The game of novum or novem, here alluded to, requires further illustration to render the whole of the above passage intelligible. It is therefore necessary to state that it was properly called novum quinque, from the two principal throws of the dice, nine and five; and then Biron's meaning becomes perfectly clear, according to the reading of the old editions. The above game was called in French quinquenove, and is said to have been invented in Flanders.
Scene 2. Page 351.
Pageant of the nine worthies.
The genuine worthies were Joshua, David, Judas Maccabeus, Hector, Alexander, Julius Cæsar, Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bulloigne, or sometimes in his room Guy of Warwick. Why Shakspeare, in the five of them only whom he has introduced by name, has included Hercules and Pompey, remains to be accounted for. It was a great pity to omit, on this occasion, the very curious specimen of an ancient pageant given by Mr. Ritson, who, in stating that nothing of the kind had ever appeared in print, seems to have forgotten the pageants of Dekker, Middleton, and others, a list of which may be found in Baker's Biographia dramatica, vol. ii. 270.
Scene 2. Page 353.
Biron. Your nose smells no, in this, most tender smelling knight.
He is addressing, or rather ridiculing Alexander. Plutarch in his life of that hero relates, on the authority of Aristoxenus, that his skin "had a marvellous good savour, and that his breath was very sweet, in so much that his body had so sweet a smell of itselfe that all the apparell he wore next unto his body, tooke thereof a passing delightfull savour, as if it had been perfumed." This Shakspeare had read in Sir Thomas North's translation.
Scene 2. Page 353.
Cost. Your lion, that holds his poll-ax sitting, &c.
The clown's Cloacinian allusion to the arms of Alexander is a wilful blunder, for the purpose of introducing his subsequent joke about Ajax. These are the arms themselves copied from the Roman des neuf preux, Abbeville, 1487, folio, showing that the chair is not a chaise-perçée.
The modern patent Bramahs were in Shakspeare's time called Ajaxes. Thus in The hospitall of incurable fooles, 1600, 4to, fo. 7: "Whoever saw so many odd mechanicks as are at this day, who not with a geometricall spirite like Archimedes, but even with arte surpassing the profoundest Cabalistes, who instead of a pigeon loft, place in the garrets of houses, portable and commodious Ajaxes." The marginal explanation comes closer to the point. Again, "the Romans might well be numbered amongst those three-elbowed fooles in adoring Stercutio for a God, shamefully constituting him a patron and protector of Ajax and his commodities," fo. 6.
Scene 2. Page 360.
Cost. I will not fight with a pole, like a northern man.
On this passage Dr. Farmer says, "Vir borealis, a clown, See glossary to Urry's Chaucer." The Doctor's notes are generally clear and instructive, but in this instance he is obscure. It is presumed that he intends to refer the reader to the word borel in Urry's glossary, where it is properly explained a clown. Whether borel be derived from borealis may be questioned; but Shakspeare in all probability was unacquainted with this word and its etymology. Does he not refer to the particular use of the quarter staff in the Northern counties?
Scene 2. Page 367.
Prin. As bombast, and as lining to the time.
Bombast is from the Italian bombagia, which signifies all sorts of cotton wool. Hence the stuff called bombasine. The cotton put into ink was called bombase. "Need you any inke and bombase?" Hollyband's Italian schole-maister, 1579, 12mo, sign. E. 3.
The clown in this play is a mere country fellow. The term fool applied to him in Act V. Scene 2, means nothing more than a silly fellow. He has not sufficient simplicity for a natural fool, nor wit enough for an artificial one.
It will probably be discovered at some future time that this play was borrowed from a French novel. The dramatis personæ in a great measure demonstrate this, as well as a palpable Gallicism in Act IV. Scene 1, viz. the terming a letter a capon.