Imogen is discovered reading in her bed in the second act of "Cymbeline." She inquires the hour of the lady in attendance: Almost midnight, madam.
IMOGEN.

I have read three hours, then; mine eyes are weak.
Fold down the leaf where I have left! To bed! By-and-by, when Iachimo steals from his trunk to "note the chamber," he observes the book, examines it, and proclaims its nature: She hath been reading late The tale of Tereus! here's the leaf turned down Where Philomel gave up.
Brutus reads within his tent: Let me see, let me see; is not the leaf turned down Where I left reading?
Here it is, I think.
How ill this taper burns! Ha! Who comes here?
And thereupon enters the ghost of Caesar, and appoints a meeting at Philippi.
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.

Here is an apposite note from John Taylor's "Records of my Life," relative to Garrick's method of accomplishing this piece of stage business: "My father, who saw him perform King Richard on the first night of his appearance at Goodman's Fields, told me that the audience were particularly struck with his manner of throwing away the book when the lord mayor and aldermen had retired, as it manifested a spirit totally different from the solemn dignity which characterised the former old school, and which his natural acting wholly overturned." A certain antiquary, when Kemble first assumed the part of Richard, took objection to the prayer-book he affected to read in this scene.
"This book," writes Boaden, "for aught I know the 'Secret History of the Green Room,' which Kemble took from the property-man before he went on, our exact friend said should have been some illuminated missal.

This was somewhat inconsistent, because one would suppose the heart of the antiquary must have grieved to see the actor skirr away so precious a relic of the dark ages, as if, like Careless, in 'The School for Scandal,' he would willingly 'knock down the mayor and aldermen.'" It was at this time, probably, that antiquarianism first stirred itself on the subject of scenic decorations.

The solitary banner unfurled by Kemble, as Richard, bore a white rose embroidered upon it.