'... but his flaw'd heart
Burst smilingly.'"
Now there is some reason for supposing that flaw might signify a fragment in Shakspeare's time, as well as a mere crack; because among the Saxons it certainly had that meaning, as may be seen in Somner's Diction. Saxon. voce ꝼloh. It is to be observed that the quartos read flowes, approaching nearer to the original. In the above quotation flaw'd seems to be used in the modern sense.
ACT III.
Scene 2. Page 147.
Fool. Marry, here's grace, and a cod-piece; that's a wise man and a fool.
Shakspeare has with some humour applied the above name to the fool, who, for obvious reasons, was usually provided with this unseemly part of dress in a more remarkable manner than other persons. To the custom Gayton thus alludes, when speaking of the decline of the stage: "No fooles with Harry codpieces appeare."—Festivous notes upon Don Quixote, p. 270.
Scene 2. Page 150.
Fool. No hereticks burn'd but wenches suitors.
Dr. Johnson has very well explained why wenches suitors were burned; but Mr. Steevens's quotation from Isaiah iii. 24, "—and burning instead of beauty," has not been applied on this occasion with his usual discernment. Not to mention the improbability that the burning in question should have existed in the time of Isaiah, the expression itself is involved in the deepest obscurity. Saint Jerome has entirely omitted it; and if the Hebrew word, which in some translations has been rendered adustio, be susceptible of any fair meaning, it is that of shrivelled or dried up by heat. It is, therefore, in the bishop's bible and some foreign translations paraphrastically given, "and for their bewty witherednesse and sunne burning." The manuscript regulations for the stews in Southwark, printed but abridged in Stowe's Annals, would have furnished the learned commentator with a far more apposite illustration. In these it is said, "no stewholder shall keep any woman that hath the perilous infirmity of burning."
Scene 4. Page 160.