The engine, which sometimes meant the rack, is spoken of in “King Lear” (i. 4):
“Which, like an engine, wrench’d my frame of nature
From the fix’d place.”[849]
So, in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Night Walker” (iv. 5):
“Their souls shot through with adders, torn on engines.”
Once more, in “Measure for Measure” (ii. 1), where Escalus tells how
“Some run from brakes of ice, and answer none”
—a passage which Mr. Dyce would thus read:
“Some run from brakes of vice.”
It has been suggested that there is an allusion to “engines of torture,” although, owing to the many significations of the word “brake,” its meaning here has been much disputed.[850]
Stocks. This old-fashioned mode of punishment is the subject of frequent allusion by Shakespeare. Thus, Launce, in the “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (iv. 4), says: “I have sat in the stocks for puddings he hath stolen.” In “All’s Well that Ends Well” (iv. 3), Bertram says: “Come, bring forth this counterfeit module, has deceived me, like a double-meaning prophesier.” Whereupon one of the French lords adds: “Bring him forth: has sat i’ the stocks all night, poor gallant knave.” Volumnia says of Coriolanus (v. 3):