"Mirth. How like you the Vice i' th' play?
Expectation. Which is he?

"Mirth. Three or four; old Covetousness, the sordid Penny-Boy, the Money-Bawd, who is a fleshbawd too, they say.

"Tattle. But here is never a Fiend to carry him away. Besides, he has never a wooden dagger! I'd not give a rush for a Vice, that has not a wooden dagger to snap at every body he meets.

"Mirth. That was the old way, gossip, when Iniquity came in, like hokos pokos, in a jugler's jerkin," &c.

He alludes to the Vice in the Alchymist, a&t i. sc. 3.

"Sub. And, on your stall, a puppet, with a

Vice*."

Some places of Shakspere will from hence appear more easy as in the First Part of Henry IV. a&t ii. where Hal humorously characterizing Falstaff, calls him, That reverend Vice, that grey Iniquity, that father Ruffian, that Vanity in years, in allusion to this buffoon character. In K. Richard III. act iii.

Thus, like the formal Vice, INIQUITY,

I moralize two meanings in one word.

Iniquity is the formal Vice.

-a puppet with a Vice.] Mr. Upton has misinterpreted this passage. A vice in the present instance means a device, clock-work. Coryat, p. 254, speaks of a picture whose eyes were moved by a vice.

FARMER.

In Hamlet, act i. there is an allusion, still more distant, to the Vice; which will not be obvious at first, and therefore is to be introduced with a short explanation. This buffoon character was used to make fun with the devil; and he had several trite expressions, as, I'll be with you in a trice; Ah, ha, boy, are you there? &c. And this was great entertainment to the audience, to see their old enemy so belabour'd in effigy. In King Henry V. act iv. a boy characterizing Pistol, says, Bardolph and Nym had ten times more valour than this roaring Devil i' the old play: every one may pare his nails with a wooden dagger. Now Hamlet, having been instructed by his father's ghost, is resolved to break the subject of the discourse to none but Horatio; and to all others, his intention is to appear as a sort of madman; when therefore the oath of secrecy is given to the centinels, and the ghost unseen calls out, swear; Hamlet speaks to it as the Vice does to the Devil. Ah, ha, boy, say'st thou so? Art thou there, Truepenny? Hamlet had a mind that the centinels should imagine this was a shape that the devil had put on; and in act iii. he is somewhat of this opinion himself:

The spirit that I have seen,

May be the devil.

The manner of speech, therefore, to the devil, was what all the audience were well acquainted with ; and it takes off in some measure from the horror of the scene.

UPTON.

I have nothing to add to the observations of these learned criticks, but that some traces of this antiquated exhibition are still retained in the rustick puppet-plays, in which I have seen the Devil very lustily belaboured by Punch, whom I hold to be the legitimate successor of the old Vice.

JOHNSON.

THE END.