Ed. 1736, p. 158.
In like manner Bale, describing the threats used by some papist magistrates to his wife, speaks of them as "grennyng upon her lyke Termagauntes in a playe." (Actes of Engl. Votaryes, pt. ii. fo. 83, Ed. 1550, 12mo.) Accordingly in a letter of Edward Alleyn, the founder of Dulwich College, to his wife or sister, who, it seems, with all her fellows (the players), had been "by my Lorde Maiors officer mad to rid in a cart," he expresses his concern that she should "fall into the hands of suche Tarmagants." (So the orig. dated May 2, 1593, preserved by the care of the Rev. Thomas Jenyns Smith, Fellow of Dulw. Coll.) Hence we may conceive the force of Hamlet's expression in Shakspeare, where, condemning a ranting player, he says, "I could have such a fellow whipt for ore-doing Termagant: it out-herods Herod" (Act iii. sc. 3). By degrees the word came to be applied to an outrageous turbulent person, and especially to a violent brawling woman; to whom alone it is now confined, and this the rather as, I suppose, the character of Termagant was anciently represented on the stage after the eastern mode, with long robes or petticoats.
Another frequent character in the old pageants or interludes of our ancestors, was the sowdan or soldan, representing a grim eastern tyrant. This appears from a curious passage in Stow's Annals (p. 458). In a stage-play "the people know right well that he that plaieth the sowdain, is percase a sowter [shoe-maker]; yet if one should cal him by his owne name, while he standeth in his majestie, one of his tormenters might hap to break his head." The sowdain, or soldan, was a name given to the Sarazen king (being only a more rude pronunciation of the word sultan), as the soldan of Egypt, the soudan of Persia, the sowdan of Babylon, &c., who were generally represented as accompanied with grim Sarazens, whose business it was to punish and torment Christians.
I cannot conclude this short memoir, without observing that the French romancers, who had borrowed the word Termagant from us, and applied it as we in their old romances, corrupted it into Tervagaunte; and from them La Fontaine took it up, and has used it more than once in his tales. This may be added to the other proofs adduced in these volumes of the great intercourse that formerly subsisted between the old minstrels and legendary writers of both nations, and that they mutually borrowed each other's romances.
FOOTNOTES:
[420] See a short Memoir at the end of this Ballad, Note †‡†.
[421] Sign C. ii. b.
[422] Sign C. i. b.
[423] Odyss. a. 105.
[424] See vol. ii., note subjoined to 1st part of Beggar of Bednal, &c.