The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

  ‘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: