411. He looks like sooth :— -] Sooth is truth. Obsolete. So, in Lylly's Woman in the Moon, 1597 : "Thou dost dissemble, but I mean good sooth." STEEVENS. 429. —doleful matter merrily set down;] This seems to be another stroke aimed at the title-page of Preston's Cambises, "A lamentable Tragedy, mixed full of pleasant Mirth," &c. STEEVENS. 436. of dil-do's-] "With a hie dildo dill" is the burthen of the Batchelor's Feast, an ancient ballad, and is likewise called the Tune of it. STEEVENS. -fa-dings: -] An Irish dance of this name is mentioned by Ben Jonson, in The Irish Masque at Court: 66 -and daunsh a fading at te wedding." Again, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle : "I will have Him dance fading; fading is a fine TYRWHITT. jigg." So, in The Bird in a Cage, by Shirley, 1633: "But under her coats the ball be found. "With a fading." Again, in Ben Jonson's 97th epigram: "See you yond motion? not the old fading." 439. STEEVENS. -Whoop, do me no harm, good man.] This was the name of an old song. In the famous history of Fryar Bacon we have a ballad to the tune of " Oh! do me no harme, good man." Fiij. FARMER. 448. 448. caddisses, -] I do not exactly know what caddisses are. In Shirley's Witty Fair One, 1633,* one of the characters says: "I will have eight velvet pages, and six footmen in caddis." In the First Part of K. Henry IV. I have supposed caddis to be ferret Perhaps by six footmen in caddis, is meant six footmen with their liveries laced with such a kind of worsted stuff. As this worsted lace was particoloured, it might have received its title from cadesse, the ancient name for a daw. STEEVENS. 457. -sleeve-band,-] Is put very probably by Sir T. Hanmer; it was before sleeve-hand. JOHNSON. The old reading is right, or we must alter some passages in other authors. The word sleeve-hands occurs in Leland's Collectanea, 1770, Vol. IV. p. 313: "A surcoat [of crimson velvet] furred with mynever pure, the coller, skirts, and skeve-hands garnished with ribbons of gold." So, in Cotgrave's Dict. "Poignet de la chemise," is Englished "the wristband, or gathering at the sleeve-hand of a shirt." I conceive, that the work about the square on't, signifies the work or embroidery about the bosom part of a shift, which might then have been of a square form, or might have a square tucker, as Anne Bolen and Jane Seymour have in Houbraken's engravings of the heads of illustrious persons. So, in Fairfax's trans, lation of Tasso, B. XII. st. 64. "Between her breasts the cruel weapon rives, I should I should have taken the square for a gorget or stomacher, but for this passage in Shakspere. TOLLET. The following passage in John Grange's Garden, 1577, may likewise tend to the support of the ancient reading-sleeve-hand. In a poem called The Paynting of a Curtizan, he says, Their smockes are all bewrought about the necke and hande." STEEVENS. 468. poking-sticks of steel,] These pokingsticks were heated in the fire, and made use of to adjust the plaits of ruffs. So, in Middleton's comedy of Blurt Master Constable, 1602: "Your ruff must stand in print, and for that purpose get poking-sticks with fair long handles, lest they scorch your hands." These poking-sticks are several times mentioned in Heywood's If you know not me, you know Nobody, 1633, second part; and in the Yorkshire Tragedy, 1619, which has been attributed to Shakspere. In the books of the Stationers-Company, July 1590, was entered "A ballat entitled Blewe Starche and Poking-sticks. Allowed under the hand of the Bishop of London.” Stowe informs us, that "about the sixteenth yeere of the queene [Elizabeth] began the making of steele poking-sticks, and untill that time all lawndresses used 'setting stickes made of wood or bone." STEEVENS. 489. Clamour your tongues,- -] The phrase iş taken from ringing. When bells are at the height, in order to cease them, the repetition of the strokes be comes 7 comes much quicker than before; this is called. clamouring them. The allusion is humorous. WARBURTON. The word clamour, when applied to bells, does not signify in Shakspere a ceasing, but a continued ring. ing. Thus used in Much Ado about Nothing, act v. SC. 7. "Ben. -If a man do not erect in this age his own tomb ere he dies, he shall live no longer in monument than the bells ring and the widow weeps. "Beat. And how long is that, think you. ? "Ben. Question; why an hour in clamour, and a quarter in rheum.' 491. GREY. —you promis'd me a tawdry lace, and a pair of sweet gloves.] Tawdry lace is thus described in Skinner, by his friend Dr. Henshawe: " Tawdrie lace, astrig. menta, timbriæ, seu fasciolæ, emtæ, Nundinis Sæ. Etheldredæ celebratis: Ut rectè monet Doc. Thomas Henshawe." Etymol. in voce. We find it in Spenser's Pastorals, Aprill; "And gird in your waste, "For more finenesse, with a tawdrie lace." As to the other present, promised by the Clown to Mopsa, of sweet, or perfumed gloves, they are fre quently mentioned by Shakspere, and were very fashionable in the age of Elizabeth, and long afterwards. Thus Autolycus, in the song just preceding this passage, offers to sale : "Gloves as sweet as damask roses." Stowe's Stowe's Continuator, Edmund Howes, informs us, that the English could not "make any costly wash or perfume, until about the fourteenth or fifteenth of the queene [Elizabeth] the right honourable Edward Vere earle of Oxford came from Italy, and brought with him gloves, sweet bagges, a perfumed leather jerkin, and other pleasant thinges: and that yeare the queene had a payre of perfumed gloves trimmed onlie with foure tuftes, or roses, of cullered silke. The queene took such pleasure in those gloves, that shee was pictured with those gloves upon her hands: and for many yeers after it was called the erle of Oxfordes perfume." Stowe's Annals by Howes, edit. 1614. p. 868. col. 2, WARTON. So, in The Life and Death of Jack Straw, a comedy, 1593: "Will you in faith, and I'll give you a tawdrię lace." Tom, the miller, offers this present to the queen, she will procure his pardon. 1 if It may be worth while to observe, that these tawdry laces were not the strings with which the ladies fasten their stays, but were worn about their heads, and their waists. So, in The Four Ps. 1599: "Brooches and rings, and all manner of beads, "Laces round and flat for women's heads." Again, in Drayton's Polyolbion, song the second: "Of which the Naides and the blew Nereides make 4 Them tawdries for their necks." In |