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Scene 2. Page 139.

CADE. the three-hoop'd pot shall have ten hoops.

The note here is not sufficiently explanatory, The old drinking-pots, being of wood, were bound together, as barrels are, with hoops; whence

they were called hoops. Cade promises that every can which now had three hoops shall be increased in size so as to require ten. What follows in the notes about "burning of cans," does not appear to relate to the subject.

Sc. 2. p. 140.

SMITH. The clerk of Chatham.

This person is a non-entity in history, and in all probability a character invented by the writer of the play. It it presumed that few will be inclined to agree with Mr. Ritson in supposing him to have been Thomas Bayly a necromancer at Whitechapel, and Cade's bosom friend.

Sc. 7. p. 161.

CADE. Then break into his son in law's house, Sir James
Cromer.

Mr. Ritson cites William of Worcester to shew that this sheriff's name was William. The author of the play, if wrong, may be justified by the examples of Halle, Grafton, Stowe, in his early editions, and Holinshed, who call him James. Fabian, as if doubtful, leaves a blank

for Crowmer's Christian name. As to the fact itself, the evidence of William of Worcester, a contemporary writer, is entitled to the preference. Fuller's list of the sheriffs of Kent likewise makes the name William.

Sc. 10. p. 173.

CADE. I think this word sallet was born to do me good: for many a time, but for a sallet, my brain-pan had been cleft with a brown bill.

The notes on this occasion may admit of correction as well as curtailment. It is possible that we have borrowed sallet from the French salade, in the sense of a helmet; but the original word is the old Teutonic schale, which signifies gene rally, a covering. Hence shell, scale, scull, shield, &c. Wicliffe does not use brain-pan for scull, in Judges ix. 53, as Mr. Whalley sup poses, but brain, simply.

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KING HENRY VI. PART III.

ACT I.

Scene 1. Page 223.

EXE. Here comes the queen whose looks bewray her anger.

ALTHOUGH the word bewray has received very proper illustration on the present and other occasions, it remains to observe that its simple and original meaning was to discover or disclose; that it has been confounded with betray, which is used, though not exclusively, for to discover for bad or treacherous purposes, a sense in which bewray is never properly found. Of this position take the following proof: "If you do so, saide the other, then you ought to let me knowe what so ever you know your selfe: unlesse you thinke that yourself will bewray yourself, except you doubt yourself will deceive yourself, and unlesse you thinke that yourself will betray your self." Lupton's Siuqila, 1580, 4to, sign. L 4. b.

Sc. 1. p. 224.

Q. MAR. Rather than made that savage duke thine heir.

The note which follows Mr. Steevens's was not inadvertently introduced by that gentleman, though it certainly should not have been retained as the text now stands.

Sc. 4. p. 242.

Q. MAR. [Putting a paper crown on his head.]

Mr. Ritson has not shown, as he conceived he had, that the preceding commentator was certainly mistaken for the author of the play, if he be accountable for the stage direction, could not have "followed history with the utmost precision," when he makes queen Margaret put a paper crown on York's head; whereas Holinshed, the black letter chronicler whom Mr. Ritson should have first consulted, and who only follows Whethamstede, relates that a garland of bulrushes was placed on York's head, which was afterwards stricken off and presented to the queen. Nor is there historical evidence that the queen herself put on the crown. Shakspeare has continued the same error in King Richard the

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