Edward III

Edward III is a history play, published anonymously in 1596, about Edward III's wars in France. Since the 1990s it has been accepted into the Shakespeare canon as partly his work.

Main characters

• King Edward III
• The Countess of Salisbury
• Edward, the Black Prince
• King John of France
• The Earl of Warwick

Plot summary

This summary gives away the ending.

Edward III claims the throne of France. In the first part, while relieving a castle besieged by the Scots, he falls in love with its mistress, the Countess of Salisbury, and pressures her to become his mistress, even enlisting her father Warwick to persuade her. She threatens to kill herself rather than dishonour both their marriages, and Edward, ashamed, turns back to war.

The rest of the play follows the campaigns in France, the Battle of Crécy, where the Black Prince wins his spurs, and the Battle of Poitiers, where the French king is captured. The play ends with the Black Prince presenting his royal prisoner to his father.

Themes

• Kingship and self-government
• Honour and chastity
• War and chivalry

Famous lines

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

Warwick, Act 2 Scene 1 (the same line ends Sonnet 94)

More in our collection of famous Shakespeare quotes.

Sources

Jean Froissart's Chronicles and William Painter's The Palace of Pleasure.

On stage and screen

The Countess scenes share language and imagery with Shakespeare's sonnets and early histories, including the line about festering lilies. The play was included in major editions of Shakespeare from the late 1990s.

See where Edward III sits in Shakespeare's career on the timeline, or read about the playhouses it was written for.