7. queer untrustworthy, suspicious.
8. Again, an opportunity for a director to decide precisely when Arthur believes Philip, if at all. [RV]
9. cozenage fraud, deception.
10. foist roguery, trick.
11. catalogue of boons list of demands.
12. admit accept.
13. print copy, duplicate.
14. lineaments outlines, shapes.
15. sharker swindler.
16. equability evenhandedness.
17. beseem to suit, accord, fit.
18. quirk quibble with.
19. case of truth a legal question decidable on facts.
20. gloomy another clue to dating the play, gloomy appears only in Shakespeare’s earliest plays. [RV]
21. Elizabethan zoology held that young eagles matured by staring at the sun. [RV]
22. compass devised, contrived.
23. Jove … pate In mythology, Minerva burst fully armed from Jupiter’s forehead, where her mother had nurtured her.
24. “Didn’t that hurt?” but also “Was it hard to think up this plan?” [RV]
25. tench a fish with red spots, giving it the appearance of being flea-bitten. [Tinca vulgaris. —RV]
26. jordan-faced resembling the contents of a chamber pot.
27. scroyle scoundrel, wretch. [Used again by Shakespeare in King John. —RV]
28. pashed smashed.
29. In many ways, this is the least Shakespearean moment in the entire play, and, though Mr. Phillips did not note it, I will: the revelation to the audience here—that Philip is in fact a fraud—would normally occur before his acceptance by Arthur (if Arthur is sincere in believing the boy’s story and is not simply accepting it as a useful lie to break his pact with Mordred). This particular dramatic effect occurs elsewhere in the canon—I am thinking of Iachimo and the trunk in Cymbeline and the statue of the “dead” Hermione in The Winter’s Tale—but not in quite the same way. That having been said, the unique occurrence of an effect or word in one particular play by no means proves he didn’t write it. There are canonical plays that include unique examples of vocabulary, for example, the technical term being hapax legomenon. That he did something only once does not prove he didn’t do it. And, in this case, I am obviously not dissuaded of his authorship. Rather, I would consider this as an experiment he felt was not worth repeating, or an effect that audiences did not like. [RV]
30. unlooked unexpected.
31. bating beating impatiently, as if to take off.
32. mews me up Continuing the bird imagery, mewing a bird is to confine it or tie it down. [RV]
Act V, Scene I
1. There is, perhaps, a sexual implication in this line. [RV]
2. Mordred mistakes the actors for foreign royalty. The actors, in turn, mistake Mordred for another actor, dressed, not very convincingly, as a king.
3. avaunt begone!
4. base interluder a lowly actor.
5. puffy blustering, bombastic.
6. malapert presumptuous one.
7. current actual, real.
8. compassed built upon, contrived.
9. Charlemagne … Jove emperor of the Franks, Roman emperor, king of the Israelites, king of the Jews, king of Troy, Roman thunder god. [RV]
10. Icarus in Greek myth, the boy who with his wings of feathers and wax flew too near the sun and fell into the sea. [RV]
11. gulls … paints a virtuoso triple meaning (1) Only birds cannot distinguish makeup from real blood; (2) Only fools cannot distinguish kings from actors; and (3) Only a fool would mistake you, Mordred, for a king. One is reminded of the words of the Italian writer Cesare Pavese: “Shakespeare was conscious of a double or treble reality fused together into one line or a single word.” [RV]
12. needless word remove “mother” from “mother-queen” and marry Guenhera as queen.
13. misconster misunderstand.
14. crooning bellowing, like a bull, especially Scottish dialect. [RV]
15. pert impertinent.
16. my continuance “the continuation of my line.”
17. I.e., the throne to Philip. [RV]
18. kersey king the player king, dressed in kersey, a coarse cloth.
19. like likely.
Act V, Scene II
1. welkin sky.
2. saggish soggy.
3. Sisyphus a mistake on Bell’s part, or my father’s. In myth, Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to push a rock up a hill, never reaching the summit.
4. There is in this line an implication of Guenhera cuckolding Arthur. [RV]
5. bawcock from “beau coq”—fine fellow. [RV]
6. squiff skiff.
7. Strike her a command to lower sails.
Act V, Scene III
1. quaggy boggy.
2. sermoner a preacher.
3. right for right fair.
4. front confront, oppose.
5. kens knows.
6. tercel-gentle male peregrine falcon.
7. carriages … caps The wheeled cannons are sunk to the axles. [Anachronism. —RV]
8. fletcher an arrow maker.
9. heaven’s car the sun.
10. give the fico make an obscene gesture.
11. o’ertopping surpassingly arrogant.
12. caterans Scottish troops.
13. o’ermanned outnumbered.
14. singly in single combat.
15. engirt encircled.
16. abroach in motion. My father, I am reminded, told me that he once announced a University of Minnesota football game for the college radio station, KUOM. Among the reasons he was not asked back was his repeated color commentary that “the backfield is abroach.”
17. nook to hide in a corner. [Interestingly, the next recorded usage of this rare verb (1611) is by a younger playwright, Thomas Middleton, who collaborated with Shakespeare on Timon of Athens around 1605. A case, perhaps, of being able to trace Shakespeare’s direct influence—in one small way—on the generation after his. —RV]
18. fain gladly.
19. mangonel a catapult.
20. trebuchet a swinging catapult.
1. An interesting example of “the fog of war.” It is not clear who has attacked first. Does Arthur lose control of his temper or has Mordred lost control of a subtle plan? [RV]
2. proofed unvalued currency proven as worthless hostages.
3. unstaid uncontrollable.
4. misproud haughty, wrongly proud.
5. stale low-class prostitute.
6. trad’st upon them act upon them, deal with them.
7. Elizabethan zoology viewed young serpents as having concentrated venom, which diluted with maturity. [RV]
8. plainsong simple truth.
Act V, Scene V
1. bereft … strain deprived of his lineage and quality.
2. poltroon coward, wretch.
3. englutting gulping, devouring.
4. In fact, Arthur was not at Lincoln (II.vii). [RV]
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, in 1564, the son of a town official. Likely educated at the local grammar school, Shakespeare then traveled to London in the late 1580s, making his name as an actor, poet, playwright, and co-owner of theaters and theater companies. His career ended as a member and partner of the King’s Men company serving King James I. His works include Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, and The Tempest. He is widely considered the greatest writer in the history of the English language. He died in 1616.
•
ARTHUR PHILLIPS was born in Minneapolis and educated at Harvard. He has been a child actor, a jazz musician, a speechwriter, a dismally failed entrepreneur, and a five-time Jeopardy! champion. He is the author of the novels Prague, The Egyptologist, Angelica, and The Song Is You. The Washington Post called him “one of the best writers in America,” and Kirkus Reviews wrote, in 2009, “Phillips still looks like the best American novelist to have em
erged in the present decade.” He lives in New York with his wife and two children.
Table of Contents
LIST OF PARTS
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44