dBooks desire

In the third act of "The Third Part of King Henry VI.," that monarch
enters, "disguised, with a prayer-book." Farther on, when a prisoner
in the Tower, he is "discovered sitting with a book in his hand, the
Lieutenant attending;" when Gloucester enters, abruptly dismisses the
Lieutenant, and forthwith proceeds to the assassination of the king.
But Gloucester himself is by-and-by to have dealings with the "book of
the play." In the seventh scene of the third act of "King Richard
III.," a stage direction runs: "Enter Gloucester in a gallery above,
between two bishops." Whereupon the Lord Mayor, who has come with
divers aldermen and citizens to beseech the duke to accept the crown
of England, observes:
See where his grace stands 'tween two clergymen!
Says Buckingham:
Two props of virtue for a Christian prince,
To stay him from the fall of vanity;
And, see, a book of prayer in his hand;
True ornaments to know a holy man.
The mayor and citizens departing, Gloucester, in Cibber's acting
version of the tragedy, was wont wildly to toss his prayer-book in the
air.


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