This again seems to have been imitated from a similar description of the State of Spain in Greene’s “Spanish Masquerade,” 1589:—
“The Cardinalls solicit all, The King grauntes all, The Nobles confirm all, The Pope determines all, The Cleargie disposeth all, The Duke of Medina hopes for all, Alonso receives all, The Indians minister all, The Soldiers eat all, The People paie all, The Monks and friars consume all, And the Devil at length will carry away all.”
The Naked Boy was a satirical sign reflecting upon the constant changes of the fashions of our ancestors. William Herbert has this observation in his manuscript memoranda, “I remember very well when I was a lad seeing on Windmill Hill, Moorfields, a taylor’s sign, a naked boy with this couplet:—
“So fickle is our English nation,
I wou’d be clothed if I knew the fashion.”[647]
The same idea is expressed in the “Introduction to Knowledge,” by Andrew Borde, (the original “Merry Andrew,”) Doctor of Physick, 1542, where a naked man is introduced undecided as to the style of dress he should adopt on account of the continual change in the fashions:—
“Now am I a frysker, all men doth on me looke,
What should I do but set cocke on the hoope,
What do I care yf all the worlde me fayle,
I will get a garment shall reche to my tayle.”
Coryatt also reflects upon this ever-varying change in his “Crudities:”—“For whereas they [the gentlemen of Venice] have but one colour, we use many more than are in the rainbow; all the most light garish and unseemly colours that are in the world. Also for fashion we are much inferior to them: for we weare more phantastical fashions than any nation vnder the Sunne doth, the French onely excepted; which hath given occasion to the Venetians and other Italians to brand the Englishmen with a notable mark of levity by painting him stark naked with a pair of shears in his hand, making his fashion of attire according to the vain conception of his brain sick head, not to comeliness and decorum.”
So ancient is this complaint as to the versatility of our fashions that we verily believe even our tattooed forefathers must have been constantly altering the hue of their blue stencilling, and bedaubing themselves with new patterns. John Harding, in his “Chronicles,” of the reign of Richard II., describing the various materials and cuts of the “unpayed doublettes and gownes,” even long before his time, says, ch. 193:—
“Broudur and furres and goldsmith werke ay newe,
In many a wyse eche day they did renewe.”