“Methinks, nobody should be sad but I:
Yet, I remember, when I was in France,
Young gentlemen would be as sad as night,
Only for wantonness.”[727]
There are frequent references to this fashion in our old writers. Thus, in Ben Jonson’s “Every Man in His Humor” (i. 3), we read: “Why, I do think of it; and I will be more proud, and melancholy, and gentlemanlike than I have been, I’ll insure you.”
FOOTNOTES:
[707] “Shakespeare and His Times,” 1817, vol. i. p. 220.
[708] On entering into any contract, or plighting of troth, the clapping of the hands together set the seal, as in the “Winter’s Tale” (i. 2), where Leontes says:
“Ere I could make thee open thy white hand,
And clap thyself my love; then didst thou utter
I am yours forever.”
So, too, in “The Tempest” (iii. 1):
“Miranda.My husband, then?
Ferdinand. Ay, with a heart as willing
As bondage e’er of freedom: here’s my hand.
Miranda. And mine, with my heart in’t.”
And in the old play of “Ram Alley,” by Barry (1611), we read, “Come, clap hands, a match.” The custom is not yet disused in common life.
[709] “The Stratford Shakespeare,” 1854, vol. i p. 70.