FOOTNOTES:
[61] Passage and Novem were games at dice, and mumchance one at cards. See Steevens's note on a passage in "Love's Labour Lost," act v.
[62] [The jack.]
[63] By a bale a pair of dice only is meant.
[64] Stephen puns on the words bale and bail.
[65] It appears from an after-remark of Stephen's, that the game they were playing at was passage. Boreas may be a punning invocation to the north wind to assist him in his passage, or an allusion to the noise which arises at the same time in the bowling-alley.
[66] The trundletail was a species of dog in little estimation, I believe; it is mentioned in the "Lear" of Shakespeare. So Ursula to Quar. in "Bartholomew Fair:" "Do you sneer, you dog's-head, you trundletail!" But here the host only puns on the rolling or trundling the bowl at the game.
[67] The host was probably box-keeper or groom-porter; and it appears by an extract from the Monthly Mirror (quoted by Mr Gifford), that "if the caster throws three mains, or wins by throwing three times successively, he pays to the box-keeper, for the use of the house, a stipulated sum." It was probably these profits that the host directs them to look to; or that in our poet's time, or at a different game, a regular percentage might have been paid to the box-keeper on the money staked; or the host might have been banker, and staked against the players, as now at Rouge-et-Noir, and some other games, I believe.
[68] It is perhaps unnecessary to notice that Stephen puns between the quatre and trey on the dice, and the cater or caterer who buys the provisions, and the tray in which it is brought home.