Page:Henry VI Part 1 (1918) Yale.djvu/129

King Henry the Sixth does appear that Richard was permitted to succeed to his inheritances without the formal restoration to his blood which the play represents (III. i. 148 ff.). See D. N. B.

 Nestor-like aged, in an age of care. That is, trebly aged by care. 'The care that has afflicted my life has made me as old as Nestor' (who lived through three mortal lifetimes).

 Edmund Mortimer. The poet adopts without essential alteration the statement of the chroniclers. Holinshed says: 'Edmund Mortimer, the last earle of March of that name (which long time had beene restreined from his libertie ) deceassed without issue; whose inheritance descended to the lord Richard Plantagenet.' Modern commentators point out that the chronicles, and with them Shakespeare, are wrong, since this Mortimer died in freedom in 1424. Apparently, they confused Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, with his cousin, Sir John Mortimer, who after long captivity was executed in the same year (1424). It is evident, moreover, from the use of the word 'mother' rather than 'grandmother' in line 74, that Shakespeare further confuses Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, with an older Edmund Mortimer, his uncle, just as he does in the first part of Henry IV. (See note on I. iii. 145, 146 of that play in the present edition.)

 the rest I wish thee gather. Probably gather is used in the well-authenticated Shakespearean sense of 'infer,' and Mortimer desires cautiously to remind his nephew of the full significance of his heirship; namely, the claim to the crown that it carries with it.

 'Or make my injuries an instrument for attaining my ambition.' The Folios read 'will' instead of ill, the latter being one of Theobald's convincing emendations.