The Heart’s Abundance: Seduction and Bad Faith in The Reign of King Edward III
by David P. Gontar (December 2014)
– “from the heart’s abundance speaks the tongue” – King Edward III
KING EDWARD
What news with you?
AUDLEY
I have, my liege, levied those horse and foot,
According as your charge, and brought them hither.
KING EDWARD
Then let those foot trudge hence upon those horse,
According to our discharge, and be gone.
EARL OF DERBY
KING EDWARD
I mean the Emperor. Leave me alone.
AUDLEY (to Derby)
What is his mind?
EARL OF DERBY
KING EDWARD
She is as imperator over me, and I to her
Am as a kneeling vassal that observes
The pleasure or displeasure of her eye.
(Sc. 3, 29-42)
But the lapse of focus is revealing.
Like a practiced analysand, Edward understands its meaning: the Countess rules over him as might a monarch. By use of this device, Shakespeare is showing us how to read his dramatic poetry, not by taking things at face value, but by treating even minor inadvertences as symptoms of unacknowledged feelings. This principle applies across the board, not just to Edward alone. As we learn about him by hearkening to his use and misuse of language, so we can and should approach other characters in this manner, including Countess Salisbury.
COUNTESS SALISBURY
1. Let not thy presence, like the April sun,
Flatter our earth, and suddenly be done.
2. More happy do not make our outward wall
Than thou wilt grace our inner house withal.
3. Our house, my liege, is like a country swain
Whose habit rude, and manners blunt and plain,
Presageth naught, yet inly beautified
BRACKENBURY
What one, my lord?
RICHARD GLOUCESTER
Her husband, knave. Wouldst thou betray me?
(I, i, 99-103)
5. But, to make up my all-too-long compare,
These ragged walls no testimony are
What is within, but like a cloak doth hide
More gracious than my terms can, let thee be:
Entreat thyself to stay a while with me.
(Sc. 2, 149-161)
The following encounters of King Edward and this seductress have, however, a sharply contrasting tone: when approached by him for intimacy, she is shocked. One passage suffices.
KING EDWARD
I wish no more of thee than thou mayest give,
In rich exchange I tender to thee mine.
COUNTESS SALISBURY
But that your lips were sacred, good my lord,
You would profane the holy name of love.
The love you offer me you cannot give,
For Caesar owes that tribute to his queen.
That love you beg of me I cannot give,
For Sarah owes that duty to her lord.
He that doth clip or counterfeit your stamp
Shall die, my lord: and will your sacred self
To stamp his image in forbidden metal,
Forgetting your allegiance and your oath?
You break a greater honour then yourself:
To be a king is of a younger house
Than to be married. Your progenitor,
By God was honoured for a married man,
But not by him anointed for a king.
It is a penalty to break your statutes,
How much more to infringe the holy act
Made by the mouth of God, sealed with his hand!
Doth but so try the wife of Salisbury,
Lest being therein guilty by my stay,
From that, not from my leige, I turn away.
(Sc. 2, 417-444)
ANGELO
But, in the loss of question, that you his sister,
Finding yourself desired of such a person
Whose credit with the judge, or own great place,
Could fetch your brother from the manacles
Of the all-binding law, and that there were
No earthly mean to save him, but that either
You must lay down the treasures of your body
What would you do?
ISABELLA
As much for my poor brother as myself.
That is, were I under the terms of death,
And strip myself to death as to a bed
My body up to shame.
(II, iv, 88-104)
as not being her own body, and she contemplates it as though from above as a passive object to which events can happen but which can neither provoke them nor avoid them because all its possibilities are outside of it.
WORKS CITED:
David P. Gontar, Hamlet Made Simple and Other Essays, New English Review Press, 2013
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, Hazel Barnes, trans., Philosophical Library, 1956
William Shakespeare The Complete Works, 2d Ed., S. Wells, G. Taylor, eds., Oxford University Press, Clarendon, 2005
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