1. 1. 96 Skip with a rime o’ the Table, from New-nothing. What is meant by New-nothing I do not know. From the construction it would seem to indicate the place from which the fool was accustomed to take his leap, but it is possible that the word should be connected with rime, and may perhaps be the translation of a Greek or Latin title for some book of facetiae published about this time. Such wits as Fennor and Taylor doubtless produced many pamphlets, the titles of which have not been recorded. In 1622 Taylor brought out a collection of verse called ‘Sir Gregory Non-sense His Newes from no place,’ and it may have been this very book in manuscript that suggested Jonson’s title. In the play of King Darius, 1106, one of the actors says: ‘I had rather then my new nothing, I were gon.’
1. 1. 97 his Almaine-leape into a custard. ‘In the earlier days, when the city kept a fool it was customary for him at public entertainments, to leap into a large bowl of custard set on purpose.’—W. Whalley refers also to All’s well that Ends Well 2. 5: ‘You have made a shift to run into it, boots and all, like him that leapt into the custard.’
Gifford quotes Glapthorne, Wit in a Const.:
The custard, with the four and twenty nooks At my lord Mayor’s feast.
He continues: ‘Indeed, no common supply was required; for, besides what the Corporation (great devourers of custard) consumed on the spot, it appears that it was thought no breach of city manners to send, or take some of it home with them for the use of their ladies.’ In the excellent old play quoted above, Clara twits her uncle with this practise:
Now shall you, sir, as ’tis a frequent custom, ‘Cause you’re a worthy alderman of a ward, Feed me with custard, and perpetual white broth Sent from the lord Mayor’s feast.’
Cunningham says: ‘Poets of a comparatively recent date continue to associate mayors and custards.’ He Quotes Prior (Alma, Cant. 1) and a letter from Bishop Warburton to Hurd (Apr. 1766): ‘I told him (the Lord Mayor) in what I thought he was defective—that I was greatly disappointed to see no custard at table. He said that they had been so ridiculed for their custard that none had ventured to make its appearance for some years.’ Jonson mentions the ‘quaking custards’ again in The Fox, Wks. 3. 164., and in The Staple of News, Wks. 5. 196, 7.
An Almain-leap was a dancing leap. ‘Allemands were danced here a few years back’ (Nares). Cunningham quotes from Dyce: ‘Rabelais tells us that Gargantua “wrestled, ran, jumped, not at three steps and a leap, ... nor yet at the Almane’s, for, said Gymnast, these jumps are for the wars altogether unprofitable and of no use.” Rabelais, Book 1, C. 23.’
Bishop Barlow, Answer to a Catholike Englishman, p. 231, Lond. 1607, says: ‘Now heere the Censurer makes an Almaine leape, skipping 3 whole pages together’ (quoted in N. & Q. 1st Ser. 10. 157).
1. 1. 97 their hoods. The French hood was still worn by citizens’ wives. Thus in the London Prodigal, ed. 1709: