EPILOGUEn8297

---

n9622   ACT 5 The final act comprises a single scene in Victoria’s house, where spectators find her celebrating Flavia’s union with Francisco. Borgio arrives with Horatio and Piso and from their joyful conversation the audience learn that the Novella was herself instrumental in arranging the ruse with the disguised pedlar-woman. Borgio re-enters to report the arrival of a mysterious English factor, who has the full sum required to possess Victoria; she asks for privacy while she attends to this pressing business. Although Horatio and Piso (along with the newly wedded pair) leave her , they immediately return “above” to watch her encounter with the stranger, who presents his money and begins to pay court in expectation of his promised reward. Borgio appears “behind” also bent on watching the proceedings; alarmingly he is seen to be carrying a brace of pistols. Brome is again metatheatrically deploying the full resources of the playing space with a divided focus of interest on the main stage while two characters observe events from the gallery level. Four men study one woman, three voyeuristically expecting to see her sexually involved with the fourth, all make her the object of their gaze as, in consequence, does the audience.

Remarkably Victoria neither flinches from nor brazens out the situation; but, kneeling and threatening, if the stranger should approach her too closely, to take her life with the knife she produces, she holds their attention as she confidently chides her wooer for debasing himself in “bestial lust”; questions the origins of his wealth as suspicious; and, when he threatens her with the rigour of the law for seeming to renege on her own advertised reward for the man who can fulfil the conditions she sets for possessing her maidenhead, makes a determined plea for her honour. She tells of her birth, status and background in her native Rome, of her engagement with a visiting Venetian and the sudden breaking off of that relationship at the urging of her lover’s father; of her coming to Venice in quest of him, setting herself up as a Novella and using the strategy of the reward and the month’s grace allowed her by its terms hopefully to find her lover again. To what extent is this just a clever performance to escape fulfilling the contract with the stranger? To what extent is it the performance of a frigid puritan? Piso, for all his misogyny, is won over by her honesty and virtue; so too is Borgio who, whatever his planned design with the pistols, suddenly departs in a state of high relief praising Victoria’s nobility. Both are convinced of her truth to self. The stranger offers to wed Victoria should she fail to find her first lover, but she fends him off by recalling the promises she made to Swatzenburgh out of gratitude for defending her from Don Pedro. The stranger reveals he is Swatzenburgh, who has come to her in this disguise to “try” her; he admits to finding her “honest”. Victoria is shocked by his lack of trust, the more so in that such a cruel tactic has challenged her to vindicate her own integrity.

The tense situation is resolved by Borgio’s appearing to announce the arrival of the “German”, as again the mood shifts to farce: Victoria races away to escape threat of danger, while Swatzenburgh in his disguise is confronted by an exact replica of himself in his customary garb. Alert spectators readily appreciate that this new figure is actually Fabritio in his chosen disguise. Fabritio quickly expels Swatzenburgh from the stage and demands to see Victoria, whom (on viewing) he takes to be a ghost or vision. When she touches him, he realises she is palpably alive; but that realisation renders him dumbstruck, since he presumes her genuinely a courtesan and reduced to that fate by his own former treachery. If his surmise is true, then they are lost to each other absolutely. Victoria is evidently moved by Fabritio's words but remains, given his disguise, unsure who he might be.

Before their doubts and confusion can be resolved, Pantaloni, Guadagni and a train of angry individuals including Swatzenburgh and Don Pedro storm in. To calm Guadagni Victoria bids Borgio fetch Flavia and Francisco with their friends. Piso and Astutta on their entering have to leap to Flavia’s defence in face of her father’s rage. Both fathers are addressed by Piso about the error of their assumptions, the evil of their prizing money above honour, birth and true devotion, and the tragedy in the lives of four young people that will ensue if they do not change their values. (Having traced Piso’s transformation from misogynistic cynic to willing defender of Victoria’s integrity, Brome now makes him the mouthpiece for moral sanity in the world of the play.) The lovers meanwhile in dumbshow have sorted out their difficulties; Fabritio has shown Victoria his face hidden behind the false beard, and the pair are reconciled. Borgio reveals that he earlier married Flavia and Francisco, and now offers to marry the other pair of lovers too. Pantaloni, supposing from his particular disguise that Fabritio is actually the state executioner whom he planned to use as a pawn to bring about Victoria’s disgrace, encourages Borgio in this idea. He is ecstatic at the thought of triumphing over everyone. The marriage completed, Pantaloni orders Nicolo to pull the beard off the man he considers is the hangman only to discover he has unmasked his own son. Guadagni now objects to any marriage that Borgio, a pimp, might have solemnised, which prompts Borgio in turn to remove his Bravo’s gear and wig to reveal himself as Victoria’s brother, Paulo, a Franciscan friar in orders. He explains his motive for following Victoria from Rome to guard her and her family’s honour.

The play ends with everyone onstage endorsing Victoria’s integrity and with a call for the audience to do likewise, showing their appreciation of her by way of their applause. No summary can do adequate justice to Brome’s meticulous dramaturgy in compressing such complexities of plotting and disguising plausibly within the space of a single act: his pacing of events, his calculated shifts of tone (from the joyous to the threatening, from the morally earnest to the farcical, from the transcendent to the aggressive and so on through the multiple exposures of identities and disguises to end with the vindication of the heroine’s absolute self-possession and daring proactive agency) is handled with consummate expertise and, characteristically, in a manner that celebrates the virtuosity of an ensemble of performers gifted with the skills to match the playwright’s demands. [go to text]

gg1497   yet still [go to text]

n7779   friendly foes Flavia found her intrusive, organising father anything but friendly in earlier acts. But now that she is married and therefore out of his control and under her new husband's, she can afford to be generous and recognise that perhaps he tried to arrange a marriage for her in part with her best interests at heart. She seems somewhat naively assured that her father will welcome the match that she has entered into with Francisco. Time will show her otherwise: Guadagni is not easily convinced of the wisdom or social acumen of what she has done and in the final scene of the play will take some persuading to accept the fait accompli. [go to text]

n7780   these safe arms She is referring to her husband, Francisco. [go to text]

n9350   And your mistrust is over too. I hope, sir, ] And your mistress is over, too, I hope sir (The lack of any punctuation mark at the close of the line makes it possible to read this in two ways: either as offered by this edition, which prefers to begin a new sentence with "I hope" and to carry both sense and sentence on into the following line; or one might argue for the line as a finished sentence in itself ("And your mistress is over too, I hope, sir.") If this reading is taken then the following line would be framed as an assertion rather than, as in this edition, as a question.) [go to text]

n7781   your mistrust is over ] your mistress is over. The reading in all copies of the 1653 text collated for this edition poses some difficulty: it is so compact a sentence in its expression that it verges on the confused and confusing. The problem focusses on the words "mistress" and "over". One might have been tempted to emend "mistress" to "distress", given the context of the word between the preceding and the next sentence, but for the capitalisation of the word, "Mistress", in the 1653 text, which it would not be easy to argue as being a misreading on the part of the compositor. One might infer the idea of Flavia's being "(won) over", since Francisco is now firmly married to her and, given the scene of his wooing in the guise of the pedlar-woman, he had to take some care in winning her. Part of that process of wooing and winning required him to allay Flavia's "frowns and furies" but her temptestuousness is now happily "over" and the man she thought as "foe" is now her absolute "friend". This is to presume that Flavia and Francisco have informed Victoria of the difficulties he faced on gaining entrance to Guadagni's house. It is possible to retain this reading but it would require careful handling by the actor playing Victoria to convey this intricate interpretation of its sense to an audience. The Eton College Library copy of the 1653 volume of Five Plays contains a number of neat handwritten emendations and corrections to the text. At this point the copy has been emended in black ink to read "mistrust", which makes good sense in the context. It neatly turns Victoria's conclusion to the sentence "The place is not so dangerous as it was" into a teasing joke at Francisco's expense and it chimes with Francisco's reference in his next speech to his "foul suspicion" which has been "wiped off" on account of Victoria's "great bounty". This emendation has been included here as most sensitively and sensibly resolving the problem posed by the 1653 text. [go to text]

n7782   hope, sir, ] hope sir [go to text]

n7784   dangerous That is: given her reputation as a courtesan and the social challenges that role poses. [go to text]

n7783   was? ] was. [go to text]

gs791   bounty kindness, generosity [go to text]

gg5113   not alone not only [go to text]

n7785   wiped off The image here draws on the idea of the tavern reckoning or slate on which one's purchases were scored or marked up until a final bill or tally would be paid. The metaphor continues through the use of the words "scored", "sum", "discharge". [go to text]

gg5114   discharge pay (but often with accompanying sense of relieving a debt of gratitude) [go to text]

gg40   creature one ready to do another's bidding, puppet (through patronage or devotion) (OED 5) [go to text]

gg5115   tempt try, make trial of, put to the test or proof (OED v. 1) [go to text]

gs1184   In by, through [go to text]

gg5116   provide supply the necessary resources for a thing to happen, arrange matters for a given purpose (OED v. 8b) [go to text]

n7786   sum in such a scruple This is an overly concise expression, which yields several possibilities of interpretation, depending on what one chooses to read into the word, "sum". One might infer that Francisco is refusing to add to the precise amount that constitutes the debt of gratitude he owes Victoria for her help, and that he does so out of a proper sense of scruple and decorum. Or that out of such a scruple he does not wish to assess the amount of the debt he owes her for her kindness, lest it cause her undue embarrassment. "Scruple" may bring into one's reading a religious interpretation relating to Puritan fastidiousness and exactitude: in other words, Francisco would be embarrassed for her sake to make a precise calculation of Victoria's virtues and strength of goodness. Some such inference must colour a reading, given the way that the speech continues by evoking concepts of divinity. [go to text]

gg5118   fictions myths, legends, fables [go to text]

gs1185   fabulous fabled, mythical, legendary (classical or pagan) [go to text]

gg5119   Fashioning out imagining, shaping (within a narrative or story) [go to text]

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

gs1186   deep profound, earnest [go to text]

gs1187   courtesy generosity, politeness, standing on ceremony [go to text]

n9351   Enter BORGIO with HORATIO and PISO. The 1653 text positions this direction immediately after the second line of Victoria's speech. It is the usual pattern in this text (abandoned in this instance) to place directions for entrances in advance of when characters are referred to in the dialogue, allowing the actors time to be well into the playing space before they are seen and addressed. Here clearly Horatio and Piso need to be within the audience's view as well as the characters' to make sense of Victoria's line. Hence in this edition the placing of the direction has been brought forward. [go to text]

gs1188   suffrage approval, sanction, consent, permission (OED 5a and b) [go to text]

gs1191   supply answer your need, grant (permission) [go to text]

n9608   Neither of these is he they call Fabritio? This is a curious question, almost an outburst, from Victoria who has till this moment been so coolly in control of herself. For once her feelings would appear to have got the better of her judgement. It would be possible for an actress to handle the words very lightly or nonchalantly, but the importance of the question as indicative of the way Brome is guiding the play to its conclusion cannot be underestimated. [go to text]

n7788   the lady The identity of the "lady" poses something of a problem for director and cast. One might interpret this as Francisco introducing his wife to his friends. More likely, given the ensuing dialogue, he is addressing Victoria here and is continuing his line of courtesy towards her. He and the rest are after all guests in Victoria's house; he does not know that both Horatio and Piso have already made fruitless approaches to Victoria in her role as courtesan. [go to text]

n7790   [Aside to HORATIO] There is no such direction in the 1653 text, which generally leaves some of the complexities of staging in this scene unresolved. The prevailing tenor of the scene is that people are loading praise and expressions of gratitude on Victoria who modestly and wittily tries to make them desist. Victoria would appear to be enjoying the embarrassment of Horatio and Piso and teasing them out of her knowledge of their former approaches to her. But since courtesy prevails, she would appear to do this without creating a situation in which they would lose face. It is in the spirit of that overall tenor that this edition has chosen to insert an aside at this moment in the action. [go to text]

n7789   your suit Victoria is teasing Horatio by reminding him of his behaviour in the previous act. [go to text]

n7791   I Who is speaking here and whose name therefore should be indicated in the prefix? The 1653 text assigns this and the following speech to Victoria but it would hardly seem logical for her to be referring to herself in the third person as "her" and later "she" or to be wishing to possess double the advertised price of her maidenhead. Nor is it feasible that Victoria would crack the crude joke with which the speech ends with its reference to sexual doings. (She at no point in the play indulges in bawdy, but generally deflects it when it is addressed to her.) That the next speech is properly assigned to Victoria is acceptable, since the tone and tenor are exactly in line with her exchange with Horatio. That Piso immediately responds to her irony suggests that he should be given the first speech in this bantering exchange and that he is the individual denoted by that "I" and that, as in this emendation, he be assigned the speech prefix accordingly. [go to text]

n7792   had her double price That is: had double her price. [go to text]

gg5127   ready as cash in hand, the sum proposed in actual coins [go to text]

gg2741   ducats gold, sometimes silver, coins used in several European countries including Italy; an Italian ducat was worth around 3s. 6d in the 1600s (roughly £15.60 in currency in 2009) [go to text]

n7793   For what she has done, and tother do besides. Piso wants possession of twice the number of ducats than is the advertised price of Victoria's maidenhead so that he would be able both to reward her first for her generosity in helping Francisco to his bride and then to purchase the right to have sex with her. [go to text]

gs240   tother the other [go to text]

gg5128   stand remain steadfast, firm, secure (in an opinion); hold to, stand firm (in one's beliefs) (OED v. 9b) [go to text]

gg302   conceit notion [go to text]

gs1192   stand maintain an erect penis [go to text]

n7794   I will not whisper it, Horatio This implies that the two men have been talking quietly together with Flavia till now and during the exchange between Piso and Victoria, which has occupied the stage focus. For this reason, the aside directions implying an intimate tone to that exchange have therefore been added to this edition throughout the preceding four speeches. [go to text]

n7795   The woman That is: the pedlar-woman. [go to text]

gg1029   wrought (literally) moulded, shaped; (in context) persuaded [go to text]

gg3918   matchless peerless, incomparable [go to text]

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

gg5129   though even if [go to text]

gg1781   ere before [go to text]

gs1193   condition agree terms or conditions, bargain [go to text]

gg5130   in case in the event that [go to text]

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

n7796   thou That is: Victoria. [go to text]

n9352   done’t. Would ] done't, would [go to text]

n9593   Would That is: if, or I wish. [go to text]

gs1194   pledge redeem, ransom or bail a person out of a contract or set of conditions (Piso is still wanting to possess Victoria and thinks, if he had the required fee, he would bring her freedom from the terms of her advertisement) [go to text]

gg5131   hereafter later, in the future [go to text]

n9353   [BORGIO] whispers with VICTORIA The 1653 text places this as a continuation of the direction indicating Borgio's entrance. As a servant he would wait until his mistress has completed her exchange with her guests before taking her aside to impart news to her privately. Brome devises a new line of dialogue concerning the two servants Astutta and Jacconetta to engage the other actors onstage, while mistress and servant speak apart unheard. Victoria joins the conversation again at [NV 5.1.speech668] only to ask her guests to leave her in private for a while as business demands her attention. This edition has divided the 1653 stage direction in two to observe a proper decorum between Victoria and Borgio in respect of her guests. [go to text]

gs1195   tit hussy, minx, jade [go to text]

gg5132   putter-forwards one who advances an action, moves matters along (OED cites this as the only known usage) [go to text]

n7798   and make him something That is: make him a cuckold or maybe make him accept parentage of an illegitimate offspring. Astutta, as several of her speeches with Flavia earlier in the play indicate, is looking forward to sexual experience with an almost manly enthusiasm and, if a chosen husband fails to live up to her expectations, then she will find her pleasures elsewhere. See [NV 4.1.speech392]. [go to text]

gg5133   cast a glance, a look, expression [go to text]

n7800   hue Piso is crudely drawing attention to Jacconetta's black skin. [go to text]

n7802   gloat OED defines this word as a particular way of looking: either furtively or as an "expression of triumphant satisfaction" (OED n1, 1 and 2). Though no citation is offered before 1899 for the second meaning, it would seem to be appropriate here. Both servant women clearly have a "knowing" look that is sexually appraising, if not exactly experienced. This whole sequence is in a manner characteristic of Brome, himself a former servant to Ben Jonson: it draws attention to servants as astute (note the actual name of one of the women), highly pro-active, indomitable, forthright. Neither woman is embarrassed by being suddenly made the focus of the discussion onstage. [go to text]

n7804   [Aside] To JAC[CONETTA] ] To Jac. [go to text]

gs155   Wait tend (upon someone); accompany as a servant [go to text]

gg5135   respectively attentively; with becoming respect, deference, or courtesy [go to text]

gs1196   observe obey someone's instructions [go to text]

n7803   [HORATIO, FRANCISCO, FLAVIA, ASTUTTA and JACCONETTA] exit ] Exeunt [go to text]

gg2741   ducats gold, sometimes silver, coins used in several European countries including Italy; an Italian ducat was worth around 3s. 6d in the 1600s (roughly £15.60 in currency in 2009) [go to text]

n7807   shares Piso implies that the gallants are running a raffle or sweepstake for Victoria's favours and deserve their respective rewards. This is not the only reference in Brome's plays to such an idea: much of the action of the final three acts of The Demoiselle is taken up by Dryground's scheme to raffle the Demoiselle's virginity to all-comers who are capable of laying down the money for an appropriate share. Borgio has also floated the possibility of a sweepstake for possession of Victoria's maindenhead in his first scene with her, but he hedges his idea with a deep sarcasm [NV 2.2.speech232]. [go to text]

gg5136   connive have a covert understanding with (a person); to take part or co-operate with (others) privily (OED 3b) [go to text]

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

n9354   [Aside] No such direction is given in the 1653 text but it would not seem logical for Borgio to be a party to Victoria's musing here: he knows nothing of her actual scheme in presenting herself as a courtesan in Venice and will not till much later in this act. While this observation and anxiety of Victoria's alert spectators to the fact that all is not as it seems regarding her, she dares not similarly step out of her role as courtesan with him. To Victoria, Borgio is still merely a Bravo and her pimp. [go to text]

n7809   money! ] money? [go to text]

gg5138   factor one who buys and sells for another person; a mercantile agent; a commission merchant (OED n. 4) [go to text]

n7810   trust Here: moneys entrusted to an agent by a merchant to buy merchandise advantageously on his behalf. Victoria is astutely questioning whether she should trust a man who uses other's money for his own private pursuits and not their gain. [go to text]

n7812   the royalest nation of the world It is difficult to judge the tone of this observation, which would depend very much on the style and tenor of its delivery in the theatre. Is the remark flattering to the English abroad? Venice was a republic and proud of the fact, which Brome must have appreciated from his reading in Coryat's Crudities, and this may give this line and the following ones a distinct political and satirical edge. Certainly the adjective "royalest" carries an ironic force, implying an absolutist and colonising attitude to the possessions of other countries. [go to text]

n9355   royalest ] royalist (The meaning "most royal" is required in the context, hence the emendation. There is more than a hint of absolutism in the use of the word here, which is neatly framed as a critique of a particular English quality.) [go to text]

gg5139   royalest (when used ironically) behaving like royalty, kingly in manner, absolutist in tendency [go to text]

n7813   What rich Venetian rarety has not The English money-masters purchased from Princes and states to bear home as their triumphs? Again at face value this observation might seem laudatory and triumphalist, which might be Brome's defence if questioned about his intention with these three lines. But he has placed the comment in the mouth of an Italian, who is in part afraid (as the act will reveal) of what the power of money might achieve with Victoria. It is possible too that behind this long sentence, where complex syntax cleverly disguises the precise point of view being expressed, there lies a critique of Charles I's purchase the previous decade of a substantial amount of the famous Gonzaga collection of pictures and statues from the palaces in Mantua. The negotiations, left to Daniel Nys, were protracted and necessarily secret (when they eventually became known about, there was an outcry in both Italy and England). There is some point in mentioning the sale, which was concluded by 1628, in a play set in Venice, since it was from Murano that many of the paintings were eventually shipped. The phrase "bearing home as their triumphs" would in this context be loaded, since one of the finest treasures included in the English purchase was Mantegna's series of images depicting "The Triumphs of Casesar" (now housed at Hampton Court), which show Roman soldiery either carrying bodily or leading chariots laden with the spoils of Caesar's wars. The imagery is triumphalist in the extreme. The cost of the transaction was in the region of £30,000 (which has been variously estimated as well in excess of £3 million in today's currency). Charles was not alone in developing a taste for Italian art: the Duke of Burckingham and the Earls of Somerset and Arundel also deployed agents throughout Europe to add items to their collections. During the period of the Civil War and the Protectorate the decision was taken by Parliament to sell the royal collection, which Charles had been forced to abandon when he fled north from London in 1642. The sale lasted over three years from 1649 to 1651 or later and many of the finest items were sold abroad. The Mantegna series escaped that fate, being reserved for the use of Oliver Cromwell. [go to text]

gg1432   Without outside [go to text]

gg3818   telling tallying, counting [go to text]

gs1061   tender offer, proffer [go to text]

n7816   your supposed Monsieur That is Horatio in disguise, as he appeared in the previous act. [go to text]

gg5143   descent lineage (blood and parentage) [go to text]

n7817   set you up This is an ambiguous phrase with the possible meaning, "establish you in Venice" in the sense of providing for Victoria's future income and wellbeing. Or it may mean "establish" in the more loaded sense of "settling you in a career as courtesan, keeping you as his private mistress". [go to text]

n7818   [Aside] The 1653 text contains no such direction but by the close of the speech it is evident that this is a critique of Borgio and not of the Dutchman without. As Victoria talks of Borgio in the third person, her words cannot be intended to contribute to a dialogue with him but must be private musing or direct address to the audience as she tries to understand the motive for his speaking as he is currently doing (the actress has a choice of modes of delivery here). [go to text]

gg5144   turn change, alter, deflect (OED v. 13) [go to text]

gs1198   blood passionate desire, lust [go to text]

gs1199   tincture quality, hint, smattering (OED 5b) [go to text]

gg5145   bait an enticement, allurement, temptation (OED n1. 2) [go to text]

gg5146   spurs urges, prompts, goads, incites [go to text]

gs1176   bravo pimp or procurer [go to text]

gs1200   fit match (in the sense of "be equal with", "get even with", "parry") [go to text]

n9356   [Aside] There is no such direction in the 1653 text but it seems called for here in context, where (like Victoria in the previous speech) Borgio confidentially muses with himself, also letting spectators see that maybe he too is wearing a mask and playing a role, even though its nature is not yet to be revealed. The actor may choose whether to play this inwardly or confidingly to the audience. [go to text]

gg4427   blood passion, temper, anger (OED n. 5) [go to text]

gg5147   brain intelligence, strength of purpose, intellectual objective [go to text]

n7820   Be strong and sudden! The words convey a dark intention, being appropriate for a mind bent on revenge. That Borgio has a secret bloody scheme intending no good to Victoria, should she succumb to a lover and betray her noble origins, is not revealed in its details till the long speech in which he reveals his identity and purpose. See [NV 5.1.speech872]. [go to text]

gs1201   dainty fine, excellent, delightful, rare [go to text]

gs1202   just fair-minded, honest [go to text]

gg491   want lack [go to text]

gg5148   grain diminutive particle, the least fraction [go to text]

n7821   sweet damnation Borgio's phrase is again ambiguous in its tenor: words like "sweet" are wholly appropriate in the mouth of a pimp with reference to sexual pleasure; words, however, like "damnation" are utterly unfitting because they hint at clerical condemnation of such pleasure as a sin. The sense of unknown and unknowable depths in Borgio renders him throughout somewhat sinister. Only in the final moments of the play will these ambiguities be resolved. [go to text]

gg302   conceit notion [go to text]

n7822   Lost i’ the house today That is Flavia's, when she and Francisco consummated their marriage. [go to text]

gs1203   edge (when used in conjuction as here with "sets") sharpens a desire to, prompts a need or inclination to [go to text]

gs320   fly run, hasten [go to text]

n9357   Enter above PISO [and] HORATIO Brome is steadily setting up a highly metatheatrical and intertextual strategy here while deploying the full resources of the Caroline stage. Soon Victoria's behaviour with Swatzenburgh is to be viewed by two separate onstage audiences as well as by the actual theatre audience. For informed theatregoers (or, in Caroline contexts, more likely readers of dramatic texts) the situation begins to reflect that created by Shakespeare in Troilus and Cressida (5.2) where, variously positioned about the stage, Troilus (with Ulysses) and Thersites (alone) watch Cressida being wooed by Diomede. For a fuller discussion of the remarkable nature of this scene and its dramaturgical devices see the General Introduction. [go to text]

gs519   ails troubles, afflicts, disturbs [go to text]

n9358   trow ] troe [go to text]

gg4252   trow I wonder [go to text]

n7823   catch her i’th’ nick This literally means: to catch her at a critical moment; but "nick" is also a crude term for the female genitalia; and so, by virtue of the pun involved in that word, the phrase comes to mean "catch her in the act of copulation". [go to text]

gs1204   close two meanings are relevant in context: intently and secretly, covertly [go to text]

n9359   suitor ] Sutor [go to text]

gg5150   admittance permission to enter, admission [go to text]

n9360   sum ] Summe [go to text]

n7824   your enjoying That is: (the price required for) enjoying you (sexually). [go to text]

n9614   Here, ] Here [go to text]

gg2195   due (n) that which is due or owed, or that someone has a right to (OED n. 2a); fee, payment (OED n. 4a) [go to text]

gg5151   tuition (sexual) teaching, instruction (in carnal knowledge) [go to text]

gs1205   of concerning, regarding, consequent on [go to text]

gg5152   invokes calls upon, makes an appeal to [go to text]

n9361   sudden ] sodaine [go to text]

gs1206   apprehension the taking possession of; (but also with regard to the mental faculties) the conscious awareness of [go to text]

gg5154   ornament that which confers or adds distinction; embellishment [go to text]

gg5155   transmute take out of one's self [go to text]

gg5156   regardless heedless, indifferent, careless [go to text]

n7825   the delicious pleasure brings them in That is: the repeated sexual encounters that will be rewarded by yet more gold. [go to text]

n7826   Enter BORGIO behind with pistols. The sinister qualities evident in Borgio are here embodied in his carrying pistols, which immediately poses the question: who would he aim to shoot? In addition to this, the theatre audience are made fully aware by Brome's exploiting of the possibilities of the playing space that there is now a growing onstage audience (two spectators watching from above; two variously disposed on the main acting space) observing Victoria. This awareness brings with it the further question of whether or not Victoria should be interpreted as playing the scene here. Is her outpouring to be read as a genuine outburst of feeling or as consummately skilled acting? Also to be noted in the episode is the degree to which Victoria is the focus of the male gaze throughout: four men watch her intently, interpreting her every word and action, each motivated by a different emotional need. [go to text]

n7828   And now must let you know The speech which follows is a tour de force of syntactical control, demonstrating a disciplined mind reasoning out a means to persuade Victoria's listener(s) of her strength of mind and firm intent. This is not the language and linguistic intensity that might (in terms of theatrical conventions) be expected of a courtesan. The challenge to an audience's powers of perception and interpretation is considerable. [go to text]

gs1208   take take possession of (my capacity for wonder) [go to text]

n7827   bears his Maker’s shape That is: made in God's image. [go to text]

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

gg5157   Allotted assigned [go to text]

n9362   How’s this? Victoria's speech with its beautifully controlled syntax, regular verse lines and onward dynamic begins to be disrupted by short half-lines, as privately her various watchers and listeners voice their reactions to the import of what she says. Their muttered expressions of surprise or shock effectively offset Victoria's sustained confidence. [go to text]

n7829   She preaches, methinks! What is Piso's tone here? Is he still inclined to be abusive to women? If so, then this speech implies that he judges Victoria to be "performing" virtue. Or is he beginning to think of her in more positive terms and so is undergoing a significant reappraisal of her? [go to text]

n9363   examinèd ] examin'd (The metrical scansion of the line requires that the final syllable of the past participle be enunciated.) [go to text]

gs876   tender offer (for acceptance) [go to text]

gg5138   factor one who buys and sells for another person; a mercantile agent; a commission merchant (OED n. 4) [go to text]

gs1209   warrant authorisation, sanction, permission [go to text]

gg5158   bills documents listing charges for goods delivered or services rendered, in which the cost of each item is separately stated (OED n3. 6) [go to text]

gg5159   lading freight, cargo with which a ship is loaded (laded) [go to text]

gg5160   transportable capable of being transported [go to text]

gg5161   fraught the money paid for the hire of a boat for the transportation of cargo [go to text]

gg5162   leakage allowance made for the waste, damage or loss of cargo by the leaking of seawater into the hold of a ship or the seeping of its contents into the ocean [go to text]

gg5158   bill documents listing charges for goods delivered or services rendered, in which the cost of each item is separately stated (OED n3. 6) [go to text]

gg3456   or either [go to text]

gs1098   dally are playing (with), toying, making light of [go to text]

gs1210   order legal injunction or authorisation [go to text]

n9364   spew ] spue [go to text]

gg5163   spew literally "vomit"; but here used figuratively meaning "violently expel or exile" [go to text]

n9365   [Aside] The 1653 text offers no such direction here but this is a decisive moment where, sensing herself as trapped, Victoria reveals her capacity for quick thinking and resourcefulness: she has a fall-back plan. That Swatzenburgh does not hear Victoria's remark is apparent from his next demand for a direct answer, which suggests that to him she is a still and silent presence. That same image is what convinces Piso of Victoria's honesty. It is essential for the logic of their lines that Victoria's are heard only by the theatre audience. It will be a decision for the actress and director, however, whether her lines are delivered as a direct appeal to the audience. [go to text]

gg5164   ensnared trapped [go to text]

gs889   fly from flee, escape [go to text]

n7834   I begin to suspect her honest. Piso, the most consistently critical and misogynistic of the onstage spectators, begins hesitantly to revise his opinion of Victoria. This neatly directs the audience's sympathies and understanding too, challenging them to examine their own responses to her words and actions. [go to text]

gg5165   suspect to imagine or fancy (something) to be possible or likely; to have a faint notion or inkling of; to surmise (OED 3a) [go to text]

gs1231   relieve free from the obligation (to fulfil the terms of a contract) [go to text]

n9366   What may this mean? A short line of four syllables is isolated within more regular verse. It is a matter for decision in performance whether the rest of the line be observed as silence (or as actors' term it: a silent beat) or whether its irregularity be treated as simply an aside. If the former decision is taken, then the audience through pressure occasioned by the silence are themselves invited to ponder the significance of Victoria's changing moods and postures. Victoria hinted at having an alternative strategy should her first one fail, but what it should comprise is not revealed till its enactment and embodiment now. Swatzenburgh's interjection encourages the audience to share his bewilderment and themselves reach for explanations of Victoria's conduct. [go to text]

n9367   pity ] pitty [go to text]

gs684   prove to show oneself as or turn out to be something (OED v. 2d) [go to text]

gs1232   strange surprising, exceptional, wondrous, remarkable [go to text]

n7890   none of th’unhandsom’st Swatzenburgh is being chivalrous and modest, claiming he is not one to be numbered amongst those deemed ugly. In other words he is saying he is surprised by the situation he finds himself in, as he is in fact dashingly handsome. [go to text]

gg5210   go down find acceptance (with a person); appeal to (someone ) (OED go v, 80g) [go to text]

gg5211   profession occupation as courtesan (prostitution has been commonly termed "the oldest profession") [go to text]

n7893   pretend to be of There is a significant shift in how Victoria is perceived at this moment in the scene. Earlier the question posed related to the degree to which her virgin modesty was an enacted role. Swatzenburgh now questions whether her career as courtesan is more a performance than a reality. [go to text]

n7894   cold iron He means the dagger that Victoria is threatening to use on herself. [go to text]

n7896   unnatural Victoria is not in Swatzenburgh's eyes acting true to type or to theatrical convention whether one sees her type as virgin or whore. [go to text]

n7901   I am indeed a mere pretender This act is to end with a succession of spectacular revelations of various characters' true identities and relations with each other. These follow the long-established theatrical tradition of a character throwing off a disguise to reveal the extent to which throughout the play he or she has been acting an assumed role. Brome adopts a different tactic here: Victoria's revelation is defined through confessional words and the response she elicits is not shock or surprise but a transforming wonder. Swatzenburgh and Piso are themselves quite changed psychologically by the experience, while Borgio hides his threatening pistols and departs the stage. [go to text]

gg5211   profession occupation as courtesan (prostitution has been commonly termed "the oldest profession") [go to text]

n7903   my utmost hopes That is: my hopes of utmost (heavenly) bliss in the afterlife. In other words: on my honour as a Christian. [go to text]

n7905   Too honest to be a woman! Piso admits his belief in Victoria's virginity and honesty, but he cannot yet abandon his misogynistic attitudes towards women generally. [go to text]

n7908   deceiving habit That is: these clothes and an appearance designed to deceive. [go to text]

n9367   pity ] pitty [go to text]

n7910   of the Candiani That is: a member of the aristocratic Candiani family. This is the last of the many borrowings from Coryat's Crudities. Towards the end of his account of his travels in Venice, Coryat names what he deems "the nobler families of the citie": of the eighteen aristocratic lineages, the Candiani heads the list. Brome did not look far for an impressive name, even though to an Italian the chosen one is decidedly Venetian rather than Roman. [go to text]

n9368   Howe’er ] How ere [go to text]

gg1781   ere before [go to text]

gg5212   sojourned resided for a time (made a temporary stay) [go to text]

gg3932   covetous greedy, grasping, avaricious [go to text]

gs1233   Ravished snatched; tore away; broke off [go to text]

gs1234   cross thwart, obstruct [go to text]

n7916   Fabritio’s wench Piso makes the connection for the audience, should any spectator not have followed Victoria's speech and perceived its import. It is characteristic of Piso's characterisation as misogynist that Brome should give him a somewhat derogatory word like "wench" to refer to Victoria. [go to text]

gg128   habit clothing [go to text]

n6901   courtesan In Rome and Venice, but especially in the latter, courtesans were mistresses of high-ranking persons; they ran luxurious households where they frequently entertained groups of men with their singing, dancing and lively intellectual discussion (they were often far better educated than aristocratic wives, as is evident from the career of the most famous courtesan of the sixteenth century, Veronica Franco). It would be wrong to categorise them as prostitutes or whores (though their enemies sought to do so on occasion), since their relationships were centred on far more than sexual encounters, and they did not sustain a constantly changing sequence of partners. Though paid lavishly for their companionship, this was rarely in the form of a straight fee in return for the sexual favours granted. (See Margaret F. Rosenthal, The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth-Century Venice [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992].) [go to text]

gg634   port dignified demeanour or manner (OED n4. 1) [go to text]

gg362   censure judgement (especially, though not always, adverse judgment) [go to text]

n7919   gives Here used in the sense of "gives out publicly as a verdict on or about someone". [go to text]

n7920   held familiarity with That is: was intimate with (a man to whom she was betrothed through the ritual of handfasting). [go to text]

n7921   Lost in repute That is: to have lost her honour and reputation. [go to text]

n7922   vindicate her honour That is: by making her his wife. [go to text]

gg362   censure judgement (especially, though not always, adverse judgment) [go to text]

gg5213   disloyalty want of faith; violation of a duty or allegiance (OED 1a and 1b) [go to text]

gs1235   wrought caused (me to do) [go to text]

gs1236   firm absolutely, securely [go to text]

n7923   On my first basis That is: make me again his betrothed as formerly. [go to text]

n7924   exchange a life For mine That is, she would kill him and herself (rather than be parted from him again). [go to text]

n7925   kissed death Precisely why Borgio has been contemplating murdering Victoria, were she to succumb to Swatzenburgh, is not fully revealed till one of the final speeches in the play. See [NV 5.1.speech 872]. [go to text]

gg5214   of to; with [go to text]

gs1237   remove depart, withdraw, quit (this place) [go to text]

gs1238   testimony evidence, proof [go to text]

gs1239   reserved preserved [go to text]

gs1240   carriage conduct, behaviour (OED n. 15a and 15b) [go to text]

gg2153   ends aims, purposes [go to text]

gg3389   Maugre despite [go to text]

gs594   construction the interpretation put upon conduct, action, facts, words, etc.; the way in which these are taken or viewed by onlookers; usually with qualification, as to put a good, bad, favourable, charitable (or other) construction upon (OED n. 8a) [go to text]

gs1241   receive welcome, admit into their company [go to text]

gs1242   shift strategy involving disguise [go to text]

gg5215   reducing removing (from the more common sense of reducing as lessening, diminishing) (OED reduce v, 26b) [go to text]

gs1243   try put (your integrity) to the test [go to text]

n7932   This is the German that Fabritio apes. Once again Brome finds a neat way to remind an audience of a crucial element in his plotting. [go to text]

gs1244   apes imitates, mimics, impersonates [go to text]

n7933   And he should come now! Horatio's joking exclamation subtly prepares spectators for what will be the next development in the action. As the Irish dramatist G.B. Shaw observed of one of his staple ways of starting a comedy: begin by establishing that there are two people who simply must not meet under any circumstances, then organise an immediate confrontation between them, and see what ensues. That is precisely what happens here. [go to text]

gs1245   And what if...! [go to text]

gs524   forbear stop (this behaviour), desist [go to text]

gs1246   civil well-mannered, polite, courteous [go to text]

n7935   hospitable usage That is: the open and generous hospitality offered to you as guests. [go to text]

gg5217   timely in good time [go to text]

gg5218   chidden scolded, rebuked [go to text]

n7937   HOR[ATIO and] PI[SO] exit [with JACCONETTA] ] Exit Hor. Pi. [go to text]

n9369   jealous trial That is: this trial occasioned by your jealousy. [go to text]

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

n9368   howe’er ] How ere [go to text]

gg5219   augmented raised in estimation, increased, enlarged [go to text]

gg5220   redeem regain, recover [go to text]

n7939   Must the mind alter with the outward habit? That is: is there an accompanying change in one's psychology when one dons a disguise (literally changes one's clothes)? [go to text]

n9370   Enter BORGIO It is ironic that Brome places this entrance directly after Victoria's question: "Must the mind alter with the outward habit?" This is an intricately complex moment since that question relates as much to Victoria herself as to Swatzenburgh (though his identity as defined by his costuming is soon to be challenged when his exact double walks onstage). Perhaps in this moment Brome is also preparing his audience for Borgio's final revelation of how and why he too is in role (a role moreover, as the audience shall shortly learn, which is diametrically opposed to his "real" identity). The issue of whether being in disguise or playing a role seriously affected one's integrity is one that attracted numerous dramatic treatments throughout the Jacobean and Caroline periods, especially in the plays of Jonson and Middleton. That onstage debate may well have been fostered by Puritan attacks on the whole art of theatre, of play-acting, as if among morally sensitive dramatists those attacks touched a raw nerve that needed salving through careful investigation within the process of theatre itself. [go to text]

n9371   Here he is, man, ] Here he is man, [go to text]

gg1432   without outside [go to text]

gg5221   craves desires, entreats [go to text]

n9372   in your tother beard Borgio is implying that Swatzenburgh is a master of disguises with a collection of beards to aid his impersonations. [go to text]

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

gg5222   whet up provoke, sharpen (the term is taken from the image of a boar sharpening its tusks in preparation for an attack or of a grinding stone being used to hone the blade of a weapon) [go to text]

gg5223   worried mangled; maltreated, harassed; troubled or distressed [go to text]

n9373   He ] He [go to text]

gg5225   stand the hazard take (my) chance; chance it; face the danger [go to text]

n9623   in the German’s habit The disguisings have become so complex by now that, in reading the text rather than seeing the play in performance, it is easy to forget what kind of "habit" is involved in each of the transformations. The bearded Swatzenburgh appeared in the third act in what we are to suppose seventeenth-century audiences took for German attire. He has reappeared in this scene in the clothes of an English factor. Fabritio enters in the German's style of habit. We know that earlier in Act Two Fabritio relieved Nicolo of a Zaffi's habit or uniform. When in 4.2 he shows his disguise (presumably the Zaffi's attire) to Horatio and Piso, they immediately point out a resemblence to Swatzenburgh and especially when Fabritio dons a large beard. This is presumably how Fabritio appears on his entrance here. In other words, the "German" habit and the Zaffi's uniform must be relatively similar in structure and perhaps in decoration. Swatzenburgh has changed out of the costume he wore for his earlier appearance in Act Three (the one that is now imitated by Fabritio). His English clothing must be sufficiently different to fox Borgio and Victoria into believing he is the factor that at this point he claims to be. He needs must retain the all-important beard (though he admits to having trimmed it somewhat). It would make for much fun, admittedly, if Swatzenburgh confronted an identical image of his current self at this moment (much as do the two Antipholi in Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, or eventually Viola and Sebastian in Twelfth Night). But following the indications in the dialogue, what is in fact occurring is a confrontation between the "English" Swatzenburg and a duplicate of his German self. Perhaps only the beards are close to being identical. Immediately after he has been chastised by Victoria for abusing her by donning a disguise, an apparition of his "true" self appears as if to taunt him in his disgrace. This might be used by the actors involved in the scene to account for Swatzenburgh's rapid overpowering by his rival: that he is already too cowed by Victoria's disdain to put up a vigorous fight. [go to text]

n9374   Does ] Dos [go to text]

gg147   fly (v) run away from [go to text]

n9609   Was oder wer bistu This and the following two sentences in German that comprise Swatzenburgh's speech may be translated: "Whatever are you? Are you German? Tell me which region you lived in." I am grateful to Jennie Clark for help with the translation and who confirmed the accuracy of the German in the 1653 text.

Fynes Moryson tells a story of a strange incident he experienced when he passed "from Genoa to Milan on foote, in a disguised habit, and that in an Inne not farre from Pavia, I met an Englishman. Wee sat downe to supper, where he voluntarily and unasked, did rashly professe himselfe to be a Dutchman, whereupon I saluted him in Dutch familiarly, till he betraied manifestly his ignorance in that language, and excused himselfe that he was not Dutchman, but borne upon the confines of France, where they speake altogether French. Then I likewise spake to him in French, till he was out of countenance, for his want of skill in that language. So as my selfe being a man in his case, dissembling my Country and quality, ceased further to trouble him...Thus when supper was ended, I tooke him aside, and spoke English to him, whereat he rejoyced, and imbracing mee, swore that he had been in the stable, and commanded his man to make ready his horses, and would presently have rid away, if I had not discovered my selfe to him" (Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary, [Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons for the University of Glasgow, 1907], Vol.3, p. 381). Sharpe is convinced that Moryson's tale was the inspiration for this episode in The Novella where Swatzenburgh challenges Fabritio's identity as German (R.B. Sharpe, 'The Sources of Richard Brome's The Novella', Studies in Philology, 30 [January, 1933], 69-85; especially pp. 82-83). [go to text]

n9375   Sag mir The 1653 text prints Swatzenburgh's German words as prose by making the line break after "Sag", but the German can be scanned into two lines of verse and is so rendered in this edition. "Mir" is modern German spelling for the word, "mihr", which appears in the 1653 text. [go to text]

n9610   Ich denke du bist ein heuchler This phrase and the rest of Swatzenburgh's speech may be translated as "I think you are a fraud; if you are German, answer me in German". I am grateful to Jennie Clark for help with the translation. [go to text]

n9376   Ein Deutscher The 1653 text again prints Swatzenburgh's German sentences as prose, making the line break midway through the word "Deutscher": " ein Deut-/scher". This is clumsy and, while these two lines do not scan as comfortably as the previous two in German, it is possible to render them as verse since a strong rhythm does underlie them. Hence the emendation. [go to text]

gg4085   brokenly imperfectly [go to text]

gg5226   imposture fraudulent deception [go to text]

gg2357   end purpose, aim [go to text]

n9377   Thou son of slander The 1653 text prints the whole of Fabritio's speech as prose, making the line-break as follows: "...son of /slander." "Thou son of slander" and "Precious counterfeit" together make up a perfect pentameter and are the funnier for doing so. Hence this edition has emended the scansion accordingly. [go to text]

n7943   Precious counterfeit! It is not easy to determine whether "counterfeit" here is used of the man or of the act of impersonation. Therefore one may interpret the phrase as meaning: "You out-and-out impostor!" Or alternatively as: "What downright fraud!" "Precious" is used here as an intensifier. [go to text]

gg252   strength a body (of men); military strength [go to text]

gs1247   remove take (you) away; urge (your) departure [go to text]

n9378   Fabritio The 1653 text assigns this speech to Swatzenburgh, but he has already quitted the stage and, though at this moment Fabritio is impersonating the Dutchman, his speech prefixes have since his entrance always read "Fabritio" or "Fab." Was the compositor confused by the ambiguous relation between role and man? An emendation was clearly necessary. [go to text]

n7944   not.[To BORGIO]Honest ] not honest [go to text]

n9379   Enter VICTORIA The 1653 text positions this entrance after Fabritio's words, "Good angels guard me!" when clearly this is his response to the sight of Victoria. Her entrance logically should therefore precede his prayer and this edition has emended the placing of the stage direction accordingly. [go to text]

n7945   Good angels guard me! There is a strong echo here of Hamlet's words on first seeing his father's ghost: "Angels and ministers of grace defend us!" (1.4.20). The effect is to suggest that Fabritio thinks he too has seen a ghost: that he recognises the woman before him as his lost love, Victoria, but supposes her a phantom. Much of the ensuing dialogue relies on an actor's ability in the role of Fabritio to convey the impression that the character truly believes he is seeing a ghost or apparition. [go to text]

n7946   Thou powerful man in magic That is: you man, powerful in magic. In other words: you magician, you conjurer. [go to text]

gs1248   raised conjured forth, invoked, roused up, summoned [go to text]

gs1685   apparition ghost, vision [go to text]

gg5228   inspired was the inspiration for, gave life to [go to text]

gg128   habit clothing [go to text]

gg5229   sink cause to descend (to Hell) [go to text]

n7948   I would not dare to try to be the Duke. This is a difficult line to try to interpret but, in context, it seems to continue the theme of impersonation and mimicry that dominates this episode of the play. Fabritio is expressing his complete disbelief that it is a woman standing before him and not his former beloved who, if dead, must be a saint in bliss. The idea that she is truly flesh and blood and not a magical trick or illusion is to him as farfetched as for him to try impersonating the Doge of Venice. [go to text]

gg5231   hinder impede, obstruct [go to text]

gg5232   Although despite [go to text]

gg273   adulterate adulterous (OED ppl. a, 1); coming from a base origin: impure, corrupted, degraded (see OED ppl. a, 2) [go to text]

gg5233   incitements provocative garments (that encourage lustful or adulterous responses) [go to text]

n9380   [A] bell rings This is a neat dramaturgical touch. All three characters onstage are caught in a moment of awe, wonder, stupefaction, puzzlement. The bell breaks the spell, which this scene has brought about. The resolution of Victoria's strand of the plot is clearly present to the subconscious awareness of all three characters and to some degree to the audience, though it will need the intervention of others to bring that denouement about. [go to text]

n7952   See who rings. This command to Borgio effectively removes him from the stage (he might otherwise have left Jacconetta to attend to the new arrival). Victoria has met Fabritio, the man she has been searching for (though she supposes that Borgio knows nothing of her intention in setting herself up as a courtesan in Venice) and in circumstances that have allowed her to appreciate the depth of feeling he still holds for her. She needs above all now to be alone with her former love. [go to text]

n7977   incensed ghost There is a pun involved in the use of the word "incensed" in that it can mean both "perfumed with a scent like incense" (OED ppl and a, 1) and "angry, enraged" (OED ppl and a, 2). The ambiguity should be played by the actor if possible, since Fabritio is both alert to the reality of the woman before him who, decked as a courtesan, is likely to be highly perfumed, but also acutely conscious of the difficult situation he is in, if this is indeed the ghost of the Victoria he cruelly abandoned at his father's urging. If she is a woman, then he is lured by her charms; if she is a ghost then he fears she is a justifiably vengeful one. The linguistic usage neatly captures his psychological predicament. [go to text]

gs1249   work bring into a particular mental state; move powerfully; induce (a particular state of mind) (OED v. 14a and 14b) [go to text]

gs1250   strangely eerily; wondrously; astonishingly [go to text]

gs1251   fall come by chance into; drop into, engage upon, become the subject of (OED v. 35, 63a and 63d) [go to text]

gg1027   discourse talk, conversation [go to text]

gg5243   start undergo a sudden involuntary movement of the body (OED v. 5a); flinch, recoil [go to text]

gs1252   shadow phantom, ghost [go to text]

gg5244   startle feel sudden astonishment or alarm; take fright [go to text]

gg5245   airy ethereal, incorporeal, insubstantial [go to text]

gs1253   substance body or bodily matter (a solid or real thing, as opposed to an apparition or shadow) [go to text]

gg1491   resolve answer (a question, argument, etc.); to solve (a problem of any kind); explain (something to someone) (OED n. 11a and 11c) [go to text]

n7980   thus Fabritio means "with all the trappings, appearance and retinue of a courtesan". [go to text]

gs348   desperate hopeless; hazardous; reckless [go to text]

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

n7981   us! All ] us, all [go to text]

n9381   now. For what ] now, for what [go to text]

gg5248   draw bring (but the OED also cites another meaning which may underlie the usage here: "to drag (a criminal) at a horse's tail or on a hurdle", which was in England in the 1600s a punishment along with whipping for prostitution and pimping) [go to text]

n7983   in question That is: into being questioned, where "question" carries the sense of being interrogated, examined, put on trial. But just as "draw" can convey darker associations to do with criminal punishment, so "question", especially in terms of Venetian judicial practice, could in the 1600s involve the application of torture. [go to text]

gg5249   stupefied stunned with amazement (and so deprived of apprehension, feeling, sensibility or the power of speech) [go to text]

gg5250   took th’affront took offence, was insulted [go to text]

n9382   today ] to day [go to text]

n9383   feigned ] fain'd [go to text]

gs1254   feigned pretended, simulated, dissembled [go to text]

n9384   PEDRO Interestingly Brome brings this Spanish character back onstage for the conclusion. Though he is given few lines to speak, his very presence adds to the general sense of uproar and mayhem that threatens to prevail as everyone storms in at this point. [go to text]

n9385   This is the house, you say. This and the following two speeches are all of seven syllables in length; and, though they have a marked rhythm and drive, it is impossible to render them as verse. It makes a superbly dramatic shift of tone, if the heightened mood of the sequence involving Victoria and Fabritio is suddenly broken into by such grossly pedestrian questioning. The rendering of the lines as prose emphasizes the rudeness of Guadagni's intrusion into the house: he may be a magnifico but he lacks civility. It is equally telling in context that Victoria responds to his outburst with a quietly studied control. She wittily deflects the intended insult to her by choosing to hear Guadagni's use of the word "harlot" (referring to herself) as deployed in apposition to Guadagni's reference to his daughter, whom she then proceeds to exonerate from her father's cruel supposition. [go to text]

n9418   Pedlar-Woman Some confusion appears at first to surround the assigning of this particular speech, which is occasioned by the fact that in the 1653 text the abbreviated speech prefixes for both Pedro and the Pedlar-Woman are rendered as "Ped.". Both characters have met with Victoria in the course of the action, either within the action (Don Pedro) or reportedly so (the Pedlar-Woman). Later in the scene at [NV 5.1.speech807], the Pedlar-Woman comments to Guadagni: "...for look you, sir, /I brought you where you find your daughter, safe". This would seem to indicate that the speech here be assigned to the Pedlar-Woman rather than Don Pedro, who has not previously met with Flavia in the action. This is the reasoning behind the emendation here. [go to text]

n7984   creature With great dignity, Victoria is expressing her affront that Guadagni dares to use such gross language in her presence. She preserves the level of decorum in polite conversation that he ignores. "Creature" here is a derogative term, implying the lowliest kind of life. [go to text]

n7985   this woman That is: the pedlar-woman. [go to text]

gs509   divers various, sundry [go to text]

gg4475   magnificos’ a great or noble person (generally deployed as an honorary title for any of the magnates of Venice who held high office) [go to text]

n7986   Speak lower or at home, sir: you know not That is: moderate your tone or, if you persist in shouting, do so within the confines of your own home (and not here in my house). [go to text]

n9386   at home ] at home sir, you know not [go to text]

n9387   are. ] are: [go to text]

n9388   We shall know more anon. From this speech till [NV 5.1.speech796] where Pantaloni dominates the stage, the 1653 text struggles to render the dialogue in verse; but the results are very clumsy and irregular. Just as the earlier moment works best as prose when this group burst onto the stage and begin hectoring everyone they find there in the rudest manner possible, so this sequence with various characters clamouring for justice seems better rendered as prose, except for the two lines spoken by Don Pedro. Given his enormous sense of self-importance, it seems proper to give his lines as verse. And they do scan neatly in the 1653 text. For the layout as verse attempted by the 1653 text, readers are requested to study the period text in comparison with this modernised version. [go to text]

n7987   what are you? Absurdly and ironically, Pantaloni has failed to recognise his own son beneath his disguise as Dutchman. [go to text]

n7988   [Pointing to SWATZENBURGH] There is no such direction in the 1653 text but, given the congregation of persons onstage by now, some means of identification is necessary. Apart from Borgio and Victoria, the only other person onstage at this moment whom Don Pedro has encountered is Swatzenburgh and he points accusingly at him. Victoria would in theory count as a stranger being newly come to Venice, but the Dutchman burst into the room unannounced and was not introduced by Borgio; and so he is still to the punctilious Spaniard a "stranger". [go to text]

gg5252   affronted confronted, faced [go to text]

n7989   [Pointing to FABRITIO] There is no such direction in the 1653 text, but one has been added here to point up the symmetry of the comic dramaturgy. [go to text]

gg5253   abuser one who perverts truth or abuses confidence; one who by so doing insults the honour of another; a deceiver or impostor [go to text]

n7991   gave you lost That is: gave you up for lost; believed you lost. [go to text]

gg5254   whimper whine; "utter a feeble, whining, broken cry, as a child about to burst into tears" (OED) [go to text]

n7992   She was not lost, sir Noticeably despite her chiding Flavia, Astutta has still to speak for her, even as she did earlier in the play. A director and actress could make something of this in terms of the dominating patriarchal presence of Guadagni and how this invariably renders Flavia tongue-tied. [go to text]

n7993   chatt’ring magpie The magpie was proverbially linked with the idea of the gossip because of its noisy, chattering call. OED gives as one definition of magpie: "an idle or impertinent chatterer" and cites an example of its usage in this way from Massinger and Field's The Fatal Dowry (1632): "I have waited, sir, /Three hours to speak wi'ee, and not take it well, /Such magpies are admitted, whilst I dance attendance" (IV. sig. H2). [go to text]

gs1255   side take (your) side, support (you) [go to text]

gg762   strumpet debauched woman, whore [go to text]

n9389   Not in consenting to the stealth? The 1653 text struggles to render the dialogue from this speech down to the Pedlar-Woman's exit as continuous verse; but the result makes for some highly irregular lines. What becomes apparent from studying the scansion is that Brome works a subtle comic ploy in rendering the Pedlar-Woman's lines in pentameters, whereas Guadagni cannot fit his anger and exasperation to the metre and is reduced to speaking prose. It is a neat aesthetic correlative for his upstaging by the Pedlar: he cannot fit into the scene, for all his attempts to retain the dignity of his position as a senator and magnifico. Consequently this edition renders most of his speeches in prose in this short sequence. [go to text]

n7994   Not in consenting to the stealth? That is: how do you account as duty your agreeing to (being complicit with) the secret plot? [go to text]

gg5255   discharged exonerated, released, dismissed [go to text]

n7995   No whit the worse for wearing, as they say. The very formulation of the sentence reveals it as proverbial, meaning "not the least affected or damaged by experience". In the context this is hilariously mis-judged in being addressed to a father beside himself with fears that his daughter's much-prized virginity may be lost. [go to text]

n7996   [To the ZAFFI] There is no such direction in the 1653 text, but the Zaffi is the only character onstage who does not have a direct involvement in the dénouement of the play. He is also a minor officer of the law and therefore used to taking orders. [go to text]

n7998   May you see your children’s, children’s, children’s children. A particularly garrulous equivalent of "Long life to you!" [go to text]

n8050   [PEDLAR-WOMAN] exit[s with the ZAFFI] The direction in the 1653 text reads simply "Exit", which is sited on the same line a short space after the Pedlar-Woman's last words. Since the Zaffi has been ordered to escort her from the stage (and he has no further dialogue or role to play in the rest of the act) this edition includes the officer in the direction. [go to text]

n7999   [To PISO] There is no such direction in the 1653 text. The line could be addressed to Victoria except that Pantaloni clearly has not recognised his son as the man in Dutch attire standing close beside her. It seems more appropriate that this remark be addressed to Piso, Fabritio's friend, whom Pantaloni sees as the corrupter of his son's youth (hence "misledst"). [go to text]

n9390   You shall know more of that anon, sir. Piso is sending Pantaloni up by reiterating what has become his catch-phrase in this scene. Given the intertextual presence of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice behind some of the compositional ploys of The Novella, one cannot but hear in Piso's taunts something of Gratiano's baiting of Shylock in the trial scene of Act 4, where he cruelly reiterates phrases uttered by the now-vanquished Jew, when he formerly thought the trial was going in his favour: "A Daniel, still say I, a second Daniel! /I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word"(4.1.336-337). [go to text]

gg5256   Outbraved defied [go to text]

gs1176   bravoes pimp or procurer [go to text]

n9391   Call in the officers. Pantaloni's half-line hangs uncompleted and his command unaswered, marking his failure to regain his authority. [go to text]

n8001   the common hangman A particularly ironic taunt, given Pantaloni's plot to get revenge on Victoria by exploiting that very hangman. Nicolo deliberately spoke privately to Fabritio about this plan of his father's to disgrace the woman who had tricked him, so Piso does not actually know of the scheme. His calling on the hangman here is a generalised expression of disgust with the hypocrisy of the older generation. [go to text]

n9392   HORATIO and FRANCISCO, etc., talk aside with FABRITIO and VICTORIA What in this edition is placed centrally as a continuous stage direction is in the 1653 text presented as a block of five lines in italics, sited in the right-hand margin of the page alongside five lines of dialogue running from the third line of Piso's [NV 5.1.line2279] ("And lawyers here can find one guilty person") to the second line of his next speech, numbered [NV 5.1.line2283] [NV 5.1.speech820] ("And you, opposing it, shall wrong the dignity"). The layout of the direction is as follows, showing how each line is preceded by a bracket: "(Horatio and /(Francisco &c. /(talke aside with /(Fabritio and /(Victoria. [go to text]

gg5257   boldly impudently, shamelessly, presumptuously, brazenly [go to text]

n9394   I will speak but truth. It is significant that Brome chooses Piso to be the voice of commonsense and morality at the close of his play, when his misogyny in earlier scenes has rendered him far from attractive to an audience. It is the mark of how far Brome has attempted to reclaim Piso through his astonished awareness of how seriously he has misjudged Victoria. Piso has undergone a transformation in the course of the last two acts and it is this which invests him with the authority now to dress down the errant fathers. [go to text]

gg3741   contracted formally betrothed, or engaged (in the early modern period, this contract was as binding as a marriage, especially if accompanied by the ritual of handfasting) [go to text]

n8003   diviner providence The reference is to God as the arbiter of human destiny but the comparative ("diviner") nicely critiques both fathers as usurping the privilege of being providers for their offspring and assuming godlike absolute powers over them. [go to text]

gs1256   person distinction of character; also rank and a name [go to text]

gs974   blood family line, lineage [go to text]

n8009   a prince’s dowry Interestingly Piso is arguing in favour of inner qualities and accomplishments rather than material wealth as arbiters of the true worth of individuals (though ironically such a line did not stand Horatio in good stead when he pursued it in courting Victoria earlier). A dowry is the marriage portion that either the wife brought to her husband's estate or that the husband settled on his wife to be a source of income in the event of his death. The dowries of princes and princesses were often extensive, included the possession of tracts of land, and were generally viewed as important factors in a marriage between people of high rank, where dynastic claims were seen as more important than personal feelings. [go to text]

gg5259   kick at object strongly to, rebel against, reject with anger or scorn, spurn, defy [go to text]

n9393   despite ] despight [go to text]

gg5260   ordinance that which is ordained or decreed by God [go to text]

gs1257   forfeit violate [go to text]

gs977   withal besides [go to text]

gs1258   relieve find relief or release (from a burden or curse) [go to text]

n8014   your children’s bastard issue The idea here is a strange one to twenty-first-century theatregoers and readers: that because Guadagni and Pantaloni's children will be married to partners not ordained by Heaven but arranged by their fathers, then the offspring ("issue") of those unions will be illegitimate ("bastard") and bring endless grief ("lashes") to their grandfathers. The view that Flavia and Fabritio would be commiting adultery, were they to marry, is grounded in the fact that each had entered into a prior contract with another lover through the ritual of handfasting, which still in the 1630s was considered as binding as a church wedding ceremony. The legal force of handfasting is excellently treated in chapters five and six of Greer's Shakespeare's Wife (London: Bloomsbury, 2007). [go to text]

gg5265   receipt for place for receiving (OED receipt n, IV 11a) [go to text]

gs1259   warrantable genuine, legally guaranteed or sanctioned [go to text]

n9395   I cannot be so happy. This and the two following speeches from Francisco and Victoria are in the 1653 text all bracketed together and designated "Aside" by a single direction. The intention behind this mode of setting the speeches concerns the need to give a sense that the lovers are occupying a separate world from Pantaloni and the other accusers. In this text the speeches have been severally formatted as asides. While the moral world asserts itself in their defence on the main part of the stage, the four lovers are lost in their own world of blissful discovery, quite unaware of the two raging fathers. [go to text]

gs1260   loath reluctant, averse to, displeased [go to text]

gg5266   unwarrantable licentious, loose, illicit, louche [go to text]

gs1261   upright of unbending integrity or rectitude; morally just [go to text]

n8018   St. Mark’s The great basilica dedicated to St. Mark, the evangelist and patron saint of the city of Venice, which is situated near the Doge's palace. It is the centre of Christian worship in the Republic. [go to text]

gg5268   t’avouch to confirm, quarantee, certify, vouch for (OED v. II 5 and 6) [go to text]

n9396   BORGIO joins in conference with VICTORIA and FABRITIO In the 1653 text this long direction is rendered as a block of four lines and sited in the right-hand margin alongside four lines of dialogue starting from Guadagni's "Fetch that priest" to Pantaloni's reference to "that Trull /here". The direction is rendered as follows with each line being preceded by a bracket: "[Borgio] joynes /(in conference /(with Victoria /(and Fabritio.". [go to text]

gs1274   instrument a thing with or through which something is done or effected (OED 1a) [go to text]

n8051   instrument Pantaloni in his anger sees Victoria in the most reductive of terms, not even allowing her human status or agency, when he refers to how she has tricked him twice: once over his attempts to pay court to her; secondly over her frustrating of the scheme to marry Flavia with his son, Fabritio. [go to text]

gg1701   trull a low prostitute or concubine; a drab, strumpet, trollop (OED) [go to text]

n9398   Fabritio, The 1653 text makes no line break here and gives as one pentameter "Our eyes and ears, Fabritio, witness for her". This is to suppose that Pantaloni's previous speech with its threats to Victoria's future safety are best rendered as prose. But he is a serious threat now as patriarch and senator and to be taken seriously as such: not any longer is he merely a pantaloon. As the metrics allow for the rendering of his lines and the following as verse, this makes for a verse line divided between Pantaloni's dismissal of Victoria as a "trull" and Horatio's vindication of her on the strength of what he has witnessed of her behaviour. This balancing of attitudes to and evaluations of Victoria will prevail till the last lines of the play when the choice is directed to the audience as ultimate judges. [go to text]

n9397   Witness for her. Horatio has revealed to Fabritio what he and Piso observed when they watched Victoria from "above" in conference with Swatzenburgh. [go to text]

gs1275   cabinet (literally) a case for the safe custody of jewels, or other valuables (OED n. 5) but here used in the sense that the beloved is such a store of treasures [go to text]

n8052   take This simple word is not easily paraphrased in context. Fabritio has been remarking on the wonders he has been told relating to how Victoria comes to be in Venice and to her scheme in being there, where "take" may mean "understand, mentally grasp" the complexities of her narrative, which his friends have endorsed. But "the heavenly cabinet" refers to the excellences of Victoria's fair self, and in this context "take" may mean "come into the possession of, seize, take hold of" or even "embrace", all of which invite an appropriate action. [go to text]

gs1276   prize value, hold in high esteem [go to text]

n8053   My soul is not assured of firmer truth. These are remarkable words from Piso. Throughout this act he has been undergoing a steady transformation both in himself and in his estimation of Victoria's nature and virtue. Given his former misogynistic attitude to women generally and Victoria in particular, his endorsing of her character here to his close friend is especially convincing. In performance an actor is presented with the chance to build on this change of heart to depict the gradual growth in Piso's awareness as he moves from lecherous voyeur to ardent enthusiast for Victoria's integrity. Brome charts the aspects of that change meticulously, even if many stages in Piso's progress are indicated through single lines of dialogue (often in the form of asides). [go to text]

n8054   Let thy Dutch habit drink off jealousy There are complexities of meaning compressed into this single line. The basic instruction is for Fabritio to shed his Dutch disguise ("habit" as dress). Excessive drinking was proverbially seen in the sixteenth century to be a Dutch habit ("habit" as settled disposition, custom, instinctive tendency). Jealousy is also seen here as an assumed role (in the sense of Fabritio's fearing that Victoria has actually taken on the career of courtesan), so the advice is that this psychological (like the physical) disguise should now be shed in having been proved pointless. [go to text]

n8055   And take her to thee. Again the line carries a double meaning as a consequence of the resonances within the word "take": literally this involves the physical action of embracing Victoria; but there is also a psychological and emotional dimension present in the word, meaning "take her wholeheartedly to you" in the sense of Fabritio's opening himself to Victoria without fear, suspicion or prejudice. In this latter case "take" has the force it carries in the Anglican marriage service: "Do you take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife?". [go to text]

n8057   my height of hopes. That is: the very highest of my hopes. [go to text]

n8058   [Aside]Good, you shall see how I shall cool those kisses. There is no such direction in the 1653 text, but clearly Pantaloni is not a part of the rejoicing group around the two young couples. If he were and uttered these words, then one would have expected some remonstrance from the rest of the assembled group, but they continue talking of their own concerns as if unaware of him. There is much more dramatic tension present, if these words are uttered as an imminent threat of danger than if they are spoken as a publicly voiced accusation. [go to text]

gs1277   boldly confidently [go to text]

n9611   We are most faithfully till death. The audience were informed earlier by Flavia (see [NV 1.2.speech103)] and by Piso (see [NV 5.1.speech819] that Fabritio and Victoria's relationship had developed as far as plighting their troth, that is by uniting themselves by the ritual known in the period as handfasting. They now renew that pledge. Handfasting was a recognised form of union and Pantaloni was actually breaking the law in forcing Fabritio to break off his relationship and prepare to wed Flavia. Germaine Greer gives a succinct account of the tradition of handfasting and the nature of the law surrounding it (see Shakespeare's Wife [London: Bloomsbury, 2007]; especially chapter six ). [go to text]

n8061   I’ll fetch a priest shall straight pronounce ye so. In the 1653 text this line is assigned jointly to Fabritio and Victoria, following after "faithfully till death". The actor playing Borgio needs to leave the stage at this point to change his clothes so that he may return anon dressed as a friar and this is an appropriate line to allow him to do so. It makes no sense in the mouth of either Fabritio or Victoria and so this text has been emended accordingly. [go to text]

gg2252   straight immediately [go to text]

n8060   pronounce The word means "formally declare". It is part of the final required sentence in the Anglican marriage service to be spoken by the officiating priest ("I do pronounce you man and wife"). This statement makes the union legally and spiritually binding. [go to text]

n9399   I fear to her much wrong That is, I fear he (Fabritio) will do her much wrong. [go to text]

gg5951   out of beyond, after (that), further (to that) (OED prep, 2) [go to text]

n9400   you, sir That is Piso, who invoked the hangman in his moral tirade against the two fathers. This falls exactly into line with Pantaloni's plan to disgrace Victoria by exposing her in conference with the hangman. [go to text]

gs1667   port style of living; rank, status, social standing; also behaviour, conduct (OED n4. 2a and 1c) [go to text]

gg2587   affect love, like (OED v1. 2); also means ‘to show ostentatiously a liking for' (OED v1. 5) [go to text]

gg5288   verier truer [go to text]

n9612   But such a priest! such a marriage! ] But such a priest, such a marriage, (Pantaloni's sarcasm seems to require a stronger form of punctuation than mere commas.) [go to text]

n8067   Put ’em together. Pantaloni is ecstatic at the thought that he is in the process of bringing disgrace on Victoria by marrying her with (as he supposes) the common hangman. This is his moment of hubris, when his lack of generosity or understanding is most marked. [go to text]

n8166   I do pronounce them lawful man and wife. This is a variant of the statement made at the close of the marriage service in both the Anglican and the Catholic church: "I do pronounce you man and wife". The change may have been deliberate (since that statement was legally binding): the couple being so wed are doing so in role not in reality and the variation on the actual marriage service subtly makes the distinction. [go to text]

n9401   Mistress Bride: In the 1653 text this phrase is divided: the sheer length of the line cannot be contained within the space available so that "Bride" runs on to be caught into the extreme right-hand margin of the following line, and is separated from its concluding words ("put on me last night") by a gap and a bracket: "(Bride". The confined space allows no room for a concluding punctuation mark, such as a comma or a colon, which the sense seems to require. The lack has been filled in this edition with a colon. [go to text]

n9615   [Aside to SWATZENBURGH] There is no such direction in the 1653 text, however the words that in this edition are assigned to the aside to Swatzenbach are enclosed in that text within round brackets. This is often a means that either Brome or his compositors within the range of the printed texts of his plays use to denote words to be spoken as asides, though it is the only instance in the 1653 text of The Novella. [go to text]

gs1148   counterfeit impostor, dissembler (OED n. 2) [go to text]

gg5339   ride (literally) mount a horse; (but in this figurative instance: mount the scaffold to conduct an execution) [go to text]

gg5338   wooden-horse the gallows, the scaffold [go to text]

n8167   last day That is, yesterday. [go to text]

gg5340   bear you out to support, back up, corroborate, confirm (bear v1, 3) [go to text]

gg5341   rest you be at peace, be content (usually in the phrase "God rest you") [go to text]

n8168   [NICOLO removes FABRITIO's beard] There is no such direction in the 1653 text, though clearly at some point before the general exclamation some action of this kind must needs take place. It must not occur before Pantaloni's speech ends, else the discovery with the unmasking that the figure revealed is not the hangman but Fabritio would make a nonsense of his final jubilant line and its ironic use (as he supposes) of the word "virtuous". This edition sites the direction in what examination of the context reveals as the only logical place. Fabritio has of course revealed his identity to Victoria earlier in the scene, see [NV 5.1.speeches822-824]. [go to text]

n8169   Omnes The 1653 text gives as speech prefix to this general exclamation at the discovery that the "counterfeit" is in fact Fabritio: "Horatio, Piso &c". Clearly everyone on stage at this moment is involved in surprise at the discovery, but Horatio and Piso make an odd choice for the prefix preceding "&c". Should they join in the general expression of surprise or shock? Both have known of Fabritio's disguise and false beard since during the final scene of the previous act they observed him prepare himself to play the Dutchman. Victoria knows who he is too, as does Nicolo. If a precise speech-prefix should be assigned here, then it should more properly include Pantaloni, Guadagni and Swaztenburgh, since they are the three who for different reasons are to be most deeply affected by the revelation of Fabritio. Omnes would seem a suitable compromise. [go to text]

gs1317   cozened duped, cheated, imposed on [go to text]

gs1318   Forbear avoid (me); get out of my sight [go to text]

n8170   off Various meanings of "off" are relevant here. In one sense Guadagni could mean that he is "taking off", that is leaving; but also he could mean that he is "off" with the whole idea of Flavia marrying Francisco, where "off" means "done with, no longer committed to" (OED prep, 4c). [go to text]

n10129   Stop not the blessing you were about to give us. Video In terms of dramaturgy, the final sequences of the play are remarkable. There is a lot of business going on here in the interest of resolving one strand of a complex plot. The old are revealed as unprincipled; the younger characters are shown to be morally impeccable; those in the know about their seniors (chiefly Victoria) choose to keep silent. All appears to be solved, but then one of the irate fathers realises that the priest that one set of lovers claims married them is none other than the man whom they all suppose is Victoria’s pander. And so the resolution is postponed, till Borgio reveals his true identity to be Paulo, a friar in orders and Victoria’s older brother. Why we chose to workshop this episode was to explore how best to pace it all so that an audience understands fully what is going on. Also we wished to examine what the impact is of that long narration from Paulo, a seemingly new piece of exposition, which turns steadily into the much-needed grounds for a denouement. Is this all to be played as preposterously absurd, to show the folly of mortals, young and old? Since the moral standing of Victoria has been at stake throughout the play and is still open to debate even in these closing moments, would it be possible to sustain a more complex tone? Brome’s prologue and epilogue imply that the play is all to be viewed as a good laugh. To what degree should we take this at face value? The play overall veers between a broad farce akin to commedia dell’arte and a more serious kind of romantic comedy. Would it be possible to sustain this tonal uncertainty till the very end? How much of this scene could be played directly out to the audience?

After a read-through of this final episode, Brian Woolland, the director, said he felt there needed to be a sense of danger about the old men’s intrusion into what appears to be a complete resolution: the end of the play is in sight and then the rapid progress towards it is forcibly derailed by Guadagni and Pantaloni’s questioning Borgio’s identity. The threat in this is what impels Borgio to reveal himself as Paulo and the ensuing surprise is shared by everyone on stage and in the audience; the contrast is what achieves the release into the finality of the actual ending in which the marriages are confirmed as lawful and Victoria’s true nature accepted by all. This is the logic that underlies the developments within the sequence. The cast were first arranged in family groups around the respective father-figures (but with Victoria and Borgio in close proximity to the centre of the stage) to produce a tableau indicative of a “happy ending”; each father stood as if blessing his respective child’s union; the stage picture was carefully balanced. This was done so that there would be a troubling disruption of the harmony almost at the moment it was formed. David Broughton-Davies playing Borgio was instructed to take time before starting on his long narrative to establish that, though all seemed suddenly lost, he remained confidently in control of himself and the situation. This was the first attempt at staging the episode.

There was discussion about details of the performance: Richard Cave felt that David’s speaking the narrative of his past with his back to the theatre audience had great power which was lost when he moved upstage, turning as he did so. It was decided to explore the impact of his remaining for much of his speech in this commanding position, thereby requiring the people he variously addresses to approach him, so that we see their facial reactions to his newly revealed identity as one-by-one they realise their close relationships to him. David was asked to find a means of relinquishing this position onstage to Sarah Edwardson as Victoria to enable her to include the theatre audience as well as everyone onstage in her final request that they all voice their judgement of her. The positioning of Borgio/Paulo in this version brought tension and complexity to the long narration (he now gave due weight to the disturbing lines about plotting Victoria’s death, should she have dishonoured her family by actually losing her virginity); and Victoria’s positioning invested a new power in her at this moment (while not marginalised, she has not been commanding our attention for some time in this scene). The actual ending with Paulo’s final couplet seemed messy by contrast with the clarity that obtained till that moment. It was decided to revisit this again and David was instructed to join Victoria downstage centre to give his lines better emphasis as the conclusion.

The cast at no point felt it worth attempting to play the episode as broad comedy: there were too many dark reflections, confessions, questionings to make that style and tone a viable choice for them. Rather they preferred to give due weight to those darker moments in order to make the actual resolution and the confirmation of a universal honouring of Victoria’s integrity thoroughly convincing. They also spontaneously kept the action within their stage groupings: no one looked out to the audience or addressed them directly till Victoria threw herself on their mercies. This gave significance to her daring their judgement and confirmed as absolute the self-assurance that has been the hallmark of Victoria’s stage presence throughout the play. [go to text]

n8171   off again Here the sense is definitely "done with", "am no longer committed to" the marriage. [go to text]

gs1317   cozened duped, cheated, imposed on [go to text]

n9404   BORGIO casts off his peruke and beard [during the following speech] The 1653 text places this long direction as a block of four lines in the right-hand margin alongside the dialogue starting from Piso's "You will know more anon" and continuing beside the three lines of Borgio's next speech. The direction is separated from the main text by brackets and by being set in italics. It reads: "([Borgio] /(casts /(off his Perruk /(and Beard." [go to text]

gg3390   peruke a skull-cap wig, periwig, false hair-piece [go to text]

n8172   th’ holy Order of St. Augustine The Augustinian friars, named after St. Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430), were and are a monastic order living in accordance with the Rule of St. Augustine. Erasmus and Luther were of the order which, honouring principles of love, fairness and learning, devotes itself still to missionary and charitable offices. Brome twice refers to the order in this play (here and in [NV 2.2.speech237]) and the King chooses to retire to one of their houses to redeem his transgressions in The Queen and Concubine: "I vowed my after-life unto the monastery /Of the holy Augustinians at Solanto" [QC 5.4.speech1377]. [go to text]

gg5342   surfeit over-indulge; feed to excess or satiety [go to text]

n9405   My brother, Paulo! This revelation finally resolves much of the tension and strangeness that has persisted throughout Victoria's scenes with Borgio. The half-line allows for general surprise to be registered by the characters onstage and for some form of affectionate greeting to be expressed between brother and sister before the need for explanations pressures Paulo into his ensuing speech. [go to text]

n8173   father Both in the religious and spiritual sense as priest; and as Victoria's protector and guide acting in place of her father, who is deceased. Throughout the renaissance period a woman was answerable to and under the guardianship of her father but after his death was under the protection of her nearest male relative within the family, usually a brother. [go to text]

gg5343   dearest most affectionate, loving, fond; most precious; most earnest (anxious, fastidious) [go to text]

gs1319   jealous zealous, vigilant, watchful [go to text]

n9406   honour, ] honour [go to text]

gs974   blood family line, lineage [go to text]

gg5345   relicts survivors (OED relict n, 3a , which cites as a characteristic usage the Argument to Ben Jonson's The New Inn (acted 1629): "The eldest daughter, Frances...is the sole relict of the family.") [go to text]

gs1320   nearly closely [go to text]

n9613   ’scape That is: escape, flight. [go to text]

gs1209   warrant authorisation, sanction, permission [go to text]

n9407   gentlemen: ] Gentlemen [go to text]

gg5347   dispensation the granting of a licence either exempting a person in special circumstances from some sacred obligation, or allowing a person to omit what is enjoined by ecclesiastical law or by any solemn obligation; also the licence so given (OED n. 8) [go to text]

gg346   allowance approbation, approval [go to text]

gg5952   covent the early form of convent, regularly in common use down to the seventeenth century and surviving in some proper names, as in Covent Garden, London [go to text]

gs352   fair virtuous; legitimate [go to text]

n8178   this uncouth way That is, his unseemly and indecorous impersonation of a bravo and pimp. [go to text]

n9408   pardon! ] pardon [go to text]

n9409   (Fearing ] Fearing [go to text]

gs412   abused misused, ill-treated [go to text]

gg5348   wrack wreck, ruin; devastation, destruction (OED cites this term as in frequent usage until 1640) [go to text]

n9410   both) ] both, [go to text]

n9411   ta’en ] ta'ne [go to text]

n8181   I once had secret purpose to have ta’en Her life in case she had forsook her honour This explains Borgio/Paulo's dark moralising throughout the play that has seemed so incongruous with his function as pimp and bravo; and also his anxiety earlier in this final act when he tried to delay or prevent Victoria's encounter with Swatzenburgh, his later watching their scene together, hidden at the rear of the stage and armed with his pistols, and his departure expressing huge relief when she refused to succumb to Swatzenburgh's advances on the grounds of preserving her virginity. [go to text]

n8182   Candiani’s line That is, the lineage of the Candiani family. Borgio/Paulo as a monk and priest would have been celibate in accordance with the vows of his order and thus prevented from extending that line. Victoria alone might conceive a child in wedlock but only, it appears, with his approval of the intended partner. [go to text]

gs1321   branched Taking the image from the branches or limbs of a family tree (a diagrammatic representation of the succeeding generations of a given family), "branched" here relates to a collateral branch of that tree caused by Victoria's marriage, which will entail the loss of her surname but which will enable her to perpetuate the family honour and distinction through her children. [go to text]

n8183   touch the world’s end With fair succession! That is: Victoria's offspring will in turn reproduce as will their progeny and so on and on through endless cycles of generation, thus continuing to create further branches of the family tree till the end of the world. [go to text]

gg5352   likings approval, consent (OED vbl n1, 4b) [go to text]

n8184   That so That is: so that you may... [go to text]

n8185   Crowned by the prayers of your prosperity. This is another instance of Brome's fondness for overly compressed syntax, where the sense is clear although a succinct paraphrase is difficult. To take the line as it stands, its meaning would be: may the final fruit of your wealth and good fortune be the prayers for your honourable afterlife, voiced by your heirs. (Here children and grandchildren are to be taken as indicators of each father's prosperity rather than their material wealth.) It could be that the final word in the line is a misreading by the compositors for "posterity". This is feasible and would make for an easier interpretation along similar lines to that offered above, but the 1653 reading is defendable. When this sequence was being examined in workshop, Marion O'Connor argued in favour of emending the line to read another way: "Crowned by the prayers for your prosperity". This would have required far greater intervention on the part of the compositor than the simpler change from "posterity" to "prosperity". The 1653 reading is retained in this edition. [go to text]

gs1323   scruple doubt, uncertainty or hesitation in regard to right and wrong, duty, propriety (OED n2. 1) [go to text]

n8186   mis-spent his time That is: had sexual relations with (the moor). [go to text]

n9412   sir. See, my ] done sir, see my [go to text]

gg5353   eunuch a castrated (emasculated) male [go to text]

n8187   [VICTORIA removes some of JACCONETTA's clothing] The 1653 text offers no direction here but an action of some kind must occur, if Fabritio is to recognise Jacomo in Jacconetta. The moment is akin to the unfrocking of Epicoene in Jonson's comedy of that name (acted 1609), where a seeming woman is revealed to be a young boy actor. Director and actors can be inventive here, reducing the discovery to merely the removal of a wig or an outer garment or it may be made more complex, involving the wiping away of the "black" countenance to show it to be just makeup. It is a matter for discussion within a cast whether Jacomo should actually be a black pageboy (such were servants within English and Venetian households and feature in a number of portraits and paintings of the period) or his black skin be another of the many disguisings within the intricacies of the plot. The latter is most likely to be the situation in the play's original staging. [go to text]

n10130   Has thy mistress used thee well? Video There was some discussion in the workshop about the tenor of this question and the two different responses it provokes. Is Fabritio questioning whether there has been any sexual play between his page and Victoria (particularly in her role as would-be courtesan)? As Lucy Munro pointed out a chambermaid (which is what Jacomo has become in being disguised as Jacconetta) would have far closer access to a mistress than a page, so Fabritio’s question, even if framed as a joke, expresses a certain anxiety. One recalls the scene that starts Jonson’s Epicoene where Clerimont’s boy tells how he is made sport of amongst the Collegiate women, who throw him on a bed and sexually taunt him, wanting to dress him as a woman and kiss him (1.1.12-17) or the scene in The Devil Is An Ass (4.1. passim) where Lady Tailbush tests Pug to assess whether he is fit material to be a fashionable lady’s “pretty proficient”. Here the erotic potential of a page or young servant and his attraction to a frustrated older woman is dramatised. If Fabritio’s words do carry a sexual enquiry in the word “used”, then is he being serious (and so once again doubting Victoria’s honour) or is he lightly teasing Victoria and Jacomo? Victoria’s reply is ambivalent: in her turn she would appear to be matching Fabritio’s ambivalence. It was the actor playing Jacomo, Alan Morrissey, who made the most illuminating commentary on these lines. . The cast consequently chose to play the lines between Fabritio and Victoria as “cheeky, flirty”, as so much harmless fun; but Jacomo prefers to be straight-forward rather than risk misunderstandings and so, as a servant, to avoid possible recrimination. Sarah Edwardson as Victoria saw that responding to Fabritio’s teasing with further teasing had an element of exasperation in it. A logic to the sequence of lines was emerging, once the actors began to seek a convincing motivation for what they were required by the text to say. [go to text]

n8188   Not without much desert. That is: the boy's excellent and compliant behaviour has more than merited Victoria's kind usage of him. The words are available for a bawdy interpretation. [go to text]

n8189   honest "Honest" here means respectable, socially above reproach or moral condemnation. All the dubious members of the courtesan's household (herself as mistress, Borgio/Paulo as pimp, Jacomo/Jacconetta as black maid) are revealed to be beyond criticism as persons working (by admittedly strange means) to preserve their integrity. Their united sense of purpose and tenacity in maintaining it makes them a kind of family, even though Victoria and Paulo are now known to be actual blood kindred. [go to text]

n8294   Here you see all, and all that came i’th’ house (Since it was made mine). There is a neat quibble with double meanings here. Victoria gestures to say that all her "family" are comprised of Borgio/Paulo, Jacomo, Fabritio and, hopefully, her new father-in-law, Pantaloni, though only the first two along with herself originally inhabited her home in Venice. However the gesture may extend out to embrace all the newcomers into her house that make up the cast of the play. Also by a further extension the gesture may include all the spectators that make up the "house" that comprise her audience in the theatre. "Since it was made mine" most likely refers to the fact that the play which has drawn everyone to the space both onstage and off is named after her in her role as the "Novella". [go to text]

gg5424   convention (literally) an assembly or gathering of persons for some common object; a formal assembly met for deliberation on matters ecclesiastical, political, or social; (figuratively, as here) a theatre audience [go to text]

gg5177   dare will be so bold as to (OED v1. 1); will venture to (OED v1. 3) [go to text]

gs1380   accorded reconciled; harmonized; agreed to [go to text]

n8295   travail "Travail" has as its primary meaning, to labour, work hard, toil. But in the 1600s and earlier it was frequently the way in which the word, "travel", was spelt (appropriately since travel in that period did entail much labour and discomfort). Paulo has worked hard to protect his sister but he has also had to travel throughout Italy from Rome to Venice to fulfil that duty; and the pun encapsulates the complexity of his experience. [go to text]

n8297   EPILOGUE No speaker is assigned to the epilogue, which is often the case with printed texts of plays that include such a device in the 1600s. It is possible that the actor performing as Borgio/Paulo, who has the final speech within the actual play, might have stepped out of the action and continued into speaking the epilogue. That particular role must have been taken by one of the more senior members of the company, making him a suitable choice of speaker. Equally appropriately in relation to the play and its title, the actor playing Victoria might in a modern production take on the function (except that women characters but rarely spoke epilogues to judge by those where a named character is assigned as speaker in sixteenth-century texts). A director is faced with a choice, if he or she chooses to stage the epilogue. [go to text]

n10120   ’Cause ’tis the custom, Video To complement the workshop on the Prologue, we also decided to investigate the brief epilogue to the play. Brome’s epilogues with the exception of The Court Beggar tend to be short and pithy: an attitude is struck, applause invoked and the whole experience is over within moments. Brome can make witty allusion to the title or content of the preceding drama, as he does in The Antipodes; but here he chooses to be especially curt. The same two actors worked on this as on the earlier sequence and were invited to stay with the persona they had each created for speaking the prologue so that with both cases we would get a sense of how the play overall might be framed. It is no easier to define the tone of this speech than that of the prologue: Brome establishes that it is customary to have an epilogue and that he wants the audience to applaud, since his pay depends on their approval. So far so good, but then comes a sting in the tail: the ending is hardly obsequious (the tone and manner which the situation would seem to require of him). Brome will not beg. The artistry throughout is consummately “smooth”, but the tone is decidedly equivocal, teasing and combative. Direct address is involved, and again we were curious to determine what kind of relation the actor might establish with the audience in announcing the end of the play?

Hannah Watkins adopted a world-weary attitude and tone, openly stating that Brome’s interest in giving spectators an epilogue at all is only to ensure he gets paid. She is caustic and terse, and so wry in her delivery that the combative element in the writing verges on the insulting. The dryly aloof persona who spoke the prologue has become jaded now (though still punctilious in her attention to defining in her delivery the three couplets that shape the speech) as if wearied by the experience of the play. The threat of a worse drama to follow, if the audience fail to summon up the energy to applaud what they have just seen, is all the funnier for the dead-pan expression. Hannah stresses that the epilogue is a custom that Brome is complying with because it is expected, yet her whole manner intimates that he and she would rather such a tradition were abandoned: it is for them both a meaningless routine. The implication is that an intelligent audience will know when a play is done and will applaud or not without being asked. Behind the threat to write a worse play lies an awareness that the writing of an epilogue is demeaning in the necessarily obsequious postures it demands of the playwright. Hannah’s handling made the epilogue seem a defence of Brome’s integrity: he complied with custom since he was compelled to, but did so in a manner that voiced an absolute detestation of being expected to sue for acknowledgement of the value of his invention. Brome strongly resists a situation in which he might be patronised.

Alan Morrissey again played the luckless comedian, clearly the lowest in the company’s pecking order: he is the actor sent out to remind the audience that the services of troupe and dramatist need rewarding. He spells out the situation (Brome wants his pay and so do the actors) and then admonishes his hearers: don’t withhold applause else worse plays and performances will follow. The absurdity of the device of epilogues is emphasized by Alan’s obvious performance in role, which distances the speaker from that which is delivered. By pointing to and isolating individual members of his audience, he generates a sense of embarrassment at the possibility of anyone not applauding, which cleverly ensures everyone will applaud rather than be seen to be a lacklustre kill-joy. Only then does he risk an outright joke: that if this play seemed bad, worse could well follow. Like Hannah he expertly controls the convoluted syntax that is required to fit the complex ideas within the first two tightly formed couplets, pointing to make the flow of the sentence absolutely clear. The sustained pause and utterly changed tone and tenor of “But don’t … if you be wise” implies both horror at the possibility of there being no applause and menace at the likely consequences. When the menace relaxes into a joke and he has got his audience laughing, he can afford rapidly to quit the stage. Where Hannah appears to speak for the playwright, Alan speaks for the actors caught between honouring their author and pleasing their audience. That the speech tricks them into compliant laughter is a cunning strategy that relies on an absolute control of tone and the ability to change it on the instant. Instead of the epilogue being an embarrassed and embarrassing plea to spectators, it becomes an exhibition of the actors’ artistry and expertise which command their attention and respect. Whichever way one prefers for delivering the speech, the force of either in performance is wittily to expose the questionable morality of epilogues in terms of what they exact of actors, dramatist and audience: a bogus humility in the one is met by the ostentatious compliance of the other with a round of clapping. Both sides in the contract are compromised. True applause, Brome implies, should be spontaneous. Interestingly, Ford makes a similar observation in the Epilogue to The Lover's Melancholy: "Know, beg'd applauses never were deseru'd" (M4r, p.87, l.4). [go to text]

gg2756   ’Cause because [go to text]

gg5425   plaudit a round of applause; clapping; an audible expression of praise or approval [go to text]

n9413   is his promised pay "That" has to be understood as following the verb here and the phrase be interpreted as "is [that] his promised pay..." [go to text]

gs1381   allowed praised, approved, accepted as satisfactory [go to text]

© University of Sheffield, 2010
The transcribed text is made freely available for non-commercial usage. Copyright, of the design and content, remains with the Royal Holloway, University of London and the University of Sheffield. Commercial exploitation of this material is prohibited without licence from the Royal Holloway, University of London and the University of Sheffield.