[ [4] "Perkins." Marginal note in the old copy. Richard Perkins was an actor of great ability. At the end of the White Devil Webster speaks of the "well-approved industry of my friend Master Perkins," and adds that "the worth of his action did crown both the beginning and end." He took the part of Capt. Goodlack in Heywood's Fair Maid of the West, of Sir John Belfare in Shirley's Wedding, of Hanno in Nabbes' Hannibal and Scipio, and of Fitzwater in Davenport's King John and Matilda. From Wright's Historia Histrionica we learn that he died "some years before the Restoration."
[ [5] "A metaphor borrowed from the fencing-school, prizes being played for certain degrees in the schools where the Art of Defence was taught,—degrees, it appears, of Master, Provost, and Scholar."—Dyce's Shakespeare Glossary.
[ [6] A friend of Alleyn's backed him for a wager to excel George Peele in acting any part that had been sustained by Knell or Bentley. See Dyce's Greene and Peele (ed. 1861, pp. 330, 331). In the Introduction to the Knight of the Burning Pestle the Citizen says that his prentice Ralph "should have played Jeronimo with a shoemaker for a wager."
[ [7] The Duc de Guise, who organised the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. He was assassinated in 1588.
[ [8] This is Dyce's correction for "empire."
[ [9] Old ed. "the Drancus."
[ [10] As a word is required to complete the verse, I have followed Cunningham in inserting "but."
[ [11] All the editions give "Britain." For the sake of the metre I read "Britainy"—a form found in Edward II., ii. 2, l. 42.
[ [12] Old ed. "Samintes," for which the modern editors give "Samnites." Between the "Samnites" and the "men of Uz" there can be no possible connection. My emendation suits the context. We have Saba for Sabæa in Faustus, xii. 25, &c.
[ [13] Old ed. "silverbings." Dyce observes that the word "silverling" occurs in Isaiah (vii. 23):—"A thousand vines at a thousand silverlings."