This chapter's epigraph comes from a line in the play's first act, in which the narrator laments the state of affairs in France. He laments that the country is in a state of civil war, and that the French have lost all sense of what is happening in the world. The narrator, however, is not deterred. He goes on to say that the war is not between the French and the English, but between the Ducaines and the Bastardesses. The two families are fighting for the throne of France, and the duke of Brabant is in the middle of a battle with his brother, the Duke of Desdemona. The rumble of the battle is a warning that the duke is about to be killed.