payment page
My bed was ever to thy son as true
As thine was to thy husband, and this boy
Liker in feature to his father Geoffrey
Than thou and John, in manners being as like
As rain to water, or devil to his dam.
My boy a bastard! By my soul I think
His father never was so true begot.
It cannot be and if thou wert his mother. (2.1.124–31)
Constance speaks these words to her mother-in-law, Eleanor, when they see each other in France. Eleanor has already expressed her displeasure about Constance in the play’s opening act, where she asserts that her daughter-in-law is only pushing Arthur’s claim for the sake of her own self-gain. Eleanor has just made the same claim to Constance’s face, declaring: “Thy bastard shall be king / That thou mayst be a queen and check the world!” (2.1.122–23). Constance now responds with the words quoted here, where she rails against Eleanor’s suggestion that Arthur is a bastard. Looking to one-up Eleanor, Constance asserts that her own son is more “true begot” that the current king of England. The rivalry between these two women is potent, and Constance’s fierce words here demonstrate that she doesn’t easily back down when someone challenges her.
You have beguiled me with a counterfeit
Resembling majesty, which, being touched and tried,
Proves valueless. You are forsworn, forsworn.
You came in arms to spill mine enemies’ blood,
But now in arms you strengthen it with yours.
The grappling vigor and rough frown of war
Is cold in amity and painted peace,
And our oppression hath made up this league.
Arm, arm, you heavens, against these perjured kings! (3.1.99–107)
Constance addresses these lines to King Philip, whom she’s railing against for having abandoned his support of Arthur’s claim to the throne. The passage quoted here offers a good example of the immense rhetorical force she’s capable of conjuring. Much of what she says here relies on different types of reversals. For instance, though he’s actually the king of France, she declares Philip a “counterfeit” who merely “resembl[es] majesty.” Likewise, the “amity” he’s forged with England is “cold” where it should be warm, and the resulting peace is “painted” rather than genuine. More damningly, she accuses him of being a turncoat, reversing his own agenda “to spill mine enemies’ blood” by instead strengthening the enemies’ forces with his own. She wants desperately for Philip to regret his fickle treatment of her and her son, which she indicates when, a few lines later, she concludes her speech by demanding, “Hear me, O, hear me!” (3.1.112).
Death, death. O amiable, lovely death!
Thou odoriferous stench! Sound rottenness!
Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,
Thou hate and terror to prosperity,
And I will kiss thy detestable bones,
And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows,
And ring these fingers with thy household worms,
And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust,
And be a carrion monster like thyself.
Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smil’st
And buss thee as thy wife. (3.4.25–35)
After Arthur has been captured by the English forces, Constance is sure that she will never see her son again. This acknowledgment causes her to spiral into a wild fit of grief. The passage quoted here shows Constance at her most verbally extravagant. In the dramatic style appropriate to a diva of her stature, she invites her own death at length and in detail. She explicitly frames her desire for death in worshipful terms that would make her into this grim figure’s servant and wife. For a woman who is in the depths of grief, her imaginative description is somewhat conspicuous, as though she were conscious of giving a performance of her own sadness. Such, at least, is the opinion of Cardinal Pandolf, who begins by asserting that Constance has gone mad, only to revise his statement later and declare, “You are as fond of grief as of your child” (3.4.92).
