Clown. Not a word, a word; we stand upon our manners.
Come, strike up!”
In an old treatise entitled the “Use and Abuse of Dancing and Minstrelsie” we read:
“But some reply, what fools will daunce,
If that when daunce is doon,
He may not have at ladyes lips,
That which in daunce he doon.”
The practice of saluting ladies with a kiss was once very general, and in the “Merry Wives of Windsor” to kiss the hostess is indirectly spoken of as a common courtesy of the day.
In “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 5) a further instance occurs, where Romeo kisses Juliet at Capulet’s entertainment; and, in “Henry VIII.” (i. 4), Lord Sands is represented as kissing Anne Bullen, next to whom he sits at supper.
The celebrated “kissing comfits” were sugar-plums, once extensively used by fashionable persons to make the breath sweet. Falstaff, in the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (v. 5), when embracing Mrs. Ford, says: “Let it thunder to the tune of ‘Green Sleeves,’ hail kissing comfits, and snow eringoes.”
In “Measure for Measure” (iv. 1, song) kisses are referred to as “seals of love.” A Judas kiss was a kiss of treachery. Thus, in “3 Henry VI.” (v. 7), Gloster says:
“so Judas kiss’d his master,
And cried ‘All hail!’ when-as he meant all harm.”
Lace Songs. These were jingling rhymes, sung by young girls while engaged at their lace-pillows. A practice alluded to by the Duke in “Twelfth Night” (ii. 4):
“O, fellow, come, the song we had last night.—
Mark it, Cesario; it is old and plain;
The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,
And the free maids that weave their thread with bones
Do use to chant it.”