1 gossips godparents, but also women friends

14 run away with a tailor i.e. because she has such fine clothes, but as well, tailors were traditionally lecherous; cf. Dekker and Webster, Northward Ho!: ‘Tailors will be saucy and lickerish’ (II.i.177)

16 Nurse The dry nurse usually looked after the child, the wet nurse suckled it.

21 buss kiss

26 knocker (a) good-looker (b) notable copulator

27 countess A bawdy pun, following ‘knocker’, but see also note to III.ii.99.

31 spoon-meat puréed food for infants

32 Wipe your mouth Make a fool of yourself; but this may also refer to ‘Such is the way of an adulterous woman; she eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness’ (Proverbs 30:20).

51 neat elegant

52 make shift with be content with

63, 67 corps Q has ‘corps’, an old plural form, but ‘corpses’ is unmetrical

67 bills of Middlesex writs allowing arrests on bogus charges within Middlesex, which contained London north of the Thames, so that defendants could be tried for crimes committed outside the county

69 lard … lamb-stones fatten with lambs’ testicles, like sweetbreads believed to be aphrodisiac

golls hands (slang)

70 Molls and Dolls names used for whores and criminals’ girlfriends

72–73 chins … witches Bawds were believed to be characterized by double chins; witches were believed to give suck to the devil, and their familiars, from a third nipple somewhere on the body. Middleton also uses this image in The Black Book (1604). (See Bullen, VIII, 12.)

75 baffle insult, treat with indignity

80 bird victim

82 green sauce made with vinegar or verjuice with spices but without garlic; both ‘veal’ and ‘green’ imply gullibility and to eat ‘veal and green sauce’ = to be cheated

83 Green goose (a) young goose made into pies for the goose fair at Bow (b) cant term for a cuckold

86 colon belly

90 answerable suitable

94 close secret

98 kiss Newgate go to prison; one of the gates of ancient London, Newgate was used as a prison for the worst class of criminals from at least 1190; it was demolished 1902–3

98–9 turn … apron offer a bribe

102 sheep-biting whoring

freebooters pirates, here raiding the baskets of passers-by; perhaps with a pun on

basket = whore

103 foutra vulgarism for the sexual act; from the French ‘foutre’

104 serve your turn (a) ‘Your wife’s pregnancy can’t be used as an excuse’; under the stricter laws of 1613 it was illegal even for invalids and pregnant women to eat meat in Lent (b) continuing the sense of ‘foutra’, since one turns the body to be served sexually

121 pottage broth

125 Turnbull Street (corrupted form of Turnmill) ran between Clerkenwell Green and Cowcross Street, and was the most notorious street in London for its thieves and whores, one of whom longs because she is pregnant

133 rack neck

142 purchased the whole Lent together paid them for immunity over the 40 days of Lent, which began on Ash Wednesday

143 groats first coined 1351–2, made equal to fourpence; by 1600 used for any small sum

144 s.d. The trick played by the country wench is also found in some ballads, e.g. ‘The Country Girl’s Policy, or the Cockney Outwitted’ and ‘A Tryall of Skill, performed by a poor decay’d Gentlewoman’ (Roxburghe Ballads, ed. J. W. Ebsworth (1880–1890), VII, 286 and IX, 556).

147 wit (a) cleverness (b) cunt. Cf. Middleton, More Dissemblers Besides Women IV.ii.230–5, Shakespeare, As You Like It IV.i.155.

shift (a) succeed (b) live by fraud (c) palm off something on someone

152 band collar; standing collars were popular 1605–30. Possibly a wristband.

162 true authority The sick, and some foreign ambassadors, were permitted by the city authorities to have meat during Lent.

174 politic cunning

177 Imprimis ‘In the first place’

180 Nowed. (not Q)

187 I’ll ed. (Q omits)

189 Swounds ‘God’s wounds’

194 quean whore

199 sugar-sops bread soaked in sugar water

201 tallow used for candles and also perhaps for babies’ bottoms

203–4 Nothing … us ‘Nothing makes me so annoyed as to think that you, who felt the baby, said it was a lamb’s head; she’s made fools of us’

206 get it up make up the money we’ve lost

212 Checker an inn, with a chess-board as its sign, which gave its name to the lane where it stood (cf. Survey, I, 231)

Queen-hive Queenhithe, ‘the very chief and principal water-gate of this city’ (Survey, I, 41), a quay on the north bank of the Thames

213 young flood the beginning of the rising tide

214 Branford Brentford, eight miles upstream from London and a resort of whores as well as other citizens, usually spelt ‘Brainford’, as at V.iv.97