And again, in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 1), the mischievous Puck says:
“sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab;
And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob,
And on her wither’d dewlap pour the ale.”
And, once more, we find Capulet, in “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 5), saying to the Nurse:
“Peace, you mumbling fool!
Utter your gravity o’er a gossip’s bowl;
For here we need it not.”
Referring to entertainments at christenings, we find the following in the “Batchelor’s Banquet,” 1603 (attributed to Dekker): “What cost and trouble it will be to have all things fine against the Christening Day; what store of sugar, biskets, comphets, and caraways, marmalet, and marchpane, with all kinds of sweet-suckers and superfluous banqueting stuff, with a hundred other odd and needless trifles, which at that time must fill the pockets of dainty dames,” by which it appears the ladies not only ate what they pleased, but pocketed likewise. Upon this and the falling-off of the custom of giving “apostle spoons” at the christening, we read in “Shipman’s Gossip,” 1666:
“Especially since gossips now
Eat more at christenings than bestow.
Formerly when they us’d to troul
Gilt bowls of sack, they gave the bowl;
Two spoons at least; an use ill kept;
’Tis well now if our own be left.”
Strype tells us that, in 1559, the son of Sir Thomas Chamberlayne was baptized at St. Benet’s Church, Paul’s Wharf, when “the Church was hung with cloth of arras, and after the christening were brought wafers, comfits, and divers banqueting dishes, and hypocras and Muscadine wine, to entertain the guests.”
In “Henry VIII.” (v. 4), the Porter says: “Do you look for ale and cakes here, you rude rascals?”
A term formerly in use for the name given at baptism was “Christendom,” an allusion to which we find in “All’s Well that Ends Well” (i. 1), where Helena says:
“with a world
Of pretty, fond, adoptious christendoms
That blinking Cupid gossips,”