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Now his father is King, Edmund wants to be taken more seriously, and having toyed with the idea of calling himself The Black Vegetable, he settles for The Black Adder. A legend is born.

				Blackadder: If we lose, I'll be chopped into pieces. My arm'll end up in Essex, my torso in Norfolk and my genitalia stuck up a tree somewhere in Rutland.
				Blackadder: Let all men who go to don armour tomorrow remember to go before they don armour tomorrow.
				Blackadder: Run away from the hills! If you see hills, run the other way!

				King Richard's opening speech is a comic reworking of the oft-quoted soliloquy from Richard III: "Now is the winter of our discontent..." King Richard inspires his troops with the heroic words, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more..." These were spoken by 's Henry V, not Richard III. Harry's sorrowful words over the body of his dead uncle, "O! pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth," are exactly what Anthony says to the dead Caesar in Julius Caesar. He then mysteriously switches to a quote from Hamlet: "And flights of angels sing thee to their rest". Richard III's return to haunt his killer, Edmund, is reminiscent of Banquo's ghost in . The three crones who turn up at the end of the episode to tell Edmund that he will be king one day, are inspired by the witches from Macbeth. Their names are Goneril, Regan and Cordelia, the names of King Lear's three daughters.

				Test Your Cunning Try the Black Adder series one quiz.

			Edmund's brother Harry is afraid of spoons.
			Edmund accidentally chops off Uncle Richard's head. It could happen to anyone.