ACT III.
Scene 1. Page 469.
D. Pedro. ... the little hangman dare not shoot at him.
Dr. Farmer has illustrated this term by citing a passage from Sidney's Arcadia; but he has omitted a previous description in which Cupid is metamorphosed into a strange old monster, sitting on a gallows with a crown of laurel in one hand, and a purse of money in the other, as if he would persuade folks by these allurements to hang themselves. It is certainly possible that this might have been Shakspeare's prototype; we should otherwise have supposed that he had called Cupid a hangman metaphorically, from the remedy sometimes adopted by desparing lovers.
Scene 4. Page 488.
Marg. Clap us into light o'love.
When Margaret adds that this tune "goes without a burden," she does not mean that it never had words to it, but only that it wanted a very common appendage to the ballads of that time. The name itself may be illustrated by the following extract from The glasse of man's follie, 1615, 4to. "There be wealthy houswives, and good house-keepers that use no starch, but faire water: their linnen is white, and they looke more Christian-like in small ruffes, then Light of love lookes in her great starched ruffs, looke she never so hie, with eye-lids awrye." This anonymous work is written much in the manner of Stubbes's Anatomie of abuses, and for the same purpose.
ACT IV.
Scene 1. Page 510.