For treason executed in our late king's days? 5 * For treason executed in our late king's days?] This unmetrical line may be fomewhat harmonized by adopting a practice common to our author, and reading-execute, instead of executed. Thus in King Henry V. we have create instead of created, and contaminate inftead of contaminated. STEEVENS. 7 6 Corrupted, and exempt - Exempt, for excluded. WARBURTON. -- time once ripen'd - ] So, in The Merchant of Venice : 8 For your partaker Poole, ) Partaker in ancient language, fignifies accomplice, So, in Pfalm L: When thou faweft a thief thou did'st consent unto him, and haft been partaker with the adulterers." STEEVENS. 9 I'll note you in my book of memory, ) So, in Hamlet: the table of my memory. Again: 2 " shall live " Within the book and volume of my brain." STEEVENS. To Scourge you for this apprehension:] Though this word pofsesses all the copies, I am perfuaded it did not come from the author. I have ventured to read reprehenfion: and Plantagenet means, that Somerset had reprehended or reproached him with his father the Earl of Cambridge's treason. THEOBALD. Apprehenfion, i. e. opinion. Warburton. So, in Much Ado about Nothing: "-how long have you profess'd apprehenfion?" STEEVENS. Look to it well; and say you are well warn'd. SOM. Ay, thou shalt find us ready for thee still : And know us, by these colours, for thy foes; For these my friends, in spite of thee, shall wear. PLAN. And, by my foul, this pale and angry rofe, As cognizance of my blood-drinking hate, 3 Or flourish to the height of my degree. Sur. Go forward, and be chok'd with thy am bition! And fo farewell, until I meet thee next. [Exit. SOM. Have with thee, Poole. -Farewell, ambi tious Richard. [Exit. 1 PLAN. How I am brav'd, and must perforce endure it! WAR. This blot, that they object against your house, Shall be wip'd out in the next parliament, And, if thou be not then created York, Mean time, in signal of my love to thee, As cognizance of my blood-drinking hate, ) So, in Romeo and Juliet : " Either my eye-fight fails, or thou look'ft pale.- 1 A badge is called a cognisance à cognofcendo, because by it such persons as do wear it upon their fleeves, their shoulders, or in their hats, are manifeftly known whose servants they are. In heraldry the cognisance is seated upon the most eminent part of the helmet. TOLLET. 4 Shall be wip'd out - ) editor of the second folio. Old copy-whip't, Corrected by the MALONE. Against proud Somerset, and William Poole, PLAN. Good master Vernon, I am bound to you, That you on my behalf would pluck a flower. VER. In your behalf still will I wear the fame. LAW. And fo will I. PLAN. Thanks, gentle fir. 5 [Exeunt. 5 SCENE V. The fame. A Room in the Tower. Enter MORTIMER, brought in a chair by two Keepers. MOR. Kind keepers of my weak decaying age, gentle fir.] The latter word, which yet does not complete the metre, was added by the editor of the second folio. Perhaps the line had originally this conclusion: MALONE. --Thanks, gentle fir; thanks both." STEEVENS. 6 Enter Mortimer, Mr. Edwards, in his MS notes, observes, that Shakspeare has varied from the truth of history, to introduce this scene between Mortimer and Richard Plantagenet. Edmund Mortimer served under Henry V. in 1422, and died unconfined in Ireland in 1424. Holinshed says, that Mortimer was one of the mourners at the funeral of Henry V. His uncle, Sir John Mortimer, was indeed prisoner in the Tower, and was executed not long before the Earl of March's death, being Let dying Mortimer here rest himself. 4 charged with an attempt to make his escape in order to stir up an infunection in Wales. STEEVENS. A Remarker on this note (the author of the next seems to think that he has totally overturned it, by quoting the following paflage from Hal's Chronicle: "During whiche parliament (held in the thid year of Henry VI. 1425, 'came to London Peter Duke of Quimber, whiche of the Duke of Exeter, &c. was highly fefted. During whych season Edmond Mortymer, the last Eile of Marche of that name, (whiche long tyme had bene restraybed from bys liberty and fually waxed lame,) disceased without yssue, whofe inheritance descended to Lord Richard Piantagenet," &c. as if a circumftance which Hall mentioned to mark the time of Mortimer's death, neceffarily explained the place where it happened alfo. The fact is, that this Edmund Mortimer did not die in Londou, but at Trim in Ireland. He did not however die in confinement (as Sandford has erroneously afferted in his Genealogical Hiftory. See King Henry IV. Part I. Vol. XII. p. 215, n. 7.); and whether he ever was confined, (except by Owen Glendower) may be doubted, notwithstanding the affertion of Hall. Hardyng, who lived at the time, says he was treated with the greatest kindness and care both by Henry IV. (to whom he was a ward,) and by his fon Henry V. See his Chronicle, 1543, fol. 229. He was certainly at liberty in the year 1415, having a few days before King Henry failed from Southampton, divulged to him in that town the traiterous intention of his brother-in-law Richard Earl of Cambridge, by which he probably conciliated the friendship of the young king. He at that time received a general pardon from Henry, and was employed by him in a naval enterprize. At the coronation of Queen Katharine he attended and held the sceptre. Soon after the acceffion of King Henry VI. he was conftituted by the English Regency chief governor of Ireland, an office which he executed by a deputy of his own appointment. In the latter end of the year 1424, he went himself to that country, to protect the great inheritance which he derived from his grandmother Philippa, (daughter to Lionel Duke of Clarence) from the incurfions of fome hish chieftains, who were aided by a body of Scottish rovers; but foon after his arrival died of the plague in his castle at Trim, in January 1624-5. This Edmond Mortimer was, I believe, confounded by the author of this play, and by the old historians, with his kinfman, who was perhaps about thirty years old at his death. Edmond Mortimer at the time of his death could not have been above thirty 1 Even like a man new haled from the rack, 1 years old; for fuppofing that his grandmother Philippa was married at fifteen, in 1376, his father Roger could not have been born till 1377; and if he married at the early age of fixteen, Edmond was born in 1394. This family had great poffeffions in Ireland, in consequence of the marriage of Lionel Duke of Clarence with the daughter of the Earl of Ulster, in 1360, and were long connected with that country. Lionel was for some time Viceroy of Ireland, and was created by his father Edward III. Duke of Clarence, in consequence of pofseffing the honour of Clare, in the county of Thomond. Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, who married Philippa the duke's only daughter, fucceeded him in the government of Ireland, and died in his office, at St. Dominick's Abbey, near Cork, in December 1381. His fon, Roger Mortimer, was twice Vicegerent of Ireland, and was flain at a place called Kenles, in Ofory, in 1398. Edmund his son, the Mortimer of this play, was, as has been already mentioned, Chief Governor of Ireland, in the years 1423, and 1424, and died there in 1425. His nephew and heir, Richard Duke of York, (the Plantagenet of this play) was in 1449 constituted Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for ten years, with extraordinary powers; and his son George Duke of Clarence (who was afterwards murdered in the Tower) was born in the Castle of Dublin, in 1450. This prince filled the same office which so many of his ancestors had possessed, being conftituted Chief Governor of Ireland for life, by his brother King Edward IV. in the third year of his reign. Since this note was written, I have more precisely ascertained the age of Edmond Mortimer Earl of March, uncle to the Richard Plantagenet of this play. He was born in December 1392, and consequently was thirty-two years old when he died. His ancestor, Lionel Duke of Clarence, was married to the daughter of the Earl of Ulster, but not in 1360, as I have said, but about the year 1353. He probably did not take his title of Clarence from his great Irish possessions, (as I have suggested) but rather from his wife's mother, Elizabeth de Clare, third daughter of Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloster, and fister to Gilbert de Clare, the laft (of that name) Earl of Glofter who founded Clare Hall in Cambridge. The error concerning Edmund Mortimer, brother-in-law to Richard Earl of Cambridge, having been kept in captivity untill he died," seems to have arisen from the legend of Richard Plantagenet, duke of Yorke, in The Mirrour for Magistrates, 1575, where the following lines are found: |