[250] “In the City of London,” says Nares, “young freemen who march at the head of their proper companies on the lord mayor’s day, sometimes with flags, were called whifflers or bachelor whifflers, not because they cleared the way but because they went first as whifflers did.—­’I look’d the next Lord Mayor’s day to see you o’ the livery, or one of the bachelor whifflers. City Match.’”

[251] These words are scored through in the MS.

[252] To “bear a brain” means to have understanding.  The expression is very common.

[253] Not marked in the MS.

[254] The earliest reference I have yet found to the “Cup at Newmarket” is in Shirley’s Hyde Park, v. 1.

[255] The exact date of his death is unknown; he was dead before the performance of Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair (1614).

[256] “Merlin.  The falco aesalon of Linnaeus, a small species of hawk; sometimes corrupted into murleon.  It was chiefly used to fly at small birds, and Latham says it was particularly appropriated to the service of ladies.”—­Nares.

[257] Thomas Heywood gives an account of the “great ship” in his “True description of his Majesties Royall Ship built this yeare 1637 at Wool-witch in Kent,” &c. 1637. 4to.

[258] “Back side” = back yard.

[259] A wild cat.

[260] This scene was added, as an afterthought, at the end of the MS. In the body of the MS. we find only “A song ith taverne.  Enter Thomas.”

[261] The stage direction is my own.

[262] All that I know at present of Mr. Adson is that he published in 1621 a collection of “Courtly Masquing Ayres.”

[263] A corruption of “save-reverence”:  we usually find the form “sir-reverence.”

[264] i.e. drunk.

[265] An allusion to Webster’s “Vittoria Coromborea, or the White Devil.”

[266] Not marked in MS. We have, instead, a note:—­

    "And then begin as was intended."

[267] Old authors constantly allude to the riotous conduct of the ’prentices on Shrove Tuesday.

[268] This is a correction (in the MS.) for “to a Beggars tune.”

[269] So in Dekker & Middleton’s First Part of the Honest Whore (IV. 3):—­

    “A sister’s thread i’ faith had been enough.”

Dyce was no doubt right in thinking that the expression is a corruption of sewster’s thread.  In Ford’s Lady’s Trial, Gifford altered “sister’s thread” to “silver thread.”  Shirley has “sister’s thread” in Hyde Park (V. 1).

[270] With this abuse cf. a very similar passage in Shirley’s Duke’s Mistress (IV. 1).

[271] The Woman Hater in Beaumont and Fletcher’s play.

[272] “Canaries” was the name of a quick, lively dance.  Cf.  Middlemen’s Spanish Gipsy (IV. 2):  “Fortune’s a scurvy whore if she makes not my head sound like a rattle and my heels dance the canaries.”