The Epilogue.n3274

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n4071   ACT FIVE Act 5 consists of four scenes during the course of which the court comes to the country and Eulalia and Alinda are brought together on stage for the first time since Act 2. The act features a series of revelations and reconciliations: Prince Gonzago is revealed to be alive, and is reconciled with his mother and, eventually, his father. The King’s growing awareness of his errors and Alinda’s tyranny culminates in a final showdown with his new wife, and a surprising turn of events in the final lines of the play which have important ramifications for the play’s presentation of state politics and of the family. The act also features a number of sequences featuring music and dance, as Eulalia and the country people mount festivities for the visit of the monarch. Scenes 5.2, 5.3 and 5.4 continue Brome’s habit of beginning scenes with a small number of characters, the on-stage cast gradually increasing as the scene develops. The sequence of these scenes is also important. In 5.2 the King passes judgement on Alinda, and in 5.4 he eventually passes judgement on himself, but this emphasis on the King’s (newly found) ability to judge correctly is complicated by 5.3, in which Andrea, Poggio and Lollio mount a country ‘parliament’ in which they attempt to judge and convict Flavello. Although the scene is a comic one, it nonetheless foregrounds the aspects of the King’s autocratic rule, and of the court’s mistaken assumption of its superiority over the countryside. [go to text]

n11339   5.1 ] ACT. V. Scœn. I. [go to text]

gg2601   reason. judgement [go to text]

n3001   thank i.e. thank you for. [go to text]

gg2602   overswayed overridden; prevailed upon [go to text]

gg2603   pervert corrupt, lead astray [go to text]

n3002   sent, i.e. sent the letter to the King. [go to text]

n125   ta’en taken [go to text]

gg817   counsel. advice, direction [go to text]

gs421   happily: with good fortune, with success [go to text]

n3003   My Gonzago – My prince, I should have said. As in [QC 2.1.speech239], Eulalia attempts to correct the way that she addresses her son in order to speak in a fashion that she thinks is appropriate to her reduced status. [go to text]

n3004   Thrice-gracious mother, Gonzago rejects Eulalia’s attempts at formality, insisting on their familial relationship. [go to text]

gg2604   gracious virtuous; blessed [go to text]

n3005   Weep not, This implied stage direction suggests that Gonzago is weeping with joy. [go to text]

n4046   Now I see Methinks a court again. In the octavo this is printed as one line. [go to text]

gg2605   terror, terribleness, with the power to incite terror [go to text]

n4047   We shall do shortly, For the King is coming, and not in terror, But with grace and favour. I have altered the lineation of this speech: in the octavo the line-break comes at 'coming, / And'. [go to text]

gs422   grace goodwill; clemency [go to text]

gg201   favour. goodwill, kindness; partiality, approval, encouragement [go to text]

gg2606   inundation outpouring, flood [go to text]

gg227   happily fortunately, successfully; with great content [go to text]

gg2607   frantic. violently or ragingly mad (OED a, 1) [go to text]

gs423   wholesome beneficial, health-giving [go to text]

n2552   physic’s art, i.e. medicine [go to text]

gg2157   pomp magnificence, ceremony [go to text]

gg2608   train retinue, entourage [go to text]

gg2609   Auspicious kind, showing favour (OED a, 2b) [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]

n3006   take us in their way, i.e. include us in their route (see OED take v, 25c). [go to text]

gg2610   boons, requests, favours; gifts [go to text]

n4103   Aye, ] I [go to text]

gg2611   baubles. trifling things, toys [go to text]

gs88   careful concerned, anxious [go to text]

n3007   Patience would die, if ’twere not exercised. This phrase has a proverbial ring, but it is not to be found in Dent or Tilley. [go to text]

gg2348   rests remains [go to text]

n4048   But now it rests That we prepare to entertain our guests. This is printed as one line in the octavo. [go to text]

gg2612   holiday festival [go to text]

n3008   holiday ] holy day [go to text]

gg885   leave permission [go to text]

gg2613   swains, young men [go to text]

gs424   perfect fully prepared, completely rehearsed [go to text]

n3009   we’ll leave it for the King. i.e. leave off until the King arrives? In some contexts ‘leave’ can mean ‘To raise’: cf. Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II.x.31.7-8: ‘An army strong she leav’d, / To war on those which him had of his realm bereav’d’ (OED leave v, 3). This may be a variant of ‘levy’, which could be spelt ‘leavy’, ‘leavye’, ‘leauy’ or ‘leauye’); A.H. Hamilton glosses Spenser’s ‘leav’d’ as ‘levied’ in his edition of The Faerie Queene (London and New York: Longman, 1977). [go to text]

n4049   [They all exit.] ] Exeunt. [go to text]

n3010   5.2 Video This scene is one of the play’s two dramatic climaxes. It is based closely on the final lines of Greene’s Penelope’s Web, but Brome makes some important alterations to his source text (for details see the notes below). A workshop reading of the sequence up to the entrance of the Curate [QC 5.2.speech1209] helps to demonstrate its rhythms and shifts in tone (notably those caused by the interjections of Horatio and Lodovico); it should be stressed that this reading lacks props and does not have fully worked out renditions of the songs and dances; the latter, especially, would affect the way in which the scene comes across in performance. Like other scenes in the play (for instance, the opening scene), this sequence shows Brome manoeuvring a large number of characters around a small stage. Here, the court is represented in progress as it journeys towards Nicosia, meaning that a certain amount of formality - created here through the seated position of the King and Alinda - is appropriate. [go to text]

n11340   5.2 ] Scœn. III. [go to text]

n3011   Enter KING, ALINDA, HORATIO, LODOVICO, [and] ATTENDANTS. This may be another sign that the extant text of the play has not been fully worked out for the stage, although it should be remembered that some surviving playhouse manuscripts are remarkably 'unfinished' by modern standards. Lodovico was present on stage at the end of 5.1 and it is therefore odd to find him enter with the King and his train at the start of 5.2. It is possible that a sequence in which he leaves to meet the King and his train, and is reunited with Horatio, is missing. Otherwise, a company producing the play might decide either to indicate that a certain amount of time has passed between the end of 5.1 and the beginning of 5.2, or to insert a dumb-show sequence in which Lodovico remains on stage at the end of 5.1 and meets the King’s party as they enter. In any case, Lodovico must be positioned near to Horatio at the start of this scene, in order that they can exchange asides. [go to text]

gs425   applaud approve of, praise [go to text]

gs426   mind, thought process (OED n, 6a); desire, purpose (OED n, 9); disposition (OED n, 13a); intention, way of thinking (OED n, 13b); ‘The direction or focus of a person’s thoughts, desires, inclinations, or energies’ (OED n, 14a) [go to text]

gg2614   affected pleased, full of affection [go to text]

n3012   [Aside to HORATIO] Video Brome presents in [QC 5.2.speeches1148-1154] a series of overlapping asides and ‘aloud’ speeches: Horatio and Lodovico speak to each other, while Alinda’s asides are to be delivered either to the audience or as internal comments. In this extract from the workshop on this sequence, Lodovico and Horatio are placed together, immediately to the King’s right; this positioning means that their asides do not draw attention away from the King and Alinda, and it also underlines the danger of their situation through their proximity to those they are criticising. [go to text]

n4053   More scorn, upon my life, and rude vexation. This line is marked as an aside in the octavo: the direction, '[aside]' is placed in the right-hand margin. [go to text]

gg2615   rude impolite, offensive; uncontrolled [go to text]

gs427   fair honourable, virtuous (OED a, 9); eqitable (OED a, 10a); gentle, peaceable (OED a, 15) [go to text]

gg2616   meaning, intention, purpose [go to text]

gg2617   loving friendly [go to text]

gs428   purpose intention [go to text]

n3012   [Aside] Video Brome presents in [QC 5.2.speeches1148-1154] a series of overlapping asides and ‘aloud’ speeches: Horatio and Lodovico speak to each other, while Alinda’s asides are to be delivered either to the audience or as internal comments. In this extract from the workshop on this sequence, Lodovico and Horatio are placed together, immediately to the King’s right; this positioning means that their asides do not draw attention away from the King and Alinda, and it also underlines the danger of their situation through their proximity to those they are criticising. [go to text]

n4054   O that wretch Flavello! This line is marked as an aside in the octavo: the line is enclosed in brackets, and the direction, '[aside]' is placed in the right-hand margin. [go to text]

n4055   If she have further purpose, then, to raise More sorrow by the King’s displeasure to her — This line is marked as an aside in the octavo: the stage direction, '[aside]' is placed in the right-hand margin. [go to text]

n4056   Let her alone, her reign’s but short, we know. This line is marked as an aside in the octavo: the stage direction, '[aside]' is placed in the right-hand margin. [go to text]

n3013   Soft Music. J.S. Manifold suggests that a direction for ‘soft music’ implies the use of string instruments such as viols or violins, with or without lutes (The Music in English Drama from Shakespeare to Purcell [London: Rockliff, 1956], 95). There is some support for this inference in other Jacobean and Caroline plays. For instance, Marston’s Sophonisba (Queen’s Revels, 1605-6) includes the direction ‘A treble viol, and a base lute, play softly within the canopy’ (Three Jacobean Witchcraft Plays, ed. Peter Corbin and Douglas Sedge, [Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986], 4.1.198SD), and in Brome’s Court Beggar (Beeston’s Boys, 1640), Dainty is instructed to play the violin ‘softly’ [CB 5.2.speech1029]. In Davenant’s The Just Italian (King’s Men, 1629; printed London, 1631) a direction for ‘soft music’ is followed by the dialogue,

Hark, hark how the Roman organ seems
T’invoke the Thracian lyre; the cymbals of
Judea, call Castilian cornets forth,
And German viols wake the Tuscan lute
(sig. K1v)

Julia K. Wood (‘Music in Caroline Plays’, 104) notes that some Caroline play-texts imply the use of lutes alone; the direction in Ford’s The Broken Heart (King’s Men, c. 1629), ‘Cease recorders, during her devotions. Soft music’ (The Broken Heart, ed. Brian Morris [London: Ernest Benn, 1965], 5.3.0SD) implies that recorders or flutes were not assumed to be included in 'soft music'. The playhouse manuscript of The Two Noble Ladies (Company of the Revels, c. 1619-22) perhaps supports this conclusion, as it includes a direction for ‘Soft music’, which has been crossed out and the direction ‘Recorders’ interlined (Rebecca G. Rhoads, ed., The Two Noble Ladies [Oxford: Malone Society, 1930], l. 1856SD). Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge (Children of Paul’s, c. 1599-1600), however, includes a direction ‘The still flutes sound softly’ (Antonio’s Revenge, ed. W. Reavley Gair [Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978], 4.3.0SD). [go to text]

gg1238   want (n) need, poverty [go to text]

gg2618   misery? destitution, beggary [go to text]

gg281   wantonness, lasciviousness [go to text]

gg2619   luxury. lust, lasciviousness [go to text]

n4052   The villain had no purpose but to flatter. This line is marked as an aside in the octavo: the line is enclosed in brackets, and the direction, '[aside]' is placed in the margin. [go to text]

gg2620   villain scoundrel, rascal (with imputation of low social status) [go to text]

gs428   purpose intention [go to text]

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

n4057   Mark the chameleon. This line is marked as an aside in the octavo: the stage direction, '[aside]' is placed in the right-hand margin. [go to text]

gg2621   chameleon. inconstant or variable person (after the power of the lizard to change its colour) [go to text]

gg2622   work needlework [go to text]

n3014   Such as the rudeness of the country yields, sir. Video Eulalia overhears the King’s words as she enters and replies to them; see this extract from the workshop on this sequence. [go to text]

gs429   rudeness rough manners [go to text]

n3015   Which on my knees Video This implied stage direction indicates that Eulalia kneels: see this extract from the workshop for the effect of this gesture. [go to text]

gg2623   beautify make beautiful, adorn [go to text]

n3016   We have e’en seen enough: Video The exchanges between Alinda and Eulalia are crucial to the dynamic of this sequence. This is the first time that the two characters have shared a stage since Eulalia’s banishment in Act 2, Scene 1, so their meeting here carries an inevitable charge. It is possible to play the exchanges in different ways, with the actors playing Eulalia and Alinda displaying different levels of passivity and aggression. In this version Jennifer McEvoy (reading Eulalia) was directed to play the exchange with a certain degree of sarcasm and scheming intent, while Clare Calbraith (reading Alinda) was directed to make Alinda as aggressive as possible. The reading demonstrates how difficult it can be for an actor to make Eulalia seem sarcastic or scheming. A more productive approach is to make Eulalia so extravagantly loyal and long-suffering that there is (for Alinda) something provocative in it; as we have seen in Act 2, Scene 1, the more passive Eulalia becomes, the more she irritates the younger woman. This version captures something of that dynamic. [go to text]

gs343   e’en even now [go to text]

n3017   show for which i.e. show that for which. [go to text]

gg2624   competence adequate supply [go to text]

n3018   Shows her works, and makes a brave description of pieces: as sale-work, day-work, night-work, wrought night-caps, coifs, stomachers. This direction, which is found in the octavo text, has been thought by some critics to suggest that the extant text of the play had not been quite completed for performance (for further discussion of this issue see the Introduction). The direction ‘makes a brave description’ suggests that Brome may have intended to write at least some dialogue for Eulalia, in which she describes in detail the needlework she displays, but he may also have intended the sequence to be heavily dependent on gesture and props. (An alternative definition of ‘description’ offered by OED is ‘Pictorial representation; a picture, painting’, its earliest citation dating from 1620.) In a larger theatre, one would expect more dialogue to be necessary, as audience members would be unable to see the props clearly; in a small space such as Salisbury Court they would have been more visible.

Although ‘wrought night-caps, coifs [and] stomachers’ are straight factual descriptions of the items to be displayed, ‘sale-work, day-work, [and] night-work’ may be the terms that Brome intended Eulalia to use in her ‘brave description’. The formulation ‘xxx-work’ was a common in discussions of needlework; in his poem ‘The Praise of the Needle’, published as a preface to the 1631 edition of The Needle’s Excellency, John Taylor lists ‘tent-work, raised-work, laid-work, frost-work, net-work’ (sig. A4r). Eulalia claims that she is merely showing the King and Alinda how she makes a living, but the display of the items that she and her pupils have made creates a strong impression of the former queen as saleswoman. For further discussion see the Introduction. [go to text]

gg343   brave splendid [go to text]

gg2625   sale-work, work that is made to be sold or that can be purchased; can also imply work of inferior quality (OED sale n2, 4); the possible bawdy pun is used by Brome elsewhere, in the name of the promiscuous Alicia Saleware in A Mad Couple Well Matched [go to text]

gg2626   day-work, work done by the day and by paid by daily wages (OED n, 3) [go to text]

gg2627   night-work, work done at night, sometimes with sexual implications (OED n.): the majority of references in early modern drama and poetry are to sex and/or prostitution (Brome himself refers to Peregrine’s ‘good night-work with his bride’ in The Antipodes [AN 5.1.speech924]. See, however, Nicholas Hookes’ ‘To Mr. John Mors, Merchant in King’s Lynn, on the Death of Mrs. A. Mors his Wife’, in Amanda, a Sacrifice to an Unknown Goddess, or, A Free-Will Offering of a Loving Heart to a Sweet-Heart (London, 1653), which offers a description of the deceased woman’s prowess with her needle:

In shadows she would veil a physiognomy,
Then work a candle and light, to see it by;
’Tis true most women good at night-work be,
But few or none so good, so neat as she
(118)

[go to text]

gs430   wrought decorated, ornamented [go to text]

gg2628   night-caps, caps worn in bed or with nightclothes, skull-caps; for examples of late sixteenth century men’s nightcaps see John L. Nevinson, Catalogue of English Domestic Embroidery of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London: HMSO, 1950), plate LXIV [go to text]

gg2629   coifs, ‘small caps covering the back and sides of the head, worn as an indoor head-dress’; they were made of linen, embroidered and often edged with lace or made of drawn work (Marie Canning Linthicum, Costume in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936], 223); for illustrations of late sixteenth century coifs in the Victoria and Albert Museum see John L. Nevinson, Catalogue of English Domestic Embroidery of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London: HMSO, 1950), plates LX-LXIII. For a seventeenth-century coif see the Victoria and Albert Museum's online images: http://images.vam.ac.uk/. [go to text]

gg2630   stomachers. a stomacher was an ornamental covering for the chest, shaped like a ‘v’ and pinned to each side of the bodice at the front, often laced with ribbon. An early seventeenth-century embroidered stomacher from the Victoria and Albert Museum is reproduced in John L. Nevinson, Catalogue of English Domestic Embroidery of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London: HMSO, 1950), plate LVIII [go to text]

gg2631   frame, (a) construction; fashion [go to text]

gs431   game. puns on game as sporting activity and sexual act (Williams 2: 573-4); cf. Massinger’s The Bondman (Lady Elizabeth’s Men, 1623): ‘some great women [...] in a dearth of visitants, / Rather than be idle, have been glad to play / At small game’ (Edwards and Gibson, eds., vol. 1, 2.2.41-4); compare the use of the word ‘gamester’ for those who indulge in sexual play [go to text]

n3019   Both ways bring money: i.e. Eulalia could make money through selling her wares or through selling her body. [go to text]

gg862   forsooth? truly [go to text]

n4058   Too much, to tread upon affliction. This line is marked as an aside in the octavo: the stage direction, '[aside]' is placed in the right-hand margin. It could be delivered either to Horatio, as a self-directed aside, or to the audience; the sequence of asides shared between Lodovico and Horatio make the former more likely. [go to text]

n3020   I say, sir, the distresses of that lady merit a king’s pity, and not such scorn as I see cast upon her. But the best are women. This speech is printed as verse in the octavo. [go to text]

n3021   But the best are women. Could mean ‘but the best of women are only women’, but in context, and in view of Lodovico’s loyalty to Eulalia, it is more likely to mean ‘the most virtuous/patient are women’. The statement sounds proverbial, but it is not included in Dent or Tilley. [go to text]

n4050   [Singing] The octavo has the stage direction 'Song.', and no speech prefix. [go to text]

n3022   How blessed are they Like the first song, this also appears in another text, in this case Francis Quarles's play The Virgin Widow, printed in 1649 and apparently written for private performance around 1640-2. The long gap between the original performances and publication of The Queen and Concubine make it difficult to tell what the provenance of the song is, but it may seem unlikely that Quarles would have incorporated a pre-existing song into his play, especially one deriving from the commercial theatre. If the song is by Quarles, and was written at the same time as the rest of his play, it cannot have featured in early performances of The Queen and Concubine. It is possible that it was incorporated for a revival in the early 1640s, or for a surreptitious performance after the official closure of the public playhouses; on the other hand, it may have been accidentally placed in the manuscript, or have been inserted by the publishers of the 1659 octavo. Like the first song, its lyrics are printed at the head of the play, suggesting that they were originally on a separate sheet of paper.

Although it may not be original to The Queen and Concubine, the song is similar in its sentiments to the ‘Madrygale’ that Barmenissa sings to herself in exile in Greene’s Penelope’s Web:

The stately state that wise men count their good:
The chiefest bliss that lulls asleep desire,
Is not dissent from kings and princely blood:
No stately crown ambition doth require.
For birth by fortune is abased down,
And perils are comprised within a crown.

The sceptre and the glittering pomp of mace,
The head impaled with honour and renown,
The kingly throne, the seat and regal place,
Are toys that fade when angry fortune frown.
Content is far from such delights as those,
Whom woe and danger do envy as foes.

The cottage seated in the hollow dale,
That fortune never fears, because so low:
The quiet mind that want doth set to sale,
Sleeps safe when princes’ seats do overthrow.
Want smiles secure, when princely thoughts do feel
That fear and danger treads upon their heel.

Bless Fortune thou whose frown hath wrought thy good:
Bid farewell to the crown that ends thy care,
The happy fates thy sorrows have withstood,
By ’signing want and poverty thy share.
For now content (fond fortune to despite)
With patience ’lows thee quiet and delight
(D2r-v)

[go to text]

gg2632   waste spend, pass [go to text]

n4547   wearied ] weary (Quarles, Virgin Widow, sig. F1v) [go to text]

gg2633   solemn sombre [go to text]

gg2634   groves, small woods; groups of trees giving shade [go to text]

gg2635   bowers, arbours, leafy glades [go to text]

gg2607   frantic violently or ragingly mad (OED a, 1) [go to text]

gg1374   frolic (a) merry, excited [go to text]

gg2636   pant, ‘to long or wish with breathless eagerness; to gasp with desire; to yearn for, after, or to do something’ (OED v, 3) [go to text]

gs432   breathe exhaust, tire out [go to text]

gg2637   pursy flabby, puffed up (OED a, 1; David Crystal and Ben Crystal, Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary and Language Companion [London: Penguin, 2002], s.v. pursy). Compare The Weakest Goeth to the Wall (London, 1600): ‘to keep our hands in ure, / And breath our pursy bodies, which I fear, / Would have grown stiff for want of exercise’ (sig. C3v) [go to text]

gg2638   griping grasping, devouring (OED a, 1); painful, distressing (OED a, 2); a ‘gripe’ can also mean a spasmodic pain in the bowels (OED gripe n1, 2b) [go to text]

gg1238   want (n) need, poverty [go to text]

gg2639   sullen dull, drab; gloomy [go to text]

n3023   murder ] murther [go to text]

gg2640   wassail-tide. time when healths are drunk from a wassail-bowl, especially Twelfth Night and New Year’s Eve; time of riotous festivities (with sexual innuendo) [go to text]

n3024   in their welcome. i.e. the welcome of the seasons. [go to text]

n3025   — ] ( ) [go to text]

n3026   There’s for your song — No, stay, I may transgress The law. Video Alinda goes to give Eulalia money in payment for her song, but then withdraws it, commenting derisively that she is in danger of breaking the King’s decree that nobody should assist Eulalia. See this extract from the workshop on this scene, where Clare Calbraith (reading Alinda) rises from her ‘throne’ to mockingly present and withdraw her payment. In the octavo, the line is presented as 'There's for your Song () No, stay, I may transgress' [IMAGEQC_5_1]. It is possible that there was originally a stage direction between the brackets, which may have been illegible to the compositors. [go to text]

n4051   [Aside to HORATIO]O devil! [Aside to LODOVICO]Let her jeer on. ] (Lod. O Devil! Hor. Let her jeer on.) / [aside] [go to text]

gg2291   pains, efforts, endeavours [go to text]

gg2641   disputed considered [go to text]

n3039   As all arts are, by the rewards they find. i.e. all accomplishments are rewarded as poorly as begging. [go to text]

n3040   Nay, I beseech your majesties. The sequence of events suggests that the King and Alinda move to go after Alinda’s lines, and that Eulalia interrupts their departure by signalling to the dancers and musicians. I have added two stage directions to clarify the action. [go to text]

gs433   feat action; a surprising trick or sleight of hand (OED n, 3, cites Joseph Hall, A Recollection of Such Treatises as Have Been Heretofore Severally Published, and are Now Revised, Corrected, Augmented [London, 1615]: ‘he had rather send for his magicians to work feats’ [989] [go to text]

gg2642   prosecute pursue, continue with (OED v, 1a) [go to text]

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

gg2644   stroke (musical) beat, measure (OED n1, 10a) [go to text]

gg2645   calculated ascertained through astrology [go to text]

gs434   nativity, horoscope; conjunction of stars at one's birth [go to text]

n3041   Prevented thus the planets by their care In Penelope’s Web Olynda insults Barmenissa in a similar fashion, albeit without the sexual innuendo: ‘Perhaps (quoth Olynda) your nativity was calculated, and so the constellation foreshowing this fall, your father was a wise man and prevented the planets with policy’ (sig. D4r). The difference is that in Penelope’s Web Barmenissa’s father has prepared her for a troubled future by having her taught useful skills; Eulalia’s skills are part of the supernatural gift of the Genius. [go to text]

n3042   the planets i.e. the planets as they are used in astrology, with their supposed influence on the lives of individuals and power to affect their fate (OED planet n, 1b). [go to text]

n3043   by hand and foot. (1) by needlework and dancing; (2) by offering sexual services: the hand is often linked to masturbation (Williams, 2: 642) while the foot is often ‘used allusively for copulation’ (Williams 1: 525); it can also be used to refer to the vagina or to the penis (Williams, 1: 524-5). May be related to the proverb ‘The FOOT on the cradle and the hand on the distaff is the sign of a good housewife’ (Tilley F563), though Tilley’s earliest citation is from 1659. [go to text]

n3044   has she pride i.e. has she sufficient pride. [go to text]

n3045   EULALIA whispers [to] her. Video As this extract from the workshop demonstrates, Eulalia's whispering is dramatically effective, suggesting the danger to Alinda and creating a momentary intimacy between the two women which recalls their former friendship. It also gives Alinda’s later line ‘I would fain love her, and certainly I should’ [QC 5.2.speech1171] greater force. [go to text]

n4059   No divination against her own good, I hope. This line is marked as an aside in the octavo: the stage direction, '[aside]' is placed in the right-hand margin. [go to text]

gg2417   against contrary to, without [go to text]

gg2646   implore entreat [go to text]

gg1062   bounty, kindness, generosity, munificence (but with possible sexual overtones) [go to text]

gg2647   popular of the common people [go to text]

n3046   Bound by your allegiance as well to prevent All ills might pass against you, as to do none, That is: required by my allegiance to you (as monarch) as much to prevent any crimes that might be perpetrated against you, as to commit no crimes myself. [go to text]

gg2648   strict absolute (OED a, 13a); exactly or rigidly observed (OED a, 13b) [go to text]

gg2649   hasten accelerate [go to text]

n3047   [Gives KING a letter. He reads.] Video Lodovico’s comment, ‘Treason, and a letter?’ implies that Eulalia hands the King a letter here on this line; I have therefore added a stage direction. For a version of how this might play out on stage, see this extract from the workshop on this scene. [go to text]

n3048   [Aside to HORATIO]Treason and a letter? We have never a false brother amongst us, have we? This speech is printed as verse in the octavo. [go to text]

n3049   [Aside to HORATIO] Although these lines are not marked as asides, they must be an exchange between Horatio and Lodovico that the King does not overhear. [go to text]

gg2556   false disloyal, treacherous [go to text]

n3049   [Aside to LODOVICO] Although these lines are not marked as asides, they must be an exchange between Horatio and Lodovico that the King does not overhear. [go to text]

gg2650   held your peace, kept quiet [go to text]

gg667   peace (int.) be quiet; keep calm [go to text]

n3050   It bears a face of horror. ‘It’ is the letter, which the King has quickly scanned while Lodovico and Horatio have been bickering. [go to text]

gg2651   gypsy cunning, deceitful; also used as a derogatory term for a woman, similar to 'hussy' or 'baggage' (OED n, 2b), so could refer to the actions of such a woman [go to text]

gg2652   careless unconcerned (OED 2); inattentive, negligent (OED 3) [go to text]

n3051   this woman The King’s change in his address to Alinda indicates further the shift in his attitude towards his new wife. [go to text]

gg2652   careless, unconcerned (OED 2); inattentive, negligent (OED 3) [go to text]

n3052   But this enchantress you maintain against me. Compare Olynda in Penelope’s Web: ‘Olynda amazed at this sudden news (as base minds are ever fearful) desired the Souldan that they might hie home, least some treason in that place were intended: for (quoth she) I know, whatsoever she says, that Barmenissa was the author of this treachery, whose life, how long soever it be, is the continuance of my sorrows’ (sig. D4v). [go to text]

gg941   motion formal proposal or request (OED n, 13b) [go to text]

gg715   fain gladly, willingly, eagerly [go to text]

gs435   begets breeds, encourages [go to text]

n3053   This show is but the straw that hides the pit. That is: she is merely trying to conceal her evil intentions with her show of welcome (referring to the custom of trapping animals by disguising a pit with straw and other materials: compare also the use of the disguised pit in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, 2.2). The expression sounds proverbial although it is not recorded by Dent or Tilley. [go to text]

n3054   [Aside to HORATIO] No enemy but she? To let her know she lies, even unto profanation against that lady, I’ll speak. This speech is printed as verse in the octavo. [go to text]

n3055   No enemy but she? Video As this extract from the workshop on this scene demonstrates, the exchange between Horatio and Lodovico provides a kind of comic relief, while also embodying some of the political questions at the heart of the play. For Lodovico, to be loyal is ultimately to act in the better interests of the commonwealth, while for Horatio, to be loyal is to maintain absolute public fidelity no matter how mistaken or damaging the King’s actions are. Horatio’s problems here are caused by the fact that his private misgivings about the behaviour of the King and Alinda - which have led to his conspiracy with Lodovico - are suddenly brought into the public domain. [go to text]

gg2653   profanation disrespect, desecration [go to text]

n4060   [Aside to HORATIO] No enemy but she? To let her know she lies, even unto profanation against that lady, I’ll speak. [Aside to LODOVICO]I hope you will not. [Aside to HORATIO]The King shall see his error. [Aside to LODOVICO]Will you? [Aside to HORATIO]She her cruelty. [Aside to LODOVICO]Will you, will you? [Aside to HORATIO]The world Eulalia’s piety — [Aside to LODOVICO]Will you? Will you? Speeches 1172-1179 are not marked as asides in the octavo text (lines 3655-3661), but they are clearly muttered exchanges between Horatio and Lodovico which only become loud enough for the King to overhear in the last couple of lines. [go to text]

gg2654   easily readily, with little reluctance (OED adv, 5) [go to text]

gg2655   fact action, deed (as opposed to words) (OED n, 1a); crime (OED n, 1c) [go to text]

n3056   ’Twas wished at least by us. Compare Penelope’s Web: ‘The Souldan, whom conscience began now to sting at the very heart, turned his back without farewell, and no sooner came at the court, but caused the lords that were favourers of this treason to be apprehended, who willingly confessed their intended determination, with resolution either to die or to perform it’ (sig. D4v). [go to text]

gs436   grudge cause of complaint or resentment [go to text]

gg719   grudge (n) discontent; reluctance; resentment, ill-will [go to text]

n3057   [GUARD removes HORATIO and LODOVICO.] It seems unlikely that Horatio and Lodovico are removed from the stage entirely, as a certain number of characters onstage are necessary to make the massed lines in [QC 5.2.speech1226], [QC 5.2.speech1228] and [QC 5.2.speech1230] effective. In addition, Lodovico is certainly on stage at [QC 5.2.speech1241], when he questions the Curate about the trial of Flavello. [go to text]

gs437   serve, suffice, be enough [go to text]

n3058   Ask what you will, even to my dearest blood. In Penelope’s Web, the Souldan offers Olynda ‘free liberty to make choice of three things without denial whatsoever she would crave’ (sig. D4v). [go to text]

n3059   To bind it with an oath? Compare Penelope’s Web: ‘Olynda fearing the worst, caused the King solemnly to swear, that he should not revoke whatsoever he had promised.’ (sig. D4v). [go to text]

n3060   a book. presumably a bible, on which the King swears [go to text]

n3825   I will perform: Compare Penelope’s Web: ‘The Souldan, taking advice, made this solemn protestation, and swore by the god of the Egyptians, that whatsoever he had promised to the right and lawful queen of Egypt, he would perform’ (sigs. D4v-E1r). [go to text]

n3061   vouchsafe to take an admonition, In Penelope’s Web the Souldan and Olynda have returned to court when the Souldan pledges to grant Olynda ‘choice of three things without denial whatsoever she would crave’. Barmenissa therefore sends Olynda ‘certain verses, as a caveat for so wary a choice’ (sig. D4v). [go to text]

gg496   vouchsafe 'to show a gracious readiness or willingness, to grant readily, to condescend or deign, to do something' (OED v, 6b) [go to text]

gg2656   admonition, warning, 'authoritative counsel' (OED) [go to text]

gg2657   testimony assurance [go to text]

gs438   shadows fleeting or ephemeral things (OED shadow n, 4c); insubstantial objects (OED shadow n, 6a); prefigurations, foreshadowings (OED shadow n, 6c) [go to text]

gg2658   common general [go to text]

gg2659   respects: considerations [go to text]

n3062   Beware ambition, envy, and revenge. Eulalia’s advice is a concise summary of the verses that Barmenissa sends Olynda in Penelope’s Web, which are read by a messenger:

Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis.

Aspiring thoughts led Phaeton amiss;
Proud Icarus did fall he soar’d so high;
Seek not to climb with fond Semiramis,
Least son revenge the father’s injury.
Take heed, ambition is a sugared ill
That Fortune lays, presumptuous minds to spill.

The bitter grief that frets the quiet mind,
The sting that pricks the froward man to woe;
Is envy, which in honour seld we find,
And yet to honour sworn a secret foe.
Learn this of me, envy not others’ state,
The fruits of envy is envy and hate.

The misty cloud that so eclipseth fame,
That gets reward a chaos of despite,
Is black revenge which ever winneth shame,
A fury vild that’s hatched in the night.
Beware, seek not revenge against thy foe,
Least once revenge thy fortune overgo.

These blazing comets do foreshow mishap,
Let not the flaming lights offend thine eyes:
Look ere thou leap, prevent an afterclap:
These three forewarn’d well mayst thou fly.
If now by choice thou aim’st at happy health,
Eschew self-love, choose for the commonwealth.
(sig. E1r)

[go to text]

n3063   The oracle could not pronounce more wisely. Video Even though the King’s treatment of Lodovico and Horatio suggests that he continues to indulge Alinda, this comment suggests the change in his attitude towards Eulalia has in the course of Acts 4 and 5. Depending on the an actor’s delivery of the line, it can also help to prepare an audience for the King’s repudiation of Alinda, which follows only a few lines later. See, for instance, this clip from the workshop on this sequence, in which David Broughton-Davies, reading the King, delivers the lines in a way that suggests that Eulalia’s speech to Alinda has revealed to him the extent of her virtue. [go to text]

gg2660   oracle person (usually a priest or priestess) through which the gods were thought to speak in ancient Greece and Rome (OED n, 1a); in extended use, divine relevation or a message inspired by divine inspiration (OED n, 3) [go to text]

gg2661   pronounce speak, declare [go to text]

n3064   my King and husband. Alinda attempts to assert her power over the King by stressing her role as his wife. [go to text]

n3065   First Compare Olynda’s demands in Penelope’s Web: ‘this was her request: that first the nobles which conspired her death might be executed, the King’s son disinherited by act of parliament, and the Queen banished out of all the Souldan’s dominions: these were her three demands’ (sig. E1v). Alinda contrives to be still more vindictive in her demand that Eulalia not only be exiled but blinded. [go to text]

n2890   All ] Omn. [go to text]

n3066   Bloody. Video These massed speeches pose intriguing questions in relation to their delivery and dramaturgical function. Should they be delivered in unison, by all those on stage except for the King, Alinda and Eulalia? While the first two speeches can be treated as outraged exclamations, the third is more difficult to deliver in unison and poses a greater challenge to realist stage conventions. Should they instead be divided between different actors? Should they be spoken loudly or delivered in a whisper? Could they come from off-stage rather than from characters on the stage? Should they be directed primarily at the audience, or should they seem to influence the King in his judgement on Alinda? It is possible, for instance, for this to be the point at which the King realises that the court would support his rejection of Alinda, or for the massed speeches to represent what he is been thinking as Alinda has made her demands.

In the workshop on this sequence, we experimented with various ways of delivering the speeches and various ways in which they might be received by the King. Some participants felt that it might be more effective to divide the lines between different actors; others felt that the choric quality of the massed lines was extremely powerful in a non-naturalistic way. In this extract the lines are simply read in unison, without any discernable reaction from the King. In this clip the lines are delivered in a whisper, not entirely in unison, with each delivered by an actor to an individual in the audience. One problem with this is that it makes members of the audience who are not addressed directly feel excluded, they may not be able to hear the actors properly, and the long third speech has a tendency to dissipate, losing much of its force. In this version, the lines are delivered loudly, in unison, but are still delivered to the audience. The most effective versions in the workshops were those delivered in unison, to the King. In this version the first line is delivered relatively quietly, in unison, and the volume increases across the three speeches. In this version the massed lines are delivered in the same way, but with the addition of an explicit acknowledgement of the final speech from the King. In the final read-through the King acknowledges all three massed speeches. The King’s acknowledgement of the lines in the final version also means that his speech repudiating Alinda does not seem so sudden a reversal to the audience as it does to Alinda herself. [go to text]

n3067   your son, Alinda is apparently unaware of Gonzago’s supposed death, which Petruccio described to the King while she was off-stage. [go to text]

n2890   All ] Omn. [go to text]

gg2662   dominions. kingdom [go to text]

n2890   All ] Omn. [go to text]

n3068   past all example. without precedent [go to text]

n3070   take now thy wonted seat Video In addition to suggesting the presence of thrones or some kind of seating on the stage, the King’s comment suggests that Eulalia is put into Alinda’s seat. At this moment, Brome seems to be following the narrative of Greene’s Penelope’s Web, in which, after banishing Olynda, the Souldan ‘sent for his wife, and after reconciliation made, to the great joy of all his subjects, in lieu of her patient obedience set her in her former estate’ (sig. E2r).

However, in this extract from the workshop on this scene, Eulalia is placed not in Alinda’s ‘seat’, but in the King’s. This performance choice would suggest not the conclusion of Penelope’s Web, in which Barmenissa is returned to her position as queen consort, but the ending of Brome’s own narrative in Act 5, Scene 4, when the King will retire to a monastery, commenting that Prince Gonzago’s ‘virtuous mother ... with these true statesmen, will enable / [Him] to govern well’ [QC 5.4.speech1379]. Thus, Eulalia will not regain her position of queen consort, but instead will gain the position of queen mother and power behind the throne. [go to text]

gg2663   wonted accustomed [go to text]

n3324   Providence, ] Providentce [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]

gg2293   doom sentence [go to text]

n3071   thy immortal goodness: At the moment when he rejects Alinda, the King begins to address Eulalia in a fashion similar to that of the loyal courtiers and the country people. [go to text]

n3069   Into perpetual exile. Hence, away with her. In Penelope’s Web the Souldan makes a much longer speech:

I see well, as the distressed estate of poverty is intolerable for want, so the presumption of an insolent person is not to be suffered for pride: thoughts above measure are either cut short by time or fortune: they which gaze on a star stumble at a stone: the Cimbriams look[ed] so long at the sun that they were blind: and such as are born beggars makes majesty a mark to gaze at: sith that in presuming with Phaeton, they fall with Icarus: and that in desiring with Tarquin to be counted more than Gods, they prove in the end with Polycrates to be worse than men. I speak this, Olynda, for that I see the glory of a crown hath made thee unworthy of a crown, and dignity that ought to metamorphose men into virtuous resolutions, hath made thee a very mirror of vicious affections. Could it not suffice thee to deprive the Queen of her due, I mean of my love, of her husband, her dignity, her crown, her possessions, but now thou seekest to exile her, her country, which is dearer to a good mind than her life? Hath she borne all with patience, and dost thou requite all with envy? Doth she salve her misery with content, and canst not thou brook majesty in quiet? Is ambition so furious a foe that it suffers no co-rival? Shall I join unnatural actions to disloyalty? Have I forsaken the mother, and shall I now disinherit mine own son? Shall I bring that curse upon myself to die without one [of] my mine own blood to sit on my seat? No, Olynda, the least of thy requests shall not be fulfilled, a hair shall not fall from the meanest of my subjects’ head to satisfy thy revenge. Yet will I keep mine oath, not to thee, but to the lawful queen of Egypt, which is Barmenissa. For anger is not a sufficient divorce; the will of a prince confirmed by false witness is no law; the dated time of marriage is not mislike, but death. Therefore proud and injurious concubine (for no better can I term thee) I here, where without law I invested thee with dignity, now in the same place according to all law depose thee from the state of a queen, and allot thee the same punishment which thou didst request for the Empress: namely to be banished out of all my territories, and then to live in perpetual exile (sigs E1v-E2r)

[go to text]

n3073   My lawful Queen; Compare Penelope’s Web: ‘yet will I keep mine oath, not to thee, but to the lawful queen of Egypt, which is Barmenissa’ (sig. E2r). [go to text]

n3072   My oath was To perform what I had promised unto My lawful Queen; that’s my Eulalia. And let good Lodowick and Horatio be restored. This speech is printed as prose in the octavo. [go to text]

n4061   KING and ATTENDANTS [exit]. ALINDA entranced [is] carried out. ] Exeunt King and Attendants Alinda entransed carried out. [go to text]

gg2664   entranced insensible, in a trance [go to text]

n3074   Proh! Proh nefas! Oh! Oh wickedness! (Latin) [go to text]

n3075   in blood i.e. in the murder. [go to text]

gg2665   distracts maddens, deranges; confuses [go to text]

n3076   Coram senatu res acta est: sub judice lis est. O curvæ in terris animæ: the rusticks have ta’en again the law into their hands. This section of the speech is printed as verse in the octavo. [go to text]

n3077   Coram senatu res acta est: sub judice lis est. The case has come before the senate; the action is sub judice (Latin). ‘Coram senatu res acta est’ is quoted in Lily’s Brevissima Institutio, part of A Short Introduction of Grammar Generally to be Used (1632; sig. K8r). [go to text]

n3078   O curvæ in terris animæ: O earthbound souls (Latin); a quotation from Persius, Satires 2: 61, quoted in Lily’s Brevissima Institutio, part of A Short Introduction of Grammar Generally to be Used (1632; sig. L5v). The Loeb edition (Juvenal and Persuis, ed. and trans. Braund) renders the full line as ‘O curvæ in terras animæ et caelestium inanes’, translated as ‘O souls bent earthwards and void of celestial thoughts’; the phrase suggests the corruption of earthly souls or, in this case, the moral failings of the murderous country people. [go to text]

gg2156   ta’en taken [go to text]

gg697   clemency mercy, leniency [go to text]

n3079   non justante? Without justice (Latin). This is possibly a misprint for ‘non instante’: without being asked (Shepherd changes it to ‘non instante’ in Pearson’s text). [go to text]

n3325   courtier Courtiet [go to text]

n3081   nec invante? Not taken possession of (Latin). This is possibly a misprint for ‘nec iuvante’ ‘without aid’. [go to text]

gg2666   hight is called (an affected, archaic term in the 1630s) [go to text]

n3082   pectore et skonso. [By] heart and head; skonso seems to be a humorous Latinisation of sconce (head). [go to text]

n3083   et ] & [go to text]

gg2407   heads leaders [go to text]

gs439   drudges serfs, slaves (those who employed in servile or distasteful work) (OED druge n) [go to text]

n3084   Have got the people’s voice to be their judges. Again Brome suggests that the region of Palermo uses a quasi-democratic system through which the people elect their judges or ‘Sages’. See the Introduction for detailed comments on the political implications of this sequence. [go to text]

n3326   to be ] to (corrected in the octavo's list of errata) [go to text]

n3085   the snake of treachery. Not in Dent or Tilley, but is related to the image of the traitor as a snake fostered in the bosom of an unsuspecting associate; cf. Lodovico’s earlier description of Alinda as ‘That snake this good Queen cockered in her bosom’ [QC 2.1.speech236]. [go to text]

gs440   stay stop, prevent [go to text]

n3327   Pray tTe octavo has an additional speech prefix (Eul.), which is corrected in the list of errata. [go to text]

gg2667   avert redirect, draw away [go to text]

n3086   judgement ] Judgemeut [go to text]

n4062   [They all exit.] ] Exeunt. [go to text]

n3087   5.3 Video The tone of this scene owes much to Shakespeare’s portrayal of Dogberry, Verges and the rest of the Watch in Much Ado About Nothing, a play which seems to have been familiar to the Caroline audience. In ‘Upon Master William Shakespeare, the Deceased Author, and his Poems’ Leonard Digges compares the negative reception of contemporary drama with the popularity of Shakespeare’s plays in revival, selecting Much Ado About Nothing as one of his exemplars: ‘let but Falstaff come, / Hal, Poins, the rest you scarce shall have a room / All is so pestered: let but Beatrice / And Benedick be seen, lo in a trice / The Cockpit galleries, boxes, all are full / To hear Malvolio, that cross-gartered gull’ (Poems: Written by Will. Shakespeare. Gent. [London, 1640], sig. *3v). The popularity of Dogberry et al. is also indicated by Henry Glapthorne’s Wit in a Constable (Beeston’s Boys, 1639), Act 5, Scene 1, in which the foolish Busy instructs his men in nonsensical terms which are clearly indebted to Shakespeare's portrayal of the Watch. Brome draws in particular on Act 4, Scene 2 and Act 5, Scene 1 of Much Ado, in which the Dogberry and the Watch examine Borachio and Conrad and then present them to Don Pedro.

Like the Watch’s scenes in Much Ado, this sequence depends on the comic performances of the actors playing the would-be justices, and the interaction between the performers; physical ‘business’ is also likely to play an important part in its effectiveness. Although this workshop reading of the scene up to the entrance of Flavello and the Guard is rough in places, it conveys something of the rhythms of the scene and the relationships between the three speakers; it also demonstrates some of the ways in which it might be developed. Particularly effective is the way in which Andrea, Poggio and Lollio sporadically attempt to speak in more formal manner - for instance, in Andrea’s initial speech and the dialogue immediately following it and in the exchange that starts at Lollio’s line ‘I have made speeches that I hope shall make traitors -’ [QC 5.3.speech1252]. The trio’s attempts at formality are matched by attempts to maintain co-ordination in their movements, attempts which also regularly break down. In the long extract, Andrea’s role in attempting to control the behaviour of Poggio and Lollio is clear; the pair follow his lead in their physical movements, and at various points they look to him for guidance. In this alternative version of the sequence from Andrea’s opening speech until the exit of the Tipstaff, it is noticeable that Lollio is reluctant to join in the co-ordinated action at points when he feels that he has been slighted. For further comments on smaller sections of this sequence see notes below.

Like the scene in which the soldiers attempt to administer justice to Petruccio for his supposed murder of Sforza, and that in which the country people attempted to punish Fabio and Strozzo for their attack on Eulalia, this sequence undercuts the King’s role as arbiter of justice in Sicily. The foolishness of Poggio and Lollio is emphasised by the fact that Andrea - the professional fool - is the most sensible man among them, but their folly, and the humour it creates, does not mean that the sequence is without political bite. The attempt of the country people to administer justice may look like a distorted parody of the King’s justice, but by this point in the play the King’s ability to administer justice fairly has been so severely compromised that it has itself become almost a parody of how justice should ideally function. In addition, Lollio’s speeches to Flavello take on the style and diction of contemporaneous political prophecy, giving their critique of the court a force that transcends the speaker’s own inadequacies. For further discussion of the play’s interaction with 1630s politics, see the Introduction. [go to text]

n11341   5.3 ] Scœn. VI. [go to text]

gg2668   Tipstaff court officer [go to text]

n3088   And can these turmoils never have an end Video As this extract from the workshop suggests, Andrea’s opening speech creates an impression of formality, but this quickly breaks down as Poggio and Lollio begin to argue amongst themselves. [go to text]

gg2669   turmoils disturbances, trouble [go to text]

n3089   Unless we load our heads and shoulders thus, Video Seventeenth century judges wore a distinctive cap and scarlet robes. See, for instance, portraits of Sir James Whitelocke (unknown artist, c. 1632; National Portrait Gallery, London) and Sir John Bramston (unknown artist, after 1635; National Portrait Gallery, London). Poggio’s comment ‘You’ll show your own wit, whose clothes soever you wear’ [QC 5.3.speech1223] also suggests that he, Lollio and Andrea are wearing unaccustomed finery.

In this extract from the workshop on this scene, the actors do not have elaborate costume; they instead position their heads and shoulders in what the characters might think is an appropriately judicial manner. [go to text]

gg1382   eke also [go to text]

gg2670   cap-à-pie, from head to foot (OED, adv.) [go to text]

n3090   cap-à-pie, ] Capa Pe [go to text]

gg2671   pepper stimulate, inflame, provoke to anger (OED v, 4a) [go to text]

gs441   policy. cunning, craftiness, political nous (OED n1, 5a) [go to text]

n4102   aye, ] I [go to text]

gg2672   piteous compassionate, merciful; Lollio may understand an alternative meaning: inadequate, pathetic, lamentable (OED a, 2b; OED’s earliest citation is from 1667) [go to text]

n3091   ’Twas time to have a care; aye, and a piteous care. A pious care, you mean. Video As Lollio indicates, Poggio means to say ‘pious’ (meaning ‘dutiful’) but gets it mixed up with piteous (meaning ‘compassionate’); in this extract from the workshop, Beth Vyse (reading Lollio) delivers the line with an amused superiority which forms an effective contrast with the agitation of Hannah Watkins’s Poggio. [go to text]

gg2673   pious devout, religious; well-intentioned; self-righteous, sanctimonious (OED adj, 5) (if Lollio is being sarcastic) [go to text]

n3092   Well, pious, then: you’ll show your own wit, whose clothes soever you wear (so do the wits of the time). This part of the speech is printed as verse in the octavo. [go to text]

gg2674   wit, intelligence, wisdom; quickness, ingenuity [go to text]

gg2675   soever ‘Used with generalizing or emphatic force after words or phrases preceded by how, what, which, whose, etc.’ (OED soever, adv.) [go to text]

gg2676   wits witty or sharp-minded people [go to text]

n3093   schoolmistress ] shool Mistris [go to text]

n3094   mercifully idleful, That is: disinclined to take action because she is full of mercy. [go to text]

gg3291   idleful, idle, full of idleness (OED a); the word ‘idleful’ is also used in the second edition of Marston’s Parasitaster, or The Fawn (Queen’s Revels, c. 1604-5; London, 1606 [STC 17484]): ‘But he that upon vain surmise forsakes / His bed thus long [...] Gives to his wife youth, opportunity, / Keeps her in idleful deliciousness’ (sig. H1r). [go to text]

n4063   But, as I said, ’tis time we have a care, For though our Queen – our schoolmistress I would say – Be mercifully idleful, it is fit That we be prejudicious in the state. I have amended the lineation here: in the octavo the line breaks come at 'said, / 'Tis', 'Queen, / Our' and 'idleful / It'. [go to text]

gg2677   prejudicious in the state. a hybrid of prejudiced and judicious (as Lollio points out, Poggio means ‘judicious’) [go to text]

n3095   prejudicious Poggio’s malapropisms are similar to those of Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing; like Dogberry’s, they often consist of the substitution or removal of one syllable, the change altering or reversing the intended meaning. Compare, for instance, Dogberry’s statements ‘for the watch to babble and talk is most tolerable and not to be endured’ (3.3.34-5) and ‘Dost thou not suspect my place? Dost thou not suspect my years?’ (4.2.72-3). [go to text]

n3328   Ju-dicious, ] Ju-dicions [go to text]

n3096   Jew in your face! Poggio either misinterprets Lollio’s correction or turns it back on him. [go to text]

gg2678   in your face! an exclamation of defiance: to figuratively thrust something into someone’s face (OED face n, 2f); cf. Dekker, Satiromastix (Children of Paul’s, 1601-2): ‘No, they have choked me with mine own disgrace, / Which (fools) I’ll spit again even in your face’ (Bowers, ed., vol. 1, 1.2.403-4); Middleton, Michaelmas Term (Children of Paul’s, 1606): ‘Knave in your face! Leave your mocking, Andrew; / Marry your quean and be quiet!’ (Taylor and Lavagnino, eds., 5.3.137-8) [go to text]

n3097   Trip me catch me out [go to text]

n3098   Agree upon’t, brother sages of the bench. My brother Poggio here said very well, and learnedly, and as I would have said myself (if you will take his meaning): to wit, that as our schoolmistress dotes upon clemency, it is fit that we run mad upon cruelty. So meeting her in the midst, we shall jump into the saddle of justice.  This speech is printed as verse in the octavo. [go to text]

n3099   Agree upon’t, brother sages of the bench. My brother Poggio here said very well, and learnedly, and as I would have said myself Video In this extract from the workshop on this sequence, Andrea (read by Adam Kay) is caught physically between Poggio and Lollio as he tries to placate Poggio. [go to text]

n3100   if you will take his meaning i.e. if you take his intended meaning rather than that of the words themselves. [go to text]

n3329   schoolmistress ] Shool Mistris [go to text]

gg2679   dotes upon is excessively fond of [go to text]

gg697   clemency, mercy, leniency [go to text]

gg2680   run mad upon go mad with [go to text]

n3101   saddle of justice. Andrea, Poggio and Lollio consistently use homely, domestic imagery to describe their judicial activities. [go to text]

n3102   candle of her mercy Andrea, Poggio and Lollio consistently use homely, domestic imagery to describe their judicial activities. [go to text]

n3104   we shall shortly see more honest men than knaves among us. Poggio means to say that if they do not impose justice they will be over-run with knaves such as Flavello/Alphonso and will therefore have more knaves than honest men among them; however, he gets his ‘honest men’ and ‘knaves’ mixed up, as Lollio observes. [go to text]

n3105   Agree again, sage brothers of the bench, and let no private itch grow to a public scab. This speech is printed as verse in the octavo. [go to text]

n3106   let no private itch grow to a public scab. Andrea tells Lollio and Poggio not to let a private quarrel spill into their public duties. His imagery is that of the symptoms of syphilis; cf. Fletcher and Massinger, The Sea Voyage (King’s Men, c. 1622): ‘art thou not purl’d with scabs? No ancient monuments of Madam Venus?’ (Bowers, gen. ed., vol. 9, 1.4.35-6). Early modern political theory often compared a mis-functioning body politic with a diseased body; cf. Massinger’s The Bondman (Lady Elizabeth’s Men, 1623): ‘You have made us see, Sir, / To our shame the country’s sickness: now from you / As from a careful, and a wise physician / We do expect the cure’ (Edwards and Gibson, eds., vol. 1, 1.3.213-16). [go to text]

gs442   petty subordinate, minor (OED a, 1a); little (OED a, 3); also means trivial (OED a, 2a) [go to text]

n3330   not ] nor [go to text]

gg2681   reformation, improvement, ‘correction or removal of defects or errors’ (OED n, 2); radical political change (OED n, 3) [go to text]

n3331   superabundance ] misprinted as 'snuperabudance' in uncorrected copies of the octavo [go to text]

gg2682   superabundance excessive quantity, surplus [go to text]

gg2683   practised attempted, undertaken (OED practise v, 5b); conspired, planned (OED practise v, 9a); habitually performed (OED practise v, 3b) [go to text]

gg2684   brabble quibble; squabble [go to text]

gg2681   reformation improvement, ‘correction or removal of defects or errors’ (OED n, 2); radical political change (OED n, 3) [go to text]

n3103   hedge of her dominion, Andrea, Poggio and Lollio consistently use homely, domestic imagery to describe their judicial activities. [go to text]

gg2685   indignly: unworthily; undeservedly. Lollio probably means ‘condignly’ (worthily; deservedly) [go to text]

gg2686   bustle display activity; often refers to an excessive or obtrusive display of energy (OED v, 2a) [go to text]

n3332   first ] strst [go to text]

n3107   deform Video As Lollio assumes, Poggio seems to mean inform: ‘put into proper form or order, to arrange’ (OED, inform, v. 1.b); ‘gain knowledge, instruction, or information; to acquaint oneself with something’ (OED inform, v. 6). Compare Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing: ‘By this time our sexton hath reformed Signior Leonato of the matter’ (5.1.245-7). Brome may also be recalling the belief of the Watch in Much Ado in a phantom character called ‘Deformed’ who ‘has been a vile thief this seven year’ (3.3.122-3). In this reading from the workshop on this scene, Hannah Watkins captures nicely the mistaken conviction in Poggio’s warped use of language. [go to text]

n3108   In with your horns! Poggio’s reference to the cuckold’s horns is used more as a generalised insult than an actual allegation that Lollio is a cuckold. [go to text]

gg2687   How now? exclamation indicating reproach [go to text]

gg2688   control dominate (OED v, 4); hinder (OED v, 4b) [go to text]

n3109   sexton, A minor church official who had charge of the church fabric and contents; he sometimes acted as bell-ringer and (as Poggio makes clear in the next few lines) gravedigger. In some communities the sexton may have been more likely to be literate than other inhabitants; A.L. Rowse in The England of Elizabeth: The Structure of Society, second edition (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) writes, ‘there were in many towns somebody, sexton or bell-ringer, to teach poor men’s children their ABC, like the old man paid 13s. 4d. a year by the mayor at Launceston for the purpose’ (560). John Rogers, who died in 1636, criticises those who ‘could be as well content with the Sexton, or some base person to read a little for five or ten pounds a year, as a godly Preacher’ (A Godly and Fruitful Exposition Upon All the First Epistle of Peter [London, 1650], 616). [go to text]

gg2689   deep low (in the grave); learned, profound [go to text]

n2553   grave matters That is: dignified or serious subjects; subjects pertaining to burials. [go to text]

n3161   forbear. Video In this reading from the workshop on this scene, Lollio (read by Beth Vyse) directs his first three declarations at Andrea; the fourth, after Andrea has seemingly taken Poggio’s side in laughing at his declaration that they should ‘sit, and fall to the business’ [QC 5.3.speech1248], is an outraged exclamation. [go to text]

gg2690   forbear. control myself, have patience [go to text]

n3110   inferior? Poggio means superior (as his next line makes clear) [go to text]

n3161   forbear Video In this reading from the workshop on this scene, Lollio (read by Beth Vyse) directs his first three declarations at Andrea; the fourth, after Andrea has seemingly taken Poggio’s side in laughing at his declaration that they should ‘sit, and fall to the business’ [QC 5.3.speech1248], is an outraged exclamation. [go to text]

n4102   aye, ] I [go to text]

n3080   let him hang one, I will save two. Poggio probably means to say ‘let him hang one, I will hang two’, but he again gets muddled. [go to text]

n3161   forbear. Video In this reading from the workshop on this scene, Lollio (read by Beth Vyse) directs his first three declarations at Andrea; the fourth, after Andrea has seemingly taken Poggio’s side in laughing at his declaration that they should ‘sit, and fall to the business’ [QC 5.3.speech1248], is an outraged exclamation. [go to text]

gs443   fall to set to work, make a start [go to text]

n3162   Sit and fall! Video Poggio interprets Lollio’s ‘sit, and fall to’, meaning to ‘sit, and set to work’ or ‘sit, and make a start’ as ‘to sit and fall over’; this extract from the workshop shows how physical business might amplify the comedy and increase the tension between Poggio and Lollio. [go to text]

gg2691   fall! fall over [go to text]

n3166   Still I forbear; passion becomes not judges. Now bring in the offender, the new and last offender. This speech is printed as verse in the octavo. [go to text]

n3161   forbear; Video In this reading from the workshop on this scene, Lollio (read by Beth Vyse) directs his first three declarations at Andrea; the fourth, after Andrea has seemingly taken Poggio’s side in laughing at his declaration that they should ‘sit, and fall to the business’ [QC 5.3.speech1248], is an outraged exclamation. [go to text]

n3163   passion becomes not judges. This phrase, which is picked up by Andrea a few lines later, was a quasi-proverbial opinion; cf. Sir John Davies, ‘To Sir Thomas Egerton, on the Death of his Second Wife, in 1599’, in The Poems of Sir John Davies, ed. Robert Krueger, with introduction and commentary by the editor and Ruby Nemser (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 202: ‘You that in judgement passion never show, / (As still a judge should without passion be)’ (ll. 1-2). It may be related to the proverb ‘As sober (grave) as a JUDGE’ (Tilley J93). [go to text]

n3164   I have made speeches Video As this clip from the workshop on this scene demonstrates, it is possible to play the following section as an attempt on the trio’s part to return to the formality of the opening and to speak in a fashion that they think suitable for judges. They cannot maintain this formality, however, as on the line ‘Wilt thou tell me that?’ [QC 5.3.speech1258] Poggio again bristles at what he perceives as an insult from Lollio. [go to text]

gg2353   How? what [go to text]

n3165   A traitor’s head is not his own head: ’tis forfeited by law to the King; ’tis the King’s head. I say a traitor’s head is his own head and a good subject’s head is the King’s head. I say that’s treason, and the head thou wearest is not thine own, then, if thou be’st a good subject. Andrea initially voices the common wisdom that the head of a traitor is forfeited to the King (as the executor of justice in his realm). Poggio confuses matters by asserting that the loyal subject’s head ‘belongs’ to the King through his faithful allegiance to his monarch, while the traitor’s lack of loyalty means that his head is his own. Lollio then goes back to the orthodoxy of Andrea’s statement to suggest that Poggio’s denial that a traitor’s head belongs to the King means that he is himself guilty of treason and his own head is forfeit. Brome may also have in mind the quibbling exchange between Dogberry and Verges in Much Ado About Nothing:

DOGBERRY [...] you are to bid any man stand, in the Prince’s name. [...]
VERGES If he will not stand when he is bidden, he is none of the Prince’s subjects.
DOGBERRY True, and they are to meddle with none but the Prince’s subjects.
(3.3.24-5, 30-3)

[go to text]

n4101   o’ th’ ] o'th the [go to text]

n3167   Passion becomes not judges, brothers o’ th’ bench. The offender comes. [Aside]Now they are hot, he shall be sure to smoke for it. The whole of this speech is printed as verse in the octavo. [go to text]

n3168   Now they are hot, he shall be sure to smoke for it. Video Andrea’s aside reveals that he has been hoping all along to provoke Poggio and Lollio to anger, in the hope that this will make them more likely to condemn and hang Flavello. As actor Adam Kay suggested during the workshop, one way to play up the comedy of this moment could be to have Poggio and Lollio physically fighting behind Andrea as he delivers this line: see this extract from the workshop. [go to text]

gs444   hot, angry [go to text]

n3169   smoke for it. suffer as a result of this (OED smoke v, 4); cf. Tilley S577 ‘I will SMOKE you’ [go to text]

n3170   [FLAVELLO] ] Alphonso [go to text]

n2913   [Flavello] ] Alph. [go to text]

gg1313   Whither (to whatever) place; where [go to text]

gg2692   hale drag in violently, pull in (OED v1, 2a) [go to text]

gs445   pease-porridge porridge made with peas; Flavello is implying the poverty or low social status of his accusers [go to text]

n3171   The King’s high seat of justice publicly. In cases of treason the nobility (that is, dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts and barons) could only be tried by those of equal rank; cf. Francis Bacon, Cases of Treason Written by Sir Francis Bacon (London, 1641): ‘In treason, a trial of a peer of the kingdom is to be by special commission before the Lord High Steward, and those that pass upon him to be none but peers’ (5). [go to text]

n3172   And will not our low stool of justice privily serve for a traitor? Ha! This speech is printed as verse in the octavo. [go to text]

n3173   And will not our low stool of justice privily serve for a traitor? Lollio puns on stool as an item of furniture (picking up Flavello’s ‘high seat’) and as a toilet or privy. The lines may also recall the mock trial scene in Shakespeare’s The History of King Lear (i.e. the quarto text), in which Goneril and Regan are represented by joint-stools (see the Fool’s line, ‘Cry you mercy, I took you for a join-stool’ [13.47]). [go to text]

gg2694   stool seat for an offender (OED n, 1d); privy (n, 5a) [go to text]

gg2695   privily privately, punning on privy: toilet [go to text]

n2913   [Flavello] ] Alph. [go to text]

gg2420   succouring helping, assisting [go to text]

gg2413   ’gainst against [go to text]

gg2696   dissolute debauched, wanton [go to text]

n3174   in the King’s high name, i.e. by the authority of the King’s name. [go to text]

n2913   [Flavello] ] Alph. [go to text]

n3175   By the said woman’s, sir; she is our queen and her authority is in our hands. This speech is printed as verse in the octavo. [go to text]

n3176   she is our queen and her authority is in our hands. The country people again claim that Eulalia is their sovereign, not the King. For further comment see the Introduction. [go to text]

n2913   [Flavello] ] Alph. [go to text]

gg2697   speaks proclaims you as, reveals you as [go to text]

gg2698   able strong [go to text]

n2913   [Flavello] ] Alph. [go to text]

n2890   [All] ] Omn. [go to text]

n3333   one ] on (corrected in the octavo's list of errata) [go to text]

n2913   [Flavello] ] Alph. [go to text]

n2554   take justice on ye? That is: (presumptiously) assume the right to administer justice. [go to text]

n3334   on ] one (corrected in the octavo's list of errata) [go to text]

gg2699   faults moral definciencies (OED fault n, 3a); transgressions, offences (OED fault n, 5); defects in workmanship (OED fault n, 3b) [go to text]

gg2700   nod? doze, sleep on the job; also means ‘to overlook or connive at an offence’ (OED v, 2b) and ‘to be momentarily inattentive or inaccurate; to make a slip or mistake’ (OED v, 2c: earliest citation is William Hughes, The Man of Sin, or, A Discourse of Popery [London, 1677]: ‘We see a Jesuit may sometimes nod as well as Homer’ [19-20] [go to text]

gg2701   addle-brained? muddle-headed; foolish [go to text]

gg2702   wink shut one's eyes; fail to see, connive (OED v1, 5a) [go to text]

gg2703   aye? ever [go to text]

gg2704   circumvent cheat, outwit [go to text]

n3177   vain ] vains [go to text]

gg2705   jogged nudged, given a slight push or shake (to attract attention) [go to text]

gg2706   mastiff ‘a breed of large, powerful dog with a broad head, drooping ears, and pendulous lips, used as a guard dog and for fighting’ (OED n, 1a) [go to text]

n2900   Aye, ] I [go to text]

n3178   the hangman means to hang for him. i.e. the hangman intends to be hanged instead of him. [go to text]

n3179   never hang backward, for up you must. i.e. don’t hang back, because you must go up (the tree on which you will be hanged). [go to text]

gs440   Stay stop, prevent [go to text]

gg2707   lost ruined [go to text]

n3180   Your long speeches will lose our purpose again, Poggio refers to the events of Act 4, Scene 2, when Lollio’s 'long speeches' enabled Eulalia to enter in time to protect Fabio and Strozzo from hanging [QC 5.3.speeches781-783]. [go to text]

n2913   [Flavello] ] Alph. [go to text]

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

gg2708   blind hole dark or obscure prison. Cf. Lancelot Andrews, ‘A SERMON Preached before the KING’S MAIESTIE AT HOLYROOD House, in Edinburgh, on the VIII. of June A.D. MDCXVII being WHIT-SUNDAY’, in XCVI. Sermons by the Right Honourable and Reverend Father in God, Lancelot Andrewes, late Lord Bishop of Winchester (London, 1629): ‘These here are in prison: And in some blind hole-there, as it might be in the dungeon, where they see nothing [...] In prison; not above, but in the dungeon, the deepest, darkest, blindest hole there; no light, no sight at all’ (705). ‘Hole’ is also used as a ‘term of contempt or depreciation for any place’ (OED hole, n. 2.c). Cf. Samuel Rowlands, ‘A Cunning Man Alias Cozening Knave’, in The Knave of Clubs (London, 1609): ‘an odd blind hole, / Behind a painted cloth’ (sig. C2r) [go to text]

gg2474   choplogical argumentative, disputatious (OED chop-logic 3); OED cites only one other example, William Tindale, The Obedience of a Christen Man (London, 1528): ‘Where he sayeth the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life, "lo", say they, "the literal sense killeth and the spiritual sense giveth life". We must therefore say they seek out some choplogical sense’ (sig. Cxxxiii) [go to text]

n3181   as in the very eye or open mouth Andrea interprets Flavello’s ‘blind hole’, which means a dark or obscure prison, as referring to the anus; the ‘eye’ or ‘open mouth’ would therefore be more elevated parts of the kingdom, such as the court. [go to text]

n2913   [Flavello] ] Alph. [go to text]

n3335   Lollio ] Lot. [go to text]

n3182   Come all the court Like Andrea’s speech in [QC 2.3.speech341], the style of Lollio’s ‘speeches’ owe a debt to popular political comment and prophecy. For further comment see the Introduction, and [NOTE n3192]. [go to text]

gg2709   braveries fine clothes; ostentation; bravado [go to text]

n3183   breech, Picks up the reference to clothing in ‘braveries’ in the previous line. [go to text]

n3184   in hempen twine, That is: on a rope. [go to text]

n3185   up ] np [go to text]

n3186   all and some. Lollio also used the phrase ‘all and some’ in 4.2 [QC 4.2.speech800]. [go to text]

n3187   though for tournament your fames do fly i.e. even though you rush to a tournament to prove your reputation. [go to text]

n3188   Run all at tilt That is: ride as if in a tournament, or in other words, attack. [go to text]

n3189   draw you dry. To ‘draw’ or drag a criminal at a horse’s tail, or on a hurdle or similar, on the way to their execution was part of a punishment for treason (OED draw v, 4): Lollio means that the courtly aggressors will be dragged in this manner until they have no more blood left in them. [go to text]

n3191   correct ] corrects [go to text]

n3190   And without all peradventure, well said, judge Andrea. How long must we say away with him? Ha! This speech is printed as verse in the octavo. [go to text]

n2913   [Flavello] ] Alph. [go to text]

gg2710   hobnailed rustic, boorish (often used disparagingly) (OED a, 2): hobnails are nails 'with massive head and short tang, used for protecting the soles of heavy boots and shoes' (OED hobnail n, 1), i.e. the boots and shoes worn by working people [go to text]

gs447   fit properly qualified, entitled [go to text]

n2555   for in response to [go to text]

n2556   turn him off. That is: hang him (OED turn v, 74d) [go to text]

n3192   shoes Shoes often featured in early modern prophecies as a symbol of social status; for instance, during the Ket rebellion in Norfolk in 1549 the peasant rebels recited a prophecy which ran:

The country gnoofes [knaves], Hob, Dick and Hick,
With clubs and clouted shoon [hobnailed boots]
Shall fill up Dussindale
With slaughtered bodies soon.

The same image also featured in a Catholic prophecy of 1586 by a Leicester embroiderer, Edward Sawford: ‘all those who racked rents, hoarded corn, or otherwise oppressed the poor, would fall before a rising of "clubs and clouted shoes"’. Another section of this prophecy features a ‘string of verses protesting against current fashions in dress and popular hypocrisy in general’, which are found in a similar form in other prophesies (Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, pp. 478 and 482-3). Paula Blank (Broken English: Dialects and the Politics of Language in Renaissance Writings [London: Routledge, 1996], p. 183) notes that by the late sixteenth century 'the phrase "clubs and clouted shoon" was proverbial for peasant revolt'; a prominent user of the phrase in drama is Shakespeare's Jack Cade, who vows that 'We will not leave one lord, one gentleman - / Spare none but such as go in clouted shoon' (2 Henry VI [The First Part of the Contention], 4.3.183-4; see Blank, p. 80). Although Lollio does not use the phrase 'clouted shoon', the fact that he asserts the superiority of workers' shoes over those of courtiers, and uses the phrase 'the hobnailed commonwealth', aligns him with this tradition of popular protest. [go to text]

n3193   too fine and thin This phrase refers to the unpractical footware worn by courtiers; Linthicum notes that when single-soled pumps were ‘made of fine materials for ladies or courtiers they were naturally unfit to wear on the street’ (See Marie C. Linthicum, Costume in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936] 254). For elite male shoes and boots of the 1630s see Van Dyck’s portraits of Charles I, Henrietta Maria and Their Two Eldest Children, Prince Charles and Princess Mary, Princess Royal (1632, Royal Collection) and Sir John Suckling (c. 1638; Frick Collection, New York). [go to text]

gg2711   kindling burning [go to text]

gg2710   hobnailed rustic, boorish (often used disparagingly) (OED a, 2): hobnails are nails 'with massive head and short tang, used for protecting the soles of heavy boots and shoes' (OED hobnail n, 1), i.e. the boots and shoes worn by working people [go to text]

n2557   tread it out. That is: crush it, destroy it; put it out (often used of a fire), stamp it out; also means ‘to make or form by the action of the feet in walking’ (OED tread v, 10) [go to text]

n3195   So, now away with him.[To GUARD]Hang him first, d’ ye hear? He has the best clothes, that will encourage the hangman the better to turn the rest after him. This speech is printed as verse in the octavo. [go to text]

n3194   He has the best clothes, that will encourage the hangman the better to turn the rest after him. The hangman traditionally took a criminal’s clothes as part of his fee; cf. James Shirley, The Gamester (King’s Men, 1633; printed London, 1637): ‘let gentlemen rather live, and pay their tailors, than let their clothes enrich the hangman’s wardrobe’ (sig. A4v). [go to text]

n3336   best ] bast [go to text]

n3337   Eulalia ] Enl. [go to text]

n3196   Whither away Where are you going? [go to text]

gg2413   ’gainst against [go to text]

n3197   pull destruction That is: cause your own destruction. [go to text]

gg2712   carry behave [go to text]

n3198   as i.e. as if it were. [go to text]

n3199   No, ’tis in care of ourselves, because we know not to breed our children honestly without you. This speech is printed as verse in the octavo. [go to text]

gg2713   breed bring up [go to text]

n3200   Your counsels and entreats we are bound to disobey by proclamation, for we must grant you nothing. This speech is printed as verse in the octavo. [go to text]

gg2714   found out. discovered, discerned [go to text]

n3201   look about us. Be watchful or apprehensive (OED look, v, 11b). [go to text]

n3202   Release your prisoner, set him free, and go Send the rest of the confederates. This speech is printed as prose in the octavo. [go to text]

gg2715   confederates. conspirators [go to text]

n3203   GUARD [exits]; [FLAVELLO] kneels. ] Exeunt Guard Alphonso kneeles. [go to text]

n2913   [Flavello] ] Alph. [go to text]

gg884   present urgent, pressing, immediate [go to text]

gg2716   prevalent effective, influential (OED prevalent a, 1a) [go to text]

n3338   thou ] rhou [go to text]

gg2717   ope’ open [go to text]

gs448   heinous terrible, horrible [go to text]

n2913   [Flavello] ] Alph. [go to text]

gg1174   device scheme, project, often one of an underhand or evil character; a plot, stratagem, trick [go to text]

n2558   but no more than [go to text]

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

n4064   Enter [FABIO, STROZZO], DOCTOR and MIDWIFE [with GUARD of Palermo]. In the octavo text this stage direction appears after 't' have murdered you'. [go to text]

n3204   [FABIO, STROZZO], ] two Lieutenants [go to text]

n3205   all these witnesses, i.e. the other conspirators: Fabio, Strozzo, the Doctor and the Midwife. [go to text]

n3339   to my ] to my to my (corrected in the octavo's list of errata) [go to text]

n2890   [All the Offenders] ] Omn. [go to text]

n2890   [All the Offenders] ] Omn. [go to text]

gg2718   plead argue for, ask for [go to text]

n2913   [Flavello] ] Alph. [go to text]

n3206   Your sacred mercy, madam, shall save a life, then, To be spent in praises and prayers for your grace. This speech is printed as prose in the octavo. [go to text]

gg2719   let’s let us [go to text]

n3207   look you about you, i.e. turn your attention to matters at hand. [go to text]

gg2720   cast (v) take off [go to text]

gg2164   sports entertainments, amusements, recreations, diversions (OED sport n1, 1a) [go to text]

n3208   But of the revels for his majesty. This line strongly suggests that the play was performed by the King’s Revels Company, for whom Brome was contracted to write in 1635-6; Bentley (Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 3: 86) notes that this comment would be jarring coming from another company. For further discussion of the play’s theatrical context see the Introduction. [go to text]

n3209   [They all exit.] This stage direction is omitted from the octavo. [go to text]

n11342   5.4 ] Scœn. VIII. [go to text]

n3210   [Recorders.] The recorders are used to create a solemn or contemplative mood before the shawms (also known as hoboys [GLOSS g155]) announce the entry of the Curate, Eulalia and the rest of her train. Recorders are often linked with ‘sad’ or ‘solemn’ music in play-texts, as in the direction for ‘Recorders or other solemn music’ at the end of The Second Maiden’s Tragedy (King’s Men, 1611; ed. W.W. Greg [Oxford: Malone Society, 1909], l. 2453SD) or the direction for ‘Recorders: Sadly’ in Davenant’s The Cruel Brother (King’s Men, 1627; published London, 1630, sig. I1v). In Henry Burnell’s Landgartha (Ogilby’s Men, Dublin, 1640; published Dublin, 1641) ‘a sweet solemn music of Recorders is heard’ (I1r). [go to text]

gs83   late in the adverbial phrase, "of late": recently [go to text]

gs449   estate realm, kingdom [go to text]

gg2721   happiest: most fortunate [go to text]

gg2722   O’erspreads overspreads [go to text]

n3211   into this paradise, This phrase continues the Edenic imagery which surrounds Eulalia in the second half of the play. [go to text]

gs450   move arouse, stir [go to text]

n3212   made it such. i.e. made the region into this ‘paradise’. [go to text]

gs451   member person (OED n, 9b) [go to text]

gg2723   vein ‘a natural tendency towards, a special aptitude or capacity for, the production of literary or artistic work; a particular strain of talent or genius’ (OED n, 11) [go to text]

gg2724   tart, sour [go to text]

gg2725   blain-worm? a parasitic insect (OED blain, 3) [go to text]

gg2726   waived cast aside, rejected, disregarded [go to text]

gg2727   rustical rustic, rural [go to text]

n3213   Yes, here are some now coming – I hear ’em – That are merry in hope to make the King so. This speech is printed as prose in the octavo. [go to text]

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

gg2729   scarves probably refers to military scarves or sashes, worn either around the waist or across the body; for an example see Nevinson, Catalogue of English Domestic Embroidery of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, plate LXV [go to text]

gg2730   nosegays, bouquets [go to text]

n3214   GONZAGO, dressed and crowned as Queen of the Girls, As Matthew Steggle notes, the way in which Prince Gonzago returns ‘evokes The Winter’s Tale, casting him almost as Perdita’ (Richard Brome, 86). For further discussion of the links between The Queen and Concubine and The Winter’s Tale see the Introduction. [go to text]

n3340   [FLAVELLO], ] Alphanso [go to text]

n3215   former i.e. the Curate, the boys and Gonzago. [go to text]

n3341   Eulalia! ] Enlalia [go to text]

gg2161   handmaid attendant, (female) servant [go to text]

n3216   thunderbolts, The Roman god Jupiter (Zeus in Greek mythology) commonly used a thunderbolt in taking divine retribution on mortals. [go to text]

gs452   framed composed, made [go to text]

gs453   region realm, kingdom (OED 1a); sphere or realm of something (OED 3b); ‘A part or division of the body or its parts’ (OED 6b) [go to text]

gg2731   repercussion returned blow or stroke; resulting effect of a course of action; unintended reverberation (OED 6a) [go to text]

gs454   passion, suffering, emotion [go to text]

n3217   I am thunder-struck. As usual, Horatio follows the King’s lead, claiming that he has also been hit by the vengeful thunderbolt. [go to text]

n3218   Old lad, An informal and potentially disrespectful form of address, which in early modern texts is often (although not exclusively) used to refer to older men. The insane Ferdinand also uses it to address Sir Raphael in Brome’s The Court Beggar (Beeston’s Boys, 1640) [CB 3.2.speech446]. [go to text]

n3219   sick o’th’ King’s disease? i.e. under the (malign) influence of the King; suffering from a phantom imitation of the King's sickness. [go to text]

n3220   Vouchsafe a glance on these. That is: deign or condescend to look. [go to text]

n11343   [Flavello] ] Alphonso [go to text]

n3221   GONZAGO in his hand veiled, i.e. the Curate leads the veiled Gonzago by the hand. [go to text]

gg2732   array, clothes [go to text]

n3222   Nostri discipuli Our pupils (Latin). [go to text]

gg2612   holiday, festival [go to text]

gg2733   pedagogue teacher, schoolmaster [go to text]

gs455   petty little [go to text]

gg2734   in leading by the hand [go to text]

gg2735   Ycleped called (a poetic archaism) [go to text]

n3223   certe fallor I’m surely mistaken (Latin). [go to text]

n4065   shining ] shinning [go to text]

n3224   nunc est saltandum, Now is the time for dancing / now we should dance (Latin). As Linda Green has suggested to me, the Curate may be parodying Horace’s famous ‘nunc est bibendum’ (‘now is the time for drinking’) (Ode 1.37) [go to text]

gg2736   at random at great speed, without consideration (OED random n, 3) [go to text]

gg2737   templum, temple (Latin) [go to text]

n3225   regis ad exemplum. With the ruler as example (Latin). [go to text]

gg2738   muffled wrapped up [go to text]

gs456   blame find fault with [go to text]

gg2739   precogitation. preliminary thinking, preparation [go to text]

gg2740   disposed distributed, directed [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]

n3226   well faring, well being, good health [go to text]

gg2742   falling out disputation, disagreement [go to text]

n3227   Non simus ingrati Let us not be ungrateful (Latin). [go to text]

n3228   Rex et regina semper sint beati. King and queen be always blessed (Latin). [go to text]

n3083   et ] & [go to text]

n4066   CURATE and LASSES [exit]. ] Exuent Curat and Lasses. [go to text]

n4067   FABIO, STROZZO, [FLAVELLO], DOCTOR and MIDWIFE [remain]; they all kneel. ] Manent Fabio Strozzo Alphonso Doctor and Midwife; they all kneel. [go to text]

n2559   story, i.e. the things that have happened to me. [go to text]

gs457   strong powerful, formidable (OED a, 7b); gross, flagrant (OED a, 11e); hard to confute (OED a, 16b) [go to text]

n3229   these i.e. the conspirators. [go to text]

gs458   abuse deception, misuse [go to text]

n3230   that light i.e. the ‘light’ of heavenly providence. [go to text]

n3231   a throne of greater mercy i.e. the judgement and salvation of God. [go to text]

n3342   mercy ] merey [go to text]

gg2743   Be’t be it [go to text]

n2890   All Offenders ] Omn. [go to text]

n4068   OFFENDERS [exit]. ] Exeunt offenders. [go to text]

n2560   would That is: would be pleased if... [go to text]

gg2744   dorp village (OED) [go to text]

gg2745   manufactors. craftsmen: apparently a malapropism for malefactors [go to text]

n3343   granted. ] grauted [go to text]

n3232   She is not mine; This demonstrates the distance that the King has travelled since he repeatedly called her ‘my Alinda’ in Act Three. [go to text]

n3233   Should she recover, as heaven’s will be done. That is: if she should recover, what heaven demands will be done. Like Eulalia, the King now places events in the hands of heavenly Providence. [go to text]

gg2746   frenzy distraction, madness [go to text]

gg2747   sober modest [go to text]

n3234   I shall forgive her, The half-line, which comes between two regular iambic pentameters, may suggest textual corruption, but may also indicate that Brome intends the actor playing the King to pause before he finally replies. A similar short line can be found in Eulalia’s soliloquy in [QC 4.2.speech961]. [go to text]

gg2748   consort companion, queen [go to text]

gg2749   acquaintance friend, sexual partner [go to text]

gg307   posterity descendents [go to text]

gg2750   homely plain, simple [go to text]

gs459   tender mild, gentle; thoughtful; sensitive [go to text]

n3345   Petruccio, ] Pttrucio [go to text]

gs460   feigned pretended, apparent [go to text]

gg2760   honour (v) glorify, reward with high office [go to text]

n3344   GONZAGO. ] Gonzrgo [go to text]

n3235   I shall live. At this moment Gonzago is like both of Leontes and Hermione’s children in The Winter’s Tale: the survivor Perdita and her brother, Mamilius, who seems to sicken almost wilfully when his mother is disgraced and who does not return (as Gonzago does) at the play’s conclusion. For further discussion see the Introduction. [go to text]

n3236   queen of hearts: Not in Dent or Tilley, but is used frequently in early modern texts. Cf. Dekker and Ford, The Sun’s Darling (Lady Elizabeth’s Men, 1624), ‘All-conquering Bounty, queen of hearts, life’s glory, / Nature’s perfection; whom all love, all serve’ (in Bowers, ed., 5.1.155-6); in the first part of The Iron Age (Queen Anna’s Men, ?c. 1612-13; published London, 1632), Thomas Heywood uses it, with some irony, to refer to Helen of Troy (sig. D1r). Interestingly, the phrase is used by some Caroline writers to refer to Elizabeth I. See, for instance, John Taylor, A Memorial of all the English Monarchs Being in Number 151, From Brute to King Charles. In Heroical Verse (London, 1630): ‘one, whose virtues dignified her blood, / That Muses, Graces, arms, and liberal arts, / Amongst all queens, proclaim’d her Queen of hearts’ (sig. G2r). In England’s Hallelujah. Or, Great Britain’s Grateful Retribution, for God’s Gracious Benediction (London, 1630), John Vicars describes the exiled King and Queen of Bohemia as ‘that royal King and Queen of Hearts’ (sig. B6r). The phrase also reworks in a more positive manner Andrea’s image of the exiled Eulalia in 3.1: ‘there is not / So thin a queen in the cards’ [QC 3.1.speech443]. [go to text]

gg2411   merited deserved [go to text]

gg2761   fame reputation [go to text]

gg2762   show (v) instruct, teach [go to text]

gg2763   giv’t give it [go to text]

n3237   yoke-fellow Having rejected the idea that he is Lodovico’s ‘yoke-fellow’ in [QC 3.3.speech678], Horatio now eagerly embraces it. [go to text]

gg2352   yoke-fellow comrade, partner; derives from ‘a contrivance, used from ancient times, by which two animals, esp. oxen, are coupled together for drawing a plough or vehicle; usually consisting of a somewhat curved or hollowed piece of wood fitted with "bows" or hoops at the ends which are passed round the animals’ necks, and having a ring or hook attached to the middle to which is fastened a chain or trace extending backward by which the plough or vehicle is drawn’ (OED yoke n, 1) [go to text]

n3238   Recorders. The use of recorders again suggests that solemn or contemplative music is required; see the note to the stage direction at the head of 5.4 [NOTE n3210] for further discussion. [go to text]

n3243   in a chair, That is: in a sick-chair, used to carry invalids. As Dessen and Thomson note: ‘the portable chair carried by the arms or on poles is the most widely used signal that a character is sick/wounded/dying’ (p. 46; s.v. chair). [go to text]

n3244   veiled. At the beginning of the play Alinda wears a metaphorical veil concealing her true intentions, here the veil becomes literal. It is possible that the veil also reminds the audience of earlier events: Alinda entered ‘like a bride’ [QC 2.1.speech239] immediately after the sentence was passed against Eulalia in Act 2, Scene 1, and it is possible that this costume might have included a veil. [go to text]

n3246   never the less i.e. never do anything. [go to text]

n3245   never the less ] nevertheless [go to text]

gs462   assume claim, appropriate, pretend to [go to text]

gg2764   hardness rigour, obstinacy (OED a.) [go to text]

gs463   control challenge (OED v. 3.b.), hold in check, curb, restrain (OED v. 4.b.) [go to text]

n3250   majesty’s ] Majestie [go to text]

n3251   a loyalty after my own heart, It is entirely characteristic that Horatio should approve of Petruccio’s assertion that he should not have contravened the King’s will. [go to text]

n3252   Here a new song. Julia K. Wood suggests that the blank lyric ‘may have been kept from publication deliberately by the author’ (‘Music in Caroline Plays’, 15); this is, however, unlikely because Brome is now known to have died in 1652, prior to the publication of the 1659 text of The Queen and Concubine. Matthew Steggle argues that the direction ‘Here a new song’ is one of the characteristics that suggest that the text as presented in the 1659 octavo is unfinished (Richard Brome, 70). On the other hand, the inclusion of lyrics at the head of the octavo playtext, rather than in their proper places in the play itself, may suggest that the lyrics to all the songs were on separate sheets and that the ‘new’ song alone has been lost. Indeed, it is possible that all of the lyrics used in the original 1630s production have been lost, given that both of the lyrics printed in the octavo are also found in other texts. (See the notes to the first [NOTE n2867] and second [NOTE n3022] songs.) ‘New’ songs are also indicated in plays including the 1638 text of Thomas Heywood’s The Rape of Lucrece (first performed by Queen Anna’s Men, 1608), Nathan Field and Philip Massinger’s The Fatal Dowry (King’s Men, 1617-19) and Henry Glapthorne’s The Lady Mother (King’s Revels, 1635) and Wit in a Constable (Beeston’s Boys, c. 1639); in some cases the lyrics are given and in others they are omitted. For further discussion see the Textual Introduction. [go to text]

n3346   EULALIA ] Ealalia [go to text]

n3347   thought ] Throught [go to text]

gg2765   presumptuous arrogant, ‘unduly confident or bold’, usurping (OED adj, 1) [go to text]

gs464   renders makes [go to text]

n3253   it, i.e. her former position as queen. [go to text]

gg885   leave permission [go to text]

n3254   sink her under earth i.e. to kill her. [go to text]

gg627   wonder, prodigy, astonishing marvel, like an act of magic [go to text]

n3348   story ] stotie [go to text]

n3255   as myself was to the world. That is: as my behaviour was in the eyes of the world. [go to text]

gg2766   error, transgression, wrong-doing (OED 5) [go to text]

n2573   airy mist [go to text]

n3256   new creation. Alinda presents the recovery of her sanity as a rebirth after her period of crazed ambition. [go to text]

n3256   second birth Alinda presents the recovery of her sanity as a rebirth after her period of crazed ambition. [go to text]

n3257   My noble father (if I may say father), Recalls and reverses Alinda’s earlier assent to Flavello’s statement in 1.5, ‘Lord Sforza, whom you also may forget now to call father’ [QC 1.5.speech206]. [go to text]

gs465   rich valuable [go to text]

gg2767   vindicate clear from suspicion or criticism (OED v, 3) [go to text]

n3349   Eulalia ] Eal. [go to text]

gg2768   Note (v) observe, pay attention to [go to text]

n3258   King, Queen, and Prince, Alinda’s respectful address to Eulalia and Gonzago suggests the extent of her reformation. [go to text]

gg2416   at in full, thoroughly [go to text]

n3259   Back to my country, Naples, In 2.3, Alinda’s treatment of her father led Andrea to comment that she was his countrywoman ‘when she was Sforza’s daughter, but she has turned a father out of him’ [QC 2.3.speech326]. Her renewed allegiance to her country is thus part of a return to the authority of her father. [go to text]

n3260   Magdalene nunnery The Magdalenes, also known as the Penitents or the ‘White Ladies’ (from the colour of their habit), were a religious order originally established to cater for penitent women (the name referring to the tradition that St Mary Magdalene had been a prostitute), although many convents accepted women whose reputations had not been besmirched. Although St Dominic had organised a short-lived group of penitents at Toulouse in 1215, the order proper was founded by Rudolf of Worms at Metz, and was confirmed by Pope Gregory IX in 1227. The order quickly spread to France, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Portugal, but declined after 1370. A. Condit notes that small communities of Magdalenes which had been connected with the order developed independently; these included a community at Naples, founded in 1324 (I have not been able to trace a separate institution in nearby Lucera). Another order of St Mary Magdalene, the Madelonnettes, was founded in France in 1618 by the Capuchin Père Athanase Molé. See A. Condit, ‘Magdalens’, in The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 15 vols. [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967], 9: 57-8).

An important context for Alinda’s decision to withdraw to a nunnery is the Counter-Reformation desire to reform religious houses, which resulted in the decision by the Council of Trent (1563) that all nunneries should be subject to compulsory enclosure. In deciding to enter a nunnery Alinda therefore would therefore cut herself off completely from her former life. [go to text]

n3261   Lucera, Lucera (also known as Luceria and Nocera) is described in Edmund Bohun’s A Geographical Dictionary Representing the Present and Ancient Names of all the Counties, Provinces, Remarkable Cities, Universities, Ports, Towns, Mountains, Seas, Straights, Fountains, and Rivers of the Whole World (London, 1693) as ‘a city in the kingdom of Naples, in the hither principate; which is a bishop’s see, under the Archbishop of Salerno; and a dukedom belonging to the family of Barberino. Called for distinction from the precedent, by those of the country, Nocera di Pagani, because it hath been taken formerly by the Saracens. The ancients in many places speak of it. It stands eight miles from Salerno to the South-West, and twenty two from Naples to the South’. See also Sugden, Topographical Dictionary, 321, s.v. Lucera. [go to text]

n3262   Veils herself. In the dramatis personae, the description of Alinda as ‘veiled’ suggests that she is concealing her true nature and intentions; here, her re-veiling suggests, along with her new vocation as a nun, her modesty and desire to withdraw from the world. [go to text]

n3263   So thou art mine forever. It may seem odd that Alinda’s decision to enter a nunnery is interpreted by Sforza as a return to his parental authority. However the religious vocation of many women in the early modern period was likely to be part of an overall family strategy in which some daughters were to be married and others placed in nunneries. As Mary Lavan comments, ‘Among the elite of Venetian society, the birth of a baby girl would always give rise to the same dilemma, maritar ò monocar: would she marry or become a nun’ (Virgins of Venice: Enclosed Lives and Broken Vows in the Renaissance Convent [London: Penguin, 2002], 24). In Alinda’s case, her disastrous liaison with the King was part of a rebellion against her father’s authority, something that Brome makes explicit in 1.5, in her ready assent to Flavello’s assertion that she may ‘forget now to call [Sforza] father’ [QC 1.5.speech206]. The religious vocation is, in contrast, a safe form of ‘marriage’ which poses no threat to Sforza’s career or life. [go to text]

n3264   She has anticipated my great purpose, Brome very deliberately changes the ending from that of Penelope’s Web, in which Olynda is banished and the Souldan and Barmenissa are reconciled. For further discussion see the Introduction. [go to text]

gs466   great important, serious; noble [go to text]

gs428   purpose, intention [go to text]

n3265   holy Augustinians The Augustinians, or Order of the Hermits of St Augustine, were a mendicant order (that is, an order living solely upon charity) tracing their lineage back as far as St Augustine of Hippo (354-430) and living by the so-called Rule of St Augustine. A.J. Ennis describes the ethos of the Augustinians as ‘Unity of heart and mind in God, and life in common without personal possessions’ (‘Augustinians’, in The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1: 1071; see also J.J. Gavigan, ‘Augustine, Rule of St’, in The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1: 1059-60). [go to text]

n3266   Solanto. Sugden suggests that Brome may mean Soleto, a town in the heel of Italy, a few miles south of Lecco (Sugden, s.v. Solanto), but there was a sea port called Solanto on the northern coast of the province of Palermo. The name ‘Solanto’ derives from nearby Soluntum or Solunto, one of the most important centres in Punic Sicily. In fact, the only Augustinian monastery in Sicily seems to have been that founded in 1140 at Gratteri, also in the Province of Palermo. [go to text]

n2890   [All] ] Omn. [go to text]

gg2406   gainsaid. opposed, spoken against, refused [go to text]

n3268   lieu of That is: in recompense for. [go to text]

n3267   In lieu of former wrongs, I’ll yield thee up My crown and kingdom. These lines recall and rework the description of the Souldan’s decision in Penelope’s Web: ‘then he sent for his wife, and after reconciliation made, to the great joy of all his subjects, in lieu of her patient obedience set her in her former estate’ (sig. E2r). [go to text]

n3269   Your The King’s movement from familiar ‘thee’ to respectful ‘you’ in addressing his son underscores on a linguistic level his determination to resign his throne to his son. [go to text]

gg787   true loyal, faithful [go to text]

n4069   In lieu of former wrongs, I’ll yield thee up My crown and kingdom. Your virtuous mother (Whom may you forever honour for her Piety), with these true statesmen, will enable You to govern well. I have amended the lineation of this speech: in the octavo text the line breaks come at 'Kingdom. / Your', 'ever / Honour', and 'true / Statesmen'. [go to text]

n3270   makes a doubt of doubts [go to text]

n3271   sir, This mode of addess suggests a certain formality in the King’s address to his son; the last time he addressed him as ‘sir’ was when he was interrogating him in [QC 3.3.speech684]. [go to text]

n2574   considerative be Of That is: give consideration to. [go to text]

gg2770   conversion. transformation in character (with a suggestion of religious conversion) [go to text]

n3272   Plighted my troth Made a pledge of my faith; plighting one's troth usually refers today to a vow of marriage or betrothal, but in the early modern period it had wider application (see OED plight v1, 2a and 2b). The image of marriage was commonly used in the vows made by religious orders. For instance, in the ceremony in which Venetian women became nuns the patriarch told the woman, ‘I marry you to Jesus Christ, son of the Father Almighty, your protector. Accept therefore this ring of faith as a sign from the Holy Spirit that you are called to be the wife of God’; like secular brides, the nuns wore white for their ‘marriage’ ceremony (Lavin, Virgins of Venice, 23, citing G. Badoer, Ordo rituum et caeremoniarum tradendi velamina monialibus, Quae jam emiserunt Professionem, vel eodem tempore emittunt [Venice, 1689], 7). [go to text]

n2890   [All] ] Omn. [go to text]

gg2771   wedlock ‘marriage vow or obligation’ (OED n, 1); marriage (OED n, 2c) [go to text]

gg2769   melting dissolving (OED a, 1a); delicate, tender, sweet (OED a, 1b); ‘Yielding to strong or tender emotion; feeling or expressing tenderness, pity’ (OED a, 2); deeply touching or affecting (OED a, 4) [go to text]

gg2772   part (v) depart [go to text]

n3273   Now with such melting silence as sweet souls From bodies part to immortality, May we for better life divided be. The King’s diction here is reminiscent of John Donne’s erotic and religious verse; see, for instance, ‘A Valediction Forbidding Mourning’ (in The Oxford Authors: John Donne, ed. John Carey [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990], 120-1): ‘As virtuous men pass mildly away, / And whisper to their souls, to go, [...] So let us melt, and make no noise, / No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move’ (ll. 1-2, 5-6). The image of eternal separation also recalls the final words of Chapman’s Bussy D’Ambois (Queen’s Revels, c. 1604; revived by the King’s Men in the 1630s), spoken by the cuckolded husband Montsurry, with an acoustic echo in Brome’s choice of rhyme words:

so let our love,
Now turn from me, as here I turn from thee,
And may both points of heaven’s straight axeltree
Conjoin in one, before thyself and me.
(Bussy D'Ambois, ed. Nicholas Brooke [London: Methuen, 1964], 5.3.261-4)

[go to text]

n4070   [They all exit.] ] Exeunt Omnes. [go to text]

n3274   The Epilogue. The play’s epilogue makes a conventional plea for applause, though it is relatively unusual in being attributed to a particular character. Lodovico’s status within the play as Eulalia’s chief supporter makes him an appropriate spokesman for the play, which is elided with Eulalia herself. [go to text]

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

n3275   crowned with hearts. Compare this with the description in 5.4 of Eulalia as the ‘queen of hearts’ [QC 5.4.speech1361]. [go to text]

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