5. 6. 64 Prouinciall o’ the Cheaters! Provincial is a term borrowed from the church. See Gloss. Of the cheaters Dekker gives an interesting account in the Bel-man of London, Non-dram. Wks. 3. 116 f.: ‘Of all which Lawes, the Highest in place, and the Highest in perdition is the Cheating Law or the Art of winning money by false dyce: Those that practise this studie call themselues Cheators, / the dyce Cheaters, and the money which they purchase [see note [3. 4. 31, 2].] Cheates [see [1.7.4] and Gloss.]: borrowing the tearme from our common Lawyers, with whome all such casuals as fall to the Lord at the holding of his Leetes, as Waifes, Strayes, & such like, are sayd to be Escheated to the Lords vse and are called Cheates.’
5. 6. 64 Bawd-ledger. Jonson speaks of a similar official in Every Man out, Wks. 2. 132: ‘He’s a leiger at Horn’s ordinary (cant name for a bawdy-house) yonder.’ See Gloss.
5. 6. 68 to sindge your nayles off. In the fool’s song in Twelfth Night we have the exclamation to the devil: ‘paire thy nayles dad’ (Furness’s ed., p. 273). The editor quotes Malone: ‘The Devil was supposed from choice to keep his nails unpared, and therefore to pare them was an affront. So, in Camden’s Remaines, 1615: “I will follow mine owne minde, and mine old trade; who shall let me? the divel’s nailes are unparde.”’
Compare also Henry V. 4. 4. 76: ‘Bardolph and Nym had ten times more valor than this roaring devil i’ the old play, that every one may pare his nails with a wooden dagger.’
5. 6. 76 The Diuell was wont to carry away the euill. Eckhardt, p. 100, points out that Jonson’s etymology of the word Vice, which has been a matter of dispute, was the generally accepted one, that is, from vice = evil.
5. 7. 1 Iustice Hall. ‘The name of the Sessions-house in the Old Bailey.’—G. Strype, B. 3. p. 281 says that it was ‘a fair and stately building, very commodious for that affair.’ ‘It standeth backwards, so that it hath no front towards the street, only the gateway leading into the yard before the House, which is spacious. It cost above £6000 the building. And in this place the Lord Mayor, Recorder, the Aldermen and Justices of the Peace for the County of Middlesex do sit, and keep his Majesty’s Sessions of Oyer and Terminer.’ It was destroyed in the Gordon Riots of 1780.—Wh-C.
5. 7. 9 This strange! See variants. The change seriously injures the metre, and the original reading should be preserved. Such absorptions (this for this is or this’s) are not uncommon. Cf. Macbeth 3. 4. 17, ed. Furness, p. 165: ‘yet he’s good’ for ‘yet he is as good.’
5. 8. 2 They had giu’n him potions. Jonson perhaps had in mind the trial of Anne Turner and her accomplices in the Overbury Case of the previous year. See Introduction, [p. lxxii]. For a discussion of love-philtres see Burton, Anat. of Mel. (ed. Bullen), 3. 145 f.
5. 8. 33 with a Wanion. This word is found only in the phrases ‘with a wanion,’ ‘in a wanion,’ and ‘wanions on you.’ It is a kind of petty imprecation, and occurs rather frequently in the dramatists, but its precise signification and etymology are still in doubt. Boswell, Malone, 21. 61, proposed a derivation from winnowing,‘a beating;’ Nares from wanung, Saxon, ‘detriment;’ Dyce (Ford’s Wks. 2. 291) from wan (vaande, Dutch, ‘a rod or wand’), ‘of which wannie and wannion are familiar diminutives.’ The CD. makes it a later form of ME. waniand, ‘a waning,’ spec. of the moon, regarded as implying ill luck.
5. 8. 34 If his hornes be forth, the Diuells companion! The jest is too obvious not to be a common one. Thus in Eastward Ho Slitgut, who is impersonating the cuckold at Horn-fair, says: ‘Slight! I think the devil be abroad. in likeness of a storm, to rob me of my horns!’,—Marston’s Wks. 3. 72. Cf. also Staple of News, Wks. 5. 186: ‘And why would you so fain see the devil? would I say. Because he has horns, wife, and may be a cuckold as well as a devil.’