THE BOOK WAS DRENCHED - OUDL Home

34 Plays
102. done me right. E.M.O. v. iv. 79.
103 (margin). Shee falls vpon him. Beaumont and Fletcher, The
Scornful Lady, iv. i (1616, Hi), a reference to the scolding waitingwoman
Abigail: 'Tye your she Otter vp, good Lady Folly, she stmkes
worse then a beare-bayting.'
123. Mrs. Mary Ambree. Also alluded to T. of T. i. iv. 22. She is
unhistorical, the heroine of a ballad in Percy's Reliques, quoted in F.I.
393-7. The reference there is to the effort made in 1584 to recapture
Ghent with the aid of English volunteers after Parma's successes in the
Netherlands. With the text compare Marston, Antonio and Melhda, 1.1
(1602, 64), where Mellida addresses Rosaline, who has been using
military metaphor, 'Oh Mary Ambree, good, thy mdgement wench';
and Fletcher, The Scornful Lady, v. iv (Folio, 1679, p. 81), 'my large
Gentlewoman, My Mary Ambre'.
124. Stentors. Stentor was a herald of the Greeks at Troy; his 'iron
voice' was as loud as the shout of fifty men (Iliad, v. 785-6). S. of N.
v. vi. 49.
an ill May-day, so named from the London riots on May-day 1517
when the prentices attacked privileged foreigners from motives of trade
jealousy.
126. the Gaily-foist, the state-barge in which the Lord Mayor went to
Westminster to be sworn in on Lord Mayor's day. Cf. Dekker and
Wilkins, lests to make you Mene, 1607, The 36. lest, p. ii: 'A country
Gentleman commmg downe Westward by water to London, vpon the
day when my Lord Maiors Galley Foist was in all her holliday attire,
and seeing such triumphing on the Theames, but not knowing the cause,
demanded of his Watermen, why there was such drumming, and piping,
and trumpetting, and wherefore all those Barges (like so many Waterpageants)
were caryed vp and downe so gaylie with Flags and Streamers ?
It was told him, the Lord Mayor went that day to be sworne, to Westminster,'
140. Is't not on. The bumps his wife has made on his head (cf. Albius'
fate, Poet. n. i. 36-7).
143. Ratchffe in Stepney parish. Then an important place of resort
owing to the highway of the river (Alch. iv. vii. 125, v. iv. 76). Ratchffe
Highway has been renamed St. George Street.
iv. iii. 13. In sadnesse, seriously.
14. I'll call you Morose. So D. is A. iv. ii. 21-2. It was the etiquette
among ladies. The Countess of Bedford, Jonson's patron, addressed
Lady Cornwallis in fifteen extant letters as 'Dear Cornwallis' (The
Private Correspondence of Jane Lady Cornwallis, 1613—1644, 1842).
24-5. to Bed'lem . . . to the Exchange. Cf. Alch. iv. iv. 47-8, Dame
Pliant is to have her coach
To hurry her through London, to 'Exchange,
Bet'lem, the China-houses.
Bedlam continued to be a promenade up to 1770, deriving a revenue