The jest, as the reader skilful in the antique language of the drama
must at once perceive, turned on the same pivot as in the old minstrel
tales of the Drinking Horn of King Arthur, and the Mantle made Amiss.
But the audience were neither learned nor critical enough to challenge
its want of originality. The potent relic was, after such grimace and
buffoonery as befitted the subject, presented successively to each of
the female personages of the drama, not one of whom sustained the
supposed test of discretion; but, to the infinite delight of the
audience, sneezed much louder and longer than perhaps they themselves
had counted on. The jest seemed at last worn threadbare, and the
pardoner was passing on to some new pleasantry, when the jester or
clown of the drama, possessing himself secretly of the phial which
contained the wondrous liquor, applied it suddenly to the nose of a
young woman, who, with her black silk muffler, or screen drawn over
her face, was sitting in the foremost rank of the spectators, intent
apparently upon the business of the stage. The contents of the phial,
well calculated to sustain the credit of the pardoner's legend, set
the damsel a-sneezing violently, an admission of frailty which was
received with shouts of rapture by the audience. These were soon,
however, renewed at the expense of the jester himself, when the
insulted maiden extricated, ere the paroxysm was well over, one hand
from the folds of her mantle, and bestowed on the wag a buffet, which
made him reel fully his own length from the pardoner, and then
acknowledge the favour by instant prostration.
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