=Page 87.=--_Beshrew._ Originally a mild imprecation of evil, but often used playfully, as here. Compare the similar modern use of _confound_, which originally meant ruin or destroy; as in the _Merchant of Venice_, iii. 2. 271: "So keen and greedy to confound a man," etc. =Page 88.=--_Astrologaster._ The full title was "The Astrologaster, or the Figurecaster: Rather the Arraignment of Artless Astrologers and Fortune Tellers." =Page 89.=--_In the following form._ There were other forms, but this was regarded as one of the most potent. It will be seen that the word, as here arranged, can be read in various ways; as, for instance, following each line to the end and then up the right-hand side of the triangle, etc. An old writer, after giving directions to write the word in this triangular form, adds: "Fold the paper so as to conceal the writing, and stitch it into the form of a cross with white thread. This amulet wear in the bosom, suspended by a linen ribbon, for nine days. Then go in dead silence, before sunrise, to the bank of a stream that flows eastward, take the amulet from off the neck, and fling it backwards into the water. If you open or read it, the charm is destroyed." It was thought to be efficacious for the cure of fevers, "especially quartan and semi-tertian agues." _Thomas Lodge._ He was born about 1556, and died in 1625, and wrote plays, novels, songs, translations, etc. His _Rosalynde_ (1590) furnished Shakespeare with the plot of _As You Like It_. =Page 90.=--_Robert Greene_ (1560-1592) was a popular dramatist, novelist, and poet in his day. In his _Groatsworth of Wit_ (published in 1592, after his death) he attacked the rising Shakespeare as "an upstart crow," who was "in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country." Shakespeare afterwards took the story of _The Winter's Tale_ from Greene's _Pandosto_, or _Dorastus and Fawnia_, as it was subsequently entitled. _Webster's White Devil._ John Webster, who wrote in the early part of the 17th century, was a dramatist noted for his tragedies, among which _The White Devil_ (1612) is reckoned one of the best. Of his biography nothing worth mentioning is known. _Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy._ See on page 57 above. _Reginald Scot_, who died in 1599, is chiefly known by his _Discoverie of Witchcraft_, the main facts concerning which are given here. =Page 91.=--_Wierus._ The Latin form of the name of _Weier_, a German physician, who in 1563 published a book (_De Præstigiis Demonum_) in which the general belief in magic and witchcraft was attacked. _We infer that Shakespeare had read Scot's book._ However this may be, we are sure that he had read a book by Dr. Samuel Harsnet (1561-1631) entitled _Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures, etc., under the pretence of casting out devils_ (1603), from which he took the names of some of the devils in _Lear_ (iii. 4).