[298] [Old copy, peely.]
[299] [Cakes. Old copy, cats.]
[300] [A Knight of the Post was a person hired to swear anything—a character often mentioned in old writers.]
[301] Some persons, not merely without reason, but directly against it, treat vild and vile, and consequently vildly and vilely, as distinct words. Vild and vildly are blunders in old spelling, only to be retained when, as now, we give the words of an author in the very orthography of that date. We profess here to follow the antiquated spelling exactly, that it may be seen how the productions in our volume came originally from the press: but when spelling is modernised, as it is in the ordinary republications of our ancient dramatists, &c., it is just as absurd to print "vile" vild, as to print "friend" frend or "enemy" ennimy.—Mr Collier's note in the edition of 1851.
[302] Shakespeare has the word "exigent" for extremity, and such seems to be its meaning here, and not the legal sense; the Knight says that the good name of his predecessors for housekeeping shall never be brought into extremity by him.
[303] [Wary, aware.]
[304] [Old copy, Squire.]
[305] [Old copy, for fourtie.]
[306] An early instance of the use of an expression, of frequent occurrence afterwards and down to our own day, equivalent to going without dinner. See Steevens's note to "Richard III." act iv. sc. 4, where many passages are quoted on the point.
[307] [Old copy, ope.]