Clubs. According to Malone, it was once a common custom, on the breaking-out of a fray, to call out “Clubs, clubs!” to part the combatants. Thus, in “1 Henry VI.” (i. 3), the Mayor declares:
“I’ll call for clubs, if you will not away.”
In “Titus Andronicus” (ii. 1), Aaron says:
“Clubs, clubs! these lovers will not keep the peace.”
“Clubs,” too, “was originally the popular cry to call forth the London apprentices, who employed their clubs for the preservation of the public peace. Sometimes, however, they used those weapons to raise a disturbance, as they are described doing in the following passage in ‘Henry VIII.’ (v. 4): ‘I miss’d the meteor once, and hit that woman; who cried out ‘Clubs!’ when I might see from far some forty truncheoners draw to her succour, which were the hope o’ the Strand, where she was quartered.’”[966]
Color-Lore. Green eyes have been praised by poets of nearly every land,[967] and, according to Armado, in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (i. 2), “Green, indeed, is the colour of lovers.”
In “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (v. 1), Thisbe laments:
“Lovers, make moan:
His eyes were green as leeks.”
The Nurse, in her description of Romeo’s rival (“Romeo and Juliet,” iii. 5), says:
“An eagle, madam,
Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye
As Paris hath.”