[168] Ritson has the following note upon this sign:  “That is, the inn so called, upon Ludgate Hill.  The modern sign, which, however, seems to have been the same 200 years ago, is a bell and a wild man; but the original is supposed to have been a beautiful Indian, and the inscription, La belle Sauvage.  Some, indeed, assert that the inn once belonged to a Lady Arabella Sauvage; and others that its name originally, the belle and Sauvage, arose (like the George and Blue Boar) from the junction of two inns with those respective signs. Non nostrum est tantas componere lites.”  “Robin Hood,” I. p. liv.

[169] [Old copy, meant.]

[170] Little John’s exit is marked here in the old copy, but it does not take place till afterwards:  he first whispers Marian, as we are told immediately, John in the original standing for Little John.

[171] i.e., A collection or company, and not, as we now use the word, a kind “of fawning sycophants.”

[172] i.e., Made a Justice of Peace of him, entitling him to the style of Worship.

[173] [Old copy, ran.]

[174] i.e., “I shall be even with you.”  So Pisaro in Haughton’s “Englishmen for my Money,” says of his three daughters—­

    “Well, I shall find a tune to meet with them.”—­Sig.  E 2.

[175] Alluding to the challenges of the officers who are aiding and assisting the Sheriff.

[176] Paris Garden (or as it is printed in the old copy, Parish Garden), was a place where bears were baited and other animals kept.  Curtal was a common term for a small horse, and that which Banks owned, and which acquired so much celebrity for its sagaciousness, is so called by Webster—­

    “And some there are
    Will keep a curtal to show juggling tricks,
    And give out ’tis a spirit.”

—­“Vittoria Corombona,” [Webster’s Works, by Hazlitt, ii. 47.]

Sib is related to; and perhaps the ape’s only least at Paris Garden, may apply to Banks’s pony.  Dekker, in his “Villanies Discovered,” 1620, mentions in terms “Bankes his Curtal.”

[177] In the course of the play John is sometimes called Earl John, and sometimes Prince John, as it seems, indifferently.

[178] [Old copy, deceive.]

[179] It must be recollected that the Queen and Marian have exchanged dresses.

[180] [Old copy, must.]

[181] [Old copy, sovereign’s mother, queen.]

[182] [Old copy, cankers]

[183] [Old copy, thrust.]

[184] Haught is frequently used for haughty, when the poet wants to abridge it of a syllable:  thus Shakespeare, in “Richard III.” act ii. sc. 3—­

    “And the queen’s sons and brothers haught and proud.”