111 Clapperdudgeon beggar, so named for the clap-dish with which a beggar attracted attention. Eyre presumably refers here to the unwelcome sound of Margery’s voice.

112 soused conger pickled eel

113 Hyperboreans mythical inhabitants of the extreme north. A typical example of Eyre’s jocular nicknames for his workers; see ‘mad Greeks’ and ‘true Trojans’ at line

106 above.

118 elder more senior

1 brake thicket

game quarry

6 soil ed. (Q2 soile; saile Q1) refuge

7 embossed foaming at the mouth from exhaustion 12 pale fence

15 godamercy thank you

1 forester officer having charge of a forest; also hunter

2 Upon some upon my soul; Sybil’s catchphrase, used again at line 15

4 wot know

5 whip! quick! (exclamation of haste) 9 anon shortly

11 have a saying to you rebuke you

12 gross stupid

13 does i.e. Rose and Sybil

15 When, can you tell a phrase of defiance (Tilley, T88)

16 ’Wounds God’s wounds (an oath; see ‘’Nails’ at 4.69) 21 horns of the deer, but also of the cuckold

23 like likely

24 places of resort inhabited places 27 honey-sops bread soaked in honey

30 deer more dear (deere, more deere Q1) clichéd puns that relate courtship to hunting; evident throughout the next few lines of conventional rhyming stichomythia, especially the quibbles on ‘hart’/’heart’ at lines 37-42.

35 Impale put a fence around me (but with a bawdy pun on penetration)

37 hart . . . hart (Q1)

38 heart . . . heart ed. (hart. . . hart Q1; Hart. . . heart Q3)

39 hart (heart Q1)

41 heart (Q3; hart Q1)

42 hart (Q1; heart Q3)

43 luck had horns i.e. if my luck was horned like a hart; but Hammon opens himself up to Rose’s cuckold jest in the next line. Possibly a punning reference also to St Luke, whose emblem was the horned ox.

46 pitikins pity (diminutive)

50 sith since

53 cover the board lay the table

57 s.d. (after 56, Q1)

1-5 Ick . . . Hans? ‘I’ll tell you what, Hans: this ship that comes from Candy [i.e. Crete] is all full, by God’s sacrament, of sugar, civet, almonds, cambric, and all things, a thousand thousand things. Take it, Hans, take it for your master. There are the bills of lading. Your master Simon Eyre shall have a good bargain. What do you say, Hans?’

2 civet animal extract used to make perfume

6 Wat . . . slopen? Firk’s attempt at nonce-Dutch.

7-9 Mine . . . Hodge ‘My dear brother Firk, bring Master Eyre to the sign of the Swan. There you shall find this skipper and me. What do you say, brother Firk? Do it, Hodge’

7 tot ed. (lot Q1)

11 worth the lading of with a cargo worth

11-12 two or three hundred thousand pounds an improbably large sum of money, even by today’s standards. Deloney says that only three thousand pounds are necessary to secure the cargo; Smallwood and Wells suspect that Dekker may have originally written ‘two or three hundred’ and substituted ‘thousand’ for ‘hundred’, but that the printer reproduced both.