Note 451 — SCENE II.

a beadle beating a basin] The First Master presently tells the Duke that the basin “is an emblem of their revelling.” Here Reed cites a parallel passage from B. Jonson’s New Inn, act iv. sc. 3, and a remark of Whalley, that it alludes “to the custom of old, when bawds and other infamous persons were carted. A mob of people used to precede them beating basins and other utensils of the same kind, to make the noise and tumult the bigger,” &c. &c.