Line 111. Hippocrise.—A beverage composed of wine, with spices and sugar, strained through a cloth; said to have been named from Hippocrates' sleeve, the term given by apothecaries to a strainer (Halliwell).
Line 111. Muskadine.—A well-known rich wine.
"And I will have also wyne de Ryne
With new maid clarye, that is good and fyne,
Muscadell, terantyne, and bastard,
With Ypocras and Pyment comyng afterwarde."
(MS. Rawl. C. 86.)
Though muscadell is the usual form (for instances see Furnivall, The Babees Book, p. 205), the spelling muscadine occurs in Beaumont and Fletcher's Loyal Subject, iii. 4.
Line 112. The Pierides pies.—The reference is not to the Muses themselves (sometimes called Pierides from Pieria, near Olympus), but to the nine daughters of Pierus, who for attempting to rival the Muses were changed into birds of the magpie kind. For a full account of the transformation see Ovid, Met. v. 670, etc. There is a play here on the double meaning of pie, namely a bird (Latin pica), and an article of food.
II.
Line 23.—Keele, to cool, from O. E. cêlan, M. E. kelen. See Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2, 930—"While greasy Joan doth keel the pot." Usually, however, the verb bore the derived sense of "to keep from boiling over by stirring round." A Tour to the Caves, 1781, gives—"Keel, to keep the pot from boiling over." This is evidently the meaning which should be adopted here.
III.
Line 13. It is bootles, etc.—Puns on the different meanings of the word boot are very common in Elizabethan writers, and the relevant use of the one frequently entails the irrelevant introduction of the other. See, for example, Two Gentlemen of Verona, i. 1, 27, etc.: