LEMDO Classroom: How Shore’s Wife was Despoiled

Edition: True Tragedy of Richard IIIHow Shore’s Wife was Despoiled

Source

Modernized excerpts of How Shore’s Wife, King Edward the Fourth’s Concubine, was by King Richard despoiled of all her goods, and forced to do open penance. prepared from Mirror for Magistrates (Churchyard).

I joined my talk, my gestures, and my grace

In witty frames, that long might last and stand,

So that I brought the king in such a case,

That to¹ his death I was his chiefest hand.

I governed him that ruled all this land:

I bare the sword, though he did wear the crown,

I strake² the stroke that threw the mighty down.

If justice said that judgment was but death,

With my sweet words I could the king persuade,

And make him pause and take therein a breath,

Till I with suite the faulter’s peace had made.

I knew what way to use him in his trade,

I had the art to make the lion meek,

There was no point wherein I was to seek.

I took delight in doing each man good,

Not scratting³ all myself as all were mine,

But looked whose life in need and danger stood,

And those I kept from harm with cunning fine

On prince’s train I always cast mine eyne.

For lifting up the servants of a king,

I did through court myself in favor bring.

I offered aid before they sued to me,

And promised naught, but would perform it straight.

I shaked down sweet fruit from top of tree,

Made spies fall in laps of men by sleight.

I did good turns whiles that I was a height,

For fear a flaw of wind would make me reel,

And blow me down when Fortune turned her wheel.

I filled no chests with chinks⁴ to cherish age⁵,

But in the hearts of people laid my gold.

Sought love of lord, of master, and of page,

And for no bribe I never favor sold.

I had enough, I might do what I would,

Save spend or give or fling it on the ground,

The more I gave the more in purse I found.

If I did frown, who then did look awry?

If I did smile, who would not laugh outright?

If I but spake, who durst my words deny?

If I pursued, who would forsake the flight?

I mean, my power was known to every wight⁶:

On such a height good hap had built my bower,

As though my sweet should ne’er have turned to sour.

My husband then, as one that knew his good,

Refused to keep a prince’s concubine.

Foreseeing th’ end, and mischief as it stood,

Against the king did never much repine⁷:

He saw the grape whereof he drank the wine.

Though inward thought his heart did still torment,

Yet outwardly he seemed he was content.

To purchase praise, and win the people’s scale,

Yea, rather bent of kind to do some good,

I ever did uphold the common weal.

I had delight to save the guiltless blood:

Each suitor’s cause, when that I understood,

I did prefer as it had been mine own,

And help them up, that might have been o’erthrown.

My power was pressed to right the poor man’s wrong,

My hands were free to give where need required.

To watch for grace I never thought it long:

To do men good I need not be desired,

Nor yet with gifts my heart was never hired.

But when the ball was at my foot to guide,

I played to those that fortune did abide.

My want was wealth, my woe was ease at will,

My robbers were rich, and braver than the sun.

My fortune then was far above my skill,

My state was great, my glass⁸ did ever run:

My fatal thread⁹ so happily was spun,

That then I sat in earthly pleasures clad,

And for the time a goddess’ place I had.

[…]

As long as life was remained in Edward’s breast,

Who was but I? Who had such friends at call?

His body was no sooner put in chest¹⁰,

But well was he that could procure my fall.

His brother was mine enemy most of all,

Protector then, whose vice did still abound,

From ill to worse, till death did him confound.

He falsely feigned that I of counsel was

To poison him, which thing I never meant,

But he could set thereon a face of brass¹¹,

To bring to pass his lewd and false intent.

To such mischief this tyrant’s heart was bent,

To God, ne¹² man, he never stood in awe,

For in his wrath he made his will a law.

Lord Hastings’ blood for vengeance on him cries,

And many more, that were too long to name,

But most of all, and in most woeful wise,

I had good cause this wretched man to blame.

Before the world I suffered open shame,

Where people were as thick as is the sand,

I penance took, with taper¹³ in my hand.

Each eye did stare and look me in the face:

As I passed by, the rumors on me ran,

But patience then had lent me such a grace,

My quiet looks were praised of every man.

The shamefast blood brought me such color then,

That thousands said, which saw my sober cheer,

It is great ruth¹⁴ to see this woman here.

But what prevailed the people’s pity there?

This raging wolf would spare so guiltless blood:

Oh wicked womb, that such ill fruit did bear!

Oh cursed earth, that yieldeth forth such mud!

The hell consume all things that did thee good,

The heavens shut their gates against thy spirit,

The world tread down thy glory under foot.

I ask of God a vengeance on thy bones:

Thy stinking corpse corrupts the air I know.

Thy shameful death no earthly wight bemoans,

For in thy life thy works were hated so,

That every man did wish thy overthrow,

Wherefore I may, though partial now I am,

Curse every cause whereof thy body came.

Woe worth the man that fathered such a child!

Woe worth the hour wherein thou wast begat!

Woe worth the breasts that have the world beguiled

To nourish thee, that all the world did hate!

Woe worth the gods that gave thee such a fate

To lie so long, that death deserved so oft:

Woe worth the chance that set thee up aloft.

Woe worth the day, the time, the hour, and all,

When subjects clapped the crown on Richard’s head!

Woe worth the lords, that sat in sumptuous hall,

To honor him that princes’ blood¹⁵ so shed!

Would God he had been boiled in scalding lead,

When he presumed in brother’s seat to sit,

Whose wretched rage ruled all with wicked wit.

Ye princes all, and rulers everyone,

In punishment beware of hatred’s ire.

Before ye scourge, take heed, look well thereon:

In wrath’s ill will, if malice kindle fire,

Your hearts will burn in such a hot desire,

That in those flames the smoke shall dim your sight,

Ye shall forget to join your justice right.

You should not judge till things he well discerned,

Your charge is still to maintain upright laws,

In conscience rules ye should be thoroughly learned,

Where clemency bids wrath and rashness pause,

And further sayeth, strike not without a cause:

And when ye smite do it for justice sake,

Then in good part each man your scourge will take.

If that such scale had moved this tyrant’s mind,

To make my plague a warning for the rest,

I had small cause such fault in him to find,

Such punishment is used for the best,

But by ill will and power I was oppressed:

He spoiled¹⁶ my goods, and left me bare and poor,

And caused me to beg from door to door.

What fall was this, to come from prince’s fare,

To watch¹⁷ for crumbs among the blind and lame?

When alms were dealt I had an hungry share,

Because I knew not how to ask for shame,

Till force and need had brought me in such frame,

That starve I must, or learn to beg an alms,

With book in hand, to say St. David’s psalms¹⁸.

Where I was wont the golden chains to wear,

A pair of beads about my neck was wound,

A linen cloth was lapped about my hair,

A ragged gown that trailed on the ground,

A dish that clapped and gave a heavy sound,

A staying¹⁹ staff and wallet therewithal,

I bare about as witness of my fall.

The fall of leaf is nothing like the spring,

Each eye beholds the rising of the sun,

All men admire the favor of a king:

And from great states grown in disgrace they run,

Such sudden claps ne²⁰ wit nor will can shun:

For when the stool is taken from our feet,

Full flat on floor the body falls in street.

I had no house wherein to hide my head,

The open street my lodging was perforce.

Full oft I went all hungry to my bed,

My flesh consumed, I looked like a corpse.

Yet in that plight who had on me remorse:

O God, thou knowest my friends forsook me then,

Not one holp²¹ me, that succored many a man.

They frowned on me that fawned on me before,

And fled from me, that followed me full fast:

They hated me, by whom I set much store,

They knew full well my fortune did not last.

In every place, I was condemned and cast,

To plead my cause at bar it was no boot,

For every man did tread me underfoot.

Thus long I lived, all weary of my life,

Till death approached, and rid me from that woe.

Example take by me, both maid and wife,

Beware, take heed, fall not to folly so:

A mirror make by my great overthrow.

Defy the world and all his wanton ways,

Beware by me, that spent so ill her days.

Notes

1.Up until.↑

2.Struck, swung.↑

3.Aiding, helping.↑

4.Pieces of money (OED chink, n.3 3).↑

5.Provide for later in life.↑

6.Person, creature (OED wight, n. 1.a).↑

7.Grumble, complain (OED repine, v. 1.a).↑

8.Hourglass, time.↑

9.Length of time allotted on earth by the Fates.↑

10.A coffin.↑

11.An impassive, stern look.↑

12.Nor.↑

13.Wax candle for devotional or penitential purposes (OED taper, n.1 a).↑

14.Compassion, sorrow (OED ruth, n. 1).↑

15.The young princes in the Tower, king Edward V and Richard, duke of York, who are supposed to have died at Richard’s command around 1483.↑

16.Confiscated.↑

17.Scrounge, scavenge.↑

18.David, king of Israel, wrote the majority of the Bible’s psalms.↑

19.Steadying.↑

20.Not.↑

21.Helped, aided.↑

Prosopography

Anonymous

Helen Ostovich

Helen Ostovich, professor emerita of English at McMaster University, is the founder and general editor of Queen’s Men Editions. She is a general editor of The Revels Plays (Manchester University Press); Series Editor of Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama (Ashgate, now Routledge), and series co-editor of Late Tudor and Stuart Drama (MIP); play-editor of several works by Ben Jonson, in Four Comedies: Ben Jonson (1997); Every Man Out of his Humour (Revels 2001); and The Magnetic Lady (Cambridge 2012). She has also edited the Norton Shakespeare 3 The Merry Wives of Windsor Q1602 and F1623 (2015); The Late Lancashire Witches and A Jovial Crew for Richard Brome Online, revised for a 4-volume set from OUP 2021; The Ball, for the Oxford Complete Works of James Shirley (2021); The Merry Wives of Windsor for Internet Shakespeare Editions, and The Dutch Courtesan (with Erin Julian) for the Complete Works of John Marston, OUP 2022. She has published many articles and book chapters on Jonson, Shakespeare, and others, and several book collections, most recently Magical Transformations of the Early Modern English Stage with Lisa Hopkins (2014), and the equivalent to book website, Performance as Research in Early English Theatre Studies: The Three Ladies of London in Context containing scripts, glossary, almost fifty conference papers edited and updated to essays; video; link to Queen’s Mens Ediitons and YouTube: http://threeladiesoflondon.mcmaster.ca/contexts/index.htm, 2015. Recently, she was guest editor of Strangers and Aliens in London ca 1605, Special Issue on Marston, Early Theatre 23.1 (June 2020). She can be contacted at ostovich@mcmaster.ca.

Janelle Jenstad

Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Beatrice Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.

Jennifer Parr

Jennifer Parr holds a Masters degree in European and Renaissance Drama from the University of Warwick. She is an independent scholar and professional director and dramaturge based in Toronto. As an undergraduate at the University of Toronto she became involved as an actor with the P.L.S. Medieval and Renaissance Players’ productions of the Medieval Mystery Cycles returning later to direct an all female company in the York Cycle Fall of the Angels for the international full cycle production in 1998. Her recent productions as director and dramaturge include an all female Julius Caesar and an experimental all female adaptation of Richard III: RIchard 3, Queens 4. Her ongoing research into the historical Richard III and the various theatrical interpretations led to her joining the company of TTR3 as an observer and historical resource for the cast. She also writes a monthly column on music theatre and dance for The WholeNote magazine.

Jennifer Roberts-Smith

Jennifer Roberts-Smith is an associate professor of theatre and performance at the University of Waterloo. Her interdisciplinary work in early modern performance editing combines textual scholarship, performance as research, archival theatre history, and design in the development of live and virtual renderings of early modern performance texts, venues, and practices. With Janelle Jenstad and Mark Beatrice Kaethler, she is co-editor of Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words New Tools (2018). Her most recent work has focused on methods for design research that deepen interdisciplinary understanding and take a relational approach. She is currently managing director of the qCollaborative (the critical feminist design research lab housed in the University of Waterloo’s Games Institute, and leads the SSHRC-funded Theatre for Relationality and Design for Peace projects. She is also creative director and virtual reality development cluster lead for the Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation (DOHR) project. She can be contacted at jennifer.roberts-smith@uwaterloo.ca.

Joey Takeda

Joey Takeda is LEMDO’s Consulting Programmer and Designer, a role he assumed in 2020 after three years as the Lead Developer on LEMDO.

Kate LeBere

Project Manager, 2020–2021. Assistant Project Manager, 2019–2020. Textual Remediator and Encoder, 2019–2021. Kate LeBere completed her BA (Hons.) in History and English at the University of Victoria in 2020. During her degree she published papers in The Corvette (2018), The Albatross (2019), and PLVS VLTRA (2020) and presented at the English Undergraduate Conference (2019), Qualicum History Conference (2020), and the Digital Humanities Summer Institute’s Project Management in the Humanities Conference (2021). While her primary research focus was sixteenth and seventeenth century England, she completed her honours thesis on Soviet ballet during the Russian Cultural Revolution. She is currently a student at the University of British Columbia’s iSchool, working on her masters in library and information science.

Mahayla Galliford

Project manager, 2025-present; research assistant, 2021-present. Mahayla Galliford (she/her) graduated with a BA (Hons with distinction) from the University of Victoria in 2024. Mahayla’s undergraduate research explored early modern stage directions and civic water pageantry. Mahayla continues her studies through UVic’s English MA program and her SSHRC-funded thesis project focuses on editing and encoding girls’ manuscripts, specifically Lady Rachel Fane’s dramatic entertainments, in collaboration with LEMDO.

Martin Holmes

Martin Holmes has worked as a developer in the UVic’s Humanities Computing and Media Centre for over two decades, and has been involved with dozens of Digital Humanities projects. He has served on the TEI Technical Council and as Managing Editor of the Journal of the TEI. He took over from Joey Takeda as lead developer on LEMDO in 2020. He is a collaborator on the SSHRC Partnership Grant led by Janelle Jenstad.

Nicole Vatcher

Technical Documentation Writer, 2020–2022. Nicole Vatcher completed her BA (Hons.) in English at the University of Victoria in 2021. Her primary research focus was women’s writing in the modernist period.

Peter Cockett

Peter Cockett is an associate professor in the Theatre and Film Studies at McMaster University. He is the general editor (performance), and technical co-ordinating editor of Queen’s Men Editions. He was the stage director for the Shakespeare and the Queen’s Men project (SQM), directing King Leir, The Famous Victories of Henry V, and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (2006) and he is the performance editor for our editions of those plays. The process behind those productions is documented in depth on his website Performing the Queen’s Men. Also featured on this site are his PAR productions of Clyomon and Clamydes (2009) and Three Ladies of London (2014). For the PLS, the University of Toronto’s Medieval and Renaissance Players, he has directed the Digby Mary Magdalene (2003) and the double bill of George Peele’s The Old Wives Tale and the Chester Antichrist (2004). He also directed An Experiment in Elizabethan Comedy (2005) for the SQM project and Inside Out: The Persistence of Allegory (2008) in collaboration with Alan Dessen. Peter is a professional actor and director with numerous stage and screen credits. He can be contacted at cockett@mcmaster.ca.

Sam Seaberg

Samuel Seaberg, a University of Victoria English undergrad, enjoys riding his bike. During the summer of 2025, he began working with LEMDO as a recipient of the Valerie Kuehne Undergraduate Research Award (VKURA). Unfortunately, due to his summer being spent primarily in working to establish an edition of Thomas Heywood’s If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part 2 and consequently working out how to represent multi-text works in a digital space, his bike has suffered severely of sheltered seclusion from the sun.

Thomas Churchyard

Toby Malone

Toby Malone is an Australian/Canadian academic, dramaturg, and librarian. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto (PhD, 2009) and the University of Western Australia (BA Hons, 2001), and the University of Western Ontario (MLIS, 2023). He has worked as a theatre artist across the world, with companies including the Stratford Festival, Canadian Stage, Soulpepper, Driftwood Theatre Group, the Shaw Festival, Poorboy Theatre Scotland, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Arizona Theatre Company, CBC, BT/A, and Kill Shakespeare Entertainment. He has published in Shakespeare Survey, Literature/Film Quarterly, Canadian Theatre Review, Borrowers and Lenders, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, appears in published collections with Routledge, Cambridge, and Oxford. Publications include two monographs: dapting War Horse (Palgrave McMillan) and Cutting Plays for Performance: A Practical and Accessible Guide (Routledge), and is currently co-writing an updated version of Shakespeare in Performance: Romeo and Juliet with Jill L. Levenson for Manchester UP. Toby has previously taught at the University of Waterloo and the State University of New York at Oswego, is currently Research Impact Librarian at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Tracey El Hajj

Junior Programmer 2019–2020. Research Associate 2020–2021. Tracey received her PhD from the Department of English at the University of Victoria in the field of Science and Technology Studies. Her research focuses on the algorhythmics of networked communications. She was a 2019–2020 President’s Fellow in Research-Enriched Teaching at UVic, where she taught an advanced course on Artificial Intelligence and Everyday Life. Tracey was also a member of the Map of Early Modern London team, between 2018 and 2021. Between 2020 and 2021, she was a fellow in residence at the Praxis Studio for Comparative Media Studies, where she investigated the relationships between artificial intelligence, creativity, health, and justice. As of July 2021, Tracey has moved into the alt-ac world for a term position, while also teaching in the English Department at the University of Victoria.

Bibliography

Churchyard, Thomas. How Shore’s Wife, King Edward the Fourth’s Concubine, was by King Richard despoiled of all her goods, and forced to do open penance. Mirror for Magistrates. London: for Thomas Marshe, 1563. Z1v-Z8v. STC 1248.

OED: The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

Queen’s Men Editions (QME1)

The Queen’s Men Editions anthology is led by Helen Ostovich, General Editor; Peter Cockett, General Editor (Performance); and Andrew Griffin, General Editor (Text).

University of Victoria (UVIC1)

https://www.uvic.ca/

Metadata

Authority title	How Shore’s Wife was Despoiled
Type of text	Primary Source
Publisher	University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series
Source	This file has been converted from IML, the SGML markup language of the Internet Shakespeare Editions platform. IML files do not indicate the copy or copytext transcribed. LEMDO acknowledges that we are not the main source of transcription, and that we do not know the witness transcribed in this transcription. As time permits, we will compare this transcription to an open-access digital surrogate and align the transcription that surrogate. If you have worked on ISE and/or may have an idea as to the source of this file, please contact lemdo@uvic.ca.
Editorial declaration	Prepared by Toby Malone for the Queen’s Men Editions.
Edition	Released with LEMDO Classroom 0.3.5
Sponsor(s)	Queen’s Men Editions The Queen’s Men Editions anthology is led by Helen Ostovich, General Editor; Peter Cockett, General Editor (Performance); and Andrew Griffin, General Editor (Text).
Encoding description
Document status	published
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