160–1 Chiroconita … calicia all poisons. Scot 6.3, listing ‘magical herbs and stones’, includes: ‘marmaritin whereby spirits might be raised: archimedon, which would make one bewray in his sleep, all the secrets in his heart: adincantida, calicia, mevais, chirocineta &c: which had all their several virtues, or rather poisons’.

162 sort arrange

164–5 needles … sheets Cf. Scot 6.7: love charms include ‘needles wherewith dead bodies are sown or socked into their sheets (shrouds)’.

166 privy gristle i.e. penis

170–1 Cf. Macbeth I.iii.24—5. Witches’ powers were supposed to be weaker than Christianity, faith in which protected people.

171 jars discords

173 our master the devil

174 that patient miracle Job, whose suffering was a test of faith and of love of God the work the marriage

181 Cf. 11. 127–8.

183 bravest most expensively dressed, most splendid

185 pipkin a small earthenware pot used chiefly in cookery

186 tumbling-cast somersault

187–8 clothes … ears Women did not wear underclothes. Firestone’s ‘I pray be covered!’ (1. 191), referring normally to the putting on of a hat, here refers to covering up Puckle’s pubic hair.

189 Hoyday form of heyday, an exclamation of surprise

190–1 to … enough to save her from disgrace even though there was little reputation left to save and/or the cat was not big enough to cover her private parts

194 flat prostrate on the ground but also absolute, downright tumblers

197 incubus actually succubus. See note to 1. 31 above.

198 Goody short for ‘goodwife’, a civil term usually applied to a married woman of the poorest class

202 a proverbial response to a good guess about another’s intentions (see Tilley W 585)

206–10 Cf. Scot 6.7: ‘The toys, which are said to procure love, and are exhibited in their poison loving cups, are these: the hair growing in the nethermost part of a wolf’s tail, a wolf’s yard, a little fish called remora, the brain of a cat, of a newt, or of a lizard: the bone of a green frog, the flesh thereof being consumed with pismires or ants; the left bone whereof engendereth (as they say) love; the bone on the right side, hate’.

206 remora eel-like, sucking fish, believed to be able to halt a ship by sucking at it

207 suck-stone as Hecate says, another name for the remora

208 sea-lamprey ed. (Stalamprey MS)

must’t be ed. (must’be MS)

210 Pismires ants

214 Cf. Women Beware Women III.i.267–8.

216 marchpane marzipan

217 fitted suited, pleased

218 paddock-brood brood of toads

219 handkercher handkerchief

220 berayed dirtied, stained

sucket See I.i.67.

228 s.d. She conjures This offers the best possibilities for spectacle, as suggested by the opening MS s.d. (see note to O.s.d. above).

229 ordinary the kind of tavern providing fixed-price meals. ‘The Cat and Fiddle’ is still a pub name today.

234 fatter ‘Laugh and be fat’ is a proverbial expression; see R. W. Dent, Proverbial Language in English Drama Exclusive of Shakespeare 1495–1616 (1984), L 91.

Act II, Scene i

8 flout scoff at, mock

13 pearl Antonio hopes to cure his impotence by eating rich broth containing dissolved pearl. Gold was also used in such concoctions (see 1. 16).

cullis broth