35 all flesh is grass proverbial (Tilley, F359); once again, inappropriate in context.

36 hair hairpiece, wig

37 Gracious Street Gracechurch Street, also known as ‘Grass Street’; Hodge probably pronounces it ‘Grass-ious’, punning on Margery’s reference to grass in the previous line.

42 fan . . . mask essential accessories for fashionable women

43 wicked ugly

44 world’s calling the vocation of worldliness - an oxymoron, inasmuch as ‘calling’ was usually associated with spiritual vocation.

48 Ick . . . so ‘I am happy; let’s see you so’

49 drink smoke; the standard verb for consuming tobacco, used repeatedly in Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl, a number of whose scenes are set outside a tobacconist’s shop.

51 idle, slavering baubles useless playthings (with a phallic pun implied by ‘felt’)

52 s.d. lame Ralph’s disability is not explicitly identified; but he is often played as having lost a leg, as in the 1981 National Theatre production.

55 tall brave

56 broder brother

61 impotent infirm; but Margery’s subsequent remarks also encourage a more modern understanding of ‘impotent’, as she refers later in her speech to infirmities from France - i.e. the French disease or syphilis, which often rotted the sexual organs.

62 sunburnt stricken; but again there is a hint of venereal disease, as ‘burned’ was common slang for syphilitic infection.

74 Hast thou not hands (i.e. hands to make shoes with)

77 stately proud, superior; in the manner of a gentlewoman

82 ka me, ka thee proverbial expression (Tilley, K1), along the lines of ‘scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’.

87 opened her case discussed her situation (with an unwitting bawdy innuendo)

89 to his power to the best of his ability (again with an unwitting innuendo)

90 Yaw, ick sal, vro ‘Yes, I shall, mistress’ ick ed. (it Q1)

94 pull up pluck up

96 brave smartly dressed

100 worshipful beneficent

103 I’ll trust to God, my good friends, and to my hands (Q3; I’le to God, my good friends, and to these my hands Q1)

105 smug smarten

106 condemned Firk probably means ‘confirmed’.

107 cry of the country popular acclaim

109 voices votes

110 fists about his ears hands raised in acclaim presently immediately

112 grieve ‘a governor of a province or town’ (O.E.D. sb. 1); sheriff

113 Shrieve Sheriff

114 Yaw . . . shrieve ‘Yes, my master is the great man, the sheriff’

120-1 I smell the Rose probably a pun; some Elizabethan coins were stamped with an image of the Queen wearing a rose behind her ear, but the money might also put Firk in mind of a tavern called the Rose.

122 pulingly whiningly; but here it may also suggest affectedly, in a la-di-da manner.

125 with a full mouth affectedly; for a lady, the surname ‘Hodge’ is a more appropriate mode of addressing an underling than the informal ‘Roger’ she has previously used (see line 117).

127 See . . . meester ‘See, my dear brother, here comes my master’

132 this flap i.e. the French hood; see note to line 31.