IV. ii. 136. from one Monsieur Berowne, one of the strange queen's lords. A very confusing and probably corrupt passage. What Jaquenetta here says is directly opposed to her assertion (ll. 94, 95) that the letter was sent to her from Don Armado; and the designation of Berowne as 'one of the strange queen's lords' is equally absurd. The recent Cambridge editors add another to a great list of implausible explanations by theorizing that 'Berowne' is a compositor's error for 'Boyet' (written 'Bo' or 'Boy'), and that Jaquenetta understands Holofernes to mean by 'directed' imparted. They assume, therefore, that Boyet juggled the two letters.
IV. ii. 147. Trip and go. A common phrase, borrowed from the words of a popular morris dance song.
IV. ii. 169, 170. society—saith the text—is the happiness of life. Nathaniel's source for the remark has not been found. Perhaps he is inventing the 'text' like the 'certain Father' of line 155. There is a much quoted Latin hexameter line, repeated by Marlowe in Doctor Faustus, which may have been in Shakespeare's mind: 'Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris,' it is a comfort to the wretched to have companions in their pain.
IV. iii. 7. as mad as Ajax: it kills sheep. Alluding to the story that Ajax, disappointed of the award of Achilles' armor, went mad and attacked a flock of sheep, which he took for a hostile army.
IV. iii. 89. Stoop, I say. 'Stoop' is generally explained as equivalent to stooping, crooked; but there seems no justification for such a use. It is probably the verbal imperative, addressed sotto voce to Dumaine: Come off your stilts, abandon your exalted nonsense.
IV. iii. 180. With men like men, men of inconstancy. There is little to choose between many of the emendations of this line, which is clearly imperfect
