I. 1. 73. Capell says: "Too hasty a perusal of a passage in Holinshed betray'd Shakespeare into a mistake in this place. The 'earl of Fife' was not 'son to Douglas' but to a duke of Albany, as the same chronicler tells us soon after; and in this passage too, was it rightly pointed, and a little attended to: for that duke was then governour; i.e. of Scotland; and the word governour should have a comma after it, or (rather) a semi-colon." He goes on to say that the mistake is repeated I. 3. 261, and proposes to give historical truth to both these passages by reading:
(1) 'Prisoners to Hotspur are
Mordake the earl of Fife; and he himself
The beaten Douglas; and with him, &c.'
(2) 'And make the regent's son your only mean
For powers in Scotland.'
That is (says Capell) by delivering him, as it appears they did by some words of the Poet himself, p. 85 (i.e. IV. 4. 23), where the earl of Fife is spoken of as making a part of Hotspur's army at Shrewsbury.
[Note V.]
I. 1. 75-77. The first and second Quartos read:
'A gallant prize? Ha coosen, is it not? In faith it is.
West. A conquest for a Prince to boast of,'
leaving a blank between 'not?' and 'In faith.' The subsequent Quartos and the Folios have the same reading without the blank. Pope reads:
'A gallant prize? ha, cousin, is it not?