Constance: A Mother's Grief Made Eloquent

Constance is Arthur's mother, and she argues his right to the throne with a ferocity that no-one can match. She is also one of Shakespeare's most extreme portraits of grief. When the political situation turns against her son, she falls apart in a way that is harrowing and entirely human.

Her speech beginning 'Grief fills the room up of my absent child' is one of the finest things in the play. It describes grief not as abstract emotion but as physical presence: a thing that takes up space, mimics her son's body, makes her feel him when he isn't there.

She disappears from the play after Act 3. Shakespeare follows history here, as Constance died before Arthur.