Chapter XVIII: Act I: SCENE 1. Page 8

DUKE. How will she love, when the rich _golden shaft_
Hath kill'd the flock of all affections else
That live in her.

This _golden shaft_ was supplied either from a description of Cupid in Sidney's _Arcadia_, book ii., or from Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, translated by Golding, 4to, fo. 8, where, speaking of Cupid's arrows, he says,

"_That causeth love_ is all of _golde_ with point full sharp and
bright.
That chaseth love, is blunt, whose steele with leaden head is dight."

Milton seems to have forgotten that Love had only _one_ shaft of _gold_. See _Parad. Lost_, iv. 1. 763.

SCENE 2. Page 11.

CAP. ... she hath abjur'd the company
And sight of men.

This necessary and justifiable change in the _ordo verborum_ from the reading in the old copy, and to which Mr. Steevens lays claim, had been already made by Sir Thomas Hanmer.

SCENE 3. Page 21.

SIR TO. ... Wherefore have these gifts a _curtain_ before them? are
they like to take dust, like mistress Mall's picture?

Mr. Malone's conjecture that curtains were at this time frequently hung before pictures of value, is further supported in Scene 5 of this Act, where Olivia, in unveiling her face, mentions the practice. In Deloney's _Pleasant history of Jack of Newbery_, printed before 1597, it is recorded that "in a faire large parlour, which was wainscotted round about, Jacke of Newbery had fifteene faire pictures hanging, _which were covered with curtaines of greene silke_, frienged with gold, which he would often shew to his friends and servants."

SCENE 3. Page 23.

SIR AND. Taurus? that's _sides and heart_.

SIR TO. No, sir, it is _legs and thighs_.

Both the knights are wrong in their astrology, according to the almanacs of the time, which make Taurus govern _the neck and throat_. Their ignorance is perhaps intentional.

SCENE 5. Page 31.

SIR TO. ... How now, _sot_?

There is great humour in this ambiguous word, which applies equally to the fool and the knight himself, in his _drunken condition_.