put horns on

— City Comedies depicted the pursuit of wealth, status, and women in Jacobean London. In a typical plot, a ne'er-do-well young gentleman dupes his older relatives out of money, while lower-class rascals play cruder tricks on respectable citizens. For example, in Thomas Middleton's A Mad World, My Masters, Follywit, the Gallant, repeatedly robs his uncle by preying on the old man's hospitality and pride. Meanwhile the wife of a "citizen" (an urban dweller with the city's rights and privileges) and her would-be seducer arrange to put horns on her jealous husband, and a prostitute and her mother (who is also her pimp, a typical manifestation of the genre's cynical attitude toward kinship) contrive to catch Follywit to be the girl's husband. All schemes succeed.