King Edward
Notes on King Edward
Shakespeare and the Casting Couch
Read the NoteStories about women summoned as supplicants to the portals of men with the power to grant their wishes, for a price, are common across professions, across countries, across millennia. Shakespeare dramatized the dilemmas some of these women faced in more than one of his plays.
In both Henry VI Part 3 and Measure for Measure, for example,
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Tempter or Tempted?
Read the NoteIn Measure for Measure (2.2.197), Angelo confronts, possibly for the first time in his life, the temptation of lust. And since this is new to him and because he is highly moralistic, he is troubled and confused. He reacts by asking himself a series of questions for which he has no answers.
What’s this? What’s this? Is this her fault,
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Seduction or Harassment?
Read the NoteShakespeare delights in the seduction ceremonies of bright men with even brighter women. These dialogues, whether between adolescents like Romeo and Juliet, more mature characters like Henry V and Princess Katherine, or seasoned adults like the widow Lady Grey and the sexual harasser King Edward, in this scene (3HenryVI 3.2.36), give Shakespeare opportunities to employ dazzling webworks of rhetorical exchanges.
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Sexual Extortion
Read the NoteIn Measure for Measure (2.4.95), Angelo, the classic sexual harasser, adopts a method of sexual extortion similar to King Edward’s in Henry VI Part 3 (3.2.36). Both men begin with oblique insinuations about their desires, which can be innocently misread. When the women, Isabella in Measure for Measure and Lady Grey in Henry VI,
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Quotes spoken by the character King Edward
Now, princely Buckingham, seal thou this league
Read the QuoteKing Edward
Now, princely Buckingham, seal thou this league
With thy embracements to my wife’s allies
And make me happy in your unity.
Buckingham, to Queen Elizabeth
Whenever Buckingham doth turn his hate
Upon your Grace, but with all duteous love
Doth cherish you and yours, God punish me
With hate in those where I expect most love.
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Is Clarence dead?
Read the QuoteKing Edward
Is Clarence dead? The order was reversed.
Richard
But he, poor man, by your first order died,
And that a wingèd Mercury did bear.
Some tardy cripple bare the countermand,
That came too lag to see him burièd.
God grant that some, less noble and less loyal,
Nearer in bloody thoughts,
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Now tell me, madam, do you love your children?
Read the QuoteKing Edward
Now tell me, madam, do you love your children?
Lady Grey
Ay, full as dearly as I love myself.
Anadiplosis & EpistropheKing Edward
And would you not do much to do them good?
Lady Grey
To do them good I would sustain some harm.
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My gracious lord, Henry, your foe, is taken
Read the QuoteNobleman
My gracious lord, Henry, your foe, is taken
And brought your prisoner to your palace gate.
King Edward
See that he be conveyed unto the Tower.
Nobleman exits.
And go we, brothers, to the man that took him,
To question of his apprehension.—
Widow, go you along.—Lords, use her honorably.
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