Note 942 — ACT IV. SCENE I.

in dock, out nettle] “The words 'in dock, out nettle,' allude, I believe, to a practice still sometimes found among children, of laying the leaf of the butter-dock upon a place that has been stung by a nettle, and repeating, as a kind of charm, the words 'in dock, out nettle,' as long as the application is continued.” Editor of 1816.—Compare Sir Thomas More; “and thus playe in and out, like in docke out netle that no man shoulde wytte whan they were in and whan they were oute.” Workes, 1557, fol. 809. In our text the words are used with some punning allusion.