English drama -- 17th century; English poetry -- Early modern, 1500-1700
Although in open view and people's face,
He fronts me with some spruce, neat, cinquepace;[361]
Or Tullus, though, whene'er he me espies,
Straight with loud mouth "A bandy, sir,"[362] he cries; 130
Or Robrus, who, addict to nimble fence,
Still greets me with stockado's[363] violence.
These I do bear, because I too well know
They are the same they seem in outward show.
But all confusion sever from mine eye
This Janian bifront, Hypocrisy.
[347] _i.e._, all-_kenning_, all-knowing. Marston uses
the word two or three times.
[348] Fawning.
[349] Bows.
[350] A mirror of refinement, a gallant of Castilian breeding.
But there is also a reference to Baldessar Castiglione, author of
the celebrated treatise _Il Cortese_. So in Guilpin's
_Skialeheia_, 1598, the name "Balthazer" is applied to a
spruce courtier:--
"Come to the court, and _Balthazer_ affords
Fountains of holy and rose-water words.
Hast thou need of him and wouldst find him kind?
Nay, then, go by, the gentleman is blind." Sig. C. 4.
[351] Lock of hair?
[352] See note, vol. ii. p. 60.
[353] Who was transformed into the hoopoe. Old ed. "Tyreus."
[354] Old ed. "talke;" but the correction is made in the author's
list of errata.
[355] Falling bands, which lay upon the shoulders.
[356] "Him"--omitted in old ed., but supplied in the author's
list of errata.
[357] _i.e._, you who feared a short while ago ("a space")
that you would have to dine off stock-fish.
[358] Wantonness.
[359] "Is the reference to Essex's expedition to Cadiz in 1596?
_Rodao_ is the Italian form of a Portuguese town in the
province of Beira."--_Grosart._
[360] The foolish shepherd in Sir Philip Sidney's _Arcadia_.
[361] The name of a dance.
[362] Tullus can talk of nothing but tennis.
[363] A thrust in fencing.
SATIRE II.
_Quædam sunt, et non videntur._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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