1–3 Giovanni’s point is that what common consensus (‘opinion’) teaches people to believe and expect is contradicted by actual experience.

1 Busy Meddlesome, interfering idle ineffectual

2 school-rod a bundle of birch-twigs used as an instrument of corporal punishment, but more commonly displayed as a threat, ‘For terror, not to use’ (Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, I.iii.26)

7 in… sports as a result of the legalization (by marriage) of Annabella’s sexual activity

8 one the same as she was

10–11 when … virgin when she was still a virgin. The point is expressed in quasilegal terms, with ‘virgin’ a title bestowed on Annabella (‘entitled’) by legal right or prerogative (‘privilege’).

13 bookmen scholars

17 jubilee time of celebration

18 retired private

19 prompted spoken of

21 I could prove it The choice of words (‘could’ rather than ‘can’) is interesting, perhaps suggesting that he cannot be bothered.

25–6 These lines may be spoken as an aside while Giovanni reads.

26 congealéd coral ed. (congeal’d Corrall Q). Coral was thought to be an undersea plant which hardened when exposed to the air.

28 factor intermediary (in carrying the letter from Annabella, Giovanni’s ‘love’); Ford uses the word similarly in The Broken Heart, II.i.10.

30 seared cauterized (and so rendered insensible)

31 stoop to warning restrain your own impulses in heeding and obeying the warning you have been given

38 Giovanni assumes that he and Annabella are the only ones who know, forgetting Putana (and also the Friar)

39 dotage nonsense (literally, senile ramblings)

40 s.d. ed. (after line 41 in Q)

52 miss fail to come

56 gage stake, wager

57 train allure, entice

60 blazing stars comets, thought to be a portent of death

69 aught of thine i.e Giovanni young man ed. (Youngman Q)

71 s.p. GIOVANNI ed. (missing in Q)

72 set… rest committed myself to my final venture, staked my all. In tte card game primero, the ‘rest’ was a stake held in reserve; to ‘set up’ your rest was to make a final wager which, if lost, would put you out of the game.

73 baneful destructive

75 prescription prescribed social behaviour (such as not murdering people at parties) gall The primary sense is ‘aggression’, from the bodily fluid which supposedly induced this; but Giovanni imagines it in terms of an organ (the gall-bladder) being ripped out of his body. ‘Gall’ also referred to a secretion from the oak tree (compare line 77) that was used in making ink (hence the next line’s suggestion of its ‘enrolling’ his death, writing it down in the roll of honour).

79 splits splinters