Great servitor to bloody Mars in arms,

The Frenchman’s terror and his country’s fame,

Triumphant rideth like a Roman peer,

And, lowly, at his stirrup, comes afoot

King Jean of France together with his son

In captive bonds, whose diadem he brings

To crown thee with, and to proclaim thee king.

KING EDWARD

Away with mourning, Philip! Wipe thine eyes!

Sound trumpets! Welcome in Plantagenet!

Enter Edward Prince of Wales with Jean King of France and Prince Philippe as his prisoners. Also enter Lord Audley ⌈in a litter borne by the two Squires⌉ and the Comte d’Artois

As things long lost when they are found again,

So doth my son rejoice his father’s heart,

For whom, even now, my soul was much perplexed.

QUEEN PHILIPPA

Be this a token to express my joy—

She kisses the Prince of Wales

For inward passions will not let me speak.

PRINCE OF WALES (to King Edward)

My gracious father, here receive thy gift,

This wreath of conquest and reward of war,

Got with as mickle peril of our lives

As e’er was thing of price before this day.

Install your highness in your proper right,

And herewithal I render to your hands

These prisoners, chief occasion of our strife.

KING EDWARD (to the King of France)

So, Jean of France, I see you keep your word!

You promised to be sooner with ourself

Than we did think for, and ’tis so indeed.

But had you done at first as now you do,

How many civil towns had stood untouched

That now are turned to ragged heaps of stones?

How many people’s lives mightst thou have saved

That are untimely sunk into their graves?

KING OF FRANCE

Edward, recount not things irrevocable.

Tell me what ransom thou requir’st to have.

KING EDWARD

Thy ransom, Jean, hereafter shall be known.

But first to England thou must cross the seas

To see what entertainment it affords.

Howe’er it falls, it cannot be so bad

As ours hath been since we arrived in France.

KING OF FRANCE

Accursed man! Of this I was foretold,

But did misconstrue what the prophet told.

PRINCE OF WALES (to King Edward)

Now, father, this petition Edward makes

To thee, whose grace hath been his strongest shield:

That as thy pleasure chose me for the man

To be the instrument to show thy power,

So thou wilt grant that many princes more,

Bred and brought up within that little isle,

May still be famous for like victories.

And for my part, the bloody scars I bear,

The weary nights that I have watched in field, 5

The dangerous conflicts I have often had,

The fearful menaces were proffered me,

The heat and cold, and what else might displease,

I wish were now redoubled twentyfold,

So that hereafter ages, when they read

The painful traffic of my tender youth,

Might thereby be inflamed with such resolve

As not the territories of France alone,

But likewise Spain, Turkey and what countries else

That justly would provoke fair England’s ire,

Might at thy presence tremble and retire.

KING EDWARD

Here, English lords, we do proclaim a rest,

An intercession of our painful arms.

Sheathe up your swords, refresh your weary limbs,

Peruse your spoils, and after we have breathed

A day or two within this haven town,

God willing, then for England we’ll be shipped,

Where in a happy hour I trust we shall

Arrive: three kings, two princes, and a queen.

Exeunt

ADDITIONAL PASSAGE

In Q, the following lines, which are probably a misplaced addition, occur at the end of 8.108, between ‘foot’ and ‘Exeunt’, and fall between what may have been stints by two different authors. They may have been intended to go after either 8.93 or 8.98.

KING EDWARD

What picture’s this?

PRINCE OF WALES A pelican, my lord,

Wounding her bosom with her crooked beak

That so her nest of young ones might be fed

With drops of blood that issue from her heart.

The motto, ‘Sic et vos’—‘and so should you’.

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

ON the night of 28 December 1594, the Christmas revels at Gray’s Inn—one of London’s law schools—became so uproarious that one performance planned for the occasion had to be abandoned. Eventually ‘it was thought good not to offer anything of account saving dancing and revelling with gentlewomen; and after such sports a comedy of errors (like to Plautus his Menaechmus) was played by the players. So that night was begun, and continued to the end, in nothing but confusion and errors; whereupon it was ever afterwards called “The Night of Errors”.’

This sounds like a reference to Shakespeare’s play, first printed in the 1623 Folio, which is certainly based in large part on the Roman dramatist Plautus’ comedy Menaechmi. As Shakespeare’s shortest play, it would have been especially suited to late-night performance. Exceptional in having no cues for music, it may have been written for the occasion, or at least have been new in 1594.

The comedy in Menaechmi derives from the embarrassment experienced by a man in search of his long-lost twin brother when various people intimately acquainted with that twin—including his wife, his mistress, and his father—mistake the one for the other. Shakespeare greatly increases the possibilities of comic confusion by giving the brothers (both called Antipholus) servants (both called Dromio) who themselves are long-separated twins. An added episode in which Antipholus of Ephesus’ wife, Adriana, bars him from his own house in which she is entertaining his brother is based on another play by Plautus, Amphitruo. Shakespeare sets the comic action within a more serious framework, opening with a scene in which the twin masters’ old father, Egeon, who has arrived at Ephesus in search of them, is shown under imminent sentence of death unless he finds someone to redeem him. This strand of the plot, as well as the surprising revelation that brings about the resolution of the action, is based on the story of Apollonius of Tyre which Shakespeare was to use again, many years later, in Pericles.