"Your quondam wife swears still by Venus' glove:
She's well, but bade me not commend her to you."

Scented gloves were formerly given away as presents. In "Winter's Tale"
the custom is referred to by Mopsa, who says to the Clown (iv. 4):
"Come, you promised me a tawdry lace, and a pair of sweet gloves;" and
Autolycus is introduced singing:

"Gloves as sweet as damask roses."

In "Much Ado About Nothing" (iii. 4), Hero says: "These gloves the count
sent me; they are an excellent perfume." Trinity College, Oxford, not
ungrateful to its founder and his spouse, has many entries, after the
date of 1556, in the Bursar's books, "pro fumigatis chirothecis," for
perfumed gloves.

_Kiss._ In years past, a kiss was the recognized fee of a lady's
partner, and as such is noticed in "Henry VIII." (i. 4):

"I were unmannerly to take you out,
And not to kiss you."

In "The Tempest" (i. 2) it is alluded to in Ariel's song:

"Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands:
Court'sied when you have, and kiss'd,
The wild waves whist,
Foot it featly here and there,
And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear."

There is probably a veiled allusion to the same ceremony in "Winter's
Tale" (iv. 4), where, at the dance of shepherds and shepherdesses, the
following dialogue occurs:

"_Clown._ Come on, strike up!

_Dorcas._ Mopsa must be your mistress: marry, garlic,
To mend her kissing with.

_Mopsa._ Now, in good time!

_Clown._ Not a word, a word; we stand upon our manners.
Come, strike up!"

In an old treatise entitled the "Use and Abuse of Dancing and
Minstrelsie" we read:

"But some reply, what fools will daunce,
If that when daunce is doon,
He may not have at ladyes lips,
That which in daunce he doon."

The practice of saluting ladies with a kiss was once very general, and
in the "Merry Wives of Windsor" to kiss the hostess is indirectly spoken
of as a common courtesy of the day.

In "Romeo and Juliet" (i. 5) a further instance occurs, where Romeo
kisses Juliet at Capulet's entertainment; and, in "Henry VIII." (i. 4),
Lord Sands is represented as kissing Anne Bullen, next to whom he sits
at supper.

The celebrated "kissing comfits" were sugar-plums, once extensively used
by fashionable persons to make the breath sweet. Falstaff, in the "Merry
Wives of Windsor" (v. 5), when embracing Mrs. Ford,