holdest, surveyest, or see'st."²¹Yet both characters are missing the mark of joining words with
things effectively, though due to verbal luxuriating rather than its opposite extreme, which are
contributed in Love's Labor's Lostby a Costard and his malapropisms and Holofernes'

pedantic literalism, among others.
The King's three courtiers express no reservations whatsoever at the prospect of having the "man
of fire-new words, fashion's own knight²²haunt their company. Rather, Longaville proposes to

add to the anticipated diversions by suggesting that Navarre include a clown in the "minstrelsy":

Costard the swain and he shall be our sport;

And so to study three years is but short.²³

Yet in the final scene of Love's Labor's Lost, when all of their own "sports" have been
"dashed" by the Princess and her three ladies, the four frustrated courtiers turn on the allowed
braggart, seeking to humiliate him as well. Relying on the most willing cooperation of Costard and

the "phantasime's"²⁴own impish page, Moth, they manage to expose the braggart to public
ridicule, very much in the manner practiced by the London Court of Aldermen in two cases in
which those good citizens tried to enforce the sumptuary laws Queen Elizabeth saw fit to reaffirm

and expand in coverage throughout her reign.²⁵

Since the last attempt at reforming the claimed

21_{LLL.I.i.239-243}
22_LLL.I.i.177
23_{LLL.I.i.178-9}
24_LLL.IV.i.101
25_{At the court of alderman on January 24, 1565, a Richard Walweyn, identified as a servant of Roland Bangham,}

Esquire, who had been arrested that day in the City of London "in a very monsterous and outraygous greate payre of

hose," was examined and ordered to be detained by the Sheriff's office

untyll such tyme as he had bought or otherwyse provyded

himself of hoose of a decent & lawfull facyn & sorte

accordynge to the form of the . . .proclamacyon . . .

and also shewed himself in the same new hose this

afternoone to my lorde mayre and broughte in to his

lordshipp his other saide monsterous hose to be

treshured for a time in some open place in the nether

hall where they maye aptly be seen and consideryd of

the people as an example of extreme folye.

(quoted in Hooper, W.,The Tudor Sumptuary Laws, EHR,30 (1915),441; also Repert.,15,fo. 414b)

Five years later, on November 23, 1570, the same Court of Aldermen tried the case of a Thomas Bradshaw, a

merchant tailor. This Thomas Bradshaw had also shown himself in public in monstrous hose "contrary to good

order." In the case of the more prominent man the court decreed

that all the stuffinge & lynings of one of his said

hose shalbe cutt and pulled out presently, and he to

be put into his doublett and hose, and so lead home
through the streates into his Masters. house, and

there the lyninge and stuffinge of thother to be

likewise cutt and pulled out.
(see Hooper,p. 441; also Repert.,17,fo.78b)
The relevant Statutes of the Realm are 24 Henry VIII, cap. 13 and 1&2 Philip & Mary, cap. 5whose provisions
Elizabeth invoked in the following Royal Proclamamations:Hughes & Larkin No.464[II.136-8]; Nos.493-6[II,187-

cpb@gac.edu: CRC 98 Paper6January, 1998