"Pro. Over the boots? Nay, give me not the boots.
Val. No, I will not, for it boots thee not."
And Every Man in his Humour, i. 3, 30, etc.:
"Brai. Why, you may ha' my master's gelding, to save your longing, sir.
Step. But I ha' no boots, that's the spite on't.
Brai. Why, a fine wisp of hay roll'd hard, Master Stephen.
Step. No, faith, it's no boot to follow him now."
"Give me not the boots" = "do not make a laughing-stock of me."
Line 48. Ioynd stooles.—The word joint-stool, meaning a seat made with joints, a folding-chair, is sometimes spelt join'd stool in old editions of Shakespeare. The porter's use of this form is probably intended to convey a jest; ioynd stooles is here equivalent to stooles joined to one another, and the term is used as a facetious synonym for bench.
IV.
Line 6. Oulde.—So MS., possibly for whole.
Line 19. A man & noe beast.—An inversion, probably intentional.
Line 22. Condole my tragedies.—Condole is here used in the now obsolete transitive sense, and is equivalent to bewail, grieve over, lament. See (in 1607) Hieron, Works, i. 179—"How tender-hearted the Lord is, and how he doth ... condole our miseries." Cf. also Pistol's use of the verb, Henry V. ii. 1, 133.
Line 24. Craues.—The substantive crave, = craving, is not in general use, but appears to be considered rather as a new formation than as an obsolete word. Thus the earliest of the three examples given in the N. E. D. dates from 1830—"His crave and his vanity so far deluded him" (Fraser's Magazine, i. 134). This is a clear instance of a previous use.