II. iii. 6. As Scythian Tomyris by Cyrus' death. The story of Herodotus is that Tomyris, Queen of the Massagetæ, led her troops to battle after her husband's death, slew Cyrus the Great (B. C. 529), and in scorn of his bloodthirstiness dropped his severed head into a wine skin filled with blood. Compare the countess's address to Talbot in line 34.
II. iii. 22. this is a child, a silly dwarf. The countess exaggerates greatly. Talbot was eighty years of age when he fell in battle, and the examination of his bones, when they were exhumed in 1874, showed that he could not have been undersized. 'The bones generally were remarkably well developed, and had evidently belonged to a muscular man.'
II. iv. 6. Or else was wrangling Somerset in th' error? Capell changed error to 'right' and Rolfe, retaining the old text, wished to interpret else as 'in other words.' Neither, probably, is justified. Richard's apparent alternatives amount to the same thing. From craft or from impetuosity he leaves the hearers to whom he appeals but one answer. It is 'heads, I win; tails, Somerset loses.'
II. iv. 7. Faith, I have been a truant in the law. Shakespeare brilliantly imagines the quarrel of the roses to have started among a group of young aristocrats, studying law in the Temple.
II. iv. 81. the yeoman. Somerset's slur is explained in his next speech. The execution of Plantagenet's father for treason (as recorded in the play of Henry V) deprived his heir of all titles of nobility. Lionel of Clarence, third son of Edward III, was not the grandfather, as Warwick states in line 83, but the great-great-grandfather of Plantagenet. See the genealogical table on next page.
II. iv. 96. attached, not attainted. Literally, arrested, but not formally condemned, as by bill of attainder, to the legal consequences of treason. It is evident that the speaker is splitting hairs, but it
