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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: APPENDIX I V. 321-323: the strong statutes Stand like the forfeits in a barber's shop, As much in mock as mark. Compare Fuller, Holy and Profane State, V. x. 395, 1642: No more than the forfeits in a barber's shop, where a gentleman's pleasure is all the obligation to pay (New Eng. Dict.). Fuller's passage is an obvious echo of the words in the text, and are interesting as they give his view of their meaning. Warburton appears, however, to have first started the generally accepted explanation. He says that barbers' shops were continually crowded with idle people, who would be perpetually handling and misusing them [his instruments as a barber-surgeon]. To remedy which, / suppose, there was placed up against the wall a table of forfeiture, adapted to every offence of this kind; which it is not likely would long preserve its authority. Dr. Johnson says Warburton's explanation may serve till a better is discovered. Steevens sarcastically says: I have conversed with several people who had repeatedly read the list of forfeits alluded to by Shakespeare, but have failed in my endeavours to procure a copy of it. The metrical one, published by the late Dr. Kenrick, was a forgery. Henley says: These forfeits were ... of a ludicrous nature. I perfectly remember to have seen them in Devonshire (printed like King Charles's Rules), though I cannot recollect the contents. Nares (in v. Forfeits) gives the rules, excogitated by Dr. Kenrick, with scepticism as to their genuineness. It will be observed that there is not an iota of support for the above hypothesis. Nevertheless it is accepted by such authorities as Schmidt and the New Eng. Dict., as well as by the commentators to a man. I reject the whole fabric; for two reasons, firstly, because if such a custom had e...

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