Note 368 — THE HOG HATH LOST HIS PEARL. ACTUS PRIMI, SCENA PRIMA.
Reading edition
Perhaps this was the title of some play or ballad that was very successful, though it is not easy to explain the allusion. Dekker, in his "If it be not good, the Devil is in it," seems to refer to the same piece to nearly the same purpose. Scumbroth observes, "No, no, if fortune favoured me, I should be full; but fortune favours nobody but garlick, nor garlick neither now, yet she hath strong reason to love it; for though garlick made her smell abominably in the nostrils of the gallants, yet she had smelt and stunk worse but for garlick." It may be, that such a play was produced at the Fortune theatre, and met with general approbation.
This conjecture is supported by the following passage from "The World's Folly; or, A Warning-Peece Discharged upon the Wickedness thereof," by I. H., 1615: "I will not particularize those blitea dramata, (as Laberius tearmes another sort), those Fortune-fatted fooles and Times Ideots, whose garbe is the Tootheache of witte, the Plague-sore of Judgement, the Common-sewer of Obscœnities, and the very Traine-powder that dischargeth the roaring Meg (not Mol) of all scurrile villainies upon the Cities face; who are faine to produce blinde * Impudence ['Garlicke' inserted in the margin, against the asterisk] to personate himselfe upon their stage, behung with chaynes of garlicke, as an antidote against their owne infectious breaths, lest it should kill their Oyster-crying Audience."—Collier.