The celebrity of Lais, the Corinthian courtezan, is said to have occasioned the proverb cited in Mr. Steevens's note, because from the extravagance of the lady's demands every one could not afford to go to Corinth, which, says Taverner, in his Proverbs or adagies of Erasmus, 1569, 12mo, is of like sense with our English proverb, Every man may not be a lord. We are told by Strabo that the temple of Venus at Corinth was furnished with a thousand young girls who performed the rites of the goddess. In short, that city appears to have been so notorious for its luxury, that ancient writers are full of allusions on this subject. See particularly Aristophanes's Plutus, Act I. Scene 2, and Saint Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians, ch. v. verse 1. This may serve to explain why wenchers were called Corinthians.
Scene 4. Page 444.
Fran. Anon, anon, sir.
This was the coming, sir, of the waiters in Shakspeare's time. In Summer's last will and testament, Harvest says, "Why, friend, I am no tapster to say, anon, anon, sir."
Scene 4. Page 461.
P. Hen. Thou knotty-pated fool.
Although it certainly stands thus in the old copy, the word should be changed without scruple to nott-pated, i. e. polled or cropped. The prince had a little before bestowed the same epithet on the drawer. In this place it may refer to the practice of nicking or cropping naturals.
Scene 4. Page 461.
Fal. What upon compulsion? No; were I at the strappado, or all
the racks in the world, I would not tell you on compulsion.
As the strappado has been elsewhere improperly defined "a chastisement by blows," under an idea that a strap was used on the occasion, it may be necessary to take further notice of it on this occasion. It was a military punishment, by which the unfortunate sufferer was most inhumanly tortured in the following manner:—a rope being fastened under his arms, he was drawn up by a pulley to the top of a high beam, and then suddenly let down with a jerk. The consequence usually was a dislocation of the shoulder blade. Representations of this nefarious process may be seen in Breughel's print of The punishments of the law; in one of Gerini's fine Views of Florence, and in Callot's Miseries of war. The term is evidently taken from the Italian strappare, to pull or draw with violence. At Paris there was a spot called l'estrapade in the fauxbourg St. Jaques, where soldiers received this punishment. The machine, whence the place took its name, remained fixed like a perpetual gallows.