SCENE. We have not followed Capell and the more recent editors in attempting to define the precise spot at which each scene took place, where none is mentioned in the body of the play or in the stage directions of the Folio. Nothing is gained by an attempt to harmonize the plot with historical facts gathered from Holinshed and elsewhere, when it is plain that Shakespeare was either ignorant of them or indifferent to minute accuracy. For example, the second scene of Act IV. is supposed to occur at the same place as the first scene of that act, or, at all events, in the immediate neighbourhood (IV. 2. 85), and in England (II. 3. 71 and IV. 2. 110). But Holinshed distinctly states that Arthur was imprisoned first at Falaise and then at Rouen (pp. 554, 555. ed. 1577). The whole play is divided into Acts and Scenes in the first Folio, but arbitrarily. The second act is made to consist of a single scene of 74 lines, and ends in what Theobald has clearly shewn to be the middle of a scene. He, with 'Gildon and others', once supposed the close of the second act to be lost, but afterwards changed his mind and adopted the arrangement we have followed. NOTE III. I. 1. 20. This line must probably be scanned as an Alexandrine, reading the first 'Controlment' in the time of a trisyllable and the second as a quadrisyllable. NOTE IV. I. 1. 43. Here Steevens gives the same stage direction as Capell, '_Enter the Sheriff of Northamptonshire and whispers Essex_,' changing merely '_and_' to '_who_,' and, as usual, ignoring Capell, says in a note that he had taken it from the Old Quarto. He convicts himself of plagiarism, for the 'Old Quarto' has '_Enter the Shrive and whispers the Earle of_ Salis. _in the care_.' It was Capell who changed 'Salis.' to '_Essex_.' All the three editions of the Old Quarto agree in this stage direction _literatim_, except that the edition of 1591 has '_Sals._' for 'Salis.' Salisbury introduces the sheriff thus: 'Please it your Majesty, here is the shrive of Northampton-shire, &c.' NOTE V. I. 1. 75. 'Whether.' Here the first three Folios read 'Where.' In the _Comedy of Errors_, IV. 1. 60, all the Folios agreed in reading 'whe'r.' In both cases we spell 'whether.' The Folios are not consistent. They have, for instance, 'Whether' in line 134 of the present scene, 'Whether hadst thou rather be a Faulconbridge.' As we do not contract the words 'either,' 'neither,' 'mother,' 'brother,' 'hither,' 'thither,' &c. when pronounced in the time of a monosyllable, so we abstain from contracting 'whether', especially as such contraction might cause ambiguity in the sense. NOTE VI. I. 1. 85. In Mr Wilbraham's MS. notes the following occurs: 'Trick' is a term in Heraldry for a 'copy.' In the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1803, Supplement, p. 1207, in an account of various memorandums of Receipts and Expenditures, &c., by some one at the latter end of the 17th century, I find the three following ones: