Scene 1. Page 442.
Kath. And, for your love to her, lead apes in hell.
It is perhaps an ill-natured, though a very common, presumption, that the single state of old maids originates either in prudery or in real aversion to the male sex, and that consequently they deserve some kind of punishment in the next world. It is therefore not a matter of wonder that some of our waggish forefathers, impressed with this idea, should have maintained that these obdurate damsels would be condemned to lead apes in the inferior regions, instead, as Mr. Steevens has ingeniously suggested, of children; or perhaps with a view to compel them to bestow such attention on these deformed animals as they had formerly denied to men. So in Rabelais' hell, Alexander the great is condemned, for his ambition, to mend old stockings, and Cleopatra, for her pride, to cry onions.
It is said that homicides and adulterers were in ancient times compelled by way of punishment to lead an ape by the neck, with their mouths affixed in a very unseemly manner to the animal's tail. The fact is mentioned in the early Latin dictionary entitled Vocabularius breviloquus, and in the Catholicon of Johannes Januensis, both printed at the end of the fifteenth century, under the article anulus. It is added, that the above punishment being found too opprobrious was commuted for wearing a ring on the finger, which the higher classes caused to be made of gold or silver; and this is further stated to have been the reason why the general practice of wearing rings declined. After all it may be a mere fabrication for the purpose of introducing an etymology of the word annulus, that cannot here be repeated.
Scene 1. Page 450.
Hor. And, twangling Jack.
It is the author's desire to withdraw a former note on this passage, which, as well as a few others of a confidential nature, was not intended for publication. To twangle means to make any sharp shrill noise on a stringed instrument, as a bad player would do. A Jack denotes a low or mean person, and is occasionally used as a term of reproach. Thus Horatio is afterwards called "swearing Jack." Twangling Jack may sometimes allude to that little machine in harpsichords and spinnets in which the quill is placed that strikes the wires. The jangling Jack mentioned in Mr. Steevens's note is not connected with the other. He is a mere prating fellow. Thus in Drant's translation of Horace's ninth satire, 1567, 4to:
"A prater shal becom his death,
Therefore, let him alwayes,
If he be wise, shun jangling jackes,
After his youthful dayes."
Scene 1. Page 461.
Gre. My hangings all of Tyrian tapestry.