Chapter CXXVII: Act III: SCENE 2. Page 147

FOOL. Marry, here's grace, and a _cod-piece_; that's a wise man and
a _fool_.

Shakspeare has with some humour applied the above name to the fool, who, for obvious reasons, was usually provided with this unseemly part of dress in a more remarkable manner than other persons. To the custom Gayton thus alludes, when speaking of the decline of the stage: "No fooles with _Harry codpieces appeare_."--_Festivous notes upon Don Quixote_, p. 270.

SCENE 2. Page 150.

FOOL. No hereticks _burn'd_ but wenches suitors.

Dr. Johnson has very well explained why _wenches suitors_ were _burned_; but Mr. Steevens's quotation from Isaiah iii. 24, "--and _burning_ instead of beauty," has not been applied on this occasion with his usual discernment. Not to mention the improbability that the _burning_ in question should have existed in the time of Isaiah, the expression itself is involved in the deepest obscurity. Saint Jerome has entirely omitted it; and if the Hebrew word, which in some translations has been rendered _adustio_, be susceptible of any fair meaning, it is that of _shrivelled_ or _dried up by heat_. It is, therefore, in the bishop's bible and some foreign translations paraphrastically given, "and for their bewty witherednesse and _sunne burning_." The manuscript regulations for the stews in Southwark, printed but abridged in Stowe's Annals, would have furnished the learned commentator with a far more apposite illustration. In these it is said, "no stewholder shall keep any woman that hath the perilous infirmity of _burning_."

SCENE 4. Page 160.

EDG. _Pillicock_ sat on pillicock's hill.

In the metrical romance of _Sir Gawain and Sir Galaron_, there is this line,

"His polemous with _pelicocus_ were poudred to pay."

Pinkerton's _Scotish poems_, vol. iii. 214.

In the comedy of _Ignoramus_ by Ruggles, Act III. Scene 6, Cupes talks of "quimbiblos, indenturas, _pilicoccos_, calimancas;" where it is perhaps a new-fangled term for any kind of stuff or cloth. There is an attempt to explain the word in Warner's _Letter to Garrick_, p. 30; but whoever would be certain of finding the exact meaning, may consult, besides the article in Minsheu, 9299, the following books: Durfey's _Pills to purge melancholy_, iv. 311.--The _Nightingale_, (a collection of songs) 1738, p. 380.--Lyndsay's _Works_, as edited by Mr. Chalmers, ii. 145, and the excellent glossary.--Florio's _Italian dictionary_, 1611, under the articles _piviolo_, and _rozzone_.

SCENE 4. Page 162.

EDG. Keep thy pen from _lenders books_.

When spendthrifts and distressed persons resorted to usurers or tradesmen for the purpose of raising money by means of shop-goods or _brown paper commodities_, they usually entered their promissory notes or other similar obligations in books kept for that purpose. It is to this practice that Edgar alludes.

In Lodge's _Looking-glasse for London and Englande_, 1598, 4to, a usurer says to a gentleman, "I have thy hand set to my book that thou received'st fortie pounds of me in money." To which the other answers, "It was your device, to colour the statute, but your conscience knowes what I had." Parke, in his _Curtaine-drawer of the world_, speaking of a country gentleman, alludes to the extravagance of his back, which had got him into _the mercer's book_.

SCENE 4. Page 163.

EDG. ... ha, no nonny.

This was the burden of many old songs. One of these, being connected with Mr. Henley's curious note, is here presented to the reader. It is taken from a scarce collection, entitled _Melismata. Musicall phansies, fitting the court, citie and countrey humours, To 3, 4, and 5 voyces_, 1611, 4to. In Playford's _Musical companion_, p. 55, the words are set to a different tune.

[Music:

E that will an Ale-house keepe must have three things in store,
a Chamber and a feather Bed, a Chimney and a hey no-ny no-ny
hay no-ny no-ny, hey nony no, hey nony no, hey nony no.]

SCENE 4. Page 164.

LEAR. ... unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare,
_forked_ animal as thou art.

_Forked_ is a very strange epithet, but must be taken literally. See a note by Mr. Steevens in Act IV. Scene 6, of this play. The Chinese in their _written_ language represent a man by the following character.

SCENE 6. Page 176.

FOOL. He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's
_health_, a boy's love, or a whore's oath.

Though _health_ will certainly do, it has probably been substituted for _heels_, by some person who regarded it as an improved reading. There are several proverbs of this kind. That in the text has not been found elsewhere, and may be the invention of Shakspeare. The Italians say, _Of a woman beware before, of a mule beware behind, and of a monk beware on all sides_; the French, _Beware of a bull's front, of a mule's hinder parts, and of all sides of a woman_. In Samuel Rowland's excellent and amusing work, entitled _The choice of change, containing the triplicity of divinitie, philosophie, and poetrie_, 1585, 4to, we meet with this proverbial saying, "Trust not 3 thinges, dogs teeth, horses feete, womens protestations."

SCENE 6. Page 184.

EDG. Poor Tom, _thy horn is dry_.

On this speech Dr. Johnson has remarked that men who begged under pretence of lunacy, used formerly to carry a horn and blow it through the streets. To account for Edgar's horn being _dry_, we must likewise suppose that the lunatics in question made use of this utensil to drink out of, which seems preferable to the opinion of Mr. Steevens, that these words are "a proverbial expression, introduced when a man has nothing further to offer, when he has said all he has to say," the learned commentator not having adduced any example of its use. An opportunity here presents itself of suggesting a more correct mode of exhibiting the theatrical dress of Poor Tom than we usually see, on the authority of Randle Holme in his most curious and useful work _The academy of armory_, book III. ch. iii. p. 161, where he says that the _Bedlam_ has "a long staff and a cow or ox-horn by his side; his cloathing fantastic and ridiculous; for being a madman, he is madly decked and dressed all over with rubins, feathers, cuttings of cloth, and what not, to make him seem a madman or one distracted, when he is no other than a dissembling knave." It is said that about the year 1760 a poor idiot called _Cude Yeddy_, went about the streets of Hawick in Scotland habited much in the above manner, and rattling a cow's horn against his teeth. Something like this costume may be seen in the portrait of that precious knave _Mull'd Sack_, who carries a _drinking horn_ on his staff. See Caulfield's _Portraits, memoirs, and characters of remarkable persons_, vol. ii.