King John, page 27
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222 + SP] Oxf1; Lady. F 231 Philip? Sparrow!] (Upton); Philip, sparrow, F
232 There’s toys abroad ‘There are unusual things going on’ (i.e. he has been knighted and has been recognized as the son of Richard the Lionheart).
anon soon
234–5 i.e. there is nothing of me that is Sir Robert’s. Jokes about the sacrilege of eating a meal on Good Friday, of all Fridays the most sacred, abound in Elizabethan times. The most celebrated instance in Shakespeare is Poins’s query regarding Falstaff’s mock-Faustian bargain in 1H4 1.2.108ff., ‘What says Sir John Sack and Sugar, Jack? How agrees the devil and thee about thy soul, that thou soldest him on Good Friday last for a cup of madeira and a cold capon’s leg?’ (108–11).
236 do well i.e. perform intercourse successfully; cf. 271, didst not well.
marry to be sure, indeed; exclamation derived from an oath ‘by the Virgin Mary’
237 ‘Sir Robert could technically perform intercourse and conceive me (‘Could he get me’) but could not in essence have fathered someone like me.’
238 handiwork doing, performance: i.e. Robert. The Bible, cited in OED n. 1 in Coverdale’s translation of Psalm 18, describes the creation of the world as God’s handiwork: ‘The very heavens declare the glory of God and the very firmament showeth his handye worke’.
239 beholding indebted
240 holp helped
241 conspired conspirèd
242 thine own … honour Admitting to her dishonour (as the Bastard has in effect done) will disinherit him; see 68–70.
243 untoward refractory, unmannerly
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236 well –… confess –] (Vaughan); well, marrie to confesse F 237 he] Pope; not in F me? Sir] Ard2; me sir F
244 Basilisco-like The Bastard self-deprecatingly refers to the braggart knight Piston in Soliman and Perseda (1592): ‘ “Pist[on]. I, the aforesaid Basilisco – / Bas[ilisco]. I, the aforesaid Basilisco – Knight, goodfellow, Knight, Knight – / Pist. Knaue, goodfellow, Knaue, Knaue –” (Kyd, p. 173)’ (Ard2). Present within the knight’s name is the Greek word for king, ‘basilius’, a submerged and comic sign of the serious issue of the Bastard’s being by quality and subsequent conduct the figure in the play best suited to be the King of England.
245 dubbed made a knight (by having been touched on the shoulder by the sword of the King). Ard2 points out the frequent facetiousness in the use of this word, which by 1590 was already quite dated (citing W. Segar, Book of Honor and Armes (1590), sig. Q3: ‘that terme dubbing was the old terme in this point’).
248 Legitimation naturally enough the central concern of bastards. Cf. Edmund’s soliloquy in KL, which includes a riff on that ‘Fine word, “legitimate” ’ (KL 1.2.18ff.).
249 let … father with a glancing reference to just how hard a piece of information this is to get without maternal help; proverbially, ‘It is a wise man who knows his own father’.
250 proper good-looking, handsome, together with the suggestions of ‘strong’ and ‘brave’
252 an allusion to the Catechism and its directive to ‘renounce the devil and all his works’ (Furness, cited in Ard2)
254 vehement suit persistent courting
256–8 Lady Faulconbridge unnecessarily or mistakenly fears that the very product of her sin will indict her for it. As we see, her son is far from criticizing her for what was both beyond her power of resistance and so attractive in its outcome.
256 ‘Don’t count my transgression as my responsibility.’ Noble (113) compares Acts, 7.60, where Stephen knelt down ‘and cryed with a loude voyce, Lord, lay not this sinne to their charge’, and Shaheen (392) adds Deuteronomy, 21.8, and 2 Timothy, 4.16.
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256 God] Oxf; Heauen F
257–8 ‘The couplet underscores the antithesis (offence/defence)’ (Oxf1).
257 *Thou F4 seems to correct F’s ‘That’ as if the previous line were an interjection. Braunmuller suggests that ‘That’ and ‘Thou’ if abbreviated in manuscript would be easily confused. It is possible that we have an elliptical expression for ‘Thou that art’ (i.e. Philip).
dear both morally expensive and highly valuable; a good example of the antithetical sense of primal words
259 by this light a frequent oath = ‘by God’s light’
get be conceived
261 Either (1) some sins are venial rather than mortal, or (2) transgressions of a certain kind or result, are nevertheless valued in this world if not the next.
262 fault See 118n.
folly bad judgement; wantonness
263 dispose disposal
264 Subjected tribute punning on three meanings: (1) the tribute a subject owes to a king, or a vassal owes to a lord; (2) the biblical injunction that ‘wives be subject to their own husbands in everything’ (part of The Form of Solemnization of Matrimony in BCP); (3) Lady Faulconbridge has subjected herself to King Richard’s commanding love Ard2.
265 unmatched unmatchèd
266–7 aweless lion … hand The legend of Richard’s killing a lion by reaching down its throat and tearing out its heart and then eating the heart explains Richard’s sobriquet, ‘the Lionheart’, but it also runs counter to the myth that the lion, king of the beasts, will not touch a human king, a brother royal. See Falstaff’s explanation at 1H4 2.4.263 for his not resisting Hal, the future king, when the latter robbed the robber Falstaff.
266 aweless fearless, unawed
268 perforce forcibly, by physical strength
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257 Thou] F4; That F 269 ay] (aye)
275 said him nay rejected Richard and his advances
276 not both (1) ‘not true’ and (2) ‘naughty’, as the Bastard is both proud and witty at the same time; not is an aural pun on ‘nought/naught’ (= nothing; wickedness, i.e. sexual transgression); cf. R3 1.1.97–100, ‘BRAKENBURY With this, my lord, myself have nought to do. / RICHARD Naught to do with Mistress Shore? I tell thee, fellow, / He that doth naught with her, excepting one, / Were best to do it secretly, alone.’
2.1 Some of the events depicted here and in Act 3 come from Holinshed’s account of the siege of Mirabeau in 1202: ‘In the yeare 1202 king Iohn … and the French king met togither, neere vnto the castell of Gulleton, and there in talke had betweene them, he commanded king Iohn with no small arrogancie, and contrarie to his former promise, to restore vnto his nephue Arthur duke of Britaine, all those lands now in his possession on that side the sea, which king Iohn earnestlie denied to doo, wherevpon the French king immediatlie after, began war against him’ (164a).
0.1 before Angiers The use of the upper stage (here representing the top of the city walls) is required from 201 onwards when the Citizens enter (200.1). The city is apparently in a state of defence against the French army; for the staging of a parley before the walls of a besieged town cf. 1H6 4.2 and H5 3.3. Angiers (so spelled in F and Holinshed), modern Angers, is on the river Loire between Nantes and Tours, and is the capital of the province of Anjou. At the time of the play it was one of the French territories that had been brought under the English sway when Henry Plantagenet became Henry II of England.
0.1–4 Philip … Austria The two groups of actors representing the French and Austrian allies meet to combine their forces. The Elizabethan public theatre had two stage doors from which actors could make their entrances, here to be imagined as entrances from different locations.
0.2 DAUPHIN frequently ‘Dolphin’ in the sixteenth century. In 1H6 1.1.92 we find ‘The Dolphin Charles is crowned King in Reims’.
2 forerunner … thy blood King Philip seems to suggest that Arthur is the son, rather than the nephew, of King Richard.
blood in the sense of consanguinity and noble birth
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2.1] Rowe2; Scaena Secunda. F 0.1–4] Enter before Angiers, Philip King of France, Lewis, Daulphin, Austria, Constance, Arthur. F 1, 18 SPs] Smallwood (Theobald); Lewis. F
4 holy … Palestine i.e. the Third Crusade, 1189–92
5 By … duke Following the author of Troublesome Reign, Shakespeare fuses two opponents of Richard’s: Widomar, Viscount of Limoges, and Leopold, Archduke of Austria.
6 Austria killed Richard, and to make amends is going to support Arthur and his claim to the English throne. Cf. R3 4.4.294ff.
7 importance solicitude; see OED n. 7: ‘Urgent or pressing solicitation; importunity. Also: urgency of action. Obs.’
8 spread his colours display his ensigns or standards (an action which indicates his intention to do battle). The image is used again at 5.2.73 with the opposite effect: ‘thy threatening colours now wind up’. OED colour II 7 cites 3H6 2.2.173, ‘Sound trumpets! Let our bloody colours wave’. In addition, for a Marlovian echo, see 1 Tamb, 4.1.7: ‘[the rogue of Volga] hath spread his collours to our high disgrace’.
9–10 rebuke … English John Unnatural avuncular usurpation reappears most celebratedly in Hamlet’s ‘A little more than kin, and less than kind’, regarding the abnormality of Claudius’s relationship to the Prince (Ham 1.2.65).
9 rebuke beat down or force back (OED v. 1 trans.); cf. H5 3.6.120, ‘we could have rebuked him at Harfleur’. The word picks up in the internal rhyme of the second syllable that it is the duke who is making the rebuke.
14 Shadowing … wings Cf. Psalms, 17.8, ‘hide me under the shadow of thy wings’.
Shadowing sheltering, protecting (OED v. 2)
16 unstained unstainèd; pure, unspotted; however, see in the suggestion made by Kellner as from Samuel Bailey, The Received Text of Shakespeare’s Dramatic Writing, 2 vols (1862–6), 2.244 (noted by Braunmuller), that the compositor of this section of F missed the manuscript’s ‘unfained’ (= unfeigned), ‘without pretence’.
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17 SD] this edn
18 A noble boy Oxf1 would have the Dauphin’s tone patronizing, and his audience for the expression Constance or the company at large, with the remainder of the sentence addressed to Arthur. This is a possible reading and performance, but a directly honest response by the Dauphin, to Arthur, is equally possible.
boy Arthur’s immaturity is stressed throughout the play. Historically, Arthur was 15, but in the play his age is uncertain and clearly younger.
19 Upon thy cheek There is a suggestion of Judas’s kiss. See Matthew, 26.48, ‘Now he that betrayed him, had giuen them a token, saying, Whomsoeuer I shal kisse, that is he, lay hold on him’.
20 seal a sealed legal agreement; some humour at the expense of Austria can come from his Germanic pronouncing of seal heavily, like the zeal in zealous in 19.
indenture contract. OED n. 2a cites this line. Shakespeare’s awareness of etymology reminds us that there is danger in this kiss (19); the teeth (dents) that give force to a contract are within the lips of that kiss. At the court of royalty we know already the sweet poison of flattery that comes from the age’s tooth (1.1.213). Austria’s kiss performs the function of a seal (= a stamp engraved with some device or inscription, to be imprinted on wax) affixed to a contract, agreement (indenture), by which he promises to support Arthur’s cause.
23–9 Austria’s speech is oddly anglophile in the mouth of one of England’s enemies; for familiar patriotic descriptions of England cf. R2 2.1.40–65 and Cym 3.1.16–29.
23 pale … shore the chalk cliffs of southern England; pale = enclosed place, taken up again by water-walled in 27 (with a pun on the meaning light-coloured, echoed in white-faced); cf. Cym 3.1.18–19, ‘your isle, which stands / As Neptune’s park, ribbed and paled in’.
25 coops encloses for protection or defence. OED v. 2a cites this line and adds ‘one of the uses for poultry’. There is a touch of the pejorative quality to this term as applied to humankind, and the passage itself is a negative version of John of Gaunt’s encomium in R2 2.1.40ff.
26 hedged surrounded protectively. Ard2, crediting Halliwell, notes Robert Greene’s Spanish Masquerado (1589): ‘reposing ourselves in that our owne strength, for that wee were hedged in with the sea’ (sig. B4).
main elliptically, the ‘main sea’: ‘The high sea, the open ocean’ (OED n.1 5a)
27 water-walled water-wallèd; cf R2 2.1.46–7, ‘This precious stone set in the silver sea, / Which serves it in the office of a wall’. It is a common image of England’s special situation regarding invasion. Cf. Nashe’s expression ‘England … walled with seas’, (Works, 2.134), in the 2nd edition of Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem (1594, first edn 1593), a text used by Shakespeare in the composition of several plays, including TA, JC, Ham and KL, and with a publication date significant for the dating of KJ.
28 confident without fear, full of assurance; cf. his soldiers confident, 61, and Lions more confident, 452.
purposes aims, designs, with the implied sense of motion (i.e. of an invading force) (OED n. 1b); cf. 1H4 1.1.100–1, ‘we must neglect / Our holy purpose to Jerusalem’.
29 utmost … west i.e. England; see 5.7.116n. on three corners. There seems a subtle macaronic pun along the lines of Pope Gregory’s description of the fair English children, ‘non Angli sed angeles’ (‘not Angles but angels’). Here we remember the Latin words angulus, corner (as in Horace’s little spot of land, ‘angulus terrarum’), and Angli, the Angles (the Low German tribes who immigrated to what is now called, after them, England). England is that angle, that corner of the far west that will, according to Austria, welcome Arthur as king.
32 a widow’s thanks Constance is alluding to the concept (derived from the Bible) familiar in Shakespeare’s time that the duty of governors and kings enjoined them to protect widows and orphans. See 171–2n. and 3.1.107–8n. Shakespeare follows Troublesome Reign in ignoring the historical fact that Constance at this time in the purported action was married to her third husband, Guy de Thouars.
34 more requital greater recompence; more is frequently used as the comparative and superlative of the adjective ‘great’ (Abbott, 17, citing this example).
35–6 A commonplace justification for military action: cf. R3 5.2.14–16, ‘In God’s name, cheerly on, courageous friends, / To reap the harvest of perpetual peace / By this one bloody trial of sharp war’, and Marlowe’s Edward II, 3.3.36–7, ‘Now lustie lords, now not by chance of warre, / But justice of the quarrell and the cause’. The collocation just and charitable partly anticipates Henry V’s ‘May I with right and conscience make this claim?’ (H5 1.2.96), and also reflects a changing attitude towards war: namely that it should be morally justifiable, not merely expedient.
36 charitable war Directorial judgement will determine how much irony attaches to the phrase.
37 bent aimed, directed; a term derived from archery but applied also to other instruments of war, cf. 3H6 5.1.87, ‘To bend the fatal instruments of war’.
39 discipline military skill and experience (OED n. 3b); the art of war (cf. Fluellen in H5 3.1.94ff.)
40 cull … advantages select the places (plots = pieces of ground) most advantageous for attack
43 But unless; however, the word is sometimes spoken as a mere adversative; i.e. it may be that ‘we will lay … but we will make …’ (DSK).
46 England (1) King John; (2) the country of England
47 right i.e. our just claim that Arthur rule England
49 indirectly wrongfully, unfairly (OED adv. 1b)
53 coldly calmly, dispassionately. Constance’s indictment of any rashness (49) seems to have its effect upon King Philip.
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37, 50, 79 SPs] Rowe subst.; King. F 37 work. Our] Collier (Theobald); worke our F
55 stir … against rouse them towards or in preparation for. Another of many elements in this play that recur directly or indirectly in JC. See Antony’s affectedly modest denial that he has the rhetorical skill ‘To stir men’s blood’ (JC 3.2.216), and note for stir and Ate (at 63) Berowne’s comment on the performance of the pageant of the Nine Worthies, ‘More Ates, more Ates! Stir them on, stir them on!’ (LLL 5.2.684–5). Antony’s Ate, ‘come hot from hell’, is to accompany the revenging spirit of Caesar (JC 3.1.271).
56 impatient intolerant (OED a. 1b)
just demands legitimate requests. Shakespeare is remembering Holinshed here and the ‘sawcie’ words of Pandulph, but reapplies them to another opponent of John’s: ‘I would aduise you … to obeie the pope’s iust demands’ (Hol., 177, i) (Ard2).
57–60 John’s speed is emphasized in Holinshed: ‘he used such diligence, that he was vpon his enimies necks yer [= ere] they could vnderstand any thing of his comming, or gesse what the matter meant, when they saw such a companie of souldiers as he brought with him to approch so neere the citie’ (164b).
57–8 adverse winds … stayed i.e. Chatillon had to wait for a favourable wind.
58 leisure cessation
62 the mother queen the Queen Mother, i.e. Eleanor
63 Ate pronounced ‘Ah-tay’ (accent on the first syllable); Greek goddess of discord and strife, author of all rash destructive deeds and their results. See 55n.
64 niece like ‘cousin’, an expansive term of relation in sixteenth-century English, here ‘granddaughter’. Eleanor’s daughter, also Eleanor, had married King Alfonso VIII of Castile. See LR 5n. In his will, as Honigmann notes, ‘Shakespeare … referred to his grand-daughter as “my Neece Elizabeth Hall”.’
65 the king-deceased Richard the Lionheart
66–75 Editors find topical allusions here to one of two military adventures on the part of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex: (1) the Cadiz expedition of 1596, best remembered in John Donne’s poem ‘The Calm’, with its elegant ‘and in one place lay / Feathers and dust today and yesterday’ (17–18); or (2) the French campaigning of 1591. If either is alluded to, a post-1591 date is necessary.
66 th’unsettled humours medical metonymy for John’s army which, Chatillon says, is made up of the distempered (unsettled) body of England. For the image of England as a distempered body see 4.2.245–6, 5.1.12–13. These are restless, troubled (though able-bodied) men. In the widespread doctrine of the humours, a person’s temperament was deemed unbalanced in one way or another, depending upon which of the four basic fluids in the body was dominant, blood, phlegm, yellow bile (choler) or black bile (melancholy). Few people could claim a perfectly balanced temperament; hence the special praise of Brutus by Antony: ‘This was the noblest Roman of them all, / … His life was gentle, and the elements / So mixed in him that nature might stand up / And say to all the world, “This was a man!” ’ (JC 5.5.69, 74–6).
