Note 40 — ACT II., SCENE I.

Copesmate Dr Johnson conjectures to be the same as copsmate, a companion in drinking, or one that dwells under the same cope, or house. I find the word used in "The Curtain-Drawer of the World," 1612, p. 31, but not according to either of the above explanations. "Hee that trusts a tradesman on his word, a usurer with his bond, a phisitian with his body, and the divell with his soule, needes not care who he trusts afterwards, nor what copesmate encounters him next."

Copesmate, I believe, means only companion, a word which was used both in a bad and good sense by our ancestors. To cope is to meet with, to encounter. Thus Hamlet—

"As e'er my conversation cop'd withall."

—Steevens.

Again, in Wither's "Abuses Stript and Whipt," 1613, bk. ii. s. 1—