Act 5, Scene 4

Another room in the Castle.

Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 2619historical topical
“Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear”
Bolingbroke's reported words echo a notorious pattern in English history: Henry II's outburst in 1170 against Archbishop Thomas Becket, which four knights took as a command and used to justify Becket's murder. The pattern is the point -- a king voices a wish aloud, deniably, and an ambitious subordinate acts on it. Editors of the play (Ure, Arden) note the Becket parallel.
historical Holinshed's Chronicles
TLN 2625archaic vocab
“he wistly looked on me”
'Wistly' means intently, fixedly, with earnest attention — the word has nothing to do with 'wistful' (longing), despite their similarity in sound. Exton says that while repeating the fatal wish, the king stared steadily at him: that sustained look is what Exton reads as a silent commission to act.
TLN 2626syntax grammar
“As who should say 'I would thou wert the man”
'As who should say' is an Elizabethan idiom meaning 'as if to say' or 'as though saying.' Exton is reporting not a spoken sentence but an implied one: the king looked at him in a way that wordlessly communicated the wish. The phrasing keeps the king's guilt at arm's length — it was a look, not a command.