[IV, i, 96]. ouerthrowne—M., f. read overflown, i. e., become excessive or inordinate; so full that the contents run over the brim. The reading of the Q., however, is quite intelligible,—taking overthrown in the sense of thrown too strongly.
[IV, i, 135]. Colbran—more properly Colbrand or Collebrand, a wicked giant in the medieval romance of Guy of Warwick. He is the champion of the invading King of Denmark, who challenges the English King, Athelstan, to produce a knight who can vanquish Colbrand, or to yield as his vassal. In this hour of need Guy appears, fights with the giant, and kills him.
[IV, i, 137]. hee’l make some of you smoake,—i. e., “make some of you suffer.” Cf. Beaumont & Fletcher, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, I, ii, 136: “I’ll make some of ’em smoke for’t;” and Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, IV, iii, 111: “Or some of you shall smoke for it in Rome.”
[IV, i, 138]. a Consort—“In the author’s age, the taverns were infested with itinerant bands of musicians, each of which (jointly and individually) was called a noise or consort: these were sometimes invited to play for the company, but seem more frequently to have thrust themselves, unasked, into it, with an offer of their services: their intrusion was usually prefaced with, ‘By your leave, gentlemen, will you hear any music?’”—Gifford.
[IV, i, 145]. of—formerly sometimes substituted, as here, for on in colloquial usage. So also on for of, as in [l. 148]. Cf. also [l. 182].
[IV, i, 197–8]. ’tis Fairies treasure Which but reueal’d brings on the blabbers ruine.—To confide in any one about a fairy’s gift rendered it void, according to popular tradition, and drew down the fairy giver’s anger. In instance, see John Aubrey’s Remains (Reprinted in Publications of the Folk-Lore Society, vol. IV, p. 102): “Not far from Sir Bennet Hoskyns, there was a labouring man, that rose up early every day to go to worke; who for a good while many dayes together found a nine-pence in the way that he went. His wife wondering how he came by so much money, was afraid he gott it not honestlye; at last he told her, and afterwards he never found any more.”
There are numerous literary allusions to this superstition: e. g., Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, III, iii, 127, ff.: “This is fairy gold, boy; and ’twill prove so. Up with’t, keep it close.... We are lucky, boy; and to be so still requires nothing but secrecy.”
And Field himself in Woman is a Weathercock, I, i:
“I see you labour with some serious thing,
And think (like fairy’s treasure) to reveal it,