In Love's Labour Lost, Boyet calls Don Armado,
——A Spaniard that keeps here in Court,
A Phantasme, a Monarcho.——
Here too Sir Thomas is willing to palm Italian upon us. We should read, it seems, Mammuccio, a Mammet, or Puppet: Ital. Mammuccia. But the allusion is to a fantastical Character of the time.—“Popular applause,” says Meres, “dooth nourish some, neither do they gape after any other thing, but vaine praise and glorie,—as in our age Peter Shakerlye of Paules, and Monarcho that liued about the Court.” p. 178.
I fancy you will be satisfied with one more instance.
“Baccare, You are marvellous forward,” quoth Gremio to Petruchio in the Taming of the Shrew.
“But not so forward,” says Mr. Theobald, “as our Editors are indolent. This is a stupid corruption of the press, that none of them have dived into. We must read Baccalare, as Mr. Warburton acutely observed to me, by which the Italians mean, Thou ignorant, presumptuous Man.”—“Properly indeed,” adds Mr. Heath, “a graduated Scholar, but ironically and sarcastically a pretender to Scholarship.”
This is admitted by the Editors and Criticks of every Denomination. Yet the word is neither wrong, nor Italian: it was an old proverbial one, used frequently by John Heywood; who hath made, what he pleases to call, Epigrams upon it.
Take two of them, such as they are,
Backare, quoth Mortimer to his Sow: