847. Sir Christopher, tell Richmond this from me:-] The person, who is called Sir Christopher here, and who has been styled so in the Dramatis Persona of all the impressions, I find by the chronicles to have been Christopher Urswick, a bachelor in divinity; and chaplain to the countess of Richmond, who had intermarried with the lord Stanley. This priest, the history tells us, frequently went backwards and forwards, unsuspected, on messages betwixt the countess of Richmond, and her husband, and the young earl of Richmond, whilst he was preparing to make his descent on England. THEOBALD.

Dr. Johnson has observed, that Sir was anciently a title assumed by graduates. This the late Mr. Guthrie disputes; and says, it was a title sold by the pope's legates, &c. that his holiness might be on the same footing with the king. STEEVENS.

In the Scornfull Lady of Fletcher, Welford says to Sir Roger, the curate, "I acknowledge you to be your art's master."—" I am but a bachelor of art, sir,” replies Sir Roger. Mr. Guthrie would have done well to have informed us, how Sir Roger could possibly have bought his title of the pope's nuncio; when, as Abigail tells us, he had only claro, besides his pigges in posse."

twenty nobles de

FARMER.

ACT

ACT V.

Line 1. WILL not king Richard let me speak with him?] The reason why the duke of Buckingham solicited an interview with the king, is explained in King Henry VIII. act i.

66

-I would have play'd

"The part my father meant to act upon

"The usurper Richard; who, being at Salisbury,
"Made suit to come in his presence; which, if
granted,

"As he made semblance of his duty, would
"Have put his knife into him." STEEVENS.

See also Hall's Chronicle, Richard III. fo. 16.

REED.

19. Is the determin'd respite of my wrongs.] Hanmer has rightly explained it, the time to which the punishment of his wrongs was respited.

Wrongs in this line means wrongs done, or injurious practices. JOHNSON.

29.

-blame the due of blame. ] This scene should, in my opinion, be added to the foregoing act, so the fourth act will have a more full and striking conclusion, and the fifth act will comprise the business of the important day, which put an end to the competition of York and Lancaster. Some of the quarto editions are not divided into acts, and it is probable, that this and many other plays were left by the author

in one unbroken continuity, and afterwards distributed by chance, or what seems to have been a guide very little better, by the judgment or caprice of the first editors. JOHNSON.

39. -embowell'd bosoms,] Exenterated; ripped up: alluding, perhaps, to the Promethean vulture; or, more probably, to the sentence pronounced in the English courts against traitors, by which they are condemned to be hanged,. drawn, that is, embowelled, and quartered. JOHNSON.

hurdle

Drawn, in the sentence pronounced upon traitors only, signifies to be drawn by the heels or on a from the prison to the place of execution. So, Dr. Johnson has properly expounded it in Measure for Measure, act ii. So, Holinshed in the year 1569, and Stowe's Chronicle, edit. 1614, p. 162, 171, 418, 763, 766. Sometimes our historians use a colloquial inaccuracy of expression in writing, hanged, drawn, and quarter'd; but they often express it-drawn, hanged, and quartered; and sometimes they add-bowelled, or his bowels taken out, which would be tautology, if the same thing was implied in the word drawn.

TOLLET.

Drawn in the sense of embowelled, is never used but in speaking of a fowl. 'It is true, embowelling is also part of the sentence in high treason, but in order of time it comes after drawing and hanging.

46.

BLACKSTONE.

-conscience is a thousand swords,] Alluding

to the old adage, “Conscientia mille testes.”

BLACKSTONE.

70. military skill.

——sound direction :-] True judgment; tried

JOHNSON. 77. Give me some ink and paper—] I have placed these lines here as they stand in the first editions: the rest place them three speeches before, after the words Sir William Brandon, you shall bear my standard; interrupting what there follows; The earl of Pembroke, &c. I think them more naturally introduced here, when he is retiring to his tent; and considering what he has to do that night. POPE.

I have followed the folio, which, of this play, is by far the most correct copy. I do not find myself much influenced by Mr. Pope's remark. STEEVENS.

120. Give me a watch:-] A watch has many significations, but I should believe that it means in this place not a centinel, which would be regularly placed at the king's tent; nor an instrument to measure time, which was not used in that age; but a watch-light, a candle to burn by him; the light. that afterwards burnt blue; yet a few lines after, he says:

Bid my guard watch,

which leaves it doubtful whether watch is not here a sentinel. JOHNSON. A watch, i. e. guard, would certainly be placed about a royal tent, without any request of the king concerning it.

I believe, therefore, that particular kind of candle is here meant, which was anciently called a watch, because, being marked out into sections, each of which

was

was a certain portion of time in burning, it supplied the place of the more modern instrument by which we measure the hours. I have seen these candles represented with great nicety in some of the pictures of Albert Durer.

Barret, in his Alvearie, 1580, mentions watching lamps or candles. So, in Love in a Maze, 1632: "slept always with a watching candle." Again, in The Noble Soldier, 1634:

"Beauty was turn'd into a watching-candle that went out stinking.".

Again, in the Return from Parnassus, 1606: "Sit now immur'd within their private cells, "And drink a long lank watching candle's

smoke."

Again, in Albumazar, 1610:

"Sit up all night like a watching candle."

STEEVENS.

Lord Bacon mentions a species of light called an allnight, which is a wick set in the middle of a large cake JOHNSON. 121. Saddle white Surrey for the field to-morrow.] So, in Holinshed, p. 754:

of wax.

122.

he was mounted on a great white courser," &c. STEEVENS.

Look that my staves be sound,-] Staves are

the wood of the lances.

JOHNSON. As it was usual to carry more lances than one into the field, the lightness of them was an object of consequence. Hall informs us, that at the justs in honour

of