[270] To fling an old shoe after a person to produce good luck is a custom still spoken of, and hardly yet disused. It is mentioned in many writers: as in "The Wild Goose Chase," act ii. sc. 1—
"If ye see us close once,
Begone, and leave me to my fortune suddenly,
For I am then determined to do wonders.
Farewell, and fling an old shoe."
[271] See note to "A Match at Midnight" [xiii. 81].
[272] One of the original actors in the plays of Shakespeare. See an account of him in Wright's "Historia Histrionica" infrâ, vol. xv.
[273] Banks, who was famous for a horse, which was taught to show tricks, and perform several feats of art, to the great admiration of the virtuoso spectator. This celebrated horse is mentioned by several writers of Queen Elizabeth's time, as Ben Jonson, in "Every Man out of his Humour," act iv. sc. 6: "He keeps more ado with this monster than ever Banks did with his horse, or the fellow with the elephant."
Again, in "Jack Drum's Entertainment," sig. B 3: "It shall be chronicled next after the death of Bankes his horse."
Again, in Dekker's "Satiromastix," 1602: "I'll teach thee to turn me into Bankes his horse, and to tell gentlemen I am a juggler, and can show tricks."
And in Dekker's "Wonderfull Yeare," 1603: "These are those ranck riders of art, that have so spur gal'd your lustie wing'd Pegasus, that now he begins to be out of flesh, and (even only for provander sake) is glad to show tricks like Bankes his curtall."
See Digby "On Bodies," c. 37, p. 393. Sir Walter Raleigh's "History of the World," 1st part, p. 178. Gayton's "Notes on Don Quixote," part 4, p. 289.
[274] [i.e., Without their upper garments.]