'The Art of Flattery' (1576) - eTheses Repository - University of ...

(105.9) advanc'd to-morrow? What creature
ever fed worse, then hoping Tantalus?
(1.1.56; The Complete Works of John
Webster, edited by F.L. Lucas, 4 vols
(London, 1927), II, 38)
105.16 garde and dent] Ornamental trimmings; Linthicum
i*1 Costume in the Drama of Shakespeare and his
350
Contemporaries (Oxford, 1936; rptd. New York, 1963),
p.150, says that 'A guard was a band or border placed
on a garment for ornament. f She does not mention
'dents 1 , and OED gives no examples in which the word
is applied to clothing, but defines it generally as
r\
! an indentation in the edge of anything 1 (sb. 1).
However, the word f garde 1 was often associated with
jagged trimmings; for example, in 'The Maner of the
World Now a Dayes' the poet castigates extravagance
in dress: 'So many gardes worn, / Jagged and all
to-torn' (Complete Poems of John Skelton, edited by
P. Henderson, p.133); A Discourse of the common weal
of this realm of England (c.1550): 'When oure gentlemen
went simply and oure servinge-men plainly, with out
cut or garde* (quoted OFD 'guard' sb.11); and
Breton, A Ploorish vpon Fancy (1582): 'Wherof good
stoare of cloathe...in fashions may be spent: In
gardes, in weltes, and iagges' (quoted OED 'welt 1
sb. 1 2). There is also a proverb, 'Without welt
or guard' (Tilley W274), meaning without ornamentation
or trimming, implying someone who is plain and honest
(OED 'welt' sb. 1 2.b).