Upon another occasion the poet writes:

But only fools, and they of vast estate,
The extremity of modes will imitate,
The dangling knee-fringe and the bib-cravat.

While the fops were thus equipped, the ladies wore vizard-masks, and
upon the appearance of one of these in the pit--

Straight every man who thinks himself a wit,
Perks up, and managing his comb with grace,
With his white wig sets off his nut-brown face.

For it was the fashion of the gentlemen to toy with their soaring,
large-curled periwigs, smoothing them with a comb. Between the fops
and the ladies goodwill did not always prevail. The former were, no
doubt, addicted to gross impertinence in their conversation.

Fop Corner now is free from civil war,
White wig and vizard-mask no longer jar,
France and the fleet have swept the town so clear.

So Dryden "prologuised" in 1672, attributing the absence of "all our
braves and all our wits" to the war which England, in conjunction with
France, had undertaken against the Dutch.

Queen Anne, in 1704, expressly ordered that "no woman should be
allowed, or presume to wear, a vizard-mask in either of the
theatres." At the same time it was commanded that no person, of what
quality soever, should presume to go behind the scenes, or come upon