Note 214 — THE CITY GALLANT. (continued 2)
Reading edition
An allusion, probably, to some old ballad. "Hamlet," act iii. sc. 2, refers to the same, and appears to repeat the identical line, which is also introduced in "Love's Labour's Lost," act iii. sc. 1. Bishop Warburton observes that "amongst the country May-games there was an hobby-horse which, when the puritanical humour of those times opposed and discredited these games, was brought by the poets and ballad-makers, as an instance of the ridiculous zeal of the sectaries" (Note to "Hamlet.") See also Mr Steevens's note on the same passage.
Again, in Massinger's "Very Woman," act iii. sc. 1—
"How like an everlasting Morris dance it looks; Nothing but hobby-horse and Maid Marian."
The hobby-horse was also introduced into the Christmas diversions, as well as the May-games. In "A True Relation of the Faction begun at Wisbich, by Fa. Edmonds, alias Weston, a Jesuite," 1595, &c., 4o, 1601, p. 7, is the following passage: "He lifted up his countenance, as if a new spirit had bin put into him, and tooke upon him to controll and finde fault with this and that (as the comming into the hall of a hobby-horse in Christmas), affirming that he would no longer tolerate these and those so grosse abuses, but would have them reformed."
Whatever the allusion in the text be, the same is also probably made in Drue's "Dutchess of Suffolk," 1631—
"Clunie. Answer me, hobbihorse; Which way cross'd he you saw now? Jenkin. Who do you speake to, sir? We have forgot the hobbihorse."
—Sig. C 4.—Gilchrist.