Chapter CXXIII: Act IV: SCENE 3. Page 539

The two last lines in the quotation from _The wife for a month_ should be printed thus:

Hung up _my_ picture in a market place,
And sold _me_ to vile bawds.

SCENE 3. Page 540.

BAWD. ... to scatter his _crowns in the sun_.

"There is here," says Mr. Malone, "perhaps, some allusion to the _lues venerea_, though the words _French crowns_ in their literal acceptation were certainly also in Boult's thoughts." Mr. Mason sees no allusion whatever to the above disease. That a French crown did signify the _lues venerea_ cannot be doubted; but Mr. Mason's difference of opinion might be further supported by reflecting that if the Frenchman came to _renovate_[18] his malady, he could not well be said to scatter it. It must therefore be inferred that he was to scatter nothing but his money. As Mr. Mason has not favoured us with an explanation of the coins in question, it is necessary to state that they were _crowns of the sun_ specifically so called, _écus du soleil_; and in this instance, for the sake of antithesis, termed crowns _in_ the sun. They were of gold, originally coined by Louis XI. Their name was derived from the mint mark of a sun; and they were current in this kingdom by weight, in the same manner as certain English coins were in France.

SCENE 3. Page 541.

BOULT. ... we should lodge them with _this sign_.

_This sign_ is properly referred by Mr. Malone to the person of Marina, and cannot, for the reasons in the last note, allude to the _sun_, according to Mr. Mason's second explanation. Nor is this gentleman's argument supported by the instance adduced of the sun having been used as the sign of a brothel. It was by no means exclusively, or even particularly so. The following passage from Dekker's _Villanies discovered, or the belman's night walks_, may throw some light on the subject before us. "He saw the doores of notorious _carted bawdes_ (like hell gates) stand night and day wide open, with a _paire of harlots_ in taffata gownes (like two painted posts) garnishing out those doores, being better to the house then a _double signe_."

SCENE 6. Page 567.

MAR. Thou 'rt the damn'd door-keeper to every coystrel
That hither comes enquiring for his _tib_.

Mr. Malone thinks _Tib_ a contraction of Tabitha; but quære if not of Isabel? In all events it was a name given to any lewd woman. In _Pasquil's mad cappe_, 1626, 4to, an excellent satire, mention is made of _a tinker and his tibbe_. Why this name was exclusively applied to a loose woman, or how it got into the game of gleek, does not appear.