Note 1134 — ACT V. SCENE I.

Meg of Westminster’s courage] Meg of Westminster, or long Meg of Westminster, was a virago, of whom frequent mention is made by our early dramatists; and indeed, like the heroine of the present piece, she had the honour of figuring in a play called after her, in 1594 (see Malone’s Shakespeare, by Boswell, vol. iii. p. 304). At that period, however, she is supposed to have been dead. She is introduced in an ante-masque in B. Jonson’s Fortunate Isles—Works, vol. viii. p. 79, ed. Giff. A 4to tract, entitled The Life of Long Meg of Westminster: containing the mad merry prankes she played in her life time, not onely in performing sundry quarrels with divers ruffians about London; but also how valiantly she behaued her selfe in the warres of Bolloingne, was printed (perhaps not for the first time) in 1635; and forms part of Miscellanea Antiqua Anglicana, 1816, 4to.