PAN. Agoodly med'cine for my aching bones!-O world! world! world! thus is the poor agent despised! O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a' work, and how ill requited! Why should our endeavour be so loved, and the performance so loathed? what verse for it? what instance for it?Let me see :

Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing, 'Till he hath lost his honey, and his sting: And being once subdued in armed tail, Sweet honey and sweet notes together fail,Good traders in the flesh, set this in your painted cloths.5

As many as be here of pander's hall,

Your eyes, half out, weep out at Pandar's fall: Or, if you cannot weep, yet give some groans, Though not for me, yet for your aching bones. Brethren, and sisters, of the hold-door trade, Some two months hence my will shall here be made:

It should be now, but that my fear is this,-
Some galled goose of Winchester would hiss:

Broker, in our author's time, signified a bawd of either sex, So, in King John:

"This bawd, this broker, this all-changing word," &c. See Vol. X. p. 408, n. 9. MALONE.

3

ignomy and shame-] Ignomy was used, in our author's time, for ignominy. See Vol. XI. p. 426, n. 9.

MALONE.

-loved,] Quarto; desir'd, folio. JOHNSON.

-set this in your painted cloths.] i. e. the painted canvas with which your rooms are hung. See Vol. VIII. p. 103, n. 8.

STEEVENS.

6

Some galled goose of Winchester-] The publick stews were anciently under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester.

POPE.

Till then I'll sweat," and seek about for eases ;
And, at that time, bequeath you my diseases.

[Exit.s

Mr. Pope's explanation may be supported by the following passage in one of the old plays, of which my negligence has lost the title:

"Collier! how came the goose to be put upon you?

"I'll tell thee: The term lying at Winchester in Henry the Third's days, and many French women coming out of the Isle of Wight thither, &c. there were many punks in the town," &c.

A particular symptom in the lues venerea was called a Winchester goose. So, in Chapman's comedy of Monsieur D'Olive, 1606: "the famous school of England call'd Winchester, famous I mean for the goose," &c.

Again, Ben Jonson, in his poem called An Execration on Vulcan:

-this a sparkle of that fire let loose,
"That was lock'd up in the Winchestrian goose,
"Bred on the Bank in time of popery,
"When Venus there maintain'd her mystery."

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In an ancient satire, called Cocke Lorelles Bote, bl. 1. printed by Wynkyn de Worde, no date, is the following list of the different residences of harlots:

"There came such a wynd fro Winchester,
"That blewe these women over the ryver,
"In wherye, as I wyll you tell:

"Some at saynt Kateryns stroke agrounde,
"And many in Holborne were founde,
"Some at sainte Gyles I trowe:

"Also in Ave Maria Aly, and at Westmenster;
"And some in Shoredyche drewe theder,
"With grete lamentacyon;

"And by cause they have lost that fayre place, "They wyll bylde at Colman hedge in space," &c. Hence the old proverbial simile" As common as Coleman Hedge:" now Coleman Street. STEEVENS.

As the publick stews were under the controul of the Bishop of Winchester, a strumpet was called a Winchester goose, and a galled Winchester goose may mean, either a strumpet that had the venereal disease, or one that felt herself hurt by what Pandarus had said. It is probable that the word was purposely used to express both these senses. It does not appear to me, from

the passage cited by Steevens, that any symptom of the venereal disease was called a Winchester goose." M. MASON.

Cole, in his Latin Dict. 1669, renders a Winchester goose by pudendagra. MALONE.

There are more hard bombastical phrases in the serious part of this play, than, I believe, can be picked out of any other six plays of Shakspeare. Take the following specimens: Tortive,persistive, protractive,-importless, insisture,-deracinate,dividable. And in the next Act: Past-proportion,-unrespective, propugnation,-self-assumption,-self-admission,-assubjugate,-kingdom'd, &c. TYRWHITT.

7- I'll sweat,] i. e. adopt the regimen then used for curing what Pistol calls "the malady of France." Thus, says the Bawd, in Measure for Measure: " - what with the sweat, See note on Timon of Athens,

&c. I am custom-shrunk." Act IV. sc. iii.

STEEVENS.

This play is more correctly written than most of Shakspeare's compositions, but it is not one of those in which either the extent of his views or elevation of his fancy is fully displayed. As the story abounded with materials, he has exerted little invention; but he has diversified his characters with great variety, and preserved them with great exactness. His vicious characters disgust, but cannot corrupt, for both Cressida and Pandarus are detested and contemned. The comick characters seem to have been the favourites of the writer; they are of the superficial kind, and exhibit more of manners than nature; but they are copiously filled and powerfully impressed. Shakspeare has in his story followed, for the greater part, the old book of Caxton, which was then very popular; but the character of Thersites, of which it makes no mention, is a proof that this play was written after Chapman had published his version of Homer. JOHNSON.

The first seven Books of Chapman's Homer were published in the year 1596, and again in 1598. They were dedicated as follows: To the most honoured now living instance of the Achilleian virtues eternized by divine Homere, the Earle of Essexe, Earl Marshall, &c. The whole twenty-four Books of the Iliad appeared in 1611. An anonymous interlude, called THERSYTES his Humours and Conceits, had been published in 1598. Puttenham also, in his Arte of Englishe Poesie, 1589, p. 35, makes mention of "Thersites the glorious Noddie" &c. STEEVENS.

The interlude of Thersites was, I believe, published long before 1598. That date was one of the numerous forgeries of VOL. XV. 2 I

Chetwood the Prompter, as well as the addition to the title of the piece-"Thersites his Humours and Conceits;" for no such words are found in the catalogue published in 1671, by Kirkman, who appears to have seen it. MALONE.

P. 436. How the devil luxury, with his fat rump, and potatoe finger, tickles these together.] Luxuria was the appropriate term used by the school divines, to express the sin of incontinence, which accordingly is called luxury in all our old English writers. In the Summa Theologia Compendium of Thomas Aquinas, P. 2. II. Quæst. CLIV. is de Luxuriæ Partibus, which the author distributes under the heads of Simplex Fornicatio, Adulterium, Incestus, Stuprum, Raptus, &c. and Chaucer, in his Parson's Tale, descanting on the seven deadly sins, treats of this under the title De Luxuria. Hence, in King Lear, our author uses the word in this particular sense :

"To't, Luxury, pell-mell, for I want soldiers." And Middleton, in his Game of Chess:

-in a room fill'd all with Aretine's pictures,
(More than the twelve labours of Luxury,)
"Thou shalt not so much as the chaste pummel see
"Of Lucrece' dagger."

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But why is luxury, or lasciviousness, said to have a potatoe finger? This root, which was, in our author's time, but newly imported from America, was considered as a rare exotick, and esteemed a very strong provocative. As the plant is so common now, it may entertain the reader to see how it is described by Gerard, in his Herbal, 1597, p. 780:

"This plant, which is called of some Skyrrits of Peru, is generally of us called Potatus, or Potatoes.-There is not any that hath written of this plant;-therefore, I refer the description thereof unto those that shall hereafter have further knowledge of the same. Yet I have had in my garden divers roots (that I bought at the Exchange in London) where they flourished until winter, at which time they perished and rotted. They are used to be eaten roasted in the ashes. Some, when they be so roasted, infuse them and sop them in wine; and others, to give them the greater grace in eating, do boil them with prunes. Howsoever they be dressed, they comfort, nourish, and strengthen the bodie, procure bodily lust, and that with great greediness."

Drayton, in the 20th Song of his Polyolbion, introduces the same idea concerning the skirret:

"The skirret, which, some say, in sallets stirs the blood.” Shakspeare alludes to this quality of potatoes in The Merry Wives of Windsor: "Let the sky rain potatoes, hail kissing comfits, and snow eringoes; let a tempest of provocation.

come."

Ben Jonson mentions potatoe pies in Every Man out of his Humour, among other good unctuous meats. So, T. Heywood, in The English Traveller, 1633:

"Caviare, sturgeon, anchovies, pickled oysters; yes
"And a potatoe pie: besides all these,
"What thinkest rare and costly."

Again, in The Dumb Knight, 1633: "-truly I think a marrow-bone pye, candied eringoes, preserved dates, or marmalade of cantharides, were much better harbingers; cock-sparrows stew'd, dove's brains, or swans' pizzles, are very provocative; ROASTED POTATOES, or boiled skirrets, are your only lofty dishes."

Again, in Decker's Honest Whore, 1635: "If she be a woman, marrow-bones and potatoe-pies keep me," &c.

Again, in A Chaste Maid of Cheapside, by Middleton, 1620: "You might have spar'd this banquet of eringoes, "Artichokes, potatoes, and your butter'd crab;

"They were fitter kept for your own wedding dinner." Again, in Chapman's May-Day, 1611: "a banquet of oysterpies, skirret-roots, potatoes, eringoes, and divers other whetstones of venery."

Again, in Decker's If this be not a good Play the Devil is in it, 1612:

"Potatoes eke, if you shall lack
"To corroborate the back.”

Again, in Jack Drum's Entertainment, 1601: "—by Gor, an me had known dis, me woode have eat som potatos, or ringoe." Again, in Sir W. D'Avenant's Love and Honour, 1649: "You shall find me a kind of sparrow, widow; "A barley-corn goes as far as a potatoe." Again, in The Ghost, 1640:

"Then, the fine broths I daily had sent to me, "Potatoe pasties, lusty marrow-pies," &c. Again, in Histriomastix, or the Player whipt, 1610:

"Give your play-gull a stool, and your lady her fool,
"And her usher potatoes and marrow."

Nay, so notorious were the virtues of this root, that W. W. the old translator of the Menaechmi of Plautus, 1595, has introduced them into that comedy. When Menochmus goes to