Page:Henry VI Part 2 (1923) Yale.djvu/146

134 references is not minutely accurate. It was Æneas himself who told Dido of his acts, and Ascanius, his son, was impersonated on that occasion by Cupid.

 Stay, Salisbury, With the rude multitude till I return. Warwick speaks through the door to his father, who does not enter the stage.

 Would curses kill, as doth the man drake's groan. The mandrake, or mandragora, was a poisonous plant with narcotic properties. Its forked root was supposed to resemble the human figure, and to utter a cry when pulled from the ground which would kill or drive mad those who heard it. For the latter penalty, cf. Romeo and Juliet, IV. iii. 48 f.

'And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth,

That living mortals, hearing them, run mad.'

 That thou might'st think upon these by the seal, Through whom a thousand sighs are breath'd for thee. As often in cases of difficult syntax, Samuel Johnson's paraphrase has been found the most accurate: 'That by the impression of my kiss forever remaining on thy hand thou mightest think on those lips through which a thousand sighs will be breathed for thee.' 'These' in line 344 is the antecedent of 'whom' and refers to Margaret's lips. The elaborate and 'precious' style which the reviser affects is well illustrated when lines 343-345 are contrasted with the plain language of the Contention version:

'Oh let this kisse be printed in thy hand,

That when thou seest it, thou maist thinke on me.'

 Cardinal Beaufort is at point of death. Beaufort's death occurred on April 11, 1447, six weeks after that of Gloucester, and three years before the banishment of Suffolk (March 17, 1450). The unfavorable character of Beaufort which the dramatists derived from the Tudor chroniclers is not historically justified. The aged cardinal's death seems in par-