76. 'And afterwards he paid for it in his fair skin.' We should now say, his recompense fell upon his own head.
78. of good wil, readily, of their own accord. 'They of their own accord feared him as being the strongest.' So also 'of thine own good will,' Shak. Rich. II. iv. 1. 177; 'by her good will,' Venus and Adonis, 479. But the nearest parallel passage is in Octouian Imperator, l. 561, pr. in Weber's Metrical Romances, iii. 180. It is there said of some sailors who were chased by a lioness, that they ran away very hastily 'with good wylle.' Cf. in wille, i. e. anxious, in l. 173.
82. To handle his beard, i. e. to feel, by his beard, that he was of full age. Lodge has a parallel passage, but gives a more literal sense to the expression 'hondlen his berd,' which merely signifies that he was growing up. 'With that, casting up his hand, he felt haire on his face, and perceiving his beard to bud, for choler he began to blush, and swore to himselfe he would be no more subject to such slaverie.' Cf. As You Like It, iii. 2. 218, 396.
90. 'Is our meat prepared,' i. e. is our dinner ready? Our perhaps means my, being used in a lordly style. See the next note.
92. Observe the use of the familiar thou, in place of the usual respectful ye. This accounts for the elder brother's astonishment, as expressed in the next line.
100. 'Brother by name, and brother in that only.'
101. that rape was of rees, who was hasty in his fit of passion. Mr. Jephson's explanation 'deprived of reason for anger' is incorrect. Rape is hasty; see the Glossary. Rees is the modern E. race, A. S. rǣs, applied to any sudden course, whether bodily or mental; cf. l. 547. So in Gower, ed. Pauli, i. 335, we find:—
'Do thou no-thinge in suche a rees,'
i. e. do nothing in such a sudden fit; referring to Pyramus, who rashly slew himself upon the hasty false assumption that Thisbe was dead.