English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700; English wit and humor; Great Britain -- Civilization -- 17th century -- Literary collections
But the Prince had another pet, a she monkey, and the satirist must
needs make that inoffensive animal a mark at which to spit his spite,
although nothing like the supernatural powers of _Boy_ were attributed
to her. There are two portraits extant of her, but I have only
reproduced one, the dresses in both cases being precisely similar,
and may probably represent her real costume [49]. In this tract she
is described as--"I never saw such a strange fashioned creature in my
life; for she hath a kind of Round-head as smooth as an apple, and
if there be any Round-head this Munkey is one, her brow is low and
wrinkled hanging over her little eyes; her nose thats flatt is very
short, her cheekes are leane and lanke, and her thin lipps do hardly
cover her teeth, the complection of her whole face is swarthy, cover'd
with hayre greene as mosse, and lastly she hides her head in a black
bagg, moreover she weares a greene or yellow gowne trimmed about with
lace, & a girdle about her middle by the which she is fastned to the
nave of a wheele, for the Prince is full of feares and Jelousies that
if she were loose she would steale away into some wood and live there
upon nutts and apples.... Thus P. _Ruperts_ Monkey is a kind of
old, little, wrinkled, old faced, petulant, wanton, and malignant
gentlewoman ... that sometimes rides upon the beast that is Prince
_Rupert's_ dog....
[Illustration]
Prince _Rupert's_ Monkey is a toy,
That doth exceed his dog called Boy,
Which through dogged folly,
Both Barkes and Bites,
But this delights
The Prince when's melancholy.
He puts sweetemeats and sugar plumbs
Into his Monkey's toothlesse gums,
Which open like an oyster,
For he doth esteeme
A wench I meane,
More than a Nun in a Cloister."
The colour of her dress is also described in a tract, before quoted
from [39]--"And Prince _Roberts_ Monkey dare not come thither, lest
the Parliaments Bitch should tear her green coat off from her back."
Her food is described in another tract [50]--"She would eat no
oatmeal, nor lome of walls to cure her infirmitie, but the longest
whitest sugar plums she could put into her mouth, were most
delightfull to her taste, and had such a ravenous appetite to fruit
that she would swallow all but the stones, and having gotten a
delectable bit in her mouth, she would onely suck the juice out of
it and then spit out the rest.... Moreover this Monkey was and is by
nature a notable plunderer not onely of studdies and closets, into
which, if she got, she would teare the books, spill the ink, and eat
the sweetmeats."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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