Prov. ... and your deliverance with an unpitied whipping; for you have been a notorious bawd.
Mr. Steevens makes unpitied, unmerciful; it is rather a whipping that none shall pity, for the reason that immediately follows.
Scene 2. Page 334.
Prov. Pardon me, good father, it is against my oath.
This is a very different provost from one of whom Fabian in his Chronicle, p. 187, relates the following story: "In the thyrde yere of the reigne of this Philip, the provost of Paris, having in his prison a Picard, a man of greate riches, whiche for felony or like crime, was judged to be hanged. The sayde provost for great benefit to him done and payment of great summes by the sayd Pycard, tooke an other poore innocent man, and put him to death, in steede of the sayd Pycarde. Of the whiche offence whan due proofe of it was made before the kynges counsayle, the sayde provoste for the same dede was put unto like judgement."
Scene 3. Page 335.
Clo. First, here's young master Rash, he's in for a commodity of
brown paper and old ginger.
The nefarious practice of lending young men money in the shape of goods which are afterwards sold at a great loss, appears to have been more prevalent in the reign of Elizabeth than even at present. It is very strongly marked in Lodge's Looking glasse for London and Englande, 1598, where a usurer being very urgent for the repayment of his debt is thus answered, "I pray you, sir, consider that my losse was great by the commoditie I tooke up; you know, sir, I borrowed of you forty pounds, whereof I had ten pounds in money, and thirtie pounds in lute strings, which when I came to sell againe, I could get but five pounds for them, so had I, sir, but fifteene pounds for my fortie: In consideration of this ill bargaine, I pray you, sir, give me a month longer." But this sort of usury is much older than Shakspeare's time, and is thus curiously described in one of the sermons of Father Maillard, a celebrated preacher at Paris at the end of the fifteenth century, and whose style very much resembles that of John Whitfield. "Quidam indigens pecunia venit ad thesaurarium supra quem fuerunt assignata mille scuta; dicit thesaurarius, Ego dabo tibi, sed pro nunc non habeo argentum; sed expectes usque ad quindecim dies. Pauper dicit, Non possum expectare; respondet thesaurarius, Dabo tibi unam partem in argento et alia in mercantiis: et illud quod valebit centum scuta, faciet valere ducenta. Hic est usura palliata." Sermo in feriam, iiii. de passione.
Scene 3. Page 337.
Clo. ... ginger was not much in request, for the old women were all dead.