ACT IV.

Scene 2. Page 508.

Cap. Where have you been gadding?

Mr. Steevens remarks that "the primitive sense of this word was to straggle from house to house and collect money under pretence of singing carols to the blessed Virgin;" and he quotes a note on Milton's Lycidas by Mr. Warton: but this derivation seems too refined. Mr. Warton's authority is an old register at Gadderston, in these words: "Receyvid at the gadyng with Saynte Mary songe at Crismas." If the original were attentively examined, it would perhaps turn out that the word in question has some mark of contraction over it, which would convert it into gaderyng, i. e. gathering or collecting money, and not simply going about from house to house according to Mr. Warton's explanation.

Scene 5. Page 525.

Fri. ... and stick your rosemary
On this fair corse——

This plant was used in various ways at funerals. Being an evergreen, it was regarded as an emblem of the soul's immortality. Thus in Cartwright's Ordinary, Act V. Scene 1:

"... If there be
Any so kind as to accompany
My body to the earth, let them not want
For entertainment; pr'ythee see they have
A sprig of rosemary dip'd in common water
To smell to as they walk along the streets."

In an obituary kept by Mr. Smith, secondary of one of the Compters, and preserved among the Sloanian MSS. in the British Museum, No. 886, is the following entry: "Jan^y. 2. 1671. Mr. Cornelius Bee bookseller in Little Britain died; buried Jan. 4. at Great St. Bartholomew's without a sermon, without wine or wafers, only gloves and rosmary."

And Mr. Gay, when describing Blouzelinda's funeral, records that

"Sprigg'd rosemary the lads and lasses bore."

Scene 5. Page 528.

Pet. No money, on my faith; but the gleek: I will give you the minstrel.

From what has been said in page [118], it becomes necessary to withdraw so much of a former note as relates to the game of gleek. To give the minstrel, is no more than a punning phrase for giving the gleek. Minstrels and jesters were anciently called gleekmen or gligmen.

Scene 5. Page 529.

Pet. When griping grief the heart doth wound
And doleful dumps the mind oppress.

The following stanza from one of Whitney's Emblems, 1586, 4to, is not very dissimilar from that of Richard Edwards, communicated in the note by Sir John Hawkins, and may serve to confirm the propriety of Mr. Steevens's observation, that the epithet griping was not calculated to excite laughter in the time of Shakspeare.

"If griping greifes have harbour in thie breste
And pininge cares laie seige unto the same,
Or straunge conceiptes doe reave thee of thie rest,
And daie and nighte do bringe thee out of frame:
Then choose a freinde, and doe his counsaile crave,
Least secret sighes, doe bringe untimelie grave."

Griping griefs and doleful dumps are very thickly interspersed in Grange's Golden Aphroditis, 1577, 4to, and in many other places. They were great favourites; but griefs were not always griping. Thus in Turbervile's translation of Ovid's epistle from Hero to Leander;

"Which if I heard, of troth
For grunting griefe I die."