Abstract
IN the second scene of Arden of Faversham, the goldsmith Bradshaw tells Black Will about a man who brought to his shop some plate that turned out to have been stolen from Lord Cheiny. He was ‘A lean-faced, writhen knave, / Hawk-nosed and very hollow-eyed’, and wearing ‘A pair of threadbare velvet hose, seam rent’ (ii.47–8, 56).1 This is reminiscent of Pinch, as described by Antipholus of Ephesus in Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, V.i.238–41: a hungry lean-faced villain, A mere anatomy, a mountebank, A threadbare juggler, and a fortune-teller, A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch.2 1 I quote from The Tragedy of Master Arden of Faversham, ed. M. L. Wine, Revels Plays (London: Methuen, 1973). 2 William Shakespeare: The Complete Works: Compact Edition, gen. eds Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).
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