CLOWN. If I were not in love with Mopfa, thou should'st take no money of me; but being enthrall'd as I am, it will alfo 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 promised 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 fhould bear their faces? Is there not milking-time, when you are going to bed, or kiln-hole," to whistle 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.

8

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 fhould 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 stoking-hole, is part of the office of female fervants in farm-houfes. Kiln, at least in England, is not a fynonyme 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.

MOP. I have done. Come, you promised me a tawdry lace, and a pair of sweet 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:

Ben.

If a man do not erect in this age his own tomb e'er he dies, he ball 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 suspect that Dr. Warburton's is a mere gratis dictum.

In a note on Othello, Dr. Johnson 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 eafy 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.

9 you promifed me a tawdry lace,] Tawdry lace is thus defcribed in Skinner, by his friend Dr. Henshawe: "Tawdrie lace, aftrigmenta, timbriæ, feu fafciolæ, emtæ Nundinis Sæ. Etheldredæ 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 thefe tardry laces were not the ftrings with which the ladies faften their stays, but were worn about their heads, and their waifts. So, in The Four P's. 1569:

"Brooches and rings, and all manner of beads,
"Laces round and flat for women's heads.”

Again, in Drayton's Polyolbim, fong the fecond:

"Of which the Naides and the blew Nereides make
"Them tawdries for their necks."

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 fhalt 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 smallest beck,

"But with white pebbles makes her tawdries for her neck." STEEVENS.

9- a 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 English 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 pleasant thinges: and that yeare the queene had a pay re of perfumed gloves trimmed onlie with foure tuftes, or roses, of cullered filke. The queene took fuch pleasure in those 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 custom still fubfifting) to the college-tenants, and often prefented to guefts of diftinction. But it appears (at leaft, from accompts of the faid college in preceding years) that the practice of perfuming gloves for this purpofe was fallen into difufe foon after the reign of Charles the Firft. T. WARton.

CLOWN. What haft here? ballads?

Mor. 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 eat adders' heads, and toads carbonado'd.

Mor. Is it true, think you?

Aur. Very true; and but a month old.
DOR. Blefs me from marrying a ufurer!

AUT. 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 fee 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

"Their perfum'd judgment."

It is the abbreviation, I suppose, of-at life; as a'-work is, of

t work. TYRWHITT.

This reftoration is certainly proper. So, in The Ifle 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.

3Why bould 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:

"Thefe 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,

and thump her; and where fome ftretch-mouth'd rafcal would, as it were, mean mischief, and break a foul gap into the matter, he makes the maid to anfwer, Whoop, do me no harm, good man; puts him off, flights him, with Whoop, do me no harm, good

POL. This is a brave fellow.

CLOWN. Believe me, thou talkeft of an admirableconceited fellow. Has he any unbraided wares? *

"With a dildo, dildo, dildo,

"With a dildo, dildo, dee.” MALONE.

-fadings:] An Irish dance of this name is mentioned by

Ben Jonfon, in The Irish Mafque at Court.

and daunfh a fading at te wedding."

Again, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Peftle: "I will have him dance fading; fading is a fine jigg."

So, in The Bird in a Cage, by Shirley, 1633:

"But under her coats the ball be found.-
"With a fading,"

Again, in Ben Jonfon's 97th epigram:

9

-

TYRWHITT,

"See you yond motion? not the old fading." STEEVENS. Whoop, do me no harm, good man.] This was the name of an old fong. In the famous hiftory of Fryar Bacon we have a ballad to the tune of, "Oh! do me no harme, good man." FARMER.

This tune is preferved in a collection intitled "Ayres, to fing and play to the Lvte and Baffe Violl. with Pauins, Galliards, Almaines, and Corantos, for the Lyra Violl. By William Corbine :" 1610. fol. RITSON.

2

unbraided wares?] Surely we must read braided, for fuch are all the wares mentioned in the anfwer. JOHNSON.

I believe by unbraided wares, the Clown means, has he any thing befides laces which are braided, and are the principal commodity fold by ballad-finging pedlers. Yes, replies the fervant, he has ribands, &c. which are things not braided, but woven. The drift of the Clown's queftion, is either to know whether Autolycus has any thing better than is commonly fold by fuch vagrants; any thing worthy to be prefented to his mistress: or, as probably, by enquiring for fomething which pedlars ufually have not, to escape laying out his money at all. The following paffage in Any Thing for a quiet Life, however, leads me to fuppofe that there is here fome