Note 106 — THE PROLOGUE.
Reading edition
A brake here seems to signify a snare or trap. The word has much puzzled the commentators on Shakspeare (See Measure for Measure, Act II. Sc. 1). One of its antient significations was a sharp bit to break horses with. A farrier’s brake was a machine to confine or trammel the legs of unruly horses. An antient instrument of torture was also called a brake; and a thorny brake meant an intricate thicket of thorns. Shakerly Marmion, in his comedy of ‘Holland’s Leaguer’, evidently uses the word in the same sense with Cavendish:
“———-Her I’ll make A stale to catch this courtier in a brake.”