many miles,
To tread a measure with her on this grass,"

was a grave solemn dance, with slow and measured steps, like the minuet.
As it was of so solemn a nature, it was performed[839] at public
entertainments in the Inns of Court, and it was "not unusual, nor
thought inconsistent, for the first characters in the law to bear a part
in treading a measure."

[839] Singer's "Shakespeare," vol. ii. p. 269; Sir Christopher
Hatton was famous for it.

_Trip and Go_ was the name of a favorite morris-dance, and appears, says
Mr. Chappell, in his "Popular Music of the Olden Times," etc. (2d
edition, vol. i. p. 131), to have become a proverbial expression. It is
used in "Love's Labour's Lost" (iv. 2).

_Up-spring._ From the following passage, in Chapman's "Alphonsus,
Emperor of Germany," it would seem that this was a German dance:

"We Germans have no changes in our dances;
An almain and an up-spring, that is all."

Karl Elze,[840] who, a few years ago, reprinted Chapman's "Alphonsus" at
Leipsic, says that the word "up-spring" "is the 'Huepfauf,' the last and
wildest dance at the old German merry-makings. No epithet could there be
more appropriate to this drunken dance than Shakespeare's _swaggering_"
in "Hamlet" (i. 4):

"The king doth wake to-night, and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels."

[840] Quoted in Dyce's "Glossary," p. 476.

CHAPTER XVIII.

PUNISHMENTS.

Shakespeare has not omitted to notice many of the punishments which were
in use in years gone by; the scattered allusions to these being
interesting in so far as they serve to illustrate the domestic manners
and customs of our forefathers. Happily, however, these cruel tortures,
which darken the pages of history, have long ago passed into oblivion;
and at the present day it is difficult to believe that such barbarous
practices could ever have been tolerated in any civilized country. The
horrible punishment of "boiling to death," is mentioned in "Twelfth
Night" (ii. 5), where Fabian says: "If I lose a scruple of this sport,
let me be boiled to death with melancholy." In "Winter's Tale" (iii. 2),
Paulina inquires:

"What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me?
What wheels? racks? fires? What flaying? boiling
In leads or oils? What old or newer torture
Must I receive?"

There seems to be an indirect allusion to this punishment in "The Two
Noble Kinsmen" (iv. 3), where