Enter AUTOLYCUS, finging. Lawn, as white as driven fnow; Come, buy of me, come; come buy, come buys -necklace-amber,] Place only a comma after amber. “ Autolycus is puffing his female wares, and fays that he has got among his other rare articles for ladies, fome necklace-amber, an amber of which necklaces are made, commonly called bead-amber, fit to perfume a lady's chamber. So, in The Taming of the Shrew, A& IV. fc. iii. Petruchio mentions amber-bracelets, beads," &c. Milton alludes to the fragrance of amber. See Sams. Agon. V. 720: "An amber fcent of odorous perfume, "Her harbinger." T. WARTON. in an 6 -poking-flicks of fteel,] These poking-fticks were heated in the fire, and made ufe of to adjust the plaits of ruffs. In Marton's Malcontent, 1604, is the following inftance: "There is fuch a deale of pinning thefe ruffes, when the fine clean fall is worth them all" and, again, "if you fhould chance to take a nap afternoon, your falling band requires no poking-flick to recover his form," &c. Again, in Middleton's comedy of Blurt Mafter Conftable, 1602: "Your ruff muft ftand in print, and for that purpose get poking-flicks with fair long handles, left they fcorch your hands." you Thefe poking-flicks are several times mentioned in Heywood's If know not me you know Nobody, 1633, fecond part; and in the Yorkshire Tragedy, 1619, which has been attributed to Shakspeare. In the books of the Stationers' Company, July 1590, was entered "A bailat entitled Elewe Starche and Paking-flicks. Allowed under the hand of the Bishop of London." CLOWN. If I were not in love with Mopfa, thou fhould't take no money of me; but being enthrall'd as I am, it will also be the bondage of certain ribands and gloves. Mop. I was promised them against the feast; but they come not too late now. DOR. He hath promifed you more than that, or there be liars. Mop. He hath paid you all he promised you: may be, he has paid you more; which will fhame you to give him again. CLOWN. Is there no manners left among maids? will they wear their plackets, where they should bear their faces? Is there not milking-time, when you are going to bed, or kiln-hole," to whiftle off thefe fecrets; but you must be tittle-tattling before all our guests? 'Tis well they are whispering: Clamour your tongues, and not a word more. Stowe informs us, that "about the fixteenth yeare of the queene [Elizabeth] began the making of fteele poking-flicks, and untill that time all lawndreffes ufed fetting ftickes made of wood or bone." See Vol. IV. p. 486. STEEVENS. 7 kiln-bole,] The mouth of the oven. The word is fpelt in the old copy kill-hole, and I should have fuppofed it an intentional blunder, but that Mrs. Ford in The Merry Wives of Windfor defires Falstaff to creep into the kiln-hole;" and there the fame falfe fpelling is found. Mrs. Ford was certainly not intended for a blunderer. MALONE. " Kiln-bole is the place into which coals are put under a ftove, a copper, or a kiln in which lime, &c. are to be dried or burned. To watch the kiln-hole, or ftoking-hole, is part of the office of female fervants in farm-houfes. Kiln, at least in England, is not a synonyme to oven. STEEVENS. 8 Clamour your tongues,] The phrafe is taken from ringing. When bells are at the height, in order to cease them, the repetition of the strokes becomes much quicker than before; this is called clamouring them, The allufion is humourous. WARBURton, 139 MOP. I have done. Come, you promifed me a tawdry lace, and a pair of fweet gloves.' The word clamour, when applied to bells, does not fignify in Shakspeare a ceafing, but a continued ringing. Thus used in Much ado about Nothing, Act V. fc. ii: If a man do not erect in this age his own tomb e'er he Ben. dies, he fall live no longer in monument, than the bell rings and the widow weeps. Beat." And how long is that, think you? Ben. " Question? why an hour in clamour, and a quarter in rheum." GREY. Perhaps the meaning is, Give one grand peal, and then have done. "A good Clam" (as I learn from Mr. Nichols) in fome villages is used in this fenfe, fignifying a grand peal of all the bells at once. I fufpect that Dr. Warburton's is a mere gratis dictum. In a note on Othello, Dr. Johnfon fays, that "to clam a bell is to cover the clapper with felt, which drowns the blow, and hinders the found." If this be fo, it affords an easy interpretation of the paffage before us. MALONE. Admitting this to be the fenfe, the difputed phrafe may answer to the modern one of-ringing a dumb peal, i. e. with muffled bells. STEEVENS. -you promifed me a tawdry lace,] Tawdry lace is thus defcribed in Skinner, by his friend Dr. Henshawe: aftrigmenta, timbriæ, feu fasciolæ, emtæ Nundinis Sæ. Etheldredæ "Tawdrie lace, celebratis: Ut rectè monet Doc. Thomas Henfhawe." Etymol. in voce. We find it in Spenfer's Paftorals, Aprill: "And gird in your waft, "For more fineneffe, with a tawdrie lace." T. WARTON. So, in The Life and Death of Jack Straw, a comedy, 1593: " Will you in faith, and I'll give you a tawdrie lace. Tom, the miller, offers this prefent to the queen, if she will procure his pardon. It may be worth while to obferve, that these tawdry laces were not the ftrings with which the ladies faften their ftay's, but were worn about their heads, and their waifts. So, in The Four P's. 1569: "Brooches and rings, and all manner of beads, Again, in Drayton's Polyolbion, fong the second: "Of which the Naides and the blew Nereides make CLOWN. Have I not told thee, how I was cozen'd by the way, and loft all my money? AUT. And, indeed, fir, there are cozeners abroad; therefore it behoves men to be wary. CLOWN. Fear not thou, man, thou shalt lofe nothing here. Aur. I hope fo, fir; for I have about me many parcels of charge. In a marginal note it is obferved that tawdries are a kind of necklaces worn by country wenches. Again, in the fourth fong: not the fmalleft beck, "But with white pebbles makes her tawdries for her neck." STEEVENS. 9a pair of fweet gloves.] Sweet, or perfumed gloves, are frequently mentioned by Shak fpeare, and were very fashionable in the age of Elizabeth, and long afterwards. Thus Autolycus, in the fong just preceding this paffage, offers to fale: "Gloves as fweet as damask rofes." Stowe's Continuator, Edmund Howes, informs us, that the Englifh could not "make any coftly wash or perfume, until about the fourteenth or fifteenth of the queene [Elizabeth,] the right honourable Edward Vere earle of Oxford came from Italy, and brought with him gloves, fweet bagges, a perfumed leather jerkin, and other pleafant thinges: and that yeare the queene had a payre of perfumed gloves trimmed onlie with foure tuftes, or rofes, of cullered filke. The queene took fuch pleasure in thofe gloves, that fhee was pictured with thofe gloves upon her hands and for many yeers after it was called the erle of Oxfordes perfume." Stowe's Annals by Howes, edit. 1614, p. 868. col. 2. : In the computus of the burfars of Trinity college, Oxford, for the year 1631, the following article occurs: "Solut. pro fumigandis chirothecis." Gloves makes a conftant and confiderable article of expence in the earlier accompt-books of the college here mentioned; and without doubt in those of many other focieties. They were annually given (a cuftom still fubfifting) to the college-tenants, and often prefented to gucfts of diftinction. But it appears (at leaft, from accompts of the faid college in preceding years) that the practice of perfuming gloves for this purpose was fallen into difufe foon after the reign of Charles the First. T. WARTON. CLOWN. What haft here? ballads? Mop. Pray now, buy fome: I love a ballad in print, a'-life; for then we are fure they are true. 2 Aur. Here's one, to a very doleful tune, How a ufurer's wife was brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden; and how the long'd to cat adders' heads, and toads carbonado'd. Mop. Is it true, think you? Aur. Very true; and but a month old. Aur. Here's the midwife's name to't, one miftrefs Taleporter; and five or fix honeft wives' that were prefent: Why fhould I carry lies abroad?' MOP. 'Pray you now, buy it. CLOWN. Come on, lay it by: And let's first see more ballads; we'll buy the other things anon. 2 I love a ballad in print, a'-life;] Theobald reads, as it has been hitherto printed,or a life. The text, however, is right; only it should be printed thus:a'-life. So, it is in Ben Jonfon: thou lovft a'-life It is the abbreviation, I suppose, of—at life; as a'-work is, of t work. TYRWHITT. This restoration is certainly proper. So, in The Ife of Gulls 1606: "Now in good deed I love them a'-life too." Again, in a Trick to catch the Old One, 1619: "I love that fport a'-life, i'faith." A-life is the reading of the eldest copies of The Winter's Tale, viz. fol. 1623, and 1632. STEEVENS. 3 Why Should I carry lies abroad?] Perhaps Shakspeare remembered the following lines, which are found in Golding's Tranflation of Ovid, 1587, in the fame page in which he read the story of Baucis and Philemon, to which he has alluded in Much ado about Nothing. They conclude the tale: "These things did ancient men report of credite very good, For why, there was no caufe that they should lie. As I there food," &c. MALONE. |