The Tragedy of Arthur_ A Novel - Arthur Phillips [170]
1. Diomedes Diomedes was a hero in the Trojan War.
2. Diomedes on Deinos leapt While that’s true, the reference here is actually to the giant Diomedes, who kept four horses, mad from consuming human flesh. One of the horses was called Deinos (“the terrible”). Hercules’ labors included stealing the horses. [RV]
3. endamagement harm, injury.
4. As I did doubt he might A little disingenuous, since Mordred sent Alexander expressly to provoke a war. [RV]
5. mien manner, mood.
6. upspring upstart.
7. beaver’s vents the slits or airholes of his visored helmet.
8. quartered shield … ween The four sections (quarters) of Arthur’s coat of arms reveal his ambition (ween) to be king of all the British Isles: Wales (dragon), England (lions), Scotland/ Pictland (thistle), and Ireland (harp). [These symbols are, of course, anachronistic to the period of Arthur. —RV]
9. Bannerets pennons, military flags.
10. escape … by postern gate Mordred unintentionally attaches a fecal image to the northerners, likely amusing to the London audience, and likely sufficient to offend James VI, triggering the Nicolson Letter of 1598. [RV]
11. obolus … debt … farm “He will repay our injuries in greater quantity later.” From collecting (“farming”) tax or debt. An obolus was a coin of the lowest value. [RV]
12. hie hurry.
13. gins snares.
14. deck decorate.
15. assay to test, sample, try on.
16. vivers food. [True enough, but especially in Scottish dialect. In fact, the term was exclusively Scottish until the nineteenth century, demonstrating again Shakespeare’s gift for listening to the voices around him in London and imitating the dialects. —RV]
17. blazon’s quartered fancies the whimsical, wishful ambitions of Arthur’s coat of arms (blazon) drawn in four parts (quartered).
Act II, Scene IV
1. general in my greetings (ironic) attacking everyone he saw with equal generosity.
2. gratulate to greet.
3. pounds upon my arm a pun: pounds as weight to rest and as money to wager on Arthur’s arm. [RV]
4. Pluto’s wealth Pluto was god of the underworld and its extensive riches. [Hence, “plutocrat.” —RV]
5. vict’ry-ripe on the verge of victory.
6. mead meadow.
7. Legend had it that the invaders burned their boats upon arriving in England, leaving themselves no tempting option of returning home, so each foe will have to be killed. [RV]
8. broil fighting.
9. culv’rin type of cannon. [Anachronistic. —RV]
10. halidom an oath, “by all that’s holy” or “by what I hold to be holy.”
11. career to charge, gallop.
12. freshly … yew as flexible and springy as wood from a yew tree (used to make bows). [RV]
13. holp helped.
14. Named for my father’s perpetual tormentor, Ted Constantine, Hennepin County attorney and father of my best friend, Doug.
15. The name is in Holinshed, Malory, and several other Arthur stories. Shakespeare did not select it to comment on a twentieth-century Minnesota prosecutor. [RV]
16. embers inspired, I suspect, by my father’s habit of visiting the Embers restaurant in Minneapolis, where I can imagine him writing this play.
17. factious seditious, secessionist.
18. stamp royal a kind of dance.
19. worry harass.
20. agastment fright, alarm.
21. Petit Bretagne Brittany, as opposed to Grand Bretagne, or Great Britain.
22. A bit convoluted: “Though Lincoln will only be 25 percent as large a battle as the one we have just fought, even that opportunity to fight will be lost if we don’t hurry, since kids with stones will scatter the remaining enemy.” [RV]
23. Arthur’s mysterious business in York is never entirely clarified in the text. I can see four alternative explanations for this: (1) The 1597 text is corrupt. (2) We are meant to see the arrival of Philip in Act IV as the denouement to a sexual adventure here in Act II. (3) There was some stage business in the original production which is now unclear to us (and modern directors will no doubt find their own interpretations). (4) Shakespeare allowed a mystery to sit at the heart of his character’s behavior, as he later did in Othello, for example. [RV]
24. hest command.