Note 435 — SCENE I.

This speech is undoubtedly by Marlow, but it is curious that Nashe, in Summer's Last Will and Testament speaks of the amusement caused among the gods by the sight of Vulcan's dancing:—"To make the gods merry the celestial clown Vulcan tuned his polt foot to the measures of Apollo's lute, and danced a limping galliard in Jove's starry hall." (Hazlitt's Dodsley, viii. 91). In both passages there is perhaps an allusion to the lines in the first book of the Iliad (599-600), describing how "unquenchable laughter rose among the blessed gods when they saw Hephæstus limping through the hall."