[252] Gabriel Harvey, in his "Pierces Supererogation," 1593, speaking of Long Meg of Westminster, says: "Although she were a lusty, bouncing rampe, somewhat like Gallimetta or maid Marian, yet was she not such a roinish rannel, such a dissolute flirt gillian," &c.
[253] Thou strumpet. See Note on "Antony and Cleopatra," Shakspeare, 1778, vol. viii., p. 175.—S.
So in Davies's "Scourge of Polly" [1611]—
"Or wanton Rigg, or letcher dissolute,
Do stand at Powles Crosse in a sheeten sute."—Reed.
[254] The accoutrements of an itinerant trull.—S.
[255] Thinkest or imaginest.
[256] Cut appears to have been an opprobrious term used by the vulgar when they scolded or abused each other. It occurs again, act v., sc. 2: "That lying cut is lost, that she is not swinged and beaten."
A horse is sometimes called Cut in our ancient writers, as in the "First Part of Henry IV.," act ii., sc. 1., and Falstaff says: "If I tell thee a lye, spit in my face, and call me horse." Cut is therefore probably used in the same sense as horse, to which it seems to have been synonymous. Several instances of the use of this term are collected by Mr Steevens, in his edition of Shakspeare; see vol. iv., p. 202.
It appears probable to me that the opprobrious epithet Cut arose from the practice of cutting the hair of convicted thieves; which was anciently the custom in England, as appears from the edicts of John de Northampton against adulterers, who thought, with Paulo Migante, that