' In
the same play, great sport is made of this word, until the Fool himself
at last gets weary of it, when he says (act iii. sc. i):--'You are
out of my welkin--I might say _element_, but the word is overworn.'
29: Blackfriars, where Shakspere first acted, was a former cloister.
'On fish, when first a Carthusian I entered,' no doubt means that
from the beginning he had preferred keeping mute as a fish, in regard
to forbidden matters of the Church.
30: I.e., _Christmas_-pie. In the Prologue of _The Return from
Parnassus_, this comedy is called a _Christmas Toy_.
Shakspere is therein lavishly praised by his brother actors,
whereas Jonson is spoken of as 'a bold whoreson, as confident now
in making of a book, as he was in times past in laying of a brick.'
A veritable libel!
31: _Hamlet_ (act v. sc. 2):--
Methought, I lay
Worse than the mutines in the bilboes
32: Through Jonson's satire we always see the sanctimonious Jesuit
peering out.
33: These are the parables in which Hamlet speaks. Many a reader will
understand why Shakspere could not use more explicit language.
34: So the envious Jonson calls Shakspere's public who are satisfied with
'salad;' that is, with patchy compositions, pieced together from all
kinds of material.
35: Jonson had Scottish ancestry.
36: In a moment of fanaticism, Hamlet wishes Ophelia to go to a
nunnery.
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