s:

"Or take a fellow pinn'd up like a mistress,
About his neck a ruff like a pinch'd lanthorn,
Which school-boys make in winter."

Stubbs also pays his respects to the gowns of the women, which he says
were no less "famous" than the rest of their attire. A quotation will
serve to give an idea of the materials which were in use for dress
goods and the embellishments of women's gowns; "Some are of silk, some
of velvet, some of grograin, some of taffeta, some of scarlet, and
some of fine cloth of ten, twenty, or forty shillings the yard; but,
if the whole garment be not of silk or velvet, then the same must be
laid with lace two or three fingers broad all over the gown, or else
the most part; or, if it be not so, as lace is not fine enough, now
and then it must be garded with gards of velvet, every gard four or
five fingers broad at the least, and edged with costly lace; and, as
these gownes be of divers colours, so are they of divers fashions,
changing with the moon; for, some be of the new fashion, some of
the old; some with sleeves, hanging down to their skirts, trailing
on the ground, and cast over their shoulders like cow-tails; some
have sleeves much shorter and cut up the arm, drawn out with sundry
colours, and pointed with silk ribbands, and very gallantly tied with
love-knots, for so they call them." To these striking costumes were
added capes which reached down to the middle of the back, and which,
our author informs us, were "plaited and crested with more knacks than
he could express."

It is impossible to do more than mention the absurdities in general
of women's attire and toilette during the eccentric Elizabethan era.
Ladies painted their faces and wore false hair, as they had done in
other ages, only with greater refinements of hideousness; they stuffed
their petticoats with tow, and drew in their waists to incredible
smallness as compared with the vast expansiveness of their form from
the waist down, which was secured by the use of farthingales. The way
they tilted up their feet with long cork soles made them amble much
after the fashion of the women of China with their bandaged feet. They
wore jewels and ornaments in great profusion, fine colored silk hose,
which had lately been introduced among the other foreign "gewgaws"
of the times, and exchanged with their friends as valued presents
embroidered and perfumed gloves. In the light of the varied styles
of the day, the criticism, "Like a crow, t