Note 41 — SCENE II.—Mrs. Crossbite's Dining-room.
Reading edition
A powdering-tub means properly a tub in which meat is salted, to sprinkle with salt being an occasional sense of the verb "to powder." Hence the name of powdering-tub was applied to places where persons afflicted with a certain disease were cured. Compare Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, iii. 2; "Troth, sir, she hath eaten up all her beef, and she is herself in the tub." Also King Henry V., ii. 1.