1810. made: cp. Prol. 300.
1815 ff. Gower seems to have dealt rather freely with this story. The usual form of it gives Palamedes, not Nauplius, as the person who came to fetch Ulysses, and makes Ulysses yoke a horse and an ox together in a plough as a sign of madness: see Hyginus, Fab. xcv. As to the name of Nauplus, see notes on iii. 973, 1002.
1833. That is, ‘feigning to be mad,’ not ‘like one who feigns to be mad’: see note on i. 695.
1847 ff. ‘He thought to try if he were mad or no, however it might please Ulysses,’ that is, whether it pleased him or not. ‘Hou’ seems to be for ‘How so evere’: cp. l. 415.
1875. tothe, written so when the emphasis falls on the preposition, see note on i. 232.
1901 ff. Ovid, Her. Ep. xiii.
1927. F has a stop after ‘londeth,’ thus throwing the clause, ‘and was the ferste there Which londeth,’ into a parenthesis.
1935 ff. 1 Sam. xxviii., where the witch is called ‘mulier pythonem habens.’
1968 ff. The story of the education of Achilles by Chiron, as we have it here, is apparently taken, directly or indirectly, from Statius, Achill. ii. 121 (407) ff.,
‘Nunquam ille imbelles Ossaea per avia damas