Epilogue

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n8573   5.1 Like Act 2, Act 5 consists of one long scene in a single location, in this case the ordinary itself. The scene opens with an extended comic sequence in which Magdalen and Jane fulfil their ambition to come to the ordinary and learn about French behaviour and fashions. By this point in the play Magdalen, who has been accustomed to relatively thrifty living, is rather enjoying the introduction to the beau-monde that events have given her. While Alice is in on the plot and knows Frances’ true nationality and gender, Jane probably knows only what Alice has told her – that Frances teaches deportment and fashionable behaviour. The sequence is broken by the appearance of Wat, who after the indignities to which he was subjected in Act 4 is having second thoughts about Dryground’s scheme. The exchange with Magdalen and the other women culminates as Magdalen swoons and its taken off stage, accompanied by the bottle of wine from which she has been drinking throughout the scene. The scene is then set for the final revelations – of identity, allegiance and redemption – which are carefully stage-managed by Dryground and, especially, Valentine. Eventually, all of the play’s four fathers will be on stage simultaneously, and all of the younger generation. The only character not to appear in this scene is Trebasco, and it is possible that his role was doubled with another, perhaps that of Wat. (For further discussion of casting, see the Introduction.)

Dramaturgically, this is another of Brome’s large-scale scenes, but whereas the long scene in Act 2 created an ebb and flow among its characters as they exited and entered, here the energy builds towards the final conglomeration of characters on the stage. [go to text]

n8575   5.1 ] ACT. V. Scene I. [go to text]

n8576   [Enter] FRANCES, MAGDALEN, JANE, [and] ALICE. Frances, Magdalen, Jane, Alice. [go to text]

n8578   Très bien venue, Mesdames. You are very welcome. Video (You are) very welcome, ladies (French); Frances translates her own words in the second half of the line. In this extract from the workshop on this scene, Joseph Thompson (reading Frances) experiments with a wavering French accent, saying the first half of the line with a French accent and the second half with an English accent. [go to text]

n8577   Très bien venue, Mesdames. Video This is Frances’ most sustained performance as a ‘demoiselle’, and it has the same pattern of phonetic spellings to indicate the accent and snippets of French dialogue as the sequence in Act 3 in which she encounters Oliver. In terms of the play’s narrative, Frances is a young man impersonating a woman, and in the workshop on this scene we experimented with some different casting patterns available to us with our cast of two men and two women. In this reading of the sequence up to the entrance of Wat and Dryground after speech 911 [DM 5.1.speech911], Frances’s part is read by Hannah Watkins, in this version it is read by Joseph Thompson, and in this extract it is read by Alan Morrissey. These clips are in chronological order, and it is possible to see one actor picking up and developing details of performance from another’s reading. The original all-male casting would lend a greater plausibility to the cross-dressed character, as an audience would be conditioned to accept a character played by a male actor as female. This precise effect was not available on the day of the workshop, and instead we have a kind of gender-blind casting: in the first extract, Frances is played by a woman, and Alice and Jane are played by men; in the others Frances and Jane are played by men. It is nonetheless possible to see different effects that casting a man or a woman as Frances might create, and the different effects that actors of the same sex might achieve. See notes on the lines below for further comment on specific details of the scene.

In some ways, the sequence’s closest analogue is the ‘Spanish Lady’ scene in Act 4 of Jonson’s The Devil is an Ass (King’s Men, 1616), in which a young man, Wittipol, impersonates a woman who claims to be able to instruct the women of London in the use of cosmetics. It is therefore possible that an audience member who knew Jonson’s play may have begun to wonder about Frances’s true gender at this point. For further discussion, see the Introduction. [go to text]

n8585   Très bien venue, Mesdames. ] TRes bien venue Madames. [go to text]

gg5382   Good an exclamation along the same lines as ‘good heavens!’ or ‘good grief!’ [go to text]

gs1494   carriage bodily deportment, the correct ways of moving/behaving [go to text]

n8580   I will make bold with t’other glass of wine. Video Magdalen drinks regularly throughout the sequence, and various bits of physical business might be added to heighten the comedy. In this extract from the workshop on this scene, Alice (Hannah Watkins) and Jane (Alan Morrissey) attempt to water down the wine, and later take the glass away from Magdalen; see also this extract for another example, this time with Joseph Thompson playing Jane, in which the two younger women hover anxiously, waiting for their chance to take the glass. [go to text]

n8579   make bold with Make free with, take the liberty (to drink). [go to text]

gs1347   At a word, to speak plainly, to be honest (can also mean ‘in short’ or ‘briefly’) [go to text]

gs1495   carriage behaviour (OED n, 14a) [go to text]

gg5609   Mingle mix, blend [go to text]

n8581   This i.e. the glass of undiluted wine. [go to text]

n8582   can dream French enough Either (1) can speak enough French, or (2) have enough interest in French things. [go to text]

gg1268   hither, here (to this place) [go to text]

gg859   warrant assure, promise [go to text]

n8583   Madam-silly? A mispronunciation of Mademoiselle, which Frances corrects in the next line. [go to text]

n8584   Mademoiselle, s’il vous plaît. ] Madamoyselle, si vous plaist [go to text]

n8586   Mademoiselle, s’il vous plaît. Video Mademoiselle, if you please (French). See this extract from the workshop for an example of the way in which Frances might correct Magdalen. [go to text]

gs1496   find regard (OED v, 6a) [go to text]

n8587   She learn very well. The non-standard grammar here suggests that Frances continues to speak with a strong French accent. [go to text]

n8588   Have you not learned to carry a man? Video There is a heavy sexual innuendo in Magdalen’s speech here, which is picked up and intensified by Frances. See this extract from the workshop, in which Jenny McEvoy reads Magdalen. [go to text]

gg5610   carry succeed in obtaining (OED v, 15a); manage (OED 22a); bear up (as in sexual intercourse) (Williams, 1: 207-8) [go to text]

gg5611   waggishly, in a waggish (mischievous or wanton) manner [go to text]

n8258   an old ape has an old eye. This is a proverbial expression (Tilley A272); it also appears in William Rowley’s A Match at Midnight (Revels Company, c. 1622) and Robert Chamberlain’s The Swaggering Damsel (Beeston’s Boys, c. 1639). [go to text]

gs1497   Go to. an exhortation, equivalent to ‘come, come’ (OED go v, 93b) [go to text]

gs1498   matter, thing, affair [go to text]

n8589   I ask you how much carriage she has learned? Video In this extract from the workshop on this scene, Magdalen (read by Jenny McEvoy) assumes that Frances’s ‘What is that you say?’ means that she does not speak very much English, and she therefore says this line very slowly and clearly. [go to text]

n8590   dis This (said with a strong French accent). [go to text]

n8591   she carry both the hands already. Video That is: she can already position her hands correctly. See this extract from the workshop on this scene, in which Joseph Thompson reads Frances’s lines with a great deal of attention to the sexual innuendo in this and the following lines: it is accompanied by physical business, as Frances positions the arms and feet of Hannah Watkins’s Alice, and a sense of intimacy between the characters is created. An audience may be unsure as to the meaning of the innuendo: they may read it as female bawdy, as homosocial or lesbian intimacy between two women, or they may suspect Frances’s true gender. As Jenny McEvoy commented during the workshop, we have here two competing kinds of bawdy, one from Magdalen and one from Frances. [go to text]

gs1499   carry hold, position [go to text]

n8592   she shall carry the foot as well. That is: she shall position her foot correctly too. This carries a strong sexual innuendo, as the English word ‘foot’ sounds very like the French word foutre, which has the slang meaning of ‘to fuck’; compare the language lesson scene in Shakespeare’s Henry V (Chamberlain’s Men, 1599), in which Princess Katherine is informed by Alice, her waiting woman, that the English for pieds (feet) and robe (gown) are ‘De foot ... et de cown’ (Alice mispronounces ‘gown’ in a way that makes it sound like con, the French word for ‘cunt’). Katherine replies, ‘De foot et de cown? O Seigneur Dieu! Ils sont les mots de son mauvais, corruptible, gros, et impudique, et non pour les dames d’honneur d’user. Je ne voudrais prononcer ces mots devant les seigneurs de France pour tout le monde’ (3.4.47-52) (‘De foot and de cown? O Lord God, they are words with the most wicked, corrupting, gross and impudent sound, and not for ladies of honour to use. I would not say these words before the lords of France for all the world’). See [NOTE n8591] for commentary on the potential of this innuendo in performance. [go to text]

n8593   handling before footing Magdalen hammers home the sexual innuendo in Frances’s words. [go to text]

gg5614   handling touching, feeling (OED n, 1a); see also Williams, 2: 642-3, who quotes Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (King’s Men, c. 1604), in which Escalus proposes to question Isabella, ‘You shall see how I’ll handle her’, to which Lucio responds, ‘Not better than he, by her own report’ (5.1.270-1) [go to text]

gs1500   footing dancing (OED n, 2) and by extension other physical interaction; the stable positioning of the feet (OED n, 4a); Williams (3: 1236) notes that in The Family of Love (King’s Revels, c. 1607; published London, 1608), Master Purge, fearing his wife’s adultery, says, ‘I scent your footing, wife’ (sig. F1r); see also Williams 1: 525-6 on the associations between the word ‘foot’ and sexual intercourse [go to text]

n8595   dat That (said with a strong French accent). [go to text]

n8596   de leetle shild. The little child (said with a strong French accent). [go to text]

n8597   de ting, The thing (said with a strong French accent, and heavy sexual innuendo). [go to text]

n8598   de The (said with a strong French accent). [go to text]

gs1501   reverence. a gesture indicative of respect: here a curtsy (OED n, 2) [go to text]

n8599   dat is de gross English douck, That is the gross English duck (said with a strong French accent). [go to text]

gs1448   gross ‘brutally lacking in refinement or decency’ (OED a, 15) [go to text]

n8601   douck, Video Duck: ‘An instantaneous lowering of head or body; a rapid jerky bow or obeisance’ (OED n2, 2); Magdalen may look rather like a duck as she curtsies: see this extract from the workshop on this scene for an example of how it might be performed. See also William Cavendish and James Shirley, The Variety (King’s Men, 1641; published in The Country Captain and the Variety, Two Comedies Written by a Person of Honour, London, 1649), in which the French dancing master, Galliard, denounces Lucy’s reverence. When she protests, ‘’Tis the French fashion as you taught me, Monsieur’, he replies, ‘Oui, ’tis de French fashion, but de French fashion is always to change, and dis reverence displease a me very mush, because you go back, back vid your buttock, as if some vod take you by dat, to vat me vil give a no name’ (sig. C6r) [go to text]

gg5615   swag-buttocked-wife ‘having large swaying buttocks’ (OED, swag-belly) [go to text]

gg859   warrant assure, promise [go to text]

n8602   See how you carry de hands like de comedien dat act de shangling. Video That is: you carry the hands like the comedian [actor] that acts the changeling (said with a strong French accent). This may be a reference to the performance of one of two plays: Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s The Changeling, first performed by Lady Elizabeth’s Men in 1622 but revived in 1635 (see John R. Elliott, Jr., ‘Four Caroline Playgoers’, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 6 [1993], 179-93 [192]), in which Antonio poses as a changeling, or Brome’s own play The English Moor, performed by Queen Henrietta Maria’s Men 1637, in which Buzzard poses as the changeling Timsy (the ‘comedian’ in this case was Timothy Reade, who probably appeared in The Demoiselle). The ‘changeling’ in both of these plays is a character who is posing as someone who is cognitively/intellectually disabled. On the title page of The Wits (1662), a figure labelled ‘Changeling’ appears among other dramatis characters (Falstaff, Bubble from Greene’s Tu Quoque, etc.) [IMAGEEM_4_1]. He may be Buzzard or Antonio, and both of his hands are limp at the wrist: this may be how Brome envisaged Magdalen holding her hands as she curtsies. See these extracts from the workshop, in which Magdalen holds her hands in this manner, curtsying with enormous concentration, and Joseph Thompson and Alan Morrissey, reading Frances, imitate in varying ways the ‘comedian that acts the changeling’ [go to text]

gs1499   carry hold, position [go to text]

n8603   comedien actor (French) [go to text]

achieve it   hit on’t, [go to text]

gs833   trow? do you think [go to text]

n8605   I must take t’other glass. Video Magdalen has apparently emptied her glass at this point, and reaches for another one. See these readings of the full sequence up to the entrance of Dryground and Wat after speech 911 [DM 5.1.speech911] for the effect in performance of the constant replenishment. [go to text]

gg1418   crossing thwarting, opposing, or contravening (OED vbl n, 8) [go to text]

gs1502   familiar friendly, over-intimate [go to text]

gg5617   sea-coal mineral coal (coal in the usual sense), as distinguished from charcoal (OED sea-coal n, 2a) [go to text]

gg2366   coarse rough, unrefined [go to text]

gg3906   housewifery, management of household affairs, housekeeping (OED 1); thrift, economy (OED 1b) [go to text]

gs1503   courtly. in a polished or refined manner (as befitting the court) [go to text]

n8606   and all your other parts and members. Video In this extract from the workshop on this scene, Alan Morrissey (reading Frances) makes the innuendo clear. [go to text]

gs1504   parts characteristics, attributes (OED n, 12); genitals [go to text]

gg5618   members. parts of the body; sexual organs [go to text]

gg2242   win persuade, prevail upon (OED win v1, 9a) [go to text]

n8607   to love me courtly then. i.e. to make love to me (to woo me or to have sex with me) in a courtly fashion. [go to text]

n8608   To love and lie with you courtly. Video Frances again makes the innuendo in Magdalen’s speech explicit; in this extract from the workshop on this scene Joseph Thompson (reading Frances) creates intimacy with Magdalen in this line, which suggests the potential pathos of her reply. [go to text]

gs152   lie sleep with, have sex with [go to text]

n8610   That’s but seldom, This suggests that courtiers probably don’t make love to their wives very often; this may also be Magdalen’s wistful comment on the state of her own sex life. [go to text]

gs1505   doubt. fear [go to text]

gs1506   multiply increase, augment [go to text]

n8609   I will so multiply, then. Magdalen repeats Frances’s ‘multiply’, but it picks up an additional meaning, ‘breed’ or ‘cause (a family, population, etc.) to increase in numbers by reproduction or procreation’ (OED v, 3a). [go to text]

n8611   Not only in your looks, your smiles and sweet caresses, Video At this point Frances takes control of the sequence, as she talks Magdalen through various skills and techniques. See these extracts from the workshop on this scene, in which Frances (read by Joseph Thompson and Alan Morrissey) physically moves Magdalen around the stage. [go to text]

gg5619   caresses, ‘an action of endearment, a fondling touch or action, a blandishment’ (OED) [go to text]

gs1507   painting cosmetics [go to text]

gs1508   motion movement (with sexual innuendo); step, gesture [go to text]

gg5620   lineament contour, outline (OED 2) [go to text]

gs1509   frame structure [go to text]

gg5621   well-ordered ‘exhibiting good order; rightly regulated; carefully arranged; following good lines of conduct or procedure’ (OED a, 1) [go to text]

gg5622   unregarded, unseen, without being looked at [go to text]

n8612   geat Gait: way of moving (said with a strong French accent: this is the octavo’s spelling). [go to text]

gg5623   artifice ‘make or shape by artifice; to apply artifice to; to construct, contrive’ (OED) [go to text]

gg5624   nymph. semi-divine spirit in classical mythology, often the spirit of a river, tree, etc. (OED n1, 1); a slang term for a prostitute (OED n1, 2a); damsel, maiden (OED n1, 2b) [go to text]

n8614   [Sing[s]] ] [sing.]; in the octavo the stage direction is placed in the right hand margin [go to text]

n8613   ‘Diana and her darlings, dear, dear, dear’, etc. Video The first line of a ballad titled ‘A New Sonnet, Showing How the Goddess Diana Transformed Acteon into the Shape of a Hart’. The earliest extant copy (London, 1650), specifies the tune ‘Rogero’, which has not been traced. The opening lines read: ‘Diana and her darlings dear / went walking on a day / Throughout the woods and waters clear, / for their disport and play’. See Wood, ‘Music in Caroline Plays’, vol. 2, Appendix 1, 450. An alternative version of the lyric, titled ‘The History of Diana and Acteon’ can be found in Clement Robinson’s A Handful of Pleasant Delights (London, 1584), sig. B4r-6r. For the effect of these sung lines see these extracts from the workshop on this scene, in which Jenny McEvoy (reading Magdalen) improvises a tune for the lyric for the first two lines of the ballad. [go to text]

gg5625   paint, use cosmetics [go to text]

gg5626   allowably; excusably, legitimately [go to text]

n8615   Oh, most allowably; Nay, commendably. ] this appears as one line in the octavo [go to text]

gg5627   commendably. laudably [go to text]

n8616   T’other glass for that. i.e. I’ll drink to that. Magdalen apparently drinks again at this point. See [NOTE n8580] for further comment on these moments. [go to text]

gs1510   dressing, getting dressed, or elaborately arranging the hair [go to text]

gg5629   setting forth arranging in a certain manner, laying out (set v1, 144a (c)); adorning, decorating (set v1, 144g); exhibiting, displaying (set v1, 144j) [go to text]

n8620   To hide shame, or show all: i.e. either hide embarrassing features, or display everything [go to text]

gg5630   perceived, seen, detected [go to text]

gs1511   grace ‘attractive or pleasing quality or feature’ (OED n, 2a) [go to text]

n8621   I am for the naked neck and shoulders, then. That is: I am in favour of wearing a garment with a low neck so as to display the neck and shoulders. A low neck-line was fashionable in the 1630s: see, for example, Gilbert Jackson, A Lady of the Grenville Family and her Son (1640), Tate Britain. [go to text]

n8622   French flea-bites, Video Although Magdalen is talking about flea-bites, the addition of the word ‘French’ may suggest that she is also talking about the symptoms of venereal disease; compare Brome’s own The Jovial Crew, in which Oliver compares city women with female beggars: ‘Why, beggars are flesh and blood, and rags are no diseases. Their lice are no French fleas. And there is much wholesomer flesh under country dirt than city painting, and less danger in dirt and rags than in ceruse and satin’ [JC 3.1.speech467]. The line might be delivered to Frances, as it is in this extract from the workshop on the scene, or as an aside: see this extract, in which it is addressed to Alice and Jane. The latter reading encourages an audience to assume that Magdalen is thinking about the pox. [go to text]

n8623   ’T has been suggested by invective men, Video This speech is rather different in its effect from the previous exchange with Magdalen, as Frances broadens her argument about fashion to examine the origins of masculine stylistic affectations. As Joseph Thompson pointed out in the workshop on this sequence, it is structured rather like the routine of a stand-up comic, as different styles of dress are described and then insulted, with Frances perhaps picking out members of the audience as she speaks. Some of the fashions described are Jacobean rather than Caroline, conjuring the vision of a man of fifty still wearing the ‘long silk hose’ and short breeches of his youth. In this extract from the workshop, Alan Morrissey, reading Frances, makes use of the preceding discussion, picking out for Magdalen’s benefit men in the audience who might be wearing a fringe (‘brow-locks’) for various underhand reasons. Brome utilises this quasi-stand-up technique elsewhere, notably in The New Academy, in which Galliard’s long speech [NA 4.2.speech990] similarly focuses on issues of fashion: see [NOTE n6941] for discussion and extracts from the workshop on that sequence. The speech also parodies the tendency that Farah Karim-Cooper notes in anti-cosmetic tracts to reduce women ‘in long lists, to the parts of their bodies or the accoutrements that they might attach to their frames’ (Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama [Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006], 113); for further discussion see the Introduction. [go to text]

gg5631   invective abusive, vituperative (OED a, 1) [go to text]

gg5632   justify vindicate [go to text]

n8624   on ] one [go to text]

n8625   The fashion of men’s brow-locks i.e. wearing a fringe or bangs. [go to text]

gg5633   ill-graced unattractive [go to text]

n8626   The outward symptoms of some inward grief, This refers to lesions in the skin (chancres), which are a symptom of syphilis. [go to text]

gs1512   inward inner; intimate [go to text]

n8627   saffron-steeped linen, Linen collars dyed with yellow starch were fashionable in the 1610s and 1620s; interestingly, as Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass note, references to yellow starch recur in texts of the 1650s (the period when many of Brome’s plays, including The Demoiselle, were first printed) attacking James I, which draw on its association with the scandalous murder of Sir Thomas Overbury and with Ann Turner, who was hanged in November 1615 for her complicity in the murder. Turner wore a yellow collar and cuffs to her execution, and was widely (and erroneously) credited with having introduced the technique into England. See Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 59-85. [go to text]

n8628   found useful against vermin, Saffron was supposed to keep parasites away from clothes; Jones and Stallybrass quote Fynes Moryson on the poor folk of Ireland who, he writes, wore shirts ‘coloured with saffron to avoid lowsiness, incident to the wearing of foul linen’ (Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory, 67). [go to text]

gg2156   ta’en taken [go to text]

gs1513   wearing. style of clothing [go to text]

n8629   was no niggard of not stingy with [go to text]

gg5634   bring up bring into fashion (OED bring v, 27c) [go to text]

n8630   narrow brims i.e. on a hat [go to text]

gg5635   publish announce, proclaim [go to text]

n8631   ones, i.e. brims [go to text]

gg5636   questionless, unquestionably [go to text]

gg5637   neat-timbered well-built [go to text]

n8633   the tronks and long silk-hose. These are short trunks worn with long silk stockings, revealing the leg. See William Larkin’s George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (c. 1616), National Portrait Gallery, London. [go to text]

n8632   tronks Trunks (said with a strong French accent). [go to text]

gg5638   baker-knees, deformities of the legs (e.g. knock knees) that bakers were supposedly prone to (OED baker 5); in Pus-Mantia, the Mag-Astro-Mancer, or, The Magical-Astrological-Diviner Posed and Puzzled (London, 1652), John Gaule writes that ‘loose-kneed, signifies lascivious, and baker-kneed, effeminate’ (p. 186) [go to text]

gg5639   shamble-shanks, someone with deformed or ill-shaped legs [go to text]

n8634   The baker-knees, or some strange shamble-shanks, Begat the ankle-breeches. Compare James Shirley, The Gentleman of Venice (Queen Henrietta Maria’s Men, 1639 [possibly premiered in Dublin c. 1637]; published London, 1655), in which Malipiero castigates ‘men / Of state, who hide their warp’t legs in long gowns, / And keep their wisdom warm in furs like agues’ (sig. C7r). [go to text]

gg5640   ankle-breeches. breeches covering the whole of the legs [go to text]

gs1063   conceit conception, notion, idea [go to text]

gg5641   shows displays; displays ‘deliberately or ostentatiously in order to attract notice or win admiration’ (OED v, 8a) [go to text]

n8635   What woman shows A leg that’s not a good one? The erotic potential of female legs in the Caroline period is suggested in texts such as Robert Herrick’s ‘The Vision’: ‘Her legs were such Diana shows, / When tucked up she a-hunting goes; / With buskins shortened to descry / The happy dawning of her thigh’ (The Poems of Robert Herrick, ed. Leonard Cyril Martin [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965], 51). [go to text]

n8636   She shows a swaddled leg. Compare the stage business in George Chapman’s The Gentleman Usher (Children of the Chapel, c. 1602), in which the elderly (and increasingly tipsy) Corteza declares, ‘thank God, / I never was more sound of wind and limb’ and displays ‘a great bombasted [padded] leg’, saying, ‘Look you, I warrant you I have a leg, / Holds out as handsomely -’ (The Gentleman Usher, ed. John Hazel Smith [London: Edward Arnold, 1970], 2.1.26-9). Like Chapman’s play, The Demoiselle requires a boy actor to perform a caricature of aging female sexuality. [go to text]

n8637   She shows a swaddled leg. ] in the octavo this direction appears in the margins of this line and the following one [go to text]

gg5642   swaddled wrapped in bandages [go to text]

gg5643   attires) clothing [go to text]

gg5382   Good lack! an exclamation along the same lines as ‘good heavens!’ or ‘good grief!’ [go to text]

gs1514   parts? lands; characteristics, attributes (OED n, 12); genitals [go to text]

n8638   Enter DRYGROUND [and] WAT. ] Enter Dryground, VVat. [go to text]

n8639   I prithee, I pray thee: please [go to text]

gg295   base contemptible, degraded, unworthy [go to text]

gs1385   pander go-between, bawd [go to text]

gg5644   baseness— iniquity, contemptible behaviour [go to text]

gs1515   look you, pay attention; listen to me [go to text]

gs1516   pumped dunked under a water pump [go to text]

gs446   sport entertainment, amusement, recreation, diversion (OED n1, 1a) [go to text]

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

gg5645   ravenous ferocious, predatory (OED a, 1a) [go to text]

gg4154   trudge walk laboriously or wearily (OED v1, 1) [go to text]

gg3659   Heart, mild oath: by God's heart [go to text]

gg5646   hip-shot! have a dislocated hip-joint (OED a, 1) [go to text]

gg5647   mourning of the chine, ‘a disease of horses’ (OED chine, n2, 5) (chine: spine, back) [go to text]

gg5648   hunches pushes, shoves (OED n, 1a) [go to text]

gg5649   o’erlaid overlaid: overwhelmed, oppressed (OED v, 4) [go to text]

gg5650   resistance! the power to resist [go to text]

gg5651   Was’t was it [go to text]

gg859   warrant assure, promise [go to text]

gg5652   hackney-jade an inferior kind of hired horse: a ‘hackney’ is a horse kept for hire (OED n, 2), and ‘jade’ is a contemptuous word for a horse [go to text]

gg5653   chapmen merchants, dealers [go to text]

gs1517   forward eager; bold, immodest [go to text]

n8640   with ] without [go to text]

gg5654   propagate multiply through procreation, spread [go to text]

gs1518   sale-ware, literally means inferior quality goods (ready-made rather than home-made; OED sale n2, 4a), but it is used in early modern texts to refer to women with low moral standards or prostitutes; compare the name of Alicia Saleware in Brome’s A Mad Couple Well Matched, and the statement of Grimundo in James Shirley’s The Grateful Servant (Queen Henrietta Maria’s Men, 1629; published London,1630), who disdains ‘sale-ware, mercenary stuff that ye may have i’th’ suburbs, and now maintenance traffic with ambassadors’ servants’ (sig. G4r) [go to text]

gg5655   lasting; enduring, permanent (OED a, 1): used here either to refer to strength of affection or heath [go to text]

n8641   Madam Polecat, 'Polecat' is a term often used for a whore or a bawd; Williams (2: 1070) cites the insults aimed by the title-character, Franceschina, in Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan (Queen’s Revels, c. 1604) at her bawd: 'Foutra 'pon you, vitch, bawd, polecat' (David Crane, ed., The Dutch Courtesan [London: A&C Black, 1997], 2.2.35). [go to text]

gs1519   trim well-equipped; competent; excellent, fine (OED a, 1); elegantly dressed (OED a, 2); good looking (OED a, 2c); fine (said ironically) (OED 3) [go to text]

n8642   make bold with Presume; behave in a bold manner; take liberties with. [go to text]

n8643   your scholar. i.e. Alice [go to text]

n8644   What! You have more? Wat apparently spies Magdalan and Jane at this point. [go to text]

n8645   some fitter place of execution. Execution is often used in early modern texts to mean ‘copulation’. Williams (1: 451) compares Rowley, All’s Lost by Lust (?Prince Charles’s Men, c. 1619 [later Lady Elizabeth’s Men]; published London, 1633): ‘alas poor maidenhead, th’art cast, i’faith, / And must to execution’ (sig. B1v), and Sharpham’s Cupid’s Whirligig (King’s Revels, 1607; published London, 1607), ‘why do your old judges’ widows always marry young gentlemen, but to show that they love execution better than judgement’ (sigs. F4r-v). Williams writes, ‘the primary sense, giving practical effect to sexual passion, too readily blurs with that of inflicting capital punishment, saying much of the inherent violence of sexuality’. [go to text]

n8646   bon Good (French): spelled ‘boun’ in the octavo. [go to text]

n8647   and if [go to text]

gg5382   good lack! an exclamation along the same lines as ‘good heavens!’ or ‘good grief!’ [go to text]

n8648   at my hands, from me [go to text]

gs1499   carry hold, position [go to text]

gg5656   maudlin the stage of drunkenness in which the drinker is tearfully sentimental (OED a, 2) [go to text]

gs1520   fit! mood (OED dates this usage from 1680, but it seems to be the meaning here) [go to text]

n8649   Oh, oh, oh— This appears to indicate that Magdalen is sobbing, though she could also say ‘oh!’ [go to text]

n8650   [She falls.] i.e. she swoons and therefore falls to the ground [go to text]

n8651   Aye, aye, aye. ] I, I, I [go to text]

n8652   FRA[NCES and] JANE [lead] out MAGDALEN. ] Exeunt Fra. Jane leading out Magdalen. (in the octavo the direction appears in the margins of [DM 5.1.lines2635-2637]). [go to text]

gg578   ’Sfoot, an oath, short for ‘God’s foot’ [go to text]

n8653   out o’ doors? i.e. out of the door. [go to text]

gg5657   provided prepared [go to text]

gg5658   rule control, govern [go to text]

gg356   bawd procurer, go-between [go to text]

n8654   mistrusted your apostasy. i.e. suspected that you would abandon your allegiance to me [go to text]

gg5659   apostasy. abandonment or renunciation of religious or moral allegiance (OED 1); abandonment of principles more generally (OED 2) [go to text]

gs1118   lay put [go to text]

n8655   as just as [go to text]

gg5660   post-knight! knight of the post: a perjurer or someone who earns a living by making false oaths (OED knight of the post) [go to text]

gg5661   postilion ‘a person who rides the (leading) nearside (left-hand side) horse drawing a coach or carriage, esp. when one pair only is used and there is no coachman; also in extended use: an outrider for a carriage.’ (OED n, 3; the earliest example cited is from Massinger’s The City Madam [King’s Men, 1633; published London, 1658], and this usage appears in a number of Caroline texts) [go to text]

n8656   o’er the ears i.e. covered [go to text]

gg5662   fingers measurements equal to the breadth of a finger, or three quarters of an inch (OED n, 5) [go to text]

gg295   base. contemptible, degraded, unworthy [go to text]

gg2962   varlets, knaves, rogues, menials [go to text]

gg62   bawdy-house? brothel [go to text]

gs192   find perceive (OED v, 5a) [go to text]

gg5663   whine, cry as if in pain or distress (OED v, 1) [go to text]

gs1521   ward imprisonment (OED v, 3); prison (OED v, 17a), department or section within a prison (OED v, 17b) [go to text]

gs1522   handsome, proper, seemly (OED a, 3) [go to text]

gs1523   lucky well-omened (OED a, 3); acquired through good fortune; occurring by chance and producing happy results (OED a, 2) [go to text]

n8657   Out of the Temple suds. That is: from being washed under the pump in the Temple Gardens. ‘In the suds’ also means to be in difficulties or to be in disgrace (see OED suds n, 5). [go to text]

n8658   Hast thou been shaved since? Wat is apparently no longer wearing his false beard. [go to text]

gs1524   recant. renounce, abjure (OED v1, 1b); publicly confess as an error (OED v1, 3) [go to text]

n8659   We do not use to wait dry-fisted, i.e. we are not used to waiting [go to text]

gg5664   dry-fisted, i.e. without being paid (see OED dry-fist: a stingy person; OED defines dry-fisted as stingy, but the meaning in this context seems clear) [go to text]

gg5665   dry-throated. without being offered drink [go to text]

gg5666   catchpoles, sergeants, especially officers who arrest debtors (OED 2) [go to text]

n8661   Here’s i.e. here’s money. [go to text]

n8660   Sergeants, you shall not Out of the house. Here’s for half an hour’s attendance. Go into that room with your prisoner. You shall have wine and smoke too. ] this part of the speech is lined as prose in the octavo [go to text]

gs1525   smoke tobacco [go to text]

n8662   of good cheer, cheerful, courageous [go to text]

gg5667   coheir joint heir [go to text]

n8663   WAT [and] SERGEANTS [exit]. [Exeunt Wat, Sergeants] In the octavo this direction appears on the previous line, but I have moved it because the first half of Valentine’s line is clearly addressed to Wat. [go to text]

gs1526   means way, method [go to text]

n8664   work it by, bring it about [go to text]

n8666   urge ] urg’d [go to text]

n8665   past his nature. i.e. to transgress his natural scruples. [go to text]

gs798   free unrestricted, unrestrained [go to text]

gg2502   in’s in his [go to text]

n8667   Giving the spurs ran him beyond his speed, Quite off his legs, and glad to be led home. The image is of Dryground as rider and Wat as horse: Dryground has spurred Wat to run faster and longer than he was capable of, and the latter is now docile and eager to return to his former life. [go to text]

n8668   comes on fairly. i.e. is making good progress. [go to text]

gg4293   father-’law, a contraction of father-in-law [go to text]

n8669   wise said ironically [go to text]

gg4113   western from the west of England [go to text]

gs1572   ordinary an establishment where meals were provided at a set price; OED notes that in the seventeenth century ‘the more expensive ordinaries were frequented by men of fashion, and the dinner was usually followed by gambling; hence the term was often used as synonymous with “gambling-house”’ (OED n, 11c) [go to text]

n8670   best cheap Most inexpensive (OED cheap a, 1a); most easily obtained (OED cheap a, 3). [go to text]

gg5668   mother-’law, a contraction of mother-in-law [go to text]

gs1527   petty little, subordinate (i.e. to the royal court); there is probably a deliberate choice of ‘petty’ because it sounds like the French petit (little) [go to text]

gs1528   fit humour, impulse (OED dates this usage from 1680, but it seems to be the meaning here) [go to text]

gs1529   riflers? gamesters, participants in the raffle; those who want to ‘rifle’ Frances [go to text]

n8671   well satisfied, extremely contented [go to text]

gs1530   honest respectable, honourable, upright [go to text]

gg2357   end purpose, aim [go to text]

gs934   project scheme [go to text]

gg5670   charged loaded, laden (OED ppl, 1) [go to text]

gg5673   breasts, hearts (the breast is figuratively thought of as the seat of the affections and emotions) (OED n, 5) [go to text]

gg5671   recanted renounced [go to text]

gg5672   barbarous uncivilised, rough, savage [go to text]

gg4014   freely willingly, unreservedly (OED adv, 1a) [go to text]

gg5674   pre-intended intended previously, ordained (OED: the earliest citation dates from 1636) [go to text]

n8673   Pursed theirs again. i.e. returned their stakes to their purses [go to text]

gg5675   uncouth uncertain; strange; distasteful (OED a, 1, 2 and 3) [go to text]

n8674   five hundred pounds In today’s money, £500 would be worth around £42,900. [go to text]

n8675   at stake as stakes [go to text]

gs1531   stock fund of money (OED n1, 47) [go to text]

n8676   Frank. Dryground again refers to Frances as ‘Frank’; see [NOTE n5802] and [NOTE n7879] for further comment. [go to text]

n8678   paper. ] Baper [go to text]

n8677   [VALENTINE gives DRYGROUND the letter and] exit[s]. Video Valentine’s exit to fetch the characters that he has picked up during the course of Act 4 sets off the play’s final sequence, in which fifteen characters will eventually gather on the stage. Like many of Brome’s comedies, The Demoiselle finishes with a crowded sequence in which plots are resolved and reconciliations ensured. The ending of The Demoiselle is not as problematic as that of The New Academy, which it in some ways resembles, or as parodic as that of The Sparagus Garden, but it has a very uneven tone, and shifts between verse and prose. The revelations come thick and fast, but it does not necessarily seem exaggerated or farcical, and the comedy is leavened with pathos and wonder, especially surrounding the conversion of Vermin, Bumpsey’s very humane interventions, and the comic treatment of Magdalen’s repentance. See this extract from the workshop for a run-through from this line to the end of Dryground’s final speech [DM 5.1.speech1051]), which gives an impression of how it might work in performance. As in many of Brome’s large-cast scenes, management of the stage is crucial: see [DM 5.1.speech987] for detailed comment on the problematic stage direction. [go to text]

n8679   [VALENTINE gives DRYGROUND the letter and] exit[s]. ] Exit. [go to text]

gs1532   How now! exclamation indicating surprise [go to text]

gg5603   injured wronged (OED’s first example is from 1634) [go to text]

gs1533   abused wronged, violated (OED a, 2); deceived [go to text]

gs1534   hand handwriting (the word ‘hand’ influences the rest of the line, in which the handwriting is imagined as a physical hand that thrusts Eleanor away) [go to text]

n8680   that if only [go to text]

n8681   it i.e. the hand that wrote the letter [go to text]

gs1535   receive catch in my arms (OED v, 3b); give accommodation or shelter to (OED v, 11a); ‘to admit (a person) into some relation with oneself, esp. to familiar or social intercourse; to treat in a familiar or friendly manner’ (OED v, 8a); greet or acknowledge (OED v, 9a); take or accept (often used in the context of marriage) (OED 13a) [go to text]

n8682   Enter OLIVER [and] AMBROSE. ] Enter Oliver. Ambrose. [go to text]

n8683   by your leave, That is: with your permission; according to your instructions. [go to text]

gg5318   sup eat supper [go to text]

gg5536   w’ with [go to text]

n8684   Does your rifling hold? That is: is your raffle going ahead? [go to text]

n8685   off o’ the hooks, In a bad way (OED hook n1, 15a); put out (OED hook n1, 15c: OED’s earliest citation is from 1662, but the sense may have been current at an earlier date); it is tempting to take the current meaning of ‘off the hook’ (OED hook n1, 15f), but OED dates the earliest usage to 1864). In any case, Ambrose seems to look around and see that there are no hoards of gallants waiting for the raffle. Brome also uses the expression in The Sparagus Garden, Act 5, Scene 1, in which Gilbert says, ‘are we no less sure that Sir Hugh Moneylacks will set his strength to lift Sir Cautious off o’the hooks, in hope of a matter of five pound, though he forfeit the obligation of his throat by’t?’ [SG 5.1.speech1048]. [go to text]

gs1536   tell disclose, reveal (OED v, 5a) [go to text]

gg5676   briefly. soon (OED 2); in few words (OED 1) [go to text]

n8686   Enter FRANC[ES]. ] Enter Franck. Frances elsewhere appears in the octavo’s stage directions as ‘Frances’, ‘Francis’, ‘Fran.’ and ‘Fra.’; this is the only time at which ‘Frank’ is used (apart from in Dryground’s dialogue). The move to ‘Frank’ would be more disorientating for a modern reader, as ‘Frank’ is often used as a woman’s name in early modern texts. See [NOTE n5802] for further discussion. [go to text]

gs1537   salute Video greet, hail, pay one's respects, honour (often with elaborate compliment, gesture or bow). The following dialogue suggests that Oliver greets Frances by kissing her: this may be on the mouth or on the hand. See [NOTE n94] on The Queen and Concubine’s stage directions for detailed discussion of the signification of such gestures, and A Mad Couple Well Matched [MC 4.1.speech730] for a similar example of saluting (see [NOTE n2104] and [NOTE n2105] for commentary and video clips). Brome also uses ‘Salute’ to indicate a kiss in The New Academy: see [NOTE n5147]. In this extract from the workshop on this scene, Oliver kisses Frances on the hand [go to text]

n8687   whisper. Video Oliver’s use of the third person (‘She does not taste of sin!’ [DM 5.1.speech981] suggests that Ambrose may hear his exchange with Frances, but it is important that Dryground does not hear it. See this extract from the workshop, in which Oliver addresses Ambrose. [go to text]

n8688   She does not taste of sin! ] the octavo has the speech prefix ‘Dry.’ here, but it is clearly an error [go to text]

n8689   Fair chastity Sits crowned upon her brow, A similar image of the visibility of chastity in a woman’s face can be found in ‘The Amorous Zodiac’ in George Chapman’s Ovid’s Banquet of Sense (London, 1595), which was reprinted in 1639:

All this fresh April, this sweet month of Venus,
I will admire this brow so bounteous:
This brow, brave court for love, and virtue builded,
This brow where chastity holds garrison,
This brow that (blushless) none can look upon,
This brow with every grace and honour gilded. (sig. F3v)

[go to text]

gs1538   profess undertake this task (OED 2a); declare (OED 2c) [go to text]

n8690   it, i.e. the actions that Dryground will undertake. [go to text]

gg5677   swordmen, swordsmen, soldiers [go to text]

n8691   at the signal of a finger, That is, they will respond if Oliver makes a gesture with his hand. [go to text]

n8692   fetch you off. Rescue you, deliver you. [go to text]

n8693   we are for you, i.e. we are ready to hear you (see OED for prep, 12). [go to text]

gs1539   late recent, former [go to text]

gg2173   impatience irritability, restlessness [go to text]

n8694   You speak not now In that high phrase, or tone, as you did then. Ambrose realises that Dryground is not speaking in the affected ‘high’ style that he adopted in his persona of Osbright in Act 3. [go to text]

n8695   Enter VALENTINE [with] BUMPSEY, VERMIN, AMPHILUS, BROOKALL, ELEANOR [and] PHYLLIS. ] Enter Valentine. Bumpsey, Vermine, Amphilus, Brookall, Elynor, Phillis. (in the octavo the stage direction appears in the margins of [DM 5.1.lines2759-2763]) [go to text]

n8696   Enter VALENTINE [with] BUMPSEY, VERMIN, AMPHILUS, BROOKALL, ELEANOR [and] PHYLLIS. Video It is difficult for seven characters to enter quietly, and although Dryground and, perhaps, Frances may be aware of their presence, Oliver and Ambrose apparently are not. The location of the ordinary may help here, as a certain amount of bustle and to-and-fro might be expected. In this extract from the workshop the characters are brought on from two different entrances (the downstage one would not, of course, have existed at Salisbury Court, where The Demoiselle was first performed); they carry glasses and stand in clusters, with their backs to the Dryground-Frances-Oliver-Ambrose group. As this extract demonstrates, the entering group do not make themselves known until [DM 5.1.speech1008], when Alice enters and Vermin and Sir Amphilus are shocked into speaking aloud. I have therefore added ‘aside’ to the speeches of Valentine, Eleanor, Phyllis, Brookall and Vermin that follow over the next ten speeches. Some of these speeches might be self-directed, or addressed to other characters in the group. [go to text]

gg5678   attentively. ‘with careful consideration; observantly’ (OED) [go to text]

gg5679   misdeed offence, evil deed (OED 1) [go to text]

gg4411   affiance, solemn engagement; esp. the plighting of troth between two persons in marriage, a marriage contract (OED 3) [go to text]

gs1540   abused, misused, ill-treated, violated (Dryground strongly hints that he took advantage of the marriage agreement to have sex with Eleanor, and Oliver picks him up on this in his reply) [go to text]

gg5681   Ay me! alas [go to text]

gs1541   passion, expression of emotion; ‘A fit, outburst, or state marked by or of strong excitement, agitation, or other intense emotion’ (OED n, 6c) [go to text]

n8697   on the discontent That is: on meeting with this cause of discontent or grievance (see OED discontent n1, 2). [go to text]

gg2288   hapless unfortunate [go to text]

n8698   fourteen winters since, Fourteen years is often the length of a period of separation or exile in Jacobean and Caroline plays: see Shakespeare and Wilkins’s Pericles (King’s Men, c. 1607-8), Middleton’s No Wit, No Help Like a Woman’s (?Prince Henry’s Men, c. 1611), William Rowley’s The Thracian Wonder (auspices uncertain, c. 1618?), Fletcher and Massinger’s The Double Marriage (King’s Men, c. 1620-1), Fletcher and Rowley’s The Maid in the Mill (King’s Men, 1623) and Ford’s Perkin Warbeck (Queen Henrietta Maria’s Men, c. 1633). Perhaps not coincidentally for many of these plays (including The Demoiselle), fourteen is often also the age at which many early modern commentators assume that women reach sexual maturity. In Marston’s The Malcontent (Chapel/Queen’s Revels, c. 1603), for instance, the bawd Maquerelle claims that Mendoza has declared that ‘at four, women were fools; at fourteen, drabs [whores]; at forty, bawds; at fourscore, witches; and a hundred, cats’ (George K. Hunter, ed., The Malcontent [London: Methuen, 1975], 1.6.34-6). [go to text]

n8699   sadly burdened, That is, pregnant (with Phyllis). [go to text]

n8700   took no sense That is: had no feeling of (see OED sense n, 5); did not comprehend the general reaction to (see OED sense n, 18b, which includes ‘to take the sense of’ ‘to ascertain the general feeling or opinion of’: OED’s earliest example dates from 1653) [go to text]

n8701   dear loss, i.e. loss of something valuable; costly loss [go to text]

gs1542   careless unconcerned (OED 2); inattentive, negligent (OED 3) (for Brome, the word ‘careless’ carries a large degree of moral opprobrium: see the name of the anti-hero of A Mad Couple Well Matched, George Careless) [go to text]

gg5682   riotous dissolute, extravagant (OED riotous 3) [go to text]

gs1543   credit financial credit: ‘Trust or confidence in a buyer’s ability and intention to pay at some future time’ (OED n, 9); reputation [go to text]

n8702   ran at waste, That is: were brought to ruin. ‘Waste’ is used to describe barren land (OED waste a, 1a), while ‘to run at waste’ is used figuratively to refer to the useless expenditure of wealth (see OED waste n, 10a: the phrase originally refers to the flowing of liquor so as to be wasted); Brome puns on all senses here [go to text]

gs1544   nigh nearly [go to text]

gg319   trespass (n) offence (OED n, 1); minor violation of the law (OED n, 2); crime [go to text]

gs310   render deliver [go to text]

gg276   satisfaction. penance, compensation, atonement [go to text]

n8703   in vain fruitlessly, pointlessly [go to text]

n8704   offer i.e. offer compensation; make offerings. [go to text]

gs1545   genius guardian spirit (thought in classical belief to govern someone’s fortunes and determine his character (OED 1); ‘Natural ability or capacity; quality of mind; the special endowments which fit a man for his peculiar work.’ (OED 4: the earliest citation dates from 1649, but it may be applicable here) [go to text]

gs1546   grateful manifesting gratitude (OED 2); pleasing (OED 1) [go to text]

gs1547   blood. family, kindred [go to text]

n8705   What can this come to? That is, where is this going?, what does this mean? [go to text]

n8706   How’s that? What was that? [go to text]

n8707   What’s all this to your daughter? i.e. what does this have to do with your daughter? [go to text]

n8708   Even all that may be. See: his son’s my daughter. ] Even all that may be; (see) His Sonne’s my Daughter. The octavo’s punctuation suggests that ‘see’ is delivered in a particular way, and that it is perhaps accompanied by the action of ‘Discover[ing]’ Frances’s true identity. For further comment on the stage direction and on ways of handing it in performance see [NOTE n8709] below. [go to text]

n8709   Discover FRANC[ES]. Video The revelation of Frances’s identity and true sex is similar to the coup de théâtre at the end of Ben Jonson’s Epicoene, originally performed by the Children of the Queen’s Revels in 1609-10, but revived in the 1630s, in which the ‘silent woman’ of the play’s subtitle is revealed to be a man. The stage direction directs Dryground to ‘discover’ Frances’s identity, and the most straightforward way of doing this would be to have him remove Frances’s wig. This would parallel the stage business in Jonson’s play, which includes the stage direction ’He takes off Epicoene’s peruke’ [wig]’ (L.A. Beaurline, ed., Epicoene [London: Edward Arnold, 1966], 5.4.182) at the point at which Dauphine reveals Epicoene’s true identity. A comparison also might be drawn with the stage business in Nathan Field’s Amends for Ladies (Queen’s Revels, c. 1611; published London, 1618), itself indebted to Epicoene, in which Frank, Ingen’s brother, is required to dress as a woman. Stage directions indicate that he enter ‘like a woman masked’ (sig. D2v) and ‘like a woman’ (sig. D4v), and his identity is finally revealed by Ingen:

No, behold, it is my younger brother dressed: Plucks
A man, no woman, that hath gulled the world, off his
Intended for a happier event headtire
Than this that followed. (sig. E1r)

Interestingly, the brother is not referred to as ‘Frank’ until later in the play, when he appears in man’s clothing. In this extract from the workshop, Dryground (Mike Burrell) removes Frances’s wig with something of a flourish, and the other characters on stage gasp: the importance of this moment for the plot suggests that it should have as much impact on an audience as possible. It would be possible to register it still more through the reactions of the other characters, which are relatively muted here. The removal of a wig could also be paralleled in Dryground’s second revelation at [DM 5.1.speech1012] where the stage direction reads ‘Discovers himself.’

There may be other ways of revealing Frances’s true sex. In The City Wit, Brome has a boy disguised as a woman reveal his identity by revealing breeches under his petticoats [CW 5.1.speech955], but this is unlike the moment in The Demoiselle in that it is a carefully staged and symbolic revelation which comes out of an inset masque sequence. Modern productions might use hats, or items of female clothing which could be removed (the latter would have been hard to achieve in the Caroline theatre, as women’s clothing was complicated and often tightly laced). [go to text]

gg1278   find discover, understand [go to text]

n8711   at charge at the expense [go to text]

gg2502   in’s in his [go to text]

n8712   A fair pull for That is: a good shot at. The term is used in relation to card games (see Henry Burton, A Plea to an Appeal [London, 1626]: ‘Yea, all the cards in his hand are black, and he hath a fair pull to rub [...] but the mischief is, after much hard drawing, his ace proves a spade’ [sig. B3r]) and with sexual innuendo (see Williams 2: 1109, who cites Thomas Dekker’s II The Honest Whore [Prince Henry’s Men, c. 1605; published London, 1630]: ‘and when she’s ripe, every slave has a pull at her’ [sig. B3r]). [go to text]

gs1548   lawful legally qualified or entitled (OED 2a) [go to text]

gg5683   churchman, clergyman [go to text]

gg5684   wonders! miracles, astonishing or astonishing deeds [go to text]

gg141   Bravely, worthily; fearlessly; splendidly, handsomely (OED) [go to text]

gs1549   act. deed, action (with sexual innuendo) [go to text]

gg2643   ha! a versatile exclamation which can express surprise, wonder, joy, suspicion, indignation, etc., depending on the speaker’s intonation (OED int, 1) [go to text]

gg5685   ho! ‘an exclamation expressing, according to intonation, surprise, admiration, exultation (often ironical), triumph, taunting’ (OED int1, 1); ‘a call to stop or to cease what one is doing’ (OED int2, 1) [go to text]

n8713   Your ‘ha’s and ‘ho’s Video That is: your exclamations of ‘ha!’ and ‘ho!’. See this extract from the workshop on this part of the scene. [go to text]

gs1550   draw drag, pull; lure [go to text]

gg5686   witchcraft? black magic (OED 1); ‘Power or influence like that of a magician; bewitching or fascinating attraction or charm’ (OED 2) [go to text]

gg5687   charms spells, enchantments; ‘any quality, attribute, trait, feature, etc., which exerts a fascinating or attractive influence, exciting love or admiration’ (OED n1, 3) [go to text]

gs1551   art cunning, skill [go to text]

n8714   Discovers himself. Video As suggested in [NOTE n8709], this revelation of identity might parallel that of Frances at [DM 5.1.speech1004]. In this extract from the workshop, having removed Frances’s wig Dryground now removes his own, to the general amazement of the other characters. [go to text]

gs187   wonder. amazement [go to text]

gg5688   swoons. faints [go to text]

n8715   cheer you up this lady, That is: raise this lady’s spirits with cheering words (see OED cheer v, 10). [go to text]

gs1552   appease pacify, calm (OED v, 1) [go to text]

n8716   [To AMPHILUS] Video This stage direction does not appear in the octavo: it is not altogether clear who Valentine addresses, but it could plausibly be Sir Amphilus, whose next line responds to Valentine’s ‘While I appease the rest’. See this extract from the workshop. [go to text]

gg4862   appeased. pacified, quieted, satisfied [go to text]

n8717   To her again, ‘To’ in this context means ‘towards’: ‘to her’ or ‘to him’ was used as an encouraging cry in hunting or fighting (OED prep, 25b); it is possible that Dryground has embraced Eleanor on [DM 5.1.speech1018], and that Bumpsey encourages him to embrace her again. [go to text]

n8718   Your son, and mine in law, i.e. your son, and my son-in-law [go to text]

n8719   the full point and the whole substance, Bumpsey again, somewhat joyously, reworks one of his favourite phrases. [go to text]

gs803   point proposition, idea (OED n1, 10a); main subject or focus of a discussion (OED n1, 10b); objective, aim (OED n1, 10c); conclusion (OED n1, 11) [go to text]

gg4027   substance, what the speech amounts to (OED 11a); essence (OED 14); puns on possessions, estate, fortune (OED 16) [go to text]

gg5689   flat (n) plainness, absoluteness [go to text]

gg5690   plain (n) unambiguousness [go to text]

gs1553   business, affair (possibly with sexual innuendo: see Williams 1: 179-80) [go to text]

gs1554   melancholy? sadness; ‘melancholy’ can also refer to ‘sadness giving rise to or considered as a subject for poetry, sentimental reflection, etc.’ (OED n1, 3d), so Bumpsey may be teasing Sir Amphilus about his poetic vein of Act 3 [go to text]

n8720   but and I were at the ducking-pond— I know what I know. ] But and I were at the Duckingpond, I know what I know. It is difficult to make sense of the octavo’s punctuation, as ‘I know what I know’ does not seem to emerge logically from ‘and [if] I were at the ducking-pond’, and I have therefore re-punctuated the line to indicate that Sir Amphilus breaks off and then says ‘I know what I know’. It could be effective in performance to have Sir Amphilus be inarticulate with sorrow or rage at this point. [go to text]

gg857   and if [go to text]

n8721   I know what I know. Video This may be a veiled threat (a similar usage can be found in Brome’s The Lovesick Court [LS 1.2.speech91]; in this extract from the workshop it has something of this quality. [go to text]

n8722   I’ll give you leave to hang me. A typically nonsensical misuse of a cliché: if Sir Amphilus had drowned himself there would be no point in hanging him. [go to text]

n8723   VALENTINE [exits]. ] Exit Valentine. [go to text]

n8724   VALENTINE [exits]. Video Valentine is directed to exit here in the octavo, and so it is not entirely clear whether Vermin’s ‘hence’ is directed at Alice or at Valentine. It seems more likely, however, that it is directed at Alice, especially as Vermin addresses the line ‘Away’ at her in [DM 5.1.speech1026] below. See this extract from the workshop on the scene. [go to text]

gs1555   High great; divine, heavenly [go to text]

gg2236   Providence God (‘applied to the Deity as exercising prescient and beneficent power and direction’: OED n, 4); divine care or guidance (OED n, 3) [go to text]

n8725   chief instructor to i.e. principal motivation in [go to text]

gg5691   instructor teacher [go to text]

n8726   my daughter. That is: my daughter-in-law (Brookall’s phrasing is also a calculated snub to Vermin). [go to text]

gs1556   substance. what the speech amounts to (OED 11a); essence (OED 14) [go to text]

n8727   Enter VAL[ENTINE], WAT, MAGDALEN [and] JANE. ] Enter Val. Wat. Magdalen, Jane. [go to text]

n8728   her i.e. Conscience [go to text]

n8729   Sir, if you can forgive, and can obey you— I now can better kneel than speak— Wat is apparently weeping throughout this speech (as the stage direction indicates), which explains its incoherence; the dash after ‘obey you’ appears in the octavo. [go to text]

n8730   Sure, all’s but apparition, or a dream. This appears to be the point at which Vermin begins to soften in his attitudes towards his son and daughter. [go to text]

gs1557   apparition, illusion [go to text]

n8731   by your leave and liking, i.e. with your permission and approval. [go to text]

n8732   may prove as honest a man as his father. This may be said with some irony. [go to text]

gs775   plain evident, obvious (OED a1, 7); simple, clear, unambiguous (OED a1, 9); free from ambiguity, straightforward, direct, blunt (OED a1, 12) [go to text]

n8733   O my dear Bump! Video Magdalen’s speech to Bumpsey introduces a comic note after the potential pathos in Wat’s reconciliation with Vermin. See this extract from the workshop on this scene. [go to text]

gg5692   harm damage, mischief [go to text]

gg5693   dishonesty, dishonour, disgrace (OED 1); lewdness, unchastity (OED 2) [go to text]

n8734   though the place be as they say— i.e. even though the ordinary is a brothel. [go to text]

gs1347   At a word, to speak plainly, to be honest (can also mean ‘in short’ or ‘briefly’) [go to text]

n8736   carriage of the body, Bodily deportment; sexual activity (Magdalen picks up her own innuendo in the rest of the speech). [go to text]

n8737   That ever I did that! As if I would ever do that! [go to text]

gs1558   disease. ailment, malady (OED n, 2); morbid condition of the mind (OED n, 3) [go to text]

gg5388   fashion-sick, made sick by fashion; compare Thomas Bancroft, ‘To London in Time of Pestilence’, in Two Books of Epigrams and Epitaphs (London, 1639):

the roaring boys I see
Put women down with man-less luxury,
Still to be fashion-sick, and drink, and swear,
And rage, as if they Stygian monsters were (sig. G1v)

[go to text]

gg4691   civil educated; well-bred; refined, polished, ‘polite’ (OED a, 9) [go to text]

gg5694   lethargy torpor, apathy (OED n, 2) [go to text]

gg3886   avarice. greed, desire to acquire and hoard wealth (OED) [go to text]

n8738   Blessed may our friendship be. This is probably addressed to Dryground and Brookall, but it may be directed to Bumpsey, who has consistently cajoled Vermin to adopt better behaviour throughout the play. [go to text]

n8739   done the office. That is, performed the ceremony of marriage. [go to text]

n8740   my girl! i.e. Phyllis [go to text]

gg5695   Occurrents events, incidents (OED occurrent n, 1a) [go to text]

gg5696   accidents things that happened by chance [go to text]

gg4211   Perfectly fully, completely [go to text]

gg3892   hopeful promising, ‘giving promise of success or future good’ (OED a, 2a) [go to text]

gg5697   nolens volens whether willing or not (OED) [go to text]

gs1559   beholden obliged (probably said with some degree of irony) [go to text]

gs1560   taken delighted [go to text]

gs1561   So to such an extent [go to text]

gs1562   wrought worked [go to text]

gs1563   convertite convert [go to text]

n8741   stand firm Remain steadfast (i.e. not relapse into dissolute behaviour). [go to text]

gg5698   determination termination, bringing to an end (OED 1) [go to text]

gg5018   mortgage, loan secured against property (in this case, Dryground's estate) [go to text]

gg2068   gratis freely, without charge [go to text]

gs806   business. affairs, concerns, tasks to attend to [go to text]

n8742   has done long, This seems an exaggeration, given that the events of the play have taken place during one day, and Wat and Phyllis only met in Act 4. [go to text]

n8743   since you promised him your daughter too, Dryground promised that Wat could marry his fake daughter Frances (which was, of course, impossible for a number of reasons); Valentine here substitutes his newly discovered real daughter. [go to text]

gs1564   fair honourable [go to text]

gs992   suit. petition, specifically in the courtship of a woman (OED n, 12) [go to text]

n8744   Fortune is not blind, This contradicts the cliché which asserts that Fortune is blind. [go to text]

n8745   way i.e. the way [go to text]

gg3527   friends, close companions, or relatives [go to text]

n8746   a brother’s love That is: the love of a brother-in-law (as Dryground will now marry Eleanor, Brookall’s sister). [go to text]

gs1565   salute Video greet; honour (this statement may be accompanied by a bow or another physical gesture, possibly an embrace, if Dryground’s line [DM 5.1.speech1051] is direct response to Bumpsey’s: see this extract from the workshop on this scene) [go to text]

gg5699   general collective [go to text]

n8747   the heart of friendship, not the face. That is: genuine friendship, not merely the appearance of friendship. [go to text]

gs1568   ordinary puns on two meanings of ordinary: the eating/drinking establishment, and the meal served there [go to text]

gs579   stays, awaits [go to text]

gs1566   fare food (OED n1, 8) [go to text]

gg5700   vulgar common, general; uncultured (OED a, 13: the earliest example cited for the latter is from 1643, but it may have been in use earlier) [go to text]

n8748   By your fair leave, with your gracious permission [go to text]

gs1567   assume claims, wears [go to text]

gg2728   bays, a wreath of laurel or bay leaves: an emblem of victory or of distinction in poetry [go to text]

n8749   pulled fair for a leaf, That is, made a good attempt to get at least a leaf from the wreath. [go to text]

n8750   no. not [go to text]

n8751   let your hands assistant be i.e. let your applause help. [go to text]

n8752   T’ encourage to encourage [go to text]

n8753   Apollo’s tree. This is the laurel tree on which the leaves that make up the poet’s wreath of ‘bays’ grow. [go to text]

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