King edward iii, p.1
King Edward III, page 1
T H E A R D E N S H A K E S P E A R E
* * *
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL edited by G.K. Hunter*
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA edited by John Wilders
AS YOU LIKE IT edited by Juliet Dusinberre
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS edited by Kent Cartwright
CORIOLANUS edited by Peter Holland
CYMBELINE edited by Valerie Wayne
DOUBLE FALSEHOOD edited by Brean Hammond
HAMLET, Revised edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor
HAMLET, The Texts of 1603 and 1623 edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor
JULIUS CAESAR edited by David Daniell
KING EDWARD III edited by Richard Proudfoot and Nicola Bennett
KING HENRY IV PART 1 edited by David Scott Kastan
KING HENRY IV PART 2 edited by James C. Bulman
KING HENRY V edited by T.W. Craik
KING HENRY VI PART 1 edited by Edward Burns
KING HENRY VI PART 2 edited by Ronald Knowles
KING HENRY VI PART 3 edited by John D. Cox and Eric Rasmussen
KING HENRY VIII edited by Gordon McMullan
KING JOHN edited by E.A.J. Honigmann*
KING LEAR edited by R.A. Foakes
KING RICHARD II edited by Charles Forker
KING RICHARD III edited by James R. Siemon
LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST edited by H.R. Woudhuysen
MACBETH edited by Sandra Clark and Pamela Mason
MEASURE FOR MEASURE edited by J.W. Lever*
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE edited by John Drakakis
THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR edited by Giorgio Melchiori
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING,
Revised edited by Claire McEachern
OTHELLO, Revised edited by E.A.J. Honigmann, with an Introduction by Ayanna Thompson
PERICLES edited by Suzanne Gossett
ROMEO AND JULIET edited by René Weis
SHAKESPEARE’S POEMS edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones and H.R. Woudhuysen
SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS, Revised edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones
SIR THOMAS MORE edited by John Jowett
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW edited by Barbara Hodgdon
THE TEMPEST, Revised edited by Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan
TIMON OF ATHENS edited by Anthony B. Dawson and Gretchen E. Minton
TITUS ANDRONICUS edited by Jonathan Bate
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, Revised edited by David Bevington
TWELFTH NIGHT edited by Keir Elam
THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA edited by William C. Carroll
THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN, Revised edited by Lois Potter
THE WINTER’S TALE edited by John Pitcher
* Second Series
The Editors
Richard Proudfoot is Emeritus Professor and Fellow of King’s College, London, and Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of English Studies, University of London. He is a member of the Advisory Board, Shakespeare Survey, and has served as Senior General Editor of the Arden Shakespeare, 1982–2010, and General Editor, 1971–83, of The Malone Society, of which he has been President since 2000. His various publications include: Shakespeare: Text, Stage, Canon (2001); The Two Noble Kinsmen (University of Nebraska, Nebr., 1970); and several editions for The Malone Society, including Tom a Lincoln (Oxford, 1992).
Having graduated from King’s College, London, Nicola Bennett went on to train at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, after which she worked for several years in the theatre. She now works in publishing, primarily as a freelance copy-editor. Her publications include the Globe Quarto edition of The Merry Devil of Edmonton (2000).
For our parents:
two Scots, one English and one French
CONTENTS
List of illustrations
General editors’ preface
Preface
Introduction
The just war
Historical context
Amatory concerns
A conclusion in which (almost) everything is concluded
The play’s sources
An approach to authorship
Edward III in performance
The printing of Q1, 1596
THE REIGN OF KING EDWARD THE THIRD
Sc. 1
Sc. 2
Sc. 3
Sc. 4
Sc. 5
Sc. 6
Sc. 7
Sc. 8
Sc. 9
Sc. 10
Sc. 11
Sc. 12
Sc. 13
Longer notes
Appendices
1 Edward III: Early reception
1. Deloney’s ballad
2. The play of Alice Perrers
3. Bodenham’s Bel-vedére
4. Earliest owners of the first quarto of Edward III
2 Casting chart
3 Genealogical table
Abbreviations and references
Abbreviations used in notes
Works by and partly by Shakespeare
Editions of King Edward III collated or referred to
Other works
Modern stage productions cited
Index
LIST OF
ILLUSTRATIONS
1A miniature of the Battle of Sluys, taken from Jean Froissart, Chroniques, 1401 (courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France)
2Wooden funeral effigy of Edward III (courtesy of Westminster Abbey)
3The siege of Paris: woodcut frontispiece to A brief declaration of the yielding up of St Denis to the French King the 29. of June, 1590 (Photo: akg-images/The British Library)
4Early sixteenth-century view of Calais and its harbour, from BL Cotton MS Augustus I. II, fol. 70r (Photo: akg-images/The British Library)
5Crispijn de Passe, the elder, engraving of Queen Elizabeth I, 1596, with pelican emblem and quartered royal arms in top-left corner (courtesy of the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge)
6King Edward (Jochen Tovote) languishing over the Countess, directed by Frank-Patrick Steckel, Bühnen der Stadt, Cologne, 1999–2000 (© Klaus Lefebvre)
7King Edward (David Rintoul) and his son, Prince Edward (Jamie Glover), directed by Anthony Clark, RSC, The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2002 (© Jonathan Dockar-Drysdale, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust)
8King Edward (David Rintoul) instructing Lodwick (Wayne Cater) to write a love poem to the Countess, directed by Anthony Clark, RSC, The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2002 (© The Malcolm Davies Collection, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust)
9The English confront the French before Crécy, directed by Alexandru Tocilescu, Teatrul National Bucuresti, 2008–10 (courtesy of Teatrul National Bucuresti)
10Queen Philippa (Simona Bondoc) urges King Edward (Ion Caramitru) to show mercy for the citizens of Calais, directed by Alexandru Tocilescu, Teatrul National Bucuresti, 2008–10 (courtesy of Teatrul National Bucuresti)
11King Edward (David Rintoul) embracing the Countess (Caroline Faber), directed by Anthony Clark, RSC, The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2002 (© Jonathan Dockar-Drysdale, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust)
12Q1 title-page, 1596 (courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library)
13Q1 sig. H2r, 1596 (courtesy of The British Library)
14Q1 sig. H2v, 1596 (courtesy of The British Library)
15Q1 sig. B3v, 1596 (courtesy of The British Library)
GENERAL EDITORS’
PREFACE
The earliest volume in the first Arden series, Edward Dowden’s Hamlet, was published in 1899. Since then the Arden Shakespeare has been widely acknowledged as the pre-eminent Shakespeare edition, valued by scholars, students, actors and ‘the great variety of readers’ alike for its clearly presented and reliable texts, its full annotation and its richly informative introductions.
In the third Arden series we seek to maintain these well-established qualities and general characteristics, preserving our predecessors’ commitment to presenting the play as it has been shaped in history. Each volume necessarily has its own particular emphasis which reflects the unique possibilities and problems posed by the work in question, and the series as a whole seeks to maintain the highest standards of scholarship, combined with attractive and accessible presentation.
Newly edited from the original documents, texts are presented in fully modernized form, with a textual apparatus that records all substantial divergences from those early printings. The notes and introductions focus on the conditions and possibilities of meaning that editors, critics and performers (on stage and screen) have discovered in the play. While building upon the rich history of scholarly activity that has long shaped our understanding of Shakespeare’s works, this third series of the Arden Shakespeare is enlivened by a new generation’s encounter with Shakespeare.
THE TEXT
On each page of the play itself, readers will find a passage of text supported by commentary and textual notes. Act and scene divisions (seldom present in the early editions and often the product of eighteenth-century or later scholarship) have been retained for ease of reference, but have been given less prominence than in previous series. Editorial indications of location of the action have been removed to the textual notes or commentary.
In the text itself, elided forms in the early texts are spelt out in full in verse lines wherever they indicate a usual twenty-first-century pronunciation that requires no special indication and wherever they occur in prose (except where they indicate non -standard pronunciation). In verse speeches, marks of elision are retained where they are necessary guides to the scansion and pronunciation of the line. Final -ed in past tense and participial forms of verbs is always printed as -ed, without accent, never as -’d, but wherever the required pronunciation diverges from modern usage a note in the commentary draws attention to the fact. Where the final -ed should be given syllabic value contrary to modern usage, e.g.
Doth Silvia know that I am banished?
(TGV 3.1.214)
the note will take the form
214 banished banishèd
Conventional lineation of divided verse lines shared by two or more speakers has been reconsidered and sometimes rearranged. Except for the familiar Exit and Exeunt, Latin forms in stage directions and speech prefixes have been translated into English and the original Latin forms recorded in the textual notes.
COMMENTARY AND TEXTUAL NOTES
Notes in the commentary, for which a major source will be the Oxford English Dictionary, offer glossarial and other explication of verbal difficulties; they may also include discussion of points of interpretation and, in relevant cases, substantial extracts from Shakespeare’s source material. Editors will not usually offer glossarial notes for words adequately defined in the latest edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary or Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, but in cases of doubt they will include notes. Attention, however, will be drawn to places where more than one likely interpretation can be proposed and to significant verbal and syntactic complexity. Notes preceded by * discuss editorial emendations or variant readings.
Headnotes to acts or scenes discuss, where appropriate, questions of scene location, the play’s treatment of source materials and major difficulties of staging. The list of roles (so headed to emphasize the play’s status as a text for performance) is also considered in the commentary notes. These may include comment on plausible patterns of casting with the resources of an Elizabethan or Jacobean acting company and also on any variation in the description of roles in their speech prefixes in the early editions.
The textual notes are designed to let readers know when the edited text diverges from the early edition(s) or manuscript sources on which it is based. Wherever this happens, the note will record the rejected reading of the early edition(s) or manuscript, in original spelling, and the source of the reading adopted in this edition. Other forms from the early edition(s) or manuscript recorded in these notes will include some spellings of particular interest or significance and original forms of translated stage directions. Where two or more early editions are involved, for instance with Othello, the notes also record all important differences between them. The textual notes take a form that has been in use since the nineteenth century. This comprises, first: line reference, reading adopted in the text and closing square bracket; then: abbreviated reference, in italic, to the earliest edition to adopt the accepted reading, italic semicolon and noteworthy alternative reading(s), each with abbreviated italic reference to its source.
Conventions used in these textual notes include the following. The solidus / is used, in notes quoting verse or discussing verse lining, to indicate line endings. Distinctive spellings of the base text follow the square bracket without indication of source and are enclosed in italic brackets. Names enclosed in italic brackets indicate originators of conjectural emendations when these did not originate in an edition of the text, or when the named edition records a conjecture not accepted into its text. Stage directions (SDs) are referred to by the number of the line within or immediately after which they are placed. Line numbers with a decimal point relate to centred entry SDs not falling within a verse line and to SDs more than one line long, with the number after the point indicating the line within the SD: e.g. 78.4 refers to the fourth line of the SD following line 78. Lines of SDs at the start of a scene are numbered 0.1, 0.2, etc. Where only a line number precedes a square bracket, e.g. 128], the note relates to the whole line; where SD is added to the number, it relates to the whole of a SD within or immediately following the line. Speech prefixes (SPs) follow similar conventions, 203 SP] referring to the speaker’s name for line 203. Where a SP reference takes the form, e.g. 38+ SP, it relates to all subsequent speeches assigned to that speaker in the scene in question.
Where, as with King Henry V, one of the early editions is a so-called ‘bad quarto’ (that is, a text either heavily adapted, or reconstructed from memory, or both), the divergences from the present edition are too great to be recorded in full in the notes. In these cases, with the exception of Hamlet, which prints an edited text of the Quarto of 1603, the editions will include a reduced photographic facsimile of the ‘bad quarto’ in an appendix.
INTRODUCTION
Both the introduction and the commentary are designed to present the plays as texts for performance, and make appropriate reference to stage, film and television versions, as well as introducing the reader to the range of critical approaches to the plays. They discuss the history of the reception of the texts within the theatre and scholarship and beyond, investigating the interdependency of the literary text and the surrounding ‘cultural text’ both at the time of the original production of Shakespeare’s works and during their long and rich afterlife.
PREFACE
The foundations of this edition of Edward III were laid between the early 1960s – when, on the recommendation of F.P. Wilson, Richard was commissioned by Dan Davin of the Clarendon Press to replace C.F. Tucker Brooke’s The Shakespeare Apocrypha (Oxford, 1908, 1929) with a new critical old-spelling edition of the fourteen plays printed in that volume and Lewis Theobald’s Double Falsehood (1728) – and 1985, when he was invited by the British Academy to give their annual Shakespeare lecture and chose Edward III as his topic. These years saw his work on the surviving copies of the quartos of 1596 and 1599. His thanks are due to the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C., for a summer fellowship in 1962 and use of the Hinman collator in the basement. Visits to the Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California, and the Houghton Library, Harvard, were enabled by a Leverhulme Fellowship and a year’s leave of absence from King’s College, London, in 1970–1. The reading rooms of the Folger and Huntington libraries were ideal settings for the start of the project, and warm gratitude is due to the librarians, among them the late Giles Dawson, James McManaway and Mary Isobel Fry, whose constant support and advice made the experience of working there uniquely valuable. This edition of Edward III for the Third Series of the Arden Shakespeare was commissioned in the years after the larger project was abandoned.
Once the possibility of Richard editing the play for the Arden was mooted by its then publisher Jessica Hodge (to whom we both owe much thanks), Nicola was recruited with him, in the hope, now at last justified, that she might be able to extract from Richard the fruits of his already long engagement with the text of the play and take her equal role in the researching and writing of the other necessary parts of the edition. Like the play that is its subject, this edition is accordingly the product of a complex process of collaboration, and has been for many years the ‘chief occasion of our strife’, though completed happily without ‘mickle peril of our lives’.
When a book has been so long in gestation as this edition the joint and several debts of gratitude of its editors, if all could be remembered, would soon exhaust the patience of readers. Primarily we owe a lasting debt to previous editors of the play, from Edward Capell in 1760 to Giorgio Melchiori in 1998, for questions, answers and indeed disagreements; to the libraries which hold copies of the early quartos, in particular the rare book librarians of the British Library (and the British Museum Library before it), the Bodleian Library, Trinity College Library, Cambridge, and the aforementioned American libraries. Special thanks are due to Angela Schofield of the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, for obtaining scanned copy of Thomas Deloney’s ballad ‘Of Edward the third and the fair Countess of Salisbury’, from Sir Walter Scott’s copy of the 1608 edition of Strange Histories now housed in his library at Abbotsford.
Our unprecedented opportunities of seeing Edward III in production, or in rehearsed readings, from 1986 to 2009, from Wales to Canada, and from Cologne to Bucharest, by way of Stratford-upon-Avon and London, have been enabled by the generosity of directors, theatres and colleagues. Especial mention is due to Toby Robertson, for providing a copy of the working script of his production at Theatr Clwyd; to Dorothee Hannapel for obtaining tickets for Frank-Patrick Steckel’s productions of Edward III and King John, at the Bühnen der Stadt, Cologne; to Clarissa Hurley, for access to her memorable student production in Toronto in 2000; and to George Volceanov, who not only invited Richard to see the grand production by Alexandru Tocilescu at the National Theatre of Romania in 2009, but supplied information to aid memory later. Above all we owe much stimulus to the performances themselves and to all involved in presenting them.
