Read The Tragedy of Arthur: A Novel Online
Authors: Arthur Phillips
Alarums. Excursions. Enter Arthur
ARTHUR
Nay, Gloucester, nay! Still offer wisdom’s words;
Thou wert my father, too, and I thy son.
Your worthless boy must lean on you today.
Enter Cumbria
CUMBRIA
O King! The frenzied Pict doth waste the field
And hazards with his soul to win a crown:
He murdered Philip and your Guenhera.
ARTHUR
Say no, say no! Can death so envy me?
Englutting
3
all my loves before my eyesYet scorning my own life, that I must stay
To roam such hell as this, to flay my heart?
O, Father! Doth this end now prove my birth?
O, bloody ghost, I am become thee.
For this I hid those years in Gloucester’s woods?
For this I lived my seasons all at war?
I rescued York and Lincoln in my youth
4And asked for my own pleasure not a whit
Save for a queen I loved beyond all else.
E’en this is more than any king deserve.
CUMBRIA
There is no flight, my king, but only on.
Red Humber washes off the country’s sons,
And limbs like branches float upon its waves.
But crush the scattered foe! Now rise, my king!
Enter Cornwall
CORNWALL
Dear brother, friend, and Britain’s hero, stand!
The day can yet be ours for all our grief!
Alarums. Exeunt
[
Cornwall and Cumbria
]
ARTHUR
To be some other man than what I am!
O, God, but free me from this rising mud
And give me sign how this unworthy king
Can do your will.
Enter Mordred and Soldier
I thank thee, God. Come, knave!
MORDRED
O, weeping king! Poor bastard boy, death’s fool,
Lift up thy knitting-stick, thou sobbing dame,
And strike at me! [
To Soldier
] You cut him from behind!They fight. Arthur is wounded then kills Mordred
[
and Soldier
]
ARTHUR
May all my blood make rich this British soil
To strengthen it ’gainst pox of rival kings.
Alarum. Enter Constantine
[
Cornwall
]
and British nobility
CORNWALL
O King!
ARTHUR
Good Constantine, here cradle up
This frail and draining shape and from my head
Lift this oppressive weight to rest on thee.
[
Cornwall takes crown
]On rightful brow it shines and will but float.
CORNWALL
Farewell, sweet king, sweet friend, my brother lost.
Arthur dies
Sound drum and trumpet up to heaven’s ear
In intermingled notes of thanks and sorrow.
Full thirty thousand men did die today
To win our victory at Humberside,
With loving king who joined with them in death
To pledge with blood his kingdom’s lasting peace.
Inter their mortal shapes as each deserves.
May Britain now and ever more be blessed,
And ne’er be torn asunder by such strife
As plagued this realm and stole from Arthur life.
May heaven grant this prayer and yield this gift:
That peace may buckle fast this island’s rifts.
Raise sepulchres for both great queen and king
And for their souls, and ours, raise voice and sing.
Exeunt
Act I, Scene I
1.
bolts
crossbow arrows.
2.
plate
armor. Dogs were commonly armored for boar hunts, men less often, but it did occur. [Roland Verre]
3.
prate
to chatter pointlessly.
4.
cates
delicacies.
5.
savor
(passim) One of the ironies of this project is that the first modern edition of Shakespeare’s lost play is published with American spellings! [
RV
]
6.
young liege
a double-stressed (spondee) opening. Gloucester is trying to get the prince to pay attention. It is by such subtle clues of meter that Shakespeare communicated to his actors (and to actors to this day), directing them without overt stage directions. [
RV
]
7.
stream of gold
the crown.
8.
strain
a melody or song.
9.
murder sleep
cf
Macbeth
, II ii.43. [
RV
]
10.
courser
warhorse.
11.
fardle
bundle.
12.
swathed
swaddled.
13.
clouts
swaddling clothes.
14.
Orient red
the color of dawn (which occurs in the east, or Orient).
15.
shrift
the hearing of confession.
16.
Sexual double-entendre,
spear
as phallus, and
mutton
as slang for vagina. [
RV
]
17.
Again, a sexual pun:
conscience of a nothing
an erection for a vagina. [
RV
]
18.
stone
testicle.
19.
chaps
jaws. [And, with
truffling
, a double entendre: the boar can find truffles, but truffles were also thought to promote chastity and cool off sexual ardor, which would surely be the result if its tusks or chaps were to cost the prince a stone. —
RV
]
20.
droops
nods with tiredness.
21.
swain
a shepherd or rustic lover.
22.
Mab
the fairy queen who causes wishful dreams.
23.
ear
reap.
24.
to her!
a hunting cry. Shakespeare makes it clear that Arthur exchanges one prey for another. [
RV
]
25.
When time was
“Who was in his day known as …”
26.
Mentor
When Odysseus went to the Trojan War, he left Mentor as guardian and teacher of his son.
27.
sword of lath
wooden sword.
28.
made to die when touched
to pretend to die when hit.
29.
pick-a-back
piggy back.
30.
Smacks
tastes.
31.
gallant-springing
growing up beautifully.
32.
cockered
indulged.
33.
Albion
Great Britain.
34.
Saxon
Historically, the Saxons migrated into Britain, either peacefully or as invaders, from about
A. D
. 400 to 600.
35.
breed-bate
trouble-maker.
36.
an
if.
37.
meet
suitable.
38.
heavy cheer
serious news.
39.
perfidy
deceitfulness, treachery.
40.
litter
a coach or wagon.
41.
See
Henry VI, Part One
, III.ii.95, from which my father stole this line.
42.
Or in which Shakespeare quotes the same source material, or in which Shakespeare’s likely collaborator on
Henry VI, Part One
—Nashe, Peele, or Greene—quoted Shakespeare’s preexisting
Arthur
play. The explanations are both numerous and unconfirmable, but they do not with any likelihood point to the fraud Mr. Phillips endorses in his Introduction. [
RV
]
43.
terms of manage
military commands.
44.
Pictish
Pictland, which in this play is the dominant northern power, seems to have covered eastern Scotland from Roman times until the tenth century.
45.
borderer
enemies along the border.
46.
farland
foreign.
47.
bide a trice
put up with a brief delay.
48.
slips
leashes.
49.
friends across the Wye
troops from Wales. [
RV
]
Act I, Scene II
1.
for Swain
Arthur is somehow disguised as a peasant or shepherd. [
RV
]
2.
booth
to shelter.
3.
white face
It is possible she already sees through Arthur’s disguise, since his skin is pale, not like someone who spends his days outdoors. [
RV
]
4.
Ecce signum
“Behold the sign.” (Latin, and thank God for online translators.)
5.
Or professional editors: Shakespeare used the phrase again in
Henry IV, Part One
. [
RV
]
6.
cowslip
a wildflower. I can only imagine my father straining to find one in a prison book of English flora.
7.
Again, Mr. Phillips is jumping at shadows. The cowslip—
Primula veris
—appears in three other Shakespeare works. [
RV
]
8.
Itching, are you
Joan hears “ecce” as “itching,” or desiring sex. She immediately shifts from the friendly, informal “thou” to the more distant (and chaste) “you.” It is in details like this that one senses the work of the master playwright of the sixteenth century, not a convict of the twentieth. [
RV
]
9.
stretch ’em no credit
you won’t let them kiss you on a promise. [
RV
]
10.
stag … horns
Joan is teasing with double meanings. If Arthur is young and pretty, that will change, just like the shape of a cloud, and someday he will become a cuckold; cuckolds were said to grow horns when their wives betrayed them. [
RV
]
11.
banns
public notice of an engagement.
12.
sedge
grassy plants growing in wet places. [A sexual-anatomical innuendo is not impossible. —
RV
]
13.
plight a troth
to make a promise of marriage.
14.
tilly-vally
nonsense. [Used twice more by Shakespeare in his plays.—
RV
]
15.
turnmelon
See “Step On” by the band Happy Mondays: “You talk so hip, you’re twisting my melon, man.”
16.
Meaning obscure. A face so ugly it rots produce? A duplicitous person? Possibly an error of type-setting, but no alternatives have yet been suggested by early readers. [
RV
]
17.
bell-wether
the leading sheep of the flock. It wears a bell around its neck.