friars, a precinct or liberty between Fleet Street and the Thames, the Temple walls and Water Lane. Here was the White Friars' Church, called "Fratres Beatæ Mariæ de Monte Carmeli," first founded by Sir Richard Gray in 1241. . . . The privileges of sanctuary continued to this precinct after the Dissolution, were confirmed and enlarged in 1608 by royal charter. Fraudulent debtors, gamblers, prostitutes, and other outcasts of society made it a favorite retreat. Here they formed a community of their own, adopted the language of pickpockets, openly resisted the execution of every legal process, and extending their cant terms to the place they lived in, new-named their precinct by the well-known appellation Alsatia, after the province which formed a debateable land between Germany and France.'

4.2. 52 Come, I blush for you, master Would-Bee, I. ‘I have observed before that in works of this age the capital letter I stands alike for the personal pronoun and for the exclamation Ay, and the modern editor has to choose between them. Here I am persuaded we ought to read,

Come, I blush for you, master Would-be, ay.'—C.

4.2.57 And you be such a one! I must bid adieu. Sir Pol, always looking for plots, is quite ready to believe the strange suggestions of his wife.

4.2.61 Who here is fled for liberty of conscience. This is, I suppose, another hit at the Puritans, whom Jonson is never tired of ridiculing. As to liberty of conscience at Venice, cf. Thomas, p. 85: 'For no man there marketh an others dooynges, or that meddleth with an other mans liuyng. If thou be a papist, there shalt thou want no kynde of supersticion to feede vpon. If thou be a gospeller, no man shall aske why thou comest not to church. If thou be a Jewe, a Turke, or beleeuest in the diuel (so thou spreade not thyne opinions abroade) thou arte free from all controllement.'

4.2. 72-73 Onely your nose enclines, etc. "This burlesque similitude seems to have furnished Sir John Suckling with a very pretty allusion, in his description of the rural bride:

For streaks of red were mingled there,

Such as are on a Catharin-pear,

The side that's next the sun.'-W.

4.3. 10 I saw him land, this morning, at the port. A definite indication that the author is observing strictly the unity of time.

4.3. 17 'Pray you, sir, vse mee. In faith, The more you see me, the more I shall conceiue. One of the lady's most unfortunate malapropisms, worthy of Mistress Quickly; both use and conceive are open to misunderstanding. No wonder Peregrine comments, 'This is rare!'

4.3.23 I'le trie your salt-head. 'Lady Would-be ought to be flattered by having the same epithet applied to her that Shakespeare bestowed on the queen of Egypt:

All the charms of love,

Salt Cleopatra, softened thy waned lip.'-C.

'Cunningham has made an evident slip here. Salt-head refers not to Lady Would-bee, but to the knight, her husband. Peregrine is led to believe that Sir Pol had practised, i. e. plotted or schemed, against him because he was unacquainted with the manners and customs of the country, and he determined to try the seasoned and experienced Sir Pol with a counter-plot.-H.

4.4. I2 As we doe croakers, here. 'I read crackers, i. e. squibs.'-U. 'It seems to be a cant term given to Corbaccio, since Corvino immediately replies, "I, what shall he do?" If this is the sense, it should be wrote croaker's, i. e. his tongue and noise: and this meaning seems to be countenanced by what Mosca afterwards says to Corbaccio, "If you but croak a syllable, all comes out." —W. 4.4. 14 Sell him for mummia. 'Mummia till recently formed a part of the recognized Materia Medica. Bailey describes it as "the liquor or juice that oozes from human bodies, aromatized and embalmed." In Jonson's time it was so highly prized that it became an object of home manufacture. “The French method of counterfeiting mummy" says Harris "is very simple. Out of the carcase of a person hanged they take the brains and entrails, and dry the rest in an oven, steeping it in pitch and other drugs." Steevens, the Shakespearian commentator, adds that it "is still much coveted by painters, as a transparent brown colour that throws a warmth into their shadows." Was this the "glazing" of Sir Joshua's time?'-C. Professor Albert S. Cook in Mod. Lang. Notes for December, 1906, discusses the use of mummy in medicine, and gives many passages referring to it.

4. 4. 20 Much. 'Upton and Whalley constantly mistake the sense of this interjection; they will have it to be elliptical, for "Much good may it do you!" whereas it is merely ironical, as I have already observed, and means, Not at all.'-G.

4.4.22

the French Hercvles. 'The Gallic, or Celtic Hercules, was the symbol of eloquence. Lucian has a treatise on this

French Hercules, surnamed Ogmius: he was pictured old and wrinkled, and drest in his lion's skin; in his right hand he held his club, in his left his bow: several very small chains were figured reaching from his tongue to the ears of men at some distance.'-U. 4.5.7 monstrous. Pronounced in three syllables, as often. Cf. Tamburlaine 4. 1. 18:

As monstrous as Gorgon prince of hell.

4.5.44-47 For these, not knowing how to owe a gift, etc. Dyce, quoted by Cunningham, points out that this is from Tacitus, Annals 4. 18: 'Nam beneficia eo usque læta sunt, dum videntur exsolvi posse; ubi multum antevenere, pro gratia odium redditur.' Perhaps Jonson found it in Tacitus; but he is just as likely to have found it in a note of Justus Lipsius on Seneca Ep. 19: 'Et idem in beneficiis, quæ usque eo læta sunt, donec exsolvi posse videantur; supra, odium pro gratiâ redditur. Tacitus alibi, et Seneca, I quote from the Antwerp edition of 1652; Lipsius' Seneca was first published in 1605. Jonson was so familiar with the Epistles that it seems quite likely he found the passage here, in the new edition just published, in which he would naturally have been interested.

4.5.50-51 To obserue the malice, yea, the rage, etc. Holt notes that this is from Juvenal 6. 284-285:

Nihil est audacius illis

Deprensis, iram atque animos a crimine sumunt.

4.5.54 this foule fact. Cf. Tale of a Tub 2. 1 (Wks. 6. 151): If ever I would do so voul a vact.

Fact is used in the sense of the Latin facinus, crime.

4. 5. 61-62

his vice, That can beguile so, vnder shade of vertue. Holt quotes Juvenal 14. 109:

Fallit enim vitium specie virtutis et umbra.

4.5.79 Mischiefe doth euer end, where it begins. 'But the reverse of this seems the truer remark, and what he intended to say; namely, that mischief does not stop where it first began, or set out. So that, notwithstanding the authority of the printed books, it is probable that we should read,

Mischief doth never end where it begins.'-W.

'Mr. Dyce supports this emendation of Whalley's by pointing out that Jonson had in view a passage from Valerius Maximus, "Neque enim ullum finitur vitium ibi ubi oritur." Lib. ix. 1.'-C.

4.5.96 His soule moues in his fee. It was a common question for debate whether man's soul were situated in his brain, heart, or blood. Bonario thinks the question an easy one to answer in the case of the lawyer, Voltore: his soul is to be found in his pocket-book.

4.5.97 For six sols more, would pleade against his maker. Cf. Magnetic Lady 2. 1 (Wks. 6. 39) :

He is a lawyer, and must speak for his fee,

Against his father and mother, all his kindred,
His brothers or his sisters.

4. 5. 110 Haue they made you to this! 'Wrought you by previous instruction, etc.'-G.

4. 5. 119 Neighes, like a iennet. Cf. Jeremiah 5. 8: 'They were as fed horses in the morning: every one neighed after his neighbor's wife.'

4. 5. 124-125 and that, here, The letters may be read, thorough the horne. 'When Corvino says "here" it is to be understood that he made the sign of horns with two fingers over his forehead. This symbol was so well recognized that the letter V in the margin of an old play stood for a stage direction to that effect.'-C. "The allusion, in the next line, is to the horn-book of children. Our old writers are never weary of their ridiculous jests on the transparency of these badges of cuckoldom.'-G.

4. 6. 2 Out, thou chameleon harlot. The speaker evidently believes that Celia is the same person she had earlier seen in man's attire in company with her husband. On the power of the chameleon to change its color, see Topsel, who has a long chapter on this 'fraudulent, ravening, and gluttonous beast' as he calls it: 'Being black, it is not unlike the Crocodile, and being pale, it is like to the Lizard, set over with black spots like a Leopard. It changeth colour both in the eyes, tail, and whole body, always into the colour of that which is next it, except red and white, which colours it cannot easily undertake, so that it deceiveth the eyes of the beholders, turning black into green, and green into blew, like a Player, which putteth off one person, to put on another.'

4.6.3 Vie teares with the hyæna. The lady is probably confused in her literary-natural history. I can, at any rate, find no example of the hyena weeping crocodile tears; it was, however, famous for being able to imitate the tones of the human voice. Cf. Eastward Hoe 5. 4. 38-40:

Touch. I am deafe still, I say. I will neither yeeld to the song of the syren nor the voice of the hyena, the teares of the crocodile nor the howling o' the wolfe.

4.6.15 Let her o'recome. 'There never was a character supported with more propriety, than this of Lady Would-be. She comes into court in all the violence of passion, and having vented her rage in a hasty epithet or two, she relapses into her usual formality, and begins to compliment the judges. Tired with her breeding and her eloquence, they are obliged not to give her a reply, and proceed to the examination of the other parties.'-W. I suppose this little contest with the judges was suggested by Libanius, 300 C: 'Etenim vereor ne mora in loquendo facta, vxor resciuerit, linguam in vos diuertat, meque et vos verborum copia obruat.'

4.6.32 Put him to the strappado. Cf. Coryat, Crudities 1. 392: 'On the fourth day of August being Thursday, I saw a very Tragicall and dolefull spectacle in Saint Markes place. Two men tormented with the strapado, which is done in this manner. The offender having his hands bound behind him, is conveighed into a rope that hangeth in a pully, and after hoysed up in the rope to a great heith with two severall swinges, where he sustaineth so great torment that his joynts are for the time loosed and pulled asunder; besides such abundance of bloud is gathered into his hands and face, that for the time he is in the torture, his face and hands doe looke as red as fire.'

4.6.47 It smell not rancke, and most abhorred slander. Cf. Hamlet 3. 3. 36:

O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven.

4. 6. 51-53 That vicious persons, etc. Holt compares Juvenal, 13. 237:

Cum scelus admittunt, superest constantia.

4.6.76 As your owne soule, sir. We have seen how much this is to be trusted; but Corvino does not notice the sarcasm in the speech.

4. 6. 89-90 What horride strange offence, etc. Upton compares Juvenal 10. 254-255:

Cur hæc in tempora duret,

Quod facinus dignum tam longo admiserit ævo.

4.6.95 That you shall not. Mosca speaks out in sudden alarm, and then is compelled to explain in the next lines with one of his ready falsehoods.