Full of Soup and Gold

"Hecate dominates the stage in an owl-drawn chariot." That's one thing I read in REPROBATES: THE CAVALIERS OF THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR yesterday. Also: "The masque ends with a dance of sprites on a blazing cloud." Then I read about some guy who was "the reputed 'stallion' of the court, a heavy-set charmer. In future decades, after the ordeals of war, when he was 'full of soup and gold,'" people would make fun of him for being a big fat guy. But he used to sneak around with the queen in dark corridors, if you know what I'm saying, or so the gossip went. You go, fat boy! Then I read about poor Prince Rupert. "In the narrow escape from Spanish forces at Prague in 1620, the infant Rupert was nearly forgotten. By 1636, his widowed mother found more solace in her pet dogs and monkeys than in her children." Sadly, it is not recorded here whether Rupert's mom used to get her monkeys to ride her dogs around for fun, but come on! If you have a menagerie of dogs and monkeys to whom you turn for solace, it's bound to happen, isn't it?