ACT IV.
Scene 3. Page 323.
1. Lord. Hoodman comes!
An allusion to the game of blindman's buff, formerly called hoodman blind.
Scene 3. Page 326.
Par. He was whipp'd for getting the sheriff's fool with child.
Mr. Ritson will not admit this to be a fool kept by the sheriff for diversion, but supposes her one of those idiots whose care, as he says, devolved on the sheriff when they had not been begged of the king on account of the value of their lands. Now if this was the law, the sheriff must have usually had more than one idiot in his custody; and had Shakspeare alluded to one of these persons, he would not have chosen so definite an expression as that in question; he would rather have said, "a sheriff's fool." Female idiots were retained in families for diversion as well as male, though not so commonly; and there would be as much reason to expect one of the former in the sheriffs household as in that of any other person. It is not impossible that our author might have in view some real event that had just happened.
Scene 3. Page 327.
Ber. I know his brains are forfeit to the next tile that falls.
In Whitney's Emblems, a book certainly known to Shakspeare, there is a story of three women who threw dice to ascertain which of them should first die. She who lost affected to laugh at the decrees of fate, when a tile suddenly falling, put an end to her existence.
Scene 3. Page 329.
Par. ... a dangerous and lascivious boy, who is a whale to virginity.
This is an allusion to the story of Andromeda in old prints, where the monster is very frequently represented as a whale.
Scene 3. Page 333.
Par. For a quart d'ecu he will sell the fee simple of his salvation.
The quart d'ecu, or as it was sometimes written cardecue, was a French piece of money first coined in the reign of Henry III. It was the fourth part of the gold crown, and worth fifteen sols. It is a fact not generally known, that many foreign coins were current at this time in England; some English coins were likewise circulated on the continent. The French crown and its parts passed by weight only.
Scene 4. Page 339.
Hel. All's well that ends well: still the fine's a crown.
In King Henry VI. part 2. Act V. we have "la fin couronne les œuvres." Both phrases are from the Latin finis coronat opus. In this sense we still use the expression to crown, for to finish or make perfect. Coronidem imponere is a metaphor well known to the ancients, and supposed to have originated from the practice of finishing buildings by placing a crown at their top as an ornament; and for this reason the words crown, top and head are become synonymous in most languages.
There is reason for believing that the ancients placed a crescent at the beginning, and a crown, or some ornament that resembled it, at the end of their books. In support of the first usage we have a poem by Ausonius entitled CORONIS which begins in this manner:
"Quos legis à prima deductos menide libri."
And of the other, these lines in Martial, lib. x. ep. 1:
"Si nimius videor, seraque coronide longus
Esse liber: legito pauca, libellus ero."
The mark which was used in later times for the coronis has been preserved in the etymologies of Isidore, lib. i. c. 20. It is this,
; and in some manuscripts of that writer
and
. In other places it has these forms,
.
Scene 5. Page 343.
Clo. But sure, he is the prince of the world.
The Devil is often called so by Saint John.