pale

  139–354 Who … father In Holinshed (3.541), those attending on the King believe him to be dead and so inform the Prince, who takes away the crown. Shakespeare’s dramatization of this incident is much closer to the version in Famous Victories, sc. 8, which was based on Hall. Speeches, though longer, have much the same pattern and tone, and the Prince’s reply to the King at 268–306 closely parallels that in Famous Victories. In Daniel the King, not the Prince, addresses the crown, but their exchange after the King has awoken includes political advice which closely parallels that given by the King at 331–44. See 3n.

  136 SD] Oxf subst. (Exit one or more. Still music within.); [to an Attendant who goes out. Capell; not in QF 139 SD] F; Enter Harry Q

  140 heaviness sadness, sorrow. Cf. 4.1.310.

  141–8 *Owing to metrical irregularities, line divisions in these speeches are at best tentative. Q and F disagree on which lines are prose and which, verse. I elect to keep the Prince’s lines at 145–6 prose, as in Q, because rhythmically they break the regularity of Warwick’s lines, just as the noise made by the Prince intrudes on the solemnity of those he bursts in on.

  141 rain i.e. tears

  abroad out of doors

  144 altered Warwick’s reply sounds ironic, since one would expect the King to have rallied, not worsened, on hearing news that the rebels had been crushed. Cf. the King’s questioning his own response to the good news at 102. The Prince picks up on the irony at 145–6.

  146 physic medicine. Cf. 1.1.137.

  141–2] Q; prose F 143] Q; F lines yet? / him. / 144 altered] Q(corr), F; vttred Q(uncorr) 145–6] one line Q; F lines Ioy, / physic. / 147–8] Pope; F lines (My Lords) / lowe, / sleepe. / ; prose Q 151 SD] Oxf1 subst.; Exeunt all but P. Henry. / Rowe (after 152); not in QF

  154–9 The Prince’s apostrophe to the crown echoes his father’s apostrophe to sleep at 3.1.4–31. As possible sources, see the King’s address to the crown in Daniel, CW, 3.119–20, and the Prince’s in Famous Victories, 8.11–21.

  154 perturbation The crown is personified as a bringer of unrest.

  155 ports gates, here meaning eyes

  156 watchful wakeful, sleepless. Watching is crucial to this scene: it signifies attendance on the dying King (151) and the passage of the night (159).

  sleep … now Presumably the King is the unspoken subject of the Prince’s injunction: may you sleep in spite of the presence of the crown.

  158 homely biggen coarse nightcap. The word homely identifies the wearer as a poor subject, perhaps a peasant. The vulgarity of Snores (159) reinforces this class distinction.

  159 watch of night The night was divided into several intervals, called watches, for sentry duty.

  160 pinch torment; or more literally, if majesty (159) is taken to mean ‘crown’, the physical pain caused by the weight of the crown on one’s head

  162 scald’st with safety a paradox: the crown burns its wearer even as it provides the protection of sovereignty.

  gates of breath i.e. mouth and nose

  163 downy For some editors, the peculiar spellings ‘dowlny’ in Q, ‘dowlney’ in F, and their common ‘dowlne’ at 164 provide evidence that the copy-text for this play may have been a Shakespearean holograph. For further evidence, see 3.2.88n..

  164 suspire breathe

  167 rigol circle. Cf. Macbeth’s ‘golden round’ (Mac 1.5.28)

  163 downy] F4; dowlny Q; dowlney F1–3 164 down] F4; dowlne QF1–3 165 move. My … father?] Rowe subst.; moue. My … Lord, … Father, F; moue my … lord … father: Q 168 due] Q (deaw), F

  169 blood perhaps, as elsewhere, emotion or passion; but there is also a play on kinship – blood relationship – confirmed by the following line. See the Prince’s use of blood to refer to lineal succession at 173.

  170 nature the natural affection of a son for his father

  173 immediate from next in succession to

  174 Derives itself descends

  174 SD The Prince’s crowning himself in the presence of his insensible, dying father has a certain symbolic import. Critics with a psychoanalytic bent argue that Harry is enacting an unconscious patricidal wish, as his father accuses him at 222. Weis interprets Harry’s action as ‘political autogenesis’ (48) which ensures that, at least in this private coronation, he will not receive the crown from the hands of a usurper. Yet this contrasts with Harry’s explicit justification for inheriting the crown at 349–52. Ironically, in taking possession of the crown before it is rightly his, the Prince follows in his father’s footsteps.

  175–6 and … arm The clause has subjunctive force: ‘were the world’s whole strength put’. Cf. Famous Victories, 8.58–61.

  178 SD1 The Prince exits through a different door from that taken by the others at 151. Warwick, by noting that ‘This door is open’ (186), implies that it is not the same door through which he, Gloucester and Clarence have re-entered.

  180 *F’s addition of words to complete Warwick’s line is explicable if one regards the King’s and Clarence’s speeches at 179–80 as comprising one regular line of verse. It makes more sense, however, to take Clarence’s and Warwick’s half-lines together as one verse line (180), separated from the King’s part-line (179) by the amount of time it takes for them to enter and respond. On F’s frequent completion of partial lines in Q, see 52n.

  174 SD] Johnson subst. (after 174); not in QF where] Q; heere F 175–8] Q; F lines guard: / Arme, / from me. / leaue, / me. / 175 God] Q; Heauen F 178 SD2] Oxf; not in QF 179.1] QF (after 178) 180 majesty?] Q; Maiestie? how fares your Grace? F

  185 *F omits this line probably in the interest of preserving metrical regularity, just as it adds words for that purpose at 52, 120, 132 and 180. The King in his sickness speaks in part-lines here and at 192, 197 and 199.

  190–5 *F’s distribution of lines unsuccessfully attempts to regularize the metre of what, in Q, is an idiosyncratic alternation of regular and irregular lines.

  182–4] F; prose Q 185] Capell; prose Q; not in F 190] Q; F lines hence: / out. / 191–2] Capell; one line Q; F lines suppose / (my Lord of Warwick) / 193–5] Q; F lines Chide … conioynes / me. / … are: / 193 SD] Capell; not in QF