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ILLUSTRATIONS.

1 SCENE I.-"I will be thy Beadsman,

Valentine."

ACT I.

THE Anglo-Saxon beade-a prayer-something prayed-has given the name to the mechanical help which the ritual of the early church associated with the act of praying. To drop a ball down a string at every prayer, whether enjoined by the priest or by voluntary obligation, has been the practice of the Romish church for many centuries. In our language the ball, from its use, came to be called a bead. To "bid the beads," and to "pray," were synonymous. Burnet, in his History of the Reformation, says, "The form of bidding prayer was not begun by King Henry, as some have weakly imagined, but was used in the times of popery, as will appear by the form of bidding the beads in King Henry the Seventh's time. The way was, first for the preacher to name and open his text, and then to call on the people to go to their prayers, and to tell them what they were to pray for; after which all the people said their beads in a general silence, and the minister kneeled down also and said his." We find the expression "bedes bydding" in the Vision of Pierce Plowman, which was written, according to Tyrwhitt, about 1362. In the same remarkable poem we also find Bedman-beadman, or beadsman. A beadsman, in the sense of "I will be thy beadsman," is one who offers up prayers for the welfare of another. In this general sense it was used by Sir Henry Lee to Queen Elizabeth. (See Illustration 10.) "Thy poor daily orator and beadsman" was the common subscription to a petition to any great man or person in authority. We retain the substance, though not the exact form, of this courtly humiliation, even to the present day, when we memorialize the Crown and the Houses of Parliament, and seek to propitiate those authorities by the unmeaning assurance that their "petitioners shall ever pray." But the great men of old did not wholly depend upon the efficacy of their prayers for their welfare, which proceeded from the ex

pectation or gratitude of their suitors. They had regularly appointed beadsmen, who were paid to weary Heaven with their supplications. It is to this practice that Shakspere alludes, in the speech of Scroop to Richard II.:

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Thy very beadsmen learn to bend their bows Of double-fatal yew against thy state." Johnson, upon this passage, says, "The king's beadsmen were his chaplains." This assertion is partly borne out by an entry in 'The Privy Purse Expenses of King Henry VIII.,' published by Sir Harris Nicolas :-"Item, to Sir Torche, the king's bede man at the Rood in Grenewiche, for one yere now ended, xl s." The title "Sir" was in these days more especially applied to priests. (See Merry Wives of Windsor.") But the term "Bedesman" was also, we have little doubt, generally applied to any persons, whether of the clergy or laity, who received endowments for the purpose of offering prayers for the sovereign. Henry VII. established such persons upon a magnificent scale. The Harleian MS. No. 1498, in the British Museum, is an indenture made between Henry VII. and John Islipp, Abbot of St. Peter, Westminster, in which the abbot engages to

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provide and sustain within the said monastery, in the almshouses there, therefore made and appointed by the said king, thirteen poor men, one of them being a priest;" and the duty of these thirteen poor men is "to pray during the life of the said king, our sovereign lord, for the good and prosperous state of the same king, our sovereign lord, and for the prospering of this his realm." These men are not in the indenture called bedesmen; that instrument providing that they "shall be named and called the Almesse men of the said king our sovereign lord." The general designation of those who make prayers for others-bedesmen is here sunk in a name derived from the particular almesse (alms) or endowment. The dress of the twelve almsmen is to be a gown and a hood, "and a scochyn to be made and

set upon every of the said gowns, and a red rose crowned and embroidered thereupon." In the following design (the figure of which, a monk at his devotions, is from a drawing by Quellinus, a pupil of Rubens), the costume is taken from an illumination in the indenture now recited, which illumination represents the abbot, the priest, and the almsmen receiving

the indenture. The first almsman bears a string of beads upon his hand. The "scochyn" made and set upon the gown reminds us of the "badge" of poor Edie Ochiltree, in the Antiquary;' and this brings us back to "Beadsmen." This prince of mendicants was, as our readers will remember, a "King's Bedesman"-" an order of paupers to whom the kings of Scotland were in the custom of distributing a certain alms, in conformity with the ordinances of the Catholic church, and who were expected, in return, to pray for the royal welfare and that of the state." The similarity in the practices of the "King's Bedesmen" of Scotland, and the "Almesse men" of Henry VII., is precise. "This order," as Sir Walter Scott tells us in his advertisement to the 'Antiquary,' from which the above description is copied, "is still kept up." The "poor orators and beadsmen" of England live now only in a few musty records, or in the allusions of Spenser and Shakspere; and in the same way the "Blue Gowns" or "Kings Bedesmen" of Scotland, who "are now seldom to be seen in the streets of Edinburgh," will be chiefly remembered in the imperishable pages of the Author of 'Waverley.'

2 SCENE I.-" Nay, give me not the boots." This expression may refer, as Steevens has suggested, to a country sport in harvest-time, in which any offender against the laws of the

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reaping-season was laid on a bench and slapped with boots. But Steevens has also concluded and Douce follows up the opinion-that the allusion is to the instrument of torture called the Boots. That horrid engine, as well as the rack and other monuments of the cruelty of irresponsible power, was used in the questionin the endeavour to wring a confession out of the accused by terror or by actual torment. This meaning gives a propriety to the allusion. In the passage before us, Valentine is bantering Proteus about his mistress-and Proteus exclaims, "Nay, give me not the boots"-do not torture me to confess to those love-delinquencies of which you accuse me. Mr. Collier, however, says that this is "a proverbial expression not unfrequently met with in our old dramatists, signifying-don't make a laughing-stock of me. It seems to have no connexion whatever with the punishment of the Boots." Be this as it may, we may add a few words upon Douce's view. The torture of the boots was used principally in Scotland; and Douce has an extract from a very curious pamphlet containing an account of its infliction in the presence of our James I., before he was called to the English crown, upon one Dr. Fein, a supposed wizard, who was charged with raising the storms which the king encountered on his passage from Denmark. The brutal superstition which led James to the use of this horrid torture is less revolting than the calculating tyranny which prescribed its application to the unhappy Whig preachers of a century later, as recorded by Burnet, in the case of Maccael, in 1666. Our readers will here again remember Scott, in his powerful scene of Macbriar before the Privy

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to day, though he has had his boots on."
Douce says,
"the torture of the boot was
known in France, and, in all probability, im-
ported from that country." He then gives a
representation of it, copied from Millæus's
Praxis criminis persequendi, Paris, 1541. The
woodcut which we subjoin is from the same
book; but we have restored a portion of the
original engraving which Douce has omitted-
the judges, or examiners, witnessing the tor-
ture, and prepared to record the prisoner's de-
position under its endurance.

tortured man has fainted-" he 'll scarce ride | produced in the leaves of many plants, and which find habitation and food by the destruction of the receptacle of their infant existence. These caterpillars are termed "leaf-rollers,” and their economy is amongst the most curious and interesting of the researches of entomology. A small dark-brown caterpillar, with a black head and six feet, is the "canker-worm" of the rose. It derives its specific name, Lozotania Rosana, from its habits. The grub, produced from eggs deposited in the previous summer or autumn, makes its appearance with the first opening of the leaves, and it constructs its summer tent while the leaves are in their soft and half-expanded state. It weaves them together so strongly, bending them (according to the Greek of the Septuagint) and fastening their discs with the silken cords which it spins-that the growth of the bud in which it forms its canopy is completely stopped. Thus secured from the rain and from external enemies, it begins to destroy the inner partitions of its dwelling: it becomes the cutting insect of the Hebrew. In this way,

3 SCENE I.

"In the sweetest bud The eating canker dwells."

This is a figure which Shakspere has often repeated. In the Sonnets we have (Sonnet LXX.)

"Canker vice the sweetest buds doth love."

In 'King John,'

"Now will canker sorrow eat my bud."

In 'Hamlet,'

"The canker galls the infants of the spring." The peculiar canker which our poet, a close observer of Nature, must have noted, is described in A Midsummer Night's Dream,'

"Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds."

And in '1 Henry VI.,'

"Hath not thy rose a canker."

The instrument by which the canker was produced is described in

"The bud bit with an envious worm "

of 'Romeo and Juliet;' and in

"concealment, like a worm i' the bud, Fed on her damask cheek,"

in 'Twelfth Night.'

Shakspere found the "canker-worm" in the Old Testament (Joel i. 4). The Geneva Bible, 1561, has, "That which is left of the palmerworm hath the grasshopper eaten, and the residue of the grasshopper hath the canker-worm eaten, and the residue of the canker-worm hath the caterpillar eaten." The Arabic version of the passage in Joel renders what is here, and in our received translation, "the palmer-worm," by dud, which seems a general denomination for the larva state of an insect, and which applies especially to the "canker-worm." The original Hebrew, which is rendered palmer-worm, is from a verb meaning to cut or shear; the Greek of the Septuagint, by which the same word is rendered, is derived from the verb meaning to bend. (See 'Pictorial Bible,' Joel i.) These two words give a most exact description of the "canker-worm ;"-of " the canker in the musk-rose buds;" of the larvæ which are

"the most forward bud

Is eaten by the canker ere it blow."

• SCENE I.-"Not so much as a ducat." The ducat-which derives its name from duke, a ducal coin-is repeatedly mentioned in Shakspere. There were two causes for this. First, many of the incidents of his plays were derived from Italian stories, and were laid in Italian scenes; and his characters, therefore, properly use the name of the coin of their country. Thus, ducat occurs in this play-in the Comedy of Errors-in 'Much Ado about Nothing'-in 'Romeo and Juliet;' and, more than all, in the Merchant of Venice. But Italy was the great resort of English travellers in the time of Shakspere; and ducat being a familiar word to him, we find it also in 'Hamlet,' and in 'Cymbeline.' Venice has, at present, its silver ducat-the ducat of eight livresworth about 38. 3d. The gold ducat of Venice is at present worth about 68. The following representation of its old gold ducat is from a print in the Coin Room in the British Museum.

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S SCENE I.-" You have testern'd me.”

A verb is here made out of the name of a coin-the tester-which is mentioned twice in Shakspere: 1, by Falstaff, when he praises his recruit Wart, "There's a tester for thee;" and, 2, by Pistol, "Tester I'll have in pouch." We have also testril, which is the same, in 'Twelfth Night.' The value of a tester, teston, testern, or testril, as it is variously written, was supposed to be determined by a passage in Latimer's sermons (1584):-" They brought him a denari, a piece of their current coin that was worth ten of our usual pence—such another piece as our testerne." But the value of the tester, like that of all our ancient coins, was constantly changing, in consequence of the in

famous practice of debasing the currency, which

• SCENE II.-" Best sing it to the tune of Light o' love."

This was the name of a dance tune, which, from the frequent mention of it in the old poets, appears to have been very popular. Shakspere refers to it again in Much Ado about Nothing,' with more exactness: "Light o' love; that goes without a burthen; do you sing it and I'll dance it.”

7 SCENE II." Injurious wasps! to feed on such sweet honey."

The economy of bees was known to Shakspere with an exactness which he could not have derived from books. The description in 'Henry V., "So work the honey bees," is a

study for the naturalist as well as the poet. He had doubtless not only observed "the lazy yawning drone," but the "injurious wasps," that plundered the stores which had been collected by those who

These were the fearless robbers to which the

"Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds."

pretty pouting Julia compares her fingers :—

"Injurious wasps! to feed on such sweet honey, And kill the bees that yield it with your stings!"

* SCENE II.-" I see you have a month's mind," &c.

was amongst the expedients of bad governments for wringing money out of the people by cheating as well as violence. The French name, teston, was applied to a silver coin of Louis XII., 1513, because it bore the king's head; and the English shilling received the same name at the beginning of the reign of Henry VIII.,-probably because it had the same value as the French teston. The testons were called The metaphor is as accurate as it is beautiful. in by proclamations in the second and third years of Edward VI., in consequence of the extensive forgeries of this coin by Sir William Sherrington, for which, by an express act of parliament, he was attainted of treason. They are described in these proclamations as "pieces of xiid., commonly called testons." But the base shillings still continued to circulate, and they were, according to Stow, "called down" to the value of ninepence, afterwards to sixpence, and finally to fourpence halfpenny, in the reign of Edward VI. The value seems, at last, to have settled to sixpence. Harrison in his description of England, says "Sixpence, usually named the testone." In Shakspere's time, it would appear, from the following passage in 'Twelfth Night,' where Sir Toby and Sir Andrew are bribing the Clown to sing, that its value was sixpence :

"Sir To. Come on; there is sixpence for you: let's have a song.

Sir A. There's a testril of me, too." In the reign of Anne its value, according to Locke, who distinguishes between the shilling and the tester, was sixpence; and to this day we sometimes hear the name applied to sixpence. Whence do we derive the present slang name for sixpence, a tanner?

The month's mind, in one form of the expression, referred to the solemn mass, or other obsequies directed to be performed for the repose of the soul, during the month which followed interment. At the funeral of the Abbot Islipp, "The herse, with all th' other things, did remayne there untill the monethes mynde." (Vetusta Monumenta,' Vol. IV. p. 3.) The strong desire with which this ceremony was regarded in Catholic times might have rendered the general expression "month's mind" equivalent to an eager longing, in which sense it is generally thought to be here used. But we are not quite sure that it means a strong and abiding desire; two lines in Hudibras would seem to make the "month's mind" only a passing inclination:"For if a trumpet sound, or drum beat,

Who hath not a month's mind to combat?"

• SCENE III.-"Some to the wars," &c. It would be out of place here to give a more particular detail of what were the wars, and who the illustrious men that went "to try their fortunes there," or to recapitulate "the islands far away," that were sought for or discovered, or

to furnish even a list of "the studious universi- | writing, and acting at once upon the cupidity ties" to which the eager scholars of Elizabeth's time resorted. The subject is too large for us to attempt its illustration by any minute details. We may, however, extract a passage from Gifford's Memoirs of Ben Jonson,' prefixed to his excellent edition of that great dramatist, which directly bears upon this passage :

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'Some, to the wars, to try their fortune there: Some, to discover islands far away; Some, to the studious universities'; and the effect of these various pursuits was speedily discernible. The feelings, narrowed and embittered in household feuds, expanded and purified themselves in distant warfare, and a high sense of honour and generosity, and chivalrous valour, ran with electric speed from bosom to bosom, on the return of the first adventurers in the Flemish campaigns; while the wonderful reports of discoveries, by the intrepid mariners who opened the route since so successfully pursued, faithfully committed to

and curiosity of the times, produced an inconceivable effect in diffusing a thirst for novelties among a people, who, no longer driven in hostile array to destroy one another, and combat for interests in which they took little concern, had leisure for looking around them, and consulting their own amusement."

1o SCENE III.—“ There shall he practise tilts and tournaments."

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St. Palaye, in his Memoirs of Chivalry,' says, that, in their private castles, the gentlemen practised the exercises which would prepare them for the public tournaments. This refers to the period which appears to have terminated some half-century before the time of Elizabeth, when real warfare was conducted with express reference to the laws of knighthood; and the tournay, with all its magnifi. cent array-its minstrels, its heralds, its damosels in lofty towers-had its hard blows, its wounds, and sometimes its deaths. There were the "Joustes à outrance," or the "Joustes mortelles et à champ," of Froissart. But the "tournaments" that Shakspere sends Proteus to "practise" were the "Justes of Peace," the "Joustes à Plaisance," the tournaments of gay penons and pointless lances. They had all the gorgeousness of the old knightly encounters; but they appear to have been regarded only as courtly pastimes, and not as serious preparations for " a well-foughten field."

ACT II.

"SCENE I.-" Beggar at Hallowmas." If we were to look only at the severe statutes against mendicancy, we might suppose that, at the period when Shakspere thus describes what he must have commonly seen, there were no beggars in the land but the licensed beggars, which these statutes permitted. Unlicensed beggars were, by the statute of 1572, to be punished, in the first instance, by grievous whipping, and burning through the gristle of the right ear; and for second and third of fences they were to suffer death as felons. is clear that these penal laws were almost wholly inoperative; and Harrison, in his 'Description

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of Britain,' prefixed to Holinshed, shows the lamentable extent of vagrancy amongst the "thriftless poor." In our notes upon 'King Lear,' where Edgar describes himself as "Poor Tom, who is whipped from tything to tything, and stocked, punished, and imprisoned," we again notice this subject. Of the "valiant beggar,"

the compound of beggar and thief,-Shakspere has given a perfect picture in his Autolycus. We give a curious representation of the Beggarman and Beggarwoman, from a manuscript of the Roman de la Rose,' in the Harleian Collection (No. 4425). The date of the MS. is somewhat earlier than this play, and these beggars are French; but the costume of rags is not

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