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Perhaps these words are part of an old Spanish proverb, corresponding with the Portuguese, "A o hom entendedor poucas palavras," i. e. to an intelligent man, few words. Most of the modern European languages have a proverb like our "word to the wise." In Ben Jonson's Masque of Augures, Vangoose is made to exclaim "hochos-pochos, paucos palabros."

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Of the various modes of filling up this blank suggested in the notes, that of Dr. Johnson, who would insert sly, is the most probable. Mr. Steevens asks, "how should the Lord know the beggar's name to be Sly?" This is very true; yet Shakspeare might as well forget himself in this place as he certainly did a few pages afterwards, where he makes the Lord's servant talk of Cicely Hacket, &c.

ACT I.

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She means to say, "do you intend to make a strumpet of me among these companions?" but the expression seems to have been suggested by the chess-term of stale mate, which is used when the game is ended by the king being alone and unchecked, and then forced into a situation from which he is unable to move without going into check. This is a dishonourable termination to the adversary, who thereby loses the game. Thus in Lord Verulam's twelfth essay, "They stand still like a stale at chess, where it is no mate, but yet the game cannot stir."

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Dr. Farmer's note might have been omitted, as it refers to a story which has no manner of connection with that to which Petruchio alludes.

Scene 2. Page 436.

To fear is to frighten. In Mathews's Bible, psalm xci. v. 5, is thus rendered: "Thou shalt not nede to be afraied for any bugs by night." In the Hebrew it is "terror of the night;" a curious passage, evidently alluding to that horrible sensation the night-mare, which in all ages has been regarded as the operation of evil spirits. Thus much seemed necessary in explanation or defence of the above most excellent old translation, which we have retained with very little change in the language; for the expression, from its influence on a modern ear, might have been liable to a very ludicrous construction. The word bug is originally Celtic, bwg, a ghost or goblin, and hence bug-bear, boggerd, bogle, boggy-bo, and perhaps pug, an old name for the Devil. Boggy-bo seems to signify the spirit Bo, and has been thought, with some probability, to refer to a warrior of that name, the son of Odin, and of great celebrity among the ancient Danes and Norwegians. His name is said to have struck his enemies with terror, and might have been used by the nurses of those times to frighten children, as that of Marlborough was in France on the same occasion. It is remarkable that the Italian women use bau bau, for this purpose, and the French ba-bo. It should seem as if bug had been metaphorically applied to the cimex, that insect being in all respects a terror of the night. Nor was the word used in this sense till late in the seventeenth century, the old names for the house bug being, wall-louse, wig-louse, chinch, punie, and puneez; the two last from the French.

ACT II.

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It is perhaps an ill-natured, though a very common, presumption, that the single state of old maids originates either in prudery or in real aversion to the male sex, and that consequently they deserve some kind of punishment in the next world. It is therefore not a matter of wonder that some of our waggish forefathers, impressed with this idea, should have maintained that these obdurate damsels would be condemned to lead apes in the inferior regions, instead, as Mr. Steevens has ingeniously suggested, of children; or perhaps with a view to compel them to bestow such attention on these deformed animals as they had formerly denied to men. So in Rabelais' hell, Alexander the great is condemned, for his ambition, to mend old stockings, and Cleopatra, for her pride, to cry onions.

It is said that homicides and adulterers were in ancient times compelled by way of punishment to lead an ape by the neck, with their mouths affixed in a very unseemly manner to the animal's tail. The fact is mentioned in the early Latin dictionary entitled Vocabularius breviloquus, and in the Catholicon of Johannes Januensis, both printed at the end of the fifteenth century, under the article anulus. It is added, that the above punishment being found too opprobrious was commuted for wearing a ring on the finger, which the higher classes caused to be made of gold or silver; and this is further stated to have been the reason why the general practice of wearing rings declined. After all it may be a mere fabrication for the purpose of introducing an etymology of the word annulus, that cannot here be repeated.

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It is the author's desire to withdraw a former note on this passage, which, as well as a few others of a confidential nature, was not intended for publication. To twangle means to make any sharp shrill noise on a stringed instrument, as a bad player would do. A Jack denotes a low or mean person, and is occasionally used as a term of reproach. Thus Horatio is afterwards called "swearing Jack." Twangling Jack may sometimes allude to that little machine in harpsichords and spinnets in which the quill is placed that strikes the wires. The jangling Jack mentioned in Mr. Steevens's note is not connected with the other. He is a mere prating fellow. Thus in Drant's translation of Horace's ninth satire, 1567, 4to:

Scene 1. Page 461.

Whether the purple of Tyre be here alluded to is doubtful. There is a Turkish city of some celebrity in Natolia called Tiria, where, according to the account of Paul Lucas, carpets are manufactured; and in the Comedy of errors, Act IV. Scene 1, mention is made of Turkish tapestry.

ACT III.

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Mr. Malone has well explained this word as meaning unless, in which sense it is often used by Shakspeare. It is the Saxon bu?on, nisi. Sometimes it was used with if, as "I wol breake thy heed but if thou get the hense;" from Terence's "Diminuam ego tibi caput, nisi abis," Udall's Floures from Latine, 1533, 12mo.

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So in Tarlton's Jests, "T. having been domineering very late at night with two of his friends." In these instances to domineer is to bluster.

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In the anonymous play of A knacke to knowe a knave, 1594, one of the old men says, "My house? why, 'tis my goods, my wyfe, my land, my horse, my ass, or any thing that is his." If Mr. Malone's conjecture respecting the date of The taming of the shrew be well founded, it is difficult to say whether Shakspeare is the borrower, in this instance, or not.

ACT IV.

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Thus in Nashe's Have with you to Saffron Walden, or Gabriell Harvey's hunt is up, when this foul-mouth'd writer has accused his adversary Harvey of defrauding Wolfe his printer of thirty-six pounds, he adds, that he borrowed of him a blue coat for his man; "and yet Wolfe did not so much as brush it, when he lent it him, or presse out the print where the badge had been." In another place, alluding to the same transaction, he states that Wolfe "lent him one of his prentises for a serving creature to grace him, clapping an old blue coate on his backe, which was one of my Lord of Harford's liveries (he pulling the badge off)."

The practice of giving liveries to menial servants has not originated in modern times. It is mentioned in some of the statutes made in the reign of Richard the Second. In that of Edward the Fourth the terms livery and badge appear to have been synonymous, the former having no doubt been borrowed from the French language, and signifying a thing delivered. The badge consisted of the master's device, crest, or arms, on a separate piece of cloth, or sometimes silver, in the form of a shield, fastened to the left sleeve. Greene, in his Quip for an upstart courtier, speaking of some serving men, says, "their cognizance, as I remember, was a peacocke without a tayle." In queen Elizabeth's time the nobility gave silver badges, as appears from Hentzner's Travels, p. 156, edit. Norimb. 1612, 4to. "Angli magnifici domi forisque magna assectantium famulorum agmini secum trahunt, quibus in sinistro brachio scuta ex argento facta appendunt." But this foolish extravagance was not limited to persons of high rank. Fynes Moryson, speaking of the English apparel, informs us that "the servants of gentlemen were wont to weare blew coates, with their masters badge of silver on the left sleeve, but now they most commonly weare clokes garded with lace, all the servants of one family wearing the same liverie for colour and ornament:" we are therefore to suppose that the sleeve badge was left off in the reign of James I. Yet the badge was at one time so general an accompaniment to a blue coat, that when any thing wanted its usual appendage, it was proverbially said to be like a blue coat without a badge.

The custom of clothing persons in liveries and badges was not confined to menial servants. Another class of men called retainers, who appear to have been of no small importance among our ancestors, were habited in a similar manner. They were a sort of servants, not residing in the master's house like other menial domestics, but attending occasionally for the purpose of ostentation, and retained by the annual donation of a livery consisting of a hat or hood, a badge, and a suit of clothes. As they were frequently kept for the purpose of maintaining quarrels and committing other excesses, it became necessary to impose heavy penalties on the offenders, both masters and retainers. In process of time they were licensed. Strype complains of the too great indulgence of queen Mary in this respect. "She granted," says he, "more by half in her short five years than her sister and successor in thirteen. For in all that time there were but fifteen licenses of retainer granted, whereas queen Mary had granted nine and thirty. She was more liberal also in yielding the number of retainers to each person, which sometimes amounted to two hundred. Whereas Q. Elizabeth never yielded above an hundred to any person of the greatest quality, and that rarely too. But Bishop Gardiner began that ill example, who retained two hundred men: whereas under Q. Elizabeth the Duke of Norfolk retained but an hundred; and Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, but forty." He has added a list of the persons to whom Mary granted licenses, and the number of persons retained. Eccl. memorials, iii. 479.

Nor did these retainers always consist of men of low condition. The entertaining author of a book entitled A health to the gentlemanly profession of serving men, or the serving man's comfort, 1598, 4to, (to whom these notes have occasionally been indebted, and who with good reason is supposed to have been Jervis Markham,) has certainly alluded to them in the following curious passage, wherein he is consoling the objects of his labour: "Amongst what sort of people should then this serving man be sought for? Even the duke's sonne preferred page to the prince, the earles seconde sonne attendant upon the duke, the knights seconde sonne the earles servant, the esquires sonne to weare the knightes lyverie, and the gentlemans sonne the esquiers serving man: Yea I know at this day, gentlemen younger brothers, that weares their elder brothers blew coate and badge, attending him with as reverend regard and duetifull obedience, as if he were their prince or soveraigne." Let us congratulate ourselves that we no longer endure such insolent aggressions, the result of family pride and ignorance, and which had been too often permitted to degrade the natural liberties and independence of mankind. The excellent old ballad of Times alteration, has the following illustrative stanza of the coats and badges in question:

Before we dismiss the present subject, it will be necessary to observe that the badge occurs in all the old representations of posts or messengers. On the latter of these characters it may be seen in the 52nd plate of Mr. Strutt's first volume of The dress and habits of the people of England, where, as in the most ancient instances, the badge is affixed to the girdle; but it is often seen on the shoulder, and even on the hat or cap. These figures extend as far back as the thirteenth century, and many old German engravings exhibit both the characters with a badge that has sometimes the device or arms of the town to which the post belongs. He has generally a spear in his hand, not only for personal security, but for repelling any nuisance that might interrupt his progress. Among ourselves the remains of the ancient badge are still preserved in the dresses of porters, firemen, and watermen, and perhaps in the shoulder-knots of footmen. The blue coat and badge still remain with the parish and hospital boys. The following figure of a person of a higher class with a badge, is copied from the view of Windsor in Braunii civitates orbis terrarum, 1573.