The Persons in the Comedy.

Sir Philip LUCKLESS		contracted to Mistress Fitchow the city widow
Master TRIEDWELL		kinsman to Sir Philip.
Sir Paul SQUELCH Master [Apprehension] BULFINCHn240	}	Justices [and] Mistress Fitchow’s friends.
Master [Walter] WIGEONgg436		a cockney gentleman, brother to Mistress Fitchow
[Captain] ANVILn238		a braggart, governor to Wigeon.
Master [Salamon] NONSENSE		a Cornish gentleman, suitor to Constance.
[Oliver] PATE		a witty servingman to Sir Philip.
BEAVISn1166		a blunt servingman to Mistress Trainwell.
[Humphrey] HOWDEEn239		Mistress Fitchow’s man and gentleman-usher.
VEXHEM		a constable.
CLERK to Sir Paul.
Masquers.
Mistress [Audrey]FITCHOWn1617gg139		the city widow.
CONSTANCE, the northern lass.
Mistress TRAINWELL		her governess.
Camitha HOLDUP		a cunning whoren266.
[FLAPSn265		the] chambermaid to Mistress Fitchow.

Prologue.

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n240   BULFINCH A bulfinch is a member of the genus of birds allied to grosbeaks. They can be easily trained as songbirds and therefore became a proverbial name for persons easy to influence or persuade. That Apprehension Bulfinch as a Justice of the Peace should be so malleable is a cause for concern in social terms. [go to text]

gg436   WIGEON (1) a wild duck; (2) applied to a person, in allusion to the supposed stupidity of the bird; a fool, simpleton, ninny [go to text]

n238   [Captain] ANVIL The block (usually of iron) on which a smith hammers and shapes the metal which he is working, though here applied to Anvil's role as Wigeon's governor or tutor. Wigeon is the malleable material shaped by Anvil's interventions. [go to text]

n1166   BEAVIS Probably pronounced 'Bee-viss' to point up the comic association with the heroic knight of chivalric literature, Sir Bevis. As a 'blunt servingman' according to the dramatis personae, Beavis is clearly the antithesis of a romantic hero. [go to text]

n239   HOWDEE Howdee's surname, which will be the subject of considerable punning in the playtext proper, is a version of the formal greeting 'How d'ee' or 'How d'ye' (i.e. How do you). [go to text]

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

n1617   FITCHOW By making Fitchow's name suggestive of a 'fitchew' or polecat Brome plays on the emblematic association of the polecat with lechery, suggesting that she complies with the misogynistic stereotype of the lusty widow. Compare the 'character' of the widow in Wye Saltonstall's Picturae loquentes; Or, Pictures draw forth characters (London, 1631). Polecats were also proverbially associated with a strong musky smell (Tilley P461: 'stinking like a polecat'); see the mobilisation of both senses of the comparison in Michael Cassio's misogynistic observation on the prostitute Bianca in Othello, 4.1.141: 'Tis such another fitchew - marry, a perfumed one!'. Brome intriguingly will both invoke all these traditonal prejudices with regard to the archetypal figure of the city widow in this play but also challenge such easy categorisations at every turn. [go to text]

n266   cunning whore Despite the rather damning tone of this description from the original cast list of the 1632 quarto publication of the play, the play proper proves highly sympathetic in its treatment of Constance [Camitha] Holdup. For a discussion of this tension, see Steggle (2004), p. 25. [go to text]

n265   FLAPS The chambermaid to Mistress Fitchow was not named in the original cast list in the quarto publication of The Northern Lass. However, since Mistress Fitchow appears to summon her as 'Flaps' in 2.1, I have decided to accord her this name throughout. The name is fitting since it means 'a strike or blow' and is therefore very much in keeping with the casual violence associated with the London society of this play, not least in its treatment of servants. See Pate and Beavis's discussion of the violent tendencies of their respective master and mistress at 2.2. On this theme in general, see Steggle (2004), pp. 26-8. [go to text]

n4328   ACT ONE This is a play that largely takes place in London households. In the opening scene, the first household we encounter is that of Sir Philip Luckless, a courtier who is declaring his intention to formalise his betrothal to a rich city widow, Audrey Fitchow. While his friend and kinsman, Triedwell, clearly has reservations about this match, invoking as he does cultural stereotypes of the browbeating and profligate widow who will rapidly consume Luckless's riches and his sanity, Luckless stresses that the match is already secured. The couple are 'Lustily promised . . . Absolutely contracted' (See the introduction for an extended discussion of the treatment of courtship and handfasting rituals in this play). We are then introduced to the brother of the said widow, Walter Wigeon, who is another recognizable type from the Jacobean and Caroline stage, the young fool. He is accompanied by his 'governor' or tutor, Captain Anvil. This relationship imaginatively reworks that of Bartholomew Cokes and Humphrey Wasp in Ben Jonson's 1614 play Bartholomew Fair. In similar ways to Coke, Wigeon has little control over his purse and dreams of conducting a 'grand tour' of Europe (by the end of the play he will embark on European travels for very different reasons). Anvil reworks another character-type, that of the braggart soldier (compare Jonson's Bobadill in Every Man In His Humour) and brings into the play the homosocial world of male fraternities and brotherhoods, often fashioned around drinking establishments and violent behaviour. The humour for the audience is that Anvil is a pretty poor exponent of the type he represents, regularly subject to violent beatings from others and an abject misunderstander of situations. Wigeon is excited at the prospect of his sister's marriage to Luckless since it will raise their family further up the social spectrum and therefore benefit him directly. On meeting the hapless Wigeon, Luckless starts to doubt the sense of a marriage which will tie him to the Wigeon clan. It is at the very moment when these doubts are entering his head that his servant Pate announces the arrival of a woman at the house who clearly has a grievance to air. Mistress Trainwell enters, although at this point neither the audience nor Luckless is clear who exactly she is. She approaches Sir Philip and rails on him for his poor treatment of a woman called Constance and hands him a letter from the same. Luckless appears to assume that the letter comes from a prostitute whose sexual services he has employed in the past and who went by the name of Constance (we will later learn that her real name is Camitha Holdup). As a result he treats Trainwell with considerable scorn. She leaves, appalled at his response, and Luckless is informed by Pate that she has left in her coach. This would be an immediate signal to early modern audiences that there may be a case of mistaken identity here, since it was highly unlikely that a prostitute or her bawd would have access to their own coach, although the opportunity for confusion persists in that those clear social demarcations were increasingly under pressure in the Caroline period when access to coach travel was becoming possible for those lower down the social scale. Indeed, in the 1630s there would be publications on this theme including Henry Peacham's 'Coach and Sedan pleasantly disputing for place and precedence' (1636) and John Taylor's 'The World Runs on Wheels; or, Odds between Carts and Coaches' (1635). Ben Jonson’s The New Inn first performed in the same year as The Northern Lass (1629) includes extended ruminations on this topic. However the key to Luckless's poor judgement in this instance lies in the response of Pate, the witty servant who will have a key role in some of the later disguisings and embedded performances of this theatrically-conscious play. He can see quite clearly that Mistress Trainwell is not a typical bawd. Another servant then arrives at the Luckless household. Beavis is the servant to Sir Paul Squelch’s household. Sir Paul is the local Justice of the Peace. We will meet Sir Paul later in the play and learn in due course that Trainwell is his housekeeper and therefore also governess and confidante to his niece Constance, currently resident in his London household. For the moment, however, Pate seems to endorse Luckless's assumption that Trainwell is a bawd and identifies Beavis as servant to a brothel or bawdy-house and he treats him accordingly. This leads to an exchange full of asides that the audience can enjoy greatly as each expresses shock at the other’s comments and responses. Pate and Beavis agree that Luckless will visit Trainwell's household that evening. Beavis's comment that he will not be able to recognise Sir Philip lays the foundations for Pate's decision to encourage Captain Anvil to disguise himself as Sir Philip and visit the supposed 'brothel', a scene of comic misunderstanding that will take place onstage in Act 2. In the second scene of this act we are in the household of Audrey Fitchow, the rich city widow due to be formally married to Sir Philip Luckless the following day. She is in conversation with her servant, Humphrey Howdee, and is describing the terms and conditions under which she intends to conduct her forthcoming marriage. She will not refer to her husband with terms of respect and, as we learn later in the scene, she intends to be in control of the household. Howdee is another of the interestingly sketched servant characters in this play. He dreams of being a gentleman usher and is malleable to other people's suggestions and instructions throughout. His social ambitions suit the ambitious Fitchow who wishes to attain a certain status in society, in pursuit of which she is agreeing to marry Sir Philip and become Lady Luckless. Howdee is also the subject of much comic stage business around his name – he constantly mistakes people's expressions of concern or greeting 'how d'ye?' to be a direct summons which makes for several comic entrances onto the stage. What can look quite corny in print comes alive in performance as Howdee's entrances are often used to punctuate moments of dramatic tension by Brome (the exchange between Fitchow and Triedwell later in this scene is a prime example). When Howdee has gone offstage temporarily in this scene the audience is given access to Fitchow's plans for her marriage which she sets out in quasi-legal terms in a lengthy soliloquy (her previous marriage was to a civil lawyer so she is well acquainted with legal theory). She intends to have 'the whole sway of the house and all domestical affairs' and complete control of her husband into the bargain. At this point, Fitchow would seem to conform to the cultural stereotype of the rich widow, though our initial response to her will be complicated by the end of the scene following the extended exchange with Triedwell. Triedwell arrives at the household on a mission to dissuade Fitchow from marrying Sir Philip. In a verbal assault that resembles Truewit’s attempts to dissuade Morose from marrying in Ben Jonson's 1609 play Epicoene Triedwell initially slanders both the institution of marriage and his kinsman, Sir Philip. His own performance is complicated, however, by the fact that he finds himself unexpectedly attracted to Fitchow; indeed, in the course of the scene he appears to fall quite deeply in love with her. There is undoubtedly a sexual chemistry that develops between them during the scene (something which clearly emerged in the workshopping of the scene with actors) and Brome underscores this through the verbal and poetic rhythms of the dialogue as well as through astute use of asides for both characters. Howdee's previously mentioned comic entrance might serve to punctuate the increasingly breathy exchanges between Triedwell and Fitchow but it also gives Fitchow someone to play against and ask questions of as she is clearly perplexed and confused by the end of the scene and the act. [go to text]

n216   Bermudas Possibly a reference to an area near to Covent Garden renowned for prostitution, and which may prefigure later associations of Luckless in the play with formerly disreputable behaviour of this kind. However, the Bermudas had also become a by-word for risky financial and personal ventures after the ill-fated journey of a fleet of 400 new colonists to the Jamestown colony in Virginia by the recently established Virginia Company in 1609. After hitting a hurricane off the coast of Virginia, the survivors landed on island of Bermuda where they spent the winter. William Strachey's account of their experiences, recorded in a letter of 1610, 'A true report of the wreck and redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Knight, upon and from the islands of the Bermudas . . .', had circulated in manuscript form soon after its composition and is considered to a major influence on Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' (1611). Strachey's account had new relevance and resonance in the Caroline period since it was published in 1625 as part of Samuel Purchas's remarkable collection of travel writings, 'Purchas his Pilgrimes'. Brome's interest in the genre of travel writing was clearly considerable, witness the plotline involving 'Sir John Mandeville's Travels' in 'The Antipodes' (1638). See Julie Sanders, 'The politics of escapism: fantasies of travel and power in Richard Brome's 'The Antipodes' and Ben Jonson's 'The Alchemist' ' in 'Writing and Fantasy' ed. Ceri Sullivan and Barbara White (London: Longman, 1999), pp. 137-50. [go to text]

gg417   nurseling a person bred in or fostered by a particular place, or conditions (OED 2a) [go to text]

n4329   (they say, I never saw her) Much of the action of this play is dependent on the fact that several of the main characters have never met or seen each other before, which allows for a series of impersonations and mistaken identities which drive the plot forward. [go to text]

gg418   proctors people employed to manage the affairs of another; agents, deputies, proxies, attornies (OED 2a) [go to text]

n217   Herculean Hercules was renowned for his exceptional strength. [go to text]

n218   Bedlam Bethlehem Hospital, London, formerly the Priory of St. Mary of Bethlehem. After 1402 it became where the mentally infirm were placed. [go to text]

n219   Lustily promised, sir. Absolutely contracted. Luckless refers here to the early modern convention whereby when a couple declared themselves man and wife, they were legally married per verba de presenti. By a strange paradox, the Church recognised the legality of these contracts but also denounced them as sinful since they encouraged the practice of sexual consummation prior to a church blessing. See John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, 1.1.477-8. The practice was often referred to as 'handfasting'. For a detailed discussion of this custom, see Nicholl 2007, pp. 251-8. [go to text]

n4330   filliped out With an obvious pun on Sir Philip's name as well as the literal meaning. This pun is repeated by Wigeon later in the play when he has enjoyed sexual intercourse with Holdup (who at this point in time he believes to be the northern lass) in the guise of Sir Philip Luckless (see Act 5). [go to text]

gg421   filliped struck smartly (OED 4b) [go to text]

gg420   foot-post a letter carrier or messenger who travels on foot [go to text]

gg419   whipping-post a post, usually set up in a public place, to which offenders were tied to be whipped [go to text]

n221   D’ye hear? The phrase becomes Anvil's catchphrase as the playtext progresses and several other characters make reference to his verbal tick, Wigeon in particular feeling it operates as a sign that Anvil is telling a joke against someone. Other catchwords or identifying phrases allied to particular characters in the play include Sir Paul Squelch's 'directly' and Mistress Trainwell's 'discretion'. The practice of deploying catchwords as a form of easy character identification is also common to the plays of James Shirley in the commercial Caroline theatres at this time. [go to text]

n222   apt to decline any man’s anger Triedwell implies that Anvil is a coward, a state of affairs produced by several beatings at the hands of others. [go to text]

n1618   Sir Philip Luckless his betrothed This possessive is a highly unusual way of referring to his own sister. It represents her entirely through the optic of her husband to be and is indicative both of Wigeon's uncaring misogyny in the play and the great importance he places in the social advancement of the Wigeon family by Fitchow's marriage to Sir Philip. [go to text]

n220   flew out of Holland in Lincolnshire The Wigeon family surname plays on their association with a wild duck common to the wetland marshes of the Lincolnshire wolds. The area of the wolds known as 'Holland' due to its resemblance to the reclaimed lands of the Low Countries still exists today. Brome was clearly interested in the vexed contemporary issues surrounding fenland and marshland drainage in Lincolnshire and East Anglia in the 1620s and 1630s and makes reference to the subject again in The Asparagus Garden through the character of the Gardener and his wife Martha and in the windmill projects advanced at court in The Court Beggar. For an earlier Jacobean example of engagement with this topic, see Ben Jonson's 1616 The Devil is an Ass and its plotline involving the dukedom of 'drowned land'. For further discussion of this subject on the early modern stage, see Sanders (1998), pp. 107-22. For an insight into the social and economic history of the fens at this time, see Hindle (2004). [go to text]

n223   persecution Wigeon refers here to Protestants who went into hiding in Lincolnshire during the reign of Mary Tudor to avoid religious persecution. [go to text]

n224   Crowland A small town in Lincolnshire, popular with wild duck hunters. Triedwell is continuing the puns on Wigeon's name. [go to text]

n225   moulting time Wild ducks were presumed to be most vulnerable to hunters when they were moulting their wing-feathers. [go to text]

gg422   cannoneer an artillery man who manages the laying or firing of a cannon (NB: here the term is reapplied to refer to the management of legal canons) [go to text]

gg423   canon law, rule, edict (OED 2a) [go to text]

n1619   rare parts Possibly with a bawdy sense of genitalia. Wigeon seems fond throughout of bawdy references and double entendres of a sexual nature. [go to text]

n226   Might she have had ’em both, sir? Triedwell is clearly casting sexual aspersions on Mistress Fitchow's character. [go to text]

n227   six yoke of such cattle Triedwell's agricultural turn of phrase implies in a roundabout way that Mistress Fitchow will eat up any fortune that Luckless possesses within a short space of time. The association between women and the consumption of acreage was conventional in early modern drama. See Ben Jonson Epicoene, 2.2.109-111: 'she feels not how the land drops away, nor the acres melt; nor foresees the change when the mercer has your woods for her velvets'. [go to text]

n4316   [TRIEDWELL] exit[s]. In accordance with the modernising undertaken throughout this edition, I have modernised all exits to read in this way - e.g. Triedwell exits, rather than 'Exit Triedwell'. I have not added a textual note for each example since use of square brackets should indicate to the user where a stage direction existed, if only in partial form or in Latin in the Quarto and where they are complete editorial intervention. [go to text]

n228   give him and me our gloves accept our friendship. Gloves were given as a pledge both in declarations of friendship and of challenges and duels, but they were also commonly given as wedding gifts at this time (especially to men who wore the more exotically embroidered versions of the garment). [go to text]

n229   wits, fits, and fancies a phrase commonly used in early modern literature to refer to a collection of clever sayings. Anthony Copley's 'Wits fittes and fancies' was published in 1596 (Fried). [go to text]

n230   dry nurse Wigeon's pun (in fact an appropriation of Anvil's own joke) on the role of a wet nurse who would traditionally have been employed to breastfeed the children of aristocratic parents. [go to text]

gg425   towry-lowry dialect expression, possibly from Cumberland (cf. 'tirra-lirra'), meaning 'all in disorder' (OED notes this as the first usage) [go to text]

gg426   bate be impatient with (OED v1. 2b) [go to text]

gg424   pomps splendid or showy ornaments, appurtenances etc. (OED n1. 3 notes this as a unique usage) [go to text]

n1620   How the hot sum of his rage boils out of his mouth! i.e. he is seething. Wigeon's image-laden speech here is typical of his discourse throughout the play. He rarely uses one word where several will do. [go to text]

n4333   I shall marry into a fine stock! Luckless is already exhibiting doubts about his impending marriage just fifty lines into the play. [go to text]

gg1396   stock! race, family, or ancestral type (OED n. 1 and 3d) [go to text]

gg427   oraculously in the manner of an oracle (OED records the first usage as c. 1631 in Donne's Paradoxes) [go to text]

n4332   PATE enters. Enter Pate to Luckless, Wigeon, [and] Anvil in Q. This kind of stage direction is typical in early modern printed editions of plays where the convention was for the entrance of a new character onto the stage to mark a new scene division. Since in this edition we have chosen to respect the flow of action when denominating scenic division, I have updated all of these stage directions accordingly. [go to text]

gg428   warrantable guaranteed virtuous (OED 2) [go to text]

gg432   fightingly pugnaciously (OED's first recorded usage) [go to text]

n1621   She fears no colours 'She will not be frightened off by any man's army.' [go to text]

gg188   colours flag [go to text]

n231   monkey Traditional pets for Caroline aristocratic women. [go to text]

n232   purchased a four hundred pounds knighthood The sale of aristocratic titles to boost Treasury funds became a veritable scandal during the reign of James VI and I. Several Jacobean plays made comic capital out of the practice; see, for example, Ben Jonson's 'mushroom knight' (so-called because he sprang up overnight), Sir Epicure Mammon in The Alchemist (1610). [go to text]

gg429   earnest seriousness (OED n. 1 and 2) [go to text]

gg430   Whiskin (1) northern dialect term in Caroline period for a shallow kind of drinking vessel; (2) slang term for a pander (OED's first recorded usage in this sense) [go to text]

n215   Whiskin Brome's use of this phrase as a slang term for a pander is the OED's first recorded usage, but see also James Shirley, The Lady of Pleasure (1635), 4.2.51. [go to text]

n4334   out o’ the way i.e. in private, for fear that the ceremony might be interrupted by the likes of Trainwell railing at him on behalf of another woman with a supposed claim to his hand in marriage. [go to text]

n4335   She had a bastard t’other day too. This is the first mention of Holdup's illegitimate child, which will prove to be a factor in the plot later. Luckless's unsympathetic, even misogynistic, response to her dilemma here is disturbing. He is not an uncomplicated male hero in this play by any means and despite audience fondness for the northern lass, her intended match with Sir Philip raises questions of its own. [go to text]

gg431   maw stomach (usually of an animal) [go to text]

n233   ‘Cupid’s Muster’ This appears to be a satirical Caroline ballad naming all the London prostitutes of the day but no extant evidence of this ballad has yet been identified. [go to text]

gg433   pumped put under a stream of water from a pump; a common punishment for those perceived to be witches (see Induction to Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, ll. 31-3: 'And a punk set under upon her head, with her stern upward, and ha' been soused by nmy witty young masters o' the Inns of Court?') [go to text]

n234   Coaches must needs be common when their carriages are so Expansion in both the availability of and the access to coach travel was a common topic of debate in the Caroline period. Concern was expressed that access to such modes of transport on the part of the lower classes was a threat to social stability; see, for example, contemporary pamphlets produced on the topic by John Taylor ('The World Runnes on Wheeles', 1625) and Henry Peacham ('Coach, Cart, and Sedan', 1637,) as well as the reflections on social rank and coach travel in Ben Jonson's The New Inn (1629), 4.3.70-74: 'A coach is hired and four horse; he runs / In his velvet jacket thus to Romford, Croydon, / Hounslow, or Barnet, the next bawdy road; / And takes me out, carries me up, and throws me / Upon a bed --'. Luckless in fact misreads the significance of Trainwell's access to a coach, presuming it proves the case that even the lowest social orders now travel in the highest style, thereby demeaning coach travel in the process, instead of realising that it indicates Trainwell's access to a coach due to her employment in the Squelch household. [go to text]

gg434   cooler vessel for cooling (OED 2a) [go to text]

n235   batchelor’s button a flower worn by unmarried men; traditionally a campion. [go to text]

gg435   Mother of the Maids a bawd [go to text]

n1622   cock-bawd With a pun on 'cock-bird'. [go to text]

gg438   punk prostitute [go to text]

n241   Bridgefoot 'The Bear at the Bridgefoot' was a famous London tavern at the Southwark end of London bridge (Fried). [go to text]

n242   Cat Probably a reference to 'The Cat and Fiddle', an eating house in Cheapside (Fried). Pate's implication is that this venue, like the Bridgefoot, is used for assignations with prostitutes. [go to text]

gg437   overwatched tired from too much watching [go to text]

gg439   nobles English gold coins first minted by Edward III, usually valued at 6s 8d (OED n1. 2a) [go to text]

n1623   put my master to the pains subject my master to this same treatment [go to text]

gg440   trim-tram trick piece of nonsense or absurdity (OED 4) [go to text]

n243   great palace probably referring to Westminster Palace (Fried). [go to text]

n4336   But how shall I know him? I never saw him. Beavis's observation that he has never seen Luckless sets in train the plotline whereby Captain Anvil will assume he can pretend to be Luckless and arrive at the 'brothel' he assumes Trainwell is the keeper of. The scene takes place in the second act of the play. [go to text]

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

gg430   whiskin (1) northern dialect term in Caroline period for a shallow kind of drinking vessel; (2) slang term for a pander (OED's first recorded usage in this sense) [go to text]

gg442   tup a male sheep or ram (here applied to a person) [go to text]

gg447   cast (usually of garments) thrown aside, cast-off, rejected (OED 5) [go to text]

gg443   Clotpoll a blockhead or dolt (OED 2) [go to text]

n1624   gentleman-usher This is the role the junior devil Pug trains in in Jonson's The Devil is an Ass. The role of an usher hints at something deeply embedded in the dramatic structure of The Northern Lass which is replete with scenes where servants usher people into other people's households and often into specific rooms in those households. While the policing of the threshold of any household is an important role for the servants of the play, it is equally noticeable how the conventions of that threshold are misinterpreted or misunderstood by the visitors, such as Pate mistaking Beavis for a bawd's accomplice in Act 1 in the scenes in Sir Philip's residence and Anvil repeating the mistake when he meets Beavis, and indeed Mistress Trainwell, at Sir Paul Squelch's residence in Act 2. [go to text]

gg1397   gentleman-usher an usher is an official or servant who has charge of the door and admits people to a hall or chamber; a gentleman-usher is a gentleman who acts as an usher to a person of superior rank [go to text]

n1625   came home upon my worship’s foot-cloth The implication here is, I think, that he arrived home straight onto his carpet or 'foot-cloth', i.e. he staggered in drunk. The account Howdee gives is of a high-living city gallant who burns the candle at both ends and lives a life of leisure and luxury. [go to text]

gg251   conned small unit of time [go to text]

n251   conned OED notes 1821 as the first usage of this term, but 'studied, learned' is clearly Brome's sense here. [go to text]

n1626   get you down The implication of this statement is that there is a specific spatiality to Fitchow's household, where the servants reside in the downstairs sections of the building and guests are received in her upper chambers (since she goes on to instruct Howdee in the same line that if Sir Paul Squelch arrives he should be brought 'up' to her). An interesting comparison in terms of the dramatic signification of space and movement within a building would be with Ben Jonson's The New Inn, performed at the Blackfriars in the same year as The Northern Lass, where there are distinct semiotics to the upstairs and downstairs attributions and associations of characters, distinguishing as they do for the large part the inn-workers from the paying guests. [go to text]

gg1398   forward bold, presumptuous, immodest (OED 8) [go to text]

n255   let me study my remembrances for after marriage Albeit an exaggerated version, Fitchow's legal declaration of her rights in the marriage to Luckless is not dissimilar to contemporary documents, such as Lady Elizabeth Compton's letter to her husband William, Lord Compton, when he came into her father's fortune in 1610, in which she asserted her right to have access to coaches and finery and to control the appointment of servants, as well as instructing him to settle his debts and purchase land. See W. David Kay (1999), pp. 1-34. Lady Compton's letter is reproduced in full in G. Goodman, 'The Court of King James', 2 vols (London, 1839), 2: 127-32. See also the type of the city widow in the popular subgenre of 'characters literature' in the 1630s, such as work by Wye Saltonstall and Richard Braithwaite. [go to text]

gg445   Imprimis 'In the first place' (originally used to introduce the first of a number of items, as in an inventory or will) [go to text]

n1627   contrary to all conformity i.e. behave in contradistinction to the expectations of the age that women should be obedient and passive. Early modern drama took regular delight in challenging social expectations of this kind, which suggests that in practice such 'conformity' was far from standard. [go to text]

gg446   prick goad or prompt to memory [go to text]

n1628   tickle the spleen of a woman make a woman happy (in seventeenth-century usage the spleen was seen as the seat of laughter in the body rather than the seat of melancholy which was a view held by other ages and cultures). [go to text]

gg1399   spleen abdominal organ, held by many ages to be the seat of melancholy but in the early seventeenth century more traditionally held to be the seat of laughter or mirth (OED 1c) [go to text]

gg447   cast (usually of garments) thrown aside, cast-off, rejected (OED 5) [go to text]

gg1400   put in apparel dress, attire [go to text]

gg1397   gentleman-usher an usher is an official or servant who has charge of the door and admits people to a hall or chamber; a gentleman-usher is a gentleman who acts as an usher to a person of superior rank [go to text]

n1629   the aptness of his name Howdee's name is particularly apposite for someone who is perform the role of a gentleman-usher, since the usher meets and greets those who enter into their mistress or master's household (usually with the verbal greeting of 'How do you?' or in early modern terminology, 'How d'ye?'). Howdee's name and his regular confusion of the conventional greeting with a direct summons to him from his mistress is the cause of several bits of self-consciously lame stage business in this play. [go to text]

gg1401   proportionable correspondent, comparable [go to text]

n4337   TRIEDWELL enters. Enter Triedwell to Fitchow. (Q) [go to text]

gg448   trow 'do I believe it?' (OED v) [go to text]

n1208   presence Triedwell possibly puns here on the idea of the royal presence chamber at the palace of Whitehall, to gain access to which in the Caroline period, there existed an elaborate series of rituals and codes of etiquette. A similar ironic reference to Whitehall is made by Anvil in 2.2 when he believes he has arrived at an upper-class brothel. [go to text]

n527   Beshrew your fortune then. And if my counsel Triedwell shifts from a prose register to a verse register here mid-scene. This was not an uncommon tactic in Caroline drama; James Shirley deployed the technique in plays such as The Bird in a Cage often (though not always) to indicate a shift to a more ceremonial, elite, or courtly register. Here the shift appears to mark Triedwell's move into a more consciously rhetorical stance and register in order to persuade Fitchow against her intended marriage to Luckless. [go to text]

gg1223   ’ventrous venturous = adventurous, hazardous [go to text]

n258   sea of endless sorrows. Cf. Hamlet (Q2), 3.1.58. The self-consciousness of this allusion underlines the artificiality of this speech of persuasion (or 'dissuasion' as Fitchow later recognises) as does Triedwell's deployment of the verse register from this point onwards. There is a developed sense of acting a part here which ties in with Brome's extended explorations of theatricality elsewhere in his plays. [go to text]

n528   This is pretty! Fitchow's phrase here appears to comment on Triedwell's rhetorical shift from a prose to a verse register. It is one indication among many in the scene that Fitchow is both an astute reader of situations and a fine performer in her own right. Having made this observation she immediately switches to a verse register in her next speech. [go to text]

n530   Triedwell Triedwell's elaborate rhetorical dissuasion against marriage here recalls quite self-conciously Truewit's lengthy diatribe against the 'goblin matrimony' (2.2.32) in Ben Jonson's Epicoene (2.2.20-42). The gender shift here is telling since whereas in Epicoene the conversation is between men, here it is the wealthy and independent city widow, Fitchow, who is being asked to consider the losses, both financial and personal, she may bear by marrying Luckless. Compare Carol's hesitancy about remarrying in James Shirley's Hyde Park, 1.2: 'What is in your condition makes you weary?'. The shift to a feminine emphasis in these scenes gives considerable credence to critical claims of a greater 'feminocentrism' in Caroline commercial drama. See, for example, Sanders (1999) and Tomlinson (2005). [go to text]

n1209   yoke This strikes me as a deliberate allusion to the scene in Ben Jonson's Epicoene where Truewit attemps to dissuade Morose from his plan to marry by showing him a halter: ‘Marry your friends do . . . desire that you would sooner commit your grave head to his knot than to the wedlock noose’ (2.2.20-30). There is the possibility here that in performance Triedwell might perform a direct visual echo of Truewit by producing a rope noose or 'yoke' from his pocket. If this hand-held stage property were a material presence here this would make interesting sense of the rope that Triedwell produces later in this same act for Anvil. Is it something he carries around in his pocket to produce at salient moments on this and related themes? On hand-held stage properties more generally, see Gil Harris and Korda (2002). [go to text]

gg808   thraldom captivity [go to text]

n1210   endless sorrows Deliberately echoing his earlier use of this allusive phrase and further underlining the artificial nature of his performance. [go to text]

n529   Fitchow Fitchow's move into a verse register at this point mirrors Triedwell's earlier shift from prose to verse when he started into the more rhetorical and persuasive part of his dialogue with her. While, as previously noted, this indicates Fitchow's acute reading of the intricate machinations of this scene, there is also a sense that for the audience the mirroring effect of the verse registers will indicate an underlying attraction and sexual chemistry between them that for the moment is unclear to the characters themselves. A comparable use of linguistic markers in this fashion might be Shakespeare's accordance of shared lines of iambic pentameter blank verse between his warring couples such as Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing or Katherine and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew to indicate to the audience the ultimate attraction between them despite their surface quarrel. [go to text]

n4510   This woman is not brainless. Video Triedwell's use of asides in this sequence of dialogue with Fitchow gives a very particular rhythm to this scene and impacts upon the audience's sense of involvement with the changing emotions of the couple. [go to text]

n11381   the town The Caroline period is largely recognised as the time when that area of London identified by the term 'town' came in to existence, focused as it was in particular in those areas to the west of the old city walls, which connected the City of London to Westminster, and with its focal point in the Strand. See Brett-James (1935). [go to text]

n260   tobacco pipe Tobacco had been introduced to London in 1586 and by 1614 it was being cultivated commercially. In the Caroline period, there was a recognised clay-pipe manufacturing industry in the country. See Schofield, pp. 315-6. [go to text]

gg1224   borrowing begging [go to text]

gg455   laid up imprisoned [go to text]

gg452   Sempster a person whose occupation is sewing [go to text]

gg449   spurrier a spur maker [go to text]

gg451   vintner a person who deals in or sells wine [go to text]

gg450   tapster a person who draws ale; a keeper of a tavern [go to text]

gg453   mercer a person who deals in textiles, especially silks, velvets, etc. [go to text]

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

n261   knight out of his Ward i’th’ Counter The Counter was a debtor's prison in London. The conditions in which people were kept depended on their ability to pay and their social status. There were four grades of lodging: the Master's Side; the Knights' Ward; the Two-penny Ward; and the Free Quarters (or Hole) (Fried). Triedwell's suggestion here is that Luckless will employ Fitchow's wealth to keep himself out of the Knights' Ward. [go to text]

gg1607   withal along with the rest [go to text]

n262   nurseries abroad Illegitimate children were frequently sent elsewhere (into the country, for example) to be cared for. [go to text]

n1211   you are old The subtle treatment of older women in this play is a point of much interest. The counterpart character to Fitchow in this regard is Trainwell, Constance's governess, and Sir Paul Squelch's housekeeper and (as becomes clear as the play progresses) future life-partner. This all seems like further persuasive evidence of the critical claim that Caroline drama offers a deeper and more diverse treatment of female characterisation than much preceding drama (see, for example, Sanders 1999; Tomlinson, 2005). [go to text]

n1212   The means to save you to be his undoing In the 1632 quarto publication this is in brackets which generally indicates an aside in this scene. However, this is clearly part of Triedwell's main address to Fitchow so I simply silently removed the brackets. [go to text]

n1213   ’Tis enough I know it. The dignity of Fitchow's words and stance here should not be underestimated in terms of its impact upon Triedwell and the audience. The audience will, however, also have a very recent stage memory of Fitchow's intentions for the marriage which involved a legal document asserting her right in all matters both within and outwith the household. There is a subtlety of characterisation here and an openness to alternative performance possibilities that again belies previous critical givens about Brome's characterisation and skills as a dramatist. [go to text]

n531   Sure, I was much mistaken in this woman. This commences a flurry of asides from Triedwell in which he begins to recognise his deep attraction to Fitchow. These are presumably directed towards the audience, who have already been encouraged by the use of poetics in the scene to link Triedwell and Fitchow as possibly sexual and emotional partners. Though only effectively audible to the audience, there is a clear sense here that Triedwell's asides (and eventually Fitchow's) start to complete verse lines begun by her. There is then a conscious reworking of the early modern device, not least Shakespearean, of bringing quarrelling lovers together through the use of underlying speech rhythms. This means that audiences are invariably aware of their sexual attraction long before the interlocuters themselves seem able to acknowledge it. Compare, for example, Petruchio and Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew and Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. Timing here is crucial to getting the idea of sexual chemistry across to an audience. [go to text]

gg1608   railing the action of the verb; abusing, abuse (OED n. 2) [go to text]

gg1225   unconscionable uncontrolled by conscience; harsh [go to text]

gg501   Depraving defaming [go to text]

n1218   Sir, I have enough, Fitchow here completes a verse line initiated by Triedwell. The underlying attraction is, it seems, mutual. [go to text]

gg1609   bugbear imaginary terror (applied as an adjective, OED 2). Compare Timon of Athens, 1.2.6. [go to text]

n1214   That hour the uniting of our hands. Because The punctuation and sense are difficult here. The essence of Fitchow's comments (that she would not allow even her best friends to dissuade her from the holy course of matrimony) is clear enough but quite where the main verb of the sentences lie is a moot point. [go to text]

gg502   guerdon reward (for) [go to text]

n532   What ails the gentleman? This reference to Triedwell in the third person is clearly not meant for his ears hence the editorial intervention of an aside at this point. It does also suggest an element of stage business, however, since until now Triedwell's asides to the audience appear to have gone unregistered by Fitchow, but here she seems to notice he is in some sort of emotional or physical distress without having actually heard what has been said. Directors and performers might like to consider at this point stage positioning and blocking to enable the subtleties of the gradual realisations that take place during this scene to unfold for the audience spatially as well as verbally. [go to text]

n533   rock of constancy Steggle (2004, p. 23) comments on the significance of Triedwell's use of this term to describe Fitchow in a play where her two counterpart female protagonists are called Constance. [go to text]

n4511   Sir, how d’ye? Video Fitchow's concerned remark to Triedwell, asking him how he does, occasions a comic entrance by her servant Howdee who mistakenly believes he has been summoned. The comic punctuation of the sexual chemistry of the scene was clear when we workshopped this sequence . [go to text]

n534   Not you, sir. A rather heavy-handed joke on Howdee thinking that Fitchow's concerned request to Triedwell - 'How d'ye, sir?' - refers to him. These punning references, however, as well as Anvil's recurring catchphrase - 'D'ye hear' - all indicate that the modern editor must preserve this archaic verbal marker in a modern edition. In rhythmical terms this moment is an interesting puncturing of the sexual tension of the dialogue that precedes it however and raises interesting questions about Brome's dramatic strategy in terms of providing light relief and sudden switches of tone via his servant characters in the play. It is worth adding that in the acting workshops what can seem a clunky moment of comedy on the page proved to be actually quite a funny example of stage business in practice. Timing is all for the actor playing Howdee, of course. [go to text]

n1215   at least not heard It is interesting that Fitchow's skill with words is what has most won Triedwell's affections in this scene. This is in a play where the heard voice, whether spoken or sung, is a powerful instrument. This immediately connects Fitchow with Constance the northern lass, whose singing proves so seductive and so identifiable in the play, and with her remarkable counterfeit and counterpart Constance [Camitha] Holdup, the prostitute. As with the earlier verbal connection of Fitchow with the two Constances when Triedwell calls her a 'settled rock of constancy' Brome connects his female protagonists in terms of audibility. This is a play about active listening in many respects. [go to text]

gg456   Froward perverse, difficult to deal with, ill-tempered [go to text]

gg1610   hazard (n) risk of loss or harm (OED 3) [go to text]

n1216   [Aside, continuing to leave and muttering to himself] It is a point of contention whether this entire speech or just a section of it is delivered as an aside. Triedwell needs to be leaving the stage at this point to warrant Fitchow's question, and so it seems he needs to be muttering to himself, presumably in quite a distressed and fragmented way, rather than making any direct address to the audience, as might have been the case with a number of his earlier asides and self-reflections. It compares interestingly with the exit of Trainwell in 2.3 on an aside in which she castigates Anvil. In workshopping that scene with actors the unusual nature of an exit on an aside was remarked upon, but here we can see it used as a device earlier in the play also. [go to text]

n1217   [To HOWDEE?] Video It is a point of contention whether this entire speech is delivered as an aside or only partially so as I have indicated. Howdee is still present onstage throughout despite being silent, or at least Brome gives no indication that he leaves the stage. We workshopped both possibilities with the actors and retaining Howdee onstage gave Fitchow someone and something to play off which was productive . Does the cynicism displayed here by Fitchow in any way revise our response to her dignity in the exchanges with Triedwell that preceded it? Was she simply role-playing for effect and were we as an audience being duped? Or is there, for the audience, any sense that Fitchow is attracted to Triedwell - as those early verbal and poetic indicators suggested - and is simply in self-denial here, repressing the reality of the emotional impact of the scene? The performance possibilities are rich as our workshopping indicated, as well as drawing out the distinct differences between asides as direct address and asides as comments to self. [go to text]

gg503   juggling act of trickery, practice of deception (OED) [go to text]

gg1435   fit (a) competent [go to text]

n267   wit On the cultural significance of 'wit' as both concept and practice to early seventeenth-century society, see O'Callaghan, 2007. Brome chooses to end several scenes in this play, here tellingly at the end of the first act, in this self-conscious manner with a rhyming couplet. Acts were clearly denoted in performance by this means. Performances in indoor theatres required between-the-act interludes, often involving music. [go to text]

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