I'll note you in my book of memory 2, derate. So, in Psalm 1.: “When thou sawest a thief thou didst consent unto him, and hast been partaker with the adulterers.” Again, in Marlow's translation of the first book of Lucan, 1600: "Each side had great partakers: Cæsar's cause "The Gods abetted Again, in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, lib. ii. :" his obsequies being no more solemnized by the teares of his partakers, than the bloud of his enemies." STEEVENS. 2 I'll note you in my BOOK OF MEMORY,] the table of my memory." shall live "Within the book and volume of my So, in Hamlet: brain." STEEVENS. 3 To scourge you for this APPREHENSION] Though this word possesses all the copies, I am persuaded it did not come from the author. I have ventured to read-reprehension: and Plantagenet means, that Somerset had reprehended or reproached him with his father the Earl of Cambridge's treason. THEOBALD. Apprehension, i. e. opinion. WARBURTON. So, in Much Ado About Nothing: 4 66 how long have you profess'd apprehension?” this PALE and angry rose, STEEVENS. As cognizance of my BLOOD-DRINKING hate,] So, in Romeo and Juliet: "Either my eye-sight fails, or thou look'st pale. 66 66 And, trust me, love, in mine eye so do you: Dry sorrow drinks our blood." STEEVENS. In A badge is called a cognisance à cognoscendo, because by it such persons as do wear it upon their sleeves, their shoulders, or in their hats, are manifestly known whose servants they are. heraldry the cognisance is seated upon the most eminent part of the helmet. TOLLET. SUF. Go forward, and be chok'd with thy ambi tion! And so farewell, until I meet thee next. tious Richard. SOM. Have with thee, Poole.-Farewell, ambi [Exit [Exit. PLAN. HOW I am brav'd, and must perforce en dure it! WAR. This blot, that they object against your house, Shall be wip'd out' in the next parliament, PLAN. Good master Vernon, I am bound to you, PLAN. Thanks, gentle siro. Come, let us four to dinner: I dare say, 5 Shall be WIP'D out editor of the second folio. [Exeunt. ] Old copy-whip't. Corrected by the MALONE. gentle SIR.] The latter word, which yet does not com plete the metre, was added by the editor of the second folio. Perhaps the line had originally this conclusion: 66 MALONE. Thanks, gentle sir; thanks both." STEEVENS. SCENE V. The Same. A Room in the Tower. Enter MORTIMER', brought in a Chair by Two Keepers. MOR. Kind keepers of my weak decaying age, 7 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 charged with an attempt to make his escape in order to stir up an insurrection 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 passage from Hall's Chronicle: "During whiche parliament [held in the third year of Henry VI. 1425,] came to London Peter Duke of Quimber, whiche of the Duke of Exeter, &c. was highly fested—. During whych season Edmond Mortymer, the last Erle of Marche of that name, (whiche long tyme had bene restrayned from hys liberty and finally waxed lame,) disceased without yssue, whose inheritance descended to Lord Richard Plantagenet," &c. as if a circumstance which Hall mentioned to mark the time of Mortimer's death, necessarily explained the place where it happened also. The fact is, that this Edmund Mortimer did not die in London, but at Trim in Ireland. He did not however die in confinement (as Sandford has erroneously asserted in his Genealogical History. See King Henry IV. Part I. vol. xvi. p. 220, n. 5.); and whether he ever was confined, (except by Owen Glendower,) may be doubted, notwithstanding the assertion 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 son Henry V. See his Chronicle, 1453, fol. 229. He was certainly at liberty in the year 1415, having a few days before King Henry sailed from Southampton, divulged to him in that town the traiterous intentions of his brother-in-law Richard Earl Let dying Mortimer here rest himselfR.— 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 accession of King Henry VI. he was constituted 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 incursions of some Irish chieftains, who were aided by a body of Scottish rovers; but soon after his arrival died of the plague in his castle at Trim, in January 1424-5. This Edmond Mortimer was, I believe, confounded by the author of this play, and by the old historians, with his kinsman, who was perhaps about thirty years old at his death. Edmond Mortimer was born in December 1392, and consequently at the time of his death was thirty-two years old. This family had great possessions in Ireland, in consequence of the marriage of Lionel Duke of Clarence with the daughter of the Earl of Ulster, about 1353, 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 possessing the honour of Clare, in the county of Thomond. Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, who married Philippa the duke's only daughter, succeeded him in the government of Ireland, and died in his office, at St. Dominick's Abbey, near Cork, in December 1381. His son, Roger Mortimer, was twice Vicegerent of Ireland, and was slain at a place called Kenles, in Ossory, 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 constituted Chief Governor of Ireland for life, by his brother King Edward IV. in the third year of his reign. Perhaps I have been mistaken in one assertion which I have made in the former part of this note; Mortimer probably did not So fare my limbs with long imprisonment: take his title of Clarence from his great Irish possessions, (as I have suggested) but rather from his wife's mother, Elizabeth le Clare, third daughter of Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloster, and sister to Gilbert de Clare, the last (of that name) Earl of Gloster, 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: "His cursed son ensued his cruel path, And kept my guiltless cousin strait in durance, "He, from Sir Edmund all the blame to shift, "For which condemned shortly he was slain : "In helping right this was my father's gain." MAlone. It is objected that Shakspeare has varied from the truth of history, to introduce this scene between Mortimer and Richard Plantagenet; as the former served under Henry V. in 1422, and died unconfined in Ireland, in 1424. In the third year of Henry the Sixth, 1425, and during the time that Peter Duke of Coimbra was entertained in London, "Edmonde Mortimer (says Hall) the last erle of Marche of that name (which long tyme had bene restrayned from hys liberty, and fynally waxed lame,) disceased without yssue, whose inheritance descended to lord Richard Plantagenet," &c. Holinshed has the same words; and these authorities, though the fact be otherwise, are sufficient to prove that Shakspeare, or whoever was the author of the play, did not intentionally vary from the truth of history to introduce the present scene. The historian does not, indeed, expressly say that the Earl of March died in the Tower; but one cannot reasonably suppose that he meant to relate an event which he knew had happened to a free man in Ireland, as happening to a prisoner during |