None of the explanations of this speech are satisfactory, but least of all such part of a note by the author of these remarks, as refers to the picklock, which has been better accounted for by Mr. Ritson. It is probable, after all, that Lucio simply means to ask the clown if he has no newly-coined money wherewith to bribe the officers of justice, alluding to the portrait of the queen.
Scene 2. Page 308.
Escal. This would make mercy swear and play the tyrant.
The old belief certainly was that tyrants in general swore lustily; but here seems to be a particular allusion to the character of Herod, in the mystery of The slaughter of the innocents, formerly acted by the city companies in their pageants, and of which those for Chester and Coventry are still preserved in the British Museum. In this curious specimen of our early drama, Herod is made to swear by Mahound, by cockes blood, &c. He is uniformly in a passion throughout the piece; and this, according to the stage direction, "Here Erode ragis," is exemplified by some extraordinary gesticulation. See the notes of Messrs. Steevens and Malone on a passage in Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.
Scene 2. Page 310.
Duke. ... and now is he resolved to die.
Mr. Reed has certainly adduced an instance which proves that resolved occasionally means satisfied, and we still talk of resolving difficulties, or a question in arithmetic; but in the passage before us it seems rather to signify resolute, firm, determined. Thus the allegorical romance of Le chevalier deliberé was translated into English in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, under the title of The resolved gentleman; and into Spanish by that of Il cavalero determinado.
ACT IV.
Scene 1. Page 318.
Isab. And that I have possess'd him.