Quarto omits this line. Woodville was the Lord Rivers addressed in line 66, and he was also Lord Scales in right of his wife, the heir and daughter of Lord Scales. Shakespeare was apparently misled into thinking Rivers three separate persons by the passage in Halle, 347: 'The gouernance of this younge Prince was committed too lord Antony Wooduile erle Ryuers and lord Scales, brother to the quene.' He was unaware that one person bore all three of these titles. See also Holinshed, iii. 714, a passage possible to misinterpret in the same way. See note on II. ii. 149.
II. i. 69–72. Cf. Milton's Eikonoklastes (1649), chap. 1, in which, in illustrating that 'the deepest policy of a tyrant hath been ever to counterfeit religious,' Milton states that the poets 'have been in this point so mindful of decorum, as to put never more pious words in the mouth of any person, than of a tyrant. I shall not instance an abstruse author . . ., but one whom we well know was the closest companion of these his [i.e., King Charles'] solitudes, William Shakespeare; who introduces the person of Richard the Third, speaking in as high a strain of piety and mortification as is uttered in any passage of this book [Eikon Basilike], and sometimes to the same sense and purpose with some words in this place: "I intended," saith he, "not only to oblige my friends, but my enemies."'
II. i. 104. give pardon to a slave. '. . . although king Edward were consenting to his death, yet he much did both lament his infortunate chance, & repent his sudden execution: insomuch that, when anie person sued to him for the pardon of malefactors condemned to death, he would accustomablie saie, & openlie speake: "Oh infortunate brother, for whose life not one would make sute!"' Holinshed, iii. 703. Halle, 362.
II. i. 113. Oxford. John de Vere, thirteenth Earl
