  | (1) | Doll. | They say Poins has a good wit. | | Falstaff. | He a good wit? hang him, baboon! his wit's as thick as Tewksbury Mustard; there is no more conceit in him than in a mallet. | | 2nd Henry IV, act ii, sc. 4 (260). | | | (2) | Titania. | Pease-blossom! Cobweb! Moth! and Mustardseed! | | ***** | | Bottom. | Your name, I beseech you, sir? | | Mustardseed. | Mustardseed. | | Bottom. | Good Master Mustardseed, I know your patience well; that same cowardly giant-like ox-beef hath devoured many a gentleman of your house: I promise you your kindred hath made my eyes water ere now. I desire your more acquaintance, good Master Mustardseed. | | Midsummer Night's Dream, act iii, sc. 1 (165, 194). | | | (3) | Bottom. | Where's the Mounsieur Mustardseed? | | Mustardseed. | Ready. | | Bottom. | Give me your neaf, Mounsieur Mustardseed. Pray you, leave your courtesy, good mounsieur. | | Mustardseed. | What's your will? | | Bottom. | Nothing, good mounsieur, but to help Cavalery Cobweb to scratch. | | Ibid., act iv, sc. 1 (18). | | | (4) | Grumio. | What say you to a piece of beef and Mustard? | | Katharine. | A dish that I do love to feed upon. | | Grumio. | Ay, but the Mustard is too hot a little. | | Katharine. | Why then, the beef, and let the Mustard rest. | | Grumio. | Nay, then, I will not; you shall have the Mustard,
Or else you get no beef of Grumio. | | Katharine. | Then both, or one, or anything thou wilt. | | Grumio. | Why then, the Mustard without the beef. | | Taming of the Shrew, act iv, sc. 3 (23). | | | (5) | Rosalind. | Where learned you that oath, fool? | | Touchstone. | Of a certain knight that swore by his honour they were good pancakes, and swore by his honour the mustard was naught; now I'll stand to it, the pancakes were naught, and the Mustard was good, yet was the knight not forsworn..... You are not forsworn; no more was this knight swearing by his honour, for he never had any; or if he had, he had sworn it away before he ever saw those cakes or that Mustard. | | As You Like It, act i, sc. 2 (65). | The following passage from Coles, in 1657, will illustrate No. 1: "In Gloucestershire about Teuxbury they grind Mustard and make it into balls which are brought to London and other remote places as being the best that the world affords." These Mustard balls were the form in which Mustard was usually sold, until Mrs. Clements, of Durham, in the last century, invented the method of dressing mustard-flour, like wheat-flour, and made her fortune with Durham Mustard; and it has been supposed that this was the only form in which Mustard was sold in Shakespeare's time, and that it was eaten dry as we eat pepper. But the following from an Anglo-Saxon Leech-book seems to speak of it as used exactly in the modern fashion. After mentioning several ingredients in a recipe for want of appetite for meat, it says: "Triturate all together—eke out with vinegar as may seem fit to thee, so that it may be wrought into the form in which Mustard is tempered for flavouring, put it then into a glass vessel, and then with bread, or with whatever meat thou choose, lap it with a spoon, that will help" ("Leech Book," ii. 5, Cockayne's translation). And Parkinson's account is to the same effect: "The seeds hereof, ground between two stones, fitted for the purpose, and called a quern, with some good vinegar added to it to make it liquid and running, is that kind of Mustard that is usually made of all sorts to serve as sauce both for fish and flesh." And to the same effect the "Boke of Nurture"— "Yet make moche of Mustard, and put it not away,
For with every dische he is dewest who so lust to assay."
(L. 853).
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