Yet very well I can, by the smell, scent an honest man from
a knave.”
* Of the original we speak, which Caulfield sold to Mr.
Townley for ten guineas! This identical print, with the
Jests, now lies before us. Caulfield's copy is utterly
worthless.
Once while he was performing at the Bull in Bishopsgate-street, where the queen's servants often played, a fellow in the gallery, whom he had galled by a sharp retort, threw an apple, * which hit him on the cheek: Tarlton, taking the apple, and advancing to the front of the stage, made this jest:—
“Gentlemen, this fellow, with his face of mapple, **
Instead of a pippin, hath throwne me an apple;
But, as for an apple he hath cast me a crab,
So, instead of an honest woman, God hath sent him a drab.”
The people laughed heartily, for he had a queane to his wife. ***
Gabriel Harvey, in his “Four Letters and certain Sonnets,” 1592, speaking of Tarlton's “famous play” (of which no copy is known) called “The Seven Deadly Sins,” says, “which most deadly, but lively playe, I might have seen in London, and was verie gently invited thereunto at Oxford by Tarlton himselfe; of whom I merrily demanding, which of the seaven was his own deadlie sinne?