Jonson’s form tabacco is the same as the Italian and Portuguese. See Alden, Bart. Fair, p. 169.
5. 8. 74, 5 yellow, etc.
That’s Starch! the Diuell’s Idoll of that colour. For the general subject of yellow starch see note [1. 1. 112, 3]. Compare also Stubbes, Anat. of Abuses, p. 52: ‘The deuil, as he in the fulness of his malice, first inuented these great ruffes, so hath hee now found out also two great stayes to beare vp and maintaine this his kingdome of great ruffes.... The one arch or piller whereby his kingdome of great ruffes is vnderpropped, is a certaine kinde of liquide matter which they call starch, wherein the devil hath willed them to wash and diue his ruffes wel.’
‘Starch hound’ and ‘Tobacco spawling (spitting)’ are the names of two devils in Dekker’s If this be not a good Play, Wks. 3. 270. Jonson speaks of ‘that idol starch’ again in the Alchemist, Wks. 4. 92.
5. 8. 78 He is the Master of Players. An evident allusion to the Puritan attacks on the stage. This was the period of the renewed literary contest. George Wither had lately published his Abuses stript and whipt, 1613. For the whole subject see Thompson, E. N. S., The Controversy between the Puritans and the Stage, New York, 1903.
5. 8. 81 Figgum. ‘In some of our old dictionaries, fid is explained to caulk with oakum: figgum, or fig’em, may therefore be a vulgar derivative from this term, and signify the lighted flax or tow with which jugglers stuff their mouths when they prepare to amuse the rustics by breathing out smoke and flames:
—a nut-shell With tow, and touch-wood in it, to spite fire (5. 3. 4. 5).’ —G.
5. 8. 86, 7 to such a foole, He makes himselfe. For the omission of the relative adverb cf. 1. 3. 34, 35.
5. 8. 89 To come to dinner, in mee the sinner. The conception of this couplet and the lines which Fitzdottrel speaks below was later elaborated in Cocklorrel’s song in the Gipsies Metamorphosed. Pluto in Dekker’s If this be not a good Play, Wks. 3. 268, says that every devil should have ‘a brace of whores to his breakfast.’ Such ideas seem to be descended from the mediæval allegories of men like Raoul de Houdanc, Ruteboeuf, etc.
5. 8. 91, 2 Are you phrenticke, Sir, Or what graue dotage moues you. ‘Dotage, fatuity, or folly, is a common name to all the following species, as some will have it.... Phrenitis, which the Greeks derive from the word φρήν, is a disease of the mind, with a continual madness or dotage, which hath an acute fever annexed, or else an inflammation of the brain, or the membranes or kells of it, with an acute fever, which causeth madness and dotage.’—Burton, Anat. of Mel., ed. Shilleto, 1. 159-60.
5. 8. 112 f. Οὶ μοὶ κακοδαίμων, etc. See variants. ‘This Greek is from the Plutus of Aristophanes, Act 4, Sc. 3.’—W.