“Or a pleated lock, or a bareheaded coachman,
This sits like a sign where great ladies are
To be sold within.”
Sheriffs’ Post. At the doors of sheriffs were usually set up ornamental posts, on which royal and civic proclamations were fixed. So, in “Twelfth Night” (i. 5), Malvolio says: “He’ll stand at your door like a sheriff’s post.” “A pair of mayors’ posts,” says Staunton, “are still standing in Norwich, which, from the initials T. P., and the date 159, are conjectured to have belonged to Thomas Pettys, who was mayor of that city in 1592.”
Shoeing-Horn. This, from its convenient use in drawing on a tight shoe, was applied in a jocular metaphor to other subservient and tractable assistants. Thus Thersites, in “Troilus and Cressida” (v. 1), in his railing mood gives this name to Menelaus, whom he calls “a thrifty shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his brother’s [Agamemnon] leg.”
It was also employed as a contemptuous name for danglers on young women.
In the same way “shoe-tye” became a characteristic name for a traveller, a term used by Shakespeare in “Measure for Measure” (iv. 3), “Master Forthright the tilter, and brave Master Shoe-tie, the great traveller.”
A Solemn Supper. In Shakespeare’s day this was a phrase for a feast or banquet given on any important occasion, such as a birth, marriage, etc. Macbeth says (iii. 1):
“To-night we hold a solemn supper, sir,
And I’ll request your presence.”
Howel, in a letter to Sir T. Hawke, 1636, says: “I was invited yesternight to a solemne supper by B. J. [Ben Jonson], where you were deeply remembered.”
So, in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 5), Tybalt says:
“What! dares the slave
Come hither, cover’d with an antic face,
To fleer and scorn at our solemnity?”