In this way Leatherhead proceeds with his motion; he relates part of the story himself, in a ribald manner, and making the puppets quarrel, “the puppet Cole strikes him over the pate.” He performs Damon and Pythias in the same way, and renders the “gallimaufry” more ridiculous, by a battle between the puppets in Hero and Leander, and those of Damon and Pythias. Zeal-of-the-land Busy interferes with the puppet Dionysius, who had been raised up by Leatherhead—
“Not like a monarch but the master of a school,
In a scrivener’s furr’d gown which shows he is no fool;
For, therein he hath wit enough to keep himself warm:
O Damon! he cries, and Pythias what harm
Hath poor Dionysius done you in his grave,
That after his death, you should fall out thus and rave,” &c.
Zeal-of-the-land contends that Dionysius hath not a “lawful calling.” That puppet retorts by saying he hath; and inquires—“What say you to the feather makers i’ the Fryers, with their peruques and their puffs, their fans and their huffs? what say you? Is a bugle-maker a lawful calling? or the confect-makers? such as you have there? or your French fashioner? Is a puppet worse than these?”—Whereto Zeal-of-the-land answers—“Yes, and my main argument against you is, that you are an abomination; for the male among you putteth on the apparel of the female, and the female of the male.” The puppet Dionysius triumphantly replies, “You lie, you lie, you lie abominably. It’s your old stale argument against the players; but it will not hold against the puppets: for we have neither male nor female amongst us.” Upon this point, which persons versed in dramatic history are familiar with, Zeal-of-the-land says, “I am confuted, the cause hath failed me—I am changed, and will become a beholder.”
These selections which are here carefully brought together may, so far as they extend, be regarded as a picture of Bartholomew Fair in 1614, when Jonson wrote his comedy for representation before king James I. We learn too from this play that there was a tooth-drawer, and “a jugler with a well educated ape, to come over the chain for the king of England, and back again for the prince, and to sit still on his hind quarters for the pope and the king of Spain;” that there was a whipping-post in the Fair, and that Smithfield was dirty and stinking. Beside particulars, which a mere historiographer of the scene would have recorded, there are some that are essentially illustrative of popular manners, which no other than an imaginative mind would have seized, and only a poet penned.
A little digression may be requisite in explanation of the term arsedine, used by Trash to Leatherhead in Jonson’s play; the denomination costermonger; the tune Paggington’s-pound; and the Pie-pouldres, or Pie Powder Court.
Arsedine.
This is also called arsadine, and sometimes orsden, and is said to be a colour. Mr. Archdeacon Nares says, that according to Mr. Lysons, in his “Environs of London,” and Mr. Gifford in his note on this passage, it means orpiment or yellow arsenic. The archdeacon in giving these two authorities, calls the word a “vulgar corruption” of “arsenic:” but arsenic yields red, as well as yellow orpiment, and both these colours are used in the getting up of shows. Possibly it is an Anglo-Saxon word for certain pigments, obtained from minerals and metals: the ore oꞃe or oꞃa is pure Saxon, and pluralizes ores; to die in the sense of dying, or colouring, is derived from the Saxon ðeaᵹ or ðeah. The conjecture may be worth a thought perhaps, for dramatic exhibitions were in use when the Anglo-Saxon was used.