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A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 13

Chapter 26: FOOTNOTES:
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About This Book

An edited anthology gathers a range of early English stage plays presented in chronological order and accompanied by commentator annotations and new notes by W. Carew Hazlitt. The volume reproduces dramatis personae, act and scene divisions, and full texts of comedies and civic dramas that explore marital matches, social hypocrisy, debt and urban life, often through satirical character types and comic situations. Editorial material and transcriber notes contextualize language, performance practice, and textual variants, making the plays accessible for modern readers while preserving original stage directions and comic dialogue.

FOOTNOTES:

[133] The camomile is said to grow faster the more it is pressed or trodden upon, and to this circumstance the Clown here alludes. Frequent notice is taken of this property in the plant by our ancient writers. As in Tofte's "Honours Academie, or the Famous Pastorall of the Faire Shepheardesse Julietta," 1610, p. 204, 5th part: "But as gold taken out of the burning furnace, is farre more bright and fierce, than when it was first flung in; and as Camomell, the more it is trod upon, the thicker and better it groweth: even so we see this faire Archeresh to shew more cleare and beautifull, when the flame was once past and gone then she had bene before."

And in the "First Part of King Henry IV.," act ii. sc. 4: "For though the camomile the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears."

See other instances in the notes of Mr Steevens and Dr Farmer on the last passage.

[134] [Recommended.]

[135] [I might go in search of it.]

[136] [A proverbial expression, by which the Clown ironically suggests that the world is going to be good at last.]

[137] That is, acquainted, or informed him. [See note at vol. ix., p. 483.]

[138] [Old copy, fears.]

[139] The speech following has hitherto very mistakenly been assigned to Verona. The sense, even without comparison with the old copy, shows the error.—Collier.

[140] [Old copy, made.]

[141] [Old copy, So cast him from our presence.]

[142] The 4o reads, Exeunt Lord, &c., but Lorenzo is meant.—Collier.

[143] [Old copy, of lords.]

[144] See note on "Albumazar," [xi. 328.]

[145] i.e., Go before. Old copy, Far more.Pegge.

[146] [In the former edits, this line precedes the one before it, to the prejudice of the sense.]

[147] [Old copy, butcher's.]

[148] [Old copy, orders bar. Mr Collier's correction. He alludes, as Mr Collier suggests, to the religious order to which he pretends to belong.]