Chapter LVI: Act I: SCENE 1. Page 414

KATH. I pray you, sir, is it your will
To make a _stale_ of me amongst these _mates_.

She means to say, "do you intend to make a strumpet of me among these companions?" but the expression seems to have been suggested by the chess-term of _stale mate_, which is used when the game is ended by the king being alone and unchecked, and then forced into a situation from which he is unable to move without going into check. This is a dishonourable termination to the adversary, who thereby loses the game. Thus in Lord Verulam's twelfth essay, "They stand still like a _stale_ at chess, where it is no _mate_, but yet the game cannot stir."

SCENE 2. Page 427.

PET. Be she as foul as was Florentius' love.

Dr. Farmer's note might have been omitted, as it refers to a story which has no manner of connection with that to which Petruchio alludes.

SCENE 2. Page 436.

PET. Tush, tush, _fear_ boys with _bugs_.

To _fear_ is to frighten. In Mathews's _Bible_, psalm xci. v. 5, is thus rendered: "Thou shalt not nede to be afraied for any _bugs_ by night." In the Hebrew it is "_terror_ of the night;" a curious passage, evidently alluding to that horrible sensation the night-mare, which in all ages has been regarded as the operation of evil spirits. Thus much seemed necessary in explanation or defence of the above most excellent old translation, which we have retained with very little change in the language; for the expression, from its influence on a modern ear, might have been liable to a very ludicrous construction. The word _bug_ is originally Celtic, _bŵg_, a ghost or goblin, and hence _bug-bear_, _boggerd_, _bogle_, _boggy-bo_, and perhaps _pug_, an old name for the Devil. _Boggy-bo_ seems to signify the _spirit_ Bo, and has been thought, with some probability, to refer to a warrior of that name, the son of Odin, and of great celebrity among the ancient Danes and Norwegians. His name is said to have struck his enemies with terror, and might have been used by the nurses of those times to frighten children, as that of Marlborough was in France on the same occasion. It is remarkable that the Italian women use _bau bau_, for this purpose, and the French _ba-bo_. It should seem as if _bug_ had been metaphorically applied to the _cimex_, that insect being in all respects _a terror of the night_. Nor was the word used in this sense till late in the seventeenth century, the old names for the house bug being, _wall-louse_, _wig-louse_, _chinch_, _punie_, and _puneez_; the two last from the French.