Volume Vi Part 113 (1/2)

[297] [Old copy, _Abstrauogant_.]

[298] [Old copy, _peely_.]

[299] [Cakes. Old copy, _cats_.]

[300] [A Knight of the Post was a person hired to swear anything--a character often mentioned in old writers.]

[301] Some persons, not merely without reason, but directly against it, treat _vild_ and _vile_, and consequently vildly and _vilely_, as distinct words. _Vild_ and _vildly_ are blunders in old spelling, only to be retained when, as now, we give the words of an author in the very orthography of that date. We profess here to follow the antiquated spelling exactly, that it may be seen how the productions in our volume came originally from the press: but when spelling is modernised, as it is in the ordinary republications of our ancient dramatists, &c., it is just as absurd to print ”vile” _vild_, as to print ”friend” frend or ”enemy” _ennimy_.--_Mr Collier's note in the edition of_ 1851.

[302] Shakespeare has the word ”exigent” for _extremity_, and such seems to be its meaning here, and not the legal sense; the Knight says that the good name of his predecessors for housekeeping shall never be brought into extremity by him.

[303] [Wary, aware.]

[304] [Old copy, _Squire_.]

[305] [Old copy, _for fourtie_.]

[306] An early instance of the use of an expression, of frequent occurrence afterwards and down to our own day, equivalent to going without dinner. See Steevens's note to ”Richard III.” act iv. sc. 4, where many pa.s.sages are quoted on the point.

[307] [Old copy, _ope_.]

[308] The copy of this play in the British Museum has here ”_Scinthin_ maide;” but another, belonging to the Rev. A. Dyce, ”_Scythia_ maide,” a reading we have followed, and, no doubt, introduced by the old printer as the sheets went through the press.

[309] ”Counterfeit” was a very common term for the resemblance of a person: in ”Hamlet,” act iii. sc. 4, we have ”counterfeit presentment;”

and in the ”Merchant of Venice,” act iii. sc. 2, ”Fair Portia's counterfeit.” In Beaumont and Fletcher's ”Wife for a Month,” act iv. sc.

5, we meet-with ”counterfeits in Arras” for portraits, or figures in tapestry.