P. 7, 1. 2. He's a coward, and a coystri, i. e. a coward cock. It may however be a keystril, or a bastard hawk; a kind of stone hawk, STEEVENS.

A coystril is a paltry groom, one only fit to carry arms, but not to use them. For its etymology, see Coustille and Coustillier in Cotgrave's Dictionary. TOLLET.

P. 7, L. 4- till his brains turn o'the toe like a parish-top.] This is one of the customs now laid aside. A large top was formerly kept in every village, to be whipped in frosty weather, that the peasants might be kept warm by exercise, and out of mischief while they could not work. STEEVENS.

,,To sleep like a town-top," is a proverbial expression. A top is said to sleep, when it turns round with great velocity, and makes a smooth humming noise. BLACKSTONE.

P. 7, 1. 5. Castiliano vulgo;] We should read volto. In English, put on your Castilian countenance; that is, your grave, solemn looks.

WARBURTON.

I meet with the word Castilian and Castilians in several of the old comedies. It is difficult to assign any peculiar propriety to it, unless it was adopted immediately after the defeat of the Ariada, and became a cant term capriciously expressive. of jollity or contempt. STEEVENS.

Mr. Steevens has not attempted to explain vulgo, nor perhaps can the proper explanation be given, unless some incidental application of it may be found in comicction with Castiliano, where the context defines its meaning. Sir Toby here, having just declared that he would persist in drinking the health of his niece, as long as there was a passage in his throat, and drink in Illyria, at the

VOL. II.

13

sight of Sir Andrew, demands of Maria, with a banter, Castiliano vulgo. What this was, may be probably inferred from a speech in the Shoemaker's Holiday, 410, 1610:,, Away, firke, seower thy throat, thou shalt wash it with Ga stilian liquor." HENLEY.

P. 7, 1. 15. To accost, had a signification in our author's time that the word seems now to have lost. In the second part of The English Dictionary, by H. G. 1655, in which the reader ,,who is desirous of a more refined and elegant speech," is furnished with hard words, „to draw near," is explained thus:,,To accost, appropriate, appropinquate." See also Cotgrave's Dict. in verb.. accoster. MALONE.

P. 7, 1. 21. Probably board her may mean sa lute her, speak to her, etc. REED.

To board is certainly to accost, or addressespi RITSON

P. 7, 1, 29. and fol. There is the same pleasant-j ry in Lylies Euphues, 1581; „None (quoth she) can judge of wit but they that have it; why then (quoth he) doest thou think me a fool? Thought is free, my Lord, quoth she." HOLT WHITE., 9*

P. 8, 1. 3. and fol. What is the jest of dry hand, I know not any better than Sir Andrew. It may possibly mean, a hand with no money in it; or, according to the rules of physiognomy, she may intend to insinuate, that it is not a lover's hand, a moist hand being vulgarly accounted, a sign of an amorous constitution. JOHNSON.

P. 9, 1, 16, and yet I will not compare with an old man. This is intended as a satire on that common vanity of old men, in preferring their own times, and the past generation, to the present A: WARBURTON

This stroke of pretended satire but ill accords with the character of the foolish knight. Agues cheek, though willing enough to arrogate to himself such experience as is commonly the acquisi tion of age, is yet careful to exempt his person from being compared with its bodily weakness. In short, he would say with Falstaff: ,,I am old in nothing but my understanding." STEEVENS. P. 9, 1. 24. like mistress Mall's pictures?] The real name of the woman whom I suppose to have been meant by Sir Toby, was Mary Frith. The appellation by which she was generally known, was Mall Cutpurse. She was at once an hermaphrodite, a prostitute, a bawd, a bully, a thief, a receiver of stolen goods, etc. etc. On the books of the Stationers' Company, August 1610, is entered ,,A Booke called the Madde Prancks of Merry Mall of the Bankside, with her walks in man's apparel, and to what purpose. Written by John Day." Middleton and Decker wrote a comedy, of which she is the heroine. In this, they have given a very flattering representation of her, as they observe in their preface, that ',,it is the excellency of a writer, to leave things better than he finds them."

The title of this piece is

purse;

The Roaring Girl, or Moll Cut as it hath been lately acted on the Fortune Stage, by the Prince his Players, 1611. The frontispiece to it contains a full length of her in man's clothes, smoaking tobacco. A life of this woman was likewise published, 12mo. in 1662, with her portrait before it in a male habit; an ape, a lion, and an eagle by her. As this extraordinary personage appears to have partook of both sexes, the curtain which Sir Toby mentions, would not have been unneces

sarily drawn before such a picture of her as might have been exhibited in an age, of which neither too much delicacy or decency was the characteristick. STEEVENS.

In our author's time, I believe, curtains were frequently hung before pictures of any value. MALONE.

See a further account of this woman in Dodsley's Collection of Old Plays, edition, 1780, Vol. VI. p. 1. Vol. XII. p. 398., REED.

Mary Frith was born in 1584, and died in 1659. In a MS. letter in the British Museum, from John Chamberlain to Mr. Carleton, dated Feb. 11, 1611-12, the following account is given of this woman's doing penance: ,,This last Sunday Moll Cutpurse, a notorious baggage that and challenged the

used to go in man's apparel, feld of diverse gallants, was brought to the same place [St. Paul's Cross], where she wept bitterly, and seemed very penitent; but it is since doubted she was maudlin drunk, being discovered to have tippel'd of three quarts of sack, before she came to her penance. She had the daintiest preacher or ghostly father that ever I saw in the pulpit, one Radcliffe of Brazen Nose College in Oxford, a likelier man to have led the revels in some inn of court, than to be where he was. But the best is, he did extreme badly, and so wearied the "audience that the best part went away, and the rest tarried rather to hear Moll Cutpurse than him." MALONE.

It is for the sake of correcting a mistake of Dr. Grey, that I observe this is the character 'alluded to in the second of the following lines; and not Mary Carleton, the German Princess, as he has very erroneously and unaccountably imagined:

,,A bold virago stout and tall,

,,As Joan of France, or English Mall."

Hudibras, P. I. ciii. The latter of these lines is borrowed by Swift in his Baucis and Philemon. RITSON.

P. 9, 1. 28. a sink-a-pace.] i. e. a cinque pace; the name of a dance, the measures whereof are regulated by the number five. The word occurs elsewhere in our author. SIR J. HAWKINS. P. 9, last 1. and P. 10, first 1. Sir To. we not born under Taurus?

- were

Sir And. Taurus; that's sides and heart.] Alluding to the、 medical astrology still preserved in Almanacks, which refers the affections of particular parts of the body, to the predominance of particular constellations. JOHNSON.

P. 11, 1. 12. And all is semblative a woman's part. That is, thy proper part in a play would be a woman's, Women were then personated by boys. JOHNSON.

P. 11, 1. 20. a barrful strife! i. e. a contest full of impediments. STEEVENS.

P. 11, 1. 24. CLOWN.] As this is the first Clown who makes his appearance in the plays of our author, it may not be amiss, from a passage in Tarleton's News out of Purgatory, to point out one of the ancient dresses appropriated to the character: -- ,,I saw one attired in russet, with a button'd cap on his head, a bag by his side, and a strong bat in his hand; so artificially attired for a clowne, as I began to call Tarleton's woont ed shape to, remembrance." STEEVENS.

Such perhaps was the dress of the Clown in this Comedy, in All's well that ends well, etc. The Clown, however, in Measure for Measure, (as an anonymous writer has observed) is only