metallic din. A hammer-man may signify the hooper of barrels, the shoer of horses, or the artificer in metals. The kettlemender was a very vociferous fellow, crying, 'A brass pot or an iron pot to mend !' The armorer, who was generally foreign, was less of an itinerant than the others, and had his shop in the Old Exchange. Cooking and table-utensils were made of pewter, and the noise of the trade is recorded as early as Lydgate in London Lyckpenny: Pewter pots they clattered on a heap.'

159. parish. Dekker describes the parish of this time, The Dead Tearme, Pr. Wks. 4. 75: According therefore to the Romane custome of Citties, was I diuided into Signories, all of them notwithstanding, like so many streames to one Head, acknowledging a priority and subiection, to One Greater than the rest, and who sitteth aboue them, those Diuisions or Partages are called Wardes, or Aldermanries, being 26 in number; for by 24 Aldermen in whom is represented the dignity of Romaine Senatours, and Two Sheriffes, who personate (in theyr Offices and places) the Romane Consuls. Then is there a Subdiuision; for these Cantles are againe cut into lesse, being called Parishes, which are in number 109; which are vnto me like so many little Citties within themselues: so beautifyed they are with buildings, so furnished with manuall Trades, so peopled with wealthy Cittizens, and so pollitikely, wisely and peacebly gouerned.'

160. shroue-tuesdaies riot. One of the chief events of this festival day was, in the words of Lanthorn Leatherhead, Bar. Fair 5. I, p. 473: the rising of the prentices, and pulling down the bawdy houses.' Earle, Micro-C., A Player, no. 21: 'ShroueTuesdey hee feares as much as the baudes, and Lent is more damage to him then the Butcher.' Dekker, Seven Deadly Sinnes, Pr. Wks. 2: They presently, like prentices vpon Shroue-tuesday, take the law into their hands, and do what they list.' For other amusements, cf. Brand, Pop. Antiq. 1. 63 ff., and cf. John Taylor (folio 1630), p. 115: 'In the morning all the whole kingdom is unquiet, but by that time the clocke strikes eleven, which (by the help of a knavish sexton) is commonly before nine, then there is a bell rung, cal'd pancake-bell, the sound whereof makes thousands of people distracted, and forgetful either of manners or humanitie.'

161. when the rest were quit. Whalley thinks 'quit' is

'discharged from work'. Coleridge's interpretation is better: 'The pewterer was at his holiday diversion as well as the other apprentices, and they as forward in the riot as he. But he alone was punished under pretext of the riot but in fact for his trade.' -Notes on Ben Jonson, ed. Bohn, p. 415. For 'quit' in the obsolete sense of 'acquit' cf. Abbott, § 342, and Gammer Gurton's Needle, ed. Manly, 5. 2. 262: BAYLY. 'Ye shall go quite,' &c.

162 ff. Trumpet... Hau'-boyes, ... Waights. Whether Jonson means here the instruments or the musicians is not quite clear. Cf. Mer. of Ven. 2. 5. 30: The vile squealing of the wryneck'd fife.' A trumpet was carried by the vender of hobby-horses, who blew upon it intermittently and cried, "Troop, every one, one'; there were bands of street musicians called trumpeters. Dekker, The Kings Entertainment, Dram. Wks. 1. 280: 'The Wayts and Hault-boyes of London made the music for the banquet.' Waits were originally night-watchmen who announced with a horn that they were on watch, but in the seventeenth century regular bands of musicians bore the name, and it is still preserved in England as applied to persons who sing at Christmas from house to house. Rymer, quoted in Chambers's Book of Days, says: 'A wayte, that nightelye from mychelmas to Shreue Thorsdaye pipeth the watche within this courte fower tymes... Also this yeoman waight, at the makinge of knyghtes of the Bath, for his attendance vpon them by nyght-time, in watchinge in the chappelle, hath he to his fee all the watchinge clothing that the knyght shall wear vpon him' (vol. 2. 743). Tale of a Tub 3. 3, p. 176:

He was one o' the waights o' the city, I have read o' 'un; He was a fellow would be drunk, debauch'd...

His name was Vadian, and a cunning toter.

There

Cf. also Shirley, Witty Fair One 4. 2, and Tatler 222. are also some items of interest in Notes and Queries, 10th S. 2, Dec. 24, 1904.

166. Bell-man. This night-watchman had been given his distinctive instrument in the reign of Mary, and he remained a public nuisance until the time of Cromwell. Stow says there was one in each ward. Hindley, p. 34, quotes from the British Museum Print, no. 2, and Tuer, Old London Street Cries, p. 20:

...

Dekker, Bel-man of London, Pr. Wks. 3. 113: 'The sound of his Voice at the first put me in mind of the day of Iudgement; Men (me thought) starting out of their sleepes, at the Ringing of his bell, as then they are to rise from their graues at the sound of a trumpet. I approached neare vnto him, and beheld a man with a lanthorne and canale in his hand, a long staffe on his necke, and a dog at his tayle.... I began to talke to my Bel-man, and to aske him, why with such a Iangling, and balling, and beating at Mens doores hee went about to waken either poore men that were ouerwearyed with labour, or sick men that had most neede of rest?' The mayor, Sir Henry Barton, had made a law, which remained in force three centuries, that at night between All Hallows and Candlemas each house had to have a 'lanthorne and a whole candell light'. Watchmen whose particular business was to see that this rule was obeyed, according to the British Museum Print, no. 1, admonished the public thus:

A light here, maids, hang out your light,
And see your horns be clear and bright,
That so your candle clear may shine,
Continuing from six till nine;

That honest men that walk along,

May see to pass safe without wrong.

172. common noises. Dekker gives a vivid account of these in Seven Deadly Sinnes, Pr. Wks. 2. 50: 'In euery street, carts and coaches make such a thundring as if the world ranne vpon wheeles... Hammers are beating, in one place, Tubs hooping in another, Pots clinking in a third, water-tankards running at tilt in a fourth: heere are Porters sweating vnder burdens, there merchants-men bearing bags of money,' &c.

178. cryed his games. The bear-ward was accustomed to advertise his sport noisily. Cf. Humorous Lovers (1617): 'I'll set up my bills, that the gamesters of London, Horsleydown, Southwark, and Newmarket, may come in and bait him here

before the ladies; but first, boy, go fetch me a bagpipe; we will walk the streets in triumph, and give the people notice of our sport.'

180. bleeding: adj. 'bloody'. I find the same construction of the superl. thus formed from the pres. part. in Jeronimo, Haz.Dods. 4. 354: A most weeping creature.'

181. prize. Pepys describes a prize or contest in his Diary, June 1, 1663: 'The New Theatre... since the king's players gone to the Royal one, is this day begun to be employed by the fencers to play prizes at. And here I came and saw the first prize I ever saw in my life: and it was between one Mathews, who did beat at all weapons, and one Westwicke, who was soundly cut several times... They fought at eight weapons, three boutes at each weapon.' Cf. also May 27, 1667. Strutt, Sports and Past. 209 ff., gives an account of the barbarousness of the prizes fought by fencers, and of the long apprenticeship necessary to become masters of the science of defence, or fencing.

184. for the bells. Besant, London, pp. 105 ff., has described the city with its never quiet bells as Rabelais' l'Ile Sonnante. There were eighty-nine churches burnt in 1666; fiftyone were rebuilt. The word for as here used is noticed by Abbott, § 149.

185. i' the Queenes time. Elizabeth's death in 1603 made a change from the strict attendance at church service. Jonson here points to the fact that his contemporaries were growing careless in matters of religious observance.

187. perpetuitie of ringing. The year before Epicone appeared we find this allusion in Volp. 3. 2, p. 237:

VOLP.

Oh,

Rid me of this my torture, quickly, there;
My madam, with the everlasting voice:
The bells, in time of pestilence, ne'er made
Like noise, or were in that perpetual motion.

Dekker, Wonderfull Yeare, Pr. Wks. 1. 105: And to make this dismall comfort more full, round about him Bells heauily tolling in one place, and ringing out in another.' Rod for Run-awayes (1625), Pr. Wks. 4, scathes the people who left London in terror of the plague, but the author knows they perceiue the Bels of London toll 40 miles off in their eares'.

192. tennis-court. The prevalence of tennis in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is attested in many places. Stow, Survey 6. 6: 'Divers fair tennis-courts, bowling-alleys, and a cockpit, were added to Whitehall by Henry VIII.' Strutt, Sports and Past., pp. 92 ff., gives its history. Perhaps the most famous literary reference to tennis is that in Henry V 1. 2. 256. James I said tennis was an exercise becoming a prince', and Pepys records, Dec. 2, 1663, that Charles II 'beat three and lost two sets, they all, and he particularly playing well'.

194. trunke. There are a people, says Montaigne, where no one speaks to the king, except his wife and children, but through a trunk.'-G. Jonson makes Dol use one in the Alchem., but the same word in News from the New World, vol. 7. 338, means 'telescope'.

ACT I. SCENE II.

5. masters. Coke defines a gentleman to be one qui arma gerit, who bears coat armor, the grant of which adds gentility to a man's family' (Blackstone, Comm. bk. 1, § 405). 'As for gentlemen, says Sir Thomas Smith, they may be made good cheap in this kingdom: for whoever studieth the laws of the realm, who studieth in the universities, who professeth the liberal sciences, and to be short, who can live idly, and without manual labor and will bear the port, charge, and countenance of a gentleman, he shall be called Master, and shall be taken for a gentleman' (§ 406). Cf. W. and their Ways, p. 324, and the quibbling over the word between Launcelot and his father, Mer. of Ven. 2. 2.

9-10. ridiculous acts, and moniments. Morose is not Jonson's first comic martyr; in Every Man Out 3. 2, p. 114, one of the rustics who saves Sordido says: 'I'll get our clerk put his conversion in the Acts and Monuments.' Jonson, at this time a Catholic, may have taken a little justified pleasure in indulging in jests at the expense of Fox, so popular an opponent of his faith. This book was the butt of much joking, for Stubbes writes, Anal. of Ab., p. 185: 'This maketh the Bible, the blessed Book of God, to be so little esteemed; that woorthie Booke of Martyrs, made by that famous Father & excellent Instrument in God his Church, Maister John Fox, so little to be accepted.' Cf. Mayne, City Match 2. 1.