The joke turns on Donne's pretending to misunderstand the bore's colloquial, but rather affected, indefinite use of 'your'. Donne applies it to himself: 'You are mistaken in thinking that I have only one suit.' Chambers gives the whole speech, from 'He's base' to 'he follows me', to the bore. This gives 'Certes ... grogaram' to Donne, and the closing repartee to the bore. Chambers uses inverted commas, and has, probably by an oversight, omitted to begin a new speech at 'Mine'.
For 'your' as used by the bore compare Bottom's use of it in A Midsummer Nights Dream: 'I will discharge it in either your straw-coloured beard, or your orange-tawny beard', and 'there is not a more fearful wild-fowl than your lion'. In most of the instances quoted by Schmidt there is the suggestion that Shakespeare is making fun of an affectation of the moment. That Donne had a French servant appears from one of his letters: 'therefore I onely send you this Letter ... and my promise to distribute your other Letters, according to your addresses, as fast as my Monsieur can doe it.' To Sir G. B., Letters, p. 201.
Page 162, l. 97. ten Hollensheads, or Halls, or Stowes. Every reader of these old chroniclers knows how they mingle with their account of the greater events of each year mention of trifling events, strange births, fires, &c. This characteristic of the Chronicles is reflected in the History-Plays based on them. Nash complains of these 'lay-chroniclers that write of nothing but of Mayors and Sherifs, and the deere yere and the great frost'. Pierce Penniless.
ll. 98. he knowes; He knowes. I have followed D, H49, Lec in thus punctuating. To place the semicolon after 'trash' makes 'Of triviall household trash' depend rather awkwardly on 'lye'. Donne does not accuse the chroniclers of lying, but of reporting trivialities.
Page 163, l. 113-4. since The Spaniards came, &c.: i.e. from 1588 to 1597.
l. 117. To heare this Makeron talke. This is the earliest instance of this Italian word used in English which the O.E.D. quotes, and is a proof of Donne's Italian travels. The Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca (1747) quotes as an example of the word with this meaning, homo crassâ Minerva, in Italian:
O maccheron, ben hai la vista corta.
Bellina, Sonetti, 29.
Donne's use of the word attracted attention. It is repeated in one of the Elegies to the Author, and led to the absurd substitution, in the editions after 1633, of 'maceron' for 'mucheron' (mushroom) in the epistle prefixed to The Progress of the Soule.
l. 124. Perpetuities. 'Perpetuities are so much impugned because they will be prejudiciall to the Queenes profitt, which is raised daily from fines and recoveries.' Manningham's Diary, April 22, 1602. Manningham refers probably to real property in which for many centuries the Judges have ruled there can be no inalienable rights, i.e. perpetuities. Donne's companion declares that such inalienable rights are being established in offices. One has but to read Donne's or Chamberlain's letters (or any contemporaries) to see what a traffic went on in reversions to offices secular and sacred.