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n9626   3.1 Act 3 completes introductions of the dramatis personae and complicates the plot situation. Having closed the previous act by arranging for the Doctor and his patient Ferdinand to stay in Lady Strangelove’s house, Mendicant (with the assistance of Philomel) opens this act by escorting them onstage. Ferdinand plays mad riffs in various roles – soldier, gamester, and poet. Raphael returns with get-well messages from Court to Lady Strangelove’s houseguest, but Ferdinand responds by threatening the messenger with physical violence and is therefore carried off again. Lady Strangelove enters and, in her turn, behaves alarmingly enough to scare away Mendicant and then Raphael. Left alone with Philomel, Strangelove questions her about her preference among suitors: the mistress recommends Cit-Wit, but the maid fancies Dainty. Their conversation also establishes the maid’s previous sexual experience, Philomel having been suffering from gonorrhea when Strangelove brought her out of the country and into her service. A member of the household who has not been seen before (the Boy) enters to announce both the Doctor’s approach in hopes of speaking to Strangelove and the proximity of Cit-wit, Court-wit and Swain-wit. The Boy and Philomel exit separately. The Doctor enters and, after some advice on psychiatric care from Strangelove, persuades her to visit her lunatic houseguest. Having personally guaranteed Strangelove’s safety, the Doctor leads her off. Their exit clears the stage and therefore breaks the scene, but time is uninterrupted, and place remains within Lady Strangelove’s house. Swain-wit and Cit-wit enter, soon followed by Court-wit, and Swain-wit again attempts to pick a fight with Cit-wit. The bullying and the banter are interrupted by cries for help from Strangelove offstage. Philomel and Dainty hurry onstage together, and all save Cit-wit rush off to assist the lady. From offstage Ferdinand exclaims, insanely, over the failure of his attempt to rape his hostess. With her other guests and Philomel, Strangelove comes back onstage just long enough to confirm that that was what Ferdinand was trying (but failing) to do and to resolve to get even with the treacherous Doctor. All exit to devise his punishment. [go to text]

gg4782   lodgings rooms for temporary occupancy; guestsuite [go to text]

gg2573   distracted maddened, deranged [go to text]

n7125   [Enter SERVANTS carrying on FERDINAND, who has been bound and hooded, in a chair. Having set down the chair, loosened the prisoner's bonds and removed his hood, the SERVANTS exit.] Octavo of 1653 reads: `Ferdinand brought in a chaire bound and hooded, &c.' The stage direction is printed in the margin alongside the Doctor's command and Ferdinand's first two lines: the command thus cues the entry which it anticipates. The entry could, however, begin a line earlier, with Ferdinand being carried on through one stage door as Philomel makes her exit through the other: the command would then react to the entry rather than control it. Either way, the command is addressed to at least two servants, the minimum necessary to carry on an adult in a chair. Octavo of 1653 does not assign the servants an exit at any point before it gives another entrance for servants, summoned by the Doctor in Speech No. 465. It seems reasonable to assume that the servants who there respond to the Doctor's cry for help are the same as those who have earlier acted as medical orderlies. The intervening dialogue implies no cue for the servants' departure, but neither does it give them anything to do once they have deposited Ferdinand and obeyed the Doctor's command to release his bonds and restore his vision. This edition clears them away sooner rather than later: directorial decision, however, might determine their movements otherwise. [go to text]

n8804   Am I then taken prisoner in the North? Sir Ferdinand's first outburst of insanity jeers at Sir John Suckling's conduct in the military stand-off between the Crown and the Scottish Presbyterians. The struggle being partly a matter of resistance to ecclesiastical governance on the English model (control by bishops who answered to archbishop), it is sometimes designated `the Bishops' Wars'. As the plural suggests, it had two phases: one escalating through 1638 and ending, without battle, in June of 1639; and the other seeing a defeat of royalist forces in August of 1640. Suckling was widely ridiculed for his behaviour in both phases. [go to text]

n8803   To which of your rebelliously usurped Castles ha’ you brought me? The escalation of hostilities between the Covenanters and the Crown during the first half of 1639 included the Scots' seizure of royal castles in Scotland. By an agreement reached (without battle) on 18 June 1639, these were restored to the king, and armies on both sides were disbanded. [go to text]

gg5746   Presbyter, An Elder or office-holder (whether cleric or layperson) in Presbyterianism, a mode of Protestantism in which churches are governed locally and without bishops [go to text]

n7124   pugnare than orare, These Latin infinitive verbs mean `to fight' and `to pray'. Medieval political theory, as articulated by Geraldus Cambrensis in the eleventh century, had identified the former as the responsibility of kings and the latter as the responsibility of bishops. [go to text]

gg6040   abjure renounce, repudiate (OED v. 2) [go to text]

n8802   He takes you for a Northern Pastor, Mr. Doctor. A speech in the previous act [CB 1.1.speech40] describes the doctor as a `trim, effeminate gentleman' whose fashion sense runs to `gay clothes and Flanders laces'. His costume will exaggerate the absurdity of Sir Ferdinand addressing the doctor as a Christian cleric of any sort, let alone an elder of the Scottsh Presbyterian church. [go to text]

gg5747   Pastor, minister in charge of a Christian church or congregation (OED n. 1a) [go to text]

gg5748   run out exhaust, get through (OED v. 77 Ja and Jb) [go to text]

gg5742   fancy. fantasy, hallucination (OED n and a, 3) [go to text]

gg5743   Order action(s) to a particular end; measures or steps for the accomplishment of a purpose (OED n. 18) [go to text]

n9627   though you know none. Octavo of 1653 presents this phrase in parentheses. [go to text]

n8805   use my horse well, too, and let my horse and armour Be decently preserved In the military skirmish near Newcastle that concluded the Second Bishops' War, Sir John Suckling was reported to have conducted himself with ludicrous cowardice. The least humiliating reports were that some of his horses had been seized by the Scottish forces and the best steed given to their general, or that his coach had been taken, along with both clothing and cash. (See The Works of Sir John Suckling, ed. Thomas Clayton, [Oxford: Clarendon, 1971], I, l-liii, and references there cited.) If these lines by Brome refer to those reports from the front -- and it is difficult to construe them otherwise -- then they are evidence for dating The Court Beggar somewhat later in 1640 than has been previously thought: see Introduction. [go to text]

gg194   redemption. ransom [go to text]

gg6050   fetched off rescued (OED, fetch v, 16) [go to text]

n9322   all content the country yields, `Content' is here used in the now-obsolete sense as not the state, but rather the source or material condition, of satisfaction. The entry for this sense in the OED (content n<sup>2</sup>, 3) goes on to gloss the plural form as `pleasures, delights', which also seem appropriate for this instance of the singular. For an urban English audience, the joke is of course that oatcakes, ale and bagpipes constitute the sum of comforts available in the North country or Scotland. [go to text]

gg5745   oatbread, bread made of oatflour, characteristic of Scottish diet [go to text]

n8800   let’s ha’ cards, and you and I to cribbage Sir John Suckling, whose cardgamesmanship was well known. Near the beginning of the brief biography which he wrote of Suckling in 1680, John Aubrey recorded: `He was the greatest gallant of his time, and the greatest Gamester...so that no Shopkeeper would trust him for 6d, as today, for instance, he might, by winning, be worth 200 pounds, and the next day might not be worth half so much, or perhaps sometimes be minus nihilo.....He played at Cards rarely well, and did use to practise by himselfe a-bed, and there studyed how the best way of managing the cards could be.' In a separate manuscript note, Aubrey amplified this account: `Sir John Suckling -- from Mr. William Beeston -- invented the game of cribbidge. He sent his Cards to all Gameing places in the countrey, which were marked with private markes of his; he gott twenty thousand pounds by this way.' (Brief Lives, chiefly of Contemporaries, set down by John Aubrey, between the Years 1669 and 1696', edited from the author's MSS by Andrew Clark (Oxford: Clarendon, 1898) II, 240-1, 245. The longer quotation comes from Bodleian MS Aubrey 6, fol. 110, and the shorter from Bodleian MS Aubrey 8, fol 10v.) [go to text]

gg4740   cribbage card game involving 2 to 4 persons and full pack of 52 cards (OED), said by Aubrey to have been invented by Sir John Suckling [go to text]

gg2873   pieces! coin, usually gold, and at this date the equal of twenty-two shillings (the spending worth in today's currency would be £94.38p.) [go to text]

gg3407   gleek. a card game involving 3 players and 44 cards [go to text]

gg2902   Crown a coin (once gold, subsequently silver) to the value of five shillings (its spending power in terms of the currency of 2009 would be £21.45p) [go to text]

gg5744   Covenanter subscriber or adherent of the Scottish Presbyterians' national covenant, signed 28 February 1638, for the defense of reformed religion and resistance to episcopacy [go to text]

gg2873   piece coin, usually gold, and at this date the equal of twenty-two shillings (the spending worth in today's currency would be £94.38p.) [go to text]

gg5120   buyings. stakes, shares [go to text]

n7787   bate me aces. The phrase `to bate an ace' means `to lose or abate a jot or tittle, to make the slightest abatement' (OED ace n, 3b). The addition of the first-person pronoun as an indirect object turns the phrase -- apt in conversation about cardgames -- into an expression of incredulity. [go to text]

gg5117   Tib and Tom. the ace and the knave of trumps in the game of gleek (OED Tib n, 2; Tom n1, 2) [go to text]

gg4742   hazard, game at dice in which chances are complicated by arbitrary rules (OED 1) [go to text]

n8801   the great sitting After fully a decade of personal rule, late in 1639 Charles I summoned a Parliament, the fourth of his reign. It sat for only three weeks -- from April 13th to May 5th. Sir John Suckling's personal sitting was even shorter than most MPs': defeated in his first bid for a seat, on April 30th he won another (Bramber, Sussex), but parliament was dissolved within a week. If the phrase refers to this Parliament, then it must be ironic. It may, however, refer to the Parliament which opened on 3 November 1640 and was not dissolved until 16 March 1660, eight years after Brome's death. Although the eventual duration of this later Parliament of course could not have been anticipated by the playwright, its importance was obvious from the start (because the commons had the upper hand over the king), and its early business was dominated by monopolies. If the reference is to this later Parliament, however, then The Court Beggar must have been written -- or at least revised -- later than has previously been suggested. See Introduction. [go to text]

gs1190   fetch all in recoup everything (OED v. II 12a) [go to text]

n9780   Ovid’s Publius Ovidius Naso (43BC-18AD) was a Latin poet, active in the early years of the Roman Empire. Among Ovid's extant works, the one most influential for Medieval and Early Modern literature was his Metamorphoses, a collection of myths about the gods. He is also, however, celebrated for his love poetry. Ovid wrote in elegaic distichs (that is, pairs of lines in which a hexameter line is followed by a pentameter one), and his verse is indeed distinguished by smoothness. [go to text]

n9782   Petrarch’s Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) was an Italian poet, best known (and most influential) for his celebrations -- across three hundred sonnets -- of idealised and unrequited love. [go to text]

gg5121   buskin tragic -- `buskin' being a kind of boot and a high, thick-soled boot (`cothurnus') being a characteristic of the Athenian tragic actor (OED 1 and 2b) [go to text]

gg5749   Laura, The name of the lady who is the spiritual centre of Petrarch's love lyrics, collectively titled in brief as Canzoniere (Book of Songs) and in full as Rime in Vita e Morte di Madonna Laura (Poems on the Life and Death of Milady Laura) [go to text]

gg5702   Corinna, The object of Ovid's amorous attentions in Elegies VIII, XIII and XVII of his love poetry, known as the Amores [go to text]

gg5122   Intelligences Spirits (OED n. 4a) [go to text]

n8806   Phoebus, stay thy course to hear me sing Her praises, In addition to his responsibilities for poetry, music and prophecy, Phoebus (Apollo) was Greek classical mythology's god of the sun, figured as a chariot which he drove across the sky every day. Sir Ferdinando is thus asking that the god bring time to a standstill while pausing to listen to the praises of Lady Strangelove. Note that what Sir Ferdinando proceeds to celebrate is the reaction of other (male) gods and that he is advertising his own supposed skill. In other words, and as is usually the case in English Petrarchan poetry, the lady disappears. [go to text]

n9783   th’enamoured gods Would leave their proper seats, and in stolen shapes, Converse with mortals Ferdinand imagines the gods as a group being so smitten with his beloved as to abandon their respective territories and to adopt disguises which would give them access to human beings. [go to text]

n8808   – – – You soul-ravishing spheres, Octavo of 1653 reads: `, your soule-ravishing spheres'. The emendation and repunctuation turn Ferdinand's invocation of Phoebus Apollo into a self-interruption. What it interrupts is his address to the spirits which control the cosmos, construed as a graduated series of rotating spheres, nested like a Russian doll. The turning of these spheres produced harmonious vibrations: the music of the spheres. [go to text]

gs1662   move excite, disquiet (OED v. 25a); anger, provoke (OED v. 25d) [go to text]

gg1269   brace pair, two [go to text]

gg1376   almanac. book of tables, containing a calendar of months and days, with astronomical data and calculations, ecclesiastical and other anniversaries, besides other useful information, including astrological forecasts of good days for special occasions like weddings [go to text]

gg5123   receipts recipes (whether culinary or, as here, medical), prescriptions [go to text]

gg5948   candy crystallised sugar, made by boiling and evaporating a sirup of it [go to text]

n7833   Carduus Benedictus Carduus benedictus is a southern European species of thistle (also known as Cnicus benedictus) used for medicinal purposes. In the Jacobean Pharmacopoeia Londinensis (1618), both the leaves and the seeds of Carduus benedictus are listed among apothecaries’ store cupboard of ingredients, and it appears as the basis of various medicines, including infusions and conserves. Its ordinariness is indicated by a passage in William Harrison's Description of Britain (2nd edition 1586) which opposes the reputation of exotic medicinal herbs like tobacco to the reality of domestic ones such as `our common germander or thistle benet [which are] found and knowne to bee so wholesome and of so great power in medicine as any other hearbe'. [go to text]

gg3796   ague. acute fever [go to text]

n7797   Æsculapius In Greek and Roman mythology Æsculapius was the legendary physician and god of medicine. The son of Apollo and a Thessalian maiden named Coronis, he had the skill and the benevolence towards humankind to restore Hippolitus to life. For this violation of divine prerogative, Æsculapius incurred the mortal wrath of Zeus, who killed him with his thunderbolt. In his last utterance as recorded by Plato, Socrates (another violator of established orders) left a memorable trace of the cult of Æsculapius. [go to text]

n7799   Hippolytus, Son of the Greek mythological hero Theseus and an Amazon (variously named Hippolyta and Antiope), Hippolytus grew up to be the object of his stepmother's sexual obsession. When Hippolytus rejected her advances, she killed herself and blamed him for her suicide. The unjust accusation prompted Theseus to send his son into exile with his curses, which in turn caused the death of Hippolytus. A sea-monster appeared and so spooked his horses that he lost control, crashed his chariot and died of his injuries. [go to text]

n11549   Galen A Greek physician (c.129-c.216) whose patients included several Roman Emperors. Galen was also an anatomist and prolific writer of medical treatises whose influence was still very strong in the Renaissance. [go to text]

n7801   Hippocrates, Greek physician (c. 460-370 BC) whose writings survived to earn him recognition as the father of medicine [go to text]

gg5782   rare exceptional [go to text]

gg5949   simplicities ignorances (OED simplicity 2a); stupidities [go to text]

gg2177   Simples plants or herbs employed for medical purposes; remedies (OED simple n, 6) [go to text]

gg5124   Family at Amsterdam. Netherlandish religious sect, in England popularly known as the `Family of Love' and mocked for wife-swapping [go to text]

gg5125   physic (v) treat with medicine, especially a purgative [go to text]

gg5126   leech (v) draw blood by application of blood-sucking leeches to the skin [go to text]

n9871   Enter RAPHAEL. ] Enter sir Raphael. [go to text]

gg150   humorous moody, whimsical [go to text]

gs1723   regard consideration (for) (OED n. 14b) [go to text]

n7805   Dionysus, Born ca. 430 BC, Dionysus the Elder ruled Sicily from 406 BC until his death in 367 BC. Best remembered for his cruelty, he was also a patron of the arts, a playwright, and a player of horribly instructive pranks: the most famous was his dangling, by a thread, of a sword over the head of Damocles in order to teach that courtier the perils of high office. [go to text]

n9786   What, Ferdinand asks that his well-wishers at Court be alerted to the need for their kind in hell, where he imagines himself to be. He proceeds to elaborate the attractions of hell as a site for colonisation by young men and women (hell being old-fashioned), by great ladies (hell being ugly), by men who are tired of their wives and mistresses, and by women who can manage without their husbands and servants. [go to text]

gs991   want lack [go to text]

gg3161   plantation. a settlement, a colony, often in an overseas territory [go to text]

n9787   drive all Before ’em conquer all; overcome and expel everyone (from OED, drive v, 1a). [go to text]

gs1664   stand; state of arrested movement; standstill (OED stand n1, 5a [go to text]

gs1663   invention the action of contriving or devising OED invention 2) [go to text]

n7806   art art] act [go to text]

n10193   Let ’em come down, Ferdinand invites men who have wearied of their female partners, and women who can get along without their male partners, to descend into hell for holiday activities which will include sexual reshuffles. The terms of his invitation imply a common assumption that female sexual appetite is inexhaustible: whether through boredom or exhaustion, men tire of their women, while women merely tolerate the absence of their men. [go to text]

n9729   holidays, ]holy-days. The original spelling retains the sense (OED, holiday n, 1) of a religious festival, a consecrated day. This sense is sustained through the line-ending word `jubilee', which has religious significances (OED 1a, 2) in both Judaism and Roman Catholicism. [go to text]

gg6041   jubilee season of celebration (OED n. 4), extended period of holidays [go to text]

n10175   Hah! Octavo of 1653 reads `Ha' old Lad!' The first word might just as sensibly be emended to `Hey'; but elsewhere in Ferdinand's rant, Octavo of 1653 presents that syllable as `haigh': see [CB 4.2.speech713] and [NOTE n8894]. [go to text]

n1082   Old Lad! [go to text]

gg150   humorous moody, whimsical [go to text]

n7808   Proserpina, In classical Roman mythology, goddess of the underworld and consort of Pluto [go to text]

gg3829   cavalier gentlemen trained to arms, gallants [go to text]

gs1660   hopeful full of hope, expectant of something desired (OED adj. 1) [go to text]

gs1662   move excite, disquiet (OED v. 25a); anger, provoke (OED v. 25d) [go to text]

gg3789   endowments ‘gift’, power, capacity, or other advantage with which a person is endowed by nature or fortune (OED 4) [go to text]

gg2569   mansion, dwelling-place, home [go to text]

n8071   wisdom, justice, magnanimity, temperance Sir Raphael is paraphrasing Cicero's On Duties (De Officiis) I.v, where this quartet of virtues is said to comprise all human moral goodness ('omne quod est honestum'). Written in 44BC, the treatise is addressed to Cicero's son, then a student in Athens, so Sir Raphael could be construed as positioning himself as Ferdinand's father figure. He is certainly uttering platitudes: the Latin treatise was reprinted many times over in the 16th and 17th centuries. Moreover, the verse paragraph in which he pronounces them is an imitation of Cicero's oratorical style. Note the extension of a single sentence across 14 lines of verse, punctuated at midpoint by Sir Andrew's aside, which interrupts an apposition after `pillars' and thereby draws attention to the list of virtues. [go to text]

gg2078   indued archaic form of 'endowed' [go to text]

n7814   Salisbury steeple, The steeple of Salisbury's 13th-century cathedral rises to over 400 feet, and the effect of its height is exaggerated by the geographical situation of the city. In his Britannnia (1586, English translation by Philemon Holland published 1610), William Camden commented on the visual impact of the building, `Which (with its high steeple and double cross-isles,) by a venerable kind of grandeur strikes the spectators with a sacred joy and admiration.' [go to text]

n7811   Whore of Babylon? In Chapter 7 of Revelations, the visionary last book of the Christian New Testament, a gaudily and richly dressed woman, who is labelled (in the King James translation) `MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH' across her forehead and is inebriated with the blood of the saints and martyrs, is seen riding across a desert on a seven-headed beast. When the book was written, she and her steed constituted a figure of Roman Imperial persecution of the first Christians. In the 16th and 17th centuries, however, Protestant apologists construed the pair as Roman Catholicism and its persecution of the Reformed Church. [go to text]

gs1197   firk beat, lash, trounce (OED firk v, 4), but with an audible innuendo on `fuck' [go to text]

gs1724   edify, benefit spiritually (OED, edify v, 3a) [go to text]

n9793   Demosthenes Athenian statesman and orator (385?-322 BC) whose denunciations of Philip of Macedon are remembered in the word `Philippic' (OED n, 1), meaning `invective' or `scathing attack' [go to text]

n8773   give me a knife: He is but tongue-tied. Literally to be tongue-tied is to have movement of one's tongue restricted by shortness of the ligament at its base and to be rendered dumb by this impediment. The condition can be cured by loosening the ligament surgically. Ferdinand's verbal threat to attempt such a procedure on Raphael would occasion some physical business --enough to prompt Raphael's call for divine protection in Speech No. 461. [go to text]

gg4781   suddenly! forthwith, promptly (OED adv. 2) [go to text]

n9325   Oh, do you make me then your Knight o’ th’ Shire? Ferdinand now imagines himself as having just been elected to parliament: see `Knight of the Shire' in the OED (knight n 4c). He addresses the Servants as his constituents, who are now carrying him in victory on their shoulders and will soon be celebrating his victory with wine provided by him. Beyond its generally comic misreading of the situation in the dramatic fiction, the speech particularly ridicules Sir John Suckling's defeat when he stood for election to a seat in the Parliament of April 1639: see [NOTE n8801]. [go to text]

gg6042   tun large cask or barrel, usually for liquids, especially wine, ale, or beer (OED n. 1) [go to text]

n9323   A Ferdinand, a Ferdinand! In Octavo of 1653 the speech heading for this line is `Al.' (All), which this edition takes to mean both the servants, who are carrying Ferdinand, and also the doctor, who has been playing along with his patient's various whims throughout the scene. The Octavo prints the line itself as: `A Ferdinand, a Ferdinand, &c.': that final et cetera [`and other things'] is an invitation to directorial imaginations of rowdiness. [go to text]

gg5721   A prefix which turns a proper name into a battlecry (OED int., 2) [go to text]

n9324   [Exit DOCTOR and SERVANTS, carrying FERDINAND in his chair.] Octavo of 1653 does not supply an exit for Ferdinand and his medical team. It specifies instead that Mendicant and Raphael should remain onstage: `Manent Men. sir Rap'. This stage direction is placed, parenthetically, to the right, across two lines -- the last in Ferdinand's speech (no. 466) and then the cheers which the others exclaim for him. [go to text]

gg6043   disputations, controversies [go to text]

n7815   travels, ] travailes. The sense could be either `exertions' (OED travail n1, I 1) or `journeys' (OED travail n1, II 7. Either sense would fit. Modern usage spells the word in the latter sense `travels' and stresses its first syllable: this is metrically smoother within the line, and the relative regularity of his verse is one of Sir Raphael's few distinctions as an orator. [go to text]

gg6044   Confiscated forfeited to the sovereign by way of penalty (OED, confiscate v, 1) [go to text]

gs891   Bedlam an early mental asylum, the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem, situated next to Bishopsgate, on the edge of the City of London (see Sugden, Topographical Dictionary, 53-4, s.v. Bedlam) [go to text]

n10156   your Projectorship In the immediately preceding speech, Mendicant has addressed Strangelove as `your Ladyship'. She now bounces back this formal title, appropriately adjusted. [go to text]

gg5140   Philosophaster, Pseudo-philosopher, whose phoniness is a matter of shallowness and/or pretentiousness. [go to text]

gg2642   prosecute pursue, continue with (OED v. 1a) [go to text]

gg258   post (as a verb) hasten, hurry [go to text]

gg6045   resort frequent (OED v1. 9) [go to text]

gg5247   distraction. disorder or confusion, caused by internal conflict or dissension; disturbance of mind or feelings [go to text]

n10144   Spanish Inquisition. Initially pursuing Jewish and Moorish converts who were suspected of having secretly relapsed, the Spanish Inquisition was instituted in 1478 by Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile. It sought further targets but remained under royal control, and its notoreity, particularly in Protestant countries, fuelled antipathy to Spain and Roman Catholicism. [go to text]

gg5720   liberty unrestricted use (OED n1. 4b) [go to text]

n9789   Where are you, Phil? I were but dead if I Had not this wench to fool withal sometimes. Octavo of 1653 sets these last two sentences of Strangelove's speech as prose, but they are as regular iambic pentameter as Brome writes. [go to text]

gg5974   fool play the fool with; tease [go to text]

gs363   withal substituted for ‘with’ (OED prep.) [go to text]

gs1725   correction. rebuke, reprehension for faults of character or conduct (OED, 3) [go to text]

n9326   [PHILOMEL scratches at her own face.] Octavo of 1653 the corresponding stage direction, placed to the right of the last line in Philomel's speech ([CB 3.1.speech 488]), reads 'Teare.': see [CB 3.1.line1395]. That she gestures at clawing rather than crying is clear from the dialogue. [go to text]

gg5141   passionate, sorrowful (OED adj and n, 5b) [go to text]

gs1025   covenant, a mutual agreement between two or more persons, a contract, a legal undertaking, pledge [go to text]

gg6013   article item in the contract, stipulation [go to text]

gg222   humour mood, temper, attitude, frame of mind [go to text]

gg4599   conditioned settled on conditions; stipulated; bargained (for); according to the agreed terms (OED cites only The Novella as an instance of this sense [adj, 4] but it also occurs in The Court Beggar) [go to text]

gg5142   clap gonorrhea (OED n. 2) [go to text]

n7962   ere ] e're [go to text]

gg1781   ere before [go to text]

n7963   e’er ] e're [go to text]

gg5238   e’er contraction of 'ever' (Onions) [go to text]

n7836   a husband, then, to solder up the old crack. The ambiguous innuendo appears in the opening dialogue (another woman-to-woman exchange) of Thomas Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1613): `But ’tis a husband solders up all cracks'. [go to text]

gg4257   solder unite, fasten, mend [go to text]

gg5168   crack. [i]vulvae, cunt; [ii] rupture of chastity (Partridge,Shakespeare's Bawdy) [go to text]

gg5137   jealous apprehensive of losing some desired benefit through the rivalry of another; zealous, vigilant, watchful of one's interests (OED adj. 4b and 3) [go to text]

n7835   fear ] feard [go to text]

n10145   When perhaps none dares touch it, were I it. Philomel's metaphorical suggestion that men might fear being her sexual partner is ambiguous: the reason could be her own gonorrhea (as has been mentioned by Lady Strangelove in [CB 3.1.speech495] or Court-wit's syphilis (as will be implied by Swain-wit in [CB 4.2.speech767]). [go to text]

gg2874   curious skilful, clever, inventive (OED curious a, 4) [go to text]

gg5166   limner? painters, especially of portraits [go to text]

gg5731   Jove poetical form of `Jupiter', the name of the highest and most powerful of the Roman gods [go to text]

gg1499   towards. on the way [go to text]

gs1573   come, come (as an imperative of conversational encouragement): proceed, out with it, keep talking [go to text]

n8785   I love drawing and painting, as no lady better, who for the most part are of their occupation that profess it. The syntax is strained but the sense is clear, and it is a joke on female use of cosmetics. Philomel is saying that she herself is just as fond of drawing and painting as all ladies -- who for the most part, and like professional limners, practise painting. [go to text]

gg5167   entered. begin, start (OED v. 6) [go to text]

gs1726   covet desire, wish for (OED v. 1) [go to text]

n8786   to draw naked pictures by, as of Diana, Venus, Andromeda, Leda, In Greek classical mythology Diana and Venus were deities, while Andromeda and Leda were humans. What they have in common was that all four are most often depicted naked, the objects of male gazes within their respective stories as well as in the paintings which represent those stories: Diana bathing and attracting the attention of the hunter Actaeon, whom she transforms into a stag for staring at her; Venus and two other goddesses displaying themselves in a divine beauty contest judged by Paris, Prince of Troy ; Andromeda, wearing nothing but some jewelry, chained to a rock overflown by Perseus; and Leda being raped by Jupiter in swan's disguise. [go to text]

n9794   Diana, in classical Roman mythology, the goddess of the moon, patroness of virginity and of hunting [go to text]

n9795   Venus, in classical Roman mythology, the goddess of beauty and of love [go to text]

n9796   Andromeda, Ethiopian princess who (in punishment of her mother for boasting of their beauty) was chained to a rock as food for a sea-monster but was rescued and eventually married by the hero Perseus [go to text]

n9797   Leda, in classical Greek mythology, the wife of King Tyndareus of Sparta and the mother of Helen of Troy [go to text]

gg798   several various [go to text]

gs240   tother the other [go to text]

n7966   the most learned authors that I can turn over, Purporting to offer a diagnosis to the doctor, Lady Strangelove begins by gesturing at a conflation of opinions to be found in the writings of ancient medical authorities. [go to text]

n7964   Dioscorides, Greek physician of the first century A.D., known for influential treatise on substances used in medicine [go to text]

n7965   Avicenna, Anglicised form of the name Ibn Sina (980-1037 A.D.), Persian philosopher and physician whose writings (translated from Arabic) on medicine and science were authoritative in medieval Europe [go to text]

n11549   Galen, A Greek physician (c.129-c.216) whose patients included several Roman Emperors. Galen was also an anatomist and prolific writer of medical treatises whose influence was still very strong in the Renaissance. [go to text]

n7801   Hippocrates, Greek physician (c. 460-370 BC) whose writings survived to earn him recognition as the father of medicine [go to text]

gs1904   jumps not altogether with to jump with: to coincide, to agree completely (OED jump v, 5a) [go to text]

n7831   hellebore, Shade-loving and winter-flowering, Hellebore (Veratra nigra) has a tangle of black roots. These are conspicuous in John Payne's image of this plant in the second (1636) edition of Gerard's Herball, Book II, Chapter 377. The list of apothecaries' ingredients in Pharmacopoeia Londiniensis (1618) includes root of both black and white hellebores. According to Gerard, `A purgation of Hellebor is good for mad and furious men, for melancholy, dull and heavie persons...and briefly for all those that are troubled with blacke choler, and molested with melancholy' (p.977, sig.Nnnn1). [go to text]

n8790   saltpetre Potassium nitrate, also known as 'saltpetre' and `nitre', was used both medicinally and, as the basis of gunpowder, militarily. [go to text]

n7968   blindnettles. One of many English names for a plant (Lamium) which resembles stinging nettle save that it does not sting. According to Geoffrey Grigson in The Englishman's Flora, it is so called in Somerset and Devon. Other names include `deaf nettles', `dead nettles' and `archangel'. Its medicinal uses have been for gynaecological and prostate problems. [go to text]

n7967   I’ll give you the proportions, and the quantity is to take. Even as she teases the young physician, Lady Strangelove shows herself to be up-to-date in matters medical. The time-honoured method of comparing and contrasting the opinions of ancient authorities has, she says, revealed discrepancies in their respective opinions. She proposes instead to adopt the clinical approach of Theodore Turquet de Mayerne (1573-1655), celebrated physician to both the French and the English courts. Mayerne's voluminous casebooks are models of diagnostic care; and he was a prime mover in the regularisation of apothecaries, their guild being chartered in 1617, and in the standardisation of pharmaceuticals, the first Pharmacopoeia Londinensis being published in 1618. This volume closes with a list of apothecaries' basic ingredients, including everything needed for the potion which Lady Strangelove is poised to prescribe. [go to text]

n10146   if his malady grow out of ambition and his overweening hopes of greatness (as I conjecture), then he may take a top of cedar, Strangelove's taunt is at first iconographical rather than pharmaceutical. The cedar (cedrus) was known for its height: in An English Expositor (1616) John Bullokar defined it as `a tall great tree, which groweth in Africa, and Syria, straight vpright like the Firre tree'. [go to text]

n10148   oak-apple An oak-apple is a gall which an insect forms around itself on an oak leaf. The joke may lie in the contrast between it and cedar-tops. [go to text]

gg5738   sovereign efficacious or potent to a supreme degree (OED adj. 3) [go to text]

n10147   hempseed. The seed of hemp (cannabis) is among the pharmaceutical simples listed in the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis (1618). Gerard reports various medicinal uses for hempseed in his Herball (second edition 1636): `it consumeth winde'; it clears obstructions in the ear canal; it cures yellow jaundice; and it improves egg production in hens. That none of these appears at all appropriate for Ferdinand's condition may be the point: Lady Strangelove is starting to torment the Doctor with silliness rather than (as before) knowledge. [go to text]

n8788   cunning Octavo of 1653 reads `cunning', which suggests that the Doctor is poised to insist upon his own knowledge in general and medical expertise in particular (OED `cunning' n 1 & 3). Lady Strangelove, however, responds to the word as if she had heard it as `coming' (OED vbl n sup 1 1) and anticipates an explanation of his motive in speaking to her. [go to text]

gg776   on of it [go to text]

gs1665   call call for, demand (OED call v, 4f) [go to text]

gg5736   nursekeeper? a nurse who tends the sick (OED) [go to text]

gg776   on’t of it [go to text]

gg329   manifest obvious, clear [go to text]

gg5247   distraction, disorder or confusion, caused by internal conflict or dissension; disturbance of mind or feelings [go to text]

gg5737   Allure draw forth, attract (OED v. 4) [go to text]

n10234   3.2 No scene division is indicated in Octavo of 1653. The reason for introducing one in this edition is merely that when the Doctor and Lady Strangelove exit together, their departure clears the stage. Dramatic time, however, is not broken; and if any change of place is imagined, the move is merely from somewhere in Lady Strangelove’s household to somewhere else in Lady Strangelove’s household. The act has begun with Philomel's statement of place: `These are the lodgings that my Lady appointed/ For your distracted patient' [CB 3.1.speech 405]. The demonstrative adjective suggests that she, the Doctor and Mendicant are conversing in or adjacent to the suite of rooms which Lady Strangelove has assigned to Ferdinand; but it is subsequently [CB 3.1.speech467] made clear that they are not in Ferdinand's own bedchamber within the suite. Immediately after the exit of Lady Strangelove and the Doctor, Swain-wit's speech of entry `into this garden here' [CB 3.2.speech542] establishes place for the rest of the act. A modern producer might decide to change stage sets at this point and thereby separate the fictional place where the act begins from that where it ends, but this would not be necessary nor even appropriate. Under early Stuart staging conventions, continuity of playing from one scene to another means that distinctions of place have to be indicated verbally. When, as in this act, they are not thus made, it can be assumed (until proven contrary) that they do not matter. What does matter in this act is an imaginary place offstage: Ferdinand’s bed-chamber. [go to text]

n10235   Enter SWAIN-WIT and CIT-WIT. Video The 14 December 2008 workshop session on this scene started with lengthy consideration of whether or not the initial entrance of Swain-wit and Court-wit should be amplified by Court-wit, to whom Octavo of 1653 assigns a separate entrance three speeches further on: see [CB 3.2.line 1543]. Director Brian Woolland thought this change necessary to make sense of some parts of Swain-wit’s first speech [CB 3.2.speech 542] ; but neither the editor of the play, nor the actor who played Court-wit, was persuaded of his opinion. The strongest of the textual arguments against moving Court-wit's entrance from its position in the original text to the beginning of the scene are: (1) Cit-wit soon says [CB 3.2.speech546] that Swain-wit had `pulled me out', and his first-person singular pronoun does not suggest that a third person had been present; and (2) Court-wit somewhat later [CB 3.2.speech597] tells the other two Wits that he himself had left Philomel and Dainty `close on a couch together kissing', and his use of a singular first-person pronoun implies that he had remained offstage to observe the couple's amorous activity rather longer than the other two Wits had done. Moreover, nowhere else in Octavo of 1653 is an entrance misplaced by more than a line or two, nor does anything about the placement of either of these entrances on the page suggest that something has gone awry in printing. This edition has therefore retained the entrances from Octavo of 1653, but it has amplified Swain-wit’s first speech with directions distinguishing those parts of it which are to be addressed to Court-wit, still offstage. In workshop, it was General Editor Richard Cave who pointed out the possibility of such directional additions, and I am grateful to him for the suggestion. Their effect can be observed in the second of the three different walk-throughs which, along with some of the discussion of how to arrange the entrances, are recorded in the following video clip: . [go to text]

gg4811   do have sex with (OED doing vbl n, 1b: euphemism for copulation) [go to text]

gg5739   for all notwithstanding (OED all a, 9c); despite [go to text]

gg2336   discreet judicious [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]

gs1574   quality profession, occupation, business, especially that of an actor (OED n. 6a [a]) [go to text]

n10236   two thousand pound at use, Cit-wit's income is not mentioned elsewhere: that it is ten times Swain-wit's own [CB 2.1.speech309] may help to explain the Cornishman's antipathy. [go to text]

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

gg3269   Pish! an interjection 'expressing contempt, impatience, or disgust' (OED) [go to text]

n8789   buff and feather. military uniform, with a implicit sneer at Sir John Suckling's extravagant outfitting of his troop of solders `in white doubtletts and scarlett breeches, and scarlet coates, hatts, and...feathers' (`Brief Lives,' chiefly of Contemporaries, set down by John Aubrey, between the Years 1669 and 1696, ed. Andrew Clark (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898), II, 242 [go to text]

gg2891   buff a leather (made generally in England out of ox-hide, treated with oil till it developed a fuzzy, dull yellow finish) from which at this date soldiers’ clothing was fashioned [go to text]

gg5740   jowl knock, bump, bang (OED v1. 2) [go to text]

gg6046   tone the one (of two) [go to text]

gg1195   tother other (of two) [go to text]

gg2369   wavering inconstant, fickle [go to text]

gg4314   La an exclamation used ‘to call attention to an emphatic statement’ (OED int.) [go to text]

gs1575   special notable, important, distinguished (The OED examples of this now-obsolete sense [a, 1d] are all dated between 1576 and 1631.) [go to text]

gg5741   cry. pack of hounds (OED n. 13a) [go to text]

gg3452   City. The City of London, the ancient capital and commercial area with its own system of power and government; often contrasted with the Royal Court, based a few miles down the Thames at Westminster and Whitehall, a rival base of power, authority, and culture [go to text]

n9800   I am no clown to run my Country. Swain-wit has just used `Country' to mean `native land' (OED 4), the sense in which Court-wit deployed the word in [CB 3.1.speech556]. Cit-wit, however, uses the word to mean `rural districts' (OED 5a) and then `clown' to mean both `rustic bumpkin' and `ill-bred boor'. [go to text]

gs2504   clown [go to text]

gs1322   clowns, man without refinement or culture; an ignorant, rude, uncouth, ill-bred man (OED clown n, 2), opposed to `courtier' [go to text]

n9799   cockney A cockney is someone who was born in the city of London -- more precisely, within the sound of the bells of St. Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside. Swain-wit is here using the word to counter the insult implicit in `clown'. As the OED entry for this sense explains, the word is `always more or less contemptuous or bantering, and particularly used to connote the characteristics in which the born Londoner is supposed to be inferior to other Englishmen.' John Minsheu's multi-lingual dictionary Ductor in Linguas (1617) gives an etymological anecdote which insults citizens' sons like Cit-wit: the `tearme came first out of this tale: That a Cittizens sonne riding with his father out of London into the Country, and being a nouice and meerely ignorant how corne or cattell increased, asked, when he heard a hourse neigh, what the horse did, his father answered, the horse doth neigh, riding farther he heard a cocke crowe, and said doth the cocke neigh too? [go to text]

gs1727   whelp, low fellow; impertinent youngster (OED n1. 3b) [go to text]

gs1728   forbear, be patient (OED 8c) [go to text]

gs1729   maintain support, uphold, defend [go to text]

gg6048   doatest on art infatuated with [go to text]

gg3452   City The City of London, the ancient capital and commercial area with its own system of power and government; often contrasted with the Royal Court, based a few miles down the Thames at Westminster and Whitehall, a rival base of power, authority, and culture [go to text]

n8791   have wit, sir, and am accounted a wit Have discretion or prudence (OED n, 6a)...considered to be a person of lively fancy, who has the faculty of saying smart or brilliant things (OED n, 10). [go to text]

n8792   within the walls. within the City of London: see [NOTE n1571] re `City Walls' [go to text]

gg5719   company, City of London trade guild (OED n. 6a) which both regulated the practices of its members and also was part of the political organisation of the City [go to text]

gg3452   City. The City of London, the ancient capital and commercial area with its own system of power and government; often contrasted with the Royal Court, based a few miles down the Thames at Westminster and Whitehall, a rival base of power, authority, and culture [go to text]

n8793   Salters, Incorporated in 1558, the Salters were a London livery company, one of the twelve great companies from whose ranks the aldermen (and eventually mayor) of the City of London were chosen. [go to text]

n8783   sal sapit omnia The Latin phrase sal sapit omnia, which is indeed the motto of the Salters' Company, means `salt seasons everything' or `salt gives savour to all things'. In citing this phrase to prove that the Salters are the wisest of the City companies, however, Cit-wit is perpetrating a pun which turns on the double sense of the Latin 2nd-conjugation verb `sapere': as it can mean `to know' or `to be wise', the motto could be translated as `salt knows all'. [go to text]

gg1331   cuckold man with an unfaithful wife, traditionally thought of as having horns on his head [go to text]

gg857   and if [go to text]

n8795   Lady Ramsey, Mary Dale Avery Ramsey (d. 1601) was the second wife of Sir Thomas Ramsey (1510/1-1590), a freeman of the Grocers Company who held high office in the City of London. The couple were noted for their charitable giving, which she maintained as a widow. A particular beneficiary of their philanthropy was Christ's Hospital, where her portrait survives. They both figure in Thomas Heywood's If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody (1606), where she is represented `as the model of virtuous civic womanhood' (Ian W. Archer, ODNB entry). [go to text]

n8794   Mistress Katherine Stubbes Katherine Emmes Stubbes (1570/1-1590) was the wife of the Protestant pampleteer Philip Stubbes (c.1555-1610), best known for his Anatomie of Abuses (1583). She died, aged 19 or 20, weeks after giving birth to their son. Her widower promptly memorialised her in a pamphlet entitled A Christal Glasse for Christian Women: Wherein they may see most wonderfull and rare examples of a right vertuous Life and Christian death. First published in 1591, it went through multiple editions. As Alex Walsham notes in her ODNB entry on the couple, `It is difficult to disentangle the historical person Katherine Stubbes from the paragon she became in a text heavily conditioned by generic convention.' According to her widower, the paragon's virtues included avoidance of entertainments in his absence: `When her husband was abroad...there was not the dearest friend she had in the world that could get her abroad to dinner or supper, or to plaies or enterludes, nor to any other pastimes, or disports whatsoever' (sig A3). [go to text]

n8796   we are forbidden to pray for ’em? Praying for the souls of the Christian faithful departed was a charitable devotion which, being dependent upon the doctrine of Purgatory and associated with the practice of indulgences, went out with the Reformation. In England, prayers for the dead disappear from the Prayerbook as of its second Edwardian version (1552). See Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (1992), passim, but especially 338-376, 485. [go to text]

n10237   [SWAIN-WIT] draw[s his sword from the scabbard at his side]. Video Both the position of the stage direction in the middle of the line in Octavo of 1653 after the end of Swain-wit's speech and the content of the dialogue make clear that it is he who draws a sword here [CB 3.1.speech591] and then sheathes the sword in its scabbard four lines later [CB 3.1.speech595]. In workshop session on 14 December 2008 actors Joseph Thompson as Swain-wit and Alan Morrissey as Cit-wit invented appropriately comic business around Swain-wit's sword . [go to text]

gg6049   equivocation, intentional ambiguity in speech [go to text]

gg4963   Scabbard sheath or covering for a sword [go to text]

n10238   Gi’ me the book! Video The line requires Cit-wit to try to seize a sword. His use of the definite article `the', coming so soon after the verbal play on sword as book and scabbard as its cover, suggests that it is Swain-wit's sword for which he reaches. As was noted in workshop session, that possibility would be extremely clumsy. Nevertheless, Cit-wit will very soon [CB 3.2.speech603] be reproached for not having drawn the sword of his own which the dialogue has already indicated [CB 3.2.speech549] he is wearing. Perhaps at this point, then, Cit-wit simply grabs at Swain-wit's sword but does not actually grasp it. Brome may have anticipated some improvisation around the swordplay here. As the workshop session indicated, Cit-wit's combination of showy swordsmanship and craven cowardice is a gift to an actor with an eye for a comic riff . [go to text]

n8797   baton, ] Octavo of 1653 reads `Battoune': according to the OED entry, the usual spelling in the 17th and 18th centuries was `battoon'. The sense is double: one sense, which continues the physical violence of the previous word (`kick') in the series, is `club, cudgel, truncheon'(OE n, 1a); and the other sense, which anticipates the shame of the next word (`scandall'), is `the baton sinister, the badge of bastardy' in English heraldry (OED n, 3). [go to text]

n8799   stiff blades Stalwart gallants, stout roysterers (OED stiff, a, 13a; OED, blade, n, 11a) with a sexual innuendo, which the double entendre of Swain-wit's reply will continue, on both words. The stage picture makes the verbal joke unmissable: with Cit-wit lifting up Swain-wit's scabbarded sword in order to swear upon it, Swain-wit will present the image of a man with an enormous erection. [go to text]

n8798   moving cause quibble on (a)incitement to an action, and (b)excitement to an erection [go to text]

n9328   [Screaming,] unseen, above. Octavo of 1653 places this stage direction to the right and across two lines, the second of which is the cry for help which it governs. [go to text]

n9733   Aaaaah!!! ]---ha--- [go to text]

n9330   [COURT-WIT and SWAIN-WIT draw their swords.] Octavo of 1653 reads: `Draw all'. This stage direction is placed to the right of the single line ([CB 3.2.line 1659]) which is Strangelove's second cry for help ([CB 3.2.speech607]). [go to text]

n9331   Above. Octavo of 1653 places this stage direction to the right the cry for help (Speech No. 613) which it governs. [go to text]

n9335   [COURT-WIT, SWAIN-WIT, PHILOMEL and DAINTY exit. CIT-WIT, his sword still drawn, remains onstage.] Video In Octavo of 1653 the corresponding stage direction is placed, parenthetically, to the right of the two-line exchange between Swain-wit and Philomel about the door [CB 3.1.lines1671-1672]. It reads: `Exe. omnes Pret. Cit. his sword drawn.' That is, with abbreviations expanded: `Exeunt omnes Praeter Cit-wit his sword drawn', which translates `Let all go off except Cit-wit whose sword is drawn.' Having been quickly filled up with ineffectual activity, the stage now almost empties again, and even more quickly than it had filled up. Workshop session on 14 December 2008 demonstrated Brome's skill in thus orchestrating comic confusion: see clip . [go to text]

n9339   Look[ing] out [from stage window] above In Octavo of 1653 the corresponding stage direction is placed, parenthetically, to the right of three lines, starting at [CB 3.2.line1673] with the speech from the Doctor ([CB 3.2.speech 620])which it governs. It there reads: `Doctor looks out above.' There is no direction for the Doctor to stop looking out. However, his disappearance from the stage window will be cued by, and will probably occur during, Ferdinand's detumescent rant at [CB 3.2.speech622]. [go to text]

gg589   warrant! employment, interest [go to text]

n9341   Above unseen Octavo of 1653 places this stage direction to the right of the last line ([CB 3.2.line1680]) of the speech ([CB 3.2.speech622]) that it governs. [go to text]

n9798   Medusa! In classical Greek mythology, the ugliest of the three gorgons, Libyan monsters who had serpents instead of hair on their heads. Medusa was so hideous that the sight of her face turned the beholder to stone. [go to text]

n8758   thou hast transformed me! Stone, stone, I am all stone! Video Complaining of impotence, and consequent inability to rape his hostess, Sir Ferdinando overstates his figurative transformation. Where the sight of Medusa turned her victims wholly to stone, the petrification of Sir Ferdinando has been limited to his genitals. Note that the actor of Ferdinand is invisible: the nakedness of the character and the flaccidness of his penis are left to audience imagination. What is visible is the actor of Cit-wit, left alone onstage. In the workshop on 14 December 2008, Alan Morrissey devised some showy swordplay which responded to Ferdinand's cries: see clip . [go to text]

gg3144   bulwark a fortification [go to text]

n8760   Stones Picking up Ferdinando's metaphor for impotence as petrification and his mad call for mortar to make himself into a bulwark, Cit-wit exploits the familiar slang sense of `stones' as 'testicles': Ferdinando's cannot be big enough to be incorporated in military fortifications. For them to serve merely as ammunition for a demiculverin, they would have to be very large indeed: that kind of cannon had a four-and-half-inch bore. [go to text]

gg43   quotha! 'said he', i.e. indeed! (OED); sarcastic exclamation [go to text]

n8761   demi-culverin Octavo of 1653 reads `demy-culvering'. [go to text]

gg5709   thumpers, anything ‘thumping’ or strikingly big of its kind (OED 3, where the earliest example given for usage in this colloquial sense dates from 1660) [go to text]

n12043   Enter STRANGELOVE, SWAIN-WIT, COURT-WIT, DAINTY [and] PHIL[OMEL]. [go to text]

gg5711   practice? stratagem, trick, treachery (OED n. 5a and 5b) [go to text]

gg5713   accident symptom (OED n. 3) [go to text]

gg5711   practice stratagem, trick, treachery (OED n. 5a and 5b) [go to text]

gg5714   colour disguise (OED v. 3) [go to text]

gg5715   plaster a solid medicinal or emollient substance applied to the skin (OED n. 1) [go to text]

gg5716   vented discharged, evacuated (OED v2. 2b) [go to text]

n8769   she could ha’ drawn better than the leeches. Cit-wit likens sexual ejaculation into a woman's vagina to medical blood-letting by means of leeches. Behind the analogy lies the venerable notion of human health as a balance among four fluids or `humours': phlegm, blood, choler (or bile), black choler (or black bile). [go to text]

n8772   Pandarean That is: pimp-like, from Pandarus, who procures Cressida for Troilus in medieval legends of Troy. (In the classical Greek narratives, Pandarus is no pimp but a skilled archer who fights on the Trojan side.) This adjectival form does not appear at all in the OED, which gives an example (from Thomas Dekker's Wonderfull Year) of the participal adjective for early as 1603. An emendation of the 1653 Octavo reading `Pandarean' to `pandering' is thus a possibility here. [go to text]

gg491   want lack [go to text]

n9345   [CIT-WIT detaches PHILOMEL from DAINTY.] Video In Octavo of 1653 the stage direction corresponding both to this and to part of the one which this edition has added to the preceding speech (No. 636) reads: `He snatcheth Phil. from Dainty, who took her by the arm.' This is printed, parenthetically, to the right across two lines -- Cit-wit's exhortation at [CB 3.2.speech637] and Philomel's question at [CB 3.2.speech638]. (See [CB 3.2.line1709] and CB 3.2.line1710].) Neither the original stage direction nor the dialogue makes clear to whom Cit-wit speaks his stage-clearing exhortation: it could be addressed threateningly to Dainty, possessively to Philomel, and/or triumphantly to Swain-wit andCourt-wit. In workshop on 14 December 2008, Alan Morrissey as Cit-wit centred its delivery first on Philomel and then on Dainty before striding off: see clip [go to text]

gg1956   sworn promised by oath [go to text]

n9343   [All exit.] Octavo of 1653 reads: `Exeunt omnes.' [go to text]

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