"Methinks he did not this respectively enough."
[410] Meaning a bill announcing that the plague had occasioned forty deaths. During the plague, the theatres were closed; and, to a new player such an event was doubly calamitous.—Collier.
[411] It was formerly customary for the counters in London to receive the remains of the sheriffs' dinners, for the use of the prisoners confined there.—See Stow's "Survey," vol. i. b. iii. p. 51. edit. 1720.
[412] [Mistress Smell-smock advanced Frances the dress, the cost of which was to be repaid, and Frances says that she made up the money in six weeks.]
[413] Breeches. The term occurs in almost every writer of the times.
[414] In "Philocothonista," 1635, p. 46, it is said: "Of glasses to qnaffe in, the fashions and sizes be almost without number, some transported hither from Venice and other places, some made in the Citie by strangers." The manufactory of glass at Venice was then very considerable. See Howell's "Letters," 1754, p. 56.
[415] [See Nares, edit. 1859, p. 923.]
[416] Formerly there were a set of itinerant musicians who used to earn a scanty pittance by going about in winter evenings to taverns and inns, playing for the entertainment of the company they found there. Sir John Hawkins ("History of Music," v. 66) mentions a person who was an excellent performer, and yet submitted to get his living by this practice so late as the year 1735. It is said that some musicians attended the greater inns so constantly that they might in some sort be styled retainers to the houses. A very curious and rare tract, with the title of "The Actors Remonstrance or Complaint for the Silencing of their Profession," 1643, has the following apposite passage:—"Our Musike that was held so delectable and precious that they scorned to come to a Taverne under twenty shillings salary for two houres, now wander with their Instruments under their cloaks, I meane such as haue any, into all houses of good fellowship, saluting every roome where there is company with Will you have any musike, Gentlemen?" Such was one consequence of the severity of Puritan discipline.—Collier. [Hazlitt's "English Drama and Stage," 1869, p. 263.]
[417] I find blue coats used to be worn on St George's day, but what order of people the fashion was confined to, I have not been able to discover. It is mentioned in epigram 33 of Rubbe and a great cast. The second bowle, by Thomas Freeman, 4to, 1614.
"With's coram nomine keeping greater sway,
Then a court blue coat on Saint George's day."