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Kate! — “How now,” 1 HENRY IV., ii. 3. 33. “Shakespeare either mistook the name of Hotspur's wife (which was not Katharine, but Elizabeth), or else designedly changed it, out of the remarkable fondness he seems to have had for the familiar appellation of Kate, which he is never weary of repeating, when he has once introduced it; as in this scene, the scene of Katharine and Petruchio, and the courtship between King Henry V. and the French Princess. The wife of Hotspur was the Lady Elizabeth Mortimer, etc. ” (STEEVENS) . “Shakspeare calls this lady [Lady Percy] Kate; Hall and Holinshed call her Elinor, and mention that she was aunt to the Earl of March, on which account Shakspeare, apparently forgetting that he had correctly styled Lady Percy Mortimer's sister [see Mortimer. Wor. I cannot blame him, etc.], in another place (iii. 1. 196) makes Mortimer speak of her as his aunt. There is throughout a confusion between uncle and nephew.” Courtenay's Comment. on the Hist. Plays of Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 93 (note).

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