Title page of the quarto edition (reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California).
The title is paradoxical, and perhaps proverbial: ‘A chaste maid in Cheapside?
Not likely!’
conceited ingenious, clever
the Swan theatre stood in Paris Garden on the Bankside; built probably in 1596, used irregularly for plays and other entertainments until 1620 and still standing, though ruinous, in 1632. The inside was sketched by a Dutch visitor, Johannes de Witt, about 1596; a copy of this sketch, made by Aernout (or Arend) van Buchell, was found in the Utrecht University Library and published in 1888; it is the only known contemporary representation of an Elizabethan public playhouse interior.
Lady Elizabeth her Servants were a company of adult players active 1611–16 in London, 1612–22 in the provinces, 1622–5 in London. Revived in 1628 as the Queen of Bohemia’s Players, they continued until about 1641. The Lady Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of James I, was born in 1596, married Frederick V, Elector Palatine, in 1613, became Queen of Bohemia in 1619, and died in 1662.
Paul’s Churchyard was the centre of the London book trade. There were two classes of business premises around the cathedral church, houses which bordered the churchyards, and less substantial booths (or lock-up shops) and stalls clustered round the walls and at the doors of the building itself.
The Names of the Principal Persons
MR contraction for ‘Master’; the modern ‘Mister’ came into general use later in the 17th century
YELLOWHAMMER (a) referring to his goldsmith’s trade (b) a bird (c) slang for ‘a gold coin’ (d) a term of contempt, a fool
MAUDLINE pronounced and also spelt ‘Maudlin’ (a) Magdalene; traditionally Mary Magdalene, the friend of Jesus, was a reformed prostitute, but there is no evidence for this in the Bible (b) mawkish, sentimental
TIM Used by Jonson as a term of contempt: ‘you are an otter, and a shad, a whit, / A very tim’ (The Alchemist IV.vii.45–6); as an otter is ‘neither fish not flesh’ (I Henry IV, III.iii.127), a shad is a fish of the herring family, and a whit is the least part of something, ‘Tim’ also implies ‘small’. See IV.i.123.
MOLL (a) diminutive of ‘Mary’ (b) slang for ‘whore’; a prime example of Middleton’s ambiguous use of names