9 SIR ROGER OATLEY In Q1 and subsequent seventeenth-century editions, the name is spelled ‘Otley’; Stow renders it as ‘Oteley’ in Survey of London, in which Dekker found the name. I follow the practice of recent editors (including Steane, Small-wood and Wells, and Parr) in emending to Oatley. The name was probably pronounced with a long ‘O’, as indicated by a punning reference to the character as ‘Sir Roger Oatmeal’ at 13.29.

12 HAMMON The name is close to the Biblical Haman, the tyrant in the Book of Esther who is hanged in the very gallows he had built for his enemy. See note to 18.18.

20 FIRK Firk’s name, with its bawdy suggestiveness, prompts numerous quibbles throughout the play; but it could also mean ‘frisk’, ‘cheat’, or ‘rob’.

THE PROLOGUE

Spoken before the performance at Richmond Palace on New Year’s Day, 1600.

4 goddess the Queen

5 vassals punning on ‘vessels’; the sailing metaphor is extended throughout the speech.

6 bottom depth; also the hull of a ship

8 strike lower (the actors probably knelt before the Queen while the Prologue was spoken)

9-10 stanza division ed. (undivided Q1)

10 hap fortune

15 mirror exemplar

Such songs were supposed to be common in shoemakers’ workshops; Deloney claims that the journeyman shoemaker ought to know how to ‘bear his part in a three mans Song’. No music for either three-man’s song has survived. The quarto editions of the play do not specify where the songs appear in the action, but we might surmise that they are sung by the shoemakers at certain climactic points. The editorial consensus is to place this first song in scene 11, in conjunction with the morris dance at line 46; another possibility is at line 71, after Eyre has enjoined the shoemakers to merriment and they ‘all go dancing out’.

2 frolic joyous

4 summer’s queen The queen of the midsummer festival or May games

8 breast against a briar the nightingale proverbially sang because of the pain caused by a thorn in her side.

11 do not like the cuckoo The cuckoo was traditionally associated with the cuckold.

12 toy dally

This song’s chorus of ‘Down-a-down’ is repeated at the beginning of scene 13, which suggests that it is sung then; however, the direction that it be ‘sung at the latter end’ might be taken literally, so that the song concludes the play.

2 Saint Hugh the patron saint of the shoemakers

speed ‘that which promotes success or prosperity’ (O.E.D., sb. 4b)

5 Troll pass around

12 Ring compass, gentle joy let joy reach its fullest range

1 sundry several

5 my cousin Lacy my kinsman (i.e. nephew) Lacy; see ‘coz’ at line 27.

6 much affected passionately attracted

8 in the chase in hunting (him)

15 doubt mistrust

16 advise you be careful

17 verier unthrift bigger spender

21 bills of exchange promissory notes

25 Scant hardly

27 embezzled squandered

29 Wittenberg German university town, fifty miles from Berlin (though Dekker may have believed it to be in Holland), famous for its connections in history with Martin Luther and in drama with Hamlet. It was not reputed as a shoemaking center. See Introduction, pp. xii-xiii.