The play ends thus:
Make you good
Your promised reformation, and instruct
Our city dames, whom wealth makes proud, to move
In their own spheres, and willingly to confess,
In their habits, manners, and their highest port,
A distance 'twixt the city and the court.
Cf. also Maid of Honour, III., 1, 84; City Madam, III., 2, 153; IV., 4, 43; New Way, II., 1, 81 and 88. In The Renegado, I., 2, distinctions are drawn between the county ladies, the city dames, and the court ladies of England. Compare also the epilogue to Henry VIII:
Others, to hear the city
Abused extremely, and to cry “that's witty.”
Rape of Lucrece, II., 1; II., 3; The Devil is an Ass, III., 1; Westward Ho! I., 1; “I tell thee, there is equality enough between a lady and a city dame if their hair be but of a colour.” Ford contrasts the ladies of the city and the court in The Broken Heart, II., 1. In Dekker's Shoemaker's Holiday, I., 1, the Lord Mayor says:
Too mean is my poor girl for his high birth,
Poor citizens must not with courtiers wed.
Cf. also A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, I., 1:
Maudlin. Besides, you have a presence, sweet Sir Walter,
Able to dance a maid brought up in the city;
A brave court-spirit makes our virgins quiver.
Eastward Ho! deals with the same contrast. Cf. also the Induction to The Knight of the Burning Pestle, and ib., IV., 5; Induction to Four Plays in One.
II.; 4, 79-106. The reference to the mills is as follows: