The Tragedy of Arthur_ A Novel - Arthur Phillips [175]
44. luce a type of fish. [More precisely, a pike used in heraldry. —RV]
45. docked tail cut-off ending. [Also, slang for a circumcised penis. —RV]
46. mouth-made insincere.
47. rate manner, style, conduct.
48. unproofed vigor untested strength.
49. momentary temporary.
Act IV, Scene II
1. the wife the midwife.
2. as lief I would prefer.
3. jar jostle.
4. A short line. The queen begins to worry at her fetus’s stillness? [RV]
5. Elizabethans believed that fish and other sea life were able to breathe underwater, thanks to spouts of fresh air that bubbled on the ocean’s floor. [RV]
6. wake realize.
7. in broil in battle.
8. wrangle to dispute or contest.
9. chrisom a child dead within a month of birth, shrouded in its christening robes (“chrisom-cloth”).
10. Mordred will not mind the infant’s little cries, but will sweep him away to become king. [RV]
11. peasant weeds disguised as a peasant.
12. counter-strive strive against each other.
13. discovery space in Elizabethan theaters, a curtained area, also called an “inner stage.” [Here, used metaphorically for womb. —RV]
Act IV, Scene III
1. Cf Christopher Marlowe’s poem “Hero and Leander”: “Above our life we love a steadfast friend.” The poem was first published in 1598, but Shakespeare would likely have known of it before. As was often the case with these two men, it is nearly impossible to disentangle who was influencing whom. See Rival Playwrights by Professor James Shapiro. [RV]
2. Hector a Trojan hero.
3. made me fair weather feigned friendship to me.
4. posts rides with haste.
5. This line appears verbatim in Sonnet 55, line 9, published in 1609 but certainly written much earlier. A similar “pre-borrowing” from The Sonnets (or later recycling for The Sonnets) occurs in Edward III, approximately contemporaneous to The Tragedy of Arthur. [RV]
6. do mind recall.
7. Mordred is just realizing, in modern words, that he’s been conned.
8. amort dejected.
9. liberal promiscuous, and here pronounced in three syllables. [RV]
Act IV, Scene IV
1. kern Irish foot soldier.
2. capriole leap, caper.
3. peg to fix, guarantee.
4. giddy indecisive.
5. Empillowed apparently a Shakespearean invention. [RV]
6. The episode of Philip of York is perhaps another clue to the disappearance of The Tragedy of Arthur. Queen Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, similarly ennobled an illegitimate son, Henry FitzRoy. The boy died at age seventeen, but the king, having only daughters, had apparently considered making him his heir. As with the portrait scene in III.i, this scene may have been viewed as commentary on the queen’s father and therefore more than sufficient to earn a banishment from the London stage. A further note: Henry VIII was the younger son of Henry VII, and would not have been king but for the premature death of his elder brother. His name? Arthur. [RV]
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