Gammer Gurton's Needle - Faculty & Staff Web Pages

Bailey: God bless you, Gammer Gurton.
Gammer: God yield 1 you, master mine.
[Gammer Gurton enters from her house]
Bailey: Thou hast a knave within thy house, Hodge, a servant of thine.
They tell me that busy knave is such a filching one
That hen, pig, goose, or capon – thy neighbor can have none.
Gammer: By God 'Cham much amazed to hear any such report!
Hodge was not wont, Ich trow, to 'have him in that sort! 2
Chat: A thievisher knave is not alive, more filching or more false!
Many a truer man than he has hanged up by the halse! 3
And thou, his dame, of all his theft thou art the sole receiver!
For Hodge to catch and thou to keep – I never knew none better. 4
Gammer: Sir, reverence of your masterdom, and you were out of doors,
'Chould be so bold, for all her brags, to call her arrant whore! 5
And Ich knew Hodge so bad as thou, Ich wish me endless sorrow,
And 'Chould hot take the pains to hang him up before tomorrow. 6
Chat: What have I stolen from thee or thine, thou ill-favored old trot? 7
Gammer: A great deal more, by God's blessed, than 'Chever by thee got! 8
That thou knowest well, I need not say it –
Bailey: Stop there, I say!
And tell me, I pray you, this matter by the way:
How chance Hodge is not here? Him would I fain have had.
Gammer: Alas, sir, he will be here anon; ha' been handled too bad!
Chat: Master Bailey, sir, you be not such a fool, well I know,
But you perceive by this lingering there is a pad in the straw! 9
Gammer: 'Chi'll show you his face, I warrant thee – lo, where he is now!
1 Yield: reward
2 Hodge was . . . sort: Hodge has never been accustomed to behaving that way.
Gammer Gurton's Needle 50
3
Halse: neck
4
That is, "And you, his mistress, receive all the goods Hodge steals – I never knew a worse thief than Hodge or a worse
receiver of stolen goods than you."
5
That is, "Sir, out of respect for your presence, if you weren't around, because of all Dame Chat's lies I would call her an
obvious whore!"
6 That is, "If I knew that Hodge was as bad as you are, I swear I would take the trouble to hang him myself."
7 Ill-favored old trot: ugly old hag
8 That is, "A good deal more, by God's saints, than I ever took from you!"
9 Pad in the straw: toad hiding in the straw — "there's something fishy here."