NOTES
Dramatis Personæ. A list of characters was first given in Rowe's edition of 1709. The First Folio divides the play into acts, of which the first is headed Actus Primus. Scæna Prima. There is no further division into scenes.
I. i. S. d. aloft. The tribunes and senators enter on the gallery which was situated at the back of the Elizabethan stage, and served a variety of purposes. It was, e.g., the balcony from which Juliet speaks to Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, and in The Taming of the Shrew it served as the gallery from which Christopher Sly and his attendants watch the play performed on the lower stage. Cf. also below, I. i. 298 and V. ii. 8.
I. i. 9. Romans. 'As a matter of orthoepy, it is perhaps worthy of notice that throughout this play, and generally in English books printed before the middle of the seventeenth century, this word is spelled Romaines or Romanes. "Romaine" could hardly have been pronounced Roman.' (White.)
I. i. 35. In coffins from the field. After these words in the Quarto of 1594, there is a passage of three and a half lines which was omitted from the later texts. Lines 35–38 in the 1594 Quarto read as follows:
'In coffins from the field, and at this day
To the Monument of that Andronicy
Done sacrifice of expiation
And slaine the Noblest prisoner of the Gothes.'
I. i. 64. Because of the fact that there is a distinct break here between the action that has just finished and that now commencing, Pope, Capell, Malone, and
