[263] [A reference to the belief in prodigies reported from Africa.  “Africa semper aliquid oportet novi.”—­S.  Gosson’s “School of Abuse,” 1579.  See also Rich’s “My Ladies Looking-glass,” 1616, sig.  B 3.]

[264] [Edits. give this speech to the Herald.]

[265] [The head.]

[266] A celebrated puppet-show often mentioned by writers of the times by the name of the Motion of Nineveh.  See Ben Jonson’s “Bartholomew Fair,” act v. sc. 1; “Wit at Several Weapons,” act i.; “Every Woman in her Humour,” 1609, sig.  H, and “The Cutter of Coleman Street,” act v. sc. 9.

[267] So in “Twelfth Night,” act i. sc. 1.

    “That strain again; it had a dying fall.”—­Steevens.

[268] [Edits., bitter.]

[269] [See Dyce’s “Beaumont and Fletcher,” ii. 225, note.] Theobald observes in his edition of “Beaumont and Fletcher,” that this ballad is mentioned again in “The Knight of the Burning Pestle,” and likewise in a comedy by John Tatham, 1660, called “The Rump, or Mirrour of the Times,” wherein a Frenchman is introduced at the bonfires made for the burning of the Rump, and catching hold of Priscilla, will oblige her to dance, and orders the music to play Fortune my foe.  Again, in “Tom Essence,” 1677, p. 37.

[270] A dance.  Sir John Davies, in his poem called “Orchestra,” 1596, stanza 70, thus describes it—­

    “Yet is there one, the most delightfull kind,
      A loftie jumping, or a leaping round,
    Where arme and arme two dauncers are entwind,
      And whirle themselues with strict embracements bound,
    And still their feet an anapest do sound: 
      An anapest is all their musicks song,
      Whose first two feet are short, and third is long.”

    71.

    “As the victorious twinnes of Laeda and Ioue,
      That taught the Spartans dauncing on the sands,
    Of swift Eurotas, daunce in heauen aboue,
      Knit and vnited with eternall hands,
    Among the starres their double image stands,
      Where both are carried with an equall pace,
      Together iumping in their turning race.”

[271] “Or, as it is oftener called, passa mezzo, from passer to walk, and mezzo the middle or half; a slow dance, little differing from the action of walking.  As a Galliard consists of five paces or bars in the first strain, and is therefore called a Cinque pace; the passa mezzo, which is a diminutive of the Galliard, is just half that number, and from that peculiarity takes its name.”—­Sir John Hawkins’s “History of Music,” iv. 386. [Compare Dyce’s second edition of Shakespeare, iii. 412.]

[272] i.e., St Leger’s round.  “Sellinger’s round was an old country dance, and was not quite out of knowledge in the last century.  Morley mentions it in his Introduction, p. 118, and Taylor the Water Poet, in his tract, entitled, ‘The World runs on Wheels;’ and it is printed in a ‘Collection of Country Dances,’ published by John Playford in 1679.”—­Sir John Hawkins’s “History of Music,” iii. 288, where the notes are engraved.