[450] i.e., Plot or contrivance.  Tarlton produced a piece called “The Plat-form of the Seven Deadly Sins;” and in “Sir J. Oldcastle,” by Drayton and others, first printed in 1600, it is used with the same meaning as in the text, viz., a contrivance for giving effect to the conspiracy.

    “There is the plat-form, and their hands, my lord,
    Each severally subscribed to the same.”

—­Collier.

[451] [A common proverb.]

[452] [The ordinary proverb is, “The devil is good when he is pleased.”]

[453] The Italian for How do you do?

[454] Skinker was a tapster or drawer.  Prince Henry, in “The First Part of Henry IV.” act ii. sc. 4, speaks of an underskinker, meaning an underdrawer.  Mr Steevens says it is derived from the Dutch word schenken, which signifies to fill a cup or glass.  So in G. Fletcher’s “Russe Commonwealth,” 1591, p. 13, speaking of a town built on the south side of Moscow by Basilius the emperor, for a garrison of soldiers, “to whom he gave priviledge to drinke mead and beer, at the drye or prohibited times, when other Russes may drinke nothing but water, and for that cause called this newe citie by the name of Naloi, that is, skinck, or poure in.”  Again, in Marston’s “Sophonisba,” iii. 2—­

    “Ore whelme me not with sweets, let me not drink,
    Till my breast burst, O Jove, thy nectar skinke.”

And in Ben Jonson’s “Poetaster,” act iv. sc. 5—­

    “ALB.  I’ll ply the table with nectar, and make ’em friends.

    “HER.  Heaven is like to have but a lame skinker.”

And in his “Bartholomew Fair,” act ii. sc. 2:  “Froth your cans well i’ the filling, at length, rogue, and jog your bottles o’ the buttock, sirrah; then skink out the first glass ever, and drink with all companies.”

[455] Suspicion.

[456] [Be in accord with reason.]

[457] [Old copy, call’st.]

[458] Similar to this description is one in Marlowe’s “Edward II.,” act i.

[459] Old copy, are.

[460] [Old copy, knew.]

[461] See note to “Cornelia” [v. 188].

[462] In Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus,” Sicinius asks Volumnia, “Are you mankind?” On which Dr Johnson remarks that “a mankind woman is a woman with the roughness of a man; and, in an aggravated sense, a woman ferocious, violent, and eager to shed blood.”  Mr Upton says mankind means wicked.  See his “Remarks on Ben Jonson,” p. 92.  The word is frequently used to signify masculine.  So in [Beaumont and Fletcher’s] “Love’s Cure; or, The Martial Maid,” act iv. sc. 2—­

    “From me all mankind women learn to woo.”

In Dekker’s “Satiromastix”—­

    “My wife’s a woman; yet
    ’Tis more than I know yet, that know not her;
    If she should prove mankind, ’twere rare; fie! fie!”