Lorenzo (1613-1642) was the son of Henry Cary (1575-1633), 1st Viscount Falkland and Lord Deputy of Ireland, and Elizabeth Cary (1585-1639), the writer renowned as ‘the first female author to write original drama in English’ (ODNB). Thereafter, our annotated copy disappears, and although there are occasional marks and sporadic marginalia by later readers, there is nothing so rich as these early annotations.īut who might this annotater have been? There is a huge clue in the name ‘Lorenzo Cary’ written in at the end of Act four, scene two of ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’. Alas, the copy changes again at this point, recommencing momentarily at the end of ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ (‘bon fort bon’) and making a brief reappearance for three leaves of ‘Love’s Labours Lost’. Best of all are the summary verdicts at the end each play: The Tempest is liked ‘pretty well’, but on the other hand ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’ is ‘starke naught’ The Merry Wives of Windsor is lauded as ‘very good light’. A comment in the ‘Merry Wives’, for instance, accurately sums up Ford’s mistrust of his wife as being ‘a good jealous mans dilemma’. The leaves have unfortunately been cropped in binding making some of the marginalia difficult to decipher, but there is enough to give us a sense of the annotator’s enjoyment of Shakespeare. Much to our delight, the reader also occasionally adds comments to the text as well, showing us their appreciation (or otherwise) of the plays. ‘I approve’) is the reader’s key marginal device, used to highlight sections of particular interest. Besides this, the notation ‘ap’ (possibly an abbreviation of ‘approbo’ i.e.
The most obvious evidence of attentive reading is in frequent underlining and bracketing. Interspersed occasionally with leaves from another copy, the pages throughout ‘The Tempest’, ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’ and ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ are heavily and consistently marked. The annotations continue in the first section of the book.
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