Note 852 — SCENE II.

It was suspected much in Monsieur’s days] “By Monsieur’s days, I apprehend, the author means the time when the duke of Anjou resided in England. That prince, brother to Charles the Ninth, king of France, on the encouragement he had received from Queen Elizabeth, visited the English court in the year 1581, and expected to have been united to her majesty in marriage. The queen, however, after many affected delays, broke off the treaty; and the duke was obliged to return to his own country, with the disgrace of a direct refusal. Monsieur’s days are mentioned again in The Blacke Booke, 1604, sign. C. ‘—let mercers then have conscionable thumbs when they measure out that smooth glittering devil, sattin, and that old reveller, velvet, in the days of Monsieur, both which have devoured many an honest field of wheat and barley.’” Reed. The piece just cited is by Middleton, and will be found in the last vol. of the present work. So too in Marmyon’s Fine Companion, 1633, “Two or three dances, as old as Mounsier.” Sig. G 2.