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The Complete Plays

Page 64

by Christopher Marlowe


  13 Hainault: A Flemish county in the Low Countries adjacent to France.

  20 shake off: Cast off. The emendation share of is attractive.

  24 staff: Quarter-staff used in combat.

  32 marquis: William, Count of Hainault, brother to Sir John.

  41 thraldom: (Here) captivity, bondage.

  47 Monsieur le Grand: A fictional character invented by Marlowe.

  49 king: I.e. the King of France.

  50–51 right… weapons want: Mortimer means that right can find an opportunity even without weapons, but his words can also mean that right must cede place if it lacks power.

  52 made away: Murdered.

  55 cast up caps: Throw caps into the air with joy.

  56 appointed for: Armed for battle.

  66 to bid… base: Alluding to the children’s game in which players could be caught by opponents when running between two bases.

  67 match: Game.

  74 brother: I.e. brother-in-law.

  75 motion: Proposal.

  76 forward in arms: Eager to fight.

  Scene 16

  8 note: Official list.

  11.1 SD SPENCER reads their names: Q does not provide details of those nobles who were executed. However, the following passage (from Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1587), vol. 3, p. 331) could be adapted for performance purposes:

  the lord William Tuchet, the lord William Fitz William, the lord Warren de L’Isle, the lord Henry Bradbourne, and the lord William Chenie barons, with John Page an esquire, were drawn and hanged at Pomfret aforesaid, and then shortly after, Roger lord Clifford, John lord Mowbraie, and sir Gosein d’Eevill barons, were drawn and hanged at York. At Bristow in the like manner were executed sir Henrie de Willington, and sir Henrie Montfort baronets; and at Gloucester, the lord John Gifford, and sir William Elmebridge knight; and at London, the lord Henry Teies baron; at Winchelsea, sir Thomas Culpepper knight; at Windsor, the lord Francis de Aldham baron; and at Canterbury, the lord Bartholomew de Badelis-mere, and the lord Bartholomew de Ashbornham, barons. Also at Cardiff in Wales, sir William Fleming knight was executed: divers were executed in their countries, as sir Thomas Mandit and others…

  12 barked apace: (i) Barked rapidly like dogs, (ii) embarked swiftly (upon their treasons) (Forker 1994).

  20 ’A will be had: He will be caught.

  28 promised: Levune begins formulaically with a reminder of the dutiful promises he has made. Many editors emend to ‘premised’.

  38 Your honour’s… service: At your honour’s disposal for anything you want to do.

  41 lead the round: Lead the dance.

  42 a’: In.

  43 rout: Band of followers.

  52 equal: Able.

  Scene 17

  3 Belgia: The Netherlands.

  4 cope with: (i) Engage with, (ii) embrace. Lines 3–9 all reflect this ambiguity.

  26 havocs: Causes havoc in (i.e. plunders). Havocking was the indiscriminate slaughter of game.

  Scene 18

  0.1–0.2 SDflying about: Cf. the ‘fly’ of line I.

  6 r’enforce: Once more encourage.

  7 bed of honour: The ground on which the soldiers will die honourably, and be buried.

  Scene 19

  16–17 Bristol… false: I.e. the Mayor of Bristol has betrayed Edward I’s son.

  17 Be… suspect: Don’t be found alone for it arouses suspicion.

  43 A goodly chancellor. This is spoken sarcastically.

  45.1 SD RICE ap HOWELL: A Welshman (Rice = Rhys) employed to arrest Edward.

  48 this presence: The royal presence (with a pun in the next line).

  60 started thence: Driven from their place of refuge.

  63 in a muse: Perplexed.

  70 Your lordship… head: Your recently acquired status may save you from hanging, but not beheading.

  75 Being of countenance: Having authority.

  Scene 20

  18 nurseries of arts: I.e. universities.

  20 life contemplative: The vita contemplativa, the monks’ life of religious devotion.

  29 gloomy fellow: The Mower who appears at line 45.

  35 fall on shore: Run aground.

  44–5 drowsiness… no good: Sleepiness was sometimes considered an evil omen.

  45.1 SD Welsh hooks: Long-handled hedging bills resembling a scythe.

  53–4 Quem… iacentem: ‘He whom the coming day [dawn] saw in his pride, the passing day [dusk] has seen laid low’ (from Seneca’s Thyestes, 613–14).

  56 by no other names: Leicester denies the titles which Edward has conferred upon Spencer Junior and Baldock.

  58 Stand not on titles: Do not depend upon the privileges of noble status.

  61–2 O day… stars: A recollection of Gaveston’s lament, 10.4–5.

  67 in rescue of: As payment for the release from custody of.

  81 Killingworth: A common variant of ‘Kenilworth’, but the associations of the name darken as the play proceeds.

  85 As good… benighted: I.e. it would be best to leave for Killingworth before nightfall (Wiggins and Lindsey 1997).

  89 hags: Hellish spirits.

  90 these, and these: Edward probably indicates the monks of Neath Abbey, Spencer Junior and Baldock.

  96 feignèd weeds: False clothes (i.e. the disguises they are wearing).

  98 Life… friends: Now that his friends have been sent to their deaths, his life has become meaningless.

  101 Rend, sphere… orb: Let heaven be torn apart, and let the fire burst from its sphere (which surrounded the world in Ptolemaic cosmology).

  113 the place appointed: I.e. the gallows.

  115 remember me: I.e. remunerate me.

  Scene 21

  3 lay… a space: Resided a while here for pleasure.

  9–10 forest deer… herb… wounds: It was believed that the herb dittany could heal wounds. Cf. Pliny, Historia Naturalis VII.xli.97. being struck: I.e. shot with an arrow.

  13 And: Missing from all early texts.

  18 pent and mewed: Penned and caged (like a bird in a ‘mew’ or cage).

  27 perfect: Mere (Rowland 1994).

  35 exchange: Change of circumstances.

  43–4 this crown… fire: Medea gave Creusa (for whom Jason had left her) a crown which burst into flames when it was worn.

  47 vine: An emblem of royal lineage. See also 11.163n.

  66 watches of the element: I.e. stars and planets.

  67 rest… stay: Remain motionless.

  71 tiger’s milk: Tigers were emblematic of cruelty.

  85.1 SD The KING rageth: In the Coventry Pageant of the Shearmen and Taylors (Late fourteenth-century mystery play), ‘Erode [Herod] ragis in the pagond and in the strete also’ (783–4).

  88 install: Invest (a person) to a position of authority.

  109 for aye: For ever.

  115 protect: Be Lord Protector to.

  130 to… breast: Edward offers ‘himself as to a murderer’s dagger’ (Gill 1967).

  149 estate: Condition.

  153 I… once: Proverbial (Tilley M219).

  Scene 22

  2 light-brained: Frivolous.

  8 slip: Escape.

  9 And grip… himself: And bite more fiercely for having been captured himself. ‘Grip’ is not clearly distinguished at this date from gripe (Q’s reading), used of an animal seizing its prey (cf. 23.57).

  10 that imports us much: That (it) is most important for us. us: For Q’s as.

  11 erect: Establish on the throne.

  13–14 For… under writ: I.e. Mortimer Junior and Isabella will enjoy greater power when they can act in the name of the new king.

  17 so: Provided that.

  30 or this… sealed: Before (‘or’) Edward’s letter of abdication was sealed.

  31 he: Edward.

  33 no more but so: Without more ado (Forker 1994).

  37 privy seal: Royal seal.

  39 To dash… drift: To frustrate the stupid Edmund’s plan.


  48 resign: Hand over.

  57 casts… liberty: Is contriving to free him.

  110 ’sdain’st thou so: Are you so disdainful?

  114 nearer: Closer in blood to Prince Edward.

  115 charge: Responsibility.

  Redeem him: Give him back.

  Scene 23

  6–7 nightly bird… fowls: The owl, which other birds will mob if it appears in daylight. Because it was thought to foul its own nest, it was traditionally a dirty bird, which may explain Edward’s identification with it.

  10 unbowel: Open up.

  12 mark: Target.

  17 air of life: Breath.

  22 closet: Chamber.

  26 excrements: (Here) faeces.

  27 channel water: Sewer-water.

  28 Sit… your grace: Matrevis plays upon the alternative sense of ‘excrements’ (26), which could also mean ‘hairs’.

  36.1–2 SD They wash… away: The incident is taken from John Stow’s Chronicles of England (1580).

  52 Thrust in: I.e. into Killingworth Castle. Marlowe is thinking of the doors at the back of the stage; cf. Jew of Malta 2.3.365.

  Scene 24

  8 ,11 Edwardum… est: The two interpretations of the Latin are given in the succeeding lines.

  13 Unpointed: Unpunctuated.

  14 being dead: I.e. when Edward is dead.

  16 quit: Exonerated.

  21 Lightborne: An anglicization of ‘Lucifer’ (= light-bearer), this is also the name of a devil in the late fifteenth-century Chester cycle of mystery plays.

  26 use much: Am much accustomed.

  31 lawn: Strip of linen, here stuffed down a victim’s throat to cause suffocation.

  41 At every… horse: Fresh horses have been stationed for him at intervals of ten miles.

  42 Take this: I.e. the secret token used at 25.19.

  50 seal: Authorize with the royal seal.

  51 Feared… feared: Reminiscent of Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. 17: ‘because hardly can [love and fear] subsist both together, it is much safer to be feared, than to be loved’ (trans. Edward Dacres (1640), p. 130).

  53–4 Aristarchus’ eyes… boy: I.e. the prince fears Mortimer as much as his pupils feared the Greek scholar Aristarchus (N), whose very looks were like a whipping (‘breeching’).

  59 imbecility: (Here) incapacity, weakness.

  60 onus quam gravissimum: A very heavy burden. Like the tag in line 62, part of the legal formula for the installation of a Roman governor.

  62 Suscepi… provinciam: I have undertaken that office.

  68 Maior… nocere: I am greater than one Fortune can harm (i.e. too great for Fortune to harm me), from Ovid, Metamorphoses VI, 195.

  71.2 SD CHAMPION: One who, in a formal coronation ceremony, offers to fight any who challenge the claim of the new king to his crown.

  79 here’s to thee: The king customarily drank the champion’s health from a silver-gilt cup, which was then presented to him as his fee.

  81 blades and bills: Swords and halberds.

  106 none of both them: I.e. neither of them (Q2‘s reading; Q has none of both, then).

  Scene 25

  9 savour: Stench.

  16 for the nonce: Purposely.

  24 Pereat iste: Let this man perish. The instruction may be included in the unpunctuated letter or inscribed on the token. It is in Latin so that Lightborne cannot understand it.

  25 lake: (Here) dungeon, cell.

  33 featherbed: Feather mattress.

  41 Foh: An expression of disgust at a bad smell.

  with all my heart: ‘I must say’ (Bevington and Rasmussen 1995).

  41.1 SD Enter KING EDWARD: Because Q provides no stage directions, Edward’s entrance is unclear. He may enter from beneath the stage via a trap door, or he could be ‘discovered’ (i.e. revealed) from behind a curtain drawn by Lightborne.

  48 used: I.e. being treated.

  54 Caucasus: See (N). The mountains were a byword for hardness.

  69 ran at tilt: Jousted.

  77 That, even: Q’s That, and even is just possible but strained and hypermetrical.

  92 You’re overwatched: You are exhausted (from having little sleep), perhaps punning on the sense, ‘under my eye’.

  113.1 SD EDWARD dies: Q is unspecific about the murder, but the details were notorious. In Holinshed’s words:

  they came suddenly one night into the chamber where he lay in bed fast asleep, and with heavy featherbeds or a table (as some write) being cast upon him, they kept him down and withall put into his fundament an horn, and through the same they thrust up into his body an hot spit, or (as other have) through the pipe of a trumpet a plumber’s instrument of iron made very hot, the which passing up into his entrails, and being rolled to and fro, burnt the same, but so as no appearance of any wound or hurt outwardly might be once perceived. His cry did move many within the castle and town of Berkeley to compassion…

  (Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1587), vol. 3, p. 341)

  Scene 26

  4 ghostly father: Priest (administering the last rites to one about to die), i.e. here a murderer.

  9 Fly… savages: Take flight beyond civilization.

  11 Jove’s huge tree: The oak.

  24 SP FIRST LORD: Though Q attributes speeches in this scene to a collectivity of LORDS, it is likely that they were apportioned to individuals in performance (as at 93).

  52 hurdle: The frame or sledge used to drag criminals through the streets on the way to the place of execution.

  53 Hang him… quarters up: Mortimer Junior is to be hanged, drawn and quartered – the traditional punishment for treason.

  80 trial: Investigation.

  101 distilling: Falling.

  THE MASSACRE AT PARIS

  The Massacre at Paris probably dates from 1592. It must post-date the assassination of Henri III (2 August 1589), and is generally supposed to have been the play whose first performance, under the title ‘The Tragedy of the Guise’, by Lord Strange’s Men at the Rose in January 1593, is recorded in Philip Henslowe’s Diary. That play was a great success, and continued in the repertoire. But the only early publication of The Massacre was in an undated octavo usually assigned on bibliographical evidence to 1602, and from the difficulties presented by this text (the basis of this edition) spring most of the problems which beset the understanding of the play. It seems to have been assembled from the memories of actors, and perhaps as much as half the play Marlowe wrote is missing. A single manuscript leaf, now in the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, preserves a significantly fuller version of the opening of scene 19, and hints tantalizingly at the original verbal texture of the play (see Appendix).

  The action of the first half of the play, dealing with the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572), derives from François Hotman’s De Furoribus Gallicis, published under the pseudonym ‘Ernest Vara-mund’, translated in 1573 as A True and Plain Report of the Furious Outrages in France and reprinted in 1574 without acknowledgement as Book 10 of Jean de Serres, The Three Parts of the Commentaries… of the Civil Wars in France. Some details of the planning of the massacre may be taken from Simon Goulart’s collection of Mémoires de l’état de France (1576–7). The killing of Ramus comes from the anonymous Tocsin contre les massacreurs (1579). This clearly touched a chord for Marlowe: Guise, impugning Ramus’s scholarship for ‘never sound[ing] anything to the depth’ (9.25), recalls (or anticipates) Faustus’ resolution to ‘sound the depth’ of his ‘profess[ion]’ (1.2). Sources for the latter half of the play, which treats events of seventeen years with distorting compression, cannot be so clearly determined. There are innumerable hostile accounts of the reign of Henri III (his interests in magic and mignons were especially execrated in Guisard polemics); and Marlowe need not have been confined to written sources of information: events were within living memory, English soldiers were fighting in France in the early 1590s, and Marlowe may have been there twice in person.

  One of the play�
�s nineteenth-century editors thought it beneath criticism:

  the language seldom rises above mediocrity, the characters are drawn with the indistinct faintness of shadows, and the plot is contemptible: events in themselves full of horror and such as should strike the soul with awe, become ludicrous in the extreme by injudicious management; The whole is in fact not so much a tragedy as a burlesque upon tragedy…

  (William Oxberry, quoted in Oliver 1968:1)

  Its stock has risen since then (Judith Weil argues that its concerns are central to the understanding of all Marlowe’s work), but the key issues remain the play’s historical accuracy and the interpretation of its black humour. Earlier scholars thought its historical vision corrupted by the Protestant propaganda of its sources. More recently, its bloodthirsty comedy has been seen to reflect the vicious sacrilegious humour which characterized the atrocities of the French wars of religion, ‘the rites of violence’. However, the anthropologically minded historian who coined the term (Natalie Zemon Davis, in Society and Culture in Early Modern France, 1975) was explicitly concerned with popular violence. Marlowe’s is a sixteenth-century ‘Machiavellian’ interpretation of the massacre as a conspiracy engineered by the Catholic nobility. He gives far greater prominence than his sources to his villainous duke of Guise, and, as Guise’s big soliloquy (2.34ff.) makes clear, his motivation is not religion but the distinctly Marlovian ambition for a crown, ‘the diadem of France’ (44). ‘For this,’ the speech insists, are all his actions shaped, including a hypocritical show of religion:

  For this, have I a largess from the Pope,

  A pension and a dispensation too;

  And by that privilege to work upon,

  My policy hath framed religion.

  Religion: O Diabole!

  Fie, I am ashamed, how ever that I seem,

  To think a word of such a simple sound,

  Of so great matter should be made the ground. (2.62–69)

  As in Shakespeare’s early histories, Henry VI, Parts Two and Three (1591–2), with which the play shares a number of lines, popular violence is the tool of aristocratic ambition.

  In the fast-moving second half, as in the Shakespeare histories, civil war is treated as a revenge-drama played out by the nobility (the conspirators speak of the Massacre itself as a bloody piece of theatre). The Guise is caught up in a lethal court intrigue, and the massacre he engineers in the first half is ironically recalled in the slaughter of the second. The text is full of ironic symmetries, though we cannot be quite sure of their import: are Queen Catherine’s casually murderous speeches about her two royal sons in scenes 11 and 14 so similar because they depict the terrible repetitive mechanism of civil war (as in Henry VI), or because the reporter mixed up the original speeches? Similarly, is Anjou apparently so different once he becomes Henry III because ideological confusion in Marlowe’s treatment of him makes the character ‘wellnigh unintelligible’ (Kocher 1941), or because Marlowe intended to disconcert his audiences, or, as Potter suggests, because the historical king really was so enigmatic? The problem is acute in the final scene, when the dying king has an unexpected attack of pro-Elizabethan sentiment and violent anti-Catholicism (especially since his anti-papal speech seems to have got tangled up with Edward II’s equally uncharacteristic outburst on the same theme). Can the lines in which Henry gives the Protestant Navarre his blessing be Marlowe’s? If so, was Marlowe being serious? And what would the lines have meant to audiences who saw the play after the new king, Henri IV, converted to Catholicism in 1593?

 

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