ajotttell Hjtiocraitg Slibtarg 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THEVNCOME OF THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
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 HENRY W. SAGE 
 
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Cornell University Library 
 PR 2243.G8 1904 
 
 The gull's hornbook 
 
 3 1924 013 118 835 
 
a Cornell University 
 § Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
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This Edition of the "Gull's Hornbook" is limited to 50 
 Copies on Japanese Vellum and 650 on Hand-made Paper, of 
 which latter 480 only are for sale in England. 
 
THE KING'S LIBRARY 
 
 EDITED BY PROFESSOR GOLLANCZ 
 
 DE LA MORE PRESS QUARTOS 
 IL THE GULL'S HORNBOOK 
 
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 ,?S«i5e^' i-.-*-»1»' i«i/*«\tt* 
 
 
 AM'X\NI)1:K MOliINO 
 It niE DE LA MURK PRESS 
 
 2 9 8, RE GENT STREET, "V\'. 
 
 B.M9Maa-Us: 
 
THE GULL'S HORNBOOK 
 
THE GULL'S HORN- 
 BOOK BY THOMAS 
 DEKKER, EDITED 
 BY R. B. M^KERROW 
 
 AT THE DE LA MORE PRESS 298 REGENT STREET 
 LONDON W MDCCCCIV 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 The Author. — Thomas Deklcer, the author of the GulFs 
 Hornbook was, while not perhaps one of the greatest, certainly one of 
 the most prolific writers of his time. Poet, playwright, pamphleteer, 
 and moralist, no subject and no style of writing seems to have come 
 amiss to him. Born however, as he was, in London and brought 
 up there, forced apparently from his youth to earn a living, harder 
 then than now, by his pen, he had neither time, opportunity, nor 
 perhaps learning to range far in the search for material. He turned 
 by preference to what was nearest at hand, to what was every day 
 before his eyes — the life of his contemporaries. There is little, if 
 any, of his best work which does not deal in some way with the 
 London in which he lived. 
 
 And it is just this which makes what remains of his writings, 
 his prose especially, so valuable to us at present. In the GuH's 
 Hornbook and in other works of a similar nature we can see, when 
 we make due allowance for the exaggeration of the satirist, how 
 Londoners really lived and behaved three hundred years ago. We 
 feel in his descriptions the sure touch of complete and minute 
 knowledge. In the very modernness of the humours portrayed we 
 are sensible of their truth to nature. Change but the setting and 
 the " Gulls " of the Hornbook are but a slightly coarser variant of a 
 certain class of townsman of to-day, and this may well satisfy us of 
 the accuracy of the whole picture. 
 
 Of Dekker's life little is known. It was in all probability a 
 hard hand-to-mouth sort of existence whose only incident was an 
 occasional visit to the debtor's prison, "that university" as it is 
 called in a play written by him in conjunction with Middleton, 
 "where men pay more dear for their wit than anywhere." Born 
 about 1570, the early years of his literary life were spent for the 
 most part in revising old plays or in working at new ones in collab- 
 oration with one or other of the well known dramatists of his time. 
 
Drayton, Wilson, Chettle, Day, Webster, Munday, Middleton and 
 Jonson are but a few of those with whom he joined. The fact that 
 between 1598 and 1602 he wrote eight plays of his own, besides 
 collaborating in some twenty-five others, shows the extraordinary 
 facility with which he worked. 
 
 In 1598 he came into notice as the author of an indifferent 
 but very popular poem called Canaan s Calamity. It is a description 
 of the fall of Jerusalem, a favourite subject of Elizabethan writers 
 and moralists. The treatment is entirely commonplace and gives 
 little indication of the poetic talent which his plays show him to have 
 certainly possessed. 
 
 With the latter we are not concerned here. The Shoemakers 
 Holiday, Old Foriunatus, and Satiromastix deserve mention, though 
 very different opinions as to the value of his dramatic work have 
 been expressed by critics. It may be said in general that while 
 almost all contain detached passages of great delicacy and beauty, the 
 effect of the whole is often marred by hasty and careless workmanship. 
 
 His first important prose work was The Wonderful Tear 1603, 
 a vivid description of the ravages of the plague in London during 
 that year. In 1606 he published The Seven Deadly Sins of London, 
 which presents under the form of an allegory a lurid picture of con- 
 temporary life. Dekker calls it on the title page "Opus septem 
 dierum " ; if it was in truth but a week's work it is an extraordinary 
 instance of rapidity of composition. In the same year appeared 
 News from Hell (reissued in the following year as AKnigMs Conjuring. 
 This, he tells us, was written in imitation of "ingenious, ingenuous, 
 fluent, facetious T. Nash," and is in some measure a sequel to the 
 latter's Piers Penniless his Supplication to the Devil. Passing over some 
 less important pieces, we come in 1 608 to The Bellman of London : 
 Bringing to Light the Most Notorious Villanies that are now Practised in the 
 Kingdom. This book, which the numerous editions show to have 
 been very popular, continued the series of descriptions of rogues 
 
 ii. 
 
and vagabonds, their tricks and their habits, of which the most 
 notable were Harman's Caveat for Cursitors (1566) and Robert 
 Greene's "Coney-Catching" pamphlets (i 591-2); indeed from the 
 first of these books Dekker borrowed no small part of his material. 
 Later in the same year he published a second part under the title of 
 Lanthorn and Candle-light, or the Bell-man's Second Night's Walk' 
 (republished with considerable additions in 1612). In 1609 appeared 
 The Raven's Almanac, a parody on the terrible prognostications of 
 almanac-makers, and the book which is here reprinted, The Gull's 
 Hornbook. His other prose works are of less interest ; several of them 
 are of a religious turn, for Dekker, in common with Greene and 
 most other writers of the period, if, probably, not over-particular in 
 his manner of life, had at least a marvellous facility in repentance. 
 
 From 1613 to 1616 Dekker seems to have been confined in 
 the king's bench prison ; the reason is not known but is more likely 
 to have been debt than anything else, unless perhaps it was thought 
 that, for a law-abiding person, he possessed an unreasonably exact 
 knowledge of the innumerable methods of swindling. In 1622, in 
 conjunction with Massinger, he wrote The Virgin Martyr, which 
 shows him at his best as a dramatist. In a tract published in 1625, 
 entitled A Rod for Run-aways, he describes the state of terror caused 
 by the visitation of the plague in that year, thus returning to one 
 of his earliest subjects. In 1628 and 1629 Dekker composed the 
 Lord Mayor's Pageants, namely, Britannia's Honour and London's 
 Tempe, a fact which probably indicates that towards the end of his 
 life he was in somewhat better circumstances, for such work as this 
 seems generally to have been given to men of some recognised 
 standing. His last work was probably the republication of Lanthorn 
 and Candle-light, in 1 637. He is supposed to have died shortly after. 
 
 One of the best known incidents of Dekker's life was his quarrel 
 with Ben Jonson, It is an interesting and curious piece of literary 
 history, but I have no space to discuss it here. The leading facts 
 are these : after having collaborated with Dekker in the production of 
 
 in. 
 
two plays, in 1599, Jonson suddenly attacked him in Every Man out 
 of His Humour and Cynthia s Revels (1600), and again with more 
 virulence in The Poetaster (1602). The cause of the quarrel is quite 
 uncertain. Jonson's own words of excuse that he had been provoked 
 by his opponents " with their petulant styles on every stage " are 
 too vague to help us much. Shortly after, Dekker answered in the 
 Satiromastix, a badly constructed, but in some scenes very amusing, 
 play, and with this the quarrel seems to have been tacitly dropped, 
 though so late as 1619 Jonson still considered, as is shown by his 
 conversations with Drummond, that Dekker was a " knave." 
 
 The best and most complete summary of all that is known 
 regarding Dekker is to be found in Mr. A. H. BuUen's article on 
 him in the Dictionary of National Biography. To this I must refer 
 readers desirous of more detailed information. 
 
 Sources. — The Gull's Hornbook, as regards general tone and 
 plan, is founded on the Grobianus of Frederick Dedekind {c. 152^— 
 1598). This work, a poem in Latin elegiac verse, was first published 
 in two books in 1 549, and again, in a much revised form and enlarged 
 to three books, in 1552. It had an immense popularity, at least on 
 thei Continent of Europe, as is shown by the numerous editions 
 which were published both of the original and of a contemporary 
 German translation. 
 
 " Grobianus " * (from the German grob — rude, boorish) is the 
 name of a supposed ignoramus to whom the poem is addressed, and 
 to whom are given directions as to his conduct under a variety of 
 circumstances, these directions being calculated to increase his offen- 
 siveness to the highest possible limit ; it is in short a kind of satire 
 in the imperative mood. This is not, of course, the first employment 
 
 * The name " Grobianus " seems to be borrowed from Sebastian Brant's famous 
 poem Das Narren Schiff, in the course of which he describes the worship paid to a new 
 Saint " Grobian," the patron of boors. It is found later in several works of the 
 period besides Dedekind's. 
 
 iv. 
 
of such a mode of correction ; it was probably from the beginning 
 of time as familiar in the nursery as it is at the present day, but never 
 has an attempt to make a literary use of it had half the success of 
 Grobianus; a success which, it must be confessed, seems to have 
 been due rather to the peculiar taste of the readers than to any merit 
 in the work itself. 
 
 We find, not without satisfaction, that its popularity was far 
 less in England than abroad. While the book was no doubt well 
 known in this country, we meet with but few allusions to it, and 
 even the translation into English which was published by one " R.F." 
 in 1605, under the title of The Schoole of Slovenrie: Or, Cato turnd 
 wrong side outward, seems to have attracted little attention. 
 
 From Dekker's preface to the Reader, we learn that he had at 
 one time, presumably before the above mentioned book was pub- 
 lished, meditated a complete translation of his own, but not greatly 
 liking the subject (or rather perhaps finding himself anticipated) he 
 "altered the shape, and of a Dutchman \i.e,, German] fashioned 
 a mere Englishman." 
 
 The correspondence is rather in general tone than in detail, 
 though there are many borrowings, especially in the early part of the 
 book ; but almost all that Is noteworthy — for example the chapter on 
 the behaviour of gallants in a theatre — is Dekker's own. And then 
 too there is a great difference between the Gull and Grobianus. The 
 latter Is a mere boor, the former is much more than this : he Is a 
 boor posing as a wit, a fool qualifying for a sharper, Dedekind's 
 work is for the most part merely disgusting ; it is concerned far more 
 with such personal matters as the cleanliness and control of the body 
 than with behaviour In society. From Grobianus an anthropologist 
 wishing to make himself familiar with the manners and customs of 
 natural man might conceivably learn something ; the historian who 
 desires to form an Idea of German society In the sixteenth century 
 will learn nothing or next to nothing. 
 
In order to give a general idea of the character of this work I 
 print in an appendix the first chapter of Book I from the translation 
 of 1605, this chapter being chosen as the one from which nearly all 
 Dekker's borrowings are taken. 
 
 A new translation of Grobianus, by R, Bull, appeared in 1739 
 under the title of Grobianus; or the Compleat Booby. It is dedicated to 
 Dean Swift, to whose style of irony as exemplified in his " Directions 
 to Servants " and " Polite Conversation " it bears no slight affinity, 
 at least in method if not in execution. 
 
 For an excellent account of the history of Grobianus see 
 Professor Herford's Literary Relations of England and Germany in the 
 Sixteenth Century ^ Chapter VII. _, 
 
 Editions. — The Gull's Hornbook was first published in 1609, 
 in quarto. There is no entry of it in the Stationers' Register. The 
 book was probably not among its author's most popular writings, 
 for, so far as is known, no other edition was published during his 
 lifetime ; indeed, if we except the publication next mentioned, it was 
 not reprinted for more than two hundred years. 
 
 In 1674 Dekker's book was re-issued with alterations intended 
 to bring it up to date, apparently as an original work, by one Sam. 
 Vincent. The title is The Toung Gallant's Academy, or. Directions how 
 he should behave himself in all Places and Company. Vincent prefixed 
 a long dedication in which he says " I have . . . followed the 
 humorous Tides of this Age, and like Democritus have fallen a 
 laughing at all the world, seeing it doth nothing but mock it self. 
 Sir, you have here the behaviour and Character of a Fop composed, 
 to shew the Apish Fashions, and ridiculous Humours and Conver- 
 sations of some of our Town-Gallants." 
 
 The changes made by Vincent are for the most part trifling, 
 consisting merely of such substitutions as "a Flaxen Peruke and a 
 pair of Pantaloons " for "a gilt spur and a ruflled boot," the fashions 
 of his day for those of Dekker's. But in two cases his revision is 
 
 vi. 
 
of interest : he omits altogether the chapter dealing with the conduct 
 of a "gull" in Paul's Walks, thus showing that, with Old St. Paul's, 
 the use of the sacred edifice as a general meeting-place of gallants 
 had passed away, and he rewrites a great part of the chapter on the 
 theatre, in order to bring it into accordance with the changed con- 
 ditions of the Restoration stage. 
 
 As Vincent's book is scarce, it seemed worth while to reprint this 
 chapter as an appendix. A comparison with Dekker's version will 
 show how much and in what way theatrical arrangements in the 
 second half of the seventeenth century differed from those of Shake- 
 speare's time. 
 
 To complicate the" imposture, Vincent prefixed an " Address to 
 the Reader" the first half of which is taken from Dekker's "Address" 
 before his News from Hell, and the rest from that prefixed to the same 
 author's Jest! to make you Merry. Vincent's share is but half a dozen 
 connecting words in the middle, and the concluding paragraph. 
 Whatever may be said of Vincent, he cannot have been wholly 
 ignorant of Jacobean literature. 
 
 The GulFs Hornbook was reprinted in modern spelling in 1 8 1 2, 1 
 under the editorship of Dr. Nott, who added an introduction ' 
 of twelve pages giving a life of the author and an elaborate list of his 
 works. Nott's annotations are very full, indeed, so full that 
 comparatively little has been left to be done by the present editor. 
 The text is on the whole very correct. 
 
 This edition having been issued at a high price (;^i. i6s.), for 
 subscribers only, was difficvilt to obtain, and in 1862 a cheap reprint 
 of the text alone was published at Islington by William M'MuUen. 
 No editor's name is given, but as Mr. Hazlitt says, in his Handbook, 
 that in this year an edition was published by Halliwell, and as there 
 seems to have been no other, I presume that he was responsible for 
 it. Two changes proposed by Nott were adopted and a few 
 emendations suggested. 
 
 vii. 
 
Nott's text was again reprinted in 1872, under the editorship 
 of Charles Hindley, in the Old Book Collectors Miscellany, Part 7. 
 (Vol. II.). In this edition there are a certain number of notes, mostly 
 taken from the older edition. The statement that Nott's reprint had 
 been compared with the original is not borne out by the fact that his 
 errors remain uncorrected, even an important one in the first paragraph. 
 This edition is by no means to be relied on. 
 
 The work was again reprinted, this time in the spelling of the 
 original quarto, in Vol. II. of the edition of Dekker's Non-Dramatic 
 Works, issued by A. B. Grosart in 1 884. This text is, on the whole, 
 accurate, but is not entirely free from serious slips. A very few notes, 
 mosdy taken from Nott, are to be found in the Glossarial Index. 
 
 Finally, it is included, again in the old spelling, in Professor 
 Saintsbury's Elizabethan i^ Jacobean Pamphlets (The Pocket Library of 
 English Literature), 1892. The notes are few and without importance. 
 
 In the present edition the spelling and punctation have been 
 modernised, as also the use of capital letters and italics. The British 
 Museum copy of the edition of 1609 (C. 27. b. 23) has been used 
 as the basis of the text. 
 
 It should be mentioned that a large' number of the explanations 
 in the glossary have been taken from Dr. Nott's edition ; it has not, 
 however, been thought necessary to distinguish them as his when 
 they contain only such matter as may be found in the ordinary books 
 of reference. Further, those notes to which! his name is attached 
 have, in several cases, been shortened ; and it has been necessary to 
 omit a large amount of illustrative material, some of it, indeed, 
 bearing rather remotely on the subject, which is to be found in his 
 edition. The Gull's Hornbook is one of those works the full anno- 
 tation of which would require a space many times as great as that 
 occupied by the text itself. 
 
 The initial letters to the several chapters are reproduced from 
 Nott's edition. 
 
 vni. 
 
THE GULS 
 
 Horne-booke: 
 
 Stultorum plena sunt omnia. 
 Al Sauio meza parola, 
 Basta. 
 
 By T. Deckar. 
 
 Imprinted at London for R.S,, 1609. 
 
Co all (^WilUL^ in jjeneral. 
 
 HOM can I choose, my most worthy 
 Maecen-asses, to be patrons to this labour 
 of mine fitter than yourselves? Your 
 hands are ever open, your purses never 
 shut; so that you stand not in the com- 
 mon rank of dry-fisted patrons who give 
 nothing, for you give all. Scholars, 
 therefore, are as much beholden to you 
 as vintners, players, and punks are. Those three trades gain by 
 you more than usurers do by thirty in the hundred : you spend 
 the wines of the one, you make suppers for the other, and 
 change your gold into white money with the third. Who 
 is more liberal than you ? Who, but only citizens, are 
 more free ? Blame me not, therefore, if I pick you out from 
 the bunch of book-takers, to consecrate these fruits of my 
 brain, which shall never die, only to you. I know that most 
 of you, O admirable Gulls ! can neither write nor read. A 
 Hornbook have I invented, because I would have you well 
 schooled. Paul's is your walk, but this your guide : if it lead 
 you right, thank me; if astray, men will bear with your errors, 
 because you are Gulls. Farewell. 
 
 T.D. 
 
Co t!)e lEleaDer* 
 
 ENTLE reader, I could willingly be 
 content that thou shouldst neither be at 
 cost to buy this book, nor at the labour 
 to read it. It is not my ambition to be 
 a man in print thus, every term : Ad 
 prelum tanquam ad prcelium ; we should 
 come to the press as we come to the 
 field, seldom. This tree of Gulls was 
 planted long since ; but not taking root, could never bear till 
 now. It hath a relish of Qiobianism, and tastes very strongly 
 of it in the beginning: the reason thereof is, that, having trans- 
 lated many books of that into English verse, and not greatly 
 liking the subject, I altered the shape, and of a Dutchman 
 fashioned a mere Englishman. It is a table wherein are drawn 
 sundry pictures: the colours are fresh; if they be well laid on, 
 I think my workmanship well bestowed; if ill, so much the 
 better, because I draw the pictures only of Gulls. 
 
 T.D. 
 
Cl)e Cl)apter0 contatneti in tf^is 20oofe- 
 
 HAP. I. T'/ie Old world and the New 
 weighed together. T'he 'Tailors of those 
 times and these compared. The Apparel 
 and Diet of our first fathers. 
 
 Chap. 2. How a young Gallant shall not 
 
 only keep his clothes (which many of them 
 
 can hardly do) from Brokers; but also save 
 
 the charges of taking physic ; with other 
 
 Rules for the Morning. The praise of Sleep., and of Going Naked. 
 
 Chap. 3. How a Gallant should warm himself by the fire ; 
 how attire himself. "Description of a Man's Head. The 
 praise of Long Hair. 
 
 Chap. 4. How a Gallant should behave himself in PauPs Walks. 
 
 How a Gallant should behave himself in an Ordinary. 
 
 How a Gallant should behave himself in a Playhouse. 
 
 How a Gallant should behave himself in a Tavern. 
 
 How a Gallant is to behave himself passing through 
 
 Chap. 5 
 Chap. 6 
 Chap. 7 
 
 Chap. 8. 
 
 the City, at all hours of the night; and how to pass by any 
 Watch. 
 
THE GULL'S HORNBOOK 
 
 OR 
 
 FASHIONS TO PLEASE ALL SORTS OF GULLS 
 
 0jcooemtum> 
 
 SING, like the cuckoo in June, to be 
 laughed at. If therefore I make a scurvy 
 noise, and that my tunes sound unmusic- 
 ally; the ditty being altogether lame in 
 respect of the bad feet, and unhandsome 
 in regard of the worm-eaten fashion ; 
 you that have authority under the broad 
 seal of mouldy custom to be called the 
 "gentle audience," set your goodly great hands to my pardon: 
 or else, because I scorn to be upbraided that I profess to instruct 
 others in an art, whereof I myself am ignorant, do your worst; 
 choose whether you will let my notes have you by the ears, or no : 
 hiss, or give plaudities; I care not a nutgKell which of either: 
 you can neither shake our comic theatre with your stinking 
 breath of hisses, nor raise it with the thunderclaps of your 
 hands: up it goes, in dispetto delfato. The motley is bought ; 
 and a^coat with four elbows, for any one that will wear it, is 
 put to making, in defiance of the seven wise masters. For I 
 
have smelt out of the musty sheets of an old almanack, that, at 
 one time or other, even he that jets upon the neatest and sprucest 
 leather ; even he that talks all adage and apothegm ; even he 
 that will not have a wrinkle in his new satin suit, though his 
 mind be uglier than his face, and his face so illfavouredly made 
 that he looks at all times as if a toothdrawer were fumbling 
 about his gums ; with a thousand lame heteroclites more, 
 that cozen the world with a gilt spur and a ruffled boot ; 
 will be all glad to fit themselves in Will Sommer his ward- 
 robe, and be driven, like a Flemish hoy in foul weather, to 
 slip into our school, and take out a lesson. Tush ! Ccelum 
 petimus stultitid. All that are chosen constables for their wit 
 go not to heaven. 
 
 A fig therefore for the new-found college of critics. 
 You courtiers, that do nothing but sing the gam-ut a-re of 
 complimental courtesy, and, at the rustical behaviour of our 
 country muse, will screw forth worse faces than those which 
 God and the painter has bestowed upon you ; I defy your 
 perfumed scorn, and vow to poison your musk-cats, if their 
 civet excrement do but once play with my nose. You 
 ordinary Gulls, that, through a poor and silly ambition to be 
 thought you inherit the revenues of extraordinary wit, will 
 spend your shallow censure upon the most elaborate poem so 
 lavishly, that all the painted tablemen about you take you to 
 be heirs-apparent to rich Midas, that had more skill in 
 alchemy than Kelley with the philosopher's stone (for all 
 that he could lay his fingers on turned into beaten gold), dry 
 tobacco with my leaves, you good dry-brained polyprag- 
 monists, till your pipe-offices smoke with your pitifully- 
 stinking girds shot out against me. I conjure you, as you 
 
 8 
 
come of the right goose-caps, stain not your house ;/but when 
 at a new play you take up the twelvepenny room^ next the 
 stage, because the lords and you may seem to be hail-fellow- 
 well-met, there draw forth this book, read aloud, laugh aloud, 
 and play the antics, that all the garlic-mouthed stink_ards 
 may cry out : " Away with the fool ! " ) As for thee, Zoilus, 
 go hang thyself; and for thee, Momus, chew nothing but 
 hemlock, and spit nothing but the syrup of aloes upon my 
 papers, till thy very rotten lungs come forth for anger. I am 
 snake-proof; and though, with Hannibal, you bring whole 
 hogsheads of vinegar-railings, it is impossible for you to 
 quench or come over my Alpine resolution. I will sail 
 boldly and desperately alongst the shore of the Isle of Gulls ; 
 and in defiance of those terrible block-houses, their logger- 
 heads, make a true discovery of their wild, yet habitable, 
 country. 
 
 Sound an ^alarum th erefore, O thou_niy__csurageous 
 muse ! and"irke^a Dutch~cner make proclamation witK^thy 
 'drum : the effect of thine 0-yes being that if any man, 
 woman, or child, be he lord, be he loon, be he courtier, be 
 he carter, of the inns o' court, or inns of city, that hating, 
 from the bottom of his heart, all good manners and generous 
 education, is really in love, or rather doats on that excellent 
 country lady, innoc ent Simplic ity, being the first, fairest, and 
 chiefest chambermaid that our great-grandam Eve entertained 
 into service : or if any person aforesaid, longing to make a 
 voyage in the Ship of Fools, would venture all the wit that 
 his mother left him to live in the country of Gulls, Cockneys, 
 and Coxcombs ; to the intent that, haunting theatres, he may 
 sit there like a popinjay, only to learn play-speeches, which 
 
afterward may furnish the necessity of his bare knowledge to 
 maintain tabletalk ; or else, haunting taverns, desires to take 
 the Bacchanalian degrees, and to write himself in arte bibendi 
 magister; that at ordinaries would sit like Bias, and in the 
 streets walk like a braggart ; that on foot longs to go like a 
 French lackey, and on horseback rides like an English tailor: 
 or that from seven years and upward, till his dying day, has 
 a month's mind to have the Gull's Hornbook by heart ; by 
 which in time he may be promoted to serve any lord in 
 Europe, as his crafty Fool or his bawdy Jester ; yea, and to 
 be so dear to his lordship, as for the excellency of his fooling 
 to be admitted both to ride in coach with him, and to lie at 
 his very feet on a truckle-bed. Let all such (and I hope the 
 world has not left her old fashions, but there are ten thousand 
 such) repair hither. Never knock, you that strive to be 
 ninnyhammers ; but with your feet spurn open the door, 
 and enter into our school: you shall not need to buy books; 
 no, scorn to distinguish a B. from a battledore ; only look 
 that your ears be long enough to reach our rudiments, and 
 you are made for ever. It is by heart that I would have 
 you to con my lessons, and therefore be sure to have most 
 devouring stomachs. Nor be you terrified with an opinion 
 that our rules be hard and indigestible ; or that you shall 
 never be good graduates in these rare sciences of barbarism 
 and idiotism. Oh fie upon any man that carries that un- 
 godly mind ! Tush, tush ! U'arleton, Kemp, nor Singer, nor 
 all the litter of fools that now come drawling behind them, 
 never played the clowns more naturally than the arrantest 
 sot of you all shall, if he will but boil my instructions in 
 his brainpan. 
 
 ID 
 
And lest I myself, like some pedantical vicar stammering 
 out a most false and cracked Latin oration to master Mayor 
 of the town and his brethren, should cough and hem in my de- 
 liveries; by which means you, my auditors, should be in danger 
 to depart more like woodcocks than when you came to me: O 
 thou venerable father of ancient, and therefore hoary, customs, 
 Silvanus, I invoke thy assistance ; thou that first taughtest 
 carters to wear hobnails, and lobs to play Christmas gambols 
 and to shew the most beastly horse-tricks ! O do thou, or 
 if thou art not at leisure let thy mountebank goat-footed 
 Fauni, inspire me with the knowledge of all those silly and 
 ridiculous fashions, which the old dunstical world wore even 
 out at elbows ; draw for me the pictures of the most simple 
 fellows then living, that by their patterns I may paint the 
 like ! Awake, thou noblest drunkard Bacchus : thou must 
 likewise stand to me, if at least thou canst for reeling ; teach 
 me, you sovereign skinker, how to take the Germanics' upsy- ^ 
 freeze, the Danish rowsa,'the Switzer's stoop of Rhenish, the 
 Italian's parmizant, the Englishman's healths, his hoops, cans, 
 half-cans, gloves, frolics, and flapdragons, together with the 
 most notorious qualities of the truest tosspots, as when to 
 cast, when to quarrel, when to fight, and where to sleep: 
 hide not a drop of thy moist mystery from me, thou plumpest 
 swill-bowl; but like an honest red-nosed wine-bibber lay 
 open all thy secrets, arid the mystical hieroglyphic of rashers 
 o' th' coals, modicums, and shoeing-hdrns, and why they 
 were invented, for what occupations, and when to be used. 
 Thirdly, (because I will have more than two strings to my bow) 
 Comus, thou clerk of Gluttony's kitchen, do thou also bid 
 me " Preface ! " and let me not rise from table, till I am perfect 
 
 1 1 
 
in all the general rules of epicures and cormorants : fatten 
 thou my brains, that I may feed others; and teach them both 
 how to squat down to their meat ; and how to munch so 
 like loobies, that the wisest Solon in the world shall not be 
 able to take them for any other. Jlf there be any strength in 
 thee, thou beggarly monarch of Indians and setter-up of 
 rotten-lunged chimneysweepers, Tobacco, I beg it at thy 
 smoky hands ; make me thine adopted heir, that inheriting 
 the virtues of thy whiffs I may distribute them amongst all 
 nations ; and make the fantastic Englishmen, above the rest, 
 more cunning in the distinction of thy roll Trinidado, leaf, 
 and pudding, than the whitest-toothed blackamore in all 
 Asia, j After thy pipe shall ten thousands be taught to dance, 
 if thou wilt but discover to me the sweetness of thy snuffs, 
 with the manner of spawling, slavering, spitting and drive- 
 ling in all places, and before all persons. Oh what songs will 
 I charm out, in praise of those valiantly strong-stinking 
 breaths, which are easily purchased at thy hands, if I can but 
 get thee to travel through my nose ! All the " Fobs ! " in the 
 fairest lady's mouth that ever kissed lord shall not fright me 
 from thy brown presence : for thou art humble ; and from 
 the courts of princes hast vouchsafed to be acquainted with 
 pejiny galleries ; and, like a good fellow, to be drunk for 
 company, with watermen, carmen, and colliers ; whereas 
 before, and so still, knights and wise gentlemen were, and are, 
 thy companions. Last of all, thou lady of clowns and carters, 
 schoolmistress of fools and wiseacres, thou homely but harm- 
 less Rusticity, Oh breathe thy dull and dunstical spirit into 
 our gander's quill ! Crown me thy poet — not with a garland 
 of bays — Oh no ! the number of those that steal lauret is too 
 
 12 
 
monstrous already — but swaddle thou my brows with those 
 unhandsome boughs, which, like Autumn's rotten hair, hang 
 dangling over thy dusty eyelids. Help me, thou midwife of 
 unmannerliness, to be delivered of this embryon that lies 
 tumbling in my brain. Direct me in this hard and dangerous 
 voyage, that, being safely arrived on the desired shore, I may 
 build up altars to thy unmatchable rudenes^; the excellency 
 whereof I know will be so great, that grOutnoUs and monies 
 will in swarms fly buzzing about thee. So Herculean a 
 labour is this that I undertake, that I am enforced to bawl 
 out for all your succours, to the intent I may aptly furnish 
 this feast of fools, unto which I solemnly invite all the world; 
 for at it shall sit not only those whom fortune favours, but 
 even those whose wits are naturally their own. Yet, because 
 your artificial fools bear away the bell, all our best workman- 
 ship, at this time, shall be spent to fashion such a creature. 
 
 13 
 
C?)apfer t 
 
 I'he Old world and the New weighed together. 'The Tailors 
 of those times and these compared. The Apparel and Diet 
 of our first fathers. 
 
 OOD clothes are the embroidered trapp- 
 ings of pride, and good cheer the very 
 e'ryngp-root of gluttony ; so that fine 
 backs and fat bellies are coach-horses 
 to two of the seven deadly sins ; in the 
 boots of which coach Lechery and 
 Sloth sit like the waiting maid. In a 
 most desperate state therefore do tailors 
 and cooks stand, by means of their offices ; for both those 
 trades are apple-squires to that couple of sins. The one 
 invents more fantastic fashions than France hath worn 
 since her first stone was laid ; the other more lickerish 
 epicurean dishes than were ever served up to Gallonius' table. 
 Did man, think you, come wrangling into the world about 
 no better matters, than all his lifetime to make privy searches 
 in Birchin lane for whalebone doublets, or for pies of night- 
 ingale tongues in Heliogabalus his kitchen ? No, no ! the 
 first suit of apparel that ever mortal man put on, came neither 
 from the mercer's shop, nor the merchant's warehouse : 
 
 15 
 
Adam's bill would have been taken then, sooner than a 
 knight's bond now ; yet was he great in nobody's books 
 for satin and velvets. The silkworms had something else to do 
 in those days than to set up looms and be free of the weavers : 
 his breeches were not so much worth as King Stephen's, 
 that cost but a poor noble ; for Adam's holiday hose and 
 doublet were of no better stuff than plain fig-leaves, and Eve's 
 best gown of the same piece; there went but a pair of shears 
 between them. An antiquary in this town has yet some of 
 the powder of those leaves dried to show. Tailors then were 
 none of the twelve companies : their hall, that now is larger 
 than some dorpes among the Netherlands, was then no bigger 
 than a Dutch butcher's shop : they durst not strike down 
 their customers with large bills : Adam cared not an apple- 
 paring for all their lousy hems. There was then neither the 
 Spanish slop, nor the skipper's galligaskin, the Switzer's 
 blistered codpiece, nor the Danish sleeve sagging down like 
 a Welsh wallet, the Italian's close strosser, nor the French 
 standing collar: your treble-quadruple d^dalian ruffs, nor your 
 stiffnecked rabatos, that have more arches for pride to row 
 under, than can stand under five London bridges, durst not 
 then set themselves out in print ; for the patent for starch 
 could by no means be signed. Fashions then was counted 
 a disease — and horses died of it : but now, thanks to folly, it 
 is held the only rare physic ; and the purest golden asses 
 live upon it. 
 
 As for the diet of that Saturnian age, it was like their 
 attire, homely. A salad, and a mess of leek-porridge was 
 a dinner for a far greater man than ever the Turk was. 
 Potato-pies and custards stood like the sinful suburbs of 
 
 i6 
 
cookery, and had not a wall so much as a handful high built 
 round about them. There were no Daggers then, nor no 
 Chairs. Crookes his ordinary, in those parsimonious days, 
 had not a capon's leg to throw at a dog. O golden world ! 
 The suspicious Venetian carved not his meat with a silver 
 pitchfork, neither did the sweet-toothed Englishman shift a 
 dozen of trenchers at one meal ; Piers Ploughman laid the 
 cloth, and Simplicity brought in the voider. How wonder- 
 fully is the world altered ! And no marvel, for it has lien 
 sick almost five thousand years ; so that it is no more like 
 the old theatre du monde, than old Paris Garden is like the 
 king's Garden at Paris. 
 
 What an excellent workman therefore were he, that 
 could cast the Globe of it into a new mould : and not to 
 make it look like MuUineux his globe, with a round face 
 sleeked and washed over with whites of eggs ; but to have 
 it in piano, as it was at first, with all the ancient circles, lines, 
 parallels, and figures ; representing indeed all the wrinkles, 
 cracks, crevices, and flaws that (like the mole on Helen's 
 cheek, being cos amoris^ stuck upon it at the first creation, 
 and made it look most lovely : but now those furrows are 
 filled up with ceruse and vermilion ; yet all will not do, it 
 appears more ugly. Come, come ; it would be but a bald 
 world, but that it wears a periwig ; the body of it is foul, 
 like a birding-piece, by being too much heated ; the breath 
 of it stinks like the mouths of chambermaids by feeding on 
 so many sweetmeats : and, though to purge it will be a sorer 
 labour than the cleansing of Augeas' stable, or the scouring 
 of Moorditch, yet Ille ego qui quondam ; I am the Pasquil's 
 madcap that will do't. 
 
 c 17 
 
Draw near, therefore, all you that love to walk upon 
 single and simple soles ; and that wish to keep company 
 with none but innocents, and the sons of civil citizens ; out 
 with your tables ; and nail your ears, as it were to the pillory, 
 to the music of our instructions : nor let that title Gullery 
 fright you from school, for mark what an excellent ladder 
 you are to climb by. How many worthy, and men of famous 
 memory for their learning (of all offices, from the scavenger, 
 and so upward) have flourished in London of that ancient 
 family of the Wiseacres, being now no better esteemed than 
 fools and younger brothers ? This gear 'must be looked into ; 
 lest in time (O lamentable time, when that hourglass is 
 turned up !) a rich man's son shall no sooner peep out of the 
 shell of his minority, but he shall straightways be begged 
 for a concealment, or set upon, as it were, by freebooters, 
 and ta'en in his own purse-nets by fencers and conycatchers. 
 To drive which pestilent infection from the heart, here's 
 a medicine more potent, and more precious, than was ever 
 that mingle-mangle, of drugs which Mithridates boiled 
 together. Fear not to taste it ; a caudle will not go down 
 half so smoothly as this will ; you need not call the honest 
 name of it in question ; for antiquity puts off his cap, and 
 makes a bare oration in praise of the virtues of it : the 
 receipt hath been subscribed unto, by all those that have had 
 to do with simples, with this moth-eaten nxotlo, pro batum est. 
 Your Diacatholicon aureum, that with gunpowder threatens to 
 blow up all diseases that come in his way, smells worse than 
 asafoetida in respect of this. You therefore whose bodies, 
 either overflowing with the corrupt humours of this age's 
 fantasticness, or else being burnt up with the inflamation of 
 
 i8 
 
upstart fashions, would fain be purged ; and, to shew that 
 you truly loath this polluted and mangy-fisted world, turn 
 Timonists, not caring either for men or their manners ; do 
 you pledge me : spare not to take a deep draught of our 
 homely counsel : the cup is full ; and so large, that I boldly 
 drink, a health unto all comers. 
 
 19 
 
Cjjapter it 
 
 How a young Gallant shall not only keep his clothes (which many 
 of them can hardly do for Brokers) ; but also save the charges 
 of taking physic ; with other Rules for the Morning. T'he praise 
 of Sleep, and of Going Naked. 
 
 B 
 
 
 
 
 OU have heard all this while nothing 
 but the prologue, and seen no more 
 but a dumb show : our vetus comcedia 
 steps out now. The fittest stage upon 
 which you, that study to be an actor 
 there, are first to present yourself, is, in 
 my approved judgement, the softest and 
 largest down-bed; from whence, if you 
 will but take sound counsel of your pillow, you shall never 
 rise, till you hear it ring noon at least. Sleep, in the name 
 of Morpheus, your bellyful ; ot, rather, sleep till you hear 
 your belly grumbles and waxeth empty. Care not for those 
 coarse painted-cloth rhymes made by the university of Salerne, 
 that come over you with : 
 
 Sit brevis, aut nullus, tibi somnus meridianus. 
 Short let thy sleep at noon be, 
 Or rather let it none be. 
 Sweet candied counsel ! But there's ratsbane under it. 
 Trust never a Bachelor of Art of them all ; for he speaks 
 
 21 
 
your health fair, but to steal away the maidenhead of it. 
 Salerne stands in the luxurious country of Naples ; and who 
 knows not that the Neapolitan will, like Derick the hang- 
 man, embrace you with one arm, and rip your guts with the 
 other ? There's not a hair in his mustachio but, if he kiss 
 you, will stab you through the cheeks like a poniard : the 
 slave, to be avenged on his enemy, will drink off a pint of 
 poison himself, so that he may be sure to have the other 
 pledge him but half so much. And it may be, that, upon 
 some secret grudge to work the general destruction of all 
 mankind, those verses were composed. Physicians, I know, 
 and none else took up the bucklers in their defence ; railing 
 bitterly upon that venerable and princely custom of long- 
 lying-abed. Yet, now I remember me, I cannot blame them; 
 for they which want ,sleep, which is man's natural rest, 
 become either mere naturals, or else fall into the doctor's 
 hands, and so consequently into the Lord's : whereas he that 
 snorts profoundly scorns to let Hippocrates himself stand 
 tooting on his urinal, and thereby saves the charges of a 
 groat's-worth of physic : and happy is that rnan that saves 
 it ; for physic is non minus "Penefica quam benefica ; it hath an 
 ounce of gall in it for every dram of honey. Ten Tyburns 
 cannot turn men over the perch so fast as one of these brewers 
 of purgations ; the very nerves of their practice being nothing 
 but ars homicidiorum, an art to make poor souls kick up their 
 heels ; insomuch, that even their sick grunting patients stand| 
 in more danger of Mr. Doctor and his drugs, than of all the 
 cannon-shots which the desperate disease itself can discharge 
 against them. Send them packing therefore, to walk like 
 Italian mountebanks ; beat not your brains to understand 
 
 22 
 
their parcel-greek, parcel-latin gibberish ; let not all their 
 sophistical buzzing into your ears, nor their satirical canvassing 
 of featherbeds, and tossing men out of their warm blankets, 
 awake you till the hour that here is prescribed. 
 
 For do but consider what an excellent thing sleep is : 
 it is so inestimable a jewel, that, if a tyrant would give his 
 crown for an hour's slumber, it cannot be bought : of so 
 beautiful a shape is it, that, though a man lie with an 
 empress, his heart cannot be at quiet till he leaves her em- 
 bracements to be at rest with the other : yea, so greatly 
 indebted are we to this kinsman of death, that we owe the 
 better tributary half of our life to him ; and there's good 
 cause why we should do so, for sleep is that golden chain 
 that ties health and our bodies together. Who complains 
 of want, of wounds, of cares, of great men's oppressions, of 
 captivity, whilst he sleepeth ? Beggars in their beds lake as 
 rm]5l)..plearSttfe--asL_kings. Can we therefore surfeit on this 
 delicate ambrosia? CSiTwe drink too much of that, whereof 
 to taste too little tumbles us into a churchyard ; and to use 
 it but indifferently throws us into Bedlam ? No, no ! Look 
 upon Endymion, the Moon's minion, who slept threescore 
 and fifteen years ; and was not a hair the worse for it. Can 
 lying abed till noon then, being not the threescore and 
 fifteenth thousand part of his nap, be hurtful? 
 
 Besides, by the opinion of all philosophers and phy-, 
 sicians, it is not good to trust the air with our bodies till the 
 sun with his flame-coloured wings hath fanned away the 
 misty smoke of the morning, and refined that thick tobacco- 
 breath which the rheumatic night throws abroad of purpose 
 to put out the eye of the element : which work questionless 
 
 23 
 
cannot be perfectly finished, till the sun's car-horses stand 
 prancing on the very top of highest noon ; so that then, and 
 not till then, is the most healthful hour to be stirring. 
 Do you require examples to persuade you ? At what time do 
 lords and ladies use to rise, but then? Your simpering 
 merchants' wives are the fairest liers in the world ; and is 
 not eleven o'clock their common hour? They find, no 
 doubt, unspeakable sweetness in such lying ; else they would 
 not day by day put it so in practice. In a word, midday 
 slumbers are golden : they make the body fat, the skin fair, 
 the flesh plump, delicate, and tender: they set a russet colour 
 on the cheeks of young women, and make lusty courage to 
 rise up in men : they make us thrifty ; both in sparing 
 victuals, for breakfasts thereby are saved from the hell-mouth 
 of the belly ; and in preserving apparel, for whilst we warm 
 us in our beds our clothes are not worn. 
 
 The casements of thine eyes being then at this com- 
 mendable time of the day newly set open, choose rather to 
 have thy windpipe cut in pieces than to salute any man. 
 Bid not good-morrow so much as to thy father, though he be 
 an emperor. An idle ceremony it is, and can do him little 
 good ; to thyself it may bring much harm : for if he be a 
 wise man that knows how to hold his peace, of necessity 
 must he be counted a fool that cannot keep his tongue. 
 
 Amongst all the wild men that run up and down in this 
 wide forest of fools, the world, none are more superstitious 
 than those notable Ebritians, the Jews : yet a Jew never 
 wears his cap threadbare with putting it off; never bends 
 i' th' hams with casting away a leg; never cries : "God save 
 you ! " though he sees the devil at your elbow. Play the 
 
 24 
 
Jews therefore in this, and save thy lips that labour : only 
 remember, that, so soon as thy eyelids be unglued, thy first 
 exercise must be, either sitting upright on thy pillow, or 
 rarely lolling at thy body's whole length, to yawn, to stretch, 
 and to gape wider than any oyster-wife ; for thereby thou 
 dost not only send out the lively spirits, like vaunt-couriers, 
 to fortify and make good the uttermost borders of the body ; 
 but also, as a cunning painter, thy goodly lineaments are 
 drawn out in their fairest proportion. 
 
 This lesson being played, turn over a new leaf; and, 
 unless that Freezeland cur, cold winter, offer to bite thee, 
 walk awhile up and down thy chamber, either in thy thin 
 shirt only, or else (which, at a bare word, is both more 
 decent and more delectable) strip thyself stark naked. Are we 
 not born so ? And shall a foolish custom make us to break 
 the laws of our creation ? Our first parents, so long as they 
 went naked, were suffered to dwell in paradise ; but, after 
 they got coats to their backs, they were turned out o' doors. 
 Put on therefore either no apparel at all, or put it on 
 carelessly : for look how much more delicate liberty is than 
 bondage ; so much is the looseness in wearing of our attire 
 above the imprisonment of being neatly and tailor-like dressed 
 up in it. To be ready in our clothes is to be ready for 
 nothing else : a man looks asjfji^e hung in chains, or like 
 a scarecrow. And as those excellent birds, whom Pliny 
 could never have the wit to catch in all his springes, com- 
 monly called woodcocks, whereof there is great store in 
 England, having all their feathers plucked from their backs, 
 and being turned out as naked as Plato's cock was before all 
 Diogenes his scholars, or as the cuckoo in Christmas, are 
 
 25 
 
more fit to come to any knight's board, and are indeed more 
 serviceable, than when they are lapped in their warm liveries ; 
 even so stands the case with man. Truth, because the bald- 
 pate her father, Time, has no hair to cover his head, goes, 
 when she goes best, stark naked ; but Falsehood has ever a 
 cloak for the rain. You see likewise, that the lion, being 
 the king of beasts ; the horse, being the lustiest creature ; 
 the unicorn, whose horn is worth half a city ; all these go 
 with no more clothes on their backs, than what nature hath 
 bestowed upon them; but your baboons, and your jackanapes, 
 being the scum and rascality of all the hedge-creepers, they 
 go in jerkins and mandilions,. Marry how? They are put 
 into these rags only in mockery. 
 
 Oh beware therefore both what you wear, and how you 
 wear it ; and let this heavenly reason move you never to be 
 handsome ! For, when the sun is arising out of his bed, 
 does not the element seem more glorious then, being only 
 in gray, than at noon, when he's in all his bravery ? It were 
 'madness to deny it. What man would not gladly see a 
 beautiful woman naked, or at least with nothing but a lawn, 
 or some loose thing over her ; and even highly lift her up 
 for being so ? Shall we then abhor that in ourselves, which 
 we admire and hold to be so excellent in others ? Absit. 
 
 26 
 
Cljapter in* 
 
 How a young Gallant should warm himself by the Jire ; how 
 attire himself. 'The description of a Man's Head : the praise 
 of Long Hair. 
 
 UT if, as it often happens unless the 
 year catch the sweating sickness, the 
 morning, hke charity waxing cold, 
 thrust his frosty fingers into thy bosom, 
 pinching thee black and blue with her 
 nails made of ice, like an invisible 
 goblin ; so that thy teeth, as if thou 
 wert singing prick§jpng, stand coldly 
 quavering in thy head, and leap up and down like the nimble 
 jacks of a pair of virginals ; be then as swift as a whirlwind, 
 and as boisterous in tossing all thy clothes in a rude heap 
 together ; with which bundle filling. thine arms, step bravely 
 forth, crying: "Room! What a coil keep you about the fire!" 
 The more are set round about it, the more is thy com- 
 mendation, if thou either bluntly ridest over their shoulders, 
 or tumblest aside their stools to creep into the chimney- 
 corner: there toast thy body till thy scorched shin be speckled 
 all over, being stained with more motley colours than are 
 to be seen on the right side of the rainbow. 
 
 27 
 
Neither shall it be fit for the state of thy health to put 
 on thy apparel, till, by sitting in that hothouse of the 
 chimney, thou feelest the fat dew of jhy_body^Jike. basting, 
 run trickling down thy si des^' ibf by that means thou mSyst 
 lawfiilly~~boast7 that thou livest.by the sweat of thy b rows. 
 
 At for thy stockings and shoes; so wear them, that all 
 pien may point at thee, and make thee fameu«~-byLjiiat 
 ^glorious name of a malcontent.. Or, if thy quicksilver can 
 Vun so far on thy errand as to fetch thee boots out of 
 St. Martin's, let it be thy prudence to have the tops of them 
 wide as the mouth of a wallet, and those with fringed boot- 
 hose over them to hang down to thy ankles. Doves are 
 accounted innocent and loving creatures ; thou, in observing 
 this fashion, shalt seem to be a rough-footed .dove, anc^ be 
 lield as innocent. Besides, the strawling, which^of necessity 
 so much leather between thy legs must put thee into, will 
 be thought not to grow from thy disease, but from that 
 gentlemanlike habit. 
 
 Having thus apparelled thee from top to toe, according 
 to that simple fashion, which the best goosecaps in Europe 
 strive to imitate ; it is now high time for me to have a blow 
 at thy head, which I will not cut off with sharp documents, 
 but rather set it on faster ; bestowing upon it such excellent 
 carving, that, if all the wise men of Gotham should lay their 
 heads together, their jobbernowls should not be able to 
 compare with thine. " 
 
 To maintain therefore that sconce of thine strongly 
 guarded and in good reparation, never suffer comb tO' fasten 
 his teeth there : let thy hair grow thick and bushy, like a 
 forest or some wilderness ; lest those six-footed creatures that 
 
 28 
 
breed in it, and are tenants to that crown-land of thine, be 
 hunted to death by every base barbarous barber ; and so that 
 delicate and tickling pleasure of scratching be utterly taken 
 from thee : for the head is a house built for reason to dwell 
 in, and thus is the tenement framed. The two eyes are the 
 glass windows, at which light disperses itself into every room, 
 having goodly penthouses of hair to overshadow them : as 
 for thejoQse ; though some, most injuriously and improperly, 
 make it serve for an Indian chimney ; yet surely it is rightly 
 a bridge with two arches, under which are neat passages to 
 convey as well perfumes to air and sweeten every chamber, 
 as to carry away all noisome filth that is swept out of unclean 
 corners : the cherry lips open, like the new-painted gates of a 
 Lord Mayor's house, to take in provision: the tongue is a bell, 
 hanging just under the middle of the roof; and, lest it should 
 be rung out too deep (as sometimes it is when women have 
 a peal, whereas it was cast by the first founder but only to 
 toll softly) there are two even rows of ivory pegs, like pales, 
 set to keep it in : the ears are two music-rooms, into which 
 as well good sounds as bad descend down two narrow pair 
 of stairs, that for all the world have crooked windings like 
 those that lead to the top of Paul's steeple ; and, because 
 when the tunes are once gotten in, they should not too 
 quickly slip out, all the walls of both places are plastered 
 with yellow wax round about them. Now as the fairest 
 lodging, though it be furnished with walls, chimnies, cham- 
 bers, and all other parts of architecture, yet, if the ceiling be 
 wanting, it stands subject to rain, and so consequently to ruin; 
 so would this goodly palace, which we have modelled out 
 unto you, be but a cold and bald habitation, were not the 
 
 29 
 
top of it rarely covered. Nature therefore has played the tiler, 
 and given it a most curious covering ; or, to speak more 
 properly, she has thatched it all over ; and that thatching is 
 hair. If then thou desirest to reserve that fee-simple of wit, 
 thy head, for thee and the lawful heirs of thy body ; play 
 neither the scurvy part of the Frenchman, that plucks up all 
 by the roots ; nor that of the spending Englishman, who, to 
 maintain a paltry warren of unprofitable conies, d:isimp,arks 
 the stately swift-footed wild deer : but let thine receive his 
 full growth, that thou mayest safely and wisely brag 'tis thine 
 own bush natural. 
 
 And withal consider ; that, as those trees of cobweb 
 lawn, woven by spinners the fresh May-mornings, do dress 
 the curled heads of the mountains, and adorn the swelling 
 bosoms of the valleys ; or, as those snowy fleeces, which the 
 naked briar steals from the innocent nibbling sheep, to make 
 himself a warm winter livery, are to either of them both an 
 excellent ornament : so make thou account, that, to have 
 feathers sticking here and there on thy head will embellish, 
 and set thy crown out rarely. None dare upbraid thee, that 
 like a beggar thou hast lien on straw, or like a travelling 
 pedlar upon musty flocks ; for those feathers will rise up as 
 witnesses to choke him that says so, and to prove that thy 
 bed was of the softest down. 
 
 When your noblest gallants consecrate their hours to 
 their mistresses and to revelling, they wear feathers then 
 chiefly in their hats, being one of the fairest ensigns of their 
 bravery : but thou, a reveller and a mistress-server all the 
 year, by wearing feathers in thy hair ; whose length before 
 the rigorous edge of any puritanical pair of scissors should 
 
 3° 
 
shorten the breadth of a finger, let the three housewifely 
 spinsters of destiny rather curtail the thread of thy life. 
 Oh, no ! L ong hair is the only net that women spread aj)roadl 
 t o entrap men in : and why should not men be as far abovej 
 women in that commodity, as they go beyond men in others ?i 
 The merry Greeks were called KaptiKo/nowvrsg (long-haired). 
 Lose not thou, being an honest Trojan, that honour ; sithence 
 it will more fairly become thee. Grass is the hair of the 
 earth, which, so long as it is suffered to grow, it becomes 
 the wearer, and carries a most pleasing colour ; but when 
 the sunburnt clown makes his mows at it, and like a barber 
 shaves it off to the stumps ; then it withers, and is good for 
 nothing but to be trussed up and thrown amongst jades. 
 IJo w ug lYJS-Jwbald pate ! : Jt looks like a face wanting^j^nose, 
 or like ground eaten bare with th^'arTows-of-aTChers': whereas 
 a head all hid in hair gives even to a most wicked face a 
 sweet proportion, and looks like a meadow newly married to 
 the spring ; which beauty in men the Turks envying, they no 
 sooner lay hold on a Christian, but the first mark they set 
 upon him, to make him know he's a slave, is to shave off all 
 his hair close to the skull. A Mahommedan cruelty, there- 
 fore, is it to stuff breeches and tennis-balls with that, which, 
 when 'tis once lost, all the hare-hunters in the world may 
 sweat their hearts out, and yet hardly catch it again. 
 
 You then, to whom chastity has given an heir apparent, 
 take order that it may be apparent ; and, to that purpose, 
 let it play openly with the lascivious wind, even on the top 
 of your shoulder;|g^ . Experience cries out in every city, that 
 those selfsame efiticaFSaturhists, whose hair is shorter than 
 their eyebrows, take a pride to have their hoary beards hang 
 
 31 
 
slavering like a dozen of fox-tails down so low as their 
 middle. But, alas, why should the chins and lips of old men 
 lick up that excrement, which they violently clip away from 
 the heads of young men ? Is it because those long besoms, 
 their beards, with sweeping the soft bosoms of their beautiful 
 young wives, may tickle their tender breasts, and make some 
 amends for their masters' unrecoverable dulness ? No, no ! 
 There hangs more at the ends of those long grey hairs, than 
 all the world can come to the knowledge of. Certain I am, 
 that, when none but the golden age went current upon earth, 
 it was higher treason to clip hair, than to clip money ; the 
 comb and scissors were condemned to the currying of 
 hackneys ; he was disfranchised for ever, that did but put on 
 a barber's apron. Man, woman, and child wore then hair 
 longer than a lawsuit : every head, when it stood bare or un- 
 covered, looked like a butter-box's noul, having his thrummed 
 cap on. It was free for all nations to have shaggy pates, as 
 it is now only for the Irishman. But, since this polling and 
 shaving world crept up, locks were locked up, and hair fell 
 to decay. Revive thou, therefore, the old, buried fashion ; 
 and, in scorn of periwigs and sheepshearing, keep thou that 
 quilted head-piece on continually. Long hair will make 
 thee look dreadfully to thine enemies, and manly to thy 
 friends : it is, in peace, an ornament ; in war, a strong helmet : 
 it blunts the edge of a sword, and deads the leaden thump 
 of a bullet : in winter, it is a warm nightcap ; in summer, 
 a cooling fan of feathers. 
 
 32 
 
Cljapter tt). 
 
 How a Gallant should behave himself in Paurs Walks. 
 
 EING weary with sailing up and down 
 alongst these shores of Barbaria, here 
 let us cast our anchor, and nimbly leap 
 to land in our coasts, whose fresh air 
 shall be so much the more pleasing to 
 us, if the ninnyhammer, ivhose per- 
 fection we labour to set forth, have so 
 much foolish wit left him as to choose 
 the place where to sjick_ iij : for that true humorous gallant 
 that desires to pour hims§Jf, ,\nto. all, l^^shipns (if his ambition 
 
 ^' — ^ " ^ '^complimerit J itself ) J rnust , a^ \A " 
 
 raiks, as*^to be various in his sara 
 
 be such, to excel even 
 
 well 
 practise to diminish his walks, aslo be various in his safads, 
 •curious in his tobacco, or ingenious in the trussing up of a 
 new Scotch hose; all which virtues are excellent, and able 
 to maintain him ; especially if the old worm-eaten farmer, 
 his father, be dead^and left him five hundred a year, only 
 to keep an Irish noboyTan Irish horseboy, and himself like 
 a gentleman. He the/efore that would strive to fashion his 
 legs to his silk stockir\gs, and,, 
 garters, let him wliiff down these 
 once get but to walk by the book (and I see no reason but 
 he may, as well as fight by the book) Paul's may be proud of 
 
 his prqud gait to^his brpad^ 
 hese observations:' for, if he' 
 
 D 
 
 33 
 
him ; Will Clarke shall ring forth ehcomiums in his honour ; 
 John in Paul's churchyard shall fit his head for an excellent 
 block ; whilst all the inns of court rejoice to behold his most 
 handsome calf. ^ a 41 ^ \ 
 
 Your mediterranean aisle is the nthe only gallery, wherein 
 the pictures of all your true fashionate and cornplemental 
 Gulls are, and ought to be hung up. Into that gallery carry 
 your neat body ; but take heed you pick out such an hour, 
 when the main shoal of islanders are swimming up and down. 
 And first observe your doors of entrance, and your exit ; not 
 much unlike the players at the theatres ; keeping your 
 decorums, even in fantasticality. As for example : if you 
 prove to be a northern gentleman, I would wish you to pass 
 through the north door, more often especially than any or 
 the other ; and so, according to your countries, take note 
 of your entrances. 
 
 Now for your venturing into the walk. Be circumspect 
 and wary what pillar you come in at ; and take heed in any 
 case, as you love^tbe reputation of your honour, that you 
 avoid the serving-man'^^og,"'and approach not within five 
 fathom of that pillar ; but bend your course directly in the 
 middle line, that the whole body of the church may appear 
 to be yours ; where, in view of all, you may publish your 
 suit in what manner you affect most, either with the slide 
 of your cloak from the one shoulder — and then you must, as 
 'twere in anger, suddenly snatch at the middle of the inside, 
 if it be taffeta at the least, and so by that means your costly 
 lining is betrayed ; or else by the pretty advantage of com- 
 pliment. But one note by the way do I especially woo you 
 to, the neglect of which makes many of our gallants cheap 
 
 34 
 
and ordinary, that by no means you be seen above four turns; , 
 but in the fifth make yourself away, either in some of the 
 sempstersl shops, the new tobacco-office, or amongst the book- 
 sellers,^ where, if you cannot read, exercise your smoke, and 
 inquire who has writ against this divine weed, &c. For this 
 withdrawing yourself a little will much benefit your suit, 
 which else, by too long walking, would be.. stale tcj, the whole 
 spectators: but howsoever, ifPaul'sJaCKS' De''orice up with 
 their elbows, and quarrelling to strike eleven ; as soon as ever 
 the clock has parted them,, and ended the fray with his 
 hammer, let not the. Duke's g;allef"y fcontain you any longer, 
 but pass away apace in open view : in which departure, if by 
 chance you either encounter, or aloof off throw your inquisi- 
 tive eye upon any knight or squire, being your familiar, salute 
 him not by his name of Sir such a one, or so ; but call him 
 Ned, or Jack, &c. This will set off your estimation with 
 great men : and if, though there be a dozen companies 
 between you, 'tis the better, he call aloud to you, for that's 
 most genteel, to know where he shall find you at two o'clock; 
 tell him at such an ordinary, or such ; and be sure to name 
 those that are dearest, and whither none but your gallants 
 resort. After dinner you may appear again, having translated 
 yourself out of your English cloth cloak into a light Turkey 
 grogram, if you have that happiness of shifting ; and then be 
 seen, for a turn or two, to correct your teeth with some 
 quill or silver instrument, and to cleanse your gums with a 
 wrought handkercher : it skills not whether you dined, or 
 no — that's best known to your stomach — or in what place 
 you dined ; though it were with cheese, of your own mother's 
 making, in your chamber or study. 
 
 35 
 
Now if you chance to be a gallant not much crossed 
 among citizens; that is, a gallant in the mercer's books, 
 exalted for satins and velvets ; if you be not so much blest 
 to be crossed (as I hold it the greatest blessing in the world 
 to be great in no man's books), your Paul's walk is your only 
 refuge : the Duke's tomb is a sanctuary, and will keep you 
 alive from worms, and land-rats, that long to be feeding on 
 your carcass : there you may spend your legs in winter a 
 whole afternoon ; converse, plot, laugh, and talk anything ; 
 jest at your creditor, even to his face ; and in the evening, 
 even by lamp-light,, steal out, and so cozen a whole covey of 
 abominable catchpole^.' ■ ;\ ' ' '"' 
 
 Never be seen to mount the steps jijto the choir, but 
 upon a high festival-day, to prefer the fashion of your doublet ; 
 and especially if the singing-boys seem to take note of you ; 
 for they are able to buzz your praises above their anthems, 
 if their voices have not lost their maidenheads : but be sure 
 your silver spurs dog your heels, and then the boys will swarm 
 about you like so many white butterflies ; when you in the 
 open choir shall draw forth a perfumed embroidered purse, 
 the glorious sight of which will entice^^any countrymen 
 from their devotion to wondering; and quoit silver into the 
 boys' hands, that it may be heard above the first lesson, 
 although it be read in a voice as big as one of the great 
 organs. 
 
 This noble and notable act being performed, you are to 
 vanish presently out of the choir, and to appear again in the 
 walk : but in any wise be not observed to tread there long 
 alone ; for fear you be suspected to be a gallant cashiered 
 from the society of captains and fighters. 
 
 36 
 
Suck this humour up especially : put off to none, unless 
 his hatband be of a newer fashion than yours, and thrqe degrees 
 quainter: but for him that wears a trebled_cypiress about'his 
 hat, though he were an alderman's son, never move to him; 
 for he's suspected to be worse than a Gull, and not worth the 
 putting off to, that cannot qbseiye the, time of tlis hajjband, 
 nor know what fashioned olock is most kin to his head: for, in 
 my opinion, that brain that cannot choose his felt well, being 
 the head-ornament, must needs pour folly into all the rest of 
 the members, and be an absolute confirmed fool in summd Mali. 
 
 All the diseased horses in a tedious siege cannot shew so 
 many fashions, as are to be seen for nothing, every day, in 
 Duke Humphrey's walk. If therefore you determine to enter 
 into a new suit, warn your tailor to attend you in Paul's, who, 
 with his hat in his hand, shall like a spy discover the stuff, 
 colour, and fashion of any doublet or hose that dare be seen 
 there ; and stepping behind a pillar to fill his table-books 
 with those notes, will presently send you into the world an 
 accomplished man ; by which means you shall wear your 
 clothes in print with the first edition. 
 
 But if fortune favour you so much as to make you no 
 more than a mere country gentleman, or but some three degrees 
 removed from him (for which I should be very sorry, because 
 your London experience will cost you dear before you shall 
 have the wit to know what you are) then take this lesson 
 along with you : the first time that you venture into Paul's, 
 pass through the body of the church like a porter, yet presume 
 not to fetch so much as one wJiql^ turn in the middle aisle, no, 
 nor to cast an eye to Siquts door',* 'pasted and pTiistered up with 
 serving-men's supplications, before you have paid tribute to 
 
 37 
 
the top of Paul's steeple with a single penny ; and, when you 
 are mounted there, take heed how you look down into the 
 yard, for the rails are as rotten as your great-grandfather; and 
 thereupon it will not be amiss if you inquire how Kit Woqd- 
 roffe_ durst vault over, and what reason he had for't, to put 
 his neck in hazard of reparations. From hence you may 
 descend to talk about the horse that went up, and strive, if 
 you can, to know his keeper; take the day of the month, and 
 the number of the steps, and suffer yourself to believe verily 
 that it was not a horse, but something else in the likeness of 
 one: which wonders you may publish, when you return into 
 the country, to the great amazement of all farmers' daughters, 
 that will almost swound at the report, and never recover till 
 their bans be asked twice in the church. 
 
 But I have not left you yet. Before you come down 
 again, I would desire you to draw your knife, and grave your 
 name, or, for want of a name, the mark which you clap on 
 your sheep, in great characters upon the leads, by a number 
 of your brethren, both citizens and country gentlemen : and 
 so you shall be sure to have your name lie in a coffin of lead, 
 when yourself shall be wrapt in a winding-sheet : and indeed 
 the top of Paul's contains more names than Stow's Chronicle. 
 These lofty tricks being played, and you, thanks to your 
 feet, being safely arrived at the stairs' foot again ; your next 
 worthy work is to repair to my Lord Chancellor's tomb, and, 
 if you can but reasonably spell, bestow some time upon the 
 reading of Sir Philip Sidney's brief epitaph ; in the compass 
 of an hour you may make shift to stumble it out. The great 
 dial is your last monument : there bestow some half of the 
 three-score minutes, to observe the sauciness of the jacks that 
 
 38 
 
are above the man in the moon there ; the strangeness of the 
 motion will quit your labour. Besides, you may here have 
 fit occasion to discover your watch, by taking it forth and 
 setting the wheels to the time of Paul's ; which, I assure you, 
 goes truer by five notes than St. Sepulchre's chimes. The 
 benefit that will arise from hence is this, that you publish 
 your charge in maintaining a gilded clock ; and withal the 
 world shall know that you are a timepleaser. By this I 
 imagine you have walked your bellyful ; and thereupon being 
 weary, or, which rather I believe, being most gentlemanlike 
 hungry, it is fit that I brought you into the Duke ; so, because 
 he follows the fashion of great men, in keeping no house, and 
 ,that therefore you must go seek your dinner, suffer me to 
 take you by the hand, and lead you into an ordinary. 
 
 39 
 
How a young Gallant should behave himself in an Ordinary. 
 
 IRST, having diligently inquired out 
 an ordinary of the largest reckoning, 
 whither most of your courtly gallants 
 do resort, let it be your use to repair 
 thither some half hour after eleven ; for 
 then you shall find most of your fashion- 
 mongers planted in the room waiting 
 for meat. Ride thither upon your 
 Galloway nag, or your Spanish jennet, a swift ambling pace, 
 in your hose and doublet (gilt rapier and poniard bestowed 
 in their places), and your French lackey carrying your cloak, 
 and running before you ; or rather in a coach, for that will 
 both hide you from the basilisk eyes of your creditors, and 
 outrun a whole kennel of bitter-mouthed sergeants. 
 
 Being arriyed in the room, salute not any but those of 
 your acquaintance : walk up and down by the rest as scorn- 
 fully and as carelessly as a gentleman-usher : select some 
 friend, having first thrown off your cloak, to walk up and 
 down the room with you ; let him be suited, if you can, 
 worse by far than yourself ; he will be a foil to you ; and 
 this will be a means to publish your clothes better than 
 Paul's, a tennis-court, or a playhouse : discourse as loud as 
 you can, no matter to what purpose ; if you but make a 
 noise, and laugh in fashion, and have a good sour face to 
 promise quarrelling, you shall be much observed. 
 
 41 
 
If you be a soldier, talk, how often you have been in 
 action ; as the Portingale voyage, Cales voyage, the Island 
 voyage ; besides some eight or nine employments in Ireland, 
 and the Low Countries: then you may discourse how 
 honourably your Grave used you (observe that you call 
 your Grave Maurice " your Grave ") ; how often you have 
 drunk with Count such a one, and such a Count, on your 
 knees to your Grave's health ; and let it be your virtue to 
 give place neither to St. Kynock, nor to any Dutchman 
 whatsoever in the seventeen provinces, for that soldier's 
 compliment of drinking. And, if you perceive that the un- 
 travelled company about you take this down well, ply them 
 with more such stuff, as, how you have interpreted between 
 the French king and a great lord of Barbary, when they have 
 been drinking healths together : and that will be an excellent 
 occasion to publish your languages, if you have them ; if 
 not, get some fragments of French, or small parcels of Italian, 
 to fling about the table ; but beware how you speak any Latin 
 there ; your ordinary most commonly hath no more to do 
 with Latin, than a desperate town of garrison hath. 
 
 If you be a courtier, discourse of the obtaining of suits ; 
 of your mistress's favours, &c. Make inquiry, if any gentle- 
 man at board have any suit, to get which he would use the 
 good means of a great man's interest with the king ; and 
 withal, if you have not so much grace left in you as to blush, 
 that you are, thanks to your stars, in mighty credit ; though 
 in your own conscience you know, and are guilty to yourself, 
 that you dare not, but only upon the privileges of handsome 
 clothes, presume to peep into the presence. Demand if there 
 be any gentleman, whom any there is acquainted with, that 
 
 42 
 
is troubled with two offices, or any vicar with two church- 
 livings ; which will politicly insinuate, that your inquiry 
 after them is because you have good means to obtain them. 
 Yea ; and rather than your tongue should not be heard in 
 the room, but that you should sit like an ass, with your finger 
 in your mouth, and speak nothing, discourse how often this 
 lady hath sent her coach for you, and how often you have 
 sweat in the tennis-court with that great lord ; for indeed 
 the sweating together in France (I mean the society of tennis) 
 is a great argument of most dear affection, even between 
 noblemen and peasants. 
 
 If you be a poet, and come into the ordinary (though 
 it can be no great glory to be an ordinary poet), order your- 
 self _thus. Observe no man ; doff not cap to that gentleman 
 to-day at dinner, to whom, not two nights since, you were 
 beholden for a supper ; but, after a turn or two in the room, 
 take occasion, pulling out your gloves, to have some epigram, 
 or satire, or sonnet fastened in one of them, that may, as it 
 were unwittingly to you, offer itself to the gentlemen ; they 
 will presently desire it ; but, without much conjuration from 
 them, and a pretty kind of counterfeit loathness in yourself, 
 do not read it; and, though it be none of your own, swear 
 you made it. Marry, if you chance to get into your hands 
 any witty thing of another man's that is somewhat better ; 
 I would counsel you then, if demand be made who composed 
 it, you may say : " Faith, a learned gentleman, a very worthy 
 friend." And this seeming to lay it on another man will be 
 counted either modesty in you, or a sign that you are not 
 ambitious of praise; or else that you dare not take it upon you, 
 for fear of the sharpness it carries with it. Besides, it will add 
 
 43 
 
much to your fame to let your tongue walk faster than your 
 teeth, though you be never so hungry : and, rather than you 
 should sit like a dumb coxcomb, to repeat by heart either 
 some verses of your own, or of any other man's, stretching 
 even very good lines upon the rack of censure ; though it be 
 against all law, honesty, or conscience : it may chance save 
 you the price of your ordinary, and beget you other sup- 
 plements. Marry ; I would further entreat our poet to be 
 in league with the mistress of the ordinary ; because from 
 her, upon condition that he will but rime knights and 
 young gentlemen to her house, and maintain the table in 
 good fooling, he may easily make up his mouth at her 
 cost, gratis. 
 
 Thus much for particular men. But in general let all 
 that are in ordinary pay march after the sound of these 
 directions. Before the meat come smoking to the board, 
 our gallant must draw out his tobacco-box, the ladle for the 
 cold snufF into the nostril, the tongs and prining iron ; all 
 which artillery may be of gold or silver, if he can reach to 
 the price of it ; it will be a reasonable useful pawn at all 
 times, when the current of his money falls out to run low. 
 And here you must observe to know in what state tobacco 
 is in town, better than the merchants ; and to discourse of 
 the poticaries where it is to be sold ; and to be able to speak 
 of their wines, as readily as the poticary himself reading the 
 barbarous hand of a doctor : then let him shew his several 
 tricks in taking it, as the whifF, the ring, &c., for these are 
 compliments that gain gentlemen no mean respect, and for 
 which indeed they are more worthily noted, I ensure you, 
 than for any skill that they have in learning. 
 
 44 
 
When you are set down to dinner, you must eat as 
 impudently as can be, for that's most gentlemanlike : when 
 your knight is upon his stewed mutton, be you presently, 
 though you be but a captain, in the bosom of your goose ; 
 and, when your justice of peace is knuckledeep in goose, 
 you may, without disparagement to your blood, though you 
 have a lady to your mother, fall very manfully to your 
 woodcocks. ' 
 
 You may rise in dinner-time to ask for a close-stool, 
 protesting to all the gentlemen that it costs you a hundred 
 pound a year in physic, besides the annual pension which 
 your wife allows her doctor ; and, if you please, you may, 
 as your great French lord doth, invite some special friend of 
 yours from the table, to hold discourse with you as you sit 
 in that withdrawing-chamber ; from whence being returned 
 again to the board, you shall sharpen the wits of all the eating 
 gallants about you, and do them great pleasure to ask what 
 pamphlets or poems a man might think fittest to wipe" his 
 tail with ; (marry, this talk will be somewhat foul, if you 
 carry not a strong perfume about you ;) and, in propounding 
 this question, you may abuse the works of any man ; deprave 
 his writings that you cannot equal ; and purchase to yourself 
 in time the terrible name of a severe critic ; nay, and be 
 one of the college, if you'll be liberal enough, and, when 
 your turn comes, pay for their suppers. 
 
 After dinner, every man as his business leads him, some 
 to dice, some to drabs, some to plays, some to take up friends 
 in the court, some to take up money in the city, some to lend 
 testers in Paul's, others to borrow crowns upon the Exchange: 
 and thus, as the people is said to be a beast of many heads, 
 
 45 
 
yet all those heads like hydras', ever growing, as various in 
 their horns as wondrous in their budding and branching ; so, 
 in an ordinary, you shall find the variety of a whole kingdom 
 in a few apes of the kingdom. 
 
 You must not swear in your dicing ; for that argues a 
 violent impatience to depart from your money, and in time 
 will betray a man's need. Take heed of it. No ; whether 
 you be at primero, or hazard, you shall sit as patiently, though 
 you lose a whole half-year's exhibition, as a disarmed gentle- 
 man does when he's in the unmerciful fingers of sergeants. 
 Marry ; I will allow you to sweat privately, and tear six or 
 seven score pair of cards, be the damnation of some dozen 
 or twenty bale of dice, and forswear play a thousand times 
 in an hour ; but not swear. Dice yourself into your shirt ; 
 and, if you have a beard that your friend will lend but an 
 angel upon, shave it off, and pawn that, rather than to go 
 home blind to your lodging. Further it is to be remembered; 
 he that is a great gamester may be trusted for a quarter's 
 board at all times ; and apparel provided, if need be. 
 
 At your twelvepenny ordinary, you may give any justice 
 of peace, or young knight, if he sit but one degree towards 
 the equinoctial of the saltcellar, leave to pay for the wine ; 
 and he shall not refuse it, though it be a week before the 
 receiving of his quarter's rent, which is a time albeit of good 
 hope, yet of present necessity. 
 
 There is another ordinary, to which your London usurer, 
 your stale bachelor, and your thrifty attorney do resort ; the 
 price threepence ; the rooms as full of company as a jail ; 
 and indeed divided into several wards, like the beds of an 
 hospital. The compliment between these is not much, their 
 
 46 
 
words few ; for the belly hath no ears : every man's eye here 
 is upon the other man's trencher ; to note whether his fellow 
 lurch him, or no : if they chance to discourse, it is of nothing 
 but of statutes, bonds, recognizances, fines, recoveries, audits, 
 rents, subsidies, sureties, inclosures, liveries, indictments, 
 outlawries, feoffments, judgments, commissions, bankerouts, 
 amercements, and of such horrible matter ; that when a 
 lieutenant dines with his punk in the next room, he thinks 
 verily the men are conjuring. I can find nothing at this 
 ordinary worthy the sitting down for ; therefore the cloth 
 shall be taken away, and those, that are thought good enough 
 to be guests here, shall be too base to be waiters at your 
 grand ordinary ; at which your gallant tastes these com- 
 modities : he shall fare well, enjoy good company, receive 
 all the news ere the post can deliver his packet, be perfect 
 where the best bawdy-houses stand, proclaim his good clothes, 
 know this man to drink well, that to feed grossly, the other 
 to swagger roughly ; he shall, if he be minded to travel, put 
 out money upon his return, and have hands enough to receive 
 it upon any terms of repayment ; and no question, if he be 
 poor, he shall now and then light upon some Gull or other 
 whom he may skeliiej:, after the genteel fashion, of money. 
 By this time the parings of fruit and cheese are in the voider; 
 cards and dice lie stinking in the fire; the guests are all up; 
 the gilt rapiers ready to be hanged ; the French lackey and 
 Irish footboy shrugging at the doors, with their masters' 
 hobby-horses, to ride to the new play: that's the rendezvous: 
 thither they are galloped in post. Let us take a pair of oars, 
 and now lustily after them. 
 
 M 
 
How a Gallant should behave himself in a Playhouse. 
 
 HE theatre is your poets' Royal Ex- 
 change, upon which their muses, that 
 are now turned to merchants, meeting, 
 barter away that light commodity of 
 words for a lighter ware than words — 
 plaudities, and the breath of the great 
 beast ; which, like the threatenings of 
 two cowards, vanish all into air. Players 
 are their factors, who put away the stuff, and make the best of 
 it they possibly can, as indeed 'tis their parts so to do. Your 
 gallant, your courtier, and your captain had wont to.bet^e ,^ 
 soundest paymasters, and, I think, are still the surest chkprhen: 
 and these, by means that their heads are well stocked, deal 
 upon this comical freight by the gross; when your groundling 
 and gallery-commoner buys his sport by the penny, and, 
 like a haggler, is glad to utter it again by retailing. 
 
 Sithence then the place is so free in entertainment, 
 allowing a stool as well to the farmer's son as to your templar; 
 that your stinkard has the selfsame liberty to be there in 
 his tobacco-Iumes, which your sweet courtier hath ; and 
 that your carman and tinker claim as strong a voice in 
 their suffrage, and sit to give judgement on the play's life „p,nd 
 death, as well as the proudest Momusarpiohg the tribe of 
 critic : it is fit that he, whom the most tailors' bills do 
 
 49 
 
 \ 
 
make room for, when he comes, should not be basely, like a 
 viol, cased up in a corner. 
 
 Whether therefore the gatherers of the public or private 
 playhouse stand to receive the afternoon's rent; let our gallant, 
 having paid it, presently advance himself up to the throne 
 of the stage ; I mean not into the lords' room, which is now 
 but the stage's suburbs ; no, those boxes, by the iniquity 
 of custom, conspiracy of waiting-women and gentlemen- 
 ushers that there sweat together, and the covetousness of 
 sharers, are contemptibly thrust into the rear; and much 
 new satin is there damned, by being smothered to death in 
 darkness. But on the very rushes where the comedy is to 
 dance, yea, and under the state of Cambyses himself, must 
 our feathered estrich, like a piece of ordnance, be planted 
 valiantly, because impudently, beating down the mews and 
 hisses of the opposed rascality. 
 
 For do but cast up a reckoning, what large comings-in 
 are pursed up by sitting on the stage. First, a conspicuous 
 eminence is gotten ; by which means, the best and most 
 essential parts of a gallant, good clothes, a proportionable 
 leg, white hand, the Persian lock, and a tolerable beard, are 
 perfectly revealed. 
 
 By sitting on the stage, you have a signed patent to 
 engross the whole comn3fa4ity \of censure, may lawfully 
 presume to be a girder, anct stand at the helm to steer the 
 passage of scenes ; yet no man shall once offer to hinder 
 you from obtaining the title of an insolent, over-weening 
 coxcomb. 
 
 By sitting on the stage, you may, without travelling 
 for it, at the very next door ask whose play it is ; and, by 
 
 5° 
 
that quest of inquiry, the law warrants you to avoid much 
 mistaking : if you know not the author, you may rail against 
 him ; and peradventure so behave yourself, that you may 
 enforce the author to know you. 
 
 By sitting on the stage, if you be a knight, you may 
 happily get you a mistress ; if a mere Fleet-street gentleman, 
 a wife ; but assure yourself, by continual residence, you are 
 the first and principal man in election to begin the number 
 of " We three." 
 
 By spreading your body on the stage, and by being a 
 justice in examining of plays, you shall put yourself into 
 such true scenical authority, that some poet shall not dare 
 to present his muse rudely upon your eyes, without having 
 first unmasked her, rifled her, and discovered all her bare 
 and most mystical parts before you at a tavern ; when 
 you most knightly shall, for his pains, pay for both their 
 suppers. 
 
 By sitting on the stage, you may, with small cost, 
 purchase the dear acquaintance of the boys; have a good stool 
 for sixpence; at any time know what particular part any of the 
 infants present ; get your match lighted ; examine the play- 
 suits' lace, and perhaps win wagers upon laying 'tis copper ; 
 &c. And to conclude ; whether you be a fool, or a justice 
 of peace; a cuckold, or^a captain; a Lord Mayor's son, or a 
 dawcock ; a knave, or an under-sheriff; of what stamp 
 soever you be ; current or counterfeit ; the stage, like time, 
 will bring you to most perfect light, and lay you open. 
 Neither are you to be hunted from thence; though the 
 scarecrows in the yard hoot at you, hiss at you, spit at you, 
 yea, throw dirt even in your teeth : 'tis most gentlemanlike 
 
 51 
 
patience to endure all this, and to laugh at the silly animals. 
 But if the rabble, with a full throat, cry : " Away with the 
 fool ! " you were worse than a madman to tarry by it ; for 
 the gentleman and the fool should never sit on the stage 
 together. 
 
 Marry ; let this observation go hand in hand with the 
 rest ; or rather, like a country serving-man, some five yards 
 before them. Present not yourself on the stage, especially 
 at a new play, until the quaking Prologue hath by rubbing 
 got colour into his cheeks, and is ready to give the trumpets 
 their cue that he's upon point to enter ; for then it is time, as 
 though you were one of the properties, or that you dropped 
 out of the hangings, to creep from behind the arras, with 
 your tripos or three-footed stool in one hand, and a teston 
 mounted between a forefinger and a thumb in the other; 
 for, if you should bestow your person upon the vulgar, when 
 the belly of the house is but half full, your apparel is quite 
 eaten up, the fashion lost, and the proportion of your body 
 in more danger to .be devoured than if it were served up in 
 the Counter amongst the poultry : avoid that as you would 
 the ba^stone. It shall crown you with rich commendation, 
 to laugh aloud in the midst of the most serious and saddest 
 scene of the terriblest tragedy, and to let that clapper, your 
 tongue, be tossed so high, that all the house may ring of it ; 
 your lords use it ; your knights are apes to the lords, and do 
 so too ; your inn-o'-court man is zany to the knights, and 
 (many very scurvily) comes likewise limping after it : be 
 thou a beagle to them all, and never lin snuffing till you 
 have scented them : for by talking and laughing, like a 
 ploughman in a morris, you heap Pelion upon Ossa, glory 
 
 52 
 
upon glory : as first, all the eyes in the galleries will leave 
 walking after the players, and only follow you, the simplest 
 dolt in the house snatches up your name, and, when he 
 meets you in the streets, or that you fall into his hands in 
 the middle of a watch, his word shall be taken for you; he'll 
 cry " He's such a gallant," and you pass : secondly, you 
 publish your temperance to the world, in that you seem 
 not to resort thither to taste vain pleasures with a hungry 
 appetite ; but only as a gentleman to spend a foolish hour or 
 two, because you can do nothing else : thirdly, you mightily 
 disrelish the audience, and disgrace the author : marry; you 
 take up, though it be at the worst hand, a strong opinion 
 of your own judgement, and enforce the poet to take pity of 
 your weakness, and, by some dedicated sonnet, to bring you 
 into a better paradise, only to stop your mouth. 
 
 If you can,je ither fo i^love or money, provide yourself 
 a lodging by the water-side ; for, above the conveniency it 
 brings to^shun shoulder-clapping, and to ship away your 
 cockatrice: betimes in the morning, it adds a kind of state 
 unto you to be carried from thence to the stairs of your 
 playhouse. Hate a sculler, (remember that,) worse than to 
 be acquainted with one o' th' scullery. No your oars are 
 your only seatcrabs, board them, and take heed Y9^j||pver 
 go twice together with one pair; often shiftir y(|j| jjpr^reat 
 credit to gentlemen, and that dividing of mNp^'^ will 
 make the poor water-snakes be ready to puli^mi in pieces 
 to enjoy your custom. No matter whether, upon landing, 
 you have money, or no ; you may swim in twenty of their 
 boats over the river upon ticket: marry; when silver comes 
 in, remember to pay treble their fare ; and it will make your 
 
 53 
 
flounder-catchers to send more thanks after you when you 
 do not draw, than when you do ; for they know it will be 
 their own another day. 
 
 Before the play begins, fall to cards ; you may win or 
 lose, as fencers do in a prize, and beat one another by con- 
 federacy, yet share the money when you meet at supper : 
 notwithstanding, to gull the ragamuffins that stand aloof 
 gaping at you, throw the cards, having first torn four or 
 five of them, round about the stage, just upon the third 
 sound, us though you had lost ; it skills not if the four 
 knaves lie on their backs, and outface the audience ; there's 
 none such fools as dare take exceptions at them ; because, 
 ere the play go off, better knaves than they will fall into 
 the company. 
 
 Now, sir ; if the writer be a fellow that hath either 
 epigrammed you, or hath had a flirt at your mistress, or hath 
 brought either your feather, or your red beard, or your 
 little legs, &c. on the stage ; you shall disgrace him worse 
 than by tossing him in a blanket, or giving him the bastinado , 
 in a tavern, if, in the middle of his play, be it pastoral or 
 comedy, moral or tragedy, you rise with a screwed and 
 discontented face from your stool to be gone ; no matter 
 whether the scenes be good, or no ; the better they are, the 
 worse do you distaste them : and, being on your feet, sneak 
 not away like a coward ; but salute all your gentle acquain- 
 tance, that are spread either on the rjashes, or on stools about 
 you ; and draw what troop you can from the stage after you ; 
 the mimics are beholden to you for allowing them elbow- 
 room : their poet cries, perhaps, "a pox go with you"; but 
 care not you for that ; there's no music without frets. 
 
 54 
 
Marry ; if either the company, or indisposition of the 
 weather bind you to sit it out ; my counsel is then that you 
 turn plain ape : take up a rush, and tickle the earnest ears of 
 your fellow gallants, to make other fools fall a laughing; mew 
 at passionate speeches ; blare at merry ; find fault with the 
 music ; whew at the children's action ; whistle at the songs; 
 and, above all, curse the sharers, that whereas the same day 
 you had bestowed forty shillings on an embroidered felt and 
 feather, Scetcli fa^shion, for your mistress in the court, or 
 your punk tti the city, within two hours after you encounter 
 with the very same block on the stage, when the haberdasher 
 swore to you the impression was extant but that morning. 
 
 To conclude: hoard up the finest play-scraps you can 
 get ; upon which your lean wit may most savourly feed, 
 for want of other stuff, w hen t he-Arcadi-an-aad JEuphuized 
 gentlewo men have th ^ir tonguessharpenjedto_set upori-you; ' 
 that quality, next toyour jh|tt:lecock, isTHeonly furniture 
 to a courtier that's but a new beginner, and is but in his 
 A B C of compliment. The next places that are filled, after 
 the playhouses be emptied, are, or ought to be, taverns ; 
 into a tavern then let us next march, where the brains of 
 one hogshead must be beaten out to make up another. 
 
 55 
 
Ct)a|)ter "oil 
 
 How a Gallant should behave himself in a T'avern. 
 
 H OSOE VER desires to be a man of good 
 reckoning in the city ; and, like your 
 French lord, to have as many tables 
 furnished as lackies, who, when they 
 keep least, .keep , none ; whether he be 
 a young quat of the first year's revenue; 
 or some austere and sullen-faced steward, 
 who, in despite of a great beard, a satin 
 suit, and a chain of gold wrapt in cypress, proclaims himself 
 to any, but to those to whom his lord owes money, for a 
 rank coxcomb ; or whether he be a country gentleman, that 
 brings his wife up to learn the fashion, see the tombs at 
 Westminster, the lions in the Tower, or to take physic ; or 
 else is some young farmer, who many times makes his wife 
 in the country believe he hath suits in law, because he will 
 come up to his lechery ; be he of what stamp he will that 
 hath money in his purse, and a good conscience to spend it ; 
 my counsel is that he take his continual diet at a tavern, 
 which out of question is the only rendezvous of boon com- 
 pany ; and the drawers the most nimble, the most bold, and 
 most sudden proclaimers of your largest bounty. 
 
 Having therefore thrust yourself into a case most in 
 fashion, how coarse soever the stuff be, 'tis no matter, so it 
 hold fashion ; you'r office is, if you mean to do your judgement 
 right, to inquire out those taverns which are best customed, 
 
 S7 
 
whose masters are oftenest drunk (for that confirms their 
 taste, and that they choose wholesome wines), and such as 
 stand furthest from the Counters ; where, landing yourself 
 and your followers, your first compliment shall be to grow 
 most inwardly acquainted with the drawers ; to learn their 
 names, as Jack, and Will, and Tom ; to dive into their in- 
 clinations, as whether this fellow useth to the fencing-school, 
 this to the dancing-school ; whether that young conjurer in 
 hogsheads at midnight keeps a gelding now and then to visit 
 his cockatrice, or whether he love dogs, or be addicted to 
 any other eminent and citizen-like quality ; and protest 
 yourself to be extremely in love, and that you spend much 
 money in a year upon any one of those exercises which you 
 perceive is followed by them. The use which you shall 
 make of this familiarity is this : if you want money five or 
 six days together, you may still pay the reckoning with this 
 most gentlemanlike language, " Boy, fetch me money from 
 the bar" ; and keep yourself most providently from a hungry 
 melancholy in your chamber. Besides, you shall be sure, if 
 there be but one faucet that can betray neat wine to the 
 bar, to have that arraigned before you, sooner than a better 
 and worthier person. 
 
 The first question you are to make; after the discharging 
 of your pocket of tobacco, and pipes, and the household stuff 
 thereto belonging ; shall be for an inventory of the kitchen : 
 for it were more than most tailor-like, and to be suspected 
 you were in league with some kitchen-wench, to descend 
 yourself, to offend your stomach with the sight of the larder, 
 and, happily, to grease your accoutrements. Having therefore 
 received this bill, you shall, like a captain putting up dead 
 
 58 
 
pays, have many salads stand on your table, as it were for 
 blanks to the other more serviceable dishes : and, according 
 to the time of the year, vary your fare ; as capon is a stirring 
 meat sometime, oysters are a swelling meat sometimes, trout 
 a tickling meat sometimes, green goose and woodcock a 
 delicate meat sometimes ; especially in a tavern, where you 
 shall sit in as great state as a churchwarden amongst his 
 poor parishioners at Pentecost or Christmas. 
 
 For your drink, let not your physician confine you to 
 any one particular liquor ; for as it is requisite that a gentle- 
 man should not always be plodding in one art, but rather be 
 a general scholar, that is, to have a lick at all sorts of learning, 
 and away ; so 'tis not fitting a man should trouble his head 
 with sucking at one grape ; but that he may be able, now 
 there is a general peace, to drink any stranger drunk in his 
 own element of drink, or more properly in his own mist 
 language. 
 
 Your discourse at the table must be such as that which 
 you utter at your ordinary ; your behaviour the same, but 
 somewhat more careless ; for, where your expence is great, 
 let your modesty be less : and, though you should be mad 
 in a tavern, the largeness of the items will bear with your 
 incivility ; you may, without prick to your conscience, set 
 the want of your wit against the superfluity and sauciness 
 of their reckonings. 
 
 If you desire not to be haunted with fiddlers ; who by 
 the statute have as much liberty as rogues to travel into any 
 place, having the passport of the house about them ; bring 
 then no women along with you : but, if you love the com- 
 pany of all the drawers, never sup without your cockatrice ; 
 
 59 
 
for, having her there, you shall be sure of most officious 
 attendance. Inquire what gallants sup in the next room ; 
 and, if they be any of your acquaintance, do not you, after 
 the city fashion, send them in a pottle of wine, and your 
 name, sweetened in two pitiful papers of sugar, with some 
 filthy apology crammed into the mouth of a drawer ; but 
 rather keep a boy in fee, who under-hand shall proclaim you 
 in every room, what a gallant fellow you are, how much 
 you spend yearly in taverns, what a great gamester, what 
 custom you bring to the house, in what witty discourse 
 you maintain a table, what gentlewomen or citizens' wives 
 you can with a wet finger have at any time to sup with you, 
 and such like ; by which encomiastics of his, they that 
 know you not shall admire you, and think themselves to be 
 brought into a paradise but to be meanly in your acquain- 
 tance ; and, if any of your endeared friends be in the house, 
 and beat the same ivy-bush that yourself does, you may join 
 companies, and be drunk together most publicly. 
 
 But, in such a deluge of drink, take heed that no man 
 counterfeit himself drunk, to free his purse from the danger 
 of the shot ; 'tis an usual thing now amongst gentlemen ; it 
 had wont be the quality of cockneys : I would advise you 
 to leave so much brains in your head, as to prevent this. 
 When the terrible reckoning, like an indictment, bids you 
 hold up your hand, and that you must answer it at the bar ; 
 you must not abate one penny in any particular ; no, though 
 they reckon cheese to you, when you have neither eaten any, 
 nor could ever abide it, raw or toasted : but cast your eye 
 only upon the totalis, and no further; for to traverse the 
 bill would betray you to be acquainted with the rates of the 
 
 60 
 
market : nay more ; it would make the vintners believe you 
 were pater-familias, and kept a house ; which, I assure you, 
 is not now in fashion. 
 
 If you fall to dice after supper, let the drawers be as 
 familiar with you as your barber, and venture their silver 
 amongst you ; no matter where they had it ; you are to 
 cherish the unthriftness of such young tame pigeons, if you 
 be a right gentleman : for when two are yoked together by 
 the purse-strings, and draw the chariot of madam Prodi- 
 gality ; when one faints in the way and slips his horns, let 
 the other rejoice and laugh at him. 
 
 At your departure forth the house, to kiss mine hostess 
 over the bar, or to accept of the courtesy of the cellar when 
 'tis offered you by the drawers, (and you must know that 
 kindness never creeps upon them, but when they see you 
 almost cleft to the shoulders,) or to bid any of the vintners 
 good-night, is as commendable as for a barber after trimming 
 to lave your face with sweet water. 
 
 To conclude : count it an honour, either to invite, or 
 to be invited to any rifling ; for commonly, though you find 
 much satin there, yet you shall likewise find many citizens' 
 sons, and heirs, and younger brothers there, who smell out 
 such feasts more greedily than tailors hunt upon Sundays 
 after weddings. And let any hook draw you either to a 
 fencer's supper, or to a player's that acts such a part for 
 a wager ; for by this means you shall get experience, by 
 being guilty to their abominable shaving. 
 
 6i 
 
Cljapter Wl 
 
 How a Gallant is to behave himself passing through the City, at 
 all Hours of the Night ; and how to pass by any Watch. 
 
 FTER the sound of pottle-pots is out 
 of your ears ; and that the spirit of 
 wine and tobacco walks in your brain; 
 the tavern door being shut upon your 
 back, cast about to pass through the 
 A/^idest and goodliest streets in the city, 
 '^nd if your means cannot reach to 
 the keeping of a boy, hire one of the 
 drawers to be as a lanthorn unto your feet, and to light you 
 home ; and, still as you approach near any nightwalker that 
 is up as late as yourself, curse and swear, like one that speaks 
 high Dutch, in a lofty voice, because your men have used 
 you so like a rascal in not waiting upon you, and vow the 
 next morning to pull their blue cases over their ears ; though, 
 if your chamber were well searched, you give only sixpence 
 a week to some old woman to make your bed, and that she 
 is all the serving-creatures you give wages to. If you smell 
 a watch, and that you may easily do, for commonly they 
 eat onions to keep them in sleeping, which they account a 
 medicine against cold ; or, if you come within danger of 
 their brown bills ; let him that is your candlestick, and 
 holds up your torch from dropping, for to march after a 
 link is shoe-maker like; let ignis fatuus, I say, being within 
 
 63 
 
the reach of the constable's staff, ask aloud, " Sir Giles," — or 
 " Sir Abram," — "will you turn this way, or down that street ? " 
 It skills not, though there be none dubbed in your bunch ; 
 the watch will wink at you, only for the love they bear to 
 arms and knighthood. Marry; if the sentinel and his court 
 of guard stand strictly upon his martial law, and cry "Stand," 
 commanding you to give the word, and to shew reason why 
 your ghost walks so late ; do it in some jest ; for that will 
 show you have a desperate wit, and perhaps make him and 
 his halberdiers afraid to lay foul hands upon you ; or, if you 
 read a mittimus in the constable's book ; counterfeit to be 
 a Frenchman, a Dutchman, or any other nation whose 
 country is in peace with your own, and you may pass the 
 pikes ; for, being not able to understand you, they cannot 
 by the customs of the city take your examination, and so by 
 consequence they have nothing to say to you. 
 
 If the night be old, and that your lodging be in some 
 place into which no artillery of words can make a breach ; 
 retire, and rather assault the doors of your punk, or, not to 
 speak broken English, your sweet mistress, upon whose 
 white bosom you may languishingly consume the rest of 
 darkness that is left in ravishing though not restorative 
 pleasures, without expences, only by virtue of four or five 
 oaths (when the siege breaks up, and at your marching away 
 with bag and baggage) that the last night you were at dice, 
 and lost so much in gold, so much in silver ; and seem to 
 vex most that two such Elizabeth twenty-shilling pieces, or 
 four such spur-royals, sent you with a cheese and a baked 
 meat from your mother, rid away amongst the rest. By 
 which tragical, yet politic speech, you may not only have 
 
 64 
 
your night-work done gratis ; but also you may take diet 
 there the next day, and depart with credit, only upon the 
 bare word of a gentleman to make her restitution. 
 
 All the way as you pass, especially being approached 
 near some of the gates, talk of none but lords, and such 
 ladies with whom you have played at primero, or danced in 
 the presence, the very same day ; it is a chance to lock up 
 the lips of an inquisitive bellman : and, being arrived at your 
 lodging door, which I would counsel you to choose in some 
 rich citizen's house, salute at parting no man but by the 
 name of " Sir," as though you had supped with knights ; 
 albeit you had none in your company but y omx j^erim^ or 
 your ingle. 
 
 Happily it will be blown abroad, that you and your 
 shoal of gallants swam through such an ocean of wine, that 
 you danced so much money out at heels, and that in wild- 
 fowl there flew away thus much ; and I assure you, to have 
 the bill of your reckoning lost of purpose, so that it may be 
 published, will make you to be held in dear estimation : only 
 the danger is, if you owe money, and that your revealing 
 gets your creditors by the ears; for then, look to have a 
 peal of ordnance thundering at your chamber-door the next 
 morning. But if either your tailor, mercer, haberdasher, 
 silkman, cutter, linen-draper, or sempster, stand like a guard 
 of Switzers about your lodging, watching your uprising, or, 
 if they miss of that, your down-lying in one of the Counters; 
 you have no means to avoid the galling of their small-shot 
 than by sending out a light-horseman to call your poticary 
 to your aid, who, encountering this desperate band of your 
 creditors only with two or three glasses in his hand, as 
 
 F 65 
 
though that day you purged, is able to drive them all to 
 their holes like so many foxes; for the name of taking 
 physic is a sufficient quietus est to any endangered gentle- 
 man, and gives an acquittance, for the time, to them all; 
 though the twelve companies stand with their hoods to 
 attend your coming forth, and their officers with them. 
 
 I could now fetch you about noon, the hour which I 
 prescribed you before to rise at, out of your chamber, and 
 carry you with me into Paul's churchyard ; where, planting 
 yourself in a stationer's shop, many instructions are to be 
 given you, what books to call for, how to censure of new 
 books, how to mew at the old, how to look in your tables and 
 inquire for such and such Greek, French, Italian, or Spanish 
 authors, whose names you have there, but whom your 
 mother for pity would not give you so much wit as to 
 understand. From thence you should blow yourself into 
 the tobacco-ordinary, where you are likewise to spend your 
 judgement, like a quack-salver, upon that mystical wonder ; 
 to be able to discourse whether your cane or your pudding 
 be sweetest, and which pipe has the best bore, and which 
 burns black, which breaks in the burning, &c. Or, if you 
 itch to step into the barber's, a whole dictionary cannot 
 afford more words to set down notes what dialogues you are 
 to maintain, whilst you are doctor of the chair there. After 
 your shaving, I could breathe you in a fence-school, and out 
 of that cudgel you into a dancing-school ; in both which I 
 could weary you, by shewing you more tricks than are in 
 five galleries, or fifteen prizes. And, to close up the stomach 
 of this feast, I could make cockneys, whose fathers have left 
 them well, acknowledge themselves infinitely beholden to 
 
 66 
 
me, for teaching them by familiar demonstration how to 
 spend their patrimony, and to get themselves names, when 
 their fathers are dead and rotten. But, lest too many dishes 
 should cast you into a surfeit, I will now take away ; yet so 
 that, if I perceive you relish this well, the rest shall be in 
 time prepared for you. Farewell. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
 67 
 
NOTES 
 
 So far as possible^ all explanatory notes have been incorporated in the 
 Glossary. 
 
 The edition 0/1862 and that edited by Hindley in 1872 correspond 
 in general with Dr. Nott's. The readings of these editions are therefore 
 only given when they differ from his. 
 
 Grosarfs text, which preserves the old spelling, follows the original 
 more closely. I have therefore given his readings only when he accepted 
 the emendation of an earlier editor. In other cases it is to be understood 
 that he kept the text of the Quarto. 
 
 The text given by Professor Saintsbury seems to be merely a reprint 
 of Grosarfs. I have therefore not recorded its readings. 
 
 3. 12. many books. Grobianus has only three books; pro- 
 bably chapters are meant, 
 
 5. The titles of the chapters as given here do not correspond 
 exactly with the actual chapter headings. 
 
 5. 7. save. Nott's emendation, followed by Grosart. The 
 Quarto reads * haue.' 
 
 7. I. cuckoo in June. " From this exordium, it would seem 
 that Decker's tract came out in the month of June, perhaps at the 
 beginning of Trinity term."^ — Nott. 
 
 8. 15. gam-ut a-re. Gamuth-are {Qxxzxto). Nott, considering 
 that * are ' was intended to be read also as the verb, printed ' gamut, 
 ARE.' 
 
 10. 2. haunting. Nott's emendation. The Quarto reads 
 ' heating.' 
 
 10. 3. write. Nott's emendation, followed by Grosart. The 
 Quarto reads * waite.' 
 
 69 
 
II. II. Fauni. Nott, taking 'mountebank' as a substantive, 
 thought it necessary to correct to Faunus. It is, however, possible 
 to consider the word as used adjectivally, in which case no change is 
 necessary, 
 
 II. 17. Germanies*. Nott corrected to German's. The quo- 
 tation from Brinkelow's Complaint of Roderyck Mors (c. 1545), given 
 in N.E.D., seems however to show that ' Germany ' was, at any rate 
 earlier, a possible name for an inhabitant of the country. We might 
 equally well read Germany's, the word standing in the Quarto as 
 Germanies, with no apostrophe. 
 
 1 1 . 30. Preface! Nott read * profess,' explaining it as ' declare 
 myself an adept.' In this reading he is followed by Hindley, but 
 not by the edition of '62. 
 
 12. 30. lauret. Nott read ' laurel.' 
 
 15. heading. The Tailors. The Quarto has ' T the Tailors.' 
 
 15. 16. Birchin lane. Nott's emendation for ' Burchin-law ' 
 of the Quarto. Accepted by Grosart. 
 
 17. 2-3. There were . . . Chairs. The Quarto has 
 ' There were no daggers then, nor no Chayres.' Nott doubtfully 
 explained ' daggers ' as instruments to fix meat upon while cutting 
 it. This seems unsatisfactory, nor does 'chair' in the ordinary sense 
 appear to have much point here. Taking into consideration what 
 immediately follows in the text, it seems to me very probable that in 
 ' Daggers ' we have a reference to the celebrated ' Dagger ' tavern in 
 Holborn, which is frequently mentioned in literature of the period. 
 If this is so ' The Chair ' may have been the name of another tavern 
 or, as seems rather more likely, of a barber's shop. References to 
 the barber's chair are of course frequent. 
 
 17. 19-20. Helen's cheek. The Quarto reads ' Hattens cheeke.' 
 The change to ' Helen's ' was suggested to Nott by ' a scholar of no 
 mean judgement,' but was not adopted by him. It is strongly 
 
 70 
 
supported by a passage in Lyly's Euphues: " Venus had hir Mole in 
 hir cheeke which made hir more amiable [i.e., lovable] : Helen hir 
 scarre on hir chinne which Paris called Cos amoris, the Whetstone of 
 loue." — PForks of J. Lyly (ed. Bond), i., 184, 21-3. 
 
 The Quarto does not, however, read ' cos ' but • os,* and we 
 must suppose that Helen's scar was confused with Venus' mole, 
 a mistake which, in itself, is by no means unlikely. 
 
 On the other hand, ' Hatten's cheek ' gives no intelligible sense. 
 Sir Christopher Hatton, who is the only person likely to be under- 
 stood by such a reference, had died as long ago as 1591, and a joke 
 on his appearance would, at the date of the GulFs Hornbooky be 
 pointless ; nor does there seem to be the least record of his having 
 had any such mark. If we keep the reading ' Hatton's ' we may 
 perhaps suppose that some peculiarity of his monument in St. Paul's 
 or, possibly, some flaw in the stone of which it was composed may 
 have given rise to a joke which would be understood by those 
 at least who frequented the Cathedral. But such an explanation 
 seems, in the absence of proof, decidedly far-fetched, and I have 
 therefore preferred, though after some hesitation, to accept the 
 emendation, which at least gives an intelligible sense. 
 
 17. 20. cos amoris. The Quarto has os amoris, which, inter- 
 preted either as * the mouth of love ' or ' the bone of love,' seems 
 meaningless and an impossible designation for a mole. 
 
 18. 8-9. memory . . . have. The Quarto has "memory 
 (for their learning of all offices, from the scauenger and so vpward) 
 haue . . ." 
 
 18. 26-8. that with . . . this. The Quarto has " that 
 with gun-powder brings threatens, to blow vp all diseases that come 
 in his way, & smels worse then Assa fatida in respect of this." Nott 
 reads as my text, but has 'its way' for 'his way.' Grosart has 
 ' brings threaten[ings] to . . .' 
 
 71 
 
19. 3' Timonists. The Quarto has Pimonists, Corrected 
 by Nott, who is followed by all later editors. 
 
 2 1 . heading, do for Brokers. This, the reading of the Quarto, 
 which gives perfectly good sense, was changed by Nott and Hindley 
 (not '62) to ' do, from Brokers ' to accord with the list of chapters 
 on p. 5. 
 
 21.4. stage. Nott's emendation for ' stay ' of the Quarto. 
 Accepted by Grosart. 
 
 21. 19. Bachelor of Art. Nott has ' bachelor of arts.' 
 
 22. 16. doctor's. So Hindley: doctors', Nott, '62. The 
 Quarto has no apostrophe. 
 
 22. 19. the charges of. Nott's emendation for ' that charges 
 of in the Quarto. Hindley omits ' of.' 
 
 24. 18-9. choose rather to have thy windpipe cut in pieces 
 than to salute any man. From here to the end of the chapter 
 Grobianus is closely followed. Compare the extract from The School 
 of Slovenrie in the Appendix, lines 13-28. 
 
 26. 10. but your baboons and your jackanapes. The Quarto 
 has in both cases ' you ' for ' your.' Grosart printed ' your . . . 
 you[r].' 
 
 26. 17-8. more glorious . . . when. The Quarto has 
 ' more glorious then (being onely in gray) at noone, when.' Nott 
 reads ' more glorious, being only in gray, than at noon, when.' 
 Grosart has ' more glorious, then (being onely in gray) then at noone, 
 when '; his second ' then ' stands, of course, for ' than.' 
 
 27. heading, young gallant. Nott, following the list of chapters 
 on p. 3 omits ^ young' as 'unnecessarily interpolated.' Not so '62. 
 
 The description. Nott omits '7!^!?.' 
 
 27. II. tossing all thy clothes in a rude heap. Again we 
 have many borrowings from Dedekind. See the passage from The 
 School of Slovenrie, 11. 29-60. 
 
 72 
 
27- 1 7- shin. Nott reads 'skin', Grosart 'skinne'; but the 
 Quarto has clearly ' shinne.' 
 
 28. 9. thee. Nott's emendation for 'three' of the Quarto. 
 Accepted by Grosart. 
 
 28. 15. strawling. Nott altered this to 'straddling,' The 
 word * strawling ' does not seem to occur elsewhere, but it may 
 nevertheless be correct. 
 
 31. II. mows at it. Nott suggests ' mows of it.' 
 
 2)9' if' 'charge. Nott's emendation for 'change' of the Quarto. 
 Accepted by Grosart. 
 
 39. 12. he follows the fashion of great men, in keeping no 
 house. The reduction of the households of the nobility and gentry, 
 and consequent decay of hospitality, especially in the country, was a 
 common subject of complaint throughout the period. The passage 
 is well illustrated by one in Stafford's Examination of certayne 
 complaints^ 1581 ; "Some other [of the Noblemen and Gentlemen], 
 seeing the charges of householde encrease so much, as by no pro- 
 uision they can make, it can bee holpen, geue ouer their housholdes, 
 and get them Chambers in London or aboute the courte, and there 
 spend their time, some of them with a seruaunt or two, where he was 
 wont to keepe thirty or forty persons daily in his house, and to doe 
 good in the Countrey in keeping good order and rule among his 
 neighbors." — (Ed. Furnivall, for N.S.S., p. 64.) 
 
 41. heading. Nott omits 'young' as on p. 22, 
 
 41. 5. some half hour after eleven. Eleven o'clock was still 
 the usual dinner hour at this period though shortly afterwards it 
 became later. 
 
 42. 9. Kynock. Nott says 'a learned friend conjectures ii^Koc^ 
 to be a misprint for Rynock; and fancies the word constituted of Ryn^ 
 Rhine, and Hock, the wine so called.' He however printed Kynock, 
 as did ' 62. Hindley has Rynock, without any note. 
 
 73 
 
43- 5- you- The Quarto misprints *yon.' 
 
 43. 19. unwittingly. This reading was suggested by the editor 
 of '62; the Quarto reads 'vomittingly.' Nott and Hindley have 
 'vomitingly' which does not give satisfactory sense. 
 
 43. 20. conjuration. Nott's remark that the Quarto reads 
 'comuration' is not true of the British Museum copy, which has, 
 correctly, 'coniuration.' 
 
 43. 24-5. man's . . . would. Read perhaps 'man's, that 
 is somewhat better : I would.' 
 
 44. 18. priningiron. ' priming-iron ' in the sense of ' tobacco- 
 pick' has been suggested, and is perhaps right, but I cannot find 
 other instances of the word at such an early date. 
 
 44. 25. wines. The Quarto has 'wiues,' All editors read 
 ' wines.' 
 
 46. 17. Further it is . . . The Quarto begins a new 
 paragraph here. All editors, including Grosart, run it on. 
 
 47. 29. now. Nott suggest ' row,' which reading was adopted 
 by '62 and Hindley. It is plausible but not quite convincing, for 
 the guide and the guU would not themselves row. 'Oars' probably 
 means 'oarsmen.' 
 
 49. I. poets'. The edition of '62 reads 'poet's' : in the Quarto 
 there is no apostrophe. 
 
 49. 9. are. Nott's suggestion for 'and' of the Quarto. It 
 was accepted by the editor of ' 62. As an alternative, Nott suggested 
 the insertion of 'To' before 'players,' in which case the sentence 
 should of course not be broken after the word 'do.' Hindley has 
 'Players and their factors, who ... do, your gallant . . . 
 pay-masters ; and.' Grosart followed the Quarto. 
 
 49. 23. tribe. Nott reads 'tribes' : Grosart 'tribe[s].' 
 
 50. 21. Persian. Nott suggests 'Parisian,' on the ground 
 that allusions to the ' French lock ' are frequent. The emendation 
 was accepted by Hindley. 
 
 74 
 
51. 26. stage, like time. Nott's emendation for • Stagelike 
 time ' of the Quarto. Accepted by Grosart. 
 
 52. 9. quaking. Hindley reads 'quacking,' perhaps a mere 
 misprint. 
 
 52. 21. bastone. So Hindley. The Quarto, Nott, and '62 
 have ' bastome,' possibly an allowable form. 
 
 52. 27. many. Grosart has * mary,' i.e., marry. 
 
 54. 17-8. your feather, or your red bead, or your little legs. 
 On this passage Hindley has the following note : — ' Here Decker 
 retorts on Ben Jonson, who, in his The Poetaster, Act III., sc. i., 
 makes mention of — " He with the ash-coloured feather there," 
 "Little Legs," "And shall your hair change like these?" The 
 blanketting alludes to the punishment inflicted on him as Horace in 
 the Satiromastrix \sic\, and the bastinadoing to a circumstance of 
 which — whether true or not — several hints are to be found in the 
 same play.' 
 
 I confess that I am sceptical. The quarrel dated from seven 
 years before, a long time in the quickly-changing conditions of the 
 Elizabethan stage, and besides, had Dekker really intended to attack 
 Jonson, he could hardly have chosen a more unapt way of doing it 
 than to picture himself as a gull laughed at by a poet and able to 
 answer him in no better way than by rising 'with a screwed and 
 discontented face ' and leaving the theatre in the middle of one of 
 his plays. Surely Dekker, if indeed he had a red beard and little 
 legs, was not unique in these respects among men of the period. 
 In 161 1, at least, we know that a red beard was 'most in fashion' 
 {see L, Barry's Ram-Alley, I., i.). It is indeed hard to see what more 
 obvious or likely peculiarities of a gull Dekker could have selected 
 for mention. 
 
 55. 15. Euphuized. The Quarto has £«/>/^«/r^; Nott, Euphu- 
 esed ; and Grosart, Euphuizd. 
 
 7S 
 
58. 12. inlove . . . /.^., very fond of one of the exercises 
 mentioned. 
 
 58. 30. dead. Nott's emendation for ' deere ' of the Quarto. 
 The edition of '62 reads ' dear ' but suggests ' dead.' Although the 
 change seems necessary, ' dear ' giving no apparent sense, it should 
 be noted that the misprint is not a simple one, necessitating, as it 
 does, an error of at least two letters. 
 
 59. 14-5. now there is a general peace. 'The peace con- 
 cluded with Spain in August, 1 604 ; and which had re-opened up 
 the wine trade.' — Hindley. 
 
 59. 15. drunk. Notts emendation, accepted by Grosart. 
 The Quarto has 'drinke.' 
 
 61. 16. vintners. The Quarto misprints 'Vintuers.' 
 
 62- 20. cold; or, if Nott's emendation for 'cold) But if 
 of the Quarto. Accepted by Grosart. This reading gives fair sense, 
 but it seems to me much more probable that several words have 
 dropped out, telling the gull what he should do if he 'smell a watch': 
 it may perhaps have been intended to give him directions for escaping 
 notice altogether. 
 
 66. 22. itch to. The Quarto has 'itch, to', which would also 
 give quite good sense, though the sentence would be grammatically 
 imperfect. If this reading is preferred the comma after 'barber's' 
 should be replaced by a semicolon. Grosart printed ' itch to', as 
 here. 
 
 76 
 
GLOSSARY 
 
 (The figures between brackets are those of the page and line.) 
 
 Ad prelum TANQUJM ad PRCELIUM — (3. 5-6): 'to the press as 
 to battle.' 
 
 Alongst — (33. 2) : along. 
 
 Apple-squire — (15. 10): a harlot's attendant ; pimp. 
 
 Arcadian and Euphuized gentlewomen — (55. 15-16): persons 
 who, to be in the fashion, used an affected style of speech imitated 
 from Sidney's Arcadia and Lyly's Euphues, 
 
 Arches — (16. 20) : fluting or puckering (of the rabatos or ruffs). 
 
 A-RE—{%. 15): see GAM-UT. 
 
 B. FROM A BATTLEDORE, TO DISTINGUISH A (lO. 1 8) : tO IcnOW OnC 
 
 thing from another ; here apparently — to be able to read. The 
 phrase, which is very common, has not been satisfactorily ex- 
 plained. 
 
 Bale (of dice) — (46. 13) : pair or set. 
 
 Bankerout — (47. 6) : bankruptcy. 
 
 Barbaria — (33. 2): "a countrey where dwelleth people rude and 
 beastly." — Cooper's Thesaurus (1584). Here put jokingly for 
 the land of barbers. 
 
 Basilisk eyes — (41. 13) : malignant eyes. The basilisk was fabled 
 to be able to kill a person with its glance. 
 
 Bastone — (52. 21): bastinado. See note. 
 
 Beast, the great — (49. 6-7): the common people. 
 
 Begged for a concealment — (18. 14-15): see Concealment. 
 
 Bias, like — (10. 4): silent. "Bias holding his tongue at a feast, 
 was termed there of a tatler to be a fool, who said, ' Is there 
 
 77 
 
any wise man that can hold his tongue amidst the wine ? ' unto 
 whom Bias answered, ' There is no fool that can.' " — J. Lyly's 
 Euphues {Works, ed. Bond, I., 279). Bias was one of the " seven 
 wise men " of Greece. 
 
 Bill — (16. 14): used in the double sense of — (i) an account, and 
 (2) a kind of halberd, the weapon of a watchman. 
 
 BiRCHiN Lane — (15. 16): a lane running north from Lombard 
 Street, some distance west of Gracechurch Street. It was 
 inhabited chiefly by drapers and dealers in clothing ; especially 
 second-hand. 
 
 BiRDiNG-PiECE — (17. 25): a fowling-piece. 
 
 Blind — (46. 17) : without a light (?). 
 
 Blistered — (16. 17): ornamented with puffs. 
 
 Block — (34. 3) : a mould for a hat. 
 
 Block-house — (9. 14) : a guard-house, with punning allusion to the 
 use of ' block ' in the sense of stupid person, as in ' block- 
 head.' 
 
 Blue case — {()T^. 14) : blue coat, the usual colour for a serving-man's 
 livery. 
 
 Book, to fight by the — (33. 22) : i.e., according to rules. Possibly 
 Dekker is referring to some such work as Vincentio Saviolo his 
 Practise, in two Books. The first intreating of the use of the Rapier 
 and Dagger. The second, of honor and honorable Quarrels (1595). 
 
 Boot-hose — (28. 11-12) : hose and boots combined in one. 
 
 Bravery — (26. 18): gay apparel; splendour. 
 
 Butter-box — (32. 16) : a cant term for a Dutchman. 
 
 Cales voyage — (42. 2) : the expedition under the Earl of Essex 
 and Lord Effingham which took Cadiz (Cales) in 1596. 
 
 Candied — (21. 18) : sugared ; with allusion to the sense of ' candid.' 
 
 78 
 
Canvassing — (23. 2): criticising; attacking. 
 
 Cane — (66. 19) : a variety of tobacco. 
 
 Case — (57. 22): dress. 
 
 Cast — (11. 22): possibly — vomit. 
 
 Casting away a leg — (24. 29) : making a bow or curtsy. 
 
 Catchpole — (36. 12): sheriff's officer; sergeant. 
 
 Ceruse — (17. 22) : white lead used as a cosmetic. 
 
 Chair — (17. 3) : perhaps the name of a tavern. See note. 
 
 Chapman — (49. 12): merchant. 
 
 Charm out — (12. 17): sing. 
 
 Clarke, Will — (34, i) : Nott suggests that he may have been a 
 notorious news-writer of the time. There were at least two 
 writers of the name who are known to us, but neither seems 
 likely to be alluded to. Possibly ' Will, the clerk ' is meant, 
 the sense being that the church bells would be rung in the 
 gull's honour. 
 
 Cleft to the shoulders — (61. 16): drunk (?) The phrase does 
 not seem to occur elsewhere. 
 
 Coat with four elbows — (7. 17) : a fool's coat with an extra pair 
 of sleeves hanging down at the back. Compare Nashe's Have 
 with you to Safiron-Walden (JVorks ed. Grosart, iii., 33), "wings 
 at his arms, like a fool's coat with four elbows." 
 
 Cockatrice — (58. 10; 59. 30): a loose woman ; mistress. 
 
 C(ELUM PETIMUS STULtlTIA — (8. 11-12): we seek heaven in our 
 folly. From Horace, Carm^ i., 3. 38. 
 
 Coil — (27. 13): fuss; to-do. 
 
 College of Critics — (8. 14) : it is not known to what this refers. 
 Nott quotes Ben Jonson's Epiccene (1609-10), I., i. ; "a new 
 foundation ... of ladies, that call themselves the collegiates " ; 
 
 79 
 
but the second allusion here (45. 24) seems to show that it was 
 an association of men. Compare also the Induction to Marston's 
 Malcontent. 
 
 Commodities, TASTES THESE — (47. 13-14): obtains these advantages. 
 
 CoMPLiMENTAL — (8. 1 6) I accomplished. 
 
 Compliment — (42.11; 44.28): accomplishment; especially polite 
 accomplishment. 
 
 Concealment, be begged for a — (18. 14-15): "concealment" was 
 the offence of holding land against the king's right ; without 
 proper title. It seems to be meant that rich men's sons were 
 accused (probably for purposes of blackmail or with the object 
 of getting the property made over to the accuser) of being in 
 possession of lands to which they had no legal right. Nott's 
 suggestion that the concealing or sheltering of adventurers and 
 sharpers from the law is referred to, does not seem plausible. 
 
 Conjuration — (43. 20) : persuasion. 
 
 Constable — (8. 12): the joke is not quite clear; but constables 
 were proverbially dull-witted and a common butt of jests. 
 
 CoNVENiENCY — (53. 17): Convenience. 
 
 Conycatcher — (18. 16): cheat; sharper. 
 
 Cormorant — (12. i): glutton. 
 
 Cos JMORIS — (17. 20) : the whetstone of love. See note. 
 
 Counters — (58.3; 65.26): the debtors' prisons. There were two 
 of these: one in Wood Street, the other in the Poultry, in 
 Cheapside. The latter is punningly alluded to as " the Counter 
 amongst the poultry" (52. 20). 
 
 Crookes his ordinary — (17. 3) : the name of a tavern. Nothing 
 further is known about it. 
 
 Crossed, not much — (36. 1-4) : few of whose accounts have been 
 crossed off as paid ; hence — largely indebted. 
 
 80 
 
Cuckoo in Christmas — (25. 30): The point of this allusion has 
 not been explained. 
 
 Cuckoo in June — (7. i.) : the cuckoo was supposed to grow hoarse 
 in June. See note to PasquiPs Jests in Hazlitt's Shakespeare 
 Jest-Books, vol. iii. 
 
 Cutter — {6^. 24) : tailor. 
 
 Cypress — (37. 3) : a light, transparent material resembling crape ; a 
 hat-band of such material. 
 
 D^DALiAN — (16. 19) : "RufFs were so termed from their manifold 
 
 [labyrinthine] plaits." — Nott. 
 Dagger — (17. 2) : a celebrated tavern in Holborn. See note. 
 Dawcock — (51. 25) : a silly fellow (Jit. jackdaw). 
 Dead pay — (58. 30; 59. i) : pay for dead soldiers fraudulently 
 
 drawn by their officers. See note. 
 Derick — (22. 3-4) : the hangman of the time. 
 DiACATHOLICON JUREUM — (18. 26) : a laxative electuary, so called 
 
 because it was a ' golden ' remedy for every disease, and perhaps 
 
 also because it was supposed to contain gold. 
 
 Dog your heels — (36. 18): stick close. "It had long been the 
 custom, and it prevails even at this day, for the choristers, on 
 seeing a person enter the cathedral, during divine service, with 
 spurs on, to demand of him what is called spur-money." — Nott. 
 
 Dorp — (16. 12): a village. 
 
 Drab — (45. 27) : a loose woman. 
 
 Draw — (54. 2) : i.e., draw out your purse. 
 
 Duke — (29. 11): i.e., Duke Humphrey. The tomb of Sir John 
 Beauchamp, on the south side of the nave in St. Paul's 
 Cathedral, was popularly supposed to be that of Humphrey, 
 Duke of Gloucester (1391-1447), "the Good Duke Hum- 
 phrey," who was in reality buried at St. Albans. This tomb 
 
 G 81 
 
was a common meetingplace of gallants and others, particularly 
 such persons as went in fear of arrest for debt, for within the 
 Cathedral they were safe from the hands of the law. They 
 seem to have especially congregated in the "gallery" adjacent to 
 the tomb, presumably the south aisle of the church. Compare 
 Dekker's Dead Term {Works, ed. Grosart, iv., 50). Hence 
 those who could not afford dinner and were obliged to spend 
 the mid-day hours in wandering about the Cathedral were said 
 to " dine with Duke Humphrey." 
 
 DuNSTiCAL — (11. 12): stupid; dunce-like. 
 
 Dutch crier — (9. 18): "the Dutch public criers made use of a 
 drum, as ours now do of a bell." — Nott. 
 
 Dutchman — (3. 13): German. 
 
 Ebritians — (24. 27) : Hebrews. Dekker perhaps took the word 
 from The School of Slovenrie. See extract, 1. 1 9. 
 
 Encomiastics — (60. 13): praises. 
 
 Endymion — (23. 21) : I can find no authority for the statement that 
 his sleep was of 75 years. Classical mythology makes it eternal ; 
 Lyly, in his play of Endimion, 40 years. 
 
 Ensure — (44. 29) : assure. 
 
 Equinoctial of the salt cellar — (46, ii) : the salt was placed in 
 the middle of the table, the most honourable places being those 
 nearest the head. 
 
 Eryngo-root — (15. 3) : this was formerly used as a provocative. 
 
 EsTRicH — (50. 14): ostrich. 
 
 Exhibition — (46. 9) : allowance of money ; income. 
 
 Eye of the element — (23. 30) : the sun. 
 
 82 
 
Fashionate — (34. 6) : fashionable. 
 
 Fashions — (16. 23; 37. 12): a vulgar variant of farcy or farcin, 
 the horse disease. Here used with a pun on the ordinary 
 meaning of the word. 
 
 Fencer — (18. 16): fencing master. They were notorious bullies 
 and blackguards. Nott considered that it meant a receiver of 
 stolen goods, but this sense is perhaps hardly so early. 
 
 Flapdragon — (11. 20): "small combustible bodies (they may be 
 formed of almonds) set on fire, floated in a glass of liquor and 
 swallowed while burning." — Nott. 
 
 Flocks — (30. 22) : refuse of wool, used for stuffing mattresses, etc. 
 
 France — (43. 9) : Nott thinks that a part of the tennis-court was 
 called France. I have, however, been unable to find other 
 instances of its use in this sense. 
 
 Freezeland — (25. 11): for Friesland, to favour the equivoque. 
 
 Frenchman — (30. 6) : " Allusion is here made to a certain disease, 
 so frequently noticed by Shakespeare [and almost every other 
 Elizabethan writer] for its depilatory effects," — Nott. 
 
 Frolic — (11. 20): "Humorous verses circulated at a feast." — 
 N.E.D., but the quotations are not convincing. They were 
 clearly something passed round the table. 
 
 Gallery — (66. 28): a display of fencing (.?). 
 
 Gallery-commoner — (49. 15): a spectator in the gallery, one of 
 the cheapest parts of a theatre. 
 
 Galligaskin — (16. 16) : a kind of wide hose or breeches. 
 
 Galloway nag — (4 1.9): a small Scotch horse. 
 
 Gallonius — (15. 13): a public crier in Rome circa B.C. 140, pro- 
 verbial for his wealth and luxurious mode of life. 
 
 83 
 
GjM-UT A-RE — (8. 15) : the two lowest notes of Guido d'Arezzo's 
 musical scale. Compare The Taming of the Shrew, III., i. 
 Used to signify the whole scale, as A B C to mean the whole 
 alphabet. 
 
 Gatherers — (50. 3) : money-takers at the doors of theatres. 
 
 Gear — (18. 11): matter; affair. 
 
 Germanies' — (11. 17): Germans'. See note. 
 
 Gird — (8. 30) : sneer. 
 
 Girder — (50. 25): sneerer; satirist. 
 
 Globe — (17. 14) : there seems to be an allusion to the Globe theatre, 
 which was in or near Paris Garden. 
 
 Glove — (11. 20): "some kind of drinking vessel." — N.E.D. (with 
 no other instance). 
 
 Golden Ass — (16. 25): an allusion to the well-known romance of 
 Apuleius. In 1600 Dekker had collaborated with Chettle and 
 Day in a play of The Golden Ass, and Cupid and Psyche, not now 
 extant. 
 
 GoosECAP — (9. i; 28. 20): booby; noodle; numskull. 
 
 Gotham — (28. 24) : this village, in the south-west corner of Notting- 
 hamshire, was notorious for the foolishness of its inhabitants, 
 about whom many ludicrous stories were current. See the 
 Merry Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham in Hazlitt's Shakespeare 
 Jest-Books, vol. iii. 
 
 Grave Maurice — (42. 6) : Maurice of Nassau, the second son of 
 the Prince of Orange, who succeeded Robert, Earl of Essex, as 
 general-in-chief of the United Provinces in 1588. 
 
 Great — (16. 2 ; 36. 5): to be 'great' in anyone's books was to be 
 largely in debt to them. 
 
 Green goose — (59. 5) : gosling. 
 
 84 
 
Grobianism — (3. 10): the characteristics of the hero of Frederick 
 Dedekind's Latin poem of Grobianus. See Introduction under 
 ' Source.' 
 
 Grogram — (35. 24) : a coarse fabric of silk, mohair, or wool, or of 
 these mixed with silk ; often stiiFened with gum. 
 
 Groundling — (49. 15): a spectator who occupies one of the cheapest 
 places in a theatre, generally standing-room in the yard. 
 
 Groutnoll — (13. 8): blockhead. 
 
 Gull — Dekker uses the word in the somewhat unusual sense of an 
 ignorant, boorish person trying to pose as a town gallant. The 
 common meaning is — fool, one easily cheated ; sometimes also 
 — fop. 
 
 Gull — (54. 7) : vb. Cheat ; trick. 
 
 Hand — (44. 26) : handwriting. 
 
 Handfull — (17. i): a measure of four inches, the same as 'hand- 
 breadth.* 
 
 KLandkercher — (35. 27) : handkerchief. 
 
 Hanged (of rapiers) — (47. 25) : put on ; suspended to the belt by 
 the cords termed ' hangers.' 
 
 Hannibal — (9. 10) : the allusion is to Hannibal's passage over the 
 Alps, when, according to Livy, he used vinegar to split or 
 dissolve the rocks and make a road for his army. 
 
 Happily — (51. 6; 58. 29; 65. 14): haply; perhaps. 
 
 Hare-hunter — (31. 23): hair hunter; an equivoque. 
 
 Hazard — (46. 8) : a card game. 
 
 Heir — (3 1 . 25): punning on ' hair.' 
 
 Hedge-creeper — (26. 1 1) : a crafty vagabond and thief. 
 
 Helen's CHEEK — (17. 19): j^e note. 
 
 85 
 
Heliogabalus — (15. 17): a Roman Emperor, A.D. 2 18-222, famed 
 for his insane luxury. 
 
 Hemlock, chew nothing but — (9. 7-8) : Nott considered this 
 equivalent to " Go, poison yourself." 
 
 Heteroclite — (8. 7): oddity; eccentric person. 
 
 Hieroglyphic, mystical — (11. 25): probably 'occult power' is 
 meant. 
 
 High Dutch — (63. 12): German. 
 
 Hobby — (33. 17) : a small horse or pony. 
 
 Hobby-horse — (47. 27) : pony. 
 
 Hoop — (i i. 19) : a kind of drinking vessel, or a measure of drink. 
 
 Hornbook : a leaf of paper containing the alphabet (and generally 
 the Lord's Prayer and a few simple words) covered with a thin 
 sheet of horn for protection, and mounted on a square piece of 
 wood with a handle (see the initial letter on page i). It was 
 used for teaching children their letters. Hence elementary 
 primer. 
 
 Horse that went up St. Paul's steeple — (38. 5): we learn from 
 Dekker's Dead Term (Pf^orks, ed. Grosart, iv., 49) that this 
 took place in the year 1 600. There is also an anecdote about 
 it in the same author's Jests to make you Merry (JVorks, ii., 288). 
 Nott thinks that this must have been the famous performing 
 horse of Banks, frequently referred to in Elizabethan literature, 
 but there seems no evidence for this. 
 
 Humphrey, Duke : see Duke. 
 
 iLLE EGO QUI QUONDJM — (17. 29): <I am he who once . . . ' 
 Part of the first of four probably spurious lines prefixed to the 
 first book of Virgil's Aeneid. " In allusion, I suppose, to his 
 former satirical tracts." — Nott. 
 
 86 
 
In JRTE BIBENDI M agister — (lO. 3-4): 'master in the art of 
 drinking.' Perhaps in allusion to the treatise of Vincentius 
 Obsopeus de Arte Bibendi^ 1536. 
 
 Indian chimney — (29. 9) : chimney for the fumes of tobacco. 
 
 In DISPETTO del FJTO — (7. 16): ' in defiance of fate.' 
 
 Ingle — (^6^. 13) : boy favourite (in a bad sense). Nott says ' crony,' 
 but I do not think there is any authority for this explanation. 
 
 In PLJNO — (17. 17): 'on the flat.' 
 
 In SUMMJ TOTJLI — (37. 10): 'altogether.' 
 
 Into — (39. 14) : unto. 
 
 Island voyage — (42. 2-3): the expedition sent in 1597 to capture 
 the Azores, under Essex, Howard, and Ralegh. 
 
 Islanders — (34. 9) : people who walk the aisles (of St. Paul's). 
 Punning on the usual sense of ' islanders.' 
 
 Isle of gulls — (9. 13) : there is probably an allusion to the play of 
 this name by John Day, printed in 1606. 
 
 Ivy-bush, beat the same — (60. 17) : frequent the same tavern. A 
 bush of ivy hung up over a door was a general sign that wine 
 was sold within. 
 
 Jacks — (27. 10): the pieces of wood which plucked the strings of 
 the virginals when the keys were depressed. See also Paul's 
 
 JACKS. 
 
 Jade — (3 1 . 13): horse. 
 
 Jennet — (41. 9) : a small Spanish horse. 
 
 Jet — (8. 2) : vb. swagger. 
 
 Jobbernowl — (28.25): blockhead. 
 
 John in Paul's Churchyard — (34. 2) : Nott thinks that this was 
 probably the name of a well-known hatter, but there is perhaps 
 some joke that escapes us. 
 
 87 
 
KelleYjEdward — (8. 26) : alchemist and necromancer (7?. 1555-95). 
 associated with the celebrated Dr. Dee. 
 
 Kemp, William — (10. 26): a popular comic actor and dancer 
 (fl. 1600). 
 
 Kynock, St. — (42. 9) : I can learn nothing of this — probably- 
 fictitious — personage. 
 
 La.uret — (12. 30): laurel. Either a mistaken form or, as seems 
 more probable, a mere misprint. Grosart explains the word 
 as ' laureate,' but this appears to make no sense. 
 
 Lickerish — (15. 12): tempting to the palate. 
 
 Lien — (30.21): lain. 
 
 Lin — (52, 28) : stop. 
 
 Lob — (i 1.8): country lout. 
 
 Log — (34. 20) : See Serving-man's log. 
 
 Logger-head — (9. 14-15): a blockhead. 
 
 Looby — (12. 4) : an awkward fellow. 
 
 Lord Chancellor's tomb — (38. 25) : the tomb of Sir Christopher 
 Hatton (1540-91), in St. Paul's. It was one of the finest 
 monuments there. 
 
 Lords' room — (50. 6) : an apartment or box in a theatre, near the 
 stage. 
 
 Lurch — (47. 3) : vb. Cheat ; trick. 
 
 Malcontent — (28. 8) : a person who professed discontent with the 
 state of society or with the government. 
 
 Mandilion — (26. 12): a kind of outer coat, generally without 
 sleeves. 
 
 88 
 
Martin's, St. — (28. 10): compare "Shoemakers Hall in Saint 
 Martin's," Pappe with an Hatchet {Works of J. Lyly, ed. Bond, 
 iii., 400, 38). The editor notes "a burlesque locality," but see 
 Stow's London, ed. Strype, Bk. I., 242 : " The Shoemakers and 
 Curriers of Cordwainer Street removed, the one to St. Martin's 
 Le Grand, the other to London Wall." This was before 1 603, 
 but the exact date is not given. 
 
 Mediterranean aisle — (34. 5) : the middle aisle of St. Paul's. 
 Compare Dekker's Dead Term: "And thus doth my middle 
 aisle show like the Mediterranean Sea, in which as well the 
 merchant hoists up sails to purchase wealth honestly as the 
 rover to light upon prize unjustly." — JVorks^ ed. Grosart, iv., 51. 
 Also " Come, let's walk in Mediterraneo." — Every Man out 
 of His Humour, iii., i. 
 
 Mingle-mangle — (18. 19): mixture. 
 
 Mist language — (59. 16-17): Nott explains as "wine, (quasi 
 drunken language) derived from the offuscating effects of wine 
 upon the senses." 
 
 MiTHRiDATES — (i8. 1 9) : he is supposed to have Invented an 
 antidote against all poisons. The recipe, which is given by 
 Celsus, contains about forty different drugs. 
 
 Mittimus — (64. 11) : a warrant for arrest. 
 
 Modicum — (11. 26): something eaten to provoke thirst. 
 
 MoME — (13. 8): a ninny; dolt. 
 
 MoMUS — (9. 7 ; 49. 23) : the personification of censure ; a carping 
 
 critic. 
 Month's mind — (10. 8) : a strong inclination. 
 
 MooRDiTCH — (17. 29): part of the old city moat. These moats 
 had been much neglected and had become very foul. Several 
 attempts had from time to time been made to cleanse them, 
 the most recent having been in 1606. 
 
Mows — ' MAKES HIS MOWS AT* — (3 1. 1 1) : dcrides ; also, by a pun, 
 mows or cuts down. See note. 
 
 MuLLiNEux — (17. 15) : a famous globe maker, a friend of Hakluyt. 
 A pair of his globes are now in the library of the Middle 
 Temple. 
 
 MusTACHio — (22. 5) : moustache. 
 
 Natural — (22. 16): idiot. 
 
 New-painted gates — (29. 13): this alludes to the custom of the 
 Lord Mayor, on coming into office, of redecorating his official 
 residence. Compare " their cheeks sugar-candied and cherry- 
 blushed so sweetly, after the colour of a new Lord Mayor's 
 posts, as if the pageant of their wedlock holiday were hard at 
 the door." — Nashe's Piers Penniless {JVorks^ ed. Grosart, ii., 43). 
 
 Ninnyhammer — (10. 16; 33. 6): a simpleton. 
 
 NON MINUS VENEFICJ QUAM BENEFICE — (22. 2i) : ' not less harm- 
 ful than beneficial.' 
 
 NouL — (32. 16): head. 
 
 Only — (3 1.3): chief ; " great." 
 
 Ordinary-pay — (58. 15): " all who pay at the ordinary." — Nott. 
 This seems, however, to have been a term for the pay of soldiers 
 engaged in guarding fortified places, etc., as distinct from that 
 which they received on active service. Compare Cotgrave (i 650), 
 s. V. morte-payes : " Souldiers in ordinary pay, for the guard of a 
 Fortresse, or frontier Towne, during their lives." 
 
 0-TES — (9. 19) : proclamation. From the words used by the crier 
 to call attention (Fr. oyez, hear !). 
 
 Painted-cloth rhymes — (2 1 . 13): " hacknied sage sentences, such 
 as are found spouting in scrolls from the mouths of figures 
 worked or painted on tapestry." — Nott. 
 
 90 
 
Pair of cards — (46. 12) : pack of cards. 
 
 Pair of virginals — (27. 10) : set of virginals. The expression is 
 frequent, though the virginals were in reality but one instru- 
 ment. 
 
 Parcel-greek, parcel-latin — (23. i) : partly Greek and partly 
 Latin. 
 
 Parcels — (42. 17): fragments; scraps. 
 
 Paris Garden — (17. 11): a bear garden on the south bank of the 
 Thames, contiguous to the Globe Theatre. It was named after 
 Robert of Paris, who, in the time of Richard II., had a house 
 there. 
 
 Parmizant — (11. 19): a kind of drink, or a way of drinking (.'')• 
 The word also occurs in Dekker's Seven Deadly Sins of London 
 {JVorks^ ed. Grosart, ii., 19), but has not been explained. 
 
 Pasquil's madcap — (17. 28-9): satirist. Pasquil or Pasquin was 
 a name given to a certain statue of a gladiator in Rome on 
 which it became customary to hang satirical or libellous poems 
 against persons in authority. A book by Nicholas Breton 
 entitled PasquiFs Mad-cap, appeared in 1 600 ; the second part 
 is stated to have been "finished by his friend Marphorius." 
 Is it possible that Dekker had some hand in it 1 
 
 Patent for starch — (16. 22): such a patent for the sole manu- 
 facture and sale of starch was granted to Sir John Packington 
 in 1594 or 1595. (Stow's London, ed. Strype, 1720, bk. v., 
 P- 1 77-) 
 
 Paul's — (i. 19, etc.): St. Paul's Cathedral. It was used at this 
 time as a general rendezvous. See Duke. 
 
 Paul's jacks — (35. 8; 38. 30; 39. 4): automatons which struck 
 the hour. 
 
 91 
 
Paul's steeple — (38. i): the tall, pointed spire of St. Paul's was 
 struck by lightning on the 4th of June, 1561, and burnt down 
 as far as the stone-work, leaving only a square tower, which 
 seems to have remained in a somewhat ruinous state. Money 
 was frequently collected for its restoration, but when at last 
 work was commenced it was stopped by the Great Fire, In 
 which the church itself was destroyed. 
 
 Paul's Walks — (33. heading) : the aisles of St. Paul's. 
 
 Penny galleries — (49. 15) : the cheapest places at a theatre. 
 
 Perch, to turn men over the — (32. 23) : to kill them. 
 
 Perfect — 'to be perfect in' — (11. 30; 47. 15): to know 
 thoroughly. 
 
 PerINJDO — (65. 12): the word seems to be otherwise unknown, 
 but it was evidently synonymous with Ingle (q.v.). 
 
 Persian lock — (50. 21) : see note. 
 
 Piers plowman — (17. 7): used here as representing a simple, ab- 
 stemious person. 
 
 Pipe-office — (8. 29) : I am unable to explain this passage. There 
 was an office of the name in the Court of Exchequer, which 
 dealt with leases of crown lands, etc. Whether there is any 
 allusion to this, I cannot say. Dekker is, of course, playing 
 on the idea of the tobacco pipe. 
 
 Pitch-fork — (17. 6): table fork. They were introduced about 
 this time from the continent, where they had been in use many 
 years previously. 
 
 Plato's cock — (25. 29) : the plucked cock, which Diogenes declared 
 to fulfil Plato's definition of a man (a two-footed, featherless 
 creature). The story comes from Diogenes Laertius. 
 
 Plaudities — (7. 13; 49. 6): (pronounced as three syllables) 
 applause. 
 
 92 
 
Point to, upon — (52. 1 1) : about to. 
 
 Politicly — (43. 2) : artfully. 
 
 Polling — (32. 18): cropping, 
 
 Polypragmonist — (8. 28-9): a busybody. 
 
 Popinjay — (9.30): a parrot; a gaily-coloured imitation parrot, used 
 as a mark for archery, hence a coxcomb, fop. 
 
 Portingale — (42. 2) : Portugal. The Portingale voyage was the 
 unsuccessful expedition sent in 1589, under Sir John Norris 
 and Sir Francis Drake, to replace Don Antonio on the throne 
 of Portugal. 
 
 Post, in — (47. 29) : in haste. 
 
 Poticary — (44. 24-5; 65. 28): apothecary. 
 
 Prefer — (36. 14): show ofF. 
 
 Present — (51.21): represent. 
 
 Pricksong — (27. 8) : (i) written music, or (2) a descant or counter- 
 point as distinguished from a cantus firmus; contrapuntal music 
 in general. — Cent. Diet. 
 
 Primero — (46. 8 ; 65. 6) : a card game. 
 
 Prining-iron — (44. 18): apparently an instrument for picking out 
 the burnt tobacco. Nott thought it to mean tobacco stopper. 
 
 Prize — (54. 5; 66. 28): a fencing match or display of arms. 
 Dekker is referring to the fact that in such contests the winner 
 is sometimes decided upon beforehand. 
 
 PROBJTUM est — (18. 25) : * it has been tried.' 
 
 Proface, to bid — (11. 30): to wish "good luck" or "much good 
 may it do you." 
 
 93 
 
Public and private playhouses — (50. 3-4) : see Collier's Hist, of 
 Eng. Dram. Poetry (1879) '^°1- ^"-j ^4°> ^o"" ^^^ distinction 
 between these. In general, it may be said that the private 
 theatres were smaller and more expensive ; they were also 
 entirely roofed over, while the public ones were partially open 
 to the sky. 
 
 Pudding — (66. 19): a variety of tobacco. 
 
 Punk — (i. 9; 47. 8; etc.): a loose woman; mistress. 
 
 Put out money upon his return — (47. 18-19): adventurers about 
 to set out on a journey frequently staked large sums of money 
 on condition that if they returned in safety they were to receive 
 from two to ten times the amount deposited. 
 
 Quality — (60. 22) : characteristic. 
 
 QuAT — (57. 6) : a young man (Jit. a pimple; spot). 
 
 Quicksilver — (28. 8) : apparently here used for a lackey or errand 
 boy. There is a character of this name in Chapman, Jonson, 
 and Marston's play o{ Eastward Ho (1605), but he is a prentice, 
 not a servant. 
 
 Quietus est — (66. 3) : acquittance. 
 
 Quilted — (32. 22) : padded. 
 
 Quoit — {2^- ^^) • toss; throw. For a note on the custom of giving 
 * spur-money ' see under Dog. 
 
 Rabato — (16. 20) : a kind of ruff or collar. 
 
 Rasher o' th' coals — (11. 25-26) : a fried or broiled slice of meat, 
 probably salted, eaten to provoke thirst. 
 
 Rid away — (64. 29) : were lost. 
 
 Rifling — (61.20): dicing party. A variant of ' raffling.' 
 
 94 
 
Ring — (44. 27) : a method of taking tobacco ; or perhaps the trick 
 of forming rings with the smoke. 
 
 RouGH-EOOTED DOVE — (28. 14) : One with feathers on its legs. 
 
 RowsA — (11. 18): a bumper. 
 
 Rubbing — (52, 9) : " Hath put on his stage face, by rubbing the 
 usual paint on his cheeks." — Nott. The word 'quaking' seems, 
 however, to suggest that his want of colour was due to nervous- 
 ness. The prologue appears, at least sometimes, to have been 
 spoken, not by one of the regular actors, but by the author or 
 his representative. 
 
 Ruffled boot — (8. 8) : one with a large turn-down top. 
 
 Salad — (59. i) : used with a play on the two meanings: (i) a dish 
 of lettuce, and (2) a military head-piece. 
 
 Salerne, the university of — (21. 13): a famous medieval school 
 of medical science at Salerno. Its more important precepts 
 regarding the care of the health were embodied in a Latin poem, 
 which, under the title of Regimen Sanitatis Sakrni, became ex- 
 ceedingly popular. This is anonymous, but is said to have been 
 the work of Joannes de Mediolano, an Italian physician who 
 lived in the latter half of the eleventh century. 
 
 Saturnian agb — (16. 27) : the primitive world. 
 
 Saturnist — (31. 29) : a person of a morose or gloomy temperament. 
 
 Sconce — (28.27): head. 
 
 Sepulchre, St. — (39. 5) : one of the best known of the churches 
 without the walls, near Newgate. 
 
 Sergeant — (41. 14): sheriff's officer ; bailiff. 
 
 Serving-man's log — (34. 20) : probably a block or bench upon 
 which serving-men sat. 
 
 95 
 
Seven wise masters — (7. 18): the 'seven wise men' of Greece, 
 namely, Solon, Chilo, Pittacus, Bias, Periander, Cleobulus, and 
 Thales. 
 
 Seventeen provinces — (42. 10): the United Netherlands. 
 
 Sharers — (55. 7) : the members of a theatrical company who shared 
 the risks and profits of the undertaking. 
 
 Shaving — (61. 27): roguery; cheating. 
 
 Shears — 'there went but a pair of shears between them' — 
 (16. 8) : " there i.e., they were both cut from the same stuff. 
 
 Ship of Fools — (9. 27) : the Narrensckiff, a. famous German satirical 
 poem descriptive of the various kinds of fools, by Sebastian 
 Brant ; first printed in 1494, translated into English by 
 Alexander Barclay, 1509. 
 
 Shittlecock — (55. 17): shuttlecock. 
 
 Shoeing-horn — (11.26): something eaten to provoke thirst. Com- 
 pare Nashe's Lenten Stuff: " [red-herring] is a shoeing-horn for 
 a pint of wine over-plus." — Works (ed. Grosart, v., 245). 
 
 Shot — (60. 21): tavern reckoning. 
 
 Shoulder-clapping — (53. 18): arrest. 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip — (38. 27): his epitaph may be read in Stow's 
 London (ed. Strype, 1720, bk. iii., p. 161). The tomb shared 
 between him and Sir Francis Walsingham was considered un- 
 worthy of their renown. Hence was made a rhyme : 
 
 " Philip and Francis have no Tomb, 
 For great Christopher takes all the Room." 
 
 (Stow, as above, p. 160.) 
 
 Singer, John — (10.26) : a noted actor and jig-maker (^fl. 15 94- 1602). 
 
 Si QUIS — (37. 29): an advertisement for anything lost; notice or 
 announcement of any kind. 
 
 96 
 
Sit brevis, jut nullus, tibi somnus meridunus — (21. 15): 
 
 ' let your mid-day sleep be short or none at all.' A quotation 
 from the Regimen Sanitatis Salerni, see Salerne. 
 
 SiTHENCE — (49. 17): since. 
 
 Skelder — (47. 22) : swindle. 
 
 Skill's not — (35. 27; 64. 3): matters not. 
 
 Skinker — (11. 17) : one who serves drink; a drawer, tapster. 
 
 Slop — (16. 16): trousers. 
 
 Snake-proof — (9. 10): proof against envy and malice. 
 
 Snort — (22. 18): snore. 
 
 Soles, single and simple — (18. 2): 'Single-soled' meant poverty- 
 striken. There is here some vague play upon the sense of ' soul.' 
 
 Sometime — (59. 4) : sometimes. 
 
 Sommer, William — (8. 9): the famous jester of Henry VIII, 
 {d. 1560), more correctly called 'Sommers.' His 'wardrobe' 
 was of course his fool's dress. 
 
 Spawling — (12. 15): spitting about. 
 
 Spending Englishman — (30. 7): "A joke is here intended, which 
 I think I can catch ; but perhaps it is one that needs not be 
 inquired into." — Nott. 
 
 Spinsters of destiny — (31. 2) : the fates. 
 
 Spur-royal — (64. 28): a gold coin issued by James I, and worth 
 about 1 6s. 
 
 State OF Cambyses — (50.13): throne of Cambyses. The character 
 seems to have been proverbial for magnificence, perhaps owing 
 to the popularity at an earlier date of Preston's play of 
 Cambyses (1569-70). 
 
 H 97 
 
Stephen, King — (i6. 5) : Alluding to a stanza in the ballad 'Take 
 thy old cloak about thee,' in Percy's Reliques, etc. The verse is : 
 
 "King Stephen was a worthy peer, 
 
 His breeches cost him but a crown ; 
 He held them six-pence all too dear, 
 
 With that he called the tailor ' Lown ! ' " 
 
 This stanza with another occurs in Othello, II., iii. 
 
 Stool — (51. 19): It was customary for the more fashionable 
 spectators to sit on stools on the stage. 
 
 Stoop — (11. 18) : a tankard ; flagon ; or its contents. 
 
 Stow's Chronicle — (38. 22): The Summary of English Chronicles^ 
 first published in 1565, or The Chronicles of England, first 
 published in 1580, and frequently afterwards with the title of 
 The Annals of England. 
 
 Strawling — (28. 15): straddling (.'). See no\&. 
 
 Strosser — (16. 18): a kind of tight trousers. 
 
 Supplements — (44. 7-8): supplies; or perhaps additional advantages. 
 
 SwouND — (38. 13): swoon. 
 
 Table — (3. 14): a panel for painting on. 
 
 Tables — (18.4; 66. 12): tablets for memoranda. 
 
 Table-books — (37. 17): See Tables. 
 
 Table-men — (8. 24) : The usual meaning is chess or draughtsmen : 
 here possibly players at these games may be meant. It has been 
 suggested that 'gaily apparelled servants' are intended. 
 
 Take up money — (45. 28) : borrow or, perhaps, collect money due. 
 
 Tarleton, R. — (10. 26) : a celebrated comic actor and improviser 
 of doggrel verse {d. 1588). 
 
 98 
 
Term — (3. 5) : London was much fuller and more busy during 
 the four law terms than at other seasons. It was therefore 
 customary to publish books, especially those of a popular nature, 
 at these times. 
 
 Tester, teston — (45. 22; 52. 14): a coin of the value of six 
 pence. 
 
 Theatre DU MONDE — (17. 11) : possibly this may be an allusion 
 to the Theatrum mundi of P. Boaistuau, first published in 1566, 
 but many geographical works had similar titles, as, for example, 
 the well-known Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570), by the Italian 
 geographer, Ortelius. 
 
 Thirty in the hundred — (i. 10) : thirty per cent interest. 
 Thrummed cap — (32. 17-18): a cap made of thrums, or waste yarn. 
 TiMONisTS — (19, 3): followers of Timon of Athens. See note. 
 Tooting— (22. 19): peering; prying. 
 TOTJLIS—{6o.2^): total. 
 Traverse — (60, 29) : dispute. 
 
 Trojan, an honest — (31. 7): a good fellow; boon companion. 
 There is a play on the word Greek above : a ' merry Greek ' is 
 also a boon companion, jovial fellow. 
 
 Troubled with two offices — (43. i) : Nott says "This alludes to 
 the prohibition by law to hold two benefices, or two lay offices 
 together, without a dispensation ; and such dispensation was 
 not so easily obtained as now. Our gallant therefore is directed 
 to affect having the means of procuring persons this dispensa- 
 tion, from his intimacy with the great." 
 
 Trumpets — (52. 10) : trumpets were sounded thrice as a signal that 
 the play was about to begin. 
 
 99 
 
Turks — (31. 1 8) : Compare the account by T. Sanders of a disastrous 
 voyage to i'ripoli in 1583, in Hakluyt's Principal Navigations, 
 vol. ii., part i., p. 187. The ship's company were taken 
 prisoners and were * forceably and violently shaven, head and 
 beard.' 
 
 TwELVEPENNY ROOM — (9. 2) : the best places at a theatre. 
 
 Unicorn's horn — (26. 8) : The substance sold as 'unicorn's horn' 
 was considered an infallible antidote against poison, and as such, 
 fetched a very high price. It seems to have been the fossilised 
 tusk of some animal, but probably more than one substance 
 went under the name. Compare Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia 
 Epidemica, bk. iii., ch. 23. 
 
 Unwittingly — (43. 19): 5^^ note. 
 
 Upsy-freeze — (11. 17-18) : 'in the Frisian manner'; probably some 
 custom connected with drinking. It was thought by Nott to 
 be a kind of drink, but see ' upsee-Dutch ' in the Century 
 Dictionary. 
 
 Vaunt-couriers — (25. 6) : avaunt-couriers ; fore-runners. 
 
 VeTUS COMCEDU — (21. 3): the old comedy, i.e., satirical and 
 topical drama. 
 
 Virginals — (27. 10) : a spinet or harpsichord. 
 
 Voider — (17. 8 ; 47. 23) : a basket used to carry away the remnants 
 of a meal. 
 
 Walks — (34. 1 7) : the aisles of St. Paul's, used as a fashionable 
 promenade. 
 
 Wet finger, with a — (60. 12): easily, at a call or sign. The 
 origin of the expression has not been satisfactorily explained. 
 
 100 
 
We three — (51. 9) : An allusion to the old humorous picture of two 
 boobies, with the inscription 'We three, Loggerheads be,' the 
 spectator being, of course, the third. 
 
 Whiff — (44. 27) : a method of taking tobacco, perhaps inhaling. 
 
 Whiff down — (33. 20) : swallow down. 
 
 Wines — (44.25): the rarer wines, especially varieties of sweet wine, 
 were at this period generally sold by apothecaries. See note. 
 
 Woodcock — (11. 5): a simpleton. The bird was popularly 
 supposed to have no brains. The reference at 25. 27, to Pliny's 
 being unable to catch them in his springes has not been explained. 
 Nott suggests that it merely means that he omitted the bird 
 altogether in his Natural History, but Pliny's ' attagen ' is gen- 
 erally taken to be the same bird. 
 
 Woodroffe, Kit — (38. 4-5) : nothing further seems to be known 
 about this person. 
 
 Yard — (51. 29): the uncovered standing-room in the public theatres. 
 
 ZoiLus — (9. 6) : a grammarian famous for his strictures on Homer ; 
 hence, a carping critic. 
 
 lOI 
 
APPENDICES 
 
 I. — The first chapter of Dedekind's Grobianus, from the 
 English translation by R.F., published in 1605, under the title 
 of I'he Schoole of Slovenrie : Or, Cato turnd wrong side outward. 
 
 What modestie is to he observed each morning in the apparrell, and making 
 the haire, the face, and the teeth cleane. 
 
 Whose're thou art that hat'st at heart a Masters crabbed charge, 
 Which reades a Lecture every day of gravltie at large : 
 Harke hither, come and heare this man, a man of quiet speech, 
 No thunder-thumping Catonist, you neede him not beseech. 
 My speech is brode, be rul'd, and then He do the best I can, 5 
 
 Be rudible, and sure I thinke you'le prove a learned man : 
 Be but a careful! auditor and scholler unto me, 
 And then you'le soone excell your Master in simplicitie. 
 What though some crabbed wittall do not like my precepts well, 
 Yet they can never hurte you, if you marke all that I tell. i o 
 
 When Morpheus, drowsie god of sleepe, from bed doth thee 
 dismisse, 
 (Which must be just at dinner time, for so my counsell is :) 
 Thy parents blessing never aske, learne that good point of me. 
 This is a rule and perfect note of great civilitie. 
 Good morrow nor good even to friend nor foe impart too fast : 1 5 
 If they beginne, repay no thanks, walke on, you are in haste : 
 What though you both should use, to both you know t' would be 
 
 but vaine, 
 Then loose no words for good words past cannot be cal'd againe. 
 Let fond Hebritians, which account their superstition wealth, 19 
 Salute their friends, pray for their foes, and aske them of their health : 
 Tis vaine to have so great a care of such superfluous things, 
 This too much care to jocund youth white haires and sorrow brings. 
 
 102 
 
When you are up, to stretch your selfe deserveth mickle praise ; 
 This is prescrib'd by all that practise phisicke in our daies : 
 For when your sinews, numb'd with sleepe, cannot performe 
 
 their worke, 25 
 
 This stretching drives away all numbnesse which in them did lurke. 
 
 Being out of bed, let it suffice to clothe thee in thy shurt, 
 To stay to put on all thy clothes, with colde thou mightst thee hurt: 
 All thy apparrell else get up forth-with under thine arme, 29 
 
 Then to the chimney corner runne, for there thou maist it warme. 
 What though a maide or married wife be there before thou come. 
 Go forward with thy purpose though, as thou wouldst erst have 
 
 done. 
 If any man object to thee, that manners thou doost lacke, 
 Bid him, if he mislike that sight, be gone and shew his backe. 
 Let every man give place to thee, thy selfe give place to none, 35 
 What, man ! why, Nature made thee free, then boldely hold thine 
 owne. 
 
 At length, when thou art well araide, let both thy hose hang 
 downe 
 About thy heeles, this onely thing will get thee great renowne : 
 For by this secret meanes the maides will seeke thy love to have, 
 And every wench thee, for her husband, of her friends will crave. 
 Your reason, sir 1 O sir, there is a speciall reason why, 4 1 
 
 I cannot stay to tell it now. He tell it by and by. 
 
 Simplicitie commands that you forget to trusse your pointes, 
 Hard tying is an enimie to bellie and to joynts. 
 
 Lest some men say you are too hansome, ne'er combe your haire, 
 As Nature sets it, and bed leaves it, use it so to weare : 46 
 
 Leave plaited haires, and curled lockes, unto the female sex, 
 And let them use to combe their haire, whom cruell love doth vex. 
 Beleeve me, not a wench unto thee will affection beare. 
 If she perceive that thou observ'st such nicenesse in thy haire : 50 
 Who can abide yong men that dresse themselves as female crew, 
 
 103 
 
A Creetish dame writ to an Amazonian lover true : 
 
 'Tis praise and credite to have feathers store upon your head, 
 
 For thereby men may well perceive you scorne straw in your bed. 
 
 In any case cut not your haire, but let it hang at length, ^^ 
 
 For t'will both keepe away the colde, and argue Sampsons strength. 
 When father Saturne rulde the world all men did use long haire. 
 And gloried in it, though now wenches use it most to weare : 
 Fore-fathers plaine simplicitie is prais'd in every place, 
 Then let not us disdaine to use it, it is no disgrace. 60 
 
 Thy face and hands too oft to wash, is cause of mickle hurt, 
 Therefore (a Gods name) let them both have ever store of durt : 
 Let other men, that with hands, have care to wash them cleane ; 
 But as for washing of my hands, to take no care I meane. 64 
 
 Some nice-controuling mate will counsell thee to wash thy teeth; 
 But I say, water in the mouth not with the health agreeth : 
 What though your teeth, through o're-much rust, are dide to a 
 
 red hue .'' 
 That is a perfect saffron colour, t'will much credite you. 68 
 
 What other colour then this red hath the bright glittering gold. 
 For which possessions, tenements, lands, lives, and all are sold } 
 Then thinke not, that golds perfect colour doth your teeth disgrace. 
 That colour which, in few mens purses, in your teeth hath place. 
 
 104 
 
II. — The fifth chapter of Vincent's Toung Gallant's 
 Academy, i6y^, corresponding to the sixth of T/ie Gull's 
 Hornbook. 
 
 CHAP. V 
 
 Instructions for a young Gallant how to be have himself in the 
 
 Play-house. 
 
 The Theatre is your Poets Royal Exchange, upon which their 
 Muses (that are now turned to Merchants) meeting, barter away that 
 light Commodity of words, for a lighter ware than words, Plaudities, 
 and the breath of the great Beast, which (like the threatnings of two 
 Cowards) vanish into Air. 
 
 The Play-house is free for entertainment, allowing Room as well 
 to the Farmers Son as to a Tempter; yet it is not fit that he whom the 
 most Taylors bills make room for when he comes, should be basely, 
 like a Viol, cased up in a corner : Therefore, I say, let our Gallant 
 (having paid his half Crown, and given the Door-keeper his Ticket) 
 presently advance himself into the middle of the Pit, where having 
 made his Honor to the rest of the Company, but especially to the 
 Vizard -Masks, let him pull out his Comb, and manage his flaxen Wig 
 with all the Grace he can. Having so done, the next step is to give 
 a hum to the China-Orange-wench, and give her her own rate for her 
 Oranges (for 'tis below a Gentleman tost and haggling like a Citizens 
 wife) and then to present the fairest to the next Vizard-mask. And 
 that I may incourage our Gallant not like the Trades-man to save a 
 shilling, and so sit but in the Middle-Gallery, let him but consider 
 what large comings-in are pursed up sitting in the Pit. 
 
 I. First, A conspicuous Eminence is gotten, by which means the 
 best and most essential parts of a Gentleman, as his fine Cloaths and 
 Perruke, are perfectly revealed. 
 
 105 
 
2. By sitting in the Pit, if you be a Knight, you may happily 
 get you a Mistress ; which if you would, I advise you never to be 
 absent when Epsome Wells is plaid : for, 
 
 " We see the Wells have stoln the Vizard-masks away" 
 
 Empress of Morocco, in the Prologue. 
 
 But if you be but a meer Fleetstreet Gentleman, a Wife : but assure 
 your self, by your continual residence there, you are the first and 
 principal man in election to begin the number of We three. 
 
 It shall Crown you with rich Commendation, to laugh aloud in 
 the midst of the most serious and sudden Scene of the terriblest 
 Tragedy, and to let the Clapper (your Tongue) be tossed so high, 
 that all the House may ring of it : for by talking and laughing, you 
 heap Pelion upon Ossa, Glory upon Glory : as first, all the eyes in the 
 Galleries will leave walking after the Players, and. only follow you : 
 the most Pedantick Person in the House snatches up your name ; 
 and when he meets you in the Streets, he'l say. He is such a Gallant; 
 and the people admire you. 
 
 Secondly, You publish your temperance to the world, in that 
 you seem not to resort thither to taste vain Pleasures with an hungry 
 Appetite ; but only as a Gentleman to spend a foolish hour or two, 
 because you can do nothing else. 
 
 Now Sir, if the Poet be a fellow that hath Lampooned or libelled 
 you, or hath had a flirt at your Mistress, you shall disgrace him worse 
 than tossing him in a Blanket, or giving him the Bastinado in a 
 Tavern, if in the middle of the Play you arise with a skrew'd and 
 discontented face (as if you had the griping in the Guts) and be gone ; 
 and further to vex him, mew at passionate Speeches, blare at merry, 
 find fault with the Musick, whistle at the Songs, and above all, curse 
 the Sharers, that whereas the very same day you had bestowed five 
 pounds for an embroidered Belt, you encounter with the very same 
 on the Stage, when the Belt-maker swore the impression was new 
 but that morning. 
 
 lo6 
 
To conclude, hoard up the finest Play-scraps you can get, upon 
 which your lean Wit may most savourly feed for want of other stuflF; 
 for this is only Furniture for a Courtier that is but a new Beginner, 
 and is but in his A B C of Complement. The next places that are 
 fiUed after the Play-houses be emptied, are Taverns. Into a Tavern 
 let us then march, where the Brains of one Hogshead must be beaten 
 out to make up another. 
 
 107 
 
THIS EDITION OF THE GULL'S HORNBOOK 
 
 WAS PRINTED BY ALEXANDER MORING 
 
 LIMITED AT 298 REGENT STREET 
 
 LONDON W MARCH 
 
 MDCCCCIV