Caraways. See on [page 62] above. Marmalet is an obsolete form of marmalade. Marchpane was a kind of almond-cake, much esteemed in the time of Shakespeare. Compare Romeo and Juliet, i. 5. 9: "Good thou, save me a piece of marchpane." Sweet-suckers are dried sweetmeats or sugar-plums, also called suckets, succades, etc.
Page 85.—Wote. Know; more commonly written wot. It is the first and third persons singular, indicative present, of the obsolete verb wit. Unweeting (unwitting), unknowing or unconscious, is from the same verb.
Page 86.—Thomas Lupton. He wrote several books besides his Thousand Notable Things, which was a collection of medical recipes, stories, etc. Little is known of his personal history.
Robert Heron. He was a Scotchman (1764–1807), who wrote books of travel, geography, history, etc.
Warlocks. Persons supposed to be in league with the devil; sorcerers or wizards.
Page 87.—Beshrew. Originally a mild imprecation of evil, but often used playfully, as here. Compare the similar modern use of confound, which originally meant ruin or destroy; as in the Merchant of Venice, iii. 2. 271: "So keen and greedy to confound a man," etc.
Page 88.—Astrologaster. The full title was "The Astrologaster, or the Figurecaster: Rather the Arraignment of Artless Astrologers and Fortune Tellers."
Page 89.—In the following form. There were other forms, but this was regarded as one of the most potent. It will be seen that the word, as here arranged, can be read in various ways; as, for instance, following each line to the end and then up the right-hand side of the triangle, etc. An old writer, after giving directions to write the word in this triangular form, adds: "Fold the paper so as to conceal the writing, and stitch it into the form of a cross with white thread. This amulet wear in the bosom, suspended by a linen ribbon, for nine days. Then go in dead silence, before sunrise, to the bank of a stream that flows eastward, take the amulet from off the neck, and fling it backwards into the water. If you open or read it, the charm is destroyed." It was thought to be efficacious for the cure of fevers, "especially quartan and semi-tertian agues."
Thomas Lodge. He was born about 1556, and died in 1625, and wrote plays, novels, songs, translations, etc. His Rosalynde (1590) furnished Shakespeare with the plot of As You Like It.
Page 90.—Robert Greene (1560–1592) was a popular dramatist, novelist, and poet in his day. In his Groatsworth of Wit (published in 1592, after his death) he attacked the rising Shakespeare as "an upstart crow," who was "in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country." Shakespeare afterwards took the story of The Winter's Tale from Greene's Pandosto, or Dorastus and Fawnia, as it was subsequently entitled.