Alexander Dyce, A General Glossary to Shakespeare's Works

France “Young gentlemen would be as sad as night, Only for wantonness— When I was in,” KING JOHN, iv. 1. 14. “I doubt whether our author had any authority for attributing this species of affectation to the French. He generally ascribes the manners of England to all other countries” (MALONE) . The French may or may not have been the inventors of this singular mark of gentility, which, it is well known, was once highly fashionable in England. But Nash, in one of his tracts, expressly mentions an assumed melancholy as among the follies which “idle travellers” brought home from France. The passage is very curious; “What is there in Fraunce to be learned more than in England, but falshood in fellowship, perfect slouenrie, to loue no man but for my pleasure, to sweare Ah par la mort Dieu when a mans hammes are scabd? For the idle traueller (I meane not for the souldiour), I haue knowen some that haue continued there by the space of halfe a dozen yeare, and when they come [came] home, they haue hyd a little weerish leane face vnder a broad French hat, kept a terrible coyle with the dust in the streete in their long cloakes of gray paper, and spoke English strangely. Nought else haue they profited by their trauell saue learnt to distinguish of the true Burdeaux grape, and knowe a cup of neate Gascoygne wine from wine of Orleance; yea, and peraduenture this also, to esteeme of the poxe as a pimple, to weare a veluet patch on their face, and walke melancholy with their armes folded.” The Vnfortunate Traveller, Or, The Life of Jacke Wilton, 1594, sig. L 4.