"We'll dine in the great room, but let the musick
And banquet be prepared here;"[142:C]
a custom which it is astonishing the delicacy and refinement of modern manners have not generally adopted.
As our ancestors, during the greater part of the period we are considering, possessed not the conveniency of eating with forks, and were, therefore, compelled to make use of their fingers, it became an essential point of good manners, to wash the hands immediately before dinner and supper, as well as afterwards: thus Petruchio, on the entrance of his servants with supper, says, addressing his wife,—
"Come, Kate, and wash, and welcome heartily."[143:A]
In the fifteenth item of Harrington's Orders, we find that no man was allowed to come to the kitchen without reasonable cause, an injunction which may appear extraordinary; but, in those days, it was customary, in order to prevent the cook being disturbed in his important duties, to keep the rest of the men aloof, and, when dinner was ready, he summoned them to carry it on the table, by knocking loudly on the dresser with his knife: thus in Massinger's Unnatural Combat, Beaufort's steward says,—
"When the dresser, the cook's drum, thunders, Come on,
The service will be lost else;"[143:B]
a practice which gave rise to the phraseology, he knocks to the dresser, or, he warns to the dresser, as synonymous with the annunciation that, "dinner is ready."
It was usual, also, especially where the domestic fool was retained, to keep an ape or a monkey, as a companion for him, and he is frequently represented with this animal on his shoulders. Monkeys, likewise, appear to have been an indispensable part of a lady's establishment, and, accordingly, Ben Jonson, in his Cynthia's Revels,