Page:Henry VI Part 1 (1918) Yale.djvu/131

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King Henry the Sixth
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issue. To these great estates were added by inheritance from his mother's side the titles of the Mortimers, Earls of March.

III. i. 178, 179. King Henry's voyage to France occurred at the close of 1431, five years after the Parliament of Leicester which furnished the material for the opening portion of this scene.

III. i. 185 S. d. Sennet. A sennet was a trumpet signal to mark the approach or departure of a procession.

III. i. 194. that fatal prophecy. The prophecy was very well known in Shakespeare's time—more so, doubtless, than in Henry V's. Holinshed thus reports it: 'The king, being certified [of the birth of his son at Windsor] gaue God thanks . . . But, when he heard reported the place of his natiuitie, were it that he [had been] warned by some prophesie, or had some foreknowledge, or else iudged himselfe of his sonnes fortune, he said vnto the lord Fitz Hugh, his trustie chamberleine, these words: "My lord, I Henrie, borne at Monmouth, shall small time reigne, & much get; and Henrie, borne at Windsore, shall long reigne, and all loose: but as God will, so be it."'

III. ii. S. d. The story of the capture of Rouen is apocryphal. This city remained in the hands of the English till 1449, eighteen years after Joan of Arc had been burned there. The particular stratagem here related may have been suggested by two different anecdotes found in the chroniclers, one referring to the capture of the castle of Cornill (Corville ?) by the English, the other to the capture of Le Mans by the French.

III. ii. 22. Where. This is Rowe's emendation, adopted regularly by subsequent editors. The Folios read Here, which may well be defended: Joan's signal is not to distinguish the safest passageway, but to