“There’s no man in the world
More bound to’s mother; yet here he lets me prate
Like one i’ the stocks.”
Again, in the “Comedy of Errors” (iii. 1), Luce speaks of “a pair of stocks in the town,” and in “King Lear” (ii. 2), Cornwall, referring to Kent, says:
“Fetch forth the stocks!—
You stubborn ancient knave.”
It would seem that formerly, in great houses, as in some colleges, there were movable stocks for the correction of the servants. Putting a person in the stocks, too, was an exhibition familiar to the ancient stage. In “Hick Scorner,”[851] printed in the reign of Henry VIII., Pity is placed in the stocks, and left there until he is freed “by Perseverance and Contemplacyon.”
Strappado. This was a military punishment, by which the unfortunate sufferer was cruelly tortured in the following way: a rope being fastened under his arms, he was drawn up by a pulley to the top of a high beam, and then suddenly let down with a jerk. The result usually was a dislocation of the shoulder-blade. In “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 4), it is referred to by Falstaff, who tells Poins: “were I at the strappado, or all the racks in the world, I would not tell you on compulsion.” At Paris, says Douce,[852] “there was a spot called l’estrapade, in the Faubourg St. Jacques, where soldiers received this punishment. The machine, whence the place took its name, remained fixed like a perpetual gallows.” The term is probably derived from the Italian strappare, to pull or draw with violence.
Toss in a Sieve. This punishment, according to Cotgrave, was inflicted “on such as committed gross absurdities.” In “1 Henry VI.” (i. 3), Gloster says to the Bishop of Winchester:
“I’ll canvass thee in thy broad cardinal’s hat,
If thou proceed in this thy insolence.”
It is alluded to in Davenant’s “Cruel Brother” (1630):
“I’ll sift and winow him in an old hat.”
Wheel. The punishment of the wheel was not known at Rome, but we read of Mettius Tuffetius being torn asunder by quadrigæ driven in opposite directions. As Shakespeare, remarks Malone, “has coupled this species of punishment with another that certainly was unknown to ancient Rome, it is highly probable that he was not apprised of the story of Mettius Tuffetius, and that in this, as in various other instances, the practice of his own times was in his thoughts, for in 1594 John Chastel had been thus executed in France for attempting to assassinate Henry IV.”