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n6228   4.1 This act like Act 3 is one continuous flow of action. Only Peregrine and the Doctor return after the interval as the play-within-the-play resumes. Hughball urges Peregrine to disguise his kingly apparel and, heavily cloaked, they watch a new series of strange relationships: an old woman with a passion for bear-baiting gets the better of her puritan granddaughter, but that young maiden proves anything but maidenly when a young gallant and his aged servant come into view. When the young man resists her advances, she attacks him and his servant physically, then with the arrival of a constable and the watch feigns being the victim of gross abuse, winning the constable to her support. Peregrine is outraged by the constable’s intention to send the young man to prison and intervenes to insist on passing his own judgement. He decides that the Antipodes is in need of substantial reordering and determines to bring the country to honour his own values. Enchantment with the difference of his newly discovered world is rapidly displaced by the need to mould it to familiar social and political structures. The woman fighter returns victorious from her combat, but the questioning of justice immediately is foregrounded again by the arrival of a man-scold who has been ducked by a party of women; their jeering reduces him to tears. His abject state is reflected too in a group of three courtiers that next take the stage, revealing themselves to be brainless, ill-educated fools whose lives revolve around horseplay and drinking. Their inadequacies are further exposed by contrast with the three working men in the next episode, who are masters of the courtly phrase and of extremes of polite behaviour. When the stage fills with a procession of situations that reverse what Peregrine knows as social or political norms, he fears he may go mad as he realises the extent of what he will need as king to reform. Byplay now enters in the role of a grand statesman, surrounded by fawning projectors who seek his patronage for various bizarre schemes or ply him with suits for the relief of indigent individuals (one and all might more profitably be characterised as of the decidedly undeserving poor). A horrified Peregrine again intervenes into what he considers a manifest abuse of power and privilege, but the Doctor advises against punishment and recommends mercy, which Peregrine graciously bestows. Letoy, Joyless and Diana return to view the performance from the window of a private chamber above the playing space. Thrown by Peregrine’s intervention, Byplay is suddenly at a loss how to proceed, which angers Letoy and causes him to rebuff Diana rudely, to Joyless’s secret enjoyment. Chaos ensues, till the situation is saved by Byplay improvising a rapid shift of focus in the playing to announce with many offstage sound effects that the whole nation of Antipodeans is approaching to do honour to their new king. A procession appears which brings with it Martha, Peregrine’s wife, now dressed like a Queen, who is offered as a bride to Peregrine in a dynastic marriage. Despite some reluctance at first, fuelled by vestiges of his reading of strange marital customs in Mandeville, Peregrine agrees to the union; they leave to wed and in time to bed. Letoy hastily commands his men to adapt to this new situation (Quailpipe is to become a curate again and officiate at the wedding). Alone with Joyless and his wife, he explains the thinking behind the therapy he and the Doctor have been undertaking with its stress on play and playing to gain new perspectives on life and on sexual experience in order to find joy. Diana is envious when she hears this and expresses her resentment at Joyless’s treatment of her, fed by his jealous imaginings. It is late and Letoy bids them retire to bed at his house. Though Joyless attempts to demur, he is overruled. The action in this act has centred on Peregrine, given Diana and Joyless’s long absence from the stage; and his plot-line appears to have been successfully resolved. Letoy, when calling Diana and her husband down from the upper window on to the stage, deployed the enigmatic words: “come down /Quickly; your parts are next” (my emphasis). This implies for the theatre audience that the second plot-strand and its accompanying theme has still to be resolved. The withdrawal of the characters to bed chambers on Letoy’s instructions and with Diana’s willing compliance plunges Joyless into a new state of crisis. [go to text]

gg2945   cloud hide, conceal [go to text]

gg2946   raiment garments, clothing [go to text]

n3584   Great kings have done the like The best known theatrical examples of such behaviour in monarchs or leaders are Shakespearean: Henry V on the eve of the battle of Agincourt; Duke Vincentio throughout Measure for Measure; and Polixenes in The Winter's Tale when he wishes to spy on his son, Florizel's relations with Perdita. Shakespeare's late play had been revived by the King's Men for court and possibly public performance during January 1633. [go to text]

gg2947   passages movements (about a town or country); incidents; exchanges (verbal or physically violent); doings, goings-on [go to text]

gs500   close hidden (OED a and adv, 4a) [go to text]

gg2948   tanners artisans who make leather out of hide by the process of tanning [go to text]

gg2949   single one at a time (in single combat) [go to text]

n3585   game bear the bear currently being baited [go to text]

n3586   two ten-dog courses at the great bear Two rounds in which a pack of ten dogs attack an especially large creature (lions and bulls were variously deployed as well as bears); this was to be the climax of the event. [go to text]

n3587   these profane and diabolical courses The maid is here using typical puritan rhetoric which was levelled against most forms of popular entertainment at this date. Theatre and blood sports in particular were deemed idolatrous, heathen and the work of the devil (diabolical). Jonson had satirised this kind of verbal attack in the person of Zeal-of-the-Land Busy in Bartholomew Fair, who condemns the fair for the gluttony, iniquity and debauchery such entertainments provoke, but indulges his appetites hugely when not observed. [go to text]

n3588   meditations most likely, a book of sermons [go to text]

n3589   could not that is, could no longer actually see the sport [go to text]

n3590   scent in the view of most writers on the subject, the more accurate term would be "stench" [go to text]

n3591   the king’s game The reference carries a critical irony: though bear-baiting had been an entertainment enjoyed by the Tudors, including Queen Elizabeth, and again by James I, King Charles pursued more refined and cultured pleasures. [go to text]

n3592   “one side venison” Editors of the play have generally considered this to be a reference to Ben Jonson ("the good author"), who in the Induction to The Magnetic Lady refers to the "left side" of a beast as "the venison side" on the basis of the popular pun on "hart" (meaning deer) and "heart"; but Jonson is not specifically referring to bears in the context and so the reference would seem to be somewhat forced. No other "good author" has been put forward, however, as source of the quotation. [go to text]

gg491   want lack [go to text]

gg2611   baubles trifling things, toys [go to text]

n3593   bear The actor has a choice whether to point the pun verbally and even guy it as somewhat laboured or just to pass over it silently, leaving the audience to perceive it, if they will. [go to text]

gg3205   Season course of time [go to text]

n3594   Too subject to infirmity The puritanical cliche of this is exposed as hypocritical by the viciousness of the Maid's threats which precede it and by her louche behaviour in the ensuing episode. [go to text]

n4193   [second] young GENTLEMAN This edition adds the denomination "second" to distinguish this young gentleman from the Gentleman who appeared in the second and third acts, accused of going back on his word to lie with the Citizen's wife. Q marks a new scene with the entry of the two new characters: "Act 4. Scene 2.". [go to text]

n3595   Publish That is: spread it wide to everyone's view. Cloaks at this date were often sumptuously embellished and lined and it was fashionable to throw the garment over the shoulder and often then fold part of it under the opposite arm and around the chest so that both topside and lining were fully displayed. The effect can be seen in many of Van Dyck's portraits of aristocrats and the men of the royal family and King Charles's household. See also the first act of Jonson's The Devil Is An Ass, which features an ostentatious cloak exchanging hands, which is described as made of plush at "three pound ten shillings a yard" (Wilkes, volume IV, 1.4.40), lace (the decoration) and velvet (the probable lining). Fitzdotterel, who comes into possession of it, intends to go to the theatre, sit onstage and show off its excellencies to (he hopes) an envying audience to the despair of the (upstaged) players. [go to text]

n5730   Display it on one arm There is obviously good opportunity here for comic business, as the Servingman tries to find the correct mode of display intended by the Gentleman. The dashes copied from Q suggest where the business should occur. [go to text]

gg2950   ass donkey, beast of burden, which was often laden with panniers full of merchandise [go to text]

n3597   appendix to this book. Brome is continuing the book-publishing metaphor: the servant is to walk close behind the gentleman to be sure that passers-by fully appreciate to whom the cloak properly belongs. [go to text]

n3596   appendix I have retained the italics of the first published text as an invitation to the actor to make much of the word by way of self-aggrandisement. [go to text]

gs501   dainty choice (of a specimen), fastidious, exquisite [go to text]

n3598   my blood Rebels against the spirit "Blood" here means "passion" or "carnal appetite, lust" (see OED n, 5 and 6). Despite her protestations of puritan morality, as voiced throughout the previous episode, the Maid quickly succumbs to bodily desire when she sights a handsome man. Though she refers to a struggle within herself ("rebels"), she puts up no resistance whatever. [go to text]

gg2951   mowing a richly allusive term, since a complex range of meanings is possible: the relentless advancing of one with a scythe cutting down corn or hay, reaping; striking down men (in battle); making faces (that is, provocative, come-hitherish moues with the lips); being sexually available [go to text]

gg496   vouchsafe 'to show a gracious readiness or willingness, to grant readily, to condescend or deign, to do something' (OED v, 6b) [go to text]

n3599   none of those The use of the plural implies that from what he has seen of her antics, her "mowing", the Gentleman takes the Maid for a prostitute on the look-out for clients. All this indicates how the actress should play the sequence, while the reference to how "broad" the way is in the following line suggests that she should steadily come very close to him. [go to text]

n3600   a copy of your countenance That is: you are putting on a pretend face, your harsh frown and attitude are just for show. [go to text]

n3601   half a piece About eleven shillings. How this exchange is played offers various possibilities for the actors involved. Has the Maid decided to play the role that the Gentleman has assigned her, or is this an indication that the earlier puritan mouthings were a mask to cover her real game as whore? The fee quoted is surprisingly high (though Mistress Saleware in A Mad Couple Well Matched agrees to a single encounter with Thrivewell for £100). Lawrence Stone in The Family, Sex and Marriage in England: 1500-1800, writing of amateur prostitution in the last decades of the sixteenth century, comments: "Some poor families let out a room in their house to a whore, and the occasional married woman indulged in casual fornication in the fields for 4d a time, partly to earn money, and partly, it would seem, for mere pleasure. Sex was, therefore, rather more readily available to rural bachelor youths than one would have suspected [...]"(p.391). The Maid has drawn conclusions from the "advertisement" of the young Gentleman's rich cloak and so her approach would seem motivated more by commercial than sexual intent. [go to text]

n3602   The whole breadth of your nose The surface meaning here is "completely", that is: "you are utterly deceived". But the Gentleman may also be continuing his barbed, caustic innuendo on a figurative level, since the nose was the first site to be affected by advanced syphilis and, according to Gordon Williams (A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature [London: Athlone, 1994]), the slitting of noses was a known punishment for a woman taken in adultery (and the young man is soon to refer to his wife in attempting to fend off the Maid's advances). Williams also cites this very line as "a vaginal quibble", referring to the woman's sexual capacity. Robert Herrick in his Epigram "Upon Scobble" includes the lines: "Scobble for whoredom whips his wife; and cries /He'll slit her nose" (1-2), where again the phrase is used in the context of a woman suspected of committing adultery. There is a similar example of such a threat in Chapman's A Humorous Day's Mirth (performed 1597), where the Countess, suspecting that her young husband is meeting with a woman, Martia, at an ordinary (eating house), starts to go in pursuit of them, vowing "I'll slit her nose, by Jesus." (Scene 5, lines 146-7). Some decades after the writing of The Antipodes Pepys's wife still resorted to the threat when she found her husband with his hand up her maid, Deb Willet's skirt. [go to text]

n3603   so disposed The Gentleman's snootiness here shows how right the Maid was initially to see him as "dainty" (fastidious). [go to text]

n3604   civilly The Maid is matching her response to the Gentleman's seeming fastidiousness, since both meanings of the term are relevant here: "courteously" but also "lawfully" in the sense that at his home private sexual antics would not in themselves be open to punishment, unless adultery were involved (which explains the Gentleman's immediate recourse to references to his wife). [go to text]

gg2952   turn the use here is punning on various meanings of the noun, "turn": as need, requirement, objective; "turn" as meaning strategy, trick; or, drawing on hunting and farming terminology (where the reference is to coupling beasts), it can mean a sexual romp, "the best turn in the bed", though the tone is often denigratory (OED turn, n. 30a, 21, 15c) [go to text]

n3605   Gip gaffer shotten. Get lost, grandad! [go to text]

gg532   jade on the analogy with an exhausted horse, a jade is an overused prostitute (or more crudely: a clapped-out tart) [go to text]

n3606   That durst not strike a woman The implied meaning here is: "But is happy to hit a man!" Brome's Antipodean inversions are extending cleverly into proverbial usages and many other levels of diction. [go to text]

n4454   Enter CONSTABLE and WATCH Q creates a new scene at this point: "Act 4. Scene 3.". [go to text]

gg1312   an if [go to text]

gg2953   pass go about one's business [go to text]

gg2954   shortly soon [go to text]

n3607   street-walkers Usually the term applied to practising prostitutes soliciting for clients in the streets, but is here applied to a fashion-obsessed gallant. The detail (like the whole speech and the Maid's behaviour) is full of antipodean inversions, showing how thoroughly Brome has thought through his basic premise with the play. In Caroline England and in many other periods of legal history, the word of a commoner or generally the word of a woman would not stand up in court against that of a gentleman. Here in the Antipodes the word of a gentleman will not stand up in a legal situation against a tearful woman who asserts her virginity as her moral support and vindication. That the Maid's virginity has been called into question by the preceding episode should, if the patterns involved in the inversion are followed through, give a spectator pause for thought about the status of gentlemen and whether that status too with all its assertion of masculinist power is not simply a pose. The Maid is an actor playing a role (in the Caroline theatre, even the gender is role-play) and in role "she" uses her gender and her sexuality in a series of power games against members of the opposite sex. As was Jonson in such plays as Epicoene (1609), The Devil Is An Ass (1616) and The New Inn (1629), Brome throughout this act of The Antipodes seems deeply preoccupied with gender as a social and political construct. His comic inversions continually invite spectators to critique contemporary Caroline society, its assumptions, practices, traditions and conventions. [go to text]

n3608   Hear me the truth That is: hear from me the truth, hear me speak the truth. [go to text]

gg2956   precepts commands, injunctions [go to text]

gg1952   bugbears imaginary terrors [go to text]

gg3085   drawn attract, entice, lure [go to text]

n4205   Aside unto their lust, That is: taken (me) into a private place (aside from the public throughfare), intent on rape. [go to text]

n3610   Protest That is: I protest. [go to text]

gs502   party one side in a lawsuit [go to text]

n3611   the Counter Generally the meaning was as here "to prison"; but specifically the term was used to apply to the two debtors' prisons in Caroline London in Cheapside and at the Poultry. [go to text]

gg2957   at large free [go to text]

gg2958   out disrupts my part (role) as written, disturbs my concentration so that I forget my lines [go to text]

n5584   matter mat er (Q) [go to text]

n5731   Go. This edition. Q reads: "Goe―― [go to text]

n4433   [SERVINGMAN] Q here reads "Servant" but this edition continues to use "Servingman" for consistency. [go to text]

gg2959   clap her up imprison [go to text]

n4462   ears This would seem to be a second reference to Prynne's appearance in the pillory in 1637 and the lopping away of what remained of his ears after his first punishment of 1633. The image is conjured up in spectators' imaginations within a short space (in terms of playing time) of the first such reference in Act 3 [NOTE n3559]. Again the context is an assertion of judicial right (this time on the part of Peregrine in his role as self-created King of the Antipodes). Throughout the play and particularly in the play-within-the-play justice is chiefly expressed as punishment and that invariably as a violent manifestation of power (ducking, bodily disfigurement). [go to text]

gg1879   transgress offend, disobey (a rule of conduct) [go to text]

gg2960   sweet pleasing, agreeable [go to text]

n5691   Enter BUFF WOMAN Interestingly Q does not make a new scene division for this entry, presumably because it simply involves a procession of actors across the stage with no assigned dialogue. [go to text]

gg2961   prize. a contest in which a trophy or money (prize) is awarded the victor [go to text]

gg2961   prize a contest in which a trophy or money (prize) is awarded the victor [go to text]

n5701   (within) One of the particular dramaturgical felicities of this comedy is Brome's deployment of offstage sound to provoke an audience's curiosity and laughter. Like the cacaphony that precedes Byplay's hasty entrance and account of Peregrine's attack on the theatre company's props and costumes in Act 3, this upsurge of shouting indicative of a street fight in which a crowd of women is clearly getting topside of an irate man is highly provocative and, for male spectators, somewhat unsettling (particularly since the last stage picture they witnessed was the procession of the Buff Woman with her supporters returning victorious from her boxing match). The pattern of antipodean inversions is now being firmly extended to engage with issues of gender-identity. [go to text]

gg2962   Varlets! knaves, rogues, menials [go to text]

n9841   Duck him again. Duck him again. Video The brief scene of the ducking of the man-scold is one of the darker and more challenging of the inversions Brome imagines for his antipodean world. The actual practice of so treating women who were believed to transgress male prerogatives and authority seems outrageously barbaric in its sadism and cruelty to modern sensibilities. The workshop set out with several objectives: to examine the degree to which the scene might be presented as comedy and to find an appropriate tone for the proceedings; to explore the changing dynamic of presenting the scene with an entirely male cast (as would have been the case with the original Stuart production) or with a mixed cast of several women and one man (as, arguably, the episode was realised in Brome’s imagination); to investigate what effect it would have on the overall dynamic of the scene if the Man-scold were played by an older man or a young one; and to look into a textual crux involving the line, "No, no; I charge ye, no!" [AN 4.1.speech753], which in the Quarto is assigned to "2 Woman". The words are uttered in response to Woman 3's "In with him again" [meaning: let's duck him in the pond since he is calling us names]. On a first reading it might seem acceptable for Woman 2 to try and intervene as having witnessed enough violence. However, her next assigned speech (756) shows her displeasure at the ending of the man-scold’s punishment, which she manifestly enjoyed and hoped to prolong as "more holiday sport". Could an actress make the two speeches plausibly compatible with her characterisation of the woman? Or should the words be re-assigned to Woman 1 who, as the scene progresses, increasingly seems both to adopt a proper legal attitude in line with the force of the word "charge" in the disputed speech which argues a certain authority, and to urge a peaceful outcome to the proceedings (see [AN 4.1.speech750] and [AN 4.1.speech755])? (A very different interpretation of the role and of Woman 1's lines was offered by Kate Spiro, as will be evident from the video extracts.) It would be equally logical to assign the problematic speech to the Man-Scold, when it would become an expression of his terror at being thrust "in" yet again and motivate the development of his ensuing speech (753), which outlines the fearsome realities of being ducked under water in a river or pond. Amongst earlier editors, Haaker ignores the problem entirely, while Kastan and Proudfoot follow Parr and assign the difficult line to the Man-Scold. Within the workshop this was the solution adopted in time by the actors, and it is one that undeniably gives a dramatic momentum to the Man-Scold’s long evocation of what it is like "to learn dumbness /Amongst the fishes". The alternative ascription of the line to Woman 1 would be equally plausible: it is the simplest solution and in line with her "characterisation", though this was not attempted here. Various attempts were made by actors to try and render the line plausible if it were spoken by Woman 2, but none proved generally satisfying.

Initially the director wished to work with a chair or stool as a prop with the Man-Scold tied to it, but this proved impractical to manage; also the implication of the scene is that the worst of the man’s punishment is over at least for the time being. Instead it was decided to use ropes as in part signifying his release from his immediate ordeal but also allowing for his recapture and continuing punishment if the Women felt this necessary. This brought an ominous sense of threat and menace to the scene even when a tone of broad comedy was the objective. The workshop began with a read-through, after which there was lengthy discussion about the textual crux and whether to reassign the particular lines to a different speaker. Various possibilities were explored (through reading not acting) in which a further issue presented itself: to what degree are the women united against the Man-Scold and to what degree are they factionalised amongst themselves between those who want an end to the event and those of a more sadistic bent who would like to protract it further. One suggestion was that Woman 3, who has the line "In with him again: he calls us names", should accompany her speech with placing her hand firmly over the Man-Scold’s mouth to silence him and that Woman 2 had the lines assigned her by the Quarto to stop her doing that since, if the man continue to shout abuse at them, they would be justified in ducking him again. This possibility was not taken further into action. A first run-through (not shown) proved tame and rather static with the women standing at a distance leaving Robert Lister as the Man-Scold to hold the stage. The effect was to make him appear merely the victim and open to audience sympathy. The Women had yet to find an appropriately Bacchic quality: they tended to downplay their lines with a dry delivery, which was undeniably funny but had no quality of menace. After this version there was some discussion about how the scene opens. Richard Cave pointed out how there are numerous sequences in this comedy where Brome invites his audience to imagine what might be happening offstage in relation to the sounds they hear emerging from the activity (Peregrine’s breaking into the tiring house in Act 3 is a notable example). The cast next explored how to work up a sense of violence and abuse through offstage sound, using the words initially assigned to the whole group by Brome and over-riding the shouts and screams of the Man-Scold with cries of jubilation. Once onstage the cast would need to sustain this tone and volume, and so move their performance up by several gears. This is the second full run-through with such a build-up of offstage sound. The delayed entrance here creates considerable tension and expectation and the women conduct their exchanges with the man (Robert Lister) with tones ranging through jeering, taunting, derision, mockery, even mimicry. The Women in this version were definitely a pack with no division into factions. Lines for Woman 1 that might have been read as asserting a measure of legal authority, were here in Kate Spiro’s treatment of them turned instead into a potent threat. It is to be noted that Clare Calbraith as Woman 2 was still at this stage speaking the problematic line; it was her sense that she could not motivate her intrusion because she did not understand why or on what authority the woman tried to take command of the situation at this moment that led to a renewed discussion that ended with the decision to assign the line to the Man-Scold. The sheer heartlessness of the scene is now apparent, a quality chillingly exemplified by Clare Calbraith in her final lines; her attempt to instil the same quality earlier into "No, no; I charge ye, no!" disappointed her by contrast, because it "came from nowhere and achieved nothing". Her decision to place herself mostly outside the main group gave her movement into the centre on this line a tone of command, which proved spurious because the situation did not then build on it.

For the next attempt at the scene the roles of the Women were taken by the men in the group with Robert Lister still in the role of the Man-Scold. Here the disputed line was taken by Sam Alexander as Woman 1, who throughout assumed a tone of leadership within the group, clearly keeping a loutish element under some semblance of control. The four Women here were decidedly factionalised into opposed groups: two determined to follow the letter of the law, and two intent on more extreme measures; but the element of threat was consequently reduced, even subdued. Perhaps Sam was too authoritative? The women in the cast who had watched this version thought the men were being far too manly, which lost the subversive quality of the comedy. They made the same criticism of the men’s second attempt, here shown in a shorter sequence. The cast here wished to emphasize the contrasting groups (the loutish element now arrived wielding the rope around the Man-Scold, while the more authoritative party stood well back from the taunting) and Jack Fortescue had a shot at making the ascription of the problematic speech to Woman 2 work. Again, though the delivery was in character with the persona Jack was creating, the speech and its arresting the renewal of violence seemed just a device to keep the characters onstage. It was an idea that led nowhere and seemed as spurious as Clare’s attempt earlier. One strength of this version for everyone involved was the use of the full length of the rope and Robert’s delayed entry: his being pulled into the playing space prepared spectators to see yet more sadistic action. The menace, however, still seemed overly masculine. What intrigued Richard Cave and Brian Woolland was why the male actors were making nothing of the possibilities of the tongue/penis joke which lies at the heart of the scene [AN 4.1.speech753]. They broached the issue with the cast, pointing out how the Man-Scold is effectively emasculating himself at this moment by trying to inhabit the female stereotype of the loquacious gossip or shrew and claiming the tongue as his most meaningful icon of self-definition. To help engage with this Brian Woolland decided to return to a largely female casting, but this time with a younger man (Sam Alexander) as the Man-Scold. This is not the full scene but it runs long enough to establish a number of useful points. The long-delayed entrance of the Man-Scold with the seemingly endless rope fostered excitement at what might eventually be revealed: it was a comic moment, but it also suggested the absolute exhaustion that had overtaken the man during his prolonged punishment (the offstage opening sequence was noticeably getting longer and louder with each presentation). Sam chose to interpret the whole scene as about sexual humiliation; his falling to the floor within the half-circle of dominant women rendered him instantly abject; and, though the line about the man’s pleasure in his tongue was somewhat forced ("tongue" was virtually delivered in quotation marks), the sense that we were watching a man deliberately unman himself introduced a new and disturbing tone into the scene.

The next experiment was with a wholly male cast with those playing women now in skirts and headscarfs. Brian Woolland deliberately wished to evoke an image of female domesticity (though he discouraged the men from playing as if in drag). Sam Alexander continued to play the Man-Scold and indicated that the difficulty he found with the scene as an actor was the rapid transition it required of him from the aggression of his initial outburst to the collapse into tears when his belief in the primacy of the tongue as his means of self-expression was ridiculed. He felt he had grasped a structure to his role within the scene but that it needed stronger backing from the ensemble to help motivate the tonal changes. Renewed discussion honed in on the perception that the early offstage build-up of sound and implied activity frittered away once the characters appeared onstage when perhaps what was required was that that volume of noise should be sustained till the Women’s exit, particularly since the objective of at least two of the Women was to provoke more scolding and asperity out of their victim. Something of this had been present in the first recorded version above, where the Women kept going a constant level of abusive scorn; subsequent versions had lost this element. It was generally agreed that the use of the long ropes, though funny tended to deflate the energy and the danger that spectators had been led to expect from the barrage of offstage sound.

This rendering still in everyone’s view failed to do full justice to the complexities of the scene (despite the injunction against "drag" acting, the way the men chose to wear their costumes made them appear cartoon-like; and Sam’s defence of the tongue lacked conviction by missing the right comic intonation and timing). Yet there was an undeniable vigour in the playing; Sam felt the tide of sound against which he had to act now better aided his descent into tears; audience response was noticeably vocal rather than confined to inward amusement, but the laughter had an uneasy edge to it because of the omnipresent sense of a potential for violence hardly held in check. The women actors thought that, despite the hints of drag, there were strong intimations that the women’s dignity had been abused by the Man-Scold, that they had suffered a domestic affront through his verbal attacks on them and that this fuelled their rage. Whether this was quite in line with Brome’s games with gender-stereotyping was, however, open to question: the Women in The Antipodes, as he presents them, are transgressive in that they live like European men and uphold their values, and yet they abuse a man who wishes to usurp the prerogatives of what, by European standards of the seventeenth century, was a particular female stereotype. Brome’s satirical vision challenges both genders in their exclusiveness.

A last attempt to capture this complexity was made with the female actors returning with Sam again as the Man-Scold. Brian Woolland encouraged them to learn from the men’s recent portrayal especially in relation to its incipient violence but bring an element of sexuality to their taunting of a member of the opposite gender whom they had in their power. He suggested they think of Amazons, of the Bacchae; and he insisted they all wear practice skirts (all had come to the workshop in jeans or trousers, which brought too modern a set of associations to their performance). He asked them to take whatever had impressed them from previous attempts but above all to play macho. The cast chose to improvise even at this late stage: there was a new element occasioned by the fact that it was the Man-Scold who for the first time raced into the scene in advance of the Women, as if putting as much distance as possible between himself and the horror that he had gone through. He moved constantly throughout the playing space, but always the Women lined up anew against him, slowly advancing in ever more threatening formations. And the Women aided Sam’s characterisation as he had requested, particularly in the lead-up to the line about the tongue, where Kate Spiro derisively mimed a conventional phallus-gesture which gave point to the man’s correcting her. Sam’s collapse into tears was now a consequence of experiencing even this last aspect of his selfhood (his joy in his loquacity) being vilified. In these moments something of the intricacy of Brome’s satire came into view. The menace rather lost its focus and momentum in the final speeches and the exit was too prolonged, but the spontaneously effected detail of leaving the kerchief as a sop to the man’s femininity carried complexities of resonance in line with the overall satire. It was a simple, even homely gesture that within the context of the whole scene was now made so strange that one did not know how precisely to interpret its motivation. From all this it can be appreciated how a scene can be built up through rehearsal, exploring possibilities, critiquing each stage, layering into successive performances what seemed valuable discoveries in the immediate work. Time-restraints prevented this exploration from going further, but the richness of invention required adequately to stage what is a very brief scene in Brome’s comedy can be sensed even so. [go to text]

n3612   ducked for scolding This was a traditional judicial punishment for women accused and found guilty of being scolds or shrews (that is, asserting their independence or critical spirit against the patriarchal order). It involved being strapped into a chair that had been attached to a plank of wood which was balanced across a fulcrum; this was then lowered into a pond or river and the woman immersed wholly under water for a period of time that could sometimes induce early symptoms of drowning. [go to text]

n4455   Enter WOMEN and MAN-SCOLD Q marks a new scene with the arrival of these characters: "Act. 4. Scene 4.". [go to text]

n4194   WOMEN There are lines of dialogue assigned in Q to three women, but there is potential in the staging to have as many to make up a crowd as the size of the company will allow at this point. [go to text]

n3613   devil-ridden witch The common accusation against witches was that they consorted with the devil, were ridden upon or broken in (in both the equestrian and sexual senses) by Satan or his cohorts. [go to text]

gg2963   passed on condemned, sentenced [go to text]

n9890   1 Woman ] Wom. (Q's reading is troublingly ambiguous: it may require the group of women to divide the words between them (this is Haarker's choice) or it may be assigned to a single woman (as here, following the examples of Baker, Parr, Kastan and Proudfoot). [go to text]

n3614   Through which great men, and cunning, wade or swim; But mean and ignorant must drown in’t. The satire and the humour in this episode are appreciably darkening. Noticeably the Man-Scold's accusation here goes unanswered: his complaint is that the affluent, the titled and the clever can manipulate or buy out the processes of the law to suit their own ends, whereas those of lowlier status, the poor and the naively innocent can expect little by way of redress for wrongs done to them. Perhaps some of Brome's own recent experience at the hands of the law in connection with his contract with the Salisbury Court company coloured this image of the law as an implacably flowing river that few but the experienced can hope to navigate or cross. The larger irony behind the passage (though one not even implicit in the writing) is that, through the years of personal rule and the abandonment for long periods of time of parliamentary procedure, the king had increasingly shaped law to suit himself and his concept of regal authority. 1637, the year in which Brome's comedy was being completed, has been seen by the historian, Kevin Sharpe, as "the critical year" in Charles I's fortunes (see Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I 2nd edn [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995], especially chapter XIII). The fact that composition on the play began a year earlier (especially when passages like this one are read in the light of historical event) may indicate that artists such as Brome had begun to perceive and subtly articulate a need for change before the "critical year" showed change as inevitable. [go to text]

n4200   More flames about your ears He wishes to see them burning in hell-fire. [go to text]

n9792   No, no; I charge ye, no! In the quarto these lines are assigned to "2 Woman" [AN 4.1.line2054] but her implied desire with these words to stem the violence seems out of keeping with her final speech (AN 4.1.speech756), where she expresses the wish to prolong the women's "holiday sport" with the Man-Scold. Haaker makes no emendation here; Kastan and Proudfoot follow Parr and assign the words to the Man-Scold as the start of speech 753; this reading has been adopted here too. However it would be equally plausible to assign this problematic speech to 1 Woman, who increasingly seems to be conscious of the law and to be keen on ending the violence. This gives her a certain authority which, were this speech assigned to her, would give weight to the significant word "charge", which seems out of place in the Man-Scold's mouth: he is in the wrong and has no power to assert himself within the sequence: hence his tears and frustration. A director and cast would be well advised to experiment with the lines and decide the issue in terms of what seems best within the context of their overall production. There is further discussion of this textual crux in the commentary on the video recording of the workshop devoted to this scene, where the assigning of the lines to the Man-Scold was the adopted solution. It was to bring the edition in line with the workshop that the emendation was carried through into the text. But consideration of the alternative is worth pursuing in the rehearsal room and in a close reading. [go to text]

n3615   The tongue! The joke is, of course, that one expects that the "member" which affords a man his chief source of pleasure will be his penis. But the jest is somewhat more complicated than that. Webster offers a different take on the joke in The Duchess of Malfi, when Ferdinand talks about women liking the "part" which has no "bone" in it, but defeats spectators' and his onstage audience's expectations, when he elucidates the answer to his riddle as "the tongue"(I.i.338). Instead of phallic assertion, one gets misogynistic caricature. Here Brome takes Webster's form of the joke and, by antipodean inversion, further defeats audience expectations by a subtler means, which confuses the conventional gender-boundaries on which the joke rests, as a man claims the woman's "part" as the quinessential expression of his identity. The darkest irony is reserved for the fact that women who claimed the tongue as the quintessential expression of their selfhood were the ones traditionally punished by ducking. [go to text]

gg2964   by on account of, because of [go to text]

gg2965   spend exhausted, worn out [go to text]

n3616   holiday-sport It is a grim reflection that such a sadistic practice as ducking was the occasion for a holiday mood in bystanders. This may be a challenge for Brome's theatre audience to take the situation and the satire more seriously by looking beneath the situation at its levels of implication and import. Like numerous episodes of horseplay in Jonson's comedies, the presence of an onstage audience whose sadism is clearly stirred by the cruelty of the situation causes the wary spectator in the auditorium to examine his or her motives for laughter. (See, for example, the taunting of Daw and La-Foole in Epicoene (4.5.232-301), which is watched by the Collegiate women from "above".) [go to text]

gg2966   doubtless without doubt, unquestionably, certainly [go to text]

gs503   proper suited to, characteristic of, befitting [go to text]

n3617   takes a taste of sense That is: is showing signs of sense. [go to text]

gg2967   qualified limited, moderated, regulated [go to text]

n4456   Enter a COURTIER Q creates a new scene with the entrance of the courtier: "Act.4.Scene 5.". [go to text]

n9879   This was three shillings yesterday, how now! Video This particular scene was included as part of a workshop investigating the speaking of Brome’s verse. Lyn Darnley, Head of Voice at the Royal Shakespeare Company, who led the workshop, chose to explore in this episode how violent action and fisticuffs could be timed in with the verse. Just as Jonson uses regular pentameters throughout The Alchemist to contain the mounting anarchy, so here farce is the funnier for being similarly “contained”. The verse in the scene also deploys a number of shared lines, which require actors to have a feeling for the shape of the whole line to which they are contributing; this generates a sense of ensemble, a necessary togetherness, which the chaotic action is then pulling against. What is offered here is one of the later renderings, where the cast were asked to handle the verse lightly and to use this dichotomy between verse and action to emphasize the comedy of Brome’s satire. We are in a world of inversions where courtiers behave like louts (we are soon in the next scene to meet workmen who behave with the good breeding normally expected of aristocrats). Far from being above normal everyday cares, civil, self-aware and courteous, these courtiers are preoccupied with their lack of money, petty squabbling, concern to guard their backs and backsides, inability to read, enjoyment of common, rustic ballads and of ale rather than wine. The actors had got some measure of the satirical contrasts, but began to own the full richness of the comedy once Lyn invited them to “up” the accents and really “speak posh”. This was the result. [go to text]

n3624   for leather soles To my new green silk stockings Silk stockings were delicate and expensive, and so easily damaged through wear at heel and toes or on the ball of the foot. Consequently they were often made with felt or in some cases leather soles for indoor wear when street shoes were set aside. It may be, however, that the impoverished courtier is seeking to economize by acquiring inner soles to insert between each stocking and shoe to protect the silk from heavy wear, thus prolonging their use. In the period these inner soles, properly shaped to one's inner shoe measurements, were normally made of felt for upper-class wear; the use of leather in this instance may be seen as a comic insight into the courtier's poverty and the invention this causes him to resort to. [go to text]

gg75   groat coin valued at roughly fourpence (OED 2), which in today's currency would be worth about £1.43 [go to text]

gg2968   ordinary a meal at a fixed price in a tavern [go to text]

gg2969   pompions pumpkins [go to text]

n6319   Do such eat pompions? Peregrine's surprise reflects the fact that in the seventeenth century, pumpkins were considered food for countryfolk and for animals, especially pigs. An insult in Brome's Sparagus Garden [SG 3.1.speech616] illustrates this point succinctly: "For aught I see pompeons are as good meat for such a hoggish thing as thou art." [go to text]

gs504   clowns countryfolk [go to text]

gg2970   musk-melons the aromatic, orange flesh of melons which, being but recent imports into England, were costly [go to text]

gg2971   ninepins "a game in which nine skittles are set up to be knocked down by a ball or bowl" [go to text]

gg2972   tokens "a stamped piece of metal", similar to a coin, issued by tradesmen, "who engage to take it back at its nominal value, giving goods or legal currency" in exchange [go to text]

gs545   towards to contribute, to go to meet (the cost of something) [go to text]

gg2973   pigeon-holes―――― "an outdoor game, popular in the 17th and early 18th centuries, in which balls were bowled at targets"; these last were probably arched so appeared like the recesses for pigeons in a dovecote [go to text]

gg2974   ’S nails! an abbreviation: By God's nails! (instruments of Christ's crucifixion) [go to text]

n4195   [Enter 2 COURTIER, unseen by 1 Courtier.] Q gives no entrance for the second courtier who rapidly makes his presence felt by the first. Where such an entry should be timed is not altogether clear. Haaker places the entrance alongside her speech-prefix for the second courtier's first line. Parr, Proudfoot and Kastan place the entrance before the first courtier's line, "Threepence I lost at ninepins" but indicate that the second courtier remains at first unseen. This edition places the entrance at the point where the implication of the first courtier's lines is that he is bending down searching for supposedly lost coins from his damaged pocket, so presenting his backside to his fellow as a provocatively tempting target for a kick. [go to text]

gg2975   poke pocket; but perhaps also carrying overtones of the further meaning, a beggar's bundle [go to text]

gs505   pox chickenpox, smallpox, syphilis, any illness, such as plague, that manifests in pustules on the skin [go to text]

gg2976   breech applied variously to both the garment covering the buttocks and also the buttocks [go to text]

gg2977   bell-metal an alloy made from copper and tin, akin to bronze, from which bells are made [go to text]

gg2978   In earnest? Initially the word is used in the sense of "seriously", "was that intentional or in jest?" But then the First Courtier takes the word in its other sense of an instalment paid as a pledge "of anything afterwards to be received in greater abundance" and follows up his kick with pulling his opponent's hair. [go to text]

n4201   [Grabs him by the hair.] Q offers no direction here, but one is to be inferred from the ensuing dialogue. [go to text]

gg2979   lock a tress of hair (in this instance, a good handful) [go to text]

gg1482   currying action of rubbing down or grooming (a horse) with a curry-comb [go to text]

n3618   afore Initially this means "before" (as in "before you arrived on the scene"); but, taken with the reiterated use throughout the episode of the word, "behind", homosexual resonances enter the exchange. (Parr notes, quoting Lovelace, that the word "antipodes" was often coded sexual slang in the period for sodomy). [go to text]

gg2980   buffet fight, cuff, knock about, thump [go to text]

n5692   Ent[er] Q marks a new scene with the third courtier's entrance. Instead of this division and the related stage direction being placed centrally within the column of text as all such divisions have been sited so far in this act, the information is crammed tightly into the right hand margin alongside the second line of the first courtier's speech, ending "Was troubled too much afore". Given the space it has to occupy, the information is given in abbreviated form: "Act 4. Sc.6. Ent. 3.Court.". The setting of all subsequent scene divisions in this act are formatted in this way. [go to text]

n4202   knocks down Q offers no such direction here, beyond the entrance for 3rd Courtier, but one has been added to supply actions to be inferred from the ensuing dialogue. [go to text]

gg2981   twice and once repeatedly, more than just once, often (but with the overtone of "for the last time", "once and for all") [go to text]

gg2982   of since (I was) [go to text]

n3619   that my tutor knew: I had been a scholar else. Jokes and stories abound in classical literature, especially in Roman comedies, about pederastic or sodomitic practices between tutors and their pupils, which may be being hinted at here. Brome, like Jonson, is charily reticent on the subject, but this would be appropriate antipodean behaviour (old men seducing young boys; sexual relations by unconventional orifices). Interestingly in this sequence, however, as with the scene for the Man-Scold and that for the Gentleman and the Maid, topsy-turvy behaviour in the antipodean fashion is productive of a considerable outburst of anger in the First Courtier. One could interpret the episode as just grown men behaving like irresponsible adolescent lads, in whose horseplay genital and anal groping is not infrequent. [go to text]

n3620   nocked This is a curious, figurative usage. The OED notes under "nock, n1" that the word usually and primarily is a technical term applied to the notch made in the end of an arrow to carry the bowstring; but that (2a) it also was applied to the cleft in the buttocks or to the actual anus (the OED cites Cotgrave's Dictionary of French & English Tongues (1611) "the nock, fould or dint betweene the buttocks" and Medwall and Heywood are quoted as deploying the word in this bawdy sense in plays as early as 1533). What the First Courtier would appear to be saying, while remaining innocent of his own innuendo, is that he carries a concealed weapon in the form of a short sword or dagger thrust through his belt in the small of the back for quick reach should he be attacked. (The weapon is likely to be worn diagonally with the hilt towards his right hand.) If, however, the attack should come from behind him, he would be prevented from defending himself in the manner that he planned. [go to text]

n3621   And yet you would do’t. The half-line of verse allows for a lengthy pause in performance in which the sheer frustration and anger of the First Courtier could be explored by the actor and expressed through gesture. When he next calls for the Second Courtier to "take a knife", it may be to demonstrate practically what his speech tried to describe. (Has his opponent perceived the unintended innuendo and begun to smirk?) Violence of some kind is being invited, which the Third Courtier has to step in rapidly and stop. There is space in stage time here for the cast to improvise to both comic and menacing effect, matching the complex tone of the episode. [go to text]

n3622   dainty one Of the many meanings of the word, "dainty", the most appropriate here would be "choice" or "excellent". [go to text]

n3623   burn daylight waste time [go to text]

n3625   rude silken clowns crude louts dressed in silk [go to text]

gg454   watermen licensed wherry men who plied for hire on the river (in London on the Thames) (OED 2) [go to text]

gg2983   car-men carters or carriers [go to text]

gg2984   conditions occupations, trades [go to text]

n4457   Ent[er] CAR-MAN Q marks a new scene with the entrance of the two new characters, cramming the information into the right margin in a block of three lines, starting beside line 2121: "Act 4. Scen 7. /En. car- /man, & waterman.". [go to text]

gg2985   devoir duty, obligation [go to text]

n3626   devoir This term drawn from polite French diction is characteristic of the comic exaggerated rhetoric of this whole sequence, which apes courteous discourse with its use of elaborate and extended compliment. This is the kind of language and manner that writers, artists, composers and playwrights of the period had to adopt in dedicating their works to aristocratic patrons (see Brome's "dedicatory epistle" to the Earl of Hertford which prefaces the text of the 1640 quarto of The Antipodes). The manner is kept up right to the moment of the three workmen's departure, where they absurdly defer precedence to each other in leaving the scene. [go to text]

gg2986   honourers servants and friends [go to text]

gg2987   detractors enemies, those who defame (another's reputation) [go to text]

n3627   gallows Carters drove condemned felons to their execution at Tyburn. [go to text]

n4458   Enter SEDANMAN Q marks a new scene with this entrance: "Act 4. Scene 8. /Enter Sedan-man.". The scene heading and the details of the entrance are situated in the right margin and spread alongside two lines of dialogue at lines 2146-47. The ensuing scene is notable for its textual layout, which differs markedly from earlier sections of the play in the way that verse lines shared between two speakers are set. Till now in the setting of shared lines, the second portion that begins a new character's speech has been placed to create a new independent line of text. In this scene where the exchange of speakers is frequent, the compositor begins to observe the verse lines more meticulously, so the words of the speaker who concludes the verse line are set with an appropriate speech prefix alongside the words of the speaker who initiates the line. This pattern is largely followed throughout the rest of the play in respect of the setting of shared lines, though not with absolute consistency. One hypothesis would be that the change came about because the compositor(s) became concerned at the length of text still to be set. Another is possibly that a change occurred here in the copytext (either Brome's manuscript or a clean copy of it) because Brome wished to make a dramaturgical point: that the comedy in this sequence derives from the speakers falling over themselves politely to elaborate on each other's ideas, courtesies or observations. The comedy resides in the speed of the delivery (which the new layout captures to some degree) and the sense of an audience being overwhelmed with vacuous, though unctuous, verbiage. [go to text]

gg2988   SEDANMAN one of the two men required to carry a sedan chair, a closed kind of litter borne on two parallel poles or shafts [go to text]

n3628   Our noble friend There is irony here, when the phrase is viewed from the perspective of the late 1630s. Sedans had but newly arrived in London that decade and immediately created fierce competition with watermen and carmen, who till then had the monopoly of conveying citizens rapidly around the capital. The OED actually cites Brome's The Sparagus Garden in its definition of the term: "She's now gone forth in one o' the new hand-litters: what call ye it, a sedan." Steggle convincingly dates that play to the early months of 1635, when such a line attests to the fact that sedans were still a novelty. Haaker also cites The Court Beggar of 1640, where a project is envisaged to build a new theatre on barges floating on the Thames to help the boatmen recover some of their losses incurred since the arrival of sedan chairs. There is too the comic scene in A Mad Couple Well-Matched, where Careless comes home drunk in a sedan-chair [MC 3.1.speech520]. [go to text]

n5732   Right happily encountered―― The extended dash, copied from Q, suggests that elaborate forms of courteous greeting were performed between the three men at this juncture. [go to text]

gg2989   elect select, elite, choice [go to text]

n4203   Both Q simply reads "2", meaning both together. [go to text]

n3629   Three are the golden number In Pythagorean mathematics, three is deemed the perfect number, where "the golden rule" is "the rule of three". "Golden" here carries resonances of the use of the epithet in relation to the word "age" or "world", an ideal time characterised by joyousness and prosperity. (See OED golden a, 5b and 7) [go to text]

n3630   the next of best the nearest decent (tavern) [go to text]

gg2990   competently suitably, adequately (merry); that is, not to the point of being drunk and disorderly [go to text]

n3631   Importing much This and the ensuing two speeches are a lively parody of the many scenes of exposition favoured by Shakespeare in his later plays for conveying necessary but not particularly dramatic information to his audiences. The Winter's Tale and Henry VIII afford some notable scenes of this type. It is particularly funny in this instance to watch commoners discussing affairs of state (the letters relate to diplomatic, intellectual and courtly political matters) so earnestly but with such courteous attention and civility. Workmen they may be, but they converse in the finest urbane style. [go to text]

gg2947   passages movements (about a town or country); incidents; exchanges (verbal or physically violent); doings, goings-on [go to text]

gg2991   advertisements information, news [go to text]

n3632   both Our universities Cambridge and Oxford (the only English universities in the period) [go to text]

gg2992   progress a journey undertaken by the monarch and his/her court (usually during the summer months, as a kind of holiday; but often to avoid residing in London during a time of year when plague was prevalent) [go to text]

n3633   news-collecting gallant Taverns and ordinaries (eating-houses) were a fount of gossip, rumour and factual news. The implication of the lines here is that between them the three workmen have enough material to satisfy a gossip-prone gallant for some time to come, should he join them at table. It was a common practice for upper-class family-members who chanced to be resident in London to send home into the country lengthy weekly epistles ("dispatches") giving all the latest news. A notable extant example of this practice is the hoard of letters passing between members of the Verney family throughout the Caroline period, which provided a fund of information for Adrian Tinniswood's The Verneys (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007). [go to text]

gs506   In sooth indeed [go to text]

n3634   Tis common here, sir, for your watermen To write most learnedly John Taylor (1578-1653), fondly known as "the Water Poet", was such a working-class versifier, who fell foul of Brome's circle, to judge by both this observation and CG's "Commendatory Verses" that preface the quarto of The Antipodes. The lines praise the Jonsonian qualities of Brome's comedy before chastising the pretensions of Taylor to be Jonson's equal: "Taylor his goose quill may abjure again, /And to make paper clean, scribbling refrain." [go to text]

n3635   your courtier Has scarce ability to read Illiterate and uncultured aristocrats were a particular target of Jonsonian satire, which Brome is emulating here. (See "To My Lord Ignorant" in Jonson's Epigrams (1616) and the treatment of uncultured and uneducated courtiers throughout the corpus of Brome's comedies from The City Wit to The Court Beggar.) Jonson's yardstick of excellence was always Sir Philip Sidney. If, as is likely, Brome assisted Jonson in rehearsing the staging of the many masques that Jonson penned, then he too would have encountered at first hand badly educated courtiers struggling to learn their lines, blocking and dance-movements (many of such men, in James's reign especially, had received royal favour for their looks and flattering tongues rather than their intellectual attributes). [go to text]

n3636   change their notes that is, sing a new tune [go to text]

n3637   ordain a course to change their coats That is: prescribe a procedure whereby men shall dress differently (according to their abilities and culture). Elizabeth, James and Charles had each in turn framed sumptuary laws to control excess in apparel by ordering how men and women should dress according to their particular class, occupation or station in life and not in relation to what their income might afford. Brome is envisaging an antipodean sumptuary law where dress defines an individual's intellectual worth. It is significant that Brome sees culture here as the antipodean opposite to wealth and class, a radical proposal for a meritocracy akin to what Jonson proposes through comedies such as Cynthia's Revels (staged 1600). [go to text]

gg2681   reformation improvement, ‘correction or removal of defects or errors’ (OED n, 2); radical political change (OED n, 3) [go to text]

n3638   a counsel from New England? For those weary of or infuriated by Charles's continuing personal rule (England had been without a parliament since 1629), the democratic ordering of New England in America was an attractive alternative, even if, as here, it was just a fanciful dream of possibilities. [go to text]

n3639   Is this man mad? The Doctor is substantiating as eminently sane Peregrine's vision of a "reformed" England. This is one of the most radical sequences in the play and, given Brome's coda to the printed quarto which informs readers that there is more in the text than was originally performed, one cannot but wonder whether passages like this one were actually acted in Caroline London. [go to text]

n3645   These persons pass over the stage in couples, according as he describes them. This long sequence is remarkable on many counts. In some ways the various couples briefly crossing the stage are like notes for episodes which Brome decided ultimately not to dramatize in full. Interestingly he chooses to stage here what in effect are a series of dumbshows or mimes with descriptive accompanying interpretation. There is a long history to this device going back to the earliest renaissance plays such as Sackville and Norton's Gorboduc in the early 1560s, where the device carries allegorical weight, foretelling the outcome of events, which the drama will subsequently unfold. Brome had recently deployed the device in a similarly ritualistic way in The Queen and Concubine (which Steggle dates on the evidence as in all likelihood composed early in 1636 and before The Antipodes). In this tragicomedy the mime presents a dream-sequence in which Eulalia learns from her guardian Genius that no ill will befall her, despite the hazards that afflict her; the device intimates, therefore, how the plot will be resolved in her favour. Brome's use of dumbshow in The Antipodes is more complex and original in that it offers instances of antipodean inversions in such rapid succession that, for all the comedy of the individual detail, they cumulatively have the force of a nightmare, which compels Peregrine to question frantically "Will you make me mad?" The absurdity of the inversions has been carried to such a length that it appears now to be threatening, obsessive. If a modern production were to choose to stage the sequence, then care must be taken to relate the several figures seen in procession to the impact they have on Peregrine as alarmed spectator of the enactment. [go to text]

n3640   And there’s a puritan tradesman teaching a Great traveller to lie; A comic reversal according to antipodean principles: puritans were required to be truth-tellers, while travellers were assumed to be great weavers of fantasy. [go to text]

gg2993   Gives light enlightens, informs [go to text]

gg2994   natural fool born simpleton (as distinct from a professional court fool) [go to text]

n3641   schismatic This is a term that changes its meaning depending on whether one views it from a Catholic or Protestant perspective: to the former, it denotes a heretic; to the latter, a recusant, dissenter, one refusing to honour the authority of the Church of England. [go to text]

gg2995   scrivener a professional scribe or copyist [go to text]

n3642   to keep his ears References to this particular mode of punishment continue to recur throughout the dialogue. This is the third such instance and within some 66 lines of the previous one. Did Brome have the recent case of William Prynne's second mutilation for treasonous writing in mind at the time of composing the play? And at some level of his psyche, did he dread this as a possible fate for his own daring thinking within his comedy (even though that thinking is scrupulously placed within the realm of fantasy, folly and madness that is the Antipodean world of the play-within-the-play)? [go to text]

gg2996   confuting proving wrong, confounding, putting to silence [go to text]

n3643   Bellarmine Cardinal Bellarmine, a great Catholic theologian, had disputed with King James about the political (as distinct from the spiritual) authority of the Pope. Despite his brilliant intellect, he is here in the Antipodes being put in his place by an artisan with ardent protestant convictions. [go to text]

n3644   Will you make me mad? If Peregrine is beginning to question the relentless absurdity of the inversions he is witnessing, then that is a sign that his sanity is returning and his folly cured. He is starting to perceive the fantasy for what it is. [go to text]

n4459   Ent[er during the following speech] BYPLAY Q creates a new scene with Byplay's entrance. Again the compositor situates the scene heading and the lengthy stage direction in the right margin and compresses it into a block of seven lines to fit the available space. The stage direction describing the entrance is separated from the scene heading by a long bracket to the left of the italicised text that embraces lines 2 through 7. The text here reads: "Act 4. Sc. 9. /Ent. Byplay /like a States- /man. 3. or 4. /Projectors /with bundles /of papers.". [go to text]

n4196   PROJECTORS Though three or four projectors are listed in the stage direction, only one joins in dialogue with Byplay. He acts as a kind of intermediary who introduces the others to Byplay in his role of aristocrat. [go to text]

n3646   studious for the commonwealth that is, concerned for the general good, for the welfare of the state [go to text]

n3647   projectors of the country The OED defines the word as possessing both positive and negative senses, and gives for the latter the following interpretation: "A schemer; a person who lives by his or her wits; a promoter of bogus or unsound business ventures; a cheat; a swindler" (OED projector, 1b). This was the term applied in the period to speculators who devised schemes (projects), which they hoped would be lucrative if they could but patent them and so get the grant of a royal monopoly to promote them. While some projects in Charles's reign were of relative benefit to large sections of the community, such as the Earl of Bedford's scheme to build Covent Garden, many were money-making scams. The entrepreneurs relied on courtiers and statesmen to forward their interest with the king often in return for bribes or other forms of payment. The abuse dated back to James's reign (but was augmented, not stemmed in Charles's) and many city comedies presented projectors in a damningly satirical light from Jonson's The Devil Is An Ass (1616) to Brome's The Court Beggar (1640), which, Steggle records, deeply offended King Charles. The OED quotes in support of its negative definition from Featley's Clavis Mystica of 1636: "Let not the Projector pretend the publike good, when he intends but to robbe the riche and to cheat the poore"(XXXIV. 477). [go to text]

gg3206   jacks machines, often simple in construction, designed to save human labour (the ones referred to specifically in the context were made to turn a spit during the roasting of meat) [go to text]

n3648   young children Spits were horizontally placed rods of metal that were thrust through meat to allow it to be suspended above a fire when being roasted. It was the practice to use young children (or servants) to turn a spit manually from beside the fire. The invention of spit jacks (mechanical mechanisms involving a system of connecting weights and counterweights, cogged wheels and cylinders, which allowed the meat slowly to rotate) inevitably put a stop to the practice, though such devices were cumbersome and tended in an ordinary kitchen to get in the way of the cooks. [go to text]

n3648   In turning spits Spits were horizontally placed rods of metal that were thrust through meat to allow it to be suspended above a fire when being roasted. It was the practice to use young children (or servants) to turn a spit manually from beside the fire. The invention of spit jacks (mechanical mechanisms involving a system of connecting weights and counterweights, cogged wheels and cylinders, which allowed the meat slowly to rotate) inevitably put a stop to the practice, though such devices were cumbersome and tended in an ordinary kitchen to get in the way of the cooks. [go to text]

n3649   witchcraft and contagion Cats were popularly believed to be both witches' familiars (creatures of the devil sent to aid in promoting magic) and carriers of plague. [go to text]

gg2997   briefs mandates, certificates giving legal (or royal) authority [go to text]

gs507   gamester one who lives by gambling, a professional dice- or card-player [go to text]

gs508   succour aid and sustain, support [go to text]

gg2998   standing length of service in a profession [go to text]

n3650   both ware And merchant; flesh and butcher she advertised and sold her own body [go to text]

n3651   housekeeping That is: running a brothel. [go to text]

gg3252   fourscore eighty (years old) [go to text]

gg2999   gear goods, merchandise, stuff (but in a depreciatory sense, meaning rubbish) but also in slang at this date may punningly refer to the sexual organs, much like the twenty-first century use of the word, tackle (OED gear n, 9a, 10 and 5b) [go to text]

gg3253   riff-raff the rabble; low, disreputable individuals [go to text]

gg3000   cope manage, deal with, but also barter [go to text]

gg3001   desperately hopelessly, irretrievably, incurably [go to text]

gg2158   riot debauchery, extravagance (OED n, 1a); violence, disorder (OED n, 4a) [go to text]

gg3002   prodigal extravagant, recklessly wasteful [go to text]

gg3003   purse store of wealth [go to text]

n3652   six thousand pounds This in the period would be a prodigious sum. For comparison: Sir Edmund Verney after 1625 could expect an annual stipend of £200 as Knight-Marshal at King Charles's court; his mother's jointure as widow was also £200 on which she comfortably ran a distinguished household in Drury Lane; and he determined out of his estate to set aside dowries of £1000 for each of his daughters (see Adrian Tinniswood, The Verneys [London: Jonathan Cape, 2007] pp. 41-42). The National Archives Currency Converter posits that the equivalent of £6000 from the 1630s would be almost £535,000.00 in 2009. [go to text]

gs509   divers various, sundry [go to text]

gg3004   weal public the state [go to text]

n3655   brands Branding (burning a permanent scar on a felon's flesh) was a continual reminder to a criminal and society at large of his or her one-time guilt. [go to text]

n3653   loss of careless ears Once again the reference is to the legal punishment that involved docking all or part of a prisoner's ears. It is but some 75 lines since the last such mention of the practice. The carefree, breezily offhand tone of this speech is particularly disturbing and places exactly the sadism of a society that could conceive of such a form of publicly staged punishment [NOTE n3559] [NOTE n4462] [NOTE n3642]. [go to text]

gg2652   careless unconcerned (OED 2); inattentive, negligent (OED 3) [go to text]

n3654   houses of correction buildings for the confinement and punishment of offenders with a view to their reformation [go to text]

gs510   relief charitable support or sustenance for the impoverished [go to text]

gg3254   rapine violent robbery or pillage [go to text]

gg3005   cozenage fraud, duplicity [go to text]

gg3006   cutpurses A term often generally used for thieves in the period, but specifically it denotes robbers who slit open purses attached to belts to steal the contents therein, or cut through the laces by which purses were so hanging to run off with purse and contents. [go to text]

gg2202   palsy paralysis [go to text]

gg3007   ignorance want of acceptable knowledge [go to text]

n3656   We went by custom and the warrant, which We had in your late predecessor’s reign. Parr sees this as a not too covert reference to the licentiousness of James I's court, notorious for its extravagant squandering of wealth, its indulgence in favourites (male and female), drunkenness and open sexuality. The shameless hedonism and corruption may have been Middleton's inspiration for the court scenes in The Revenger's Tragedy (1607). [go to text]

gg3008   conformable compliant, adaptable, submissive, disposed [go to text]

gg3009   protestation declaration or affirmation (of intent), "typically made in response to an explicit accusation" (OED n, 1) [go to text]

n3657   above This entrance is on the upper stage or gallery, as at the "window" described by Letoy at the close of the previous act: "We'll at a window see the rest o' th' play." [go to text]

gg3010   lacerate tear to pieces [go to text]

n3658   these papers the draft schemes of the projectors and the petitions of the needy [go to text]

n3659   light The usage puns on the two senses of the word: "lacking in weight" and "unchaste, wanton". [go to text]

gg3011   quoit throw (like a quoit and so the word carries sexual connotations, since quoits are round objects aimed at upright spikes with the intention of circling them about) [go to text]

gg3012   mumbling babbling, making indiscriminate sounds, muttering (the term actually derives from the idea of eating tentatively with toothless gums, making masticating noises) [go to text]

gs560   chops literally jaws and/or lips (as used here in combination with "mumbling", the phrase is a comic inversion of the popular idiom of the period, "nimble-chops", meaning a talkative person) [go to text]

n3660   Is your brain dry? Are you empty-headed? Has your brain run out of matter? The appropriate, present-day theatrical idiom would be: "Have you dried?" That is: "Have you forgotten your lines?" [go to text]

n3661   Do you pump? Are you exhausted, out of breath and panting? [go to text]

gg3014   sneap snub, reprove, chide [go to text]

gg3015   Hoyday! an exclamation of annoyance, anger and exasperation (akin to 'Heyday!', which is more expressive of surprise or delight) [go to text]

gg2441   mar spoil, damage [go to text]

gg3016   coxcomb conceited ass (the term is derived from the cap worn by professional fools, which was shaped like a cock's crest or comb, which came to be the natural substitute for the word "fool", the emblem representing the man) [go to text]

gg3017   puppy derogatory term for an arrogant, undisciplined youth (colloquial) [go to text]

n3662   have all That is: "I recall it all" or "I've remembered my lines, cues and directions". [go to text]

n4204   A voice out of the clouds Letoy has shouted down from his position in the upper playing space (the "window" referred to in Act 3 and what is designated "above" at Letoy's entrance into this scene with Joyless and Diana). This shows a bit of quick thinking on Byplay's part, as he interprets the voice as of divine origin bringing order to the chaos of earthly activity. [go to text]

gg3018   tidings news [go to text]

n3663   Shouts within. This sound effect and those which follow are all created theatrical illusions. Is this to be interpreted as an indirect and subtle comment on the nature of support for Charles I and his policies at this date throughout the country? The masques staged at court throughout the decade repeatedly end with expressions of national concord and acclaim but they too were theatrical illusions, dreams of kingly power, control and authority. See, for example, Davenant and Inigo Jones's Britannia Triumphans performed at Whitehall during the Twelfth Night celebrations of Christmas 1637-38. [go to text]

gg3019   votes shouts of support [go to text]

gg3027   Hautboys. "a wooden double-reed wind instrument of high pitch, having a compass of about 2 octaves, forming a treble to the bassoon (now usually oboe)" (OED hautboy, 1) [go to text]

gs511   state pomp and ceremony [go to text]

n4460   beauty sweet In the right margin alongside line 2354, Q inserts a new scene heading in advance of the processional entrance that immediately follows: ""Act 4 Sce. 10.". The text of the stage direction describing the extended entrance is set in a block of six italicised lines. [go to text]

gs509   divers various, sundry [go to text]

n4410   like a queen That is, dressed or arrayed like a queen. [go to text]

gs512   starts back flinches, recoils [go to text]

n3664   The mother of her maids This is the matron of honour or leading bridesmaid (usually married herself). [go to text]

n3665   if she have any Diana checks her enthusiasm on seeing that, instead of bridesmaids, Martha has two pages ("two boys in robes") in her train. Kastan and Proudfoot suggest that Diana, given many of the scenes she has just witnessed, may be questioning whether there are any virgins (maids) in the Antipodes. [go to text]

n3666   Apollo with the Muses Who arts divine infuses Apollo here is invoked not as the sun-god but as patron of the arts, represented by the nine Muses, who according to classical lore, nursed the god in his infancy and supervised his cultural education. [go to text]

gs561   infuses instils, insinuates, inspires (OED v. 2 notes that the verb is used specifically of "the work of God in the imparting of grace" but it is here deployed with reference to the attributes of a classical deity) [go to text]

n11647   Hymen In classical mythology and lore, Hymen was the god of marriage, usually represented as a young man carrying a torch and veil. [go to text]

gg3255   delicious highly pleasing, delightful, affording sensuous pleasure [go to text]

gs513   advertisement official notification [go to text]

gg3021   fleeting departing, passing away [go to text]

gg3256   wondrous strangely, marvellously, wonderfully [go to text]

gs514   slack slow, tardy, remiss [go to text]

gg859   warrant assure, promise [go to text]

gg3022   bar prevent [go to text]

gg3023   aloof apart, at a distance [go to text]

n3668   Gadlibriens The story of the "gadlibiriens" (whose name Brome misremembers or adapts to suit his metre) is situated towards the end of Mandeville's Travels. They were also known as the "fools of despair". These young men are employed in their country to deflower women on their wedding night by the brides' husbands because of a legend within their culture, which tells how in former times brides "had snakes within them, which stung the husbands on their penises inside the women's bodies; and thus many men were slain, and so they follow that custom there [involving the gadlibiriens] to make other men test out the route before they themselves set out on that adventure" (The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, translated by C.W.R.D. Moseley, [London: Penguin Books, 1983] p.175). The story explains many references in the ensuing lines. [go to text]

gg3024   couple copulate [go to text]

gg3025   passage channel, vagina [go to text]

gs515   lodge reside (but also with intimations in the context of being intimate with someone) [go to text]

gg3027   Hautboys "a wooden double-reed wind instrument of high pitch, having a compass of about 2 octaves, forming a treble to the bassoon (now usually oboe)" (OED hautboy, 1) [go to text]

gs511   state pomp and ceremony [go to text]

gg1151   Domine polite form of address to a schoolteacher or master, deriving from the latin, dominus (meaning "Master") [go to text]

n4461   Enter QUAILPIPE Q gives a new scene heading with Quailpipe's entrance but compresses the heading and the details of Quailpipe's appearance into a three-line block of italicised text running in the right margin alongside the last three lines of speech 902 (lines 2413-15 in Q), thereby anticipating the actual moment of entrance. The text reads: "Act.4.Sce.11. /Enter Quailpipe in /a fantasticall shape.". [go to text]

gg1035   shape stage costume [go to text]

n3669   shape It may be that Quailpipe appears here in the costume that he is to wear in the final masque. If it is as one of the followers of Discord, then it nicely sets the tone for the sequences that precede the masque in the final act. It should be sufficiently bizarre ("fantastical") as to intrigue the audience about what may be intended to happen next. A curate or parson appearing here in the guise of a demonic figure would be a wild inversion but by this stage of the comedy anything can be expected as possible within the world of the Antipodes. [go to text]

n4197   [Quailpipe] Q gives "Chap." as the speech prefix here, referring to Quailpipe's role in Letoy's house as his chaplain and curate. Noticeably he was summoned earlier into Letoy's presence with the word "Domine", a further latin reference to his status [AN 4.1.line2415]. This slip in the prefix is one of several indications that Q was in all likelihood set from Brome's foul papers or a clean copy of them. [go to text]

n3670   for this time for the moment [go to text]

gg3028   coat profession (it would be possible in a world were sumptuary laws obtain for the precise garb to indicate the profession) [go to text]

gg3029   for expedition to be quick, to save time [go to text]

n3671   your own This would be a cassock and surplice, ready to effect the "marriage" of Peregrine and Martha. The extensive folds in these garments would allow him adequately to hide his theatrical garb beneath. [go to text]

gg3030   function status, position in a lord's household [go to text]

n4198   QUA[ILPIPE] exit[s, as] JOYLESS [and] DIANA enter. Q compresses this complex stage direction together with a scene break into a block of three lines in the right margin, starting alongside Letoy's instruction that Quailpipe should now "go": "Act 4. Sce. 12. Exit, /Qua. Enter /Ioylesse, Diana.". [go to text]

gs562   issue outcome, but with the punning sense too that the hoped for outcome will be the birth of a child and heir (so both usages of the word are deployed here) [go to text]

n3672   drawn By physic into an anatomy That is: reduced by medicine to a skeleton. [go to text]

gs563   rear restore, recover, in the sense of raise again to his feet, animate (with possible comic overtones, given the reference in the context to the patient being reduced to a skeleton, of bringing back from the dead) [go to text]

gg3033   wind him up gather up his wits [go to text]

gg3034   centre true state of mental balance [go to text]

gg3035   medium generally carries meaning "a middle or midway course between extremes", hence the appropriate meaning here is moderation [go to text]

n3673   learned authors Kastan and Proudfoot (p.144) simply paraphrase this as "authorities"; Parr (p.305) invokes Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy and his discussion about the psychological consequences of sexual abstention and of over-indulgence but notes too that the supposed curative effects of carnal experience "belongs more to folklore". [go to text]

gg3038   carries completes, perfects (the cure); takes away the adverse effects of (something); also with the idiomatic sense, "wins the day"; brings safely through a crisis [go to text]

gg3039   recipe remedy, prescription [go to text]

n3674   fool that is, make him a cuckold [go to text]

n3675   country home That is, away from the temptations, subversions, diversions, dangerous entertainments of the city, which invite misrule and undermine the authority of a husband. [go to text]

gg3037   royal absolute, total [go to text]

gg3014   sneaped snub, reprove, chide [go to text]

n3676   we’ll not trouble them This was unusual for the period, when the bridal pair especially in dynastic marriages were accompanied to the bedchamber with songs and continuing festivites (usually bawdy in nature); both bride and groom were prepared for the wedding night by respective friends or relations amid much laughter and innuendo. Rarely were they, as here, left to their own selves (though, of course, Letoy has arranged that Barbara and Hughball are on hand to offer any guidance that might be solicited). A dramatised rendering of a traditional wedding night is to be found in the opening two acts of Beaumont and Fletcher's The Maid's Tragedy which presents a marriage masque, followed by a scene in which the bride, Evadne, exchanges songs and repartee with three ladies of the court as they undress her for bed: "The wars are nak'd that you must make tonight" (Volume 2, 2.1.2) and the bridegroom when he next appears continues affectionately to sustain the bawdy, until with a sharp change of tone Evadne informs him she is the King's mistress, that the marriage is all a cover and a complete sham and bids him sleep alone. [go to text]

gs516   keep stay, reside, lodge [go to text]

n4411   a house-side to our selves Letoy is proposing that he, Diana and Joyless have rooms in a different part of the house. "Side" here carries a similar meaning to "wing" in terms of domestic architecture. This situating of the characters all over Letoy's mansion prepares for the complications and misconstructions of the final act. [go to text]

gs564   up agitated, roused, angry (OED adv. II. 16d); but there is also a further sense here, drawing on idiomatic phrases such as "All's up": (you are) caught, trapped [go to text]

n5733   son――― The extended dash, copied from Q, suggests that a long pause is sustained while Letoy provocatively waits for Joyless to comply with him. The moment is sufficiently threatening to prepare the audience for the darker tone with which the ensuing act begins. [go to text]

gg3041   watch (keep) watch, be on the look out, stay awake or alert [go to text]

gg3042   match wife [go to text]

n4199   All ex[it]. This edition translates from Q's latin instruction: "Ex. omn." ("Exeunt omnes"). A direction for a general exit here is perhaps misleading: Diana is clearly all-too-keen to depart in Letoy's company, but Joyless has to be coerced into following them. That they should leave the stage in advance of him would once again give him the space to direct his final two lines to the audience (if such a convention were deployed within a production) or to speak them with a more inward register as private musing. If the final stage picture echoes that at the close of Act Three where Joyless was seen as a markedly isolated figure, then his predicament will begin to provoke some element of pathos. [go to text]

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