This mode of expression will admit of a little more illustration than it has already received. The practice to which it refers was calculated to advertise the public of any matters which concerned itself or the party whose bills were set up; and it is the more necessary to state this, because the passages which have been used in explanation might induce the reader to suppose that challenges and prize-fightings were the exclusive objects of these bills. This however was not the case. In Northbrooke's Treatise against dicing, dauncing, vaine plaies, &c., 1579, 4to, a work much resembling that extremely curious volume Stubbes's Anatomie of abuses, we are told that they used "to set up their billes upon postes certain dayes before, to admonish the people to make resort unto their theatres, that they may thereby be the better furnished, and the people prepared to fill their purses with their treasures." In the play of Histriomastix, a man is introduced setting up text billes for playes; and William Rankins, another puritanical writer against plays, which he calls the instruments of Satan, in his Mirrour of monsters, 1587, 4to, p. 6, says, that "players by sticking of their bils in London, defile the streetes with their infectious filthines." Mountebanks likewise set up their bills. "Upon this scaffold also might bee mounted a number of quacksalving emperickes, who arriving in some country towne, clap up their terrible billes in the market place, and filling the paper with such horrible names of diseases, as if every disease were a divell, and that they could conjure them out of any towne at their pleasure." Dekkar's Villanies discovered by lanthorne and candle-light, &c., 1616, 4to, sign. H. Again, in Tales and quick answeres, printed by Berthelette, b. l. n. d. 4to, a man having lost his purse in London "sette up bylles in divers places that if any man of the cyte had founde the purse and woulde brynge it agayn to him he shulde have welle for his laboure. A gentyllman of the Temple wrote under one of the byls howe the man shulde come to his chambers and told where." It appears from a very rare little piece entitled Questions of profitable and pleasant concernings talked of by two olde seniors, &c., 1594, 4to, that Saint Paul's was a place in which these bills or advertisements were posted up. Thomas Nashe in his Pierce Pennilesse his supplication to the divell, 1595, 4to, sign. E. speaks of the "maisterlessemen that set up theyr bills in Paules for services, and such as paste up their papers on every post, for arithmetique and writing schooles:" we may therefore suppose that several of the walks about Saint Paul's cathedral then resembled the present Royal Exchange with respect to the business that was there transacted; and it appears indeed, from many allusions in our old plays, to have been as well the resort of the idle, as the busy. The phrase of setting up bills continued long after the time of Shakspeare and is used in a translation of Suetonius published in 1677, 8vo, p. 227.
Scene 1. Page 399.
Beat. ... challenged him at the bird-bolt.
In further exemplification of this sort of arrow, the following representations have been collected. A very sagacious modern editor of King James's Christ's kirk on the green has stated that the line "the bolt flew o'er the bire" is a metaphor of a thunderbolt flying over the cowhouse!
Scene 1. Page 412.
Bene. Prove that ever I lose more blood with love, &c.
There is a covert allusion in this speech that will not admit of a particular explanation. Debauchees imagine that wine recruits the loss of animal spirits. Love is used here in its very worst sense, and the whole is extremely gross and indelicate.
ACT II.
Scene 1. Page 429.