KING RICHARD II.

P. 110. Like to a tenement, or pelting farm:] "In this 22d yeare of King Richard (says Fabian,) the common fame ranne, that the king had letten to farm the realme unto Sir William Scrope, earle of Wiltshire, and then treasurer of England to Syr John Bushey, Sir John Bagot, and Sir Henery Grene, knightes."

MALONE.

P. 115. As blanks, benevolences, and I wot not what :] Stow records, that Richard II. "compelled all the Religious, Gentlemen, and Commons, to set their seales to blankes, to the end he might as it pleased him, oppresse them severally, or all at once some of the Commons paid 1000 markes, some 1000 pounds," &c. Chronicle, p. 319, fol. 1639. HOLT WHITE.

P. 140. Then I must not say, no.] "The duke with a high sharpe voyce bade bring forth the king's horses, and then two little nagges, not worth forty franks, were brought forth; the king was set on the one, and the earl of Salisburie on the other: and thus the duke brought the king from Flint to Chester, where he was delivered to the duke of Gloucesters sonne, and to the earle of Arundels sonne, (that loved him but little, for he had put their fathers to death, who led him straight to the castle." Stowe, (p. 621, edit. 1605,) from a manuscript account written by a person who was present. MALONE.

P. 143. Westminster Hall.] The rebuilding of Westminster-Hall, which Richard had begun in 1837, being finished in 1399, the first meeting of parliament in the new edifice was for the purpose of deposing him. MALONE.

P. 145. Surrey] Thomas Holland earl of Kent. He was brother to John Holland duke of Exeter, and was created duke of Surrey in the 21st year of King Richard the Second, 1397. The dukes of Surrey and Exeter were half brothers to the King, being sons of his mother Joan, (daughter of Edmond earle of Kent) who after the death of her second husband, Lord Thomas Holland, married Edward the Black Prince. MALONE.

P. 167. The grand conspirator, abbot of Westminster,
Hath yielded up relation here given of his death, after Holinshed's

his body to the grave; This Abbot of Westminster was

William de Colchester. Chronicle, is untrue, as he survived the King many years; and though called "the grand conspirator," it is very doubtful whether he had any concern in the conspiracy, at least nothing was proved against him. RITSON.

P. 163. Carlisle, this is your doom] This prelate was committed to the Tower, nut on the intercession of his friends, obtained leave to change his prison for Westminster Abbey. In order to deprive him of his see, the Pope, at the King's instance, translated him to a bishopric in partibus infidelium; and the only preferment he could ever after obtain, was a rectory in Gloucestershire. He died in 1409. RITSON.

HENRY IV. PART I.

P. 175. the prisoners,] Percy had an exclusive right to these prisoners, except the Earl of Fife. By the law of arms, every man who had taken any captive, whose redemption did not exceed ten thousand crowns, had him clearly for himself. either to acquit or ransom, at his pleasure. It seems from Camden's Britannia, that Pounouný castle in Scotland was built out of the ransome of this very Henry Percy, when taken prisoner at the battle of Otterbourne by an ancestor of the present Earl of Eglington. TOLLET.

Percy could not refuse the Earl of Fife to the King; for being a prince of the blood royal, (son to the Duke of Albany, brother to King Robert III.) Henry might justly claim him by his acknowledged military prerogative. STEEVENS.

P. 176. Phabus,---he, that wandering knight so fuir.] Falstaff starts at the idea of Phoebus, i. e. the sun; but deviates into an allusion to El Donzel del Febo, the knight of the sun in a Spanish Romance translated (under the title of The Mirror of Knighthood, &c.) during the age of Shakespeare. This illustrious personage was "most excellently faire," and a great wanderer, as those who travel after him throughout three thick volumes in 4to. will discover. STLEVENS.

P. 179. ---sir John Sack-and-Sugar.] Much inquiry has been made about Falstaff's sack, and great surprize has been expressed that he should have mixed sugar with it. As they are here mentioned for the first time in this play, it may not be im proper to observe, that it is probable that Falstaff's wine was Sherry, a Spanish

wine, originally made at Xerex. He frequently himself calls it Sherris-sack. Nor will his mixing sugar with sack appear extraordinary, when it is known that it was a very common practice in our author's time to put sugar into all wines. "Clownes and vulgar men (says Fynes Moryson) only use large drinking of beer or ale,---but gentlemen garrawse only in wine, with which they mix sugar, which I never observed in any other place or kingdom for that purpose. And because the taste of the English is thus delighted with sweetness, the wines in taverns (for I speak not of Inerchantes' or gentlemen's cellars) are commonly mixed at the filling thereof, to make them pleasant." MALONE.

P. 184. His brother-in-law, the foolish Mortimer;] Shakespeare has fallen into some contradictions with regard to this Lord Mortimer. Before he makes his personal appearance in the play, he is repeatedly spoken of as Hotspur's brother-inlaw. In Act II. Lady Percy expressly calls him her brother Mortimer. And yet when he enters in the third Act, he calls Lady Percy his aunt, which in fact she was, and not his sister. This inconsistence may be accounted for as follows. It appears from Dugdale's and Sandford's account of the Mortimer family, that there were two of them taken prisoners at different times by Glendower; each of them bearing the name of Edmund; one being Edmund earl of March, nephew to Lady Percy, and the proper Mortimer of this play; the other, Sir Edmund Mortimer, uncle to the former, and brother to Lady Percy. Shakespeare confounds the two persons. STEEVENS.

Another cause also may be assigned for this confusion. Henry Percy, according to the accounts of our old historians, married Eleanor, the sister of Roger earl of March, who was the father of the Edmund earl of March, that appears in the present play. But this Edmund had a sister likewise named Eleanor. Shakespeare might, therefore, have at different times confounded these two Eleanors. In fact, however, the sister of Roger earl of Marchi, whom young Percy married, was called Elizabeth.

MALONE.

P. 198. How now, Kate?] Shakespeare either mistook the name of Hotspur's wife, (which was not Katharine but Elizabeth,) or else designedly changed it, out of the remarkable fondness he seems to have had for the familiar appellation of Kate, which he is never weary of repeating, when he has once introduced it; as in this scene, the scene of Katharine and Petruchio, and the courtship between King Henry V. and the French Princess. The wife of Hotspur was the Lady Elizabeth Mortimer, sister to Roger Earl of March, and aunt to Edmund Earl of March, who is introduced in this play by the name of Lord Mortimer. STEEVENS.

P. 206. in Kendal Green,] Kendal-green was the livery of Robert Earl of Huntington and his followers, while they remained in a state of outlawry, and their leader assumed the title of Robin Hood. STEEVENS.

P. 208. Give him as much as will make him a royal man.] He that received a noble was, in cant language, called a nobleman ; in this sense the Prince catches the word, and bids the landlady "give him as much as will make him a royal man," that is, a real or royal man, and send him away. JOHNSON. TYRWHITT.

The royal went for 10s.---the noble only for 6s. and 8d. This seems to be an allusion to a jest of Queen Elizabeth. Mr. John Blower, in a sermon before her majesty, first said: "My royal Queen," and a little after: "My noble Queen." Upon which says the Queen: "What, am I ten groats worse than I was?"

TOLLET.

P. 223. Thy place in council thou hast rudely lost,] The Prince was removed from being President of the Council, inmediately after he struck the Lord Chief Justice Gascoigne. MALONE.

P. 227. Lord Mortimer of Scotland hath sent word,] There was no such person as Lord Mortimer of Scotland; but there was a Lord March of Scotland, (George Dunbar,) who having quitted his own country in disgust, attached himself so warmly to the English, and did them such signal services in their wars with Scotland, that the Parliament petitioned the King to bestow some reward on him. He fought on the side of Henry in this rebellior, and was the means of saving his life at the battle of Shrewsbury, as is related by Holinshed. This, no doubt, was the lord whom Shakespeare designed to represent in the act of sending friendly intelligence to the King. Our author had a recollection that there was in these wars a Scottish lord on the King's side, who bore the same title with the English family, on the rebel side, (one being the Earl of March in England, the other, Earl of March in Scotland,) but his memory deceived him as to the particular name which was common to them both. He took it to be Mortimer, instead of March. STEEVENS.

P. 323. I, in my condition,

HENRY IV. PART II.

Shall better speak of you than you deserve.] I know not well the mean: ing of the word condition in this place; I believe it is the same with temper of mind: I shall, in my good nature, speak better of you than you merit. JOHNSON.

P. 338. Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds,

But Harry Harry] Amurath the Third (the sixth Emperor of the Turks) died on January the 18th, 1595-6. The people being generally disaffected to Mahomet his eldest son, and inclined to Amurath, one of his younger children, the Emperor's death was concealed for ten days by the Janizaries, till Mahomet came from Amasia to Constantinople. On his arrival he was saluted Emperor by the great Bassas, and others his favourers; "which done, (says Knolles,) he presently after caused all his brethren to be invited to a solemn feast in the court; whereunto they, yet ignorant of their father's death, came chearfully, as men fearing no harm: but, being come, were there all most miserably strangled." It is highly probable that Shakespeare here alludes to this transaction; which was pointed out to me by Dr. Farmer.

This circumstance, therefore, may fix the date of this play subsequently to the beginning of the year 1596; and perhaps it was written while this fact was yet recent. MALONE.

P. 343.

--fig me,
like

The bragging Spaniard.] Dr. Johnson has properly explained this phrase ; but it should be added, that it is of Italian origin. When the Milanese revolted against the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, they placed the empress his wife upon a mule with her head towards the tail, and ignominiously expelled her their city. Frederick afterwards besieged and took the place, and compelled every one of his prisoners on pain of death to take with his teeth a fig from the posteriors of a mule. The party was at the same time obliged to repeat to the executioner the words "ecco la fica." From this circumstance "Far la fica" became a term of derision, and was adopted by other nations. The French say likewise "faire la figue." DOUCE.

P. 344. Nuthook, nuthook, you lie.] From a late "critical review," I learn that nutkhut in the language of the Bazegurs or Nuts of Hindostan signifies rascal or blackguard, and that it was probably introduced into England by the gypsies, between whose language and manners and those of the Nuts a considerable similarity has been discovered by Mr. Richardson as detailed in the 7th vol. Asiatic Researches. Boston Monthly Anth. vol. ii. p. 131.

P. S47. Carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet;] I do not see why Falstaff is carried to the Fleet-prison. We have never lost sight of him since his dismission from the King; he has committed no new fault, and therefore incurred no punishment; but the different agitations of fear, anger, and surprize in him and his company, made a good scene to the eye; and our author, who wanted them no longer on the stage, was glad to find this method of sweeping them away.

VOL. VI.

KING HENRY V.

JOHNSON.

P. 9.the scambling and unquiet time---] In the household book of the 5th Earl of Northumberland there is a particular section, appointing the order of service for the scambling days in Lent; that is, days on which no regular meals were provided, but every one scambled, i. e. scrambled and shifted for himself as well as he could.

PERCY.

P. 13. Convey'd himself as heir to Lady Lingare,] It was manifestly impossible that Henry, who had no hereditary title to his own dominions, could derive one, by the same colour, to another person's. He merely proposes the invasion and conquest of France, in prosecution of the dying advice of his father:

❝to busy giddy minds

"In foreign quarrels; that action, thence borne out,
"Might waste the memory of former days:"

that his subjects might have sufficient employment to mislead their attention from the nakedness of his title to the crown. The zeal and eloquence of the Archhishop RITSON. are owing to similar motives.

P. 48.1 must speak with him from the pridge.] Fluellen, who comes from the bridge, wants to acquaint the king with the transactions that had happened there. This he calls speaking to the king from the bridge. THEOBALD.

P. 63. --------take from them now

The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers] If the sense of reckoning, in consequence of the King's petition, was taken from them, the numbers opposed to them would be no longer formidable. When they could no more count their enemies, they could no longer fear them. STEEVENS.

P. 65. Two chantries,] One of these monasteries was for Carthusian monks, and was called Bethlehem; the other was for religious men and women of the order of Saint Bridget, and was named Sian. They were on opposite sides of the Thames, and adjoined the royal manor of Sheen, now called Richmond. MALONE.

P. 66. By Jove,] The king prays like a christian, and swears like a heathen.

JOHNSON.

I believe the player-editors alone are answerable for this monstrous incongruity. In consequence of the Stat. 3 James I. c. xxi. against introducing the sacred name on the stage, &c. they omitted it where they could; and in verse, (where the metre would not allow omission,) they substituted some other word in its place. The author, I have not the least doubt, wrote here---By heaven,-----MALONE.

VOL. VII.

KING RICHARD III.

P. 66. Baynard's Castle.] A castle in Thames Street, which had belonged to Richard Duke of York, and at this time was the property of his grandson King Edward V. MALONE.

P. 71. loath'd bigamy:] Bigamy, by a canon of the council of Lyons, A. D. 1274, adopted in England by a statute in 4 Edward I. was made unlawful and infamous. It differed from polygamy, or having two wives at once; as it consisted in either marrying two virgins successively, or once marrying a widow.

BLACKSTONE.

P. 79. To Brecknock.] To the Castle of Brecknock in Wales, where the Duke of Buckingham's estate lay. MALONE.

P 101. That never slept a quiet hour with thee,] Shakespeare was probably here thinking of Sir Thomas More's animated description of Richard, which Holinshed transcribed: "I have heard (says Sir Thomas) by credible report of such as were secret with his chamberlaine, that after this abominable deed done [the murder of his nephews] he never had quiet in his mind. He never thought himself sure where he went abroad; his eyes whirled about; his body privily fenced; his hand ever upon his dagger; his countenance and manner like one always ready to strike againe. He tooke ill rest a-nights; lay long waking and musing, sore wearied with care and watch; rather slumbered than slept, troubled with fearful dreames; sodainely sometime start up, leapt out of bed, and ran about the chamber; so was his restless heart continually tost and tumbled with the tedious impression and stormy remembrances of his abominable deede."

With such a companion well might Anne say, that she never slept one quiet hour. MALONE.

P. 106. the enemy is pass'd the marsh;] There was a large marsh in Bosworth plain between the two armies. Henry passed it, and made such a disposition of his forces that it served to protect his right wing. By this movement he gained also another point, that his men should engage with the sun behind them, and in the faces of his enemies: a matter of great consequence when bows and arrows were in use. MALONE.

P. 108. Now civil wounds are stopp'd] Summary Account of the times and places of the several battles fought between the Houses of York and Lancaster.

1. Battle of Saint Albans, 23 May 1455, between Richard Plantagenet duke of York and king Henry VI. York victorious, Henry taken prisoner. Killed on the royal side, 5041 on York's side 600. Total 5641.

2. Battle of Bloarheath in Shropshire, 30 September 1459, between James lord Audley on the part of king Henry, and Richard Nevil earl of Salisbury on the part of the duke of York. Lord Audley slain, and his army defeated. Killed 2411.

3. Battle of Northampton, 20 July 1160, between Edward Plantagenet, earl of March, eldest son of the duke of York, and Richard Nevil earl of Warwick on the one side, and king Henry on the other. Yorkists victorious. Killed 1035.

4. Battle of Wakefield, 30 December 1460, between Richard duke of York and

queen Margaret. Duke of York slain, and his army defeated; Richard Nevil earl of Salisbury taken prisoner, and afterwards beheaded at Pomfret. Killed 2801.

5. Battle of Mortimer's Cross in Herefordshire, on Candlemasday 1460-1, between Edward duke of York on the one side, and Jasper earl of Pembroke and James Butler earl of Wiltshire on the other. Duke of York victorious. Killed 3800.

6. Second Battle of Saint Albans, 17 February 1460-1, between queen Margaret on the one side, and the duke of Norfolk and the earl of Warwick on the other. The queen victorious. Sir Richard Grey, a. Lancastrian, slain, whose widow afterwards married king Edward IV. Killed 2303.

7. Action at Ferrybridge in Yorkshire, 28 March 1461, between lord Clifford on the part of king Henry, and lord Fitzwalter on the part of the duke of York. Lord Fitzwalter and John lord Clifford slain. Killed 230.

8. Battle of Towton four miles from York, Palm-sunday, 29 March, 1461, between Edward duke of York and king Henry. King Henry defeated. Henry Percy earl of Northumberland slain. Killed 37,046.

9. Battle of Hedgeley Moor in Northumberland, 29 April 1463, between John Nevil viscount Montague on the part of king Edward IV. and the lords Hungerford and Roos on the part of Henry VI. The Yorkists victorious. Killed 108.

10. Battle of Hexham, 15 May 1463, between viscount Montague and King Henry. The king defeated. Lords Roos and Hungerford taken prisoners, and afterwards beheaded. Killed 2024.

11. Battle of Hedgecote four miles from Banbury, 25 July 1469, between William Herbert earl of Pembroke on the part of king Edward, and the lords Fitzburg and Latimer and sir John Conyers on the part of king Henry. The Lancastrians defeated. Killed 5009.

12. Battle of Stamford in Lincolnshire, 1 Oct. 1469, between sir Robert Wells and king Edward; in which the former was defeated and taken prisoner. The vanquished who fled, in order to lighten themselves threw away their coats, whence the place of combat was called Losecoatfield. Killed 10,000.

14. Battle of Barnet, on Easter-sunday, 14 April, 1471, between king Edward on the one side, and the earl of Warwick, the Marquis of Montague, and the earl of Oxford on the part of King Henry. The Lancastrians defeated; the earl of Warwick and the marquis of Montague slain. Killed 10,300.

15. Battle of Tewksbury, 8 May 1471, between king Edward and queen Margaret. The queen defeated, and she and her son prince Edward taken prisoners. On the next day the prince was murdered by king Edward and his brothers. Killed 3,032. Shortly afterwards, in an action between the bastard son of lord Falconbridge and some Londoners, 1092 persons were killed.

16. Battle of Bosworth in Leicestershire, 22 August 1485, between king Richard III. and Henry earl of Richmond, afterwards king Henry VII. Richard defeated and slain. Killed on the part of Richard, 1,013; on the part of Richmond, 181. The total number of persons who fell in the contest between the Houses of York and Lancaster was Ninety-one Thousand and Twenty-six. MALONE.

KING HENRY VIII.

P. 117. Have broke their bucks with laying manors on them] So in King John: "Rash, inconsiderate, fiery voluntaries,

"Have sold their fortunes at their native homes,
"Bearing their birth-rights proudly on their backs,
"To make a hazard of new fortunes here."

Again, in Camden's Remains, 1605: "There was a nobleman merrily conceited, and riotously given, that having lately sold a manor of an hundred tenements, came ruffling into the court, saying, am not I a mighty man that bear an hundred houses on my backe?" MALONE.

P. 129. ---Leave these remnants

Of fool, and feather] This does not allude to the feathers anciently worn in the bats and caps of our countrymen, (a circumstance to which no ridicule could justly belong,) but to an effeminate fashion recorded in Greene's Farewell to Folly, 1617: from whence it appears that even young gentlemen carried fans of feathers in their hands: "we strive to be counted womanish, by keeping of beauty, by curling the hair, by wearing plumes of feathers in our hands, which in wars, our ances tors wore on their heads." STEEVENS.

The text may receive illusration from a passage in Nashe's Life of Iacke Wilton, 1594: "At that time [viz. in the court of King Henry VIII.] I was no common squire, no undertroden torch-bearer, I had my feather in my cup as big as a flag in the foretop, my French doublet gelte in the belly, as though (lyke a pig readie to be spitted) all my guts had been pluckt out, a paire of side paned hose that hung down like two scales filled with Holland cheeses, my long stock that sate close to my dock,--my rapier pendant like a round sticke, &c. my blacke cloake of blacke cloth, ouer