Q. Mar. Rather than made that savage duke thine heir.
The note which follows Mr. Steevens's was not inadvertently introduced by that gentleman, though it certainly should not have been retained as the text now stands.
Scene 4. Page 242.
Q. Mar. [Putting a paper crown on his head.]
Mr. Ritson has not shown, as he conceived he had, that the preceding commentator was certainly mistaken: for the author of the play, if he be accountable for the stage direction, could not have "followed history with the utmost precision," when he makes queen Margaret put a paper crown on York's head; whereas Holinshed, the black-letter chronicler whom Mr. Ritson should have first consulted, and who only follows Whethamstede, relates that a garland of bulrushes was placed on York's head; which was afterwards stricken off and presented to the queen. Nor is there historical evidence that the queen herself put on the crown. Shakspeare has continued the same error in King Richard the Third, where he makes Gloucester say to queen Margaret,
"The curse my noble father laid on thee
When thou didst crown his noble brows with paper."
He was therefore, in this instance, misled by the author of King Henry the Sixth; or he must have written the queen's speech himself.
Scene 4. Page 244.
York. Whose tongue more poisons than the adder's tooth.
Again in Cymbeline, Act III. Scene 4;