[132] Trimmed.
[133] Dyce suggests that here the audience had to imagine a change of scene—to the lodging of the Duchess, who is confined to certain apartments in her own palace.
[134] Curtain.
[135] Band.
[136] Coach.
[137] "She has lived among horrors till she is become 'native and endowed unto that element.' She speaks the dialect of despair, her tongue has a smatch of Tartarus and the souls in bale. What are 'Luke's iron crown,' the brazen bull of Perillus, Procrustes' bed, to the waxen images which counterfeit death, to the wild masque of madmen, the tomb-maker, the bell-man, the living person's dirge, the mortification by degrees! To move a horror skilfully, to touch a soul to the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear, to wean and weary a life till it is ready to drop, and then step in with mortal instruments to take its last forfeit; this only a Webster can do. Writers of an inferior genius may 'upon horror's head horrors accumulate,' but they cannot do this. They mistake quantity for quality, they 'terrify babes with painted devils,' but they know not how a soul is capable of being moved; their terrors want dignity, their affrightments are without decorum."—C. Lamb, Spec. of Eng. Dram. Poets.
[138] This was a common superstition of the time.
[139] Fraught.
[140] Skeletons.
[141] Sugar-plums perfumed for sweetening the breath.