0 s.d. severally separately

7 pickled cucumbers made with verjuice, the sharp, slightly fermented juice of sour grapes or crab apples – pregnancy produces strange cravings; and this is a hidden irony, as ‘pickled’ = poxed and cucumbers are phallic

13 table Cf. Psalm 78:19 ‘Can God furnish a table?’ and Proverbs 9:2 ‘Wisdom … hath mingled her wine; she hath also furnished her table’ (The Holy Bible, 1611); blasphemy continues with prays and bless.

17 a he

18 family includes servants as well as children

21 church … scavenger Parish dues (duties) could be paid in cash or service. The scavenger was a town officer who employed the poor to sweep the streets and chimneys; Stow says Bread Street ward, which contained part of Cheapside, had eight.

26 chaldron a dry measure of 36 bushels of coal; the coal trade between Newcastle and London grew tenfold between 1545 and 1625 and while Shakespeare was in London the price per chaldron rose from four shillings to nine

28 Kentish faggots bundles of brushwood, about eight feet long (2.44 m) and a foot (30.5 cm) through; much London firewood came from Kent

29 waterhouse and the windmills either the house near Broken Wharf in which Bevis Bulmer in 1594 built an ‘engine’ ‘to convey Thames water into men’s houses of West Cheap, about Paul’s, Fleet Street, &c’ (Survey, I, 8) or Sir Hugh Middleton’s recently completed reservoir in Islington; windmills could be seen to both north and south of Cheapside

30 pin bolt

35 Gresham’s Burse the Royal Exchange, ‘whose founder was Sir Thomas Gresham Knight, agent to her Majesty, built 1556–8 for the confluence and commerce of merchants’ (John Speed, The Theatre of … Great Britain (1611), fol. 852)

38 rundlets barrels; large rundlets held between 12 and 18½ gallons (54.6–84.2 litres), small between a pint and four gallons (0.57–18.2 lirres)

40 think’s think it’s

43–4 dye … heirs ‘wickedly extort money from spendthrift sons of the gentry to buy clothing and jewellery for their whores’. Gulling ‘prodigal heirs’ is a major theme in Middleton’s Michaelmas Term (c. 1606).

45 night-piece mistress, bedfellow

47 nature more constrains restricts nature more

55–6 strings … frets The heart was supposed to be braced with strings, which frayed and broke under emotional stress; the fret of a musical instrument was a ring of gut, now wood or metal, on the fingerboard to regulate fingering.

57 dildo This chorus has ironic overtones; a dildo is a substitute phallus.

58 a-singing … head reference to horns, the common insignia of the cuckold, a man with an adulterous wife

59 work sexual activity (slang)

66 Ergo ‘Therefore’

67 Negatur argumentum ‘Your argument is denied’

68 peep pip, degree; from a card game ‘one-and-thirty’ in which thirty-two was ‘a pip out’, the pips being the spots on the cards

70 Jack This may well be Allwit’s name, but it is also a generic name for (a) a low bred, common fellow (Sir Walter is asserting his authority immediately) (b) a penis.

74 She’s a tumbler … meets ‘She’s a copulator, and she’s pregnant’

77 Put on Hats were normally worn indoors; Allwit has removed his out of deference.

84 humour disposition he one, you

90 marrow melts with the heat generated by his jealousy

100 forfeited lordships Mortgaged properties claimed by moneylenders for repayment of loans. A jibe at the low value of knighthood. Cf. note 43–4 above.

117 God-den ‘Good evening’, but used any time after noon

124 legs a bow

138 heavy pregnant

142 calf blockhead. Another small but subtle irony, since a ‘mooncalf’ is also a false pregnancy.