Makes monarches, markes: when varrijnge fate doth lower.”
The mastiff is almost the only dog to which Shakespeare assigns any epithet of praise. In Henry V. (act iii. sc. 7, l. 130, vol. iv. p. 552), one of the French lords, Rambures, acknowleges “that island of England breeds very valiant creatures; their mastiffs are of unmatchable courage.” It is the same quality in Achilles and Ajax on which Ulysses and Nestor count when “the old man eloquent,” in Troilus and Cressida (act i. sc. 3, l. 391, vol. vi. p. 155), says of the two warriors,—
“Two curs shall tame each other: pride alone
Must tarre[[184]] the mastiffs on, as ’twere their bone.”
It is, however, only in a passing allusion that Shakespeare introduces any mention of the bandog. He is describing the night “when Troy was set on fire” (2 Henry VI., act i. sc. 4, l. 16, vol. v. p. 129), and thus speaks of it,—
“The time when scritch-owls cry, and ban-dogs howl,
When spirits walk, and ghosts break up their graves.”
We are all familiar with the expression “motley’s the only wear,” and probably we are disposed simply to refer it to the way in which that important personage was arrayed who exercised his fun and nonsense and shrewd wit in the courts of the kings and in the mansions of the nobles of the middle ages. The pictorial type exists in the Emblems both of Sambucus and of his copyist Whitney (p. 81), by whom the sage advice is imparted,—“Give trifles in charge to fools.”
Fatuis leuia commitito.