Let … unsettle Skeat compares ‘His wits begin t’unsettle’ (KL 3.4.162).

  31 state of nature existence

  fail together die all at once, not only in the best props of 32, such as reason

  32 which way now? She probably starts to leave, her uncertain movements showing her loss of direction.

  33 next nearest

  * * *

  19 fed] F; feed Q 25 dozens] Seward; (dussons) 28 brine] 1711; bine Q

  34 errant erring or wandering

  beside away from the path

  35-6 The moon … dawn Skeat notes the reminiscence of Mac 2.2.15: ‘I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry’; cf. also ‘The moon is down’ (Mac 2.1.2) and see 12n. Leech points out the Daughter’s topsy-turvy world, indicated by her substitution of the screech-owl for the cock as the bird that summons the dawn.

  36 offices Either a repetition of the idea in 21, or a reference to ‘offices’ like Arcite’s – official duties at court.

  37 Save … in i.e., meeting Palamon and filing off his fetters

  37-8 the point … all Point and end have the double meaning of ‘purpose’ or ‘conclusion’; a point was also a fastener at the lower end of a doublet, used to attach it to the hose (a usage which may recur at 3.4.2). The Daughter plays on all three meanings, first attempting to sum up the ‘point’ of her speech, then abandoning the idea of any purpose except to come to an end.

  3.3

  3.3.0.1 Arcite’s entrance with a file parallels the Daughter’s. As Taylor notes, the presence of a bush, or other symbol of the woods, raises ‘the tantalizing possibility that the gaoler’s daughter may be wandering within a few feet of the man she is searching for’ (Taylor & Jowett, 42). Some productions have emphasized this possibility: see cf. 3.1.30.1n. This scene, like the previous one, must take place late at night (see 3.1.83), but, unlike the Daughter, the men do not comment on the darkness and there is no evocation of its atmosphere.

  2 SD In view of 3, Palamon cannot yet be on stage; he may put his head out of a bush or speak from off stage.

  * * *

  3.3] Scæna 3. Q 2 SD] this edn; Enter … as from the bush. Oxf; not in Q 3 SD] after 1 Q

  6 beastly like a beast (as you now are)

  9 must would have to

  good now please

  10 parleys hostile exchanges of words

  11 ancient former

  12 Make talk for ‘behave in such a way as to be talked about by’ or, possibly, ‘talk in a way fit for’

  To your health Q follows this with &c. Proudfoot’s suggestion, that it was a misreading of ‘Sir’, is a good one. Perhaps, however, the phrase indicates some business, such as ceremonial pouring and saluting. Rituals of drinking could be very elaborate (see William Cartwright’s The Royal Slave (1636), 3.1.670–716) and much of the scene is taken up with ‘pledging’. Arcite may drink first in order to prove that the wine is not poisoned, as Palamon has suggested. In Berkeley (1985), Arcite filled out the &c. by a comically melodramatic performance of death by poison, thus rebuking what he saw as unworthy suspicions.

  13 Do! either ‘Yes, do drink (and prove that there is no poison there)’, or an expression of mocking toleration for whatever else Arcite has been doing

  16 pledge you drink after you (from the same cup)

  17 it … blood a common belief (see Dent, W461: ‘Good wine makes good blood’)

  * * *

  12 health –] health, &c. Q; health, sir! Proudfoot SD] Dyce; not in Q 16 SD] Dyce; not in Q 18–27 Stay … this?] prose Q

  21 stomach appetite; perhaps also anger (Riv). Arcite is commenting on Palamon’s voracious eating.

  22–3 mad … woods a pun: ‘wood’, or ‘wode’, as an adjective, could also mean mad. Cf. ‘wode within this wood’ (MND 2.1.192). Palamon’s retort (a play on wild) sets up a series of aggressive puns.

  25 sauce ‘Hunger needs no sauce’ or ‘hunger is the best sauce’ (Dent, H819) is proverbial. Arcite notes the sharpness of Palamon’s reply.

  27 lusty hearty, but also lust-provoking – which may explain the direction the conversation now takes. For an explicit account of the aphrodisiac effects of meat and wine, see Middleton, The Revenger’s Tragedy (1607), 1.2.178–90.

  * * *

  23 them] F; then Q

  34 play … virginals This small, plucked keyboard instrument, so called because ‘maids and virgins do most commonly play on them’ (T. Blount, Glossographia, quoted by Weber), often inspires puns about losing one’s virginity. Cf. ‘Still virginalling / Upon his palm?’ (WT 1.2.125–6).

  38 tales false reports (see Prologue 21n., and 41n.)

  39 brown brunette

  39–41 There … beech Arcite is remembering a seduction in the woods, like the one the Jailer’s Daughter hoped would follow her rescue of Palamon.

  41 thereby … tale a catch-phrase (Dent, T48) hinting that the speaker could say more (probably scandalous) on the subject, often with a pun on ‘tale’/’tail’ (as in Oth 3.1.8–11)

  42 Hey ho either a real sigh or an exaggerated, comic one, which Palamon interprets (rightly or wrongly) as evidence that Arcite is ‘treacherously’ thinking of Emilia

  45 break break your promise not to mention this woman (though Palamon is in fact the first to speak her name)

  wide wide of the mark: ‘an expression from archery’ (Weber)

  * * *

  45–7 By … now] Q lines honest. / now:

  48 shirts, and Q has ‘shirts, and, perfumes’. The presence of the two commas, even though the compositor was having difficulty squeezing this line into the available space, suggests that the punctuation indicates a deliberate pause to reinforce Arcite’s supercilious insistence that Palamon is not only behaving but smelling like a beast.

  49 two hours Cf. 3.6.1–2.

  51 Fear me not ‘Do not doubt me’ (Skeat).

  52 trinkets the fetters, compared to bracelets

  53 keep touch keeps his promise

  * * *

  52 Sirrah –] 1778; sir ha: Q; Ha? Sir! Davenant 3.4] Scæna 4. Q

  3.4

  3.4.1 out extinguished

  2 aglets originally the metal tag at the end of a lace; then, by extension, gold, silver or metallic ornament (stud, plate or spangle), worn on a dress (OED). Davenant reads ‘spangles’. Weber notes a comparison between stars and aglets in Faerie Queene, 2.3.26.

  3 Palamon! She calls to him, then ‘remembers’ that he has been killed by wolves.

  5 Yonder’s … ship For possible sources of this hallucination.

  7 it beats upon it ‘The ship strikes the rock’ (Leech).

  8 a leak sprung Another sexual double meaning: a leaky wench is one who has lost her virginity, and a ship is traditionally female. The Daughter identifies herself with it, and its imaginary sinking coincides with her complete loss of sanity.

  9 *Run her Q has Upon her, possibly influenced by Up in 10. Spoon and its variant spelling spoom (OED: to run before the wind or sea) have been suggested as emendations. Weber noted the analogy with The Double Marriage (c. 1620): ‘Down with the fore-saile too, we’l spoom before her’ (Bowers, 9: 2.1.191). Run seems a somewhat more likely source of misreading; the capital letter R in the MS seems to have given the compositors trouble, as in the misreading of Ravishd as Bravishd in 2.2.22. It scans better than Open, suggested by Freehafer and adopted by Montgomery and Waith (Oxf1).

  10 course small sail attached to lower yards of a ship (Leech)

  tack about change direction; cf. Prologue 26, which seems to echo this part of the play.

  12 frog to eat, presumably, in view of her previous line, though she could also be thinking of the animal helpers in fairy-tales. The Daughter still imagines herself by the water – perhaps the lake mentioned later by the Wooer (4.1.53), which may or may not be indicated as the setting for this scene.

  14 carrack also spelled ‘carrick’; a large cargo ship, also used for warfare

  17 trussed up hanged (by analogy with a fowl made ready for roasting)

  in a trice Trice originally meant windlass or pulley; in a trice means ‘at a single pull’, that is, instantly.

  18 I’ll … word Cf. Ophelia’s ‘Pray let’s have no words of this’ (Ham 4.5.46), which is followed by the song ‘Tomorrow is St Valentine’s Day’. The Daughter’s song, similarly, hints at what she refuses to say.

  19–26 For the Daughter’s songs, see Appendix 6, pp. 407–10.

  * * *

  9 Run] Skeat; Vpon Q; Up with 1778 (Sympson); Spoon (Theobald); Spoom Dyce; Open Riv (Freehafer) 10 tack] F; (take) 18 SD] Sing / opp. 19 Q 19 a foot] (afoote)

  22 He’s ‘He’s is a common abbreviation of “he shall”, still common among the vulgar’ (Weber); Davenant uses a similar phrase: ‘Is’e not stand a step amiss’ (Act 3, p. 33).

  cut horse, either with docked tail or gelded

  25 prick The nightingale supposedly sang with its breast against a thorn in order to stay awake, symbolizing the ravished Philomel who was metamorphosed into the bird; the Daughter is also making a sexual pun on ‘penis’, which Davenant removed by substituting ‘Hawthorn’.

  26 sleep like a top proverbial for sound sleep (Dent, T440)

  * * *

  25–6] Q lines breast / else. / 3.5] Scæna 6. Q 0.1] Enter a Schoolemaster. 4. Countrymen: and Baum 2. or 3. wenches, with a Taborer. Q 1–22] prose Q

  3.5

  3.5.0.1 Perhaps because the author was building his scene around an already existing spectacle (see Appendices 4 and 5) and did not know exactly what it would be like, his opening direction is vague and ‘permissive’; the wording in Q (see t.n.) suggests that the last part was added as an afterthought, as it became clear which characters would be needed. Most editors have taken lines 26–8 as evidence that Q’s ‘2 or 3 wenches’ ought to be five. The Schoolmaster’s questions about the whereabouts of the Wenches, the Taborer and the Bavian may mean that some or all of these characters enter later. If the scene included a ‘boscage’, or artificial woods (as in Beaumont’s masque), they might be on stage but not yet visible to the audience, or visible to them but not to the Schoolmaster. Or his question may be prompted only by self-important fussiness. Or perhaps the mode is presentational: i.e., all the characters enter at once, but come downstage only when called for. Lines 29 and 34 may mean that some of them are not yet completely dressed for the morris.

  2 disinsanity madness. Either the Schoolmaster is saying the opposite of what he means (Skeat), or he is using dis as an intensification (Proudfoot); either way, the word is a unique coinage.

  5 by a figure ‘to put it metaphorically’. Rhetoric, an important element in education, involved the study of tropes and figures – that is, literary uses of language; Gerald refers to figures again at 16, 22 and 106.

  5–6 plum-broth / And marrow the very best. Plum-broth was much like plum-porridge (see 2.3.75n.). Bone-marrow was considered the choicest part of meat.

  8 coarse-frieze a rough woollen cloth (coarse is tautological). For differentiation of social classes in terms of the cloth from which their clothes are made, see ‘hempen homespuns’ (MND 3.1.77) and (Skeat’s example) ‘russet yeas and honest kersey noes’ (LLL 5.2.413).

  jean a kind of twilled cotton, fustian cloth (the origin of the modern ‘jeans’)

  9 ‘Thus … let be’ Cf. ‘here I’ll be / And there I’ll be’ (2.3.49–50); perhaps this is how the Schoolmaster has drilled them in the dance moves, using the rhetorical divisions ‘thus’, ‘there’ and ‘then’ of a school exercise.

  11 Proh … Fidius Most of Gerald’s Latin consists of common phrases from school textbooks. Terence’s ‘Proh Deum atque hominum fidem’ [by God and the faith of men] is listed among the exclamatory interjections in Lily’s famous Latin grammar (first pub. 1540), as is Medius Fidius, ‘an old Latin oath, apparently short for me dius Fidius adiuuet, may the divine Fidius [Jupiter] help me!’ (Skeat). This also occurs in Wit at Several Weapons (c.1613), which is attributed to Middleton, Rowley and possibly Fletcher (Bowers, 7: 1.2.23–8).

  13 Here stand I Possibly the School-master demonstrates the layout of the entertainment on the ground (like Launce in TGV 2.3.13–32).

  16 hums makes encouraging non-committal sounds. There may be irony at the speaker’s expense, if the audience interprets Theseus’ hums differently from the Schoolmaster (cf. ‘I cried “hum”, and “well, go to”, / But mark’d him not a word’, 1H4 3.1.156–7).

  18 mark there! He probably demonstrates the gesture.

  * * *

  8 jean] jave Q; sleave Seward; jay or jaw (Weber); jape Knight; jane Dyce

  19 Meleager … boar Theseus was one of the hunters of the Calydonian boar, an adventure organized by Meleager (Ovid, Met, 8). Thomas Heywood dramatized it in The Brazen Age.

  20 lovers of the Duke, in whose honour they are performing

  21 Cast … body form a group

  22 sweetly one of the Schoolmaster’s favourite words (see 30); his pupils probably parody him at 23.

  by a figure ‘metaphorically speaking’; Gerald is consciously varying a cliché.

  trace and turn This expression is not in OED, which does however list ‘trace and race’ and ‘trace and traverse’ (IV 12). To ‘trace’ is to tread a measure in dancing (OED V 2); Pilling takes it to be cognate with the French tresse and the Italian treccia, meaning ‘hey’, a circular dance formation in which the dancers weave in and out. Davenant’s ‘Cast your selves decently into a Body / by a Trace, and turn Boyes thus’ (Act 3, p. 33) suggests that Gerald acts out his instructions.

  25 have at ye said during a real or mock attack (see Ham 5.2.302); Timothy probably gives a frenzied burst of drumming. Davenant’s SD is: ‘He strikes up and 1. Country man dances a Jigg’ (Act 3, p. 33).

  26 *these Q has their, but, as RP points out, the misreading of theis is common, and the usage would parallel ‘Where are these hearts?’ (MND 4.2.25–6) which also occurs in the context of a show that is nearly unable to go on because of someone’s absence.

  Friz short for Frances

  Maudlin short for Magdalen

  * * *

  25 SD] this edn; not in Q 26 these] Proudfoot; their Q SD] this edn; not in Q

  27 bouncing hefty, strapping. Both Luce and Barbary are described as if they were horses.

  28 Nell … master perhaps with a double meaning, if Nell is the tanner’s daughter mentioned in 2.3.45–6

  29 Swim the desired effect in Renaissance dance. The Italian dance-term is ondeggiare, translated ‘undulation’ (Franko, 61).

  30 deliverly nimbly

  31 favour possibly like ‘honour’, the bow or curtsey by partners in a country dance. Participants in Dover’s Cotswold Games (see Appendix 5a) received yellow ribbons (‘Dover’s Favours’) for taking part (Whitfield, 130 n.33). Except in the volta, there was no physical contact between male and female dancers, though kissing might occur at the end. Women sometimes gave their partners a flower or nodded at them.

  frisk a lively dance movement, caper or jig

  32 Let us alone You can count on us.

  33 Dispersed Musical sounds coming from a variety of locations were popular at masques and concerts; a famous example is Monteverdi’s Vespers. Davenant included ‘a hunt in music’, which may have involved ‘dispersed’ sound effects.

  Couple pair off for the dance

  34 wanting missing

  Bavian See List of Roles.

  38 bark Baboons were thought to be half-dog and half-man (Topsell, 10).

  39 Quo usque tandem How long …? (Latin). The famous opening of Cicero’s first oration against Catiline (‘How long, O Catiline, will you abuse our patience?’), often studied in school. Here, an exasperated exclamation (= ‘Give me patience!’).

  40 go whistle proverbial (Dent, W313) for doing something in vain

  all … fire proverbial (Dent, F79): everything’s ruined. In Sidney’s The Lady of May, the pedantic schoolmaster Rhombus says, ‘all the fat will be ignified’ (240).

  41 washed a tile proverbial (not learned, as Gerald claims), meaning to labour in vain (Dent, T289). A tile was used to line ovens and fireplaces.

  42 fatuus foolish (Latin)

  43 piece creature (contemptuous)

  hilding worthless animal, human being or, more specifically, woman. Cf. ‘For shame, thou hilding of a devilish spirit’ (TS 2.1.26).

  45 Cicely As RP notes, the name seems to have had pejorative connotations; he cites Dekker’s Shoemakers’ Holiday and Rowley’s A Shoemaker a Gentleman.

  sempster male form of seamstress (someone who sews professionally)

  46 Gloves, often worn in dancing, were a common gift on festive occasions, dogskin being the cheapest kind.

  47 an if

  48 by … bread ‘by bread and salt’ was a common oath (Dent, Prov, B616.11); Chaucer’s burlesque knight Sir Thopas swore by ale and bread (Skeat). This seems an allusion to swearing by the sacrament (the most serious of oaths), but may simply be a secular equivalent, suitable to the play’s pre-Christian setting.

  break break her promise (to take part)

  49 An … woman See Dent, W640: ‘Who has a woman has an eel by the tail’.

  * * *

  41] Q lines have, / Tile, /

  52 Gerald applies rules of arithmetic or grammar to Cicely’s behaviour.

  53 fire ill Dyce suggested wildfire (Greek fire, highly inflammable), comparing ‘A wildfire take you!’ (The Mad Lover, Bowers, 5: 5.3.3). Since venereal disease was metaphorically equated with burning, Leech is probably right in paraphrasing ‘pox take her’.

  55 nullity a ‘non-event’

  58 frampul OED defines as sour-tempered, disagreeable or (of a horse) spirited; perhaps also merely capricious, like Lady Frampul in Jonson’s The New Inn (1629).