Note 1739 — BOOK IV THE PLAY-HOUSES (continued 5)

V. P. xiv. 593, 599, records a charge against the ambassador Foscarini (1611–15) of pursuing a woman, and ‘sometimes attending the public comedies and standing among the people on the chance of seeing her’. Foscarini said he only went three or four times to the play and that the archduke’s ambassador and his wife did the same. It was given in evidence that the ambassador Giustiniani (Dec. 1605–Oct. 1608) went with the French ambassador and his wife to see Pericles at a cost of 20 crowns. This must have been at the Globe. For the presence of harlots, cf. pp. 534, 535; vol. i, p. 255.