Boole .A i.-T YALE STUDIES IN ENGLISH ALBERT S. COOK, Editor XXXIII THE KNIGHT OF THE BURNING PESTLE BY BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND GLOSSARY BY HERBERT S. MURCH, Ph.D. INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH IN PRINCETON UNIVERSITY A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Yale University in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1908 \ / YALE STUDIES IN ENGLISH ALBERT S. COOK, Editor XXXIII THE KNIGHT OF THE BURNING PESTLE BY ■^..^si, BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND GLOSSARY BY HERBERT S. MURCH, Ph.D. INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH IN PRINCETON UNIVERSITV A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Yale University in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1908 WEIMAR: PRINTED BY R. WAGNER SOHN. PREFACE The Knight of the Burning Pestle performs an excep- tional office in the Jacobean drama. As the only con- siderable stage-burlesque of its day, it passes an unparalleled censure upon many of the theatrical vagaries of a decadent time. It is no less unique in that it affords a refreshing contrast to the tone of its authors' other work. Here, for once, Beaumont and Fletcher move in a pure and wholesome atmo- sphere. Through delightfully humorous agencies, the rare old comedy discloses the genuine humanity of a vanished age, its lineaments undisguised by the delusive artifice which is a besetting sin of these playwrights. If the modern reader is enabled to understand the antique subject-matter, he can easily see in this humanity, moreover, an authentic reflection of our own, and appreciate, in the dramatists' por- trayal of some of the elemental absurdities of our nature, a masterpiece of comic creation. But the subject-matter is remote and obsolete. The burlesque is immediately concerned with the Jacobean commoners' taste for the romances of chivalry, the eccentric plays which were the products of that taste, other forgotten stage-favorites of the Jacobeans, and the singular manners of Jacobean audiences. These peculiarities of a former civiliziation have long since passed out of the life of the race. It is the purpose of the present edition to make them intelligible, for the sake of completely revealing both the historic Preface significance of the play and its more vital and enduring literary excellencies. It has been the editor's aim to render possible a full appreciation of The Knight of the Burning Pestle, not only as the earliest, and perhaps finest, of our dramatic bur- lesques, but also as one of the brightest examples of pure comedy in the language. The Introduction is mainly devoted to an exposition of the larger objects of the satire. Comment upon the details of Jacobean life to which the play bears reference is contained in the Notes. Peculiarities of the vocabulary are treated, for the most part, in the Glossary. I desire to acknowledge my obligations to the fol- lowing members of Yale University : to Professor Albert S. Cook for inspiration and aid at every stage of my work; to Professor Henry A. Beers and Pro- fessor William L. Phelps for useful advice ; to Dr. Rudolph Schevill for invaluable suggestions relative to the play's independence of Don Quixote, and its connections with the Spanish romances ; to Dr. Wil- liam S. Johnson for the benefit of frequent consul- tations; and to Mr. Andrew Keogh and Mr. Henry A. Gruener for assistance in bibliographical matters. A portion of the expense of printing this thesis has been borne by the Modern Language Club of Yale University from funds placed at its disposal by the generosity of Mr. George E. Dimock, of Elizabeth, New Jersey, a graduate of Yale in the class of 1874. Princeton University, April 20, 1907. CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION: A. Editions of the Text . B. Date and Stage-History C. Authorship D. Analogues and Attributed Sources 1. The Romances of Chivalry and Don Quixote .... 2. Contemporary Plays and Ballads E. Objects of the Satire . 1. Literary and Theatrical Tastes of the Middle Classes a. The Fashion of Romance-reading and the Chivalric Drama b. Miscellaneous Stage-favorites of the Citizens .... 2. The Manners of Jacobean Audiences 3. Minor Objects of the Satire 11. TEXT . m. NOTES . IV. BIBLIOGRAPHY V. GLOSSARY . VL INDEX . page i xi xxi xxxi xxxii lix Ixv Ixvi Ixvi xcv cii ex 1 105 275 281 304 INTRODUCTION A. Editions of the Text. The Knight of the Burning Pestle was originally printed in quarto in 1613. A second quarto appeared in 1635, and still a third in the same year. The play, though not included in the First Folio of 1647, is in the Second Folio of 1679, and in all subsequent editions of the collected works of Beaumont and Fletcher. It is to be found, also, in three books of selected plays from English dramatists, and, finally, in a distinct volume in The Temple Dramatists series. 1613. The quarto of 1613 is the only edition of the play which was issued during the lifetime of Beaumont and Fletcher. Though published after the theatre- going public had condemned the stage-presentation, and hence designed for the general reader, its inac- curacies and inconsistencies in punctuation, and, less frequently, in spelling, show that it was not transcribed from the authors' MS., but from the prompters' books or the playhouse copies. The imprint is a good example of the elementary stage of typography at the time. Frequent and an- noying blunders occur. Chief among them are the omission of commas, semicolons, periods, and interro- gation points, and the gratuitous substitution of any one of these marks of punctuation for another. Often the sense remains unimpaired in spite of these mis- takes ; quite as often, however, it is obscured or viti- ated by them. Owing, no doubt, to the unsettled condition of orthography at the time, inconsistencies ii Introduction in spelling, also, are to be found in the quarto. Thus we find Rafe and Raph for modern Ralph ; ctmny, con?iy, and cony ; shawmes and shawnes ; of (off) and off; am ('em) and 'em; ben, bene, and beene ; faith and feth ; lam and lamb ; tane and ta'en for taken. There are numbers of purely typographical errors. In spite of these discrepancies and blunders, the quarto of 1613 presents the most satisfactory basis of departure for a critical treatment of the play. Many corrections are made in the quartos of 1635 and the folio of 1679 ; but often, too, an original read- ing is preferable to its alteration, and neither the quartos nor the folio can be set forth as authorita- tive. All things considered, it has been deemed best to adopt for this edition the text of the First Quarto, and to subjoin whatever variant readings are helpful in removing difficulties or suggestive of alternative readings. 1635. Two quarto editions were published in 1635. Though they are identical in leaf-collation, neither is a reprint of the other. Copies of these editions are bound together in a single volume preserved in the Boston Public Library. I treat them, according to their arrangement, as O2 and Q.j. Q2 efi'ects a valuable improvement in removing all of the misprints in the First Quarto as noted above. There is an advance toward modernization in spelling. There are one or two helpful emendations of the text, i. e. of 'em for 'ern (1. 223), and get you to for get to (2. 256). There are many improvements upon the First Quarto in punctuation. On the other hand, there are a number of unwarranted alterations, i. e. by my faith for by faith (1. 264) ; I shall for shall I (2. 451) ; bound to thank you for bound to you (3. 319) ; blowing for bel- lowing (4. 468) ; Too for To (5. 14) ; part for depart (5. 374).. Editions of the Text iii Qs represents few marked differences from Q^. There are a few further improvements in punctuation. The mistakes of Q.^ noted above are, however, retained, and to them are added these additional false readings : the omission of right (1. 345) ; estate for state (1. 391) ; deare for my deere deere (3. 1) ; are for he {^- 121). Two other new readings, though retained in all subsequent editions, seem to me wrong, for reasons which are advanced in my notes ; they are as for an (2. 179), and Pottage for Porrage (4. 216). In general, the quartos of 1635 may be said to be an improvement on the text of the earliest edition, offering, as they do, clearer and more consistent read- ings by virtue of their more careful punctuation ; but the considerable number of indefensible altera- tions in them weighs against their authoritative value, and makes necessary a reversion to the original quarto as the basis of investigation. 1679. The foHo of 1679, so far as regards The Knight of the Burning Pestle, is a disappointing book. On the general title-page it is announced that the plays are 'published by the authors original copies,' but we learn in the bookseller's preface addressed to the readers that this statement applies only to the thirty-four plays previously issued in the First Folio, 1647, and, moreover, its validity is denied by competent investigators. The Knight of the Burning Pestle is not included among these thirty-four plays. It is one of the seventeen additional plays regarding which the booksellers of 1679 make the following statement: 'Besides, in this Edition you have the addition of no fewer than Seventeen Plays more than were in the former, which we have taken the pains and care to collect, and print out of 4 to in this Volume, which for distinction sake are markt iv Introduction with a Star in the Catalogue of them facing the first Page of the Book.' It is apparent that the foHo of 1679 forms its text of The Knight of the Burning Pestle^ not upon the authors' MS., but upon the quarto editions already described. An examination of its readings, moreover, will show that the quartos of 1635, rather than the quarto of 1613, are depended upon. There has been occasion to cite, in the list of variants subjoined to my text, relatively few alterations of Qj and Q.j read- ings made by the folio. There is an occasional im- provement of the punctuation. There is also a further modernization of the spelling, notably in the follow- ing instances: the conjunction then regularly becomes than ; Rafe and Raph regularly become Ralph ; moneth regularly becomes month; maister regularly becomes master; diuel regularly becomes devil; a'th, a thy, a fny, a your, &c., become o'th^ o thy, o my^ o your, &c. On the other hand, all the false readings of Q2 and Qg noted above are carried over to the folio, and, to offset this flaw, the improvements afforded the text are not of sufficient number or of sufficient substan- tive value to give the folio any marked superiority over its predecessors. 1711. This edition is of small worth. It ration- alizes the punctuation, indeed, in some passages mod- ernizes such markedly obsolete spelling as sute for shoot (1. 164), and introduces a good emendation, viz. These for There (4. 292). On the other hand, it makes arbitrary alterations, i. e. Grocers for Grocery (Ind. 97), and ignorant for Ingrant (3. 576), while, in general, it closely follows the folio, continuing the latter's errors, and adopting, but adding little to, its improvements. 1750. This is the first edition of Beaumont and Editions of the Text v Fletcher's works in which an attempt is made toward a critical reconstruction of the text. The task was begun by Theobald, the Shakespearean commentator, and, after his death, concluded by Seward and Symp- son. These editors had access to all the early quartos, as well as the folios, and made pretensions to superior accuracy and care in the collation of the texts ; but, in the light of their results, their pretensions are seen to have been greater than their accomplishment. They seem to have proceeded in their task, so far as may be judged from their treatment of The Knight of the Burning Pestle^ not by closely comparing the early editions line by line, but only by resorting to them in passages which they happened to regard as difficult ; while, moreover, out of their own unenlight- ened assurance, they dared to alter words and even passages, more frequently to the detriment than to the strengthening of the sense. The result was that many of the errors which had crept in through the successive reprints were retained, and another quota of blunders was added. The notes in which the new readings are defended are compounded of ludicrous self-sufficiency, obtuseness, and ignorance of the pecu- liarities of Elizabethan English. The most remarkable of these blunders in reading and annotation have been touched upon in my notes, i. e. 2. 182; 3. 271. One class of changes which has a specious value is the introduction of extra words in lines of halting metre ; but, though the editors are careful to choose words which do not distort the sense, such altera- tions sometimes color the sense strongly ; they are at all events arbitrary ; and they are in most instances rejected by the careful and scholarly D3^ce. Among the cases in point are; 1. 195; 3. 54; 4. 110; 4. 133. vi Introduction The one distinctly useful contribution of the edition of 1750 is the arrangement in stanzaic form of the snatches from ballads sung by Old Merrythought. In the older texts these verses are printed as prose, and, in some instances, are indistinguishable from their prose context. Through Seward and Sympson's helpful labors in this direction, one of the most pleas- ing aspects of the play is brought into fitting prom- inence. In general, we may say that, though the edition of 1750 is the first serious effort toward a recon- struction of the text, it is wholly inadequate; it is so because of carelessness in collation, rashness and presumption in its new readings, and ignorance of the peculiarities of Elizabethan English. 1778. George Colman, Isaac Reed, and others were co-workers in this complete edition of Beaumont and Fletcher's works. They professed to supply a critical text, but the retention of errors introduced through successive reprints o{ The Knight of the Burn- ing Pestle shows that careful collations of the early quartos were not made, and that the significance of these errors was not grasped. In this text the mis- takes made in the Second and Third Quartos are not corrected. Sympson's blundering change of mighttj hord to mighty bore (3. 271) is not corrected, and Ladt/. For and (2. 182) is still further vitiated by being changed to lady. Ralph. Fair ! And. The interpolations made by Sympson to fill out incomplete measures are usuall}^ retained. The editors are guilty of a few arbitrary readings of their own, i. e. God's woimds for Gods (1.490), vile for tvilde (3.404), and the ar- rangement of 5. 100-178 in verse form. Colman and Reed show, however, much greater critical acumen than Seward and Sympson. They Editions of the Text vii are aware of the deficiencies of these editors, and in the preface strongly condemn their 'unpardonable faults of faithlessness and misrepresentation. ' Seward and Sympson's arbitrary changes are discarded, for the most part, and the original readings are restored, A few significant alterations are made. Among them may be noted the rendition in stanzaic form of 1. 455-56, which had been overlooked by Sympson ; the justified interpolation of hlach (4. 49), and of an end (5. 307). The value of the edition, however, lies in the rejection of Seward and Sympson's impertinent readings, and in signal improvements of punctuation, which materially lessened the task of succeeding editors. 1812. This is a pretentious, but very imperfect, edition of fourteen volumes. It was undertaken by Henry Weber, a German, the amanuensis of Sir Walter Scott. In his task, he had the help of Mason's Com- ments on Beaumont and Fletcher^ and a copy of the dramatists which had been interleaved and annotated by Scott. Weber's treatment of The Knight of the Burning Pestle makes a commendable advance in the regu- lation of the text. This is the outcome of a truly scrupulous collation of all the old copies of the play, a fairly judicious choice of readings, the insertion of entirely new and clarifying scene-divisions, scene- headings, and stage-directions, and the rejection of Seward and Sympson's awkward metrical arrange- ments of certain prose passages. But though painstaking, conscientious, and often successful in supplying useful features to his edition, Weber, as a foreigner, was not properly equipped to edit English dramatists. Gilford says : viii Introduction Mr. Weber had never read an old play in his life ; he was but im- perfectly acquainted with our language ; and of the manners, customs, habits, of what was and was not familiar to us as a nation, he possessed no knowledge whatever ; but secure in ignorance, he entertained a com- fortable opinion of himself, and never doubted that he was qualified to instruct and enliven the public. This dictum regarding Weber's incompetency seems substantiated in the case of The Knight of the Burning Pestle. A review of the variants will show that Weber continued numbers of his predecessors' errors, which his familiarity with the early editions ought to have enabled him to remove, while ignorance of the pecu- liarities of Elizabethan English and popular literature is further revealed in a large number of new and unwarranted alterations of the original text. Most of these errors are commented upon in my notes. 1843-46. During these years appeared the best of all the complete editions of Beaumont and Flet- cher's works that of the Rev. Alexander Dyce. Dyce's treatment of the text of The Knight of the Burning Pestle leaves little to be desired. An examin- ation of the variants will show that in nearly every instance he has produced a rational and satisfying solution of a given difficulty. The absurd and con- fusing readings which were his heritage from a dozen predecessors he has repudiated. The meritorious features of foregoing editions he has appropriated or improved upon. The work of dividing the acts into scenes, begun by Weber, he has carried out more consistently and exactly than Weber himself had done. Weber's scene-headings, when not fol- lowed exactly, are given a more precise and specific treatment. Weber's stage-directions, where misplaced, are removed to their proper setting. To all of these particular features scene-divisions, scene-headings, and stage-directions additions are made which are Editions of the Text ix invariably logical, and helpful in illuminating the text. In regard to other details, it may be said that Dyce has cleared up the disordered punctuation, normalized the spelling, removed nearly all the errors, and ad- justed the loose ends left in preceding editions. Dyce's text, however, does not seem to me to be impeccable. Some of his readings would not be approved by more recent scholarship. In the light of Elizabethan usage, as given in such authorities as the New English Dictionary and Abbott's Shakespearean Gramtnar, by faith (1. 264) should not become by my faith, must be (i. 38) should not become shall be, noint- ing (4.136), should not become 'nointing, and (1.490) should not become an, &c. These are trifling points, perhaps, but they show that Dyce's knowledge of Elizabethan Enghsh was not infallible, and that other supposed corrections in the modern edition may be the result of ignorance of archaic peculiarities which are beyond the reach of present scholarship. I have taken exception in my notes to Dyce's reading of as for an (2. 179), vild for tvilde (3. 404), pottage for porrage (4. 216), and stock for Flocke (4. 444). I ques- tion, too, the propriety of such readings as afraid for afeard (3. 461), and such modernizations as have for ha (2. 273, &c.) and he for a (2. 268), since the original words are not obscure in meaning, and pre- serve the pleasingly archaic and colloquial tone of the passages. The remaining editions of Beaumont and Fletcher which include our play are reprints of preceding ones, and hence do not demand detailed notice. The text of 1778 was embodied in a four-volume edition of the plays of Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher, pubhshed in 1811. The text of Weber was reissued in 1840 in two volumes, to which was X Introduction prefixed an introduction on the dramatic art of the authors by George Darley. The book is known as Darley's edition. It was reprinted in 1866, and again in 1885. In Burlesque Platjs and Poems (Morley's Uni- versal Library), 1885, there is a reprint of our play, taken, not as might be expected, from the standard edition of Dyce, but from the wretched and univer- sally condemned edition of 1750! In it, readings from the later editions are now and then substituted, and objectionable passages are altered or expurgated ; but there is no distinctiveness about the book, and it does not call for extended description. Dyce's text is incorporated, save for a few slight alterations, in the two volumes of Beaumont and Fletcher s plays, among them The Knight of the Burning Pestle^ pub- lished in 1887 in The Mermaid Series. The editor is J, St. Loe Strachey. Dyce's text in also adopted, except in one or two details, by R. W. Moorman, in his edition of The Knight of the Burning Pestle in the series of The Temple Dramatists, 1898. Moorman in- cludes a brief introduction, notes which are mostly reduced from Dyce, and a small but useful glossary. The Library Catalogue of the British Museum con- tains the following entry: 1. 'The Works of the British Dramatists. Carefully selected from the best editions, with copious notes, biographies, and a historical introduction by J. S. K. (John Scott Keltie). Edinburgh, 1870. 8^' 2. 'Famous EHzabethan Plays expurgated and adapted for modern readers, by H. Ma- caulay Fitzgibbon, M. A. London, 1890.' Each of these selections contains The Knight of the Burning Pestle. I have been unable to see a copy of either book, but I am informed by the authorities of the British Museum that in each case the text of our play is based on Weber's edition, with the exception Date and Stage-History xi of a few unimportant deviations which are adopted from Dyce. The majority of Keltic's notes are his own, but they are such as could have been gathered from a dictionary, or from an intelligent reading of the context. Fitzgibbon's notes are very few, and the majority are supplied by Dyce. Fitzgibbons has ex- purgated or altered objectionable passages. B. Date and Stage-History. The first published quarto of The Knight of the Burning Pestle bears the date of 1613. The date of the play's composition is to be determined by the evidence of internal allusions, and the statements of Burre, the publisher. To find the earliest pcobable limits for the date, one must turn to the lines of the play itself. R. Boyle \ and, following him, A. H. Thorndike^, adduce the resemblance in burlesque spirit to The Woman Hater^ and the allusion (4, 44) to an incident in Day, Row- ley, and Wilkin's Travailes of Three English Brothers^ as presumptive evidence that our comedy originated about 1607, in which year the first of these plays seems to have appeared, and in which the second was printed as acted at the Curtain Theatre. Boyle believes that since the Travailes was based on the adventures of the three Shirleys, and was only of immediate interest, a reference to it would most like- ly be made only when that play was fresh. The Boy in our passage, however, expressly states that the play is 'stale'; moreover, that it 'had beene had before at the red Bull,' and so far as is ascertainable, * Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle. Englische Studien, Band XII, p. 156. * Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespeare, 190 1, p. 60. xii Introduction the Red Bull Theatre was not occupied before 1609.'' The comparison with The Woman Hater is hardly a tenable argument, since there is no good reason why Beaumont, whose hand is everywhere manifest in that comedy, and whose humor is essentially of the broader sort, should not, any number of years after 1607, have conceived another play similarly burlesque in tone ; particularly is this true in view of the fact that he did effect semi-burlesque creations in the character of Bessus (King and No King), 1608, of Pharamond (Philaster), 1610, and of Calianax (The Maid's Tragedy) J 1610. Thorndike would have it also that the allusion to the 'King of Moldavia' (4. 71) points to 1607 as the date of our play, since in Nichols' Progresses of King James the First 2. 157 it is re- corded that one Rowland White wrote from the court on Nov. 7 of that year : ' The Turke and the Prince of Moldavia are now going away.' But there is a similar allusion to the Prince of Moldavia, as to a former visitor to England, in Jonson's Epicoene 5. 1, which was not produced until 1609-10, as is proved by internal references to the plague of 1609^. The recollection of the eastern potentate's visit seems to have lasted at least two years. The evidence pro- duced by Boyle and Thorndike would really indicate 1609, at least, as the earliest possible date. An ad- ded indication to the same effect is that several of Old Merrythought's songs are founded on Ravens- croft's collections, Deuteromelia and Pammelia, which were both entered on the Stationers' Registers in 1609, though, as Thorndike justly remarks, these were col- lections of songs and snatches already familiar. But the date seems to be still further pushed for- ward by the apparent identity of 'the little child ' Cf. Epicoene, ed. Aurelia Henry (^Yale Studies in English), p. XXII. Date and Stage-History xiii that was so faire growne,' &c., (3. 304) and 'the boy of six years old,' &c., in Ben Jonson's Alchemist 5. 1, which appeared in 1610. I think we may reject as of very doubtful value Fleay's statement that 'the hermaphrodite' (3. 305) was no doubt 'the monstrous child' born 1609, July 31, at Sandwich (see S. R. 1609, Aug. 26, 31), which was probably shown in London 1609-10 '^ This is pure conjecture; in the Stationers' Registers there is no specification of a hermaphrodite, and we do not know that 'the monstrous child' was shown in London. On the other hand, a strong in- ternal evidence on the date of the play is pointed out by Fleay, and I am inclined to accept is as nearly conclusive. It rests in the Citizen's words: ''read the play of the Foure Prentices of London' (4. 66). That this play of Heywood's, though the earliest extant edition was printed in 1615, was previously issued from the press in 1610, is virtually proved by the author's preface, where he says that The Four Prentices could not have 'found a more seasonable and fit publication then at this time, when . . . they haue begun again the commendable practice of long for- gotten arms.' This is an allusion to the revival of the practice of arms in the Artillery Gardens, 1610, and to that revival as of very recent occurrence. If, as is indicated by this allusion. The Four Prentices was thus first pubHshed in 1610, the Citizen could only have directed his auditor to 'read' it in that or a succeeding year. > It must be acknowledged that there is one con- siderable difficulty in the way of establishing 1610 as the date. It is in the Citizen's statement, 'This seven yeares there hath beene playes at this house,' &c. * Fleay's discussion of the date is in his Biog. Chr. of the English Drama i. 182—5. xiv Introduction (Ind. 8). Mr. Fleay believes that play was acted by the Queen's Revels Children at Whitefriars ^, but there is no mention of a Whitefriars theatre as existent seven years before 1610. The first known record of the playhouse is in regard to its occupancy from 1607 to 1610 -. Frequent references in the play to children as its actors show that it was produced by a children's company, which fact, coupled with the reference to 'the seven yeares,' leads Thorndike to suggest its presentation either by the Queen's Revels at Black- friars during their seven years of occupancy of that theatre from 1600-1607, or by the Paul's boys during the period 1599-1606-7 (the years of their second organization) ; all of which circumstances are used by Thorndike to fix the date at 1607. However, there is nothing to warrant the supposition that the theatre to which the Citizen refers had been contin- uously occupied by children for seven years ; its early tenants may have been an adult company. It may, therefore, have been another theatre than Black- friars. Fleay's inference that the play was produced at (whitefriars, and therefore that that playhouse was in existence seven years before 1610 is indeed a conjecture, but it seems to me, in the light of other considerations supporting the 1610 date, not a violent one. ] At all events, there is nothing to dis- prove it, and it does not so positively invalidate the argument for 1610 as the facts above adduced in- validate the argument for 1607. The external evidence points explicitly to 1610 or 1611 as the date. In his dedicatory epistle to Robert Keysar, Burre, the publisher of the First Quarto, 1613, ^ Cf. Fleay, History of the Stage, pp. i86, 203. * Cf. Greenstreet, The Whitefriars Theatre in the Time of Shakspere (New Shaks. Soc. Trans., 1888). Date and Stage-History xv says that Keysar had previously sent him the play, ' yet being an infant and somewhat ragged,' and that he 'had fostred it priuately' in his 'bosome these two yeares.' Burre also writes, 'perhaps it will be thought to be of the race of Don Quixote ; we both may confidently sweare, it is his elder aboue ayeare.' [This allusion to Don Quixote is not to the Spanish original, 1605, which is too early a date for our play, but to Shelton's English translation of Part I, entered on the Stationers'' Eegisters ]a.n. 19, 1611, though dated on the printed copies 1612. Carrying the date back from 1612 'aboue a yeare,' we place it early in 1611 or late in 1610, which result agrees with Burre's statement that when he received it in 1611 it was still an 'infant' Its 'raggedness,' so far as this may be submitted in evidence at all, may perhaps indi- cate that the copy had been battered about suf- ficiently long to show that its origin was in 1610. It is still more closely drawn toward 1610 by the internal features, already named, which bear reference to that year. Thorndike does not attempt to over- throw the evidence of Burre's letter. He simply says : 'If we assume a 1607 date, we shall have to assume that Robert Keysar turned the play over to Burre a considerable time after its first production, and that Burre knew nothing personally of its first production.' This assumption of Burre's ignorance is arbitrary, and certainly based on an improbability. In brief, the collective indications, internal and ex- ternal, lead me to agree with Fleay in assigning the origin of the play to the year 1610 or 1611, and to regard the former as the more probable date. Records of the early stage- productions of 2'he Knight of the Burning Pestle are very meagre. That it met with a swift and decisive condemnation from xvi Introduction its first audience is certain. The publisher of the First QuartO; in his dedication to Robert Keysar, wrote : Sir, this vnfortunate child, who in eight daies (as lately I have learned) was begot and borne, soone after was by his parents ex- posed to the wide world, who for want of judgement, or not vnder- standing the priuy marke of Ironie about it (which shewed it was no ofspring of any vulgar braine) vtterly rejected it : so that for want of acceptance it was euen ready to giue vp the Ghost, and was in danger to haue bene smothered in perpetuall obliuion, if you (out of your direct antipathy to ingratitude) had not been moued both to relieue and cherish it. We can easily believe that the citizen spectators who damned the play on its first appearance were, indeed, not at all devoid of an understanding of 'the priuy marke of Ironie about it,' but, on the contrary, that their very consciousness of its incisive, scathing satire on their tastes and manners aroused their vig- orous hostility. It is unlikely that the rich and in- fluential tradesmen and their aggressive wives, who more and more under James I assumed a sort of dictatorship over the theatre, would have remained quiet at this open affront to their civic and personal pride, and this unsolicited, unsavory spicing of the literary and theatrical pabulum upon which they fed. Equally improbable is it that the roisterous London apprentices, who so frequently pla3'ed havoc at the theatre, would have brooked the ridicule cast upon them through the erratic behavior of their comrade Ralph. The sting of the satire must have penetrated deeply, and it must have been in the heat of an active resentment againt the play that the offended London commoners, as Burre tells us, 'vtterly re- jected it.' However that may be, the comedy seems to have disappeared from the boards for many years, and, in fact, not to have emerged to view until 1635, when it was entered on the list of plays at the Cockpit Date and Stage-History xvii Theatre. The title-page of the Second Quarto tells us that the play is therein reprinted 'as it is now acted by her Majestie's Servants at the Private house in Drury Lane. 1635.' (The Cockpit was frequently called 'the private house in Drury Lane.') That our play was known to the theatre-going pubhc in 1635 is proved, not only by the Second Quarto, but also by a passage, which I here trans- scribe, from Richard Brome's Sparagus Garden 2. 2, first acted in that year: Rebecca. I long to see a play, and above all plays, The Knight of the Btirning what d'ye call it ? Monylacke. The Knight of the Burning Pestle. Rebecca. Pestle is't ? I thought of another thing, but I would fain see it. They say there's a grocer's boy kills a giant in it, and another little boy that does a citizen's wife the daintiliest but I would fain see their best actor do me ; I would put him to't : ' I warrant him. ' Whether the revival of the play called forth a renewed expression of disapproval from the populace is not known. It is probable that, as given at the Cockpit, it was acted before aristocratic spectators, since that theatre was a 'private house,' and, as such, was resorted to by the more select gentry, by the nobility, and even by Queen Henrietta herself. Such an audience could have received with an amused composure impossible in a public theatre this delic- ious burlesque on^ the absurd pretentiousness and low tastes of the commoners. Whatever its reception at Drury Lane, the play seems to have met with favor in court circles, for in Sir Henry Herbert's MSS. is this item (of the year 1635-6) : The 28. Feb. The Knight of the Burning Pestle playd by the Qmen at St. James. In 1639 the ownership of The Knight of the Burning Pestle and 44 other plays, among them several of b xviii Introduction Beaumont and Fletcher's works, was secured by a company at the Cockpit known as ' Beeston's Boys,' which succeeded Her Majesty's Servants at that Theatre in 1637. No definite account of a stage- production of our play at this period is attainable, but that it must have been famihar to theatre-goers is evident from the allusion to it in Glapthorne's Wit in a Constable 2. 1, printed in 1640 'as lately acted at the Cockpit in Drury lane, by their Majestie's Servants,' i. e. 'Beeston's Boys,' who sometimes were given that title. In this play, Clare, niece to Alder- man Covet, objects to a match which her uncle is trying to force upon her. She says to him : Nor shall you (As sure tis your intention) marry me To th' quondam fare-man of your shop, (exalted To be your Cash-keeper) a limber fellow Fit onely for deare Nan, his schoole-fellow, A Grocer's daughter, borne in Broad-street, with Whom he used to goe to Pimblie's — And by the way has courted her with fragments, Stolen from the learned Legends of Knight Errants, Or from the glory of her father's trade, The Knight o'the Burfiing Pestle. Since the play was appropriated by 'Beeston's Boys' in 1639, it is probable that it was acted by them from time to time, but there is no further record of it until after the Restoration. Malone (in Boswell 3. 275), gives a list of plays from Sir Henry Herbert's MSS. in the order of their reappearance after 1660. According to this list, The Knight of the Burning Pestle was acted on May 5, 1662, but none of the circum- stances of the event are recorded. Malone says, in connection with this table : Such was the lamentable taste of those times that the plays of Fletcher, Jonson, and Shirley were much oftener exhibited than those of our author, Date and Stage-History xix i. e. Shakespeare. Indeed, Beaumont and Fletcher enjoyed an enormous vogue during the Restoration period. Dryden's statement in An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, 1668, regarding their popularity, is often quoted. He says : Their plays are now the most pleasant and frequent entertainments of the stage ; two of theirs being acted through the year for one of Shakespeare's or Johnson's : the reason is, because there is a certain gaiety in their comedies, and pathos in their more serious plays, which suits generally with all men's humours. It would be unsafe to assert that The Knight of the Burning Pestle was received with pronounced favor, since its vigorous humor is essentially different from the kind of 'gaiety' which made its authors' other comedies acceptable to the artificial and languid society of the Restoration. The play continued to be acted, however. Gerard Langbaine, writing in An Account of the English Dra- matic Poets, 1691, says : Knight of the Burning Pestle^ a Comedy. This play was in vogue some years since, it being reviv'd by the King's House, and a new Prologue (instead of the old one in prose) being spoken by Mrs. Ellen Guin. Genest remarks that this revival must have taken place before 1671, since in that year the King's house, that is, the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, was des- troyed by fire. The Ellen Gwyn mentioned by Lang- baine was the beautiful, but notorious, actress, more generally known as Nell Gwyn, who became the mistress of Charles 11. No doubt she did proper justice to her part in our play. She spoke prologues and epilogues with wonderful effect, danced to perfection, and in her peculiar but not extensive line was, perhaps, unequaled for the natural feeling which she put into the parts most suited to her'. ^ Doran, English Stage i. 62. b2 XX Introduction The last presentation of our play in the seventeenth century, so far as I have discovered, was in 1682. According to Genest^, it was acted that year at the Theatre Royal, which had been restored in 1674. After 1682 the play seems to have sunk into an oblivion more profound and lasting than that to which its earliest auditors consigned it. Many of the other productions of its authors held their vogue through the whole of the eighteenth century, and a few of them, notably The Maid's Tragedy, were occasionally acted, with alterations, during the early part of the nineteenth century. But The Knight of the Burning Pestle, as a stage-performance, was forgotten. This was inevitable, after the manners which it depicts had become obsolete, and the literary and theatrical sing- ularities which it burlesques had become foreign to the knowledge of general audiences. The old comedy seems to have slept between its book-covers for over two hundred years. So far as I am aware, it has been only recently revived, and, moreover, only in America. Five presentations of it have been given in this country within the last dec- ade, two at Yale University, one in New York City, one at Stanford University, and one in Chicago. The first of these performances was accomplished on March 28, 1898, by graduate students in English at Yale, being the outgrowth of a Seminary in the Jacobean Drama^. It was witnessed chiefly by the officers of the English department, but proved to be so successful that it was repeated before a wider audience in Warner Hall, New Haven, on April 29, 1898. The comedy was enthusiastically received by a general audience in New York City, March 26, * Genest, English Stage i. 348. * This Seminary was conducted by Professor Cook. Authorship xxi 1901, when it was acted by students of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts at the Empire Theatre. These several presentations approximated a reproduc- tion of the old-time settings and environments of the stage. A more complete realization of the Elizabethan setting, however, was effected at Stanford University in March, 1903, when the comedy was set forth by students on an improvised Elizabethan stage. This structure was modeled in part on the stage of the Swan Theatre as represented in a rough drawing of its interior made about 1596 by Johannes de Witt, a Dutch visitor to London. The last recorded pro- duction of the play was given on Dec. 19, 1905, in Chicago, by pupils of the School of Acting of the Chicago Musical College. The chosen stage in Chicago was that of the Studebaker Theatre. It also was set to resemble as nearly as possible de Witt's drawing of the Swan Theatre. C. Authorship. The authorship of The Knight of the Burning Pestle is a matter of dispute. It is questioned whether the comedy was composed by one or by both of the playwrights to which it is attributed, and, if by both, whether Beaumont or Fletcher was the principal workman. For the determination of this problem, it is here practicable merely to adopt the methods of solution which have been formulated by the critics for the detection of single or double authorship in other debatable plays traditionally ascribed to the collaboration of the dramatists, and for the severance of their individual shares in plays of which the double authorship is undoubted. Throughout the investigations, the external proofs xxii Introduction fall into two general groups chronological and doc- umentary. Chronologically, Beaumont could have written, wholly or partially, only those plays which originated before 1616 the year of his death. Docu- ments bearing upon the problem are of little value : prefatory verses, prologues, dedications, and title- pages assign the plays to Beaumont and to Fletcher, singly and conjointly, and are filled with contra- dictions and inaccuracies. Manifestly, the internal proofs form the surest basis of judgment, subject, wherever possible, of course, to the regulative weight of dates. The internal tests whereby Beaumont and Fletcher's editors made their apportionments have been chiefly literary. As such, their eifectiveness depended upon the critic's personal power of discerning differences in quality between plays known to have been written by the dramatists separately, and the subsequent application of his results to the apportionment of plays in which they may have collaborated. A more closely critical and scientific investigation was begun in 1874 by F. G.Fleay in a paper entitled Metrical Tests as applied to Fletcher^ Beaumont^ and Massinger, which was read before the New Shakespeare Society. This system of metrical inquiry has since been elaborated and improved by R. Boyle, G. C. Macaulay, and E. N. Oliphant. Through the successive experiments, a critical canon has been developed, which is a fairly reliable instrument for the solution of this problem of authorship. It is necessary to our purpose to summarize only the methods of the metrical critics, since, latterly at least, they have absorbed all that is of value in the purely literary tests, and have added the positive scientific data essential to proof In his study of those of Fletcher's plays which Authorship xxiii were written after the death of Beaumont, Fleay discovered the following metrical peculiarities : 1. A very large number of double or feminine endings. 2. Frequent pauses at the end of the lines. 3. Moderate use of rimes. 4. Moderate use of short lines. 5. Complete absence of prose. 6. An abundance of trisyllabic feet. With these criteria, Fleay proceeded to examine the doubtful plays, i. e. those produced before Beau- mont's death. He applied to them the test of Fletcher's metrical peculiarities, and those of Beaumont in one of the latter's confessedly independent productions, viz. the first half of Four Plays in One. He discovered that the distinguishing marks of Beaumont's metre, as determined by this play, are as follows : 1. A relatively small use of double endings. 2. The frequent employment of rimes. 3. Occasional incompleteness in the lines. 4. Run-on lines. 5. Use of prose. Boyle, in his articles entitled Beaumont, Fletcher , and Massinger, in Englische Studien, Bande V-VIIL, practically adopted Fleay's tests, and added the test of the light and weak endings prevalent in Fletcher's verse. He laid particular emphasis upon double end- ings, because of the far greater proportion of such endings in Fletcher's acknowledged plays over plays of Beaumont's sole or partial authorship. G. C. Macaulay, in his Francis Beaumont., 1883, and E. H. Oliphant, in The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, Englische Studien, Band XIV., continued the investiga- tion of metre. They found, as did their predecessors, especial significance in Fletcher's use of redundant xxiv Introduction syllables in all parts of the line, but particularly at the end ; his rise of emphasis in end-pauses, even upon weak syllables ; and the absence of prose. Con- versely, they found the plays to which Beaumont con- tributed distinguished by an unrestricted freedom in the use of run-on lines, though with a comparative freedom from redundancy, and by prose passages not requiring dignified expression. They broadened, however, the scope of differentiation. They recog- nized that metrical characteristics are an outgrowth of the matter, and of the general style of expression. That is, they united literary and metrical consid- erations of the plays. Proceeding upon this basis, they discovered that Fletcher's looseness of metre corresponds to a looseness in sentence-structure and plot, and to a certain shallowness and instability in the mental and moral temperament of the dramatist ; on the other hand, that the regularity of metre in Beaumont is accompanied by the periodic or rounded style of speech, approximate regularity and effec- tiveness of plot, depth in the general conception, rich powers of humorous characterization, tragic power of a high order, and a large degree of moral earnestness. One specific quality attributed to Beau- mont is his faculty for burlesque, an element which nowhere appears in Fletcher's independent work. Let us now consider how the various sorts of evid- ence point to the authorship of The Knight of the Burning Pestle. The title-page of the First Quarto bears the date of 1613. This is definite proof that the play originated during the years when col- laboration was possible. Other external evidences are inconclusive. In the dedication prefixed to the First Quarto, Burre, the publisher, speaks of the parents of the play, but he also speaks twice of its Authorship xxv father, thus leaving the matter of single or double authorship doubtful. In the address 'To the Readers of this Comedy,' prefixed to the quarto of 1635, we are told that the ^Author had no intent to wrong any one in this Comedy,' but the title-page bears the names of both dramatists. In the Prologue of this edition, the words 'Authors intention' may point to either single or double authorship, because of the omission of the apostrophe. Dyce suggests that if the play was really written in eight days, as Burre states it to have been, the probabilities are that more than one hand was engaged upon it. The external evidences, however, are so incomplete and contra- dictory that they do not satisfactorily bear out any theory of authorship. It is necessary, then, to refer to the play's internal features for evidence of real value. Fleay did not apply his metrical tests at all closely to this comedy, and made a worthless division, giving Beaumont all the prose, and declaring the rest 'mixed.' Boyle reduced the results of his study of the play to the form of a chart, in which he attempted to designate the authorship of every scene in Weber's divisions of the acts. He disregarded the Induction, the scat- tered songs, and the remarks of the Citizen and the Wife. In the body of the play, he found the dis- tinguishing marks of the style to exist in the follow- ing proportions: prose, 473 lines; verse, 1152 lines; double endings, 268 ; run-on lines, 205 ; Hght endings, 8 ; weak endings, 1 ; rimes, 270. In percentages, the verse amounts to 23. 2 in double endings ; 18 in run- on lines ; 0. 7 in light endings ; 23. 4 in rimes. Boyle did not attempt to determine the dramatists' pro- portionate shares in the prose, but formed the follow- ing summary upon the basis of the verse : i Introduction Beaumont's Part. Verse d. e. r. 0. 1. 1. e 544 44 86 4 Per cent. 8 16 — Fletcher's Part. 608 224 119 4 Per cent. 36.8 19.5 — rhy. 58 212 34-8 Macaulay and Oliphant did not give detailed study to the authorship of the play. Macaulay simply wrote : From internal evidence we should be disposed to attribute the play- to a single writer ; and we can have little hesitation in ascribing it to that one of our authors of whom the mock-heroic style is charac- teristic *. He accordingly attributed the play wholly to Beau- mont. Oliphant reached the same conclusion. He wrote : It is, in my opinion, wholly or almost wholly his. Every scene shows traces of his hand, though the latter part of V. 4 may belong to Fletcher, who may also have revised II. 2. But I cannot think Fletcher would be contented with writing only a part of two scenes ; and, as there is nothing in the play that might not be Beaumont's, I must give it wholly to the latter*. Now, through the application of such standards of judgment as are supplied to me by the critical meth- ods outlined above, and by my personal impres- sions of Beaumont and Fletcher, I have concluded that Boyle gave too much, and Macaulay and Oli- phant too little of the credit of this play's compo- sition to Fletcher. It is not necessary here to write a critique upon all of Fletcher's peculiarities as mani- fested in his independent plays ; suffice it to say that, to my mind, these peculiarities are demonstrably present in The Ktiight of the Burning Pestle in the scenes, though only in the scenes, which develop ' Fra7icis Beatonont^ p. 82. ' The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher. Englische Sttcdien, Band XIV, p. 88. Authorship xxvii the love-adventures of Luce and Jasper. The love- theme is, indeed, of so conventional a sort that either dramatist might have projected it as a mere piece of hack work, but whatever characterization and dis- tinguishing features of plot it contains are in Fletcher's manner. The love of Luce and Jasper is, to be sure, purer than that usually conceived by Fletcher, but it is marked by the colorless sentimentality which is always present when he tries to depict a virtuous passion, while its insipidity is unrelieved by the poetic beauty infused by Beaumont (as the critics generally agree) into Bellario's love-lornness and Aspatia's repining moods. Again, Luce is of the same mold as Fletcher's heroines in her weak and unresisting submission to the feigned assaults of Jasper (3. 107-114) and in her tearful tributes to the memory of her lord and persecutor (4. 277-315). Fletcher's women, in his independent plays, are almost invariably either wholly vicious, or passively and im- perturbably meek. No one will hesitate in the classi- fication of Luce. So far as her relations with Jasper are concerned, she is the personification of meekness, and of a false and badly motived devotion. More- over, she nowhere exhibits either the resourceful, but virtuous, sagacity of Aspatia, or the strong self- assertion, combating with a sense of duty, which animates Evadne, or the genuine and inspiriting, if excessive, devotion of Euphrasia -Bellario three female characters in the early plays in whose deline- ation their creator, presumably Beaumont, has shown an insight into woman's nature of a truth and subtlety nowhere manifested by Fletcher singly, and not ap- proached in the portrayal of Luce. I feel, too, that Jasper's pointless and unprovoked trial of Luce's fidelity (3. 73-99), and the sensational xxviii Introduction entrances and exits of the lovers in the coffin (4. 268-351) are forced, irrational and melodramatic de- vices, which are akin to the many similar offenses in Fletcher's later dramas, but which are not notice- ably paralleled in the plays originating before Beau- mont's death. This ascription of the love-scenes to Fletcher is borne out by a metrical analysis. In the first of them (1. 1-65) more than half the lines contain double endings, the distiguishing mark of Fletchers verse. In the second (3. 1-150), the proportion of double endings is small (34 out of 104 verses), but, also, there are only 19 run-on lines, which scarcity is indicative of Fletcher, and only 18 rimes; these latter, being spoken by Humphrey, are, I think, added by Beaumont. In the coffin-scene, 48 of the 104 lines have double endings, only 18 are run-on, and there are no rimes. In this apportionment of Fletcher's share I agree with Boyle. I see no reason, however, for his addi- tional ascriptions to Fletcher. They consist of all the scenes, exclusive of Act 5, in which Humphrey appears, and seem to be founded on the fact that these contain a fair proportion of double-ending rimes ; but, as Oliphant points out, Boyle should have noted that these rimes are not (or very, very rarely) to be found in Fletcher, while they are not uncommon in Beaumont's burlesque. All of the play, exclusive of the love-scenes, I should, in the absence of sufficient evidence pointing to Fletcher's authorship, assign to Beaumont, A large part of it, some 1500 lines indeed, is in prose, and Fletcher's complete disuse of prose after his partner's death argues that Beaumont was the chief, if not the only, employer of it in the early plays. Authorship xxix Judging from metrical considerations, almost all of the verse might reasonably be assigned to Beaumont. Only 23,2 per cent, of the verses contains double endings, and this is but little more than the 20 per cent, which, according to Oliphant, represents Beau- mont's average proportion of such endings a wide distance from the 70 per cent, in Fletcher. The 18 per cent, in run-on lines fairly represents Beaumont's liking for that metrical form. The proportion of rimes, a feature totally absent from Fletcher's inde- pendent plays, is 23.4 per cent.! The test of Beaumont's general literary qualities, when applied to this piece, leads to the same con- clusion as the metrical test. Beaumont's more serious attributes, of course, have no place in this rollicking comedy. His lighter, but none the less sound and deeply sympathetic, moods nowhere find a better exemplification. The prose passages are used for the exploitation of his gift for broad and easy caricature. The wholesome and genuine humor there resident in the conception of the Citizen and the Wife, of Ralph, and of the Merrythought family, has no coun- terpart in Fletcher's drama. The essence of Fletcher's comedy is merely the wit of fashionable repartee, a skilful and amusing battle of words. The humor of The Knight of the Burning Pestle is inwrought with the cardinal absurdities of human nature itself; it is vital and pervasive. The tendency to burlesque, which the later critics with one accord regard as peculiar to Beaumont, here finds the fullest possible exercise. Metrically, it is developed in the nonsensical rimes of Humphrey, and the swelling pentameters of Ralph. Beaumont had elsewhere exercised his faculty for burlesque characterization in The Woman Hater and The Triumph XXX Introduction of Honour, two acknowledged productions of his pen, and it was later to be reflected, in some sense, in the creation of Calianax, in The Maid's Tragedy, and of Bessus, in King and No King. In The Knight of the Burning Pestle it found its amplest expression. Manifestly the regular, and hence somewhat formal, structure of Beaumont's verse was more appropiate for the mock-heroic than was Fletcher's semi-collo- quial metre, and if there were no other grounds for crediting Beaumont with the present play, this would be significant. Macaulay sa5'^s : The true burlesque or mock heroic, a perfectly legitimate weapon of the satirist when used to make absurdity more laughable, and not to bring noble and serious things to the level of a vulgar taste, uses nat- urally the grand as distinguished from the familiar style of expression ; accordingly Fletcher, the master of the latter style, is the last person from whom we should expect the burlesque, which delights in sonorous lines and flowing periods. . . . We find hardly a touch of it in any of the work which we have attributed to Fletcher alone, while of that which was produced during the lifetime of the younger poet it is always a noticeable feature*. In coming to my conclusion upon the authorship of The Knight of the Burning Pestle, I have been fully conscious of the insecuHty, on the one hand, of the results of a fixed mechanical test as applied to the infinitely flexible and various nature of literary ex- pression, and, on the other, of the insecurity of a private judgment in such a matter, except as it is grounded on a positive scientific basis. But I can heartily espouse Oliphant's opinion of the mutually confirmatory value of these two sorts of criticism when properly associated. He says : With regard to these plays, I cannot trust any division of them . . . that has no better warrant than the proof afforded by the verse-tests; but I do think such tests give on the whole good confirmation of the correctness of views based on knowledge of the general style of the various dramatists*. * Francis Beaumont^ p. 60. * The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher . Englische ^^wtf/^w, Band XIV, p.54. Analogues and Attributed Sources xxxi It is because of a faith in the approximate relia- biUty of the conjoined methods that, with Httle hesi- tation, I ascribe the whole of The Knight of the Burning Pestle to Beaumont, with the exception of the three specified scenes which are devoted to the love-episodes. These I attribute to Fletcher. D. Analogues and Attributed Sources. In its conception, The Knight of the Burning Pestle is in a marked and peculiar sense original. Its place among the dramas of its age is unique and unap- proached. In its function as a burlesque, it is the only complete embodiment of a new dramatic type, and, from its very nature, is independent of the lead- ing theatrical and literary tendencies of its day, to all of which, indeed, it in some degree runs counter. Unlike the typical plays of its own authors, of Shake- speare, or of the other romanticists, it does not lift into finished dramatic expression some theme bor- rowed from heroic or popular legend ; on the con- trary, though its burlesque is by no means inclusive of the whole of romantic lore, its appropriations from the literature familiar to the times are made, not be- cause of their dramatic adaptability, but for the sake of exposing their inherent absurdities to open view. Unlike a typical play of Ben Jonson, the stalwart defender of tradition and law against a flood of in- novation, it is in no sense the expression of a dra- matic theory, nor is it a labored, arbitrary judgment upon the literary and social standards which it dis- avows ; on the contrary, its designedly loose, hit-or- miss construction, though resultant in a new form and a type all its own, is, in so far, an abnegation of form in the Jonsonian sense, while its satire is implicit in its material, not imposed by an eccentric XXX ii Introduction and biased censor from without. Most of all, it is unlike the innumerable stage-productions of a meaner order, designed to attract the uncultured London middle-class with flattering displays of the deeds of their eminent representatives, or to please their childish fancy with some pompous but absurd extravaganza ; on the contrary, it depicts these untutored, but ego- tistical tradesmen, and their theatrical tastes, not for the sake of honoring them, but of exposing them to a salutary ridicule and reproof. In a word, its spirit is essentially the spirit of burlesque and the mock-heroic, and, as such, it is irreverent of tradition, of its literary material, and of its public. Since the play is a satire on a whole class of so- ciety and a whole species of literature, its constituent episodes are typically reflective ; they are, therefore, drawn merely from the general nature of its objects, and cannot be traced to specific and assignable origins. The search for its sources, then, in the ordinary sense of that word, would seem to be futile from the outset. All that can be attempted with security is to adduce such parallelisms from the ro- mances of chivalr}^ and elsewhere as may serve to illustrate the satirical pertinence of the plot, always with the fact in mind that the various episodes in the play are coincident with similar themes in the romances rather than, in any certain sense, derivative from them. This study will also involve the exam- ination of certain attributions of sources for the play which have been more or less emphathically made ever since its first appearance. 1. The Romances of Chivalry and Don Quixote. It is an assertion which is frequently encountered, and which, so far as I know, has never been con- Analogues and Attributed Sources xxxiii tradicted, that Beaumont drew his idea for The Knight of the Burning Pestle, and much of his material, directly from Don Quixote, Now, of course, the community in spirit between the play and Cervantes' great bur- lesque is so apparent that he who runs may read. The objects of their satire are the same ; their meth- ods of developing a humorous situation through bringing into ludicrous juxtaposition the common- place realities of life and the high-flying idealisms of knight-errantry are the same ; and, moreover, a few of the incidents are remarkably alike. But these similarities are the natural outcome of allied purposes in the two works ; they do not of themselves argue any interdependence whatever. To prove that Beau- mont fashioned his play upon the novel would involve the necessity of proving that he could not have drawn the hint for his episodes from the ro- mances of chivalry themselves quite as easily as from Don Quixote, and that his burlesque conception could not have been original Moreover, it would be necessary to show that he was acquainted with the Spanish language, for in 1610, the date of the play's composition, he could have read the novel only in the original, since the first English translation was not printed until 1612. Let us examine these difficulties standing in the way of the assumption that Don Quixote is the source of our play. The large indebtedness of Beaumont and Fetcher to Spanish literature is undeniable. According to Miss O. L. Hatcher^, the latest investigator to publish a treatment on the dramatists' sources, ' of the thirty- four plays whose sources are already known, either entirely or in part, seventeen draw upon Spanish material.' Within this number, however, the author ^ J^ohn Fletcher, A Study in Dra77iatic Method^ I905) P- 47- xxxiv Introduction includes The Knight of the Burning Pestle. Setting aside this ascription for the moment, the remaining sixteen plays can be shown to have been derived from Spanish works which were, at the time of the play's composition, existent in English or French translations^. They cannot, therefore, be adduced as evidence that Beaumont and Fletcher knew Spanish. It remains to examine the possibility of their having known the Spanish original oi Don Quixote. A pointed, though of course not conclusive, evidence that they did not know this original is the statement of Burre, the first publisher of The Knight of the Burning Pestle : Perhaps it will be thought to bee of the race of Dcfti Quixote : we both may confidently swear, it is his elder aboue a yeere ; and therefore may (by vertue of his birth-right) challenge the wall of him. As I have elsewhere shown, Burre alludes to Shel- ton's English translation of Don Quixote, which ap- peared in 1612, and to the fact that our play was written in 1611 or 1610. Manifestly the publisher was not aware of the authors' possessing any knowl- edge of Spanish, and he emphatically denies any dependence of the play upon Don Quixote. Of course, Burre may not have been fully informed as to the dramatists' linguistic attainments, and his denial of the alleged source cannot be taken as proof; but in the absence of any positive evidence to support the opposite contention, its significance must be rec- ognized. There is absolutely nothing to show that Beaumont and Fletcher knew Spanish, and in discus- sions of the matter the burden of proof rests upon those who assert that they did know it ; moreover, those who make this assertion must meet the difficulty of disproving the presumptive evidence that the * Dr. Rudolph Schevill of Yale University has kindly informed me of this fact. Analogues and Attributed Sources xxxv dramatists drew their Spanish plots from EngHsh and French translations. Of the details of this evidence I am not exactly informed^, but so far as regards The Knight of the Burning Pestle, I have become con- fident, after careful examination, that its authors wrote it in complete independence of its accredited source, Bon Quixote. This independence is witnessed by the significant omission of some of the most salient features of the Spanish novel, and, more positively still, by a resemblance between the play's episodes and the romances which is demonstrably greater than that between the play and Bon Quixote. I shall now set forth these parallelisms in some detail. It will be best to list the features in Bon Quixote and the play which are approximately coincident, and then to consider the assumed dependence of the play upon the novel in view of the larger area of chivalric romance itself. The most specific exposition of the Bon Quixote theory was made in 1885 by Dr. Leonhardt, who published at Annaberg, Germany, in that year, a monograph entitled Uher Beaumont und Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle^ in which he set forth the following parallels between the play and the novel : a. Ralph's adoption of a squire : Don Quixote's en- gagement of Sancho Panza. b. Ralph's rescue of Mistress Merrythought : Don Quixote's rescue of the Biscayan lady. c. Ralph's adventures at the inn : Don Quixote's similar adventures at an inn. d. The barber's basin : the ' helmet of Mambrino.' e. The liberation of the barber's patients : the lib- eration of the galley-slaves. ^ Again, I have depended upon the conclusions of Dr. Schevill, who has made a careful study of the question. xxxvi Introduction f. Ralph's fidelity to Susan before Pompiona : Don Quixote's fidelity to Dulcinea before Maritornes. g. The conception of Susan : the conception of Dulcinea del Toboso. Now when The Knight of the Burning Pestle and Don Quixote are compared without reference to the ro- mances which are the common object of their bur- lesque, some of these resemblances are undeniably strong ; but others are trivial, and all of them are deprived of significance when set beside the more striking parallels to the play to be found within the romances themselves, or when set against the differ- ences between the play and the novel in their local backgrounds. Let us examine Leonhardt's points in the above order. a. The Adoption of a Squire. In Act 1, 1. 289 Ralph says : Haue you heard of any that hath wandered vnfurnished of his squire and dwarf? My elder prentice Tim shall be my trusty squire, and little George my dwarf. Leonhardt calls up Don Quixote's engagement of Sancho Panza as his squire (Bk. 1, chap. 7), and cites it as evidence of the play's dependence on the novel. As a matter of fact, the situations involved are en- tirely dissimilar. Ralph is merely a swaggering pren- tice-boy, who is fully conscious of playing a part, and, out of his knowledge of knight-errantry, claps up a swift bargain, whereby his two underlings in the grocer's shop become his chivalric attendants. Don Quixote, on the other hand, is a deluded old visionary, who enters upon his harebrained undertak- ing in perfect seriousness, and who, moreover, has to dicker a long time with his slow-witted neighbor before he can persuade him to the enterprise. Be- yond these differences, there is the widest imaginable Analomes and Attributed Sources "■S contrast between the sprightly juvenile errants who follow Ralph, and the ponderous and unwilling Sancho, Moreover, Don Quixote desires only a squire, while Ralph calls for a squire and a dwarf. This notion of a double attendance could not have been derived from Don Quixote. It was taken directly from the romances. An illustration of it may be found, for example, in Amadis of Gaul and Palmerin de Oliva, two continental romances which had become exceed- ingly popular in England through Anthony Munday's translation of the first two books of the former in 1595, and of the whole of the latter in 1588-97. There is continual mention of Amadis' squire, Gan- dalin, and his dwarf, Ardian. Palmerin de Oliva's only constant attendant is his dwarf, Urbanillo, but he is also accompanied, on certain occasions, by one, and sometimes more than one, esquire. A con- spicuous example is to be found in Part 1, chap. 16. Palmerin is preparing to go forth to slay a horrible serpent, when he is addressed by the Princess Aris- mena : I shall yet desire you, said tiie Princess, that for my sake you will take with you three Esquires which I will give you, which may send you succour if any inconvenience should befall you. Then she called the Esquires, and presented them unto him. . . . Then he commanded the Esquires and his Dwarfe Urbanillo.^ to expect his return at the foot of the Mountaine. The passage is typical, and is far more nearly par- allel to the situation in our play than is Don Quixote. One may reject, then, as untenable, Leonhardt's assumption that the conception of Ralph's squire and dwarf was inspired by that of Sancho Panza. These characters bear no significant likeness to their ac- credited prototype ; on the contrary, they present a marked disparity to him. The only analogous figures are to be found in the romances themselves. In the xxxviii Introduction persons of Tim and George, Beaumont is merely bur- lesquing one of the recurrent features of the romantic machinery, and I see no reason for doubting that he is so doing in complete independence of Cervantes. b. The Bescue of Mrs. Merrythought. Near the be- ginning of Act 2 (1. 105), Ralph enters Waltham Forest in search of adventures, and there chances upon Mrs. Merrythought and little Michael. The poor woman is naturally frightened at the grotesque ap- pearance of the supposititious knight, and is made to cry out : ' Oh, Michael, we are betrayed, we are betra3'ed ! here be giants ! Fly, boy ! fly, boy, fly ! ' She runs out with Michael, leaving a casket of jewels behind her. Ralph immediately assumes that the boy is some ' uncourteous knight,' from whose embrace a ' gentle lady ' is flying, and swears to rescue her. He overtakes Mrs. Merrythought, and learns of the loss of the casket, upon the quest of which he straightway sets out, but he is soon diverted from the quest by the adventure on behalf of Humphrey, and later by his combat with the barber-giant. Leonhardt asserts, without vouchsafing the slightest reason for so doing, that this episode originated from Don Quixote's chivalrous defense of a lady in Bk. 1, chap. 7. It will be recalled that, in the Spanish novel, two peaceable friars of St. Benet's order are traveling along a highroad, followed by a coach in which rides a certain Biscayan lady, of whom, however, they are unconscious. Don Quixote, espying them, calls out to his squire : Either I am deceived, or else this will prove the most famous ad- venture that hath been seen ; for these two great black hulks, which appear there, are, questionless, enchanters, that steal or carry sway perforce, some princess in that coach ; and therefore I must, with all my power, undo that wrong ^. ^ Shelton's trans. Analogues and Attributed Sources xxxix Therewith the deranged old hidalgo sets upon the friars, who, as soon as they are able, take to their heels in terror. The Don then becomes embroiled with one of the Biscayan lackeys, who objects to this stoppage of the progress of his mistress. Don Quixote overcomes his opponent in the fight, and grants him his life only on condition that he go and offer his services to the Lady Dulcinea. It ought to be perfectly patent that there is no necessary connection whatever between these epi- sodes. There is no similarity of sufficient importance to warrant the supposition that the one suggested the other. Their qualifying features, their develop- ments, and their issues are totally unlike. They are allied only in the fact that their creators are both turning into ridicule one of the most persistent motives to be found in chivalric romance the interminable rescues of ' gentle ladies ' who find themselves in distressing predicaments through the wiles of ' un- courteous knights ' and wicked enchanters. I see no reason for assuming, on the basis of mere corres- pondence in purpose, that Beaumont derived a typical romantic theme like this from a dissimilar development of the theme in Cervantes, or, for that matter, that he had ever heard of Cervantes' episode. The significant outcome of Ralph's meeting with Mrs. Merrythought is the ' great venture of the purse and the rich casket.' It should be remarked that there are no ' adventures of the casket ' in Don Quixote. Here, again, our comedy is dependent directly upon the romances, wherein such quests are not infrequent. Since Palmerin de Oliva is shown, from the definite allusions to it, to have been prominently in Beaumont's mind as an object of the burlesque, it is possible that Mrs. Merrythought's ill luck is suggested by the xl Introduction incidents in chap. 21 of that book, which relates ' how Palmerin and Ptolome met with a Damosell, who made great mone for a Casket which two Knights had forcibly taken from her, and what happened to them.' ' What happened to them,' of course, was their complete overthrow by the avenging knights, who restored the stolen treasure to its lamenting owner. This derivation, however, is a conjecture of my own. It is more likely, according to my interpretation of the play, that here again Beaumont is merely hitting off a typical feature of the narrative machinery common to all the romances, and that no specific incident is assignable as his source. c. The Inn-scenes. Ralph's adventures at the inn in Waltham must be acknowledged to bear a striking resemblance to certain features of similar incidents in Don Quixote, and to be without a close parallel in the romances. This being the case, it is a natural conjecture that Beaumont here had Cervantes in mind. Let us, however, examine these analogous situations somewhat closely. It will be remembered that Don Quixote, when he first sallies forth on adventures, comes to an inn, which he feigns to himself as 'a castle with four turrets, whereof the pinnacles were of glistering silver, without omitting the drawbridge, deep fosse, and other adherents belonging to the like places ' (Bk. 1, chap. 2). The host at this tavern quickly sees the mental condition of his guest, and gives him lodging without charges. A closer parallel to Ralph's adventures at the Bell Inn is to be found in the first three chapters of Bk. 3. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza chance upon an inn, which to the Don straightway becomes a won- drous castle, but which the squire stoutly maintains Analogues and Attributed Sources xli to be an inn, and only an inn. During their sojourn at this hostelry, the knight becomes involved in a number of strange adventures which have no coun- terpart in our play. The parallel resides, first, in the fact that Don Quixote imagines the inn to be a castle, just as George, the dwarf (2, 397-8), feigns before our errant adventurers to have discovered, not a stone's cast off. An ancient Castle held by the old Knight Of the most holy order of the Bell ; and secondly, in the corresponding manner in which the two heroes receive the reckoning of their hosts for the night's lodging. Both Don Quixote and Ralph offer profuse thanks for their entertainment : And, being both mounted thus a-horseback [i. e. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza], he called the innkeeper, and said unto him, with a grave and staid voice : ' Many and great are the favours, sir constable, which I have received in this your castle, and do remain most obliged to gratify you for them all the days of my life.' With this, compare Ralph's speech to ' the knight of the most holy order of the Bell ' (3. 160-3) : We render thankes to your puissant self. Your beauteous Lady, and your gentle squires, For thus refreshing of our wearied limbs. Stiffened with hard achievements in wild desert. This close correspondence might seem forcibly indicative of the play's dependence upon the novel ; but the speeches of Ralph, as above, are filled with the stock phrases of Munday's translations, which do not belong to the language of Don Quixote; while, in their developments, the episodes diverge from each other radically. Don Quixote offers to recom- pense the favors accorded him in these words : And if I may pay or recompense them by revenging of you upon any proud miscreant that hath done you any wrongs, know that it is mine office to help the weak, to revenge the wronged, and to chastise xlii Introduction traitors. Call therefore to memory, and if you find anything of this kind to commend to my correction, you need not but once to say it ; for I do promise you, by the order of knighthood which I have re- ceived, to satisfy and apay you according to your own desire. There is no resemblance to this offer in Ralph's pro- posal (3. 185-8): But to requite this liberal curtesie. If any of your squires will follow arms. He shall receive from my heroic hand A knighthood, by the virtue of this pestle. In each case, the host insists upon payment, but Ralph pretends to ignore the bill, as though it were a matter unintelligible to him. It is very apparent that here again Ralph is fully conscious of playing a part, and that his steady obtuseness is due to his excess of histrionic zeal. The poor old Don, on the other hand, awakens to a realization that he has been mistaken about his surroundings. Upon the host's urging his suit for the charges, ' This, then, is an inn ? ' quoth Don Quixote. ' That it is, and an honorable one too, ' replied the innkeeper. ' Then have I hitherto lived in an error,' quoth Don Quixote, 'for, in very good sooth, I took it till now to be a castle, and that no mean one neither. ' The situations diverge still further in their final outcomes. In the novel, there is no payment at all. Don Quixote appeals to the immemorial right of knights-errant to partake of entertainment without cost. ' All that concerns me nothing, ' replied the innkeeper. ' Pay unto me thy due, and leave these tales and knighthoods apart ; for I care for nothing else but how I may come by my own. ' ' Thou art a mad and a bad host, ' quoth Don Quixote. And, saying so, he spurred Rozinante, and flourishing with his javelin, he issued out of the inn in despite of them all, and, without looking behind him to see once whether his squire followed, he rode a good way off from it. Thereupon the innkeeper applies to Sancho Panza for the money, who refuses to give it, pleading that 'the very same rule and reason that exempted his master from payments in inns and taverns ought also Analogues and Attributed Sources xliii to serve and be understood as well of him. ' As a result of his unresponsiveness, Sancho is tossed in a blanket, and his wallets are taken from him as the only available return for the lodging. In The Knight of the Burning Pestle the solution of the difficulty is wholly unlike this, and is assuredly unique. The Knight of the Bell Inn, in a manner more courteous, though not less insistent, than that of Don Quixote's host, says (3. 189-191) : Fair knight, I thank you for your noble offer : Therefore, gentle knight. Twelve shillings you must pay, or I must cap you. Thereupon, Ralph's solicitous master, the onlooking grocer, who fears that his apprentice is in actual danger, triumphantly holds out the money, and gives the innkeeper to understand that he cannot ' cap, ' i. e. arrest, Ralph now. This easy, though singular, dis- missal of the situation is not derived from l)on Quixote. It will be readily granted that, even if Beaumont did draw the idea of the inn-scenes from Cervantes, his development of it is independent and original. But what reason is there for presuming that he so derived it ? Is not its employment a very logical issue of the conditions of the play, and may not the con- ception of it, therefore, have been wholly original with its author? Ralph, with his squire, his dwarf. Mistress Merrythought, and Michael, is wandering about in the uninhabited Waltham Forest in search of food and a resting-place. Suddenly the party emerge into the open, and find themselves at the end of Waltham Town, where is situated a tavern called the Bell Inn (2. 393). This is a local touch which does not have the least connection with Don Quixote. It is very natural and probable that the Bell Inn should be so situated, and it is merely a logical xliv Introduction outcome of the whole purpose of the burlesque that it should be hailed as a castle, the only sort of habitation, aside from caves and dungeons, which has any conspicuous place in the romances. Equally in keeping with the burlesque is it that the host should be regarded as the castle's knightly owner. I see no reason why, in the logic of the movement, this feature of the play should not have been con- ceived in complete independence of Don Quixote. Furthermore, the ascription of the source of the scene to the novel seems nullified by the thoroughly Eng- lish and local tone of the dwarfs account of the castle and its inmates : the Knight of the Bell and his squires, Chamberlino, Tapstero, and Ostlero. There are no characters of this stamp at the inn in Don Quixote. A reference to the notes will show how t3'pically English are these functionaries, particularly the ostler. And for Ralph's assumed ignorance of the purport of the reckoning, the well-known poverty of knights- errant, and the free hospitality everywhere accorded them, together with the almost complete lack of a mention of their monetary possessions in the roman- ces, form a sufficient explanation. The similarity between the play and the novel in this circumstance is, of course, remarkable, but, as in other coincidences already treated, it seems to me to be easily referable to the common object of their burlesque, and not to present any sure evidence whatever of a direct relation between them. In a word, the differences between the inn-scenes in Don Quixote and in The Knight of the Burning Pestle, both in local color and in particular developments, are so great as strongly to impair the probability of the novel being, in this instance, the source of the play, while in the play the requirements of the situ- Analogues and Attributed Sources xlv ation are in themselves sufficient to have produced the episode. This, the most considerable parallel between the two burlesques, still further loses signif- icance in view of the case of other parallels, alleged to be connectives, which are yet to be touched upon. d. The Barber's Basin. Leonhardt assumes that, because a barber's basin happens to play a small part in our comedy, its appearance was suggested by the like vessel which Don Quixote forces from a traveling barber, who is wearing it on his head to protect himself from the rain (Bk. 3, chap. 7). Don Quixote looks upon his capture as an inestimable prize, since he is under the delusion that it is the famous helmet of Mambrino, for the possession of which he has long cherished a desire. Leonhardt's tracing of a connection between this fanciful helmet and the barber's bowl in our play is certainly far-fetched and ridiculous. In Don Quixote^ the barber's basin is an important feature in the adven- tures of the hero ; in our play, the corresponding vessel is an insignificant detail. The host mentions it in his description of Barboroso's cell, i. e. the barber's shop (3. 263), and Ralph directs his squire to knock upon it in order to summon the giant to his account (3. 351). There is no similarity whatever between the uses made of the basins, or the circum- stances surrounding them, or the attitude of the characters toward them. To Don Quixote the imple- ment is a gorgeous helmet ; to Ralph and his com- panions it is merely a basin, and always a basin, and never gives the least suggestion of any part of a knight's armor, beyond the fact that the host says that it hangs upon a ' prickant spear,' i. e. the barber's pole. No one in the play has any quixotic delusions about the bowl. It remains throughout merely a xlvi Introduction barber's implement. That it should have been men- tioned among the other furnishings of the barber's shop is perfectly natural. The fact has no reference to Don Quixote whatever. We may reject as wire- drawn and absurd Leonhardt's assumption that there is a relationship between the specified incidents. e. The Liberation of the Barber's Patients. Here, again, Leonhardt thinks he sees a connection with Bon Quixote. He traces the source of this scene to the release of the galley-slaves. In Bk. 3, chap. 8, the Knight of La Mancha and his squire come upon a chain of convicts, who have been forced by the king to go to the galleys. Don Quixote accosts one of the guardians, and demands of him to allow each of his charges to give an account of his conviction. The manner in which each of the culprits describes the cause of his captivity is parallel, in general, to the accounts of their misfortunes which Ralph draws from the recipients of his good offices. The answers are in some sort humorous, made with an evident realization of Don Quixote's mental state, just as the knights in our play attune their speeches to the imaginings of their fantastic interrogator. The first of the galley-slaves has been convicted for love, too much love, though it be for 'a basket well heaped with fine linen ; ' the second is paying the penalty of ' singing in anguish, ' which is interpreted to the Don as the confession wrung from the wretch upon I. the r)^ck that he delighted in being ' a stealer of ^ beasts ; ' the third is going to the Lady Garrupes for five years because he wanted ten ducats and got them, in a manner which proved disastrous ; the fourth is condemned as a bawd ; &c. &c. When he has received the varied accounts, Don Quixote addresses the slaves in this fashion : Analogues and Attributed Sources xlvii I have gathered out of all that which you have said, dear brethren, that although they punish you for your faults, yet that the pains you go to suffer do not very well please you, and that you march toward them with a very ill will, and wholly constrained. . . . All which doth present itself to my memory in such sort, as it persuadeth, yea, and enforceth me, to effect that for you for which heaven sent me into the world, and made me profess that order of knighthood which I follow, and that vow which I made therein to favour and assist the needful, and those that are oppressed by others more patent. Upon the refusal of the guardians to Hberate the prisoners peaceably, Don Quixote assaults one of them so suddenly with his lance that he completely overcomes him. During the ensuing skirmish between the Don and the other guards, the slaves break their chain and put their keepers to rout. Don Quixote then commands them to go and present themselves before his lady Dulcinea del Toboso, and recount to her the adventure he had that day accomplished in her name ; at which preposterous suggestion the slaves fall upon the Knight and Sancho with stones, and then leave them, overwhelmed with wounds and astonishment. There is, indeed, a very slight resemblance to this episode in Ralph's magnanimous behavior toward the barber-giant's supposed captives. But, once again, it is far more probable that the likeness arises through the common objects of the burlesque than through any use of Cervantes' material by Beaumont. In the first place, the one element of real similarity, the questioning of released prisoners, is such a com- mon motive in the romances themselves that it is altogether gratuitous to regard Don Quixote as the inspiration of its employment in the scene in question. I need only cite a few instances from Palmerin of England. In Part 1, chap. 28, after the knight of the Savage Man had rescued from the giant Calfurnio some imprisoned damsels, ' their great courtesy liked xlviii Introduction him so well, that he was loth to do anything they should mislike of: Wherefore sitting talking with them, he desired them that without offence he might demand their names and country, and by what mishap they chanced into the giant's government?' Upon this request, Artinalda, one of the damsels, relates their history. In chap. 32, Palmerin discovers his squire Seliam in the hands of brigands. Palmerin puts the ruffians to death or flight, 'which done, he cut the cords with which Seliam was tied, requesting him to report how he chanced into that mishap.' In chap. 42, the knights rescued from the giant Dramu- ziando send Prince Floraman to the King of England with the tidings of their release. Upon the king's questioning Floraman concerning the adventure, ' Floraman rehearsed the whole state of their impris- onment, from the first to the last, with the contin- uance of accidents happening in that time.' In Part 2, chap. 125, the knight of the Damsels, after he had rescued a certain maiden from the hands of some villainous knights, ' questioned with the damsel, how she happened into that place, and upon what occasion the knights so sought to force her.' She relpied in the customary manner, giving a detailed account of the circumstance, and beginning in this characteristic manner : ' Sir, I was born in this coun- try, and am somewhat of kin to the lady Miraguarda,' &c. And so one might go on, citing instance after instance from the romances which of themselves would furnish sufficient explanation for Ralph's examination of the prisoners, without any reference to Don Quixote. When we regard the more essential elements of the scene in the play, we see a still greater inde- pendence of the novel. In The Knight of the Burning Analogues and Attributed Sources xlix Pestle, there are no traveling slaves, and no abuse of Ralph and his attendants by the recipients of his benefactions. On the other hand, Don Quixote contains no cave, no giant, and no incarcerated victims — and these are the really important features in the play. Once again, one must turn, not to Cervantes, but to the romances, for the parallels which suggested Beaumont's episode. It would be hazardous to assert that the adventure to which Ralph here commits himself is founded upon any single incident in the romances. The old tales are replete with rescues of prisoners from the caves and castles of evil-minded giants and sorcerers. At the beginning of Pahnerin of England, for example, Don Duardo is taken captive by the giant Dramuziando. The heroes who first attempt to liberate him are foiled, and some of them are themselves made prisoners. The climax of the action in Part 1 is the conquest of the giant and the rescue of his victims by Palmerin. Similar engage- ments with giants are countless. None of them, however, so far as I have discovered, present parallels to our play which are exact enough to entitle them to be regarded as sources. An extended use of the cave- or dungeon-motive is to be found in Amadis of Gaul, Bk. 1, chaps. 19 and 20. Amadis arrives at the castle of Arcalaus, the enchanter. Entering one of the courts, he espies a dark place, with steps that go under ground. The narrative proceeds thus : Amadis went down the steps so far that he could see nothing ; he came to a plain ground, it was utterly dark, yet he proceeded, and groping along a wall felt a bar of iron, whereto there hung a key, and be opened the padlock of the gate. . . . Anon more than a hundred voices were heard crying aloud, Lord God send us death and deliver us ! Thereat was Amadis greatly astonished'. ^ Southey's trans. d 1 Introduction Presently he discovers the prisoners' guards, whom he engages in combat so successfully that of them all only two escape death, and that only by falling at his feet for mercy. Shew me then the prisoners 1 said Amadis : they led the way. Who lies here ? said he, hearing a lamentable voice from a cell. A lady, said they, in great torment. Needless to relate, he rescues the lady, who, in the approved fashion, tells him of her lineage, and is led from the prison. After returning to the upper court, Amadis is for a time held in the spell of the enchanter Arcalaus. Upon recovering himself, he puts on a suit of armor and goes to deliver Gandalin, his squire, who has meanwhile been imprisoned. The men of Arcalaus seeing him thus armed, ran all ways ; but he descended the steps, and through the wall where he had slain the jaylor, and so to the dungeon : a dreadful place it was for the captives : in length an hundred times as far as a man's spread arms can reach ; one only and a half of that span wide ; dark, for neither light nor air could enter, and so full that it was crowded. . . . but then the dwarf knew his [i. e. Gandalin's] voice, and answered. Here we arel Thereat greatly rejoicing, Amadis went to the lamp in the hall, and kindled torches and took them to the dungeon, and loosed Gandalin's chains, and bade him deliver his comrades. They came from the dungeon, an hundred and fifteen men in all, of whom thirty were knights, and they followed Amadis, ex- claiming, O fortunate knight ! . . . Christ give thee thy reward ! and, when they came to the sun-light and open sky, they fell upon their knees, and with lifted hands blest God who had given that knight strength to their deliverance. I have quoted this incident from Amadis, not be- cause I regard it as an immediate source of the cave- scene in our play, but because it well illustrates the fact that Beaumont, in his use of an episode dealing with a cave and prisoners, is simply burlesquing a typical and recurrent feature of the romances of chivalry. It is a feature, moreover, which has no analogy, as has been pointed out, in the attributed source in Don Quixote. Here, as elsewhere, Beaumont Analogues and Attributed Sources H drew, not from Cervantes, but directly from the ro- mances themselves. f. Ralph's Fidelity to Susan before Pompiona. In Act 4, 11. 108-9, the Princess Pompiona is represented as trying to persuade Ralph to wear her favor in his shield. He refuses, because she ' trusts in Antichrist, and false traditions.' He says also : Besides, I have a lady of my own In merry England, for whose virtuous sake I took these arms ; and Susan is her name, A cobbler's maid in Milk-street ; whom I vow Ne'er to forsake whilst life and Pestle last. Leonhardt seems to think that Ralph's faithfulness to Susan is reflected from Don Quixote's staunch fidelity to Dulcinea before the imagined loveliness of Maritornes, who is a kitchen-wench at the inn (Bk. 3, chap. 3), and who is 'broad-faced, flat-pated, saddle-nosed, bhnd of an eye, and the other almost out. ' The crazed old hidalgo receives this charmer as '■ a goddess of love between his arms,' though he resists complete captivation through reflecting on Dulcinea, telling Maritornes that it is impossible to yield to her love, because, as he says, ' of the prom- ised faith which I have given to the unmatchable Dulcinea of Toboso, the only lady of my most hidden thoughts ; for did not this let me, do not hold me to be so senseless and mad a knight as to overslip so fortunate an occasion as this your bounty hath offered to me.' Here, again, Leonhardt stretches a point in order to find in the play a derivation from the novel. Pompiona is always a princess of high degree, in- habiting a magnificent castle, and is so depicted. Maritornes is nothing but a vulgar, obscene kitchen- wench, bent, when accosted by Don Quixote, upon a secret intrigue with a carrier at the inn, and is so d 2 lii Introduction depicted. Pompiona can by no possibility have been suggested by Maritomes, while the fidelity of Ralph and the Don to their plighted lady-loves is a reflec- tion from their common original, the romances, and in no sense argues a connection between the play and the novel. The whole of Ralph's adventures at the court of Pompionas father, the King of Moldavia, find an ap- proximate analogy K indeed, not in any portion of Don Quixote, but in a situation in Palmerin de Oliva which is thoroughly typical of the romances. The eighth chapter of the second book of that romance is entitled, ' How the Princesse Ardemia, enduring extreame Passions and torments in Love, made offer of her affections to Palmerin, which he refused : wherewith the Princesse (through extreme conceit of griefe and despaire) suddenly dyed. '^ Ardemia is a companion of Alchidiana, daughter of the Sultan of Babylon, to whose court the fortunes of Palmerin have brought him. The amorous suits of this Prin- cess are indeed much more insistent and long-winded than Pompiona's, and the result of their failure is much more violent, but there are a few resemblances which are of value as illustrating the satirical point in our scene. In much the same manner as Pompiona urges Ralph to receive a ' favor, ' Ardemia presents Palmerin with a diamond, saying : O sweet Friend, and onely comfort of my Soule, let me intreat you to weare this as an argument of my love, thereby to know how well I esteeme you, assuring you that I am so devoted yours : as if you vouchsafe to grant me the favor and honor as to goe with me to the court of my Father, I never will have any other Husband but * An analogous situation is to be found, also, in the fidelity of Amadis to Oriana before the love-smitten Briolania, in Amadies of Gaul, Bk. i, chaps. 40, 50. Other analogies might be cited by the score. * Munday's trans. Analogues and Attributed Sources liii you, and there shall such account be made of you, as well beseems a Knight so noble and vertuous. More relevant, however, to Ralph's adventure is the manner in which Palmerin receives Ardemia's advances. Just as Ralph refuses to wear the favor of Pompiona, because she trusts in Antichrist, Palmerin is repelled by the fact that Ardemia is a pagan : Palmerin, amazed at this strange accident, because she was a Pagan, and contrary to him in faith, therefore made no answer, but . . . started from her sudainly, and being moved with displeasure, departed the Chamber. And as Ralph calls his Susan to mind before Pompiona, so Palmerin fortiiies himself, after having fled from Ardemia, by invoking his absent lady-love, saying : Ah sweet Mistresse, succour now your Servant, for I rather desire a thousand deaths, then to violate the chaste honour of my Love, or to give that favour to this Lady which in only yours. After Ardemia has died of grief because of Pal- merin's refusal of her love, her companion Alchidiana, daughter of the Sultan, falls in love with the hero, and plies him with amorous suits, which also he evades (chap. 13). Just as Pompiona requires of Ralph his name and birth, Alchidiana thus addresses Palmerin : I desire you Sir Knight by the reverence you beare our Gods, and the faith you owe to her, for whose loue you tooke the Enchanted Crowne from the Prince Maurice, to tell me your name, what your parents be, and of whence you are. For I sAveare to you by the honour of a Princesse, that the guerdon you shall receive in so doing, is my heart, having once conquered those desires that long haue tor- mented me : intending to make you Lord of myself, and all the possessions of the Soldane my Father, without any sinister meaning you may believe me. Then just as Ralph responds : ' My name is Ralph, ' &c., Palmerin replies to the inquiries of Alchidiana : My name is Palmerin D'Oliva, and what my parents, the Queen of Tharsus within these three days will tell me more than hitherto I could understand by any, when you shall haue more knowledge of liv Introduction my estate and Country also : but so farrc as I yet can gather by mine own understanding, my Descent is from Persia. Palmerin is here, it should be said, deceiving Alchid- iana into beUeving him a Persian, since he does not wish to cause her immediate dissolution by dis- closing to her that he is a Christian, and that his heart is already bound to a Christian lady. The only conclusion to be derived from such a comparison as that just made is that Beaumont is merely burlesquing the general features of recurrent amours in the romances, whereby designing prin- cesses attempt to lure the knights away from their chosen lady-loves. It may plausibly be surmised, though not confidently asserted, that he drew the idea of the scene at the Court of Moldavia from Palmerin de Oliva. He assuredly did not draw it from Do7i Quixote. There is no significant resemblance between Ralph's behavior towards Pompiona and the Don's behavior toward Maritornes at the inn. g. Susan, the lady-love of Ralph. Leonhardt implies that Dulcinea del Toboso is the prototype of Susan. This, of course, is mere conjecture. It seems based simpl}^ on the fact that the two damsels belong to a humble station in life. Susan is a ' cobbler's maid in Milk-street,' while Dulcinea, it will be remembered, is a country-wench, and is chiefly commendable for her skill in the salting of pork. In each instance, it is a fitting issue of the mock-heroic purpose that a lowly maiden should be represented as the lady-love of the burlesque knight, and should be given a grotesque and incongruous elevation. In the absence of any definable line of connection between Susan and Dulcinea, there is no reason for presuming that Beaumont may not of his own accord have hit upon this very pertinent conception. Analogues and Attributed Sources Iv Furthermore, there is a distinct difference between Cervantes ' and Beaumont's conceptions. However humble and even coarse to the world at large Dul- cinea may be, to Don Quixote she is always and everywhere a beautiful and lofty lady, whom he ab- jectly worships. On the other hand, however chival- rous Ralph may be in his addresses to his absent lady-love, she is always to him, as to everybody else, merely 'the cobbler's maid in Milk-street,' and is never in his or other people's eyes exalted by her function as a lady to an aristocratic height. She is merely a prentice-boy's naturally chosen sweetheart, and offers no resemblance whatever to the attributes with which Don Quixote invests Dulcinea. Susan, as a denizen of Milk-street, is a thoroughly local personage, moreover, and her 'cobbling' vocation smacks more suggestively of London than of Dul- cinea's rustic surroundings. That Ralph should have thought of honoring Susan, in particular, with his devotion is an aptly local touch, for it reflects the close community of the London trades, with perhaps some bit of condescension on the part of the grocer's boy in noticing a maiden whose master, unlike his own, belongs to one of the lower guilds, and not to one of the twelve great City Companies. There is in all this no hint of Dulcinea del Toboso and her country occupations, and there is nothing Spanish about it. Beaumont, we may well suppose, out of his own unassisted ingenuity, simply contrived to give point to his ridicule of the exaggerated lady- worship in the romances by calling before the imag- ination of his hearers a familiar London character in the person of this Susan, since the absurdity of the grocer knight's high-flown and chivalrous devotion to the ' cobbling dame ' would be patent to any Lon- Ivi Introduction don audience. How faithfully Ralph's attitude toward Susan, his vows and invocations to her, reflect the character of the romances, may be seen in the illus- trative passages from the romances which are quoted in my notes on the lines containing allusions to Susan. In giving notice to Leonhardt's ascriptions to Don Quixote as a source of our play, I have incidentally covered all the larger features of the plot which are paralleled in the romances of chivalry. It would be possible to carry out the comparison with much greater minuteness. The burlesque portions of the play are packed with details of the romantic ma- chinery. The relief of poor ladies (1. 263), the swearing by the sword (2. 131), the keeping of the passage (2. 300), the mode of defying an enemy (2. 323-27), the functions of the dwarf and squire (3. 228), the taking of vows (3. 246-52) these and numerous other particularities are carried over directly from the romances. There are ample citations of illustra- tive parallels in the notes, and we may therefore ignore at this point these smaller dependencies. I trust that in the foregoing survey of analogous features in The Knight of the Burning Pestle and the romances it has been made sufficiently evident that Beaumont took the suggestion for his burlesque, so far as it touches the romances, directly out of his objects Amadis of Gaul, Palmerin de Oliva, Palmer- in of England, &c. and not, as far as is either demonstrable or probable, out of Don Quixote. I have attempted to show that every incident adduced is more reasonably ascribable to the romances them- selves, or to local conditions, as the source of its in- spiration, than to Don Quixote. The broader aspects of the play and the novel tend to confirm the belief that their conceptions are Analogues and Attributed Sources Ivii mutually independent. There is nothing in The Knight of the Burning Pestle, for example, to correspond to the Knight of La Mancha's Rozinante or to Sancho's ass beasts which play a most important part in the fortunes of their masters. If Beaumont had Cer- vantes in mind, is it not strange that he did not in some way appropriate these famous chargers ? There is no figure in the play to correspond to Sancho Panza, and assuredly here is a type which would have lent itself so readily to stage-caricature, and to the emphasis of the burlesque, that we can hardly conceive of Beaumont's neglecting to adapt it had he known it at first hand. True, the cit- izen-spectators, like Sancho, represent the prosaic unimaginative world of fact, and they thus afford the proper foil to heighten the humor of the burlesque. But they are not, like Sancho, themselves engaged in the central action, and their characteristics are not his. They do not have his homespun sense, and their obtuse blindness to the factitious nature of the stage-play is not, like the stolidity of Sancho, ever and again crossed by a gleam of intelligence, a real- ization that all this chivalric phantasm is a delusion and a fraud, and that they are its dupes. On the contrary, its simplicity is so great that, though Ralph's identity never becomes blurred, whatever is enacted before them can to them be only reality, and Ralph's assumption of a chivalric role can only project him into the felicities and dangers of an actual knight ; while, unlike Sancho, who knows that the windmills are windmills, and tries to call his master away from their disastrous sweep, the citizen and his wife quake with fear for Ralph, as though he were fighting an actual giant when he meets the barber, while every- where they excitedly stir him on to kill a lion, foil Iviii Introduction his enemy, or court the princess. They are very remote from Sancho Panza. Again, there is no character in the play which re- sembles Don Quixote himself. The Don and Ralph have pratically nothing in common. Ralph struts and swaggers about the stage in keen realization of his histrionic importance, and never for an instant loses himself in the pathetic bewilderment which at- taches to the old knight's semi-conciousness of con- flict between his reason and his fancies, of disparity between his chivalric dream-world and the unsym- pathetic world of reality in which he actually moves. There is the same measure of difference between the conceptions which would naturally have existed between a roistering prentice-boy of the London shops and a decayed old country hidalgo who has become so steeped in the literature and peculiar cul- ture of the day that his mind is turned. Surely, if Beaumont drafted the play upon the Spanish novel, we should expect to see a reproduction of at least some of the essential traits of its hero. It would be interesting to study carefully the broad- er contrasts between the two burlesques, but this brief statement of their leading differences, together with the obvious differences in scope of development and in local significance, will tend to show the es- sential dissimilarity between the play and the novel, and to confirm the specific proofs, already given, which point to Beaumont's independence of Cervantes in his conception both of the idea and the plot of The Knight of the Burrmig Pestle. The play and the novel touch each other closely in their satirical pur- pose ; but, in its specific features, the play is modeled directly upon the general lines of the romances themselves, and not upon Don Quixote. Analogues and Attributed Sources lix 2. Contemporary Plays and Ballads. A number of the features of The Knight of the Burning Pestle seem to have been suggested by con- temporary plays, and by a popular ballad of the time. It has long been recognized that one of the especial objects of the burlesque is Heywood's Four Prentices of London. I shall consider the relation of the satire to this play in a later section. At present, I wish to notice only the elements in its plot which were appropriated by Beaumont. These are few in number, but significant. There can be no doubt that the con- ception of a grocer-errant was suggested by the four prentice brothers in Heywood's play. The brothers are sons of the Earl of Bouillon, who has been so reduced in fortune that he lives ' in London like a Cittizen,' and binds them as prentices to four trades. Through the vicisitudes of their fortunes, they rise from their lowly tradesman's rank to become knights and princes. I shall sketch the plot in detail at another point. Written in a grandiose style, and devoted to flattering the vanity of the tradesmen, the play easily lent itself to ridicule ; and Beaumont, though nowhere following its development closely, appropriated its central feature the idea of prentice adventurers for the purposes of his burlesque, and incorporated a few of its details. Near the beginning of the play, Eustace expresses discontent with the humdrum life of the grocer's shop, and a desire for a warlike career: I am a Grocer : Yet had rather see A faire guilt sword hung in a velvet sheath, Then the best Barbary sugar in the world, Were it a freight of price inestimable. I haue a kind of prompting in my braine, That sayes : Though I be bound to a sweete Trade, I must forgoe it, I keepe too much in. Ix Introduction These lines seem to have suggested Ralph's query (1. 276-82): But what brave spirit could be content to sit in his shop, with a flappet of wood, and a blue apron before him, selling mithridatum and dragon's water to visited houses, that n:iight pursue feats of arms, and, through his noble achievements, procure such a famous history to be written of his heroic prowess ? Eustace, before starting for the Holy Land, declares : For my Trades sake, if good successe I haue, The Grocers Armes shall in my Ensigne waue. Weber and Dyce point out that these lines sug- gested their parody as contained in Ralph's announc- ement: Yet, in remembrance of my former trade upon my shield shall be portrayed a Burning Pestle, and I will be called the Knight of the Burning Pestle. There is a general resemblance to Ralph's adven- tures at the Court of Moldavia in the adventures of Guy at the court of the King of France. A shipwreck in Hey wood's play casts Guy upon the coast of France. The king and his daughter, walking upon the beach, espy him: Him at first sight the beauteous Lady loves ; And prays her father to receive him home: To which the King accords ; and in his Court Makes him a great and speciall Officer. The Princess straightway begins her suit, but is much more insistently amorous than Pompiona, and Guy is much more loquaciously obdurate that Ralph. The mistress, the thought of whom preserves him from the lady's advances, is not another Susan, but tvar. Lady. faire Knight do you love ? Guy. To march, to plant a battle, lead an Hoast, To be a souldier and to goe to Warre, By heauen I loue it as mine owne deere life Make Warre a Lady, I that Lady loue. Analogues and Attributed Sources Ixi The Lady objects: I know all this ; your words are but delaies : Could you not loue a Lady that loues you ? Tis hard when women are enforced to wooe. The prentice-knight remains impenetrable ; but the Lady, undismayed, follows him to the wars, and, in the final outcome, weds him. It will be seen that the situation is more acute than that between Ralph and Pompiona ; but because of its easy susceptibility to burlesque, it is possible that it was in our author's mind, together with the analogous episode in Palmerin de Oliva with which comparison has already been made. At the conclusion of The Four Prentices, Charles says : Since first I bore this shield I quartered it With this red Lyon, whom I singly once Slew in the Forrest. Dyce points out the resemblance of these lines to the Wife's suggestion : ' Let him kill a lion with a pestle, husband ' (Ind. 46), and also to a ballad en- titled The Honour of a London Apprentice^ in which the said apprentice kills two lions. It is hazardous to assert that either Heywood's play or the ballad is the direct source of the Wife's proposal. The ro- mances of chivalry are filled with conflicts with lions, and Beaumont may have been merely ridiculing this stdck motive, without a specific incident in view. The Honour of a London Apprentice is an absurdly serious tale of a London shop-boy, who finds himself in Turkey, and proceeds to defend the name of 'Elizabeth his princess' by slaying the Sultan's son. Two lions are set to devour the prentice, but he succeeds in killing them both by thrusting his arms down their throats and plucking out their hearts, which he casts before the Sultan. This act so fills the monarch with admiration that he repents all his Ixii Introduction ' foul offences ' against the prentice, and gives him his daughter to wed^. This ballad was very popular at the time, and must have been known to Beaumont. It offers an excellent parallel, in its ridiculous laudation of the prowess of London prentice-boys, to the burlesque use of this general theme in our play ; and, though it cannot be demonstrated, it is possible that the ballad influenced Beaumont's conception. There are three comparatively distinct strands in the plot of The Knight of the Burning Pestle : the love- story of Jasper and Luce, the fortunes of the Merry- thought family, and the adventures of Ralph. The literary relationships of the third division have been specified. The first two are realistic reflections of ordinary life merely, and are for the most part either original with the dramatists, or drawn from the com- mon subject-material of the stage. The love-theme, though given here and there some freshness and beauty, is essentially conventional. The avaricious and irascible father, bent upon wedding his daughter to a wealth}^ dolt whom she despises, the rejected suitor, the poor but favored lover, the elopement, the reconciliation, and the happy ending here is a time-honored plot which has been the stock in trade of the theatre from the earliest ap- pearance of English comedy down to the latest pop- ular ' hit ' upon Broadway. It is superfluous to attempt to find an origin for the central idea of this story. Beaumont and Fletcher drew it from their observation of the life about them, and from the conventions of their profession. One or two of its elements, however, seem to have been suggested by contemporary plays. Emil Koeppel * The ballad may be found in Rilson's Ancient Sofigs and Ballads 2. 199. Analogues and Attributed Sources Ixiii has called attention to a similarity between one of its episodes and Marston's Antonio and Mellida, which appeared in 1602 ^ At the conclusion of the play, there is a device similar to the conveyance of Jasper into the house of Venturewell, and of Luce into the house of Merrythought, in a coffin (4. 268, 349, and 5. 196). Antonio, the hero, causes himself to be car- ried on a bier into the presence of his beloved Mellida in the palace of her father, Piero Sforza, the Duke of Venice, who has opposed the match because of enmity toward Antonios family. When the incident occurs, the Duke has just been reconciled with Antonio's father. In the midst of the funeral assemblage, Piero swears that he would bestow Mellida's hand upon Antonio, could the latter s life be restored. At these words, the supposed corpse rises from the bier, and demands the fulfilment of the vow, which is granted. It is true that the situation in our play is conceived chiefly in a comic spirit, and is solved through Ven- turewell's ludicrous fear of Jasper's fabricated ghost, and grief over the fictitious death of the heroine in- stead of the hero ; but the devices in the two plays are similar enough to make plausible the conjecture that here our authors draw upon Marston. The character of Humphrey has interesting affili- ations throughout our early comedy, and is not hard to account for. The cowardly fop and ninny, who is the dupe of a parasite, or the sport of a scornful lady-love, or the victim of humorous wags about town, is a stock figure upon the Elizabethan stage ; he is as old, indeed, as Ralph Roister Doister him- self. From one point of view or another, Humphrey is akin to Ralph Roister Doister, to Shakespeare's ^ Quellen- Studien zu den Dramen Ben Jonson's, John Marston's UJid Beautnont's und Fletcher's^ p. 42. Ixiv Introduction Simple, to Ben Jonson's Master Stephen, and to nu- merous gulls and dandies of the old drama whose only merit lies in their curled locks or in their money- bags. A comparative study of these characters would result in the definition of a recurrent type ; it would not result in the specification of a concrete source for the conception of Humphrey. Here, again, Beau- mont and Fletcher are appropriating the general stock in trade of the theatre, though they must be granted a large degree of originality in a creation of such bizarre, and indeed overdrawn, absurdity as the figure of this unconscionable booby. The family of the Merrythoughts, like the house- hold of the merchant, form merely a homely picture of more or less typical domesticity, and are sketched by the authors from observation rather than under the influence of literary models. Old Merrythought, however, is more of a ' humor ' study than an actual invididual, and his portrait has suggested analogues. His name reminds Leonhardt of Merrygreek, the parasite in Ralph Roister Bolster, and his fondness for ballads recalls to Leonhardt Justice Silence in 2 Henry IV^. It is almost needless to say that the resemblances here are only superficial. Merrygreek, like Merrythought, does, indeed, flee from work, and he announces as a sort of guiding motto : As long lyueth the merry man, they say, As doth the sory man, and longer by a day ; but he is a schemer and a sharp, who craftily designs to live at the charges of his patron, while our scape- grace thinks not at all about the means for procuring meat and drink, and carelessly defies the encroach- ment of poverty. He warbles : ^ Oder Beaumont und Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle, p. 30. Objects of the Satire Ixv Who can sing a merrier note Than he that cannot change a groat ? In another passage he cries : When earth and seas from me are reft, The skies aloft for me are left. Merrythought's absorbing joUity is not the spirit of Merrygreek. Still less is it associated with Shake- speare's Justice Silence. This character has no kinship with Merrythought beyond his singing of snatches from old ballads, and, moreover, he sings only when he is intoxicated ; Merrythought sings at all times, whether he be drunk or sober. If it were desirable to push comparisons, one might find relationships between our lover of ballads and the ballad-monger Autolycus in A Winter's Tale, which was first acted near the date of our play's appearance. This latter personage, however, is concerned only with the profit to be gained from his wares, and the clownage which characterizes him is the expression of deep -dyed rascality, while that of Merrythought is merely the result of irrepressible spirits. After all, however far Merrythought may be the reflection of a common type, I think that we must recognize in his blithe and sunny nature, his invincible gaiety, and his com- fortable philosophy, an imperfectly outlined, but orig- inal and eminently happy creation of our dramatists. The character is not without an ancestry, but in its distinguishing lineaments it is unique. E. Objects of the Satire. The satire in The Knight of the Burning Pestle points in many directions. It is leveled at the romances of chivalry, together with the tastes of the reading mem- bers of the middle classes, and the extravagances of the bourgeois drama, which were the products of this Ixvi Introduction literature ; it is leveled at the dunce-critics of the London shops, who presumed to sit in judgment upon the playwrights, and to impose upon the stage such theatrical productions as conformed to their uncouth standards ; it is leveled at some of the child- ish diversions and foibles of the commoners, with an especial reference to their inflated military ardor as manifested in the drills of the City train bands at Mile End. My purpose is to show the relevancy and justification of this ridicule by sketching the several objects which provoked it. 1 . Literary and Theatrical Tastes of the Middle Classes. The discussion of the parallel episodes in The Knight of the Burning Pestle and the romances of chivalry has either covered or anticipated what is to be said of the popular literature of the time, so far as it offered material for the burlesque. The features of the old tales which were most openly exposed to the satirical shafts of the dramatist have been sufficiently illustrated by these comparisons. It re- mains to show how far the burlesque upon them was pertinent to the English public. a. The Fashion of Romance-reading y and the Chivalric Drama. The continental romances of chivalry never secured the wide vogue among the English aristocracy which they had enjoyed in the courts and castles of their native soils. The reason is not far to seek. In the first place, the field was preempted, so far as the ro- mances continued to be read among the higher classes, by the legends of Arthur and his Round Table, which, with their organic religious principle and their fine consecrations, together with their distinctly na- tional aroma, appealed to thoughtful, cultivated minds Objects of the Satire Ixvii with far greater force than the pointless extravagances of Amadis of Gaul and its progeny. The favor some- times accorded to these pecuHarly British tales by men of letters is reflected in Milton's unqualified reverence for the characters and ideals of the knights : he tells us that in his youth he betook himself ' among those lofty fables and romances, which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood founded by our victorious kings,' and that the magnanimous and pure lives of the heroes proved to him ' so many incitements ... to the love and steadfast observation of that virtue which abhors the society of bordelloes ';^ and his early intention to write an epic founded upon the Arthurian legend is well known. But the good opinion of romances entertained by Milton does not by any means reflect the attitude of all litterateurs and scholars. As early as 1570, Roger Ascham lodged a frequently quoted indictment against the Morte d' Arthur as an agent of popery and a cor- rupter of youth. He says : In our forefather's time, when Papistrie as a standyng poole, couered and ouerflowed all England, few bookes were read in our tong, sauyng certaine bookes of Cheualrie, as they sayd, for pastime and pleasure, which, as some say, were made in Monasteries, by idle Menkes, or wanton Chanons ; as one for example, Morte Arthure : the whole pleasure of which booke standeth in two speciall poyntes, in open manslaughter, and bold bawdry. . . . Yet, I know when Gods Bible was banished the Court, and Morte Arthure received into the Princes chamber. What toyes the dayly readying of such a booke may worke in the will of a yong ientleman, or a yong mayde, that liueth welthelie and idelie, wise men can iudge, and honest men do pitie^. The sombre old pedagogue's fear of the pernicious influence of the Morte d' Arthur was, of course, exces- sive, but it was in line, at least, with a growing sentiment that the reading of romances, even those * An Apology for Smectymtiuus, 1642. * The Schoolmaster. Arber's Reprint, p. 70. Ixviii Introduction of native growth, was a waste of time. During Elizabeth's reign, the national tales were displaced, and the Amadis cycles were forestalled, in the ' prince's chamber ' and court circles, by court and pastoral fictions, either translated or modeled from the Spanish and the Italian, and by the varied species of poetry which sprang into being under the inspiration of the Italian Renaissance. As a result of this new and polished literature, the way into the favor of culti- vated readers was blocked against the Peninsular romances. When Anthony Munday began to make his translations in the latter half of the sixteenth century, books of chivalry had lost much of their prestige in Spain itself, and it was inevitable that they should receive small notice in English society, whose literary fashions were largely dominated by Spanish influenced But though banished from the circles of the elite, Munday's versions received wide and lasting popu- larity among the uneducated. Because of the success of his undertaking, Munday published translations of Palmerin of England, Palmerin de Oliva, Pallidino of England, Amadis of Gaul, Primaleon of Greece, and Palmendos, in the order named. Coeval with Munday's labor were the translations of other romances by other hands, chief of which was that of the famous Espeio de Cahallerias. The first part of this exceed- ingly popular work was translated in 1579 by Mar- garet Tiler. The remaining eight portions appeared at intervals, the last being printed in 1602. The book was given the English title of The Mirrour of Knight- hood .... The Mirrour of Princely Deeds atid Knight- hood, wherein is shewed the Worthinesse of the Knight of the Sunne and his Brother Rosicleer, &c., &c. ' Cf. Underbill, Spanish Literature in the England of the Tudors,'^. 368. Objects of the Satire Ixix The romances which seem to have received the largest prominence, and which, moreover, are the most directly related to The Knight of the Burning Pestle, are Amadis of Gaul, the two Palmerins, and The Mirrour of Knighthood. As is well known, Amadis was the progenitor of the Spanish cycles, and it is generally regarded as having given the most admirable expression to the peculiarities of its t3^pe. Its imita- tive descendants, however, steadily deteriorated in worth, and in The Mirrour of Knighthood the wild and preposterous plots which marked the romances reached the climax of extravagance, Cervantes has this tale consigned without mercy to the flames. The relative merits of the Amadis and the Palmerins are specified by Cervantes is his chapter on ' The Burning of the Books.' The curate commands Oliva to be ' rent in pieces, and burned in such sort that even the very ashes thereof may not be found.' Amadis is to be preserved as ' the very best contrived book of all those of that kind.' Palmerin of England also is to be preserved 'as a thing rarely delectable.' 'The discourse,' says the curate, 'is very clear and courtly, observing evermore a decorum in him that speaks, with great propriety and conceit.' All the other presentations of ' so bad a sect ' are doomed by the curate to the flames. Side by side with these foreign importations, the heroic tales of native growth were diligently pub- lished and read. The Morte d' Arthur was frequently printed down to 1634, and the histories of Sir Bevis of Hamptoun, Sir Guy of Warwick, Sir Lancelot of the Lake, Robin Hood, Adam Bell, &c., were constantly issued from the press in small handy volumes, which were adorned with illustrative cuts^ In their attract- * Cf. Jusserand, The Ejiglish Novel in the Time of Shakespeare, p. 64. Ixx Introduction ive bindings, these wonderful story-books went forth to the London shops and the country villages, where they were read by all commoners with the avidity and faith of children. The extent and quality of a middle class man's reading happen to have found an abundant and most valuable illustration in a rare old letter written by one Robert Laneham, which con- tains a list of the ballads and story-books of a Co- ventry mason who was known as Captain Cox, and who figured in a Hock Tuesday play given before Queen Elizabeth in the festivals at Kenilworth Castle, July, 1575, which are described by Laneham. The list of Cox's books, inserted by Laneham into his account of this individual, is by so far the fullest and best exemplification of the kind of literary taste sat- irized in our play which I have seen that, though few of the romances mentioned by Beaumont are included, I here transcribe the whole of it : But aware, keep bak, make room now, heer they cum 1 And fyrst, captin Cox, and od man I promiz yoo : by profession a Mason, and that right skillful, verry cunning in fens, and hardy az Gawin ; for his tonsword hangs at his tablz eend : great ouersigt hath he in matters of storie : For az for King Arthurz book, Huon of Burdeaus, The foour sons of Aymon, Beuys of Hampton, The squire of lo degree, The Knight of Courtesy, and the Lady Faguell, Frederick of Gene, Syr Eglamooure, Syr Tryamooure, Syr Lamwell, Sir Isenbras, Sir Gawin, Olyver of the Castle, Lucres and Curialus, Virgil's Life, the Castl of Ladiez, the Wido Edyth, The King and the Tanner, Frier Rous, Howle- glas, Gargantua, Robinhood, Adam Bel, Clim of the Clough and William of Cloudley, the Churl and the Burd, the Seven Wise Masters, the Wife lapt in a Morels Skin, the Sak full of Nuez, the Sergant that became a Fryer, Skogan, CoUyn Clout, the Fryar and the Boy, Elynor Running, and the Nut brooun Maid, with many moe then I rehearz heere, I believe hee haue them all at his fingers endz. Then in Philosophy, both morall and naturall, I think he be az naturally ouerseen ; beside Poetrie and Astronomic, and other hid Sciencz, az I may gesse by the omberty of his books ; whearof part, az I remember. The Shepherdz Kalender, The ship of Foolz, Danielz Dreams, the Booke of Fortune, Stans puer ad Mensam, The by way to the Spitl-house, Julian of Brainfords testament, the Castle of Loue, Objects of the Satire Ixxi the Booget of Deraainds, the Hundreth Mery Talez, the Book of Riddels, the seaven Sororz of Wemen, the proud Wives Pater Noster, the Chap- men of a Peneworth of Wit, Hikskorner, Nugizee, Impacient Poverty, and herevirith Doctor Boords Breviary of Health. What should I re- hearz heer, what a bunch of Ballets and Songs, all auncient ; as Broom broom on hil, So wo iz me begon, troly lo, Oliver a Whinny, Meg, Hey ding a ding. Bony lass upon a green, My hony on gaue me a bek, By a bank as I lay ; and a hundred more he hath wrap up in a parch- ment, and bound with a whip chord. And az for Almanacks of An- tiquitee (a point for Ephemeridees), I ween he can sheaw from (LX) Jasper Laet of Antwarp vnto (LXI) Nostradem of Frauns, and thens vnto oour (LXII) John Securiz of Salsbury. To stay ye no longer heerin, I dare say hee hath az fair a library for theez sciencez, & az many goodly monuments both in proze & poetry, & at afternoonz can talk az much without book, az ony Inholder betwixt Brainford and Bagshot, what degree soeuer he be*. It will be seen from this remarkable document that, though the amount of fiction appropriated to the commoners was numerically by no means small, it offered little variety. In one way or another, an element of magnificence or of mystery runs through all the popular literature. Their fancy stimulated by continuous association, through their reading, with noble knights and gentle ladies, who led them un- ceasingly into an ever widening realm of grandeur and marvel, it is no wonder that simple-minded folk, like our citizen and his wife, came to believe in the veracity of these tales, and it is with no great stretch of probability that the playwright depicts their naive acceptance of his dramatic fable as a bit of absorbing and immediate fact. The popularity which accrued to the romances through the industry of the translators and the printers was maintained late into the seventeenth century, and the favor accorded them by the citizen-spectators in our play seems to be in no wise overdrawn. Not only the shopkeepers, but bourgeois society as a * Cf. Robert Laneham's Letter, ed. Furnivall, p. 12. Ixxii Introduction whole, were beguiled by the seductions of the narra- tives, and looked upon the knowledge of them as a mark of superior breeding. In particular, their cul- tivation was affected by the Paul s men, and the ' shabby genteel ' gallants and beaux of the Eliza- bethan and Stuart regimes. Matthew Merrygreek, the parasite in Balph Bolster Doister, can think, for instance, of no surer means of flattering the vanity of his gull of a patron than in thus describing the effect of the latter's appearance upon the onlookers in the street : ' Who is this ? ', sayth one, ' Sir Launcelot du Lake ? ' ' Who is this ? greate Guy of Warwike ? ' sayth an-other ; ' No, ' say I, ' it is the thirtenth Hercules brother ' ; ' Who is this ? noble Hector of Troy ? ' sayth the thirde ; ' No, but of the same nest,' say I, ' it is a birde ' ; . . . ' Who is this ? greate Alexander ? or Charle le Maigne ? ' ' No it is the tenth Worthie,' say I to them agayne. This trenchant testimony of the addiction of ' sparks ' and would-be men of fashion to the reading of ro- mances is borne out by many another allusion in the literature of the period. ' If they read a book at any time,' writes Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Mel- ancholy, 'tis an English Chronicle, Sr. Huon of Bordeaux, Amadis de Gaul, &c.'; and, in depicting the inamoratoes of the day, Burton accuses them of ' reading nothing but the play books, idle poems, Amadis de Gaul, the Knight of the Sun, the Seven Champions, Palmerin de Oliva, Huon de Bordeaux, &c. ' ^ Furthermore, Fynes Moryson, in directing a hypo- thetical traveler how to acquire courtly language, re- veals the depth of the common admiration of the tales, particularly of Amadis : I think no Booke better for his discourse than Amadis of Gaiile, for the Knights errant, and the Ladies of Courts doe therein exchange ' Cf. Drake, Shakespeare and his Times, p. 253. Objects of the Satire Ixxiii Courtly speeches, and these Books are in all languages translated by the Masters of eloquence*. Even Sir Philip Sidney, in recording his observation of the humanizing effects of ' poetical imitation, ' has this to say for Amadis : Truly, I haue known men, that even with reading Amadis de Gaule, which, God knoweth, wanteth much of a perfect poesy, haue found their hearts moved to the exercise of courtesy, liberality, and espec- ially courage '-. Not only the city gallants and dames, but the country gentry as well, were devoted to the perusal of romances. In an old book, entitled The English Courtier and the Cuntrey-gentleman, Vincent, the country- gentleman, tells how they amuse themselves ' in fowle weather ' at dice, cards, and games, and ^ Wee want not also pleasant mad-headed knaues that bee properly learned, and well reade in diuerse pleasant bookes and good authors, as Sir Guy of Warwicke, the four somies of Anwit, the Ship of Fooles, the Budget of Demaundes, the Hundreth Merry Tales, The Booke of Ryddles, and many other excellent writers bot witty and pleasaunt. ' ^ This book was written in 1579. How thorough and persistent was the country folk's relish for the romances is shown by the fact that, many years after 1579, Brome, in his Covent Garden Weeded, published 1658, included a satire upon it. In Act 1, sc, 1, of that play, Crossewell, a country squire, is trying to persuade his son, whom he has brought up to London, to stop talking about the study of law, and become interested in ' polite literature.' He says : Away with books. Away with madnesse. I, God blesse thee, and make thee his servant and defend thee from Law, I say. Take * Itinerary, 1617, Part 3, Bk. I, chap. 2, p. 15. * Defetise of Poesy, ed. Cook, p. 24. * Cf. Robert Laneham's Letter, ed. Furnivall, p. 14. Ixxiv Introduction up these books, sirrah, and carry them presently into Pauls Church- yard dee see, and change them all for Histories, as pleasant as prof- itable ; Arthur of Britain, Primalion of Greece, Aniadis of Gaul. Mi. I hope he do's but jest. Cross. And do you heare. Sirrah. Belt. I Sir. Cross. Get Bells work, and you can, into the bargain. Belt. Which Bell, Sir ? Ada?n Bell, with dim o' th' Clongh and William of Cloudesley . Cross. Adam Bell you Asse ? Valiant Bell that kill'd the Dragon. . Belt. You mean St. George. Cross. Sir Jolthead, do I not. I'll teach you to chop logick, with me. Mi. Sfoot, how shall I answer my borrow'd books ? Stay Belt. Pray Sir, do not change my books. Cross. Sir, Sir, I will change them and you too : Did I leave thee here to learn fashions and manners, that thou mightst carry thy self like a Gentleman, and dost thou wast thy brains in learning a lan- guage that I understand not a word of ? ha 1 I had been as good have brought thee up among the wild Irish. Crossewell's amusing laudation of the cultural value he ascWbes to the absurd old yarns would probably have won the approval of every member of his coun- try household, except this recalcitrant son. Emphatic assent would certainly have been yielded to it by the swains and damsels of the servants' hall. At all events, the tales, and in particular the Spanish ro- mances, are said to have been the common reading of milkmaids for a century after their importation^. How plebeian was their appeal may be partially in- dicated, indeed, by the traditional belief that Palmerin de Oliva itself was the work of a carpenter's daughter in northern Spaing The stories were eagerly perused by the credulous servant-girls of the day. Overbury, in his Characters, written 1613, says of a chambermaid : She reads Greene's Works over and over ; but is so carried away with the ' Mirror of Knighthood, ' she is many times resolved to run out of her self and become a lady-errant'. ^ Cf. Underbill, Spanish Literature in the England of the Tudors, p. 307. » Ibid., p. 298. ^ Cf. Character Writings of the Seventeejith Century, ed. Morley, p. 59- Objects of the Satire Ixxv To much the same effect is William Browne's testi- mony in a poem upon a lady who converses with her maid about her love-letters: Op'ning a paper then she shows her wit, On an epistle that some fool had writ: Then meeting with another which she likes, Her chambermaid's great reading quickly strikes That good opinion dead, and swears that this Was stol'n from Palmerin or Amadis. And in Massinger's Guardian 1. 2, the confidante Calipso says : In all the books of Amadis de Gaul, The Palmerins and that true Spanish story. The Mirror of Knighthood, which I have often read. Read feelingly, nay more I do believe in't, My lady has no parallel. How thoroughly the servant-class were possessed of a craze for the romances may be emphasized by one more citation. In Shirley's Gentleman of Venice 1. 2, Roberto, the Duke's gardener, is being upbraided by his wife for allowing their son Giovanni to waste his time in reading trash : So, so 1 the duke's garden shall be then Well look'd to 1 he deserves a pension For reading Amadis de Gaul, and guzman And Don Quixote ; but I'll read him a lecture. The gardener is proud of his son's literary learning, and asks Giovanni, one of his subordinates : And does he not tell the tales, and dainty stories sometimes ? Geov. Oh, of Tamberlaine, and the great Turk Would you would speak to him, though to take a little More pains 1 'tis I do all the droll, the dirt-work. When I am digging, he is cutting unicorns And lions in some hedge, or else devising New knots upon the ground, drawing out crowns. And the duke's arms, castles, and cannons in them ; . . . I think he means to embroider all the garden Shortly ; but I do all the coarse work. Ixxvi Introduction But not only had the romances descended from their once high estate in the favor of kings and nobles, to become the familiar reading-matter of gar- deners and kitchen-maids; they were still further de- graded by being cast out into the streets and alehouses, where, in shortened, mutilated forms, they became the common property of the mendicant minstrels, a race once worthy and honored, but now become vicious and despised. These vagabonds wandered about the towns, and, for a pittance, sang to the harp rimed snatches of the old tales for the amusement of the multitude. This fate was meted out particularly to the domestic romances. Puttenham has much to say of the tuned versions made by these Canta ianqui vpon benches and barrel heads where they haue none other audience then boys or countrey fellowes that passe by them in the streete, or else the blind harpers or such like tauerne minstrels that giue a fit of mirth for a groat and their matters being for the most part stories of old time, as the tale of Sir Tophas, the reports of Bevis of Southampton, Guy of Warwicke, Adam Bel and Clymme of the Clough, and such other old Romances or historical rimes, made purposely for the recreation of the common people at Christmas diners and brideales, and in tauerns and alehouses and such other places of base resort; also they be vsed in Carols and rounds and such light or lascivious Poems, which are commonly more commodiously vttered by these buffoons or vices in playes then by any other persons 1 ' These few scattered allusions to the popular taste in literature, here brought together because of their concisely illustrative worth, will serve to show how thoroughly steeped in chivalric lore were all grades of society lower than the highest. From the wealthy London tradesmen and the country squires down to the menials in their households and the beggars in the street, the old-fashioned and elsewhere despised or forgotten tales were eagerly read or listened to, and their admirers not only believed that, in absorbing ' Art of English Pocsie (Arber's Reprint), p. 56. Objects of the Satire Ixxvii them, they were somehow partaking deeply of a fount of emancipating, though mysterious, culture, but often showed a nai've, unfaltering trust in the truth of the related deeds of knightly heroes and wicked giants, and of the whole phantasmagoria of wild wonders and ' enchantments drear. ' The Wife in The Knight of the Burning Pestle is by no means unique in her sympathy with the King of Portugal, who had such a hungry time of it because of the malevolence of the giants and ettins, who snatched from his table his daily meat, or in her honest skepticism about the convertibility of this monstrous race to the virtuous living of ' us ordinary people, ' or in her scathing dis- paragement of the knights of James I, who do, in- deed, like the knights of old, 'neglect their posses- sions well enough, but do not the rest'; while her assenting spouse but records his orthodoxy in an- nouncing that he will have a ring to discover the enchantments which so prop up Jasper that he resists victoriously the onslaught of Ralph's all-conquering arm. In these small touches Beaumont is but deftly hitting off the absurd credulity of the citizen-public in respect to the literature upon which they had been reared, and their presumption in forcing the gro- tesque fashions of the romances upon the boards of the playhouse a dictation which they felt called upon to assume, since they were the chief patrons of the public theatres. That the influence of this popular literature should be felt in the drama was, of course, inevitable. It would have been strange indeed if some of the needy, struggling playwrights of the time had not turned to good account their opportunity of catering to the childish taste of their public in the production of extravagant acting versions of the old themes. That Ixxviii Introduction there was a large crop of such plays, having a chiv- alric, if not directly romantic setting, is evident even from the meagre accounts of them which have de- scended to us. In the earlier days of the drama, be- fore the romances had wholly lost caste, a number of these stage-redactions of them were even produced at court. For instance, on Jan. 3, 1574, Lord Clinton's Men presented a play called Herpetulus, the Blue Knight and .... Perobia ; in Aug., 1576, The Red Knight was acted by the Chamberlain's Men ; on Feb. 17, 1577, The Solitary Knight was given by Lord Charles How- ard's Men; on March 1, 1579, Warwick's Men acted The Knight in the Burning Rock (a production which is sometimes supposed to have suggested the title of our play); on Jan. 12, 1582, Ariodanto and Genevora (founded on the Orlando Furioso) was acted by the Merchant-Taylors' Boys ; and on Dec. 28, 1593, the Earl of Sussex' Men acted Huon of Bordeaux, a play which was evidently founded on the romance of that name. All of these plays were of anonymous author- ship, and none of them are now extant. Their titles can leave little doubt, however, that their themes, when not taken directly out of chivalric legends, were reproductions of the peculiar tone and character of those legends^ But the chivalric drama did not measure the length of its career by its brief popularity among the higher circles. When the Palmerins, Rosicler, Guy of Warwick, and their redoubtable compeers, had been banished from the court, they still pursued their endless quests throughout the world, not only through the resusci- tative magic of the printer's art, but upon the open boards of the common theatre, where they visibly and impressively wrought their wondrous deeds once * Cf. Fleay, Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama, Vol. 2. Objects of the Satire i::xix more, meeting and overcoming dragons, lions, mon- sters, giants, ' uncurteous ' knights, and tyrants and strong armies, to the infinite dehght, albeit palpita- tion, we may believe, of the wide-eyed and aston- ished, but credulous, admiring multitude. It is true that few of the media through which these heroes thus contrived to prolong their manifold exploits have come down to us in the form of books. The plays were written merely to suit the shallow caprice of an unreflective audience, and, from the nature of their theme and purpose, could have had little in- trinsic worth or interest. Therefore most of them seem never to have had a reading public, but were cast into the limbo where were gathered the in- numerable other stage ephemera which never knew the perpetuating agency of print. That there was a goodly number of these plays of chivalry and wild adventure, however, is not to be doubted. Stephen Gosson, the Puritan, implies as much, in his Playes Confuted in Five Actions : I may boldely say it because I haue seen it, that the Palace of pleasure, the Golden Asse, the Aethiopian historic, Amadis of Fraunce, theRounde table, baudie Comedies in Latine, French, Italian, and Spanish, haue been throughly ransact to furnish the Playe houses in London.^ And with what a complete equipment the stage seems continuously to have been prepared for this kind of representations may be gathered from a graphic description in Brome's Antipodes, 1638. A young lord, crazed with a mania for travel, gets in among the properties of a theatre, and his conduct is thus described by one of the actors : He has got in into our Tyring-house amongst us, And tane a strict survey of all our properties, Our statues and our images of Gods ; our Planets and our constellations, Our Giants, Monsters, Furies, Beasts, and Bug-Beares, * Cf W. C. Hazlitt, T/ie English Drama and Stage. Ixxx Introduction Our Helmets, Shields, and Vizors, Haires, and Beards, Our Pastboard March-paines, and our Wooden Pies — Whether he thought twas some inchanted Castle, Or Temple, hung and pild with Monuments Of uncouth, and of various aspects, I dive not to his thoughts ; wonder he did A while it seem'd, but yet undanted stood ; W^hen on the suddaine, with thrice knightly force. And thrice, thrice, puissant arme he snatcheth downe The sword and shield that I played Bovis with, Rusheth amongst the foresaid properties, Kils Monster, after Monster ; takes the Puppets Prisoners, knocks downe the Cyclops, tumbles all Our jig ambobs and trinckets to the wall. Spying at last the Crowne and royall Robes Ith upper wardrobe, next to which by chance. The divells vizors hung, and their flame painted Skin coates ; those he removed with greater fury, And (having cut the infernall ugly faces. All into mamocks) with a reverend hand. He takes the imperiall diadem and crownes Himselfc King of the Antipodes^ and beleeves He has justly gained the Kingdom by his conquest. It will been seen from this account that 'giants, mon- sters, furies, beasts, and bug-bears' were habitual denizens of the tiring-house, and that their emergence into the glare of the open stage-light not infrequently brought to proof anew the combative prowess of Sir Bevis (Bovis) of Southamptoun and his valiant company, as they stalked and slashed their way with sword and shield amongst the gruesome creatures, in full exposure to the public gaze. We need not trust wholly to general descriptions, however, for the proof of the existence of these chivalric extravaganzas. Some of the titles, and a few of the plays themselves, have come down to us. I cull from the lists of F. G. Fleay^ the names of the following extant stage-productions which have a more or less evident relation to the romances : * Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama. Objects of the Satire Ixxxi 1. Common Conditions, a play describing ' the adven- tures of amorous knights passing from country to country for the love of their ladies.' Anon. Entered S. R. July 26, 1576. 2. The Jiistorij of the tico valiant knights^ Sir Clyomon, Knight of the Golden Shield and (Sir) Clamijdes, the ivhite Knight. Authorship uncertain. 1578 ? 3. The Misfortunes of Arthur. ' Uther Pendragon's son reduced into tragical notes by Thomas Hughes of Gray's Inn.' Feb. 28, 1588. 4. Orlando Furioso. Robert Greene. 1588-9. 5. Charlimayne. Anon. 1589 ? 6. The Four Prentices of London. Thomas Hey wood. 1594? 7. Uter Pendragon. Anon. 1589. 8. Tristram de Lyons. Anon. Oct. 4, 1599. 9. The Four Sons of Amijon. Anon. Dec. 10, 1602. 10. The Trial of Chivalry. Hey wood and another? 1604. To this list may be added two or three plays not extant, viz : The Life and Death of Arthur, Kitig of England, by Richard Hathaway, 1598 ; The Green Knight, a tragedy, mentioned by Nash in his Lenten Stuff e, 1599 ; The Life and Death of Guy of Warwick, entered S. R. Jan. 19, 1620, and attributed to John Day and Thomas Dekker ; possibly, also, the play mentioned in The Knight of the Burning Pestle as Bold Beauchamps, which was a dramatization of the chivalric, but historically true, career of Thomas, first Earl of Warwick of that name. When we add together the lost plays of chivalric cast produced at court and those just listed, we get a sum of about twenty titles a number which is not inconsiderable if the time-serving, perishable na- ture of the productions be borne in mind. We may f Ixxxii Introduction fairly presume, also, that many lost plays, of which we have a record, appropriated the themes of the romances in ways which are not revealed to us by the titles. From what we positively know, however, we can infer that the theatrical area over which the burlesque in The Knight of the Burning Pestle radiated was a wide one. The satire must have fallen hard upon many a petty and now forgotten playwright, and have outraged the theatrical sense of his numerous and devoted clientele. How thoroughly warranted it was may be gathered from the brief notice which it is here desirable to give to one or two of the dramas which have been named. The only plays in the list which have a direct relation with The Knight of the Burning Pestle are Bold Beauchamps and The Four Prentices of London. The first of these is mentioned by the Wife in the In- duction, as a play which evidently stood well in the esteem of her theatrically informed husband : but it is now lost. The Four Prentices of London, by Thomas Heywood, is foremost in Beaumont's mind among all the plays which he makes the butt of his ridicule. It is alluded to approvingly by the Citizen as authen- ticating the propriety of a grocer's prentice courting the daughter of a king ; it is drawn upon for a number of small objects of the burlesque, and, as has already been shown, Beaumont derived from it the idea of a grocer-knight. No play could be more aptly illustrative of the tediously serious nonsense of the chilvalric drama which our author has turned to such humorous account than The Four Prentices of London. A rapid analysis of its plot will be useful in specifying the preposterous attributes of the whole class. The Earl of Bouillon, having been banished from Objects of the Satire Ixxxiii his native land and deprived of his fortune, retires to London, where he Hves privately as a citizen. His four sons he apprentices to four trades: Godfrey, the eldest, is bound to a mercer ; Guy, to a goldsmith ; Charles, to a haberdasher ; Eustace, the youngest, to a grocer. The father, weary of life, parts from his children, and sets out for the Holy Land, expecting there to find his death. But the brothers, who have high regard for their humble callings, but desire a more heroic career, follow the earl, out of their in- born love of adventure, enlisting under Robert of Normandy in his crusade against the infidels. Setting sail for France, they suffer shipwreck, and are sep- arated from one another. Godfrey is cast ashore in France, and, freeing certain citizens of Bouillon from attacking Spaniards, is proclaimed by them earl of his father's original domain. Guy is picked up on the shore of France, and carried to the court, where he is unsuccessfully wooed by the king's daughter : in martial wise, he protests that war is his only mistress. Charles is carried as far as Italy on a plank ! He there delivers his wandering father from the clutches of banditti, and manages himself to become chief of the lawless band, entertaining the virtuous resolve to lead them into the ways of a better life. Eustace floats in singular security to the coast of Ireland ; but the Irish kerns displease his knightly spirit, and he presently sets forth again toward Je- rusalem. After the prentices-errant have thus been fully launched upon their enterprise, Bella Franca, ' their sister, follows them with zealous feete,' and thereupon this valiant family are gradually brought to the walls of the Holy City through divers and tortuous paths, in which their several adventures grow continually wilder and more improbable. Eustace f 2 Ixxxiv Introduction suddenly, without any discernible explanation, finds himself in Italy, where he rescues the much belabored earl, his father, who this time is being maltreated and despoiled of his money-bags by a villain and an egregiously out-of-place comedy clown. Immediately afterward, Eustace meets Charles and his bandit fol- lowers. For some insufficient reason, the brothers fail to recognize each other, and Eustace falls upon the presumptive leader of thieves. Suddenly Bella Franca, pursued by an ' uncurteous ' outlaw, breaks in upon them. After the conventional queries as to her mishap, the brothers fall to quarreling over the right of precedence in the lady's favor, being strangely unable to perceive that she is their own sister. All at once enters Tancred, County Palatine, who de- mands that the lady be given up to him as hostage of peace between the contestants. The difficulty is thus, for the time, settled ; and Charles and Eustace, being made attendants on the prince, receive knight- hood. Directly Robert of Normandy comes marching into Italy with his army, accompanied by the erst- while apprentices Godfrey and Guy, now, by fortune's favor, become Earl of Bulloigne and Lord of Lessing- ham respectively. Prince Tancred resents this un- heralded intrusion, and calls upon Charles to uphold his honor against Godfrey, who champions the Nor- man host. Neither prince wishes, however, to lose his highly prized knight, and the two combatants are straightway parted. The same separation is the result of an attempted match between Eustace and Guy. The princes decide to drop their strife, and to join armies against the heathen. All six of the heroes, however, fall into a stormy altercation over the possession of Bella Franca, and only on that lady's tearful announcement of an intention to scratch Objects of the Satire Ixxxv her ' Christall eyes out,' because of their brawling, do they deem it wise to desist. The armies soon arrive in Asia, where long-winded defiances against the pagan hosts are indulged in for a considerable time, an outcome of which is the banishment of Guy and Eustace from the ranks on account of their quar- relsome rivalry over which of them shall bear the first challenge. Meanwhile, Bella Franca, distracted by the importunities of her many suitors, flees from the camp, accompanied by a French lady, who, out of her love for Guy, has followed the army. Bella and Eustace chance to meet in a forest, and, without any very clear reason, suddenly each awakens to the other's identity. Meantime Godfrey and Charles are discovered to each other before the walls of Jerusalem through the old earl, their father, whom they have rescued from captivity in the city. Soon after this, the banished Guy and Eustace are restored to favor through their sudden arrival, and their gallant repulse of the pagans in an encounter in which the Christians are being worsted. Learning of the identity of Charles and Godfrey, they themselves become known to each other, and, ultimately, to their brothers. At last, after many reverses, Jerusalem is conquered, and Guy, the one-time goldsmith's prentice, is made its king ! Robert of Normandy thereupon magnanim- ously bestows the crown of Sicily upon Eustace, and the crown of Cyprus upon Charles. Godfrey prefers to wear a crown of thorns ^ At the last moment enters Bella Franca, who, through Eustace, is made known to her rejoicing brothers. With her comes * This motive seems to be reflected from the refusal of the historic Godfrey of Bouillon, on his being elected King of Jerusalem, to wear a crown of gold in the place where the Saviour of the world had been crowned with thorns. Cf. Michaud, History of the Crusades I. 234. Ixxxvi Introduction the French lady, who turns out to be the French princess who had unsuccessfully tried to win the love of Guy at her father's court. Her continued loyalty at last prevails, and she is made the bride of Guy. Bella Franca bestows her hand upon Tan- cred, whom she has more affected than her other suitor, Robert of Normandy. Upon this apportion- ment of crowns and ladies, the play appropriately ends. This flamboyant exposition of the impossible careers of four London apprentices, written in an absurdly pompous style, and crossed with innumerable strands from chivalric romance and tales of Oriental adven- ture, naturally flattered the vanity of the susceptible London shopkeepers, and as naturally lent itself to the ridicule of humorists like Beaumont. Its sprawling, disordered plot, its strange mixture of countries, man- ners, and classes, its illogical reverses, successes, concealments, and recognitions, and its whole array of preposterous improbabilities, are typical of the whole class to which it belongs ; and it was wisely chosen as a most deserving victim of the burlesque in The Knight of the Burning Pestle. Even more closely allied to the books of chivalry, however, than The Four Prentices is Sir Clyomon, Knight of the Golden Shield, and Sir Clamydes, the White Knight. This play, sometimes attributed to George Peele, is evidently based directly upon some lost romance. It presents an odd jumble of ancient and mediaeval heroes (princes of northern Europe and Alexander the Great !), of classic and chivalric man- ners, of dragons, marshes, marvelous forests, enchanters, and incongruous comedy clowns, and of disjointed adventures extended in a few pages over the whole face of Europe ; in a word, it exhibits such a Objects of the Satire Ixxxvii wildly romantic plot that it is an epitome of the whole complex of absurdities which it is the pur- pose of Beaumont to laugh down. But there is not space to characterize minutely this extravaganza. We must leave unnoticed, too, plays like The Misfortunes of Arthur, which, though written upon the Senecan model, set forth the ro- mantic pecularities of their original sources, and plays like Charlimayne and Orlando Furioso, which, though steeped in a chivalric atmosphere, are only remotely connected with the romances and dramas specifically attacked by Beaumont. One example must suffice to reveal the lineaments of a dramatic type which is a cardinal object of the burlesque in our comedy. It was, of course, inevitable that this outcropping of overstrained, unnatural plays, and the commoners' wasteful preoccupation with the romances, should have made the judicious grieve, and have called forth vigorous protests. As might be expected, the Puritans, the morahsts, and the social satirists were ready with their invectives. Roger Ascham's indictment of the Morte d'Arthur, already quoted, may be taken as a pattern of the opinions held by the graver leaders of public thought. We may illustrate the scandalized feelings of the Puritans by an extract from a book of one of their number, Edward Dering, entitled A Briefe and Necessary Catechism or Instructmi, written in 1614. Dering is, indeed, speaking of the romances as afi"ecting an older generation particularly, but he has in mind the corrupting influence of this literature's subsequent developments. He says : For in these days in which there is so great licentiousness of printing bookes, as indeed it maket'h vs all the worse, who can blame it that hath any taste or fauour of goodnesse, be it neuer so simple, if it had no other fruit. Yet this is great & plentiful, that in reading it, we should keep our eie from much Godlesse and childish vanity. Ixxxviii Introduction that now haue blotted so many papers. We see it al, & we mourn for griefe, so many as in spirit and truth do love the Lord : what multitude of bookes ful of all sin & abhominations, haue now filled the world ! Nothing so childish, nothing so vaine, nothing so wanton, nothing so idle, which is not both boldly printed & plausibly taken, so that herein we haue fulfilled the wickednesse of our forefathers, & ouertaken them in their sins : They had their spiritual inchantments, in which they were bewitched, Beuis of Hamptoun, Guy of Warwick, Arthour of the roud table, Huon of Burdaux, Oliver of the Castel, the foure sons of Amyon, & a great many other of such childish folly. And yet more vanity than these, the witlesse deuices of Gargantua, Hawleglasse, Esape, Robinhood, Adam bell. Frier Rush, the fooles of Gotham, & a thousand such other. And yet of al the residue the most drunken imagination, with which they so defiled their festiual & high Holidaies, their legendary, their Saints Hues, their tales of Robin good fellow, & many other spirits, which Sathan had made, hel had printed, & were warranted to sale vnder the Popes priuiledge, to kindle in mens harts the sparks of superstition, that at last it might flame out into the fire of purgatory. These were in the former dales the subtle sleights of Sathan to occupy Christian wits in Heathen fantasies. Dering proceeeds to show the iniquity of the lite- rature which has followed in his own day songs & sonnets, unchaste fables, tragedies, ' and such sorceries.' But it was not only the Puritans who were shocked by some of the noisome features of this literature. That acute satirist, Thomas Nash, in his Anatomie of Absurditie, 1589, expressed a common sentiment in his attack on the contemporary versions and re- dactions of the romances : What else I pray you, doe these bablc booke-mungers endeuor, but to repaire the ruinous wals of Venus court, to restore to the worlde that forgotten Legendary lisense of lying, to imitate a fresh the fan- tasticall dreams of those exiled Abbie-lubbers, from whose idle pens proceeded those worne out impressions of the feyned no where acts of Arthur of the round table, Arthur of litle Brittaine, Sir Tristram, Hewon of Burdeaux, the squire of low degree, the foure sons of Amon, with infinite others ? And as late as 1653, we find this clever character- ization of the romances, as of a class of reading of which the baleful influence was still felt : Objects of the Satire Lxxxix Among all the books that ever were thought on, those of knight errantry and shepherdry haue been so exceedingly trivial and naughty, that it would amuse a good judgment to consider to what strange and vast absurdities some imaginations have straggled the Knight con- stantly killing the gyant, or it may be whole squadrons ; the Damosel certainly to be relieved just upon the point of ravishing ; a little childe carried away out of his cradle, after some twenty years discovered to be the sone of some great Prince ; a girl after seven years wandering and co-habiting and being stole confirmed to be a virgin, either by a panterh, fire or fountain, and lastly all ending in marriage These are the whole entertainments of books of this kinde, which how prof- itable they are, you may judge ; how pernicious 'tis easily seen, if they meet but with an intentive melancholy and a spirit apt to be overborne by such follies*. It is not from the pamphleteers and the preachers, however, but from the dramatists, that we now are able to glean the most extensive evidences of disap- proval among thoughtful men. Plays of the better class are packed with satirical allusions to the fashion of romance-reading. It would be profitless to list them here in their completeness ; but to sketch the general drift of the sentiment of the better playwrights will be useful in showing that Beaumont's burlesque is' expressive of the common attitude among the more gifted of his associates. These men, with their ap- preciations of literary and dramatic values all rela- tively high, with ideals of their art usually lifted above mere motives of expediency and money-getting, looked with scorn and derision upon plebeian taste, and upon those of their humbler fellow-craftsmen who truckled to that taste in the fabrication of the preposterous melodramas which satisfied it. Burlesque episodes are to be discovered in Ben Jonson, in Chapman, and in Beaumont and Fletcher apart from The Knight of the Burning Pestle^ while fun is every- where poked at the belles and beaux and mushroom * Quoted by Jusserand, The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare, p. 404. xc Introduction knights, whose affectations were engendered largely by their reading of romances. From the first infancy of the drama, some sense of the ridiculous features of popular stories seems to have been felt. As early as 1537, an old inter- lude, entitled Thersytes^ developed traces of burlesque upon Greek tales of heroism and the romances of chivalry. The didactic aim of this performance is to ' declare howe that the greatest boesters are not the greatest doers.' The management of the plot through which the lesson is evolved is exceedingly childish and farcical, but the play's satirical intent is manifest. Directly, the satire is leveled at the prevalent tendency to braggadocio, but indirectly it shows that that tendency was nurtured by the kind of literary pabulum upon which the common people were fed. The classical boaster, Thersytes, enters, and announces his ability to overcome all heroes, both ancient and modern. He challenges to the trial, among others, King Arthur and his famous knights, and Robin Hood and Little John. He an- nounces his intention to seek adventures, to join battle anywhere ' in Wales or in Kent,' and to over- come all manner of wild beasts. His first chance to attest his prowess soon arrives. The incident is truly quixotic, and, though conceived in the most infantile spirit, is undoubtedly intended, from one point of view, as a burlesque upon the adventures of knights- errant. We read : ' Here a snail must appear unto him, and he must look fearfully upon the snail, saying : But what monster do I see now Coming hitherward with an armed brow I Marry, sir, fy, fy, I do sweate for fear : I thought I had croked but too timely here. Hence, thou beast, and pluck in thy horns. How, how, ray servants, get you shield and spear, Objects of the Satire xci And let us worry and kill this monster here. God's arms, the monster cometh toward me still, Except I fight manfully, it will me surely kill ! '{Then he must fight against the snail with his club.)' The snail still refusing to draw in her horns, Ther- sytes throws his club away. ' (Here he must fight then with his sword against the snail, and the snail draweth her horns in.) ' Thersytes is triumphant, and says: Now in other countries both far and near Mo deeds of chivalry I will go inquire. Upon this utterance, Miles, a soldier, who has been scornfully witnessing the encounter with the snail, challenges Thersytes to a combat. '(And he begin- neth to fight with him, but Thersytes must run away, and hide him behind his mother's back.) ' Miles calls out: Thou that dost seek giants to conquer Come forth, if thou dare, and in this place appear. Receiving no response, Miles disappears for a time, but presently re-enters and falls upon the hero, who ' must run away and leave his club and sword.' Thereupon, Miles delivers himself of the play's moral as to the vanity of boasting, and the action ends. The didacticism of this grotesque piece is, of course, uppermost ; but its irreverent use of romantic ma- chinery shows that very early the playwrights began to turn to humorous account the features of popular literature. In the fully developed drama, the most pronounced ridicule, outside our play, passed upon books of chivalry and the contemporary manners in- spired by them, is to be found in Ben Jonson and Chapman. It was inevitable that Jonson, the pugnacious de- fender of classicism, should have treated with the utmost contempt the wild romanticism of this litera- xcii Introduction ture and of its theatrical outgrowths. His indictment of the absurd plots of such plays as The Four Pren- tices of London is well known : he says that miracles upon the stage are what please the people, so if a child could be born in a play, and grow up to a man, in the first scene, before he went off the stage : and then after to come forth a squire, and be made a knight to travel between the acts, and do wonders in the Holy Land, or elsewhere ; kill Paynims, wild boars, dun cows, and other monsters; beget him a reputation, and marry an emperor's daughter for his mistress ; and at last come home lame, and all-to-be-laden with miracles.* He says elsewhere that he would have expected vengeance from the fire-god had he compiled Amadis de Gaul, The Esplandians, Arthurs, Palmerins, and all The learned library of Don Quixote, And so some goodlier monster had begot;* and his other scattered references to tales of chivalry are invariably scornful.'^ Jonson's most extensive satire on the affectations cultivated in the Paul's men and owners of purchased knighthoods by romance-reading is in his caricature of Puntarvolo, 'a vain -glorious knight, wholly con- secrated to singularity,' who figures in Every Man Out of his Humor. This ceremonious fop holds chivalric ' dialogues and discourses between his horse, himself, and his dog,' and ' will court his own lady, as she were a stranger never encountered before.' His manner of carrying on his stereotyped love- making is to appear under his wife's window every morning, and, by the winding of his hunter's horn, call her forth to the ordeal. First, he summons his wife's waiting-woman, upon whose appearance at the * Alagnetic Lady I. i. * Underwoods, ed. Gifford, 8. 400. ' Cf. The Alchemist 4. 4 ; The Silent Woman 4. I ; Every Man in his Humour 3. \. \\ A Tale of a Tub 3. 3 ; The New Inn, I. I. Objects of the Satire xciii window, he exclaims : ' Stay : mine eye hath, on the instant, through the bounty of the window, received the form of a nymph,' &c. Then follows a satirical colloquy, in which be draws from his interlocutor all sorts of complimentary information about himself, asking her about the lord of the ' castle,' whether or not he is courteous, magnanimous, bountiful, learned, devout to all of which queries she is trained to respond in the affirmative. Upon the appearance of his own lady, he bursts forth in this fashion : What more than heavenly pulchritude in this ? O, I am planet-struck, and in yond sphere A brighter star than Venus doth appear. There is more vaporing of the same sort, ending with this announcement to his ' most debonair and luculent lady' : I am a poor knight-errant, lady, that by hunting in the adjacent forest, was, by adventure, in the pursuit of a hart, brought to this place ; which hart, dear madam, escaped by enchantment : the evening approaching, myself, and servant wearied, my suit is, to enter your fair castle and refresh me. His wife, true to her part in keeping up the fiction, demurs as to the propriety of receiving a strange knight into her castle, but says at last : I am reselved to entertain you to the best of my power ; which I acknowledge to be nothing, valued with what so worthy a person may deserve. Please you but stay, while I descend.' Puntarvolo is, of course, one of Jonson's broadly exaggerated 'humor' studies, but his antics expressively denote the absurd vagaries entertained by his class through their acquaintance with romances. A truer delineation of the fantastic dreams and desires in- stilled into the bourgeois society through this agency is that in Eastward Ho, written by Chapman chiefly, though with the probable collaboration of Jonson. ' Cf. Every Man out of his Humour 2. i. xciv Introduction The purse -ridden Sir Petronel Flash has, by false accounts of castles, which he is popularly supposed to have won from giants, &c., dazzled the fancy of Gertrude, daughter of an old goldsmith. Touchstone. By his deceptions he weds her, gets possession of her maternal estate, and sends her on a fool's errand in a coach to find the visionary castles, while he takes wing for America. Chapman humorously depicts the simple-minded Gertrude's comical despair, and her appeals to the authority of the romances : Would the knight o'the sun, or Palmerin of England, have used their ladies so, Syn ? or Sir Lancelot ? or Sir Tristram ? But her loss is for the time irretrievable, and she ends with consoling herself by means of a spiteful comparison of the prosy knighthoods nowadays with the glorious knighthoods of old time. The Faithful Friends, a play somewhat doubtfully ascribed to Beaumont and Fletcher, contains an under- plot in which the braggart knight Sir Pergamus draws out to great length the chivalric lingo and ceremonies which seem to have been cultivated by the romance-nurtured dandies. These features of the play do not differ in essential character from those of Every Man Out of his Humour, just sketched, while the satire is inferior in point and originality ; there- fore specific notice need not be given it. Beside these three our four considerable treatments of the romance -habit, the old plays contain innu- merable condemnatory flings at it in brief allusions. Shakespeare gives the romances small notice, but he is never complimentary ^ Dekker uses them for iron- ical purposes in The Untrussing of the Humorous Poet. Marston attacks them with his usual scurrility-. * Cf. / Henry IV 2. 2 ; 2 Henry IV 3. 2 ; Much Ado 2. i ; Lear 3. 4 ; King John I. 2 ; Henry V l. l. * Cf. The Malcontent i. i. Objects of the Satire xcv Beaumont and Fletcher continually poke fun at them^ The plays of the later dramatists, particularly Shirley, Nabbes, and Habington, are seamed with contemp- tuous references to them^. These small satirical al- lusions and episodes in the old dramatists, of little significance singly, in their collective aspect form a convincing evidence of the prevalence and the del- eterious effect of the fashion of romance-reading, and illuminate to an invaluable degree the cause and point of Beaumont's elaborate satire. b. Miscellaneous Stage-favorites of the Citizens. The emphasis of the literary satire in The Knight of the Burning Pestle is upon the romances and the chivalric drama. There are oblique thrusts, however, at a class of city stage-favorites, which, for lack of a better term, may be called the civic drama. This was a numerous series of plays which flamboyantly set forth the lives of famous London worthies, and extolled the virtues of London shopkeepers and ap- prentices. It is productions of this sort which the Citizen, in the Induction of The Knight of the Burning Pestle, insists should be substituted for the bill offered by the Prologue; he is only pacified when the Wife suggests the even more delectable treat to be en- joyed through Ralph's essay of a chivalric role. The Legend of Whittifigton, a lost play. The Life and Death of Sir Thomas Gresham, a play written by Heywood under the actual title of If you know not me, you know no body, and a play which the Wife calls Jane Shore, but which is probably Heywood's First and 1 Cf. Jiule a Wife 4. 2 ; Wild Goose Chase i. i ; Little French Lawyer 2. 3 ; Scarnful Lady 3. I ; Philaster 5. 4 ; &c. " Cf., for example, Shirley's Bird in a Cage 3. 2, and Honoria and Mammon 2. i ; Nabbes' Tottenham Court 4. 7. xcvi Introduction Second Parts of King Edward the Fourth^ are the rep- resentatives of the type mentioned in the Induction. The fact that egregiously open addresses were made to the vanity of the tradesmen is illustrated, indeed, in such a play as The Four Prentices of Lon- don. It will easily be seen that The Four Prentices is intended to idealize the supposititious valor of the London shop-boys, and that to do so it stops short of no limit of probability or reason. Indeed, Hey- wood inscribes his preface of the printed copy ' to the honest and high-spirited prentises, the readers," compliments them on their absurdly pretentious mil- itary drills in the newly revived practice of arms in the Artillery Gardens, and concludes thus : But to returne agayne to you, my braue spirited Prentises, vpon whom I haue freely bestowed these Foure, I wish you all, that haue their courages and forwardnesse, their noble Fates and Fortunes. ' The noble Fates and Fortunes ' of the sons of Bouillon were, then, deliberately set forth as within the scope of possible attainment by the valiant ap- prentices, and were doubtless so looked upon by those gullible youths. That their masters, too, re- garded the fiction as authentic and praiseworthy is evidenced by the Citizen's triumphant appeal to it as a witness that a grocer's boy may properly court a king's daughter, if he so aspires (4. 64). The lines of the play itself contain numbers of straightforward appeals to the tradesmen's pride of caste and wealth. The noble four loudly proclaim the honor and dig- nity of their tradesmen's calling. Godfrey declares : I hold it no disparage to my birth Though I be born an Earl, to have the skill And the full knowledge of the Mercer's trade. Guy expatiates upon the worth of the goldsmith's vocation as a means to purchase 'steadfast wealth,' Objects of the Satire xcvii while ' state ' may waste, ' and towring honours fall ' ; and Charles cries out to the old earl, his father: Or should I say the Citty-trades are base For such a great mans sonnes to take on them : Your fatherly regard would straight aduise mee To chastise my rebellious thoughts. There is more of the same sort. It is sufficient to say that Eustace proudly emblazons the grocer's arms upon his ensign, and Guy adopts the goldsmith's emblem ; while throughout the headlong rush of ad- ventures the heroes loquaciously signify that they are exerting their prowess to ' try what London pren- tises can doe.' The other plays named by the spectators were palatable to them for much the same reason as was The Four Prentices. The Legend of Whittington was un - doubtedly a dramatization of the familiar story of that celebrated grandee and his cat. The fabulous nature of the tale must have made a deep impression upon the childishly credulous fancy of the commoners of the time, and, through the embodiment of their commercial dignity and importance in this eminent representative, their pride must have been immeas- urably flattered. The second part of If you know not me is largely devoted to a laudatory account of the public bene- factions of the famous merchant Sir Thomas Gresham, particularly his erection of the great Bourse known as the Royal Exchange. The play is tediously drawn out in long-winded discourses, in which there are many bombastic descriptions of the careers of ' prov- ident, valiant and learned citizens,' now gone to their reward, and many boastful utterances from Sir Thomas himself regarding the magnanimity of his present enterprise, which, however, he incautiously g xcviii Introduction remarks, is undertaken that thereafter young trades- men established in the Exchange may speake in Gresham's praise, In Gresham's work we did our fortunes raise. What little action there is moves lumberingly along, till, with much splurge and display, the climax is reached in the christening of the building under the hand of Queen Elizabeth herself. Monotonous and dramatically hollow as is the piece, its popularity among the purse-proud brethren of Sir Thomas was natural enough, but it was as naturally exposed to the gibes and ridicule of dramatists who could despise its obsequious flattery of the citizens, and detect its pretentiousness and absurdity. A production more creditable to Heywood is his King Edward IV. The main theme is concerned with the king^s mistress, Jane Shore, the story of whose rise from obscurity, brief enjoyment of grandeur and singular power, final downfall and repentance, is treated with much of the simple dramatic effectiveness and ' homely tenderness ' for which Heywood is famous. An underplot has to do with the besieging of London hij the Bastard Falconhridge, and the valiant defence of the same by the Lord Maior and the Citizens. It is in this latter feature that our Citizen doutbless takes his greatest dehght. Here the worthiness of himself and his fellows is set forth in glowing colors. Their apprentices bravely defy the rebels in these terms : Nay scorn us not that we are prentices. The Chronicles of England can report What memorable actions we haue done. To which the daies achievement shall be knit, To make the volume larger than it is. The prentices make good their boast in the stirring repulses which they give the enemy. The army of Objects of the Satire xcix citizens at length gains the victory, the leaders are knighted by the king, and the episode concludes with the Lord Mayor's somewhat unprovoked, but edifying, account of his rise from a grocer's appren- ticeship in his youth to his present high dignity. The plebeian appeal of such plays as these is self-evident ^ Another of Beaumont's objects of at- tack is a nondescript drama of marvels and adven- ture, represented by ' The story of Queen Elenor,' Mucedorus, and The Travailes of the Three English Brothers. Queen Eleanor's story is told in Peele's King Edward the First, a sub-plot of which is entitled the sinking of Queene Elinor, ivho sunck at Charing crosse, and rose againe at Potters-hith, now named Queene- hith. This fate was supposed to have been meted out to the unpopular, but really virtuous, princess because of her reported murder of the Lord Mayor's wife, and its incidents were very absurdly set forth for the stage in Peele's version of the scandal. Plays like Mucedorus are of a hybrid order, develop- ing in a most childish fashion some of the features of the romances such as rescues of fair damsels from beasts and wild-men- of-the-woods together with the broadest buffoonery of the old-time Vice, through his descendant, the clown. The Travailes of the Three English Brothers was written by Day, Rowley, and Wilkins. The fortunes of the three Shirleys Thomas, Anthony, and Robert at the courts of Persia and other Eastern countries, form an interesting chapter in the history of Elizabethan travelers. Many fabulous stories were related about these men, and * It is concisely illustrated by Earle in his Microcosniography , 1628, in his character of ' A Mere Gull Citizen ' : ' He is one loves to hear the famous acts of citizens, whereof the gilding of the cross [by Ed. I in memory of Queen Elenor] he counts the glory of this age, and the four prentices of London above all the nine worthies.' g 2 c Introduction Day and his associates incorporated them into their play. This production is a very odd affair. The action is propelled by means of dumb shows and choruses, which transport the brothers all over Europe and Asia in a fashion more disconnected than that of The Four Prentices itself ; and, after many strange happenings, the plot finds issue in the marriage of Sir Robert Shirley to the Sophy of Persia's daughter, concluding with the christening of their first-born in dumb show an incident which our Citizen wishes Ralph to enact (4. 44). Finally, a word should be said upon that much belabored old stage-piece. The Spanish Tragedy of Thomas Kyd. As is well known, the playwrights are never tired of casting slurs at the rant and blood- and-thunder fustian of this long-lived favorite of the citizens. Modern critics have found considerable dra- matic skill and real tragic power beneath the weak- nesses of the old play, but Kyd's contemporaries in the drama could only sneer perhaps incited by some feeling of jealousy of its unequalled popularity. Beaumont and Fletcher make their most considerable sport of it in The Knight of the Burning Pestle. As early as the Induction, its plebeian patronage is denoted by the Citizen's declaring that Ralph was to have 'played Jeronimo with a shooemaker for a wager' before the wardens of the Grocers' Company. In two later passages it is outspokenly parodied. At the opening of The Spanish Tragedy, Andrea's ghost enters and says : My name is Don Andrea ; my descent, Though not ignoble, yet inferior far To gratious fortunes of my tender youth. These lines are ridiculed in our play (4. 442-3) by Ralph's utterance : Objects of the Satire ci My name is Ralph, by due descent though not ignoble I, Yet far inferior to the stock of gracious grocery. The whole of Ralph's concluding speech (5. 319-69), when his ghost enters with ' a forked arrow through his head,' seems to be conceived in a spirit of bur- lesque upon Don Andrea's declamation. A few definite parallels can be established. Andrea's ghost begins : When this eternall substance of my soule Did Hue imprisond in my wanton flesh, Ech in their function serving others need, I was a Courtier in the Spanish Court. Thus Ralph : When I was mortal, this my costive corps Did lap up figs and raisins in the Strand. Andrea continues : For there in prime and pride of all my years, My duteous service and deserving love, In secret I possest a worthy dame, Which hight sweet Belimperia by name. Ralph says correspondingly : Where sitting, I espied a lovely dame, Whose master wrought with lingel and with awl. From here on the speeches diverge according to the difference between Ralph's and Andrea's narratives of their achievements in life. There seems to be a connection, however, in the accounts of their deaths. Andrea says : But in the harvest of my summer joys, Death's winter nipt the blossoms of my bliss. Though totally dissimilar in content, Ralph's grotesque description may be a parody on Andrea's solemn utterance. Ralph has it : Then coming home, and sitting in my shop With apron blue, Death came into my stall To cheapen aguavitae ; but ere I Could take the bottle down and fill a taste, Death caught a pound of pepper in his hand, And sprinkled all my face and body o'er. And in an instant vanished away. cii Introduction Lastly, there seems to be an intentionally ludicrous contrast drawn between the final havens of these two martial souls. When Andrea has arrived in Hades, Rhadamant declares : He died in warre, and must to Martial fields. But Ralph says, after describing the singular manner of his decease: Then took I up my bow and shaft in hand, And walk't into Moorfields to cool myself. 2. The Manners of Jacobean Audiences. Perhaps the feature of The Knight of the Burning Pestle which is the most remote from modern com- prehension is the conduct of the Citizen and his Wife, No amount of extraneous description or passing allusion in Jacobean literature can re-create for us the popular manners which Beaumont has typified in the behavior of his rough-and-ready spec- tators. To come into proper sympathy with these good people, one must realize them, not through written accounts of the rude social life of that olden time, but through a free exercise of his own creative imagination. He must project himself into a vanished civilization, whose rough, hearty life was essentially different from our modern urbanity and restraint, and he must make that life his own. Only by so doing can he accept with full relish and conviction the forceful, realistic humor of Beaumont's satire. Most of all, for the right understanding of The Knight of the Burning Pestle, the modem playgoer must transport himself in imagination into the con- ditions which prevailed in the common theatre of the time of James the First. He must hold before his mental vision as clearly as may be the outlines of Objects of the Satire ciii the Jacobean playhouse^ its high circular interior, roofless for the most part, and lighted by the open sky ; its primitve stage, made of rough timbers pro- jecting into the centre of the yard, and wholly de- void of curtains or of scenery, save for a few tra- verses and painted cloths ; its low-thatched gallery, running around the walls at a short distance from the ground ; and its more decorative balconies above and behind the platform, which are reserved for the well-to-do spectators. He must then bring into his mind's eye one of the typical audiences of London. He must picture the aristocratic, haughty occupants of the ' twelve-penny rooms ' at the rear or sides of the stage. He must look with proper deference upon the gaudily dressed and copiously mannered gallants who are seated in cherished prominence upon the stage itself, where they blazon forth their finery, and, with complacent skill, blow fantastically fashioned wreaths of tobacco smoke, to the admiration or the envious opprobrium of all ' the opposed rascality ' down in the yard below ; or who, better still, are stretched their whole resplendent length upon the very boards, 'the very Rushes where the Comedy is to daunce, yea, and vnder the very state of Cambises himselfe,' where their recumbent forms interfere mightly with the business of the actors, who have to shuffle about as best they can in the narrow space which is yet vouchsafed to them. But still further must our hy- pothetical modern divest himself of his accustomed notions of a theatre familiar to his own experience, with its comfortable furnishings, its highly finished appointments, and its sleek and placid patrons ; he must in imagination shove his way into the midst of the noisy, jostling throng gathered upon the bare earth there, and crowded about the very edge of the civ Introduction stage itself in zealous determination to draw out every iota of their sixpence worth of delight from whatever dramatic display that unpromising structure may set forth. It is a motley and turbulent assem- blage yeomen, tradesmen, sailors, quarrelsome ap- prentices, tittering servant-girls, and aggressive city wives, with here and there, mayhap, a furtive Puritan brother, who has slipped away from his disapproving fold to glance for a wicked hour upon the ' vanity,' and snatch a fleeting and fearful joy from this high carnival of the ungodly. Here it is that our translated spectator will find the worthy grocer, accompanied by his bustling wife and his stage-struck apprentice-boy Ralph. The good man is protesting loudly to his assenting neighbors against the impertinence of that placard hanging from the rafters of the stage, which an- nounces that the play to be presented is called The London Merchant. There is assuredly some sinister meaning in this name, for have not numerous stage- pieces in these days, under cover of just such a smooth-sounding title as this, hurled ridicule and in- sult at the honorable tradesmen of London, who are the salt of the land, and the support and prop of the state ? And, indeed, have not many of their number of best degree and quality been brought into disrepute by these rascally players, so that more than once the Worshipful Company of Aldermen, and even the Lords of the Privy Council themselves, have interfered and forbidden the libelous perform- ances ? And, moreover, is it not their money and their patronage by which these shows are maintained, and why should they not have in return for their outlay whatsoever kind of an entertainment may please them ? Why should they not have something Objects of the Satire cv presented 'notably in honour of the commons of the city,' such as The Legend of Whittington, The Building of the Royal Exchange^ or The Four Prentices of London ? As the interested modern listens to this garrulous shopkeeper's assumption of authority over the im- mediate behavior of the dramatic muse, he finds himself little by little drawn into sympathy with an unwonted point of view, and it seems altogether natural, and expressively human, when the indignant worthy, in a gathering storm of wrath, suddenly pushes his way through the excited crowd, leaps bodily upon the stage, throttles the astonished Prologue, who has just entered to speak the accustomed preamble, and shouts in that functionary's defenseless ear : ' Hold your peace, goodman boy ! this seven years there hath been plays at this house, I have observed it, you have still girds at citizens ; and now you call your play The London Merchant. Down with your title, boy ! down with your title ! ' When once the beholder has been swept into the spirit of this vigorous conduct, it seems not at all a bizarre or incredible circumstance that presently the agitated Wife should also go clambering up the stage, nor that, after her due obeisance to the usually haughty, but in this case indulgent, gallants, she should abet her irate spouse in his stormy protest against the bill proposed. And it seems quite in the natural order of life that she should volubly insist upon giving the boy Ralph a chance to exercise his vaunted gift for histrionics, or, as an upshot of the whole dispute, that Ralph should actually be assigned a role as a valiant grocer-errant, and be allowed to scramble through the five acts of the comedy as best he may to the slight impairment of The London Merchant^ to be sure, but to the vast delectation of cvi Introduction his master and mistress, and to them a welcome rehef from the expected pertness of the appointed play. In this vivid creation of the Citizen and his Wife, Beaumont is but striking off with perfect accuracy the assurance and actual manners of his own theatrical public, who tried to overrule the playwrights, and not infrequently succeeded in dictating the produc- tions of the stage. There is, of course, an essentially fanciful element in the interwoven antics of Ralph, but the boisterous conduct of the spectators is no- wise overdrawn. Indeed, its delineation seems to be restrained, if we may accept as fact the following account of theatrical audiences by a contemporary of Beaumont : Men come not to study at a playhouse, but love such expressions and passages which with ease insinuate themselves into their capacities. Lingua, that learned comedy of the contention betwixt the five senses for the superiority, is not to be prostituted to the common stage, but is only proper for an academy ; to bring them Jack Drum's Enter- taijiment. Greens Tit Quoqiie, The Devil of Edmonton, and the like ; or if it be on holidays, when Sailors, Watermen, Shoemakers, Butchers, and Apprentices, are at leisure, then it is good policy to amaze those violent spirits with some tearing tragedy full of fights and skirmishes, as the Guelph and Ghibbelines, Greeks and Trojans, or The Three London Apprentices*, which commonly ends in six acts, the spectators frequently motinting the stage, and making a more bloody catastrophe among themselves than the players did. \ I have known upon one of these festivals, but especially at Shrove-tide, where the players have been appointed, notwithstanding their bills to the contrary, to act what a major part of the company had a mind to; sometimes Tamer- laine, sometimes Jugurth, sometimes The Jew of Malta, and sometimes parts of all these ; and at last, none of the three taking, they were forced to undress and put off their tragic habits, and conclude the day with The Merry Milkmaids. And unless this were done, and the popular humor satisfied, as sometimes it so fortuned that the players were refractory, the benches, the tiles, the laths, the stones, oranges, apples, nuts, flew about most liberally ; and as there were mechanics of all professions, they fell every one to his own trade, and dissolved a house in an instant, and made a ruin of a stately fabric*. \ ' Probably Heywood's Fotir Prentices of London is here meant. * Gayton, Festivous Notes Upon Don Quixote, 1654, p. 271. Objects of the Satire cvii This graphic account gives us a clear index to the code of pubHc manners, and the irresponsible criticism of plays, which Beaumont's acute but kindly satire sets forth in a delightfully humorous fashion in The Knight of the Burning Pestle. It was of course quite inevitable that such spectacular exhibitions of human nature in the rough should have attracted the play- wrights. In modified form, they were used for pur- poses of characterization by other dramatists besides Beaumont. In Summer's Last Will and Testament, prob- ably performed at some nobleman's castle in 1592, Thomas Nash has Henry the Eighth's jester, Will Summer, sit upon the stage, flout the actors, and cast satirical flings at the themes of the play. In the last act of Middleton's Mayor of Queenhorough, Simon, an illiterate tanner who has become mayor of his native town, is made to break in upon a play which he thinks is being improperly acted, and assume a role himself, to his ultimate discomfiture through having his pockets picked by one of the cast, whose part necessitates this indignity. Simon's interested and credulous participation in the feigned occurences, as though they were all real events, and his inter- posed comments upon the relative cleverness of the actors, bear a marked resemblance to the conduct of our Citizen and his Wife. Randolph, in The Muses' Looking Glass, acted about 1635, has two Puritans inveigled into witnessing a play, and uses the spec- tator-motive to satirize the Puritans' bigoted opposition to the stage, on the one hand, and, on the other, to try to convert these skeptics to a belief in its moralizing influence. Brome, in his Antipodes., 1638, humorously portrays an unsophisticated country- woman, Diana by name, who sits in the audience, and makes naive comments upon the play, this cviii Introduction being her first experience of the theatre. These treatments of the spectator-motive are illustrative of such contemporary manners as are depicted by Beau- mont, but they are slight incidental sketches, while in The Knight of the Burning Pestle the Citizen and his Wife are in the centre of attention, and are the prime movers of the action. It was left to Beaumont and to Ben Jonson, in- deed, to give the fullest exhibitions of the uncouth- ness and the arrogance of their theatrical public. The manner of their delineations varied according to the purposes and the peculiar genius of the two men. Jonson, the cynic, the scorner of human kind, warped and distorted his exponents of the popular taste into grotesque caricatures, which symbolized his personally biased outlook upon his audiences ; and, heavy moralist that he was, he laid on his blows with unsparing severity, often directing the whole movement, moreover, to the exposition of some artistic or ethical thesis rather than to the truly dramatic exposition of life itself. Jonson fumes and rails and vituperates in the very face of his audience. He squarely tells the groundlings that they are a ' rude barbarous crew, a people that have no brains,' who ' will hiss anything that mounts above their ground- ed ' capacities ^ ; and he says the capricious gallants ' have such a habit of dislike in all things, that they will approve nothing, be it never so conceited or elaborate ; but sit dispersed, making faces, and spitting, wagging their upright ears, and cry, filthy ! filthy .', simply uttering their own condition'^. In the In- duction of Cynthia's Revels^ he sums up, with the most acrid denunciation, the various sorts of stupiditiy and presumption in his audience which excite his wrath : * I'he Case is Altered 2. 4. * Ibid. Objects of the Satire cix As some one civet-wit among you, that knows no other learning than the price of satin and velvets ; nor other perfection than the wearing of a neat suit ; and yet will censure as desperately as the most professed critic in the house, presuming his clothes should bear him out in it. Another, whom it hath pleased nature to furnish with more beard than brains, prunes his mustaccio, lisps, and, with some score of affected oaths, swears down all that sit about him ; ' That the old Hieronimo, as it was first acted, was the only best and judiciously penned play in Europe.' A third great-bellied juggler talks of twenty years since, and when Monsieur was here, and would enforce all wits to be of that fashion, because his doublet is still so. A fourth miscalls all by the name of fustian that his grounded capacity cannot aspire to. A fifth only shakes his bottle-head, and out of his corky brain squeezeth out a pitiful learned face, and is silent. These abusive denunciations are typical of Ben. He lengthily draws out more of the same sort through the medium of the spectators Dampley, in The Mag- netic Lady^ and the Gossips, in The Staple of News^ through Leatherhead's rascally catering to the ple- beian public's low taste by means of his puppet-shows, in the last act of Bartholomew Fair, and through the well-known preachments of Jonson's spokesman, Asper, upon the purposes of dramatic art and the contempti- bility of popular opinion, in Every Man out of his Humour. Ben's harsh and untempered invectives, expository as they are of the boorish manners and shallow the- atrical judgment of the playwrights' average auditors, have little in common with Beaumont's satirical meth- od. Beaumont is every inch a dramatist, and never a moralizer or a self-opinionated denouncer. He had, indeed, had reason enough for invective, for, early in 1610, the 'many-headed bench' had hissed from the boards his colleague Fletcher's beautiful pastoral, The Faithful Shepherdess, and he had written to his mortified friend some indignant verses on the stu- pidity and injustice of the ignorant rabble, Scarce two of which can understand the laws Which they should judge by, nor the parties cause ; ex Introduction yet who, even as the boy doth dance Between the acts, will censure the whole play^. It is sometimes very naturally surmised that The Knight of the Burning Pestle was written as a rebuke to the city for its rejection of The Faithful Shepherdess^^ but if that is so, the author has wholly submerged the personal motive, and refrained from expressed de- nunciation. Like a true dramatist, he himself is completely non-commital. He allows his bigoted citizens to be exposed to humiliating ridicule through their own self-projected absurdities, and the process is neither hindered nor abetted by interpretations in- jected by the author from without. The satire is a faithful reflex of actual life, wholly unspoiled by the tang and asperity of the cantankerous Ben's admix- tures. It is inwrought with the texture of the piece itself; it is conceived, not as a polemic or a diatribe, but as a pure expression of vital dramatic humor. 3. Minor Objects of the Satire. During the course of The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Beaumont laughs in an indulgent way at numbers of the small foibles and superstitions of the commoners. The Wife's vociferous repugnance to the new fashion of smoking tobacco (1. 224-8); her faith in the medicinal efficacy of green ginger (2. 279), of a mouse's skin (3. 212), of 'smelling to the toes' (3. 216), and of carduus henedictus and mare's milk (3. 336); the delight of her spouse and herself in the puppet-shows and other rare sights (3. 295-308) ; the boastful spirit aroused by the exercises at the fencing- schools (2. 368 — 71) ; the absurdities of the old civic * Cf. TTie Works of Beaumont &= Fletcher, ed. Dyce, 2. 9. * Cf. Macaulay, Fraticii Beaumont, p. 152. Objects of the Satire cxi display known as Arthur's Show (4. 65) ; the childish interest of the citizens in the May-game (4. 420-92.) these and other eccentricities of the common folk the dramatist archly glances at in passing, and, in a clever but kindly manner, he sets them out to denote the ignorance and the egotism of the self- constituted censors of the stage whom he desires to ridicule and reprove. The features of these minute media of the satire are sufficiently illustrated in the notes, and need not here be further specified. A word should be said, however, upon one of the lesser satirical episodes which Beaumont developes at some length, and with inimitable spirit. I refer to the playful burlesque upon the drills at Mile End Green in Act 4, 11. 65-185. The mimicry which is there introduced through the Wife's suggestion is in ridicule of the pompous manoeuvers of the City train bands, merged in later times in the Royal London Mihtia. Mile End, just outside the bounds of Old London, was established as the mustering place of this order by Henry VIII in 1532, when the organiza- tion was provisionally formed. Entick says : The king laid a scheme to find out the real strength of his metrop- olis, by ordering a general muster to be made of all the defensible men within the City or the liberties, from the age of i6, to 60, to be held at Mile-end, on the fields between Whitechapel church and Stephney church ; and commanding that their names, and an account of the weapons, armour, and other military accoutrements belonging to the City, should then be also taken down and sent him*. There are records of two important musters under Ehzabeth, one in 1559 at Greenwich, the other in 1585, when about 4000 men were chosen out of the Companies of the City by command of the Queen. They mustered daily at Mile End and in St. George's Fields, and were inspected by the Queen at Green- * Survey of Londo7t i. 184. cxii Introduction wich. By a commission dated Aug. 21, 1605, King James authorized a general muster to be made of the forces of the City, and especially of such trained men as had been enrolled under Elizabeth. Eventu- ally these bodies were organized into companies, under the name of train bands. They were officered by members of the Honorable Artillery Company, with which they are sometimes confounded. The Artillery Company dates its present existence from 1610, hence from the immediate period of our play. ' Its formation immensely stimulated the military interest of the Londoners, and induced the excessive fondness for drills which the play satirizes. ' The train bands were not brought into active requisition until the Civil War. Then, however, though their practical utility had been cheaply esteemed, they distinguished them- selves by their skill and their bravery^ It is the factitious dangers and illusory bravery involved in these battles at Mile End which so mightily stir the military ardor of our representative Citizen and his wife, and which so dilate the bosom of the redoubtable Ralph, as he marshals his invincible troops across the stage. Nothing could more cleverly denote the childish futiHty of these displays, and the citizens' inflated pride in their imagined magnificence and importance, than our grocer's seeming belief in his own hairbreadth escapes when he himself was a pikeman there 'in the hottest of the day,' or his terror before the sham fire, and his devout gratitude that ' for all this I am heere wench,' or Ralph's solemn inspection of the faulty munitions, or Greengoose's egregious rashness in firing his gun, ' partly to secure ^ For accounts of the City train bands, cf. Francis Grose, The Anti- quarian Repertory I. 251— 270, and G. A. Raikes, The History of the Honourable Artillery Company. Objects of the Satire cxiii her, and partly for audacity,' or the captain's fear of the ' Butchers hookes at white-Chappel,' or his inspiring address to the soldiers, with his reassuring adjuration : ' Feare not the face of the enemy, nor the noise of the guns: for beleeue me brethren, the rude rumbling of a Brewers Carre is farre more terrible,' and his comforting promise to them : ' for you shall see (I do not doubt it) and that very shortly, your louing wives againe, and your sweet children, whose care doth beare you company in baskets.' Here again the genius of a truly dramatic satirist is at work. The citizens are allowed to bring down ridicule upon themselves of their own initiative, and from impulses which are native, in varying degrees, to all mankind. The satire is implicit in its objects, and is made expressive by means of the unfolding of a typical, if designedly exaggerated, picture of absurd contemporary customs, through which, how- ever, are exposed the fundamental and eternally ludicrous vanities and weaknesses of human nature itself. Here, as elsewhere in The Knight of the Burn- ing Pestle, Beaumont, though his medium is some- what obscure, because of its remoteness from our experience, is directing his ridicule at the ingrained absurdities of men, and, therefore, is here, as else- where, manifesting his powers, not merely as a social satirist, whose work must necessarily have a tempo- rary application only, but as a dramatist setting forth a vitally humorous, hence penetrating and perennially truthful interpretation of life. It is in this larger aspect that, in the last analysis, The Knight of the Burning Pestle should be remem- bered. It shadows forth popular fashions and manners and social oddities which have long since vanished ; h cxiv Introduction it is in its occasion a burlesque upon some of the outworn vagaries of the race ; but, unlike many of its forgotten contemporaries on the public stage, its essence inheres not in its occasion or its immediate material, but in the elemental peculiarities of our common nature. It should excite, therefore, not mere- ly an antiquarian, but also a vital and sympathetic interest. THE KNIGHT OF THE BURNING PESTLE TEXT EDITOR'S NOTE The text adopted for the present edition is that of a copy of the First Quarto, dated 1613, which is preserved in the Boston Public Library. Except for pagination, line-numbering, and a few substitutions of modern for archaic characters, the text here given aims to be an exact reproduction of the Quarto. In the compilation of variants, the guiding principle has been to record only those alterations of the original text which materially clarify or strengthen the sense, or which supply alternate readings having a peculiar interest. This has involved the noting of all suggestive changes of punctuation ; all changes in spelling of which the result is a difference of form or removal of ambiguities ; and all stage-directions and scene-headings supplied by the editions of Weber and Dyce. Frequently, also, the egregious blunders and inconsistencies of punctuation in the First Quarto have led me to note subsequent corrections, even in passages of which the meaning is perfectly clear. I have limited myself, however, to the emendations of only the more obtrusive of such errors; to have noticed all of them would have involved a task manifestly disproportionate to the value of its results. I have not given separate treatment to the edition of 1811, since it is merely a reprint of that of 1778, nor to Darley's editions of 1840 and 1866, since they are reprints of the text of Weber. Keltie's text of the play in his Works of the British Dramatists, 1870, and Fitzgibbon's text in Famous Elizabethan Plays, 1890, are based on the editions of Weber and Dyce, A 2 4 Editor s Note and are therefore unnoticed. The text in Morley's Burlesque Plmjs and Poems, 1885, is based on the edition of 1750, and presents no variants not bor- rowed from the editions of 1778, Weber, or Dyce; consequently, it also has been disregarded. Strachey's (Mermaid) edition and Moorman's (Temple Dramatists) edition, though they follow Dyce very closely, present a few unique variants of significance, which are duly recorded. Q2 = The first quarto of 1635. Qg = The second quarto of 1635. F = FoHo of 1679. 1711 - Edition of 1711. 1750 = Edition of Theobald, Seward, and Sympson, 1750. 1778 = Edition of 1778. W = Weber's edition, 1812. Dy = Dyce's edition, 1843. S = Strachey's (Mermaid) edition, 1887. M = Moorman's (Temple Dramatists) edition, 1898. om. = omitted, f. = and all later editions. At the end of the text may be found the title- page, the address to the readers, the prologue, and the speakers' names, which are prefixed to the Second Quarto, 1635. THE KNIGHT OF the Burning Pestle. Quod si ludicium subtile, videndis artibus illud Ad libros cS= ad haec Musarum dona vocares: Boeotum in crasso iurares acre natum. Horat. in Epist. ad Oct. Aug. (Printer's Device.) LONDON, Printed for WALTER BURRE, and are to be sold at the signe of the Crane in Paules Church-yard. 1613. TO HIS MANY WAIES ENDEERED friend Maister Robert Keysar. ^^IR, this vnfortunate child, who ^ ^ in eight daies (as lately I haue \__y learned) was begot and borne, soone after, was by his parents (perhaps because hee was so vn- like his brethren) exposed to the wide world, who for want of iudgement, or not vnderstanding the priuy marke of Ironie about it (which shewed it was no of -spring of any vulgar braine) vtterly reiected it : so that for want of accep- tance it was euen ready to giue vp the Ghost, and was in danger to haue bene smothered in perpetuall obliuion, if you (out of your direct antipathy to ingratitude) had not bene moued both to relieue and cherish it: wherein I must needs commend both your iudgement, vnderstand- ing, and singular hue to good wits; you afterwards sent it to mee, yet being an infant and somewhat ragged, I haue fostred it priuately in my bosome these two yeares, and now to shew my loue returne it to you, clad in good lasting cloaths, which scarce memory will weare out, and able to speake for it selfe; and withall, as it telleth mee, desirous to try his fortune in the world, where if yet it be welcome, father, foster-father, nurse and child, all haue their desired end. If it bee slighted or traduced, it This dedication was first reprinted by W DEDICATION OF THE FIRST EDITION, 1613. W Maister] Master W, f. passim after W, f. of -spring^ offspring W, f. yet, W ragged: Dy 8 The Epistle Dedicatory hopes his father will beget htm a yonger brother, who shall reuenge his quarrell, and challenge the world eith- er of fond and meerely literati interpretation, or illite- rate misprision. Perhaps it will be thought to bee of the race of Don Quixote : we both may confidently sweare, it is his elder aboue a yeare; and therefore may (by ver- tue of his birth-right) challenge the wall of him. I doubt not but they will meet in their aduentures, and I hope the breaking of one staff e will make them friends ; and per- haps they will combine themselues, and trauell through the world to seeke their aduentures. So I commit him to his good fortune, and my selfe to your hue. Your assured friend W. B. W. B] W. B(URRE). Dy The famous Historic Of the Knight of the burning PESTLE. Enter PRO LOG VE. FRom all that's neere the Court, from all that's great Within the compasse of the Citty-wals, We now haue brought our Sceane. Enter Citizen. Cit. Hold your peace good-man boy. Fro. What do you meane sir ? Cit. That you haue no good meaning : This seuen yeares there hath beene playes at this house, I haue obserued it, you haue still girds at Citizens ; and now you call your play, The London Marchant. Downe with your Title boy, downe with your Title. Pro. Are you a member of the noble Citty? Cit. I am. Pro. And a Free-man? Cit. Yea, and a Grocer. Pro. So Grocer, then by your sweet fauour, we intend no abuse to the Citty. The famous Historic Of the Knight of the burning Pestle. ] The Knight of the Burning Pestle. F, f. Induction. W, f. E7tter Prologve. ] E7iier speaker of ike Prologue. 1778 W, f. The Citizen, his Wife, and Ralph, siiiing below the Stage among the Spectators. Several Gentlemen sitting upon the Stage. W, f. 5 Enter Citizen. ] Citizen leaps upon the stage, W, f. II Iylarchant\ Merchant Qj, f. passim 10 The Knight of the burning Pestle [ind. Cit. No sir, yes sir, if you were not resolu'd to »o play the lacks, what need you study for new subiects, purposeley to abuse your betters ? why could not you be contented, as well as others, with the legend of Whittington, or the life & death of sir Thomas Greshmn ? [10] with the building of the Royall Exchange? or the »5 story of Queene Elenor, with the rearing of London bridge vpon wool-sackes ? Frol. You seeme to bee an vnderstanding man : what would you haue vs do sir ? Cit. Why present something notably in honour 30 of the Commons of the Citty. Pro. Why what doe you say to the life and death of fat Drake, or the repairing of Fleet-priuies ? Cit. I do not hke that, but I will haue a Citizen, and hee shall be of my owne trade. 35 Pro. Oh you should haue told vs your minde a moneth since, our play is ready to begin now. Cit. 'Tis all one for that, I will haue a Grocer, and he shall do admirable things. Pro. What will you haue him do? 40 Cit. Marry I will haue him Wife. Husband, husband. ^tf^ Rafe. Peace mistresse. j^^f^ ' Wife. Hold thy peace Rafe^ I know what I do I below. warrant tee. Husband, husband. 45 at. What sayst thou cunny? Wife. Let him kill a Lyon with a pestle husband, let him kill a Lyon with a pestle. Cit. So he shall. Il'e have him kill a Lyon with a pestle. 19 No, sir? 1778 W No, sir! Dy 22 The .... IVhittington, Dy 23 The .... Exchange? Dy Gresham, W, f. 25 The .... woolsaaks ? Dy 3 1 The .... Fleet-priues ? Dy 36 month F, f. passim 42 Rafe ] Ralph F, f. passim 44 tee ] ye Q^ Q, F 1711 1750 Dy you 1778 thee W 45 cunny] cony 1711, f. passim 48 Il'e] I'll F, f. passim iND.] The Knight of the burning Pestle ii Wife. Husband, shall I come vp husband ? Cit. I cunny. Eafe helpe your mistresse this way : so pray gentlemen make her a little roome, I pray you sir lend me your hand to helpe vp my wife : I thank you sir. So. Wife. By your leaue Gentlemen all, Im'e some- thing troublesome, Im'e a strager here, I was nere ss at one of these playes as they say, before ; but I should haue seene Jane Shore once, and my husband hath promised me any time this Tweluemoneth to carry me to the Bold Beaucliams, but in truth he did not, I pray you beare with me. 6° Cit Boy, let my wife and I haue a cupple stooles, and then begin, and let the Grocer do rare things. Prol. But sir, we haue neuer a boy to play him, euery one hath a part already, [11] Wife. Husband, husband, for Gods sake let Rafe ss play him, beshrew mee if I do not thinke he will goe beyond them all. Cit. Well remembred wife, come vp Bafe : Il'e tell you Gentlemen, let them but lend him a suit of reparrell, and necessaries, and by Gad, if any of them ?<> all blow winde in the taile on him, Il'e be hang'd. Wife. I pray you youth let him haue a suit of reparrell, Il'e be sworne Gentlemen, my husband tels you true, hee will act you sometimes at our house, that all the neighbours cry out on him : hee will 75 fetch you vp a couraging part so in the garret, that we are all as feard I warrant you, that wee quake againe: wee'l feare our children with him if they bee 50 I] ay 171 1, f. passim in this sense 53 So.] Wife comes iipon the stage. W, f. 54 Im'e] I'm F, f. passim 55 stranger Q,, f. nere] ne'er 171 1, f. passim 61 couple of stools Qj, f. 62 things.] Stools are brought. W, f. and they sit down. W. 7 1 hanged.] RALPH comei on the Stage. W, f. 73 reparrel 1 1778 W reparrel. Dy 78 him ; 1778, f. 12 The Knight of the burning Pestle. [ind. neuer so vn-ruly, do but cry, Rafe comes, Bafe comes So to them, and they'l be as quyet as Lambes. Hold vp thy head Bafe, shew the Gentlemen what thou canst doe, speake a huffing part, I warrant you the Gentlemen will accept of it. at. Do Bafe, do. 8s Bafe. By heauen me thinkes it were an easie leap To plucke bright honour from the pale-fac'd Moone, Or diue into the bottome of the sea, Where neuer fathame hne touch't any ground, And plucke vp drowned honor from the lake of hell. 90 at. How say you Gentlemen, is it not as I told you? Wife. Nay Gentlemen, hee hath playd before, my husband sayes, Musidorus before the Wardens of our Company. at. I, and hee should haue playd leronimo with 95 a Shooemaker for a wager. Pro. He shall haue a suite of apparrell if he will go in. at. In Bafe., in Bafe, and set out the Grocery in their kinde, if thou lou'st me. Wife. I warrant our Bafe will looke finely when 100 hee's drest. Pro. But what will you haue it cal'd? at. The Grocers honour. Pro. Me thinks The Knight of the burning Pestle were better. «>s Wif. H'e be sworn husband, thats as good a name [12] as can be. ad. Let it be so, begin, begin, my wife and I wil sit downe. Pro. I pray you do. 110 at. What stately mucsike haue you ? you have shawmes. 88 fathom F, f. 97 Grocery] Grocers 1711 1750 107 so. Dy, f. no mucsike] music F, f. iND.] The Knight of the burning Pestle 13 Fro. Shawnes ? no. Cit. No? Im'e a thiefe if my minde did not giue me so. Rafe playes a stateley part, and he must needs haue shawnes: Il'e be at the charge of them "s my selfe, rather then wee'l be without them. Fro. So you are Kke to be. Cit.. Why and so I will be: ther's two shillings, . let's haue the waits of South-warke, they are as rare fellowes as any are in England : and that will fetch "o them all or'e the water with a vengeance, as if they were mad. Fro. you shall haue them : will you sit downe then? Cit. I, come wife. "s Wife. Sit you merry all Gentlemen, Im'e bold to sit amongst you for my ease. Fro. From all that's neere the Court, from all that's great. Within the compasse of the Citty-walles, mo We now haue brought our Sceane : flye farre from hence All priuate taxes, immodest phrases. What ere may but shew like vicious : For wicked mirth neuer true pleasure brings, ^s But honest minds are pleas'd with honest things. Thus much for that we do : but for Eafes part You must answere for your selfe. Cit. Take you no care for Fafe, hee'l discharge himselfe I warrant you. ^^^ Wife. I faith Gentlemen Il'e giue my word for Fafe. 112 shawnes] shawmes F, f. passim ii6 then] than F, f. passim in this sense Il8 shillings (gives money); Dy 121 or'e] o'er 17 1 1, f. passim 123 you] You Qj, f. 126 all, F, f. 127 ease.] Citizen and Wife sit down. Dy, f. 129 great Qj, f. 14 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act i Actus primi, Scoena prima. Enter Marchant, and lasper his Prentice. March. Sirrah, Il'e make you know you are my Prentice, And whom my charitable loue redeem'd Euen from the fall of fortune, gaue thee heate [13] 5 And growth, to be what now thou art, new cast thee, Adding the trust of all I haue at home, In forren Staples, or vpon the Sea To thy direction, ti'de the good opinions Both of my selfe and friends to thy endeauours, lo So faire were thy beginnings, but with these, As I remember, you had neuer charge. To loue your Maisters daughter, and euen then, When I had found a wealthy husband for her. I take it, sir, you had not ; but how euer, 15 1'le breake the necke of that commission. And make you know you are but a Merchants Factor. lasp. Sir, I do liberally confesse I am yours, Bound, both by loue and duty, to your seruice ; In which, my labour hath bene all my profit; 2o I haue not lost in bargaine, nor delighted To weare your honest gaines vpon my backe. Nor haue I giuen a pencion to my bloud, Or lauishly in play consum'd your stocke. These, and the miseries that do attend them, as I dare, with innocence, proclaime are strangers To all my temperate actions ; for your daughter, If there be any loue, to my deseruings, Scoena prima . . . . A Room in the Hotise of Venterweh. W, f. Ven- TUREWELL Dy passim Enter Mar chant. ] Enter Venterwelh. W, f. I March.] Vent. W, f. passim 7 foreign i?", f- 9 endeavors; 1778, f. 10 beginnings. Dy 22 blood 1711, f. passim 27 love Qj, f. deservings 1778, f. ACT i] The Knight of the bm ning Pestle 1 5 Borne by her vertuous selfe, I cannot stop it ? Nor, am I able to refraine her wishes. She's priuate to her selfe and best of knowledge, 3° Whom she'le make so happy as to sigh for. Besides, I cannot thinke you meane to match her, Vnto a felow of so lame a presence. One that hath little left of Nature in him. Mar. 'Tis very well sir, I can tell your wisedome 35 How all this shall bee cur'd. lasp. Your care becomes you. March. And thus it must be sir, I heere discharge you My house and seruice, take your liberty. And when I want a sonne I'le send for you. Exit: lasp. These be the faire rewards of them that loue. you that Hue in freedome neuer proue The trauell of a mind led by desire. Enter [U] ■^ _ Luce. Luce. Why, how now friend, struck with my fathers thunder ? 45 lasp. Strucke and strucke dead vnlesse the remedy Be full of speede and vertue ; I am now. What I expected long, no more your fathers. Luce. But mine. lasp. But yours, and onely yours I am, so That's all I haue to keepe mee from the Statute, You dare be constant still. Liice. O feare me not, In this I dare be better then a woman. Nor shall his anger, nor his oifers moue me, Were they both equall to a Princes power. 55 lasp. You know my riuall ? Luce. Yes and loue him deerly Euen as I loue an ague, or foule weather, 1 prethee Jasper feare him not. lasp. O no, 28 it: Qj F 171 1 1750 it; 1778, f. 38 must be] shall be Qg F 1711 1750 1778 Dy 49 mine? 1778 W 50 am ; 1778, f. 51 statute; 1711 1750 statute. 1778, f. 52 still? Q3, f. 1 6 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act i 60 I do not meane to do him so much kindnesse, But to our owne desires, you know the plot We both agreed on. Luce. Yes, and will performe My part exactly, las]). I desire no more. Fare-well and keepe my heart, 'tis yours. Luce. I take it, 65 He must do miracles makes me forsake it. Exeunt. Cittiz. Fye vpon am little infidels, what a matters here now? well. Tie be hang'd for a halfe-penny, if there be not some abomination knauery in this Play, well, let 'em looke toot, Rafe must come, and if there 70 be any tricks abrewing, Wife. Let 'em brew and bake too husband, a Gods name, Bafe will find all out I warrant you, and they were older then they are, I pray my pretty youth is Rafe ready. 75 Boij. He will be presently. Wife. Now I pray you make my commendations vnto him, and withall carry him this sticke of Licoras, tell him his Mistresse sent it him, and bid him bite a peece, 'twill open his pipes the better, say. 80 Enter Marchant, and Maister Humfery. Mar. Come sir, shee's yours, vpon my faith she's yours You haue my hand, for other idle lets Betweene your hopes and her, thus, with a wind They are scattered and no more: my wanton Prentice, [15] 85 That like a bladder, blew himselfe with loue, I haue let out, and sent him to discouer New Maisters yet vnknowne. Himif. I thanke you sir, Indeed I thanke you sir, and ere I stir 60 kindnesse. 1778, f. 62 on? 1778, f. 64 it; 1778, f. 65 Exeunt severally. Dy 66 am ] 'em Qj, f. 69 toot ] to't Qj, f. 72 and] an 1778, f. passim in this sense 73 are. Qj, f. {Enter Boy.) S 74 ready? Qj, f. 77 licorice 1778, f. 80 Scene II. — Another room in the house of Venturewell Enter Venturewell and Humphrey Dy 81 faith she's yours, Q2, i. 82 hand: 1778, f ACT i] The Knight of the burning Pestle 17 It shall bee knowne, how euer you do deeme, I am of gentle bloud and gentle seeme. 90 March. O sir, I know it certaine. Humf. Sir my friend, Although, as Writers say, all things haue end And that we call a pudding, hath his two let it not seeme strange I pray to you. If in this bloudy simile, I put 9s My loue, more endlesse, then fraile things or gut. Wife. Husband, I prethee sweete lambe tell me one thing, But tell mee truely : stay youths I beseech you, till 1 question my husband. Citiz. What is it mouse ? 100 Wife. Sirrah, didst thou euer see a prettier child ? how it behaues it selfe, I warrant yee, and speakes, and lookes, and pearts vp the head ? I pray you brother, with your fauor, were you neuer none of M. Monkesters schollars. xos Cit. Chicken, I prethee heartely containe thy selfe, the childer are pretty childer, but when Rafe comes, Lambe. Wife. I when Rafe comes conny ; well my youth, you may proceed xio Mar. Wei sir, you know my loue, and rest, I hope, Assur'd of my consent, get but my daughters. And wed her when you please ; you must be bold. And clap in close vnto her, come, I know You haue language good enough to win a wench, us Wife. A whoreson tyrant has ben an old stringer in's daies I warrant him. Humf. I take your gentle offer and withall Yeeld loue againe for loue reciprocall. j^^^g Mar. What Luce within there. Lu. Cal'd you sir ? 120 March. I did. 93 two, F, f. 116 tyrant 1 1778, f. h'as Dy been Q„f. 120 Luce I 1778, f. there? F 171 1 1750 there 1 1778, f. B 1 8 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act i Giue entertainement to this Gentleman And see you bee not froward : to her sir, My presence will but bee an eye-soare to you. Exit. 125 Hum/. Faire Mistresse Luce^ how do you do, are you well ? Giue me your hand and then I pray you tell, How doth your little sister, and your brother? [16] And whether you loue me or any other. 130 Luce. Sir, these are quickely answered Hum/. So they are Where women are not cruel: but how farre Is it now distant from this place we are in, Vnto that blessed place your fathers warren. 135 Luce. What makes you think of that sir? Hum/. Euen that face For stealing Rabbets whilome in that place, God Cupid^ or the Keeper, 1 know not whether Vnto my cost and charges brought you thither, 140 And there began. Luce. Your game sir. Hum/. Let no game. Or anything that tendeth to the same. Bee euermore remembred, thou faire killer For whom I sate me downe and brake my Tiller. 145 Wife. There's a kind Gentleman, I warrant you, when will you do as much for me George ? Luce. Beshrew me sir, I am sorry for your losses, But as the prouerbe sales, I cannot cry, I would you had no scene me. Hiimf. So would L 150 Vnlesse you had more maw to do me good. Luce. Why, cannot this strange passion be withstood, Send for a Constable and raise the Towne. 125 you do, are] you, are F, f. 134 warren? W, f. 136 face Qa, f. 138 whether, Q,>, f. 140 began . . . 1778, f. Sir? 1778 W 142 same, Q^ f. 148 cry; 1711 1750 1778 cry: Dy 149 would I, 1711, f. 151 strange] strong 1750 withstood? 171 1, f. ACT i] The Knight of the burning Pestle 19 Hum/. O no, my valiant loue will batter downe Millions of Constables, and put to flight, Euen that great watch of Mid-summer day at night. 155 Luce. Beshrew me sir, 'twere good I yeelded then, Weake women cannot hope, where valiant men Haue no resistance. Hum/. Yeeld then, I am full Of pitty, though I say it, and can pull Out of my pocket, thus, a paire of gloues, ^^o Looke Lucy, looke, the dogs tooth, nor the Doues Are not so white as these ; and sweete they bee, And whipt about with silke, as you may see. If you desire the price, sute from your eie, A became to this place, and you shall espie »6s F. S. which is to say, my sweetest hony. They cost me three and two pence, or no money. Luce. Well sir, I take them kindly, and I thanke you, [17] What would you more ? Hum/. Nothing. Luce. Why then fare-well. ^7° Hum/. Nor so, nor so, for Lady I must tell. Before we part, for what we met together, God grant me time, and patience, and faire weather. Luce. Speake and declare your minde in termes so briefe. ^75 Hump. I shall, then first and formost for reliefe I call to you, I if that you can aff'oord it, I care not at what price, for on my word, it Shall be repaid againe, although it cost me More then I'le speake of now, for loue hath tost me, ^^o In furious blanket like a Tennis ball, And now I rise aloft, and now I fall. Luce. Alas good Gentleman, alas the day. Hum/. I thanke you hartely, and as I say, Thus do I still continue without rest, 185 164 shoot 1711, f. 172 together; 1778 W together: Dy 177 I if] if Qj, f. 184 heartily Q„ f. B2 20 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act i I'th' morning like a man, at night a beast, Roaring and bellowing myne owne disquiet, That much I feare, forsaking of my diet. Will bring me presently to that quandary, 190 I shall bid all adeiw : Jjuce. Now by S. Mary That were great pitty. Hum. So it were beshrew me, Then ease me lusty Luce., and pitty shew me. Luce. Why sir, you know my will is nothing worth Without my fathers grant, get his consent, 195 And then you may with assurance try me. Hmnf. The Worshipfull your sire will not deny me. For I haue askt him, and he hath repli'd, Sweete Maister Humfrey, Luce shall be thy Bride. Luce. Sweete Maister Humfrey then I am content. 2°° Humf. And so am I intruth. Jjuce. Yet take me with you. There is another clause must be annext. And this it is, I swore and will performe it ; No man shall euer ioy me as his wife 20s But he that stole me hence, if you dare venter I am yours ; you need not feare, my father loues you, If not farewell for euer, Humf. Stay Nimph, staie, [18] I haue a double Gelding coulored bay, Sprung by his father from Barbarian kind, 210 Another for my selfe, though somewhat blind, Yet true as trusty tree. Luce. I am satisfied. And so I giue my hand, our course must lie Trough Waltham Forrest, where I haue a friend Will entertaine vs, so fare-well sir Humfrey. ^^^ 215 And thinke vpon your businesse. Humf. Though I die, I am resolu'd to venter Hfe and lim, For one so yong, so faire, so kind, so trim. Humfrey. 195 with assurance] with full assurance 17501778W 201 you ; 1778, f. 203 is: 1778, f. it, 1778, f. 205 hence. Dy venter, Q, Qj venture, F, f. 206 loues you; Dy 216 limb, 1711, f. ACT i] The Knight of the burning Pestle 21 Wife. By my faith and troth George., and as I am vertuous, it is e'ne the kindest yong man that euer trod on shooe leather, well, go thy waies if thou hast 220 her not, 'tis not thy fault 'faith. Cit. I prethee mouse be patient, a shall haue her, or i'le make some 'em smoake for't. Wife. That's my good lambe George, fie, this stinking Tobacco kils men, would there were none 225 in England, now I pray Gentlemen, what good does this stinking Tobacco ? do you nothing, I warrant you make chimnies a your faces : o husband, husband, now, now, there's Uafe.^ there's Uafe. Enter Rafe like a Grocer in's shop, with tivo Prentices 23* Reading Palmerin of England. Cit. Peace foole, let Rafe alone, harke you Rafe ; doe notstraine your selfe too much at the first, peace, begin Rafe. Rafe. Then Palmerin and Trineus snatching their 235 Launces from their Dwarfes, and clasping their Hel- mets gallopt amaine after the Gyant, and Palmerin hauing gotten a sight of him, came posting amaine, saying : Stay trayterous thiefe, for thou maist not so carry away her, that is worth the greatest Lord in 240 the world, and with these words gaue him a blow on the shoulder, that he stroake him besides his Ele- phant, and Trineus comming to the Knight that had 219 e'ne] e'n 1711, f. passim 220 Well, 1778, f. ways; 1778, f. 221 'faith] i'faith 1778, f. 223 'em] of 'em Qj, f 224 George. 1778, f. 225 men] me. 1750 Dy England I 1778, f. 227 tobacco do you ? 1750, f. 228 you; make 1778 W you: make Dy a ] o' Dy passim in this sense faces 1 ] Scene II. W Scene III Dy A Grocer's Shop. W, f. 230 Enter Ralph, as a grocer, reading Palmerin of England, with Tim and George. Dy 235 Ralph (Reads.) W, f. 235—49 "Then . . . me." 1778, f. 236 lances Qj, f. passim 239—41 'Stay . . . world ;' 1778, f, 242 struck F, f. 22 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act i Agricola behind him, set him soone besides his horse, 245 with his necke broken in the fall, so that the Prin- cesse getting out of the thronge, betweene ioy and griefe said ; all happy Knight, the mirror of all such [19] as follow Armes, now may I bee well assured of the loue thou bearest me, I wonder why the Kings doe 25» not raise army of foureteene or fifteene hundred thousand men, as big as the Army that the Prince of Portigo brought against Bosicler, & destroy these Giants, they do much hurt to wandring Damsels, that go in quest of their Knights. 2S5 Wife. Faith husband and Rafe sales true, for they say the King of Portugall cannot sit at his meate, but the Giants & the Ettins will come and snatch it from him, Cit. Hold thy tongue, on Rafe. 260 Rafe. And certainely those Knights are much to be commended, who neglecting their possessions, wander with a Squire and a Dwarfe through the Desarts to relieue poore Ladies. Wife. I by faith are they Rafe., let 'em say what 26s they will, they are indeed, our Knights neglect their possessions well enough, but they do not the rest. Rafe. There are no such courteous and faire well spoken Knights in this age, they will call one the Sonne of a whore, that Palmerin of England, would 270 haue called faire sir ; and one that Rosicler would haue cal'd right beauteous Damsell, they will call dam'd bitch. Wife, rie be sworne will they Rafe^ they haue cal'd mee so an hundred times about a scuruy pipe 275 of Tobacco. 247—49 'All . . . me.' 1778, f. 249 me. 1750, f. 258 him. Q,, f. 259 tongue. 1778, f. 264 by faith] by my faith Qj, f. 265 indeed. 1778, f. ACT i] The Knight of the burning Pestle 23 Rafe. But what braue spirit could be content to sit in his shop with a flappet of wood and a blew apron before him selling Methridatum and Dragons loater to visited houses, that might pursue feats of Armes, & through his noble atchieuments procure 280 such a famous history to be written of his heroicke prowesse. Cit. Well said Rafe^ some more of those words Rafe. Wife. They go finely by my troth. Rafe. Why should not I then pursue this course, 285 both for the credit of my selfe and our Company, for amongst all the worthy bookes of Atchieuements I doe not call to minde that I yet read of a Grocer Errant, I will be the said Knight, haue you heard of any that hath wandred vnfurnished of his Squire and 29° Dwarfe, my elder Prentice Tim shall be my trusty [20] Squire, and little George my Dwarfe, Hence my blew Aporne, yet in remembrance of my former Trade, vpon my shiled shall be purtraide, a burning Pestle, and I will be cal'd the Knight oth burning Pestle. 29s Wife. Nay, I dare sweare thou wilt not forget thy old Trade, thou wert euer meeke. Rafe, Tim. Tim. Anon. Rafe. My beloued Squire, & George my Dwarfe, I charge you that from hence-forth you neuer call me 300 by any other name, but the RigJit Courteous and Valiant Knight of the burning Pestle, and that you neuer call any female by the name of a woman or wench, but faire Ladie, if she haue her desires, if not distressed Damsell, that you call all Forrests & Heaths Desarts, 305 and all horses Palfries. 282 prowess? 1778, f. 286 company? 1778, f. 289 Knight. 1778, f. 291 dwarf? Q3, f. 292 dwarf. 1778, f. 294 shiled] shield Qj, f. portrayed Dy 295 oth ] of the Q3, f. 297 I?a/ph. Tim! 1778, f. 304 not, F, f. 305 damsel; Q3, f. deserts Dy 24 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act i Wife. This is very fine, faith, do the Gentlemen Uke i?a/(0, thinke you, husband ? Cittiz. I, I warrant thee, the Plaiers would giue all 3"> the shooes in their shop for him. Bafe. My beloued Squire Tim^ stand out, admit this were a Desart, and ouer it a Knight errant pricking, and I should bid you inquire of his intents, what would you say? 315 Tim. Sir, my Maister sent me, to know whether you are riding ? Rafe. No, thus ; faire sir, the Right Courteous and Valiant Knight of the burning Pestle, commanded me to enquire, vpon what aduenture your are bound, 320 whether to relieue some distressed Damsels, or other- wise. Cit Whoresome blocke-head cannot remember. Wife. I'faith, & Rafe told him on't before, all the Gentlemen heard him, did he not Gentlemen, did 325 not Rafe tel him on't ? George. Right Courteous and Valiant Knight of the burning Pestle, here is a distressed Damsell, to haue a halfe penny-worth of pepper. Wife. That's a good boy, see, the little boy can 330 hit it, by my troth it's a fine child. Rafe. Relieue her with all courteous language, now shut vp shoppe, no more my Prentice, but my trusty [21] Squire and Dwarfe, I must bespeake my shield and arming-pestle. 335 Cit. Go thy waies Rafe, as Im'e a true man, thou art the best on 'em all. Wife. Rafe, Rafe. 309 thee; 1778, f. 315 whether] whither F, f. 320 Damsel, F 1711 1750 Dy 322 whoreson Qj, f. 331 language. 1778, f. 332 Prentice(s) Dy 333 dwarf. 1778, f. 334 pestle. [Exeunt TiM and George Dy ACT i] The Knight of the burning Pestle. 25 Eafe. What say you mistresse ? Wife. I pre'thee come againe quickl}^ sweet Bafe. Bafe. By and by. 340 Exit Rafe. Enter Jasper, and his mother mistresse Merri-thought. Mist, merri. Giue thee my blessing? No, Il'e ner'e giue thee my blessing, Il'e see thee hang'd first ; it shall ner'e bee said I gaue thee my blessing, th'art thy fathers owne spnne, of the right bloud of the 34s Merri-thoughts, I may curse the time that er'e I knew thy father, he hath spent all his owne, and mine too, and when I tell him of it, he laughs and dances, and sings, and cryes, A merry heart Hues long-a. And thou art a wast-thrift, and art run away from thy maister, 350 that lov'd thee well, and art come to me, and I haue laid vp a little for my yonger sonne Michael^ and thou think'st to bezell that, but thou shalt neuer be able to do it. Come hither Michael, come Michael^ downe on thy knees, thou shalt haue my blessing. ■^^.^^'' Mich. I pray you mother pray to God to blesse me. Mist, merri. God blesse thee : but lasper shall neuer haue my blessing, he shall be hang'd first, shall hee not Michael ? how saist thou ? Mich. Yes forsooth mother and grace of God. 360 Mist, merri. That's a good boy. Wife. I faith it's a fine spoken child. lasp. Mother though you forget a parents loue, I must preserue the duty of a child. I ran not from my maister, nor returne 36s To haue your stocke maintaine my Idlenesse. Wife. Vngracious childe I warrant him, harke how 340 Exit. [ Scene III W Scene IV Dy A Room in Merrythought's Hotise. W, f. 345 right om. Q, F1711 1750 1778 350 wastethrift, 1778, f. 354 it. \Enter Michael W, f. 356 Mich. (Kneels.) W, f. 26 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act i hee chops logicke with his mother : thou hadst best tell her she lyes, do tell her she lyes. 370 Cit. If hee were my sonne, I would hang him vp [22] by the heeles, and flea him, and salt him, whoore- sonne halter-sacke. lasp. My comming onely is to begge your loue, Which I must euer, though I neuer gaine it, And howsoeuer you esteeme of me, 375 There is no drop of bloud hid in these veines. But I remember well belongs to you That brought me forth, and would be glad for you To rip them all againe, and let it out. Mist, merri. I faith I had sorrow enough for thee 380 (God knowes) but Il'e hamper thee well enough : get thee in thou vagabond, get thee in, and learne of thy brother Michael. Old merri. within. Nose, nose, iolly red nose, and who gaue thee this iolly red nose? 38s Mist, merri. Harke, my husband hee's singing and hoiting, and Im'e faine to carke and care, and all little enough. Husband, Charles^ Charles Merithought. Enter old Merithought. Old merri. Nutmegs and Ginger, Cinnamon and 390 Clones, And they gaue me this iolly red Nose. Mist, merri. If you would consider your state, you would haue little list to sing, I-wisse. Old merri. It should neuer bee considered while it were an estate, if I thought it would spoyle my singing. 395 Mist, merri. But how wilt thou do Charles, thou art an old man, and thou canst not worke, and thou hast 371 flay, Dy 373 only F, f. passim 382 Exeunt Jasper and Michael. Dy 384 Mer. (Singing within.) W. f. In stanzaic form : Nose .... And .... nose? 1778, f. 389 Mer. (Singing.) W, f. 391 state] estate Q3 F 1711 1750 1778 392 list] lust W ACT i] The Knight of the burning Pestle 27 not fortie shillings left, and thou eatest good meat, and drinkest good drinke, and laughest ? Old merri. And will do. Mist, merri. But how wilt thou come by it Charles ? 400 Old merri. How ? why how haue I done hitherto this forty yeares ? I neuer came into my dining roome, but at eleuen & six a clocke, I found excellent meat and drinke a'th table, my clothes were neuer worne out, but next morning a Taylor brought me a new 405 suit ; and without question it will be so euer : vse makes perfectnesse. If all should faile, it is but a little straining my selfe extraordinary, & laugh my [23] selfe to death. Wife. It's a foolish old man this : is not he George ? 410 Cit. Yes Cunny. Wife. Giue me a peny i'th purse while I Hue George. Cit. I by Ladie cunnie, hold thee there. Mist, merri. Well Charles, you promis'd to prouide for lasper, and I haue laid vp for Michael, I pray you 415 pay lasper his portion, hee's come home, and hee shall not consume Michaels stocke : he sales his maister turnd him away, but I promise you truly, I thinke he ran away. Wife. No indeed mistresse Merrithought, though he 420 bee a notable gallowes, yet Il'e assure you his maister did turne him away, euen in this place 'twas I'faith within this halfe houre, about his daughter, my hus- band was by. Cit. Hang him rougue, he seru'd him well enough : 425 loue his maisters daughter ! by my troth Cunnie if there were a thousand boies, thou wouldst spoile them all with taking their parts, let his mother alone with him. Wife. I George, but yet truth is truth. 402 this] these F, f. 404 a'th] o'th 1711, f. 413 by'r Lady 1750 1778 W 422 place; 1778, f. 28 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act i 430 Old merri. Where is lasper, hee's welcome how euer, call him in, hee shall haue his portion, is he merry ? Enter lasper and Michael. Mist, merri. I foule chiue him, he is too merrie. 435 lasper, Michael. Old merri. Welcome lasper, though thou runst away, welcome, God blesse thee: 'tis thy mothers minde thou should'st receiue thy portion; thou hast beene abroad, and I hope hast learn'd experience 440 enough to gouerne it, thou art of sufficient yeares, hold thy hand : one, two, three, foure, fiue, sixe, seuen, eight, nine, there's ten shillings for thee, thrust thy selfe into the world with that, and take some setled course, if fortune crosse thee, thou hast a retiring 445 place, come home to me, I haue twentie shillings left, bee a good husband, that is, weare ordinary clothes, eate the best meate, and drinke the best drinke, bee merrie, and giue to the poore, and beleeue me, thou hast no end of thy goods. [24] 450 lasp. Long may you Hue free from all thought of ill, and long haue cause to be thus merry still. But father ? Old merri. No more words lasper, get thee gone, thou hast my blessing, thy fathers spirit vpon thee. 455 Farewell lasper, but yet or ere you part (oh cruell') kisse me, kisse me sweeting, mine owne deere iewell : So now begone; no words. ^"^^^ Mis. mer. So Michael, now get thee gone too. Mich. Yes forsooth mother, but Il'e haue my fathers 460 blessing first. 430 Jasper? Q3, f. 435 Jasper I Michael I 1778, f. Enter Jasper and Michael 1778, f. 442 thee. (Gives money) Dy 444 course: 1778, f. 445 left. 1778, f. 452 father . . . 1778, f. 455 Jasper ! (Sings) Dy 455—56 In stanzaic form : But . . . Kiss . . . jewell. 1778, f. ACT i] The Knight of the burning Pestle 29 Mis. mer. No Michael^ 'tis now matter for his bless- ing, thou hast my blessing, begone ; Il'e fetch my money & iewels, and follow thee : Il'e stay no longer with him I warrant thee, truly Charles I'le begone too. Old merri. What you will not. 465 Mis. merri. Yes indeed will I. Old merri. Hey ho, fare-well Nan, Il'e neuer trust wench more againe, if I can. Mis. merri. You shall not thinke (when all your owne is gone) to spend that I haue beene scraping 47» vp for Michael. Old merri. Farewell good wife, I expect it not ; all I haue to doe in this world, is to bee merry : which I shall, if the ground be not taken from me : and if it be, 475 When earth and seas from me are reft, The skyes aloft for me are left. Exeunt Boy danceth. Musicke. Finis Actus priini. Wife. Il'e be swome hee's a merry old Gentleman for all that. Harke, harke husband, harke, fiddles, 480 fiddles ; now surely they go finely. They say, 'tis present death for these fidlers to tune their Rebeckes before the great Turkes grace, is't not George ? But looke, looke, here's a youth dances : now good youth do a turne a'th toe, sweet heart, I'faith He haue Rafe come 48s and do some of his Gambols ; hee'l ride the wild mare Gentlemen, 'twould do your hearts good to see him. I thanke you kinde youth, pray bid Rafe come. 461 now] no Q2, f. 463 thee. (Exit Michael.) Dy 465 What I 1778, f. not? Qa, f. 467-68 In stanzaic form: Hey-ho . . . I'll . . . can. 1778, f. 477 Exeunt severally. Dy 478 Finis Actus primi. om. Dy 480 that. (Music) Dy fiddless, fiddles 1 (Music) W 483 George ? (Boy danceth.) W (Enter a boy and dances.) Dy, f. 485 a'th ] o'th F, f. 30 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act ii [25] Cit. Peace Cunnie. Sirrah, you scuruie boy, bid 490 the plaiers send Rafe, or by Gods —and they do not, Il'e teare some of their periwigs beside their heads : this is all Riffe Raffe. Actus secundi Scoena prima. Enter Merchant and Humphrey. March. And how faith ? how goes it now son Humphrey ? Humph. Right worshipfull, and my beloued friend And father deere, this matters at an end. 5 March. 'Tis well, it should be so, Im'e glad the girle is found so tractable. Humph. Nay she must whirle From hence, and you must winke : for so I say, The storie tels, to morrow before day. Wife. George, do'st thou thinke in thy conscience 10 now 'twil be a match? tell me but what thou thinkst sweet rogue, thou seest the poore Gentleman (deere heart) how it labours and throbs I warrant you, to be at rest : Il'e goe moue the father fort. Cit. No, no, I pre'thee sit still hony-suckle, thoul't 15 spoile all, if he deny him, Il'e bring halfe a doze good fellows my selfe, & in the shutting of an euen- ing knock't vp, & ther's an end. Wife. Il'e busse thee for that i'faith boy ; well George, well you haue beene a wag in your dales I 20 warrant you : but God forgiue, you, and I do with all my heart. March. How was it sonne ? you told me that to morrow Before day breake, you must conuey her hence. 490 by God's wounds 1778 W and] an 1778, f. Act II. Scene I. A Roo7n in the House of Ventertvels. W, f. 7—8 (and . . . tells) I75of. 13 for't Qo, f. 15 dozen Q3, f. ACT n] The Knight of the burning Pestle 31 Humph. I must, I must, and thus it is agreed, 25 Your daughter rides vpon a browne-bay steed, I on a sorrell, which I bought of Brian, The honest Host of the red roaring Lion In Waltham situate ; then if you may Consent in seemely sort, lest by delay, 3° The fatall sisters come and do the office, And then you'l sing another song. March. Alasse Why should you be thus full of griefe to me ? That do as willing as your selfe agree To any thing so it be good and faire, 35 [26j Then steale her when you will, if such a pleasure Content you both, I'le sleepe and neuer see it. To make your ioyes more full, but tell me why You may not here performe your marriage ? *• Wife. Gods blessing a thy soule old man, i'faith 40 thou art loath to part true hearts, I see, a has her Georg, & I'me as glad on't, well, go thy waies Hum- phrey, for a faire spoken man, I beleeue thou hast not thy fellow within the wals of London, & I should say the Suburbes too, I should not lie, why dost not 45 reioyce with me George ? Cit. If I could but see Raph againe, I were as merry as mine Host i'faith. Hum. The cause you seeme to aske, I thus declare, Helpe me o Muses nine, your daughter sweare so A foolish oath, the more it was the pitty. Yet none but my selfe within this Citty, Shall dare to say so, but a bold defiance Shall meete him, were he of the noble Science. And yet she sweare, and yet why did she sweare ? 55 Truely I cannot tell, vnlesse it were 29 may, Q^, f. 33 me, F, f. 35 fair? F, f. 38 full: Q^ Q3 F 171 1 1750 full. 1778, f. 40 a thy] o'thy F, f. 41 hearts: Qj Q3 F 1711 1750 hearts. 1778, f. 42 on't! 1778, f. 45 not reioyce] not thou rejoice Q3 F 171 1 1750 1778 52 none] no one 1750, f. 32 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act ii For her owne ease, for sure sometimes an oath, Being sworne thereafter is like cordiall broth. And thus it was shee swore, neuer to marry, 60 But such a one, whose mighty arme could carry (As meaning me, for I am such a one) Her bodily away through sticke and stone, Till both of vs arriue, at her request, Some ten miles off, in the wilde Waltham Forrest. 65 March. If this be all, you shall not need to feare Any deniall in your loue, proceed, rie neither follow, nor repent the deed. Hum. Good-night, twenty good-nights, & twenty more, 70 And 20 more good-nights, that makes three-score. Exeunt. Enter mistresse Mery-thought , and her son Michael. Mist. mer. Come Michael^ art thou not weary boy ? Mich. No for-sooth mother not I. Mist. mer. Where be we now child ? [27] 75 Mich. Indeed for-sooth mother I cannot tell, vnlesse we be at Mile-end, is not all the world Mile-end, Mother ? Mist. mer. No Michael, not al the world boy, but I can assure thee Michael, Mile-end is a goodly matter, 80 there has bene a pitch-field my child betweene the naughty Spaniels and the English-men.^ and the Spaniels ran away Michael., and the English-men followed, my neighbour Coxstone was there boy, and kil'd them all with a birding peece. Mich. Mother forsooth. 85 Mist. mer. What saies my white boy ? Mich. Shall not my father go with vs too ? Mist. mer. No Michael, let thy father go snicke-vp, he shall neuer come between a paire of sheets with 58 thereafter, Qj, f. 59 thus ] this Qj, f. 70 Exeunt severally Dy 7 1 Scene II W, f. Night. W Waltham Forest. Enter &c. W, f. ACT n] The Knight of the burning Pestle 33 me againe, while he hues, let hmi stay at home & sing for his supper boy, come child sit downe, and 90 lie shew my boy fine knacks indeed, look here Michael, here's a Ring, and here's a Bruch, & here's a Bracelet, and here's two Rings more, and here's mon}^ and gold bi'th eie m}^ boy. Mich. Shall I haiie all this mother? 95 Mist. Mer. I Michael thou shalt haue all Michael. at. How lik'st thou this wench ? Wife. I cannot tell, I would haue Bapli, George; rie see no more else indeed-law, & I pray you let the youths vnderstand so much by word of mouth, 100 for I tell you truely, Fme afraid a my boy, come, come George, lets be merry and wise, the child's a father-lesse child, and say they should put him into a streight paire of Gaskins, 'twere worse then knot- grasse, he would neuer grow after it. Enter Cit. Here's Baph, here's Raph. Sqtt/re, Wife. How do you Ra})]i ? you are welcome Raph, <^"d as I may say, it's a good boy, hold vp thy head, and be not afraid, we are th}^ friends Raph, the Gentlemen will praise thee Raph, if thou plaist thy part with "o audacity, begin RapJi a Gods name. Rap)h. My trusty Squire vnlace my Helme, giue mee my hat, where are we, or what Desart may this be ? Divarfe. Mirrour of Knight-hood, this is, as I take it, the perrilous Waltham downe. In whose bottome 115 stands the inchanted Valley. Mist. mer. O Michael, we are betrai'd, we are be- traid here be Gyants. flie boy, flie boy, flie. Exetit •^ -' ' -^ ^ mother cr* 90 boy. 1778, f. 91 indeed: (Takes' out a Casket) W (They sit ^''^^^"■^^• down ; and she takes out a casket.) Dy 94 by th' eye Q3, f. 99 in- deed : law F 1711 indeed la 1750, f. passim loi a my] o'my F, f. boy. 1778, f. 105—6 Squire, and- Dzvarfe.J Tim and George. 1778, f. passim 115 in Q,, f. 116 enchanted 1778, f. passim 1 17 betrayed 1778, f. 118 E.xe7it, etc.] Exit ivith Michael, leaving a casket. I'jl'i. f. C 34 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act ii [28] Rafe. Lace on my helme againe : what noise is this ? "0 A gentle Lady flying ? the imbrace Of some vncurteous knight, I will releiue her. Go squire, and say, the Knight that weares this pestle. In honour of all Ladies, sweares reuenge Vpon that recreant coward that pursues her. "5 Go comfort her, and that same gentle squire That beares her companie. Squire. I go braue Knight. Rafe. My trustie Dwarfe and friend, reach me my shield, And hold it while I sweare : First by my knight-hood, 130 Then by the soule of Amadis de Gaule, My famous Ancestor, then by my sword, The beauteous Brionella girt about me. By this bright burning pestle of mine honour. The lining Trophic, and by all respect 135 Due to distressed Damsels, here I vow Neuer to end the quest of this faire Lady, And that forsaken squire, till by my valour I gaine their liberty. Dwarf e. Heauen blesse the Knight That thus reliues poore errant Gentlewomen. Exit. 140 Wife. I marrie Rafe, this has some fauour in't, I would see the proudest of them all offer to carrie his bookes after him. But George, I will not haue him go away so soone, I shall bee sicke if he go away, that I shall ; call Rafe againe George, call Rafe again, 145 1 pre'thee sweet heart let him come fight before me, and let's ha somme drums, and some trumpets, and let him kill all that comes neere him, and thou loust me George. Git. Peace a little bird, hee shall kill them all and 150 they were twentie more on 'em then there are. ^«/ Exit.] Exit vith the casket. Dy 178 question. [SCENE III — Another part of the forest. Dy 179 an] as Qj F 1711 1750 1778 Dy. C 2 36 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act ii Enter Rafe and Dwarfe. 180 RapU. Comes not sir Squire againe ? Dwar. Right courteous Knight, Your Squire doth come and with him comes the Lady. Enter mistresse Merr : and Michael, and Squire. For and the Squire of Damsels as I take it. 185 Rafe. Madam if any seruice or deuoire Of a poore errant Knight may right your wrongs, Command it, I am prest to giue you succour, For to that holy end I beare my Armour, Mist. mer. Alas sir, I am a poore Gentlewoman, 190 and I haue lost my monie in this forrest. Rafe. Desart, you would say Lady, and not lost Whilst I haue sword and launce, dry vp your teares Which ill befits the beauty of that face : [30] And tell the storie, if I ma}^ request it, 195 Of your disasterous fortune. Mist. mer. Out alas, I left a thousand pound, a thousand pound, e'ne all the monie I had laid vp for this youth, vpon the sight of your Maistership, you lookt so grim, and as I may say it, sauing your 200 presence^ more like a Giant then a mortall man. Rafe. I am as 3^ou are Ladie, so are they All mortall, but why weepes this gentle Squire. Mist. mer. Has hee not cause to weepe doe you thinke, when he hath lost his inheritance ? 205 Rafe. Yong hope of valour, weepe not, I am here That will confound thy foe and paie it deere Vpon his coward head, that dares denie. Distressed Squires and Ladies equitie. I haue but one horse, on which shall ride 182 Lady 1750 184 Fair, and 1750 Ralph. Fair! and 1778 W 193 befit 1778, f. 201 they, 1778 W, they; Dy 202 mortal. 1778, f. 209 on] upon 1750 1778 W. ACT ii] The Knight of the burning Pestle 37 This Ladie faire behind me, and before 210 This courteous Squire, fortune will giue vs more Vpon our next aduenture ; fairelie speed Beside vs Squire and Dwarfe to do vs need. Examt. (Jit. Did I not tell you Nel what your man would doe ? by the taith of my bodie wench, for cleane action 215 and good deliuerie they may all cast their caps at him. Wife. And so they may i'faith, for I dare speake it boldly, the twelue Companies of Londo)i cannot match him, timber for timber, well George, and hee be not inueigled by some of these paltrie Plaiers, I ha 220 much maruell, but George wee ha done our parts if the boy haue any grace to be thankefull. Cittiz. Yes I warrant thee duckling. Enter Humphrey and Luce, Hum. Good Mistresse Luce how euer I in fault am 22s For your lame horse ; you're welcome vnto Waltham. But which way now to go or what to sale I know not truely till it be broad daie. Luce. O feare not Maister Humphreg, I am guide For this place good enough. Hum. Then vp and ride, 230 Or if it please you walke for your repose, Or sit, or if you will go plucke a rose: |31] Either of which shall be indifferent. To your good friend and Humphrey, whose consent Is so entangled euer to your will, 235 As the poore harmelesse horse is to the Mill. Luce. Faith and you say the word we'le e'ne sit downe And take a nap. Hum. 'Tis better in the Towne, Where we may nap together, for beleeue me To sleepe without a snatch would mickle grieue me. 240 219 timber. 1778, f. 223 duckling. [Scene IV. — Another part of the forest. Dy 226 horse, 1778, f. 38 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act n Ijuce. You're merrie Maister Humphrey. Hum. So I am, And haue bene euer merrie from my Dam. Luce. Your nurce had the lesse labour. Hum. Faith it may bee, 245 Vnlesse it were by chance I did beray mee. f"^^'" •' _ -' lasper. lasp. Luce deere friend Luce. Luce. Heere lasper. lasp. You are mine. Hum. If it be so, my friend, you vse me fine. What do you thinke I am ? lasp. An arrant noddie 250 Hmn. A word of obloquie, now by Gods bodie, rie tell thy maister for I know thee well. lasp. Nay, and you be so forward for to tell, Take that, and that, and tell him sir I gaue it. And saie I paid you well. Hum. O sir I haue it, 255 And do confesse the paiement, praie be quiet. lasp. Go, get to your night-cap and the diet. To cure your beaten bones. Lmcc. Alas poore Humphrie Get thee some wholsome broth with sage and comfrie : A little oile of Roses and a feather, 260 To noint thy backe withall. Hum. When I came hether. Would I had gone to Paris with lohn Dorrie. Luce. Fare-well my prettie Nump, I am verie sorrie I cannot beare thee companie. Hum. Fare-well, 26s The Diuels Dam was ne're so bang'd in hell. nmn^ ' Wife. This yong lasper will proue me Sinoiher ^^mpkreji Things, a my conscience and he may be suffered ; George^ dost not see George how a swaggers, and flies ^^m [32] at the very heads a fokes as he were a Drago ; well ^M 270 if I do not do his lesson for wronging the poore Gentleman, I am no true woman, his friends that 249 noddie. Qj f. 250 obloquy. 1778, f. 254 well. [Beats him. 1778, f. 256 get to] get you to Qj, f. 261 hither, Qj, f. 263 Numps, 1750 267 thing SM a ] o' Dy 269 folks 1778, f. 269 Drago;] Dragon; Qj F 171 1 1750 dragon? 1778, f. 271 woman. 1778, f. ACT ii] The Knight of the burning Pestle 39 brought him vp might haue bene better occupied, I wis, then ha taught him these fegaries, hee's e'ne in the high-way to the gallows, God blesse him. Cit. You're too bitter, conny, the yong man may 27s do wel enough for all this. Wife. Come hither Maister Humfrey, has hee hurt you? now beshrew his fingers for't, here sweet heart, here's some greene ginger for thee, now beshrew my heart but a has pepper-nel in's head, as big as a 280 pullets egge, alas swete lamb, how thy Tempels beate : take the peace on him sweete heart, take the peace on him. ^'f (7 boy. Cit. No, no, you talke like a foolish woman. Tie ha Raph fight with him, and swing him vp welfau- 285 ourdlie, sirrah boie come hither, let Raph come in and fight with lasper. Wife. I, and beate him well, he's an vnhappy boy. Boy. Sir you must pardon vs, the plot of our Plaie lies contrarie, and 'twill hazard the spoiling of our Plaie. 290 Cit. Plot mee no plots, Tie ha Raph come out, I'le make your house too hot for you else. Boy. Why sir he shall, but if anie thing fall out of order, the Gentlemen must pardon vs. Cit. Go your waies good-man boie, lie hold him 295 a pennie he shall haue his bellie-fuU of fighting now, ho heere comes Raph, no more. Enter Raph, mistresse Merri: Michael., Squire, and Dwarfe. Raph. What Knight is that Squire, aske him if he keep 300 The passage, bound by loue of Ladie faire, 273 ha] have Qj f. 278 for't! 1778, f. 279 thee. 1778, f. 285 swinge F, f. welfavourdly.— W, f. 286 hither. (Enter Boy.) Dy 295 boy 1 (Exit Boy.) Dy 296 now. 1778 297 Ralph! 1778, f. more. [ Scene V. — Another part of the forest. Dy 300 that, F, f. Squire? 1778, f. 40 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act ii Or else but prickant. Hum. Sir I am no Knight, But a poore Gentleman, that this same night, Had stolne from me on yonder Greene, 305 My louelie wife, and suffered to bee seene Yet extant on my shoulders such a greeting, That whilst I liue, I shall thinke of that meeting. Wife. I Raph hee beate him vnmercifully, Raph, and thou spar'st him Raph I would thou wert hang'd. [33] 310 Qn_ No more, wife no more. Rafe. Where is the caitife wretch hath done this deed, Lady your pardon, that I may proceed Vpon the quest of this iniurious Knight. 315 And thou faire Squire repute me not the worse, In leaning the great venture of the purse, /''l'^ And the rich casket till some better leasure, aizd Luce. Hum. Here comes the Broker hath purloin'd my treasure. 32° Raph. Go, Squire, and tell him I am here, An Errant Knight at Armes, to craue deliuery Of that faire Lady to her owne Knights armes. If he deny, bid him take choice of ground. And so defye him. Squire. From the Knight that beares 32s The golden Pestle, I defie thee Knight. Vnlesse thou make faire restitution, Of that bright Lady. lasp. Tell the Knight that sent thee Hee is an Asse, and I will keepe the wench 330 And knocke his Head-peece. Raph. Knight, thou art but dead. If thou recall not thy vncurteous tearmes. Wife. Breake's pate Raph, breake's pate Raph, soundly. 304 on] upon 1750 1778 W 305-6 (to . . . shoulders) 1750, f. 312 deed? Q2, f. 325 knight, 1750, f. 331 Knight cm. F 1711 ACT ii] The Knight of the burning Pestle 4 1 lasper. Come Knight, I am ready for you, now snatches T-, , axfiay his your restel Pestic. Shall try what temper, sir, your Morters off With that he stood vpright in his stirrops, And gaue the Knight of the Calue-skinne such a knocke. That he forsooke his horse and downe he fell, 34° And then he leaped vpon him and plucking of his Helmet. Ham. Nay, and my noble Knight be downe so soone. Though I can scarcely go I needs must runne. ^^^^ Wife. Runne Raph, runne Raph, runne for thy life boy. andRaph. lasper comes, lasper comes. lasper. Come Luce, we must haue other Armes for you. Humphery and Golden Pestle both adiew. Exeunt. Wife. Sure the diuell, God blesse vs, is in this Springald, why George, didst euer see such a lire-drake, 350 1 3.4] I am afraid my boie's miscaried, if he be, though hee were Maister Merythouglits sonne a thousand times, if there bee any Law in England I'le make some of them smart for't. Cit. No, no, I haue found out the matter sweete- 355 heart, lasper is inchanted, as sure as we are heere, he is inchanted, he could no more haue stood in Raph's hands, then I can stand in my Lord Maiors, I'le haue a ring to discouer all inchantments, and Raph shall beate him yet : be no more vext for it shall be so. ^,60 Enter Raph, Squire, Divarfe, mistresse Mery-thought and Michaell. Wife. O husband heere's Raj^h againe, stay Rajjh let mee speake with thee, how dost thou Raph ? art 337 off] of. Q.,, f. 339 knock [i'nocks RALPH dow;/. D}'. 341 of] off Qy, f. 342 helmet 17 So, f. [/Cnocks him down. W 344 Exit. W, f. 346 comes 1 \Exit Ralph taking up the pestle. W Exit Ralph. Dy 350 Eire-Drake ? 1750, f. 359 enchantments F, f. 360 so. [ Scene III. W Scene VI. Y)y— Before the Bell Inn at Waltham. W, f. 42 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act n 365 thou not shrodly hurt ? the foule great Lungeis laid vnmercifully on thee, there's some suger-candy for thee, proceed, thou shalt haue another bout with him. Cit. If Raph had him at the Fencing-schoole, if hee did not make a puppy of him, and driue him vp and 370 downe the schoole he should nere come in my shop more. Mist. mer. Truely Maister Knight of the Burning Pestle I am weary. Mich. Indeed law mother and I am very hungry. 375 Raph. Take comfort gentle Dame, and you faireSquire, For in this Desart there must needs be plac't. Many strong Castles, held by curteous Knights, And till I bring you safe to one of those, I sweare by this my Order nere to leaue you. 380 Wife. Well said Raph. George, Raph was euer com- fortable, was he not? Cit. Yes Ducke. Wife. I shall nere forget him, when wee had lost our child, you know, it was straid almost, alone, to Puddle-wharfe and the Criers were abroad for it, and 385 there it had drown'd it selfe but for a Sculler, Raph was the most comfortablest to me ; peace Mistresse, saies he, let it go, I'le get you another as good, did he not George ? did he not say so ? Cit. Yes indeed did he mouse. [35] 390 Dwarf e. I would we had a messe of Pottage, and a pot of drinke. Squire, and were going to bed. Squire. Why we are at Waltham Townes end, and that's the Bell Inne. Dwarfe. Take courage valiant Knight, Damsel, & 395 Squire I haue discouered, not a stone cast off, 365 shrodly] shrewdly Q„ f. 375 you] your Q3 F 1711 1750 1778 Dy 382 him. Dy 383-85 (you . . sculler) 1778, f. 387 you om. W 395 Squire! 1778, f. 396 stone's 1750, f. ACT ii] The Knight of the burning Pestle 43 An ancient Castle held by the old Knight Of the most holy order of the Bell, Who giues to all Knights errant entertaine : There plenty is of food, and all prepar'd, 400 By the white hands of his owne Lady deere. He hath three Squires that welcome all his Guests. The first high Chamberlino, who will see Our beds prepar'd, and bring vs snowy sheetes, Where neuer foote-man stretch'd his butter'd Hams. 405 The second hight Tastero, who will see Our pots full filled and no froth therein. The third a gentle Squire Ostlero hight, Who will our Palfries slicke with wisps of straw. And in the Maunger put them Oa tes enough, 410 And neuer grease their teeth with candle snufFe. Wife. That same Dwarfe's a pretty boy, but the Squire's a grout-nole. Raph. Knocke at the Gates my Squire with stately launce. ^"^^>' Tap. Who's there, you're welcome Gentlemen, will you see a roome? [burning Pestle, Dwarf e. Right curteous and valiant Knight of the This is the Squire Tapstero. Raph. Faire Squire Tapstero, I a wandering Knight 420 Hight of the burning Pestle, in the quest Of this faire Ladies Casket, and wrought purse, Loosing my selfe in this vast Wildernesse Am to this Castle well by fortune brought, Where hearing of the goodly entertaine 42s Your Knight of holy Order of the Bell Giues to all Damsels and all errant Knights, I thought to knocke, and now am bold to enter. 403 high] hight 1750, f. 406 Tastero,] Tapstero, 1778, f. passim 410 manger Q^, f. 415 lance. [ Tt7n knocks at the door. Dy 423 loosing ] losing Q2, f. 44 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act ii [36] Tapster. An't please you see a chamber, you are 43° very welcome. Exeunt. Wife. George I would haue something done, and I cannot tell what it is. at. What is it NeU Wife. Why George, shall Raph beate no body againe ? 435 Prethee sweete-heart let him. Cit. So he shall Nel, and if I ioyne with him, weele knocke them all. Enter Humpherij and Merchant. Wife. O George here's maister Humpherij againe 44° now, that lost Mistresse Luce, and Mistresse Lucies father, Maister Hiimphery will do some -bodies errant I warrant him. Humf. Father, it's true, in armes I nere shall claspe her, For shee is stolne away by your man lasper. 445 Wife. I thought he would tell him. March. Vnhappy that I am to loose my child, Now I beginne to thinke on laspers words. Who oft hath vrg'd me thy foolishnesse, Why didst thou let her go ? thou loust her not, 450 That wouldst bring home thy life, and not bring her. Hum. Father forgiue me, shall I tell you true, Looke on my shoulders they are blacke and blew. Whilst too and fro faire Luce and I were winding, He came and basted me with a hedge binding. 455 March. Get men and horses straight, we will be there Within this houre, you know the place againe. Hum. I know the place, where he my loines did swaddle, 437 all. [Scene IV. W Sckne VII. Dy — London. W A Room in the House of Venterwels. W, f. 441 father. 1778, f. errant] arrant, Q2 Q;i F 1711 1750 errand, 1778, f. 448 vrg'd me] urged to me 1750, f. foolishness: 1778, f. 451 mc. Dy shall I] I shall Qj Q3 F 171 1 1750 1778 true? W, f. 456 hour. 1778, f. againe? Qj, f. ACT II I The Knight of the burning Pestle 45 rie get six horses, and to each a saddle. Mar. Meane time I'le go talke with laspers father. Exeunt. Wife. George, what wilt thou laye with mee now, that Maister Humphery has not Mistresse Luce yet, speake George, what wilt thou laie with me? Cit. No Nel, I warrant thee lasper is at Puckeridge with her, by this. 465 Wife. Na-Y George, you must consider Mistress Lucles feete are tender, and, besides, 'tis darke and [37] I promise you tuely, I doe not see how hee should get out of W a Itm forrest with her yet. Cit. Nay cunny, what wilt thou laie with me that 470 Raph has her not yet. Wife. I will not lay against Raph, hunny, because I haue not spoken with him, but looke George, peace, heere comes the merry old Gentleman againe. Enter old Merrie-tJioagld, 475 Old mer. When it was growne to darke midnight, And all were fast asleepe, In came Margarets grimely Ghost, And stood at Williams feete. I haue mony, and meate and drinke before hand, 480 till to morrow at noone, why should I be sad ? mee thinkes I haue halfe a dozen louiall spirits within mee, I am three merry men, and three merry men, To what end should any man be sad in this world? giue me a man that when hee goes to hanging cries, troule 485 the blacke bowle to mee : and a woeman that will sing 460 I'le] I will 1750, f. Exeunt severally. Dy 468 tuely] truly Qo, f. 469 Waltham Q.j, f. 471 yet? 1778, f. 473 him. W, f. [ Scene VIII.— ^ room In Merrytought's house. Dy 474 againe. [ Scene V.—An Apartmejit in Merrythought's Hotise. W 476 Mer. (sings) W, f. 482 me ; [ Sings. I am three merry men., aitd three merry men: 1750 Quotes 1778 W Small print Dy 485 Troit'l the black bowl to me, 1750 Quotes 1778 W^ Small print Dy 4 6 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act ii a cath in her Trauell. I haue scene a man come by my dore, with a serious face, in a blacke cloake, without a hat-band, carrying his head as if hee lookt for pinnes in the streete, I haue lookt out of my window 490 halfe a yeare after, and haue spide that mans head vpon London-bridge : 'tis vile, neuer trust a Tailor that does not sing at his worke, his mind is of nothing but filching. Wife. Marke this George^ tis worth noting : God- 40s frrt/ my Tailor, you know, neuer sings, and hee had foureteene yards to make this Gowne, and Tie be sworne Mistresse Fennistone the Drapers wife had one made with twelue. Old mer. 'Tis mirth that fils the veines with bloud, 500 More then wine, or sleepe, or food. Let each man keepe his heart at ease. No man dies of that disease. He that would his body keepe From diseases, must not weepe, 505 But who euer laughes and sings, [38] Neuer he his body brings Into feuers, gouts, or rhumes, Or lingringl}' his longs consumes : Or meets with aches in the bone, 510 Or Catharhes, or griping stone : But contented Hues for aye. The more he laughes, the more he may. Wife. Looke George, how saist thou by this George'^ is't not a fine old man? Now Gods blessing a' thy 515 sweet lips. When wilt thou be so merry George ? Faith thou art the frowningst little thing when thou art angry, in a Countrey. 486 cath] catch Qj, f. 490 spied Q.,, f. 492 of] on 1778 W 508 lungs Q„ f. ACT iij The Knight of the burning Pestle 47 Enter Merchant. Cit. Peace Coney, thou shalt see him taken downe too I warrant thee ; here's Luces father come now. 520 Old mer. As you came from Walsingham, fro that holy land, there met you not with my tru-loue by the way as you came March. Oh Maister Merri-thought ! my daughter's gone. This mirth becomes you not, my daughters gone. 525 Old Merri. Why an if she be, what care I? Or let her come or go, or tarry. ' March. Mocke not my misery, it is your sonne. Whom I haue made my owne, when all forsooke him, Has stolne my onely ioy, my childe away. 53° Old Mer. He set her on a milk-white steed, & himselfe vpo a gray. He neuer turn'd his face againe, but he bore her quite away. March. Vnworthy of the kindnesse I haue shewn S3s To thee, and thine : too late I well perceiue Thou art consenting to my daughters losse. Old mer. Your daughter, what a stur's here wee yer daughter? Let her goe, thinke no more on her, but sing lowd. If both my sons were on the gallows, 540 I would sing downe, down, downe : they fall downe, and arise they neuer shall. March. Oh might I behold her once againe. And she once more embrace her aged sire. Old merri. Fie, how scuruily this goes : and she 545 once more imbrace her aged sire ? you'l make a dogge 520 thee. [Enter Venterwell. W, f. 521 3fer. (sings) W, f. fro] from Q^, f. that] the Qj Q3 F 1711 1730 1778 W 523 came? ^75°) f- 532 vpo] upon Qu, f. 538 wee yer] wi' y'r F 171 1 1750 wi' your 1778, f. 541—42 In stanzaic form: Down . . . fall, Down . . . shall. 1750, f. 543 (but) 1 behold 1750 I (but) behold W 545—46 'And . . . sire?' 1778, f. 48 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act ii on her, will yee ? she cares much for her aged sire I warrant you. [39] She cares cares not for her daddy, nor shee cares 550 not for her mammie, For she is, she is, sheis, she is my Lord of Loiv-gaues Lassie. March. For this thy scorne, I will pursue That Sonne of thine to death. 555 Old merri. Do, and when you ha kild him, Giue him flowers i'now Palmer : giue him flowers i'now, Giue him red, and white, and blew, greene, and yellow. March. Il'e fetch my daughter. Old merri. He heare no more a your daughter, it 560 spoyles my mirth. March. I say Fie fetch my daughter. Old merri. Was neuer man for Ladies sake, doivne, downc, Tormented as I poore sir Guy ? de derry downe 565 For Lucies sake, that Lady bright, downe, doivne, x^s euer men beheld with eye ? de derry doivne. March. Il'e be reueng'd by heauen. Exeunt. J/i/sui'f. Mill's Actus secundi. Wife. How dost thou like this George'^. 570 Cit. Why this is well coney : but if Baph were hot once, thou shouldst see more. Wife. The Fidlers go againe husband. Cii. I l^ell, but this is scuruy musicke : I gaue the whoreson gallowes money, and I thinke hee has not 575 got mee the waits of South-warke, if I heare him not anan, He twinge him by the eares. You Musicians, play Baloo. 551 — 52 In stanzaic form : She . . . She . . . For . . . Lord . . . Lassie. '750) f- 556 i'now] enow 1778, f. 559 a your] o'your F, f. 567 Exeunt severally. Dy 568 om. Dy 571 more. [Music. Dy 574 gallows-money W 575 him] 'em 1750, f. 576 anon, 171 1, f. ACT m] The Knight of the burning Pestle 49 Wife. No good George, lets ha Lachrimae. at. Why this is it cony. Wife. It's all the better George : now sweet lambe, 580 what story is that painted vpon the cloth? the confu- tation of Saint Paul ? Cit. No lambe, that Rajih and Liicrece. Wife. Raph and Lucrece? which Raph'i our Raph? Cit. No mouse, that was a Tartarian. 58s Wife. A Tartarian ? well, I'wood the fidlers had done, that wee might see our Rcq)h againe. Actus tertius, Scoena prima. [40] Enter lasper and Luce. lasp. Come my deere deere, though we haue lost our way. We haue not lost our selues : are you not weary With this nights wandring, broken from your rest? And frighted with the terrour that attends s The darknesse of these wilde vn-peopled place? Luce. No my best friend, I cannot either feare. Or entertaine a weary thought, whilst you (The end of all my full desires) stand by me. Let them that loose their hopes, and hue to languish 10 Amongst the number of forsaken louers. Tell the long weary steps, and number time, Start at a shadow, and shrinke vp their bloud. Whilst I (possest with all content and quiet) Thus take my prettie loue, and thus imbrace him. 15 lasp. You haue caught me Luce, so fast, that whilst I Hue I shall become your faithfull prisoner, 583 that's Qj, f. 586 wood] would 1778, f. Act III Scenk I. Waltham Forest. W f. I my deere deere,] my deare Q3 F 1711 my dear dear, 1750 1778 Dy my dear deer, W 6 these] this Qj, f. 10 loose ] lose Qj, f. D 50 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act in And were these chaines for euer. Come sit downe, 20 And rest your body, too too delicate For these disturbances ; so, will you sleepe ? Come, do not be more able then you are, I know you are not skilfull in these watches : For women are no souldiers ; be not nice, 25 But take it, sleepe I say. Luce. I cannot sleepe, Indeed I cannot friend. lasp. Why then wee'l sing, And try how that will worke vpon our sences. 30 Luce. Il'e sing, or say, or anything but sleepe. :Ias. Come little Mer-maid, rob me of my heart With that inchanting voyce. Luce. You mocke me lasper. [41] Song. 35 lasp. Tell me (deerest) what is loue ? Luce. 'Tis a lightning from ahoue, 'Tis an arrow , 'tis a fire 'Tis a hoy they call desire. 'Tis a smile 49 Doth beguile las. The poore hearts of men that prone. Tell me more, are women true ? Luce. Some loue change., and so do you. las. Are they faire, and neuer kind ? 45 Luce. Yes, when men turne with the winde. las. Are they froward ? Luce. Euer toward, Those that loue, to loue anew. 19 were j weare Q,,, f. 21 disturbances. (They sit down.) Dy 34 Song. [ TJiey sing. Dy 47 toward Qj, f. ACT iiij The Knight of the burning Pestle 51 lasp. Dissemble it no more, I see the God Of heauy sleepe, lay on his heauy mace so Vpon your eye-lids. Luce. I am very heauy. lasp. Sleep, sleep, & quiet rest crowne thy sweet thoughts : Keepe from her faire bloud, distempers, startings, Horrors, and fearefull shapes: let all her dreames ss Be ioyes, and chast delights, imbraces, wishes. And such new pleasures, as the rauisht soule Giues to the sences. So, my charmes haue tooke. Keepe her you powers diuine, whilst I contemplate Vpon the wealth and beauty of her minde. ^° She is onely faire, and constant : onely kinde. And onely to thee lasper. Oh my ioyes ! Whither will you transport me? let not fulnesse Of my poore buried hopes, come vp together, And ouer-charge my spirits : I am weake ^^ Some say (how euer ill) the sea and women Are gouem'd by the Moone, both ebbe and flow, Both full of changes: yet to them that know. And truly iudge, these but opinions are. And heresies to bring on pleasing warre ^° Betweene our tempers, that without these were y'^^i Both void of ater-loue, and present feare. Which are the best of Cupid. Oh thou child ! Bred from dispaire, I dare not entertaine thee, Hauing a loue without the faults of women, ^^ And greater in her perfect goods then men : Which to make good, and please my selfe the stronger, Though certainly I am certaine of her loue, Il'e try her, that the world and memory 50 sleep 1778. f. 51 heavy. [Sleeps. W, f. 52 Sleep, sleep; 1778, f. 54 distempers] all distempers 1750 1778 W 56 chaste F, f. 64 hopes F, f. 65 weak; 1750 weak ! 1778 W weak. Dy 72 ater- loue] after-love Q2, f. feare; 1711, f. 73 child 1778, f. D 2 52 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act hi 80 May sing to after times, her constancie. iMce^ Luce, awake. Luce. Why do you fright me, friend, With those distempered lookes ? what makes your sword Drawne in your hand? who hath offended you? I pre'thee lasper sleepe, thou art wilde with watching. 85 lasp. Come make your way to heauen, and bid the world (With all the villanies that sticke upon it) Fare-well ; you'r for another life. Luce. Oh lasper ! How haue my tender yeares committed euill, 9° (Especially against the man I loue) Thus to be cropt vntimely? lasp. Foolish girle. Canst thou imagine I could loue his daughter, That flung me from my fortune into nothing? Discharged me his seruice, shut the doores 95 Vpon my pouerty, and scorn'd my prayers, Sending me, like a boat without a mast, To sinke or swin ? Come, by this hand you dye, I must haue life and bloud to satisfie Your fathers wrongs. 100 Wife. Away George, away, raise the watch atLudgate, and bring a Mittimus from the Justice for this desperate villaine. Now I charge you Gentlemen, see the King's peace kept. O my heart what a varlet's this to offer manslaughter vpon the harmlesse Gentlewoman? 105 Cit. I warrant thee (sweet heart) wee'l haue him hampered. Luce. Oh lasper ! be not cruell. If thou wilt kill mee, smile and do it quickly. And let not many deaths appeare before me. [43] 110 1 am a woman made of feare and loue, A weake, weake woman, kill not with thy eyes. 80 constancy. [ Draws. W, f. his sword. Dy 81 Luce I Luce 1 1778, f. 97 swin 1 swim Qj, f. iii woman; 1778, f. ACT III] The Knight of the burning Pestle 53 They shoot me through and through. Strike I am ready. And dying stil I loue thee. ^''^^''' T.*- 7 IT 71 1- Merchant, Marcli. Where abouts. Humphrey, lasp. No more of this, now to my selfe againe. "^''^ -^^ Hnm. There, there he stands with sword Hke mar- tial knight Drawne in his hand, therefore beware the fight lao You that be wise : for were I good sir Beuis, I would not stay his comming, by your leaues. March. Sirrah, restore my daughter. lasj). Sirrah, no. March. Vpon him then. Wife. So, downe with him, downe with him, downe 125 with him : cut him i'th leg boies, cut him i'th leg. March. Come your waies Minion, Il'e prouide a Cage For you, your growne so tame. Horse her away. Humph. Truly Ime glad your forces haue the day. exeunt. lasp. They are gone, and I am hurt, my loue is lost, "j^Zl*^ Neuer to get againe. Oh me vnhappy ! Bleed, bleed, and dye, I cannot : Oh my folly ! Thou hast betraid me. Hope where art thou fled ? Tell me if thou bee'st any where remaining. Shall I but see my loue againe ? Oh no ! 13s She will not daine to looke vpon her butcher. Nor is it fit she should ; yet I must venter. Oh chance, or fortune, or what ere thou art That men adore for powerfull, heare my cry. And let me louing, liue ; or loosing, die. Exit. Wife. Is a gone George! Cit. I conie. 112 Strike! I am ready; 1778, f. 115 Enter Venturewell, Humphrey a«rf Attendants. Dy 116 Whereabouts? Qj, f. 117 again. [Aside Dy 118 sword, 171 1, f. 119 knight, 1711, f. 121 be] are Q3 F 1711 1750 1778 124 then. [Luce is torn from Jaspek. W They attack Jasper and force \XiQS. from him. Dy 128 your] you're Qj, f. 132 die. 1778 W die! Dy 54 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act hi Wife. Marie and let him goe (sweet heart), by the faith a my body a has put me into such a fright, that 145 1 tremble (as they say) as 'twere an Aspine leafe : looke a my little finger George^ how it shakes ; now i truth euery member of my body is the worse for't. at. Come, hugge in mine armes sweet mouse, hee [44] shall not fright thee any more : alas mine owne deere 150 heart, how it quiuers. Enter Mistresse Merrithonght, Rafe, Michall, Squire Dwarf e, Host, and a Tapster. Wife. O Bafe, how dost thou Rafe? how hast thou slept to night ? has the knight vs'd thee well ? 155 Cit. Peace Nell, let Rafe alone. Tapst. Maister, the reckoning is not paid. Rafe. Right curteous knight, who for the orders sake Which thou has tane, hang'st out the holy bell, As I this flaming pestle beare about, 160 We render thankes to your puissant selfe, Your beauteous Lady, and your gentle Squires, For thus refreshing of our wearied limbes, Stiffned with hard atchieuements in wilde desert. Tapst. Sir there is twelue shillings to pay. 165 Rafe. Thou merry Squire Tapstero, thankes to thee. For comforting our soules with double lug. And if aduentrous fortune pricke thee forth, Thou louiall Squire, to follow feats of armes. Take heed thou tender euery Ladies cause, 170 Euery truery true Knight, and euery damsell faire faire ; But spill the bloud of trecherous Sarazens, And false inchanters, that with magicke spels, Haue done to death full many a noble Knight. 147 in truth Qj, f. 150 quivers. [ ScENE II. A Room in the Bell- Inn. W, f. Waltham. Dy 158 hast F, f. tane,] ta'en, 1711, f- 167 adventurous F, f. 170 truery om. Qj, f. faire faire ; ] fair ; Q,, f. ACT ui| The Knight of the burning Pestle 55 Host. Thou valiant Knight of the burning Pestle, giue eare to me, there is twelue shillings to pay, and 175 as I am a true Knight, I will not bate a peny. T'H/e. George^ I pray thee tell me, must Rafe pay twelue shillings now? Cit. No Nell., no, nothing but the old Knight is merrie with Rafe. iSo Wife. O is't nothing else? Rafe will be as merry as he. Rafe. Sir Knight, this mirth of yours becomes you well. But to requite this liberall curtesie, 183 If any of your Squires will follow armes, Hee shall receiue from my heroicke hand A Knight-hood, by the vertue of this Pestle. [46] Host. Faire Knight I thanke you for your noble offer, Therefore gentle Knight, 19° Twelue shillings you must pay, or I must cap you. Wife. Looke George, did not I tell thee as much, the Knight of the Bel is in earnest, Raph shall not bee beholding to him, giue him his money George, and let him go snickvp. 195 a. Cap Raph ? no ; hold your hand sir Knight of the Bel, theres your money, haue you anything to say to Raph now? Cap Raph} Wife. I would you should know it, Raph has friends that will not suffer him to be capt for ten times so 200 much, and ten times to the end of that, now take thy course Raph. M.mer. Come Michael, thou & I wil go home to thy father, he hath enough left to keep vs a day or two, and we'leset fellows abrod to cry our Purse & 205 our Casket, Shal we Michael ? 177 pray thee] prethee Q2 Q3 F 1711 prithee 1750, f. 196 Ralph 1 Dy 198 Rapht] Ralph! Dy 201 that. 1778, f. 56 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act in Mich. I, I pray Mother, intruth my feete are full of chilblaines with trauelling. Wife. Faith and those chilblanes are a foule trouble, 210 Mistresse Merie-thought when your youth comes home let him rub all the soles of his feete, and the heeles, and his ancles, with a mouse skinne, or if none of your people can catch a mouse, when hee goes to bed, let him rowle his feete in the warme embers, 215 and I warrant you hee shall be well, and you may make him put his fingers betweene his toes & smell to them, it's very soueraigne for his head if he be costiue. Mist. mer. Maister Knight of the burning Pestle, 220 my son Michael and I, bid you farewel, I thanke your Worship heartily for your kindnesse. Baph. Fare-well faire Lady and your tender Squire, If, pricking through these Desarts, I do heare Of any traiterous Knight who through his guile, 225 Hath light vpon your Casket and your Purse, I will despoile him of them and restore them. Mist. Mer. I thanke your Worship. SLTf** Raph. Dwarfe beare my shield. Squire eleuate my lance, 230 And now fare-well you Knight of holy Bell. Cit. I, I Raph, all is paid. [46] Raph. But yet before I go, speake worthy Knight, If ought you do of sad aduentures know. Where errant Knights may through his prowesse winne, 235 Eternall fame and free some gentle soules. From endlesse bonds of Steele and lingring paine. Host. Sirrah go to Nicke the Barhor, and bid him prepare himselfe, as I told you before, quickely. Tap. I am gone sir. ^^'t Tapster, 209 trouble. 1778, f 225 light] lit 1778 W 234 Knight 1711, f. win Q3, f. 235 souls 171 1, f. 237 Barber, Q2, f. passim ACT m] The Knight of the burning Pestle 57 Host. Sir Knight, this wildernesse affoordeth none "40 But the great venter, where full many a Knight Hath tride his prowesse and come off with shame, And where I would not haue you loose your life, Against no man, but furious fiend of hell. Raph. Speake on sir Knight, tell what he is, and where, 245 For heere I vow vpon my blazing badge, Neuer to blaze a day in quietnesse ; But bread and water will I onely eate. And the greene hearbe and rocke shall be my couch, Till I have queld that man, or beast, or fiend, 250 That workes such damage to all Errant Knights. Host. Not far from hence, neere to a craggy cliffe. At the North end of this distressed Towne, There doth stand a lowly house Ruggedly builded, and in it a Caue, 25s In which an ougly Gyant now doth won, Ycleped Barharoso : in his hand He shakes a naked lance of purest Steele, With sleeues turn'd vp, and him before he weares, A motley garment, to preserue his cloaths 260 From bloud of those Knights which he massacres. And Ladies Gent : without his dore doth hang A copper bason, on a prickant speare : At which, no sooner gentle Knights can knocke, But the shrill sound, fierce Barharoso heares, 265 And rushing forth, bings in the errant Knight, And sets him downe in an inchanted chaire. Then with an Engine which he hath prepar'd. With forty teeth, he clawes his courtly crowne, [47] Next makes him winke, and vnderneath his chinne, 270 Hee plants a brazen peece of mighty bord, 242 tried F, f. 256 ougly] ugly Q3, f. 257 Barbarossa. Dy 259 wears 171 1, f. 265 sound 171 1, f. 266 bings] brings Qj, f. 271 bord] bore 1750 1778. 58 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act m And knocks his bullets round about his cheeks, Whilst with his fingers, and an instrument With which he snaps his haire off, he doth fill 275 The wretches eares with a most hideous noise. Thus euery Knight Aduenturer he doth trim, And now no creature dares encounter him. Rapli. In Gods name, I will fight him, kinde sir, Go but before me to this dismall Caue, 280 Where this huge Gyant Barbaroso dwels, And by that vertue that braue Bosicleere^ That damned brood of ougly Gyants slew. And Palmerin Frannarco ouerthrew : I doubt not but to curbe this Traitor foule, 285 And to the Diuell send his guilty soule. Host. Braue sprighted Knight, thus far I will performe This your request, I'le bring you with in sight Of this most lothsome place, inhabited By a more loathsome man : but dare not stay, 290 For his maine force soopes all he sees away. Raph. Saint George set on before, march Squire and page. Exeunt. Wife. George, dost thinke Rajjh will confound the Gyant ? 295 Cit. I hold my cap to a farthing hee does : why Nel I saw him wrastle with the great Dutch -man and hurle him. Wife. Faith and that Ducth-man was a goodly man, if all things were answerable to his bignesse, 300 and yet they say there was a Scotsh-man higher then hee, and that they two and a Knight met, and saw one another for nothing, but of all the sights that 278 him; 1778 him: W him. Dy 290 soopes] swoops Qj, f. 291 on, 1750 on; 1778 W before! Dy 296 wrestle F, f. 298 Ducth-man] Dutch-man Qj, f. 301 and a Knight] on a night 1750 1778 ACT III I The Knight of the burning Pestle 59 euer were in London, since I was married, mee thinkes the little child that was so faire growne about the members was the prettiest, that, and the Hermophrodite. 305 Cit. Nay by your leaue Nel^ Ninimj was better. Wife. Niniuie, O that was the story of lone and the Wall, was it not George} Lit. Yes lam. mistresse Wtfe. Looke Georcje, heere comes Mistresse Merry- Merry- thouyht againe, and I would haue Raph come and fight ^"'^ with the Giant, I tell you true, I long to see't, Cit. Good Mistresse Merry-thought be gone, I pray [48] you for my sake, I pray you forbeare a little, you shall haue audience presently, I haue a little businesse. 315 ^¥ife. Mistresse Merry-thought if it please you to refraine your passio a little, til Raph haue dispatch the Giant out of the way we shal think our selues much bound to you, I thank you good Mistresse Merry-thought. ^^^^ 'w"*^- Merry- T-, , , thou : iLnter a boy. Cit. Boy, come hither, send away Raph and this whore-sonne Giant quickely. Boy. In good faith sir we cannot, you'le vtterly spoile our Play, and make it to be hist, and it cost 3»s money, you will not suffer vs to go on with our plot, I pray Gentlemen rule him. Cit. Let him come now and dispatch this, and I le trouble you no more. Boy. Will you giue me your hand of that? 330 Wife. Giue him thy hand George, do, and I'le kisse him, I warrant thee the youth meanes plainely. 307 lone ] Joan 1711 1750 1778W 309 lamb. F. f. Scene III W, f. London. W The Street before Merrythought's i/oe«^. W 317 passion] Qs,f. dispatchtQj, f. 319 bound to you, ] bound to thank you : Qj Qg F 1711 1750 1778 W [Exit Mistress Merrythought. Dy 322 hither. (Enter Boy.) Dy 326' plot. W, f. 6o The Knight of the burning Nestle [act hi Boy. rie send him to you presently. Exit Boy. Wife. I thanke you little youth, feth the child hath 335 a sweete breath George, but I thinke it bee troubled with the wormes, Carduus Benedictus and Mares Milke were the onely thing in the world for't, O Raph's here George^ God send thee good lucke Raph. Enter Raph, Host, Squire, and Divarfe. 340 Host. Puissant Knight yonder his Mansion is, Lo where the speare and Copper Bason are, Behold that string on which hangs many a tooth, Drawne from the gentle iaw of wandring Knights, I dare not stay to sound, hee will appeare, ExUHost. 345 Raph. O faint not heart, Susan my Lady deere. The Coblers Maid in Milke-streete, for whose sake 5 I take these Armes, O let the thought of thee. Carry thy Knight through all aduenterous deeds, [49] And in the honor of thy beauteous selfe, 350 May I destroy this monster Barharoso, Knocke Squire vpon the Bason till it breake. With the shrill stroakes, or till the Giant speake. ^^^^'^ . ^. Barbor, Wife. O George, the Giant, the Giant, now Raph for thy life. 355 Barber. What fond vnkno wing wight is this ? that dares So rudely knocke at Barharossa's Cell, Where no man comes but leaues his fleece behind? Raph. I, traiterous Caitiffe, who am sent by fate To punish all the sad enormities 360 Thou has committed against Ladies Gent 334 IVife (kissing him.) Dy youth (Exit Boy.) Dy feth ] Faith W, f. 336 worms ; 1778, f. 337 for't. Qj, f. [ Scene IV. — Before a barber's shop, Waltham. Dy 338 George 1 1778, f. Ralph! [SCENE IV. Before a Barber's Shop ui Waltham. W 343 knights ! 1 778, f. 345 heart! 1778, f. 350 Barbaroso 1 1778, f. 351 break Qj, f, 352 speak. [Tim knocks upon the bason. W, f. 353 Giant I Now 1 778, f. ACT III] The Knight of the burning Pestle 6 1 And errant Knights, traitor to God and men : Prepare thy selfe, this is the dismall houre Appointed for thee, to giue strickt account Of all thy beastly treacherous villanies. Barber. Foole-hardy Knight, full soone thou shalt aby 365 This fond reproach, thy body will I bang, ^^^ t<^^^\ do'Wfic his And loe vpon that string thy teeth shall hang; p^j^^ Prepare thy selfe, for dead soone shalt thou bee. Baph. Saint George for me. They fight. Barber. Gargantua for me. 37° Wife. To him, Raph to him, hold vp the Giant, set out thy leg before Raph. Cit. Falsifie a blow Raph, falsifie a blow, the Giant lies open on the left Skide. Wife. Beare't off, beare't of still ; there boy, O 375 RapJie's almost downe, Raph's almost downe. RapJi. Susan inspire me, now haue vp againe. Wife. Vp, vp, vp, vp, vp, so Raph, downe with him, downe with him Raph. Cit. Fetch him ore the hip boy. 380 Wife. There boy, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, Raph. Cit. No Raph get all out of him first. Raph. Presumptuous man, see to what desperate end Thy treatchery hath brought thee, the iust Gods, Who neuer prosper those that do despise them, 385 For all the villanies which thou hast done To Knights and Ladies, now haue paid thee home [50] By my stiffe arme, a Knight aduenturous, But say vile wretch, before I send thy soule To sad Auernus whether it must go, 390 What captiues holdst thou in thy sable caue. Barber. Go in and free them all, thou hast the day. 375 of] off Q2, f. 380 ore] o'er W, f. boy [ Ralph knocks down the Barber. W, f. 384 thee I Dy 388 adventurous. Qj, f. 390 whither Q^, f. 391 cave? F, f. 62 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act iii Raph. Go Squire & Dwarfe, search in this dread- full Caue 395 And free the wretched prisoners from their bonds. Exit Squire and Dwarfe. Barber. I craue for mercy, as thou art a Knight, And scomst to spill the bloud of those that beg. Raph. Thou showdst no mercy, nor shalt thou haue any, 400 Prepare thy selfe for thou shalt surely die. Enter Squire leading one winking, with a Bason vnder his chin. Squire. Behold braue Knight heere is one prisoner. Whom this wilde man hath vsed as you see. 405 Wife. This is the first wise word I heard the Squire speake. Raph. Speake what thou art, and how thou hast bene vs'd. That that I may giue condigne punishment, 410 1. Km. I am a Knight that tooke my iourney post North-ward from London, and in curteous wise, This giant train'd me to his loathsome den, Vnder pretence of killing of the itch. And all my body with a powder strew'd, 415 That smarts and stings^ and cut away my beard, And my curl'd lockes wherein were ribands ti'de, And with a water washt my tender eyes, Whilst vp and downe about me still he skipt. Whose vertue is, that till mine eyes be wip't 420 With a dry cloath, for this my foule disgrace, I shall not dare to looke a dog i'th' face. 398 showdst] shewest Qj F 171 1 1750 shew'dst W, f. 402 Cki'/i, as prepared for shaving. W, f. 404 wilde] vile 1778 W vild Dy 409 That that I ] That I Q^, f. give condigne ] give him condign Q», f. punishment. F, f. 410 i Kni.^ Alan Dy passim ACT III] The Knight of the burning Pestle 63 Wife. Alas poore Knight, relieue him Raph, reUeue poore Knights whilst you liue. Raph. My trusty Squire conuey him to the Towne, Exit Where he may finde releife, adiew faire Knight. Knight. Enter Dwarfe leading one with a patch ore Ms Nose. Dwar. Puisant Knight of the burning Pestle hight, See here another wretch, whom this foule beast [51] Hath scorcht and scor'd in this inhumaine wise. Raph. Speake me thy name and eke thy place of birth, 430 And what hath bene thy vsage in this Caue. 2. Knight. I am a Knight, Sir Pocke-hole is my name, And by my birth I am a Londoner Free by my Coppy, but my Ancestors Were French-men all, and riding hard this way, 435 Vpon a trotting horse, my bones did ake. And I faint Knight to ease my weary limbes. Light at this Caue, when straight this furious fiend, With sharpest instrument of purest Steele, Did cut the gristle of my Nose away, 440 And in the place this veluet plaister stands, Relieue me gentle Knight out of his hands. Wife. Good Raph releiue sir Pocke-hole and send him away, for, intruth, his breath stinkes, Raph. Conuey him straight after the other Knight, 44s Sir Pocke-hole fare you well. 2. Kni. Kinde sir good-night. ExH. Man. Deliuer vs. Woeman. Deliuer vs. .l^^L 424 relief. 1778, f. \Exeimt Knight and Tim \^Exit Man witJi Tim, -who presently re-enters Dy 428 scorcht] scotch'd 1 750, f. 432 2. Knight] Sec. Man. Dy passim 438 Light] lit 1778 W 441 stands: 1778, f. 444 stinks. Qj, f. 445 Knight. 1778, f. 447 [Exit with George W, f. who presently re-enters. Dy 448 Man. ] Third Man, Dy passim 64 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act ni Wife. Hearke George, what a woefull cry there is, 450 I thinke some woman hes in there. Man. DeUuer vs. Woeman. DeHuer vs. Raph. What gastly noise in this? speake 5«r&arosO; Or by this biasing Steele thy head goes off. Barber. Prisoners of mine whom I in diet keepe, 455 Send lower downe into the Caue, And in a Tub that's heated smoaking hot, There may they finde them and deliuer them, Raph. Run Squire and Dwarfe, deliuer them with ^^^^^^^ speed. Squire 460 Wife. But will not Raph kill this Giant, surely I am ^"^^ . afeard if hee let him go he will do as much hurt, as euer he did. Cittiz. Not so mouse neither, if hee could conuert him. [52] 465 Wife. I George if hee could conuert him, but a Giant is not so soone conuerted as one of vs ordinary people : there's a pretty tale of a Witch, that had the diuels marke about her, God blesse vs, that had a Giant to her Sonne, that was cal'd Loh-lie-hy-the-fire, didst neuer 470 here it George ? Enter Squire leading a man ivith a glasse of Lotion in his hand, and the Dioarfe leading a ivoman, with diet- bread and drinke. Cit. Peace Nel, heere comes the prisoners. 475 Dwar. Here be these pined wretches, manfull Knight, That for these sixe weekes haue not scene a wight. Raph. Deliuer what you are, and how you came To this sad Caue, and what your vsage was? 453 blazing Qj, f. 454 keep. 1778, f. 457 them. Qj, f. 460 giant? 1778, f. 461 afeard] afraid F, f. 474 prisoners. [ Re-enter TiM leading a third man, etc. Dy 476 these ] this Q,, f. ACT m] The Knight of the burning Pestle 65 Man. I am an Errant Knight that followed Armes, With speare and shield, and in my tender yeares 480 I stricken was with Cupids fiery shaft, And fell in loue with this my Lady deere. And stole her from her friends in Turne-bull-streete, And bore her vp and downe from Towne to Towne, Where we did eate and drinke and Musicke heare, 485 Till at the length, at this vnhappy Towne Wee did arriue, and comming to this Caue This beast vs caught and put vs in a Tub, Where we this two monthes sweate,and should haue done Another Moneth if you had not relieu'd vs, 49° Worn. This bread and water hath our diet bene, Together with a rib cut from a necke Of burned Mutton, hard hath bene our fare. Release vs from this ougly Giants snare. Man. This hath bene all the food we haue receiu'd, 495 But onely twice a day for nouelty. He gaue a spoonefull of this hearty broth, ^^^ °'^^ 1 • 11 • 1 1 ^ strringe. To each of vs, through this same slender quill. Raph, From this infernall monster you shall go. That vseth Knights and gentle Ladies so, 500 Conuey them hence. Exeunt Cit. Cony, I can tell thee the Gentlemen like Kafe. ^o^nan. Wife. I George., I see it well inough. Gentlemen [53] I thanke you all heartily for gracing my man Eafe., and I promise you you shall see him oftner. sos Barber. Mercy great knight, I do recant my ill. And henceforth neuer gentle bloud will spill. Rafe. I giue thee mercy, but yet shalt thou sweare Vpon my burning pestle, to performe Thy promise vtterd. sio 493 mutton; 17 II, f. fare! 1778 W fare: Dy 501 Exejint man and ■woman. ] Third Man and Woman are led off by TiM and George, who presently re-enter Dy 503 enough. Q^, f. E 66 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act ni Barber. I sweare and kisse. Rafe. DejDart then, and amend. Come squire and dwarfe, the Sunne growes towards his set, and we haue many more aduentures yet. Exeunt. 5>5 Cit. Now liafe is in this humour, I know hee would ha beaten all the boyes in the house if they had beene set on him. Wife. I Georye., but it is well as it is, I warrant you the Gentlemen do consider what it is to ouer- sao throw a gyant : but looke George^ heere comes mistresse Merri-thought and her sonne Michael ; now you are welcome mistresse Merrithought, now liafe has done you may go on. Enter mistresse Merri-thought, and Michael. 5»5 Mist. mer. Micke my boy ? Mich. I forsooth mother. Mist. mer. Be merry Micke we are at home now ; where I warrant you, you shall finde the house flung out at the windowes : Harke, hey dogges, hey, this 530 is the old world Ffaith with my husband ; if I get in among 'em. He play em such a lesson, that they shall haue little list to come scraping hither, againe. Why maister Merri-thought^ husband, Charles Merri-thought. Old merri. within. If you will sing and daunce, and 535 laugh, and hollow, and laugh againe, and then cry there boyes, there : why then One, two, three, and foure. We shall be merry within this houre : Mist, merri. Why Charles., doe you not know your 511 kiss. [ Kisses the Pestle. W, f. 520 ^ii^nt. [ ScENK V — The Street before MEKRYTiiouGHT's/i'i'/^ji". W,f. EnterMrs. Merrythought andMicnxKL W, f. 529 at ] of Qa, f. windows. (Sing^ing above.) W (Music within.) Dy Hark I hey, dogs, hey I 1778, f. 534 Mer. (Singing at the Window above.) W (appearing above, and singing.) Dy In stanzaic form : If . . . And hollow . . . And then . . . One . . . We . . . hour. 1750, f. ACT III] The Knight of the burning Pestle 67 owne naturall wife? I say, open the doore, and turne 540 |n4 me out those mangy companions ; 'tis more then time that they were fellow and fellow like with you : you are a Gentleman Charles^ and an old man, and father of two children ; and I my selfe (though I say it) by my mothers side, Neece to a worshipfull Gentleman, 545 and a Conductor, ha has beene three times in his Maiesties seruice at Chester^ and is now the fourth time, God blesse him, and his charge vpon his iourney. Old Mer. Go from my windo'W, loiie^ goe ; Go from my ivindow my deere, 55° The winde and the raine will driue you hocke ngaine, You cannot he lodged heere. Harke you Mistresse Merrithoughf, you that walke vpon aduentures, and forsake your husband, because hee sings with neuer a peny in his purse ; What shall I 555 thinke my selfe the worse ? Faith no, Il'e be merry. You come not heere, heer's none but lads of mettle, lives of a hundred yeares, and vpwards, care neuer drunke their blouds, nor want made 'em warble. Hey-ho, my heart is heauy. 56° Mist. mer. Why Mr. Aferriihought, what am I that you should laugh me to scorne thus abruptly ? am I not your fellow-feeler (as we may say) in all our miseries ? your comforter in health and sicknesse? haue I not brought you Children ? are they not like you Charles ? s(>6 looke vpon thine owne Image hard-hearted man ; and yet for all this — Old. mer. within. Begone, begone, my luggy, my 546 conductor; 1778, f. ha ] hec Qj Q, he F, f. 548 charge, 1778, f. 549 Afrr. [ Shiffing. W (sings.) Dy 555 What, 17 1 1, f. 556 merry. [ Singing. W 557—60 In stanzaic form : You . . . Lives . . . Care . . . Hey-ho 1778 W 559 warble, 1750, f. 560 'Hey . . . heavy?' W, f. 561 Mr.] Master F, f. passim 568 Mer. (Singing.) W (sings.) Dy In stanzaic form : Mcgone . . . Begone my . . . The . . . 'Twill . . . Thou . . . here. 1750, f \i2 68 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act m puggy, begone my loue, my deere. 570 The weather is warme, twill do thee no harme, thou canst not be lodged heere. Be merry boyes, some light musicke, and more wine. Wife. He's not in earnest, I hope George., is he ? Cit. What if he be, sweet heart? 575 Wife. Marie if hee be George., He make bold to tell him hee's an Ingrant old man, to vse his bed- fellow so scuruily. Cit. What how does he vse her hunny ? Wife. Marie come vp sir sauce-box, I thinke you'l [55] 580 take his part, will you not ? Lord how hot you are growne : you are a fine man an you had a fine dogge, it becomes you sweetly. Cit. Nay pre'thee Nell chide not : for as I am an honest man, and a true Christian Grocer, I doe not 58s like his doings. Wife. I cry you mercie then George ; you know we are all fraile, and full of infirmities. Dee heare Mr. Merri-thought, may I craue a word with you ? Old mer. ivithin. Strike vp liuely lads. 590 Wife. I had not thought in truth, Mr. Merrithought, that a man of your age and discretion (as I may say) being a Gentleman, and therefore knowne by your gentle conditions, could haue vsed so little respect to the weaknesse of his wife : for your wife is your 595 owne flesh, the staffe of your age, your yoke-fellow, with whose helpe you draw through the mire of this transitory world : Nay, she's your owne ribbe. And againe — • Old mer. I come not hither for thee to teach, 600 I haue no pulpit for thee to preach, 572 wine I \ Exit from above. W, f. 576 Ingrant] ignorant 1711 587 Dee] D'ye 1711, f. 589 Mer. (At the Window.) W (appearing above.) Dy 599 Mer. (Singing.) W (sings.) Dy ACT III] The Knight of the burning Pestle 69 I would thou hadst kist me vnder the breech, As thou art a Lady gay. Wife. Marie with a vengeance. I am hartely sorry for the poore gentlewoman : but if I were thy wife, I'faith gray-beard, Ffaith — — 605 Cit. I pre'thee sweet hunny-suckle, be content. Wife. Giue me such words that am a gentlewoman borne, hang him hoary rascall. Get mee some drinke George., I am almost molten with fretting : now beshrew his knaues heart for it. 610 Old mer. Play me a light Laualto : Come, bee frolocke, fill the good fellowes wine. Mist. mer. Why Mr. Merrithought, are you disposed to make me wait here : you'l open I hope, Il'e fetch them that shall open else. 615 Old mer. Good woman if you wil sing Il'e giue you something, if not Song. [56] You are no loue for me Margret, I am no loue for you. Come aloft Boijes, aloft. 62° Mist. mer. Now a Churles fart in your teeth sir : Come Micke, wee'l not trouble him, a shall not ding vs i'th teeth with his bread and his broth : that he shall not: come boy, Il'e prouide for thee, I warrant thee : wee'l goe to maister Venterwels the Merchant, 625 Il'e get his letter to mine Host of the Bell in Waltham., there Il'e place thee with the Tapster ; will not that doe well for thee Micke ? and let me alone for that old Cuckoldly knaue your father, Il'e vse him in his kinde, I warrant yee. ^30 603 vengeance, Q3 F 171 1 1750 1778 W 604 heartily Q3, f. 608 born ? 1778 W born I Dy 610 it. [ Citizen exit. W, f. 612 fro- locke, ] frolic(k). 1750, f. 617 not, [Sings. Dy 620 aloft 1 [Exit from the Window. W [ Exit above. Dy 630 you I [ Exeunt. W, f. Finis Actus Tertii. 1778 W om Dy Re-enter Citizen with Beer. W, f. 70 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act iv Wife. Come George^ wher's the beere? Cit. Here loue. Wife. This old fornicating fellow wil not out of my mind yet ; Gentlemen, Il'e begin to you all, and I de- 635 sire more of your acquaintance, with all my heart. Fill the Gentlemen some beere George. Finis Actus tertij. Musicke. Actus quartus, Scoena prima. Boy daunceth. Wife. Looke George., the little boy's come againe, mee thinkes he lookes something like the prince of Orange in his long stocking, if hee had a little har- nesse about his necke. George I will haue him dance 5 Fading ; Fading is a fine ligge Il'e assure you Gent- •lemen : begin brother, now a capers sweet heart, now a turne a'th toe, and then tumble : cannot you tumble youth ? Boy. No indeed forsooth. 10 Wife. Nor eate fire? Boy. Neither. Wife. Why then I thanke you heartily, there's two pence to buy you points withall. Enter lasper and Boy. lasp. There boy, deliuer this : but do it well. Hast IS thou prouided me foure lusty fellowes ? [57J Able to carry me? and art thou perfect In all thy businesse ? Boy. Sir, you need not feare, I haue my lesson here, and cannot misse it : The men are ready for you, and what else 635 heart. (Drinks.) Dy 636 George. (Boy danceth.) W (Enter Boy.) Dy 6 brother. (Boy dances.) Dy 12 withall. (Act IV. 1778, f. Scene I. — A Street. W, f. 15 fellows, [ Gives a letter. Dy ACT iv] The Knight of the burning Pestle 71 Pertaines to this imployment, lasp. There my boy, " Take it, but buy no land. Boy. Faith sir 'twere rare To see so yong a purchaser : I flye, And on my wings carry your destinie. Exit. lasp. Go, and be happy. Now my latest hope Forsake me not, but fling thy Anchor out, as And let it hold : stand fixt thou rolling stone. Till I enioy my deerest : heare me all You powers that rule in men coelestiall. Exit. Wife. Go thy wayes, thou art as crooked a sprigge as euer grew in London ; I warrant him hee'l come to 3° some naughty end or other : for his lookes say no lesse : Besides, his father (you know George) is none of the best, you heard him take me vp like a flirt Gill, and sing baudy songs vpon me : but Ifaith if I Hue George as . Cit. Let me alone sweet-heart, I haue a tricke in my head shall lodge him in the Arches for one yeare, and make him sing Peccaui, er'e I leaue him, and yet hee shall neuer know who hurt him neither. Wife. Do my good George, do. 40 Cit. What shall we haue Rafe do now boy? Boy. You shall haue what you will sir. Cit. Why so sir, go and fetch me him then, and let the Sophy of Persia come and christen him a childe. Boy. Beleeue me sir, that will not doe so well, 'tis 45 stale, it has beene had before at the red Bull. Wife. George let Eafe trauell ouer great hils, & let him be very weary, and come to the King of Cracouia's house, couered with veluet, and there let the Kings daughter stand in her window all in beaten 50 gold, combing her golden locks with a combe of 20 employment 1778, f. 21 land [ Gives money. Dy 28 celest- ial. Q3, f. 33 flirt Gill] Gill-flirt Q3 F 1711 1750 1778 49 with veluet] with black velvet 1778, f. 72 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act iv luory, and let her spy Rafe^ and fall in loue with him, and come downe to him, and carry him into her fathers house, and then let Rafe talke with her. [58] 55 Cit. Well said Nell, it shal be so : boy let's ha't done quickly. Boy. Sir, if you will imagine all this to be done already, you shall heare them talke together : but wee cannot present a house couered with blacke veluet, 6o and a Lady in beaten gold. Cit. Sir boy, lets ha't as you can then. Boy. Besides it will shew ill-fauouredly to haue a Grocers prentice to court a kings daughter. Cit. Will it so sir ? you are well read in Histories ; 6s I pray you what was sir Dagonet ? was not he pren- tice to a Grocer in London? read the play of the Foure Prentices of London, where they tosse their pikes so : I pray you fetch him in sir, fetch him in. Boy. It shall be done, it is not our fault gentlemen. Ex/t 7° Wife. Now we shall see fine doings I warrant tee George. O here they come ; how pretily the king of Cracuioa's daughter is drest. Enter Rafe and the Lady, Squire and dwarfe. Cit. I Nell., it is the fashion of that country, I war- 75 rant tee. Lady. Welcome sir Knight vnto my fathers Court. King of Moldauia, vnto me Pompiona His daughter deere : but sure you do not like Your entertainment, that will stay with vs 8o No longer but a night. Rafe. Damsell right faire, I am on many sad aduentures bound, 69 done. 1778, f. 70 tee] thee Qg F 171 1 1750 1778 W ye Dy, f. 71 George. [ Scene II. — A hall in the King of Moldavia's court. W, f. 72 Cracovia's Qj, f. 73 Lady'\ Pompiona 1778, f. 76 Court, 171 1, f. 77 Moldavia; 1778, f. 1 ACT iv] The Knight of the burning Pestle 73 That call me forth into the wildernesse : Besides, my horses backe is something gal'd, Which will inforce me ride a sober pace. But many thankes (faire Lady) be to you, ss For vsing errant Knight with curtesie. Lady. But say (braue knight) what is your name & birth ? Rafe. My name is Rafe^ I am an English man, As true as Steele, a hearty Englishman, 9° And prentice to a Grocer in the strond. By deed Indent, of which I haue one part : But Fortune calling me to follow Armes, On me this holy order I did take. Of Burning pestle, which in all mens eyes, 95 I beare, confounding Ladies enemies. [59j Lady. Oft haue I heard of your braue country-men. And fertill soyle, and store of holesome food : My father oft will tell me of a drinke In England found, and Nipitato cal'd. i°° Which driueth all the sorrow from your hearts. Rafe. Lady 'tis true, you need not lay your lips To better Nipitato then there is. Lady. And of a wild-fowle he will often speake, Which poudred beefe and mustard called is : ^°5 For there haue beene great warres 'twixt vs and you. But truly Rafe, it was not long of me. Tell me then Rafe, could you contented be. To weare a Ladies fauour in your shield ? Rafe. I am a knight of religious order, "° And will not weare a fauour of a Ladies That trusts in Antichrist, and false traditions. Cit. Well sayd Rafe, conuert her if thou canst. 84 enforce Q3, f. 91 strond,] Strand Qj Q3 F 1711 1750 1778 Dy 98 wholesome Q3 f. 105 powdered 171 1, f. 107 'long Dy no of religious] of a religious 1750, f. in Ladies] Lady 1750, f. 74 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act iv Rafe. Besides, I haue a Lady of my owne "5 In merry England, for whose vertuous sake I tooke these Armes, and Susan is her name, A Coblers maid in Milke-street, whom I vow Nere to forsake, whilst life and Pestle last. Lady. Happy that Cobling dame, who ere she be, "° That for her owne (deere Rafe) hath gotten thee. Vnhappy I, that nere shall see the day To see thee more, that bearst my heart away. Rafe. Lady fare-well, I needs must take my leaue. Lady. Hard-harted Rafe., that Ladies dost deceiue. "5 Cit. Harke the Rafe., there's money for thee ; giue something in the King of Cracouia's house, be not be- holding to him. Rafe. Lady before I go, I must remember Your fathers Officers, who truth to tell, '3o Haue beene about me very diligent. Hold vp thy snowy hand thou princely maid, There's twelue pence for your fathers Chamberlaine, [60] And another shilling for his Cooke, For by my troth the Goose was rosted well. 135 And twelue-pence for your fathers horse-keeper, For nointing my horse backe ; and for his butter There is another shilling. To the maid That wash't my boot-hose, there's an English groat ; And two pence to the boy that wip't my boots : 140 And last, faire Lady, there is for your selfe Three pence to buy you pins at Bumbo faire. Lady. Full many thankes, and I will keepe them safe Till all the heads be off, for thy sake Rafe. Rafe. Aduance my Squire and Dwarfe, I cannot 145 stay. Lady. Thou kilst my heart in parting thus away. Exeut. 125 thee [gives money] Dy 133 And another] And there's anotheri75o, f. 134 roasted 17 1 1, f. well ; 1 778, f. 136'nointing l7So,f. horse-backi778,f. ACT IV j The Knight of the burning Pestle 75 Wife. I commend Rafe yet that hee will not stoope to a Cracouian, there's properer women in London then any are there I-wis. But heere comes Maister Humphrey and his loue againe now George. 150 Cit. I cony, peace. Enter Marchanf, Humphrey, Luce and a Boy. March. Go get you vp, I will not be intreated. And gossip mine, Il'e keepe you sure hereafter From gadding out againe with boyes and vnthrifts, 155 Come, they are womens teares, I know your fashion. Go sirrah, locke her in, and keepe the key. ^^'''^ Luce Safe as you loue your life. Now my sonne Humfrey^ You may both rest assured of my loue In this, and reape your owne desire. '6° Hum. I see this loue you speake of, through your daughter. Although the hole be little ; and hereafter Will yeeld the like in all I may, or can. Fitting a Christian, and a gentleman. 165 March. I do beleeue you (my good sonne) and thanke you : For 'twere an impudence to thinke you flattered. Humph. It were indeed, but shall I tell you why, I haue beene beaten twice about the lye. 17° March. Well son, no more of complement, my daughter Is yours againe ; appoint the time, and take her, We'le haue no stealing for it, I my selfe [61] And some few of our friends will see you married. 175 1 47 Rafe yet that ] Rafe^ yet that F Ralph yet, that 1 7 1 1 , f. 149 i-wis. [Scene III. — A Room in the house of Venturewell Dy 151 peace! [ Scene III.— 7%^ House 0/ Venterwels. W 153 entreated. 1778, f. 155 unthrifts : 1778, f. 157 key 171 1, f. 158 Safe, 1778. 169 why? 1778, f. 171 compliment. 1778, f. 76 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act rv Hum. I would you would i'faith, for be it knowne I euer was afraid to lie alone. March. Some three daies hence then. Hum. Three daies, let me see, 180 'Tis some-what of the most, yet I agree, Because I meane against the appointed day. To visite all my friends in new array. Enter •^ •' _ seruant. Ser. Sir there's a Gentlewoman without would speake with your Worship. March. What is shee? 185 Seru. Sir I askt her not. Merch. Bid her come in. Enter mistresse Merry-thought and Michael. Mist. mer. Peace be to your Worship, I come as a poore 190 Suter to you sir, in the behalfe of this child. Merch. Are you not wife to Merrie-thought ? Mist. mer. Yes truely, would I had nere scene his eies, ha has vndone me and himselfe and his children, & there he Hues at home & sings, & hoights, & ^95 Reuels among his drunken companions, but, I warrant you, where to get a peny to put bread in his mouth, he knowes not : and therefore if it like your Worship, I would entreate your letter, to the honest Host of the Bel in Waltham, that I may place my child vnder 2°° the protection of his Tapster, in some setled course of life. Merch. I'me glad the heauens haue heard my pray- ers : thy husband When I was ripe in sorrows laught at me, 2°5 Thy Sonne like an vnthankefull wretch, I hauing Redeem'd him from his fall and made him mine, 179 days? 1778W days ! Dy 186 in. [ ^at/j" Servant. Dy I93ha] he Q„ f. ACT iv] The Knight of the burning Pestle 77 To shew his loue againe, first stole my daughter, Then wrong'd this Gentleman, and last of all, Gaue me that griefe, had almost brought me downe Vnto my graue, had not a stronger hand 21° Releiu'd my sorrowes, go, and weepe, as I did And be vnpittied, for I heere professe An euerlasting hate to all thy name. Mist. mer. Wil you so sir, how say you by that? come Micke, let him keepe his winde to coole his 21s [62] Porrage, we'le go to thy Nurces Micke, shee knits silke stockings boy, and we'le knit too boy, and bee beholding to none of them all. Exetmt ^ Michael and Enter a hoy ivith a letter. mother. Boy. Sir, I take it you are the Maister of this house. 220 Merch. How then boy ? Boy. Then to your selfe sir comes this letter. Merch. From whom my pretty Boy ? Boy. From him that was your seruant, but no more Shall that name euer bee, for hee is dead, 225 Griefe of your purchas'd anger broke his heart, I saw him die, and from his hand receiu'd This paper, with a charge to bring it hither, Reade it, and satisfie your selfe in all. Letter. 23° March. Sir, that I haue wronged your loue, I must confesse, in which I haue purchast to my selfe, besides myne owne vndoing, the ill opi?iion of my friends, let not your anger, good sir, outUue me, but suffer mee to rest in peace with your forgiuenesse, let my body (if a dying 235 211 Sorrows: 1778 W sorrows. Dy 216 Porrage] Pottage Q3, f. 222 letter. [Gives letter. Dy 225 dead 1 1778 W dead: Dy 226 Heart; 171 1 1750 heart: 1778 W heart. Dy 228 hither: 1778, f. 231 Merch. (reading.) 1778, f. 233 friends. Q3, f. 235 forgiveness: 1778, f. 78 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act iv man may so much preuaile with you) bee brought to your daughter, that shee may truely know ?ny hote flames are now buried, and, withall, receiue a testimony of the zeale 1 bore her vertue : farewell for euer, and be euer happy. 240 lasper. Gods hand is great in this, I do forgiue him, Yet I am glad he's quiet, where I hope He will not bite againe : boy bring the body And let him haue his will, if that be all. 245 Boy. 'Tis here without sir. Merch. So sir, if you You may conduct it in, I do not feare it. [please Hump, rie be your Vsher boy, for though I say it, He owd me something once, and well did pay it. Exeunt. Enter Luce alone. aso Luce. If there be any punishment inflicted Vpon the miserable, more then yet I feele, Let it together ceaze me, and at once [63] Presse downe my soule, I cannot beare the paine Of these delaying tortures : thou that art 255 The end of all, and the sweete rest of all ; Come, come o death, bring me to thy peace. And blot out all the memory I nourish Both of my father and my cruell friend. O wretched maide still liuing to be wretched, 260 To be a say to fortune in her changes. And grow to number times and woes together. How happy had I bene, if being borne My graue had bene my cradle? ^«fer ser riant. Ser. By your leaue 265 Yong Mistresse, here's a boy hath brought a coffin, 237 bote] hot Q3, f. 241 thisl 1778 W this: Dy 248 Exnmt. [Scene W.— Attother Room in the same House. W, f. 252 seize Qj, f. 255 all, 1711, f. 256 bring] and bring 1750 263 cradle! 1778, f. 265 coffin : Dy ACT iv] The Knight of the burning Pestle 79 What a would say I know not, but your father Charg'd me to giue you notice, here they come. Enter two hearing a Coffin, lasper in it. Luce. For me I hop't 'tis come, and 'tis most welcome. Boy. Faire Mistresse let me not adde greater griefe 270 To that great store you haue already ; lasper That whilst he liu'd was yours, now dead, And here enclos'd, commanded me to bring His body hither, and to craue a teare From those faire eyes, though he deseru'd not pitty, 275 To decke his funerall, for so he bid me Tell her for whom he di'de. Luce. He shall haue Good friends depart a little, whilst I take [many : Exetmt My leaue of this dead man, that once I lou'd : carrier Hold, yet a little, life and then I giue thee &" boy. To thy first heauenly being ; O my friend ! Hast thou deceiu'd me thus, and got before me? I shall not long bee after, but beleeue me. Thou wert too cruell lasper gainst thy selfe. In punishing the fault, I could haue pardoned, ^^s With so vntimely death ; thou didst not wrong me, But euer wer't most kind, most true, most louing ; And I the most vnkind, most false, most cruell. Didst thou but aske a teare? Il'e giue thee all, [^4] Euen all my eies can powre downe, all my sigh's ■^9° And all my selfe, before thou goest from me There are but sparing rites : But if thy soule Be yet about this place, and can behold And see what I prepare to decke thee with, It shall go vp, borne on the wings of peace »9s 267 notice. 1778, f. 268 Enter two Men bearing a Coffin, and the Boy. W, f. Jasper laid otit as a corpse within it, covered with a Cloth. W 269 hop't] hope Q,, f. 280 life I 1778, f. 290 sighs 1711, f. 291 me : 1778, f. 292 There] These 1711, f. 8o The Knight of the burning Pestle [act iv And satisfied : first will I sing thy dirge, Then kisse thy pale lips, and then die my selfe, And fill one Coffin and one graue together. Song. 300 Come you whose loiies are dead, And whiles I sing Weep and wring Euery hand and euery head, Bind with Cipres and sad Ewe, 305 Ribands hlacke, and candles blew, For him that was of men most true. Come with heauy mourning. And on his graue Let him haue 310 Sacrifice of sighes and groaning, Let him haue faire floivers enow. White and purple, greene and yellow^ For him that ivas of men most true. Thou sable cloth, sad couer of my ioies 315 1 lift thee vp, and thus I meete with death. lasp. And thus you meete the liuing. Luce. Saue me heauen. las. Nay do not flie me faire, I am no spirit, Looke better on me, do you know me yet? 320 Luce. O thou deere shadow of my friend. lasp. Deere substance, I sweare I am no shadow, feele my hand. It is the same it was, I am your lasper.^ Your lasper that's yet liuing, and yet louing, 32s Pardon my rash attempt, my foolish proofe 303 hand, 1711, f. head 1750, f. 304 Ewe,] ewe; 1750 yew; 1778, f. 305 Ribands] Ribbons 1778 W 307 mourning] moaning 1750, f. 315 death. [ She takes off the Cloth, and he rises out of the Coffin."^ ,i. 322 shadow ; 171 1, f. 324 loving I i778W]oving. Dy ACT iv] The Knight of the burning Pestle 8i I put in practise of your constancy, [65] For sooner should my sword haue drunke my bloud, And set my soule at liberty, then drawne The least drop from that body ; for which boldnesse Doome me to any thing : if death I take it 330 And willingly. Luce. This death Fie giue you for it. So, now I am satisfied ; you are no spirit. But my owne truest, truest, truest friend. Why doe you come thus to mee. lasi^er. First to see you, 33s Then to conuey you hence. Luce. It cannot bee. For I am lockt vp here and watcht at all howers. That 'tis impossible for me to scape. lasp. Nothing more possible, within this coffin 340 Do you conuey your selfe, let me alone, I haue the wits of twenty men about me, Onely I craue the shelter of your Closet A little, and then feare me not; creepe in That they may presently conuey you hence : 34s Feare nothing deerest loue, Il'e be your second, Lie close, so, all goes well yet ; Boy. Boy. At hand sir. lasp. Convey away the Coffin, and be wary. Boy, 'Tis done already. 3so lasp. Now must I go coniure. Exit. Enter Merchant. Merch. Boy, Boy. Boy. Your seruant sir. 331 it! [Al'sses him. W, f. 333 friend! 1778 W friend; Dy 334 me ? Q2, f. 338 hours Q2, f. 340 possible : 1778 W possible. Dy 341 self ; 1750 1778 W self: Dy 347 Boy ! [ She goes into the Coffat, and he covers her with the Cloth. W, f. 349 wary. [ The Men carry out the Coffin. W, f. 351 conjure. [JExzt into a Closet. W, f. F 82 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act iv 3S5 Merch. Do me this kindnesse Boy, hold here's a crowne : Before thou bury the body of this fellow, carry it to his old merie father, and salute him from mee, and bid him sing, he hath cause. Boy. I will sir. 360 Merch. And then bringe me word what tune he is in, and have another crowne : but do it it truely. I haue fitted him a bargaine, now, will vex him. [66] Bot/. God blesse your Worships health sir. March. Fare-well boy. Exeunt. 365 Enter Maister Merrie-thought. Wife. Ah old Merry-thought, art thou there againe, let's here some of thy songs. Old Mer. Who can sing a merrier noate, Then he that cannot change a groat? 370 Not a Denier left, and yet my heart leapes, I do wonder yet, as old as I am, that any man will follow a Trade, or serue, that may sing and laugh, and walke the streetes, my wife and both my sonnes are I know not where, I haue nothing left, nor know I how to 375 come by meate to supper, yet am I merry still ; for I know I shall finde it vpon the Table at sixe a clocke, therefore hang Thought. I would not be a seruingman to carry the cloke-bag still, Nor would I be a Fawleconer the greedy Hawlkes to fill. 3S0 But I would be in a good house, & haue a good Maister too. But I would eat & drink of the best, & no work would I do. 358 sing ; 1778, f. 364 Exeunt. Scene V. W, f. Exeunt severally. Dy A Room in Merrythought's House. W Street before Merrytought's house. Dy 368 Mer. [Singing.) W {sittgs) Dy 370 leaps: 1778, f. 373 streets. 1778, f. 376 o'clock; 1778, f. 377 thought! [Sing- ing. W Sings. Dy 379 falconer 1778, f. hawks Qj, f. ACT iv] The Knight of the burning Pestle 83 This is it that keepes Hfe and soule together, mirth, this is the Philosophers stone that they write so much 385 on, that keepes a man euer yong. Enter a Boy. Boy. Sir, they say they know all your mony is gone, and they will trust you for no more drinke. Old mer. Will they not? let am choose, the best 390 is I haue mirth at home, and neede not send abroad for that, let them keepe their drinke to themselues. For lillian of Berry shee dwels on a Hill, And shee hath good Beere and Ale to sell. And of good fellowes she thinks no ill, 395 And thether will we go now, now, now, now, and thether Will wee go now. And when you haue made a little stay. You need not aske what is to pay, But kisse your Hostesse and go your way. And 400 thither, &c. Enter another Boy. 2. Boy. Sir, I can get no bread for supper. Old mer. Hang bread and supper, let's preserue our [67] mirth, and we shall neuer feele hunger. Fie warrant 405 you, let's haue a Catch, boy follow me, come sing this Catch. Ho, ho, no body at home, meate, nor drinke, nor money ha wee none, fill the pot Eedy, neuer more need I. Old mer. So boies enough, follow mee, let's change 410 our place and we shall laugh afresh. Exeunt. 390 am] 'em Qj, f. choose! 1778 W choose. Dy 392 that; Qj, f. 396 thither Qj, f. 406 you. 1778, f. catch : boy 1778 W catch, boy(s) ; Dy, f. come. [ They sing. Dy sing this Catch, om. Dy 407 catch [ They sing the following catch. W 408—09 In stanzaic form : Ho . . , Meat . . . Fill . . . Never ... I. 1750, f. 409 none ? 1778 W none. Dy F2 84 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act iv Wife. Let him goe George, a shall not haue any countenance from vs, nor a good word from any i'th' Company, if I may strike stroke in't. 41s Cit. No more a shannot loue ; but Nel I will haue Raph doe a very notable matter now, to the eternall honour and glory of all Grocers, sirrah you there boy. can none of you heare? Boij. Sir, your pleasure. 420 Cit. Let Baph come out on May-day in the morning and speake vpon a Conduit with all his Scarfes about him, and his fethers and his rings and his knacks. Boij. Why sir you do not thinke of our plot, what will become of that then? 42s Cit. Why sir, I care not what become on't. Fie haue him come out, or I'le fetch him out my selfe, I'le haue something done in honor of the Citty, besides, he hath bene long enough vpon Aduentures, bring him out quickely, or if I come in amongst you 430 Boy. Well sir hee shall come out, but if our play miscarry, sir you are like to pay for't. ^^'^ ^°y- Cit. Bring him away then. Wife. This will be brauei'faith, George shall not he dance the morrice too for the credit of the Strand. 435 Cittiz. No sweete heart it will bee too much for the boy, o there he is iV>Z, hee's reasonable well in „ ' , , , . , Enter reparell, but hee has not rmgs enough. j^aph. Baph. London, to thee I do present the merry Month of May [68] 440 Let each true Subiect be content to heare me what I say : For from the top of Conduit head, as plainely may appeare, I tvill both tell my name to you and wherefore I came heere. 415 sha'not W, f. 417 grocers. 1778, f. 418 hear? [Enter Boy. Dy 419 pleasure? 1778, f. 427 city. 1778 W city: Dy 428 ad- ventures. Dy 433 i'faith I 1778, f. 434 Strand? 171 1, f. 436 boy. [ Enter RALPH, dressed as a May-lord. Dy Same W after 437 439 May ; 1778, f. ACT iv] The Knight of the burning Pestle 85 My name is Raph, hij due discent, though not ignoble I, Yet far inferior to the Flocke of gratious Grocery. And by the Common-councell , of my fellow es in the Strand, 445 With guilded Staffe, and crossed Sharfe, the May-lord here I stand. Reioyce, English hearts, reioyce, reioyce Loners deere, Reioyce Citty, Toivne, and Country, reioyce eke euery Shire ; For now the fragrant Floivers do spring and sprout in 450 seemely sort. The little Birds do sit and sing, the Lambes do make fine sport. And now the Burchin Tree doth bud that maks the Schoole boy cry 455 The Morrice rings ivhile Hobby-horse dothfoote itfeateously : The Lords and Ladies now abroad for their disport and play, Do kisse sometimes vpon the Grasse, and sometimes in the Hey. Noiv Butter ivith a leafe of Sage is good to Purge the bloud, 460 Fly Venus and Phlebotomy for they are neither good. Noiv little fish on tender stone, beginne to cast their bellies, And sluggish snails, that erst were mute, do creep out of their shelles The rumbling Riuers noiv do ivarmefor little botes to padle, 46s The sturdy Steede, noiv goes to grasse, and vp they hang his saddle. The heauy Hart, the bellowing Bucke, the Rascal and the Pricket, Are noiv among the Yeomans Pease, and leaue the feare- 47° fidl thicket. And be like them, you, I say, of this same noble Towne, And lift aloft your veluet heads, and slipping of your gowne : 444 Flocke] Stock Dy gracious Qj, f. 455 cry, Q3 F 1711 1750 1778 W cry ; Dy 459 hay F, f. 463 mute] mew'd 1750, f. 464 shellies. 1711 1750 1778 W shellies ; Dy 466 steed 1711, f. 468 bellowing] blowing Q^ Q3 F 171 1 1750 1778 473 off W, f. gown, 1750, f. 86 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act iv With bels on legs, and napkins cleane vnto your shoulders 47S tide, With Scarfes & Garters as you please, & Hey for our Town cri'd March out and shew your ivilling minds by twenty and by twenty, 480 ToHogsdon or to Newington, ivhereAle and Cakes are plenty : And let it nere be said for shame, that we the youths of London, Lay thrumming of our Caps at home, and left our custome vndone. 485 Vp then, I say, both yong and old, both man and maide a Maying With Drums and Guns that bounce alowd, & mery Taber ptlaying. Which to prolong, God saue our King, and send his 490 Country peace And roote out Treason from the Land, and so, my friends I cease. Finis Act. 4. [69] Actus 5. Scoena prima. Enter Marchant, solus. March. I will haue no great store of company at the wedding, a cupple of neighbours and their wiues, and weewill haue a Capon in stewed broth, with marrow, and a good peece of beefe, stucke with rose-mary. 5 Enter lasper, his face mealed. lasp. Forbeare thy paines fond man, it is too late. March. Heauen blesse me : lasper ? 476— 77 'hey . . . town !' W, f. cri'd : Q2 Q3 F 1711 1750 cried. 1778 W cried, Dy 486 Maying, 1711, f. 491 land! 1778, f. Act V. Scene I. A Room iti the House of VeJiterwels. Enter Venterwels W, f. ACT v] The Knight of the burning Pestle 87 lasp. I, I am his Ghost Whom thou hast iniur'd for his constant loue : Fond worldly wretch, who dost not vnderstand xo In death that true hearts cannot parted be. First know thy daughter is quite borne away, On wings of Angels, through the liquid aire. To farre out of thy reach, and neuer more Shalt thou behold her face : But shee and I 's Will in another world enioy our loues, Where neither fathers anger, pouertie. Nor any crosse that troubles earthly men Shall make vs seuer our vnited hearts. And neuer shalt thou sit, or be alone 20 In any place, but I will visit thee With gastly lookes, and put into thy minde The great offences wich thou didst to me. When thou art at thy Table with thy friends Merry in heart, and fild with swelling wine, 25 Il'e come in midst of all thy pride and mirth, Inuisible to all men but thy selfe. And whisper such a sad tale in thine eare. Shall make thee let the Cuppe fall from thy hand. And stand as mute and pale as Death it selfe. 30 March. Forgiue me lasper ; Oh I what might I doe ? Tell me, to satisfie thy trobled Ghost? [70j las}}. There is no meanes, too late thou thinkst of this. March. But tell me what were best for me to doe? lasp. Repent thy deede, and satisfie my father, 3s And beat fond Humphrey out of thy dores, ^^^ei Enter Humphrey. Wife. Looke George, his very Ghost would haue folkes beaten. 8 I, I] Ay, I 1711, f. 14 Too Qj Q, F 1711 1778 W 23 which Q„ f. 88 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act v 40 Humph. Father, my bride is gone, fairemistresseLz^c^", My soule's the fount of vengeance, mischiefes sluce. March. Hence foole out of my sight, with thy fond passion Thou hast vndone me. 45 Humph. Hold my father deere, For Luce thy daughters sake, that had no peere. Mar. Thy father foole? there's some blows more, begone. lasper, I hope thy Ghost bee well appeased, 50 To see thy will performed, now will I go To satisfie thy father for thy wrongs. Exit. Humph. What shall I doe ? I haue beene beaten twice. And mistresse Luce is gone ? helpe me deuice : 55 Since my true-loue is gone, I neuermore, Whilst I do Hue, vpon the sky will pore ; But in the darke will weare out my shooe-soles In passion, in Saint Faiths Church vnder Paules. Exit. Wife. George call Rafe hither, if you loue me call 60 Rafe hither, I haue the brauest thing for him to do George; pre'thee call him quickly. at. Rafe, why Rafe boy. fj^f Rafe. Heere sir. Cit. Come hither Rafe, come to thy mistresse boy. 65 Wife. Rafe I would haue thee call all the youthes together in battle-ray, with drums, and guns, and flags, and march to Mile end in pompous fashion, and there exhort your Souldiers to be merry and wise, and to keepe their beards from burning Rafe, and then skir- 70 mish, and let your flagges flye, and cry kill, kill, kill : 43 passion. Qj passion, Q3 F 1711 1750 passion 1 1778, f. 44 me. [Beats him. W, f. 45 Hold, 1778, f. 48 begone. [Beats him. 171 1, f. 50 performed. 1778, f. 51 Exit.] Aside and exit. Dy 54 gone I W gone. Dy 69 burning, 171 1, f. 70 'kill, kill, kill I' 1778, f. ACT v] The Knight of the burning Pestle 89 my husband shall lend you his lerkin Eafe^ and there's a scarfe ; for the rest, the house shall furnish you, and wee'l pay for't : doe it brauely Bafe, and thinke [71] before whom you performe, and what person you rep- resent. 75 B,afe. I warrant you mistresse if I do it not for the honour of the Citty, and the credit of my maister, let me neuer hope for freedome. Wife. 'Tis well spoken Ifaith ; go thy wayes, thou art a sparke indeed. so Cit. Rafe, Rafe, double your files brauely Rafe. Rafe. I warrant you sir. Exit Rafe. Cit. Let him looke narrowly to his seruice, I shall take him else, I was there my selfe a pike-man once in the hottest of the day, wench ; had my feather shot 85 sheere away, the fringe of my pike burnt off with powder, my pate broken with a scouring-sticke, and yet I thanke God I am heere. ^Z"" •^ within. Wife. Harke George the drums. Cit. Ran, tan, tan, tan ; ran, tan : O wench an thou 9° hadst but scene little Ned of Algate, drum Ned, how hee made it rore againe, and layd on like a tyrant : and then stroke softly till the ward came vp, and then thundred againe, and together we go : sa, sa, sa, bounce quoth the guns ; courage my hearts, quoth the Cap- 95 taines : Saint George, quoth the pikemen ; and withall here they lay, and there they lay : And yet for all this I am heere wench. Wife. Be thankfull for it George, for indeed 'tis wonderfull. »»«> 83 service; 1778, f. 84 else. 1778, f. 88 yet, 1778, f. God, 1778, f. Drum] Drums 1778, f. 93 stroke] struck F, f. 94 bounce 1 Dy 100 wonderful. [ Scene II. W, f. Mile-End. W A street (and afterwards Mile-End.) Dy Enter RALPH, WILLIAM Hamerton, George Greengoose, and Others of his Company, with Drtans and Colours. W, f. 90 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act v Enter Rafe and his company ivith Drummes and colours. Rafe. March faire my hearts, Lieutenant beate the reare vp : Ancient, let your colours flye ; but haue a great care of the Butchers hookes at white-Chappell, los they haue beene the death of many a faire Ancient. Open your files that I may take a view both of your persons and munition : Sergeant call a muster. Serg. A stand, William Hamerton peuterer. Ham. Here captaine. "o Rafe. A Corselet, and a Spanish pike ; 'tis well, can you shake it with a terror? [72] Ham. I hope so Captaine. Rafe. Charge vpon me, 'tis with the weakest : put more strength William Hammerton, more strength : as "5 you were againe. Proceed Sergeant. Serge. George Greene-goose, Poulterer? Greene. Heere. Rafe. Let me see your peece neighbour Greene- goose, when was the shot in? I20 Greene. And like you maister Captaine, I made a shot euen now, partly to scoure her, and partly for audacity. Rafe. It should seeme so certainely, for her breath is yet inflamed : besides, there is a maine fault in the 125 touch-hole, it runnes, and stinketh ; and I tell you moreouer, and beleeue it : Ten such touch-holes would breed the pox in the Army. Get you a feather, neighbour, get you a feather, sweet oyle, and paper, and your peece may do well enough yet. Were's 130 your powder ? Greene. Heere. 102 The whole of this military scene in blank verse. 1778 fair, 1778, f. hearts I F, f. 104 white-Chappell ] Whitechapel Q3, f. 108 stand I 1778, f. 113 me. 1750, f. me. {He charges on Ralph.) Dy 120 And ] An't 1778, f. ACT v] The Knight of the hurtling Pestle 91 'Rafe. What in a paper? As I am a Souldier, and a Gentleman, it craues a Martiall Court : you ought to dye for't. Where's your home ? answere me to that. Greene. An't Uke you sir, I was obliuious. 135 B,afe. It Hkes me not you should bee so ; 'tis a shame for you, and a scandall to all our neighbours, beeing a man of worth and estimation, to leaue your home behinde you : I am afraid 'twill breed example. But let me tell you no more on't ; stand, till I view you 140 all. What's become o'th nose of your flaske ? 1. Souldier. Indeed law Captaine, 'twas blowne away with powder. Bafe. Put on a new one at the Cities charge. Wheres the stone of this peece? 145 2. Souldier. The Drummer tooke it out to light To- bacco. Eafe. 'Tis a fault my friend, put it in againe : You want a Nose, and you a Stone ; Sergeant, take a note on't, for I meane to stoppe it in the pay. Remoue 15° and march, soft and faire Gentlemen, soft and faire : [73] double your files, as you were, faces about. Now you with the sodden face, keepe in there : looke to your match sirrah, it will be in your fellowes flaske anone. So, make a crescent now, aduance your pikes, stand 155 and giue ear. Gentlemen, Countrey-men, Friends, and my fellow-Souldiers, I haue brought you this day from the Shops of Security, and the Counters of Con- tent, to measure out in these furious fields. Honour by the ell ; and prowesse by the pound : Let it not, 16° o let it not, I say, bee told hereafter, the noble issue of this Citie fainted : but beare your selues in this faire action, like men, valiant men, and free-men ; Feare not the face of the enemy, nor the noise of the 140 on't. 1778, f. 151 March! W, f. {Tkej' march.) W, f. fair, gentleman 1778, f. 154 anon F, f. 156 earl 1778, f. 92 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act v 165 guns : for beleeue me brethren, the rude rumbUng of a Brewers Carre is farre more terrible, of which you haue a daily experience : Neither let the stinke of powder offend you, since a more valiant stinke is nightly with you. To a resolued minde, his home is 170 euery where : I speake not this to take away the hope of your returne ; for you shall see (I do not doubt it) and that very shortly, your louing wiues againe, and your sweet children, whose care doth beare you com- pany in baskets. Remember then whose cause you 175 haue in hand, and like a sort of true-borne Scauingers, scoure me this famous Realme of enemies. I haue no more to say but this : Stand to your tacklings lads, and shew to the world you can as well brandish a sword, as shake an apron. Saint George and on my 180 hearts. Omnes. S*. George, S^. George. Exeunt. Wife. 'Twas well done Hafe^ Il'e send thee a cold Capon a field, and a bottle of March-beere ; and it may be, come my selfe to see thee, Cit. Nell, the boy has deceiued me much, I did 185 not thinke it had beene in him : he has performed such a matter wench, that if I Hue, next yeare Il'e haue him Captaine of the Gally-foist, or Il'e want my will. Enter old Merri-thought. Old mer. Yet I thanke God, I breake not a rinkle 190 more then I had, not a stoope boyes : Care Hue with Cats, I defie thee, my heart is as sound as an Oke ; [74] and though I want drinke to wet my whistle, I can sing : 166 Carre ] cart W 169—80 To . . . hearts. In blank verse. Dy 170—80 I . . . hearts. In blank verse W 179 on, my hearts! 1778, f. St. George, St. George! 1778, f. 181 Ralph! 1778, f. 182 a-field 1778, f. 187 will. [Scene III. A Roora in Old Merrythought's House. W, f. 189 wrinkle 1711, f. 190 had. 1778, f. boys? Qj, f. 192 sing. [ Sings. W, f. ACT v] The Knight of the burning Pestle 93 Come no more there boyes, come no more there: For we shall neuer whilst we Hue, come any more there. 19s Enter a hoy ivith a Coffin, Boij. God saue you sir. Old mer. It's a braue boy: canst thou sing? Boy. Yes sir, I can sing, but 'tis not so necessary at this time. 200 Old merri. Sing wee, and chaunt it, whilst loue doth grant it. Boy. Sir, sir, if you knew what I haue brought you, you would haue little list to sing. Old mer. O the Mimon round, full long long I haue 205 thee sought. And now I haue thee found, & what hast thou here brought ? Boy. A Coffin sir, and your dead son lasper in it. Old mer. Dead ? why fare-well he : 210 Thou wast a bonny boy, and I did loue thee. Enter lasper. lasp. Then I pray you sir do so still. Old mer. laspers ghost? thou art welcome from Stygian lake so soone, 215 Declare to mee what wondrous things in Pluto's court are done. lasp. By my troth sir, I nere came there, tis too hot for me sir, 196 Enter a Boy, aitd two men bringing in the Coffin. W, f. with Luce in it. W 201 3fer. {sings) Dy In stanzaic form: Sing ... Whilst ... it. 1750, f. 205 Mer. (sings) Dy long long I] long I Q2, f. 209 it. [Exit with Men. Dy 2lo Mer. Dead 1 {sings) Dy In stanzaic form : Dead ? (Why Dy) . . . Thou . . . And . . . brought ? 1750, f. 214 ghost 1 Dy, f. [Sings. W, f. 94 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act v „o Old mer. A merry ghost, a very merry ghost. And where is your true-loue? o where is yours? las. Marie look you sir. f^co/fil Old mer. Ah ha! Art thou good at that Ifaith? With hey trixie terlery-whiskin, the world it runnes on 225 wheeles, i When the yong mans . . . vp goes the maidens heeles. j Mistresse Merri-thought and Michael within. \ Mist. mer. What Mr. Merry-thought, will you not let's ^ in? what do you thinke shall become of vs? '30 Old mer. What voyce is that that calleth at our doore ? Mist. mer. You know me well enough, I am sure [75] I haue not beene such a stranger to you. Old mer. And some they whistled, and some they 235 sung, Hetj downe, doivne : and some did lowdly say, euer as the Lord Barnets home blew, aivaij Musgraue, aivay. Mist. mer. You will not haue vs starue here, will you Mr. Merri-thought ? lasp. Nay good sir be perswaded, she is my mother : 240 if her offences haue beene great against you, let your owne loue remember she is yours, and so forgiue her. Luce. Good M^. Merri-thought let mee entreat you, I will not be denied. Mist. mer. Why Mr. Merri-thougt, will you be a vext 245 thing still. Old mer. Woman I take you to my loue againe, bot you shall sing before you enter: therefore dis- patch your song, and so come in. 220 very merry ghost! [Sings. W, f. 222 Marry, Q3, f. Heaves vp the Coffin. ] Removes the cloth, and LuCE rises out of the coffin. Dy 228 Mist. Mer. {7mthin.) Dy 232 Mist. Mer. [rvithin.) Dy 234 Mer. {Sings) W, f. In stanzaic form : And . . . Hey . . . And . . . Ever . . . Away . . . away. 1750, f. 236 Musgrave, away! Dy 237 Mist. Mer. {within). Dy 239 persuaded; 1778, f. 244 Mist. Mer. (within) Dy 245 still ? Q2, f. ACT v] The Knight of the burning Pestle 95 Mist. mer. Well, you must haue your will when al's done. Micke what song canst thou sing boy? 250 Mich. I can sing none forsooth, but a Ladies daughter of Paris properly. Mist. mer. Song. It was, a Ladies daughter, <&c. Old mer. Come, you'r welcome home againe. If such danger be in playing, and iest must to earnest 255 turne, You shall go no more a maying. March, within. Are you within sir, Maister Merri- thougt ? lasp. It is my maisters voyce, good sir go hold 260 him in talke whilst we conuey our selues into some inward roome. Old mer. What are you? are you merry? you must bee very merry if you enter. March. I am sir. 265 Old mer. Sing then. March. Nay good sir open to me. Old mer. Sing, I say, or by the merry heart you come not in. March. Well sir, Il'e sing. 270 Fortune my Foe, &c. Old mer. You are welcome sir, you are welcome, you see your entertainment, pray you bee merry. March. O Mr. Merri-thought, I am come to aske you Forgiuenesse for the wrongs I offered you, 275 [76] And your most vertuous sonne, they're infinite, Yet my contrition shall be more then they. 2^q Mist. Mer. {withm.) Dy 2^1 Mich. [within.) Dy 251—52^... properly. Dy [ Sings within. W, f. 253 Mist. Mer. Song. ] Mich. {sings) 1778 om. W, f. d^c. [Merrythought opens the door. Dy jEw/fr J/r5. Merrythought ff«rf Michael W, f. 254 again. [Sings Dy 260 voice : Dy 262 room. [ Exit with LucE. W, f. 270 sing. [Sings. W, f. 271 &c. [Merrythought opens the door. Dy Enter Venter WELS W, f. 96 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act v I do confesse my hardnesse broke his heart, For which, iust heaven hath giuen me punishment 280 More then my age can carry, his wandring spirit Not yet at rest, pursues me euery where Crying, I'le haunt thee for thy cruelty. My daughter she is gone, I know not how, Taken inuisible, and whether Huing, 285 Or in graue, 'tis yet vncertaine to me. O Maister Merrij-tJiought these are the weights. Will sinke me to my graue, forgiue me sir. Old mer. Why sir, I do forgiue you, and be merry, And if the wag, in's life time, plaid the knaue, 290 Can you forgiue him too ? March. With all my heart sir. Old mer. Speake it againe, and hartely. Merch. I do sir. Now by my soule I do. 295 Old mer. With that came out his Paramoure. Shee was as white as the Lillie flower. Hey troule trollie lollie. ^"^^^ With that came out her owne deere Knight, lasper. He was as true as euer did fight. &c. 3°o Sir, if you will forgiue him, clap their hands together, there's no more to be sad i'th' matter. Merch. I do, I do. Cit. I do not like this, peace boies, heare me one of you, euery bodies part is come to an end but 305 Raphes.^ and hee's left out. Boy. 'Tis long of your selfe sir, wee haue nothing to doe with his part. 282 'I'll . . . cruelty.' 1778, f. 285 in (the) grave, 1750, f. 287 gravel 1778, f. 288 you; 1778, f. 292 heartily. Q,, f. 294 do. [ Re-enter LuCE and Jasper Dy 295 Mer. {Sings.) W, f. 297 lollie] loly 1711, f. 301 sad] said Q^, f. 303 this: 1778 W this. Dy Peace, boys! 1778, f. 304 you! 1778, f. 306 'long Dy >i ACT v] The Knight of the burning Pestle 97 Cit. Raph come away, make on him as you haue done of the rest, boies come. Wife. Now good husband let him come out and die. 310 Cit. He shall Nel, Baph come away quickely and die boy. Boij. 'Twill be very vnfit he should die sir, vpon no occasion, and in a Comedy too. [77] Cit. Take you no care of that sir boy, is not his 31s part at an end, thinke you, when he's dead? come away Raph. Enter Raph, with a forked arrow through his head. Raph. When I was mortall, this my costiue corps Did lap vp Figs and Raisons in the Strand, 32° Where sitting I espi'd a louely Dame, Whose Maister wrought with Lingell and with All, And vnder ground he vampied many a boote. Straight did her loue pricke forth me, tender sprig To follow feats of Armes in warlike wise, 325 Through Waltham Desert, where I did performe Many atchieuements, and did lay on ground Huge Barharoso that insulting Giant, And all his Captiues soone set at liberty. Then honour prickt me from my natiue soile, 33° Into Moldauia, where I gain'd the loue Of Pompana his beloued daughter : But yet prou'd constant to the blacke thum'd maide Susan, and skom'd Pompianaes loue : Yet liberall I was and gaue her pinnes, 335 308 away I 1778, f. make on ] Make an end on 1778, f. 309 boys ; 1778, f. 311 Nell. 1778, f. 322 All,] awl, 1778, f. 323 boot: 1778 W boot. Dy 324 sprig, 1711, f. t,t,2 Pompana] Pompiana Q.% Qs F 1711 1750 Pompiona 1778, f. passim 333 black-thumb'd 1778, f. G 98 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act v And money for her fathers Officers, I then returned home, and thrust my selfe In action, and by all men chosen was Lord of the May, where I did flourish it, 340 With skarfes and Rings, and Poesie in my hand, After this action, I preferred was. And chosen Citty Captaine at Mile-end, With hat and feather and with leading staffe. And train'd my men and brought them all of cleere 345 Saue one man that berai'd him with the noise. But all these things I Raph did vndertake, Onely for my beloued Susans sake. Then comming home, and sitting in my Shop With Apron blew, death came vnto my Stall 350 To cheapen Aqua-vitae^ but ere I Could take the bottle downe, and fill a taste, [78] Death caught a pound of Pepper in his hand. And sprinkled all my face and body ore, And in an instant vanished away. 355 Cit. 'Tis a pretty fiction i'faith. Raph. Then tooke I vp my Bow and Shaft in hand, And waklt into Moore-fields to coole my selfe, But there grim cruell death met me againe. And shot this forked arrow through my head, 360 And now I faint, therefore be warn'd by me. My fellowes euery one of forked heads. Fare-well all you good boies in merry London, Nere shall we more vpon Shroue-tuesday meete And plucke downe houses of iniquitie. 365 My paine increaseth, I shall neuer more Hold open, whilst another pumpes both legs, Nor daube a Satten gowne with rotten egs : 336 officers. 1711, f. 340 Posie 1750 posy 1778 Dy poesy W hand. 1778, f. 344 off Q^, f. 360 faint; 1778, f. 365 increa- seth ; Dy ACT v] The Knight of the burning Pestle 99 Set vp a stake, o neuer more I shall, I die, flie, flie my soule to Grocers Hall, oh, oh, oh, &c. Wife. Well said Raph, doe your obeysance to the 370 Gentlemen and go your waies, well said Raph. Exit Raph. Old mer. Methinkes all we, thus kindly and vnex- pectedly reconciled should not depart without a song. Merch. A good motion. 37s Old mer. Strike vp then. Song. Better Musicke nere was knowne, Then a quire of hearts in one. Let each other that hath beene, 380 Troubled with the gall or spleene : Learne of vs to keepe his brow, Smoth and plaine as ours are now. Sing though before the houre of dying He shall rise and then be crying. 385 Hey ho, 'tis nought but mirth. That keepes the body from the earth. Exeunt Omnes. Epilogus. [79] Cittiz. Come Nel, shall we go, the Plaies done. 390 Wife. Nay by my faith George, I haue more manners then so, I'le speake to these Gentlemen first : I thanke you all Gentlemen, for your patience and 368 shall 1 1778, f. 369 die! 1778, f. Oh, oh, oh. &c. [Dies. Dy 370 Ralph I 1778, f. 371 ways. 1778 W ways: Dy Ralph! 1778, f. [ Ralph rises, makes obeisance, and exit. Dy 374 reconciled, F. f. depart ] part Qj Qj F 1711 1750 1778 380 been 171 1, f. 381 spleen, 1711, f. 382 brow 1711, f. 383 Smooth Q2, f. 384 dying; 1778, f. 385 crying, Qj, f. 386-87 'Heyho . . . earth.' 1778, f. 388 Exeunt Omnes. ] Exeunt. W, f. 390 play's F, f. G2 100 The Knight of the burning Pestle [act v countenane to Raph, a poore fatherlesse child, and if 395 1 might see you at my house, it should go hard, but I would haue a pottle of wine and a pipe of Tabacco for you, for truely I hope you do like the youth, but I would bee glad to know the truth : I referre it to your owne discretions, whether you will applaud 400 him or no, for I will winke, and whilst you shall do what you will, I thanke you with all my heart, God giue you good night ; come George. FINIS. 394 countenance Qj, f. child 1 1778 W child; Dy 397 for you: Dy 401 will. 1711 heart. 1778, f. 402 night 1 1778, f. George. [ Exeunt. W, f. THE KNIGHT Of the BVRNING PESTLE. Full of Mirth and Delight. [ Francis Beamount, 1 Written by { and \ Gent. loJin Fletcher. As it is now acted by her Majesties Servants at the Private house in Drury lane. 1635. Quod si ludicium subtile, vivendis artibus illud Ad libros autres grands Seigneurs. Ouvrage qui sert de Miroir a tous Princes &• Chevaliers. Traduite en nostre language par Francois de Rosset. Paris. Chez Mathieu Guillemot, rue S. lacques au coin de la rue de la Parche minerie. M.DC.XLUl. This version consists of eight octavo volumes, containing from 300 to 600 pages each. In the French version, there is no mention of an army brought against Rosicler by the Portugese prince. This latter personage is of subordinate importance, and is not brought into collision with the heroes. The only episode in which ACT i] Notes 145 armies play an extensive part is at the conclusion of the third volume, when the hosts of many Christian princes assemble at Constantinople to wage war against the infidels. Ralph is apparently confused in his allusion to the romance. 255. for they say the King of Portugall cannot sit at his meate, &c. This incident is not contained in the Mirror of Knighthood, as might be suggested by Ralph's reference to that romance in the preceding speech. 263. to relieue poore ladies. The law of chivalry whereby a knight was bound to ' relieue poor ladies ' is indicated in Palmertn of England, Part 1, chap. 34 : 'As soon as she saw him, she rode up to him, saying, Sir, as you regard the honour of knighthood, help to defend me from this wretch that seeks to dishonor me. He, seeing a knight coming after her, who was well armed and bravely mounted rode up to meet him, saying, I perceive both knighthood and that armour is ill bestowed upon you, that employ your- self in the persecution of a damsel, when your are both bound by duty, and by law of arms, to defend her.' In Amadis, Bk. 1, chap. 33, we read: 'The boon I ask is this, said Brisena, that ye always defend dames and damsels from all wrong ; and if by chance you have made promise of two suits, one to a man, the other to a woman, you shall ac- complish the woman's request first, as being the weakest person, and who hath most need to be holpen. Thus shall women travel more safely along the highways, and discourt- eous and cruel men shall fear to offer them force or injury.' 265. our Knights neglect their possessions well enough, but they do not the rest. The honor of knighthood was often purchased from King James, and the character of the order so formed is frequently sneered at by old writers. Cf. Hans Beer Pot, 1816 : Twas strange to see what knighthood once would do, Stir great men up to lead a martiall life, Such as were nobly bom of great estates, To gain this honour and this dignity, So noble a mark to their prosperity. But now, alas ! it's grown ridiculous, K 146 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act i Since bought with money, sold for basest prize, That some refuse it which are counted wise, 269. Palmerin of England. The hero of the romance of the same name. The tale is of Spanish and Portugese origin, and belongs to the second family chronicle carried on in the romances of the Peninsula. The first is concerned with the fortunes of Amadis of Gaul and his descendants. Pal- merin de Oliva, to which notice has already been given, begins the series. It is followed by the romance of Prima- leon, son of Palmerin de Oliva and Polinardo. Lastly comes the history of Palmerin of England, son to Don Duardos, Prince of England, and Florida, daughter of the Emperor Palmerin de Oliva. The earliest extant edition of Palmerin of England was written in Spanish, and was published at Toledo in 1547. Recent investigations have proved this print to be a translation of an original Portugese version by Fran- cisco de Moraes, which was written about 1544. Cf. C.Micha- elis de Vasconcellos and T. Braga, Grundriss der Romanischen Philologie, 1897, 2. 334, and W. E. Purser, Palmerin of England, 1904. Next to Amadis of Gaul, Palmerin of Eng- land is the most meritorious of the Peninsular romances, and in England it long retained its popularity. An English version of the tale was entered 13 Feb., 1581, but no perfect copy earlier than Anthony Munday's translation from the French in 1602 is known to exist. Cf. Introd., p. LXVIQ. 277. flappet of wood. Ralph refers to the grocer's counter. Cf. Glossary. 277. blew apron. Worn by tradesmen. Sometimes the term blue apron was used substantively to specify a trades- man. Blue garments, especially blue coats, were a common badge of servitude. Ben Jonson, in his Masque of Christ- mas, describing the habits of his characters, makes this stage- entry for one of them : " New Years' Gift, in a blew coat like a servingman." Howe, the continuator oiSiovte's Annals, tells us (p. 1039) that 'in the reign of Mary, and the be- ginning of Queen Elizabeth's, all the apprentices in London wore blue cloaks in the summer, and in the winter blue gowns ; but it was not lawful for any man, who was a servant. ACT i] Notes 147 to have his gown lower than to the calves of his legs, ex- cept he were upward of 60 years of age : but as the length of their cloaks was not limited, they used to wear them so long that they reached down to their heels.' 278. Methridatum and Dragons water. Dekker, speaking of the fearful plague of 1603, says: 'This intelligence runs currant, that every house lookt like S Bartholomewes Hos- pitall, and every streete like Buclersbury, for poor Methre- datum and Dragonwater (being both of them in all the world, scarce worth three-pence) were bort in every comer, and yet were both drunke every houre at other men's cost.' The Wonderful Year {Wks. 1. 112). Faith in the value of both these specifics resulted from the radical superstitions of the time. Mithridate, or mithridatum, was a medical compound sup- posed to serve either as antidote or preservative against poison and the plague. The name was derived from Mithri- dates VI, King of Pontus, who was supposed to have so charged himself with the poisons with which he experimented that he acquired an immunity from all of them. Cf. the speech of the poisoned emperor, Valentinian 5. 2 : What can your doses do now, and your scrapings, Your oils, and mithridates ? Dragon-water is defined in Nares' Glossary as ' a medicinal remedy which appears to have been very popular in the earher half of the I7'th century.' Cf Taylor's Works, 1630: And triacles powder is wonderously exprest. And dragon-water in most high request. Cf. Dekker and Webster's Westward Ho 3. 3: 'Ran into Buckleberry for two ounces of dragon-waterJ I find no mention of dragon-water in medical reference-books. Weber's suggestion that the term is a substitute for dragon's-blood seems plausible, dragon's-blood being an extract from certain tropical plants which is sometimes used as a tonic and an astringent; his conclusion, however, that Ralph is simply making a ludicrous mistake is invalidated by the serious employment of the term in the passages cited. K2 148 The Knight of the Burning 'Pestle [act i Grocers did not merely sell drugs ; the Grocers' Company was entrusted with the commission of garbling and examining drugs and spices, &c., sold within the city. There is a copy of the original document, granting this privilege, in the appendix to Heath's Account of the Grocers' Company, p. 392. It was made under Henry VI, 1447. 279. to visited houses. ' That is, to houses visited by the plague.' Weber. Cf. Ben Jonson, The Alchemist 5. 1 : Fare. The house, sir, has been visited. Love. What, with the plague? The old dramatists repeatedly allude to the fearful visi- tations of the Plague or Black Death which swept over Europe during the 16 th and 17 th centuries. The most fatal of them all was that of 1603, when the mortality in London alone reached 38,000. During the years immediately suc- ceeding 1603 the epidemic gradually abated, and in 1610, the year of our play's production, it had practically died out, not to reappear until 1625. Cf Creighton, History of Epidemics 1. 493 : ' There was little plague in 1604, and not much in 1605; but in 1606 the infection again became active, and continued at its endemic level for some five or six years.' 280. through his noble atchieuments procure such a famous history to be written. Don Quixote, it will be re- called, muses at length upon his posthumous renown, to be enshrined in ' a true history of his famous acts ' (Bk. 1, chap. 2). 288. I doe not call to minde that I yet read of a Grocer Errant. Apparently Ralph has not read The Four Prentices of London, in which are related the adventures of the gro- cer's boy, Eustace, who becomes a knight. The Citizen is better informed than Ralph ; cf 4. 66-8. 289. haue you heard of any that hath wandred vn- furnished of his Squire and Dwarfe? Amadis of Gaul is usually accompanied by his squire Gandalin and his dwarf Ardian. Palmerin de Oliva's regular attendant is his dwarf Urbanillo, but he is sometimes followed by a number of ACTi] Notes 149 esquires. Neither Palmerin of England nor Don Quixote has more than a squire. Cf. Introd., pp. XXXVI-VIII. 291. my elder Prentice Tim shall be my trusty Squire. Service as a squire was ordinarily a stepping-stone to knight- hood. 'The youth more usually remained an esquire the next step to that of a page till he was twenty. He attended the knight to whose person he was attached, dressed and undressed him, trained his horses, kept his arms bright and burnished, and did the honours of the household to the strangers who visited it; so that Spencer takes the squire as the type of such courtesy.' Sir C. Strachey, Introduction to Morte Darthur. 293. yet in remembrance of my former Trade, vpon my shiled shall be purtraide, a burning Pestle. ' This is in ridicule of Eustace, in Hey wood's Four Prentices of London, bearing the grocer's arms upon his shield.' Weber. Eu- stace, who is a grocer's apprentice, says: For my trade's sake, if good success I have, The Grocer's Arms shall in mine ensign wave. The representation of a burning pestle upon Ralph's shield is indeed a travesty on the elaborate design of the grocers' arms. ' Their arms,' says Maitland, ' are, argent a chevron, gules, between six cloves in chief and three in base, sable ; crest, a helmet and torse, a loaded camel trippant proper, brid- led of the second, two griffins perfess gules and or ; motto, " God grant thee grace." ' New View of London 2. 207. 295. cal'd the Knight oth burning Pestle. It was usual for knights to derive their name from some function, achieve- ment, or trait which characterized them. Gayton says of Don Quixote, otherwise called the Knight of the Ill-favour'd Face, Festivous Notes Upon Don Quixote, p. 99 : ' It is usual for Knights and Dons Errant to take appellative names fi'om their successes, places of Birth, Conquest or Favour. . . . He stiles himselfe of the Illfavoured Face, not im- properly, nor farre fetcht.' The Don himself says: 'It hath seemed fit to the wise man, to whose charge is left the writing of my history, that I take some appellative name, 150 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act i as all the other knights of yore have done ; for one called himself the Knight of the Burning Sword; another that of Unicom ; this, him of the Phoenix ; the other, that of the Damsels ; another the Knight of the Griffin ; and some other, the Knight of Death ; and by these names and devices they were known throughout the compass of the earth. And so I say, that the wise man whom I mentioned set in thy mind and tongue the thought to call me the Knight of the Ill- favoured Face, as I mean to call myself henceforth; and that the name may become me better, I will, upon the first occasion, cause to be painted in my shield a most ill-favoured countenance ' (Bk. 3, chap. 5). 301—5. Right Courteous and Valiant Knight . . . dis- tressed Damsell. These chivalric terms of address may be partially illustrated from Pahnerin de Oliva, Part 1, chap. 21: ^Faire Virgin (saide Palmerin) doo not discomfort yourself, but shew me which way they rode that dealt with you so discourteously. Gentle Knight (quoth she) if your hap be to restore my losse againe, you doe the most gracious acte that euer Knight did for a distressed Damosel. . . . And may all happinesse repay this gentle daede, Fayre Knight.'' In- stances of the use of the formula fair lady are innumerable. It is perhaps needless to say that Ralph is made to exaggerate the sufficiently ceremonious manner in which the knights themselves were addressed. Isolated epithets, like fair, courteous, gentle, are habitually applied to them, but seldom will one find such a sounding and lengthy designation as that which Ralph demands for himself. 305. that you call all Forrests & Heaths Desarts. A somewhat extreme demand. Don Quixote and the ro- mances have both forests and deserts. Indeed, the two words are sometimes joined : Palmerin of England's brother Florian is called Florian of the Desert, because the forest wherein he was born was called the Desert Forest. 306. and all horses Palfries. A reference to the passage quoted above will show that Ralph is somewhat excited, for even the old romancers sometimes called a spade a spade : the giant Franarco ' fel from his horse,' and ' the knight that ACT I Notes 151 had Agricola behind him ' was soon set ' besides his horse: The steeds, however, which carry ' distressed,' or other ' dam- sels,' are almost invariably called palfreys. 309. the Platers would glue all the shooes in their shop for him. The Citizen is thinking of the shoes in the players' dressing-room, known as the tiring-house. Cf. Ind. 97, and note. 311-14. admit . . . what would you say? This is a con- ventional mode of interrogation in the romances. Cf Pal- merin of England, Bk. 1, chap. 35 : ' Admit (quoth the damsel) myself would be the means to provide you all of horses and armour again, would you grant the boon I should put forth unto you ? ' 312. a Desart, and ouer it a Knight errant pricking. One is instantly reminded of the first verse of The Faerie Queen : A gentle knight was pricking o'er the plain. Gayton remarks in satirical vein: 'This order of Knight er- rantry is very ancient, when there were but three persons in the World, one was of this Order, even Cain, who for the murther of his Brother was a Fugitive and a Vagabond over the whole earth, a larger extent than our Dons peregri- nations; he had beside this marke another like to our Knight-errants, that none should slay him, for you never read of a Knight-errant that was slaine in the whole world.' Festivous Notes Upon Don Quixote, p. 9. The Don himself follows tradition in looking upon King Arthur as the chief instigator and exemplar of knight-er- rantry. 'In this good king's time was first instituted the famous order of knighthood of the Knights of the Round Table, . . . and from that time forward, the order of knight went from hand to hand, dilating and spreading itself through many and sundry parts of the world ' (Bk. 2, chap. 5). 328. a halfe penny-worth of pepper. Pepper was for a long time the chief commodity in which the grocers dealt, and, according to Herbert, their license to deal in it is still obUged to be especially inscribed over the doors of the shops. 152 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [acti Indeed, the Grocers trace their descent and origin from an amalgamation between the Pepperers of Soper's Lane and the Spicers of Cheap in 1345. This union led to the adop- tion of the more comprehensive name, ' which,' says Hazlitt, ' obviously signifies engrosser, or dealer in miscellaneous ar- ticles of consumption.' Livery Companies of London, p. 188. 335. true man. ' That is, an honest man, generall used in opposition tho thief.' Weber. Nares cites the following examples : Whither away so fast? A true man, or a thief, that gallops thus? Love's Labour s Lost 4, 3. The thieves have bound the true men. / Henry IV 2. 2. We will not wrong thee so To make away a true man for a thief. Edward II, Dodsley's Old Plays 2. 362. 349. A merry heart Hues long-a. 'Resembles a line in the first verse of "Jog on, jog on the foot-path way," &c., a song printed in An Antidote against Melancholy, &c. 1661, p. 73.' Dyce. This song is not at hand, but according to Dyce the first verse of is it sung by Autolycus in the Winters Tale 4. 3 : Jog on, jog on, the footpath way, And merrily hent the stile-a : A merry heart goes all the day, Your sad tires in a mile-a. 372. halter-sacke. Cf. Four Plays in One : ' Thy begin- ning was knap-sack, and thy ending will be halter-sack.'' Also, cf. A King and No King 2. 2 : ' Away, you halter-sack, you.' ' Haltersack. A term of reproach equivalent to hang-dog. Minshew writes it haltersick, and explains it, " One whom the gallows groans for." Coles has, " One halter-sick, nebulo egregius." . . . Mr. Seward also conjectured haltersick. These conjectures may be right; but from the incongruity of calling a person halter-sick, before the halter has ap- proached him, I rather think that halter-sack meant, that the ACT i] Notes 153 person so called was doomed to hang upon a halter, like a sack.' Nares, Glossary. N. E. D. agrees with Nares. 383. Nose, nose, ioUy red nose, and who gaue thee this iolly red nose ? ' These and the next two lines sung by Merrythought are taken from a song (No. 7) in Ravens- croft's Deuteromelia, 1609, beginning, " Of all the birds that euer I see, the Owle is the fayrest," &c. where they stand thus: "Nose, nose, nose, nose, and who gaue thee that iolly red nose? Sinamont and ginger, Nutmegs and Cloves, and that gaue me my iolly red nose." ' Dyce. 386. carke and care. ' To Cark. To be careful or thought- ful. It is often joined with to care, as if not perfectly synon- ymous. "Why knave, I say, have I thus cark'd and card, And all to keep thee like a gentleman?" Lord Cromwell, Sh. Supp., II. 377. "In times past neither did I labor, carcke, nor care, For business, for family, for foode, nor yet for fare." North's Plut., p. 392, E.' Nares, Glossary, 386. and all little enough. And not as much as the case warrants. Cf. Prologue to The Four Prentices of London : ' Three prologues to our Play ? pardon me, we have need of three hundred me thinkes, and all little enough.^ 403. at eleuen & six a clocke. ' These were the dinner and supper hours of our ancestors, when this play was written.' Weber. In The Woman-Hater 1. 2, Lazarillo directs a boy to hasten to spy out what is being cooked for dinner. The boy replies : ' I run ; but not so fast as your mouth will do upon the stroke of eleven' Cf. Ben Jonson's The Case is Altered 2. 3: Eat when your stomach serves, saith the physician, Not at eleven and six. 154 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act i InDekker's Dead Term {Wks. 4. 50), we read : ' What layinge of heads is there together and sifting of the braine, still and anon, at is growes towards eleven of the Clocke (euen amongst those that weare guilt Rapiers by their sides) where for that noone they may shift from Duke Humfrey, & bee furnished with a Dinner at some meaner mans Table.' 413. by Ladle, 'i. e. b}*- our Lady, a common form. Altered by the modem editors to " by'r Lady." ' Dyce. Cf. Every Woman in her Humour, 1609 : A teadious time, by Lady; a month were enough. Cf. also Guy Earl of Warwick, a Tragedy, 1661 : Ha, ha, the world's well amended with me, by Lady. 413. hold thee there. Adhere rigidly to, 'stick to,' your opinion. The reflexive use of hold in this sense is not no- ticed in the dictionaries. 434. foule chiue him. May ill luck befall him. A rare old phrase. Cf Sir A Cockain, Obstinate Lady, 1657, 3. 2 : ' Foul cheeve him for it.' ' " 111 mote he cheve " is in Chaucer. Cheve, chieve, and chive, are only different forms of the same word, chevir, old French; and still existing here as a pro- vincial word, to prosper.' Nares, Glossary. 455. but yet or ere you part (oh cruell). ' Varied from part of the first verse of a song (No. 15) printed in The first Booke of Songes or Ayres of foure parts with Tableture for the Lute, Sic, 1597, by Dowland: " Wilt thou, unkind, thus reaue me of my heart and so leaue me ? Farewell; but yet or ere I part (O cruell) Kiss me sweete, my Jewell " ' Dyce. For the use of the phrase or ere, meaning before, cf. Lear 2. 4 : I have full cause of weeping; but this heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, Or ere I'll weep. Cf. also Swinburne, Cent. Roundels, 23 : These, or ever man was, were. ACT i] Notes 155 478. Boy danceth. Gosson, the Puritan, tells us that a theatrical entertainment in the time of Elizabeth was di- versified through the wiles of the devil, who 'sendeth in garish apparell, masques, vaulting, tumbling, dancing of gigges, galiardes, morisces, hobby-horses, shewing of juggling castes, . . . nothing forgot, that might serve to set out the matter with pompe, or ravish the beholders with variety of pleasure.' Playes confuted in Five Actions, reprinted in Hazlitt's Drama and Stage. According to Malone in his Shakespeare (Boswell 3. 140), in the time of Shakespeare there was a great deal of extemporaneous buffoonery on the part of the clown, who solicited the attention of the audience by singing and dancing between the acts, and either by a song or metrical jig at close of the play. Beaumout says, in his lines to Fletcher on The Faithful Shepherdess : Nor want there those, who, as the boy does dance Between the acts, will censure the whole play. We learn from Paul Hentzner that the dancing was ac- companied by music. Cf. A Journey into England {Augervy lie Soc. Reprints, p. 28). 481. They say, 'tis present death for these fidlers to tune their Rebeckes before the great Turkes grace. The Wife probably refers to an episode in some romance or ballad. I have been unable to trace the allusion. 482. Rebeckes. 'Rebec. A Moorish word, signifying an instrument with two strings, played on with a bow. The Moors brought the Rebec into Spain ; whence it passed into Italy, and after the addition of a third string, obtained the name of Rebecca ; whence the old English Rebec, or fiddle with three strings.' Moore, Encyclopaedia of Music. The instrument was the parent of the viol and the violin. It was used throughout western Europe in the Middle Ages. It was sometimes employed in the state bands. At the time of our play it was used also, as is made evident by the context here, to accompany dancing. After the invention 156 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act n of the viol and violin, the rebec was banished from the city, but it long remained popular at country festivals. Hence Milton's mention of the ' jocund rebeck ' played at the rural dance in L' Allegro. 486. ride the wild mare. Dyce quotes from Douce's Illus- trations of Shakespeare 1. 458 a passage in which it is main- tained that riding the wild mare is another name for the childish sport of see-saw. In 2 Henry IV 2. 4, Falstaflf speaks of Poins as one who ' rides the wild-mare with the boys.' 490. Gods . 'The editors of 1778 and Weber printed " God's wound's,''' without informing their readers that the latter word is not in the old editions.' Dyce. 490. and. Modem editions read an. Cf 1. 66. and note. 491. periwigs. The performers of male characters fre- quently wore periwigs, which in the age of Shakespeare were not in common use. Cf Hamlet 3. 2 : ' O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters.' Cf Every Woman in Her Humour, 1609: 'A none wear hoods but monks and ladies, . . . and none periwigs but players and pictures.' Act II. 28. red roaring Lion. The ancient custom of distinguishing taverns, not by worded, but by figured, signboards often led to curious combinations of images, articles, and colors. ' We may mention incidentally, the Bull and Mouth, the Bull and Gate, the Belle Sauvage, the Goat and Compasses, the Cat and Fiddle, the Cock and Pie, the Cock and Bottle, the Goat in Boots, the Swan with Two Necks, the Bag of Nails, the Pig and Whistle, the George and Vulture, the Bolt in Tun, the Bear and Harrow, the Elephant and Castle. Our streets are filled with Blue Boars, Black Swans, and Red Lions, not to mention Flying Pigs and Hogs in Armour.' Eraser's Magazine, cited by Brand, Pop. Antiq. 2. 357. ACT n] Notes i57 ' Since pictorial or carved signs have fallen into disuse, and only names given, , . . The Red Lion is by far the most common ; doubtless it originated with the badge of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, married to Constance, daughter of Don Pedro the Cruel, king of Leon and Castille. The duke bore the lion rampant gules of Leon as his cognizance, to represent his claim to the throne of Castille, when that was occupied by Henry de Trastamare. In after years it may often have been used to represent the lion of Scotland.' Larwood and Hotten, History of Signboards, p. 120. 29. In Waltham situate. Harrison names in ' a table of the best thorowfaires and townes of greatest travell in Eng- land, in some of which there are twelve or sixteen innes at the least.' Description of England, p. 415 (in Holin- shed's Chronicles, ed. 1807, London). 31. The fatale sisters. The Three Fates. 44. within the wals of London. Cf. Ind. 3, and note. 45. the Suburbes. The suburbs were the districts lying immediately outside the walls of the city. Here the citizens had their pleasure-resorts. These were places where intrigues and many disorderly projects were carried on. Most of the inhabitants of the suburbs were a ruffianly class thieves, murderers, and every mischief-maker, among whom Hum- phrey would have had small honor in finding an equal in " fair speech." Cf. Stow, Survey, pp. 156 ff. ; Nares, Glossary; and Wheatley, ed Every Man in His Humour. 54. were he of the noble Science. ' Meaning the noble science of defence ; a master of fencing.' Mason. ' And for defence and use of the weapon, there is a special pro- fession of men that teach it.' Stow, Survey, p. 36. 'The author of a description of the colleges and schools in and about London, which he calls "The Third University of England," printed in black letter in 1615, says, " In this city," meaning London, " there be manie professors of the science of defense, and very skUful men in teaching the best and most offensive and defensive use of verie many weapons, as of the long-sword, back-sword, rapier and dagger, single rapier, the case of rapiers, the sword and buckler, or targate, 158 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act ii the pike, the halbard, the long-staff, and others. Henry VIII made the professors of this art a company, by letters patent, wherein the art is entitled The Noble Science of Defence" ' Strutt, Sports and Pastimes, p. 262. 68-70. God-night . . . three-score. Emil Koeppel {Quellen- Studien zu den Dramen Ben Jonsons, fohn Marston's, und Beaumont und Fletchers, 1895, p. 43) regards it as probable that these lines are in ridicule of the frequent repetition of the words Good night in the garden scene of Romeo and Juliet 2. 2 : ' Sweet, good night ! ,' 1. 120 ; ' Good night, good night ! ,' 1. 123 ; ' Three words good Romeo, and good night indeed !,' 1. 142 ; ' A thousand times good night ! ,' 1. 154 ; ' God night, good night ! parting is such sweet sorrow That I shall say good night till it be morrow.' 1. 184. 79. Mile-end. ' An ancient manor and hamlet of Stepney (or Stebonheath) parish, lying to the east of Whitechapel It was " so called," says Strype, " from its distance fi"om the middle parts of London," or more probably from its distance from Aldgate Mile End Bar, where Mile End begins, being exactly a mile from Aldgate. . . . Mile End in the l7th cen- tury was still in " the country," and a resort of Londoners for fresh air, and cakes and ale.' Wh.-C. The green at Mile End was long famous as a rendezvous for the mil- itary. Cf. next note, 5. 67 if., and notes. 80. there has bene a pitch-field my child betweene the naughty Spaniels and the English-men. ' This must relate to some mock-fight which was fought at Mile End, where the train-bands of the city were often exercised. One of the ballads mentioned in Monsieur Thomas (vol. VI, p. 489), is " The Landing of the Spaniards at Bow, with the Bloody Battle at Mile-End." Again in the epilogue to a Wife for a Month (vol. VIII, p. 252), " the action at Mile-End " alludes to the same or a similar mock-fight.' Weber. 85. white boy. This is a term of endearment common in our old writers. It was usually applied to a favorite son or dependent. Thus in The Two Lancashire Lovers, 1640, p. 19 : ' Fie, young gentleman, will such a brave sparke as you, that is your mother's white-boy, undoe your hopes.' The ACT n] Notes i59 term, however, though in itself an indication of favor, might have an opprobrious association, as in a tract printed 1644 which was entitled The DeviWs White Boyes, a mixture of malicious malignants, tvith their Evill Practices against the Kingdome and Parliament, &c. 87. let thy father go snicke-vp. ' Sneck-up, or snick-up. An interjection of contempt, thought to be of little meaning, till it was proved by one passage to signify "go and be hanged," or "hang yourself"; which sense, indeed, agrees best with most of the instances. Mr. Malone had conjectured that this was the meaning. The passage alluded to is this : A Tibvume hempen-candell will e'en cure you: It can cure traytors, but I hold it fit T'apply't ere they the treason do commit. Wherefore in Sparta it ycleped was Snick-up, which is in English gallow-grass. Taylor, Praise of Hempseed [p. 66, Works, 1630]. This was quoted by Mr. Weber ; and from it we may not unfairly conjecture that "neck-up," or "his neck-up," was the original notion.' Nares, Glossary. Cf. Heywood, Faif Maid of the West ( Wks., ed. Dyce, 2. 268) : She shall not rise, sir, go, let your Master snick-up. Cf. also Twelfth Nigth 2. 3: We did keep time, sir, in our catches. Sneck up! 94. bi'th eie. Apparently the expression means in unlimited quantity. N. E. D. cites passages which seem to bear out this definition : c. 1894 P. PI. Crede, 84 : ' Grete-hedede queues wij) gold by J)e eigen.'; c. 1592 Marlowe, Jew Of Malta 3. 4: ' Thou shalt have broth by the eye.'' 98. I cannot tell. ' I know not what to say or think of it. A common phrase in old plays.' Halliwell, Arch, and Prov. Diet. Cf. Ben Jonson, The Magnetic Lady 2. 1 : Plea. Which would you choose now, mistress. Pla. ''Cannot tell; The copy does confound one. 1 60 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act n Cf. also Bartholomew Fair 1.3: ' Quar. ... I pray thee what ailest thou, thou canst not sleep ? hast thou thorns in thy eyelids, or thistles in thy bed? Winw. I cannot tell: it seems you had neither in your feet, that took this pain to find me.' 99. rie see no more else. I'll see nothing else ; I'll see no- thing except (Ralph). A similar Elizabethan idiom is no more but, in which but in the sense of except follows a negative comparative, where we should use than. These poor informal women are no more But instruments of some mightier member. Measure for Measure 5. 1. Cf. Abbott, Shakes. Gram., p. 86. 99. indeed-law. The compound expression is not given in the dictionaries. In separating the words, however, the editors have been unwarranted in changing law to la. Cf. variants. Law may originally have been an alteration of la, but it has existed for centuries as a distinct exclamatory word. It is now vulgar. 102. let's be merry and wise. This is an old saw, which, so far as it has any point at all, seems to mean ' let's be merry, but also wise.' Cf. Ralph Roister Doister 1. 1: As long lyueth the mery man, they say. As doth the sory man, and longer by a day. Yet the grassehopper for all his summer pipyng, Sterueth in winter with hungrie gryping. Therefore an-other sayd sawe doth men aduise That they be together both mery and wise. Touchstone, the merchant in Chapman's Eastward Ho, at- tributes his prosperity in part to the observance of certain ' sentences,' as ' Touchstone, keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee,' ' Light gain makes heavy purses,' * Tis good to be merry and wise.'' In an old play. Every Woman in her Humor, the Host says : ' lets be merrie and wise, merrie hearts live long.' Bullen's Old Plays 4. 366. ACT n] Notes i6i 103. and say they should put him into a streight paire of Gaskins. Gaskins were a fashion of breeches rather looser than the ordinary hose. They were much in vogue in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Wife is afraid that Ralph will be cramped by being clothed in gaskins too small for him, streight in this connection mean- ing stretched or tight. Cf. Glossary. 104. knot-grasse. ' So called for the numerous nodes in its stems, and its thickly spreading habit. It is a tough trailing and branching plant, common in trodden ground, and often carpeting dooryards, &c. An infusion of it was formerly supposed to retard bodily growth.' Cent. Diet. We want a boy extremely for this function. Kept under for a year with milk and knotgrass. Coxcomb, 2. 2. Get you gone, you dwarf; You minimum, of hindering knotgrass made. Mid. Sum. Night's Dream 3. 2. 107—11. How do you Raph . . . audacity. At the close of Nash's Summer's Last Will and Testament, Will Summer, who is sitting on the stage, gives a similar encouragement to a little boy who enters to speak the epilogue : ' Here a pretty boy comes with an Epilogue to get him audacity. I pray you sit still a little, and hear him say his lesson without book. It is a good boy, be not afraid : turn thy face to my lord. Thou and I will play at pouch tomorrow morning for breakfast. Come and sit on my knee, and I'll dance thee, if thou canst not endure to stand.' 114. Mirrour of Knight-hood. Cf. 1. 247, and note. 115. the perrilous Waltham downe. P(?m7o«s is an epithet habitually used in the romances to describe a region which is supposed to be characterized by dangers. One of the knights in Amadis is called Gavarte of the Perrilous Valley. 117. We are betraid here be Gyants, flie boy. Mr. Merry- thought is evidently conversant with romances, and is aware that discreet ladies are uniformly made to flee from monsters, except for good cause. Thus, in Palmerin of England, Part 1, L 1 62 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act n chap. 3, on the appearance of the ' Savage Man ' in the forest, there was great dismay among the courtly attendants of the princess, ' who at this presence of so grim a sire be- took themselves to flight.' 120. A gentle Ladle flying? the imbrace Of some vncour- teous knight. This is a recurrent feature of the romances. Cf Introd., pp. XXXVIII-XL. 121. I will releiue her. Cf. 1. 263, and note. 125. gentle squire. This is a chivalric formula so fre- quently employed as scarcely to need illustration. 129. while I sweare. I would be practically an endless task to quote the instances of vows taken by knights-errant when entering upon a quest or a combat. 129. by my knight-hood. Cf. Don Quixote, Bk. 1, chap. 4: ' And so that he will swear to me to observe it, by the order of knighthood which he hath received, I will set him free.' 130. by the soule of Amadis de Gaule. Similarly, in Pal- merin de Oliva, Part 1, chap. 35 : 'By the soule of King Arthur, said the Duke, looke thou guard thyself well.' Amadis of Gaul is the most widely known of the con- tinental prose romances. The oldest extant version is in Spanish. It was made by Garcia Ordonez de Montalvo, and was printed in Saragossa in 1508. The author admits that most of his book is mere translation. There is practical unanimity of opinion that the lost original was written in Portugese by the troubadour Joao Lobeira (1261—1325). Cf. C. Michaelis de Vasconcellos and T. Braga, Geschichte der Portugiesischen Litteratur in Grundriss der Romanischen Philologie, 1897, 2. 216 ff. Also cf J. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, Spanish Literature, 1904, p. 123. During the early part of the 17 th century, an English version was accomplished by Anthony Munday, translator of the Palmerin series. Cf. Introd., p. LXVffl. 131. My famous Ancestor. As may be inferred from the judgment of Cervantes, Ralph derives small honor from classing himself among the descendants of Amadis, since the excellences of their original are but dimly reflected in them. Cf Introd., p. LXIX. ACT n] Notes 163 131. by my sword. So Palmerin, in the combat with Franarco, swears : ' By my sword, villain, I shall make thee dearly to pay for thy folly.' Cf. Amadis of Gaul, Bk. 1, chap. 1: 'The king whose will was already disposed by God that that which ensued might come to pass, took his sword which was by him, and laying his right hand upon the cross of its hilt, pronounced these words : / swear by this cross, this sword wherewith I received the order of knighthood, to perform whatever you shall require for the Lady Elisena.' 132. The beauteous Brionella girt about me. Weber er- roneously says that Brionella is Palmerin de Oliva's dwarf. Urbanillo is the name of the dwarf; his most important function is as intermediary in the love-affairs of his master. Brionella is the companion of the Princess Polianardo, who is daughter of the German emperor, and the beloved of Palmerin. Brionella is also the mistress of Palmerin's friend Ptolme, who, in the course of the story, wins and weds her. 141. offer to carrie his bookes after him. Try to emulate or equal him. 152. bring about Thy desperate wheel, that I may clime at length And stand. In later classic mythology the goddess Fortuna was represented with wings, or with her eyes bound, standing upon a ball; and her usual attribute was a wheel, the turning of which signified the instability of change. The image of Fortune's wheel constantly recurs in literature. Cf. Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy {Temple Classics, p. 29) : ' I [Fortune] turn my wheel that spins its circle fairly ; I delight to make the lowest turn to the top, the highest to the bottom. Come to the top if you will, but on this con- dition, that you think it no unfairness so sink when the rule of my game demands it.' Hey wood's Four Prentices of London begins with these lines : Daughter, thou seest how Fortune turns her wheel. We that but late were mounted up aloft Lull'd in the skirt of that inconstant Dame, Are now thrown head-long by her ruthless hand. To kiss that earth whereon our feet should stand. L2 164 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act n 173. rie tell Raph a tale in's eare. To tell or whisper a tale in the ear seems to have been a proverbial expression ; cf. 5. 28. Cf. also Romeo and Juliet 1.5: I have seen the day That I have worn a visor and could tell A whispering tale in a fair lady's ear, Such as would please. 174. Wanion. ' Used only in the phrase with a wanion, but totally unexplained, though exceedingly common in use. It seems to be equivalent to with a vengeance, or with a plague.' Nares, Glossary. 'Ho, clod-pate, where art thou? Come out with a ven- geance, come out with a wannion." Ozell's Rabelais, Bk. 4, chap. 47. 179. an. 'Weber printed with the first 4 to, "an."' Dyce. But may not Weber and Qi be right ? Dyce would read as, but an as a contraction of and, in its obsolete sense of as if, fits the context quite as well. It bears this mean- ing in Midsummer Night's Dream 1. 2: 'I will roar you an 'twere any Nightingale.' Cf. also Troilus and Cressida 1. 2 : ' O he smiles valiantly. . . . O yes, and't were a cloud in autumn.' 179. Emperall. Undoubtedly the word is the same as emperial, an obsolete form of imperial, which often in the 16 th and 17 th centuries, as seemingly here, meant an emperor. Cf. Two Gentlemen of Verona 2. 3 : ' I . . . am going with Sir Proteus to the Imperial's Court.' 184. For and the Squire of Damsels as I take it. The obsolete adv. phr. for and, meaning and also, and besides, puzzled the early editors. Ed. 1750 altered it and subjoined it to the preceding sentence, reading: Your squire doth come and with him comes the lady Fair, and the Squire of Damsels, as I take it. Ed. 1778 and Weber read: Your squire doth come and with him comes the lady. Ralph. Fair ! and the Squire of Damsels, as I take it ! Madam, if any service, &c. ACT n] Notes 165 Dyce restored the original reading, and cited the following instances to show that the expression for and is not unfre- quently used by our early writers: Syr Gy, Syr Gawen, Syr Cayus, for and Syr Olyvere. Skelton's second poem Agatnsi Garnesche. Works 1. 119, ed. Dyce. A hippocrene, a tweak, for and a fucus. Middleton's Fair Quarrel^. 1. Works 3. 544, ed. Dyce. A pick-axe, and a spade, a spade, For and a shrouding sheet. Hamlet 5. 1. Mason observed that the " Squire of Damsels " is an al- lusion to Spencer's Squire of Dames. Cf. Faere Queen, 3. 7. 51, &c. Cf. Monsieur Thomas 1. 1 : Hylas. I must be better. And nearer in my service, with your leave, sir. To this fair lady. I Val. What, the old Squire of Dames still? The expression seems to have become proverbial as a specification of any man who is particularly attentive to women. Cf. Massinger, Emperor of the East 1. 2: Marry, there I'm call'd The Squire of Dames, or Servant of the Sex. 187. I am prest to giue you succour. For to that holy end I beare my Armour. In accordance with the oath of knighthood. ' He [the knight] swore, and received the holy communion in confirmation of his oath, to fulfil the duties of his profession ; to speak the truth ; to maintain the right ; to protect women, the poor, and the distressed; to practice courtesy ; to pursue the infidels ; to despise the allurements of ease and safety, and to maintain his honour in every perilous adventure.' Sir E. Strachey, Introduction to Morte Darthur. 193. the beauty of that face. The good Mrs. Merrythought cannot easily be thought of as beautiftil. One is reminded here of Don Quixote's raptures over the imagined beauty of the Asturian wench, Maritomes, in Bk. 3, chap. 2. Cf. Introd., p. LI. 1 66 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act n 209. I haue but one horse, on which shall ride This Ladie faire behind me. This is a very unknightly proposition; Ralph is driven to hard shifts by his lack of the proper ac- coutrements. The approved manner of exit for the ' relieved ' damsel is on a palfrey of her own, which she rides in front of her benefactor. Galaor rescued a ' distressed damsel ' from six villains and a dwarf, and, after he had given his arms to his squire, said : ' Damsel, go you before me, and I will guard you better than I have done.' Antadis, Bk. 1, chap. 13. 209. on. Eds. 1750, 1778, and Weber printed, for the metre, upon. 216. they may all cast their caps at him. According to N. E. D., this phrase means to show indifference to, give up for lost. In the text, however, the meaning clearly is that the rivals of Ralph may all salute i. e. cast their caps before him as a superior. For the definition in the Glossary I am indebted to F. W. Moorman, ed. of The Knight of the Burning Pestle in The Temple Dramatists. The Citizen is making a sweeping denial of the Londoners' being able to equal Ralph in histrionic achievements. Caps were the common headdresses of the citizens. Hence, it came about that the citizens obtained the name of Flatcaps, and were so called, in derision, by the pages of the court. The city flatcap was round, perfectly flat, and tight-fitting, and was held close to the crown by a narrow band about the bottom. Cf. Strutt, Dress and Habits of England 1. 316 ; 2. 137. 218. the twelue Companies of London. Cf note to Ind. 16. The twelve great companies of London were the Mercers, the Grocers, the Drapers, the Fishmongers, the Goldsmiths, the Skinners, the Merchant Tailors, the Haberdashers, the Salters, the Ironmongers, the Vintners, and the Clothworkers. 219. and hee be not inueigled by some of these paltrie Plaiers. The Wife's anxiety is not caused by a wholly imaginary danger. There are evidences to show that boys were not only ' inveigled ' into the service of theatrical com- panies, but were sometimes forcibly kidnapped. In the Athe- ACT n Notes 1^7 naeum, Aug. 10, 1889, 2. 203-4, James Greenstreet prints a bill of complaint from the father of a boy who had been kidnapped by the agents of Blackfriars. The complamt makes mention of other boys thus stolen, among them ' Nathan ffield, a scholler of a grammer schoole in London, kept by one Mr. Monkester.' Nathan Field became a famous actor in later years. His schoolmaster was the same Monkester to whom the Wife has once referred, 1. 105. Such cases of enforced service at the theatres as Greenstreet records are typical. Cf. H. S. Mallory, ed. Ben Jonson's Poetaster 1. 6 {Yale Studies in English, 1905, p. 138). 231. walke for your repose. Or sit, or if you will go plucke a rose. Cf. Middleton, The Changeling 1. 2: 'Yes, sir, for every part has his hour : we wake at six and look about us, that's eye-hour ; at seven we should pray, that's knee-hour ; at eight walk, that's leg-hour •, at nine gather flowers and pluck a rose, that's nose-hour ' ; &c. Pluck a rose is a euphemism of fairly obvious meaning; = ahum exonerare, Class. Cf. Grose, Diet, of Vulgar Tongue in V. Pluck. . 240. mickle grieue me. The adverbial use of mickle is unusual. It is not noticed in the dictionaries. 250. by Gods bodie. Humphrey is swearing by the bread of the sacrament. See Glossary. Cf. / Henry IV 2. 1 : ' Gods body ! the turkeys in my pannier are quite starved out.' Diminutive oaths of this sort were considered as ornaments of conversation, and were adopted by both sexes, in order to give spirit and vivacity to their language. ' A shocking practice,' says Drake, 'which seems to have been rendered fashionable by the reprehensible habit of the Queen, whose oaths were neither diminutive nor rare.' Shakes, and hts Times, p. 423. One easily recalls Captain Bobadill, the ' Paul's man,' 'in Every Man in his Humour, and his frequent oaths, and 'the despair of Master Stephen, the country gull, who exclaims : ' O, he swears most admirably ! By Pharaoh's foot ! Body o' Caesar ! 1 shall never do it, sure. Upon mine honor, and by Saint George! No, I ha' not the right grace.' 3. 5. 1 68 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [acth It is somewhat surprising to see the expletive by God's body in our play, since there is upon the statute book ' an Act to restrain the abuses of players ' (3 Jac. 1, chap. 21), wherein it is enacted, ' That if at any time or times after the end of this present Session of Parliament, any person or persons do or shall in any Stage-play, Enterlude, Shew, May- game, or Pageant jestingly or profanely speak or use the holy name of God, or of Christ Jesus, or of the Holy Ghost, or of the Trinity, which are not to be spoken, but with fear and reverence, shall forfeit for every such offence by him or them committed ten pounds.' Cf. Wheatley, ed. Every Man in his Humour, Introduction, p. XLII. 252. for to tell. ' For to, which is now never joined with the infinitive except by a vulgarism, was very common in E. E. and A. S., and is not uncommon in the Elizabethan writers. It probably owes its origin to the fact that the prep- ositional meaning of " to " was gradually weakened as it came to be considered nothing but the sign of the infinitive. "Forbid the sea for to obey the moon." W. T. 1. 2. 427.' Abbott, Shakes. Gram., p. 152. 256. get you to your night-cap and the diet. The pre- scription of a diet in sickness is elsewhere mentioned in our play. Cf. 1. 188; 3. 454; 3. 491. ' Nightcaps are first mentioned in the time of the Tudors. In an inventory of the Wardrobe of Henry VIII we find : " A nightcappe of blacke velvett embroidered." They were worn in the day-time by elderly men and invalids. When Zoilus was sick he knew not where. Save his wrought nightcap and lawn pillow-bear. Davies' Epigrams. They are frequent in the portraits of the seventeenth cen- tury, some of velvet or silk, occasionally richly embroidered and edged with lace.' Planche, Diet, of Costume. 262. to Paris with lohn Dorrie. The reference is to a song entitled John Dory, which was exceedingly popular. Weber, in a note on a passage in The Chances 3, 2, where one of the characters calls for John Dory, prints all the ACT n] Notes 169 verses of the song. The tune is to be found in Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time 1. 68, and Hawkins' His- tory of Music 5. 478. Ritson, Ancient English Songs 2. 57, says that this was the favorite performance of the EngUsh minstrels as late as the reign of King Charles II. Cf. Earle, Microcosmography, " Character of a Poor Fiddler " : ' Hunger is the greatest pains he takes, except a broken head some- times and laboring fohn Dory.' 263. my prettie Nump. Presumably, Nump is here used for numps, the obsolete term for dolt or blockhead. See Glossary. Cf. Bp. Parker, Reproof of Rehearsel Trans., 1673, p. 85: Take heart, numps I here is not a word of the stocks. In Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair 1. 4 the word is a cor- ruption of ' Humphrey,' Humphrey Waspe being addressed as 'Mr. Numps,' and it is possible that the same nickname is here applied to our Humphrey. 265. The Diuels Dam. This and the similar phrase, 'the devil and his dam,' were very common in the literature of the time. Englische Studien, Vol. 32, prints the following quotation, taken from Henry Brinklow's Complaynt of Rod- eryck Mors (1542 ; E. E. T. S.), as an irrefutable proof that the second expression must already have been a very usual one in the first half of the 16th century: 'It is amended, even as the devel mendyd his dayms legg (at it is in the proverbe).' This is an evidence, added to that of our pas- sage, that the devil's dam was accustomed to undergo some sort of physical maltreatment. Moreover, the ridicule of these infemals was one of the dramatists' favorite appeals to the groundlings, a motive which came by direct descent from the later miracle and morality plays, in which the devil was often a comic character. 266. will proue me another Things. Strangely enough, the correction of Things to thing escaped the early editors, and even Dyce, but was finally made by Strachey. Cf. va- riants. 271. I am no true woman. Cf. / Henry IV 2. 2: 'Now, as I am a true woman, holland of eight shillings an ell.' lyo The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act n 279, here's some greene ginger for thee. A specific brought, no doubt, from the Wife's own still-room. The housewives of the time were richly versed in remedial lore, and manu- factured many of the domestic medicines. Cf. 3. 211, and note. 297, no more. This phrase is an old form of demanding silence. Cf, King John 4, 1 : Hub. Peace; no more. Adieu, , , . Arth. O heaven ! I thank you, Hubert. Hub. Silence; no more: go closely in with me. Cf. also Hey wood's / Edward IV, p. 24, ed. Dyce : Peace, wife, no more. Friend, I will follow ye, 297. In Dyce's arrangement, the fifth scene begins at this point, Cf variants, ' Though Humphrey had not quitted the stage, having been detained by the Citizen's Wife, there can be no doubt that the audience were to imagine a change of scene on the entrance of Ralph: I have already noticed more than once that our early theatres were not furnished with moveable painted scenery,' Dyce, 300, aske him if he keep The passage. In the old ro- mances, the entrances to castles, &c,, are frequently defended from intruders by knights who were placed as sentries over them. For illustrations, one may turn to Palmerin of Eng- land. In Part 1, chap, 10, Primaleon comes to Dramuziando's castle. ' And being come near the castle, the noble prince Don Duardos came forth upon the bridge, . . , Primaleon, no less abashed at the bravery of the castle, than to see a knight so well appointed at arms, began in this order to use his speeches : Sir Knight, will 5'ou not give passage to one who wishes to see this castle, without making him prove the strenght of our hands ? If, replied Don Duardos, you knew how little necessary that wish is, I well believe you would bend your way elsewhere. The custom is, that you must joust with me, and if you overthrow me, pass through other full doubtful dangers, which will show themselves.' The keeping of a passage for ' the love of lady fair ' seems exemplified in Part 1, chap, 20 : 'As concerning why I keep ACT ii] Notes 171 this passage, thus it is : a certain lady, who cured the wounds I received at my last encounter, against two knights whom I slew, commanded me to keep this passage until I should win a knight whom she greatly desireth.' 304. on. Eds. 1750, 1778, and Weber printed, for the metre, upon. 311. Where is the caitive wretch, &c. Ralph's espousal of Humphrey's cause is reflective of the chivalric defense of all distressed mortals, male as well as female. Cf. Don Quixote, Bk. 2, chap. 5 : ' And therefore I travel through these solitudes and deserts, seeking adventures with fall res- olution to offer mine own arm and person to the most dangerous that fortune shall present, in the aid of weak and needy persons.' Cf. 1. 263, and note. 316. the great venture of the purse And the rich casket. ' Adventures of the casket ' are not infrequent in the ro- mances. Cf. Introd., p. XXXIX. 318. Here comes the Broker hath purloin'd my treasure. There is double meaning in this sentence. Humphrey uses the word broker not only in its ordinary signilicance, but, more emphatically, in the obsolete sense of pander, or go- between in love-affairs; here, with an ironical implication. 323. bid him take choice of ground. And so defye him. This reflects the conventional mode of challenging an enemy to a contest or trial of skill. Frequently the summons was carried by a subordinate of the challenger. Thus in Amadis of Gaul, Bk. 2, chap. 12 : ' Then said the knight, King, I defy thee on the part of Famongomaden, the giant of the Boil- ing Lake.' 325—7. I defie . . . bright Lady. Cf. Amadis of Gaul, Bk. 1, chap. 17 : ' Galvanes then let loose the bridle; You threaten us, and you will not release the damsel as right is, therefore I defy you on my own behalf, and for all errant knights ! And I defy you aU, replied the duke ; in an evil hour shall any of you come here ! ' 338-42. With that . . . Helmet. ' Quoted, or parodied, from some romance.' Dyce. 339. such a knocke. That he forsooke his horse and 1 72 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act n downe he fell. The passage is typical. Cf. Amadis, Bk. 1. chap. 12 : ' When he of the lions heard that he with whom he must yet deal was the lord of the castle, he delivered him such a rigorous blow on the helmet that he lost his stirrups, and staggered and fell upon the horse's neck.' 341. And then he leaped vpon him and plucking of his Helmet. We are to assume that Jasper fitted the action to the word. The removing of the vanquished knight's helmet was usually the prelude to his acknowledgement of defeat, in the absence of which he suffered death. The passage in Amadis just quoted continues : ' The knight then seized his helmet and plucked it off, . . . and cried. Yield thyself or thou art dead. Mercy, quoth he, good knight, and I am your prisoner.' Cf. also Bk, 2, chap. 19 : ' Amadis followed close and caught him by the helmet, and plucked it off, and brought him to the ground at his feet, then knelt upon him and cut off his head, to the great joy off all.' 349. God blesse vs. God preserve us. The utterance is a precaution from any evil which might arise from pro- nouncing the devil's name. Cf. Ben Jonson, The Devil is an Ass 4. 4: Wit. What's his name? Fit. Devil, o'Darbi-shire. Hit. Bless us from him! 352. if there bee any Law in England. Seemingly a com- mon expression. Cf. A Woman is a Weathercock, Dods.-Haz., Old Eng. Plays 9. 57 : ' She is my kinswoman, and I would be loth our house should suffer any disgrace in her; if there be law in England, . . . the wench shall take no wrong.' 358. I'le haue a ring to discouer all inchantments. An indication of the credence given by the Citizen and his class to the tales of enchantment and the magical properties of rings, which were scattered throughout the old romances. 368. Fencing-schoole. Cf. 2. 54, and note. ' The manner of the proceeding of our fencers in their schools is this : first, they which desire to be taught at their admission are called scholars, and, as they profit, they take degrees, and proceed to be provosts of defence ; and that must be wonne by pubUc ACT n] Notes 173 trial of their proficiencie and of their skill at certain weapons, which they call prizes, and in the presence and view of many hundreds of people; and, at their next and last prize well and sufficiently performed, they do proceed to be maisters of defence, or maisters of fence, as we commonly call them.' The Third University of England, 1615, quoted by Strutt, Sports and Pastimes, p. 262. 379. I sweare by this my Order. The fictitious Order of the Burning Pestle. As to the custom of taking oaths, cf. 2. 129-38, and notes. 383. was straid. In the passive of some few intransitive verbs, mostly of motion, both be and have are still used, though the use of be is almost wholly restricted to the passive forms of transitive verbs. In 17th century English, the use of be with intransitive verbs was very common. Cf. Abbott, Shakes. Gram., p. 206. 384. Puddle-wharfe. Now called Puddle Dock. It is situ- ated at the foot of St. Andrew's Hill, Upper Thames Street, Blackfriars, in Castle Bay ward Ward. 'The Blacke-friers stairs, a free landing-place. Then a Watergate at Puddle wharf, of one Puddle that kept a wharf on the west side thereof, and now of Puddle Water, by means of many horses watered there.' Stow, Survey, ed. Thoms, p. 16. 384. the Criers were abroad for it. There is in the British Museum an undated folio volume containing a curious Uttle collection, on three sheets, of early London cries. The customary duty of the town crier in advertising lost children is hit off on the third sheet, upon which as a picture of this officer, bearing a staff and keys. Beneath the picture are these humorous lines : O yes, any man or woman that Can tell any tydings of a little Mayden childe of the age of 24 Yeares. Bring word to the Cryer And you shall be pleased for Your labor. And God's blessinge. Cf. A. W. Tuer, Old London Street Crtes, p. 22. 174 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act n 386. most comfortablest. The double superlative is of frequent occurrence in our old writers. ' The inflections er and est, which represent the comparative and superlative degrees of adjectives, though retained, yet lost some of their force, and sometimes received the addition of more, most for the purpose of greater emphasis. . . . Ben Jonson speaks of this as " a certain kind of EngUsh atticism, imitating the manner of the most ancientest and finest Grecians." B. J. 786. But there is no ground for thinking that this idiom was the result of imitating Greek. We find Bottom saying : " The more better assurance." M. N. D. II. 1. 49.'— Abbott, Shakes. Gram., p. 22. 387. you. 'Omitted by Weber!' Dyce. The play on get is sufficiently evident. 392. Waltham Townes end. Waltham Abbey, or Waltham Holy Cross, is a small market-place of Essex. It is situated on the river Lea, some thirteen miles out from the Liver- pool Street Station, London. It was built on the edge of the great forest of Waltham, in which some of the scenes of our play are laid. 393. the Bell Inne. The representation of a bell was a common tavern-sign. In Chambers' Book of Days 1. 278, there is a picture of the Bell Inn in Warwick Lane, in which the signboard is very clearly marked. There was a famous Bell Inn in Holborn. 'The bell is one of the commonest signs in England, and was used as early as the fourteenth century, for Chaucer says that the "gentil hostelrie that heighte the Tabard," was " fast by the Belle." Most probably bells were set up as signs on account of our national fond- ness for bell-ringing, which procured for our island the name of the "ringing island," and made Handel say, that the bell was our national musical instrument ; and long may it be so ! ' Larwood and Hotten, History of Signboards, p. 477. ' Those to wnes that we call thoro wfaires [of which Waltham was one] have great and sumptuous innes builded in them, for the receiuing of such trauellers and strangers as passe to and fro. The manner of harbouring wherein, is not like to that of some other countries, ... in which the host or ACT n] Notes 175 goodman of dooth chalenge a lordlie authoritie ouer his ghests, but cleane otherwise, sith euerie man may vse his inne as his owne house in England, and have for his monie how great or little varietie of vittels and what other seruice himself shall think expedient to call for.' Harrison, Des- cription of England (Holinshed's Chronicles 1. 414). 397. An ancient Castle. Cf. Introd., pp. XL-XL VI. 398. the most holy order of the Bell. The introduction of this fictitious order is in evident ridicule of the great number and variety of fraternities among the knights. ' We have had many orders of Knighthood, plaine Knights, Knights of Bath, Knights and Baronets, Knights Bannerets, Knights Templars, Knights of Jerasulem, Knights of Windsor, and Knights of the Post, which two last were very much like the Knight errants, for they could reply to the Question as quick as the Don, and as point blanke.' Gayton, Festivous Notes Upon Don Quixote, p. 9. ' While the form of chivalry was martial, its object became to a great extent religious and social : from a mere military array chivalry obtained the name of the Order, the Holy Order, and a character of seriousness and solemnity was given to it' Sir E. Strachey, Introduction to Morte Darthur, p. XXIV. 403. Chamberlino, who will see Our beds prepar'd. ' Cham- berUno, properly Chamberlain. An attendant in an inn, equiv- alent to the present head waiter or upper chambermaid, or both offices united; sometimes male, sometimes female. Milton says that Death acted to Hobson the carrier: In the kind office of a chamberlin, Show'd him his room where he must lodge that night, Pull'd off his boots, and took away the light. On the Univ. Carrier, 1. 14. I had even as live the chamberlaine of the White Horse had called me up to bed. Peele's Old Wive's Tale, i, 1. The character of a chamberlaine is given at large by Wye Saltonstall, in the 18th of his Characters (1631), where some of his tricks are exposed. Among his perquisites was that of selling faggots to the guests. He is also said to be " sec- 176 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act n retary to the kitching and tapsty," i. e. the tap. He also made the charge for the reckoning. The author concludes by saying, But I forbeare any farther description, since his picture is drawne to the hfe in every inne. See Mr. Warton's ed. of Milton's smaller poems, p. 323. A chamberlaine was also a servant in private houses. See Johnson.' Nares, Glossary. 404. and bring vs snowy sheetes. ' Ech comer is sure to lie in cleane sheets, wherein no man hath beene lodged since they came from the landresse, or out of the water wherein they were last washed.' Harrison, Description of England (Holinshed's Chronicles 1. 414). 405. Where neuer foote-man stretch'd his butter'd Hams. ' This alludes to the running footmen, a fashionable piece of splendid folly prevalent at the time. They were still kept by some noblemen in Scotland about the middle of the last century, ane are to be met with occasionally on the continent. Like the jockeys, they are put upon a particular diet ; and, in order to prevent cramps, the calves of their legs are greased, and to this the text refers.' Weber. 409. our Palfries slicke -with wisps of straw. ' Their horsses in like sort are walked, dressed and looked vnto by certaine hostelers or hired seruants, appointed at the charges of the house, who in hope of extraordinarie reward will deale verie diligentlie after outward appeerance in this their func- tion and calling.' Harrison, Description of England (Holin- shed's Chronicles 1. 414). ' For as soon as a passenger comes to an Inne, the servants run to him, and one takes his horse and walks him till he be cold, then rubs him and gives him meate, yet I must say they are not much to be trusted in this last point, without the eye of the Master or his servant to oversee them.' Fynes Moryson, cited by Besant, London in the Time of the Tudors, p. 335. 411. grease their teeth with candle snuffe. This seems to have been a common trick of the ostlers to prevent the horse from eating the provender. In Lanthorne and Candle- ACT ii] Notes 177 light {IVks. 3. 298), Dekker describes the manner in which a certain ostler proceeded to wean his charges of their taste for hay. He stole down to the stable in the dead of night, and took away their provender. ' The poore Horses looked very rufull}- vpon him for this, but hee rubbing tlirir teeth onely ivith the end of a candle (in steed of a Corrol) tolde them, that for their ladish trickes it was now time to weane them : And so wishing them not to be angry if they lay vpon the hard boards, cosidering all the beddes in the house were full, back againe he stole to his Coach, till breake of day : yet fearing least the sunne should rise to discouer his knauery, vp hee started, & into the stable he stumbled, scarce halfe awake, giuing to eviery lade a bottle of hay for his breake-fast ; but al of them being troubled w the greazy tooth-ach could eate none, which their maisters in the morning espying swore they were either sullen or els that provender pricked them.' 416. Tap. Who's there, you're welcome gentlemen. Cf. Timon of Athens 4. 3 : Thou gav'st thine ears like tapsters that bid welcome To knaves and all approachers. 425. goodly entertaine. ' And it is a world to see how ech owner of them [i. e. the inns] contendeth with other for goodnesse of interteinement of their ghests, as about tinesse & change of linnen, furniture of bedding, beautie of roomes, service at the table, costlinesse of plate, strength of drinke, varietie of wines, or well vsing of horses.' Harrison, De- scription of England, p. 415. 441. Maister Humphery will do some-bodies errant. Cf. variants. Errand, in this connection, denotes some dignified enterprise. The Wife is predicting that Humphrey, hke Ralph, will prove his quality by undertaking the rescue of some distressed knight or damsel. Cf. Kane, Arctic Explo- rations 2. 21. 207: 'The scene impressed my brother when he visited it on his errand of rescue.'' Cf. Glossary. 448. Who oft hath vrged me thy foolishnesse. Who oft hath brought to my mind, pressed upon my attention, M 178 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act n thy foolishness. For a similar use of urge^^ cf. The Coxcomb 5. 2: Ric I do beseech you To pardon all these faults, and take me up An honest, sober, and a faithful man ! Viola [raising him]. For God's sake, urge your faults no more, but mend ! By supplying to, the modem editors have mended the lame metre. 454. hedge binding. According to A^. E. D., this compound word is obsolete. It is used to denote ' something used to bind together the bushes composing a hedge.' 464. Puckeridge. According to Harrison, ' Puchrich ' was on 'the waie from Walsingham to London,' some thirteen miles from Waltham, and twenty-five from London. De- scription of England, p. 415. 468. tuely. Misprint. Cf. variants. 476. When it was growne to darke midnight. 'This stanza is from the ballad of Fair Margaret and Sweet WilUam, Reliques of Ancient Poetry [Vol. 3, Bk. 2], where it is thus given [from " a modem printed copy "] : "When day was gone, and night was come, And all men fast asleep. Then came the spirit of fair Marg'ret, And stood at William's feet. " ' Weber. The full title of the ballad is Fair Margaret's Misfortunes ; or Sweet William's frightful dreams on his wedding night, with the sudden death and burial of those noble lovers. Mar- garet has died of grief because her lover has deserted her, and wedded another. Her ghost appears in his dreams to rebuke him. He is overcome with remorse, and dies. The tune to the ballad is printed in Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time 1. 383. 488. I am three merry men, and three merry men. Chap- pell in his Popular Music of the Olden Time 1. 216, prints the tune to a catch which nms thus: Three merry men and three merry men And three merry men be we a, ACT ii] Notes 179 I in the wood, and thou on the ground And Jack sleeps in the tree. These verses are rehearsed in Peele's Old Wives' Tale ; they are sung in Act 2 of Ram Alley (Dods-Haz., Old Eng. Plays 10. 298); are referred to in Dekker and Webster's Westward Ho, and other old plays ; and in Fletcher's tragedy, The Bloody Brothers, 3. 2, they occur in the following form : Three merry boys, and three merry boys. And three merry boys are we, As ever did sing, three parts in a string. All under the triple tree. Sir Toby, in Twelfth Night 2. 3, says that ' Malvolio's a Peg-a-Ramsey, and Three merry men be we.^ Hawkins, in his History of Music, says that it is a conclusion common to many old songs. The refrain, indeed, goes back at least to the Robin Hood Ballads: Then Robin Hood took them by the hands With a hey, &c. And danced about the oak-tree; For three merry men, and three merry men, And three merry men be we. 485. troule the blacke bowle to me. ' Trowle, or trole the bowl was a common phrase in drinking for passing the vessel about, as appears by the following beginning of an old catch : "Trole, trole the bowl to me. And I will trole the same again to thee." Sir John Hawkins' History of Music 3. 22. It is probably the above catch which Merrythought intro- duces into his speech ! ' Weber. Dyce says that Hawkins' quotation is from Ravenscroft's Pammelia 1609, a book which is not for the present purpose obtainable. Cf. the song at beginning of Act 2, Gammer Gurton's Needle, stanza 3 : Then dooth she trowle to mee the bowle, Euen as a mault-worme shulde. And sayth, " Sweete hart," I tooke my part Of this iolly good ale and olde. M 2 i8o The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act n In the Second Three Men's Song-, Dekker's Shoemaker s Holiday 5. 4, there is this stanza : Trowl the bowl, the jolly nut-brown bowl, And here, kind mate, to thee : Let's sing a dirge for Saint Hugh's soul, And down it merrily. The tune to Heywood's song is in Chappell's Popular Music of the (Jldni Time 1. 278. 487. cath. A misprint of catch. Cf. variants, ' A catch is a species of vocal harmony to be sung by three or more persons ; and is so contrived, that though each sings precisely the same notes as his fellows, yet by beginning at stated periods of time from each other, there results from the per- formance a harmony of as many parts as there are lingers. Compositions of this kind are, in strictness, called Canons in the unison; and as properly, Catches, when the words in the different parts are made to catch or answer each other.' Johnson and Steevens' Shakespeare 4. 57. 490. mans head vpon London-bridge. ' Old London Bridge was a stone l^ridge over the Thames from London to South- wark, 926 feet long, 60 feet high, and 40 feet broad, built between 1176 and 1209, under the superintendence of Peter of Colechurch, chaplain of the former church of St. Mary Coleclmrch, in the Old Jewry. The heads of traitors and heretics were set upon poles at tirst over the drawbridge, and then over the bridge gate at Southwark, which was taken down in 1726, but the custom of exposing traitors' heads had been discontinued l^efore then, although the gate was rebuilt of stone in 1728. . . . Hentzener, when in England in 1598, counted " above thirty '" heads upon the bridge. The last head exhibited on the bridge was that of Venner, the Fifth Monarchy zealot, in the reign of Charles II.' Wh.-C. The old bridge disappeared in 1832, after the open- ing of the new .structure in 1831. 492. of. 'Altered by the editors of 1778 to "on"; and so Welder : but they ought to have recollected that of in the sense, of on was formerly very common.' Dyce. Cf. Glossary. ACT u] Notes i8i 517. in a Countrey. This was a common expression. Cf. Nash, Summer s Last Will and Testament, Dods., Old Eng. Plays 9. 67 : ' This same Harry Baker is such a necessary fellow to go on errands as you shall not tind in a country.'' 521. As you came from Walsingham. The printed version of the ballad, As ye Came from the Holy Land, from which the quotation in the text is taken, gives the stanza thus : As ye came from the holy land Of blessed Walsingham, O met you not with my true love As 1iy the way ye came ? Percy's Reliques, Vol. 2, Bk. 1. This is the query of a forsaken lover, who proceeds to descant upon the fickleness of womankind. Walsingham was a place of pilgrimage. Cf. next note. Percy says ' that pilgrimages undertaken on pretense of religion, were often productive of affairs of gallantry, and led the votaries to no other shrines than those of Venus.' He quotes from Langland, Piers Plowman : Hermets on a heape, with hoked staves, Wenten to Walsingham, and her wenches after. The verses in our passage are also found in an old play entitled Hans Beerpot, his Invisible Comedy, 1618. The tune is printed in Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time 1. 123. 521. fro that holy land. Walsingham is an old-fashioned market-town, lying in Norfolk about seven miles from the sea. It is of interest to-day because of the remains of an ancient Augustinian priory, which once contained the famous shrine of Our Lady of Walsi)igham, which was as celebrated for miraculous influences as that of St. Thomas at Canter- bury. Down to the time of the dissolution of the priory in 1538, this image of the Virgin was a close rival to equally renowned continental fanes in the numbers of pilgrims which it attracted yearly from all parts of the world. Cf. Cham- bers, Book of Days 2. 174, and Murray, Handbook of Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Cambridgeshire. All eds. except Qi and Dyce print ' the holy land,' a 1 82 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act n reading which ignores the sacred associations of Walsingham, and gives a misleading suggestion of Jerusalem. 531. He set her on a milk- white steed. ' A similar verse occurs in a ballad called The Douglas Tragedy, printed in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. 2, p. 217 [ed. 1810]: " He's mounted her on a milk-white steed, And himself on a dapple grey, With a bugelet horn hung down by his side, And lightly they rode away." ' Weber. 'And in The Knight and Shepherd's Daughter: " He sett her on a milk-white steede, And himself upon a graye ; He hung a bugle about his necke, And soe they rode awaye." Percy's Reliques Vol. 3, Bk. 1. Perhaps the verse as given by Merrythought, may exist in some ballad with which I am unacquainted.' Dyce. Child considers these conjectured originals for Merry- thought's verses to be of equal probability. Cf. English and Scottish Popular Ballads 2. 457. The Douglas Tragedy tells of the abduction of Margaret, Lord Douglas' daughter, by Lord William, the fight be- tween father and lover, the slaying of the latter, and Margaret's death from grief The Knight and Shepherd's Daughter is a tale of seduc- tion and desertion. In the end the knight is forced to wed the heroine, with an attendant discovery that she is a duke's daughter in disguise, and that he is but a squire's son. 541-2. downe .... shall. Dyce found these verses in a masque which was presented on Candlemasnight at Cole- Overton, but which has never been printed. He quotes the following passage : Puck What newes abrode ? where the vengeance haes thou been thus long. Bob. Why, goblin, He tell thee, boy ; all over England, where hospitality-downe he sings, ACT n) Notes 183 Downe, downe it falls, Downe, and arise, downe, and arise it never shall. 543. Ed. 1750, for the metre, reads ' but I behold,' and Weber, ' I but behold.' 546. you'l make a dogge on her. ' We usually talk of a dog's sire and dam.' Weber. 556. Gitie him flowers i' now Palmer. The custom of strewing flowers upon the biers and graves of departed fi-iends is of great antiquity. Brand has a chapter upon its history. Pop. Antiq. 2. 302, ff. 562. Was neuer man for Ladies sake. 'A stanza from the Legend of Sir Guy ; Percy's Reliques of Antient Poetry^ Vol. 3, Bk. 2: Was ever knight for ladyes sake Soe tost in love, as I Sir Guy For Phelis fayre, that lady bright As ever man beheld with eye. The ballad is again quoted in The Little French Lawyer^ Act 2, sc. 3.' Weber. The Little French Lawyer has only one of the lines : Was ever man for lady's sake ? Down, down ! ' " The Legend of Sir Guy " contains a short summary of the exploits of this famous champion, as recorded in the old story books ; and is commonly intitled, " A pleasant song of the valiant deeds of chivalry achieved by that noble knight Sir Guy of Warwick, who, for the love of fair Phelis, be- came hermit, and dyed in a cave of craggy rocke, a mile distant from Warwick." ' Percy, Reliques. The original metrical romance is cited by Chaucer as pop- ular even in his time: Men speke of romances of prys, Of Horn childe and Ypotys, Of Bevis, and sir Gy. Rime of Sir Thopas. The tune of The Legend of Sir Guy is in Chappell's Pop- ular Music of the Olden Time 1. 172. 184 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act n 573. I gaue the whoreson gallows money. ' Gallows is a common term of reproach, meaning, one who deserves the gallows; yet Weber printed '' I gave the whoreson gallows- money " ! ' — — Dyce. 575. him. "em. 'Old eds. "him," a frequent misprint.' Dyce. Cf. variants. 577. Baloo. ' See Percy's Reliques of Antient Poetry Vol. 2, Bk. 2, Lady Anne Bothwell's Lamentation ; in which the concluding Hues of each stanza are these; Balow, my babe, lie .stil and sleipe ! It grieves me sair to see thee weepe. ' ^Ed. 1778. ' There are several other popular songs which have a sim- ilar burden, but the text alludes to the tune, which was still popular in the reign of Charles IL' Weber. Lady Bothwell, in the ballad mentioned, croons over her babe a lullaby into which she infuses a lament over her lord, who has deserted her. 578. Lachrimae. Specifically, Lachrimae was a tune, written by Dowland, a celebrated lutanist and composer. It is pre- served in two MSS. of Dowland's (consisting of lute-music) in the Public Library at Cambridge, in Queen Elizabeth's Virginal Book. Dowland also published a musical volume entitled Lachrymae, or Seven Teares figured in seaven passion- ate Pavans, &c., which has been confused with the tune itself by Weber, Nares, and other commentators. Cf. Dyce. There are numerous references to the tune in the old dramatists. 581. what story is that painted vpon the cloth? Painted cloth was a term frequently applied to a species of cheap hangings, upon which designs, i. e. ' stories ' — -were painted in imitation of tapestry. Since tapestry was very expensive, painted cloths were used for decorative purposes even in the houses of the aristocracy. Cf. Nares, Glossary. If one were to accept the statements of Malone and Collier that curtains were used in front of the old stages, we might regard the painted cloth to which the Wife refers as a drop- ACT ii] Notes 185 curtain. Recent investigators, however, discountenance the conckisions of the older authorities on this point. W. J. Lawrence, in an article entitled Some Characteristics of the Elizabethan and Stuart Stage (Englische Studien, Vol. 32, 1903), in an argument too long to reproduce here, shows that some of the passages cited by Malone in support of his contention have no bearing on the period, and that all the others refer, not to a front curtain, but to the traverses. The traverses were hangings at the rear of the stage, sometimes used for scenic purposes, and sometimes serving, when drawn, to make another and inner apartment, if the business of the play so required. Especially pertinent to our play is this paragraph in Law- rence's article : ' Much of what we know delinitely concerning the physical conditions of the Elizabethan-Stuart theatres, and of the play-going customs of the time, argues of the absence of a front curtain. The stage was simply a rush- strewn scaffold jutting out into the pit. It had no feature that approximated to our modern proscenium arch. Between player and spectator there was as yet no strict line of de- marcation. If the action demanded it (as in The Knight of the Burning Pestle), the player could seat himself tempora- rily in the pit ; the spectator, on his part, could retaliate by occupying a stool on the stage. Moreover, as there were boxes at the back of the stage as well as on the sides, there was as little necessity for a front curtain at an early playhouse as in a latterday circus.' Weber remarks in connection with our passage : ' It may here be observed, that the present play is one of the strongest proofs in favour of Mr. Malone's argument, that there were no moveable scenes in the ancient theatres; as the citizen and his wife would certainly have made their observations on the different alterations, which must have been necessary had the scenery intended to be imagined been actually represented.' 581. the confutation of Saint Paul. The Wife undoubtedly means The Conversion of St. Paul; but the one title for the ' story ' probably has as much significance for her as the other. 1 86 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act m 583. that Raph and Lucrece. An evident blunder for the Rape of Lucrece. 585. that was a Tartarian. ' " The citizen's mistake and his wife's consequent surprise will not be understood with- out recollecting that Tartarian was a cant term for a thief. So in The Merry Devil of Edmonton, the Host says, ' There's not a Tartarian nor a carrier shall breathe upon your geldings; they have villainous rank feet, the rogues, and they shall not sweat in my linen.' And in The Wander- ing Jew, 1640, as quoted by Mr. Reed, the Hangman says, ' I pray. Master Jew, bestow a cast of your office upon me, a poor member of the law, by telling me my fortune ; and if any thieving Tartarian shall break in upon you, I will with both hands nimbly lend a cast of my office to him.' ' Weber, who was indebted to the index of Dodsley's Old Plays for these examples of a word not of common occurrence, and the meaning of which they leave somewhat indefinite.' Dyce. Act III. 1. my deere deere. Weber foolishly printed ' my dear deer ! ' Of course the modem reading should be ' my dear dear,^ i. e. my dear darling. Cf. variants. 25. But take it. Moorman, ed. of The Knight of the Burning Pestle (Temple Dramatists), suppUes the right meaning of this phrase, viz. give way, acquiesce, and cites, by way of illustration, Hamlet's soliloquy at the end of 2. 2 : Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across? Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face ! Tweaks me by the nose ? gives me the lie i ' the throat, As deep as the lungs? who does me this, ha? ' Swounds, I should take it. 35. Tell me (deerest) what is loue ? This song occurs in The Captain 2. 2, with variations and an added stanza. 47. Euer toward. Those that loue, to loue anew. The sense is helped by the omission of the comma after toward. Anew is a puzzling word. It apparently has a meaning ex- tending beyond any definition supplied by the dictionaries. ACT in] Notes 187 I have given it the definition of freshly ; as a novelty ; with some implication of fickleness. Cf. Glossary. This is an inter- pretation warranted by the drift of the v^^hole lyric, throughout which Luce Ughtly banters Jasper upon the unfaithfulness of lovers. 49-51. I see the God, Of heauy sleepe, lay on his heauy mace Vpon your eye-lids. Here is the familiar conception of Somnos lulling to sleep whomsoever he touches with his golden wand. Cf. fulius Caesar 4. 3. 267. 54. distempers. ' Sympson, for the metre, printed " all distempers ; " and so his successors. Something perhaps may have dropt out from the line : it is nevertheless certain that our early poets very frequently used fair as a dissyllable.' Dyce. 63. let not fulnesse Of my poore buried hopes, come vp together. The employment of together in connection with a verb the subject of which is in the singular is peculiar; it can best be explained here by considering the notion of plurality involved in the word fulnesse through its association with hopes. The comma after hopes is omitted by F. and succeeding editions, as of course it should be. Cf. variants. 66. the sea and women Are gouem'd by the Moone. The idea is proverbial. In Hey wood's 2 Edward IV, p. 162, ed. Dyce, Mistress Blague, a false friend of Jane Shore, says : And what can be objected for the same That once I lov'd her: well perhaps I did; And women all are govern d by the moon, But now I am of another humour; Which is, you know a planet that will change. The notion is embodied by Shakespeare in Richard III 2. 2, in a speech of Queen Elizabeth : All springs reduce their currents to mine eyes, That I, being governed by the watery moon, May send forth plenteous cries to drown the world ! Cf. also Love's Labour's Lost 5. 2 : 1 88 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act hi Rosalind. My face is but a moon, and clouded too Not yet ! no dance ! Thus change I like the moon. King. Will you not dance ? How come you thus estranged ? Rosalind. You took the moon at full, but now she's changed. 100. watch at Ludgate. The sentinels who stood guard at Ludgate, one of the entrances through the city wall. Cf. Ind. 3, and note. These officers were .stationed along all parts of the wall. Pepys' Diary 3. 410 (ed. Wheatley, 1893) has this entry : ' Home in a coach, round by the Wall, where we met so many stops by the Watches that it co.st us much time and some trouble, and more money, to every watch, to them to drinck.' The Wife's suggestion that the watch at Ludgate be called is perhaps especially significant in that she knew of Ludgate, not only as a passage-way into the city, but also as a prison which was set apart for the free citizens of her own class who were committed for debts, tre.spasses, and like offenses. Ludgate was first erected into a prison in the reign of Richard II. Traitors and other criminals were committed to Newgate. Cf. I\Ias.singer, The City Madam: . . . built with other men's monies Ta'en up at interest, the certain road To Ludgate in a citizen. 102. the King's peace. ' orig. The protection secured to certain persons by the king, as those employed on his bus- iness, travelling on the king's highway, &c. ; hence, the gen- eral peace of the kingdom under the king's authority.' N. E. D. ' By the end of the thirteenth century , . . the king's peace had fully grown from an occasional privilege into a common right.' Sir T. Pollock, Oxford Lectures, p. 88. 121. Sir Beuis. The hero of a celebrated mediaeval ro- mance, entitled Sir Bevis of Hampton, which has as its sub- ject the wondrous adventures and daring of an English knight, principally in the East. The legend is widely spread in the literatures of mediaeval Europe. The original English version (13th cent.) seems to have been derived from a French source. The story is related in Drayton's Polyolhion, Bk. 2. ACT lu] Notes 189 122. stay his comming. In the cant of knight- errantry ^ tliis is a stock phrase meaning to await his arrival or onset. Cf. Palmerin dc Oliva, Part 1, chap. 6 : ■ He got over the Wall againe, where Trenato stayed his comming.'' ' As for the rest they should be going on before, and stay his com- ming at an appointed place.' 145. I tremble (as they say) as 'twere an Aspine leafe. Cf. 2 Henry IV 2. 4: ' Host. ... By my troth, I am the worse when one says " swagger; " feel, masters, how I shake; . . . yea, in very truth, do I, an 'twere an aspen-leaf : I cannot abide swaggerers." 156. the reckoning is not paid. ' In the evening or in the morning after breakfast .... he, the guest, shall have a reckoning in writing, and if it seeme vnreasonable, the Host will satisfie him, either for the due price, or by abating part, especially if the servant deceive him any way, which one of experience will soone find.' Fynes Moryson, Itinerary, 1617, p. 151. 160-2. We render thankes . . . For thus refreshing of our wearied limbes. One is reminded of Don Quixote's gratitude to the host in Bk. 3, chap. 3. Cf. Introd., p. XLI. 164. there is twelue shillings to pay. Ralph and his attendants have spent the night at the inn, and have prob- ably had supper and breakfast. Whether or not the charge for the accommodations is exorbitant may be reckoned from the following passage in Fynes Moryson's Itinerary, 1617, p. 61 : 'hi the Innes men of inferiour condition vse to eate at the Host's Table, and pay som six pence ameale : but Gentlemen have their chambers, and eate alone, except perhaps they have consorts and friends in their company, and of their acquaintance. If they loe accompanied, perhaps their reckoning may commonly come to some two shiUings a man, and one that eates alone in his owne chamber with one or two servants attending him, perhaps vpon reckoning may spend some five or six shillings for supper and break- fast. . . . One horses meate will come to twelve pence, or eighteene pence the night for Hay, Oates and Straw.' 190 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act iii 164. to pay. The infinitive active is often found where we use the passive. Cf. Abbott, Shakes. Gram., p. 259. 166. double lug. 'Mentioned by Cleveland in The Rebel Scot : " Or which of the Dutch States a double Jug Resembles most in Belly or in Beard." JVorks, p. 41, ed. 1687.' Dyce. 176. I will not bate a peny. Apparently the Host thinks that Ralph has been fairly treated during his sojourn. Cf. 3. 164, and note. 179. nothing but. (It is) nothing but. Abbott gives num- erous examples of the omission of it is in Shakespearean English. Cf. Shakes. Gram., p. 290. 179. the old Knight is merrie with Ralph. Gay ton, in speaking of the tavern-keeper in Don Quixote, chap. 3, thus accounts for the proverbial merriment of mine Host : ' It is ordinary for Hosts to be knavishly witty, the latter being a set-off to the former. Much of the reckoning goes current for the Drolery of the Maker of the Bill. There is a kind of Leachery in neat and ingenious cozenage. It doth find mercy before a Judge, and applause amongst most. . . . Just as mine Host is here, so is every Host almost upon all rodes of the Temper with his Guest ; he is a Knight errant with a Knight errant ; Are you a Cavaliere, he is a Cavaliere. . . . They are the veriest Apes in the World, and to be short, generally Bonii Socii, and very Sofia's : Like guest, like Land- lord.' Festivous Notes Upon Don Quixote, p. 8. 183. Sir Knight, this mirth of yours becomes you well. Ralph's obtuseness regarding the reckoning eclipses even that of Don Quixote upon leaving the inn in Bk. 3, chap. 3. Cf. Introd., pp. XLI-II. 185. But to requite this noble curtesie. Don Quixote similarly offers to give a knightly recompense for his enter- tainment. Cf Introd., p. XLI. 186-8. If any of your Squires will follow armes, Hee shall receiue from my heroicke hand A Knight-hood. It will be recalled that Don Quixote was much afflicted vmtil he was ACT inj Notes 1 9 1 dubbed knight, ' forasmuch as he was fully persuaded that he could not lawfully enterprise, or follow any adventure, until he received the order of knighthood ' (Bk. 1, chap. 2). All the chivalric heroes, before they enter into the full swing of their adventures, see to it that they become knighted. Amadis says : ' Sir, it behoves me to obtain knighthood, that I may win honour and the praise of prowess. The king saw him, how fair he was, and approaching him said. Would you receive the order of knighthood ? 1 would. In the name of God, then! and may He order it that it be well bestowed on you .... Then, putting on the right spur, he said, now are you a knight, and may receive the sword. The king took the sword and gave it him, and the child girded it on ' (Bk. 1, chap. 5). In Don Quixote, the cere- mony is more familiar to us : the host who performs it deals blows upon the neck and shoulders with his sword. 189. Faire Enight I thanke you for your noble ofifer. Don Quixote's host is less courteous than Ralph's. Cf. Introd., p. XLII. 190. Therefore gentle Knight. 'The incomplete sense shows that some words which preceded " Therefore " have dropt out from the second line.' Dyce. 190. gentle Enight. A very fi-equent formula in the ro- mances. Cf. Amadis, Bk. 1, chap. 19: 'Ah, gentle knight, God protect thee and give thee reward.' 195. let him go snickvp. Cf. 2. 87, and note. 197. theres your mony, haue you any thing to say to Raph now? This solution of the difficulty has no parallel in Don Quixote. Cf. Introd., p. XLII. 210. when your youth comes home, &c. The housewife was the great ally of the doctor in the old times. A still- room was a common department in the Elizabethan house. There the good woman of the house concocted numerous specifics for the family's use, and found, in so doing, one of her most regular employments. The medical superstitions of the age were numerous, and the strange remedies which the Wife proposes for ills in various parts of our play are a faithful reflection of ideas current in her day. 192 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [acthi Thornbury has some interesting pages on the domestic medicine of the EUzabethan age in his Shakespeare's Eng- land, Vol. 2, chap. 14. 211. let him rub all the soles of his feete, and the heeles, and his ancles, with a mouse skinne. I have been able to get no information regarding the belief that a mouse's skin was remedial for chilblains. Some curious superstitions re- garding other medical uses of mice are recorded in an old book by one Robert Lovell, published in 1661. Its title is Panzoologicomineralogia, or a Compleat History of Animals and Minerals. The following extract is taken from Notes and Queries, Series 1, Vol. 4, p. 52 : ' The flesh eaten cause th oblivion, and corrupteth the meat ; yet those of Chalecut eat them ; it is hot, soft, and fattish, and expelleth melancholy. ... A mouse dissected and applied, draweth out reeds, darts, and other things that stick in the flesh. . . . Mice bruised, and reduced to the consistence of an acopon, with old wine, cause hair on the eyebrows. . . . Being eaten by children when rosted, they dry up the spittle. The magic- ians eat them twice a month against the pains of the teeth. The water in which they have l^een boiled helps against the quinsey. . . . The fresh blood kills warts. The ashes of the skin, appUed with vinegar, help the paines of the head. The head worn in a cloth, helps the headache and epilepsy.' There is more of the same sort, to the extent of nearly three closely printed pages. 217. it's very soueraigne for his head if he be costiue. The virtue of smelling to the toes is a feature in folk-lore medicine upon which I have found no information. Smelling to vmlikely curatives, however, seems not to have been un- common. In Lovell's Compleat Histo7'y of Animals and Minerals, p. 80, quoted above, 3. 211, we are told that the dung of a ' Horse hindereth too much bleeding, after phle- l^omie, being applied : So smelling to.' 225. light. The word is an obsolete pp. of the verb to light. It is unwarrantably altered to lit by ed. 1778 and Weber. 228. Dwarfe beare my shield. Squire eleuate my lance. Portions of the armour were regularly borne by the knight's ACT m] Notes 1 93 attendants. Thus in Palmerin de Oliva : ' In the morning they arose, and armed themselves, all save their Helmets and Lances, which their Squires carried.' Elsewhere, we read of two squires who carry the hero's helmet, shield, and mace ; and, in Palmerin of England, of a squire who bears the shield and helmet. 232, speake worthy Knight, If ought you do of sad ad- uentures know. Cf. the speech which Gayton in his Festi- vous Notes, p. 83, causes Don Quixote to utter upon leaving the inn: High Constable of this large Castle, kown, I cannot pay you, what I present owe For all the favours shewne, for the sweet oyles, Yet fragrant on my wounds got in late broyles. But chiefly for the Queens affections. And for your Daughters gentle frictions, Never was Knight so handled: wherefore say, (For new adventures call your guest away) Is there a Miscreant who hath dar'd to blast Your Queen or Daughter, as they were unchast; Or that your selfe are of no noble spirit, (Courteous above almost Knights-errants merit) Shew me the Varlet that I may confound him, Before I go to fight the world so round in. 244. Against no man, but furious fiend of hell. Against a creature who is not a man, but a furious fiend of hell. 246. For heere I vow vpon my blazing badge, Neuer to blaze a day in quietnesse. Weber reminds the reader that in the romance of Perceforest (edit. 1531, Vol. 1, chap. 41) Alexander the Great and his chivalry take an oath that they will never rest one day in one place until the great quest is accomplished. 247. blaze. Dyce reasonably conjectures that the word is a misprint, occasioned by the eye of the original compositor having caught the word ' blazing ' in the preceding line. He says the sense seems to require ' lose ' or ' pass.' This is true ; nevertheless it is consistent with the context to re- gard the word as meaning to shine resplendently , whereby Ralph would mean that he would not be content to sit in idleness, resplendent with his armor and his blazing badge, &c. N 194 The Knight of the Burning 'Pestle [act m 248. But bread and water will I onely eate, &c. Cf. Don Quixote, Bk. 2, chap. 2 : ' But when Don Quixote saw that the visor of his helmet was broken, he was ready to run mad; and, setting his hand to his sword, and lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said : " I vow to the Creator of all things, and to the four gospels where they are largest written, to lead such another life as the great Marquis of Mantua did, when he swore to revenge the death of his nephew Valdo- vinus; which was not to eat on table-cloth nor sport with his wife, and other things, which, although I do not now remember, I give them here for expressed, until I take complete revenge on him that hath done me this outrage.' ' Pellicer, in his excellent edition of Don Quixote, observes, that Cervantes either did not recollect or purposely altered the vow of the Marquis, which he subjoins from an old ballad, and which w£is, never to comb his hair, nor cut his beard, nor to change his dress, nor |3ut on new shoes, never to enter any town or village, not to take off his armour, imless to wash his body ; never to eat upon a table-cloth, nor sit down at a table, till he had revenged Baldovinos.' Weber. Bread and water would not have seemed a hard diet to Don Quixote. He gives Sancho Panza to understand that ' it is an honour for knights-errant not to eat in a month's space; and if by chance they should eat, to eat only of that which is next at hand.' In the books of knight-errantry, the heroes did never eat ' but by mere chance and adven- ture, or in some costly banquets that were made for them and all other days they passed over with herbs and roots ; ' and though it is to be vmderstood that they could not live without meat, yet, since they spent the greater part of their lives in forests and deserts, ' their most ordinary meats were but coarse and rustical.' 249. And the greene hearbe and rocke shall be my couch. The knights' predilection for hard couches is a recurrent motive. Cf. Palmerin of England, Part 2, chap. 121 : ' Here they alighted, . . . the knight having retired farther into the wood, that he might leave them to themselves; and ACT m] Notes 195 throwing himself at the foot of the tree, with his helmet for a pillow, began to think of Lionarda.' 254. There doth stand a lowly house. ' Something seems to have dropt out here. Sympson's " anonymous friend " proposed, " A mansion there doth stand, a lonely house, ^^ observ- ing that afterwards ' " tis called a mansion." ' Dyce. 255. a Caue, In which an ougly Gyant now doth won. Giants and wild men in the romances habitually inhabit caves or dark and forbidding castles. ' The Savage man ' who carries off the infant Palmerin in the first chapters of Pal- merin of England dwells in a cave. One of the giants whom Palmerin overcomes is known as ' Daliagem of the Dark Cave.' 257. Barbaroso. The play upon the word barber (from Latin barba, a beard) is evident. Resounding and mouth-filling names were ordinarily given to the giants. In Palmerin of England, for instance, we read of the giants Pavoroso, Miraguardo, Dramuziando, &c. Don Quixote imagines himself slaying the giant Caraculiam- bro, lord of the island called Malindriana. Cf. Bk. 1, chap. 1. 263. A copper bason, on a prickant speare. A ' prickant spear ' is an ' upward pointing ' spear. Cf. Glossary. The phrase as here used is an euphemism for barber s pole. The copper basin was a common trade-sign, used to indicate blood-letting, &c., in the days when the barber and surgeon were one. ' In cities and corporate towns they still retain the name of Barber Chirurgeons. They therefore used to hang their basons upon poles, to make known at distance to the weary and wounded traveller where all might recourse.' Athenian Oracle 1. 834. In the British Apollo, fol., Lond. 1708, Vol. 1, no. 3, there is an explanation of the origin of the custom : In ancient Rome, when men lov'd fighting, And wounds and scars took much delight in, Man-menders then had noble pay. Which we call surgeons to this day. 'Twas ordered that a huge long pole. With bason deck'd, should grace the hole, N2 1 96 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act m To guide the wounded, who unlopt Could walk, on stumps the others hopt. 268. Engine. It is perhaps needless to say that the con- text shows that the Host is referring to the barber's comb. Dekker would have it that the gallants and it is gallants whom Ralph is to deliver from Barbaroso considered it ill-advised to comb the hair. He says {Gull's Horn-book, chap. 3) : 'To maintaine therefore that sconce [i. e. head] of thine strongly guarded, and in good reparation, never suffer combe to fasten his teethe there : let thy haire grow thick and bushy like a forrest, or some wildemesse; lest those sixe-footed creatures that breede in it, and are Tenants to that crowne-land of thine, bee hunted to death by every barbarous Barber; and so that delicate, and tickling pleasure of scratching, be vtterly taken from thee.' 270. Next makes him winke. For the purpose of an- ointing his eyes with perfumed water. ' Your eyes closed must be anointed therewith also.' Stubbes, Anat. of Ab- uses 2. 50. 271. brazen peece of mighty bord. ' " I conjecture the poets intende to say bore; so the cavity of a gun, cannon, &c., is commonly called." Sympson, (who, it may be mentioned as a remakable instance of obtuseness, did not perceive that the utensil here spoken of is the barber's basin, but supposed it to be a piece of ordnance: he accordingly printed " bore " in the text ; and was followed by the Editors of 1778.' Dyce. After all, as Dyce points out, bord as here used is a cor- ruption of the archaic word bore, meaning ' the calibre or internal diameter of a hole or perforation, whether made by boring or not.' Cent. Diet. The term is especially applied to the cavity of a gun or tube. Cf. Drayton, Noah's Flood (ed. 1630), p. 103: Beside th'Artillery Of fourscore pieces of a mighty Boare. The barber's basin was ' a basin or bowl formerly used in shaving, having a broad rim with a semicircular opening to ACT ni] Notes 197 fit the neck of the customer, who held it, while the barber made the lather with his hand and applied it directly : still in use in some parts of Europe as a barber's sign.' Cent. Diet. 272. bullets. In obsolete use, a bullet, as the term is here employed, means a small ball. Cf. Glossary. Cf. Lyte, Dodoeus 1. 8. 15, 1578: 'Upon the branches of the burdock there groweth small bullets or rounde balles^ Again, the word ball, in a specific obsolete use, means a spherical piece of soap. Cf. Glossary. Soap seems regularly to have been molded in this shape. In our passage, the reference is to the barber's lather-balls. The old plays and pamphlets have many references to soap-balls : As a barber wasteth his Ball in the water. — Nashe, Chrisfs Tears, p. 25. A half-witted barbarian, which no barber's art, or his balls will ever expunge or take out. Ben Jonson, Magnetic Lady 2. 1. A ball to scour a scouring ball a ball to be shaved. Dutch Courtezan 3. 3. 273. Whilst with his fingers, and an instrument With which he snaps his haire off, he doth fill The wretches eares with a most hideous noise. The snapping or ' knacking ' of the fingers, or the shears, was a common trick of the barbers. It is often given liter- ary notice. The barbers ' gallery-play ' with the shears excites the wrath of Stubbes, Anat. of Abuses 2. 50: 'Besides that, when they come to the cutting of the haire, what snipping and snapping of the cysers is there, what tricking and toying, and al to towe out mony, you may be sure.' 281, And by that vertue that braue Rosicleere, That damned brood of ougly Gyants slew. Weber states that Ralph is here referring to a combat between Rosicler and the giants Bulfor and Mandroc, which is related in chap. 10, Bk. 4, of The Mirror of Knighthood. Cf. 1. 231, and note. Since Ralph speaks of a ' brood ' of giants, it is more prob- able that he has in mind Rosicler's adventure with the giant Brandagedeon and his thirty knights. The story is 198 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act ni told in chap. 36 of Bk. 1. Rosicler goes forth to avenge a number of damsels whom Brandagedeon has molested. In the engagement, the giant is on the point of being slain, when his knights come to the rescue. So valorous and mighty of arm is Rosicler that in a trice he fells to earth ten of these assailants. He soon has slain ten more, and holds out against the remainder until one of the damsels has summoned two other errant knights to his rescue. Mean- while he has overcome and decapitated the giant himself. His strength begins to wane, but, with the arrival of aid, he revives, and the whole of Brandagedeon's company is put to the sword. 283. And Palmerin Frannarco ouerthrew. This incident is fully described in the passage from Palmerin de Oliva already quoted. Cf 1. 231, and note. 291. Saint George set on before. Nares prints the fol- lowing injunction, from an old art of war, concerning the use of the name of St. George in onsets : ' Item, that all souldiers entering into battaile, assault, skirmish, or other factions of armes, shall have for their common cry and word, St. George, forward, or, upon them St. George, whereby the souldier is much comforted, and the enemie dismaied, by calling to mind the ancient valour of England, which with that name has so often been victorious, &c. Cited by Warton in a note on Rich. III. Act. 5, sc. 3.' Cf. 3. 369, and note. 295, I hold my cap to a farthing. A similar form of wager is found in Lodge and Greene's Looking Glass for London and England, p. 83 {Greene's Dram. IVks, ed. Dyce) : '/ hold my cap to a noble, that the userer hath given him some gold.' 296. the great Dutch-man. ' Dutchman was a generick name in Decker's day, given to any one belonging to the German continent ' (note in Nott's ed. of the Gull's Hornbook, 1812, p. 7). ' The great Dutchman " was possibly," Weber says, " the same person who is mentioned as ' the German fencer ' in S. Rowley's Noble Spanish Soldier, as ' the high German ' ACT mj Notes 199 in Middleton and Dekker's Roaring Gtrl, &c." I think not. " The great Dutchman " of our text seems to be described in the following passage of Stow. " This yeare 1581 were to be scene in London 2 Dutchmen of strange statures, the one in height seven foote and seven inches, in breadth be- twixt the shoulders 3 quarters of a yard and an inch, the compass of his breast one yard and halfe and two inches, and about the wast one yard quarter and one inch, the length of his arme to the hand a full yard ; a comely man of person, but lame of his legges (for he had broken them with lifting of a barrell of beere)." Annates, p. 694. ed. 1615. The other Dutchman was a dwarf.' Dyce. 301. and a Knight met. 'Altered to "on a night met"' by Sympson, who hopes the correction " will be allowed by every candid and judicious reader: night being the time when these men-monsters remove from place to place, thereby spoiling their market by exposing to common view what they would have the world pay dearly for the sight of." And so the Editors of 1778. Weber gave the reading of the old eds., observing that " perhaps the authors alluded to some known anecdote." Qy. have the words " and a knight " been shuffled out of their right place in the sentence ? and ought we to read, " and yet they say there was a Scotch- man and a knight higher than he, and they two met, and saw one another for nothing " ? ' Dyce. 302. of all the sights. The Wife's sensational enthusiasm here reflects the fondness of her class for seeing rare and abnormal creatures. Among the attractions at the show in Ben Jonson's Bar- tholomew Fair were the bull with five legs, the great hog, the dog that danced the morris, and the hare which played on the tabor : 3. 1 ; 5. 4. Jonson, in The Alchemist 5. 1, satirizes the persistent, often indecorous, curiosity of the citizens and their wives for unusual sights: Lovewit. What should my knave advance To draw this company? he hung out no banners Of a strange calf with five legs to be seen, 200 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act in Or a huge lobster with six claws? .... Sure he has got Some bawdy pictures to call all this ging; The friar and the nun ; or the new motion Of the knight's courser covering the parson's mare ; The boy of six year old with the great thing : Or't may be, he has the fleas that run at tilt Upon a table, or some dog to dance. Gifford in his note on this passage of the Alchemist says: 'The "curiosities" which he enumerates are not imaginary ones; they were actually exhibited in London, and specific mention of them respectively, might easily be produced from the writers of those times. There is much pleasant satire on this head in the City Match, and the Knight of the Burning Pestle: Cf further The Tempest 2. 2. Mayne's City Match, printed in 1638, is an extravagant farce, much of the fun of which turns upon the exhibition of a drunken vagabond, Timothy, before the public, as a talking fish. The play is an elaborate satire on public credulity over fantastic sights. 304. the little child, &c. Dyce maintains that this is the boy mentioned in Jonson's Alchemist in the passage quoted above in note to 3. 302, Fleay agrees with Dyce. Cf. Biog. Chr. 1. 183. 305. Hermaphrodite. Morley speaks of a hermaphrodite which was exhibited at the King's Head, a tavern on Fish Street Hill over against the Mews' Gate, Charing Cross. Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair, p. 324. ' The hermaphro- dite, iii, 2, was no doubt " the monstrous child " bom 1609, July 31, at Sandwich (see S. R. 1609, Aug. 26, 31), which was probably shown in London 1609-10.' ¥\e3.y, Biog. Chr. 1. 183. Fleay is speaking of our play. There is nothing in the Stationers' Registers to prove that the ' monstrous child ' was a hermaphrodite, or that it was shown in London. 306. Niniuy was better. Nineveh, with Jonas and the Whale, was one of the most popular of the many puppet- plays in vogue at the time. According to Collier, it is mentioned by no fewer than twenty Jacobean authors. Cf. Ben Jonson, Every Man Out of his Humour 2. 1 : ' They say ACT ni] Notes 201 there's a new motion of the city of Nineveh, with Jonas and the whale, to be seen at Fleet-bridge.' Nineveh belonged to the order of religious puppet-shows which developed almost coevally with the Mysteries and Moralities. These earliest ' motions ' exhibited scriptural sub- jects from both the Old and the New Testament. During the reign of Elizabeth, historical and other secular legends began to be treated in a manner similar to the scrip- tural themes. Among the lower orders there was distinct favor shown to the ' motions,' which frequently rivaled the regular stage-performers at the theatre in popularity. The wooden figures were clothed like the actors at the the- atre, and their dumb mimicry was made to reproduce, as nearly as possible, the most successfril dramatic enter- tainments. At a later date, more invention was displayed in these productions, the best illustration of which is the famous Punch and Judy, the vogue of which continues to this day. For illustrations of the diiferent ways of manipulating the figures, and presenting their supposed dialogue, either through running commentary or through ventriloquism, cf Benjonson, Bartholomew Fair 5. 4, and Don Quixote, Part 2, chap. 26. Adequate treatment of the general subject of puppet-shows may be fomid in Collier's Punch and Judy, London, 1873, and Magnin's Histoire des Marionnettes en Europe, Paris 1862. 317. til Raph haue dispatch the Giant out of the way. Cf. variants. Till Ralph has killed the giant. The expression is probably obsolete. N. E. D. cites Potter's Antiq. Greece, 1697, 1.4: 'He was quickly dispatch' d out of the way, and no inquiry made after the murderers.' 319. bound to you. ' So the first 4to. Later eds. (the compositor's eye having caught what immediately follows) " bound to thank you " ; and so the modem editors.' — Dyce. Bound, it may be remarked, here implies obligations. Cf. Glossary. 334. feth. An old form oi faith. Cf Cupid's Revenge 5. 1 : ' Ism. What is't ? if it be no great matter whether I do or no, perhaps I will. 202 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act in Ura. Yes, feth, ' tis matter.' Again, Urania says : ' Why, feth, I do.' 336, Carduus Benedictus and Mares Milke. The use of Carduus Benedictus as a remedy for every kind of disease was wide-spread in the 17th century. I have found no definite mention of the appliance of mare's milk to ' worms.' In old folk-lore medicine, its use and the use of horse's blood for other ailments may be gathered from the following quotation : ' The milk is drunk by the Tartars. It, as also the Asses, and cows is more fit for the belly, than the sheeps which is more thick. . . . Mares milk is most purging ; then the Asses, Cows, and lastly the Goats. Being drunk it looseneth the belly. The milk of a mare, helps against the poyson of a Sea Hare, . . . and helps also the falling sicknesse. ... It purgeth ulcers. The bath thereof helpeth the womb. It causeth conception being dnmk. The whey thereof gently purgeth the body. . . . The bloud of a horse corrodeth the flesh by a septick strength : that of a colt drunk in wine helps the jaundice, being let bloud in the mouth and swallowing it, it cureth their worms. . . . The sweat of a Horse drunk in a bath driveth away worms and serpents.' Robert Lovell, A Compleat History of Ani- mals and Minerals, 1661, p. 28. Cf 3. 211, and note. 339. Enter Raph, Host, Squire, and Dwarfe. A discussion of parallels in the romances to the adventure here introduced may be found in the Introd., pp. XL VI— LI. 342. Behold that string on which hangs many a tooth. Cf The Woman-Hater 3. 3 : Knock out my teeth, have them hung at a barber's. And enter into religion. Tooth-drawing was once a function of the barber-surgeon's profession. ' The barbers anciently displayed the teeth which they had drawn on a string or chain, which they sometimes wore upon their persons. In the romance of Otuel, that champion having laid bare his adversary's jaw by a stroke of his faulchion, thus gibes him, V. 1311, " Clarel, so mote thou the, Why sheuweston thi teth to me? ACT m] Notes 203 I n'am no toth draw ere ; Thou ne sest me no chaine bere^' [p. 71 of the ed. printed for the Abbotsford Club, where in the second hne, " scheuweston thi teth."] . , . and Cleveland, in his celebrated satire, entitled ' The Rebel Scot,' speaking of their national disposition to be mercenary soldiers, says : "Nature with Scots as tooth drawers hath dealt Who use to string their teeth upon their belt." ' Weber. Truewit, in Ben Jonson's Epicoene 3. 5, suggests that Cut- berd, the barber, eat ear-wax, ' or draw his owne teeth, and add them to the lute string.' 345. Susan my Lady deere. 'I say it cannot be that there's any knight-errant without a lady ; for it is as proper and essential to such to be enamoured as to heaven to have stars : and I dare warrant that no history hath yet been seen wherein is found a knight-errant without love ; for, by the very reason that he were found without them, he would be convinced to be no legitimate knight, but a bastard ; and that he entered into the fortress of chivalry, not by the gate, but by leaping over the staccado like a robber and a thief Don Quixote, Bk. 2, chap. 5. 346. The Coblers Maid. The humble capacity of Ralph's mistress bears an obvious resemblance to that of Don Quixote's Dulcinea. I do not believe, however, that the latter is Susan's prototype. Cf. Introd., pp. LIV— LVI. 346. Milke-streete. The street lies in Cheapside, in the ward of Cripplegate. Stow {Survey, p. 1 10) supposes that it was 'so called of milk sold there.' 347. let the thought of thee. Carry thy Enight through all aduenterous deeds. The characteristic invocation of an absent lady-love upon the eve of a new adventures is illu- strated in Palmerin of England, Part 1, chap. 41. The Knight of Fortune is about to enter upon a combat with the giant Dramuziando, when, 'turning his thoughts to his lady Polinarda, in this manner he began to invoke her silently, saying. If, lady, at any time you remember me, let it be now, if only that I may know how by your help so great a victory was atchieved.' 204 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act m ' It is a received use and custom of errant chivalry, that the knight adventurous who, attempting of any great feat of arms, shall have his lady in place, do mildly and amorously turn his eyes towards her, as it were by them demanding that she do favour and protect him in that ambiguous trance which he undertakes ; and, moreover, if none do hear him, he is bound to say certain words between his teeth, by which he shall, with all his heart, commend himself to her : and of this we have innumerable examples in histories.' Don Quixote, Bk. 2, chap. 5. 355. What fond vnknowing wight is this? Some such form of inquiry as this is frequently addressed to the bold assaulter of giant or wicked knight, with the effect of calling forth from the attacking hero a proud announcement of his name, and a scathing denunciation of his opponent's perfidy. In Amadis, Bk. 1, chap. 19, Angriote of Estravus ' looked from a window and asked Amadis, Art thou he who hast slain my jaylor and my servants? Art thou he, answered Amadis, who so treacherously murderest knights and im- prisonest dames and damsels ? thou art the most disloyal and cruellest knight in the world ! . . . I am Amadis of Gaul, the knight of Queen Brisena.' 357. Where no man come but leaues his fleece behind? The barber's speech is aptly satirical of the boastful manner of the giants' addresses to their foes. Cf. Amadis, Bk. 2, chap. 13 : ' When the giant heard him, he came towards him with such rage that smoke came through the vizor of his helmet, and he shook his boarspear with such force that its ends almost met. Unhappy wretch ! cried he, who gave thee boldness enough to dare appear before me ? That Lord, quoth Beltenbros, whom thou hast offended, who will give me strength to-day to break thy pride. Come on ! come on ! cried the giant, and see if his power can protect thee from mine ! ' 367. poole. The significance of the barber's pole is spec- ified by Larwood and Hotten, History of Signboards, p. 341 : ' The barber's pole . . . dates from the time when barbers practised phlebotomy : the patient undergoing this operation ACT m] Notes 205 had to grasp the pole in order to make the blood flow more freely. ... As the pole was of course liable to be stained with blood, it was painted red : when not in use barbers were in the habit of suspending it outside the door with the white linen swathing-bands twisted around it; this in latter times gave rise to the pole being painted red and white, or even with red, white, and blue lines winding round it.' The Antiquarian Repertory, quoted by Brand, Pop. Antiq. 3. 359, says that ' the true interpretation of the party-coloured staff was to show that the master of the shop practised surgery, and could breathe a vein as well as mow a beard.' The British Apollo, 1708, Vol. 1, no. 3, having spoken of the activity of surgeons in the Roman War, goes on to say : But, when they ended all their wars. And men grew out of love with scars. Their trade decaying; to keep swimming, They joined the other trade of trimming; And on their poles to publish either. Thus twisted both their trades together. 369. Saint George for me. Cf 3. 291, and note. The in- vocation of St. George in wars and lesser combats was common long before his establishment as the patron of England in the reign of Edward III. Richard the Lion-hearted was sup- posed to have been successful in the Crusades because of the saint's response to his appeals for aid. Shakespeare makes frequent use of the name in war-cries : Then strike up drums : God and Saint George for us ! J Henry VI, 2. 1. My royal father, cheer these noble lords And hearten those that fight in your defence: Unsheathe your sword, good father ; cry ' Saint George ! ' J Henry VI, 2. 2. Harry ! England ! and Saint George ! Henry V, 3. 1. 370. Gargantua for me. Gargantua, Rabelais' great satir- ical romance, appeared in 1535. It achieved early popu- 2o6 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act m larity in England. It is with evident satirical purpose that this hero of a travesty is here invoked as a tutelary patron, and set off against St. George, the conventionalized guardian of chivalric knights. Moreover, Gargantua, being himself a giant, is here a fitting guardian of a supposed scion of his race. 371. hold vp the Giant. Cf. Glossary. 372. set out thy leg before. I was at first inclined to suppose this direction to be an antiquated fencing term, but being unable to find evidence substantiating my conjecture, I have concluded that the Wife is simply warning Ralph to fortify himself by placing or planting his leg firmly in front of him. This meaning of the phrase set out, however, is not noted in the dictionaries. 373. Falsifie a blow. An obsolete fencing term for feign a blow ; to make a blow under cover of a feint of aiming at one part of the adversary when another is the real object of attack. Cf. King and No King 1. 2 : 'You lay thus, and Tigranes falsified a blow at your leg, which you, by doing thus, avoided.' 375. Beare't off. In obsolete use, the phrase to bear off means to resist and cause (a stroke) to rebound. Cf. Glossary. 'His Helmet, to beare off blowes in battell.' Milton, Church Discipline.'' 377. Susan inspire me. Cf. 3. 347, and note. In similar fashion, Amadis is able to overcome a giant, seemingly be- cause of the sustaining remembrance of his lady. Cf. Bk. 3, chap. 2 : ' Amadis who feared him greatly, seeing how mon- strous he was, and commending himself to God, he said. Now Oriana lady mine, it is time to be succoured by you ! .... for he would attack the giant, and fitted his lance under his arm and ran at him in full career, and smote him so rudely on the breast that he made him fall back upon the crupper.' Invocations of lady-loves in the heat of combat are part of the regular machinery of the romances. 377. now haue vp againe. This singular expression is not noticed in the dictionaries. The context would seem to show that Ralph is trying to stand erect. He is apparently speak- ACT m] Notes 207 ing to himself, and the phrase seems to mean : ' Stand up ! Get up again ! ' 382. get all out of him first. The Citizen means that Ralph ought first to draw out of the giant the complete account of his ' treacherous villanies.' 390. Auernus. Lake Avemus in Campania, Italy, nine miles west of Naples, was anciently regarded as an entrance to Hades, because of its wild and gloomy aspect. 401. a Bason vnder his chin. Cf. 3. 263, 271, and note. 404. wilde. Ed. 1778 and Weber read Vile. Dyce has Vild, an obsolete corruption of vile, and adduces as evidence of its occasional employment by Beaumont and Fletcher two or three passages from other plays. However, wild makes sufficiently good sense, and I see no reason for rejecting it which can outweigh the assumption that an original read- ing wherein no confusion is involved is correct. 405. heard. In 17 th century English, the simple past is sometimes used for the complete present. ' This is in accord- ance with the Greek use of the aorist, and it is as logical as our more modem use. The difference depends upon a difference of thought, the action being regarded simply as past, without reference to the present or to completion: Abbott, Shakes. Gram., p. 246. Cf. Much Ado 1.2: ' I can tell you strange news that you yet dreamed not of.' 407. Speake what thou art, and how thou hast bene vs'd. Cf. Don Quixote, Bk. 3, chap. 8: 'One of the guardians a horseback answered that they were slaves condemned by his majesty to the galleys, and there was no more to be said. "For all that," repHed Don Quixote, " I would fain learn of every one of them in particular the cause of his disgrace." The guards said to him : " Draw you nearer and demand it of themselves." . . . With this license, which Don Quixote would have taken although they had not given it him, he came to the chain, and demanded of the first for what offence he went in so ill a guise.' Ralph's succeeding inquiries are also paralleled in Don Quixote's conversation with the slaves, but the similarity is 2o8 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act m nowhere very close. The interrogating of released captives is common in the romances. Cf. Introd., pp. XL VI— LI. 409. That that I may giue condigne punishment. This line was emended by Q2. Cf. variants. 410. I am a Knight that tooke my ioumey post North- ward from London. ' In England towards the South, and in the West parts, and from London to Barwick, Vpon the confines of Scotland, Post-horses axe established at every ten miles or thereabouts, which they ride a false gallop after some ten miles an hower sometimes, and that makes their hire the greater.' Fynes Moryson. Itinerary, 1617, p. 61. 415. and cut away my beard. And my curl'd lockes wherein were ribands ti'de. This passage ridicules the foppish fashions in hair-dressing and beard-trimming which were in vogue among the gallants of the time. The styles are well de- scribed in Lyly's Mydas 3. 2 : ' How will you be trimmed sir ? Will you have your beard like a spade, or a bodkin? A pent-house on your upper lip, or an alley on your chin? A low curie on your heade like a ball, or dangling locks like a spaniell? Your mustachoes sharp at the ends like shoemakers aules, or hanging down to your mouth like goates flakes? Your love-locks wreathed with a silken twist or shaggie to fall on your shoulders ? ' Cf. Davenant, Love and Honour: 'A lock on the left side, so rarely hung with ribanding.' Stubbes, Anat. of Abuses 2. 40, has much to say about the many 'strange fashions and monstrous manners of cuttings, trimmings,' &c., which stir his indignation. 417. with a water washt my tender eyes. Perfumed water and soap-balls were in especial favor with the gallants. Cf. Dekker, Seven Deadly Sinnes ( Wks. 2. 62) : ' No, no, be not angry with me (O you that bandie away none but sweete washing Balks, and cast none other then Rose-water for any mans pleasure).' Dekker counts shaving among the seven deadly sins of London, and his book contains a characteristically diverting chapter on the subject. Stubbes, Anat. of Abuses 2. 50, cries out against perfumed soaps and waters : ' And when they come to washing, oh how gingerly they behave ACT ni] Notes 209 themselves therein. For then shall your mouth be bossed with lather, or fome that riseth of the balles (for they have their sweete balles wherewith all they vse to washe) ; your eyes closed must be anointed therewith also. . . . You shall have also your orient perfumes for your nose, your fragrant waters for your face, wherewith you shall bee all to be besprinkled.' 420. With a dry cloath. 'Your eyes closed must be a- nointed therewith [i. e. perfumed soaps] also. Then snap go the fingers, ful bravely, God wot. Thus this tragedy ended, comes me warnte clothes to wipe and dry him withall.' Stubbes, Anat. of Abuses 2. 51. 420. for this my foule disgrace. The gallants could ill brook any shearing of their locks. Dekker reveals the in- ordinate pride they took in long, and even unkempt, hair, ' whose length before the rigorous edge of any puritanicall paire of scizzers should shorten the breadth of a finger, let the three huswifely spinsters of Destiny rather curtail the thread of thy Ufe. . . . How Vgly is a bald pate ? it lookes like a face wanting a nose ; or, like ground eaten bare with the arrows of Arches, whereas a head all hid in haire gives even to a most wicked face a sweet proportion, and lookes like a meddow newly marryed to the Spring. . . . Certain I am, that when none but the golden age went currant vpon earth, it was higher treason to clip haire, then to clip money : the combe and scizers were condemned to the currying of hackneyes : he was disfranchised ever, that did but put on a Barbers apron ' {The Gull's Hornbook, chap. 3). 425. one with a patch ore his Nose. The episode here introduced deals with a man who is in an advanced stage of the French pox, or syphilis, in England called simply the pox. This disease was so prevalent throvighout Europe in the 15th century as to be epidemic, ignorant people becoming infected in many innocent ways. The more terrible type was practically checked during the 16th century, though as late as 1579, one Wilham Clowes, in a treatise addressed to bar- bers and chirurgeons, says that, owing to the enormity of licentiousness then rife in London, at the hospital where he O 210 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act in was an attendant 'among every twentye diseased persons that are taken in, fifteen of them have the pocks.' For this citation and for an account of the features and history of the malady, cf Creighton, History of Epidemics in Britain^ Vol. 1, chap. 8. The part played by barbers in the cure of the pox may be indicated by two extracts: O Esculape ! how rife is phisike made, When ech Brasse-basen can professe the trade Of ridding pockie wretches from their paine, And doe the beastly cure for ten-groat gaine. Hall, Virgidemiarum 4. 1. 162. Truewit, in Ben Jonson's Epicoene 3. 5, asks Morose why the latter should not lay a few curses upon the head of a certain barber whom he hates : ' As, that he may get the poxe with seeking to cure it, sir ? ' 428. scorcht. Cf. variants. 'Scotch'd i. e. cut, nearly synonymous with "scor'd." The correction of Theobald and Sympson. Old eds. " scorcht." ' Dyce. The old eds. are right. In Cent. Diet. scor(t)ch is given as an obsolete form of scotch. Cf. Babees Book (E. E. T. S.), p. 80 : Afore thy meat, nor afterward, With knyfe scortche not the Boorde. 433. I am a Londoner Free by my Coppy. The 2d Knight means that he is in full citizenship, according to his copy of the official document whereby he was admitted into the freedom of the City. 434. my Ancestors Were French-men all. ' Alluding to the name of the knight.' Weber. The French pox issued from France, chiefly, during the periods when it was epi- demic. Hence its name. 436. my bones did ake. Disease of the bones is one of the late developments of syphilis, a stage known as ' ter- tiary syphilis. 438. Light. Obsolete preterite of the verb to light. Cf. Glossary. Unwarrantably altered by ed. 1778 and Weber to 'Lit.' , ACT m] Notes 211 440. Did cut the gristle of my Nose away. One of the early accounts printed by Creighton speaks of victims of syphilis 'whose very noses were eaten off.' 441. veluet plaister. The covering of wounds with pieces of velvet is a custom ridiculed by Shakespeare, Ail's Well Thai Ends Well 4. 5 : ' O madam, yonder's my lord your son with a paich of velvet on's face : whether there be a scar under't or no, the velvet knows ; but ' tis a goodly patch of velvet : his left cheek is a cheek of two pile and a half, but his right cheek is worn bare.' Women long continued the ridiculous habit of wearing patches for ornamentation. At the time of our play men, that is, coxcombs, also wore them. 454. in diet keepe. During the treament of the pox, the patients were kept on a strict diet. Ben Jonson speaks of Shift, in Every Man Out of his Humour, as ' a thread-bare shark,' who all the while ' was taking the diet in a bawdy house.' 455. Caue. 'Some epithet belonging to this word seems to have been dropt out.' Dyce. 456. in a Tub that's heated smoaking hot. Syphilis patients were ordinarily placed in sweating-tubs as a means of cure. Cf. Timon of Athens 4, 3 : Be a whore still! they love thee not that use thee; Give them diseases, . . . season the slaves For tubs and baths; bring down rose-cheeked youth To the tubfast and the diet. 'The process of sweating patients so afflicted is often mentioned in our old plays, and with a variety of jocular allusions.' Dyce. 461. afeard. Modem eds. read afraid. Cf. variants. A- feard is still used by uneducated people. Its retention in our passage would, it seems to me, have been advisable, since the word would have been in keeping with the colloquial and dialectal tone of the Wife's speech. 467. a "Witch, that had the diuels marke about her. It was a popular superstition that witches were branded by the devil. N. E. D. cites from Newes fr. Scotld. Life & D. Dr. Fian, written 1592, this sentence : ' They suspecting that she O2 212 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act m had beene marked by the Divell (as commonly witches are) . . . found the enemies marke to be in her fore crag.' 468. God blesse vs. Cf. 2. 349, and note. 469. Lob-lie-by-the-fire. Almost nothing at all is known of this giant sprite. Whatever oral traditions about him may have prevailed seem never to have found a written statement. Warton is disposed to identify the sleepy giant here men- tioned with 'the lubber fiend' of Milton's L Allegro, and Weber conjectures that he is suggested by the son of the wicked witch in Bk. 3 of the Faerie Queen, Canto 7, st. 12 : A laesie loord, for nothing good to donne, But stretched forth in idlenesse alwayes. Dyce points out the insecurity of these surmises. The term lob, hke the term lubber, seems to convey some suggestion of heaviness or dullness, but the etymology and real significance of the word are uncertain. Farewell thou lob of spirits [i. e. Puck] ; I'll be gone. Mid. Sum. Nights Dream 2. 1. But as the drone the honey hive doth rob. With worthy books so deals this idle lob. Gascoigne, A Remembrance. Cf. Keightley, Fairy Mythology, p. 318, and Mrs. J. H. Ewing, Lob-lie-by-the-fire, Introduction. 474. heere comes the prisoners. According to Abbott, Shakes. Gram., p. 237, passages in old plays in which a quasi- singular verb precedes the plural subject are very common, especially ' when the subject is as yet future, and, as it were, unsettled.' Here comes the townsmen. 2 Henry IV 2. 1. There comes no swaggerers here. 2 Henry IV 2. 4. ' This [i. e. the latter citation], it is true, comes from Mrs. Quickly, but the following are from Posthumus and Valentine : " How comes these staggerers on me ? " Cymb. V. 5. 233. "Far behind his worth Comes all the praises that I now bestow." T.G.ofV.n.4.72.' 483. Tume-bull-streete. The street is properly known as ACT ni] Notes 2 1 3 Tummill. It lies between Clerkenwell Green and Cow Cross. At the time of our play it was the haunt of prostitutes and other low characters. Falstaff says of Shallow: 'This same starved justice hath done nothing but prate to me of the wildness of his youth, and the feats he hath done about Turnbull Streets 2 Henry IV 3. 2. Knockem, one of Ben Jonson's characters in Bartholomew Fair, is ' a horse-courser and a ranger in TurnbulV 484. bore her vp and downe. Possibly this is an illustration of the old-time custom of searching out women of ill-fame on Shrove Tuesday, and carting them about the towns, thereby making them the butts of all sorts of buffoonery and abuse. Cf. 5. 363, and note. 488. put vs in a Tub, Where we this two monthes sweate. As patients suffering from syphilis. Cf. 3. 456, and note. ' A view of such a patient in his tub, looking very wretched and pensive, warning off some bona robas, who have come to visit him in his affliction, is to be seen as a frontispiece to Randolph's Cornelianum Dolium, 1638, 12 mo. In my copy, in an antique hand, is written Young man, take warning by my fate. To lead a chaste and virtuous life; All wanton peats' allurements hate, And cleave unto thy wedded wife, To Cicely, Susan, or to Kate. So may you 'scape the bitter ills Of Esculapius' searching pills.' ^J. Mitford, Cursory Notes on Beaumont and Fletcher, p. 14. 491. This bread and water hath our diet bene. This carries out the testimony of Creighton, who quotes a pre- scription which specifies a thin diet and a decoction of guaiacum. 498. through this same slender quill. Subcutaneous in- jection of nutriment is employed in some developments of syphilis. 503. Gentlemen I thanke you all heartily for gracing my man Rafe. The Wife may well be grateful, for the trades- men were usually regarded with considerable contempt by 214 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act ni the gallants. In Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour 2. 1, Kitely, the merchant, says of his son's dandified com- panions : They mock me all over, From my flat cap mito my shining shoes. Dekker has his gallant look upon the groundUngs at the theatre as 'the opposed rascality' {The Gull's Hornbook, chap. 6). 512. Depart then, and amend. It is a singularity worthy of notice that Ralph does not send his victim, as do many of the heroes of the romances, and as Don Quixote attempts to do, to do penance at the feet of his mistress. 514. Exeunt. The old-time barber shop, metaphorically described in the preceding passages, is literally and suc- cinctly described, though in the service of a fable, in the extract which I subjoin. In Gay's Fables, Part. 1, no. 22, a goat grows weary of his 'frowzy beard.' Resolv'd to smooth his shaggy face, He sought the barber of the place. A flippant monkey, spruce and smart. Hard by, profess'd the dapper art: His pole, with pewter basins hung. Black rotten teeth in order stnmg, Rang'd cups that in the window stood, Lin'd with red rags, to look like blood. Did well his threefold trade explain, Who shav'd, drew teeth, and breath'd a vein. 540. tume me out these mangy companions. Me was often used, in virtue of its representing the old dative, where we should use /or me, by me, &c. Cf. Abbott, Shakes. Gram., p. 146. Cf. Taming of the Shrew 1.2: Pet. Villain, I say, knock me here soundly. Gru. Knock you here, sir ! Why, sir, what am I, sir, that I should knock you, sir? Pet. Villain, I say, knock me at this gate. And rap me well. Compamon was often equivalent, in old plays, to the modem use of ' fellow ' in a contemptuous sense. Cf. 2 Henry IV 2. 4 : 'I scorn you, scurvy companion. What ! you poor, ACT in] Notes 215 base, rascally, cheating, lacklinen mate ! Away, you mouldy rogue, away.' 546. a Conductor. In obsolete use, the word conductor denoted a naval or military leader. Cf. Glossary. ' Archers on horseback under their Captaines or conductours.' Sir J. Smyth, Disc. Weapons, 1590. Cited by N. E. D. 547. Chester. The capital of Cheshire, England, situated on the Dee, fifteen miles southwest of Liverpool : the Ro- man Deva and Castra, and the Celtic Caerleon. 549. Go from my window, loue goe. There is a variation of this catch in Monsieur Thomas 3. 3 : Come up to my window, love. Come, come, come; Come to my window, my dear: The wind nor the rain Shall trouble thee again. But thou shalt be lodged here. In The Woman's Prize 1. 3, we read: The wind and the rain Has tum'd you back again, And you cannot be lodged here. In Otway's Soldier s Fortune 5. 5, the catch stands thus : Go from the window, my love, my love. Go from the window, my dear; The wind and the rain Have brought 'em back again. An thou canst have no lodging here. ' On the 4th March, 1587-8, John Wolfe had a license to print a ballad called " Goe from the windowe." ' Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time 1. 140. Chappell prints the notes accompanying the ballad. 557. lads of mettle. Lads of spirit. A common old phrase. Cf. / Henry IV 2. 4 : ' They . . . tell me flatly I am no proud Jack, hke Falstaff ; but a Corinthian, a lad of mettle' Cf. also First Part of Jeronimo 1. 1 : Oh, heeres a Lad of mettle, stout Don Andrea. 561. Mr. All eds. succeeding Qi read Master. Cf. variants. The alteration is useful in causing the avoidance of con- 2i6 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act hi fusion between the Mr. of the text and the now prevalent Mister, which is a weakened derivative of master. The alteration would not have been necessary at the date of our play, since the abbreviation Mr., as fovuid in books the sixteenth century and for some time later, is to be read Master. Cf. Cent. Diet. 568. Begone, begone, my luggy, my puggy. At the end of Hey wood's Rape of Lucrece, 1609, is a song beginning, ' Arise, Arise, my Juggie, my Puggie, &c.', and containing this stanza: Begon, begon, my WiUie, my Billie, begon, begon my deare. The weather is warme, 'twill do thee no harme, thou canst not be lodged here. My Willy, my Billy, my honey, my cony, my love, my dove, my deare. Oh, oh, the weather is warme, 'twill do thee no harme, oh, oh, thou canst not be lodged here. The singer of these lines is 'Juggy, my Puggy,' who re- fuses lodgings to the intruder. In our play, the situation is reversed. Hence, ' luggy, my puggy ' is the outcast. There seems to be a close connection between these verses and the preceding fragment sung by Merrythought. Chappell, however, in Popular Music 1. 41, treats Hey wood's lines and those in our play as belonging to distinct ballads. Chappell prints the score of Go from my IVindow. 576. Ingrant. ' Is the reading of all the copies but that of 1711, which exhibits ignorant; of which word it may be a vitiation, as ingrum is in Wit without Money, Act V. sc. 1. Ingrant here seems to stand for ingrateful or ingrate^ Ed. 1778. The supposition is a likely one, although N. E. D. gives only the former of the above interpretations. Cf. Glossary. 581. You are a fine man an you had a fine dogge, it becomes you sweetly. This allusion to the possession of ' a fine dog ' as a mark of gentility reminds one of the absurd attachment for his dog borne by the quixotic knight Pimtar- volo in Every Man Out of His Humour. There is an old Welsh proverb which says that a gentleman may be known by his hawk, his horse and his greyhound. ACT in] Notes 2 1 7 586. I cry you mercie. ' A phrase equivalent to " I beg your pardon," at present. ..." My good lord of Westmore- land, / cry you mercy; I thought your honour had already been at Shrewsbury." / Henry JV4.2. " Are you a gentleman ? cry you mercy, sir." B. Jons. Every Man in His Humour, 1. 2. . . . Used apparently in mere sport, as an awkward apology for some blunder or inattention; possibly founded upon some anecdote of such an apology being offered.' Nares, Glossary. 595. the staffe of your age. Cf. Merchant of Venice 2. 2 : ' the boy was the very staff of my age, my very prop.' 604. hartely. Cf. 1. 184, and note. 611. Laualto. 'Lavolta, or Lavolt. A kind of dance for two persons, consisting a good deal in high and active bounds. By its name it should be of ItaUan origin ; but Florio, in Volta, calls it a French dance, and so Shakespeare seems to make it : "They bid us to the English dauncing schools, And teach lavoltas high, and swift corantos." Henry V 3. 5. " I cannot sing, Nor heel the high lavolt, nor sweeten talk. Nor play at subtle games; fair virtues all. To which the Grecians are most prompt and pregnant." Tro. and Cress. 4. 4. It is thus described by Sir John Davies, in his poem on dancing : "Yet there is one the most delightful kind, A lofty jumping, or a leaping round. Where arm in arm two dancers are entwin'd, And whirl themselves, with strict embracements bound; And still their feet an anapaest do sound. An anapaest is all their music's song. Whose first two feet are short, and third is long." Nares, Glossary. 619. You are no loue for me Margret, I am no loue for you. We have here two lines from some ballad now lost. The editors of 1778 erroneously state that they are to be found in Fair Margaret and Sweet William, the ballad irom 2 1 8 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act iv which there is a quotation in the text, 2. 476. Mallet's Margareifs Ghost is founded upon the lines there found, and upon the present quotation. 620. Come aloft. ' To come aloft means to tumble.' Mason. ' The expression is generally foimd applied to apes that are taught to vault: here it is used merely as an incitement to mirth.' Dyce. Cf. Massinger, The Bondman 3. 3 : But if this hold, I'll teach you To come aloft, and do tricks Uke an ape. 631. wher's the beere? Not only tobacco, but liquor also, was consumed at the playhouse during the performance. Hentzner tells us that there were attendants who sold ale, tobacco, fruits, and nuts to the audience. Cf. A Journey into England, Augerville Reprints, p. 27. In The Woman Hater 2. 1, Lazarillo speaks of the 'shakings and quakings' of the poet towards ' the latter end of his new play, (when he's in that case that he stands peeping betwixt the curtains, so fearfully that a dottle of ale cannot be opened but he thinks somebody hisses).' Weber and the editors following him have the Citizen go out to get the beer. Cf. stage -directions in the variants, 3. 610 and 3. 630. The directions hardly seem necessary, since the liquor might easily have been obtained from the venders of refreshments who went about among the audience. Act IV. 1. Act rV. Cf. variants. ' All the copies concur in making this act begin with the Boy's dancing; but as the dance was certainly introduced by way of interlude, here as well as at the end of the first act, we have made this act begin with a part of the real play, as all the others do.' Ed. 1778. 2. the prince of Orange. The head of the House of Orange at the time of our play was Philip William, eldest son of William the Silent. 3. long stocking. Cf. Ben Jonson, Poetaster 3. 1 : ' Why, I have beene a reveller, and at my cloth of silver suit, and my long stocking, in my time, and will be againe. . . .' ACT iv] Notes 2 1 9 A pair of long Spanish silk hose was presented by Sir Thomas Gresham to Edward VI. It was in the period of the Tudors, indeed, that the name stocking was first used, so far as we know. 'Then it occurs as the term used for " stocking of hose " ; that is, adding continuations to the trunk hose or breeches of the period, which said continuations received the name of "nether-stocks," the breeches in turn being distinguished by that of " upper stocks ".' Planche, Cyclopaedia of Costume 1. 484. There is much ridicule in old plays upon the absurd pride of the gallants in their costly stockings as a means of showing off the shape of their legs to advantage. ' Brain. A very good leg, master Stephen ; but the woolen stocking does not commend it so well. Steph. Foh ! the stockings be good enough, now summer is coming on, for the dust : I'll have a pair of silk stockings against winter, that I go to dwell in town. I think my leg would shew in a silk hose. . . .' Ben Jonson, Every Man in His Humour 1. 3. 3. hamesse. 'Harness means armour. So Macbeth says, " At least I'll die with harness on my back." ' Mason. 5. Fading is a fine ligge. ' Fading is the name of an Irish dance, and the common burden of a song. This dance is mentioned by Ben Jonson in the Irish Masque at Court: " Daunsh a fading at te vedding " ; and again, " Show tee how teye can foot te fading an te fadow.'" Ed. 1778. Since it seems to have been the burden of a ballad as well as a dance, Weber concludes that the word jig should be understood in its ancient sense, viz. song or ballad. ' A jig was a ludicrous metrical composition, often in rhyme, which was sung by the clown, who occasionally danced, and was always accompanied by a tabor and pipe.' Halliwell, Archaic and Provincial Diet. A jig shall be clapped at, and every rhyme Praised and applauded. Fair Maid of the Inn, Prologue. Fading is referred to in this sense of the jig in Winter's Tale 4. 4 : ' He has the prettiest love-songs for maids ; so 220 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act iv without bawdry, which is strange ; with such deUcate burdens of dildos and fadings.^ 7, and then tumble. The diversion afforded by tumblers between the acts of a play is condemned by Stephen Gosson in his Playes confuted in five Actions. Cf. 1. 478, and note. 10, Nor eate fire ? Professional tricksters, who pretended to handle fire with impunity, were looked upon as great marvels in the 17th century, and received large remunerations for their exhibitions. Evelyn, in his Diary, recounts a fire- eater's performance which he saw while calling on Lady Sutherland. He says : ' She made me stay for dinner, and sent for Richardson, the famous fire-eater. He devoured brimstone on glowing coals before us, chewing and swal- lowing them ; he melted a beer-glass, and eat it quite up ; then taking a live coal on his tongue, he put on it a raw oyster, the coal was blown with bellows, till it flamed and sparkled in his mouth, and so remained till the oyster gaped and was quite boiled. Then he melted pitch and wax together with sulphur, which he drank down as it flamed. I saw it flaming in his mouth a good while.' Cited by Chambers in Book of Days 2. 278. This Richardson astonished all Europe by his tricks with fire, and was scientifically noticed in the fournal des Scavans for 1680. 12. points. Laces with tags at the ends. Such laces, about eight inches long, consisting often of three differently colored strands of yam twisted together, and having their ends wrapped with iron, were used in the Middle Ages to fasten the clothes together, but gave place to buttons in the seventeenth century. Cf. i Henry IV 2. 4 : Falstaff. Their points being broken Poins. Down fell their hose. 37. Arches. ' The chief and most ancient consistory court of the Archbishop of Canterbury in London; being held at Bow Church, in London, called St. Mary de Arcubus, or St. Mary le Bow, from being built on arches.' Nares, Glossary. Nares, in citing our passage, says : ' It seems there was a prison belonging to this court.' Cf. Scornful Lady 4. 2 : ACT IV] Notes 221 ' Let him be civil and eat in the Arches, and see what will come of it.' The text would indicate that there was a prison connected with the court, but I have found nothing to bear out the inference. 44, let the Sophy of Persia come and christen him a childe. ' In a note by Warton on the next speech but two of the Citizen, it is erroneously stated that " the Sophy of Persia christening a child " is a circumstance in Heywood's Four Prentices of London; and Weber as erroneously adds that " there is no doubt a Sophy of Persia in Heywood's play, but his christening a child is merely a ludicrous con- fusion of the foolish Citizen^ The fact is, the Citizen is not thinking of Heywood's play, but of a drama written by Day, W. Rowley, and Wilkins, entitled The Travailes of The three English Brothers, Sir Thomas, Sir Anthony, Mr. Robert Shirley, which was printed in 1607, and which (as appears from the Boy's reply to the Citizen) had been acted at the Red Bull. In the last scene of it, the following dialogue takes place between the Sophy and Robert Shirley, who has married the Sophy's niece: " Soph. If yet vnsatisfied thy griefes remaine, Aske yet to please thy selfe, it shall be granted. Rob. I feare to be too bold. Soph. Aske and obtaine. Rob. My child may be baptis'd in Christian faith. And know the same God that the father hath. Soph. Baptize thy child : our self will ayd in it, Our selfe will answer for't, a Godfather; In our owne armes weele beare it to the place, Where it shall receive the compleat ceremonie. Now for the Temple, where our royall hand Shall make thy Child first Christian in our land. A show of the Christening.^^ Exeunt.' Dyce. Cf. Introd., p. XCIX. Fleay maintains that this play was first put on at the Curtain, 1607, it having been presented by Her Majesty's Servants, who played at that theatre until the opening of the Red Bull in 1609. CI Hist, of Stage, p. 205. Cf. next note. 222 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act iv 46. red Bull. The Red Bull Theatre stood at the upper end of St. John Street, Clerkenwell. Its origin is obscure. Collier is of the opinion that it was an inn-yard in the beginning, and was converted into a regular theatre in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Fleay says, however, that the earliest definite mention of it known to him is in 1609. It was then, not an inn-yard, but a regular theatre. Dekker, in his Raven's Almanac, entered S. R., July 7, 1608, predicts the renewal, in the autumn of 1609, of the annual contention between the three public theatres. According to Fleay, these houses were the Globe, at which the King's men were playing, the Curtain, which supported the Queen's, and the Fortime, which supported the Prince's. As no mention is made of the Red Bull, Fleay concludes that it must have been opened after the appearance of Dekker's book. It is known that the company of Queen's [Anne's] men played at the Red Bull in 1609, having removed that year from the Curtain. Among the dramas presented there between 1609 and 1613 was The Four Prentices of London. Queen Anne's men acted at the Bull until her death in 1619 ; thereafter the Prince's, chiefly, were in possession of the playhouse. After the suppression of the theatres, the Red Bull seems to have been used for clandestine representation of plays. On Dec. 20, 1649, some players were arrested for presenting there Fletcher's tragedy. The Bloody Brother. The theatre was not pulled down until some time after the Restoration, but when Davenant brought out his Playhouse to be Let, 1663, it was entirely abandoned : ' There are no tenants in it but spiders.' For these particulars, cf. Fleay, Hist, of the Stage, and Collier, Annals of the Stage. Plays of inferior merit seem to have been the kind usually presented at the Bull. Pompous productions, like The Four Prentices of London, were the vogue. Wither in Abuses stript and whipt, 1613, remarks of a ruf- fling lover, courting his sweetheart: His poetry is such as he can cull From plays he heard at Curtain or at Bull. ACT iv] Notes 223 In Albumazar, 1615, an old play, one of the characters speaks of compliments he has drawn from plays at the Red Bull, ' where I learn all the words I speak and understand not.' Thomas Carew, in his lines prefixed to Davenant's Just Italian, 1630, says of the performers at the Red Bull : These are the men in crowded heaps that throng To that adulterate stage, where not a tongue Of th' untun'd kennel can a line repeat Of serious sense. In Randolph's Muses' Looking Glass, the theatre meets with marked hostility from one of the Puritans in that play : Lastly he wish'd The Bull might cross the Thames to the Bear-garden, And there be sovmdly baited. The satirical intent of our play's notices of the Red Bull is made evident by these references. 48. King of Cracouia's house, covered with veluet. Cracovia is M, L. for Cracow, which is now the second city of Galicia, Austria-Hungary, but was from 1320 to about 1609 the capital of Poland, and, till the 18th century, the place of coronation of her kings. The Wife probably confuses the city with the kingdom. Modem eds., following ed. 1750, print black velvet. Symp- son says : ' I have inserted the colour of the velvet, which was here wanting, from what the Boy says, in the second speech below, as to the impossibility of their complying with the request of the Citizen's Wife, ^^ But we can't present an house covered with black velvet." The Boy's statement, by the way, may be taken as an evidence of the Elizabethan theatre's limited equipment in stage-scenery.' Weber says that the text probably refers to some con- temporary romance of the Amadis school. I have fovmd no mention of a King of Cracovia. It is possible that the black velvet is suggested by a circumstance in Palmerin de Oliva. Cf chap. 30, Part 2 : ' These three companions being entred the great Hall, which was hanged round about with black velvet, in sign of mourning, they marvelled what might be the occasion thereof It is equally possible that the text 224 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act ly contains a reminiscence of ' The House of Sadness ' in Pal- merin of England, where dwelt the mournful lady Paudricia, disappointed in love : ' In the midst of this river was an isle, wherein was placed an ancient mansion, with many pinnacles and battlements, covered all over with black; which declared small pleasure to those who remained there, and great occasion of sadness to any that should come there ' (Part 1, chap. 6), With her usual blindness toward the fitness of things, the Wife does not see the impropriety of developing a love- episode in a house which is covered with black velvet, the emblem of mourning. 49. let the Kings daughter stand in her window all in beaten gold. Cf. Palmerin of England, Part 1, chap. 57 : * The giant Almoural, abashed at this noble combat, the like whereof he had never before beheld, called Miraguarda to come and see it ; and it was not long before the cloth of silk fringed with gold was spread along the window, whereon she leaned, her damsels standing by her to behold this knightly chivalry.' Metals embroidered or ' beaten ' in elaborate designs were formerly used for the ornamentation of cloth. 62. to haue a Grocers prentice to court a kings daughter. The retention of to in the infinitive, in cases where modem English would omit it, was formerly common. Cf. Love's Labours Lost 4. 3 : To see . . . profound Solomon to time a jig. Cf. Abbott, Shakes. Gram., p. 250. 65. what was sir Dagonet ? was not he prentice to a grocer in London? 'Sir Dagonet, whom the Citizen mistakes for a grocer's prentice, is a character in the celebrated romance, Morte d" Arthur, where he is described as " Kynge Arthurs foole," and we are told that "Kynge Arthur loued hym passynge wel, and made hym knyght [with] his owne handes. And att every tumement he beganne to make Kynge Arthur laughe." B. x. cap. 12. vol. ii. 21, ed. Southey. On all occasions sir Dagonet meets with very rough treatment : see, for instance, B. ix. cap. 3. vol. i. 314, where sir La-cote- ACT iv] Notes 225 male-tayle smites him over his horse's croup ; and cap. 19 of the same B. p. 339, where sir Tristram " souses " him in a well, and afterwards takes him by the head and dashes him to the ground.' Dyce. The Citizen's acquaintance with Sir Dagonet was gained, no doubt, through the latter's appearance in Arthur's Show, an exhibition of archery held at Mile End Green by a society of London citizens, fifty-eight in number, who assumed the arms and names of the Knights of the Round Table. Henry Vin gave the fraternity a charter, and patronized their per- formances. Justice Shallow boasts of his connection with the fellowship : ' I remember at Mile End Green, when I lay at Clement's Inn, 1 was then Sir Dagonet in Arthur's Show.' 2 Henry IV 3. 2. 66. Read the play of the Foure Prentices of London. The earliest extant edition of The Four Prentices bears the date of 1615. The Address to the Readers mentions as quite recent, however, the revival of arms-practice in the Artillery Gardens. This was in 1610. Fleay adduces this fact as, evidence that our play first appeared in that year. Cf. Introd., p. XIII. 67. where they tosse their pikes so. In The Four Prentices, Eustace and Guy, before entering upon a combat with each other, toss and catch their pikes to prove their strength of arm. Eustace. Thinks't thou this rye-straw can o'er-rule my arm ? Thus do I bear him when I use to march; Thus can I fling him up, and catch him thus : [They toss their pikes. Then thus, to try the sinews of my arm. Guy. I thus: 'tis easier sport than the baloon [i. e. foot ball]. 73. Enter Rafe and the Lady, Squire and dwarfe. For a discussion of episodes in the romances parallel to the ad- venture here commenced, cf. Introd., pp. LI— LIV. 77. King of Moldauia. Moldavia, once an independent principality, now forms the northern part of Roumania. It was founded early in the 14th century, became tributary to Turkey late in the 15th century, maintained a shifting relation to the P 226 ■ The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act iv Hungarian crown, and sometimes transferred its vassalage to Lithuania and Poland. Cf. Freeman, Historical Geography. Perhaps in this period of shifting allegiance the titles King of Moldavia and King of Cracovia [i. e. Poland (?)] were interchangeable, and the seeming inconsistency of our text is thereby explained. Cf. 4. 48, and note. Weber conjectures that Ralph's adventures at the court of Moldavia were founded upon one of the numerous Spanish romances in the library of Don Quixote. Cf. Ben Jonson, Epicoene 5. 1 : ' Yes, sir, of Pomentack, when he was here, and of the prince of Moldavia, and of his mistress, mistress Epicoene.' Fleay, referring to our passage, has this to say : 'The Prince of Moldavia of Jonson's Epicoene V. 1 (Cf. " King of Moldavia " 4. 2), on whom Weber wrote such nonsense, and of whom Dyce says " nothing is known," was with the Turkish Ambassador at the English court, 1607, Nov. (see Nichols, ii. 157).' Biog. Chr. 1. 184. One Rowland White, writing from the Court on Nov. 7 of 1607, says : ' The Turke and the Prince of Moldavia are now going away.' Nichols, Progresses of King James the First 2. 157. 79. that will stay with vs No longer but a night. It is characteristic of the errant knights to be so engrossed in the quest of adventures that they are unwilling to tarry in any lodging longer than a night. In Palmerin de Oliva, Netrides has been banished from his brother's kingdom, and he proceeds to take solace in a rapid pursuit of adventures. 'Then willing one of his Squires to saddle his Steede, he departed away as close as he could, forbidding any of his Servants to follow him : and such expedition he made, as not resting but one night in any Lodging, he left his Brothers Kingdome, wandring without any care of himselfe, or which way he went, but wente here and there, as Fortune pleased to guide him.' Similarly, in Palmerin of England, Part 1, chap. 31, the knight of Fortune (and here as a mark of particular favor) agrees to spend a night in the castle of the countess of Sorlinga : ' And be- cause the knight of Fortune had received great honours from ACT iv] Notes 227 her on the way, he accompanied her to her dwelling, and remained there that night. The next morning he rode forward, rejoicing that he was arrived in that coiintry where he had determined to put his fortune in trial.' 91. Grocer in the strond. Q^i. read Strand. Cf. variants. The Strand is now one of the great business arteries of London, reaching from Charing Cross to the site of Temple Bar. In the 16th and 17th centuries, it was a fashionable quarter. Tradesmen, however, were to be found on the street. James Northcote, R. A., on his first coming to London, lodged at ' Mrs. Lefty's, Grocer in the Strand.^ Cf. Wh.-C. 92. By deed Indent, of which I haue one part. ' Appren- tices . . . are usually bound for a term of yeares, by deed indented, or indentures, to serve their masters, and be main- tained and instructed by them.' Blackstone, Commentaries, Vol. 1, chap. 2. Articles of agreement between apprentice and employer were drawn up in duplicate, the two halves of the document being severed by a toothed, zigzag, or wavy line, so that the two parts exactly tallied. ' One copy was retained by each party ; the genuineness of these could be subsequently proved by the coincidence of their indented margins.' N.E.D. 100. Nipitato. According to Nares, this obsolete term means strong liquor. It was a sort of jocular title, applied in com- mendation, chiefly to ale. It is a mock Latin word formed from the whimsical Elizabethan adjective nippitate. Nares cites Stubbes, Anat. of Abuses, p. 150 : ' Then, when the Nippitatum, this Huf-cap (as they call it) and this nectar of lyfe, is set abroche, wel is he that can get the soonest to it, and spend most at it.' To illustrate the use of the ad- jective, Nares gives a passage from The Weakest goes to the Wall: 'Well fare England, where the poore may have a pot of ale for a penny, fresh ale, firme ale, nappie ale, nippitate ale.' This quotation bears out Pompiona in describing nippitato as a peculiarly English drink. 104. of a wild-fowle he will often speake. Which poudered beefe and mustard called is. To speake of beef and mustard as a wild fowl is, of course, an intentional absurdity. P2 228 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act rv A common old use of the verb to powder was to signify the salting of meat in any way. Cf. / Henry IV 5. 4 : 'If thou embowel me to-day, I'll give you leave to powder me, and eat me too, to-morrow.' 109. To weare a Ladies fauour in your shield. Here is a reflection of the well-known custom in mediaeval chivalry which enjoined upon the knight to wear in some conspicuous part of his armor a ' favor,' or token of affection, from his lady, i. e. a knot of ribbons, a glove, &c. Cf. Humorous Lieutenant 2. 2 : Hang all your lady's favours on your crest, And let them fight their shares. 111. will not weare a fauour of a Ladies That trusts in Antichrist. The Christian knights habitually repelled the advances of pagan princesses. Thus Palmerin de Oliva scorns Ardemia's amours because she is a pagan. Cf Introd., p. Lm. 114. Besides, I haue a Lady of my owne. Similarly, Pal- merin de Oliva fortifies himself against the blandishments of a designing princess by calling to mind his chosen love. Cf. Introd., p. Lin. 133. And another. The modem eds. print, for the metre, ' And there's another.' 136. nointing. The modem eds. read ' nointing, as though the word were an abbreviation of anointing. The original reading is defensible : Cent. Diet, gives noint as a distinct word, now obsolete, but formed by aphaeresis from anoint. 136. butter. 'Mason says we should read butler^ "as Seward does." But the edition of 1750, and every other, reads as in the text, and there is no occasion to alter it. Ralph gives an additional shilling for the butter used for his horse's back.' Weber. Butter was formerly used as an unguent. Cf 2. 405, and note. 138. wash't my boot-hose. Boot-hose were extra stockings or leggings worn with boots, and covering the upper part of the leg and a part of the thigh, but not the ankles and feet. ACT rv] Notes 229 Stubbes cries out against ' the vain excesse of boote hosen ' : ' They have also boote hosen which are to be wondered at ; for they be of the fynest cloth that may be got, yea, fine inough to make any band, ruffe, or shurt needful to be worn : yet this is bad inovigh to were next their gresie boots. And would God this weare all : (oh, phy for shame !) they must be wrought all over, from the gartering place vpward, with nedle worke, clogged with silk of all colors, with birds, foules, beasts, and antiques purtrayed all over in comlie sorte. So that I have knowen the very nedle work of some one payre of these bootehose to stand, some in iij. pound, vi. pound, and some in X. pound a peece. Besides this, they are made so wyde to draw over all, and so longe to reach vp to the waste, that as litle, or lesse, clothe would make one a reasonable shurte. But tush ! this is nothing in comparison of the reste.' Anat. of Abuses, p. 61. 139. wip't my boots. 'Boots were universally worn by fashionable men, and, in imitation of them, by others, in the reign of Elizabeth and James the First, insomuch that Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, pleasantly related, when he went home into Spain, that all the citizens of London were booted, and ready, as he thought, to go out of town.' Nares, Glossary. The affectation of polished foot wear, common among the gallants and their imitators, is frequently satirized. Falstaff ridicules Poins because he ' swears with a good grace ; and wears his boot very smooth, like unto the sign of the leg.' 2 Henry IV 2. 4. In Massinger's Guardian, some one asks how the vintners shall be known. The answer is: *If they walk on foot, by their rat-coloured stockings, and shin- ing shoesJ' 141. to buy you pins at Bumbo faire. Pins of a costly sort seem to have been popular with women. The pedlar in Hey wood's Four PP, Haz.-Dods., Old Eng. Plays 1. 249 ff., is thus rebuked by the pothecary: I beshrew thy knaves naked heart For making my wife's pincase so wide. The pins fall out, they cannot abide: 230 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act iv Great pins she must have, one or other ; If she lose one, she will find another. Wherein I find cause to complain; New pins to her pleasure and my pain. I can find no record of a ' Bumbo Fair.' Apparently Ralph is playing upon the word bumbo, which is the name of a drink made of rum, water, and nutmeg. It was no doubt popular at fairs. It should be remembered that fairs were formerly not merely places for exhibits and for amusements, but were regular markets, to which the people resorted periodically to buy supplies for the ensuing year. In Gay's Pastorals, No. 6, some of the commodities are enumerated. Among other things Gay tells us: How pedlar's stalls with gUtt'ring toys are laid. The various fairings of a country maid, Long silken laces hang upon the twine, And rows of pins and amber bracelets shine. 153. Go get you vp. The first inference is that Venturewell is commanding his daughter to rise from her knees, but the context seems to show that he is bidding her go to her chamber in the upper part of the house. 154. gossip. No fitting definition of this noun is given in the dictionaries. In the light of the context, and of a dial, verb gossip, with about, meaning ' to make merry, gad about ' (cf. Wright), I have ventured to define it as hoydenish 'gad- about.^ Cf. Glossary. The word will bear this interpretation, since the merchant is rebuking Luce for her disobedience and her clandestine escapade with Jasper. 170. I haue beene beaten twice about the lye. With characteristic irrelevancy, Humphrey drags in an allusion to some dispute over a point of honor in which he was worsted. In Saviolo's treatise entitled Of Honour and Honorable Quarrels, 1595, there is a minute chapter on the ' Diversity of Lies,' in which are enumerated the ' Lie certain,' the ' conditional Lie,' the ' Lie in particular,' the ' foolish Lie,' ' the returning ACT iv] Notes 231 back of the Lie,' &c. Touchstone admirably hits off the absurd fashions which prevailed in the picking, adjusting, and settling of a quarrel. Cf. his account of a quarrel ' upon a lie seven times removed,' As You Like It 5. 4. 171. no more of complement. The language of compliment was carried to an absurd height in the 17th cent., and was extravagantly artificial. An anonymous writer of 1629, speak- ing of the trifling and intrusive manners of male gossips, says : ' It is a wonder to see what multitudes there be of all sorts that make this their only business, and in a maimer spend their whole time in compliment; as if they were bom to no other end, bred to no other purpose, had nothing else to do, than to be a kind of living, walking ghosts, to haunt and persecute others with imnecessary observation.' Marston, describing the finished gallant, says : Mark nothing but his clothes, His new stampt complement; his common oathes, Mark those. Scourge of Villainie (1599), Bk. 2, sat, 7. Cf. Dekker, The Gull's Hornbook: 'You courtiers that do nothing but sing the gamut A-Re of complemental courtesy.' See also Drake, Shakespeare and his Times, p. 422. 180. 'Tis some-what of the most. It is a rather long time. 181. Because I meane against the appointed day. To visite all my friends in new array. The prep, against has a cur- rent meaning, in anticipation of, which is rather more general than the sense of our passage will admit. Here I take it to have an intensive force, implying the close proximity of the wedding. This emphasis is supplied in an obsolete use of the word equivalent to in view of the near approach of, and carrying with it some idea of preparedness and provision for (an event). See N. E. D., and Glossary. Cf. Taming of the Shrew 2. 1 : Give me thy hand, Kate: I will unto Venice, To buy apparel 'gainst the wedding-day. Provide the feast, father, and bid the guests. 209. had almost brought me downe. 'Where there can be no doubt what is the nominative, it is sometimes omitted. 232 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act iv . . . The omission of the nominative is most common with " has," " is," " was," &c. . . . " Tis his own blame : hath put himself from rest." Lear, ii. 4. . . . " Poor jade, is wrung in the withers out of all 'cess." 1 Henry IV, 2. 1.' Abbott, Shakes. Gram., pp. 287-8. 216. Porrage. Dyce justifies the variant reading, pottage, by referring to the employment of the latter word in 2. 390. This is scarcely a sufficient basis for the change. Porridge and pottage were both words in good usage in the 17th century, and both may easily have occured in the same play. 252. Let it together ceaze me. Together can here have no other significance than that of altogether, though such a meaning is not recognized in the dictionaries. Cf Glossary. 256. bring. Ed. 1750, for the metre, prints 'and bring.' 272. now dead. ' Something seems to have dropt out from the line : qy. " That whilst he liv'd was only yours, now dead " ? ' Dyce. 298. And fill. And we will fill. ' Where there can be no doubt what is the nominative, it is sometimes omitted.' Abbott, Shakes. Gram., p. 287. It will be seen that here there is also an elision of an auxilliary verb; the force of the preceding will, 1. 281, however, is of course carried over. As an example of the omission of the nominative, cf. Winter's Tale 4. 4 : They call him Doricles; and boasts himself To have a worthy feeding. 304. Bind with Cipres and sad Ewe. The branches of the cypress and the yew were formerly used as emblems at funerals. ' Coles in his Introduction of Plants, p. 64. says : " Cypresse Garlands are of great account at funeralls amongst the gentler sort, but rosemary and bayes are used by the commons both at funeralls and weddings." . . . To a query why among the ancients yew and cypress were given at funerals, it is answered: "We suppose that, as yew and cypress are always green, the ancients made use of them ACT rv] Notes 233 at burials, as an emblem of the immortality of the deceased through their virtues or good works." ' Brand, Pop. Antiq. 2. 253. Cf. song in Twelfth Night 2. 4 : Come away, come away, death. And in sad cypress let me be laid ; My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, O, prepare it ! . . . 305. candles blew. Brand says that in Henry the Eighth's time it was the custom to set two burning candles over the dead body, and quotes from Moresinus, an old writer, who gives his conjecture on the use of the candle upon this occasion: 'It was an Egyptian hieroglyphic for life, de- signed to express the ardent desire of the survivors to have had the life of the deceased prolonged.' Pop. Antiq. 2. 236. Blue was the color which symbolized constancy. 307. mourning. The variant reading moaning is justified, since it supplies, as ed. 1750 makes note, the rime to groaning. 311. Let him haue faire flowers enow. Cf. 2.556, and note. 351. Now must I go coniure. Professional conjurers had a great following in the 16th and 17th century. They were supposed among other things to materialize the spirits of the dead ; therefore the subsequent appearance of Jasper's ghost might easily have been ascribed by Venturewell to the supernatural powers of these magicians. Accounts of the tricks employed by conjurers may be found in Thombury, Shakespeare's England 2. 156 ff., and Brand, Pop. Antiq. 3. 55 ff. 368. Who can sing a merrier noate. 'The last piece in Ravenscroft's Pammelia, 1609, is A Round or Catch for ten or eleven voices: " Sing we now merily, our purses be empty, hey ho. Let them take care That list to spare. For I will not doe soe; Who can sing so merry a note As he that cannot change a groat? Hey hoe, trolly, Dolly Doe, trolly lolly lo." ' Dyce. 234 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act rv The lines occur, with slight variations, at a much eariier date than 1609 in Hey wood's Proverbs, printed 1546. Cf. Sherman's ed. p. 82: What man ! the begger may sing before the theefe. And who can sing so merrie a note, As may he that cannot change a grote ? 378. I would not be a seruingman to carry the cloke-bag still. The gallants were accompanied by their serving-men, who carried their cloaks and loose belongings in a sort of bag or portmanteau made for the purpose. One is reminded of Every Man Out of his Humour 3. 1, where Puntarvalo and Carlo enter the middle aisle of Paul's to promenade with the other gallants, and are ' followed by two servingmen, one leading a dog, the other bearing a bag.^ In 2 The Returne from Parnassus 4. 2, 1602, one of the characters, Ingenioso, says to another, the Recorder : ' So ho maister Recorder . . . you that are a plague stuffed Cloake- bagge of all iniquitie, which the grand serving-man of Hell will one day trusse vp behind him, and carrie to his smokie Ward-robe.' 379. Nor would I be a Fawleconer the greedy Hawlkes to fill. ' The falconer's life was not one of idleness ; he had to study the dispositions of each one of his birds as if they were children, to learn which he should fly early and which late; and he had to clean them, and study their diet. Every night, after the day's flight, he must give his birds fitting medicine, directed by the mewting, or the appearance of their eye or plumage. . , . He was obliged to have his pouch well supplied with medicines for his hawks, . , . mimimy powder, washed aloes, cloves, nutmegs, and saffron. . . . The food of the hawk was a question of great importance : the sparrow-hawk was fed with sheep's, pig's, and lamb's hearts, the thighs of pullets and martlets, and it was held dangerous to give them two sorts of meats at the same meal.' Thorn- bury, Shakespere's England 1. 383 ff. 385. Philosophers stone. Sometimes identified in alchemy with the elixir vitce, a solid soluble substance, which was ACT iv] Notes 235 a supposed drug or essence having the property of restoring youth and indefinitely prolonging life. 393. lillian of Berry. ' " This is, perhaps, an error for Gillian of Brentford, a noted character of the sixteenth century. Among the Selden collection of black-letter Ro- mances, there is one entitled ' Jyl of Brentford's Testament.' " So writes Weber, and very absurdly. Berry is, of course, Bury. Jyl of Braintfords Testament, instead of being a ro- mance, is a facetious poem.' Dyce. 400. But kisse your Hostesse and go your way. This seems not to have been an unusual ceremony on leaving an inn. Dekker says to his gallant: 'At your departure forth the house, to kiss mine Hostis over the barre, ... or to bid any of the Vintners good night, is as commendable, as for a Barber after trimming to lave your face with sweete water.' The Gull's Hornbook, chap. 7, 'How a Gallant should behave himself in a Taveme.' 406. sing this Catch. ' The modern editors give, " come, sing this catch " : but in the first 4to. and one of the 4tos. of 1635, the words, " sing this catch," are distinctly a stage- direction.' Dyce. Cf. variants. 408. Ho, ho, no body at home. 'In Ravenscroft's Pant- melia, 1609, this catch (No. 85) stands as follows : "Ey ho no body at home, Meate nor drinke nor money have I none. Fill the pot Eadie. Hey ut supra." ' Dyce. Dyce's statement is, of course, authentic, but there is no means of referring to Pammelia. The book is not accessible. 420. Let Raph come out on a May-day in the morning. The celebration of May-day, no longer observed except in partial form here and there by children, was an annual event in the England of the 16th and 17th centuries. 'In the month of May, namely, on May-day in the morning, every man, except impediment, would walk into the sweet meadows and green woods, there to rejoice their spirits with the beauty and savour of sweet flowers, and with the harmony of birds, praising God in their kind. ... I find also that in 236 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act iv the month of May, the citizens of London of all estates, lightly in every parish, or sometimes two or three parishes joining together, had their several Mayings, and did fetch in May-poles, with divers warlike shows, with good archers, Morris dancers, and other devices for pastime all the day long; and toward the evening they had stage-plays, and bonfires in the streets.' Stow, Survey, p. 38. Stubbes has a spirited account of the festival, but, unlike Stow, he does scant justice to its beauties. His Puritanical sensibiUties are shocked by the alleged wickedness and debauchery committed on May-day, and he regards the whole celebration as a tribute to Satan. ' And no marvaile, for there is a great Lord present amongst them, as superintendent and Lord ever their pastymes and sportes, namely, Sathan, prince of hel.' Anat. of Abuses, p. 149. Most of the features of the May-games vanished long ago. The last of the London May-poles was erected soon after the Restoration in 1661. It remained standing until 1717. In the remoter districts of England, however, May-poles were to be found far into the last century. There is a description of them by Washington Irving in The Sketch Book. Good accounts of the May-games are to be found in Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, Brand's Pop. Antiq., and Cham- bers' Book of Days. 421. vpon a Conduit. In Old London, the conduits or reservoirs were common gathering-places, where gossips met and passed the news of the day. Hence the Citizen is eminently judicious in his selection of a place for the dis- play of Ralph's finery, and for his rhetorical flourishes. Previous to 1613 there were only two or three conduits in the principal streets, and a few others in the northern suburbs. The largest and the most decorative of these was known as the Great Conduit. It stood in the center of Cheapside, then, as now, one of the important thoroughfares. Leaden pipes ran along Cheapside, conveying the water to the smaller reservoirs. Only pubUc buildings were supplied directly. The water had to be fetched for domestic use from the conduits. Many poor men, known as tankard-bearers, ACT iv] Notes 237 made their living by carrying water to householders in large tankards holding from two to three gallons. When water was required in smaller quantities, apprentices and servant- girls were sent to get it. Hence the conduits were not only gossiping-places, but spots about which the rougher elements of the population gathered. Cf. Chambers, Book of Days 2. 393. Oliver Cob, in Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour, is a water-carrier. His language and the coarse quality of his associations may be taken as an index to the kind of life which assembled about the conduits. 421. with all his Scarfes about him, and his fethers and his rings and his knacks. A valuable description of the equipment of the Morris-dancers, which the Wife has in mind, is given by Stubbes in an invective against them as attendants upon the Lord of Misrule : ' Then everie one of these men, be investeth with his liveries of green, yellow, or some other light wanton colour; And as though they were not (baudie) gaudie enough, I should say, they bedecke them selves with scarfs, ribons & laces hanged all over with golde rings, precious stones, & other jewels : this doon, they tye about either leg XX. or XL. bels, with rich handker- cheifs in hands, and sometimes laid a crosse over their shouldiers & necks, borrowed for the most parte of their pretie Mopsies & looving Besses, for bussing them in the dark. Thus al things set in order, then have they their Hobby-horses, dragons & other Antiquities, togither with their baudie Pipers and thundering Drummers to strike vp the devils daunce withall. Then, march these heathen com- pany towards the Church and Church-yard, their pipers pipeing, their drummers thundring, their stumps dauncing, their bels iyngling, their handkerchefs swinging about their beds like madmen, their hobbie horses and other monsters skirmishing amongst the route: & in this sorte they go to the Church (I say) & into the Church, (though the Minister be at praier or preaching), dancing & swinging their hand- kercheifs over their heds in Church, hke devils incarnate, with such a confuse noise, that no man can hear his own voice.' Anat. of Abuses, p. 147. 238 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act iv 427. in honor of the Citty. This or some similar expression seems to have been commonly employed in connection with any celebration or festive performance undertaken by the citizens. In Women Pleased 4. 1, Soto, leader of a band of Morris-dancers, says to them: 'Now /or the honour of our town, boys, trace sweetly.' Cf. also Ind. 29, and 5. 75. In his dedication of The Four Prentices of London ' to the honest and high-spirited prentices, the readers,' which was prefixed to the ed. of 1615, Heywood speaks of renewal of 'the commendable practice of long forgotten Armes,' which had redounded to ' the glory of our Nation, the security of the Kingdome, and the Honour of this Renowned Citty.'' 433. shall not he dance the morrice. The Morris-dance or Morrice-dance was a performance for a long time asso- ciated with a number of festive seasons in England, among them Holy Thursday, the Whitsun Ales, the ceremony of the Lord of Misrule, weddings, and the May-day. It is now wholly discontinued. The name would indicate a Spanish origin, and indeed the dance is regarded with more or less certainty as a development of the Morisco-dance or Spanish fandango. It became an essential part of village festivities under Henry VIII. Only fragmentary descriptions of it have been handed down to us, and accurate knowledge of its features is not obtainable. Allusions and contemporary prints indicate that it was a hoidenish sort of performance, in which the participants joined hands and formed many eccentric figures. The collective number of dancers in the Morris varied from time to time. According to Douce {Illustrations of Shakes- peare, p. 581), in more ancient times the chief characters were Robin Hood, Little John, Friar Tuck, Maid Marian, the Queen or Lady of the May, the fool, the piper, and several Morris-dancers habited in various modes. Afterwards a hobby- horse and a dragon were added. Most of the authorities. Douce included, do not regard the Robin Hood cortege, with the exception of Maid Marian, as constituent figures in the Morris. A large proportion of the allusions to the dance in the old plays and poems connect it with the ACT iv] Notes 239 May-games, but do not necessarily contain a mention of the train of Robin Hood. A tabulation of the Morris- dancers, which is generally accepted, is found in a rare old poem entitled Cobbe's Prophecies, which is quoted by Brand, Pop. Antiq. 1. 25: It was my hap of late, by chance, To meet a country Morris-dance, When, cheefest of them all, the Foole Plaied with a ladle and a'toole ; When every younker shakt his bels, Till sweating feet gave fohing smels: And fine Maide Marian with her smoile Shew'd how a rascall plai'd the roile: But, when the hobby-horse did wihy, Then all the wenches gave a tihy : But when they gave to shake their boxe, And not a goose could catch a foxe, The piper then put up his pipes. And all the woodcocks look't like snipes. In a painted window at Bentley, Straffordshire, is a famous representation of a Morris, in which a Maypole is surrounded by six Morris-dancers, together with a musician, a fool, a crowned lady who is regarded as Maid Marian, and a hobby-horse mounted by a crowned man, who is possibly Robin Hood. In The Two Noble Kinsmen 3. 5, Gerrold, the schoolmaster, directs a Morris danced by four countrymen, six women, a taborer, and the Bavian or fool. Other plays which mention or appropriate the old dance are too nume- rous to mention here. In addition to the authorities already cited, cf. Chambers, The Mediceval Stage, and Enc. Brit. 434. for the credit of the Strand. A Morris-dancer in The Two Noble Kinsmen 3. 5, speaking of his performance, says that ' the credit of our town lay on it.' 440. Let each true Subiect. Each subject of the May Lord. 443. My name is Raph, by due discent, though not ignoble I, Yet far inferior to the Flocke of gratious Grocery. A direct parody of the speech of the ghost in Kyd's Spanish Tragedy 1. 1. Cf. Introd., p. C. 240 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act iv Instead of Flocke, Dyce reads stock. Cf. variants. The alteration perhaps strengthens the sense, but it is quite un- warranted. The v^ord Jlock is legimately, though infrequently, transferred from birds or animals to any band or company of people. It is so employed here. 446. With guilded Staffe, and crossed Skarfe, the May- lord here I stand. Is seems to have been the constant custom, at the celebration of the May-games, to elect a Lord and Lady of the May, who probably presided over the sports. Strutt, in Sports and Pastimes, p. 353, mentions our passage as an evidence that the Lord of the May was decorated with scarfs, ribbons, and other fineries. He identifies this digni- tary with the personator of Robin Hood : ' At the commence- ment of the sixteenth century, or perhaps still earlier, the ancient stories of Robin Hood and his frolicsome companions seem to have been new-modelled, and divided into separate ballads, which much increased their popularity ; for this reason it was customary to personify this famous outlaw, with several of his most noted associates, and add them to the pageantry of the May-games. He presided as Lord of the May; and a female, or rather, perhaps, a man habited like a female, called the Maid Marian, his faithful mistress, was the Lady of May. His companions were distinguished by the title of " Robin Hood's men," and were also equipped in appropriate dresses; their coats, hoods, and hose were generally green.' The crossed Skarfe is referred to by Stubbes. Cf. 4. 421, and note. 450. For now the fragrant Flowers do spring, &c. These lines are in the manner of the typical May-day ballads, which usually sounded the praises of spring. Chambers, in the Book of Days 1. 547, gives the following representative May-song : Come listen awhile unto what we shall say, Concerning the season, the month we call May ; For the flowers they are springing, and the birds they do sing, And the blaziers are sweet in the morning of May. When the trees are in bloom, and the meadows are green, The sweet-smelling cowslips are plain to be seen; ACT iv] Notes 241 The sweet ties of nature, which we plainly do see, For the blaziers are sweet in the morning of May. All creatures are deem'd, in their station below, Such comforts of love on each other bestow; Our flocks they are folded, and young lambs sweetly do play, And the blaziers are sweet in the morning of May. So now to conclude, with much freedom and love. The sweetest of blessings proceeds from above ; Let us join in our song that right happy may we be, For we'll bless with contentment the morning of May. 456. The Morrice rings while Hobby-horse doth foote it feateously. ' The hobby-horse, which seems latterly to have been almost inseparable from the morris-dance, was a com- pound figure ; the resemblance of the head and tail of a horse, with a light wooden frame for the body, was attached to the person who was to perform the double character, covered with trappings reaching to the ground, so as to conceal the feet of the actor, and prevent its being seen that the supposed horse had none. Thus equipped, he was to prance about, imitating the curvetings and motions of a horse, as we may gather from the following speech in an old tragedy called the Vow-breaker, or Fair Maid of Clifton, by William Sampson, 1636. " Have I not practised my reins, my careeres, my prankers, my ambles, my false trotts, my smooth ambles, and Canterbury paces and shall the mayor put me, besides, the hobby-horse ? I have borrowed the fore-horse bells, his plumes, and braveries ; nay, I have had the mane new shorn and frizelled Am I not going to buy ribbons and toys of sweet Ursula for the Marian, and shall I not play the hobby-horse? Provide thou the dragon, and let me alone for the hobby-horse." And after- wards: "Alas, Sir! I come only to borrow a few ribbands, bracelets, ear-rings, wyertyers, and silk girdles, and hand- kerchers, for a morris and a show before the Queen — -I come to furnish the hobby-horse." ' Strutt, Sports and Pastimes, p. 224. Usually a ladle was suspended from the horse's mouth for the purpose of gathering money from the spectators. Q 242 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act iv There are frequent allusions in the old plays to the ex- pulsion of the hobby-horse from the May-games, which was effected by the Puritans. Cf. Hamlet 3. 2 : 'or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose epi- taph is,' " For, O, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot ! " ' Cf. Women Pleased 4. 1, Love's Labour's Lost 3. 1, &c. Women Pleased contains an extended exposition of the Puritans' aver- sion to the hobby-horse. ' During the reign of Elizabeth the Puritans made considerable havoc among the May-games by their preachings and invectives. Poor Maid Marian was assim- ilated to the whore of Babylon ; friar Tuck was deemed a remnant of Popery, and the Hobby-horse an impious and Pagan superstition ; and they were at length most completely put to rout as the bitterest enemies of religion.' Douce, Illustrations of Shakespeare, p. 595. Under James I the lady and the hobby-horse were reinstated. They were degraded under the Commonwealth, but again revived after the Res- toration. 457. The Lords and Ladies now abroad. Cf. Pasquil's Palinoda, 1634: The lords of castles, mannors, townes, and towers, Rejoic'd when they beheld the farmers flourish. And would come down unto the summer bowers, To see the country gallants dance the morrice. 460. Now Butter with a leafe of Sage is good to Purge the bloud. The only account of the medicinal properties supposed to belong to May-butter which I have found is the following : ' If during the moneth of May before you salt your butter you save a lumpe thereof, and put it into a vessel, and so set it into the Sun the space of that moneth, you shall find it exceeding soveraigne and medicinable for wounds, strains, aches, and such like grievances.' G. Mark- ham, English Housewife, 1637, p. 199. 461. Fly Venus and Phlebotomy. Venus, as here em- ployed, is an obsolete euphemism for venery. Phlebotomy, or blood-letting, was formerly an extremely common feature of medical treatment. ACT iv] Notes 243 Cf. Philaster 2. 2 : ' Your grace must fly phlebotomy, fresh pork, conger, and clarified whey ; they are all dullers of the vital spirits.' Cf. also A Wife for a Month 3. 3 : Phlebotomy, and the word lie nigher, Take heed of, friend, I thee require. 463. And sluggish snails, that erst were mute, do creep out of their shelles. Snails were used in love divinations; they were sent to crawl on the hearth, and were thought to mark in the ashes the initials of the unknown lover. Cf. Brand, Pop. Antiq. 1. 388. The divination regarding the snail on May-day is pre- served in Gay's Shepherd's Week, 4th Pastoral: Last May-day fair, I search'd to find a snail, That might my secret lover's name reveal : Upon a gooseiDerr3'-bush a snail I found, For always snails near sweetest fruit abound. I seized the vermine ; home I quickly sped. And on the hearth the milk-white embers spread : Slow crawl'd the snail, and, if I right can spell, In the soft ashes marked a curious L : Oh, may this wondrous omen lucky prove ! For L is found in Lubberkin and Love. Sympson and succeeding editors read mew'd. Sympson says : ' I have ventured to alter mute into the old word mew'd, i. e. shut up, confined.' Cent. Diet, gives mue as obsolete spelling of mew. Hence, mute (?). They keep me meiv'd up here as they mew mad folks. Humorous Lieutenant 4. 5. 468. bellowing. ' So the first 4 to. Other eds. " blowing " ; and so the modem editors, Weber excepted. The worthy prioress of Sopwell, describing the various cries of beasts of chase, says, "An harte belowyih and a bucke groynyth I fynde." Book of Saint Albans, sig. d. ii.' Dyce. 468. the Rascal and the Pricket. Rascal is an obsolete name for a deer too young*and lean, or of too inferior a Q2 244 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act iv quality, to hunt as food. Cf. As You Like II 3. 3: ' Horns ? Even so. Poor men alone ? No, no ; the noblest deer hath them as huge as the rascal.'' A pricket is ' a buck in his second year : probably so called from his horns.' Cent. Diet. 473. lift aloft your veluet heads. • A sly allusion to the horns of the citizens.' D3^ce. Cf. Philaster 4. 2, in which a woodman says that Pharamond's steward would have a deer's ' velvet-head into the bargain, to turf his hat withal.' On this passage, Dyce has the following note : ' " His [the hart's] head [i. e. horns], when it commeth first out, hath a russet pyll vpon it, the which is called Veluet, and his head is called then a velvet- head. ''^ The Noble Art of Venerie, &c. by Turbervile, 1611, p. 244.' ' Cuckolds were fancifully said to wear horns on the brow.'- — N. E. D. It is a very old saying, widely prevalent throughout Europe, that a husband wears horns, or is a cornute, when his wife proves false to him. The origin of the idea, as well as its exact significance, has had various assignments. Brand has a chapter on ' Comutes,' Pop. Antiq. 2. 181. 474. "With bels on legs, and napkins cleane vnto your shoulders tide. The use of bells was the distinctive char- acteristic of the Morris, the feature which separated it from dances of a similar nature. Cf. Chambers, Mediceval Stage 1. 200. We learn from Stubbes (cf. note to 4. 421) that around each leg of the Morris-dancer were tied from twenty to forty bells. The chief of these were designated the fore- bell, the second bell, the treble, the tenor, the base, and the double bell. According to Douce, sometimes only the trebles were used. ' But these refinements were of later times. The bells were occasionally jingled by the hands, or placed on the arms or wrists of the parties.' Illustra- tions of Shakespeare, p. 603. Douce cites The Knight of the Burning Pestle and Stubbes in the passage just alluded to as evidence that ' handker- chiefs, or napkins, as they were sometimes called, were held in the hand, or tied to the shoulders.' Cf. Women Pleased 4. 1: ACT iv] Notes 245 . . . Where are your bells, then ? Your rings, your ribbands, friend ? and your clean napkins ? Cf. Shirley, Lady of Pleasure 1.1: How they become a morris, with whose bells They ring all into Whitsun ales ; and sweat, Through twenty scarfs and napkins, till the hobby-horse Tire, and the Maid Marian, dissolved to a jelly, Be kept for spoonmeat ! 476. With Scarfes & Garters. These were not necessarily festive articles of clothing. During the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries, scarfs were much worn, particularly by knights and military officers, and under the name of sashes are still distinguishing marks of rank in the army. Regard- ing garters, Stowe says : ' At this day men of meane rank weare garters and shoe roses of more than five poimds price.' ' They were, in the time of James I, small sashes of silk, tied in a large bow, and the ends of point lace.' Planche, Diet, of Costume, p. 199. 476. Hey for our Town cri'd. ' A very usual exclamation at processions similar to the present. Butler uses the same ex- pression in a passage where he probably recollected the text : ..." Followed with a world of tall lads. That merry ditties troul'd and ballads, Did ride with many a good-morrow. Crying, hey for our town, through the borough." ' Weber. 480. To Hogsdon or to Newington, where Ale and Cakes are plenty. Cf. Wither, Britain's Remembrancer, 1628 : And Hogsdon, Islington, and Totenham-court, For cakes and cream had then no small resort. ' Hogsdon, or Hoxton, mentioned in Domesday as Hocheston, a manor belonging to the cathedral of St. Paul, whose prop- erty it still is, a suburban district within the parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, lying to the north of the Shore-ditch end of Old Street Road and west of Kingsland Road.' Wh.-C. 2. 245. Hogsdon Fields formed a common pleasure- 246 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act iv ground for the Londoners on holidays. Master Stephen, the country gull in Every Man in His Humour, lived in Hogs- don. It is a fact which causes the following expression from him : ' Because I live at Hogsdon, I shall keep company with none but the archers of Finsbury, or the citizens that come a-ducking to Islington ponds ! Slid ! a gentleman mun show himself like a gentleman.' 1. 1. Sir Epicure Mammon has the following dream about Hogsdon : He would have built The City new ; and made a ditch about it Of silver, should have run with cream from Hogsdon, That every Sunday in Moorfields the younkers And tits and tom-boys should have fed on gratis. Alchemist 5, 3. Newington, situated on the Surrey side of the Thames, became famous as a resort of the populace for the practice of archery, and after 1558, when by royal mandate the butts were set up for purposes of drill, it was known as Newington Butts. 483. thrumming of our caps. ' Thrumming of caps. Set- ting on the tufts or thrums upon a coarse cap. In the following instance, it is applied to a man setting his beard in order : " Bel. Let me set my beard vp. How has Pinac perform'd ? Mir. He has won already. He stands not thrumming of caps thus." Fletcher, Wild-goose Chase 2. 3. Or it might mean playing with his hat or cap like a person thrumming an instrument ; which is a theatrical symptom of irresolution. But the former explanation is confirmed by this line of Quarles : " Are we bom to thrum caps, or pick straws ? " • Judgm. & Mercy.' Nares, Glossary. 487. With Drums and Guns that bounce alowd, & mery Taber playing. These were the usual accompaniments of the May-game. Strutt cites Strype, who speaks of ' a goodly May-game in Fenchurch-street, with drums and guns, and pikes.' Sports and Pastimes, p. 353. Stubbes declaims ACT v] Notes 247 against ' their baudie pipers and thundering drnmmers.' Cf. 4. 421, and note. ' Tom the Piper, with Tabor and Pipe ' was often a constituent figure of the Morris. The tabor was not unUke a tambourine (without the jingles), and usually formed an accompaniment to the pipe. ' The tabor was a diminutive drum, without snares, hung by a short string to the waist or left arm, and tapped with a small drumstick. There is a woodcut of William Kemp, the actor, playing pipe and tabor in his Morris dance to Norwich, and another of Tarleton, the Elizabethan jester, in the same attitude. The writer is informed by Mr. William Chappell that Hardman, a music-seller at York, described the instruments to him fifty years ago as above, adding that he had sold them, and that country people still occasionally bought them.' Grove, Diet, of Music. Act V. 3. weewill haue a Capon in stewed broth, with marrow, and a good peece of beefe. A characteristic wedding-feast. In The London Chanticleers, Dods.-Haz., OldEng. Plays 12. 341, one of the characters foretells to his prospective bride some of the peculiarities of their wedding-dinner : ' Then a leg of beef shall walk round the table, like a city captain with a target of lamb before it : a snipe, with his long bill, shall be a sergeant, and a capon carry the drumstick. Thou shalt be a lady-general, and pick out the choicest of every dish for thy life guard.' 4. beefe, stucke with rose-mary. Old plays contain frequent evidences of the custom of using rosemary as a symbol of remembrance. It was employed both at weddings and funerals. In The Woman^s Prize 1. 1, 'The parties enter with rosemary as from a wedding^ Cf. The Pilgrim 5. 6 : Well, well, since wedding will come after wooing, Give me some rosemary, and lets be going. The rosemary used at weddings was previously dipped in scented water. Cf. The Scornful Lady 1.12: ' Were the 248 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act v rosemary branches dipt ... I would not wed.' The plant, as a bond of love, is celebrated in Robinson's Handefull of Pleasant Delites, 1584 : Rosemarie is for remembrance Betweene us daie and night, Wishing that I may always have You present in my sight. Cf. Hamlet 4. 5 : ' There's rosemary, that's for remembrance.' Nares cites our play to show that rosemary was some- times made a garnish for the meats. Cf Pericles 4.4:' Marry, come up, my dish of chastity with rosemary and bays.' There is an account of ' Rosemary at weddings' in Brand's Pop. Antiq. 2. 119. 14. To farre. ' So the first 4to. Later eds, " To " ; and so the modern editors ! ' Dyce. Dyce was the first editor to realize that the far of the text is an obsolete verb mean- ing to remove. Cf. Glossary. 27. Inuisible to all men but thy selfe. ' In this passage our author evidently has an eye to the ghost of Banquo in Macbeth.' Dyce. In ed. 1778 it is regarded as a ridicule on Macbeth. 28. And whisper such a sad tale in thine eare. Cf. 2. 173, and note. 29. Shall make. (It) shall make. 'Where there can be no doubt what is the nominative it is sometimes omitted.' Abbott, Shakes. Gram., p. 287. Cf 4. 298, and note. Cf. Macbeth 4. 2 : I take my leave of you : * Shall not be long but I'll be here again. 30. And stand as mute and pale as Death itself. Darley remarks upon the passage ending with this line : ' How are we struck by this awful picture, by its visionary character so well harmonising with the words which sound as if heard in a terrific dream? How are disappointed when we find the ghost is but Jasper who has had " his face mealed," and the passage itself extracted from a mock-heroic play, " The Knight of the Bvirning Pestle " ? ' Introduction, p. ACT v] Notes 249 XXXII. Darley uses this illustration to point his contention that Beaumont and Fletcher are more agreeable if read des- ultorily than consecutively. 58. Saint Faiths Church vnder Paules. 'At the west end of this Jesus chapel, under the choir of Paules, also was a parish church of St. Faith, commonly called St. Faith under Paul's, which served for the stationers and others dwelling in Paule's church-yard, Paternoster Row, and the places near adjoining. The said chapel of Jesus being suppressed in the reign of Edward VI, the parishioners of St. Faith's church were removed into the same, as to a place more sufficient for largeness and lightsomeness, in the year 1551, and so it remaineth.' Stow, Survey, p. 123. Cited, in part, by Dyce. Hvimphrey's evident intention to withdraw from places of ' lightsomeness,' and to wear out his shoe-soles in the dark, would indicate that his place of retirement was to be the original St. Faith's. Our friend's gloomy state of mind is aptly indicated in this resolve of his, since dandies of his sort were prone, not to hide in obscure retreats like St. Faith's, but to vie with each other in a display of their fine clothing and haughty manners in Paul's Walk or Duke Humphrey's Walk, the cen- tral aisle of the church itself. Captain Bobadill in Ben Jon- son's Every Man in His Humour is a ' Paul's man.' Chap. 4 of Dekker's Gulfs Hornbook is entitled ' How a gallant should behave himself in Powles walkes.' Act 3, sc. 1, of Ben Jon- son's Every Man Out of His Humour is laid in Duke Hum- phrey's Walk; so also is Act 1, sc. 1, of Middleton's Michael- mas Term. 65. I would haue thee call all the youthes together in battle-ray. Entick says that about this time the military ardor of the Londoners was manifested, not only in the numerous response of the adults to the king's musters, but in the martial spirit of the rising generation. ' The children endeavoured to imitate their parents; chose officers, formed themselves into companies, marched often into the fields with colours flying and beat of drums, and there, by frequent prac- tice, grew up expert in the military exercise.' Survey 2.^15. 2 50 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act v 66. drums, and guns, and flags. Under Elizabeth, and in the reigns preceding hers, the drum and the fife were the musical instruments of the infantry, but thereafter the infantry had only the drum, until fifes were restored to use in 1745. Aside from serving as the accompaniment on the march, the drum was used to signal the different movements in the drills. The chief beats of the drum on these occasions were a Call, a Troop, a Preparation, a March, a Battaile, a Retreat, terms which are minutely defined by Grose, Milit. Antiq. 2. 47. Guns of the period were of different sorts and denomi- nations. The first guns fired by hand were called hand- cannons, culverines, and hand-guns. The instruments used in the infantry, however, were the muskets, and these the Wife undoubtedly has in mind. The muskets were de- velopments of the cruder, but lighter, harquebuses, and were so heavy that they had to be supported on a fork, called a rest, when presented in order to fire. They were fired with match-locks. Besides the musket and the rest, the soldier had to carry with him a bullet-bag, a powder-flask, and a match-cord. Flags, banners, pencils, and other ensigns, are of great antiquity ; their use was to distinguish the troops of differ- ent nations or provinces within the larger armies, and, in smaller bodies, the troops of the different leaders. They also served to point out rallying-places for broken battalions or squadrons, and the stations of the chief officers. 67. march to Mile end. The mimicry which the Wife here proposes is intended to be in ridicule of the manoeuvers of the City train bands at Mile End. Cf. Introd., p. CXI. 68. exhort your Souldiers to be merry and wise. Cf. 2. 102, and note. 68. to keepe their beards from burning. An evident al- lusion to the danger arising from the powder, matches, and other inflammable articles which the musketeers carried. 70. cry kill, kill, kill. Cf. Lear 4. 6 : And when I have stol'n upon these sons-in-law, Then, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill! Fumess has the following note upon these lines in Lear: ACT v] Notes 2 5 1 ' Malone : " This was formerly the word given in the Eng- Hsh army when an onset was made. So in Ven. &> Ad. 652 : in a peaceful hour doth cry " kill, kill." " Again, in The Mirrour for Magistrates 1610, p. 315 : " Our Englishmen came boldly forth at night. Crying Saint George, Salisbury , kill, kill." ' 71. lerkin. 'A short body-garment of the jacket or doublet variety, for either of which it appears to have been used indiscriminately during the sixteenth century ... Its exact shape and fashion varied at different times, and the only absolute definition of it I ever met with occurs in Meriton's ' Clavis ' 1697, the compiler stating that " a jerkin is a kind of jacket or upper doublet with four skirts or laps." . . . The word has become obsolete, while jacket is as much in re- quest as ever.' Planche, Diet, of Costume. 72. scarfe. ' Scarfs were worn by knights and military officers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and under the name of sashes are still distinguishing marks of rank in the army. Before the establishment of uniforms the scarf was also a sign of company.' Planche, Diet, of Costutne. In Grose's Milit. Antiq. 1. 133, there is a picture of a pikeman, whose scarf is flung over the right shoulder and tied in a single knot upon the left hip. The ends are hung with tassels. Cf 4. 421, and note. 72. for the rest, the house shall furnish you. The tiring- house shall furnish you. Cf Ind. 96, and note. In Grose's Milit. Antiq. 1. 131, is the following description of the soldiers' outfit : ' The armes that we must carry must be there: first of all, the corslet complete with the tasses, i. e. skirts downe to the knee, hose of male, a codpeece of yron, good vambraces, and gauntlets or gloves of male, and a good head peece, with the sight almost covered. The other harnesse for the body must be a shirt or jerkin, with sleeves and gloves of male, and a head peece with the face uncovered.' 76. for the honour of the Citty. Cf. 4. 427, and note. 77. let me nevier hope for freedom. That is, civic free- dom won through the medium of apprenticeship. Cf Ind. 15, and note. 252 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act v 83. Let him looke narrowly to his sendee, I shall take him else. Let him give careful direction to the drill ; other- wise I shall take his place myself. Take in the sense of displace, which it manifestly means here, is not noted in the dictionaries. Cf. The Beggar s Bush 4. 6 : Look well, look narrowly upon her beauties. 84. pike-man. The infantry in the reign of James I con- sisted of pikemen and musketeers. From the reign of Henry VIII to that of William III, the greater part of the English Army was formed of pikemen. Cf. Farrow, Military Encyclopedia. 85. had my feather shot sheere away. The cut in Grose's Milit. Aiitiq. 1. 163, representing a 17th century pikeman, shows his helmet to be surmounted by an enormous ostrich feather. 86. fringe of my pike burnt off. Presumably the injured ' fringe ' is that of the cloth ornament known as the armin, which is thus described in a military work, called the Art of Training, 1622 : ' You had then armins for your pikes, which have a graceful shew, for many of them were of vel- vet, embroidered with gold, and served for fastness when the hand sweat ; now I see none, and some inconveniences are found by them.' Cited by Grose, Milit. Antiq. 2. 278. The pike was a species of spear or lance, solely appro- priated to the infantry. It was introduced into France under Louis XI by the Switzers, and soon became of general use in European armies. It was used in England from the reign of Edward IV to that of George II. Grose cites Markham [Soldier s Accidence, 1648), who says : ' The pikemen should have strong, straight, yet nimble pikes of ash-wood, well headed with steel, and armed with plates downward from the head, at least four feet, and the full size or length of every pike shall be fifteen feet, besides the head.' Milit. Antiq. 2. 277. The pike is now superseded by the bayonet on the end of the musket. 90. Ran, tan, tan, &c. The passage recalls Justice Shal- low's description : ' I remember at Mile-end Green, when I ACT v] Notes 253 lay at Clement's Inn, 1 was then Sir Dagonet in Arthur's show, there was a little quiver fellow, and a' would man- age you his piece thus ; and a' would about and about, and come you in, and come you in : " rah, tah, tah," would a' say ; " bounce " would a' say ; and away again would a' go, and again would a' come : I shall ne'er see such a fellow.' 2 Henry IV 3. 2. Concerning this resemblance, Coleridge says : ' That Beau- mont and Fletcher have more than once been guilty of sneering at their great master, cannot, I fear, be denied ; but the passage quoted by Theobald from the " Knight of the Burning Pestle " is in imitation. If it be chargeable with any fault, it is with plagiarism, not with sarcasm.' Notes on Shakespeare's Plays. 91. little Ned of Algate. The deeds of this redoubtable boy, if he really existed, seem not to have been duly rec- ognized in history. I can find no record of them. Algate or Aldgate is one of the twenty -six wards of Lon- don. It is located near the site of the gate in the old City wall towards the East ; hence its name. Cf. Ind. 3, and note. 91. drum Ned. The importance of the drummer is indi- cated by a quotation made by Grose from a Military Col- lection of Elizabeth's reign: 'All captains must have dromes and phiphes and men to use the same, who should be faith- ful, secret, yngenious, of able personage to use their instru- ments and office, of sundrie languages, for often tymes they are sent to parlie with their enemies, to summon their forts and towns, to redeme and conduct prisoners, and diverse other messages, which of necessitie require languages; if such dromes or phiphers should fortune to fall into the hands of their enemies, no gifte or force should cause them to disclose any secret that they know; they must often practise their instruments, teache the company the sound of the march, allarme, approach, assolte, battel, retreat, skirmish, or any other calling that of necessity should be known.' Milit. Antiq. 2. 43. 101. company. The consistency of a company of infantry varied slightly from, time to time. Typical companies of 254 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act v the period were those sent to the Palatinate. They were each made up of one hundred and forty-four privates, three gentlemen, three corporals, and two drummers. The com- missioned officers to each compan}^ were a captain, a lieuten- ant, and ensign. Cf. Grose, Milit. Aniiq. 1. 182. 101. colours. ' The colours of the foote, frequently by the old writers stiled ensigns, are square, but larger than the banners or standards of the horse ; they are fixed on a spear ; formerly there was a stand of colours to every company ; they were in time of action guarded by two ranks of hal- bardiers.' Grose, Milit. Antiq. 2. 53. Grose says that the colours of every captain ' should be blazoned with Saint George's Armes alone, but with so many spots or several devices as pertain to the dignity of their respective places.' This gives us the insignia of our Captain Ralph. As to the composures of hues, from which these flags took their name, Grose quotes Markham, Soldier's Accidence, p. 31 : ' There must be in military honour nine several faces, or complex- ions, that is to say, two which be called mettals, as yellow and white, figuring gold and silver ; seven which are called proper colours, as black, white, blew, red, green, purple, tunnis, and ermine.' Certain mixtures of these shades were supposed to bring disgrace to the ensign, and were dis- countenanced. Grose gives the signification of the legitimate colors, i. e., yellow betokens honor, blue, faith, &c. 102. March faire. An old form of military command, which is not noticed in the dictionaries. It undoubtedly means ' march without haste or violence.' In Heywood's / Edward IV, the rebels under Falconbridge enter ' marching as being at Mile-end.' One of the officers says to them : ' March fair, ye rogues, all kings or cap- knitters.' Cf soft and faire, 5. 142, and note. 102. Lieutenant beate the reare vp. Among other duties devolving upon the lieutenant, ' he is to order and ranke the company fit for his captaine to march with; hee is to divide his company into foure divisions; making two divis- ions of the pikes and two of the musquetieres ; hee is to ranke the first division of musquets in the front, and the ACT v] Notes 255 second division of musquets in the rcare of the pikes ; hee is to march in the reave of the company into the field ; and in marching out of the field, the captaine is to march in the rear, and the heutenant in the front.' Ward, Animad- versions of Warre, 1639, quoted by Grose, Milit.Antiq. 2. 353. To beat vp, in mihtary parlance, is to summon or call to- gether as by beat of drum ; well-known in the phrase to beat up recruits. The specific name of the drumbeat at which, as in the present instance, the troops are to fall in. and the roll to be called, is the Assembly or Troop. Cf. Grose, Milit. Antiq. 2. 48. 103. Ancient, let your colours flye. The obsolete word ancient is used to denote either the standard or the standard- bearer. N. E. D. gives it as a corruption of ensign. There were marked regulations as to the occasions for letting the colors fly, and violation brought disgraces upon the bearer : ' as in carrying his colours furl'd (or folded) up, when they should be flying: or to let his colours fly when they should be folded up; or to display (or nourish them) when they should be carried without any hand motions ; or to carry them without motion when they should be displayed ; or to vaile them when they should be advanced, or to advance them when they should be vailed.' Grose, Milit. Antiq. 2. 141. Pertinent to our passage was the rule that upon a regi- ment's march through a city or town the ensign-bearer should unfurl or open his colors, and let them fly at full length. 105. the Butchers hookes at white-Chappel. Whitechapel is a parish lying east of Aldgate, and stretching away to Mile End. It is a commercial district, but, in respect to most of its inhabitants, poor. The chief thoroughfare in Whitechapel, together with Aldgate High Street adjoining it, was formerly an important butchers' market. ' The great street in Whitechapel is one of the broadest and most public .streets in London; and the side where the butchers lived more like a green field than a paved street ; toward White- chapel church the street was not all paved, but the part that was paved was full of grass.' The City Remembrancer 1. 357. 256 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act v 105. the death of many a faire Ancient. It is obvious that here may be meant the destruction of the standard. Cf 5. 103, and note. It is quite possible, however, that the standard-bearer may be meant, and that the play is satiriz- ing the excessive punishments meted out to the ensign- carriers for injuries sustained by the colours. Cf. Grose, Milit. Antiq. 2. 142. 106. Open your files. ' Both ranks and files had three dif- ferent distances at which they stood ; they were distinguished by the terms: 1st open order; 2d order; and 3d close order: the first was six feet ; the second three feet ; and the third onty one foot and a half For open order, a distance of six feet was taken by each file, standing so far from their right and left hand men, that their arms being mutually extended, their finger ends would just meet.' Grose, Milit. Antiq. 1. 350. 106. that I may take a view both of your persons and munition. Ward says of captain that ' he ought to see his souldiers furnished with all things needful : as armes, munition and their weekly pay duely at the appoynted times. ... I he be in garrison . . . hee is precisely to go the first round himselfe, being ayded with Serjeant and divers gentlemen, where he may view the strength and sufficiency of every guard, &c.' Quoted in Milit. Antiq. 2. 249. 107. Sergeant call a muster. The sergeant here plays the part of clerk. Grose cites Ralph Smith, an Elizabethan authorithy, who describes the method of calling the roll at a muster: 'At every mustering or assemblinge. the captaines bill shalbe called by the clarke, every man answeringe to his own name, marching foorthe as he is called, that noe man unto twoe names make answere ; yf any souldier bee sicke or hurte, being not serviceable, paye him his wages, give him his pasporte, send him home, furnish his roome with an hable souldier ; 3^f any helthfull souldier absente himself at such tymes, let him be punished as in the statutes is mentioned, to the example of the rest.' Milit.Antiq. 1. 185. 'A Serjeant ought to be a man of good experience, and sufficiently instructed in all martial exercises. He ought to ACT v] Notes 257 be learned both in writing and arithmetic ; he is always to have a sqiiadron-rowle about him, wherein hee should dis- tinguish every man by the armes he beares.'— Ward, quoted in Milit. Antiq. 2. 258. 110. A Corselet and a Spanish pike. 'The corselet was a suit of armour chiefly worn by pikemen, who were thence often denominated corselets. Strictly speaking, the word corselet meant only that part which covered the body, but was generally used to express the whole suit, under the terms of a corselet furnished or complete. This included the head-piece and gorgett, the back and breast, with skirts of iron called tasses or tassets covering the thighs.' Grose, Milit. Antiq. 2. 251. Grose quotes a sixteenth century author who says that the Spanish pike was an especially faithful imitation of the pike made by the Switzers. I have found no other mention of a Spanish pike except in Shirley's Young Admiral 3. 1. Grose says that there was a Morris or Moorish pike greatly in fashion under Elizabeth, though he is unable to state its peculiar characteristics. It is possible that Moorish and Spanish pikes were the same. The cause of Ralph's interest in his soldiers' equipment is the fact that the object of a muster was not only to ascer- tain the number of men, but likewise to examine their armor and weapons. This practice went back at least to Henry V, who, in his ordinances of war, made provision that each captain should make inspections of his company at the musters when reqviired, and report the results to his superiors. Cf. Grose 1. 183. 118. peece. Any sort of fire-arm might be called a piece. Green-goose, however, being an infantry-man, is probably possessed of a musket. 120. And. 'An't. Here the old eds. have "and": but see fourth speech after this.' Dyce. 128. feather. Sometimes the fork, or rest, upon which the musket was supported in action, was • armed with a con- trivance known as a swine's feather, which was a sort of sword blade, or tuck, that issued from the staff of the rest, R 258 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act v at the head; this being placed before the musqueteers when loading, served, like the stakes placed before the archers, to keep off the cavalry : these preceded the use of the bayonets; the invention of which originated in the sol- diers sticking the handles of their daggers into the muzzles of their pieces, when they had discharged all their ammu- nition.' Grose, Milit. Antiq. 2. 293. 128. sweet oyle, and paper. ' In time of marching and travelling by the way, let him [i. e., the musketeer] keepe a paper in his paune and tutch-hole. ... It is moreover requisite, that a souldier keepe his cocke with oyle free in falling, andhispeece bright without rusting.' Treatise, 1619, cited by Grose, Milit. Antiq. 2. 122. 129. Where's your powder ? 'Hee [i. e. the captain] is to see the bandyliers filled with powder, with sufficient match and bullets.' Ward, quoted in Milit. Antiq. 2. 250. 133. it craues a Martiall Court. Grose says that it is not easy to ascertain at what time courts martial, according to their present form, were first held. They are mentioned, however, with the distinction of general and regimental, in the Ordinances of James 11, 1686. During the reign of James I, controversies between officers and soldiers were settled, seemingl}', in a mixed form of martial court, composed both of civil and military members. Cf. Milit. Antiq. 2. 61. 134. Where's your home? 'The balls were carried in a bag or purse, the powder in a horn or flask, and the prim- ing, which was a finer sort of mealed powder, in a touch- box.' Grose, Milit. Antiq. 2. 292. 141. flaske. Cf. 5. 134, and note. 145. stone of this peece. The old fashioned gun-flint is here in mind. The lighter pieces of ordnance were set off by a wheel-lock, a contrivance for producing sparks of fire by the friction of a notched wheel of steel, which grated against a flint. These wheels were wound up with an instrument called a spanner. Cf. Grose, Milit. Antiq. 2. 291. 'About seaven of the clocke marched forward the eight peeces of ordinance, with stone and powder.' Holinshed, Chronicles 3. 947. ACT Tj Notes 259 Evidently the 2d soldier does not bear a musket, since that weapon was lighted with a match-lock and was very heavy. He must be carrying some smaller hand-gvm, such as the harquebus. 150. I meane to steppe it in the pay. I mean to keep back, withhold, the cost of the damages from the wages. Cf. 2 Henry IV. 5. 1 : 'do you mean to stop any of William's wages, about the sack he lost the other day at Hinckley Fair ? ' Cf. also Pope, Imitations of Horace 2. 2. 63 : Nor stops, for one bad cork, his butler's pay. Grose says that, in a 17th century estimate of army ex- penses, flasks are charged at 1 lb. 8 s. each. The daily wage of the common soldier was usually 8d. Cf. Milit. Antiq. 1. 271. 150. Remoue and march, &c. In connection with the passage beginning here, we may again quote Ward : ' At all convenient times he [i. e. the captain] is to drill his soul- diers very accurately, shewing them all the postures of the pike and musquet, then how to march, counter march, to double their files and rankes, the middle men to double to the front, to advance forwards, and to retreat backwards at the sound of the drumme, to wheele about, his musquetiers, to make redy, present and give fire, to give fire in the front, in the reare and upon either flanke, to fall off by files and give fire.' Quoted in Milit. Antiq. 2. 251. 151. soft and faire. This, or the reverse expression, 'fair and softly,' is an obsolete phrase frequently met with in old writers. It indicates ease of movement, absence of haste, &c., and, as here, may be used as an admonition, i. e. ' Gently ! quietly ! Take your time ! ' N. E. D. cites Top- sell, Four-f. Beasts, 1607 : ' The proverb is old and true, Fair and softly goeth far." ' 152. double your files, as you were, faces about. In the time of James I, as now, to double the files meant simply to put two files in one, and so make the ranks smaller. Of the second phrase in the text, Markham, Souldicrs Accidence, 1625, p. 21, says: 'To reduce any of these words of direction R2 26o The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act v to the same order or station in which the Sotildier stood before . . . you shall say As yon were.'' ' Faces about is the military word of command equivolent to wheel. In the Souldier's Accidence the officers are directed to give the word of command in these terms : Faces to the right Faces to the left Faces about, or \ ■>■ ^ ■ ^^ i Faces to the reare I ^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ °^^^- Cf. Gifford's note on Jonson's Every Man in his Humour 3. 1. Or when my muster-master Talks of his tacticks, and his ranks and files, His bringers-up, his leaders-on ; and cries, Faces about, to the right hand, the left. Now, as you were. Ben Jonson, Staple of News 4. 4. 154. match. The muskets were fired with a match. A spring let down a burning match upon the priming in the pan. The contrivance was known as a match-lock. 155. make a crescent now, aduance your pikes. When the companies were drawn up for exercise or a review, the ordinary formations were squares and rectangles, but the manoeuvers of the time included a variety of whimsical figures, of which Grose mentions wings, wedges, rhombs, triangles, the shears, and the saw. These absurd conceits were ridiculed as puerile exercises. The line of the cres- cent, however, was not an unusual formation. The Christian crew came on in forme of battayle pight, And like a cressent cast themselves preparing for the fight. Gascoigne, Flowers, 1572. x\dvancing the pike was a regular part of the military drill. The posture consisted of three motions by which the lower end of the pike was lifted from the ground to the right hip of the soldier. The movements are illustrated in Milit. Antiq. 1. 256. 155. stand and glue ear. '• The audience were to suppose that Ralph and his soldiers had now arrived at Mile-End.' Dyce. ACT v] Notes 261 159. to measure out . . . Honour by the ell ; and prowesse by the pound. It is perhaps a supererogation to call atten- tion to the expressive satire in these lines upon the per- sistent materialism in the conceptions of the old dramatists' average audience. The idea is perhaps suggested by a speech of Captain Spicing in Hey wood's / Edward IV, p. 10, ed, Dyce : Peace, ye rogues ; what, are you quarrelling ? And now list to Captaine Spicing. You know Cheapside : there are mercer's shops. Where we will measure velvet by the pikes, And silkes and satins by the street's whole breadth. 162. beare your selues in this faire action, like men, &c. ' He [i. e. the captain] must be familiar and eloquent in per- suading and diswading his souldiers, and to stirre up their valors to undergoe pain and peril.'— — Ward, quoted in Milit. Antiq. 2. 251. 166. Carre. Altered by Weber to cart. Formerly car was more frequently used than at present to denote any common cart or wagon ; now it is usually found in this general sense with dignified or poetic associations. For the more antiquated use, cf. Beawes, Lex Mercat., 1752, p. 399 : ' Merchants, and others that use Carrs or Carts.' 171—73. for you shall see . . . children. May not these lines have been suggested by Richmond's speech vaRichardlll 5. 3 ? Richmond says : If you do fight in safeguard of 3'our wives. Your wives shall welcome home the conqvierors ; If you do free your children from the sword. You children's children quit it in your age. 173. whose care doth beare you company in baskets. Nothing could more pungently denote the contrast between the train bands' pompous displays and their actual triviality than this satirical thrust : the notion of the domestic larder seriously figuring as commisariat for ' the noble defenders of the realm ' is assuredly unique and absurd. 175. sort. Company, band. 'The Editors of 1778 gave the whole of this speech in verse. Weber very prop- 262 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act v erly threw it back into prose, with the exception of the present passage beginning ' To a resolved mind,' which seems to be a recollection of Shakespeare : Remember whom you are to cope withal, A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways, &c. Richard 111, 5. 3.' Dyce. The editors of 1778, indeed, gave not only this speech, but the whole of the military episode in verse an arbi- trary, as well as awkward, arrangement. 177. Stand to your tacklings. This resembles the cau- tionary command, ' Stand to your arms,' when soldiers are put upon the alert. 179. as shake an apron. Cf. 1. 277, and note. 181. a cold capon a field, and a bottle of March-beere. Poins, in / Henry IV 1. 2, says: 'Jack, how agrees the devil and thee about thy soul, that thou soldest him on Good-friday last for a cup of Madeira and a cold capon's leg ? ' ' The beer that is used at noblemen's tables in their fixed and standing houses is commonly a year old, or peradven- ture of two years' standing or more ; but this is not general. It is also brewed in March, and therefore is called March beer ; but for the household, it is usually not under a month's age.' Harrison, A Description of England, Bk. 3, chap. 1, 1577. 184. I did not thinke it had beene in him. ' Sometimes the sequence of tenses is not observed in dependent sen- tences.' — -Abbott, Shakes. Gram., p. 269. 186. Il'e haue him Captaine of the Gally-foist, Captains of galley-foists did not always meet with the esteem which the Citizen evidentl}^ pays them. Cf. The Scornful Lady 1. 2 : ' He makes no mention of such company as you would draw unto you, captains of galley foists, such as in a clear day have seen Calais; fellows that have no more of God than their oaths come to.' Other contemptuous references may be found in Middleton and Dekker's The Roaring Girl, in The Parsons Wedding (Dods.-Haz., Old Eng. Plays, Vol. 2), and elsewhere. ACT y] Notes 263 ' The gally-foist was a long barge, with many oars ; com- posed of galley and foist. The latter being made ixovcifuste, which Cotgrave thus explains : " Fuste, f. a foist; a light gaily that hath about 16 or 18 oares on a side, and two rowers to an oare." ' Nares, Glossary. The Lord Mayor's and Company's Barges were sometimes called The City Galley foists. The companies had their in- dividual barges for the water processions, which were a prominent feature of The Lord Mayor's Shows, given upon the day of that dignitary's installation. The accounts of the Grocers' Company for the year 1436 contain items of ex- penditure for " hiring of barges." ' The City companies con- tinued to hire barges for state occasions two centuries after this period. The Grocers hired the last in 1636, when it was thought to be beneath the dignity of the company to appear in a barge which was not their own, and accordingly the Wardens were empowered to construct " a fair and large barge for the use of this Company." ' Knight, London 6. 146. 190. Care liue with Cats. Merrythought has in mind the familiar adage ' care will kill a cat,' and is adjuring care to live with its proper victim; his invincible merriment defies its encroachments. 201, Sing wee, and chaunt it. ' The commencement of the fourth song in Morley's Firste Bookc of Ballets, &c., 1600.' Dyce. Again Dyce's word must be depended upon, since the Firste Booke of Ballets is not for the present pur- pose obtainable. 224. terlery-whiskin. This is a bit of colloquial jargon which was common at the time. ' In The Lady's Trial by Ford, we have terlery-pufkins. Whiskin occurs twice with no very determinate meaning in the same author's Fancies, Chaste and Noble' Weber. 224. the world it mnnes on wheeles. Before its publi- cation in 1605, Chapman's play All Fools was called The World runs on Wheels. The expression is proverbial. Cf. John Heywood, Proverbs, 1546, ed. J. Sherman, p. 134. 234. And some they whistled, and some they sung. 'This stanza is taken from the ballad of Little Musgrave 264 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act v and Lady Barnard, printed in Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry, Vol. 3, Bk. 1, where it runs thus: Then some they whistled, and some they sang, And some did loudlye saye. Whenever lord Barnardes home it blewe, Awaye, Musgrave, away.' Weber. In the story, the lady proves false to her lord, Barnard, who takes vengeance in murdering her and his rival. Little Musgra V e. Chappell prints the tune of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard in Popular Music of the Olden Time 1. 170. 240. let your owne loue remember she is yours, and so forgiue her. ' " This may mean. Let your self-love tell you that she is a part of yourself, and so forgive her. Yet I think it probable that we ought to read * Let your old love ' —that is, your former affection." Mason. The meaning seems to be, besides the consideration that she is my mother, let your own love as a husband, &c.' Dyce. 251. a Ladies daughter of Paris properly. No. 31 in Vol.1 of Evans' Old Ballads, p. 135, ed. 1810, has this heading: 'A rare example of a virtuous maid in Paris, who was by her own mother procured to be put in prison, thinking thereby to compel her to Popery : but she continued to the end, and finished her life in the fire. Tune is O man in desperation.' The first stanza runs thus : It was a lady's daughter, Of Paris properly. Her mother her commanded To mass that she should hie : O pardon me, dear mother. Her daughter dear did say. Unto that filthy idol I never can obey. 271. Fortune, my Foe, &c. 'A black-letter copy of "A sweet sonnet, wherein the lover exclaimeth against Fortune for the loss of his lady's favour, almost past hope to get it again, and in the end receives a comfortable answer, and attains his desire, as may here appear : to the tune of For- ACT v] Notes 265 turn my foe^ is in the Bagford Collection of Ballads (643 m., British Museum). It begins as follows : Fortune my foe, why dost thou frown on me ? And will thy favours never better be? Wilt thou, I say, forever breed my pain ? And wilt thou not restore my joys again? There are twenty-two stanzas, of four lines each, in the above.'- — Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time 1. 162. With respect to the words of the title. The tune is, For- tune my foe, Chappell observed to Dyce that ' nothing is more common in reprints of ballads than to put the name of the tune the same as the ballad itself; as The Carman's Whistle, to the tune of the Carman's Whistle, &c.' Chappell gives a considerable number of instances from old books and plays of the mention of Fortune my foe. Prominent among them are The Custom of the Country 1, 1, and Ben Jonson's The Case is Altered 4. 4. Chappell prints the tune of Fortune my foe. 292. hartely. Cf. 1. 184, and note. 308. make on him. Modem eds. read make an end on him. ' The two words which we have added seem abso- lutely necessary to the completion of the sense.' Ed. 1778. The alteration is amply justified. Dyce calls attention to the preceding speech of the Citizen as a support for the new reading. 318. Enter Raph, with a forked arrow through his head. Apparently, this is in ridicule of a stage-direction in The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York, 1595: 'Enter Clifford wounded, with an arrow in his necked As Dyce notes, Shakespeare, when he re-wrote The True Trag- edy, omitted ' with an arrow in his necke.' Cf. 3 Henry VI 2. 6. We now speak of a barbed, instead of a forked, arrow. Cf. Dryden, Assignation 3. 1 : '1 am wounded with a forked arrow, which will not easily be got out.' 319. When I was mortall, this my costiue corps. Many verses of the speech beginning here are a direct parody on the speech of Andrea's ghost, with which Kyd's ^/^ams/z Trag- 266 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [act v edy opens. Cf. Introd., p. CI. The next three verses of the speech are elsewhere parodied in our play (cf. 4. 443). 321. Where sitting I espi'd a louely Dame. Another par- ody on The Spanish Tragedy. Cf. Introd., p. CI. 322. wrought with Lingell and with All. Lingel is now dialectal (cf. N. E. D). It applies to the thread or hemp rubbed with rosin, which is used by shoemakers and cob- blers. Cf. Women Pleased 4. 1 : Every man shall have a care of his own sole. And in his pocket carry his two confessors, His lingel and his nawl [i. e. awl]. 333. the blacke thum'd maide. It should be remembered that Susan is a cobbler's maid ; evidently she is not espe- cially skilled in her master's craft. 340. With skarfes and Rings, and Poesie in my hand. We have already had mention of the scarfs and rings worn at the May-games. Cf. 4. 421, and note. Eds. 1750 and 1770 read posie, Dy., posy. Weber says: ' There is no occasion to vary the orthographic. Poesy is continually used in the same sense as posy in old plays; but in the present case, it refers to the rhymes which Ralph reads at the conclusion of the fourth act, standing as May- lord on the conduit.' ' A very doubtful explanation.' Dyce. Because of its conjunction here with Rings, Poesie, it seems to me, most probably refers to the mottoes or sentimental conceits, known as poesies or posies, which were engraved upon rings or other trinkets. ' Nay, and I have poesies for rings too, and riddles that they dream not of.' Ben Jonson, Cynthia's Revels 2. 1. A hoope of Gold, a paltry Ring That she did give me, whose Poesie was For all the world like Cutlers Poetry Upon a knife ; Love me and leave me not. Merchant of Venice, 5 (Folio 1623). 342. Citty Captaine at Mile-end. That is. Captain of the City train bands. Cf. Cowper, John Gilpin: John Gilpin was a citizen Of credit and renown, ACT v] Notes 267 A train-band captain eke was he Of famous London town. 343. leading staffe. Cent. Diet, quotes our passage to illus- trate the rare employment of this term to indicate the baton or staff borne by a field-marshal or other commanding officer. Cf. Ford, Perkin Warbeck 3. 1, stage- direction : 'Enter King Henrie^ his Gorget on, his sword, plume of feathers, and leading staffe.'' 349. death came vnto my Stall To cheapen Aqua-vitae. Grocers dealt in drugs and spirits as well as the regular commodities. To cheapen here means to ask the price of, Cf. Glossary. Death is an interested inquirer about the cost of ' the water of life.' 352. Death caught a pound of Pepper in his hand. This unique medium of Ralph's decease is peculiarly laughable because of the importance of pepper among the commodities of old-time grocers. Cf. 1. 328, and note. 356. Then tooke I vp my Bow and Shaft in hand. The practice of archery was encouraged at this time almost as much as the artillery drills. Under the immediate prede- cessors of the Tudors, archery had rather fallen into decay. It was revived, however, by Henry VIII, under whom a number of acts were made for promoting the practice of shooting both with the longbow and the shortbow. Ralph has a longbow, for the shaft was a sort of arrow which was used only with that implement. Henry VIII established masters and rulers of the " science," who formed a perpetual corporation called the Fraternity of St.George. ' The members of this society were also permitted, for pastime sake, to practise shooting at all sorts of marks and butts, and at the game of the popinjay, and all other games, as at fowls and the like, in the city and suburbs of London, as well as in any other convenient places.' Strutt, Sports and Pastimes, p. 57. The popular enthusiasm for archery thus created was very active under the monarchs succeeding Henry VIII. James I opened up a number of locations adjoining London for the practice of archery, and granted a commission in which were re-established the statutes, ordinances, proclamations, &c. 268 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [actv that had been previously made at different times in favor of archery. One of the chief resorts for the archers was Finsbury Fields, which Moorfields adjoined. Master Stephen speaks contemptuously of the archers of Finsbury, Every Man in His Humour 1. 1. 357. -walkt into Moore-fields. ' Moor-fields, a moor or fen without the walls of the City to the north, first drained in 1527 ; laid out into walks for the first time in 1606, and first built upon late in the reign of Charles II. The name has been swallowed up in Finsbury (or Fensbury) Square, Finsbury Circus, the City Road, and the adjoining localities. . . . This low-lying district became famous for its musters and pleasant walks.' Wh.-C. There is a black-letter chap- book entitled The Pleasant Walkes of Moore fields, written by Richard Johnson soon after the improvements made in 1606. Moorfields lay between the City and Hogsdon, the pleasure garden mentioned at 4. 480, and near Finsbury Fields, which, together with Mile-End, were used as a prac- tising ground for archers and the artillery. 361. My fellowes euery one of forked heads. A punning allusion to the horned heads of the citizens. Cf 4. 473, and note. Conjugal infidelity is thus referred to in Othello 3. 3 : O curse of marriage ! 'Tis destiny, unshunnable like death. Even then, this forked plague is fated to us. When we do quicken. 363. Shroue-tuesday. Shrovetide, as the word signifies, was originally a time for confessing sins, but it became, also, a period of unusual sport and feasting, notably the custom of eating pancakes. Shrove Tuesday was esteemed the ap- prentices' especial holiday, and of the many licenses which they took, the chief was that of assailing houses of ill-fame, and carting the inmates about the streets. In the ballad entitled Poor Robin, 1707, are these lines: February welcome, though still cold and bitter, Thou bringest Valentine, Pan cake, and Fritter; But formerly most dreadful were the knocks Of Prentices 'gainst Whore-houses and Cocks. ACT v] Notes 269 Sir Thomas Overbury, in his Characters, speaking of ' a Maquerela, in plaine Enghsh, a bawde,' says, ' Nothing daunts her so much as the approach of Shrove Tuesday^ We read in the Masque of the htner Temple : Stand forth Shrove Tuesday, one of the silencest Bricklayers, ' Tis in your charge to pull down bawdy-houses. Cf. Brand, Pop. Antiq. 1. 89, and Dekker, 2 Honest Whore. 368. Set vp a stake. Ralph probably refers to the stake to which cocks were tied as targets to be thrown at in the contests on Shrove Tuesday. Brand cites the following sa- tirical doggerel from an obscure poem written in 1679 : Cocke a doodle doe, 'tis the bravest game. Take a cock from his dame, And biftd him to a stake. Oh the beares and the bulls Are but corpulent gulls To the valiant Shrove-tide martyr. Pop.Antiq.i.lS. 369. Grocers Hall. A likely haven for the soul of a grocer's apprentice, for it was the grand place of assemblage in all the deliberations or the festivities of the grocers' guild. ' The first Hall of the Grocers of which we have an account was built in 1427, before which they had met at the house of the Abbot of Bury in St. Mary Ave . . . and other places. In 1411 they bought the chapel of St. Edmund of Lord Fitz-Walter, and a few years after his adjacent house and gardens, and commenced building their hall. The second hall was built some years after the great Fire ; and their third, the present edifice (Thomas Leverton, architect), was commenced in 1798, and opened July 21, 1802.' Wh.-C. 2. 158. The location of the building is Grocers' Hall Court, Poultry and Princes Street. 374. depart. ' i. e. part (as in our old marriage-service, i' till death us deparf^). So the first 4to. Other eds. " part " ; and so the modern editors, Weber excepted.' Dyce. This meaning of the verb is now obsolete. Of its intransitive use, N. E. D. gives the following examples : ' Adeu nou ; be 270 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [tit. treu nou, Sen that we must depairt.'' Montgomerie, Poems, 1605. ' So loth wee were to depart asunder.' Hinde, /. Brueit, 1641, p. 133. 392. then so. A phrase meaning than that, formerly in common use. Nares gives the following examples : ' Faith I thought as much, but such a one taught me more wit then so seaven yeares agoe.' Copley's Wits, Fits and Fan- cies, 1614. Hear. Foh, foh ! she hath let fly. Potl. Doe y' think 1 have no more manners than so ? Cartwright's Ordinary, 1651. 393. I thanke you all Gentlemen. Again the Wife is aware of the gallants' unusual courtesy in countenancing a grocer's prentice boy. Cf. 3. 503, and note. 396. I would haue a pottle of wine and a pipe of To- bacco for you. Ralph's favorable reception has assuredly caused a change of front in the Wife's attitude toward the smoking of tobacco, for cf. 1. 224-28. 400. and whilst. And was formerly used emphatically for ' even,' ' and that too.' ' We still use " and that " to give emphasis and call attention to an additional circumstance, e. g. "He was condemned, and that unheard." . . . The " that " is logically unnecessary, and is omitted sometimes by Shake- speare. . . . " And shall the figure of God's majesty Be judged by subject and inferior breath, Andhe himself not present ? " Richard II, IV. 1.129.' Abbott, Shakes. Gram, p. 70. The ellipsis in the last verse of this extract might be thus supplied : ' And whilst he him- self is not present.' Title-Page of Qg. I Francis Beaumont, j Written by< and > Gent. I lohn Fletcher. j This ascription of the play to a double authorship seems contradicted by the statement regarding the author in the TIT.] Notes 271 Address to the Readers, and to be made of doubtful reli- ability by the equivocal word authors in the Prolo^e. A consideration of the authorship may be found in the Introd., pp. XXI-XXXI. As it is now acted. There is no evidence that our play, after its first presentation in 1610, was revived before this year, 1635. Cf. Introd., p. XVI. her Majesties Servants. The organization from which this company of actors descended was formed under Alex- ander Foster in 1611, when it entered into a bond with Henslow, probably to act at the Swan. In March, 1613, Henslow's company and Rossiter's (the 2 Revels) amalga- mated, and were then called the Lady Elizabeth's Men. They bore this title until the accession of Charles I, 1625, when they passed over to Queen Henrietta and became known as Her Majesty's Servants. Nathan Field, who was also a member of the Queen's Revels, acted with this company. In Jan. and Feb., 1612-13, Beaumont and Fletcher's The Coxcomb was presented by it; in March, 1613, The Honest Man's Fortune; in succeeding years The Night- ivalker, Wit without Money and Nice Valour. In Malone's Shakespeare (in Boswell 3. 238), is printed this entry from Sir Henry Herbert's MSS., 1636: 'The 28 Feb. The Knight of the Burning Pestle played by the Q. men at St. James.' For details regarding Her Majesty's Servants, cf. Fleay, Hist, of the Stage, pp. 186, 204, 263, 312, 321, &c. the Private house in Drury lane. This playhouse should not be confused with the famov;s Drury Lane Theatre of our own time. The latter was opened in Catherine Street, 1663. The ' Private house in Drury lane ' stood in the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, and was generally known as The Cockpit, from the building which had originally occupied this site, and had served as a place for the exhibition of cock-fighting. The exact date of its erection is not ascer- tainable. ' The Cockpit Theatre was certainly not converted into a playhouse until after James I had been some time on the throne. . . . Camden, in his Annals of fames I, speaking of the attack upon it in March, 1616-17, says that the Cock- 272 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [tit. pit Theatre was then tiuper erectum, by which we are to understand, perhaps, that it had been lately converted into a playhouse. Howes, in his continuation of Stowe, adverting to the same event, calls it " a new playhouse," as if it had then been recently built from the foundation.' Collier, Annals of the Stage 3. 328. The attack to the which Collier alludes was made by a mob of apprentices on Shrove Tues- day, March 4, 1616-17. The Cockpit was occupied continuously by Lady Elizabeth's Men from 1616-17 until the end of James ' reign. After June 24, 1625, Her Majesty's Servants acted there under the management of Christopher Beeston. In 1637 these players were transferred to Salisbury Court to make place at The Cockpit for a new company known as Beeston s Boys. Cf. Fleay, Hist, of the Stage, pp. 299, 321, 359. ' On Saturday, March 24, 1640, the house was pulled down by a company of soldiers, " set on b}' the sectaries of those sad times." ' Wh.-C. Quod si, &c. Cf these lines on title-page of the text, and the note regarding them. Address to the Readers, Q.^. the French Kickshoes. The modem spelling is kickshaws. Ed. 1778 reads quelque chose. Cf. variants. ' The original Fr. spelling was frequent in the 17th century, but the com- monest forms follow the pronunciation qiie'que chose, formerly regarded as elegant, and still current in colloquial French. The word was sometimes correctly taken as sing., with plural choses, &c. ; more commonly it was treated as a pL, and a sing, kickshaw afterwards formed from it.' A^. E. D. The term French kickshoes as employed here had a con- temptuous force. Cf Glossary. Cf Addison, Tatler, No. 148 : ' That substantial English Dish banished is so ignominious a Manner, to make Way for French Kickshaivs.' the Author. An evidence of single authorship. PEOL.] Notes 273 Prologue of Q.^. THE PROLOGVE. This Prologue is almost an exact transcript of 'The Prologue at the Black fryers' prefixed to Lyly's Sapho and Phao. There are a few trivial alter- ations of the text, the addition of a few words, (viz.: or mistaking the Authors intention, ivho never aymed at any one particular in this Play, and the concluding sentence, And thus I leave it, and thee to thine owne censure, to like, or dislike.), and the omission of Lyly's last sentence, which is as follows : ' The Gryffon never spreadeth her wings in the sunne, when she hath any sick feathers: yet have we ventured to present our exercises before your iudgements, when we know them full of weak matter, yielding rather our selves to the curtesie, which we have ever found, then to the preciseness, which wee ought to feare.' Sapho and Phao was first printed in 1584. It was republished in 1591 ; and in 1632 it was included, in a third edition, with five of Lyly's other plays, in a collection called the Sixe Court Com- edies. Dyce corrects Weber's erroneous statement that the play had been presented at court in 1633. where the Beare cannot finde Origanum to heale his griefe, hee blasteth all other leaves with his breath. Cf. Pliny, Natural History, Bk. 9, chap. 115 (Bostock and Riley's trans.) : ' The breath of the lion is fetid, and that of the bear quite pestilential ; indeed, no beast will touch anything with which its breath has come in contact, and substances which it has breathed upon will become putrid sooner than others.' R. W. Bond, ed. The Complete Works of John Lyly, 1902, notes that the passage is a reminiscence of Euphues 1. 208, 11. 20-6 : ' The filthy sow when she is sicke, eateth the Sea Crabbe and is immediately recured: the Torteyse having tasted the Viper, sucketh Origanum and is quickly revived : the Beare readye to pine, lycketh vpp the Ants and is re- covered,' &c. Lyly adopted these ideas directly from Pliny, Bk. 8, chap. 41. ' Cuvier remarks upon this and the follow- ing Chapter, that they are entirely fabulous. The diseases, s 274 The Knight of the Burning Pestle [prol. remedies, and instructions given by the animals are equally imaginary, although the author has taken the whole from authors of credit.' Bostock and Riley. to breed (if it might be) soft smiling, not loud laugh- ing. ' Noticeable as an acknowledgement, made to a popular audience, of a purpose sufficiently apparent in the plays themselves, of weaning popular taste from coarse farce and rough-and-tumble clownage to appreciate a more refined style of Comedy. We may compare the effort at tragic dignity announced by Marlowe in the Prologue to Tambur- laine^ Bond. They were banished the Theatre of Athens, &c. ' Prob- ably amplified from Horace's brief account of the suppres- sion of the license of ' vetus comoedia ' at Athens {Ars Poetica, 281 sqq.), and the preceding uncomplimentary ref- erence to the wit of Plautus, 1. 270.' Bond. The lines in Horace are thus translated by Howes {Art of Poetry, ed. Cook, p. 20): Our forefathers, good-natured, easy folks. Extolled the numbers and enjoyed the jokes Of Plautus, prompt both these and those to hear, With tolerant not to say with tasteless ear. The account of the ' vetus comoedia ' is rendered as follows : The Antique Comedy was next begun, Nor light applause her frolic freedom won; But, into slanderous outrage waxing fast. Called for the curb of law; that law was passed; And thus, its right of wronging quickly o'er, Her Chorus sank abashed, to rise no more. the Authors intention. This throws no light on the question of joint composition, since Authors may be either the plural or the possessive of the singular, Cf. variants. The Speakers' Names. The Speakers Names. Dyce's additions to this list, to- gether with his corrections of inaccuracies, should be noted. Cf. variants. BIBLIOGRAPHY Abbott, E. A. A Shakesperian Grammar. London, 1891. Arber, Edward, ed. A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London : 1554—1640. 5 vols. London, 1875-94. AscHAM, Robert. The Schoolmaster, 1570. Arber's Reprints. London, 1870. Bates, K. L., and Godfrey, L. B. English Drama. A Work- ing Basis. Wellesley College, 1896. 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London, 1857, GLOSSARY This Glossary is designed to include all words which are obsolete, archaic or dialectal ; all current words used in senses which are obsolete, archaic, dialectal or rare ; so far as prac- ticable, all phrases which are obsolete, archaic, or otherwise pecviliar ; all obsolete or archaic forms which are not merely old spellings ; and words which, though current in the senses defined, are obscure from a difficult context or from their occurrence in the play in different senses. Every definition is accompanied by at least one citation. In all cases of pos- sible confusion, the citations are complete. The New English Dictiotiary and the Century Dictionary have been my principal authorities. The Standard Dictionary , Nares' Glossary, Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Pro- vincial Words, and Wright's Dictionary of Obsolete and Pro- vincial English have often been useful. A dagger before a word or definition indicates that the word or the particular meaning involved is obsolete. An interrogation point after a word or definition indicates un- certainty with regard to it. Other abbreviations are in com- mon use in dictionaries. The citations are by act and line of the text of this edition. Jl, prep, f I. In, denoting capacity : in any one's name. Phr., a God's name. i. 71 ; 2. 1 1 1. ■j-2. Worn down from of. I. 228 ; 2. loi, 269, 559; 3. 144. Phr., a clocke = o'clock. I. 403 ; 4. 376. f3. On. I. 404, 485 ; 2. 40, 267, 514; 3. 146; 4. 7. fA, proTt. He. I. 222 ; 2. 41, 268, 280 ; 3. 141, 144, 622 ; 4. 6, 266, 412, 415. Able, a. fi. Strong, capable of endurance. 3. 22. About, prep. Because of; on ac- count of. I. 274; 4. 170. •j-False representation. ■j-To misrepresent. Ind. Abuse, : Ind. 18. Abuse, V. 21. Aby, V. To pay the penalty for (an offence). Arch. 3. 365. Accept of, phr. To receive with favor or approval. Ind. 83. 2«2 The Knight of the Burning Pestle Add, V. fTo put into the posses- sion of; to give or grant addition- ally, as to a person, i. 6. Admirable, a. f Wonderful, mar- velous. Ind. 38. Afeard, ppl. a. (From obs. v. of ear) Afraid. Now colloq. or vulgar. 3. 461. Affoord, V. fi. To manage to sell (at such a price), i. 177. 2. To supply or yield. 3. 240. Againe, adv. In response ; in re- ply ; in return. Obs. or arch. Ind. 78; I. 119, 179; 4. 207. Against, prep, f Shortly before ; in view of the near approach of. 4. 181. Am, pron. Obs. form of 'em = them. I. 66 ; 4. 390. Amend, v. fAbsol. To make amends for (an offence). 3. 512. An, C071J. (Weakened from and = if) fl. As if? 2. 179. Cf. note. 2. If. Arch, or dial. 3. 581. An, conj. (= A7id if). An inten- sive of if. Arch, or dial. 2. 524. An an, adv. Obs. form of anon. fStraightway, at once, instantly. 2. 576. Ancient, n. Arch. 1. A standard- bearer. 5. 103. 2. A standard ? 5. 105. And, C071J. I. If. Arch, or dial. I. 72, 490 ; 2.44, 147, 149, 219, 267, 309. f 2. Even ; and that too. 5. 400. Anew, adv. -j-Freshly ; as a nov- elty ; with some implication of fickleness ? 3. 48. Cf. note. Anon, interj. fA response by a servant, &c., called : ' Immediately ! presently 1 coming 1 ' ; whence ex- tended to an expression of atten- tion, ' At your service 1 awaiting your orders!' N. E. D. i. 298. Answerable, a. Correspondent ; commensurate. Arch. 3. 299. An't, phr. Contraction oianit=if it. Arch, or dial. 2. 429 ; 5. 120 (and), 135. Apparell, n. i . Clothing generally, raiment, dress. Arch. To the Readers. •j'2. concr. Clothing provided for a specific purpose. Ind. 96. Aqua-vitae, n. Ardent spirits in any form. 5. 350. Arming, vbl. 71. ■\concr. Heraldic arms ; hence, ' arming-pestle.' I. 334- As, adv. f Demons, adv. with that in the relative clause ; to such a degree ; so. Ind. 77. As, C072J. As if, as though. Arch. 2. 269. As you were, phr. f milit. Return to your former positions! 5. 152. Cf. note. Assured, ppl. a. Covenanted ; pledged. Obs. or arch. Ded. Ater-loue, n. (Misprint of after- love) Subsequent love. 3. 72. Away, adv. Straightway, at once, ' right away.' Chiefly colloq. in imperative sentences. 4. 432. Badge, 7i. f A distinctive device or emblem used to identify a knight or distinguish his followers. 3. 246. Bang, V. To beat violently, or knock about ; to thrash or drub. 2. 265 ; 3. 366. Barbarian, a. f Of or belonging to Barbary. i. 209. Barbor, «. Obs. form for barber. 3- 237, 353- Bargaine, «. A transaction that entails consequences, especially un- pleasant ones ; a bad or unfortu- nate ' business.' Arch, or obs. A bargaine, ellip. for phr., with a bargaine. 4. 362. Bason, «. Obs. form of basin. 3. 263, et passi77i. Cf. note. Baste, V. To beat soundly, thrash, cudgel. 2. 454. Bate, V. -j-To lower in amount, deduct. 3. 176. f Battle-ray, w. Now battle-array. Order of troops arranged for battle. 5- 66. Baudy, a. Obs. form of bawdy. Lewd, obscene. 4. 34. Be, V. 3'd pers. pi. pres. indie, of Glossary 283 the verb to be = are. Arch, and dial. 2. 118 ; 3. 121. Be bold, phr. To be (so) bold : to venture so far as, take the liberty, (to do something). Ind. 126 ; 2. 428. fBeare off, phr. To resist and cause (a stroke) to rebound ; to repel, to ward off. 3.375. Cf. note. Beaten, ppl. a. Hammered into thin foil or leaf of embroidered design. 4. 50, 60. Beate up, phr. milit. To summon or call together as by a beat of the drum. 5. 102. Cf. note. Bed-fellow, n. f A wife. 3. 576. Before hand, adv. Phr., to have (something) before hand : to have more than sufficient for present demands. Arch. 2. 480. Begot, pp. Obs. pp. ofbeget. Ded. Beholding, ppl. a. f Under obli- gation, obliged, indebted. 3. 194 ; 4. 126, 218. Ben, V. Obs. form of been, from the verb to be. i. 116. Beray, v. Obs. or arch. To befoul with ordure. 2. 245 ; rejl. 5. 345. Beshrew me, phr. Arch. Used with the force of such imprecatory expressions as ' Evil befall me,' ' Mischief take me,' &c. Ind. 66, et passim. Beside, prep. fAway from, off. 1. 491. Besides, prep. fOff. i. 242, 244. Bespeake, v. To arrange for ; to ' order.' I. 333. f Bezell, V. To plunder, spoil ; to make way with. I. 353. "BV, prep. Obs. form of by. 2. 94. Bird, n. A term of endearment. 2. 149. Birdingpeece, ;/. A gun for shoot- ing birds, a fowling piece. 2. 84. Bite, V. fTo deceive, overreach. Now only colloq., and in the pas- sive. 4. 343. Blame, v. -j-To rebuke, to visit with reproof. Prol. Blaze, V. To shine resplendently. 3- 247- Blazing, ppl. a. f (Heraldry) Des- cribing heraldically ; blazoning. 3. 246 ; biasing {obs. form) 3. 453. Blesse, v. f To protect, save (from). 2. 274; 3. 468, 548; 5. 7. Bloud, w. Obs. form of b/ood. 1.22. Body, w. Applied symbolically to the bread in the sacrament of the Lord's supper. fUsed in the oath by God's body. 2. 250. Bold, a. Ind. 126; 2.428. Cf. Be bold. Boldness, n. Presumption. 4. 329. Bonny, a. A general epithet of eulogy or appreciation ; ' fine.' Dial. 5. 211. f Boot-hose, n. pi. Over-stockings worn with the boots, and reaching from the thigh to the ankle. 4. 138. Cf. note. Bord, n. Corruption of bore, mean- ing the interior measurement or diameter of a circular cavity. 3. 271. Cf. note. Bounce, v. ^intr. To make a noise of explosion, to go ' bang.' 4.487. Bounce, interj. Imitating the sound of a gun. 5. 94. Bound, ppl. a. I. Having entered into a contract binding to service. 1. 18. 2. Under obligations (of gratitude, &c.). 3. 319. Boy, «. -j- 1. As a term of contempt : knave, varlet, &c. Ind. 6, 12 ; I. 489; 2. 288, 295 ; 5. 315. f 2. Attendant or page at the theatre. Ind. 61 ; 2. 283, ff. ; 3. 321, ff. ; 4. 41, 417, ff. ; 5. 306, ff. f3. Child-actor. Ind. 63 ; 5. 303. 4. Used in familiar, affectionate, or playful address. 2. 18 ; 3-375) 380, 381, 536, 624. f5. Servant or page. 4. 13, ff., 219, ff., 387, 402. Braue, a. Used loosely as a gener- al epithet of admiration and praise : ' fine,' ' capital,' &c. Arch. 4. 433 ; 5- 60, 198. Brauely, adv. Worthily, well. Dial. ? In a showy manner ; splendidly, finely? 5. 73, 8r. 284 The Knight of the Burning Pestle fBraue sprighted, a. Brave- spirited ; brave-minded. 3. 286. Breech, n. The buttocks. 3. 601. Breed, v. To produce ; to be the source of. 5. 139. Bright, a. Of persons : ' resplen- dent with charms ' ; beautiful, fair. Arch. 2. 327, 565. Bring about, phr. To turn around. 2. 152. Bring off, pkr. To deliver, rescue, acquit. Arch. 5. 344. Broker, w. f A go-between in love- affairs ; a pander. 2.318, Cf. note. Blillet, n. f A small round ball of soap. 3. 272. Cf. note. Burchin Tree, 7i. Birch tree. 4. 454- Business, n. i. A particular mat- ter demanding attention, i. 215 ; 3- 315- 2. Errand. 4. 17. Busse, V. Arch, and dial. To kiss. 2. 18. But, conj. Than. Formerly common in negative sentences containing a comparative ; now rare. 4. 80. By and by, phr. -j-At once ; straightway, i. 340. Caitife, a. Obs. form oi caitiff. Vile, wicked. 2. 311. Caitiffe, ti. A base, mean, despi- cable ' wretch,' a villain. 3. 358. Can, T'. fTo know. Not given in absolute use in ^V. E. D. i. 468. Cannot tell, phr. f Know not what to say or think of it.' Halli- well. 2. 98. Cf. note. Cap, 7'. -)-To arrest, 3. 191, 196, 198. Capon, n. A cock-chicken castrat- ed for the purpose of improving the flesh for table. 5. 3, 182. Carduus Benedictus, «. The blessed thistle. 3. 336. Care. «. i. Oversight with a view to protection or guidance. I. 36. 2. Regard, solicitous attention. 5- 173- fCarke and care, phr. To be troubled and full of anxious thoughts. I. 386. Cf. note. Carre, «. A cart or wagon ; now rare in this sense. 5. 166. Carry, v. i. To escort, 'take' (a person). Arch. ■asiA dial. Ind. 59. •[■2. To endure, bear. 5. 280. Cast, 7'. I. To form, fashion. 1.5. ■j"2. To spawn. Phr., cast their bellies. 4. 462. f3. Phr., cast their caps at: to salute as a superior ; yield prece- dence to. 2. 216. Cf. note. Cath, ;;. Form of catch. (Cf. va- riants.) A short musical compo- sition, originally for three of more voices. 2. 487. (cf. note) ; catch, 4. 406. Censure, n. Judgment, opinion, criticism. Arch. Prol. Challenge, v. f i. To accuse, ar- raign, impeach. Ded. ■)'2. Phr., challenge the wall: to claim seniority over. Ded. Cf. note. Chamberlain, n. A chamber at- tendant on a lord or king, one who waits on him in his bedcham- ber. Arch. 4. 132. Chamberlino, n. Humorous alter- ation of chamberlain. fAn at- tendant at an inn, in charge of the bedchambers. 2. 403. Charge, n. i. Phr., to be at the charge of : to bear the expense of. Ind. 115. 2. Commission; injunction. I. II. 3. Expense ; outlay. Arch. i. 139; 5- 144- 4. The people under (one's) management ; here = troops. 3. 548. Chast, a. Obs. form of chaste. flnnocent, morally pure. 3. 56. Cheapen, v. To ask the price of; chaffer or bargain for. Arch, or dial. 5. 350. Childer, «. Obs. or dial. pi. of child. I. 107. Chiue, V. Obs. or dial. To befall, betide, f Phr., foiile chiue him. : ' i. e. may it turn out ill with him, ill luck to him. Fr. chever.' Dyce. I. 334. Cf. note. Glossary 285 Choose, "'. To do as one likes. Obs. or dial. 4. 390. Chop logic, phr. To exchange, bandy, arguments. I. 368. Churl, n. A base, low-bred fellow. 3. 621. Cipres, n. Obs. form of cypress. The branches of the tree ; used at funerals, or as symbols of mourn- ing._ 4- 304- Clap in, phr. To press close, strike in, lay siege to. Now rare. i. 114. Cleere, adv. Obs. form of clear. Entirely, completely. 5. 344. fCloke-bag, n. A bag in which to carry a cloak or other clothing. 4. 378. Cloth, n. f Canvas or other cheap material, painted with figures and mottoes in imitation of tapestry. Common in the expression paint- ed cloth. I. 581. Cf note. Colours, pi. n. A flag, ensign, or standard, such as is borne in a military body. 5. loi, 103. fCome aloft, phr. To vault or play the tricks of a tumbler. 3. 620. Come away, phr. ' Come along, come on.' Obs. or dial. 5- 3o8, 311- 3^6. Come off, phr. To retire or ex- tricate oneself from a combat ; usu- ally with reference to the manner. 3. 242. fCome your waies, phr. Com- forting, reassuring, encouraging, Obs. or arch. 2. 380, 386. Comfrie, «. A tall plant, common on margins of streams and ditches, with rough leaves, and drooping clusters of yellowish-white or red- dish-purple bell-shaped flowers ; formerly esteemed as a vulnary. 2. 258. Commend, v. i. To express ap- probation of. Ded. ■\2. To recommend or advise (a person) to do a thing. 4. 147. Commendation, n. Respects ; message of love and greeting : common in the pi. Arch. i. 76. Common-councell, n. f A general assembly called together for any purpose ; now applied only spec, i. e. the administrative body of a town. 4. 445. Commons, pi. n. The burghers, or free citizens, of a town. Ind. 30. Companion, w. f As a term of contempt. 3. 541. Condigne, a. f Appropriate ; mer- ited ; adequate. 3. 409. Conditions, n. fin the pi. : per- sonal qualities ; manners, morals, ways ; behaviour, temper. 3. 593. Conduct, V. -j-To carry, transport. 4. 246. Conductor, ;?. f A military com- mander ; one who leads an army. 3- 546. Conduit, n. f A structure from which water is distributed or made to issue : a reservoir. 4. 421. Cf. note. f Conduit head, n. Same as con- duit. 4. 441. Confound, v. To overthrow, de- feat utterly. Obs. or Arch. 3. 293 ; 4. 96. Coniure, v. To practise the arts of a conjurer. 4. 351. Conscience, n. fi. Private or in- ward thoughts ; inmost mind. 2.9. 2. Phr., a fonj 7ny conscience: on my word, truly ; used in assev- erations. 2. 267. Consent, v. To aid, or at least voluntarily refrain from opposing, when one has the right and power to oppose. 2. 537. Consume, v. i. To waste, squander. I. 23; I. 417. f2. To destroy by a wasting dis- ease. 2. 508. Content, v. f To please, gratify ; to delight. 2. 37. Content, a. Phr., be content: f be pleased,' ' be so good as.' 4. 440. Contented, ppl. a. fWilling (to do something). 4. 108. Contrarie, adv. In a very different I direction. 2. 290. 286 The Knight of the Burning Pestle Conuert, v. fi. To bring into another state of mind and con- duct. 3. 463, 465, 466. 2. To cause to adopt another re- ligion, i. e. Christianity. 4. 113. Conuey, v. fi. To carry off clan- destinely. 4. 336. f2. To lead, conduct, guide, by going with, or otherwise. 3. 424 ; 3- 445 ; 3- 501. •j-3. refl. To steal or slip into, &c. 4. 341. f4. To take away, remove. 4. 345- 5. phr., conuey away : to take away, remove. 4. 349. Coppy, n. Charter of citizenship. 3. 434- Cf. note. Corps, n. fThe living body. 5. 319- Cost and charges, phr. fVuto (one's) cost and charges : to (one's) loss, detriment, expense, i. 139. Countenance, ;z. I. Moral endorse- ment and support. 4. 413. ")"2. Demeanor or manner towards others as expressing good-will. (Countenane) 5. 394. fCouraging, ppl. a. From obs. verb courage : to animate ; en- courage ; cheer. Ind. 76. Courteous, a. i. Having such manners as befit the court of a prince ; graciously polite and re- spectful of the position and feel- ings of others ; kind and complai- sant in conduct to others. I. 267, 331 ; 2. 377; 3- 4". 2. As a formula of address ; orig. to superiors = gracious, gentle, benign. I. 301 ff. ; 2. 181, 418 ; 3- 157. f 3. Of inferiors : politely respect- ful or deferential. 2. 211. Courtesie, n. fGenerous treatment. 3. 185 ; 4. 86. Courtly, a. fCourtierly ; court-like. 3. 269. Craue, v. fi. To demand, to ask with authority, or by right. 2. 321. 2. Phr. crave for or from : to re- quest, ask earnestly for (something), esp. as a gift or favor. 3. 396, 588 ; 4. 274. 3. Fig. Of things. To call for, demand (something necessary or desirable). 4. 343 ; 5. 133. Credit, n. In pregnant sense : good name, honor, glorification, i. 286 ; 4- 434; 5- 77- Cry, V. To give public oral notice of (things lost). 3. 205. fCry you mercy, phr. Virtually equivalent to beg your pardon. 3- 586. fCuckoldly, a. Having the char- acter or qualities of a cuckold ; often, as here, a mere term of re- viling. 3. 629. fCunny, n. A term of endearment, Ind. 45, 50; conny, i. 109 (cf. note), 2. 275 ; coney, 2. 570. Dam, n. I. Mother (human) ; usu- ally with contempt. 2. 242. -{■2. Phr., Diuels Dam. 2. 265. Cf. note. Day, n. Day of battle ; hence, battle. 5. 85. Death, n. Phr., to do to death; to put to death. Arch. 3, 173. Decke, v. j-To cover. 4. 276, 294. Dee, phr. Obs. form of d'ye = do ye. 3. 587. Defye, t. To challenge to a con- test, or trial of skill. Arch. 2. 324, 325. Delaying, ppl. a. Lingering. 4. 254- Delight, n. The quality (in things) which causes delight. Now only poet. To the readers. Deliuer, v. -j-To make known ; impart, as information. 3. 477, Deniall, n. Hindrance, impediment. Dial. 2. 66. Denie, ?'. i. To refuse to grant (a thing to a person). 2. 207, 323- 2. To say ' no ' to, to refuse (a person who makes a request) 2. 15 ; 5. 243- Denier, n. A French coin, the Glossary 287 twelfth of the sou ; from the 1 6 th c. a small copper coin. Hence {esp. in negative phrases) used as the type of a very small sum. 4- 370. Depart, v. -j-To part or separate from each other. 5- 374' "fDesart, n. Obs. form of desert. f Any wild, uninhabited region, in- cluding forest-land. i. 263, 305. Deseruing, vb!. n. Merit or worth. 1. 27. Desire, «. Object of desire, i. 61. Desperate, a. fi. Involving serious risk and danger. 2. Extreme ; dreadful, ' awful.' 3. 383. Deuice, n. Inventive faculty ; in- vention, ingenuity. Arch, and rare. 4- 54- Deuoire, n. j-Service due or ren- dered. Phr. service or devoir is frequently met with. 2. 185. Di'de, V. Obs. form of died. 4. 277. Diet, 71. A course of food pre- scribed in medical treatment. I. 188; 2. 256 ; 3. 454, 491. Diet-bread, n. Special bread pre- pared for invalids or persons under dietic regimen ; f^i^c^:., a preparation for sufferers of the French Pox. 3. 472. Cf. note. Ding, V. Arch, or dial. To hit, kock, strike. 3. 622. Discent, n. Obs. form of descent, 4- 443- Discharge, v. -frefl. To acquit oneself, fulfil, perform (a trust, a part, &c.). Ind. 139. Discretion, n. f Judgment ; deci- sion. 5. 399. Dismal, a. i. Causing dismay; terrible, dreadful, dire. 3. 279. j'2. Boding or bringing disaster ; unlucky, fatal. 3. 362. Dispatch, v. i. To dispose of by killing. Phr. to dispatch out of the way. 3. 317. 2. To execute speedily. 5. 247. Disport, 11. Pastime, sport. Arch. 4- 457. Disquiet, n. -j-Disquieting feeling or circumstance. I. 187. Dissemble, v. f To feign, pretend, simulate. 3. 49. Distempered, ppl. a. Denoting mental disorder or distraction. Of persons {obs. or arch.) ; their minds, looks, actions, &c. 3. 82. Diuell, n. Obs. form of devil. 2. 164, et passim. Doome, v. To destine or consign to some adverse fate. 4. 330. Down, 11. fA hill. 2. 115, Doze, n. Form of dozen. 2. 15. Drago, n. Form of dragon. 2. 269. fDragon's-water, n. A medicinal preparation popular in the 17th c. 1. 278. Draw, V. -j-To move, proceed. 3. 596. Drum, n. milit. One who plays the drum; a drummer. 4. 9 1. Ducke, n. A term of endearment. 2. 381. Duckling, n. -j^A term of endear- ment. 2. 223. Due, a. fl. Direct? (The dic- tionaries do not recognize this meaning), f 2. Genuine ? 4. 443. Dutch-man, n. -j-A German ; a man of Teutonic race. Obs. exc. locally in the U. S. 3. 298. Ease, V. To give ease or relief of mind to. i. 192, Ease, 71. fPleasure, entertainment. 2. 57- Eie, n. fPhr. bi'th eie (by the eye) : in unlimited quantity ? 2. 94. Eke, adv. Arch. Also. 3. 429 ; 4. 449. Ell, 71. fA measuring rod. 5. 160. 'Em,^row. Unstressed form of thej72. Colloq. I. 69. Embecill, v. Obs. form oi et7ibezzk. fTo waste or dissipate in extra- vagance. 2. 170. Emperall, ??. Obs. form oii7nperial. An imperial personage. In 1 6— 1 7th c. used as = ei7iperor. 2. 179. Cf. note. The Knight of the Burning 'Pestle Engine, n. An implement, a mechanical contrivance. Arch, in the general sense. Spec.^ a comb. 3. 268. Enormity, n. A transgression, crime. 3. 259. Enow, 71. Arch, and dial. The plural of enough. 4. 31 1. fEntertain, «. Reception of a guest ; entertainment. 2. 399, 425. Entertaine, v. fTo maintain re- lations with (a person). 3. 74. Entertainment, n. Hospitable provision for the wants of a guest ; esp. provision for the table. Arch. 5- 273- Entreate, v. i. To ask earnestly for. 4. 198. 2. To beseech, implore. With obj. clause om., rare. 5. 242. Er'e, adv. Obs. form of ever. i. 346. Errant, a. i. Traveling, roaming (in quest of adventure, or like a knight-errant). Poet, or arch. i. 289; 2. 139. 2, Said of knights who traveled about in search of adventures. 2. 188, et passim. Errant, n. Obs. form of errand. In an elevated or dignified sense : here, an expedition of rescue. Arch. or poet. 2. 441. Erst, adv. f Just a little while since. 4. 463. Estate, n. Worldly possession, prop- erty, fortune. Arch. i. 394. Esteeme, v. fPhr., esteeme of: to hold opinion of. I. 374. Estimation, ?i. f Repute ; worth in the opinion of others. 5. 138. fEttin, n. f A giant or goblin. Nares says that the word, because of its etymology (from A. S. etan, to eat), implies cannibalism. i. 257. Euen,«fl'2'. Exactly, precisely, ' just.' Arch. Ded. i. 12, 219 (e'ne). Ewe, 71. Obs. form of r^w. Twigs of the tree used at funerals. 4. 304- Example, «. A precedent to which appeal is made to justify or author- ize any course of action. Obs. or arch. 5. 139. Extant, a. Standing forth to view : in early use with phr. extant to be seen : prominent, conspicuous, man- ifest. Arch. 2. 306. Extraordinary, ^adv. Extraordi- narily. I. 408. Factor, n. An agent to buy and sell goods. I. 16. f Fading, n. The name of an Irish dance. 4. 5. Cf. note. Faine, a. fApt, wont, prone, i. 386. Faint, v. To lose heart or courage, be afraid. 5. 162. Faire, a. i. Promising, favorable. 1. 10; 5. 163. 2. Just. r. 41. f 3. Of language, diction : elegant. Comb, with spoken, i. e. fair- spoken I. 267 ; 2. 43. f4. Used in courteous or respect- ful address, i. 270, 317 ; 2. 315, 420 ; 3. 189, 295 ; 4. 410. f5. Desirable, reputable. 2. 35. 6. In conventional application to women, i. 304 ; 2. 44, 54. f7. Reputable. 5. 105. Faire, adv. ■\i. Fully, completely. Obs. or dial. Phr., faire growne. 3- 304. f2. Without haste or violence. 5. 102, 151. Faire, n. One of the fair sex ; esp. a beloved woman. Arch, or poet. 4. 318. Fairelie, adv. fCourteously, re- spectfully. 2. 212. Faith, n. Phrases fi. By the faith a my body. Quasi-oath. 2. 215 ; 3- 143- 2. By (my) faith (and troth). Quasi- oath. I. 218, 264. 3. I faith, I'faith, i'faith. (Reduced from in faith, and used interjec- tionally). In truth. Arch. Ind. 141, et passim. 4. Vpon (my) faith. Quasi-oath. I. 81. Glossary 289 'Faith, interj. Shortened from in (good) faith. In truth. Arch. cxc. dial. I. 221. Faith, interj. In or on one's faith. Obs. or arch. I. 255, et passitji. Fall, n. f Condition, lot. i. 4 ; 4. 206. Falsifie, v. ^Fencing term : to make (a blow) under cover of a feint. 3. 373. fFarre, v. intr. for refl. To re- move. Obs. cxc . dial. 5. 14. Cf. note. Fashion, n. fPretence ; assumed behaviour. 4. 156. Fathame, n. Obs. form oi fathom. Ind. 88. Favilt, n. fi. An unsound or dam- aged place ; a flaw. 5. 122. •}"2. A deficiency, lack, want. 5. 146. Fauour, n. i. Phr., by your faiiour : by your leave, permission, pardon. Obs. or arch. Ind. 17. 2. Attractiveness, charm ; something which conciliates good-will. Obs. exc. arch. 2. 140. 3. In medisevel chilvalry, something given by a lady to her knight, as a sleeve, glove, or knot of ribbons, to be worn as a token of affection. Arch. 4. 109, III. Feard, pj>l. a. Frightened. Obs. exc. dial. Ind. 77. Feare, 7^ fi. To frighten. Ind. 78. f 2. To have fear for ; have anx- iety about. 4. 344. f Feateously, adv. Cleverly ; dex- terously ; nimbly ; properly. 4. 456. Fegary, n. (A corruption of va- gary). Dial, and colloq. A whim ; a wild freak ; a prank. 2. 273. Fellow, n. I. Contemptuously : a person of no esteem or worth (felow = obs. form). I. 33 ; 3. 542. 2. Compeer ; equal in ability or qualities ; a ' match.' 2. 44. 3. Companion, comrade. Now rare exc. in pi., or with const, in. 4. 445. fFellow-feeler, n. A sympathizer. 3- 563- fFellow like, a. Like a companion ; companionable. 3. 542- Fetch, v. I. Phr., fetch tip: to produce ; cause to come forth, bring to light. Ind. 76. f 2. To ' have at,' reach, strike (a person). 3. 380. 3. To cause to come, as by a sum- mons or constraining force. Now rare. Ind. 120 ; 2. 174. 4. Bring. I. 462 ; 2. 558; 4. 43, 426. Feth, interj. Obs. form oi faith. In or on one's faith. Obs. or arch. 3- 334- Field, n. fin pi. used in collective sense to denote the country as opposed to the town [spec, the country environs of London, i. e. Mile-end, &c., set apart for military drills)? Battle-fields? 5.159. Fiery, a. Fire-bearing ; esp. of an arrow, shaft, &c. Lit. and fig. 3.481. Filching, vbl. n. Stealing, esp. in a small, sly way. Originally slang, and, as such, first recorded in the i6th c. 2. 493. Fild,//. Obs. form oi filled. 5. 25. Fill, V. With the introduced con- tents as object : to put (wine, &c.) into a vessel with the view of filling it ; hence, pour out. Obs. exc. arch. 3. 612, 636 ; 5- 35''' Fine, adv. Well. Obs. exc. dial. 2. 248. Fine spoken, a. Using fine phrases ; polite in language. I. 362. Fire-drake, n. Fiery dragon. 2. 350. Fit, V. f To supply with that which is fit or suitable. Obs. when the object is a person. 4. 362. •j-Flappet, n. A flap or edge, as of a counter, i. 277. Flea, V. Obs. form oifiay. i. 371. •(•Flirt Gill, n. A woman of light or loose behaviour. 4. 33. Flocke, n. A band or company (of persons). 4. 444. Fond, 71. I. Unwise ; mad. Obs. exc. dial. 3. 355, 366 ; 5. 6, lo. 290 The Knight of the Burning Pestle 2. Infatuated, foolish, siily. Ohs. exc. dial. Ded ; 5. 36. 3. Of sentiments, &c. : cherished or entertained with strong or un- reasoning affection. 5. 42. Foote, V. To move the foot, step, or tread to measure or music ; to dance. Esp. in phr. to foot it. 4- 456. ^For and, cojij. phr. And more- over. 2. 184. Forkedjtt. -j-l. Of an arrow : barbed. 5- 318, 359- ^2. ' Horned,' cuckolded. 5. 361. Cf. note. Forsooth, adv. ^In truth, truly. I. 360. et passim. Fort, phr. Obs. contraction of for it. 2. 13. Forward, «. Ready, eager. 2 252. Foule, n. Something evil ; ill-luck. •j-Phr., foule chiiie him : may evil success attend him. i. 434. Free-man, «. One who possesses the freedom of a city, borough, company, &c. Ind. 15. Friend, n. fA lover, i. 44 ; 2. 246; 3. 7. 27, 81 ; 4. 281, 333. Fright, V. To scare, terrify. Now rare exc. poet, and Sc. 3. 81, 149. Frighted, ppl. a. Affected with fright. 3. 5. Frolocke, a. Obs. form of frolic. -{-Joyous, merry, mirthful. 3. 612. Froward, a. Now only lit. Dis- posed to go counter to what is demanded ; perverse, refractory. I- 123 ; 3. 46. FrO"wningst, ppl. a. Superlative oi frowning. That frowns ; stern ; threatening. 2. 516. Gad, n. Rare exc. arch. (Minced pronunciation of God.^ Substitu- ted for God, esp. in phr. by Gad. Ind. 70. Gaine, n. -j-Source of gain (i. e. goods). I. 21. Gallowes, n. One deserving the gallows ; a gallows-bird. Arch. I. 421. fGally-foist, n. A barge of state. 5. 187. Cf. note. Game, ;/. -j-Diversion, pastime ; hence, spec, amorous sport or play ? Scheme, intrigue, under- taking, followed up like a game ? I. 140. -{-Gaskins, n. A kind of loose breech or hose. Chiefly pi, 2. 104. Gastly, a. Obs. form of ghastly. -{-Causing terror, terrible. 3. 452 ; 5. 22. •{-Gent, a. Of women and children : graceful, elegant, pretty. Phr. Ladies gent is of frequent occur- rence. 3. 262, 360. Gentle, a. i. Of birth, blood, &c. : distinguished by birth or position ; of the class of ' gentlemen.' i. 90; 3- 235, 507. 593. ■{-2. Of actions, &c. : courteous, considerate, i. 117. 3. Having the character and man- ners appropriate to good birth and station. Freq.m the phr. a gentle knight. 2. 120, 125, 202, 408 ; 3. 161, 190, 264, 500. Get, T. -{-To win. 3. 131. Get (oneself) up, vbl. phr. refl. To betake oneself up from a place. Common in the imperative. Arch. 4- 153- Gird, n. A gibe, taunt. In com- mon use, c. 1580 — 1700; now somewhat arch. Ind. 10. Giue, V. f Of (one's) mind, &c. : to suggest unfavorably ; misgive. Ind. 113. Giue ear, phr. To give heed ; pay attention. 5. 154. Giue (one's) hand, phr. -{-To pledge (oneself). 3. 331. Go hard, phr. With but introdu- cing a statement of what will happen unless prevented by over- powering circumstances. 5. 395. Gold, n. -{-The metal as used for the ornamentation of fabrics. 4. 51, 60. Go (one's) waies, phr. i. Take your way ; go about your busi- Glossary 291 ness ; or used as a mere expletive. Obs. or arch. 2. 42, 295 ; 4. 29 ; 5- 371- 2. Common when bidding a per- son to be gone ; used in a kindly manner. Dial. i. 220, 335- GrOOd, 11. ■|"A good quality, virtue. Rai-e. 3. 76. Good-man, w. fUsed as a title of address, orig. to yeomen or farmers ; here used derisively. Ind. 6 ; 2. 295. Gossip, «. -{-A hoydenish ' gad- about ' ? 4. 154. Cf. note. Gouerne, ». "fTo administer, man- age. 1. 440. Grace, n. i. Phr., grace of God : an Expression signifying the re- generative and sanctifying influence of God. I. 360. 2. A courtesy-title given to a monarch, and serving as a com- plimentary periphrasis. Phr., the great Turkes grace. Obs. exc. arch. I. 483. 3. Sense of duty or propriety. Phr., have the (any) grace (to do or be something). 2. 222. Grace, v. -j-To show favor or be gracious to. 3. 504. Grant, n. -J-Consent, permission. 1. 194. Grant, v. -f-To sanction, permit. 5. 202. Gratious, a. Obs. form of grac/'ot/s. Condescendingly beneficent. Often, as here, used in sarcastic or play- ful application. 4, 444. Greene, n. A grassy spot. Rare. 2. 304. Griefe, n. ^i. Physical illness or pain. Prol. -j-2. Feeling of offence ; displeasure, anger. 2. 33. Grimely, a. Obs. or arch. Grim- looking. 2. 478. Groat, n. A silver coin in circu- lation after the 13 th c, but va- rying in intrinsic value in different countries and periods. The Eng- lish groat coined in 135 1—2 was made equal to four pence. The groat ceased to be issued for cir- culation in 1662, and was not afterwards coined under that name. 4- 138, 369- Grocery, n. -{-Grocers. Ind. 97. Cf. note. Ground, n. The solid bottom un- derlying the sea. Nautical. Ind. 88. -j-Grout-nole, n. A blockhead, thickhead, dunce. 2. 413. Grow, V. I. To advance, progress. Phr., to grow toward. Rare. 3. 513- 2. To come by degrees (const, to with inf.) Rare. 4. 261. Growth, n. Advancement, i. 5. Gut, n. Guts, intestines, (Employ- ment of the sing, in the general sense is rare.) I. 96. Ha, V. A worn-down form oi have. Colloq. or dial. 2. 146, et passim. fHa, pron. He. 3. 546 ; 4, 193. Habits, n. Dress ; costume. Arch, Prol. -j-Halter-sacke, w. A gallows-bird : a term of obloquy, i. 372. Hamper, v. i. To impede; en- cumber with difficulties. I. 380. "^2. To restrain by confinement. 3. 106. Hard, adv. -j-With an uneasy or uncomfortable pace. 3. 435. Harnesse, n. Armour. Hist, or arch. 4. 3. -{-Hartely, adnf. With the heart ; earnestly, sincerely. i. 184 ; 3. 604 ; 5. 292. Has. Form of h'as, an obs. con- traction of he has. I. 1 16. •f-Haue vp, phr. Stand up 1 get up 1 brace yourself! 3. 377. Cf. note. Hawlk, n. Obs, form of hawk, 4- 379- Head-peece, n. A piece of armour for the head, a helmet. 2. 330. Heart, ?z. Phrases, -^i. My heart ! : an ejaculation of surprise, &c, 3. 103. 2. Deere heart : a term of endear- ment. 3. 150. T2 292 The Knight of the Burning Pestle Heate, ??. New life, animation, courage, spirit. /'/^. 1.4. Cf. note. fHedge binding, «. Something used to bind together the bushes composing a hedge. 2. 454. Helme, n. Helmet. Poet or airk. 2. 112, 119. Sere, v. Obs. form of hear. 2. 179, et passim. Heth.er, adv. Obs. form of hither. 2. 261. Sight, pp. Called, named. Arch. 2. 408, et passim. Him, pron. fit. Ded. His, pron. fits. Ded. History, n. f A relation of inci- dents (in early use, either true or imaginary ; later, only of those professedly true) ; a narrative, tale, story. 3. Title ; I. 281 ; 4. 64. Hobby-horse, n. fin the Morris- dance, a dancer, about whose waist was fastened the figure of a horse made of wicker work or other light material. 4. 456. Cf. note. fHoit, V. To indulge in riotous and noisy mirth. I. 386 ; hoight, 4. 194- Hold, V. I. Phr., hold (one's) peace : to cease or refrain from speaking. Arch. Ind. 6, 43. 2. Phr., hold vp (one's) head: to maintain one's dignity, pride, courage. Ind. 80 ; 2. 108. 3. reji. To persist in an opinion. 1. 413. Cf. note. f4. To wager, bet. 2. 295 ; 3. 295. 5. Phr., hold vp : to resist. Dial. 3- 371- 6. (For reJl.). In imperative as an exclamation =: Stop ! Arch. 5- 45- Holesome, a. Obs. form of whole- some. 4. 98. Honest, «. Well-intentioned, well- disposed. Ind. 136. Honour, n. i. Phr., in or for the homnir of : for the sake of honor- ing ; in celebration of. Ind. 29 ; 4. 427 ; 5. 77. 2. Phr., to the honour of : for the sake of honoring ; in celebration of. Obs. 4. 416. Hony, n. Obs. form of honey. 1. 166. Horse, ?'. To carry on a man's back or shoulders. 3. 128. Hote, a. Obs. form of hot. 4. 237. House, ;?. fPhr., to fling the hotise 07it at the window : to put every- thing into confusion. 3. 528. How do you, phr. Obs. or dial. How fare you ; how are you. 2. 103 ; how dost thou, 2. 364. Hower, n. Obs. form of hour. 4- 33S. Huffing, ///.fl. Blustering, ranting ; swaggering. Ind. 82. Hurle, V. f To ' throw ' in wrestling. 3- 297- I, ■\interj. Aye ; yes. Ind. 50, 94, 125 ; I. 264, 309, 413, 429, 433 ; 2. 96, 140, 288, 573 ; 3. 207, 231, 503, 518; 4. 151 ; 5. 8. I, prep. ' I,' i, weakened from In before a consonant, as in i'faith. Now dial, or arch. Ind. 1 41, et passim. I faith, phr. Ind. 141. Cf. faith. Ill, adv. Wrongfully ; malevolently. 3.66. Ill, 7t. Wrong-doing. Arch. 3. 506. lU-fauouredly, adv. Unpleasingly ; in an ill-favoured manner. 4. 62. Imbrace, v. or n. Obs. form of embrace. 2. 1 20, 546- Imployment, n. Obs. form of employmetit. 4. 20. In, prep. fAt. 2. 115. Inchanted, ppl. a. Obs. form of enchanted. 2. I16, et passim, Inchantment, n. Obs. form of orchantment. 2. 359- findeed-law, interj.phr. Chiefly asseverative. 2. 99, et passim. Indent, ppl. a. (Reduced form in- dented) fFormerly applied to the severing of the two halves of a document, drawn up in duplicate, by a toothed, zigzag or wavy line, so that the two parts exactly tal- lied with each other. 4. 92. Glossary 293 Infidel, n. f One who is unfaithful to his duty. i. 66. Inforce, "'. Obs. form of ctiforce. To compel , constrain, oblige. Const. to with inf. Arch. 4. 84. fingrant, a. A perverted form of ignorant. N. E. D. ? A corrup- tion of m^^raif^'. Ungrateful. Arch.? 3. 576. Cf. note. Inough, a«'f. Obs. iorxnoi enough. 3- 503- I'now, a. Obs. form of enow. 2. 556. Cf. Enow. Intent, n. Aim ; purpose ; object of an action. Rare or obs. i. 313. Intreat, v. Obs. or arch, form of entreat. fTo prevail upon by entreaty or solicitation. 4. 153. Invective, a. Characterized by denunciatory or railing language ; vituperative, abusive. Now rare. To the Readers. Inueigle, v. To gain over and take captive by deceptive allure- ment. 2. 220. Issue, n. Progeny. Fig. 5. 1 61, It, pron. "j-i. Used for he. i, 330, 410; 2. 12, 108, 383, 514; 3. 335, 337- f2. Used for she. 3. 150. I'th.', prep. A contraction of i'the = in the. Dial, or arch. i. 186, 412. I-wisse, adv. Indeed, truly, assur- edly. Obs. or arch. I. 392 ; 2. 273- lack, n. ■]• A low-bred or ill-man- nered fellow, a ' knave.' Phr., play the lacks : to play the knave, to do mean trick. Ind. 20. lerkin, n. In the i6th and 17th centuries, a close-fitting jacket, jersey, or short coat, often made of leather ; worn by men. Arch. 5- 71. loy, V. To enjoy. Arch. i. 204. ■fluggy, n. A familiar substitute for the feminine name Joan, ap- plied as a term of endearment to a sweetheart or mistress, or as a term of endearment. 3. 568. Eickshoes, n. Obs. form of h'ck- sha7C's. A fancy dish in cookery. (Chiefly with contemptuous force : a ' something ' French, not one of the known ' substantial English ' dishes). To the Readers. •j-Kill one's heart, phr. To de- press or discourage one completely. 4. 146. Kind, a. I, Affectionate, loving, fond. Rare exc. dia/. I. 145 ; 3. 44, 61 ; 4. 287. •|-2. Well-breed, of good birth, gentle, i. 217, 219; 3. 278. Kinde, 71. The manner, way or fashion, which is proper or befit- ting to the character. Freq. in phr., i7i (their, his) kind. Com- mon in 17 th c. ; now arch. Ind. 98 ; 3. 629. ■\2. Race ; stock ; breed. I. 209. Kindly, adv. I. Phr., to take kindly : to accept good-naturedly, or as a kindness. I. 168. f2. Thoroughly. 5. 373. Knack, n. A trinket, knick-knack. Obs. ? 2. 91 ; 4. 422. Knaue, n. Jocularly, or without seriously implying bad qualities. Now rare. 5. 289. Knauery, w. Trickery, fraud. 1.68. fKnight Aduenturer, n. Knight- errant. 3. 276. fKnight aduenturous, n. Knight- errant. 3. 388. Knock up, phr. To make up (hastily or off-hand), to arrange summarily. Frequently used with reference to a match or marriage. 2. 17. Knot-gn^asse, n. A common plant in wet ground, with numerous in- tricately branched creeping stems, and small pink flowers ; an in- fusion of it was formerly sup- posed to stunt the growth. 2. 104. Ladie, n. i. In the days of chiv- alry, a woman chosen by a knight as the object of his devotion, or of some special service, i. 263, 304; 2. 120, 123, 136, &c. 294 The Knight of the Burning Pestle 2. The Virgin Mary. Interj. phr., hy (by'r) Ladie : contraction of by 07ir Lady used as an oath or expletive. Obs. exc. dial. I. 413. 3. Vocatively. In the sing. Now only poet, or rhet. 2. 191, 201. 4. The feminine corresponding to lord. 4. 457. Iiara, n. Obs. form oT lamb. 3. 309. Xiame, a. Defective ; weak. -Fig. I- 33- Lap, V. To take up with the tongue. Rarely applied to human beings, or used in connection with solid food. 5. 319. •{-Laualto, n. ' A lively dance for two persons, consisting a good deal in high and active bounds.' Nares. 3. 611. Cf. note. Liaunce, n, Obs. form of lance. 1. 236, et passi?n. Lay, V. I. To wager, bet. 2. 461, 463, 470. 472. 2. To deal blows, attack. Rare in absol. use. 5. 95. Lay on, phr. i?itr. To deal blows with vigor 5. 90. -f-Formerly often with dative pron. denoting object of attack. 2. 365. Leading staffe, n. -j- A staff borne by a commanding officer ; a trun- cheon. 5. 340. Leasure, n. Obs. form of leisure. ")"Opportunity to do something spec- ified or implied. 2. 317. Lesson, n. -j-Phr., do (one's) lesson : to teach (one). 2. 270. Let, n. Hindrance, obstruction. Arch. I. 82. Let me alone, phr. I may be trusted. Colloq. 4. 36, 341. Liberall, a. Of an entertainment, &c. : abundant, ample. 3. 185. Liberally, adv. -j-Chiefly with ref- erence to speech : without reserve or restraint; freely. I. 17. Licoras, n. Obs. form of liquorice. 1. 77. Lie, V. Phrases. I. To lie in: to be in childbed. 3. 450. 2. To lie open : to be exposed to attack. 3. 374. Light, pp. Obs. past participle of /ight. 3. 225. Light, v. Obs. preterite of light. 3. 438. Like, a. Predicatively const, to with iitf. : likely to. Rare in liter- ary use, but still common colloq. Prol. ; Ind. 117 ; 4. 431. Like, ad2'. In like degree, equally. Arch, or poet. Ind. 134. Like, V. Phr. impersonal, it likes (one) : (one) is pleased. Arch, anddial. 4.197; 5.120, 135, 136. Liui, 72. Obs. spelling of limb. I. 216. Lingell, n. Arch. A shoemaker's waxed thread. 5- 322. List, /•?. Inclination, desire. Arch. I. 392; 3- 532; 5. 204. Long of, phr. For 'long of = along of. Arch, and dial. At- tributable to ; on account of. 4. 107 ; 5. 306. Longs, n. Obs. form of hoists. 2. 508. Loose, V. Obs. form of lose. 2. 423 ; 3- 10. Louing,///. a. ' Means here posses- sing her 1 love.' Mason. 3. 140. jLungeis, n. A long, slim, awk- ward fellow : a lout. 2. 365. Lusty, a. -J- 1. Of pleasant appear- ance, 'oeautiful. i. 192. 2. Strong. Now somewhat arch. in literary use ; common in dia- lects. 4. 15. Maine, a. i. As an epithet of force, strength, &c. ; exerted to the full, sheer. 3. 290. 2. Very great or considerable. Obs. exc. dial. 5. 124. Maister, «. Obs. form of master. 1. Applied to an employer. I. 12, &c. 2. A title of address now changed to mister. Arch. Ded. ; i. 80, &c. Maistership, n. Obs. form of mastership. fWith posses, pron., i. e. yoicr maistership. 2. 198. Make, 7'. To do. ^/t/j. in questions Glossary 295 introduced by an objective what. Common in 16— 17th c. 3. 82. Make bold, phr. To make (so) bold : to venture, presume so far as, take the liberty (to do some- thing). 3. 575. Make it to be, phr. Cause it to be. With obj. and inf. ; arch. when dependent verb is in the passive (i. e. make it to be hist). 3- 325- Mangy, a. fUsed as a general term of contempt : beggarly, mean, ' lousy.' Very common in the 17th c. 3. 541. Marchant, n. An ohs. form of merchant. The Speakers Names, et passim. f March-beere, n. A strong ale or beer brewed in March. 5. 182. fMarie come vp, phr. Expressive of contempt, or satirical encourage- ment. 3. 579. Marry, interj. Obs. or arch. (Orig. Mary, Marie, the name of the Vir- gin Mary invoked in oaths) Indeed ! forsooth ! a term used to express surprise, asseveration, &c. Ind. 40 ; marrie, 2. 140 ; marie, 3. 143, 575, 603; 5. 222. fMartiall Court, n. Court-martial. 5- 133- Maruell, n. f Phr., to have marvel : to be astonished, struck with v/on- der. 2. 221. Maunger, ;/. Obs. iormoi manger. 2. 410. Maw, n. -j-Stomach ; appetite ; hence, inclination. I. 150. Mealed, ppl. a. Sprinkled with meal. Rare. 5. 5. Meate, ??. fi. Dinner, i. 256. 2. Solid food of any kind ; com- mon in phr., iJieat and drink. I- 397, 447 ; 2. 480. 3. Food in general. Obs. ox arch. 4- 375- Meeke, a. Humble ; unpretentious. I. 297. Member, n. Inhabitant ; citizen. Obs.? Ind. 13. Merry, adv. Merrily. Ind. 126. fMerry and wise, phr. A pro- verbial e.xpression. 2. 102 (cf. note) ; 5. 68. Merry men, n. ^Retainers, fol- lowers ? 2. 483. Me thinkes, phr. It seems to me. Arch, and lit. Ind. 85, 103 ; 4. 2 ; 5- 372. •{-Methridatum, n. In old phar- macy, a medicine made of many ingredients, supposed to be an antidote or preservative against poison. I. 278. Cf. note. Mettle, n. I. Obs. form of metal. 2. 165. 2. Spirit ; courage ; ardor. Phr., lads of mettle. 3. 557. fMickle, adv. Much, greatly. 2. 240. Minion, n. f A bold, forward girl or woman ; a minx. 3. 127. Miscarry, v. fi. To bring to misfortune. 2. 351. 2. To come to naught ; fail in purpose. 4. 431. fMislike, n. Misliking ; aversion. Prol. Misprision, «. -j-Misunderstanding. Ded. Mittimus, n. Warrant for arrest. 3. loi. Moneth., n. Obs. form of month. Ind. 36, et passim. Morrice, ;/. An old country dance. 4. 434 (cf. note), 456. Moue, V. -j-To address one's self to ; speak to about an affair. 2. 13. Mouse, n. A familiar term of en- dearment. I. 100, et passim. Mute, V. 4. 463. Cf. note. Napkin, n. -j-A handkerchief. 4. 474- Narrowly, adv. Carefully, atten- tively. 5. 83. Naturall, a. -j-Lawful, legitimate. 3- 540. Naughty, a. -|-Bad ; worthless ; good for nothing. 2. 81 ; 4. 31. Necessaries, n. pi. -j-Things pro- vided for the performance of a 296 The Knight of the Burning Pestle specific purpose. Ind. 70. Cf. apparel. Ifeed, n. •{■Necessary service. 2. 213. Neighbor, «. i. A familiar term of address. Dfal. and colloq. 5. 118, 128. 2. One who stands near another. 5- 137. Nere, adv. A form of ne'er = never. Ind. 55. Ner'e, a^z'. Form of ne'er. 1. 342, 344- Neuer. adv. i. Not, emphatically. Ind. 63. 2. Not a whit. Obs. ? 4. 409. New, adv. -J-Anew. I. 5. Nice, a. 1. Fastidious ; difficult to please or satisfy. To the Readers. •{-2. Foolish, unwise. 3. 24. Nimph, n. Obs. form of nymph. Maiden ; damsel. Poet. i. 207. fNiniuy, n. A kind of " motion " or puppet-show, representing the story of Jonah and the whale. 3. 306. Cf. note. fNipitato, «. Strong ale. A mock Latin word. 4. 100. Cf. note. No, adv. Not. 5. 400. fNoble Science, n. Fencing ; ' science of defence.' 2. 54. Cf. note. •fNoddie, «. A simpleton ; a fool. 2. 249. •j-Noint, V. To anoint. 2. 260 ; 4. 136. No more, /^r. f Enough 1 Silence 1 2. 297, Nor, conf. Correlative to another nor. Obs. or poet. i. 54. Nor so, pkr. Not at all ; no, no ! ? Obs..^ I. 171. Cf. note. Notable, a. -j-l. Notorious. 1.421. 2. Noteworthy, memorable. 4.416. Notably, ot^z'. Excellently; cleverly. Ind. 29. Number, v. To measure, reckon, gauge. 3. II. fNump, n. Usually numps. A dolt ; a blockhead. 2. 263. Cf. note. Obeysance, ??. Obs. form of obei- sattce. Phr., to do obeysance : to make a respectful bow or curtsy. Now chiefly lit. and arch. 5. 370. Of, prep. Obs. form oi off. 2. 341 ; 3- 375; 4- 473; 5- 344- Of, prep. I. On. Obs., colloq., or V7ilgar. 2. 492 ; 3. 330. ^2. Because of. Mostly obs. 4. 226. Off. prep. Obs. form of of . 2. 337. Offence, 11. -{-Wrong, injury. 5. 23- Offend, V. -j-To attack, assault, as- sail. 3. 83. Offer, n. -|-i. Something held out as a bribe or means of persuasion ? 1. 54. Cf. note. 2. Proposal. I, 118. Offer, V. To attempt to inflict. 5. 275. -{■Offer to carry (one's) books af- ter, phr. To attempt to equal. 2. 141. Office, n. Service or function to be performed. 2. 31. Officer, n. ^A menial or domestic in a great household. 4. 129; 5. 336. Of-spring, n. Obs. form of off- spring. Ded. On, prep, f Of. I. 323 ; 2. 547. Onely, adv. Obs. form of only. "• 373) ^^ passim. On't, phr. For on it = of it. Common in literary use to c. 1750. Now dial, or vulgar, i. 323, et passim. Or ere, conj. phr. For or e'er = or ever. Intensive of the conj. or = before. I. 455. Or . . . or, correl. conj. Either . . . or. Now only poet. 2. 527. 0th, prep. For o'th, a worn down form of of the. i. 295. Ougly, a. Obs. form of ugly. 3. 256, 282. Out alas, interj. phr. An expres- sion of lamentation. Arch, or dial. 2. 196. Glossary 297 Owne, a. Absolute use (mostly with preceding possessive) : that which is (one's) own ; property, possessions. Somewhat arch. i. 347, 470. Pararaoure, /z. The lady-love of a knight. Poet. 5. 295. Part, V. To take one's leave or departure. Arch. 4. 146. Particular, n. -j-A single thing or person among a number, consid- ered alone. Prol. Passio, ". I. A passage in a play marked by strong emotion ; a pas- sionate speech or outburst. Obs. or arch. 3. 317. 2. A mood marked by abandon- ment of emotion. 5. 58.. Patience, n. -{-Sufferance ; indul- gence. 5. 393. "fPay home, phr. I. To give(one his) deserts; punish. 3. 387. Peace, n. Phrases. I. To hold (one's) peace : to keep silent, re- frain from speaking. Arch. Ind. 6, et passim. ■\-2. To take the peace on : to con- ciliate, appease ? 2. 282. -}-Peart vp, phr. To raise briskly ; perk. Rare. i. 103. Peccaui, v. ' I have sinned ' ; hence an acknowledgment of guilt. 4. 38. Pencion, «. Obs. form of pension. ■\-A contribution ; a remittance. 1. 22. •j-Pepper-nel, n. A lump or swel- ling. Pare. 2. 280. Perfect, a. Thoroughly informed, trained, conversant. Arch. 4. 16. Periwig, n. A wig. Obs. exc. hist. I. 491. Perrilous, a. -j-Greatly to be dread- ed or avoided ; terrible, awful. 2. 115. Phlebotomy, n. Blood-letting. 4. 461. Pined, ppl. a. -j-Afflicted ; tortured. 3- 475- Pipe, n. Windpipe. Colloq. I. 79- f Pitch-field, n. A pitched battle. 2. 80. Plainely, £?. i. Honestly; sincerely. 3- 332. 2. Openly, without obstruction. 4. 441. Play. V. I. To enact the part of. Ind. 63. ^2. Phr., to play a lesson : to teach a lesson. 3. SS^- •fPlucke a rose, phr. an euphe- mism = alvutn exo7ierare. 2.232. Cf. note. Poesie, n. -{-A motto or sentimen- tal conceit engraved on a ring. 5- 340. Point, n. -j-A lace with tags at the ends used in fastening clothes together. 4. 12. Cf. note. PortigO, n. Portugal, i. 252. Post, adv. (An elliptical use of post, n.) With post-horses ; by post. Arch. 3. 410. Pottle, n. jA liquid measure of two quarts ; a pot. 5- 396- Poudred beef, phr. Salted beef. 4. 105. Prentice, n. By aphseresis from apprentice. I. 2, et passim. Presence, n. Personality. I. 33. Present, v. -}-To represent ; per- sonate ; act. Ind. 29 ; 4. 438. Present, a. -|-Quick ; immediate. I. 481. Presently, adv. Straightway, im- mediately. Obs. or dial. 4. 345. Prest, a. -{-Ready. 2. 187. Prethee, v. A corruption oi pray thee = I pray thee. Arch. I. 59, et passim. Pretty, a. -j-l. Clever; shrewd. 1. 100 ; 2. 412 ; 4. 223. 2. Foppish ; finical ? ^Strong and bold ; valiant ; here, ironical ? 2. 263. 3. An epithet of endearment. 3. 15. 4. Pleasing to the eye. 3. 305. 5. Interesting ; entertaining. 3. 467 ; 5- 355- Prick, V. I. To ride rapidly; spur on ; speed. Arch. i. 313. 2. To spur ; incite ; impel. 5. 323. The Knight of the Burning Pestle ■j-Prickant, a. i. Pricking: errant, traveling. 2. 302. 2. Pricking : pointing upward. 3. 263. Pricket, «. A buck in his second year. 4, 469. Princely, a. Of the rank of a prince ; regal. 4. 1 3 1. Priuate, a. i. Particular ; individ- ual ; special : opposed to general. Ind. 133. 2, -j-Privy ; informed of what is not generally known. i. 30. Procure, v. To contrive and effect ; cause. I. 280. Promise, v. To assure. Colloq. I. 418. Proper, a. Good-looking. Now only provincial. 4. 148. Prosper, v. To bring prosperity to. 3. 385. Proue, V. ^To experience by per- sonal trial ; to enjoy or suffer. 1. 41 ; 3. 41. 2. To demonstrate. 2. 266. -j-Puggy, n. A term of familiarity or endearment. 3. 569. Purtray, v. Obs. form of portray. I. 294. Quandary, «. f A ticklish plight. 1. 189. Quarrel, n. Cause of grievance or complaint. Now rare. Ded. Quell, V. f To kill. Obs. or rare. 3- 251. Quest, n. I. Search or pursuit, made in order to find or obtain something, i. 254. 2. An expedition with some ex- ploit as its object, as in mediae- val romance. Obs. exc. poet. 2. 136. Rabbet, n. Obs. form of rabbit. I; 137- Raison, n. Obs. form of raisin. 5- 320. Raph (or) Rafe, n. Obs. or dial. form of Ralph. To the Readers, et passim. Rare, a. i. Splendid, fine. In colloq. use applied to comparative- ly trivial objects. Ind. 62. 2. Unusual. 4. 21. Rascal, n. i"A young, lean, or inferi- or deer, as distinguished from the full-grown antlered buck. 4. 468. Reasonable, -^adv. Fairly ; to a reasonable degree. 4. 436. Reave, v. To take away. Obs. or arch. I. 476. Rebeck, n. Now on\y hist, or poet. A mediaeval instrument of music, having three strings and played with a bow. I. 482. Recant, v. -J-To renounce, abjure (a course of life or conduct) as wrong or mistaken. 3. 506. Reckoning, n. A bill of charges, esp. at an inn or tavern. 3. 156. Refraine, ?•. \l. To restrain, curb. 1. 29. -j-2. To withhold, defer. 3. 317. Relieue, v. i. To rescue out of some trouble, difficulty or danger, Now somewhat rare. Ded. I. 320, 331 ; 2. 121, 139. 2. To free, release. Now rare. 3- 442. Remembred, pp. -j-Brought to mind. Ind. 68. •|-Reparrell, n. Clothing, apparel. Ind. 70, 73. Repose, 7/. -|-Peace of mind. Rare. 2. 231. Repute, 7'. jTo esteem, hold in repute. 2. 315- Resolued, ppl. a. -j-Made ready in mind ; prepared. 5. 169. Reuel, T. To indulge in boisterous festivities ; carouse. 4. 195. Riband, n. An obs. or arch, form of ribbon. 3. 416 ; 4. 305. Riffe Rafi'te, n. Rubbish ; twaddle. I. 492. Right, adv. Very ; in a great degree. Arch, or colloq. 1.271,301,317, 326 ; 2. 2, 418 ; 3. 157. Right, a. Genuine ; true. Obs. or arch. I. 345. Rinkle, «. Obs. form of wrinkle. 5. 189. Glossary 299 Rude, a. Rough ; harsh-sounding ? Obs.? 5. 165. Rudeness, n. -{-Coarseness. Prol. Ruggedly, a. Roughly. 3. 255. Sad, a. -|-i. Weighty; important; momentous. 3. 233 ; 4. 81. 2. Disastrous. 3. 359. -{-3. Dark ; somber ; applied to color. 3. 390, 478 ; 4. 314. 4. Distressing ; grievous ; fearful. 5. 28. Sate, V. An obs. or arch, preterite of sit. I. 144. Satisfie, v. ^i. To make repara- tions or amends for : atone for ; expiate. 3. 98. -}-2. To make amends to. Obs. 4. 296; 5. 32, 35. Satten, a. Obs. form of sat hi. 5- 367- Sauce-box, ;^. A saucy, impudent person. Collog. 3. 579. Sauing your presence, ///r. Dial. An expression of apology : ' with all due respect to you.' 2. 199. ^Scape, T. To escape. 4. 339. Scorch, V. Obs. form of scotch. To score or mark with slight in- cisions ; cut, hack. 3. 428. Cf. note. Score, v. To cut, slash. 3. 428. Scorne,w. Mockery; derision. 2.553. Scoure, v. To sweep clear ; rid ; cleanse thoroughly. 5. 174. ■fScouring-sticke, n. A rod used for cleaning the barrel of a gun ; sometimes the ramrod, sometimes a different implement. 5. 85. Sculler, II. One who propels a boat with a scull-oar. 2. 385. Scuruily, adv. ji. Vulgarly. 2. 545- -(-2. Meanly; shabbily. 3. 577. Scuruy, a. -}-i. Offensive, obno.x- ious. I. 274. ■|-2. Worthless ; contemptible ; shabby. 2. 573. Second, n. -j-Aid, help. 4. 346. Serue, v. -}-To act as servant. 4. 37^- Seruice, n. The performance of here the spec, A male servant. military duties drill. 5. 81. fSeruingman, 4. 378- -{•Set on before, ph?-. To begin, or head off, a march. 3. 291. Set out, phr. I. To display, pre- sent. Ind. 97. 2. To place or plant firmly. 3. 372. Sbannot, v. For sha' not, an obs. contraction of shall tiot. 4. 415. •j-Sliawnie, n. A musical instru- ment of the oboe class, having a double reed inclosed in a globu- lar mouthpiece. Ind. ill. "l-ShawTie, 71. Form of shaw?ne. Ind. 112, 115. Shew, V. .A.n arch, form of show. I. 192. Shiled. ;/. Form of .rA?'.?/^. 1.294. Shrinke vp, phr. To cause to contract. 3. 13. Shrodly, adv. Obs. form oi shrewdly. -{•Severely. 2. 365. Shutting, 11. The close ; the shut- ting-time. Arch. ? 2. 16. Sing another song, phr. To modify one's tone or manner, espe- cially with humility or submissive- ness. Colloq. 2. 32. Sirrah, it. Obs. or arch. A word of address generally equivalent to " fellow," or " sir," and applied with an angry, a contemptuous, a hasty, or a playful force. i. I ; 2. 286; 3. 123 ; 4. 157. Situate, ppl. a. Arch. Situated, located. 2. 29. Slicke, V. Form of sleek. To make smooth and glossy ; to ' rub down.' 2. 409. -{-Smell to, phr. To inhale a smell or odor as a gratification, or as a test of kind or quality. 3. 216. Smoake, f. yTo suffer, i. 223. Smoth. a. Obs. form of smooth. 5- 383. •{-Snicke-vp, v. -{-Phr., go snicke- iip : go hang (oneself), go and be hanged. 2. 87 ; 3. 195. 300 The Knight of the Burning Pestle Sodden, ppl. a. Bloated ; soaked or saturated, as with drink ; hence heavy, stupid. 5. 153. fSoft and fair, phr. Without haste or violence. 5. 151. Soop, •z'. Form of swoop : cf. va- riants. To take with a sweep. The verb soop, meaning to sweep, is still current in Scotland. 3. 290. Sophy, 71. Shah of Persia. 4. 44. Sort, ". I. Manner; fashion; way. 2. 30; 4. 451. •|-2. A company, set, troop. 5. 175- Sound, V. To cause something (i. e. a basin) to sound. 3. 344. Soueraigne, a. Efficacious in the highest degree : said especially of medicinal remedies. 3. 217. Sower, a. Ohs. form of sour. -{•Disagreeable to the feelings. Prol. Spaniels, n. Humourous mistake for Spaniards. 2. 81. Cf. note. Sparke, n. A sprightly and showy man. 5. 80. Speede, n. Successful issue ; good fortune. i. 47. Sport, n. -j-Dramatic entertainment. Prol. Sprigge, n. I. ,\ shoot, young- ster ; implying disparagement. 4. 29. 2. Without deprecatory sense. 5. 324- Spring, V. ^To breed, generate, bring forth. i. 209. -j-Springald, w. A young man. 2. 350- Squire, «. I. An attendant on a knight or lady. I. 262, et passim. ■\2. Phr., squire 0/ damsels : transf. from the Faerie Queen, and ap- plied to any man who is very at- tentive to women. 2. 184. Cf. note. Staffe, n. The long handle of a spear or similar weapon. -}-Phr., to break a staffe : to enter the lists with an opponent ; make a trial of skill. Ded. Stand, n. Phr., a stand! : a halt! Milit. command. 5. 108. Stand. V. In the imperative : halt I Milit. 5. 138, 153. Staple, n. A general market or exchange; now chiefly attrib., as in staple article, i. 7. •j-Starting, vbl. n. A sudden in- voluntary movement, as from a shock of fear, &c. 3. 54. State, n. -j-Estate ; income ; pos- sessions. I. 391. Stay, V. fTo await. 3. 122. Still, adv. -j-Always, continually, habitually. Ind. 10; 4. 378. Stocke, n. I. Funds; hoardings. I. 23, 366. -{-2. Share ; portion. i. 417- Stone, 7t. \k gun-flint ; a piece of shaped flint fixed in the lock of a musket, before percussion caps were used, to fire the charge. 5- 145- Stoope, n. A deep and narrow drinking vessel. Obs. or dial. 5. 190. Stop, 7'. I. To suppress; extinguish. 1. 28. •{-2. To keep back; withhold. 5.150. Store, n. I . Abundance ; numbers. Arch. 4. 271 ; 5. i. Streight, a. Obs. form of straight. -J-Stretched ; tight. 2. 104. Strike stroke, phr. To have a hand, have a say. Fig. 4. 414. Stringer, «. -}-A fornicator ; a wencher. i. 116. Stroake, v. Obs. form of the pret- erite of strike, i. 242. Strond, n. Obs. form of Strand. 4. 91. Strong, ■\adv. Strongly. 3. 77. Study for, phr. To plan, devise. Ind. 20. Sufficient, a. Capable ? f Reli- able ? 2. 176. Sute, V. Obs. form of shoot, i. 164. Swaddle, v. -}-To beat ; cudgel. 2. 458. Sweare, v. An obs. or arch, pret- erite of swear. 2. 50, 55. -{"Sweeting, n. A term of endear- ment. I. 456. Glossary 301 Swing, V. Obs. form of S7i'inge. i To thrash, beat. 2. 285. Swome, a. Fhr., de sworn ; bound by oath. Colloq. Ind. 73, et passhn. Taber, n. Obs. form of tabor. ■jA. small drum or tambourine (without jingles). 4. 487. Take, v. To take the place of; displace? Obs.? 5.84. Cf. note. Take it, phr. ' To give way, ac- quiesce.' Moorman. 3. 25. Take thy course, phr. Go on thy way. 3. 201. •j-Take (me) with (you), //zr. Hear me out, understand me fully, i. 200. Tane, v. Obs. form of ta'en for taken, pp. of take. 3. 158. Tartarian, n. -}-A cant term for ' thief.' 3. 586. Tax, w. -j-Charge ; censure. Ind. 133- Tearme, n. Obs. form of term. 2. 332. Tee, pron. Cf. variants. Ind. 44 ; 4- 70, 75- Tell, V. fl. Phr., tell (one) true ; to tell (one) the truth. Ind. 73 ; 3- 312. 2. To count ; reckon one after another. ''Arch. exc. in phrases such as " to tell beads." ' Mal- lory. 3. 12. Temper, n. i. Mi.xture or combi- nation of ingredients. 2. 337. -j-2. Temperament. 3. 71. Tender, v. \\. To treat with so- licitude and care. 3. 169. Tender, a. -j-Fine; hence, gravelly. 4. 462. Terror, ??. A cause of terror ; often used in humorous exagger- ation. 5. III. Then, conj. Obs. form of than. Ind. 116, et passim. ^Then so, phr. Than something indicated or signified ; than that. 5- 392. Thether, adv. Obs. form of thither. 4- 396. Thiefe, n. ^k general term of re- proach : a lawless person. Ind. 113- -j-Thrumming of our caps, phr. Setting tufts or thrums on a cap 4. 483. Cf. note. Ti'de, V. Obs. preterite of tie. i. 8 Tiller, ;/. fA crossbow, i. 144 Timber for timber, phr. Limb for limb ; man for man. Fig 2. 219. To. prep, f I. Of; for. r. 27 ; Ded. (i. e. to good wits). -|-2. Toward. 2. 33. ■|-3. With. 2. 236. t4. For. 3. 468, 594; 4. 375. 5. Against. 3. 295. -j-6. Before. 4. 438. Together, adv. i. All at once; simultaneously. 3. 64. Cf. note. f2. Altogether. 4. 252. Cf. note. To her, phr. Speak to her ; make your addresses to her. i. 123. To him, phr. Fall upon him ; ' go for him.' 3. 371. Tooke, V. Obs. or vidgar pp. of take. 3. 58. Train, v. To entice ; draw by de- ceptive means. Arch. 3. 412. Trauell. n. -}-i. Labor, i. 43. 2. Labor in childbirth. Arch. 2. 487. Tree, n. -{-Stick, staff, i. 211. Tricke, n. A crafty or fraudulent device; a stratagem. i. 70; 4. 36. Tride, v. Obs. form of tried. 3. 242. Troth, n. Phr., by my troth: upon my honor, veracity. Now chiefly lit. I. 284, et passim. Troule, v. Obs. form of troll. To pass or send round a vessel of liquor. 2. 485. True, a. I. Sure, unerring. i. 211. 2. Honest. Arch. i. 335 ; 2. 271. 3. Faithful. 2. 41 ; 5. 11. Tru-love, n. A sweetheart. 2. 522. 302 The Knight of the Burning Pestle Truely, adv. In accordance with assumed obligations ; faithfully. 4. 361. Trusty, a. i. Strong; firm. i. 211. 2. Faithful. I. 291, 332 ; 2. 112, 127 ; 3. 424. Try, V. To put to the test or proof. 3- 79- Tune, n. i. Mood, frame of mind. 4. 360. Tweluemoneth, n. A year. A)xh. Ind. 58. 'Twixt. prep. Abbrev. of betunxt = between. Arch. 4. 106. Uncivill, a. jOf apparel : lacking in taste ; gaudy ; immodest. Prol. tVncurteous, a. Discourteous, uncivil. 2. 121, 332. Vnderstanding, ppl. a. Informed ; intelligent. Ind. 27. Vndo, V. To bring ruin or distress upon. 4. 193 ; 5. 44. Vnfurnished, ppl. a. -|-Unprovid- ed. I. 290. Vnhappy, a. fi. Full of tricks; mischievous ; tricksy. 2. 288. 2. Associated with ill fortune. 3. 486. Vnkind, a. Lacking in affection. Rare. exc. dial. 4. 288. Vnknowing, ppl. a. Ignorant. 3- 355- Vnpeopled,///. a. Without inhab- itants. 3. 6. Vnthrift, n. f A spendthrift ; a prodigal. 4. 155. Vnthrifty, a. Wasteful ; prodigal. 2. 169. Vrge, V. To press upon the at- tention. 2. 448. Vsage, M. Treatment. 3.431,478. Vsher, n. Escort, conductor. 4. 247- Vale, interj. Farewell ; adieu. fForm for the ending of a letter or other written address. Prol. Valiant, a. i . Courageous ; intrep- id in danger, i. 153. •j-2. Strong; powerful. 5. 168. Vamp, V, To furnish vvith a new vamp or upper leather, as a shoe or boot. Arch, and dial. 5. 323. Varlet, n. A low fellow ; a scoun- drel : a term of contempt or re- proach. 3. 103. Venter, v. Obs. form of venttcre. I. 216, ct passim. Venture, n. -{-Adventure. 2. 316. Venus, n. "fSexual intercourse ; venery. 4. 435. Vertue. n. i. Potency; efficacy. 1. 47. 2. Phr., by the virtue of : by or through the authority of. 3. 188. Vicious, a. Virulent ; malignant ; spiteful. Colloq. Ind. 134. Villainy, n. i. Atrocious evil or wickedness. 3. 87. 2. A villainous act; a crime. 3. 264, 286. Visited, ppl. a. Afflicted ; said es- pecially of diseases, i. 279. "Wag. n. -}-A practical joker ; one who indulges in buffoonery or mis- chief. 2. 19 ; 5. 288. "Wait, n. f One of a body of mu- sicians, who played about the streets at night, especially in the seventeenth century, in England. Ind. 119. ■fWanion, n. A word found only in the phrases with a ivanioit, and ivanions on you ; generally interpreted to denote some kind of imprecation. Vhr.., with a wan- ion : with a vengeance ; energet- ically ; hence in short order. 2. 174- "Want, V. To fail in. 5. 185. Ward, fi. -j-A regiment or other division of an army. 5- 9i- "Warren, n. A piece of ground appropriated to the breeding and preservation of rabbits and other game. i. 134. fWast(e)-tlirift, n. A spendthrift. I- 350. "Watch, n. -}-i. The annual vigil of St. John's. I. 155. Cf. note. •|-2. A watchman, or body of watch- men, stationed in old London, to Glossary 303 guard public property and the peace. 3. 100. 3. A vigil. 3. 23. Watching, vbL n. Keeping vigil. 3. 84. Wee, prep. Obs. form of wi' = ■with. Cf. variants. 2. 538. Welfauourdlie, adv. In a grati- fying or pleasing way ; ' handsome- ly.' 2. 285. Well. a. Well off. 4. 436. Well spoken, a. Given to using decorous speech. Dial. i. 267. Wench, n. A young woman. Arch. or lit. The word as current now has a deprecatory sense, i. 303, et passim. Were, v. Obs. form of wear. 3. 19- When al's done, phr. After all. Dial. 5. 249. Whether, adv. An obs. form of whither. I. 315; 3. 390. Whether, pron. Arch. Which. I. 138. Whilome, adv. Arch. Once. i. 137. Whipt, ///. a. Overlaid ; wound round and round, as with thread. I. 163. Whistle, n. Phr., to tvet (o?ie's) whistle : to take a drink of liquor with reference to wetting the throat and vocal organs in order to improve the tone of the voice. Colloq. and jocose. 5. 192. White boy, n. -j-An old term of endearment applied to a favorite son, or the like ; a darling. 2. 85. fWhoreson, a. Bastard-like; low: used in contempt or coarse famil- iarity. I. 116; 2. 574; 3. 323 : whorcsome, i. 322 ; whoor sonne 1- 371- Wich,/ro«. YaxvAoi which. 5-23. Wight, n. Mortal ; a human being. Obs. or arch. 3. 355, 476. Willing, a. ^Harmonious ; like- minded. 4. 478. Wise, n. Manner ; mode ; guise. Obs. or arch. exc. in phrases like in any wise, &c. 3. 411 ; 5. 324. Withall, adv. Besides ; likewise. Ded. ; i. 77, 118 ; 4. 238. ■j- Withall, prep. An emphatic form of with, used after the object (usu- ally a relative) at the end of a sentence or clause. 4. 12. Woeman. «. Obs. form of woman. 2. 486, et passim. fWon, v. To dwell. 3. 256. Wood. V. Obs. form of preterite of zt'ill. 2. 586. Wrastle, v. Obs. or dial, form of -wrestle. 3. 296. Wrought, ///. a. Embroidered. Arch, f 2. 422. Ycleped, pp. Form of past par- ticiple of the obs. or arch, verb clepe : to call by the name of. 3- 257- Yea, adv. "j-Yea, being mainly a word of assent, was formerly used chiefly in answer to questions framed affirmatively. Ind. 16. Yeeld, v. Obs. form of yield. -}-To repay, i. 119; 4. 164. Yer, pro7i. Dial, form of your. 2- 539- Yong, a. Obs. form of youvg. I. 217, et passim. INDEX Adam Bell, Ixix, Ixxiv, Ixxvi. Amadis of Gaul, relations to the burlesque in K. of B. P., xxxvii, xlixff., Ivi, Ixviii, Ixix, Ixxii, Ixxiii ; origin of, 162 ; cited, 145, 163, 166, 171, 172, 191, 204, 206. Apparel, actors', 122 ; soldiers', 251. Apron, blue, of tradesmen, 146. Archery, practice of, 267. Arches, court of, 220. Arthur's show, ex, 225, 253. Artillery Gardens, practice of arms revived in, xiii, cxii, 225. As ye came from the Holy Land, a ballad, 181. Authorship of the play, xxi ff. B Baloo, a ballad, 184. Barbaroso, 195. Barber's basin, xlv, 195, 196. Barber's pole, 195, 204. Barber shop, description of the old- time, 214. Bear, pestilential effect of the breath of the, 273. Beaten gold, 224. Beaumont and Fletcher, their indebt- edness to Spanish literature, xxxiii ; their literary qualities, xxii ff. ; for citations, cf. individual works. Coxcomb, &c. Beer at the theatre, 218. Beeston's Boys, xviii. Begone, begone, inyjuggy, my pziggy , a song, 216. Bell Inn, xl ff., 174. Bells in the Morris-dance, 244. Bevis of Hampton, Ixix, Ixx, Ixxvi, Ixxx, 188. Blackfriars Theatre, xiv, 122. Blanket-tossing, 135. Bold Beatichamps, Ixxxi, Ixxxii, 120. Boot-hose, 228. Boots, affectation of wearing polished, 229. Boy, as attendant at theatre, 121 ; as a regular actor, 121 ; as a dancer between the acts, 155. Boy-actors, kidnapping of, 166. Brionella, 163. Brome, Richard, his mention of Kn. of B. P. in Sparagiis Garden, xvii ; his ridicule of the fashion of romance-reading, Ixxiii, Ixxix ; his satirical treatment of the man- ners of theatrical spectators, in The Antipodes, cvii. Bullets, a term for barber's soap- balls, 197. Bumbo Fair, 230. Burre, Walter, xiv, xxiv, 106, 107. Butter, as an unguent, 228 ; as a medicinal remedy, 242. C Candles, blue, at funerals, 233. Captain, City, 266. Captain, duties of a, 256, 259, 261. Cardials Benedictus as a medicinal remedy, ex, 202. Casket, adventures of the, xxxix, 171. Catch, nature of a, 180. Caves as habitations of giants, xlix ff., 195- Chamberlain at an inn, 175. Chapman, George, his satire on the fashion of romance-reading in East- ■ward Ho, xciii. Children of the Queen's Revels, xiv, no, 122. Chivalric plays, lists of, Ixxviii, Ixxxi ; quality and popularity of, Ixxviii ff. ; Index 305 protests of Puritans and social satirists against, Ixxxviifif. ; attacks of the dramatists upon, Ixxxixff. Citizens, their interruptions of plays, cviff., no; libelous stage repre- sentations of, civ, 112. City walls, 109. Civic drama, nature and representative specimens of, xcv ff. Cloak-bag, 234. Cockpit Theatre, xvi. 271. Colors of the infantry, 254 ; regu- lations concerning the use of, 255. Commons of the City, 117. Companies of London, the Twelve, 114, 166. Company, consistency of a military, 253- Compliment, language of, 231. Conduit, 236. Conjurers, 233. Corselet, 257. Coxcomb, cited, i6i, 178. Cracovia, King of, 233. Crane, sign of the, 106. Crier, town, 173. Cupid's Revenge, cited, 20 1. Curtain, lack of, on old stage, i84f. Curtain Theatre, xi. Cypress branches at funerals, 232. D Dagonet, Sir, 224, 253. Dam, the devil's, 169. Day, Rowley, and Wilkins, Travailes of the Three Evglish Brothers, its bearing on the date of Kn. of B. P., xi ; its relationship to the burlesque in Kn. of B. P., xcixf. Deed indent, 227. Defiance, mode of, in romances of chivalry, 171. Dekker, Thos., his attacks on the romances, xciv. Devil's mark on witches, 211. Diet as a medicinal remedy, 136, 168, 211, 213. Dog, possession of, a mark of a gentleman, 216. Do7i Quixote, its bearing on the date of Kn. of B. P., XV ; the attri- bution of, as a source of Kn. of B. P., xxxiiff. ; cited, 105, 107, 144, 148, 149, 150, 151, 162, 171, 189, 190, 191, 194, 195, 203, 204, 207. Dottglas Tragedy, a ballad, 182, Dragon- water, 147. Drake, the life and death of fat, 117. Drummer, 253. Drums, 246, 249. Dryden, John, his comment on the popularity of Beaumont and Flet- cher, xix. Dulcinea del Toboso, the attributed prototype of Susan, livff., 203. Dutchman, the great. 198. Dwarf as an attendant upon knights, xxxvii, 148 ; as bearer of the knights' armor, 192. Elenor, Queen, the story of, xcix, 116, Entertainment at inns, 177. Fading, 219. Fair Margaret and Sweet William, a ballad, 178. Faithful Friends, its satire on the fashion of romance-reading, xciv. Faithful Shepherdess, its unpopu- larity, cix. Falconer, 234. Favor, lady's, 228. Feathers, 237, 257. Fencing-school, ex. 172. Fingers, barber's ' knacking ' of, 197. Fire-eaters, 220. Flags, 249. Footman, 176. Forked heads, 268. Fortune, my Foe, a song, 264. Four Plays in One, xxiii ; cited, 152. Four Prentices of London. Cf. Hey- wood. Franarco, Palmerin de Oliva's con- flict with, 1 40 if. Freeman, qualifications of a, 114. U 3o6 The Knight of the Burning Pestle Gallants seated on the stage, ciii, 1 08 ; their aversion to the combing of the hair, 196 ; their fashion of trimming the beard and dressing the hair, 208 ; their aversion to shorn locks, 209 ; their scorn of the tradesmen, 213, 270. Galley-foist, captain of the, 262. Gargantua, 205. Garters, 245. Gaskins, 1 6 1. Giants, conventional employment of, in romances of chivalry, xlix, 161 ; Palmerin de Oliva's conflict with, I40ff., 198 ; Rosicler's conflict with, 197 ; boastful manner of, 204. Gloves given as presents at betrothals and weddings, 134; decorations of, 134 ; costs of, 135. Go fro9n my wmdow, a catch, 215. God of sleep, 187. Gresham, Life and Death of Sir Thomas, xcv, xcvii, 115. Grocers, civic importance of, Ii4f. ; guild livery of, 127 ; shop dress of, 139 ; hall of, 269. Gun-flint, 258. Guns, 246, 249. Guy of Warwick, Ixix, Ixxii, Ixxiii, Ixxvi, Ixxxi. H Heads, velvet, 244. Helmet, 172. Her Majesty's Servants, xvii, xviii, 271. Hermaphrodite, xiii, 200. Haywood, Thos., The Four Prentices of London, as an evidence of the date of Kn. of B. P., xiii ; as an object of the burlesque, lixff., 117, 149 ; as a type of the chivalric drama, Ixxxii ; analysis of its plot, Ixxxii ff. ; as typical of the taste of tradesmen, xcvi ; cited, 117, I49i 163, 225; If you know not me, xcv, xcvii, 115 ; Edward IV, xcv, xcviii, 120. Ho, ho, no body at home, a catch, 235. Hobby-horse, 241. Hogsdon, 245. Honest Man's Fortune, cited, 271. Honour of a London Apprentice, a ballad, a possible object of the burslesque, Ixi, 118. Horace, 105, 274. Host, proverbial merriment of mine, 190. Hostess, kissing of, on leaving an inn, 235- Hotspur, lines from speech of, 123. Humorous Lieutenant, cited, 228, 243. I lam three merry men, a catch, 178. J Jane Shore, xcv, xcviii, 120. Jerkin, 251. Jeronimo, 125. Jillian of Berry, 235. Johti Dory, a ballad, 168. Jonson, Ben, Alchemist, as an evi- dence of the date oi Kn. of B. P. ; his satirical treatment of tlie Ro- mances of chivalry and the ro- mantic drama, xci ff. ; his satir- ical treatment of Jacobean audi- ences, cviii. K Keysar, Robert, xiv, xv, 106. King and No King, its burlesque elements, xii, xxx ; cited, 152, 206. Knight and Shepherd' s Daughter, a ballad, 182. Knights-errant, names of, 149 ; order of, 151 ; vows and oaths of, 162 ; duties of, 165 ; numerous frater- nities and religious character of, 175; fastings of, 194; hard couches of, 194. Knight of the Burning Pestk, edi- tions, ii ff. ; date and stage-history, xiff. ; authorship, xxi ff., 106, 107, 270, 272, 274 ; originality of the conception, xxv ; relationships with the Romances of Chivalry and Don Qtiixote, xxxii ff. ; relation- ships with contemporary plays and Index 307 ballads, lix ff. ; objects of the bur- lesque and satire, Ixv ff. ; attrib- uted origins of the title, 105 ; functional significance of the title, 149. Knighthood, mode of receiving the order of, 190. Knighthoods, purchased, 145. Knotgrass, 161. Kyd, Thos., Spanish Tragedy as an object of the burlesque, c ff., 239, 265. Lachrimae, a tune, 184. Ladies, relief of, in the romances, xxxix, 145 ; flight of, from ' uncur- teous knights,' &c., 162. Lady Anne Bothwell's Lamentation, a ballad, 184. Lady-loves of knights-errant, 203 ; invocation of, liii, 203, 206. Lancelot of the Lake, Ixix, Ixxii. Laneham's Letter, Ixx. Lavolta, 217. Legend of Sir Guy, a ballad, 183. Leonhardt, Uber Beatanont und Flet- cher's I^night of the Burning Pestle, XXXV ff. Lies, 230. Lieutenant, duties of a, 254. Littk French Lawyer, cited, 183. Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard, a ballad, 263. Lob-lie-by-the-fire, 212. London Bridge, 180. London Merchant, 112. M Maid's Tragedy, its burlesque ele- ments, xii, XXX ; its long-lived popularity, xx. Manners of Jacobean audiences, cii ff. ; Gayton's description of, cvi ; the dramatists' satirical treat- ment of, cviiff. March beer, 262. Mare's milk as a medicinal remedy, ex, 202. Marston, John, Antonio and Mellida, as a possible source of the casket episode in Kn. of B. P. Ixiii ; his attacks on the romances, xciv. Martial Court, 258. May-game, cxi, 235. May-lord, 240. May-song, typical, 240. Meals, hours for, 153. Medicine, domestic, 191. Merry heart lives long-a, a song, 152. Middleton, Thomas, Mayor of Queen- borough, its satirical treatment of the manners of theatrical spec- tators, cvii. Midsummer Watch, 133. Mile-end, 158 ; military drills at, cxi, 250. Military commands, peculiar, 254, 259, 260. Mirror of Knighthood, Ixviii, Ixix, 143, 144, 161, 197. Mithridatum, 147. Moldavia, kingdom of, 225 ; Prince of, xii, 225. Monkester, Richard, 132. Monsieur Thomas, cited, 158, 165, 215- Moorfields, 268. Morris-dance, 238. Morris-dancers, dress of, 237. Morte d' Arthur, Ixvii, Ixix. Mouse's skin as a medicinal remedy, ex, 192. Mucedorus, xcix, 124. Munday, Anthony, his translations of the Rom.ances of Chivalry, Ixviii, 140, 146, 162. Music at the theatre, 128, 155. N Napkins in the Morris-dance, 244. Nash, Thos., his ridicule of the ro- mances in The Anatomic of Ab- surditie, Ixxxviii ; his use of the spectator motive in Siimmer's Last Will and Testament, cvii. Nell Gwyn, xix. Newington, 245. Nice Valour, cited, 271. Night-caps, 168. Nineveh, a ' motion,' 200. U2 3o8 The Knight of the Burning Pestle Nipitato, 227. Nor so, 135. Nose, nose, jolly red ?iose, a ballad, 153- O Oaths, fashion of swearing diminutive, 167. ' Open your files,' 256. Orange, Prince of, 218. Ostler, tricks of the, 176. Pagans, knights' aversion to, liii, 228. Painted cloth, 184. Palfrey, 150, 176. PalUdino of England, Ixviii. Palmendos, Ixviii. Palmerm de Oliva, relations to the burlesque in Kn. of B. P., xxxvii, xxxix, iii ff., Ivi, Ixviii, Ixix, Ixxiv ; origin of 140; cited, 140, 150, 163, 189, 193, 198, 223, 226, 228. Palmerm of Etigland, relations to the burlesque in Kn. of B. P., xlvii, xlix, Ivi, Ixviii, Ixix ; origin of, 146 ; cited, 145, 151, 161, 170, 193. 194, 19s. 203, 224, 226. Passage, keeping the, in the roman- ces, 170. Pauls Walk, 249. Pepper as the chief commodity of the grocers, 151. Periwigs, 156. Philaster, its burlesque elements, xii. Philosopher's stone, 234. Pike, 252. Pikeman, 252. Pilgrim, cited, 247. Pins, 229. Plague, the, 148. Plasters, velvet, 211. Poesies on rings, 266. Points, 220. Post, traveling by, 218. Powder, horn, 258. Pox, French, 209. Pricket, 244. Primaleon of Greece, Ixviii. Prologue, entrance of, 107 ; represent- ative character of, iio; conciliatory function of, 130. Prologue of Qj, 273. Puckeridge, 178. Puddle wharf, 173. Puritans' dislike of the romances and the chivalric drama, Ixxxvii. Q Questioning of released prisoners in the romances, xlvi ff., 207. R Rafe, 117. Ralph Roister Doistcr, its analogies to Kn. of B.P.,\yX\\^. ; cited, Ixxii. Randolph, Thos,, his use of the spectator motive in The Muse's Looking Glass, cvii. Rascal, 244. Rebecks, 155. Reckonings at inns, 189. Red Bull Theatre, xi, xii, 222. Red Roaring Lion, a tavern, 156. Rings for the discovery of enchant- ments, 172 ; worn in the Morris- dance and May-games, 237, 266, Romances of Chivalry as sources of Kn. of B. P., and objects of the burlesque, xxxiiff. ; extent of their popularity in England, Ixvi ; Mil- ton's approval of, Ixvii ; Ascham's condemnation of, Ixvii ; court so- ciety's rejection of, Ixviii ; Munday's translations of, Ixviii; bourgeois so- ciety's fondness for, Ixix ff. ; menials' fondness for, Ixxiv ; mendicant minstrels' appropriation of, Ixxvif. ; influence of, upon the drama, Ixxvii ff. ; reactions against, Ixxxviiff. Rotneo and Juliet, a possible object of the burlesque, 158. Rosemary at wedding, 247. Rosicler, 144, 197. Royal Exchange, 116. Saint Faith's Church, 249. Saint George, 198, 205. Scarfs, 237, 245, 251, 266. Scenery, absence of, on old stage, 109. Index 309 Scornful Lady, ciicd^ 133, 139, 220, 247. Sergeant, duties of a, 256. Serving-man, 234. Science, the noble (of defence), 157. Shakespeare, analogies to Kn. ofB. P. in his plays, Ixiiiff. ; his attacks on the romances, xciv ; regarded as an object of the burlesque, 123, 158. Shirley, James, his ridicule of the fashion of romance-reading, Ixxv f , xcv. Shrove Tuesday, apprentices' diver- sions on, 213, 268, 269. Sights, the citizens' love of unusual, ex, 199. Sing we, and chant it, a song, 263. ' Smelling to the toes ' as a medicinal remedy, ex, 192. Snails used in love-divinations, 243. Southwark, 129. Spanish pike, 257. Spanish Tragedy. Cf. Kyd. Squire as an attendant upon knights, xxxvif., 148 ; as bearer of the knights' armor, 192. Squire of Damsels, 164. Staff, leading, 267. ' Stay his coming,' 189. Stocking, long, 218. Stools on stage, 121. Strand, 227. Suburbs of London, 157. Susan, her attributed relationship with Dulcinea del Toboso, livff., 203. Sweet oil, 258. Sweating-tubs, 211, 213. Tabor, 247. Tapster, 177. Tartarian, 186. Tavern-signs, 156, 174. Teeth, the barber's strings of, 202. Thersytes, its ridicule of the roman- ces, xcff. Tiring-house, 126, 151, 251. Title-board, 112. Tobacco, new fashion of smoking, ex, 138. Train bands. City, as an object of the burlesque, cxiff., 250. Travailes of the Three English Bro- thers. Cf. Day, Rowley, and Wilkins. Triumph of Honour, its burlesque elements, xxix. Troivl the bowl, a catch, 179. Tumblers at the theatre, 220. Turnbull Street, 212. Two Noble Kinsmen, cited, 239. V Valentinian, cited, 147. Velvet, black, as a covering for a house, 223. Vetus Comcedia, 374- Vows, swearing of, in the romances, 162, 163, 165, 173, 193. W Waits, 128. Walthara, xliii, 157, 174. Waltham down, 16 1. Waltham Forest, xxxviii, xliii, 136. Walsingham, 181. Wardens of guilds, presentation of plays before, 125 ; function of, 125. Watch at Ludgate, 188. Water, perfumed, used by barbers, 208. Wedding-dinner, 247. Wheel of Fortune, 163. Whitechapel, 255. Whitefriars Theatre, xiv, iioff., 121. Whittington, the legend of, xcv, xcvii, 115. Who can sing a merrier note, a catch, 233. Wife for a Month, cited, 158, 243. Wild Goose Chase, cited, 246. Wit Without Money, cited, 216, 271. Wom.an Hater, its bearing on the date of Kn. of B. P., xi ; its burlesque elements, xii, xxix ; cited, 108. 153, 202. Woman's Prize, 215, 247. Women at the theatre, 1 18, 1 19. Women Pleased, cited, 238, 242, 245, 266. Y Yew tree branches at funerals, 232. You are no love for me Margret, a lost ballad, 217. ERRATA Page xlix, 1. 3 from bottom for be read he. Ixxiii, 1. 13 from bottom yi?r bot read both. Ixxiv, 1. 17 from bottom /br ascurbes read ascribes. Ixv, 1. 10 from bottom ybr droll read droil. Ixv, 1. 7 from bottom for the read thee. Ixxxviii, 1. 21 from bottom /"or proceeeds read proceeds. 10, 1. 25 (variants) for woolsaaks read woolsacks. 18, 1. 136 (variants) yb^ face read face,. 20, 1. 2 IT) for Trough read Through. 22, 1. 250 for army read an army. 30, 1. 20 for forgiue, you read forgiue you. 82, 1. 361 for it it truely read it truely. 90, I. 129 /or Were's read Where's. 93, 1. 210 (variants) ybr brought read thee. 94, 1. 247 for bot read but. 140, 1. I for exspected read expected. 142, 1. 2 from hoiiom for his fall read in his fall. 165, 1. 26 from bottom for Faere read Faerie. 1 93 1 ^- 30 from bottom for kown read know. 194, 1. 22 from bottom for but read put. 275) 1- 30 from bottom /br Ascham, Robert read Ascham, Roger. 276, 1. 36 from bottom for Grossart read Grosart. 277, 1. 12 from bottom for Cunnigham read Cunningham. YALE STUDIES IN ENGLISH. Albert S. Cook, Editor. I. The Foreign Sources of Modern English Versification. Charlton M. Lewis, Ph.D. ."$0.50. II. iElfric : A New Study of his Life and Writings. Caroline Louisa White, Ph.D. $1.50. m. The Life of St. Ceciha, from MS. Ashmole 43 and MS. Cotton Tiberius E. VII, with Introduction. Variants, and Glossary. Bertha Ellen Lovewell, Ph.D. $1.00. IV. Dry den's Dramatic Theory and Practice. Margaret Sher- wood, Ph.D. $0.50. V. Studies in Jonson's Comedy. Elisabeth Woodbridge, Ph.D. $0.50. VI. A Glossary of the West Saxon Gospels, Latin-West Saxon and West Saxon-Latin. 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