3 ward The guardian of a ward would want to marry off his charge before he reached the age of majority (21), in order to secure a payment from the father of the bride or, if his ward refused the match, a fine from the estate. This relationship led to extensive corruption on the part of guardians at the time. If the bride refused the match, however, no fine could be levied.

4 as time calls upon me The Ward is ‘almost twenty’ (1. 78), hence almost at the age of majority.

10 hanselled A ‘hansel’ is a gift given at the beginning of the New Year or a new venture; Guardiano’s allusion is thus ironic – i.e. he would be left with little.

12 meridian point of highest development (in this case, intellectual)

13 take measure; catch

17 fools … foolish proverbial

20–1 you, / Lady ed. (you Lady O)

30–3 injustice … well Jacobean discourse frequently debated the legal and moral rights of a father to marry off his daughter to whomever he chose; technically, the daughter had to consent to the marriage. Plays such as George Wilkins’s The Miseries of Enforced Marriage (1607) dramatized real-life cases.

34 Counting considering

37 game with sexual connotation

42 kickshaws fancy dishes (i.e. trifles)

44–5 lick a finger … best cooks i.e. women should have some of the same rights to ‘taste’ as men. Livia’s egalitarian point, however, is made through an obscene sexual metaphor which foreshadows the sexual transgressions to come.

48 blown fully blossomed, no longer a ‘bud’ (I. 47)

56 Your … parted ‘A fool and his money are soon parted’ (Tilley, F 452).

Light … brother! O’s line has seemed obscure to many editors, leading to such emendations as ‘like enow’, with ‘Brother’ given to Livia, and ‘Plight her now’, again giving ‘Brother’ to Livia. Gill suggests, reasonably, that ‘perhaps Guardiano is inciting Fabritio to answer Livia, to bring her down, now she is in full, witty flight?’ The term ‘brother’ could be used very loosely.

61 stock a new-found land Middleton refers to the hastily-arranged marriages – in some cases, the couples had not previously met – designed to populate one of the New World colonies, probably Virginia: ‘Take deliberation, sir, never choose a wife as if you were going to Virginia’ (The Roaring Girl II.ii.66–7).

65 walk … sleeps walk together rather than sleep

71 clean competent; morally pure

72 stranger things men and women not related, hence strangers

80 tongues gossip

85 bushels large quantities (of money, in his case)

87 s.d. trap-stick also ‘cat-stick’ (1. 89). A cat-stick was used in the country game of Tip-Cat (or Cat-and-Trap) to strike a wooden ‘cat’ (a short piece of wood tapered outward at both ends) so that it flies into the air, where it can be struck again.

90 first hand the first strike in the game

91 jacks common fellows

tailor Tailors were proverbially cowards (and thieves).

93 beating used to being beaten; used to ‘beaten’ or embroidered cloth

94 tippings presumably a term in the Tip-Cat game

95–104 A prose passage suddenly intrudes into the verse – a common occurrence in this play. The alternation of prose and verse helps characterize the Ward throughout, a country bumpkin whose efforts at higher social discourse continually collapse back into such colloquial prose.

96 guardianer guardian

99 get gain in game playing Tip-Cat; having sex

100–1 fair end good result

103 Coads-me i.e. ‘egad’ – a mild oath

106–7 cats … chimney … burn sexual innuendo: ‘cats’ = whores; ‘chimney’ = female genitals; ‘burn’ = symptom of venereal disease

111–12 stoop gallantly … pitch out … dog at a hole All three are terms from a game, perhaps Tip-Cat, but all are also sexual puns: ‘stoop gallantly’, according to Mulryne, alludes to ‘stoop-gallant’, a term for venereal disease; ‘pitch out’ = ejaculation; ‘hole’ = female genitals.

113 mar’l abbreviation for ‘marvel’

116 fool A verbal ‘contract’ for marriage was enacted if the proper words of declaration were spoken in the presence of a witness; but since this witness would be a ‘fool’, the contract would not be binding. Touchstone seeks a similarly flawed contract when he engages Sir Oliver Martext to marry him in As You Like It (Ill.ii). fool … sack-posset ‘Fool’ is a dish of fruit mixed with cream, a kind of trifle; ‘sack-posset’ was a drink made with sack, sugar, eggs and spices.

118 prone i.e. to lechery

118–19 ride … cock-horse a child’s hobby-horse; also with strong sexual connotation of a loose woman

120 eggs … nights Eggs were thought to be an aphrodisiac; ‘moonshine nights’ were traditionally times of sexual festivity and release. Mulryne also suggests ‘eggs-in-moonshine’, a dish resembling poached eggs.

121–3 cock … took down … crow i.e. the cock will crow, but also the Ward’s phallus will ejaculate (‘crow’) if it is not detumesced (‘took down’)

131 Justice a Justice of the Peace

132 liberty area of his legal jurisdiction

137–8 geese … Capitol Juno’s sacred geese were kept on the Capitoline Hill. Their cackling once awoke the Romans to a surprise attack by the Gauls, but Livia’s analogy seems to dismiss their effectiveness here.

146 parts qualities of mind and body

151 thy ed. (that O)

158 You presumably a reference to ‘you my sorrows’ (1. 156)

164–5 idolatry … image She doubly commits idolatry, because a fool is only an ‘image’ of a man, and man is the image of God.

170 portions marriage dowries

175 Sometimes. By’r ed. (Sometimes by’r O)

178 estate condition

180 four warring elements Earth, air, fire and water, combined in equal portions, form an ideal balance of nature or psychological state. Perhaps an echo of / Tamburlaine: ‘Nature that framed us of four elements / Warring within our breasts for regiment, / Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds’ (II.vii. 18–20). In saying that ‘Providence’ ‘sets four warring elements / At peace’, Isabella is inverting Tamburlaine’s much different view that ‘Nature’ sets these elements at war; her naivety will soon vanish.

196 keep shut

198 arguments topics, discussions

216 nearer become more explicit; get even closer

218–25 Somewhat obscure passage. The first hint of bad news, she implies, will be understood immediately, even sooner than merely hearing it; rather than welcome it, she will forestall ever hearing it by forswearing all discourse.

220 Than ed. (Then O). This seems a comparative, but O may also be correct, as Holdsworth (p. 89) notes.

prevent anticipate

227 blood Isabella means ‘natural relation’, but the word also suggests, contrary to her intention, ‘sexual desire’. The word ‘blood’ appears frequently in the play; its meaning may range from ‘birth’ or ‘natural relations’, to ‘inclination’, ‘arousal’, ‘desire’ and ‘sexual appetite’. Several quite different meanings may be invoked simultaneously, as here.