[1665] Gosson, P. C. (1582), ‘it is the fashion of youthes to go first into the yarde, and to carry theire eye through every gallery’; Hamlet, III. ii. 10, ‘tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise’; Dekker, G. H. B. (1609), ‘your Groundling and Gallery-Commoner buyes his sport by the penny ... neither are you to be hunted from thence, though the Scar-crows in the yard hoot at you, hisse at you, spit at you, yea, throw durt euen in your teeth’; Bartholomew Fair (1614), ind. 51, ‘the vnderstanding Gentlemen o’ the ground here, ask’d my iudgement’, 59, 79; The Hog Has Lost His Pearl (1614), prol.:
We may be pelted off for ought we know,
With apples, egges, or stones, from thence belowe;
W. Fennor, Descriptions (1616):
the understanding, grounded, men for their just reward,
Shall gape and gaze among the fools in the yard.
So later, Vox Graculi (1623), ‘they will sit dryer in the galleries then those who are the understanding men in the yard’; Shirley, The Changes (1632):
Many gentlemen
Are not, as in the days of understanding,
Now satisfied with a Jig;