I judge they are for wives such tooles
As bables are, in playes, for fooles."[98:B]
Silver and ivory handles were usual among ladies of the middle class of society; but in the higher ranks they were frequently decorated with gems, and the Queen had several new-year's gifts of fans, the handles of which were studded with diamonds and other jewels.[99:A] Shakspeare has many allusions to fans of feathers[99:B]; and even hints, in his Henry the Eighth, that the coxcombs of his day were not ashamed to adopt their use.[99:C]
Perfumed bracelets, necklaces, and gloves, were favourite articles. "Gloves as sweet as damask roses," form part of the stock of Autolycus, and Mopsa tells the clown, that he promised her "a pair of sweet gloves."[99:D] The Queen in this, as in most other luxuries of dress, set the fashion; for Howes informs us, that in the fifteenth year of her reign, Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford, presented her with a pair of perfumed gloves trimmed with four tufts of rose-coloured silk, in which she took such pleasure that she was always painted with those gloves on her hands, and that their scent was so exquisite that it was ever after called the Earl of Oxford's perfume.[99:E]
To these notices it may be added, that a small looking-glass pendent from the girdle[99:F], a pocket-handkerchief richly wrought with gold and silver, and a love-lock hanging wantonly over the shoulder, were customarily exhibited by the fashionable female.
Burton, writing at the close of the Shakspearean era, has given us a brief but exact enumeration of the feminine allurements of his day; a passage which, whilst it adds a few new particulars, will
furnish an excellent recapitulation of what has been already advanced.
"Why," exclaims he, "do they decorate themselves with artificial flowers, the various colours of herbs, needle works of exquisite skill, quaint devices, and perfume their persons, wear inestimable riches in precious stones, crown themselves with gold and silver, use coronets and tires of several fashions; deck themselves with pendants, bracelets, ear-rings, chains, girdles, rings, pins, spangles, embroideries, shadows, rebatoes, versicoler ribands? Why do they make such glorious shews with their scarfs, feathers, fans, masks, furs, laces, tiffanies, ruffs, falls, calls, cuffs, damasks, velvets, tinsels, cloth of gold, silver tissue? Such setting up with corks, straitening with whale bones; why, it is but as a day-net catcheth larks, to make young ones stoop unto them.—And when they are disappointed, they dissolve into tears, which they wipe away like sweat: weep with one eye, laugh with the other; or as children, weep and cry they can both together: and as much pity is to be taken of a woman weeping as of a goose going barefoot."[100:A]
We have seen in the extract from Harrison, at the commencement of this chapter, that a great portion of it is employed in satirising the extravagance and folly of the male-dress of his times, and the adduction of further particulars will serve but to strengthen the propriety of his invective, and to prove, what will scarcely be credited, that, in the absurdity and frivolity of personal ornament, the men far surpassed the other sex.
Though there is reason to conclude that this taste for expensive and frivolous declaration, was originally derived from the reign of