'Scribble' collocates with 'parchment' in both of its occurrences and is associated with death.. We encounter it first in the Jack Cade rebellion:
Dick.
76 The first thing we do, let's kill all the
77 lawyers.
Cade.
78 Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a
79 lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb
80 should be made parchment? that parchment, being
81 scribbled o'er, should undo a man? (2H6 4.2.76-81)
In King John Hubert expresses his view that "The King, I fear, is poison'd by a monk" (KiJ 5.6.23). A little later the King describes the symptoms of his illness:
30 There is so hot a summer in my bosom
31 That all my bowels crumble up to dust.
32 I am a scribbled form, drawn with a pen
33 Upon a parchment, and against this fire
34 Do I shrink up. (KiJ 5.7.30-34)
It is only one step from pen to poison, and "scribble" is the act of clerical mischief that associates lawyers and monks with a common guilt.
26 July, 1999
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