41 are not the things they go under :) Are not really so true and sincere as in appearance they seem to be. 49 brokes-] Deals as a broker. 43 -John Drum's entertainment,] There is an old motley interlude (printed in 1601), called Jack Drum's Entertainment: Or, the Comedy of Pasquil and Katharine. In this, Jack Drum is a servant of intrigue, who is ever aiming at projects, and always foil'd, and given the drop. And there is another old piece (published in 1627) called, Apollo shroving, in which I find these expressions : Thuriger. Thon lozel, hath Slug infected you? Why do you give such kind entertainment to that cobweb? Scopas. It shall have Tom Drum's entertainment; a flap with a fox-tail. But both these pieces are, perhaps, too late in time, to come to the assistance of our author: so we must look a little higher. What is said here to Bertram is to this effect. "My lord, as you have taken this " fellow (Parolles) into so near a confidence, if, upon "his being found a counterfeit, you don't cashier him "from your favour, then your attachment is not to " be remov'd."-I'll now subjoin a quotation from Holinshed (of whose books Shakspeare was a most diligent reader) which will pretty well ascertain Drum's history. This chronologer, in his description of Ireland, speaking of Patrick Scarsefield (mayor of Dublin in the year 1551) and of his extravagant hospitality, subjoins, that no guest had ever a cold or forbidding look from any part of his family: so that his porter or any other officer durst not, for both his ears, give the simplest man, that resorted to his house, Tom Drum's entertainment, which is, to hale a man in by the head, and thrust him out by both the shoulders. THEOBALD. 44 -emboss'd him,] To emboss a deer or hound is, as has been before remarked, to run him till he foams at the mouth. 45 Is wicked meaning in a lawful deed, And lawful meaning in a lawful act;] The sense of the two lines is this, It is a wicked meaning because the woman's intent is to deceive; but a lawful deed, because the man enjoys his own wife. Again, it is a lawful meaning because done by her to gain her husband's estranged affection, but it is a wicked act because he goes intentionally to commit adultery. The riddle concludes thus, Where both not sin, and yet a sinful fact: i. e. Where neither of them sin, and yet it is a sinful fact on both sides; which conclusion, we see, requires the emendation here made. WARBURTON. 46 -Bajazet's mule,) We should read, Bajazet's mute, i. e. a Turkish mute. So in Henry V. Either our history shall with full mouth Speak freely of our acts; or else our grave, Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth. WARBURTON. As a mule is dumb by nature, as the mute is by art, the reading may stand. In one of our old Turkish histories, there is a pompous description of Bajazet riding on a mule to the Divan. 47-this has no holding, STEEVENS. To swear by him whom I protest to love, That I will work against him:] i. e. that oath can never hold, whose subject is to offend and displease that Being, whom I profess, in the act of swearing by him, to love and reverence. 48 -braid,] is crafty, deceitful. WARBURTON. 49 if I were to live this present hour,] i. e. only this present hour. 50 -cassocks,] Cassock signifies a horseman's loose coat, and is used in that sense by the writers of the age of Shakspeare. So in Every Man in his Humour, Brainworm says-" He will never come within the "sight of a cassock or a musquet-rest again." Something of the same kind likewise appears to have been part of the dress of rusticks, in Mucedorus, an anonymous comedy, 1598, attributed by some writers to Shakspeare. Within my closet there does hang a cassock, Thơ base the weed is, 'twas a shepherd's. Nash, in Pierce Pennilesse his Supplication to the Devil, 1595, says, " I lighted upon an old straddling usurer, " clad in a damask cassock edged with fur, &c." So in Lingua, or a Combat of the Tongue, &c. 1607. "Enter Memory, an old decrepid man in a velvet cassock." Again in Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra, 1578. "I will not stick to wear "A blue cassock." On this occasion a woman is the speaker. So again Puttenham, in his Art of Poetry, 1589" Who "would not think it a ridiculous thing to see a lady "in her milk-house with a velvet gown, and at a " bridal in her cassock of moccado ?" STEEVENS. 31 Men are to mell with, &c.] To mell is to meddle: meler, French. In the west of England this word is, at present, in common use. 'Don't mell o'the fire,' or 'Don't mell with the apples,' is the daily language of the Devonshire peasant to his children. 52 He will steal, sir, an egg out of a cloister; I know not that cloister, though it may etymologically signify any thing shut, is used by our author otherwise than for a monastery, and therefore I cannot guess whence this hyperbole could take its original: perhaps it means only this: He will steal any thing, however trifling, from any place, however holy. 53 JOHNSON. -saucy trusting-] saucy here means lascivious. 54 whose villainous saffron, &c.] Parolles is represented as an affected follower of the fashion, and an encourager of his master to run into all the follies of it; where he says, Use a more spacious ceremony to the noble lords they wear themselves in the cap of time and though the devil lead the measure, such are to be followed. Here some particularities of fashionable dress are ridiculed, Snipt-taffata needs no explanation; but villainous saffron is more obscure. This alludes to a fantastic fashion, then much followed, of using yellow starch for their bands and ruffs. So Fletcher, in his Queen of Corinth, -Has he familiarly Dislik'd your yellow starch; or said your doublet And Jonson's Devil's an Ass, Carmen and chimney-sweepers are got into the yellow starch. This was invented by one Turner, a tire-woman, a court-bawd; and, in all respects, of so infamous a character, that her invention deserved the name of villainous saffron. This woman was, afterwards, amongst the miscreants concerned in the murder of sir Thomas Overbury, for which she was hanged at Tyburn, and would die in a yellow ruff of her own invention: which made yellow starch so odious, that it immediately went out of fashion. 'Tis this then to which Shakspeare alludes: but using the word saffron for yellow, a new idea presented itself, and he pursues his thought under a quite different allusion-Whose villainous saffron would have made all the unbaked and doughy youth of a nation in his colour, i. e. of his temper and disposition. Here the general custom of that time, of colouring paste with saffron, is alluded to. So in the Winter's Tale: I must have saffron to colour the warden pyes. WARBURTON. 55 -his phisnomy is more hotter-] This is intoler |