Page:Love's Labour's Lost (1925) Yale.djvu/135

Love's Labour's Lost may be the Dutchman's pronunciation of 'well,' or the German viel (much), or a pun on 'veil' in the sense of mask. The editors' efforts to evolve wit and sense out of this dialogue are all far-fetched. Katharine is evidently punning on Longaville's name in the words 'long' (l. 245) and 'veal.'

Let's part the word. The recent Cambridge editors explain: 'half the word "calf" is "ca" which are the first two letters of Catharine, and "half" means "wife.

Qualm, perhaps. Pronounced 'calm'; hence the pun. The same jest occurs in 2 Henry IV II. iv. 39–41.

statute-caps. An act of Parliament in 1571 required all ordinary citizens to wear woollen caps on Sundays and holidays. Hart quotes a still more apposite regulation for the apparel of London apprentices (in 1582), forbidding them at any time to wear within the city any head covering except a woollen cap. The object was to encourage the wool trade. It is worth noting that Shakespeare's uncle incurred a fine in 1583 for refusing to wear a cloth cap on Sundays and holidays.

Till this man show'd thee. Theobald first read 'man' for the 'madman' of the early editions, which spoils the scansion of the line and certainly does not improve the sense. A plausible explanation of the intrusion of the superfluous 'mad—' is that the compositor's eye caught the first syllable of 'madam' in the next line.

like a blind harper's song. Harping was proverbially the resource of the blind.

'Lord have mercy on us.' The words put up on plague-stricken houses.

the Lord’s tokens. Spots on the body, marking the plague. Berowne jestingly so calls the lords' tokens, i.e. the gifts of, his three associates to