"What!" cried the antiquaries, "a king of England battling with invaders and yet not displaying his royal banner!" And remark was made upon the frequent mention of armour that occurs in the later scenes of the play.

We have "locked up in steel;" "What! is my beaver easier than it was ?" "And all my armour laid into my tent;" "The armourers accomplishing the knights;" "With clink of hammers closing rivets up;" "Your friends up and buckle on their armour." Yet, as Boaden relates, it was no less strange than true, that, in Kemble's time, "excepting the breastplate and thigh-pieces on Richmond, not one of the _dramatis personae_ had the smallest particle of armour upon him in either army." There is a stage-book in "King Henry VIII." The Duke of Norfolk, in the second act, "opens a folding-door; the king is discovered sitting and reading pensively." The book of Prospero is spoken of, but not seen.

In "Hamlet" the stage-book plays an important part.

Says Polonius to Ophelia, when he and Claudius would be "lawful espials" of her meeting with Hamlet: Read on this book, That show of such an exercise may colour Your loneliness.
The book is now usually a missal which the lady employs at her orisons.

But it is oftentimes--for so stage-management will have it--the identical volume with which Hamlet had entered reading in an earlier act, and which he describes, upon being interrogated by Polonius, as containing, "words, words, words!" and "slanders, sir!" It was John Kemble's way, we are told, to tear out a leaf from the book at this period of the performance, by way of conveying the "stronger impression of Hamlet's wildness." The actor's method of rendering this scene has not been adopted by later representatives of the character.