According to Shakespeare’s historical sources, the setting of
the first scene should be the last daie of Aprill in the towne of
Leicester (Chronicles, 1587 545).
two Bishops
Only one bishop is necessary for the scene, as only one,
corresponding to the Archbishop of Canterbury in F and in the historical source
material, speaks.
Clarence
The Duke of Clarence, brother to the King, is silent in this
scene, though he may be given the speech of the unnamed Lord at
Sc1 Sp12.
He replaces F’s Bedford.
th’ambassadors
The French ambassadors.
cousin
Kinsman.
This Duke of Exeter, Thomas Beaufort (1377–1426), was Henry’s
uncle. In the Quarto version of the play, the opening speech may have been
reassigned to him from the Folio’s Westmorland, who was Henry’s cousin by
marriage. This reading is not necessarily an error of neglect, however, since the
word cousin had a broader meaning than it now has, and is
equally applicable to both characters.
we
The royal pronoun, i.e., I.
resolved / Of
Freed from uncertainty about.
touching
Concerning.
become it
Grace it with your presence.
law Salic
A law prohibiting the inheritance of titles from a female
ancestor.
The Pactus Legis Salicae was
a legal code that adapted Roman law for the governance of the barbarian tribes
under Frankish rule. Issued by the Frankish King Clovis I between 508 and 511, the
Pactus governed crime as well as inheritance,
but when later French jurists used it to combat English claims of inheritance, it
came to be synonymous with the tenet of agnatic succession, i.e., the exclusion of
females from the inheritance of titles in Salic land, a phrase
that, as the bishop here points out, has no certain interpretation (see Geary 90–91 and 105–106). An Elizabethan audience, of
course, would be well aware of the obsolescence of any such laws in Tudor
England.
Your argument, the legal justification of the claim.
drop their blood
Die or be wounded.
approbation
Proving true, putting to trial.
impawn our person
Commit me.
Both the sense of put into pawn, give as a
pledge (OEDimpawn, v.1) and put in hazard (v.2) are relevant,
with the further implication of the bishop moving Henry like a pawn in
chess.
charge
Command.
After this conjuration
According to my imposition of this oath (i.e., in the name
of God, take heed).
The more sinister sense of
conjuration, compelling a demon to do one’s bidding, may
also be implicit.
note
Pay close attention.
believe … baptism.
Henry’s beforehand declaration that he will believe what the
bishop says is true subtly undercuts his speech’s ostensible attempt to police and
evaluate the truth. It may be meant to imply that the decision to go to war is a
fait accomplis.
Then hear … progenitors.
The bishop’s speech is a significantly shorter version of its
analogue in F, which, aside from being rendered in meter, is taken nearly verbatim
from its source in Holinshed
(see FM A1 Sc2 Sp8 n.).
The omissions and changes in the Q version make composites of several historical
figures while carefully preserving the argument of the speech the Lady
Inger, for example, seems not to be an error, but rather a composite of
the names Ermengare and Lingare in the Folio
version, themselves names of doubtful authenticity. Graham Holderness argues at
length for the conscious shaping of the Quarto version of the speech for dramatic
effectiveness rather than historic precision. (See Holderness.)
peers
Nobles.
faith
Allegiance.
bar
Legal objection.
stay
Prevent.
they
The French.
Pharamond
A legendary king of the early Franks, supposedly reigning in the
fifth century.
succeed
Inherit a title or estate.
Salic land
Salic land originally referred not to a specific geographical
region, but to any land falling under the Salic law of succession. The bishop,
like the French, is glossing somewhat unjustly.
gloss
Define, interpret.
female bar
Prohibition against women’s succession.
floods
Rivers.
Saale … Elbe
Rivers in Germany.
The Quarto has Sabeck and of Elme. Like
Lady Inger below, these names serve as markers of the bishop’s
authority, not as accurate geographical designations; they are misspelled in all
early printed versions of the play.
Charles the Fifth
This is an error for F’s reading, Charles the Great
(FM A1 Sc2 Sp8), i.e.,
Charlemagne (742–814).
Charlemagne campaigned to settle and impose Christianity on
the German region of Saxony starting in 773; the last rebellions there were put
down in 804. The Quarto’s error is perhaps understandable, since the
sixteenth-century Holy Roman Emperor Charles V would have been the Emperor
Charles clearest in the memories of Shakespeare’s
contemporaries.
certain French
These French were properly Franks, the
Germanic tribes that Charlemagne ruled. The anachronistic distinction between
French and Germans is, however, crucial to the bishop’s case.
dishonest manners
Lewd behaviour.
to wit
Namely.
Meissen
A town in Saxony on the banks of the Elbe.
function
Life, reign.
Q’s reading, the function may well be an aural
error for F’s defunction (i.e., death; FM A1 Sc2 Sp8), but the word’s etymology and the
senses a person’s role in life and the purpose or intended
role of a person (OEDfunction, n.1.a., 2.a.) suggest the possibility that this is the
correct reading.
The Frankish-sounding name Inger may be a
composite of F’s Ermengare (i.e., Ermengarde at A1 Sc2 Sp8) and
Lingare (likely another invented figure; see A1 Sc2 Sp8 and note). The Lady Inger is a perfectly
appropriate name for the ancestor of a figure who is also a composite of the
historical Hugh Capet and Charles, the Duke of Lower Lorraine; she allows the
bishop to make his point succinctly. At any rate, historical accuracy is not
Shakespeare’s concern here, nor is it the bishop’s.
Charles … Lorraine.
No such Charles has been mentioned, but the longer analogous
passage in F does mention him (A1 Sc2 Sp8 and note).
as clear … sun
Given the length of the bishop’s argument, this line is often
played for laughs in performance, but it is not necessarily irony either on the
bishop’s or Shakespeare’s part.
King Pepin’s
Pepin the Short (714–768), who became the first Carolingian
king and the father of Charlemagne, justified his title through a female ancestor,
as the analogous longer speech in F explains (see A1 Sc2 Sp8 and
note).
Charles his
Charles’s (an archaic form of the possessive).
No female-succeeding King Charles has been mentioned in this
speech. Presumably the bishop refers to the contemporary king (Charles VI), which
gives an immediacy to his argument absent in the Folio version.
1) A complicated web of lines of descent; 2) a tangle of
contradictions.
Perhaps with reference to the proverb You dance in a
net and think nobody sees you (Tilley N130).
amply to embase
Openly to discredit, devalue.
crooked
Dishonest; supported by indirect and perverse evidence.
causes
Legal cases, i.e., arguments for their legitimacy of rule (OEDcause, n.7).
progenitors
Ancestors.
The sin … head
If the claim is false, I will accept moral responsibility.
When … daughter.
A reference to Numbers 27:8.
Both Hall and Holinshed cite the verse, If a man die
and haue no sonne, then ye shall turne his inheritaunce vnto his
daughter (Geneva Numbers 27:8 qtd. in Hall, The vnion and
Holinshed, Chronicle, 1587). Shakespeare shortens the verse for the
sake of meter, sacrificing some of the explicit sense.
Stand … own.
Defend your right to France.
great-grandsire’s
King Edward III’s.
From … claim
As whose descendant you make this claim.
Edward III’s maternal grandfather was King Philip IV of
France.
your great-uncle
The grave of your great-uncle.
Edward … Prince
The eldest of Edward III’s seven sons, Edward (1330–1376) was
popularly known as the Black Prince of Wales because of a gift of black armour
given to him after his famous victory at Crécy.
In the Quarto version of the play, even more pronouncedly
than in the Folio version, Shakespeare strategically avoids reference to the
dynastic conflicts that underlay the Wars of the Roses, the subject of his first
tetralogy of English history plays (1
Henry VI, 2 Henry VI, 3 Henry
VI, and Richard III). The Black Prince’s son,
Richard II, was deposed by Henry Bolingbroke, later Henry IV, an act that would
lead to the civil wars. The bishop’s avoidance of that subject, and his linking of
Henry V to his great-uncle’s glory, downplays the conflict.
tragedy
The battle of Crécy, 1346, at which the Black Prince led the
English forces.
In general, the Quarto emphasizes the recurring metaphor
linking warfare and drama less than the Folio version of the play (see my Textual
Introduction), though phrases
like this one and the Quarto-only Unmasked his power below (Sc1 Sp10)
do suggest that theme.
his most … hill
According to Holinshed, Edward III stood aloft on a
windmill hill at Crécy and refused to join the battle, commanding that
his officers send no more to me for any aduenture that falleth, so long as
my son is aliue, for I will that this iournie be his, with the honor
thereof (Chronicle, 1587 372).
whelp
Cub.
Foraging
1) Taking as plunder; 2) devouring.
Q’s reading, with forage as a
transitive verb without a preposition, is as valid as the more familiar reading
from F, Forage in. See OEDforage, v. 1.
1) Cold through lack of action; 2) indifferent or unmoved to
action.
lay … proportion
Determine the appropriate military force.
Oxford English Dictionary does not list the sense of
proportion as “military force”, but
Shakespeare frequently uses the word, usually pluralized, in this sense (FM H5A1 Sc2 Sp30, A2 Sc4 Sp4; Ham
1.2.32.
the Scot
Scotland.
make road
Invade, make inroads.
with all advantages
At any opportunity; i.e., with our military power engaged in
France.
The Marches
The Scottish border lands (and their inhabitants; OEDmarch, n.3).
The Wardens of the Marches, bordering Scotland and
Wales, kept a military retinue and a quasi-regal authority there until the
seventeenth century (Gurr, King Henry).
England
This may be a mishearing of F’s inland (i.e.,
the interior part of the country, as opposed to the border lands), but Q’s reading
makes as good, if not better sense.
coursing
Swift-running.
Refers to hunting hares with greyhounds (OEDcourse, v.1).
sneakers
This epithet seems illogically joined to
coursing—how exactly does one course sneakily?—and F’s reading,
snatchers (i.e., thieves), may be preferable. Q’s paradoxical
phrase is appropriate, however, to the English view of the Scots, who are compared
both to stealthy egg-stealing weasels and to the fearsome pouring of water through
a tide wall.
intendment
Intention, design.
Oxford English Dictionary cites this line for this sense
(OEDintendment, n.5). In the Folio version, however, the sense is
clearly “disposition or general character” (n. 6.), as indicated by
the following line, which is absent in Q. In F, the native
giddiness of the Scots is the issue, not their plan for a
coordinated invasion (A1 Sc2 Sp17).
For you … hereof.
From 1295 to 1560, France and Scotland made a series of
treaties, the Auld Alliance, providing mutual military aid in
conflicts with England. In 1346, during Edward III’s campaign in France, the
Scottish King David II invaded England, though as the bishop notes below, he did
so unsuccessfully. Hall, though not Holinshed, has Westmorland make a similar argument:
None of your progenitors euer passed the sea in iust quarell against the
Frenche nacion, but the Scottishe
people in their absence entered your realme, spoyled your houses, slewe your
people and toke great praies innumerable, only to prouoke your auncestors
for to returne from the inuayding of
Fraunce.
(The vnion fol. 39)
The English fears were well grounded in this instance; the Scottish Earl of
Douglas had made arrangements in 1413 with the nominally pro-English Duke of
Burgundy to provide each other military aid. (See Anne Curry, Agincourt: A New
History 37).
Unmasked … for
Revealed his intention to invade.
A more evocative phrasing than F’s went with his
forces into France, and so probably a conscious revision, this suggests
the ethical ambiguity of Edward III’s invasion, and reinforces the metaphor of war
as theatre begun at Sc1 Sp7.
Another sense of unmask, to reveal a cannon’s location by
firing it (OEDunmask, v.3.a), though not cited until the eighteenth century, may
be intended here, as well.
unfurnished
Unprotected.
breach
Gap in a sea wall.
That
So that.
bruit
Clamour, noise.
hereof
Of this invasion.
She
England.
feared
Frightened.
hear … herself
Just listen to how her history represents her.
chivalry
Knights (i.e., military forces).
impounded … stray
Penned up like a stray dog.
the king of Scots
The Scottish King David II, captured at the battle of
Neville’s Cross, 1346, while Edward III was in France. Historically (and in
Holinshed), David II was not sent to France, though he is in Edward III (1596).
caitiff
1) Captive; 2) poor wretch; 3) villain.
your chronicles
The history books (that you have read).
F’s their makes the sense “the
chronicles of King Edward’s time”. Both pronouns were frequently
abbreviated yr in manuscript.
ooze
Muddy bed.
wreck
The cargo of wrecked or sunken ships (OEDwreck, n.1).
Legally, wreck (or wrack) became royal property.
shipless treasury
Treasure scattered from the hulls of sunken ships, or remaining
when the ships have rotted away.
Lord
The Folio assigns this reasonable caveat
about Scotland to the scene’s second bishop (designated in F as the Bishop of
Ely), which adds considerable nuance to the clergy’s case for the war (A1 Sc2 Sp19). Given the Quarto’s
opening stage direction, it might also go to Clarence, an otherwise silent
character. Since Westmorland appears in the Folio version of the scene, many
editors since Warburton have assigned this speech to him, arguing that Holinshed’s
account of this council has Westmorland making this argument (see third-level
note).
Holinshed suggests that Westmorland had
a personal agenda for making this argument:
When the archbishop had ended his prepared tale, Rafe Neuill earle of
Westmerland, and as then lord Warden of the marches against Scotland,
understanding that the king vpon a courageous desire to recouer his right in
France, would suerlie take the wars in hand, thought good to mooue the king
to begin first with Scotland, and thereupon declared how easie a matter it
should be to make a conquest there, and how greatlie the same should further
his wished purpose for the subduing of the Frenchmen, concluding the summe
of his tale with this old saieng: that Who so will France win, must
with Scotland first begin. Manie matters he touched, as well to
shew how necessarie the conquest of Scotland should be, as also to prooue
how iust a cause the king had to attempt it, trusting to persuade the king
and all other to be of his opinion.
(Chronicle, 1587 546)
If … begin.
See Tilley (Dictionary F663), which
lists Hall’s chronicle as the earliest instance of the proverb. In Holinshed, both
versions of the proverb are cited, first by Westmorland and then inverted by
Exeter, who
replied against the erle of Westmerlands oration, affirming rather that
he which would Scotland win, he with France must first begin. For if the
king might once compasse the conquest of France, Scotland could not long
resist; so that conquere France, and Scotland would soone obeie. For where
should the Scots lerne policie and skill to defend themselves, if they had
not their bringing vp and training in France? If the French pensions
mainteined not the Scotish nobilitie, in what case should they be? Then take
awaie France, and the Scots will soone be tamed; France being to Scotland
the same that the sap is to the tree, which being taken awaie, the tree must
needs die and wither.
(Chronicle, 1587 546)
in prey
A predator; out for prey.
To … eggs
England is usually gendered female, as at Sc1 Sp11,
but the switching of gendered pronouns in this metaphor captures both the
masculine excursion of the army/eagle from the nest and the feminine associations
of eggs.
suck
Go in order to suck.
havoc
Lay waste.
cursed
Damnable.
Properly, it is the reasoning that dictates the necessity of
staying at home that is cursed, not the necessity itself.
advisèd
Judicious, wise.
though … parts
Though it be put into parts according to social hierarchy.
The phrase also establishes the musical metaphor of a chorus
of parts singing in harmony.
Congrueth
Agrees, accords.
The verb congrue appears only here and
in Q1 Hamlet.
with … content
To the satisfaction of everyone.
content may be an error for F’s consent (A1 Sc2 Sp20) or for
concent. The latter, meaning “harmony”, is
a musical term of art—deriving from the Latin con
cantus, a singing together—and would better elaborate the musical
metaphor.
Like … divide
The Quarto’s addition of True perfects the meter
of the shared line, which lacks a beat in F.
fate
Predestined lot.
F’s reading (state) keeps the sense of
“situation, lot”, with the added sense of
“governance”, the theme of the Bishop’s argument.
This reading differs markedly from F in its implications for
the Bishop’s argument. In the Folio, Canterbury attributes the bees’ act of
order to a rule in nature (FM A1 Sc2 Sp21), i.e.,
their own instinct.
Ordain … kingdom
1) Enact a law ordering their kingdom; 2) arrange a demonstration
of order for the kingdom of humans.
king
The Aristotelian belief that the leader of a beehive was male
was traditional until the late sixteenth century. As Taylor notes, the fact of the
queen bee’s sex was not published in England until Charles Butler’s The Feminine Monarchy in 1609 (Henry V).
The image anticipates the battlefield pavilion that Henry
will occupy in his French campaign.
busied … majesty
Absorbed in his kingly rank; busy with royal affairs.
behold
Beholds.
masons
Builders.
civil
Orderly.
citizens
The term has a more specific sense than
city-dwellers; citizen, in Shakespeare’s London,
signified a member of a recognized trade guild, especially the twelve great
livery companies from which the city’s governors were elected.
In the absence of banks in early modern England, wealthy citizen merchants and
their guilds were storehouses of liquid wealth, providing loans of ready money to
individuals, to civic institutions, and to the crown. The Bishop’s
characterization of those bees who store the hive’s own liquid wealth as
citizens would thus have seemed particularly apt to the play’s
original audience.
A noise of deliberation, (i.e., hmmm); also the
buzz of a bee.
executors
Executioners.
The weaker legal sense of “those that carry out a
warrant” (OEDexecutor, n.1), is possible, but the grimmer sense fits the context,
and foreshadows the execution of Bardolph in scene 10.
caning
Turning sour and drossy, like poorly-brewed ale.
A rare word of northern English origin (OEDcane, v.2).
drone
Non-working male bee whose function is to impregnate the
queen.
After their sexual function is fulfilled, drones are ejected
from the hive to die. The drone is a common Renaissance figure for
laziness.
This … moment
These two lines disturb the otherwise metrically regular
speech, and their content is redundant, since they briefly convey the sense of the
series of similes that follow: As many arrows […] defect (Sc1 Sp14). They were likely intended to replace those lines, a shorter version of the
same sentiment. Perhaps one version or other was marked for deletion in the
Quarto’s copy-text, but both were printed.
The division into quarters appears as a first
indication of the size of the English army in France and the small numbers
present at Agincourt (Gurr, King Henry).
Gallia
The ancient Roman name for France (Gaul).
Craik notes that all Gallia recalls the
familiar opening to Caesar’s Gallic Wars: Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres
(“All Gaul is divided into three parts”; qtd. in Craik, King Henry).
policy
Political shrewdness.
dauphin
The title of the heir to the French throne.
In productions, the original spelling of the French prince’s
title (Dolphin) has suggested a fertile joke to directors. In
Adrian Noble’s 1984 production, for example, Exeter (Brian Blessed) insisted on
the English pronunciation in order to irk the French, and the dauphin’s reaction,
an indignantly precise French pronunciation (For the—Doe-fan,
I stand here for him) raised a laugh (Noble, Henry V). Similarly,
in 2000, Edward Hall’s English characters used the Folio spellings of Dauphin,
Calais (Callice), etc., as a running joke about the parochialism of
the English tourist’s refusal to acknowledge local custom (Hall, Henry V).
France being ours
Since France is rightfully ours.
bring … awe
Force its submission.
like tongueless mutes
The chronicles shall be dumb regarding us (since our failure will
give them nothing to say).
Not … epitaph
We shall not be memorialized gloriously in the chronicles.
pleasure
Intention.
from him
I.e., not from the king, his father.
Pleaseth
Does it please.
render
Deliver, recite.
what we … charge
What we have been ordered to say.
sparingly
Reservedly, delicately.
afar off
Indirectly, as if from a distance.
embassage
Message.
spirit
Passion, anger.
as … prisons
Like his prisoners, Henry’s passion is under the control of his
virtuous nature.
fettered
Chained.
uncurbed
Unhindered.
The word may be trisyllabic as it is in F, but the
irregularity of meter makes it uncertain.
Gurr argues that in fine presents a different
shade of meaning from F’s in few (A1 Sc2 Sp25), the former implying a perfunctory
summary and the latter the plainspoken bluntness that Henry enjoins (King
Henry).
naught
Nothing.
galliard
Lively dance.
revel into
Party your way into.
meeter … study
1) More suited to your characteristic inclinations and pursuits;
2) an object appropriate for you to think upon.
The colourful but probably apocryphal anecdote of the
dauphin’s gift of tennis balls was among the most memorable popular traditions
surrounding Henry V. Holinshed places the disdainfull ambassage in
the spring preceding the Leicester parliament dramatized here:
Whilest in the Lent season the king laie at Killingworth, there came to
him from Charles Dolphin of France certaine ambassadors, that brought with
them a barrel of Paris balles, which from their maister they presented to
him for a token that was taken in verie ill part, as sent in scorne, to
signifie, that it was more meet for the king to passe the time with such
childish exercise, than to attempt any worthie exploit.
(Chronicle, 1587 545)
Following the example of the anonymous 1598 play The Famous
Victories of Henry the Fifth (FV D2v–D3v),
Shakespeare conflates the tennis ball embassy with the French reply to Henry’s
demands.
When … chases.
Henry engages in extended wordplay, quibbling on several terms
from tennis (as it was played by the aristocracy of late medieval European
courts): rackets, set, hazard, match, courts, chases.
The game of real tennis (as opposed to the
modern lawn tennis) originated in France, was popular among the English
aristocracy from the reign of Henry V to the seventeenth century, and has
maintained its enthusiasts to the present day.
Real tennis: a seventeenth-century French illustration.
It is played indoors on a walled, oblong court, and scoring is achieved when the ball
is struck into a hazard (a hole or concavity in the wall)
or when it bounces twice without being returned (a chase).
(See Shakespeare’s
England 2.459–462).
According to fifteenth-century historical tradition, passed
down to Shakespeare’s historical sources and dramatized in both parts of Henry IV, before acceding to the throne Henry led a dissolute
life of lawless pleasure-seeking and surrounded himself with dissolute
companions—represented by Shakespeare in the characters of Sir John Falstaff,
Pistol, Bardolph, and Nym—whose companionship he had dutifully discarded at his
accession. Holinshed relates that
this king even at first appointing with himselfe, to shew that in his
person princelie honors should change publike manners, he determined to put
on him the shape of a new man. For whereas aforetime he had made himselfe a
companion unto misrulie mates of dissolute order and life, he now banished
them all from his presence (but not unrewarded, or else unpreferred)
inhibiting them upon a great paine, not once to approach, lodge, or sojourne
within ten miles of his court or presence: and in their places he chose men
of gravitie, wit, and high policie.
(Chronicle, 1587 543)
The Folio Henry V emphasizes this aspect of the
central character rather more than does the Quarto (see A1 Sc1 Sp11).
The context makes clear that seat
refers metonymically to the royal place and duties, and not, as some early editors
surmised, to England itself. But as Craik argues, ‘this poor seatʼ may
introduce the ironical idea that England is only the lesser part of his
rightful inheritance, his ‘throne of Franceʼ being the greater
part (King
Henry).
At this point in the Folio version of this speech, Henry’s
personal pronouns turn from the royal plural (we and
our) to the more personal I and
my, suggesting that the coming war is as much a personal
conflict between Henry and the dauphin as it is a battle between nations (F1 H5 H2v). The
Quarto’s consistent use of the plural we is consistent with
Q’s heightened emphasis on the communal nature of the campaign.
rouse us
Rise up.
throne
Though the Q1 reading is clear enough, a word may be missing
here, as suggested by F’s my throne (FM A1 Sc2 Sp28) and Q3’s the throne (sig. A4v). Gurr
emends to our throne presumably to parallel the plural pronouns
elsewhere in the Quarto version of the speech (King Henry).
like … days
Like a common working man.
Moore Smith reads for working days as
during working days and draws a comparison between Henry’s
ultimate glory and the Sabbath as a day of rest (Henry V 137-138).
mock
Act of mockery.
The repetition of the word in the ensuing lines appropriately
evokes the sound of a tennis ball struck back and forth.
balls
Tennis balls.
Some editors have found a bawdy play on the sense of
testicles.
gunstones
Cannon-balls.
Stones, rather than iron balls, were used as ammunition in
early cannons, and gunstones remained the more usual word until the
seventeenth century. Henry’s quip about tennis balls returned as ammunition has a
long pedigree. Caxton’s Cronycles of Englond (1482), for
example, records that Henry
was wonder sore agreued & right euyll payed toward the frensshmen,
and toward the kyng & the Dolphyn / & thought to auenge hym vpon hem
/ as sone as god wolde sende hym grace & myght / and anone lete make
tenys balles for the dolphyn in al the hast that they mygt be made and they
were grete gonne stones for the Dolphyn to playe with all.
(Caxton T5r)
In Famous Victories, Henry rejoins that in
steed of balles of leather, / We will tosse him balles of brasse and
yron (FV D3v).
sore charged
Heavily burdened.
Plays on the sense of loaded with ammunition
(OEDcharge, v.5).
The rank of corporal is anachronistic; the earliest Oxford English Dictionary citation dates to the sixteenth
century.
Lieutenant
Although Bardolph appears in 1 Henry
IV, 2 Henry IV, and Merry
Wives, this is the first time he is addressed as Lieutenant, and the
addition of a military rank to the character seems intended to emphasize the
mobilization process. Nym is addressed as Corporal consistently in
Merry Wives (the other play in which he appears),
though Pistol is given the title Ancient only on the Quarto title
pages of that play. Pistol is introduced in 2 Henry IV
more as the comic type of the braggart soldier than as a literal military man, and
in that play he is variously called Ancient (F1 2H4 G4v,
G5r),
Captain (G5r), and Lieutenant (GG7v).
Ancient
Ensign, i.e., military flag-bearer.
Gary Taylor considered Ensign
Pistol to be a modernization of the character’s title, but I have
retained Ancient on the grounds that unless a character is a
version of a historical figure with a modern historical convention dictating the
spelling of his name, preference should be given to dramatic convention. Thus I
have retained Flewellen (or Fluellen in F) as the
fictional captain’s name despite Llewellyn being the more proper
spelling of the common Welsh surname, and Ancient, as part
of the designation of the dramatic character of Pistol. At any rate, neither
ancient nor ensign, a variation
of the title that Flewellen pronounces once in Q (Sc9 Sp4),
is equivalent to the modern rank of ensign, which designates a naval officer, not
a medieval standard-bearer.
wink
Shut my eyes.
iron
Sword.
what though
What of that?
it will … cold
I.e., it does not mind being unsheathed.
troth-plight
Betrothed.
A more binding arrangement than a modern engagement.
Though … plod.
Nym implies that he can wait indefinitely for his revenge.
Proverbial: Men must do as they may, not as they
would (Tilley M554).
A modern stage tradition, that Nim stutters, has the merit of bringing
out the absurdity of this line, the stutter on do giving
an audience time to anticipate the obvious and logical conclusion
die, which Nim then avoids (Taylor, Henry V).
rest
1) Final consolation, i.e., death; 2) last-ditch bet (a reference
to the card game primero).
For the second sense, see OEDrest, n.2.6.a, which cites this line.
This reading is more evocative than F’s by this
hand (A4 Sc1 Sp69),
and may be an actor’s improvisation or an authorial revision.
keep lodging
Rent out rooms.
With the suggestion of keeping a brothel, as the Hostess
implies.
live … needle
Make an honest living by sewing.
With additional bawdy senses, as both
prick and needle have the sense
of penis, and, the RSC editors assert,
needle can mean “vagina” as well (Bate and Rasmussen).
straight
Immediately.
Nym … sword.
The Quarto text, like the Folio, gives editors, directors,
and actors considerable latitude when determining who draws or sheathes a sword
and when in this scene. The only original stage directions are They
drawe and again They draw (Q1 H5B2r), but the dialogue makes it clear that
the threat of comic violence between the cowardly braggarts repeatedly arises. I
have made editorial incursions only where the dialogue strongly suggests stage
business.
Nym’s
Nym’s recently drawn weapon.
This exclamation may suggest that Pistol’s weapon has already
been drawn.
Cf. Pistol’s Push home in F (A2 Sc1 Sp32). Various other senses
of push are possible, and Pistol’s response suggests that
he hears Nym’s speech as a verb. The corresponding speech in F reads
Pish (FM A2 Sc1 Sp13), a less-specific expression of
contempt.
prick-eared
Pointy eared.
The phrase may also suggest the horns traditionally thought
to grow on a cuckold’s head, since Pistol has triumphantly stolen Nym’s intended
bride.
cur of Iceland
A popular breed of lap dog with long, course hair.
See OEDIceland, n.2 John Caius’s treatise Of Englishe
Dogges (trans. Abraham Fleming, 1576) discusses the breed:
Vse and custome hath intertained other dogges of an outlandishe kinde,
but a fewe and the same beyng of a pretty bygnesse, I meane Iseland, dogges
curled & rough al ouer, which by reason of the lenght of their heare
make showe nei|ther of face nor of body. And yet these corres, forsoothe;
because they are so straunge are greatly set by, esteemed, taken vp, and
made of many times in the roome of the Spaniell gentle or comforter.
(Caius 37)
Pistol’s insult may depend on the course shagginess of the breed or its
meekness.
Will you shog off? is likely an invitation to
Pistol to carry the duel elsewhere, although it may be directed at the Hostess
and/or Bardolph, whose presence is impeding the duel. Another sense of
shog, to shake off (OEDshog, v.1.a) may indicate that someone is attempting to restrain
Nym physically.
solus
Alone (Latin).
Usually a theatrical term indicating a character’s solo
entry, Pistol seems to misunderstand the word as an insult.
egregious
Outrageous.
messful
Dripping with half-chewed food(?).
Evidently Pistol’s nonce-word, messful
(mesfull in Q) does not appear in Oxford
English Dictionary. The contemporary senses of
mess all have to do with food, not the modern senses of
disorder, dirt, and disgust.
perdie
By God.
A corruption of the French par
Dieu.
retort
Cast back.
I can talk
I.e., I can talk as intimidatingly as you can.
Pistol’s … up.
1) Firing mechanism is ready; 2) burning penis is erect.
Pistol’s name (both a firearm and a homophone of
pizzle, a slang term for penis) provides much potential
for wordplay in scenes where he appears. The Quarto version of this phrase is more
suggestive of genitals and venereal disease than the Folio reading
(Pistol’s cock is up, and flashing fire will follow), which
plays more heavily on the handgun image.
Barbasom
The name of a demon.
Pistol’s inflated speech reminds Nym of a conjuror’s spell.
Barbason is also mentioned in Merry Wives (Wiv
2.2.227).
conjure
Invoke or control by magic.
humour
Inclination.
Nym implies that his violent urges are influenced by one of
the four humors believed by medieval medicine to control moods and
behaviours: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. Nym, both in this play and
in Merry Wives, uses the word rather imprecisely,
typically in some variation of his catchphrase, that’s the humor of
it. His overuse of the word pokes fun at the comedy of
humors, a type of play made fashionable at the time of Henry V by Chapman’s A Humorous Day’s Mirth
(1597) and Jonson’s Every Man in his Humor (1598).
indifferently
Fairly.
foul
1) Insulting; 2) dirty from being fired.
scour
1) Stab; 2) clean the pistol’s dirty barrel.
rapier
Long, light sword used for fencing.
As Nym is a contemporary of Henry V, his rapier is
anachronistic, as it evolved from the older longsword only in the sixteenth
century.
in fair terms
Legitimately.
in contrast to the foul Pistol.
braggart
Boaster.
furious
1) Raging; 2) absurd.
wight
Person.
exhale
Draw (literally haul out) your sword.
Steevens’s suggestion, breathe your last, is
another possibility (Plays).
mickle
Much, great.
Couple gorge
Pistol’s version of Couper la
gorge, French for “cut the
throat”.
To the
Go to the.
powdering tub
Sweating tub used to treat venereal disease.
infamy
Shame, bad reputation.
lazar
Diseased.
Usually leprous, though in this context Pistol probably means
poxy, i.e., syphilitic.
kite
Bird of prey, predatory person.
Cressid’s kind
Impoverished whores.
Cressida, in classical legend, was the unfaithful lover of
Troilus, son of the Trojan king Priam. Robert Henryson’s fifteenth century poem
The Testament of Cresseid, a sequel to Chaucer’s
Troilus and Criseyde, has her ending her life as a
leprous beggar.
Doll Tearsheet
The name of a prostitute.
A character by this name is mentioned as a consort of
Falstaff’s (2H4 2.1.133, 2.2.123, 2.2.134). Doll was a common name for a
prostitute (cf. Jonson’s Dol Common in The Alchemist), and Tearsheet suggests violently
vigorous sexual activity.
espouse
Marry.
I … hold
The phrase recalls the marriage service.
quondam
“Former” (Latin).
By marriage, the Hostess’s name has become Mistress
Pistol.
Paco!
Pistol’s version of Pauca, Latin
for “few”, i.e., only a few words are needed to
explain the situation.
The full phrase is pauca
verba (“few words”).
Hostess
In F the boy comes to summon Pistol, with your
hostess as an afterthought (FM A2 Sc1 Sp24), but this is reversed in Q.
my master
Sir John Falstaff.
Falstaff is the companion of King Henry’s dissolute youth, as
depicted in 1 Henry IV and 2 Henry
IV.
Bardolph … warming-pan.
Warm Falstaff’s sheets with your fiery red nose.
Bardolph’s alcoholically red face, often compared to fire or
to red gems, is a running joke in the plays in which he appears. See the Boy’s
joke (A2 Sc3 Sp13)
and Flewellen’s description of Bardolph (A3 Sc6 Sp29).
See also especially 1 Henry
IV
3.3.18–38. A
warming-pan is a long-handled brass pan of live coals,
used for warming beds.
yield … pudding
Provide his substantial quantity of flesh to carrion birds; i.e.,
die.
The Folio reading, betting (FM A2 Sc1 Sp29), may make better
sense, but since Q repeats this spelling, and the entire speech verbatim, below
(Sc2 Sp32),
it is somewhat difficult to explain the Quarto reading as error, and though
perhaps less precise, the Quarto version of Nym’s question makes its own
sense.
Base
Unworthy, low.
As Craik argues, Base is the slave that pays
seems to have become proverbial from its use here (King Henry; see also Tilley S523).
As … compound.
That is as valour shall determine.
Sword … oath
Punning on ’sword (i.e., “God’s word”), a common oath.
noble
A gold coin worth six shillings eight pence.
i.e., sixteen pence less than Nym claims Pistol owes
him.
will give
I will give.
combind
Bind us together.
live by Nym
1) Live with Nym’s help; 2) make a living by thievery — playing on the sense of nym as steal (OEDnim, v.3.a).
sutler
Seller of provisions to an army.
camp
Army, military camp.
came of
Were born of.
tashan
The Hostess’s mistake for tertian, a type
of fever or ague.
A tertian fever causes paroxysms every
third day.
contigian
The Hostess’s mistake either for contagion,
or for quotidian, another type of fever.
A quotidian fever causes daily
paroxysms. Falstaff evidently has multiple types of fever at once. While some
editors cite the Hostess’s gibberish phrase as evidence that the composers of the
Quarto text had no knowledge of Latin, the error may very well be intended as one
of the Hostess’s malapropisms.
condole
Comfort, grieve over.
live
Outlive Falstaff.
Malone’s punctuation, lambkins we will live
(Plays),
alters the traditional reading: we will live as quietly and peaceably
together as lambkins.
The longer version of this scene in the Folio (2.1) includes
several speeches that do not appear in Q, which serve to implicate King Henry’s
rejection of Falstaff and all of his former companions, as depicted in 2 Henry IV (2H4
5.5.39–66).
The Hostess’s declaration that The king has killed Falstaff’s heart (A2 Sc1 Sp26),
Nym’s assessment that Henry hath run bad humors on the knight (A2 Sc1 Sp41)
and Pistol’s attribution of his sickness to a broken heart rather than to fever
(A2 Sc1 Sp42)
are all absent in Q, part of a larger pattern that avoids critiques of Henry and
presents his character less ambiguously than in F.
Scene 3
Location: the English muster camp at Southampton, a port city on
the southern coast of England.
In performance, this scene is often set on a quayside or a
makeshift council chamber to indicate the English preparations to embark, but no
such specificity is indicated in the text.
his grace
King Henry.
too bold
Overconfident.
apprehended
Arrested.
bedfellow
Intimate companion.
It was not unusual for men to share beds
until the middle of the seventeenth century, often only for convenience, though
here the practice indicates the special relationship that Scrope enjoyed with
Henry, detailed in Holinshed:
The said lord Scroope was in such fauour with the king, that he admitted
him sometime to be his bedfellow, in whose fidelitie the king reposed such
trust, that when anie priuat or publike councell was in hand, this lord had
much in the determination of it. For he represented so great grauitie in his
countenance, such modestie in behauiour, and so vertuous zeale to all
godlinesse in his talke, that whatsoeuer he said was thought for the most
part necessarie to be doone and followed.
(Chronicle, 1587 548)
In Munday’s Sir John Oldcastle (1600), which
dwells much more fully on the conspiracy than does Henry
V, Scrope proposes using this trust to assassinate the king:
Historically, Lord Scrope’s crime was not involvement in the plot,
but failure to reveal it to the king, and as Anne Curry argues, Henry’s action
against Scrope was verging on arbitrary rule (Agincourt 37).
cloyed
Sickened by overfeeding.
a foreign purse
French bribes.
aboard
Embark the navy.
gentle
Noble.
power
Troops.
feared
Revered.
Taylor notes that this line may allude
to the famous question — posed by Machiavelli in The
Prince — of whether it is better for a ruler to be feared or loved (Henry V, 132); if so,
then feared may have the sinister connotation more usual
today. Holinshed (citing Hall) may provide a source for the balanced view of Henry
that Cambridge voices here:
Thys king was a Prince whome all men loued, and of none disdayned. This
Prince was a captain against whome fortune neuer frowned, nor mischance once
spurned. This captain was a shepheard, whom his flocke both loued and
obeyed. This shephearde was suche a Iusticiarie, that lefte no offence
vnpunished, nor frendship vnrewarded. Thys Iusticiarie was so feared, that
all rebellion was banished, and sedition suppressed.
(Chronicle, 1577 4:1217)
steeped their galls
Drowned their bitterness.
Galls are gall-bladders, traditionally regarded as
the source of bitter feelings, especially those of resentment (Craik, King
Henry).
And shall … merit
I am more likely to forget the purpose of my hands than the uses
of rewards.
Possibly an echo of Psalm 137:5: If I forget thee, O
Ierusalem, let my right hand forget to play (Geneva).
their … worthiness
The reasons for rewarding, and the worth of, my subjects.
with … shine
Gleam with muscles hardened and burnished like steel.
Neither this incident, the release of the complaining
drunkard, nor the game with the commission papers that ensues, is historical, and
all seem to be Shakespeare’s inventions.
set him on
Provoked him.
on … advice
Now that he has sobered up and come to his senses.
See OEDdistemper, n.1.4.d, which cites this line as the earliest example of
the sense of “intoxication”. Steevens quotes an unrelated passage of
Holinshed: his neighbours came to him, and gaue him wine and strong drinke
in such excessiue sort, that he was therewith distempered, and reeled as he
went (Chronicle, 1587 626).
Proverbially, small faults are winked at (Tilley F123).
how … eye
How wide must I open my eye.
capital
Punishable by death.
chewed … digested
Deliberately planned, premeditated.
dear
Tender.
The secondary sense of “costly, dearly bought”
is also ironically intended. The RSC editors find a pun on dire
here as well (Bate and
Rasmussen, 1047).
late
Lately appointed.
commissioners
Officers to serve as regents during the absence of the
king.
it
My commission.
change you colour
Do you turn pale.
out of appearance
Out of your faces.
quit
Driven to an end.
F’s quick makes mercy a living thing that the
traitors kill (FM A2 Sc2 Sp25);
the Quarto reading, while less evocative, makes perfect sense.
The sense of interest, usury may be a
reminder, along with the coining metaphor in the previous line, that Masham had
been Henry IV’s Lord Treasurer.
spark
Insignificant irritant.
annoy
Harm, irritate.
gross
Plainly.
black from white
Assigning moral value to black and white is common enough,
but the implicit alignment here of truth with blackness is curious. F’s reading,
black and white (FM A2 Sc2 Sp25), suggests instead the hard
factuality of written words on paper.
open
Evident, clear.
to the answer
To receive the verdict.
practices
Treacheries.
by … name of
You who go by the name of.
price of it
At this point in the Folio text (FM A2 Sc2 Sp28),
Cambridge justifies his treachery according to his political motives rather than
avarice: according to Shakespeare’s chronicle sources, Cambridge’s motivation for
treason was to supplant Henry in favour of his brother-in-law Edmund Mortimer, Earl
of March, and of his own progeny (Holinshed,
Chronicle, 1587; Hall,
The vnion). As a grandson of Edward III, Richard of
Cambridge had his own claim to the throne, a claim that his son Richard, Duke of
York (1411–1461), would eventually make openly, starting the Wars of the Roses.
While Shakespeare had chronicled these matters extensively in his first tetralogy
of history plays, this later conflict is only hinted at in the Folio Henry V, and the Quarto version, which in general presents a unified
England untorn by civil unrest, omits even the hint.
quit
Pardon.
enemy … fixed
Officially recognized enemy of England (i.e., France).
Steevens notes the echo of Famous
Victories: What not King of France, then nothing (FV
G1v qtd. in Steevens, Plays).
Scene 4
Location: London.
Staines
A town west of London, on the road to Southampton.
Seventeen miles away from London, Staines is where the
soldiers would cross the Thames on their way to Southampton, eighty miles to the
southwest.
No fur
No farther.
A dialect form of the comparative, surviving from the Old
English feorr. See discussion at OEDfar, adj.
Arthur’s bosom
The Hostess’s mistake for Abraham’s bosom, i.e.,
heaven.
For the origin of the correct phrase,
see the parable of Dives and Lazarus (Geneva, Luke 16:19–31). Arthur’s
bosom, as a secular, literary alternative to Abraham’s, is arguably a more
appropriate afterlife for Falstaff. Sir John himself is familiar with the gospel
passage that the Hostess misremembers (see 1H4
3.3.24–25).
Philip Schwyzer suggests that her error reflects
dual impulses by English reformers (Literature, Nationalism, and Memory 131–133). On the one hand,
Abraham’s bosom was deleted from the Edwardian Book of Common Prayer in an attempt
to
eradicate, along with purgatory, all middle spaces between hell and heaven. At the
same
time, early in the English Reformation, a link had been forged between Arthur and
the True Church, both arch-enemies of Rome (Schwyzer 132). The newly-Protestant English crown could have a middle place
between heaven and hell or […] Arthur’s Empire but not both.
Imperial Britain and Purgatory were effectively in economic and
conceptual competition to fill a single space. It is no accident that the
English crown’s seizure in 1547–48 of the assets set aside for the relief of
souls in Purgatory coincided with its aggressive attempt to force the Scots
to participate in a renewed British Empire. England’s rulers had chosen
Arthur over Abraham the same choice made in Henry V
by Hostess Quickly.
(133)
as if it
As if he.
chrisomed
Newly-baptized.
The chrisom refers either to the white
robe worn by babies at baptism (OEDchrisom, n.2), or to the baby itself in its first month (n.4).
pen
Quill pen, i.e., a feather sharpened to a point.
no … one
No alternative but death.
clothes
Bedclothes.
cried out on
Decried, spoke against.
sack
Dry Spanish white wine.
Derived from the French vin
sec, “dry wine”,
sack seems to have referred in the sixteenth century to
fortified wines generally. In Shakespeare it is Falstaff’s favourite drink,
associated with him in all four plays in which he appears, rather
anachronistically, as its import to England began in the sixteenth century (e.g.:
1H4 3.3.33;
2H4 2.4.151; and
Wiv
2.1.6).
incarnate
In the flesh. The hostess understands him to mean “wearing
carnation”.
carnation
Pink, flesh-coloured.
Cf. Lancelot Gobbo in Merchant of
Venice: the verie diuell incarnation (F1 MV O6r).
handle
Discuss, with a bawdy play on the sense of
grope.
rheumatic
Feverish; the Hostess probably intends
lunatic.
Some editors suggest that the word’s similarity to
Rome-atic suggests the ensuing connection to the whore of
Babylon, associated by Protestants with Rome and the Catholic Church.
whore of Babylon
A figure from Revelation representing the sin and wickedness of
the world.
I sawe a woman sit vpon a skarlet coloured beast, full of names of
blasphemie, which had seuen heads, and tenne hornes. And the woman was
arayed in purple & skarlet, and gilded with golde, and precious stones,
and pearles, and had a cup of gold in her hand, full of abominations, and
filthines of her fornication. And in her forehead was a name written, A
mysterie, that great Babylon, that mother of whoredomes, and abominations of
the earth.
(Geneva, Revelation 17:3–5)
Since the figure of the whore of Babylon was most familiar to Shakespeare’s
audiences from religious polemic associating her with the Catholic church, Maurice
Hunt suggests that Falstaff seeks to die a proto-Protestant condemning a
personification of the Church of Rome (Hybrid Reformations
181).
burning … fire
See Sc2 Sp23 n.
A memory of Falstaff’s description of Bardolph’s face in 1 Henry
IV: I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire and Dives
that lived in purple—for there he is in his robes, burning, burning
(1H4
3.3.23–25).
that … service
Either 1) abuse, or 2) my red face (from drink) was the only
payment he ever gave me.
Bardolph’s speech in F contains an sentence that clarifies
the joke, and makes the wealth refer explicitly to alcohol:
Well, the fuel is gone that maintained that fire. That’s all the riches
I got in his service (FM A2 Sc3 Sp14).
shog off
Be on our way.
Clear … crystals.
Dry your eyes.
my … movables
My personal, as opposed to real, property; a legal phrase.
A redundancy, since chattels and
movables are legal synonyms.
OED cites this
line as a source of Holdfast as the literal name of a dog
that holds tenaciously (holdfast, adj. 3.b.), but Pistol
probably refers to “a clamp that holds part of a building or structure
together” (adj. 4.a.). Rann cites the proverb Brag is a good dog,
but holdfast is better, which plays on the sense of
dog as iron clamp (OEDdog, n.1.7.a) and brag as nail
(OEDbrag, n.2).
Cophetua
A legendary king who stayed celibate until falling in love with,
and eventually marrying, a beggar maid he saw outside his palace.
Pistol’s advice to his new wife could admonish her to emulate
Cophetua’s purported lack of sexual interest, i.e., to remain chaste. More likely,
he encourages her to emulate the beggar and save her chastity for the highest
bidder. Shakespeare refers to the legend of Cophetua in Love’s Labour’s Lost
(4.1.61–65) and
Romeo and
Juliet (2.1.14).
buggle boe
Vagina.
The term has several suggestive etymologies. Gary Taylor
reads it as buggle-boo—like bugaboo or
bogle a Scots term for a goblin or phantom—and
interprets Pistol to be urging the Hostess to restrain her wandering spirit (Modernizing Shakespeare’s
Spelling 149). The word could also, however, refer more generally
to any fearful thing, and thus serve as a rather misogynistic term for female
genitalia, incorporating the terror of the devouring female (see
Williams, Dictionary of
Sexual Language and Imagery 166).
Williams cites several seventeenth-century occurrences of bugle bow,
evidently also slang for the vagina, but derived a bit more innocently, as Andrew
Gurr notes: A ‘bugle bowʼ was technically a child’s bow made of a
sheep’s or goat’s horn, a horn bow. Its resemblance to the human mouth made it a
synonym both for the mouth and for the vagina (King Henry). I have retained
Q’s original spelling as a conflation of both of these senses.
Scene 5
Location: The French royal court at Rouen, in northern
France.
slack
Slow, lazy.
is footed on
Has arrived in.
meet
Fitting.
England
1) The English army; 2) King Henry.
morris dance
Traditional English folk-dance performed at the summer holiday of
Pentecost, or Whitsun.
The morris was an elaborately choreographed dance involved
several (traditionally nine) men in various costumes, among which often appeared a
fool in a coat of folly (A2 Sc0 Sp1),
Robin Hood and Maid Marian, and a hobby-horse indicating a mimetic carnival
version of a mounted knight. The latter character might suggest to the dauphin a
hyperbolically ineffectual English attack. Alan Brissenden suggests that the
scepter so fantastically borne (A2 Sc4 Sp2) refers to the fool’s
bauble stick (Brissenden, Shakespeare and the Dance 28–33).
she
England.
so idly kinged
Ruled by such a frivolous king.
sceptre
Ornamental rod, symbol of royal power.
fantastically
Whimsically, strangely.
humorous
Moody, capricious.
attends
Accompanies, serves.
late
Recently-returned.
he heard his
Henry heard the ambassador’s.
agèd
None of Henry’s council in Scene 1 is particularly old, but
as Taylor points out, Q’s reading, more than F’s noble (FM A2 Sc4 Sp3),
seems much more pertinent in rebuking the Dauphin’s charges of
adolescent giddiness (Henry V, 148).
think we
Let us think.
strongly arm us
Let us prepare our forces well.
prevent
Confront, oppose.
Exit Constable.
The French King’s Bid him may be to the
constable or to attendants who have entered to announce Exeter’s presence. Having
the constable himself exit here to fetch in Exeter achieves the necessary business
with a minimum of fuss.
chase … followed
Hunt is eagerly pursued.
Foreshadowing the eventual French defeat, both the king and
the dauphin characterize the French as game hunted by the English. This
continues the metaphor begun
with ‘fleshedʼ (Wilson, Henry V, 144).
The sense “to draw off wine from sediment”
(v.2), may also be relevant, since Henry’s title is a thing of value sifted from
the dust of oblivion. F’s spelling, rakt (F1 H5 H4v), may suggest
either “racked” or “raked”.
lines
The bloodlines documented in Henry’s family tree.
Offers … paper
A stage direction is suggested by the text, and editors since
Capell have placed it here. It is possible that the document changes hands at some
point in the scene, but of course the French King (or his surrogate) need not take
it at the moment that Exeter offers it, if at all. The Quarto version has no
analogue to the French King’s promise in F to consider the document (FM A2 Sc4 Sp13).
Since Exeter would have no right to use the royal plural
pronoun, we might indicate that he enters attended, or he may refer
to the collective English.
slight regard
Little estimation.
misbecome
Be inappropriate to.
Unlike the dauphin himself, that is, Henry will not demean
himself with childish insults.
prize you at
Estimate your worth to be.
loud
This Quarto reading is more in keeping with the passage’s
extended imagery of sounds and echoes than is F’s hot
(FM A2 Sc4 Sp15).
wombly vaults
Womb-like caverns.
Both F’s womby (A2 Sc0 Sp1) and Q’s wombly
seem to be Shakespearean coinages.
chide
Answer reprovingly, rebuke.
trespass
Wrong.
The specific sense of “trespass to land”, i.e.,
the wrongful entry or inhabitation by the French of Henry’s rightful lands, is
implied.
second accent
Echo.
ordinance
Artillery, gunfire.
Although, as Malone points out,
ordnance is the modern spelling of the term in its
military sense of artillery (OEDordinance,
n.3.a), a double meaning is most appropriate
here, since Exeter is also threatening the French with their divinely-ordained
destiny. Cf. Cymbeline: Let Ord’nance / Come as the Gods
fore-say it (4.2.147–148).
fair
Polite.
odds
Conflict.
Paris balls
Tennis balls.
Louvre
Palace in Paris; pun on lover.
The first Paris fortress of this name was built in the
twelfth century. The earliest printed spellings—Louer in Q and F
(Q1 C1v; F1 H5r), Loover in F2 (K1r)—indicate early-modern
English pronunciation, which is frequently used in modern performance to
underscore national difference; Brian Blessed’s Exeter in 1984, for example,
gleefully mispronounced the word to disgruntle the French (Noble, Henry V).
mistress
1) Principal; 2) paramour (playing on Louvre/lover).
musters
Displays.
weighs time
Values each moment of his time.
latest grain
Last grain of sand in the hourglass.
Scene 6
Location: Location: outside the walls of Harfleur, northern
France.
hot service
Violent battle.
vassals
Servants
’Tis honour
It’s all in the name of honour.
Nym probably means this in a bitterly derisive way; cf.
Falstaff’s battlefield speech on the worthlessness of honour in 1 Henry IV
(5.1.127–137).
prevail
Succeed.
hie
Go hastily.
beats them in
Drives them offstage (i.e., toward the battle) with blows.
Q’s stage directions indicate the beginning exit of Nym,
Bardolph, and Pistol here, but do not specify it until after the Boy’s monologue
(Q1 H5C2v). They must deliver
their lines while being driven offstage.
God’s plood
God’s blood, i.e., by the blood of Christ, a powerful oath.
Shakespeare renders Flewellen’s Welsh accent phonetically
throughout the play. The spelling conventions intended to indicate a Welsh dialect
include p for b,
th for d, and
f for v. and occasional
indications of vowel pronunciation, all of which this edition retains. Since
Shakespeare does not make these substitutions consistently in Flewellen’s
speeches, some editors have sought to regularize the patterns, but I have
preserved the original distinctions as much as possible.
breaches
Gaps in Harfleur’s defensive wall.
Exeunt … Pistol.
The Quarto has these three characters exit along with the Boy
after the latter’s speech, but since the Boy complains to the audience about them,
they must have been beaten offstage by this point. Flewellen might follow them,
but no exit is marked for him, and he might as easily remain onstage, though apart
from and not engaging with the Boy’s aside. If Flewellen does exit, he must
re-enter almost immediately to encounter Gower.
from
Away from.
three mile
The Folio version compounds this absurdity by making Bardolph
haul the lute case twelve leagues, or about thirty-six
miles.
The reading of this line in both Q and F, with no
punctuation, seems to indicate that Flewellen mistakes the English
mines for the countermines that would be
excavated by the French defenders. I have adopted Taylor’s solution, which,
following Moore Smith’s, clarifies that the French have planted countermines four
yards beneath the English explosives (Henry V).
direction
Strategy, instruction.
Enter … lords.
In the Folio, the transition from the discussion of the mines
to the entrance of the king and the English army is accomplished with 77 more
lines, the introduction of two characters, Jamy and Macmorris, who do not appear
in Q, and an exit that at least implies a change of scene. Scene division in the
Harfleur scenes is unmarked and fluid even in the longer version, however, with
Shakespeare largely ignoring the convention of clearing the stage before a new
scene begins, perhaps in order to convey the spatial and temporal chaos of battle.
The Quarto version takes one short scene to represent a siege that in the Folio
extends over what is traditionally considered four: 3.0, 3.1 (both simply absent
in Q), 3.2, and 3.3 (substantially pared down).
Q presents a much milder and more abstract version of Henry’s
threat to Harfleur than F, with its vigorous description of infanticide, rape, and
slaughter. Here also there is no mitigating order from Henry to use mercy
to them all at the scene’s end (A3 Sc3 Sp3),
with the result that his final parley comes off as far less equivocal, less
morally and politically ambiguous.
guilty in defence
Responsible for your own destruction by continuing to defend the
town.
Taylor comments that this is surely intended to sound
paradoxical (Henry V, 174), but the phrase is specific to the medieval laws of
warfare: a governor could be found guilty in defence if he
stubbornly continued to hold a town even without adequate resources (see Rauchut, Guilty in
Defense).
Enter Governor.
Editors since Capell have located this entrance
above, i.e., in an upper stage space representing the walls of
Harfleur. This is the most likely staging, but the simplicity of the stage
directions in Q, as in F, allow for flexibility.
This may the same location as the royal court at Rouen in the
next scene, though the text does not specify.
Alice … anglais?
Alice, come here. You are forty years old; you speak
very good England English. What do you call the hand in English?
The degree to which the French in this scene and elsewhere
accurately reflects either sixteenth- or fourteenth-century French is a subject of
some debate, and presents the editor of a modern edition with a conundrum: does
one merely render the scene in correct modern French, correcting what would be
errors in that idiom? Or rather, does one attempt to preserve the different flavour
of sixteenth-century French, thus perhaps staying more faithful to the copy text,
but departing from the modernizing rationale? This edition attempts to modernize,
referring the reader to commentary when modernization is uncertain, would kill an
intended bilingual pun. Whatever choice an editor makes, the scene is likely to
sound as absurd to a modern francophone as it would have to a French ear in 1599.
For the most complete historical-linguistic study of the play’s French, see
Jean-Michel Déprats, A
French history of Henry V, especially 81–85.
Vous … ans;
The Q reading may intend Vous
avez quatorze ans, suggesting an erroneous substitution of the
French for fourteen (quatorze)
for the French for forty (quarante).
La main … han.
“The hand, madame? De han”.
Et le bras?
“And the arm?”
Oui
“Yes”.
Et comment … col?
“And what do you call the chin and the neck?”
Et … coude?
“And de neck, and de cin. And the
elbow?”
Le coude? … madame.
“The elbow? My faith, I forget! But I
remembre—the elbow—oh! De elbo,
madame”.
Q’s spelling of remember indicates Alice’s
accented pronunciation.
Ecoutez … bilbo.
“Listen: I will rehearse all that I have learned: de
han, de arma, de neck, du cin, and de bilbo”.
The reading of this sentence’s verb in Q1 is rehersera (C3v), an
invented cognate of English rehearse. The emendation
in Q3 — recontera
(C3v) — closer approximates the more correct French verb
raconter.
O Jesu … bon?
“O Jesus, I forgot! My faith! Listen; I will recount:
de han, de arma, de neck, de cin, and de elbo. Is
it good?”
Other possible interpretations of the last three words of
this speech in Q (e ca bon) include Et
c’est bon? (“and is that good?”) and Gurr’s Eh, c’est bon! (“Hey, that’s good!”; Gurr, King
Henry).
Ma foi … Angleterre.
“My faith, madame, you speak English as well as if you had
studied in England”.
The Quarto reads Asie vous aues ettue en
Englatara. I have followed Gurr in emending Asie (King Henry),
conjecturing it to be a mangled bilingual contraction of English as
if and French comme
si.
Par … robe?
“By the grace of God, in small time I shall speak better.
What do you call the foot and the gown?”
foot
Catherine’s reaction suggests that she hears foutre, French for “to fuck”.
le con.
Alice attempts to say gown, but Catherine hears the
French obscenity con (cunt).
Modern editors disagree on how to represent this Franglish
hybrid word. The Quarto reading makes Catherine’s French mishearing clear, but
risks making the joke imperceptible to an Anglophone audience. Taylor’s
cown, on the other hand, emphasizes the English word Alice is
going for, but obscures the obscenity in both languages (Henry V). The Folio reads
count, which might make the joke land with English audiences
more familiar with English cunt than French con.
Le fot … foi!
“The fot, and the con? O Jesus! I
would not speak this again before the dear knights of France for a million! My
faith!”
Oh! Est-il … con.
“Oh! Is it so, too? Listen, Alice: de han, de arma, de
neck, de cin, the foot, and de con”.
C’est … madame.
“Very good, madame”.
Allons-y a dîner.
“Let’s go to dinner”.
Scene 8
Location: The French royal court at Rouen.
river Somme
River in northern France, between Harfleur and Calais.
Mort … vie!
“Death of my life”.
sprangs of us
Offshoots, branches of our ancestry.
Oxford English Dictionary cites
sprang first in 1847 (OEDsprang, n.), but this is a likely first appearance.
After the Norman
invasion of England in 1066, many of the English and nearly all of the English
aristocracy had French blood.
1) The trees from which the English offshoots were cut in order to
be grafted onto a new trunk (i.e., the French bloodline carried into England); 2)
those doing the grafting (i.e., the Norman invaders themselves).
bastard Normans
Illegitimate descendants of the Normans who conquered
England.
Mon dieu!
My God.
Given Q1’s
spelling, mor du (C4r), Mort dieu (approximating “God’s death”) is
another possibility, though it makes little grammatical or logical sense. Cf.
Q1’s Mordeu ma via (C3v)
and Mor du ma vie (QM H5Sc13 Sp2).
And if
An if is also a possible reading, but the
difference in sense is very subtle.
withal
With.
short-nook
Jagged-coasted.
That is, marked, as is the island of Britain, by many corners
and shallow peninsulas.
Beer, the characteristic national drink of the English, is
made by fermenting boiled malt.
drench
1) Drink; 2) dose of medicine for an animal.
swollen jades
Sickly horses.
sodden
Boiled.
decoct
Heat by boiling.
quick
Lively.
spirited
1) Impregnated with alcohol; 2) possessed by energetic
spirits.
they o’ … climate
Those inhabitants of a colder land.
Q1 reads
they a more frosty clymate (C4r), and Gurr
takes the English climate as a metonym for the English
people (King
Henry), but a as an abbreviation for
of is common enough; see, e.g. Rosalind’s what i’st a
clocke? (AYL
3.2.258).
dispatch
Hasten.
Montjoy
The French royal herald.
Heralds were officers of the court specifically tasked to
carry messages between opposed armies. The Montjoie Roi
d’Armes was the traditional title of the highest-ranking herald of
the French royalty, but Shakespeare takes the name of the office as that of the
character. A montjoy (from the Latin mons
Gaudii)
is a heap of stones by a roadside (see OEDmontjoy, n), used by armies to act as signposts leading soldiers to
a battle, hence an appropriate metaphor for a herald of war. In Famous Victories, the battle of Agincourt is begun with the stage
direction The French-men cry within, S. Dennis, S. Dennis. Mount, Ioy,
Saint Dennis (Q1 FV F1r).
willing ransom
Payment to the French for his return when captured.
In medieval warfare, leaders and noble members of an army
could expect to be held hostage and treated well in anticipation of a rich ransom.
Ransoms were, indeed, the largest source of potential income from a battle. Hence,
Henry’s repeated boast that he will give no ransom for his safe return if captured
(see Sc9 Sp39,
Sc12 Sp17)
represents an extraordinary profession of an intention to fight to the death.
Son … me.
Shakespeare follows Holinshed for the exchange: The
Dolphin sore desired to haue beene at the battell, but he was prohibited by his
father (Chronicle, 1587 552). Famous
Victories dramatizes the moment and provides the French King with
emotional motivation:
Dolphin.
I trust your Maiestie will bestow,
Some part of the battell on me,
I hope not to present any otherwise then well.
King.
I tell thee my sonne,
Although I should get the victory, and thou lose thy life,
Location: the English camp in Picardy, northern France, near the
river Canche.
meeting
Gower and Flewellen, as the dialogue makes clear, must enter
separately.
service
Military feats.
committed
Performed.
at the bridge
Holinshed does not the location of this skirmish. Some
editors, following Malone, place the historical encounter on the river Ternoise
near Blangy, but it is more likely that it took place on 22 October, three days
before the battle of Agincourt, at a bridge over the river Canche, near Frévent
(see Curry 154–156). Holinshed does
describe the encounter in some detail, though he does not mention the role of
Exeter (Chronicle, 1587 552).
One of the three rulers of the Roman world during the Second
Triumvirate (43–33 BCE).
Flewellen’s comparison is ambivalent, as Mark Antony is most
famous to military history for his famous retreat from the battle of Actium (31
BCE), which led to the inception of the Roman Empire and Antony’s disgrace and
suicide.
The definition pliant, obedient (OEDbuxom, adj.1.a) may also be appropriate, giving buxom
valor the sense of valour under good command, obedient to its
superiors (Steevens,
Plays, 85).
giddy
Fickle.
Fortune’s … blind
The goddess Fortune was traditionally represented as a blind
woman turning a wheel that alternately exalted humans and cast them down.
rolling restless stone
An alternate depiction of Fortune showed her standing on a
spherical stone to represent her unpredictable fickleness. One of the earliest
such representations is that of the Roman tragedian Marcus Pacuvius (220–130 BCE),
who writes
Hans Sebald Beham’s 1541 engraving of Fortuna depicts both wheel and
spherical stone.
By your patience
Forgive my interruption.
plind
Blind.
muffler
Blindfold.
to signify … plind
To illustrate that chance, the principle Fortune represents,
operates blindly.
Warburton found this to be a tautology signifying Flewellen’s
absurdity (Works), but Steevens argues that the captain
distinguishes between the goddess Fortuna and the
abstraction fortune (Plays). I have rendered the latter in
lowercase to suggest the distinction.
her fate … at
She is bound inexorably to.
This makes a certain amount of sense, but it is also probable
that fate is an error—on the part of Flewellen’s or the
textual transmission process—for F’s foot (FM A3 Sc6 Sp12).
rouls
Most editors regularize the spelling, but Q1’s spelling, roules (C4v), may indicate Flewellen’s non-standard pronunciation.
moral
Symbolic figure, allegorical emblem.
pax
Precious metal tablet depicting the crucifixion, kissed in mass by
those taking communion.
Though pax is the reading of both Q and F,
some editors emend to pix or pyx (the chest used to
hold the consecrated bread), since that is the spelling used in the description of
this incident by both Hall and Holinshed (The vnion; Chronicle, 1587), and since
a pyx is an object equally likely to be stolen from a church. In Hall, though not
in the more Protestant-inclined chronicle of Holinshed, the soldier’s real crime
is not theft, but the blasphemous eating of the host outside the context of
mass.
approach
A mistake for reproach: shame, disgrace.
requite
Repay (by bribing).
Ancient
Although Pistol is also called captain in
2 Henry IV (e.g., 2H4 2.4.111), Q’s reading is evidently an erroneous echo of
the previous line; Flewellen has no reason to address Pistol as an officer of
equal rank, and is unlikely to be in error, since he addresses him correctly at
1479 and 1500.
partly
Either because Pistol’s speech is confusing or because the offer
of a bribe is only implied.
Why … therefore!
A theatrical phrase, perhaps (as Malone observes) recalling
Marlowe’s Massacre at
Paris (1594): The Guise is slaine, and I
reioyce therefore (D2r). Cf. Pistol’s
Why then Lament therefor in 2 Henry IV
(2H4
5.3.94).
For if
For even if.
figa
Pistol’s version of Italian fico,
“fig”.
The fig was an insulting exclamation,
usually accompanied by biting the thumb or thrusting it between the first two
fingers. By its shape, the gesture, also called the fig or
the fig of Spain (see Sc9 Sp19) suggests the fruit,
but also evokes a haemorrhoid (another sense of fig; see
OEDfig, n.1.3.a), and indicates a wish for its recipient to suffer such
a painful condition, or perhaps to be murdered by poisoned figs, a practice
associated with Spanish and Italian revenge (n.2.).
Flewellen’s sarcastic dismissal of Pistol’s empty noise.
Probably an authoritative addition to Q.
it lighten
The lightning.
bawd
Pimp.
cutpurse
Pickpocket.
prave
Brave.
as … day
I.e., as you shall ever see.
Summer days are the longest and thus offer the best chance at
seeing wonders. The phrase is proverbial (Tilley S967). (See also Sc17 Sp7,
below, and MND
1.2.69).
Andrew Gurr’s discussion of this word—on which he partly
bases his argument about the relationship among Q1, Q3, and a manuscript copy-text
for F—depends on a misreading of Q1, which Gurr believes has scene
here. In fact, Q1 reads sconce, like Q3 and F, though a worn or
imperfectly inked O type might suggest
scence (see The Shakespearian Stage 8).
Francis M. Kelly and Randolphe Schwabe, in A
Short History of Costume and Armour (1931), note that in the ’nineties the Earl of Essex set the
fashion of rather long, square beards, otherwise reserved for elder men
(2.22), and F. S. Le Comte argues that it is to this fashion, the so-called
Cadiz beard that Gower alludes (Shakspere, Guilpin, and
Essex); this allusion would lend support to the identification of
the general of our gracious empress mentioned by the Chorus with
Essex (FM A5 Sc0 Sp1). Taylor suggests that Pistol himself had such a beard,
in the original performances (Henry V).
horrid
Frightful.
shout … camp
War cry.
ale-washed
Drunken.
wonderful
Amazing.
know
Recognize.
slanders … age
Disgraces to the current time.
mistook
Deceived, misled.
an it shall
If it shall.
partition
Flewellen’s mistake for perdition, i.e.,
“loss of men”.
like you now
If it please you.
A less usual, but fittingly more deferential, form of
Flewellen’s verbal tic, look you now.
we have lost
The change from F’s reading, the duke hath
lost (F1 H5 I1r), is consistent with Q’s
heightened emphasis on the war as a communal endeavour.
never a man
Not even one man.
one … church
Flewellen seems to indicate that Bardolph’s execution has
already occurred, revealing Pistol’s pleading to have been useless. This differs
significantly from F, where the line reads one that is like to
be executed for robbing a church (F1 H5 I1r). Q thus
downplays Henry’s complicity in the decision to kill his former companion. Modern
directors, working from a Folio-based script, have frequently brought Bardolph
onstage in this scene to have Henry watch or silently order his execution.
if … man
Flewellen, of course, has no way of knowing of the prior
relationship between Henry and Bardolph, but assumes that the king might have
noticed the latter’s odd appearance.
His … out.
Steevens suggests an echo of Chaucer’s description of the
Summoner, whose face is fyr-reed with whelkes white
and knobbes sittynge on his cheekes (General Prologue
624–633 qtd. in Steevens, Plays, vi.90).
Johnson remarks with relief that
this is the last time that any sport can be made with the red face
of Bardolph, which to confess the truth seems to have taken more hold on
Shakespeare’s imagination than on any other. The conception is very cold to the
solitary reader, though it may be somewhat invigorated by the exhibition on the
stage. This poet is always more careful about the present than the future,
about his audience than his readers.
(Johnson,
Plays)
whelks
Pustules.
knubs
Boils.
pumples
Pimples.
his … coal
His breath inflames his nose like a bellows blowing on a
smouldering coal.
Taylor takes this to imply that the character should have an
underbite (Henry
V, 192).
plue
Blue.
his … executed
His face no longer glows.
Either this means that Bardolph has been executed, an
assumption that reveals Pistol’s pleading to have been useless and Flewllen’s
prediction of the execution puzzling, or more likely, as Malone argued, it means
that the anticipation of his fate has extinguished the fire in Bardolph’s face.
Modern directors frequently portray the execution of Bardolph onstage at this
point in the scene. In Adrian Noble’s 1984 RSC production, for example, the moment
was played for full tragic effect: Bardolph was brought onstage to stare silently
at Henry during Flewllen’s description of him, and slowly knelt after his
fire’s out (Henry
V). Kenneth Branagh’s Henry then gave a nod to Exeter, who
garrotted Bardolph gruesomely; his agonizingly slow death and Henry’s static,
silent reaction to it took place in a full eighty seconds of silence, filled only
by the sound of rain falling, before Henry’s next line (Henry V, 1989).
cut off
Punished by death.
express
Explicit, direct.
upbraided
Reproached.
play for
Gamble for.
gentlest
Mildest, most generous.
gamester
Player, gambler.
habit
Apparel.
The French royal herald would wear a tabard bearing the
king’s coat of arms. Both Walter and Humphreys comment that Montjoy’s
unceremoniously terse greeting is insolent, but Henry’s Thou dost thy
office fair (Sc9 Sp39)
suggests that he does not take offence.
of thee
From thee.
Unfold
Reveal, explain.
advantage
Superior circumstances (either a better attack location or greater
numbers).
upon our cue
At the appropriate time.
Like an actor following a script.
imperial
1) Commanding, majestic; 2) of a higher rank than a mere
king.
her
Q’s substitution of her for F’s
his makes the herald address the country of England rather than
the king as a symbol of it.
sufferance
Patient endurance.
which … under
The value of Henry’s ransom when captured will be insufficient to
repay the French for the injuries they have borne.
pettiness
Weakness, insignificance.
bow
Bend, collapse.
Implying Henry’s bow in obeisance to the French king.
For the effusion
In recompense for the spillage, loss (i.e., the slaughter of the
French).
too weak
Too few; too poor in blood.
thy quality
1) Your rank; 2) your occupation; 3) your character; 4) whose side
you are on.
Calais, the closest French town to England, was
English-occupied territory—and a potential beachhead for English wars in France
—from its capture by Edward III 1347 to its recapture by the French in 1558.
Q1’s spelling, Callis
(D2r), indicates traditional English pronunciation.
Every pair of English legs is worth three French ones (?).
The Quarto reading is likely an error for F’s
Frenchmen (F1 H5 I1r), but if so it is uncorrected in Q3.
heir of France
The dauphin and his boastful taunts; 2) punning on
air, the atmosphere of France that encourages such
boastfulness.
Q’s spelling, heire (Q1 H5 D2r), makes
the pun more explicit than in the Folio version.
blown … in me
Inflated me with boastfulness.
Continuing the heir/air wordplay, the dauphin can be said to
have boasted (see OEDblow, v.1.6.a) boastfulness into Henry.
God before
1) With God on our side; 2) I swear before God.
tawny
Yellow-brown.
on … them
Tomorrow we will order the troops to.
Although MacDonald Jackson’s conjecture (An Emendation), which Gurr
accepts (King
Henry), is attractive, the punctuation of Q and F makes perfectly
good sense, and since Henry himself has just given the order to march, a further
command to give the order would be redundant.
Scene 10
Location: the French camp, Agincourt.
Gebon
No French lord by this name appears in historical accounts of
Agincourt, though as Gerda Okerlund points out, it might be a misreading for some
version of Guilliam (Quarto Version 819). Since Gebon is never named in dialogue,
Taylor surmises credibly that it is the name of an actor included in this scene as
a
supernumerary (Henry
V).
palfrey
Riding horse.
A palfrey, typically ridden by women, would be unsuitable in
battle, and Bourbon presumably doesn’t mean to imply that his warhorse is one,
choosing it for the word’s association with chivalric poetry.
of the sun
Helios, the classical sun god, rode a chariot pulled by
either two or four horses, variously named by classical poets.
pure … fire
The two hot, light elements of the four elements of ancient
philosophy.
Shakespeare associates these elements with swiftness and
lightness (see Sonnets 44 and 45), and elsewhere with nobility and courage; see
Cleopatra’s boasting self-description: I am Fire, and Ayre; my other
Elements / I giue to baser life (Ant
5.2.278–279).
heat
Great eagerness, ardour (as ginger is hot
to the taste).
the sands
Infinite grains of sand.
argument … all
Sufficient topic to keep them all busy.
sonnet
Lyric poem.
Wonder of nature
Readers at least since Warburton have conjectured Shakespeare
satirizes a specific contemporary poem here, but no such poem has been
convincingly identified.
shook you
1) Rattled you while riding; 2) had sex with you.
shrewdly
1) Sharply, severely; 2) like a shrew, i.e., an ill-tempered
woman.
bearing me
1) Carrying me in the saddle; 2) having sex with me.
my … hair
I.e., as opposed to yours, who has lost her natural hair to
syphilis and so wears a wig.
to my mistress
As my mistress.
use … for
1) Treat like; 2) employ sexually as.
thou … anything
You find any way to turn my words against me.
outfaced … way
Defied and driven from my course.
Hay!
An exclamation of triumph on successfully hitting an
opponent.
Bourbon exits imagining, perhaps acting out, the upcoming
battle. Compare the dauphin’s exclamation ch’ha in the Folio
version of the scene (A3 Sc7 Sp7).
he’ll … kills
I.e., he will kill no one.
The phrase is proverbial (Dent A192.2). Cf. Beatrice’s similar mock in Much Ado: But how many hath he kil’d? for indeed, I
promis’d to eate all of his killing (Ado
1.1.32–33).
cap
Outdo, beat.
The constable here begins a game called
Proverbs, in which players counter one proverbial saying with
another. Taylor notes that such proverb duels also occur in Drayton’s Idea 59 (1619), Henry Porter’s Two Angry
Women of Abingdon (ca. 1588), and John Grange’s Golden
Aphroditis (1577) (Taylor, Henry V).
Have … eye
I’ll shoot at the target.
The constable imagines the dauphin, and the proverb that
makes him into a devil, to stand as an archery
target, the centremost point of which is called the eye (OEDeye, n.1.16.c).
jag of
Stab at.
Taylor suggests that Q’s Iogge is an error for
fig (Henry V), but see Oxford English
Dictionary (OEDjag, n.1.7; cf. jag, v.1.1).
active
Energetic, diligent.
Doing his activity
Yes, when doing such contemptible things as he does.
F’s reading, Doing is activity, suggests
doing in the sense of copulation (OEDdoing, n.1.b).
still
Always, continually.
did hurt
Injured anyone.
never will
Will hurt no one tomorrow in battle.
he
Bourbon.
go … hazard
1) Make a wager; 2) go into danger, risk.
Literally a dice game.
a hundred paces
Approximately five hundred feet.
A military pace is a step, or roughly
five feet—the mile being derived from the Roman mille passus, a thousand paces. A mere five hundred
feet between camps seems an exaggeratedly small distance, so perhaps the phrase is
intended only to mean within earshot or dangerously
close. F has the distance at a more probable fifteen hundred
paces, or roughly a mile and a half (A3 Sc7 Sp62).
Grandpré
The Quarto spelling (Grandpeere) suggests a
generic Franglois name for a French lord (i.e., great peer), while
Gurr’s spelling in his edition of the Quarto version (Grandpere)
suggests a grandfather (King
Henry). I have regularized the name to that of the historical
French lord who appears as a character in F.
Come … day.
This closing couplet has been transposed from the Folio
(F1 H5 I3v),
which has no analogous scene in Q, and is set in the late morning rather than the
early hours. In the longer Folio version of the play, Orléans ends this prose
scene with a different couplet—the only verse in the scene and so perhaps tacked
on as an afterthought to clarify the passage of time—declaring it to be two in the
morning and anticipating the end of the battle by ten. Moving the constable’s
couplet suggests that the sun has, at the very least, risen since Bourbon’s exit
nineteen lines earlier, advancing dramatic time markedly and heightening the sense
of urgency. The change need not be seen as clumsy or produce contradiction with
the following scene in the English camp, in which the First Soldier acknowledges
the sunrise (Sc11 Sp27).
See Sc11 Sp22
n.
Scene 11
Location: the English camp, Agincourt.
Ke ve la?
Pistol’s version of Qui va là?,
French for “Who goes there?”
The fact that Pistol gives his challenge in pidgin French may
indicate his ambiguous patriotism, or it may merely serve as a reminder of how
close the camps are.
Discuss
Declare, relate.
Henry V is the only Shakespeare play in which this word
appears, in three of Pistol’s speeches and one of Flewellen’s (F1 H5 H5v, I2r, I4r).
popular
Of low birth; one of the common people.
For a discussion of the makeup of the English army and its
class divisions, see Curry (Agincourt 57–78).
gentleman … company
A nobleman, but serving as a volunteer rather than commissioned as
a captain.
Trail’st … pike?
Do you carry the mighty pike; i.e., are you an infantryman?
To trail a pike—the English infantryman’s
usual weapon during the fifteenth century and into Shakespeare’s day—is to carry
it below the head, dragging the butt along the ground. Trailing a pike, as opposed
to carrying it over a shoulder, could be seen as a sign of defeat or of funereal
mourning (see Cor
5.6.150), but it was
also the usual means of carrying the weapons when not marching into battle.
Even so
Just so.
bago
Fine fellow; Pistol’s nonce word.
Probably a version of F’s reading, bawcock
(from the French beau coq), a word that seems in
any case to originate with Pistol (see OEDbawcock, n.). Since Pistol, in both versions of the play, imports
corrupted snatches of various languages, the word might also have links to Spanish
vago (“an affable idler”) or
French bagou (“volubility,
glibness”).
imp
Shoot of a plant (i.e., child).
Pistol uses the same phrase for Henry just after his
coronation (2H4
5.5.37).
The sense of graft (OEDimp, n.2.a.) is a reminder that Henry’s lineage has been grafted
onto the tree of fame by his father’s usurpation of Richard II’s throne, as
opposed to growing naturally.
heartstrings
The deepest seat of emotion.
Literally, the tendons or nerves thought to support the
heart.
bully
Fine fellow, gallant.
le Roy
Hints at the king (French le
roi).
Cornishman
Nothing about the name Leroy is
particularly Cornish. Walter suggests an allusion to the now lost play Harry of Cornwall (ca. 1591) mentioned in Henslowe’s Diary (1961
fol. 7, 7v qtd. in Walter, Henry V).
crew
Band of soldiers.
Crew, related to crowd, is usually
derogatory in Shakespeare; e.g., So dissolute a crew (R2
5.3.12), Robin’s a
crew of patches (MND
3.2.9),
and the doctor’s a crew of wretched souls (Mac
4.3.142).
a Welshman
Henry was created Prince of Wales—the traditional title of
the English heir apparent—at his father’s coronation, but he probably refers here
to his birth in Monmouth, in southeast Wales. Cf. Sc16 Sp22.
Philip Schwyzer points out that the historical Henry V had no actual Welsh blood,
and argues that his claim here relates more to the needs of the Tudor
dynasty—whose own Welshness came from Owain Tudor, the man who would marry Henry
V’s widow—to legitimize their link to Shakespeare’s heroic king: Henry
‘inheritsʼ his Welshness not from his ancestors, but from his Tudor
successors (Literature, Nationalism, and Memory 127).
The two captains may enter together, in conversation, or
separately, with Gower greeting Flewellen too loudly.
worell
World.
prerogatives
Flewellen either means something like principles, or the
privilege of authority to maintain discipline and decorum, or
prerogatives is an error for another word.
tittle-tattle … bible-bable
Chatter, babbling.
cares
Heedfulness, seriousness.
fears
Soberness, reverence.
ceremonies
Formalities.
otherwise
Different from the loud, undisciplined English camp.
heard
The past tense here, a subtle change from the Folio version,
which has heare (F1 H5 I2v), suggests that the night is already past and shifts
the time of day into morning. Together with the constable’s closing couplet above
(Sc10 Sp36)
and the absence of the famous Chorus speech about the night before the battle,
this change makes clear that in the Quarto version of this scene, day has already
broken.
God-so!
By God’s such-and-such, a mild, euphemistic oath.
Gurr sees Q’s reading, Godes sollud, to be
a phonetic transcription […] of whatever the player
of Llewellyn invented here (King Henry). We need not see it as a whole-cloth
invention, however. God-so is a weakening of various oaths
begging with God’s: God’s blood,God’s
wounds, etc. (see OEDgodso, int.). The Folio hints that God-so is
in Flewellen’s vocabulary (FM A4 Sc1 Sp32), which reads
'So! (see A4 Sc1 Sp32
n.). Another possible emendation of Flewellen’s odd oath is God’s
blood (explained by a misreading of sollud for
splud or sblud), which Flewellen
uses multiple times (Q1M Sc6 Sp6,
Sc16 Sp1,
Sc17 Sp5.
God-so may be an Anglicization of the very common
Italian oath cazzo (“cock”, used
with a broadness of sense comparable to the English fuck);
the cobbler Juniper in Jonson’s The Case is Altered
(1598) uses catso
and Gods so
interchangeably.
prating coxcomb
Chattering fool.
meet
Fitting.
care
Attentive concern, responsibility.
beginning
Beginning of the day.
at all adventures
Whatever happens.
What cheer?
How are you?
small cheer
Little joy.
frolic
Merry.
reckoning
Accounting (to God).
In both the literal sense of counting the dead lost in the
battle and the moral sense of accounting for sins.
join together
1) Rejoin their bodies; 2) speak in unison.
latter day
Judgement day.
Cf. Job 19:25: For I am sure that my
redeemer saueth, and he shall rayse vp at the latter day them that lye in the
dust (Bishop’s Bible).
rawly
1) Abruptly; 2) too early in the marriage; 3) in
destitution.
Cf. Malcolm’s Why in that rawness left you wife and
child, […] Without leave-taking? (Mac
4.3.27–29).
Why … damnation.
This entire passage is much clearer in F, specifying that the
hypothetical servant and son not only die, but die in sin (A4 Sc1 Sp55).
factor
Agent, representative.
miscarry
Come to harm, die.
lewd action
Sinful behaviour.
they … services
Kings do not intend their subjects’ deaths when they employ
them.
This significant change in verb from the analogous sentiment
in F — they purpose not their death, when they purpose their
services (F1 H5 I2v; italics mine) — alters the referent of the
pronouns, subtly changing Henry’s
argument about moral agency and responsibility. In F, they are the
subjects (or servants, or sons), who may intend to serve the king but do not
necessarily expect to die. In Q, they are the kings (or masters, or
fathers), whom Henry absolves of the knowledge that their servants could face
death.
F’s perjury (oath-breaking) is only slightly
more precise.
broken seal
The image suggests both the wax seals authenticating legal
contracts and the maidenheads of the beguiled maidens.
beguiling
Seducing, deceiving.
outstrip
Move faster than.
beadle
Parish official who punished petty criminals.
mote
Speck of dust.
The word echoes Jesus’s metaphor for hypocrisy: And
why seest thou the mote, that is in thy brothers eye, and perceiuest not the
beame that is in thine owne eye? (Geneva Matthew 7:3).
every … head
In a significant difference from the Quarto version, F gives
this sentiment to Williams (the Folio analogue of the quarrelsome second soldier),
indicating that Henry’s long speech is convincing enough even for the man who
challenged the king’s cause (F1 H5 I3r). In Q, the second soldier is never won to
Henry’s side of this argument.
The exchange of pledges, usually gloves, was symbolic of a
promise to duel.
broils
Quarrels, brawls.
cut French crowns
1) Cut off French heads; 2) clip or shave metal from the edges of
French coins.
in addition to debasing the value of a coin, the practice of
coin clipping counted as treason, as it defaced the image of the
monarch.
clipper
1) Clipper of coins; 2) barber; i.e., cutter of French
heads.
Exeunt the soldiers.
In F, this first time Henry has been alone on stage is the
occasion for his only soliloquy, not counting the god of battles
prayer. The missing speech is a moving complaint about the responsibilities of
kingship in which, while not conveying wavering or doubt about his cause, he
presents royalty as a collection of empty theatrical ceremonies (F1 H5 I3r); its absence in Q
contributes to the Quarto’s pattern of portraying Henry’s rule less ambiguously
than F does. The Quarto text prints, obviously in error, another stage direction:
Enter the King, Gloster, Epinham, and
Attendants. This sounds like a memory of the staging at the
beginning of F 4.3 (A4 Sc3 SD1),
and may suggest that the agents who composed the Q text were familiar with the
manuscript copy-text behind the F text, especially since the character of
Erpingham does not appear in Q. (See Gurr,
Shakespearian Stage 23.)
God of battles
Rather than the classical Mars, this is the aspect of the
Christian god referred to in the Old Testament as the Lord of Hosts
(i.e., armies).
steel
Harden.
sense of reckoning
Ability to count.
appall
Weaken; make pale.
the fault … crown
Henry IV’s deposition of Richard II, who was later murdered while
imprisoned at Pomfret castle by Sir Pierce of Exton, as dramatized by Shakespeare
in Richard II
(5.4 and 5.5).
After Richard’s murder, he was buried at Kings Langley in
Hertfordshire. One of Henry V’s first acts as king, in 1413, was to rebury Richard
II at Westminster after
a lavish funeral procession. See Holinshed (Chronicle, 1587 543–544).
hath
I have.
contrite
Penitent.
forcèd
Violently shed.
blood
Richard’s murder.
chantries
Privately financed chapels where priests sang masses to reduce an
individual’s time in purgatory (here Richard II’s).
all too little
According to the Anglican doctrine of Shakespeare’s audience,
though not to the Catholic belief of the historical Henry, such acts of penitence
as he describes here would have been insufficient to gain God’s favour, and the
purgatory he imagines Richard to dwell in was an outdated Catholic fable.
See General Introduction.
stays upon
Waits for.
Scene 12
Location: the English camp, Agincourt.
Gloucester
Since Gloucester has only just exited, and since he does not
speak until Sc12 Sp8,
when he provides new information about the French preparedness, it may make more
sense to delay his entrance until that point.
five to one
Odds against the English.
Contemporary historians, both French and English, provide
differing estimates of the size of the English army, ranging from 6,000 to 15,000;
contemporary estimates of the French army range from 10,000 to 150,000 and the
chroniclers variously calculate the French outnumbering the English at multiples
ranging from one and a half to six (see Curry 326–328). Exeter’s line would suggest that the English numbered
12,000, and Henry seems to suggest an army of only 5,000 (FM A4 Sc3 Sp16). Holinshed, following
Hall, gives the odds as six to one (Chronicle, 1587 553). In performance, of course,
mathematical discrepancies go unnoticed.
The numerical difficulty is harder to ignore in Famous Victories, since King Henry performs faulty arithmetic
on stage:
A term of polite address among the nobility; Richard
Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, was not Henry’s cousin, though Westmorland, the
addressee of the analogous speech in F, was.
God’s will
Either by God’s will (an oath), or God’s
will be done (a prayer).
share from me
Take from me as part of his share.
wish
Wish for.
proclaim
Announce.
stomach … feast
Appetite for this meal; i.e., courage for this battle.
passport
Document authorizing safe passage back to England.
drawn
Drawn up, issued to him.
crowns for convoy
Money for his journey.
his fellowship
Duty as a comrade.
day of Crispin
A holiday commemorating the martyrdom of the brothers Crispin and
Crispinian in 287 C.E.
Although historically Henry dedicated the battle of Agincourt
to another saint, it became traditionally associated with the mostly legendary
Saints Crispin and Crispinian, said to have been two third-century noble brothers
who fled persecution by Diocletian in Rome and lived in obscurity in France,
making Christian converts and supporting themselves as shoemakers before their
martyrdom. Cf. Holinshed:
The daie following was the fiue and twentith of October in the yeare
1415, being then fridaie, and the feast of Crispine and Crispinian, a day
faire and fortunate to the English, but most sorrowfull and vnluckie to the
French.
(Chronicle, 1587 552)
Shakespeare seems to have combined Crispin and Crispinian into one name
(Crispin Crispian), perhaps for metrical reasons. The name
Crispian, an alternate spelling of
Crispinian, also appears in Thomas Deloney’s The Gentle Craft (1597–1598), a prose work in praise of famous
shoemakers that includes the story of the craft’s patron saints, the two Roman
brothers. Deloney’s version of the saints’ legend, set in England and involving
the conscription of one of the brothers to fight in France (Gaul), also provided
the source for Thomas Dekker’s comedy The Shoemakers’
Holiday (1599). Dekker’s play, which the Lord Chamberlain’s Men
probably performed concurrently with Henry V, has many
thematic and verbal parallels to Shakespeare’s history play, and indeed strongly
suggests that the English king who appears in the final act to resolve the
romantic comedy and conscript its characters into his French war is Henry V
himself.
stand a tiptoe
Stand tall; i.e., feel eagerness and pride.
vigil
Eve, night before the holiday.
in … remembered
Have a toast raised to us.
general doom
Day of universal judgement.
happy
Fortunate (to be so small in number).
base
Low-ranking.
gentle his condition
Ennoble him.
Steevens and Walter both note that when Henry passed
restrictions on bearing coats of arms in 1418, he excepted veterans of Agincourt.
Here, however, he promises only figurative gentility; certainly no common soldier
is promoted during or after the battle. Taylor suggests that a depiction of such
literal promotion may have occurred in some earlier play (Henry V).
Then … day.
These lines are possibly out of place and should come after
Tomorrow is Saint Crispin’s day above (Sc12 Sp7), though since the
he who sheds his blood by Henry’s and the he who
strips his sleeve and shows his scars could quite logically be the same person,
they make sense as they are placed in Q.
This sentence, while not absurd in Q, suffers from comparison
with the Folio reading: Why, now thou hast unwished five thousand men, /
Which likes me better than to wish us one (FM A4 Sc3 Sp16).
charge
Orders.
achieve
Capture.
The man … him.
I.e., overestimating oneself is dangerous.
Henry refers to the proverb sell not the bear’s skin
before you have caught him (Tilley B132). In substituting a lion for the more usual bear, he
personalizes the proverb, alluding to the heraldic symbol of English
royalty.
A many
A great many.
Though … dunghills
Even if we are buried shamefully and anonymously.
reeking
1) Rising like steam (from newly-dead corpses); 2)
blood-smeared.
Plague was thought to be spread by unwholesome air.
Mark
Note, behold.
abundant
Plentiful.
Q’s reading lacks the pun on abounding (i.e.,
rebounding like a cannonball) that establishes the ensuing metaphor in F
(A4 Sc3 Sp20).
crazing
Fragmenting after impact (for greater damage).
May also suggest grazing, i.e., ricocheting.
The F2 compositors, who printed grasing (F2 H5 K6r), evidently took
this as the primary meaning. Craik defends crazingbecause it implies the destruction, not merely the deflection, of the
bullets (King
Henry).
course of mischief
Round of damage.
in … mortality
As their bodies fall into decomposition.
Like the shattered bullets, the English will kill even as
they disintegrate.
feather
Decorative helmet feathers.
Henry derides the French army’s ornate battlefield apparel to
throw the English shabbiness into the light of unostentatious modesty and working
class honesty. His speech may be undercut, however, by the memory of Vernon’s
earnest praise of Prince Henry’s own army at the battle of Shrewsbury in 1 Henry IV:
This subtle joke has seemed too grim and obscure for some
editors, who read the fresher robes as synonymous with the
gay new clothes to be pillaged from the French (Sc12 Sp17).
Such a reading usually requires emendation of or (Sc12 Sp17) to
for (Hanmer) or
as (Taylor, Henry V).
pluck … service
Strip the dead Frenchmen of their finery.
A servant who has been turned out of service
(newly dismissed) has his livery removed.
them
The French soldiers, not the coats.
levièd
Raised.
naught
Nothing.
as I … them
I.e., dead.
vanguard
Foremost division.
dispose
Direct, manage.
Scene 13
Location: the battlefield, Agincourt.
Q reverses the order of this scene (4.5 in F) and the next
one (4.4) from their analogues’ positions in the Folio, perhaps because, as Taylor
argues, Clarence and Montjoy (both present in 4.3) doubled the Boy and
Pistol (Henry
V), so in the more stripped-down acting version that Q
represents, the two actors needed time for a costume change.
O diable!
Oh, the devil!
Mort … vie!
Death of my life!
Aujourd’hui haute.
“Today, (we shall be) in heaven” (?).
This is as close to sense as any reading of Q’s
O jour dei houte; Gurr
ventures O jour des heures (“O day of hours”; King Henry).
upon
Of.
with … hand
Doffing his cap in servility.
leno
Pander, pimp.
The appearance of this extremely rare word, a substitution
for F’s more common Pander, figures largely in arguments about the
provenance and date of the text behind Q1. Taylor and Gurr have both argued that
with this exception, and perhaps caning for F’s
yawning (Q1M Sc1 Sp14; FM A1 Sc2 Sp21), the producers of the
Q text tend to have reduced F’s more colorful and unusual adjectives to
something simpler (Gurr, Shakespearian Stage 21; Taylor, Shakespeare’s Leno).
See my Textual
Introduction
.
no gentler
1) No kinder, no less rough; 2) with no more gentility.
contaminate
Corrupted; i.e., raped.
spoiled
Ruined, destroyed; plundered.
right us
Set us upright; correct our course.
Come we
Let us go (back to the battle).
This edition’s punctuation makes some sense of the line; Q’s
reading Come we in heapes (Q1
H5 E3r), suggests a manoeuvre difficult to
picture. An alternate modernization might be “Come, we in heaps
will offer up our lives”.
in heaps … fame
Either we will be slaughtered ignobly or die honourably in
battle.
doth last
Has already lasted.
The constable’s last line in the play is a version of the
proverb better to die with honor than to live with shame (Tilley H576).
Scene 14
Location: the battlefield, Agincourt.
O Monsieur … moi!
O sir, I pray you, have pity on me!
Moy
Uncomprehending repetition of moi.
The French word may have been pronounced by contemporary
Englishmen as rhyming with destroy (e.g., R2
5.3.118–119). Pistol
takes moy to mean a coin, and although Oxford English Dictionary calls it a nonce-word and denies that any
real coin is intended (OEDmoy, n.2), it may relate to the later word
moidore (Portuguese moeda de
ouro; French moi-d’or?), an
eighteenth-century designation for a gold coin.
Comment êtes-vous apellé?
What are you called?
Fer
Iron (French).
fer
Nonce word, apparently meaning “beat”.
Pistol may also play on fear (frighten), but
Shakespeare elsewhere uses similar nonsensical repetitions of names as threatening
verbs. Cf. Wiv
4.2.145, Cor
2.2.104.
Several other violent senses are possible; the word sometimes
puns on fuck, as in Dekker’s Shoemaker’s
Holiday—which also has a character named Firk—though the bawdy sense
seems less likely here.
Faites-vous … gorge.
“Prepare yourself: he wants to cut your
throat”.
On y … gorge!
Pistol’s pidgin French, approximately “There’s my faith! Cut
the throat!”
egregious
Extraordinarily large.
One … fox.
All that stands between you and death is the point of my fox (a
kind of sword).
The fairly obscure term fox may come
from the blade-mark stamped on certain swords to identify their maker. Webster’s
White Devil uses the term it to distinguish an
English-made rapier: O what blade is’t? / A Toledo, or an English
fox? (Webster 5.6.233–234).
F offers a slightly more explicit version of Pistol’s threat: thou diest
on point of fox (FM A4 Sc4 Sp5). The compositor of the
second Quarto seems to have been so puzzled by One point of a Foxe
that he printed it as a stage direction, italicized and justified to the right
margin (Q2 H5
E3r).
Que … monsieur?
“What does he say, sir?”
Il … tuerez.
“He said that if you will not give him a large ransom, he
will kill you”.
Oh! … France.
“Oh! I beg you, young gentleman, speak to this great captain
to have mercy on me, and I will give for my ransom fifty crowns. I am a
gentleman of France”.
five hundred
Either the Boy misunderstands M. Fer’s cinquante as “cinq cents”, or he intentionally exaggerates the proffered
ransom of fifty crowns.
suck blood
Am bloodthirsty; am a leech.
Exeunt omnes.
Q has all three characters exit at the end of the scene, but
Pistol re-enters immediately, either without his prisoner or as his last line in
the scene indicates, with him still in tow. Pistol, or indeed all three
characters, could just as easily remain on stage to be met by the king and his
train.
Scene 15
Location: the battlefield, Agincourt.
commends him to
Greets.
down
Unhorsed.
array
Condition; attire (i.e., his blood).
Larding
Enriching (with his blood).
Yoke-fellow
Partner, companion.
honour-dyeing wounds
Wounds that coloured his honour indelibly with blood.
Suffolk … love.
Suffolk and York dying in each other’s arms is Shakespeare’s
invention. This Suffolk (Michael de la Pole, 1394–1415) was succeeded by his
brother, William de la Pole, who became a stalwart supporter of Henry VI during
the Wars of the Roses until his execution in 1450 at the orders of his archenemy
Richard, son of this Duke of York. The testament of noble-ending
love here related therefore serves both as an ironic foil for the
conflict to come between the houses of York and Lancaster, and prefigures that
conflict’s resolution. As Wilson noted, the passage also recalls the death of the
Talbots in 1 Henry VI (1H6
4.7;
Wilson, Henry
V).
all hasted o’er
Covered in wounds.
The inclusion of all precludes the
sense of hurried to him. Gurr suggests that hasted
is a portmanteau like F’s hagled (F1 H5 I4v qtd. in
King Henry).
It seems to combine hacked and basted,
i.e., thrashed, beaten soundly (OEDbaste, v.3).
steeped
Immersed, drenched.
yawn
Gape like mouths.
Julius Caesar, another 1599 play, also compares wounds to
gaping mouths: thy wounds […] Which like dumb mouths
do ope their ruby lips, / To gain the voice and utterance of my tongue
(JC
3.1.263–265).
Tarry
Linger, stay here.
well-foughten field
Well-fought battle.
chivalry
Knightliness; martial skill.
cheered them up
Spoke encouragingly to them.
F’s reading, cheered him up, would seem to
make better sense, since Exeter explains that Suffolk was already dead.
Q’s punctuation suggests this intransitive sense of
seal (OEDseal, v.4). Gurr’s sealed an argument adopts the
punctuation of F, but requires a rather strained definition of
argument (King Henry).
waters
Tears.
my mother
My feminine tenderness.
The mother frequently refers to a medical
condition thought to arise from the uterus and cause hysteria in women, or a
condition with similar symptoms (a sense of constriction in the torso, shortness
of breath) in men (OEDmother, n.1.9). See also Lr 7.215 and TN
2.1.30–31.
convert to tears
1) Turn entirely into tears; 2) turn from the battle to
weep.
Pistol may cut his prisoner’s throat onstage at this point,
thus giving up Fer’s ransom and making the upshot of Henry’s order more
graphically explicit than is suggested in F. Modern productions frequently
emphasize the brutality of the decision to kill the prisoners by having them
executed onstage, often by soldiers or officers only reluctantly following the
order. In the 2003 National Theatre production, Adrian Lester’s Henry, frustrated
that no one acted when he ordered the prisoners’ deaths, unceremoniously gunned
them down himself (Hytner,
Henry V).
Scene 16
Location: the battlefield, Agincourt.
plood
Blood.
luggage
Presumably Flewellen means those guarding the
luggage.
arrant’st
Most downright.
worell
World.
whereupon
At which time; for which reason.
Shakespeare’s adaptation of his source material makes clear
that Gower’s interpretation of the prisoner-killing as retaliation for the French
atrocity is simply incorrect; as we have just seen (Sc15 Sp5),
it was instead a tactical response provoked by battlefield necessity, which is
different from the attack by the cowardly rascals that ran from the
battle (Sc16 Sp2). The disjunction between what we see and what the English army incorrectly
remembers serves as a subtle commentary on the process of making history.
Monmorth
Flewellen’s pronunciation of Monmouth, a town in south Wales near
the English border.
one reckoning
The same thing.
phrase … variation
Wording is a little different.
Macedon
Macedonia, formerly a region in the north of Greece.
Wye
River forming the border between Wales and England.
both
Both rivers.
is come after
Follows, parallels.
in … ales
While drunk.
Cleitus
Macedonian general, friend and bodyguard of Alexander the
Great.
Cleitus, or Kleitos (375–328 BCE) was ordered in 328 to
command a separate army in Asia. Like Falstaff,
André Castaigne’s The Killing of Cleitus (1898-99).
Cleitus rankled at the prospect of being forced to withdraw from the
king’s company to be forgotten; he quarrelled with Alexander and was speared to
death by the drunken king, who later regretted the deed. Shakespeare’s audience
would have been familiar with the anecdote; Flewellen follows the crown-approved
Homilie against Gluttonie and Dronkennes:
The great Alexander after that he hadde conquered the whole worlde, was
hym selfe ouercome by dronkennesse, in so muche, that beyng dronken, he slew
his faythfull frende Clitus, whereof when he was sober, he was so muche
ashamed, that for anguyshe of harte he wyshed death.
(The seconde tome of
homilies fol. 107v)
.
great-belly doublet
Tight jacket padded in the stomach covering.
The belly, or lower part of a doublet (OEDbelly, n.3.b), could be great (padded) or
thin (unpadded), according to fashion. The padding, in
Falstaff’s case, was of course his fat, but the line serves as a reminder of the
padded costuming of an actor playing the role.
I … name.
Taylor suggests that this is a joking allusion to the
name having had to be changed (i.e., from Oldcastle in 1 Henry IV to Falstaff in 2 Henry IV; Henry V);
similarly in Merry Wives Mistress Page declares that she
cannot tell what the dickens his name is (Wiv
3.2.14).
But in addition to the inside joke, Flewellen’s line gives point to the Henriad’s
arguably tragic process of casting off Falstaff and excising him from Henry’s
story, and reinforces the play’s theme of memory, forgetfulness, and remembering
with advantages (FM A4 Sc3 Sp10).
Enter … herald.
The stage directions in Quarto do not specify an entrance for
an English herald, but one must be on stage at this point, as Henry’s first speech
indicates. Gurr’s addition of an entrance for the Second Soldier (also missing in
Q1) at this point is also a possibility (King Henry), but I have indicated it later
in the scene (Sc16 SD4),
just before he is mentioned. I have also added a necessary exit for Gower at that
point, since the exit of the heralds seems a logical place for it.
trumpet
Trumpeter.
skirr
Flee.
as … slings
Craik hears an echo of Marlowe’s 1593 translation of Lucan’s
Pharsalia, Swifter than bullets thrown from
Spanish slings, (Lucan 231 qtd. in King Henry), and suggests that for patriotic
reasons Shakespeare substituted Assyrians, who, according to the Geneva
translation of Judith, trust in shield, speare and bow, and sling
(Geneva 9:7).
Enforcèd
Violently flung.
Besides
Additionally.
those
The prisoners.
fined … ours
Determined to pay only my bones and nothing more.
charitable favour
Gracious permission.
To sort
That, in order to sort.
day
Victory.
Crispin, Crispin
Either a repetition for effect, or a mistake for Crispin
and Crispian, the two brother saints on whose feast day Agincourt was
fought.
grandfather … memory
Edward III.
Properly, Edward III was Henry’s great-grandfather, and Craik
suggests emending, as Flewellen has no reason to get this wrong (King Henry).
grandfather might mean simply ancestor
here, however, and in later Scottish, though not Welsh usage, it could mean
great-grandfather (OEDgrandfather, n.2, 3).
An it
If it.
the Welshmen … grow
Flewellen is the only source for the idea that the tradition
of Welshmen wearing leeks comes from Crécy, though Shakespeare may have
gathered a tradition from Welshmen in London, as he seems to have done for
details of Glendower’s character in 1 Henry IV
(Humphreys, Henry
V). Editors usually comment that the custom commemorates a March 1
victory of the Welsh over the Saxons in 540 C.E., Taylor points out that that
explanation dates from the late seventeenth century (Henry V).
Saint Davy’s day
Feast day of David (Welsh Dewi),
patron saint of Wales (1 March).
On which day Welshmen wear leeks in their caps in
commemoration.
his grace’s
Either an epithet for the king or a reference to God’s
grace.
The two senses run together, resulting in a comic muddling of
divine and royal agency.
him
The French herald.
the scattered French
The remnant of the French army still alive.
Gower
Gower must exit at some point before his qualities are
discussed and the soldier is sent to fetch him (Sc16 Sp36).
This is a logical point for his exit, but not the only possibility.
swaggered
Boasted, quarrelled.
perjured
Forsworn, an oath-breaker.
arrant
Notorious, downright.
worth
High rank.
Lucifer, and Belzebub
Names of the devil.
meet
Fitting, necessary.
sirrah
Sir (an address to an inferior).
Pronounced with emphasis on the first syllable.
lit’rature … wars
Military learning.
Alençon
A French duke.
The Duke of Alençon mentioned in Henry V would likely have
reminded the Elizabethan audience of François of Anjou and Alençon (1555–1584), who
courted Queen Elizabeth in 1572. François, or simply Monsieur, as
he was popularly known, occasioned much ridicule for his physical deformities and
for the twenty-two-year gap in age between himself and the queen, and caused
English Protestants consternation at the idea of a royal marriage to a foreign,
Catholic king.
down together
Fighting on the ground.
Perhaps the phrase merely distinguishes between fighting on
foot or on horseback, but its occurrence in Coriolanus
(Cor
4.5.119) suggest a rough and tumble wrestling match on the
battlefield. At any rate, Shakespeare has Henry recall his fight with Alençon as
hand-to-hand affair, while Holinshed records it differently:
The king that daie shewed himselfe a valiant knight, albeit almost
felled by the duke of Alanson; yet with plaine strength he slue two of the
dukes companie, and felled the duke himselfe; whome when he would haue
yelded, the kings gard (contrarie to his mind) slue out of hand.
(Chronicle, 1587 554)
touched
Given occasion; touched off, lit (like gunpowder).
Scene 17
Location: the field of victory, Agincourt.
toward
Coming to.
know
Recognize.
this glove
Henry’s glove (in the soldier’s possession).
this
The soldier’s glove (in Flewellen’s cap).
God’s ploot
God’s blood.
his
The soldier’s blood (which Flewellen intends to spill).
1) In the name of your valour; 2) in your manliness; 3) unworthy of
comparison with your magnificence.
thy glove
That glove (actually Henry’s).
marshal’s law
Martial law, the law of the battlefield.
lowliness
Disguise of low rank.
under that habit
In that disguise.
mettle
Courage.
brabbles
Frivolous quarrels.
dissentions
Disagreements, disputes.
I’ll
I want.
Whether Williams assents to take Flewellen’s shilling is a
performer’s choice; Taylor argues that he does so, but he has no obvious warrant
for arguing for the assertion that silence normally gives consent to a
direction implied in the dialogue or that continued refusal
would surely elicit some verbal reaction from Henry or the others (Henry V). The
scene allows no time for such comment, as the focus is shifted to loftier matters
by the French herald’s entrance.
Evidently a list of the captured and killed French makes its
way on stage at this point, and is in Henry’s hands by Sc17 Sp19.
Exeter may read from it or speak from his own knowledge. I have attempted to leave
the stage directions as open as possible.
sort
High rank, nobility.
This note … thine.
The first quarto, evidently faulty in its speech prefixes
here, gives this entire speech to Exeter, which requires him to respond to himself
with ‘Tis wonderful (Sc17 Sp20).
The second and third quartos fix this fault, quite logically, by giving Sc17 Sp18 to Exeter, allowing Henry to comment on the royall
fellowship and ask about the English dead, Exeter to continue and
Henry to come back with O God thy arme was here (Q2 H5 F3r; Q3 F3v). The concurrence of the Q2
and Q3 solution might suggest some otherwise unindicated relationship between
the copy-text for the two later quartos, or the agents behind them may have
arrived at it independently. The Q2/Q3 version of the exchange does obviate
the rather inelegant passing of papers necessitated by the Folio version (F1 H5 I5v),
to which I have emended the Quarto edition here.
bearing banners
Of rank sufficient to fly their own standards.
Admiral
Commander of the navy.
Master … Crossbows
Commander of the French archers, a title traditionally given
to a high-ranking member of the French aristocracy.
High Master
Head of the royal household.
The Grand Maître was one of
the highest-ranking officials of the French court. Guichard Dauphin is a name; he
is not to be confused with the French crown prince.
chevaliers
Knights.
The Quarto reading, Charillas, has
puzzled editors (Q1 H5 F3v). Gurr believes Nobelle
Charillas to be a clarification of the name of Guichard Dauphin, but
notes that no such name or title appears in Holinshed. He conjectures that it
may be a version of Charolais, the name of the Duke of Burgundy
who appears in scene 19, but who was historically not at Agincourt. Gurr concedes
that how the revisers found such a name is an open question (King Henry). I
propose that the Q reading is an error stemming from an easy misreading of MS
Chevillers (or, less likely, Earles), the
compositor having assumed that he was reading another unfamiliar French name and
setting it in italic, without much compunction about spelling. Shakespeare uses
chevalier as an English word only once elsewhere (1H6
4.3.14).
arm
Power, influence.
stratagem
Trickery.
The usual sense is an artifice or trick designed to
outwit or surprise the enemy (OEDstratagem, n.1.a). Often paired as a synonym with
policy, Shakespeare seems to use it contemptuously, as
he does that word (see FM A2 Sc0 Sp1). As
Gurr points out, Henry’s claim to have used no stratagem ignores what Holinshed
calls a politike invention (qtd. in Gurr, King Henry), the
innovation of protecting archers from a cavalry charge with sharpened stakes:
he caused stakes bound with iron sharpe at both ends, of the length of
fiue or six foot to be pitched before the archers, and of ech side the
footmen like an hedge, to the intent that if the barded horsses ran rashlie
vpon them, they might shortlie be gored and destroied. Certeine persons also
were appointed to remooue the stakes, as by the mooueing of the archers
occasion and time should require, so that the footmen were hedged about with
stakes, and the horssemen stood like a bulwarke betweene them and their
enimies, without the stakes. This deuise of fortifieng an armie, was at this
time first inuented.
(Chronicle, 1587 553, margin)
even … battle
Straightforward encounter of forces.
Take it
Accept the credit.
wonderful
Extraordinary, to be wondered at.
Non nobis
Latin hymn based on Psalm 115: Give not praise to us,
Lord.
The Psalm reads Non nobis
Domine non nobis sed nomini tuo da gloriam (Vulgate, Psalm 113:9), or Not vnto
vs, O Lord, not vnto vs, but vnto thy Name giue the glorie (Geneva, Psalm 115:1).
Te Deum
Latin hymn of thanksgiving, beginning Te deum laudamus (“We praise thee, O God”).
A Te Deum is sung regularly
at the Catholic service of Matins and at public occasions celebrating divinely
influenced deliverance or victory.
with … clay
Given Christian burial.
According to Holinshed, the English army departed to Calais
leaving the despoiled French bodies on the field for days until the Earl of
Charolais had 5,800 bodies buried in three pits (Chronicle, 1587 555). The
English dead seem to have been burned or buried, for the most part, though
Holinshed records that Henry brought the corpses of York and Suffolk with him to
be buried in England (see Curry
12).
more happier
1) More joyful; 2) luckier, more fortunate.
Scene 18
Location: France.
The precise location is uncertain. It is clear from the
opening lines that it takes place in early March (just after Saint Davy’s day),
and not in late October, when Agincourt was fought, so apparently time has passed,
and the characters are back in France for the enforcement of the peace treaty
after wintering in England. In the Folio version, the Chorus makes the passage of
time explicit.
wherefore
Why, how.
The pairing of the synonyms why and wherefore
is proverbial (Tilley W332).
move no dissentions
Start no quarrel.
swelling … turkey-cock
Puffed up with pride.
The comparison is proverbial (Tilley T612), and used of Malvolio (TN
2.5.25), but
Flewellen’s response—swellings and cocks—plays upon
the resonances of erect penis.
Usually Trojan is a positive epithet
for a boisterously good fellow (OEDvillain, n.2.a), but Pistol seems to intend a melodramatic insult
on a Homerically epic scale.
fold … web
Kill you.
I.e., cut the cord of Flewellen’s life, spun out, according
to Greek myth, by the Fates, or Parcae. Pistol invokes the Sisters
Three in 2 Henry
IV
(2.4.167).
Hence!
Begone.
qualmish
Nauseous.
Cadwallader
Welsh king of the seventh century.
Cadwallader (or Cadwaladr) became a semi-legendary hero to
the Welsh in the later middle ages; as the last Welsh king to claim sovereignty
over all of Britain, he was prophesied to redeem the Welsh from the Saxons.
goats
Goats are traditionally associated with Wales; Pistol may
intend a sneer at Welsh poverty by implying that they are the height of Welsh
wealth and luxury.
goat
I.e., blow.
Flewellen may refer to his cudgel, punning on
goad, a pointed stick for driving livestock.
J. A. K. Thompson first noted a possible echo of Virgil’s
Aeneid (Shakespeare and the Classics 106), in which Juno
vows Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronto
movebo (“If I cannot bend the powers above, I will
stir up those of Acheron one of the rivers in
hell”; Virgil
7.312).
hussy
Mischievous woman.
As Q’s spelling (huswye) indicates, the word
is derived from housewife. The idea of Fortune as a whore
is proverbial (Dent F603.1; cf. Ham
2.2.225).
lines
Lineaments, features.
Other senses perhaps as appropriate to Pistol are
verses (OEDline, n.2.23.e), referring to his frequent histrionic snatches of
metrical bombast, and fits of temper (n.2 29.), a word from the
dialect Shakespeare’s native Warwickshire that he uses in Merry
Wives (F1 Wiv E3v) and Troilus and
Cressida (F1 Tro ¶4v). It may also be a mistake for F’s limbes or Q3’s
loynes; as Taylor points out, lines could be a
contemporary spelling of loins (Henry V).
Doll
A mistress of Pistol’s.
Many editors emend to Nell, assuming that
Pistol means his wife, the former Nell Quickly, a rather sentimental assumption
about his marital fidelity. Johnson spent some time considering the possibility
that Doll is Doll Tearsheet, the prostitute mentioned in 2 Henry IV and at Sc2 Sp22, and Wilson uses this mistake as evidence that Pistol’s character
was a late replacement for Falstaff, whom Shakespeare decided to kill off during
the process of composing the play (Wilson,
Henry V).
on … France
Of syphilis, known in England as the French
disease.
affordeth naught
Are worth nothing.
Bawd
Pimp.
the sleight … hand
My dexterity in cutting purses.
steal
Sneak.
With the play on the more usual sense (“rob”) in
the repetition.
patches
Bandages.
Gallia wars
French wars.
The pretentiousness of Pistol’s last
phrase, from the Latin for Gaul (France), would remind every former schoolboy in
Shakespeare’s audience of Caesar’s Gallic Wars. His
promise to lie about the origins of his scars reminds us of Gower’s
slanders of this age (Sc9 Sp25);
as Joel B. Altman points out, in the late 1590s England was troubled with veterans
returning from the Irish wars to a life of robbery such as Pistol imagines for
himself: Pistol was speaking to current affairs when he envisioned a
profitable future in sturdy vagabondage upon his return from Henry’s
France (Vile Participation 12). The speech also
provides a rather pathetic conclusion to the Henriad’s comic scenes, as Johnson noted:
The comic scenes of The History of Henry the
Fourth and Fifth are now at an end, and
all the comic personages are now dismissed. Falstaff and Mrs Quickly are
dead; Nym and Bardolph are hanged; Gadshill was lost immediately after the
robbery; Poins and Peto have vanished since, one knows not how; and Pistol
is now beaten into obscurity. I believe every reader regrets their
departure.
(Plays)
Scene 19
Location: a court in Troyes, France.
Catherine
The Quarto stage direction lists her as Queene
Katherine, anticipating her marriage to Henry and position as royal
consort.
Alice
Catherine’s attendant is not addressed as
Alice in this scene, and her speech prefix throughout is
Lady. Since she serves as a translator, however, editors have
always presumed her to be identical to the Alice of scene 7.
Peace … met
Peace, for which we are here met, be to this
meeting (Johnson,
Plays).
brother
Fellow king.
fair … day
Good day.
branch … stock
Member of the ruling family of France.
So are we
We are likewise glad to see yours.
both
Both of you kings.
Since mightiness is singular, I suggest that
Burgundy’s both refers to both kings, but that your
mightiness is addressed to the victorious Henry alone.
Most editors emend this word to cursitory, a
form which appears in no authoritative printed version: Q1 and Q2
read cursenary (F5r; F4v), Q3 reads cursorary (G1v), and
F1 has curselarie
(K1r). Shakespeare clearly intended to coin a four-syllable
word meaning passing over rapidly. The only such word to have
gained common currency, cursory — whose earliest Oxford English Dictionary occurrences are contemporary with
Henry V (OEDcursory, adj.) — is metrically inadequate. Since no modern
alternative recommends itself, this edition retains the original forms.
O’erviewed
Looked over.
Pleaseth
If it please.
peremptory
Conclusive, final.
leap-frog
A boys’ vaulting game.
wearing
Using, possessing.
not worth sunburning
Too ugly for the sun to make worse.
By Elizabethan conventions of beauty, dark skin was
considered ugly.
between … George
With the combined blessings of the patron saints of France and
England.
a boy
Henry VI.
The irony of Henry’s hopes for Henry VI, a famously
ineffectual king, could not but be apparent to the audience.
take … beard
Drive out the Turks.
To pluck a man by the beard was a humiliating insult (cf.
Ham
2.2.469, Lr
3.7.33). Henry’s
sentiment is an anachronism, as the Ottoman Turks did not occupy Constantinople
(modern Istanbul) until 1453, three decades after Henry’s death. See my
General
Introduction.
sall
Shall.
Saint Denis
Patron saint of France.
be my speed
Help me.
false France
1) Bad French; 2) deceitful French.
neighbours
Friends, people close by.
closet
Private chamber.
of me
About me.
use
Treat.
cruelly
Excessively, extremely.
hollow
Sunken; insincere.
wax
Become.
curled pate
Head of curly hair.
as please
As it shall please, according to the wishes of.
O mon … faveur.
“O my God! I would not do anything like that? for all the world. This is not your
way to gain favour”.
Mais … baiser!
“But faith, I forget” what is to
“kiss”.
Oui … grace.
“Yes, saving your grace”.
patience perforce
You must endure.
in schedule had
Included in the written statement of demands.
The sense of “a note appended to a larger document
containing supplementary matter” (OEDschedule, n.2.a) might indicate, as does the French king’s exit
with the English lords that the terms of the French surrender are still being
written in this scene. Q’s phrased might also be a mishearing of all that
we enschedulèd, i.e., every term of surrender we listed; cf. F’s
enscheduled (A5 Sc2 Sp7).
subscribed
Signed agreement to.
for … grant
In conferring titles or estates.
addition
Title.
Notre … Franciae.
Both the French and Latin translate to “Our most dear son
Henry, King of England, heir of France”.
nicely
Fastidiously, precisely.
let … course
Let that demand go into effect as well.
what
Whatever.
disposeth
Governs, arranges.
present solemnize
Immediately celebrate.
Prosopography
Chris Horne
Donald Bailey
Eric Rasmussen
Eric Rasmussen is Regents Teaching Professor and Foundation Professor of English at
the University of Nevada. He is co-editor with Sir Jonathan Bate of the RSC William Shakespeare Complete Works and general editor, with Paul Werstine, of the New Variorum Shakespeare. He has received the Falstaff Award from PlayShakespeare.com for Best Shakespearean Book of the Year in 2007, 2012, and 2013.
James D. Mardock
James Mardock is Associate Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Associate
General Editor for the Internet Shakespeare Editions, and a dramaturge for the Lake
Tahoe Shakespeare Festival and Reno Little Theater. In addition to editing quarto
and folio Henry V for the ISE, he has published essays on Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other Renaissance
literature in The Seventeenth Century, Ben Jonson Journal, Borrowers and Lenders, and contributed to the collections Representing the Plague in Early Modern England (Routledge 2010) and Shakespeare Beyond Doubt (Cambridge 2013). His book Our Scene is London (Routledge 2008) examines Jonsonʼs representation of urban space as an element in
his strategy of self-definition. With Kathryn McPherson, he edited Stages of Engagement (Duquesne 2013), a collection of essays on drama in post-Reformation England, and
he is currently at work on a monograph on Calvinism and metatheatrical awareness in
early modern English drama.
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 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.
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.
Martin Holmes
Martin Holmes has worked as a developer in the UVicʼs 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.
Michael Best
Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He is the Founding
Editor of the Internet Shakespeare Editions, of which he was the Coordinating Editor
until 2017. In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and
huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals,
principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of
texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet
Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia,
and Japan.
Navarra Houldin
Project manager 2022–present. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them)
completed their BA in History and Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. During
their degree, they worked as a teaching assistant with the University of Victoriaʼs
Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies. Their primary research was on gender and
sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America.
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 womenʼs
writing in the modernist period.
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.
William Shakespeare
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Henry V: Quarto Annotations
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University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online platform.
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