Note 404 — Chapter XXII · GUILD PLAYS AND PARISH PLAYS (continued)
Reading edition
Cf. p. 90, and Hamlet, iii. 2. 9 ‘O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod.’ The Miller in Cant. Tales, 3124, cries out ‘in Pilates vois.’ The torturers also seem to have been favourite performers; cf. the Poem on the Evil Times of Edward II (T. Wright, Political Songs, C. S. 336):
‘Hii ben degised as turmentours that comen from clerkes plei.’