1223. This line, slightly altered, occurs also in the Legend of Good Women, 658.
1225. Now is me shape, now I am destined; literally, now is it shapen (or appointed) for me.
1247. It was supposed that all things were made of the four elements mentioned in l. 1246. 'Does not our life consist of the four elements?'—Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, ii. 3. 10.
1255. Cf. P. Plowman, C. xiii. 236.
1257. 'And another man would fain (get) out of his prison.'
1259. matere; in the matter of thinking to excel God's providence.
1260. 'We never know what thing it is that we pray for here below.' See Romans viii. 26.
1261. dronke is as a mous. This phrase seems to have given way to 'drunk as a rat.' 'Thus satte they swilling and carousyng, one to another, till they were both as dronke as rattes.'—Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses; ed. Furnivall, p. 113.
'I am a Flemying, what for all that,
Although I wyll be dronken otherwhyles as a rat.'