A passage from Lenton (see note [4. 4. 134]) may also be quoted: ‘He is forced to stand bare, which would urge him to impatience, but for the hope of being covered, or rather the delight hee takes in shewing his new-crisp’t hayre, which his barber hath caused to stand like a print hedge, in equal proportion.’
The dramatists ridiculed it by insisting that the coachman should be not only bare-headed, but bald. Cf. 2. 3. 36 and Massinger, City Madam, Wks. p. 331: ‘Thou shalt have thy proper and bald-headed coachman.’ Jonson often refers to this custom. Cf. Staple of News, Wks. 5. 232:
Such as are bald and barren beyond hope, Are to be separated and set by For ushers to old countesses: and coachmen To mount their boxes reverently, etc.
New Inn, Wks. 5. 374:
Jor. Where’s thy hat?... Bar. The wind blew’t off at Highgate, and my lady Would not endure me light to take it up; But made me drive bareheaded in the rain. Jor. That she might be mistaken for a countess?
Cf. also Mag. La., Wks. 6. 36, and Tale Tub, Wks. 6. 217 and 222.
4. 4. 204 his Valley is beneath the waste. ‘Waist’ and ‘waste’ were both spelled waste or wast. Here, of course, is a pun on the two meanings.
4. 4. 206 Dulnesse vpon you! Could not you hit this? Cf. Bart. Fair, Wks. 4. 358: ‘Now dullness upon me, that I had not that before him.’
4. 4. 209 the French sticke. Walking-sticks of various sorts are mentioned during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. ‘In Chas. II.’s time the French walking-stick, with a ribbon and tassels to hold it when passed over the wrist, was fashionable, and continued so to the reign of George II.’ (Planché).
4. 4. 215, 6 report the working, Of any Ladies physicke. In Lenton’s Leasures (see note [4.4.134]) we find: ‘His greatest vexation is going upon sleevelesse arrands, to know whether some lady slept well last night, or how her physick work’d i’ th’ morning, things that savour not well with him; the reason that ofttimes he goes but to the next taverne, and then very discreetly brings her home a tale of a tubbe.’