A common trick of English burlesque at this time (cf. Midsummer Night's Dream, v. 1, 337, etc.) was the inversion of epithets, producing nonsensical combinations; an expedient which, if we condemn it as poor wit, we must at least allow to fall under the definition of humour as "the unexpected." A good example of this occurs in ll. 360, 361:
"So cruell as the huge camelion,
Nor yet so changing as small elephant."
And another in ll. 677, 678:
"But oh, remaine, and let thy christall lippe
No more of this same cherrye water sippe."
Sarcastic allusions are also not wanting; see, for instance, the cheerful inducement held out to Narcissus:
"As true as Helen was to Menela,
So true to you will bee thy Florida."
And cf. the notes on ll. 337, 342.
There are several facetious mistakes in the forms of words, such as spoone for moon (l. 350), Late-mouse for Latmus (l. 279), and Davis for Davus (l. 400); of which the first recalls Ancient Pistol's "Cannibals" (2 Henry IV. ii. 4, 180), or the contrary slip in Every Man in his Humour, iii. 4, 53, and the two latter, Bottom's "Shafalus" and "Procrus," and the blunders of Costard.
The naïve devices by which the players seem to have made up for some paucity of accoutrements and stage appliances, and their direct appeals to the intelligence of the audience to excuse all defects, are highly edifying. There is, as I have before remarked, no indication of any scenery; and the only characters whom we know to have worn a special dress are Tiresias and Liriope. The prophets of classical history were often converted into bishops by English writers; so, for example, Helenus, son of Priam, in the fourteenth century alliterative Gest Hystoriale of Troy. This is why Tiresias wears a bishop's rochet. It is unfortunate that the collection of robes now in the possession of St. John's College does not include a garment of this description.
Liriope has a symbolical costume, which she very carefully interprets to Narcissus: