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n7025   ACT THREE Act 3 contains two of the centrepiece scenes of the play. The first is 3.1, at the heart of which is the section in which Quicksands paints Millicent black: a section that Brome expanded and lengthened in revision, putting extra emphasis on the visual emblem of the act of painting itself. It is, in a sense, the eponymous moment of the play, and fitly occupies the central position within it. The second, and more conventionally impressive centrepiece scene is 3.2, a noisy and lively 'place-realism' depiction of the Devil Tavern in Fleet Street. While offstage drinkers shout requests, and serving-boys career in and out, Buzzard becomes steadily more and more drunk: a bravura scene for a comic actor. And hanging over the whole tavern scene (if a location-board is used) is the emblem of the Devil Tavern: a woman turning into a black monster [NOTE n3370]. Finally, with striking economy, 3.3 collects together and advances the other strands of the plot, not merely for the characters present in it but for those - like Dionysia and Rafe - whose unfolding story is merely described in their absence. [go to text]

gg2143   pernicious harmful [go to text]

gg779   knave rogue, scoundrel [go to text]

gs290   harlot not necessarily sexual: can be a generally pejorative term for a woman [go to text]

gg2144   Avaunt be off with you [go to text]

n4284   your ] MS; you O. [go to text]

n4287   whose e’er it be No matter whosoever it belongs to. [go to text]

gg3219   gripe grasp [go to text]

n4289   without your knowledge Another mean trick by Quicksands: doubtless they would have noticed her leaving had she left, but she is still in the inner parts of the house. (Similarly duplicitous is his later instruction to them not to return to the house until they have found her). [go to text]

gg151   cashier dismiss (a military term originally, frequently misapplied to relations between master and servant) [go to text]

n2528   before she was well found You had scarcely found her before you lost her. [go to text]

gg3220   So, so, so an interjection indicating that the speaker is thinking aloud (it is used, for instance, by Quicksands in The English Moor; Letoy in The Antipodes; and Touchwood in The Asparagus Garden) [go to text]

n2529   mark The 'mark' is the bullseye of an archery target (a metaphor which Quicksands goes on to develop). [go to text]

n2530   arrows Lust's arrows are Cupid's arrows, already mentioned in this play; emblematically, Envy too is frequently represented with arrows. Cf. John Lyly, Endymion, 5.1.139-143: 'Envy with a pale and meagre face... stood shooting at stars, whose darts fell down again on her own face.' [go to text]

gs546   dear serious, damaging [go to text]

gg1892   felicity happiness [go to text]

gg3222   mine used metaphorically: 'an infinite amount' [go to text]

gg361   iniquity wickedness [go to text]

gg2145   stallions a punning usage involving the sense of a) a male horse; b) by extension, a lustful man (OED n. 2b) [go to text]

n2531   'Bed-bounders', and 'leap-ladies' Both, apparently, coinages to describe promiscuous men. [go to text]

n2532   'Mount-mistresses' Seemingly, another Brome coinage for a lustful man. [go to text]

n2533   shackle Optative: 'may diseases shackle them' (that is, disable them, as if their limbs were chained up). [go to text]

gs625   spitals hospitals [go to text]

n2535   quaint device The same phrase used by Millicent earlier, and in the stage directions of Shakespeare, The Tempest, 3.3.52, to describe the means by which Ariel causes the banquet to vanish. Virginia Mason Vaughan glosses the phrase as: 'a vague reference to stage machinery by someone who knows little about theater mechanics. Quicksands, an amateur producer/director, sees his black paint as a way to create a theatrical spectacle, his own version of The Masque of Blackness' (Vaughan, 2005, 117). [go to text]

n2534   factorship The office of a 'factor', or merchant's agent. An important detail of the backstory: Quicksands belongs to the merchant world, having learned his craft in Venice, the major trading port linking Western Europe and the Levant. [go to text]

n4295   blackamoor ] MS; Backamore O. [go to text]

n2536   passed your word That is: given your word. [go to text]

gs291   shape costume, appearance [go to text]

gg2751   powdered wearing hair-powder, a marker of being fashionable [go to text]

n2561   spirits A pun obtains here, referring to a) fashionable young men; b) evil demons. Quicksands' imagination conflates the two senses, and he goes on in the next line to develop the trope of young men as monsters. [go to text]

gg2752   Rose-footed a rose is 'an ornamental knot of ribbon or other material in the shape of a rose, worn upon a shoe-front' (OED n. 15); someone "rose-footed", then, is fashionably dressed [go to text]

gg2753   fumigated perfumed [go to text]

gg2754   tincture’s pigment's [go to text]

n2562   Twill cool their kidneys He means 'dampen their lust'. The liver, not the kidneys, was usually thought of as the seat of desire, but Quicksands' vaguely medical terminology is approximate rather than exact. [go to text]

n2563   a box of black painting. The 'painting' probably consists of a mixture of two components: a black pigment, and a base. The base may well have been lard or tallow, while early texts record various possible black pigments including charcoal; burnt cork; and more exotic alternatives including burnt cherrystones and burnt ivory (Vaughan, 2005, 11; Karim-Cooper, 2007). Cf. also this account from a nineteenth-century theatrical manual;

[T]he performer should cover the face and neck with a thin coat of pomatum, or what is better, though more disagreeable, of lard; then burn a cork to powder, and apply it with a hare's foot, or a cloth, the hands wet with beer which will fix the colouring matter.

(Leman Thomas Rede, The Road to the Stage [1836], cited in Vaughan, 2005, 11). [go to text]

n2564   such a shape? Can jealousy assume such a strange form? An elegant line: Millicent is the one whose 'shape' is most obviously being altered by this subterfuge, but she identifies jealousy as the true shape-shifter. Cf. Quicksands' earlier fears that he may become a 'horned monster', and also The Antipodes, 5.1.speech190, where Jealousy itself is figured on stage as a half-formed monster. [go to text]

gg2755   Ethiop’s (literally) a person from Ethiopia; but used in a much vaguer sense to describe anyone black-skinned [go to text]

gg2757   daubs use make-up [go to text]

gs461   adulterate impure [go to text]

n2566   At sin’s appointment That is: for the purposes of sin. [go to text]

n2567   queens A clear reference to Jonson's The Masque of Blackness, performed in 1605, in which King James's wife, Anne of Denmark, and her retinue wore blackface make-up. Conceivably, Brome may also have been aware of Mr Moore's Revels, an amateur entertainment performed at Oxford in 1636 in which the actors, presumably members of the University, blacked themselves up as Moors to celebrate a student named Moore. For an edition of and commentary on Mr Moore's Revels, see Elliott (1984). [go to text]

gg2758   presentment presentation [go to text]

n2568   white ] MS; while O. [go to text]

n2572   sun ] MS; Sun; O. A consequential error from corrupting 'white' to 'while'. [go to text]

n2586   Thou dost but case thy splendour in a cloud Cf. Hal's speech in Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV, 1.2.191-7 (Steen). [go to text]

n2569   when ] MS; in O. Again, O's version is an obvious corruption of the MS reading. [go to text]

gg45   case condition [go to text]

n2570   and spare not (Shine out) as much as you like. [go to text]

n2577   Take pleasure in the scent first Efstathiou-Lavabre (2003) notes Quicksands' sensuous, eroticized appreciation of the make-up. [go to text]

n2576   no foe to feature He means, no foe to beauty. As Karim-Cooper points out, in her perceptive reading of this play's use of make-up, Quicksands is literally correct: whereas whitening make-up tended to use poisonous and corrosive ingredients, 'the materials likely used to paint faces black were not poisonous' (Karim-Cooper, 2007, p. 146, reproduced in this edition). [go to text]

n2575   [QUICKSANDS] begins to paint her. Video When does Quicksands first apply black paint to her face? It has not happened by the first line of the speech, where he offers it her to smell; it has happened by 'What murder have I done upon a cheek there'. Indications in between are ambiguous. 'Farewell' appears to indicate a decisive moment of painting, but this decisiveness is retracted by the following phrase 'before I part with you'. Secondly, what is the tone of this important sequence? Extensive workshopping revealed many possibilities. On the one hand, it was possible to play the scene seriously, looking to emphasise the cruelty of Quicksands and the violation of Millicent ; on the other, it was possible to make the scene extremely funny, by comically emphasising the distance between Quicksands' inflated poetic rhetoric, and the action he undertakes . Various tones in between were also possible. The videos also demonstrate the different audience response obtained by each version: the way in which the laughing audience almost becomes complicit in Quicksands' enthusiastic humiliation of his wife, while the silent audience of the 'serious' version can hear the details of the words with which he accompanies his painting, and has more room to contemplate what they reveal about his motivations. The same effect applies to Millicent, too: one might say that the 'serious' version fits with the Millicent we see in Act Five Scene Two, the self-possessed, dignified heroine, whereas the 'comic' version offered, in effect, the Millicent of Act One Scene Three, able at least to see the absurdity of her predicament. A lot, of course, depends on the practicalities of the making-up. Whereas, in the 'straight' version, Quicksands goes first to make up Millicent's eyes, as the text partly suggests, the more comic alternatives included smearing black around the whole face in one movement; or starting off by giving Millicent a black moustache . In some workshopped versions, Millicent faced upstage, away from the audience, so that the audience did not get to see her reactions and could not see her blackened face until she got up to exit, an effect which created a strong coup de théâtre at the cost of giving her nothing to do in the earlier part of the scene. Another suggestion was that Quicksands start by painting on one side of her face, and not the other, so that parts of the audience can see what's going on but others cannot. By a felicitous accident, one video sequence mimics this effect, since the live audience can see Millicent's blackened face before the camera (whose view of it is blocked by the actor's script). One final question: how completely black is Millicent by the end of the scene? One's instant assumption is that Millicent finishes the scene with a visibly but partially blackened face, more or less as happens in our, admittedly tentative, experiments along these lines: and . This would also fit with Quicksands' instruction that she finish the job herself in her own room. (In additional, a very partial blacking would run less risk of damaging Millicent's expensive costume: I owe this observation to Jenny Tiramani). However, one should also entertain the alternative idea. With practice, an accomplished performer might be able, in yet another virtuoso effect, to make a passably complete blackening in the available time. [go to text]

n2578   houses Dynasties. Quicksands' conceit is that the red and white are like two noble families, and that Beauty is their offspring. [go to text]

n2579   Oh let me kiss ye Another line suggesting Quicksands finds this situation erotic, kissing the cheek one last time before painting it. An alternative performance option would be to have Quicksands kiss it after having partially painted it, thus smudging a little black facepaint onto his own face as well. [go to text]

gg2773   ebon ebony [go to text]

n2580   diamonds, set in lead Proverbial for something of value whose value is not impaired by its unworthy setting. Cf. Webster, A Monumental Columne (1613), A2r: 'As a perfect diamond set in lead, / Scorning our foil, his glories do break forth'. Also, like the 'ebon', diamonds are a product exported from the East. [go to text]

n2581   glass A looking-glass, possibly a small hand-mirror. Another performance decision: is this mirror offstage, a convenient justification for Millicent's exit, or is it onstage? The former idea has the advantage of being simpler, and requiring fewer props. However, the latter would allow another coup de théâtre as Millicent sees, for the first time, her besmirched face. In practical terms, too, it would not be impossible to ask Millicent to hold both tincture and mirror at once. For instance, in Mr Moore's Revels the apes black themselves up on stage, each holding both a mirror and an 'inkhorn' of black facepaint (Elliott, 1984, 417). [go to text]

gg128   habit clothing [go to text]

gs959   fancy preference (compare the modern idiom 'as the fancy takes you') [go to text]

n2582   pawn wardrobe 'A wardrobe in which pawned clothes are kept' (OED pawn n3, C2, citing this as the sole example). [go to text]

gg2774   drudge menial servant [go to text]

n2583   private service A maid to be my private servant. [go to text]

gg3234   breeding upbringing [go to text]

n2585   One knocks ] MS; One knock O. The words are essential to the metre, otherwise it would be tempting to posit that this is a stage direction which has migrated into the text. [go to text]

n4320   cook-maid Cf. MS, where Phillis's disguise is that of a 'country lass'. Phillis is pretending to be from Norfolk, so as to evade questions about her past; and so desperate now is her plight, that she is looking for a job as a cook-maid, among the lowest-status of servant roles. In fact, the job she finds Quicksands is offering, as lady's maid, is an unexpected promotion from cook-maid (and comparable to the job she briefly held with Lucy) but still a humiliation for Phillis as an ex-gentlewoman. [go to text]

n2587   the master's worship The master, who is also deserving of respect: compare the more normal idiom, 'your worship' (OED n, 5). [go to text]

n2588   mawther An East Anglian dialect word meaning 'girl or young woman' (OED mawther n.). This sets up a series of bawdy puns on 'maid' = servant/unmarried woman; and 'mawther' = unmarried woman/mother. Quicksands uses the word 'mawther' himself three times in the rest of the scene, and we may imagine him making fun of East Anglian pronunciation each time. [go to text]

n2589   service Usually the word means a job as a servant; but the use here may carry bawdy overtones. [go to text]

n2590   and like your worship 'If you please'. This is an aphetic abbreviation of 'and [if] it like [pleases] your worship'. [go to text]

n2591   I were I was. [go to text]

n2592   cry thee mercy I beg your pardon. [go to text]

gs467   pass give [go to text]

gg2776   bearing behaviour, [good] conduct [go to text]

n2593   retorney A comic and yokellish mistake for 'attorney' (which is in fact the MS reading). [go to text]

n2594   Lyon’s Inn An Inn of Chancery, that is, a training school for chancery lawyers, associated with the Inner Temple. It was located on the northern side of the Strand, in West London. [go to text]

n2595   Muggle Street A London street, running south from St Giles Cripplegate to Silver Street. [go to text]

n2596   as well’s The meaning is: as well as. [go to text]

n2597   Thripperstown Real within the world of the play, but not to be found outside it (in spite of the confident statement to the contrary in Sugden [1925]). The name refers to 'thripping' (see below). [go to text]

n2795   rocks A rock is a distaff: 'A cleft staff about 3 feet long, on which, in the ancient mode of spinning, wool or flax was wound. It was held under the left arm, and the fibres of the material were drawn from it through the fingers of the left hand, and twisted spirally by the forefinger and thumb of the right, with the aid of the suspended spindle, round which the thread, as it was twisted or spun, was wound.' (OED rock n.²; OED distaff). [go to text]

n2796   Thripping Specifically, to 'thrip' is to make a jerking movement with one's hand or fingers, and the OED cites Nashe in this connection: 'He with clapping his hands and thripping his fingers seemed to dance an antic'. Hence, in this context, 'thripping' refers in particular to the action of the hand pulling on the yarn (with obvious possible obscene overtones) as part of the process of hand-spinning. [go to text]

n2797   Hulverhead A significant name, meaning 'Stupid; muddled; confused; as if the head were enveloped in a hulver [holly] bush' (OED, quoting a nineteenth-century guide to East Anglian dialect). Hulverhead's name, then, has an East Anglian flavour. As will later become clear, John Hulverhead is the East Anglian man paid to look after Quicksands' illegitimate son. [go to text]

gg2779   innocent a) an innocent person; b) someone deficient in intelligence [go to text]

gg4436   husbandman farmer [go to text]

n2798   Bow Lane London street running south through Cheapside, seemingly associated with hiring servants; cf. CW 1.1.speech91, where Josina expects 'Mistress Piccadell in Bow Lane' to find her a servant. [go to text]

n4321   a maid came in This, of course, is Madge, dismissed earlier on in this scene. Note Brome's characteristically fluid treatment of time. Phillis has come to apply for Madge's job. [go to text]

gg3235   put away dismissed [go to text]

n2799   Ah ] MS; All O. [go to text]

gg862   forsooth truly [go to text]

n4322   serve to choose The same apparently inverted word-order occurs in the MS. As Steen suggests, it 'underscores Phillis's affected rustic speech'. [go to text]

n4323   takes me Is appealing to me. [go to text]

gg2374   speak relate, give an account of [go to text]

gg2781   ware goods; specifically, women, imagined as a commodity (OED n3. 4b) [go to text]

n2892   gander-month Literally, the month after a woman has given birth. 'During that time, husbands plead a sort of indulgence in matters of gallantry' (Grose, cited in OED gander n, 4). [go to text]

n2893   lies in of Literally, 'lying in' refers to the period after giving birth (OED lie v1, 24). Quicksands imagines Millicent's confinement to the house as being like her having given birth to her new black face. [go to text]

gg2782   for my turn (sexually) available to me (OED n. 30b) [go to text]

n2894   hulk Two meanings are current: a) a ship (an image Phillis develops in the next phrase); and b) a 'big, unwieldy person' (OED hulk n2). Perhaps this is a clue to Quicksands' appearance. [go to text]

n2895   twixt wind and water 'Referring to that part of a ship's side which is sometimes above water and sometimes submerged, in which part a shot is peculiarly dangerous' (OED wind n1, 30). Hence the phrase was used metaphorically for any injury in a vulnerable spot. [go to text]

n3370   into the Devil Tavern The Tavern of the Devil and St Dunstan, on Fleet Street in West London, was one of London's leading taverns, owned by the Wadlow family. For Brome, it was associated in particular with his mentor Jonson, who held court there for many years in an upstairs chamber, the Apollo Room, and who christened people his literary 'sons' there. The Devil and its landlord Simon Wadlow are frequently mentioned in Jonson's work, and Jonson also wrote the leges conviviales, a list of mock-laws of tavern etiquette, to be displayed there. This play offers a brief portrait of the tavern in a place-realism mode typical of Brome's London comedies - one might, in particular, compare the representations of the Goat and the Paris taverns in CG. See Simpson (1939); Esdaile (1944); Steggle (2004), arguing that the scene can be construed as an affectionate literary tribute to Jonson, who died in 1637.
The real force of the Devil Tavern, though, may be iconographic. According to the legend which gives the tavern its name, Saint Dunstan, a tenth-century English saint, was working at his forge when the Devil appeared before him in the shape of a beautiful young woman. Dunstan, seeing through the temptation, picked up his tongs and seized the Devil by the nose, whereupon he reverted to his true, monstrous shape.

There survives a tavern-token issued for the Devil Tavern by John Wadlow, son (probably) and successor to Simon, which can be dated (probably) to between 1627 and 1660. On its obverse it illustrates the moment when the devil is changing from young woman back to his true form. Burn, who describes the token, also gives some (unsourced) information about the painted signboard of the Devil Tavern: firstly, that it too depicted this moment of transformation, and secondly, that "the devil on the signboard was as usual sable", that is, black-skinned, which he ascribes to the fact that "the devils often used to appear to the monks in the figure of Ethiopian boys or men" (Burn, 1855, 104-5). The sign of the Devil Tavern, then, was a beautiful woman being transformed into a black-skinned monster. [IMAGE EM_4_2] This motif, of course, reflects ironically upon the previous scene, in which Millicent has changed from white to black. What is more, it may be more than just a subdued metaphor. There is some evidence that early modern drama used "locality boards" to establish location, and that these 'locality boards' often took the form of inn signs (Gurr, 1992, 180, 193, 210). If this were a method used to establish the location of 3.2, then the locality board would show a beautiful woman being transformed into a black monster: exactly what has just happened, literally, in the world of the play in the course of Millicent's transformation.

The devil of the Devil Tavern, black-skinned and looking out over Fleet Street, is another black Londoner in the play, to set alongside Catalina and the other characters more subtly associated with blackness: he is another potential 'English Moor', and he dominates the play's 'place-realism' centre. [go to text]

n4324   A drinker, within ] Within. O; Wthin MS. O and MS both indicate, according to Brome's usual practice, an offstage voice. The context indicates that this unseen voice is a drinker at the Devil Tavern. [go to text]

gg236   anon soon; immediately; in good time [go to text]

n4325   A drinker, within ] Within O; Wthin MS. This is probably a second offstage voice, rather than a second line from the first offstage speaker: a device which would help foster the impression of bustle. [go to text]

gg2800   canary wine from the Canary Islands (popular throughout the period and the favourite drink of Ben Jonson, among others) [go to text]

n3034   Apollo. An upstairs room within the Devil Tavern, associated, in particular, with the memory of Jonson: see [NOTE n3370] for further discussion. [go to text]

n4326   Jonathan Buzzard Delicate social comedy. Buzzard, as a servant, would not have been on first-name terms with the young gentlemen. Aware that their relationship seems to be changing, he offers intimacy by giving his first name, which Nathaniel declines to reciprocate. As the scene unfolds, they negotiate their way towards a compromise form of address, 'friend'. [go to text]

n3035   Goldsmiths’ Hall The guildhall of the guild of goldsmiths, in Foster Lane, London, near St Pauls: the building was completed in 1636, and this therefore is an up-to-the-minute reference. [go to text]

n4327   Enter BOY ] this edn; Ent Drawere wth wine MS; no SD in O. This SD poses various problems of staging. I assume here that the "Drawer" of the MS SD, addressed as "Boy" in both MS and O, is the same person as the "Boy" already seen, and as the "Boy" who has one line at the end of this scene, although they could equally well be two or three different boys. The Boy here has to arrive and pour the wine without disrupting the flow of the scene, so that his actual entrance onto the stage may be a line or two earlier than here, where this SD is marked in MS. No further exits or entrances are marked for this character. This edition assumes that the Boy exits and reappears when needed later. But he could also be left onstage throughout, pouring the wine for the gallants and taking a fuller part in the slapstick action of the scene. [go to text]

n4331   NATHANIEL drinks to BUZZARD The key to the comic sequence that follows is the careful management of pace, with Buzzard getting steadily more and more tipsy, while the gallants use more and more underhand methods to keep him drinking. Drunk scenes, offering opportunities for virtuoso clowning, are not uncommon on the Renaissance stage, and a subset of them revolve around drinking toasts: cf. for instance, Jonson, Every Man Out of his Humour, 5.3, where Carlo gets steadily drunker through drinking toasts to himself, or indeed the climax of Brome, CG. [go to text]

gg4433   Off with it drink it off [go to text]

n3036   sorts of wine Buzzard mistakenly thinks the cups he has drunk so far are of different sorts of wine, a sign of his inexperience with drink. [go to text]

n3037   Bacchus Classical god of wine and drunkenness: but in translating him into terms Buzzard will understand, Vincent has to use the language of trade guilds. [go to text]

n3038   Babylonian From Babylon: here, used loosely to mean 'excessively wicked'. [go to text]

gs472   bar counter from which wine is served [go to text]

gg2802   gill a quarter of a pint [go to text]

n3287   of sixteen thousand pound This means that Quicksands and his partner bought something costing sixteen thousand pounds. This is an enormous sum of money by Caroline standards, for which a gill of sack would seem a miserly celebration. (The modern equivalent in currency in 2009 would be little short of one-and-a-half million pounds.) [go to text]

gg1680   pottle 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]

n3033   beer bowl A conspicuously large cup for drinking beer out of. One should imagine something like the vessel held by Falstaff in the illustration of The Wits (1662) [IMAGE EM_4_1]. Drinking wine out of such a large vessel is, of course, a recipe for rapid drunkenness, but there is some suggestion that the idea of the practice, at least, was fashionable. Cf. Thomas Jordan, 'A Catch Royal, 1641': 'Here's a jolly health to the King... / Next to the Lady Mary / A beer-bowl of canary'. (Jordan, A royal arbor of loyal poesie [1663], 19). [go to text]

gg2805   penny costing a penny [go to text]

gg2803   muscadine a sweet wine made from the muscat grape [go to text]

n3288   with an egg 'Wine with egg was sometimes believed to be an aphrodisiac' (Steen). [go to text]

n3289   of later memory That is: of more recent times, compared to the other two examples (a rather overblown phrase). [go to text]

n3290   my turning away That is: me being turned away from Quicksands's employment. [go to text]

n3291   ha, ha, ha Note the very rapid transition required from drunken weeping to drunken laughter. This whole routine is an exhibition piece for the clowning skills of Andrew Read. [go to text]

n3292   spoiled i’the breeding Buzzard is a gentleman by birth, as he believes, but through the poverty of his parents has been educated as a mere manservant. Other manservants in the Brome canon with pretensions to gentry status include the aspirant Cash in NA, and Springlove in JC. [go to text]

n3358   Buzzards While Buzzard himself likes to trace his name to the Norman French 'Beaudesert', the joke for the audience is that buzzards are birds proverbial for their stupidity. [go to text]

n4353   We came in with the Conqueror See Sir Amorous La-Foole in Jonson, Epicoene, who similarly boasts: 'They all come out of our house, the La-Fooles of the north, the La-Fooles of the west, the La-Fooles of the east and south--we are as ancient a family as any is in Europe--but I myself am descended lineally of the French La-Fooles' (1.1). See also Letoy's stress on his own ancestry and heraldry in AN. The joke enjoys a long afterlife, reappearing again when Kenneth Williams's appropriately named Judge Burke gives his own family history in Carry On Cowboy (1966). [go to text]

n3357   Beau-desert 'Good deserving': a plausible-sounding Norman French surname. [go to text]

n4350   (hiccup) ] /hickup/ MS; no SD in O. [go to text]

gg1013   draught a quantity of liquid to be consumed, often in a single mouthful [go to text]

gg139   shrewd cunning, artful (OED adj. 13a); perhaps also 'difficult, dangerous' or even evil (see OED 4) [go to text]

gg2810   cullion a testicle, hence, figuratively, a rascal [go to text]

n4351   (hiccup) ] -hickvp MS; no SD in O. [go to text]

gg3224   cadzooks a variant of 'gadzooks', a mild oath [go to text]

gg647   delicate synonym for dainty, with the same food associations; also, 'wanton, blunt, foolish, which knoweth not howe to discerne things, and boasteth vainelie of himselfe' (see Thomas Thomas, Dictionarium Linguae Latinae et Anglicanae (1587) on LEME) [go to text]

gg2811   arsy-versiest most preposterous (OED arsy-versy a, but the entry has no examples of this superlative form) [go to text]

gg2812   oaf (literally) an elf-child, but widely used to mean 'simpleton' [go to text]

n3359   some goblin Buzzard offers two explanations: either Timsy was fathered by a goblin rather than by Quicksands, or he is a changeling, swapped in the cradle for the true human son. [go to text]

gg3236   nest cradle [go to text]

n3360   in short coats and long coats Traditionally, babies wore long coats, garments extending down to the ankles; children wore short coats; and idiots were dressed in long coats, such as that worn by 'Changeling' in the illustration to Kirkman's The Wits [IMAGE EM_4_1]. The point about Timsy, then, is that his dress resembles that of a baby even though he is in his twenties. [go to text]

gg2813   natural 'a person having a low learning ability or intellectual capacity' (OED) [go to text]

n3361   a thissen Like this: presumably Buzzard imitates it. [go to text]

n5243   compounded for Struck a deal to cover the cost of. [go to text]

n3362   land-sick Eager for land: until their fathers die, the heirs cannot take possession of it. [go to text]

n4352   and to him for a father 'And went to him, claiming him for a father'. The construction, without a verb, is unusual, but it is present both in MS and O. [go to text]

n3363   [Aside to VINCENT]Pray thee hold thy peace Nathaniel sees, correctly but too late, that Buzzard's drunkenness is about to cause him to erupt in anger. [go to text]

n4354   My beard’s my honour All Renaissance men, who could, cultivated a beard. As documented by Fisher (2001), beards were indeed central to early modern English ideas of manhood and manliness. [go to text]

n3364   or woman If delivered as an afterthought, quite possibly obscene: perhaps Buzzard's thoughts are progressing to lechery. [go to text]

n4355   the other 'Another', in modern usage. [go to text]

n3365   betwixt hawk and buzzard Between sleep and waking. See Henry Burton, A reply to a relation of the conference between William Laud and Mr. Fisher the Jesuit (1640), 273, discussing an edict 'that binds up the sense of the [Thirty-Nine] Articles fast asleep, or in a slumber between hawk and buzzard, or as a speaking in a dream'. [go to text]

n3366   excellent sport Nathaniel proposes a form of psychological torture which would have been familiar, at least as an idea, to early modern Londoners. For instance, a widow named Anne Elsden was for days kept drunk and deprived of sleep, in a series of taverns, by a man who wished to get his hands on her property. The lost play Keep the Widow Waking (1624), by Ford and Rowley, dramatized her story: see Sisson (1936). [go to text]

n3367   very sleepy Another virtuoso transition for Read. Possibly Buzzard passes out altogether at this point, which would make Nathaniel's next line funnier. [go to text]

n3368   he jouks To 'jouk' is to compose oneself for sleep, a falconry term used to describe birds on their roost at night: hence, half-appropriate to Buzzard. [go to text]

n3369   Down Plumpton-park Buzzard is singing the refrain of a hugely popular and sometimes derided contemporary ballad, 'The Lamentation of John Musgrave'. Musgrave, a Cumberland gentleman, was executed at Kendal around 1608 for robbing the King's Receiver. The ballad, spoken by a supposed eye-witness of the execution, has the refrain:

Down Plumpton Park as I did pass,
I heard a bird sing in a glen:
The chiefest of her song it was,
Farewell the flower of serving-men.

The ballad quickly established itself as a classic in its genre. In 1625, 'A.H.' complained of the poor literary taste of 'North villages, where every line / Of Plumpton Park is held a work divine' (John Davies and A.H., A Scourge for Paper-Persecutors [1625], 4). Jacomo in Fletcher's The Captain says that Plumpton Park is the only thing that he can sing; and the ballad itself was reprinted in the Restoration. [go to text]

gs961   cheer comfort [go to text]

n3371   marry you to death That is: kill you. Once again, the recurring joke is that Theophilus has quickly lost his temper. [go to text]

n4374   Your pardon again, sister, ] this edn; Your pardon again your sister O. This line is not in the manuscript version at all. O's reading, as it stands, seems meaningless, hence the emendation. [go to text]

n3372   jew One of three examples (spread between O and MS) which refer to Quicksands as a 'Jew', a term seemingly used as a metaphorical description encapsulating his moneylending and general hatedness (OED n, 2). In no respect apart from these three references does Quicksands appear to be 'really' Jewish. For the wider picture of representations of Jewishness in England at this date see Shapiro (1996); for further discussion of Quicksands and Jewishness, see Steggle (2004). [go to text]

n3373   He then might overtake her As someone both old and evil, Quicksands himself will be going to hell soon. [go to text]

n6674   And do you laugh too? This moment has been carefully worked up to. The joke here lies in the irony: the mismatch between Arnold's expectation that this news will make Theophilus laugh, and our superior knowledge (based on having twice already seen him lose his temper about this topic) that it will make him explode with rage as never before. The pause before Theophilus starts to shout may well be the funniest moment of the exchange. In addition, the exchange accomplishes useful plot points, showing the spread of the news of the 'disappearance'; and giving an occasion for Arnold's sacking. [go to text]

gg869   forbear avoid, shun [go to text]

gg2815   oft as every time that [go to text]

gs473   proper appropriate, usual [go to text]

gg2445   cross (v) thwart, forestall; contradict; afflict, go against [go to text]

n3374   proverb As quoted in, for example, Gervase Markham, A Health to the Honest Profession of Serving-Men (1598), C4r: 'who is so simple but will confess, that the serving-man's profession (in regard of their pleasure and ease) is to be preferred before divers sorts of people, of more wealth, and greater ability, if their end were not misery, penury, scarcity, and almost beggary: for I hold it an infallible rule, an old serving-man, a young beggar.' [go to text]

gg2816   cast-off a person who has been 'cast off', or sacked, by their employer [go to text]

n3375   at a dead lift In an emergency. (According to OED, a metaphor from haulage: a horse at a 'dead lift' is one using their maximum strength in an attempt to move a load.) [go to text]

gg3239   devotion act of prayer (OED n. 2) [go to text]

n4375   NATHANIEL and ARNOLD whisper. That is, they whisper in dumb show while Edmund and Vincent talk. Unlike Quicksands' later whispering [NOTE n4371], which is an indication of how a line is delivered, this whispering is, in effect, mimed. [go to text]

gg3005   cozenage fraud, duplicity [go to text]

n4376   whore-master Implies a range of meanings crossing from 'man who keeps a mistress', to 'pimp', to, as here, 'fornicator'. It is an interesting choice of word, because Nathaniel uses it of himself at the end of the play: it thus draws attention to parallels between the two characters. [go to text]

gg2817   Nursled raised [go to text]

gs474   base born outside wedlock; bastard [go to text]

n3376   he might had He might have had: an elision not unusual in seventeenth-century English. [go to text]

n4377   of some other’s getting That is, fathered by someone else (since Edmund assumes that Quicksands will be cuckolded). [go to text]

n3377   Should with her light heels make him heavy-headed 'Light heels' imply a) speedy gait; b) unchaste behaviour. Cf. OED light-heeled a. In a parallel pun, 'heavy-headed' implies a) misery at her fleeing; b) a head made heavy with cuckold's horns. [go to text]

gg2818   running of fleeing from [go to text]

gg2819   cover person who covers up for [go to text]

n4378   What dost laugh at? An idiomatic ellipsis for 'What dost thou laugh at?'. Moderately common in Restoration drama: cf., for instance, Edward Ravenscroft, The London Cuckolds (1682), 5: 'Prithee, what dost laugh at?' [go to text]

n3378   Buzzard ] this edn; uzzard O. [go to text]

n3379   could match him who could be paired with him [go to text]

gg1090   clown rustic, yokel, country bumpkin [go to text]

gs475   company group, in a general sense; but also, specifically, a term for a group of actors [go to text]

gs182   project something projected or proposed for execution; a plan, scheme (OED n. 5a) [go to text]

gg80   pieces of gold or silver, i.e. money (OED n. 1b) [go to text]

gg2820   piece (v) reconcile [go to text]

gg1846   clinches settles the matter [go to text]

gg2821   wonts habits [go to text]

gg2822   salted experienced [go to text]

gg2823   documents of lessons about (note that 'document' does not yet carry the modern sense of 'piece of paper'). [go to text]

gg2824   reins kidneys (the seat of lust) [go to text]

n3380   That tickle upon a man above their sphere That amuse a man far more than women can. [go to text]

n3381   They dull They [that is, women] dull a man, they make him sluggish. [go to text]

gg2825   runt hag [go to text]

gg2826   splay-foot a foot which turns outwards, often believed to be a sign of a witch [go to text]

gg613   crossed frustrated, jinxed; (literally) run across (one's path) [go to text]

n3382   Gid ye good den Good evening (OED good even). Presumably a sarcastic reflection on Arthur's lack of welcome to him. [go to text]

n3383   mine stood that way My thought: but the line contains the possibilty for lewd double entendre. [go to text]

gg3224   cadzooks a variant of 'gadzooks', a mild oath [go to text]

n3384   kept at livery That is, kept as a mistress. See Massinger, The City-Madam (1659) 56, where Goldwire's louche lifestyle is discussed: 'you that made / Your ten pound suppers; kept your punks [mistresses] at livery / In Brainford, Staines, and Barnet, and this in London'. [go to text]

n3396   pressable Seemingly, a Brome coinage. It means, 'fit to be lain upon', with obvious sexual intention: but 'pressable' is later documented as meaning 'able to be pressed into military service', and that may be a subdued metaphor here. [go to text]

n3397   flaxen Of the colour of flax (a pale gold colour; normally an adjective applied to hair). [go to text]

n3398   tawny-moor 'A name given to the tawny or brown-skinned natives of foreign lands; prob. originally to natives of northern Africa' (OED). [go to text]

n3399   giantess ] MS; giants O. Since the dwarf, the doxie, and the dowsabel are all in the singular, O's reading is probably merely a transmissional error. [go to text]

gg702   conditions state, circumstance [go to text]

gg2835   doxy the mistress of a beggar or rogue [go to text]

n3400   dowsabel A mistress: an English corruption of the name Dulcibella. The distinction in this line, perhaps, is between the common-sounding 'doxy' and the rather more poetic 'dowsabel'. [go to text]

n3401   religions ] MS; religious O. [go to text]

n3402   For what make they with any? A hard-to-paraphrase throwaway joke. 'Opinion' refers to differing religious affiliations within Christianity, while 'religion' moves on to consider faiths other than Christianity as well. But then Nathaniel remembers that 'woman of religion', as a phrase, could also describe a very devout puritan. Such devout women, Nathaniel complains, never have anything do with men like him, and are no fun. [go to text]

gg2836   huckle-backed hump-backed [go to text]

gg2837   bum-creeper 'one who walks almost bent double' (OED) [go to text]

gs479   straight upright in posture [go to text]

gg2838   spiny thin and gaunt [go to text]

gg2839   shop-maid woman who serves in a shop [go to text]

n3403   St. Martin’s A disreputable area of London around the church of St Martin-le-Grand near Aldersgate, particularly noted for shops selling cheap and inferior goods, such as 'St Martin's Lace' (a type of cheap copper lace). [go to text]

n3404   done well That is, acted in a moral way. [go to text]

n3406   As well as I could with the worst of ’em He means, 'my sexual performance was excellent even in the difficult cases'. Nathaniel misunderstands the terms of Arthur's question. [go to text]

n3405   though I say it 'Don't think I'm boasting, what I'm telling you is true even though it reflects well on me': cf. the modern idiom, 'though I say it who shouldn't'. [go to text]

n3407   Few men come after me that mend my work 'Men who have sex with women whom I have previously seduced rarely improve on my achievement'. Nathaniel imagines himself as a craftsman of sex. While this line is funny, the audience are also reminded by it of the twenty women he claims to have dragged into prostitution by seducing them [EM 1.2.speech42]. [go to text]

n3408   or member Part of the body, and in particular, the penis. [go to text]

gs480   cross misfortune [go to text]

gg2840   loose livers people who live a dissolute life [go to text]

n3409   doting ] doating MS; dovting O. On balance, 'dovting', i.e. 'doubting', is probably not a revision, but a transmissional error. 'Doubting' would be an adjective carrying the meaning 'insecure', but OED indicates that it is rare in this sense, and 'doting' - 'old and foolish' - fits much better with the thought of the speech. [go to text]

n3410   bachelor 'Stale bachelor' is a fairly common seventeenth-century phrase describing an older unmarried man. 'Doting', which connotes specifically foolishness brought on by age, fits well with it. (Steen argues for a pun on 'stale-doting', since 'stale' can also mean 'whore', but this seems unnecessarily complicated). [go to text]

gg2841   thing a pejorative term for a woman (OED n1. 10a) [go to text]

n3411   common promiscuous, or a prostitute [go to text]

gg1323   perforce forcibly, violently; by force or threat of force [go to text]

gs494   point topic, issue in debate or under discussion, which is to be resolved (brought to a conclusion) [go to text]

gg2842   valiant bold [go to text]

gg153   jocund cheerful, merry [go to text]

n3412   be supposed no warrant Your bold wit and merry disposition do not give you the right to insult your friends. [go to text]

n3413   town talk The talk of the town. [go to text]

n3414   brags on’s back (He) boasts about the strength of his back. [go to text]

n3415   strong-chined Having a strong chine, or backbone (a term more applicable to horses, than to people) [go to text]

n3416   tits Two meanings here are in play: a) young men; b) small horses. Nathaniel continues his horse-related punning. [go to text]

n3417   wildfire in their cruppers The punning continues with a further play on two meanings: a) (of horses) with an inflammatory disease in their buttocks; b) (of young men) with wild energy in their loins. [go to text]

n4386   wild distempered fury Arthur imagines his woe as a cloud, full of rain and ready to break out into a violent storm. Another unexpected and subtle piece of stagecraft and characterisation. Arthur, who generally appears mild-mannered and in control of himself, finally loses his temper, startling even Nathaniel with the vehemence of the next few lines. This playing against type offers potential for comedy, especially if accompanied by appropriate stage business, but it also reveals a certain depth to Arthur's character; and creates tension for the next act, when his enemy's lover is entirely in his power. [go to text]

n4387   So near my pity This line gives a clue to how Arthur's rage is performed, in that the observer's reaction at the end is 'pity' rather than alarm. Perhaps, after threatening Nathaniel, Arthur has burst into tears before leaving the stage. [go to text]

gg906   grigs wild and merry youths (a meaning derived from the term used to define slippery eels) [go to text]

gg2843   hand o’er head recklessly (OED, hand over head adv. phr.) [go to text]

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