Garnett Garnett's Father Shakespeare Equivocation Blood Tailor Equivicator

Through the equivicator, Shakespeare could be alluding to Father Garnett, a priest arrested for his complicity in the Gunpowder plot who famously used equivocation in his testimony in an attempt to avoid execution.

Garnett failed and was killed on the 3rd May, 1606. An original audience 'would immediately have understood this line as a mockery of the Catholics' perceived practice of equivocation

'Farmer' was one of Garnett's pseudonyms

Shakespeare could be making reference to relics from Garnett's execution in the talk of 'napkins' (another word for handkerchiefs which were often used by Catholic spectators at executions to mop up the blood of martyrs.'

The Porter's welcoming of a tailor could possibly refer to a tailor questioned in November 1606 for being in possesion of a stalk of grain on which Garnett's blood was said to have splashed, creating an image of his face and known, therefore as 'Garnett's straw'.