in Hamlet I. iv. 83 Shakespeare erroneously accents the first syllable. Hart notes that Golding's Ovid gave him a precedent for the pronunciation.
IV. i. 102. Monarcho. 'The monarch'; a crazy Italian who lived about the English court. He was subject to delusions of grandeur, and though he died about 1580, was still a familiar subject of allusion twenty years later.
IV. i. 112. she that bears the bow. Rosaline is punning on 'shooter' and 'suitor,' which were pronounced alike, and often quibblingly confused. In Boyet's speech, line 111, the early editions all print 'shooter' for 'suitor.' In Shakespeare's time, it should be remembered, firearms had not replaced the bow in the fashionable sport of deer-slaying. Several writers see a special application in the deer-shooting allusions of this and the next scene to Queen Elizabeth's well-known fondness for the cross-bow. Cf. Appendix A, p. 128, note 1.
IV. i. 115. if horns that year miscarry. If the crop of horns is not good. Boyet succumbs to the inevitable jest about cuckolds' horns, produced by unfaithful wives.
IV. i. 123. King Pepin of France. Charlemagne's father, a very ancient monarch.
IV. ii. 32. So were there a patch set on learning, to see him in a school. The word 'patch' is used ambiguously. If Dull were seen in a school, (1) a patch (fool) would be put to study, and (2) a patch (disfigurement, disgrace) would be put on learning.
IV. ii. 34. Many can brook the weather that love not the wind. Apparently a proverbial saying, similar to 'There is no accounting for tastes,' or 'It takes many sorts of men to make a world.' To brook the weather means to put up with foul weather.
IV. ii. 37. Dictynna. This rare epithet of Diana is found in Golding's Ovid and in Tottel's Miscellany.
