Note 671 — ACT V. SCENE I.

yellow bands] i. e. bands dyed with yellow starch, which was once very fashionable, and is said to have been invented by Mrs. Turner, who was executed Nov. 1615, for having been concerned in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, and wore at the gallows a ruff of her favourite colour,—the hangman, we are told, having his bands and cuffs also yellow. Hence the epithet “hateful” in the text. Yet B. Rich, in The Irish Hubbub, declares that “yellow starcht bands ... beganne even then [i. e. immediately after Mrs. Turner’s death] to be more generall than they were before;” and they were certainly worn in 1621: see note on Albumazer—Dodsley’s Old Plays, vol. vii. p. 133, last ed.