A Select Collection of Old English Plays
Chapter 410 : [154] A bully.[155] _i e, pox_.[156] Old copies, _alone_.[157] _Vile_.[158] _Your live

[154] A bully.

[155] _i e, pox_.

[156] Old copies, _alone_.

[157] _Vile_.

[158] _Your lives so farre amisse_, edit. 1592.

[159] [Scrupulous.]

[160] [Old copies, _Fraud_.]

[161] [Dissimulation.]

[162] [Edit. 1592, _Iwis_.]

[163] Edit. 1584, _s.h.i.+ft it_.

[164] This speech stands as follows in edit. 1592--"Gramercie, Usury; and doubt not but to live here as pleasantly, And pleasanter too: but whence came you, Symonie, tell me?"

[165] _Doubt not, fairs ladie_, edit. 1592. In the next line but two, edit. 1592 has _certainly_ for "I perceaue," and the last two lines of the speech run as follows--

"And seeing we are so well setted in this countrey, Rich and poore shall be pincht, whosoever come to me."

[166] When this drama was reprinted in 1592, the interval between 1584 and that date made it necessary to read 33 _years_ for "26 yeares" in this line. It is a curious note of time.

[167] [This is given in the old copies, _sarua voulra boungrace_, but surely _Mercatore_ was not intended to blunder in his own language.]

[168] [Scald.]

[169] Omitted in edit. 1584.

[170] _I think so_ is omitted in the second 4to.

[171] [Signed.]

[172] _Studied late_ is omitted in first 4to.

[173] _At all_ is not in second 4to.

[174] [Old copies, _kettels_.]

[175] Possibly a personal allusion to somebody sitting "in the corner"

of the theatre; or it may have been to some well-known character of the time. Farther on, Simplicity alludes to some boy among the audience.

[176] [Not in _edit. 1581_]

[177] [_I think youle make me serve_, edit. 1592.]

[178] [_And prosperous be they to thee_, edit. 1592.]

[179] [_And dine with me_, edit. 1592.]

[180] [_Thankes_, edit. 1592, omitting _I give you_.]

[181] [Old copies, _am_.]

[182] [Testy. Halliwell spells it _testorn_. Old copies, _testren_.]

[183] [Clarke, in his "Paroemiologia," 1639, has the proverb "He blushes like a black dog."]

[184] [Old copies, _you_.]

[185] [Edit. 1584 has _very_, and second 4 _well_, the true reading, as Mr Collier suggests, being that now given in the text.]

[186] [_Priest_, edit. 1592.]

[187] [_Neuter_.]

[188] [Miracle.]

[189] [i.e., in good style.]

[190] [Edit. 1584 has _must_.]

[191] This line is omitted in edit. 1592.

[192] [Will.]

[193] For _parliament_ we are to understand _parament_, i.e., apparel, referring to the gowns he carries. Beaumont and Fletcher use the word _paramentos_--

"There were cloaks, gowns, ca.s.socks, And other _paramentos_,"

--"Love's Pilgrimage," edit. Dyce, xi. 226. _Paramento_ is Spanish, and means ornament, embellishment, or sometimes any kind of covering.

[194] [In the old copies this direction is inserted wrongly six lines higher up.]

[195] [Old copies, _hastily_, the compositor's eye having perhaps caught the word from the stage-direction just above.]

[196] [These three words are not in second 4.]

[197] [A proverbial expression. See Hazlitt's "Proverbs," 1869, p. 210.

So, in the "Spanish Tragedy," vol. v. p. 84: "I am in a sort sorry for thee; but if I should be hang'd with thee, I cannot weep."]

[198] [Old copies, _thy_.]

[199] Mr Collier's suggestion; both the old copies, _gracious_.