The receipt for making a man resemble an ass, already given in a former note, must give place to the following in Scot's Discoverie of witchcraft, b. 13. c. xix. "Cutt off the head of a horsse or an asse (before they be dead), otherwise the vertue or strength thereof will be the lesse effectuall, and make an earthern vessell of fit capacitie to conteine the same, and let it be filled with the oile and fat thereof; cover it close, and dawbe it over with lome: let it boile over a soft fier three daies continuallie, that the flesh boiled may run into oile, so as the bare bones may be seene: beate the haire into powder, and mingle the same with the oile; and annoint the heads of the standers by, and they shall seem to have horsses or asses heads."
Scene 2. Page 95.
Obe. All fancy-sick she is, and pale of cheer.
Mr. Steevens deduces this word from the Italian cara; but it is from the old French chere, face. Lydgate finishes the prologue to his Storie of Thebes with these lines:
"And as I coud, with a pale cheare,
My tale I gan anone, as ye shall heare."
Scene 2. Page 103.
Hel. So with two seeming bodies, but one heart;
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.
It may be doubted whether this passage has been rightly explained, and whether the commentators have not given Shakspeare credit for more skill in heraldry than he really possessed, or at least than he intended to exhibit on the present occasion. Helen says, "we had two seeming bodies, but only one heart." She then exemplifies her position by a simile—"we had two of the first, i. e. bodies, like the double coats in heraldry that belong to man and wife as one person, but which, like our single heart, have but one crest."
Scene 2. Page 112.