SHAKESPEARE'S " VAGROM MEN " 77 



There is the " pedlar," the aristocracy of the profession, a clever plausible 

 rascal like Autolycus. " The droncken tyncker " is represented by Christopher 

 Sly — " by birth a pedlar ... by present profession a tinker " — drunk on 

 the heath, and in debt for ale to Marian Hacket [Tarn. Sh. Ind. ii. 11. 19-22). 

 There is the " prygger " or " prygman," who " haunts wakes, fairs, and 

 bear-baitings " {Wint. Tale, Act iv. Sc. 2, 1. 109). There is Awdeley's " chop- 

 logy ke," who gives " XX wordes for one," to whom Capulet likens his daughter 

 Juliet {Rom. and Jul. Act iii. Sc. 5, 1. 150). There is Harman's " Rogue," 

 or " Wild Rogue," in the " rogue forlorn," who shares the hovel and the straw 

 with King Lear and the swine {Lear, Act iv. Sc. 7, 1. 39). Edgar, disguised 

 as a madman and calling himself " poor Tom " {Lear, Act iii. Sc. 4, 1. 57), is 

 Awdeley's " Abraham man," who " nameth himselfe ' poore Tom.'. . Whipped 

 from tithing to tithing," he had only received the punishment to which an 

 Elizabethan statute (39 Eliz. c. 4) sentenced " all fencers, bearwards, common 

 players, and minstrels ; all jugglers, tinkers and petty chapmen," and other 

 vagrants who were adjudged to be rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars. 



