V. ii. 577. your lion, that holds his poll-axe sitting on a close-stool. Theobald illustrated this Rabelaisian witticism very neatly by quoting the description of Alexander's arms in Gerard Leigh's Accidence of Armory, 1591: 'a lion or [of gold color] seiante [sitting] in a chair, holding a battle-axe argent.'
V. ii. 601. A kissing traitor. Alluding to the kiss of Judas Iscariot. Berowne gets the hint for this gibe from Dumaine's clipt in the line above. Dumaine uses the word in the sense of abbreviated, and Berowne seizes upon another sense, from 'clip,' to embrace.
V. ii. 607. Judas was hanged on an elder. An old belief. Sir John Mandeville reported that the tree was still standing.
V. ii. 619. worn in the cap of a toothdrawer. The brooch in the toothdrawer's cap appears to have been a distinguishing mark of his costume. Halliwell quoted a passage from the works of John Taylor, the Water-Poet (1630):—'In Queen Elizabeth's days there was a fellow that wore a brooch in his hat like a toothdrawer.' One of the costume sketches made by Inigo Jones for a mask at James I's court represents a toothdrawer wearing a very high hat with a brooch in the left side. (See publications of the (Old) Shakespeare Society, vol. 39, 1848.)
V. ii. 692. More Ates. Ate was goddess of discord. She is introduced at the opening of Peele's Arraignment of Paris and again in the fourth book of the Fairy Queen.
V. ii. 731, 732. I have seen the day of wrong through the little hole of discretion. 'To see day at a little hole' was a proverbial saying.
V. ii. 748, 749. The extreme parts of time extremely forms All causes to the purpose of his speed. The closing moments of a period force concentration upon the matter in hand, or subordinate everything else to the necessity of making the most of time.
