Note 356 — ACT IV., SCENE I.

This was one of the names by which women of ill-fame were usually distinguished.

So in Ben Jonson's "Every Man out of his Humour" "His chief exercises are taking the whiff, squiring a cockatrice, and making privy searches for imparters."

In "Cynthia's Revels," act ii. sc. 4: "—Marry, to his cockatrice, or punquetto, half a dozen taffata gowns, or sattin kirtles, in a pair or two of months; why, they are nothing."

And in his "Poetaster," act iii. sc. 4: "—I would fain come with my cockatrice, one day, and see a play, if I knew when there were a good bawdy one."

Again in Massinger's "City Madam," act ii. sc. 1:

And in Dekker's "Belman of London," sign. B.: "Shee feedes uppon gold as the estredge doth upon iron, and drinks silver faster downe her crane-like throat, than an English cockatrice doth Hiphocras."

See also an extract from the "Gull's Horn Book," 1609, in Shakespeare, p. 83, edit. 1778.