Line 193. Oddes here = contention, quarrel. For this sense compare—
"I cannot speak
Any beginning to this peevish odds."
(Othello, ii. 3, 185.)
and also Henry V. ii. 4, 129, and Timon of Athens, iv. 3, 42.
Line 195. Seven yeares I was a woman.—The blindness of Tiresias is most frequently ascribed, either to his having, when a child, revealed the secrets of the gods, or to his having gazed upon Athenè bathing, on which occasion the goddess is said to have deprived him of sight. Another tradition, however (adhered to by Ovid, Met. iii. 516, etc.), relates that Tiresias beheld two serpents together; he struck at them, and, happening to kill the female, was himself changed into a woman. Seven years later he again encountered two serpents, but now killed the male, and resumed the shape of man. Zeus and Hera, disputing over the relative happiness of man and woman, referred the matter to Tiresias, as having a practical knowledge of both conditions. He favoured Zeus's assertion that a woman possessed the more enjoyments; whereupon Hera, indignant, blinded him, while Zeus bestowed on him, in compensation, the power of prophecy.
Line 197. Fold.—The omission of a prefix to suit the exigencies of metre, common enough in verbs such as defend, defile, becomes remarkable when the force of the prefix itself is such as to change entirely the meaning of the verb. Examples of omission in such cases are comparatively rare, but they are not confined to our own language. See Vergil, Aen. i. 262—
"Longius et volvens fatorum arcana movebo"—
and cf. also Aen. v. 26, and Cicero's Brutus, 87.
Line 223. Catch audacitye.—For the old metaphorical use of catch cf. Wyclif's Bible (1 Tim. vi. 12), "Catche euerlastyng lyf."
Line 227. Curromanstike, chiromantic, i.e. pertaining to chiromancy; the rhyme being probably responsible for the use of the adjective rather than the noun.