Note 1025 — SCENE III.

take up a commodity of cloth] Many passages in our early writers might be cited to shew how common a custom it was for needy gallants to take up commodities, i. e. wares which they were to convert into ready money. Brown paper (which Quomodo presently mentions,) was an article frequently taken up; see Steevens’s note on Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, act iv. sc. 3; and ginger, pins, packthread, &c. &c., are also found in the strange list of commodities.