Chapter LXXVII: Act I: SCENE 1. Page 11

TRA. Up to the _rowel head_.

Dr. Johnson had either forgotten the precise meaning of the word _rowel_, or has made choice of inaccurate language in applying it to the _single spiked spur_ which he had seen in old prints. The former signifies the moveable spiked _wheel_ at the end of a spur, such as was actually used in the time of Henry the Fourth, and long before the other was laid aside. Shakspeare certainly meant the spur of his own time.

SCENE 1. Page 13.

NORTH. Even such a man so faint so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so _woe-begone_,
Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night, &c.

Dr. Bentley's proposed substitution of _Ucalegon_ for _woe-begone_, is a most striking example of the uselessness of learning when unaccompanied with judgment to direct it. Where too had the doctor found that Ucalegon drew Priam's curtain? and, it may be added, where did Shakspeare find that any one did so? It is not very uncommon for our poet to forget his reading, and make events change places. Thus a little further on, he has confounded Althea's firebrand with Hecuba's; and it is not improbable that in the present instance he might have misapplied the vision of Hector to Æneas so finely described in the second book of the Æneid.

SCENE 3. Page 46.

HAST. The _duke_ of Lancaster and Westmorland.

Mr. Malone's note on this anachronism would be more perfect if this slight addition were made to it, "and then not duke of _Lancaster_ but of _Bedford_." Mr. Ritson seems to have traced the source of Shakspeare's error in calling prince John of Lancaster _duke_ of Lancaster, in Stowe's _Annales_; but he has omitted to remark that even then Shakspeare had forgotten that prince John was not the _second_ son of Henry the Fourth. The blunder of the industrious historian is unaccountable. See the seal of Henry the Fifth as prince of Wales and duke of Lancaster in Sandford's _Genealogical history_.