The woolen statute-caps. Caps which, by Act of Parliament in 1571, the citizens were required to wear on Sundays and holidays. The nobility were exempt from the requirement, which, as Strype informs us, was "in behalf of the trade of cappers"—one of sundry such "protection" measures in the time of Elizabeth. Compare Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2. 282: "Well, better wits have worn plain statute-caps." As Knight intimates here, the law was a very unpopular one.
THE BAR-GATE, SOUTHAMPTON
The Wife of Bath's husbands. Alluding to the Wife of Bath, one of Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims. In the prologue to her tale, she says of her husbands (of whom she had five in succession):—
"I governed hem so wel after my lawe,
That eche of hem ful blisful was and fawe [fain, or glad]
To bringen me gay things fro the feyre."
That is, as she goes on to explain, they were glad to bring her presents from the fair to keep her in good humor, as otherwise she was apt to treat them "spitously," or spitefully.
Where a coxcomb will be broke. That is, a head will be broken; but it should be understood that this does not mean a fractured skull, but merely a bruise sufficient to break the skin and make the blood flow. Shakespearian critics have sometimes misapprehended this and similar expressions. In Romeo and Juliet (i. 2. 52), where the hero says, "Your plantain-leaf is excellent for that" (referring to a "broken shin"), Ulrici, the eminent German commentator, thinks that he must be speaking ironically, as plantain "was used to stop the blood, but not for a fracture of a bone." Compare Twelfth Night, v. 1. 178, where Sir Andrew says: "He has broke my head across and has given Sir Toby a bloody coxcomb too."
Page 206.—Junkets. The word here means sweetmeats or delicacies.