Page:Twelfth Night (1922) Yale.djvu/113

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or What You Will

101

self of the possibility that her brother may still be alive.

II. v. 44, 45. the lady of the Strachy. A famous crux, still unexplained. The lady's name may or may not have been invented by the poet. Webster's tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi, deals with a great Italian lady who married the steward of her household.

II. v. 47. Jezebel. Sir Andrew, whose knowledge both of the Bible and of womankind is limited, uses Jezebel as a general term of reproach.

II. v. 67. play with my—. Malvolio is probably fingering his steward's chain, but then abruptly remembers that he will have discarded this badge of his present office.

II. v. 72. with cars. This is the First Folio reading, but many emendations have been proposed, including Hanmer's 'by th' ears,' which has been frequently followed.

II. v. 127. checks. 'A term in falconry, applied to a hawk when she forsakes her proper game, and follows some other of inferior kind that crosses her in her flight.'

II. v. 169. cross-gartered. An ostentatious style of wearing garters crossed above and below the knee.

III. i. 24, 25. words are very rascals since bonds disgraced them. A man's word is not as good as his bond nowadays. Insistence on the bond has brought the mere word into disrepute.

III. i. 63. Cressida was a beggar. According to a development of Chaucer's story, she finally became a leper and begged by the roadside. Another allusion to this fate is found in Henry V, II. i. 80: 'the lazar kite of Cressid's kind.'

III. i. 132. baited. The reference is to the popular sport of bear-baiting. Cf. I. iii. 100.