subs. phr. (old).—A peep-show: specifically one carried in a box. Hence, RAREE-SHOWMAN = ‘a pool Savoyard trotting up and down with portable Boxes of Puppet-shews at their backs … Pedlars of Puppets.’—B. E. (c. 1696); GROSE (1785).
1697. VANBRUGH, The Provoked Wife, ii. 1. Your Language is a suitable Trumpet, to draw Peoples Eyes upon the RAREE-SHOW.
1707. WARD, Hudibras Redivivus, II. vi. 3. The Rabble-Rout, Who move, in Tumults, to and fro, To wonder at the RAREE-SHOW.
1751. SMOLLETT, Peregrine Pickle, xlv. At last Pickle, being tired of exhibiting this RAREE-SHOW … handed her into the coach.
1837. BULWER-LYTTON, Maltravers, V. xii. He expressed a dislike to be visited merely as a RAREE-SHOW.
1885. The Field, 4 April. As though a Catholic Church were a theatre or RAREE-SHOW.
