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n7176   ACT TWO Scene One: This act opens in John and Rebecca Brittleware's household and china-shop. The Brittlewares are new characters and this is a new setting and the decision to bring them onstage at the start of a new act is consistent with the dramaturgic style of indoor theatre plays where separate acts were demarcated by entr'acte music and breaks in the performance. This kind of shared residential premises was very common at this time; the notebooks of London woodturner, Nehemiah Wallington, from this period indicate exactly this form of living arrangements, including live-in lodgers in the same way that the Brittlewares share their household with Sir Hugh Moneylacks and have done for some time. The interest of this play in the living conditions of 1630s London as well as the practices of community and neighbourhood are explored in more detail in the introductory essay, but it is worth noting here Brome's decision to represent a number of different tenanted lodgings onstage. The play also brings before the audience a whole range of contrasting couples, many of them dysfunctional marriages or relationships in some way. John Brittleware's first words are an attempt to appease his seemingly dissatisfied wife: 'Sweet wife, content thyself'. Her cravings and desires seem to be for a child - so in effect her cravings are 'out of joint', since they come pre-pregnancy. The Brittleware family name presumably reflects the family trade of selling chinawares, which were in vogue in London in the early seventeenth century; Ben Jonson's 1609 play Epicoene had featured a chinashop owner and his wife, Captain and Mistress Otter, and his entertainment written for the opening of Britain's Burse that year makes great play of the chinaware and porcelain to be sold in the New Exchange's retail outlets. Theatre audiences would also have been well aware that china-shops had become synonymous in the public imagination with brothels and, while that allusion is only hinted at here, the general pervasive air of suppressed or thwarted sexuality in the Brittleware household is self-evident. These kinds of loose associations prepare the audience for the next site of capitalist enterprise that we will see in the play, which is the Asparagus Garden itself in which the entire third act is located. There Martha and her husband the gardener clearly run a covert brothel behind the respectable front of a pleasure house and gardens selling the new delicacy of asparagus spears. The secondary implication of the Brittleware name is directly sexual and implies John's impotency - he has 'brittle wares'. This all lends itself to scenes replete with sexual double-entendres of the most knowing kind. Rebecca laments that she has been married for five years and still has no child to show for it. She uses insulting nicknames to draw attention to her husband's failures in the bedroom; he is a 'fribling fumbler' etc. She also uses his own names, John and Jack, as veritable sticks with which to beat him throughout their dialogues and discursive exchanges. Brome is, of course, operating here within the highly recognisable parameters of the clichéd 'upside down marriage' where the husband is henpecked by his stronger wife (the image was common in church misericords from the late medieval period onwards), but he also creates something subtler and more complex from that stage stereotype as the play progresses. As already noted, Moneylacks is a lodger in the Brittlewares' household and often finds himself directly implicated in their marital disputes. He takes advantage of Rebecca's cravings to introduce her to the idea of consuming asparagus at the Asparagus Garden (thereby earning himself the commission we learned in the first act that he makes as a 'gather guest' for Martha and her husband). By extension the audience is invited to think about Sir Hugh's multiple 'projects' including the sedan chairs mentioned in act one as a larger attempt to satisfy (or create) the cravings of London as a consumerist capital, hungry for each new craze and fashion. Moneylacks's description to Rebecca of what asparagus could do for her in terms of increased fertility also allows the play to pick up on and respond to what were lively contemporary debates about formal medicine as promulgated by the College of Physicians and herbalism, which was practised by more independent and itinerant individuals in London in the 1630s (see Woolley, 2004). Key figures in that debate included William Harvey, surgeon to the Caroline Court (and discoverer in this period of the circulation of the blood) and herbalists such as Nicholas Culpeper and John Gerard and the detailed references Brome makes to medicinal and herbalist practice, both here and in plays such as The Antipodes suggest he was knowledgeable in this area. (For a more detailed discussion of the implications of this for the play, see the introductory essay). Through the course of Moneylacks's sales pitch on behalf of asparagus and its properties the audience gets a first tantalizing description of the Asparagus Garden itself and the diverse company and society that appears to gather there. This also serves to prepare the audience for the third act setting. Rebecca's exit from the stage enables another plot stratagem to come into the audience's view. Moneylacks and his confederate Spring are plotting to deceive a naive young man who has come to London from the West Country of England (from Taunton in Somerset to be precise). The young man, whose name is Timothy Hoyden (his surname meaning rural clown or fool would immediately indicate to the audience his vulnerability in the face of city scammers like Moneylacks) wants to be a gentleman and is prepared to pay for the pleasure of being instructed in the art. Moneylacks and Spring intend to trick him and win the money for themselves in the process and they proceed to involve Brittleware in their plan. They suggest he play the role of a 'barber-surgeon' which was apparently his trade before he opened the china shop. Barber-surgeons, who had their own city guild, were also part of the medical rivalries and attempts at regulation in the 1630s that the earlier discussion of herbalism has already invoked. That the play chooses to offer such a negative portrayal of a barber-surgeon may be an indication of Brome's personal sympathies in these matters. Spring has apparently waylaid Hoyden and his servant, Coulter (named appositely after an agricultural implement used for ploughing - his name along with his pronounced Somerset dialect in the play means that the audience immediately locate him as existing in a social space quite different to that of the all-knowing Londoners) and these two characters enter onstage during this scene. Tim, we learn, has £400 to spend and this is what Moneylacks and his 'crew' (this pejorative terms is actually used by Coulter to describe the grouping on several occasions in the dialogue) have their eyes on and they immediately make suggestions as to how he might spend it. Continuing the medical frame of reference, they suggest that what Tim needs to do to become a gentleman is to be bled and purged of his coarse rural identity (is there an implicit parody of Harvey's theories of blood and circulation here?). They are also going to put him, quite literally, on a city diet - no more of the rural foodstuffs such as pease-pudding and porridge, but instead shrimps and asparagus, food that is a display of conspicuous consumption and therefore of wealth and status. The fascination of this play with food as a key to social identity should not be underestimated. Several key characters make reference to a longing for particular kinds of diets and that helps the audience to 'place' them socially and culturally. The asparagus at the heart of the play's title and central setting is also part of the way in which the play offers various models or paradigms of consumption to the audience for consideration. Moneylacks and his crew will also train Hoyden in the behaviour and appearance of a gentleman, teaching him 'The look, the garb, the congee'. In this way their 'education' mirrors that being offered by printed manuals at this time such as Henry Peacham's influential The Compleat Gentleman (first published 1622, but crucially published in second and third editions in 1627 and 1634, the latter being directly relevant for Brome's composition of The Sparagus Garden). In 1637, Peacham (whose Coach and Sedan I also consider to be an important cognate text for this play) also published The Gentleman's Exercise, the language and ideas of which would seem to resonate with the Tim Hoyden scenes of this play. Other print manuals will also be invoked in later scenes such as the fencing and dancing manuals that were considered to be required reading for young gentlemen at this time. [go to text]

n5954   John Bo-peep Presumably a reference to Brittleware's sexual impotency - his invisible erection in the marriage bed? [go to text]

n5772   ’tis you that must content me This heated marital exchange is all about impotency and Rebecca's perception that her husband has failed to get her pregnant. Brome cleverly builds on all the insinuations about Striker's sexual impotency in the first act to present us here with a genuinely childless and impotent marriage. Some of the terms of the exchange seems strikingly modern and it would be fascinating to see how this element of the play would be received in an era of IVF treatment. [go to text]

gg2089   smart (v) suffer pain [go to text]

n5773   Brittleware His surname, of course, indicates not only his profession as the owner of a china-shop in London (that sells 'brittleware' as Moneylacks notes in 2.1) but the supposed impotency he is charged with by his dissatisfied wife. [go to text]

n5955   Five years practice one would think were sufficient The Brittlewares have clearly been married for five years. [go to text]

n5774   too long it is unless I had got a better name by’t Rebecca is here complaining about her married surname which she now takes to be a public labelling or signifier of her childless marriage. [go to text]

gg382   zounds 'by God's wounds' (OED), a strong oath [go to text]

gg3866   lubber a big clumsy, stupid fellow [go to text]

gg3867   fribbling foolish, stumbling [go to text]

n5786   sufficient here with the underlying meaning of sexually competent and fertile. [go to text]

n5749   MONEYLACKS [enters] Act Two Scene 2. Mony-lacke, Rebecca, Brittle-ware. (Q). [go to text]

n7201   landlord Moneylacks's status as a tenant in the Brittleware household is just one of several examples of urban living arrangements represented in the play. [go to text]

n5759   lain lyen (Q) [go to text]

gg1685   main chief, principal (OED main n, 5a) [go to text]

n5788   I must have my longings before I can be with child Rebecca's 'longings' are here directly compared to cravings experienced during pregnancy. This scene is yet further example of Brome's interest in the female body and in particular states associated with pregnancy, fertility and phantom pregnancies. This play will, of course, also feature the fake pregnancy of Annabel, achieved via the ultimate stage property of a cushion (see Act 5). Brome explores related conditions in The Northern Lass through onstage characters such as Holdup and offstage characters such as Mistress Vexham. [go to text]

gg1024   fribbles falters, stammers or muddles through [go to text]

n5789   one before and another behind as the new fashion is The bawdy inference from this description of how people are carried in sedan chair is fairly obvious. This entire scene is replete with sexual innuendo and double meanings. [go to text]

n5790   man-litter Rebecca's striking coinage for the sedan chair which was newly in vogue as a mode of personal transport in London in the 1630s. Audiences will recall that Striker has already mentioned Moneylacks's involvement in a financial project or scheme relating to sedans in the first act. As with his efforts to 'sell' the Asparagus Garden to Rebecca as a concept here, he has clearly worked on her desires in this regard as well. See also Peacham's 1637 pamphlet Coach and Sedan in which a coach and a sedan literally debate who is the most superior in a mini-play and Act 4 of Brome's The Antipodes where a debate is staged between a waterman, a carman, and a sedan-man. The lines of influence here are complicated and are yet to be fully unpacked but both Brome and Peacham are clearly responding to a topical issue of the day. The argument in Peacham's playlet is eventually moderated by a brewer's cart. [go to text]

n5791   the great bed at Ware Ware in Hertsfordshire was a major stop on coaching routes in the 1620s and 1630s and became very famous for a large four poster bed in an inn there, which became a site of popular resort and mythmaking. It is typical that Rebecca would include a longing to visit this site in her list of cravings as it had obvious sexual connotations. [go to text]

n5792   the new ship Rebecca could be referring here to a number of new ships, in particular men-of-war, commissioned by Charles I in the 1630s, part of the strengthening of the English Fleet that the ill-fated Ship Money collections were designed to make possible. Chief among these was the Sovereign of the Seas and it is feasible this is Rebecca's point of reference since, although it was not officially launched until 1637, it was a point of interest while it was being built at Woolwich docks and a published guide to its interior authored by Thomas Heywood, who had been involved in writing some of the mottos carved on the imprese and devices of the ship, indicates that guided tours were given of the ship ('A true discription of his Majesties royall and most stately ship called the Soveraign of the Seas, built at Wolwitch in Kent 1637', London, 1638). Other objects of interest Rebecca mentions here such as the new steeple on St Paul's were also incomplete at the time of the play's first performance. This all helps to stress the premature nature of her desires and cravings to a well-informed London audience. Charles I was sufficiently proud of his new ship to have had a scale model made to show to visiting foreign dignitaries (Cust, 2005: 190). [go to text]

n5794   to be on the top of Paul’s steeple when it is new built The reference is to St Paul's Cathedral which was undergoing major renovations throughout the 1630s. The poor state of repair that St Paul's was in was a major concern of Charles I's government and in 1631 he visited the site 'and instigated plans for its restoration' (Sharpe, 1995: 322). Attempts to raise money for this work were however painfully slow in their effects and so by 1635 when this play is written and performed the work is very much ongoing. Even before its restoration work St Paul's steeple was the most visible landmark in the London skyline and is a point of reference in many plays from the period as a result. [go to text]

n7178   stay the time wait [go to text]

n7179   The Knight of the Burning This was the 1613 Blackfriars play by Francis Beaumont, originally performed by the Children of the Revels. An initial failure, the play was successfully revived in the 1630s: as its 1635 quarto printing tells us it 'was acted by her Majesties Servants at the Private house in Drury Lane', i.e. the Cockpit Theatre. Brome's reference to the play here has been taken by scholars of proof of its success in the Caroline context, though I would also argue that it is a play with specific associations with a female audience in terms of its links to Queen Henrietta Maria's theatrical patronage. Sir Henry Herbert's records also indicate that a court performance took place byt the Queen's Men on 28 February 1636 (Zitner, 1988, p. 43). Presumably Moneylacks jumps in to complete the play's title to highlight a pun on 'pestle' as 'pizzle' (slang for penis) again implying the sexual undertow to all of Rebecca's cravings for experience. [go to text]

n5795   The Knight of the Burning Pestle. Rebecca's reference, as Moneylacks's subsequent completion of the full title makes clear is to Francis Beaumont's play The Knight of the Burning Pestle, first published in 1613 and originally performed by the Children of the Revels at the Blackfriars Theatre in 1607. It was revived for the Caroline stage and republished in 1635, when by all accounts it was far more successful with audiences. The titlepage of the 1635 edition declares that it was 'acted by her Majesties Servants at the Private house in Drury Lane', that is the Cockpit Theatre. A court performance also took place on 28 February 1636 and there are also records of a performance in Yorkshire, probably in the great hall of Skipton Castle, owned by the Cliffords and an acknowledged locale of household performances at this time (see Zitner, 1984: 42-3). This widespread interest in the play would also suggest that it suited Caroline tastes. The particular relevance to Rebecca is that the play features a framing story involve George a citizen and his wife who keep interfering in the 'onstage' action of the play, even to the extent of insisting on a starring role for their son Rafe, an apprentice. What Rebecca is less attuned to, however, is that the play parodies people like herself. [go to text]

n7180   I thought of another thing i.e. she thought of the word 'pizzle' (slang for penis) rather than the correct word 'pestle' in recalling the play's title. [go to text]

n5829   a grocer’s boy kills a giant in it A reference to Rafe in The Knight of the Burning Pestle who in the mock-heroic romance plot of the play within a play does exactly this. [go to text]

n5830   and another little boy that does a citizen’s wife In all the references to boy actors in the performance of The Knight of the Burning Pestle Rebecca alludes both to the general practice of Caroline theatre companies of boy actors in women's roles but also to the larger history of this play as a boys' company text (see Munro, 2005). [go to text]

n5835   they should find another thing in handling of me As ever, Rebecca's statements have a bawdy secondary meaning. Here the act of performance shades readily into the sexual act. [go to text]

n5839   last frost There had been a series of particularly hard frosts in London in the early seventeenth century which led to the freezing over of the Thames for several weeks and the creation of frost fairs on the rivers. The most recent, to which Brittleware is presumably alluding, was in 1634-5 (see timeline in Currie, 1996). [go to text]

n5840   one of the dromedaries over the Thames As part of the frost fairs which took place when the Thames froze over during extreme winter weather conditions, there were several spectacles and theatrical entertainments of this kind made available to a paying public. (See Currie, 1996.) [go to text]

n7181   dromedaries An especially light breed of camel, good for racing and presumably in context for walking on frozen river ice. [go to text]

gg941   motion formal proposal or request (OED n. 13b) [go to text]

n5842   Have you this spring eaten any asparagus yet? Asparagus has a short season during which it can be picked and eaten, usually running from late April into mid-May in the UK. [go to text]

gg4833   provocative exciting appetite or lust [go to text]

gg4834   operative effective [go to text]

n5844   All your best (especially your modern) herbalists conclude Though originally published in 1597, John Gerard's Herbal had been republished with major additions in 1633 so may well be the 'modern' authority Moneylacks refers to here. Certainly it has a major entry with accompanying illustrations on asparagus (Gerard, Herbal 1112). This is another instance in the play when references appear to touch on contemporary debates about practice between professional medics and sugeons and herbalists (see Wolley, 2004). [go to text]

n5847   the only sweet stirrer The sense here is slightly ambiguous; it could simply mean a vegetable used to stir drinks and desserts due to its stick-like shape - certainly the other examples offered by Moneylacks share this appearance with asparagus (gladioli, for example, are flowers that grow on very long straight stems). Alternatively though is the medicinal and homeopathic sense that these plants act as aphrodisiacs - stirring the loins as it were. Certainly Rebecca wants to know if partaking of the fashionable new vegetable will assist in making her pregnant. Steggle (2004: 78) notes that asapragus was widely held to be a diuretic, laxative and aphrodisiac and that the herbalist Nicholas Culpeper discussed it in the following terms as making 'the belly soluble and open' and that it 'stirreth up lust'. [go to text]

n5848   cornflag, or gladioli Cornflag is the common name for gladioli communis. [go to text]

n5754   gladioli gladiall (Q) [go to text]

n5849   standergrass Orchis mascula; also known as standerwort. Still commonly used in medicinal treatments today. [go to text]

n5860   satyrion An ancient aphrodisiac made from the plant ragwort. [go to text]

n5851   clary Salvia sclarea or clary sage; a common herbal treatment used today as in early modern periods. Often prescribed for stomach ailments and as an essential oil. In early modern times it was also considered a vegetable. [go to text]

n5861   horminum Salvia horminum is traditionally used as a medicinal gargle or antiseptic. As with all the plants named here it tends to grow in the form of long stems; Moneylacks connects this with a phallic interpretation in his catalogue of foodstuffs and liquid concoctions that Rebecca might take to induce fertility. [go to text]

n7182   nuts presumably artichoke hearts [go to text]

n7183   I have it from the opinion of most learned doctors, rare physicians Moneylacks is presumably referring to the College of Physicians who were active at this time in staking their claim to the control and regulation of certain medical practices (not least to safeguard the financial profits to be made by performing them) (see Wolley, 2004). By making Moneylacks part of this grouping Brome may be implicitly expressing sympathy for the herbalists in the debates. Certainly, Richard Cave in his edition of The Antipodes for this Complete Works has identified parallel positions in that play. [go to text]

n5862   he knows none but lords and ladies This is a satirical portrait of the medical profession; Doctor Thou-Lord is only interested in patients he knows will be able to settle bills generously. There may also be a specific reference here to William Harvey, the King's physician. Harvey's links to both Charles I and the Duke of Buckingham had provoked considerable envy within the profession. Brome seems elsewhere to criticize Harvey and his fellow physicians and to express sympathy for the more amateur pharmacists and herbalists of the age (see Woolley, 2004). My thanks to Richard Cave for rich discussion on this topic. [go to text]

n5863   Gills A conventional name for a prostitute. [go to text]

n5864   and if [go to text]

n5867   all the year long An impossibility in view of asparagus's short season. [go to text]

n5868   Fribble A mocking nickname, implying Flounderer or Fumbler (another allusion to Brittleware's limited sexual prowess). [go to text]

gg459   commodity goods, merchandise (OED 6a) [go to text]

gg534   broker a retailer of commodities, a second-hand dealer, pedlar [go to text]

n5956   The virtue of it is mortified The power of it is completely lost [go to text]

n5957   garden of delight Moneylacks describes the Asparagus Garden in terms derived from the genre of romance; see also 'palace of pleasure' in this same scene. [go to text]

gg4835   dressed prepared (as in food) [go to text]

gg4833   provocative exciting appetite or lust [go to text]

n5872   coolers Moneylacks's implication here is that people carry portable remedies to dampen their sexual ardour as required. [go to text]

n5958   palace of pleasure Moneylacks describes the Asparagus Garden in terms derived from the genre of romance. Compare 'garden of delight' a few lines earlier. [go to text]

n5901   fit yourself for the walk i.e. put on suitable clothing for the walk to the Asparagus Garden. This mention reflects the newly fashionable mode of fashionable city walking as a leisure pursuit in its own right that has been discussed as a particular phenomenon of the early seventeenth century by Karen Newman (2002). The ways in which this also changed the ways that people understood and practised their city is an interesting consideration. [go to text]

gg3939   fagary a whim or eccentricity (also fegary, figary) [go to text]

n5903   has lain in thy house i.e. lodged in your house [go to text]

gg3141   pillory a device for punishment, usually consisting of a wooden framework mounted on a post, with holes or rings for trapping the head and hands, in which an offender was confined so as to be subjected to public ridicule, abuse, assault, etc.; punishment of this kind (OED 1) [go to text]

n5904   as ever Subtle and his Lungs did The reference is to characters in Ben Jonson's 1610 play The Alchemist in which Face the butler performed the role of 'Lungs', assistant to Subtle's 'alchemist'. There is an irony to Moneylacks's reassurance to Brittleware here that they are as close as these two characters as anyone with a good knowledge of the play would be aware that the pair begin the play arguing and end in anything but mutual amity. Nor are the proceeds of their alchemy scam equally shared out between the two parties since Face, really Jeremy the butler, ends up dividing the spoils with his returned master, Lovewit. As with earlier references to Jonson's 1629 play The New Inn Brome is assuming a theatre-literate audience for this play and one with a confirmed knowledge of the Jonsonian canon at that. [go to text]

n7184   'Uds me My God [go to text]

n5906   is the party come to town This question, and Brittleware's sudden act of remembrance, promulgate a whole new plotline in the play at this point; the story of Timothy Hoyden, the Somerset man, come to be made a gentleman in the city and therefore subject to the scams of Moneylacks. [go to text]

n5761   porcelain purslane (Q). The obsolete version of porcelain has been modernised here to avoid confusion with the winter salad of the same name. [go to text]

n5907   more trinkets than an antiquary’s study is furnished withal Antiquarians at this time were becoming known for collecting 'cabinets of curiosities' or wunderkammer, often including objects from world travels as well as relics of the past. The best known in this period in England was that being established by the gardener and plantsman-traveller John Tradescant and his wife at their Lambeth household (today the Tradescant museum in London). Many of the contents of Tradecant's 'cabinet' can now be viewed as part of the collection on display at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (the collection was sold by Tradescant's son to Elias Ashmole in the later seventeenth century). Since some critics have also seen a reference to Tradescant in the scene with the gardener and his wife Martha, who run the Asparagus Garden business, at the start of Act 3, there may be an embedded allusion here too. [go to text]

n5908   barber-surgeon The hybrid role of barber-surgeon, which dated from medieval battlefields, was recognised by its own guild and company in the early modern period. In the 1630s Inigo Jones would be commissioned to design an anatomy theatre for their London property which shared many features with his theatrical and masquing designs and with the layout and dimensions of Caroline commercial playhouses. It seems very apt then that part of Brittleware's role in this play is that of performance or feigning of other roles, including his past career as a barber-surgeon. [go to text]

gg3961   stead to be useful or advantageous to (OED, v.) [go to text]

gg601   project design or pattern according to which something is made (OED n. 1; now obsolete) [go to text]

gg990   trim fine, neat, smart (clever) [go to text]

gg3962   squab raw inexperienced person (Brome's The Sparagus Garden is OED's only recorded example); also a young pigeon or newly hatched bird [go to text]

n7185   Slid 'God's lids' [go to text]

n5959   though he be but coarse metal yet An allusion derived from alchemy. Spring compares Hoyden to the coarse metal that the alchemical process must make into gold (i.e. a gentleman in their schema). [go to text]

gg4836   clear (adj) bright, splendid, brilliant [go to text]

gg3964   Hoyden a rude, ignorant or awkward fellow; a clown, boor (OED, n; obsolete) [go to text]

gg4836   clear (adj) bright, splendid, brilliant [go to text]

gg4837   yeoman a man holding a small landed estate, one who cultivates his own land, usually of respectable standing [go to text]

n326   Hammersmith A village approximately seven miles west of St. Paul's, on the northern bank of the Thames. [go to text]

n5909   at my card afore thy card Gambling tricks by which the Hammersmith gang sought to defraud Hoyden of his money. [go to text]

n5960   so noddy pooped utterly fooled. The phrase is somewhat tautologous since 'noddy' = a fool and 'pooped' = fooled according to the OED. [go to text]

gg3963   pooped fooled [go to text]

gg4838   chafe (v) become irritated [go to text]

n5911   Your small acquaintance, sir. Hoyden misapprehends Spring's overly elaborate discourse here and henceforth rather touchingly refers to him as 'small acquaintance'. Presumably this could be pointed up in performance by casting an actor of dimunitive stature in the role. Since John Brittleware is regularly described as being large and lumpish this would provide a fine visual contrast as well. [go to text]

n5961   which my man has here drawn up to town, and here I mean to quarter it Hoyden refers to the transportation of his money to town, but Moneylacks will play on his use of the terms 'drawn' and 'quarter' to pun on the violent punishment regularly meted out on felons (and not only on their corposes) at public executions in this period. This all helps to create our sense of Hoyden as the 'victim' of the wiser city characters in this scene. [go to text]

n5762   Coulter Coulter delivers his lines throughout in a basic version of a Somerset dialect with particular distinct markers such as 'z' for 's'. This is comparable to the 'rural' dialect Jonson accords his provincial characters in his 1633 play A Tale of a Tub. Hoyden's discourse has not been marked as a distinct dialect type as Brome makes no phonetic indicator of any slips into his provincial dialect and this is in keeping with his aspirations to become a city gentleman, and presumably therefore to speak in the received pronunciation of the city. [go to text]

gg1290   spark young foppish man (gallant) (OED n2. 2a) [go to text]

n5912   Taunton Village in Somerset. [go to text]

gg3940   finical over-particular or affectedly fastidious [go to text]

n5913   city wit, and a superfinical court wit The City Wit is the title of an early Brome play and City-Wit, Court-Wit and Country-Wit are characters in another 1630s playtext The Court Beggar. [go to text]

gg3211   jeer (v) to treat with scorn (OED 2) [go to text]

n5962   I will have a clubbing wit The 1620s and 1630s were notable for the rise in numbers of gentlemen's clubs and coterie gatherings (often in taverns). See Raylor (1994) and O'Callaghan (2007) as well as examples of the same in Brome's The Weeding of Covent Garden. [go to text]

gg3941   malapertest most saucy or impudent [go to text]

n7186   quarter i.e. divide it in quarters (in Tim's case parcelling his four hundred pound into four separate hundreds). The others in the scene quickly pun on this idea taking the term to mean quartering as in the punishment of hanging, drawing and quartering, physicalising Tim's money as well as providing a resonant metaphor for the ways in which they are cheating and humiliating him. [go to text]

n7187   They’ll quarter that and you too Coulter here picks up on the fact that Tim's innocent division of his money into quarters will be quickly reinterpreted by the London scammers who aim to cheat him of his fortune. They will effectively 'hang, draw and quarter' the poor man in the process. [go to text]

n5914   some suburb justice that sits o’ the skirts o’the city and lives by’t. Corrupt justices of the peace was a favourite Brome theme. Characters like Sir Paul Squelch in The Northern Lass the Middlesex J.P. who sets up a prostitute as his mistress conforms to the stereotype offered here. 'Skirts' here is both a geographical reference to the city and a literal reference to the women residing in that parish and subject to the corrupt justice's sexual whims. [go to text]

gg4839   cast summed it up, reckoned it (OED 6c) [go to text]

gg4840   gross total, whole sum [go to text]

gg4841   retail the sale of commodities in small quantities [go to text]

gg4779   craft cunning, ingenuity [go to text]

gg4837   yeoman a man holding a small landed estate, one who cultivates his own land, usually of respectable standing [go to text]

gg4837   yeoman a man holding a small landed estate, one who cultivates his own land, usually of respectable standing [go to text]

gg2349   copy model, example, master-copy [go to text]

n5915   to go by the heralds i.e. to become a gentleman by identifying a lineage and commissioning a coat of arms from the Herald's office [go to text]

n5916   purging and bleeding Traditional actions of a barber-surgeon in administering medical advice. [go to text]

gg3964   Hoyden a rude, ignorant or awkward fellow; a clown, boor (OED, n; obsolete) [go to text]

n11361   [Writes] SD appears in the right margin (Q). [go to text]

n7188   dispraised spoken of in depracating fashion. Tim's use of the term here is a malaproprism since it would suggest that there is no-one quite as despised as his father was in his home county! [go to text]

n5917   pease-porridge Porridge or stew made from dried peas; also known as pease-pudding. Here, along with bacon, presented as archetypal rural food as opposed to the fine dining enjoyed by a city gentleman and therefore part of the world that Hoyden must reject. [go to text]

n7189   must out of you to the last dram i.e. must be drained out of you to the last drop. This again appears to be an embedded reference to theories of medical practice and the circulation of the blood at this time, most obviously linked to the controversial contemporary figure of William Harvey, the king's physician. This line of conversation continues into Spring's response where he assures Tim his blood will be taken out by degrees and his veins replenished with more noble blood. [go to text]

n5918   meats and drinks of costly price all of the items Moneylacks lists are also notably deemed to be aphrodisiacs which creates an interesting link with the foodstuffs Rebecca was being persuaded to partake of earlier in the scene. [go to text]

gg3942   muscadel muscadel wine [go to text]

gg78   caudles (cup of) ‘a warm drink consisting of thin gruel, mixed with wine or ale, sweetened and spiced, given chiefly to sick people, esp. women in childbed; also to their visitors’ (OED n. 1a); aphrodisiac [go to text]

gg79   cock-broths broth made from a boiled cock; aphrodisiac [go to text]

n5963   shrimp porridge A very extravagant (and expensive) version of porridge. [go to text]

gg3864   souped i.e. spooned up with [go to text]

n5763   This stands to reason indeed. This could be delivered as an acerbic aside, but alternatively Coulter could deliver it for all to hear - he has certainly made such openly witty ripostes in Moneylacks's hearing earlier in the scene. This therefore seemed a place in the text where too impositional a stage direction might close down performative possibilities. [go to text]

n7190   on an (Q) [go to text]

n5919   King Cadwallader 7th century Welsh king reputed to be the last to have lordship over all Britain. [go to text]

gg1747   congee ceremonial bow (usually as a leavetaking) [go to text]

n7191   an absolute gentleman Cf. Henry Peacham, The Compleat Gentleman, first published in 1622, and which went into a third edition in 1634. [go to text]

gg343   brave splendid [go to text]

gg3965   chargeable costly, expensive (obs., OED 4) [go to text]

n5964   hide i.e. the toughened skin of an animal. The scammers enjoy constructing Hoyden as a kind of beast in this exchange as they discuss bathing and de-fleaing him. [go to text]

n7192   flea It is just possible that Tim could hear this as 'flay' especially spoken with a strong London accent by Spring, but the sense works literally as well. [go to text]

gg3943   coulter iron blade fixed in front of a plough [go to text]

n5920   this is but my hanger on a reference to the sword hanging at Coulter's side, about which Moneylacks has made the disparaging reference that it resembles the blade of a plough thereby emphasising Coulter's rural agricultural background. [go to text]

n7428   2.2 Scene 2: This scene returns us to Touchwood's residence, seemingly to a space just outside it. Gilbert and Walter have come to put their plot into action, informing Touchwood that Sam, his son, has done exactly what Touchwood demanded of him in the first act - that he cause harm to the Striker family. They state that Samuel has got Annabel pregnant and now intends to eschew all responsibility for his act and escape to the continent to pursue the foreign travels that were a common ambition for comparable young gentlemen of the day. Touchwood's glee is palpable in this scene and adds to the audience's perception of the casual nastiness, spite and violence of 1630s urban society. Once alone again, Touchwood looks forward to taunting his friend, Striker, on this subject: 'Strike Striker's teeth out with his own abuse'. The truth of the two men's relationship is, however, that they depend on each other for the reassuring rhythms of their arguments. We can tell their encounters are part of a regular routine since Touchwood looks for Striker in his 'usual walk'. We also get a glimpse here into the new walking practices of the seventeenth-century capital that have been the focus of recent study (see Newman, 2002). Touchwood has, however, made an oath to Gilbert and Walter not to reveal his knowledge of the pregnancy, so some of the enjoyment of the scene that ensues between Striker and Touchwood is our knowledge of this and our pleasure in watching him struggle to suppress his words (this leads to a plethora of agonised asides). In a quite brilliantly orchestrated scene of verbal sparring (which we might also see as prefiguring the 'fencing with words' scenarios of the later Hoyden scenes) the two men hurl invective at each other in a scene of seeming hatred but which through its one-line stichomythic exchanges and shared rhythms also renders it a kind of love-duet between the two old men. Add to this the potential for physical humour in their encounter and Brome has created a wonderfully rich set-piece, a kind of mock-duel, which gives the audience the tone for the Striker-Touchwood encounters throughout the rest of the play. Once Touchwood finally exits, just about keeping his 'secret' (which we as audience know to be a false belief), Striker delivers a closing soliloquy in which he admits the extent to which his existence is reliant on Touchwood's constant vexation of him, a position they have maintained for some three decades. The phlegm that we have already been told is central to understanding Striker's personality or 'humour' (in the Galenic system of the four humours) has quite literally been released by the duelling with Touchwood, since we see Striker physically overwhelmed by coughing fits throughout the duologue. [go to text]

n7193   This is a mischief with a witness to it That is: Annabel's pregnancy and the resulting child will be very visible and tangible proof of Samuel's actions. [go to text]

gg3814   home effectively, to the heart of the matter (OED adv. 5a) [go to text]

n5764   [Turns] Aside [to hide his] laugh[ter] Aside and laugh (Q) [go to text]

gg105   coxcomb head; fool [go to text]

n5921   falling bands and cuffs Sleeve details associated with French and continental European fashions [go to text]

gg3944   buffets fisticuffs, fighting [go to text]

gg3211   jeer (v) to treat with scorn (OED 2) [go to text]

n5922   This is his usual walk Video Another reference to different kinds of walking in this play. It is clear that Striker takes regular recreation in this place and so Touchwood can be assured of meeting his old adversary there. The codependency of the two men is therefore established for the audience despite the physical and verbal rubbish they will go on to throw at each other during the exchange which follows . [go to text]

gg543   despite scorn, contempt [go to text]

n5923   [Aside] Video The dynamics of this scene depend on the asides and the different interpretations each man has of the exchange. As our workshopping of the scene proved to the delight of the watching audience, there is a a wonderfully achieved rhythm in the dialogue here and its quasi-operatic movement into and out of duet . [go to text]

gg58   casting devising, contriving (OED cast, 43b); rolling of dice [go to text]

n5924   And I thank chance he’s here. In the best tradition of theatrical odd couples these two old men can neither live with nor without each other. Their sense of self is in part defined by and dependent on these regular heated exchanges between them. [go to text]

n5925   old puppy Though the old men like to think they are being shocking their insults are invariably of a very tame variety. [go to text]

n7206   Has he but seen her? Video We experimented at length in the workshopping with how to deliver these asides in which Touchwood struggles to keep in the 'secret' he has been told by Gilbert and Walter earlier in the scene. As the discussions which emerge here between the actors and director Brian Wolland indicate, a key to the scene was also its physicality (the coughing, the circling of each other by the two elderly men) and its use of strategies of impoliteness and mickey-taking . [go to text]

n7202   [Aside] Video This is a scene where the potential for asides is crucial to its operations but where the quarto text is very lightly marked in terms of stage directions. While bearing in mind a wish to keep performance options open, workshopping the scene with actors Philip Cumbus (Touchwood) and Alan Morrissey (Striker) really helped to explore the rhythms of asides and which worked best as words to self or direct address to the audience. My annotations and editorial interventions in this section are a direct result of the actors' input on the day and should be seen as a collaborative outcome. One example of the working with asides can be seen here . [go to text]

n5926   I fear I shall out with it Touchwood's asides reveal how tempted he is to make full use of his new knowledge about Annabel's pregnancy. The added enjoyment for the audience is that they suspect he too has been fooled by Samuel and his friends. [go to text]

gg1276   malapert impudent, saucy [go to text]

n5928   Cough[s] The workshopping of this scene with Alan Morrissey in the role of Striker helped us to realise how powerful the coughing actions are in the scene. They are a visual (and aural) signal of the physical as well as mental release that the exchange with Touchwood gives the old man. He confirms as much in the next scene with Friswood in which he describes Touchwood as his 'physician'. [go to text]

n7207   there was a touch for him Video This was a point at which we workshopped the notion of there needing to be a physical catalyst for Striker's coughing in this scene (so visible in the stage directions which the quarto does choose to include) . [go to text]

gg1185   churl’s a countryman, often used contemptuously of a low-bred villain, especially (since Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour, first performed 1599) referring to a grain-hoarder, who withheld grain from the market, driving up the price and causing great hardship among the poor (hence the curse of weeds in the field choking out the grain) [go to text]

n5765   throttle thratle (Q) [go to text]

n7194   by about [go to text]

n5929   yet thus far take me wi’ye, sir Video Workshopping this scene brought to our attention the underlying rhythm of the sequence that meant that Striker could not quite bear to leave the conversation at this point; our actors realised this in a physical turning and crossing towards each other at various stages in the action . [go to text]

n7208   Not a step, unless I were sure I were going to the devil, huh, huh. No, sir Video In another brilliant set of interpretations we can witness Philip Cumbus (Touchwood) and Alan Morrissey (Striker) pushing the exchange to its physical and verbal limits, using shouting, comedy, physical action - not least the coughing fit- to consistently punctuate and sometimes dramatically shift the rhythm and register of the scene . [go to text]

n5965   much good do it you Usually a form of well wishing at a meal or repast. [go to text]

n7203   So he’s gone Video Striker's soliloquy at this point is one of several moments in the play when a particular character takes the audience into his/her confidence. This is the moment when Striker reveals his absolute dependence on his arch-enemy Touchwood for a sense of self and for a certain sustaining rhythm in his life . The actors discussed this relationshop with real insight during the course of the workshop, a nice example of which is included here . [go to text]

n5930   my comfort is he has recovered me Striker's brief soliloquy at the close of this brilliantly crafted scene confirms the sense of interdependence our actors identified in these characters. As Striker will reveal in subsequent lines they have effectively been a couple for thirty years and it is clear that the relationship with Touchwood has compensated for the loss of his wife (with whom he also clearly had a vexatious relationship). In a manner akin to Shakespeare's warring lovers such as Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing or Katherine and Petruccio in The Taming of a Shrew while the surface of their lines is all conflict and invective, the underlying rhythm of the scene is connectedness. This is achieved here mostly through the quickfire banter of stichomythia though another common early modern theatrical strategy would be to deploy shared verse lines to indicate the underlying chemistry acoustically to the audience. [go to text]

gg3966   phlegm one of the four humours, an excess of which in the body was supposed to induce apathy [go to text]

n7426   2.3 Scene 3: There is a strange dramatic issue of a timelag here between Striker's closing soliloquy in the previous scene and his arrival back at his own household where Friswood awaits him. The implication appears to be that he exits the stage and then re-enters with the audience understanding that he has been walking the city streets homewards in the interim moments. Striker repeats his revelations of the soliloquy in his comments to Friswood about feeling light at heart after the encounter with Touchwood even describing its effects in medical and physiological terms - Touchwood is his 'dog-leech' and his 'physician'. Friswood seizes the moment to 'reveal' Annabel's pregnancy to Striker. Immediately he declares that he will cast his granddaughter out on the street but Friswood stays him via an act of recuperative memory. She reminds him (and in turn fills in further backstory for the audience) that he did just that to his own sister some thirty years previously when she became pregnant before marriage (the thirty year timeline will immediately link to the Touchwood-Striker feud in the audience's mind at this point). In an inset narrative Friswood describes how Audrey Striker was sent away heavily pregnant and has not been heard of since and how Striker appropriated her dowry in the process. She urges him not to do the same to Annabel and, to make doubly sure, she threatens to expose his sexual relationship with her if he does so, making public his 'foul incontinence' to the world. In a brief soliloquy at the end of the scene Friswood confides in the audience that she hopes she has done enough to quell Striker's rage. Her moment of confiding recalls that by other Brome heroines including Trainwell, Holdup and Fitchow in The Northern Lass and creates a level of empathy with her position that is important in the unfolding action. [go to text]

n5767   You are welcome home, sir. Friswood's opening line here is an indicator of a change of scene to Striker's residence, the previous exchange with Touchwood having taken place somewhere outside, where we are informed Striker takes his usual walk. [go to text]

n5768   And merrily too, Fid. Hemh, light at heart. Much of this scene is set out as verse in the printed version although there seems less internal justification for this shift from the mostly prosaic register of the play at this point than is usual in Brome. Caroline dramas are notoriously varied in their patterns of prose and verse in print and I have taken the decision here where the verse appeared to break up and confuse the sense of what was being said (particularly with Friswood's lines) to retabulate them as prose. [go to text]

n5931   my physician, dog-leech Touchwood Continuing the sense of the previous scene, Striker's implication here is that Touchwood and the tetchy exchanges with him actually keep him in good health. He therefore compares Touchwood to a doctor and to a dog-leech which would commonly have been used in purging exercises. This in turn reminds the audience of the recent scene featuring Tim Hoyden and all the threats of bleeding and purging there. Brome is a master of the internal echo in this way that enables audiences to keep hold of multiple plot-strands. [go to text]

n7195   as just as German’s lips Proverbial saying; German's lips were held to be a by-word for truth and reliability (Tilley, G87) (McClure, p. 408). [go to text]

gg3945   lipped leaped (with a sexual connotation) [go to text]

n5933   lipped Compare 'Leap her! I lip her' in Ben Jonson, The New Inn 3.2.116. [go to text]

n5769   Sir, if you think the knowledge of a truth of this sad nature may prejudice your health by drawing a choleric fit into you you were best to send for your physician, your dog-leech Touchwood, as you called him, to break your bed of phlegm by laughing at you. Here I have retabulated the lines from verse to prose for clarity since some of the verse line breaks broke up words and therefore sense. [go to text]

gg3946   choleric having choler as the predominant humour; being of bilious temperament [go to text]

n7196   send for your physician, your dog-leech Touchwood Frsiwood's repetition of Striker's earlier phrases also serves to imprint them on the audience's memory. [go to text]

n5934   to break your bed of phlegm Phlegm was one of the four humours, an excess of which in the body was supposed to induce apathy. We have quite literally seen Touchwood breaking Striker's 'bed of phlegm' in the coughing fit of the previous scene. [go to text]

gg3947   clapped literally affected with the clap (i.e. a sexual disease), but also seduced sexually [go to text]

n5770   travel The sense is straightfroward but the early modern spelling 'travail' did allow for an additional sense of a journey of hardship caused by Samuel's (supposed) action in getting Annabel pregnant. [go to text]

n7197   mystically literally 'in a mystical manner' but Striker's reference here is to Touchwood's oblique references to this matter in their previous encounter in this act the full import and meaning of which have only now become clear to him. [go to text]

n7198   ’Sprecious One of many strange oaths in the play, this one presumably being a foreshortening of 'God's precious [things?]'. [go to text]

n7199   lusty pleasing (although meant ironically by Striker in this instance). [go to text]

gg2169   passages progresses, transitions from one state to another (OED passage n, 3a); episodes, events (OED passage n, 14) [go to text]

n5935   near thirty years ago also the timeline of the Touchwood -Striker quarrel so once again a sense of codependency is given historical and psychological justification. [go to text]

gg1143   portion dowry (monies, goods or lands brought by the wife to augment her husband’s estate on their marriage) [go to text]

n5936   did get a clap got pregnant [go to text]

gg3947   clapped literally affected with the clap (i.e. a sexual disease), but also seduced sexually [go to text]

gg1143   portion dowry (monies, goods or lands brought by the wife to augment her husband’s estate on their marriage) [go to text]

n7200   took i.e. took off, took herself, went to [go to text]

gg1143   portion dowry (monies, goods or lands brought by the wife to augment her husband’s estate on their marriage) [go to text]

n5771   ’mazed mated (Q). Emended for sense. [go to text]

gg3948   impeach indict, charge, accuse [go to text]

gg3967   incontinence sexual unchastity (OED 1) [go to text]

n5941   Old bullion trunks Striker's clothing is presumably somewhat old-fashioned. There is the additional bawdy implication here that what is contained within his trunks is also old coinage (bullion being gold and silver in its lumpen form). The clothing expert Jenny Tiramini observed, in a workshop for the project, Brome's persistent use of slightly antiquated modes of tying trousers or clothing as a means of indicating to the audience old-fashioned views or attitudes on the part of the character and this is a useful instance of that. Presumably Striker would be dressed in the rather full legged trousers that were considered antiquated by a Caroline court with a penchant for tight lacing and clothes that displayed the figure (for both male and female courtiers). [go to text]

n5942   over my truckle-bed This image of Striker looming over the bed of his female servant is both repulsive and sexually threatening. The implication is that he had her sleep in a trucklebed possibly beneath his own to enable easy access to her in the night. The play is replete with suggestions and implications about the sexual relationship he has enjoyed with Friswood throughout her time of employment and even during his wife's lifetime. [go to text]

gg3956   truckle-bed a low bed running on castors and usually pushed beneath a higher bed when not in use, often used by servants or children [go to text]

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