Miko: annotations

“Few words” - again, an ironic thing for the wordy Holofernes to say.

“A wise man speaks little” - an ironic thing for someone who talks as much as Holofernes to say.

“Twice sod” means a food that has been boiled twice. “Bis coctus” is Latin for bread that is baked twice (we get our English word “biscuit” it). So Holofernes is expressing annoyance that Dull has twice disagreed with him.

An interjection of agreement meaning “By Hercules!”.

Holofernes accurately describes the pia mater, a membrane that encases the brain.

By Shakespeare's time it was already understood that the human brain is divided into sections called “ventricles”. It was believed that one of those ventricles was devoted to memory.

One definition of “claw” was to flatter someone. So Dull is saying that Sir Nathaniel flatters Holofernes.

“Talent” was a variant of “talon”, which is a synonym for “claw”. So in this case Dull is making puns on the similarity of the two words.

In this context, “sorel” (also spelled “sorrel”) is a buck in its third year.

In this context, a sore (sometimes spelled “soare”) is a buck in its fourth year.