"Here's N. with a nag that is prancing with pride,
And O. with an owl hooping close by his side."
Scene 1. Page 222.
Bovet. His heart like an agate with your print impressed.
An allusion either to the figures of the human face often found in agates and other stones, or to an engraved gem.
ACT III.
Scene 1. Page 225.
Moth. Master, will you win your love with a French brawl.
The word brawl in its signification of a dance is from the French branle, indicating a shaking or swinging motion. The following accounts of this dance may be found more intelligible than that cited from Marston. It was performed by several persons uniting hands in a circle, and giving each other continual shakes, the steps changing with the tune. It usually consisted of three pas and a pied-joint, to the time of four strokes of the bow; which being repeated was termed a double brawl. With this dance balls were usually opened. Le branle du bouquet is thus described in Deux dialogues du nouveau langage François, Italianizé, &c. Anvers, 1579, 24mo:—"Un des gentilhommes et une des dames, estans les premiers en la danse, laissent les autres (qui cependant continuent la danse) et se mettans dedans la dicte compagnie, vont baisans par ordre toutes les personnes qui y sont: à sçavoir le gentil-homme les dames, et la dame les gentils-hommes. Puis ayans achevé leurs baisemens, au lieu qu'ils estoyent les premiers en la danse, se mettent les derniers. Et ceste façon de faire se continue par le gentilhomme et la dame qui sont les plus prochains, jusques à ce qu'on vienne aux derniers."—P. 385. It is probably to this dance that the puritan Stubbes alludes in the following words: "for what clipping, what culling, what kissing and bussing, what smouching and slabbering one of another: what filthy groping and unclean handling is not practised every where in these dauncings? Yea the very deed and action itselfe which I will not name for offending chaste eares, shall bee purtrayed and shadowed foorth in their bawdy gestures of one to another."—Anatomie of abuses, p. 114, edit. 1595, 4to. And John Northbrooke, another writer ejusdem farinæ, in his invective called A treatise wherein dicing, dauncing, vaine plaies or enterludes, &c. 1579, 4to, exclaims that "the Pagans were better and more sad than wee be, they never knewe this newe fashion of dauncing of ours, and uncleanely handling and groping, and kissings, and a very kindling of lechery: whereto serveth all that bassing, as were pigeons the birdes of Venus?" And again; "they daunce with disordinate gestures, and with monstrous thumping of the feete, to pleasant soundes, to wanton songues, to dishonest verses, maidens and matrons are groped and handled with unchaste hands, and kissed and dishonestly embraced," fo. 64, 66. Amidst a great variety of brawls mentioned in the very curious treatise on dancing by Thoinot Arbeau, entitled Orchesographie, Lengres, 1588, 4to, there is a Scotish brawl, with the music, which is here given as a specimen of an old Scotish tune.
The facetious macaronic poet Antony Sablon, or de Arena, whose work Camden says he "kept as a jewel," has left the following description of a brawl:—