Free Shakespeare's Kings by John Julius Norwich Page B

he yields to her entreaty. Next comes a brief interlude with a certain John Copland, who has been fortunate enough to capture King David of - Scotland at Neville's Cross a short time before. Despite Philippa's commission from her husband to govern in his name during his absence, Copland has refused to deliver his prisoner to anyone but the King himself and has accordingly brought him to Calais. The Queen is
    i. Salisbury's letter was issued nine or ten years before, and Calais had already been nearly a decade in English hands. Several obvious questions arise: did he take all that time to ride through France? Is Poitiers really on the way between Brittany and Calais? But to ask such questions is to miss the point. For the purposes of the play, the siege of Calais and the Battle of Poitiers were virtually contemporaneous .
    understandably irritated, but Edward is pleased by Copland's flattering explanation of his motives and rewards him with a knighthood.
    The scene continues with the arrival of Lord Salisbury, who brings tragic news:
    Here stood a battle of ten thousand hone:
    There twice as many pikes, in quadrant-wise .. .
    And in the midst, like to a slender point
    Within the compass of the horizon . . .
    Or as a bear fast chain'd unto a stake, -
    Stood famous Edward [the Black Prince], still expecting when
    Those dogs of France would fasten on his flesh . . .
    The Battle s join: and, when we could no more
    Discern the difference 'twixt the friend and foe . . .
    Away we turn'd our wat'ry eyes, with sighs
    As black as powder fuming into smoke.
    Consternation follows; but a moment later, while the distraught Queen is mourning her son and the furious King is swearing vengeance, a herald enters to announce the arrival of the Prince in splendid health, accompanied by Audley—now apparently recovered—and his prisoners, King John of France and his son Philip. Edward is quick to taunt the captive King:
    So, John of France, I see you keep your word.
    You promis'd to be sooner with ourself
    Than we did think for, and 'tis so indeed:
    The Prince then delivers a fine patriotic speech, leaving, however, the play's last words to his father:
    A day or two within this haven-town,
    God willing, then for England we'll be shipp'd,
    Where, in a happy hour, I trust, we shall
    Arrive, three kings, two princes, and a queen.
    Once again, Shakespeare - if Shakespeare it is - has taken his usual liberties with historic truth. Edward and Philippa were not in France after Poitiers, though they were as we know present at Calais. King David of Scotland was never taken to Calais, but remained in London and Odiham in Hampshire between his capture in 1346 and his eventual ransom in 1357. But in the context of the play such details are insignificant enough. Perhaps because of its suspected multiple authorship, Edward III probably contains more inaccuracies than the other plays in the canon. The fact remains - and cannot be too often repeated or too strongly emphasized - that to a dramatist, accuracy is at most of secondary importance. The main events of Edward's life are all there; and the average playgoer, whether of the sixteenth or the twenty-first century, having no previous knowledge of the period, will have come away with a mental picture which, for all its bold lines and high colour, will not be so very far wrong.
    The story of the last sad years of Edward's reign can be briefly told. In 1362 he made over Gascony and Poitou to his eldest son, to be held of himself as sovereign. At Bordeaux the Black Prince established a luxurious and sophisticated court where, wrote the Chandos Herald, 1 'since God was born, never was open house kept so handsomely and honourably.' He fed 'more than fourscore knights and full four times as many squires' at his table, and maintained a vast retinue of his own: pag es, valets, cooks, stewards, butl ers, grooms, huntsmen and falconers, insisting that he himself be served only by a knight wearing golden spurs. His lovely