[445-45] For that read so that or insomuch that.
[445-46] Stale means bait. It was a term used by hunters for a bait that would lure birds.
[445-47] Caliban.
[445-48] Nurture can never stick on his nature: that is, he can never be improved by culture or education.
[445-49] Cankers means rusts, or here, eats into itself.
[445-50] It is not known whether line refers to a clothesline or to a line tree. Only Shakespeare himself could tell us to a certainty.
[446-51] Play’d the Jack with us. “Led us astray as a Jack-o’-lantern might.”
[446-52] To hoodwink this mischance means to make it forgotten or overlooked.
[446-53] In Hudson’s Shakespeare this is explained as an allusion to the old ballad entitled “Take thy old Cloak about thee.” The following stanza is quoted:
“King Stephen was a worthy peer,
His breeches cost him but a crown:
He held them sixpence all too dear.
Therefore he called the tailor lown.”