A Select Collection of Old English Plays Volume Vi Part 113

[297] [Old copy, _Abstrauogant_.]

[298] [Old copy, _peely_.]

[299] [Cakes. Old copy, _cats_.]

[300] [A Knight of the Post was a person hired to swear anything--a character often mentioned in old writers.]

[301] Some persons, not merely without reason, but directly against it, treat _vild_ and _vile_, and consequently vildly and _vilely_, as distinct words. _Vild_ and _vildly_ are blunders in old spelling, only to be retained when, as now, we give the words of an author in the very orthography of that date. We profess here to follow the antiquated spelling exactly, that it may be seen how the productions in our volume came originally from the press: but when spelling is modernised, as it is in the ordinary republications of our ancient dramatists, &c., it is just as absurd to print "vile" _vild_, as to print "friend" frend or "enemy" _ennimy_.--_Mr Collier's note in the edition of_ 1851.

[302] Shakespeare has the word "exigent" for _extremity_, and such seems to be its meaning here, and not the legal sense; the Knight says that the good name of his predecessors for housekeeping shall never be brought into extremity by him.

[303] [Wary, aware.]

[304] [Old copy, _Squire_.]

[305] [Old copy, _for fourtie_.]

[306] An early instance of the use of an expression, of frequent occurrence afterwards and down to our own day, equivalent to going without dinner. See Steevens's note to "Richard III." act iv. sc. 4, where many pa.s.sages are quoted on the point.

[307] [Old copy, _ope_.]

[308] The copy of this play in the British Museum has here "_Scinthin_ maide;" but another, belonging to the Rev. A. Dyce, "_Scythia_ maide," a reading we have followed, and, no doubt, introduced by the old printer as the sheets went through the press.

[309] "Counterfeit" was a very common term for the resemblance of a person: in "Hamlet," act iii. sc. 4, we have "counterfeit presentment;"

and in the "Merchant of Venice," act iii. sc. 2, "Fair Portia's counterfeit." In Beaumont and Fletcher's "Wife for a Month," act iv. sc.

5, we meet-with "counterfeits in Arras" for portraits, or figures in tapestry.

[310] [i.e., from or after.]

[311] [i.e., The shoemaker. There is a jest turning upon this in one of the early collections of _facetiae_.]

[312] [Vulcan.]

[313] By "carminger" the cobbler means harbinger, an officer; who preceded the monarch during progresses, to give notice and make preparation.

[314] We print it precisely as in the old copy, but we may presume that here a couplet was intended, as the cobbler's speech begins in rhyme:--

"And we are come to you alone To deliver our pet.i.tion,"

[315] Roquefort in his "Glossary," i. 196, states that bysse is a sort _d'etoffe de soie_, and the Rev. A. Dyce, "Middleton's Works," v. 558, says that it means "fine linen," while others contend that it is "a delicate blue colour," but sometimes "black or dark grey." The truth may be that it was fine silk of a blue colour, and we now and then meet it coupled with purple--"purple and bis."

[316] [Old copy, _Indian_.]

[317] [Old copy, _calamon_.]

[318] [i.e., he withdraws to the back of the stage, to allow the king to confer first with Osrick, and then comes forward again.]

[319] [Old copy, _Asmoroth_.]

[320] [Old copy, _Asmoroth_.]

[321] [Old copy, _bid_.] _Bid_ may be taken in the sense of invite, a meaning it often bears in old writers; but we are most likely to understand it _bide_ or _abide_, the final _e_ having been omitted, or dropped out in the press. In the next line we have _quit_ again used for _acquit_.

[322] [We must suppose here that Honesty sends out some of the attendants to bring in the Coneycatcher and Farmer, who soon make their re-appearance on the stage.]