Look, they′ve even put a pair of old pongy socks exactly like mine in the corner by the door, exactly like I bunged them last Sunday. Mind you, they are a bit pongier than I remembered. But mind you, they would get pongier over the week.

It might be objected that the ratio depends on the exigencies of the drama, that e.g. short anapaestic passages of only half-a-dozen or so metra plus their paroemiac might be required in some plays, not in others, and thus lower the ratio for those plays.

But it is evident that many of these are juristic rationalizings of what had been done for a long time through formal transactions.

To make Capons […] [S]ome for this Purpoſe make it their Buſineſs after Harveſt-time to go to Markets for buying up Chickens, and between Michaelmas and All-hollantide caponize the Cocks, when they have got large enough to have Stones [i.e., testes] of ſuch a Bigneſs that they may be pulled out; for if they are too little, it can't be done; […] [M]aking a Cut here big enough to put her Finger in, which ſhe thruſts under the Guts, and with it rakes or tears out the Stone that lies neareſt to it. This done, ſhe performs the very ſame Operation on the other Side of the Cock's Body, and there takes out the other Stone; then ſhe ſtitches up the Wounds, and lets the Fowl go about as at other Times, till the Capon is fatted in a Coup, which is commonly done from Chriſtmas to Candlemas, and after.