[168a] The quarto of 1600 reads Woncote: all the folios read Woncot. Yet Malone in the Variorum of 1803 introduced the new and unwarranted reading of Wincot, which has been unwisely adopted by succeeding editors.
[168b] These references are convincingly explained by Mr. Justice Madden in his Diary of Master Silence, pp. 87 seq., 372-4. Cf. Blunt’s Dursley and its Neighbourhood, Huntley’s Glossary of the Cotswold Dialect, and Marshall’s Rural Economy of Cotswold (1796).
[170] First adopted by Theobald in 1733; cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 257.
[172a] Remarks, p. 295.
[172b] Cf. Shakespeare Society’s reprint, 1842, ed. Halliwell.
[172c] This collection of stories is said by both Malone and Steevens to have been published in 1603, although no edition earlier than 1620 is now known. The 1620 edition of Westward for Smelts, written by Kinde Kit of Kingston, was reprinted by the Percy Society in 1848. Cf. Shakespeare’s Library, ed. Hazlitt, I. ii. 1-80.
[174] Diary, p. 61; see p. 167.
[175] Nichols, Progresses of Elizabeth, iii. 552.
[176a] Cf. Domestic MSS. (Elizabeth) in Public Record Office, vol. cclxxviii. Nos. 78 and 85; and Calendar of Domestic State Papers, 1598-1601, pp. 575-8.
[176b] Cf. Gilchrist, Examination of the charges . . . of Jonson’s Enmity towards Shakspeare, 1808.