ptista how he had been struck by Katharina because "I did but tell her
she mistook her frets," adds:

"she struck me on the head,
And through the instrument my pate made way;
And there I stood amazed for a while,
As on a pillory, looking through the lute."

It has been suggested that there may be an allusion to the pillory in
"Measure for Measure" (v. 1), where Lucio says to the duke, disguised in
his friar's hood: "you must be hooded, must you? show your knave's
visage, with a pox to you! show your sheep-biting face, and be hanged an
hour!" The alleged crime was not capital, and suspension in the pillory
for an hour was all that the speaker intended.[848]

[848] Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 661; see Douce's
"Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, pp. 90, 91, 109; Brand's
"Pop. Antiq.," vol. iii. p. 111.

_Press._ Several allusions occur to this species of torture, applied to
contumacious felons. It was also, says Malone, "formerly inflicted on
those persons who, being indicted, refused to plead. In consequence of
their silence, they were pressed to death by a heavy weight laid upon
the stomach." In "Much Ado About Nothing" (iii. 1), Hero says of
Beatrice:

"she would laugh me
Out of myself, press me to death with wit."

In "Richard II." (iii. 4) the Queen exclaims:

"O, I am press'd to death, through want of speaking!"

And in "Measure for Measure" (v. 1), Lucio tells the Duke that,
"Marrying a punk, my lord, is pressing to death, whipping, and hanging."

In the "Perfect Account of the Daily Intelligence" (April 16th, 1651),
we find it recorded: "Mond., April 14th. This Session, at the Old
Bailey, were four men pressed to death that were all in one robbery,
and, out of obstinacy and contempt of the Court, stood mute, and refused
to plead." This punishment was not abolished until by statute 12 George
III. c. 20.

_Rack._ According to Mr. Blackstone, this "was utterly unknown to the
law of England; though once, when the Dukes of Exeter and Suffolk, and
other ministers of Henry VI., had laid a design to introduce the civil
law into this kingdom as a rule of government, for the beginning thereof
they erected a rack of torture, which was called, in derision, the Duke
of Exeter's daughter; and still remains in the Tower of London, where it
was occasionally used as an engine of state, not of law, more than once
in the reign of Queen Eliz