[275] A sort of parody on the exclamation of Pistol in "Henry V.," act ii. sc. 1—
"Base is the slave that pays!"
Mr Steevens, in a note on the passage, points out a similar expression in Heywood's "Fair Maid of the West."—Collier.
[276] i.e., Thine interpreter. Trucheman, Fr. See Cotgrave.—Steevens.
The word is not very common in our old writers, but it is found [in two or three plays printed in the present series, and] in a passage quoted in "England's Parnassus," 1600, [from Greene's "Menaphone," 1589]—
"Seld speaketh love, but sighes his secret paines;
Teares are his truch-men; words do make him tremble."
Again, in Whetstone's "Heptameron," 1582: "For he that is the Troucheman of a stranger's tongue may well declare his meaning, but yet shall marre the grace of his tale."—Collier.
[In "England's Parnasaus," 1600, is the following line from James I.'s "Essayes of a Prentise," 1584—
"Dame Nature's trunchmen, heavens interprets true;"
and Park, in his reprint of the book, not knowing the meaning of trouchman, supposed trunchman to be misprinted for trenchman.]