410. towards] i. e. in a state of preparation, at hand.
411. saker, basilisk] Small pieces of ordnance.
412. Ast., Car., &c.] One of the many speeches to which in the old ed. is the prefix “Omnes.”
414. Kneels] “This [common] custom of 'kneeling and drinking of healths’ kindled the wrath of various puritanical writers. Stubbes, in his Anatomy of Abuses, tells a story of a man in Almaine, who, drinking a health to his Creator on his knees, was fixed for ever like a statue, which horses could not draw nor fire burn. R. Junius, in his Drunkard’s Character, 1638, speaks of ‘a Lincolnshire man, well known, that in his cups drank a health to the devil, who had no sooner drank it off, but he fell down dead.’ ‘To mend the matter (he says elsewhere), lest Satan should want his due reverence, these wine-worshippers will be at it on their knees, especially if they drink a great man’s health,’ p. 313.” Reed.
415. Thus ... thus] How they indicated the price I know not.
416. Billmen] i. e. watchmen, who carried bills (a sort of pikes with hooked points), which were anciently the weapons of the English foot-soldiers.
417. Is’t Shrove Tuesday, that these ghosts walk] “From this passage, I apprehend it was formerly a custom for the peace-officers to make search after women of ill fame on that day, and to confine them during the season of Lent. So Sensuality says, in Microcosmus, ‘But now welcome a cart, or a Shrove Tuesday’s tragedy.’” Reed. “The progress of the constables on Shrove Tuesday was for the purpose of checking the outrages of the apprentices. See Taylor’s Jack-a-Lent, 115.” O. Gilchrist. Demolishing houses of bad fame was one of the amusements of the apprentices on Shrove Tuesday (see my note on Webster’s Works, vol. iii. p. 225); and their riots no doubt required the check of the constable and his attendants: but it appears also, that on the same day an official search was made for brothel-keepers, who were either forthwith carted, or confined during Lent: vide Nares’s Gloss. in v. Shroving.
418. Me, sir] “This ‘Me, sir?’ and the Billmen’s echo of it in the old copy are printed ‘Me, Sirrr?’ to indicate, perhaps, the manner in which Bots spoke it.” Collier.
419. sits in a blue gown] “It appears from a passage in Promos and Cassandra [and from a dozen other passages in various writers], that a blue gown was the habit in which a strumpet did penance. So too in The Northern Lass, 1633, ‘All the good you intended me was a lockram coif, a blue gown, a wheel,’ &c. The wheel, as well as the blue gown, are mentioned in subsequent scenes of this comedy.” Steevens.
420. any woman, &c.] i. e. that has been carted, and pelted with rotten eggs.
421. beats chalk, or grinds in the mill] “To beat chalk, grind in mills, raise sand and gravel, and make lime, were among the employments assigned for vagrants who were committed to Bridewell. See Orders appointed to be executed in the Cittie of London, for setting roges and idle persons to worke, and for releefe of the poore. Printed by Hugh Singleton.” Reed.
422. Your Bridewell, &c.] “We have here a curious specimen of the license which ancient writers used to allow themselves of introducing facts and circumstances peculiar to one country into another. Every thing here said of Bridewell is applicable to the house of Correction which goes by that name in London. Changing the names of the duke and his son to those of Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth, all the events mentioned will be found to have happened in the English Bridewell. The situation of the place is also the same. In the time of Henry the Eighth princes were lodged there; part of it being built in the year 1522, for the reception of Charles the Fifth, whose nobles resided in it. In 1528, Cardinal Campeius had his first audience there; and after Henry’s death, Edward the Sixth, in the seventh year of his reign, 1552, gave to the citizens of London this his palace for the purposes above mentioned. To complete the parallel, it was endowed with land, late belonging to the Savoy, to the amount of 700 marks a-year, with all the bedding and furniture of that hospital. See Stowe’s Survey, Strype’s edit. 1721, vol. i. p. 264. There is also the like anachronism in the First Part of this play, concerning Bethlem Hospital.” Reed.
424. war] Old ed. “warres.”
426. on] Old ed. “or.”
427. and] Old ed. “before.”
428. he] Old ed. “she.”
429. anatomies] i. e. skeletons:
431. atomies] i. e. atoms.
435. a beetle] “A mallet.” Reed. See speech of First Master, p. 233.
437. a squire of the body] “A squire of the body, says Mr. Steevens (note on the First Part of Henry IV.)—[Malone’s Shakespeare (by Boswell), vol. xvi. p. 191]—signified, originally, the attendant on a knight, the person who bore his head-piece, spear, and shield. It afterwards became a cant term for a pimp, and is so used here.” Reed. So also B. Jonson uses the single word squire for pimp or procurer: (see Gifford’s note on Every Man in his Humour—Works, vol. i. p. 132.) See also our author’s Fair Quarrel, act iv. sc. 4.
438. apple-squire] In a note on Hall’s Satires, 1824, p. 8, the editor remarks: “This cant phrase has been erroneously explained as meaning a pander or pimp. The fact is, that it meant what is in modern slang called a flash-man: a squire of the body had the same meaning.” No doubt one of its meanings was a kept gallant; but it generally signifies, as in our text, a pimp. Greene, enumerating the professors of the “sacking law,” mentions “The Bawd; if a man, an Apple squire.” Notable Discouery of Coosenage, 1592, sig. c 2. See also the fourth line of the song in our author’s Fair Quarrel, act iv. sc. 4.
440. a wheel ... blue gown] The use of both is presently mentioned in the text; and see note, p. 220.
444. mought] i. e. might.
446. guarded] A play on the word—trimmed, faced.
447. God] “In the old copy there is a blank left for this word, to avoid the prophanationem nominis Dei, as T. Bastard terms it in his Epigrams.... This vice, as is well known, was, not many years afterwards, reformed in a great degree, as far as the theatre was concerned. See the statute 3. James I. chap. xxi.” Collier.
449. chare] “i. e. task-work.” Reed.
451. a beadle beating a basin] The First Master presently tells the Duke that the basin “is an emblem of their revelling.” Here Reed cites a parallel passage from B. Jonson’s New Inn, act iv. sc. 3, and a remark of Whalley, that it alludes “to the custom of old, when bawds and other infamous persons were carted. A mob of people used to precede them beating basins and other utensils of the same kind, to make the noise and tumult the bigger,” &c. &c.
453. ancient] i. e. “an ensign.” Reed. “This point will be better understood from the following [passage of The Fleire, by Sharpham, sig. F 2, ed. 1615.]
454. aqua vitæ] “Formerly the general name for spirits.” Reed.
455. defy] i. e. reject, disclaim.
456. and] i. e. if.
459. placket] See vol. ii. p. 497. The assertion of Nares, there mentioned, is disproved by the present passage.
460. and] i. e. if.
461. let] Old ed. “lets.”
462. Yet, good, &c.] An imperfect couplet: see note, p. 52. In the passage which immediately precedes it, Orlando seems to be seized with a fit of rhyming.
463. Then hear, Matheo: all, &c.] Qy. “Then here, Matheo, all,” &c.
464. have] Old ed. “hath.”
465. recovered] From the playhouse probably, as Steevens conjectures.
466. a banquet towards] i. e. a banquet at hand, ready. Banquet means here, as in many (though not all) passages of our early writers, what we now call a dessert. Our ancestors usually quitted the eating-room as soon as they had dined, and removed to another apartment, where the banquet was set out.
467. duke’s] MS. “king’s.”
468. know] MS. “knew.”
469. suckets] i. e. sweetmeats.
470. termers] i. e. persons resorting to the capital during term-time: compare vol. ii. pp. 107, 433.
472. she that sunk, &c.] i. e. Queen Elinor, wife to King Edward the First: see Peele’s drama entitled Edward I., and the Ballad prefixed to it, in my sec. ed. of his Works, vol. i. p. 69. 1829.
473. charms] Written in MS. “charmes”—is used as a dissyllable in the next scene,
But perhaps I ought to have reduced the present hobbling speech to prose.
474. a country house, &c.] “The country house here alluded to,” says Malone, “was at Brentford; and in the plays written in 1607, and for some years afterwards, there are frequent allusions to the practice of carrying women of the town thither.” Life of Shakespeare, p. 428 (Sh. by Boswell, vol. ii.)
475. conclusions] i. e. experiments.
477. have] MS. “hath.”
479. The abode of Hecate. Enter Hecate] MS. has, “Enter Heccat; and other Witches (with Properties, and Habitts fitting).“—I had originally prefixed to this scene, ”A Cave: Hecate discovered in front of the stage: Stadlin, Hoppo, other witches, and Firestone, in an inner cave, where a caldron is boiling:” but Hecate does not see the caldron; and as we shall presently find that Almachildes (vide p. 268) is on the point of falling into it, before he meets with Hecate, it could not have been placed in an inner cave.
482. Puckle] MS. “Prickle.”
483. The nips of fairies, &c.] This passage is explained by the following lines of Browne:
485. There, take this unbaptised brat, &c.] Here, and in the next three speeches of Hecate, Middleton follows Reginald Scot, using sometimes the very words of that curious writer. In the Discouerie of Witchcraft, Scot gives from “John Bapt. Neap.” i. e. Porta, the following receipts for the miraculous transportation of witches: “℞. The fat of yoong children, and seeth it with water in a brasen vessell, reseruing the thickest of that which remaineth boiled in the bottome, which they laie vp and keepe, vntill occasion serueth to vse it. They put herevnto Eleoselinum, Aconitum, frondes populeas, and soote.” “℞. Sium, acarum vulgare, pentaphyllon, the bloud of a flitter-mouse, solanum somniferum et oleum. They stampe all these togither, and then they rubbe all parts of their bodies exceedinglie, till they looke red and be verie hot, so as the pores may be opened and their flesh soluble and loose. They ioine herewithall either fat or oile in steed thereof, that the force of the ointment maie the rather pearse inwardly, and so be more effectual. By this means (saith he) in a moone light night they seeme to be carried in the aire, to feasting, singing, dansing, kissing, culling, and other acts of venerie, with such youthes as they loue and desire most,” &c. B. x. c. viii. p. 184, ed. 1584.—See the original of this in Porta’s Magiæ Naturalis, sive De Miraculis Rerum Naturalium Libri iiii., 1561, 12mo. p. 180. Porta omitted the passage in (at least some) later and enlarged editions of his work.
486. leek] i. e. like—for the sake of the rhyme.
487. coll] i. e. embrace, or clasp round the neck.
488. Whelplie’s] What place is meant by this word I know not.
489. his throat] i. e. the dead child’s.
490. Pentaphyllon] MS. “Dentaphillon.”
491. flitter-mouse] Or flicker-mouse—i. e. bat.
492. churnings] MS. “charmings.”
493. meet] i. e. even.
494. dew-skirted] MS. “dew’d-skirted.”
495. swathy feastings] i. e. (I suppose) feastings among the swaths—the mown rows of grass.
496. costermonger’s] i. e. apple-seller’s.
497. Sylvans] MS. “Silence.”—Here again Middleton borrows from Reginald Scot: “And they haue so fraied vs with bull beggers, spirits, witches, vrchens, elues, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, faunes, sylens [sylvans], kit with the cansticke, tritons, centaurs, dwarfes, giants, imps, calcars, coniurors, nymphes, changlings, Incubus, Robin good-fellowe, the spoorne, the mare, the man in the oke, the hell waine, the fierdrake, the puckle, Tom thombe, hob gobblin, Tom tumbler, boneles, and such other bugs, that we are afraid of our owne shadowes.” Discouerie of Witchcraft, b. vii. c. xv. p. 153, ed. 1584.—Sir W. Scott, having given the above quotation from the work of his namesake, observes: “It would require a better demonologist than I am to explain the various obsolete superstitions which Reginald Scot has introduced, as articles of the old English faith, into the preceding passage. I might indeed say, the Phuca is a Celtic superstition, from which the word Pook, or Puckle, was doubtless derived; and I might conjecture, that the man-in-the-oak was the same with the Erl-König of the Germans; and that the hellwain were a kind of wandering spirits, the descendants of a champion named Hellequin, who are introduced into the romance of Richard sans Peur. But most antiquarians will be at fault concerning the spoorn, Kitt-with-the-candlestick, Boneless, and some others.” Letters on Demonology, &c., p. 174, sec. ed.—Whatever “Hellwain” may be properly, Middleton meant to express by the term some individual spirit: see p. 259, and the 3d scene of act iii.—The words with which Hecate concludes this speech, “A ab hur hus!” are also borrowed from R. Scot’s work, b. xii. c. xiv. p. 244, where they are mentioned as a charm against the toothache.
498. as] MS. “and.”
499. Stadlin’s within, &c.] From R. Scot: “It is constantlie affirmed in M. Mal. that Stafus vsed alwaies to hide himselfe in a monshoall [mouse-hole], and had a disciple called Hoppo, who made Stadlin a maister witch, and could all when they list inuisiblie transferre the third part of their neighbours doong, hay, corne, &c. into their owne ground, make haile, tempests, and flouds, with thunder and lightning; and kill children, cattell, &c.: reueale things hidden, and many other tricks, when and where they list.” Discouerie of Witchcraft, b. xii. c. v. p. 222, ed. 1584.—See Sprenger’s Malleus Maleficarum, Pars Sec. quæst. i. cap. xv. p. 267, ed. 1576, where the name Stadio, not Stadlin, is found; but the latter occurs at p. 210.
500. tear] MS. “teares”—and in the next line “Flyes,” and “takes.”
501. Anno Domini] i. e. the date of the house, frequently affixed to old buildings.
502. reeks] i. e. ricks.
504. Chirocineta, &c.] From R. Scot: “Pythagoras and Democritus giue vs the names of a great manie magicall hearbs and stones, whereof now both the vertue and the things themselues also are vnknowne: as Marmaritin, whereby spirits might be raised: Archimedon, which would make one bewraie in his sleepe all the secrets in his heart: Adincantida, Calicia, Meuais, Chirocineta, &c.: which had all their seuerall vertues, or rather poisons.” Discouerie of Witchcraft, b. vi. c. iii. p. 117, ed. 1584.
505. sew and sock] MS. “soawes and socks.”
506. patient miracle] i. e. Job.
508. I know he loves me not] Steevens, enumerating the parallel passages of Macbeth and The Witch, compares the present observation of Hecate with what the same personage says in Shakespeare’s play;
509. bravest] i. e. fineliest dressed.
510. I pray, be covered] I may just observe, that, in the language of the time, these words meant, properly,—put on your hat.
511. tremble] MS. “trembles.”
512. a toad in marchpane] Marchpane was a composition of almonds and sugar, &c. pounded and baked together. It was a constant article at banquets [i. e. desserts], and was wrought into various figures. Taylor, the water-poet, mentions
513. beray’d] i. e. befouled.
514. sucket] i. e. sweetmeat.
515. cullis] i. e. a strong broth, a savoury jelly: among its ingredients the old receipt-books mention fine gold and orient pearl.
516. nobles] Gold coins worth 6s. 8d. each.
517. panado] “A kind of caudle, made of water, grated bread, currans, mace, cinnamon, sack, or white wine and sugar, with yolks of eggs boiled.” R. Holme’s Ac. of Armory, b. iii. c. iii. p. 84.
518. Some, &c.] In this speech I have printed several lines as prose, which might, perhaps, be tortured into verse.
519. chewets] “Chewit, or small pie, minced or otherwise.” R. Holme’s Ac. of Armory, b. iii. c. iii. p. 82.
520. gamester] i. e. debauched fellow.
521. toy] i. e. trifle.
522. have] MS. “has.”
523. spoil] MS. “spoiles.”
525. toys] i. e. trifles.
526. heal] i. e. health—Scotch—at Ravenna!
528. toy] i. e. whim, fancy.
529. boughts] i. e. knots, twists.