Thomas Heywood by Thomas Heywood - HTML preview

A WOMAN KILLED WITH KINDNESS FOOTNOTES.

[1] “The Shaking of the Sheets” a popular tune to which many ballads ware set. Here a double entente is intended.

[2] “In a good time that man both wins and woos, That takes his wife down in her wedding shoes.” a proverbial saying.

[3] frets the points at which a string is to be stopped in a lute or guitar.—Halliwell.

[4] hoigh out of all bounds.

[5] angels gold coins.

[6] be stirring early with the lark to-morrow did Heywood remember Shakespeare’s “Stir with the lark to-morrow, gentle Norfolk”?

[7] crash a merry bout.

[8] “Rogero”, “The Beginning of the World”, “John come kiss me now.”... the tunes here mentioned are all more or less familiar from other passages in the old dramatists.

[9] sowse we have here a number of not very intelligible terms borrowed from falconry. “At the sowse” was said of a bird when the hawk swooped straight down upon it.

[10] gets booty.

[11] jesses the short leather straps round the hawk’s legs.

[12] querre perhaps from the German quer=oblique.

[13] merlin a small species of hawk.

[14] attach arrest.

[15] seen versed.

[16] censured on to censure, in legal language, means to pass judgment on.

[17] enter over the stage they evidently pass through the gallery above and leave the stage to

Wendoll.

[18] to bring him on his way i.e. to accompany him.

[19] beholding beholden.

[20] miching sneaking or stealing into.

[21] bed-roll i.e. bead roll.

[22] from the grate alluding obviously to the debtors’ prisons; the lines remind us at once of Pickwick.

[23] wooden knife with which the scraps were swept into the voider or basket.

[24] carpet i.e. table-cover.

[25] play the good husband i.e. be frugal.

[26] before your beard i.e. before you had a beard.

[27] make-bate promoter of quarrels.

[28] a pair of cards i.e. pack of cards.

[29] well said i.e. well done.

[30] noddy said to have been something like cribbage; of the other games mentioned accounts are easily accessible, while it would be superfluous to comment on the various quibbles.

[31] quean in the now obsolete sense of a whore.

[32] cross piece of money.

[33] remember i.e. remind.

[34] leese or lese, i.e. lose.

[35] expectation “execution” in the early eds.

[36] disease inconvenience.

[37] two flight-shot i.e. two bow-shots.

[38] cast beyond the moon a proverbial expression for anything extravagant or out of reach.

[39] patience perforce “patience perforce,” a phrase when some evil must be endured.—Halliwell.

[40] like the angel’s hand, Hast stayed me from a bloody sacrifice alluding to Gen. xxii. 10, 11.

[41] uncivil kern “kern” signified in general any uncivilised person: used especially of the Irish.

[42] one denier a penny.

[43] resolve satisfy.

[44] rebato a species of ruff for the neck: the wire would be used to stiffen it.

[45] manors a quibble on “manners” and “manors.”

[46] During this and some following speeches Wendoll evidently remains unseen.

[47] kept this coil i.e. made this trouble.

[48] gotten those perfect tongues i.e. acquired those tongues perfectly (French, German and Italian).

[49] atoned reconciled.

[50] once more meaning probably ‘Kiss me once more.’

[51] filled ‘filled’ is equivalent perhaps to ‘filled in,’ i.e. on the tomb.