[1] 4tos. Will.

[2] References to the lapwing's subtlety are very common. Cf. Shakesp., Measure for Measure, i. 4, 32, &c.

[3] An old game at cards; it is supposed to have resembled cribbage.

[4] "To make ready," meaning "to dress," is a very common expression in old authors.

[5] An obvious reference to Queen Elizabeth.

[6] So Elbow:—"My wife, Sir, whom I detest before heaven and your honour," &c. (M. for M., II. 1).

[7] Ovid, Metamorph. I. 1.

[8] People who walk with mincing steps. I have not met the word elsewhere. (Cf. dancitive, p. 31.)

[9] A beggar (Ital. besogno) Vid. Dyce's Glossary under "Besonian".

[10] "Knight of the post" was the name given to those who gained their living by giving false evidence at law-courts. Nares quotes from Nash's "Pierce Pennilesse":—"A knight of the post, quoth he, for so I am tearmed: a fellow that will swear any thing for twelve pence."

[11] Cf. Lear, iii. 2. Vaunt-curriors to oak-cleaving thunder-bolts. (First folio.)

[12] "Division" was a technical term in music for "the running a simple strain into a great variety of shorter notes to the same modulation" (Nares). The "plain song" was the simple air without variations.

[13] Sir Thomas Overbury says, in his character of 'A very woman,' that 'her lightnesse gets her to swim at top of the table, where her wee little finger bewraies carving'.

[14] 4tos. Ladies.

[15] 4tos. Eternesses.

[16] To do anything with 'a wet finger' is to do it easily. 'It seems not very improbable that it alluded to the vulgar and very inelegant custom of wetting the finger to turn over a book with more ease.'—Nares.

[17] Ov. Metam. I., ll. 322-23.

[18] Ed. 1606, one; ed. 1636, on.

[19] The 1606 ed. marks "Exit" Penelope.

[20] Here Momford retires to the back of the stage, where Clarence is waiting. The 4tos. mark "Exit." I thought the lines "Mens est," etc., were Horace's, but cannot find them. "Menternque" destroys sense and metre. An obvious correction would be "et nomen."

[21] "Falsus honos juvat, et mendax infamia terret
Quem, nisi mendosum et medicandum."
Hor. Ep. l. 16, ll. 39, 40.

[22] A card that cools a player's courage (I. Hy. VI., v. 3, 1. 83, &c.).

[23] The "Family of Love" was the name given to a fanatical sect; David George, of Delph (obiit 1556), was the founder.

[24] The reference is to the visit of the MarÉchal de Biron and his suite in the autumn of 1601.

[25] 4tos. Foul.

[26] Pick-thatcht, ed. 1606.

[27] A term in card-playing; to "vie" was to cover a stake.

[28] The name of a famous bear. Cf. Epigrams by J. D.—

"Leaving old Plowden, Dyer and Brooke alone,
To see old Harry Hankes and Sacarson."

Master Slender ("Merry Wives," I. 1) told Anne Page: "I have seen
Sackarson loose twenty times and have taken him by the chain."

[29] 4tos. King.

[30] The reference is, I suppose, to Roger Bacon's "Libellus de retardandis Senectutis accidentibus et de sensibus conservandis. Oxoniae, 1590."

[31] Quy. inframed (F.G. Fleay).

[32] Ed. 1636, "state."

[33] Ed. 1636 makes sad work of the text here:—

"Merry clad in inke,
Is but a manner" &c.

[34] Quy. thridlesse (sc. that cannot be pierced). Mr. Fleay suggests "rimelesse."

[35] Ed. 1636 reads "antheame."

[36] "White-boy" was a common term of endearment for a favourite son.

[37] Quy., hot.

[38] i.e., companions.

[39] Doubtless the writer was thinking of Dogberry's "Comparisons are odorous."

[40] A pun is intended. "Cast of merlins" = a flight of merlins (small hawks); and "cast-of" = cast-off.

[41] "Foisting-hound." A small lap-dog with an evil smell, "Catellus graveolens."

[42] The 'clap-dish' which beggars used to beat in order to attract the attention of the charitable.

[43] Both quartos give "all."

[44] Ovid, Metam., I., 523.

[45] Ed. 1606: Antevenit sortem moribus.

[46] 4tos. weend.

[47] "That most lovely and fervid of all imaginative panegyrics."—Swinburne's "Study of Shakespeare," p. 141.

[48] "Dr. Dodypoll" is a very rare play, to be found only in the libraries of wealthy collectors. The copy in the library of the British Museum is catalogued as "imperfect; wanting Sig. A 2"; but it corresponds in all respects with Mr. Huth's. Perhaps an "Address to the Reader," or a "Dedication" was cancelled.

[49] Before the reader goes further, let him turn to Sonnet xvii. in Mr. Swinburne's series of "Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets."

[50] The author was doubtless thinking of Romeo and Juliet, iii. 2:—

"And when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine,
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun."

[51] 4to. Form.

[52] 4to. adorning. Possibly there is the same confusion in Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 2:—"And made their bends adornings."

[53] See notes of the commentators on Hamlet, i. 1, 165, "Then no planets strike."

[54] See the commentators on As You Like It, iii. 2. "I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras's time that I was an Irish rat." A short time ago the subject of "rhyming rats to death" was discussed anew in "Notes and Queries."

[55] Qto. cockfromb in cony. The word "incony" (meaning sweet, delicate) occurs twice in Love's Labour Lost. Its derivation is uncertain.

[56] 4to. With.

[57] This word is found in Holland's "Ammianus" and Harrington's "Epigrams" (see Nares' "Glossary," ed. Halliwell). A similar compound (of more common occurrence) is "smell-smock."

[58] The reader will remember the punning lines in 3 Henry VI., v. 1:—

"Why, what a peevish fool was that of Crete,
That taught his son the office of a fowl!
And yet, for all his wings, the fool was drown'd."

[59] 4to. Wilt it.

[60] 4to. Flor.

[61] A perfume-ball worn round the neck or carried in the pocket.

[62] The trials of the Scotch witches in 1590 (for practising to shipwreck James VI. on his return with his bride from Denmark) were too horrible to be soon forgotten.

[63] 4to Ape.

[64] Quy. cliffe.

[65] I suspect that we should read—

"What rock hath bred this savage-minded man
That such true love in such rare beautie shuns?"

[66] 4to. clime.

[67] Quy. lead.

[68] 4to. Alp.

[69] Vide note on vol. I, p. 117.

[70] The direction in the 4to is "Enter Flores and Homer!"

[71] Vide note [16].

[72] 4to. craines.

[73] Compare Midsummer Nights Dream, ii. 1, 15: "And hang a pearl on every cowslip's ear."

[74] 4to. where.

[75] Not marked in the 4to.

[76] 4to. rake.

[77] 4to. Sorrowed tired.

[78] The 4to prints the lines thus:—

"Where since he found you not,
He asked of me the place of your abode,—
And heere I have brought him?"

In other passages I have restored the metre silently.

[79] Qto. visition.

[80] I regret to say that Mr. Fleay was misled by a mistake of mine. In my first hasty reading of the play I took the long double "s" to be a double "f": the character is "La Busse."

[81] Mr. C.H. Herford, to whom I showed the MS., writes as follows:— "The first two words make it highly probable that the whole inscription is, like them, in Italian. In that case the first two Greek letters give very easily the word 'fideltÀ' (=phi, delta), which combines naturally with the nella. The second part is more difficult, but perhaps not hopeless. [Greek: fnr] may, perhaps be read phi ny (as Latinised spelling of [Greek: nu]), rÔ, or finirÔ. Then, for the 'La B.,' suppose that the words form, as emblems often do, a rhymed couplet; then 'B.' would stand for BeltÀ, and naturally fall in with 'la.' The whole would then read—

'Nella fideltÀ, Finiro la BeltÀ.

This does not seem to me very excellent Italian, but we need not suppose the author was necessarily a good scholar; and in that case we might extract from it the fairly good sense: 'I will make fidelity the end (the accomplishment) of beauty.'" This explanation seems to me very satisfactory.

["'La Bussa' suits my explanation as well as, if not better than 'La Buffa.' The meaning now is, 'I will end my task faithfully, with an equivoque on 'I will end La Busse, or the play containing him as a character, faithfully.' There is no shadow of reason for supposing a rhyme, or for Field's thinking that any reader would interpret La B. by la beltÀ. Moreover no other name but Field's out of the 200 known names of dramatic writers anterior to 1640, can be found in the letters. There are other works of Field than those commonly attributed to him still extant, as will be seen in a forthcoming paper of mine." —F.G. FLEAY.]

[82] So the MS., but I suspect that we should read "ruyne," which gives better sense and better metre.

[83] The next line, as in many instances, has been cut away at the foot of the page.

[84] "The close contriver of all harms."—Macbeth, iii. 5.

[85] "The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire."—Hamlet, i. 5.

[86] "Blacke and blewe," i.e., first as a kitchen-drudge and afterwards as a personal attendant. Blue was the livery of serving-men.

[87] It is not always easy to distinguish between final "s" and "e" in the MS. I printed "blesseing_e_" in the Appendix to vol. II.

[88] Devices on shields.

[89] A baser sort of hawk (kestrel).

[90] A word before or after "thys" seems wanted to complete the line: "yet, Richard, thys;" or, "yet thys disgrace."

[91] Gervase Markham in the Second Part (cap. vi.) of the "English Husbandman" gives the following explanation of the term plashing.—"This plashing is a halfe cutting or deviding of the quicke growth, almost to the outward barke, and then laying it orderly in a sloape manner, as you see a cunning hedger lay a dead hedge, and then with the smaller and more plyant branches to wreathe and binde in the tops, making a fence as strong as a wall, for the root which is more then halfe cut in sunder, putting forth new branches which runne and entangle themselves amongst the old stockes, doe so thicken and fortifie the Hedge that it is against the force of beasts impregnable" (ed. 1635, pp. 68-9).

[92] The first five lines of this speech are crossed through in the MS.

[93] In the MS. "reverend prelats" is crossed out and "preists" written above. To make sure that the correction was understood, the author or reviser has written in the left-hand margin, "read preists."

[94] i.e., star.

[95] "Brawl" was the name of a dance.

[96] Old terms in the art of fencing.

[97] In Halliwell's "Nares" two instances of the transitive use of stoop ("to lower, humiliate") are given, and both are from Chapman.

[98] On the upper stage, a balcony raised a few feet from the ground. Cf. stage-direction in Day's Humour out of Breath, iv. 3. "Enter Aspero, like Hortensio, Florimell, and Assistance on the upper stage." Later in the same scene: "They renew Blind mans Buff on the Lower stage." See also Dyce's note on Middleton's Family of Love, i. 3.

[99] A correction in the MS. for Musquett.

[100] In the Appendix to Vol. II. I printed "misse"; and so one would naturally read the word before becoming thoroughly acquainted with the handwriting.

[101] The words "so begett" are repeated in the MS.

[102] i.e. prisons.

[103] MS. good.

[104] The expression "Fool's paradise" was common long before Milton used it. A writer in Notes and Queries (Jan. 7, 1882) gives instances of its occurrence in Udall's "Apophthegmes of Erasmus," 1542. I have met it in Bullein's "Dialogue against the Fever Pestilence," 1564.

[105] For the spelling cf., Vol. ii. pp. 139 (l. 14), 179 (l. 12). "Diety" for "deity" is not uncommon in print as well as MS.; cf., Saltonstall's translation of Ovid's "Ars Amoris," 1639, p. 14:—

"Oft pray'd she to the gods, but all in vaine,
To appease their Dieties with blood of beasts thus slaine."

[106] In the MS. these lines are scored through.

[107] The juxtaposition of this anagram with the preceding motto (which did not appear in the Appendix to Vol. ii.) strongly confirms my interpretation of La B. as la bussa; for the anagram is a kind of paraphrase on the motto, and should be read doubly in this way: NataniÈle Field, il fabro, Nella fideltÀ finiro la Bussa. I, Nathaniel Field, the author will finish the work (terminat auctor opus) faithfully (i.e., at the time appointed, terminat hora diem). —F.G. Fleay.

["Terminat hora" &c. or some similar tag, is frequently found at the end of old plays. I cannot see that Mr. Fleay's interpretation is strongly confirmed,—or affected at all,—by the presence of the motto.]

[108] See Henslowe's Diary, ed. Collier, p. 220:—"Lent unto Thomas Downton the 4 of maye 1602 to bye a boocke of harye Cheattell and Mr. Smyth called the Love partes frenship the some of" … …

[109] King John, i. 2.—"And now instead of bullets wrapt in fire."

[110] Another form of the apologetical expression "save-reverence."

[111] i.e. cheated, cozened.

[112] An echo from "King John," I. 2:—

"And now instead of bullets wrapt in fire
To make a shaking fever of your walls," &c.

[113] A common proverbial expression. The dish is the wooden "clap-dish" on which beggars clattered to attract attention.

[114] I should prefer "true heart his loyalty"—for the metre's sake.

[115] 4to. staffe.

[116] 4to. strayne.

[117] 4to. his passions.

[118] "A corrupt oath, the origin of which is obscure and not worth inquiring."—Nares.

[119] The author certainly had in his mind Falstaff's puns on the names of the recruits, Mouldy, Shadow, &c. (ii. Henry IV. iii. 2).

[120] An extemporal play by the famous Richard Tarleton. The "plat" is preserved at Dulwich College. See Collier's "Hist. of Dramatic Poetry," iii. 394 (first edition).

[121] So the 4to, but I should prefer "So I have discharg'd myselfe of these hot-shots." The term "hot-shot" seems to have been originally applied to sharp-shooters.

[122] i.e., maid: an East-Anglian usage of the word "mother." See Forby's "Vocabulary of East Anglia." "Mauther" is the commoner form (found in Ben Jonson and others), but "mother" occurs in Chettle and Day's Blind Beggar and elsewhere.

[123] I find this expression of feminine impatience in Dekker's Honest Whore (Dramatic Works, ii. 26):—"Marry muffe, sir, are you growne so dainty!"

[124] Let me understand you. The expression is of constant occurrence.

[125] A term of contempt like "pilchard" and "poor John." "Haberdine" was the name for an inferior kind of cod used for salting.

[126] So Pistol, "A foutre for the world, and worldlings base!" "A foutre for thine office!" ii. Henry IV. v. 3.

[127] Verjuice was made by pounding crab-apples.

[128] Kite.

[129] Dingy. "Russet" or "russeting" was the name of the coarse brown dress worn by shepherds.

[130] In Henry V., iv. 1, Pistol accosts the king with "Che vous la?" according to the first folio. Modern editors correct the intentional blunder.

[131] To "outface with a card of ten" was just what we mean by "browbeat." The expression (which is very common) was no doubt drawn from the game of primero.

[132] Old spelling of "pumpkin."

[133] The officer of lowest rank (now called "lance corporal").

[134] Quart d'Écu.

[135] Cf. Day's Ile of Guls, ii. 2:—

"But forresters, like images, set forth
The tyrannie of greatness without pittie."

Everybody remembers Jaques' moralising in As You Like It, ii. 1.

[136] Cf. Day's Humour out of Breath, I. 2:—"Deceive the watry subjects."

[137] To "kill with kindness" was a proverbial saying.

[138] A falconer's term: to flap the wings when preparing for flight.

[139] A giant who was conquered by Sir Bevis of Southampton. See notes of the commentators on 2 Henry VI., ii. 3: "Therefore, Peter, have at thee with a downright blow, as Bevis of Southampton fell upon Ascapart."

[140] i.e., a vain boaster. "Puckfist" is the fungus commonly known as "puff-ball."

[141] "Carbonade. A carbonado, a rasher on the coals."—COTGRAVE.

[142] Cf. Antony and Cleopatra, i. 3:—

"Upon your sword sit laurel victory."

The form of expression is common. Cf. Knight of Malta, iv. 2
(Fletcher's portion):—

"Art thou a knight? did ever on that sword
The Christian cause sit nobly?"

I make this note because I find Mr. G.C. Macaulay, in his interesting "Study of Francis Beaumont," choosing the words, "Victory sits on his sword" (Maid's Tragedy, i. 1), as one of the "special passages which suggest imitation, conscious or unconscious," of Shakespeare.

[143] 4to. honord. The correction (which would occur to most readers) is made by Dyce on the fly-leaf of his copy in the Dyce and Forster Library.

[144] If we retain "unscorcht" we must suppose the construction to be proleptic. But quy. "sun-scorcht."

[145] The stage-direction is my own.

[146] Ink-stand (more commonly "standish").

[147] Plan, design. Cf. Arden of Feversham, ii. 1. "And I will lay the platform of his death."

[148] "Termagant" or "Trivigant" is often coupled with "Mahound." Cf. "Faery Queene," vi. 7. (47):—

"And oftentimes by Termagant and Mahound swore."

Our ancestors were not accustomed to draw fine distinctions. They regarded Mohammedans as heathens, and Termagant and Mahound as false gods.

[149] 4to. Ruthelesse and bloudy slaughters.

[150] "Pickt-hatch" was a notorious brothel in or near Turnbull Street.

[151] See Strutt's "Sports and Pastimes," p. 212 (ed. 1801).

[152] Swaggered, crowed.

[153] i.e. sucking rabbit. So Falstaff,—"Hang me up by the heels for a rabbit sucker" (I Henry IV., ii. 4).

[154] A variation of Bobadil's oath "By the foot of Pharaoh."

[155] For the sake of the metre I should like to read "You, Pembrooke, worthy knight."

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