VER. In your behalf still will I wear the same. LAW. And so will I. PLAN. Thanks, gentle sir." Come, let us four to dinner: I dare say, [Exeunt. 6 gentle sir.] 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: 66 MALONE. Thanks, gentle sir; thanks both." STEEVENS. "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. P. I. Vol. XI. p. 225, 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 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 at the time of his death could not have been above thirty years old; for supposing 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 sixteen, Edmond was born in 1394. 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, 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 conse Even like a man new haled from the rack, quence 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 Össory, 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 bro ther 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 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, So fare my limbs with long imprisonment : "For when king Henry, of that name the fift, "He, from Sir Edmund all the blame to shift, "For which condemned shortly he was slain : 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 longe tyme had bene restrayned from hys liberty, and fynally waxed lame,) disceased without yssue, whose inheritance discended 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 the time that a particular person was in London. But, whereever he meant to lay the scene of Mortimer's death, it is clear that the author of this play understood him as representing it to have happened in a London prison; an idea, if indeed his words will bear any other construction, a preceding passage may serve to corroborate: "The erle of March (he has observed) was ever kepte in the courte under such a keper that he could nether doo or attempte any thyng agaynste the kyng wythout his knowledge, and dyed without issue." I am aware, and could easily show, that some of the most interesting events, not only in the Chronicles of Hall and Holinshed, but in the Histories of Rapin, Hume, and Smollet, are perfectly fabulous and unfounded, which are nevertheless constantly cited and regarded as incontrovertible facts. But, if modern writers, standing, as it were, upon the shoulders of their predecessors, and possessing innumerable other advantages, are not always to be depended on, what allowances ought we not to make for those who had neither Rymer, nor Dugdale, nor Sandford to consult, who could have And these grey locks, the pursuivants of death," These eyes,-like lamps whose wasting oil is spent,1 Wax dim, as drawing to their exigent:" no access to the treasuries of Cotton or Harley, nor were permitted the inspection of a public record? If this were the case with the historian, what can be expected from the dramatist? He naturally took for fact what he found in history, and is by no means answerable for the misinformation of his authority. RITSON. * Let dying Mortimer here rest himself.] I know not whether Milton did not take from this hint the lines with which he opens his tragedy. JOHNSON. Rather from the beginning of the last scene of the third Act of the Phonissa of Euripides: Tiresias. “ Ηγε πάροιθε, θύγατερ, ὡς τυφλῶ ποδ Οφθαλμὸς εἶ σὺ, ναυβάταισιν ἄστρόν ὡς. Δευρ ̓ εἰς τὸ λευρὸν πέδον ίχνος τιθεῖσ ̓ ἐμὸν,” &c. 9-pursuivants of death,] Pursuivants. The heralds that, forerunning death, proclaim its approach. JOHNSON. 1like lamps whose wasting oil is spent,] So, in King Richard II: "My oil-dry'd lamp, and time-bewasted light-." as drawing to their exigent:] Exigent, end. STEEVENS. So, in Doctor Dodypoll, a comedy, 1600: JOHNSON. STEEVENS. And pithless arms,] Pith was used for marrow, and figura tively, for strength. JOHNSON. In the first of these senses it is used in Othello: "For since these arms of mine had seven years' pith—." And, figuratively, in Hamlet: "And enterprizes of great pith and moment-" STEEVENS. |