Note 604 — ACT II. SCENE I.

Gentlemen, to the dresser!] When dinner was ready, the cook used to knock on the dresser with his knife, as a signal for the servants to carry it into the hall. But the words put into the mouth of the facetious Doyt appear to have been those usually employed by the usher to the attendants on such occasions. In the notes to the Northumberland Household Book, p. 423, are extracts from “Lord Fairfax’s Orders for the servants of his household [after the civil wars],” where, among “The Usher’s Words of Directions,” we find,—“Then he must warn to the Dresser, ‘Gentlemen and Yeomen, to the Dresser.’” Gifford (Massinger’s Works, vol. i. p. 166) has cited from a note of Reed on Dodsley’s Old Plays this passage of Lord Fairfax’s “Orders,” &c., as if it contained the warning of the cook; and Nares, in his Glossary (voc. Dresser), has made the same mistake.