Chapter XXVIII: Act I: SCENE 1. Page 395

Enter LEONATO....

This is the name of the injured lady's father in the novel of Belleforest which Mr. Steevens supposes to have furnished the plot of the play; a circumstance that tends very much to prove the justness of that gentleman's opinion.

SCENE 1. Page 396.

MESS. Without a _badge_ of bitterness.

See a future note on _The taming of the shrew_, Act IV. Scene 1.

SCENE 1. Page 397.

BEAT. He _set up his bills_ here in Messina.

This mode of expression will admit of a little more illustration than it has already received. The practice to which it refers was calculated to advertise the public of any matters which concerned itself or the party whose bills were set up; and it is the more necessary to state this, because the passages which have been used in explanation might induce the reader to suppose that challenges and prize-fightings were the exclusive objects of these bills. This however was not the case. In Northbrooke's _Treatise against dicing, dauncing, vaine plaies, &c._, 1579, 4to, a work much resembling that extremely curious volume Stubbes's _Anatomie of abuses_, we are told that they used "to _set up their billes_ upon postes certain dayes before, to admonish the people to make resort unto their _theatres_, that they may thereby be the better furnished, and the people prepared to fill their purses with their treasures." In the play of _Histriomastix_, a man is introduced setting up _text billes for playes_; and William Rankins, another puritanical writer against plays, which he calls _the instruments of Satan_, in his _Mirrour of monsters_, 1587, 4to, p. 6, says, that "players by _sticking of their bils_ in London, defile the streetes with their infectious filthines." Mountebanks likewise set up their bills. "Upon this scaffold also might bee mounted a number of _quacksalving emperickes_, who arriving in some country towne, clap up their _terrible billes_ in the market place, and filling the paper with such horrible names of diseases, as if every disease were a divell, and that they could conjure them out of any towne at their pleasure." Dekkar's _Villanies discovered by lanthorne and candle-light, &c._, 1616, 4to, sign. H. Again, in _Tales and quick answeres_, printed by Berthelette, b. l. n. d. 4to, a man having lost his purse in London "_sette up bylles_ in divers places that if any man of the cyte had founde the purse and woulde brynge it agayn to him he shulde have welle for his laboure. A gentyllman of the Temple _wrote under one of the byls_ howe the man shulde come to his chambers and told where." It appears from a very rare little piece entitled _Questions of profitable and pleasant concernings talked of by two olde seniors, &c._, 1594, 4to, that Saint Paul's was a place in which these bills or advertisements were posted up. Thomas Nashe in his _Pierce Pennilesse his supplication to the divell_, 1595, 4to, sign. E. speaks of the "maisterlessemen that _set up theyr bills in Paules for services_, and such as paste up their papers on every post, for arithmetique and writing schooles:" we may therefore suppose that several of the walks about Saint Paul's cathedral then resembled the present Royal Exchange with respect to the business that was there transacted; and it appears indeed, from many allusions in our old plays, to have been as well the resort of the idle, as the busy. The phrase of _setting up bills_ continued long after the time of Shakspeare and is used in a translation of Suetonius published in 1677, 8vo, p. 227.

SCENE 1. Page 399.

BEAT. ... challenged him at the _bird-bolt_.

In further exemplification of this sort of arrow, the following representations have been collected. A very sagacious _modern_ editor of King James's _Christ's kirk on the green_ has stated that the line "the bolt flew o'er the bire" is a metaphor of a _thunderbolt_ flying over the cowhouse!

SCENE 1. Page 412.

BENE. Prove that ever I lose more blood with love, &c.

There is a covert allusion in this speech that will not admit of a particular explanation. Debauchees imagine that wine recruits the loss of animal spirits. _Love_ is used here in its very worst sense, and the whole is extremely gross and indelicate.