0 s.d. as from This wording in seventeenth-century stage directions usually indicates some significant action by the characters; see Alan C. Dessen, Elizabethan Stage Conventions and Modern Interpreters (Cambridge, 1984). pp. 31–3. In this case, Giovanni and Annabella might be rearranging their clothes to suggest that they have come ‘from their chamber’ (= bedroom; i.e. from ‘chambering’ = sex).

4 yielding giving up her virginity

6 contents pleasures

10 toy a trivial thing
maidenhead virginity (literally, a woman’s hymen, pierced in her first sexual encounter)

11 nothing (a) an insignificant thing; (b) a vagina

13–14 Music… playing Implying that you don’t have to experience something directly to understand it (with reference to Giovanni’s inability to share Annabella’s female experience of losing her virginity).

16 Thus… Leda’s neck In classical mythology, the god Jupiter (also known as Jove) visited the woman Leda in the shape of a swan, and fathered twins on her.

17 ambrosia the food of the classical gods; hence a byword for anything with a superlatively pleasant taste

25 weep in earnest truly cry; possibly she has feigned tears during the preceding jocular banter

27 live to me live faithful to me

33–4 lineation ed. (Will… must. / When… Soone. / Looke… Farewell Q) The first verse line is incomplete, perhaps indicating a stunned pause from Annabella after Giovanni’s? ‘I must.’

40 passed over travelled through

41 passed under Referring to the conventional ‘missionary’ sexual position, with the man on top of the woman.

44 the fit sexual desire

47 the speech of the people vulgar, censorious gossip

49 s.d. Within Off-stage

51 s.d. like a doctor of physic disguised as a medical doctor (as distinct from a holder of a university doctorate); the disguise includes ‘a broad beard’ (II.vi.80), probably adopted the better to cover his face. Richardetto remains disguised in public until V.vi.150.

52 lose waste

52–7 lineation ed. (prose in Q)

54 Padua a city in the state of Venice, about 80 miles north east of Parma; its university included one of the leading medical schools in Europe. In reality, as is established in the next scene, Richardetto has come from the opposite direction, from Leghorn (see note to II.ii.75).

55 for that because

59 large extensive; full and free

64 parts talents, accomplishments

66 make not strange either ‘don’t stay away’ (ie. Florio issues a standing invitation to ‘the Doctor’), or ‘don’t behave too formally’; ‘strange’ means ‘like a stranger’

67 art medical skill

69 bind… you i.e. in bonds of gratitude

70 confidence private talk. Ford perhaps recalls the Nurse’s usage in Romeo and Juliet (II.iii.118), which Shakespeare may originally have intended as a malapropism.

73 cunning skill

75 touch an instrument play a musical instrument; but ‘instrument’ could also mean ‘penis’, so there is a bawdy undertone unintended by Florio, but relevant to the context now that Annabella is no longer a virgin. could have done used to be able to do