the Gaoler's Daughter in her madness
speaks of those who "are mad, or hang, or drown themselves, being put
into a caldron of lead and usurer's grease, and there boiling like a
gammon of bacon that will never be enough."

The practice of holding burning basins before the eyes of captives, to
destroy their eyesight, is probably alluded to by Macbeth (iv. 1), in
the passage where the apparitions are presented to him by the witches:

"Thou art too like the spirit of Banquo; down!
Thy crown does sear mine eyeballs."[841]

[841] Halliwell-Phillipps's "Index to Shakespeare," p. 36.

In "Antony and Cleopatra" (ii. 4), soaking in brine as a punishment is
referred to by Cleopatra, who says to the messenger:

"Thou shalt be whipp'd with wire, and stew'd in brine,
Smarting in lingering pickle."

Drowning by the tide, a method of punishing criminals, is probably
noticed in "The Tempest" (i. 1), by Antonio:

"We are merely cheated of our lives by drunkards.
This wide-chapp'd rascal--would thou might'st lie drowning
The washing of ten tides!"

_Baffle._ This was formerly a punishment of infamy inflicted on recreant
knights, one part of which consisted in hanging them up by the heels, to
which Falstaff probably refers in "1 Henry IV." (i. 2), where he says to
the prince, "call me villain, and baffle me." And, further on (ii. 4):
"if thou dost it half so gravely, so majestically, both in word and
matter, hang me up by the heels for a rabbit-sucker, or a poulter's
hare."[842] In "2 Henry IV." (i. 2), the Chief Justice tells Falstaff
that "to punish him by the heels would amend the attention of his ears."
And in "All's Well that Ends Well" (iv. 3), where the lord relates how
Parolles has "sat in the stocks all night," Bertram says: "his heels
have deserved it, in usurping his spurs so long."

[842] See Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p. 46.

Spenser, in his "Fairy Queen" (vi. 7), thus describes this mode of
punishment:

"And after all, for greater infamie
He by the heels him hung upon a tree,
And baffl'd so, that all which passed by
The picture of his punishment might see."

The appropriate term, too, for chopping off the spurs of a knight when
he was to be degraded, was "hack"--a custom to which, it has been
suggested, Mrs. Page alludes in the "Merry Wives of Windsor" (ii.
1):[843] "What?--Sir Alice Ford! These knights will hack, and so thou
shouldst not alter the article o