The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works
Page 116
DUMAINE (to Catherine)
But what to me, my love? But what to me?
A wife?
CATHERINE A beard, fair health, and honesty.
With three-fold love I wish you all these three.
DUMAINE
O, shall I say ‘I thank you, gentle wife’?
CATHERINE
Not so, my lord. A twelvemonth and a day
I’ll mark no words that smooth-faced wooers say.
Come when the King doth to my lady come;
Then if I have much love, I’ll give you some.
DUMAINE
I’ll serve thee true and faithfully till then.
CATHERINE
Yet swear not, lest ye be forsworn again.
They talk apart
LONGUEVILLE
What says Maria?
MARIA At the twelvemonth’s end
I’ll change my black gown for a faithful friend.
LONGUEVILLE
I’ll stay with patience; but the time is long.
MARIA
The liker you—few taller are so young.
They talk apart
BIRON (to Rosaline)
Studies my lady? Mistress, look on me.
Behold the window of my heart, mine eye,
What humble suit attends thy answer there.
Impose some service on me for thy love.
ROSALINE
Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron,
Before I saw you; and the world’s large tongue
Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks,
Full of comparisons and wounding flouts,
Which you on all estates will execute
That lie within the mercy of your wit.
To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain,
And therewithal to win me if you please,
Without the which I am not to be won,
You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day
Visit the speechless sick and still converse
With groaning wretches, and your task shall be
With all the fierce endeavour of your wit
To enforce the pained impotent to smile.
BIRON
To move wild laughter in the throat of death?—
It cannot be, it is impossible.
Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.
ROSALINE
Why, that’s the way to choke a gibing spirit,
Whose influence is begot of that loose grace
Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools.
A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it. Then if sickly ears,
Deafed with the clamours of their own dear groans,
Will hear your idle scorns, continue then,
And I will have you and that fault withal.
But if they will not, throw away that spirit,
And I shall find you empty of that fault,
Right joyful of your reformation.
BIRON
A twelvemonth? Well, befall what will befall,
I’ll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.
QUEEN (to the King)
Ay, sweet my lord, and so I take my leave.
KING
No, madam, we will bring you on your way.
BIRON
Our wooing doth not end like an old play.
Jack hath not Jill. These ladies’ courtesy
Might well have made our sport a comedy.
KING
Come, sir, it wants a twelvemonth an’ a day,
And then ’twill end.
BIRON
That’s too long for a play.
Enter Armado the braggart
ARMADO (to the King) Sweet majesty, vouchsafe me.
QUEEN Was not that Hector?
DUMAINE The worthy knight of Troy.
ARMADO
I will kiss thy royal finger and take leave.
I am a votary, I have vowed to Jaquenetta
To hold the plough for her sweet love three year.
But, most esteemed greatness, will you hear the
dialogue that the two learned men have compiled in
praise of the owl and the cuckoo ? It should have
followed in the end of our show.
KING Call them forth quickly, we will do so.
ARMADO
Holla, approach!
Enter Holofernes, Nathaniel, Costard, Mote, Dull, Jaquenetta, and others
This side is Hiems, winter,
This Ver, the spring, the one maintained by the owl,
The other by the cuckoo. Ver, begin.
SPRING (sings)
When daisies pied and violets blue,
And lady-smocks, all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then on every tree
Mocks married men, for thus sings he:
Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo—O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear.
When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,
And merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks;
When turtles tread, and rooks and daws,
And maidens bleach their summer smocks,
The cuckoo then on every tree
Mocks married men, for thus sings he:
Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo—O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear.
WINTER (sings)
When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail;
When blood is nipped, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl:
Tu-whit, tu-whoo!—a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian’s nose looks red and raw;
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl:
Tu-whit, tu-whoo!—a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
⌈ARMADO⌉ The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. You that way, we this way. Exeunt, severally
ADDITIONAL PASSAGES
A. The following lines found after 4.3.293 in the First Quarto represent an unrevised version of parts of Biron’s long speech, 4.3.287-341. The first six lines form the basis of 4.3.294-9; the next three are revised at 4.3.326- 30; the next four at 4.3.300-2; the last nine are less directly related to the revised version.
And where that you have vowed to study, lords,
In that each of you have forsworn his book,
Can you still dream, and pore, and thereon look?
For when would you, my lord, or you, or you,
Have found the ground of study’s excellence
Without the beauty of a woman’s face?
From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive.
They are the ground, the books, the academes,
From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.
Why, universal plodding poisons up
The nimble spirits in the arteries,
As motion and long-during action tires
The sinewy vigour of the traveller.
Now, for not looking on a woman’s face
You have in that forsworn the use of eyes,
And study, too, the causer of your vow.
For where is any author in the world
Teaches such beauty as a woman’s eye?
Learning is but an adjunct to ourself,
And where we are, our learning likewise is.
Then when ourselves we see in ladies’ eyes
With ourselves.
Do we not likewise see
our learning there?
B. The following two lines, spoken by the Princess and found after 5.2.130 in the First Quarto, seem to represent a first draft of 5.2.131-2.
Hold, Rosaline. This favour thou shalt wear,
And then the King will court thee for his dear.
C. The following lines found after 5.2.809 in the First Quarto represent a draft version of 5.2.824-41.
BIRON
And what to me, my love? And what to me?
ROSALINE
You must be purged, too. Your sins are rank.
You are attaint with faults and perjury.
Therefore if you my favour mean to get
A twelvemonth shall you spend, and never rest
But seek the weary beds of people sick.
LOVE’S LABOUR’S WON
A BRIEF ACCOUNT
IN 1598, Francis Meres called as witnesses to Shakespeare’s excellence in comedy ‘his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love Labour’s Lost, his Love Labour’s Wone, his Midsummer’s Night Dream, and his Merchant of Venice’. This was the only evidence that Shakespeare wrote a play called Love’s Labour’s Won until the discovery in 1953 of a fragment of a bookseller’s list that had been used in the binding of a volume published in 1637/8. The fragment itself appears to record titles sold from 9 to 17 August 1603 by a book dealer in the south of England. Among items headed ‘[inte]rludes & tragedyes’ aremarchant of vennis
taming of a shrew
knak to know a knave
knak to know an honest man
loves labor lost
loves labor won
No author is named for any of the items. All the plays named in the list except Love’s Labour’s Won are known to have been printed by 1600; all were written by 1596-7. Taken together, Meres’s reference in 1598 and the 1603 fragment appear to demonstrate that a play by Shakespeare called Love’s Labour’s Won had been performed by the time Meres wrote and was in print by August 1603. Conceivably the phrase served as an alternative title for one of Shakespeare’s other comedies, though the only one believed to have been written by 1598 but not listed by Meres is The Taming of the Shrew, which is named (as The Taming of A Shrew) in the bookseller’s fragment. Otherwise we must suppose that Love’s Labour’s Won is the title of a lost play by Shakespeare, that no copy of the edition mentioned in the bookseller’s list is extant, and that Heminges and Condell failed to include it in the 1623 Folio.
None of these suppositions is implausible. We know of at least one other lost play attributed to Shakespeare (see Cardenio, below), and of many lost works by contemporary playwrights. No copy of the first edition of Titus Andronicus was known until 1904; for I Henry IV and The Passionate Pilgrim only a fragment of the first edition survives. And we now know that Troilus and Cressida was almost omitted from the 1623 Folio (probably for copyright reasons) despite its evident authenticity. It is also possible that, like most of the early editions of Shakespeare’s plays, the lost edition of Love’s Labour’s Won did not name him on the title-page, and this omission might go some way to explaining the failure of the edition to survive, or (if it does) to be noticed. Love’s Labour’s Won stands a much better chance of having survived, somewhere, than Cardenio: because it was printed, between 500 and 1,500 copies were once in circulation, whereas for Cardenio we know of only a single manuscript.
The evidence for the existence of the lost play (unlike that for Cardenio) gives us little indication of its content. Meres explicitly states, and the title implies, that it was a comedy. Its titular pairing with Love’s Labour’s Lost suggests that they may have been written at about the same time. Both Meres and the bookseller’s catalogue place it after Love’s Labour’s Lost; although neither list is necessarily chronological, Meres’s does otherwise agree with our own view of the order of composition of Shakespeare’s comedies.
RICHARD II
THE subject matter of Richard II seemed inflammatorily topical to Shakespeare’s contemporaries. Richard, who had notoriously indulged his favourites, had been compelled to yield his throne to Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Hereford: like Richard, the ageing Queen Elizabeth had no obvious successor, and she too encouraged favourites—such as the Earl of Essex—who might aspire to the throne. When Shakespeare’s play first appeared in print (in 1597), and in the two succeeding editions printed during Elizabeth’s life, the episode (4.1.145-308) showing Richard yielding the crown was omitted, and in 1601, on the day before Essex led his ill-fated rebellion against Elizabeth, his fellow conspirators commissioned a special performance in the hope of arousing popular support, even though the play was said to be ‘long out of use’—surprisingly, since it was probably written no earlier than 1595.
But Shakespeare introduced no obvious topicality into his dramatization of Richard’s reign, for which he read widely while using Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577, revised and enlarged in 1587) as his main source of information. In choosing to write about Richard II (1367―1400) he was returning to the beginning of the story whose ending he had staged in Richard III; for Bolingbroke’s usurpation of the throne to which Richard’s hereditary right was indisputable had set in train the series of events finally expiated only in the union of the houses of York and Lancaster celebrated in the last speech of Richard III. Like Richard III, this is a tragical history, focusing on a single character; but Richard II is a far more introverted and morally ambiguous figure than Richard III. In this play, written entirely in verse, Shakespeare forgoes stylistic variety in favour of an intense, plangent lyricism.
Our early impressions of Richard are unsympathetic. Having banished Mowbray and Bolingbroke, he behaves callously to Bolingbroke’s father, John of Gaunt, a stern upholder of the old order to whose warning against his irresponsible behaviour he pays no attention, and upon Gaunt’s death confiscates his property with no regard for Bolingbroke’s rights. During Richard’s absence on an Irish campaign, Bolingbroke returns to England and gains support in his efforts to claim his inheritance. Gradually, as the balance of power shifts, Richard makes deeper claims on the audience’s sympathy. When he confronts Bolingbroke at Flint Castle (3.1) he eloquently laments his imminent deposition even though Bolingbroke insists that he comes only to claim what is his; soon afterwards (4.1.98-103) the Duke of York announces Richard’s abdication. The transference of power is effected in a scene of lyrical expansiveness, and Richard becomes a pitiable figure as he is led to imprisonment in Pomfret (Pontefract) Castle while his former queen is banished to France. Richard’s self-exploration reaches its climax in his soliloquy spoken shortly before his murder at the hands of Piers Exton; at the end of the play, Henry, anxious and guilt-laden, denies responsibility for the murder and plans an expiatory pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY
KING RICHARD II
The QUEEN, his wife
JOHN OF GAUNT, Duke of Lancaster, Richard’s uncle
Harry BOLINGBROKE, Duke of Hereford, John of Gaunt’s son, later
KING HENRY IV
DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER, widow of Gaunt’s and York’s brother
Duke of YORK, King Richard’s uncle
DUCHESS OF YORK
Duke of AUMERLE, their son
Thomas MOWBRAY, Duke of Norfolk
Lord BERKELEY
Lord FITZWALTER
Duke of SURREY
ABBOT OF WESTMINSTER
Sir Piers EXTON
LORD MARSHAL
HERALDS
CAPTAIN of the Welsh army
LADIES attending the Queen
GARDENER
Gardener’s MEN
Exton’s MEN
KEEPER of the prison at Pomfret
GROOM of King Richard’s stable,
Lords, soldiers, attendants
The Tragedy of King Richard the Second
1.1 Enter King Richard and John of Gaunt, with the Lord Marshal, other nobles, and attendants
KING RICHARD
Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaste
r,
Hast thou according to thy oath and bond
Brought hither Henry Hereford, thy bold son,
Here to make good the boist’rous late appeal,
Which then our leisure would not let us hear,
Against the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray?
JOHN OF GAUNT I have, my liege.
KING RICHARD
Tell me moreover, hast thou sounded him
If he appeal the Duke on ancient malice
Or worthily, as a good subject should,
On some known ground of treachery in him?
JOHN OF GAUNT
As near as I could sift him on that argument,
On some apparent danger seen in him
Aimed at your highness, no inveterate malice.
KING RICHARD
Then call them to our presence.
[Exit one or more]
Face to face
And frowning brow to brow, ourselves will hear
The accuser and the accused freely speak.
High-stomached are they both and full of ire;
In rage, deaf as the sea, hasty as fire.
Enter Bolingbroke Duke of Hereford, and Mowbray Duke of Norfolk
BOLINGBROKE
Many years of happy days befall
My gracious sovereign, my most loving liege!
MOWBRAY
Each day still better others’ happiness,
Until the heavens, envying earth’s good hap,
Add an immortal title to your crown!
KING RICHARD
We thank you both. Yet one but flatters us,
As well appeareth by the cause you come,
Namely, to appeal each other of high treason.
Cousin of Hereford, what dost thou object
Against the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray?
BOLINGBROKE
First—heaven be the record to my speech—
In the devotion of a subject’s love,
Tend’ring the precious safety of my Prince,
And free from other misbegotten hate,
Come I appellant to this princely presence.