[899] Mr. Singer, in a note on this passage, says, “It was customary, in the East, for lovers to testify the violence of their passion by cutting themselves in the sight of their mistresses; and the fashion seems to have been adopted here as a mark of gallantry in Shakespeare’s time, when young men frequently stabbed their arms with daggers, and, mingling the blood with wine, drank it off to the healths of their mistresses.”—Vol. ii. p. 417.
[900] “Illustrations of Shakspeare,” 1839, p. 156.
[901] “Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare,” p. 124.
[902] Cf. “Tempest,” v. 1:
“the ignorant fumes that mantle
Their clearer reason.”
[903] Clark and Wright’s “Notes to Macbeth,” 1877, p. 101.
[904] Singer’s “Shakespeare,” vol. viii. p. 123.
[905] “Vulgar Errors,” book v. chap. 23 (Bohn’s edition, 1852, vol. ii. p. 82).
[906] Prynne attacked the fashion in his “Unloveliness of Love-locks.”
[907] See Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” pp. 165, 166.