5. 8. 35 How he foames! For the stock indications of witchcraft see Introduction, [p. xlix].
5. 8. 40 The Cockscomb, and the Couerlet. Wittipol is evidently selecting an appropriate name for Fitzdottrel’s buffoonery after the manner of the puppet-shows. It is quite possible that some actual motion of the day was styled ‘the Coxcomb and the Coverlet.’
5. 8. 50 shee puts in a pinne. Pricking with pins and needles was one of the devil’s regular ways of tormenting bewitched persons. They were often supposed to vomit these articles. So when Voltore feigns possession, Volpone cries out: ‘See! He vomits crooked pins’ (The Fox, Wks. 3. 312).
5. 8. 61 the Kings Constable. ‘From the earliest times to our own days, there were two bodies of police in England, namely, the parish and high constables, and the watchmen in cities and boroughs. Nothing could exceed their inefficiency in the 17th century. Of the constables, Dalton (in the reign of James I.) observes that they “are often absent from their houses, being for the most part husbandmen.” The charge of Dogberry shows probably with no great caricature what sort of watchmen Shakespeare was familiar with. As late as 1796, Colquhoun observes that the watchmen “were aged and often superannuated men.” ’—Sir J. Stephen, Hist. Crim. Law 1. 194 f.
5. 8. 71 The taking of Tabacco, with which the Diuell
Is so delighted. This was an old joke of the time. In Middleton’s Black Book, Wks. 8. 42 f. the devil makes his will, a part of which reads as follows: ‘But turning my legacy to you-ward, Barnaby Burning-glass, arch-tobacco-taker of England, in ordinaries, upon stages both common and private, and lastly, in the lodging of your drab and mistress; I am not a little proud, I can tell you, Barnaby, that you dance after my pipe so long, and for all counter-blasts and tobacco-Nashes (which some call railers), you are not blown away, nor your fiery thirst quenched with the small penny-ale of their contradictions, but still suck that dug of damnation with a long nipple, still burning that rare Phoenix of Phlegethon, tobacco, that from her ashes, burned and knocked out, may arise another pipeful.’
Middleton here refers to Nash’s Pierce Pennilesse and King James I.’s Counterblast to Tobacco. The former in his supplication to the devil says: ‘It is suspected you have been a great tobacco-taker in your youth.’ King James describes it as ‘a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrid stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.’
The dramatists seem never to grow tired of this joking allusion to the devil and his pipe of tobacco. Cf. Dekker, If this be not a good Play, Wks. 3. 293: ‘I think the Diuell is sucking Tabaccho, heeres such a Mist.’ Ibid. 327: ‘Are there gentleman diuels too? this is one of those, who studies the black Art, thats to say, drinkes Tobacco.’ Massinger, Guardian, Wks., p. 344:
—You shall fry first For a rotten piece of touchwood, and give fire To the great fiend’s nostrils, when he smokes tobacco!
Dekker (Non-dram. Wks. 2. 89) speaks of ‘that great Tobacconist the Prince of Smoake & darknes, Don Pluto.’
The art of taking or drinking tobacco was much cultivated and had its regular professors. The whiff, the ring, etc., are often spoken of. For the general subject see Dekker, Guls Horne-booke; Barnaby Riche, Honestie of this Age, 1613; Harrison, Chronology, 1573; Every Man in, etc. An excellent description of a tobacconist’s shop is given in Alchemist, Wks. 4. 37. For a historical account of its introduction see Wheatley. Ev. Man in, p. xlvii.