The constellation Virgo (the Virgin) was supposed to represent Astræa after she had left the earth (cf. IV. iii. 4). Taurus (the Bull) and Aries (the Ram) are also zodiacal constellations.
IV. iv. 67. Coriolanus. This is the theme of Shakespeare's last tragedy, Coriolanus, which was written about 1608 or 1609.
IV. iv. 90. honey-stalks. According to Dr. Johnson, honey-stalks are sweet-clover flowers.
V. i. 42. the pearl that pleas'd your empress' eye. Alluding to an old proverb, which Shakespeare uses in Two Gentlemen of Verona (V. ii. 11, 12),
'the old saying is,
Black men are pearls in beauteous ladies' eyes.'
V. i. 79. An idiot holds his bauble for a god. The bauble was the carved head with asses' ears that surmounted the baton which was carried by the court fool as a mock emblem of his office.
V. i. 122. like a black dog, as the saying is. 'To blush like a black dog' is one of the old proverbs in Ray's collection.
V. i. 124 ff. Aaron's circumstantial account of his misdeeds suggests at once the similar list of offences for which Barabas claims credit in Marlowe's Jew of Malta (II. iii. 177 ff.).
V. i. 145. Bring down the devil. Aaron's speech has evidently just been made from the top of the ladder on which he was to be hanged.
V. ii. 189. of the paste a coffin I will rear. In early English cookery books the crust of a pie was always known as the coffin. According to Selden (cf. Table-Talk, under Christmas), Christmas pies were baked originally in a long coffin-shaped crust, in imitation of the manger in which our Lord was laid at his birth.
V. ii. 196. worse than Progne I will be reveng'd.
