against Winchester by Gloucester (in 1426) relates to the former's alleged complicity in an attempt to murder the Prince of Wales, later Henry V. The same scandal has been more obscurely insinuated by Gloucester in I. i. 33, 34.
I. iii. 35. The disorderly houses on the Southwark bank of the Thames were under the control of the Bishop of Winchester and paid him a revenue. The proximity of these houses to the Rose Theatre, where this play appears to have been first acted (and to the later Globe), doubtless gave point to the allusion.
I. iii. 39. This be Damascus, be thou cursed Cain. Several popular mediaeval works (Mandeville's Travels, Higden's Polychronicon) gave currency to the belief that Abel was slain on the site of Damascus.
I. iv. 23-56. This passage involves several anachronisms. Salisbury's mortal wound was received at Orleans in October, 1428. Talbot was captured at Patay in June, 1429, and was not released by exchange with Santrailles till 1433.
I. iv. 95. Plantagenet. Montacute, not Plantagenet, was Salisbury's name. Furthermore, the appellation Plantagenet was not adopted by the English royal family till after Salisbury's death. It first appears in public records in 1460, being revived by one of the characters in this play, Richard Duke of York, as a means of expressing superiority of descent over the Lancastrian line (cf. D. N. B. s. v. Plantagenet).
like thee. The reading of the First Folio, meaning 'I will be as unconcernedly remorseless as you have been.' The next line carries with it a subordinate reminiscence of the well-known story of Nero, which led the later Folios to alter like thee to 'Nero-like will.' Malone then blended the two readings into the vapid 'like thee, Nero,' a perversion which nearly all modern editors have unfortunately accepted.
