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).