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Scana Secunda.

[Act II. scene i.]

Enter before Angiers, Philip King of France, Lewis, Daulphin, Austria, Conftance, Arthur.

1. Scana Secunda.] Ff, Rowe i, Fleay. Act I, Scene iii. Dono. Act II, Scene i. Rowe ii. et cet.

Scene: The French King's Tent. Dono. Before the Walls of Angiers. Rowe et cet. (subs.).

2, 3. Enter...Arthur.] Ff. Enter Philip, King of France, Lewis the Dauphin, the Arch-Duke of Austria, Constance, and Arthur. Rowe,+. Drums, &c. Enter Austria, and Forces, on one side: on the other King Philip of France

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and his Power; Lewis, Arthur, Constance, and Attendants. Capell, Cam. +. Enter on one side, the Archduke of Austria and Forces; on the other Philip, King of France, and Forces, Lewis, Constance, Arthur and Attendants. Mal. et cet.

2, 3. Lewis, Daulphin,] Ff, Fle. Louis, Dyce, Hal. Wh. i. (throughout).

3. Austria,] Anstria Booth reprint, Furnivall (Old Spel. Sh.).

1. Scana Secunda] In the Folios this is the second scene of Act I, but as all modern editions subsequent to Rowe ii. make this the first scene of Act II, this latter arrangement is here adopted merely in order to facilitate reference to the modern editions.-ED.

Act II. scene i.] F. Gentleman (Dram. Cens., ii, 156): We apprehend the play would have begun with much more propriety at this period, and there is not a single passage in the First Act, save King John's reply to Chatillion, that could cause taste or judgment to lament the omission of it.-BOSWELL-STONE (p. 51): The historic time of Acts II. and III. extends to nearly three years, beginning at the interview of John and Philip 'on the morrow after the feast of the assumption of our ladie' (August 16), 1199, and ending 'on Lammas daie' (August 1), 1202, when Arthur was taken prisoner by John.-MoORE-SMITH: In spite of the fact that in the opening scene of the play Arthur's claim is represented as a just one, and John as a usurper, the present scene by no means enlists sympathy on behalf of Arthur's supporters. The very words in which Philip [Lewis] introduces Austria as the cause of the early death of Richard Cordelion are as a warning to the audience not to find their heroes here.

2. Angiers] 'Angers, or Angiers, anciently Juliomagus, Andegavum, and Andes, the capital of the government of Anjou, in France, situated a little above the place where the little rivers Loire and Sarte fall into the Maynne; which last river divides this city into two parts. Its ancient name it had from Julius Cæsar, who built it.... The first walls of this city were raised by John, surnamed Lackland, who was king of England, and Duke of Anjou. But Prince Lewis, son of King Philip Augustus, and afterwards King Lewis VIII, demolished these walls. His son and successor, St. Lewis, built them up again in the manner in which they still are; and besides these, it is surrounded with antique fortifications.'-Shakespeare Illustrated, vol. i, p. 79.-MOBERLY: Shakespeare well divines the character of this city, the cradle of the Plantagenets, warlike and powerful, a bulwark of France against the Dukes of Bretagne. M. Michelet remarks that its architecture even now shows

Lewis. Before Angiers well met braue Auftria,

4, 21. Lewis.] K. Phi. Theob. conj. (Nichols, ii, 388), Dyce ii, iii, Col. iii, Huds. ii, Wh. ii, Words. Dono. Craig.

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4. Auftria,] Ff, Rowe i. Austria! Huds. ii. Austria. Rowe ii. et cet.

traces of this character, the walls of its cathedral being covered not with sculptured saints, but with armed warriors.

4. Lewis] THEOBALD (Nichols, ii, 388): Why does the Dauphin take upon him to anticipate his father in welcoming Austria, and his father here in presence? I doubt not but this speech should be placed to King Philip.-[This conjecture, made in a letter to Warburton in 1729, Theobald did not repeat in either his first or second editions.-ED.]-COLLIER (ed. ii.): It has been suggested, with some plausibility, that the King of France ought to open this scene, and that such is usually the case when Shakespeare introduces a king on the stage. This rule is by no means without exception, and, of course, we do not feel authorised upon mere speculation to alter the invariable regulation of the Folios.-[In his ed. iii. Collier assigns this and the next speech, l. 21, to Philip, and says that the prefix 'Lewis' is doubtless an error, since the tenor of this speech and others shows that it belongs to Philip and not to Lewis.-ED.]-W. W[ILLIAMS] (Parthenon, 16 August, 1862, p. 506): This speech is given to Lewis, although the line 'At our importance hither is he come' is alone sufficient to show to whom it should belong. Again, after a few words from Arthur to the Duke, Lewis patronisingly commends him as 'A noble boy.' Yet we know that these young princes were about the same age and had been educated together. This blind adherence to the prefixes of the Folio (elsewhere admittedly most inaccurate) appears to have arisen from Shakespeare having crowded into this drama the events of several years. In the later acts Lewis plays a conspicuous part and heads the invasion of England; but at the period in question he was a mere youth, and was evidently so considered by the dramatist. If we read the whole of this scene carefully we can hardly fail to perceive that Lewis is not intended to speak until called upon to express his sentiments with regard to marrying the Lady Blanch. When King John proposes the marriage to King Philip, the latter addresses his son by 'What say'st thou, boy?' and King John afterwards asks 'What say these young ones?' How, consistently with real or dramatic decorum, could a 'beardless boy,' 'a cockered silken wanton,' as Lewis is described by Faulconbridge, be the first to welcome the Duke of Austria before Angiers, and this in the presence of his father, the King of France? The first speech given to King Philip in the received text commences with 'Well, then, to work,' and implies that he had previously spoken. With a few unimportant exceptions Shakespeare invariably makes his monarchs and great personages open and conclude the dialogue whenever they appear. This further exception in King John would be a strange and most suspicious instance of the reverse. I may add, too, that in the old play, The Troublesome Raigne, the corresponding speech is assigned, and with undeniable propriety, to King Philip.-[On the authority of Dyce the Shakespearean notes in The Parthenon (a weekly publication discontinued in 1863) are assigned to Mr W. W. Williams. The name does not appear in the Dictionary of National Biography, in Allibone's Dictionary of Authors, or in Jaggard's Bibliography.-ED.]-C. & M. COWDEN CLARKE: In our previous editions we left the speech assigned [as in the Folio] under the impression that the forward part taken elsewhere by the Dauphin in the French political procedure warranted

[4. Lewis]

the assumption that here he takes the initiative, even in his father's presence. But on more mature consideration of the whole question (besides bearing in mind the frequent errors in prefixes made by the Folio), we think there is little doubt that King Philip is the speaker here. The expression 'At our importance hither is he come,' which we imagined might be spoken by Lewis in his royal father's name and his own, is, we confess, more consistent with the regal style put by Shakespeare into the mouths of his monarchs. Moreover, the word 'boy,' addressed to Arthur, makes for the belief that it is the French king who speaks, and not Lewis; since the latter is himself called by his father 'boy' further on in this same scene, and one so young would probably not use this epithet. The same argument applies to the next speech but one-'A noble boy'-—which has also the prefix 'Lewis' in the Folio, but which, from its tone of protection, seems properly to belong to the king. FLEAY (Introd., p. 28): In this scene, ll. 4-204, the King of France is called 'Lewis' in the text, l. 153, and in the prefixed names, lines 4, 21, 160. In this scene only are some of his speeches assigned to King simply. Editors have tried emendation unsuccessfully. They either make Lewis two syllables, or Philip one; neither of which are admissible in the metre of this play. It seems more reasonable to infer that these two hundred lines and also III, ii, 1-10 were inserted hurriedly after the rest of the play had been written. This would also account for the confusion in the division into acts and scenes. The metrical test, which shows only two rhymes in these two hundred lines, and no rhyme in III, ii, confirms this conjecture; and when we consider that the passage alluding to the English fleet of 1596 (ll. 76–79) is also contained in these lines, I feel little doubt that these subsequent insertions were made after Hamnet's death, and that the blunders of Philip for Richard and Lewis for Philip are to be attributed to the confusion caused by grief in Shakespeare's mind. None but those who have had to write compulsorily under similar bereavements can tell how errors do creep in at such times. That the errors remained uncorrected causes no difficulty, for this play was not printed during Shakespeare's life, and its probable revivals in 1611 and 1622 took place after his retirement from the theatre, according to the most probable chronology, which gives 1611 for the production of his last complete play; the two plays produced afterwards being finished by Fletcher. The excision of the character of Essex from this play may also have been made after August, 1596, and with the same want of care; which would account for his name being left in the prefix to I, i, 51.— Brandes (i, 174): All the scenes in which Arthur appears are contained in the older play, and, among the rest, the first scene of Act II, which seems to dispose of Fleay's conjecture that the first two hundred lines were hastily inserted after Shakespeare had lost his son. Nevertheless almost all that is gracious and touching in the figure is due to the great reviser. [See III, iv, 98 and notes thereon. -ED.-Miss C. PORTER: The main dramatic object is to let the audience know the relation of Austria to Richard the Lionheart, and thereby to Faulconbridge, as well as to Arthur. But the most skilful way is to give the information to one in the play who does not know its relation to himself, and also to make this subsidiary matter a mere preliminary to the main business,—the attack on Angiers, the hearing of Chatillion, the reception of John, etc.,—in all of which the King leads necessarily. By means of this change [from King Philip, as in the older play, to Lewis], moreover, the two new characters of whom the audience has before heard nothing-Lewis and Austria—are both at once introduced and time

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Arthur that great fore-runner of thy bloud,
Richard that rob'd the Lion of his heart,
And fought the holy Warres in Palestine,

By this braue Duke came early to his graue:

5. Arthur] Ff. Arthur! Pope,+. Arthur, Rowe et cet.

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is saved. Shakespeare's speaker is not 'welcoming Austria,' but bidding little Arthur to welcome him, and the speech is recast [from the older play] to suit abridgement and new uses.

4. Before Angiers... Austria] Rose (Sh. Soc. Trans., 1880, p. 49): If we want to be sure of Shakespeare's method of work we cannot do better than look at him actually in the workshop; not creating beings of his own, but improving, dovetailing together, planing down, or filling out other men's faulty work; adapting old plays, that is, and putting any amount of honest toil into the business. . . . Take a very small example: In reading the old Troublesome Raigne of John it struck me that after the first scene, when all the English characters had gone off and the French came on, the audience must be puzzled, for the first dozen lines or so, to know where they were and whom they had before them. It was a small enough matter, and the uncertainty would not last very long; yet I thought I would see whether Shakespeare was more or less careful in such things. I found that in his King John the very first line spoken on the entry of the French was this: 'Before Angiers well met, brave Austria!' In six words the place and person were set before the audience!

4. Angiers] B. DAWSON (Sh. Soc. Trans., 1887, p. 172), in speaking of Shakespeare's accentuation of proper nouns, shows that the accent is on the first syllable of Angiers in all cases where it occurs in this play, and he 'therefore claims “Angiers" as a Spondee in the present line. It consists of Iamb, three Spondees, Iamb; for as beat falling upon the a of "Austria" (which has neither accent nor emphasis) indisputably makes the line end in an Iamb, so surely may beat falling upon the -giers of Angiers (also without accent or emphasis) make it a Spondee.'—[It is, I think, reasonable to suppose that the g is here soft, as in the somewhat similar name Algiers.-ED.]

5. fore-runner of thy bloud] WRIGHT: By some strange carelessness Shakespeare here makes Arthur in the direct line of descent from Richard. [See note by MOBERLY, 1. 16.]

6. rob'd the Lion of his heart] See note on I, i, 280.

8. By this braue Duke] CAPELL (i, pt 1, p. 121): A great falsification of history; and a wilful one certainly, for the purpose of blending two characters, and giving spirit to the Bastard's resentment which follows presently. Richard's chronicle story, so much of it as concerns the explanation of Shakespeare, is this: That, in his return from the Palestine wars, he was drove ashore on an enemy's countrythe Duke of Austria-was discover'd by him and imprison'd, but purchas'd his liberty at last by a great ransom, his imprisoner dying soon after by a fall from his horse; that, warring some years after in France, he was kill'd by an arrow before the castle of a vicount of Lymoges, which vicount in some other encounter was kill'd by the Bastard. . . . Shakespeare revives Austria, and makes him Lymoges too; brings him so intitl'd to Angiers in the spoil of his prisoner, whose death he attributes to him, and kills him then by the Bastard in revenge of that death.

And for amends to his pofteritie,

At our importance hether is he come,

To spread his colours boy, in thy behalfe,

And to rebuke the vfurpation

Of thy vnnaturall Vncle, English Iohn,

Embrace him, loue him, giue him welcome hether.

Arth. God fhall forgiue you Cordelions death The rather, that you giue his off-spring life, Shadowing their right vnder your wings of warre:

9. And] And, Cap. et seq.

10, 14. hether] Fl. hither Ff. et cet. 10. is he] he has Words.

12. vsurpation] usurpation Fle. 13. Vncle,] Uncle F、F..

John,] Ff. John. Rowe,+, Ktly,

Del. Neils. John: Cap. et cet.

ΙΟ

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15. Cordelions] F2F3. Cordelion's F1, Rowe, Del. Fle. Caur-de-lion's Pope et cet.

16. rather, that] rather that F, Rowe i, Wh. i, Cam.+, Huds. ii. 17. their] his Coll. MS.

STEEVENS: The old play, [The Troublesome Raigne], led Shakespeare into this error of ascribing to the Duke of Austria the death of Richard. [Ibid., note on III, i, 44.] In the person of Austria Shakespeare has conjoined the two well-known enemies of Cœur-de-lion. Leopold, Duke of Austria, threw him into prison in a former expedition (in 1193); but the castle of Chaluz, before which he fell (in 1199), belonged to Vidomar, viscount of Limoges; and the archer who pierced his shoulder with an arrow (of which wound he died) was Bertrand de Gourdon. The editors seem hitherto to have understood Lymoges as being an appendage to the title of Austria, and therefore enquired no further about it. Austria in the old play (printed in 1591) is called Lymoges, the Austrich duke. With this note I was favoured by. my friend Henry Blake, Esq.-MALONE: Harding says, in his Chronicle, that the cause of the quarrel was Richard's taking down the Duke of Austria's arms and banner, which he had set up above those of the King of France and the King of Jerusalem. The affront was given when they lay before Acre in Palestine, [ed. Ellis, p. 264]. Fabian says that Richard 'toke from a knighte of the Duke of Ostrich the sayd dukis banner, & in despyte of the sayd duke, trade it under foote, and dyd unto it all the despyte he myght,' [ed. Ellis, p. 301]. This circumstance is alluded to in the old King John, where the Bastard, after killing Austria, says: 'And as my father triumph'd in thy spoils, And trod thine ensigns underneath his feet.'

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10. importance] JOHNSON: That is, importunity. Compare: 'Maria writ The letter at Sir Toby's great importance.'-Twelfth Night, V, i, 371.—[According to SCHMIDT (Lex.) these are the only examples of Shakespeare's use of 'importance' in this sense.-ED.]

16. off-spring] DELIUS thinks that by 'off-spring' Arthur here means not himself, but rather the whole of Richard's family collectively, as is shown by the use of 'their' in the next line.—MOBERLY: Of course Arthur was only nephew to Richard I, not his 'offspring.' Yet Shakespeare is only following the style of official documents in which kings are held to be descended from their predecessors. So even Henry VII. repeatedly speaks of 'our royal progenitor, King Edward the Fourth.' 17. Shadowing] WRIGHT: That is, sheltering. Compare: 'Behold, the Assyrian

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