Note 2 — GEORGE BRANDES (continued 14)

F. Halliwell-Phillips has published, concerning these last two lines, a miniature book, The Fool and the Ice, London, 1883. He explains that a whole little history lies behind this curious simile. When Lord Chandos's Company played at Evesham, near Stratford (before 1600), a country fool there, Jack Miller by name, became so infatuated with their clown that he wanted to run away with them, and had, consequently, to be locked up. He saw from the window, however, that the company was preparing to depart, and springing out, sped, in spite of the danger, over forty yards of ice so thin that it would not bear a piece of brick which was laid upon it. (First told in a little book by the player Robert Arnim, afterwards one of Shakespeare's colleagues. It was published in 1603 under the title "Foole upon Foole, or Sixe Sortes of Sottes, by Colonnico del Mondo Snuffe," clown at the Globe Theatre.)