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References / Notes
1 If not indicated otherwise, references to Shakespeare’s plays are drawn from The Oxford Shakespeare,
2nd ed., gen. ed. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
2 David Bevington, ‘Asleep Onstage,’ in From Page to Performance: Essays in Early English Drama, ed. by
John A. Alford (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1995), pp. 51–83; and David Roberts,
‘Sleeping Beauties: Shakespeare, Sleep and the Stage,’ The Cambridge Quarterly, 35 (2006), 231–54.
3 The literary tradition of the trope is, however, much older. Episodes similar to that in Othello can be
found in the Old Testament (I Samuel 26), Ovid (Metamorphoses X, ‘Myrrha and Cinyras’), Apuleius
(Asinus Aureus V, ‘Cupid and Psyche’) or, in English literature, Sir Philip Sidney (Arcadia IV, ‘Pyrocles
and Philoclea’).
4 As the title-page of the 1607 Quarto (London: G. E. for John Wright) suggests, The Devil’s Charter was
performed before King James by the King’s Men earlier that year; John Fletcher was one of the King’s
Men’s principal playwrights, taking over Shakespeare’s position after the latter’s retirement around
1612; The Valiant Welshman has been attributed to the King’s Men’s actor Robert Armin (c. 1563–
1615).
5 Since all three quartos depend upon each other, presenting more or less the same text, I will be
referring to all of them collectively as “the Quarto”, using Q1 for quotations.
6 William Shakespeare, The First Part of the Contention Betwixt the Two Famous Houses of Yorke and
Lancaster (London: Thomas Creed for Thomas Millington, 1594), sig. E2r (original italics).
7 William Shakespeare, Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories and Tragedies, ed. by John Heminge
and Henry Condell (London: Isaac Jaggard and Ed. Blount, 1623), sig. N3r (original italics).
8 Arthur Freeman, ‘Notes on the Text of “2 Henry VI”, and the “Upstart Crow”,’ Notes and Queries, 15
(1968), 128–30 (p. 129).
9 Claire Saunders, ‘“Dead in His Bed”: Shakespeare’s Staging of the Death of the Duke of Gloucester in 2
Henry VI,’ The Review of English Studies (New Series), 36 (1985), 19–34 (p. 25).
10 The play was edited by William Montgomery.
11 Milan Lukeš, ‘První díl sporu dvou slavných rodů a Pravdivá tragédie Richarda, vévody z Yorku (1594 a
1595),’ in Základy shakespearovské dramaturgie (Prague: Charles University, 1985), pp. 57–74
(especially pp. 63–68).
12 ‘Tower,’ in A Dictionary of Stage Directions in English Drama, 1580–1642, by Alan C. Dessen and Leslie
Thomson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 235.
13 Philip Henslowe, Henslowe Papers, Being Documents Supplementary to Henslowe’s Diary, ed. by Walter
W. Gregg (London: A. H. Bullen, 1907), p. 116.
14 For example Sander, Bevis and Holland in The First Part of the Contention; see Lukeš, pp. 59–61. The
mention of ‘the Tower’ in the dialogue of the play might, however, have been intentional as well. In his
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