Note 329 — ACT V.

It was a common practice for gallants to sit on the stage; but when a coxcomb obstructed the view by planting himself in a prominent position, the audience naturally took offence. Dekker, in the chapter of the Gull’s Horn-Book, describing “how a gallant should behave himself at a play-house,” writes:—“But on the very rushes where the comedy is to dance, yea, and under the state of Cambyses himself, must our feathered estridge, like a piece of ordnance, be planted valiantly (because impudently), beating down the mews and hisses of the opposed rascality.”