“Henry awaking, enter a keeper (J.  Sincler), to him a servant (T.  Belt), to him Lidgate and the keeper.  Exit, then enter again—­then Envy passeth over the stage.  Lidgate speakes.”]

[Footnote 55:  Women were first introduced on the Italian stage about 1560—­it was therefore an extraordinary novelty in Nash’s time.]

[Footnote 56:  That this kind of drama was perfectly familiar to the play-goers of the era of Elizabeth, is clear from a passage in Meres’ “Palladis Tamica,” 1598; who speaks of Tarleton’s extemporal power, adding a compliment to “our witty Wilson, who, for learning and extemporal wit, in this faculty is without compare or compeer; as to his great and eternal commendations, he manifested in his challenge at the Swan, on Bank-side.”  The Swan was one of the theatres so popular in the era of Elizabeth and James I., situated on the Bankside, Southwark.]

[Footnote 57:  Dr. Clarke’s Travels, vol. iv. p. 56.]

[Footnote 58:  In the poem on the entrenchment of New Ross, in Ireland, in 1265 (Harl.  MS., No. 913), is a similar account of the minstrelsy which accompanied the workers.  The original is in Norman French; the translation we use is that by the late Miss Landon (L.E.L.):—­

    Monday they began their labours,
    Gay with banners, flutes, and labours;
    Soon as the noon hour was come,
    These good people hastened home,
    With their banners proudly borne. 
    Then the youth advanced in turn,
    And the town, they make it ring,
    With their merry carolling;
    Singing loud, and full of mirth,
    A way they go to shovel earth.”

]

[Footnote 59:  Deip. lib. xiv. cap. iii.]

[Footnote 60:  The Lords of the Admiralty a few years ago issued a revised edition of these songs, for the use of our navy.  They embody so completely the idea “of a true British sailor,” that they have developed and upheld the character.]

[Footnote 61:  In Durfey’s whimsical collection of songs, “Wit and Mirth,” 1682, are several trade songs.  One on the blacksmiths begins:—­

    Of all the trades that ever I see,
    There’s none to a blacksmith compared may be,
    With so many several tools works he;
                        Which nobody can deny!”

The London companies also chanted forth their own praises.  Thus the Mercers’ Company, in 1701, sang in their Lord Mayor’s Show, alluding to their arms, “a demi-Virgin, crowned":—­

    “Advance the Virgin—­lead the van—­
      Of all that are in London free,
    The mercer is the foremost man
      That founded a society;
    Of all the trades that London grace,
    We are the first in time and place.”

]

[Footnote 62:  Dr. Burney subsequently observed, that “this rogue Autolycus is the true ancient Minstrel in the old Fabliaux;” on which Steevens remarks, “Many will push the comparison a little further, and concur with me in thinking that our modern minstrels of the opera, like their predecessor Autolycus, are pickpockets as well as singers of nonsensical ballads.”—­Steevens’s Shakspeare, vol. vii. p. 107, his own edition, 1793.]