[277] The scenes are marked, though incorrectly, in the old copy thus far; but the rest of the play is only divided by the exits or entrances of the characters.

[278] Jenny, a country wench, uses the old word straw’d; but when the author speaks afterwards in the stage direction, he describes Marian as “strewing flowers.”  Shakespeare has o’er-strawed in “Venus and Adonis,” perhaps for the sake of the rhyme.

[279] [i.e., Over.]

[280] [Old copy, of.]

[281] Formerly considered an antidote for poison.  Sir Thomas Brown was not prepared to contradict it:  he says, that “Lapis Lasuli hath in it a purgative faculty, we know:  that Bezoar is antidotal, Lapis Judaicus diuretical, Coral antipileptical, we will not deny.”—­“Vulgar Errors,” edit. 1658, p. 104.  He also (p. 205) calls it the Bezoar nut, “for, being broken, it discovereth a kernel of a leguminous smell and taste, bitter, like a lupine, and will swell and sprout if set in the ground.”  Harts-horn shavings were also considered a preservative against poison.

[282] [From what follows presently it may be inferred that the king temporarily retires, although his exit or withdrawal is not marked.]

[283] The old word for convent:  Covent-Garden, therefore, is still properly called.

[284] The grate of a vintner was no doubt what is often termed in old writers the red lattice, lettice, or chequers, painted at the doors of vintners, and still preserved at almost every public-house.  See note 24 to “The Miseries of Enforced Marriage.”

[285] The 4to reads—­

                    “In the highway
    That joineth to the power.”

[286] Robin Hood advises his uncle to insist upon his plea of privilegium clericale, or benefit of clergy—­

    “Stand to your clergy, uncle; save your life.”

“Originally the law was held that no man should be admitted to the privilege of clergy, but such as had the habitum et tonsuram clericalem.  But in process of time a much wider and more comprehensive criterion was established; every one that could read (a mark of great learning in those days of ignorance and her sister superstition) being accounted a clerk or clericus, and allowed the benefit of clerkship, though neither initiated in holy orders, nor trimmed with the clerical tonsure.”—­Blackstone’s “Com.,” iv. b. iv, ch. 28.  We have already seen that the king and nobles in this play called in the aid of Friar Tuck to read the inscription on the stag’s collar, though the king could ascertain that it was in Saxon characters.

[287] This account of the death of Robin Hood varies from all the popular narratives and ballads.  The MS. Sloan, 715, nu. 7, f. 157, agrees with the ballad in Ritson, ii. 183, that he was treacherously bled to death by the Prioress of Kirksley.