[302] “Fact”—guilty deed, crime.
[303] It was a common superstition that the wounds of a murdered man bled in the presence of the murderer.
[304] This couplet is from a copy of verses in Nashe’s Pierce Penniless, 1592 (Works, ed. Grosart, ii. 10). It is also found in the Yorkshire Tragedy, 1608.
[305] Ed. 1613 “Tioris.”
[306] Fere = proud, fierce. The word was obsolete in Marston’s time.
[307] Quy. “Though Neptune cold”?—The passage smacks of Macbeth.
[308] Cf. Hamlet, iii. 3:—
“Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent:
When he is drunk, asleep, or in his rage;
Or in the incestuous pleasures of his bed,” &c.
[309] Marston almost invariably makes a trisyllable of “vengeance.”
[310] i.e., cannot I be saved by “benefit of clergy”?
[311] Cf. Hamlet, i. 2:—
“So loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly.”