gradually developed into a complete dramatic entertainment, in which the scenes were accompanied and embellished by music, the dressing was very splendid, and the scenery magnificent. Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Milton are the greatest makers of this form of poetry. Because of the expense of such spectacles they were never a popular amusement, being enjoyed chiefly by the royalty or nobility of the realm, at one of the great houses. Masques came to be a feature of ceremonial days, birthdays, weddings, coronation days, &c. True-wit enumerates masques as one of the things Morose's wife should not witness, because the conduct of the citizens who were admitted to the court masques, was notorious. playes. The harshest criticism in regard to the conduct of women in the early play-house is that of Stubbes, Anat. of Ab., pp. 144 ff., and of Gosson, School of Ab. Besant, London, p. 279, gives a happier view: 'Women in the galleries ... dressed very finely, like ladies of quality, in satin gown, lawn aprons, taffeta petticoats, and gold threads in their hair. They seemed to rejoice in being thus observed and gazed upon. When a young man had found a girl to his taste, he went into the gallery, sat beside her, and treated her to pippins, nuts, or wine.'

But from the earliest times the audience at the theatre had a reputation for irresponsible behavior. As early as Dec. 6, 1574, the following enactment was passed by 'Order of the Common Council of London in restraint of Dramatic Exhibitions' (Hazlitt, Drama and the Stage, p. 27): 'Whereas heartofore sondrye greate disorders and inconvenyences have been found to ensewe to this Cittie by the inordynate hauntynge of greate multitudes of people, specially youthe, to playes, enterludes and shewes; namelye occasyon of frayes and quarrells, eavell practizes of incontinencye in greate Innes, havinge chambers and secrete places adjoynynge to their open stagies and galleries, inveyglynge and alleurynge of maides, speciallye orphanes, and good cityzens children under age, to previe and unmete contracts, the publishinge of unchaste, uncomelye, and unshamefaste speeches and doyngs, withdrawinge of the Quenes Majesties subjectes from dyvyne service on Soundaies & hollydayes,' &c. puritane preachings. Jonson's gibe at the Puritan service by classing it with secular gatherings of the above sort is hardly fair, but it indicates his intolerance of this sect, which resulted in the making of the famous Tribulation Wholesome

and Ananias in the Alchem., and in the still more famous character in Bar. Fair, the erstwhile baker of Banbury, Zeal-of-the-land Busy, together with his friends the Littlewits and Purecrafts. mad-folkes. The hospitals for the insane were open for the amusement of visitors, for the Jacobian idea of the comic included madness, as many of the plots and separate scenes of old comedies prove. A small fee admitted visitors to the public asylums, and the inmates were looked upon in the light of legitimate amusement. strange sights. Fleet Street, from Ludgate Circus to the Strand and West End, was London's 'midway' or 'pike', where people of all sorts crowded to see the curiosities brought home by English explorers: Indians from the Americas, fish from strange seas, waxworks, puppet shows, and monstrosities of all kinds. Thornbury, Sh. Eng. 1. 35: 'There's the guinea hens and cassowary at St. James's and the beaver in the park; the giant's lance at the Tower; the live dog-fish; the wolf, and Harry the Lion; the elephant; the steer with two tails; the camel; the motion of Eltham and the giant Dutchman.' Another list is in Mayne, City Match 3. 1:

The birds

Brought from Peru, the hairy wench, the camel,
The elephant, dromedaries, or Windsor Castle,
The Woman with dead flesh, or she that washes,
Threads needles, writes, dresses her children, plays
O' th' virginals with her feet, could never draw
People like this.

In the Tempest 2. 2 Trinculo, seeing Caliban, exclaims: 'A strange fish! Were I in England now, as once I was, and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver: there would this monster make a man; any strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian.' In Volp. 2. 1 Jonson satirizes the love of strange sights and news, in the gull Sir Politik Would-be.

37. Etheldred... Edward the Confessor. Jonson's reference to the morals of Edward's and his father's time, is influenced by the latter's churchly name, his reputation for sanctity, and his canonization in 1161. He was a West Saxon king, son of Æthelred II and Emma of Normandy. He was born at Islip, Oxford

shire, and lived 1004-1066. Æthelred II, surnamed the Unready, lived 968-1016.

42. shall runne. Shall at this time denoted in all three persons inevitable futurity, without desire. Later a reluctance to apply a word meaning necessity to 2nd and 3rd person, caused post-Elizabethans to substitute will (wish) in the 2nd and 3rd persons. So will came to have two duties-purpose (wish), futurity. Shall in the 2nd and 3rd persons came to mean the compulsory act of the speaker. Cf. Abbott, § 315.

43. cosen'd. This word as verb or noun is constantly cropping up, and at this time, more often than not, its connotation is unpleasant. W. and their Ways, pp. 67 ff.: 'Cozen has usually been referred to cousin, and the French cousiner favors this view. Cotgrave, in 1611, defined the French verb as 'to claim kindred for advantage...; as he who, to save charges in travelling, goes from house to house, as cousin to the owner of every one'. This etymology has been doubted, but it is supported by a fact which has escaped the editors of the N. E. D. 'To go acousining' is an old-fashioned New England phrase applied to one who quarters himself on his distant relatives.' Cf. Epicone

2.2. 103.

49. assassinate. An unusual noun, Daniel, Civ. Wars 3. 78: What hast thou done,

To make this barbarous base assassinate
Upon the person of a prince?

Jonson, Prince Henry's Barriers, vol. 7. 157:

Th' assassinate made upon his life
By a foul wretch.

54. facinorous. Shakespeare makes use of this word but once, All's Well 2. 3. 35, PAROLLES: 'He's of a most facinerious spirit that will not acknowledge it.'

61 ff. Vaulter . . . Frenchman that walkes vpon ropes. Acrobats never lacked popularity. Nichols (Progresses 1. 16) enumerates among the entertainments at Kenilworth Castle for Queen Elizabeth, 'goings, turnings, gambauds, somersaults, caprettings, and flights, forward, backward, sideways, downward, upward, and with sundry windings, gyrings, and circumflexions'. That this class of entertainers did not have the sanction of the law is shown in the following, 39 Eliz. c. 4 (1597-8), 'An Acte for

punyshment of Rogues, Vagabonds, and Sturdy Beggars': 'All Fencers, Bearewards, common Players of Enterludes, and Minstrels wandering abroad (other then Players of Enterludes belonging to any Baron of the Realm...) shall be stripped, whipped, and sent to their own parishes or to the house of correction.' Strutt gives a full account of most of their performances, Sports and Past., pp. 172 ff. Vaulters are described: 'The wonderful performances of that most celebrated master Simpson, the famous vaulter who, being lately arrived from Italy, will show the world what vaulting is,' &c. One leaped on horseback from all sorts of inconceivable positions, another leaped over nine horses standing side by side with a man seated on the midmost, another jumped over a garter held fourteen feet high, &c. Strutt relates remarkable feats in rope-dancing (ibid. 180 ff.) from the battlements of St. Paul's, in the time of Henry, Mary, and James II. Wire-dancing Strutt tells about on p. 228, and descriptions of the balancing of balls, knives, swords, wheels, &c., follow on p. 231.

68. yellow doublets, and great roses. The braveries' of James I's day were notorious for the loud colors in which they dressed and for the extremes to which they carried fashions. The rose, which was worn on the shoe, was as universal a fashion as it was a subject for jest and satire. D. A. 1. 2, p. 19:

My heart was at my mouth

Till I had view'd his shoes well; for these roses
Were big enough to hide a cloven foot.

Hamlet 3. 2. 288: Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers, with two Provencial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir?' Friar Bacon's Prophecie (1604):

When roses in the garden grew,

And not in ribons on a shoe:
Now ribon-roses take such place,

That garden roses want their grace.

69-70. if foule, ... shee'll... buy those doublets. So said Chaucer, Wife's Prologue 265: And if that she be foul thou seist, that she coveiteth every man that she may se.' And Jonson echoes the satire again, Cat. 2. 1, in the conversation between Fulvia and Sempronia.

73. Tyrannes. Pronounced probably Tyranny, cf. 3. 5. 17. Though in a line in Sej. 1. 1, p. 17: Tyrannes arts are to give

flatterers grace', it is disyllabic. C. appends to the line in Sej. this statement: 'Jonson invariably spelt this word without a ', meaning of course a final t. Cf. note 3. 2. 10.

78-9. Speake Latine and Greeke. Despite Jonson's satire, women who were his contemporaries were no mean students of these languages. Women of the type of the mother and aunts of Francis Bacon are by no means such isolated cases that parallels are not to be found. Roger Ascham, as tutor of Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey, told before Jonson's time the now popular story of going to bid the latter of his pupils good-bye before he left for Germany, and she was in her chamber reading Phaedon Platonis in Greeke, and that with as much delight as some gentlemen would read a merrie tale in Bocase'. Elizabeth herself wrote a commentary on Plato, translated two orations from the Greek Isocrates, a play of Euripides, the Hiero of Xenophon, and Plutarch's de Curiositate, and her translations from the Latin are numerous. Cf. Ascham's Works (ed. Benner), p. 333.

81. silenc'd brethren. Alchem. 3. 1, p. 88, Tribulation calls them 'silenced saints'; Dekker, 'dumb ministers', cf. note 3. 3. 84; Jonson calls them 'silenc'd ministers', 2. 6. 17, as does Earle, Micro-C., p. 63. In the Conventicle Act of Elizabeth, 1593, the Puritans had been prohibited from worshipping independently. Those disobeying this mandate were imprisoned, some for terms stretching over many years without even a trial. In 1604, after the Hampton Court conference, nonconformists were again silenced, and many ministers lost their benefices.

82. family, or wood. Alchem. 3. 2, p. 92, has this peculiar expression.

86. will cozen you. Jonson brings the same charge of dishonesty against the Puritans in Bar. Fair 5. 2, p. 476, where Purecraft confesses to Quarlous her enormities, among which she enumerates her business of marrying 'our poor handsome young virgins with our wealthy bachelors or widowers; to make them steal from their husbands'.

90. I will beat you. Manual correction of household servants was common. Twelfth Night 3. 2: 'I know my lady will strike him.' There are many stories of Elizabeth's chastisement of those who waited upon her. Besides, there seems to have been a prevalent custom of indulging in the kind of conjugal beatings which

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