We may also refer to what Othello says (iv. 1): “To confess, and be hanged for his labour; first, to be hanged, and then to confess. I tremble at it.”
In “Timon of Athens” (i. 2), Apemantus says: “Ho, ho, confess’d it! hang’d it, have you not?”
“Cry him, and have him.” So Rosalind says, in “As You Like It” (i. 3), “If I could cry ‘hem’ and have him.”
“Cry you mercy, I took you for a joint-stool” (“King Lear,” iii. 6). It is given by Ray in his “Proverbs” (1768); see also “Taming of the Shrew” (ii. 1).
“Cucullus non facit monachum.” So in “Henry VIII.” (iii. 1), Queen Katherine says:
“All hoods make not monks.”
Chaucer thus alludes to this proverb:
“Habite ne maketh monk ne feere;
But a clean life and devotion
Maketh gode men of religion.”
“Dead as a door-nail.” So, in “2 Henry VI.” (iv. 10), Cade says to Iden: “I have eat no meat these five days; yet, come thou and thy five men, and if I do not leave you all as dead as a door-nail, I pray God I may never eat grass more.”
We may compare the term, “dead as a herring,” which Caius uses in the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (ii. 3), “By gar, de herring is no dead, so as I vill kill him.”