There's no hope she'll return. I'll swear she's dead,
And thrown into the fea. - But I'll fee further;
Perhaps they will but please themselves upon her,
Not carry her aboard. If the remain,
Whom they have ravish'd, must by me be flain.

[Exit.

SCENE III.

Mitylene. A Room in a Brothel.

Enter PANDER, Bawd, and BOULT.

PAND. Boult.

BOULT. Sir.

PAND. Search the market narrowly; Mitylene is full of gallants. We loft too much money this mart, by being too wenchless.

BAWD. We were never so much out of creatures. We have but poor three, and they can do no more than they can do; and with continual action are even as good as rotten.

PAND. Therefore let's have fresh ones, whate'er we pay for them. If there be not a confcience to be used in every trade, we shall never prosper."

We should probably read-These roving thieves. The idea of roguery is necessarily implied in the word thieves. M. MASON.

6

- and with continual action -) Old copies-and they with &c. The word they was evidently repeated by the carelessness of the compositor. MALONE.

7 Therefore let's have fresh ones, whate'er we pay for them. If there be not a confcience to be used in every trade, we hall never prosper.] The sentiments incident to vicious professions BAWD. Thou say'st true: 'tis not the bringing up of poor bastards, as I think, I have brought up fome eleven

BOULT. Ay, to eleven, and brought them down again. But thall I search the market?

BAWD. What else, man? The stuff we have, a strong wind will blow it to pieces, they are so pitifully fodden.

I

PAND. Thou say'it true; they are too unwholefome o'confcience. The poor Transilvanian is dead, that lay with the little baggage.

fuffer little change within a century and a half. -This speech is much the fame as that of Mother Cole, in The Minor : "Tip him an old trader! Mercy on us, where do you expect to go when you die, Mr. Loader?" STEEVENS.

8 Thou Say' st true: 'tis not the bringing up of poor bastards,] There seems to be fomething wanting. Perhaps that will door some such words. The author, however, might have intended an imperfect sentence. MALONE.

4

Ay, to eleven, and brought them down again.) I have brought up (i. e. educated) says the Bawd, some eleven. Yes, (answers Boult) to eleven (i. e. as far as eleven years of age) and then brought them down again. The latter clause of the sentence requires no explanation.

Thus, in The Play of the Wether, by John Heywood, 4to. bl. 1. Mery Report says:

"Oft tyme is sene both in court and towne,

Longe be women a bryngynge up, and sone brought downe." STEEVENS.

The modern copies read-I too eleven. The true reading, which is found in the quarto, 1609, was pointed out by Mr. Steevens. MALONE.

* Thou Say'st true; they're too unwholesome o'confcience.] The old copies read there's two unwholesome o' confcience. The preceding dialogue shows that they are erroneous. The complaint had not been made of two, but of all the stuff they had. According to the present regulation, the pandar merely affents to what his wife had faid. The words two and too are perpetually confounded in the old copies. MALONE.

BOULT. Ay, the quickly pooped him; she made him roaft-meat for worms :- but I'll go search the market. [Exit BOULT.

PAND. Three or four thousand chequins were as pretty a proportion to live quietly, and so give

over.

BAWD. Why, to give over, I pray you? is it a shame to get when we are old ?

PAND. O, our credit comes not in like the commodity; nor the commodity wages not with the danger; therefore, if in our youths we could pick up fome pretty eftate, 'twere not amiss to keep our door hatched. Besides, the fore terms we stand

2

Ay, She quickly pooped him ;) The following passage in The Devil's Charter, a tragedy, 1607, will fufficiently explain this fingular term :

- foul Amazonian trulls,

"Whose lanterns are still lighted in their poops,"

MALONE.

This phrafe (whatever be its meaning) occurs in Have with you to Saffron Walden, or Gabriel Harvey's Hunt is up, &c. 1596: "But we shall l'envoy him, and trumpe and poope him well enough-.”

The fame word is used by Dryden, in his Wild Gallant : "He's poopt too." STEEVENS.

3

- the commodity wages not with the danger:] i. e. is not equal to it. Several examples of this expreffion are given in former notes on our author. So, in Antony and Cleopatra :

"his taints and honours

Wag'd equal with him." STEEVENS.

Again, more appofitely, in Othello:

4

"To wake and wage a danger profitless." MALONE. - to keep our door hatched.) The doors or hatches of brothels, in the time of our author, seem to have had fome diftinguishing mark. So, in Cupid's Whirligig, 1607: "Set some picks upon your hatch, and, I pray, profess to keep a bawdy-house."

Prefixed to an old pamphlet entitled Holland's Leaguer, 4to. 1632, is a reprefentation of a celebrated brothel on the Bank-fide

1

upon with the gods, will be strong with us for giving

over.

near the Globe playhouse, from which the annexed cut has been made. We have here the hatch exactly delineated. The man with the pole-ax was called the Ruffian. MALONE.

The precept from Cupid's Whirligig, and the passage in Pericles to which it refers, were originally applied by me to the illustration of the term Pict-hatch in The Merry Wives of Windfor. See Vol. V. p. 81, n. 4.

A hatch is a half-door, usually placed within a street-door, admitting people into the entry of a house, but preventing their access to its lower apartments, or its stair-cafe. Thus, says the Syracufan Dromio in The Comedy of Errors, to the Dromio of BAWD. Come, other forts offend as well as we.5

Ephesus: "Either get thee from the door, or fit down at the hatch."

When the top of a hatch was guarded by a row of pointed iron spikes, no person could reach over, and undo its fastening, which was always within-fide, and near its bottom.

This domestick portcullis perhaps was necessary to our ancient brothels. Secured within such a barrier, Mrs. Overdone could parley with her customers; refuse admittance to the shabby visitor, bargain with the rich gallant, defy the beadle, or keep the conftable at bay.

From having been therefore her usual defence, the hatch at last became an unequivocal denotement of her trade; for though the hatch with a flat top was a constant attendant on butteries in great families, colleges, &c. the hatch with spikes on it was peculiar to our early houses of amorous entertainment.-Nay, as I am affured by Mr. Walsh, (a native of Ireland, and one of the compofitors engaged on the present edition of Shakspeare,) the entries to the Royal, Halifax, and Dublin bagnios in the city of Dublin, still derive convenience or security from hatches, the Spikes of which are unfurmountable.

This long explanation (to many readers unnecessary) is imputable to the preceding wooden cut, from the repetition of which I might have excused myself. As it is possible, however, that I may stand in the predicament of poor Sancho, who could not difcern the enchanted castles that were so distinctly visible to his master's opticks, I have left our picture of an ancient brothel where I found it. It certainly exhibits a house, a lofty door, a wicket with a grate in it, a row of garden-rails, and a drawbridge. As for hatch-let my readers try if they can find one.

I must suppose, that my ingenious fellow-labourer, on future confideration, will class his hatch with the air-drawn dagger, and join with me in Macbeth's exclamation--" There's no fuch thing."

Let me add, that if the Ruffian (as here represented) was an oftenfible appendage to brothels, they must have been regulated on very uncommon principles; for instead of holding out allurements, they must have exhibited terrors. Surely, the Ruffian could never have appeared nifi dignus vindice nodus inciderat, till his prefence became necessary to extort the wages of prostitution, or fecure fome other advantage to his employer.

The representation prefixed to Holland's Leaguer, has, there