29 marchpane marzipan (a luxury food item)

32 deed a) marriage; b) sexual act

35 velvet classy (‘velvet-jacket’ was slang for a mayor)

36 careful full of care

38 my new buildings i.e. Leadenhall (see 21.127-31)

42 mad Cappadocians one of Eyre’s typical jocular epithets for his men (compare ‘mad Greeks’, ‘true Trojans,’ and ‘mad Hyperboreans’ at 4.106 and 4.113). There may be a pun here on ‘madcap’, and also on ‘caperdewsie’ or ‘caperdochy’, cant-terms for ‘the stocks; prison’ (O.E.D.). all . . . together i.e. as apprentices (who customarily fetched water from the conduits for their masters)

46 pancake bell the church bell that rings on Shrove Tuesday (a festival holiday for apprentices)

49 let masters care i.e. the masters will have to put up with it

2 bloods kin, society or corporation (in its most embodied sense)

4 king of spades partly a reference to the playing card and its suggestion of high rank, but also a play on the association of spade with delve. A spade could also be a eunuch.

4-5 delve in thy close dig in your patch (with a bawdy quibble)

5 sufferance permission

7-8 stroked on her shoes helped her put on her shoes

10 and for because

18 neither Hammon nor hangman a double pun, a) on Hammon and hangman, and b) on the Biblical King Haman (in the Book of Esther) who, having built a gallows for his enemy, was hanged on it himself. See note on Hammon’s name, Dramatis Personae, p. 5.

30 Cry clubs for prentices a rallying cry for groups of apprentices in street fights

33 bird-spits knives or swords

38 look not strange don’t act as if you don’t know him

45 pack be off

47 ’Swounds by God’s wounds, a common mild expletive (used again at lines 68 and 128); see note to 6.16.

48 creature beast (more derogatory than its current sense)

55 affect love

57 humble weeds simple attire (referring to his working clothes)

59 his attire i.e. her wedding clothes, provided by Hammon

64 busk-point piece of lace on a corset, by means of which the ‘busk’ - a piece of wood or whalebone used to stiffen the corset - could be tied into position

69 Bluecoat Servants traditionally wore blue livery.

70 Saint George’s Day the day when servants traditionally sought new employment, and hence a change of livery; because St George’s cross is red, perhaps Firk is threatening here to bloody the servant’s blue coat.

71 For ‘i.e., if you value’ (Parr)

72 sheep’s eye lecherous look; proverbial (Tilley, S323)

73 clouts rags

74 no striving no point in fighting

84 commodity profit

88 pelf filthy lucre

99 mask Elizabethan women often wore masks in public.

105 Mars in Venus i.e. Mars and Venus are in conjunction - with a bawdy allusion to the two gods’ notorious love affair in classical legend.

117 I’ll . . . cure i.e. Oatley makes to remove Jane’s mask, and Lincoln knocks away Ralph’s crutch - which (as Parr notes) may provide the pretext for Firk’s next remark.