Page:Henry VI Part 1 (1918) Yale.djvu/130

118  The historical place of this scene was Leicester, where Parliament met in 1426 (three years before the relief of Orleans depicted in Act I). Line 77 shows, however, that the dramatist thought of the events as occurring in London. King Henry, who plays a precocious part in the scene, was actually in his fifth year.

 Gloucester's third charge against Winchester, as reported by the chroniclers, was that he had put men at arms and archers in ambush at the Southwark end of London Bridge, with intent to slay the Protector if he attempted to pass that way to the young king at Eltham. The reference to the trap laid at the Tower alludes of course to the incident dramatized in I. iii.

 Rome Roam. The words were not identical in sound. Elsewhere in Shakespeare Rome rimes with 'doom,' 'groom,' 'room,'—words which have not essentially changed their pronunciation, while roam has presumably the vowel sound in modern 'broad.' Probably the pun in the present line was consciously inexact. Otherwise one might argue that Shakespeare was not its author.

 enter talk. On the precedent of the participle entertalking in Golding's translation of Ovid (1565-67), Hart changed this phrase to a single word: entertalk. The New English Dictionary does not recognize the word.

 This reference to the use of pebble stones, when weapons were forbidden the adherents of the contending noblemen, appears to show that the author of the scene had recourse to the ancient chronicler Fabyan. The episode is not mentioned by Holinshed.

 Richard Plantagenet inherited the earldom of Cambridge from his father and the dukedom of York from his father's elder brother, who had died (at Agincourt; cf. Henry V, IV. vi.) without