attend upon the coming space,
Expecting absent friends."

_Statute Caps._ These were woollen caps enforced by Statute 13
Elizabeth, which, says Strype, in his "Annals" (vol. ii. p. 74), was
"for continuance of making and wearing woollen caps in behalf of the
trade of cappers; providing that all above the age of six years
(excepting the nobility and some others) should on Sabbath-days and
holy-days wear caps of wool, knit thicked, and drest in England, upon
penalty of ten groats." Thus, in "Love's Labour's Lost" (v. 2), Rosaline
says:

"Well, better wits have worn plain statute-caps."

Jonson considered that the statute caps alluded to were those worn by
the members of the universities.

_Theatrical Lore._ At the conclusion of a play, or of the epilogue, it
was formerly customary for the actors to kneel down on the stage, and
pray for the sovereign, nobility, clergy, and sometimes for the commons.
So, in the epilogue to "2 Henry IV.," the dancer says: "My tongue is
weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night; and so kneel
down before you:--but, indeed, to pray for the queen." Collier, in his
"History of English Dramatic Poetry" (vol. iii. p. 445), tells us that
this practice continued in the commencement of the 17th century.

_Tournaments._ In "Coriolanus" (ii. 1) Shakespeare attributes some of
the customs of his own times to a people who were wholly unacquainted
with them. In the following passage we have an exact description of what
occurred at tiltings and tournaments when a combatant had distinguished
himself:

"Matrons flung gloves,
Ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchers,
Upon him as he pass'd: the nobles bended,
As to Jove's statue; and the commons made
A shower and thunder with their caps and shouts:
never saw the like."[989]

[989] See Singer's "Shakespeare," vol. vii. p. 350.

An allusion to the mock tournaments, in which the combatants were armed
with rushes in place of spears, is used in "Othello" (v. 2):

"Man but a rush against Othello's breast."

_Trumpet._ In olden times it was the fashion for persons of distinction,
when visiting, to be accompanied by a trumpeter, who announced their
approach by a flourish of his trumpet. It is to this custom,
Staunton[990] thinks, that Lorenzo refers in the "Merchant of Venice"
(v. 1), where he tells Portia:

"Your husband is at hand; I hear his trumpet."

[990] "Sh