2nd §, No 5., Fes, 2. ’56.] 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 85 
LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1856. 
Pates, 
A FEW SUPPLEMENTAL NOTES ON SOME PASSAGES 
IN MIDDLETON’s “ PLAYS.” 
The Mayor of Queenborough, Act II. Se. 2., 
vol. i. p. 148. : 
“ Hor. Stay, fellow! 
Sim. How, fellow? ’Tis more than you know whether 
I be your fellow or no; I am sure you see me not.” 
As Mr. Dyce has no note upon this reply of Simon, 
and since it is sheer nonsense as it stands, I sup- 
pose see to be a misprint for fee. The use of 
* fellow” for servant, so common with us*in Here- 
fordshire, was by no means rare with writers of 
Middleton’s time. Thus in Love's Labours Lost, 
Act I. Se. 2. : 
« Arm. Thou shalt be heavily punished. 
Cost. I am more bound to you than your fellows, for 
they are but lightly rewarded.” 
In Blurt Master Constable, Act II., vol. i. p. 262., 
noticing the phrase “stand a high lone,’ Mr. 
Dyce refers his reader for more instances to 
Romeo and Juliet, Act I. Sc.3., 4to. 1597, which 
reads “stand high lone,” for “stand alone” of the 
received text, and to W. Rowley’s A Shoomaker 
a Gentleman, 1638, sig. B. 4., where is found “ goa 
hie lone.” As Mr. Halliwell in his Dictionary re- 
mits his reader to the example in Middleton and 
Mr. Dyce’s note, it may not be amiss to add an- 
other : 
“ Amongst the which he affirmeth that all beasts, so 
soone as they are deliuered from their damme, get upon 
their feet, and are able to stand ‘a high alon.’” — Gu- 
azzo’s Civile Conversation, booki. p.12., London, 1581. 
The Phenix, Act V. Sc. 1., vol. i. p. 398. : 
“ Duke, Our joy breaks at our eyes; the prince is 
come! 
Prod. Soul-quicking news! pale venggance to my 
blood!” (Aside.) 
On this “aside” of Proditor Mr. Dyce’s note is 
— ‘“quiching.| So ed. 1630, first ed. ‘ queking ;’ 
query quickening.” But rather query “ quaking,” 
both as being more pertinent, and as supported by 
A Mad World my Masters, Act IV. Se. 1., vol. ii. 
p. 387. : 
“ Pen. B. Devil, I do conjure thee once again, 
By that soul-quaking thunder to depart.” 
‘To digress a moment from Middleton to Shak- 
pee Most Shakspeare scholars will remember 
at of Timon, ‘ Raise me this beggar and deny’t 
that lord,” Act IV. Se. 3., on which Warburton 
and Steevens have the following highly charac- 
teristic notes : 
“Where is the sense and English of ‘deny’t that 
lord’? Deny him what? What preceding noun is 
there to which the pronoun it is to be referred? And it 
would be absurd to think the poet meant to say deny to 
raise that lord. The antithesis must be, let fortune raise 
this beggar, and let her strip and despoil that lord of all 
his pomp and ornaments, &c., which sense is compleated 
by the slight alteration, ‘and denude that lord.’ So Lord 
Rea, in his relation of Sir Hamilton’s plot, written in 
1630, ‘ All these Hamiltons had denuded themselves of 
their fortunes and estates.’ And Charles the First, in his 
message to the parliament, says: ‘ Denude ourselves of 
all.’ (Clar., vol. iii. p. 15., octavo edit.) °— Warburton. 
“T believe the former reading to be the true one. 
Raise me that beggar and deny a proportionable degree 
of elevation to that lord. A lord is not so high a title in 
the state but that a man originally poor might be raised 
to one above it. We might read ‘ devest that lord’ De- 
vest is an English law-phrase. Shakspeare uses the 
word in King Lear, ‘Since now we will devest us both of 
rule, &c. The word which Dr. Warburton would intro- 
duce is not, however, uncommon}; I find it in the Tragedie 
of Cresus, 1604, ‘ As one of all happiness denuded.’ ” — 
Steevens. [Johnson and Steevens’s Shakspeare, London, 
1778. | 
What is obvious enough, Warburton at once per- 
ceived that there must be a thorough antithesis, 
that the whole context, as well as the disputed 
line, absolutely requires this; and while Steevens’s 
reverence for the authorised reading led him 
vainly to struggle against what must have been 
equally apparent to him, after an unsuccessful 
attempt to make sense of “ deny’t,” he suggests 
“devest,” not as a better word than denude, but 
partly because something nearer to the letters of 
the text, partly perhaps from unwillingness to be 
outdone by his brother commentator. Now, if 
the text must needs be altered, the alteration 
should at any hand fulfil the required conditions ; 
varying as little as possible from the trace of the 
letters in the rejected word, it should strictly 
supply the indispensable antithesis. But the ob- 
jection to Dr. Warburton’s denude is, that it is not 
antithetical to “raise ;” and until an example be 
adduced, some precedent to build upon, I will not 
believe that it ever was, ever could be so used. 
Our great forefathers, pre-eminently Shakspeare, 
did not utter words with the lax rambling senses 
that the wear and tear of a vulgar currency has 
since acquired for them. They were too fresh 
from the mint to bear any other value than what 
their stamp clearly expressed. Aversion to tam- 
pering with the text would effectually prohibit 
the entertainment of any wish to elevate an emend- 
ation of my own into the room of the authorised 
reading ; but I venture to suggest, by way of note, 
a verb that is the manifest, and was the customary 
antithesis of “raise,” and hardly more remote 
from the letters of the text than either ‘‘denude” 
or “ devest ” —that word is “deject.”. This di- 
gression from Middleton to Shakspeare was oc- 
casioned by crossing an instance in point, which 
oecurs in A Trick to catch the Old One, Act II. 
Sc. 2., vol. ii. p. 27. : 
\ “ Hoa. In this one chance shines a twice happy fate, 
I both deject my foe and raise my state.” 
