‘That life was mine which thou hast here deprived.
If in the child the father’s image lies,
Where shall I live now Lucrece is unlived?
Thou wast not to this end from me derived.
If children predecease progenitors,
We are their offspring, and they none of ours.
‘Poor broken glass, I often did behold
In thy sweet semblance my old age new born;
But now that fair fresh mirror, dim and old,
Shows me a bare-boned death by time outworn.
O, from thy cheeks my image thou hast torn,
And shivered all the beauty of my glass,
That I no more can see what once I was.
‘O time, cease thou thy course and last no longer,
If they surcease to be that should survive!
Shall rotten death make conquest of the stronger,
And leave the falt’ring feeble souls alive?
The old bees die, the young possess their hive.
Then live, sweet Lucrece, live again and see
Thy father die, and not thy father thee.’
By this starts Collatine as from a dream,
And bids Lucretius give his sorrow place;
And then in key-cold Lucrece’ bleeding stream
He falls, and bathes the pale fear in his face,
And counterfeits to die with her a space,
Till manly shame bids him possess his breath,
And live to be revenged on her death.
The deep vexation of his inward soul
Hath served a dumb arrest upon his tongue,
Who, mad that sorrow should his use control,
Or keep him from heart-easing words so long,
Begins to talk; but through his lips do throng
Weak words, so thick come in his poor heart’s aid
That no man could distinguish what he said.
Yet sometime ‘Tarquin’ was pronounced plain,
But through his teeth, as if the name he tore.
This windy tempest, till it blow up rain,
Held back his sorrow’s tide to make it more.
At last it rains, and busy winds give o’er.
Then son and father weep with equal strife
Who should weep most, for daughter or for wife.
The one doth call her his, the other his,
Yet neither may possess the claim they lay.
The father says ‘She’s mine’; ‘O, mine she is,’
Replies her husband, ‘do not take away
My sorrow’s interest; let no mourner say
He weeps for her, for she was only mine,
And only must be wailed by Collatine.’
‘O,’ quoth Lucretius, ‘I did give that life
Which she too early and too late hath spilled.’
‘Woe, woe,’ quoth Collatine, ‘she was my wife.
I owed her, and ’tis mine that she hath killed.’
‘My daughter’ and ‘my wife’ with clamours filled
The dispersed air, who, holding Lucrece’ life,
Answered their cries, ‘my daughter’ and ‘my wife’.
Brutus, who plucked the knife from Lucrece’ side,
Seeing such emulation in their woe
Began to clothe his wit in state and pride,
Burying in Lucrece’ wound his folly’s show.
He with the Romans was esteemed so
As silly jeering idiots are with kings,
For sportive words and utt’ring foolish things.
But now he throws that shallow habit by
Wherein deep policy did him disguise,
And armed his long-hid wits advisedly
To check the tears in Collatinus’ eyes.
‘Thou wronged lord of Rome,’ quoth he, ‘arise.
Let my unsounded self, supposed a fool,
Now set thy long-experienced wit to school.
‘Why, Collatine, is woe the cure for woe?
Do wounds help wounds, or grief help grievous deeds?
Is it revenge to give thyself a blow
For his foul act by whom thy fair wife bleeds?
Such childish humour from weak minds proceeds;
Thy wretched wife mistook the matter so
To slay herself, that should have slain her foe.
‘Courageous Roman, do not steep thy heart
In such relenting dew of lamentations,
But kneel with me, and help to bear thy part
To rouse our Roman gods with invocations
That they will suffer these abominations—
Since Rome herself in them doth stand disgraced—
By our strong arms from forth her fair streets chased.
‘Now by the Capitol that we adore,
And by this chaste blood so unjustly stained,
By heaven’s fair sun that breeds the fat earth’s store,
By all our country rights in Rome maintained,
And by chaste Lucrece’ soul that late complained
Her wrongs to us, and by this bloody knife,
We will revenge the death of this true wife.’
This said, he struck his hand upon his breast,
And kissed the fatal knife to end his vow,
And to his protestation urged the rest,
Who, wond’ring at him, did his words allow.
Then jointly to the ground their knees they bow,
And that deep vow which Brutus made before
He doth again repeat, and that they swore.
When they had sworn to this advised doom
They did conclude to bear dead Lucrece thence,
To show her bleeding body thorough Rome,
And so to publish Tarquin’s foul offence;
Which being done with speedy diligence,
The Romans plausibly did give consent
To Tarquin’s everlasting banishment.
EDWARD III
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND OTHERS
FIRST heard of in the Stationers’ Register for I December 1595, The Reign of King Edward the Third was published anonymously in the following year, with the statement that it had been ‘sundry times played about the City of London’. As was usual, there are no act and scene divisions; we divide it only into scenes. It could have been written at any time between the Armada of 1588 and 1595. Like other plays of this period, including Shakespeare’s I Henry VI, Richard II, and King John, it is composed entirely in verse, much of it formal and rhetorical in style. Shakespeare seems at least to have known the play, since a historical error placing King David of Scotland among Edward’s prisoners at Calais (10.40-56, 18.63.1) occurs also in Henry V (1.2.160-2). The play’s omission from the First Folio is good presumptive evidence against Shakespeare’s sole authorship. It was, however, attributed to him in a totally unreliable catalogue of 1656; better worth taking seriously is the attribution to Shakespeare by Edward Capell, expressed in 1760. Since then various scholars have proposed that Shakespeare wrote at least the scenes involving the Countess of Salisbury (Scene 2, Scene 3). When the Oxford edition first appeared, its editors remarked that ‘if we had attempted a thorough reinvestigation of candidates for inclusion in the early dramatic canon, it would have begun with Edward III’ (Textual Companion, p. 137). Since then intensive application of stylometric and other tests of authorship, along with an increased willingness to acknowledge that Shakespeare collaborated with other writers, especially early and late in his career, has strengthened the case for including it among the collected works. We believe, however, that Shakespeare was responsible only for Scene 2 (from the entrance of Edward III) and Scene 3, and for Scene 12 (which includes a Hamlet-like meditation on the inevitability of death), and possibly Scene 13, and that one or more other authors wrote the rest of the play.
The play’s treatment of history, deriving principally from Lord Berners’s translation (1535) of Froissart’s Chronicles, is loose. As with Henry V, the opening episode shows the Eng
lish king seeking reassurance about his claims to the throne of France. Lorraine’s subsequent demand that Edward swear allegiance to the French king meets with derision. Attention turns to England’s relations with Scotland, where King David, France’s ally, has besieged the castle of Roxburgh, imprisoning the Countess of Salisbury. Edward instructs his son Edward (Ned) the Black Prince to raise troops against France; Edward himself will march against the Scots. At Roxburgh the King rescues and attempts to seduce the Countess, who is also desired by King David and Sir William Douglas. In the principal scenes ascribed to Shakespeare, the enraptured King expresses his passion in attractively lyrical verse recalling that of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. He attempts to persuade the Earl of Warwick, the Countess’s father, to further his suit, but the Countess, virtuous (and married), repudiates his adulterous desires, threatening to kill herself if he persists. Penitent, he reverts to the French conflict. This, presented in episodes of ambitious rhetoric rather than of violent action, reaches its first climax in young Edward’s conquest over the King of Bohemia, for which his father knights him. Edward’s queen, Philippa, who with her followers has overcome the Scots, joins him, and persuades him to show mercy to the burghers of the besieged town of Calais. Young Edward, believed dead, is revealed as the conqueror of the French, and the play ends with a jingoistic English triumph. It has had a few modern productions, including one by the Royal Shakespeare Company in
THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY
The English
KING EDWARD III
QUEEN PHILIPPA, his wife
Edward, PRINCE OF WALES, their eldest son
The EARL OF SALISBURY
The COUNTESS OF SALISBURY, his wife
The EARL OF WARWICK, the Countess’s father
Sir William de MONTAGUE, Salisbury’s nephew
The EARL OF DERBY
Sir James AUDLEY
Henry, Lord PERCY
John COPLAND, an esquire, later knighted
LODOWICK, King Edward’s secretary
Two SQUIRES
A HERALD to King Edward from the Prince of Wales Four heralds who bear the Prince of Wales’s armour Soldiers
Allied with the English
Robert, COMTE D’ARTOIS and Earl of Richmond
Jean, COMTE DE MONTFORT, later Duc de Bretagne
GOBIN de Grace, a French Prisoner
The French
Jean II de Valois, KING OF FRANCE
Prince Charles, Jean’s eldest son, Duc de Normandie, the DAUPHIN
PRINCE PHILIPPE, Jean’s younger son
The DUC DE LORRAINE
VILLIERS, a prisoner sent as an envoy by the Earl of Salisbury to the Dauphin
The CAPTAIN OF CALAIS
Another FRENCH CAPTAIN
A MARINER
Three HERALDS to the Prince of Wales from the King of France, the Dauphin and Prince Philippe
Six POOR MEN, residents of Calais
Six SUPPLICANTS, wealthy merchants and citizens of Calais
Five other FRENCHMEN
A FRENCIIWOMAN with two children
Soldiers
Allied with the French
The KING OF BOHEMIA
A POLISH CAPTAIN
Polish and Muscovite soldiers
David II, KING OF SCOTLAND
Sir William DOUGLAS
Two Scottish MESSENGERS
The Reign of King Edward the Third
Sc. 1 Enter King Edward, the Earl of Derby, the Earl of Warwick,⌉ Edward Prince of Wales, Lord Audley and the Comte d’Artois
KING EDWARD
Robert of Artois, banished though thou be
From France thy native country, yet with us
Thou shalt retain as great a seigniory:
For we create thee Earl of Richmond here.
And now go forwards with our pedigree:
Who next succeeded King Philippe of Beau?
COMTE D’ARTOIS
Three sons of his, which all successively
Did sit upon their father’s regal throne,
Yet died and left no issue of their loins.
KING EDWARD
But was my mother sister unto those?
COMTE D’ARTOIS
She was, my lord, and only Isabel
Was all the daughters that this Philippe had,
Whom afterward your father took to wife.
And from the fragrant garden of her womb
Your gracious self, the flower of Europe’s hope,
Derived is inheritor to France.
But note the rancour of rebellious minds:
When thus the lineage of Beau was out
The French obscured your mother’s privilege
And, though she were the next of blood, proclaimed
Jean of the house of Valois now their king.
The reason was, they say, the realm of France
Replete with princes of great parentage
Ought not admit a governor to rule
Except he be descended of the male.
And that’s the special ground of their contempt
Wherewith they study to exclude your grace.
KING EDWARD
But they shall find that forged ground of theirs
To be but dusty heaps of brittle sand.
COMTE D’ARTOIS
Perhaps it will be thought a heinous thing
That I, a Frenchman, should discover this.
But heaven I call to record of my vows:
It is not hate nor any private wrong,
But love unto my country and the right
Provokes my tongue thus lavish in report.
You are the lineal watchman of our peace,
And Jean of Valois indirectly climbs.
What then should subjects but embrace their king?
Ah, wherein may our duty more be seen
Than striving to rebate a tyrant’s pride
And place thee, the true shepherd of our commonwealth?
KING EDWARD
This counsel, Artois, like to fruitful showers,
Hath added growth unto my dignity,
And by the fiery vigour of thy words
Hot courage is engendered in my breast,
Which heretofore was raked in ignorance
But now doth mount with golden wings of fame
And will approve fair Isabel’s descent,
Able to yoke their stubborn necks with steel
That spurn against my sovereignty in France.Sound a horn
A messenger. Lord Audley, know from whence.
⌈Enter a messenger, the Duc de Lorraine⌉
AUDLEY
The Duke of Lorraine, having crossed the seas,
Entreats he may have conference with your highness.
KING EDWARD
Admit him, lords, that we may hear the news.
(To Lorraine) Say, Duke of Lorraine, wherefore art thou come? 55
DUC DE LORRAINE
The most renowned prince, King Jean of France,
Doth greet thee, Edward, and by me commands
That, forsomuch as by his liberal gift
The Guienne dukedom is entailed to thee,
Thou do him lowly homage for the same.
And for that purpose, here I summon thee
Repair to France within these forty days
That there, according as the custom is,
Thou mayst be sworn true liegeman to our king;
Or else thy title in that province dies
And he himself will repossess the place.
KING EDWARD
See how occasion laughs me in the face!
No sooner minded to prepare for France
But straight I am invited—nay, with threats,
Upon a penalty, enjoined to come!
‘Twere but a childish part to say him nay.
Lorraine, return this answer to thy lord:
I mean to visit him as he requests.
But how? Not servilely disposed to bend,
But like a conquero
r to make him bow.
His lame unpolished shifts are come to light,
And truth hath pulled the vizard from his face
That set a gloss upon his arrogance.
Dare he command a fealty in me?
Tell him the crown that he usurps is mine,
And where he sets his foot he ought to kneel.
’Tis not a petty dukedom that I claim
But all the whole dominions of the realm
Which if, with grudging, he refuse to yield
I’ll take away those borrowed plumes of his,
And send him naked to the wilderness.
DUC DE LORRAINE
Then, Edward, here, in spite of all thy lords,
I do pronounce defiance to thy face.
PRINCE OF WALES
Defiance, Frenchman? We rebound it back
Even to the bottom of thy master’s throat!
And, be it spoke with reverence of the King,
My gracious father, and these other lords,
I hold thy message but as scurrilous,
And him that sent thee like the lazy drone
Crept up by stealth unto the eagle’s nest,
From whence we’ll shake him with so rough a storm
As others shall be warned by his harm.
EARL OF WARWICK (to Lorraine)
Bid him leave off the lion’s case he wears
Lest, meeting with the lion in the field,
He chance to tear him piecemeal for his pride.
COMTE D’ARTOIS (to Lorraine)
The soundest counsel I can give his grace
Is to surrender ere he be constrained.
A voluntary mischief hath less scorn
Than when reproach with violence is borne.
DUC DE LORRAINE
Regenerate traitor, viper to the place
Where thou wast fostered in thine infancy!
Bear’st thou a part in this conspiracy?
⌈Lorraine⌉ draws his sword
KING EDWARD ⌈drawing his sword⌉
Lorraine, behold the sharpness of this steel:
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works Page 92
