NOTE V.
[I. 4. 75.] After this line which is assigned to ‘Keep.’ like the foregoing lines, the Folios insert the stage direction, ‘Enter Brackenbury the Lieutenant,’ and then prefix ‘Bra.’ to the next line, as if Brackenbury and the keeper had been two different persons, instead of being identical as they are in the Quartos. Pope restored the reading of the Quartos. Mr Grant White defends the stage directions of the Folios thus: ‘It was a violation of all propriety to make Sir Robert Brakenbury, Lieutenant of the Tower, go about with a bunch of ponderous keys at his girdle or in his hand. These keys were evidently carried by the keeper, a higher sort of gaoler, but a person of rank much inferior to that of Brakenbury, the commander of the Tower. The stage direction and the prefixes of the quarto are probably the result of the limited number of actors in Shakespeare’s company when the play was first produced, which caused the easily merged parts of the Keeper and Brakenbury to be assigned to one performer.’
But Clarence was no common prisoner, and there would be no degradation in Brakenbury’s acting in person as keeper to a prince of the blood, at a time when even menial offices were rendered by gentlemen of good birth not only to royal personages but also to others. We may observe—though this is of little weight—that the corrector has omitted to provide for the exit of the Keeper.
On the whole we have decided to adhere to the Quartos, as they undoubtedly give what Shakespeare originally wrote, and the alteration found in the Folios is not of such obvious propriety that we should unhesitatingly attribute it to the hand of the author.