Note 108 — SCENE IV.

These words have reference, perhaps, to Middleton and Rowley's curious old comedy of manners, "A Faire Quarrel," 1617 and 1622. The second edition contains "new additions of Mr Chaugh, and Trimtram's roaring." These two persons, empty pretenders to courage, set up a sort of academy for instruction in the art and mystery of roaring or bullying, and much of the piece is written in ridicule of it and its riotous professors. Whorebang calls these playmakers observers, as if suspecting that Welltried and Feesimple came among them for the purpose of making notes for a play. In Webster and Rowley's "Cure for a Cuckold," 1661, act iv. sc. 1, there is another allusion to the "Faire Quarrel," where Compass uses the words Tweak and Bronstrops, adding, "I learnt that name in a play." Chaugh and Trimtram, in the "Faire Quarrel," undertake also to give lessons in the cant and slang of the time. In other respects, excepting as a picture of the manners of the day, that play possesses little to recommend it.