42 s.d. Exeunt (Exit Q1)

7 head authority, support

14-15 he . . . France whoever advised him not to go to France has done so, i.e. wronged his honour

28 your Rose be free, my (Q3; my Rose be free, your Q1)

29 lives ed. (dies Q1; lies Q2)

34 scud scuttle off

41 butter-box derogatory slang for Dutchman (see note to 4.50)

44 honnikin contemptuous term for a Dutchman, perhaps meaning ‘little Hans’

50 lubber lout

51 That’s brave! That’s just grand! (meant sarcastically)

56-8 hoping . . . Firk Firk parodies here the formal conclusion to a letter.

61 vouchsafed guaranteed. ‘Firk means that Lincoln’s more polite mode of address has mollified him; but he also implies that, having turned back, those standing before (in front of) him are knaves’ (Parr).

66 bob them (Q2; bob then Q1) fool them. A ‘bobber’ was a slang term for a cheat (Steane).

69-70 maw to this gear appetite for this bit of stuff. Firk, playing for time, is pretending that Lincoln and Oatley want to marry him off to Sybil.

70 red petticoat a scarlet lady (petticoat being a common term for ‘woman’); but also resplendent attire. See 17.16-17, when Eyre refers to his own ‘red petticoat,’ i.e. the livery of the Lord Mayor.

73 the tune of Rogero an Italian ballad (Aria di Ruggiero) popular in England; also a pun on Hodge’s first name, Roger.

78-9 ‘Can you dance the shaking of the sheets?’ The first line of a ballad called ‘The Daunce & Song of Death’, much employed by Elizabethan writers in bawdy jokes .

80 gull these diggers fool these people trying to dig up secrets

83 Canst thou Do you know in sadness seriously

86 of on

88 feeling having my palm greased, i.e. bribed (slang)

89 aurium tenus . . . genuum tenus ‘up to the ears . . . up to the knees’, with the sense that he will go the whole way if given ten gold pieces, but will do very little if given just ten silver pieces. Firk makes tenus mean ten, aurium mean aurum or gold, and genuum mean argentum or silver.

90 stretchers shoe-stretchers; but also stretches of the truth, i.e. lies (O.E.D. I.2)

93 No point Absolutely not

94 corporation craft-guild

95 firked and yerked thoroughly worked over

100 Pitchers have ears proverbial (Tilley, P363)

100-101 Hans Prans Firk’s rhyming slang for Hans.

102 gear business

102-3 by this rush Firk deliberately swears by something of negligible value: rushes were used to cover floors.

103 firkin a small keg

105 Paul’s Steeple For the play’s Elizabethan audience, Firk’s remark would have had an ironic dimension: the wooden spire on top of St Paul’s tower had burned down in 1561 and never been replaced - so it was hardly ‘higher’ than anything.

105-6 London Stone a large stone, now encased in St Swithin’s Church, that once marked the convergence of old Roman roads in Candlewick Street

106 Pissing Conduit Conduits were public cisterns from which many Londoners drew their drinking water; the Pissing Conduit, near the Royal Exchange and the present site of Mansion House, was probably so named either because it leaked or had a thin stream of water.