1 sergeants sheriff’s officers

2 watermen the taxicab men of the time. John Taylor, the ‘water-poet’, reckoned that by 1614 2,000 small boats plied the river about London and between Windsor and Gravesend; 40,000 lives were maintained by their labour. Queenhithe was their headquarters and they were renowned for strong language.

3 most requiteful’st most willing to return favours

6 Blackfriars theatre, the second known ‘private’ theatre, indoors and lit by candles; used by boys’ companies 1600–08 and by the King’s Men 1608–42.

9 sword dance Among the different kinds of sword dances included in plays of the time were adaptations of folk dances and choreographed mock fights.

10 candles Ghosts carried symbolic objects so that they could be recognized; the ruffians needed candles to find their victim in the indoors Blackfriars theatre.

11 bandied hit at, struck to and fro

14 Your first man the watermen’s trade cry

18 Barn Elms a park and manor house upstream opposite Hammersmith, well-known for assignations and duels

23 French crown French écu, worth about the same as the English crown (5 shillings)

24 take water A bawdy pun; cf. Touchwood Senior’s ‘water’ at II.i.188.

31 Paul’s wharf was between Puddle wharf and Trig stairs

36 buff tough, whitish oxhide leather usually worn by sergeants

38 Venetian women were believed lascivious and weak and the men cruel and oppressive, using padlocks on doors and chastity belts.

39 reads advises, or in the normal sense; cf. ‘The sly Venetian locked his lady’s ware, / Yet through her wit Actaeon’s badge he bare’ (Ariosto’s Satires, [Tr.) G. Markham (1608), sig. K2r); Actaeon was transformed into a horned stag for watching the goddess Artemis bathing.

41 looked opened

45 knows Ironic; as the tutor has cuckolded Yellowhammer.

46–7 ‘The poet speaks truth’; ‘Virgil says it’. Tim is confusing the very moral Virgil with the more erotic Ovid.

48 gill wench

51 smelt any small and easily caught fish, therefore applied, like gudgeon, to a simpleton

53–4 ‘She’ll make us all look fools’

68–9 mermaid … fishwives More unconscious irony; mermaid could mean ‘whore’, and fishwife, ‘bawd’.

87 Westminster The Abbey monuments could be viewed for a penny. Tim’s foolishness is exposed again, since Henry V’s armour had been stolen, with his head of silver, though Edward Ill’s sword was still there.

94 forty Later in the 17th century 150 gold ecus (about £37) and a year’s keep were quoted as the price of a virgin in Venice. (See F. Henriques, Prostitution and Society (1963) II, p. 89).

102 checks my tongue stops me speaking; Touchwood Junior is also likening himself to a dog following a scent, ‘giving tongue’, and playing on his adversary’s name; cf. I.i.143.

104 in play at risk. This begins a series of gaming images. Middleton later used such imagery with great effect in Women Beware Women II.ii, when the conversation during a chess game forms an ironic commentary on a seduction.

105 Sir … first? (first Q) ‘You think you’re going to stab me through the heart straight off?’

106–7 Sir Walter is offering Touchwood Junior a compromise deal allowing him to share in the dowry.