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n2234   ACT THREE Like the previous two acts, Act Three has two scenes. This, the centre of the play, contains crucial manifestations of some of its primary concerns. In the first scene, the audience is again shown tavern life, here dominated by Captain Driblow, a seedy military figure, a braggadocio feeding on the young men forming the club of the Philoblathici. The scene shows Clotpoll's initiation, the young men performing a characteristic boorish ritual, and then the entrance of the disguised Cockbrain as a tavern singer. At this point the underlying sadism of the young men's play begins to emerge more clearly. Hitherto they have been obnoxious to women they assume to be prostitutes and to a fool like Clotpoll, of whom they mean to take advantage financially. Now, led by Nick, they physically attack and abuse Cockbrain, with the new member Clotpoll the most enthusiastic participant and Anthony (who does not yet recognize his disguised father) displaying more qualms and attempting to mitigate the beating. As a representation of tavern life and the roistering behaviour of the young men, the scene is amusing; but the underlying, casual violence of their lives begins to discomfort and dismay.
The second scene takes place in Rooksbill's house, where Crosswill and his family are to stay until their own rented accommodation is ready. Lucy and Katherine enter, perhaps with Belt, the servant, and in the first part of the scene engage in dialogue that is heavy in exposition but also full of tensions and subtle negotiations between the two women. This part of the scene is complex: if Belt is on stage, what is he doing there? Does he overhear secrets being disclosed by the two women (on several occasions in the play he makes use of overheard secrets, disclosing them to his master Crosswill)? Do the women care that a servant may overhear them? During the exposition of the complex story of Dorcas and her seduction by Nick, Lucy makes explicit reference to complex plotting in contemporary drama, and the need for audiences to pay close attention. This self-consciousness is funny but it raises the question of how the scene should be acted. Should the actors knowingly lecture the audience? Throughout the discussion between Lucy and Katherine, issues of class are both on the surface and, unknown to the interlocutors, beneath it. These are rendered all the more apparent when the women's fathers, 'the old men' Rooksbill and Crosswill, come on stage. Rooksbill again proposes a marriage between his daughter Lucy and one or other of Crosswill's sons, leading Crosswill to threaten to storm out of Rooksbill's house or, as Crosswill insultingly calls it, 'your inn here'. [go to text]

n3351   Driblow In the 1659 text there is no speech prefix. [go to text]

n664   I. 1659: I: In this instance, both readings--'I' or 'Aye' are possible. [go to text]

n665   Lo, you there: 1659: loe you there. [go to text]

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

n3818   Well, to the Oath then Both the oath taken by Clotpoll and the subsequent exchanges between the brethren of the Blade and Batton resemble the playful and fantastic rituals by which one becomes a member of a drinking club in [Richard Brathwaite], A Solemne Ioviall Disputation, Theoreticke and Practicke; briefly Shadowing the Law of Drinking (1617):
The usuall or common manner of this adoption is after this sort. "SIR, if I who am but a young man should not seeme altogether unworthy / of so high an honour, I could wish to enter a leugue of amity and Brotherhood with you: whereunto the other makes answer; "Drinke a Gods name, this shall be very acceptable unto mee. Then he drinkes, and gives it to him that is to be adopted, where in the very instant act of reaching the Cup, these words are accustomably used: "N.N. is my name, by which name I vow to doe whatever shall be pleasing unto you, and forbeare to doe whatsoever shall be displeasing: Yea, in all points I will demeane my selfe as becommeth a faithfull brother. Whereunto the other replies; "And I will be the same in all things. Soone after, having used some eare-whisperings one to another, their mutuall request is, that this Brotherhood may be strengthened with mutuall visitations. [go to text]

gg576   ’Slid a common seventeenth-century oath derived from an abbreviation of ‘God’s eyelid’ and the idea of the deity’s all-seeing eye [go to text]

n8821   brokers Anthony sardonically comments that Clotpoll is likely to lose his sword, not as a result of a fight, but because he has had to pawn it. [go to text]

n4262   DRIBLOW draws his sword Driblow commands Clotpoll to place his hand on 'hilts'. The plural could be used for a single sword, but it may imply that the other members of the fraternity all produce their swords at this point. [go to text]

n4585   true and faithful Driblow's injunction is another variant on the topics of trust and faithfulness presented in Act 2. [go to text]

gg1686   sutler one who follows an army or lives in a garrison town and sells provisions to the soldiers (OED) [go to text]

gg1687   travail travel [go to text]

n669   Brother’s friend A lover [go to text]

n670   Mirror of Knighthood Refers to the popular, and near interminable, volumes of Diego Ortunez de Calahorra, The Mirror of Princely Deeds and Knighthood translated by M[argaret] T[yler] (1578 onwards). [go to text]

n671   in Parliament Captain Driblow does not appear to think that rule without Parliament is a permanent feature of English politics, adding to the sense that readings of The Weeding of Covent Garden that emphasize high-political reference may be off the mark. [go to text]

n766   law brissons No other use of this term has been found. It appears to mean officer. It is just conceivable that it is a reference to the famous French jurist and statesman, Barnabe Brisson (1531-1591), who was a notable reformer. [go to text]

n767   take wall of you The inferior must give way, ceding the cleaner part of a street (nearest the wall) to a superior. See Samson in Romeo and Juliet, 'I will take the wall of any man or maid of Montague's' (1.1.11). [go to text]

n3130   brevity’s sake 1659: brevity sake [go to text]

n4263   Kiss the book No book has been mentioned in this scene, and so this is probably a facetious reference to the sword hilt or, as in The Tempest 2.2.132, to a bottle or glass of alcohol. It is conceivable that there is a book of rules for the Philoblathici, however. [go to text]

n672   I’ll swear to them whatsoever they be. So, now I am a Blade, and of a better Row than those of Tytere tu or Oatmeal hoe. And so an health to our Fraternity, and in chief to our noble Captain Driblow This speech is set as prose and is kept so here. However, the internal rhymes (row, hoe, Driblow) suggest something of a 10 or 11 syllable metre, as Clotpoll celebrates his admission to the dismal heroics of the fraternity:
and of a better row / than those of Tytere tu, or Oatmeal hoe, / and so an health to our Fraternity, / and in chief to our Noble Captain Driblow
He remains an inadequate heroic versifier as yet, however. [go to text]

n8822   a better Row Although Clotpoll's meaning is clear here, this use of 'row' is unusual to modern ears. It is probably the sense in OED row n1 2. a. An array or set of persons (or things) of a certain kind; a class or category. The OED has examples from the early seventeenth century. [go to text]

n8823   Tytere tu or Oatmeal hoe. For the names of the roistering gangs, see Walton B. McDaniel, 'Some Greek, Roman and English Tityretus', American Journal of Philology 35 (1914), pp. 52-66. The line from Virgil’s Eclogues, 'Tytere tu patulæ recubans sub tegmine fagi', would be well-known not least from its quotation in George Puttenham’s Art of English Poesie (1602 edn.). McDaniel cites William Gifford’s note to John Ford’s The Sun’s Darling: 'I have already had more than one occasion to notice those lawless ruffians, who, to the disgrace of the city, under the various names of Mohawks, Roarers, Circling-boys, Twibills, Blades, Tityre-tu’s, Oatmeals, &c., infested the streets, almost with impunity, from the days of Elizabeth down to the beginning of the last century. Some of the Titrye-tu’s, not long after the appearance of this drama (1624), appear to have been brought before the Council, and thus committed on a suspicion of state delinquency: had they been sent to be flogged in Bridewell, it would have been at least as wise. The names of two of them incidentally appear, - A. Windsor and George Chambers: 'madcaps' they call themselves. The badge of their order was a blue ribbon: the Oatmeals are usually coupled with them. 'So! Now I am a Blade, and of a better row' (higher class?) 'than those of Titrye-tu or Oatmeal-ho!' Covent Garden Weeded [by Brome]. The Oatmeals are alluded to by Cartwright [in The Ordinary], under a pretended mistake, for Ottomans. "My son [a Roaring boy] shall have the Turkish monarchy! [...]Great Andrew Mahomet!" "Andrew Oatmeal-man! Oatmeal-man Andrew" &c. - The Titrye-tu’s were committed to prison on the charge (they say) of "my Lord of Canterbury;" and they do not forget to triumph over the misfortune which embittered his declining years:
"If he were but behind me now,
And should this ballad hear,
Sure he’d revenge with bended bow
And I die like a deer."
The Works of John Ford ed. Rev. Alexander Dyce 3 vols. (London, 1869), vol. 3, p. 113.
McClure prints 'Catmeal', misreading a feintly-printed passage in the Library of Congress 24031999 copy. The word is clear in other copies and just readable as 'Oatmeal' in the Library of Congress copy. [go to text]

n768   watching of him Nick means 'by keeping him awake'. See OED watch v 1. [go to text]

n769   Men are apt to believe strange fancies in their liquor, and to entertain new opinions. Anthony makes a series of sententious statements in this scene, all worthy but all dull. The dialogue seems to confirm that, for good and ill, he is not naturally one of the wild crew of riotous young men: too moral and insufficiently witty. [go to text]

gg1680   pottles a measure of capacity for liquids (also for corn and other dry goods, rarely for butter), equal to two quarts (four pints or half a gallon): now abolished (OED 1) [go to text]

gg1688   Italic Italian or Italianate [go to text]

gg1689   less unless [go to text]

n773   little rogue Mihil’s word-choice is hardly complimentary or suggestive of affection for Lucy. In the company of his peers, the young male roisterers, Mihil repeatedly downplays this relationship. [go to text]

n774   virtue A play on virtue=power or might and, ironically, virtue=goodness [go to text]

n775   I thought now I was sworn into this Brotherhood, I might have sworn what and as much as I would. Clotpoll is puzzled that having joined a dissolute society, he is forbidden swearing, the reverse of what he expected. There is also a play on swearing as pledging and swearing as cursing or blaspheming. [go to text]

n776   furnish the mouth with some affected protestation Driblow swings directly into these affected protestations, but it’s not clear whether Clotpoll realises immediately that these are examples. [go to text]

n777   ’Ud A contraction of 'God'. [go to text]

gg1690   “I protest” 'protest' has many contemporary uses, but can be used in a commercial context: 'to make a formal written declaration of the non-acceptance or non-payment of (a bill of exchange) when duly presented' (OED v. 2a) [go to text]

n778   City-word The City was also more militantly reformed in doctrine than much of the rest of England, so 'protest' may be a reference to 'Protestant' also, with the sense that heart-on-sleeve religiosity is a cover for ruthless commercial activity. [go to text]

n3131   Driblow This speech is misassigned to Clotpoll in the 1659 printing. The Folger Shakespeare Library B4872 ms. annotator corrects this. [go to text]

n2945   French balls Driblow is encouraging the younger men to engage in an energetic dance-like performance and he makes the analogy with the French balls famous across Europe. He may be thinking especially of the galliard, which literally means a sprightly, energetic man. The galliard as a dance prized vigour and athleticism, and it would suit the hyper-masculine competitiveness Driblow is encouraging.
There is no Stage Direction indicating a dance, but the passage ends with '[Up with their battoons'. This suggests that the verbal game has been accompanied by stylised play with their battons, rather like Morris Dance stick clashing. [go to text]

n779   vapours Vapours (OED n3) are the fumes generated by a particular vehemence and excitability of the humours. However, as with humoral pathology, there seems to be no very precise use of the term here. Rather, the vapours are a metaphor for a kind of giddiness. [go to text]

n780   I’ll make a third man. The young men move quickly and easily into a game of verbal wit, taking up each other’s words, often in slightly fantastical ways, contradicting, disputing, teasing and taunting. This is similar to the games of vapours in Bartholomew Fair (4.4.2-97), though Brome’s players seem less governed by their humours (or alcohol) and more aware that they are engaging in something close to ritual, as the Captain’s congratulation - ''tis very well performed' - confirms. Brome seems to scorn them less. See Michelle O'Callaghan, The English Wits: Literature and Sociability in Early Modern England , pp. 54-56. [go to text]

n3280   [They raise] their battoons. 1659: [Up with their battoons [go to text]

n781   Part fair OED fair adv. 2.b.: on good terms. It may be that the game has either reached its ritual conclusion - raising the battons as though to strike each other - or that the players are in fact becoming incensed and likely to fall to blows. [go to text]

n782   qualify As with his injunction to 'part fair', the Captain’s proposal that they 'qualify this bout' with a round of alcohol is ambiguous. Qualify may mean regulate or bring to a proper condition (OED qualify v 10) or it may mean calm or pacify (OED qualify v 9). [go to text]

n783   state-surgeon Cockbrain pronounces himself the surgeon searching the commonwealth’s wounds or injuries, and then curing it. [go to text]

gg3124   rankly of a luxuriant, gross or coarse quality; gross, highly offensive or loathsome; (in later use especially) grossly coarse or indecent [go to text]

n4270   Look upon me, ye Commonwealth’s men, now Like a state-surgeon, while I search and try The ulcerous core of foul enormity. These are a parcel of those venomous weeds, That rankly pester this fair garden plot. Whose boisterous growth is such, that I must use More policy than strength to reach their root, And hoist them up at once. This is my way to get within ’em. Cockbrain's move into iambic pentameter verse communicates his self-image as the heroic magistrate.
The first two lines of this speech are set as prose in the 1659 printing, but they are clearly iambic pentameter, like the rest of the speech. [go to text]

n855   mumpers OED cites usages in The Weeding of Covent Garden but says the precise sense is unclear. Clearly, Brome's characters think that, as well as beggar, the word connotes prostitute. Here almost surely a sexually active woman, a prostitute, 'a goer' in colloquial modern English [go to text]

n3132   [Drawer] There is no Speech Prefix in the 1659 printing. Nick's speech is followed by '(Within) By and By.' Neither the Stage Direction nor the Drawer's response is italicized or otherwise differentiated from Nick's speech. [go to text]

n3350   [Heard offstage] 1659: (Within) [go to text]

n784   Are you one of ’em, sir? Nick asks Cockbrain if he is an employee of or licenced worker at the tavern. [go to text]

n785   has the favour Cockbrain asserts that he is permitted or has the privilege to entertain in the tavern (OED favour n 3 c). [go to text]

gg917   quality? a word with multiple possible meanings including profession and professional standing or ability (when reference is to actors); also referring to class and social standing (OED 3a [pertaining to class]; OED 1b and 2b [pertaining to ability]) [go to text]

n787   to speak or sing ex tempore upon any theme Extempore versification was prized and practiced in the literary societies from which such clubs as the Philoblathici descended. [go to text]

n788   [NICHOLAS throws a] glass [of sack in COCKBRAIN’s] face 1659: '[Glasse in's face. [go to text]

gg1967   chawing a variant of chew (OED) [go to text]

n790   flour Clotpoll beats Cockbrain with his battoon; stage direction added. [go to text]

n789   [CLOTPOLL beats COCKBRAIN with his battoon] 1659: Flower. The metaphor is of bread baking. [go to text]

n791   it shall down. Clotpoll is complacently thrilled by his newly-discovered ability to make the cruel and facile jokes characteristic of his fraternity. [go to text]

n3889   Roman resolution Cockbrain attributes to himself a Stoic capacity for suffering without complaint for the sake of the public good. [go to text]

n2208   [NICHOLAS] kicks [COCKBRAIN] 1659: [kicks him. [go to text]

n792   tire upon him. He will not only attack Cockbrain as a first exercise of the bullying violence of his club, but he will continue until exhausted. The analogy is drawn from hunting. See OED, flesh v 1. [go to text]

gg1691   a man, and of my hands a man of valour, skill or practical ability (OED cites Sir Robert Naunton's account of the reign of Elizabeth, Fragmenta regalia (1641, posthumously published after his death in 1635), in his description of Lord Hudson: 'He loved sword and buckler men, and such as our Fathers were wont to call men of their hands') [go to text]

n794   on both sides. A mercenary, Cockbrain seems to mean, or perhaps as having been on both winning and losing sides. However, the young men seem to wish to take everything as obscene, and so there may be a common double-entendre in the reference to 'Low Countries'. They may imply then that 'on both sides' suggests that Cockbrain engages in both hetero- and homosexual acts. [go to text]

n795   out of countenance. Discomforted, but also a joke about Janus, picking up on 'face of war', but also the sexual connotations of Cockbrain’s speech. [go to text]

n796   Fenner Probably refers to William Fennor, the pamphleteer and antagonist of John Taylor the Water Poet. See Anna E. C. Simoni, 'William Fennor, Alias Wilhelmus Vener, Enghelsman', Neophilologus 62 (1978) 151-60 and 'A postscript to the bilingual poet' Neophilologus 66 (1982) 638-639. On the titlepage of Fennors Defence (1625), he describes himself as 'his Maiesties Ryming Poet'. Cockbrain is claiming to have combined the roles of soldier and popular poet in the tradition of Fennor and poets of earlier generations such as Thomas Blenerhasset and George Gascoigne. [go to text]

n797   do his eyes stand right The Captain questions whether Cockbrain is still sober. [go to text]

n798   I will have sack. Nick is continuing to argue about the theme for Cockbrain’s song but the Drawer hears this as a request for more sack. Nick then responds to the drawer with a threat, but the Drawer has already gone about his business. The play suggests an ironic view of the Philoblathici: those with real work to do pay little attention to the young men’s antics. [go to text]

n2209   [DRAWER] takes [the] pot [to refill it] 1659: Takes pot [go to text]

n799   pump Probably means 'to subject (a person or thing) to a process likened to pumping, with the object of extracting something; to obtain something from by persistent effort; also, to drain, exhaust', OED pump 7. a. trans. Nick is accusing Cockbrain of stalling for time or seeking hints from others. [go to text]

n800   [COCKBRAIN sings] This song is placed before the prologue in the 1659 printing. [go to text]

n801   Away with all grief and give us more sack. In the 1659 text there is a stage direction at this point: '(Song. Now B. and Clot. askes Gabriel, Are you a brother. They fall in the burthen.)' However, Gabriel is not onstage in this scene; nor is any character conceivably identified by the initial 'B'. This can only refer to Betty, who is also absent. The annotator of Folger Shakespeare Library B4872 tries to sort this out, crossing out 'B. and Clotpoll asks Gabriel, Are you a brother' and Nicholas and Anthony’s next two lines. But it is more likely that the compositor has mistakenly placed here a reference in the manuscript to a different song, that in Act 4, scene 2, when Gabriel is confused about being a 'brother' and leads the party into dancing and singing. The final part of the stage direction - 'They fall in the burthen' - should be placed later in this scene, when Cockbrain sings again, this time a song with a refrain. Mihil and Anthony do join in that refrain, before stealing away while Cockbrain and Clotpoll are staring fixedly at each other. [go to text]

n3842   buttery sprights These spirits inhabited inns and taverns and were particularly implicated in adulterating drinks, or in punishing those who did so. [go to text]

n3843   ground looks blue The exact meaning of this phrase is unclear, but it seems to suggest the coming on of night, the twilight, when spirits begin to come abroad. [go to text]

n3133   Clotpoll 1n 1659, this speech is assigned to Cockbrain. [go to text]

n3844   [Pig] In the original text the name Pig and Pig's subequent line are set as part of Nick's previous speech. [go to text]

gg103   presently immediately (OED adv. 3); without delay [go to text]

n802   Paris Tavern Another real tavern in the Covent Garden neighbourhood. [go to text]

n803   mouth OED 4 b: orig. cant. A person who talks foolishly; a slow-witted or gullible person; a fool, a dupe. However, OED’s own citations reveal this to be an insufficient definition, failing to make explicit the connection with money. Charles Cotton in The Compleat Gamester (1674) advises a naïve player that, if he submits meekly to being cheated of payment by a 'dry fist', one who has no intention to pay if he loses, 'the whole Gang will be watching ever and anon an opportunity to make a Mouth of you in the like nature'. Cotton completes the paragraph containing this advice, 'We need no other testimony to confirm the danger of associating with these Anthropo-phagi, or Man-Eaters, than Lincolns Inn Fields whilst Spearings Ordinary was kept in Bell-yard, and that you need not want a pair of Witnesses for the proof thereof, take in also Covent-Garden' (p. 9). By 1674, the battle for respectability so confidently declared won in the 1640 Prologue to The Weeding of Covent Garden had been decisively lost. [go to text]

n804   Turkey merchant Clotpoll plays on the ambiguity of Turkey, either the place in the Levant or the bird. A 'Turkey merchant' could mean someone who engaged in the Levant trade; or it could mean a poulterer. This ambiguity was famously exploited by Horne Tooke (1736-1812) when quizzed on his social origins at Eton (his father sold poultry and had been appointed supplier of poultry to Frederick, Prince of Wales). Clotpoll’s verbal play is about farmyard animals. Turkey merchants dealt in commodities of all sorts from the Levant but there was often an air of the rogue about them in this period, with the suspicion that they dealt in stolen or contraband goods. Nonetheless, Clotpoll's joke is a sign of the steadily increasing prominence of overseas trade and 'Turkey merchants' in early modern London: 'The increasing importance of these trades, and more especially the intimately connected Levant and East India trades, ... is a central feature of early Stuart commercial history' (Robert Ashton, The City and the Court, 1603-1643 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 15). [go to text]

n805   I am in haste, sir Pig, the servant, like the Drawer before him, has no time for the stale and forced repartee of the Philoblathici. [go to text]

n3135   Clotpoll In 1659 this speech is assigned to Pig, but he has already left the stage. Anthony is asking Clotpoll to explain his joke. [go to text]

n2171   reckoning The account of what is owed, as in a tavern account, the bill for the evening’s entertainment, or a debt. [go to text]

n3136   Let's 1659: Let [go to text]

n3137   [Drawer] In 1659 there is no Speech Prefix and the Drawer's speech in response to the Captain's question is set as part of the latter's speech. Given that the Captain ends with 'Drawer', the compositor has probably skipped the Speech Prefix, thinking he has already set that word. [go to text]

n3845   father Anthony bids farewell to Captain Driblow as his 'father', the leader of the fraternity. This is ironic, because, as Anthony will discover later, his real father, Cockbrain, is beside him in disguise. [go to text]

n807   Bloomsbury Like the Covent Garden district itself, Bloomsbury was on the brink of transformation in the seventeenth century. The property of the earls of Southampton, until merged through marriage with the Bedford estates in the eighteenth century, Bloomsbury was in 1600 largely agricultural and dominated by the Southampton’s manor house, later Montague House, the site of the British Museum. But as London continued its extraordinary growth, irregular residential development took place, and the district, like Covent Garden, acquired a reputation for lax morality and unregulated conduct. The pattern of squares, gardens, and orderly grid streets that now characterises the district is largely a product of eighteenth-century urban planning. [go to text]

n808   second article of your Oath. Clotpoll has forgotten that he is not to disclose any information about a fellow member of the Philoblathici that might be used to identify him. He is, indeed, overheard by that aspiring magistrate, Cockbrain. [go to text]

gg1692   bate to reduce or forgive, as in rebate [go to text]

n811   rent It is ironic that the landlord may well be Rooksbill, Nick’s father. Nick’s silence on this point suggests once again his moral slipperiness. In Act 1, scene 2, when he thought such information might gain him advantage with Dorcas through intimidation and barely-concealed threats, Nick was only too willing to disclose that his father was a major property owner in the district. [go to text]

n810   Pray let me see the bill before you pay it. Anthony’s willingness to scrutinize the bill or reckoning marks him as no real gallant. See Thomas Dekker, The Guls Horne-book (1609): 'When the terrible reckoning (like an inditement) bids you hold up your hand, and that you must answer it at the bar; you must not abate one penny in any particular, no, though they reckon cheese to you, when you have neither eaten any, nor could ever abide it, raw or toasted: but cast your eye only upon the totals and no further: for to traverse the bill would betray you to be acquainted with the rates of the market: nay, more; it would make the vintners believe you were pater-familias, and kept a house which, I assure you, is not now in fashion' (p. 35). Significantly, Cockbrain praises his son’s citizen-like attention to detail, revealing their affinity and marking them both as less than fashionable. Nick does ask to 'abate one penny', or rather three; perhaps his station is not entirely secure. [go to text]

n4264   Well, I can hold it then. The general meaning of this exchange is clear: Nicholas is more than happy not to receive the bill, which passes to Anthony for checking and then to Clotpoll for payment. The exact meaning of Nicholas's line is unclear, however. [go to text]

n812   Ha’ you no men below The drawer asks if the amount listed doesn’t include some food and drink consumed by their servants, 'below'. [go to text]

n813   bar Anthony plays on the different meanings of bar. A barrister is said to have been 'called to the bar' (OED bar n 24). Dekker uses the same pun (see note 810). [go to text]

n3394   there will be a law for you one o’ these days Kaufmann notes (p. 70) that 'there was a royal proclamation, dated February 1633-34 (o.s.), which fixed ceiling prices on poultry, eggs, butter, etc.'. [go to text]

n814   Is ’t right cast Is the addition correct? [go to text]

n9056   [DRAWER] The 1659 edition simply has 'Ex.' at the end of Cockbrain's line, with no indication of who leaves the stage. Cockbrain, Anthony, Nicholas, and Clotpol continue talking, however, and the Drawer re-enters some lines later. [go to text]

gg1693   twink wink an eye (OED v. 1) [go to text]

n2172   In praise of the Battoon, and if you miss it you shall be sure on’t. Sing well about the Battoon or you will be beaten with it. [go to text]

n816   Set your eyes Nick has set Cockbrain and Clotpoll up with a staring competition, with the result that they are not aware of his and Anthony’s escape without paying. [go to text]

n2210   [COCKBRAIN sings. COCKBRAIN and CLOTPOLL stare fixedly at each other. NICHOLAS and ANTHONY join in the refrain initially but exit undetected during the song] 1659: Song [go to text]

gg1962   partisan a member of a small body of light or irregular troops operating independently and engaging in surprise attacks, etc.; a guerrilla (OED Partisan n1, 2) [go to text]

n8824   [CLOTPOLL gives COCKBRAIN money] Cockbrain seems to have succeeded in singing ex tempore without looking away or 'pumping'. [go to text]

n2211   Enter DRAWER The Stage Direction has been moved up in this edition. [go to text]

n818   full sum Actually, Clotpoll had his money returned to him by Nick. Either there’s a confusion or missing moment or Clotpoll is getting the hang of forcing others to pay up, to make a 'mouth' of others: Cockbrain funds them here. [go to text]

n819   I may make bold with their words He uses expostulations more than 'I protest' because those members of the Philoblathici to whom they properly belong are out of earshot. [go to text]

n3138   show 1659: shoune. McClure: show. The OED does not list this as a variant of show, but Clotpoll may be using a country dialect variant that connects to the Old English etymology of the modern word. [go to text]

n3139   I vow, 1659, McClure: 'I vow, (the words out) here'. This reading makes no obvious sense and so the phrase '(the words out) here' have been omitted. I suspect that the compositor has misinterpreted annotation to the playbook: someone in the printing house has noted a problem with the manuscript -- 'the word's out [in error, missing, or misplaced] here' -- and the compositor has assumed that the annotation is part of Clotpoll's speech. The word 'out' is used with this sense in The Winter's Tale 2.1.73, when Leontes loses his train of thought under the pressure of emotion: 'oh, I am out'. Even more pertinently, Joseph Moxon in Mechanick exercises on the whole art of printing (1683) describes how to indicate an omission occuring during composition: 'If a whole Sentence be Left out, too long to be writ in the Margin, he makes the mark of Insertion where it is Left out, and only Writes (Out) in the Margin' (p. 248). [go to text]

n820   And after all my sufferings, if at last, The final two lines are set as verse in the 1659 text, making the couplet rhyme more obvious. Although the beginning of this sentence is set as prose, it is an iambic pentameter and so set here as verse. Ending a scene on a couplet is conventional; here, however, it also allows Cockbrian to display his self-delusion and self-satisfaction as the weeder of the garden. [go to text]

n3140   LUCY and KATHERINE enter Video 1659: Scæn. 2. Enter Lucie, Katharine, Belt. McClure: Enter Lucy, Katherine.
Belt does not speak in this part of the scene and is marked separately as entering within a few lines of its end. McClure deletes him from the entrance here, as does this edition. However, keeping him onstage, as a silent but significant character, overhearing the women's conversation while they to differing degrees ignore someone who is only a servant, offers fascinating possibilities for staging. Belt's overhearing of dangerous, and thus potentially useful, secrets would be consistent with his role in the play: several times he overhears and then reveals sensitive information when he thinks he might derive benefit.
Staging the scene with Belt present from the outset, though it would probably not survive in a full performance, highlights the tensions and dangers of the interchange between Katherine and Lucy. Lucy is acting as hostess or landlady, a proxy for her father Rooksbill; her relationship in one aspect is commercial or professional. But both she and Katherine know that they may soon be related, by virtue of Lucy's marriage to Katherine's brother Mihil. The two women have to navigate their way from one relationship to another, with all that that entails of shifting power and class relations. This is done through the sharing of somewhat shaming family secrets (at least by Katherine); by Lucy more freely acknowledging sexual motives and conduct in ways not usually done in bourgeois conversation; in changes of diction and syntax. All this is complicated by the presence of a male servant, which intensifies both the class and gender negotiations of the two women.
The conversation between Katherine and Lucy occurs at the midpoint of the play. From this point onwards, the plot will hurtle forward, with multiple plot lines being resolved at breakneck speed. Brome has Katherine and Lucy recapitulate major elements of the story, and Katherine is given lines that enable the actor to insist that the audience pay attention. In the workshop exploration of the exchange, Richard Cave pointed out that the audience knows virtually all the information given in Katherine's exposition, but it has not known what is or is not significant, nor how different plot elements connect. The scene's dense exposition is carefully structured and expressed, gathering up the audience to ensure that everyone is 'up to speed' before proceeding. [go to text]

n2212   Let me now bid you welcome to my father’s house Video The opening exchanges between Lucy and Katherine are dominated by possessive pronouns, a powerful indication of the powerlessness of the women in the play, which is only too well recognized by these characters. Their opening exchanges emphasise 'his' and their subjection to their fathers.
The exchange is also fascinating for the cautious and respectful manner in which Lucy approaches Katherine, perhaps not only because of the difference in their status but also because she is not sure whether Katherine will be trustworthy. Lucy's first speech is distanced, a commercial formulation, even slightly legal in its caution. [go to text]

n7337   Indeed, I am glad that my father yielded to your father’s friendly request in it Video Katherine's reply, with its exaggerated emphasis on both young women as proxies for their fathers, without power to express their own wills, begins the process of creating a more intimate relationship between them. Subjection to their fathers is an experience common to them; acknowledging it creates a shared space in which intimacy can develop.
Throughout exploration of the scene, the director Brian Woolland and the actors kept trying to discern and mark the stages of the journey from wary reserve to complicity and intimacy. This was all the more complex given that the scene is not solely naturalistic. As exposition becomes more prominent, so the actors addressed the audience more, archly acknowledging the theatricality and humour of the scene. In a speech such as this there seemed almost an element of stand-up comedy. [go to text]

n7345   sweet sister. Indeed I’ll call you sister always Katherine's heavy use of 'sister' shows her trying hard to break down Lucy's reserve. [go to text]

n821   Why, you would not have him too, sister, would you? Video Katherine’s slightly or potentially off-colour joking has something of the quality of Mary Crawford’s inappropriate speech in Mansfield Park (Vol. 1, Ch. 6): '"Certainly, my home at my uncle's brought me acquainted with a circle of admirals. Of Rears and Vices, I saw enough. Now, do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat". Edmund again felt grave, ....'. Lucy Rooksbill does not have the security of gentry status and perhaps shows her city morality by failing to join in, at least initially. Katherine’s secure status permits her to get away with such a transgression; Lucy has no such latitude. But Katherine's conduct is a kind of invitation to Lucy to emerge from her cautious reserve, to establish a more intimate relationship. The actors sought to mark this by having Katherine at this point force Lucy, previously standing and looking at a non-commital tangent, to engage in direct eye-contact. In performance there was a sense of Lucy discovering new emotional possibilities.
However, there is again a hint of a potential incest plot: Crosswill has already appraised Lucy’s person and will do so again in the final act. As a widower, there is nothing to prevent him from marrying Lucy himself. Katherine's joke -- maybe Lucy does want Crosswill for herself -- may have an edge to it. Lucy could become not her sister but her step-mother. [go to text]

n7339   His consent I would Already the male pronouns are becoming bewildering: just who is 'he' in these speeches? The confusion possibly suggests the difficulties of this play's female characters making their way through a universe of almost undifferentiated male power. [go to text]

n3141   one [of the] fathers 1659: one fathers. This emendation is also made by the National Art Library Dyce 25.E.45 ms. annotator. [go to text]

n3142   Dutch Church at five and twenty. Calvinism dominated the Protestantism of the Low Countries and Lucy associates excessive and ostentatious sobriety and seriousness with them. No gentleman, she says, least of all a man of twenty-five, would countenance presenting himself in this way. [go to text]

n822   But you were about to tell me The pronouns here are confusing. 'He' in Katherine's previous speech refers to Mihil: he was almost unable to keep up the pretence because the noise of the tavern was so intoxicating. But here 'he' must refer to Gabriel and how he became a Puritan.
This is another of Lucy's interventions to steer Katherine back to telling the story. Lucy's phrases of encouragement and reminder almost resemble prompts to the other actor. [go to text]

n7343   observation Video Katherine is instructing not only Lucy to pay attention, but also the audience. 'Observation' and 'observe' (in Lucy's next line) are followed by 'note' and more injunctions ('mark') to pay attention as the scene progresses. In the workshop performance, the actors experimented with different degrees of interaction with the audience, the director Brian Woolland encouraging them to range up to a point which would be too much for a full staging but which demonstrated the degree to which the actor appeared simultaneously with the character. [go to text]

gg103   presently immediately (OED adv. 3); without delay [go to text]

n823   So The actors need to determine how to interpret Lucy’s concise responses in this dialogue. One possibility is that her reservedness communicates the tension of the relationship, as she reveals little in response to Katherine's revelations. In this interpretation she resembles Horatio in Hamlet (5.2.1-82), when he is extremely cautious in responding to news of the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. It may be that Lucy’s reserve indicates that she is aware of the ambiguity of Dorcas’s status.
Alternatively, the scene could be played with silences following her interjections, making clear Katherine's difficulties in speaking so openly to a stranger of her family's disfunction. [go to text]

n826   Nay, mark, I pray you, as I would entreat an auditory, if I now were a poet, to mark the plot and several points of my play, that they might not say when ’tis done, they understood not this or that, or how such a part came in or went out, because they did not observe the passages Video Such a speech is bound to provoke laughter in a theatre, as it did in the reading at the Globe Theatre in London in the 'Read not Dead' series. The metatheatricality acknowledges the contrived nature of the play and complexity of the plot, and also that it is much to do with disguise and assumed and created identities. However, the admonition to the audience to pay close attention to this piece of exposition is only too necessary at this stage.
In the workshop exploring the scene, the actors and director experimented with different degrees of openness in the acknowledgement of the audience. The scene seems to demand more rather than less explicitness in addressing this admonition to the audience. Thereafter, the actors maintained this contact, but through glances at individual audience members; having made this unambiguous metatheatrical statement, they could be understated for the rest of the scene. [go to text]

gg1694   auditory audience [go to text]

gg1695   several different, separate [go to text]

gg3106   fry children [go to text]

gg3172   quiet undisturbed, free from interference [go to text]

n3846   sport still, for there is almost none of his sect holds any other game lawful Lucy refers to the Puritan opposition to all forms of sport; the controversy over traditional games and pastimes has already been mentioned in connection with Gabriel's Puritanism. See [NOTE n362]. Here, Lucy on one level says that the only form of entertainment allowed ('lawful') by Puritans ('his sect') is military training or playing soldiers. However, Katherine has gone on to say that playing the soldier was also a way of seducing young women: 'there was not a handsome maid in an whole county could be quiet for him'. Lucy maybe implies that the Puritans hypocritically find the 'sport' of seduction allowable too. [go to text]

n3847   reverend bishop The 1630s saw growing controversy over the episcopacy, the validity and authority of which had been in question since Calvinism became a powerful strain in English protestantism in the 1560s. The Laudian episcopacy was increasingly attacked by some as corrupt and scarcely reverend, and this line may well have elicited a wry chuckle from sections of the original audience. Writings by such as John Bastwick (Elenchus religionis papisticae (1624, 1627; republished (often) as Flagellum pontificis et episcoporum Latialium (1634)) and Alexander Leighton (Sion's Plea Against the Prelacy (1629)) were notorious during the period of this play's first performances. [go to text]

n827   London This is the sole use of the word 'London' in the play. [go to text]

n828   though he showed like a lord there Rooksbill is a citizen and of inferior class, at least in the eyes of country gentry like the Crosswill family. But money, however accumulated, seems to be able to claim whatever status it likes once in the country. If gentility, honour, and virtue are defined only by the outward signs of clothing and accessories, there is nothing to differentiate the well-dressed upstart from the prince. This connects with Mihil's complaint about the pernicious effects of money in Act 2, Scene 1. But such caste disdain is undercut by the irony that Katherine is speaking of Lucy's own family. It is certainly true that Crosswill's younger son is the one who marries into trade or commerce; but there seems little sign in the play that Gabriel will mature enough to marry and beget legitimate heirs. The danger of educating and marrying a younger son without regard to the possibility that he might become the heir are well embodied in the career of John (Jack) Verney, younger son of Sir Edmund. Born in 1640, Jack Verney became a merchant in the Levant, then London; married first the daughter of a draper; but inherited the baronetcy and the estates after his elder brother predeceased their father. Ironically, it was this City-culture son who guided the family to higher status, becoming Baron Verney of Belterfast and Viscount Fermanaugh (Irish peerage) in 1703. (See Adrian Tinniswood, The Verneys (London: Cape, 2007), Ch. 23 in particular. [go to text]

n4586   my old lord his father Katherine is unaware that she is referring to Rooksbill, Lucy's own father; Lucy does not know this either. The breezy jocularity is ironic. [go to text]

n7348   clapped her you may guess where Video Katherine's starkly Anglo-Saxon verb is almost vulgar. It is both potentially shocking and also liberating for Lucy. [go to text]

n829   slippery Trojan Aeneas, who seduced and abandoned Dido. [go to text]

n7347   O devilish rascal! Video Katherine's almost rakish jocularity could be played as having its effect here, permitting Lucy (and the audience) to take a certain pleasure is risque conversation. [go to text]

n4587   that villain would be hanged. Again, the audience recognizes the irony that, unknown to her, Lucy is condemning her own brother. [go to text]

gg1696   would should [go to text]

n7346   Why then do you desire him to get you a husband? Video Lucy here seems to be playing the 'straight man' in this double-act, offering Katherine opportunities to say revealing and funny things. But Lucy is also acting as a proxy for the audience, which is working hard to assimilate new information and, more importantly, to sort through knowledge acquired earlier in the play to discern the plot and relative importance. In the workshop exploration of the play it became clear that Brome at times makes Lucy especially slow on the uptake -- she is the least perceptive member of Katherine's audience. Lucy's slowness becomes another of the ways in which the scene gives the audience permission to laugh in complicity. The audience, as Marion O'Connor pointed out, feel superior to Lucy and enjoy the feeling that they understand more than her. [go to text]

n4589   can wish now that I had had his son. The audience must not linger here, for the play provides no reason why Katherine and Anthony should not get married, now that their fathers are in agreement. [go to text]

n3848   There’s another youth now gone on love’s pilgrimage, e’er since your father crossed him in your love not to be heard of Lucy's jocular phrasing makes this slightly unclear on the page: Katherine and Anthony's love was not tolerated by their fathers, hence it is their 'love not to be heard of'. [go to text]

n7349   Hush! the old men. Video Katherine's irreverend reference to their fathers is something Lucy would not have joined in with at the scene's beginning; it is a measure of the distance the two women have travelled in their relationship. In the workshop exploration of the scene, the actors also used the stage space to indicate that journey, moving across the stage and towards the audience to indicate greater intimacy between them and also with the audience.
The scene could be static, with the actors trapped by exposition; but by the end of the workshop staging it had several different kinds of vitality: physical, psychological, and theatrical in the sense that the actors and audience shared the experience of thinking about the play's structure and acknowledging its complexities and contrivances. What could have been seemed somewhat leaden on the page was revealed as funny and energising on the stage. [go to text]

gg103   presently immediately (OED adv. 3); without delay [go to text]

gg1697   dogbolt Applied to a person as a term of contempt or reproach. Perhaps originally the term meant a 'mere tool to be put to any use' or 'one at the command of another'; but generally defines a 'contemptible fellow, mean wretch'. Now obsolete. [go to text]

n832   I should get a child Part of the egotistical sublime of these fathers, that they speak of 'child' when they mean 'grandchild'. [go to text]

n4590   These new walls do so stink of the lime, methinks. Katherine is clearly referring to more than the newly-constructed building here. Her insult encompasses the upstart Rooksbill family and exposes her father's class-based disdain. Her strategy is, no doubt, to provoke him to back down in response, thus using his own 'crossness' and perversity to defuse his snobbery. [go to text]

n2173   Marry, fough. Goody Foist Crosswill knows he is being manipulated by his daughter, but he is nonetheless unable to resist the bait. Her pretend squeamishness and enthusiasm to leave force him to cross her and confirm that they will remain. [go to text]

gg1963   , fough an exclamation of abhorrence or disgust (OED) [go to text]

gg2801   Goody a term of civility formerly applied to a woman, usually a married woman, in humble life; often prefixed as a title to the surname; hence, a woman to whose station this title is appropriate (OED Goody 1a) [go to text]

gg441   Foist a cheat or a rogue (OED n4) [go to text]

n4591   I’ll look to my bargain. Crosswill as ever is inconsistent, opposing whatever has been last said. Having threatened to depart Rooksbill's house on class grounds, the moment his landlord expresses the desire to be rid of his new tenant Crosswill becomes fixated on the fulfilment of the bargain to provide him with lodging. [go to text]

n3849   I’ll look to my bargain. ] I'le have look to my bargain
Deletion of 'have' makes this grammatically correct and comprehensible. This appears to be another currente calamo correction in the manuscript; the compositor has set what he sees, rather than correcting the grammar. [go to text]

n2213   [CROSSWILL beats BELT] Crosswill gives Belt something, which could conceivably be a tip for the bearer of the message. But Belt says 'I must suffer', so it is likely that he is beaten as so often in the play. [go to text]

n3386   I beat all the rest o’ th’ bushes As Steggle comments (p. 51), Belt is misled by the fact that so many unlicensed drinking places are attempting to evade detection by not displaying the traditional sign of a tavern. He puns on 'bushes', the signs of drinking establishments, to present his search in terms of a forest hunt. [go to text]

n833   my son’s sanctity A contemptuous reference to Gabriel’s religiosity. [go to text]

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