‘He plucked ope his doublet.’
The Carpenter in ‘Julius Cæsar’ is asked:
‘Where is thy leather apron and thy rule?’
The mob have ‘sweaty night-caps.’
Cleopatra, in ‘Antony and Cleopatra,’ says:
‘I’ll give thee an armour all of gold.’
The ‘Winter’s Tale,’ the action of which occurs in Pagan times, is full of anachronisms. As, for instance, Whitsun pastorals, Christian burial, an Emperor of Russia, and an Italian fifteenth-century painter. Also:
‘Lawn as white as driven snow;
Cyprus[B] black as ere was crow;
Gloves as sweet as damask roses;
Masks for faces and for noses;
Bugle-bracelet, necklace amber,
Perfume for a lady’s chamber;
Golden quoifs and stomachers,
Pins and polking-sticks of steel.’
So, you see, Autolycus, the pedlar of these early times, is spoken of as carrying polking-sticks with which to stiffen ruffs.
Shylock, in ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ should wear an orange-tawny bonnet lined with black taffeta, for in this way were the Jews of Venice distinguished in 1581.