CLOWN. I have nothing to say to you, sir; I aim at your uncle.
CLOWN. That's all one, I'll take him as I find him.
WID. I have taken him so before you, sir: will you be quiet?
STEPH. Thou shalt take me so too, Hodge, for I'll be thy fellow, though thy mistress's husband. Give me thy hand.
CLOWN. I'll make you seek your fingers among the dogs, if you come to me. _My fellow?_ You lousy companion, I scorn thee. 'Sfoot! is't come to this? Have I stood all this while to my mistress an honest, handsome, plain-dealing serving-creature, and she to marry a whoreson _tityre tu tattere_ with never a good rag about him? [_Draws his sword, and puts his cap on the point of it._] Stand thou to me, and be my friend; and since my mistress has forsaken me----
ROB. But tell me one thing I apprehend not: why didst lay thy cap upon the sword's point?
CLOWN. Dost not thou know the reason of that? why, 'twas to save my belly: dost thou think I am so mad to cast myself away for e'er a woman of 'em all? I'll see 'em hanged first!
CLOWN. Well, since there is no remedy. O tears! be you my friend.
CLOWN. I cannot choose; nay, I will steep Mine eyes in crying tears, and crying weep. [_Exeunt._
[61] _Passage_ and _Novem_ were games at _dice_, and _mumchance_ one at cards. See Steevens's note on a passage in "Love's Labour Lost," act v.
[63] By a _bale_ a pair of dice only is meant.
[64] Stephen puns on the words _bale_ and _bail_.
[65] It appears from an after-remark of Stephen's, that the game they were playing at was _passage_. _Boreas_ may be a punning invocation to the north wind to assist him in his _passage_, or an allusion to the noise which arises at the same time in the bowling-alley.
[66] The _trundletail_ was a species of dog in little estimation, I believe; it is mentioned in the "Lear" of Shakespeare. So Ursula to Quar. in "Bartholomew Fair:" "Do you sneer, you dog's-head, you _trundletail_!" But here the host only puns on the rolling or trundling the bowl at the game.
[67] The host was probably box-keeper or groom-porter; and it appears by an extract from the _Monthly Mirror_ (quoted by Mr Gifford), that "if the caster throws three mains, or wins by throwing three times successively, he pays to the box-keeper, for the use of the house, a stipulated sum." It was probably these profits that the host directs them to look to; or that in our poet's time, or at a different game, a regular percentage might have been paid to the box-keeper on the money staked; or the host might have been banker, and staked against the players, as now at Rouge-et-Noir, and some other games, I believe.