Читать книгу French and English furniture distinctive styles and periods described and illustrated - Singleton Esther - Страница 8

1. Taming of the Shrew, Act II., Scene 1.

2. “The usual manner,” says Percy in his preface to the Northumberland Household Book, “of hanging the rooms in the old castles, was only to cover the naked stone walls with tapestry or arras, hung upon tenter hooks from which they were easily taken down upon every removal.” Afterwards it seems to have been hung on projecting frames leaving a space between it and the wall, affording a convenient hiding-place. It will be remembered that Hamlet killed Polonius behind the arras, where the latter had concealed himself.

3. So called from the town of that name in Flanders.

4.

“Read what is written in the painted cloth

Do no man wron; be good unto the poor

Beware the mouse, the maggot and the moth

And ever have an eye unto the door.”

(Old Tract, 1601).

5. The cushion was in favour at an early date; it is mentioned in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, “Whyssynes upon quelde-poyntes” (1340 c); in the Will of Edward the Black Prince in Nichol’s Royal Wills, “74 curtyns quissyns” (1361); Chaucer’s Troylus, “And down she sett here by hym upon a quysshon gold y-bete” (1229); Isumbras, “Bryn a chayere an a qwyschene” (1400); Wyclif, “Seetis of skynnes ethir cuyschuns” (1388) Wyclif, Ezek iii, “Woo to hem that sewen tegider cusshens” (1382); Mallory, “And there was laid a cusshyn of gold that he should knele upon” (1470–85); and Berners, Arth. Lyt. Bryt., “They set them down on cosshyns of sylke” (1530).

6. Cymbeline, Act II. Scene IV.

7. A heavy ribbed silk.

8. “Taunt him with the license of ink; if thou thou’st him some thrice, it shall not be amiss; and as many lies as will lie in thy sheet of paper, although the sheet were big enough for the bed of Ware in England, set ’em down.”—Twelfth Night, Act III, Scene II.

9. This name occurs as early as 1301.