Shakespeare and Domestic Life: A Dictionary 9781472581808, 9781472581839, 9781472581822

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Shakespeare and Domestic Life

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ARDEN SHAKESPEARE DICTIONARY SERIES SERIES EDITOR Sandra Clark (Birkbeck College, University of London) Class and Society in Shakespeare Paul Innes Military Language in Shakespeare Charles Edelman Shakespeare’s Books Stuart Gillespie Shakespeare’s Demonology Marion Gibson Shakespeare’s Insults Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin Shakespeare and the Language of Food Joan Fitzpatrick Shakespeare’s Legal Language B. J. Sokol and Mary Sokol Shakespeare’s Medical Language Sujata Iyengar Shakespeare’s Musical Language Christopher R. Wilson Shakespeare and National Identity Christopher Ivic Shakespeare’s Non-Standard English N. F. Blake Shakespeare’s Political and Economic Language Vivian Thomas Shakespeare’s Theatre Hugh Macrae Richmond Shakespeare and Visual Culture Armelle Sabatier Women in Shakespeare Alison Findlay FORTHCOMING: Shakespeare and Animals Karen Raber Shakespeare and London Sarah Dustagheer

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Shakespeare and Domestic Life A Dictionary

SANDRA CLARK

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THE ARDEN SHAKESPEARE Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC 1B 3DP, UK BLOOMSBURY, THE ARDEN SHAKESPEARE and the Arden Shakespeare logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2018 Copyright © Sandra Clark, 2018 Sandra Clark has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. vii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Irene Martinez Costa All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN :

HB : ePDF : eBook:

978-1-4725-8180-8 978-1-4725-8182-2 978-1-4725-8181-5

Series: Arden Shakespeare Dictionaries Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

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Contents

List of Figures

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Acknowledgements

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Series Editor’s Preface

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List of Abbreviations

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List of Headwords

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Introduction

1

A–Z

5

Bibliography

407

Index

427

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Figures

1 The Crimson Bedroom at Montacute House, Somerset 2 A Puritan family from ‘Tenor of the Whole Psalms in Four Parts’, 1563 3 Woodcut from the ballad ‘The Godly Maid of Leicester’, Broadside Ballads, 4° Rawl. 566, fol. 161r 4 Portrait of Elizabeth Vernon, Countess of Southampton, by an unknown English artist, c. 1598 5 Frontispiece from Thomas Dawson, The Good Husewifes Jewell, 1610

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27 129 141 157 200

Acknowledgements

As Series Editor, I suppose I should have known more than most about what is needed to produce an Arden Shakespeare Dictionary. In the event, I was really glad to have the views of others about my work. I am particularly grateful to Viv Thomas, who gave generously of his time and experience in reading a high proportion of the entries, and as a result they were much improved. John Fullman and Boika Sokolova were also kind enough to read and comment on parts of the text, almost always to good effect. The anonymous reader from Bloomsbury was exactly what I wanted, encouraging in his/her comments, but also quick to see what could be made better. At Bloomsbury, Margaret Bartley has been supportive throughout, and in the later stages Susan Furber has helped with the illustrations. My husband, Mike Holmes, supplied domesticity in a practical form while I attended to this project.

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Series Editor’s Preface

The Arden Shakespeare Dictionaries aim to provide the student of Shakespeare with a series of authoritative guides to the principal subject areas covered by the plays and poems. They are produced by scholars who are experts both on Shakespeare and on the topic of the individual dictionary, based on the most recent scholarship, succinctly written and accessibly presented. They offer readers a self-contained body of information on the topic under discussion, its occurrence and significance in Shakespeare’s works, and its contemporary meanings. The topics are all vital ones for understanding the plays and poems; they have been selected for their importance in illuminating aspects of Shakespeare’s writings where an informed understanding of the range of Shakespeare’s usage, and of the contemporary literary, historical and cultural issues involved, will add to the reader’s appreciation of his work. Because of the diversity of the topics covered in the series, individual dictionaries may vary in emphasis and approach, but the aim and basic format of the entries remain the same from volume to volume. Sandra Clark Birkbeck College University of London

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Abbreviations

1. Shakespeare’s works AC AW AYL CE COR CYM E3 HAM 1H4 2H4 H5 1H6 2H6 3H6 H8 JC KJ LC LLL KL LUC MA MAC MM MND MV MW OTH PER PP PT R2 R3 RJ SON

Antony and Cleopatra All’s Well That Ends Well As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Coriolanus Cymbeline Edward III Hamlet The First Part of Henry IV The Second Part of Henry IV Henry V The First Part of Henry VI The Second Part of Henry VI The Third Part of Henry VI Henry VIII Julius Caesar King John A Lover’s Complaint Love’s Labour’s Lost King Lear The Rape of Lucrece Much Ado About Nothing Macbeth Measure for Measure A Midsummer Night’s Dream The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor Othello Pericles The Passionate Pilgrim The Phoenix and the Turtle Richard II Richard III Romeo and Juliet Sonnets ix

Abbreviations

STM TC TGV TIM TIT TEM TN TNK TS VA WT

Sir Thomas More Troilus and Cressida The Two Gentlemen of Verona Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus The Tempest Twelfth Night The Two Noble Kinsmen The Taming of the Shrew Venus and Adonis The Winter’s Tale

2. Others Dent ed. edn EEBO ELR EMLS esp. F fn. Ind. MEMS OED PMLA Prol. Q rev. rev. ed SB Sc. SD SEL ser. SQ SS Tilley trans. vol. x

Dent, R. W., Shakespeare’s Proverbial Language: An Index (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1981) editor edition Early English Books Online English Literary Renaissance Early Modern Literary Studies especially Folio footnote Induction Medieval and Early Modern Studies Oxford English Dictionary Publications of the Modern Language Association Prologue Quarto revised by revised edition Studies in Bibliography Scene stage direction Studies in English Literature series Shakespeare Quarterly Shakespeare Survey Tilley, M. P., A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Ann Arbor, 1950) translated by volume

Headwords

age aglet ague ale, alehouse, alewife amber angel apprentice (see prentice) apron, apron man aqua-vitae arras (see tapestry) aunt babe, baby bacon baked meats banquet barber basket, buck basket, alms-basket bastard beard bearing cloth bed, daybed, truckle bed beef beer bell blanket bodkin bolt (boult) bombard bonnet book, notebook bracelet bread, gingerbread breeches, breech bride, bridegroom, bride bed broom

brother burial, bury butler buttery button, buttonhole cake, pancake cambric canary, canaries candle cap, nightcap capon carcanet cards carpet, carpet-monger casement (see window) cat, musk-cat, gib-cat cates caudle caviare caudle chain chalice chamber, chamberer chambermaid (see servant) chattels chest cheverel child, childish, childbed chimney, chimney sweep, chimney piece chopine civet cloak, cloak-bag clock closet clout xi

Headwords

coal, sea-coal coat codpiece coffer contract, handfast copataine (copatain or copotaine) hat couch cousin cradle cuckold, horn curds, curd curtain cushion custard cuts cypress damask daughter day bed (see bed) dial diet dinner distaff divorce doctor dog, cur, hound doublet dowager dowry, dower, portion dug egg eisel[l] ewer family fan farthingale father feast

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feather fish, fishmonger, saltfish flapjack (see pancake) flax funeral fustian garden garter gaskins gentleman gentlewoman gingerbread (see bread) glass glove gossip gown, nightgown grandam, grandmother grange grease, greasy green sickness groat halfpenny (see penny) handkerchief handfast (see contract) hanging (see tapestry) hat herring hogshead horn (see cuckold) hornbook hose host, hostess hound (see dog) house household, householder housekeeper housewife husband husbandry

Headwords

ink inkle inn

muffler mustard mutton

Jack (and Jill) jakes jerkin jewel, jeweller joint-ring (see ring) joint-stool jointure jordan journeyman (see prentice)

napkin needle, needlework neighbour, neighbourhood nephew niece nightcap (see cap) nightgown (see gown) noble nurse, nursery

kerchief kersey key (see lock) kirtle kitchen

orchard ostler

lace laundry, laundress lawn leather(n) linen linsey-woolsey livery lock maid, maiden, maidenhood, maidenhead malmsey mammet mansion mantle marchpane marriage, marry meat metheglin midwife milk, milkmaid mirror mother

packthread paint, painting pancake, flapjack pantler parchment parlour pawn pen pencil penny, pennyworth, halfpenny penthouse pepper, peppercorn perfume petticoat pewter physic, physician picture pie pin placket plate pocket points pomander poor john xiii

Headwords

porridge, plum porridge, pottage porringer porter portion (see dowry) posset pottle, pottle pot prentice, apprentice prunes pudding puke (see stocking) pump purse quill rebato rhenish ribbon, ribband ring, joint-ring ruff rush, rush candle sack saffron salad, sallet salt sampler sarcenet satin sauce scarf school, schoolmaster scullion sea-coal (see coal) seal servant, service, servingman, chambermaid sew sheet shilling shirt shoe xiv

shop shrew signet silk, silken simple sister skillet sleave sleeve slop slut, sluttish smock spaniel (see dog) spectacles spice spin spinster steward stocking, netherstocking stool, close-stool sty suck, suckle supper, suppertime table(s), tablebook, tablet taffeta tailor taper tapestry, arras, hanging tapster tavern tennis thrift, thrifty, thriftless, spendthrift tinker tire toast torch trencher troth-plight truckle bed (see bed) trunk

Headwords

uncle valance velvet wardrobe wassail wax wean wedding, wedlock wench

whey widow, widower wife wig, periwig window, casement wine wool, woollen wormwood yeoman youth

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Introduction

The language of domesticity can have a number of connotations, most of them pleasant: the first for most people today is probably the home, the intimate, the familiar. But there are others, for instance, to do with the native, as opposed to the foreign. To domesticate is to train, to habituate, to render less wild. In Shakespeare’s texts, domestic language can often create its effects from its sheer simplicity: Lear’s button, Lady Macbeth’s blanket. But it is capable of mixed effects too. For Othello, it is inconceivable that he could be distracted from his duties as a soldier in the wars by the pleasure to be enjoyed at home with his new wife; if this were to happen, then, the worst possible fate: Let housewives make a skillet of my helm And all indign and base adversities Make head against my estimation. (1.3.273–5) He figures the destruction of his military reputation in terms of domestic debasement: his helmet would be transformed by women into a saucepan. For Othello, the male world of action must be separate from the female world of the house. ‘Private and domestic quarrel’ (2.3.211), in his view, has no place in a public setting. Othello uses ‘domestic’ here in a general sense, the most common one, to mean internal rather than to do with the household. This relates to OED ’s third sense, ‘of or pertaining to one’s own country or nation; not foreign’, the most frequent in Shakespeare and the most common in the period. The references in Julius Caesar to ‘domestic fury’, in King Lear to ‘domestic and particular broils’, in Macbeth to ‘malice domestic’, in Antony and Cleopatra to ‘domestic powers’ are typical. But the meaning of ‘domestic’ as ‘of or belonging to the home, house or household; pertaining to one’s residence or family affairs’ (OED adj. 2) was gaining force in early modern England. William Gouge could use it in this sense in the title of his manual Of Domesticall Duties (1622) without providing an explicit definition. The OED cites a reference in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (1610) as the first recorded use of the word in the sense of household, where Lucius says to Cloten that Caesar ‘hath moe kings his servants than / Thou domestic officers’ (3.1.63–4). The OED , however, is not correct in this instance; and EEBO throws up numerous examples of earlier uses of ‘domestic’ in the sense that we are now most familiar with. For instance, Roger Edgeworth in Sermons very fruitful (1557) uses the phrase ‘for domesticall cohabitation’, and states (of an erring husband) that ‘this adulterie and unlawful luste in hym was not domesticall or of household’. ‘Domestic (or domestical) servants’ are mentioned in Natural and Moral Questions and Answers by A. P. (1598), and in many other Elizabethan texts before 1

Shakespeare and Domestic Life

1600. Robert Cawdrey’s word-list, A Table Alphabeticall (1604), glosses ‘domesticall’ as ‘at home, belonging to houshold: private’. It is, in fact, true to say that domestic life and questions of the organization of the household were becoming matters of scrutiny in the period, and the proliferation of household manuals, conduct books, sermons concerning the relations of husband and wife, the education of children and the management of the household, and what Lena Cowen Orlin calls ‘oeconomic discourse’ is testimony of this.1 There was an increasing quantity of household goods available, especially luxury products, and domestic culture revealed itself in a range of material forms. At the same time, certain social changes were taking place which bore on relationships within the household and its environs; a ‘crisis in service’,2 in part resulting from the dissolution of feudally created social bonds, was transforming the relationships between masters and servants, and the status of groups like gentlemen and gentlewomen, and yeoman was in flux. The conception of the household itself was in the process of change: from being a ‘little commonwealth’,3 headed by a man, it was becoming a feminized private space, and the continuum between public and private that had characterized the medieval household in its relations to society was gradually breaking down. Othello, in his fear of losing his professional and masculine identity through absorption into the domestic arena, represents this split. Recently, early modern domestic culture has become the subject for a wide variety of explorations of the life of Shakespeare’s England: of clothing and food, furniture, servants and service, of the development of the kitchen, of beds and sleep, of attitudes towards childhood, youth and old age, of family values, motherhood, gender roles within the household, and more.4 The intersections between the private, as located in property and the interior domain of the household, and the public, that is the state or the commonwealth, have, since Orlin’s seminal book Private Matters and Public Culture in Post-Reformation England (1994), been much examined. The analogy between ruling the house and ruling the commonwealth is familiar. Gouge states that ‘a conscionable performance of domesticall and houshold duties, tend to the good ordering of Church and common-wealth, as being meanes to fit and prepare men thereunto’ and that such a performance ‘may be accounted a publike worke’.5 Scholars’ awareness of this has broadened out into a sense of the complex role of the community in what we might now regard as private concerns, where, for example, religious practices, sexual and familiar relationships were subject to public scrutiny. The skimmington ride, a shaming ritual to express disapproval of adulterous behaviour, is an example of this. The early modern family and the household were deeply embedded in the wider community. There has also been a welcome recognition, especially from feminist writers, that the early modern housewife was involved in domestic activities that demanded many kinds of skills, and that she took part in economic activities such as managing accounts and marketing household products which took her outside the house.6 The detail of domestic life features in some form, both narrative and figurative, in almost every one of Shakespeare’s works, including his poems. My object has been to examine his handling of terms relating to the household, its ambiance, and the activities 2

Introduction

of those within it, many of them very familiar words, and one of the greatest problems in compiling this dictionary has been to decide what to include and where to draw the boundaries. Domesticity, unlike many subjects of this dictionary series, medicine, say, or music, has no technical vocabulary; and whereas legal language or military language is definable, the language of domestic life has no clear parameters. The term ‘domestical’, in the sense of relating to household matters, is first recorded as part of a title as early as 1549, in The Seconde parte of the Domesticall or housholde Sermons, for a godly housholder, to his children and familie: Compyled by the godly learned man Christopher Hegendorffine, translated from Latin; but the most familiar early usage is that by Gouge in Of Domesticall Duties (1622), referring to ‘domesticall and houshold duties’. In Shakespeare’s works the affairs and activities of the household involve the material aspects of everyday life: what its members wear and eat, what they see around them in the house and how they use it. The household itself is a construction of relationships between individuals and the concepts underlying these relationships. Hence, I have included terms relating to the material processes of household life, domestic activities and implements as well as those of roles and relationships, such as father, mother, husband, wife, nurse, servant. The largest entry is ‘marriage’, reflecting not only its importance within the narratives of the plays but also its centrality to the structure of early modern society. Birth and death as household events are also included, as are the stages of life: childhood, youth and age. The domestic appears to be identified with the concerns of family; but there are forms of social life in Shakespeare’s plays that are in some wider sense ‘domestic’, even if they take place outside the home, such as Falstaff’s relationships with Mistress Quickly and other frequenters of the tavern, or interactions between citizens over domestic issues, as in Sir Thomas More. And these I have included also. A number of the terms refer to objects that appear in material form in the plays, as props or symbolic objects: for example, furniture such as stools, beds or hangings, or personal items like jewellery or pieces of clothing. In these cases I have not ignored the stage functions of these objects, but my focus has been on their role within the language of the play. Given the richness of this subject and the wealth of possible headwords, I have excluded terms where Shakespeare’s usage imparts no nuance, and which can be readily explained with a gloss, and, in many cases, terms that only appear once. Conventions used in this volume Headwords and entries All headwords are terms which actually occur within Shakespeare’s texts. All entries except for the most straightforward are divided into three sections. The ‘(A)’ section defines the term, with attention to how it was understood in early modern England. Sometimes it has seemed appropriate to give a brief account of the relevant social history, but the intention is always to focus on definition rather than description. The ‘(B)’ section

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Shakespeare and Domestic Life

reviews Shakespeare’s usage of the term; not every reference to it is included, which would be an impossibility in the case of many of the commonest terms, but I have hoped to cover the most significant usages. The ‘(C)’ section gives a selective guide to further reading, both in contemporary texts and in modern scholarship and criticism. Titles are not included, but author surnames and dates of publication are given, and where relevant page numbers, in order to identify the reference in the Bibliography. For the purposes of cross-referencing I have indicated (once) in bold type any term which appears as a headword for another entry. Quotations Quotations from Shakespeare are taken from the editions of the Arden Shakespeare, third series; where the third series has not been available, I have used the second series, in consultation with the Arden Shakespeare Complete Works. Some names of characters used in the Arden Shakespeare, third series, may take forms unfamiliar to some readers. Notes 1

2 3 4

5 6

4

Lena Cowen Orlin, Private Matters and Public Culture in Post-Reformation England (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1994). She chooses ‘oeconomic’ because it is a familiar term from the period and being no longer in regular usage has not acquired any anachronistic associations. Mark Thornton Burnett, Masters and Servants in English Renaissance Drama and Culture (Basingstoke, 1997), 80. William Googe, Of Domesticall Duties Eight Treatises (1622), 18. A few examples: Bella Mirabella, ed., Ornamentalism: The Art of Renaissance Accessories (Ann Arbor, MI , 2011), Robert Appelbaum, Aguecheek’s Beef, Belch’s Hiccup, and Other Gastronomic Interjections: Literature, Culture, and Food among the Early Moderns (Chicago, 2006), Antony Buxton, Domestic Culture in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, 2015), Judith Weil, Service and Dependency in Shakespeare’s Plays (Cambridge, 2005), Sarah Pennell, The Birth of the English Kitchen, 1600–1800 (London and New York, 2016), Sasha Handley, Sleep in Early Modern England (New Haven, CT, 2016), Paul Griffiths, Youth and Authority: Formative Experiences in England 1560–1640 (Oxford, 1996), Anthony Ellis, Old Age, Masculinity and Early Modern Drama (Farnham and Burlington, VT, 2009), Helen Berry and Elizabeth Foyster, eds, The Family in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2007), Patricia Crawford, Blood, Bodies and Families in Early Modern England (London and New York, 2014), Natasha Korda, Shakespeare’s Domestic Economies: Gender and Property in Early Modern England (Philadelphia, 2002a), Naomi Miller and Naomi Yavneh, Gender and Early Modern Constructions of Childhood (Farnham and Burlington, VT, 2011), Catherine Richardson, Domestic Life and Domestic Tragedy in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2007). Googe, 18. An example of such an approach is Erica Longfellow, ‘Public, Private, and the Household in Early Seventeenth-Century England’, Journal of British Studies, 45.2 (2006), 313–34.

A age (A) Age has a range of meanings and can refer simply to a period of existence or a particular stage in a person’s life, but most of Shakespeare’s uses are to age as the latter stage of life, to the qualities associated with this stage, and with the process of getting old. (B) Many epithets for old age suggest it is an undesirable stage of life: ‘haggish’ (AW 1.2.29), ‘decrepit’ (VA 1148), ‘feeble’ (SON 7), ‘weak, decaying’ (1H6 2.5.1), ‘wrinkled’ (LUC 275). Age can bring about physical deformity and ugliness; Sycorax ‘with age and envy / Was grown into a hoop’ (TEM 1.2.258–9). It is also a time of senility: ‘When the age is in, the wit is out’, says Dogberry complacently, of his colleague Verges (MA 3.5.33). Lear’s elder daughters have strong views on what to expect from their father’s old age: The best and soundest of his time hath been but rash; then must we look from his age to receive not alone the imperfections of long-engrafted condition, but therewithal the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them. (KL 1.1.296–300) As Goneril’s speech implies, the old are a burden. Adam in AYL has saved money against the time when ‘service should in my old limbs lie lame / And unregarded age in corners thrown’ (2.3.41–2). Lear tells Regan bitterly what he thinks she wants to hear: ‘Dear daughter, I confess that I am old; / Age is unnecessary’ (KL 2.2.343–4). The Lord Chief Justice berates Falstaff for considering himself young, and tells him that he has ‘all the characters of old age’ which he proceeds to list mercilessly: Have you not a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a decreasing leg, and increasing belly? Is not your voice broken, your wind short, your chin double, your wit single, and every part about you blasted with antiquity? (2H4 1.2.181–5) Hamlet’s malicious account of the condition of old men is even more depressing: The satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plumtree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit together with most weak hams. (HAM 2.2.193–7)

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age

Old age is a time when the vital juices of youth have dried up. ‘Age cannot wither her’ (AC 2.2.245), says Enobarbus of Cleopatra’s paradoxical attractions, but this is not usually the case. Talbot hoped in vain that his son would be alive to preserve the family name ‘when sapless age and weak unable limbs / Should bring thy father to his drooping chair’ (1H6 4.4.5). John of Gaunt describes his condition in terms of loss: My oil-dried lamp and time-bewasted light Shall be extinct with age and endless night. (R2 1.3.221–2) Mistress Page regards Falstaff as ‘one that is well-nigh worn to pieces with age’ (MW 2.1.17), despite his amorous pursuit of her. Queen Gertrude is not old, but Hamlet mercilessly targets what he regards as her too-youthful sexuality: You cannot call it love, for at your age The heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble And waits upon the judgment. (HAM 3.4.65–7) The lover of SON 138, who acknowledges that his ‘days are past the best’, is also conscious that ‘age in love loves not t’have years told’. The Gravedigger’s song personifies age as a thief who robs men of their youth: ‘age with his stealing steps / Hath clawed me in his clutch / And hath shipped me into the land [of death] / As if I had never been such [young]’ (HAM 5.1.66–70). Old age is the winter of life, indicated by ‘frosty signs and chaps of age’ (TIT 5.3.76). Adam’s hopeful claim that his age ‘is as a lusty winter’ (AYL 2.3.52) is counteracted by Jacques’ bleak vision of the seventh age of man as one of total loss: ‘sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything’. Old men return to the total dependency of ‘second childishness’ (AYL 2.7.167, 166). ‘Feeble age’ is the sunset of life (SON 7). The elderly regard themselves as close to death. Capulet’s Wife is overcome at the sight of the corpses in the tomb: O me, this sight of death is as a bell That warns my old age to a sepulchre. (RJ 5.3.206–7) Lear, fatally, proposes to ‘shake all cares and business from our age . . . while we, / Unburdened crawl toward death’ (KL 1.1.38–40). It was a commonplace that the tastes of youth are opposite to those of age: ‘Youth and age will never agree’ (Dent, Y43). The verses that begin, ‘Crabbed age and youth cannot live together’ (PP 12), spoken by a young woman waiting impatiently for her lover, consist of a series of contrasts between the two stages of life, with a marked preference for the former. Youth is full of sport, age’s breath is short; Youth is nimble, age is lame;

6

aglet

Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold; Youth is wild, and age is tame. But there is an alternative vision of old age, though less commonly expressed. Macbeth’s elegy for what he has sacrificed in his pursuit of the crown is the best known: I have lived long enough: my way of life Is fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf, And that which should accompany old age, As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have (MAC 5.3.22–6) This is echoed in more sententious style in LUC : ‘The aim of all is but to nurse the life / With honour, wealth and ease in waning age’ (141–2). Young Clifford takes up the dead body of his father on the battlefield, regretting that he failed ‘to achieve / The silver livery of advised age’ (2H6 5.2.47). In his injunction to Alcibiades to kill the Athenians without distinction, Timon tells him, ‘Pity not honoured age for his white beard’ (TIM 4.3.111), implying that respectful tenderness would be the norm. Edmund has sent Lear to prison, fearing that his ‘age had charms in it’ (KL 5.3.48) to attract popular support for his cause. In jocular spirit Falstaff characterizes himself as a man whose age is ‘some fifty, or, by’r Lady, inclining to threescore’, yet still appealing, with ‘a cheerful look, a pleasing eye and a most noble carriage’ (1H4 2.4.411–13). (C) Studies of old age in this period, taking a cultural approach towards the process, have burgeoned in recent years, with much concern for its negative representation. A broadly based account of aging and its moral meanings that ranges from Plato to writing of the present day is Small (2007). More specifically, MacInnes (2000) discusses early modern views of the physical qualities of age and of the aging process, especially in relation to the Sonnets. Taunton (2007) relates the experience of aging to changes in material culture in the period with reference to a range of texts including KL . Ellis (2009) explores the handling of comic old men in Italian and English drama of the period, including Shakespeare. Martin (2012) discusses age in a cultural context that takes off from Queen Elizabeth’s responses to her own aging. Botelho (in Poska et al., 2013) examines the meaning of aging for women. Toulahan’s well-documented article (2016) focuses on the perception of the aging body of both sexes in relation to its infertility. Semenza in his article on ‘second childishness’ argues that ‘Shakespeare’s drama of senescence . . . is the drama of learning how to “act one’s age” ’ (in Miller and Yavneh, 2011, 229). Niccholes (1615) strongly advises against marriage for those ‘that are past hope of Children’ (29), as does Smith (1591). aglet Aglets were originally metal tags at the end of a lace, used to attach parts of a garment to one another; but the term could also mean the lace itself, or refer to small shining ornaments or spangles on a dress. The Jailor’s Daughter in TNK is alone at night

7

aglet

when she refers to them in a vividly pathetic speech: ‘I am very cold and all the stars are out too, / The little stars and all, that look like aglets’ (TNK 3.4.1–2). Grumio’s reference in TS is more obscure when he says of Petruccio’s undiscriminating desire for a wealthy wife, ‘Why, give him gold enough and marry him to a puppet or an aglet-baby’ (1.2.78). Hodgdon (Arden edn, 2010) glosses aglet-baby, ‘perhaps a doll-shaped figure forming the tag of a lace or worn as a tag-like ornament on a dress (OED n. aglet 6)’, but OED more helpfully defines ‘aglet baby’ as ‘a childish or doll-like person decorated with aglets’. Kyd in The Spanish Tragedy refers to aglets: ‘And all these stars that gaze upon her face / Are aglets on her sleeve, pins on her train’ (Fourth Addition, 35–6). Tiramani (2010) gives fascinating detail about the uses of aglets in clothing, especially in stage costumes. See also pins. ague (A) Ague seems to have been an all-purpose term for a variety of influenza-like illnesses, characterized by fever, cold and shivering. (B) King Richard II , angered by the outburst of his uncle the Duke of Gaunt against his mismanagement of his realm, calls the dying man ‘a lunatic lean-witted fool, / Presuming on a ague’s privilege’ (R2 2.1.115–16). Lear also associates the condition with old age when he pathetically tells the blind Earl of Gloucester that although his flatterers have tried to make him believe himself omnipotent, ‘ ’Tis a lie, I am not agueproof’ (KL 4.6.106). In H8 the Duke of Buckingham, soon to be impeached, mentions at the start of the play that he has been confined to his chamber by ‘an untimely ague’ (1.1.4). The grief-stricken Constance in KJ imagines meeting her little son Arthur in heaven where she will hardly recognize him because of the changes caused by suffering when he will look ‘as dim and meagre as an ague’s fit’ (3.3 85). In TEM the trembling of Caliban, fearful of Prospero’s displeasure, makes Stephano take him for someone stricken by an ague (2.2). That the ague was considered alarmingly omnipresent is suggested by Patroclus’s remark that ‘danger, like an ague, subtly taints / Even when we sit idly in the sun’ (TC 3.3.232–3). Venus begins her list of the miseries of the human condition with ‘burning fevers, agues pale and faint’ (VA 739). (C) Iyengar (2011) identifies several kinds of ague and gives early modern views of its causes and cures. ale, alehouse, ale-wife (A) Ale is an alcoholic drink long brewed in England from yeast, water and malt. Small ale meant weak ale. In the Middle Ages ale was brewed at home, by women known as ale-wives, who also sold their product in alehouses. The alehouse, like the present-day pub, was a place of relaxation and social gathering, and was regarded as downmarket in relation to the tavern. Both might function as brothels, and Mistress Overdone’s establishment in MM serves both purposes. (B) In TS Christopher Sly’s lower-class tastes are signified by his longing for ‘a pot o’ th’ smallest ale’ (Ind. 2.73) in the face of all the delicacies offered to him by the Lord and his servants. In the confusion of the Lord’s house, it is ‘Marion Hacket, the fat alewife of Wincot’, to whom he owes fourteen pence (Ind. 2.20–1) who can testify to his 8

ale, alehouse, ale-wife

identity. In 2H4 Falstaff’s Page pretends to see Bardolph’s red face peeping through ‘two holes in the ale-wife’s new petticoat’ at the Eastcheap tavern (2.2.80). The Boy in H5, who finds himself on the battlefields of France in the company of Pistol and the others, longs pitifully for home comforts: ‘Would I were in an alehouse in London! I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety’ (3.2.12–13). Autolycus, celebrating the pleasures of spring, comments joyfully that ‘a quart of ale is a dish for a king’ (WT 4.3.8). Ale was drunk at home as well as in the alehouse. Puck recalls pleasurably how he sometimes lurks in ‘a gossip’s bowl’ in the shape of a roasted crab-apple and will ‘on her withered dewlap pour the ale’ (MND 2.1.50). Ale and the alehouse are viewed in quite another light by speakers of higher social status. The Queen in R2 laments the changes wrought in her husband by comparing him, in a rather fanciful image, to a building inhabited by someone unsuitable: Thou most beauteous inn, Why should hard-favoured Grief be lodged in thee, When Triumph is become an alehouse guest? (R2 5.1.13–15) She contrasts Richard, as a ‘beauteous inn’ which houses ugly grief, with Bolingbroke, his rival, seen as the lower-class alehouse which is inhabited by triumph. Malvolio reproves the noisy merrymaking of Sir Toby Belch and his companions: ‘Do ye make an alehouse of my lady’s house that ye squeak out your cozier’s catches [cobblers’ songs] without any mitigation or remorse of voice?’ (TN 2.3.87–9). But when Sir Toby turns back on him, asking ‘Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?’ (2.3.113), it is with added meaning: he is referring to the refreshments traditionally provided at church festivities such as saints’ days and holy days, disapproved of by Puritans, and thus mocking Malvolio as repressively religious. Maria later calls the steward ‘a kind of Puritan’ (2.3.136). The Porter guarding the door for the christening ceremony of Princess Elizabeth at court in H8 roughly prevents the eager crowd from getting in: ‘Do you look for ale and cakes here, you rude rascals?’ (5.3.9). When Lance invites Speed to go with him to the alehouse in TGV , and says if he does not then he is ‘not worth the name of a Christian . . . because thou hast not so much charity in thee as to go to the ale with a Christian’ (2.5.46–50) he is referring to a church (or parish) ale, a festival with dancing and games at which ale was sold to raise money for the church. (C) Boorde says that ‘ale for an englysh man is a natural drynke’ (1547, sig. D2v). See also Cogan (1636, ch. 218) on ale and beer. He thinks ale the more wholesome. For evidence that ale could be sold in the home see Yarington’s Two Lamentable Tragedies (1601) where Thomas Merry and his sister Rachel serve customers ale and beer downstairs and live upstairs. Fitzpatrick (2011) has much information about early modern ale and its making. Clark (1983) identifies the alehouse in this period as the haunt of the underclasses and a site of popular opposition to established society. Griffiths (1996) describes the lure of the alehouse for young men. See also McBride (2004, 181–91) on alehouses and 9

ale, alehouse, ale-wife

drunkenness. Hailwood (2014) focuses on alehouses as places of sociability, with many case studies of their users. Forker’s edition of R2 (Arden edn, 2002) has a note on other uses of the inn image (501). See also beer. amber (A) Amber, derived from fossilized tree resin, is a semi-precious stone, typically orange-yellow in colour (though it can range through a number of shades from pale lemon to near black), used to make jewellery. (B) Shakespeare often includes amber items in lists of finery. In TS Petruccio mentions among the accoutrements which he will bestow on Katherina ‘ruffs and cuffs . . . scarves and fans . . . amber bracelets, beads and all this knavery’ (4.3.58–60). Autolycus has in his pack ‘Bugle-bracelet, necklace-amber, / Perfume for a lady’s chamber’ (WT 4.4.224–5). The forsaken woman in LC is described getting rid of her fickle lover’s gifts: ‘A thousand favours from a maund [basket] she drew, / Of amber, crystal and of beaded jet’ (36–7). Amber can be used flatteringly to describe women’s blonde hair. In LLL Dumaine praises Katherine by saying that ‘Her amber hairs for foul hath amber quoted’ (4.3.84) (i.e. ‘Her amber hair makes amber itself look ugly’, Arden edn, 2001). Berowne comments sarcastically, ‘An amber-coloured raven was well noted’, meaning that Dumaine has been over-observant in seeing Katherine’s dark hair as amber. The infatuated King Edward in E3 eulogizes the Countess of Salisbury: Her hair, far softer than the silkworm’s twist, Like to a flattering glass doth make more fair The yellow amber. (2.280–2) When Hamlet talks about old men with ‘their eyes purging thick amber and plumtree gum’ (2.2.195–6) he refers, disgustingly, to the diseased discharge which is yellow or dark red. angel An angel was a valuable gold coin, in circulation from the reign of Edward IV in 1465 and last coined by Charles I, bearing the image of St Michael slaying a dragon. It was the coin given by the monarch to those he or she ‘touched’ for the King’s Evil (scrofula). In Shakespeare’s time it was worth ten shillings (50 pence in today’s money). The Prince of Morocco remarks upon it when looking for the casket that will contain Portia’s image: ‘They have in England / A coin that bears the figure of an angel / Stamped in gold’ (MV 2.7.55–6). Falstaff puns on the two meanings of the word when he mentions one of the reasons for his interest in Mistress Ford: ‘The report goes she has all the rule of her husband’s purse: he hath a legion of angels’ (MW 49–50). Pistol follows up the pun by adding, ‘As many devils attend her!’ Mistress Page does so too when, with characteristic exaggeration, she describes the bribes she has received to facilitate access to Mistress Ford: ‘I myself had twenty angels given me this morning, but I defy all angels in any such sort, as they say, but in way of honesty’ (MW 2.2.68–70). In KJ the Bastard concludes that he is only railing against commodity (in the sense of self-interested expediency) because 10

aqua-vitae

. . . he hath not wooed me yet: Not that I have the power to clutch [clench] my hand, When his fair angels would salute my palm (KJ 2.2.587–90) See Fischer (1985) on coinage in the period. apprentice see prentice apron, apron-man The apron was a garment worn by men or women mainly to protect the front of the clothing from wear, but in this period could also be a decorative garment for women, made of fine fabric and decorated with lace. For non-elite women, it was ‘an indispensible accessory’ (North, 2013, 40). When the Bawd promises Marina that Lysimachus will ‘line your apron with gold’ (PER 4.3.63) it may be this latter kind of apron that he has in mind. Timon’s bitter injunction to the whores, Timandra and Phrynia, to ‘hold up . . . your aprons mountant’ (4.3.134–5) to receive the gold he has to offer them may identify ‘aprons’ with ‘skirts’ (Dawson and Minton, Arden edn, 2008) or suggest the decorative over-garment. But more commonly aprons are the rough garments symbolic of working men. Cleopatra sneers at labourers, ‘mechanic slaves / With greasy aprons (AC 5.2.208–9), as does Menenius when he derides the Tribunes and their followers as ‘you and your apron-men’ (COR 4.6.97). Nick, one of Jack Cade’s followers in 2H6, remarks that ‘the nobility think scorn to go in leather aprons’ (4.2.11), lamenting the decline in virtue in England ‘since gentlemen came up’. Peter Thump in the same play, a workingclass hero who acts in the interests of the aristocracy by striking down his drunken master Horner, bequeaths his apron to his friend Robin when he fears he may die (2.3.76). See Findlay (2010), ‘apron’ and Williams (1994, 32–3) on obscene uses. Hobday (1979) discusses the politics of shoes and workmen’s aprons. aqua-vitae Literally ‘the water of life’, means strong distilled spirits, used in the Middle Ages and early modern England as a restorative. The strength and potency of this drink is the subject of most of Shakespeare’s references. When Sir Toby Belch says that Maria’s trick letter has worked on Malvolio ‘like aqua vitae with a midwife’ (TN 2.5.190), he means not only that that midwives revived their patients with it but that they enjoyed it themselves. Its popularity with the stereotypically drink-loving Irish is referred to by the fanatically jealous Master Ford in MW , who declares he would rather trust ‘an Irishman with my aqua-vitae bottle’ than his wife (2.2.288–9). The Nurse in RJ calls for it when she hears of Tybalt’s death (3.2.87) and again when she discovers Juliet apparently dead – ‘Some aqua-vitae, ho!’ (4.5.16). In WT , Autolycus torments the Clown by listing the punishments he is due to receive for aiding Florizel and Perdita, predicting that he will be flayed alive, covered with honey and set on a wasps’ nest until almost dead, then ‘recovered again with aqua-vitae’ for further torments (4.4.789). It forms part of the ship’s medical equipment, along with oil and balsamum, for Dromio of Syracuse in CE when he prepares a vessel for escaping from Ephesus. 11

arras

arras see tapestry aunt (A) While the main meaning of aunt is the sister of one’s father or mother, in early modern England it could also mean an old woman or gossip, or a bawd or whore. (B) In R3, a play of complex family relationships, the aunt’s role within the family is evoked several times, mostly in relation to Anne, Richard’s unfortunate queen, who takes it seriously. In 4.1 the Duchess of York is impressed to see the (dead) Duke of Clarence’s young daughter ‘led in by the hand of her kind aunt of Gloucester’ (4.1.2). Soon afterwards, Anne draws on her relationship to the young princes imprisoned in the Tower to insist to their captor, ‘Their aunt I am in law, in love their mother. / Then bring me to their sight’ (4.1.23–4). Queen Elizabeth wryly remembers Anne after her death, when she accuses Richard, then attempting to woo her own daughter, of having made ‘quick conveyance with her good aunt Anne’ (4.4.283). Even the children in this play are aware of how their elders can misuse family relationships. When Queen Elizabeth calls on the children of Clarence to join her in mourning the death of her husband, the boy reproves her: Ah, aunt! You wept not for our father’s death. How can we aid you with our kindred tears? (2.2.62–3) The aunt–nephew relationship is a source of pathos in TIT . Young Lucius is solicitous for the mute and abused Lavinia, asking Titus to cease his ‘bitter deep laments’ and ‘make my aunt merry with some pleasing tale’ (TIT 3.2.46–7). The boy is frightened when Lavinia attempts to communicate with him, and runs away from her (4.1.1–12). But reassured by his great-uncle Marcus he acknowledges her family feeling for him: ‘I know my noble aunt / Loves me as dear as e’er my mother did’ (4.1.22–3). Another aunt–nephew relationship of surprising significance is that between the Trojan Hector and the mother of the Greek Ajax in TC . The two men engage in single combat on behalf of their respective nations, when Hector suddenly ceases to fight Ajax on account of their family connection: the just gods gainsay That any drop thou borrowed’st from thy mother, My sacred aunt, should by my mortal sword Be drained. (TC 4.5.133–6) However, this same aunt is treated with total disparagement by Troilus when he is making the case for the Trojans to retain Helen. He rewrites the story of Paris’s theft of Helen as one of revenge for the capture of another woman by the Greeks: ‘for an old aunt whom the Greeks held captive / He brought a Grecian queen, whose youth and freshness / Wrinkles Apollo’s’ (TC 2.2.77–9). Helen is a priceless commodity compared with whom the ‘old aunt’ has no value. 12

aunt

Another old aunt comically represented is the Duchess of York in R2. She plays on her relationship to her nephew to get her wish, in her supplication to Bolingbroke (by this time King Henry IV ) on behalf of her hapless son Aumerle. The effect here is comic. Bolingbroke hears a commotion at his door, asking ‘What shrill-voiced suppliant makes this eager cry?’ Her reply, ‘A woman, and thy aunt. Great King, ’tis I’ (5.3.74–5), signals a change in mood, as Bolingbroke notes: ‘The scene is altered from a serious thing, / And now changed to “The Beggar and the King”.’ The elderly Duchess kneels to him to pardon her son, and the King has, absurdly, to call upon her three times, ‘Rise up, good aunt’, ‘Good aunt, stand up’, before she will. In MW another old aunt, though one never seen, is a comic subject. When Falstaff needs to escape in haste from the Fords’ house Mistress Ford remembers that ‘my maid’s aunt, the fat woman of Brentford, has a gown above’ (MW 4.2.71–2). Disguised in the gown, Falstaff makes his escape publicly, but not before Ford takes out his fear and dislike of the ‘old cozening quean’ by beating the supposed aunt out of the door. When Puck is recounting his shape-shifting exploits in MND he tells how ‘The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, / Sometime for a three-foot stool mistaketh me; / Then slip I from her bum, down topples she’ (2.1.51–3). This seems to be a disrespectful reference to an old woman. But when Autolycus in WT describes the sounds of birds as ‘summer songs for me and my aunts / While we lie tumbling in the hay’ (4.3.11–12) he clearly uses the word to mean whores or mistresses. Hamlet’s bitter reference to Gertrude as his ‘aunt-mother’ (2.2.313) primarily signifies the perverted relationships created by her marriage to her husband’s brother, but it may also possess a bawdy undertone. (C) On bawdy uses of aunt in the period, see Williams (1994) and also Findlay (2010).

13

14

B babe, baby (A) Baby and babe are both terms for very young children or infants, though in early modern usage they can signify a child of any age. In early modern England they could mean doll, inexperienced person or child-like adult. (B) It is probably the case that these terms are almost interchangeable, their uses distinguished only by metrical considerations. Both can signify the vulnerability of a young child. In R3 the two princes in the Tower, murdered at Richard III ’s behest, are not infants, even if they are not portrayed in the play at their real ages (13 and 10 at the time of their death). They are called ‘tender babes’ three times, and ‘sweet babes’ once, but also babies, as in this speech of their mother, Queen Elizabeth, apostrophizing the Tower: Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes Whom envy hath immured within your walls, Rough cradle for such little pretty ones; Rude ragged nurse, old sullen playfellow For tender princes, use my babies well. (R3 4.1.98–102) Most commonly, the terms refer to very young or suckling infants. Macbeth’s extraordinary vision of ‘pity, like a naked new-born babe, / Striding the blast’ (MAC 1.7.21–2) which inspired Blake, has received much comment, as has his wife’s declaration, ‘I have given suck, and know / How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me’ (1.7.54–5). Macbeth’s image paradoxically renders the babe simultaneously vulnerable and actively potent, but for Lady Macbeth the suckling child represents an utterly powerless creature in the greatest possible need of protection. Cleopatra calls the snake that is poisoning her ‘my baby at my breast / That sucks the nurse asleep’ (AC 5.2.308–9), in a complex refiguration of the image of the Madonna and child. Suckling infants feature vividly in other images. In 1H6 babes reduced to sucking moisture from their mothers’ eyes illustrate the idea of famine (1.1.49–50). The Marquess of Suffolk in 2H6 envisages a death ‘as mild and gentle as the cradle-babe / Dying with mother’s dug between its lips’ (3.2.392–3). See also 1H6 3.3.47–8 for another simile using the dying infant. Claudius prays for his hard heart to become ‘soft as sinews of the new-born babe’ (HAM 3.3.71). Hermione’s woman Emilia reports joyfully that the Queen has given birth to ‘a daughter, and a goodly babe, / Lusty and like to live’ (WT 2.2.25–6). Infant mortality was high in this period, and the time immediately after birth a very dangerous 15

babe, baby

one for mother and child. The ‘birth-strangled babe ‘(MAC 4.1.30), whose finger is an ingredient in the Witches’ vile potion, met a fate that sometimes befell illegitimate children, especially those ‘ditch-delivered’ like this one, without benefit of a midwife or assistant to the mother. The relationship between infant and nurse is a particularly tender one. Juliet’s wetnurse remembers her fondly as ‘the prettiest babe that e’re I nursed’ (RJ 1.3.61) and recalls in vivid detail the day her weaning began. The poet in SON 22 promises to keep his lover’s heart with such care ‘as tender nurse her babe from faring ill’. But the woman who ignores an infant’s cries is supremely neglectful, like the ‘prattling nurse’ that Brutus in COR scornfully describes, who gives all her attention to gossiping about Coriolanus and ‘into a rapture [paroxysm] lets her baby cry’ (COR 2.1.201). SON 134 is constructed round the comic comparison between a woman who abandons the care of her infant in order to chase an escaped hen and the poet’s lover, who pursues some other object while the poet, neglected like the crying baby, cries for attention. Julia compares the vagaries of love to ‘a testy babe [that] will scratch the nurse / And presently, all humbled, kiss the rod’ (TGV 1.2.58–9). Babies can signify inexperienced people, as when Polonius tells Ophelia to ‘think yourself a baby’ (HAM 1.3.104) in that she has taken Hamlet’s protestations of love at face value, or people who act like children. Hamlet calls Polonius ‘that great baby . . . not yet out of his swaddling clouts’ (HAM 2.2.319–20). Goneril says dismissively of her father, ‘old fools are babes again and must be used / With checks as flatteries’ (KL 1.3.20–1), reflecting Jacques’ view of the seventh age of man as ‘second childishness’. When Pandarus reproves Cressida for blushing, saying ‘Shame’s a baby’ (TC 3.2 38–9), he means that she is acting in a babyish manner. Helena in AW , preparing to attempt the cure of the King of France at which doctors have failed, observes: He that of greatest works is finisher Oft does them by the weakest minister. So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown When judges have been babes. (AW 2.1.134–7) She alludes to the biblical notion of strength coming from the mouths of babes and sucklings (Psalm 8.2). See also 1H6 3.1.199. However, the declaration of Aaron the Moor, as he is about to be taken off for execution, that ‘I am no baby, I, that with base prayers / I should repent the evils I have done’ (TIT 5.3.184–5), probably means that he intends to meet his end with bravado. Petruccio implies something similar when he tells Baptista that ‘I am rough and woo not like a babe’ (TS 2.1.134). When Macbeth says that if he were found to tremble in fight, then ‘protest me / The baby of a girl’ (MAC 3.4.103–4), ‘baby’ means ‘doll’ here (OED baby n. 2), as also in Constance’s reference to ‘a babe of clouts’ (KJ 3.3.58), a doll made of rags. (C) Cressy (1997) provides much detail about early modern childbirth. Rose’s seminal article (1991) has some discussion of maternal care-giving. Laoutaris (2008) 16

baked meats

discusses maternity and the pregnant body in relation to early modern scientific disciplines such as anatomy, with particular reference to HAM , TEM , MAC and AC . On the image of new-born babe in MAC see Clark’s note (Arden edn, 2015) and Brooks’ influential discussion (‘The Naked Babe’, 1947). See also child. bacon is a meat product made from pork, cured for long keeping. Being hard to digest, it was thought in the early modern period to be most suitable for labourers or working men. The Second Carrier in 1H4 has ‘a gammon of bacon and two races (roots) of ginger to be delivered as far as Charing Cross’ (2.1.24–5) and is anxious to be on his way. During the Gad’s Hill robbery Falstaff absurdly berates the travellers whom he is attempting to rob for their corpulence, calling them ‘bacon-fed knaves’, ‘fat chuffs’ and ‘bacons’ (2.4.82–7). Mistress Quickly intervenes in William’s Latin lesson in MW to help him with the accusative form of hic, haec, hoc, which Sir Hugh Evans the schoolmaster calls in his Welsh accent ‘hing, hang, hog’: ‘Hang-hog is Latin for bacon, I warrant you’ (4.1.42). The Jailor’s Daughter in TNK in her madness imagines the damned in hell boiling ‘in a cauldron of lead and usurers’ grease . . . like a gammon of bacon’ (4.3.35–7). Boorde (1547, ch. 16) considers bacon good ‘for carters and plowmen, the whiche be ever labourynge in the earth or dunge’. See Fitzpatrick (2011) for the views of other early modern food writers on bacon. baked meats might simply mean pies and pastries, since ‘meat’ could mean food in general at this time, but in their Shakespearean contexts they may well signify pies containing meat. In RJ Capulet urges the Nurse to ‘look to the baked meats, good Angelica’ (4.2.3) in preparation for Juliet’s wedding feast. Hamlet makes a wry joke when Horatio remarks that the remarriage of Hamlet’s mother ‘followed hard upon’ the funeral of her husband: Thrift, thrift, Horatio, the funeral baked meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. (HAM 1.2.179–80) Although Hamlet appears to imply that the food at the wedding consisted of leftovers, this is unlikely to be literally true since at least a month, perhaps two, elapsed between the two events. There may be some underlying significance in the fact that the contemporary name for a pastry case was a coffin. Titus Andronicus puns on this when he tells Chiron and Demetrius that he will grind their bones to dust And with your blood and it I’ll make a paste, And of the paste a coffin I will rear, And make two pasties of your shameful heads (TIT 5.2.186–8) See Fitzpatrick (2011), who gives a contemporary recipe for baked meats, and Appelbaum on the pies at Gertrude’s wedding (2006, 17–18). 17

banquet

banquet (A) In early modern England a banquet could mean either a sumptuous feast or a course of sweetmeats, fruit and wine, sometimes served as a separate course in a different room. A running banquet meant an insubstantial course between meals. (B) Banquet scenes are significant occasions, theatrically and thematically, in Shakespeare. In H8 Cardinal Wolsey holds a banquet arranged so that the King can meet Anne Bullen, and the term is used with sexual innuendo. In 1.4 the court ladies are welcomed and Lord Sandys remarks to another guest: Sir Thomas Lovell, had the Cardinal But half my lay thoughts in him, some of these Should find a running banquet ere they rested I think would better please ’em. (1.4.10–13) Referring to the women present, he uses the expression ‘running banquet’ to imply that some of them would enjoy sexual pleasures quickly taken in the course of the evening. Later in the scene the banqueting tables are removed when the King enters in a group of masquers and Anne dances with him. Wolsey then asks Lovell if ‘the banquet [is] ready / I’th privy chamber?’ where there is ‘fresher air’ (1.4.98–9, 101), and Henry leads Anne in to it. The feast or banquet as an occasion for amorous encounters also appears in RJ , where Capulet gives ‘an old accustomed feast’ (1.2.19) at which Romeo and Juliet meet for the first time. After the dancing and the masquing, Capulet tries to persuade his guests to stay longer, with the offer of a course of sweetmeats: Nay, gentlemen, prepare not to be gone; We have a trifling foolish banquet towards. (1.5.121–2) But it proves too late. Desserts with wine also feature in AC . Enobarbus orders the servants: ‘Bring in the banquet quickly; wine enough / Cleopatra’s health to drink’ (1.2.12–13). At the bibulous occasion on Pompey’s barge where Antony and Caesar feast together the SD for the scene (2.7) is: ‘Music plays. Enter two or three Servants with a banquet’, and the subsequent action suggests that the wine flows freely. In TS Sly the tinker is provided by the Lord with ‘a most delicious banquet by his bed’ (1.1.37). At the start of the last scene in the play servants enter ‘bringing in a banquet’ and Lucentio makes clear its purpose: ‘My banquet is to close the stomach up / After our great cheer’ (5.2.9–10). It is intended both to aid the digestion and to provide a fitting finale for the wedding feast. See also TNK (1.1.184–5) for the association of a banquet with a wedding. In MAC the banquet at which Macbeth and his Lady make a state appearance as king and queen (3.4) is a formal meal, intended to signify harmony and fellowship; but the appearance of the ghost of Banquo violently disrupts the mood and causes the meal to break up in ‘most admired disorder’ (3.4.108). In TIM the ‘great banquet’ served to Timon’s guests in 1.2, which like that in H8 also includes a masque and dancing, is a 18

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grandiose display of the host’s wealth and hospitality. The second banquet in 3.7 is met with the same expectations by the guests, and when it is brought in they greet the ‘covered dishes’ with delight: ‘Here’s a noble feast toward’ comments a lord. But they are stunned when the dishes are shown to contain only lukewarm water, indicating Timon’s recognition of the true nature of his false friends, and the scene breaks up in disorder. Another banquet which is set up to deceive the expectant guests and teach them a lesson is the one organized by Prospero in TEM . In 3.3 spirits bring a banquet ‘and dance about it with gentle salutations’, but as the guests are about to taste, there is thunder and lightning, Ariel ‘claps his wings upon the table, and with a quaint device the banquet vanishes’. In TIT Titus prepares for his enemies a banquet, ‘which I wish may prove / More stern and bloody than the Centaurs’ feast’ (5.2.202–3). To this end he himself acts as cook, and prepares for Tamora a pie in which he will bake the heads of her sons: This is the feast that I have bid her to, And this the banquet she shall surfeit on. (5.2.192–3). The term banquet can also be used figuratively to mean a source of sustenance. Hence Duncan, praising Macbeth, says that ‘in his commendations, I am fed. / It is a banquet to me’ (MAC 1.4.55–6), and Venus, eulogizing the beauty of Adonis, runs through his appeal to each of the five senses, concluding, ‘But O, what banquet wert thou to the taste, / Being nurse and feeder of the other four’ (445–6). In MA , Benedick describes Claudio as changed by love from a plain-spoken man into one characterized by verbal flourishes: ‘his words are a very fantastical banquet, just so many strange dishes’ (2.3.20–1). (C) Teague discusses the role of banquet scenes (1991, ch. 5) and Thong (2010) focuses specifically on the performance of the banquet course in plays of the period, including TIM , TS and RJ . Meads (2001) surveys the dramatic functions of banquet scenes in plays of the period. See also Wilson (1991) on the food consumed at banquets, and Fitzpatrick (2011). Foods suitable for banquets are suggested in Markham (1615) and Plat (1602). barber (A) Early modern English barbers did not only cut men’s hair and beards but also, as barber-surgeons, offered medical services such as phlebotomy and dentistry. Barbers did not then have particularly good reputations, and their shops were sometimes associated with brothels. (B) When Kent insults Oswald as a ‘whoreson cullionly [rascally, despicable] barbermonger’ (KL 2.2.32) it is partly an allusion to Oswald’s foppishness, in that he is often at the barber’s shop, but may also imply an association with prostitutes, if the coinage ‘barber-monger’ is taken (as Johnston suggests (2010, 126)) as a synonym for whoremonger. Antony is so eager to impress Cleopatra that he is ‘barbered ten times o’er’ before he meets her (AC 2.2.234). When Petruccio wants to criticize the sleeve of 19

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the gown that the tailor has made for Katherina he says it is ‘like to a cithern [type of lute] in a barber’s shop’ (TS 4.3.93), alluding to elaborate pinking of the sleeve and the custom of providing musical instruments for the customers waiting in barber’s shops to entertain themselves. (‘Cithern’ is an emendation for the problematic ‘censor’ in F.) Bottom, wearing the ass’s head, is uncomfortable with his hairy face and declares ‘I must to the barber’s’ (MND 4.1.23). When Polonius objects to the length of the First Player’s recitation Hamlet tells him, ‘It shall to the barber’s with your beard’ (HAM 2.2. 437), probably intending to be dismissive. In MA Claudio and Don Pedro make fun of Benedick’s visit to the barber: DON PEDRO

Hath any man seen him at the barber’s? CLAUDIO

No, but the barber’s man hath been seen with him, and the old ornament of his cheek hath already stuffed tennis balls. (3.2.40–3) In MM when the Duke reveals himself in the final scene, he says that laws in Vienna have not been observed and that ‘the strong statutes / Stand like the forfeits in a barber’s shop, / As much in mark as mock’ (MM 5.1.319–21). Lever’s note (Arden edn, 1965) explains that he is alluding to the custom for barber-surgeons to hang up joking lists of the penalties to be paid by the customers for bad behaviour such as swearing while in the shop. Falstaff jokes about Prince Hal’s beardless face, saying that ‘a barber shall never earn sixpence out of it’ (2H4 1.2.25–6), which sounds like a high price. (C) Greene, in A Quip for an Upstart Courtier (1592), contrasts the barber’s obsequious treatment of Velvet-Breeches with his brusqueness towards Cloth-Breeches. The association of the barber’s shop with the brothel is played on in Marston, The Dutch Courtesan, 2.1 and Rowlands (1605, Epigram 14). Johnston (2010) has much fascinating information about early modern barbershops and their bad reputations. Maguire (1998) explains the TS reference and gives evidence for the presence of citterns in barbers’ shops. McEachern in her note on MA 3.2.40–3 (Arden edn, 2006) gives evidence to show that beard shavings really were used to stuff tennis balls. basket, buck basket, alms-basket A basket is a receptacle usually made of woven or plaited rushes, cane, or other such material, and sometimes used for a specific purpose. For example, a buck basket is a laundry basket for dirty linen being taken to the wash. To buck means to steep in lye, or to bleach (OED buck, v.1). In MW such a basket, an important prop in the play, is used by Mistress Ford and Mistress Page to transport Falstaff with the maximum of humiliation out of Mistress Ford’s house. ‘Have I lived to be carried in a basket like a barrow of butcher’s offal, and thrown in the Thames?’ (MW 3.5.4–5), he asks indignantly, before describing to Ford how he has been ‘crammed’ in the basket. Ford is subsequently humiliated in turn when he orders the basket, now 20

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filled with dirty laundry, to be emptied in public in his jealous search for Falstaff. In LLL Moth comments on the verbal pretensions of Armado and Holofernes: ‘They have been at a great feast of languages and stole the scraps’, and Costard delivers his devastating verdict: ‘They have lived long on the alms-basket of words’ (LLL 5.1.35–7). According to the OED , the expression ‘to live on the alms-basket’ came to mean to live on public charity, deriving from Costard’s words. Hamlet’s citation of a fable about giving away secrets, involving a ‘basket on the house’s top’ into which ‘the famous ape creeps, to its own destruction’ (HAM 3.4.191–4), continues to mystify editors (see Thompson and Taylor’s note, Arden edn, 2016). In AC the Clown brings a basket of figs to Cleopatra, in which are concealed two asps. Wall (2002, 117–20) discusses the buck basket in MW , noting Ford’s ‘hysterical’ punning on ‘buck’ (3.3.157–9). bastard (A) The primary meaning of bastard is a child born out of wedlock, and because of the social stigma attached to it in the period the term is commonly used as a slur or insult. Illegitimacy was regarded as a significant social problem, given the importance of female chastity in a system of patriarchal values. The covert infiltration of the family line by a bastard born within a marriage was much feared as disruptive of proper lineal succession. Bastards had no legal right to inherit, and other kinds of civil rights were denied to them. Bastard children without identifiable fathers often had to be maintained at the expense of the parish. In drama, bastardy generally goes hand in hand with moral transgression. (B) Shakespeare’s plays include many bastards, all (except Joan Puzel in 1H6, if she is illegitimate) male, and the term is often used to denote them in speech headings and stage directions. The most notable is probably Edmund in KL (always called ‘Bastard’ and not by his name in stage directions) whose father, Gloucester, draws unembarrassed attention to his son’s status without using the term itself (1.1.8–24). By contrast, Edmund himself, bitterly conscious of his lack of rights, questions the stigma attached to his status, playing on the various senses of the term: Why bastard? Wherefore base? When my dimensions are as well compact, My mind as generous and my shape as true As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us With base? With baseness, bastardy? Base, base? He concludes his soliloquy boldly: ‘Now gods, stand up for bastards!’ (1.2.6–10, 22). When he fabricates a speech by his brother Edgar in order to turn Gloucester against his older son he imagines Edgar addressing him as ‘Thou unpossessing bastard’ (2.21.67), a direct reference to his inability to inherit. Gloucester is easily taken in, and determines to ‘work the means’ to make Edmund ‘capable’ (2.1.84–5). When Lear wants to insult Goneril for her unfilial treatment of him he calls her ‘ungrateful bastard’ (1.4.245). Laertes similarly connects filial loyalty with legitimacy when he confronts 21

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Claudius in rage over his father’s death: ‘That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard’ (HAM 4.5.117). Another bastard whose legal status as an outsider reflects his moral status is Don John in MA , like Edmund an embittered younger brother. Benedick observes that if Claudio and Don Pedro have been misled about Hero, ‘the practice of it lives in John the bastard, / Whose spirits toil in frame of villainies’ (4.1.188–9). In Prospero’s eyes the evil nature of Caliban, ‘this thing of darkness’, is partly explained because ‘he’s a bastard one’ (TEM 5.1.273), though conceivably the term is used here in a more general sense to mean ‘a mongrel hybrid of inferior breed’ (OED , cited in Vaughan and Vaughan’s note, Arden edn, 1999). This is certainly the idea Posthumus in CYM has in mind when, in the misogynistic rant occasioned by his deluded belief that his wife is unfaithful, he wants to find out and reject ‘the woman’s part’ in himself: ‘Is there no way for men to be, but women / Must be half-workers? We are all bastards’ (2.5.1–2). Leontes’ angry insistence that the baby Perdita is ‘a bastard, / So sure as this beard’s grey’ (WT 2.3.159–60) is also the result of delusion. The adult Perdita’s emphatic refusal to plant ‘streaked gillyvors’ in her garden because she thinks them ‘Nature’s bastards’ (4.3.82–3) is ironic in the light of this. When old Talbot rescues his son John from the hands of the French in 1H6, he mingles references to a literal ‘bastard’ (the Bastard of Orleans, Jean Dunois) with insults derived from Orleans’ status: The ireful bastard Orleans, that drew blood From thee, my boy, and had the maidenhood Of thy first fight, I soon encountered And, interchanging blows, I quickly shed Some of his bastard blood, and in disgrace Bespoke him thus: ‘Contaminated, base, And misbegotten blood I spill of thine, Mean and right poor, for that pure blood of mine Which thou didst force from Talbot, my brave boy’. (1H6 4.4.71–9) Talbot’s polarizing of the ‘pure’ blood of his son against the ‘contaminated’ blood of Orleans is the output of paternal pride, coupled with chauvinism, a sentiment also felt by the French in H5 when they refer to the English as ‘bastard Normans’ who will couple with French women to ‘new-store France with bastard warriors’ (H5 3.5.10, 31). Orleans in 1H6 is by no means a character worthy of Talbot’s derision. Some of Shakespeare’s bastards are distinctly spirited, and, like Edmund, flaunt their status. Thersites in TC is an extreme example. Encountering Margareton, Priam’s bastard son, on the battlefield he claims kindred: I am a bastard too; I love bastards. I am bastard begot, bastard instructed, bastard in mind, bastard in valour, in everything illegitimate. (5.8.8–10) 22

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Bastardy is sometimes connected with vitality. In LLL Costard expresses his delight in Moth’s precocious wit with the wish that ‘the heavens were so pleased that thou wert my bastard, what a joyful father thou would make me!’ (5.1.68–70). Philip Faulconbridge, supposedly the son of Sir Robert Faulconbridge but in fact the bastard son of King Richard Coeur de Lion, is one of the liveliest and most vigorous characters in KJ , a play in which illegitimacy is used in a complex way, partly to support a ‘subversive questioning of patriarchal power’ (Findlay 1994, 208). Initially the Bastard (as he is styled in speech headings) argues with his half (and younger) brother Robert that he is entitled to inherit, because he was conceived when his mother was married to his putative father (1.1) but once acknowledged as the son of Coeur de Lion he abandons this claim, and determines to satirize the corruptions of society and ‘deliver / Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age’s tooth’ (1.2.212–13). He calls himself ‘a bastard to the time’ (1.2.208), an outsider; but though the Earl of Salisbury derisively calls him ‘that misbegotten divell Faulconbridge’ (5.4.4), he is at some points a spokesman of moral authority, and is given the play’s final speech, endorsing the need for national unity: ‘Naught shall make us rue / If England to itself do rest but true!’ (5.7.117–18). Bastard as an adjective can also mean spurious, debased or inauthentic. In SON 68 the poet considers that his love lived in an age of genuine beauty ‘before these bastard signs of fair were borne’; he refers particularly to the use of hair taken from corpses to make wigs. The same theme appears in SON 127 when the present age is one of debased standards where beauty is ‘slandered with a bastard shame’ and black is ‘counted fair’. (C) Sokol and Sokol (2000) discuss the legal status of bastardy. Findlay’s useful book (1994) examines the threat posed by bastardy and surveys its handling in a wide range of plays including Shakespeare. On bastardy in KJ see also Dusinberre (1989). Neill’s two essays, ‘ “In Everything Illegitimate” ’ and ‘Bastardy, Counterfeiting, and Misogyny’, in Neill (2000), explore the bastard as a theatrical and moral type, at once ‘natural’ and unnatural. He argues that the bastard ‘is figured as a creature who reveals the “unnaturalness” of his begetting by the monstrous unkindness of his nature’ (129). Early modern treatises on matrimony, such as Agrippa (1534, sigs B7–8), justify the social exclusion of the bastard. Other plays featuring bastard characters or issues of bastardy include Middleton, The Revenger’s Tragedy, Barnabe Barnes, The Devil’s Charter and Edmund Ironside. beard (A) A beard is the hair that grows on the lower part of a man’s face after puberty. In the early modern period when adult men generally wore beards, the beard signified both adulthood and masculinity. As a verb, to beard usually means to challenge, to confront or defy. (B) Beards in early modern England came in a variety of styles, and they had great importance for the construction of masculinity. In TNK Pirithous describes the knight who accompanies Palamon: 23

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In his face The livery of the warlike maid appears, Pure red and white, for yet no beard has blessed him. (4.2.105–7) Unusually, this man’s beardlessness does not signify either adolescence or lack of masculinity, since he is said to be a valorous and fearless fighter. Coriolanus begins his career as a warrior in youth, ‘when with his Amazonian chin he drove / The bristled lips before him’ (COR 2.2.88–9). But when Cleopatra refers to the ‘scarce-bearded Caesar’ (AC 1.1.22), or Faulconbridge in KJ to the Dauphin of France as ‘a beardless boy’ (5.1.69), or Benedick to Claudio as ‘my Lord Lack-beard’ (MA 5.1.187) the lack of beard is used as an insulting signifier of immaturity. Sometimes it merely suggests youth. Lafew in AW wishes he were young like the lords offered by the King as suitors to Helena: ‘I’d give bay curtal and his furniture / My mouth no more were broken than these boys’, / And writ as little beard’ (2.3.60–2). After an exchange of wit with Viola/ Cesario, Feste wishes that ‘Jove in his next commodity of hair send thee a beard’ (TN 3.1.43). He appears to be saying something complimentary, since she has just given him money, but he may be commenting sardonically on her lack of virility. Flute in MND is unwilling to play Thisbe because ‘I have a beard coming’ (1.2.44). Beatrice’s attitude towards beards suggests the contradictoriness of her disposition; when she tells her uncle that she ‘could not endure a husband with a beard on his face’ and he jokingly replies that she may ‘light on a husband that hath no beard’, she is not content with that as a solution: What should I do with him? Dress him in my apparel and make him my waitinggentlewoman? He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him. (MA 2.1.26–34) Benedick, once convinced that Beatrice is in love with him, appears, to the merriment of Claudio and Don Pedro, having shaved, and as Leonato observes ‘he looks younger than he did by the loss of a beard’ (3.2.45–6). This comic transformation, which includes perfuming himself with civet, exposes him to masculine ridicule, and is an indication that he is love-struck to the point of effeminacy. It suggests the importance of the beard to masculinity, that Benedick, now identified as ‘Monsieur Love’ (2.3.34), would take so radical a step as shaving off his beard to please a woman. The importance of the beard to a man’s identity is made evident in the final scenes of STM . Sir Thomas More, who has earlier joked that his wife objected to his kissing ‘when my beard was in the stubble’ (11.55), tells her when awaiting execution: I had thought to have a barber for my beard; Now I remember that were labour lost: The headsman now shall cut off beard and all. (16.98–100) 24

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Just before his death, he expresses a last wish to the Hangman: ‘take heed thou cutt’st not off my beard’ (17.104), though he then remembers that this has already taken place. The beard’s role in differentiating gender is significant in MAC where it contributes to the ambiguous nature of the Witches. ‘You should be women’, says Banquo to them, ‘And yet your beards forbid me to interpret / That you are so’ (1.3.45–7). The actor playing Rosalind says in the Epilogue to AYL that she would ‘kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me’ (17); having flattered the women in the audience, she now turns to flattery of the men. To pluck a man by the beard is a grave insult to his masculinity. Hamlet upbraids himself for cowardice, asking rhetorically Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across, Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face . . . ’Swounds I should take it. (HAM 2.2.507–11) Claudius, however, is not prepared to ‘let our beard be shook with danger / And think it pastime’ (4.7.33–4). One of the insults that Regan offers to Gloucester in KL is to pluck him by the beard (KL 3.7.36). A Servant turns on her in Gloucester’s defence telling her: ‘if you did wear a beard upon your chin, / I’d shake it in this quarrel’ (3.7.75–6). To beard someone is to challenge them. In 1H6 the Bishop of Winchester and the Duke of Gloucester square up to one another: WINCHESTER

Do what thou dar’st I beard thee to thy face. GLOUCESTER

What? Am I dared and bearded to my face? Draw, men, for all this privileged place. Blue coats to tawny coats. Priest, beware your beard; I mean to tug it off and cuff you soundly. (1.3.44–8) A grey or white beard signifies old age, sometimes regarded with respect and sometimes not. Hamlet questions Horatio about the appearance of the Ghost: ‘His beard was grizzled, no?’ (1.2.238). In his satirical address to Polonius he says that ‘old men have grey beards’ (2.2.194), while Ophelia sings of her father that ‘His beard was as white as snow’ (4.5.187). Prince Hal describes Falstaff as ‘that old white-bearded Satan’ (1H4 2.4.451). ‘Thy father’s beard is turned white with the news’ (2.4.349–50), Falstaff tells Hal, when news of the revolt against the King breaks out. Richard of Gloucester despises ‘this word “love”, which greybeards call divine’ (3H6 5.6.81). ‘Greybeard, thy love doth freeze’, says Tranio mockingly to old Gremio (TS 2.1.342). Timon of Athens urges Alcibiades to spare no one in his war against Athens: ‘Pity not honoured age for his white beard’ (TIM 4.3.111). Scroop tries to impress on Richard II the extent of the support that Bolingbroke has raised: ‘Whitebeards have armed their thin and hairless 25

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scalps / Against thy majesty’ (R2 3.2.112–13). Lear, meeting the blind Gloucester on the heath, identifies him as ‘Goneril with a white beard’ associating the old man with those who ‘flattered me like a dog and told me I had the white hairs in my beard ere the black ones were there’ (KL 4.6.96–8), that is with people who told him he was a wise man while he was still a child. Beards can come in all shapes and sizes. Jacques in his speech on the seven ages of man describes the soldier as ‘bearded like the pard [leopard]’, that is, unkempt, whereas the justice has ‘eyes severe and beard of formal cut’ (AYL 2.7.151, 156). Mistress Quickly, wanting to identify Slender, questions his servant, Peter Simple: ‘Does he not wear a great round beard, like a glover’s paring knife?’ Simple corrects this carefully: ‘No, forsooth, he hath but a little wee face, with a little yellow beard: a Cain-coloured [reddish-yellow] beard’ (MW 1.4.18–21). Bottom, delighted with the prospect of playing Pyramus, at once turns his attention to his character’s appearance, asking, ‘What beard were I best to play it in?’ He lists several possibilities: ‘I will discharge it in either your straw-coloured beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow’ (MND 1.2.84–9). Touchstone in AYL describes to Jacques how a quarrel could arise because of an argument about ‘the cut of a certain courtier’s beard’ (5.4.70). Mercutio accuses Benvolio of being too quicktempered: ‘Thou – why thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair more or a hair less in his beard than thou hast’ (RJ 3.1.16–18). (C) The beard not only signifies masculinity in this period, but it was also seen as a sign of the man’s capacity to procreate, as Fisher demonstrates in ‘The Renaissance Beard’ (2001). He explores the significance of the beard more fully in Materialising Gender (2006), observing that ‘there were at least fifteen distinct and recognisable beard styles’ worn (95), and he also discusses the beard as a stage property, especially for boy players. Jowett (STM , Arden edn, 2011) discusses the moral and theatrical significance of the beard in STM . Greene in A Quip (1592) introduces a barber who asks his customer what shape of beard he wants, ‘whether he will have his peak cut short & sharpe, amiable like an inamorato or broad pendant like a spade’ (sig. C4). Harrison includes a comic description of ‘our variety of beards’ in his satirical account of English fashions (1587, 146). bearing cloth A bearing cloth is a child’s christening robe. In WT , the Shepherd notices among the items that Antigonus has deposited with the baby Perdita ‘a bearing-cloth for a squire’s child’ (3.3.112). He is clearly impressed with the quality of the robe, which, along with the contents of the box, confirms him in his belief that this is a lucky find. The other reference to a bearing cloth is in the Duke of Gloucester’s challenge to his enemy, the Bishop of Winchester in 1H6: I will not slay thee, but I’ll drive thee back: Thy scarlet robes as a child’s bearing cloth I’ll use, to carry thee out of this place. (1.3.41–3)

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Although the Arden editor (Burns, 2000) glosses ‘bearing cloth’ as a kind of sling for carrying a baby, it is more likely that Gloucester, having already mocked Winchester’s ‘broad cardinal’s hat’, intends to compound the insult by suggesting a comparison between his enemy’s flowing red robes and a baby’s long white ones. bed, day bed, truckle bed (A) A bed is a piece of household furniture for sleeping on, usually made from a frame and a mattress. In early modern England the bed was commonly the most valuable piece of furniture in the house and it features in many wills of the period as an important bequest. It could take several forms: the four poster, or tester bed, usually made of oak, often panelled and carved, and hung with curtains for warmth and privacy; the truckle bed, which slotted underneath another bed and was used by servants or children; the field bed, which could be dismantled for travelling and used by wealthier people; the cupboard or box bed, built into wooden panelling. In early modern England the bed occupies a different kind of position in the household from today, in that while it constituted almost the only private space in the house, it was also the site where the significant life events of birth, marriage and death became public rituals. The bed had huge symbolic value, especially within a marriage, the legal definition of which included the sharing of bed and board; and the word is frequently

Figure 1 Jacobean oak four-poster bed, headboard carved with the arms of James I and of Henry, Prince of Wales, and other Jacobean furniture, The Crimson Bedroom at Montacute House, Somerset. © National Trust

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used by Shakespeare as a synecdoche for marriage, sexuality or sexual relationships. The bed often features as a stage property, ‘thrust forth’ or ‘out’ onto the stage, where characters may be ‘discovered’. (B) Most references to the bed in Shakespeare are to it as the site of marital conjunction. For example, in COR Volumnia boasts to her fearful daughter-in-law that if she were married to Coriolanus ‘I should freelier rejoice in that absence wherein he won honour, than in the embracements of his bed, wherein he would show most love’ (1.3.3–5). In H8 Queen Katherine laments that King Henry ‘has banished me his bed already’ (3.1.119) and Portia in JC complains of her husband’s neglect, that he has ‘ungently . . . stole from my bed’ (2.1.236–7). In 3H6 Queen Margaret, outraged that her husband has promised the throne to the Yorkists, thus disinheriting their son, announces that ‘I here divorce myself / Both from thy table, Henry, and thy bed’ (1.1.254–5), and in 2H6 the Duke of Gloucester, hearing that his wife is accused of trafficking with spirits, says in the same terms, ‘I banish her my bed and company’ (2.1.188). Both echo the legal formula for a judicial separation (divorce not being permitted), a mensa et thoro (literally, from table and bed). The verb, to bed, can mean to have conjugal relations with, as when Bertram in AW asserts of Helena that ‘I’ll to the Tuscan wars and never bed her’ (2.3.272). ‘I have wedded her, not bedded her’, he writes in a letter to his mother (3.2.20), though later one bed, which he believes to be the ‘yet maiden bed’ of Diana, becomes the site where his marriage is, unbeknown to him, consummated and the terms of a riddle fulfilled. Beds are the place for sexual encounters and love, outside as well as inside marriage, and the word may be used as a synecdoche for sex, as in AC when Antony dryly observes that ‘The beds i’th’east are soft’ to explain his belated appearance in Rome (2.6.50). Troilus, in a more excitable mood, exclaims that ‘Her bed is India’ when thinking of Cressida (1.1.99). Venus, attempting to arouse Adonis, imagines the response of a lover, ‘Who sees his true-love in her naked bed / Teaching the sheets a whiter hue than white’ (VA 397–8). The same image occurs to Iachimo when spying on the sleeping Innogen: Cytherea, How bravely thou becom’st thy bed! Fresh lily! And whiter than the sheets! (2.3.14–16) But in HAM the bed as the place for love has been perverted, in the view of Hamlet and of his father, by the adulterous liaison of Gertrude and Claudius. Let not the royal bed of Denmark be A couch for luxury and damned incest the Ghost begs his son (1.5.82–3); and Hamlet later conjures up a repulsive vision for his mother: ‘Nay but to live / In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed’ (3.4.92). For Othello too the idea of the marital bed has been poisoned; Iago, having persuaded him 28

bed, day bed, truckle bed

of Desdemona’s adultery, torments him with the image of her ‘naked with her friend in bed’ (4.1.4). Iago compounds the agony with his suggestion that Othello is only one among ‘millions now alive / That nightly lie in those unproper beds / That they dare swear peculiar’ (4.1.67–9). Taking the concept of the polluted bed to its extreme, he persuades Othello that the appropriate form of revenge is to ‘strangle her in her bed – even the bed she hath contaminated’ (4.1.204–5). Beds are sometimes the sites of death, as in 2H6, where Cardinal Beaufort is ‘discovered in his bed, raving and staring as if he were mad’ according to the stage directions in the Quarto, guiltily recalling the death of the Duke of Gloucester, for which he has been responsible: ‘Died he not in his bed? Where should he die?’ (3.3.9). Death in bed is the natural way to end life, but Gloucester’s death has not been a natural one. In WT the Shepherd says pathetically to Florizel that he had hoped ‘to fill his grave in quiet, yea, / To die upon the bed my father died’ (4.4.459–60) whereas he fears, in the wake of Polixenes’ anger, that he will be hanged and go to an unmarked grave. In 2H4 the scene of reconciliation between the dying King and his son Hal takes place while the king lies in bed. In H5 Mistress Quickly narrates the manner of Falstaff’s death: ‘So ’a bade me lay more clothes upon his feet. I put my hand into the bed and felt them, and they were cold as any stone’ (2.3.22–4). The last words of the Fool in KL (found only in the Folio) are ‘And I’ll go to bed at noon’ (3.6.82). Foakes (Arden edn, 1997) offers various explanations of the line, including that it refers to a proverb meaning to play the fool, but since the Fool appears no more in the play, his words may hint at death. The bed as the place for scenes of both love and death is most fully exploited in RJ . Early on, Juliet tells the Nurse to ask Romeo’s name and predicts that ‘if he be married, / My grave is like to be my wedding bed’ (1.5.133–4). She uses the same idea when hearing of the killing of her cousin Tybalt by Romeo: ‘I’ll to my wedding bed / And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead’ (3.2.136–7). Her bedchamber is the setting for her last scene with Romeo before his departure into exile, and it is the place where she takes Friar Laurence’s potion, and where she is discovered by her parents, apparently dead, next morning. Paris comes to mourn at her tomb, almost as if to visit her as a bride: ‘Sweet flower, with flowers thy bridal bed I strew’ (5.3.12), but Romeo, on the same mission, is more direct, calling the tomb into which he descends ‘this bed of death’ (5.3.28). The love–death nexus, at the heart of this play, is also recalled by a more experienced lover, Mark Antony, when, believing Cleopatra to be dead, he prepares for suicide: ‘I will be / A bridegroom in my death and run into’t / As to a lover’s bed’ (AC 4.14.100–2). Day beds, or couches, are associated with sex; in R3 ‘lulling [or lolling] on a lewd love-bed’ (3.7.71, ‘day-bed’ in Q) is an activity ascribed by Buckingham to King Edward, and in TN Malvolio fantasizes about being married to Olivia, ‘having come from a day-bed where I have left Olivia sleeping’ (2.5.45). Shakespeare uses ‘bed’ in some unusual compounds: Leontes calls Hermione a ‘bedswerver’ (WT 2.1.93), meaning an adulteress, and Hal calls Falstaff ‘this sanguine coward, this bed-presser’ (1H4 2.4.236), in reference to his weight. In E3 the Earl of 29

bed, day bed, truckle bed

Warwick is relieved that his daughter, the Countess of Salisbury, has not succumbed to the ‘bed-blotting shame’ of becoming mistress to King Edward (2.623). A truckle-bed was a low bed on castors usually stored under a high or standing bed and used for children or servants. The Host of the Garter Inn in MW points out to Simple, somewhat impatiently, the features of Falstaff’s room: ‘There’s his chamber, his house, his castle, his standing-bed, and truckle-bed’ (4.5.6–7). Mercutio in RJ jokes to Benvolio that, since they are unable to find Romeo (who is seeking out Juliet), he will withdraw ‘to my truckle-bed’ (2.1.39), evoking, as Weis says, ‘an image of himself cosily tucked away in a child’s bed at home while Romeo is out in the field’ (184). (C) Roberts (2002, 153–74) notes that there are ‘over 350 allusions to beds’ in Shakespeare’s works. She focuses particularly on those in RJ and OTH . Dessen and Thomson (1999) give many examples of beds featuring as stage props. The bed in OTH is ‘at the very heart of the tragedy’ in Neely’s reading (1985, 105–35). See also Neill, ‘ “Unproper Beds” ’ (2000) on the bed and the discourse of race in OTH . Chambers (1923, 3, 65) says that ‘bed-chamber scenes’ are the commonest types of scenes set in chambers, and gives examples, noting that they ‘give opportunity for tragic episodes of death and sickness’ (66). Handley (2016) is the best source of information on early modern sleeping habits, with extensive discussion of beds. She observes that ‘bedsteads were not simply places of rest; they were prominent symbols of status and carriers of family history’ (123). Emmison (1976) discusses the frequency with which beds feature in Elizabethan wills. Buxton (2015) has a useful account of the types of bed and bedding featuring in probate inventories in Thame (176–94). Harrison (The Description of England, 1587, 201) describes the improvement in the comfort of beds, including the use of pillows and sheets and mattresses filled with down rather than straw, during his lifetime. In Middleton, A Mad World, My Masters, Sir Bounteous Progress describes an elaborate bed, pretending to belittle it: ‘a hard down bed i’faith . . . poor cambric sheets, and a cloth o’tissue canopy. The curtains were wrought in Venice, with the story of the prodigal child in silk and gold’ (2.2.3–7). See also cradle, sheet, wedding. beef (A) Beef, the flesh of cow or bull, was a popular foodstuff, and particularly associated with the English, although the ‘roast beef of old England’ only came into popular usage after Henry Fielding’s patriotic song in The Grub Street Opera (1731). In Shakespeare’s time the eating of too much beef was thought to make people stupid. It was also considered unsuitable food for invalids. (B) In 1H6 the Duke of Alençon ascribes the military failure of the English to the fact that ‘they want their porridge and their fat bull-beeves’ (1.2.9). In H5 the Constable of France, indulging in what has been termed ‘contemptuous banter’ (Hoeninger, 1992, 236) about the English, thinks that if they get ‘great meals of beef and iron and steel, they will eat like wolves and fight like devils’, though the Duke of Orleans responds, ‘Ay, but these English are shrewdly out of beef’ (3.7.148–51). The idea that English soldiers are dependent on their diet of beef is drawn on again by the scornful King John 30

beef

in E3, when he says that all the French need to do to defeat them is to ‘scant them of their chines of beef, / And take away their downy featherbeds’ (6.159–60). That beef is regarded as a food especially beloved of the English is implied by John Lincoln in STM when he tries to stir up the people by telling them that if aliens come in large numbers to London it will increase the price of food to ‘butter at eleven pence a pound, meal at nine shillings a bushel and beef at four nobles a pound’ (6.2–4). A noble was then a gold coin worth one-third of a pound. When Sir Andrew Aguecheek in TN , unable to respond adequately to the quickwitted Maria, explains, ‘I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit’ (1.3.83–4) he alludes to popular belief, enshrined in medical lore, about the properties of beef. Thersites in TC calls Ajax a ‘mongrel beef-witted lord’ (2.1.12), referring to the same idea. In TS the Lord’s servants offer Christopher Sly ‘conserves’ (candied fruits) to eat, but he rejects the dainties, asking instead that they give him ‘conserves of beef’ (Ind. 2.7). In 2H6 Jack Cade, about to fight with, and be killed by, Alexander Iden, addresses his sword: Steel, if thou turn the edge or cut not out the burly-boned clown in chines of beef ere thou sleep in thy sheath, I beseech God on my knees thou mayst be turned to hobnails. (4.10.55–7) Knowles’s note on the passage (Arden edn, 1994, 374) suggests that Cade’s part was played by Will Kemp, a large and athletic actor specializing in clown parts, and that Cade is creating an ironic effect by referring to himself, and reinforcing the connection between beef and dim-wittedness. Dietary lore of a different kind is behind Grumio’s joky offer to Katherina of ‘a piece of beef and mustard’ (TS 4.3.23), instead of the ‘fat tripe finely broiled’ that he says is too choleric for her. According to Elyot’s The Castle of Health (1539, sig. D3v), beef is better for a choleric person than other foods such as chicken. But of course the mustard is too hot, and in the end Katherina gets nothing. The association of beef and mustard is made the subject of a joke by Bottom when he tells Mustardseed that ‘that same cowardly giant-like ox-beef hath devoured many a gentleman of your house’ (MND 3.1.185–6). When Hal addresses Falstaff as ‘my sweet beef’ (1H4 3.3.176) he might be using the word in reference to Falstaff’s corpulence (though the word ‘beefy’ did not come into the language till the eighteenth century). ‘Sweet beef’ can mean fresh, unsalted meat (Kastan’s note, Arden edn, 2002). In MM when Pompey tells Lucio that Mistress Overdone’s career as a brothel keeper is over he says that ‘she hath eaten up all her beef, and she is herself in the tub’ (3.1.323–4). The tub refers to the tub for pickling beef, but there is a pun on the sweating tub for the care of venereal disease. The ‘beef’ that Mistress Overdone has ‘eaten up’ probably means either that she has exhausted the supply of prostitutes or that their health has been ruined in her service. (C) Fitzpatrick (2011) cites useful contemporary references to beliefs about the eating of beef. Appelbaum (2006) discusses the debate about beef-eating and Englishness 31

beef

in the context of early modern medical theory. Williams (1994) discusses the sexual connotations of beef. Cogan regards the plentifulness of beef in England as vital to the economy and a source of national pride: ‘I neede not to shew how plentifull it is throughout this land, before all other countries, and how necessary it is both by sea for the vitalling of ships, and by land for good house keeping’ (1636, 129). Medical lore about beef can also be found in Elyot (1541) and Boorde (1547, ch. 14). beer (A) Beer is an alcoholic drink, brewed, like ale, from malt and water but with the addition of hops. ‘Small beer’ was weak beer; ‘double beer’ (boiled twice) was extra strong. Beer came to be regarded as superior to ale in the latter part of the sixteenth century. (B) When Prince Hal in 2H4, filled with self-disgust, asks Poins whether ‘it [does] not show vilely in me to desire small beer’ (2.2.6), which he calls ‘a poor creature’, he probably refers to the low-life company at the Eastcheap tavern rather than the drink. Iago says dismissively that the role of even the best woman is ‘to suckle fools and chronicle small beer’ (OTH 2.1.160), meaning that all she can do is bear slow-witted children and gossip about trivialities. When Hamlet ponders on the ‘base uses’ to which the bodies of even the greatest must return after death, he wonders of Alexander, ‘why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beerbarrel?’ (5.1.200–1). Jack Cade in 2H6 is speaking literally when he promises that, on becoming king, he ‘will make it felony to drink small beer’ (4.2.62–3), meaning that only strong beer will be drunk and this drunkenness will be legal and compulsory. In E3 King John refers to the proverbial drunkenness of the Dutch as ‘those everbibbing epicures – / Those frothy Dutchmen, puffed with double beer’ (4.24–5). Horner the armourer in 2H6 is offered ‘a pot of good double beer’ by his neighbours before he goes to fight Peter Thump (2.3.64), although Peter, who wins, gets ‘a pint of claret wine’. (C) Harrison (The Description of England, 1587, 135–9) describes beer-brewing in detail from experience, because it is done by his wife. Boorde considers beer to be a drink which is natural for a Dutchman but not an Englishman, although ‘it is moche used in Englande to the detriment of many englysshe men’ (1547, Ch. 10, sig. D2v). The dialogue Wine, Beere, and Ale, together by the eares (1629) locates these drinks in a social hierarchy. Curth and Cassidy (2004, 143–59) discuss medicinal uses of beer and other forms of alcohol in the period. McBride (2004, 181–91) explores the stereotype of the Englishman as a beer drinker. See also Buxton (2015, 111–16) on brewing in the household. Fitzpatrick (2011) has useful information on early modern beer-making. See also ale. bell (A) Bells are metal objects of various sizes designed to make a sonorous noise when struck. The public ringing of bells played an important part in the soundscape of early modern England, and was much more prominent than it is today. The bells of parish churches rang to announce deaths or funerals, but also to tell the passing of time. 32

bell

Bells rang to denote important public events such as military victories, coronations, royal births or weddings, and also executions. Bell-ringing had many other functions, for instance in Morris dancing and other sorts of music; rung at the gates of large houses, they signified the presence of a visitor; within a house, handbells might be rung to summon servants. (B) The most prominent domestic uses of the bell are in MAC . Macbeth asks a servant to tell his wife that ‘when my drink is ready / She strike upon the bell’ (2.1.31– 2). This sounds like an intimate instruction for the preparation of a nightcap, but it is clear from Macbeth’s response to the announcement that the drink is ready that it is something very different, a pre-arranged signal between the couple to proceed with their murderous plan: I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell That summons thee to heaven or to hell. (MAC 2.1.62–4) The next time a bell is needed is when Macduff announces Duncan’s murder; he calls for something much louder: ‘Awake, awake! / Ring the alarum bell! Murder and treason’ (2.3.74–5). Lady Macbeth is the first to respond, her language making clear that this is a public summons: ‘What’s the business / That such a hideous trumpet calls to parley / The sleepers of the house?’ (2.3.81–3). Othello reacts similarly to the alarm bell which is rung during the uproar over Cassio’s drunken fighting: ‘Silence that dreadful bell, it frights the isle’ (OTH 2.3.171). The mention of time being told by a bell can be ominous, as when Barnardo in HAM breaks off his account of the Ghost’s previous appearance, ‘the bell then beating one’ (1.1.38). King John evokes the eeriness of the dead of night when he tells Hubert that he would be prepared to command him to kill Arthur at this time: if the midnight bell Did, with his iron tongue and brazen mouth, Sound on into the drowsy race of night. (KJ 3.2.47–9) But the tolling of the bell may simply indicate scene setting, as when Falstaff announces that ‘the Windsor bell hath struck twelve’ (MW 5.5.1) or Dromio of Ephesus tells the surprised Antipholus of Syracuse that he is late for lunch: ‘The clock hath stricken twelve upon the bell’ (CE 1.2.45). It may be more atmospheric: Antony’s exhortation to Cleopatra to ‘mock the midnight bell’ (AC 3.13.184), like Falstaff’s reminiscence, ‘We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow’ (2H4 3.2.214), suggests a nostalgia for night-time revelry. The pealing of bells may be joyful, at a military victory (KJ 2.1.312–14) or coronation (2H6 5.1.3–4). When King Henry IV is dying he expects that his son will find in this occasion to rejoice: 33

bell

Then get thee gone and dig my grave thyself, And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear That thou art crowned, not that I am dead. (2H4 4.3.240–2) He imagines that the solemn bells announcing his death will be replaced by the joyful bells for his son’s coronation. For Capulet, the opposite: the joyful music ordered for Juliet’s wedding must be changed for her apparent death to ‘melancholy bells’ (RJ 4.5.86). Funeral bells are alluded to many times. The Father who kills his Son in 3H6 tells him that ‘My sighing breast shall be thy funeral bell’ (2.5.117). ‘No mournful bell shall ring her burial’, Lucius announces of Tamora in TIT (5.5.196). Ophelia, although her death was ‘doubtful’, is allowed ‘the bringing home of bell and burial’ (HAM 5.1.222–3), the proper ceremony of bringing her to her grave with bell-ringing and burial rites. SON 71 begins with the poet’s selfless wish that his death cause no prolonged sorrow to his lover: No longer mourn for me when I am dead Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell. Duncan-Jones, in her note on this Sonnet (Arden edn, 1997) says that ‘it would have been in the power of the dead speaker’s heirs to commission a prolonged tolling of the bell, as Shakespeare appears to have done for the burial of his actor brother Edmund’. Benedick refers to the length of the tolling of the funeral bell in his observation to Beatrice that times have changed for the worse: ‘If a man do not erect in this age his own tomb ere he dies, he shall live no longer in monument than the bell rings and the widow weeps’ (MA 5.2.71–3). Compare the reference in 2H4 (1.1.102) to the tolling of a ‘sullen bell’. In KJ Faulconbridge speaks of his determination to go into battle: ‘Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me back’ (3.2.22). He refers to the ritual of excommunication in the Roman Catholic Church. That people were conscious of the different sounds that a bell could produce is evident, not only from the references to ‘sullen’ or deep and mournful bells. Theseus compares the cry of his hounds to bells that are well tuned; they are ‘matched in mouth like bells, / Each under each: a cry more tuneable / Was never holla’d to’ (MND 4.1.122– 4). But to Ophelia Hamlet’s disordered mind makes her think of ‘sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh’ (HAM 3.1.157). Don Pedro praises Benedick for having ‘a heart as sound as a bell’ (MA 3.2.11–12), meaning that a well-made bell is clear and strong. The expression was proverbial (Dent, B272). (C) Smith discusses church bells as part of the ‘acoustically dense soundscape’ of early modern London (1999, 53). Kinney (2006) argues that bells ‘carve out Macbeth’s career’ (99). Cressy (1997) surveys the religious significance of bells in Protestant culture. Gittings (1984) has much interesting detail about funeral rituals and bellringing. Dessen and Thompson (1999) list stage directions requiring bells of different 34

blanket

kinds. See also Wilson and Calore (2005) who have very informative entries on ‘bell’ and ‘knell’. See also funeral. blanket (A) A blanket is a large piece of thick cloth, originally of wool, typically used as a bed-covering to keep in the warmth. (B) Blankets in Shakespeare can function as clothing for the poor or those in desperate circumstances. In HAM the Player describes the distress of Hecuba, Priam’s queen, at the sack and burning of Troy when she catches up what clothing she can: A clout [cloth] upon that head Where late the diadem stood and, for a robe, About her lank and all-o’erteemed loins, A blanket in the alarm of fear caught up. (2.2.444–7) In KL Edgar plans his costume in which to appear as Poor Tom: ‘My face I’ll grime with filth, / Blanket my loins’ (2.2.181–2), and the Fool later remarks on this item, when Lear comments on Edgar’s destitution: LEAR

Have his daughters brought him to this pass? Coulds’t thou save nothing? Wouldst thou give ’em all? FOOL

Nay, he reserved a blanket, else we had all been shamed. (3.4.62–5) The blanket is by implication a humbly domestic object. Cloten in CYM , absurdly bolstering the British defiance of Rome, asks ‘Why should we pay tribute? If Caesar can hide the sun from us with a blanket, or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute for light; else, sir, no more tribute’ (3.1.43–5). Lady Macbeth also imagines the blanket in terms of a covering over the earth, when she invokes the night to hide the murder of Duncan from sight and discovery: Come thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark To cry, ‘Hold, hold’. (1.5.50–4) Tossing someone in a blanket meant giving them some kind of rough treatment or punishment. Falstaff may be teasing Doll Tearsheet, with innuendo, when he greets her expression of affection by saying, ‘A rascally slave! I will toss the rogue in a blanket’ (2H4 2.4.221), or alternatively thinking back to Pistol, whom he has just thrown out for abusing Doll. 35

blanket

(C) Buxton shows that blanket weaving was an established industry in Oxfordshire by this period, and blankets often featured in probate inventories (2015, 190). See Clark (2015) for a note on the objections of Johnson and Coleridge to Lady Macbeth’s use of the word ‘blanket’. Handley has a brief discussion of blankets and the different qualities available (2016, 130–1). bodkin Bodkins, needle-like objects made of metal, with an elongated head and a blunt end, were used for threading ribbons, cords and laces (Shinn, 2014, 246). The Induction to A Warning for Fair Women mentions bodkins used as stage props, in a disparaging reference to plays which feature ‘two or three like to drovers, / With taylers bodkins, stabbing one another’. Hamlet may draw on this meaning when he speaks of the ease with which a man may end his life ‘with a bare bodkin’ (3.1.75). The term could also mean a long hairpin, as it does in LLL when Dumaine mocks Holofernes’ appearance as Judas in the pageant of the worthies by saying he resembles ‘the head of a bodkin’ (5.2.605). The Clown in WT evokes the wildness of a storm which makes sea and sky indistinguishable by saying that ‘you cannot thrust a bodkin’s point’ (3.3.84) between them. See Dessen and Thomson (1999), ‘bodkin’. bolt (boult) As a verb, bolt has several meanings, including to sift or refine, as of flour, by passing through a sieve (OED v. 1). Its uses are all metaphorical. Menenius, referring to Coriolanus’s inability to speak diplomatically, says he is ‘ill-schooled / In bolted language. Meal and bran together / He throws without distinction’ (COR 3.1.323–5). He means that Coriolanus cannot refine his speech, and mingles what is worthwhile (‘meal’) and worthless (‘bran’) together. Henry V uses the same image when speaking of the way that the three traitors, Cambridge, Scroop and Grey, have deceived him by appearing perceptive, scrupulous and ‘finely boulted’ (H5 2.2.137), that is finely sifted or free from faults (Craik, Arden edn, 1995). Florizel calls Perdita’s hand as white as ‘the fanned snow that’s bolted / By th’northern blasts twice o’er’ (WT 4.4.369–70). Prince Hal, playing the role of his father and denouncing Falstaff in a series of increasingly inventive insults, calls him a ‘bolting-hutch of beastliness’ (1H4 2.4.437–8). This refers to a trough used to collect the sifted flour, and implies that Falstaff is a repository of disgusting substances. Shakespeare’s most sustained use of bolting is in TC, where Pandarus teasingly develops a strain of sexually suggestive images from baking, to encourage Troilus to practise patience in his pursuit of Cressida: PANDARUS

He that will have a cake out of the wheat must tarry the grinding. TROILUS

Have I not tarried? PANDARUS

Ay, the grinding, but you must tarry the bolting. TROILUS

Have I not tarried? 36

bonnet PANDARUS

Ay, the bolting, but you must tarry the leavening. TROILUS

Still have I tarried. PANDARUS

Ay, the leavening; but here’s yet in the word hereafter the kneading, the making of the cake, the heating of the oven, and the baking. Nay, you must stay the cooling too, or ye may chance burn your lips. (1.1.14–24) Williams (1994) explicates the sexual wordplay in Pandarus’s speech. bombard A bombard was a leather jug or bottle for liquor, shaped like a small cannon. Hal in 1H4, looking for images to convey Falstaff’s gross size, calls him ‘that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack’ (2.4.439). Trinculo in TEM compares a storm cloud to ‘a foul bombard that would shed his liquor’ (2.2.21). In H8 the Chamberlain accuses the household servants of laziness in that they ‘lie, baiting of bombards’ when they should be at work (5.3.78). McMullan (Arden edn, 2000, 425) considers that he probably uses ‘baiting’ to mean ‘taking refreshment’. bonnet (A) Bonnets, originally a head-covering or soft cap for men, were worn in the early modern period by both sexes (although Shakespeare refers to them only as worn by men), indoors as well as out. They are distinguished from hats by the lack of a brim. ‘To bonnet’, confusingly, means to remove the bonnet’ (from French bonneter), and removing the bonnet in greeting or as a courtesy or act of deference was an established custom. (B) Osric’s exaggerated courtesy to Hamlet is implicitly reproved when Hamlet urges him, ‘Your bonnet to his right use: ’tis for the head’ (HAM 5.2.79). Similarly, King Richard is dismissive of Bolingbroke’s ‘courtship to the common people’: ‘Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench’ (R2 1.4.31). In COR , Volumnia advises her son to adopt a posture of humility before the people: ‘Go to them, with this bonnet in thy hand’ (3.2.74). In an ambiguous passage, an Officer compares Coriolanus’s achievement of popular acclaim with that of more successful men: ‘His ascent is not by such easy degrees as those who, having been supple and courteous to the people, bonneted, without any further deed to have them at all into their estimation and report’ (2.2.24–7). In this passage, ‘bonneted’ may mean ‘having removed their bonnets’ (and Johnson emended the line to clarify this, reading ‘unbonneted’) or it may mean ‘putting their bonnets back on again’. When Othello informs Iago of his royal descent, claiming that ‘My demerits [merits] / May speak unbonneted to as proud a fortune / As this that I have reached’ (OTH 1.2.22–4) he seems to mean that he has high enough rank and enough achievements to address men such as the signiory of Venice without needing to remove his bonnet. But 37

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when the Knight describes mad King Lear in the storm, ‘unbonneted he runs’ (KL 3.1.14), he clearly means that Lear is hatless, and therefore careless of both his dignity and his welfare. The references to the bonnet worn by Adonis in VA may to a modern reader suggest effeminacy, but would have helped a contemporary reader to envisage him as a fashionable young man. Adonis uses his bonnet to hide ‘his angry brow’ (339), and to keep the sun off (1081). After his death Venus believes that no-one else will ever need to protect their beauty: Bonnet nor veil henceforth no creature wear! Nor sun nor wind will ever strive to kiss you. (1081–2) The would-be fashionable Falconbridge, one of Portia’s suitors, gets his bonnet in Germany (MV 1.2.701). In AYL Rosalind describes the garb of the careless lover who wears ‘his bonnet unbanded’ (3.2.364–5), that is without a band around the crown. (C) See Forker’s long note on R2 1.4.31 (Arden edn, 2002), which cites two contemporary references, one approving, one not, to the Earl of Essex doffing his bonnet to humble people (487), possibly referring to this line. book, notebook (A) Books, in the sense of portable printed volumes, feature in many plays. The word also has various associated and sometimes metaphorical uses, particularly to mean repositories of knowledge, records, scholarship or source of instruction. In this period it could also mean the script of a play. (B) Books are valued objects for many characters. Prospero stands out here; he makes a point of the fact that among the most important items that Gonzalo provided him in exile were his books: Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom. (TEM 1.2.166–8) Caliban is well aware of the importance Prospero attaches to them, encouraging Stephano to brain him ‘having first seized his books’ and urging repeatedly ‘Remember / First to possess his books, for without them / He’s but a sot, as I am . . . Burn but his books’ (3.2.88–9, 91–2, 95). It is essential to Prospero’s preparations for a new life, having revoked his plan for vengeance on his enemies, that he must give up his magic, break his staff, ‘And deeper than did ever plummet sound / I’ll drown my book’ (5.1.56– 7). In TIT the book that Lavinia extracts from among those possessed by her well-read nephew, Young Lucius, is the means by which she reveals to her family what she has suffered. Titus asks the boy, ‘Lucius, what book is that she tosseth so?’ and he replies, ‘Grandsire, ’tis Ovid’s Metamorphosis; / My mother gave it me’ (4.1.41–3). This work, ‘schoolroom reading for Shakespeare himself as well as Young Lucius’ (Bate, Arden 38

book, notebook

edn, 1995, 91), is also the book that Innogen takes to bed and Iachimo finds: ‘She hath been reading late, / The tale of Tereus: here the leaf’s turned down / Where Philomel gave up’ (CYM 2.2.44–6). It is a favourite of Innogen’s; she tells her woman that she has been reading it for three hours before she goes to sleep. Brutus is another character who reads in bed. He directs the attention of his young servant Lucius (and of the audience) to it: ‘Look, Lucius, here’s the book I sought for so’ (JC 4.3.250), and takes it up with ‘the leaf turned down’ (4.3.271) to occupy his mind when he cannot sleep. Reading in bed is a private activity, as is the reading to be done by Ophelia, when Polonius supplies her with a prayer-book ‘that show of such an exercise may colour / Your loneliness’ (HAM 3.1.44–5), as she confronts Hamlet. Similarly, Richard III is urged by Buckingham, ‘Look you get a prayer book in your hand’ (R3 3.7.46), so that he can present a suitably pious appearance before the citizens of London. It is a poignant detail that the two young princes in the Tower are described by their murderers in bed where ‘a book of prayers on their pillow lay’ (4.3.14). Religious books featured in everyday life as an accoutrement of the pious or would-be pious. For Gratiano, to ‘wear prayerbooks in my pocket’ (MV 2.2.184) is part of the ‘sober habit’ he must put on when accompanying Bassanio to Belmont. King Henry VI enters ‘with a prayer-book’ (3H6 3.1.12, Folio SD ). A book of another kind that is also a valued object is the one Abraham Slender wishes he had at hand when he goes to the Pages’ house to meet Anne Page: ‘I had rather than forty shillings I had my book of Songs and Sonnets here’ (MW 1.1.183–4), he muses nervously. When his servant Peter Simple enters, he has another idea, and asks, ‘How now Simple, where have you been? I must wait on myself, must I? You have not the Book of Riddles about you?’ (1.1.185–7). But he is out of luck; Simple thinks that this, evidently popular, book has been lent to someone else. The book of Songs and Sonnets refers to the popular collection now generally known as Tottel’s Miscellany (1557), and regarded as a vade mecum for young men involved in courtship. The Book of Riddles has not been identified, but may have been a jestbook used to spice up conversation. Other types of book could be called upon for reference in particular situations. When Jacques asks Touchstone to ‘nominate in order . . . the degrees of the lie’ (to list the different levels of insulting someone by calling them a liar), Touchstone replies, ‘O sir, we quarrel in print, by the book, as you have books for good manners’ (AYL 5.4.87–90). ‘By the book’ means according to the rules, and ‘books for good manners’ refers to the plethora of conduct books then available. Valentine, about to travel abroad, jokingly asks that Proteus ‘on a love-book pray for my success’ (TGV 1.1.19). He is mocking his friend for staying at home because of his love for Julia, and the ‘love-book’ may mean a book of love poems. Books are objects of scorn for Jack Cade’s rebels in 2H6, signifying the elitist culture from which they feel themselves excluded. He threatens Lord Saye with execution, claiming that he has ‘most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school; and, whereas before our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used’ (4.7.29–32). Smith the Weaver 39

book, notebook

condemns the clerk of Chatham because he ‘can read and write and cast account’ and also ‘H’as a book in his pocket with red letters in’t’ (4.2.78–9, 83–4). This refers either to ‘a school primer with red capitals or an almanac with saints’ days in red’ (Knowles, Arden edn, 1999, note), but Cade immediately assumes this is the magic book of a conjuror. Books and book learning are rejected for other reasons. In fact, the Duke of York condemns King Henry VI for his ‘bookish rule’ which he says ‘hath pulled fair England down’ (2H6 1.1.256). Iago despises Cassio for his lack of practical experience in warfare, knowing only ‘the bookish theoric’ (OTH 1.1.23). Berowne is sceptical of the vow initiated by the King of France to spend three years in study and contemplation, arguing that ‘painfully to pore upon a book / To seek the light of truth’ (LLL 1.1.74–5) blinds the seeker to the truth that is around him. Small have continual plodders ever won, Save base authority from others’ books. (1.1.86–7) Hamlet, having listened to the Ghost’s recital, determines to embark on a new course of life and reject the old one. He will wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, That youth and observation copied there And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain (HAM 1.5.99–103) Books lend themselves to metaphorical uses and the image of the book as a repository, especially for secret or intimate matters, appears elsewhere. ‘In nature’s infinite book of secrecy / A little I can read’ (AC 1.2.10–11), observes the Soothsayer loftily, when trying to impress Cleopatra’s entourage. The Earl of Worcester uses a similar image to his brother and nephew as he draws them in to a conspiracy against King Henry IV: And now I will unclasp a secret book, And to your quick-conceiving discontents I’ll read you matter deep and dangerous (1.3.187–9) Richard III hypocritically claims that Lord Hastings was his close friend and that he ‘made him my book, wherein my soul recorded / The history of all her secret thoughts’ (R3 3.5.278). Olivia makes the same claim, with more sincerity, to Viola: ‘I have unclasped / To thee the book even of my secret soul’ (TN 1.4.13–14). Menenius says of Coriolanus that he has been ‘the book of his good acts’ (COR 5.2.16). One of the most meaningful uses of the book as record of significant happenings comes in the speech of King Henry IV on the vicissitudes of fortune: 40

book, notebook

O God, that one might read the book of fate And see the revolution of the times Make mountains level, and the continent Weary of solid firmness, melt itself Into the sea . . . . . . O, if this were seen, The happiest youth, viewing his progress through, ... Would shut the book and sit him down and die! (2H4 3.1.45–56) Other images of the book as a record include Romeo’s identification of the dead Paris as ‘one writ with me in sour misfortune’s book’ (RJ 5.3.82), The Duke of Venice’s to ‘the bloody book of law’ (OTH 1.3.68), and Falstaff’s use of the word as a verb when he asks for his capture of the knight Sir John Collevile to be ‘booked with the rest of this day’s deeds’ (2H4 4.2.45). The book may sometimes reveal rather than conceal. Asked by Northumberland to read a record of accusations made against him, Richard II instead calls for a lookingglass and responds: I’ll read enough When I do see the very book indeed Where all my sins are writ, and that’s myself. (R2 4.1.27–35) That a face may be open to those that can interpret or read it is the point made by Lady Macbeth, when she tells her husband, ‘Your face, my thane, is as a book, where men / May read strange matters’ (MAC 1.5.62–3). She then advises him on ways to conceal what he is thinking: ‘look like the innocent flower, / But be the serpent under’t’. The image of a person, especially one who is precious or beloved, as a book is used by King John, referring to Blanche as ‘this book of beauty’ (KJ 2.1.485), and by Othello, when he figures Desdemona’s body as a book sullied by the inscription of a foul word: ‘Was this fair paper, this most goodly book / Made to write “whore” upon?’ (OTH 4.2.72–3). In RJ Capulet’s Wife develops a long image comparing the face of Paris to a book which she urges Juliet to study. Read o’er the volume of young Paris’ face, And find delight writ there with beauty’s pen. (RJ 1.3.82–3) Paris, ‘this precious book of love’, is likened to a volume full of hidden treasures, a ‘golden story’, partly revealed in ‘the margent [margin] of his eyes’, but locked in by ‘golden clasps’. The book needs a ‘cover’ to complete its beauty, which Juliet is to supply. Pope, not without justification, called the lines ‘ridiculous’. Later in the play, Juliet, seeking a language in which to express her paradoxical feelings about Romeo 41

book, notebook

once he has slain Tybalt, echoes her mother in asking rhetorically, ‘Was ever book containing such vile matter / So fairly bound?’ (3.2.83–4). The book suggests instruction. Duke Senior and his companions in exile in AYL will find ‘sermons in stones, books in running brooks’ (2.1.16). The book is used to mean the Bible by Pompey when he says of Master Froth, ‘I’ll be supposed upon a book, his face is the worst thing about him’ (MM 2.1.152), meaning ‘I’ll take my oath upon a Bible’, and by the Archbishop of Canterbury in H5 referring to the ‘Book of Numbers’ (1.2.98). (C) There is plenty of secondary literature on the early modern book trade, the impact of printing, print culture, and increasingly on the history of the book, but not much of it is concerned with the book as a domestic object. The introductory essay in Andersen and Sauer (2002) gives an overview of the current field of book studies relevant to the early modern period and to the major theoretical approaches. Hackel’s detailed and informative book is attentive to the use of the book as a stage object, to books as ‘valued objects’ (2005, 19) in plays, and as evidence of reading habits in the home. Dessen and Thomson (1999) give many examples of the book onstage, calling it ‘a widely used property’. Emmison (1976, 123–5) has some interesting examples of books bequeathed in wills by men of the middling sort. bracelet (A) A bracelet is piece of jewellery consisting of a loop of material, commonly metal, worn round the wrist or forearm. It could be associated with the manacles or hand-cuffs worn by prisoners. (B) Bracelets could be given as love-tokens, and Petruccio in TS includes amber bracelets among the finery with which Katherina will be adorned when she goes to her father’s house (4.3.60). Autolycus has jewellery such as ‘bugle [small tube-shaped bead] bracelet, necklace-amber’ (WT 4.4.224) in his pack to lure men to buy presents for their lovers. He claims to have sold every ‘brooch, table-book, ballad, knife, tape, glove, shoe-tie, bracelet, horn-ring’ before he leaves (WT 4.4.59–89). Egeon accuses Lysander of wooing Hermia with love tokens, among them ‘bracelets of thy hair’ (MND 1.1.33). In TNK the Jailor’s Daughter poetically refers to the manacles around the arms of Palamon as ‘his iron bracelets’ (2.6.8). By far the most significant bracelet in Shakespeare is the one that Posthumus gives to Innogen in CYM . He calls it ‘a manacle of love’ (1.1.123) when they exchange parting gifts – she gives him a diamond ring – before he goes into exile in Italy, and it is not referred to in the text as a bracelet (though identified as such in editorial stage directions) until the final scene. The bracelet is obviously such a clearly identifiable stage prop, carrying distinctive symbolic qualities, that it does not need to be identified verbally. Iachimo steals it off her while she is asleep and then confronts Posthumus with it as evidence of her infidelity: She stripped it from her arm. I see her yet. Her pretty action did outsell her gift, And yet enriched it, too. (2.4.101–3) 42

bread, gingerbread

In the final scene the penitent Iachimo confesses to Cymbeline, Posthumus and the disguised Innogen how he contrived his deception, ‘with tokens thus, and thus: averring notes / Of chamber-hanging, pictures, this her bracelet / (O cunning how I got it)’ (5.5.203–5). It is not until Innogen’s identity has been revealed and she has been reunited with her husband as well as her long lost brothers and her father that the bracelet is returned to her. Iachimo kneels to Posthumus, offering up his life, along with Posthumus’s ring and the bracelet: Take that life, beseech you, Which I so often owe; but your ring first, And here the bracelet of the truest princess That ever swore her faith. (5.5.413–16) By this means, the return of the love tokens to their true owners, the marriage of Innogen and Posthumus is restored. (C) On the significance of the bracelet in CYM see Wayne (2002, 288–315). Wayne explores the significance of the fact that Innogen’s bracelet is not referred to in the text as a ‘manacle’ until the final scene. She regards the manacle/bracelet and the ring that Innogen gives Posthumus as ‘signifiers of the marital and sexual bond’ and subsequently ‘trophies of Iachimo’s conquest’ over Posthumus (294–5). Findlay (2010, 55) observes that the bracelet does not appear in Frederyk of Jennen, one of the play’s sources, but does feature in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1607) where Angelica gives Orlando’s pledge to another man. She also suggests that its significance as a love token may originate from the Bible, the Song of Solomon, chapter 8, verse 6: ‘Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm’. The bracelet of hair as a token between lovers appears in Donne’s poem ‘The Relic’, and Bacon in Sylva Sylvarum (1627) mentions, sceptically, its roles as a preservative of love (264). The bracelet is also a symbolic object in William Sampson’s The Vow-Breaker (1636), illustrated in one of the images on the title-page. bread, gingerbread (A) Bread was a staple of the diet in early modern England. A range of breads was available, from the fine white bread made of wheat, called manchet, eaten by the better-off, to bread made of rye or barley, eaten by the poor and used as an edible trencher on which to serve food. Brown bread was regarded as inferior, the food of the poorer classes. (B) The view of bread as a staple foodstuff may be inferred from several references, where it often represents food itself. In MND Puck refers disparagingly to the ‘rude mechanicals, / That work for bread upon Athenian stalls’ (3.2.9–10). Iago in a similar spirit calls Bianca ‘a housewife, that by selling her desires / Buys herself bread and clothes’ (OTH 4.1.95–6). In KL Albany challenges Edmund to fight, saying of his claim that Edmund is a traitor, ‘I’ll prove [Folio “make”] it on thy heart, / Ere I taste bread’ (5.3.94– 5). Hamlet describes how Claudius killed his father: ‘ ’A took my father grossly, full of 43

bread, gingerbread

bread / With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May’ (3.3.80–1), Here he means that old Hamlet was in a state of sinfulness when he died (‘unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled’, as the ghost puts it, 1.5.77). Thompson and Taylor (Arden edn, 2016) note that in Ezekiel, 16.49 ‘fulnes of bread’ is given as a state of sin. When Nim in MW says he is a man who ‘love[s] not the humour of bread and cheese’ (2.1.122–3) he means that he wants something better than the most basic food. Falstaff insults Hal by saying that he would have made a ‘good pantler [pantry worker], ’a would ’a chipped [cut] bread well’ (2H4 2.4.240). Other references to bread are literal. Lucio in MM , wishing to indicate the Duke’s indiscriminate sexual tastes, say that he ‘would mouth with a beggar, though she smelt brown bread and garlic’ (3.2.175–6). In COR the play begins with corn riots, and the First Citizen, making the case for an uprising against the patricians, declares: ‘the gods know, I speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge’ (1.1.22–3). In PER the citizens of Tharsus are also starving; Cleon the Governor observes that people who recently desired ‘inventions to delight the taste / Would now be glad of bread, and beg for it’, and is overwhelmed when Pericles appears bringing ships ‘stor’d with corn to make your needy bread’ (1.4.40–1, 95). In STM , another play concerned with civil disorder and food distribution, John Lincoln reads the ‘bill of wrongs’ he has drawn up on behalf of the citizens, in which it is claimed that ‘aliens and strangers eat the bread from fatherless children’ (1.123–4), and the Clown later asserts that aliens eat more in England than in their own countries ‘by an halfpenny loaf a day, troy weight’ (6.9). But the weary and sleepless Henry V envies the carefree peasant who ‘with a body filled and vacant mind / Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread’ (H5 4.1.266–7). (Craik, Arden edn, 1995, in his note suggests that ‘distressful’, a rare word in Shakespeare, signifies earned with hard toil, alluding to the penalty of Adam after the Fall (Genesis 3.17–19).) In 1H4 the bill found in Falstaff’s pocket for his tavern expenses reveals that he is considerably more interested in wine than in food: ‘O monstrous! But one halfpennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack!’ exclaims Hal (2.4.527–8). Breaking or sharing bread with someone is a sign of intimacy. Apemantus cynically comments that a man cannot trust his closest friend: ‘The fellow that sits next him, now parts bread with him . . . is the readiest man to kill him’ (TIM 1.2.46–7). It features in the commonplace expression ‘as ever broke bread’ (Dent, M68) to mean ‘as ever lived’ (see MW 1.4.139–40, MA 3.5.37). Richard II , informed that Bolingbroke has been riding his special horse, Barbary, which appeared proud to have such a rider, is outraged: ‘So proud that Bolingbroke was on his back? / That jade hath eat bread from my royal hand’ (5.5.85–6); the intimacy between the horse and its former owner, signified by the hand-feeding of bread, has been violated. When Rosalind says that Orlando’s kissing is ‘as full of sanctity as the touch of holy bread’ (AYL 3.4.12–13) her comparison is not about intimacy; it is one of series (including a comparison of his brown hair to that of Judas) implying his propensity to deception. Her reference to the sanctified bread used in Holy Communion is rather bold (and was censored in a copy of F2 owned by the Catholic monastery at Valladolid in Spain. (See Dusinberre’s note, Arden edn, 2006.) Capulet uses ‘God’s bread’ as a mild oath (RJ 3.5.176). 44

breeches, breech

The most poignant reference to bread comes in Bolingbroke’s address to Bushy and Green about the crimes they have committed against both the king and himself, causing him to eat ‘the bitter bread of banishment’ in a foreign country (3.1.21). The image, its force heightened by the alliteration, may carry biblical overtones, as to the ‘bread of affliction’ in 1 Kings 22.27 (see Forker’s note, Arden edn, 2002). The Jailor’s Daughter’s mysterious injunction to the Schoolmaster when telling his fortune – ‘Friend, you must eat no white bread; if you do / Your teeth will bleed extremely’ (TNK 3.5.8–12) – is explained by Potter (Arden edn, 2015); eating white bread refers to the begetting of bastards and the bleeding of a man’s teeth indicates that his wife is pregnant. There are two references to gingerbread, a spicy cake-like substance containing ginger and honey. Hotspur objects to dainty oaths as used by his wife, calling them ‘such protest of pepper-gingerbread’ (1H4 3.1.251); Kastan in his note (Arden edn, 2002) glosses this as ‘mealy-mouthed phrases’, and says that in pepper gingerbread pepper was substituted for ginger, making it milder (though Fitzpatrick (2011) thinks it was spicier, which seems inappropriate in the context). In LLL Costard is impressed by the wit of Moth the page, asserting that ‘An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread’ (5.1.65–6). Gingerbread was a sweetmeat commonly sold at fairs – as in Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, where the foolish Bartholomew Cokes enjoys it so much that he wants to buy a whole shop’s worth (3.4). (C) Fitzpatrick (2011) has much information about early modern bread and also gingerbread. In Fitzpatrick (2004) she discusses the social connotations of bread in STM . Purkiss (2010) includes technical information about early modern bread making and corrects some misconceptions. In Deloney, Jack of Newberry, a young wife is reproved for feeding her household ‘the best of beef and the finest of wheat’ when they would be content with ‘brown bread on the board’ or even ‘barley bread or rye mingled with pease’ (377). Boorde (1547), ch. 11, extols the virtues of bread, which ‘doth comforte, confyrme, and doth stablysshe a mannes herte’. Cogan (1636, chs 4–6) discusses the best flour for making bread, as does Harrison, who notes the rising price of corn (Description of England, 133). breeches, breech (A) The noun breeches, used mostly in the plural in this period, means a garment worn by boys and men, covering the loins and thighs, extending to just below the knee. The verb, to breech, means to put a boy into breeches; in early modern England young children of both sexes were dressed in long robes until the age of about six or seven, when boys were dressed in breeches. (B) Leontes is reminded by his young son Mamillius of himself as a little boy: Looking on the lines Of my boy’s face, methoughts I did recoil Twenty-three years, and saw myself unbreeched, In my green velvet coat; my dagger muzzled (WT 1.2.154–7)

45

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The image is of a child in a long gown, made vivid by the specificity of ‘green’ and ‘velvet’ (the rich fabric associated with royalty and nobility), his masculinity signified by the miniature dagger he wears (perhaps a phallic symbol), though cannot yet use. This is Shakespeare’s only use of the term ‘unbreeched’. When Bianca tells her wouldbe tutors, ‘I am no breeching scholar in the schools’ (TS 3.1.18), she means that she is no schoolboy young enough to be subject to whipping (OED breeching n. 2a). The Schoolmaster in TNK announces that he is ‘by title pedagogus, that let fall / The birch upon the breeches of the small ones / and humble with ferula the tall ones’ (3.5.109–11); he differentiates between the little boys whom he can cane on the backside and the bigger ones whose hands he raps with a stick. The wearing of breeches is identified with masculinity. Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, warns King Henry against the emasculating power of his wife: She’ll pamper thee, and dandle thee like a baby. Though in this place most master wear no breeches, She shall not strike Dame Eleanor unrevenged. (2H6 1.3.146–8) She refers to the proverbial expression ‘She wears the breeches’ (Dent, B645), meaning that the mistress controls the master. Richard of Gloucester uses the same idea when he insults Queen Margaret, who wishes that Henry VI had been as determined as his son, Prince Edward: QUEEN

Ah, that thy father had been so resolv’d! RICHARD

That you might still have worn the petticoat And ne’er have stol’n the breech from Lancaster. (3H6 5.5.22–4) He means that if Henry VI had been stronger, then she would not have taken control of him. The Fool in KL connects the lack of breeches with lack of manliness in another sense when he tells Lear that things have been awry ‘since thou mad’st thy daughters thy mothers; . . . when thou gav’st them the rod and putt’st down thine own breeches’ (1.4.163–5). He creates a humiliating image of the king as a child being disciplined by his own daughters. In TGV when Julia plans her disguise as a boy her maid Lucetta asks promptly, ‘What fashion, madam, shall I make your breeches?’ (2.7.49). Julia does not bother to specify, but in H8 French-style, ‘short blistered breeches’, favoured by gallants (H8 1.3.31), are roundly condemned by Henry’s courtiers. ‘Blistered breeches’ were ornamented with cuts through which another fabric or colour could be seen. Iago sings a song to Cassio about King Stephen, ‘a worthy peer’ whose ‘breeches cost him but a crown’ (2.3.85–6), praising the monarch’s economical ways; this may be a jibe against what he sees as Cassio’s pretentiousness. 46

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The most puzzling reference to breeches is Macbeth’s when he describes the daggers supposedly used by Duncan’s grooms to kill him as ‘unmannerly breeched with gore’ (MAC 2.3.117). This appears to mean that the daggers were clothed with blood in an indecent way, with ‘unmannerly’ perhaps punning on ‘unmanly’, and ‘breeched’ suggesting the breach that has been made in Duncan’s body. (C) Pitcher (WT , Arden edn, 2010, 140) has a useful note on Mamillius’s age in relation to his breeching. Linthicum (1936, 204–6) describes fashions for breeches. Hayward’s account of a young boy’s doublet (2010, 107–15) implies that breeching could take place at the age of five or six. bride, bridegroom, bride bed (A) A bride is a woman to be married or else very recently married, and the bridegroom the man who marries her. In early modern England the legal age of marriage for a woman was 12 and for a man 14, though historians put the median age for women and men of the non-élite classes to marry as in the mid-twenties. Findlay (2010) calculates that 15 women in Shakespeare appear or are presented as brides. Bridegrooms, though significant, have less prominence. (B) The joyous readiness that bride and groom are expected to feel is alluded to in figures of speech. Iago, wanting to make much of the situation before Cassio’s drunken attack on Roderigo as one of extreme good will, describes those about to be involved in the fracas as ‘in quarter and in terms like bride and groom / Divesting them for bed’ (OTH 2.3.176–7). Aeneas in TC (drawing on a proverbial expression, Dent, B664.1, ‘fresh as a bridegroom’) urges his compatriots to go forth to battle ‘with a bridegroom’s fresh alacrity’ (4.4.144). Hotspur uses the same image when he describes the lord who interrupted him on the battlefield as ‘neat and trimly dress’d / Fresh as a bridegroom’ (1H4 1.3.33). ‘I will die bravely, like a smug bridegroom’, declares the mad Lear (‘smug’ meaning ‘neatly dressed’) (4.6.194). Claudio in MM imparts to the bridegroom’s eagerness a more ominous significance when he assures his sister of his readiness for death: ‘If I must die, / I will encounter darkness as a bride / And hug it in mine arms’ (3.1.82–4). Antony in AC uses the idea similarly, but in his case the connection between death and the wedding night is differently inflected, since at this point he believes he will join Cleopatra after death. He tells Eros: ‘I will be a bridegroom in my death and run into’t / As to a lover’s bed’ (4.14.100–2). In HAM love and death are tragically conjoined in Gertrude’s poignant epitaph on Ophelia: ‘I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid, / And not have strewed thy grave’ (5.1.233–4). Juliet’s father, mistakenly believing her dead, expresses the same idea: ‘Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse’ (RJ 4.5.89). Ross intends to compliment Macbeth by calling him ‘Bellona’s bridegroom’ (1.2.55), but the implications of being spouse to the goddess of war are ominous. Juliet’s conflicted status as a bride is central to the play. When Paris presses his suit Capulet is at first unwilling to give his consent, asking him to wait till his daughter is more mature: 47

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Let two more summers wither in their pride Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride. (1.3.10–11) But after Tybalt’s death Capulet changes his mind, and Juliet’s mother, thinking to cheer her up, tells her to prepare for a ‘day of joy’: Marry, my child, early next Thursday morn, The gallant, young and noble gentleman, The County Paris, at Saint Peter’s church Shall happily make thee there a joyful bride. (3.5.112–15) Juliet, by this time married to Romeo, rejects the idea with horror, and her response angers her parents who believe themselves to ‘have wrought / So worthy a gentleman to be her bride’ (3.5.144–5). (As Weis, Arden edn, 2012 explains in his note, ‘bride’ here is used to mean ‘bridegroom’.) She begs her mother desperately to delay the marriage ‘for a month, a week, / Or if you do not, make the bridal bed / In that dim monument where Tybalt lies’ (3.5.200–2). Paris in his eagerness arrives in the early hours of the designated Thursday morning, with music (4.4.20–1) to wake Juliet. The Nurse attempts to rouse Juliet, using the word ‘bride’ as the last in her list of endearments (4.5.1–3). But it is clear that the bride is not ‘ready to go to church’, though Capulet’s view that she is ‘ready to go, but never to return’ (4.5.34) is almost correct. Several brides experience problematic wedding days. Blanche, niece to King John of England, has made a dynastic marriage to Lewis, son to King Philip of France, much against the wishes of Lady Constance, mother to King John’s nephew Arthur. When hostilities break out between the two countries on Blanche’s wedding day, Constance urges Lewis to stand firm with his father’s Catholic faith, since ‘the devil tempts thee here / In likeness of a new untrimmed bride’ (KJ 3.1.134–5). She means that Blanche is so newly married that she is still a virgin (‘untrimmed’). A bride who is more genuinely like a diabolic temptation is Antiochus’s daughter in PER , who is involved in an incestuous relationship with her father. Antiochus offers her to Pericles if he can solve a riddle, commanding, ‘Bring in our daughter, clothed like a bride, / For the embracements even of Jove himself’ (1.1.7–8). He expects Pericles to fail, like the Daughter’s other suitors, but Pericles guesses, and denounces Antiochus for his ‘Uncomely claspings with your child, / Which pleasures fits a husband not a father’ (1.1.129–30). In AW Bertram, having against his will been married to Helena, leaves the country before consummating the marriage (2.5.23–5). In TIT Saturninus’s wish to marry Lavinia is thwarted when Bassianus, to whom she is betrothed, takes her away and hastily marries her. Saturninus instead marries Tamora, Queen of the Goths, and parades her in public: ‘Lords, accompany / Your noble emperor and his lovely bride’, to the astonishment of Titus, who feels himself insulted: ‘I am not bid to wait upon this bride’ (1.1.338–9, 343). The two newly made husbands greet one another sardonically:

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bride, bridegroom, bride bed SATURNINUS

So, Bassianus, you have played your prize. God give you joy, sir, of your gallant bride. BASSIANUS

And you of yours, my lord. I say no more (1.1.404–6) Saturninus calls upon the emperor’s court to ‘feast two brides’, but it is not long before the two married couples are at odds and violence breaks out. Katherina in TS has an unusually chaotic wedding day. Baptista is anxious that Petruccio, who is late to put in an appearance, is intending to make a fool of them all: ‘What mockery will it be / To want the bridegroom when the priest attends / To speak the ceremonial rites of marriage?’ (3.2 4–6). Eventually the laggard rushes in, pretending surprise at the demeanour of the company, and searching for Katherina, who has gone off in tears. Tranio reproves Petruccio for his ramshackle appearance: ‘See not your bride in these unreverent robes’ (3.2.111), but he makes the unassailable riposte, ‘To me she’s married, not unto my clothes’, and expresses his longing ‘to bid good morrow to my bride / And seal the title with a lovely kiss’ (3.2.121–2). Petruccio’s inappropriate behaviour is commented on again, when in response to Tranio’s question, ‘And is the bride and bridegroom coming home?’, Gremio, who has witnessed the offstage wedding, answers, ‘A bridegroom, say you? ’Tis a groom indeed / A grumbling groom, and that the girl shall find’ (3.2.150–2). (‘Groom’ here signifies a rough-mannered, lower-class man.) Gremio later calls Petruccio ‘this mad-brained bridegroom’. Uneasy brides feature in TNK . The play begins with a wedding ceremony, ‘Hippolyta the bride’ is led in procession, ‘her tresses . . . hanging’, as was the custom for a virgin. But Theseus is prevailed upon to delay the consummation of his marriage until after he has arranged the burial of three kings killed in battle by the tyrant Creon. Palamon, speaking in praise of Venus, cites as an example of her mysterious power, the union of ‘a man of eighty winters . . . who a lass of fourteen brided’ and fathered with her a child (5.1.107–9). The tone of this passage is ambiguous, but the play’s last bride, Emilia, forced to agree to a marriage she does not want, calls herself in no uncertain terms, ‘bride-habited, / But maiden hearted’ (5.1.150–1). In the play’s final speech Theseus makes an effort to respond to the opposing fortunes of the two kinsmen, one dead, one about to be married to Emilia, the woman both of them loved. After gracing the funeral of Arcite, ‘the visages of bridegrooms we’ll put on / And smile with Palamon’ (5.4.126–7). As Potter’s note mentions (Arden edn, 2015), this recalls the ‘mirth in funeral and dirge in marriage’ (HAM 1.2.12) that Claudius experiences when marrying Gertrude. Women who become the brides of kings are much subject to the dislike of their husbands’ enemies. One such is Margaret of Anjou, who became wife to Henry VI , having been mistress to the Duke of Suffolk, Henry’s envoy in wooing her. Margaret’s father, Reignier, offers her in a dynastic marriage to Suffolk, his style ironic in its apparent self-deprecation:

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Since thou dost deign to woo her little worth To be the princely bride of such a lord – Upon condition I may quietly Enjoy mine own, the country, Maine and Anjou . . . My daughter shall be Henry’s if he please. (1H6 5.2.172–7) At the beginning of 2H6 the Duke of York, planning a strike against the ruling Lancastrians, alludes scornfully to King Henry, ‘surfeiting in joys of love / With his new bride and England’s dear-bought Queen’ (1.1.248–9). When Edward of York becomes king as Edward IV he marries Lady Grey, a widow; the Earl of Warwick, who has turned against him attempts to oust him, remarking that ‘ ’Tis not his new-made bride shall succour him’ (2H6 3.3.207). King Lewis of France joins in on Warwick’s side against Edward, saying that he will ‘send over maskers / To revel it with him and his new bride’ (3.3.224–5). The words are repeated to Edward by a messenger (4.1.92–4), when he asks for news from France. Edward’s brother, Richard of Gloucester, also uses the word in mockery when Edward’s ceremonial entry is announced. ‘Here comes the King’, says the Duke of Somerset and Richard adds, ‘And his well-chosen bride’ (4.1.6–7). Richard objects to the way his brother promotes the family of his new wife in preference to his own, telling him that he should have given ‘the heir and daughter of Lord Scales’ to himself or Clarence as a wife, instead of to ‘the brother of your loving bride’, adding, ‘But in your bride you bury brotherhood’ (4.1.52). He voices this grievance again in R3 (1.3.92–101), accusing the Queen directly of using her marriage for social climbing. (C) For further reading see the full listings at marriage, wedding. broom A broom is an implement for sweeping, originally made of twigs (made from the shrub broom) fixed to a long handle. Shakespeare’s only reference is in MND where Puck invokes the spirit of midnight and the mysterious activity of the animal and spirit worlds taking place when human beings are asleep. While the fairies ‘are frolic’ . . . not a mouse Shall disturb this hallowed house. I am sent with broom before To sweep the dust behind the door. (MND 5.1.381–4) In the Folio text of MW Ford assumes the alias ‘Master Broome’ (instead of ‘Brooke’ as in Q). Wall (2002) makes an interesting point about how ‘the ethereal fairies literalize the mundane work of housewives’ (110), and Puck’s tidying is suggestive of the domestic order necessary for the flourishing of Theseus’s aristocratic household. brother (A) Brother can have other meanings than a male sibling, including a kinsman, but also an equal or a close male friend. 50

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(B) Probably Shakespeare’s warmest use of the word brother occurs in Henry V’s address to his soldiers on the eve of Agincourt, where it signifies equals or peers as well as comrades: We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. For he today that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition. (H5 4.3.60–3) An equally heartfelt use is Capulet’s address to Montague, acknowledging that the two are equal in their sorrow for their dead children: O brother Montague, give me thy hand. This is my daughter’s jointure, for no more Can I demand. (RJ 5.3.296–8) Similarly, Duke Senior in AYL to his ‘co-mates and brothers in exile’ (2.1.1). The Clown in WT excitedly tells Autolycus how he and his father have been received at Leontes’ court, when ‘the king’s son [he refers to Florizel] took me by the hand and called me brother, and then the two kings called my father brother’ (5.2.137–8). In sombre mood, the sleepless King Henry IV, recounting the ‘revolution of the times’ that he has witnessed, recalls to Warwick how once Northumberland, now his enemy, ‘was the man nearest my soul / Who like a brother toil’d in my affairs’ (2H4 3.1.61–2). When Brutus in JC refers more than once to ‘my brother Cassius’ (4.3.246, 302) he may be using the word in this sense, although as Plutarch records, they were brothers-in-law, since Cassius was married to Brutus’ sister. True brothers owe one another loyalty and affection, as well as being equals. CE concludes with the reunion of the two Dromios deciding not to compete, even in courtesy, as to who should go first: We came into the world like brother and brother, And now let’s go hand in hand, not one before another. (5.1.425–6) But more commonly fraternal relationships are characterized by ‘resentment and envy’ (Montrose, 1981, 29) and power struggles. ‘I pray thee mark me, that a brother should be so perfidious’ (TEM 1.2.66–7), Prospero urges Miranda when telling her the story of Antonio’s part in their exile. At the moment when the two brothers finally come face to face at the end of the play Prospero addresses his brother with a bitterness to which Antonio makes no reply: For you, most wicked sir, whom to call brother Would even infect my mouth, I do forgive Thy rankest fault. (5.1.131–3) 51

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Claudius in Hamlet is all too conscious that the crime he has committed has the most dreadful of precedents: ‘It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t – / A brother’s murder’ (3.3.37–8). Cain’s murder of Abel is invoked twice more in the play, by Claudius himself, referring to the death of fathers as the ‘common theme’ of nature ‘from the first corpse to him that died today’ (1.2.104–5), and by Hamlet in the graveyard, observing that the gravedigger treats a skull as roughly ‘as if ’twere Cain’s jawbone, that did the first murder’ (5.1.73–4). As Thompson and Taylor note (Arden edn, 2016, 173), ‘this archetypal murder was often in Shakespeare’s mind while he was writing his English history plays where civil wars turn relatives against each other’, citing 1H6 1.3.39–40, R2 1.1.104 and 5.6.43, 2H4 1.1.155–60, and KJ 3.3.79. In AYL , the play to which fraternal enmity is perhaps most central, Orlando is so angered when his elder brother Oliver calls him a villain (the term in this context suggesting a peasant or ‘villein’) that he is barely prevented from harming him: ‘Wert thou not my brother I would not take this hand from thy throat till this other had pulled out thy tongue for saying so’ (1.1.55–8). Oliver has fewer scruples, and he plans, with the ‘malice / Of a diverted blood and bloody brother’ (2.3.36–7) to burn Orlando in his lodging. Duke Frederick, the evil and usurping younger brother to Duke Senior, also wants Orlando disposed of, and orders Oliver to see to it. Oliver protests his loyalty to Frederick: ‘I never loved my brother in my life’ (3.1.14). In KL one of the consequences of the ‘late eclipses in the sun and moon’ that Gloucester notes is that ‘brothers divide’. Edmund’s discontent at being ‘some twelve or fourteen moonshines / Lag of a brother’ (1.2.5–6) motivates his ruthless ambition against Edgar; he is both a younger brother and also illegitimate. (The word ‘legitimate’ occurs only three times in Shakespeare outside Edmund’s soliloquy.) Relations between brothers and sisters are generally more amicable. In TN Olivia amazes Orsino by her determination to spend seven years mourning ‘a brother’s dead love, which she would keep fresh / And lasting in her remembrance’ (1.1.30–1), and Viola, equally devoted to her brother whom she believes dead, tells Orsino sadly that she is ‘all the daughters of my father’s house, / And all the brothers too’ (2.4.121). Innogen in CYM is overwhelmed with joy to be reunited with her brothers, whom she had previously met when in male disguise: O my gentle brothers, Have we thus met? O, never say hereafter But I am truest speaker. You called me brother, When I was but your sister; I you brothers, When ye were so indeed. (5.5.373–7) But Isabella in MM , though eager to do what she can to save her brother’s life, controversially has limits: ‘I had rather my brother die by the law, than my son should be unlawfully born’ (3.1.188–9). A woman uniquely anxious not to claim a man as her brother is Helena in AW . The Countess of Rossillion expresses her affection for 52

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Helena by claiming to be ‘a mother to you’, but Helena responds by forcefully rejecting this relationship; she loves Bertram, the Countess’s son, and therefore he ‘must not be my brother’. ‘Nor I your mother?’, enquires the Countess, who is beginning to understand the implications of Helena’s words. Helena, who returns the Countess’s affection, replies, You are my mother, madam; would you were – So that my lord your son were not my brother – Indeed my mother! (AW 1.3.157–60) (C) On the difficult situation of the younger brother in relation to primogeniture, see Montrose (1981) and Wilson (1936, 23–4). Earle’s ‘Character of a younger brother’ (1628) also takes account of this. On family relationships see Stone (1977), and the critiques of his work in Houlbrooke (1984) and Macfarlane (1986). Belsey’s discussion (1999) of the popularity of the Cain motif in visual arts of the period is informative. Crawford (2014) has a chapter on sibling relationships in a social context. Plays which feature brother/sister relationships, usually unhappy, include Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness and Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore and The Broken Heart. See also sister. burial, bury (A) Burials, that is the interment of the dead according to Christian ritual, were the responsibility of the parish, and done in consecrated ground. Most people were buried in the parish churchyard, or, if rich, within the parish church, perhaps in a family vault. Burial was preceded by a service prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer, ‘The order for the buriall of the dead’. (B) The importance of a burial fitting to the deceased is an issue in HAM , when the Gravedigger and his Man discuss the interment of Ophelia. The Gravedigger asks, ‘Is she to be buried in Christian burial, when she wilfully seeks her own salvation?’ (5.1.1–2). While the Gravedigger’s man replies that ‘The crowner hath sat on her and finds it Christian burial’, it is clear from the responses of Hamlet and Laertes that she is not attended with full ceremonies. The Priest explains that had not ‘the great command’ intervened, she would have been buried as a suicide: She should in ground unsanctified been lodged Till the last trumpet: for charitable prayers, Flints and pebbles should be thrown on her. Yet here she is allowed her virgin crants [garlands], Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home Of bell and burial. (5.1.218–23) His speech gives information about the style of funeral given to a woman who died as a virgin. He refuses to allow any further ceremony: 53

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We should profane the service of the dead To sing a requiem and such rest to her As to peace-parted souls. (5.1.225–7) In MND Puck describes how, at the approach of dawn, Ghosts wandering here and there Troop home to churchyards. Damned spirits all That in cross-ways and floods have burial, Already to their wormy beds are gone (3.2.382–4) The ghosts are, like Hamlet’s father, ‘doomed for a certain term to walk the night’ before returning to their tombs. The ‘damned spirits’ are those of suicides who could not be buried in consecrated ground. Elizabethan suicides, like criminals, were buried at crossroads, in an act of desecration to show social disapproval of suicide, and those who drowned had, as it were, their burials in the water. Appropriate burial is important for the concept of Roman pietas in TIT . Titus Andronicus is eager for his sons who have died in battle to be honoured ‘with burial amongst their ancestors’ but wishes to deny this to his son Mutius who rebels against him. He will not relent until his brother Marcus and his remaining sons have fallen to their knees to plead for Mutius to be buried in the family tomb. He gives in reluctantly: ‘This is the dismall’st day that e’er I saw / To be dishonoured by my sons in Rome! / Well, bury him, and bury me the next’ (1.1.389–91). At the end of the play Lucius gives orders for Titus to be given burial ‘in his fathers’ grave’ but that for Tamora, Queen of the Goths, ‘No mournful bell shall ring her burial, / But throw her forth to beasts and birds to prey’ (5.3.191, 195–6). In CYM Belarius urges Guiderius and Arviragus to overcome their hatred of Cloten, and, because he was ‘princely’ to ‘bury him as a prince’ (4.2.248, 250). The prologue to RJ states that the misfortune of the star-crossed lovers ‘doth with their death bury their parents’ strife’. This is a play where love and death interchange; ‘our wedding cheer [is transformed] to a sad burial feast’, says Capulet. Romeo, discovering the body of his rival Paris lying dead, magnanimously promises, ‘I’ll bury thee in a triumphant grave’ (RJ 5.3.83). The Friar in MA counsels that in order to convince everyone of Hero’s death the family must ‘maintain a mourning ostentation’ and ‘do all rites that appertain unto a burial’ (4.1.205, 207–8). Burial constitutes a laying to rest of the deceased, and scanted ceremony is a matter for shame and sometimes retribution, like the interment of Polonius, which Claudius describes as ‘hugger-mugger’ (HAM 4.5.84). When Macbeth sees the ghost of the murdered Banquo he erupts in horror: If charnel-houses and our graves must send Those that we bury back, our monuments Shall be the maws of kites. (3.4.68–70) 54

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He means that if graves can no longer be relied on to retain the dead, then (in the words of Dover Wilson, cited in Arden edn, 2015) ‘the only safe way with corpses is to let the vultures bury them’. Although Brutus in JC promises that Caesar shall ‘have all true rites and lawful ceremonies’ (3.1.241), at his funeral, Antony is not placated and instead imagines Caesar’s spirit ‘ranging for revenge’ so that ‘this foul deed shall smell above the earth / With carrion men, groaning for burial’ (3.1.274–5). The Clown in WT wants to do right by the corpse of Antigonus, mauled to death by the bear, and promises, that ‘If there be any of him left, I’ll bury it’, which his father commends as ‘a good deed’ (3.3.129–30). Burial of those who have died on the battlefield is an important matter. The herald Mountjoy in H5 begs King Henry ‘for charitable licence . . . / To look our dead and then to bury them’ (4.7.70–2). In MAC Duncan’s victorious commanders demand ransom of the enemy before they will ‘deign him burial of his men’ (1.2.61). Burying is a way of getting rid of something permanently. Prospero will ‘break [his] staff, / Bury it certain fathoms in the earth’ (TEM 5.1.55) when he gives up his magic. Brutus, reconciling himself with Cassius after their angry exchanges, calls for a bowl of wine and drinks: ‘In this I bury all unkindness, Cassius’ (JC 4.3.157). Less happily, Richard of Gloucester, annoyed that his brother King Edward has chosen to marry Lady Elizabeth Grey, tells him that ‘in your bride you bury brotherhood’ (3H6 4.1.54). When Antony famously says that he comes ‘to bury Caesar, not to praise him’ (JC 3.2.75) he plays on the literal and the metaphorical senses. (C) Gittings (1984) has a fascinating account of early modern burial customs and practices in the context of her broader exploration of the meanings of death in this period. She comments on the burial of suicides like Ophelia (72–4). Houlbrooke (1998) studies attitudes towards death, preparations for it, and its rituals in the context of religious change. Cust (2017) discusses funeral rites and monuments in his account of the material culture of lineage. butler The early modern butler was the man in charge of the wine cellar, who served liquor, and perhaps also partook of it, like Stephano in TEM , whom Alonso recognizes with a shock as ‘my drunken butler’ (5.1.127). The Shepherd who has adopted Perdita in WT upbraids her at the sheep-shearing feast for not matching the energy of his late wife who was ‘both pantler, butler, cook’ (4.4.56) for the occasion. Hotspur asks after a servant named Butler (1H4 2.3.66, 71), who is dealing with his horses. buttery The buttery was a store-room or pantry for household provisions. When the Players arrive the Lord in TS tells his servant to ‘take them to the buttery / And give them friendly welcome every one’ (Ind. 1.101–2). In TN Maria, toying flirtatiously with Sir Andrew Aguecheek, to whom she has just been introduced, tells him to ‘bring your hand to th’ buttery-bar, and let it drink’ (1.3.67); in referring to the hatch of the buttery, from which provisions would be dispensed, she seems to be indicating her breasts and inviting him to touch them. 55

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button, buttonhole (A) Buttons are small fasteners, used to hold two pieces of a garment together. The word could also mean bud. (B) Buttons were originally ornamental in use rather than functional, made of gold, silk, gold and silver thread, and other precious materials, and aspects of this remain in Shakespeare’s references to them. When Mercutio refers to Tybalt as ‘the very butcher of a silk button’ (RJ 2.4.23) he means that Tybalt is so skilful a duellist that he can strike through his opponent’s doublet, ornamented with silk buttons, to his heart. Hal, intimidating the helpless drawer Francis, describes the tavern host as ‘this leathernjerkin, crystal-button, not-pated . . . Spanish-pouch’ (1H4 2.4.68–70). Kastan glosses this as ‘fashionable button made of quartz’ (Arden edn, 2002, 210). When Guildenstern tells Hamlet that he and Rosencrantz ‘are not the very button’ on Fortune’s cap (HAM 2.2.224), he alludes to the button as an ornament. Functioning buttons are referred to by Rosalind when she talks of the ‘sleeve unbuttoned’ as the mark of a lover (AYL 3.2.365), and by Hal when he accuses Falstaff of being ‘fat-witted’ with ‘drinking of old sack and unbuttoning thee after dinner’ (1H4 1.2.2–3). Lear in madness urges his companions to imitate Edgar and reject what ‘lendings’ they have from animals, and ‘unbutton here’ (KL 3.4.106). This may be echoed in the request, ‘Pray you undo this button’ (KL 5.3.308), made in his dying moments, where the simplicity of the short sentence, and the reference to this humble domestic item make this a moment of supreme pathos. Button is used as a poetic word for bud by Laertes when he tells Ophelia, in circumlocutory style, that virtue is too easily blemished, especially in the young and innocent: ‘The canker galls the infants of the spring / Too oft before their buttons be disclosed’ (HAM 1.3.38–9). Arcite in TNK eulogizes Emilia by calling her ‘Fresher than May, sweeter / Than her golden buttons on the boughs’ (TNK 3.1.5–6). The word button also lent itself to idiomatic expressions. When Moth says to Armado as the braggart prepares to fight with Costard over Jacquenetta, ‘Master, let me take you a buttonhole lower’ (LLL 5.2.696), he appears to be suggesting that Armado unbutton his doublet, but he is also referring to the saying, to take [a person] down a buttonhole lower, meaning to humiliate. The more buttons there were on a doublet, the more fashionable it was (Linthicum, 1936, 279). The Host in MW uses another idiom when he says that young Master Fenton is bound to be successful in his wooing of Anne Page: ‘Tis in his buttons he will carry’t’ (MW 3.2.63). (C) See Linthicum (1936, 278–9). For the saying about the buttonhole, see Tilley (1950, 181).

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C cake, pancake (A) Cake originally referred to a kind of bread, flattened and baked hard on both sides, but by Shakespeare’s time the word also meant cake more as we know it now, containing ingredients such as eggs, butter, sugar and spices. A pancake is made from a batter of flour, eggs and water, fried in a pan, traditionally tossed from one side to the other and served on Shrove Tuesday. (B) Sir Toby Belch’s riposte to Malvolio – ‘Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?’ (TN 2.3.113) – has created a now familiar expression meaning having a good time. It also appears in H8 5.3.9. But cakes and ale originally meant refreshments associated with church festivities such as saints’ days, and were disapproved of by strict Protestants. The custom of serving pancakes on Shrove Tuesday arose from the fact that this was the last day before Lent in the Christian calendar, and thus the last opportunity to use up eggs and fats before the fast began. In AW the Clown tells the Countess that he has an answer to fit all questions ‘as a pancake for Shrove Tuesday’ (2.2.23). Touchstone in AYL uses pancakes to make a rather laboured joke about a knight who swore by his honour that ‘they were good pancakes, and swore by his honour the mustard was naught’ (1.2.64) but although the opposite was the case he was not forsworn because he had no honour. Doll Tearsheet is rude about Pistol’s claim to be a captain because he ‘lives upon mouldy stewed prunes and dried cakes’ (2H4 2.4.142), that is, the fare he might find in a brothel. Cake has various metaphorical uses. In TS Gremio indicates his view that his and Hortensio’s project for the wooing of Bianca is doomed to failure by saying that ‘Our cake’s dough on both sides’ (1.1.109), an image he uses again at 5.1.30. His cake (in the original sense) has failed to rise, and he is echoing the saying, ‘My cake is dough’ (Dent, C12). Pandarus draws on an image from baking to demonstrate to Troilus the need for patience in wooing Cressida: ‘He that will have a cake out of the wheat must tarry the grinding’ (TC 1.1.14–15). The culinary terms that follow on from grinding, including bolting, heating of the oven and cooling, form part of Pandarus’s characteristic wordplay on sexual activity (Bevington, Arden edn, 2001, 132). Dromio of Ephesus comments on the irony of his master’s being shut out of his own home by his wife, saying ‘Your cake here is warm within; you stand here in the cold’ (CE 3.1.71), also with sexual innuendo. In H5 Pistol comments on the idea that no one is to be trusted by saying that ‘oaths are straws, men’s faiths are wafer-cakes’ (2.3.49). He refers to the brittle wafers used in the ceremony of holy communion, and Fitzpatrick (2011, 67) suggests this is a ‘jibe at transubstantiation’. 57

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In two instances cake forms part of a comic surname: in MW Simple thinks that Slender has lent his ‘Book of Riddles’ to Alice Shortcake (MW 1.1.190), and in MA a Watchman suggests that Hugh Oatcake is a good candidate to be constable (MA 3.3.11). (C) See Dusinberre (2003) on pancakes, and Fitzpatrick (2011) on cake. cambric Cambric was a fine linen often used for handkerchiefs, and embroidered. Autolycus has in his pack ‘inkles [tape made of linen thread], caddises [worsted tapes for garters] cambrics, lawns’ (WT 4.4.209). Marina while sewing ‘would with sharp needle wound / The cambric’ (PER 4.0.24); Valeria, who wants to stop Virgilia from continuing with her embroidery, wishes that ‘your cambric were as sensible as your finger, that you might leave pricking it for pity’ (COR 1.3.86–7). On buying cambric, see Byrne (1925, 64–6). See also Linthicum (1936, 95–6). canary, canaries Canary was a sweet wine with a yellowish tinge imported from the Canary Islands and highly rated. The word can also mean a lively Spanish dance. In TN Sir Toby Belch considers that Sir Andrew Aguecheek could do with a drink to help him perform better in repartee with the witty Maria: ‘O knight, thou lack’st a cup of canary. When did I see thee so put down?’ Sir Andrew essays a feeble witticism in response: ‘Never in your life, I think, unless you see canary put me down’ (1.3.78–81), punning on both meanings. Mistress Quickly in 2H4 thinks that Doll Tearsheet has overindulged: ‘I’faith you have drunk too much canaries, and that’s a marvellous searching wine, and it perfumes the blood ere one can say, “What’s this?” ’ (2.4.25–8). In MW the Host goes off to drink canary with Falstaff (3.2.79). The dance is referred to in LLL when Moth jokingly suggests that Armado might win his love if he can ‘jig off a tune at the tongue’s end, canary to it with your feet’ (3.1.12–13), and in AW when Lafew tells the king that he knows of a medicine that can ‘make you dance canary / With sprightly fire and motion’ (2.1.73–4). candle (A) Candles in early modern England were made of tallow (fat rendered from animal substances), or wax, shaped round a wick of cotton or rush. Wax candles were the better, and less smelly. (B) References to candles in Shakespeare’s works serve several purposes. Literal references make clear their vital role in the household. ‘Help me to a candle’, pleads Malvolio (TN 4.2.81), imprisoned in a dark room by Feste, Maria and the others. ‘Seek him with candle’, orders Duke Frederick in AYL (3.1.6) eager to have everywhere searched thoroughly for the escaped Orlando. The Carrier in 1H4, asked what time he means to come to London, answers with deliberate vagueness, ‘Time enough to go to bed with a candle’ (2.1.42). A unique reference to a candle in a stage direction appears in the quarto text of 2H6, 2.4.16, where Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, doing public penance for her involvement in witchcraft, enters ‘barefoot, and a white sheet about her, with a wax candle in her 58

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hand’. The details come from the play’s source, The Brut; or, The Chronicles of England (Knowles, Arden edn, 1999, 224). The white sheet and the candle were a traditional part of penitential attire originating in the medieval period. Candles take on several metaphorical or symbolic meanings. A candle-waster was a contemptuous term for a scholar (MA 5.1.18). In H8 Cardinal Wolsey considers possible second wives for the King, but dismisses the idea of Anne Bullen: ‘This candle burns not clear. ’Tis I must snuff it; / Then out it goes’ (3.2.96–7). The candle here appears to mean something like ‘bright idea’. Portia in MV comments on the Prince of Arragon’s mistaken choice of the silver casket: ‘Thus hath the candle singed the moth’ (2.9.78). Jessica makes a pun of the word when, in response to Lorenzo’s comment that she, disguised as a boy for their nocturnal elopement, must act as his torch-bearer, she answers, ‘What, must I hold a candle to my shames?’ (MV 2.6.42). On several occasions candles refer to the stars, as in SON 21 where they are called ‘those gold candles fixed in heaven’s air’. Romeo is sad to realize that the day on which he and Juliet are to part has dawned: ‘Night’s candles are burnt out’ (RJ 3.5.9). Banquo’s reference to the darkness of the night is ominous: ‘There’s husbandry in heaven. / Their candles are all out’ (MAC 2.1.5). The candle is also a common image for the shortness of human life. The dying Clifford in 3H6 puts it most simply: ‘Here burns my candle out; ay, here it does’ (2.6.1). In 2H4 the application is given a comic turn, thanks to Falstaff’s wit. The Lord Chief Justice, keen to impress on him that he is no longer a young man, tells him, ‘You are as a candle, the better part burnt out’. But Falstaff is able to make a joke out of this: ‘A wassail candle, my lord, all tallow – if I did say of wax, my growth would approve the truth’ (2H4 1.2.156–9). A wassail candle is a fat candle, used at feasts; tallow signifies Falstaff’s own flesh, and ‘wax’ puns on growth, referring to his girth. But the most famous and most poignant use of this metaphor is by Macbeth, when he has just learnt of his wife’s death: Out, out, brief candle, Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. (MAC 5.5.22–5) (C) For proverbs about candles, see Dent. See also taper, torch. cap, nightcap (A) The cap, a small, brimless, close-fitting piece of headgear was worn by both sexes. It could be made from a wide range of fabrics, and sometimes richly decorated. (B) The cap which causes the most trouble in Shakespeare is the one that Petruccio has ordered for Katherina but refuses to let her wear. He roundly denounces it: Why, this was moulded on a porringer [basin] – A velvet dish. Fie, fie, ’tis lewd and filthy.

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Why, ’tis a cockle, or a walnut-shell, A knack, a toy, a trick, a baby’s cap. Away with it; come, let me have a bigger. (TS 4.3.66–70) Later he calls it ‘a paltry cap, / A custard-coffin, a bauble, a silken pie’. That Katherina is delighted with this fashion item – ‘I’ll have no bigger: this doth fit the time, / And gentlewomen wear such caps as these’ – makes Petruccio’s taming of her the more vivid and accentuates its gendered aspect. Caps are foregrounded in H5 when the disguised king and one of his soldiers, Michael Williams, exchange gloves after a quarrel over the king’s responsibility for the lives of his soldiers and agree to meet again to sort out the quarrel, wearing the gloves in their caps. Poor Tom in KL speaks of himself as ‘a servingman . . . that wore gloves in my cap’ (KL 3.4.84). Decorated caps, associated with courtly young men, are referred to twice in HAM . Guildenstern describes the condition of himself and Rosencrantz as ‘happy in that we are not ever [F reading “over”] happy / On Fortune’s cap we are not the very button’ (HAM 2.2.223–4). Claudius refers to skill in fencing as the peak of qualities in a young man, calling it ‘a very ribbon in the cap of youth’ (4.7.76). Falstaff, drawing attention to the disparity between his own size and that of his Page, says that the boy is like a little jewel, ‘fitter to be worn in my cap than to wait at my heels’ (2H4 1.2.15–16). In MA Benedick comments on the widespread association of marriage with cuckoldry when he responds to Claudio’s tentative confession of his love for Hero by saying, ‘Is’t come to this? In faith, hath not the world one man but he will wear his cap with suspicion?’ (MA 1.1.186–7), implying that the cap would be too small to hide the cuckold’s horns. The word ‘cap’ is used to express the highest point or summit by Apemantus when he calls Timon ‘the cap of all the fools alive’ (TIM 4.3.357). The doffing of the cap is a sign (often obsequious) of humility. Poins makes a joke about this when he talks of the readiness of even the humblest to claim kindred with the king who ‘never prick their finger but they say, “There’s some of the King’s blood spilt”. “How comes that?” says he that takes on him not to conceive. The answer is as ready as a borrower’s cap – “I am the King’s poor cousin, sir” ’ (2H4 2.2.107–11). Hotspur describes with scorn how nobles rallied to support King Richard when they thought it would do them good: ‘The more and less came in with cap and knee’ (1H4 4.3.68). Timon curses his flattering followers when he realizes their true nature, calling them ‘Cap-and-knee slaves’ (3.7.96). Plain nightcaps made of wool were worn by the lower classes on Sundays and holy days. Referring to these, Rosaline in LLL , mocking the men’s attempts at wooing, says that ‘Better wits have worn plain statute-caps’ (LLL 5.2.281). Caska in JC refers scornfully to the mob’s expression of adulation for Caesar, when they ‘clapped their chopped hands, and threw up their sweaty nightcaps’ (JC 1.2.243–4). Iago uses the term to disparage his wife when he expresses distrust of her: ‘I fear Cassio with my night-cap too’ (2.1.305).

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(C) In their note on HAM 2.2.223–4, Thompson and Taylor (Arden edn, 2015) cite the conjecture of Dutton (‘Hamlet, An Apology for Actors, and the Sign of the Globe’, SS 41 (1989), 35–43) that since Fortune is usually depicted naked, the reference here may be to Dame Fortune as depicted on the sign of the Fortune theatre. On nightcaps in JC, see Daniell (Arden edn, 1998, 179). On ‘statute caps’ see Woudhuysen (LLL, Arden edn, 2001, 255). Emmison (1976, 274–6) notes an act of parliament (13 Eliz., c. 19, 1571) that required all ‘citizens, artificers and labourers’ over the age of seven to wear woollen caps on Sundays and holy days, and to be fined 3 shillings and 4 pence a day if they did not. It was repealed in 1598. Handley gives details about fabrics used to make caps (2016, 54–7). capon (A) A capon is a cockerel fattened for the table by castration, regarded as a desirable foodstuff for the well to do. The word can be used as an insult, suggesting stupidity or cowardice (in modern terms, lacking balls). (B) Jacques characterizes the fifth age of man as that of the justice ‘in fair round belly, with good capon lin’d’ (AYL 3.1.154). As one might expect, capons feature in Falstaff’s diet. Hal suggests that Falstaff would only have a real interest in knowing the time of day if ‘hours were cups of sack and minutes capons’ (1H4 1.2.7). Poins imagines Falstaff selling his soul to the devil ‘for a cup of madeira and a cold capon’s leg’ (1.2.110–11). As ‘that reverend Vice, that grey Iniquity, that father Ruffian’ he is regarded by Hal as ‘neat and cleanly’ only in his ability ‘to carve a capon and eat it’ (2.4.441–2, 444). These dietary predilections are confirmed when his bill for food at the tavern is found to show 2 shillings and 2 pence for a capon and 5 shillings and 8 pence for two gallons of sack, but only a halfpenny for bread. Dromio of Ephesus in CE is anxious that his master will be late for dinner because ‘the capon burns, the pig falls from the spit’ (1.2.44). Lance describes the misbehaviour of his dog Crab, whom he has delivered as a present from Proteus to Silvia: ‘I came no sooner into the dining room but he steps me to the trencher, and steals her capon’s leg’ (TGV 4.4.9). When Hamlet refers to the force-feeding of capons in telling the King that he lives on promises – ‘I eat the air, promise-crammed. You cannot feed capons so’ (3.2.90–1). He refers to his role as Claudius’ heir to the throne. Dromio of Syracuse calls his brother ‘Mome, malthorse, capon, coxcomb, idiot, patch’ (CE 3.1.32) stressing his stupidity. In MA Claudio answers Benedick’s challenge to a duel by calling him a coward: ‘He hath bid me to a calf’s head and a capon, the which if I do not carve most curiously, say my knife’s naught’ (5.1.151–3). The calf’s head means a fool and the capon, here, stands for cowardice. In CYM the Second Lord insults the doltish Cloten when he boasts of his skill in fighting: CLOTEN

Every jack-slave hath his bellyful of fighting, and I must go up and down like a cock that nobody can match.

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[aside] You are cock and capon too, and you crow cock [brag] with your comb on. (2.1.20–4) The reference to the ‘comb’ is to the cockscomb worn by a Fool. (C) Vienne-Guerrin (2016) explicates the insults at greater length. See also Fitzpatrick (2011). Webster in The White Devil also deploys the ‘capon’ insult, when Vittoria says mockingly of her husband, ‘I did nothing to displease him, I carved to him at suppertime’ and Flamineo answers, ‘You need not have carved him in faith, they say he is a capon already’ (1.2.126–9). carcanet A carcanet was ‘a heavy necklace of gold and jewels that resembled a collar’ (Ashelford, 1988). The poet in the Sonnets imagines his lover as treasure locked in a cabinet, too valuable to be looked at too often, ‘stones of worth . . . captain [chief] jewels in the carcanet’ (52). Antipholus of Ephesus uses as his excuse for being late home to his wife that he lingered in the goldsmith’s shop ‘to see the making of her carcanet’ (CE 3.1.4). Norris (1938) has illustrations. cards Cards refers to the games played at table and often for money, using cards quite similar to those of the present day. Card games were played at all levels of society. In the cony-catching pamphlets by Robert Greene, such as A Notable Discovery of Coosnage (1591) and The Second Part of Conny-Catching (1592), there are descriptions of how card games were used by tricksters to cheat the unwary. Antony uses the language of cards when he accuses Cleopatra of betraying him: she, Eros, has Packed cards with Caesar, and false-played my glory Unto an enemy’s triumph (AC 4.14.18–20) He means that she has shuffled the cards in Caesar’s favour, thus allowing him to beat (or trump) Antony. ‘Trump’ is a corruption of ‘triumph’. There may be an extensive metaphor from card-playing here, since Antony refers both to ‘knave’ and ‘the queen – Whose heart I thought I had, for she had mine’. In KJ Lewis the Dauphin, angered by Pandulph’s advice to make peace with King John, exclaims: ‘Have I not the best cards for the game / To win this easy match play’d for a crown?’ (5.2.105–6). The view of card-playing in TNK is less adversarial; the Wooer invites the Jailor’s Daughter to go with him: ‘Come, sweet, we’ll go to dinner / And then we’ll play at cards’ (5.2.107–8). Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness (1607) features a lively scene of card-playing in a gentry household (3.2) where the names of the games are deployed for double entendres. carpet, carpet-monger (A) Nowadays a carpet is a floor-covering made from wool, or other hard-wearing fabrics. The word originally meant the thick fabric from which the 62

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carpet was made. In early modern England carpets were not commonly used as floor coverings; those woven in England were used to cover tables, chair seats, chests and other furniture. The floor carpet was an item of luxury. (B) Bolingbroke’s reference to marching ‘upon the grassy carpet of this plain’ (R2 3.3.50) does imply the idea of the carpet as a floor-covering, as does Marina’s in PER where she imagines strewing her mother’s grave with flowers: ‘The purple violets and marigolds / Shall as a carpet hang upon the green / While summer days doth last’ (4.1.13– 15). When Grumio, preparing Petruccio’s house for his imminent return, asks if all is ready, ‘the carpets laid, and everything in order’ (TS 4.12.44–5), he may mean coverings for tables rather than floors, but it is not clear which applies. Benedick in MA meditates on the extent to which his life has been overturned by love, and considers that ‘a whole bookful of these carpet-mongers, whose names run smoothly in the even road of a blank verse’ (5.12.32–4) would not match him. A carpet-monger would literally mean a seller of carpets, but Benedick probably means something more like ‘pretend lovers’, on analogy with ‘carpet-knight’. Sir Toby Belch tells Viola/Cesario that Sir Andrew Aguecheek is ‘a knight, dubbed with unhatched rapier and on carpet consideration’ (TN 3.4.229–31), meaning that ‘he has been knighted at court rather than on the battlefield’ (Elam, Arden edn, 2008, note). (C) For further information about early modern carpets and other textiles, see Kerridge (1985). casement see window cat, musk-cat, gib-cat (A) Felis domesticus, a small carnivorous animal, kept to destroy rodents or as a pet. In early modern England cats were one of the animals regarded as witches’ familiars. A gib or gib-cat (pronounced with a hard ‘g’) means a male cat, or one that has been castrated. Cat was also slang for prostitute. (B) The familiarity of the cat in the Elizabethan household is suggested by the many proverbial expressions or similes in which they feature. ‘They’ll take suggestion as a cat laps milk’ (TEM 2.1.289); ‘What though care killed a cat’ (MA 5.1.132–3); ‘The mouse ne’er shunned the cat as they did budge/From rascals worse than they’ (COR 1.7.43–4); ‘Playing the mouse in absence of the cat’ (H5 1.2.172); ‘I am as vigilant as a cat to steal cream’ (1H4 4.2.57). Falstaff calls himself ‘as melancholy as a gib cat’ (1H4 1.2.71), referring to a proverbial expression for melancholy (Dent, C129). When Lady Macbeth accuses Macbeth of cowardice, ‘Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would”, / Like the poor cat i’th’adage’ (1.7.44–5) she chooses a simile involving a cat proverb (Dent, C144, ‘The cat wanted to eat fish but dared not get her feet wet’). Hamlet, indicating to Laertes that their fight over Ophelia’s grave will inevitably have consequences, says gnomically, Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew and dog will have his day. (5.1.280–1) 63

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Cats can represent small insignificant creatures, as when the dying Mercutio in RJ comments bitterly, ‘Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death!’ (3.1.102–3). Romeo, similarly, mourns that ‘every cat and dog, / And little mouse, every unworthy thing’ can look on Juliet while he is forbidden to do so (3.3.30–1). Thersites in TC insults Menelaus by saying that while he would not care ‘to be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a lizard, an owl, a puttock, or a herring without a roe’ (5.1.59–60) it would be worse to be Menelaus. Hamlet classes the cat with small creatures often thought to be witches’ familiars when he asks his mother ironically, ‘For who that’s but a queen – fair, sober, wise – / Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib, / Such dear concernings hide?’ (3.4.196–8) To call someone a cat is an insult. Lysander repels the clinging Hermia with the words, ‘hang off, thou cat, thou burr!’ (MND 3.2.260). Bertram, listening to Parolles belittling him, repeats the word emphatically to show the strength of his feelings: ‘I could endure anything but a cat, and now he’s a cat to me’ (AW 4.3.233–4), ‘A pox upon him! For me, he’s more and more a cat’ (4.3.257–8), ‘A pox on him! He’s a cat still’ (4.3.269). These uses could be inflected with the slang meaning of prostitute. In LUC Tarquin is called ‘a foul night-waking cat’ who dallies with Lucrece like a cat with a mouse (554). The cat as the producer of perfume from the secretions of its anal gland (in fact, the civet cat is meant) is mentioned in AYL and KL . Touchstone, debating court and country manners with Corin, tells him that the hands of a courtier, scented with civet, are by no means pleasant to kiss, civet being ‘the very uncleanly flux of a cat’ (3.2.64–5). King Lear is less judgemental when he considers the naked body of Poor Tom, ‘unaccommodated man’: ‘Thou ow’st the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume’ (3.4.101–3). Lavatch in AW uses cat references to be insulting when Parolles appears: ‘Here is a pur of Fortune’s, sir, or of Fortune’s cat, but not a musk-cat, that has fallen into the unclean fishpond of her displeasure and, as he says, is muddied withal’ (5.2.19–22). ‘Pur’ means ‘piece of dung’, punning on the cat’s purr; Lavatch refers to the humiliation Parolles has undergone at the hands of the soldiers. When Mercutio calls Tybalt ‘Prince (or King) of Cats’ (RJ 2.4.19, 3.1.76) he is probably referring back to Tybert, prince of cats in medieval animal fables about Reynard the Fox (Weis, Arden edn, 2012, 208). Since he also calls Tybalt a ‘ratcatcher’ (3.1.74), he is clearly intending to be provocative. ‘Tyb’ (or Tib) was a popular name for a cat. When Benedick in MA says that if he is ever seen to be ‘pale with love’ then his friends are welcome to ‘hang [him] in a bottle like a cat and shoot at [him]’ (1.1.239), presumably referring to the torture of cats for sport (as described in Thomas, 1983, 109). Shylock is perhaps the only character to express a favourable opinion of the cat. In his speech at Antonio’s trial about personal inclinations or quirks, he remarks that there are people who ‘are mad if they behold a cat’, yet there is no firm reason why ‘a harmless necessary cat’ should be the object of such dislike (MV 4.1.47, 54). When Bottom boasts of his acting skills, saying he ‘could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in’ (MND 1.2.25) he means a ranting part, presumably referring to the passion and violence he 64

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could simulate. In MAC the First Witch responds to the call of her familiar, GrayMalkin, in the opening scene, and the cat gives the signal to start the ritual round the cauldron: ‘Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed’ (4.1.1). (C) Animal studies that provide a context for early modern thinking about human– animal relationships (though without necessarily including material on cats) include Boehrer (2002), Fudge (2006), Shannon (2013). Thomas (1983) discusses the rise in reputation of the domestic cat as a pet. The best-known early modern reference to a man’s relationship with a cat is Montaigne’s in ‘An Apologie of Raymond Sebond’ (Essayes, 2, 142–3). An attractive cat appears in the portrait of the third Earl of Southampton imprisoned in the Tower of London. cates Cates is an old word for choice food or delicacies. Antipholus of Ephesus in CE welcomes Balthasar to his house, conventionally downplaying what he has to offer: ‘though my cates be mean, take them in good part’ (3.1.28). Hotspur professes to find the company of Glendower so tedious that to avoid it he would prefer to live With cheese and garlic in a windmill, far, Than feed on cates and have him talk to me In any summer house in Christendom. (1H4 3.1.156–8). Petruccio puns twice on Katherina’s name when he claims that he is born to tame her ‘And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate / Conformable as other household Kates’ (TS 2.1.279–80). ‘Wild Kate’ suggests wildcat, and the ‘household Kates’ imply delicacies. See also 1H6 2.3.79. caudle is a warm fortifying drink given to invalids, made with ale, beer or wine mixed with eggs and spices, and sweetened, somewhat like posset. Shakespeare’s uses tend to be mocking. At the end of his speech deriding the love-lorn state of the King of France and the others in LLL Berowne calls, ‘A caudle, ho!’ (4.3.171), implying they could do with a cure. With an effort at wit, Jack Cade in 2H6 jeers at Lord Saye, who has been taken prisoner by the rebels and claims to be ill, promising, ‘Ye shall have a hempen caudle then and the help of hatchet’ (4.7.83). The hangman’s rope was made of hemp, and the hatchet would be used for beheading. Apemantus in TIM mocks Timon, who hast cast off the trappings of wealth and is now living wild in the woods, telling him to expect no comforts from nature: ‘Will the cold brook, / Candied with ice, caudle thy morning tastes / To cure thy o’ernight’s surfeit?’, 4.3.224–6). Playing wittily on words, he uses ‘caudle’ as a verb, ironically suggesting that the icy brook will make Timon’s ‘morning tastes’ into a curative drink for his hangover. See Fitzgerald (2011), who gives a contemporary recipe for making a caudle. caviare A delicacy consisting of sturgeon’s roe that has been salt-cured, the word is used once, metaphorically, by Shakespeare in Hamlet’s address to the Players. He refers to a 65

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speech by the First Player from a play which was not appreciated by the majority: ‘ ’twas caviare to the general’ (HAM 2.2.374–5). See Fitzpatrick (2011) for more information. Thompson and Taylor (Arden edn, 2015) note that the word was probably pronounced with four syllables. chain (A) Chains were made of a series of connected links usually of metal; chains worn as jewellery might be made of precious metal and ornamented with pearl or other precious stones. (B) In CE the valuable chain of gold, worth two hundred ducats, that Antipholus of Ephesus has commissioned from the goldsmith Angelo for his wife Adriana, but decides in a fit of anger to give to the Courtesan instead, causes endless trouble. Angelo presses the chain upon the astonished Antipholus of Syracuse, mistaking him for his twin brother, refusing present payment because he plans to come for it later to the house of the other Antipholus. When he duly turns up, Antipholus of Ephesus is in turn astonished, not having received the chain. Angelo, who is relying on the money to pay debts of his own, stresses its value: Saving your merry humour, here’s the note How much your chain weighs to the utmost carat, The fineness of the gold, and chargeful fashion (CE 4.1.27–9) Antipholus of Ephesus refuses to give money for a chain he has never received, and Angelo has him arrested. Further complications ensue when the Courtesan demands the chain from Antipholus of Syracuse, again mistaking him for his brother; his refusal to give it to her brings about yet more trouble for his brother, until all is resolved in the final scene when the pairs of brothers meet at last. The chain is a complex property in the play, and its circulation performs symbolic functions. Henze considers it ‘a symbol of social bonds’ (1971, 38), which reunites Antipholus of Ephesus and his wife. But it can also be a commodity that, while intended to signify a marital bond, can signify instead its opposite (Raman, 2006, 196). Like Desdemona’s handkerchief, the chain moves from person to person, and comes to be regarded as ‘a kind of talisman’ (Finkelstein, 2012, 234). It has different meanings according to who is in possession of it at any one time. But at the end of the play it ‘has become a miraculous object returning individuals to their rightful places of customer, merchant, master, servant and prostitute’ (Van Elk, 2009, 68–9). Chains as symbolic of the ties of love appear elsewhere. In AYL , Rosalind, having fallen in love with Orlando at their first meeting, gives him a chain, which Celia remarks upon as identifying the author of the verses in Rosalind’s praise pinned on trees in the forest (AYL 3.2.176). In VA Venus wooing Adonis recalls her capture of Mars, ‘Leading him prisoner in a red-rose chain’ (110). In LLL the wooing gift sent to Maria from her lover is the subject of witty banter:

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This and these pearls to me sent Longaville. The letter is too long by half a mile. PRINCESS

I think no less. Dost thou not wish in heart The chain were longer and the letter short? (LLL 5.2.53–6) Chains could be worn ornamentally by men as well as women. The rich but foolish Master Slender in MW sends to the Wise Woman of Brentford to know ‘whether one Nim . . . that beguiled him of a chain, had the chain or no’; the Wise Woman replies unhelpfully that ‘the very same man that beguiled Master Slender of his chain – cozened him of it’ (MW 4.5.30–2, 35–7). In TN Malvolio wears a chain, but it signifies his office as steward of Olivia’s household. When Sir Toby dismisses him with the words, ‘Go, sir, rub your chain with crumbs’ (2.3.116–17) he is snobbishly reminding him of his inferior status. (C) On the chain in CE , see articles by Henze (1971), Raman (2005), Finkelstein (2012) and Van Elk (2009). Jones and Stallybrass discuss the circulation of a chain of pearl in Middleton’s play Your Five Gallants, with further examples of the circulation of clothes in the drama of the period (2000, 193–5). On the origin of the ‘red-rose chain’ in VA , see Duncan-Jones and Woudhuysen (Arden edn, 2007, 142). chalice A chalice, from Latin calyx, cup, can mean a small goblet or drinking cup, without religious connotations. Thus Falstaff gives orders to Bardolph: ‘Take away these chalices’ (MW 3.5.26) and Claudius, when planning for Hamlet’s death in a duel, tells Laertes, ‘I’ll have preferred him / A chalice for the nonce’ (HAM 4.7.158). The song sung by the Musician in CYM who serenades Innogen on Cloten’s behalf includes a reference to ‘chaliced flowers’ (2.3.23), meaning flowers shaped like a chalice or cup. The only use of chalice drawing on its religious meaning is Macbeth’s, in his soliloquy meditating on the possibility of killing Duncan: ‘This even-handed justice / Commends th’ingredience of our poisoned chalice / To our own lips’ (MAC 1.7.10–12). It is likely, in view of Macbeth’s preoccupation with the consequences for his salvation of committing the fatal act, that the idea of the communion cup is invoked. The expression ‘a poisoned chalice’ has become proverbial. chamber, chamberer (A) A chamber was a room in a private house, often one given over to the use of a particular individual, or a bedroom; on rare occasions (as at R3 3.1.1, ‘Welcome, sweet Prince, to London, to your chamber’) it could refer to the capital city. A great chamber was a large room, often splendidly decorated, used for dining and entertaining, and sometimes the major room on the upper floor of a great house. (B) In MND when the Mechanicals plan their play it is with the great chamber of Theseus’s house in mind. Having discovered from the almanac that the moon will be up

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when they perform, Bottom sees at once how to manage the lighting: ‘Why, then may you leave a casement of the great chamber window, where we play, open; and the moon may shine in at the casement’ (MND 3.1.52–4). Perhaps Shakespeare had in mind something like the Great Chamber of Montacute House in Somerset (built c. 1595– 1601, first mentioned in Camden’s Britannia, 1607). When Lady Macbeth asks her husband, ‘Why have you left the chamber?’ (MAC 1.7.29) she may mean the grand chamber of their castle, where Duncan dined; Macbeth’s departure before his guest is an act of discourtesy. Chambers are more often private places, and on several occasions women’s chambers are violated by men. In LUC Tarquin advances on Lucrece: ‘Into the chamber wickedly he stalks’ (LUC 365). This entry is recalled by Iachimo as he steps out of the trunk into Innogen’s bedroom, where he is almost overcome with the sensual experience: That I might touch. But kiss, one kiss! Rubies unparagon’d, How dearly they do’t. ’Tis her breathing that Perfumes the chamber thus. (CYM 2.2.16–19) He must then ‘note the chamber’ so as to give a detailed description of it to Posthumus. This is a richly decorated room, befitting a king’s daughter, and Iachimo picks out the most erotic details. It was ‘hanged / With tapestry of silk and silver, the story / Proud Cleopatra’; the chimney, ‘south the chamber’ is ornamented with a chimney-piece depicting ‘chaste Dian, bathing’ and ‘the roof o’th’chamber / With golden cherubins is fretted’ (CYM 2.4.68–88). In Ophelia’s case it is the man’s chamber where the violation takes place; she sings of the young man who comes on Saint Valentine’s day to visit a maid: Then up he rose and donned his clothes And dupped the chamber door – Let in the maid that out a maid Never departed more. (HAM 4.5.52–5) In TC it is Pandarus who provides the chamber for Troilus and Cressida to consummate their affair; he ushers them off to it with a gleeful couplet: And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here Bed, chamber, pander to provide this gear. (TC 3.2.205–6) When Richard III personifies ‘grim visaged War’, having changed his nature to suit ‘this weak piping time of peace’, as a courtier who ‘capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber / To the lascivious pleasing of a lute’ (R3 1.1.12–13) he is clearly thinking of the chamber as a place for erotic encounters. Othello considers himself to lack ‘the soft parts 68

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of conversation / That chamberers have’ (OTH 3.3.268–9), meaning that he is not a ladies’ man. Falstaff has his own chamber at the Garter Inn which he rents for £10 a week (MW 1.3.7), in those days a considerable sum. It has apparently been specially decorated for him as an honoured guest. When Peter Simple comes to the inn to find him the Host says expansively, ‘There’s his chamber, his house, his castle, his standing-bed and his truckle-bed: ’tis painted about with the story of the Prodigal, fresh and new’ (MW 4.5.6–8). But he is less enthusiastic when he hears that Falstaff has a ‘fat woman’ with him: ‘Let her descend, bully, let her descend. My chambers are honourable. Fie! Privacy? Fie!’ (4.5.20–1). He does not want it believed that his chambers are being used for improper behaviour or concealment (‘privacy’, OED sense 3a). Elsewhere chambers may simply be private rooms in a more neutral sense of personal space. Mistress Quickly wants to talk privately to Falstaff (as part of the plot to trick him), and asks, ‘Sir, let me speak with you in your chamber’ (MW 4.5.114). Cardinal Wolsey is eager for Queen Katherine ‘to withdraw into your private chamber’ (H8 3.1.28) so that their conversation is not overheard, but she insists on remaining in a more public room. After the murder of Duncan, Lady Macbeth urges her husband, ‘Retire we to our chamber’ (MAC 2.2.67), referring to their bedroom, so that they can get rid of all traces of their clandestine activities. In TS the Lord has a special bedchamber in mind when he orders his servants to play a trick on Christopher Sly: ‘Carry him gently to my fairest chamber, / And hang it round with all my wanton pictures’ (Ind. 1.45–6). The Jailor’s Daughter in TNK is keen to make the cell where her father’s noble prisoners, Palamon and Arcite, are held as comfortable as possible: ‘These strewings [rushes] are for their chamber . . . The prison itself is proud of ‘em and they have all the world in their chamber’ (TNK 2.1.22–6). Chambers might be given special names. In 2H4 Mistress Quickly recalls in detail the circumstances of Falstaff’s proposal of marriage to her: ‘Thou didst swear to me upon a parcelgilt [half-gilded] goblet, sitting in my Dolphin chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, upon Wheeson week . . . to marry me, and make me thy lady wife’ (2.1.86–92). Another named room has significance for the dying King; when he learns that the chamber where he swooned was called Jerusalem he asks to be taken there: It hath been prophesied to me many years I should not die but in Jerusalem, Which vainly I supposed the Holy Land. But bear me to that chamber: there I’ll lie; In that Jerusalem shall Harry die. (2H4 4.3.364–8) (C) Girouard (1980, 88–99) describes and illustrates great chambers of the period, where masquing and dancing often took place; he calls this chamber ‘the ceremonial pivot of the house’. Buxton deduces from probate inventories of the middling sort that the chambers in households in Thame were ‘dedicated primarily to sleeping and the storage of household goods’ (2015, 221), though the principal chamber in larger houses 69

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might be used for socialising. See also Howard (1987, 78–83, 113–15). Frye discusses the furnishings of Innogen’s chamber and ‘the extent to which Innogen’s self-perceived identity is located in the visual and textual tapestries in her room’ (2010, 183). Williams (1994, 67) suggests that ‘chamber’ can mean the vagina, and that the references in TC and R3 play on this. chambermaid see servant chattels This means moveable property or possessions. Petruccio warns off anyone who might want to prevent Katherina from accompanying him home after their marriage ceremony by asserting his rights over her: ‘She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house, / My household stuff’ (TS 3.2.231–2). His apparently outrageous claim may echo the language of the tenth commandment in the Bible, which forbids a man to covet his neighbour’s property, including his wife. Pistol uses the word simply to mean property when he urges Mistress Quickly, now his wife, to ‘Look to my chattels and my moveables’ (H5 2.3.46) when he goes off to the war in France. chest A chest was a large wooden box, usually lockable, used for the storage of linen and valuables and was often in itself a valuable item, well made and finely decorated with carvings. The commonest wood was oak, but durable woods such as cypress or walnut were also used. Gremio in TS describes his rich furnishings, and has ‘in cypress chests my arras counterpoints’ (tapestry counterpanes) (2.1.355). When Antony is informed that Enobarbus has deserted him, Eros mentions that he has not taken his belongings: ‘Sir, his chests and treasure / He has not with him’ (AC 4.5.10–11). The strength of the chest is an important factor. Pericles, preparing to cast the dead body of his wife overboard, needs a strong container; the Sailor tells him that ‘we have a chest beneath the hatches, caulked and bitumed ready’ (PER 3.1.70–1). When it washes up on shore the contents are perfectly preserved, its strength and condition are wondered at, and Thaisa, the dead wife, returns to life. Mowbray in R2, asserting his loyalty to the king, tells him: A jewel in a ten-times-barred-up chest Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast. (1.1.180–1) In SON 65 the lover wonders how to preserve his beloved’s beauty: ‘Where, alack, / Shall time’s best jewel from time’s chest lie hid?’ Emmison (1976, 19–21) and Buxton (2015, 198–203) note many kinds of chest mentioned in wills and probate inventories of the period. cheverel This is kid leather, noted for its stretchiness, and commonly used in metaphors to signify moral pliability. The saying ‘He has a conscience like a cheverel’s skin’ was proverbial (Dent C 608). In H8 the Old Lady brushes aside Anne Boleyn’s assertion that 70

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she does not wish to be queen, observing cynically that the gifts that would accompany such status are such that ‘the capacity of your soft cheverel conscience would receive, / If you might please to stretch it’ (H8 2.3.31–3). Feste in a verbal duel with Viola in TN comments on the ease with which words can be manipulated: ‘A sentence is but a cheverel glove to a good wit: how quickly the wrong side may be turned outward’ (TN 3.1.11–13). In another exchange of wit Mercutio suggests that Romeo is stretching out verbal skin too far: ‘O here’s the wit of a cheverel, that stretches from an inch narrow to an ell broad’ (RJ 2.4.81–2). child, childish, childbed (A) Child can mean an infant, or a young person under the age of puberty, or the offspring, whether young or not, of human parents. In the early modern period it could mean specifically a girl. More rarely, the word could signify a young man of noble birth. There are numerous figurative uses. Laslett (1971b, 119) considers that children were ubiquitous in early modern society and at least 70 per cent of all households contained them. (B) Many of Shakespeare’s most emotionally laden uses of the word ‘child’ occur in exchanges between parents and their adult children. In TEM Alonso at his reconciliation with his son Ferdinand reflects on his past sins: ‘O, how oddly will it sound that I / Must ask my child forgiveness’ (5.1.197–8). Lear, returning to consciousness, tries to make sense of what he sees: ‘Do not laugh at me, / For, as I am a man, I think this lady / To be my child Cordelia’ (KL 4.7.68–70). Old Capulet, believing Juliet to be dead, exclaims over her body: O child, O child, my soul and not my child! Dead art thou, alack, my child is dead, And with my child my joys are buried. (RJ 4.5.62–4) Leonato in MA , grieving for his daughter Hero’s misfortune, rejects his brother’s attempt at comfort: Bring me a father that so loved his child, Whose joy of her is overwhelmed like mine, And bid him speak of patience. (5.1.8–10) The most poignant use of the word is probably Constance’s in her lament for her dead son: ‘Grief fills the room up of my absent child’ (KJ 3.3.93). King Philip rebukes her: ‘You are as fond of grief as of your child’ (3.3.92). Maternal grief, like other forms of feminine sorrow, was often regarded as excessive. Parent/child relations are fraught in many ways. Jessica in MV is conflicted in her feelings for her father: ‘What heinous sin is it in me / To be ashamed to be my father’s child!’ (2.3.16–17). Lancelet the Clown later tells her that ‘the sins of the father are to be laid upon the children’ (3.5.1–2) and she should wish herself not to be Shylock’s 71

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daughter. In KL , the play to which parent/child relations are most central, it is often the wicked characters who invoke the idea of filial duty and parental affection. Goneril tells her father that she loves him ‘as much as child e’er loved, or father found’ (1.1.59). Edmund, having told Edgar of dire predictions ‘as of unnaturalness between the child and the parent’ (1.2.146–7), hypocritically claims to their father Gloucester to have lectured him on ‘how manifold and strong a bond / The child was bound to the father’ (2.1.47–8). Cornwall praises Edmund for showing Lear ‘a childlike office’, in what is in fact a malevolent deception, to which Edmund responds, ‘It was my duty, sir’ (2.1.106–7). Lear sees himself as a wronged father, and calls for divine vengeance on Goneril for her ingratitude, that either she be rendered infertile or that she bear a ‘child of spleen’ so that ‘she may feel / How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is / To have a thankless child’ (1.4.279–81). Edgar, rejected by Gloucester, compares his own situation with Lear’s: ‘He childed as I fathered’ (3.7.107). As Foakes notes (KL , Arden edn, 1997, 294), Shakespeare seems to have coined both these terms. He also coins another term for the complex dynamic of relationships that the play explores, when Cordelia prays to the gods to restore Lear to sanity: ‘Th’untuned and jarring sense, O wind up / Of this childchanged father’ (4.7.16–17). Lear has been changed by his children into a new understanding of himself, but in the process he has become child-like himself, now requiring the care due to an infant. That ‘an old man is twice a child’, as Hamlet says contemptuously of Polonius, ‘that great baby’ (2.2.319, 322), is a common idea, most famously evoked in Jacques’ speech on the seven ages of man, whose final manifestation is ‘second childishness and mere oblivion’ (AYL 2.7.166). Falstaff’s death, recounted by Mistress Quickly, may also conflate the two extremes of life: ‘ ’A made a finer end, and went away an it had been any christom child’ (H5 2.3.11–12). Childhood is often associated with weakness and impotence. The state of ‘childhood innocence’ that Helena nostalgically recalls in MND (3.2.202) is not often invoked. In WT Camillo notes the closeness of Leontes and Polixenes who ‘were trained together in their childhoods’ (1.1.22–3) and Polixenes sentimentally recalls the times when they ‘changed . . . innocence for innocence’ (1.2.69), but the negative connotations of the condition of childhood are more common. The Countess of Auvergne responds to her first sight of Talbot by calling him ‘a child, a silly dwarf’ (1H6 2.3.21). Sicinius the tribune refers to the ‘childish friendliness’ with which the citizens have foolishly given Coriolanus their voices (COR 2.3.172). Gardiner in H8 refers to ‘childish pity’ (5.2.58), Tarquin bids farewell to ‘childish fear’ (LUC 274), Venus blames ‘childish error’ (VA 898), and Romeo, referring to Cupid, regards ‘love’s weak childish bow’ as ineffectual against Rosaline’s chastity (RJ 1.1.209). ‘I am a child to chiding’, says Desdemona pathetically (OTH 4.2.116), after Othello has abused her. ‘I am no child, no babe’, asserts Katherina angrily (TS 4.3.76), in the face of Petruccio’s attempts to suppress her. Pretending pity for his brother Clarence, Richard of Gloucester claims, ‘I am too childish-foolish for this world’ (R3 1.3.141). Childbirth features in PER and WT and is treated tenderly. Pericles gives vent to his anguish over the body of his wife, whom he believes to have died giving birth to Marina: 72

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‘A terrible childbed hast thou had, my dear, / No light, no fire. Th’unfriendly elements / Forgot thee utterly’ (PER 3.1.56–8). A more blusterous birth never had babe; ... Thou art the rudeliest welcome to this world That ever was prince’s child. (3.1.28–31) In WT Hermione also experiences a turbulent childbirth. ‘My child? Away with’t!’ exclaims Leontes at the sight of his new daughter (2.3.130). The baby is taken from her mother who is ‘proclaimed a strumpet; with immodest hatred / The childbed privilege denied’ (3.2.100–1). The Old Shepherd who finds the abandoned baby is full of pity: ‘What have we here? Mercy on’s, a bairn! A very pretty bairn. A boy or a child, I wonder? . . . They were warmer that got this than the poor thing is here’ (3.3.68–70, 73–4). (This is Shakespeare’s only definite use of ‘child’ to mean girl.) Perdita is the ‘lost child’, as Paulina calls her (5.1.40), who is miraculously found; but the fate of her brother, Mamillius, ‘our prince, jewel of children’ (5.1.115), a ‘gallant child’ (1.1.38) and his father’s delight, is sadder, one of Shakespeare’s precocious little boys who dies, like Arthur in KJ , the princes in the Tower in R3 and young Macduff in MAC , in childhood. Children are important for the preservation of lineage. ‘Infer the bastardy of Edward’s children’, Richard of Gloucester instructs Buckingham (R3 3.5.75), and when this is not sufficient, two murderers are employed to make away with ‘the gentle babes’ (4.3.9). Richard tries to persuade Queen Elizabeth to woo his daughter on his behalf, promising her heirs: ‘Your children were vexation to your youth, / But mine shall be a comfort to your age’ (4.4.305–6). Children feature in Richmond’s vision for the future of the country, as he encourages his soldiers to fight: If you do free your children from the sword Your children’s children quits it in your age. (5.3.261–2) Children represent lineage and the future in MAC . ‘Your children shall be kings’, Macbeth muses in wonderment to Banquo after the appearance of the Witches, later asking, ‘Do you not hope your children shall be kings?’ (1.3.87, 119–20). His highest compliment to his wife, despite her claim to be ready to kill her own baby if she had sworn to do it, is to wish her to ‘bring forth men-children only’ (1.7.73), since only male children would be appropriate for a woman of such spirit. Desiring a son of his own, Macbeth is anxious to do away with the sons of others. He does not succeed with Fleance, but he ensures that Macduff’s son does not survive. Macduff receives the news of the murders of his whole family at first with disbelief: ‘My children too? . . . My wife killed too?’, and then reflects bitterly, ‘He hath no children’ (4.3.212, 214, 219). Childhood is a concept often used figuratively, especially in the sense of product or offspring. ‘Be a child o’ th’ time’, Antony urges Caesar (AC 2.7.101), encouraging him 73

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to lend himself to the occasion. Prince Hal refers to his rival, Hotspur, as ‘this same child of honour and renown’ (1H4 3.2.139), and in the same play King Henry, hoping for an end to civil war, urges, in high style, that ‘the thirsty entrance of this soil [no more] / Shall daub her lips with her own children’s blood’ (1.1.5–6). Error is called ‘Melancholy’s child’ in JC (5.3.67), and Tarquin ‘Night’s child’ in LUC (785). Mercutio calls dreams ‘children of an idle brain’ (RJ 1.4.97), and the same idea of children as vigorous but uncontrollable is behind Cressida’s comparison of her thoughts to ‘unbridled children, grown / Too headstrong for their mother’ (TC 3.2.118–19). Another quality of childhood is poignantly expressed in Juliet’s sense that the days before her wedding is as tedious to her ‘As is the night before some festival / To an impatient child that hath new robes / and may not wear them’ (RJ 3.2.29–31). (C) Aries’ much-debated view that in medieval society ‘the idea of childhood did not exist’ (1962, 128) was taken up by Stone (1977) who argued that before the eighteenth century parents did not allow themselves to love their children because so many died young. This position has been widely critiqued by historians, for example Wrightson (1982) and Houlbrooke (1984), who provides figures on infant mortality (5–8). Belsey, however (2007, 33), observes that ‘childhood . . . was barely visible until well into the seventeenth century as a distinctive state of being’. Miller and Yavneh (2011) give a useful account of recent scholarship in what they call ‘the burgeoning field of childhood studies’ in this period in the introduction to their collection, which aims to treat children as subjects rather than objects as in much scholarship on the early modern family. Frick’s essay in this collection discusses the differences between early modern childhood and that of later periods, in an exploration of the significance of the codpiece in the portraiture of young boys. Brooks’s essay on child symbolism in MAC (1947) is seminal for readings of the play. The collection of essays edited by Chedgzoy et al. (2007) explores Shakespeare and childhood from a variety of perspectives. Early modern works that assume love and nurturing of children to be the first duty of parents include Gouge (1622, 498–9) and The Office of Christian Parents (1616, 224). chimney, chimney sweep, chimney piece (A) A chimney could refer to the fireplace or hearth, as well as the flue or vent over it. The chimney-piece was an ornament, often in the form of a piece of sculpture or a picture, over the fireplace, which in grand Elizabethan houses was often elaborately decorated and a centre-piece of the room. (B) In CYM Iachimo describes to Posthumus the furnishings of Innogen’s bed chamber, evidently a rich and sumptuous one, giving as much detail as he can: The chimney Is south the chamber, and the chimney-piece, Chaste Dian, bathing. Never saw I figures So likely to report themselves. The cutter Was as another Nature, dumb; out-went her, Motion and breath left out. (CYM 2.4.80–5) 74

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The chimney or fireplace is used for various purposes in other plays. In 1H4 the carriers complain of the lack of facilities in the inn: ‘They will allow us ne’er a jordan [chamberpot] and then we leak in your chimney, and your chamber lye [urine] breeds fleas like a loach’ (1H4 2.1.19–21). Falstaff, looking for a hiding place in Mistress Ford’s house, asks, ‘What shall I do? I’ll creep into the chimney’ (MW 4.2.50), but Mistress Ford rejects this plan: ‘There they always use to discharge their birding pieces’. At the end of the play Pistol, in the role of Hobgoblin at the ceremony at Herne’s oak, commands one of the children dressed as fairies, ‘Cricket, in Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap’ (MW 5.5.43). The cricket (or grasshopper) was the spirit of chimneys. Lennox tells of the unruliness of the weather on the night of Duncan’s murder: ‘where we lay / Our chimneys were blown down’ (MAC 2.3.54–5). In the dirge sung by Guiderius and Arviragus in CYM the lines ‘Golden lads and girls all must, / As chimney-sweepers, come to dust’ (4.2.261–2) have occasioned some debate as to whether the ‘chimney-sweepers’ are the men who clean chimneys with long brushes or some kind of plant, possibly a dandelion or bulrush. But like the line from Dumaine in LLL when he mocks Berowne for loving the dark complexioned Rosaline – ‘To look like her are chimney-sweepers black’ (LLL 4.3.262) – this one makes best sense when applied to the men whose faces are darkened by their trade. They may be visually the opposite of the golden lads and girls, but all meet the same fate. (C) See Thomas and Faircloth (2014), ‘Chimney-sweeper’, for the identification of the CYM reference to chimney-sweepers as plants. Harrison remarks on ‘the multitude of chimneys lately erected’ as an improvement of his time (1587, 201). chopine Chopines were shoes with high platform soles made of cork, mainly associated with women’s footwear in Spain and Italy. Hamlet welcomes the young actor who is to play the female roles: ‘What, my lady and mistress! By’r Lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last by the altitude of a chopine’ (HAM 2.2.362–4). Linthicum gives a history of these strange shoes (1936, 248–50), with illustrations; she notes an allusion in Lording Barry, Ram Alley (1611), which implies that they were worn on special occasions: ‘To see the bride trip it to church so lightly, / As if her new chopines would scorn to bruise / A silly flower’. civet This is an ingredient in perfumery made from the secretions of the anal gland of the civet cat which produce a musky smell. The mad Lear, preoccupied with the vileness of humanity generally and with women’s sexual hypocrisy in particular, begs Gloucester, ‘Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination’ (KL 4.6.125–6). In MA Don Pedro mentions as an aspect of Benedick’s transformation into a lover that ‘ ’A rubs himself with civet. Can you smell him out by that?’ (MA 3.2.46–7). The animal origins of civet are stressed in AYL when Corin and Touchstone debate the relative values of the courtier and the countryman. When Corin claims that countrymen cannot kiss hands as a gesture of courtesy because their hands smell of tar whereas the courtier’s hands ‘are perfumed with civet’, Touchstone triumphantly refutes his argument: 75

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Most shallow man! Thou worm’s meat in respect of a good piece of flesh indeed! Learn of the wise and perpend. Civet is of a baser birth than tar, the very uncleanly flux of a cat. (AYL 3.2.62–5) For information on civet used in early modern perfume, see Dugan (2011). cloak, cloak-bag (A) The cloak, a loose garment worn by both sexes over other clothing, might be full-length or short, like a cape. It might be made from a variety of materials, including taffeta, velvet and satin, often richly lined, and sometimes (by men) draped nonchalantly over one shoulder. It could be worn indoors as well as out. (B) Hamlet draws attention to the ‘inky cloak’ he wears in mourning for his father (HAM 1.2.77) and the Duke of Gloucester and his servants enter ‘in mourning cloaks’ (2H6 2.4 SD ). When Richard of Gloucester dismisses the idea of ‘wrap[ping] our bodies in black mourning gowns’ (3H6 2.1.161) he refers to the same sort of cloak. Falstaff no doubt has something more colourful in mind when he enquires of his Page, ‘What said Master Dommelton about the satin for my short cloak and slops?’ (2H4 1.2.29–31) perhaps indicating that he is planning a fashionable outfit not entirely appropriate for his years. The ‘short cloak’ may refer to the Dutch cloak, a waist-length garment with full sleeves (Bulman, Arden edn, 2016). Vincentio is horrified to see Tranio richly dressed up to impersonate Lucentio: ‘O fine villain! A silken doublet, a velvet hose, a scarlet cloak and a copotain hat!’ (TS 5.1.59–60). The poet in SON 34 refers indirectly to his lover’s betrayal, asking ‘Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day / And make me travel forth without my cloak’, the cloak as a metaphor for something protective which the lover falsely persuaded the poet that he did not need. There is perhaps an allusion to the proverb, ‘Although the sun shines, leave not your cloak at home’ (Tilley, 1950, S968). Falstaff draws on the proverb, ‘An old cloak makes a new jerkin’ (MW 1.3.16, Dent, B607) when remarking on the fact that his follower Bardolph is to take up a new trade as tapster. A cloak-bag was a protective bag designed to carry cloaks, sometimes also made of rich material. Hal insultingly refers to Falstaff as ‘that stuffed cloak-bag of guts’ (1H4 2.4.439). Pisanio packs his cloak-bag to carry the clothes Innogen will need for her male disguise (CYM 3.4.169). (C) See Linthicum (1936, 193–5) and Kelly (1970, 31–2). Portraits of Raleigh (National Gallery, 1588) and Hilliard’s miniature of an unknown man (Victoria and Albert Museum, c. 1588) show the cloak worn over one shoulder in fashionable style. clock (A) The clock is an instrument for the measurement of time. In early modern England the public clock was the most important source for most people. Such clocks, which first appeared on churches and other public buildings in the fourteenth century, struck (or chimed) the hours and (less commonly) quarter hours. Small domestic clocks, ornately decorated, were owned by the wealthy, but were not common objects. Portable clocks, or watches, were expensive status symbols. 76

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(B) Clocks are heard striking onstage in several plays, in each case at a decisive moment. In CYM Iachimo, very conscious of the passage of time, hears what must be a domestic clock during the night while he is in Innogen’s chamber, making note of its contents: ‘I lodge in fear; / Though this a heavenly angel, hell is here. / One, two, three: time, time’ (2.2.49–51). This is his signal for an abrupt departure. In JC the clock strikes in another scene of nocturnal suspense, as the conspirators plot together in Brutus’ orchard. He hears it first: ‘Peace! Count the clock.’ Cassius replies, ‘The clock hath stricken three’. Trebonius knows what it means: ‘ ’Tis time to part’ (2.1.191–2). In R3 ‘The clock striketh’ (5.3.275 SD ) as Richard prepares for battle. ‘Tell the clock there’, he orders Ratcliffe. The implication appears to be that he is lagging behind Richmond in his preparations; earlier in the scene Richmond has asked the time and been informed that it is ‘upon the stroke of four’ (5.3.235). The striking clock in TN is a little different. This is not a nocturnal scene like the others, the passage of time is not of overt significance, and the clock seems to be introduced purely to prompt Olivia’s remark, ‘The clock upbraids me with the waste of time’ (3.1.128). Time is, however, a theme in the play (Elam, Arden edn, 2008, 77–8), and Olivia becomes anxiously aware of its passing, which motivates her eager seizure of the opportunity presented by Sebastian. The poet in Sonnet 12 is also made conscious of the passing of time as he hears the clock strike. No striking of the clock is indicated in the stage directions in R3, 4.2, but the dialogue between Richard and Buckingham implies that, even if it is not heard, the characters are conscious of the possibility. Buckingham’s efforts to claim the gifts that Richard has promised are cleverly stalled by the King asking him the time; when Buckingham concedes that it is ‘upon the stroke of ten’, Richard replies, ‘Well, let it strike’. Buckingham, wrong-footed, asks, ‘Why let it strike?’, which gives Richard his opportunity to dismiss him: Because that, like a jack, thou keep’st the stroke Betwixt thy begging and my meditation. I am not in the giving vein today. (R3 4.2.112–14) The jack was a small mechanically operated figure which struck the hours on a public clock; ‘jack’ was also a derogatory term for a commoner. Richard II uses the same image to convey his sense of being subjected to another person’s will; his sense that he has become ‘Time’s numbering clock’ becomes more specific: ‘my time / Runs posting on in Bolingbroke’s proud joy, / While I stand fooling here, his jack o’the clock’ (R2 5.5.58–60). That the tick of the clock was audible appears from Hermione’s declaration to Leontes, ‘I love thee not a jar of the clock behind / What lady she her lord’ (WT 1.2.43–4). The consciousness that the passage of time is differently perceived according to one’s circumstances informs many references to clocks. Leontes refers bitterly to the desire of lovers who long for time to pass quickly so that they can be together, ‘wishing clocks more swift / Hours, minutes? Noon, midnight?’ (WT 1.2.287–8). The constraints 77

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of time are not absent from the pastoral world. When Orlando tells Rosalind that ‘there is no clock in the forest’, she responds: ‘Then there is no true lover in the forest, else sighing every minute and groaning every hour would detect the lazy foot of time as well as a clock’ (AYL 3.2.292–6). She proceeds to illustrate how ‘time travels in divers paces with divers persons’. Sonnet 57 puts the viewpoint of the lover who finds himself so enslaved to his beloved that his time is worthless unless the beloved needs him: Nor dare I chide the world-without-end-hour Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you. For some, time passes much too slowly. Innogen recounts how she has lain awake at night thinking of Posthumus, and wept ‘ ’twixt clock and clock’ (CYM 3.4.42). Juliet awaits the return of her Nurse impatiently: ‘The clock struck nine when I did send the Nurse; / In half an hour she promised to return’ (RJ 2.5.1–2). Falstaff’s sense of time is conveniently elastic, as when he tells Prince Hal and his brother how he and Hotspur ‘fought a long hour by the Shrewsbury clock’ (1H4 5.4.148). Hal has earlier remarked on the fact that time is of little importance to him: ‘What a devil hast thou to do with the time of day? Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds . . . I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous as to demand the time of day’ (1.2.6–11). Those with a reason to watch the clock include Master Ford in MW who is anxious to trap Falstaff in the act of seducing his wife and notes ‘Eleven o’clock the hour . . . better three hours too soon than a minute too late’ (2.2.293–6). In 3.2 the clock appears to strike and he notes, ‘the clock gives me my cue’ (3.2.41). Banquo, out with Fleance at night, asks his son the time, but Fleance replies, ‘The moon is down; I have not heard the clock’ (MAC 2.1.2). The luckiest are those who have no need of clocks: ‘Merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks’, sings Ver, the spring (LLL 5.2.892). Berowne draws attention to the unreliability of early modern timepieces in his speech berating himself for falling in love: What? I love, I sue, I seek a wife? A woman that is like a German clock, Still a-repairing, ever out of frame And never going aright, being a watch, But being watched that it may still go right! (LLL 3.1.185–9) Woudhuysen explains the reference to the German clock as ‘Elaborately made, often containing moving figures or people and animals . . . more valued as ornaments than as reliable timepieces’ (Arden edn, 2001). But the King of France regards the clock as a signifier of accuracy when he says of Bertram’s father that ‘his honour, / Clock to itself, knew the true minute when / Exception bid him speak’ (AW 1.2.38–40). Reignier in 1H6 connects clocks with reliability; he comments that the English soldiers fight like automatons: 78

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I think by some odd gimmers [mechanical parts] or device Their arms are set, like clocks, still to strike on; Else ne’er could they hold out as so they do. (1.2.41–3) The hourglass was also a method of telling the time, which Innogen refers to when dismissing Pisanio’s estimate of the time it would take her to reach Posthumus at Milford Haven. She mentions horse-racing wagers, ‘where horses have been nimbler than the sands / That run i’ th’ clock’s behalf’ (CYM 3.2.71–2). The hourglass is also referred to by the Duke of York in 3H6 as he prepares for death: ‘The sands are number’d that makes up my life’ (1.4.25). See also Gower in PER 5.2.1. (C) Stern’s invaluable article on time for Shakespeare’s audiences in the London theatres (2015) provides much incidental information about early modern clocks and watches. Daniell notes the amusement of earlier commentators at Shakespeare’s apparent anachronism in having a striking clock in ancient Rome; he regards this moment as significant in showing that the Julian calendar will triumph over the Gregorian (JC , Arden edn, 1998, 16–22). Sohmer’s (1999) elaborate argument for the dating of the opening of the Globe Theatre connects it to the handling of time in JC . See also bell. closet (A) A closet was a small private chamber used for reading, private study or prayer. It could also be a cabinet or small cupboard in which to keep valuables. (B) Ophelia is sewing in her closet (HAM 2.1) when Hamlet bursts in upon her, disordered in his attire. This is clearly an intrusion into her privacy. Gertrude chooses her closet as the room in which to confront Hamlet about his behaviour at the play; Polonius’s presence behind the arras when she does so (3.4) also suggests that he is out of place. Edmund, aiming to impugn the honesty of his brother Edgar, claims to their father that he has found a letter from Edgar ‘thrown in at the casement of my closet’ (1.2.60–1), which would suggest that the letter was meant to be treated as a secret. The closet as cabinet is implied when later in the play, ironically, Gloucester tells Edmund that he has received a letter ‘dangerous to be spoken of’ which he has locked in his closet (3.3.10–11). Edmund at once prepares to inform Gloucester’s enemies of it. Lady Macbeth’s Gentlewoman tells the Doctor how she has seen her mistress ‘unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon’t, read it, afterwards seal it, and again return to bed’ while fast asleep (MAC 5.1.6–8). Mark Antony, emphasizing his intimacy with Caesar, tells the people how he has found his will, ‘a parchment, with the seal of Caesar’ in his closet (JC 3.2.129). Mistress Quickly tries to hide Simple in the closet of her employer Doctor Caius, but Caius discovers him, and when she tries to defend Simple as an honest man, Caius exclaims angrily, ‘What shall de honest man do in my closet? Dere is no honest man dat shall come in my closet’ (MW 1.4.67–8). His faulty command of English makes him appear to say that no honest man enters his closet, thus excluding himself. 79

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The Earl of Warwick praises his daughter, the Countess of Salisbury, for rejecting the advances of King Edward: An honourable grave is more esteemed Than the polluted closet of a king (E3 2.598–9) Here he appears to use the word ‘closet’ to mean bedroom, although this is not a usage recorded in the period. In Sonnet 64 the poet sets up an opposition between his eyes and his heart over their share in the sight of the lover. The heart argues that it has possession, being ‘a closet never pierced with crystal eyes’; the eyes are clear, but the heart is opaque. Duncan-Jones’s note on the line (Arden edn, 1997) gives closet an anatomical meaning as ‘the pericardium or area surrounding the heart’ (OED 6a), which was available in the period. (C) Stewart (1995) examines the privacy of the closet and its function as a working space for men. Orlin (1998) challenges some of Stewart’s views and documents a wide range of purposes served by the closet for both sexes. Hackel (2005, esp. ch. 2) discusses the use of the closet by women as a study space and Longfellow describes a closet used by a young girl (2006, 321–2). clout (A) A clout can mean a piece of cloth used as a patch; a rag or worthless piece of cloth, used for cleaning, such as a dishcloth; swaddling clothes for a baby. It could also mean a piece of metal or a nail fixed to the sole of shoe to prevent wear. The term has a separate meaning in archery, signifying the target. It can also mean a blow. (B) Hamlet rudely describes Polonius as ‘that great baby . . . not yet out of his swaddling clouts’ (HAM 2.2.219–20). Young infants were wrapped closely in swaddling bands, made out of narrow strips of cloth wound round them, to keep them warm and partially restrict their movement. Shakespeare’s other uses of the word are less specific, but tend to employ the humble connotations of the word. When the First Player describes Hecuba as having ‘a clout upon that head / Where late the diadem stood’ (HAM 2.2.444–5), he means an old piece of cloth or rag, signifying the downfall of the once great queen. Scarus’s reference to driving the enemy home in defeat ‘with clouts about their heads’ (AC 4.6.6) also suggests downfall, but ‘clouts’ here may also mean blows. Richard of Gloucester recalls how in battle Queen Margaret ‘gav’st the Duke a clout / Steeped in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland’ (R3 1.3.176–7), referring to her taunting his father with a rag soaked in his child’s blood. The Nurse tells Romeo how Juliet turns ‘pale as any clout’ (RJ 2.4.197) if she hears Paris praised, though in keeping with her readiness to switch allegiance where expedient she later praises Paris: ‘Romeo’s a dishclout to him’ (3.5.220). Moth mockingly says that Armado has worn no shirt except ‘a dishclout of Jaquenetta’s, and that ’a wears next his heart for a favour [love token]’ (LLL 5.2.709–10). Constance in KJ says that if she were mad she would confuse her son with ‘a babe of clouts’ (3.3.58), meaning a rag doll. 80

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Arviragus says that in order not to disturb the sleep of Innogen, ‘I . . . put my clouted brogues from off my feet, whose rudeness / Answered my steps too loud’ (CYM 4.2.213–14). His heavy shoes, with metal studded soles, would have made a loud noise. In his rebellion, Jack Cade wants to kill all the lords and gentlemen, and orders his followers: ‘Spare none but such as go in clouted shoon’ (2H6 4.2.174), meaning peasants and working men. Knowles (Arden edn, 1999) notes that ‘clubs and clouted shoon’ was ‘a proverbial phrase for the peasant revolt in sixteenth century England’. Clout is used in the context of archery in KL (4.6.91–2), LLL (4.1.133) and 2H4 (3.2.46). (C) On the political significance of clouted shoon, see Hobday (1979). coal, sea-coal (A) Coal, a combustible black rock mined from the ground, was the fuel with which the Elizabethans heated their houses; they also cooked on open fires. It was also a source of energy for the early modern manufacturing sector in London. (B) Menenius in COR refers scathingly to ‘a pair of tribunes that have wracked for Rome, / To make coals cheap’ (5.1.16–17), meaning that they have destroyed their city to lower the price of coal because the people will be able to warm themselves by the fires of their burning houses. Burning coals were an evocative sight. Fluellen says of the red-faced Bardolph that ‘his face is all bubuncles and whelks, and knobs, and flames o’fire, and his lips blows at his nose, and it is like a coal of fire, sometimes plue [blue] and sometimes red’ (H5 3.6.101–4). Venus is described as ‘red and hot as coals of glowing fire’ (VA 36). Queen Katherine in H8 accuses Wolsey: ‘For it is you / Have blown this coal between my lord and me’ (2.4.77). She draws on a proverbial expression for causing a quarrel (Dent, C465). Another proverb (Dent, C464) associates hauling coals, that is menial dirty work, with putting up with insults. Samson and Gregory in RJ determine that they will ‘not carry coals . . . for then we should be colliers’ (1.1.1–2). The Boy in H5 makes an ironic joke about the military exploits of Nym and Bardolph; he remarks that ‘in Calais they stole a fire-shovel. I knew by that piece of service the men would carry coals’ (3.2.45–6). Dying coals create some emotional images. In the painting of the fall of Troy, recalled by Lucrece in the moments before she kills herself, is depicted a scene of mourning: Dying eyes gleamed forth their ashy lights, Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights. (LUC 1377–8) The grief-stricken exclamation of Leontes at recalling the face of his dead wife is the most poignant example of fire imagery: ‘Stars, stars, / And all eyes else, dead coals’ (WT 5.1.67–8). Sea-coal was good-quality coal as distinguished from charcoal. Mistress Quickly, preparing the room for the return of Doctor Caius, for whom she is housekeeper, promises the servant John Rugby ‘a posset . . . soon at night . . . at the latter end of a sea-coal fire’ (MW 1.4.7–8). In 2H4 she recalls Falstaff’s promise to marry her 81

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when they were ‘sitting in my Dolphin chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire’ (2.1.87–8). (C) See Calvert (2016) on the air pollution caused by the bringing of coal in early modern London. Stow (Annales, 1615) remarks that ‘Sea coal and pit coal is become the general fuel of this Britain Island, used in the houses of the nobility, clergy and gentry, in London and in all other cities and shires of this kingdom’ (cited in Borlik, 2011, 259). Borlik (ch. 2) discusses the responses of Shakespeare among other writers to the impact of the rising fossil fuel economy. coat (A) The term ‘coat’ seems to have been applied to several different styles of overgarments worn by men that covered mostly the upper part of the body and, unlike most kinds of cloak, had sleeves. It could also signify a garment stretching down from the waist like a petticoat, and worn by women or children, and it stands for ‘coat of arms’ in heraldry. (B) Fools were distinguished by their long coats of variegated colours. The Prologue to H8 tells the audience not to expect to see ‘a fellow / In a long motley coat guarded [trimmed] with yellow’ (14–15), meaning that the play will not feature a fool. Jacques envies Touchstone, whom he has met in the forest of Arden: ‘O that I were a fool! / I am ambitious for a motley coat’ (AYL 2.7.41–2). ‘Coat’ sometimes means ‘coat of arms’ as when the Messenger in 1H6 brings news of the English defeat in battle, saying that ‘Of England’s coat one half is cut away’ (1H6 1.1.81), and Talbot later urges his countrymen ‘Either renew the fight / Or tear the lions out of England’s coat’ (1.5.27–8). In R2 Bolingbroke describes how, during his banishment, Bushy and Green have taken over his lands and ‘from my own windows torn my household coat’ (R2 3.1.24), meaning that they have defaced his family coat of arms. But when he expresses the wish that his lance ‘may enter Mowbray’s waxen coat’ (R2 1.3.75) he is referring to his adversary’s armour as if it were penetrable. There seems to be no literal reference to a coat. When Leontes is poignantly reminded of his childhood by the sight of Mamillius, and sees ‘myself unbreeched, / In my green velvet coat’ (WT 1.2.155–6), he probably means the long skirt or petticoat worn by boys as well as girls and women before they were old enough to wear breeches. Rosalind uses the word in this sense in answer to Celia’s comment on the ‘briers’ or troubles in ‘this working-day world’. Celia says that these briers are only burs of no significance but that ‘if we walk not in the trodden paths our very petticoats will catch them’. Rosalind, who is full of sorrow at this point, replies: ‘I could shake them off my coat; these burs are in my heart’ (AYL 1.3.13–17). (C) For more information, see Kelly (1970, 33–5). She cites Stubbes (1583, sig. C4v), who describes ‘the varytie of coates and Ierkins’. codpiece (A) The codpiece is a flap or pouch, sometimes padded or shaped, attached to the front of a man’s hose or breeches, during the period between the fifteenth and the early seventeenth centuries. It also featured in boys’ clothing. It might take the form of ‘an ornate phallic sheath’ (Fisher, 2011, 103), but could be less obtrusive. It was starting 82

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to go out of fashion in Shakespeare’s time. ‘Cod’ is derived from the Middle English word for scrotum, and ‘cods’ meant testicles. (B) In TGV Lucetta, helping Julia disguise herself as a young man, persuades her that a decorative codpiece added to her breeches is an essential part of the costume, although Julia is at first unwilling: ‘Out, out, Lucetta, that will be ill-favoured’ (TGV 2.7.54). Lucetta insists: A round hose, madam, now’s not worth a pin Unless you have a codpiece to stick pins on (TGV 2.7.55–6) Such a codpiece may well be a fashion item designed to capture attention, as a reference in Webster’s The White Devil suggests; Brachiano, maddened by poison, thinks he can see the devil wearing a codpiece ‘stuck full of pins / With pearl o’ th’ head of them’ (5.3.100–1). Julia thus becomes a ‘codpiece daughter’ like the similarly disguised Moll in Dekker and Middleton’s The Roaring Girl (2.2.90). While the dialogue between Julia and Lucetta pokes fun at the association of the codpiece with masculine identity, emphasizing its detachability, Berowne’s address in LLL to Cupid as ‘Prince of plackets, king of codpieces’ (LLL 3.1.179) conflates the codpiece with the sexual organ it covers, and uses the two items of clothing as synecdoches for the two sexes. The Fool in KL also identifies the codpiece with the penis in his bitter song commenting on the way that men are led into acts of folly by their baser urges: The codpiece that will house Before the head has any, The head and he shall louse: So beggars marry many. (3.2.27–30) Shortly afterwards the Fool remarks ambiguously at the entrance of Kent, ‘Marry, here’s grace and a codpiece – that’s a wise man and a fool’ (3.2.40–1), not making clear who is to be identified in which role. The codpiece is similarly used as a disrespectful signifier for a man by Autolycus who boasts of his ability ‘to geld a codpiece of a purse’ while performing as a ballad singer (WT 4.4.615). Borachio refers to the absurd appearance of the outsize codpiece when he mentions the obsession of young men with fashion, which causes them to dress ‘sometime like god Bel’s priests in the old church window, sometime like the shaven Hercules in the smirched worm-eaten tapestry, where his codpiece seems as massy as his club’ (MA 3.3.130–3). No specific tapestry seems to be intended. (C) Fisher (2006) examines the role of the codpiece in shaping ideas about masculine identity. See also Williams (1994), ‘codpiece’. Frick (in Miller and Yavneh, 2011) explores the significance of the codpiece in continental portraiture of young and adolescent boys. Hercules was a common subject in tapestry, for example, ‘The Triumph of Hercules’ tapestry, on display at Hampton Court Palace, made for Henry VIII . 83

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coffer (A) A coffer was a strong box or a chest for storing valuables, but the word can also mean funds or financial resources. (B) Most uses of the term are to wealth or financial holdings in general. In MW Falstaff plans to fleece Master Ford of his money by first seducing his wife. ‘I will use her as the key of the cuckoldly rogue’s coffer, and there’s my harvest-home’ (2.2.259– 60), he tells a man he believes to be Master Brook. But this is actually Ford in disguise, who is filled with anguish at the prospect of his wife succumbing to Falstaff’s advances: ‘See the hell of having a false woman: my bed shall be abused, my coffers ransacked, my reputation gnawn at’ (2.2.276–7). ‘Hold, there’s half my coffer’, says Viola offering a reward to Antonio in TN (3.4.343). Claudio in MM , explaining why he and Juliet have not been able to get married, says that they have not been able to retrieve ‘a dower / remaining in the coffer of her friends’ (1.2.139–40), which suggests that the ‘friends’ have financial control over the money. Kings are often concerned about their finances. Lord Hastings, one of the rebels against Henry IV, notes that ‘his coffers sound / With hollow poverty and emptiness’ (2H4 1.3.74–5). Richard II confesses that ‘our coffers with too great a court / And liberal largesse are grown somewhat light’ (R2 1.4.43–4), and his solution is to make use of someone else’s. Hearing that his uncle John of Gaunt is nearing death he announces gaily that The lining of his coffers shall make coats To deck our soldiers for these Irish wars. (R2 1.4.61–2) ‘Lining’ may refer to cloth, but more probably refers to the money represented by the coffers. The word is used literally in TS when Gremio describes his wealth: ‘In ivory coffers have I stuffed my crowns [coins worth five shillings]’ (2.1.354). Pericles has a ‘satin coffer’ in which to bury the body of his dead wife (PER 3.166), which survives being thrown into the sea. Othello orders Iago to ‘go to the bay and disembark my coffers’ (OTH 2.1.207) on arriving in Cyprus. Sir Hugh Evans thinks that Falstaff might have hidden in the coffers of Ford’s house (MW 3.3.196), and Mistress Ford expects her husband will search for him there (4.2.56–9). (C) See also chest. contract, handfast (A) Contract is the usual term for betrothal in early modern England, signifying an engagement to be married. It was celebrated in a variety of ways, often by an exchange of gifts, and clasping of hands, accompanying a spoken promise. The promise might take the form of sponsalia per verba de praesenti or sponsalia per verba de futuro. If a couple agreed to marry, using the present tense (‘I do take thee to wife’), this constituted a valid marriage according to canon law and was binding. The church, however, urged couples to solemnize their vows in a formal ceremony. (B) In TEM the goddess Iris announces that she has descended to earth ‘a contract of true love to celebrate’ (4.1.83), but such contracts are rarely without problems in 84

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Shakespeare’s plays. In comedies, complex contractual arrangements usually work out for the best. In MND Demetrius is fortunate in finding himself eventually united with Helena, the woman to whom he was originally betrothed, after Egeus has tried to enforce his marriage to his daughter Hermia. Olivia in TN , having exchanged vows with Sebastian discovers that, had she married Cesario (the disguised Viola) she ‘would have been contracted to a maid’, but could be said to be ‘betrothed both to a maid and man’ (5.1.257, 259). The ceremony she has undergone with Sebastian is described by the Priest: A contract of eternal bond of love, Confirmed by mutual joinder of your hands, Attested by the holy close of lips, Strengthened by interchangement of your rings, And all the ceremony of this compact Sealed in my function, by my testimony. (TN 5.1.152–7) As Cook says (1991, 175–6) this is a betrothal, not a wedding, although it entitles the couple to call themselves husband and wife. Despite the efforts of Anne Page’s parents in MW to marry her off according to their own inclinations, in the play’s final moments, Master Fenton, her secret lover, announces to the surprise of all that ‘she and I, long since contracted, / Are now so sure that nothing can dissolve us’ (5.5.217–8). In TGV Valentine tells his treacherous friend Proteus that he is betrothed to Silvia, and ‘our marriage hour . . . determined of’ (2.4.177–9). Later, Silvia tries to deter Proteus’ courtship by reminding him of ‘Valentine, thy friend . . . to whom, thyself art witness, / I am betrothed’ (4.2.105–7). Her reference to Proteus as a witness suggests that she and Valentine have (offstage) made a formal contract to marry (as Carroll’s notes in the Arden edn, 2004, suggest). Valentine is prepared to forget all of this at the end of the play in the face of Proteus’ penitence, and even offers to give his friend ‘all that was mine in Silvia’ (5.4.83), but the play contrives to end happily. In CYM Cloten attempts to prove to Innogen that her marriage to the lower-born Posthumus, which he refuses to recognize as such, is not legally binding: The contract you pretend with that base wretch, One bred of alms, and fostered with cold dishes, With scraps o’ th’ court, it is no contract, none; (2.3.113–15) But his snobbish dislike of the union is not widely shared, and at the play’s conclusion Innogen’s father Cymbeline is happy to ‘learn our freeness of a son-in-law’ (5.5.420). Juliet, however, is confronted by a betrothal dilemma which turns out tragically. Her declaration of love to Romeo in the balcony scene appears to constitute a contract, though one that fills her with foreboding, as she tells him: ‘I have no joy of this contract tonight; / It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden’ (RJ 2.2.117–18). The contract is duly 85

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solemnized by Friar Laurence, but it ends in disaster. At the end of the play the Friar is called upon to explain the situation to bereaved parents. He describes how, although Juliet was ‘Romeo’s faithful wife’, yet her father ‘Betroth’d and would have married her perforce / To County Paris’ (5.3.238–9), with tragic results. In KL Edmund’s treacherous relationship with the two sisters, Goneril and Regan, is exposed by Albany, Goneril’s husband, when the dying Regan tries to give Edmund the rights of her husband (5.3. 75–9). Albany retorts, using ironically legalistic language: For your claim, fair sister, I bar it in the interest of my wife: ’Tis she is subcontracted to this lord And I, her husband, contradict your banns. (5.3.85–8) When the deaths of the sisters are announced, Edmund comments, ‘I was contracted to them both; all three / Now marry in an instant’ (5.3.227–8). The young King Henry VI runs into trouble with his arranged marriages. First, he is persuaded by his uncle Gloucester to agree to a dynastic union with the French Earl of Armagnac’s daughter as ‘the only means / To stop effusion of our Christian blood’ (1H6 5.1.8–9). He has little say in the matter, except to send the prospective bride a token ‘in argument and proof of [the] contract’ (5.1.46). But subsequently he is persuaded by the Earl of Suffolk that Margaret, daughter of Duke Reignier, is a better choice. Gloucester is dismayed by Henry’s enthusiasm for this new prospect, and reminds him of the problems: You know, my lord, your highness is betrothed Unto another lady of esteem; How shall we then dispense with that contract, And not deface your honour with reproach? (5.4.26–9) But Suffolk, who is Margaret’s lover and has his own reasons for promoting the match, prevails, playing on Henry’s eagerness with specious arguments: For what is wedlock forced but a hell, An age of discord and continual strife? (5.4.63–4) This in fact is exactly what Henry ends up with, once the marriage comes about. As Rosalind notes there can be a significant gap in time between ‘the contract of [a] marriage and the day it is solemnized’ (AYL 3.2.309). In MM this gap between the time of the contract and that of ‘the nuptial appointed’ (3.1.214) is critical for Mariana, whose dowry then goes missing and Angelo, her husband ‘on a pre-contract’ (4.1.72) casts her off. But the Duke, with Isabella’s collusion, arranges the bed-trick whereby Angelo will ‘perform an old contracting’ by sleeping with Mariana and thus Angelo becomes 86

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technically and legally her husband. Falstaff, seeking to make money from his position as a recruiting officer, looks for men who will offer him bribes not to serve as soldiers, including ‘contracted bachelors, such as had been asked twice on the banns’ (1H4 4.2.17–18). In WT Florizel attempts to bring about a formal betrothal to Perdita (whose real identity he does not yet know) calling on the Shepherd (whom Perdita believes to be her father) to ‘contract us ’fore these witnesses’ (4.4.395) and again to ‘Mark our contract’ (4.4.422). But the disguised Polixenes (one of the witnesses) then reveals himself with the words, ‘Mark your divorce, young sir, / Whom son I dare not call’. Later Perdita appears to believe that contract has been made, though not that it will be fulfilled. When she and Florizel arrive at Leontes’ court and hear that Polixenes is in pursuit of them and the Shepherd threatened with death, she exclaims, ‘O, my poor father! / The heaven sets spies upon us, will not have / Our contract celebrated’ (5.1.201– 3). But Leontes is happy in the final moments to tell Hermione that ‘This your son-inlaw, / And son unto the king . . . / Is troth-plight to your daughter’ (5.3.149–51). In CYM the Queen sneeringly refers to Pisanio, the servant of Posthumus and friend to Innogen, as ‘the agent for his master / And the remembrancer of her to hold / The handfast to her lord’ (1.5.76–8). She means that Pisanio acts like an official who maintains the marriage contract between Posthumus and Innogen (discussed in Wayne, Arden edn, 2017, 80–2). This is Shakespeare’s only use of the word in this sense. (C) Dod and Cleaver (1630) discuss the contract, ‘a voluntary promise of Marriage’, and its implications at great length (sigs H1v–I7), but Swinburne (?1610) gives the most detailed contemporary account of the legal issues surrounding spousals (or contracts) in the period. He considers the wording of de futuro and de praesenti contracts and also such subjects as ‘spousals contracted by infants’ and ‘by what means spousals are dissolved’. Gouge (1622) has much to say of contracts and disapproves of the fact that many contracted couples would ‘take libertie after a contract to know their spouse, as if they were married: an unwarrantable and dishonest practice’ (202). Emmison (1973), under ‘betrothal’, discusses a wide variety of cases in Elizabethan Essex of contractual problems and offences (144–54). See Giese (2006) on contracts in TGV and TN , and Cook (1991) on the network of complexities in KL . Jacobs (2001) discusses the use of precontracts to add complexity to dramatic plotting, and suggests that the frequency with which they are used implies anxiety in the period over what actually constituted a marriage (ch. 6). Kerrigan (2016) discusses contracts, along with oaths and vows, as part of Shakespeare’s ‘binding language’. Plays concerned with issues arising from marriage contracts include Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, Wilkins, The Miseries of Enforced Marriage and Middleton, A Trick to Catch the Old One. See also marriage. copataine (copatain or copotaine) hat This is ‘A high-crowned hat in the form of a sugar-loaf’ (OED ). In TS Vincentio is horrified to see his son’s servant Tranio unfittingly dressed up in ‘a scarlet cloak and a copatain hat’ (5.1.60). Such hats were obviously conspicuous; Stubbes (1583, sig. D6v) says that they could be ‘sharp on the crowne, pearking up like a sphere, or the shafte of a steeple, standing a quarter of a yard above 87

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the crowne of their heades’. Linthicum (1936, 228) describes them as trimmed with bands and plumes or jewelled ornaments. couch (A) A couch was a piece of furniture on which to rest or sleep. The word could be synonymous with bed. Used as a verb one of its meanings was to lie down. (B) When juxtaposed with the bed, the couch seems to be the more luxurious, and perhaps more implicitly associated with sex. Lucrece’s bed is only once called a couch, when, after the rape and many verses railing against Tarquin, she starts ‘from her betumbled couch’ (LUC 1037). The Lord in TS promises Sly the tinker: We’ll have thee to a couch Softer and sweeter than the lustful bed On purpose trimmed up for Semiramis (Ind. 2.35–7) The ghost in HAM begs his son, Let not the royal bed of Denmark be A couch for luxury [lust] and damned incest (1.5.83–4) The sleepless King Henry IV wonders why sleep has deserted ‘the kingly couch’ in favour of ‘vile and loathsome beds’ (2H4 3.1.16). Pistol in MW plans to betray Falstaff’s intent to cuckold Ford ‘and his soft couch defile’ (1.3.93). Iago torments Othello with the thought that he has been deceived by Desdemona: ‘To lip [kiss] a wanton in a secure couch / And to suppose her chaste’ (OTH 4.1.71–2). Here, the adjective ‘secure’ is a transferred epithet, applying to the person doing the kissing who wrongly believes himself free from anxieties. Othello’s own use of the word, when he contrasts bed and couch, reverses the usual connotations of the words: The tyrant custom, most grave senators, Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war My thrice-driven bed of down. (1.3.230–2) Couch is used as a verb by Desdemona in the willow song, giving the words of the false lover: ‘If I court moe women, you’ll couch with more men’ (4.3.56). Antony imagines a happy afterlife for himself and Cleopatra ‘where souls do couch on flowers’ (AC 4.14.52). In KJ the grieving Constance calls on death to ‘arise forth from the couch of lasting night’ and take her to him (KJ 3.3.27). cousin (A) In early modern English cousin (sometimes informally abbreviated to ‘coz’) is a term of kinship in broader use than it is today, when the meaning is generally restricted to the relationship between the children of brothers or sisters. While Shakespeare does use the term to mean relatives of this kind, he more commonly uses it 88

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of a range of other family relationships, in blood and also through marriage, and of intimate friends and social equals. A cousin-german is a first cousin (as in TC 4.5.122). (B) In MM when Lucio tells Isabella (somewhat circuitously) that her brother has made his lover pregnant, she responds, ‘Someone with child by him? My cousin Juliet?’ Lucio asks, ‘Is she your cousin?’ and Isabella replies: Adoptedly, as schoolmaids change their names By vain though apt affection. (MM 1.4.45–8) When, however, later in the play the Duke calls Angelo ‘cousin’ (5.1.167, 245) and even ‘my noble and well-warranted cousin’ (5.1.253) it is an ironic usage, since the two men are neither related nor, as Angelo is yet to discover, on friendly terms. But the term is used between real male friends, like Theseus and Pirithous in TNK (1.1.222), and between companions (Duke Senior to Amiens, AYL 2.7.174). It is also used between men who wish to cement an alliance against someone else, like the Dukes of Somerset and Buckingham in 2H6, who both want to ‘quickly hoist duke Humphrey from his seat’ (2H6 1.1.166). King John frequently calls the Bastard ‘cousin’, wishing to keep him onside (3.1.262; 3.2.16, 27), and even ‘my gentle cousin’ (4.2.159). Richard III also calls his supporter the Duke of Buckingham ‘cousin’, with the same intent. But most usages between men who are not cousins in the modern sense indicate some degree of kinship. In 1H4, for example, the word is used by Mortimer to Hotspur (3.1.49) although they are brothers-in-law, and between Glendower and Hotspur, where the latter is the former’s son-in-law’s sister’s husband. Romeo reflects in horror on his killing of Tybalt, ‘that but an hour / Hath been my cousin’ (RJ 3.1.114–15), the more heinous because of the relationship newly created through marriage. In these two plays kinship ties are highly significant and supply much of the inter-personal dynamic. In 1H4 the Earl of Mortimer is eager to make peace between Hotspur, his sister’s husband, and the fiery Glendower, his father-in-law, constantly calling his brother-in-law cousin or coz (3.1.51, 81, 143, 165, etc.) while Hotspur’s references to Glendower as cousin (3.1.3, 56) are less conciliatory, sometimes even quite ironic, as when he tells the superstitious Welshman, ‘I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil, / By telling truth’ (1H4 3.1.54–5). In 2H4 Justices Shallow and Silence appear to be related by marriage, but are also close friends; they use the term cousin constantly to one another, and Shallow, having greeted his ‘good cousin Silence’, then enquires, ‘and how doth my cousin your bedfellow? And your fairest daughter and mine, my god-daughter Ellen?’ (3.2.5–6). Shallow also refers to Silence’s son as ‘my cousin William’. In RJ kinship alliances are of the essence. Romeo’s cousin Benvolio is his loyal supporter; his efforts to exonerate Romeo from the blame of killing Tybalt are dismissed by Capulet’s Wife, mother of Juliet: He is a kinsman to the Montague. Affection makes him false; he speaks not true. (3.1.177–8) 89

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She takes her own relationship to Tybalt seriously, exclaiming loudly at the sight of his corpse: Tybalt, my cousin, O my brother’s child! O Prince, O cousin, husband, O, the blood is spilled Of my dear kinsman! Prince, as thou art true, For blood of ours shed blood of Montague. O cousin, cousin! (3.1.148–52) Tybalt is referred to more than a dozen times as a ‘cousin’, and even as Romeo prepares to kill himself in the Capulet family tomb, he is smitten with guilt for his killing of Tybalt, whose body lies there in its ‘bloody sheet’ and begs, ‘Forgive me, cousin’ (5.3.101). In MAC , King Duncan admires Macbeth’s prowess in battle: ‘O valiant cousin, worthy gentleman’ (1.2.24); the two were cousins, and when Macbeth lists the reasons against killing Duncan, he has this uppermost in mind: ‘First, as I am his kinsman’ (1.7.13). Duncan’s historically less specific kinship with Siward, Earl of Northumberland, is drawn on by Malcolm, Duncan’s son, when he seeks to honour Siward and his family in the fight against Macbeth: ‘You, worthy uncle, / Shall with my cousin, your right noble son, / Lead our first battle’ (5.6.2–4). The Trojan Hector’s recognition of his kinship with the Greek Achilles in TC leads him to break off the armed combat between them: Thou art, great lord, my father’s sister’s son, A cousin-german to great Priam’s seed. The obligation of our bloods forbids A gory emulation ’twixt us twain. (4.5.121–4) Ajax acknowledges his cousin’s honourable gesture, observing that, although ‘I came to kill thee, cousin, and bear hence / A great addition earned in thy death’ (4.5.140–1), he will instead introduce ‘my famous cousin to our Grecian tents’, and a temporary peace ensues before the two sides fall to battle again. Two of the most contentious cousins in all Shakespeare are King Richard II and Henry Bolingbroke, who deposes him and takes the throne as Henry IV. In R2 Richard refers to the relationship far more than Bolingbroke, constantly calling him ‘cousin of Hereford’ and ‘fair cousin’. He uses the term mockingly, when Aumerle, who is also a cousin to them both, describes Bolingbroke’s departure into exile, and Richard responds: He is our cousin, cousin, but ’tis doubt, When time shall call him home from banishment, Whether our kinsman come to see his friends (1.4.20–2) He addresses Bolingbroke with bitter irony in the deposition scene, obliging him to participate in a ritual: ‘Here, cousin, seize the crown. Here, cousin’ (4.1.182). 90

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Bolingbroke, as King Henry IV, uses the term only to refer to Aumerle, calling him with some amusement ‘my dangerous cousin’ (5.3.80) when the latter’s attempt at conspiracy has been discovered. The term appears more frequently in this play than any other, partly because of Richard’s regular usages of it for both Bolingbroke and Aumerle, but also because the older generation of uncle figures, the brothers John of Gaunt and the Duke of York, use it to refer to their nephews. Thus Gaunt reproves Richard: Why, cousin, wert thou regent of the world, It were a shame to let this land by lease (2.1.109–10) York tells Bolingbroke’s supporters: I have had feeling of my cousin’s wrongs And laboured all I could to do him right. (2.3.140–1) All of the history plays to some degree involve family enmities, but the ‘cousin’ references in R2 seem particularly to accentuate the bitterness of the rivalry. Cousin relationships are important in other family plays. In MW Shallow and Slender appear to be uncle and nephew, but frequently use the words ‘cousin’ and ‘coz’ to one another. Shallow is eager to prevail on his dim-witted relative to appreciate the advantages of courting the heiress Anne Page, and draws on their kinship to do so: ‘Come, coz, we stay for you. A word with you, coz. Marry, this, coz: there is, as ’twere, a tender, a kind of tender, made afar off by Sir Hugh here. Do you understand me?’, and ‘Nay, conceive me, conceive me, sweet coz. What I do is to pleasure you, coz. Can you love the maid?’ (MW 1.1.191–4, 226–8). Shallow’s importuning of Slender is affectionate, but not without some sense of advantage to himself. King John hypocritically calls his young nephew Arthur, whose death he desires, cousin, as a way of appearing to express friendship: Cousin, look not so sad: Thy grandam loves thee; and thy uncle will As dear be to thee as thy father was. (KJ 3.2.12–14) In HAM , another uncle’s use of the term ‘cousin’ for his nephew is loaded with emotional complexity. Claudius begins his first address to Hamlet with the words, ‘But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son’ (1.5.64). This might imply a wish to make a public affirmation of their familial bond, but if so, Hamlet’s response immediately rejects any such intimacy: ‘A little more than kin, and less than kind’. Claudius links the two relationships again when he attempts to persuade Hamlet not to leave the court for Wittenberg; having asked that his unwilling step-son ‘think of us / As of a father’ he ends his long speech by asking that Hamlet ‘bend you to remain / Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye, / Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son’ (1.5.115–17). His other uses of the term are also in 91

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conspicuously public contexts. ‘How fares our cousin Hamlet?’ he asks, as he enters with his entourage to see the play Hamlet has arranged to put on (3.2.88). And in the final scene, Claudius’ apparently straightforward remark before the duel with Laertes, ‘Cousin Hamlet, you know the wager’ (5.2.237) is capable of many different inflections. An uncle who calls his nephew ‘cousin’ with ill-concealed malevolence is Richard of Gloucester, when confronted with the precociously witty Duke of York, better known as one of the princes in the Tower. ‘I pray you, uncle, give me this dagger’, requests the child. ‘My dagger, little cousin? With all my heart’, answers Richard (R3 3.1.110–11). In MA , however, Leonato calls his niece Beatrice cousin (2.1.71) as an indication of intimacy, so too Pandarus with his niece Cressida (for example, TC 1.2.42). In AYL the terms, used between genuine cousins, are also synonymous with genuine friendship. Rosalind and Celia are cousins, the only children of two brothers. When Oliver asks Charles, Duke Frederick’s wrestler, if Rosalind has been banished along with her father, Charles replies: On no; for the Duke’s daughter, her cousin, so loves her, being ever from their cradles bred together, that she would have followed her exile or have died to stay behind her. (1.1.102–5) The two women constantly use the term, or its diminutive form ‘coz’, to address one another. Rosalind opens her heart to Celia: ‘O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst know how many fathom deep I am in love!’ (4.1.193–4). When Rosalind in her Ganymede disguise swoons at the sight of Orlando’s blood, and Celia tries to revive her, calling, ‘Cousin – Ganymede!’ (4.3.158), editors assume that Celia has momentarily forgotten the parts the two of them are playing. This could be the case, but Celia could rely on the vagueness of the term not to give her away. But when Celia’s father addresses Rosalind (his niece) as ‘cousin’ his tone is far from friendly: ‘You, cousin. / Within these ten days if that thou be’st found / So near our public court as twenty miles, / Thou diest for it’ (1.3.39–42). Other female cousins who are also friends are Beatrice and Hero in MA . Hero gladly participates in the plot to get Beatrice and Benedick together: ‘I will do any modest office . . . to help my cousin to a good husband’ (2.1.346–7), and Beatrice is vehement in her support of the maligned Hero: ‘O, on my soul, my cousin is belied!’ (4.1.146) In TN Sir Toby is several times called Olivia’s cousin (1.5.113, 119, 131 etc.) although he is in fact her uncle. When Malvolio has begun to see himself in the role of Olivia’s husband (and thus Sir Toby’s kinsman by marriage) he savours the prospect of lording it over Sir Toby by reproving his habits, ‘Saying, “Cousin Toby, my fortunes, having cast me on your niece, give me this prerogative of speech . . . You must amend your drunkenness” ’ (TN 2.5.66–71). It is not a common usage, but cousin can be simply a courtesy title, as when Henry V refers to the French princess whom he seeks to wed as ‘our most fair and princely cousin Katherine’ (H5 5.2.4) and to her parents as ‘brother’ and ‘sister’. 92

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(C) Crystal and Crystal have a helpful table illustrating Shakespeare’s various uses of this term (2002, 106). cradle (A) A cradle was originally a little bed or cot for an infant to sleep in. In this period it was usually made of wood, and often carved, but could also be made of wickerwork. The term is also used figuratively to mean a birthplace or place where something is sheltered and brought up. (B) Cradles in Shakespeare are mostly metaphorical, except for the one in which the infant Elizabeth lies at the end of H8 (5.3.18). In TNK Emilia recalls the intimacy she knew in her girlhood with Flavia, when she would pick a flower and put it between her breasts and Flavia ‘would long / Till she had such another, and commit it / To the like innocent cradle’ (TNK 1.3.71–3). A similar image is used by Venus when she picks the flower grown from the blood of the dead Adonis and addresses it, saying, ‘Lo, in this hollow cradle take thy rest’ (1185). Puck uses the word to mean bed, when he remarks at the sight of the Bottom and his fellows, What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here, So near the cradle of the fairy queen? (MND 3.1.72–3) Iago is more sardonic when he says that Cassio when drunk will sleep twice round the clock, ‘if drink rock not his cradle’ (OTH 2.3.118). The sleepless King Henry IV enviously imagines how sleep comes easily to the ship-boy even on the topmast of his vessel during a storm, ‘in cradle of the rude, imperious surge’ (2H4 3.1.20). In MAC Banquo gives an incongruously delicate description of Macbeth’s castle: No jutty frieze, Buttress, nor coin of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed, and procreant cradle (1.6.6–8) Queen Elizabeth also uses a tender image when she calls the Tower of London a ‘rough cradle for such little pretty ones’ (R3 4.1.100), as the infant princes. Gloucester, however, is jocular when referring to the conception of his bastard son Edmund by a woman who ‘had, indeed . . . a son for her cradle ere she had a husband for her bed’ (KL 1.1.13–15). Richard II imagines peace like a baby ‘which in our country’s cradle / Draws the sweet infant breath of gentle sleep’ (R2 1.3.132–3). A cradle can mean infancy in a general sense. Rosalind and Celia are described as ‘being ever from their cradles bred together’ (AYL 1.1.103); King Henry IV wishes that his son and Northumberland’s had been exchanged at birth ‘in cradle-clothes . . . where they lay’ (1H4 1.1.87). King Henry VI regrets his unhappy infancy: No sooner was I crept out my cradle But I was made a king at nine months old. (2H6 4.9.3–4) 93

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Griffith says of the fallen Cardinal Wolsey, that ‘From his cradle / He was a scholar’ (H8 4.2.50–1). In TC Ulysses uses the cradle in a fascinating image in his speech about the operations of ‘the providence that’s in a watchful state’ and how it Keeps place with thought, and almost, like the gods, Do thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles (3.3.201–2) Bevington (Arden edn, 2001) paraphrases this: ‘uncovers thoughts as they are conceived and before they are put into words’. (C) Handley (2016) gives a fascinating account of early modern sleep habits, and discusses cradles and beds. cuckold, horn (A) The noun cuckold is a contemptuous term for the husband of an unfaithful wife. The verb means to make a man a cuckold by sleeping with his wife. The horn is the symbol of a cuckolded man. (B) The mistaken belief of a man that he has been cuckolded, or the fear that he may be, is central to the plot of two plays, OTH and WT , and important in CYM and MW . The word is sometimes used jocularly, but more often in serious or quasi-tragic contexts. Othello, who only uses the word once, is pierced to the heart by the idea, and violent in his plan for revenge on the innocent Desdemona: ‘I will chop her into messes! Cuckold me!’ (OTH 4.1.197). Posthumus in CYM has the same idea for revenge on the wife he believes unfaithful (2.4.147). He is also too ready to believe himself wronged, blaming his wife rather than her supposed seducer, and preferring certainty to doubt. He cuts off the protestations of Iachimo: No swearing. If you will swear you have not done’t you lie, And I will kill thee if thou dost deny Thou’st made me cuckold. (2.4.143–6) Iago, who has fostered this delusion in Othello, exacerbates Othello’s misery by suggesting that it is better to know oneself a cuckold than to suspect it but be in doubt: That cuckold lives in bliss Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger, But O, what damned minutes tells he o’er Who dotes yet doubts, suspects yet strongly loves! (OTH 3.3.169–72) Leontes torments himself with the thought that the condition of cuckold is a common one, although not all men are aware of it: There have been, Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now, 94

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And many a man there is even at this present, Now, while I speak this, holds his wife by th’arm, And little thinks she has been sluiced in’s absence, And his pond fished by his next neighbour, by Sir Smile, his neighbour. (WT 1.2.189–95) The sexual possession of the wife by the neighbour equates to the violation of the husband’s property, his pond ‘fished’, and his wife’s vagina entered, by a trespasser. Master Ford in MW shares Leontes’ conviction that all women are potentially if not actually unfaithful. His particular horror is the idea of being called insulting names by the man who wrongs him: ‘Terms, names! Amaimon sounds well; Lucifer well; Barbason, well; yet they are devils’ additions, the names of fiends. But cuckold? Wittol? Cuckold! The devil himself hath not such a name!’ (2.2.281–4). He concludes this soliloquy by repeating the dreaded name: ‘Cuckold, cuckold, cuckold!’ But Ford does get his revenge on the man responsible for the misery he has endured, when he sees Falstaff absurdly dressed with buck’s horns expecting a liaison with Mistress Page and Mistress Ford. ‘Now, sir, who’s a cuckold now?’, he taunts his tormenter. ‘Master Brook, Falstaff is a knave, a cuckoldly knave’ (MW 5.5.109–11). He is repeating the expression used earlier by Falstaff in reference to himself (2.2.256). The horn is the external symbol of the cuckold’s disgrace. Leontes says Camillo’s ‘eye-glass’ (meaning the cornea of his eye) must be ‘thicker than a cuckold’s horn’ if he cannot perceive Hermione’s adultery (WT 1.2.267). Touchstone jokes about the belief, which Leontes comes to hold, that being a cuckold is an inescapable part of a married man’s condition: ‘As horns are odious, they are necessary . . . Many a man has good horns and knows no end of them’ (AYL 3.3.47–50). See also the song in AYL 4.2, and Moth’s joke at LLL 5.1.63–4. The humiliation of the cuckold’s name is intensely felt. Lucio in MM is quite prepared to be whipped for slandering the Duke, but the thought of having to marry the prostitute whom he has got pregnant is abhorrent to him, and he begs the Duke: ‘Your Highness said even now, I made you a duke; good my lord, do not recompense me in making me a cuckold’ (5.1.513–15). Laertes feels that to be temperate in pursuit of revenge for his father’s death would be like doing the worst kind of dishonour to his parents: That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard, Cries ‘Cuckold!’ to my father, brands the harlot Even here between the chaste unsmirched brow Of my true mother. (HAM 4.5.117–19) Thersites dismisses the Trojan war: ‘All the argument is a whore and a cuckold; a good quarrel to draw emulous factions and bleed to death upon’ (TC 2.3.69–70), and enjoys the sight of Menelaus and Paris fighting one another: ‘The cuckold and the cuckoldmaker are at it’ (5.8.1). This scepticism about heroic values pervades the play, but does 95

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not diminish the sense of disgraced sexuality that the terms carry with them. In Shakespeare’s most voyeuristic scene (5.2) Troilus virtually observes himself being made a cuckold. There are those who take a more relaxed attitude to the idea of the cuckold. Emilia shocks Desdemona by suggesting that she would be prepared to sleep with another man if it brought her husband some significant advantage: ‘Who would not make her husband a cuckold to make him a monarch? I should venture purgatory for’t’ (OTH 4.3.74–6). The Clown in AW , discussing marriage with the Countess, jokes about the paradoxical advantages that will come to him from his wife’s ‘friends’, using the analogy of maintaining land: ‘He that ears [plows] my land spares my team, and gives me leave to in [harvest] the crop. If I be his cuckold, he’s my drudge’ and concludes his argument: ‘If all men could be contented to be what they are [i.e. cuckolds] there were no fear in marriage’ (1.3.44–6, 50–1). But Gratiano’s jokes in the last scene of MV are nervous ones. ‘What, are we cuckolds ere we have deserved it?’, he exclaims when Portia and Nerissa claim to have slept with the ‘doctor’ and his ‘clerk’ (5.1.265). He later asks his wife, her disguise having been revealed, ‘Were you the clerk that is to make me cuckold?’ The bawdy pun on which he ends the play, that the thing that will preoccupy him above others is ‘keeping safe Nerissa’s ring’ (5.1.307), stresses the anxiety with which men maintain their wives’ chastity for the sake of their own good names. (C) There is a considerable secondary literature about the early modern cuckold and the culture of masculinity that defined this figure. Kahn (1981) examines the stigma attached to the cuckold in Shakespeare, and the significance he accords to it ‘as a masculine fantasy of feminine betrayal’ (120). Fletcher (1995) gives a historian’s account, though with much consultation of literary sources, of gender constructs including the instabilities of patriarchy which led to ‘the sheer terror of being cuckolded’ (10). Breitenberg (1996) examines a series of texts (including LUC , LLL , OTH ) to focus on their responses to anxieties, including that of being cuckolded, in early modern masculinity. Foyster (1999), arguing that the avoidance of shame was essential to early modern manhood, gives examples of men who blamed themselves for becoming cuckolds, especially through inadequate sexual performance, and of the profound consequences of the loss of honour. Hopkins (1998) discusses cuckoldry, especially in AYL . Neely (1985) discusses it in relation to male power. Middleton’s character Allwit in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside is that paradoxical figure, the contented cuckold, discussed by Panek (2001), who examines the figure in ballads as well as plays of the period. Gowing (1996) illustrates the uses of ‘cuckold’ as a term of insult in cases of defamation and considers the cuckold as a threat to household order. curds, curd (A) Curd (mostly used in the plural) is a coagulated substance formed from milk going sour either naturally or with the addition of rennet. As a verb, it means to clot or coagulate. (B) Curds are a food with pastoral associations. King Henry VI , imagining life as a ‘homely swain’ longs for ‘the shepherd’s homely curds, / His cold thin drink out of a 96

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leather bottle’ (3H6 2.5.47–8) in preference to ‘a prince’s delicates’. Aaron the Moor in TIT promises his baby son, ‘I’ll make you feed on berries and on roots, / And fat on curds and whey’ (TS 4.2.179–80). Perdita in WT is called ‘the queen of curds and whey’ (4.4.161). But as a verb, used metaphorically, the word has very different connotations. The Ghost in HAM describes how the poison poured through his ears works on his body: . . . swift as quicksilver it courses through The natural gates and alleys of the body And with a sudden vigour it doth possess And curd like eager droppings into milk The thin and wholesome blood. (1.5.66–70) The idea of the blood, which ought naturally to be thin, taking on the consistency of curdled milk is repulsive in the extreme. When the Countess in AW berates Helena for her reluctance to think of her as a mother she asks, in typically robust style, ‘God’s mercy, maiden! Does it curd thy blood / To say I am thy mother?’ (1.3.146–7). (C) See Fitzpatrick (2011) on curds. curtain (A) Curtains in early modern England had their main use as hangings round a bed, both for warmth and for privacy, although they have other functions. They might be made of rich fabric and were often embroidered. (B) Othello is eager to hide the body of his dead wife when he hears Emilia at the door, and takes a moment before he lets her in: ‘O come in, Emilia, / Soft, by and by. Let me the curtains draw’ (OTH 5.2.102–3). In RJ a stage direction indicates Juliet’s action after she has drunk the Friar’s potion: ‘She falls upon her bed within the curtains’ (4.3.58 SD ). King Lear in the hovel imagines himself in a bedroom when he bids Kent: ‘Make no noise, make no noise, draw the curtains. So, so, so; we’ll go to supper i’the morning’ (KL 3.6.80–1). In 2H6 after Cardinal Beaufort has died, raving, in his bed, King Henry commands, ‘Close up his eyes, and draw the curtain close’ (3.3.32). Northumberland thinks of King Priam of Troy as an Elizabethan when he describes the messenger coming to tell him of the burning of Troy, ‘So dull, so dead in look, so woebegone, / [Who] drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night’ (2H4 1.1.71–2). When Tarquin enters Lucrece’s room he finds the curtains drawn around her bed, thus delaying the moment when he sets eyes on her as she sleeps (LUC 365–75). Macbeth conjures up an image of the world asleep and unaware of his deadly purpose as he prepares to murder Duncan: Now o’er the one half-world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtained sleep (MAC 2.1.49–51) As in LUC , the curtains are imagined as offering a protection to the sleeper which is only temporary. Juliet in her invocation to night urges, ‘Spread thy close curtain, 97

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love-performing night, / That runaways’ eyes may wink, and Romeo / Leap to these arms, untalked of and unseen’ (RJ 3.2.5–7). This curtain will hide the lovers for the eyes of the prying world. Curtains appear in other contexts in Shakespeare’s plays. In H8 the King uses a curtain for privacy. The stage direction in 2.2 specifies that he ‘draws the curtain and sits reading pensively’, and he is angered when the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk intrude upon him. In MV Portia has a curtain to cover the three caskets. In the last scene of WT Paulina draws a curtain to reveal what Leontes believes to be the statue of his wife. She torments him by twice making to draw it back over the figure of Hermione: ‘Shall I draw the curtain?’ she asks, and he replies, ‘No, not these twenty years’ (5.3.83–4). The use of a curtain to protect a work of art also appears in TN , when Olivia reveals her face to Viola as if uncovering a painting: ‘Have you any commission from your lord to negotiate with my face? You are now out of your text. But we will draw the curtain and show you the picture’ (TN 1.5.226–7). Pandarus expresses the same idea when he tells Cressida to remove her veil in front of Troilus: ‘Come, draw this curtain, and let’s see your picture’ (TC 3.2.45). In TEM Prospero tells Miranda to take a good look at Ferdinand, whom she is seeing for the first time; The fringed curtains of thine eye advance, And say what thou seest yond. (1.2.409–10) In this elaborate image her eyelids and eyelashes are the ‘fringed curtains’ which protect her eyes; they are advanced, or lifted up, perhaps implying that she has shyly lowered her eyes at her first sight of a young man. (C) Rivère de Carles (2013) describes types of curtains but focuses on them as stage props. Roberts (2002) also discusses curtains as props. Curtains feature in inventories of the period, suggesting their value. For this, see Parker (2014). cushion Cushions, used in this period to make wooden seats more comfortable and sometimes set out on the floor, were more abundant in richer households, and could signify wealth and status. Gremio lists among the luxury furnishings of his house ‘Turkey cushions bossed [studded] with pearl’ (TS 2.1.357). These may have been covered with carpets imported from Turkey. Hermia in MND , a well-born young woman, recalls her girlhood with Helena doing embroidery, ‘both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion’ (3.2.205). In MA the constable Verges calls for ‘a stool and a cushion for the sexton’ (4.2.2), indicating the latter’s position of authority in the scene. Most references to cushions occur in COR . They are called for as a sign of office at 2.2.0 SD and 3.1.102. Aufidius, speaking of the inability of Coriolanus to adapt himself to different situations, says he does not move ‘from th’ casque [helmet] to th’ cushion’ (4.7.42), meaning that his behaviour is the same on the battlefield as in the Senate. Earlier, Menenius tells the tribunes scornfully that they talk nonsense: ‘When you speak best unto the purpose it is not worth the wagging of your beards, and your beards deserve 98

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not the so honourable a grave as to stuff a botcher’s cushion’ (2.1.83–6). Holland (COR , Arden edn, 2013, 422) has a useful note on cushions and their role in the early modern household. See also Buxton on cushions featuring in probate inventories (2015, 147–8). custard is a mixture of eggs, milk and spices; in early modern England the word could also be used to refer to an open pie filled with fruit or meat and covered with this mixture. When Lafew in AW tells Parolles that he has all too easily incurred his displeasure by running into it ‘boots and spurs and all, like him that leapt’d into the custard’ (2.5.36–7) he probably means the pie. Petruccio absurdly derides the cap offered to Katherina by calling it ‘a custard-coffin, a bauble, a silken pie’ (TS 4.3.84), using ‘coffin’ to mean the pastry crust in which the custard pie is baked. He may be playing on costard, meaning head. cuts Cutwork, made by cutting away parts of a fabric in decorative shapes and filling in the spaces with needlework, was originally an Italian technique requiring great skill in the execution. Margaret stresses the expense and fashionable quality of the Duchess of Milan’s gown, ‘cloth o’gold, and cuts, and laced with silver’ (MA 3.4.18). cypress was a transparent gauze-like linen fabric, originally imported from Cyprus, often used for veils. It was made in black and white, the former, being used for mourning wear, was more common. Autolycus has ‘Cypress black as e’er was crow’ in his pack (WT 4.4.221). Olivia fears that she has been too revealing in her exchanges with Viola/ Cesario: ‘A cypress, not a bosom, / Hides my heart’ (TN 3.1.119).

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D damask (A) Damask, a rich silk with floral or geometric patterns and sometimes of mingled colours, derives its name from Damascus where it was originally made. In Shakespeare’s day this expensive fabric was forbidden to those with estates under the value of £100 per annum (Linthicum, 1936, 120). Damask roses (rosa damascena) usually meant a particular variety of semi-double rose with pink or pale red blooms, strongly scented, first cultivated in the east. (B) Shakespeare’s references are usually to the colour or the flower rather than the fabric. They are suggestive of delicate beauty or luxury. The perfumed gloves that Autolycus sells are ‘as sweet as damask roses’ (WT 4.4.222). Women’s cheeks, like those of Viola’s supposed sister (TN 2.4 112), are like damask in being smooth and pink; Phoebe, nicely differentiating between the redness in Ganymede’s lip and his cheek, calls it ‘the difference / Betwixt the constant red and mingled damask’ (AYL 3.5.123–4). The poet’s false but beautiful mistress in PP (7) is ‘a lily pale, with damask dye to grace her’. The same admired mingle of white and pink appears as ‘the war of white and damask’ in the cheeks of the veiled dames’ who risk their complexions in the sun to welcome Coriolanus home (COR 2.1.209). Boyet punningly compares women’s beauty with that of roses: ‘Fair ladies masked are roses in their bud; / Dismask’d, their damask sweet commixture shown, / Are angels vailing [letting fall] clouds, or roses blown’ (LLL 5.2.293–7) (C) On damask silk, see Linthicum (1936, 119–20). On damask roses, see Thomas and Faircloth (2014), ‘damask’. daughter (A) A daughter is the female child of a parent or parents; the word may also mean a female descendant of a family line or race. It can also stand for daughter-in-law. In the patriarchal society of early modern England there were different expectations for daughters than for sons. While some girls did receive an education, their lives while growing up were directed towards preparation for marriage, and until they were married they were expected to be subservient to their parents. (B) The daughter’s duty towards her father, where marriage or sexual conduct is concerned, is a frequent source of difficulty. Desdemona puts the problem succinctly in her sense of a clash of allegiances: My noble father, I do perceive here a divided duty, To you I am bound for life and education: My life and education both do learn me 101

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How to respect you; you are the lord of duty, I am hitherto your daughter. But here’s my husband: And so much duty as my mother showed To you, preferring you before her father, So much I challenge that I may profess Due to the Moor my lord. (OTH 1.3.180–9) Her speech may appear clear and tactful to a present-day audience, but she skates over the accepted view that a daughter was not expected to choose her own husband, but to abide by her parents’ choice. Portia in MV is unhappy with the conditions that her father has laid down for her marriage: ‘I may neither choose who I would, nor refuse who I dislike, so is the will of a living daughter curbed by the will of a dead father’ (1.2.22–4). But she has no intention of disobeying. In KL Cordelia makes no objection to the choice of husbands lined up for her, and she stresses her sense of duty towards her father; but she sums up her feelings for her father and quantifies, in terms that many have found objectionable, her obligations once married: That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry Half my love with him, half my care and duty. (1.1.101–2) Lear is outraged by her words and casts her off as his ‘sometime daughter’ (1.1.121), later saying of her, ‘we have no such daughter’ (1.1.165). The Fool tells Lear without compromise how he has failed in his role as a father: ‘thou mad’st thy daughters thy mothers’ (1.4.163). Lear comes to realize he cannot in fact cast off his daughters, but must acknowledge them as part of himself. He tells Goneril, ‘Thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter, / or rather a disease that’s in my flesh, / Which I must needs call mine’ (2.2.410–12). They are ‘pelican daughters’ (3.4.74), who live off their father’s blood. Other characters call Goneril and Regan ‘tigers, not daughters’ (Albany, 4.2.41) and ‘dog-hearted daughters’ (Kent, 4.3.45). Unmarried daughters are expected to behave according to strict rules. Polonius reproves Ophelia for giving too much of her time to Hamlet; for him this is evidence that ‘You do not understand yourself so clearly / As it behoves my daughter and your honour’ (1.3.95–6). Theseus tells Hermia, ‘To you your father should be as a god’ (MND 1.1.47). When fathers have only one daughter they can become, like Ophelia and Hermia and many others, a painfully intense focus for their fathers’ wishes. The status of Hero in MA , as an only child constantly identified as ‘the daughter of Signior Leonato’, is central to her father’s outburst of grief when he believes her to have been unchaste: Grieved I, I had but one? Chid I for that at frugal Nature’s frame? O, one too much by thee! (4.1.127–9) 102

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Capulet, another elderly father of a single daughter, is governed by anger rather than grief when Juliet objects to his plans for her marriage: Wife, we scarce thought us blessed That God had lent us but this only child, But now I see this one is one too much (RJ 3.5.164–6) But when he believes her dead he is overcome by emotion at the destruction of all his hopes for her: O son, the night before thy wedding day Hath death lain with thy wife. There she lies Flower as she was, deflowered by him. Death is my son-in-law, death is my heir, My daughter he hath wedded. (4.5.35–9) Leontes, who has through his own actions lost his son, is the more overwhelmed when his daughter returns to him at the end of the play, ‘ready to leap out of himself for joy of his found daughter’ (WT 5.2.48–9), as the Steward puts it. The father–daughter reunion scene, which is reduced to reportage in WT , is staged as the climax of the play in PER . Pericles takes some time to be convinced that the woman before him is his lost daughter although he sees at once a family resemblance: My dearest wife was like this maid, and such a one My daughter might have been (5.1.198–9) It is only when Marina is asked by Pericles to give him ‘my drowned queen’s name’ that he finally acknowledges her: MARINA

Is it no more to be your daughter than To say my mother’s name was Thaisa? Thaisa was my mother, who did end The minute I began. PERICLES

Now blessing on thee! Rise. Thou art my child. (5.1.198–201) Some daughters are estranged from their fathers by choice. Jessica’s wry comment to the offstage Shylock as she prepares to elope with Lorenzo, ‘Farewell, and if my fortune be not crossed, / I have a father, you a daughter, lost’ (MV 2.6.54–5) contrasts in its lack of feeling with Shylock’s confused outcry, as reported mockingly by Salanio: 103

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My daughter! O, my ducats! O, my daughter! Fled with a Christian! O, my Christian ducats! Justice, the law, my ducats and my daughter! (2.8.15–17) Jessica rebels against her father’s domestic regulations, as Portia does not. It is because she is ‘the Jew’s daughter’, a phrase repeated several times, that this rebellion is offered some justification, though it comes from the lips of Lorenzo, who is hardly disinterested: If e’er the Jew her father come to heaven, It will be for his gentle daughter’s sake; And never dare misfortune cross her foot Unless she do it under this excuse: That she is issue to a faithless Jew. (2.4.34–8) In AYL Celia rejects her father, while Rosalind is estranged from hers, though not by her own desire. Celia’s father, Duke Frederick, usurping brother to Rosalind’s father, sends Rosalind into exile, and when she asks the reason he replies, ‘Thou art thy father’s daughter, that’s enough’ (1.3.55). Celia at once takes her cousin’s part, telling her, ‘Knowst thou not the Duke / Hath banished me, his daughter?’ (1.3.91–2). Innogen, angered by her father’s sending of Posthumus into exile, wishes she were ‘a neatherd’s daughter’ (CYM 1.1.150). Joan Puzel, though at first happy to announce herself as ‘by birth a shepherd’s daughter’ (1H6 1.2.72), is later anxious to disown him as ‘decrepit miser, base ignoble wretch’, despite his pathetic plea: ‘Joan, sweet daughter Joan, I’ll die with thee’ (5.3.8, 6). Daughters may be regarded as among their fathers’ possessions, as when Iago shouts to Brabantio, ‘Look to your house, your daughter and your bags!’ (OTH 1.1.79). Brabantio later confronts Othello with the words, ‘O thou foul thief, where hast thou stowed my daughter?’ (1.2.62). Polonius’s offer to Claudius and Gertrude to ‘loose my daughter’ to Hamlet (HAM 2.2.159) may imply that he treats her like an animal that he has restrained. ‘My daughter is disposed of’, Master Page curtly tells Fenton, who has come to woo his daughter Anne (MW 3.4.68). They can used as bargaining counters by or between men when arranging alliances, especially dynastic ones. This is particularly clear in the machinations of Richard III . First he decides that, having despatched his brother Clarence and seen his other brother Edward dead, his next step is to consolidate his own position: ‘Then I’ll marry Warwick’s youngest daughter . . . not all so much for love / As for another secret close intent’ (R3 1.1.153–8). He will find ‘some mean poor gentleman’ whom he will ‘marry straight to Clarence’ daughter’, and then provide for himself: ‘I must be married to my brother’s daughter, / Or else my kingdom stands on brittle glass’ (4.2.54, 60–1). In 3H6 the Earl of Warwick, seeking to cement his alliance with Clarence, who has deserted his own side, makes his best offer: ‘Come, sweet Clarence; my daughter shall be thine’ (4.2.12). In H5 the French king’s offer to Henry V

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of ‘Katherine his daughter and with her, to dowry, / Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms’ (3.0.29–30) is not enough to placate Henry at that time. But earlier in the play the value of daughters is established when the Archbishop of Canterbury proves that in France the descent of the throne through the female line entitles King Henry to make claim to French territory. In TS Baptista, addressing Bianca’s prospective suitors, asserts his authority over his daughters’ marriages: Gentlemen, importune me no farther, For how I firmly am resolved you know: That is, not to bestow my youngest daughter Before I have a husband for the elder. (1.1.48–51) Petruccio takes on the wooing of Katherina, but only after he has satisfied himself that it will be worth his while: Tell me, if I get your daughter’s love What dowry shall I have with her to wife? (2.1.118–19) Bianca’s hand in marriage is awarded by Baptista to the disguised Tranio who promises a larger dower than his rival Gremio; she is not present. Only Katherina objects to these procedures. When Baptista enquires jocularly after her feelings – ‘How now, daughter Katherine, in your dumps?’ – she explodes with anger at his hypocrisy: Call you me daughter? Now I promise you You have showed a tender fatherly regard To wish me wed to one half lunatic, A madcap ruffian and a swearing Jack (2.1.287–91) Fathers who do demonstrate ‘fatherly regard’ for their daughters include Prospero, who tells Miranda affectionately, that ‘I have done nothing but in care of thee, / Of thee, my dear one, thee my daughter’ (TEM 1.2.16–17). Cordelia is eventually recognized as Lear’s ‘most dear daughter’ (KL 4.6.185) and his ‘one daughter / Who redeems nature from the general curse / Which twain have brought her to’ (4.6.201–3). When Hamlet calls Polonius ‘old Jephthah’, the old man responds, ‘If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter that I love passing [extremely] well’ (HAM 2.2.347–8). But his claim is undermined by the connotations of the name Jephthah, an Old Testament figure, known for sacrificing his daughter. The story is also alluded to in 3H6 (5.1.94). Another daughter who is sacrificed by her father is Lavinia in TIT , killed by Titus at the fatal banquet. Before he carries out the killing, he draws the attention of Saturninus to a precedent:

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My lord the emperor, resolve me this: Was it well done of rash Virginius To slay his daughter with his own right hand Because she was enforced, stained and deflowered? (TIT 5.3.35–8) Titus’s act is one of love, but still an assertion of his right as a father over his daughter’s life. The relations of daughters with mothers are a rarer focus in Shakespeare. Hermione’s rapturous reunion with Perdita in WT is the most sustained: ‘You gods, look down, / And from your sacred vials pour your graces / Upon my daughter’s head!’ (5.3.212–13). In PER the focus is rather on the reunion of father and daughter. Helena in AW has a double role as a daughter: she is ‘a poor physician’s daughter’ (2.3.116) as Bertram rudely calls her, albeit her father was a court physician, but she is also claimed as a daughter by Bertram’s mother, the Countess of Rossilion. The Countess makes the claim out of affection, and does not at first understand why Helena rejects it: what’s the matter, That this distempered messenger of wet, The many-coloured Iris, rounds thine eye? – Why, that you are my daughter? (1.3.147–9) Helena, embarrassed and confused, finally makes it clear that her problem lies in her relationship with Bertram, and if she is daughter to the Countess then ‘he must be my brother’. The Countess understands at last: Yes, Helen, you might be my daughter-in-law. God shield you mean it not! Daughter and mother So strive upon your pulse. (1.3.163–5) ‘Daughter’ can be used unproblematically to mean ‘daughter-in-law’ as in COR when Volumnia uses the word to Virgilia, Coriolanus’ wife (COR 1.3.1, 15). It can also be a courtesy title. The Duke in MM , disguised as a Friar, calls Juliet daughter (2.3.30), and Mariana ‘gentle daughter’ (4.1.71); Friar Lawrence in RJ addresses Juliet as ‘pensive daughter’ (4.1.39). Justice Shallow enquires of Justice Silence, ‘How doth . . . your fairest daughter and mine, my god-daughter Ellen?’ (2H4 3.2.5–6). (C) Dreher (1986) reviews father–daughter relationships in Shakespeare from a literary perspective; aspects of her approach have been criticized by Cook (1991) as insufficiently well informed historically. Neely (1985), in similar style to Dreher, discusses the problematics of father–daughter relationships and incest (ch. 5). See also Kahn (1986) for a psychoanalytical reading of KL in terms of Lear’s desire for Cordelia to be a ‘mother–daughter’. Boose (1982) argues that Shakespeare models these

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relationships on the ritual of the marriage ceremony. Hamilton’s more recent book (2003) takes a character-based approach and focuses on daughters rather than fathers. Findlay (2010) gives a wide-ranging and informative overview of many aspects of the daughter’s role. Batt gives fourteen very strict precepts for the upbringing of daughters, including advice to ‘Let her not delight and take pleasure in the hearing of musicall instruments’ and ‘Let her so eate, as that shee may be always an hungred’ (1581, 75). Bentley gives prayers for daughters, noting that ‘a daughter that is bold or past shame, dishonoureth both hir father, and hir husband’ (1582, 36). Stockwood (1589) devotes a pamphlet to pressing the point that children, especially daughters, should not marry without their parents’ consent. Dod and Cleaver observe that the love between husband and wife takes precedence over that between parents and children (1630, sig. M7). day bed see bed dial (A) A dial is an instrument that measures time; it can refer to a clock or pocket watch, as well as to a sundial. Pocket dials were luxury items for the Elizabethans. The word ‘dial’ may also refer specifically to the face of a clock. (B) In AYL Jacques describes his meeting with Touchstone in the forest of Arden, amused by his attention to the passing of time: And then he drew a dial from his poke [bag], And looking on it with lack-lustre eye Says very wisely, ‘It is ten o’clock. Thus we may see’, quoth he, how the world wags [carries on]. (2.7.20–3) In Sonnet 77 the poet muses on how the passage of time will affect his lover: Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear, Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste and he refers to the ‘dial’s shady stealth’, which will indicate how time is stealing away his life. Bianca in OTH has been counting the days since she has last seen Cassio, which seem longer than reality because ‘lovers’ absent hours [are] / More tedious than the dial’ (3.4.174–5). The simile in LUC describing the impediments to Tarquin’s progress towards the chamber of Lucrece features the jerky movement of the early modern clock. Tarquin treats the various occurrences which slow him on his way as accidental things of trial; Or as those bars which stop the hourly dial Who with a ling’ring stay his course doth let Till every minute pays the hour his debt. (326–9)

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Duncan-Jones and Woudhuysen (Arden edn, 2007) explain the lines as follows: ‘Clocks of Shakespeare’s time had hands which moved in jerks rather than smoothly. This gave the impression that on their course (328) they rested for a minute on the bars, the metal or wooden lines which mark off the minutes and hours on the face of a clock, then moved on to the next minute.’ The marks by which the circumference of a clock-face or dial was divided were also called pricks (OED prick n. 2b). Mercutio alludes to these marks in his ribald response to the Nurse’s surprised comment on the time of day. She wishes him ‘good morrow’, that is good morning, but he corrects this to ‘good den’, short for ‘good evening’ and used for any time after noon. She then asks, ‘Is it good den?’, and he replies, ‘ ’Tis no less, I tell ye, for the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon’ (RJ 2.4.105–9). Lafew uses the term metaphorically when talking with Bertram about Parolles. Lafew is sceptical when Bertram cites testimonies of Parolles’ valiancy: ‘Then my dial goes not true’, he comments (AW 2.5.5). King Henry VI is clearly thinking of a sundial when he wishes he could live the life of a shepherd: ‘To sit upon a hill, as I do now, / To carve out dials quaintly, point by point’ (3H6 32.5.23–5). Richard II is another king who ponders regretfully on the meaning of time, when soliloquizing in his prison cell: I wasted time, and now doth Time waste me; For now hath Time made me his numb’ring clock. My thoughts are minutes, and with sighs they jar Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch, Where to my finger, like a dial’s point, Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears. (R2 5.5.49–54) This complex image (elucidated by Forker, Arden edn, 2002) describes the passage of time for the king: ‘ “watches” may mean the numbers on the clock face, which is compared to the king’s face, on which his finger, like the clock’s hand, passes over, wiping away his tears’. (C) See Dusinberre (AYL , Arden edn, 2006, Appendix 1) on various Elizabethan dials, including the ‘great dyall’ at Richmond Palace. She draws attention to the pocket dial belonging to Sir John Harington and depicted on the frontispiece to his translation of Orlando Furioso (1591). She also suggests that Jacques’ account of Touchstone may include a joke about Harington. Stern (2015) is very informative both about timepieces of the period and also about Shakespeare’s use of them in his plays. See also Kastan (1982). diet (A) Diet could mean a particular course of food and drink appropriate to one’s humoral temperament, but Shakespeare mostly uses the term more generally to mean the food and drink an individual consumes on a daily basis, or else simply a course of life. As a verb, to diet usually means to regulate the intake of food for a particular 108

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purpose, especially to cure an illness. The word is commonly used in metaphorical senses. (B) Hamlet is Shakespeare’s only character to use the word diet for a pun, when he tells Claudius that Polonius is at supper where ‘a certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him’, adding ‘Your worm is the only emperor for diet’ (HAM 4.3.19–21). The ‘convocation’ may refer to the Diet (or council) of Worms, where Luther made an appearance to justify his Protestant beliefs. By calling the worm an ‘emperor for diet’ Hamlet is probably playing on the idea that even the highest end up as food for worms. But when, earlier in the play, Horatio says that Fortinbras has assembled an army of mercenaries who serve him ‘for food and diet’ (1.1.98) he simply means subsistence, as does the Hostess in her reference to the ‘diet and by-drinkings’ that she charges Falstaff for (1H4 3.3.73). Cleopatra refers disparagingly to the crowds in Rome to whom she and her maids will be exhibited, with ‘their thick breaths, / Rank of gross diet’ (5.2.210– 11), meaning coarse food. But when Richard of Gloucester says that his dying brother King Edward ‘hath kept an evil diet long’ (R3 1.1.139) he is impugning his way of life, implying over-indulgence. The Archbishop of York in 2H4 draws on medical imagery to justify his involvement in military opposition to the king, referring to ‘fearful war’ which will ‘diet rank minds sick of happiness / And purge th’obstructions which begin to stop / Our very veins of life’ (2H4 4.1.63–6). Iago encourages himself to lust after Desdemona, not for the feeling itself but rather ‘to diet my revenge’ because he suspects Othello of adultery with Emilia (OTH 2.1.292), and his revenge requires careful nurturing. Cassio worries that keeping away from Othello, as Desdemona advises, is not a course of action that will flourish: ‘That policy may . . . feed upon such nice and waterish diet’ (OTH 3.3.15) as to wither away so that he will be forgotten. Coriolanus rudely rejects the praises of the Roman commanders: ‘you shout me forth / In acclamations hyperbolical, / As if my little should be dieted / In praises sauced with lies’ (COR 1.9.49–52). Diet here suggests fattening up with rich food. Later, Menenius plans to prepare Coriolanus carefully before approaching him with his petition to save Rome: ‘I’ll watch him / Till he be dieted to my request / And then I’ll set upon him’ (5.1.56–7). He means to offer appropriate ‘wine and feeding’, but ‘dieted’ also suggests ‘conditioned’. Menenius prides himself on being a skilful operator. In AW when Bertram insults Diana by suggesting that it is she who has seduced him, she responds with careful sarcasm: ‘You that have turn’d off a first so noble wife / May justly diet me’ (AW 5.3.220–1), referring to his denial of recognition to her as a denial of sustenance. Innogen in CYM uses the word similarly when she tells Pisanio who is trying to help her in her desperate situation, ‘Thou art all the comfort / The gods will diet me with’ (3.4.180). She regards herself as being punished by the deprivation of her husband’s love. (C) Boorde (1547, chs 23– 6) describes diets suitable for the different humours, and also for those suffering from various diseases. Harrison has a detailed and informative section (1587, book 2, ch. 6) ‘Of the food and diet of the English’, in which he claims that the English eat better than other nations. Iyengar (2011) discusses dietary theory in the period, with primary sources. 109

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dinner (A) Dinner in early modern England was the meal usually now known as lunch, and was served around noon or earlier. For wealthier people it could be a long meal of several courses, and was the main and most elaborate meal of the day. (B) Dinner time is an important marker of the progress of the day. In MM Escalus, having interrogated Pompey and the rest about the fracas in the Bunch of Grapes tavern, invites the Justice home with him: ESCALUS

What’s o’clock, think you? JUSTICE

Eleven, sir. ESCALUS

I pray you home to dinner with me. (MM 2.1.264–6) In AYL Orlando tells Rosalind that he must leave her for two hours: ‘I must attend the Duke at dinner. By two o’clock I will be with thee again’ (4.1.172–3). In 1H4 Prince Hal sets arrival by dinner-time as the target for his thirty-mile ride with Peto (3.3.196–7). See also MV 1.1.69–71 on dinner and time-keeping. Dinner is an important meal for Lear who calls eagerly, ‘Let me not stay a jot for dinner; go, get it ready’ (KL 1.4.8). Caliban, summoned from his rock by Prospero, protests in annoyance, ‘I must eat my dinner’ (TEM 1.2.331). Dinner is a central focus in CE . Not only does the meal at which Adriana awaits her husband’s arrival mark the mid-point of play’s single-day action, but his delay in coming for it symbolizes his dereliction of marital duty. In 1.1 Dromio tells Antipholus of Syracuse: Your worship’s wife, my mistress at the Phoenix: She that doth fast till you come home to dinner, . . . prays that you will hie you home to dinner (CE 1.1.88–90) But unfortunately he addresses his words to the wrong Antipholus. In the next scene it is two o’clock and Adriana and her sister are impatiently waiting for the slave and his master Antipholus of Ephesus before they begin the meal. Shortly afterwards, Antipholus of Syracuse turns up and is bewildered when Adriana insists at once on taking him ‘above’ for the delayed dinner, so that they can enjoy greater privacy, while Dromio of Syracuse, equally amazed, is appointed to ‘keep the gate’ (2.2.205) and allow no one in. When Antipholus of Ephesus eventually arrives, along with two guests, he is angered and embarrassed to find himself shut out of his own house while his wife dines intimately with another man. He consoles himself with the prospect of entertainment elsewhere: I know a wench of excellent discourse, Pretty and witty; wild, and yet, too, gentle; There will we dine. (CE 3.1.108–11) 110

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Dinner in this play signifies more than just a social occasion. At the beginning of MW Page and his wife hold a dinner the purpose of which is to bring together their daughter, Anne, and Abraham Slender, an aristocrat who is very rich but foolish and socially inept. There is to be wine, ‘a hot venison pasty’ (1.1.181), clearly a delicacy, and at the end ‘pippins and cheese’ (1.2.12). Anne makes strenuous efforts to get Slender in: ‘The dinner is on the table, my father desires your worship’s company’, ‘The dinner attends you, sir’, and in desperation, ‘I may not go in without your worship: they will not sit till you come’ (1.1.244, 251, 259–60). Slender refuses to go in until Page himself comes out to urge him, but even then protests that he will not eat. His behaviour over the dinner indicates his total lack of social graces. In TIM dinners are occasions on which Timon exhibits hospitality and generosity to his friends (1.1.249–51, 2.2.17–18). But on the last occasion the dinner, consisting of ‘all covered dishes’ (3.7.47) which leads the guests to expect the customary display of wealth, reveals Timon’s bankruptcy, when the dishes are uncovered to reveal only hot water. (C) Pearson (1957) and Byrne (1961) both have information about early modern dining habits. The Statute of Artificers (1563) stated that artificers and labourers were allowed one hour for dinner. Cogan (1636, ch. 211) discusses dinner, which he believes should be taken at 11 a.m., that is four hours after breakfast, and should last no longer than an hour. Harrison considers that ‘nobility, gentlemen, and merchantmen’ often sit so long at dinner, ‘till two or three of the clock at afternoon’ that they find it hard to get up for evening prayer (1587, 141). See also Boorde (1547, ch. 8) on mealtimes. Candido (1990) focusses on the significance of the dinner that Antipholus of Ephesus fails to come home to in CE . distaff (A) A distaff was a forked rod around which wool or flax was wound in spinning. It stood for women’s work, and was used to symbolize female authority in the household. (B) In R2 Scroop describes to the king the extent to which the country is in revolt against him: ‘Yea, even distaff-women manage rusty bills / Against thy seat’ (R2 3.2.118). He invents a compound word to make an implicit contrast between the normal equipment of women (the distaff) and men’s weapons of war, bills or pikes. Similarly in CYM Posthumus exalts the courage of old Belarius and the two young princes against the Roman army by saying that their ‘nobleness . . . could have turned / A distaff to a lance’ (CYM 5.3.33–4). Goneril, preparing to join battle with Cornwall’s forces, is dismissive of her husband Albany: ‘I must change names at home and give the distaff / Into my husband’s hands’ (KL 4.2.17–18). The idea of the distaff as the woman’s weapon is used by Hermione in WT when she says that if Polixenes really wants to go home to see his son, he must not be allowed to stay away: ‘We’ll whack him hence with distaffs’ (1.2.37). In TN Sir Toby Belch comments on the lack of curl in Sir Andrew’s hair, saying that ‘it hangs like flax on a distaff, and I hope to see a housewife take thee between her legs and spin it off’ (TN 1.3.98–100). The innuendo in these lines seems to play on Sir Andrew’s lack of masculinity and his need for a vigorous woman to take sexual control of him. 111

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(C) The image of Hercules made to carry a distaff and to dress in women’s clothes by Queen Omphale was regularly used to signify emasculation. See Howard (1988). See Elam (TN , Arden edn, 2008) for a full explication of TN 1.3.98–100. divorce (A) Divorce in the modern sense of a permanent and legal separation between a married couple permitting remarriage was not available in Shakespeare’s time, except at enormous expense and only in very restricted circumstances, by Act of Parliament. A marriage could be annulled if some legal impediment were found, or husband and wife could be divorced by the church courts a mensa et thoro (literally, from table and bed, but usually rendered ‘from bed and board’), which meant they no longer needed to cohabit, but could not remarry. Shakespeare most commonly uses the word to mean separation or estrangement, often metaphorically and in a non-legal sense, and not necessarily referring to the marital situation, though there are instances of the more specific meaning. They tend to occur in contexts where the parties involved are either royal, or else of high social status. (B) For some, the threat of divorce is clearly a dreadful prospect. Iago, inquiring with hypocritical concern into Othello’s marital situation (‘Are you fast married?’), warns him that Brabantio is of such influence in Venice ‘he will divorce you’ (OTH 1.2.11, 14). Desdemona, even when abused and mistreated by her jealous husband, protests that she ‘ever did, / And ever will – though he do shake me off to beggarly divorcement – love him dearly’ (4.2.158–60). Lear, in histronic style, tells Regan that if she is not truly glad to see him then he would not believe her to be his daughter: ‘I would divorce me from thy mother’s tomb, / Sepulchring an adultress’ (KL 2.2.320–1). In WT , Florizel, eager to formalize his union with Perdita and ignorant that it is his disguised father whom he is addressing, asks him to ‘mark our contract’ (4.4.422). Polixenes, removing his disguise, responds, metrically completing his son’s line, ‘Mark your divorce, young sir’ (WT 4.4.422). The term can be used, confusingly for moderns, rather ambiguously. In CYM Iachimo refers to Posthumus’ enforced separation from Innogen as ‘this lamentable divorce’ (1.4.20), but later a lord calls Cloten ‘a wooer / More hateful than the foul expulsion is / Of thy dear husband, than that horrid act / Of the divorce, he’d make’ (2.1.58–61), seeming to mean that Cloten’s intention is to make a legal separation between Innogen and her husband. But when at the end of AW , Helena says that if she cannot prove to Bertram’s satisfaction that she has fulfilled all the conditions he has set, then ‘Deadly divorce step between me and you’, she clearly refers to the legal form. In CE Adriana is equally serious when she tells the man she believes to be her husband that if she committed adultery he would be entitled to reject her, to ‘tear the stained skin off my harlot brow, / And from my false hand cut the wedding ring, / And break it with a deep-divorcing vow’ (CE 2.2.139–41). The speech is undercut by the fact that the man she is addressing is not her husband but his twin. Divorce within royal families raises other issues. Queen Margaret in 3H6, outraged that her husband has promised the kingdom to the Yorkists after his death, thus disinheriting their son, tells him that she will no longer be his wife: 112

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But thou prefer’st thy life before thine honour: And seeing thou dost, I here divorce myself Both from thy table Henry, and thy bed (1.1.253–5) In R2 one of Bolingbroke’s accusations against King Richard’s favourites, Bushy and Green, is that they ‘have in manner with your sinful hours / Made a divorce betwixt his queen and him, / Broke the possession of a royal bed’ (3.1.11–13), but he uses the term only in a metaphorical sense, implying an (unhistorical) sexual attachment between the men. When Northumberland enters to enforce a parting between the king and his wife, Richard upbraids him: ‘Doubly divorced! Bad men, you violate / A twofold marriage, ’twixt my crown and me / And then betwixt me and my married wife’ (5.1.71–3). He refers here to the idea, tactically dwelt on by Elizabeth I, of the monarch’s relationship with the realm being analogous to a marriage. The most notorious royal divorce is that between Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, handled carefully by Shakespeare (and Fletcher) so as to focus rather on the fall of Cardinal Wolsey than on Henry’s culpability. The Duke of Norfolk, discussing the machinations of Wolsey, whom he detests, says that, having ‘cracked the league’ between England the Holy Roman Empire, ‘to restore the King, / He counsels a divorce’ (2.2.29). Wolsey tries to carry out the wishes of his royal master when he attempts to persuade Katherine to accept the position that her marriage to Henry was unlawful. She refuses adamantly ‘to give up willingly that noble title / Your master wed me to. Nothing but death / Shall e’er divorce my dignities’ (H8 3.1.140–2). But Wolsey is undone when he goes behind the king’s back to deal with the Pope and delay Henry’s marriage to Anne Bullen, of whom he disapproves; Norfolk announces gleefully, that ‘In the divorce his contrary proceedings / Are all unfolded’ (3.2.26–7). Katherine does not of course escape the divorce (4.1.31–4) and by Act 3 it is Anne who is given the title of queen. (C) See Sokol and Sokol (2002) for a lucid account of the legal aspects of marital breakdown and separation in the period. Cook calls the scene in R2 between Richard, the Queen and Northumberland an ‘inversion of wedding protocol’ (1991, 178). Stone (1990) says something of the breakdown of marriage in this period, but his main focus is on the period post-1660. Emmison (1973) gives examples of divorce petitions in Elizabethan Essex (161–8). Stretton (2007) considers a range of options open to warring couples in the period, although Swinburne calls marriage ‘Dura Servitus, a hard Servitude, because it is for ever indissoluble’ (?1610, 184). Perkins does allow that marriage may be dissolved in a few circumstances (1609, 104–7). doctor (A) A doctor could mean a medical practitioner, sometimes, though not always, distinguished from a physician or a cleric. (Physician is the commoner usage in Shakespeare.) Doctor could be used as a title for a divine or a lawyer. (B) Two doctors appear in MAC , the one at the English court who appears briefly to testify to the skill of King Edward the Confessor at curing the King’s Evil, and the one 113

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employed at Macbeth’s court to attend Lady Macbeth. Macbeth’s disparagement of the Scottish Doctor’s skills reflects rather on himself than on the profession. When the Doctor tells him that Lady Macbeth is ‘not so sick . . . As she is troubled with thickcoming fancies’, he says abruptly, ‘Cure her of that’, but then asks penetratingly, Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain? (5.3.39–42) He is dissatisfied with the cautious reply, that ‘Therein the patient / Must minister to himself’, and responds angrily, ‘Throw physic to the dogs, I’ll none of it’. He realizes that no doctor can provide what he really needs: If thou couldst, doctor, cast The water of my land, find her disease, And purge it to a sound and pristine health, I would applaud thee to the very echo. (5.3.50–3) The Doctor in TNK who is called in to attend the Jailor’s Daughter is more respected and more successful. He admits that ‘she has a perturbed mind, which I cannot minister to’ (4.3.58) but nonetheless offers suggestions for her treatment, which, although unorthodox, seem to prove efficacious. When he recommends that the Wooer pretend to be Palamon and court the Daughter, even taking her to bed, the Jailor is hesitant: JAILOR

I will [fetch her], and tell her Her Palamon stays for her. But Doctor, Methinks you are i’th’wrong still. DOCTOR Go, go, You fathers are fine fools. Her honesty? An we should give her physic till we find that! (5.2.25–9) The Doctor takes an interestingly pragmatic attitude to the Daughter’s chastity, perhaps not unlike the Doctor’s self-serving lines at his exit in MAC (5.3.61–2). The Doctor Cornelius, who is employed at the court of Cymbeline, is cautious in his handling of the Queen, to whom he has taught knowledge of drugs, asking her the purpose for which she has ‘commanded . . . most poisonous compounds’. She is annoyed by this: ‘I wonder, doctor, / Thou ask’st me such a question’ (CYM 1.5.8, 10–11), and dismisses him abruptly: ‘Doctor, your service for this time is ended; / Take your own way’ (1.5.30– 1). He manages to deceive her with a potion that is sleep-inducing but non-fatal, like that which Friar Lawrence gives Juliet in RJ . The comic Doctor Caius in MW is a more ambiguous character. Sir Hugh Evans refers to him as ‘Master Caius, that calls himself 114

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Doctor of Physic’ and later, when Master Page calls him ‘the renowned French physician’, explodes: ‘Got’s will and his passion of my heart, I had as lief you would tell me of a mess of porridge . . . He has no more knowledge in Hibocrates and Galen, and he is a knave besides’ (3.1.3–4, 58–62). Caius is championed as a suitor for Anne Page by Anne’s mother, who regards him as a good prospect because he is ‘well-moneyed, and his friends / Potent at court’ (MW 4.4.87–8), though his high social status does not prevent him from being an idiot. The reference to ‘folly, doctor-like, controlling skill’ in Sonnet 66 may refer to medical practitioners who claim to know more than they do, or to learned men more generally. Other kinds of doctors include the schoolmaster Pinch in CE who is referred to as ‘Good Doctor Pinch’ by Adriana (4.4.49) but is apparently a conjuror, Portia, disguised as Balthazar, ‘a young doctor of Rome’ and a legal doctor, and Helena in AW referred to by Lafew as ‘Doctor She’ (2.1.79). (C) Pettigrew (2007) comments usefully on the doctors in MAC and TNK . See Potter (TNK , Arden edn, 2015, 58–60) on the Doctor and the cure of the Jailor’s Daughter. Iyengar (2011) discusses Helena in the context of women healers in her entry on ‘Doctor She’. The social status of the doctor was not high in the period, as some commentaries on AW (e.g. Ezell, 1987) make clear. See also physic. dog, cur, hound (A) Canis familaris, a domesticated animal, kept as a household pet or trained for guarding, hunting or other utilitarian functions. In early modern England, dogs were said to be ubiquitous (Thomas, 1983, 101). Cur was another term for a dog, usually contemptuous. A hound was a dog kept for hunting. (B) In a well-known passage in MAC , Macbeth disparagingly allows that the two murderers he has hired to make away with Banquo are men, but only insofar as ‘Hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs / Shoughs, water-rugs and demi-wolves are clept / All by the name of dogs’ (3.1.94–6). His analogy compares the great variety of dogs, each kind with its own attribute (‘the swift, the slow, the subtle, / The housekeeper, the hunter’), with the variety of men and their special skills. But the most common usage of dogs in Shakespeare is for cursing or insults. ‘Slave! Soulless villain! Dog!’, shouts the angry Cleopatra at Seleucus (AC 5.2.156). ‘Get you with him, old dog’, Oliver orders Adam (1.1.79) in AYL . In MND Hermia tries to get rid of Demetrius: ‘Out dog! Out, cur!’ (3.2.65). Lear reviles Oswald, ‘You whoreson dog, you slave, you cur’ (1.4.78–9). ‘How now, you dog?’, says Regan, outraged that a servant has tried to countermand her husband (3.7.74). The Archbishop of York compares the fickle populace to a ‘common dog’ which, in an unpleasant metaphor, disgorges itself of ‘the royal Richard, / And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up’ (2H4 1.3.97– 9). Iago is referred to as ‘inhuman dog’ and ‘Spartan dog’ (OTH 5.1.62, 5.2.361) while Othello calls himself a ‘circumsized dog’ (5.2.355). Salanio calls Shylock ‘the dog Jew’ (MV 2.8.14), and an ‘impenetrable cur’ (3.3.28) and later Gratiano refers to him as ‘inexecrable dog’ (MV 4.1.128). Shylock knows that he is called ‘misbeliever, 115

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cut-throat dog’ (1.3.109) and that he is spurned like ‘a stranger cur’ (1.3.114), and makes his own response: ‘Thou call’st me dog, before thou hadst a cause; / But since I am a dog, beware my fangs’ (3.3.6–7). Richard III , who knows himself to be so ugly ‘that dogs bark at me as I halt by them’ (1.1.23), is regularly referred to as a dog (1.3.215, 288; 4.4.49, 78). Finally, Richmond announces in triumph that ‘the bloody dog is dead’ (R3 5.2.2). Aaron in TIT is called a ‘hellish dog’ (4.2.79) and an ‘inhuman dog’ (5.3.14), Ajax calls Achilles a ‘whoreson dog’ (TC 2.3.229), and Tarquin in LUC is like ‘a thievish dog’ (736). Kent pities Lear for his ‘dog-hearted daughters’ (KL 4.3.46). Apemantus, the cynical and much derided philosopher in TIM , is often associated with dogs. The Painter tells him ‘You’re a dog’ (1.1.203) and the Lord tells him to be off in no uncertain terms: ‘Away, unpeaceable dog, or I’ll spurn thee hence’ (1.1.278). Other such insults occur at 2.2.50, 86–7, 4.3.199, 250, with some punning on the etymology of cynic, meaning dog in Greek. ‘Cur’ is generally insulting, though the Lord in TS refers to a favourite hunting bitch, Merriman, as ‘the poor cur’ (Prol. 1, 16). Dog-related insults are mostly fairly generalized, but Pistol is, characteristically, more inventive in his rude address to Nym: ‘Pish for thee, Iceland dog, thou prick-eared cur of Iceland!’ (H5 2.1.42). According to Craik, an Iceland dog was a lap-dog from Iceland, known for its quarrelsome nature and long hair (H5, Arden edn, 1995, 159). Other dogs with specific characteristics include the ‘curtal dog’ (PP 17.19, MW 2.1.99). In CE Dromio of Syracuse, complaining of his mistreatment at the hands of the kitchen wench, says that if he had not been strong, ‘She had transformed me to a curtal dog, and made me turn i’th wheel’ (3.2.151–2). This refers to a small dog with a docked tail, trained to run in a kitchen treadmill. The idea of the ‘curtal dog’ perhaps implies Dromio’s emasculation. Talbot in 1H6 observes bitterly that the French ‘call us for our fierceness, English dogs; / Now like to whelps we crying run away’ (1.5.25–6). He refers to the type of hunting dog called the Talbot, known for loyalty and courage, in contrast with the English soldiers at this point. The fighting spirit of dogs is also invoked in Mark Antony’s injunction to the Roman people to ‘cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war’ (JC 3.1.273). This instinctual behaviour was put to work in the contemporary activity of bear-baiting. Richard of Gloucester in 3H6 compares his embattled father to ‘a bear, encompass’d round with dogs’ (2.1.15). In KJ Arthur, seeking to dissuade Hubert from torturing him, suggests he is reluctant like ‘a dog that is compelled to fight’ (KJ 4.1.115). Allusions to the madness that dogs sometimes fell victim to suggest it was regarded as a common, even typical, condition. Edgar as Poor Tom, describing his conduct as a corrupt servingman, says he was like ‘the hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey’ (KL 3.4.91–2). The Abbess in CE calls a woman’s jealous clamours ‘poisons more deadly than a mad dog’s tooth’ (5.1.70). Cleopatra refers to the irrational fury of the mad dog, when she says that ‘impatience does / Become [befits] a dog that’s mad’ (AC 4.15.82–3). Dogs were often considered a very low, insignificant form of life. As the dying Mercutio in RJ comments bitterly, ‘Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to scratch a man 116

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to death!’ (3.1.102–3). Romeo mourns that ‘every cat and dog, / And little mouse, every unworthy thing’ can look on Juliet while he is forbidden to do so (3.3.30–1). Most poignant is Lear’s unanswerable question over Cordelia’s dead body: ‘Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life / And thou no breath at all?’ (5.3.305–6). Thersites in TC insults Menelaus by saying that while he would not care ‘to be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a lizard, an owl, a puttock, or a herring without a roe’ (5.1.59–60) it would be worse to be Menelaus. (Compare Timon on Apemantus, TIM 4.3.355.) The dog comes to mind when Othello is trying to imagine the lowest possible form of life to which Iago might be condemned: ‘Thou hadst better have been born a dog / Than answer my waked wrath’ (OTH 3.3.365–6). Timon of Athens’ boundless generosity is illustrated by the Senator’s view that ‘if I want gold, steal but a beggar’s dog / And give it Timon, why, the dog coins gold’ (TIM 2.1.5–6). That dogs were regularly beaten is taken for granted. Brutus says that Coriolanus as consul will silence the people, and ‘make them of no more voice / Than dogs that are as often beat for barking / As therefore kept to do so’ (COR 2.3.212–14). In the same play a servingman in Aufidius’ house says of the beggarly dressed Coriolanus that ‘I’d have beaten him like a dog but for disturbing the lords within’ (4.5.53–4). Falstaff threatens to cudgel Hal ‘like a dog’ (1H4 3.3.85). Sir Andrew, equally lacking in valiancy, declares himself ready to beat Malvolio ‘like a dog’ for being a puritan (TN 2.3.137). Iago draws on proverbial wisdom (Dent, D443) when he suggests that Othello is punishing Cassio ‘as one would beat his offenceless dog to affright an imperious lion’ (2.3.270–1). There are casual allusions to the cruel treatment of dogs. Iago dismisses Roderigo’s talk of drowning himself: ‘Come, be a man! Drown cats and blind puppies’ (OTH 1.3.336–7). Falstaff comments on the way he has been handled when hiding in the buck basket: ‘ ’Sblood, the rogues slighted me into the river with as little remorse as they would have drowned a blind bitch’s puppies, fifteen i’the litter’ (MW 3.5.8–10). KL , along with TIM , is a particularly dog-haunted play. Edgar as Poor Tom lists the dogs that he will intimidate on Lear’s behalf: Mastiff, greyhound, mongrel grim, Hound or spaniel, brach or him, Or bobtail tyke or trundle-tail, Tom will make him weep and wail. (3.6.65–8) The dog stands for creatures regularly misused, as when Kent protests to Regan against her inhumanity towards him: ‘Madam, if I were your father’s dog / You should not treat me so’ (2.2.133–4). Cordelia draws on the same idea in her response to her sisters’ cruel treatment of their father: ‘Mine enemy’s dog / Though he had bit me should have stood that night / Against my fire’ (4.7.36–8). The Fool compares Kent’s imprisonment in the stocks to the constraints exercised on animals: ‘Horses are tied by the heads, dogs and bears at the neck, monkeys by the loins and men by the legs’ (2.2.199–200). Lear’s threat to whip the Fool for his impertinence elicits the response: ‘Truth’s a dog that must 117

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to kennel: he must be whipped out, when the Lady Brach may stand by the fire and stink’ (1.4.109–10). The ‘Lady Brach’ signifies a bitch of the hunting hound variety; Hotspur refers to this dog when he has to listen to a Welsh song and tells his wife that ‘I had rather hear Lady my brach howl in Irish’ (1H4 3.1.230). Foakes suggests that the outcast dog might stand for Cordelia and the Fool, and the Lady Brach for Goneril and Regan. When Lear in his madness imagines how ‘The little dogs and all, / Trey, Blanch and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me’ (3.6.60–1), these might represent his three daughters (KL , Arden edn, 1997, 290). The dog has another kind of meaning for Lear in his outcast condition. He questions Gloucester: LEAR

Thou hast seen a farmer’s dog bark at a beggar? GLOUCESTER

Ay, sir. LEAR

And the creature run from the cur – there thou mightst behold the great image of authority: a dog’s obeyed in office. (4.6.150–5) Here the dog, still a reviled animal, is used to illustrate the perverted operations of society; it has a position of authority over a powerless human being. Examples of valued dogs are rare in Shakespeare. The Lord in TS takes a personal interest in his hunting hounds, which he knows by name, admiring the performance of Silver (‘I would not lose the dog for twenty pound’) and discussing their respective merits with his Huntsman (Ind. 1, 15–24). Theseus in MND also has high regard for his hunting hounds, ‘bred out of the Spartan kind’ (4.1.118), and wants Hippolyta to hear the music of their baying. But elsewhere hounds, like spaniels, are characterized as fawning (AC 4.12.21; COR 1.6.38; 1H4 1.3.248; JC 3.1.43 and 5.1.40). Helena in MND abases herself to Demetrius: ‘I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius, / The more you beat me, I will fawn on you. / Use me but as your spaniel’, MND 2.1.203–5). Proteus calls himself ‘spaniel-like’ for continuing to desire Silvia even though she spurns him (TGV 4.1.14–15). The eagerness of hounds to get to the hunt is prized by Henry V when he uses this quality to spur his soldiers to battle: ‘I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, / Straining upon the start’ (H5 3.1.31–2). But the hounds which pursue poor Wat the hare in VA , ‘cunning’ and ‘hot scent-snuffing’ (VA 686, 692) are alarmingly rapacious; so too when the love-sick Orsino calls himself a hart, preyed on by his desires ‘like fell and cruel hounds’ (TN 1.1.22). The most significant dog in the plays is Crab in TGV , a unique example in Shakespeare of the performing dog, who appears onstage twice, accompanied by his master, Lance, Proteus’s servant. Although Lance acknowledges that Crab is ‘the sourest-natured dog that lives’, a ‘cruel-hearted cur’ (2.3.5, 9), his devotion to his pet is such that he will take the blame for Crab’s misbehaviour, whatever it may be: ‘Nay, I’ll be sworn I have sat in the stocks for puddings he hath stolen, otherwise he had been executed. I have stood on 118

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the pillory for geese he hath killed, otherwise he had suffered for it’ (4.4.29–32). When Proteus commands Lance to present Silvia with a lapdog as a gift, expecting that his ‘little jewel’ will be met with delight, Lance, having lost this dog, offers Crab to Silvia instead, ‘who is a dog as big as ten of yours, and therefore the gift the greater’ (4.4.55–6). Unsurprisingly she rejects him: ‘She says your dog was a cur, and tells you currish thanks for such a present’ (4.4.47–8). Crab’s (presumably large) presence on the stage is continually foregrounded. When Lance describes Crab’s unfeeling response to his departure from the family home, he tells how, amid the overwhelming grief manifested by the rest of the family, ‘the dog all this while sheds not a tear nor speaks a word’ (2.3.29–30). (Dogs were proverbially hard hearted. See Dent, D510.1: ‘To have as much pity as a dog’.) (C) See Thomas for an overview of attitudes to dogs in early modern England (1983, 101–9). Fudge (2000) has material on the various roles of dogs in early modern English culture. The main contemporary source on dogs was Caius (1576). Others include Erasmus, Philodoxus and Topsell (1607). Harrison has a detailed (and patriotic) chapter ‘Of our English dogs and their qualities’ (1587, 339–48). On the list in MAC , see Clark (Arden edn, 2015) and Braunmuller (2008, 257–8). For more on the Talbot see Burns (2H6 part 1, 2000, 49–50) and on Apemantus and dogs, see Dawson and Minton (TIM , 2008, 57–8) and Empson (1951, 176–7). On Crab see Carroll (TGV , 2004, 67–75) and Brooks (1963). Carroll gives a few examples of other dogs appearing on the early modern stage, though none with so big a part as Crab. Dog, a diabolic figure in the play The Witch of Edmonton, was clearly played by an actor. Spurgeon (1935, 195–9) uses Shakespeare’s imagery as evidence of his dislike of dogs. On ‘dog’ as an insult, see Vienne-Guerrin’s extensive entry (2016). Garber’s whimsical chapter on Shakespeare’s dogs (2008) suggests a more sympathetic attitude and is full of insights. See also Boehrer (2002, 156–68). doublet (A) A doublet was a close-fitting waist-length jacket, with puffed sleeves, often detachable, and fastened by points to the hose of men and the skirts of woman. It might be made from a variety of materials, including silk, satin, brocade, taffeta, velvet, and was often of a bright colour that contrasted with the colour of the hose. It could be decorated by pinking or slashing, and might be very costly. (B) For Rosalind, the doublet and hose are the garments that identify her as a man, and she mentions them self-consciously several times. En route to the Forest of Arden she tries to conceal her weariness, acknowledging that it is her role ‘to comfort the weaker vessel, as doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat’ (AYL 2.4.5–7). When Celia taunts her by withholding the identity of the man who has carved verses on the forest trees, Rosalind begs her to tell: ‘Dost thou think, though I am caparisoned like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition?’ (AYL 3.2.189– 91). Once assured that it is Orlando, Rosalind’s first thought is of her disguise: ‘Alas the day, what shall I do with my doublet and hose?’ (AYL 3.2.212–13). The lower part of a doublet was called its belly and could be padded or not: Falstaff is identified by Fluellen as ‘the fat knight with the great-belly doublet’ (H5 4.7.47), 119

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though this description applies as much to Falstaff’s actual body as to his clothes. Moth describes to Armado the demeanour of the man in love ‘with your arms crossed on your thin-belly doublet like a rabbit on a spit’ (LLL 3.1.16–18). The thin-belly doublet flattered a lean body. Hamlet’s entry into Ophelia’s closet ‘with his doublet all unbraced [unfastened]’ (HAM 2.1.75) is of a piece with his dishevelled appearance; he may be genuinely careless through mental disturbance, or he may be affecting the style of the lover as described by Rosalind in AYL 3.2.369–72. The unfastened doublet, a token of vulnerability, is also significant in JC when Caska describes with scorn how Caesar made a show of humbling himself before the mob: ‘when he perceived the common herd was glad he refused the crown, he plucked me ope his doublet and offered them his throat to cut’ (JC 1.2.262–5). A fashionable doublet was important for a young gallant’s image. Mercutio, mocking the peaceable Benvolio, asks ‘Didst thou not fall out with a tailor for wearing his new doublet before Easter . . .?’ (RJ 3.1.26–7). Benedick imagines the lovesick Claudio who will ‘lie ten nights awake carving the fashion of a new doublet’ (MA 2.3.17). Portia mocks the eclectic fashion sense of her English suitor: ‘I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany and his behaviour everywhere’ (MV 1.2.69–71). A ‘silken doublet’, along with ‘velvet hose, a scarlet cloak and a copotain hat’, makes up the fashionable outfit that Tranio has put together when he impersonates Lucentio, to the horror of the latter’s father Vincentio (TS 5.1.59). (C) See Linthicum (1936, 197–200) who gives illustrations, also Arnold’s account of the doublet’s construction (1985, 14–30). Hayward (2010, 107–18) examines in detail a boy’s doublet discovered buried in a house in Abdingdon. Mirabella (2015, 112–16) argues that the doublet and hose ‘presents a body that can appear stuffed, stiffened, exaggerated and constrained’ (113). Stubbes’s description of doublets absurdly ‘hardequilted, and stuffed, bombasted and sewed’ so that the wearer is prevented from movement (1583, sig. C2) seems to support this. Dekker (1609, 31) mocks doublets ‘with little thick skirts, (so short that none are able to sit upon them)’ worn by women in imitation of men. dowager A dowager was a widow in receipt of a dower. In MND Lysander has a conveniently placed ‘widow aunt, a dowager / Of great revenue’ (1.1.157–8) at whose house he and Hermia can escape her father’s wrath. Theseus, eager to marry Hippolyta, in four days’ time, regards the waning moon as making him wait ‘like to a step-dame or a dowager / Long withering out a young man’s revenue’ (1.1.5–6); the dowager has rights in the young man’s inheritance, and he cannot claim it while she is alive. In H8 King Henry accords Katherine the title of Princess Dowager in order to demote her from the status of wife to that of widow to his late brother (3.2.69–71). dowry, dower, portion (A) A dowry (often called a ‘dower’ although this term can have a completely different meaning, relating to financial provision made at the marriage for the wife in the event of her husband’s death) was a marriage portion, a sum of money 120

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or a piece of property, with which a bride was provided by her family for her marriage. The term ‘portion’ was used interchangeably with ‘dower’ (though, according to Erickson (1993, 128), ‘the words “jointure” and “dower” were used only by men of yeomen status and above’). The sum was usually negotiated with the groom’s family before the marriage, and often fixed by a common-law contract (as distinct from a spousal contract). The practice was observed at all social levels except the very poorest. The term can also be used, though less commonly in Shakespeare, to signify the sum paid by the groom to the bride’s family to marry her. (B) Although Benedick declares of Beatrice that he ‘would not marry her though she were endowed with all that Adam had left him before he transgressed’ (MA 2.1.229–31) dowries are usually a matter of great significance in Shakespeare. Sir Toby’s readiness to marry Maria ‘and ask no other dowry with her but such another jest’ (TN 2.5.179) (which he apparently does) is unusual. By contrast, Lear’s determination ‘to publish / Our daughters’ several dowers’ (1.1.42–3) is the catalyst for the tragic events to follow. In this instance, the only unmarried daughter, Cordelia, though due to receive ‘a third more opulent than [her] sisters’ as being her father’s favourite, so angers him with her response to his questions about her love for him that he decides to ‘disclaim all [his] paternal care, / Propinquity, and property of blood’ (KL 1.1.114–15) and give her nothing: ‘Thy truth then be thy dower’. Cordelia’s suitors are confronted with the prospect of a bride without a marriage portion, ‘dowered with our curse’ as Lear says. Burgundy demurs, requiring that Lear ‘Give but that portion which yourself proposed’, but France feels otherwise: ‘She is herself a dowry’. The formality with which he announces to Lear and the court his readiness to accept Cordelia lays emphasis on his recognition of her rare value, even without her portion: ‘Thy dowerless daughter, King, thrown to my chance, / Is queen of us, of ours and our fair France’ (1.1.258–9). Another father involved in the matter of his daughters’ dowries is Baptista in TS . Petruccio, who has come deliberately ‘to wive it wealthily in Padua’ needs to ascertain from Baptista if it will be worth his while to proceed with Katherina: ‘Then tell me, if I get your daughter’s love, / What dowry shall I have with her to wife?’ (2.1.128–9). Baptista’s guarantee of half his lands at his death and 20,000 crowns in cash (£5,000 in the money of the time) elicits an equally generous response from Petruccio: And for that dowry I’ll assure her of Her widowhood, be it that she survive me, In all my lands and leases whatsoever. (2.1.122–4) A widow’s portion according to law need only be a third of her husband’s estate, the remainder going to his heirs. In the case of Bianca, Baptista’s other daughter, matters are arranged differently, since she is regarded as so much more valuable on the marriage market in herself (and seems not to require a dowry from her father). Unlike Lear, Baptista is in a position to bargain with two, apparently equally eager, rival suitors, telling them that ‘he . . . / That can assure my daughter greatest dower / Shall have my 121

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Bianca’s love’ (2.1.346–7). ‘Dower’ here means the payment made by the husband to the bride’s relatives. Baptista is of course fooled by this daughter, who makes her own marriage choice without any reference to him. At the end of the play, impressed by Katherina’s behaviour in the wager, he offers twenty thousand crowns to Petruccio, ‘another dowry to another daughter, / For she is changed as she had never been’ (5.2.120– 1). The Jailor in TNK , who has far less at his disposal, is anxious that he cannot provide much for his daughter’s dowry, but tells her wooer that ‘what I have, be it what it will, I will assure upon my daughter at the day of my death’ (TNK 2.1.8–9). As it transpires, he need not have worried; Palamon later gives ‘a sum of money to her marriage / A large one’ (4.1.23), and repeats his offer ‘to piece [repair] her portion’ at the moment just before he expects to be executed (5.4.31). The loss of marriage portions is an important factor in MM . Claudio and Juliet have contracted a marriage without ‘the denunciation . . . of outward order’ but need to obtain ‘a dower / Remaining in the coffer of her friends’ (MM 1.2.137–40) to formalize their union (and make it legal in the light of Angelo’s new laws). Mariana and Angelo are in a similar position, having contracted but not formalized their marriage; but in their case Mariana’s dowry, ‘the portion and sinew of her fortune’ (3.1.221–2) in the charge of her brother, has been lost at sea, and Angelo has reneged on the contract. At the end of the play, the Duke offers to transfer all Angelo’s estate to Mariana to make up for the lost dowry and ‘to buy you a better husband’ (5.1.422). In AW the King says of Helena that ‘Virtue and she is her own dower’ but nonetheless will provide ‘honour and wealth from me’ (2.3.145–6) as an inducement to the reluctant Bertram to marry her. The importance of a dower to the fatherless Diana is evident. Helena tells her mother that ‘heaven / Hath brought me up to be your daughter’s dower’ (4.4.18–19), and at the end of the play, when Diana has played her part in helping Helena secure her husband, the King urges her to ‘choose thou thy husband and I’ll pay thy dower’ (5.3.26). When Florizel in WT is seeking to make his contract with Perdita, the Shepherd readily agrees: ‘I give my daughter to him, and will make / Her portion equal his’. But Florizel, believing Perdita to be the Shepherd’s daughter and therefore unlikely to have a large dowry, answers, ‘O, that must be / The virtue of your daughter’ (4.4.390–1). Hamlet uses the idea of a dowry metaphorically, when cursing Ophelia in what appears to be a bout of madness; he urges her to leave the world and ‘Get thee to a nunnery!’ He continues, ‘If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny’ (3.1.134–5). Dowry meaning endowment appears also in MV when Bassanio, speaking of the difference between appearance and reality, refers to the ‘supposed fairness’ of golden hair which is actually a wig, ‘the dowry of a second head’ (MV 3.2.95). There is some irony in the language here, since the donor of the hair is a dead person. (C) On legal arrangements for dowries, see Sokol and Sokol (2003, 56–72) who correct errors made elsewhere when different types of dower or contract are confused. Erickson (1993, 85–97) discusses marriage portions stressing their importance at all levels of society and giving examples of portions consisting of goods as well as cash. 122

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Cook (1991) gives examples of litigation over unpaid dowers, and notes Robert Greene’s confession to deserting his wife and spending her portion (The Repentance of Robert Greene, 1592, sig. C3v). Korda (2002a, ch. 5) discusses dowries in MM and reads the play in terms of women’s alienation from property. On the marriage arrangements in TS see Hodgdon (Arden edn, 2010). See also marriage, dowager, jointure. dug (A) Dug in Shakespearean usage means a teat or nipple, usually with reference to suckling. (B) Touchstone recalls to comic effect his bucolic wooing of Jane Smile ‘and the cow’s dugs that her pretty chopped [chapped] hands had milked’ (AYL 2.4.47). Venus hurrying to track down Adonis is likened to ‘a milch-doe, whose swelling dugs do ache, / Hasting to feed her fawn hid in some brake’ (VA 857–6). Juliet’s wet Nurse describes at some length her weaning of Juliet by applying wormwood to her nipple and the baby’s reaction: When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool, To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug! (RJ 1.3.31–3) Suffolk in 2H6 imagines how it might be if he could die in the Queen’s arms, ‘as mild and gentle as the cradle-babe / Dying with mother’s dug between its lips’ (2H6 3.2.392– 3). Hamlet says dismissively of the garrulous Osric that he ‘did comply with his dug before he sucked it’ (HAM 5.2.187). The mother of Richard of Gloucester wants to deny her responsibility for her son’s hypocritical deceptions: He is my son, ay, and therein my shame, Yet from my dugs he drew not this deceit. (R3 2.2.29–30) (C) On the role of wet nurses in early modern England, see Wiesner (1993, esp. 87–9). The belief that moral and physical characteristics could be transmitted through breastmilk was widespread. See Trubowitz (2012) who documents this idea fully (esp. ch. 1). See also milk.

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E egg (A) Hens’ eggs were a plentiful food in the period, proverbially cheap, and the whites could be used for medicinal purposes. Egg could also be used metaphorically, to signify something young or of little value. (B) The egg signifying something trivial is referred to in AW by Parolles, when he slanders Lord Dumain by saying that ‘he will steal an egg out of a cloister’ (4.3.245), meaning, in Johnson’s words, that ‘he will steal anything, however trifling, from any place, however holy’ (Hunter, ed., Arden Second Series, 1967). Coriolanus refers to ‘some trick not worth an egg’ (4.4.21). When Leontes playfully asks his little son Mamilius, ‘Mine honest friend, / Will you take eggs for money?’ (WT 1.2.160–1), he refers to the proverb, ‘To take eggs for money’ (Dent, E90), meaning to accept something worthless in return for something of value. The Fool in KL is drawing on the same idea in his artful exchange with Lear: FOOL

Nuncle, give me an egg and I’ll give thee two crowns. LEAR

What two crowns shall they be? FOOL

Why, after I have cut the egg i’the middle and eat up the meat, the two crowns of the egg. (1.4.148–52) Crowns are of great symbolic significance in the play, Lear’s signifying the power which he struggles to retain, as the Fool implicitly recognizes. Eggs are used for their medicinal purposes when (in the Quarto only) one of Cornwall’s servants takes pity on the blinded Gloucester and prepares to ‘fetch some flax and whites of eggs / To apply to his bleeding face’ (3.7.105–6). Later in the play the egg stands for fragility. When the disguised Edgar averts his father’s suicide, he tells Gloucester that had he been any heavier than ‘gossamer, feathers, air’ in falling from the cliff top ‘Thou’dst shivered like an egg’ (4.6.48–50). Eggs can stand for children. The Murderer in MAC pejoratively calls Lady Macduff’s son ‘You egg! / Young fry of treachery!’ (5.2.85–6) as he prepares to kill him. When Brutus in JC contemplates the assassination of Caesar he uses Caesar’s potential for harm as a justification:

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. . . therefore think him as a serpent’s egg Which hatched, would as his kind grow mischievous, And kill him in the shell. (2.1.32–4) Eggs appear as food in 1H4. The references suggest a light meal; Falstaff jokes that Hal has not enough grace even to ‘serve to be prologue to an egg and butter’ (1.2.20), that is a meal not requiring an elaborate blessing, and the guests at the Gad’s Hill inn ‘are up already, and call for eggs and butter’ before setting out early on their journey (2.1.58). Touchstone calls Corin damned for never having been at court ‘like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side’ (AYL 3.2.35), presumably meaning a badly baked egg. Cressida makes a joke about eggs in conversation with Pandarus; in answer to his assertion that Troilus has no interest in Helen, and ‘esteems her no more than I esteem an addled egg’, she responds: If you love an addle egg as well as you love an idle head, you would eat chickens i’th’shell. (TC 1.2.127–9) She puns on ‘addle’, meaning an egg that is partly hatched and therefore not fit to eat. Mercutio uses eggs for a joke with the peaceable Benvolio, calling him quarrelsome: ‘Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat, and yet thy head hath been beaten as addle as an egg for quarrelling’ (RJ 3.1.21–3). Here, ‘addle’ means muddled or confused. (C) Fitzpatrick (2011) gives references to the medicinal uses of eggs and of their culinary preparation in Elyot (1541) and Vaughan (1612). Foakes (KL , Arden edn, 1997, note on 3.7.105) cites John Banister’s Treatise of Chyrurgie (1575, 49) on using whites of egg to soothe sore eyes. In Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair (1614) Knockem advises the Pig Woman Ursula, who has scalded her leg, to apply ‘the white of an egg, a little honey, and hog’s grease’ to it (2.5.174–5). eisel[l] is an old word for vinegar used in Shakespeare to signify a drink of intense bitterness. Hamlet, vying with Laertes as to who can do best in expressing love for the dead Ophelia, says that if his rival would ‘drink up eisel, eat a crocodile’ he would do the same (5.1.265). In Sonnet 111 the poet, ashamed by the ‘public manners’ into which his lifestyle has forced him, is willing to ‘drink / Potions of eisell ’gainst my strong infection’ if this will redeem him in his lover’s eyes. Duncan-Jones’s note on the lines (Arden edn, 1997) invokes the ‘vinegar . . . mingled with gall’ offered to Christ on the cross (Matthew 27.48). ewer A ewer was a pitcher or jug with a wide spout, used for pouring water to wash the hands. Shakespeare associates it with luxury furnishings. The stage directions to TS Induction 2 calls for ‘three Servants – with apparel, basin and ewer’, which the Lord’s

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servants bring to Christopher Sly. Gremio lists ‘basins and ewers to lave her dainty hands’ among the household items he will provide for Bianca in his grand house. Lucullus in TIM , expecting a gift from Timon, says that he has ‘dreamt of a silver basin and ewer’ (3.1.6). Picard (2003, 182–3) notes the importance of hand-washing with basins and ewers before meals, and says that ewers and basins were included in most inventories of household goods.

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F family (A) A family in early modern England could mean a group of people living together in a household, including those related to one another through blood or marriage, and sometimes also apprentices, servants and retainers. The notion that the early modern family was an extended one, with several generations living under the same roof, is not now widely held. Family could also signify a lineage, a group of people descended from a common ancestor. (B) Family, not an especially common word in Shakespeare, tends to refer to people lineally connected. ‘Come they of noble family? / Why, so didst thou’ (H5 2.2.129–30), says King Henry V to the three men found guilty of treachery. The Friar, counselling Leonato on the management of his daughter Hero’s fake death, advises him to ‘Maintain

Figure 2 A Puritan family from ‘Tenor of the Whole Psalms in Four Parts’, 1563. The wife is soberly dressed, and her husband assumes a patriarchal position. © Private Collection/The Stapleton Collection/Bridgeman Images

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a mourning ostentation, / And on your family’s old monument / Hang mournful epitaphs’ (MA 4.1.205–7). When Saturninus offers Titus Andronicus ‘to advance thy name and honourable family’ (TIT 1.1.242) by marrying his daughter Lavinia he is referring to the Andronicus dynasty, as is Tamora when she later promises ‘to raze their faction and their family’ (1.1.456). When, however, Roderigo asks Brabantio, ‘Signior, is all your family within?’ (OTH 1.1.83) before breaking to him the news of Desdemona’s elopement, he means ‘family’ in the sense of relations and household servants. A more ambiguous usage is that of Arcite in TNK , when he is reassuring his kinsman Palamon that they can count themselves self-sufficient in their prison: here being thus together, We are an endless mine to one another; We are one another’s wife, ever begetting New births of love; we are father, friends, acquaintance, We are, in one another, families (TNK 2.2.782) He may mean all kinds of blood relations, or, since he includes friends and acquaintance, he may mean families in the sense of a household living together. (C) Orgel (1986) has some provocative comments about the instability of families in Shakespeare. Belsey considers the ‘close attention to the nuclear family’ in WT to be ‘eccentric’ in Shakespeare (1999, 89), although family relationships in other forms are a common focus. Cook notes that ‘the word family denoted everyone under one roof, with no distinction between blood kin and servants’ (1991, 78). Laslett (1971a) regards this expansive conception of the family as a key element of the pre-industrial ‘world we have lost’. Berry and Foyster in the introduction to their collection (2007) give an immensely useful review of Stone’s seminal The Family, Sex and Marriage 1500–1800 (1977) and critiques of it, and also consider developments in early modern family history since Stone’s work. Crawford (2014) discusses the family as an unstable concept in this period. Young (2009) provides a basic account of the family in Shakespeare. Perkins (1609) gives a strongly patriarchal account of the family, regarded primarily as the married couple and their children, but including household servants. Gouge (1622) takes a similar line. See also marriage and the fuller bibliography there. fan (A) The fan was a small object often made of feathers, or later of carved ivory sticks, used by women to produce a gentle wind to cool the face. It could be highly decorative and adorned with a jewelled handle of gold or other precious metal. Norris (1938, 628) notes that the folding fan which opened and shut first appeared in England in the 1580s or 1590s. (B) The fan is often treated as a quintessentially feminine accoutrement, as when the angry Hotspur, reading an evasive message from someone who does not wish to join his plot against the king, explodes, ‘Zounds, an I were now by this rascal, I could brain him with his lady’s fan’ (1H4 2.3.20–1). Othello jealously imagines Desdemona finding a 130

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pretext to get Emilia out of the way ‘to fetch her fan, her gloves, her mask’ (OTH 4.2.9). A servant walking before a lady to carry her fan is a comic sight in RJ, when the Nurse calls for Peter to give her her fan, and Mercutio comments sardonically, ‘Good Peter, to hide her face, for her fan’s the fairer face’ (2.4.103–4). The same applies in LLL when Costard mocks the courtier Boyet: ‘O a most dainty man! / To see him walk before a lady and to bear her fan!’ (4.1.143–4). In 2H6 Queen Margaret uses her fan to humiliate Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, by dropping it and then ordering the Duchess to pick it up: ‘Give me my fan. What, minion! Can you not?’ (2H6 1.3.139). Philo in AC may be imagining a larger object when he says that Antony’s heart has become ‘the bellows and the fan / To cool a gipsy’s lust’ (1.1.9–10). Agamemnon in TC, speaking of how what is significant in life is separated out from what is insignificant, uses the fan in a grandiose image: Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan, Puffing at all, winnows the light away, And what hath mass or matter by itself Lies rich in virtue and unmingled. (TC 1.3.27–30) Here he seems to mean any kind of fanning tool used to winnow chaff from wheat (Bevington, Arden edn, 2001, 157). (C) Norris (1938, 506–7, 628–70) illustrates several types of fan. farthingale Generally defined as a hooped petticoat which made the skirt stand out from the body, the farthingale could take several forms: the Spanish style was a petticoat stiffened with rings of wire or whalebone, but the French style was a stuffed roll placed round the hips over which the pleated skirt of a kirtle fell. Falstaff suggests that Mistress Ford would look like a real courtier with ‘an excellent motion to thy gait’ if she wore a ‘semi-circled farthingale’ (MW 3.3.58), that is, a roll that was only stuffed at the back but flat at the front. According to Linthicum (181) farthingales in the Italian style could extend between eight and forty-eight inches; they became so large that in 1613 ladies were forbidden to wear them to masques at court. A dog that urinated against ‘a gentlewoman’s farthingale’, like Crab in TGV (4.4.35–7), would make the unfortunate woman very conspicuous. For more information, see Linthicum (1936, 179–82) and Kelly (1970, 47–8). Ashelford (1988, 12) has illustrations. father (A) A father is a male parent. The word can also be used as form of address to an elderly man and it can mean a male ancestor, a father-in-law, a man who takes on the responsibilities of a parent towards a child, or assumes the role of a father or patron. It can be a title for a priest or other religious figure. In a patriarchal society like that of early modern England the role of the father was the supreme head of the family. (B) In KL , one of Shakespeare’s plays most preoccupied with fathers, their rights and duties, the Earl of Gloucester believes that, amongst the many sorts of discord 131

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portended in ‘these late eclipses in the sun and moon’, is familial disorder, ‘the bond cracked ’twixt son and father . . . son against father . . . father against child’ (1.2.109– 11). Though superstitious, he is not wrong. The Fool does not believe that such bonds exist; from his viewpoint, the child’s relationship with his or her father is governed only by self-interest: Fathers that wear rags Do make their children blind, But fathers that bear bags Shall see their children kind. (2.2.238–41) Lear considers himself to have been ‘so kind a father’ (1.5.31), a ‘dear father’ (2.2.290), an ‘old kind father’ (3.4.19); yet he subjects Goneril to ‘th’ untented woundings of a father’s curse’ (1.4.292) and comprehensively disclaims all his ‘paternal care, / Propinquity and property of blood’ from Cordelia, saying ‘We / Have no such daughter’ (1.1.114–15, 264–5). It is Cordelia’s rational evaluation of the extent of her filial duty that has brought about her horrifying alienation from her father. He does not want to hear that he will have to share her love with her future husband, and can hardly believe it when she tells him that ‘I shall never marry like my sisters / To love my father all’ (1.1.103–4). Brabantio is not happy when Desdemona speaks of her ‘divided duty’ which results in prioritizing her husband over her father (OTH 1.3.180–9). He now regrets the bond between father and child, saying bitterly, ‘I had rather adopt a child than get it’ (1.3.192). The father’s claim to his daughter’s affections is a special one, and its modification when the daughter comes to prioritize another man is difficult for both to manage. Other women who have to set their fathers aside in favour of husbands or lovers include Juliet, who must, as she urges Romeo to do, ‘Deny thy father and refuse thy name’ (RJ 2.2.34), and Cressida, who is reluctant to return to her father and the Greeks, telling Pandarus: ‘I have forgot my father. / I know no touch of consanguinity’ (TC 4.2.97–8). Jessica in MV finds herself ‘ashamed to be my father’s child’ (2.3.17). Although Helena exhibits ‘moderate lamentation’ for the death of her father, once she is lost in contemplation of Bertram’s ‘bright radiance’ she announces to herself, ‘I think not on my father . . . What was he like? / I have forgot him’ (AW 1.1.80–2). ‘To you your father should be as a god’ (MND 1.1.47), Theseus tells Hermia reprovingly, when she rejects his marriage choice, but this paternalistic view is not accepted even by the most loving daughters. Lear eventually becomes what Cordelia calls, in an ambiguous phrase, a ‘childchanged father’ (4.7.17), a father who has changed places with his child and needs her to look after him, and a father who has been changed by his children. He is now humbled by her: ‘As I am a man, I think this lady / To be my child Cordelia’ (4.7.69–70). Gloucester is another such ‘discarded father’ (3.4.71). He too bestows his fatherly love in the wrong place, a ‘credulous father’ (1.2.176), who genuinely believes that his bastard son Edmund has, as Cornwall puts it, ‘shown [his] father / A child-like office’ 132

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(2.1.105–6). Like Goneril and Regan, Edmund can pronounce with conviction on ‘how manifold and strong a bond / The child was bound to the father’ (2.1.47–8), but the words have no meaning for him, and are used only to denigrate his brother. Too late Gloucester finds out the truth and recognizes in his other son Edgar ‘the food of thy abused father’s wrath’ (4.1.24); Edgar in disguise addresses him as father, but when he finally reveals himself to Gloucester as his son and ‘asked his blessing’ the old man cannot sustain the intensity of ‘joy and grief’ of the moment and dies. In Edmund’s view it is a natural law that fathers should give way to their sons: ‘The younger rises when the old doth fall’ (3.3.24). Claudius puts a similar view to Hamlet when advising him to accept that the ‘common theme of nature / is death of fathers’: ’Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet, To give these mourning duties to your father, But you must know your father lost a father, That father lost lost his (HAM 1.2.87–90) But for Hamlet duty to a father goes beyond mourning. The Ghost incites him: ‘If thou didst ever thy dear father love . . . / Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder’ (1.5.24–5). Hamlet’s identity becomes that of ‘the son of a dear father murdered / Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell’ (2.2.517–18, Q3 emendation, generally followed). Laertes is similarly positioned; after Ophelia’s display of madness Claudius prompts him: What would you undertake To show yourself in deed your father’s son More than in words? (4.7.122–4) Claudius attempts to persuade Hamlet to ‘think of us / As of a father’ (1.2.107–8). Gertrude tries to assist, telling Hamlet when he enters her chamber, ‘Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended’. He responds, ‘Mother, you have my father much offended’ (3.4.8–9). Hamlet’s rejection of Claudius is at its most insulting when he bids farewell to the King as ‘dear mother’. Claudius corrects him: ‘Thy loving father, Hamlet’, which produces Hamlet’s witty riposte: My mother. Father and mother is man and wife. Man and wife is one flesh. So – my mother. (4.3.47–50) Even if Hamlet cannot accept Claudius as in any sense his father, some men are more fortunate with father-figures, and respect for the elderly was a key value in Elizabethan society. Menenius calls Coriolanus son, and styles himself ‘thy old father’ (COR 5.2.70); Coriolanus acknowledges that Menenius ‘loved me above the measure of a father’ (5.3.10). Kent tries to appeal to Lear by calling on the bond between them: 133

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Royal Lear, Whom I have ever honoured as my king, Loved as my father, as my master followed (1.1.140–2) The newly crowned King Henry V acknowledges the role of the Lord Chief Justice as surrogate father: You shall be as a father to my youth; My voice shall sound as you do prompt mine ear, And I will stoop and humble my intents To your well-practised, wise direction. (2H4 5.2.117–20) ‘Timon has been this lord’s father’ (TIM 3.2.70), a stranger comments on Timon’s generosity to an ungrateful suitor. The King of France, who has offered himself as surrogate father to Bertram, presents Helena with a choice of noble lords from whom to select a husband, ‘o’er whom both sovereign power and father’s voice / I have to use’ (2.3.55–6). Ferdinand says that not only has he received a ‘second life’ from Prospero, but that Prospero has become his ‘second father’ (TEM 5.1.195–6). Belarius must in the last scene of CYM give up ‘these two young gentlemen that call me father / And think they are my sons’ (CYM 5.5.327–8) to their biological father, Cymbeline. But in compensation he is received into the family of Cymbeline, who calls him ‘brother’, while Innogen, tells him, ‘You are my father too’ (5.5.401). That children resemble their fathers is important, especially when the mother’s unique knowledge of a child’s parentage is often insisted upon. The Duke of Buckingham, pressing Richard III ’s claim to the throne, urges the bastardy of his brother Edward, ‘And his resemblance being not like the Duke’ whereas Richard is ‘the right idea of your father, / Both in your form and nobleness of mind’ (R3 3.7.11–14). The flattery of Richard is of course absurd, given his limp and hunchback. By contrast the handsome Arcite is admired by Hippolyta: ‘His body / And fiery mind illustrate a brave father’ (TNK 2.5.21–2). When Paulina presents Leontes with his baby daughter, she details her resemblance to her father to stress the child’s legitimacy: Behold, my lords, Although the print be little, the whole matter And copy of the father – eye, nose, lip, The trick of’s frown, his forehead, nay, the valley, The pretty dimples of his chin and cheek, his smiles, The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger. (WT 2.3.96–101) Leontes will not accept this: ‘Shall I live on, to see this bastard kneel And call me father?’ (2.3.153–4). But when, later, he meets Florizel the son of Polixenes, he uses Paulina’s metaphor: 134

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Your mother was most true to wedlock, prince, For she did print your royal father off, Conceiving you. (5.1.123–5) After some joking about Hero’s parentage between her father and Don Pedro, the latter compliments both father and daughter by saying, ‘Truly, the lady fathers herself’, adding, ‘Be happy, lady, for you are like an honourable father’ (MA 1.1.104–6). He means that she is so like her father that there can be no doubt of her paternity. Patrilineal descent is key to the structure of society at all levels. In MAC , a play permeated by the theme of fatherhood, Banquo muses on the Witches’ prophecy that he ‘should be the root and father / Of many kings’ (3.1.5–6), while Macbeth jealously rehearses the same occasion: They hailed him father to a line of kings. Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown And put a barren sceptre in my gripe ... No son of mine succeeding. (3.1.59–63) Thus Petruccio presents his credentials as suitor to Katherina to Baptista: You knew my father well, and in him me, Left solely heir to all his lands and goods (TS 2.1.115–16) Tranio, disguised as Lucentio, makes his case for wooing Bianca similarly: ‘I am my father’s heir and only son’ (2.1.368). Fathers exert pressure on their children from beyond the grave. Portia finds it hard to accept that ‘the will of a living daughter [is] curbed by the will of a dead father’ (MV 1.2.23–4). For the ruthless Lady Macbeth killing Duncan is impossible because of his resemblance to her father (2.2.13–14). However, Oliver, Orlando’s older brother, has ignored the wish of their father to give Orlando a good education; Orlando rebels against this mistreatment, telling Oliver, ‘The spirit of my father grows strong in me, and I will no longer endure it!’ (AYL 1.1.66–7). ‘Father’ may be used to mean guardian, as in ‘so kind a father of the commonwealth’ (1H6 3.1.98); it may also mean priest, as in ‘all the reverend fathers of the land’ (H8 2.4.202), or ‘your ghostly father’ (MM 4.3.47). Dromio of Syracuse refers to the ‘plain bald pate of Father Time himself’ (CE 2.2.68–9). Figuratively, father means originator, as in ‘the father of good news’ (HAM 2.2.42) ‘Thy wish was father . . . to that thought’ (2H4 4.3.222), and ‘Liberty, as surfeit, is the father of much fast’ (MM 1.2.117–18). (C) Batt, whose focus is the patriarchal family, asserts that the role of father, which he describes in detail, is ‘one of the highest callinges and dueties among mortall men’ 135

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(1581, 15). He believes in strict discipline and holds that ‘too much cockering and pampering’ (29) of children by parents, especially fathers, is a chief cause of problems in the family. Perkins (1609, ch. 13) describes the duties of the father in bringing up children and giving them in marriage. Dod and Cleaver (1630) and Gouge (1622) are also useful sources on parenthood. Ezell (1987), using both historical and literary evidence, challenges views of patriarchal oppression in the period. Crawford (2014) discusses the importance of biological fatherhood, including issues of patrilineal inheritance. On this subject see also Foyster (1999) and Shepard (2003). The lament of Hieronimo for his dead son Horatio in Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (third additional passage) is one of the most poignant expressions of a father’s love for a child in the period. See also family, mother. feast (A) A feast signifies a grand dinner of several courses, often held to mark a special occasion such as marriage. (B) Feasting and marriage are connected in TGV , when Valentine closes the play by promising a shared celebration with Proteus: ‘Our day of marriage shall be yours, / One feast, one house, one mutual happiness’ (5.4.170–1). Another joint celebration, with more sinister undertones, is offered in TIT when Saturninus invites the ill-fated Lavinia: Come, if the emperor’s court can feast two brides, You are my guest, Lavinia, and your friends. (1.1.493–4) In TS Petruccio will go to Venice to buy his wedding garments and asks Baptista to ‘Provide the feast, father, and bid the guests’ (2.1.310), though in the event the celebration is hosted by Lucentio (or rather Tranio, who at this stage is impersonating his master). In RJ Juliet’s father holds ‘an old accustomed feast’ (1.2.19) which, although not a marriage feast, is the occasion at which Romeo and Juliet meet for the first time. But the later discovery of what appears to be Juliet’s corpse prompts him to lament that All things that we ordained festival Turn from their office to black funeral: Our instruments to melancholy bells, Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast (4.5.84–7) Feasts indicative of largesse occur in several plays. Antony excuses himself from the charge of rudeness to Caesar’s messenger by saying that the man’s entrance was untimely, and ‘Three kings I had newly feasted, and did want / of what I was i’th’morning’ (AC 2.2.81–2). At their first meeting Cleopatra invites Antony to supper, and in Enobarbus’s matchless description, he ‘goes to the feast, / And for his ordinary pays his heart / For what his eyes eat only’ (2.2.235–6). On Pompey’s barge, Antony dismisses Pompey’s suggestion that ‘We’ll feast each other ere we part, and let’s / Draw lots who 136

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shall begin’ (2.6.60), wanting to act as host himself. As the occasion becomes increasingly drunken, Pompey encourages further excess: ‘This is not yet an Alexandrian feast’ (2.7.96), recalling a wish for the ‘fine Egyptian cookery’ (2.6.63) he associates with Antony. Food and sex are regularly associated in this play. Cleopatra is Antony’s ‘Egyptian dish’, and Pompey says he has heard that when in Egypt ‘Julius Caesar / Grew fat with feasting there’ (2.6.65). The feasts given by Timon of Athens are legendary for their excess. Apemantus rejects what Timon has to offer, saying dismissively, ‘No, I’ll nothing . . . what needs these feasts, pomps and vainglories?’ (TIM 1.2.245, 249– 50). On the occasion of the final feast, when the unsuspecting guests are offered dishes of warm water, Timon mocks their surprise: May you a better feast never behold, You knot of mouth-friends! . . . . . . Henceforth be no feast, Whereat a villain’s not a welcome guest. (TIM 3.5.85–6, 99–100) Feasts are sometimes given to mark a special occasion, often with religious significance, such as the feast of Lupercal in JC (1.1.67) or St George’s day in 1H6 (1.1.154). Henry V encourages his men on the eve of Agincourt by stressing the date: ‘This day is called the feast of Crispian’ (H5 4.3.40). Alternatively, they are occasions of social significance. The sheep-shearing feast in WT takes place in high summer, and brings together the shepherds and their employers in a communal celebration. Macbeth marks his assumption of the throne by holding a ‘great feast’ (3.1.12) at which he claims to be particularly concerned that Banquo appear, which of course he does, though not in a form that Macbeth expects. Metaphorical uses of the term are rich, if not common. In LLL Moth comments wittily to Costard on the linguistic absurdities of Holofernes and Nathaniel, ‘They have been at a great feast of languages and stolen the scraps’ (LLL 5.21.35). His image relates to the play’s concerns with fasting and with meals. At the end of HAM Fortinbras exclaims at the sight of all the bodies: O proud Death, What feast is toward in thine eternal cell That thou so many princes at a shot So bloodily hath struck? (5.2.348–51) Death is also imagined as a devourer in RJ (‘love-devouring death’, 2.6.7). Macbeth’s heart-felt paean to sleep, spoken after his murder of Duncan, celebrates its curative properties, calling it ‘Balm of hurt minds, great Nature’s second course, / Chief nourisher in life’s feast’ (MAC 2.2.39–40). (C) On early modern feasting, see Sim (1997) and on the function of feasting in drama, see Meads (2001). Britland (2004, 109–25) discusses the role of women in 137

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relation to drunken feasting and conviviality including Cleopatra. Fitzpatrick (2011) has entries on feasts and banquets. See also banquet. feather (A) Birds’ feathers, usually curled, were used to trim hats by both men and women, as well as forming the substance of fans; white ostrich plumes were especially favoured, but pheasants’ feathers were also used. (B) Hamlet, improvising verse after the aborted play of the Murder of Gonzago, imagines that with his declamatory skill, ‘two Provincial roses on my raz’d [fashionably slashed] shoes’ and ‘a forest of feathers’ he might obtain ‘a fellowship in a cry of players’ (3.2.267). A profusion of feathers signifies affectation. The Princess in LLL remarks of Don Armado, ‘What a plume of feathers is he that indited this letter? / What vane? What weathercock?’ (4.1.93–4). The Clown in AW announces the arrival of Bertram and his entourage: ‘Faith, there’s a dozen of ’em with delicate fine hats and most courteous feathers which bow the head and nod at every man’ (4.5.103–5). In TS Biondello’s description of the strange headgear worn by Grumio when he accompanies Petruccio to the wedding, ‘an old hat, and the humour of forty fancies pricked in’t for a feather’ (TS 3.2.66–7), has puzzled commentators; Hodgdon summarizes various interpretations of it by saying that ‘the combination suggests parody of a heraldic device worn in a helmet’ (Arden edn, 2010, 229). (C) Norris (1938) has many illustrations of hats decorated with feathers. fish, fishmonger, saltfish (A) As a foodstuff, fish was considered inferior to meat because less nourishing, and regarded as a cold and wet food. Certain kinds of fish such as herring were deemed unwholesome by medical writers, though pickled herring was regarded as a foodstuff for the poor. Preserved fish, or salt-fish, was thought indigestible. In Catholic times it was eaten on prescribed days according to religious rules, but in Elizabethan times it was supposed to be eaten on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and all forty days of Lent. Except for the Lenten fast, this was for the ‘better maintenance and increase of the Navy’ and ‘for the increase of fisherman and mariners and repairing of port towns and navigation, and not for any superstition . . . [nor] the saving of the soul of man’, according to the Act of 1563 (Picard, 2003, 172). The definition of fish could include white meat, that is veal, game and poultry. ‘Fish’ could be used with sexual innuendo, referring to women’s genitalia, and the term ‘fishmonger’ has often been taken to mean ‘bawd’. (B) The multiplicity of meanings associated with fish in the period are exploited in the assertion of Kent in KL when disguised as Caius, that he is an honest blunt man, who will ‘profess to be no less than I seem’ and will ‘eat no fish’ (1.4.17). Foakes (Arden edn, 1997) considers that he may mean he is a proper man (i.e. a meat eater), or a Protestant, or that he has no dealings with women. When Falstaff insults Mistress Quickly by calling her an otter, he explains this by saying ‘She’s neither fish nor flesh; a man knows not where to have her’ (3.3.126–7), with obvious sexual innuendo. The jealous Leontes develops the idea of fishing in his gross imaginings of the cuckolded husband whose 138

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wife ‘has been sluiced in’s absence, / And his pond fished by his next neighbour, by / Sir Smile, his neighbour’ (WT 1.2.193–5). The association of a fishpond with sex may also appear in AW , when the Clown Lavatch presents Parolles, who has been put in the stocks and generally humiliated, as ‘a pur [piece of dung] of Fortune’s . . . or of Fortune’s cat . . . that has fallen into the unclean fishpond of her displeasure and, as he says, is muddied withal’ (5.2.19–22). Fortune is often called a slut or slattern, and this characterization may underlie Lavatch’s words. In H8 the Old Lady refers to Anne Bullen, in contrast to herself as having been a beggar in court for sixteen years without reward, as ‘a very fresh fish’ who will wait no time to ‘have your mouth filled up / Before you open it’ (2.3.85–7) with clear sexual significance. When Samson and Gregory bandy obscene innuendo in RJ , Samson boasts of his masculinity saying that ‘’Tis known I am a pretty piece of flesh’, meaning that he has a substantial erection. Gregory cuts him down with the response, ‘’Tis well thou art not fish; if thou hadst, thou hadst been poor john [salted fish]’ (1.1.28–30). When Benvolio and Mercutio in RJ greet Romeo, Mercutio uses the occasion for a series of puns on the effects of Romeo’s supposed sexual activity: BENVOLIO

Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo! MERCUTIO

Without his roe, like a dried herring. O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified! (2.4.7–9) Romeo without his ‘ro’ equals ‘meo’, which sounds like ‘miaow’, the sound a cat makes; as Weis suggests (Arden edn, 2012) Benvolio may draw out the last syllable of Romeo’s name. Herring without its roe means a dried herring, or, metaphorically, a man without his sperm (which Romeo has supposedly expended during a meeting with Rosaline). The idea of fishification may signify that Romeo has been turned from flesh into (dried) fish, or that he has had too much sex. ‘We’ll have flesh for holidays, fish for fasting-days’ says one of the Fishermen in PER (2.1.80–1), according to the prescription that dated back to Catholic times. Fish and flesh as alternative foods are mentioned in CE (3.1.22–3). (C) Appelbaum discusses fish, particularly herring (2006, 211–18). Fitzpatrick (2011) has a helpful entry with citations from contemporary sources. Jenkins (1982, 464) has a long note on ‘fishmonger’, in HAM , suggesting that Hamlet’s reference to Polonius (2.2.170) is related to the idea that fishmongers’ womenfolk were thought to be particularly fertile. Cogan (1636, ch. 176) discusses when fish should be eaten, and enumerates the various kinds (chs 177–192), including the puffin. Harrison (1587, Book 2, ch. 6) thinks that the prescription of fish-eating on certain days is rather for secular considerations, such as ‘the preservation of the navie’ (p. 144) rather than ‘for religions sake’. See also Picard (2003) and Williams (1994) on the association of female flesh with fish. 139

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flapjack see pancake flax (A) Flax is the fibre of the plant Linum usitatissimum, used in the making of linen. (B) In TN Sir Toby Belch remarks, in uncomplimentary fashion, that Sir Andrew Aguecheek’s hair ‘hangs like flax on a distaff’ (1.3.98), meaning that it hangs in long thin strands. Flax fibre was usually yellow in colour (hence, ‘flaxen hair’). Flax is associated with the workaday world. Leontes in WT insults his wife, whom he erroneously believes to be adulterous, by saying that she ‘deserves a name / As rank as any flax-wench that puts to / Before her troth-plight’ (1.2.274–6), a flaxwench being a woman of the lower class employed in making clothes from flax. Master Ford insults Falstaff by calling him ‘a hodge-pudding [pudding stuffed with various ingredients] . . . a bag of flax’ (MW 5.5.150). Young Clifford in 2H6 refers to the flammability of flax when he vows to take merciless revenge on the Yorkists for his father’s death: ‘Beauty that the tyrant oft reclaims / Shall to my flaming wrath be oil and flax’ (5.2.54–5). But flax might be used to make a poultice for medicinable purposes, as when the Servant in KL wants to minister to the blinded Gloucester by fetching ‘some flax and whites of eggs / To apply to his bleeding face’ (3.7.105). (C) Elam (Arden edn, 2008, 177) draws attention to the fact that Sir Andrew’s hair is like that of Chaucer’s Pardoner in The Canterbury Tales, and he may share his effeminacy: ‘This Pardoner hadde heer as yellow as wex, / But smothe it heeng as dooth a strike of flex’ (675–6). Banister (1575, 49) recommends as a treatment for fistula of the eye, ‘laying upon bombase [cotton] in the white of an egge’. funeral (A) A funeral is a ceremony to mark the burial of a person. In early modern England the priest would lead the funeral procession composed of family, friends and neighbours accompanying the coffin of the deceased to the church, where a service as prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer would be performed. The corpse would then be interred, usually in the churchyard. The élite might be buried inside the church. For people of wealth and standing the funeral procession might be one of considerable grandeur, with a large number of clerics in attendance, as well as a cortege of poor people in black gowns who were sometimes paid to be present, household retainers in liveries and local dignitaries. (B) Grand funeral processions are staged in several plays. 1H6 begins with the SD ‘Dead march. Enter the funeral of King Henry the Fifth’; the nobles who accompany the dead king in his ‘wooden coffin’ (19) are attired in black, but the solemnity of the occasion is tempered by bickering amongst the mourners and the incursions of several messengers with grim news. The first scene of TIT stages the funeral of some of Titus’s many sons. In TNK 1.5 the three Queens enter ‘with the hearses of their knights, in a funeral solemnity’, to bring about the ceremonial interments of their husbands for which they have begged Theseus. In contrast, Tamora, Queen of the Goths, is to receive 140

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Figure 3 A woodcut of a man on his deathbed, attended by a priest in a long gown who reads to him. He lies in a four-poster bed praying, and wearing a nightcap and shirt, attended by his family. From the ballad ‘The Godly Maid of Leicester’, Broadside Ballads, 4° Rawl. 566, fol. 161r. © Bodleian Library

‘no funeral rite, nor man in mourning weed’ (TIT 5.3.195). Polonius in HAM is similarly treated, with what Laertes calls an obscure funeral No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o’er his bones, No noble rite, nor formal ostentation (4.5.205–7) Ophelia’s small burial procession is not referred to as a funeral. Before he knows the identity of the corpse Hamlet notes that it is being interred with ‘maimed rites’, and Laertes calls out angrily, ‘What ceremony else?’ (5.1.214). The priest explains that as her death ‘was doubtful’ she is entitled to nothing more elaborate. In JC Caesar’s funeral is not staged, although Mark Antony produces his body in front of the people. Cassius has warned Brutus not to consent ‘that Antony speak in his funeral’ (3.1.233), but Brutus fails to take his advice, with catastrophic results. At the end of AC Caesar announces that in honour of Antony and Cleopatra, ‘Our army shall / In solemn show attend this funeral’ (5.2.361–2). 141

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In RJ the discovery of Juliet’s apparently lifeless body means for her father that All things that we ordained festival Turn from their office to black funeral (RJ 4.5.84–5) In HAM too the funeral is associated with a contrasted kind of ceremony, by both Claudius and by Hamlet. The former, making the elaborately rhetorical announcement of his new relationship with Gertrude, his former sister-in-law, says that it is with ‘with mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage’ that he has proceeded, but Hamlet remarks acidly on the speed with which this marriage came about, in that ‘the funeral baked meats / Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables’ (1.2.179). (C) The best studies of funerals and the rituals of death in early modern England are those of Houlbrooke (1998) and Gittings (1984), whose whole book is devoted to funerary culture. Neill (1997) is particularly illuminating on HAM. Girouard (1980, 84) notes the large numbers of people, both retainers and poor hangers-on, who attended and received food at the funerals of the wealthy. Appelbaum (2006, ch. 1) has some interesting remarks about funeral baked meats with relevance to HAM . See also burial. fustian Fustian was originally a cloth made of cotton and linen, and imported, but in the sixteenth century made in England with imported cotton. It came in various grades (Linthicum, 1936, 106–7) but was commonly used for servants’ clothes, like the outfits of ‘new fustian . . . [and] white stockings’ worn by Petruccio’s servants to welcome Katherina. Perhaps from fustian’s being used to substitute for expensive silk, the word could also mean ridiculous or pretentious speech, as when Cassio imagines the behaviour of a drunk ‘discours[ing] fustian with one’s own shadow’ (2.3.276), or bombast, as when Fabian comments on the absurd riddle that Maria has written for Malvolio to read out suggesting Olivia’s passion for him (TN 2.5.106). See Linthicum (1936, 106–9).

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G garden (A) A garden is an enclosed piece of land, often attached to a house, devoted to the cultivation of trees, flowers, fruit or vegetables. It could be a small private area or a much larger space. Used figuratively, the word could mean a fertile and productive area. (B) Gardens are significant spaces in several plays. In MM Isabella describes to the Duke of Vienna the layout of the walled garden belonging to Angelo, where she is due to meet him for their nocturnal assignation: He hath a garden circummur’d with brick, Whose western side is with a vineyard back’d; And to that vineyard is a planched [made of planks] gate, That makes his opening with this bigger key. (MM 4.1.28–31) Later Mariana supplies the detail that it contains a ‘garden house’ (5.1.228) where she and Angelo consummated their relationship. Walled gardens were a particularly sheltered and protected space, appropriate for secret trysts, as Angelo intends this to be. Armado has such an encounter with Jaquenetta in a corner of the King’s park which is ‘north-northeast and by east from the west corner of thy curious-knotted garden’ (LLL 1.1.238–9). The scene of Malvolio’s gulling takes place in a garden which affords a hedge of box from which his tormentors can spy on him. Olivia’s second meeting with Viola/Cesario appears to take place in a walled garden, for Olivia requests that ‘the garden door be shut’ (TN 3.1.90) to give them privacy. In WT Hermione goes off with Polixenes, telling her husband, ‘if you would seek us, / We are yours i’ th’ garden’ (WT 1.2.177–8). She is not aware at this point of Leontes’ raging jealousy, which a walk in the garden with Polixenes would undoubtedly inflame. Leontes’ response, ‘To your own bents dispose you. / You’ll be found, / Be you beneath the sky’, is glossed by Pitcher (Arden edn, 2010) as ‘an allusion to Adam and Eve in Eden unable to conceal their sin from God (Genesis, 3.7– 13)’. A garden is an innocent source of pleasure for Emilia and her Woman in TNK, but the sight of her in this space has a profound effect on the two kinsmen who watch her there from their prison window, and fall in love with her almost simultaneously. When Arcite is taken away by the Jailor, Palamon expresses his wish to become part of the garden: Blessed garden And fruit and flowers more blessed that still blossom As her bright eyes shine on ye: would I were For all the fortune of my life hereafter 143

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Yon little tree, yon blooming apricock! How I would spread and fling my wanton arms In at her window . . . And then I am sure she would love me. (TNK 2.2.235–46) The garden in R2 where the Queen and her ladies encounter the gardeners serves a different function. Initially it is a sequestered space where the women can spend their leisure, playing at bowls or dancing; but it soon takes on an emblematic significance, representing the body politic. The Gardener’s Man makes an explicit comparison between their own success in ordering their territory and the King’s failure: Why should we in the compass of a pale Keep law and form and due proportion, Showing, as in a model, our firm estate, When out sea-walled garden, the whole land, Is full of weeds (3.4.40–4) The country imaged as a garden appears also in Burgundy’s evocative speech about the ruination of France, ‘this best garden of the world’, during the war with England (H5 5.2.23–67). In 1H6 it is in the garden of the Temple that the factions at the court of Henry VI choose their allegiance to the white rose or the red and thus begin a quarrel that will escalate to deadly effect. Iden’s garden in 2H6 4.10, into which Jack Cade breaks and there is killed, stands as another ‘image of an imperilled England’ (Burns, Arden edn, 2000, 62). For Hamlet, the world itself is ‘an unweeded garden / That grows to seed’ where only ‘things rank and gross in nature’ flourish (HAM 1.2.135–6). He urges his mother to take action to clean up her life, ‘and do not spread the compost on the weeds / To make them ranker’ (3.4.149–50). It is in a garden that Lucianus in the play poisons his uncle, as Claudius did his brother in an orchard. Iago develops an image of the body as a garden when persuading Roderigo to take control of his feelings: ‘Virtue? A fig! ’tis in ourselves that we are thus, or thus. Our bodies are gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners’ (OTH 1.3.320–2). Unlike Hamlet’s advice to his mother, there is no spiritual dimension to this horticultural analogy; Iago aims to discredit the idea of love as anything more than ‘a lust of the blood and a permission of the will’. Sonnet 16 applies the body/garden image more neutrally, when the poet urges the young man to attend to the business of procreation, since there are ‘many maiden gardens yet unset’. See also E3 1.14, ‘the fragrant garden of her womb’. The most delightful garden reference is Biondello’s in TS to ‘a wench married in an afternoon as she went to the garden for parsley to stuff a rabbit’ (4.4.97–8). (C) Thomas (1983) describes the history of flower cultivation with some account of the social meanings given to gardens. Thomas and Faircloth (2014) have a helpful entry 144

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on ‘garden’ with many suggestions for secondary reading. Forker (R2, Arden edn, 2002) has useful notes on the handling of the garden analogy in R2 in this scene and in the play more generally. Strong (1998) gives a standard account of the garden in this period. garter (A) Garters were bands, often made of rich materials, tied just below the knee to keep stockings up. Both sexes wore them. (B) Melancholy lovers conventionally went without garters, allowing their stockings to fall down. Rosalind (as Ganymede) tells Orlando that if he is to look like a man in love ‘your hose should be ungartered, your bonnet unbanded’ (AYL 3.2.364). In TGV Speed, who has noticed that his master Valentine is in love, mentions slyly that Valentine has in the past ‘chid at Sir Proteus for going ungartered’ because ‘he, being in love, could not see to garter his hose’ (2.1.68, 71–2). Hamlet’s entry into Ophelia’s closet, ‘his stockings fouled, / Ungartered, and down-gyved to his ankle’ (HAM 2.1.76–7), convinces Polonius that he is in ‘the very ecstasy of love’. Theseus mocks the play put on by the mechanicals by suggesting it would have been a fine tragedy ‘if he that writ it had played Pyramus, and hang’d himself in Thisbe’s garter’ (MND 5.1.343–5). ‘Hang yourself in your own garters’ was a proverbial saying (Dent, G42) and Falstaff alludes to it when abusing Hal: ‘Hang thyself in thine own heir-apparent garters’ (1H4 2.2.42–3). He puns on the fact that Hal, as heir apparent to the throne, belonged to the Order of the Garter. The tavern Host in MW presides over the Garter Inn, which allows for some punning. Mistress Quickly instructs the children of Windsor, assembled to torment Falstaff, on how to perform, explicitly alluding to the Order of the Garter: And nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing, Like to the Garter compass, in a ring. Th’expressure that it bears, green let it be, More fertile-fresh than all the field to see; And honi soit qui mal y pense write In em’rald tufts, flowers, purple, green and white, Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery, Buckled below fair knighthood’s bending knee. (MW 5.5.65–72) In 1H6 Sir John Talbot tears the Garter emblem off the leg of Sir John Fastolfe because of his cowardly behaviour in battle, asserting that When first this order was ordained, my lords, Knights of the Garter were of noble birth. (1H6 4.1.33–4) Other references to the Order of the Garter occur in R3 (4.4.366, 370) and H8 (4.1). The Fool in KL puns on Kent’s appearance in the stocks, saying that ‘he wears cruel garters’ (KL 2.2.198), cruel also meaning ‘crewel’, a fine woollen yarn used to make stockings. The tavern Host in 1H4 is contemptuously referred to by Hal as a 145

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‘puke-stocking, caddis-garter, smooth-tongue, Spanish pouch’ (1H4 2.4.69–70). ‘Caddis’ was a coarse woven tape, hence an inferior kind of garter. In TN Malvolio is tricked into wearing cross-garters, to the delight of his enemies. This was an outdated fashion whereby the garters were twisted round the back of the leg, crossed over, and tied at the side in a bow. According to Linthicum, ‘their decline began with the introduction of knee-length breeches, and by 1600 they were worn chiefly by old men, Puritans, pedants, footmen, and rustic bridegrooms’ (1936, 264). (C) See Linthicum on garters (1936, 263–4). On MW as a Garter play, see Melchiori (Arden edn, 2000, 18–30). gaskins were wide breeches reaching to the knee, sometimes stuffed, sometimes loose. They were attached to the doublet by tagged laces, known as points. Maria puns on the different senses of points in her exchange with Feste: FESTE

. . . I am resolved on two points. MARIA

That if the one break the other will hold; or if both break your gaskins fall. (TN 1.5.21–3) See Linthicum on Galligaskins (1936, 208–9). gentleman (A) A gentleman might be a man of good birth, that is, in this period one entitled to bear arms, though not a member of the nobility; the word could also be used for a man with a master’s degree from one of the two universities, or a member of a profession such as a lawyer or a physician. It might mean more generally a man with high moral qualities, but was starting at this time to be used as a polite term of address. It is thus a more nuanced term than gentlewoman. It could also mean a superior attendant waiting upon a man or men of higher social status. (B) The changing status of the gentleman in the period is reflected in several references. Richard of Gloucester insults the family of Queen Elizabeth, suggesting that they have been advanced above their deserts: Since every jack became a gentleman, There’s many a gentle person made a jack. (R3 1.3.71–2) He may refer to the contemporary proverb, ‘Jack would be a gentleman’ (Dent, J3). In KL the Fool tells Lear that a madman is ‘a yeoman that has a gentleman to his son’ (KL 3.6.12); a yeoman ranked lower than a gentleman, and the Fool implies that the King has given his daughters a status above his own. When the Shepherd and his son the Clown in WT have been rewarded with new clothes by Leontes and Polixenes, they believe themselves to have been ennobled. The Shepherd tells his son that ‘thy sons and daughters will all be gentleman born’ (5.2.125), and the Clown boasts that he ‘was a gentleman 146

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born before my father’ (5.2.136–7). They do not understand that to be born a gentleman, men in those times had ‘to descend from three degrees of gentry’ (Pitcher, Arden edn, 2010, 334), but they like the sound of the phrase, and in doing so unintentionally satirise the contemporary preoccupation with status. By contrast when Slender in MW confirms that his kinsman Sir Robert Shallow is a gentleman born (1.1.7) he speaks literal truth. ‘As I am a gentleman’ is a claim to status and to the moral character thought to accompany it, often used defensively, as by Falstaff, when preparing to borrow from Mistress Quickly (2H4 2.1.138). Hamlet asks pardon for wrongs done to Laertes: ‘Pardon’t as you are a gentleman’ (HAM 5.2.205). See also Malvolio promising to reward Feste for helping him (TN 4.2.82). The Duke of Milan intensifies the expression when he makes a request of Valentine, ‘As thou art a gentleman of blood’ (TGV 3.1.121), although here he is being ironic because he knows that Valentine is preparing to elope with his daughter Silvia. But when he is reconciled to Valentine at the end of the play, he accepts him as a suitor: Thou art a gentleman, and well derived; Take thou thy Silvia, for thou hast deserved her. (5.4.144–5) In TN, Viola/Cesario’s claim to gentle birth, that her parentage is ‘above my fortunes, yet my state is well: / I am a gentleman’ (TN 1.5.270–1) is important to the love-struck Olivia, who repeats these words. She is more than a low-ranking messenger. Orlando speaks bitterly about his brother Oliver’s mistreatment of him, denying him education: ‘He keeps me rustically at home unkept; for call you that keeping, for a gentleman of my birth, that differs not from the stalling of an ox?’ (AYL 1.1.6–10). The Duke of Suffolk, taken prisoner and in disguise, reveals himself to his captor: ‘Look on my George [badge of St George, part of the insignia of the Order of the Garter]; I am a gentleman’ (2H6 4.1.28). This is to stress that he is capable of paying for his ransom. In H5 Pistol makes a comic mistake when ascertaining the rank of the French soldier whom he has taken prisoner: PISTOL

Art thou a gentleman? What is thy name? Discuss. FRENCH SOLDIER

O Seigneur Dieu! PISTOL

O Signieur Dew should be a gentleman. (H5 4.4.5–7) He assumes that the soldier’s exclamation is his name, and thus he is of sufficient rank to pay a ransom. A gentleman is expected to uphold certain standards of conduct. When the Duke of Milan tells Proteus to slander Valentine, in order that Silvia cease to love him, he protests (hypocritically) that it is ‘an ill office for a gentleman’ (TGV 3.2.40). In TS Katherina tells Petruccio, who has announced himself as ‘a gentleman of Verona’ (2.1.47), that ‘If 147

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you strike me you are no gentleman’ (2.1.224). Duncan is particularly mortified at the treachery of the thane of Cawdor: ‘he was a gentleman on whom I built / An absolute trust’ (MAC 1.4.12–13). Rosencrantz commends Hamlet’s conduct towards himself and Guildenstern as ‘most like a gentleman’ (HAM 3.1.11). Mowbray in R2, though accused of treachery, protests himself to be ‘a loyal, just and upright gentleman’ (1.3.87). References to the gentleman as a servant are fewer than to him as a man of status. Goneril is angered by the thought that her father has struck her gentleman ‘for chiding of his fool’ (KL 1.3.1), and considers this an insult against herself. Regan interprets Kent’s abuse of Oswald (who is Goneril’s steward) similarly: My sister may receive it much more worse To have her gentleman abused, assaulted, For following her affairs. (2.2.146–8) Consequently she returns the insult by putting Kent in the stocks, which greatly offends Lear. Those in authority are protective of their gentlemen servants. Timon is ready to give money to his servant Lucilius so that he can marry above his status. The father of the bride-to-be does not want ‘one which holds a trencher’ (TIM 1.1.123) for a son-inlaw, but Timon’s generous offer of money satisfies him: ‘This gentleman of mine hath served me long; / To build his fortune I will strain a little’ (1.1.146–7). That gentlemen are distinguished from other servants is clear from the Lord Stanley’s request for King Edward to grant ‘the forfeit . . . of my servant’s life, / Who slew today a riotous gentleman / Lately attendant on the Duke of Norfolk’ (R3 2.1.100–1). Other references in H8 (1.2.5, 4.2.106) involve gentlemen servants. (C) Wrightson (1982) has a helpful overview of social stratification in the period. Houlbrooke (1984) is also useful. For discussions of the complexities of social status in early modern England see Buxton (2015, ch. 2) and Laslett, who considers the term ‘gentleman’ to ‘mark the exact point at which the traditional social system divided up the population into two extremely unequal sections’ (1971a, 27), that is between the gentry and those above them in the hierarchy, and the rest. Ellinghausen discusses the role of educated gentleman in society (2008, ch. 2). Smith, De Republica Anglorum (c. 1562), considers the obligations of gentlemen to live up to their status (ch. 21). Harrison considered gentlemen to be the first degree of society (out of four), and (following Smith) defined them as ‘those whom their race and blood or at the least their virtues do make noble and known’ (1587, 113). Brathwaite’s The English Gentleman (1630) is a conduct book, with advice for gentlemen under eight headings: youth, disposition, education, vocation, recreation, acquaintance, moderation and perfection. See also servant. gentlewoman (A) A gentlewoman could mean a woman of good birth, that is high social status, or an attendant of good birth waiting upon a woman of higher rank. (B) Gentlewomen of the first kind include Ophelia. The Gravedigger’s assistant in HAM draws attention to the privileges of rank when he comments rebelliously on 148

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Ophelia’s suicide, that ‘if this had not been a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o’Christian burial’ (5.2.23–5). Ophelia’s father Polonius, however, has reminded her that she is not of high enough rank to marry Hamlet: ‘Lord Hamlet is a prince out of thy star. This must not be’ (2.2.141–2). In AW the meaning of Helena’s social status is overtly called into question. While the lord Lafew identifies her as ‘this gentlewoman the daughter of Gerard of Narbonne’ (1.1.36), the Countess sends her steward to fetch her: ‘Sirrah, tell my gentlewoman I would speak with her, Helen I mean (1.3.67–8). Helena herself is very modest about her social standing, protesting her unsuitability to be the wife of Bertram: ‘I am from humble, he from honoured name’ (1.3.153). Bertram is also conscious of their social disparity, exclaiming, ‘A poor physician’s daughter my wife! Disdain / Rather corrupt me ever’ (2.3.116–17). But when Lear, angered by what he regards as Goneril’s unfilial insolence, asks her, ‘Your name, fair gentlewoman?’ (1.4.227), he is not so much implying that she is a waiting woman, as that she is so changed he does not recognize her. When the Provost in MM calls Juliet ‘a gentlewoman of mine’ (2.3.10) he seems simply to be referring to her status, as does the Duke when he refers to Mariana as a ‘poor gentlewoman’ (3.1.219) When Borachio refers to Margaret as ‘the Lady Hero’s gentlewoman’ (3.3.139) he clarifies the distinction of status. Equally, when Olivia in TN asks for Maria, ‘Call in my gentlewoman’ (1.5.158), Maria’s position is unambiguous. Hotspur’s scorn for the courtier who encountered him on the battlefield who talked ‘so like a waiting gentlewoman / Of guns, and drums, and wounds’ (1H4, 1.3.53) reflects class snobbery but also self-conscious machismo. Beatrice in MA jokes that her only use for a beardless husband would be to ‘dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting-gentlewoman’ (2.1.29–30). Women servants of this rank might well inherit their mistress’s cast-offs. The Old Shepherd in WT , discovering the abandoned baby Perdita, imagines her to be child of a waiting–gentlewoman illicitly involved in ‘some stair-work, some trunkwork, some behind-door-work’ (3.3.71–3). Other women servants of this rank include Emilia in OTH and Nerissa in MV . When Peter Simple, a servant in MW , talks to Dr Caius of Mistress Quickly as ‘this honest gentlewoman, your maid’ (1.4.76), he is probably flattering Quickly, since she is not of this status. (C) There is more interest in secondary literature in lower-class women servants but Burnett (1997) briefly discusses waiting gentlewomen. Dowd (2009) discusses the role and power of Maria in TN as a servant, but never refers to her as a gentlewoman. Brathwaite in his conduct book, The English Gentlewoman (1631), addresses himself to the gentlewoman of good birth, advising her on correct behaviour including modest dress. gingerbread see bread glass (A) Glass in Shakespeare has a range of meanings: a looking glass or mirror, an hour glass, a drinking glass, a glass for divination, or simply the hard transparent substance. 149

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(B) The most common references are to the looking glass, often used metaphorically to mean a model or exemplar, rather than an exact reflection. Thus Ophelia calls Hamlet ‘the glass of fashion’ (HAM 3.1.152), and Hotspur’s widow says of her dead husband that ‘He was indeed the glass / Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves . . . He was the mark and glass, copy and book, / That fashion’d others’ (2H4 2.3.21–2, 31–2). In Sonnet 3 Shakespeare uses the word both metaphorically and literally. He tells the youth to ‘Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest / Now is the time that face should form another’. He develops the idea further: ‘Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee / Calls back the lovely April of her prime’. Hamlet orders his mother to sit down and be still: You go not till I set you up a glass Wherein you see the inmost part of you. (HAM 3.4.18–19) Viola in TN does mean a perfect reflection when she she says wistfully, ‘I my brother know / Yet living in my glass’ (TN 3.4.377). Similarly in CE Dromio of Ephesus looks at his twin brother and says in wonder, ‘Methinks you are my glass, and not my brother’ (5.1.418). A looking-glass is called for by King Richard II (4.1.265) in his confrontation with Bolingbroke. Richard of Gloucester states wryly that he is not ‘made to court an amorous looking-glass’ (R3 1.1.15), but having successfully wooed Lady Anne changes his mind: ‘I’ll be at charges for a looking-glass, / And entertain a score or two of tailors’ (1.2.260–1). As he holds the dead Cordelia in his arms, King Lear asks for a glass for a very different purpose: ‘Lend me a looking-glass; / If that her breath will mist or stain the stone, / Why then she lives’ (KL 5.3.259–60. ‘Stone’ suggests a semi-transparent substance such as mica, used as a mirror (see Foakes’s note, Arden edn, 1997). Miranda artlessly tells Ferdinand that she knows no other woman’s face ‘save, from my glass, mine own’ (TEM 3.1.50). In the Sonnets the poet uses the idea of the glass to explore his sense of himself. In Sonnet 22 he will disregard his reflection as long as he can see youthfulness in his lover: My glass shall not persuade me I am old So long as youth and thou are of one date; But when in thee time’s furrows I behold, Then look I death my days should expiate. In Sonnet 62 it is his reflection in a mirror that draws his attention to the disparity between his fantasy self and the reality: . . . when my glass shows me myself indeed, Beaten and chopped with tanned antiquity, Mine own self-love quite contrary I read. The hour-glass is associated with the inevitable passing of time. Time personified in WT appears holding an hour-glass, to which he alludes, as he moves the action forward by 150

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16 years: ‘Your patience this allowing, / I turn my glass’ (4.1.15–16). Earlier, Leontes comments to Camillo on Hermione’s supposed adultery: Were my wife’s liver Infected as her life, she would not live The running of one glass. (1.2.302–4) In TEM the passing of time is measured in hour-glasses (1.2.240, 5.1.224). In 1H6 the Captain of the French foresees the death of the English hero Talbot: For ere the glass that now begins to run Finish the process of his sandy hour, These eyes that see thee now well coloured Shall see thee withered, bloody, pale and dead (4.2.35–8) In contrast to the usual view of time’s passing as inexorable, the poet in Sonnet 126 addresses his lover as one in control of time: O thou my lovely Boy, who in thy power Dost hold time’s fickle glass, his sickle hour. Magic glasses used for divination seem to be meant in MM , when Angelo talks of the ‘glass that shows what future evils . . . Are now to have no successive degrees, / But ere they live, to end’ (2.2.96–9), and in MAC when Macbeth looks with horror ar the last king in the spectral procession ‘who bears a glass / Which shows me many more [kings]’ (MAC 4.1.118–19). Towards the end of TN after the appearance of Sebastian, Orsino tells the astonished Olivia: Be not amazed, right noble is his blood. If this be so, as yet the glass seems true, I shall have share in this most happy wreck. (TN 5.1.260–2) He seems here to be referring back to his earlier comment at the first sight of Sebastian and Viola together: One face, one voice, one habit and two persons: A natural perspective, that is and is not. (5.1.212–13) Here he means that the twins are like an optical illusion, but one produced by nature and not by a perspective glass. Glass as a substance is used metaphorically in PER when the Bawd tells Boult to deflower Marina: ‘Use her at thy pleasure. Crack the glass of her virginity’ (4.6.139–40). 151

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Julia comparing herself to Silvia notes that ‘her eyes are grey as glass, and so are mine’ (TGV 4.4.190), clearly an attribute of beauty. Leontes’ curious reference to an ‘eye-glass . . . thicker than a cuckold’s horn’ (WT 1.2. 266–7) probably means the lens of the eye. (C) On hour-glasses, and their possible uses in the theatre, see Stern (2015). Kelly (2002) briefly reviews the history of mirrors and discusses their relation to ideas of selfconsciousness in Shakespeare and his contemporaries. For a broad overview of the subject of mirrors, see Melchior-Bonnet (2001). Shuger (1999) argues that mirrors in early modern writing do not display the individuated self but acted as instruments of correction. See also mirror and time. glove (A) Gloves were a covering for the hands, with a separate sheath for each finger, worn by both sexes, indoors as well as out. They were often made of soft leather, and embroidered and perfumed, but could also be made of silk or worsted or knitted from wool. They are one of the most symbolic of items of clothing, carrying many kinds of associations and meanings, and in Shakespeare’s plays gloves are usually significant as symbolic objects rather than protective coverings. They were commonly given as gifts, pledges and rewards. (B) Although Shakespeare’s father was a glover, Shakespeare’s plays do not betray any special knowledge of gloves or glove-making, unless Mistress Quickly’s reference to ‘a great round beard, like a glover’s paring-knife’ (MW 1.4.18–19) is evidence of it. Gloves, especially if they were perfumed, were given as gifts and tokens, exchanged between lovers, or given by a groom to his bride. The Second Countryman in TNK , annoyed with the absence of Cicely, the sempster’s daughter from the dance, vows that ‘the next gloves that I give her shall be dogskin’ (TNK 3.5.46), meaning that he will only get her the cheapest ones. The best gloves were of fine leather. The variety of gloves that Autolycus has in his pack is admired by the Servant: ‘No milliner can so fit his customers with gloves’ (WT 4.4.194), and ‘gloves as sweet as damask roses’ are prominent among his wares. The Clown knows he cannot escape without getting some for his lover: ‘If I were not in love with Mopsa, thou should’st take no money of me, but, being enthralled as I am, it will also be the bondage of certain ribbons and gloves’ (4.4.232–4). Mopsa is not slow to remind him: ‘Come, you promised me a tawdry-lace [silk lace to tie round the neck] and a pair of sweet gloves’ (4.4.249–50). In MA Hero also receives perfumed gloves as a love token: ‘These gloves the count sent me; they are an excellent perfume’ (MA 3.4.56–7). Edgar as Poor Tom boasts of having been ‘a serving man, proud in heart and mind, that curled my hair, [and] wore gloves in my cap’ (KL 3.4.83–4), these gloves presumably also being favours from women. Gloves were a traditional chivalric token, worn by a knight in a joust as his lady’s favour. In 1H4 the young Hotspur recalls a cynical remark made by Hal when he hears of a tournament, that ‘he would unto the stews, / And from the commonest creature pluck a glove / And wear it as a favour’ (R2 5.3.16–18). Forker suggests that this is an act deliberately mocking chivalric tradition (R2, Arden edn, 2002, 445). 152

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Gloves figure several times as pledges denoting fidelity or commitment, sometimes in ambiguous contexts. Cressida gives Troilus a glove at their parting and he in exchange gives her a sleeve. Once in the Greek camp, she parts with the sleeve to her new lover Diomed, but immediately regrets it, and tries to keep it back, thinking as she does so of Troilus’ fidelity and the glove he cherishes: O pretty, pretty pledge! Thy master now lies thinking on his bed Of thee and me, and sighs, and takes my glove And gives memorial kisses to it – As I kiss thee. (TC 5.2.83–5) When Bassanio begs Portia, in her male disguise, to accept some gift in exchange for her services to Antonio, she asks only for tokens: Give me your gloves; I’ll wear them for your sake, And, for your love, I’ll take this ring from you. (MV 4.1.422–3) The gloves here are a conventional token, and as Drakakis suggests (MV , Arden edn, 2010, 364) it may be the removal of them that reveals the ring which is to cause so much trouble later. In H5 gloves are exchanged between the disguised King and Michael Williams when they quarrel over the issue of the King’s readiness to be ransomed, as a pledge that they will settle the argument at a more convenient time. Henry subsequently passes on Williams’s glove to Fluellen as a favour, claiming that that he had it from another source – ‘When Alençon and myself were down together I plucked this glove from his helm’ – and asking him to apprehend any man who challenges him on Alençon’s behalf for the glove. Williams sees the glove and strikes Fluellen, but before anything can come of the encounter Henry reveals himself, and rewards Williams with money: ‘Here, uncle Exeter, fill this glove with crowns / And give it to this fellow. – Keep it, fellow / Wear it as an honour in thy cap / Till I do challenge it’ (H5 4.8.58–61). Gloves, or gauntlets, are thrown down as pledges in KL 5.3 by Albany when he challenges Edmund to single combat, and then by Edmund when he responds. When Alcibiades appears at the walls of Athens hot for revenge, the Senators beg him for mercy: Throw down thy glove, Or any token of thy honour else, That thou wilt use these wars as thy redress And not as our confusion. (TIM 5.4.49–52) Troilus, pathetically, declares his fidelity to Cressida at their parting by asserting, ‘I will throw my glove to Death himself [to show] / There’s no maculation [stain of impurity] in my heart’ (TC 4.4.62–3). 153

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Gloves can be intimate garments, and associated with the female body. Lafew remarks cynically of Diana, ‘this woman’s an easy glove . . . she goes on and off at pleasure’ (AW 5.3.276–7). More innocently, Romeo watching Juliet on her balcony expresses his longing to be close to her: ‘O that I were a glove upon that hand / That I might touch that cheek’ (RJ 2.2.24–5). Berowne uses a conventional image for feminine beauty when he vows to Rosaline to change his wooing manners, ‘By this white glove – how white the hand, God knows!’ (LLL 4.2.411), but intensifies it with the implication that by comparison with the glove the hand that wears it is even whiter. Shakespeare exploits the glove as an erotic token in the rape scene in LUC . Tarquin arrives in Lucrece’s chamber by torchlight: And being lighted, by the light he spies LUCRETIA’s glove, wherein her needle sticks. He takes it from the rushes where it lies, And griping it, the needle his finger pricks, As who should say, ‘This glove to wanton tricks Is not inured. Return again in haste; Thou seest our mistress’ ornaments are chaste.’ (LUC 316–22) The glove which rebuffs the attacker reflects the innocence of its owner; but Tarquin’s eager seizing of it conveys the quality of his desire for her. The presence of the needle suggests that Lucrece has been at work on the glove, perhaps embroidering it; thus it becomes more closely identified with her body, and its inability to repel her attacker with its ‘prick’ adumbrates Lucrece’s similar failure. (C) See Linthicum on gloves (1936, 266–70). On the exchange of gloves in H5, see Craik (Arden edn, 1995, 327). On Lucrece’s glove, see Duncan-Jones and Woudhuysen (Arden edn, 2007, 319). Giese (2006, 143–4) discusses gloves as courtship gifts. The erotic possibilities of the glove are very fully explored in Middleton and Rowley, The Changeling. Sir Epicure Mammon, in Jonson’s The Alchemist, plans, when he acquires the Philosopher’s stone, to have gloves made ‘of fishes’ and birds’ skins, perfumed / With gums of paradise’ (2.2.93–4). gossip (A) A gossip was originally a godparent of either sex. In early modern England it was also a woman’s female friend invited to be present at the birth of her child, a midwife, or a familiar friend. The meaning most common now, of a woman who enjoys idle talk or spreading rumour, was also coming into use; but the meaning of gossip as idle talk is not recorded till much later in OED. (B) When Mistress Quickly, recalling the circumstances of the day when Falstaff proposed marriage to her, asks, ‘Did not goodwife Keech the butcher’s wife come in then and call me gossip Quickly, coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar?’ (2H4 2.1.92–3). Mistress Page in MW similarly calls her friend ‘gossip Ford’ (4.2.8). Among the mischievous activities that Puck describes is lurking ‘in a gossip’s bowl’ in the alehouse 154

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(MND 2.1.47). When Mercutio tells Romeo to ‘Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word’ (RJ 2.1.11), he is probably referring in characteristically playful style to the goddess of love as his familiar friend. Viola as Cesario, in her extravagant wooing of Olivia, says that she would ‘make the babbling gossip of the air / Cry out “Olivia” ’ (TN 1.5.265–6). She refers to the myth of Echo, who faded away for love of Narcissus and was reduced to repeating sounds made by others; the ‘gossip’ means both the nymph herself and the sound of the repeated name. Aaron in TIT justifies the killing of the woman who has nursed his baby because he wants to keep it secret and she is ‘a longtongued, babbling gossip’ (TIT 4.2.152). Capulet uses ‘gossip’ as a demeaning term when he wants the Nurse to stop talking, telling her to ‘hold your tongue / Good Prudence, smatter [prattle] with your gossips’ and to ‘Utter your gravity o’er a gossip’s bowl’ (RJ 3.5.170–1, 173). But gossiping can be simply friendly talk. When Lewis in KJ speaks of ‘feasts / Full of warm blood, of mirth, of gossiping’ (5.2.58–9) and Titania of her woman friend, ‘Full often hath she gossip’d by my side’ (MND 2.1.125) there is no suggestion of tattle or idle talk. ‘Gossip’ referring to godparents appears in several plays. At the end of CE the Abbess, having rediscovered her husband and her two sons, invites them all, along with the twin Dromios, to a celebration: The Duke, my husband, and my children both, And you, the calendars of their nativity, Go to a gossips’ feast, and joy with me, After so long grief, such felicity. (CE 5.1.404–7) The Duke responds, ‘With all my heart, I’ll gossip at this feast’, and Dromio of Ephesus asks his brother, ‘Will you walk in to see their gossiping?’ The Abbess clearly intends a family party, the kind of event usually held to celebrate the birth of a child, even if, in this case, the children are all adults. In WT Paulina, bringing the baby Perdita to Leontes, tells him that she is involved in ‘needful conference / About some gossips for your highness’ (WT 2.3.39–40). She intends the word to mean godparents, but the anger of Leontes’ reply may suggest that he takes it in another sense. Henry VIII addresses those present at the christening of Princess Elizabeth as ‘my noble gossips’ (H8 5.4.12). Lance in TGV says that he is in love with a milkmaid, ‘yet ’tis not maid, for she hath had gossips’ (3.1.265–6). He means that she is not a virgin because she has been attended by women acting as godparents, and therefore has had a baby. Helena has some rather obscure lines when she is musing to herself about what Bertram will find at court, including ‘a world / Of pretty fond adoptious christendoms / That blinking Cupid gossips’ (AW 1.1.100–2). ‘Adoptious christendoms’ seems to mean nicknames bestowed at a christening when blind Cupid acts as a godparent. (C) See Findlay (2010) for a feminist analysis of Shakespeare’s uses of this term. Foyster in her chapter ‘Asserting manhood’ discusses men’s fear of women’s gossiping (1999, 58–65). Capp (2003) explores female networks and sociability in a patriarchal 155

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world. Bicks (2003) discusses the implications of the conflation of gossips with midwives in this period. Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside has a riotous scene of gossips getting drunk at a christening (3.2). Bate has an excellent discussion of the associations of Echo in TN (1993, 148–50). gown, nightgown (A) The gown, a long garment worn by both men and women, was open in front and usually worn over other garments. For men, it usually denoted status or a profession. According to Kelly (1970, 33) it was becoming superseded in popularity by the cloak and by 1600 largely restricted in use to ‘State officials, the learned professions and to the elderly as formal dress’. (B) Gowns have various symbolic functions; Richard II will exchange ‘My gay apparel for an almsman’s gown’ (3.3.149) meaning the poor gown of one who begs for alms, or perhaps the attire of a mendicant from a holy order. Coriolanus unwillingly dons ‘a gown of humility’ (COR 2.3.37 SD ), also referred to as ‘the napless vesture of humility’ (2.1.228), meaning a threadbare garment. Gowns can also signify high status, and Dogberry is keen to be known as ‘one that hath two gowns and everything handsome about him’ (MA 4.2.86–7). Malvolio imagines himself entertaining Olivia in a ‘branch’d velvet gown’ (TN 2.5.85). The mad King Lear recognizes how wealth and high rank may be used to excuse all faults: ‘Through tattered clothes small vices do appear; / Robes and furred gowns hide all’ (KL 4.6.161) Gowns trimmed with fox fur were especially associated with usurers, the fox symbolizing craftiness. Pompey plays on this idea when protesting against his arrest: ’Twas never merry world since, of two usuries, the merriest was put down, and the worser allowed by the order of law; a furred gown to keep him warm; and furred with lambskins too, to signify that craft, being richer than innocency, stands for the facing (MM 3.2.6–10) Women’s gowns could be richly decorated, like the Duchess of Milan’s, praised by Margaret in MA (3.4.14–15). Katherina is disappointed when Petruccio dismisses the gown made by the Tailor: ‘I never saw a better-fashioned gown, / More quaint, more pleasing, more commendable’ (TS 4.3.103–4). The style of this gown, according to the Tailor, was carefully specified: it had ‘a small-compassed cape’ (a short cape, cut on the bias, Hogdon, Arden edn, 2010, 269), trunk sleeves, ‘curiously cut’ (TS 4.3.142) and was loose-bodied. Loose-bodied gowns, which hung straight down, without any waist or folds, were often associated with prostitutes (Hogdon, Arden edn, 2010, 268, suggests that Grumio is punning on ‘loose body’s gown’). Their concealing shape could be advantageous for other reasons; Falstaff, claiming to have lost weight, observes that ‘My skin hangs about me like an old lady’s loose bodied gown’ (1H4 3.3.2–3). Queen Elizabeth apparently possessed nearly a hundred such gowns (Linthicum, 1936, 183). The nightgown was not a nightdress in the modern sense, but something more like a dressing gown, but which could be worn outdoors as well as indoors, by both sexes, and 156

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Figure 4 Portrait of Elizabeth Vernon, Countess of Southampton, by an unknown English artist, c. 1598, showing her at her dressing table, her hair loose, with an ivory comb, a dressing table displaying jewellery, and a dog at her feet. She wears a richly embroidered jacket and kirtle. A mantle lined with ermine is draped over cushions at her side. Public domain

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in the evening or early morning. But in Shakespeare scenes involving characters in nightgowns are always nocturnal and suggestive of disruption to the daily routine. It is the middle of the night when Iago urges Brabantio, whom he has woken from sleep, to get up quickly and ‘put on your gown’, and soon after Brabantio enters ‘in his nightgown’ (OTH 1.1.157 SD ). Nightgowns might be made of fine materials and richly trimmed. When the Ghost of Hamlet’s father enters ‘in his nightgown’ (HAM 3.4.99, Q1 SD ), he need not be humbly attired, and the same is the case for Henry IV when he enters in his nightgown (2H4 3.1.0 SD ). When Emilia asks Desdemona, ‘Shall I go fetch your night-gown’ (OTH 4.3.32), a domestic garment, appropriate to the privacy of the setting, seems indicated. Lady Macbeth’s order to her husband after the murder of Duncan, ‘Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us / And show us to be watchers’ (MAC 2.2.71–2), implies that he should wear a garment indicating privacy and informality. She repeats this command in her sleepwalking scene (5.2.62), and the Gentlewoman recounts how she has seen the Lady ‘rise from her bed, throw her nightgown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth paper . . . all this while in a most fast sleep’ (5.1.5–8). (C) Diehl (1983, 196) discussing MAC, identifies the nightgown as ‘a traditional Renaissance icon of mortality’, with reference to contemporary emblem books. But Linthicum (1936, 184–5) gives examples of nightgowns worn in the daytime, and out of doors, and Handley stresses that ‘nightgowns’ should be differentiated in this period from garments worn in bed, such as shirts, shifts and smocks (2016, 52–4). Hayward (2015, 35–6) suggests that the wearing of nightgowns in Shakespeare indicates a semiprivate space and a sense of intimacy. See also Findlay (2010), ‘gown’. Richardson notes the number of gowns featuring in inventories of citizens of Canterbury (2007, ch. 2). grandam, grandmother (A) Grandam is a less formal term for a grandmother, the mother of a parent. It could also mean more generally an old woman. (B) When the usually ebullient and outspoken Gratiano in MV promises to behave decorously, to ‘talk with respect . . . Wear prayer-books in my pocket, look demurely’ it is so that he will appear ‘like one well studied in a sad ostent [grave appearance] / To please his grandam’ (2.2.183–9). Speed in LLL says a weeping lover is ‘like a young wench that had buried her grandam’ (2.1.21), perhaps implying an intense, but shortlived grief. Richard III says that ‘A grandam’s name is little less in love / Than is the doting title of a mother’ (R3 4.4.299–300), and in this play we do see this demonstrated. A grandmother treated with respect and regarded as a protective figure is the Duchess of York, mother to Richard III and his brothers, when her grandson, the son of the Duke of Clarence, questions her closely about his father’s death (R3 2.2). Her words are taken seriously by her grandchildren; another of them, the clever young Duke of York (son to the dead Edward IV ), quotes her to his uncle Richard of Gloucester, fearful of being taken to the Tower of London because of the ghost of his uncle Clarence: ‘My grandam told me he was murdered there’ (R3 3.1.145). When Queen Eleanor in KJ says to her 158

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illegitimate grandson, the bastard Faulconbridge, ‘I am thy grandam, Richard; call me so’ (1.1.168), she is offering him important support. Her role within her family is a significant one. The unhappy Blanch, her great-niece, numbers her along with her father, husband and uncle as relations from whom she must be severed when war breaks out between the countries of her father and her husband (3.1.257–60). But when Eleanor later encourages her grandson, the child Arthur, to ‘come to thy grandam’, Arthur’s mother, Constance, mocks her with baby-talk, implying that Eleanor is deceiving the innocent child into surrendering his right to the throne: Do, child, go to it grandam, child. Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig: There’s a good grandam. (KJ 2.1.159–63) The grandam may be a figure of fun. Lady Macbeth is scornful of her husband’s fearful reaction to the sight of Banquo’s Ghost: O, these flaws and starts Imposters to true fear, would well become A woman’s story at a winter’s fire Authorized by her grandam. (MAC 3.4.60–3) Her dismissal of female authority is of a part with her attacks on Macbeth for his lack of manliness. ‘Grandam’ does not refer to a specific kinship relationship here or when Hotspur talks of ‘the old beldam earth . . . our grandam earth’ (1H4 3.1.31–3) erupting as if with colic. When Armado in his letter refers to Jacquenetta as ‘a child of our grandmother Eve, a female’ (LLL 1.1.252) he is alluding to Jacquenetta’s sinfulness (he accuses her of seducing Costard). Katherine in LLL , however, is sad when she mentions a sister who died for love, but ‘might ha’ been a grandam ere she died’ (5.2.17) in better circumstances. (C) Mendelson and Crawford give an overview of women’s old age (1998, 184–94). Stephens (1615) in the Character of ‘An old Woman’ describes a grandam’s affection for her grandchildren (371). Findlay (2010) emphasizes the importance of the grandmother’s role in the family. See also age. grange A grange is a country house. Brabantio at first cannot understand Iago’s outcry: ‘Why tell’st thou me of robbing? This is Venice: / My house is not a grange’ (OTH 1.1.104–5); he means that his is a town house, not one in some remote district. ‘There at the moated grange resides this Mariana’, the Duke tells Isabella, when planning the bedtrick in MM with her (3.1.265–6). The remoteness and isolation of Mariana’s dwelling stress her withdrawal from the world in consequence of Angelo’s mistreatment of her. The character’s situation inspired Tennyson’s poem ‘Mariana’ and Millais’ painting. 159

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grease, greasy (A) Grease is literally the melted fat of an animal, but can also mean oily or fatty matter generally. It could in Shakespeare’s time mean fatness, corpulence or sweat. The adjective was usually derogatory; and it could mean obscene. (B) Clothing that is greasy is associated with the working classes and usually mentioned with disgust. Cleopatra imagines with revulsion ‘mechanic slaves / with greasy aprons’ (AC 5.2.208–9) gazing on her and her maids. Menenius in COR addresses the citizens as ‘you . . . / That made the air unwholesome when you cast / Your stinking greasy caps in hooting / At Coriolanus’ exile’ (4.6.133–5). The Lord in AYL quotes a speech of Jacques referring to the ‘fat and greasy citizens’ (2.1.55). The refrain of Hiems’ song evoking winter in LLL , ‘Greasy Joan doth keel [cool by stirring] the pot’ (5.2.908), is inflected with class prejudice; ‘Joan’ is a name for a lower-class woman, and Joan is fat and sweaty because she is working in the kitchen. Dromio of Syracuse in CE flees the advances of the fat and grotesque Nell, because ‘she’s the kitchen wench and all grease’ (3.2.94–5). The grease of the kitchen is evoked with disgust by Troilus when he laments Cressida’s infidelity: The fractions of her faith, orts of her love, The fragments, scraps, the bits and greasy relics Of her o’ereaten faith, are bound to Diomed. (TC 5.2.165–7) Timon in a similar mood refers to the ‘morsels unctuous’ with which ‘ungrateful man . . . greases his pure mind’ (TIM 4.3.193–4) and corrupts his inherent goodness. Grease suggests sweat to Touchstone when he dismisses Corin’s argument that courtiers can greet one another by kissing their hands, because they are clean, whereas the hands of shepherds are soiled with mutton fat: ‘Why, do not your courtier’s hands sweat? And is not the grease of a mutton as wholesome as the sweat of a man?’ (AYL 3.2.52–4) Mistress Page calls Falstaff ‘this greasy knight’ (2.1.97) because he is both fat and lecherous. Mistress Ford contemplates keeping him waiting in false hope, ‘till the wicked fire of lust have melted him in his own grease’ (59–60). Falstaff cannot recognize the appropriateness of his humiliation in the buck basket of dirty washing, although the audience can, when he complains of being tossed among ‘foul stockings, greasy napkins’, ‘stinking clothes that fretted in their own grease’ so that he found himself ‘half stewed in grease, like a Dutch dish’ (3.5.83–4, 105, 109–10). Prince Henry in 1H4 uses a no less disgusting image when he calls Falstaff a ‘whoreson obscene greasy tallowcatch’ (lump of fat) (2.4.220–1). The addition of ‘grease that’s sweaten / From the murderer’s gibbet’ to the Witches’ broth in MAC seems horrifyingly to refer to the fat that is exuded from the hanged corpse. (C) Korda (2011b, 160) mentions that a ‘kitchen stuff woman’ (as referred in a nonextant ballad, ‘master Kempes New Jigge of the kitchen stuff woman’) would have collected and sold ‘the kitchen grease used in the manufacture of soaps or candles’. 160

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green sickness (A) This was an anaemic disorder of virginal young women (soon to be known as chlorosis), which caused a pale or greenish complexion, and was supposedly cured by having sex. (B) Capulet, angered by Juliet’s unwillingness to marry Paris, calls her ‘greensickness carrion’ (RJ 3.5.156), implying that her virginal pallor is like that of a corpse. The Pandar in PER wants the virginal Marina deflowered because she will lose the brothel its customers, and curses her: ‘Now the pox upon her green sickness for me’ (4.5.21). Polonius calls Ophelia a ‘green girl’ (HAM 1.3.100), who doesn’t understand that Hamlet is only trifling with her. Enobarbus mocks Lepidus who is suffering a hangover after the feasting on Pompey’s barge, by saying that he ‘is troubled / With the green-sickness’ (AC 3.1.5–6). He implies that Lepidus is lacking manliness. In 2H4 Falstaff in similar spirit claims that young men who do not eat red meat or drink sack ‘fall into a kind of male green-sickness’ and beget only female children (4.2.91). (C) Iyengar (2011) has an extensive discussion of this condition. See also Findlay (2010). The fullest account is King’s (2003); she gives a historical survey of the condition with detailed discussion of its context in pre-modern medicine and attitudes to female sexuality. She traces the first references to green sickness as a disease of young women to the mid-sixteenth century (20–22). The disease ‘continued to be diagnosed in England, as well as in Europe and North America, up until 1930’ (Froide, 2005, 159). groat (A) A groat was a coin worth four pence. (B) Coriolanus uses groats to signify something insignificant when he calls the plebeians ‘woollen vassals, things created / To buy and sell with groats’ (COR 3.2.10– 11). Fluellen dismissively gives Pistol a groat ‘to heal your pate’ (H5 5.1.60). (In Q it is a shilling.) Slender in MW is careful with his money and calculates the amount in his purse, which has been picked by Pistol, including ‘seven groats in mill-sixpences [newly minted sixpence coins]’ (MW 1.1.143). Falstaff’s page knows what is in his master’s purse when asked: ‘Seven groats and two pence’ (2H4 1.2.234), which Falstaff evidently considers an insubstantial sum. Richard makes a joke about money when the Groom hails him in his prison as ‘royal Prince’. He replies: ‘Thanks, noble peer. / The cheapest of us is ten groats too dear’ (R2 5.1.67–8). A royal was a coin worth ten shillings, and a noble one worth six shillings and eight pence. Richard is punning on his low status as a prisoner, being the ‘cheapest’ of the two, and therefore priced too high at a ‘royal’; if groom is his ‘peer’, meaning equal, he is not worth more than a noble. The Bastard in KJ also uses money terminology for punning. When the King asks him why he lays claim to the lands of his legitimate (younger) brother he replies: Because he hath a half-face like my father! With half that face would he have all my land: A half-fac’d groat five hundred pound a year! (KJ 1.1.92–4) 161

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He insults his brother by implying that his demand to have all the land is impudent (a matter of ‘face’), and that he is anyway only worth four pence. The groat is ‘half-fac’d’ because it shows the king’s head in profile. Lavatch also jokes about money when he tells the Countess that he has an answer to fit all questions which is ‘as fit as ten groats is for the hand of an attorney’ (AW 2.2.18). John Lincoln the broker in STM rouses the people to anger against immigrants by citing the price rises they cause: ‘He that will not see a red herring at a Harry groat, butter at eleven pence a pound, meal at nine shillings a bushel and beef at four nobles a stone, list to me’ (6.1.1–4). A Harry groat was one coined in the reign of King Henry VIII and worth more than face value later on account of its higher silver content. (C) Landreth (2012) is invaluable on the ubiquity and significance of the ‘discourse of money’ in literature of the period, including KJ , MV and MM . See also noble.

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H halfpenny see penny handkerchief (A) A square of fabric, in Shakespeare’s time probably fine linen or silk, kept on one’s person, which could be used by both men and women for wiping the hands, face, eyes and so on, but was more commonly retained as a token or fashionable accessory, given as a gift, and sometimes hung by women from their girdles or kept in a small pouch designed for the purpose. It tended to be a luxury item in this period, sometimes embroidered in rich materials, decorated with cutwork, or trimmed with lace, and perfumed. It is also referred to as a napkin. (B) Handkerchiefs in Shakespeare have some utilitarian uses. In AW Lafew asks Parolles for a handkerchief to wipe his tearful eyes at the reconciliatory conclusion to the play, and in TIT the napkin which Marcus offers to Titus to dry his eyes at the sight of the mutilated Lavinia is too sodden with his own tears to be of any use (3.1.140–1). In HAM Gertrude offers Hamlet her napkin to wipe his brow during the duel with Laertes (5.2), though her concern comes too late. But more commonly handkerchiefs feature in Shakespeare as tokens, significant in a variety of ways. In COR they are thrown down by ladies and maids to honour Coriolanus as he passes in triumph (2.1.264), and in CYM Pisanio describes how Posthumus kissed and waved his handkerchief to signify his farewell to Innogen as he set sail for Italy. ‘Senseless linen, happier therein than I’, she comments (1.4.8). Blood-stained handkerchiefs appear in several plays, attaining something of the status of a religious relic. In 3H6, Queen Margaret taunts the Duke of York with a napkin dipped in the blood of his young son, the Earl of Rutland, an incident recalled in R3 by Queen Elizabeth, when rejecting Richard’s attempt to woo her daughter: . . . present to her – as sometimes Margaret Did to thy father, steep’d in Rutland’s blood – A handkerchief: which, say to her, did drain The purple sap from her sweet brother’s body, And bid her wipe her weeping eyes withal. (4.4.274–7) The bloody handkerchief in AYL which Orlando, wounded by a lioness, sends to Rosalind, causing her to faint (4.3), also acts as a token connecting love and death. In JC , Antony conjectures that if the common people heard Caesar’s will they would be so 163

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moved as to ‘go and kiss dead Caesar’s wounds, / And dip their napkins in his sacred blood’ (3.2.133–4), as witnesses of the executions of martyrs sometimes did. In WT , all that remains of Antigonus, torn to pieces by the bear, are his handkerchief and some rings, saved by the Shepherd’s Son (5.2.67). In KJ the child Arthur, pleading with Hubert not to blind him, reminds the torturer of their intimate moments together: . . . When your head did but ache, I knit my handkercher about your brows, The best I had, a princess wrought it me, And I did never ask it you again. (4.1.41–4) These lines recall Shakespeare’s most famous use of a handkerchief, the love token given by Othello to Desdemona in OTH . Like the tear-soaked handkerchief used by the deserted woman in LC (15–19), which was embroidered with ‘conceited characters’ that she reads in her distress, Desdemona’s handkerchief also bears symbolic embroidery, in this case of strawberries. Rymer famously derided the play for the reliance of its plot on the handkerchief, claiming that it constituted ‘a warning to all good Wives that they look well to their Linnen’ (Rymer, ed. Spingarn, 1957, 221). Desdemona, seeking to soothe Othello’s headache by binding his head with her handkerchief, drops it unawares when he rebuffs her. It is a special handkerchief, embroidered with strawberries, Othello’s first keepsake to Desdemona, which she ‘reserves . . . evermore about her / To kiss and talk to’ (3.3.299–300). Emilia knowing this picks it up and gives it to Iago who has ‘a hundred times / Wooed [her] to steal it’. ‘Trifles light as air / Are to the jealous confirmation strong / As proofs of holy writ’ (3.3.325–7) remarks Iago on receiving the handkerchief. He then makes use of it to convince Othello of Desdemona’s infidelity with Cassio, claiming to have seen Cassio wiping his beard with it, and later planting it in Cassio’s chamber. Othello demands the lost handkerchief from Desdemona, frightening her with an account of its exotic origins and magical properties as a gift from his dying mother and as a talisman of love (3.4.57–77), though he later tells Gratiano that it was ‘an antique token / My father gave my mother’ (5.2.214–15). Cassio finds the handkerchief in his lodgings and gives it to his lover, Bianca, to copy the embroidery, but she, suspecting it to be ‘some token from a newer friend’ (3.4.181), angrily throws it back at him. Othello, concealed, is watching, having been led by Iago to believe that Cassio’s insulting references to Bianca are actually about Desdemona; for Othello this is the final confirmation of Desdemona’s infidelity. He only discovers the truth after her death, when Emilia reveals the part she played in the handkerchief’s tragic passage between all the main characters in the play. Despite Rymer’s disparagement, the circulation of the handkerchief not only knits all parts of the play together but also acts as an important symbol, relating particularly to ideas of love and domestic property. That the changing possession of such a trifle can bring about destruction in so many lives makes the tragedy all the more pitiful. (C) The history of the handkerchief by Braun-Ronsdorf (1967) is as valuable for its many illustrations (including handkerchiefs from Shakespeare’s period) as its text. Elias 164

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(1994, 119–23) associates the handkerchief with the growth of social refinement and gives examples of prescriptions for its uses in early modern Europe. Elizabethan handkerchiefs can be seen in portraits such as that of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (c. 1564) at Waddesdon Manor, of Mary Queen of Scots (c. 1575) after Hans Eworth, or Lady Diana Cecil by William Larkin (c. 1614–18). This last represents a handkerchief certainly large enough to bind Othello’s brows. Some handkerchiefs belonging to Queen Elizabeth can be seen at the Victoria and Albert Museum. There is a large literature on the significance of the handkerchief in OTH , beginning with Rymer (1957). The somewhat ambiguous symbolic meanings of strawberries in the period are explored by Ross (1960); they could be associated both with the Virgin Mary and also with illicit love, and were very popular as a subject for English domestic embroidery. Boose (1975) links the embroidered strawberries (an invention of Shakespeare’s, and not in his source for the play) with the blood-spotted sheets Othello envisages on his bed. Frye (2010) discusses the strawberries as ‘representing spots of adulterous lust’ (172). Andrews (1973) explores the discrepancy between Othello’s two accounts of the origins of the handkerchief, and also raises the issue of Othello’s attitude towards magic in the context of his racial otherness. Symbolic interpretations of the handkerchief abound. Hodgson (1977) summarizes many of them; he and Berger (1996) both relate it to Desdemona’s reputation, the ‘essence that’s not seen’ (4.1.16). See also Neely (1985) who regards it as ‘the emblem of the women’s power and its loss’ (128). Snow (1980) and Neill (‘Unproper beds’, 2000) relate it to the exposure of secrets. Adelman (1992, 67–70) gives a psychoanalytical account of it as a fetish. Korda (2002b) discusses various cultural functions of the handkerchief in the period. The chapter appears in enlarged form in her book Shakespeare’s Domestic Economies (2002a). Mirabella (2011) discusses contradictory images of the handkerchief in early modern Europe, both as utilitarian receptacle for bodily fluids and as ‘symbol of cleanliness and beauty’. Smith (2013) challenges the readings of Boose and others by arguing that the handkerchief, dyed in mummy, must have been black; Neill (2013) responds to this view. Celia in Jonson’s Volpone throws her handkerchief down to Volpone (disguised as a mountebank) to obtain a free sample of his elixir (2.1); her jealous husband Corvino regards the gesture as a sexual invitation. handfast see contract hanging see tapestry hat (A) Hat was in this period the general term for a covering for the head, including several different shapes, worn by both men and women, indoors as well as out, even at mealtimes. They could be trimmed with bands, feathers and jewels. The hat was a much more conspicuous item of dress in this period than nowadays, and acted as a signifier of social rank and status. 165

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(B) When Hamlet appears in Ophelia’s chamber with ‘no hat upon his head’ (HAM 2.1.76) this is a clear indicator of his confused mental state. His play later on with Osric’s hat or bonnet (5.2.79–86) draws attention to the ineptness of the courtier’s efforts to ingratiate himself with his social superiors. The doffing of the hat by a man as a gesture of humility is significant in COR . It is implicitly a part of his costume when he enters ‘in a gown of humility’ (2.3.38 SD ) to solicit the support of the citizens for his consulship. He speaks scornfully of the citizens’ readiness to be satisfied with superficial gestures: ‘Since the wisdom of their choice is rather to have my hat than my heart, I will practise the insinuating nod and be off [doff my hat] to them most counterfeitly’ (2.3.96–8). But they are not deceived, and 3 Citizen regards Coriolanus’s manner as mockery, noting how ‘with his hat, waving it thus in scorn, / “I would be consul”, says he’ (2.3.164–5). Hats can be employed in various forms of gesticulation. When Macduff responds in grief to the news of the murders of his wife and children, Malcolm enjoins him, ‘What, man; ne’er pull your hat upon your brows: / Give sorrow words’ (MAC 4.3.208–9). Macduff is presumably using his hat to hide any expression of his sorrow. Moth in LLL describes the conventional posture of the lover for his master Armado to adopt, rendering a love-song ‘with your hat penthouse-like o’er the shop of your eyes’ (3.1.15–16), presumably to hide his eyes which, like the shop window, display the goods on offer. When Adonis attempts to escape Venus’s attentions, hiding his ‘angry brow’ with his bonnet (VA 339), she will have none of it and ‘with one fair hand she heaveth up his hat’ (351). In 1H6, the Duke of Gloucester, in a stand-off with the Cardinal of Winchester, threatens, ‘I’ll canvas [trap in a net] thee in thy broad cardinal’s hat’ (1.3.36), and shortly proceeds to violence: ‘Under my feet I stamp thy cardinal’s hat / In spite of Pope or dignities of church’ (1.3.49–50). The cardinal’s distinctive red wide-brimmed hat, a potent symbol of the Roman Catholic Church to Shakespeare’s Protestant audience, also features in H8; one of the accusations of Cardinal Wolsey’s enemy, the Duke of Suffolk, is that ‘Out of mere ambition you have caused / Your holy hat to be stamped on the King’s coin’ (3.2.325), which would be a usurpation of the King’s prerogative. Prospero presumably has a special hat in mind when he asks Ariel to ‘fetch . . . the hat and rapier in my cell’ (5.1.84) in order to resume his identity as the Duke of Milan. Hats were fashionable accoutrements and social signifiers for young men. Beatrice, mocking Benedick’s fidelity, remarks that ‘he wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat: it ever changes with the next block’ (MA 1.1.71–3). When Lucentio changes places with his servant Tranio in TS , they need to exchange clothing; ‘Tranio, at once / Uncase thee [take off your outer garments]; take my coloured hat and cloak’ (TS 1.1.205–6). The coloured hat suggests Lucentio’s higher social status; Lucentio, like Petruccio’s household servants (see 4.1.81), might well have worn a servant’s blue livery. The ‘copatain hat’ that Tranio assumes at 5.1.60 offends Vincentio because it is so inappropriate for a servant to wear. (C) Stubbes has a satirical account of the ‘varietie of hattes’ in England, including some that stand up ‘a quarter of a yard above the crowne of their heades’ and others ‘like the battlements of a house’ (1583, sig. D6v). Linthicum (1936, 216–34) describes many 166

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types of headgear. See also illustrations in Kelly (1970, 41–2) and Arnold (1985, 31–3) and bonnet, cap, copotaine. herring (A) The herring was a common fish, often associated with the diet of the poor. Red herrings were dried in salt and smoked, like the modern kipper; white herrings were fresh or salted but not smoked. Shotten (or dried) herrings were those that had spawned and were therefore less fat because they had no roe. (B) Falstaff, boasting absurdly about his bravado in the Gad’s Hill robbery, claims that ‘If manhood, good manhood, be not forgot upon the face of the earth, then am I a shotten herring’ (1H4 2.4.122–4). Mercutio, responding to Benvolio’s cry, ‘Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo’, jokes that it is Romeo ‘without his roe, like a dried herring’ (RJ 2.4.37), perhaps because he has expended his sexual energy on a tryst with Rosaline. Thersites in TC uses the dried herring to signify an undesirable condition when he says that he would prefer to be ‘a herring without a roe’ than to be Menelaus (TC 4.5.60). In KL , Edgar in the guise of Poor Tom proclaims his hunger: ‘Hoppedance cries in Tom’s belly for two white herring’ (KL 3.6.30–1). In STM , herrings are one of the staple foodstuffs the price of which concerns the citizens of London, because they fear that food will become dearer if immigrants are allowed in. John Lincoln stirs them up: ‘Peace, hear me! He that will not see a red herring at a Harry groat, butter at eleven pence a pound, meal [wheat flour] at nine shillings a bushel and beef at four nobles a stone, list to me’ (6.1–4). Although most references suggest that herrings are the food of the poor, they are not scorned by Sir Toby Belch, who has clearly dined too well, when he pronounces ‘a plague o’ these pickle-herring’ (TN 1.5.116–17). (C) See Fitzpatrick (2011) for further information. Appelbaum (2006, 201–38) discusses the herring at length in terms of its cultural significance in the period. Cogan noted that herrings were cheap but not wholesome (1636, sig. X4v). Jowett (STM , Arden edn, 2011) gives information on the rise in prices of foodstuffs in Tudor London. hogshead A hogshead is a large cask or barrel of wine. Stephano, Alonso’s drunken butler in TEM , has managed to save a ‘hogshead of wine’ (4.1.251) from the shipwreck. Prince Hal is boasting of his familiarity with the lower classes when he tells Poins how he has passed his time ‘With three or hour loggerheads [blockheads], amongst three or fourscore hogsheads’ (1H4 2.4.4–5). He has been taken into the cellar of the tavern as a mark of favour, but his turn of phrase mocks his new friends. The Clown in WT vividly describes to his father the ship that brought Antigonus to Bohemia plummeting about on the stormy sea, ‘swallowed with yeast and froth, as you’d thrust a cork into a hogshead’ (3.3.91–2). In LLL Costard indulges in some badinage with Holofernes featuring a hogshead (4.2.83–6). horn see cuckold hornbook A hornbook was a sheet of paper with the letters of the alphabet, numbers and prayers, protected by a thin sheet of horn, and held in a wooden frame with a handle. It 167

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was used to teach young children, and is referred to by Speed in TGV , comparing a melancholy lover to ‘a schoolboy that had lost his A B C’ (2.1.20). Moth in LLL says of Holofernes that ‘he teaches boys the hornbook’ (LLL 5.1.44) and then proceeds to make the schoolmaster look foolish with his witticisms about the five vowels. In TNK the Third Countryman makes a joke about the Schoolmaster. When the Second Countryman asks if the ‘dainty dominie’ will turn up for the performance they are to give to the nobles, he replies, ‘He’ll eat a hornbook ere he fail’ (TNK 2.3.44), probably punning on the association of horns with cuckoldry, since he goes on to refer to the Schoolmaster’s relationship with the tanner’s daughter. hose (A) Hose, worn by men, could mean either close-fitting stockings that covered the leg or rounded breeches with nether stocks (stockings for the lower leg). (B) Hose are the usual accompaniment to doublets, and Rosalind uses the term to draw attention to her male disguise. When trying to conceal her weariness on the journey to the Forest of Arden she acknowledges that ‘doublet and hose should show itself courageous to petticoat’ (AYL 2.4.5–7). When taunted by Celia about the man who has been carving her name on trees in the forest, she cries, ‘Dost thou think, though I am caparisoned like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition?’ (AYL 3.2.189–91). Once assured that this is Orlando, her first thought is of her disguise: ‘Alas the day, what shall I do with my doublet and hose?’ (AYL 3.2.212– 13). Hose that were allowed to slip down the leg betokened the lover neglectful of his appearance; Rosalind tells Orlando that if he were really to resemble a man in love, ‘Then your hose should be ungartered, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and everything about you demonstrating a careless desolation’ (AYL 3.2.364–7). The puffed-up round hose, sometimes called French hose, that Lucetta expects Julia to don in her male disguise (TGV 2.7.55) and which Portia’s English suitor bought in France (MV 1.2.70) were the wear of fashionable gentlemen. Linthicum describes them as ‘usually mid-thigh length, shaped like pumpkins, and stuffed with hair, flocks, or bombast’ (1936, 205). In H5 the Dauphin joins in the innuendo-laden exchanges of the courtiers discussing their mistresses in terms of horse-riding: CONSTABLE

. . . methought yesterday your mistress shrewdly shook your back. DAUPHIN

So perhaps did yours. CONSTABLE

Mine was not bridled. DAUPHIN

O then belike she was old and gentle, and you rode like a kern of Ireland, your French hose off and in your strait strossers [i.e. bare legs]. (3.7.48–54)

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Such hose could contain a quantity of fabric, and Jacques may allude to this when he describes the ‘lean and slippered pantaloon’ in the sixth age of his life, with his ‘youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide / For his shrunk shanks’ (AYL 2.7.161–2). The Porter in MAC refers to an English tailor as a type of the cheating tradesman who has gone to hell ‘for stealing out of a French hose’ (MAC 2.3.13–14), probably meaning that he has skimped on the cloth necessary to make the garment. The ‘velvet hose’ that Tranio wears as part of an expensive outfit that scandalises Vincentio (TS 5.1.59–60) may have been of this kind; velvet was a luxury fabric not permitted to those below the degree of a knight’s eldest son (Hodgdon, TS , Arden edn, 2010, 286). Berowne in LLL comments in an aside, after hearing Longaville’s claim that he will tear up his sonnet and write in prose: ‘O rhymes are guards on wanton Cupid’s hose; / Disfigure not his shop’ (LLL 4.3.55–6); he means that rhymes adorn or trim the edges of love poetry, as guards (ornamental bands or borders) adorn hose, and if Longaville abandons rhyme it will disfigure the place where Cupid sells his wares, probably meaning the codpiece in the hose, which stands in for the male genitals (LLL , Woudhuysen, Arden edn, 2001). (C) See Linthicum (1936, 204–6) on hose. Arnold illustrates many different styles (1985, 14–20). host, hostess (A) A host or hostess may be simply a person who entertains and lodges another person in his or her house, or someone who does this professionally for payment, such as the landlord or landlady of an inn. (B) Ulysses in TC gives a vividly cynical portrait of the host in his characterisation of Time: Time is like a fashionable host That slightly shakes his parting guest by th’hand, And with his arms outstretched as he would fly, Grasps in the comer. (TC 3.3.166–9) The duties of host (and hostess) are treated altogether more seriously in MAC where the failure of hospitality is an important component of the abnegation of honourable values. Duncan, staying at the Macbeth’s castle, is eager to play his part as their guest. He greets Lady Macbeth as ‘our honoured hostess’ (1.6.10) and stresses his awareness of what he calls the ‘trouble’ created by his visit. He expresses his thanks for the entertainment afforded in a tangible way, as Banquo announces to Macbeth: This diamond he greets your wife withal, By the name of most kind hostess, and shut up In measureless content (2.1.15–17)

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Macbeth’s consciousness of violating his duties to Duncan troubles him deeply; not only is he Duncan’s ‘kinsman, and his subject’ which militate strongly against the murder, but there is more: Then, as his host, Who should against his murderer shut the door, Not bear the knife myself. (1.7.16–18) He will fail again in his role as host at the banquet to celebrate his coronation. He announces at the beginning how he and his wife will comport themselves: ‘Ourself will mingle with society / And play the humble host. Our hostess keeps her state, / But in best time we will require her welcome’ (3.4.3–5). All falls apart with the appearance of the Ghost of Banquo, and the formal occasion ends with a hurried dismissal of the guests, who are told, ‘Stand not upon the order of your going / But go at once’ (3.4.117–18). In KL it is the duties of guests that are desecrated, when Regan and her husband are in receipt of Gloucester’s hospitality at his house and they assault him. Regan begins with the insulting gesture of plucking the old man by the beard. He responds: I am your host; With robber’s hands my hospitable favours You should not ruffle thus. (3.7.39–41) In WT Polixenes and Hermione banter about the terms on which he will prolong his stay in Sicilia. She hopes he will not ‘force me to keep you as a prisoner, / not like a guest’ since he must be one or the other, and he concedes that he will stay as a guest, so that she will be ‘Not your gaoler then, / But your kind hostess’ (1.2.52–9). In view of the subsequent events, and of Hermione’s literal imprisonment, the exchange is highly ironic. Coriolanus wants to behave as a guest should when he recalls the hospitality he received from a poor man in Corioles, now taken prisoner. He asks Cominius, ‘I request you / To give my poor host freedom’ (1.9.85–6), but the gesture of gratitude goes for nothing when he cannot remember the man’s name. Hosts and Hostesses of taverns appear in several plays, including TS , MW (‘mine host of the Garter’), H4 and H5. When Falstaff tries to deflect Prince Hal’s attention from the subject of his own misdemeanours by asking suddenly, ‘And is not my hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench?’, the Prince responds, ‘Why, what a pox have I to do with my hostess of the tavern?’, and Falstaff answers, ‘Well thou hast called her to a reckoning many a time and oft’ (1H4 1.2.28–9, 45–7). There may be innuendo in Falstaff’s words, suggesting that Hal has had sex with the hostess. ‘Hostess’ is the regular form in which Mistress Quickly is addressed; her name is not used by Falstaff or the prince. When the Boy in H5 brings news that Falstaff is dying, he uses the word to summon her, along with her husband: ‘Mine host Pistol, you must come to my master, and you hostess. He is very sick and would to bed’ (H5 2.1.81–2). But when Nym 170

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addresses Pistol by saying, ‘How now, mine host Pistol?’, Pistol takes immediate exception: Base tyke, call’st thou me host? Now by this hand I swear I scorn the term; Nor shall my Nell keep lodgers. (H5 2.1.29–32) Craik (H5, Arden edn, 1995) calls this ‘a provocative allusion to his acquiring the tavern by marriage’. Taking lodgers may also imply prostitution. Thersites in TC alludes to the notorious slowness of tavern hostesses and tapsters to add up when he says that Ajax ‘ruminates like an hostess that hath no arithmetic but her brain to set down her reckoning’ (3.3.254–5). Jokes about tapsters and their limited skill in calculations appear in LLL 1.2.40–1 and 2H4 1.2.169–74. (C) Heal (1990) describes the contemporary culture of gift-giving and the roles of host and guest. See also tapster, tavern. hound see dog house (A) A house is a dwelling place for human habitation, or a building used by people but not necessarily for living in, such as a public house or inn, a mad house, a house of ill fame. It can also signify a household, and a family, including ancestors and descendants, or a lineage or dynasty. (B) The house that is also a home should be a safe haven, and violation of such a space is regarded with horror. In such contexts, the word is loaded with emotional significance. Lady Macbeth’s exclamation at Macduff’s announcement of Duncan’s murder is well known: ‘Woe, alas. / What, in our house?’ Banquo’s response appears to be a reproof: ‘Too cruel anywhere’ (MAC 2.3.89). Her words are of course ironic, in that the murder has been deliberately planned to take place in this domestic setting, and Macbeth is only too conscious of how it violates the laws of hospitality. She affects surprise and disbelief, but her expression has been deemed tactless. Has she overplayed her part? Iago is eager to make Brabantio as conscious as possible of the violation of his domesticity with his cry, ‘Look to your house, your daughter, and your bags! / Thieves, thieves!’ (OTH 1.1.79–80). Shylock is conspicuously protective of his house, a bastion of security in a city where he is hated. Before he will meet Antonio to seal the bond, he must first ‘see to my house, left in the fearful guard / Of an unthrifty knave’ (MV 1.3.171–3). When he goes unwillingly out to dinner, he leaves Jessica in charge, telling her not just to secure the doors and windows, but also to protect the whole environment from the contamination of outside influences: But stop my house’s ears – I mean my casements – Let not the sound of shallow foppery enter My sober house. (MV 2.5.34–6)

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For Jessica, ‘our house is hell’ (2.3.2), and she is all too ready to give Lorenzo directions ‘How I shall take her from her father’s house’ (2.4.31), but nonetheless makes fast the doors after her escape. After Portia’s judgment against him, which Shylock rightly regards as depriving him of all he owns, he urges, No, take my life and all, pardon not that. You take my house when you do take the prop That doth sustain my house. (4.1.370–2) ‘House’ here signifies more than the domestic sanctuary of home; it is also Shylock’s lineage, his Jewish identity. The possession of a house is an important mark of security in KL . The Fool introduces the idea when he asks Lear a series of riddles: FOOL

Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell? LEAR

No. FOOL

Nor I neither; but I can tell why a snail has a house? LEAR

Why? FOOL

Why, to put’s head in, not to give it away to his daughters and leave his horns without a case. (1.5.25–30) This is recalled later when the Fool remarks to Lear as they face the storm together, ‘He that has a house to put’s head in has a good headpiece [brain]’ (3.2.25). ‘One house’ is too small in Regan’s view for Lear’s followers (2.2.429), and so he finds himself cast out into the open where he becomes conscious for the first time of the plight of the homeless, ‘you houseless poverty’ (3.4.26). Gloucester has not been literally turned out by his relations, but they have assumed control over him – ‘they took from me the use of mine own house’ (3.3.4) – and turn the house into a torture chamber. Mistress Quickly regards Falstaff’s mistreatment of her as a domestic affront: ‘he stabbed me in mine own house’ (2H4 2.1.13–14), she claims, probably meaning that he has defrauded her financially, and later adds, ‘he hath eaten me out of house and home’ (2.1.72). In CE Antipholus of Ephesus has many trials to undergo, but is particularly annoyed by the misuse of his home, asking his wife: Did this companion with the saffron face Revel and feast it at my house today, Whilst upon me the guilty doors were shut, And I denied to enter in my house? (CE 4.4.63–6) 172

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For Bertram the house is no refuge, and in its lack of comfort identified with his wife. He declares to Parolles, ‘War is no strife / To the dark house and detested wife’ (AW 2.1.290–1). Hotspur similarly numbers among the afflictions a man has to put up with ‘a railing wife . . . a smoky house’ (1H4 3.1.156–7). Petruccio takes to extremes the identification of the wife with the house, as he provocatively includes Katherina among his possessions: She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house, My household stuff . . . My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything (TS 3.2.231–3) In TN Olivia is called ‘the lady of the house’ four times by Viola, an honorific conveying her high social status and using both domestic and familial senses of the word. For Malvolio, her steward, the house is a sanctuary and a community that it is his job to police. He is affronted by Sir Toby and Sir Andrew in their drunken revelry below stairs: ‘Do ye make an alehouse of my lady’s house that ye squeak out your coziers’ [cobblers] catches without any mitigation or remorse of voice?’ He proceeds to relay to Sir Toby Olivia’s view of his status within the household: If you can separate yourself and your misdemeanours, you are welcome to the house; if not, an it would please you to take leave of her, she is very willing to bid you farewell. (TN 2.3.95–9) Olivia’s competence in household governance is indicated by Sebastian’s observation that if she were mad, ‘She could not sway her house, command her followers, / Take and give back affairs and their despatch / With such a smooth, discreet and stable bearing / As I perceive she does’ (4.3.17–20). Viola’s riddling statement to Orsino, that she is ‘all the daughters of my father’s house / And all the brothers too’ (2.4.120–1) is the more poignant in the implied contrast of her position with Olivia’s. In many contexts the meaning of dynasty or lineage is to the fore. In RJ the enmity expressed by Samson and Gregory at the start of the play against ‘the house of Montague’ augurs badly for Romeo. Capulet refers with false modesty to his ‘poor house’ (RJ 1.2.23) where the feast will be held, but his Servingman tells Romeo frankly, ‘My master is the great rich Capulet, and if you be not of the house of Montagues, I pray come and crush a cup of wine’ (1.2.79–81). ‘A plague a’ both your houses!’ cries the dying Mercutio; he expires on the phrase, ‘Your houses!’ (3.1.108–10). Feuding between great families is even more devastating in the history plays. When Bolingbroke assumes the throne, the Bishop of Carlisle makes a grand prophecy: O, if you raise this house against this house, It will the woefullest division prove That ever fell upon this cursed earth. (R2 4.1.146–8) 173

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In 1H4 Worcester speaks for his family line when he angrily confronts King Henry: Our house, my sovereign, little deserves The scourge of greatness to be used on it. (1.3.10–11) Lady Macbeth ingratiatingly thanks Duncan for ‘those honours deep and broad wherewith / Your majesty loads our house’ (MAC 1.6.17–18). In AW Diana is instructed to demand of Bertram as the price for her chastity ‘a ring . . . that downward hath succeeded in his house / From son to son some four or five descents’ (3.7.22–4). He is reluctant to part with the ring: ‘It is an honour ‘longing to our house, / Bequeathed down from many ancestors’. But when Diana counters him with a play on his words: ‘Mine honour’s such a ring; / My chastity’s the jewel of our house, / Bequeathed down from many ancestors’, he gives in with an extravagant gesture: ‘My house, mine honour, yea, my life be thine’ (AW 4.2.42–7). ‘House’ sometimes has humbler meanings. ‘This house is turned upside down since Robin Ostler died’, remarks the Carrier, referring to the inn at Gad’s Hill (1H4 2.1.10– 11). Mistress Overdone ‘professes a hot-house . . . a very ill house’ (MM 2.1.64–5). Compare Polonius’s reference to a ‘house of sale’ (HAM 2.1.58). Figuratively ‘house’ has varied meanings. Cleopatra prepares to ‘rush into the secret house of death’ (AC 4.15.85), suggesting an abode. Miranda uses the word to signify body, the abode of the soul, when she praises Ferdinand’s inner and outer beauty: ‘If the ill spirit have so fair a house, / Good things will strive with’t’ (TEM 1.2.459–50). Lucrece uses it similarly in her search for images to convey the extent of her soul’s desecration by Tarquin’s rape: Her house is sacked, her quiet interrupted, Her mansion battered by the enemy (LUC 1170–1) In Sonnet 13 ‘house’ means both the body, envisaged as a beautiful exterior, and also the aristocratic lineage of the young man who refuses to marry and procreate: Who lets so fair a house fall to decay, Which husbandry in honour might uphold. When Lavatch the Clown says he ‘is for the house with the narrow gate, which I take to be too little for pomp to enter’ (AW 4.5.49–50) he refers to the ‘strait gate’ of Matthew 7.13–14, as contrasted with the wide gate and broad way leading to destruction. (C) Innes (2007) discusses ‘house’ as a dynastic concept, and provides appropriate secondary reading. Heal (1990) discusses the house as a focus for hospitality. Orlin (1994) in her exploration of private life in post-Reformation England interprets ‘house’ as a multivalent sign of ‘the locus of the private’, ‘a center of political definition’, ‘a unit of social realization’ and ‘a material agent in the construction of personal identity’ (192). See also household, housekeeper, housewife. 174

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household, householder (A) Household is a comprehensive term, often used (as both noun and adjective) with some emotive resonance, signifying a domestic establishment, or a group of people living together under one roof, but it may also stand for ‘house’ in the sense of dynasty. A householder is the person who owns the house or manages the household; it may also refer to a man qualified to vote by owning property. (B) Old Talbot, surrounded by the French in battle along with his son John, says that his own death is insignificant as compared with that of John: ‘In thee thy mother dies, our household’s name’ (1H6 4.4.94). At the funeral procession of the husbands of the three queens in TNK , Queen 3 comments that ‘This funeral path brings to your household’s grave’ (1.4.11), perhaps meaning that the end of the house (in the sense of dynasty) is in sight. In 3H6 King Henry uses ‘household’ as an adjective to mean domestic, as opposed to wild, when he talks of the pleasure felt by ‘incaged birds’ when ‘after many moody thoughts, / At last by notes of household harmony / They quite forget their loss of liberty’ (4.4.12–14). Petruccio uses the word in a similar way when tells Katherina that he will ‘bring [her] from a wild Kate to a Kate / Conformable as household Kates’ (TS 2.1.279–80). When Dogberry, the Constable in MA , affronted by Conrade’s rude dismissal of him as an ass, protests that he is a man of substance – ‘I am a wise fellow, and which is more, an officer, and which is more, a householder’ (4.2.81–3) – he may well be referring to his entitlement to vote. (C) Dod and Cleaver begin their account of household government with the statement that ‘An Household is as it were a little commonwealth’ to be ruled by the father and mother for the good of the whole (1630, sig. A1v). The husband is ‘the chiefe Governor’ and his wife ‘a fellow–helper’. Smith, De Republica Anglorum, defines the house (by which he means the household) as ‘the man, the woman, their children, their servauntes bonde and free, their cattell, their householde stuffe, and all other things, which are reckoned in thie possession’ (1562, 13). Girouard (1980, 82–6) describes households among the wealthy in the Elizabethan period, stressing their huge size, hierarchical structure and comparative paucity of women. Buxton by contrast focuses on households among the middling sort which he argues, based on his close study of domestic life in Thame in Oxfordshire, ‘predominantly consisted of a nuclear family of modest size’ (2015, 74) though he also allows for the presence there of ‘sundry associates, servants and possibly relatives’ (268). His chapter on ‘the early modern household in context’ is a very useful survey. Griffiths (1996) has a chapter on ‘the disordered household’ and the issues which contributed to domestic strain. Whittle and Griffiths (2012) examine the involvement of a woman of the upper gentry in the management of her household. Korda (2002a) explores the household in the context of the expanse of consumer culture in the period; she has useful chapters on TS and MW . housekeeper A housekeeper can mean someone who looks after a house or keeps a good house, in the sense of being hospitable. Feste in TN , pretending to be Sir Thopas the curate, considers it desirable ‘to be said an honest man and a good housekeeper’ 175

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(4.2.9). The Princess of France greets the King of Navarre, who has vowed with three of his lords to spend three years renouncing court life and pledging themselves to study, by saying, ‘I hear your grace hath sworn out housekeeping’ (LLL 2.1.104). She means that he has renounced the practice of hospitality, which was regarded as a Christian duty. But when Valeria in COR , visiting Volumnia and Virgilia at home, calls them ‘manifest housekeepers’ (1.3.53–4) she seems to mean both that they are engaged in domestic work (they are sewing) and also that they are staying at home rather than venturing outside, as she wants them to do. Macbeth’s reference in his catalogue of dogs to ‘the swift, the slow, the subtle, the housekeeper, the hunter’ (3.1.98) may refer to ‘the village dog or housekeeper’, mentioned in Topsell (1607, 106) as a kind of guard dog. Korda (2002) discusses the woman’s role as housekeeper or maintainer of the household goods which it is the man’s duty to acquire. housewife (A) Housewife, pronounced hussif and often spelt ‘huswife’, and related to ‘hussy’, referred to a woman whose main occupation was managing a household; it also meant the wife of a householder, and in early modern times could mean a woman good at managing her household affairs. It did not necessarily mean a married woman. Early modern housewives, even those of high rank, were expected to carry out a large variety of household tasks, as the title-page of The English Hus-Wife (1615) by Gervase Markham indicates: ‘The ENGLISH Hus-wife, containing, The inward and outward vertues which ought to be in a compleat woman. As, her skill in Physicke, Cookery, Banqueting-stuffe, Distillation, Perfumes, Wooll, Hemp, Flax, Dayries, Brewing, Baking, and all other things belonging to an Houshould’. Housewifery was regarded as a skill at this time, and girls could be apprenticed to learn it. Although the OED does not record the modern sense of ‘hussy’ as a woman of low reputation till after Shakespeare’s time, the word was clearly in use with an equivocal significance already, and there is some play on ‘housewife’ in relationship to ‘hussy’ in his work. (B) Shakespeare’s three references to Fortune as a housewife suggest the meaning of hussy, a capricious and unreliable woman, rather than a good manager. Pistol in H5, learning that his wife, Mistress Quickly, is dead of syphilis and that in consequence he is homeless exclaims in his characteristically histrionic fashion: ‘Doth fortune play the huswife with me now?’ (5.1.81). At the sight of the dying Antony, Cleopatra also denounces Fortune: Let me speak, and let me rail so high That the false huswife Fortune break her wheel, Provoked by my offence – (4.15.45–7) In AYL Celia proposes to Rosalind that to pass the time they should ‘sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally’ (1.2.31–3). Fortune’s capriciousness, in relation to the different conditions of the two women, is again at issue. Fortune personified as a housewife has a wheel both 176

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because spinning was very much women’s work and also because the changing circumstances of human life have long been represented in the revolutions of a wheel. The most equivocal uses of the term occur in OTH . Iago, bantering with Desdemona and Emilia while they await the arrival of Othello on the shores of Cyprus, gives a mocking account of women: Come on, come on, you are pictures out of doors, Bells in your parlours, wild-cats in your kitchens, Saints in your injuries, devils being offended Players in your housewifery, and housewives in . . . Your beds! (2.1.109–13) Although this is partly based on a proverbial saying about female hypocrisy (Honigmann, Arden edn, 2016, 169, citing Dent, W702, ‘Women are in church saints, abroad angels, at home devils’) Iago expands on and sharpens the misogynistic utterance. He puns on two senses of housewife. In their housewifely or domestic tasks, women are ‘players’, that is not serious participants, whereas by contrast in bed they are real housewives (hussies). As Honigmann (OTH , Arden edn) notes, the antithetical syntax (saints/devils) leads one to expect that ‘players’ will be followed by ‘workers’. The ellipsis (. . .) is his own punctuation. Iago’s later use of the word is unequivocal when he refers to Bianca as ‘a housewife that by selling her desires, / Buys herself bread and clothes’ (4.1.95–6). When Sir Toby in TN comments on Sir Andrew’s long straight hair, saying that ‘It hangs like flax on a distaff, and I hope to see a housewife take thee between her legs and spin it off’ (TN 1.3.98–100), he is using the equivocal sense of ‘housewife’ to make a lewd joke: the housewife is imagined as taking Sir Andrew sexually like a distaff (long stick or spindle) between her legs, and bringing him to a climax (‘spin it off’). ‘Housewife’ is used in a regular sense in H8 when Queen Katherine, in private with her women, is visited by Cardinals Wolsey and Campeius. She says, with some pathos: ‘Your graces find me here part of [partly] a housewife; / I would be all, against the worst may happen’ (3.1.24–5). The Queen, aware of the precariousness of her position, wishes she could be simply a wife. In Sonnet 143 the poet, in an unusually domesticated simile, compares his lover to a ‘careful [full of cares] housewife’ who neglects her infant, that is, himself, in order to capture a runaway fowl. When the Countess in AW says of herself, ‘I play the noble housewife with the time, / To entertain it so merrily with a fool’ (2.2.56–7), she is being ironic, and means that she is wasting her time, precisely unlike a ‘noble housewife’. Pistol bids farewell to his wife, the former Mistresss Quickly, before leaving for France, with the words, ‘Let housewifery appear; keep close, I thee command’ (H5 2.3.59, Folio version). He is urging her to act as a housewife conventionally should, to be thrifty and to stay in the house. The work of the housewife is thwarted by Puck in MND who not only ‘frights the maidens of the villagery’ but also ‘bootless make [s] the breathless housewife churn’ (2.1.35–7). 177

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(C) Pearson’s (1957) broad overview of the housewife’s tasks makes a good starting point. Fletcher (1995, 223–55) stresses the role of patriarchy in the subordination of the housewife’s labours to her husband’s control. Wall (2002) has much useful information about the housewife’s tasks, and about early modern housewifery ‘defined as the making of household objects’ (26). She also considers the housewife as an object of domestic fantasy. See also Korda (2002) on the housewife’s role as keeper of goods, and on the obliteration of Katherina in TS in this capacity. She also discusses good housewifery in MW . Erickson discusses women’s training as housewives, including apprenticeships (1993, 53–6). See also Whittle and Griffiths (2012) on the skills of housewives of the gentry class. Christensen’s excellent article (2014) examines representations of women and work and provides an overview of current attitudes to the evaluation of women’s work in the period and an extensive bibliography. Contemporary manuals include Dod and Cleaver, who stress the need of the housewife to be frugal and economical (1630, sigs F4v–F6) and Markham’s compendium, The English Hus-Wife, of 1615 (a companion to The English Husbandman), the full title of which makes clear what a variety of skills were expected of the housewife; his Chapter 1 begins with an account of her ‘general Knowledges both in Phisicke and Surgery’ and in Chapter 2, on cookery, he states firmly, ‘She must know all Hearbes’. Tusser (1580) adds ‘The Points of Huswifery’ to his Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, including a poem comparing ‘a comparison betweene good huswiferie and evill’. Hannay (1619) urges the wife to be ‘carefull of hous-wifery’, ensure that the maids work hard, and run the house economically (sig. C4v). husband (A) The noun, husband, in its earliest usage meant the master of a house, and could also mean a household manager, but most commonly in Shakespeare means a man married to a woman. The verb, to husband, means to manage or cultivate, or to be thrifty or economical with resources. (B) Husbands are of course ubiquitous in Shakespeare, but the term is not as frequently used as one might expect. There are, however, some very special uses of it. Perhaps the most significant occurs in Katherina’s long, and much debated, speech in TS where she defines the terms of the marital relationship to the two other wives onstage: Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, Thy head, thy sovereign: one that cares for thee And for thy maintenance; commits his body To painful labour both by sea and land, To watch the night in storms, the day in cold, Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe, And craves no other tribute at thy hands But love, fair looks and true obedience – Too little payment for so great a debt. Such duty as the subject owes the prince, 178

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Even such a woman oweth to her husband ... Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot, And place your hands below your husband’s foot: In token of which duty, if he please, My hand is ready, may it do him ease. (5.2.152–62, 182–5) The advice for wives given here is very orthodox for the period, deriving from the marriage ceremony, the Book of Common Prayer and the prescriptions of conduct books; the husband’s right to dominate the wife is supported by many biblical texts (e.g Genesis 3.16, Ephesians 5.22–4, 1 Peter 3.1). On stage the speech can be delivered in a variety of ways, sometimes suggesting that Katherina does not believe it at all (e.g. Phillida Lloyd’s all-female production, Globe, 2003), and is simply humouring her husband, or that she has been brainwashed by Petruccio into delivering it (Michael Bogdanov, Royal Shakespeare Company, 1978) but also (even in the twenty-first century) that she is delighted to acknowledge her husband’s authority (Globe, 2012). The speech comes as the climax to much earlier discussion of marital relations in the play. In Induction 2 Christopher Sly, tricked into believing himself a lord, is confronted by the page Bartholomew, pretending to be his wife. Their dialogue stresses, in parodic mode, the idea of the husband’s dominance: SLY

Are you my wife, and will not call me ‘husband’? My men should call me ‘lord’; I am your goodman. BARTHOLOMEW

My husband and my lord, my lord and husband, I am your wife in all obedience. (Ind. 2.101–4) Baptista is determined that his elder daughter must have a husband before her sister Bianca can wed: ‘None shall have access unto Bianca / Till Katherine the Curst hath got a husband’ (1.2.125–6). The word is bandied about between Hortensio and Gremio, rivals for Bianca. Before they can get anywhere with her, they must, as Hortensio says, ‘Get a husband for her sister’. Gremio exclaims, ‘A husband? A devil’. Hortensio answers, ‘I say, a husband’. Gremio replies, ‘I say, a devil’ (1.1.119–22). Acquiring a husband is important for a woman. Katherina comments jealously on Baptista’s preference for Bianca: She is your treasure, she must have a husband, I must dance barefoot on her wedding day And, for your love to her, lead apes in hell. (2.1.32–4)

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Petruccio announces his determination to marry Katherina in unequivocal style: Thus in plain terms: your father hath consented That you shall be my wife, your dowry ’greed on, And will you, nill you, I will marry you. Now, Kate, I am a husband for your turn. (2.1.271–4) The bluntness of his summary of the arrangement as one made between two men for a financial consideration is perhaps modified by his expression ‘a husband for your turn’, meaning that he is the right man for her, with some sexual innuendo underlying the words ‘for your turn’. Another woman deemed to be in need of a husband is Beatrice in MA , who, like Katherina, is compared with a more marriageable woman, her submissive cousin Hero. Leonato, Beatrice’s uncle, tells her, ‘By my troth, niece, thou wilt never get thee a husband, if thou be so shrewd of tongue’ (2.1.17). In the ensuing saucy badinage, Beatrice claims that she has no desire for a husband: ‘Lord, I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face! I had rather lie in the woollen’. Leonato replies, ‘You may light on a husband that hath no beard’, to which Beatrice answers, ‘What should I do with him? Dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting-gentlewoman?’ (2.1.26–30). Leonato does not let the subject drop (again employing sexual innuendo): ‘Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband’. Later in the scene, Beatrice comments on Hero’s engagement to Claudio: ‘Good Lord, for alliance! Thus goes everyone to the world but I, and I am sunburnt. I may sit in a corner and cry “Hey-ho for a husband” ’ (2.1.292–4). ‘She cannot endure to hear tell of a husband’, observes Don Pedro of Beatrice, a situation which cannot be allowed to continue. Even the quiet Hero has a say: ‘I will do any modest office . . . to help my cousin to a good husband’. And once it has been agreed that ‘Benedick is not the unhopefullest husband’ (2.1.346–8) the plot to bring the two together is hatched. Claudio as a husband fails Hero, repudiating her at the altar when he mistakenly believes her to be unchaste. But they are brought together again through a contrivance devised by the Friar. Claudio, having consented to marry Hero’s cousin, sight unseen, is presented with a masked woman (the disguised Hero): CLAUDIO

Give me your hand before this holy friar. I am your husband if you like of me. HERO

And when I lived I was your other wife; And when you loved, you were my other husband. (5.4.58–61) Self and other are one and the same. Thus the marriage is reaffirmed. There are many striking uses of the word ‘husband’ in circumstances when a woman draws particular attention to her claim to it as a title. In the last scene of TN Olivia, 180

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believing herself married to Cesario (though in fact she has married Viola’s twin brother Sebastian), is astonished when Viola, in her male disguise, prepares to leave with Orsino, and cries, ‘Cesario, husband, stay!’ This is the first use of the word in the play. Orsino, equally astonished, echoes her: ORSINO

Husband? OLIVIA

Ay, husband. Can he that deny? ORSINO

Her husband, sirrah? VIOLA

No, my lord, not I. (5.1.139–41)

Cleopatra’s first (and only) use of the word also signifies a climactic moment in the play. As she waits for her death while her women are dressing her, she readies herself to meet Antony in the afterlife: ‘Husband, I come! / Now to that name my courage prove my title!’ Miranda in TEM uses the word (one of only two occurrences in this play) with some temerity when she proposes to Ferdinand: MIRANDA

I am your wife if you will marry me; If not, I’ll die your maid. To be your fellow You may deny me, but I’ll be your servant Whether you will or no. FERDINAND My mistress, dearest, And I thus humble ever. MIRANDA

My husband, then? (3.1.83–8) Another woman who makes the running is Rosalind in AYL , when, disguised as Ganymede, she obliges Celia to conduct a wedding ceremony in the Forest of Arden between herself and Orlando. ‘I do take thee, Orlando, for my husband. There’s a girl goes before the priest’ (4.1.128–9). The just-married Blanche in KJ draws on her new status when she calls upon her husband Lewis, the Dauphin, to respect their wedding vows and not go to war against her family: ‘O husband, hear me! Ay, alack, how new / Is “husband” in my mouth!’ (3.1.231–2) The word ‘husband’ has unusual significance for Mariana in MM , a play in which marriage is by no means a romantic subject. She is the woman whom Angelo has spurned on spurious grounds, claiming that her dowry was not paid in full and also that ‘her reputation was disvalu’d / In levity’ (5.1.220–1). This is not, however, how the Duke sees it, telling Mariana that she need not fear to go ahead with the bed-trick, taking Isabella’s place, because ‘He is your husband on a pre-contract’ (4.1.72). This 181

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means that Angelo has been bound in honour by a de futuro contract (promising marriage at a future date in the presence of witnesses, the promise becoming binding if the couple sleep together). In the final scene Angelo is eventually forced to acknowledge Mariana. Having vowed that she will not unveil until bidden by her husband, she expresses her situation in riddling terms: My lord, I do confess I ne’er was married; And I confess besides, I am no maid. I have known my husband; yet my husband Knows not that ever he knew me. (5.1.185–8) When Angelo asks her to show her face, she responds: ‘My husband bids me; now I will unmask’. Angelo resists acknowledging her as long as he can, but once the exchange of the women in the bed-trick is revealed he has to confess his many misdeeds. The Duke orders the couple to be formally married and then for Angelo to be executed in the way he has dealt with Claudio. Mariana then begs for the life of her ungrateful husband (who has asked for death): O my most gracious lord I hope you will not mock me with a husband. The Duke replies, ‘It is your husband mock’d you with a husband’, and offers to confer on her all Angelo’s possessions after his death ‘to buy you a better husband’ (5.1.422). Angelo is not the only unsatisfactory husband in the play; Lucio is horrified when ordered by the Duke to marry Kate Keepdown, the prostitute who has had his child, considering this a punishment equivalent to torture and execution: ‘Marrying a punk . . . is pressing to death, / Whipping, and hanging’ (5.1.519–20). Another play in which marriage and the status of husbands and wives are problematized is AW . Helena, promised her husband of choice by the King of France as a reward for curing his illness, opts for Bertram, Count of Rossillion, but he despises her for her low birth and goes abroad to escape the marriage. Before leaving he writes her a letter setting out what he takes to be impossible conditions: ‘When thou canst get the ring upon my finger which never shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body that I am father to, then call me husband: but in such a “then” I write a “never” ’ (3.2.55–8). His behaviour is generally condemned; his mother, who loves Helena, asks rhetorically What angel shall Bless this unworthy husband? He cannot thrive, Unless her prayers . . . . . . reprieve him from the wrath Of greatest justice (3.4.25–9) 182

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But Helena is prepared to call Bertram husband even before she has fulfilled his conditions, urging the mother of Diana, the woman who will help her achieve her aim, as Mariana does for Isabella in MM , to ‘give me trust, the count he is my husband’ (3.7.8). Helena enters, pregnant, in the last moments of the play and recites the terms of Bertram’s letter back to him. Although she calls herself ‘the shadow of a wife . . . the name and not the thing’ Bertram now acknowledges that she is ‘both, both’ (5.3.306–7). In KL one of the many indicators of disorder is marital disharmony, caused by a wife’s desire to dominate her husband. Goneril refers slightingly to Albany as ‘our mild husband’ and tells her lover Edmund that ‘a fool usurps my bed’ (4.2.1, 28). Learning that forces are mustering in support of Regan and her husband Cornwall against those of Lear, she decides that ‘I must change names at home and give the distaff / Into my husband’s hands’ (4.2.17–18). In the final scene when Goneril and Regan’s rivalry over Edmund reaches a deadly climax, Albany comes between them, addressing himself to Regan: For your claim, fair sister, I bar it in the interest of my wife: ’Tis she is sub-contracted to this lord And I her husband contradict your banns: If you will marry, make your loves to me; My lady is bespoke. (5.3.85–90) His ironic use of legal terminology here points up the absurdity of the situation, in line with the play’s stress on inversion and disorder. In MV Shakespeare deals with three marriages, and in each the role of the wife seems more significant than that of the husband. While Portia’s desire to ‘choose me a husband’ (1.2.21) is curtailed by ‘the will of a dead father’, nonetheless she, and her woman, Nerissa, have more power over their husbands, through the medium of the male disguises they assume, than Bassanio and Gratiano have over their wives. ‘A light wife doth make a heavy husband’, says Portia (5.1.130), perhaps jokingly playing on the proverb, ‘A good wife makes a good husband’ (Tilley, W351), and she and Nerissa mock their husbands with the prospect of that male nightmare, cuckoldry. ‘I’ll not deny him anything I have, / No, not my body, nor my husband’s bed’ (5.1.227–8), says Portia of the ‘doctor’ to whom Bassanio has given her ring. Jessica claims that ‘I shall be saved by my husband; he hath made me a Christian!’ (3.5.17–18); but when she praises Portia as a uniquely virtuous wife (3.5.66–76) Lorenzo’s response rings a little hollow: ‘Even such a husband / Hast thou of me, as she is for a wife’. His attitude to the money that she brings with her, stolen from her father, is not completely disinterested. Bassanio too is a man who needs to marry money, which his wife Portia will provide. Marriage is a tragic subject in RJ , and Juliet’s uses of the word ‘husband’ are often loaded with poignancy. When she learns from the Nurse, before her wedding night, that Romeo has killed Tybalt, her cousin, in a sword fight, her loyalties are compromised. ‘Will you speak well of him that killed your cousin?’ asks the Nurse. Juliet replies: 183

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Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband? Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name When I, thy three hours’ wife, have mangled it? But wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin? That villain cousin would have killed my husband. ... My husband lives that Tybalt would have slain, And Tybalt’s dead that would have slain my husband. (3.2.97–106) Husbands prove a problem of another kind when Juliet’s father, unaware of her secret marriage to Romeo, comes to bring the news that he has arranged another marriage for her, and she has to devise a way of handling this. ‘I wonder at this haste, that I must wed / Ere he that should be husband comes to woo’, she responds (3.5.118–19). Later she can be open about her dilemma with the Nurse: O God! O Nurse, how shall this be prevented? My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven. How shall that faith return again to earth, Unless that husband send it me from heaven By leaving earth? (3.5.205–9) The last use of the word comes from the Friar at the end of the play when he explains to the Prince and assembled company what has happened: Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet, And she, there dead, that’s Romeo’s faithful wife. (5.3.231–2) A woman’s acknowledgement of her husband often comes at a significant moment. Lady Macbeth’s only use of the word occurs in the scene when she is nervously waiting for Macbeth’s reappearance after the murder of Duncan. Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done’t. My husband? (MAC 2.2.13–15) The line is often punctuated with an exclamation mark, perhaps to express her relief at his appearance, but the question mark might imply her wish to affirm his claim to the title. Desdemona’s affirmation of her loyalty to her newly wed spouse, delivered to the senators of Venice, is unambiguous. Her father Brabantio has challenged her to define her role as a woman: Come hither, gentle mistress: Do you perceive, in all this noble company,

BRABANTIO

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Where most you owe obedience? My noble father, I do perceive here a divided duty. To you I am bound for life and education: My life and education both do learn me How to respect you; you are the lord of duty, I am hitherto your daughter. But here’s my husband: And so much duty as my mother showed To you, preferring you before her father, So much I challenge that I may profess Due to the Moor my lord.

DESDEMONA

(1.3.177–89) The roles of husbands (and wives) are central in this play, and the word ‘husband’ appears very frequently. Marital relations are explicitly the subject of debate. Iago tells Othello that wives cannot be trusted: ‘In Venice they do let God see the pranks / They dare not show their husbands’ (3.3.205–6). Desdemona asks the more worldly wise Emilia about adultery: ‘Dost thou in conscience think – tell me, Emilia – / That there be women do abuse their husbands / In such gross kind?’ (4.3.60–1). Emilia has no doubts of it, in the right circumstances: ‘Who would not make her husband a cuckold to make him a monarch?’ (4.3.74–5). But although the action focuses on the conduct of two husbands, the word is used more of Iago than of Othello. Initially Emilia thinks of Iago as ‘my wayward husband’ (3.3.296), and it is in only the final scene she comes to see his real nature. The word is bandied back and forth in her revelatory exchange with Othello about Desdemona’s relations with Cassio. OTHELLO

Cassio did top her: ask thy husband else. ... . . . Thy husband knew it all. EMILIA

My husband? OTHELLO

Thy husband. That she was false?

EMILIA

To wedlock? OTHELLO

Ay, with Cassio.

... EMILIA

My husband?

OTHELLO

Ay, ’twas he that told me on her first; An honest man he is, and hates the slime That sticks on filthy deeds.

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husband EMILIA

My husband!

What needs This iterance, woman? I say thy husband.

OTHELLO EMILIA

O mistress, villany hath made mocks with love! My husband say she was false? OTHELLO He, woman; I say thy husband: dost understand the word? My friend, thy husband, honest, honest Iago. (5.2.134–50) It is Emilia’s readiness to accept her husband’s authority, coupled with her wifely wish ‘to please his fantasy’ (3.3.303), that has caused her to betray her mistress and lie about Othello’s dropped handkerchief. This in turn has precipitated the tragic outcome. The bond between husband and wife is also central in CE , where some of the strongest statements about it are made. Adriana, wife to Antipholus of Ephesus, takes the biblical idea of man and wife as one flesh very seriously. Concerned by her husband’s aberrant behaviour (and confused because what appears to be his behaviour is in fact that of his twin brother Antipholus of Syracuse), she berates him by appealing to the closeness of the marriage bond whereby ‘if we two be one and thou play false / I do digest the poison of thy flesh’ (2.2.141–2). Hence, if she were to be unfaithful (as he is), he would be entitled to cast her off: Wouldst thou not spit at me, and spurn at me, And hurl the name of husband in my face, And tear the stain’d skin off my harlot brow, And from my false hand cut my wedding-ring And break it with a deep-divorcing vow? (2.2.133–7) Adriana has a clear sense of the distribution of roles in marriage: ‘Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine, / Whose weakness married to thy stronger state, / Makes me with thy strength to communicate’ (2.2.173–5). But when she believes her husband to be mad and in need of medical attention, she knows her duty: ‘I will attend my husband, be his nurse, / Diet his sickness, for it is my office’ (5.1.98–9). And even the Abbess cannot keep the couple apart: I will not hence and leave my husband here: And ill it doth beseem your holiness To separate the husband and the wife. (5.1.109–11) The closeness of the marital bond is expressed by a faithful husband, Hector in TC , when he is setting out the argument in favour of returning Helen of Troy to her rightful 186

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husband: ‘What nearer debt in all humanity / Than wife is to the husband?’ (2.2.175–6). He calls it a ‘law of nature’. But in LUC Tarquin perverts the meaning of the marital bond by suggesting that if Lucrece resists his intended rape he will take his revenge in such a way (by making her appear to have committed adultery) as to shame her husband: So thy surviving husband shall remain The scornful mark of every open eye. (519–20) Therefore, he claims, it is in her family’s interests for her to surrender to him: ‘Then for thy husband and thy children’s sake / Tender my suit (533–4). This outrageous argument takes to extreme the early modern notion of the wife’s identity being subsumed into her husband’s. The uses of ‘husband’ meaning spouse and ‘husband’ meaning household manager are generally kept separate, though there may perhaps be some innuendo in Falstaff’s comment to Justice Shallow about his servant Davy: ‘This Davy serves you for good uses; he is your serving-man, and your husband’ (2H4 5.3.10–11). In MM Lucio’s unpleasant remark to Pompey when the latter is on his way to prison – ‘Commend me to the prison, good Pompey; you will turn good husband now, Pompey; you will keep the house’ (3.2.67–8) – seems only to comment ironically on Pompey’s new abode. In Sonnet 94 those ‘that have power to hurt and will do none’ are regarded as good managers: ‘They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces, / And husband nature’s riches from expense’. (C) Contemporary texts that discuss marital relations include Smith, who stresses the need for wives to observe proper subordination to their husbands (1591, 78), and Dod and Cleaver, who demarcate the husband’s sphere as that of ‘outward affaires’, while the wife’s ‘chief duty is in housekeeping’ (1630, 86). They regard it as the husband’s role to take the lead in solving any marital problems. Markham, The English hus-wife (1615, 1–2), makes the same distinction btween roles as Dod and Cleaver. His companion work, The English husbandman (1613), concerns the work of the household manager. Perkins outlines the duties of husbands and wives with strongly patriarchal emphasis (1609, chs 11, 12). For accounts of marriage in early modern England, see Giese (2006), who discusses TN and TGV in particular, and Cook, who in her well-documented book (1991) discusses the role of parents and authority figures and also of agents and gobetweens in the selection of women’s husbands. She exonerates Petruccio in TS from charges of mercenariness, but stresses Desdemona’s violation of proprieties. For discussion of Katherina’s speech in TS see Boose (1991) and Hodgdon (Arden edn, 2010). Hopkins (1998) gives a useful overview of the whole subject of marriage. See also the fuller bibliography at marriage. husbandry (A) The main meaning of husbandry is the management of a household, but it can also mean the agricultural business of a husbandman, or good housekeeping more generally, especially in terms of thrift or frugality. 187

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(B) Polonius in his worldly-wise advice to Laertes tells his son: Neither a borrower nor a lender be [‘boy’ in Q2] For loan oft loses both itself and friend And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. (HAM 1.3.74–6) Banquo uses the word in the same sense of thrifty housekeeping when remarking on the darkness of the night, more ominous to him than he realizes: ‘There’s husbandry in heaven, / Their candles are all out’ (MAC 2.1.4–5). Aufidius says that Coriolanus ‘shows good husbandry for the Volscian state’ (COR 4.7.22), meaning that he manages it efficiently. When Portia departs from Belmont to Venice, she leaves Lorenzo in charge: ‘I commit into your hands / The husbandry and manage of my house’ (MV 3.4.24–5), signifying domestic management. The steward Flavius, breaking to his master Timon the bad news of the fallen condition of his estate, urges him: If you suspect my husbandry of falsehood, Call me before th’exactest auditors And set me on the proof. (TIM 2.2.155–7) When the servant Alexander in TC says that the early rising of Hector to the battlefield suggests ‘there were husbandry in war’ (TC 1.2.7) he means that Hector shows careful management in his trade as soldier and also plays on the idea that he is a good ‘husband’ in the domestic sense. A similar word-play is used in Sonnet 13 when the poet tells the young man (whom he is urging to marry) not to allow ‘so fair a house [to] fall to decay, / Which husbandry in honour might uphold’. ‘Husbandry’ here signifies also the preserving (or ‘husbanding’) of precious resources. In Sonnet 3 he creates a fuller image around the ideas of husbandry and marriage: For where is she so fair whose uneared [unsown] womb Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry? The agricultural resonances of the word are drawn on here, linking marriage with procreation and fertility. Lucio in MM uses the same image when telling Isabella, in a somewhat circuitous fashion, that Juliet has become pregnant by Claudio, and ‘her plenteous womb / Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry’ (MM 1.4.43–4). Lucio’s uncharacteristically warm and beautiful language here helps reinforce the sense of the naturalness of the sexuality of the two young lovers, as contrasted with the inhibitions of Angelo and Isabella. The term is used in a purely agricultural sense in H5 in the Duke of Burgundy’s poignant speech about the war-ravaged and neglected countryside of France where ‘All her husbandry doth lie on heaps, / Corrupting in it own fertility’ (5.2.39–40). Queen Margaret in 2H6 develops an agricultural metaphor when urging her husband to root out the ‘weeds’, by whom she really means her own enemies, because if 188

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allowed to thrive ‘they’ll o’ergrow the garden / And choke the herbs for want of husbandry’ (3.1.32–3). (C) Tusser’s delightful doggerel miscellany, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1580), gives practical advice for farmers and their wives. Markham (1613) gives a detailed and fascinating overview of the work of an early modern husbandman, a profession he followed himself. Laslett (1971a) discusses the role of the husbandman in the social hierarchy. Leslie and Raylor (1992) discuss early modern husbandry manuals. Wrightson describes the declining fortunes of husbandmen in the early seventeenth century (2000, 187–90). See also Thomas and Faircloth (2014), ‘husbandry’.

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I ink (A) The black ink in this period was mostly coloured with oak-gall, which produced tannin. People could make their own ink, and several recipes for it exist, combining ingredients such as vinegar, wine, gum and gall with water. (B) There are many calls in Shakespeare’s plays for ink and paper, by Cleopatra, for example (AC 1.5), Richard III (R3 5.3), Romeo (RJ 5.1), Malvolio (TN 4.2), Titus Andronicus (TIT 4.3) and Lucrece (LUC 1289). In TN Sir Toby Belch urges Sir Andrew Aguecheek to send a challenge to Cesario: ‘Taunt him with the license of ink . . . Let there be gall enough in thy ink’ (3.2.42, 46–7). He puns on the other meaning of gall, as bitterness. In CYM Posthumus begs Innogen to write to him and promises that ‘with mine eyes I’ll drink the words you send, / Though ink be made of gall’ (CYM 1.1.101–2). The blackness of ink is often its most significant feature. Hamlet’s ‘inky cloak’ (1.2.77) symbolizes his melancholy after his father’s death. Pisanio, cursing a letter from Posthumus wrongly accusing Innogen of adultery, calls it ‘damn’d paper! / Black as the ink that’s on thee’ (CYM 3.2.19–20). In LLL Don Armado writes grandiosely in his letter to the King of France of an event ‘that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-coloured ink’ (1.1.235–6). In Sonnet 65 the poet, meditating on the evanescence of all things lovely, concludes that his lover’s beauty will survive only if ‘this miracle have might: / That in black ink my love may still shine bright’. Leonato, convinced that his daughter Hero is unchaste, considers her ineradicably stained: O, she is fallen Into a pit of ink that the wide sea Hath drops too few to wash her clean again (MA 4.1.139–41) (C) Ink recipes can be found in Philip (1596) and in Carvalho (1904). Jacobson (2015) discusses ink in relation to colours in Hamlet. inkle means a kind of linen tape, or the yarn from which inkle is made. Autolycus has in his pack ‘inkles, caddisses [type of linen], cambrics, lawns’ (WT 4.4.209). Costard in LLL , looking for an example of a small cheap item, asks rhetorically, ‘ “What’s the price of this inkle?” “One penny” ’ (3.1.136). Both probably mean linen tape. Gower, describing Marina’s skill in embroidery, refers to ‘her inkle, silk, twin with the rubied cherry’ (PER 5.0.8). The syntax here is somewhat obscure; it may mean that she uses inkle thread as silk, and that the embroidered object is so good as to be identical to the real object. For more on this line, see Gossett’s note (Arden edn, 2004). 191

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inn (A) An inn was a licensed establishment offering alcoholic drink, food and lodging for its customers. It was regarded as superior to the tavern and the alehouse, though the distinctions could be blurred. (B) In MAC the First Murderer sets the scene for the killing of Banquo: The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day. Now spurs the lated traveller apace To gain the timely inn (3.3.5–7) His evocative lines are a prelude to the unhappy fate of Banquo, who never does gain his ‘timely inn’. The Queen in R2 laments the unfairness of her husband’s fate with a poetic conceit contrasting him (the inn) with Bolingbroke (the alehouse): Thou most beauteous inn, Why should hard-favoured Grief be lodged in thee, When Triumph is become an alehouse guest? (5.1.13–15) But in KL Goneril rebukes Lear for the conduct of his entourage, ‘Men so disordered, so debauched and bold, / That this our court, infected with their manners, / Shows like a riotous inn’ (KL 1.4.233–5). Falstaff, annoyed at the goings on in the Eastcheap tavern, enquires of the Hostess in a lordly way, ‘Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn, but I shall have my pocket picked?’ (1H4 3.3.80–1). He plays on the proverb (Dent E42), implying that he thinks of the inn as his own house. (C) See Clark (1983) on inns, taverns and alehouses. Harrison praises the quality of English inns, though he also warns travellers against the possibility of theft taking place (1587, 387–8). Forker (R2, Arden edn, 2002) explicates the Queen’s conceit.

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J Jack (and Jill) Jack, used in conjunction with Jill, means a household servant in a general sense. Grumio in TS , ensuring that Petruccio’s house is ready for his return, asks ‘Be the Jacks fair within, the Jills fair without, the carpets laid, and everything in order’ (4.1.43–5). He puns on other meanings of the words: ‘jacks’ were leather drinking-vessels, and ‘jills’ (or ‘gills’) measures of half a pint, often made of metal. Underlying Grumio’s lines is the saying ‘All shall be well and Jack shall have Jill’ (Tilley, A164), to which Berowne alludes plaintively at the end of LLL : ‘Our wooing doth not end like an old play: / Jack hath not Jill’ (5.3.862–3). Puck uses the proverb in a more positive spirit: ‘Jack shall have Jill, / Nought shall go ill; / The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well’ (MND 3.2.461–3). jakes A jakes was an outdoor latrine or privy, the only kind of lavatory available to most Elizabethans who did not own large houses. Sir John Harrington is credited with the invention of the indoor flushing toilet, an early version of which he had installed at his house in Kelston. His satirical work A New Discourse upon a Stale Subject: The Metamorphosis of a Jakes (1596) celebrates the subject, with an abundance of bad jokes about privy chambers and so forth. Shakespeare’s one use of the term is in KL , when Kent insults Oswald and threatens to ‘tread this unbolted villain into mortar and daub the wall of a jakes with him’ (2.2.64–5). The word ‘jakes’ was pronounced with two syllables, ‘jak- es’, like the name of the character in AYL , which may have been used for punning. Later Kent insults Cornwall by suggesting that he has been taken in by Oswald: ‘None of these rogues and cowards / But Ajax is their fool’ (2.2.123–4). ‘Ajax’ may suggest ‘a jakes’, and Shakespeare puns on this name in TC , for example, when Thersites mocks the slow-witted character: ‘But whomsoever you take him to be, he is Ajax’ (TC 2.1.62). jerkin A jerkin was a short coat or jacket with a collar, which might or might not have sleeves. Buff (from buffalo) or leather jerkins were reversible, as Thersites, remarking on the two-faced quality of self-conceit, observes: ‘A plague of opinion! A man may wear it on both sides, like a leather jerkin’ (TC 3.3.265–6). They were long-lasting (‘a most sweet robe of durance’ as Hal calls the buff jerkin (1H4 1.2.41) and worn by military men, officers and gentlemen attendants. Hal mockingly refers to the innkeeper of tavern at Eastcheap as ‘this leathern-jerkin, crystal-button . . . Spanish-pouch’ (1H4 2.4.68–70). 193

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jewel, jeweller (A) A jewel is a small valuable object, usually made of gold, silver or precious stones, used for personal adornment. Used figuratively, it signifies a person or object of high value or highly prized, a treasure. (B) Jewels function as gifts or tokens in several plays. It is in CYM that jewels play the largest part in the plot. Iachimo, using the word both literally and figuratively, wagers ten thousand ducats against Posthumus’s diamond ring, his parting gift from Innogen, that he can persuade her to sleep with him, agreeing that ‘if I come off, and leave her in such honour as you have trust in, she your jewel, this your jewel and my gold are yours’ (1.4.154–6). In order to obtain entrance into Innogen’s bedchamber he asks her to allow him to leave a large trunk there for safe-keeping, claiming that it contains ‘plate of rare device, and jewels / Of rich and exquisite form, their values great’ (1.6.188–9). Having secretly entered her room, concealed in the trunk, he sets about finding evidence to substantiate the lie that he has slept with her, a major part of which is stealing from her arm the bracelet that Posthumus has given her in exchange for his ring. She values it highly and is distressed to discover it gone: Go bid my woman Search for a jewel that too casually Hath left mine arm; it was thy master’s. ’Shrew me If I would lose it for a revenue Of any king’s in Europe. (2.3.140–4) In the final scene the diamond ring that Iachimo falsely won of Posthumus in the wager becomes the means by which the extent of Iachimo’s villainy is revealed and thus Posthumus and Innogen reunited. Innogen, here disguised as a page to the Roman Lucius, is offered a boon by Cymbeline. She asks that Iachimo confess how he obtained the ring he is wearing, and he responds: I am glad to be constrained to utter that Which torments me to conceal. By villainy I got this ring. ’Twas Leonatus’ jewel. (5.5.141–3) The full explanation then follows, and the crucial but ambiguous roles played by the two pieces of jewellery, the ring and the bracelet, duly revealed. In MV jewels with emotional as well as monetary value also fall into the wrong hands. Jessica steals money and jewels from her father Shylock when she flees from his house, and Salanio with malicious pleasure recounts Shylock’s response when he discovers the theft: A sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats Of double ducats, stol’n from me by my daughter! And jewels, two stones, two rich and precious stones, Stol’n by my daughter! (2.8.18–21) 194

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Shylock’s bitter sense of his daughter’s betrayal comes across even more clearly when Tubal returns from Genoa, having heard of Jessica’s doings there: A diamond gone cost me two thousand ducats in Frankfurt. The curse never fell upon our nation till now; I never felt it till now. Two thousand ducats in that, and other precious, precious jewels. I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear. (3.1.76–81) Another jewel that has been passed from hand to hand is the ring that Portia gave Bassanio when she pledged herself to him in the casket scene, and which he subsequently surrenders to ‘doctor Balthazar’ (Portia in disguise) in payment for saving Antonio from Shylock’s knife. In the final scene he tries to explain to her why he parted with the ring to ‘the worthy doctor’, and she responds Let not that doctor e’er come near my house! Since he hath got the jewel that I loved . . . I will become as liberal as you; I’ll not deny him anything I have (5.1.223–6) Of course Portia is playing a joke on Bassanio, and the ‘rings’ (used with word play on the meaning of female sexual organ) that she and Nerissa appear to have given away are of course safe. But jewels, especially rings, can be tricky tokens, loaded with sometimes problematic meanings, as is evident in TN , where they pass back and forth between individuals without ever producing the intended effect. Olivia gets Malvolio to send a ring to Viola/Cesario, pretending that she is returning one that (s)he left (2.1); Orsino sends Viola to Olivia with a ring in token of the urgency of his feelings: ‘Give her this jewel; say / My love can give no place, bide no denay’ (2.4.123–4). Olivia gives Viola/ Cesario a miniature of herself: Here, wear this jewel for me: ’tis my picture. Refuse it not, it hath no tongue to vex you. (3.4.203–4) Jewels as bodily adornments are mentioned by several characters. Romeo uses a brilliant image playing on contrasts between black and white to evoke Juliet’s beauty: It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night As a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear (RJ 1.5.44–5) The conceit refines that used in SON 27 where the poet thinks that the ‘shadow’ of his lover, ‘like a jewel hung in ghastly night / Makes black night beauteous’. In H8 the faithful Queen Katherine is referred to as ‘a jewel [that] has hung twenty years / About his neck yet never lost her lustre’ (H8 2.2.30–1). Malvolio imagines how he will comport 195

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himself with Sir Toby, once raised in rank as Olivia’s husband: ‘I frown the while and perchance wind up my watch, or play with my – some rich jewel’ (2.3.55–6). More commonly the term is used metaphorically to refer to some precious person or quality. So, for example, Mamillius in WT is called ‘jewel of children’ (5.1.116), Cleopatra uses it of Antony (AC 4.15.82), the poet in Sonnet 65 calls his lover ‘time’s best jewel’, and Claudio in MA wonders of Hero, ‘Can the world buy such a jewel?’ (1.1.171). ‘No jewel is like Rosalind’, inscribes Orlando on a tree in the Forest of Arden. Theseus tells Palamon in TNK that the dying Arcite has restored Emilia to him ‘as your stol’n jewel’ (5.4.119). Cordelia uses the term for her sisters with strong irony when she calls them ‘the jewels of our father’ (KL 1.1.270). Miranda in TEM refers to her chastity as ‘the jewel in my dower’ (3.1.) and the word is also used of Lucrece’s chastity in LUC: it is ‘the rich jewel he [her husband Collatine] should keep unknown’ (34), and after the rape she blames herself, calling her husband ‘dear lord of that rich jewel I have lost’ (1191). Iago refers to ‘good name in man and woman’ as ‘the immediate jewel or their souls’ (OTH 3.3.158–9). Macbeth, listing the disastrous consequences of killing Duncan, realizes that he has Put rancours in the vessel of my peace . . . and mine eternal jewel Given to the common enemy of man (MAC 3.1.66–8) He probably refers here to his immortal soul, which he has now given up to the devil. (C) Johnson observed that the word jewel in Shakespeare ‘does not properly signify a single gem, but any precious ornament or superfluity’ (quoted in Elam, TN , Arden edn, 2008, 3.4.203). joint-ring see ring joint-stool A joint-stool was a stool made by a joiner, that is, a member of the Joiners’ Guild, and thus properly constructed and not roughly made by a carpenter. The stool was the commonest form of household seating in this period. In RJ the servants prepare the room for the aftermath of the supper by calling for the removal of furniture and household valuables: ‘Away with the join-stools, remove the court-cupboard [sideboard], look to the plate’ (RJ 1.5.6–7). In KL the Fool, playing along with the King’s madness, addresses the furniture in the hovel: ‘Come hither, mistress: Is your name Goneril? . . . Cry you mercy, I took you for a joint-stool’ (3.6.49–51). He alludes to the proverb (Dent, M879) that means to overlook someone. Katherina in TS uses the same joke to insult Petruccio: . . . I knew you at the first You were a moveable [i.e. changeable]. PETRCHIO Why, what’s a moveable? KATHERINA

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A joint-stool. (2.1.195–7) Caton (2013, ch. 6) examines the significance of the joint stool as a stage prop, connecting it with sexually dominant women like Lady Macbeth and Alice Arden in Arden of Faversham. Buxton, citing KL , comments that stools ‘suggested a lower status [for the sitter] than chairs’ (2015, 146, as in the illustration on p. 129). See also stool. jointure (A) A jointure was technically an estate, held jointly by husband and wife, in the form of property or sometimes an annuity which devolved automatically on to the wife at the death of her husband, but it is commonly used more loosely to mean a dower. (B) Shallow, wooing Anne Page on behalf of his witless relative Slender, says that ‘he will make you a hundred and fifty pounds jointure’ (3.4.49), a generous offer in view of the fact that Slender’s annual income has earlier been valued at £300, and therefore he need only pay Anne £100, or a third of it. Tranio, when competing with Gremio for the hand of Bianca in TS , makes an even larger offer of three or four houses and two thousand ducats a year from land for her jointure (2.1.373–4). In 3H6 the discussion of the financial settlement for the marriage of King Edward to Lady Bona of France is done more legalistically, to ensure parity of estate on both sides and distinguishing between jointure and dower (or dowry): KING LEWIS

And now forthwith shall articles be drawn Touching the jointure that your king must make, Which with her dowry shall be counterpoised. (3.3.135–7) Rosalind jokes with Orlando when she tells him that he is so late she would prefer to be wooed by a snail, because ‘though he comes slowly he carries his house on his head – a better jointure, I think than you make a woman’ (AYL 4.1.49–50). By contrast the term is used to poignant effect when Capulet, after the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, brings the enmity between their families to an end: O brother Montague, give me thy hand. This is my daughter’s jointure, for no more Can I demand. (RJ 5.3.296–8) (C) See Sokol and Sokol (2002, 179–84), who are at pains to distinguish between ‘jointure’ and ‘dower’, and also Erickson (1993, esp. ch. 6) and Cook (1991, ch. 7), who documents litigation over failures to pay. jordan Jordan was a slang word for a chamber pot. The carriers at the Gad’s Hill inn in 1H4 complain about the lack of facilities there: ‘They will allow us ne’er a jordan, and 197

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then we leak in your chimney, and your chamber lye [urine] breeds fleas like a loach’ (2.1.19–21). Falstaff at Mistress Quickly’s tavern in Eastcheap is luckier; he enters singing and commands in a lordly way, ‘Empty the jordan!’ (2H4 2.4.34). Chamber pots were provided in taverns; Earl, Microcosmographie (1628), ‘A tavern’, includes them as ‘necessary implements’. journeyman see prentice

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K kerchief A kerchief was a large piece of cloth, or shawl, generally worn by women, to cover the head. In MW when Falstaff flatters Mistress Ford by advising her to wear a fashionable headdress such as ‘a tire of Venetian admittance’, she demurs: ‘A plain kerchief, Sir John: my brows become nothing else’ (3.3.52–3). Later in the play Mistress Page suggests that Falstaff might disguise himself with ‘a hat, a muffler and kerchief’ to make good his escape from Ford’s house (4.2.67). The kerchief that Caius Ligarius wears when he takes part in the conspiracy against Caesar signifies that he is unwell (JC 2.1.313–14). kersey A lightweight wool cloth, probably first manufactured at Kersey in Suffolk, but later produced in many other parts of England. It was used by royalty in the fifteenth century, but by the time that Grumio goes to Petruccio’s wedding with ‘a linen stocking on one leg and a kersey boot-hose on the other’ (TS 3.2.64–5) it was the wear of poorer people. The First Gentleman’s reference to ‘a list [selvege] of an English kersey’ (MM 1.2.31) suggests that ‘kersey’ stands for plainness and homeliness, as does Berowne’s vow to woo Rosaline without verbal affectation in ‘russet yeas and honest kersey noes’ (LLL 5.2.413). See Linthicum (1936, 79–81). Griffiths (1996, 226) cites the Act of Common Council of London 1611 which prescribes that apprentices and other young men should wear only stockings made of ‘cloth, kersey, fustian . . . and English stuff’ but not of silk. kirtle Kirtle meant a woman’s gown, consisting of a skirt and bodice, or more commonly just a skirt, worn over a petticoat. Falstaff, wheedling Doll Tearsheet, asks her, ‘What stuff wilt have a kirtle of?’ (2H4 2.4.277). Later, Doll threatens the Beadle trying to arrest her: ‘If you be not swinged [beaten], I’ll forswear half-kirtles’ (2H4 5.4.20–1). Here she refers to the skirt alone. Bulman (Arden edn, 2016) suggests that her line is ‘humorously ironic, since Doll, in her line of work, would be out of her kirtle as much as she is in it’. The lover in PP makes a fanciful offer to his beloved of ‘a kirtle / Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle’ (19). kitchen (A) The kitchen is the room in a house where food is prepared and cooked. Not all early modern houses had kitchens, especially the humbler ones, and food such as roasted meat that could not be cooked at the hearth might be bought in from street vendors or cook-shops. 199

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Figure 5 Frontispiece from Thomas Dawson, The Good Husewifes Jewell, 1610, showing images of women at work in a kitchen. Public domain

(B) Women employed to work in the kitchen are spoken of disparagingly. ‘Laura, to his lady, was a kitchen wench’ (RJ 2.4.39–40) says Mercutio, mocking Romeo’s idealization of his lover. Similarly, Iachimo says of Posthumus’s idealization of Innogen, that for him other men seemed to lack judgement in admiring other women: ‘either our brags / Were cracked [boasted] of kitchen trulls, or his description / Prov’d us unspeaking sots’ (CYM 5.5.176–8). Brutus disparages the admiration accorded to Coriolanus at his triumphant appearance in Rome: ‘The kitchen malkin [wench] pins / Her richest lockram round her reechy neck / Clamb’ring the walls to eye him’ (COR 2.1.202–4). The only kitchen maid who is characterized is the one in CE who works for Antipholus of Ephesus and pursues the reluctant Dromio of Syracuse. ‘Marry, she’s the kitchen wench, and all grease’ he tells his master (3.2.95), before launching into a grotesque description of her body. In the play’s last scene when the two Dromios finally meet, Dromio of Syracuse tells his brother of his encounter with her, inventing a verb to do so: 200

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There is a fat friend at your master’s house, That kitchen’d me for you today at dinner; She now shall be my sister not my wife. (5.1.415–17) Iago, satirizing women’s behaviours and the differences between public and private, says that they are ‘pictures out of doors’ but ‘wild-cats in your kitchens’ (OTH 2.1.109– 10), presumably meaning that they are as violent as animals in defending their territory. (C) See Wall (2002) for a view of the kitchen as a violent and bloody place, but very much the sphere of women; Morrison (2016) challenges this, suggesting a high level of male involvement. Pennell’s fascinating account of the early modern kitchen (2016) aims to rescue it from its historical invisibility, and explores it both as domestic space and workplace.

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L lace Laces were used to tie parts of the clothing (doublets and hose, for example) together, or to pull in garments, especially women’s bodices, tightly. In AC Cleopatra claims to be overcome by emotion at Antony’s departure, and calls for Charmian’s help: ‘Cut my lace, Charmian, come’ (1.3.72). Queen Elizabeth in R3 is horrified by the news that Anne is about to be crowned queen, which signifies that Richard III has taken the throne: Ah, cut my lace asunder That my pent heart may have some scope to beat, Or else I swoon with this dead-killing news. (4.1.33–5) Paulina in WT signals distress (at Hermione’s apparent death) in the same way: ‘O cut my lace, lest my heart, cracking it, / Break too’ (WT 3.2.170–1). Mopsa in WT reminds the Clown that ‘you promised me a tawdry-lace and a pair of gloves’ (4.4.249–50), meaning a brightly coloured silk scarf or neckerchief. See Tiramani (2010, 92–3) on the functioning of laces in women’s clothing. laundry, laundress A laundry was an establishment where dirty clothes and household linens were washed and prepared for reuse. The word could also mean a laundress, a woman who did this work. At this period the laundress had an equivocal reputation, perhaps because of her association with household dirt. In MW Sir Hugh Evans tells Simple to take a letter to the house of Dr Caius; ‘And there dwells one Mistress Quickly, which is in the manner of his nurse, or his dry nurse, or his cook, or his laundry, his washer and his wringer’ (1.2.2–5). The laundry is referred to again in 3.3 when Falstaff makes his escape from Ford’s house in a basket of dirty linen, which Mistress Ford tells her servant to take to ‘the laundress in Datchet’ (3.3.137). Wall discusses the laundress ‘as a target of social condescension’ with reference to MW (2002, 121). Malcolmson (1986) gives an overview of the subject. McNeill in her thoughtful study of poor women in the period gives an illustration of two laundresses on a brass farthing, and notes the equivalence assumed between laundress and whore (2007, 9–10). In Brathwaite’s The Whimzies (1631) the laundress is the subject of bawdy punning. lawn Lawn was very fine and expensive linen cloth. Its whiteness is contrasted with rose red in LUC (304) and VA (610). ‘Lawn as white as driven snow’ (WT 4.4.220) is 203

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the first luxury item that Autolycus has to offer from his pack. Emilia includes ‘measures of lawn’ (OTH 4.3.72) in a list of desirable commodities, although she would not accept them as a bribe to make her husband a cuckold. leather(n) (A) Leather is the skin of an animal, commonly cattle, tanned and otherwise treated so as to become strong and flexible enough to be made into garments, shoes or other products. It had a variety of uses in early modern England: for the jerkins of working men, for the aprons of tradespeople, for shoes and boots, for bottles. The softer kind of leather, often imported from Spain or France, though sometimes that of dogskin, was used for gloves. Gilt leather was used for wall-coverings by the wealthy from the end of the sixteenth century. (B) ‘What shall he have that killed the deer? / His leather skin and horns to wear’, sings the forester in AYL (4.2.10–11). Earlier in the play one of Duke Senior’s Lords takes a less pragmatic view when he describes ‘the poor sequestered stag’ and the groans of the animal that ‘did stretch his leathern coat / Almost to bursting’ (2.1.37–8). ‘She has a leathern hand’ says Rosalind disparagingly of Phoebe (4.3.24). Leather jerkins are the identifying clothing of tapsters in 2H4 (2.2.168), and leather aprons of tradesmen in JC where the tribune Murellus asks the Carpenter angrily, ‘Where is thy leather apron and thy rule?’ (1.1.7), since the latter is out in his ‘best apparel’ when he should not be. Nick, one of Jack Cade’s supporters in 2H6, takes up the view of his companion George that ‘Virtue is not regarded in handicraftsmen’, saying ‘The nobility scorn to go in leather aprons’ (4.2.9–11). George, seeing a fellow rebel, ‘Best’s son, the tanner of Wingham’, remarks approvingly, ‘He shall have the skins of our enemies to make dog’s leather of’ (4.2.21–2). The versatility of the leather jerkin is alluded to by Thersites when he curses the ambiguity of opinion (reputation), saying that ‘a man may wear it on both sides, like a leather jerkin’ (TC 3.3.266). Stephano, assessing the value of Caliban as a monstrous spectacle, calls him ‘a present for any emperor that ever trod upon neat’s leather’ (TEM 2.2.69). He refers to a proverbial saying, ‘As good a man as ever trod on shoe’s leather’ (Dent, M66), which is also cited by the Cobbler in JC (1.1.26). In TS Christopher Sly rejects the Lord’s offer of new clothes, even if he does have ‘sometime more feet than shoes, or such shoes as my toes look through the over-leather [uppers]’ (Ind. 2.10–11). Leather bottles and tankards were commonly used as drinking vessels. King Henry VI envies the life of the shepherd and ‘his cold thin drink out of his leather bottle’ (3H6 2.5.47). (C) Clarkson (1960) gives much useful factual information about the leather industry in early modern London, and describes the processes of tanning. linen (A) Linen is cloth woven from flax or hemp, but the word can also refer to garments or other household articles made from this fabric, or from similar materials. In early modern England linen was a native product and linen weaving an important industry. 204

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(B) Master Ford, believing himself to be a cuckold, soliloquizes miserably, ‘This ’tis to be married, this ’tis to have linen and buck-baskets!’ (MW 3.5.132–3). ‘Linen’ here refers to household goods such as the sheets and clothing that have been in the buckbasket where Falstaff has been hidden. Prospero tells Miranda that Gonzalo provided for their well-being when they were forced into exile with ‘Rich garments, linens, stuffs and necessaries’ (TEM 1.2.164). ‘Fine linen’ is among the luxury household items, along with ‘Turkey cushions bossed with pearl’, that Gremio boasts he can offer to Bianca. When Falstaff says that his recruits who lack shirts need not worry, because ‘they’ll find linen enough on every hedge’ (1H4 4.2.46–7) he means laundry laid out to dry on the hedge, as does Autolycus in WT , singing of ‘the white sheet bleaching on the hedge’ (4.3.5), a prey to passing thieves such as he pronounces himself to be: ‘My traffic is in sheets – when the kite builds, look to lesser linen’ (4.3.23–4). The ‘lesser linen’ that the kite steals to build its nest could be handkerchiefs; Innogen, hearing that Pisanio waved and kissed his handkerchief as he sailed into exile, comments, ‘Senseless linen, happier therein than I!’ (CYM 1.3.7). Linen can also refer to shirts. Davy observes later to his master Justice Shallow, that Falstaff’s men ‘are back-bitten [flea-bitten] . . . for they have marvellous foul linen’ (2H4 5.1.32–3). Prince Hal jokes about the fact that Poins possesses only two shirts and refers to the ‘low ebb of linen’ (2H4 2.2.19) that prevents him from playing tennis (when frequent changes of shirts were deemed necessary). Doll Tearsheet calls Pistol a ‘base, rascally, cheating lack-linen mate’ (2H4 2.4.124). King Edward will spare the French of Calais only on condition that six wealthy merchants humble themselves before him, ‘naked, all but for their linen shirts’ (E3 10.75). When Tarquin comes to rape Lucrece he gags her, using ‘the nightly linen that she wears’ (LUC 680), meaning perhaps her smock or a coif. Macbeth despises the Servant, pale and terrified by the sight of the English army, and tells him that ‘those linen cheeks of thine / Are counsellors to fear’ (MAC 5.3.16– 17). ‘As white as linen’ was a proverbial expression (Dent, L306.1). White linen, or lawn, is referred to in VA 589–90. (C) Linthicum (1936, 92–101) discusses different types of linen cloth, including cambric, dowlas and lawn. Arnold (2008) devotes a book to the cut and construction of early modern linen clothing. Korda and Lowe (2017) examine the significance and visibility of clean linen (and its opposite) in a range of plays including MW . Richardson (2015, 63–84) relates linen in MW to both honesty and shame. linsey-woolsey This is a coarse cloth woven from mixed fibres of linen and wool. When Second Lord Dumaine in AW says to the soldier who is acting as interpreter for Parolles, ‘What linsey-woolsey hast thou to speak to us again?’ (4.1.10), he means an odd mixture or nonsense. See Fletcher, The Tamer Tamed: ‘A kind of linsey-wolsey mingled mischief’ (4.1.18). livery (A) The main meaning of livery in this period is the distinctive uniform or clothing worn by a retainer in the household of a gentry family or above, by which the 205

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family can be identified; metaphorically, the word can mean a badge, token or recognizable visual sign. Shakespeare, as a member of the Lord Chamberlain’s (subsequently the King’s) Men, would have worn a livery on official occasions. (B) Literal uses of the terms are less common in Shakespeare than figurative. When Lancelet the Clown in MV deserts the service of Shylock for that of Bassanio, Bassanio orders a servant, ‘Give him a livery / More guarded [decorated] than his fellows’; see it done’ (2.2.145–6); he wants to make the Clown’s change of allegiance significant. That Shylock retains liveried servants indicates his social standing. Cloten insults Posthumus by calling him ‘a base slave, / A hilding for a livery’ (CYM 2.3.123), meaning that he is a worthless person fit only to wear the distinctive dress of his master’s servants. Richard of Gloucester says mockingly that if he and his brother Clarence want to retain the favour of King Edward then they must humour his mistress, Jane Shore, ‘be her men and wear her livery’ (R3 1.1.79), although she is not of the status to retain liveried servants. Bolingbroke in R2 returns from exile to claim his rights, angry that ‘I am denied to sue my livery here’ (2.3.129). He uses legal terminology to mean that he is refused the right to claim ancestral properties held in tenancy by the crown (Forker, Arden edn, 2002, note). Hotspur repeats this claim using the same terms (1H4 4.3.62). More typical usage is that of Mercutio when bandying words with Tybalt; Tybalt, preparing to challenge Romeo, remarks, ‘here comes my man’, to which Mercutio responds, ‘But I’ll be hanged, sir, if he wear your livery’ (RJ 3.1.56). Mercutio puns on ‘man’ as ‘manservant’ meaning that Romeo will not be Tybalt’s servant, he is not of the house of Capulet, nor will he resemble Tybalt in any way. Weis (Arden edn, 2012) suggests a further pun on ‘livery’ and ‘white liver’, signifying cowardice. Jack Cade, not the most logical of thinkers, promises the rebels that once he becomes king, ‘There shall be no more money, all shall eat and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers and worship me as their lord’ (2H6 4.2.67–70). After Timon of Athens’ fall and abandonment of his house, one of his loyal servants remarks, ‘Yet do our hearts wear Timon’s livery – / That see I by our faces’ (TIM 4.2.17); the livery that once identified them by their clothing is now visible only in their demeanour. Livery as a badge or token supplies Shakespeare with a host of images: ‘silver livery’ signifies old age (2H6 5.2.47) or virginity (PER 5.2.7), which can also be ‘Diana’s livery’ (PER 2.5.10), or ‘a vestal livery’ (PER 3.4.9); ‘Youth’s proud livery’ is beauty (SON 2), and Adonis’s lips wear ‘crimson liveries’ (VA 506). Hamlet meditates on the mystery of those men who are brought down by a single fault, ‘one defect / (Being Nature’s livery or Fortune’s star)’ (HAM 1.4.31–2); the main opposition here is between heredity and environment and ‘livery’ seems basically to mean what one is endowed with by birth. Hamlet uses ‘livery’ figuratively again when advising his mother on how to reform; if she adopts good habits, they will become easier with time, because That monster Custom, who all sense doth eat Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,

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That to the use of actions fair and good He likewise gives a frock or livery That aptly is put on. (3.4.159–63) The sense seems to be that if the Queen puts on the appearance (‘livery’) of virtue, custom will make such behaviour easier. The expression ‘frock or livery’ perhaps modifies the meaning of livery as a regularly worn uniform. (But these speeches are notoriously difficult, and Jenkins’s Long Notes, Arden edn, 2nd series, 449, 520–22, are helpful.) In MM Angelo, attempting to persuade the obstinately chaste Isabella to go to bed with him in order to save her brother’s life, tells her she should behave more like a normal woman ‘By putting on the destin’d livery’ (2.4.137). This seems to mean that women are destined to be frail, as Isabella has just admitted to being, even to fall, so therefore she should assume the uniform proper to her sex. Later Isabella uses the term herself in response to her brother’s comment on ‘the precise Angelo’ (‘precise’ is an emendation for F’s ‘prenzie’): O, ’tis the cunning livery of hell The damnedst body to invest and cover In precise guards! (3.1.94–6) ‘Livery’ here is glossed by Lever (Arden edn, 2nd series, 1965) as a verbal noun, ‘the dispensing of clothing to retainers or servants’. Hell clothes its followers with suitably deceptive attire. (C) James (1986) discusses the liveried retinue as a component of a great lord’s power. Schalkwyk (2008) examines the implications of liveried service. See also Innes (2007). lock (inc. key) (A) A lock is a mechanism for keeping a door, gate, room and so on securely fastened, and a key made of metal the means by which this mechanism is operated. In early modern England a lock would usually have only a single key. Civic officials, gaolers or porters might wear a number of keys on a large ring at their waist. The terms are commonly used in metaphorical senses. (Lock, meaning a strand of hair, is not discussed here.) (B) Domestic locks and keys in Shakespeare’s works are often associated with women and with chastity. Polonius fears Hamlet’s advances to Ophelia and advises her to ‘lock herself from his resort’ (HAM 2.2.140); she has earlier promised her brother Laertes to remember his words of warning about Hamlet: ‘’Tis in my memory locked / And you yourself shall keep the key of it’ (1.3.84–5). Polonius refers to Ophelia’s ‘chaste treasure’ (1.3.30) to be guarded against Hamlet’s ‘importunity’. In CYM Iachimo uses the same idea in his plan to impugn Innogen; he will reveal to Posthumus his knowledge of the mole on her breast, and thus ‘this secret / Will force him think I have 207

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picked the lock and ta’en / The treasure of her honour’ (2.2.40–2). In LUC the description of Collatine’s boast of his marital happiness to Tarquin – that he ‘unlocked the treasure of his happy state’ (16) – anticipates ‘the locks between her chamber and his will’ (302) that Tarquin will later break open to reach the sleeping Lucrece to rape her. Locks and keys protect domestic privacy, often that of women, although in MM it is Angelo’s garden which is locked with not one but two keys (4.1.31–2). Lady Macbeth unlocks her closet, perhaps a repository of secret things, to get out writing paper (MAC 5.1). Othello refers to Emilia, whom he suspects of colluding with Desdemona’s adultery, as ‘a closet, lock and key, of villainous secrets’ (OTH 4.2.21–2). When he has finished interrogating Desdemona, having treated her as a prostitute, he gives Emilia money and commands her to ‘turn the key and keep our counsel’ (4.2.96). In CE Adriana, wife to Antipholus of Ephesus, unwittingly uses her control of the key to the house against her husband when she has the gate locked to entertain his twin brother, Antipholus of Syracuse, in private; when Antipholus of Ephesus arrives, late for dinner, he is deeply annoyed to find that ‘my door is locked’ (3.1.30), and much sexual wordplay on open and closed gates, knocking at the door, and so forth ensues. Adriana’s control over the household is further indicated when her husband later tells Dromio (the wrong Dromio, as it turns out) to go to her for money: Give her this key, and tell her, in the desk That’s covered o’er with Turkish tapestry, There is a purse of ducats: let her send it. (4.1.103–5) In MV Shylock is reluctant to cede control of the house to Jessica when he goes out, but gives her the keys, urging her to ‘lock up my doors’ (2.5.28) and keep away from the windows. She takes the opportunity to run away with Lorenzo, but before going is careful to ‘make fast the doors’ (2.6.50). Locks and keys appear in other contexts in the casket scenes, perhaps making visual connections between the separate parts of the play (Dessen, 1995). Office-holders and professional men with keys include the Provost in MM (5.1.460), the tradesmen whom Falstaff despises (‘The whoreson smoothy-pates do now wear nothing but high shoes and bunches of keys at their girdles’, 2H4 1.2.38–40), Camillo in WT (1.2.459–60) and the jailors who guard Posthumus in his prison in CYM . His despair at his captivity prompts the poignant image of ‘th’sure physician, death, who is the key / T’unbar these locks’ (5.4.7–8). The Porter in MAC is another key-holder, one who treats his office with no great reverence; perhaps his casual attitude combined with his sinister presence as a kind of ‘porter of Hell Gate’ resonate behind the Second Witch’s mysterious announcement of Macbeth’s arrival: ‘Open locks, whoever knocks’ (4.1.46). The oddest reference to locks and keys is in Dogberry’s bizarre account of the imaginary thief ‘Deformed’. This character is initially said by the Watch to wear ‘a lock’ (MA 3.3.163), meaning a lovelock, or conspicuously long lock of hair; but when 208

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Dogberry reports this he embellishes the description: ‘And also the watch heard them talk of one Deformed; they say he wears a key in his ear and a lock hanging by it’ (5.1.297–9). (C) Flather (2007) explores the relationship between locks and gendered space. Orlin (1994) relates locks and keys to domestic privacy and Stewart (1997) to the private space of the closet. Dessen (1995, 168–72) discusses the key as a stage symbol, especially in MV and MM .

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M maid, maiden, maidenhood, maidenhead (A) Maid (or maiden) in early modern England had several meanings: a young unmarried woman, a virgin (of either sex), a female servant or attendant. Maidenhead meant the condition of being a virgin, but could also refer to the (unbroken) hymen. (B) Virginity is for many of Shakespeare’s young women a perilous condition. Polonius takes care to advise Ophelia on the appropriate way to deal with Hamlet. Concerned that she has been ‘most free and bounteous’ in giving him audience, he urges her to be ‘something scanter of your maiden presence’ (1.3.120). It may be that his advice comes too late; she sings later of an encounter on Saint Valentine’s Day: Then up he rose and donned his clothes And dupped the chamber door Let in the maid that out a maid Never departed more (HAM 4.5.52–5) Nonetheless the Priest at her funeral makes a point of the fact that, despite the ‘doubtful’ nature of her death, ‘she is allowed her virgin crants [garlands], / Her maiden strewments’ (5.1.221–2). Helena in AW , who is conscious of the value of her virginity despite Parolles’ arguments against its preservation, knows she risks her reputation in attempting the cure of the King – ‘my maiden’s name / Sear’d [branded] otherwise’ (2.1.171). Diana’s virginity is also at risk; Bertram, trying to win her, says that If the quick fire of youth light not your mind You are no maiden but a monument (4.2.5–6) She has already been told by Mariana that ‘the honour of a maid is her name’, and is prepared to fear ‘the wrack of maidenhood’ that comes of listening to seducers (3.5.22– 3). Marina in PER is in danger of having her virginity auctioned off in the brothel: ‘such a maidenhead were no cheap thing’, says the Bawd (4.2.54). The Prologue to TNK begins with a jaunty comparison: New plays and maidenheads are near akin: Much followed both, for both much money gi’en, If they stand sound and well. (Prol. 1–3) 211

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‘Maid’ can signify an almost pre-sexual innocence, as when in TNK Emilia recounts her childhood attachment to Flavina, now dead, using it to show ‘that the true love ’tween maid and maid may be / More than in sex dividual’ (1.3.81–2). But the loss of virginity is often treated jocularly, especially by men. Thus Pandarus breaks in upon Cressida and Troilus after they have spent their first night together: ‘How now, how now, how go maidenheads? Here, you maid? Where’s my cousin Cressida?’ (TC 4.2.24– 5). He pretends not to recognize his ‘cousin’ (actually his niece), since she was a virgin when he last saw her. RJ begins with banter by the servants Gregory and Samson about how they will treat their opponents in the Montague household: Samson boasts that he will fight the men and then cut off the heads of the women, ‘Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads’ (1.1.24–5). At the outbreak of civil war in 1H4 Prince Hal predicts that ‘if there come a hot June and this civil buffeting hold, we shall buy maidenheads as they buy hobnails: by the hundreds’ (2.4.352–4). Jack Cade, in 2H6 expects that when the revolution comes, he will exercise the droit du seigneur: ‘there shall not a maid be married, but she shall pay me her maidenhead ere they have it’ (4.7.113–15). Women are more conscious of the value of virginity, though not necessarily fearful of losing it once married. Juliet longs for her wedding night, and for love-making with Romeo, when she will learn ‘how to lose a winning match, / Played for a pair of stainless maidenhoods’ (RJ 3.2.13–14). ‘Match’ refers to the fact that they are equal, both virgins. Miranda is questioned by Ferdinand: My prime request, Which I do last pronounce, is (O, you wonder!) If you be maid or no? (TEM 1.2.426–8) He may be asking if she is a human being, rather than a goddess, but, having fallen in love with her at first sight, he needs to know if she is suitable to marry. She later declares herself to him: I am your wife, if you will marry me; If not, I’ll die your maid. (3.1.83–4) She means not only that she will marry no one else but that she will not sleep with him outside marriage. Maids, in the sense of virtuous young girls, are expected to observe rules of conduct. Bedford cannot believe that Joan Puzel can be a virgin, given her aggressive manner: ‘A maid? And be so martial?’ (1H6 2.1.21). ‘A maiden hath no tongue but thought’ (MV 3.2.7), says Portia, expressing both her consciousness of the correct demeanour and her frustration at it. Brabantio describes Desdemona as ‘a maiden never bold, / Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion / Blushed at herself’ (OTH 1.3.95–7). He is purposely idealising his daughter, and, as her subsequent eloquence before the Senate demonstrates, he has only seen in her what suited him. Helena in MND uses assumptions about 212

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maidenly decorum to upbraid Hermia when she believes her friend to be mocking her. She calls Hermia a ‘most ungrateful maid’, describing her actions as ‘not friendly, not maidenly’ (MND 3.2.195, 217). ‘Have you no modesty, no maiden shame, / No touch of bashfulness?’, she continues (3.2.285–6). Later she appeals for the sympathy of the men, making the sort of contrast between herself and Hermia that serves Bianca so well against Katherina in TS : I have no gift at all in shrewishness; I am a right maid for my cowardice. (3.2.301–2) Modesty, shame and bashfulness are all essential maidenly attributes. Juliet is relieved that it is dark when she talks to Romeo, ‘else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek / For that which thou hast heard me speak tonight’ (RJ 2.2.85–6). Princess Katherine of France, ‘a maid yet rosed over with the virgin crimson of modesty’ is told by her future husband, Henry V, to ‘Put off your maiden blushes, avouch the thoughts of your heart’ (H5 5.2.292–3, 233). What Hamlet terms the ‘blush of modesty’ (HAM 3.4.41) is a signifier of maidenly virtue. ‘Behold how like a maid she blushes here!’ Claudio exclaims, as he prepares to denounce the innocent Hero in MA (4.1.32). Helena in AW presents herself to the Lords amongst whom she is to choose a husband: I am a simple maid, and therein wealthiest That I protest I simply am a maid. Please it your majesty, I have done already. The blushes in my cheeks thus whisper me We blush that thou should’st choose (2.3.67–71) But the maid’s archetypal modesty may sometimes be just a public facade, as the irreverent Mercutio recognizes. In his fantasy about Queen Mab he characterizes her as ‘the hag when maids lie on their backs, / That presses them and learns them first to bear’ (RJ 1.4.92–3); Mab induces erotic dreams in young girls, embracing them and making them imagine lovers, and eventually the bearing of children. Later he involves Romeo in another erotic fantasy: Now will he sit under a medlar tree, And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit As maids call medlars when they laugh alone. O Romeo, that she were, O, that she were An open-arse, thou a poperin pear! (2.2.34–8) The medlar, a kind of pear with a gaping tip, was a slang term for the female genitals; maids, less constrained when in private, refer to medlars by the obscene expression ‘open-arse’. Mercutio is not the only one to make jokes about maids. When 213

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Beatrice appears with a head-cold, professing herself stuffed and unable to smell, Margaret ripostes, ‘A maid and stuffed [pregnant]! There’s goodly catching of cold’ (MA 3.4.59–60). Julia in TGV refers to the proverbial wisdom, familiar in the period, about women’s sexual hypocrisy, when she refuses to read the letter her maidservant Lucetta has brought her: What fool is she, that knows I am a maid And would not force the letter to my view, Since maids in modesty say ‘No’ to that Which they would have the profferer construe ‘Ay’. (TGV 1.2.53–6) Buckingham uses the same idea when advising Richard on how to accept the crown (R3 3.7.50–1). Different meanings and connotations of the word ‘maid’ allow for punning. Costard in LLL plays with the word when he equivocates with the King of France. Accused of being ‘taken’ with a wench, which would mean a year’s imprisonment, he denies the wench, calling her instead a damsel, then a virgin, but finally admits to having been with a maid. The King responds, ‘This maid will not serve your turn, sir’, meaning that Costard can’t get out out trouble by changing the word; but Costard answers, ‘This maid will serve my turn, sir’ (1.1.280–3), wittily drawing on the other meaning of the King’s phrase: the woman will do what he wants. Pompey in MM , another equivocator, also makes play with the word. When Mistress Overdone asks him what Claudio has done to be taken to prison, he replies obscenely, ‘Groping for trouts, in a peculiar river’. She interprets: ‘What? Is there a maid with child by him?’ he answers, ‘No: but there’s a woman with maid by him’ (MM 1.2.83–5). For Pompey, ‘maid with child’ is a paradoxical expression, so he replaces it with another, ‘woman with maid’, using ‘maid’ in the more obscure sense of the young of certain fish, and thus harking back to his metaphor. In TN Sebastian’s explanation to Olivia of what has come about through her relationships with both him and Viola uses the word like a riddle. Had she married Viola (as Cesario), as she believed she had done, she would, he tells her, have ‘been contracted to a maid’ (i.e. a woman). He continues, Nor are you therein, by my life, deceived. You are betrothed both to a maid and man. (5.1.257–9) Elam (Arden edn, 2008) glosses ‘maid and man’: ‘This brings together three different but interconnected meanings expressing the gender confusions at play: a young woman (Viola) and a man (Sebastian); a man who turns out to be a woman (Viola); a man who is still a virgin (Sebastian). Viola’s disguise as Cesario represents all three of these possibilities.’ As applied to a man, maid and its cognates can imply effeminacy. Joan Puzel addresses John Talbot scornfully, ‘thou maiden youth, be vanquished by a maid’ (1H6 214

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4.4.150). When Venus with her tears ‘doth quench the maiden burning’ of Adonis’s cheeks (VA 50), the adjective suggests his delicate beauty, and also implies that his cheeks burn in this way for the first time. Poins makes an extended joke out of Bardolph’s ruddy complexion: Come, you virtuous ass, you bashful fool. Must you be blushing? Wherefore blush you now? What a maidenly man at arms are you become! Is’t such a matter to get a pottle-pot’s maidenhead? (2H4 2.2.72–6) He converts the drink-reddened face into one of bashful modesty, blushing at deflowering a pot of ale. Maid also means a female servant. Cleopatra compares herself to a woman ‘commanded by such poor passion as the maid that milks / And does the meanest chares’ (AC 4.15.77–8), wanting to share in the maid’s humble status. But Caesar is horrified that Octavia has come in humble style to Rome, like ‘a market maid’ instead of arriving ‘like Caesar’s sister’ (3.6.53, 44). Romeo fancifully imagines Juliet as servant to the moon, a vestal virgin, of whom the moon is jealous ‘That thou her maid art far more fair than she’ (RJ 2.2.6). Desdemona is moved by a sad recollection: ‘My mother had a maid called Barbary, / She was in love, and he she loved proved mad’ (OTH 4.3.24–5). Lucetta in TGV is sufficiently intimate with her mistress Julia to reprove her for rudeness; when Julia asks if it nearly time for dinner, Lucetta replies: ‘I would it were / That you might kill your stomach [exercise your appetite] on your meat / And not upon your maid’ (TGV 1.2.67–9). Lucrece’s maid is so overcome with sympathy for her mistress that she weeps with her (LUC 1226–32). Timon reflects the sexual exploitation of the servant in his satirical denunciation of Athenian society: ‘Maid, to thy master’s bed, / Thy mistress is o’th’brothel’ (TIM 4.1.12–13). The bastard Faulconbridge, musing on the operations of ‘that smooth-fac’d gentleman, tickling commodity’, imagines how he exploits those who, ‘having no external thing to lose / But the word ‘maid’, cheats the poor maid of that’ (KJ 2.2.571–3). Orsino in TN calls for a song that is ‘old and plain’ and sung by working women, ‘the spinsters and the knitters in the sun / And the free maids that weave their threads with bones’ (2.4.43, 45–6). Maid and its cognates have various metaphorical uses. As an adjective, ‘maiden’ can signify unconquered, as in ‘maiden cities’ (H5 5.2.321) and breast as ‘maiden world unconquered’ (LUC 408), or uncultivated: ‘maiden gardens, yet unset’ (SON 16); unused: ‘maiden sword’ (1H4 5.4.130). ‘Maidenhead’ may signify an early stage or first attempt, often in a military context (‘the maidenhead of our affairs’ 1H4 4.1.58, ‘the maidenhood of thy first fight’ 1H6 4.4.72–3). (C) According to Erickson (1993, 47), ‘In legal documents a maid was generally a ‘virgin’ in the sixteenth century. By the seventeenth century she was a ‘spinster’. She discusses the relation of unmarried women to money and property. On early modern maidservants see Jones (1999). Capp (2003, ch. 4) discusses the roles of maidservants within the household. McNeill complicates what she terms ‘the misleading taxonomy of 215

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maid, wife, and widow’ (2007, 19) as categories for ordering the lives of early modern women. See especially her chapter, ‘Pregnant maids and the new bastardy laws’ and her illuminating explication of the ‘free maids’ in TN (48–52). Findlay (2010) has an excellent entry on ‘maid, maiden’, encompassing all meanings. Sparey (2015) explores blushing in Shakespeare as a sign of emergent puberty. Luttfring (2016, ch. 2) discusses blushing and sexual innocence. See also servant. malmsey Malmsey is a sweet fortified white wine originating in Greece but now produced mainly in Madeira. Its best-known appearance in Shakespeare is in R3, where two murderers drown the Duke of Clarence in a butt (or barrel) of malmsey, joking that they will ‘make a sop of him’ (1.4.155). The detail comes from one of Shakespeare’s sources, The History of King Richard III by Sir Thomas More. Mistress Quickly calls Bardolph ‘that arrant malmsey-nose knave’ in 2H4 (2.1.38), referring to the fondness for drink which has given him his characteristic swollen red nose. See also Berowne’s reference to it as a sweet wine (LLL 5.2.233). mammet A mammet was a doll or a puppet, or, figuratively, a contemptible person. Shakespeare uses the word only twice. Juliet’s father, when angered by her refusal to marry Paris, calls her ‘a wretched puling [wailing] fool, / A whining mammet’ (3.5.184– 5). When Hotspur is preparing to leave his wife and go to war he tells her that ‘This is no world / To play with mammets and to tilt with lips’ (1H4 2.3.88). As Kastan suggests (Arden edn, 2002), Hotspur may be playing on the Latin word mamma, meaning breast, since it fits better with the thought that follows. mansion (A) A mansion was originally the chief residence of a lord, but in Shakespeare generally means either a large stately house or simply a dwelling place. (B) When Macduff’s wife speaks out against her husband’s sudden departure for England, leaving behind ‘his wife, his babes, / His mansion and his titles’ (MAC 4.2.6– 7) she may be using the word to mean his residence as a lord, since she combines it with ‘titles’, meaning entitlements, and stressing the totality of his abandonment. Timon of Athens pronounces his own epitaph: Timon hath made his everlasting mansion Upon the beached verge of the salt flood (TIM 5.2.100–1) The paradox is that he has no mansion or house of any kind; but the sea washing over his remains will do so everlastingly. The word lends itself to figurative usage. Falstaff vividly describes the extreme thinness of Justice Shallow as a young man: ‘The case of a treble hautboy was a mansion for him’ (2H4 3.2.325), the treble being the most slender of the three Elizabethan hautboys. The mansion is sometimes used to signify the heart, as by Innogen in CYM , ‘the innocent mansion of my love, my heart’ (3.4.68), and Valentine in his address to the absent Silvia: 216

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O thou that dost inhabit in my breast, Leave not the mansion so long tenantless (TGV 5.4.8–9) Juliet on her wedding night exclaims, ‘O, I have bought the mansion of a love / But not possessed it’ (RJ 3.2.26–7). The mansion here is Romeo’s body, which she has acquired without yet taking full possession of it. The mansion again stands for the body in Sonnet 95, when the poet contrasts the beauty of the lover’s body with the shame of his conduct: O what a mansion have those vices got, Which for their habitation chose out thee. The image reappears in Sonnet 146 when the poet sees his aging body as a fading mansion on which expenditure is wasted. After the rape Lucrece figures her soul as the resident of a house which has been sacked and ‘her mansion battered by the enemy’ (LUC 1171). mantle (A) A mantle is a loose sleeveless cloak, worn by either sex. Figuratively, it could mean a thick covering, and used as a verb it means to cover or envelop, or, intransitively, to be or become covered with a coating. (B) It seems that mantles could be very personal garments. Cleopatra recalls erotic games with Antony when they exchanged clothes: ‘I drunk him to his bed, / Then put my tires and mantles on him’ (AC 2.5.22–3). They could also function as significant stage props. In WT the major testimony to Perdita’s identity is her possession of ‘the mantle of Queen Hermione; her jewel about the neck of it’ (5.2.32–3), which is the garment she was wrapped in by Antigonus before he was obliged to abandon her. Similarly in CYM , Arviragus is identified by a mantle woven for him as a baby by his mother: BELARIUS

This gentleman, my Cadwal, Arviragus Your younger princely son. He, sir, was lapp’d In a most curious mantle, wrought by th’hand Of his Queen mother. (5.5.358–61) In JC , it is the bloodstained mantle of Caesar, shredded by the daggers of the conspirators, that Antony uses to rouse the crowd to vengeful fury against them. In his powerful speech the mantle, displayed to the crowd, becomes a substitute for Caesar’s ravaged body: You all do know this mantle. I remember The first time ever Caesar put it on . . . Look, in this place ran Cassius’ dagger through: See what a rent the envious Caska made: 217

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Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed . . . This was the most unkindest cut of all. (JC 3.2.168–81) A violent image to describe a body totally covered in blood is used by Cominius as he greets Coriolanus returning in triumph from a victory over the Volsci: MARTIUS

Come I too late?

COMINIUS

Ay, if you come not in the blood of others, But mantled in your own. (COR 1.6.27–9) Mantle is also used in figurative contexts, the best known of which is Horatio’s poetic evocation of the dawn, ‘But look, the morn in russet mantle clad / Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastern hill’ (HAM 1.1.165–6). In 3H6 the earl of Warwick plans a surprise attack on the forces of King Edward: ‘We, well covered with the night’s black mantle, / All unawares may beat down Edward’s guard’ (4.2.22–3). The extent of Poor Tom’s destitution is suggested by the fact that he ‘drinks the green mantle of the standing pool’ (KL 3.4.129). Gratiano in MV describes to Antonio his dislike of men who pretend to wisdom by keeping silent: ‘There are a sort of men whose visages / Do cream and mantle like the standing pond’ (MV 1.1.88–9) suggesting faces coated, as it were, with scum (‘cream’ as in OED v. 2.a, ‘to form a scum’). (C) For another reading of MV 1.1.88–9 see Drakakis’s note (Arden edn, 2010). marchpane Marchpane means marzipan, a sweet paste made of ground almonds, egg whites and sugar. It was a common dessert at feasts and banquets, often made into elaborate shapes. In RJ the Head Servant asks for someone to ‘save me a piece of marchpane’ (1.5.8) to enjoy after the Capulets’ feast is over. A recipe is given in A booke of cookerie, otherwise called the good huswives handmaid (1597, 37–8) marriage, marry (A) Marriage was the central social institution of early modern domestic life, and conceived as analogous in structure to the state, with the husband’s relation to his wife and household parallel to that of the king and the country. ‘The great majority of those who could marry, did’ (Moulton, 2014, 141). In some form it is relevant to almost all of Shakespeare’s plays. Findlay (‘marriage’, 2010) calculates that among the female characters, more than 50 are married women, 36 looking forward to marriage and 15 widows. In some plays, the legal aspects come to the fore. In early modern England two forms of pre-contract existed, known as sponsalia per verba de praesenti and sponsalia per verba de futuro. If a couple (the woman being at least twelve and the man fourteen) agreed in the presence of a witness to marry, using the present tense (‘I do take thee to wife’), this created a valid marriage and was binding. This is the form more relevant to Shakespeare. If they made a promise for the future 218

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(‘I will take thee to wife’), this could be dissolved, as long as the couple had not consummated their union. In practical terms there was much confusion about the status of these contracts, and they were discouraged by the church which preferred a formal ceremony, only possible at specified times of the day and year, preceded by a contract between the parents, a betrothal and a public reading of the banns. A ‘Forme of Solemnization of Matrimonie’ was set out in the Prayer Book (1549, revised 1552, 1559), and approved by the church in this period. In several plays versions of the marriage ceremony are staged. (B) Marriage is a bond with contractual but also affective obligations. Portia in JC , conscious that her husband Brutus is keeping something from her, questions him about her rights: Within the bond of marriage, tell me, Brutus, Is it excepted [contractually stipulated] I should know no secrets That appertain to you? Am I your self But as it were in sort or limitation, To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in the suburbs Of your good pleasure? (2.1.279–84) She longs to move from the ‘suburbs’ of her husband’s life to its centre, and as Daniell says (JC , Arden edn, 215) is making claims for herself as a wife that go beyond the contractual requirements of marriage. The suburbs in Shakespeare’s London were the location for brothels, and possibly this may colour Portia’s sense of her importance to her husband. But where Portia considers that marriage entitles spouses to the greatest emotional intimacy, Othello laments from a male perspective that complete possession of one’s spouse can never be obtained: ‘O curse of marriage / That we can call these delicate creatures ours / And not their appetites!’ (3.3.272–4), although, as Hamlet says in a cynical mood, ‘Man and wife is one flesh’ (HAM 4.3.50). Legally, that ‘one flesh’ was the husband’s; a married woman became a feme covert, who could not own property and had few legal entitlements. This legal doctrine is explored in MV when Portia contracts herself to Bassanio (3.2.157–71). Hamlet is not the only character to treat marriage irreverently. The Clown in AW asks permission of the Countess, his employer, to marry because as he says, ‘my poor body . . . requires it’. When she asks if he has any better reasons he replies, ‘I have been, madam, a wicked creature, as you and all flesh and blood are, and indeed I do marry that I may repent’. She responds knowingly, ‘Thy marriage, sooner than thy wickedness’ (1.3.28–38). The Clown in TN is another cynic; ‘Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage’, he tells Maria (1.5.18), quoting a contemporary proverb (‘Better be half hanged than ill wed’, Tilley, H130). The Clown Touchstone in AYL shares this attitude. When he enters with Audrey to join the ‘country copulatives’ preparing to be wed he tells the Duke that he comes ‘to swear and forswear according as marriage binds and blood breaks’ (5.4.56–7). Pompey the bawd in MM is 219

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also ready to joke about marriage; like Hamlet, he makes fun of the ‘one flesh’ idea in his exchange with the Provost. In response to the Provost’s question, ‘Can you cut off a man’s head?’ he replies: ‘If the man be a bachelor, sir, I can; but if he be a married man, he’s his wife’s head, and I can never cut off a woman’s head’ (4.2.1–5). The severing or violation of marriage bonds is a transgression against the most ancient of laws, according to the Countess of Salisbury in E3. In a long speech (2.415– 42) she reproves the King for his adulterous advances, telling him that In violating marriage’ sacred law You break a greater honour than yourself: To be a king is of a younger house Than to be married; your progenitor, Sole-reigning Adam on the universe, By God was honoured for a married man. (2.426–31) Richard II reproves Northumberland for forcing him to part from his wife; in calling himself ‘doubly divorced’ he makes an analogy between his loss of her and of his kingdom: ‘Bad men, you violate / A twofold marriage, ‘twixt my crown and me / And then betwixt me and my married wife’ (R2 5.1.71–3). Cordelia appeals to the requirements of the marriage contract when she tells her angry father that ‘I shall never marry like my sisters / To love my father all’ (KL 1.1.103–4). Desdemona argues similarly (OTH 1.3. 180–9). The legality of a marriage can be questionable. King Henry VIII is reported by his Chamberlain to be depressed, because ‘It seems the marriage with his brother’s wife / Has crept too near his conscience’ (2.2.15–6). Although Hamlet has no legal justification for objecting to his mother’s remarriage, he expresses his moral disapproval with characteristic wit when he responds to Horatio’s comment about the timing of it: Thrift, thrift, Horatio, the funeral baked meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. (HAM 1.2.179–80) Later he is more open about his feelings, telling his mother that her actions have ‘made marriage vows as false as dicers’ oaths’ (3.4.44) and Ophelia that ‘we will have no more marriages’ (3.1.154). In the speech of the Player Queen, which might form part of the ‘dozen lines, or sixteen lines’ (2.2.477) that Hamlet has written to be inserted in ‘The Murder of Gonzago’, remarriage is subject to clear disapproval: The instances that second marriage move Are base respects of thrift, but none of love. (3.2.176–7) Richard of Gloucester objects to the remarriage of Queen Elizabeth, a widow, to his brother King Edward IV because of his dislike for her family in a passage of virtuoso punning (1.3.92–101), suggesting it has been done purely out of ambition: 220

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What, marry, may she? Marry with a king A bachelor, and a handsome stripling too. In fact second marriages were common in the period, and not especially subject to disapproval. In Shakespeare’s plays, Richard III plans a second marriage for himself, in TS the widow marries Hortensio, and in KL Regan intends to remarry and confer her titles on Edmund. Although social historians of the period tend to agree that the basis of marriage, at least among the middling sort, was ‘individual consent’ (Giese, 2006, 3) parents, but especially fathers, in several plays attempt to control their daughters’ marriage choices. The dead father of Portia in MV is the most successful. He has denied her ‘the right of voluntary choosing’ (2.1.16) through the provisions of his will; this also controls the actions of her suitors in that the unsuccessful must agree ‘never to speak to lady afterward / In way of marriage’ (2.1.41–2). Silvia in TGV has to contend with a very much living father who has strong views about her future husband, which he expresses to Valentine, the man whom he wishes to prevent her marrying, although Silvia loves him (3.1.68–79). His wish is ‘to match my friend Sir Turio to my daughter’ (3.1.62). Silvia confesses to the chivalric Sir Eglamour that ‘my father would enforce me to marry / Vain Turio, whom my very soul abhorred’ (4.3.15–16), and begs his help in escaping ‘a most unholy match’. Hermia in MND is in the same situation. Her father Egeus has chosen for her, but Hermia rejects his choice, and the frustrated father comes before Duke Theseus to plead his case: Stand forth Demetrius. My noble lord, This man hath my consent to marry her. (1.1.24–5) He argues that he has absolute rights over his daughter: My gracious Duke, Be it so she will not here, before your Grace, Consent to marry with Demetrius, I beg the ancient privilege of Athens: As she is mine, I may dispose of her. (1.1.38–42) The Duke agrees, so the lovers run away; but eventually, Demetrius having changed his mind, the Duke overrules Egeus, and Hermia (like Silvia) gets the man she wants. In MW Anne Page’s parents scheme separately to have her marry the suitor of their choice. Even Justice Shallow weighs in, hoping to secure the heiress for his dim-witted kinsman, Slender, also favoured by Anne’s father. In response to Shallow’s question, ‘Can you love the maid?’, Slender replies with delicious malapropism: I will marry her, sir, at your request. But if there be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance, when we are married and 221

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have more occasion to know one another. I hope upon familiarity will grow more contempt. But if you say marry her, I will marry her – that I am freely dissolved, and dissolutely. (MW 1.1.229–35) But Anne chooses for herself, and her husband, Master Fenton, reproves her parents, who ‘would have married her most shamefully / Where there was no proportion held in love’. He even argues that ‘th’offence is holy that she hath committed’ since by marrying where she loves and has been ‘long since contracted’ she has avoided ‘A thousand irreligious cursed hours, / Which forced marriage would have brought upon her’ (5.5.215–24). Desdemona’s father Brabantio believes her to be ‘so opposite to marriage that she shunned / The wealthy, curled darlings of our nation’ (OTH 1.2.67–8), and cannot believe that she would choose to marry Othello unless he had used witchcraft on her. He is obliged to listen to his daughter defining her ‘divided duty’ to father and husband, but without ever being reconciled to the marriage; and after Desdemona’s murder at the hands of her husband, Gratiano tells of Brabantio’s death, saying that her ‘match was mortal to him, and pure grief / Shore his old thread in twain’ (5.2.202–3). In RJ a father’s wish to arrange his daughter’s marriage contributes to the tragic outcome. Paris, his chosen suitor, is eager for the wedding to take place as soon as possible, despite Juliet’s extreme youth (she is younger in the play than in its source). ‘She hath not seen the change of fourteen years’ (1.2.9), says Capulet, though he urges Paris not to hold back completely on that account: ‘Woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart’ (1.2.15). Unknown to her father, Juliet contracts a secret marriage with Romeo, making the preliminary advances herself, when she urges Romeo ‘If that thy bent of love be honourable, / Thy purpose marriage’ (2.2.143–4) to make immediate plans. But when her mother informs her subsequently that ‘next Thursday morn’ Paris will be ready to ‘make [her] a joyful bride’ she refuses point blank to accede to her parents’ wishes: ‘I will not marry yet; and when I do, I swear / It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate, / Rather than Paris’ (3.5.121–3). With an ominous use of the marriage/death conjunction so significant in this play (for more on this see wedding and bride) she begs her mother Delay this marriage for a month, a week, Or if you do not, make the bridal bed In that dim monument where Tybalt lies. (3.5.200–2) The haste with which her father is proceeding obliges Juliet to take rapid action, procuring from Friar Laurence the dangerous potion which will make her appear dead on the wedding day. Capulet is instantly overcome with remorse, regarding Death as a bridegroom who has taken the place of Paris: O son, the night before thy wedding day Hath death lain with thy wife. (4.5.35–6) 222

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Friar Laurence, who has presided over Juliet’s marriage to Romeo, plays his part in offering the distraught parents the consolation of religious faith, that in dying young Juliet has escaped the miseries of life on earth and gone to a better place: She’s not well married that lives married long, But she’s best married that dies married young. (4.5.77–8) The irony of these banal sentiments is not yet apparent. Marriage is often a cause of conflict, particularly among the aristocracy. The politic marriage in AC arranged between Antony and Caesar’s sister, Octavia (in which the bride has no say at all), is clearly intended to consolidate an alliance between the two men (2.2.131–44). When Cleopatra hears of it, she repeats the word in disbelief, and interrogates the terrified messenger, asking three times, ‘Is he married?’. Enobarbus soon realizes the harm the marriage will do: ‘He will to his Egyptian dish again. Then shall the sighs of Octavia blow the fire up in Caesar, and, as I said before, that which is the strength of their amity shall prove the immediate author of their variance. Antony will use his affection where it is. He married but his occasion here’ (AC 2.6.127–33). In KJ a dynastic marriage is proposed between the Dauphin Lewis, son of the King of France, and Blanche, niece of King John of England, by Hubert (2.1.423–54), and this causes problems for a different reason. Constance, mother to Arthur, King John’s nephew, is bitterly opposed for her son’s sake: ‘Lewis marry Blanche! O boy, where then art thou? / France friend of England, what becomes of me?’ (2.2.33–4). The marriage goes ahead but creates a division of loyalties for Blanche when hostilities between their respective countries break out on their wedding day. Her new husband incites his father to arms; she exclaims in horror: ‘Upon thy wedding day? / Against the blood that thou hast married?’ (3.1.226–7). Her situation is poignant: Husband, I cannot pray that thou mayst win; Uncle, I needs must pray that thou mayst lose; . . . Whoever wins, on that side shall I lose. (3.1.257–61) Richard III attempts to shore up his loosening grasp on the throne by a dynastic marriage. Having put out the rumour that ‘Anne my wife is very grievous sick’, he plans his next step: ‘I must be married to my brother’s daughter, / Or else my kingdom stands on brittle glass. / Murder her brothers, and then marry her – / Uncertain way of gain’ (4.2.60–3). But as it transpires, another dynastic marriage has been planned for this woman (Elizabeth of York), to the future Henry VII , and Richard is outwitted. The dynastic marriage in H5 between Henry V and Princess Katherine of France which brings together the ‘contending kingdoms / Of France and England’ is welcomed by both parties. The Queen of France echoes the words of the marriage service when she blesses the couple: ‘God, the best maker of all marriages, / Combine your hearts in one, your realms in one!’ (5.2.353–4). 223

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In the comic world of TS the circumstances of marital conflict are unique. Petruccio determines to marry Katharina whatever her own feelings (although her father Baptista has specified that he must first obtain ‘that special thing . . . her love’ before proceeding): . . . your father hath consented That you shall be my wife, your dowry ’greed on, And will you, nill you, I will marry you. (2.1.271–3) Strictly speaking, Petruccio here is in the right, since a marriage could be arranged in this way given parental consent; he goes on to soften the pill by mentioning Katherina’s other attraction for him, ‘thy beauty that doth make me like thee well’, which determines that ‘Thou must be married to no man but me’. On the wedding day he keeps her waiting, making her feel like a laughing-stock (3.2.15–20), and eventually appearing so oddly dressed that Baptista is horrified and even Tranio begs that he ‘see not your bride in these unreverent robes’ (3.2.111). But Petruccio asserts that ‘To me she’s married, not unto my clothes’ and so what Gremio calls the ‘mad marriage’ (3.2.181) goes ahead. That marriage could be, and sometimes was, undertaken without ceremony is underlined by Biondello’s delightful recollection when he is encouraging Lucentio to steal away with Bianca: ‘I knew a wench married in an afternoon as she went to the garden for parsley to stuff a rabbit’ (TS 4.4.97–8). In MA an onstage marriage service, more formally conducted, begins to take place but is aborted. The terminology used refers closely to contemporary practice. This has been termed ‘the most nearly complete staging of an actual marriage ceremony to be found in the Shakespearean canon’ (Hopkins, 1998, 76). LEONATO

Come, Friar Francis, be brief: only to the plain form of marriage, and you shall recount their particular duties afterwards. FRIAR

You come hither, my lord, to marry this lady? CLAUDIO

No. LEONATO

To be married to her, Friar; you come to marry her. FRIAR

Lady, you come hither to be married to this count? HERO

I do. FRIAR

If any of you know any inward impediment why you should not be conjoined, I charge you on your souls to utter it. (4.1.1–12)

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As McEachern (Arden edn, 2006) notes on this passage, the ‘particular duties’, as set out in the Book of Common Prayer, were prescribed to be read if there were no sermon, and Leonato’s action in asking for them to be omitted at this point suggests hasty interference, as do his other bumbling interventions. The Friar then begins to follow the prescribed Anglican service before the congregation take over with a scenario of their own. Sokol and Sokol (2003, 88–9) suggest that this scene (like TS 3.3) is parodic in its attitude to the Prayer Book ceremony. The formalities of the marriage service appear again in AYL . Touchstone’s attempt to marry Audrey in a hasty ceremony conducted by Sir Oliver Mar-text, supposedly ‘vicar of the next village’ (3.3.39), is thwarted by Jacques. Mar-text is prepared to ‘dispatch’ the couple under a tree, but nonetheless makes a formal start: ‘Is there none here to give the woman?’, asserting, ‘Truly she must be given or the marriage is not lawful’ (3.3.62–4). Jacques tells Touchstone firmly that he must not ‘be married under a bush like a beggar’ but should get himself to church ‘and have a good priest that can tell you what marriage is’ (3.3.76–8). (For another reference to marriage by an unlicensed or incompetent priest, see TNK 5.2.77–8.) In 4.1 another parodic marriage ceremony is enacted when Rosalind (as Ganymede) calls upon Celia to act as priest for her and Orlando (4.1.114– 30). The formulae of the marriage ceremony in the Book of Common Prayer are again alluded to, again with interruptions from the participants. Orlando, prompted by Rosalind, says the words, ‘I take thee, Rosalind, for wife’ and she responds, ‘I take thee, Orlando, for my husband’. This would technically constitute a form of marriage, sponsalia per verba de praesenti, but Rosalind’s assumed identity as Ganymede would nullify it. Marriage is problematized in MM in several different ways. When Isabella hears that Juliet is pregnant with Claudio’s child her response is ‘O, let him marry her!’ (1.4.49). But although Claudio asserts that Juliet ‘is fast my wife’, their union has not been formally ratified; as he puts it, ‘We do the denunciation lack / Of outward order’, there having been problems with the ‘propagation of a dower / Remaining in the coffer of her friends’ (1.2.137–8, 139–40). Their situation is comparable with that of Angelo and Mariana, except that this couple have not slept together, and Angelo has deserted Mariana. In his justification of the bed-trick, the Duke explains to this Isabella: She should this Angelo have married: was affianced to her oath, and the nuptial appointed. Between which time of the contract and limit of the solemnity, her brother Frederick was wracked at sea, having in that perished vessel the dowry of his sister . . . There she lost a noble and renowned brother . . . with him, the portion and sinew of her fortune, her marriage dowry; with both, her combinate [contracted] husband (3.1.212–23) After she has slept with the unknowing Angelo, Mariana’s situation becomes, in terms of the marriage practices of early modern England, a paradoxical one; as she tells the Duke 225

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My lord, I do confess I ne’er was married; And I confess besides, I am no maid. I have known my husband; yet my husband Knows not that ever he knew me (5.1.185–8) Ordered by the Duke to regularize their union, Angelo is reluctant, preferring ‘immediate sentence . . . and sequent death’, but Mariana begs for his life: ‘I crave no other, nor no better man’ (5.1.423). Another reluctant husband, though for very different reasons, is Lucio, who has unwisely boasted of impregnating Kate Keepdown, a prostitute (who never appears in the play). The Duke orders the marriage, and, having threatened Lucio with being whipped and hanged for his offence of slandering a prince, then remits this part of the punishment. Lucio responds ungratefully, ‘Marrying a punk, my lord, is pressing to death, / Whipping, and hanging’ (5.1.520–1). Bertram in AW is also a man commanded against his will to marry. As the King’s ward, and threatened with the loss of the royal favour, he cannot refuse the marriage with Helena, although he determines not to consummate it. ‘O my Parolles, they have married me!’ he complains to his follower, continuing, ‘I’ll to the Tuscan wars and never bed her’ (2.3.271–2). In the final scene, believing Helena dead, he consents to marry Lafew’s daughter, but is stopped in his tracks when a letter from Diana is read out in which she claims that ‘Upon his many protestations to marry me when his wife was dead, I blush to say it, he won me’ (5.3.139–40). The King, once the story of Bertram’s relationship with Diana begins to be unravelled, comments acidly when the foolish young man appears, ‘I wonder, sir, when wives are monsters to you, / And that you fly them as you swear them lordship, / Yet you desire to marry’ (5.3.155–7). With the appearance of the pregnant Helena and her proof that their marriage has, after all, been consummated (with the help of Diana’s participation in the bed-trick) Bertram seems at last to accept his marriage, though in productions this may be an open-ended moment. One of Shakespeare’s most famous references to marriage is metaphorical. Sonnet 116, a celebration of love’s constancy, opens with lines recalling the wording of the marriage service: ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments’. The metaphor of marriage in WT has an ironic ring. Polixenes describes the process of horticultural grafting to Perdita in approving terms: You see, sweet maid, we marry A gentler scion to the wildest stock, And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race. (4.4.92–5) But he is firmly opposed to any such union of noble and base where his own son is involved. (C) Contemporary material of relevance includes Agrippa (1534), who stresses mutuality (‘One fleshe, one minde, one concorde’, sig. B4), Gataker (1624), Gouge 226

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(1622), who has much to say of the duty of children to accede to their parents’ wishes regarding marriage, Niccholes (1615), and Swinburne, who notes in his legalistic account that ‘Spousals de praesenti are as indissoluble as perfect Contract’ (?1610, 236). He considers that marriage is lawful for a man at 14, a woman at 12 (47), although allowing that this is young. The anonymous author of The Lawes Resolutions of Womens Rights (1632), works from the view that all women ‘are understood either married or to bee married’ (6), but allows that widows ‘may be free in liberties’ (232) unavailable to the married woman. Niccholes addresses himself to bachelors, and urges caution in what he calls the ‘absolutely greatest action of a mans whole life’ (14). ‘The forme of solemnization of Matrimony’ as set out in The Book of Common Prayer (1559) is an important source for Shakespeare. Perkins describes the duties of married couples, and considers how to resolve marital difficulties. In his account of the Christian marriage, ‘immoderate desire even betweene man and wife, is fornication’ (114). Tilney, however, in his dialogue about marriage, allows one speaker to say that ‘though the woman everie where, ought to be merie with hir mate: yet muste shee chiefly in bed, thereby to shewe what love she beareth him’ (1578, 140). Smith, like Dod and Cleaver, includes large sections on the duties of spouses to one another. Smith emphasizes that the husband must treat his wife with kindness and that both should strive to make the marriage ‘delightful’ (1591, 74). Dod and Cleaver stress the need for mutual affection to make the marriage work, ‘for it sufficeth not they they bee married, but that they bee well married, and live Christianly together, and be very well contented’ (1630, sig. L3). Hannay (1619) takes the unusual approach of addressing his verse treatise to women as advice on marrying, implicitly assuming that they can choose their husbands. The author of The Office of Christian parents (1616) considers the usual age of marriage as 28 (ch. 6) and the supreme duty of a parent to a child is to see him or her married well, a point also stressed by Gouge. Dekker, The Seven deadlie Sinns (1606), includes forced marriages between unequal partners, especially young girls and old men, as a major aspect of the sin of cruelty (38–9). The secondary literature is extensive. Critical expositions have to differing degrees been informed by the work of historians. Stone’s (1977) view of marriage arrangements in the period as dominated by financial considerations rather than those of affection or mutuality, a starting point for many, has been challenged by many social historians, for example Wrightson (1982), Macfarlane (1986), Ingram (1990) and Cook (1991). Laslett (1971a, ch. 4) corrects ‘misbeliefs about child brides’ with useful documentation. On the relative ages of married couples, see Cook, who tabulates historians’ views on ages for marriage (1991, 265–7), and Pearson (1957, 298). Elliott has much useful statistical information about the peculiarities of the London marriage market (in Outhwaite, 1981, 81–100). In the same collection, Davies has a helpful survey of advice on marriage in conduct literature (59–80). Erickson has an invaluable section on married women and property (1993, 102–51). Fletcher examines marriage in the context of what he calls ‘the rules of patriarchy’ (1995, 114). Griffiths (1996) observes the effects of the relatively high average of first marriage. Cressy’s full and well-documented study (1997) is an excellent 227

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resource for information about marriage and courtship practices. Sokol and Sokol (2000) give introductory accounts of the socio-legal aspects of ‘marriage’ and ‘pre-contract’ which are considerably amplified, along with much else, in their later and indispensable work (2003). Ranald (1987) also examines matrimonial law especially in relation to MA and AW. In his later book (1990) Stone refers to ‘the extraordinary laxity and ambiguity of the English laws of marriage’ (11). Cook’s work (1991) is important in correcting the assumptions and misapprehensions of critics less well informed historically than she is. Jacobs (2001) argues that popular preference in the period was for traditional marriage customs over the church desire for more regulation. Longfellow (2006) discusses marriage and domestic relationships, especially marital breakdown, in relation to notions of privacy and community. Capp’s detailed and closely documented study (2003) broadly concerns women’s negotiating of patriarchal constraints, including those of marriage. Froide’s study of single women (2005) usefully challenges the view of marriage as normative in the period and sets out marital status as a category of difference. Richardson (2010, 289–98) examines in detail the role played by gifts in the negotiation of marriage amongst the middling sort. For a succinct and helpful account of current critical trends in scholarship on courtship, sex and marriage in the period, see Moulton (2014). Belsey (1999) explores ‘the anxiety at the heart of the modern celebration of conjugal love’ (81) and marriage, especially in CYM and WT , with reference to contemporary iconography. Hopkins gives a play-by-play, wide-ranging, overview of marriage in Shakespeare from a literary perspective, observing that he has ‘a pervading obsession’ with it (1998, 16). Findlay (2010) focuses on the significance of marriage for women. Neely (1985) examines forms of marital conflict in MA , AW , OTH , AC and WT from a mainly literary viewpoint, with emphasis on the female characters and their anxieties around marriage. Boose (1982) examines the importance of marriage rituals in connection with Shakespeare’s depiction of father–daughter relationships. On remarriage in HAM , see Frye (1984), Ouditt (1996), Kusunoki (1995) and Jardine (1996). Rose (1988) discusses marriage, sexuality and female heroism in OTH and TNK . Greenblatt has an influential account of the problems of marital sexuality in OTH (1980, 232–52). Marcus discusses the legal problems around marriage in MM (1988, 170–84). On the spousals of Rosalind and Orlando, see Dreher (1986, 122). Giese (2006) discusses marriage in TGV and TN against a detailed background of contemporary legal depositions, with much evidence of courtship practices among the middling sort. See also bride, contract, husband, wedding, wife. meat (A) Meat can mean food in general as nourishment, as well as referring specifically to the flesh of animals used as food. It can also mean scraps or titbits. (B) The meaning of nourishment, whether literal or metaphorical is the commonest in Shakespeare. Thus Cleopatra declares to Proculeius her determination to die: ‘Sir, I will eat no meat; I’ll not drink, sir’ (AC 5.2.48). Volumnia declines the invitation of Menenius to dine with him, declaring, ‘Anger’s my meat: I sup upon myself / And so 228

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shall starve with feeding’ (COR 4.2.50–1). This is an extraordinary image of what Holland (Arden edn, 2013, note) calls ‘self-consuming destruction’, indicating the desire of Volumnia, which she passes on to her son, to rise above the generality of mankind, and be entirely self-sufficient. Iago also uses the idea of self-destruction in the striking image with which he plants the idea of jealousy in Othello’s mind: O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock The meat it feeds on (OTH 3.3.168–70) Cassius asks Brutus rhetorically, ‘Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed / That he is grown so great?’ (JC 1.2.148–9). The Lord in MAC also uses meat in the sense of nourishment when he longs for Macbeth’s demise so that ‘we may again / Give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights’ (MAC 3.6.33–4). Doll Tearsheet gives the word a different sort of metaphorical emphasis when she violently rejects Pistol’s advances: ‘Away, you mouldy rogue, away! I am meat for your master’ (2H4 2.4.123–4); she uses ‘meat’ to signify female flesh. When the inept Slender in MW says he ‘cannot abide the smell of hot meat’ (1.1.268) there may be the same implication. See also RJ 2.3.126–7. Timon offers Apemantus hospitality despite the cynic’s rudeness: ‘I myself have no power, therefore let my meat make thee silent’. But Apemantus rebuffs him, making clear his disdain for those who accept: I scorn thy meat, ’twould choke me ’fore I should e’er flatter thee. O you gods, what a number of men eats Timon and he sees ’em not! It grieves me to see so many dip their meat in one man’s blood, and all the madness is, he cheers them up too. (TIM 1.2.37–42) Meat is seen as basic human food in the report given by Coriolanus of the complaints of the plebeians: They said they were an-hungry, sigh’d forth proverbs – That hunger broke stone walls; that dogs must eat; That meat was made for mouths (COR 1.1.204–6) The dying Mercutio curses the Montagues and the Capulets bitterly: ‘A plague a’ both your houses! / They have made worms’ meat of me’ (RJ 3.1.108–9). This is the idea behind Hamlet’s jocularity about Polonius being at supper ‘not where he eats, but where ’a is eaten’ (HAM 4.3.18). Touchstone uses the same expression when dismissing the arguments of Corin: ‘Most shallow man! Thou worms’ meat in respect of a good piece of flesh indeed!’ (AYL 3.2.61–2), but he probably means something more like ‘you miserable specimen as compared with a real man’. 229

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When Kent disparagingly calls Oswald ‘an eater of broken meats’ (KL 2.2.13) he means someone who lives on scraps. (C) On food and feeding in COR see Adelman (1980). See also Williams (1994) on ‘meat’ and female flesh. metheglin is a strong drink made from fermented honey spiced with herbs and produced in Wales. Sir Hugh Evans, the Welsh parson in MW , accuses Falstaff of being ‘given to fornication, and to taverns, and sack, and wine, and metheglins’ (5.5.156–8). Berowne in LLL , looking for three sweet drinks to continue his flirtatious conversation with the Princess of France, mentions ‘Metheglin, wort [sweet unfermented beer] and malmsey’ (5.2.233). Cogan (1636, ch. 221) discusses the medicinal uses of metheglin. Elyot (1541, sig. H4v) describes it: ‘Metheglin, which is most used in wales, by reason of hot hearbs boyled with honey, is hotter then Meade, and more comforteth a cold stomack, if it be perfectly made, and not new or very stale’. It was a favourite drink of Queen Elizabeth (Picard 2003, 188). midwife (A) At a time when men were usually not permitted to be present when a woman was giving birth, midwives delivered babies and were responsible for ascertaining the identity of the father. Some were licensed for this work and could command a reasonable income. Despite this, midwives did not always enjoy a good reputation, and were associated with gossips, witches and bawds. (B) When Leontes in WT refers scornfully to Paulina as ‘Lady Margery, your midwife’ (2.3.158) he seems to believe that she has delivered Hermione’s baby, Perdita, and will therefore know the identity of the father. His term ‘Lady Margery’ refers to the slang expression ‘margery-prater’ (first used in Thomas Harman, A Caveat or Warening for Common Cursetors, 1567) meaning a hen but also a chattering woman, thus further demeaning the concept of the midwife. Autolycus describes one of his ballads, about a usurer’s wife giving birth to money bags, and adds, ‘Here’s the midwife’s name to’t, one Mistress Tale-Porter’ (4.4.269–70). This name suggests that the midwife is a gossip, but with an obscene pun on ‘tail’ as penis, implying that she is a whore. The midwife’s reputation is further impugned by Sir Toby Belch’s reference to her as a lover of aqua-vitae (TN 2.5.190). In TIT Aaron closely questions the Nurse who brings him his bastard son about the circumstances of the baby’s birth: AARON

But say again, how many saw the child? NURSE

Cornelia the midwife and myself, And no-one else but the delivered empress. (TIT 4.2.142–4) Aaron promptly kills the Nurse and sends for the midwife to do the same to her. 230

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The midwife is a significant figure in the female community around childbirth. When Pericles, alone on board ship, awaits news of the birth of his daughter, the poignant situation of his wife Thaisa, travailing below deck, is emphasised by his address to the goddess of childbirth, ‘Lucina, O / Divinest patroness, and midwife gentle / To those that cry by night’ (3.1.10–12) to ease her pangs. The birthing chamber of the future Richard III is better attended; he recalls his mother’s description of his alarming birth at which ‘The midwife wonder’d, and the women cried / “O Jesu bless us, he is born with teeth!” ’ (3H6 5.6.74–5). Mercutio’s brilliant fantasy about Queen Mab, the fairies’ midwife who delivers erotic dreams to young girls, is well known (RJ 1.4.53–94). Shakespeare’s one metaphorical use of the midwife occurs in R2 when the Queen develops an elaborate conceit about pregnancy and childbirth to describe her reaction to the news that while King Richard is away in Ireland Bolingbroke has returned from exile to lead an uprising against him. The ‘unborn sorrow’ of anticipation, like a child in her womb, is given shape and brought into the world by Green, acting as a midwife with his news; she is ‘a gasping new-delivered mother’ and Bolingbroke her sorrow’s ‘dismal heir’ (2.2.10, 62–5). (C) Guillemeau (1612, Book 2) devotes several chapters to the midwife, her character and her duties. She should be ‘pleasant, merry, of good discourse, strong, painfull, and accustomed to labour, that shee may bee able (if needed bee) to watch two or three nights by the woman’ (85). Iyengar (2011) has an informative entry on ‘midwife’, citing a large secondary literature. See most recently Evenden (2000) and Pelling and White (2003). Dowd (2009) discusses the ‘cultural power’ of the midwife, especially in RJ and Jonson’s The Magnetic Lady. Pitcher’s Arden edition of WT (2010) has useful notes. milk, milkmaid (A) Milk is the whitish fluid that comes from the mammary glands of female mammals, including women, and used for nourishment. Figuratively, the word means something that provides nourishment. It has many rich associations for Shakespeare. (B) Shakespeare uses the image of the breast-feeding mother and her milk in various ways. Notorious is Lady Macbeth’s claim: ‘I have given suck, and know / How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me’ (1.7.54–5). For her, the willingness to sacrifice a suckling child is the ultimate proof she can give Macbeth of her commitment to the sworn oath to kill Duncan. Earlier, she identifies her breasts and their milk as the quintessential parts of her femininity when she calls upon the ‘spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts’ to ‘come to my woman’s breasts, / And take my milk for gall [poison]’ (1.5.47–8). The idea of corrupted breast-milk is also used by Lavinia in TIT , when she pleads with Chiron and Demetrius not to emulate the cruelty of their mother Tamora: When did the tiger’s young ones teach the dam? O, do not learn her wrath: she taught it thee. The milk thou suckst from her did turn to marble; Even at thy teat thou hadst thy tyranny. (2.2.142–5) 231

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Joan Puzel’s father, rejected by his daughter, finally spurns her himself: I would the milk Thy mother gave thee when thou suck’st her breast Had been a little ratsbane for thy sake (1H6 5.3.27–9) Hermione, summarizing her despair as she faces Leontes who has condemned her to death, lists the precious things that he has taken from her, his love, her son and now her new-born baby: My third comfort, Starred most unluckily, is from [away from] my breast, The innocent milk in it most innocent mouth, Haled out to murder. (WT 3.2.96–8) That the infant took its nature from its mother’s milk was a familiar idea; Leontes earlier has said that he is glad Hermione did not nurse her son: ‘Though he does bear some signs of me, yet you / Have too much blood in him’ (2.1.56–7). It was not common practice for women from the upper classes to breast-feed their children, although Hermione has done so. Juliet was provided with a wet-nurse, who vividly describes her weaning (RJ 1.3.23–45). Malvolio describes Viola/Cesario as being ‘between boy and man . . . One would think his mother’s milk were scarce out of him’ (TN 1.5.155–7). He implies not only youthfulness, but also effeminacy. In figurative use milk has differing applications. It can suggest something nourishing and benign, as in Lady Macbeth’s reference to the ‘milk of human kindness’ (MAC 1.5.17) that she fears will prevent her husband from falling in with her murderous plans, and Malcolm’s to ‘the sweet milk of concord’ which he would pour ‘into hell’ (4.3.98). Lear refers to Cordelia’s two suitors in terms of the produce of their countries, as ‘the vines of France and milk of Burgundy’ (KL 1.1.84). The context suggests that vines and milk are images for rich produce (although Foakes in Arden edn, 1997, wonders if the ‘milk of burgundy’ indicates ‘something insipid about the character’). Friar Laurence seeks to comfort Romeo in his misery by offering him ‘Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy’ (RJ 3.3.55), where milk signifies ‘benign healing’ (Weis, Arden edn, 2012). But by contrast milk can mean something weak, lacking in substance and sometimes in masculinity. Goneril refers disparagingly to her husband’s ‘milky gentleness’ (1.5.337) and later insults him openly as a ‘milk-livered man’ (4.2.51), that is, a man who lacks blood in his liver and hence masculinity. Bassanio refers to cowards who, despite sporting ‘beards of Hercules and frowning Mars’, have yet ‘livers white as milk’ (MV 3.2.85–6). Hotspur calls a man whom he considers to lack courage a ‘dish of skim-milk’ (1H4 2.3.31), and milksops are universally despised (MA 5.1.91, R3 5.3.325). The propensity of milk to curdle is evoked with disgusting relish by the Ghost of Hamlet’s father, recalling the effects of the poison, and how, in its rapid passage through 232

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the veins, ‘with a sudden vigour it doth possess / And curd like eager droppings into milk / The thin and wholesome blood’ (HAM 1.5.68–70). (‘Possess’ is the reading in Q2; F reads ‘posset’, meaning ‘thicken’.) The whiteness of milk can be beautiful, as in a woman’s ‘milk-white bosom’ (TGV 3.1.248), ‘hands as pale as milk’ (MND 5.1.325), ‘fingers long, small, white as milk’ (PER 4.0.22), or the ‘four milk-white horses, trapped in silver’ presented as a gift to Timon (TIM 1.2.185). The ‘milk-white rose’, raised aloft by the Duke of York (2H6 1.1.252), becomes the emblem of his house. But the description in VA of the boar’s ‘frothy’ mouth, ‘bepainted all with red, / Like milk and blood being mingled all together’ (901–2), combines the two colours of the poem in a repulsively vivid image. ‘The milky head / Of reverend Priam’ (HAM 2.2.416–17) is an object of pity. The milk-maid is a figure with varying connotations. In AC Cleopatra’s comparison of herself to a woman ‘commanded by such poor passion as the maid that milks / And does the meanest chares’ (4.15.77–8) evokes a humble servant. When Perdita, threatened by Polixenes with torture, wants momentarily to abandon her dreams of marrying Florizel and return to being a shepherd’s daughter, to ‘milk my ewes and weep’ (WT 4.4.455) it is a lowly occupation. But Touchstone’s recollections of courting Jane Smile, and ‘the kissing of her batlet [butter paddle], and the cow’s dugs that her pretty chapped hands had milked’ (AYL 2.4.46–7) envisage the milkmaid as a figure of erotic fantasy; so too Lance’s reverie about the milkmaid he loves (TGV 3.1). In LLL one of the images that Hiems uses to evoke winter is when ‘milk comes frozen home in pail’ (LLL 5.2.903). (C) On breast-feeding practices in early modern England, see Paster, who illustrates the ambivalence of attitudes towards reproductive processes in general (1993, ch. 5). Salmon demonstrates how breast milk was used for medicinal purposes, for adults and children, and regarded as a life-giving force, consisting of whitened blood (1994, 251). Wall (2002) has a chapter on ‘the erotics of milk’, with discussion of the milkmaid as a fantasy figure, and of breast-feeding. Guillemeau (1612) describes the best conditions for breast-feeding, including the diet for the wet-nurse. Dod and Cleaver, who consider it best if the mother breast-feed her own children, stress that the baby imbibes moral qualities through breast-milk (1630, sig. P4v-P5). On wet-nursing in the period, see Fildes (1986). For the debate attached to Lady Macbeth’s assertion that she has given birth, see Clark (Arden edn, 2015, note on 1.7.54–5). Buxton surveys ‘dairying’ in the early modern household (2015, 103–7). Korda (2011, 156–8) discusses the eroticized milkmaid in contemporary ballads. Markham describes the processing of milk (1615, ch. 6). mirror (A) Mirror originally meant both exemplar, something or someone worthy of imitation, and reflection, but also reflective surface, hence a looking glass. Large glass mirrors were rare and expensive in this period, but small and more affordable ones might be worn at the waist by women. (B) Perhaps the most familiar use of this term is Hamlet’s in his advice to the players, that the purpose of playing is ‘to hold as ’twere the mirror up to Nature, to show Virtue 233

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her feature, Scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure’ (HAM 3.2.21–4). He means that acting should exemplify these qualities, and reflect truth. When Henry V is called ‘the mirror of all Christian kings’ (H5 2 Chorus 6), Salisbury ‘the mirror of all martial men’ (1H6 1.4.73) and Buckingham ‘the mirror of all courtesy’ (H8 2.1.53), it means exemplar. Maecenas uses the word in the same sense when commenting on Caesar’s reaction to the news of the death of Antony: ‘When such a spacious mirror’s set before him, / He needs must see himself’ (AC 5.1.34–5). In the deposition scene of R2 the king calls for a real mirror, probably a small glass, and muses on his appearance: Give me that glass, and therein will I read. No deeper wrinkles yet? . . . . . . O flatt’ring glass, Like to my followers in prosperity, Thou dost beguile me. (4.1.276–81) In JC Cassius uses a series of mirror metaphors to flatter Brutus, telling him first that it is unfortunate that he cannot recognize his own virtues: And it is very much lamented, Brutus, That you have no such mirrors as will turn Your hidden worthiness into your eye, That you might see your shadow (1.2.55–8) ‘Shadow’ here means reflection, and Cassius goes on to develop the idea: . . . since you cannot see yourself So well as by reflection, I your glass Will modestly discover to yourself That of yourself which you yet know not of. (1.2.67–70) Polixenes uses the idea of the facial expressions of other people as reflections of his own, when he realizes how things have changed at Leontes’ court. Good Camillo, Your changed complexions are to me a mirror Which shows me mine changed too (WT 1.2.376–8) In LUC Lucrece’s father sees in his daughter’s ruined body an image of himself aged and decayed: Poor broken glass, I often did behold In thy sweet semblance my old age new born; 234

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But now that fair fresh mirror, dim and old, Shows me a bare-boned death by time outworn. O, from thy cheeks my image hast thou torn, And shivered all the beauty of my glass, That I no more can see what once I was. (1757–64) (C) See also Glass. Kelly (2002) briefly reviews the history of mirrors and discusses their relation to ideas of self-consciousness in Shakespeare and his contemporaries. For a broad overview of the subject of mirrors, see Melchior-Bonnet (2001). Shuger (1999) argues that mirrors in early modern writing do not display the individuated self but act as instruments of correction. mother (A) A mother is a female parent, or a woman who has given birth to a child; the term can also be used as a form of address to an elderly woman, and it can mean motherin-law. Figuratively it can signify a source of nurture or sustenance, or an origin. In early modern medicine, it referred to the uterus, or to conditions thought to arise from disorders of the uterus. (B) The bond between a mother and her children can be expressed in many ways. Not only does she pass down physical resemblance, in doing so she can testify to her fidelity to their father, as Leontes says, acknowledging Florizel’s parentage: Your mother was most true to wedlock, prince, For she did print your royal father off, Conceiving you (WT 5.1.123–5) The greeting is especially significant in Leontes’ mouth, given his earlier preoccupation with wifely infidelity and the production of illegitimate offspring. The resemblance of his daughter Perdita to her mother is one of the marks that indicates that ‘the king [has] found his heir’ (5.2.29), and as Leontes is reunited with her he cries ‘O thy mother, thy mother!’, combining sorrow for his loss (for at this point he believes Hermione dead) with an acknowledgement of the maternal relationship. When Marina sees Thaisa for the first time, she cries, ‘My heart / Leaps to be gone into my mother’s bosom’, and Pericles, also acknowledging this bond, says to the astonished mother, ‘Look who kneels here: flesh of thy flesh, Thaisa’ (PER 5.3.44–6). In 2H4 the resemblance of child to its parents is the subject of a joke; Falstaff asks one of his potential recruits, Shallow, ‘Whose son art thou?’ Shallow answers, ‘My mother’s son, sir’, and Falstaff then responds: ‘Thy mother’s son! Like enough, and thy father’s shadow; so the son of the female is the shadow of the male. It is often so indeed, but much of thy father’s substance’ (3.2.129–32). Falstaff, punning on son/sun and shadow, means that while Shadow is undoubtedly the son of his mother, his paternity may be more doubtful. On the one hand, he is his father’s image (shadow), but on the other sons may be uncertain reflections 235

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of their fathers, and Shadow’s father may have no substance, that is, not be known. Isabella expresses her horror at her brother Claudio’s desire for her to surrender her virginity to save his life by a reflection on their parentage: Heaven shield my mother play’d my father fair: For such a warped slip of wilderness Ne’er issued from his blood. (MM 3.1.140–2) To her, it appears that her brother’s behaviour can only be explained if he is a bastard child whose father is unknown. Lear also calls upon this idea in his hope that Regan is sincere in being glad to see him: If thou shouldst not be glad, I would divorce me from thy mother’s tomb, Sepulchring an adultress. (KL 2.2.319–21) Like Isabella, he makes the mother the origin of her child’s misconduct, here taking it to an absurd extreme. Laertes, conversely, justifies revenge as proof of his mother’s chastity (HAM 4.5.117–20). The mother’s unique knowledge of her child’s parentage is jocularly referred to by Prospero, when Miranda, confused by the story he tells her of his past status as Duke of Milan, asks, ‘Sir, are not you my father?’ He replies, ‘Thy mother was a piece [masterpiece] of virtue, and / She said thou wast my daughter’ (TEM 1.2.56–7). Joan Puzel’s father states that ‘her mother liveth yet, can testify / She was the first fruit of my bachelorship’ (1H6 5.4.12–13). In KJ a mother is directly called upon to settle a question of paternity. The bastard, Faulconbridge, determined to reject Sir Robert Faulconbridge, now dead, as his father, appeals to Lady Faulconbridge: ‘Then, good my mother, let me know my father; / Some proper man, I hope: who was it, mother?’ (1.1.249–50). The knowledge that he was born out of wedlock and fathered by Richard Coeur de Lion delights him: ‘Ay, my mother, / With all my heart I thank thee for my father!’ (1.1.269–70). Matrilineal descent is important for Caliban: ‘This island’s mine by Sycorax, my mother’ (TEM 1.2.332), as well as for several characters in the history plays (1H6 2.5.74, 2H6 2.2.43–7). Maternal feeling is not limited to biological parents; the Countess of Rossillion in AW insists that she is a mother to Helena, her ward, even though the two are not related by blood. ’Tis often seen Adoption strives with nature, and choice breeds A native slip to us from foreign seeds. You ne’er oppress’d me with a mother’s groan, Yet I express to you a mother’s care. (1.3.141–5) 236

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The relationship is troublesome to Helena because of her love for the Countess’s son Bertram; yet she loves the Countess as a daughter: You are my mother, madam; would you were – So that my lord your son were not my brother – Indeed my mother! (1.3.158–60) The Countess finds herself compromised by her son’s behaviour, and at one point even wishes he were not her son, stressing her strong feeling for Helena, whom she believes dead: ‘If she had partaken of my flesh and cost me the dearest groans of a mother I could not have owed her a more rooted love’ (4.5.10–12). At the end of the play, when Bertram appears to have accepted Helena, now pregnant with his child, as his wife, she is at last able to call the Countess by the term that had earlier been such a problem: ‘O my dear mother, do I see you living?’ (5.3.318). Mothers pass on their qualities to their children. Emilia remarks of Arcite that ‘his mother was a wondrous handsome woman; / His face, methinks, goes that way’ (TNK 2.5.20–1). Volumnia tells Coriolanus, ‘Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck’st it from me, / But owe [own] thy pride thyself’ (COR 3.2.130–1). Richard of Gloucester remarks of the ‘little prating child’ Duke of York that he is ‘all the mother’s, from the top to toe’ (R3 3.1.156). The gifts that mothers have handed down to their children have special significance. The handkerchief that Othello has inherited from his mother has been passed down through a female line (OTH 3.4.56–65), and comes imbued ‘with the strange authority of maternal wisdom’ (Findlay, 2010, 280). Innogen gives Posthumus a beloved ring (which he later parts with in his wager with Iachimo) as a parting gift: ‘This diamond was my mother’s’ (CYM 1.1.113). Jessica has bartered a ring given by her mother for a monkey, and Shylock is full of dismay to hear this (MV 3.2.107–11). The copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses that Lavinia uses to reveal her rape belongs to her nephew and has been given to him by his mother (TIT 4.1.42–3). That the influence of mothers can be difficult for their sons to handle is evident from the ways in which men regularly draw upon it to account for a display of emotion. Exeter in H5, moved by the sight of comrades dead on the battlefield, wanted to suppress his tears but could not do so: ‘I had not so much of man in me, / And all my mother came into mine eyes / And gave me up to tears’ (4.6.30–2). Sebastian, overcome by Antonio’s kindness, is anxious not to break down: ‘I am yet so near the manners of my mother that upon least occasion more mine eyes will tell tales of me’ (TN 2.2.36–8). Cassius considers that the Romans allow themselves to be ruled by Caesar because ‘we are governed with our mothers’ spirits: / Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish’ (JC 1.3.83–4). When patching up his quarrel with Brutus he uses the same idea to ask forgiveness: Have you not love enough to bear with me, When that rash humour which my mother gave me Makes me forgetful? 237

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Brutus turns this into an affectionate joke with his response: Yes, Cassius, and from henceforth When you are over-anxious with your Brutus, He’ll think your mother chides, and leave you so. (JC 4.3.118–22) Mothers may adore their children to excess; Claudius observes of Hamlet that ‘the Queen his mother / Lives almost by his looks’ (HAM 4.7.12–13). The idea that a mother’s influence on her son can undermine his masculinity is made literal in the relationship of Coriolanus and Volumnia. Her role in determining his behaviour is well known. The First Citizen denies that Coriolanus is motivated by patriotism in serving his country; instead ‘he did it to please his mother’ (COR 1.1.35). He calls her ‘the most noble mother of the world’ (5.3.49). ‘There’s no man in the world / More bound to’s mother’, she states, in her speech begging him not to fight against Rome, although she then proceeds to accuse him of disrespect: ‘thou restrain’st from me the duty which / To a mother’s part belongs’ (5.3.158–9, 167–8). He cannot resist the plea of his kneeling mother, and responds: O, mother, mother! What have you done? Behold, the heavens do ope, The gods look down and this unnatural scene They laugh at. O, mother, mother! O! You have won a happy victory to Rome But for your son, believe it, O, believe it, Most dangerously you have with him prevailed If not most mortal to him (5.3.182–9) In a tender moment with his weeping wife, Coriolanus tells her not to cry: ‘Such eyes the widows in Corioles wear / And mothers that lack sons’ (2.1.173–4). The loss felt by mothers for sons dead in battle is referred to several times (for example, KJ 2.1.303–4, R2 3.3.96, H5 1.2.286). Queen Margaret in 3H6 bursts out in grief as she finds her young son dying: ‘O Ned, sweet Ned, speak to thy mother, boy!’ (5.5.49). The most moving expression of a mother’s grief for a dead son is Constance’s lament for Arthur in KJ (3.3.93–105). In a choric scene in R3 three mothers mourn the loss of children; the most recently deprived, Queen Elizabeth, supplicates the souls of her two sons, the princes in the Tower: ‘Hover about me with your airy wings / And hear your mother’s lamentation’ (R3 4.4.13–4). She has seen her state transformed from ‘happy wife [to] a most distressed widow’ and from ‘joyful mother’ to ‘one that wails the name’ (98–9), ‘a mother only mocked with two fair babes’. The Duchess of York does not use the word mother to her son Richard III , but instead calls herself ‘she that might have intercepted thee, / By strangling thee in her accursed womb’ (4.4.137–8). In 3H6 Richard’s unnatural relationship with maternity is figured when King Henry comments on the bad omens 238

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attending on his birth, noting, ‘Thy mother felt more than a mother’s pain, / And yet brought forth less than a mother’s hope’ (5.6.49–50). In early modern England childbirth was a dangerous time; infant mortality was common. Joan Puzel invokes this special maternal loss in her speech to the Duke of Burgundy about war-torn France: Look on thy country, look on fertile France, And see the cities and the towns defaced By wasting ruin of the cruel foe, As looks the mother on her lowly babe When death doth close his tender-dying eyes (1H6 3.3.44–8) Motherhood is metaphorically used to signify a number of concepts. In MAC Ross characterizes Scotland under Macbeth’s tyranny: ‘It cannot / Be called our mother, but our grave’ (4.3.165–6). Friar Laurence similarly declares, ‘The earth that’s nature’s mother is her tomb’ (RJ 2.3.5). In KJ Faulconbridge accuses his countrymen of ‘ripping up the womb / Of your dear mother England’ (5.52.152). Timon uses the image of mother earth with derision when digging for roots: ‘Common mother – thou / Whose womb unmeasurable and infinite breast / Teems and feeds all’ (TIM 4.3.176–8). He has earlier referred to ‘damned earth, / Thou common whore of mankind’ (4.3.42–3). In LUC ‘sable Night’ is ‘mother of dread and fear’ (117), perhaps in the sense of origin, as Innogen uses the word, when she says that ‘Plenty and peace breeds cowards: hardness ever / Of hardiness is mother’ (CYM 3.6.21–2). The Catholic church is called ‘our mother’ In KJ (3.1.141), and the virgin Mary is ‘the Holy Mother of our Lord’ (R3 3.7.2). Petruccio uses ‘mother-wit’ to mean natural intelligence as opposed to book learning (TS 2.1.265). Lear’s reference to the disease of the ‘mother . . . Hysterica passio’ (KL 2.2.246–7) is to a uterine disorder; Foakes links it with the ‘the suppressed presence of the mother of [his] daughters’ and with the misogyny he voices in his madness (Arden edn, 1997, 39–40). (C) Although Crawford (2014) claims that historians have neglected the importance of motherhood until recently, there is now an extensive secondary literature about it in this period. Findlay’s detailed overview of the term ‘mother’, with its excellent bibliography is a good starting point (2010). Mendelson and Crawford (1998, 148–74) give a historical account of early modern motherhood. Rose’s seminal article (1991) argues that maternal desire and agency can only be represented as ‘dangerous, subordinate or peripheral in relation to public, adult life’ (307), and the construction of motherhood limits it to the private realm. Adelman (1992) has an influential account of maternal power in Shakespeare and its destructive effects on masculinity from a Freudian perspective. Neely discusses the ‘puzzling absence of mothers’ (Findlay counts at least twenty characters without them) and the deaths of many in Shakespeare (1985, 171–7). Kahn (1986) also deals with this question. Moncrief and McPherson’s collection (2007) contains essays on motherhood in AW , AC , MAC , MV and WT . Trubowitz (2012) explores the politicisation of the image of the nursing mother and its relation to national identity, with an account of MAC . Batt (1581, esp. 55–58) discusses the role of the 239

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mother in the family, much subsidiary to that of the father, but important during the infancy of the children, to indoctrinate them with Christian morality. The anonymous author of The Office of Christian parents (1616) gives sensitive if strict advice on parenting to mothers and fathers without much distinction (except that he urges mothers to nurse their own children and not hand them over to others, as does Batt). Jocelin (1624) gives her husband moving advice from a mother’s perspective on how to bring up their child after her death, as well as moral instruction to her unborn child. muffler A muffler was commonly a woman’s accessory in the early modern period, used to cover the lower part of the face for concealment or protection. Fluellen interrupts Pistol’s grandiose speech about Fortune to point out that ‘Fortune is painted blind, with a muffler before her eyes, to signify to you that Fortune is blind’ (H5 3.6.30–1). Craik (H5, Arden edn, 1995) notes that ‘in the final dumb-show of [Gascoigne’s] Jocasta Fortune is introduced ‘muffled with a white laune about hir eyes’ (Works 1.308). Jocasta is echoed in Pistol’s speech. When Mistress Ford and Mistress Page in MW need to disguise Falstaff as a woman they find him ‘a hat, a muffler and kerchief’ (4.2.67), which do the trick, although Sir Hugh Evans is suspicious: ‘I like not when a ‘oman has a great peard – I spy a great peard under her muffler’ (4.2.182–3). In the final scene of MM Claudio’s identity is concealed by the Provost, and the Duke enquires, ‘What muffl’d fellow’s that?’ (5.1.483). mustard Mustard is a strong condiment made from mustard seeds and used with meat, especially beef. Falstaff contradicts Doll Tearsheet when she praises Poins for his wit: ‘Hang him, baboon! His wit’s as thick as Tewkesbury mustard’ (2H4 2.4.240–1), referring to a strong coarse mustard blended with grated horseradish root and made since medieval times (to the present day) at Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire. In TS Grumio taunts Katherina with ‘a piece of beef and mustard’ which she longs for – ‘A dish that I do love to feed upon’ – but does not get (4.3.23–4). In AYL Touchstone indulges in badinage with Rosalind and Celia about ‘a certain knight that swore by his honour they were good pancakes, and swore by his honour the mustard was naught’ (1.2.62–3) but was not forsworn even if it was the other way round, because he had no honour to swear on. Dusinberre’s note (Arden edn, 2006) suggests that the phrase is recalled by Jonson in Every Man Out of his Humour (1599) when the foolish character Sogliardo is given a new coat of arms with the motto, ‘Not without mustard’ (3.1.244). Jonson here may be mocking Shakespeare’s coat of arms acquired in 1596 for his father. On types of mustard, see Erondell, The French Garden (in Byrne, 1925, 75) where Lady Beau-sejour mentions ‘that of Tewkesbury, or that of Dyjon’ as good for the esteemed ‘beefe of England’. mutton (A) Mutton is the name given to the flesh of sheep, usually as a foodstuff (from French mouton), but in this period was also a slang term for a woman, particularly a prostitute. Shakespeare’s uses nearly all involve some double entendre. 240

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(B) Mistress Quickly in 2H4 responds in spirited style when Falstaff jokingly reproves her for allowing meat to be eaten in her tavern during prohibited days: ‘All victuallers do so. What’s a joint of mutton or two in a whole Lent?’ (2.4.348–51). The innuendo here may well be intended by the speaker, as it undoubtedly is when Lucio in MM tells the disguised Duke, believing him to be a Friar, that the Duke was no sexual prude and ‘would eat mutton on Fridays’ (3.2.175–6). In the exchange about dancing in TN between Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek, where Sir Andrew says that he can ‘cut a caper’ (dance or leap like a goat), Sir Toby replies, ‘And I can cut the mutton to it’ (1.3.116–17). Mutton is again probably used to pun on both senses of the word. Speed, Valentine’s servant in TGV , indulges in some lengthy repartee with Proteus involving sheep, shepherds and a letter Proteus has given Speed to take to Julia. When Proteus finally asks Speed if he has delivered it, Speed replies: ‘Ay, sir. I, a lost mutton, gave your letter to her, a laced mutton, and she, a laced mutton, gave me, a lost mutton, nothing for my labour’ (TGV 1.1.94–6). A ‘laced mutton’ means a loose woman, and Carroll’s note (Arden edn, 2004) suggests it refers to a laced bodice. Speed, calling himself a ‘lost mutton’ is accepting that he is a fool (a sheep). Costard in LLL also uses mutton to make a joke; when the King of Navarre tells him that having been caught with a woman he must ‘fast a week with bran and water’, he quips back: ‘I had rather pray a month with mutton and porridge’ (1.1.285–6). Woudhuysen’s note (Arden edn, 2001) says that ‘mutton and porridge’ is a hendiadys for mutton broth, and that porridge may also have had sexual connotations (punning on ‘partridge’, a game bird regarded as tasty). ‘Pray’ could refer to the missionary position in sexual intercourse. Touchstone’s reference to the wholesomeness of ‘the grease of a mutton’ (AYL 3.2.53) in his argument with Corin about court versus country manners is assumed by Fitzpatrick (2011, 294) also to contain innuendo. When Petruccio rejects the mutton brought by his servant for him and Katherina as burnt (4.1.146–50) his objection is not to the meat but to its condition, because burnt meat ‘engenders choler, planteth anger’. But mutton is meat not to be scorned. Justice Shallow, eager to feast Falstaff royally, orders Davy to get ‘some pigeons . . . a couple of shortlegged hens, a joint of mutton and any pretty little tiny kickshaws’ (2H4 5.1.26–8). (C) Fitzpatrick (2011) cites Cogan (1636) and Bullein (1558) on the dietary uses of mutton. In Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1613) a country wench tricks two men into taking away her illegitimate baby by concealing it under a joint of mutton in a basket when they are eager to obtain the meat illicitly during Lent.

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N napkin (A) A napkin was a piece of cloth, usually square, used to wipe the face, hands and so on, and also at table. (B) Shakespeare sometimes uses napkin interchangeably with handkerchief, notably in OTH where Othello fatefully puts aside Desdemona’s offer of her handkerchief to bind his head, saying ‘Your napkin is too little’ (3.3.291). Emilia and Iago also call it a napkin (3.3.294, 324). Gertrude also offers Hamlet her handkerchief as a gesture of comfort during the duel with Laertes: ‘Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows’ (5.2.270). When Marcus in TIT offers his brother Titus a handkerchief to wipe away the tears he is shedding for the mutilation of Lavinia, it becomes a symbol of the inconsolable nature of their sorrow; Titus replies, A Marcus, Marcus, brother, well I wot Thy napkin cannot drink a tear of mine, For thou, poor man, hast drowned it with thine own. (3.1.140–1) Table napkins, a conspicuous stage prop, are probably intended when the servants in RJ ‘come forth with napkins’ (1.5 SD ) to clear away after the Capulets’ feast, but the ‘greasy napkins’ that Falstaff finds in the buck basket along with ‘foul shirts, and smock, foul stockings’ (3.5.83–4) could be either sort of napkin, as could the ‘two napkins tacked together and thrown over the shoulders like a herald’s coat without sleeves’ that Falstaff’s impoverished soldiers wear instead of a shirt (1H4 4.2.42–3). When the Porter in MAC urges his imaginary visitors to ‘have napkins enow about you’ (2.3.6) he is thinking of handkerchiefs to mop up the sweat of hellish heat. In several plays napkins soaked with blood are prominently displayed. In 3H6 Queen Margaret taunts the Duke of York with a handkerchief covered in the blood of his young son, Rutland: Look, York: I stain’d this napkin with the blood That valiant Clifford with his rapier’s point Made issue from the bosom of the boy. (1.4.79–81) Antony in JC imagines the common people creating relics by dipping their handkerchiefs in Caesar’s blood if they were to hear his will: 243

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Let but the commons hear this testament – Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read – And they would go and kiss dead Caesar’s wounds, And dip their napkins in his sacred blood (3.2.131–4) In AYL the bloody handkerchief that Oliver brings to Rosalind from Orlando causes her to faint and almost to reveal her true gender, as Oliver relates how Orlando was wounded in saving his brother’s life (4.3). (C) Buxton discusses the large numbers of napkins featuring in probate inventories (2015, 170–1). Dessen and Thomson (1999) have an entry on ‘napkin’, usually featuring in relation to eating and drinking. See also handkerchief. needle, needlework (A) A needle (often in this period pronounced as a monosyllable) is a small slender pointed metal implement used for drawing thread though cloth in the act of sewing. Needlework is the sewing done with a needle, or more specifically embroidery. Skill in needlework was regarded as an important feminine accomplishment in early modern England, and accorded high social status. (B) Needlework is an accomplishment of several well-born women in Shakespeare. Baptista tells Bianca who has been squabbling with her sister Katherina, to ‘Go ply thy needle, meddle not with her’ (TS 2.1.25). Othello, painfully recalling Desdemona’s virtues, says that she is ‘so delicate with her needle, an admirable musician. O, she will sing the savageness out of a bear!’ (OTH 4.1.185–6). Needlework is associated with the loss of chastity in LUC . Tarquin, having forced the locks on Lucrece’s chamber, looks round by candle-light: And being lighted, by the light he spies LUCRETIA’S glove, wherein her needle sticks. He takes it from the rushes where it lies, And griping it, the needle his finger pricks, As who should say, ‘This glove to wanton tricks Is not inured. Return again in haste; Thou seest our mistress’ ornaments are chaste’. (316–22) The language of this passage has erotic undercurrents. The glove, a garment often associated sexually with the female body, is penetrated by the needle (‘her needle sticks’), reflecting Tarquin’s purpose to rape Lucrece; but, innocent as its owner, it rebuffs him by pricking his finger, although Tarquin is not deterred. The presence of the needle in the fallen glove suggests that Lucrece has been recently working on it, perhaps embroidering it. The collocation of the words ‘needle’ and ‘prick’ is used with obviously bawdy innuendo in H5, when the Hostess protests to her husband Pistol and his associate Nym how difficult it is to keep a good reputation: ‘For we cannot lodge and 244

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board a dozen or fourteen gentlewomen that live honestly by the prick of their needles but it will be thought we keep a bawdy-house straight’ (2.1.33–6). There may also be bawdy implications when Thersites in TC says that Ajax has not so much wit ‘as will stop the eye of Helen’s needle’ (TC 2.1.78), although the expression probably derives from Matthew 19.24 (‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God’). This passage is quoted by Richard II in his soliloquy in prison: ‘It is as hard to come as for a camel / To thread the postern of a small needle’s eye’ (5.5.16–17). In two plays women do needlework together, as a joint activity. In PER Cleon’s daughter Philoten competes with Marina and the two women are always together: Be’t when they weaved the sleided [untwisted] silk With fingers long, small, white as milk, Or when she would with sharp needle wound The cambric which she made more sound By hurting it (4.0.21–5) Marina’s skill in embroidery, and her ability to teach it to others, is celebrated again later in the play, along with her attainments in singing and dancing, and her learning: Deep clerks she dumbs and with her nee’le composes Nature’s own shape of bud, bird, branch or berry, That even her art sisters [closely resembles] the natural roses. (5.0.5–7) An example of genuine female companionship celebrated in the joint activity of needlework is that of Hermia and Helena in MND . Helena, recalling their ‘schooldays’ friendship’, remembers how We, Hermia, like two artificial gods, Have with our needles created both one flower, Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, Both warbling of one song, both in one key, As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds, Had been incorporate. (3.2.203–8) Needlework, meaning embroidery, is used in TS when Gremio promises among the other luxuries he will give Bianca if she will marry him ‘Valance of Venice gold in needlework’ (2.1.358). The idea of the needle as the woman’s weapon underlies the Bastard’s threat against the French and English traitors which includes a vision of their women taking to arms: 245

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For your own ladies and pale-visag’d maids Like Amazons come tripping after drums, Their thimbles into armed gauntlets change, Their needl’s to lances (KJ 5.2.154–7) (C) On Marina’s sewing, see Gossett’s illuminating notes (Arden edn, 2004). On the bawdy associations of needle, see Williams (1994, 943–4). The cultural significance of the needle and of embroidery in the lives of women is explored by Frye (2010); in Chapter 4 she discusses the role of cloth and textiles in OTH and CYM . See also Parker (1984) on needlework and feminine agency. Shinn looks at mending as a form of non-élite needlework (2014). Spurgeon considers that Shakespeare took considerable interest in women’s sewing (1935, 124–6). Women’s sewing is sexualized in Dekker, The Shoemaker’s Holiday (1599) and in Dekker and Middleton’s The Roaring Girl (1610/11). neighbour, neighbourhood (A) A neighbour is a person who lives nearby, or in an adjoining house; it may also mean a person who lives in a nearby place, such as a town, district or country, or a person or thing in close proximity or association with another. A neighbourhood means neighbours collectively, or a nearby area. (B) When Timon looks back on the city of Athens he has abandoned he calls for an end to the civic virtues, citing Piety and fear, Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth, Domestic awe, night-rest and neighbourhood (TIM 4.1.15–17) The King of France in H5 hopes that the marriage of Henry V to his daughter Katherine will bring an end to the enmity between England and France and ‘Plant neighbourhood and Christian-like accord / In their sweet bosoms’ (5.2.347–8). Neighbours are to be valued, and Henry V imagines how the soldier who has fought at Agincourt will celebrate the anniversary, and ‘yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours’ (4.3.45). Baptista calls upon ‘neighbours and friends’ to help him celebrate Katherina’s wedding feast (TS 3.2.247). In LLL Costard movingly defends Sir Nathaniel against Berowne’s rude criticisms of his performance as Alexander in the pageant of the nine worthies: ‘There, an’t please you, a foolish mild man; an honest man, look you, and soon dashed. He is a marvellous good neighbour, faith, and a very good bowler’ (5.2.575–8). Mistress Quickly in 2H4 knows the importance of good community relations when she tries to refuse Pistol entry to her tavern: ‘I must live among my neighbours; I’ll no swaggerers. I am in good name and fame with the very best’ (2.4.74–6). She mentions twice that ‘Master Tisick the debuty [deputy]’ (a city magistrate) calls her ‘Neighbour Quickly’ (2.4.85–9). ‘Neighbour’ is often used as a mode of address for people well known to one another, sometimes among the lower classes, as when Dogberry in MA addresses ‘neighbour Seacole’ or ‘neighbour 246

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Verges’ (3.3.13, 3.5) or Horner the armourer appears with his neighbours in 2H6 2.3. The Citizens in R3 (2.2) also address one another in this way. When, however, Leonato in MA addresses Dogberry as ‘honest neighbour’ (3.5.1) he may be talking down to a man of lower status, as Menenius is when he calls the Citizens ‘masters, my good friends, mine honest neighbours’ (COR 1.1.57–8); later in the play the tribunes Brutus and Sicinius address the Citizens in the same way (4.6). But in TS Gremio and Baptista, both men of substance, address one another as ‘neighbour’ (2.1), indicating familiarity, and when Gremio wants to assert his priority over Tranio as a suitor to Bianca, he tells Baptista, ‘I am your neighbour, and was suitor first’ (2.1.338). Volumnia, believing she has failed in her plea to Coriolanus not to fight against his own people, says as she kneels to him, ‘So, we will home to Rome / And die among our neighbours’ (COR 5.3.172–3). She means that she, along with her son’s wife and child, will return to their home and die where they belong. He, meanwhile, will remain among aliens. ‘Neighbour’ may simply mean near or nearness, as in Hamlet’s callous reference to the disposal of the corpse of Polonius: ‘I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room’ (HAM 3.4.210). Richard II refers to his fraught relationship with Bolingbroke, his cousin, as ‘such neighbour nearness’ (R2 1.1.119). In the painting of the fall of Troy that decorates the wall of Lucrece’s chamber, the crowd is vividly evoked by images of almost grotesque proximity: Here one man’s hand leaned on another’s head, His nose being shadowed by his neighbour’s ear (LUC 1415–16) Neighbourly proximity ought to bring friendliness, but often fails to do so. Portia alludes ironically to this in her response to Nerissa’s question about her feelings for one of her suitors, the Scottish lord who is neighbour to her English suitor: ‘he hath a neighbourly charity in him, for he borrowed a box of the ear of the Englishman and swore he would pay him again when he was able’ (MV 1.2.74–6). The relationship of the two nations is figured similarly by Henry V, who refers to ‘the Scot, / Who still hath been a giddy neighbour to us’, and recalls how England in the past ‘shook and trembled at th’ill neighbourhood’ (1.2.144–54). Richard II refers to civil war as ‘wounds ploughed up with neighbours’ sword’ (R2 1.3.128). Compare Escalus’s phrase, referring to the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets as ‘neighboured-stained steel’ (RJ 1.1.79). The Earl of Salisbury in KJ hopes that the armies of the English and France will come together and ‘combine / The blood of malice in a vein of league, / And not to spend it so unneighbourly’ (5.2.37–9). Neighbours cannot always be trusted, as Henry V later observes when rising early before battle; ‘Our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers’ (4.1.6), he says, referring to the proverb, ‘he that has an ill neighbour has oftentimes an ill morning’ (Tilley, N107). Phoebe in AYL mocks the idea of neighbourliness as being of emotional significance, when she tells her distraught suitor, Silvius, ‘Thou hast my love, is not that neighbourly?’ He responds sadly, ‘I would have you’, to which she answers, ‘Why, that were covetousness!’ (3.5.91–2). As Dusinberre (Arden edn, 2006) notes, Phoebe is playing 247

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on Christ’s reformulation of the Ten Commandments, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self’ (Matthew 19.19). In fact, proximity can be a source of danger. Leontes in WT torments himself with a vision of wifely infidelity: . . . many a man there is even at this present, Now, while I speak this, holds his wife by th’arm, That little thinks she has been sluiced in’s absence, And his pond fished by his next neighbour, by Sir Smile, his neighbour. (1.2.191–5) The repetition of the word ‘neighbour’ and the alliterative characterization of him as a smiling hypocrite give the expression a special bitterness. Iachimo uses a similar image when taunting Posthumus with the possibility of Innogen being unfaithful: ‘You may wear her in title yours, but you know strange fowl light upon neighbouring ponds’ (CYM 1.4.91–2). The neighbour’s ready availability for adultery is an alarming prospect. The Second Murderer in R2 hopes to avoid the pricking of conscience: ‘A man cannot lie with his neighbour’s wife but it detects him’ (1.4.135–6). Rosalind and Orlando banter about the irrepressible quality of women’s wit: ORLANDO

A man that had a wife with such a wit, he might say, ‘Wit, wither wilt?’ ROSALIND

Nay, you might keep that check for it till you met your wife’s wit going to your neighbour’s bed. ORLANDO

And what wit could wit have to excuse that? ROSALIND

Marry, that she came to seek you there. (AYL 4.1.155–60) (C) Gowing (1996) explores the contribution made by the dynamics of neighbour hood to the ‘domestic dangers’ of early modern London. Clark (2003) gives examples of the involvement of neighbours in criminal investigations (44–51). Capp (2003), noting the cramped conditions of urban life and the lack of privacy, documents a range of disputes arising between neighbours, but also gives examples of neighbourly support. Wrightson (2007) re-examines the idea of the ‘decline of neighbourliness’ (19–48). The Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, a young German visitor to England in 1602, records in his diary being told that ‘in England every citizen is bound by oath to keep a sharp eye at his neighbour’s house, as to whether the married couple live in harmony’ (65); such scrutiny may well have contributed to a certain suspicion of neighbours (‘Diary of the Journey of Philip Julius, Duke of Stettin-Pomerania’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6, 1892, 1–67). 248

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nephew (A) A nephew is the son of one’s brother or sister, but in early modern England it could also mean grandsons or male descendants more generally. (B) When Iago warns Brabantio against allowing his daughter to run away with Othello he uses racist language of miscegenation: ‘You’ll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse; you’ll have your nephews neigh to you, you’ll have coursers for cousins and jennets for germans!’ (OTH 1.1.109–11). He characterises Othello as a horse, and implies that all of Brabantio’s descendants will take equine form. The relationships of nephews to uncles figure several times in HAM . Hamlet is of course the nephew to Claudius, of which he is all too conscious; he is outraged that his mother has ‘married with my uncle, / My father’s brother’ (1.2.151–2), and uses the word ‘uncle’ with mocking frequency, although Claudius pointedly calls him ‘my cousin Hamlet, and my son’ (1.2.64). Another uncle troubled by a nephew is the old king of Norway, who ‘impotent and bedrid, scarcely hears / Of this his nephew’s purpose’ (1.2.28–9), which is to lay claim to territories in Denmark. It is no accident that Lucianus the poisoner in ‘The Mousetrap’ play is ‘nephew to the king’ (3.2.237), although this is not the case in Shakespeare’s source. Hotspur in 1H4 is also a nephew whom his uncle, the wily tactician Earl of Worcester, finds troublesome. ‘Brother, the king hath made your nephew mad’ (1H4 1.3.137), he remarks after one of Hotspur’s outbursts. He fears that Hotspur’s exploits may redound to the disadvantage of his family, although his ‘trespass may be well forgot; / It hath the excuse of youth and heat of blood’ (1H4 5.2.16–17). Nephews also figure in TIT where the tactful Marcus Andronicus, the brother to Titus, tries to intervene for his nephew Mutius (1.1.361, 381) and encourages his nephew Lucius (5.3.19). In TNK the cousins Palamon and Arcite are nephews to King Creon, but their relationship with him, ‘a most unbounded tyrant’ as Palamon calls him (1.2.63), is one they wish to repudiate. In MA when Leonato arranges for Claudio to marry his brother’s child (in fact, Hero veiled) he proposes this as a rearrangement of family relations: ‘since you could not be my son-in-law, / Be yet my nephew’ (MA 5.1.277–8). (C) On family relations in Shakespeare see the bibliographies at brother, daughter, family, sister. niece (A) A niece is the daughter of one’s brother or sister, and while it could more loosely mean a grand-daughter or other female relative, Shakespeare generally uses it in the more specific sense. The uncle–niece relationship is more prominent in Shakespeare than that of aunts to nieces. Nieces can sometimes also be referred to as cousins. (B) The uncle–niece relationship features in a number of plays, sometimes as a corollary to the relationship of brothers. It takes different forms. Duke Frederick in AYL ‘hath ta’en displeasure ’gainst his gentle niece’ Rosalind (1.2.267), in large part because he has usurped the position of her father Duke Senior. He sends her off into exile, only to lose his own daughter who goes with her. There are also two cousins in MA . Here, the uncle of the fatherless Beatrice and father of her cousin Hero, Leonato, is only too 249

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delighted to involve himself in his niece’s life. He has an active role as her guardian and takes a warm and protective interest in her marriage prospects. When Beatrice risks a bawdy joke in referring to Benedick as ‘a stuffed man’, Leonato hastily explains: ‘You must not sir, mistake my niece; there is a kind of merry war betwixt Signor Benedick and her. They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them’ (1.1.57–60). They indulge in affectionate repartee. Leonato says to her ‘Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband’, she responds, ‘Not till God make men of some other metal than earth’ (2.1.50–2). He is happy to be involved in the plot to get her married off; Benedick approaches him in the play’s final scene, asking for his good will in an almost formal manner: ‘Signior, Leonato – truth it is, good signior, / Your niece regards me with an eye of favour’ (5.4.21–2). Leonato responds happily, ‘My heart is with your liking’. In TC Pandarus takes his role as guardian to Cressida in a rather different spirit, as he eagerly directs her attention to the various qualities of the Trojan warriors while they pass across the stage, focusing especially on Troilus: ‘There’s a man, niece! Hem! Brave Troilus, the prince of chivalry! . . . Mark him, note him, O brave Troilus! Look well upon him, niece’ (1.2.220–4). He takes a salacious pleasure in observing the amorous liaisons being enacted around him, telling Helen, ‘My niece is horribly in love with a thing you have, sweet queen’ (3.1.94). The couplet with which he rounds off the scene preparing for the consummation of Cressida’s affair with Troilus indicates that his interest in his niece’s life is not that of a protective uncle: And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here Bed, chamber, pander to provide this gear! (3.2.205–6) Sir Toby Belch in TN has an ambivalent relationship to his niece Olivia, and in some ways not much less exploitative than that of Pandarus. He feels her prolonged period of mourning is excessive, but his concern is as much for his own ability to enjoy a life of revelry in her household as for her emotional well-being: ‘What a plague means my niece to take the death of her brother thus? I am sure care’s an enemy to life’ (1.3.1–2). He encourages Sir Andrew Aguecheek to persist as a suitor to her although Sir Andrew knows he has little chance: ‘Faith, I’ll home tomorrow, Sir Toby. Your niece will not be seen or, if she be, it’s four to one she’ll none of me’ (1.3.101–4). He is entirely ready to utilize his niece’s marriageability for his own ends, using her in the plot to make a fool of Malvolio, and taking pleasure in the absurdity of a duel between Sir Andrew and Viola/Cesario as rival suitors. But he does realize when he has gone too far in the humiliating of Malvolio, and wants to bring the plot to an end: ‘If he may be conveniently delivered, I would he were, for I am now so far in offence with my niece that I cannot pursue with any safety this sport to the upshot’ (4.1.67–70). Olivia’s position as head of her own household gives her an authority that no other niece-figure has, and she is in a position to give him orders. She dismisses him along with Sir Andrew as a drunken rogue. Marcus Andronicus, brother to Titus, becomes deeply involved in the life of his niece Lavinia, after he comes upon her, raped and mutilated by Chiron and Demetrius. He 250

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exclaims, ‘Who is this – my niece that flies away so fast? / Cousin, a word’ (2.3.1–2). ‘Speak, gentle niece’, he urges, not yet realizing what has happened to her: ‘Why dost not speak to me?’ (2.3.16, 21). It is this gentle uncle who eventually persuades Lavinia to reveal the full extent of the outrages done to her, when he organizes the family – ‘Sit down, sweet niece. Brother, sit down by me’ (4.1.65) – and shows Lavinia how to write the names of her rapists in the sand. In KJ Blanche of Spain is niece to King John and great-niece to his mother Queen Eleanor. Both refer to her as niece. When Hubert makes the suggestion that Blanche be given in a dynastic marriage to Lewis the Dauphin of France, Eleanor takes up the suggestion eagerly: Son, list to this conjunction, make this match; Give with our niece a dowry large enough (2.1.468–9) King John makes the gesture of consulting Blanche about her marriage: ‘What say you, my niece?’ She replies dutifully, ‘That she is bound in honour still to do / What you in wisdom still vouchsafe to say’ (2.1.521–3). But the alliance between the two countries is short-lived, and on Blanche’s wedding day enmity breaks out, when she finds herself at the heart of a fractured family: Husband, I cannot pray that thou mayst win; Uncle, I needs must pray that thou mayst lose; Father, I may not wish the fortune thine; Grandam, I will not wish thy wishes thrive; Whoever wins, on that side shall I lose. (3.1.259–63) (C) See also the bibliographies at brother, daughter, family, sister. On family life in the period, see Houlbrooke (1984). Cook (1991) discusses the family in the context of marriage. Young (2009) gives a basic account of family life in Shakespeare’s plays. nightcap see cap nightgown see gown noble A noble was a gold coin worth six shillings and eight pence. In H5 Nym and Pistol have an argument about a betting debt. Nym wants a payment of eight shillings (a considerable sum) but in the end settles for the noble that Pistol offers, as long as it is ‘in cash, most justly paid’ (2.1.115). The double meaning of the term is often in play. When Joan La Pucelle rejects her father, claiming that York has ‘suborned this man / Of purpose to obscure my noble birth’, her father replies, perhaps innocently, ‘ ’Tis true, I gave a noble to the priest / The morn that I was wedded to her mother’ (1H6 5.3.21–3). John Lincoln the broker in STM rouses the people to anger against immigrants by citing 251

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the price rises they cause: ‘He that will not see a red herring at a Harry groat, butter at eleven pence a pound, meal at nine shillings a bushel and beef at four nobles a stone, list to me’ (6.1–4). In R2 King Richard makes a wry joke about money when the Groom hails him in his prison as ‘royal Prince’. He replies: ‘Thanks, noble peer. / The cheapest of us is ten groats too dear’ (R2 5.1.67–8). A royal was a coin worth ten shillings. Richard is punning on his low status as a prisoner, being the ‘cheapest’ of the two, and therefore priced too high at a ‘royal’; if the groom is his ‘peer’, meaning equal, he is not worth more than a noble. Using the imagery of coins, Angelo in MM begs Duke to test his ‘metal’, that is his quality, before giving him the role of deputy in Vienna, ‘Before so noble and so great a figure / Be stamp’d upon it’ (1.1.49–50). Landreth (2012) explores Tudor coinage and the ubiquity of money in a range of texts, including KJ , MV and MM . See also groat. nurse, nursery (A) Nurse originally meant a wet-nurse, but came to mean a woman employed to take care of young children. The word is also used more generally to mean a care-giver or a person who looks after another, and metaphorically to mean something that nurtures. Early modern wet-nurses were commonly employed in wealthy families to feed the babies with their own breast milk. As a verb, nurse means to breast-feed or take care of, or, metaphorically, to nourish. (B) Two nurses of infants feature as characters in Shakespeare: the one who brings Aaron the Moor his bastard son, and is then killed by him to keep the birth secret (TIT 4.2), and Juliet’s Nurse. This Nurse, a quasi-maternal figure, has been a wet-nurse, having suckled Juliet when her own daughter Susan died, but continues to be employed in the family although Juliet is now a teenager. She gives a vivid description of weaning Juliet at the age of three, by applying wormwood, a bitter-tasting plant extract, to her nipple (1.3.20–39). Cleopatra, applying the asp to her bosom, imagines herself as a breast-feeding mother, in a tender image that conjures up the domesticity that she creates for herself in the latter part of her life (‘No more but e’en a woman, and commanded / By such poor passion as the maid that milks’, 4.15.77–8): Peace, peace! Dost thou not see my baby at my breast That sucks the nurse asleep? (AC 5.2.307–9) A queen would not normally breast-feed her own children in this period, and Cleopatra’s image here fits with her deliberate attempt to stress her part in common humanity. (Nursing is also associated with sleep and tenderness in LUC 813, and 2H4 3.1.5–6.) Earlier she refers to the death she seeks as ‘that thing that ends all other deeds . . . Which sleeps and never palates more the dung, / The beggar’s nurse and Caesar’s’ (5.2.4–7). (Theobald amended ‘dung’ to ‘dug’, which is perhaps more appropriate to the context.) Leontes, taking the child Mamillius away from his mother, says spitefully, ‘I am glad you did not nurse him. / Though he does bear some signs of me, yet you / Have too much 252

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blood in him’ (WT 2.1.56–7), referring to the belief that a baby imbibed moral characteristics along with breast-milk. Rosalind draws on the same idea in her mockmisogynistic diatribe to Orlando: ‘O that woman that cannot make her fault her husband’s occasion, let her never nurse her child herself, for she will breed it like a fool!’ (AYL 4.1.162–5). The tribune Brutus in COR , describing the popular acclamation for Coriolanus, sneeringly mentions ‘Your prattling nurse’ who ‘into a rapture lets her baby cry / While she chats him’ (2.1.206–7). Aufidius insults Coriolanus by claiming that ‘at his nurse’s tears / He whined and roared away your victory’ (5.6.99–100). The nurse or nursery is kind, care-giving, nourishing. Lear, disappointed by Cordelia’s response to his love-test, declares that ‘I loved her most, and thought to set my rest / On her kind nursery’ (KL 1.1.123–4), his use of the word hinting at the infantilization that will eventually befall the old man. Lucius in CYM recalls the virtues of his supposed page (Innogen in boy’s disguise) calling him ‘so feat, so nurse-like’ (5.5.88), terms strongly suggestive of the page’s femininity. In WT the kind-hearted Antigonus, charged with taking the baby Perdita to be abandoned, invokes ‘some powerful spirit [to] instruct the kites and ravens / To be thy nurses!’ (2.3.185–6). In MW Sir Hugh Evans uses ‘nurse’ to mean a housekeeper when he describes the relationship of Mistress Quickly to Doctor Caius: ‘One Mistress Quickly, which is in the manner of his nurse, or his dry nurse, or his cook, or his laundry, his washer and his wringer’ (1.2.2–5). The total dependence of Caius on Mistress Quickly suggests childishness. Caius himself, in his ridiculous French accent calls her ‘my nursh-a’ (3.2.58). Metaphorically, places or countries are several times imagined as sources of nourishment. Lucentio in TS calls Padua the ‘nursery of arts’ (1.1.2), Wolsey in H8 calls Rome ‘the nurse of judgment’ (2.2.92) and Bolingbroke in R2, preparing for exile, bids farewell to England, ‘my mother and my nurse’ (1.3.307). Queen Elizabeth in R3 apostrophizes the Tower of London as a ‘rude, ragged nurse, old sullen playfellow / For tender princes’ (4.1.101). Abstract qualities are similarly imagined; peace in H5 is the ‘dear nurse of arts’ (5.2.35) and melancholy ‘the nurse of frenzy’ in TS (Ind. 2.129). In VA Venus eulogizes Adonis: ‘O what a banquet wert thou to the taste, / Being nurse and feeder to the other four!’ (445–6). Duncan-Jones and Woudhuysen (Arden edn, 2007) note the complexity of this image: ‘taste is figured as a woman and as someone who either consumes or provides food’. (C) Iyengar (2011) has much information on wet-nurses. Guillemeau (1612) strongly advocates maternal breast-feeding but also has a section on nurses and their duties more generally, including weaning, which should take place when the child is two, and preferably in spring or autumn. Findlay (2010) has a long and helpful entry on ‘nurse’. See also Crawford (2014, ch. 5) and Paster (1993) on breast-feeding and nursing as sources of metaphor. Trubowitz (2012) discusses the image of the nursing mother in relation to ideas of national identity.

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O orchard (A) An orchard is an enclosed garden where fruit trees are grown, but may also signify a pleasure garden. (B) People often walk in the orchard because it is a private place of leisure. Pandarus urges Troilus to wait for Cressida there (TC 3.2.15), Lord Northumberland has gone there to be alone (2H4 1.1.4), Baptista suggests that he and Petruccio ‘walk a little in the orchard’ before supper (TS 2.1.110). The houses of the wealthy often have orchards attached, and the orchard can be the location of important action. In MA Leonato and his brother both have orchards. Antonio tells Leonardo that ‘The prince and Count Claudio, walking in a thick-pleached alley in mine orchard, were thus much overheard by a man of mine’ (1.2.7–9) where he gets the wrong idea about who it is that wants to woo Hero. It is in Leonato’s orchard that Benedick and Beatrice are fooled into believing that each is in love with the other (2.3, 3.1). Mercutio and Benvolio, looking for Romeo, observe that ‘he ran this way and leapt the orchard wall’ (RJ 2.1.5). This is the orchard beneath Juliet’s window, and Juliet is surprised that Romeo has gained access to it: ‘The orchard walls are high and hard to climb, / And the place death, considering who thou art’ (2.2.63–4). It is in Olivia’s orchard that Sir Andrew Aguecheek sees Olivia bestowing favours on Viola / Cesario (TN 3.2.5–6), and in the same place Sir Toby arranges for the duel between Sir Andrew and Viola (3.4.172). The orchard can also be a place of solace. In KJ the dying King ‘holds belief / That being brought into the open air, / It would allay the burning quality / Of that fell poison that assaileth him’, and Prince Henry then suggests, ‘Let him be brought into the orchard here’ (KJ 5.7.6–10). But in HAM this place is violated by the murderous act of Claudius. The Ghost relates to Hamlet how his death has been misrepresented: ‘ ’Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, / A serpent stung me’. But the truth is otherwise. It is during a post-prandial nap ‘sleeping within my orchard – / My custom always of the afternoon – / Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole’ (HAM 1.5.55–61). The regularity of Old Hamlet’s activity, and his sense that this is his ‘secure hour’ when he expected to be able to relax alone and safe, make the violation of this private and domestic space the more heinous. In JC Mark Antony reads out to the citizens the provisions of Caesar’s will: ‘He hath left you all his walks, / His private arbours and new-planted orchards . . . common pleasures / To walk abroad and recreate yourselves’ (JC 3.2.238–42), stressing the act of generosity which has made private space into a public amenity. Justice Shallow in 2H4 urges Falstaff eagerly: ‘Nay, you shall see my orchard, where, in an arbour, we will 255

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eat a last year’s pippin of mine own graffing with a dish of caraways [sweets made with caraway seeds] and so forth’ (5.3.1–3). Falstaff replies, perhaps with admiration or envy, ‘ ’Fore God, you have here goodly dwelling, and rich’. This orchard is clearly a treasured private haven. In LC the speaker tells how her lover betrayed her; she ‘heard where his plants in others’ orchards grew’ (171), implying that what should have been her own was bestowed elsewhere. (C) See also Thomas and Faircloth (2014), ‘orchard’. Willes (2011) has more information on English orchards. ostler An ostler is a groom or stableman employed to look after the horses of people staying at an inn. The ostler figures most in 1H4. The word derives from hosteller, or innkeeper (Kastan, Arden edn, 2002, note). The Carriers at the Gad’s Hill inn, which seems not to be well run, call for the ostler, and one complains that ‘This house is turned upside down since Robin Ostler died’. When Falstaff asks Prince Hal to help him to his horse, the Prince is insulted at the idea of doing such a lowly job: ‘Out, ye rogue; shall I be your ostler?’ (2.2.41). Falstaff includes ‘revolted tapsters and ostlers trade-fallen [unemployed]’ among the hopeless individuals he has recruited to his company of footsoldiers (4.2.29). In COR when Menenius begs Coriolanus to be calm, the latter replies angrily: ‘Ay, as an hostler that for th’poorest piece [of money] / Will bear the knave by th’volume’ (3.3.32–3). Holland (Arden edn, 2013) paraphrases this as ‘will put up with being called knave enough times to fill a book’. Brathwaite, Whimzies (1631) gives a Character of an ostler as sly and dishonest.

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P packthread Packthread is twine used for mending or tying up bundles. Biondello in TS , describing Petruccio’s bizarre turnout for the wedding, mentions that his horse has a woman’s crupper [strap passed under a horse’s tail to hold the saddle in place] ‘here and there pieced [mended] with packthread’ (3.2.61). Among the miscellaneous content of the apothecary’s shop in RJ are ‘remnants of packthread and old cakes of roses’ (5.1.47). paint, painting (A) Paint and painting have a range of meanings, many of them unrelated to domestic life. Those meanings which relate purely to pictorial art or to colour, are not discussed here. But to paint in the early modern period also meant to use cosmetics, and thus to use artifice, to dissimulate. (B) When Charmian consults the Soothsayer and is told, ‘You shall be yet far fairer than you are’, she takes this as a compliment: ‘He means in flesh’. But Iras reinterprets sarcastically, ‘No, you shall paint when you are old’ (AC 1.2.18–20). For women, using cosmetics is something of a last resort, often to ward off the effects of old age. This is reflected in Hamlet’s disgusted comment on the skull of Yorick: ‘Now get you to my lady’s chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come’ (HAM 5.1.183–5). He has earlier attacked women’s use of cosmetics in his misogynistic rant to Ophelia: ‘I have heard of your paintings well enough. God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another’ (3.1.141–3). Timon’s advice to the whores Timandra and Phyrnia is more crudely expressed: ‘Whore still, / Paint till a horse may mire upon your face. / A pox of wrinkles!’ (TIM 4.3.146–8). The use of cosmetics is a regular feature of the language of insult against women, and deployed by both sexes. When Hermia derides Helena as a ‘painted maypole’ (MND 3.2.296), she implies that her former friend uses cosmetics as well as being ridiculously tall and skinny. Othello mocks Desdemona’s tears in public: ‘O well-painted passion!’ (OTH 4.1.257). He means that she dissimulates effectively, but also that her display of emotion is as false as a woman’s painted face. In R3 Queen Margaret twice refers to Queen Elizabeth as ‘poor painted queen’ (1.3.240, 4.4.83), meaning both that Elizabeth is not truly a queen but also casting aspersions upon her femininity. ‘Does Bridget paint still, Pompey?’ (MM 3.2.76), Lucio mockingly asks the bawd, presumably referring to a prostitute. Later Pompey, also in the spirit of mockery, claims to Abhorson, the hangman, that painting is a mystery, in the sense of a skilled craft: ‘your whores, sir, being members of my occupation, using painting, do prove my occupation a mystery’ (4.2.34–6). Perdita, 257

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having rejected the idea of planting cultivated flowers which she calls ‘Nature’s bastards’ in her garden, connects this with a rejection of cosmetics: I’ll not put The dibble in the earth to set one slip of them; No more than, were I painted, I would wish This youth should say ’twere well, and only therefore Desire to breed by me. (WT 4.4.99–103) She would no more plant these flowers than she would wish that her use of make-up would kindle Florizel’s desire for her. To put on colour is to do something unnatural and unnecessary, as when Salisbury says that King John’s second coronation is like ‘double pomp . . . To gild refined gold, to paint the lily’ (KJ 4.2.8–10), or when Berowne refers to ‘painted rhetoric’ (4.1.235). The Princess of France rejects Boyet’s flattery: Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean, Needs not the painted flourish of your praise (LLL 2.1.13–14) In the Sonnets the poet tells his lover that the lover’s beauty needs no enhancement: I never saw that you did painting need, And therefore to your fair no painting set. (83) He dissociates himself from ‘that Muse, / Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse’ (21), and in Sonnet 67 dissociates his lover from ‘false painting’. In the ambiguous Sonnet 20 the poet begins with a claim that the youth, ‘the master-mistress of my passion’, has ‘a woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted’. The implication seems to be that this man is both like and unlike a woman: he is as beautiful as a woman, but unlike a woman he does not use cosmetics. Paint, like cosmetics, is meant to deceive. Claudius is overcome with guilt when Polonius gives Ophelia a prayer book to use as a pretext: The harlot’s cheek beautied with plastering art Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it Than is my deed to my most painted word. (HAM 3.1.50–2) Troilus derides the armies on both sides of the Trojan war for fighting over an unworthy object: ‘Helen must needs be fair, / When with your blood you daily paint her so’ (TC 1.1.86–7). The image gets its bitterness from the implied comparison of blood to a red cosmetic that enhances Helen’s beauty. (C) Karim-Cooper (2006) explores the culture of early modern cosmetics and discusses the meanings given to them in a range of texts. See also Vienne-Guerrin 258

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(2016) on the use of ‘paint’ in insults. Tuke (1616) inveighs against women’s use of cosmetics as a quasi-blasphemous activity: ‘How shall they looke up to god with a face, which he doth not owne? How can they begge pardon, when their sinne cleaves unto their faces, and when they are not able for to blush?’ (18). pancake, flapjack Pancakes were flat cakes (also known as flapjacks) made of a batter from flour, eggs and water and fried in a pan. They might be savoury or sweetened with sugar, and were traditionally served on Shrove Tuesday. Lavatch in AW , seeking for similes to indicate something appropriate, includes ‘as fit as ten groats is for the hand of an attorney . . . as a pancake for Shrove Tuesday’ (2.2.23). In AYL Touchstone has a long joke about mustard as the accompaniment for pancakes (1.2.60–2). In PER the fishermen offer Pericles their hospitality: ‘We’ll have flesh for holidays, fish for fastingdays, and moreo’er puddings and flapjacks’ (2.1.81–2). Fitzpatrick (2011) has more information under ‘pancakes’. pantler A pantler was a household servant in charge of food, a counterpart to the butler. In WT the Shepherd who has adopted Perdita in WT upbraids her at the sheepshearing feast for not matching the energy of his late wife who was ‘both pantler, butler, cook’ (4.4.56) for the occasion. Other references stress the lowly nature of the pantler’s work. Cloten, jealous of Innogen’s love for Posthumus, piles insults on him as ‘a base slave, / A hilding [good-for-nothing] for a livery, a squire’s cloth, / A pantler – not so imminent’ (CYM 2.3.122–4). Falstaff, asked by Doll Tearsheet for his opinion of Prince Hal, calls him patronizingly ‘A good shallow young fellow. ‘A would have made a good pantler; ‘a would a’ chipped bread well’ (1H4 2.4.239–40). parchment (A) Parchment is the skin of an animal, especially of a sheep or goat, prepared as a surface for writing. In this period it was used mainly for legal documents, such as parish registers, land deeds, and special copies of books; it was far more expensive, and harder to produce, than paper. (B) Parchment is often associated with legal documents by Shakespeare. Jack Cade in 2H6 is eager to see the killing of all lawyers, arguing: ‘Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment; that parchment, being scribbled o’er, should undo a man?’ (4.2.72–5). Hamlet’s meditation on lawyers in the graveyard with Horatio also associates them with parchment but makes a rather laboured joke of a different kind. Having pondered the futility of all the lawyer’s efforts to make money, and the reduction of all his paperwork to what will fill a small box, he asks Horatio: ‘Is not parchment made of sheepskins?’ to which Horatio responds, ‘Ay, my lord, and of calves’ skins too’. Hamlet then says, ‘They are sheep and calves that seek assurance [legal evidence of ownership] in that’ (HAM 5.1.107–10). He means that people who trust lawyers’ documents are fools. The dying John of Gaunt fears that under King Richard’s rule, the land of England has been leased out like a piece of property, and instead of being bound in by the sea is ‘bound in with shame, / With inky 259

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blots and rotten parchment bonds’ (2.1.63–4). In JC Mark Antony produces ‘a parchment, with the will of Caesar’ (3.2.129). Camillo associates parchment with materials on which records are inscribed; he says that there is no recorded example of a person who killed an anointed king and flourished: ‘nor brass, nor stone, nor parchment bears not one’ (WT 1.2.357). In an unusual image, King John, burning up with poison, says that he is ‘a scribbled form, drawn with a pen / Upon a parchment’ (KJ 5.7.37–8). Dromio of Ephesus also equates skin with parchment when he wittily tells Antipholus, who has recently beaten him, ‘if the skin were parchment and the blows you gave were ink, / Your own hand-writing would tell you what I think’ (CE 3.1.13–14). In E3 there is a sole example of parchment being used for another purpose. The King hears a drum being beaten and orders it to be silenced: ‘Go, break the thund’ring parchment-bottom out’, adding ‘For I will use it as my writing paper’ (3.49, 52). (C) The notes of Thompson and Taylor in HAM (Arden edn, 2016) are helpful in explicating 5.1.107–10. Bland (2010) discusses the relation of parchment to paper in early modern England. parlour The parlour, originally a room for conversation, had multiple functions in this period, and could be used for dining or sleeping as well as for a sitting room, though this is not reflected in Shakespeare’s plays. In TS Bianca and the Hortensio’s wife ‘sit conferring by the parlour fire’ (5.2.108), which sounds comfortable and intimate. Similarly in MA , when Hero sends her gentlewoman Margaret on a mission: Good Margaret, run thee to the parlour; There shalt thou find my cousin Beatrice Proposing [conversing] with the prince and Claudio. (3.1.1–3) Iago mocks the two-facedness of women, saying that they ‘are pictures out of doors, / Bells in your parlours’ (OTH 2.1.109–11), meaning that are silent in public but jangling with noise at home. Richardson (2002, 140–3) describes the furnishings of parlours. Girouard (1980, 104) notes that the parlour became a more important room in the households of the wealthy during the seventeenth century. See also Buxton (2015, 225–7) on the furnishings of parlours. pawn (A) A pawn is an item deposited as a pledge in return for the loan of a sum of money. To pawn is to give a pledge, to wager, to risk. (B) Mistress Quickly, pressed by Falstaff for a loan, can only raise it through pawning. ‘I must be fain to pawn both my plate and the tapestry of my dining chambers’ (2H4 2.1.140–1), she says reluctantly, but later is persuaded when he makes her feel guilty: ‘Well, you shall have it, though I pawn my gown’ (2.1.156–7). Falstaff is again involved in pawning in MW . Mistress Page, eager to join forces with Mistress Ford to get revenge 260

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on him for his courtship of the pair of them, suggests that they ‘give him a show of comfort in his suit, and lead him on with a fine-baited delay, till he hath pawned his horses to mine host of the Garter’ (2.1.83–6). Iachimo bets Posthumus that he can seduce Innogen and boldly offers to ‘pawn the moiety of my estate, to your ring’ (CYM 1.4.112–13) as a mark of his confidence. There are numerous figurative uses to express the idea of offering a pledge. When Lear threatens Kent with punishment for being outspoken, Kent responds by saying he has no fear of death: ‘My life I never held but as a pawn / To wage against thy enemies’ (KL 1.1.156–7). For him life is as a trifle which he can sacrifice. Antigonus in the same spirit offers to ‘pawn the little blood which I have left’ (WT 2.1.164) to save the baby Perdita. Aufidius incites the conspirators against Coriolanus whom he claims to have encouraged at his own cost: ‘I raised him and I pawned / Mine honour for his truth’ (COR 5.6.20–1). Innogen offers to take care of Iachimo’s valuables, and, ironically, to ‘pawn mine honour for their safety’ (CYM 1.6.193). In R2 Lord Northumberland argues for rebellion against the king as a way of retrieving the honour of the country; he wants to ‘redeem from broking pawn the blemished crown’ (R2 2.1.293). In 2H4, urged by his wife not to go to war, he uses the same image: Alas, sweet wife, my honour is at pawn, And but my going, nothing can redeem it. (2H4 2.3.7–8) Falstaff refuses a loan to Pistol in MW , telling his retainer that his generosity has gone far enough: ‘I have been content, sir, you should lay my countenance to pawn’ (2.2.4), meaning that he has allowed Pistol to make use of the credit that he, Falstaff, can muster. Camillo in WT asks to accompany Polixenes in his departure from Leontes’ court: If therefore you dare trust my honesty, That lies enclosed in this trunk which you Shall bear along impawned, away tonight! (1.2.430–2) The trunk is his body, which Camillo offers to Polixenes to take with him as a pledge of his good faith; ‘impawn’ means to pledge as security. Compare Hotspur in 1H4 4.3.108–9: ‘Go to the king, and let there be impawned / Some surety for a safe return again’. See also H5 1.2.21. (C) Boulton (1987, 88–91) has some account of pawnbroking in Southwark in this period. Korda (1996) examines Henslowe’s business as a pawnbroker, with some discussion of the role played by women in this activity. Jones and Stallybrass (2000, 26–32) discuss the pawning of clothing, and note that in the period ‘every social class pawned goods’ (27). pen (A) The early modern pen was a quill made from the feather of a large bird, sharpened to a point. 261

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(B) The pen is the tool of authorship, deployed to greater or lesser effect. The power of the poet is celebrated in Theseus’ famous speech: And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name (MND 5.1.14–17) The Chorus in the Epilogue to H5, however, is self-effacing about the author’s ability, beginning Thus far, with rough and all unable pen, Our bending author hath pursued his story. Benedick says that if anyone can prove he wastes more time on love than on drinking, then they should ‘pick out mine eyes with a ballad-maker’s pen’ (MA 1.1.237). In the Sonnets the poet refers several times to himself as a writer, where ‘pen’ is used to mean the writer’s skill. In 79 he believes his skill to be lacking for the task in hand: I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument Deserves the travail of a worthier pen. In 16 neither ‘time’s pencil or my pupil pen’ can give the young man a future in the way that offspring can. Other writers can praise him more effectively than the poet, ‘in polished form of well-refined pen’ (85), and ‘every alien pen’ (78) is able to do it, even the ‘antique pen’ of former poets (106). But 100 hints that the poet is writing for an appreciative reader when he asks his ‘forgetful Muse’ to ‘Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem’. The Prologue to TC makes an ambiguous statement: Hither am I come, A Prologue armed, but not in confidence Of author’s pen or actor’s voice (22–4) These lines, which appear only in F, have given rise to much discussion about the status of the text. Don Armado in LLL is a self-conscious author; in his letter which the King reads out he describes his sighting of Costard and Jacquenetta together in the park as ‘that obscene and preposterous event that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-coloured ink’ (1.1.235–6). The pen is ‘snow-white’ because it is made from a white goose-quill. In 1.2 Armado prepares to write Jacquenetta another even more ambitious letter: ‘Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio’ (1.2.176–7). Berowne also calls upon the pen as an instrument for the lover:

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Never durst poet touch a pen to write Until his ink were were tempered with Love’s sighs. (LLL 4.3.320–1) Pens are the tools of the trade for people other than lovers and writers. When the Clerk in 2H6 confesses that he can write his name Cade calls out, ‘Away with him, I say! Hang him with his pen and inkhorn about his neck’ (4.2.100–1). Dogberry wants Francis Seacoal to be summoned to take part in a legal procedure: ‘Bid him bring his pen and inkhorn to the gaol’ (MA 3.5.53–4). Gratiano in MV puns on the pen as tool when he threatens that if Nerissa takes any further interest in the doctor’s clerk (whom she herself impersonated in disguise), ‘I’ll mar that young clerk’s pen’ (5.1.237). Characters call for pen and ink for a variety of purposes: for example, Malvolio (TN 4.2.81), Titus Andronicus (TIT 4.3.105), the Earl of Suffolk (1H6 5.2.87), and Lucrece (LUC 1289). King John, dying from poison, describes his bodily decay vividly: ‘I am a scribbled form drawn with a pen / Upon a parchment’ (KJ 5.7.32–3). (C) Daybell (2012) discusses writing manuals and the preparation of the quill pen. See also ink and quill. pencil (A) In this period, a pencil generally meant a small paintbrush with fine hair tapered to a point. But the meaning of a writing instrument made of a thin piece of graphite enclosed in a cylindrical stick of wood was beginning to appear. (B) In Sonnet 16 the poet, advising the young man to marry, writes of the inability of either ‘time’s pencil or my pupil pen’ to give him immortality. Time, as an artist, has created the young man’s beauty, and the poet has tried, as his pupil, to emulate him. In Sonnet 101 the idea of the pencil as an instrument for producing beauty appears again. The poet imagines his Muse apologizing for having failed in his duty to praise the young man, answering Truth needs no colour with his colour fixed, Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay. ‘Lay’, meaning to apply colours to a surface, continues the image of painting. In TNK Theseus will not accept Emilia’s absence from the fight between Palamon and Arcite: She shall see deeds of honour in their kind, Which sometime show well, pencilled. (5.3.12–13) ‘Pencilled’ here seems to mean ‘delineated’. The pencil referred to in RJ , when the Servingman is preoccupied with making a bawdy joke about tradesman (‘the shoemaker should meddle with his yard and the tailor with his last, the fisher with his pencil and the painter with his nets’, 1.2.38–40), is probably just a substitution of penis, following on from the double meaning in ‘meddle with’. 263

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(C) See A very proper treatise, wherein is briefly set forth the arte of Limning (2nd edn, 1596, 2): ‘First thou shalt with a pencell of blacke leade . . . trace all thy letters’. Other early uses of ‘pencil’ make it clear that a brush or stylus is meant. penny, pennyworth, halfpenny A penny was a coin worth one-twelfth of a pound. The word, like pennyworth, signifies a very small sum of money. Pennies and halfpennies are often referred to. Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that ‘my thanks are too dear a halfpenny’ (HAM 2.2.240), meaning worth nothing. Costard calls the diminutive page Moth ‘thou halfpenny purse of wit’ (LLL 5.1.67). Falstaff’s tavern bill shows his priorities: ‘one halfpennyworth of bread’ compared with five shillings and eight pence for sack (1H4 2.4.527). Jack Cade boldly proclaims that when he is king, ‘There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny’ (2H6 4.2.60–1). Thersites mocks Ajax’s dim-wittedness: ‘I will buy nine sparrows for a penny, and his pia mater [brain] is not worth the ninth part of a sparrow’ (TC 2.1.68–70). King Henry IV will not give ‘one penny cost’ (that is, anything at all) ‘to ransome home revolted Mortimer’ (1H4 1.3.91–2). Camillo orders Autolycus and Florizel to exchange garments, observing that ‘the pennyworth on his side (Florizel’s) be the worst’ (WT 4.4.639); that is, he will get the worst of the bargain. Jacques in AYL says cynically, ‘when a man thanks me heartily, methinks I have given him a penny and he renders me the beggarly thanks’ (2.5.23–4), meaning both the excessive thanks for a trifle given by a beggar and also worthless thanks. penthouse A penthouse means an overhanging structure attached to the side of a main building, such as the eaves projecting from the upper storey of a house. This is the sense in which the word is used in MV , when Gratiano and Salarino meet to wait for Lorenzo: ‘This is the penthouse under which Lorenzo desired us to make stand’ (2.6.1). Elsewhere the word is used metaphorically. In LLL Moth gives a comic description of the lover ‘with your hat penthouse-like o’er the shop of your eyes’ (3.1.16). The First Witch in MAC calls down a curse on the sailor whose wife has insulted her: ‘Sleep shall neither night nor day / Hang upon his penthouse lid’ (1.3.19–20). Crooke, Mikrokosmographia (1615, ch. 3, 541) says that ‘the eie-browes are as a penthouse to cast of the humors that fall from above’. pepper, peppercorn Pepper is a hot pungent spice, used to season food, either ground or in the form of peppercorns. As a verb it could mean to discharge a volley of bullets or gun-shots, and in the passive, to be thus wounded. Sir Andrew Aguecheek boasts that the challenge he has written to Cesario is a bold one: ‘I warrant there’s vinegar and pepper in’t’ (3.4.143). But when Hotspur urges his wife to swear ‘a good mouth-filling oath and leave “in sooth” / And such protest of pepper gingerbread / To velvet-guards [person wearing garment trimmed with velvet] and Sunday citizens’ (1H4 3.1.250–2) he uses ‘pepper gingerbread’ to mean a sort of gingerbread where pepper is substituted for ginger, thus making it less spicy (Kastan, Arden edn, 2002, note). Pepper is associated 264

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with very small things. Master Ford remarks drily that Falstaff ‘cannot creep into a halfpenny purse, nor into a pepperbox’ (MW 3.5.135–6), while in 1H4 Falstaff considers himself to have lost weight since the exertions of the Gad’s Hill robbery: ‘I am a peppercorn, a brewer’s horse’ (proverbially tired and worn out) (3.3.8). Falstaff also uses pepper as a verb (1H4 2.5.192–4, 5.3.36–8), as does Mercutio (RJ 3.1.97–8). Fitzpatrick (2011) gives several contemporary views of the uses of pepper in the diet. Vaughan (1612) considers it ‘the best and wholsomest of all spices’ (sig. E1v). perfume (A) Perfume may simply mean fragrance or (pleasant) odour, or it may refer to scent created from essential oils, herbs, spices and, less commonly nowadays, the glandular secretions of animals such as musk and civet. In early modern England it was often used to mask unpleasant smells, and applied to accessories such as gloves. (B) The ambivalent quality of perfume is several times suggested in Shakespeare’s works. Lear describes the nakedness of Poor Tom as a freedom from all the animal products required by ‘sophisticated’ man: ‘Thou ow’st the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume’ (KL 3.4.101–3). Cassio’s unflattering reference to Bianca as ‘another such fitchew [polecat] . . . a perfumed one’ (OTH 4.1.145–6) recalls the animal origins of perfume and associates it with prostitution, as does Apemantus when he refers to the prostitutes that were part of Timon’s luxury lifestyle as ‘diseased perfumes’ (TIM 4.3.206). Perfume’s function in covering up bad smells is implied in his comment on the corrupt society that Timon has relinquished: ‘When thou wast in thy gilt and thy perfume they mocked thee for too much curiosity [fastidiousness]’ (TIM 4.3.301–2). Perfume also carries associations of social decadence for Hotspur when he describes the officer who comes to him on the battlefield to demand his prisoners as ‘neat and trimly dressed’ and ‘perfumed like a milliner’ (1H4 1.3.33, 36). The wicked Queen in CYM has learned skills from a physician including how ‘to make perfumes, distil, preserve’ (CYM 1.5.13), which she clearly intends to put to evil uses. In Marlowe’s Edward II the villainous Lightborn boasts of his skills as a murderer: ‘I learnt in Naples how to poison flowers’ (5.4.31). But perfume can also have more positive associations. Autolycus includes ‘perfumes for a lady’s chamber’ among the luxury items in his pack (WT 4.4.225), and Borachio mentions employment in the Prince’s household where he was ‘entertained for a perfumer . . . smoking a musty room’ (MA 1.3.53–4). It is an essential component of Cleopatra’s pageantry for her wooing of Antony; her barge is equipped with purple sails, ‘so perfumed that / The winds were love-sick with them’ (AC 2.2.203) and as the barge reaches land ‘A strange invisible perfume hits the sense / Of the adjacent wharfs’ (AC 2.2.222–3). The Duke of York in 2H6 is also conscious of the power of perfume when he promises to challenge the Lancastrians with the emblem of the house of York: Then will I raise aloft the milk-white rose, With whose sweet smell the air shall be perfumed. (2H6 1.1.251–2) 265

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Women’s (and sometimes men’s) breath is several times compared with perfume. Iachimo is almost overcome with delight when he comes out of the trunk into Innogen’s chamber and realizes that ‘ ’Tis her breathing that / Perfumes the chamber thus’ (CYM 2.2.18–19). Lucentio is similarly moved by his first sight of Bianca: Tranio, I saw her coral lips to move, And with her breath she did perfume the air. (TS 1.1.173–4) Venus, enumerating the various aspects of Adonis’s appeal to the five senses, says that if she had only the sense of smell he would still delight her: For from the stillitory of thy face excelling, Comes breath perfum’d, that breedeth love by smelling. (VA 443–4) The lover in Sonnet 130 is distinctly more ambivalent about the quality of his mistress’s breath when he notes that ‘in some perfumes is there more delight / Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks’. Perfumed gifts were important in the business of courtship. Gremio is keen that the books he sends to Bianca shall be ‘very well perfumed, / For she is sweeter than perfume itself / To whom they go’ (TS 1.2.148–9). Ophelia returns the gifts that Hamlet has given her, poignantly observing that ‘their perfume [is] lost’ (HAM 3.1.98). Her words recall her brother Laertes’ warning to her that Hamlet’s attentions to her are not to be relied on; they are Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting The perfume and suppliance of a minute, No more. (HAM 1.3.8–10) Shakespeare also uses perfume to suggest impermanence in Sonnet 104, where the passing of time is indicated by ‘Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned’. Finally, the power of perfume to cover up other smells is important. In TNK Arcite offers Palamon ‘garments and / Perfumes to kill the smell o’th’prison’ (3.1.85–6). But it fails when it is most needed. Lady Macbeth rubs desperately at invisible bloodstains: ‘All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand’ (MAC 5.1.50–1). (C) On perfumed gloves, see Welch (2011, 13–39). She cites Stubbes (1983, 96–7), who disapproves of the pride displayed by women who allow perfume, on beds, clothes and so on to pervade the whole house. She says that ‘the perfuming of accessories was widely practiced at all social levels’ (15). Dugan (2008, 229–52) treats AC as a play which ‘explores perfume as a stage property’ (240). In her fuller work, The Ephemeral History of Perfume (2011), she discusses Shakespeare’s association of perfume with eroticism in several works. On perfumed gloves, see the dialogue in Florio (1578, 204). 266

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petticoat A woman’s underskirt, usually of flannel or cotton, but sometimes made of rich material and designed to be exposed. Emilia lists petticoats, along with joint-rings, measures of lawn, gowns and caps, as items that she imagines a man might use to bribe her with to commit adultery (OTH 4.3.71–3). The Page, joking about Bardolph’s notoriously ruddy complexion, suggests that his eyes look like ‘two holes in the alewife’s petticoat’ (2H4 2.2.80). The Jailor’s Daughter in TNK is anxious that the Wooer may not want her since she has only ‘this poor petticoat and two coarse smocks’ (5.2.83). The petticoat may be used as a synecdoche for a woman, as when the weary Rosalind in male disguise enjoins herself to ‘comfort the weaker vessel, as doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat’ (AYL 2.4.5–7). Enobarbus is more cynical when he tells Antony that Fulvia’s death presents him with an opportunity to find another wife: ‘This grief is crowned with consolation: your old smock brings forth a new petticoat’ (AC 1.2.174–5). The petticoat is a woman’s garment, as breeches are a man’s. In 3H6, Queen Margaret and Richard of Gloucester acknowledge the manliness of young Prince Edward’s defiant speech: MARGARET

Ah, that thy father had been so resolved. RICHARD

That you might still have worn the petticoat And ne’er have stolen the breech from Lancaster. (5.5.22–4) For more details, see Linthicum (1936) and Findlay (2010), ‘petticoat’. pewter Pewter is a metal alloy, consisting mainly of tin, mixed with other metals such as copper or lead. It was widely used to make tankards and other tableware in this period. Gremio, itemizing the furnishings of his house, includes ‘pewter and brass, and all things that belongs / To house or housekeeping’ (TS 2.1.359–60). In 1H4 Prince Hal asks Francis, the drawer in the tavern, how long he has yet to serve as an apprentice; when Francis says that he has five more years (out of the usual seven), Hal comments, ‘By’r Lady, a long lease for the clinking of pewter’ (2.4.44). He means that this is a long time to learn such a simple job as a tapster. In 2H4 Falstaff is recruiting men to serve in his command. He makes a bawdy joke about the disparity between the ragged appearance of Wart and his presumed sexual prowess: ‘’A shall charge you and discharge you with the motion of a pewterer’s hammer’ (3.2.263–4), that is, very fast. Buxton (2015, 157–63) describes the uses of pewter in this period, with illustrations. Harrison (1587) considers the use of pewter vessels rather than those of wood, even among people such as farmers, to be a sign of the increasing prosperity of his times (201–2). physic, physician (A) Physic in early modern usage means a medicinal substance used to control or cure a disease, or else a purge; as a verb it means to administer medicine. A physician in early modern England was technically a man licensed by the College of 267

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Physicians to practise medicine, but the term is used more generally to mean a qualified medical practitioner. Most sick people would not have access to a physician unless they were wealthy. (B) These terms have both literal and metaphorical applications in Shakespeare’s plays. In AW which is much concerned with medicine, Lafew announces early on that the King ‘hath abandon’d his physicians’ (1.1.13), and the Countess corroborates this: ‘He and his physicians / Are of a mind; he, that they cannot help him; / They, that they cannot help’ (1.3.234–60). When Helena, using the skills inherited from her father, agrees to attempt to cure him on condition she is put to death if she fails, he accepts: Sweet practiser, thy physic I will try, That ministers thine own death if I die (2.1.184–5) The successful cure earns her the right to claim of the king a husband; but the man she chooses, Count Bertram, scorns to take her: ‘A poor physician’s daughter my wife! Disdain corrupt me ever’ (2.3.116). Although Helena’s late father, Gerard de Narbon, was evidently famous for his medical skill, she is still far beneath Bertram socially, and even the King’s promise to endow her with the honour and wealth she does not possess does not change his mind. Cerimon in PER has ‘ever . . . studied physic’ (3.2.32). He does not call himself a physician, and describes his practice as a ‘secret art’ by means of which . . . turning o’er authorities, I have, Together with my practice, made familiar To me and to my aid the blest infusions That dwells in vegetives, in metals, stones; And I can speak of the disturbances That nature works, and of her cures (3.2.33–8) This sounds quasi-supernatural, but accords with Paracelsian homeopathy, which was then becoming known in England. The status of the comic Doctor Caius in MW is ambiguous. Sir Hugh Evans refers to him as ‘Master Caius, that calls himself Doctor of Physic’ and later, when Master Page calls him ‘the renowned French physician’, explodes: ‘Got’s will and his passion of my heart, I had as lief you would tell me of a mess of pottage . . . He has no more knowledge in Hibocrates and Galen, and he is a knave besides’ (3.1.3–4, 58–62). Medical skill is deemed inappropriate to Lady Macbeth by the Doctor who attends her: ‘More needs she the divine than the physician’, he comments (MAC 5.1.74). Macbeth is angered by the Doctor’s refusal to deal with his wife: ‘Throw physic to the dogs, I’ll none of it’ (5.3.46). In CYM death is deemed the only ‘sure physician’ (5.4.7) and the same idea is expressed in OTH (1.3.312). Aaron in TIT , having stabbed the Nurse who attended on the birth of his child, declares jauntily, ‘Hark ye, lords, you see I have given her physic’ (4.2.164). Distrust of physicians is expressed by Sempronius, a 268

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friend of Timon of Athens, commenting on the faithlessness of Timon’s friends: ‘His friends, like physicians, / Thrive, give him over’ (TIM 3.3.12–13), implying that the friends are like physicians extracting money from dying patients. Timon echoes the sentiment when addressing two thieves: Trust not the physician – His antidotes are poison and he slays More than you rob (4.3.426–8) John of Gaunt warns King Richard that he is taking advice only from those who do him harm: Thou, too careless patient as thou art, Committ’st thy anointed body to the care Of those physicians that first wounded thee. (R2 2.1.97–9) The unreliability of physicians is the subject of an image in Sonnet 140, where the poet asks that his lover tell him what he wants to hear rather than the truth: As testy sick men, when their deaths be near, No news but health from their physicians hear. In LUC Lucrece numbers among the injustices in the world, the fact that ‘The patient dies while the physician sleeps’ (904). There is also the view that physic and physicians may use unpleasant means to good ends. Isabella in MM encourages Mariana to go ahead with the bed-trick ‘for ’tis a physic / That’s bitter to sweet end’ (4.7.7–8). Coriolanus appeals to the patricians as those that ‘prefer / A noble life before a long, and wish / To jump [hazard] a body with a dangerous physic / That’s sure of death without it’ (COR 3.1.154–6). The sickly Earl of Northumberland, given bad news to rouse him to fight, declares, ‘In poison there is physic’ (2H4 1.1.137). King Lear, in his great speech about social injustice, urges, ‘Take physic, pomp’ (KL 3.4.33), perhaps here meaning a purge. Physicians may be disliked, but are sometimes necessary. Kent suggests that Lear’s behaviour is like that of a madman: ‘Kill thy physician, and thy fee bestow upon the foul disease’ (1.1.164–5). Poins, hearing that Falstaff is ‘in bodily health’ jokes that ‘the immortal part needs a physician’ (2H4 2.2.102), implying that it is his soul that is in danger. Paulina tells the angry Leontes that she has come to help him as ‘your loyal servant, your physician’ (WT 2.3.53). He himself feels that the condition that has caused him so much pain, that is, female infidelity, is incurable: ‘Physic for’t there’s none’ (1.2.199). (C) See Iyengar (2011) for a more technical account of these terms and of Paracelsian theory and practice. The life and work of Shakespeare’s son-in-law, the physician John Hall, is discussed in Lane and Earles (1996). Barrough (1583) is a good source of contemporary theory and practice, with a long list of illnesses and suggested cures. 269

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picture (A) The noun ‘picture’ could have several different meanings. It could mean a painting such as a portrait, or a visual representation more generally, including a statue, painted cloth, or a miniature portrait. It can also signify an image or representation as opposed to reality. (B) Painted pictures did hang on the walls of great houses, sometimes in special galleries. The Countess of Auvergne is surprised by Talbot’s unheroic appearance because, as she tells him, ‘In my gallery thy picture hangs’ (1H6 2.3.36) and she had expected to see ‘a second Hector for his grim aspect’. Sir William Lucy later recalls this exchange in his anger at Talbot’s death: Were but his picture left amongst you here It would amaze the proudest of you all. (1H6 4.4.195–6) This picture has power, but when Volumnia says that honour means nothing without fame and is ‘no better than picture-like to hang by th’wall’ (COR 1.3.11), she disparages the picture’s importance. Proteus asks Silvia to give him ‘your picture for my love, / The picture that is hanging in your chamber’ (TGV 4.2.117–18), which she does, referring to it, presumably a portrait, contemptuously as ‘this shadow’ (4.4.118). The Painter in TIM has a portrait to present to Timon, which the Poet flatteringly praises for its verisimilitude: ‘What a mental power / This eye shoots forth! How big imagination / Moves in this lip! To th’ dumbness of the gesture / One might interpret’ (1.1.32–5). In the face of the Poet’s later defence of the didactic qualities of his own art, the Painter responds: A thousand moral paintings I can show That shall demonstrate these quick blows of Fortune’s More pregnantly than words. (1.1.91–3) Verisimilitude in art, as well as its power to move, are again in question in TIT . When Titus regards the mutilated body of his daughter Lavinia, he tries to express his horror: Had I but seen thy picture in this plight, It would have madded me; what shall I do Now I behold thy lively body so? (3.1.104–6) Olivia plays with the idea of a portrait when she responds to Viola/Cesario’s request that she remove her veil by saying, ‘We will draw the curtain and show you the picture’ (TN 1.5.226). Valuable paintings might be protected by a dust cover, like the one Sir Toby Belch refers to when he tells Sir Andrew Aguecheek that his talents should not be hidden, or allowed ‘to take dust, like Mistress Mall’s picture’ (TN 1.3.122). This may be a topical allusion, and Elam (Arden edn, 2008) suggests that Mary Fitton would have been an appropriate candidate. Falstaff refers to another kind of portrait when he tells 270

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Prince John that he wants his triumph over the rebel knight Sir John Collevile properly recorded, and if not ‘I will have it in a particular ballad else with mine own picture on the top on’t, Collevile kissing my foot’ (2H4 4.2.46–8). This is to be a specially commissioned ballad with a purpose-made image to decorate it. Mistress Quickly, aiming to promote a liaison between Falstaff and Mistress Ford, tells him to call when Master Ford will be out, ‘and then you may come and see the picture, she says, that you wot of’ (MW 2.2.82–3), which is reminiscent of the presentday euphemism about coming up to view etchings as a sexual invitation. Iachimo prepares to list the contents of Innogen’s bed chamber which will include ‘such and such pictures’ (CYM 2.2.25), though he may mean tapestries. Similarly, when the Lord in TS orders his best chamber prepared for Christopher Sly, telling his servants to ‘hang it round with all my wanton pictures’ (Ind. 1.46), he may refer either to paintings or tapestries. Lucrece calls to mind ‘a piece / Of skilful painting made for Priam’s Troy’ (LUC 1367), a ‘picture she advisedly perused’ (1527) which is described at great length. Woudhuysen (Arden edn, 2001) considers that this could be either a tapestry or a painting; the terms ‘painter’ and ‘painting’ occur several times in Lucrece’s long account of the work, which seem to favour the latter. Paulina’s remark that Leontes should not marry again ‘unless another / As like Hermione as is her picture / Affront his eye’ (WT 5.1.73–5) is ambiguous. She may mean a painting or a miniature, but in the context of what is to follow the word may here mean ‘statue’, as it does at 5.2.171, when the Clown says that ‘the kings and the princes . . . are going to see the queen’s picture’. Many references to pictures clearly mean portrait miniatures, then very fashionable. Benedick, having been persuaded that Beatrice is madly in love with him and that he should reciprocate, declares, ‘I will go get her picture’ (MA 2.3.254). Portia tells the prince of Morocco that one of the caskets ‘contains my picture’ (MV 2.7.11). It is a miniature that Olivia presses upon Viola: ‘Here, wear this jewel for me; ’tis my picture’ (TN 3.4.203). Hamlet remarks bitterly that those who despised Claudius before he became king would now ‘give twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little’ (HAM 2.2.302–3). When he later forces his mother to compare images of his uncle and his father – ‘Look here upon this picture and on this’ (3.4.51) – it is likely that miniatures were again intended, though stage practice, at least from the illustration in Rowe’s edition of 1709 onwards, makes use of larger pictures. Emilia compares two pictures in TNK 4.2, when debating the choice between Arcite and Palamon, which again are likely to be miniatures though not necessarily staged as such. References to pictured images in Sonnets 24 and 47 also suggest miniatures. ‘Picture’ may refer to a description in words. ‘He hath drawn my picture in his letter!’ says Rosaline of Berowne (LLL 5.2.38). Boult claims to have publicized Marina’s virtues exhaustively; ‘I have cried her almost to the number of her hairs; I have drawn her picture with my voice’ (PER 4.2.91–2). Great power can be imputed to such a description. For Iachimo, it was Posthumus’s praise of Innogen’s chastity that aroused his desire to test it: 271

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. . . he began His mistress’ picture, which, by his tongue being made, And then a mind put in’t, either our brags Were cracked of kitchen trulls, or his description Proved us unspeaking sots. (CYM 5.5.175–8) Gloucester intends to ensure that Edgar’s description is widely circulated: ‘His picture / I will send far and near, that all the kingdom / May have due note of him’ (KL 2.1.81–3). This might suggest a visual representation, but more probably means a verbal description. The word sometimes means an image as opposed to reality, as when Claudius says of the mad Ophelia, that she is ‘divided from herself and her fair judgment, / Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts’ (HAM 4.5.85–6). Venus calls the unresponsive Adonis a ‘lifeless picture, cold and senseless stone, / Well-painted idol, image dull and dead’ (VA 211–12). Thersites insults Achilles by calling him ‘thou picture of what thou seemest’ (TC 5.1.6), meaning that he is all show and no substance. Proteus falls in love with Silvia from hearing Valentine rhapsodize about her, and imagines he will be even more enraptured with her when he sees her in real life: ‘ ’Tis but her picture I have yet beheld’ (TGV 2.4.206). Aaron admires his baby son as an image of himself, calling him ‘the vigour and the picture of my youth’ (TIT 4.2.110). But the lifelessness of the image is what Lady Macbeth has in mind when she upbraids her husband for refusing to return to Duncan’s corpse: ‘The sleeping and the dead / Are but as pictures’ (MAC 2.2.54–5). (C) Sabatier (2017) has a detailed entry on ‘picture’ with an extensive art-historical bibliography. See also her entries on ‘painting’ and ‘portrait’. Meek (2009) has a chapter on visual art in HAM . Elam (2010) discusses the pictures on stage in TGV and TIM . Cooper discusses Elizabethan portraiture, with illustrations (2013, 11–19). Her view that the ‘middling sort’ were increasingly interested in commissioning portraits of themselves and their family members for display in their homes is argued in more detail in her article in Hamling and Richardson (2010, 157–77). pie (A) Pies are baked dishes of very ancient history, made from crusts of pastry dough which cover or contain a filling either sweet or savoury. The pastry may function simply as a container (and as such is often known as a coffin) or it may be edible in its own right. Pies were a favourite foodstuff in Elizabethan London. Pie Corner, on the corner of Giltspur Street and Cock Lane, just outside the ancient city of London, may have been so-called from the number of cooks’ shops there, although the name is also said to derive from an inn (the Magpie Tavern). It is the site where the Great Fire of London in 1666 came to an end. (B) Shakespeare’s best-known pie is probably the one in TIT , which Titus, in revenge for the wrongs done to his family and particularly the rape and mutilation of his daughter Lavinia, has baked for Tamora and contains the bodies of her two sons. When 272

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the Emperor Saturninus calls for Tamora’s sons to be brought forth, Titus responds triumphantly, Why, there they are, both baked in this pie, Whereof their mother daintily hath fed, Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred. (5.3.59–61) Titus’s entry, ‘like a cook, placing the dishes’, adds a touch of grotesquerie to the scene. The Clown in WT shops for various spices including ‘saffron to colour the warden pies’ (WT 4.3.45); these were pies made with warden pears, a type of hard pear that has to be cooked to become edible. Other references to pies are mainly metaphorical. Cressida jokes with Pandarus to conceal her interest in Troilus: PANDARUS

Is not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality and so forth the spice and salt that season a man? CRESSIDA

Ay, a minced man; and then to be baked with no date in the pie, for then the man’s date is out. (TC 1.2.243–7) Dates were common ingredients to sweeten pies, and the lack would leave the pie sour and shrivelled, without an essential ingredient, like the ‘minced’ or dainty man. ‘Date’ also puns on the temporal sense of the word; Cressida means that this man is past his prime. Parolles uses the same joke, also with sexual overtones, in AW when he tells Helena, ‘Your date is better in your pie and your porridge than in your cheek, and your virginity, your old virginity, is like one of our French withered pears: it looks ill, it eats drily’ (AW 1.1.155–8). Sex and pies recur in RJ when Mercutio refers rudely to the Nurse as ‘a hare . . . in a Lenten pie, that is something stale and hoar ere it be spent’ (2.4.127–8). ‘Hare’ and ‘hoar’ pun on ‘whore’; and a lenten pie contained no meat. Mercutio means that the Nurse is too old for sex. Buckingham says of Cardinal Wolsey, whom he hates, that ‘No man’s pie is freed / From his ambitious finger’ (H8 1.1.52–3), referring to the proverbial expression, ‘To have a finger in the pie’ (Dent, F228). In 2H4 Mistress Quickly tells the constables searching for Falstaff that he ‘comes continuantly to Pie Corner – saving your manhoods – to buy a saddle’ (2.1.25–6). Since the area was also associated with sex, her reference to his buying a saddle is a sexual euphemism. (C) Weis (RJ , Arden edn, 2012) explicates the obscene punning at length. See also Fitzpatrick (2011) and Clarkson’s exhaustive history of pie (2009). pin (A) Pin has several separate meanings in Shakespeare. It can be a small rigid piece of metal, pointed at one end, and used as a fastening to hold clothes together; cataract in the eye (in the expression ‘pin and web’); the stud in the centre of a target in archery. 273

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(B) Pin in the commonest sense, signifying something extremely small or insignificant, is used in MM when Lucio reproves Isabella for not displaying more emotion in pleading to Angelo for her brother’s life: ‘If you should need a pin / You could not with more tame a tongue desire it’ (2.2.44–5). The image is recalled, perhaps with unconscious irony, by Isabella in her subsequent encounter with her brother: ‘O, were it but my life, / I’d throw it down for your deliverance / As frankly as a pin’ (3.1.103–4). Richard II refers to the ease with which Death ends human life; having allowed a king a little time to ‘monarchize, be feared and kill with looks’, he ‘comes at the last and with a little pin / Bores through his castle wall, and farewell, king!’ (R2 3.2.169–70). Perhaps the most poignant use of the word is the literal one, when Lear comes back to consciousness after his curative sleep, and tests himself to see if he is really alive: I know not what to say. I will not swear these are my hands: let’s see – I feel this pinprick. (4.7.54–6) Desdemona asks for Emilia to ‘unpin me here’ (OTH 4.3.34), perhaps requesting her woman’s help in removing some of the gowns and petticoats Emilia talks about later (4.3.72–3). The medical sense of the word occurs twice: by Poor Tom, when he describes the ravages wrought by the fiend Flibbertigibbet, who ‘gives the web and the pin, squinies [squints] the eye and makes the harelip’ (KL 3.4.114) and by Leontes in WT in his jealous rage, imagining his wife and her lover as impervious to the gaze of others, ‘all eyes / Blind with the pin and the web but theirs, theirs only’ (WT 1.2.289). Pin meaning archery target is used by Mercutio in a characteristically vivid description of Romeo’s lovelorn condition: ‘He is already dead, stabbed with a white wench’s black eye, run through the ear with a love song, the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy’s butt-shaft’ (2.4.15–16). It also appears in a passage of bawdy word-play in LLL between Costard, Boyet and the ladies, where archery is used as a metaphor for sexual contact (4.1.130–7). Boyet says to Maria, ‘if my hand be out, then belike your hand is in’, meaning, as Woudhuysen (Arden edn, 2001) paraphrases, ‘if my hand as an archer and in sexual matters is out, then most likely yours is in (in both senses)’. Costard responds, ‘The will she get the upshot by cleaving the pin’, meaning that if Maria splits the pin which holds the clout [patch of cloth at the centre of the target holding the pin in place] she will get the best shot; that is, if she holds his penis, she will receive the result, his ejaculation. (C) See Woudhuysen for a lucid explication of the punning in LLL (Arden edn, 2001). Iyengar (2011) gives a useful medical account of web and pin. Arnold (2001, 218) mentions that Queen Elizabeth ordered over 100,000 pins of different types for use with her clothes. Shinn (2014) discusses the cultural significance of pins in the period. Tiramani (2010) gives useful detail about the precise functions of pins in attaching pieces of clothing to one another. 274

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placket (A) A placket is an opening in a woman’s skirt or petticoat which makes it easier to put on but also enables a man to make sexual contact with her. The term is commonly used as a synecdoche for a woman. (B) Shakespeare always uses the term with sexual implications. Edgar as Poor Tom in KL warns Lear against sex: ‘Keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets’ (3.4.94–5). Berowne in LLL apostrophizes Cupid as ‘Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces’ (3.1.184). Thersites in TC curses his fellow countrymen for the futility of the war, wishing on them ‘the Neapolitan bone-ache [venereal disease]. For that, methinks is the curse dependent on those that war for a placket’ (TC 2.3.18–19). The Clown in WT , confronted by the immodest greed displayed by Mopsa and Dorcas when they see the finery Autolycus has in his pack, comments, ‘Is there no manners left among maids? Will they wear their plackets where they should bear their faces?’ (4.4.242–3). The association between the sex and the sheep-shearing festival is continued by Autolycus when he remarks on the rapt attention paid by the crowd to his songs: ‘You might have pinched a placket, it was senseless’ (WT 4.4.614–15). (C) See Williams (1994, 1048–51) on ‘placket’ meaning vagina, and Findlay (2010, 326). Arnold (1985, 148–9) describes the placket in terms of dress-making. plate (A) Plate in this period has several meanings: coinage, domestic vessels and utensils made of or plated with gold and silver; metallic tableware more generally. As a verb, it means to cover or overlay, as with precious metal, or armour-plate. (B) Plate meaning valuable utensils is often listed among the important possessions of a person of high status. Cleopatra gives Caesar ‘the brief of money, plate and jewels’ (AC 5.2.137) she claims to possess, although it turns out to be significantly incomplete. Richard II takes quick but unwise action on the death of John of Gaunt, promptly seizing ‘the plate, coin, revenues and moveables’ (R2 2.1.161) possessed by his uncle. Cardinal Wolsey betrays himself to the King by mistakenly including among papers of state an inventory, thus importing The several parcels [items] of his plate, his treasure, Rich stuffs and ornaments of household (H8 3.2.124–6) Gremio, boasting of his wealth, points out to Baptista: First, as you know, my house within the city Is richly furnished with plate and gold (TS 2.1.350–1) Iachimo persuades Innogen to take a chest of his into her room for safe-keeping, emphasizing the value of its contents: ‘ ’Tis plate of rare device, and jewels / of rich and exquisite form’ (CYM 1.6.189–90). Capulet’s servants prepare for the dance to take place by setting aside the furniture and valuables. The Head Servingman orders, ‘Away with the join-stools, remove the court-cupboard [sideboard], look to the plate’ (RJ 275

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1.5.6–7). When Falstaff asks the soft-hearted Mistress Quickly for a loan of £10 (a very considerable sum) she is reluctant: ‘I must be fain to pawn both my plate and the tapestry of my dining chambers’. But he persists, and she begins to cave in: ‘Pray thee, Sir John, let it be but twenty nobles; I’faith, I am loath to pawn my plate’ (1H4 2.1.139–41, 152–3). Philo conjures up a glorious vision of Antony in battle where ‘his goodly eyes . . . have glowed like plated Mars’ (AC 1.1.2, 4), meaning clad in armour. King Richard describes Bolingbroke as ‘plated in habiliments of war’ (R2 1.3.28) when he appears for the joust. In KL the mad King, speaking of the ways in which rich and powerful people can hide sins and evade justice, says, in a vividly compressed image, ‘Plate sin with gold, / And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks’ (KL 4.6.161–2). (The phrase ‘plate sin’ is a generally accepted emendation for the Folio ‘place sinnes’.) When Cleopatra tells Dolabella of Antony’s munificence, that ‘realms and islands were / As plates dropped from his pocket’ (AC 5.2.90–1), she means coins of silver or gold. (C) Bequests of plate are mentioned in several of the actors’ wills in Honigmann and Brock, for example that of Richard Tarlton, who left to his son Philip various items including ‘goodes cattelles chattelles plate readie money Iewelles’ (1993, 57). Shakespeare gave his granddaughter Elizabeth Hall ‘All my Plate (except my brod silver & gilt bole)’ (107). pocket (A) A pocket is a pouch-like receptacle, usually quite small, sewn on or into a garment as a container. (B) Pockets in Shakespeare are often used for concealment, particularly of letters or private papers. In KL Edmund makes play of putting a (forged) letter from his brother Edgar into his pocket so as to fool his father (1.2.33–4), and later in the play Edgar searches the pockets of the dead Oswald, discovering there a letter from Goneril to Edmund. In OTH the pockets of the dead Rodrigo also reveal secret letters: Here is a letter Found in the pocket of the slain Rodrigo, And here another: One of them imports The death of Cassio (5.2.305–8) Concealment can be comic as well as tragic. In MA Beatrice’s real feelings for Benedick are revealed in a letter, as Hero says, ‘writ in my cousin’s hand, stolen from her pocket, / Containing her affection unto Benedick’ (5.4.89–90). In 1H4 the pockets of the sleeping Falstaff are searched by Poins, to discover the bill for his tavern expenses (2.4). Feste in TN puns cleverly in begging Orsino for money. To Orsino’s attempt to stave off Feste’s first request by saying, ‘O you give me ill counsel’, Feste replies, ‘Put your grace in your pocket, sir for this once, and let your flesh and blood obey it’ (5.1.28–30), meaning put away your sense of rank as a duke (‘your grace’) and put your hand in your pocket for money. 276

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Sometimes the idea of putting something in one’s pocket can suggest illicitly keeping it for one’s own use, as when Hamlet accuses Claudius of usurpation, calling him A cutpurse of the empire and the rule, That from a shelf the precious diadem stole And put it in his pocket (HAM 3.4.97–9) Cloten in CYM justifies the refusal of tribute to Caesar unless he ‘can hide the sun from us with a blanket, or put the moon in his pocket’ (3.1.43–4), with a similar implication. Caesar in AC blames Antony for a failure in communication, saying that ‘You did pocket up my missives’ (2.2.78). But having something in one’s pocket can also mean having it at one’s disposal, or being assured of it. Menenius says that Coriolanus is coming home from war and brings ‘a victory in his pocket’ (2.1.120). Cleopatra, eulogizing Antony’s largesse, says that ‘realms and islands were / As plates [silver coins] dropped from his pockets’ (5.2.90–1). points Points were laces with metal tags (aglets) on the ends, used by both sexes for tying up shoes or fastening pieces of clothing together. When Antony asks Cleopatra, ‘To flatter Caesar would you mingle eyes / with one that ties his points?’, he is suggesting that she is flirting with a mere servant. Poins in 1H4, teasing Falstaff, puns on the knight’s claim to have outfaced seven attackers (‘I . . . took all seven points [sword points] in my target’); Falstaff continues his untruthful saga, ‘Their points being broken –’ and Poins responds, ‘Down fell their hose’ (2.4.194–5, 207–8). Maria in TN puns on Feste’s assertion that he is ‘resolved on two points’: ‘That if the one break, the other will hold; or if both break your gaskins fall’ (1.5.20–2). Biondello describes the bizarre outfit worn by Petruccio for his wedding, which includes ‘a pair of boots that have been candle-cases, one buckled, another laced with two broken points’ (TS 3.2. 45–6). See Tiramani, ‘Points and aglets’ (2010) for more detail about the uses of points. pomander Pomanders were small balls of dried spices or perfumes compressed inside an ornamental metal casing, and hung on chains at the waist or neck to ward off infection, especially in times of plague. Autolycus is delighted to note that he has sold all his goods, and there is not ‘a ribbon, glass, pomander, brooch, table-book, ballad . . . to keep my pack from fasting’ (WT 4.4.602–5). Welch comments on the association of pomanders with plague remedies (2011, 16). poor john Poor John is the name for salted and dried fish eaten in Lent, and the subject for disparaging jokes in Shakespeare. When Gregory and Samson, Capulet household servants, are bantering, Samson says that he is ‘a pretty piece of flesh’, and Gregory responds with an insulting witticism: ‘ ’Tis well thou art not fish; if thou hadst, thou hadst been poor john’ (RJ 1.1.28–30). He contradicts Samson’s praise of his own sexual attractiveness, saying that he is more like old dried fish. Trinculo spots Caliban hiding 277

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under a gabardine and speculates as to his identity: ‘What have we here, a man or a fish? Dead or alive? A fish: a very ancient and fish-like smell, a kind of – not of the newest – poor John’ (TEM 2.2.24–7). See also fish. porridge, plum porridge, pottage (A) Early modern porridge (also called pottage) was a thick broth or soup, served hot and usually before the main course, rather than the mixture of oats and hot milk or water that we know now. It could be sweet or savoury. (B) When Pandarus disparages the soldiers who appear after Troilus calling them ‘asses, fool, dolts; chaff and bran, porridge after meat’ (TC 1.2.233–4) he suggests a sense of anti-climax, as when the main course of a meal is followed by something that should have preceded it. Sebastian tells Antonio that Alonso ‘receives comfort like cold porridge’ (TEM 2.1.10), he means that it is ineffective and unwanted. Porridge was a basic food, eaten at especially at the lower social levels, but not necessarily to be despised, although Hugh Evans the parson in MW says he ‘had as lief you would tell me of a mess of porridge’ when Master Page mentions Doctor Caius (3.1.58). Costard in LLL , having been sentenced to ‘fast a week with bran and water’ replies that he would prefer to ‘pray a month with mutton and porridge’ (LLL 1.1.285–6). Edgar as Poor Tom complains of how the devil torments him, having ‘set ratsbane [poison] by his porridge’ to tempt him to suicide (KL 3.4.54).The Duke of Alençon in 1H6 says scornfully that the English soldiers lack vitality because ‘they want their porridge and their fat bullbeeves’ (1.2.9). Porridge could be sweetened with dried fruit. Parolles by means of various analogies tells Helena not to hold on to her virginity too long: ‘Your date is better in your pie and your porridge than in your cheek’ (AW 1.1.159–60). Plum porridge was a spiced concoction, dating back to medieval times and earlier, ‘made of beef, dried fruits, white bread, spices, wine and sugar’ (TNK , Potter, Arden edn, 2015, 2.3.75), often eaten at Christmas time. Countryman 2 uses it as an insult when referring to the prowess of one of his companions: ‘Hang him, plum porridge! / He wrestle? He roast eggs!’ (TNK 2.3.75–6). (C) See Fitzpatrick (2011). Cogan (1636, ch. 10) has recipes for what he calls ‘rice pottage’ using milk, sugar and cinnamon. Dekker, in News from Gravesend, refers to Londoners vowing ‘to feast their neighbors with nothing but plum-porrege and mincepyes all Christmas’ (Dekker, 1925, 74) porringer A porringer was a small basin or bowl from which porridge was eaten. The resemblance of porringers to women’s caps is twice the subject of disparaging descriptions. Petruccio rejects the cap that the haberdasher has made for Katherina, saying it ‘was moulded on a porringer’ and is like ‘a velvet dish’ (4.3.66–7). The Porter’s Man in H8 describes the crowds gathering to see the baby Princess Elizabeth, including ‘a haberdasher’s wife of small wit . . . that railed upon me till her pinked [decorated with pinking] porringer fell off her head for kindling such a combustion in the state’ (5.3.44– 5). Linthicum (1936, 218–19) notes that this sort of hat, shaped like a basin, was 278

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fashionable in Elizabethan times; it was thus anachronistic for a woman in the time of Henry VIII . porter (A) The porter’s functions were to act as gate-keeper and regulate the entrance to a house or other building, or to carry luggage. (B) Shakespeare’s best-known porter is the one in MAC , who guards the entrance to Macbeth’s castle. This foul-mouthed, drunken individual, whose part was cut for nearly two centuries and sometimes thought to be non-Shakespearean, has an ambiguous role. He speculates on what it might be like ‘if a man were porter of Hell Gate’, and imagines himself in this role, welcoming in a series of the damned. At the end of the scene he concludes that ‘this place is too cold for hell. I’ll devil-porter it no further’ (MAC 2.3.16–17). Despite his contradiction, the chilling comparison of Macbeth’s castle to hell colours the scene to follow, when Duncan’s murder is revealed, and feeds into the supernatural suggestiveness that pervades the whole play. The Porter who appears in H8, also foul-mouthed, has a more mundane role, attempting, without total success, to control the crowds trying to get into the court for a sight of Princess Elizabeth’s christening procession. The Chamberlain is dismissive of the Porter’s efforts: ‘Where are these porters, / These lazy knaves? You’ve made a fine hand, fellows! / There’s a trim rabble let in’ (H8 5.3.66–8). The prodigality of Timon of Athens is marked by the fact that, as the senator says, there is ‘No porter at his gate, / But rather one that smiles and still invites / All that pass by’ (TIM 2.1.10–12). Someone to act as gatekeeper is important to Adriana in CE when she wants to have a private meal with her husband, and she urges the role on Dromio: ‘Come, sir, to dinner; Dromio, keep the gate . . . Come, sister; Dromio, play the porter well’ (2.2.205, 210). In RJ the Head Servingman asks for some more help at the Capulets’ feast: ‘Let the porter let in Susan Grindstone, and Nell, Anthony and Potpan’ (1.5.7–9). The porter obviously has to keep an eye on the comings and goings of the servants in addition to his other functions. Porters as bearers of heavy luggage are envisaged by the Archbishop of Canterbury in H5 when he describes the structured commonwealth of the honey-bee as a model for human society; among the workers who serve the emperor are The poor mechanic porters crowding in Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate (1.2.200–1) Moth in LLL makes a joke about Samson as ‘a man of good carriage, great carriage, for he carried the town-gates on his back like a porter’ (1.2.68–70). (C) Coleridge considered the Porter scene in MAC to be an interpolation, but De Quincey stoutly defended it. For more on the porter in MAC , and devil-porter figures in medieval art and drama, see Clark (Arden edn, 2015, 184–5). The servant Jenkin in Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness is put in charge of locking up the house on the fateful night when Master Frankford catches his wife in the act of adultery: ‘You, 279

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Jenkin, for this night are made the porter, to see the gates shut in’, a Servingman tells him, and he responds, ‘Thus by little and little I creep into office’ (Sturgess, 1969, 244). portion see dowry posset (A) A drink made with hot milk, curdled with spices and some alcohol, usually ale or wine, used as a remedy for colds or to induce sleep. As a verb ‘posset’ means to thicken and curdle, like a posset. (B) In MW the domestic connotations of the word are evident in Mistress Quickly’s invitation to her servant, John Rugby, to enjoy a posset with her ‘soon at night’ (1.4.6), and Master Page’s to Master Ford to ‘eat a posset tonight at my house’ (5.5.168–9). But in MAC Lady Macbeth’s giving of drugged possets to Duncan’s grooms to keep them asleep while their master is being killed contributes to the theme of subverted domesticity elsewhere in the play, and relates to the poisoning of her breast-milk that she calls for from the spirits (1.7.46). Shakespeare’s only use of ‘posset’ as a verb is by the Ghost in HAM when describing the effects of Claudius’ poison on his body (1.5.68–70, F only) similarly links milk and poison: . . . with a sudden vigour it doth posset, And curd, like eager droppings into milk, The thin and wholesome blood. (C) For the significance of ‘perverse milk’ and poisoned nutrients in MAC see Fitzpatrick (2007, 50–6). The medicinal qualities of possets are described in Bullein (1558, sig. R6–R6v) and A.T. (1596, sig. R2), especially as a remedy for the colic. pottle, pottle pot A pottle was a measure for liquids of half a gallon, or a tankard of this size. Iago remarks scornfully that Roderigo ‘To Desdemona hath tonight caroused / Potations pottle-deep’ (OTH 2.3.50–1) and later in the same scene comments crudely to Cassio on the excessive drinking of the Englishman, who ‘gives your Hollander a vomit ere the next pottle can be filled’ (2.3.79–80). Master Ford in MW tries to bribe the Host in order to get access to Falstaff: ‘I’ll give you a pottle of burnt sack to give me recourse to him’ (MW 2.1.191–2). Clearly this is a drink Falstaff likes; having asked for a quart of sack he then wants more and tells Mistress Quickly to ‘brew me a pottle of sack finely’ (3.5.27). In 2H4 Poins twits the red-faced Bardolph on his complexion, absurdly suggesting that he is blushing because of the drink he has taken, which he implicitly compares to taking a woman’s virginity: ‘Wherefore blush you now? What a maidenly man at arms are you become? Is’t such a matter to get a pottle-pot’s maidenhead?’ (2.4.73–6). prentice, apprentice (A) An apprentice in this period refers to a young person, usually but not necessarily male, bound to a master by a contract for a specified period of time, usually seven years, to learn a trade or craft. At the end of this his status changed to that 280

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of journeyman. Apprentices (or prentices, as they were more commonly known) were paid for by their parents to live with their masters, and were not permitted to marry during their term, which they were expected to complete, though many did not do so. London prentices had a reputation for rowdy behaviour, especially on Shrove Tuesday and May Day. (B) In STM John Lincoln worries that the activities of ‘strangers’ or aliens in London will undermine the livelihoods of apprentices: ‘They bring in strange roots, which is merely to the undoing of poor prentices’ (6.12). Elsewhere prentices must be controlled to avoid disturbance in the streets. The Sheriff orders ‘that every householder, on pain of death / keep in his prentices’ (7.22–3). Prentices were prominent in the Ill May Day riots of 1517 dramatized in the play, but Shakespeare does not show them in this light. Prentices are lowly figures. Parolles in AW , wanting to insult Dumaine, refers to him as ‘a botcher’s prentice’ (4.3.182). When Prince Hal in 2H4 disguises himself as a drawer in the tavern he remarks that to go from ‘a prince to a prentice [is] a low transformation’ (2.2.168–9). But in 2H6 an apprentice challenges his master and comes off best. Peter Thump accuses his master Horner the Armourer of having committed high treason in calling Richard, Duke of York, the rightful king, which Horner denies: ‘Alas, my lord, hang me if ever I spake the words. My accuser is my prentice, and when I did correct him for his fault the other day, he did vow upon his knees he would be even with me’ (1.3.198–201). Though Peter is fearful of facing Horner in the single combat that is ordered, he is encouraged by his fellows to ‘Fight for the credit of the prentices’ (2.3.72– 3) and comes off best when Horner confesses the truth just before he dies. That apprenticeship can be long and wearisome is attested by Bolingbroke’s image for the misery he will face in exile: Must I not serve a long apprenticehood To foreign passages, and in the end, Having my freedom, boast of nothing else But that I was a journeyman to grief? (R2 1.3.271–4) (C) Burnett has a chapter on apprenticeship and society. He argues that in STM ‘apprentice concerns are . . . covertly ventilated’ (1997, 26) and that fear of censorship may have prevented them from being more openly represented. Apprentices feature prominently in incidents of urban disorder, especially on Shrove Tuesday. See Griffiths (1996, esp. ch. 3), Innes (2007), ‘prentice’, and Lamb (2014). They appear in numerous plays of London life, for instance Heywood, Edward IV , part 1 (1599) and The Four Prentices of London (1594), Chapman, Jonson and Marston, Eastward Ho (1605), Beaumont, The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607) and Massinger, The City Madam (1632). prunes are dried plums, and in this period stewed prunes were often served in brothels because they were thought to protect against sexual disease. In Shakespeare this is the 281

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most common context for them. Falstaff insults Mistress Quickly by telling her, ‘There’s no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune’ (1H4 3.3.112), meaning a bawd, and in similar vein Doll Tearsheet says of Pistol that he ‘lives upon mouldy stewed prunes and dried cakes’ (2H4 2.4.146–7). In MM the bawd Pompey describes to Escalus an incident in a brothel where the pregnant Mistress Elbow comes ‘longing, save your honour, for stewed prunes’ (MM 2.1.89), which leads into a long inconclusive anecdote with much sexual innuendo. In MW Slender refuses the invitation to dinner offered by Anne Page, telling her that he bruised his shin in a fencing match at which the stakes were ‘a dish of stewed prunes’ and in consequence, ‘I cannot abide the smell of hot meat since’ (MW 1.1.267–8). The passage probably suggests that Slender sustained some injury which has lessened his appetite for women, ‘hot meat’ referring to prostitutes. The only innocent consumer of prunes is the Clown in WT who is off to buy ‘four pound of prunes’ for the sheep shearing feast (WT 4.3.47). Fitzpatrick (2011) gives some contemporary references to the medical uses of prunes. Bulman (2H4, Arden edn, 2016) has a useful note on 2.4.146–7. See also Williams (1994), ‘stewed prunes’, and Iyengar (2011), ‘prunes’. pudding (A) The early modern pudding was more like a kind of sausage: the stomach or one of the entrails of an animal, especially a pig, stuffed with minced meat, suet, oatmeal and seasonings, and boiled. The usage now survives in black and white puddings or blood pudding. The word could also signify the stuffing itself, or the guts of a person or animal. The sweet pudding did exist in Shakespeare’s time, but his references are to the savoury kind. (B) In TGV Lance tells how he has taken the blame for his dog Crab’s misdemeanours: ‘I’ll be sworn I have sat in the stocks for puddings he hath stolen, otherwise he had been executed’ (4.4.28–9). The fishermen who find Pericles washed ashore promise him generous hospitality, including ‘flesh for holidays, fish for fasting-days, and moreo’er puddings and flapjacks’ (PER 2.1.80–2). The term is associated with Falstaff in several plays. In 1H4 Prince Hal, in the playacting scene, mimics his father’s disapproval of Falstaff listing images that combine ideas of food and disease to make his size the more repulsive: Why dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly . . .? (1H4 2.4.436–41) Mistress Page in MW , affronted by Falstaff’s advances to her, plans to take action: ‘How shall I be revenged on him? For revenged I will be, as sure as his guts are made of puddings’ (2.1.25–6). When several of the characters get their revenges on Falstaff at the end of the play, Ford remarks scornfully of him, ‘What, a hodge-pudding? A bag of flax?’ (5.5.150). The idea of inflation is continued in the insults offered by others: Mistress Page calls him ‘a puffed man’ and her husband, ‘Old, cold, withered and of 282

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intolerable [excessive] entrails’ (5.5.152). In H5 when Mistress Quickly hears that Falstaff is ill she comments wryly, ‘By my troth, he’ll yield the crow a pudding one of these days’ (2.1.86). Iago mocks Roderigo’s admiring description of Desdemona as ‘full of most blessed condition’ with obscenities: ‘Blest fig’s end! . . . Blest pudding!’ (OTH 2.1.249, 251). Both references are probably sexual, the fig’s end suggesting the vagina and the pudding (sausage) the penis (see Honigmann’s note, OTH , Arden edn, 2016). (C) Fitzpatrick (2011) gives the views of some early modern dietaries on the ingredients for puddings, with recipes. All cookery books of the period give recipes for puddings. For example, A.W., A Book of Cookrye (1591), includes instructions on how ‘to boyle a Cony with a Pudding in his Belly’, and ‘to make a Pudding in a Turnep root’, also ‘A pudding in Egges’, ‘A Pudding in a Tench’, ‘a pudding in a carret root’ and ‘A Pudding in a Cowcumber’. puke see stocking pump Pumps were single-soled decorative shoes made for indoor wear and used by both sexes and also servants. Bottom, eager for his company to present themselves well at court, urges them to ‘get your apparel together, good strings to your beards, new ribbons to your pumps’ (MND 4.2.33–4). Grumio notes that the household servants are not properly dressed for Petruccio’s arrival and, among other defects, ‘Gabriel’s pumps were all unpink’d i’th’heel’ (not pierced with eyelet holes) (4.1.119). Mercutio and Romeo develop an elaborate joke based on the pumps that Romeo is still wearing the morning after the Capulets’ feast: MERCUTIO

. . . I am the very pink of courtesy. ROMEO

Pink for flower. MERCUTIO

Right. ROMEO

Why, then is my pump well flowered. MERCUTIO

Sure wit, follow me this jest now till thou hast worn out thy pump, that when the single sole of it is worn, the jest may remain, solely singular. ROMEO

O single-soled jest, singular for the singleness! (RJ 2.4.56–65) For more information, see Linthicum (1936, 253–5). See also shoe. purse (A) A purse is a small receptacle of leather or cloth made for carrying money and used by both sexes. Early modern purses often took the form of a small bag, the mouth 283

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of which was drawn together by strings; hence holding the purse-strings meaning having control of the money. The word is also used to refer to the contents of the purse, that is money or funds. (B) In OTH control of the purse is highly significant. Roderigo in his first speech declares himself betrayed by Iago, who has kept secret his prior knowledge of Othello’s marriage: ‘I take it much unkindly / That thou, Iago, who hast my purse / As if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this’ (1.1.1–3). Roderigo expresses the closeness of his connection with Iago in monetary terms: Roderigo finances Iago, but it is the latter who controls the outgoings. ‘Put money in thy purse’, Iago repeatedly advises the foolish gentleman; and when left to himself he remarks complacently: ‘Thus do I ever make my fool my purse’ (1.3.382). With Othello, Iago takes a different attitude towards money; he declares that Who steal my purse steals trash – ’tis something-nothing, ’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands. (3.3.160–1) He follows this up with pious platitudes about the relative values of wealth and peace of mind: ‘Riches fineless [boundless] is as poor as winter / To him that ever fears he shall be poor’ (3.3.175–6). Ironically, Desdemona too has occasion to consider what money is really worth when she loses her handkerchief; she tells Emilia tearfully that ‘I had rather have lost my purse full of crusadoes’ (3.4.25–6), and her intuitive sense of the scale of her loss proves correct. The purse belonging to Timon of Athens is also a matter of importance. His steward Flavius witnesses his master’s profligacy in dismay: He commands us to provide and give great gifts, And all out of an empty coffer: Nor will he know his purse (TIM 1.2.196–8) Timon refuses to ‘know his purse’ in the sense that he will not acknowledge the true state of his finances. His purse is used to maintain others who show no gratitude for it (3.2.69–78). There comes a time when ‘ ’Tis deepest winter in Lord Timon’s purse’ (3.4.14), and the false promises of help from his former friends are ‘like empty purses picked’ (4.2.12). Purses both literal and figurative have a part to play in the plot of TN . When Olivia offers Viola/Cesario money, she is offended: ‘I am no fee’d post, lady; keep your purse’ (1.5.276). Olivia then realizes that a gift of a different sort is in order, and sends a ring after Viola instead. But it is to demonstrate his love for Sebastian that Antonio hands over his purse to him when they arrive in Illyria. Sebastian is surprised by this gesture: ‘Why I your purse?’ he asks (3.3.43) and Antonio indulgently suggests it is for ‘some toy / You have desire to purchase’. Embarrassment ensues when Antonio is arrested for springing to the defence of Viola, whom he mistakes for Sebastian, and needs money, 284

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asking the astonished Viola, ‘What will you do now my necessity / Makes me to ask you for my purse?’ (3.4.331–2). The exchanges over this purse give Viola the first clue that her brother is alive. The control of the purse signifies power. Falstaff has heard that Mistress Page ‘has all the rule of her husband’s purse’, and that the same is true of Mistress Ford: ‘She bears the purse too’ (MW 1.3.50, 65). The Second Murderer has no compunction about confessing that his conscience is ‘in the Duke of Gloucester’s purse’ (R3 1.4.127). The Duke of Exeter is horrified by a courtier’s betrayal: ‘That he should for a foreign purse so sell / His sovereign’s life to death and treachery’ (H5 2.2.10–11). Falstaff fears that he suffers from ‘consumption of the purse’ (2H4 1.3.235). King Reignier is one ‘whose large style / Agrees not with the leanness of his purse’ (2H6 1.1.109). When Proteus commends Speed for his quick wit, the page demonstrates it in his reply, ‘And yet it cannot over take your slow purse’ (TGV 1.1.122). Guiderius remarks scornfully of Cloten: ‘This Cloten was a fool, and empty purse, / There was no money in’t’ (CYM 4.2.113–14). The empty purse means Cloten’s head, which Guiderius is carrying, lacking in brains. The Gaoler who confronts Posthumus in prison jokes about empty purses, when he offers his prisoner a paradoxical consolation for the prospect of being hanged, that he will be free of the results of drinking too much in the tavern and coming out ‘Purse and brain, both empty: the brain the heavier for being too light, the purse too light, being drawn [emptied] of heaviness’ (CYM 5.4.134–6). The purse lends itself to a pun. The Lord Chief Justice tells Falstaff that he has presumed too much on the good nature of Mistress Quickly and ‘made her serve your uses both in purse and in person’ (2H4 2.1.115). Antonio offers Bassanio everything he has: ‘My purse, my person, my extremest means’ (MV 1.1.138).

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Q quill Quills were writing implements made from the discarded feather of a large bird. After her rape, Lucrece prepares to write a last letter to her husband before she dies, ‘hovering o’er the paper with her quill’, uncertain how to express her feelings (LUC 1297). The poet of the Sonnets is troubled by his inability to write in proper style about his beloved. In SON 83 he considers that ‘a modern [commonplace] quill doth come too short’; in SON 85 he imagines other writers praising his beloved ‘with golden quill’, when he cannot do so himself. See also pen.

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R rebato A rebato was a starched flat collar or ruff for women, made of linen and lace, or a linen-covered wire frame made to support the collar. Shakespeare’s sole use is in MA , when Margaret, aiming to show her scrupulous attention to Hero’s fashionable wedding outfit and to mark the significance of the occasion, says, ‘Troth, I think your other rebato were better’ (3.4.6). Korda (2011a) discusses the rebato as a luxury item associated with the labour of immigrant women. rhenish is a dry white wine made in the Rhine region of Germany. Hamlet describes with disgust how Claudius ‘drains his draughts of Rhenish down’ (HAM 1.4.10) but the Gravedigger is more tolerant when he recalls how Yorick ‘poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once’ (5.1.170). Portia considers that her German suitor, the Duke of Saxony’s nephew, will be distracted from choosing the right casket if ‘a deep glass of Rhenish wine’ is put on the wrong one (MV 1.2.91). Salarino, wanting to insult Shylock, tells him that there is more difference between his blood and that of Jessica his daughter ‘than there is between red wine and Rhenish’ (3.1.36). Thus Jessica’s blood is claimed as ‘white’ and pure, unlike her father’s. See also wine. ribbon, riband (A) A ribbon is a long narrow strip of fabric, used in this period for lacing shoes, garters and bonnets, and as decoration for hats, sleeves and so on. (B) In Autolycus’s pack, a good indicator of what was regarded as commonplace finery, are ‘ribbons of all the colours of the rainbow’ (4.4.206). Ribbons feature in the country dancing scene in TNK ; the Schoolmaster asks, ‘Where be your ribbons, maids?’ (3.5.29), suggesting either that they were part of the women’s costumes or that they were used as part of the dance. In LLL Costard, perhaps with an eye to wooing Jaquenetta, asks Berowne, ‘Pray you sir, how much carnation ribbon may a man buy for a remuneration?’ Berowne, learning that Costard defines remuneration as a ‘halfpenny farthing’, replies that he will get ‘three farthing-worth of silk’ for his money (3.1.141– 5). Ribbon could be used to renovate old shoes, as when Mercutio teases the peaceable Benvolio by saying that he would quarrel with someone ‘for tying his new shoes with old riband’ (3.1.28–9), and Bottom advises his friends to prepare for their appearance in the play before the Duke’s company by getting ‘new ribbons to your pumps’ (4.2.34). When Claudius in HAM calls Laertes’ skill in fencing ‘a very ribbon in the cap of youth’ (4.7.77), he means that it is the pinnacle of his accomplishments. (C) See Linthicum (1936, 283) on ribbon. 289

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ring, joint-ring (A) A ring is a small circular band often made of precious metal and worn on the finger by either sex. It is an important prop in many of Shakespeare’s plays, with considerable symbolic significance, despite being small, and not easily identifiable for an audience in the theatre. Rings can have multiple functions: in particular, they can be exchanged between couples, given as gifts or tokens, used as proof of identity. They do not figure to any extent in Shakespeare in relation to the solemnization of marriage. A joint-ring is a ring for the finger formed of two hinged parts, intended to make one whole and often given by lovers. The ring can also stand metaphorically for a woman’s vagina. (B) Rings in Shakespeare can be simple objects of value and display, as when in TS Petruccio rushes Katherina into marriage, gaily promising ‘We will have rings, and things, and fine array’ (2.1.327), and later that they will ‘revel it as bravely as the best, / With silken coats and caps, and golden rings’ (4.3.56–7). When Christopher Sly is to be fooled into thinking himself a lord, he will be ‘wrapped in sweet clothes, rings put on his fingers’ (TS Ind. 1.37). Of more emotional significance is the ring that, as Tubal in MV reports to Shylock, his daughter Jessica exchanged in Genoa for a monkey; Shylock painfully identifies it as a precious token from his dead wife: ‘It was my turquoise: I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys’ (MV 3.2.110–12). Portia commits herself and all her wealth to Bassanio, giving him a ring (MV 3.2.157–71); her speech makes clear the full implications of a woman’s changed legal status on becoming a wife. Rings given as tokens frequently go astray and create problematic situations. Those that Bassanio and Gratiano have given to their wives which subsequently seem to have been given to two young men, of course the wives Portia and Nerissa in disguise, create only temporary comic difficulties in a long passage of disputation between the two pairs of spouses (MV 5.1.147–208), and afford the opportunity for the play to end on a sexual pun: Gratiano, having declared his longing to take his wife to bed, concludes: Well, while I live, I’ll fear no other thing So sore as keeping safe Nerissa’s ring. (MV 5.1.307) The pun derives from the fact that ‘ring’ could signify not only marital fidelity but also the woman’s sexual organ (and ‘thing’ also could mean the vagina, as in HAM 3.2.112– 14). In CE a ring given by the Courtesan to her lover Antipholus of Ephesus, who has promised her a valuable chain, is one of several props used in the play as anchors for the plot about confused identities. It adds to the complications when she demands it back from his identical twin brother: Give me the ring of mine you had at dinner, Or for my diamond the chain you promis’d, And I’ll be gone, sir, and not trouble you. (4.3.67–9) 290

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Antipholus of Syracuse, baffled by this demand, refuses. The Courtesan then goes to the house of Antipholus of Ephesus, where she joins other creditors, to ask again for the ring, and finds him being arrested for debt. All is resolved in the final scene when the twin brothers are brought face to face and the Courtesan’s diamond ring is part of a general restitution involving parents and children, a husband and wife, and brothers, as well as money and valuables. Rings are involved in mistaken identity of another kind in TN . Olivia, having fallen in love with Viola in her male disguise as Cesario, sends Malvolio on a trumped-up mission to make Viola return: Run after that same peevish messenger The county’s man. He left this ring behind him, Would I or not. Tell him I’ll none of it ... If that the youth will come this way tomorrow, I’ll give him reasons for’t. (1.5.293–9) When the supercilious Malvolio catches up with Viola, bringing the ring, she is quick enough to work out Olivia’s ploy, and goes along with it, presumably to save Olivia embarrassment, saying, ‘She took the ring of me, I’ll none of it’. But once alone, she realizes more fully what the ring signifies: I left no ring with her. What means this lady? Fortune forbid my outside have not charmed her. . . . She loves me sure. The cunning of her passion Invites me in this churlish messenger. None of my lord’s ring? Why, he sent her none. I am the man. (2.2.17–18, 22–5) This ring signifies a trick rather than the token of love it was in tended for; but when Olivia finds the Cesario she was seeking, in Viola’s twin Sebastian, she loses no time in securing him with a ceremony before a priest, which has been ‘strengthened by interchangement of your rings’ (5.1.155). This ring has been accepted by a willing recipient, and exchanged for another as part of a true contract. In CYM , a tragicomedy, the misappropriation of a ring by someone who has no right to it causes more significant emotional distress. Innogen gives her husband Posthumus a diamond ring, inherited from her dead mother, as a parting gift when he goes into exile, and he in turn gives her a bracelet; both tokens of love fall into the wrong hands when Posthumus rashly enters into a wager with the villainous Iachimo, putting up his ring, his most valuable possession, as a stake against a large sum of money, that the latter will not be able to seduce Innogen. Posthumus is completely convinced of Innogen’s fidelity, but Iachimo is more cynical: 291

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You may wear her in title yours [claim her as a legal possession], but you know strange fowl light upon neighbouring ponds. Your ring may be stolen too. (1.4.91–3) For Posthumus the ring has much more than monetary value: ‘I will wage against your gold, gold to it. My ring I hold dear as my finger: ’tis part of it’ (1.4.135–6) Iachimo, made aware that he has no hope of seducing Innogen, cheats by stealing the bracelet from her arm when she is asleep, and then presenting it to Posthumus as evidence that he has slept with her. He gives details of her room and of her body that he has gained from spying on her, and Posthumus is convinced and quickly gets rid of the ring: ‘It is a basilisk unto mine eye, / Kills me to look on’t’ (2.4.107–8). In the final scene Iachimo, now a captive of the Britons, is made by Innogen (in disguise) to reveal how he came by the ring, and he takes the opportunity to make a full confession: I am glad to be constrained to utter that Which torments me to conceal. By villainy I got this ring. ’Twas Leonatus’ jewel (5.5.141–3) This (as in CE ) signals a flow of discoveries and revelations, and the reconcilement of Innogen to Posthumus and of Cymbeline to his family, the circular jewels, ring and bracelet, signifying the completeness of love and fidelity. Rings, especially signets, can be used as proofs of identity. In R2 the Duke of York, desperately trying to raise money, sends a messenger to his sister with his ring as authorization: Sirrah, get thee to Pleshy to my sister Gloucester; Bid her send presently a thousand pound. Hold, take my ring. (2.2.90–2) The disguised Kent in KL sends his ring to Cordelia in order to assure her that he is involved with the attempt to rescue Lear: If you shall see Cordelia, As fear not but you shall, show her this ring, And she will tell you who your fellow is That yet you do not know. (3.1.42–5) In H8 the King uses his signet ring to assert his authority and to save Archbishop Cranmer from persecution at the hands of his enemies, especially Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor. When Cranmer is summoned to appear before the Privy Council, he appeals to the King for protection, and Henry gives him his ring. 292

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Gardiner is about to send Cranmer to the Tower of London when Cranmer amazes the assembly by producing the ring, which they at once identify: CHANCELLOR

This is the king’s ring. SURREY

’Tis no counterfeit.

SUFFOLK

’Tis the right ring, by heaven. I told ye all, When we first put this dangerous stone a-rolling, ’Twould fall upon ourselves. (5.2.136–9) Most poignantly, the corpse of the murdered Bassianus in TIT is identified in the darkness of the pit where he has been thrown by the fact that ‘Upon his bloody finger he doth wear / A precious ring that lightens all this hole’ (TIT 2.2.226–7). In AW a readily identifiable ring, a family heirloom, has a vital role to play as a plot device. Bertram, married unwillingly to Helena whom he regards disparagingly for her low social status, abandons her after their wedding and sets her an apparently impossible test before he will accept her as his wife: When thou canst get the ring upon my finger, which never shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body that I am father to, then call me husband; but in such a ‘then’ I write a ‘never’. (3.2.55–8) But when Helena meets Diana, who is being solicited by Bertram, it does not take her long to come up with a plan. The ring is an ancestral one ‘that downward hath succeeded in his house / From son to son some four or five descents / Since the first father wore it’ (3.7.22–5). Diana is to demand it of Bertram in exchange for agreeing to sleep with him, but she will be replaced in the dark by Helena. When Diana and Bertram meet to arrange the encounter, he is at first reluctant to give up the ring, claiming its significance as a symbol of patrilineal descent: It is an honour ’longing to our house, Bequeathed down from many ancestors, Which were the greatest obloquy i’th’world In me to lose. (4.2.42–5) But Diana counters his argument with an assessment of the ring’s meaning on her own terms, implicitly revealing his sexual double standards: Mine honour’s such a ring; My chastity’s the jewel of our house, 293

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Bequeathed down from many ancestors, Which were the greatest obloquy i’th’world In me to lose. (4.2.45–9) When Bertram hands over the ring, Diana promises him that ‘on your finger in the night I’ll put / Another ring’ (4.2.61–2). In the final scene this ‘other ring’ is produced by Bertram and recognized by the King as one he had given to Helena to use as a signal to him should she ever be in trouble. Diana then produces Bertram’s ring, and a pregnant Helena enters, having triumphantly passed the test set by Bertram, ‘a pilgrim of love to acquire Bertram’s ring, redeem him and her true role as wife’ (Findlay, 2010, 184). The ring given to the wrong person also features in the resolution of the plot in TGV . Proteus and Julia exchange rings in token of their mutual love when they are forced to part, but when Proteus falls in love with Silvia he has little hesitation in sending it to her, although he does recall that ‘She loved me well delivered it to me’ (4.4.71). This is a bitter moment for Julia, who is in male disguise as Sebastian, tasked with conveying the ring to her rival. But Silvia is more faithful than Proteus and refuses to accept the ring: The more shame for him that he send it me . . . Though his false finger have profaned the ring, Mine shall not do his Julia so much wrong. (4.4.131, 134–5) In a confusing moment in the final scene, which has been interpreted in different ways, Julia, having fainted after Proteus’s apology to Valentine for having tried to woo Silvia, herself apologizes for not having delivered the ring to Silvia and produces it. Proteus recognizes it as the one he gave Julia, at which Julia again apologizes, saying ‘O, cry you mercy, sir, I have mistook. / This is the ring you sent to Silvia’ (5.4.93–4). Having established that the second ring is the one she originally gave Proteus, she throws off her boy’s disguise, and the play is enabled to end happily with the two pairs of lovers reunited. (C) See Cressy (1997) and Gillis (1985) on rings in courtship and betrothal. Carroll’s annotations in TGV (Arden edn, 2004) helpfully resolve some of the confusions over the rings in the final scene. Findlay (2010) discusses the gendered aspects of ring-giving and their sexual significance. Giese (2006) discuses rings as love tokens in TGV and TN . Jacobs (2001) argues effectively that Bertram’s ring in AW symbolizes sexual intercourse. Orlin (2010, 299–308) notes that rings featured prominently in wills as remembrances. ruff The ruff was a neckband or collar of linen, lined or stiffened with starch, worn by both sexes, pleated so as to stand out from the neck. Ruffs, originally introduced from France, went through various fashions in the early modern period; they could be narrow or extremely wide, requiring large quantities of fabric, pleated in complex ways, made in layers. Pistol’s threat to ‘murder’ (damage) Doll Tearsheet’s ruff causes her to jeer at

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his assumption of bravado: ‘You a captain? You slave! For what? For tearing a poor whore’s ruff in a bawdy-house?’ (2H4 2.4.141–2). Petruccio promises Katherina that they will return to her father’s house in fine style, ‘With silken coats and caps, and golden rings, / With ruffs and cuffs, and farthingales and things’ (TS 4.3.57–8). Linthicum (1936, 157–61) gives a history of the ruff in England. See also Findlay (2010), ‘ruff’. rush, rush candle (A) Rushes, hollow-stemmed waterside or marsh plants, had various domestic uses in early modern England, especially as replaceable floor coverings, either loose or woven into mats, but also for the seats of chairs. The stiff stems could be made into candles or twisted into rings. Metaphorically, they represent something ineffectual or easily broken. (B) In 1H4, Glendower interprets his daughter’s Welsh speech to his son-in-law, Mortimer: ‘She bids you on the wanton rushes lay you down’ (3.1.209), which suggests a rich and soft floor covering. Iachimo, entering the chamber of the sleeping Innogen, recalls another man’s similarly stealthy entry: Our Tarquin thus Did softly press the rushes, ere he wakened The chastity he wounded. (CYM 2.2.12–14) Grumio is anxious that all shall be ready for Petruccio’s return to his house: ‘Is supper ready, the house trimmed, rushes strewed, cobwebs swept . . .?’ (TS 4.1.40–1). The strewing of new rushes before an important event was regularly done. In 2H4 before the return of the new king Henry V from his coronation, the scene opens with the SD (in F) ‘Enter Strewers of rushes’, who call at once for ‘more rushes, more rushes’ (5.5.1). The fragility of the rush is frequently figured. Othello uses the word when assuring the bystanders that they are in no danger from him: ‘Man but a rush against Othello’s breast / And he retires’ (OTH 5.2.268–9). In KJ Faulconbridge the Bastard threatens Hubert with an easily procured death: ‘A rush will be a beam / To hang thee on’ (4.2. 129–30). Coriolanus, speaking of the unreliability of the common people, says that ‘He that depends / Upon your favours swims with fins of lead / And hews down oaks with rushes’ (COR 1.1.174–6). The one use of the rush to mean a ring is in AW , where Lavatch, seeking for similes to convey the idea of a good fit, uses ‘as [fit as] Tib’s rush for Tom’s forefinger’ (AW 2.2.20), with sexual innuendo on the slang meaning of rush for a woman’s vagina. (C) In the play Arden of Faversham one of the clues that Arden was murdered in his own house and his body moved elsewhere is that a rush from the floor of the chamber sticks to his shoe.

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S sack (A) Sack, a popular drink, was a fortified white wine imported from Spain and the Canary Islands. Sherris sack meant sherry, imported from Jeres. Burnt sack was sack heated or mulled with ingredients such as sugar, spices and eggs. English taste favoured sweet drinks. (B) When Christopher Sly is being tricked into believing himself to be a lord, the Servingman offers him a cup of sack, but his desire is for ‘a pot of small ale’ and he asserts firmly, ‘I ne’er drank sack in my life’ (TS Ind. 2, 8), associating it with the diet of the upper classes. In TEM , Stephano has survived the shipwreck by riding on a butt of sack, no doubt the tipple in the house of Alonso, whom he serves. Caliban, who is unused to strong drink, becomes inebriated. ‘My man-monster hath drowned his tongue in drink’, remarks Stephano (3.2.11). At the end of the drinking scene in TN , Sir Toby invites Sir Andrew to continue carousing: ‘Come come, I’ll go burn some sack; ’tis too late to go to bed now’ (2.3.185–6). Warm mulled wine will end their day pleasantly. Burnt sack is also regarded as a convivial drink in MW 3.1 when the Host of the tavern aims to reconcile Dr Caius and Sir Hugh Evans by inviting them back to share it with him. A notable drinker of sack in Shakespeare is Falstaff. He is introduced in 1H4 by Prince Hal’s mocking response to his question as to the time of day: ‘Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of old sack, and unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou wouldst truly know. What a devil hast thou to do with the time of day? Unless minutes were cups of sack, and minutes capons’ (1.2.2–7). Poins refers to him as ‘Sir John Sack and Sugar’ (1.2.107). Kastan’s note (Arden edn, 2002) explains that ‘the desire for sweeter wines, achieved by adding sugar, was seen as a sign of old age’. In 2.4, where Falstaff makes his appearance demanding, ‘Give me a cup of sack, boy’ (2.4.111), Hal jokingly gives Poins a pennyworth of sugar, which he says has been ‘clapped even now into my hand by an underskinker [waiter]’ (2.4.23–4). Falstaff later complains that the sack has been mixed with lime (2.4.120), which was used as a preservative. When his receipt for meals at the tavern is taken from his pocket by Hal, it reveals that he owes 5 shillings and 8 pence for two gallons of sack, but only a halfpenny for bread. The sack motif is most fully developed in 2H4 when Falstaff delivers a mock encomium on the virtues of sherris sack: A good sherris sack hath a twofold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain, dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapours which environ it, makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes . . .

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The second property of your excellent sherries is the warming of the blood . . . If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I would teach them should be to forswear thin potations, and to addict themselves to sack. (4.2.94–123) In his love letter to Mistress Page in MW Falstaff even uses his favourite tipple as evidence of their affinity: ‘You love sack, and so do I’ (2.1.8). He is something of a connoisseur of sack, sending Bardolph for a quart of sack with a toast [hot toasted bread] in it, then changing his mind later and ordering ‘a pottle of sack’; when Bardolph asks if he would like it with eggs, he responds grandly, ‘Simple of itself. I’ll no pullet sperm in my brewage’ (MW 3.5.29–30). (C) Fitzpatrick (2011) observes that Falstaff’s view of the properties of sack concurs with that of Boorde (1547, sigs D1v–D2) who states that white wine ‘doth ingendre good bloude, it doth comforte and doth nuryshe the brayne and all the body . . . the better the wyne is, the better humours it doth ingendre’. Bulman (2H4, Arden edn, 2016) has useful notes on Falstaff’s eulogy of sack. saffron is a spice made from the dried stigmas of the crocus sativus, imported originally from Greece, but grown in England in this period. Cogan says ‘it growth in many Gardens’ (1636, 78), and it is a very common ingredient in cookery. It imparts a rich yellow colour to food, as well as having medicinal properties. Shakespeare’s references to it draw on its colour. The Clown in WT , shopping for ingredients for the sheepshearing feast, declares, ‘I must have saffron to colour the warden pies’ (WT 4.3.45). In the masque in TEM Ceres hails Iris ‘who, with thy saffron wings, upon my flowers / Diffusest honey-drops’ (4.1.78–9). In CE Antipholus of Ephesus, angry with his wife, refers rudely to one of her entourage, probably Dr Pinch the conjurer or else the Courtesan, as ‘this companion with the saffron face’ (4.4.63). In AW Lafew tells the Countess that her son’s moral character has been contaminated by his association with Parolles: ‘Your son was misled with a snipp’d taffeta fellow there, whose villainous saffron would have made all the unbaked and doughy youth of a nation in his colour’ (4.5.1–4). This complex metaphor extends the language of fashion to that of food. ‘Snipp’d taffeta’ suggests the showy appearance created by slashed sleeves, emphasized by its bright yellow colour. Parolles’ ‘villainous saffron’ may draw on the association of yellow with cowardice. Jones and Stallybrass discuss saffron in relation to the famous yellow starch that featured in the Essex divorce case (2000, ch. 3). Harrison (1587) devotes a detailed chapter to ‘saffron and the dressing thereof’ (348–56), which he considers an especially valuable commodity. salad, sallet (A) Salad (sometimes spelt sallet) was a cold dish of raw vegetables and herbs, in early modern England usually mixed with cooked ingredients and sometimes flowers or fruit. The word could also be used figuratively to signify a mixture, or something spicy. (A secondary meaning of sallet was a light headpiece in medieval armour.) 298

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(B) Shakespeare’s most famous reference to salad is Cleopatra’s dismissal of her affair with Caesar as having been in ‘My salad days, / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood, / To say as I said then’ (1.5.76–8). She means that she was inexperienced (‘green’) as well as less passionate than at the present time of mature judgment. Hamlet’s use of the word (spelt ‘sallets’ in all versions) is a little more ambiguous. He is recalling the play in which he heard the speech containing ‘Aeneas’ tale to Dido’, which did not meet with general approbation despite its virtues: I remember one said there were no sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury nor no matter in the phrase that might indict the author of affection [affectation], but called it an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome as fine. (HAM 2.2.378–83) His praise of the language of the play is for its lack of pretension. The ‘sallets’ may imply, as Jenkins (Arden edn, 2nd series, 1982) suggests in his note, ‘tasty morsels, sharp flavours, hence ribaldries’ (the sharp flavours contrasting with the ‘sweet’ ones), or it may mean a variety of different ingredients, as opposed to something simpler. The rebel Jack Cade, on the run from the forces of King Henry VI , is starving, but not so desperate that he cannot make a pun on the two meanings of the word: O’er a brick wall have I climbed into this garden, to see if I can eat grass, or pick a sallet another while, which is not amiss to cool a man’s stomach this hot weather. And I think this word ‘sallet’ was born to do me good: for many a time, but for a sallet, my brain-pan has been cleft with a brown bill; and many a time, when I have been dry and bravely marching, it hath served me instead of a quart pot to drink in; and now the word ‘sallet’ must serve me to feed on. (2H6 4.10.6–15) Poor Tom, also indigent, ‘eats cowdung for sallets’ (KL 3.4.123–4). Lafew in AW praises Helena: ‘ ’Twas a good lady; ’twas a good lady. We may pick a thousand sallets ere we light on such another herb’. The Clown wittily develops the image: ‘Indeed, sir, she was the sweet marjoram of the sallet, or, rather, the herb of grace’ (AW 4.5.13–16). (C) Markham describes both simple and compound salads, giving inviting recipes for both (1615, 66). See also Albala (2003, 171–2) and Fitzpatrick (2011). Jonson, in his poem ‘Inviting a Friend to Supper’, says that his guest will have ‘to rectify your palate, / An olive, capers, or some better salad / Ush’ring the mutton’. salt (A) Salt (sodium chloride) was widely used both as a condiment and as a preservative. It could be used figuratively to mean a quality that imparts freshness or piquancy, or wit. It was also a term, now long obsolete, for sexual excitement, usually of a bitch, with an adjectival use meaning lecherous or salacious. (B) In TC Pandarus upbraids Cressida for her dismissive attitude toward Troilus, saying that he possesses a range of qualities, such as ‘manhood, learning, gentleness, 299

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virtue, youth, liberality’ that represent the ‘spice and salt that season a man’ (TC 1.2.244– 6). Leonato in MA , using salt to signify a preservative, extravagantly denounces his daughter Hero, whom he believes to be unchaste, saying that ‘she is fallen / into a pit of ink that the wide sea / Hath drops too few to wash her clean again, And salt too little which may season give / To her foul tainted flesh’ (4.1.139–43). In TGV Lance, commenting on the list of qualities that Speed claims for his mistress explicates the sentence ‘she hath more hair than wit’ as follows, punning on salt meaning pungent wit (OED n. 3c): ‘The cover of the salt [i.e. the salt cellar] hides the salt, and therefore it is more than the salt; the hair that covers the wit is more than the wit, for the greater hides the less’ (3.1.348–51). Falstaff, pretending to fear for the health of the Lord Chief Justice, tells him to be careful about going out, because ‘Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, have yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time’ (2H4 1.2.96–8), perhaps combining the idea of salt as a preservative with that of it as a seasoning. In MW Falstaff disparagingly refers to Master Ford as a ‘mechanical saltbutter rogue’ (2.2.264), he means that Ford is base (like the ‘rude mechanicals’ in MND ) and mean, in that salted butter was considered to be of poor quality. When Pompey refers to ‘salt Cleopatra’ (AC 2.1.21) he means lecherous, as does the Duke in MM when he talks of Angelo’s ‘salt imagination’ (5.1.398), and Timon advising the prostitute Timandra to ‘make use of thy salt hours’ (TIM 4.3.86). (C) See Fitzpatrick (2011) on salt in early modern dietaries. Melchiori’s note on MW 2.2.264 (2000) refers to a man in Nashe’s Pierce Penniless who lives poorly on ‘salt butter and Holland cheese in his chamber’. Harrison discusses the production of salt in England (1587, 375–8). See also fish and salt-fish. sampler The word sampler originally meant an example to be copied or used as a model; hence, a sampler was a piece of embroidery serving as a pattern for copying. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses Philomel is raped by Tereus who cuts out her tongue, but she finds a way to reveal her story. As Marcus in TIT , seeing his mutilated niece Lavinia says Fair Philomela, why she but lost her tongue, And in a tedious [laboriously executed] sampler sewed her mind. (TIT 2.3.38–9) This way is not open to Lavinia, whose hands have been cut off, but like Philomel she too finds means to expose her rapists. The Philomel story is a ‘sampler’ or model for her. The sampler has a simpler function in MND , as a detail in Helena’s evocation of the strong bond of friendship she enjoyed with Hermia when they were girls together: We, Hermia, like two artificial gods, Have with our needles created both one flower, Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion (MND 3.2.203–5) 300

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Skill in needlework was an important social accomplishment for well-born women in this period. The cultural significance of embroidery in women’s lives is explored by Frye (2010); in Chapter 4 she discusses the role of cloth and textiles in OTH and CYM . See also Parker (1984) and Wall (2002). sarcenet Sarcenet is soft silk used for lining. Shakespeare uses it with connotations of effeminacy or primness. Thersites insults Patroclus by calling him ‘Thou idle immaterial skein of sleave-silk, thou green sarcenet flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal’s purse’ (TC 5.1.29–31). Hotspur, urging his wife to swear more robustly and like an aristocrat tells her that she ‘swear[s] like a comfit-maker’s [confectioner’s] wife . . . And givest such sarcenet surety for thy oaths / As if thou never walk’st further than Finsbury’ (1H4 3.1.243, 247–8). Linthicum (1936, 121–2) has more information. satin Satin is a luxurious silk fabric, glossy on one side. When Falstaff asks his page, ‘What said Master Dommelton about the satin for my short cloak and my slops?’ (2H4 1.2.29–30) he is considering the purchase of extravagant clothes which he cannot afford. Pompey in MM lists among the men about town who have found themselves in prison ‘one Master Caper, at the suit of Master Three-pile the mercer, for some four suits of peach-coloured satin, which now peaches [denounces] him a beggar’ (4.3.8–11); Caper is a person who has run up a debt he cannot pay because of his extravagant tastes. Pericles asks Lychorida to ‘bring me the satin coffer’ for the new-born Perdita (3.1.67), but here he is honouring the child with the best crib he can provide. See Linthicum (1936, 122–3) on the fabric. sauce (A) Sauce, meaning a soft or liquid mixture of ingredients used as an accompaniment adding flavour to food, has various metaphorical senses. As a verb, it could in this period mean to rebuke as well as to season. (B) The tavern bill for Falstaff’s food and drink, taken from his pocket by Prince Hal, records an expenditure of four pence for sauce to accompany the capon which cost two shillings and two pence (1H4 2.4.523). In TNK Arcite remarks of the starving Palamon, ‘Your hunger needs no sauce’ (3.3.25), recalling the proverb, ‘Hunger is the best sauce’ (Dent, H819). Sauce is sometimes regarded as an addition to tempt the appetite. Guiderius, admiring the ‘neat cookery’ of Innogen in her boy’s disguise, says that she ‘sauced our broths, as Juno had been sick / And he her dieter’ (CYM 4.2.50–1). Lady Macbeth, attempting to promote the hospitality that she and her husband are offering, says that ‘the sauce to meat is ceremony’ (3.4.34), meaning that social ritual gives an extra pleasure to the meal. Malcolm, claiming to be more evil than even Macbeth, says that his avarice knows no bounds, ‘And my more-having would be as a sauce / To make me hunger more’ (MAC 4.3.81–2). Pompey hopes that Cleopatra will keep Antony in Egypt with her charms, that ‘Epicurean cooks / Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite’ (AC 2.1.24–5). Sauces can have a beneficial effect, as when in TC Alexander speaks of ‘Folly sauced with discretion’ (TC 1.2.23), but also the opposite. 301

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Coriolanus disdains the idea of praise, ‘As if I lov’d my little should be dieted / In praises sauc’d with lies’ (COR 1.9.51–2). The Abbess in CE reproves Adriana for her treatment of her husband: ‘Thou say’st his meat was sauc’d with thy upbraidings’ (5.1.73). Sauce can also be bitter. In a passage of banter between Romeo and Mercutio, the latter tells the former that ‘Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting [sweet apple], it is a most sharp sauce’ (RJ 2.4.78). See also SON 118, MA 4.1.281. (C) Albala (2006) gives some recipes for early sauces, noting the absence of butter and cream in them and the higher level of spicing than nowadays (14–15). See also Fitzpatrick (2011), ‘sauce’. scarf (A) The scarf was a band of material worn round the neck for warmth or display, or (for men) diagonally across the body from shoulder to hip or tied under the arm. Scarves could be tied round the arm by men wearing them as a lady’s favour. (B) With the exception of the ‘scarves and fans and double change of bravery’ (TS 4.3.59) with which Petruccio urges Katherina to return to her father’s house for revelry, Shakespeare does not usually associate scarves with women’s attire. They can be used as decoration, for instance of ships, in Gratiano’s reference to ‘the scarfed bark’ that puts out from the bay with more spirit than she returns (MV 2.6.16), and of statues, as in JC when the tribunes Murellus and Flavius are punished ‘for pulling scarves off Caesar’s images (JC 1.2.284–5). Ceres in TEM calls the rainbow a ‘rich scarf to my proud earth’ (4.1.82), suggesting its decorative value. Scarves can also be used as blindfolds: Benvolio, arriving at the Capulets’ party wants ‘no Cupids hoodwinked with a scarf’ or any other form of introduction for himself and Romeo; Macbeth calls for ‘seeling night’ to ‘scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day’ (MAC 3.2.47–8) so that his next deed of murder shall have no witness. Scarves were worn by soldiers, diagonally across the body as a mark of rank. Benedick in MA mocks the lovesick Claudio by asking him if he will wear his willow garland (the emblem of the forsaken lover), ‘about your neck, like a usurer’s chain? Or under your arm, like a lieutenant’s scarf?’ (MA 2.1.174–5). After the battle in which he wins his honorific, Coriolanus enters wounded, ‘with his arm in a scarf’ (COR 1.9 SD ). This may suggest military attire, although in AYL Rosalind remarks on the injured Orlando wearing his ‘heart in a scarf’ (5.2.20). In AW the military pretensions of the cowardly braggart Parolles are satirized in his scarves; Lafew notes that he wears them to excess: ‘The scarves and bannerets [streamers] about thee did manifoldly dissuade me from believing thee a vessel of too great a burden’ (2.3.204–6). First Lord Dumaine refers to him as ‘the gallant militarist – that was his own phrase – that had the whole theoric of war in the knot of his scarf’ (4.3.140–2). Diana succinctly calls him ‘that jacknapes / With scarves’ (3.6.84–5). (C) Ashelford (1988), Cunnington and Cunnington (1955) and Norris (1938) all have several illustrations of scarves. school, schoolmaster (A) A school is an establishment for the education of young people. In early modern England for the most part formal education was only for boys, 302

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but it was not compulsory. Many boys went only to the petty (elementary) school, not following this up with education at the grammar school. A few schools for girls have been recorded, focusing on gender-related subjects such as embroidery. Boys would start at a grammar school at about the age of seven. Brinsley (1627) considers that they should start school at five, and enter the grammar school when they can read, so as to be ready for university entrance by fifteen. (B) School and schoolmasters generally get a bad press in Shakespeare. The rebel Jack Cade is singular in accusing Lord Saye of ‘traitorously corrupting the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school’ (2H6 4.7.29–30), but dislike of school is widespread. The ‘whining schoolboy’ that Jacques describes in his speech on the seven ages of man, ‘with his satchel / And shining morning face, creeping like snail / Unwillingly to school’ (AYL 2.7.146–8) is a familiar archetype. There was a current proverb, ‘With as good will as ever I came from school’ (Dent, W398). Romeo contrasts the experience of lovers and schoolboys: Love goes towards love as schoolboys from their books, But love from love toward school with heavy looks. (RJ 2.2.156–7) Gremio in TS is only too eager to escape from the church where Petruccio and Katherina were married, hurrying away ‘As willingly as e’er I came from school’ (3.2.149). As Speed says, the mark of a lover is ‘to sigh, like a schoolboy that had lost his ABC [spelling book]’ (TGV 2.1.20). Schoolmasters do not rank highly. That Antony sends his schoolmaster as an ambassador to Caesar shows that ‘he is plucked, when hither / He sends so poor a pinion of his wing’ (AC 3.12.3–4), as Dolabella puts it. The schoolmaster Holofernes in LLL , described as ‘the Pedant’, is an absurd character full of verbal affectations; Sir Hugh Evans in MW has an apt pupil in William Page, but he is also comic and foolish, as is the fussy and pedantic Schoolmaster in TNK who directs the Morris dance (3.5) and takes himself very seriously. The only effective teacher is one who is not a professional: Prospero is proud of the education he has given Miranda: ‘Here / Have I thy schoolmaster, made thee more profit / Than other princes can that have more time / For vainer hours, and tutors not so careful’ (TEM 1.2.171–4). Friendships made at school have importance for both men and women. Brutus draws on this old relationship when he asks Volumnius to help him commit suicide: Good Volumnius Thou knowest that we two went to school together: Even for that our love of old, I prithee Hold thou my sword-hilts while I run on it. (JC 5.5.25–8) Hamlet is at first delighted to see Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and greets them warmly, but comes to a different opinion later when he refers to them as ‘my two schoolfellows – / Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged’ (HAM 3.4.200–1). Helena, believing that 303

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Hermia is mocking her, tries to get her friend to remember their shared past: ‘O, is all forgot? / All school-days’ friendship, childhood innocence?’ (MND 3.2.201–2). Her appeal proving unsuccessful, she turns on Hermia: ‘O, when she is angry, she is keen and shrewd: / She was a vixen when she went to school’ (3.2.323–4). In MM Isabella says that she calls Juliet her cousin ‘Adoptedly, as schoolmaids change [exchange] their names, / By vain [foolish] though apt affection’ (1.4.47–8). The education of girls is an important matter for Baptista in TS , who takes pains with his daughters’ upbringing, although this education takes place at home, where the position of tutor appears to be a live-in one. Since Katherina is so intractable he concentrates his efforts on Bianca, choosing tutors to suit her aptitudes: for I know she taketh most delight In music, instruments and poetry, Schoolmasters will I keep within my house Fit to instruct her youth. (TS 1.1.92–5) Baptista’s attention to his younger daughter’s training is observed by Lucentio and Tranio, and Lucentio readily takes on the role of schoolmaster to get access to her, apparently not requiring any qualifications to do so. Bianca, however, proves a less tractable pupil than expected, and makes her feelings clear to the wrangling tutors: I am no breeching scholar [young child still subject to whipping] in the schools: I’ll not be tied to hours, or ’pointed times But learn my lessons as I please myself. (2.1.18–20) ‘School’ and ‘schoolmaster’ can be used figuratively in relation to learning of whatever kind. Desdemona says she will make Othello’s bed a school to get him to accept Cassio back into favour (OTH 3.3.24). Lucrece tries to dissuade Tarquin from his assault on her: ‘Wilt thou be the school where Lust shall learn?’ (LUC 617). When Gloucester attempts to intercede with Regan on Lear’s behalf, she has no pity for her old father: O sir, to wilful men The injuries that they themselves procure Must be their schoolmasters. (KL 2.2.493–5) The Duke of Britain (a Frenchman) in H5 refers to the insults that French women have levelled at the French soldiers, saying that ‘They bid us to the English dancing- schools . . . / Saying our grace is only in our heels’ (3.5.34). There is no evidence that England was famous for dancing schools, and his meaning is that the women are mocking the Frenchmen’s ability to run away. Maria in TN rather mysteriously says that the cross-gartered Malvolio in his yellow stockings looks ‘like a pedant that keeps school in a church’ (3.2.71–2). Elam (Arden edn, 2008) explains this as a reference to a teacher who works from a church through 304

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lack of a schoolhouse, thus evoking a rustic scene and confirming the view that Malvolio’s outfit is completely out of fashion. When Claudius refuses Hamlet’s request to return ‘to school in Wittenberg’ (HAM 1.2.113) he means university, although this usage is not recorded in the OED till 1701, and denoted then as ‘US ’. (C) Cressy (1987) examines the teaching profession in the period. Jewell (1998) has a broad survey of education and literacy in early modern England, with some account of women’s education. Mendelson and Crawford (1998) have a little information about the education of girls in the period, especially 321–7. See also Ben-Amos (1994, 132–4) on girls’ schooling, Fletcher (1995, 364–73) and Charlton (1999) who has the most detailed account. Mulcaster (1581, ch. 38) is a strong advocate for the education of girls, though not necessarily in schools. Moncrief (2011) examines Prospero’s education of Miranda in TEM , concluding that, like Mulcaster, his ultimate end is to fashion her as a good wife. Hollyband (1925), himself a schoolmaster, has several dialogues about school and schoolboys, reflecting aspects of contemporary educational practice, including the payment of the teachers and the whipping of the boys. Dod and Cleaver emphasize the importance of education, and particularly admonish parents from the upper classes who do not provide good schoolmasters for their children (1630, sigs X4–6). Pearson, in a usefully detailed but minimally footnoted book, discusses school curricula, and gives some account of which texts were taught (1957, ch. 3). There were numerous current books of pedagogical theory, including Elyot (1531), Ascham (1570), Coote (1596) and Brinsley (1627) who uses a dialogue between two schoolmasters to give an account of the grammar school education, with a strongly puritan bias. William in MW appears to have been taught Latin from Lilly and Colet’s frequently reprinted A Short Introduction of Grammar (1549). scullion A scullion is a domestic servant of the most menial rank, who carried out the lowest duties in the kitchen. Falstaff’s Page in 2H4 insults Mistress Quickly on his master’s behalf, using her own idiom: ‘Away, you scullion, you rampallion, you fustilarian!’ (2.1.58). (‘Rampallion’ means a ruffian, and ‘fustiliarian’ is a nonce-word.) Hamlet in the Folio text expresses disgust with himself, that he Must like a whore unpack my heart with words And fall a-cursing like a very drab, A scullion! (HAM 2.2.520–2) Q2 reads ‘stallion’, meaning male prostitute. Either reading works in the context of Hamlet’s sense of self-abasement. See Vienne-Guerrin (2016) who relates ‘scullion’ in HAM to ‘cullion’ meaning coward. sea-coal see coal seal (A) A seal was an authenticating device used to ratify identity or ownership, or to close up or finalize a legal procedure. It came in several forms and was sometimes made 305

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of or impressed into wax, or stamped into lead or other metal. It could be attached to a ring. (B) Seals often have important plot functions in Shakespeare. Malvolio is completely taken in by the letter that appears to come from Olivia because it has a waxen seal bearing ‘the impressure [of] her Lucrece, with which she uses to seal’ (TN 2.5.92–3). Aumerle’s part in the plot against Bolingbroke’s life is betrayed by the seal, probably of red wax, attached to a document about the plot, which he has carelessly allowed to dangle outside his tunic. ‘What seal is that that hangs without thy bosom? Yea, look’st thou pale? Let me see the writing’, exclaims his father (R2 5.2.56–7). Hamlet is able to send Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths by means of a substitute letter to the King of England which he has exchanged for the real one, to which he refers when he reveals to Gertrude his knowledge of Claudius’s plotting: ‘There’s letters sealed and my two schoolfellows . . . / They bear the mandate’ (HAM 3.4.200–2). Later he explains to Horatio how he has dealt with his schoolfellows on his sea-voyage to England: I had my father’s signet in my purse – Which was the model of that Danish seal – Folded the writ up in the form of th’other, Subscrib’d it, gave’t th’ impression, placed it safely, The changeling never known. (5.2.49–53) Sealing as a mode of authentication appears elsewhere in the play. Hamlet describes how his soul has given approval to his friendship with Horatio (‘my dear soul . . . [h]ath sealed thee for herself’) (HAM 3.2.58–60), and describes his father as a quasi-divine figure: A combination and a form indeed Where every god did seem to set his seal To give the world assurance of a man (HAM 3.4.58–60) But his violent speeches to his mother will never be ratified by actions: How in my words somever she be shent To give them seals never my soul consent. (HAM 3.2.388–9) Letters closed with waxen seals present temptation to several characters. Regan begs Oswald to let her ‘unseal the letter’ that he is carrying from Goneril to Edmund (KL 4.5.24) but he manages to resist. The Duke of Milan in TGV , finding a concealed letter to his daughter Silvia from Valentine, has no such scruples: ‘What letter is this same? What’s here? / And here an engine fit for my proceeding. / I’ll be so bold to break the seal for once’ (TGV 3.1.137–9); thus he discovers Valentine’s plot to steal Silvia away and banishes the hapless lover instantly. Jack Cade’s suspicion of lawyers and literacy 306

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extends to seals: ‘Some say the bee stings, but I say ’tis the bee’s wax; for I did but once seal to a thing and I was never my own man since’ (3H6 4.2.75–7). Seals feature at critical points in the action of several plays. The breaking of a seal is tense moment in WT 3.2; Cleomenes and Dion bring the ‘sealed-up oracle’ from Apollo and swear that they have not broken it. Leontes then commands, ‘Break up the seals and read’, thus hearing in public the divine validation of his wife’s chastity and the condemnation of his treatment of her. Another sealed document revealed at a turning point in the action is the will of Caesar in JC , which Antony produces to tantalize the mob: ‘But here’s a parchment, with the seal of Caesar. / I found it in his closet. ’Tis his will’ (3.2.128–9). Not until sometime later does he read it: ‘Here is the will, and under Caesar’s seal’ (3.2.233). Shylock’s sealed bond is central to the trial scene of MV ; for him it signifies the validation of his agreement with Antonio, and he answers Gratiano’s insults confidently: ‘Till thou canst rail the seal from off my bond / Thou but offend’st thy lungs to speak so loud’ (MV 4.1.138–9). In MM the disguised Duke shows to the Provost a letter that prepares for the final stage of the action: ‘Look you, sir, here is the hand and seal of the Duke; you know the character, I doubt not, and the signet is not strange to you?’ (4.2.189–92). The letter gives news of the Duke’s planned return to put right Angelo’s wrongs in Vienna. Sealing may take place metaphorically as well as literally. When the Nurse presents Aaron with the baby son that he has fathered she tells him mockingly that ‘the empress sends it thee, thy stamp, thy seal, / And bids thee christen it with thy dagger’s point’ (TIT 4.2.71–2). Aaron tells Tamora’s sons, who are disgusted by the black baby who is their kin, despite his appearance: ‘Nay, he is your brother by the surer side, / Although my seal be stamped in his face’ (4.2.128–9). Some seals are tokens of love. Antony calls Cleopatra’s hand ‘this kingly seal, / And plighter of high hearts’ (AC 3.13.130–1). The song sung to Mariana in her moated grange touchingly recalls the kisses she has exchanged with Angelo, which gave false assurance of his fidelity, ‘seals of love, but seal’d in vain’ (MM 4.1.6). Kisses are the coinage with which bargains are made and bonds sealed, but not always in good faith. In KJ the Archduke of Austria pledges his support for Arthur and promises to help him to the throne of England: Upon thy cheek lay I this zealous kiss, As seal to the indenture of my love. (2.1.19–20) But this is a pledge he has no chance of fulfilling. The poet in Sonnet 142 charges his mistress with infidelity, recalling deceitful kisses ‘from those lips of thine / That have profaned their scarlet ornaments, / And sealed false bonds of love’. By contrast, Romeo kisses the lips of Juliet for the last time before he drinks the poison and dies: ‘O you / The doors of death, seal with a righteous kiss / A dateless bargain with engrossing Death’ (RJ 5.3.113–15). Here, lips are deceptive in another way; Juliet is not dead, and wakes from her drugged sleep only moments after Romeo has died. The kiss as ratifying the union between a married couple is alluded to in TS when Petruccio hastens to his wedding: 307

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But what a fool am I to chat with you, When I should bid good morrow to my bride, And seal the title with a lovely kiss. (TS 3.2.120–2) In VA Shakespeare, still developing mercantile imagery, handles the conceit of kisses as seals more playfully, imagining the mark left by the kisses as a print on a lover’s soft lips; Venus woos Adonis, inviting an exchange of kisses: Pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted, What bargains may I make, still to be sealing? To sell myself I can be well contented, So thou wilt buy, and pay, and use good dealing; Which purchase if thou make, for fear of slips [counterfeit coins] Set thy seal-manual on my wax-red lips. (VA 511–16) ‘Seal-manual’ means ‘individual seal personally applied, not here with the hand (manual) but with his lips’ (Duncan-Jones and Woudhuysen, Arden edn, 2007, 522). Venus wants the seal of Adonis’s lips as protection against fraud. (C) See Loewenstein (2011) on the history of seals and sigillography in England, and especially on HAM (2011, 210–14). He argues that Shakespeare uses the act of sealing ‘as a sign of the insecurity of subjection’ (204). Newman (2017) explores the technology and the meanings of wax sealing in a wide-ranging account of what he calls Shakespeare’s ‘language of impression’. servant, service, servingman, chambermaid (A) A servant is a person obliged to work for someone else, usually a person of superior status, and often paid to do so. Service is the name given to the duties and tasks he or she performs, although it may be more generally applied to the allegiance paid to another person as an act of respect or to the devotion of a lover. A servingman is a male servant. The term ‘servant’ used in the domestic sense in the period comprised many social and economic classes (Dolan, 1994, 65), and servants did not constitute a separate social group. The conditions of service within an early modern household were extremely complex and need to be understood on their own terms. It has been argued that the master–servant relationship provided a model ‘by which all relationships involving power and authority were understood’ (Neill, 2000, 20). There could be many grades of servants, with different levels and areas of responsibility. In a grand house some of these might be young men and women of high social standing: boys of good, even noble, family often served in a noble household for a period of time as part of their training, and ladies’ maids (such as Maria in TN or Emilia in OTH ) were of the class of gentlewomen. Servants could include relations of the householder; and even if not, they could in certain circumstances be considered part of the family. The number of servants

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employed was an indication of the social status of the master (like King Lear’s huge retinue); in a large household servants would wear as a uniform the master’s livery which formed a part, often quite a substantial one, of the payment for their services. The number of servants in aristocratic households, however, was falling during this period (Neill, 2000, 28). Huge numbers of people, a high proportion of them young, were employed as servants for some part of their lives. According to Kussmaul (1981, 3), 60 per cent of young people aged between fifteen and twenty-four were living as household servants in early modern England, and even modest households might employ at least one. (B) Servants are important figures in Shakespeare and carry out a number of plot functions. Their interactions with their masters (and mistresses) are central in several plays, including TN , KL , AYL , TIM and TEM . In TN servants of various grades form a large part of the cast, including Malvolio, Olivia’s steward, Maria, Olivia’s waitinggentlewoman, Feste, Olivia’s jester, Antonio, the sea captain who begs to serve Sebastian, and the various attendants of Orsino and Olivia, as well, of course as the fabricated servant, Cesario, the role played by the disguised Viola. At the top of the social hierarchy are Malvolio and Maria. She, Sir Toby Belch explains to his companion Sir Andrew Aguecheek, is ‘My niece’s chambermaid’ (1.3.49). Chambermaids, who attended to the personal needs of their mistress, were servants of high standing, who often took on the role of companions (Capp, 2003, 151–2). In KL , another play much concerned with master–servant relations, Edgar refers to the fiend Flibbertigibbet, as a fiend of ‘mopping and mowing, who since possesses chambermaids and waitingwomen’ (4.1.64–5); Foakes’s note (Arden edn, 1997) suggests that Flibbertigibbet acts in this way because chambermaids were similarly disrespectful – making faces and grimacing, behind the backs of their mistresses. Maria is of sufficient rank for both Sir Toby and Sir Andrew to be prepared to marry her (and Sir Toby does). Malvolio is a high-status servant, conceivably of a gentry background (Schalkwyk, 2005, 87), but he is one with social aspirations to rise higher, and these make it easy for Maria and her accomplices to gull him with the letter supposedly from Olivia. This cunningly plays on his desire for promotion, urging him to ‘Be opposite with a kinsman, surly with servants’ and if he fails to do so then ‘let me see thee a steward still, the fellow of servants’ (2.5.146, 151–2). Malvolio repeats these phrases when he makes his appearance in cross-garters before Olivia as a would-be suitor; she has called for him in the belief that he will comfort her in her anxiety about Cesario: ‘He is sad and civil, / And suits well for a servant with my fortunes’ (3.4.5–6), but his ludicrous advances convince her that he is mad, and she asserts her inherent sense of rank in her order to her chambermaid, ‘Good Maria, let this fellow be looked to’ (3.4.58), although he interprets the word ‘fellow’ quite other than she intends it (Elam, Arden edn, 2008, 278). The gulling letter is signed off, ‘She that would alter services with thee’ (2.5.153–4) punning on the idea that Olivia and Malvolio should change places between mistress and servant. Play on the terminology of service takes a different form in an exchange between Olivia and the disguised Viola, who has presented herself in Olivia’s household as a 309

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‘young gentleman’ in Orsino’s service. As Cesario Viola has quickly become the favourite among Orsino’s gentlemen servants, and is promised promotion by her master if she succeeds in her proxy courtship of Olivia (1.4.38–40). When Olivia asks her name, she responds in courtly style, ‘Cesario is your servant’s name, fair princess’. Olivia tries to lower the register to that of everyday discourse: My servant, sir? ’Twas never merry world Since lowly feigning was called compliment. You’re servant to the Count Orsino, youth. For her own protection, since she is aware of Olivia’s misdirected feelings towards her, Viola wishes to retain the courtly idiom and answers punningly: And he is yours, and his must needs be yours. Your servant’s servant is your servant, madam. (3.1.96–100) The domestic and the erotic senses of ‘servant’ intertwine in Viola’s witty response, drawing on interconnections between patronage, duty and desire. When Orsino discovers the true gender of his page at the end of the play he transforms the bonds of service into those of love: ‘Your master quits you, and for your service done him . . . / And, since you called me master for so long, Here is my hand; you shall from this time be / Your master’s mistress’ (5.1.315–20). Antonio’s plea to Sebastian, ‘Let me be your servant’ (2.1.33), also combines these two senses, here with clearer homoerotic overtones than are expressed in the exchanges between Orsino and Cesario. The play with the largest number of roles for servants is TS . Baptista, a wealthy (and anxious) householder, observes in passing that ‘Pitchers have ears, and I have many servants’ (4.4.51). In the Lord’s well-appointed household, not only are there players who ‘offer service to your lordship’ (Ind. 1.77) and will take part in the trick on Sly the tinker, but the Lord’s servants also have roles to play, making Sly believe he is a lord: ‘Look how thy servants do attend on thee, / Each in his office ready at thy beck’ (Ind. 2.31–2). Tranio, Lucentio’s man, with whom he changes places in order to facilitate his wooing of Bianca, is the original ‘trusty servant, well approved in all’ (1.1.7). He has his own part to play and will ‘Keep house and port and servants’ (1.1.202) while Lucentio is absent. Grumio, Petruccio’s ‘ancient, trusty, pleasant servant’ (1.2.46), grumbles at his master’s rough treatment of him, wondering ‘If this be not a lawful cause for me to leave his service’ (1.2.29). Petruccio maintains a large household in the country, where his many servants are seen preparing for his arrival with his new bride. ‘Where’s the cook, is supper ready, the house trimmed, rushes strewed, cobwebs swept, the servingmen in their new fustian, their white stockings, and every officer his wedding garment on?’ asks Grumio (4.1.40–3). These servants may not be very spruce but they collude with their master in his shrew-taming plan. Thus Petruccio, with Grumio’s assistance, gets Katharina to behave more graciously, noting that ‘The poorest service is repaid with thanks’ (4.3.47). 310

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In KL , a play centrally concerned with questions of rank and authority household servants have major roles to play and notions of service impinge in some way on almost every character. The most important servant is the Earl of Kent. When he challenges Lear over his treatment of Cordelia he is conscious that in his outspoken criticism he is overriding the limits of what is permissible for a servant to say to a master whom he has ‘ever honoured as my king, / Loved as my father, as my master followed’ (1.1.141–2). Lear, appalled by Kent’s outspokenness, calls him ‘vassal’, that is, slave, before banishing him. Kent returns in disguise and presents himself to Lear as an honest servant who will ‘serve him truly that will put me in trust’ (1.4.13–14) and desires to serve the King because ‘you have that in your countenance which I would fain call master . . . Authority’ (1.4.27–30). He demonstrates service to Lear by teaching Goneril’s steward Oswald a lesson when he is insolent to the king, and for his continued feuding with Oswald finds himself put in the stocks by Regan’s husband, the Duke of Cornwall. Cornwall’s action is hugely disrespectful to Lear as Kent’s master (and also a moment that contributes to the topsy-turviness of the Lear world in that Kent as an Earl is one of the most high-born characters in the play, ranking only below a duke, albeit here disguised as ‘Caius’), and when Lear discovers it he is outraged, and demands to know who is responsible: ‘Who stocked my servant?’ (2.2.377). But what is of most importance to Lear is not Kent’s punishment but the fact that his daughter has a hand in it. Lear is slow to recognize that his own status, like that of Kent, has been degraded. But when he calls the elements ‘servile ministers [agents]’ (3.2.21) for siding with his ‘pernicious daughters’ against him, he is beginning to feel himself in some respects a ‘slave’ (3.2.19). Lear never gets to understand the full extent of Kent’s service to him, and when at the end of the play Kent attempts to reveal himself to his dying master, in a scene of the greatest pathos, Lear is incapable of recognizing him. Who are you? Mine eyes are not o’the best, I’ll tell you straight.

LEAR

KENT

If fortune brag of two she loved and hated, One of them we behold. LEAR

This is a dull sight: are you not Kent? The same; Your servant Kent; where is your servant Caius?

KENT LEAR

He’s a good fellow, I can tell you that; He’ll strike and quickly too. He’s dead and rotten. (5.3.276–83) Servants enhance the dignity and importance of their masters. A lord or rich man’s status was reinforced by the number of servants in his household, and management of them was important. When Goneril and Regan propose to cut down Lear’s retinue, they 311

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adduce pragmatic considerations: ‘Why might not you, my lord, receive attendance / From those that she calls servants or from mine?’ (2.2.432–3). But it is clear that their real aim is not efficient household management but the reduction of their father’s power. Oswald, Goneril’s steward, stands in an interesting relation to Kent in that he is also faithful and loyal, but in the service of a corrupt regime. Goneril encourages him in disrespectful behaviour to her father: ‘If you come slack of former services, / You shall do well’, she advises (1.3.10–11). He is completely trusted by Goneril, manages her household, and delivers confidential letters for her. ‘This trusty servant / Shall pass between us’, she tells Edmund (4.2.18–19). Kent and Oswald clash again at their second meeting, when Kent bombards the steward with insults, calling him ‘a whoreson, glassgazing, super-serviceable, finical rogue . . . one that would be a bawd in way of good service’ (2.2.17–18). He recognizes the perverse diligence with which Oswald serves his mistress and his (possibly newly coined) term, ‘super-serviceable’, plays ironically on ‘service’, in its implication that ‘super’ service may go too far. The steward has sufficient authority to deny Regan’s request to see the letter he is carrying from Goneril to Edmund (4.5). When he meets the blinded Gloucester being led by his disguised son Edgar, he sees this as an opportunity to demonstrate his loyalty to the sisters and also to ‘raise my fortunes’ (4.6.224) by taking the life of the old man. He is, however, despatched by Edgar, who comments, ‘I know thee well; a serviceable villain, / As duteous to the vices of thy mistress / As badness would desire’ (4.6.247–9). Edgar’s words echo Kent’s earlier insult. Another kind of ‘serviceable villain’ is embodied in the corrupt servant role that Edgar constructs for himself as Poor Tom: ‘a servingman, proud in heart and mind, that curled my hair, wore gloves in my cap, serv’d the lust of my mistress’ heart . . . false of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand’ (3.4.82–90). The loyalty of servants is foregrounded in the scene when Regan and Cornwall torture and blind Gloucester. Some are sent off at the start of the scene to take letters from Cornwall to Albany to inform him of the arrival of French troops on English soil. Others fetch and bring in the captive Gloucester and assist in tying him up. But when Cornwall blinds the old man, one of the servants intervenes: Hold your hand, my lord. I have served you ever since I was a child, But better service have I never done you Than now to bid you hold. (3.7.71–4) His action in checking his master’s behaviour is in a legalistic sense highly improper, as Regan recognizes – ‘How now, you dog? . . . A peasant stand up thus?’ (3.7.74, 79). But it is also good service in that it is morally right. And when the royal party have left the scene, in the F text three servants remain behind and pledge to help Gloucester in any way they can. A messenger subsequently reports to Albany the sensational news: ‘O my good lord, the Duke of Cornwall’s dead, / Slain by his servant . . . A servant that he bred, thrilled with remorse, / Opposed against the act, bending his sword / To his great master’ 312

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(4.2.71–6). This astonishing act of disobedience is rewritten by Albany as a kind of order: ‘This shows you are above, / You justicers, that these our nether crimes / So speedily can venge’ (4.2.79–81). The elderly Adam in AYL is a retainer in the de Boys household whose loyalty to the household recalls the vision in Markham of reciprocal bonds between social classes: ‘What greater love could almost be found, than between the master and the Servant’ (1598, sig. C2v). When the ungrateful Oliver calls him ‘old dog’ and throws him out, he responds: ‘Is “old dog” my reward? Most true, I have lost my teeth in your service. God be with my old master, he would not have spoken such a word’ (1.1.78–80). Adam recognizes in Orlando the virtues he valued in his ‘old master’ and begs to serve him: ‘Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty . . . / I’ll do the service of a younger man / In all your business and necessities’ (2.3.45–6, 54–5), even offering Orlando the savings he has put aside for his old age, ‘when service should in my old limbs lie lame’ (2.3.41). Orlando is deeply moved by this expression of loyalty: O good old man, how well in thee appears The constant service of the antique world, Where servants sweat for duty not for meed. (2.3.56–8) The arrival of Orlando at the forest encampment of Duke Senior and his lords, bearing the weary Adam in his arms (2.7) and refusing food until his servant has eaten, encapsulates, like Kent’s loyalty to Lear, the values of the ‘antique world’ that are being eroded by the new order. A similarly close bond between master and servant is demonstrated in AC when Antony says farewell to his servants on the night before he expects defeat and death. Trying to express his gratitude for their devotion, he says I wish I could be made so many men, And all of you clapped up together in An Antony, that I might do you service So good as you have done. (4.2.16–19) They are reduced to tears when he continues: Mine honest friends, I turn you not away, but, like a master Married to your good service, stay till death. (4.2.29–31) His address to the servants as ‘friends’ and his image of himself as a faithful spouse movingly express the reciprocal nature of the relationship. In TEM it is more the condition of servitude rather than the master–servant relationships as such that is at issue. Indeed, ‘use of service’, that is, the employment by masters of paid servants, is one of the social institutions that Gonzalo would banish 313

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from his ideal commonwealth (2.1.152). Prospero has two servants, Ariel and Caliban, contrasted in their natures but at times equally reluctant to accept their roles. Ariel, given work by Prospero, is initially moody, demanding his promised freedom: I prithee Remember I have done thee worthy service, Told thee no lies, made no mistakings, served Without grudge or grumblings. (1.2.246–9) But once reminded of the torments of Sycorax, from servitude to whom Prospero has released him, he becomes eager to do his best, often drawing his master’s attention to his skills. ‘Sir, all this service / Have I done since I went’, he notes in the final scene after the Boatswain has described the miraculous restoration of the shipwrecked vessel. While Prospero calls Ariel by affectionate terms, ‘my industrious servant’ (4.1.33), ‘My tricksy spirit’, ‘my diligence’ and ‘chick’, he calls Caliban ‘whom now I have in service’ (1.2.286) ‘my slave’. Caliban is a lowly, but necessary servant. ‘We cannot miss him’, Prospero tells Miranda, ‘he does make our fire, / Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices / That profit us’ (1.2.112–14). Caliban repays Prospero’s disdain for him with hatred, but is ready to give Stephano all the service he can do in return for drink. Stephano is only too ready to exploit him: ‘Servant monster, drink to me . . . Drink, servant monster, when I bid thee’ (3.2.3, 7). Unlike Ariel, Caliban is naturally servile, transferring his service readily from one master to another. He promises Stephano, whom he styles his ‘king’, to be ‘thy Caliban, / For aye thy foot-licker’ (4.1.218–19). True and false service also feature in TIM . When Timon’s fortunes are flourishing, as the Poet says, You will see how all conditions, how all minds, As well of glib and slippery creatures as Of grave and austere quality, tender down Their services to Lord Timon. (1.1.54–7) And Timon in turn is ready to help his servants, giving Lucilius, ‘a gentleman of mine [who] hath served me long’, enough money to match the dowry of a woman he loves. But his generosity is exploited by the venal men around him. Ventidius, newly redeemed from prison by Timon’s help, offers to return the money he has been lent, ‘doubled with thanks and service’ (1.2.7), knowing that Timon will refuse it. The Poet and the Painter are among the hypocrites who offer service (5.1.70) only in the expectation of reward. When Timon’s wealth has been spent and his creditors come calling, Flavius, his honest servant, attempts to put them off, but Lucius will not be deterred by the steward’s bluntness: ‘This answer will not serve’. Flavius responds with bitter wit: ‘If ’twill not serve ’tis not so base as you / For you serve knaves’ (3.4.56–7). Timon, embittered by 314

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the ingratitude of his former friends, calls for the world to be turned upside down and all bonds to be dissolved: ‘Bound servants, steal: / Large-handed robbers your grave masters are / And pill [steal] by law’ (4.1.10–11). But not all servants share the selfishness of their masters, and Flavius shares what money he has with those few whose ‘hearts wear Timon’s livery . . . fellows still, / Serving alike in sorrow’ (4.2.17–19). He will not desert his fallen master: I’ll ever serve his mind with my best will: Whilst I have gold, I’ll be his steward still. (4.2.50–1) He is true to his promise when he encounters Timon in the woods, ready, despite Timon’s unwelcoming aspect, to present himself as ‘an honest poor servant of yours’ and to ‘serve him with my life’ (4.3.470, 466). Timon will not at first acknowledge him: I never had an honest man about me, I; all I kept were knaves to serve in meat to villains. (4.3.472–3) It is hard for him to accept that Flavius is acting without self-interest: Methinks thou art more honest now than wise, For by oppressing and betraying me Thou mightst have sooner got another service (4.3.497–9) Unlike Kent, whom Flavius resembles as a type of the faithful servant, he is able to stay with his master to the last. Pisanio in CYM is also a faithful servant, though paradoxically by disobedience. When ordered by his master Posthumus to murder Innogen he reacts violently: ‘I, her? Her blood? / If it be so to do good service, never / Let me be counted serviceable’ (3.2.13–15). When Innogen is recommended by Pisanio to seek employment in serving the Roman general Lucius (3.4.175) she too becomes a faithful servant. Having found what she believes to be her husband’s corpse (actually that of Cloten), in her loneliness she reinvents herself as a masterless page, who ‘may wander / From east to occident, cry out for service, / Try many, all good; serve truly; never / Find such another master’ (4.2.370–3). In the last scene her final words to Lucius, the Roman general whom she has come to serve, are still in this character, although her real identity has by this time been revealed: ‘My good master, / I yet will do you service’ (5.5.403–4). Masters and servants are bound by reciprocal obligations. Lance, Proteus’s servant in TGV takes this idea to comic extreme, when, in order to save his dog Crab from punishment for relieving himself under the table, he pretends that he was himself responsible, asking: ‘How many masters would do this for his servant?’ (4.4.28–9). His observation that ‘When a man’s servant shall play the cur with him, look you, it goes hard’ (4.4.1) applies not only to the dog, but also more broadly to Proteus as a fickle 315

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lover, to whom Julia displays the same loyalty as Lance to Crab. When Proteus is introduced to Silvia by Valentine, his friend and her lover, there is banter between the three of them on the idea of service in the chivalric sense as the tribute of courtesy a man pays a woman; but given Proteus’s prior commitment to Julia (and with hindsight his betrayal of Valentine) the exchange carries an undertone of irony: [to Silvia] . . . Sweet lady, entertain him To be my fellow-servant to your ladyship.

VALENTINE

SILVIA

Too low a mistress for so high a servant. PROTEUS

Not so, sweet lady, but too mean a servant To have a look of such a worthy mistress. VALENTINE

Leave off discourse of disability. Sweet lady, entertain him for your servant. PROTEUS

My duty I will boast of, nothing else. SILVIA

And duty never yet did want his meed. Servant, you are welcome to a worthless mistress. (2.4.102–11) The master–servant bond is explored more seriously in H5, when Michael Williams, one of the soldiers in the King’s army, accuses the King (who is at the time in disguise) of responsibility for the fates of his soldiers on the battlefield, because the soldiers must obey their king. Henry argues against this position by using the analogy with the roles of masters and servants, hypothesizing that ‘if a servant, under his master’s command transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of the servant’s damnation’. He continues, refuting the argument: ‘But this is not so: the King is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant; for they purpose not their death when they purpose [sometimes emended to “propose”] their services’ (4.1.150–8). An image used by Brutus in JC suggests how masters can use their authority to the detriment of their servants. When he is counselling the conspirators on the best way of managing the killing of Caesar he advises that they should ‘let our hearts, as subtle masters do, / Stir up their servants [i.e. their hands] to an act of rage / And after seem to chide ’em’ (JC 2.1.174–6). But servants who misuse their masters’ trust are more common in Shakespeare than abusive masters. Iago is the most obvious example. Angry with Othello for promoting Cassio over his head – ‘ ’Tis the curse of service’ – he tells Roderigo of his intention to pay his master back: 316

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I follow him to serve my turn upon him. We cannot all be masters, nor all masters Cannot be truly followed. (1.1.41–3) He has nothing but scorn for honest servants, and admires those who ‘throwing but shows of service on their lords, / Do well thrive by them’ (1.1.51–2). ‘Service’ is a word he enjoys playing on and as Weil says, mounts ‘an early attack on service’ (2005, 70). Awaking Brabantio with the news of Desdemona’s elopement with Othello, he tells the angry father, ‘Zounds, sir, you are one of those that will not serve God, if the devil bid you. Because we come to do you service, and you think we are ruffians, you’ll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse’ (1.1.106–10). In the next scene, presenting himself as ‘honest Iago’, he tells Othello primly, ‘I lack iniquity / Sometimes to do me service’ (1.2.3–4). Later when he pledges to devote himself to ‘wronged Othello’s service’ (3.3.470) there is a bitter irony in his use of the word. In OTH service is important to other characters also. Cassio and Othello, between whom Iago attempts to insert himself, in different ways cherish service as an ideal. The term is used in both military and moral senses. Cassio is the loyal servant, and it is his desire to serve Othello that Iago exploits. Begging Desdemona to intercede on his behalf with her husband he is anxious that she act promptly, lest ‘I being absent and my place supplied, / My general will forget my love and service’ (3.3.17–18). Later he needs urgently to know ‘If my offence be of such mortal kind / That nor my service past nor present sorrows . . . / Can ransom me into his love again’ (3.4.116–18) so as to plan for the future. Othello sets value by the service he can give the Venetian state. He is confident in the face of Brabantio’s hostility: ‘My services, which I have done the signiory, / Shall out-tongue his complaints’ (1.2.18–19). He begins his final speech with an understated reference to this aspect of his life, now no longer important: Soft you, a word or two before you go. I have done the state some service, and they know’t: No more of that (5.2.336–7) Another soldier whose identity derives from being a servant of the state is Coriolanus. The ‘services he has done for his country’ (1.1.27), his ‘warlike service’ (3.3.48) are acknowledged even by his enemies and frequently mentioned. The civic and the military senses of the word are often conflated. Although he acknowledges to the senate that ‘I do owe them [the senate] still my life and services’ (2.2.132) he insists that the service to the people of Rome must be on his own terms. ‘I had rather be their servant in my way, / Than sway with them in theirs’, he tells his mother when she expresses her wish for him to be made consul (2.1.197–8). The notion of ‘service’, as in OTH , is a fraught one. Coriolanus will not allow that the people have any claim to the term. They have no right to receive corn because ‘They ne’er did service for’t’ (3.1.123). He mentions their 317

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cowardice: ‘This kind of service / Did not deserve corn gratis’ (3.1.125–6). When the tribune Brutus allows that ‘he hath / Served well for Rome’ Coriolanus cuts him short: ‘What do you prate of service?’ (3.3.82–3). Coriolanus deserts Rome and, after recalling ‘the painful service / The extreme dangers and the drops of blood / Shed for my thankless country’, offers his ‘revengeful services’ to the Volscians (4.5.70–2, 91). Aufidius, becoming jealous of his rival’s popularity, observes his weaknesses, in particular that ‘First he was / A noble servant to them [the people of Rome] but he could not / Carry his honours even’ (4.7.35–7). He justifies his hostility towards Coriolanus to his supporters, describing how ‘I took him, / Made him joint-servant with me’ (5.6.30– 1). After Coriolanus has been killed it is Aufidius’ turn to present himself to the Volsci: Please it your honours To call me to your Senate, I’ll deliver Myself your loyal servant (5.6.140–2) Servants can be unwilling in their service, like Dromio of Syracuse who dislikes an errand he is sent on by Antipholus of Ephesus, saying ‘Thither I must, although against my will, / For servants must their masters’ minds fulfil’ (CE 4.1.112–13). They can also become angered if unrewarded, like Buckingham in R3 when Richard spurns his request for reward: ‘Repays he my deep service / With such contempt? Made I him King for this?’ (4.2.117–18). They can also be untrustworthy. Macbeth is initially ready to pledge himself to serve the King for no reward: ‘The service and the loyalty I owe, / In doing it, pays itself’ (1.4.22–3). But when his wife welcomes Duncan to her castle, having just planned with her husband to kill him, her use of the word ‘service’ is strongly ironic: All our service In every point twice done, and then done double, Were poor and single business, to contend Against those honours deep and broad wherewith Your majesty loads our house. (1.6.16–18) The condition of the servant as one of humility and subservience is most commonly alluded to in the context of erotic service. Antony, trying to appease a jealous Cleopatra, protests that ‘I go from hence / Thy soldier, servant, making peace or war / As thou affects’ (AC 1.3.70–1). In AW , a play ‘that represents service in many different contexts: courtly, feudal, amatory, commercial’ (Weil, 2005, 68), Helena declares her love for Bertram in terms that combine an acknowledgement of his social superiority with the intensity of her feeling: ‘My master, my dear lord he is; and I / His servant live, and will his vassal die’ (1.3.155–6). In his presence she is humble to the point of servility. When, at the King’s behest, she chooses Bertram for her husband out of all the eligible bachelors, she says: 318

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I dare not say I take you, but I give Me and my service, ever whilst I live, Into your guiding power. (2.3.103–5) At their parting she is similarly obsequious: Sir, I can nothing say But that I am your most obedient servant (2.5.71–2) Two of the Sonnets (57, 58), both ambiguous in tone, are devoted to an exploration of the lover’s sense of subservience, and may be read on a spectrum between acceptance of the condition and ironic undermining of such a posture of self-abasement. Sonnet 57 begins: Being your slave, what should I do but tend Upon the hours and times of your desire? I have no precious time at all to spend, Nor services to do, till you require. In this sonnet the poet presents himself as ‘a sad slave’ who can have no claim on his ‘sovereign’ lover’s time; in 58 he appears to repine openly: That god forbid, that made me first your slave, I should in thought control your times of pleasure, Or at your hand th’account of hours to crave, Being your vassal bound to stay your leisure. In Sonnet 149 the lover again refers to his subservience as part of the paradoxical quality of his condition. On the one hand he ‘is so proud thy service to despise’, but on the other he is so enslaved to his beloved that he will ‘worship thy defect’. (C) There is an extensive secondary literature relevant to this topic. Anderson (2005) and Weil (2005) have books devoted to servants and service in Shakespeare. Weil’s has many subtle readings and includes an excellent bibliography. Burnett (1997) includes Shakespeare’s plays in his account of master–servant relationships though they are not his main focus. His bibliography of secondary sources is excellent. Dolan (1994, 60–71) discusses master–servant relationships in TEM in the context of treason in a domestic setting. Schalkwyk has a subtle discussion of service and love in SON and TN and the interrelations between the social conditions of service in the two texts. He notes an element of ‘gender-rivalry’ in the relations between Maria and Malvolio in TN (2005, 88) and expands his treatment of service in his book of 2008. Neill (2000, 21) stresses the ‘extensiveness’ of the notion of service in the period. He, like Barish and Waingrow (1958), writes excellently on service in KL , as does Strier (1988) on obedience and disobedience, and Foakes’s introduction to the play (Arden edn, 1997, 69–72) is also 319

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useful. Evett (2005) challenges materialist criticism of plays concerned with servants and service, including TS and TEM , and offers an account of it based on the moral concept of ‘volitional primacy’ (accepting as self-imposed conditions imposed from outside, and thus capturing the initiative). For an overview of household servants’ roles and duties, see Pearson (1957, 430–53). On servants’ clothing see Jones and Stallybrass (2000, 18–21). Capp (2003, ch. 4) describes the roles of maidservants in the non-élite household. He also reminds us, relevantly, that ‘early modern conceptions of social order were rooted in the principle of reciprocal obligation’ (131). Griffiths explores ‘the politics of service’ with documentation of master–servant conflict (1996, 299–313, 353–9). See also Houlbrooke (1984, 171–8) and Laslett (1971a, 1–21). Beier notes that servants and apprentices account for nearly three-quarters of the Londoners with occupations listed in the Bridewell records for 1597–1608 (1985, 44). Froide (2005) discusses domestic service as ‘the preferred employment’ (91) for ‘singlewomen’. Rivlin (2015) surveys recent literary scholarship on servants and service, with an extensive bibliography. Contemporary plays where domestic servants play important roles include Arden of Faversham, Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling, Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness, Jonson’s Volpone and The Alchemist, and Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. The duties of servants, along with the obligations of their employers, are spelled out in contemporary conduct books such as Gouge (1622) who discusses the bonds between masters and servants, as do Dod and Cleaver (1630) who stress the responsibility of masters to ensure that their servants observe a Christian lifestyle. Smith’s advice on marriage (1591) includes a section on masters’ duties towards their servants. Basse (1609) has an interesting first-person defence of the servingman which urges those in the role of masters to treat their servants with dignity and consideration. Other contemporary works of relevance include Darell (1578), who defends the servingman against criticism for laziness, drunkenness and other vices, and Markham (1598). Harrison has a vitriolic account of idle servingmen (1587, 119). Overbury (1615) has a satirical portrait of the servant. sew (A) To sew is make something such as a garment from fabric using a needle and thread. To be able to sew well was regarded as an important accomplishment for women of all social classes. (B) ‘Proclaim that I can sing, weave, sew and dance’, Marina tells the pander Boult in PER (4.5.186), listing assets by which she could earn a living. Gower praises her skill in embroidery more than once stressing it as a feminine accomplishment (‘when they weaved the sleided silk / With fingers long, small, white as milk’, 4.0.21–2) and something difficult (‘with her nee’le composes / Nature’s own shape, of bud, bird, branch, or berry’, 5.0.5–6). When Lance itemizes the qualities of the milkmaid with whom he is in love, sewing is included, along with knitting and brewing good ale (TGV 3.1). At the other end of the social scale, Ophelia, a courtier’s daughter, is taken by surprise when Hamlet bursts in upon her as she ‘was sewing in my closet’ (HAM 2.1.74). Volumnia and Virgilia are found sewing when Valeria comes to visit them. She exclaims, 320

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‘You are manifest house-keepers. What are you sewing here? A fine spot in good faith’ (COR 1.3.53–5). She calls them house-keepers, somewhat mockingly, because they are doing domestic work, and even comments on the skill with which one of the women has embroidered a pattern. In TIT Marcus compares his mutilated niece Lavinia to Philomela who ‘in a tedious sampler sewed her mind’, revealing, in a mode specific to women, that she had been raped; but Lavinia has had her hands chopped off and is doubly silenced, having also had her tongue cut out, otherwise she ‘could have better sewed than Philomel’ (2.3.39, 43). Embroidery is also a mode of communication in OTH , when Othello tells Desdemona the story of the handkerchief, created by a 200-year-old sibyl, who ‘in her prophetic fury sewed the work’. The handkerchief has a particularly feminine pedigree: The worms were hallowed that did breed the silk, And it was dyed in mummy, which the skilful Conserved of maidens’ hearts. (3.4.74–7) Men’s involvement with sewing occurs on a professional level in TS , when Petruccio objects to the gown that the tailor has made for Katherina. The tailor reads from the order for the garment, that it is to be ‘loose-bodied’. Grumio, who has transmitted the order, ripostes, ‘Master, if ever I said “loose-bodied gown”, sew me in the skirts of it and beat me to death with a bottom [bobbin] of brown thread’ (4.3.134–6). Loose-bodied gowns were associated with prostitutes, and Grumio is colluding with his master in the humiliation of Katherina. Falstaff, protesting at the distance he claims to have walked during the Gad’s Hill robbery, declares, ‘Ere I lead this life long, I’ll sew netherstocks and mend them, and foot them too’ (1H4 2.4.112–13). His characteristically exaggerated speech means that if he lives any longer, he will have to stitch, darn and remake his stockings, an incongruous idea. (C) Findlay (2010) discusses sewing as an essentially feminine accomplishment. See also Parker (1984) and Frye (2010) on needlework and female identity. Gossett has a long note on Marina’s needlework, which she relates to that of other aristocratic women (2004, 410). See also needle, spinster. sheet (A) Sheets made of linen constituted the bed-linen of the well-to-do in early modern England; they were also used as burial shrouds. The whiteness of sheets was important; dressing in white sheets and parading in public was a punishment for various offences, such as adultery. A sheet could also refer to a single piece of loose paper. (B) Sheets are, naturally, significant objects in plays with bedroom scenes, and can be used as a synecdoche for the bed. Iago’s ribald wedding-night wish for Othello and Desdemona, ‘Happiness to their sheets’ (OTH 2.3.26) has an ironic resonance for this play of love and death, in which the two uses of sheets are so tragically connected. Desdemona in a sad premonition asks Emilia to ‘lay on my bed my wedding sheets’ (4.2.107), later 321

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clarifying her feeling: If I do die before thee, prithee shroud me / In one of these same sheets’ (4.3.22–3). In H5 the bed in which Falstaff dies is not seen, but vividly evoked. The Boy announces Falstaff’s imminent end, and calls for Bardolph to ‘put thy face between his sheets and do the office of a warming-pan’ (H5 2.1.84–5), revisiting the old joke about Bardolph’s red complexion. Mistress Quickly, now married to Pistol, describes Falstaff’s end in mundane but moving detail to the group of his loyal followers: ’A parted even just between twelve and one, even at the turning o’ th’ tide. For after I saw him fumble with the sheets and play wi’ th’ flowers, and smile upon his fingers’ ends, I knew there was but one way (2.3.12–15) In 2H6 the body of the Duke of Gloucester is shown in the bed where he has been murdered. Warwick describes how the appearance of the corpse betrays signs of his violent end: His hands abroad displayed, as one that grasped And tugged for life and was by strength subdued. Look, on the sheets his hair, you see, is sticking (3.2.172–4) Hamlet’s rage against his mother’s remarriage, and his disgust with her sexuality, are wonderfully condensed into a rush of sibilants: ‘O most wicked speed! To post / With such dexterity to incestuous sheets’ (HAM 1.2.156–7). The transferred epithet ‘incestuous’ refers to the view that Gertrude and Claudius, as sister and brother-in-law, are involved in a relationship forbidden by the church. King Lear also inveighs against the marriage bed, when he tells Gloucester (mistakenly) that his ‘bastard son was kinder to his father / Than were my daughters got ’tween lawful sheets’ (KL 4.6.113–14). The bed as a place for sex is evoked more sensuously in VA , when Venus describes the pleasure of the lover ‘Who sees his true-love in her naked bed, / Teaching the sheets a whiter hue than white’ (VA 477–8). Similarly, Iachimo is thrilled by the sight of Innogen in her bed ‘whiter than the sheets’ (CYM 2.3.16). Leontes has a different association for white sheets, in his claim that Hermione’s adultery will ‘Sully / The purity and whiteness of my sheets’ (WT 1.2.324–5). There is a comic undertone to the song of Autolycus, that ‘The white sheet bleaching on the hedge. . . . Doth set my pugging tooth on edge’ (4.3.5–7). He means that the sight of the sheet left out to whiten whets his appetite to steal it. A white sheet of another kind features in 2H6, when Eleanor Duchess of Gloucester appears dressed in one, barefoot and carrying a lighted taper, doing public penance in the streets for her treasonous involvement in witchcraft. At the end of the scene Sir John Stanley tells her that her penance is done and she can discard the sheet, but she replies: My shame will not be shifted with the sheet: No, it will hang upon my richest robes And show itself, attire me how I can. (2.4.106–8) 322

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The sheet as a shroud is used figuratively in 3H6, when the king says that, rather than give up his right to the crown, the flag of his country ‘shall be my winding-sheet’ (3H6 1.1.133). Later in the play the Father that has killed his Son in battle poignantly promises, These arms of mine shall be thy winding-sheet; My heart, sweet boy, thy sepulchre. (2.5.114–15) In RJ it appears literally when Romeo, in Juliet’s tomb, spies the corpse of his rival: ‘Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?’ (5.3.97). In MA two senses of the word give Leonato and Claudio the opportunity to share a joke. Leonato tells how Beatrice is ‘up twenty times a night, and there will she sit in her smock till she have writ a sheet of paper’. He continues, ‘O, when she had writ it, and was reading it over, she found “Benedick” and “Beatrice” between the sheet’ (2.3.131– 3, 136–8). (C) Handley discusses sheets in her account of early modern sleeping habits (2016, 48–52), and notes the general preference for those made of linen though coarser sheets might be made of flax. She illustrates a hand-woven linen sheet, made between c. 1575 and c. 1625, still in use as a winding sheet until c. 1900 and in good condition (84). Buxton notes that bed-linen ‘constituted some of the most significant and valuable assets of the household’ in inventories in Thame (2015, 190). On winding sheets as shrouds, see Gittings (1984, 110–17). On the white sheet and other rituals of penance, see Emmison (1973, 261–91). See also bed. shilling (A) A shilling was a coin, in this period mostly of silver, worth 12 pence, or one twentieth of a pound. The coinage was subject to frequent devaluations during the sixteenth century. (B) Shillings, being English currency, feature most in plays set in England, though Shakespeare is not always consistent here. The Prologue to H8, preparing the audience for the show to come, wagers that if they be still and willing I’ll undertake may see away their shilling Richly in two short hours. (11–13) The price cited is a high one, since standing room in the yard cost one penny, and the speaker may be punning on ‘richly’. Mistress Quickly has to keep an eye on her money in her dealings with Falstaff. In 1H4 she claims that she has bought him a dozen shirts, made, not as he asserts of ‘filthy dowlas’ (coarse linen) but of ‘holland of eight shillings an ell’ (3.3.70–1). This would have been expensive material, fine linen imported from Holland. In 2H4 she recalls the day when he promised to marry her, in characteristic style: ‘And didst thou not kiss me, and bid me fetch thee thirty shillings?’ (2.1.100–1). 323

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Bullcalf offers Bardolph ‘four Harry ten shillings in French coins’ (2H4 3.2.221–2) to let him off conscription into the army. In H5 Nym and Pistol quarrel about a gambling debt, Nym claiming eight shillings, but eventually settling for a noble (six shillings and eight pence) (H5 2.1). Abraham Slender, an inept wooer, wishes he had some inspiration for conversation at the dinner where he will encounter Anne Page: ‘I had rather than forty shillings I had my book of Songs and Sonnets here’ (MW 1.1.182–3). The same sum is mentioned by Sir Andrew Aguecheek, envying Feste his skill in dancing: ‘I had rather than forty shillings I had such a leg’ (TN 2.3.19). Slender in MW mentions that he has had his pocket picked by Pistol, ‘of seven groats in mill-sixpences, and two Edward shovelboards, that cost me two shilling and two pence a-piece of Ed miller’ (1.1.142–5). (These shilling pieces are new machine-made ones, acquired from the manufacturer, and thus cost more than their face value, i.e. two pence each, according to Melchiori’s note, Arden edn, 2000.) The Clown in WT does laborious calculations about the profits to be made from his sheep: ‘Every ’leven wether [sheep] tods, every tod yields pound and odd shilling. Fifteen hundred shorn, what comes the wool to?’ (4.3.32–4). He concludes that he needs counters to help him work out the total. (A tod is a measure of the weight of wool, 28 pounds or 12.7 kilograms.) John Lincoln, the broker in STM , rouses the people to anger against immigrants by citing the prices rises they cause: ‘He that will not see a red herring at a Harry groat, butter at eleven pence a pound, meal at nine shillings a bushel and beef at four nobles a stone, list to me’ (6.1.1–4). (C) Landreth (2012) discusses money in several plays of the period including KJ , MM and MV , and has a useful appendix on early modern monetary units. Bulman in his helpful note on 2H4 3.2.221–2 (Arden edn, 2016) makes it clear that Bullcalf’s offer is not as good as it first sounds because neither Harry shilling coins nor French coins had kept their original value. See also groat, noble. shirt (A) The shirt was a man’s garment with a high neck and long sleeves. According to Linthicum (1936) it was nearly a metre long, requiring two to three metres of fabric. The band with which the shirt was finished at the neck and ends of the sleeves might be a decorative feature, embroidered or made of lace. Plainer shirts were worn in bed. (B) The shirt could be used as a metonym for a man, as when Mercutio heralds the arrival of the Nurse and her man Peter with a cry of ‘two, two, a shirt and a smock’ (RJ 2.4.99). Being dressed only in a shirt indicates that the wearer is not fully dressed. When the French soldiers ‘leap over the walls in their shirts’ (1H6 2.1.38 SD ) to escape the English they are in night attire. Iago is deliberately dressed to look unready, when he ‘comes in his shirt, with light and weapons’ to see what has transpired from Rodrigo’s attack on Cassio, which he has organized (OTH 5.1.47). Having several shirts indicates being well-off; in 1H4 the Hostess claims money from Falstaff: ‘I bought you a dozen of shirts to your back . . . Holland of eight shillings an ell’ (1H4 3.3.66–71). Poor Tom, the Bedlam beggar, recalls better days as a servingman at court who ‘had three suits to his back, six shirts to his body’ (KL 3.4.131–2). The shirt is also associated with 324

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luxurious living in TIM , when Apemantus calls Timon mad and tells him that, living in the open air rather than the court, he cannot expect nature to protect him: What, think’st That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain, Will put thy shirt on warm [warm your shirt before you put it on]? (4.3.220–2) Lacking shirts is a sign of poverty. Prince Hal jeers at Poins, referring to ‘the inventory of thy shirts – as, one for superfluity, and another for use’ (2H4 2.2.16–17). Falstaff describes the beggarly band of recruits he has assembled to fight in the King’s army: ‘There’s not a shirt and a half in all my company, and the half-shirt is two napkins tacked together and thrown over the shoulders like a herald’s coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host at Saint Albans’ (4.2.41–5). When Armado, playing Hector in the pageant of nine worthies, challenges Costard, who is playing Pompey, to fight for Jacquenetta, Costard is prepared to ‘do it in my shirt’. Armado refuses to meet him: ‘Gentlemen and soldiers, pardon me. I will not combat in my shirt’. When pressed for his reason Armado is forced to a humiliating admission: ‘The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt’ (LLL 5.2.694–705). Antony, tormented because he believes that Cleopatra has betrayed him to Caesar, draws on a classical comparison to express his passion: ‘The shirt of Nessus is upon me. Teach me / Alcides, thou mine ancestor, thy rage’ (AC 4.12.43–4). Hercules (Alcides) was destroyed by wearing a poisoned shirt, given innocently to him by his wife Deianira; the shirt had been dipped in poisoned blood by the centaur Nessus, in revenge for the wound that Hercules had inflicted on him. (C) For more information about shirts, see Linthicum (1936, 213). Arnold (2008) describes early modern shirts and how to construct them. shoe (A) Shoes were made of a variety of materials in early modern England, but especially leather; as luxury items they could be made of cloth or silk, and lavishly decorated for both sexes. (B) In JC a jocular Cobbler appears in the first scene and annoys the tribunes with his jokes and innuendoes: ‘All that I live by is the awl: I meddle with no tradesman’s matters, nor women’s matters; but withal I am indeed, sir, a surgeon to old shoes; when they are in danger, I recover them. As proper men as ever trod on neat’s leather have gone upon my handiwork’ (1.1.23–7). He refers here to the proverbial expression, ‘as good a man as ever trod on shoe leather’ (Dent, M66). Compare H5 4.7.139–40. This Cobbler is proud of his work (like the shoemakers in Dekker’s play The Shoemaker’s Holiday), and caters for a discerning clientele. Various different sorts of shoes are referred to, from the ‘dancing shoes with nimble soles’ (RJ 1.4.14–15) that Romeo believes Mercutio to be wearing, to the ‘razed’ (fashionably slashed) shoes decorated with ‘with provincial roses’ (HAM 3.2.278–9) that Hamlet thinks might entitle him to ‘a fellowship in a cry of players’, and the 325

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‘cobbled [roughly mended] shoes’ (COR 1.1.191) that Coriolanus scornfully imputes to the plebeians. Shoe fashions are significant; Falstaff is dismissive of what he regards as jumped-up tradesmen: ‘The whoreson smoothy-pates do now wear nothing but high shoes and bunches of keys at their girdles’ (2H4 1.2.38–40). He refers to the high corksoled shoes (or pantofles) that were considered to indicate pride. Edgar in KL creates his role as Poor Tom as an aspiring servingman; he urges, ‘Let not the creaking of shoes, nor the rustling of silks, betray thy poor heart to woman’ (3.4.92–4). Bertram refers to ‘creaking my shoes on the plain masonry’ (AW 2.1.31) as something he will do to pass the time before he can go off to war. The creaking may suggest the noise made by leather shoes if they are new or not fully worn in. Hamlet is upset because his mother remarried within ‘a little month, or e’er those shoes were old / With which she followed by poor father’s body’ (HAM 1.2.146–7); the implication seems to be that she as Queen was wearing delicate shoes to follow the coffin, because, as Thompson and Taylor say in their note (Arden edn, 2016), the shoes of ordinary people would not be thought old after one month or even two. Shoes had to be tied with laces or ribbons. Rosalind says that one sign of a true lover is that he has his shoes untied (AYL 3.2.365); Autolycus sells ‘shoe-ties’ (WT 4.4.604) among many other small items, and Mercutio jokingly accuses the peaceable Benvolio of quarrelling with someone ‘for tying his new shoes with old ribband’ (RJ 3.1.28). Lance’s shoes are indispensable props for his demonstration of how the members of his family lament his parting for court, in contrast to the stony-hearted dog Crab. He can’t decide which shoe represents his father and which his mother, but in the end ‘the shoe with the hole in it is my mother’ because ‘it hath the worser sole’ (TGV 2.3.15–16). He is making a bawdy joke on ‘hole’ as female genitals, and also alluding to the traditionally misogynistic view that women have inferior souls to men. (C) Linthicum has a detailed section on footwear in the period (1936, 238–64). Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday celebrates the craft and culture of shoemakers. Daniell’s note on the cobbler’s speech in JC (Arden edn, 1998) elucidates some sexual implications. Korda’s fascinating article ‘How to do things with shoes’ (2015, 85–103) explores ‘fancy footwork and footware’ as exhibited on the stage. shop (A) A shop was a building or room from which goods were made or sold. London shops were regulated by the Lord Mayor of London and the city fathers. The number of shops in London increased rapidly towards the end of the sixteenth century, and imports of luxury goods continued the trend in the next century. ‘Shop’ may also stand for workshop. (B) The most vividly evoked shop in Shakespeare is the apothecary’s in RJ where Romeo goes to buy poison. These are the premises of a man so indigent that he will sell anything, legal or not. Romeo describes it: . . . in his needy shop a tortoise hung An alligator stuffed, and other skins

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Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves A beggarly account of dusty boxes Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds Remnants of packthread and old cakes of roses Were thinly scattered to make up a show. (5.1.42–8) The character is taken from Shakespeare’s source, Arthur Brooke’s Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, but the picturesque description of the shop is mostly Shakespeare’s own. The desperate situation of the impoverished shopkeeper, with his collection of lifeless and musty objects, reflects on the hopeless and death-bound condition of Romeo himself. The importance of shops in CE is a pointer to the lifestyle of Antipholus of Ephesus as a man about town. He wants the goldsmith to give him an excuse for being late home to dinner that will go down well with his wife: ‘Say that I lingered with you at your shop / To see the making of her carcanet’ (CE 3.1.4–5). When he is arrested later for non-payment of a debt to the goldsmith, his tone changes, and he threatens: ‘Sirrah, you shall buy this sport so dear / As all the metal in your shop will answer’ (4.1.82–3). Antipholus of Syracuse, benefiting from all the attention normally paid to his twin brother, notes how he is solicited on every hand: Even now a tailor called me in his shop, And showed me silks that he had bought for me. (4.3.7–8) In JC the tribune Flavius angrily asks the Cobbler, ‘But wherefore art not in thy shop today?’ (1.1.28), probably meaning his workshop. It is, as has been established ‘a labouring day’, and the cobbler ought to be at work. In 1H6 the Lord Mayor protests to the King that the fighting going on in the streets between the servingmen of the Duke of Gloucester and the Bishop of Winchester is disturbing the peace: Our windows are broke down in every street, And we, for fear, compelled to shut our shops. (1H6 3.1.84–5) In his misanthropy, Timon of Athens encourages thieves to go about their business: ‘To Athens go, / Break open shops, nothing can you steal / But thieves do lose it’ (TIM 4.3.441–3). The shop is sometimes used to mean a storehouse or place where goods are displayed. Iachimo describes the men of Italy boasting about their women: ‘for condition, / A shop for all the qualities that man / Loves woman for’ (CYM 5.5.166–7). In SON 24 the poet imagines the lover’s true image ‘which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still’; the image is not for sale, but only to be gazed on and admired. (C) For a brief account of shopping in early modern England see Glennie and Thrift (1996). Cox and Dannehl (2007) explore attitudes towards shopping and retail practices

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in the period, though without much use of literary sources. Wallis’s fascinating and detailed article (2008) examines the early development of specialized retail shops in London in relation to the development of material and medical culture, with special reference to the apothecary’s shop. On the apothecary in RJ , see also Grace (1998). shrew (A) A shrew is a small mouse-like animal with a long pointed snout, small eyes and velvety fur, regarded in this period as aggressive or even having a venomous bite. In early modern England the term is also applied to a person, usually with misogynistic implications to a woman, especially a wife, regarded as over-assertive and bad-tempered. The adjective ‘shrewish’ usually refers to this second meaning, whereas ‘shrewd’ has other meanings such as astute, sharp or having good powers of judgement, but can be used to pun on shrew as a bad-tempered person. (B) Shrewish qualities may be applied to children or young people, as when Queen Elizabeth in R3 rebukes the young Duke of York: ‘A parlous boy; go to, you are too shrewd’ (R3 2.4.35) or Malvolio in TN says that Cesario/Viola is ‘very well favoured and speaks very shrewishly’ (1.5.155–6). Antipholus of Ephesus, angry with Angelo the goldsmith in CE , compares him to shrew (4.1.51) as being quarrelsome. But most commonly in Shakespeare shrewishness is found in women; thus Alençon in 1H6 remarks that ‘These women are shrewd tempters with their tongues’ (1.2.123), using the word both to intensify ‘tempters’ and to draw on its misogynistic undertones. Judge Silence generalizes similarly in his drunken song: Be merry, be merry, my wife has all For women are shrews, both short and tall. (2H4 5.3.32–3) Antipholus of Ephesus remarks of his ill-used wife that she ‘is shrewish when I keep not hours’ (CE 3.1.2). Lorenzo in MV intends to tease Jessica in the nocturnal exchange between the couple at Belmont: In such a night Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew, Slander her love, and he forgave it her. (5.1.20–2) Sir Andrew Aguecheek probably intends to compliment Maria in his address to her, ‘Bless you, fair shrew’ (TN 1.3.45), but his choice of language conveys his ineptitude with women. Helena, however, speaks with deliberate spite in her quarrel with Hermia, whom she calls ‘keen and shrewd’ (MND 3.2.323), while declaring of herself that ‘I have no gift at all in shrewishness’ (3.2.301). Being regarded as shrewish or over-talkative does a woman no favours in the marriage market. Leonato tells his niece Beatrice, ‘Thou wilt never get thee a husband if thou be so shrewd of tongue’ (MA 2.1.17), and his last words to her in the play (often 328

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given to Benedick) are ‘I will stop your mouth’ (5.4.97). Shakespeare’s most extensive exploration of shrewishness is of course TS , where Katherina is described from the start in terms suggestive of uncontrollable aggression; she is ‘too rough’ for Gremio (1.1.55), ‘stark mad’ (1.1.69), a ‘fiend of hell’ (1.1.88), a devil, ‘so curst and shrewd’ (1.1.178) that it seems no man will ever approach her. Petruccio, however, in his pursuit of a wealthy wife, is prepared take on any woman even one ‘As old as Sibyl, and as curst and shrewd / As Socrates’ Xantippe’ (1.2.69–70) as long as she comes with enough money. That he is the right man to deal with Katherina is intimated when his steward Curtis, hearing of his master’s treatment of his new bride on his journey home, remarks that ‘By this reckoning he is more shrew than she’ (4.1.76). Tranio calls him ‘the master / That teacheth tricks eleven-and-twenty long / To tame a shrew and charm her chattering tongue’ (4.2.57–9) in his ‘taming school’. Petruccio sums up his programme of shrewtaming in a soliloquy at the end of 4.1, finally addressing himself to the audience: He that knows better how to tame a shrew, Now let him speak; ’tis charity to show. (4.1.199–200) The conclusion of the play appears to confirm the success of Petruccio’s methods, when Katherina wins for him the wager that the three new husbands put on their wives. After the couple retire to bed, the two defeated husbands round off the scene: HORTENSIO

Now go thy ways; thou hast tamed a curst shrew. LUCENTIO

’Tis a wonder, by your leave, she will be tamed so. (5.2.194–5) (C) TS itself has occasioned a great deal of commentary both on the sexual politics of the play and on the concept of shrewishness in general. See both Thompson’s edition (1984, 2nd edn, 2003) and Hodgdon (2010), who have illuminating introductions and surveys of this material. The collection of essays by Wootton and Holderness (2010) offers some new readings of TS and of other shrew plays linked with it. Boose (1991) has a seminal essay on early modern scolds. Brown (2003) locates shrewishness in the culture of the early modern jest. Capp (2003) explores the lives and culture of women of the poorer and middling sort within a society governed by patriarchal values. Munro (2010) has a good edition of Fletcher’s The Tamer Tamed, his riposte to TS . There are numerous accounts of gender relations from historians in the early modern period, for example Weisner (1993), Fletcher (1995), Gowing (1996), Miller and Yavneh (2006). See also Findlay’s entry on ‘shrew’ (2010). signet A signet was a small seal used for purposes of authentication and often set in a ring. It was also useful as a shorthand means of communicating a request. Hamlet, luckily, ‘had my father’s signet in my purse’ (HAM 5.2.49) when he needed to forge a 329

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letter ordering the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. In MM the disguised Duke convinces the Provost to execute another prisoner in place of Claudio by showing him documents of authentication: ‘Look you, sir, here is the hand and seal of the Duke: you know the character, I doubt not, and the signet is not strange to you?’ (4.2.191–2). The steward Flavius has sent on his master’s behalf for money from the Senators: I have been bold (For that I knew it the most general way) To them to use your signet and your name (TIM 2.2.199–201) See also ring, seal. silk, silken (A) Silk is a fibre produced from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm which can be woven into a delicate and rich fabric. Raw silk for weaving was imported into England in considerable quantities in the early modern period; despite the efforts of King James to encourage native cultivation of mulberry trees, no raw silk was produced in England until the eighteenth century. Small quantities of woven silk were produced by women, but by the middle of the sixteenth century immigrant professional silk-weavers, often religious refugees from the continent, had begun to work in several cities in England and to set up an industry which rapidly became successful. (B) Silk has connotations, of luxury, beauty, and delicacy. In Enobarbus’s description of Cleopatra’s barge, where every detail calls up luxury beyond imagining, even the sails and rigging are ‘silken’ (AC 2.2.219). Innogen’s bedroom is ‘hanged / With tapestry of silk and silver’ (CYM 2.4.69). The delicacy of silk is central to Juliet’s conceit about her desire to hold Romeo prisoner, as a careless child does a pet bird: That lets it hop a little from his hand, Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves, And with a silken thread plucks it back again (RJ 2.2.177–9) The thread, though exceedingly fine, is as strong to hold the bird as the gyves or shackles of the prisoner. But when Leonato says that to give counsel to those who are full of sorrow is as useless as to ‘fetter strong madness in a silken thread’ (MA 5.1.25), the silk suggests something fine in appearance but too weak for purpose. So too when Thersites calls Patroclus ‘thou idle immaterial skein of sleave-silk’ (TC 5.1.29–30) he means something uselessly flimsy. (To ‘sleave’ is to separate the silk into filaments.) The weaving of silk signifies fine embroidery. Marina ‘weaved the sleided silk / With fingers, long, small, white as milk’ (PER 4.0.22), among her other accomplishments. (‘Sleided’ means ‘sleded or untwisted’, according to Gossett, PER , Arden edn, 2004, not divided into filaments.) Emilia in the garden with her woman asks idly if she could ‘work such flowers in silk’ (TNK 2.2.127) and goes on to imagine ‘a gown full of ’em’. The deserted woman in LC sighs over her lover’s letters, ‘with sleided silk, feat and 330

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affectedly, / Enswathed and sealed to curious secrecy’ (48–50), the careful binding of which signifies how highly she has prized them. The most significant embroidery with silk is on Othello’s handkerchief. When describing the origins of the handkerchief to the frightened Desdemona, he tells her that ‘the worms were hallowed that did breed the silk, / And it was dyed in mummy, which the skilful / Conserved of maidens’ hearts’ (OTH 3.4.75–7). The exotic origins and magic properties of the handkerchief give it special symbolic value in this play, where it links together all the main characters. Silk can suggest the leisure and ease of an upper-class life. ‘Silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies’ (H5 2.0.2) when the youth of England go to war in H5. Clothing made of silk was prohibited to those below the status of gentlemen by the sumptuary laws. Jack Cade refers scornfully to members of the nobility as ‘silken coated slaves’ (2H6 4.2.119). Belarius prefers the simple life of the country to that of the court; it is ‘prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk’ (CYM 3.3.24). Edgar in his role as Poor Tom associates the ‘rustling of silks’ (KL 3.4.93) with his wasteful life as a servingman at court. ‘Thy flatterers yet wear silk, drink wine, lie soft’ (TIM 4.3.205), observes Apemantus to Timon, noting that the extravagant lives of those with whom he used to consort have not changed. Compare Coriolanus’s reference to ‘the parasite’ silk’ (COR 1.9.45). When Berowne abjures elaborate language, ‘taffeta phrases, silken terms precise’ (LLL 5.2.405), and Richard III says that ‘simple truth’ is abused by ‘silken, sly, insinuating jacks’ (R3 1.3.52–3), silk is associated with falsity and deception. Lear, wishing to restore himself to the state of ‘unaccommodated man’, contemplates Poor Tom: ‘Thou ow’st the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume’ (KL 3.4.102–3). Here, silk stands for what is inessential and inauthentic to the human condition. (C) See Rothstein (2003) on silk manufacturing in this period. Linthicum (1936, 110–27) describes several sorts of silk. See Shulman (2007) on sumptuary legislation. Hentschell (2016) gives a fascinating account of the role of luxury fabrics in the formation of English cultural identity. Gossett (PER , Arden edn, 2004, 410) has a long note on Marina’s embroidery with silk. See also cypress, damask, taffeta, velvet. simple (A) Simple, as a noun in the medical sense, originally meant a medicine or medical treatment composed of a single constituent, but could also mean more generally a plant or herb with healing properties. (B) Shakespeare sometimes makes use of the more specific sense of the word for word-play. In LUC , Tarquin tries to persuade Lucrece to yield willingly to him but keep it secret from her husband, arguing that she will thus gain him as a ‘secret friend’: The poisonous simple sometime is compacted In a pure compound; being so applied, His venom in effect is purified. (530–2) He means that a simple, if composed of a single ingredient, may be poisonous, but if compacted, or mixed with other elements, its poisonous effect is nullified. 331

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In PT the poet is describing the result of the union of two lovers so complete that neither retained a separate identity: Reason in itself confounded, Saw division grow together, To themselves yet either neither, Simple were so well compounded (41–4) These complex lines explore the paradoxes of love, which overthrow reason; the lovers are neither themselves nor each other, the single selves (simple) being completely remade as a compound. Jacques in AYL also puns on the word, but in a less metaphysical style. He describes to Rosalind his own brand of melancholy, the uniqueness and complexity of which he wants to emphasize, calling it ‘a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extricated from many objects’ (4.1.15–16). Lafew in AW puns on simple, meaning elementary, when he says that Helena, having inherited her father’s medical skill, has ‘a simple touch . . . / powerful to raise King Pippen’ (2.1.74–5). The word is used elsewhere just to mean a herb with healing properties. Laertes has bought ‘an unction of a mountebank’ to anoint his sword so lethal that ‘no cataplasm [poultice] so rare, / Collected from all simples that have virtue / Under the moon’ (HAM 4.7.141–3) can counter its effects. Romeo resorts for poison to an impoverished apothecary whom he has observed ‘culling of simples’ (RJ 5.1.40). The Gentleman in KL mentions Lear’s need of sleep, which will be met by the use of ‘many simples operative’ (4.4.14). See also MW 1.4.58–9. (C) Iyengar, ‘simple’ (2011), gives further information. She notes that ‘Physicians and wise-women were permitted to prescribe their own simples, but technically required the services of an apothecary to dispense compounded medicines’. She cites Bright, who warns against assuming that all plants and simples have medicinal properties (1580, sig. B2). sister (A) A sister is a female sibling. The word can also mean sister-in-law, or a close female friend or associate; it can denote a female member of a religious order. (B) The cousins Rosalind and Celia are said to share loves ‘dearer than the natural bond of sisters’ (AYL 1.2.265), and Rosalind takes the opportunity to calls Celia ‘sister’ in the Forest of Arden, where, although disguised as a boy, she is said to look like Celia’s ‘ripe sister’ (4.3.86). When Olivia discovers that Cesario, for whom she has longed so hopelessly, is Viola she refocuses the intensity of her feeling and greets her with delight, or possibly more mixed emotions: ‘A sister – you are she’ (TN 5.1.320). In their youth, the relationship of another pair of women, Hermia and Helena in MND , has represented an ideal of sisterhood, though when Helena recalls it, the sisterly bond is broken: Is all the counsel that we two have shar’d. The sisters’ vows, the hours we have spent 332

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When we have chid the hasty-footed time For parting us – O, is all forgot? (MND 3.2.198–201) Indeed, sisters related by blood rarely enjoy such closeness. In TS ‘the preferment of the eldest sister’ (TS 2.1.92) in the disposition of marriage is not the only cause of strife between Katherina and Bianca. Bianca’s first words to Katherina are ‘Sister, content you in my discontent’ (1.1.80), and the two when alone together come to blows. Katherina is bitterly jealous of her sister’s place in their father’s affections: She is your treasure, she must have a husband, I must dance barefoot on her wedding day And for your love to her, lead apes in hell. (2.1.32–4) The father’s love is a central factor in the relationship of the three sisters in KL , and the catalyst for its breakdown. ‘Sir I am made of that self mettle as my sister, / And prize me at her worth’ (1.1.69–70). So says Regan, when asked by her father to tell how much she loves him. While the responses of his two elder daughters satisfy him, he cannot resist setting his youngest in opposition to them when he asks ‘But now our joy / . . . what can you say to draw / A third more opulent than your sisters?’ (1.1.82–6). The sisters part on bad terms, without any attempt to disguise the nature of their relationships. Cordelia refers to the others as ‘the jewels of our father’, telling them bluntly, ‘I know you what you are, / And like a sister am most loath to call / Your faults as they are named’. Once she has departed, Goneril and Regan exchange notes on their father: You see how full of changes his age is. The observation we have made of it hath not been little. He always loved our sister most, and with what poor judgment he hath now cast her off appears too grossly. (1.1.290–3) They are very much in accord here, and later take one another by the hand to make a joint stand against their father. But their unity is shattered when they become rivals for the affections of the unscrupulous Edmund. ‘To both these sisters have I sworn my love’, he declares, ‘each jealous of the other as the stung / Are of the adder’ (5.1.56–8). When Cordelia discovers the extent of their cruelty to Lear, she is horrified at their violation of all familial and gender norms: Faith, once or twice she heaved the name of father Pantingly forth as if it pressed her heart; Cried ‘Sisters, sisters, shame of ladies, sisters! Kent, father, sisters! . . .’ (4.3.26–9) Albany, Goneril’s husband, uses another image to express the idea of their transgressive behaviour: ‘Tigers, not daughters’ (4.2.41). 333

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A sister properly supportive of her sibling is Luciana in CE , who berates the man she believes to be the husband of Adriana (in fact, his twin brother) for his mistreatment of her: If you did wed my sister for her wealth, Then for her wealth’s sake use her with more kindness. Or if you like elsewhere, do it by stealth ... Let not my sister read it in your eye. (3.2.5–9) Antipholus of Syracuse responds by denying his relationship with Adriana – ‘Your weeping sister is no wife of mine’ (3.2.42) – and then proceeding to woo Luciana herself. She rejects him and a spate of word-play cleverly contained within the couplet ensues: LUCIANA

Why call you me love? Call my sister so. ANTIPHOLUS

Thy sister’s sister. LUCIANA ANTIPHOLUS

That’s my sister. No. (3.2.59–60)

Some brothers are also supportive of and devoted to their sisters. Claudio defines one version of such a relationship when he says of Hero that he ‘never tempted her with word too large, / But as a brother to his sister showed / Bashful sincerity and comely love’ (MA 4.1.51–3). Laertes, a careful brother, warns Ophelia at length of the danger from Hamlet’s sexual interest in her: ‘Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister’ (1.3.32), and his pain at the sight of her madness is genuine: O rose of May, Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia, O heavens, is’t possible a young maid’s wits Should be as mortal as an old man’s life? (HAM 4.5.156–9) He defends her reputation to the last, telling the priest at her funeral, ‘A ministering angel shall my sister be / When thou liest howling’ (5.1.230–1). Caesar protests his affection for Octavia, ‘a sister . . . whom no brother / Did ever love so dearly’ (AC 2.2.158–9), but his feelings are less disinterested than Laertes’. He makes use of her to cement his relationship with Antony, and when this fails is offended as much on his own behalf as hers. She returns to Rome with what he considers an insufficiently impressive following, and he remarks pointedly: ‘Why have you stolen upon us thus? You come not / Like Caesar’s sister’ (3.6.43–4). Sebastian in TN recalls his twin sister Viola, whom he believes lost at 334

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sea, with poignant affection, and is overwhelmed with joy at their reunion. Claudio’s relationship with Isabella is more conflicted. He speaks proudly of her to Lucio, confident of her ability to help him out of his difficult situation: This day my sister should the cloister enter, And there receive her approbation. Acquaint her with the danger of my state: ... For in her youth There is a prone and speechless dialect Such as move men; beside, she hath prosperous art When she will play with reason and discourse, And well she can persuade. (MM 1.2.167–76) Isabella is soon persuaded to undertake the task and expects, wrongly as it transpires, to succeed. But when they meet in his prison cell, and she tells him of Angelo’s bargain, the terms of their relationship undergo a shift. At first he is prepared to go bravely to his death, and Isabella commends him: ‘There spake my brother: there my father’s grave / Did utter forth a voice’ (3.1.85–6). But after he has imagined what dying might mean he begs her to reconsider: Sweet sister let me live. What sin you do to save a brother’s life, Nature dispenses with the deed so far That it becomes a virtue. (3.1.132–5) She violently rejects this argument, and adds one of her own: ‘Is’t not a kind of incest, to take life / From thine own sister’s shame?’ (3.1.137–8). The remorseful Claudio later begs the Duke, ‘Let me ask my sister pardon; I am so out of love with life that I will sue to be rid of it’ (3.1.170–1). But there is no scene of reconciliation for this brother and sister. Even though, in recounting to the Duke the events with Angelo, Isabella says that ‘my sisterly remorse confutes mine honour, / And I did yield to him’ (5.1.103–4) she is not telling the truth. Sisters-in-law play varied roles, none so complex as that of Gertrude, to whom Claudius refers with unblushing honesty as ‘our sometime sister, now our Queen’ (HAM 1.2.8). This excessively close relationship gives some support to Hamlet’s view of the ‘incestuous sheets’ to which his mother has hurried. Olivia tells Orsino, who has once sought to marry her, to ‘think of me as well a sister as a wife’ (TN 5.1.311) and he is happy to do so. It is with relief that Dromio of Syracuse, when reunited with Dromio of Ephesus at the end of CE , realizes that the kitchen maid who has pursued him will be ‘my sister, not my wife’ (5.1.417), because she was really after his brother. Albany is being sarcastic when he greets Regan as ‘our very loving sister’ (KL 5.1.20). Queen 335

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Elizabeth expresses female solidarity when she calls Anne, Richard III ’s unhappy wife, ‘good sister’ and ‘kind sister’ as they meet at the Tower of London (R3 4.1.7, 11). The weird sisters who astonish Macbeth and Banquo with their mysterious appearance and their uncanny predictions are a malignant band of close female associates, always seen together. ‘The weird sisters, hand in hand, / Posters of the sea and land, / Thus do go about, about’ (MAC 1.3.32–4), they chant. They address one another as ‘sister’, and protect one another’s interests against the world. They have sometimes been linked with the Fates, who are referred to as ‘the sisters three’ by Pistol (2H4 2.4.199) and Lancelet Gobbo in MV (2.2.58). The dying Pandarus at the end of TC invokes ‘Brethren and sisters of the hold-door trade’ (5.11.51), meaning pimps and bawds; the words may be mockingly addressed to the audience (Bevington, Arden edn, 2001). The idea of becoming a sister in a religious order is proposed as a punishment for Hermia if she will not marry the man of her father’s choice. The alternative is death, but ‘to live a barren sister all your life, / Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon’ (MND 1.1.72–3) sounds hardly more appealing. Celia also associates the life of a nun with chill; she jokes about Orlando’s lips saying that ‘a nun of winter’s sisterhood kisses not more religiously; the very ice of chastity is on them’ (AYL 3.4.13–15). The sisterhood that Isabella is preparing to join, ‘the votarists of Saint Clare’ (MM 1.4.5), is less restrictive than she would wish. The speaker in LC refers to a woman as ‘a nun, / Or sister sanctified’ (232–3). Duncan-Jones glosses this as a ‘rhetorical correction’ suggesting that the woman ‘(in this post-Reformation poem) may be not technically a member of a religious order, merely a woman who has made a nun-like decision to devote herself to chastity’ (Arden edn, 1997, 446). (C) See Miller and Yavneh (2006) on sisters in both families and religious communities. Froide (2005) discusses the importance of kinship relations, especially sisters, to unmarried women. Findlay (2010) has a useful entry on ‘sisters’. skillet A skillet is a metal cooking pot with a long handle, a saucepan. Shakespeare’s only use of the term is in OTH when Othello vows before the Senate that if he becomes distracted from his business as commander of the Venetian force in Cyprus by Desdemona’s presence, then Let housewives make a skillet of my helm [helmet] And all indign [shameful] and base adversities Make head against my estimation [reputation] (1.3.273–5) He means that allowing his military judgement to be clouded by domestic matters would be tantamount to debasing his soldier’s armour for use as kitchen equipment. But this confusion is exactly what occurs. sleave Sleave is a ‘A slender filament of silk obtained by separating out a thicker thread’ (MAC , Arden edn, 2015, 181). Cunnington defines it as ‘raw untwisted silk’ (1955, 336

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205). Macbeth refers to ‘the innocent sleep / Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care’ (MAC 2.2.37–8) as something fine and fragile he has lost forever through his killing of Duncan. In TC Thersites insults Patroclus with images of clothes, all suggestive of flimsiness and useless decoration, calling him ‘thou idle immaterial skein of sleavesilk, thou green sarcenet flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal’s purse’ (TC 5.1.29–31). sleeve (A) The sleeve is the part of a garment that covers the shoulder and arm; it was sometimes detachable, and in this period could be a fashion item. Down sleeves were long tight-fitting sleeves to the wrist, and side sleeves were decorative sleeves hanging from the shoulder, attached to the armhole, but open, so as to display the fabric beneath (Linthicum, 1936, 173–4). Trunk sleeves were prominent and stiffened so as to balloon out from the shoulder and taper down to the wrist. (B) Shakespeare’s most significant sleeve is that given by Troilus to Cressida as a love token in exchange for his glove (TC 4.4.68). In the sight of Troilus, she gives it to Diomed, who then wears it on his helmet in battle to challenge Troilus. Thersites comments mockingly, ‘That dissembling abominable varlet, Diomed, has got the same scurvy doting foolish young knave’s sleeve of Troy there in his helm’ (5.4.2–4), and expresses the hope that Troilus will send Diomed back to Cressida ‘of a sleeveless errand’. He jeers at the two men fighting, ‘Now the sleeve, now the sleeve’ (5.4.8, 24). The sleeve could be a conspicuous part of a woman’s dress. In TS the sleeve of the gown that the Tailor has made for Katherina is a bone of contention; the Tailor’s note that the gown is to have a ‘trunk sleeve . . . curiously cut’ is contradicted by Grumio who asserts that he ordered ‘the sleeves should be cut out and sewed up again’ (TS 4.3.140–5). In MA Margaret, teasing Hero about her wedding dress, describes the Duchess of Milan’s gown, evidently very grand and fashionable: ‘cloth o’gold, and cuts, and laced with silver, set with pearls, down sleeves, side sleeves and skirts underborne with a bluish tinsel’ (3.4.18–20). The unbuttoned sleeve was part of the careless garb that marked a lover, according to Rosalind in AYL (3.2.365). The man who fights alongside Henry V on St Crispin’s Day will proudly ‘strip his sleeve and show his scars’ (H5 4.3.47) at every anniversary. Taking someone by the sleeve is a mark of intimacy: Adriana demonstrates her affection for the man she believes to be her husband (in fact, his twin brother): ‘Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine: / Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine’ (CE 2.2.179–80). Luciana later in the play urges this same man to show at least the semblance of affection to his wife, even if he loves someone else: ‘Though others have the arm, show us the sleeve’ (3.2.23); she seems to be drawing on the idea of wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve, as alluded to by Iago when he tells Roderigo that if ever he reveals his real thoughts in his actions, then ‘ ’tis not long after / But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve / for daws to pack at’ (OTH 1.1.62–4). (The proverb is in Dent, F32, ‘He pins his faith (etc) on another man’s sleeve’.) Berowne in LLL also uses a proverbial expression, commenting on Boyet’s success with women: ‘This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve’ (5.2.321). See Dent, S534, ‘To have (pin) in (on) one’s sleeve’. 337

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(C) For more detail about sleeves, see Linthicum (1936, 171–6). Arnold (1985) illustrates various types of sleeves and gives instructions on how to construct them. On Troilus’s sleeve, see Bruster (2002, 67–96) and Kerrigan (2016, ch. 10). slop Slops were wide breeches, closed at the knee, requiring a large quantity of often very expensive fabric. The slop can signify the round or French hose, as in Mercutio’s greeting to Romeo, ‘Signor Romeo, bonjour: there’s a French salutation to your French slop’ (RJ 2.4.43–5). But in MA , where Don Pedro mocks Benedick’s sartorial transformation into a lover, slops are the fashion of another nation: There is no appearance of fancy in him, unless it be a fancy that he hath to strange disguises: as to be a Dutchman today, a Frenchman tomorrow – or in the shape of two countries at once, as a German from the waist downward, all slops, and a Spaniard from the hip upward, no doublet (MA 3.2.29–34) According to Linthicum, German slops ‘were paned with grotesquely full lining in contrasting colour which hung between the panes [of different fabric] in limp puffs’ (1936, 209). When Falstaff enquires of his Page, ‘What said Master Dommelton about the satin for my short cloak and slops? (2H4 1.2.29–30), the implication may be that the outfit he has ordered is expensive but also too youthful for him. Dekker says of the Englishman, who gets his clothes from all over Europe, that ‘his huge sloppes speakes Spanish’ (1606, 32). slut, sluttish (A) Slut was a derogatory term, meaning a woman who was dirty or untidy in her habits. It could also suggest promiscuity. Sluttish meant dirty or repulsive or of low character, and could be applied to either sex. (B) Touchstone makes fun of the simple-minded Audrey when she asserts that she is not good-looking but would therefore like to be chaste: ‘I am not fair, and therefore I pray the gods make me honest’. He responds, ‘Truly; and to cast away honesty upon a foul slut were to put good meat into an unclean dish’ (that is, chastity is wasted on a slattern). ‘I am not a slut’, answers poor Audrey, ‘though I thank the gods I am foul’ (AYL 3.3.30–5). Ulysses in TC speaks insultingly of women like Cressida, whom he likens to a prostitute, as ‘sluttish spoils of opportunity / And daughters of the game’ (4.5.63–4). Timon gives away his gold to the whores Timandra and Phrynia, urging them, ‘Hold up, you sluts, / your aprons mountant [raised]’ (TIM 4.3.134–5), so that he can pour the gold into their laps. The term sluttish can mean dirty or untidy in a non-sexual sense, as when Shakespeare in SON 55 refers to ‘unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time’ or the tears of Venus are too precious to ‘wash the foul [dirty] face of the sluttish ground’ (VA 983). In the same way, Pistol in MW says of the Fairy Queen that she ‘hates sluts and sluttery’ (5.5.46). Parolles, humbled and in filthy clothes, tells Lavatch that he is out of favour with fortune and ‘smell[s] somewhat strong of her strong displeasure’. Lavatch replies 338

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‘Truly, Fortune’s displeasure is but sluttish if it smell so strongly as thou speakest of’ (AW 5.2.4–6). (C) See Vienne-Guerin (2016) on ‘slut’ as an insult, and Findlay (2010), ‘slut’. smock (A) Smocks were loose, high-necked, shirt-like undergarments worn by women, sometimes used for nightwear; some were plain and made of coarse material but others might be made of fine linen and embroidered. The term could be used disparagingly to denote a woman. (B) In Shakespeare the smock is usually a humble garment, and is often used as a dismissive metonym for a woman. Enobarbus consoles Antony for the death of his wife Fulvia by suggesting it is an opportunity to find a new wife: ‘your old smock brings forth a new petticoat’ (AC 1.2.175–6). Romeo and Mercutio greet the arrival of the Nurse and her man Peter as two sails, ‘a shirt and a smock’ (RJ 2.4.99). In WT a servant remarks on the extravagance of Autolycus’s praise for his wares: ‘You would think a smock were a she-angel, he so chants [sings in praise of] the sleeve-hand [wrist-band]’ (WT 4.4.211). Bertram refers disparagingly to his unloved wife, Helena, who prevents him from going to the wars, ‘I shall stay here, the forehorse to a smock’ (AW 2.1.30). (The ‘forehorse’ is the leader in a team, in this case one driven by a woman.) Berowne, annoyed by Boyet and the part he has played in assisting the women’s fooling of the men, dismisses him by saying, ‘Go, you are allowed; / Die when you will, a smock shall be your shroud’ (LLL 5.2.478–9). Woudhuysen (Arden edn, 2001, 269) glosses this: ‘Whenever you die, you’ll be buried like the woman you are’. The Jailor’s Daughter humbly offers herself to her suitor, claiming ‘I have nothing / But this poor petticoat and two coarse smocks’ (TNK 5.2.83–4). Othello’s address to the dead Desdemona, ‘O ill-starred wench / Pale as thy smock’ (OTH 5.2.271), gains pathos from its reference to this modest garment and the implication of Desdemona’s chastity in her pallor. But when Alençon jokes that the Dauphin ‘doubtless . . . shrives this woman [Joan La Pucelle] to her smock’ (1H6 1.2.119) he uses the word with a bawdy implication. The ‘summer smocks’ that are bleached by maidens in springtime help create the pastoral mood of the song at the end of LLL . (C) Finlay (2010), ‘smock’, connects smocks worn on stage with vulnerability. See also Linthicum (1936, 189–91) who provides an illustration. spaniel see dog. spectacles A device for correcting ineffective eyesight, spectacles had been in use since the Middle Ages. The early scientist Roger Bacon (c. 1214–1292?) has been associated with their invention, though according to the College of Optometrists this probably came about in Italy. Iyengar notes that ‘spectacles with a fixed bridge were invented in the late sixteenth century’ (2011, 130). The wearing of them is usually associated by Shakespeare with old age. ‘Spectacles on nose’ are an accoutrement of the ‘lean and slippered pantaloon’ in Jacques’ speech on the seven ages of man (AYL 2.7.160). In 2H6 339

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the King reproves the elderly Earl of Salisbury by asking, ‘What, wilt thou on thy deathbed play the ruffian, / And seek for sorrow with thy spectacles?’ (5.1.164–5). In KL the Earl of Gloucester answers Edmund’s disingenuous denial that he has a letter hidden in his pocket saying, ‘If it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles’ (1.2.36). When King Lear in his madness counsels the blind Gloucester to ‘get thee glass eyes’ (4.6.166) he is probably referring to spectacles, since false eyes made of glass were first mentioned late in the seventeenth century (Foakes, Arden edn, 1997). Pandarus makes a feeble pun when he says of Troilus and Cressida, grief-stricken at their imminent parting, ‘What a pair of spectacles is here’ (TC 4.4.13). Queen Margaret in 2H6 may also be punning when she refers to eyes filled with sorrow as ‘blind and dusky spectacles’ (3.2.112). See Iyengar (2011) ‘eyes’. spice (A) Spices are aromatic substances made from plants, much used in early modern cooking and also for medicinal purposes. Most were imported and thus expensive. (B) In MV Salarino puts himself in the situation of Antonio, who has ships at sea freighted with valuable commodities, and imagines how he would be constantly reminded of their peril, especially from ‘dangerous rocks, / Which touching but my gentle vessel’s side, / Would scatter all her spices on the stream’ (1.1.30–2). Pericles, preparing to bury his (as he thinks) dead wife at sea with as much state as he can muster, calls for ‘spices, ink and paper, / My casket and my jewels’ (PER 3.1.65–6); in the next scene the coffin containing the body is washed up, and Cerimon observes with wonder that it is ‘shrouded in cloths of state; balmed and entreasured with full bags of spices’ (3.2.67–8). Timon of Athens describes the miraculous effect that gold has, similarly drawing on the idea of spice as a preservative: She whom the spittle house and ulcerous sores Would cast the gorge at, this [gold] embalms and spices To th’April day again. (TIM 4.3.40–2) Spices are an essential ingredient of festive food. Lady Capulet tells the Nurse to ‘fetch more spices’ for Juliet’s wedding feast (RJ 4.4.1). The Clown in WT shops at Perdita’s behest for ‘spices for our sheep-shearing’ (4.3.115). They also suggest the exotic. Hippolyta in MND describes how she sat and gossiped with the mother of the Indian boy ‘in the spiced Indian air by night’ (2.1.124). Richard III ’s effort to persuade Queen Elizabeth to woo her daughter on his behalf utilises spice in a uniquely grotesque way. When she objects to his suit, saying, ‘Yet thou didst kill my children’, he responds: But in your daughter’s womb I bury them, Where, in that nest of spicery, they will breed Selves of themselves, to your recomfiture (R3 4.4.423–5) 340

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The reference is to the phoenix’s nest, from which a new phoenix arises out of the ashes of the first. Spice is used metaphorically to mean an extra seasoning by the Old Lady in H8 when she refutes Anne Boleyn’s claim that she does not want to be queen: Beshrew me, I would – And venture maidenhead for’t; and so would you, For all this spice of your hypocrisy. (2.3.24–6) See also WT 3.2.183 and COR 4.7.46. (C) Elyot (1541) laments the greed behind the trade in spices, ‘the traffyke of spyce and sondry droughes, to content the unsaciablenesse of wanton appetites’ (24). See Fitzpatrick (2011) for more information on early modern spices. spin To spin was to draw out or twist the fibres of wool or flax into a continuous thread on a distaff. Spinning was a household industry as well as a domestic pastime for women. Spinning and weaving were often regarded as proper activities for the virtuous wife, although the word can be used by Shakespeare with bawdy implications. Lucrece in LUC personifies the virtuous wife, who, according to the Argument of the poem, is discovered by her husband Collatine, ‘though it were late in the night, spinning among her maids: the other ladies were all found dancing and revelling, or in several disports’ (15–17). Her productive occupation contrasts with the activities of other women, and thus Collatine wins a wager with the other men in the army on his wife’s chastity. But when Lance in TGV itemizes the qualities of the milkmaid he is in love with, in a list read out by Speed, this leads to bawdy innuendo: SPEED

Item, she can spin. LANCE

Then may I set the world on wheels, when she can spin for her living (3.1.307–8) He means that he can then lead a life of leisure because she can make a living by sex work. In TN Sir Toby comments on Sir Andrew’s long straight hair, saying that ‘it hangs like flax on a distaff, and I hope to see a housewife take thee between her legs and spin it off’ (1.3.98–100). Sir Toby puns on ‘take thee’ and ‘spin it off’, meaning that the housewife (or hussy) will take Sir Andrew sexually and to bring him to orgasm. Mendelson and Crawford (1998) have information about spinning as an occupational trade for women. McNeill stresses the importance of spinning as work for poor women, its contribution to the textile industry, but also its equivocal status (2007, 28–34). spinster (A) A spinster was primarily an occupational term for a woman who spun wool or flax, or a legal term for an unmarried woman. The derogatory meaning now current, of an old maid, is not recorded before the eighteenth century. 341

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(B) In H8 the Duke of Norfolk lists the people within the clothing trade who are in revolt against heavy taxation, including ‘spinsters, carders, fullers, weavers’ (1.2.33). While this clearly uses the word in its original meaning, the other three references in Shakespeare all draw on the other meaning. Iago’s derogatory description of Cassio as man ignorant of the practicalities of warfare, That never set a squadron in the field Nor the division of a battle know More than a spinster (OTH 1.1.21–3) implies that his rival lacks manliness. In TNK Hippolyta, urging Pirithous to join her husband Theseus in battle, says that she and Emilia are in spirit like soldiers themselves, and if he waits for them to become like women who stay at home and spin he will wait forever: Then, if You stay to see of us such spinsters, we Should hold you here forever. (1.3.22–4) The best-known use of the word is in Orsino’s speech about the song he wants Feste to sing: It is old and plain. The spinsters, and the knitters in the sun And the free maids that weave their threads with bones Do use to chant it. (TN 2.4.43–6) The ‘free maids’ may be unmarried, or just carefree, girls; weaving thread with bones refers to bone spindles, and they may have been making lace. The beautiful lines about women singing an old song together in the sun conjures up a rich vision. (C) Froide (2005), who rejects the word spinster, examines the lives and occupations of women who never married in this period. See also Mendelson and Crawford (1998, 165–74) who summarize general features of the lives of unmarried women. McNeill comments on contradictory uses of the term (2007, 31–3). steward (A) Stewards were senior servants in aristocratic households who worked at the highest level. They were well educated, entrusted with jurisdiction over the other servants and held a great deal of authority in the running of the household. (B) Shakespeare’s best known steward is Malvolio, who works in the household of Olivia and attempts to use his authority not only over the other servants but also over her uncle Sir Toby Belch, and his companions. Sir Toby, accused by Malvolio of ‘mak[ing] an alehouse of my lady’s house’ with his drunken singing, hits back with an aristocrat’s 342

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disdain for a servant: ‘Art any more than a steward? Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?’ (TN 2.3.111–12). Maria plays cleverly on Malvolio’s social aspirations in the letter she writes as if from Olivia: ‘Thou art made if thou desir’st to be so; if not, let me see thee a steward still, the fellow of servants and not worthy to touch Fortune’s fingers’ (TN 2.5.151–4). In TIM Flavius is Timon’s honest and faithful steward who tries unsuccessfully to protect his master from his predators and false friends, prepared even to use his own money in Timon’s service. When Timon, now penniless, has left Athens, Flavius vows to follow him: I’ll ever serve his mind with my best will: Whilst I have gold, I’ll be his steward still. (TIM 4.2.50–1) His use of the word ‘steward’ here suggests not only that he will continue in his old role, but also that he will act as guardian to his master. When he catches up with Timon in the woods and begs his fallen master ‘to entertain me as your steward still’, Timon is so astonished at his words of loyalty that he is almost unable to believe in them: Had I a steward So true, so just and now so comfortable? It almost turns my dangerous nature mild. (TIM 4.3.485–7) That stewards were men of power is clear from Falstaff’s boast to Shallow when they have heard news of the death of the old king Henry IV, and Falstaff has high expectations of office under the new king: ‘Master Shallow, my Lord Shallow – be what thou wilt: I am Fortune’s steward!’ (2H4 5.3.129–30). On the other hand, when the poet in Sonnet 94 is defining the moral status of those ‘that have power to hurt, and will do none’ he observes that they ‘rightly do inherit heaven’s graces’ while others are ‘but stewards of their excellence’. ‘Stewards’ here means mere guardians or custodians of wealth, as opposed to those who actually possess it. Sad to say, Ophelia’s reference to ‘the false steward that stole his master’s daughter’ (4.5.166–7) continues to puzzle editors. Aspiring stewards who aimed for more power than they were entitled to were clearly dangerous servants to employ. (C) Schalkwyk notes that ‘stewards, who occupied critical positions of authority and trust, could be drawn from the yeomanry, the lesser gentry, and in some cases the upper gentry’ (2005, 87). See also Burnett (1997), who discusses the steward’s responsibilities, and Heal (1990). Empson (1966, 75–96) discusses the ambiguities of SON 94. Other plays featuring stewards include Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi and Fletcher’s The Scornful Lady. stocking, netherstocking (A) Stockings, also called netherstockings, made of silk, wool, cotton or linen were worn by men and women to cover the leg from the knee downwards; long stockings, so-called, extended from the thigh to the foot. They might be fashion items, decorated with embroidery, and came in many colours. 343

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(B) Shakespeare’s most famous stockings are those that Malvolio is tricked into wearing, in the belief that Olivia is fond of them. Maria words her letter carefully: ‘Remember who commended thy yellow stockings and wished to see thee ever crossgartered’ (TN 2.5.149–50). Olivia in fact dislikes the colour, and Elam suggests that by the time of the play yellow stockings were ‘hopelessly old-fashioned’ (Arden edn, 2008, 247). Poins is credited with possessing two pairs of silk stockings, one of them ‘peachcoloured’ (2H4 2.2.16), perhaps a more fashionable shade. Among the epithets Hal applies to the innkeeper is ‘puke-stocking’, referring to his dark woollen stockings (1H4 2.4.69). ‘Puke’ was a kind of woollen cloth as well as a dark colour. Florio (1578) defines ‘Pauonaccio cupo’ as ‘a deepe darke purple or puke colour’. In TS , Petruccio’s household servants are expected to be ready for his arrival ‘in their new fustian [coarse cloth of cotton or linen], their white stockings’ (TS 4.1.42). The white stockings were for special occasions. Kent insults Oswald by calling him ‘a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited-hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave’ (KL 2.2.114–16). The three suits were the allowance of a steward, who earnt the goodly sum of one hundred pounds, but the stockings made of worsted (wool) indicated his status as a servant not a gentleman, whose stockings would have been silk. Hamlet’s entry into Ophelia’s closet, ‘his stockings fouled [unwashed] / Ungartered and downgyved to his ankle’ (HAM 2.1.76–7) is a clear sign of mental disturbance. A gentleman’s silk stockings were held up tightly by ornamental garters at the knee, to show off the shape of his leg. Lord Lovell in H8, complaining of the Frenchified behaviour of ‘our travelled gallants’, says that they must return to English manners, ‘renouncing clean / The faith they have in tennis and tall stockings’ (H8 1.3.29–30). Tall (or long) stockings were fashions from France but in fact also worn at court by King James and Prince Henry. The Fool makes a bitter pun when he sees Kent in the stocks by remarking that ‘he wears wooden netherstocks’ (KL 2.2.201). Falstaff remarks that if he leads a life of crime any longer he will need to ‘sew netherstocks and mend them, and foot them too’ (1H4 2.4.112–13), meaning that his stockings are worn out with too much exercise. (C) See Linthicum (1936, 260–1). On yellow stockings, Elam (Arden edn, 2008, 247) cites a reference in Overbury (1615) to the attire of a country gentleman: ‘If he goe to court, it is in yellow stockings’. Some yellow clothing had an equivocal reputation. Tarltons newes (1590) describes how a husband, believing his wife to be unfaithful, ‘resolves with the crue of the yellow hosed companions that Mulier . . . is a word of inconstancie’ (23). Yellow bands (collars or cuffs) were to become notorious in the Jacobean period for their association with Anne Turner, hanged in 1615 for her part in the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury. See Jones and Stallybrass (2000, 59–85) for an extended account of this. Korda discusses the attractions of silk stockings, especially on stage (2015, 95–9). See Jack of Dover, His Quest of Inquirie (1604, 6) on the ambitious draper’s wife : ‘When other women had their stockings of wosted, jersie, silke, and such like, she got herself a paire made of the finest satten’. On the significance of clothing images in KL , see Ranald (1987, ch. ix). In Erondell’s conversation manual, The French 344

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Garden, Lady Ri-Melaine, dressing in the morning, calls among other items of fashionable clothing, for ‘my Carnation silk stockins’ (1925, 43). stool, close-stool (A) A stool meant a piece of furniture, usually of wood, consisting of a seat resting on three or four legs. It was the commonest form of seating in most homes in early modern England. A close-stool was a chamber pot enclosed in a box or stool and used as a toilet. Stool also meant excrement. (B) Volumnia and Virgilia ‘set them down on two low stools and sew’ (COR 1.3 SD ), this establishing the domestic nature of the scene. Macbeth’s wife admonishes him for his violent reaction to the Ghost of Banquo, which is invisible to her: ‘Shame itself. / Why do you make such faces? When all’s done, / You look but on a stool’ (MAC 3.4.63– 5). The domestic detail is an attempt to reduce Macbeth’s behaviour to the ridiculous. Belarius sits ‘on my three-foot stool’ to tell Guiderius tales of his feats in battle (CYM 3.3.89), and Puck tells how an old woman drinking in the alehouse ‘sometime for a three-foot stool mistaketh me’ (MND 2.1.52). Katherina threatens Hortensio, ‘To comb your noddle with a three-legged stool’ (TS 1.1.64), referring to the proverbial expression, ‘To comb one’s head with a three-legged stool’ (Dent, H270). King Edward IV in 3H6 concludes the play with a complacent speech in which he describes how he has vanquished his enemies and ‘made our footstool of security’ (5.7.14), signifying that he believes his rule to be firmly based. The insult Ajax has for Thersites, ‘thou stool for a witch’ (TC 2.1.41), has several possible interpretations. It may mean excrement, or, as Bevington suggests in his long note (Arden edn, 2001), or the cucking or ducking stool used for punishing those suspected of witchcraft. When the disgraced Parolles tries to get Lavatch to deliver a letter for him, the latter recoils: ‘Foh, prithee, stand away. A paper from Fortune’s close-stool to give to a noble man!’ (AW 5.2.14–15). In LLL Costard mocks Sir Nathaniel the curate, who is representing Alexander the Great in the pageant of worthies, saying that ‘Your lion, that holds his pole-axe sitting on a close-stool, will be given to Ajax’ (5.2.571–2). Alexander’s arms usually consisted of a lion on a throne holding a battle-axe; Costard makes the throne into a privy, and puns on the name Ajax as ‘a jakes’. (C) See Calderwood (1971, 12–13) on the stool in MAC , which he calls ‘the most innocent of stage props’. Vienne-Guerrin (2016) explicates the insulting uses of ‘stool’ and its derivatives in fascinating detail. Caton (2013) discusses stools along with joint stools and their connections with sexually dominant women like Lady Macbeth and Alice Arden. She regards the stool as a ‘repository of complex social meaning’ (131). Buxton in his anthropological account of domestic culture analyses the role of the stool (and other types of seating) in relation to domestic space (2015, 239–42). See also jointstool. sty A sty is an enclosure where pigs are kept. By Shakespeare’s time it had come also to signify a place associated with lust or moral degradation. The verb, then fairly new, 345

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means to confine or keep like a pig. For Cleopatra the world is ‘no better than a sty’ (4.1564) without Antony. Caliban complains that Prospero keeps him confined: ‘Here you sty me / In this hard rock’ (TEM 1.2.342–3). The word is used with more moral opprobrium by Lord Stanley in R3 speaking of his son’s imprisonment ‘in the sty of this most bloody boar’ (4.5.2). Hamlet brings out the word’s animal associations most fully, when he envisages his mother and Claudius ‘honeying and making love / Over the nasty sty’ (HAM 3.4.91–2). Marina also associates it with repulsive sex when she says to Boult who has taken her to a brothel, that ‘most ungentle fortune / Have plac’d me in this sty’ (PER 4.6.93–4). suck, suckle (A) To suck is to draw milk from the breast; as a noun, ‘suck’ can mean the milk that is drawn. To suckle is to nurse a child at the breast. (B) Cleopatra draws on the inherently tender image of the suckling infant when she says to Charmian, just before dying, ‘Dost thou not see my baby at my breast / That sucks the nurse asleep?’ (AC 5.2.308–9). It is of course an asp that she refers to, which is sucking her blood and killing her, not putting her to sleep. But in her last moments Cleopatra is creating for herself a supremely beautiful and gentle death, carefully stagemanaged and in every respect in contrast with the painfully bungled suicide of Antony. Volumnia praises her son’s readiness to shed his blood for his country, and expresses her admiration for the warrior ethic to her timid daughter-in-law Virgilia: The breasts of Hecuba When she did suckle Hector looked not lovelier Than Hector’s forehead when it spit forth blood At Grecian sword contemning. (COR 1.3.42–5) In this disturbing image the flowing of milk is replaced by the violent ejection of blood; the vulnerable baby at his mother’s breast is transformed into the fighter. Mother’s milk was believed to transmit the mother’s moral qualities; Volumnia later claims this for Coriolanus: ‘Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck’st it from me’, but adds, ‘But owe [own] thy pride thyself’ (3.2.130–1). The Nurse in RJ , having given a lengthy account of Juliet’s weaning, then compliments her charge: ‘Were not I thine only nurse, / I would say thou hadst sucked wisdom from thy teat’ (1.3.68–9). See also Lavinia in TIT (2.2.143–4). Aaron the Moor who wants to bring up his baby son to be a warrior promises to make him ‘fat on curds and whey and suck the goat’ (TIT 4.2.180), so as to imbibe its wild qualities. Ulysses flatters the brutish Ajax for his ‘sweet composure’, adding absurdly ‘Praise him that got thee, she that gave thee suck’ (TC 2.3.235). Iago concludes his parodic praise of the good woman with the words: She was a wight, if ever such wights were . . . To suckle fools, and chronicle small beer (OTH 2.1.158–60) 346

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The conclusion to his couplets is a deliberate anticlimax, a demolition of all that has gone before, and as Desdemona calls it, ‘a most lame and impotent conclusion’. In this case the woman cannot transmit any good qualities she possesses to her children; she will only raise fools. In 1H6 the Duke of Bedford, predicting the unhappy state into which the country is in danger of falling after the death of Henry V, uses an odd image: Posterity, await for wretched years When at their mothers’ moistened eyes babes shall suck, Our isle be made a nourish of salt tears (1.1.48–50) England’s sorrowful condition is signified by the idea of babies feeding on their mothers’ tears instead of milk, the country transformed into a nurse with no nourishment to offer. The Father of Joan Puzel wishes that ‘the milk / Thy mother gave thee when thou suck’st her breast / Had been a little ratsbane for thy sake’ (5.3.27–9). Lady Macbeth’s reference to suckling a child is, like Volumnia’s, equivocal: ‘I have given suck, and know / How tender is to love the babe that milks me’, she tells Macbeth, but only as a way of attesting to her commitment to the plan they have made to kill Duncan; she continues, I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have plucked the nipple from his boneless gums, And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn As you have done to this. (MAC 1.7.54–9) With her references to her ‘nipple’ and the baby’s ‘boneless gums’ she evokes the experience of breast-feeding more vividly, and thus in the context more painfully, than anywhere else in Shakespeare. Suckling has metaphorical uses. Ophelia ‘sucked the honey’ of Hamlet’s vows of love (HAM 3.1.155), eager to sustain herself with their sweetness. Friar Laurence celebrates the curative powers of plants and herbs, figuring them as the nutrition provided by mother earth: ‘from her womb children of divers kind / We sucking on her natural bosom find’ (RJ 2.3.7–8). In JC Decius gives Caesar a flattering interpretation of his dream of the ‘statue spouting blood’, using it to signify ‘that from you great Rome shall suck / Reviving blood’ (2.2.87–8). Underlying his image may be the concept of the monarch ‘as both father and nursing mother of the people’ (Daniell, Arden edn, 1998). Pistol’s invitation to his followers to accompany him to the war in France to make what profits they can uses this image in a more overtly sinister way: Yoke-fellows in arms, Let us to France, like horse-leeches, my boys, To suck, to suck, the very blood to suck! (H5 2.3.52–4) 347

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Later, having captured a French soldier from whom he expects to extract ransom money, he remarks with relish, ‘As I suck blood, I will some mercy show’ (4.4.64). (C) Adelman gives a Freudian account of the maternal body and the role of breastfeeding in AC , COR and MAC . She comments especially well on the image from COR (1980, 148). Salmon (1994) describes a range of uses for breast milk in this period, such as food for weak adults or as pain relief. She has much useful information about early modern child-care practices, including infant feeding and weaning. Crawford (2014, ch. 5) discusses attitudes towards breast-feeding along with other aspects of infant care. See Clark (Arden edn, 2015, 169) on the issues arising from Lady Macbeth’s claim to have borne a child. Gouge (1622) strongly advocates the breast-feeding of one’s own children, as does Perkins (1609, 135) and Leigh (1616). Markham (1615) advocates the use of the milk of a nursing mother to aid another woman in her labour (39–40). supper, suppertime (A) Supper was the last meal of the day, taken during the evening, and less substantial than dinner. (B) Suppers can be the occasion for sexual assignations in Shakespeare. Antony invites Cleopatra to supper after seeing her on the river at Cydnus (AC 2.2.230), although she insists on making him her guest. Mistress Quickly, anxious to provide for Falstaff’s well-being, asks, ‘Will you have Doll Tearsheet meet you at supper?’ (2H4 2.1.164). Suppers can take the form of a celebratory meal, as in MAC where Macbeth’s careful arrangements for what appears to be his coronation feast take an unexpected form. He tells Banquo that ‘Tonight we hold a solemn supper, sir, / And I’ll request your presence’ (3.1.14–15). Although Banquo plans to ride some distance, ‘as far . . . as will fill up the time / ’Twixt this and supper’, promises to be back in time for the meal. Macbeth is anxious to complete his own plans once Banquo is out of the way, and gives his orders: Let every man be master of his time Till seven at night; to make society The sweeter welcome, we will keep ourself Till supper time alone. (3.1.40–3) In H8 the Lord Chamberlain mentions a grand event, in fact the occasion at which the King first catches sight of Anne Boleyn, to be held by Cardinal Wolsey: This night he makes a supper, and a great one, To many lords and ladies (1.3.52–3) In 1H6, the absence of Richard of Gloucester, departed to take the life of King Henry, is explained by his brother Clarence; he has gone ‘to make a bloody supper in the Tower’ (3H6 5.5.83). Supper is also the subject for macabre jocularity for Hamlet when he responds to Claudius’s enquiry about the whereabouts of Polonius, saying that he is ‘at 348

supper, suppertime

supper . . . not where he eats but where ’a is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him’ (HAM 4.3.18–20). The timing of supper is sometimes important. Prospero is conscious of the need to make haste with his plans for the union of Miranda with Ferdinand: ‘For yet ere suppertime must I perform / Much business appertaining’ (TEM 3.1.95–6). In TS when Petruccio returns home with his new bride, Grumio is anxious that everything is ready for him, and asks, ‘Where’s the cook? Is supper ready?’ As soon as Petruccio has entered, he gives orders: ‘Go, rascals, go, and fetch my supper in’ (TS 4.1.125). On the evening before the final battle, Richard III asks Catesby the time, and Catesby answers, ‘It’s supper time, my lord; it’s nine o’clock’ (5.3.49). Supper is not a late meal. In MND Theseus calls for some entertainment ‘to wear away this long age of three hours / Between our after-supper and bedtime’ (5.1.33–4). The ‘after-supper’ is the dessert at the end of the meal. King Lear’s disordered understanding of what is happening to him is epitomized in his reply to Kent’s effort to get him to rest: ‘Make no noise, make no noise, draw the curtains. So, so, so; we’ll go to supper in the morning’ (3.6.80–1). (C) Cogan (1636, ch. 212) discusses supper which he considers should be taken about four to six hours after dinner. Boorde (1547, ch. 8) gives similar advice. Both think that for most people a light supper is better for the health than a large meal, and that one should not go immediately to bed, but ideally walk a mile first.

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T table(s), tablebook, tablet (A) Table has several different meanings in Shakespearean usage. It can signify a piece of furniture, usually of wood, with a flat top on which food and drink is served, and also, by extension, the group seated round it; a small portable tablet for writing notes or memoranda, or on which a picture can be painted; a tablebook or pocket notebook. (B) Mistress Quickly reminisces about the time when Falstaff proposed marriage to her, with vivid details of the cosy domestic setting, when he was ‘sitting in my Dolphin chamber at the round table by a seacoal fire upon Wednesday in Wheeson week’ (2H4 2.1.86–7). More ceremonial tables feature in HAM and MAC . Hamlet recalls his mother’s remarriage when ‘the funeral baked meats / Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables’ (HAM 1.2.179–80). He also remembers when the jests of Yorick ‘were wont to set the table on a roar’ (5.1.181). The table at Macbeth’s coronation feast is an important prop but also a signifier of the ceremony that is disrupted. Macbeth urges his guests to ‘drink a measure / The table round’ (3.4.10–11) to celebrate their participation in the grand occasion, but when he goes to take his place there, he finds it unexpectedly occupied: ‘The table’s full’ (3.4.44). Nonetheless, he attempts to restore order after the first appearance of the Ghost: ‘I drink to the general joy o’the whole table’ (3.4.87); but again the ritual is abruptly disrupted by the Ghost. When the Lord envisages the return of peace to his troubled country, it is on terms of domestic order, hoping that ‘we may again / Give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights’ (3.6.34). Social distinction is observed in positioning at the table. In COR the servants of Aufidius remark on the extraordinary attention paid to Coriolanus at the feast, where he is ‘so made on here within as if he were son and heir to Mars, set at upper end o’th’table’ (COR 4.5.194–5). The Shepherd in WT tells his supposed daughter Perdita that his late wife paid attention to all at the feast, ‘would sing her song and dance her turn, now here / At upper end o’th’ table, now i’th’middle’ (WT 4.4.58–9). Someone who does not behave well at a feast is Lance’s dog Crab in TGV , who ‘thrusts me himself into the company of three or four gentleman-like dogs under the Duke’s table’ (4.4.17–18). When Gremio tells Tranio (at this point disguised as his master Lucentio) that Baptista would be a fool ‘To give thee all and in his waning age / Set foot under thy table’ (TS 2.1.404–5), he is using a proverbial expression meaning to live on charity (Dent, F572, ‘To thrust one’s feet under another man’s table’). ‘Table’ meaning notebook is most famously used by Hamlet when he needs to record a thought after his encounter with his father’s Ghost: 351

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My tables! Meet it is I set it down That one may smile and smile and be a villain – At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark (1.5.107–9) He refers here to what were also known in the period as ‘writing-tables’ which could be wiped clean and reused. They seem to have been common objects. In SON 122 the poet talks of ‘thy gift, thy tables’ which his lover has given him but which he has fully recorded within his memory. The term is often used figuratively. Lovers, observes Innogen in CYM , ‘clasp [lovingly embrace] young Cupid’s tables’ (3.2.39). When Helena in AW recalls how she has enjoyed thinking about Bertram and drawing ‘his arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls, / In our heart’s table’ (1.1.95–6), she uses the word to mean a tablet for drawing or painting a picture. The poet uses the same image in Sonnet 24 when he compares his eye to a painter who ‘hath steeled / Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart’. Poins in 2H4 refers to Mistress Quickly as Falstaff’s ‘old tables, his notebook, his counsel-keeper’ (2.4.269–70). Bulman (Arden edn, 2016) has a useful note on these rather obscure phrases, saying that they ‘define Falstaff’s deep and long-standing friendship with the hostess. She has served as his tables (tablets, possibly used for recording private assignations) and notebook (akin to a private diary), and in both instances has been his counsel-keeper (confidante)’. Autolycus boasts that he has sold all his stock to the country people, and has ‘not a ribbon, glass, pomander, brooch, table-book’ left (WT 4.4.603). In LLL a stage direction in the Folio at 5.1.15 states that Sir Nathaniel ‘draws out his table-book’, in order to make a note of the ‘most singular and choice epithet’ (‘peregrinate’) which Holofernes has just used. The sole usage of the word ‘tablet’ is in CYM , where the god Jupiter descends to Posthumus as he lies asleep in prison and commands, ‘This tablet lay upon his breast, wherein / Our pleasure his full fortune doth confine’ (CYM 5.4.79–80). Posthumus wakes and addresses it as ‘a book’, which contains a riddling prophecy about his future. Woudhuysen (2004, 6) thinks this tablet must take ‘the common form of a pair of hinged leaves of some material or other on which a short inscription or set of notes could be written’ but Wayne (Arden edn, 2017) glosses it as ‘a single sheet or a small book’. (C) See Richardson (2002) on ‘The Table in A Woman Killed with Kindness’. In A Woman the table is covered by a carpet, and set with candles and candlesticks (8.121). Richardson relates the table to the significance of domestic ritual, and of its disruption (135). Woudhuysen (2004) has a useful article on writing tables and table-books, observing how frequently they appear in plays of the period. He cites a poem wrongly attributed to Donne (in The Poems of John Donne, ed. Herbert Grierson, 2 vols (Oxford, 1912), 1, 404) in which the poet compares the mind to a writing table: ‘The mind, you know, is like a Table-book, / Which, the’old unwept, new writing never took’.

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taffeta (A) Taffeta is thin fine silk fabric, woven with different colours in the warp and the woof so as to appear iridescent when seen from different angles, hence called ‘changeable’. (B) As an adjective it could mean florid or over-decorative, as in the ‘Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise’ that Berowne abjures (LLL 5.2.406). It was a showy fabric and sometimes associated with the clothing of prostitutes, as in the ‘taffety punk’ mentioned by the Clown in AW (2.2.21). Prince Hal imagines that the sun would have to be ‘a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta’ (1H4 1.2.9–10) to arouse Falstaff’s interest in the passing of time. When Lafew refers to Parolles as a ‘snipp’d taffeta fellow’ (AW 4.5.1– 2) he is suggesting a worthless person of showy appearance, snipped probably meaning slashed. Feste in TN comments on Orsino’s moodiness: ‘Now the melancholy god protect thee, and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal’ (TN 2.4.72–5). The opal is a semi-precious stone which shows different colours when viewed from different angles. Elam (Arden edn, 2008) suggests that Feste is satirizing Orsino’s inconstancy under the guise of comparing him with luxury items, rich fabric and gemstones (231), but Norris calls taffeta ‘a cheap substitute for the rich thin silk so popular amongst the nobility’ (1938, 791). (C) For changeable taffeta, see Hollyband and Erondell (1925, 56). Elam (Arden edn, 2008, 24–5) relates the iridescence of taffeta to the ‘play of alternative perspectives’ he finds in TN . tailor (A) The tailor was a man who made or repaired clothes for a living. Tailors did not enjoy a good reputation in this period, being regarded not only as type of cheating tradesman, but also as social upstarts who grew wealthy by pandering to the vanity of the rich. (B) Tailors in Shakespeare get a bad press. When Kent wants to insult Oswald he says that ‘nature disclaims in thee – a tailor made thee’. Cornwall asks him to explain this, and he answers, ‘Ay, a tailor, sir; a stone-cutter or a painter could not have made him so ill’ (KL 2.2.54–7). The Porter in MAC welcomes ‘an English tailor come hither, for stealing out of a French hose’ (2.3.13) to his imaginary hell. He means that the tailor has skimped on the correct amount of cloth required for this particular style of breeches. Lovell in H8 refers scornfully to ‘our travelled gallants / That fill the court with quarrels, talk and tailors’ (1.3.19–20). In similar spirit the Servingmen in COR look forward to the resuming of war because peace ‘is nothing, but to rust iron, increase tailors and breed ballad-makers’ (4.5.221–2). Tailors contribute to wasteful luxury. Richard of Gloucester, having seduced Lady Anne, decides that he will ‘entertain a score or so of tailors / To study fashions to adorn my body’ (R2 1.2.261–2). In TNK Palamon is dismissive of the values of a foppish and trivial society: Why am I bound By any generous bond to follow him Follows his tailor (1.2.49–51)

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The foolish Cloten arrives in Wales wearing the clothes of Posthumus, of which he is proud – ‘How fit his garments serve me!’ – and expecting to be recognized as a nobleman by Guiderius: Thou villain base, Know’st me not by my clothes?

CLOTEN

No, nor thy tailor, rascal. Who is thy grandfather? He made those clothes, Which, as it seems, make thee.

GUIDERIUS

(CYM 4.2.80–3) Women’s tailors were often regarded as lacking in manly prowess, like Feeble in 2H4, whom Falstaff conscripts to his ragged army, though their sexuality was somewhat ambivalent and they were also considered to be lecherous. Falstaff asks Feeble, probably with sexual innuendo, ‘Wilt thou make as many holes in an enemy’s battle as thou hast done in a woman’s petticoat?’ (2H4 3.2.155–6). In TEM Stephano sings bawdily of Kate, who rejected sailors although ‘a tailor could scratch her where’er she did itch’ (TEM 2.2.52). Thinness in a man appears ridiculous. In MND the comic name of the tailor Robin Starveling suggests that he shares the poor physique of Feeble. When Falstaff wants to insult Prince Hal he calls him ‘you starveling . . . you tailor’s yard’ (1H4 2.4.238, 240). (C) The lowly status of the tailor is a significant aspect of the class conflict in Arden of Faversham (Neill, 2000, 55). Bulman’s note on 2H4 3.2.151–6 (Arden edn, 2016) cites the proverb, ‘It takes nine tailors to make a man’ in relation to the tailor’s effeminacy. Shepherd (1992) explores the tailor as a sexual type in the context of early modern constructions of effeminacy. Overbury’s character of a tailor (1615) describes him as ‘double yarded, and yet his femal complaineth of want of measure’. In Greene the tailor is regarded as an upstart, once ‘counted but Goodman Tailor’ but now to be called ‘a Merchant or gentleman Merchant-Tailor, giving arms and the holy lamb in his crest’ (A Quip, 1592, 30). taper (A) A taper was a candle made of wax, an important household object. (B) When tapers are called for onstage it is usually to invoke a special kind of nocturnal atmosphere. The sleepless Brutus while meditating ‘in his orchard’, asks his servant to light him a taper in his study (JC 1.3.7); Lucius soon reports that ‘the taper burneth in your closet, sir’, although the action of the long scene, including the visit of his fellow conspirators, all takes place in the orchard, symbolically away from the light. Later in the play Lucius brings ‘wine and tapers’ to Brutus and Cassius in their war tent. As Brutus prepares to sleep he is disturbed by a change in the atmosphere, and exclaims, ‘How ill this taper burns’, just as the Ghost of Caesar makes its entrance (4.3.273). The presence of the supernatural was commonly believed to cause lights to burn low, as in R3 5.3.180. Innogen goes to bed but asks her woman, ‘Take not away the taper, leave it burning’; and when Iachimo makes his stealthy entrance he observes that 354

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The flame o’th’ taper Bows towards her and would under-peep her lids To see th’ enclosed lights (CYM 2.2.19–21) Lady Macbeth in her sleepwalking scene enters ‘with a taper’ (MAC 5.1.18), which, as the Gentlewoman says, demonstrates her compulsive need for light, even during the night. Brabantio, rudely awakened by Iago and Roderigo telling him of Desdemona’s elopement with Othello, calls urgently, ‘Give me a taper . . . light, I say, light’, and later, ‘get more tapers’ (OTH 1.1.139–142, 164). Tapers are associated with the ceremonies of the wedding night by Saturninus in TIT as he prepares to lead Tamora to the bridal chamber: Priest and holy water are so near, And tapers burn so bright, and everything In readiness for Hymenaeus stand. (TIT 1.1.328–30) Coriolanus recalls the time when ‘our nuptial day was done / And tapers burned to bedward’ (COR 1.6.31–2). As with the candle, the burning down of the taper signifies death. John of Gaunt expects that ‘my inch of taper will be burnt and done’ before he will see his exiled son again (R2 1.3.223). The oath that Aaron the Moor swears when saving his baby son from the rapiers of Chiron and Demetrius, ‘by the burning tapers of the sky’ (TIT 4.2.91), is unexpectedly grandiose, but suggests the intensity of his feeling for the child. (C) Diehl (1983) discusses the symbolism of the taper. See also candle. tapestry, arras, hanging (A) Tapestry is a thick textile fabric decorated with designs, commonly of narrative subjects, painted, embroidered or woven, and used in Shakespeare’s period for wall hangings both for decoration and for insulation, but also as covering for tables. Arras refers to tapestry used as wall–hangings, often hung at a little distance from the actual wall so that a person could be concealed in the space in between, but can also signify tapestry fabric used more generally. Olson (2010, 50) claims that arras is ‘a term specifically associated with tapestries of high quality, particularly those with metallic threads’. The name comes from the town of Arras, now in France, where much tapestry was manufactured. Tapestry was also known as hanging. (B) Tapestry often signifies luxury, as in TS when Gremio boasts of having ‘hangings all of Tyrian tapestry’ (TS 2.1.353), Tyre being famous for the purple or crimson dye made there from shellfish. He also keeps ‘in cypress chests my arras counterpoints’ (counterpanes) (2.1.355). Antipholus of Ephesus in CE has a desk ‘that’s cover’d o’er with Turkish tapestry’ (4.1.105), where he keeps his money. Innogen’s bed chamber in 355

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CYM , richly appointed as befitting a royal princess, is hung with arras, as Iachimo notes in considerable detail when reporting back to Posthumus: it was hang’d With tapestry of silk and silver, the story Proud Cleopatra, when she met her Roman, ... a piece of work So bravely done, so rich, that it did strive In workmanship and value (CYM 2.4.68–70, 72–4) But the tapestry in her dining rooms that the Hostess in 2H4 claims she must pawn to meet the debts that Falstaff has caused her to run up he rudely dismisses as valueless and old-fashioned: ‘Glasses, glasses, is the only drinking, and for thy walls, a pretty slight drollery, or the story of the Prodigal, or the German hunting, in waterwork, [“imitation tapestry, painted in size or distemper”, OED n. 4] is worth a thousand of these bedhangers [hanging tapestry for a bed] and these fly-bitten tapestries’ (2.1.143–7). Borachio in MA makes a reference to ‘the shaven Hercules in the smirched worm-eaten tapestry, where his codpiece seems as massy as his club’ (3.3.131–4) which has caused some puzzlement, but no specific tapestry has ever been identified. McEachern (Arden edn, 2006, 244) suggests that Borachio may be confusing Hercules with Samson, whose shaving at the hands of Delilah was a favourite subject for tapestry, or the reference may be to the youthful Hercules at the crossroads, ‘poised between the paths of virtue and vice’. That tapestry was not confined to the homes of the wealthy is evident from the simile used by Richard of Gloucester in 2H6 when he compares the strong will of a man with a feeble body to ‘rich hangings in a homely house’ (5.3.12). Hanging arras serves for spying and concealment: most famously in HAM on two occasions, once when Polonius suggests to Claudius that the two of them should be behind an arras when an encounter between Ophelia and Hamlet is arranged (2.2.159–60), and once when, with fatal consequences, he spies on the meeting of Hamlet and his mother: ‘Behind the arras I’ll convey myself / To hear the process’ (3.23.28–9). In MA hiding behind the arras also produces an unfortunate result when Borachio does so, and misinterprets what he hears (1.3.56–9). In MW (3.3) Mistress Ford and Mistress Page play a trick on Falstaff. Mistress Ford gets him to hide behind the arras so that he will overhear a conversation about Master Ford’s jealousy and be persuaded to hide in the laundry basket along with the dirty washing in order to make his escape. This perhaps echoes the scene in 1H4 when Prince Hal conceals him behind the arras in the tavern at Eastcheap so as to hide him from the sheriff (2.4). In KJ Hubert orders the executioners to ‘Heat me these irons hot; and look thou stand / Within the arras’ (4.1.1–2) so as to rush forth and take Arthur by surprise. (C) See Frye on tapestry as a household furnishing for people of the middling sort as well as for the gentry and aristocracy (2010, 5). She also discusses tapestries given as gifts by the wealthy (58) and the significance of the tapestry and other textiles in 356

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Innogen’s room (181–90). Olson (2010) discusses Shakespeare’s differentiation between the terms ‘tapestry’ and ‘arras’ in the context of an account of the textiles in CYM (48– 51). Olson (2009) speculates that the arras in HAM may have depicted some kind of symbolic representation to which Hamlet could point when asking Gertrude to look on the pictures of her two husbands. She makes the point that hangings, as stage props, would have remained in place throughout the play and might therefore have been used to depict scenes of symbolic significance (although allowing that not all of the audience could have seen them). Maria (an equivalent to Katherina in TS ) in Fletcher’s play, The Tamer Tamed, extravagantly demands that her old hangings be replaced with ‘new pieces of the civil wars of France . . . large and lively’ (3.2.107–8). tapster (A) A tapster was a person (originally a woman) who tapped or drew ale for sale in an alehouse or tavern. (B) Tapsters had a reputation for dishonesty, which Celia alludes to when she tells Rosalind that ‘the oath of a lover is no stronger than the word of a tapster. They are both the confirmer of false reckonings’ (AYL 3.4.27–9). In TNK the Schoolmaster makes a speech to the nobility describing the pairs of costumed dancers in the Morris, including mine Host And his fat Spouse that welcomes to their cost The galled traveller and with a beck’ning Informs the tapster to inflame the reck’ning. (3.5.126–9) The host and his wife offer the traveller a drink on the house, but then signal to the tapster to inflate the bill. In MM Escalus warns the dim-witted Master Froth: ‘I would not have you acquainted with tapsters; they will draw you, Master Froth, and you will hang them’ (2.1.202–3). He puns on the idea of execution which involved hanging, drawing (disembowelling) and quartering. Escalus dismisses Pompey’s claim to be a tapster: ‘Pompey, you are partly a bawd, howsoever you colour it in being a tapster, are you not?’ (2.1.216–17). An exchange between Pandarus and Cressida makes the point that the reckoning ability of tapsters is limited. Pandarus mentions the youthfulness of Troilus – ‘he has not past three or four hairs on his chin’ – to which she replies, ‘Indeed, a tapster’s arithmetic may soon bring his particulars therein to a total’ (TC 1.2.107–10). ‘I am ill at reckoning; it fitteth the spirit of a tapster’, says Armado in LLL (1.2.40–1). See also 2H4 (1.2.169–74). In TIM Apemantus upbraids Timon for his indiscriminate generosity: ‘Thou gav’st thine ears, like tapsters that bade welcome, / To knaves ands all approachers’ (TIM 4.3.214–15). (C) See Clark (1983) on the bad reputation of alehouses and tapsters. See also host, hostess. tavern (A) A tavern was a licensed establishment selling alcoholic drinks such as ale and wine and also hot food, somewhat more upmarket than an alehouse. 357

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(B) Goneril, angry with the rowdiness of her father’s entourage, tells him that their behaviour makes her house ‘more like a tavern or a brothel / Than a graced palace’ (KL 1.4.236–7). In MW Sir Hugh Evans describes Falstaff as ‘given to fornications, and to taverns’ (MW 5.5.156), similarly suggesting their low reputation. At the end of R2, Bolingbroke, now King Henry IV, is searching for his son: Enquire at London, ’mongst the taverns there, For there, they say, he daily doth frequent, With unrestrained loose companions (1H4 5.3.5–7) In the Henry IV plays Prince Hal acts in just the way his father imagines, a familiar figure along with Falstaff in the tavern in Eastcheap. Falstaff is so much at home there that when tasked with procuring men for his infantry unit, he exclaims, ‘O, I could wish this tavern were my drum’ (1H4 3.3.205), meaning that he wishes he could use the tavern to enlist his soldiers. In 2H4 Peto arrives at the tavern with news that Falstaff is being urgently sought: As I came along I met and overtook a dozen captains, Bareheaded, sweating, knocking at the taverns, And asking every one for Sir John Falstaff. (2.4.260–3) In CYM the Jailor jocularly tells Posthumus that since he is about to be executed ‘the comfort is you shall be called to no more payments, fear no more tavern bills’ (CYM 5.4.129–30). (C) On the culture of taverns, see Clark (1983). O’Callaghan (2004, 37–51) discusses tavern societies in seventeenth-century London. She notes the representation of taverns as fashionable places to be seen in numerous plays, including Jonson’s Every Man out of his Humour (1599), Bartholomew Fair (1614) and The Devil is an Ass (1616), and Dekker and Webster’s Westward Ho (1607). Dekker (1609) gives the would-be gallant satirical advice on how to behave in a tavern, ‘the only rendezvous of boon company’ (ch. 7), where he can expect to eat delicacies such as capons and oysters. tennis (A) Tennis in the early modern period was a game, French in origin, fashionable with young aristocrats, and sometimes condemned for its associations with wild behaviour. Now known as ‘real tennis’, it was played indoors on enclosed courts, sometimes attached to great houses such as Hampton Court, where one still survives. (B) Polonius, conjuring up for Reynaldo some ideas of what Laertes might be getting up to in Paris, suggests, along with gaming and visiting brothels, ‘falling out [quarrelling] at tennis’ (2.1.57). Prince Hal says that he knows little about the number of shirts owned by Poins: ‘that the tennis-court keeper knows better than I’ (2H4 2.2.18), also reinforcing the association of tennis with idle young men. Lord Lovell in H8, complaining of the Frenchified 358

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behaviour of ‘our travelled gallants’ says that they must return to English manners, ‘renouncing clean / The faith they have in tennis and tall stockings’ (H8 1.3 29–30). Tall (or long) stockings were fashions from France but in fact also worn at court by King James and Prince Henry. In MA Claudio remarks mockingly that the beard of the newly shaven Benedick ‘hath already stuffed tennis balls’ (3.2.43). The Jailor’s Daughter in TNK , madly fantasizing about the attainments of her horse in dancing, is encouraged by her father who suggests, satirically, that ‘Having these virtues / I think he might be brought to play at tennis’ (5.2.55–6). The shipwrecked Pericles calls himself ‘a man whom both the waters and the wind / In that vast tennis-court, hath made the ball / For them to play on’ (PER 2.1.58–60). (C) Frenk (2014) gives an account of the early history of real tennis. Bosola in Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi uses a simile akin to that of Pericles to comment on the vagaries of fortune: ‘We are merely the stars’ tennis balls, struck and bandied / Which way please them’ (5.4.53). thrift, thrifty, thriftless, spendthrift (A) Thrift means economical management of resources, but also prosperity, good fortune, or thriving. The adjective thrifty follows this usage; thriftless is the converse, often used with moral connotations. A spendthrift is a person who spends money or other resources wastefully or extravagantly. An unthrift is one without resources or who wastes them, a prodigal. (B) Thrift and its cognates are often more slippery terms in Shakespeare than one might expect. When Bassanio in MV makes his case to Antonio for a loan to cover his wooing of the wealthy Portia, he talks up his project enthusiastically: I have a mind presages me such thrift That I should questionless be fortunate. (1.1.175–6) He uses the word to signify both material gain and prosperity or success; the connotations that the word often carries of saving or economy are entirely absent. Bassanio’s use of ‘fortunate’ here also combines material and non-material meanings (as Drakakis, Arden edn, 2010, notes). Shylock has something rather different in mind when he muses on his enmity with Antonio who, he claims, rails, ‘On me, my bargains and my well-won thrift, / Which he calls “interest” ’ (1.3.46–7). He means that he has worked for his financial prosperity, rather than achieving it with ease, and in despite of Christian disapproval of his methods. (The Folio reading is ‘well-worne thrift’, which would imply that Shylock’s practices are of long-standing.) He uses the Bible story of Jacob’s sheep to justify his financial success, concluding, ‘And thrift is blessing, if men steal it not’ (1.3.86). When he reluctantly leaves his daughter Jessica in charge of the house while he goes out to dinner, he gives her instructions: Do as I bid you; shut doors after you. ‘Fast bind, fast find’. A proverb never stale in thrifty mind. (2.5.51–3) 359

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The proverb (Dent, B352) means that what is left secure (fast) will remain so. The ‘thrifty mind’ belongs to someone who is careful of his possessions. ‘Thrift’ is used in this sense by the wealthy Old Athenian in TIM who does not want his daughter to marry Timon’s servant. I am a man That from my first have been inclined to thrift, And my estate deserves an heir more raised Than one which holds a trencher. (1.1.120–3) He deploys his thriftiness as a kind of moral blackmail; he has no objection to the servant once Timon has agreed to enable the marriage with a financial subvention. Falstaff’s notion of thrift is, not surprisingly, an equivocal one; telling Pistol of his plans to ‘thrive’ (MW 1.3.71) he says, ‘I am now about no waste: I am about thrift. Briefly, I do mean to make love to Ford’s wife’ (1.3.39–41). Ford is a wealthy man, and Falstaff, whose eye is ever on the main chance, hopes to combine pleasure and profit. He sends his page off with letters to Mistress Page as well as Mistress Ford, claiming ‘Falstaff will learn the humour of this age: / French thrift’ (1.3.80–1). Leontes uses thrift to mean private gain when he says that true servants are those who ‘bare eyes / To see alike mine honour as their profits, / Their own particular thrifts’ (WT 1.2.307–9). In a complex passage in CYM about the actions of the gods Posthumus says that they allow men to do wrong repeatedly, but only so that they will eventually gain by it: You some permit To second ills with ills, each elder worse, And make them dread it, to the doers’ thrift. (5.1.13–15) Jack Cade praises ‘such as go in clouted shoon’, or peasants, ‘For they are thrifty honest men’ (2H6 4.2.174), using the word without any kind of innuendo. Probably Shakespeare’s most famous use of ‘thrift’ is in Hamlet’s witty riposte to Horatio’s observation about the speed with which Gertrude remarried after her husband’s death: Thrift, thrift, Horatio, the funeral baked meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. (HAM 1.2.179–80) Hamlet mockingly suggests that the food left over from the funeral was available to be served cold at the wedding, thus deriding his mother’s rapid (and over economical) replacement of one husband with another. The same implication appears in the words of the Player Queen: 360

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The instances that second marriage move Are base respects of thrift, but none of love. (3.2.176–7) She may mean financial advantage, as in Hamlet’s reference to the gains to be made from flattery, ‘where thrift may follow fawning’ (3.2.58), but there is also the sense of a perverse economy at work. By contrast, the Sonnets connect thrift with profit and wise expenditure. The youth who refuses to marry is addressed as ‘unthrifty loveliness’ (4) who will not ‘spend’ his ‘beauty’s legacy’ profitably by producing children to inherit it. It would be ‘an all-eating shame and thriftless praise’ (2) if his beauty were devoted only to himself and he had nothing to show for it in old age. He behaves like an ‘unthrift’ (9, 13) in his failure to use his beauty to advantage. In line with this view, that the youth’s beauty has been given him to be invested in offspring, Duke Vincentio in MM praises nature’s careful husbandry: Nature never lends The smallest scruple of her excellence But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines Herself the glory of a creditor, Both thanks and use. (1.1.36–40) Resources, financial or otherwise, should be used to create profit. In MAC Ross comments on the action of Duncan’s sons in (apparently) murdering their father as ‘thriftless ambition, that will raven up [swallow] / Thine own life’s means’ (2.4.28–9). In AYL Adam offers Orlando his savings of five hundred crowns, ‘the thrifty hire I saved under your father’ (2.3.39). The old man, who embodies ‘the constant service of the antique world’ (2.3.57), has managed his wages with admirable economy. But husbandry can sometimes be too careful. When Henry VIII discovers how much private wealth Cardinal Wolsey has secretly accumulated, he exclaims incredulously, ‘How i’th’name of thrift / Does he rake this together?’ (H8 3.2.109–10). King Henry in R2 complains of his ‘unthrifty son’ (5.3.1) whom he also calls ‘wanton and effeminate’ (5.3.10). He has earlier lamented that his rights (as Bolingbroke) have been ‘plucked from my arms perforce and given away / To upstart unthrifts’ (2.3.121–2). The Duke of York is also anxious over the behaviour of his son, Aumerle, who he fears will ‘spend mine honour with his shame, / As thriftless sons their scraping fathers’ gold’ (5.1.67– 8). Unthriftiness can signify carelessness in general, as when Shylock calls Lancelet Gobbo ‘an unthrifty knave’ (MV 1.3.172). Lorenzo’s later use of the word is more nuanced: In such a night Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew, And with an unthrift love did run from Venice As far as Belmont. (5.1.14–17) 361

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In the context of the financial terminology here, Lorenzo is airily positioning himself in contrast to Shylock as one not concerned with wealth; but given the profit he stands to make from Jessica’s theft from her father (including the fortune he will inherit at Shylock’s death), the claim to unthriftiness is ironic. These terms lend themselves to figurative uses. The loquacious Gonzalo is characterised as ‘a spendthrift . . . of his tongue’ (TEM 2.1.26). Olivia will breathe ‘thriftless sighs’ (TN 2.2.39) for love of Cesario. The Gentleman in WT is eager to lose no time in viewing Hermione’s statue: ‘Our absence makes us unthrifty to our knowledge’ (5.2.109–10); Pitcher (Arden edn, 2010) glosses this as ‘If we are not there, we’ll lose the chance to know more about it’. A line of Claudius exists in two versions; he urges Laertes to act quickly in taking revenge on Hamlet: ‘That we would do / We should do when we would’, because if left too long, ‘this “should” is like a spendthrift sigh / That hurts by easing’ (HAM 4.7.116–17, 121–2). This is the reading (Q5) followed by Jenkins and many others, in which the sigh of relief from performing a duty (what ‘should’ be done) is painful because, according to the physiology of the time, sighs ‘were thought to draw blood from the heart’ (Jenkins, 1982, 371). Thompson and Taylor (Arden edn, 2016), following Pope’s emendation, read ‘spendthrift’s sigh’, which they gloss as ‘the vain regret of a man who has spent his money’. (C) Muldrew (1998) examines the development of a culture of credit in the sixteenth century, looking at the ethics of marketing; he examines conceptions of thrift in relation to Tusser and other contemporary texts. Essays by Netzloff (‘The lead casket’) and Mentz (‘The Fiend gives Friendly Counsel’) in Woodbridge (2003) discuss economics in MV . Rosenberg (2016) has an illuminating discussion of the ‘profit economy’ and the language of thrift in HAM and other texts (39–58). See also Thomas (2008) on ‘thrift’, ‘thriftless’, ‘thrifty’. Tusser (1580) includes ‘The ladder to thrift’ as one of his points of good husbandry (13–14). He advises the reader ‘to meddle not with usurie’. Dod and Cleaver regard thrift as important to good husbandry, but do not condone parsimonious housekeeping (1630, 77). Bullokar’s glossary, however, defines parsimony as ‘thriftines, good husbandrie’ (1616). tinker (A) A tinker was a man who made or repaired pots and pans made of metal. The tinker’s trade was associated with travelling people, vagrancy and thieving. Tinkers did not enjoy a good reputation, and were believed to drink heavily. (B) Christopher Sly, reviewing his various occupations, states firmly that he is ‘now by present profession a tinker’ (TS Ind. 2.19), though later, under the influence of the Lord and his servants, starts to think that ‘I am a lord indeed, / And not a tinker, nor Christopher Sly’ (Ind. 2.19, 71–2). ‘I know you, you’re a tinker; sirrah tinker, / Stop no more holes than you should’ (TNK 3.5.83–4), says the Jailor’s Daughter to the Schoolmaster, who is insulted at the idea (and perhaps also at the bawdy innuendo). Prince Hal, wanting to stress his ability to move easily amongst all classes of people, says that he ‘can drink with any tinker in his own language’ (1H4 2.4.18). When Malvolio comes upon Sir Toby Belch and his associates drunkenly carousing, he 362

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upbraids them sternly: ‘Have you no wit, manners nor honesty but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night?” (TN 2.3.85–6). In 2H6 the Marquess of Suffolk expresses an aristocrat’s scorn for the trade when he refers to his enemy the Earl of Salisbury, who has come from the common people, as ‘the lord ambassador / Sent from a sort of tinkers to the King’ (3.2.276–7). Autolycus, a rogue who makes his living by various dubious means, especially thieving, identifies himself as tinker because it would be better than being a vagrant were he to be arrested: If tinkers may have leave to live, And bear the sow-skin budget [tool bag made of pigskin], Then my account I well may give, And in the stocks avouch it. (WT 4.3.19–22) (C) Dekker, in The Wonderful Year (1603), tells a comic tale of an itinerant tinker who accepts money to bury a corpse from plague-stricken London when no one else will, and is enabled to steal a purse with seven pounds in it when he strips the body (Plague Pamphlets, ed. Wilson, 1925, 57–59). Greene, in The Second Part of ConnyCatching (1592), has ‘a true and merry tale of a Knight and a Tincker that was a Picklocke’, playing on the tinker’s reputation for thieving. tire (A) Tire could be an all-purpose word for garment or apparel, usually a woman’s, or more specifically a woman’s head-dress. (B) Margaret in MA clearly uses the word to mean head-dress when she advises the soon-to-be married Hero on wedding apparel: ‘I like the new tire within excellently, if the hair were a thought browner’ (MA 3.4 12). Cleopatra, reminiscing about her frolics with Antony, recalls how Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed, Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst I wore his sword Philippan. (AC 2.5.21–3) Her description of the exchange of clothing implies the effeminization of Antony, and has been taken to refer to the enslavement of Hercules by Omphale, where such an exchange also took place. Julia in TGV , musing on the portrait of Silvia, considers that ‘If I had such a tire, this face of mine / Were full as lovely as is this of hers’ (4.4.183–4). In MW Falstaff flatters Mistress Ford with an exaggerated tribute to her beauty: ‘Thou hast the right arched beauty of the brow that becomes the ship-tire, the tire-valiant, or any tire of Venetian admittance’ (3.3.50–2). The ship-tire means a head-dress in the shape of a ship but the tire-valiant appears to be a term of Falstaff’s invention (perhaps, according to Melchiori, Arden edn, 2000, ‘with a concealed pun on “gallant” or “top gallant”, the flag borne on the main mast of a ship’). Falstaff refers to a Venetian headdress because Venice was then considered to be the centre of fashion. In SON 53 the 363

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lover describes the fair youth as the acme of beauty, partaking of the characteristics of both sexes: Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit Is poorly imitated after you; On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set And you in Grecian tires are painted new. The reference to Grecian tires is ambiguous and could mean either costume or headdress. As Duncan-Jones (Arden edn, 1997) notes, ‘The idea of a young man adorned with a Greek woman’s costume or head-dress seems a shade grotesque, but it is of course such an image that Elizabethan audiences would have seen either in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus or Shakespeare’s TC 3.1’. (C) Nicholl (2007, esp. chs 14–16) gives cultural and social contexts for head-tires in the period, and information about their construction. toast (A) The noun toast mainly referred to a piece of bread browned at the fire and put in wine (a sop), while the verb meant to brown bread or cheese at the fire. (B) In MW Falstaff orders Bardolph: ‘Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in’t’ (3.5.2). In TC Nestor meditates at length on how men deal with misfortune, comparing those who are not truly valorous to a ‘saucy boat’ in rough water that is ‘either to harbour fled / Or made a toast for Neptune’ (TC 1.3.44–5), imagining the boat as a sop floating in wine, a morsel for the sea-god. Falstaff contemptuously describes the men whom he has allowed to buy themselves out of doing military service as ‘toasts-and-butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins’ heads’ (1H4 4.2.20–2). This term, meaning milksops, refers to pampered citizens (Kastan, Arden edn, 2002) and also appears in Fletcher, Wit without Money (1614) 4.2: ‘They love young toasts and butter, Bowbell suckers [Londoners]’. When Mistress Quickly in 2H4 tells Doll Tearsheet and Falstaff that they are ‘as rheumatic as two dry toasts’ (2.4.53) she really means choleric, referring to the hot and dry humour. References to toasted cheese (often associated with the Welsh) appear in several plays, including H5 2.1.18, MW 5.5.138 and KL 4.5.88–9. In 2H6 Smith the Weaver remarks that Jack Cade’s breath ‘stinks with eating toasted cheese’ (4.7.10). torch (A) In the early modern theatre a torch was a flaming light carried by hand, consisting of a long stick of wood coated with an inflammable substance. It could also mean a lamp carried on a pole. (B) Stage directions for torches to indicate nocturnal scenes appear in many plays, including HAM , 1H6, H8, MAC , OTH , RJ , TNK and TC . Edmund calls for torches when causing a fracas to incriminate his brother Edgar (KL 2.1.33). Romeo wants a torch as he goes towards the Capulets’ house, and makes a familiar pun: Give me a torch. I am not for this ambling, Being but heavy I will bear the light. (RJ 1.4.11–12) 364

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Jessica in boy’s disguise, somewhat embarrassed, becomes Lorenzo’s torch-bearer, and also makes a pun about light and darkness: ‘What, must I hold a candle to my shames?’ she asks him; ‘They, in themselves, good sooth, are too too light’ (MV 2.6.42–4). In LUC the torch carried by Tarquin is part of pattern of images of light and darkness developed through the poem, and also functions as a symbol of Tarquin’s sexual passion. As he prepares to go on his way to Lucrece’s chamber ‘A waxen torch forthwith he lighteth, / Which must be lodestar to his lustful eye’ (178–9). Torn between desire and shame he addresses the torch: Fair, torch, burn out thy light, and lend it not To darken her whose light excelleth thine (190–1) The torch, buffeted by wind, is nearly extinguished, but then flares up again (311–15). The play of light and dark is again evoked when Tarquin begins his assault on the sleeping Lucrece. Shakespeare imagines her eyes locked up in sleep, and broken open: Who, peeping forth this tumult to behold, Are by his flaming torch dimmed and controlled. (447–8) Her eyes are dulled and their brightness outmatched by the power of Tarquin’s torch. The torch bears various other symbolic meanings. It can signify human life, as when Richard Plantagenet remarks of his dead uncle, ‘Here lies the dusky torch of Mortimer’ (122), and Antony of Cleopatra, whom he believes dead, ‘since the torch is out, / Lie down and stray no further’ (AC 4.14.47–8). In MM the torch represents something whose usefulness extends beyond itself. The Duke urges Angelo to extend his virtues into the world: Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, ’twere all alike As if we had them not. (MM 1.1.32–5) A similar thought is expressed by Venus, urging Adonis to attend to the business of procreation: ‘Torches are made to light, jewels to wear’ (VA 163). (C) The title-page to the 1615 edition of Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy shows Hieronimo carrying a flaming torch. Dessen and Thomson (1999) give an extensive list of stage directions featuring torches. Lever (MM , Arden 2 edn, 1965) has a long note on 1.1.32– 6, giving various parallel usages. Teague (1991) discusses the function of torches as stage props, particularly in tragedies. trencher (A) A trencher, the equivalent of a plate, was a vessel made of wood, metal or earthenware on which food was served. A trencherman (comparatively recent term) meant someone with a hearty appetite. 365

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(B) Antony, full of hatred for Cleopatra, refers disparagingly to her past in terms of discarded food: ‘I found you as a morsel cold / Upon dead Caesar’s trencher; nay, you were a fragment / Of Gnaius Pompey’s’ (AC 3.13.117–19). The Marquess of Suffolk, finding himself at the mercy of Walter Whitmore, a former servant, reminds him of their old relationship: How often hast thou waited at my cup, Fed from my trencher, kneeled down at the board, When I have feasted with Queen Margaret? (2H6 4.1.56–8) Lance tells of the misdeeds of his dog Crab, recalling how Crab, given as a present to Silvia, ‘steps me to her trencher and steals her capon’s leg’ (LLL 4.4.8–9). Servants who waited at table are treated with contempt. The Old Athenian in TIM despises the servant Lucilius who wants to marry his daughter, saying that his estate ‘deserves an heir more raised / Than one which holds a trencher’ (1.1.122–3). In RJ the Head Servingman in the Capulets’ household calls impatiently: ‘Where’s Potpan, that helps not to take away? He shift a trencher, he scrape a trencher!’ (RJ 1.5.1–2). Caliban is delighted with the idea of escaping from the service of Prospero: No more dams I’ll make for fish, Nor fetch in firing at requiring, Nor scrape trenchering, nor wash dish (TEM 2.2.176–9) Coriolanus reminds Aufidius’s servant to get on with work: ‘Thou prat’st and prat’st. Serve with thy trencher. Hence!’ (COR 4.5.49–50). Beatrice in MA jokes that Benedick, rather than being a great fighter in the war, ‘is a very valiant trencher-man: he hath an excellent stomach’ (1.1.48–9). Timon calls false friends ‘fools of fortune, trencher-friends’ (TIM 3.7.95), and Berowne refers to the person who has revealed the secret of the lords’ Russian disguises as ‘some mumblenews, some trencher-knight’ (5.2.464), probably meaning parasitical hanger-on. troth-plight Troth-plight can be used as both a noun, meaning a solemn promise to marry, and as an adjective, meaning bound by a promise to marry, contracted, betrothed. In H5 Bardolph is correct in telling Nym that he has been wronged by Mistress Quickly because she has married Pistol: ‘Certainly she did you wrong, for you were troth-plight to her’ (2.1.19–20). Leontes in WT believing Hermione to be unfaithful, says that she ‘deserves a name / As rank as any flax-wench that puts to / Before her troth-plight’ (1.2.274–6). He abuses his wife coarsely with the implication that she is as consumed by lust as a lower-class woman unable to wait for her betrothal to have sex. Very different is his mood when, in the final scene, he presents Hermione with Florizel as ‘your son-in-law . . . troth-plight to your daughter’ (5.3.149–51). 366

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Cook discusses troth-plighting in her account of marriage contracts (1991, 217–18). See also contract. truckle bed see bed trunk (A) A trunk is a large piece of furniture, in this period usually made of wood, designed to hold valuables. The word also refers to the central part of the human body, or torso. (B) Iachimo, needing to gain access to Innogen’s chamber, claims he has valuables ‘in a trunk / Attended by my men’ (CYM 1.7.195–6) which she offers to store for him, thus enabling him to smuggle himself in. Kent in his inventive list of insults calls Oswald a ‘one trunk-inheriting slave’ (KL 2.2.18), meaning that he has no more possessions than would go into a single trunk. The Ford household in MW is better off, since Mistress Ford considers that Falstaff cannot hide in any of the likely storage places – ‘Neither press, coffer, chest, trunk, well, vault’ (4.2.57) – because her husband will search them. The Shepherd in WT also thinks of the trunk as a hiding place when he meditates on the conception of the baby he has discovered: ‘This has been some stairwork, some trunk-work, some behind-door-work’ (3.3.73–4). Some speakers pun on the word’s two meanings. Prince Hal calls Falstaff ‘that trunk of humours’ (1H4 2.4.437), meaning a container of diseases and referring to his large size. Camillo begs to go with Polixenes when he leaves the court of Leontes: If therefore you dare trust my honesty, Which lies enclosed in this trunk which you Shall bear along impawned, away tonight! (WT 1.2.430–2) His body is the container of his honesty, which Polixenes will take as a pledge of his good faith (‘impawned’).

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U uncle (A) An uncle is the brother of a person’s father or mother, or the husband of an aunt; but the word may also mean an older male relation, or simply an old man. ‘Nuncle’, a contraction of ‘mine uncle’, is a colloquial variant. (B) Several Shakespearean uncles have fraught relationships with their nephews, and even in one case with a niece. In AYL , where the two brothers, Duke Senior and Duke Frederick, are enemies, their daughters, Rosalind and Celia, are close friends. Celia helpfully explains the relationships when she attests to the strength of her love for Rosalind: ‘If my uncle, thy banished father, had banished thy uncle, the Duke my father, so thou hadst been still with me I could have taught my love to take thy father for mine’ (1.2.8–12). Nieces and uncles generally fare better. Here, the uncle of the fatherless Beatrice and father of her cousin Hero, Leonato, is only too delighted to involve himself in his niece’s life. He takes a warm and protective interest in her marriage prospects. ‘I am sorry for her, as I have just cause, being her uncle and her guardian’ (MA 2.3.163–4), he tells Don Pedro as the two are scheming to make Benedick fall in love with her. Another uncle concerned with niece’s love-life is Pandarus, in TC , but in a very different spirit. He breaks in on her when she is with Troilus, merrily asking, ‘How now, how now, how go maidenheads?’, to which she responds, ‘Go hang yourself, you naughty mocking uncle’ (4.2.24–6). Lafew in AW draws on the idea of Pandarus as the archetypal pander, when he says to Helena as he takes her to attend the sick King, ‘I am Cressid’s uncle, / That dare leave two together’ (2.1.97). In HAM there are several uneasy uncle–nephew relationships. Hamlet is the nephew to Claudius, of which he is all too conscious; he is outraged that his mother has ‘married with my uncle, / My father’s brother’ (1.2.151–2), and uses the word ‘uncle’ with mocking frequency, although Claudius pointedly calls him ‘my cousin Hamlet, and my son’ (1.2.64). Another uncle troubled by a nephew is the old king of Norway, ‘uncle of young Fortinbras’ who ‘impotent and bedrid, scarcely hears / Of this his nephew’s purpose’ (1.2.28–9), which is to lay claim to territories in Denmark. It is no accident that Lucianus the poisoner in ‘The Mousetrap’ play is ‘nephew to the king’ (3.2.237), although this is not the case in Shakespeare’s source. The history plays naturally enough feature multiple uncle–nephew relationships, since they are all plays about families. Hotspur in 1H4 is also a nephew whom his uncle, the wily tactician Earl of Worcester, finds troublesome, although for Hotspur ‘my father, my uncle and myself’ (1H4 2.3.22) form an important unit of resistance against the King. The Duke of Exeter, ‘uncle of Exeter’ to Henry V, is also a key ally. In R2 369

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Bolingbroke’s efforts to ingratiate himself with the Duke of York at first meet with angry resistance; he explodes, ‘Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle. / I am no traitor’s uncle’ (R2 2.3.87–8). In R3 the young son of Clarence wants to believe the story his ‘good uncle Gloucester’ has told him about his father’s death, but when the Duchess of York comments on the lies that Richard has told the child, he asks, ‘Think you my uncle did dissemble, grandam?’, and when she answers, ‘Ay, boy’, he responds, ‘I cannot think it’ (2.2.31–3). The unfamilial behaviour of Richard is a frequent subject; when he attempts to persuade Queen Elizabeth to woo her daughter on his behalf, she answers: What were I best to say? Her father’s brother Would be her lord? Or shall I say her uncle? Or he that slew her brothers and her uncles? (R3 4.4.337–9) An example of the ambiguity of early modern familial titles is in MAC , when Mentieth announces that ‘The English power is near, led on by Malcolm, / His uncle Siward and the good Macduff’ (5.2.1–2). Siward was in fact Malcolm’s maternal grandfather. See also MW 3.4.39–41, where Shallow and Slender call one another ‘uncle’ and ‘cousin’. The Fool in KL always uses the term ‘nuncle’ when addressing his master: ‘How now, nuncle?’, ‘Mark it, nuncle’, ‘good nuncle’ and so forth. Lear in return calls him ‘boy’, ‘lad’, or ‘knave’. ‘Nuncle’ suggests an intimacy that is not one between kin or equals, and perhaps a touch of lèse-majesté in its familiarity towards a social superior. (C) See also family, nephew, niece.

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V valance A valance is a border of drapery hanging round the sides of a bed-canopy. Gremio boasts that he has, among other luxury household items with which to induce Bianca to marry him, a ‘valance of Venice gold in needlework’ (TS 2.1.358). Embroidered fabric, imported from abroad, was highly expensive, and Gremio is making a point both about his wealth and his taste in luxury. velvet (A) Velvet is a closely woven silk fabric with a pile on one side. In this period it was imported from France and Italy and considered a luxury fabric. The finest was three-pile velvet, with a pile of triple thickness. According to the sumptuary laws, the wearing of velvet was restricted to those above the degree of a knight’s eldest son. The word is used figuratively, especially of fur or skin, to signify softness and smoothness. (B) Leontes in WT is reminded by the sight of his son Mamillius of himself as a child ‘unbreeched, / In my green velvet coat’ (1.2.156–7), the detail giving vividness to the memory. Velvet also figures in the imagination of Malvolio, dreaming of himself newly married to Olivia, and giving commands to the household servants finely attired ‘in my branched [embroidered] velvet gown’ (TN 2.5.44–5). Such clothing would be a visible mark of rising status. In TS Vincentio is outraged at the sight of Tranio, dressed as his master Lucentio, in ‘a silken doublet, a velvet hose, a scarlet cloak and a copotaine hat’ (5.1.59–60), an outfit far too extravagant for one of his class. The view of velvet as a fancy foreign cloth, not native to the English, and with some unsavoury associations, is expressed in a passage of badinage in MM between Lucio and a Gentleman, who argue about which of them is the greater reprobate: 1 GENTLEMAN

. . . there went but a pair of shears between us. LUCIO

I grant: as there may between the lists and the velvet. Thou art the list. 1 GENTLEMAN

And thou the velvet; thou’rt a three-piled piece, I warrant thee: I had as lief be a list of an English kersey, as be pilled, as thou art, for a French velvet. (1.2.27–33) The ‘list’ is the selvage; ‘three-piled’ refers to the thickest velvet, and the gentleman puns on ‘pilled’ meaning having lost hair through treatment for syphilis. In WT Autolycus says that ‘I have served prince Florizel, and in my time wore three-pile’ 371

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(4.3.13–14), referring to the expensive velvet, and perhaps implying a degenerate past. Velvet patches were worn by fashionable young men to cover scars or battle wounds, and also the sores from syphilis. In AW the Clown Lavatch reports to the Countess of Rossillion that Bertram is about to appear: O madam, yonder’s my lord your son with a patch of velvet on’s face; whether there be a scar under’t or no, the velvet knows, but ‘tis a goodly patch of velvet. His left cheek is a cheek of two pile and a half, but his right cheek is worn bare. (4.5.93–7) Lavatch invents a new sort of velvet, of two and a half pile, insinuating that Bertram may be hiding the effects of syphilis. When Poins describes Falstaff as fretting ‘like a gummed velvet’ (1H4 2.2.2) he puns on cheap velvet stiffened with resin or gum, which easily frets or frays (Kastan, Arden edn, 2002, note). Hotspur, as an aristocrat, looks down on people he calls ‘velvet-guards and Sunday citizens’ (1H4 3.1.252); velvetguards means trimming made of velvet, for people who could not afford, or were not entitled to wear, the real thing. Velvet is used to signify smoothness in the references of Berowne to Rosaline’s ‘velvet brow’ (LLL 3.1.191), Dumaine to ‘the velvet leaves’ of May (LLL 4.3.102) and the Archbishop of Canterbury to ‘summer’s velvet buds’ (H5 1.2.194). (C) See Linthicum (1936) for more information about the fabric, and Shulman (2007) on sumptuary legislation. Hentschell (2016) gives a fascinating account of the role of velvet and other luxury fabrics in the formation of English cultural identity. Greene, in A Quip (1592), uses Velvet Breeches as type of the foreign Italianate upstart, as contrasted with the native Cloth Breeches. Vindice in Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy refers in a vivid phrase to ‘costly three-pil’d flesh’ (1.1.46).

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W wardrobe (A) A wardrobe originally meant a room in which clothes were kept, and only later a cupboard. It also meant a person’s complete set of clothing. Another meaning was that of the office of a royal or noble household in charge of the clothes. (B) In 1H4 Falstaff tells Prince Hal that he would almost prefer being a hangman to waiting in the court. ‘For obtaining of suits?’ asks the Prince, and Falstaff characteristically turns his answer into a joke: ‘Yea, for the obtaining of suits, whereof the hangman hath no lean wardrobe’ (1.2.68–80). He puns on the two meanings of suits, as either favours or garments. The hangman was entitled to keep the clothes of those he hanged. The Earl of Douglas makes a joke of a grimmer sort during the battle of Shrewsbury. Having killed a man whom he believes to be the King, he is angered to discover that it is Sir Walter Blount dressed in armour like the King’s: Now, by my sword, I will kill all his coats. I’ll murder all his wardrobe, piece by piece, Until I meet the King. (1H4 5.3.26–8) The wardrobe as container for clothes is mentioned twice. The Chorus in H5 describes the eagerness of all Englishmen to go to France to fight, so that ‘silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies’ (Chorus 2, 2). In SON 52 the poet figures time as the preserver of the preciousness of his relationship with his lover, like ‘the wardrobe which the robe doth hide’. The word means a set of clothes in TEM , when Trinculo, taken in by the ‘glistering apparel’ that Prospero has provided to distract him and his fellows, exclaims to Stephano, ‘Look what a wardrobe here is for thee!’ (4.1.224). When Malvolio searches for precedents for high-born ladies like Olivia marrying men of lower status, he recalls that ‘the Lady of the Strachey married the yeoman of the wardrobe’ (TN 2.5.36–7), here referring to a man employed to look after the lady’s clothes. wassail Wassail could mean the liquor, often spiced ale, with which healths were drunk, or more generally riotous festivity and revelry. Caesar, needing the assistance of Antony in Rome, begs him to ‘leave thy lascivious wassails’ (AC 1.4.57). Hamlet observes with disapproval that ‘the King doth wake tonight and takes his rouse, / Keeps wassail’ (HAM 1.4.8–9). Thompson and Taylor’s note (Arden edn, 2016) explains that this means ‘to drink numerous toasts (and hence often to become disorderly)’. Lady Macbeth 373

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tells her husband of her plan to dispose of Duncan’s guards: ‘his two chamberlains / Will I with wine and wassail so convince’ (MAC 1.7.64–5). Berowne says of Boyet that he is ‘wit’s pedlar and retails his wares / At wakes and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs’ (LLL 5.2.317–18). When the Lord Chief Justice reminds Falstaff of his age, saying he is ‘as a candle, the better part burnt out’, Falstaff’s reply turns this into a joke: ‘A wassail candle, my lord, all tallow – if I did say of wax, my growth would approve the truth’ (2H4 1.3.156–9). He means that this is the sort of candle burnt at feasts, which burns quickly, but (punning on his size and ‘wax’ meaning to grow big) he is more like a wax (and better-quality) candle. wax (A) Wax is a yellow substance produced by bees, easily malleable and used to make candles and seals on documents. It was an everyday substance in the period. The ease with which it takes impressions lends it to metaphorical uses. (B) Waxen seals are referred to in several plays when letters are opened. For example, Pisanio says, ‘Good wax, thy leave’ (CYM 3.2.35) and Edgar ‘Leave, gentle wax’ (KL 6.6.254). Venus begs Adonis to kiss her and ‘set thy seal-manual on my wax-red lips’ (VA 516). A ‘seal-manual’ means a seal personally applied, but in this context by his lips, rather than his hand, on her lips. Red wax was the usual colour for seals. The malleability of wax is used to suggest the impressionability of women. Theseus, giving Hermia his view of the proper relationship between a young woman and her father, tells her that he should be as a god: One that composed your beauties, yea, and one To whom you are but as a form in wax By him imprinted (MND 1.1.47–50) A similar view of gender relations is expressed in LUC : For men have marble, women waxen minds, And therefore are they formed as marble will. (LUC 1240–1) In TN Viola uses the same image for the idea that it is men who imprint forms on women. Musing on the problems caused by her disguise, she laments that women are too readily impressed by a handsome but deceitful man: How easy it is for the proper false In women’s waxen hearts to set their forms (TN 2.2.29–30) But Friar Lawrence, berating Romeo for his unmanly behaviour, tells him that he lacks strength and solidity 374

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Thy noble shape is but a form of wax, Digressing from the valour of a man (RJ 3.3.125–6) The Nurse has earlier in the play used the same image of Paris, intending it for a compliment when she praises him to Juliet: ‘Why, he’s a man of wax’ (1.3.77). She may mean that he is as beautiful as a waxen image. The wax-like softness of a woman is referred as part of her ability to deceive in PP 7, where she is described as Brighter than glass, and yet as glass is brittle; Softer than wax, and yet as irony rusty. The proverbial expressions ‘As soft as wax’ and ‘Iron not used soon rusts’ (Dent, 1981, W135.1, 191) underlie these lines. Titus Andronicus says that in comparison with the merciless tribunes of Rome, ‘a stone is soft as wax’ (TIT 3.1.44). The readiness of wax to melt is another of its qualities. Hamlet tells his mother that her shameful behaviour encourages the young to act similarly: ‘To flaming youth let virtue be as wax / And melt in her own fire’ (HAM 3.4.84–5). In 3H6 the Earl of Warwick says that a group of the king’s enemies ‘have wrought the easy-melting King like wax’ (3H6 2.1.171) to persuade him to accept the Yorkists’ succession. wean (A) Weaning is the process by which an infant is made accustomed to food other than milk. In early modern England the best age for weaning was deemed to be at around a year old. Used metaphorically, the word ‘wean’ means to withdraw from something to which one has become attached. (B) The weaning of an infant is referred to only once in Shakespeare, in the affectionately comic account given by Juliet’s Nurse. She tells how on the day when an earthquake took place, she was weaned, I never shall forget it, Of all the days of the year upon that day. For I had then laid wormwood to my dug, Sitting in the sun under the dovehouse wall. ... But as I said, When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool, To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug! (RJ 1.3.25–8, 30–3) The process described was familiar in the period, although Juliet at nearly three is older than the recommended age. Other references are metaphorical. In 3H6 Queen Elizabeth, informed of the likelihood that her husband is dead, says she must ‘rather wean me from despair’ by 375

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thinking of the baby she is bearing (4.4.17). Titus Andronicus tries to reassure Saturninus that he will regain for him the support of the people: Content thee, prince, I will restore to thee The people’s hearts, and wean them from themselves. (TIT 1.1.214–15) Katherine in LLL uses it in a complicated exchange with Longaville, punning on the word ‘calf’; he suggests the word should be divided between them, and she refuses, saying ‘No, I’ll not be your half. / Take all and wean it; it may prove an ox’ (LLL 5.2.249–50). (C) Crawford (2014, ch. 5) has much information about the care of infants in this period, including weaning practices and the use of wet-nurses. Findlay (2010), ‘Nurse’, discusses wet-nursing at length, along with attitudes to breast-feeding in the period. Guillemeau assumes that weaning will have taken place by the age of two (1612, addendum, ch. 10). See also suck. wedding, wedlock (A) The word wedding signifies the ceremony of the rites of marriage, with the associated rituals and celebration. Wedlock mainly signifies the marriage vows but also means the condition of being married. (B) The wedding day is one of huge importance in the life of the bride and groom. Theseus in TNK , using heroic language, calls it ‘This grand act of our life, this daring deed / Of fate in wedlock’ and ‘a service . . . greater than any war’ (1.1.164–5, 171–2). Beatrice in MA , who ‘cannot endure to hear tell of a husband’ (2.1.321) is considerably more down to earth in her advice to Hero about marrying: For hear me, Hero, wooing, wedding and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure and a cinque-pace. The first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding mannerly-modest as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes Repentance, and with his bad legs falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave (2.1.64–70) A polarized view of marriage is taken by Suffolk in 1H6, when he is hypocritically arguing for King Henry to marry the French princess Margaret (actually Suffolk’s lover): For what is wedlock forced but a hell, An age of discord and continual strife? Whereas the contrary bringeth bliss, And is a pattern of celestial peace. (1H6 5.4.62–5) The marriage that comes about for Henry and Margaret brings much more strife than it does peace, and this is not the only wedding to be followed by discord. Hero’s wedding 376

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day is interrupted, as is Theseus’, but in her case the ceremony does not actually take place. Much preparation is made for it, not least by Don John, who plans to ‘cross this marriage’ by contriving to make Hero appear unchaste ‘the very night before the intended wedding’ (2.2.41–2). Dogberry wants a special watch placed upon Leonato’s house ‘for the wedding being there tomorrow, there is a great coil tonight’ (3.3.90–1). Claudio keeps to the promise he makes that ‘If I see anything tonight why I should not marry her, tomorrow in the congregation where I should wed, there will I shame her’ (3.2.111–13), and indeed he does so. The Friar believes that ‘this wedding day / Perhaps is but prolonged’ (4.1.253–4), and in the final scene all ends well and the reunited couple prepare to go to the chapel for their ‘holy rites’ (5.4.68). The wedding day of Katherina and Petruccio in TS is fraught in a different way. Katherina, like Beatrice, has low expectations of marriage and thinks that her father is only interested in getting her sister Bianca married: ‘I must dance barefoot on her wedding day / And, for your love to her, lead apes in hell’ (2.1.33–4), referring, as Beatrice does too, to the proverbial idea (see Dent, D22 and 37) that old maids suffer for having no children to lead them into heaven. But not long after, Petruccio amazes Baptista and the rest by announcing that ‘upon Sunday is the wedding day’ and that he ‘will unto Venice / To buy apparel ’gainst the wedding day’ (2.1.301, 318–19) for which Baptista must ‘provide the feast’. Petruccio keeps the company waiting so long that Katherina expects that he ‘never means to wed where he hath wooed’. When he does turn up Baptista reproves him for his unconventional appearance: ‘Why, sir, you know this is your wedding day . . . Fie, doff this habit, shame to your estate, / An eyesore to our solemn festival’. Petruccio answers shortly, ‘To me she’s married, not unto my clothes’ (3.2.96–100), and the ‘mad marriage’ goes ahead offstage, vividly described by Gremio. But this couple do not stay for the ‘bridal dinner’ and the ‘great store of wedding cheer’ (3.2.185) that Petruccio, it seems, has provided; although the rest ‘go to the feast, revel and domineer’ (3.2.225), they set off for Petruccio’s country house, where, ironically, his servants await them all prepared with ‘every officer his wedding garment on’ (4.1.43). It turns out that Bianca is the one who has married illicitly, without obtaining her father’s ‘good will’ (consent) though the doting Baptista has no word of blame for her. Wedding becomes a tragic subject in RJ through its regular conjunction with death. Juliet has an early premonition at her first sight of Romeo (whose name she does not yet know) that ‘My grave is like to be my wedding bed’ (1.5.134). When she learns that Tybalt is dead and Romeo banished for his murder before their marriage has been consummated, she prepares to ‘die maiden-widowed’, telling the Nurse: ‘I’ll to my wedding-bed / And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead’ (3.2.136–7). But Juliet’s father, knowing nothing of the marriage with Romeo, has attempted to arrange a marriage for her with Paris, which she is desperate to avoid. She goes to Friar Laurence for advice, and he comes up with a plan for her that will only work ‘if thou hast the strength of will to slay thyself’. Juliet declares herself prepared to court death: 377

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O bid me leap, rather than marry Paris, From off the battlements of any tower, ... Or bid me go into a new-made grave And hide me with a dead man in his shroud (4.1.72, 77–8, 84–5) The potion that he gives her to take makes her father think her dead on the eve of the wedding to Paris and he tells the disappointed suitor that the night before thy wedding day Hath death lain with thy wife. There she lies, Flower she was, deflowered by him. Death is my son-in-law, death is my heir, My daughter he hath wedded. (4.5.35–9) For him, death has become a substitute for the husband that Juliet will never enjoy. ‘Wedding cheer’ has been replaced by a ‘sad burial feast’ (4.5.87). Romeo uses the death–love conjunction with great poignancy in his address to Juliet’s apparently lifeless body in the vault, when he wonders if ‘unsubstantial death is amorous, / And that the lean abhorred monster keeps / Thee here in the dark to be his paramour’ (5.3.102–5). Wedding and dying are similarly connected in OTH when Desdemona, also possessed by a premonition of death, tells Emilia to ‘lay on my bed my wedding sheets’ (4.2.107). Wedding is celebrated in jocular fashion in AYL , when Hymen, the god of marriage, actually appears to join the four couples in the final scene. He commands the singing of a ‘wedlock hymn’: Wedding is great Juno’s crown, O blessed bond of board and bed. ’Tis Hymen peoples every town, High wedlock then be honoured. Honour, high honour and renown To Hymen, god of every town. (5.4.139–44) As Cook notes, this is ‘the only wedding Shakespeare ever completes onstage’ but it is one that ‘marks the apex of unreality, as far removed from the world of betrothal contracts, impediments, and the like as possible’ (1991, 223). Juno, goddess of marriage, appears in TEM in the marriage masque arranged by Prospero for Miranda and Ferdinand to offer them ‘Honour, riches, marriage-blessing / Long continuance and increasing’ (4.1.106–7), though the entertainment never reaches its conclusion. In KJ the less fortunate wedding day of Lewis the Dauphin of France and Lady Blanche, King John’s niece, is interrupted by an outbreak of hostilities between 378

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their countries. Lewis calls upon his father King Philip of France to go at once to arms, and Blanche exclaims unhappily: Upon thy wedding-day? Against the blood that thou hast married? What, shall our feast be kept with slaughtered men? (3.1.226–8) Like Juliet when her husband becomes responsible for the death of her cousin, Blanche’s loyalties are divided: Husband, I cannot pray that thou mayst win; Uncle, I needs must pray that thou mayst lose (3.1.257–8) In E3 the Countess of Salisbury invokes her married status against the King when he is pressing her to commit adultery with him by drawing attention to the ‘wedding knives’ (3.169) (according to Findlay, 2010, 433, ‘symbolic gifts hung from the bride’s girdle’, and see also the Longer Note in Proudfoot and Bennett), urging him to take one and kill his wife in his own heart while she takes the other to kill her husband within herself. Only thus can love between them be consummated. The King is duly shamed into remorse. Leontes’ admiring greeting to Florizel, ‘Your mother was most true to wedlock, prince, / For she did print your royal father off, / Conceiving you’ (WT 5.1.123–5), is ironic, since his own inability to regard the baby Perdita in the same light has been the cause of so much woe. The case of the Bastard in KJ is interestingly different. Since his mother ‘did after wedlock bear him’ (1.1.117), he is legitimate according to English common law, although his features make it clear that he was not the child of her husband. When Lucrece laments her rape she says that daylight will reveal ‘the impious breach of holy wedlock vow’ (LUC 809); this expression seems to imply that the blame for the rape is hers, since it is she, not Tarquin, who has made the vow. (C) Hopkins (1998) discusses weddings in her overview of Shakespearean marriage and is especially good on RJ . Rose (1988) analyses marriage in OTH and TNK . Bate discusses the weddings in AYL in an Ovidian context (1993, 157–61). Sokol and Sokol discuss the situation of the Bastard in KJ (2002, 160–1). Puttenham has a splendid account of ‘The maner of rejoycings at marriages and weddings’ (1936, Book 1, Ch. 26). Harrison describes hospitality at weddings (Description, 1968, 131). See also the fuller bibliography at marriage. wench (A) Wench can mean simply a girl or young woman, but there are commonly connotations of rusticity or working-class origins. It could be an endearment; and it could suggest a wanton woman. (B) When Charmian in AC asks the Soothsayer ‘How many boys and wenches must I have?’ (1.2.38) she is using the word to signify the gender of her future offspring. 379

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Falstaff uses it similarly referring to ‘demure boys’ who do not drink and therefore ‘when they marry, they get wenches’ (2H4 4.2.92). It is used to mean girl or young woman by Speed in TGV , speaking of ‘a young wench that had buried her grandam’ (2.1.21), and Gower in PER , when he calls Philoten ‘a wench full-grown’ (Chorus 4.16). Biondello’s lovely anecdote about the ‘wench married in an afternoon as she went to the garden for parsley to stuff a rabbit’ (TS 4.4.97–8) also uses the word without particular connotations. ‘Wench’ is an affectionate address when Prospero uses it to Miranda – ‘Well demanded, wench’ (TEM 1.2.139), or Titus Andronicus to Lavinia – ‘Bear thou my hand, sweet wench’ (TIT 3.1.283). Queen Katherine in H8 addresses her women compassionately when she knows they will suffer from her downfall: ‘Alas, poor wenches, where are now your fortunes?’ (3.1.148). Lucio uses the word in approbation when he encourages Isabella in her encounter with Angelo: ‘O, to him, wench! He will relent’ (MM 2.2.125). Othello’s address to his dead wife, ‘O ill-starred wench, / Pale as thy smock’ (OTH 5.2.270–1), is strangely poignant. But when Iago uses the same word to address his wife, it is with a patronizing connotation: ‘A good wench, give it me’ (3.3.317) he orders, when she shows him the handkerchief she has taken up. So too when Falstaff says to Mistress Quickly, whom he has just persuaded to lend him some money, ‘Come, an ’twere not for thy humours, there’s not a better wench in England’ (2H4 2.1.147–8). Sir Andrew Aguecheek says of Maria that ‘she’s a good wench’ (TN 2.3.172), and echoes Sir Toby’s sentiment when he declares that he ‘could marry the wench for this device’ (2.5.176) after the success of her gulling letter; in both cases the men are admiring of a woman’s wit, but at the same time speak from a position of social superiority. At the end of Katherina’s long speech about marriage in TS Petruccio applauds her with the words, ‘Why, there’s a wench’ (5.2.186), which suggests admiration, but taken in conjunction with the fact that she has just won his bet for him may also indicate his wish to display her as his property. He has earlier referred to her as ‘a lusty wench’ (2.1.159) on hearing of her violent behaviour, which might indicate approbation of her spirit, though it probably serves principally to elicit a laugh from the audience. Agrippa’s comment on Cleopatra is primarily admiring, but also alludes to her sexual reputation: Royal wench! She made great Caesar lay his sword to bed. He ploughed her, and she cropped. (AC 2.2.236–8) The sexual connotations of the word are unequivocal when Prince Hal tells Falstaff that ‘unless the blessed sun himself [were] a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta’ (1H4 1.2.9–10) he would not be concerned with the time of day, and also in Gonzalo’s reference to the ship being ‘as leaky as an unstanched wench’ (TEM 1.1.46). Lucio’s casual recollection that he was once called up before the Duke ‘for getting a wench with child’, which he denied for fear of having to marry ‘the rotten medlar’ (MM 4.3.167, 380

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172) is a similar usage. ‘I confess the wench’, says Costard in LLL (1.1.269), having been ‘taken with a wench’. Dromio of Syracuse asks Dromio of Ephesus, ‘Dost thou conjure for wenches?’ when the latter calls out the names of a number of maidservants (CE 3.1.31). ‘I know a wench of excellent discourse, / Pretty and witty; wild, and yet, too, gentle’ (CE 3.1.109–10), says Antipholus of Ephesus, alluding to the Courtesan. Palamon and Arcite reminisce about ‘the wenches / We have known in our days’ (TNK 3.3.28–9), and especially ‘a pretty brown wench’ (3.3.39). This may well suggest a country girl or a peasant, since a brown complexion was a sign of sun-tanning, which upper-class women would avoid. The Earl of Surrey taunts Cardinal Wolsey: I’ll startle you Worse than the scaring-bell when the brown wench Lay kissing in your arms, lord Cardinal (H8 3.2.294–6) He is mocking Wolsey with the suggestion not only that he has had illicit sexual encounters, but that they have been with a woman of the lower classes. Class connotations are sometimes combined with suggestions of loose morals. The word is sometimes used in this way with a defining epithet, as when Richard II says contemptuously of Bolingbroke, ‘Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench’ (R2 1.4.31) or Leontes says his wife deserves a name ‘as rank as any flax-wench that puts to / Before her troth-plight’ (WT 1.2.276–7). Joan La Pucelle in 1H6 quotes the words of Young Talbot to her, that he ‘was not born / To be the pillage of a giglot wench’ (4.4.152–3). Mercutio mocks what he regards as Romeo’s romantic affectation: ‘Laura to his lady was but a kitchen wench’ (RJ 2.4.39–40). Being like a wench can signify effeminate behaviour in a man. Friar Laurence upbraids Romeo for acting ‘like a mishaved and sullen wench’ (RJ 3.3.142), when he breaks out in ‘tears [that] are womanish’ (3.3.109). Guiderius criticizes his brother Arviragus for the poetic quality of his lamentation over the corpse of Fidele (Innogen): ‘Prithee have done, / And do not play in wench-like words with that / Which is so serious’ (CYM 4.2.228–30). The terrified Parolles is said to weep ‘like a wench that has shed her milk’ (AW 4.3 105), an insult aimed against both women and men. (C) ‘Wench’ is used simply to mean female child by, for example, Guillemeau (‘The signes whereby to know whether a woman be with child of a boy or a wench’, 1612, Ch. 2). See Findlay’s feminist analysis of the word (2010). Forker in his edition of R2 (Arden edn, 2002, 487) has a long note on echoes of the line at 1.4.31. whey Often used as a drink in the period, whey is the watery part of the milk that remains after the formation of curds. Its white colour is used to suggest unhealthy or unnatural pallor. Aaron in TIT promises his baby son: I’ll make you feed on berries and on roots And fat on curds and whey (4.2.176–7) 381

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Macbeth berates the messenger who brings him bad news of the advancing enemy army for his pallor: Death of my soul, those linen cheeks of thine Are counsellors to fear. What soldiers, whey-face? (MAC 5.3.16–17) Sim notes that ‘for most people milk was a precious resource . . . [so that] the whey left over from making cheese was all that was likely to be left for drinking for most people’ (1997, 46). widow, widower (A) A widow is a married woman whose husband has died. In early modern England widows enjoyed more legal rights than married women, and some took advantage of this status to manage the trades or businesses of their late husbands. Remarriage was not uncommon, though more for widowers than for widows. (B) Widowhood is one of the three categories of female status, according to the Duke in MM when he interrogates Mariana about her condition and dismisses her answer: ‘Why, you are nothing then: neither maid, widow, nor wife!’ (MM 5.1.178–9). It is commonly adduced as a pitiable condition, and widows are regularly seen as weeping victims, most particularly in TNK 1.1. In Lucrece’s outburst against ‘Opportunity’ (or random chance) she notes that ‘Justice is feasting while the widow weeps’ (LUC 906). A consequence for the French in H5 of failure to surrender will be that ‘the widows’ tears, the orphans’ cries’ will be on their heads (2.4.106). Henry VI prophesies that the rise to power of Richard of Gloucester will result in ‘many an old man’s sigh, and many a widow’s, / And many an orphan’s water-standing eye’ (3H6 5.1.39–40). Coriolanus reproves his wife for her tears, saying that ‘Such eyes the widows in Corioles wear / And mothers that lack sons’ (2.1.173–4). Macduff evokes the misery of Scotland under Macbeth’s tyranny: ‘Each new morn / New widows howl, new orphans cry’ (MAC 4.3.4– 5). In Sonnet 9 the consequences of the youth’s dying unmarried, and thus leaving no child, are imagined as global bereavement: ‘The world will wail thee like a makeless wife; / The world will be thy widow’. A widow who makes much of her condition to elicit pity, even to the extent of seeming empowered by it, is the clamorous Lady Constance in KJ . When the King of Austria pledges his support for her son Arthur’s claim to the throne of England she responds, ‘O, take his mother’s thanks, a widow’s thanks’ (2.1.32). She refers to herself as ‘a widow, husbandless, subject to fears’ (2.1.13), and her son as ‘My widow-comfort’ (3.3.105). In an outcry against the kings of Austria and France for their alliance with England, she draws on her status in a call for divine support: Arm, arm, you heavens, against these perjur’d kings! A widow cries; be husband to me, heavens!’ (3.1.33–4) Benedick in MA takes a cynical view of the widow’s tears, shared by Hamlet (1.2.153– 6) when he says that a man’s memory is soon forgotten, lasting ‘no longer in monument 382

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[memory] than the bell rings and the widow weeps’ (5.2.73). The legal rights of widows were important, as the Earl of Salisbury makes clear in 2H6, when he numbers among the most inexcusable sins ‘To wring the widow from her customed right’ (5.1.188). But widows are sometimes seen as having an eye to the main chance. Buckingham is dismissive of Elizabeth Grey who, in his view, has managed to trap Edward IV into marriage: A care-crazed mother to a many sons, A beauty-waning and distressed widow, Even in the afternoon of her best days, Made prize and purchase of his wanton eye (R3 3.7.183–6) In the scene when Edward woos Lady Grey (3H6 3.2) the asides of his brothers George and Richard (later Richard III ) draw on the stereotype of the widow as sexually easy, although Edward does not treat her as such. When Hortensio in TS realizes he has no chance with Bianca he decides that ‘I will be married to a wealthy widow / Ere three days pass’ (TS 4.2.37–8). The ready availability of this woman is emphasized by Tranio who remarks that ‘he’ll have a lusty widow now / That shall be wooed and wedded in a day’ (4.2.51–2). The remarrying widow is subject to disapproval, apparently motivated by either greed for money (like the ‘wappened widow’ at TIM 4.3.39) or lust (Regan in KL 5.1.60–2, competing with her sister Goneril for Edmund). Jokes about ‘widow Dido’ in TEM (2.1) play on the idea of widow’s sexual appetite. Such a lusty widow is Mistress Overdone in MM , the employer of Pompey, who calls her a ‘poor widow’ yet allows that she has had nine husbands, ‘Overdone by the last’ (MM 2.1.202). The Player Queen in HAM seems to rely on an acceptance of the idea that second marriage, at least for a woman, is to be regarded with deep suspicion when she voices her resounding couplets linking a woman’s second marriage with the murder of her first husband (3.2.173–4, 178–9). She concludes her denunciation of second marriage with a curse: Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife If once I be a widow ever I be a wife. (3.2.216–17) Her words are of course intended to reflect back on the play’s example of the widow who remarries, Gertrude, whose second marriage is technically invalid (Sokol and Sokol, 2000, 170). One widow who is a victim of exploitation is Mistress Quickly, who styles herself ‘a poor widow of Eastcheap’. When she has Falstaff arrested for owing her money, the Lord Chief Justice reproves him, asking, ‘How comes this, Sir John? . . . Are you not ashamed to enforce a poor widow to so rough a course to come by her own?’ (2H4 2.1.80–2). But Mistress Quickly is the owner of a business, and Falstaff has no compunction for his conduct, losing no time in soliciting her for another loan. There is an unusual use of ‘widow’ as a verb in MM , when the Duke orders Angelo to be married to Mariana and then executed, telling her: 383

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For his possessions, Although by confiscation they are ours, We do instate and widow you with all, To buy you a better husband. (MM 5.1.420–2) He means that he will grant her rights to the property of her late husband which should legally belong to the crown. The verb more commonly means ‘to become the widow of’, as when Charmian in AC desires the Soothsayer to predict that she will ‘be married to three kings in a forenoon and widow them all’ (1.2.27–8). References to widowers, not such a significant cultural category as widows, are often made jocularly. Caesar reproves Agrippa for saying that ‘Great Mark Antony / Is now a widower’ (2.2.126–7), remarking that this would be a rash statement in Cleopatra’s ears. Jokes about widow Dido are countered with a jibe at the idea of ‘widower Aeneas’ (TEM 2.1.80). In 3H6 when Lady Bona, who had expected to marry Edward IV, hears that he has married Lady Grey, responds: Tell him, in hope he’ll prove a widower shortly, I’ll wear the willow garland for his sake (3H6 3.3.227–8) words which are quoted to him in the next scene. The references to Bertram in AW as a widower (5.3.70, 141) resound mockingly, since they are spoken when the audience knows he is no such thing. (C) There is plenty of secondary literature on early modern widows. See Sokol and Sokol (2000) for a brief discussion of the legal aspects of widowhood and Erickson (1993, 153–222) for a longer account of widows and property which challenges several stereotyped views, as does Carlton (1978). Froide (2005) shows how widows benefited from more economic options than married women (ch. 2). For discussions of Gertrude’s remarriage, see Kusunoki (1995) and of the remarrying of widows more generally, Todd (1985) and Brodsky (1986). Emmison (1976, 94–102) documents the provisions made by men for their wives in wills in Elizabethan Essex, and notes that the remarrying of widows was ‘high by modern standards’ (100). Kehler (2009) examines the 31 widows and ‘seeming widows’ in Shakespeare in relation to their social and cultural contexts. Findlay (2010) has a useful survey of Shakespeare’s widows, emphasizing the idea of the widow as a ‘culturally threatening figure’ (444). Panek’s useful article (2000) discusses the significance of the ‘lusty widow’ figure in a range of comedies. Her book (2004) expands on this. Jacobs (2001) stresses that stage widows, commonly young, wealthy and lusty, are not representative of widows in the population in general. Deloney, in Jack of Newbury, ch. 1, describes a happy marriage between a young craftsman and the witty widow of his master, but Niccholes advises against marrying a widow because she is ‘halfe-worne’ (1615, 25). Gouge is concerned that ‘if a rich woman marry a poor man, she will look to be the master’ (1622, 190). Widows 384

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feature prominently in many plays, including Chapman’s The Widow’s Tears, Barry’s Ram- Alley, Field’s Amends for Ladies, Fletcher’s The Scornful Lady, Middleton’s The Widow, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi and Rowley’s A New Wonder, a Woman Never Vexed. wife (A) The word wife originally meant woman, but in early modern usage (as now) most commonly signifies a woman married to a man, though there are a few examples in Shakespeare of the earlier meaning. Derivatives such as ale-wife refer to a woman, usually of the lower class, by reference to her husband’s trade. The verb ‘to wive’ means to take a wife. Becoming a wife involved significant changes to a woman’s legal status, in that she then became a feme covert, which limited, among other things, her rights to hold property as well as her legal liability. (B) The duties of a wife towards her husband, a major concern in handbooks of domestic conduct in the period, are important in several Shakespeare plays, most obviously TS . A model for marital relations is proposed in the Induction where the page Bartholomew is dressed as a woman and Christopher Sly tricked into believing that Bartholomew is his wife. The Lord describes how the page should address Sly: With soft low tongue and lowly courtesy And say, ‘What is’t your honour will command, Wherein your lady and your humble wife May show her duty and make known her love?’ (Ind 1.112–15) Sly is disconcerted when the page, taking his instructions to heart, addresses him as ‘noble lord’ which he regards as too lofty a term for a wife to use: SLY

Are you my wife, and will not call me husband? My men should call me ‘lord’; I am your goodman. BARTHOLOMEW

My husband and my lord, my lord and husband, I am your wife in all obedience. (Ind. 2.101–4) The Lord’s advice and page’s response represent a textbook lesson in the first duty of a wife, according to early modern handbooks on marital relations, which is to be submissive and acknowledge her husband’s superiority. A less orthodox approach to wiving is taken by Petruccio who has come to Padua ‘haply to wive and thrive as best I may’ (1.2.55). He is prepared to take on what Hortensio calls ‘a shrewd ill-favour’d wife’ as long as he deems her ‘rich enough to be Petruccio’s wife’ (1.2.66). Having met Katherina’s father and indicated his readiness to marry her, he asks the all-important question: ‘Then tell me, if I get your daughter’s love, / What dowry shall I have with her to wife?’ (2.1.118–19). Next, he meets Katherina and tells her 385

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Thus in plain terms: your father hath consented That you shall be my wife, your dowry ’greed on, And will you, nill you, I will marry you. (2.1.271–3) Although marriage manuals laid stress on mutuality and companionship in marriage, arranged marriages among the upper classes were far from uncommon. However, Baptista does require of Petruccio to agree that the contract will only go ahead ‘when the special thing is well obtained – / That is, her love, for that is all in all’ (2.1.127–8). The arrangement that Baptista tries to make for his younger daughter Bianca, in effect making two suitors bid for her, with no mention of love, is entered into enthusiastically by both suitors; Tranio, bidding in the guise of his master Lucentio, promises that ‘If I may have your daughter to my wife / I’ll leave her houses three or four’ (2.1.369–70). Petruccio embarks on an extensive training programme to ‘tame’ Katherina; having outlined his methods he sums up: ‘This is a way to kill a wife with kindness’ (4.1.197), making ironic use of an old proverb (Dent, K51). Katherina’s long speech at the end of the play (which does not use the word ‘wife’) defines the marital relationship in textbook terms, stressing, as Bartholomew does, the wife’s subservient role in the partnership: Such duty as the subject owes the prince, Even such a woman oweth to her husband. (5.2.161–2) She has won the wager made by Petruccio with the other two husbands as to whose wife is ‘most obedient’ (5.2.78). The virtuous wife is exemplified in Queen Katherine in H8. In the courtroom scene she pleads with Henry not to cast her off, describing how she has carried out her duties towards him: Heaven witness I have been to you a true and humble wife, At all times to your will conformable, Even in fear to kindle your dislike, Yea, subject to your countenance, glad or sorry As I saw it inclined. ... Sir, call to mind That I have been your wife in this obedience Upward of twenty years (2.4.20–5, 32–4) Henry cannot bring himself to answer her, but after her exit he claims that any man ‘who shall report he has / A better wife’ is not to be trusted, and for ‘meekness saint-like, wifelike government, / Obeying in commanding’ (2.4.135–6) she has no equal. Virgilia in 386

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COR is the wife who prefers to stay at home (1.3), so retiring in public that Coriolanus addresses her as ‘my gracious silence’ (2.1.170). She is always subordinate to her mother-in-law Volumnia, and says almost nothing in confrontation with her estranged husband in 5.3. But he notices that ‘my wife comes foremost’ in the procession of supplicants, and when he asserts that he will ‘stand / As if a man were author of himself / And knew no other kin’ she completes his verse line and at the same time denies his speech merely by addressing him, ‘my lord and husband’ (5.3.36–8). Portia, Brutus’s wife in JC , was a well-known example of the virtuous wife, not only ‘a woman that Lord Brutus took to wife’ but also ‘a woman well reputed, Cato’s daughter’ (2.1.292, 294). She presses her husband to realize to the fullest extent the significance of ‘the bond of marriage’: Am I your self But as it were in sort or limitation, To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in the suburbs Of your good pleasure? If it be no more Portia is Brutus’ harlot, not his wife. (2.1.281–6) The word ‘suburbs’ may play on the idea that (in Shakespeare’s time) the suburbs of London were the location of many brothels. Brutus responds by calling her ‘my true and honourable wife, / As dear to me as are the ruddy drops / That visit my sad heart’ (2.1.287– 9). When she tells him that she has tested her ‘constancy’ by giving herself a wound in the thigh, he is amazed: ‘O ye gods, / Render me worthy of this noble wife!’ (2.1.301–2). Another wife who calls on her husband to treat her according to the marriage bond, as ‘undividable, incorporate . . . better than thy dear self’s better part’ is Adriana in CE (2.1.121–2). She feels that, since her husband appears to ignore her needs and wishes, ‘I am not Adriana, nor thy wife’ and, because a married couple should be as ‘one flesh’ (HAM 4.3.50), he is ‘estranged from [him]self’. But the long speech she makes about the effects of his infidelity on their union is comically misdirected: she is addressing her husband’s twin brother, Antipholus of Syracuse. Her sister Luciana urges this same Antipholus, also mistaken as to his identity, ‘Comfort my sister, cheer her, call her wife’, telling him to ‘look sweet, speak fair, become disloyalty’ even if he no longer loves her; but he replies, ‘Your weeping sister is no wife of mine’ (3.2.26, 11, 42). In 1H4 Lady Percy also begs her husband for reassurance that he loves and trusts her. His response is equivocal: ‘I know you wise but yet no farther wise / Than Harry Percy’s wife’ (2.4.104). Wives who are estranged from their husbands, though eventually reunited, include Innogen in CYM , Hermione in WT and Hero in MA . Innogen, who has seemed to Posthumus like ‘the nonpareil’ of her time, is discarded because he mistakenly believes she has been unfaithful. But Pisanio, who realizes she has been belied, says that ‘She’s punish’d for her truth; and undergoes / More goddess-like than wife-like, such assaults / As would take in some virtue’ (CYM 3.2.7–9). He sends Posthumus a ‘bloody cloth’ to make 387

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him believe that Innogen is dead; and Posthumus, wretched with guilt at his mistreatment of his wife, calls directly on the audience to take cautionary example by him: You married ones, If each of you should take this course, how many Must murder wives much better than themselves For wrying but a little? (5.1.2–5) When at last Posthumus discovers the truth, he is almost inarticulate, overcome with love for her: ‘O Innogen! / My queen, my life, my wife, O Innogen, / Innogen, Innogen’ (5.2.225–6). Hero, also rejected on false grounds, is received again by Claudio when the plot to destroy the marriage has been revealed. Unveiling herself, she tells him: ‘And when I lived I was your other wife; / And when you loved, you were my other husband’ (5.4.60–1). Hermione’s trials are more protracted. The wife’s relation to her husband is a theme through the play. Leontes, watching Hermione with Polixenes, imagines that she ‘arms her with the boldness of a wife / To her allowing husband’ (WT 1.2.183–4), probably meaning that she links arms with Polixenes as a wife would with her husband (though see the range of meanings offered by Pitcher in his note, Arden edn, 2010). Leontes becomes obsessed with the idea of his wife’s infidelity, challenging the lord Camillo, in a speech whose disjointed syntax expresses his overheated imagination, to disagree with him: Ha’ you not seen, Camillo – But that’s past doubt; you have, or your eye-glass Is thicker than a cuckold’s horn – or heard – For, to a vision so apparent, rumour Cannot be mute – or thought – for cogitation Resides not in the man that does not think – My wife is slippery? If thou wilt confess – Or else be impudently negative To have nor eyes, nor ears, nor thought – then say My wife’s a hobby-horse (1.2.265–74) He tells Camillo that ‘Were my wife’s liver / Infected as her life, she would not live / The running of one glass’ (1.2.302–4). His disgust with women extends to Paulina, whom he describes to her husband Antigonus as ‘thy lewd-tongued wife’ (2.3.106). After the passage of sixteen years and the realization that Hermione, now apparently dead, was after all innocent, the repentant Leontes is urged by courtiers to marry again, but he is adamant that Hermione was matchless: ‘No more such wives, therefore no wife’ (5.1.56). And later: ‘Fear thou no wife; I’ll have no wife, Paulina’ (5.1.68). But having regained his wife through Paulina’s agency, he is determined to repay her: ‘Thou shouldst a husband take by my consent, / As I by thine a wife’ (5.3.137). At the play’s conclusion he matches her with the loyal Camillo. 388

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Desdemona is Shakespeare’s sole tragic example of a wife whose innocence is discovered too late. The newly married Othello is proud of his wife and before they set off for Cyprus is anxious to ensure she is suitably provided for, asking initially for ‘fit disposition for my wife’ (OTH 1.3.237) when he expects that she will remain behind in Venice, and then, ironically, that Iago be appointed to take care of her on the journey: ‘A man he is of honesty and trust. / To his conveyance I assign my wife’ (1.3.285–6). Iago, however, has other plans, including revenge on his rival Cassio and the destruction of the marriage. Women are mere pawns in his scheming. Considering that Othello may have slept with his wife, Emilia, he imagines being even with him ‘wife for wife’ (2.1.297). But a more promising idea is to spread lies about Desdemona and Cassio, ‘to abuse Othello’s ear / That he [Cassio] is too familiar with his wife’ (1.3.395). He brings Emilia to bear on this: ‘My wife must move for Cassio to her mistress’ (2.3.382). ‘Look to your wife’, he urges Othello (3.3.200), once the scheme gets under way. Othello is ready to use Emilia to aid the spying: ‘Set on thy wife to observe’, he tells Iago (3.3.243). Othello is tormented by the complexity of his feelings for Desdemona. He sees in her qualities that are desirable in a well-born wife: ’Tis not to make me jealous To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company, Is free of speech, sings, plays and dances well: Where virtue is, these are more virtuous. (3.3.186–9) But Iago’s insinuations confuse him: ‘I think my wife be honest, and think she is not’ (3.3.387). Having seen the fatal handkerchief in Cassio’s possession, Othello is so convinced of Desdemona’s guilt that he strikes her in public, in full view of an embassy from Venice; Ludovico is horrified: ‘What! Strike his wife!’ (4.1.272). Although the legitimacy of wife-beating was subject to debate in the period, Othello’s behaviour here is clearly excessive. Desdemona clings on desperately to her chosen role; Othello in his rage treats her as if she were a prostitute, ‘a subtle whore, / A closet, lock and key, of villainous secrets’. She tries to plead with him: OTHELLO

Why, what art thou? DESDEMONA

Your wife, my lord: your true and loyal wife. (4.2.34–5) In a subsequent conversation with Emilia Desdemona professes herself unable to imagine any circumstance in which she would commit adultery; but the more worldlywise Emilia argues that a husband who mistreats his wife deserves all he gets: ‘I do think it is their husbands’ faults / If wives do fall’. She develops this point into a defence of a wife’s right to revenge: ‘Let husbands know / Their wives have sense like them: they see, and smell, / And have their palates both for sweet and sour / As husbands have’ (4.3.85–6, 92–5). 389

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When Othello has murdered Desdemona, he too finds it impossible to relinquish his role. Desperately temporizing with Emilia who is pressing to enter the bedchamber, he talks to himself: ‘If she come in, she’ll sure speak to my wife. / My wife, my wife! What wife? I have no wife’ (5.2.95–6). Once the secret of the handkerchief is out, Emilia’s verdict on Othello’s deception is succinct: ‘O murderous coxcomb, what should such a fool / Do with so good a wife?’ (5.2.231–2). The next moment, she too becomes a wife killed by her husband. A wife whose fidelity is wrongly doubted but emerges triumphant is Mistress Ford in MW , whose jealous husband is a precursor to Othello. Falstaff believes that both she and her friend Mistress Page have shown sexual interest in him: ‘I do mean to make love to Ford’s wife. I spy entertainment in her: she discourses, she carves, she gives the leer of invitation’ (1.3.40–3). While both Master Ford and Master Page are made aware of Falstaff’s interest in their wives only Ford is troubled. Page remarks complacently: ‘If he should intend this voyage toward my wife, I would turn her loose to him, and what he gets more of her than sharp words, let it lie on my head’ (2.1.164–7). Falstaff’s pursuit of Mistress Ford is not only sexual; he is short of funds and he knows that Ford is wealthy: ‘They say the jealous wittolly knave hath masses of money, for the which his wife seems to me well-favoured’ (2.2.257–9). The wives are realistic about their appeal for Falstaff. Mistress Page knows she is no longer ‘in the holiday-time of my beauty’ (2.1.2) and the fact that he is pursuing both women at once makes his advances the more insulting. Their wittily contrived revenge on him also punishes Ford for his unfounded jealousy and demonstrates that, as Mistress Page says, while they await Falstaff’s humiliating exit in the buck basket along with all the dirty linen, ‘Wives may be merry and yet honest too’ (4.2.100). Ford, having witnessed this, is obliged to humiliate himself in front of Page and his wife: Pardon me, wife. Henceforth do what thou wilt: I rather will suspect the sun with cold Than thee with wantonness. (4.4.7–9) Wives come off well in this play; Mistress Quickly considers that Mistress Page has the ideal life for a wife: ‘Truly, Master Page is an honest man – never a wife in Windsor leads a better life than she does: do what she will, say what she will, take all, pay all, go to bed when she list, rise when she list, all is as she will’ (2.2.109–13). The name of wife is an important title and gives a woman status. Portia urges Bassanio to return to Venice and rescue Antonio from Shylock’s clutches, but not before they are married: ‘First go with me to church and call me wife’ (3.2.302). ‘What motive may / Be stronger with thee than the name of wife?’ says the newly married Blanche to Lewis in KJ (3.1.240). Juliet’s Nurse tells her to hurry to Friar Laurence’s cell: ‘There stays a husband to make you a wife’ (RJ 2.5.69). The style of wife is important to the young Juliet: she is only Romeo’s ‘three-hours’ wife’ when she hears of his killing her cousin Tybalt. She is prepared to take any risky action that the Friar proposes in order 390

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to avoid marriage with Paris and ‘live an unstained wife to my sweet love’ (4.1.88). Capulet, believing that Juliet has died on the morning she is due to marry Paris, tells his prospective son-in-law that ‘the night before thy wedding day / Hath death lain with thy wife’ (4.5.35–6). Love, death and marriage are again invoked by Romeo when he discovers Juliet in the tomb: O my love, my wife, Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty. (5.3.91–3) A woman who must work hard to achieve the title of wife is Helena in AW . Rewarded by the King for curing his aliment, she chooses Bertram, the King’s ward, for her husband, but the young man is horrified at the prospect (‘A poor physician’s daughter my wife!’, 2.3.116) and hurries away from France with the resounding rhyme: ‘Wars is no strife / To the dark house and the detested wife’ (2.3.290–1). He sends her a letter affirming his decision, with a sentence that Helena desolately repeats: ‘Till I have no wife I have nothing in France’ (3.2.73). But, with the aid of another woman and the bedtrick, she manages to meet the apparently impossible conditions he sets, and appears, pregnant with Bertram’s child, in the final moments of the play. But until he acknowledges her she regards herself as ‘but the shadow of a wife’. He then grants her acceptance: ‘Both, both. O pardon!’ (5.3.306, 308). Some women actively woo their husbands. ‘I am your wife, if you will marry me’, Miranda tells Ferdinand (TEM 3.1.83). Rosalind in AYL coaches Orlando in the response he must make when Celia acts as priest to their marriage in the forest: ‘Then you must say, “I take thee, Rosalind, for wife” ’ (4.1.125). Compatibility in marriage and mutual liking are important. ‘Since that respects of fortune are his love / I shall not be his wife’, Cordelia observes of Burgundy (KL 1.1.248–9). Marriage will only work, says Margaret in MA , ‘an it be the right husband and the right wife’ (3.4.33), an ironic remark in its context since she herself is the cause for Claudio’s rejection of Hero at the altar. In AC Enobarbus observes that Octavia, just married to Mark Antony, ‘is of a holy, cold and still conversation’. Menas takes a conventional viewpoint about female virtue when he asks, ‘Who would not have his wife so?’ The more worldly Enobarbus replies, ‘Not he that himself is not so’ (2.6.124–7). But wives who dominate are always subject to disapproval. The Bishop of Winchester warns the Duke of Gloucester: ‘Thy wife is proud, she holdeth thee in awe, / More than God or religious churchmen may’ (1H6 1.1.39–40). Richard of Gloucester in R3 comments on the imprisonment of his brother Clarence: Why, this it is when men are ruled by women: ’Tis not the king that sends you to the Tower; My Lady Grey, his wife, Clarence, ’tis she That tempers him to this extremity. (1.1.63–5) 391

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Boyet considers that shrewish wives act out of pride: Do not curst wives hold that self-sovereignty Only for praise’ sake when they strive to be Lords o’er their lords? (LLL 4.1.36–9) Petruccio makes his plan ‘to kill a wife with kindness’ with husbandly dominance in mind: ‘And thus I’ll curb her mad and headstrong humour’ (TS 4.1.208–9). A rare kind of misbehaviour by a wife is presented metaphorically, in a striking image used by the Archbishop of York in 2H4, when he explains King Henry’s wish no longer to punish his rebellious subjects because he cannot do so without injuring his friends: So that this land, like an offensive wife That hath enraged him on to offer strokes, As he is striking, holds his infant up, And hangs resolved correction in the arm That was upreared to execution. (2H4 4.1.210–14) ‘Wife’ meaning ‘woman’ is rare in Shakespeare. It appears in Chorus 5 in H5: ‘The English beach / Pales in the flood with men, with wives and boys’ (9–12) and (probably) in TN , where Viola prepares to follow Orsino whom she loves ‘More than I love these eyes, more than my life, / More by all mores than e’er I shall love wife’ (5.1.131–2). (C) There is a great deal of secondary literature on the roles of husbands and wives. Findlay’s (2010) long and helpful entry on ‘wife’ is a good place to start. Sokol and Sokol (2000) discuss the legal status of a wife. Erickson has a useful section on married women and property (1993, 99–151); her evidence supports the idea that among the middling sort the age of first marriage was comparatively late. Ezell (1987) discusses the theory of the ‘Good Wife’ in the context of a challenge to the concept of a monumental patriarchalism in the seventeenth century. Fletcher (1995, 192–203) discusses the social acceptability of wife-beating. Detmer (1997) discusses wife-beating in TS , and argues that Petruccio’s treatment of Katherina is domestic violence and ‘reproduces cultural desires for masculine domination’ (298). On Portia in JC see Daniell (JC , Arden edn, 1998, 139–43). She is seen as a model wife in Hannay (1619, sig. C3). On the wives in MW see Clark (1987). Biblical injunctions on the conduct of the good wife include Proverbs 23.13–27, which sets out her activities, and Ephesians 5.22–5, where St Paul advocates her total submission. Tilney has a classic account of the separate spheres of wife and husband (1578, 120–1). Relevant prescriptive literature includes Gouge (1622), who is especially emphatic about the wife’s submission to her husband, and Dod and Cleaver (1630) who regard the wife’s main role in the family as supporting the husband, although they are great advocates of companionate marriage. They emphasize that the wife’s chastity is central: ‘the honour of all dependeth onely of the woman’ (sig. 392

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L4). Her third duty as a wife is to wear attire that is ‘comely and sober’ (sig. O3v). Hannay (1619) addresses himself to women, describing in verse how a woman should conduct herself as a wife. The Lawes Resolutions of Womens Rights (1632) has much interesting commentary on the rights of married women (esp. pp. 4, 6). Wing argues for the wife to be given due respect, even if she is her husband’s inferior (1620, 133). Capp has a useful overview of the handling of marital relations in conduct books (2003, 31– 5). In Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness (1607), Sir Charles Mountford describes the wife’s ideal relation to her husband: ‘She doth become you like a wellmade suit’ (1.1.59) and also remarks on the ‘equality’ in this marriage. See also bride and the bibliography at marriage. wig, periwig (A) A periwig means a wig, or covering made of false hair, worn by either sex, to cover the head, concealing the real hair. The term was derived from a corruption of the French perruque. Wigs were not commonly worn in England as everyday fashion items before the mid-seventeenth century, although Queen Elizabeth is known to have worn them for much of her life, and they were starting to become fashionable. (B) Julia in TGV , imagining how she might equal the beauty of Silvia, her rival in love, considers that a periwig would help: Her hair is auburn, mine is perfect yellow; If that be all the difference in his love, I’ll get me such a coloured periwig. (4.4.187–9) In a joking exchange between Antipholus of Syracuse and his servant Dromio in CE on the subject of time, Dromio says ‘there’s no time for a man to recover his hair that grows bald by nature’. Antipholus responds, with a pun, ‘May he not do it by fine and recovery?’ referring to the legal method for transferring the ownership of property that could not be sold. Dromio answers, ‘Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig, and recover the lost hair of another man’ (2.2.71–5). That wigs were made from the hair of the dead is referred to, with some disgust, in Sonnet 68, when the poet talks of a better age than the present: Before the golden tresses of the dead, The right of sepulchres, were shorn away, To live a second life on second head; Ere beauty’s dead fleece made another gay. Bassanio in MV , contemplating the golden casket and the deceptive nature of appearances, uses similar imagery in describing a wig: . . . those crisped snaky golden locks. Which maketh wanton gambols with the wind Upon supposed fairness, often known

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To be the dowry of a second head, The skull that bred them in the sepulchre. (3.2.92–6) Hamlet, talking to the actors of what he dislikes to see on the stage, says that he is offended ‘to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters’ (HAM 3.2.9), referring to the wigs worn by actors. (C) See Jones and Stallybrass (2000, 208–9) on stage wigs. Drakakis in his note on MV 3.2.95 (Arden edn, 2010) cites Nashe, Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem (1594): ‘For thy flaring frounzed Periwigs lowe dangled downe with love-locks, shalt thou have they head side dangled downe with more Snakes than ever it had haires’ (Nashe, 1958, 2.140). Queen Elizabeth (then over sixty) is described wearing a wig in 1597 by the French Ambassador (Maisse, 1931). window, casement (A) A window is an opening in a building to let in light and air. In early modern England windows tended to have small leaded panes; glazing was expensive and glass in windows the preserve only of the better off. In the newly built houses of the aristocracy large windows displayed the owner’s wealth: Hardwick Hall, built between 1590 and 1597, was dubbed ‘more glass than wall’. By no means all windows opened, though hinged casement windows did. Casement windows are attached to their frame by a hinge at the side, and can open inwards or outwards. In Elizabethan times grand houses were built with conspicuously large windows of this type, sometimes with latticed panes and stained glass with heraldic designs. The word had various metaphorical applications, and the idea of the eyes as windows to the soul is common. (B) Windows are important for communication between lovers, usually nocturnal and in secret. The audience shares Romeo’s rapture at the sight of Juliet: But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun (RJ 2.2.2–3) Egeus is displeased by Lysander’s ardent courting of Hermia: ‘Thou hast by moonlight by her window sung’ (MND 1.1.30). Shylock worries about his daughter’s access to the world outside his house, urging her, ‘Clamber not you up to the casements’ (MV 2.5.30), when he goes out in the evening, and he is right to do so; as soon as he is out of the door, the Clown tells Jessica to disregard her father: ‘Mistress, look out at the window for all this [despite all this]; / There will come a Christian by / Will be worth a Jewess’ eye’ (2.5.39–41). Valentine unwisely tells Proteus of his plan to elope with Silvia, by climbing at night to her chamber window with a ‘ladder made of cords’ (TGV 2.4.180), and Proteus betrays him to Silvia’s father. In AW Diana tells Bertram, ‘When midnight comes, knock at my chamber window’ (4.2.56). He later tells the King untruthfully that the all-important ring (given by the King to Helena) was ‘from a 394

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casement thrown me’ (5.3.94). Don John tells Claudio to keep watch on Hero the night before the wedding when he will see ‘her chamber window entered’ (MA 3.2.102), although he later asserts that they have watched her ‘talk with a ruffian at her chamber window’ (4.1.91), not claiming entry. The one encounter at a window by daylight is Ophelia’s; she sings of the outcome in stark terms: Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s Day All in the morning betime, And I a maid at your window To be your valentine. Then up he rose and donned his clothes And dupped the chamber door – Let in the maid that out a maid Never departed more. (HAM 4.5.47–55) Windows have other purposes. In KL Edmund claims that Edgar has thrown a letter in at the casement of his closet (1.2.60). Cassius plans to throw similarly fake letters in at Brutus’s windows by night to incite him against Caesar (JC 1.2.314–15). Rosalind tells Orlando that the wit of a woman cannot be confined: ‘Make the doors upon a woman’s wit and it will out at the casement. Shut that and ’twill out at the keyhole’ (AYL 4.1.151–3). In MND Quince worries about how to bring moonlight into the chamber where the mechanicals’ play will be performed and the ingenious Bottom proposes a solution; since the moon will be shining that night ‘then may you leave a casement of the great chamber window, where we play, open; and the moon may shine in at the casement’ (3.1.52–4). Bolingbroke is angered by the insults that Bushy and Green have offered him; they have ‘from mine own windows torn my household coat’ (R2 3.1.24), meaning that that they have broken the windows in which his family coat of arms was represented in stained glass. But later, when he makes a triumphant return to London, the Duke of York says that his reception by the bystanders and those who ‘through casements darted their desiring eyes’ was so tumultuous that ‘You would have thought the very windows spake’ (R2 5.2.14, 12). In TN , Malvolio, locked in a dark room, is taunted by Feste telling him, in riddling style, that he is mad, because the room ‘hath bay-windows transparent as barricadoes’ (i.e. not transparent at all) (4.2.36–7). Windows are used in various metaphors. Charmian attends lovingly to her dead mistress Cleopatra: Downy windows, close, And golden Phoebus, never be beheld Of eyes again so royal! (AC 5.2.315–16) Arcite in TNK also links eyes with windows and the sight of the sun when he speaks of the advantages enjoyed by Palamon in prison where he will have sight of Emilia, and be 395

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able to see ‘Her bright eyes break each morning ’gainst thy window / And let in life into thee’ (2.3.9–10). The compressed image identifies the brightness of Emilia’s eyes with the sun shining at break of day, which will let in life through the window. Iachimo in Innogen’s chamber imagines the candle flame as bending towards the sleeping woman as if it would ‘under-peep her lids, / To see th’enclosed lights, now canopied / Under these windows, white and azure laced / With blue of heaven’s own tinct’ (CYM 2.2.20– 3). The eyelids, as in Charmian’s lines in AC , are evoked in an almost sensually vivid way. Berowne, eager to impress Rosaline with his sincerity as a wooer, asks her to ‘look on me, / Behold the window of my heart, mine eye’ (LLL 5.2.825–6). The same idea of the eye as window to the heart is central to SON 24, where the poet plays on the conceit that his lover’s ‘true image’ is in his own ‘bosom’s shop . . . That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes’. In this complicated formulation, the lover’s eyes are the glass windows through which the poet’s bosom, containing the lover’s image, can be seen. Lafew uses the transparency of windows differently when he calls Parolles ‘my good window of lattice’ saying ‘thy casement I need not open. For I look through thee’ (AW 2.3.213–14). He means that Parolles is easily seen through, despite his affected manner (his ‘lattice’). An extraordinary use of the same idea comes in King Lear’s speech addressed to the poor of the earth, when he asks how their ‘looped and windowed raggedness’ (KL 3.4.31) will protect them from the storm. (C) Orlin (2002) notes that glass windows, a relative novelty then, appear in wills of the period, in the category of objects that should not be removed. Howard (1987) has useful information about window styles in great houses of the period, with many illustrations. Harrison (1587) observes that glass for windows has become cheap and plentiful, displacing the use of horn (197). wine (A) Many varieties of wine were available. It was drunk in the home and at inns, taverns and alehouses, sometimes with the addition of sugar or another sweetening agent, and sometimes diluted with water. It was believed to have medicinal properties and to warm the blood. (B) Wine is offered to make toasts, and to signify hospitality and friendship. In AC Enobarbus strikes a keynote when he calls ‘Bring in the banquet quickly; wine enough / Cleopatra’s health to drink’ (AC 1.2.12–13). At the feast on Pompey’s barge wine flows too freely. Antony urges the other guests: Come, let’s all take hands Till that the conquering wine hath steeped our sense In soft and delicate Lethe. (2.7.106–8) Caesar disapproves of this excess, observing that ‘Strong Enobarb / Is weaker than the wine, and mine own tongue / Splits what it speaks’ (2.7.122–3). In preparation for the duel between Hamlet and Laertes, Claudius commands his servants to ‘Set me some stoups of wine upon the table’ (HAM 5.2.267), ostensibly so that he can toast his step396

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son’s success, but in fact so that he can administer poison. Lady Macbeth similarly uses a hospitable offering of ‘wine and wassail’ for evil purposes, to send Duncan’s grooms to sleep (MAC 1.7.65). In TEM Stephano plies Caliban with drink from the barrel he has rescued, in order to render him malleable: ‘If he have never drunk wine afore, it will go near to remove his fit. If I can recover him and keep him tame, I will not take too much for him!’ (2.2.72–6). Mistress Quickly in 2H4 considers that Doll Tearsheet, whose colour is ‘as red as any rose’, has somewhat overindulged: ‘I’faith you have drunk too much canaries, and that’s a marvellous searching wine, and it perfumes the blood ere one can say, “What’s this?” ’ (2.4.24–8). Later in the play, Justice Silence, who usually lives up to his name, breaks into inebriated song: A cup of wine that’s brisk and fine, And drink unto thee, leman mine, And a merry heart lives long-a. (5.3.45–7) ‘Good wine is a good familiar creature’, says Iago insinuatingly, having successfully induced Cassio to take a disastrous quantity of it (OTH 2.3.304). Menenius in COR appraises himself as a ‘humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine, with not a drop of allaying Tiber in’t’ (2.1.45–6). When Edgar, playing the part of Poor Tom, characterizes his life as a dissolute servingman, he says, ‘Wine loved I deeply, dice dearly’ (KL 3.4.89). Rosalind as Ganymede tells Phoebe not to fall in love with her, ‘For I am falser than vows made in wine’ (AYL 3.5.74). The ability of wine to heat the blood is drawn on by Achilles in his plans for Hector: ‘I’ll heat his blood with Greekish wine tonight, / Which with my scimitar I’ll cool tomorrow’ (TC 5.1.1–2). Falstaff disapproves of Prince John of Lancaster because he is a ‘sober-blooded boy’ who ‘drinks no wine’ (2H4 5.3.87, 89), before going on to celebrate sack and its uses in ‘the warming of the blood’ (4.3.102). Menenius advises approaching Coriolanus only after he has dined: when we have stuffed These pipes and these conveyances of our blood With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls Than in our priest-like fasts. (COR 5.1.53–6) Macbeth’s metaphorical use of the word is striking; in his epitaph for the dead Duncan he says that All is but toys; renown and grace is dead, The wine of life is drawn [drained away], and the mere lees Is left this vault to brag of. (MAC 2.3.95–7) Wine here is something rich and sustaining. 397

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(C) On wines drunk in the household, see Hollyband and Erondell (1925, 29–31). Cogan (1636, ch. 21) discusses issues relating to the drinking of wine with meals. He thinks wine particularly beneficial to old people, because they are cold and it warms them. See also Boorde (1547, ch. 10). Picard (2003, 185–7) describes how wine was served. See also Rhenish. wool, woollen (A) Wool is the fleece that forms the coat of a domesticated sheep or the cloth that is made from it. Many kinds of materials were made in England from wool, and the cloth trade on which it was based enjoyed a period of expansion during Elizabeth’s reign. (B) Wool can be used in quite a broad sense in Shakespeare. In MAC 2 Witch refers to ‘wool of bat’ as one of the ingredients in the potion she and her sisters are brewing, meaning the soft under-hair or down of the animal’s coat. Aaron’s ‘fleece of woolly hair’ (TIT 2.2.34) is a major signifier of his racial otherness. Wool carries connotations of the basic and the humble. Lear, describing Poor Tom as the embodiment of ‘unaccommodated man’, notes his lack of obligation to the animal kingdom: ‘Thou ow’st the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume . . . Here’s three on’s us are sophisticated; thou art the thing itself’ (3.4.101–4). When Beatrice says that rather than marrying a man with a beard she would prefer to ‘lie in the woollen’ (MA 2.1.27) she refers to sleeping in rough blankets rather than sheets. Similarly Armado, when playing the part of Hector and about to fight Costard as Pompey, announces that he cannot fight in his shirt because he has none: ‘I go woolward for penance’ (LLL 5.2.705–6). This was a proverbial expression (Dent, W757.1). Coriolanus refers to his mother’s denigration of the plebeians as ‘woollen vassals’ (3.2.10), wearing only humble clothing. When he calls the garment of humility, which he must wear to solicit the citizens’ votes, a ‘wolvish toge’ (2.3.113) he may be punning on the word ‘wool’. The Clown in WT , who is both literate and numerate, calculates how much money he will get for the wool of his sheep: ‘Every ’leven wether tods, every tod [measure of weight, 28lb or 12.7 kilos] yields pound and odd shilling. Fifteen hundred shorn, what comes the wool to?’ (4.3.31–4). (C) Linthicum (1936) has an excellent chapter on the cloth trade and the wide range of woollen cloths (including flannel, kersey, motley, puke, russet, tawny) then being produced. See Holland (Arden edn, 2013, 425) on the textual problem of Coriolanus’s ‘wolvish toge’; he regards the image of a wolf in sheep’s clothing as the underlying idea. Pitcher (WT , Arden edn, 2010, 253) does some useful calculations for the Clown showing that the sum he might make is ‘probably £143 3s 7d (£143.18), a huge amount at the date of WT  ’. wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) was a herb noted for its bitterness, used medicinally and in salads. Juliet’s Nurse vividly recalls weaning Juliet by the use of wormwood and the child’s alarmed reaction ‘when it did taste the wormwood on the nipple / Of my dug, and felt it bitter’ (RJ 1.3.32–3). Hamlet comments on the words of the Player Queen 398

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about second marriage, ‘That’s wormwood’ (HAM 3.2.175), meaning that for Gertrude the sentiment is a bitter pill to swallow. At the end of LLL Rosaline gives Berowne a penance to atone for the bitterness of his wit, ‘to weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain’ (LLL 5.2.835), by using it in a different way, to bring pleasure to the sick and dying. In E3 King Edward remarks sarcastically to King John: ‘If gall or wormwood have a pleasant taste, / Then is thy salutation honey-sweet’ (6.73–4). See also LUC 893. Cogan (1636, ch. 3) describes a way of using wormwood steeped in wine as a cure for worms.

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Y yeoman (A) In this period the term yeoman is a tricky one with various meanings. It generally means a man who holds a small landed estate, under the rank of a gentleman, a small farmer, or someone of this standing serving as a foot soldier. It could imply respectability, or it could be used as a class-based insult. The word could also refer to an assistant to an officer (OED n. 1b). Yeoman’s (or yeoman) service meant good service, as of a faithful servant (as in HAM 5.2.36). (B) Falstaff in his search for men who will pay bribes to avoid military service admits that ‘I press me none but good householders, yeomen’s sons’ (1H4 4.2.15). Classconsciousness underlies many of the uses of the word. Before the battle of Harfleur, Henry encourages his soldiers, addressing them as ‘good yeomen’ (H5 3.1.25), although he admits that some of them are ‘mean and base’. The Duke of York insults Queen Margaret, saying that although her father claims many titles, he is ‘not so wealthy as an English yeoman’ (3H6 1.4.123). In 1H6 the Duke of Somerset unwisely insults Richard Plantagenet (later to be Duke of York) by telling the Duke of Somerset to ignore him: Away, away, good William de la Pole – We grace the yeoman by conversing with him. (2.4.80–1) In KL the Fool and Lear indulge in a bit of class-based banter: FOOL

Prithee, nuncle, tell me whether a madman be a gentleman or a yeoman? LEAR

A king, a king. FOOL

No, he’s a yeoman that has a gentleman to his son; for he’s a mad yeoman that sees his son a gentleman before him. (3.6.9–14) The passage has been variously interpreted, but the most obvious sense is that Lear has given his daughters a higher status than his own. The most puzzling use is in Malvolio’s musings on the possibility that Olivia fancies him: ‘There is example for ’t: the Lady of the Strachey married the yeoman of the wardrobe’ (TN 2.5.36–7). It is clearly concerned with marriage between a woman of high status and a servant; the yeoman of the wardrobe probably means a servant in 401

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charge of a noble person’s clothes. But who these people may be, if indeed they existed, has never been ascertained. Mistress Quickly in 2H4 uses the word to refer to a constable’s assistant; she anxiously asks the Sergeant Fang, who has supposedly come to arrest Falstaff, ‘Where’s your yeoman? Is ’t a lusty yeoman? Will ’a stand to ’t?’ (2.1.2–3). (C) The yeoman is in the third social category (after gentlemen and citizens/ burgesses) in Harrison’s hierarchy (1587). He describes yeomen as men ‘of a certain pre-eminence and more estimation than laborers and the common sort of artificers’ who ‘commonly live wealthily [and] keep good houses’ (117). Stubbes (1583) classes yeomen with nobility, gentry and magistrates as people entitled to wear ‘silkes, velvets, satens, damasks, taffeties, and such like’ (sig. C2v). Hoskins’s influential article (‘Rebuilding’, 1953) shows the increasing wealth of the yeoman class in this period. Campbell (1942) gives a social history of the yeoman farmer. Laslett (1971a) is useful on the social status of the yeoman. For more on the Lady of the Strachey, see Elam’s note (Arden edn, 2008) on TN 2.5.36–7. youth (A) Youth is a stage of life between puberty and the attaining of adult maturity, and the condition characteristic of those at this stage. In early modern England youth was an elastic concept, but it is agreed by historians that young people formed a far higher proportion of the population than nowadays. (B) The Shepherd in WT is unenthusiastic about the typical behaviour of young people: I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting – hark you now, would any but these boiled brains of nineteen and two-and-twenty hunt this weather? (3.3.58–64) The hot (and abundant) blood of youth, as opposed to the cold (and decreasing) blood of age, was a given of medical theory. King Henry IV fears for the time when his son will become king and ‘rage and hot blood are his counsellors’ (2H4 4.3.64). ‘To flaming youth let virtue be as wax’ (HAM 3.4.82), Hamlet proclaims, as he upbraids his mother for her sensuality. ‘Youth to itself rebels, though none else near’ (1.3.43), Laertes tells his sister, meaning that ‘the passions of youth are so volatile that they chafe against self-restraint even when no temptation is present’ (Thompson and Taylor, Arden edn, 2016, note). Juliet is impatient at the slowness of her elderly Nurse, and believes that ‘Had she affections and warm youthful blood, / She would be swift in motion as a ball’ (RJ 2.5.12–13). ‘Now all the youth of England are on fire’, announces the second Chorus in H5 (2.0.1). It was a commonplace that the tastes of youth are opposite to those of age: ‘Youth and age will never agree’ (Dent, Y43). The verses that begin ‘Crabbed age and youth cannot live together’ (PP 12), spoken by a young woman waiting impatiently for her 402

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lover, consist of a series of contrasts between the two stages of life, with a marked preference for the former. Youth is full of sport, age’s breath is short; Youth is nimble, age is lame; Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold; Youth is wild, and age is tame. Benedick persuades himself that his dislike of marriage is to be cast off: ‘Doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age’ (MA 2.3.230–1). The Duke, in his eloquent speech to Claudio enjoining him to ‘be absolute for death’, dismisses both youth and age as exchanging each other’s worst aspects: Thou hast nor youth nor age, But as it were an after-dinner’s sleep Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms Of palsied eld: and when thou art old and rich, Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty To make thy riches pleasant. (MM 3.1.32–8) But elsewhere youth is a golden time: the Countess in AW refers to ‘our rose of youth’ (AW 1.3.127), Caesar ‘wears the rose of youth upon him’ (AC 3.13.20), Henry V is ‘in the very May-morn of his youth’ (H5 1.2.120). But these flowery associations bring with them ideas of the shortness and fragility of youth. Laertes, moralizing to Ophelia, calls Hamlet’s favour ‘a violet in the youth of primy nature . . . sweet, not lasting’ (HAM 1.3.7–8). He warns her, rather melodramatically, of her vulnerability: The canker galls the infants of the spring Too oft before their buttons be disclosed, And in the morn and liquid dew of youth Contagious blastments are most imminent. (1.3.38–41) Youth is ‘pretty’ (AYL 3.5.114), and ‘sweet-faced’ (CE 5.1.419), but also ‘moonish’ (AYL 3.2.392), or changeable and ‘fantastic’ or fanciful (TGV 2.7.47). It is regarded as an appealing condition by Claudio in MM , who says of his sister that ‘in her youth / There is a prone and speechless dialect / Such as move men’ (1.2.172–4). In the Sonnets the poet praises his lover as one ‘most rich in youth’ (15), but is conscious of the transience of this condition: ‘Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth’ (60), and when the young man achieves middle age, the poet tells him sadly, ‘Thy youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now, / Will be a tattered weed of small worth held’ (2). ‘Youth’s a stuff will not endure’, sings Feste in his carpe diem injunction (TN 2.3.51). Despite the views of Duke of Vienna, youth can be an enviable condition for those that do not 403

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possess it. Falstaff longs to see himself as still young; when attacking the hapless travellers in the Gad’s Hill robbery, he denounces them – ‘They hate us youth’ – and absurdly follows this up with the protestation, ‘Young men must live’ (1H4 2.2.83, 88). That youth is a precious period is nowhere more poignantly expressed than in Hotspur’s dying words to Prince Hal, who has dealt him a mortal wound on the battlefield: ‘O Harry, thou hast robbed me of my youth’ (1H4 5.4.76). But youth is also a time for wild behaviour. When the Porter’s Man describes the rowdy behaviour of the crowd pressing to get a sight of the procession for Princess Elizabeth’s christening, the Porter says of one group, ‘These are the youths that thunder at a playhouse, and fight for bitten apples’ (H8 5.3.57); he probably refers to apprentices, notorious for riotous activity. Falstaff is dismissive of Justice Shallow’s claims to a wild youth (2H4 3.2.301–6). Portia, preparing to assume the gender characteristics of a young man, tells Nerissa that she will ‘speak of frays / Like a fine bragging youth’ (MV 3.5.68–9). The Duke of York urges his brother John of Gaunt to tread carefully with Richard II : ‘Deal mildly with his youth, / For young hot colts, being raged, do rage the more’ (R2 2.1.69–70). Berowne says that the vow he and his fellows have made, ‘to fast, to study and to see no woman’, is ‘flat treason ’gainst the kingly state of youth’ (LLL 4.3.288–9). Young men are sometimes allowed a measure of wildness; Bertram assumes this when, speaking of Diana, he tells the King, casually, ‘Certain it is I lik’d her, / And boarded her i’ th’ wanton way of youth’ (AW 5.3.210–11). Worcester, planning with Vernon how best to proceed with their strategy, tells him that Hotspur will be given special dispensation: ‘My nephew’s trespass may be well forgot; / It hath the excuse of youth and heat of blood’ (1H4 5.2.16–17). See also SON 96. But the young, particularly girls, are also vulnerable. Juliet ‘falling in the flaws of her own youth’ (MM 2.3.11) has become pregnant before marriage. Brabantio, fearful for his daughter’s safety, believes that there may be ‘charms / By which the property of youth and maidhood / May be abused’ (OTH 1.1.169–71) and is convinced that Othello has ‘abused her delicate youth with drugs or minerals’ (OTH 1.32.74–5). Young men need proper adult guidance, not that supplied by those such as Falstaff, ‘that villainous, abominable misleader of youth’ (1H4 2.4.450), as Prince Hal calls him. When he attains the throne, he signals his changed course of life by telling the Lord Chief Justice, ‘You shall be as a father to my youth’ (2H4 5.2.117). The rebel Jack Cade espouses alternative values when he accuses Lord Saye, ‘thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school’ (2H6 4.7.29–30). (C) There is a large secondary literature on youth in early modern England with a tendency to focus more on males. The view of Aries that youth as such did not exist as a period in life before the nineteenth century has given way to many studies describing early modern youth and adolescence from a range of viewpoints. Ben-Amos (1994) gives a history of youth in this period, especially useful on the working lives of the young and the transition to adulthood. Griffiths’s more nuanced account (1996) critiques some of Ben-Amos’s ideas, and discusses the effects of the high proportion of young people in England (36–40 per cent under 15 in the mid-sixteenth century). Ira Clark 404

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(2003) explores the passage into adulthood in a range of literary texts focusing on marriage as the transition into adulthood. Lamb (2014) has a succinct account of youth culture. Shepard (2003) discusses early modern constructions of manhood from a theoretical perspective but also uses archival material to illustrate the cultural world of young men. Sparey (2015) explores representations of puberty and adolescence in Shakespeare’s plays with an eye towards staging. MacInnes (2000, 11) discusses the medical theories of the period that inform views of the physiology of age and youth. He notes that different writers define the period of youth in different ways: ‘Thomas Elyot, for example, in The Castell of Helth, calls “adolescenscie,” the first 25 years, after which comes “juventute,” to age 40 (Elyot, 1548–9)’. Du Laurens designates infancy (age 0–13 months), adolescence (1–24) and youth (24–40) (Du Laurens, 1599, 172– 177). See also The Office of Christian Parents (1616). This anonymous author considers that ‘the flower of youth’ begins at 14 in boys, 12 in girls (73), but regards youth (like numerous other writers) as ‘the worst and most dangerous time of all’ (159). Brathwaite (1630, 2–8) develops this view at some length.

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Primary sources A.T., A Rich Storehouse or Treasury for the Diseased (1596). A. W., A Book of Cookrye (1591). Agrippa von Nettesheim, Heinrich Cornelius, The Commendation of Matrimony, trans. David Clapam (1534). Ascham, Roger, The Scholemaster, Or plaine and perfite way of teachyng children (1570). Banister, John, A Needefull, new, and necessarie treatise of Chyurgerie (1575). Barnes, Barnabe, The Devil’s Charter: A Critical Edition, ed. Jim C. Pogue (New York, 1980). Barrough, Philip, The Methode of Phisick, Conteining the Causes, Signes, and Cures of Inward Diseases (1583). Barry, Lording, Ram Alley, eds Peter Corbin and Douglas Sedge (Nottingham, 1981). Basse, William, Sword and Buckler, Or, Serving-mans Defence (1609). Batt, Barthelemy, The Christian mans Closet, trans. William Lowth (1581). Beaumont, Francis and John Fletcher, The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, ed. Fredson Bowers, 10 vols (Cambridge, 1966–96). Bentley, Thomas, The Fift Lampe of Virginitie (1582). The Boke of Common Praier (1559). A booke of cookerie, otherwise called the good huswives handmaid (1597). Boorde, Andrew, A Compendyous Regyment or a Dyetary of healthe (1547). Brathwaite, Richard, The English Gentleman (1630). —— The English Gentlewoman (1631). —— Whimzies: Or, A New Cast of Characters (1631). Bright, Timothy, A Treatise: wherein is declared the sufficiencie of English Medicines (1580). Brinsley, John, Ludus Literarius: Or, The Grammar Schoole (2nd edn, 1627). Bullein, William, A newe booke Entituled the Governement of Healthe (2nd edn, 1558). Bullinger, Heinrich, The golden boke of christen matrimonye (1543). B[ullokar], J[ohn], An English Expositor (1616). Byrne, M. St Clare, ed., The Elizabethan Home Discovered in 2 Dialogues by Claudius Hollyband and Peter Erondell (London, 1925). Caius, John, Of Englishe Dogges, the diversities, the names, and the properties, trans. Abraham Fleming (1576). Chapman, George, Plays and Poems, ed. Jonathan Hudston (London, 1998). Climsell, Richard, A pleasant new Dialogue: or, the discourse between the Serving-man and the Husband-man (?1626). Cogan, Thomas, The Haven of Health (2nd edn, 1636). Coote, Edmund, The English Schoole-maister (1596). Crooke, Helkiah, Mikrokosmographia: A Description of the Body of Man (1615). Darell, Walter, A Short discourse of the life of Servingmen (1578). Dekker, Thomas, The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, ed. Fredson Bowers, 4 vols (Cambridge, 1953–61). —— The Gulls Hornbook (1609).

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425

426

Index

A. P. Natural and Moral Questions and Answers, 1 A. W. A Book of Cookrye, 283 Acts of Common Council, 199 Acts of Parliament, 61, 112, 138 Adam and Eve, 44, 121, 143 Adelman, Janet, 165, 230, 239, 348 Agrippa von Nettesheim, Heinrich Cornelius, 23, 226 Albala, Ken, 299, 302 All’s Well That Ends Well, 5, 16, 24, 28, 48, 52–3, 57, 58, 64, 78, 96, 97, 99, 106, 108, 109, 112, 115, 122, 125, 132, 138, 139, 149, 154, 155, 162, 163, 173, 174, 177, 182, 205, 211, 213, 219, 226, 228, 236–7, 239, 259, 268, 273, 278, 281, 293–4, 295, 298, 299, 302, 318–19, 326, 332, 338–9, 345, 352, 353, 369, 372, 381, 384, 391, 394, 396, 403, 404 almanacs, 40, 67 ambassadors, 303, 363, 394 Andersen, Jenny, and Elizabeth Sauer, 42 Anderson, Linda, 319 Andrews, Michael C., 165 animal fables, 64 Antony and Cleopatra, 6, 11, 15, 17, 18, 19, 24, 28, 29, 33, 40, 47, 62, 70, 73, 80, 88, 115, 116, 118, 131, 136–7, 141, 160, 161, 174, 191, 196, 203, 215, 217, 223, 228, 233, 234, 239, 252, 257, 265, 266, 267, 275, 276, 277, 300, 301, 303, 307, 313, 318, 325, 330, 334, 339, 346, 348, 363, 365, 366, 373, 379, 380, 384, 391, 395, 396, 403 Appelbaum, Robert, 17, 31, 139, 142, 167 archery, 80, 81, 273, 274 Arden of Faversham, 197, 295, 320, 354 Aries, Philip, 74, 404 Ariosto Orlando Furioso, 43, 108 armour, 82, 275, 276, 298, 336, 373

Arnold, Janet, 120, 167, 169, 205, 274, 275, 325, 338 art works, 98, 270, 272, 279 As You Like It, 5, 6, 25, 26, 38, 39, 42, 44, 51, 52, 56, 57, 58, 61, 64, 66, 72, 75–6, 78, 82, 86, 89, 92, 93, 95, 96, 101, 104, 107, 108, 110, 115, 119, 120, 123, 126, 135, 145, 147, 160, 163, 168, 169, 176, 181, 193, 197, 204, 219, 225, 229, 233, 240, 241, 244, 247–8, 249, 253, 259, 264, 267, 302, 303, 309, 313, 326, 332, 336, 337, 338, 339, 357, 361, 369, 378, 379, 391, 395, 397, 403 Ascham, Roger The Scholemaster, 305 Ashelford, Jane, 62, 131, 302 Bacon, Sir Francis Sylva Sylvarum, 43 Bacon, Roger, 339 ballad-makers, 262, 353 ballads, 42, 83, 96, 141, 160, 230, 233, 271, 277 Banister, John Treatise of Chyrurgie, 126, 140 banns, 86, 87, 183, 219 Barish, Jonas A., and Marshall Waingrove, 319 Barnes, Barnabe The Devil’s Charter, 23 Barry, Lording Ram Alley, 75, 385 Basse, William Sword and Buckler Or, Serving-mans Defence, 320 Bate, Jonathan, 38, 156, 379 Batt, Barthelemy The Christian mans Closet, 107, 135–6, 239–40 Beaumont, Francis The Knight of the Burning Pestle, 281 Beier, A.L., 320 Belsey, Catherine, 53, 74, 130, 228 Ben-Amos, Ilana, 305, 404

427

Index

bequests, 27, 276 see also probate inventories; wills Berger, Harry, Jr, 165 Berry, Helen, and Elizabeth Foyster, 130 Bevington, David, 57, 94, 131, 336, 345 Bible, 16, 42, 45, 70, 186, 359 Ephesians, 179, 392 Genesis, 44, 143, 179 Matthew, 248 1 Peter, 179 Proverbs, 392 Psalms, 16, 129 Song of Solomon, 43 Bicks, Caroline, 156 birds, 13, 138, 154, 175, 241, 261, 287, 330 Bland, Mark A., 260 Boehrer, Bruce, 65, 119 Book of Common Prayer, 53, 140, 179, 219, 225, 227 Book of Riddles, 39, 58 booke of cookerie, A, 218 Boorde, Andrew A Compendyous Regyment or a Dyetary of healthe, 9, 17, 32, 45, 109, 111, 298, 349, 398 Boose, Lynda E., 106, 165, 187, 228, 329 Borlik, Todd A., 82 Botelho, Lynn, 7 Boulton, Jeremy, 261 Brathwaite, Richard The English Gentleman, 148, 405 The English Gentlewoman, 149 The Whimzies, 203, 256 Braun-Ronsdorf, Margarete, 164 Braunmuller, A.L., 119 Breitenberg, Mark, 96 bribes, 10, 87, 204, 267, 280, 401 Brinsley, John Ludus Literarius, 303, 305 Britland, Karen, 137 Brodsky, Vivian, 384 Brooke, Arthur The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, 327 Brooks, Cleanth, 17, 74 Brooks, Harold, 119 brothels, 8, 19, 20, 31, 57, 161, 211, 215, 219, 275, 281, 282, 346, 358, 387 Brown, Pamela Allen, 329 Bruster, Douglas, 338 428

Brut, The; or, The Chronicles of England, 59 Bullein, William A newe booke Entituled the Governement of Healthe, 241, 280 Bullokar, John An English Expositor, 362 Bulman, James C., 76, 199, 282, 298, 324, 352, 354 Burnett, Mark Thornton, 149, 281, 319, 343 Burns, Edward, 27, 119, 144 Buxton, Antony, 30, 32, 36, 69, 70, 99, 148, 175, 197, 233, 244, 260, 267, 323, 345 Byrne, M. St Clare, 58, 111, 240 Cain, 26, 52, 53 Caius, John Of Englishe Dogges, 119 Calderwood, James L., 345 Calvert, William, 82 Campbell, Mildred, 402 Candido, Joseph, 111 Canterbury, 158 Capp, Bernard, 155, 215, 228, 248, 309, 320, 329, 393 cardinal’s hat, 27, 166 Carlton, Charles, 384 Carroll, William C., 85, 119, 241, 294 Carvalho, David, 191 Caton, Kristiana E., 197, 345 cattle, 204 Cawdrey, Robert A Table Alphabeticall, 2 Cecil, Lady Diana, 165 Chambers, E.K., 30 Chapman, George Eastward Ho, 281 The Widow’s Tears, 385 Charles I, King, 10 Charlton, Kenneth, 305 chastity, 21, 72, 96, 114, 174, 196, 207, 236, 244, 271, 293, 295, 307, 336, 338, 339, 341, 392 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 140 Chedgzoy, Kate, 74 cheese, 44, 65, 111, 300, 364, 382 childbirth, 16, 72–3, 231, 239 childhood, 2, 3, 72, 73, 74, 82, 212, 304 Christensen, Ann C., 178 church, 2, 48, 75, 177, 303, 304, 390 bells, 32, 34

Index

burials, 53, 140 clocks, 76 festivities, 9, 57 windows, 83 church, the and forbidden relationships, 322 and marriage, 84, 219, 225, 228 see also Roman Catholic Church church courts, 112 churchyards, 53, 54, 140 Clark, Ira, 404–5 Clark, Peter, 9, 192, 357, 358 Clark, Sandra, 17, 36, 119, 233, 248, 279, 348, 392 Clarkson, Janet, 273 Clarkson, L.A., 204 Cock Lane, 272 Cogan, Thomas The Haven of Health, 9, 32, 45, 111, 139, 167, 230, 241, 278, 298, 349, 398, 399 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 36, 279 colic, 159, 280 College of Optometrists, 339 College of Physicians, 267–8 Comedy of Errors, The, 11, 33, 51, 57, 61, 62, 65, 66, 67, 110, 111, 112, 115, 116, 135, 139, 150, 155, 160, 172, 186, 200, 208, 260, 279, 290–1, 292, 298, 302, 318, 327, 328, 334, 335, 337, 355, 381, 387, 393, 403 Cook, Ann Jennalie, 85, 87, 106, 113, 123, 130, 187, 197, 227, 228, 251, 367, 378 cook-shops, 199 Cooper, Tarnya, 272 Coote, Edmund The English Schoole-maister, 305 Coriolanus, 11, 16, 24, 28, 36, 37, 40, 44, 58, 63, 72, 81, 98–9, 101, 106, 109, 117, 118, 133, 156, 160, 161, 163, 166, 176, 188, 200, 218, 228–9, 230, 237, 238, 247, 253, 256, 261, 269, 270, 295, 302, 317–18, 320–1, 326, 331, 341, 345, 346, 348, 351, 353, 355, 366, 386–7, 397 corpses, 6, 23, 52, 55, 90, 136, 240, 141, 160, 161, 247, 272, 293, 315, 322, 323, 363, 381 Cox, Nancy, and Karin Dannehl, 327 Craik, T.W., 36, 44, 116, 154, 171, 240 Crawford, Patricia, 53, 130, 136, 239, 253, 348, 376 Cressy, David, 16, 34, 227, 294, 305

Crooke, Helkiah Mikrokosmographia, 264 Crystal, David and Ben, 93 cuffs, 10, 295, 344 Cunnington, C. Willett and Phillis, 302, 336 Curth, Louise Hill, and Tanya M. Cassidy, 32 Cust, Richard, 55 Cymbeline, 22, 35, 39, 42–3, 52, 54, 61–2, 67, 68, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 85, 87, 94, 104, 109, 111, 112, 114, 134, 163, 191, 94, 200, 205, 206, 207–8, 216, 217, 228, 237, 239, 246, 248, 253, 259, 261, 265, 266, 268, 271–2, 275, 277, 285, 291–2, 295, 301, 315, 322, 327, 330, 331, 345, 352, 354–5, 356, 357, 358, 360, 367, 274, 381, 387–8, 396 daggers, 45–6, 47, 92, 217 dance and dancing, 9, 18, 19, 58, 69, 144, 241, 245, 275, 289, 320, 324, 325, 341, 351, 359, 389 barefoot, 179, 333, 377 Morris dancing, 33, 303, 357 dancing schools, 304 Daniell, David, 61, 79, 326, 347, 392 Darell, Walter A Short discourse of the life of Servingmen, 320 dates, 273, 278 Davies, Kathleen M., 227 Dawson, Anthony B., and Gretchen Minton, 11, 119 Dawson, Thomas The Good Husewifes Jewell, 200 Daybell, James, 263 death, 3, 6, 15, 59, 72, 79, 88, 137, 153, 174, 175, 181, 182, 208, 226, 232, 250, 252, 255, 261, 268, 269, 274, 307, 313, 327, 335, 336, 340, 346, 355, 403 and beds, 27, 29, 30 and bells, 32, 34 and dowries, 120, 121, 122, 252 of fathers, 22, 52, 95, 132, 133, 140, 158, 191, 255, 370 and funerals, 54–5, 141–2, 211 of husbands, 12, 120, 121, 197, 360 and love/marriage, 27, 29, 47, 48, 103, 163, 164, 222–3, 226, 307, 321, 377–8, 391 and mirrors, 150, 151, 234, 235 of mothers, 239, 240 429

Index

and remarriage, 267, 339 of soldiers, 316 Dekker, Thomas The Gulls Hornbook, 120, 358 News from Gravesend, 278 The Roaring Girl, 83, 246 The Seven deadlie Sinns of London, 227, 338 The Shoemaker’s Holiday, 246, 325, 326 Westward Ho, 358 The Wonderful Year, 363 Deloney, Thomas Jack of Newbury, 45, 384 Dent, R.W., 6, 34, 44, 46, 47, 57, 59, 63, 70, 76, 81, 117, 119, 125, 145, 146, 177, 192, 196, 204, 205, 273, 301, 303, 325, 337, 345, 351, 360, 375, 377, 386, 398, 402 Dessen, Alan, 208, 209 and Lesley Thomson, 30, 34, 36, 42, 244, 365 Detmer, Emily, 392 Diana (goddess), 206 Diehl, Houston, 158, 355 Diet of Worms, 109 disease, 10, 109, 161, 239, 267, 269, 282, 367 see also venereal disease divination, 149, 151 Dod, John, and Robert Cleaver A Godly Forme of Houshold Governement, 87, 107, 136, 175, 178, 187, 227, 233, 305, 320, 362, 392 Dolan, Frances, 308, 319 dolls, 8, 15, 16, 80, 216 Donne, John, 43, 352 Dover Wilson, John, 55 Dowd, Michelle, 149, 231 Drakakis, John, 153, 218, 359, 394 Dreher, Diane, 106, 228 drugs, 114, 280, 307, 404 see also poison Du Laurens, André A Discourse of the Preservation of the Sight: of Melancholike diseases; of Rheumes, and of Old age, 405 Dugan, Holly, 76, 266 Duncan-Jones, Katherine, 34, 80, 126, 336, 364 and Henry Woudhuysen, 67, 108, 154, 253, 308 Dusinberre, Juliet, 23, 44, 58, 108, 240, 247 Earle, John Microcosmographie, 53, 198 430

Edgeworth, Roger Sermons very Fruitful, 1 education, 2, 101, 135, 147, 148, 185 and see entry for school, schoolmaster Edmund Ironside, 23 Edward III, 10, 29–31, 32, 80, 144, 205, 220, 260, 379, 399 Elam, Keir, 63, 77, 112, 140, 196, 214, 270, 272, 304, 309, 344, 353, 401 Elias, Norbert, 164–5 Elizabeth I, Queen, 7, 113, 156, 165, 230, 274, 393, 394 Ellinghausen, Laurie, 148 Elliott, Vivien Brodsky, 227 Ellis, Anthony, 7 Elyot, Sir Thomas The Boke named the Governour, 305 The Castle of Health, 31, 32, 126, 230, 341, 405 emblem books, 158 Emmison, F.G., 30, 42, 61, 70, 87, 113, 323, 384 Empson, William, 119, 343 Erasmus, Desiderius Philodoxus, 119 Erickson, Amy Louise, 121, 122, 178, 197, 215, 227, 384, 392 Erondell, Peter The French Garden, 240, 344–5, 353, 398 Essex, Robert Devereux, Earl of, 38, 298 Essex, County of, 87, 113, 384 Evenden, D., 231 Evett, David, 320 Eworth, Hans, 165 excommunication, 34 Ezell, Margaret, 115, 136, 392 fashion, 26, 38, 47, 56, 60, 76, 83, 99, 120, 138, 146, 150, 156, 163, 166, 168, 199, 271, 278–9, 289, 294, 298, 305, 325, 326, 337, 338, 343, 344, 345, 353, 356, 358, 359, 363, 372, 393 fellowship, 18 fidelity, 153, 166, 235, 290, 291, 292, 307, 390 Field, Nathan Amends for Ladies, 385 Fielding, Henry, 30 Fildes, Valerie, 233 Findlay, Alison, 11, 13, 23, 43, 47, 107, 155, 158, 159, 161, 216, 218, 228, 237, 239,

Index

253, 267, 275, 294, 295, 321, 329, 336, 339, 376, 379, 381, 384, 392 Finkelstein, Richard T., 66, 67 First Part of Henry IV, The, 7, 17, 25, 29, 31, 36, 37, 44, 45, 47, 55, 56, 58, 60, 61, 63, 65, 74, 75, 76, 78, 87, 89, 93, 109, 110, 117, 118, 126, 145–6, 149, 152, 156, 159, 160, 167, 170, 173, 174, 192, 193, 197–8, 205, 206, 212, 215, 216, 232, 243, 249, 256, 259, 261, 264, 265, 267, 276, 277, 282, 295, 297, 301, 321, 323, 324, 344, 353, 354, 356, 358, 362, 364, 367, 369, 372, 373, 380, 387, 401, 403–4 First Part of Henry VI, The, 5, 6, 15, 16, 21, 22, 25, 26–7, 30, 49–50, 52, 65, 72, 78–9, 82, 86, 104, 116, 135, 137, 140, 144, 145, 151, 166, 175, 212, 214–15, 232, 234, 236, 239, 251, 263, 270, 278, 324, 327, 328, 339, 347, 348, 364, 376, 381, 391, 401 Fischer, Sandra K., 11 Fisher, Will, 26, 82, 83 Fitzpatrick, Joan, 9, 17, 19, 31, 32, 45, 57, 58, 62, 66, 97, 126, 138, 139, 167, 241, 259, 265, 273, 278, 280, 282, 283, 298, 299, 300, 302, 341 Flather, Amanda, 209 Fletcher, Anthony, 96, 113, 178, 227, 305, 329, 392 Fletcher, John The Scornful Lady, 343, 385 The Tamer Tamed, 205, 329, 357 Wit without Money, 364 Florio, John Florio His firste Fruites, 266, 344 flowers, 29, 41, 47, 63, 67, 88, 93, 101, 258, 283, 298, 322, 403 embroidered, 245, 300, 330 poisoned, 265 ‘of youth’, 405 see also roses; and see entry for garden Foakes, R.A., 29, 72, 118, 126, 138, 150, 232, 239, 309, 319, 340 Ford, John The Broken Heart, 53 ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, 53 Forker, Charles R., 10, 38, 45, 108, 145, 152, 192, 206, 381 Fortune, 56, 60, 61, 64, 139, 176, 206, 240, 270, 291, 339, 343, 345

Fortune’s wheel, 176–7 fortune-telling, 45 Foyster, Elizabeth, 96, 136, 155 Frederyk of Jennen, 43 Frenk, Joachim, 359 Frick, Carole Collier, 74, 83 Froide, Amy M., 161, 228, 320, 336, 342, 384 fruit, 18, 99, 143, 255, 298 candied, 31 dried, 278 see also medlars Frye, Roland Mushat, 228 Frye, Susan, 70, 165, 246, 301, 321, 356 Fudge, Erica, 65, 119 Garber, Marjorie, 119 Gascoigne, George Jocasta, 240 Gataker, Thomas Marriage Duties Briefly Couched Togither, 226 Giese, Loreen L., 87, 154, 187, 221, 228, 294 Gillis, John R., 294 Girouard, Mark, 69, 142, 175, 260 Gittings, Clare, 34, 55, 142, 323 Glennie, P.D., and N.J. Thrift, 327 Globe Theatre, 79 Gossett, Suzanne, 191, 246, 321, 330, 331 Gouge, William Of Domesticall Duties, 1, 2, 3, 74, 87, 130, 136, 226–7, 320, 348, 384, 392 Gowing, Laura, 96, 248, 329 Grace, Dominick, 328 Great Fire of London, 272 Greenblatt, Stephen, 228 Greene, Robert A Notable Discovery of Coosnage, 62 A Quip for an Upstart Courtier, 20, 26, 354, 372 The Repentance of Robert Greene, 123 The Second Part of Conny-Catching, 62, 363 Griffiths, Paul, 9, 175, 178, 199, 227, 281, 320, 404 Guillemeau, Jacques Childbirth; or, The Happy Deliverie of Women, 231, 233, 253, 376, 381 Hackel, Heidi Brayman, 42, 80 Hailwood, Mark, 10 431

Index

Hall, Elizabeth, 276 Hamilton, Sharon, 107 Hamlet, 5, 6, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21–2, 25, 28, 33, 34, 35, 37, 39, 40, 43–4, 47, 49, 53, 54–5, 56, 60, 61, 65–6, 67, 68, 75, 76, 79, 80, 88, 91, 95, 97, 104, 105, 109, 120, 123, 133, 135, 137, 139, 141, 142, 144, 145, 147, 148–9, 150, 158, 161, 163, 166, 174, 188, 206–7, 211, 213, 218, 219, 220, 228, 229, 232–4, 236, 238, 247, 249, 255, 257, 258, 259, 260, 264, 266, 271, 272, 277, 280, 289, 290, 299, 303, 305, 306, 308, 320, 322, 325, 326, 329–30, 332, 334, 335, 344, 346, 347, 348–9, 351, 356, 357, 360, 362, 364, 369, 373, 375, 383, 387, 394, 395, 396–7, 399, 401, 402, 403 Hamling, Tara, and Catherine Richardson, 272 Hampton Court Palace, 83, 358 hand-cuffs, 42 Handley, Sasha, 30, 36, 61, 94, 158, 323 Hannay, Patrick A Happy Husband, 178, 227, 392, 393 Hardwick Hall, 394 Harman, Thomas A Caveat or Warening for Common Cursetors, 230 harmony, 18, 175, 248 Harrington, Sir John, 108, 193 Harrison, William The Description of England, 26, 30, 32, 45, 75, 109, 111, 119, 139, 148, 192, 267, 298, 300, 320, 379, 396, 402 Hayward, Maria, 47, 120, 158 Heal, Felicity, 171, 174, 343 Henry V, 9, 22, 29, 30, 36, 42, 44, 51, 55, 57, 60, 63, 70, 72, 81, 92, 104–5, 116, 118, 119–20, 129, 137, 144, 147, 153, 154, 161, 168, 170–1, 176, 177, 188, 213, 215, 223, 234, 237, 238, 240, 244–5, 246, 251, 253, 261, 262, 279, 283, 285, 304, 316, 322, 324, 325, 331, 337, 347–8, 364, 366, 372, 373, 382, 392, 401, 402, 403 Henry VIII, 8, 9, 18, 28, 37, 46, 57, 59, 69, 70–1, 72, 81, 82, 93, 94, 98, 113, 120, 135, 139, 145, 148, 155, 166, 177, 195, 234, 253, 273, 275, 278, 279, 292–3, 323, 341, 342, 344, 348, 353, 358–9, 361, 364, 380, 381, 386, 404 432

Henry, Prince of Wales, 27, 344, 359 Hentschell, Roze, 331, 372 Henze, Richard, 66, 67 Hercules (Ercles), 63, 64, 83, 112, 232, 325, 356, 363 Heywood, Thomas Edward IV, 281 Four Prentices of London, The, 281 A Woman Killed with Kindness, 53, 62, 279, 320, 352, 393 Hilliard, Nicholas, 76 hobby-horse, 388 Hobday, Charles, 11, 81 Hodgdon, Barbara, 8, 123, 138, 169, 187, 329 Hodgson, John A, 165 Holland, Peter, 99, 229, 256, 398 Holy Communion, 44, 57, 67 Honigmann, E.A.J., 177, 283 and Susan Brock, 276 Hopkins, Lisa, 96, 187, 224, 228, 379 horse-racing, 79 horse-riding, 168 horses, 44, 249, 256, 257, 265, 317, 359 Hoskins, W.G., 402 hospitality, 19, 111, 171, 174, 176, 229, 259, 282, 301, 379, 396 and see entry for host, hostess Houlbrooke, Ralph, 53, 55, 74, 142, 148, 251, 320 hourglasses, 79, 152 Howard, Jean, 112 Howard, Maurice, 70, 396 Hunter, George K., 125 infant mortality, 15–16, 74, 239 infertility, 7, 72 infidelity, 42, 160, 164, 235, 248, 269, 307, 387, 388 Ingram, Martin, 227 Innes, Paul, 174, 207, 281 Iyengar, Sujata, 8, 109, 115, 161, 231, 253, 269, 274, 282, 332, 339, 340 Jack of Dover, His Quest of Inquirie, 344 Jacobs, Kathryn, 87, 228, 294, 384 Jacobson, Miriam, 191 James I, King, 27, 330, 344, 359 James, Mervyn, 207 Jardine, Lisa, 228 Jenkins, Harold, 139, 207, 299, 362

Index

Jephthah, 105 Jewell, Helen, 305 Jocelin, Elizabeth The Mother’s Legacie, to her unborne Childe, 240 Johnson, Samuel, 36, 37, 125, 196 Johnston, Mark, 19, 20 Jones, Ann Rosalind, 215 and Peter Stallybrass, 67, 261, 298, 320, 344, 394 Jonson, Ben The Alchemist, 154, 320 Bartholomew Fair, 45, 126, 358 The Devil is an Ass, 358 Eastward Ho, 281 Every Man Out of his Humour, 240, 358 ‘Inviting a Friend to Supper’, 299 The Magnetic Lady, 231 Volpone, 165, 320 Jowett, John, 26, 167 Judas Iscariot, 36, 44 Julius Caesar, 28, 39, 51, 55, 60, 61, 74, 77, 79, 116, 118, 120, 125–6, 137, 141, 163–4, 199, 204, 217–18, 219, 229, 234, 237–8, 243–4, 255, 260, 302, 303, 307, 316, 325, 326, 327, 347, 354, 387, 392 Kahn, Coppelia, 96, 106, 239 Karim-Cooper, Farah, 258 Kastan, David Scott, 31, 45, 56, 108, 216, 256, 264, 297, 364, 372 Kehler, Dorothea, 384 Kelly, F.M., 76, 82, 131, 156, 167 Kelly, Philippa, 152, 235 Kemp, Will, 31, 160 Kerridge, Eric, 63 Kerrigan, John, 87, 338 King, Helen, 161 King John, 8, 10–11, 16, 23, 24, 33, 34, 41, 48, 52, 62, 71, 73, 80, 88, 91, 116, 155, 158–9, 161–2, 164, 181, 215, 223, 236, 238, 239, 245–6, 247, 251, 252, 255, 258, 260, 263, 295, 307, 324, 356, 378–9, 382, 390 King Lear, 5, 6, 7, 8, 16, 19, 21, 25, 26, 29, 35, 38, 43, 46, 52, 56, 60, 64, 71, 72, 75, 81, 83, 86, 87, 93, 97, 102, 105, 106, 110, 111, 112, 116, 117–18, 121, 125, 126, 131–2, 138, 140, 145, 146, 148, 150, 152, 153, 156, 167, 170, 172, 183, 192, 193, 196, 197, 218, 220, 221, 230, 232,

236, 239, 253, 261, 265, 269, 272, 274, 275, 276, 278, 292, 299, 304, 306, 309, 311–13, 319, 322, 324, 326, 331, 332, 333, 335, 340, 344, 353, 358, 364, 367, 370, 374, 383, 391, 395, 396, 397, 401 Kinney, Arthur, 34 Knowles, Ronald, 31, 40, 59, 81 Korda, Natasha, 123, 160, 165, 175, 176, 178, 233, 261, 289, 326, 344 and Eleanor Loewe, 205 Kussmaul, Ann, 309 Kusunoki, Akiko, 228, 384 Kyd, Thomas The Spanish Tragedy, 8, 136, 365 Lamb, Edel, 281, 405 Landreth, David, 162, 252, 324 Lane, Joan, and Melvin Earles, 269 Laoutaris, Chris, 16 Larkin, William, 165 Laslett, Peter, 71, 130, 148, 189, 227, 320, 402 Lawes Resolutions of Womens Rights, The, 227, 393 Leicester, Robert Dudley, Earl of, 165 Leigh, Dorothy The Mothers Blessing, 348 Lent, 57, 138, 241, 277 Leslie, Michael, and Timothy Raylor, 189 letters, 11, 28, 67, 79, 138, 159, 182, 183, 191, 203, 214, 226, 241, 262, 271, 276, 287, 298, 306, 307, 309, 312, 330, 340, 343, 344, 345, 360, 374, 380, 391, 395 letters (of alphabet), 40, 167, 264 Lever, J.W., 20, 207, 365 Lily, William, and John Colet A Short Introduction of Grammar, 305 Linthicum, M. Channing, 47, 56, 58, 75, 76, 88, 101, 120, 131, 142, 146, 154, 156, 158, 166, 168, 169, 199, 205, 267, 278, 283, 289, 295, 301, 324, 325, 326, 331, 337, 338, 339, 344, 372, 398 Loewenstein, Joseph, 308 Longfellow, Erica, 80, 228 Love’s Labour’s Lost, 10, 21, 23, 36, 40, 45, 56, 58, 60, 61, 65, 66–7, 75, 78, 80, 81, 83, 95, 96, 101, 120, 131, 137, 138, 143, 154, 158, 159, 160, 166, 167, 168, 169, 171, 176, 191, 193, 199, 214, 216, 230, 233, 241, 246, 258, 262–3, 264, 271, 274, 275, 278, 279, 289, 303, 325, 331, 433

Index

337, 339, 345, 352, 353, 357, 366, 372, 374, 376, 381, 392, 396, 398, 399, 404 Lover’s Complaint, A, 10, 164, 256, 330–1, 336 loyalty, 21, 51, 52, 70, 116, 184, 312, 313, 316, 318, 343 Luther, Martin, 109 Luttfring, Sara D., 216 luxury, 2, 28, 63, 88, 98, 101, 107, 126, 163, 169, 204, 205, 265, 289, 325, 326, 330, 331, 353, 355, 371, 372 Macbeth, 7, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 25, 33, 41, 47, 55, 59, 65, 67, 68, 69, 73, 74, 75, 78, 79, 90, 93, 97, 113–14, 115, 119, 125, 135, 137, 148, 151, 158, 159, 160, 166, 169–70, 171, 174, 184, 188, 192, 196, 205, 208, 216, 229, 232, 239, 243, 264, 266, 268, 272, 279, 280, 301, 302, 336, 337, 345, 347, 348, 351, 353, 355, 361, 364, 370, 374, 382, 397, 398 McBride, Charlotte, 9, 32 McEachern, Claire, 20, 225, 356 Macfarlane, Alan, 53, 227 MacInnes, Ian, 7, 405 McMullan, Gordon, 37 McNeill, Fiona, 203, 215, 341, 342 magic, 38, 40, 55, 165, 331 Maguire, Laurie, 20 Maisse, André Hurualt, 394 Malcolmson, Patricia E., 203 Marcus, Leah, 228 Markham, Gervase The English Husbandman, 178, 187, 189 The English Hus-Wife, 19, 176, 178, 187, 233, 299, 348 A Health to the Gentlemanly Profession of Servingmen, 313, 320 Marlowe, Christopher Doctor Faustus, 364 Edward II, 265 Mars (god), 66, 232, 276, 351 Marston, John The Dutch Courtesan, 20 Eastward Ho, 281 Martin, Christopher, 7 Mary, Queen of Scots, 165 masculinity, 2, 23–4, 25, 26, 46, 83, 96, 111, 139, 232, 238, 239, 392 Massinger, Philip The City Madam, 281 Meads, Chris, 19, 137 434

Measure for Measure, 8, 20, 31, 42, 44, 47, 52, 84, 86–7, 89, 95, 106, 110, 122, 123, 135, 143, 149, 151, 156, 159, 162, 174, 181–2, 183, 187, 188, 199, 207, 208, 209, 214, 219, 225–6, 228, 236, 240, 241, 252, 257, 269, 274, 282, 300, 301, 304, 307, 324, 330, 335, 336, 357, 361, 365, 371, 380, 382, 383–4, 403, 404 medicine, 58, 161, 235, 267–8, 331, 332 medieval art and drama, 279 medlars, 213, 380 Meek, Richard, 272 Melchior-Bonnet, Sabine, 152, 235 Melchiori, Giorgio, 146, 300, 324, 363 Mendelson, Sara, and Patricia Crawford, 159, 239, 305, 341, 342 Ments, Steven R., 362 Merchant of Venice, The, 10, 38, 39, 59, 64, 71, 96, 98, 102, 103–4, 110, 115–16, 120, 122, 132, 135, 149, 153, 158, 162, 168, 171–2, 183, 188, 194–5, 206, 208, 209, 212, 218, 219, 221, 232, 237, 239, 247, 252, 263, 264, 271, 285, 290, 302, 307, 324, 328, 336, 340, 359, 361–2, 365, 393–4, 404 Merry Wives of Windsor, The, 6, 10, 11, 13, 17, 20–1, 26, 30, 33, 39, 44, 50, 56, 58, 67, 69, 75, 76, 78, 79, 81, 84, 85, 88, 91, 94, 95, 104, 111, 114–15, 116, 117, 131, 140, 145, 146, 147, 149, 152, 154, 161, 170, 175, 178, 199, 203, 205, 221–2, 229, 230, 240, 253, 260–1, 265, 268, 271, 278, 280, 282–3, 285, 297, 298, 300, 303, 305, 324, 332, 338, 356, 358, 360, 363, 364, 267, 370, 390, 392 Metamorphoses, 38, 237, 300 Middleton, Thomas The Changeling, 154, 320 A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, 96, 156, 241 A Mad World, My Masters, 30 The Revenger’s Tragedy, 23, 372 The Roaring Girl, 83, 246 A Trick to Catch the Old One, 87 The Widow, 385 Your Five Gallants, 67 Midsummer Night’s Dream, A, 9, 13, 20, 24, 26, 31, 34, 42, 43, 50, 54, 64, 67–8, 72, 85, 93, 98, 102, 115, 118, 119, 120, 132, 145, 154–5, 177, 193, 212–13, 221, 233, 245, 257, 262, 283, 300, 304,

Index

328, 332–3, 336, 340, 345, 349, 354, 374, 394, 395 Millais, Sir John Everett, 159 Miller, Naomi, and Naomi Yavneh, 7, 74, 83, 329, 336 Mirabella, Bella, 120, 165 misogyny, 22, 177, 239, 253, 257, 326, 328 Moncrief, Kathryn, 305 and Kathryn R. McPherson, 239 money, 5, 9, 24, 62, 66, 84, 87, 115, 120, 121, 122, 148, 152, 153, 183, 194, 206, 208, 211, 215, 256, 259, 260, 269, 275, 276, 283, 289, 291, 292, 314, 315, 316, 324, 329, 330, 343, 348, 355, 359, 362, 363, 380, 383, 390, 398 ‘to take eggs for’, 125 and see entries for angel; groat; noble; penny; purse; shilling money bags, 230 Montacute House, 68 Montaigne, Michel de, 65 Montrose, Louis, 51, 53 Morrison, Stuart, 201 Moulton, Ian Frederick, 218, 228 Much Ado About Nothing, 5, 19, 20, 22, 24, 34, 44, 54, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 71, 75, 83, 92, 98, 99, 102, 120, 121, 130, 135, 149, 152, 156, 166, 175, 180, 191, 196, 208, 213, 214, 224–5, 228, 232, 246–7, 249–50, 255, 260, 262, 263, 265, 271, 276, 289, 300, 302, 323, 328–9, 330, 334, 337, 338, 356, 359, 363, 366, 369, 376, 382–3, 387, 391, 395, 398, 403 mulberry trees, 330 Mulcaster, Richard 305 Muldrew, Craig, 362 Nashe, Thomas Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem, 394 Pierce Penniless, 300 national identity, 23, 32, 239, 253 Neely, Carol, 30, 96, 106, 165, 228, 239 Neill, Michael, 23, 30, 142, 165, 308, 309, 319, 354 Netzloff, Mark, 362 Newman, Harry, 308 Niccholes, Alexander A Discourse of Marriage and Wiving, 7, 227, 384

Nicholl, Charles, 364 Norris, Herbert, 62, 130, 131, 138, 302, 353 North, Susan, 11 nuns, 336 O’Callaghan, Michelle, 358 Office of Christian Parents, The, 74, 227, 240, 405 Olson, R., 355, 357 Order of the Garter, 145, 147 Orgel, Stephen, 130 Orlin, Lena Cowen, 2, 80, 174, 209, 294, 396 Othello, 30, 32, 33, 37, 40, 41, 43, 47, 68–9, 72, 84, 88, 93, 94, 96, 97, 101–2, 104, 107, 109, 112, 115–16, 117, 130–1, 132, 144, 149, 158, 159, 164–5, 171, 177, 185–6, 196, 201, 204, 208, 212, 215, 220, 222, 228, 229, 237, 243, 244, 246, 249, 257, 260, 265, 267, 268, 274, 276, 280, 283, 284, 295, 301, 304, 308, 316–17, 321–2, 324, 331, 336, 337, 339, 342, 346–7, 355, 364, 378, 379, 380, 389–90, 397, 404 Ouditt, Sharon, 228 Outhwaite, R.B., 227 Overbury, Sir Thomas, 344 Newe and Choise Characters, 320, 344, 354 Panek, Jennifer, 96, 384 paper, 167, 191, 208, 259, 260, 287, 321, 323, 340 Paracelsian theory, 268, 269 Parker, Greig, 98 Parker, Rosika, 246, 301, 321 Passionate Pilgrim, The, 6, 101, 116, 199, 375, 402–3 Paster, Gail Kern, 233, 253 patriarchy, 21, 23, 96, 101, 129, 130, 131, 135, 136, 155, 178, 187, 227, 228, 329, 392 Pearson, Lu Emily, 111, 178, 227, 305, 320 Pelling, Margaret, and Frances White, 231 penance, 58, 322, 323, 398, 399 penis, 83, 230, 263, 274, 283 Pennell, Sarah, 201 pericardium, 80 Pericles, 11, 44, 48, 58, 63, 70, 72–3, 79, 84, 103, 106, 139, 151, 161, 191, 206, 211, 233, 235, 245, 259, 268, 271, 282, 320, 330, 331, 340, 346, 359, 380 435

Index

Perkins, William Christian Oeconomie, 113, 130, 136, 187, 227, 348 Pettigrew, Todd H.J., 115 Philip, William A Booke of Secrets, 191 Philip Julius, Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, 248 phoenix, 341 Phoenix and the Turtle, The, 332 Picard, Liza, 127, 138, 139, 230, 398 pigs, 61, 282, 345, 346 Pitcher, John, 47, 143, 147, 231, 362, 388, 398 plague, 277, 363 plants, 22, 75, 140, 252, 256, 295, 331, 332, 340, 347 see also flowers Plat, Sir Hugh Delights for Ladies, 19 Plato, 7 poison, 15, 28, 83, 97, 114, 144, 231, 232, 255, 260, 263, 265, 269, 278, 280, 307, 325, 326, 331, 332, 344, 397 portrait miniatures, 76, 195, 270, 271 Potter, Lois, 45, 49, 115, 278 pregnancy, 17, 45, 89, 95, 183, 188, 214, 216, 225, 226, 231, 237, 282, 294, 391, 404 prices, rising, 31, 45, 162, 167, 252, 324 printing, 39, 42 probate inventories, 30, 36, 69, 70, 98, 99, 127, 158, 244, 323 promiscuity, 338 prostitutes, 19, 31, 63, 64, 66, 95, 156, 171, 182, 208, 226, 240, 257, 265, 282, 300, 321, 338, 353, 389 male, 305 Protestantism, 34, 57, 109, 138, 166 Proudfoot, Richard, and Nicola Bennett, 379 proverbs, 29, 32, 34, 46, 47, 59, 63, 67, 70, 76, 81, 117, 119, 125, 145, 146, 177, 183, 192, 193, 196, 204, 205, 214, 219, 229, 247, 265, 273, 301, 303, 325, 337, 345, 351, 354, 359–60, 375, 377, 386, 398 Puritans, 9, 117, 129, 146, 305 Purkiss, Diane, 45 Puttenham, George The Arte of English Poesie, 379 Queen Mab, 213, 231 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 76 436

Raman, Shankar, 66, 67 Ranald, Margaret Loftus, 228, 344 ransoms, 55, 147, 348 Rape of Lucrece, The, 5, 7, 64, 68, 72, 74, 81, 88, 96, 97, 107, 116, 154, 174, 187, 191, 196, 203, 205, 208, 215, 217, 234–5, 239, 244, 247, 252, 263, 269, 271, 287, 304, 331, 341, 365, 374, 379, 382, 399 red herrings, 162, 167, 252, 324 Richard II, 6, 8, 9, 10, 13, 25–6, 37, 38, 41, 52, 63, 70, 77, 82, 84, 90–1, 93, 108, 111, 113, 144, 145, 148, 152, 161, 173, 192, 206, 220, 231, 234, 238, 247, 248, 252, 253, 261, 269, 274, 275, 276, 280, 281, 292, 306, 353, 355, 358, 361, 369–70, 381, 395, 404 Richard III, 12, 15, 29, 39, 40, 50, 67, 68, 70, 72, 73, 77, 80, 92, 93, 104, 109, 116, 123, 134, 145, 146, 148, 150, 158, 163, 191, 203, 206, 214, 216, 232, 237, 238, 239, 247, 253, 257, 285, 318, 328, 331, 335–6, 340, 346, 354, 370, 383, 391 Richardson, Catherine, 158, 205, 228, 260, 352 Rivère de Carles, Nathalie, 98 Rivlin, Elizabeth, 320 Roberts, Sasha, 30, 98 Roman Catholic Church, 34, 166, 239 Roman Catholicism, 34, 48, 138, 139 Romeo and Juliet, 6, 11, 16, 17, 18, 19, 26, 29, 30, 34, 41–2, 44, 47, 51, 54, 56, 59, 64, 71, 72, 74, 78, 80, 81, 85–6, 89–90, 97–8, 103, 106, 108, 114, 116–17, 120, 123, 126, 131, 132, 136, 137, 139, 142, 154, 155, 161, 167, 173, 183–4, 191, 195, 196, 197, 200, 206, 212, 213, 215, 217, 218, 222–3, 229, 231, 232, 239, 243, 247, 255, 257, 263, 265, 273, 275, 277, 279, 283, 302, 303, 307, 323, 324, 325, 326–7, 328, 330, 332, 338, 339, 340, 346, 347, 364, 366, 374–5, 377–8, 379, 381, 394, 398, 402 Rose, Mary Beth, 16, 228, 239, 379 Rosenberg, Jessica, 362 roses, 101, 138, 152, 245, 257, 325, 327, 403 of Lancaster and York, 144, 233, 265 red-rose chain, 66, 67 rose-red, 203, 397

Index

Ross, Lawrence J., 165 Rothstein, Natalie, 331 Rowlands, Samuel, 20 Rowley, William The Changeling, 154, 320 A New Wonder, a Woman Never Vexed, 385 Rymer, Thomas, 164, 165 Sabatier, Armelle, 272 St George, 137, 147 St Michael, 10 St Paul, 392 Saint Valentine’s day, 68, 211, 395 Salmon, Marylynn, 233, 348 Sampson, William The Vow-Breaker, 43 Samson and Delilah, 356 Schalkwyk, David, 207, 309, 319, 343 Second Part of Henry IV, The, 5, 9, 20, 29, 32, 33–4, 35, 40–1, 44, 51, 52, 57, 58, 59, 60, 69, 76, 81–2, 84, 88, 89, 93, 97, 106, 109, 115, 130, 134, 135, 147, 150, 154, 158, 161, 171, 172, 187, 198, 199, 204, 205, 208, 215, 216, 229, 235–6, 240, 241, 246, 252, 255–6, 260, 261, 267, 269, 271, 273, 280, 281, 282, 285, 294–5, 297–8, 300, 301, 305, 323–4, 325, 326, 328, 336, 338, 343, 344, 348, 351, 352, 354, 356, 357, 358, 364, 374, 380, 383, 392, 397, 402, 404 Second Part of Henry VI, The, 7, 11, 15, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 39–40, 46, 50, 58–9, 65, 76, 81, 89, 93, 97, 119, 123, 131, 140, 144, 147, 188–9, 204, 206, 212, 233, 236, 247, 259, 263, 264, 265, 281, 285, 299, 303, 322, 331, 339–40, 356, 360, 363, 364, 366, 383, 404 Seconde parte of the Domesticall or housholde Sermons, 3 Semenza, Gregory M. Colon, 7 seven ages of man, 26, 72, 303, 339 sexual intercourse, 241, 294 Shannon, Laurie, 65 sheep, 64, 240, 241, 259, 265, 324, 331, 398 Jacob’s, 359 sheep-shearing, 55, 137, 259, 275, 282, 298, 340 Shepard, Alexandra, 136, 405 Shepherd, Simon, 354

shepherds, 26, 29, 55, 73, 87, 96, 104, 108, 122, 137, 146, 149, 160, 164, 204, 233, 241, 259, 351, 354, 367, 402 sherry, 297 Shinn, Abigail, 36, 246, 274 ship-boy, 93 ships, 11, 32, 44, 167, 231, 302, 340, 380 ship-tire, 363 shrouds, 321, 322, 323, 339, 340, 378 Shrove Tuesday, 57, 259, 281 Shuger, Deborah, 152, 235 Shulman, Rachel, 331, 372 Sim, Alison, 137, 382 Sir Thomas More, 24–5, 26, 31, 44, 45, 162, 167, 251–2, 281, 324 Small, Helen, 7 Smith, Bruce, 34 Smith, Henry A Preparative to Marriage, 7, 187, 227, 320 Smith, Ian, 165 Smith, Sir Thomas De Republica Anglorum, 148, 175 Snow, Edward A., 165 Socrates, 329 Sohmer, Steve, 79 Sokol, B.J. and Mary, 23, 113, 122, 197, 225, 228, 379, 383, 384, 392 soldiers, 1, 26, 147, 188, 246, 317, 336, 348, 401 recruitment, 87, 205, 235, 256, 267, 325 Sonnet 2, 206, 361, 403 Sonnet 3, 150, 188 Sonnet 4, 361 Sonnet 7, 5, 6 Sonnet 9, 361, 382 Sonnet 12, 77 Sonnet 13, 174, 188, 361 Sonnet 15, 403 Sonnet 16, 144, 215, 262, 263 Sonnet 20, 258 Sonnet 21, 59, 258 Sonnet 22, 16, 150 Sonnet 24, 271, 327, 352, 396 Sonnet 27, 195 Sonnet 34, 76 Sonnet 47, 271 Sonnet 52, 62, 373 Sonnet 53, 363–4 Sonnet 55, 338 Sonnet 57, 78, 319 437

Index

Sonnet 58, 319 Sonnet 60, 403 Sonnet 62, 150 Sonnet 64, 80 Sonnet 65, 70, 191, 196 Sonnet 66, 115 Sonnet 67, 258 Sonnet 68, 23, 393 Sonnet 71, 34 Sonnet 77, 107 Sonnet 78, 262 Sonnet 79, 262 Sonnet 83, 258, 287 Sonnet 85, 262, 287 Sonnet 94, 187, 343 Sonnet 95, 217 Sonnet 96, 404 Sonnet 100, 262 Sonnet 101, 263 Sonnet 104, 266 Sonnet 106, 262 Sonnet 111, 126 Sonnet 116, 226 Sonnet 118, 302 Sonnet 122, 352 Sonnet 126, 151 Sonnet 127, 23 Sonnet 130, 266 Sonnet 134, 16 Sonnet 138, 6 Sonnet 140, 269 Sonnet 142, 307 Sonnet 143, 177 Sonnet 146, 217 Sonnet 149, 319 Southampton, Elizabeth Vernon, Countess of, 157 Southampton, Henry Wriothesley, Earl of, 65 Sparey, Victoria, 216, 405 Spurgeon, Caroline, 119, 246 Stephens, John Essayes and Characters, 159 Stern, Tiffany, 79, 108, 152 Stewart, Alan, 80, 209 Stockwood, John A Bartholomew Fairing for Parentes, 107 Stone, Lawrence, 53, 74, 113, 130, 227, 228 Stow, John Annales, 82 street vendors, 199 438

streets, disturbances in, 281, 327 Stretton, Tim, 113 Strier, Richard, 319 Strong, Roy, 145 Stubbes, Philip The Anatomie of Abuses, 82, 87, 120, 166, 266, 402 Sturgess, Keith, 280 suicide, 29, 53, 54, 55, 125, 149, 278, 303, 346 swaddling clothes, 16, 80 Swinburne, Henry A Treatise of Spousals, 87, 113, 227 Taming of the Shrew, The, 8, 10, 16, 18, 19–20, 25, 31, 42, 46, 49, 55, 57, 59–60, 65, 69, 70, 72, 76, 84, 87, 88, 97, 98, 99, 105, 116, 118, 120, 121–2, 123, 126–7, 135, 136, 138, 144, 147–8, 156, 166, 169, 170, 173, 175, 178–9, 187, 193, 196–7, 199, 204, 213, 221, 224, 225, 239, 240, 244, 245, 246, 247, 253, 255, 257, 260, 266, 267, 271, 275, 277, 290, 295, 297, 302, 303, 304, 307–8, 310, 320, 321, 329, 333, 337, 344, 345, 349, 351, 355, 357, 362, 371, 377, 380, 383, 385, 392 Tarlton, Richard, 276, 344 Taunton, Nina, 7 Teague, Frances, 19, 365 Tempest, The, 5, 8, 17, 19, 22, 37, 38, 51, 55, 63, 71, 84, 98, 105, 110, 134, 150, 151, 167, 174, 181, 196, 204, 205, 212, 236, 277–8, 297, 298, 302, 303, 305, 309, 313–14, 319, 320, 346, 349, 354, 362, 366, 373, 378, 380, 383, 384, 391, 397 Ten Commandments, 70, 248 Tennyson, Alfred, 159 Tewkesbury, 240 Thame (Oxfordshire), 30, 69, 175, 323 Third Part of Henry VI, The, 25, 28, 34, 39, 46, 55, 59, 76, 79, 96–7, 104, 105, 108, 112–13, 116, 163, 175, 197, 204, 218, 231, 238–9, 243, 267, 306–7, 323, 345, 348, 375–6, 382, 383, 384, 401 Thomas, Keith, 64, 65, 115, 119, 144 Thomas, Vivian, 362 and Nicki Faircloth, 75, 101, 144, 189, 256 Thompson, Ann, 329 and Neil Taylor, 21, 44, 52, 61, 66, 260, 326, 362, 373, 402

Index

Thong, Tracy, 19 Tilley, M.P., 56, 76, 183, 193, 219, 247 Tilney, Edmund The Flower of Friendship, 227, 392 Timon of Athens, 7, 18, 19, 25, 44, 60, 65, 111, 116, 117, 119, 127, 134, 137, 148, 153, 160, 188, 206, 215, 216, 229, 233, 239, 246, 257, 265, 269, 270, 272, 279, 284, 300, 309, 314–15, 325, 327, 330, 331, 338, 340, 343, 357, 360, 366, 383 Tiramani, Jenny, 8, 203, 274, 277 Titus Andronicus, 6, 12, 16, 17, 19, 34, 38, 48–9, 54, 97, 105–6, 116, 130, 136, 140–1, 155, 163, 191, 230, 231, 237, 243, 249, 252, 263, 268, 270, 272–3, 293, 300, 307, 321, 346, 355, 375, 376, 380, 381, 398 Todd, Barbara, 384 toilets, 193, 345 Topsell, Edward The Historie of Foure-footed Beastes, 119, 176 Tottel’s Miscellany, 39 Toulahan, Sarah, 7 Tower of London, 65, 93, 158, 253, 293, 336 trees, 10, 66, 119, 143, 144, 168, 196, 225 see also mulberry trees; and see entry for orchard Troilus and Cressida, 8, 12, 16, 22, 31, 36–7, 47, 57, 64, 68, 70, 74, 89, 90, 92, 94, 95–6, 98, 116, 117, 126, 131, 132, 153, 160, 167, 169, 171, 186–7, 188, 193, 204, 212, 245, 250, 255, 258, 262, 264, 272, 273, 275, 278, 299–300, 301, 330, 336, 337, 338, 340, 345, 346, 357, 364, 369, 397 Troy, 35, 81, 97, 247, 271 Trubowitz, Rachael, 123, 239, 253 Tuke, Thomas A Treatise Against Painting, 259 Turner, Anne, 344 Tusser, Thomas Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, 178, 189, 362 Twelfth Night, 9, 11, 24, 29, 31, 40, 52, 55, 57, 58, 63, 67, 71, 77, 84, 85, 87, 92, 98, 99, 101, 111, 112, 117, 118, 121, 140, 142, 143, 146, 147, 149, 150, 151, 155, 156,

167, 173, 175, 177, 180–1, 187, 191, 185, 196, 214, 215, 216, 219, 228, 230, 232, 237, 241, 250, 255, 263, 270, 271, 276, 277, 284, 291, 294, 297, 304–5, 306, 308, 309–10, 319, 324, 328, 332, 334–5, 341, 342–3, 344, 353, 362–3, 371, 373, 374, 380, 392, 395, 401, 402, 403 Two Gentlemen of Verona, The, 9, 16, 39, 46, 61, 83, 85, 87, 118–19, 131, 136, 145, 147, 152, 155, 168, 187, 214, 215, 216–17, 221, 228, 233, 241, 270, 272, 282, 285, 294, 300, 303, 306, 315–16, 320, 326, 341, 351, 363, 380, 393, 394, 403 Two Noble Kinsmen, The, 7–8, 17, 18, 23–4, 42, 45, 46, 49, 56, 62, 69, 89, 93, 114, 115, 122, 130, 134, 140, 143–4, 152, 168, 175, 196, 211, 212, 225, 228, 237, 249, 263, 266, 267, 271, 278, 289, 301, 303, 330, 339, 342, 353, 357, 359, 362, 364, 276, 379, 381, 382, 395–6 universities, 146, 303, 305 vagina, 70, 95, 275, 283, 290, 295 Van Elk, Martine, 66, 67 Vaughan, Virginia Mason and Alden T., 22 Vaughan, William Naturall and Artificial Directions for Health, 126, 265 vegetables, 143, 298 venereal disease, 31, 275, 281 Venus and Adonis, 5, 8, 19, 28, 38, 66, 72, 81, 93, 118, 123, 166, 203, 205, 215, 233, 253, 266, 272, 308, 322, 338, 365, 374 very proper treatise, wherein is briefly set forth the arte of Limning, A, 264 Victoria and Albert Museum, 76, 165 Vienne-Guerrin, Nathalie, 62, 119, 258–9, 305, 345 Virgin Mary, 165, 239 Waddesdon Manor, 165 Wall, Wendy, 21, 50, 178, 201, 203, 233, 301 Wallis, Patrick, 328 Warning for Fair Women, A, 36 Wayne, Valerie, 43, 87, 352 439

Index

Webster, John The Duchess of Malfi, 87, 320, 343, 359, 385 Westward Ho, 358 The White Devil, 62, 83 Weil, Judith, 317, 318, 319 Weis, René, 30, 48, 64, 139, 206, 232, 273 Weisner, Merry E., 329 Welch, Evelyn, 266, 277 Whittle, Jane, and Elizabeth Griffiths, 175, 178 wife-beating, 389, 392 Wilkins, George The Miseries of Enforced Marriage, 87 Willes, Margaret, 256 Williams, Gordon, 11, 13, 32, 37, 70, 83, 139, 230, 246, 275, 282 willow garlands, 302, 384 wills, 42, 70, 276, 294, 384, 396 Shakespeare’s, 276 see also probate inventories Wilson, C. Anne, 19 Wilson, Christopher, and Michaela Calore, 35 Wine, Beere, and Ale, together by the eares, 32 Wing, John The Crowne Conjugall Or, The Spouse Royall, 393

440

Winter’s Tale, The, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 22, 26, 29, 36, 42, 45, 47, 51, 55, 58, 72, 73, 77, 81, 82, 83, 87, 94–5, 97, 98, 99, 101, 103, 106, 111, 112, 122, 125, 130, 134–5, 137, 138–9, 140, 143, 146–7, 149, 150–1, 152, 155, 164, 167, 170, 191, 196, 203–4, 205, 208, 217, 226, 228, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 239, 248, 252–3, 257–8, 259, 260, 261, 264, 265, 269, 271, 273, 274, 275, 277, 282, 298, 307, 322, 324, 326, 339, 340, 341, 351, 352, 360, 362, 363, 366, 367, 371, 379, 381, 387, 398, 402 witchcraft, 58, 222, 322, 345 witches, 16, 25, 73, 135, 160, 208, 230, 264, 345, 398 witches’ familiars, 63, 64, 65 Wittenberg, 91, 305 Woodbridge, Linda, 362 worms, cure for, 399 Wotton, David, and Graham Holderness, 329 Woudhuysen, H.R., 61, 78, 169, 241, 271, 274, 339, 352 Wrightson, Keith, 74, 148, 189, 227, 248 Yarington, Robert Two Lamentable Tragedies, 9 Young, Bruce W., 130, 251