It would be just as reasonable to call the following opening of a sonnet by Sir P. Sidney a parody upon a line in the "Spanish Tragedy"—
"O tears! no tears; but rain from beauty's skies."
In fact, it was a common mode of expression at the time. Thus in "Albumazar," we have this exclamation—
"O lips! no lips; but leaves besmeared with dew."
[202] See note to "Cornelia," [v. 225.]
[203] These lines are taken from Marlowe's "Hero and Leander," 4° 1600, sig. B 3, [or Dyce's Marlowe, iii. 15.]
[204] Again, in "Cynthia's Revels," act v. sc. 3: "From stabbing of arms, flapdragons, healths, whiffs, and all such swaggering humours, good Mercury defend us," [edit. 1816, ii. 380.]
This custom continued long after the writing of this play. The writer of "The Character of England" [Evelyn], 1659, p. 37, speaking of the excessive drinking then in use, adds, "Several encounters confirmed me that they were but too frequent, and that there was a sort of perfect debauchees, who style themselves Hectors; that, in their mad and unheard-of revels, pierce their own veins, to quaff their own blood, which some of them have drunk to that excess that they have died of the intemperance."—Reed.
[205] Alluding to the story of Friar Bacon's brazen head.—Collier.
[206] The colour of servants' clothes.