Page:Henry VIII (1925) Yale.djvu/143

King Henry the Eighth pears to have been the occasion of the conflagration which destroyed the Globe Theatre. See Appendix B, p. 150.

The fairest hand. Anne Boleyn's presence at this entertainment is an invention of the dramatists. There is no indication in Holinshed that she was there.

And not to kiss you. Kissing before the dance was the custom. If he had not kissed her, he would have been 'unmannerly.'

This scene (by Fletcher), while scarcely advancing the action of the drama, is yet finely effective, taken by itself. It is a close dramatization from Holinshed (1587), p. 865, even to the extent of keeping many of the original phrases.

To have brought. The first three Folios read To him brought; the correction was made in the Fourth.

Earl Surrey was sent thither, and in haste too, Lest he should help his father. Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey and in 1524 Duke of Norfolk, had married Elizabeth Stafford, the eldest daughter of the Duke of Buckingham.

The mirror of all courtesy. 'He is tearmed in the books of the law in the said thirteenth yeare of Henrie the eight (where his arreignement is liberallie set downe) to be the floure and mirror of all courtesie.' Holinshed (1587), p. 870.

the axe with the edge towards him. This indicated that the prisoner had been condemned.

Sir William Sandys. The same character that has figured in Act I as Lord Sandys, only here his title is correctly given. Theobald corrected the Folio, which reads Walter.

evils. Some commentators have wished to take evils in this passage and in Measure for Measure, II. ii. 172, in the Elizabethan sense of