The Tragedy of Arthur_ A Novel - Arthur Phillips [168]
2. flexure bent knee.
3. perfect complete, unquestioned.
4. rate measure, settle the amount of.
5. puissance power.
6. Foresees assumes, counts on.
7. stamp mark, proof.
8. coulter plough.
9. skink to decant liquor, or wait tables.
10. mawks, beef, ling three slang terms for prostitutes or loose women. [RV]
11. St. George’s field section of London known for prostitutes. [RV]
12. George’s day April 23 happens to be my birthday as well as King Arthur’s. A little greeting from my father and proof of Dana’s claim that the play is “about me.”
13. George’s day is also taken to be Shakespeare’s unconfirmed birthday. The mention of it as King Arthur’s birthday raises the possibility that Shakespeare was perhaps allowing himself some self-revelation here, in Somerset’s description of a man who frequents prostitutes. Perhaps Shakespeare, a man who lived for months or years at a time away from his wife, was intimately familiar with St. George’s field. More likely still, April 23 is also the foundation day of the Order of the Garter (which had Arthurian overtones), so there are many far more likely explanations for this reference than that the play was forged to honor a twenty-first-century American novelist. [RV]
14. Another joke implying Arthur is sexually insatiable and Gloucester is merely his procurer: postern gate was slang for anal sex. [RV]
15. raspberry Prior to the discovery of this text, the earliest recorded use of “raspberry” in English dates from 1602, some five years after the play’s publication. It is such details that further convince me of its authenticity. [RV]
16. “Since he’s come of age, the prince has been almost constantly engaged in sexual antics.” [RV]
17. so long as that a double entendre. The length of the prince’s new beard (reaching his thumbs) is confounded with the length of his penis. [RV]
18. a tailor’s tailors, and fools, were reputedly well-endowed. [RV]
19. luxury-amazed lust-maddened.
20. kecksie flourish with royal music (flourish) made by blowing on a blade of dried grass (kecksie). [RV]
21. continence self-restraint.
22. descried revealed, disclosed.
23. tales lead beasts … follow pun: tales as rumors, wagging the head. [RV]
24. pate head.
25. choose “He can kill you (with the edge), knock you unconscious (with the fig-shaped pommel), or just tag you for show (with the flat).” [RV]
26. Puns: York (in the north), where the father (Uter) died, and where the son unnaturally wishes to die, a desire as unnatural as the sun setting in the north. [RV]
27. See Dr. Strangelove, one of my father’s favorite movies: “Gentlemen, no fighting in the War Room.”
28. sirrah a term of address expressing contempt or the speaker’s authority.
29. clog’st burdens.
30. chough a bird [thought to chatter nonsense. —RV]
31. absolution pertinent “forgiveness is now more to the point.”
32. doubt fear.
33. dwarfish duke the first of several references to Mordred’s height.
34. boisterous violence violent rape.
35. criminal pronounced in two syllables. [RV]
36. pillar to support. Apparently a Shakespearean invention as a verb. [RV]
37. triobular worthless. [Literally, worth three oboli, small coins. —RV]
38. left no issue If this play was performed in the early 1590s, a childless English monarch being replaced with a Scottish one would not yet have been politically sensitive. By 1597, it certainly would have been. [RV]
39. vail to lower in submission.
40. bondmen slaves, serfs.
41. feculent containing, or of the nature of, feces.
42. Mercury … pip’st Mercury—the messenger god—had wings on his heels. Were they attached higher (fixed above) on this messenger, they could blow away the flatulent stench of the words. [RV]
43. pre-pardon forgiveness before the act. Earliest known usage had previously been 1625. [RV]
44. gleeks jokes.
45. violence Shakespeare gives the word two or three syllables as his verse requires. Here, pronounced with three