This frolicksome spirit thus describes himself in Jonsons masque of Love restored: "Robin Good-fellow, he that sweeps the hearth and the house clean, riddles for the country-maids, and does all their other drudgery, while they are at hot-cockles; one that has conversed with your court-spirits ere now." Having recounted several ineffectual attempts he had made to gain admittance, he adds: "In this despair, when all invention and translation too failed me, I e'en went back, and stuck to this shape you see me in of mine own, with my broom, and my canles, and came on confidently." The mention of his broom reminds us of a passage in another play, Midsummer nights dream, where he tells the audience,
He is likewise one of the dramatis personæ in the old play of Wily beguiled, in which he says "Tush! fear not the dodge: I'll rather put on my flashing red nose, and my flaming face and come wrap'd in a calf-skin, and cry bo, bo: I'll pay the scholar I warrant thee."[1] His character,
- ↑ Harsnets Declaration, London, 1604, 4to.
