[420] So in the Debate between Pride and Lowliness:—“The nether-stocks of pure Granada silk.” See Fairholt’s History of Costume, 1860, p. 211.
[421] Serving-men.
[422] It was the custom to paste on a pillar near the theatre the title of the play that was to be acted.
[423] In the suburbs—particularly near the Curtain Theatre—were many gardens, “either paled or walled round very high, with their arbours and bowers” (Stubbes), to which libertines resorted. See Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps’ chapter on “The Theatre and Curtain” in Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare.
[424] An allusion to a jest (common in the fugitive poetry of the time) about a beggar-wench, with a child at her back, who refused the advances of a knight (on the ground that the child would be injured in the amorous encounter), unless he would allow the child to be strapped to his own back.
[425] “Proface”—an exclamation of welcome from the host to his guests at a feast. See Nares’ Glossary.
To those that seem judicial Perusers.
Know, I hate to affect too much obscurity and harshness, because they profit no sense. To note vices, so that no man can understand them, is as fond as the French execution in picture. Yet there are some (too many) that think nothing good that is so courteous as to come within their reach. Terming all satires bastard which are not palpable dark, and so rough writ that the hearing of them read would set a man’s teeth on edge;
for whose unseasoned palate I wrote the first Satire, in some places too obscure, in all places misliking me. Yet when by some scurvy chance it shall come into the late perfumed fist of judicial Torquatus[426] (that, like some rotten stick in a troubled water, hath got a great deal of barmy[427] froth to stick to his sides), I know he will vouchsafe it some of his new-minted epithets (as real, intrinsicate, Delphic), when in my conscience he understands not the least part of it. But from thence proceeds his judgment. Persius is crabby, because ancient, and his jerks (being particularly given to private customs of his time) dusky. Juvenal (upon the like occasion) seems to our judgment gloomy. Yet both of them go a good seemly pace, not stumbling, shuffling. Chaucer is hard even to our understandings: who knows not the reason? how much more those old satires which express themselves in terms that breathed not long even in their days. But had we then lived, the understanding of them had been nothing hard. I will not deny there is a seemly decorum to be observed, and a peculiar kind of speech for a satire’s lips, which I can willinglier conceive than dare to prescribe; yet let me have the substance rough, not the shadow. I cannot, nay, I will not delude your sight with mists; yet I dare defend my plainness against the verjuice-face of the crabbed’st satirist that ever stuttered. He that thinks worse of my rhymes than myself, I scorn him, for he cannot: he that thinks better, is a
fool. So favour me, Good Opinion, as I am far from being a Suffenus.[428] If thou perusest me with an unpartial eye, read on: if otherwise, know I neither value thee nor thy censure.