[237] Can the reference be to Troilus and Cressida?
[238] Ben Jonson's Alchemist.
[239] Puisne (i.e. puny) was the term applied to students at the Inns of Court; also to Freshmen at Oxford.
[240] Cf. Shirley's Honoria and Mammon, i. 2:
"Go to your Lindabrides
I'the new brothel; she's a handsome leveret."
[241] The first edition of this well-known book was published in 1628. Parsons Resolutions is a fictitious book.
[242] The "lamentable ballad of the Lady's Fall" has been reprinted by Ritson and Percy.
[243] In the MS. follows a line, scored through:—
"And while my footman plaies sigh out my part."
[244] Shirley delights in ridiculing the affectation in which the gallants of his time indulged. Cf. a very similar passage in The Lady of Pleasure, v. 1.