Page:Henry VI Part 3 (1923) Yale.djvu/137

King Henry the Sixth yoke, but let thy dauntless mind Still ride in triumph over all mischance. Lines strikingly suggestive of Marlowe. Since they do not appear in the True Tragedy, they are doubtless to be ascribed to that poet's influence upon the reviser, not actually to his pen. Compare note on I. ii. 28-31.

 Then Warwick disannuls great John of Gaunt, Which did subdue the greatest part of Spain. John of Gaunt was engaged in an indecisive campaign in Spain in 1386-1387, and in 1367 had served with his brother, the Black Prince, in a more successful expedition. The theme of his rather apocryphal triumphs was apparently popular in England during the Armada era. Kyd's Spanish Tragedy (ca. 1587, I. v. 48 ff.) refers to 'a valiant Englishman,

Braue John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster.

He with a puissant armie came to Spaine,

And tooke our King of Castile prisoner.'

A book (not now extant) was licensed for publication, May 14, 1594, under the title of 'the famous historye of John of Gaunte, sonne to Kinge Edward the Third, with his conquest of Spaine and marriage of his Twoo daughters to the Kinges of Castile and Portugale, &c.'

 Why, Warwick, canst thou speak against thy liege, Whom thou obeyedst thirty and six years. The True Tragedy reads 'thirtie and eight yeeres.' Warwick was born in 1428 and at the time of the negotiation for the French marriage of Edward (1464) was thirty-six years old. But the dramatists were thinking of the general period during which King Henry's sovereignty had been acknowledged by the Yorkist party: i.e. from his accession in 1422 till the final breach in 1459 or 1460.

 Call him my king, by whose injurious doom My elder brother, the Lord Aubrey Vere,