119-20 Damask Rose a kind of rose, supposed to have been brought from Damascus (O.E.D., 2)

123 powers troops; see 1.53

133 pate head

140-1 no base . . . mean a musical pun on base (vulgar) and mean (of low birth); Firk says he is not singing the bass but the middle (mean) part of a three-man song.

144 laced mutton slang for a prostitute (Tilley, M1338); used here with a pun on Lacy’s name

146 journeyman villain possibly a punning reference to an itinerant worker (i.e. a ‘villein’ who journeys), liable to prosecution for vagrancy

158 his Grace the King

166 lammed them with flouts thrashed them with my taunts. Q1 reads ‘lamb’de’, which is an obsolete form of ‘lam’ (O.E.D. ‘lamb’, v.). There may thus be a double pun here: Firk’s taunts would have made his adversaries a) lame, like Ralph, and b) lamb-like or sheepish.

167 codpiece point lace holding together the front of the breeches

169 answered settled

171 swagger strut our stuff; an expression in vogue in the 1590s, applied to ‘roaring boys’, i.e. young boisterous merry-makers who made a din on London’s streets. Shakespeare’s most self-conscious ‘swaggerer’ is Pistol in Henry the Fourth Part Two.

172 Madge ‘clearly a servant rather than Eyre’s wife’ (Parr), as is the ‘simpering Susan’ referred to by Firk.

177 pancake bell see note to 17.46.

179 Keep in lock up

190 pasties (Q3; pastimes Q1) piping hot like sergeants ‘i.e., puffing in energetic pursuit of duty’ (Smallwood and Wells)

191 brewis broth; see note to 4.2. dry-fats barrels or vats (containing dry goods)

193 collops bacon; the day before Shrove Tuesday was called Collop Monday. scuttles plates

200 incomprehensible Parr glosses as ‘incredible’; but inasmuch as the term qualifies fellowship, with its implications of craft-guild brotherhood, incomprehensible may retain here a vestigial connotation of the ‘mystery’ or skill of the guild. See Introduction, p. xvii.

202-3 year of jubilee annual craft-guild holiday

6 state official position

7 provident prudent

10 with child pregnant; in suspense (Tilley, C317) huffcap a term used of strong liquor and beer; also applied to loud and boisterous swaggerers (O.E.D. B2; see note to 18.171). Hall decried the ‘huf-cap termes and thundering threats’ that characterized the stage-Tamburlaine (14-15); given Eyre’s over-the-top theatricality, the King’s characterization of him here seems particularly apt.

11 all my doubt is I fear that

15 wonted customary

3 brethren i.e. fellow shoemakers

4 livery i.e. members

5 trencher plate, i.e. table

9-10 innocent lamb-skins purses

10 Rip Get cracking!

14 Avoid Hurry up

15 Carouse me fathom healths An invitation to drink deep; compare Mercutio’s remark that the soldier may dream ‘of healths five fathom deep’ (Romeo and Juliet, 1.4.84).

16 tickle it live it up, drink with gusto (see 11.69 and 13.6)

18 meat food

20-1 kitchen-stuff dripping (see note to 7.44)

22 beleaguer the shambles besiege the meat market (the prime location for which was Eastcheap)

23 chargers capacious serving dishes

28 eat nothing Some editions insert the second three-man’s song here.