Chapter XXX: Act III: SCENE 1. Page 469

D. PEDRO. ... the little _hangman_ dare not shoot at him.

Dr. Farmer has illustrated this term by citing a passage from Sidney's _Arcadia_; but he has omitted a previous description in which Cupid is metamorphosed into a strange old monster, sitting on a _gallows_ with a crown of laurel in one hand, and a purse of money in the other, as if he would persuade folks by these allurements _to hang_ themselves. It is certainly possible that this might have been Shakspeare's prototype; we should otherwise have supposed that he had called Cupid a hangman metaphorically, from the remedy sometimes adopted by desparing lovers.

SCENE 4. Page 488.

MARG. Clap us into _light o'love_.

When Margaret adds that this tune "goes without a burden," she does not mean that it never had words to it, but only that it wanted a very common appendage to the ballads of that time. The name itself may be illustrated by the following extract from _The glasse of man's follie_, 1615, 4to. "There be wealthy houswives, and good house-keepers that use no starch, but faire water: their linnen is white, and they looke more Christian-like in small ruffes, then _Light of love_ lookes in her great starched ruffs, looke she never so hie, with eye-lids awrye." This anonymous work is written much in the manner of Stubbes's _Anatomie of abuses_, and for the same purpose.

ACT IV.

SCENE 1. Page 510.

BENE. Tarry, sweet Beatrice.

BEAT. _I am gone, though I am here._ There is no love in you--Nay,
I pray you let me go.

Though three explanations have been already offered, there is room for further conjecture. From the latter words of Beatrice it is clear that Benedick had stopped her from going. She may therefore intend to say that notwithstanding she is detained by force, she is in reality absent; her heart is no longer Benedick's.