Catrin Glyndŵr, Lady Mortimer: When the Welsh Lady Speaks in Henry IV, Part 1
- Jan 26
- 6 min read
How Shakespeare Gave a Voice to a Woman History Forgot
“My wife can speak no English, I no Welsh.…That pretty Welsh
Which thou pourest down from these swelling heavens
I am too perfect in; and but for shame,
In such a parley should I answer thee.
[The Lady speaks again in Welsh].”
— Henry IV, Part 1, Act III. i
She speaks clearly and fluently. Yet, in Henry IV, Part 1, Shakespeare gave her not a single line of his powerful English.
She is Catrin Glyndŵr, Lady Mortimer, daughter of the great 14th century Welsh rebel and self-declared last Welsh-born prince of Wales, Owain Glyndŵr (sometimes spelled “Glendower.”) She appears briefly in Henry IV, Part 1, but the future of England hangs on her.
Shakespeare uses her English title, “Lady Mortimer”, and in his stage directions, the “Welsh Lady”.
In one of his most tender and heart-breaking scenes, she speaks rapidly and passionately in a language neither we nor her new husband, Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, understand. What is clear is that she loves him deeply. She begs him not to go to war. He understands and shares her feelings but not her words.
Language itself becomes the barrier Shakespeare, of all people, chooses not to cross.
Here is a brief excerpt of Alex Clatworthy’s performance as Catrin, from The Hollow Crown, (BBC’s Henry IV), included for purposes of commentary and criticism. You only need the first 30-40 seconds of the scene: 🎥 The Welsh Lady Speaks: The Hollow Crown.
Why Does the Welsh Lady Matter?
Although between secondary characters, this short scene holds significance of (literally) dynastic importance, a topic very much on the minds of Elizabethans. Modern audiences may miss that dynastic succession was a hot topic in both Henry IV’s early 15th century England and Elizabeth I’s late 16th century England. Both Henry IV and Elizabeth’s grandfather had acquired the throne through weak claims and questionable means. Elizabeth remained unmarried and had refused to name her successor, a cause of great insecurity and concern in the playwright’s time.
Catrin was a Welsh princess by birth. Her husband, Mortimer, held a claim to the English throne through his descent from Edward III. Their recent marriage, clearly already loving and sexual, threatened the tenuous hold on the crown that Henry IV obsesses about losing throughout the play.
Catrin is the enemy’s daughter, the enemy’s wife and a woman on the wrong side of English history. Yet, in her few moments on stage, she may already be the mother of an entirely new dynasty of English kings.
History tells us that her husband died at Harlech Castle in Wales after an eight-month siege that became part of Prince Hal’s path to kingship as Henry V. Yet, Catrin is almost unknown historically.
How did Shakespeare come to know so much about her?
A Woman History Did Not Remember, But Shakespeare Did
The written historical record available to Shakespeare about his Welsh Lady, Catrin, Lady Mortimer, was very thin. The Tudor history source, Holinshed’s Chronicles, says only:
“Edmund Mortimer, earl of March being taken prisoner by Owen Glendower, was redeemed by the said Owen, and afterwards married his daughter.”
Daughter, wife. That is all. Not even her name. (That shows up later in scattered Welsh and English genealogical compilations from family pedigrees).
A single, administrative financial document in Henry IV’s 1409 Exchequer records evidenced that after her husband died, she and her daughters were taken to the Tower of London as prisoners and later died there in captivity.
No poem. No elegy. No ballad. Not even in Welsh.
Yet, Shakespeare renders her with astonishing gentleness, intimacy, and emotional authority, as if he knew her personally – an impossibility since she died 150 years before he was born.
One Other Source for the Welsh Lady in Henry IV in Shakespeare’s London
During Shakespeare’s lifetime there was one other place in London where he could have learned about Catrin.
On what was once Candlewick Street, and is now called Cannon Street, was a 13th century church. St. Swithin’s at London Stone stood directly next to a Roman monument that makes an appearance in another of Shakespeare’s works, which we will explore in a later post.
Here are two thought-provoking Elizabethan secrets about St. Swithin’s at London Stone:
It adjoined a garden shared with the London home of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford and his family. Oxford House, granted to the de Veres by Henry VIII, remained in the de Vere family until Edward sold it. The de Vere family also held the church’s patronage. They worshipped in St. Swithin’s. They maintained it. They knew it very well.
If, among the 120 parish churches in London, Shakespeare had happened to walk into this one, he might have seen the only other evidence that the Welsh Lady ever breathed: Catrin Glyndŵr’s tomb was in the de Veres’ London parish church.
Finding the Welsh Lady from Henry IV in Modern London
St. Swithin’s and Catrin’s tomb are no more. But, today, in London, there is a modern monument that bears Catrin’s name.
Follow me into London’s financial district. Let’s slip down a narrow alley off of Cannon Street between office buildings right beside London Stone to where St. Swithin’s and Oxford House once stood in Elizabethan London.
Next to the black iron gate guarding a pocket-sized park, a stone marker reads: “Saint Swithin’s Church Garden Leading to Oxford Court”. A couple of meters below our feet was the garden between St. Swithin’s Church and Oxford House.
In the park, a modern sculpture by Bryn Chegwydden and Richard Renshaw commemorates the suffering of all women and children in war. A plaque at its base bears her name, “Catrin Glyndŵr”, and in Welsh and English: “At the tower end far away from home, longing is a woman’s song; an exile’s silent song - Monna Eifyn.”
Although the sculpture makes no reference to Shakespeare or his Welsh Lady, it commemorates the same woman, exactly at the former location of her tomb.
How and How Much Did Shakespeare Know About Catrin Glyndŵr, Lady Mortimer?
The odds that Shakespeare gained access to the Tudor government’s then 150-year-old Exchequer rolls, and dug back to 1409 to learn about Catrin's death are close to zero. He may have read that Owain Glyndŵr had a daughter who married Mortimer in Holinshed or another Tudor historical chronicle.
But Shakespeare’s rendering of Catrin is so much more than: daughter, wife. He resurrects her from obscurity and makes her the fulcrum of the entire play.
Although married only a short time, in Shakespeare’s Henry IV Welsh scene, Catrin is prophetic and passionately in love with her husband. If the war between the forces of Henry IV and those of Glyndŵr and Mortimer goes the other way, Catrin will be Princess of Wales, Queen of England, and mother of a new dynasty of kings.
Catrin can topple Henry’s wobbly crown. Shakespeare embodies his message about the risks of uncertain succession and dynasty in this seemingly minor female character. With all his poetic mastery, he brings the spotlight onto Catrin because she speaks only in Welsh, without his writing a single word for her.
By allowing her to remain linguistically Welsh, emotionally sovereign, and morally luminous, he makes clear that she, by herself, is more than incidental to his message. Catrin is his message.
We may never know if Shakespeare stood repeatedly or long enough by Catrin’s tomb inside St. Swithin’s to absorb the weight of her importance in history.
But poets are made in secret moments like that.
And centuries later, thanks to him, Catrin still speaks to us — in Welsh.
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