Scene 1. Page 414.
Kath. I pray you, sir, is it your will
To make a stale of me amongst these mates.
She means to say, "do you intend to make a strumpet of me among these companions?" but the expression seems to have been suggested by the chess-term of stale mate, which is used when the game is ended by the king being alone and unchecked, and then forced into a situation from which he is unable to move without going into check. This is a dishonourable termination to the adversary, who thereby loses the game. Thus in Lord Verulam's twelfth essay, "They stand still like a stale at chess, where it is no mate, but yet the game cannot stir."
Scene 2. Page 427.
Pet. Be she as foul as was Florentius' love.
Dr. Farmer's note might have been omitted, as it refers to a story which has no manner of connection with that to which Petruchio alludes.
Scene 2. Page 436.
Pet. Tush, tush, fear boys with bugs.
To fear is to frighten. In Mathews's Bible, psalm xci. v. 5, is thus rendered: "Thou shalt not nede to be afraied for any bugs by night." In the Hebrew it is "terror of the night;" a curious passage, evidently alluding to that horrible sensation the night-mare, which in all ages has been regarded as the operation of evil spirits. Thus much seemed necessary in explanation or defence of the above most excellent old translation, which we have retained with very little change in the language; for the expression, from its influence on a modern ear, might have been liable to a very ludicrous construction. The word bug is originally Celtic, bŵg, a ghost or goblin, and hence bug-bear, boggerd, bogle, boggy-bo, and perhaps pug, an old name for the Devil. Boggy-bo seems to signify the spirit Bo, and has been thought, with some probability, to refer to a warrior of that name, the son of Odin, and of great celebrity among the ancient Danes and Norwegians. His name is said to have struck his enemies with terror, and might have been used by the nurses of those times to frighten children, as that of Marlborough was in France on the same occasion. It is remarkable that the Italian women use bau bau, for this purpose, and the French ba-bo. It should seem as if bug had been metaphorically applied to the cimex, that insect being in all respects a terror of the night. Nor was the word used in this sense till late in the seventeenth century, the old names for the house bug being, wall-louse, wig-louse, chinch, punie, and puneez; the two last from the French.