A Select Collection of Old English Plays Volume Ii Part 77

[305] i.e., By.

[306] [Original reads _trembled_.]

[307] [This account, if founded on fact, is a curious ill.u.s.tration of the scholastic discipline of that period. We know that Udall the dramatist was remarkable for his severity to his pupils at Eton.]

[308] Impress. Compare "Much Ado about Nothing," iv. 1.--Halliwell.

[309] [Query, the schoolmaster, so called from inflicting on the pupil with a cane _cuts_ on the hand.]

[310] Bet. See "Taming of the Shrew"--

"Now, by Saint Jamy, I _hold_ you a penny."--_Halliwell_.

[311] Jakes. Compare "Lear," ii. 2.--_Halliwell_.

[312] [Detail, or circ.u.mlocution.]

[313] At once.

[314] Compare "Comedy of Errors," Act ii, sc. 1.--Halliwell.

[315] Blamed, scolded. See "Merry Wives of Windsor," i. 4. The older meaning of the term is _ruined_, but Elizabethan writers generally employ it in the sense here mentioned.--_Halliwell_. [I do not agree.

The older sense is, I think, the only one admissible; yet, Nares cites a pa.s.sage from Shakespeare which may shake this position. See _v.

Shend_, No. 1, second quotation.]

[316] Compare the "Midsummer Night's Dream," ii, 1.--_Halliwell_.

[317] "Bring oil to fire" (_King Lear_, ii. 2). Compare also "All's Well that ends Well," v. 3.--_Halliwell_.

[318] "My tricksy spirit" (_Tempest_, v. 1).--_Halliwell_.

[319] "Smell of calumny" (Measure for Measure, ii. 4).--_Halliwell_.

[320] Often used formerly for county.--_Halliwell_.

[321] Voice.

[322] In the daytime.--_Halliwell_. [Simply _o' days_, as printed here.]

[323] The simpleton. See 1, "Henry VI."--_Halliwell_.

[324] A common phrase, equivalent to, it were a good thing. See "Much Ado about Nothing," ii. 3.--_Halliwell_. [Not a good thing, but _a charity_.]

[325] "What, sweeting, all amort" (_Taming of the Shrew_).--_Halliwell_.

[326] Altogether, entirely.

[327] Rabbit. A term of endearment.

[328] My lady so fair in countenance. The expression is common in our early romances.--_Halliwell_.

[329] If.

[330] "Twelve years since" (_Tempest_).--_Halliwell_.

[331] A provincialism.--_Halliwell_. [Rather, perhaps, a c.o.c.kneyism.]

[332] A term of contempt for a fool. See "Much Ado about Nothing,"

iii. 3.--_Halliwell_.

[333] "At a pin's fee" (_Hamlet_).--_Halliwell_.

[334] Anger. "And that which spites me more than all these wants"

(_Taming of the Shrew_).--_Halliwell_.

[335] To look sad. This term is often incorrectly explained. "Fye, how impatience lowreth in your face" (_Com. Err_.), i.e., makes your face look sad, opposed to the "merry look."--_Halliwell_. [_Lour_ is simply a contracted form of _lower_.]

[336] Care.

[337] Compare "Merchant of Venice," iii. 4.--_Halliwell_.

[338] Not a term of reproach.--Compare "1 Henry VI."--_Halliwell_.

[339] Compare "Taming of the Shrew," ii. 1.--_Halliwell_.

[340] _Never_ in the original copy.--Halliwell.

[341] Compare "The Merchant of Venice," i. 3.--_Halliwell_.

[342] Drunkards.

[343] "Upstart unthrifts" (_Richard II_.)--_Halliwell_.

[344] Compare "Taming of the Shrew," i. 2: "O this woodc.o.c.k, what an a.s.s it is!"--_Halliwell_.

[345] [Rather, perhaps, _dulsum_, i.e., sweet.]

[346] This confirms in some measure a reading in the "Taming of the Shrew"--"Or so devote to Aristotle's Ethics."--_Halliwell_. [See Dyce's 2d edit. iii. 114, and the note.]

[347] "Begnaw with the bots" (_Taming of the Shrew_).--_Halliwell_.

[348] Owing to whom.

[349] Caraway comfits. See "2 Henry IV." and the blunders of the commentators corrected in my "Dictionary of Archaisms," p. 231.-- _Halliwell_.

[350] Compare "Troilus and Cressida," ii. 2.--_Halliwell_.

[351] "Good wits will be jangling" (_Love's Labour's Lost_).-- _Halliwell_.