
**NEW MERMAIDS**

General Editors:  
William C. Carroll, Boston University  
Brian Gibbons, University of Münster  
Tiffany Stern, University College, University of Oxford

Reconstruction of an Elizabethan Theatre  
by C. Walter Hodges
**NEW MERMAIDS**

The Alchemist

All for Love

Arden of Faversham

Arms and the Man

Bartholmew Fair

The Beaux' Stratagem

The Beggar's Opera

The Changeling

A Chaste Maid in Cheapside

The Country Wife

The Critic

Doctor Faustus

The Duchess of Malfi

The Dutch Courtesan

Eastward Ho!

Edward the Second

Elizabethan and Jacobean Tragedies

Epicoene or The Silent Woman

Every Man In His Humour

Gammer Gurton's Needle

An Ideal Husband

The Importance of Being Earnest

The Jew of Malta

The Knight of the Burning Pestle

Lady Windermere's Fan

London Assurance

Love for Love

Major Barbara

The Malcontent

The Man of Mode

Marriage A-La-Mode

A New Way to Pay Old Debts

The Old Wife's Tale

The Playboy of the Western World

The Provoked Wife

Pygmalion

The Recruiting Officer

The Relapse

The Revenger's Tragedy

The Rivals

The Roaring Girl

The Rover

Saint Joan

The School for Scandal

She Stoops to Conquer

The Shoemaker's Holiday

The Spanish Tragedy

Tamburlaine

The Tamer Tamed

Three Late Medieval Morality Plays

Mankind

Everyman

Mundus et Infans

'Tis Pity She's a Whore

The Tragedy of Mariam

Volpone

The Way of the World

The White Devil

The Witch

The Witch of Edmonton

A Woman Killed with Kindness

A Woman of No Importance

Women Beware Women
**NEW MERMAIDS**

**THOMAS MIDDLETON &  
WILLIAM ROWLEY**

# **THE  
CHANGELING**

edited by Michael Neill

Professor of English  
University of Auckland

* * *

## **CONTENTS**

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

About the play

Authorship

Date and Sources

The Play

Dramatic Coherence and the Double Plot

'Changed so soon': Magic and Metamorphosis

'Conspicuous to outward view': The Castellated Body and the Secret Self

Masters and Servants

Performance History

A Note on the Text

FURTHER READING

ABBREVIATIONS

KEY

THE CHANGELING

Dramatis Personae

The Text

Epilogue

APPENDIX: THE TEXT

(i) The 1653 Quarto

(ii) Lineation

## **ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS**

My principal debts are necessarily to those whose generosity has given me the time to complete this project: to the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, and to the Folger Shakespeare Library for the award of visiting fellowships; to the University of Auckland for research funding and a period of sabbatical leave. It goes without saying that in the course of preparing this edition I have frequently relied on the scholarship and insight of others – not least the previous Mermaid editors, Joost Daalder and his predecessor Patricia Thomson. I am particularly grateful to Douglas Bruster, editor of _The Changeling_ for the forthcoming _Oxford Middleton_ , and to its general editor, Gary Taylor, who allowed me access to their unpublished work; to my colleague, Mac Jackson, whose knowledge of the Middleton canon is unrivalled; to my general editor, Brian Gibbons for his wise and good-humoured supervision of the project; and to the editorial staff at A & C Black, especially Jenny Ridout and Katie Taylor, for their patience and expertise. The librarians of Trinity College, Cambridge, the Cambridge University Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the London Theatre Museum, and the Auckland University Library, have been unfailingly helpful. For their many personal and professional kindnesses I owe more than I can easily express to Anne Barton and Adrian Poole at Trinity, to Gail Paster, Barbara Mowat, Betsy Walsh, and Carol Brobeck at the Folger, and to my colleagues in Auckland, especially Terry Sturm, Albert Wendt, Peter Simpson, and Andrew Sharp. Without the help of the people and institutions I have named this edition would never have seen the light of day; but its remaining errors and imperfections belong, I fear, to me alone.

Finally, of course, I must thank my wife, Kubé Jones-Neill, for her constant love and support. This edition is dedicated to her.

Auckland, 2006 | M.N.

---|---

## **INTRODUCTION**

### **About the Play**

'The next good mood I find my father in, / I'll get him quite discarded' – with these chillingly offhand words, Beatrice-Joanna, the spoilt daughter of a powerful nobleman, plans to destroy the livelihood of Deflores, the family servant who has crossed her once too often (II.i.92–3). In the following scene, she will plot the murder of an inconvenient fiancé with equal _sang froid_. Locked in the absolute self-centredness of late adolescence, fortified by the vanities of high-rank and youthful beauty, and utterly confident of the indulgence of a doting father, Beatrice simply has no inkling of the reality of other human beings, discarding them at need like so much trash. In their beguilingly deceptive simplicity, her lines are representative of the technical mastery that makes _The Changeling_ one of the most compelling tragedies in English. Thomas Middleton, who wrote the scene in which they appear, had a wonderful ear for the psychological and social nuances of colloquial speech; and here, in little more than a dozen words, he allows his heroine to reveal as much about herself as another dramatist might convey in an entire soliloquy.

For those who come to it with expectations shaped by the writings of Shakespeare, Middleton and Rowley's tragedy may at first seem anomalous. Although, in its treatment of the treacherous servant Deflores, it self-consciously recalls _Othello_ , and although the murderous _folie à deux_ that consumes Beatrice and Deflores sometimes seems like a rewriting of _Macbeth_ , it is conspicuously without the poetic grandeur and metaphysical resonance of those plays. _The Changeling_ belongs to that slightly paradoxical genre known as 'domestic tragedy': cast in the same bourgeois mould as the anonymous masterpiece _Arden of Faversham_ (c. 1591) or Thomas Heywood's _A Woman Killed with Kindness_ (c. 1603), it acquires a sharper edge of social observation from its authors' familiarity with the conventions of city comedy – the genre that satirised the mores of the urban middle-class. Despite its seemingly narrow domestic focus, however, _The Changeling_ has much to reveal about the gathering social and political tensions that were to plunge England into a destructive civil war within twenty years of its first performance; and in the unblinking insight with which it explores the psychology of its twin protagonists, it is recognisably ancestral to the realist theatre pioneered by Ibsen and others at the end of the nineteenth century – and thus to styles of representation that, through the medium of cinema and television, continue to shape the dramatic experience of modern audiences.

### **Authorship**

Although _The Changeling_ is nowadays reckoned amongst the finest tragedies of an exceptionally prolific era, it is a work that challenges some of our culture's most deeply rooted assumptions about the nature and genesis of high art: its colloquial style, its psychological naturalism, the violent generic contrasts of its double-plot design, and even the circumstances of its composition, are difficult to reconcile with the lofty claims of what Sir Philip Sidney characterised as 'the high and excellent Tragedy'. Like many popular dramas of its period, moreover, it was not the product of a single artistic vision, but emerged from the partnership of two writers whose history of collaboration with a whole range of contemporaries is an eloquent testament to the commercial nature of their enterprise. Such collaboration was characteristic of a profession which, as the term 'playwright' suggests, was kin to the humble crafts of cartwright, wheelwright, and shipwright. Indeed the business of supplying new material for the voracious playhouses of Elizabethan and Jacobean London may best be compared with scriptwriting for an entertainment factory like modern Hollywood: just as film-scripts are often commissioned from a team of writers, so a theatrical entrepreneur like Christopher Beeston, if he wished to obtain a new play in a hurry, might assemble a group of jobbing playwrights and suggest a subject to them; and just as screen writers are subordinate to directors and actors, their identity remaining largely unknown to the cinema-going public, so the name of a play's author (as title-page advertisements reveal) was often assumed to be of less interest than that of the company that performed it. Although we think of a play as being, like any literary work, the property of its creator, in the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre a playscript belonged, for most practical purposes, to the players as soon as they received it from the playwright, whose relative insignificance was reflected in the niggardly fee he usually received.

By the time Middleton and Rowley wrote _The Changeling_ , it is true, the theatrical world had witnessed the beginnings of a significant shift in the status accorded to dramatic texts. Key markers of this change were the publication of Ben Jonson's and then Shakespeare's _Works_ in prestigious folio volumes (1616, 1623); and from the second decade of the seventeenth century a growing number of plays were published with the addition of elaborate prefatory material calculated to flatter the social and cultural self-esteem of writers and readers alike. Just a year after _The Changeling_ 's debut, Middleton and Rowley themselves contributed admiring verses for _The Duchess of Malfi_ , echoing the sentiments of Webster's dedicatory epistle on the immortalising power of dramatic poetry; yet the two seem to have taken no more than intermittent interest in the publication of their own plays, a great many of which – including _The Changeling_ itself – appeared only after their deaths.

In the case of William Rowley (1585–c.1625) this is perhaps not altogether surprising, since what little we know of his life suggests that he was first and foremost an actor – a leading member of the Prince's Men, specialising in comic roles – for whom playwriting (mainly as a collaborator) was a sideline. By contrast, Thomas Middleton (1580–1627) seems to have earned his livelihood entirely by his pen. Born to prosperous lower middle-class parents, and educated at Oxford, he was nearing the end of a long career, during which he had written pamphlets and verse satires, in addition to his numerous plays for both elite and popular playhouses, and a variety of city pageants and entertainments. He had collaborated with a wide range of contemporaries, including Shakespeare, Webster, Ford, Dekker, Heywood, Munday, and Rowley himself, but had achieved prominence on his own account with a succession of outstanding city comedies, mocking the vices and foibles of urban life, and a small number of satiric tragedies, including the greatly admired _Women Beware Women_ – probably written just a little before _The Changeling_. The most recent count credits Middleton with sole authorship of some eighteen surviving plays, perhaps a dozen collaborations, and at least ten pageants, masques and entertainments. It was, no doubt, his standing as a writer that won him appointment as London's first city chronologer in 1620; yet there is little evidence of concern to secure the kind of lasting literary reputation that mattered so much to Jonson. He seems to have taken some pride in the publication of his civic pageants and entertainments; but only eleven of his independent dramas were printed in his lifetime – several of them, including his early masterpiece, _The Revenger's Tragedy_ (1607), anonymously; and he bothered to supply dedicatory epistles for only two plays, _The Roaring Girl_ (1611), co-written with Dekker, and _The Witch_ , which survives only in manuscript.

_The Changeling_ , then, is the work of two men for whom playwriting was less a vocation than a trade. We have no means of guessing the circumstances under which they began work on the script, but it may very well have been Beeston who commissioned them to adapt its sensational story of lust and murder. Certainly the manner in which the two set about dividing up their task suggests that, initially at least, the project was driven by no great personal investment: a variety of verbal and metrical tests concur in suggesting that Rowley undertook the composition of the comic underplot, while Middleton had primary responsibility for the tragic main plot; however the same tests have shown that Rowley (presumably to ensure a roughly equal distribution of labour) was also allocated the task of writing the crucial opening and closing scenes, as well as the first sixteen lines of Act IV, scene ii. This may seem an odd arrangement to anyone devoted to notions of authorial integrity; but to two seasoned professionals whose collaboration on at least four earlier works had made them thoroughly familiar with each other's way of working, it must have seemed an entirely practical solution. The result, against the apparent odds, was a text which, despite its superficially divergent plots, is distinguished by a remarkable imaginative coherence. It is clear that, as their writing progressed, the two playwrights must have exchanged ideas, read each other's contributions, and perhaps even worked over portions of one another's scripts. Indeed it would be surprising if Middleton did not claim some oversight of the crucial scenes which his collaborator provided for what was otherwise his own portion of the play; and there are passages in each where Middleton may either have revised Rowley's work, or even contributed some speeches of his own.

### **Date and Sources**

Closely worked though their script appears to be, Middleton and Rowley seem to have worked on _The Changeling_ with the rapidity expected of seasoned professionals: their principal source, John Reynolds' collection of 'Tragicall Histories', _The Triumph of God's Revenge_ , was itself relatively new, having appeared only in , while a secondary source – Leonard Digges' translation of G. de Sespedes y Menses' novel, _Gerardo The Unfortunate Spaniard_ – was not entered for printing on the Stationers' Register until 11 March 1622; yet the play itself seems to have been ready by 7 May, when it was licensed for performance by Lady Elizabeth's Men.

The story of Alibius and Isabella, which makes up the sub-plot of _The Changeling_ , resembles numerous folk-tales in which an aged husband is cuckolded by his beautiful young bride, but in its present form it seems to have been entirely of Rowley's invention. By contrast, the main plot is closely based on Reynolds, whose History IV, 'Alsemero and Beatrice-Joana', the dramatists followed with considerable fidelity, especially in the first half of the play – even picking up and elaborating his favourite metaphors of eyesight and blindness. Such changes as the dramatists made to their source material seem to have been mainly prompted by considerations of dramatic economy, by a wish to clarify the moral patterns of the narrative, or by a concern for psychological plausibility. Thus, for example, where Reynolds' characters move between Valencia, Briamata, and various locations in Alicant, _The Changeling_ 's tragic action is confined (after an opening scene at the castle gate) within the claustrophobic walls of Vermandero's fortress; where the original narrative stretches over several months, the play's action unfolds in a matter of days; where Reynolds' indictment of the adulterous Beatrice-Joana is complicated by her jealous husband's complicity in the killing of one Piracquo brother and his cowardly murder of the other (for which he is tried and executed), Middleton and Rowley make Alsemero the blameless victim of his wife's treachery; and where in the original Alsemero's jealousy of Beatrice-Joana seems curiously unmotivated, the play grounds it in Jasperino's eavesdropping (IV.ii.81–102), winding up the tension by means of a device borrowed from Digges – the introduction of Diaphanta as a substitute bride.

The dramatists did, however, introduce one crucial alteration for which it is difficult to account in such straightforwardly technical ways. This involves their transformation of Beatrice-Joanna's adulterous accomplice, who – even as he is promoted from his relatively insignificant role in the original narrative to become the co-protagonist of the tragedy – is simultaneously degraded to an inferior position in the play's social hierarchy. In Reynolds he is 'a Gallant young Gentleman, of the Garrison of the Castle . . . _Seigneur Antonio de Flores_ ', a youth of some status, whom Beatrice-Joana chooses as her accessory, and ultimately as her lover, because she knows that he 'doth deeply honour, and dearly affect her'; by contrast Middleton and Rowley's Deflores is a mere household servant – a gentleman by birth, it is true, but one whose lowly rank is matched by the coarsely pock-marked 'deformity' that makes him doubly repugnant in the eyes of the spoilt young noblewoman who is the object of his obsessive desire. In the source there is no suggestion that de Flores' place as a follower of Vermandero makes him unworthy of Beatrice-Joana: and, in so far as 'service' figures significantly in Reynolds' narrative, it is only in the specialised chivalric sense, by which a courtly wooer declared himself 'servant' to his mistress. In _The Changeling_ , by contrast, Deflores' reduction to literal servitude casts his affair with his lord's daughter in a completely different light, stressing the humiliations of his position and producing a complex set of verbal and gestural equivocations on the vocabulary of service.

The dramatists' exploration of the ironic relationship between the two kinds of service may have been prompted by certain details in their secondary source. It was in _Gerardo_ that the dramatists found the story of a bed-trick that goes awry and ends in murder: in one of its inset tales, the melancholy pilgrim Roberto tells the grim story of his bride Isdaura who, like Beatrice, sought to conceal her lost virginity by persuading her maid and confidante, Julia, to take her place on the wedding night. As in _The Changeling_ , the bride's scheme was imperilled by her substitute's excessive enjoyment of Roberto's embraces. Seeking to drive Julia from the nuptial bed, Isdaura set fire to a tapestry, and then, fearful of betrayal, pushed the maid into a deep well, drowning her. While _The Changeling_ 's most obvious debt to _Gerardo_ is to be found in this episode, a more profound one lies in its influence on the transformation of Deflores from a gallant young soldier to a lustful and treacherous lackey. In the novel, Isdaura's virginity has been taken by another member of her father's household, 'an old trusty servant, [a Biscayner,] whom he love[s] as an adopted son . . . for his good service', and upon whose 'faith and honesty' as a steward he entirely relies – though he is to prove as treacherous as Deflores. Shortly before Isdaura's wedding, the Biscayner, who has fallen ill with a mysterious complaint, comes to her bedchamber and demands a reward for his 'good deeds and service' declaring that only in the possession of her body can he find 'the antidote and wholesome physician' for 'the mischief and sickness that afflicts [him]'. Declaring that 'I fear no refusal, since in mine own will lies the satisfaction of my desire', he threatens her with a dagger and then rapes her, only for Isdaura to kill him as he sleeps. Deflores too, who ends the opening scene of _The Changeling_ by proclaiming the ascendancy of his 'will' in the same phallic sense (I.i.230), goes on to make his mistress's virginity the price of his 'service' (III.iii.53–7, 64–7), and to insist upon the medicinal necessity of the conquest: 'I'm in pain / And must be eased of you; 'tis a charity' (III.iii.98–9). From such small details, Middleton and Rowley worked up the story of sexual insurrection and domestic betrayal that transformed the crudely moralised sensationalism of Reynolds' narrative.

There are no other generally acknowledged sources for _The Changeling_ , but the tragedy – as we might predict from its authors' long careers in the theatre – is full of recollections of earlier plays, notably _A Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello_ and _The Duchess of Malfi_. From _Dream_ it self-consciously borrows the theme of change; from _Othello_ (published in the year of its first performance) the central figure of an 'honest' servant whose fidelity masks his true role as demonic tempter; and from _Malfi_ (where another embittered servant murders his mistress) the wild antics of the madhouse inmates, figurations of a world given over to vicious insanity.

### **The Play**

#### **DRAMATIC COHERENCE AND THE DOUBLE PLOT**

As we have seen, _The Changeling_ is constructed from two parallel plot-lines. In the tragic high-plot, Beatrice-Joanna, the beautiful, spoilt daughter of Vermandero, lord of the castle of Alicante, falls in love with Alsemero, a handsome young visitor to the city; desperate to be rid of the suitor (Alonzo de Piracquo) to whom she is inconveniently betrothed, Beatrice suborns her father's ill-favoured servant, Deflores, to kill him. Even as the murder clears the way for Beatrice to marry Alsemero, however, it delivers her into the power of her loathsome co-conspirator, who now insists upon possessing her. Beatrice attempts to conceal the loss of her virginity from her bridegroom by persuading her maid, Diaphanta, to take her place on the wedding night. Fearing that this new accomplice will betray them, Deflores kills her, arranging a house-fire to cover up the murder. Despite his best efforts, however, their crimes are exposed, whereupon Deflores stabs his mistress to death, before taking his own life.

In the comic low-plot, Isabella, the young, attractive wife of the elderly Alibius, keeper of the city's madhouse, is besieged by two courtly admirers, Antonio and Franciscus, who have disguised themselves as inmates of the asylum in the hope of seducing her. Alibius' subordinate, Lollio, becomes aware of their attentions, and seeks to blackmail his mistress into an adulterous affair; but Isabella successfully resists all of their importunities, and by virtue of her constancy is able to shame her lustful suitors into confession and her jealous husband into rueful vows of reform.

Double plots are, of course, common enough in the drama of the period, but few plays treat them quite as cavalierly as _The Changeling_ with its bald juxtaposition of two almost unrelated stories. Only two rather offhand details pretend to join the two: Antonio and Franciscus come briefly into suspicion for Alonzo's murder when they are found to have absconded from Vermandero's household, and Alibius' patients are hired to perform a masque at Beatrice's wedding; but the masque never takes place, and the absconders are almost immediately cleared by the incrimination of Beatrice and Deflores. The broadly farcical treatment of the madhouse world makes the two plots seem even more ill-assorted.

However, as the play's critical and performance histories have amply demonstrated, what the two plots lack in superficial connectedness, the overall design makes up in thematic and poetic coherence. At the most obvious level, the aristocratic Beatrice's surrender to vice is contrasted with the bourgeois Isabella's resolute adherence to her wedding vows; the conniving, lecherous Lollio emerges as a burlesque version of the false servant Deflores, while Diaphanta and Jasperino provide exemplars of less ruthless, but still self-interested modes of subordination. But the connections go far beyond such simple parallels, and the more closely one looks at the text, the more one is struck by how intimately the two dramatists must have co-operated in order to stitch together the disparate parts of their design. Thus, for example, Deflores' obscene mime with Beatrice's glove at the end of I.i – 'I know / She had rather wear my pelt tanned in a pair / Of dancing pumps than I should thrust my fingers / Into her sockets here' (11. 224–7) – is echoed and partly glossed by the bawdy exchange between Alibius and Lollio in the following scene:

[ALIBIUS]

I would wear my ring on my own finger;  
Whilst it is borrowed it is none of mine,  
But his that useth it.

LOLLIO

You must keep it on still, then; if it but lie by, one or other will be thrusting into't

(I.ii.27–31)

Rowley was responsible for both these episodes, but their full resonance ultimately depends on a climactic moment in Middleton's portion of the play, where the phallic suggestiveness of fingers and rings is given a shocking new twist by the bloody 'token' that verifies the demise of Alonzo: 'I could not get the ring without the finger' (III.iii.28). Originally an engagement gift from Beatrice herself, the ring 'stuck', Deflores explains, 'As if the flesh and it were both one substance' (1. 38): standing for the unbreakable ties between a betrothed couple – to which early modern custom granted all the moral force of the wedding bond itself – the ring declares that Piracquo and Beatrice are as much 'one flesh' as any husband and wife; but it also stands – as the language of this scene repeatedly insinuates – for the new bond between the murderess and her accomplice that will be sealed by their sexual union: 'we should _stick_ together . . . Nor is it fit we two, engaged so _jointly_ , / Should part and live asunder . . . peace and innocency has turned you out / And made you _one with me_ ' (11. 84, 88–9, 139–140).

The play's densely worked linguistic surface is full of such details: the recurrent imagery of eyesight, for example, draws attention to the way in which the characters in both plots are blinded by folly or desire, while numerous variations on the title-motif of change highlight the extraordinary transformations that seem to confound all that these deluded creatures have believed about one another. Most strikingly, perhaps, _The Changeling_ repeatedly figures erotic passion as a disease of the mind, compared to whose destructive frenzies the crazy antics of Alibius' lunatics seem almost harmless. Love turns out to be the 'hidden malady' of which the apprehensive Alsmero speaks in the opening scene (I.i.24) and that breaks out in the corrupted 'ulcer' of Beatrice's infidelity (V.iii.7–9, 16); it is the sickness that taints the 'maddest blood' of Jasperino's desire for Diaphanta (I.i.138–9), that manifests itself in the 'mad qualm' that 'ails' Deflores at the mere thought of Beatrice-Joanna (II.i.27, 79), and that takes an especially perverse form in the mysterious 'infirmity' that afflicts Beatrice at the very sight of Deflores, leaving her 'trembling an hour after' (I.i.104; II.i.91). The relationship between love and madness is more than simply metaphorical, for early modern medicine tended to regard sexual passion as a literal madness. Thus Robert Burton in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_ (1621) devotes one third of his compendious psychological treatise to cataloguing and describing the various kinds of insanity that constitute 'Love Melancholy': 'That lovers are mad,' avers Burton, 'I think no man will deny', and the passion that devours them is 'a disease, frenzy, madness, hell . . . It subverts kingdoms, overthrows cities, towns, families, mars and corrupts, and makes a massacre of men; thunder and lightning, wars, fires, plagues, have not done that mischief to mankind, as this burning lust, this brutish passion.'

Burton's 'hell' of madness is precisely where Middleton and Rowley's characters find themselves in the final moments of the play as they contemplate the massacre wrought by the 'brutish passion' that has subverted Vermandero's domestic kingdom and overthrown his family: here Deflores gives a defiant account of his liaison with Beatrice-Joanna, triumphantly informing his rival that, even as he was consummating his wedding upon the substitute body of Diaphanta, 'I coupled with your mate / At barley-break – now we are left in hell' (V.iii.162–3). This wry acknowledgement of his own damnability, with its quibbling allusion to a popular children's game, uncannily echoes the madman's offstage cry from III.ii. 'Catch there, catch the last couple in hell' (1. 160); and when Vermandero responds 'We are all there, it circumscribes us here' (1. 164), it is as if the entire company have been caught up in a bloody reprise of the madmen's game. In retrospect, the offstage cries and howls that punctuate the action of the sub-plot become the voice of repressed appetites working away beneath the veneer of courtly civility in Vermandero's citadel and demanding to 'be fed' (I.ii.192); while the violent eruption of the madmen onto the stage in III.ii, 'some as birds, others as beasts' (1. 183 s.d.) resembles a Breughelian allegory, bodying forth the animality of those hidden desires, and revealing Alibius' madhouse as the parodic double of Vermandero's castle:

[They] act their fantasies in any shapes . . .  
Sometimes they imitate the beasts and birds,  
Singing, or howling, braying, barking; all  
As their wild fancies prompt 'em.

(III.ii.186, 189–91)

#### **' CHANGED SO SOON': MAGIC AND METAMORPHOSIS**

When Lollio is made to declare – with a sideways glance at the playhouse audience – 'We have but two sorts of people in the house . . . that's fools and madmen' (I.ii.42–3) he invokes a world of universal madness like that imagined in Burton's _Anatomy:_ 'We accuse others of madness, of folly,' wrote Burton 'and are the veriest dizzards ourselves . . . giddy, vertiginous and lunatic within this sublunary maze . . . all the world is melancholy, or mad, dotes, and every member of it.' Lunacy, Burton's reference to the 'sublunary maze' reminds us, was often attributed to the unstable influence of the moon ( _luna_ ); and it is upon this the planet of change, responsible for the mutability of all earthly things, that Alsemero blames the catastrophe that has engulfed Vermandero's castle: 'What an opacous body had that moon / That last changed on us' (V.iii.196–7). There is thus a direct connection between _The Changeling_ 's treatment of madness and the preoccupations announced by its title – a connection highlighted by Rowley's schematic conclusion in which, as one character after another is identified as a changeling of sorts, Franciscus confesses himself 'changed from a little wit to be stark mad' (1. 207) – a 'transformation' mirroring that which has overcome Beatrice herself.

'Changeling', in seventeenth-century parlance, had a number of possible senses: slightingly used to designate an idiot, it could also refer to a faithless, inconstant person, or to someone illegitimately substituting for another. Each of these senses has an obvious literal relevance to the play, but the word's most resonant meaning is one that is employed metaphorically: a stupid or deformed child left in place of one stolen by malevolent fairies. While _The Changeling_ is a play largely free of supernatural intervention, the metamorphosis of Vermandero's adored daughter from 'beauty . . . To ugly whoredom' (V.iii.78, 197–8) resembles just such an uncanny substitution – one parallelled in the equally baffling transformation of Deflores from the incarnation of 'servant obedience' to its rebellious opposite, the 'master sin, imperious murder' (11. 198–9).

For Middleton and Rowley's audience (as for most playgoers today) the most familiar example of such a changeling will have been the mortal child who so infatuates the fairy queen, Titania, and provokes the jealousy of her husband, Oberon, in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ ; and in choosing a title for their play, the dramatists must surely have had in mind the 'little changeling boy' ( _MSND_ , II.i.120) who serves as an emblematic figure for the dizzying sequence of physical and psychological transformations that make up Shakespeare's plot. Not only does Franciscus greet Isabella as 'bright Titania' and refer to Alibius as 'Oberon' (III.ii.47–9), but Isabella's invocation of 'the waxing moon' under whose influence love 'turn[s] fool, run[s] mad, and all at once' (IV.iii.1–2), recalls the repeated references to the moon's maddening influence upon Shakespeare's mortal fools; and Alsemero's meditation on the malign power of the 'opacous moon', as he stands over the corpses of Beatrice and Deflores, rewrites the ending of the mechanicals' play – where Moonshine presides over the deaths of Piramus and Thisby – turning travesty back to tragedy.

The recollections of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ extend further than this, however, for the main plot of _The Changeling_ can be read as a grotesque riff on the theme announced by Helena at the end of Shakespeare's opening scene – 'Things base and vile, holding no quantity, / Love can transpose to form and dignity' ( _MSND_ , I.i.233–4): 'hunger and pleasure,' as Deflores' sardonic paraphrase expresses it, will 'commend sometimes / Slovenly dishes' (II.ii.150–1). Just as the ass-headed 'monster', Bottom, is transformed by Oberon's magic into Titania's 'gentle joy' ( _MSND_ , II.ii.6, IV.i.4), so Deflores' loving 'service' renders this hideous 'basilisk' miraculously 'beauteous' to Beatrice (I.i.110; II.ii.135; V.i.72); and just as Helena and Hermia are 'transfigured' by the same love-juice that works its change on Bottom, so in _The Changeling'_ s other plot, Antonio pretends to be transformed by the 'magic' of Isabella's 'powerful beauties' (III.ii.117–18, 179–81). In the last analysis, of course, Shakespeare's fairy love-juice is no more than an allegory for the delusive effects of desire, yet _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ preserves a place for magic, if only as an effect of the transformative power of poetry. In the materialist world of _The Changeling_ , by contrast, the notion of change and metamorphosis is subjected to a ruthless scrutiny that exposes it as a self-justifying coinage of the characters' fatal delusions.

#### **' CONSPICUOUS TO OUTWARD VIEW': THE CASTELLATED BODY AND THE SECRET SELF**

_The Changeling_ is obsessed by the disjunction between what is hidden and what is seen: the offstage howling of Alibius' madmen functions as a dramatic metaphor for the invisible threat of what lies 'within'; and the same theme is reflected in recurrent images of eyesight and blindness. Middleton and Rowley's characters frequently congratulate themselves on the special insight given them by love: 'Love,' declares the disguised Antonio, 'has an intellect that runs through all / The scrutinous sciences . . . Into one mystery . . . one secret that he proceeds in' (III.ii.120–5). Beatrice professes to love Alsemero with the 'eyes of judgement' (II.i.13, 19), just as he himself insists that his infatuation with Beatrice's outward appearance is warranted by his penetrating 'judgement' (I.i.73–5); yet later we will see this professed 'master of the mystery' (IV.i.38) calling on Antonio's 'scrutinous sciences' in an absurd effort to expose the 'secret' of her real nature.

In the early scenes it is, ironically enough, Beatrice who warns of the difference between the 'mistaken' perception that drew her to Piracquo (I.i.80), and her clear vision of Alsemero

Our eyes are sentinels unto our judgements,  
And should give certain judgement what they see;  
But they are rash sometimes, and tell us wonders  
Of common things, which when our judgements find,  
They can then check the eyes, and call them blind.

(I.i.68–72)

In the allegorical tradition, however, while the eyes might be watchmen to the soul, they were more likely to be figured as its windows – dangerous apertures that could betray it to the enemy: thus for Samuel Purchas the eye is 'a window for Hell, a loop-hole for Lust to shoot at, a look-hole for the Devil to shoot in himself and his fiery darts' (cf. Fig. 1). As for Beatrice's 'intellectual eyesight' (II.i.19), its true nature is indicated by Lollio's obscene gibe to the love-blind Franciscus: 'a woman, they say, has an eye more than a man' (III.ii.73–4). Unable to recognise the promptings of this third eye for what they are, Beatrice-Joanna, like Alsemero himself, is in thrall to a dilute platonism that persuades her of the perfect correspondence of outward appearance and inward truth. There is thus a telling symmetry between the desire inspired in her by the handsome Alsemero, and the disgust with which she responds to Deflores' ugliness – an ugliness which, she persuades herself, suits him rather than Alsemero to the act of murder: 'Blood-guiltiness becomes a fouler visage, / And now I think on one . . . The ugliest creature / Creation framed for some use' (II.ii.40–44). Until she finds a use for him, it is as though Deflores exists for the Beatrice only as an affront to her eyesight, a thing she might readily eliminate from view simply by exploiting her father's 'next good mood' to have him 'quite discarded' (II.i.59, 73, 92–3); and it is Deflores' recognition of this ocular solipsism that inspires the brilliantly directed euphemism of his promise to murder Alonzo: 'He shall be _seen_ no more' (II.ii.135).

The spoilt petulance of Beatrice's behaviour is marvellously realised; but there is also something about the visceral intensity of her response to Deflores – epitomised in her identification of him with the basilisk, a creature whose mere look could kill (I.i.109–10) – that suggests a more significant resemblance between her loathing and the equally compulsive emotion that forces her subordinate 'some twenty times a day' to 'frame ways and excuses / To come into her _sight_ ' (II.i.27–31), courting her abuse only because he 'must _see_ her' (II.i.77–8; II.ii.65–6). Accordingly modern criticism has tended to discover in Beatrice's obsessiveness the sign of 'unconscious sexual interest in Deflores'. In a probing feminist account of the play's recent performance history, such approaches have been severely criticised by Roberta Barker and David Nicol as amounting to an a-historical 'post-Freudian appropriation of an early modern text'. These critics insist that Middleton and Rowley present Beatrice as a rape-victim who 'never . . . takes any pleasure in her brutalisation', and argue that the true irony of the play is that, far from Beatrice's being ignorant of her own will, 'by pursuing it too vehemently, she loses it'; for them _The Changeling_ is a straightforward fable of 'a sinner who strays from the path of righteousness and . . . is appropriately punished when her appointed scourge takes from her precisely [what] she so wanted to save for the lover of her choice.' But the play's rhetorical stress upon the 'secrets' and 'mysteries' resists such simple moralising – even if Beatrice's acknowledgement of Deflores as the embodiment of a mysterious fatality and of her former loathing as 'prophet' to all that followed (V.iii.154–7) is as close as she comes to an explicit recognition of unconscious motives.

**Figure 1.** Death entering the windows of the soul; engraving by Theodore Galle from a chapter devoted to the temptations of eyesight in Jean David, _Veridicus Christianus_ (Antwerp 1601). Courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

In fact Middleton and Rowley's contemporaries had their own ways of describing the obscure promptings of the hidden self; and John Stachniewski has shown how seventeenth-century Calvinism, in particular, encouraged an interest 'in the logic of an inner, unknown self', resulting in 'a conception of character as strung between conscious purposes and unconscious identity.' A person's buried thoughts and desires, according to Levin Lemmins in _The Touchstone of Complexions_ (1581) are to be discovered in the 'most secret corners and innermost places . . . conveyed by many crooked by-ways and windings'; and it is in such privy corners, according to the poet and divine, John Donne, that the devil 'works upon us in secret . . . to make us so like himself as to sin in secret that others may not see us; but _his masterpiece is to make us sin in secret so as we may not see ourselves sin_.' The repressed appetites that, in Deflores' hyperbolical obscenity, promise to make Beatrice 'sutler to an army royal' (II.ii.64), belong to this mode of sinning – a vice so privately closeted that even the sinner cannot recognise it. Thus, as Stachniewski argues, not only does Beatrice's 'reprobate character, though unperceived, inhere . . . in her from the very start,' but 'discovery of the hidden logic of character [turns out to be] the unifying purpose linking the play's disparate episodes and propelling its action.'

We are first alerted to this scheme by Alsemero's half-serious reference to some 'hidden malady' within him that lies beyond the reach of his comprehension (I.i.24–5); but it is even more conspicuously signposted by Vermandero's description of the castle that Alsemero so desires to enter:

We use not to give survey

Of our chief strengths to strangers; our citadels

Are placed conspicuous to outward view

On promonts' tops, but _within are secrets_.

(I.i.156–9)

Vermandero is speaking in military terms, but the larger resonances of the passage depend on the tradition of figuring the human body as the fortress of the soul, subject to the assaults of sickness, sin, and death. Inherited from medieval allegory, the device is perhaps best known from the Castle of Alma episode in Spenser's _Faerie Queen_ (Book II, Canto ix), but allegory of this sort is common to a whole range of early modern texts from medical manuals to sermons and popular tracts. Significantly for _The Changeling_ , it was often given a gendered inflection as a figure for female chastity: in the misogynistic tract _Hic Mulier_ (1615), for example, women, 'armed with the infinite power of virtue, are castles impregnable'. In order to avoid 'immodest discoveries', however, it is necessary to keep 'every window closed with a strong casement, and every loophole furnished with such strong ordnance that no unchaste eye may come to assail them; no lascivious tongue woo a forbidden passage' (sig. A3v-B4); after all, as Bacon warned, 'love can find entrance not only into an open heart, but to a heart well fortified, if watch be not kept.'

_The Changeling_ exploits this tradition to establish an imaginative equivalence between the two repositories of Vermandero's honour and patriarchal authority – his castle and the person of his daughter. Capitalising on the enclosed intimacy of the Cockpit theatre, Middleton and Rowley evoke the interior spaces of the citadel with unusual fullness, equipping it with a gatehouse, postern, sconces, stores of munition, corridors, closet, bedchambers, chimneys, and locked doors, as well as a spacious park, a small-pleasure garden, and an adjacent church; but this naturalistic detail proves to be charged with rich metaphoric suggestiveness.

In broad terms it is possible to trace an imaginative movement beginning at the temple-church where Beatrice and Alsemero first meet, on through the castle gateway into the labyrinthine passageways where Alonzo meets his end, continuing into the secret regions of Alsemero's privy closet and Beatrice's bedchamber, and ending in the 'common sewer' of Beatrice's self-excoriating apology to Vermandero. This is a movement that corresponds to the allegorical journey described in Samuel Purchas' physiological treatise _Microcosmus_ which, beginning at the eyes, moves through the seat of reason and 'judgement', and descends through the intestines (where 'all wheyish and liquid superfluities' are sluiced away 'to the _grates_ , that is the _kidneys_ ') into the typically female domain of animality, passion and sin, the 'chamber of generation [where] there is nothing to be seen but secrets', to end in 'the privy lodging, betwixt and among variety of excrements' where humankind are conceived – the place where 'the _ureters_ , as two _common sewers_ , convey the [body's wastes] to the _sink_ , or greater vault the _bladder_ , thence to be exonerated (as by sweat and menstrous purgations . . .) from the body's community'.

For Vermandero, his castle's strength is dependent less on its imposing exterior than on the military secrets concealed within, much as his daughter's value depends less on her outward beauty than on her invisible virtue – the virginity which the bawdy Lollio will characterise as a woman's 'secret' (I.ii.8). Ironically, however, the real secrets behind these 'conspicuous' facades prove to be a source of weakness rather than strength, as Vermandero implicitly confesses when confronted by his dying child: 'An host of enemies entered my citadel / Could not amaze like this' (V.iii.147–8). No surprise assault was needed; for the enemy, it turns out, has always been within. On the literal level, this is the revelation brutally acted out when Deflores fulfils his promise to show Alonzo 'the full strength of all the castle': as his unsuspecting victim 'spends] his eye' upon its defensive ordnance, Deflores performs his 'work of secrecy' and stabs him from behind (III.i.17–18, 27). More than one kind of secrecy is involved here: carried out in secret, the murder is also designed to block Alonzo's access to a very different secret – one identical to the 'knowledge . . . dearer, / Deeper and sweeter' (I.ii.1–13) that Alibius vainly seeks to lock away in the 'cage' or 'pinfold' of his wife's domestic prison (III.ii.2–8). This is the privy knowledge that Deflores will claim for himself, and that the self-deluding 'master of the mystery', Alsemero, will seek to unlock with the aid of a manual suitably entitled ' _Secrets in Nature_ ' (IV.i.25, 38; ii.111; [Fig. 2). Ironically, however, Beatrice's secret viciousness will be exposed not by any 'pretty secret' of Alsemero's closet, but by the fatal indiscretion of Diaphanta – a woman he identified as a repository of secrets – one of those 'ladies' cabinets [into which] / Things of most precious trust are lock[ed]' (II.ii.6–7) – but who proves so unsecret that she 'cannot rule her own blood to keep her promise' (V.i.6–7).

The language of the final scene is especially striking for the way in which it relates the motif of secrets and discovery to the great unifying symbol of the play, the castle. Stung by Alsemero's denunciation of her as a whore, Beatrice accuses her husband of having 'ruined / What you can ne'er repair again' (V.iii.35–6); his riposte picks up and elaborates her subdued architectural metaphor, figuring her body as a castle to be pillaged and slighted

I'll all demolish and seek out truth within you,  
If there be any left. Let your sweet tongue  
Prevent your heart's rifling – there I'll ransack  
And tear out my suspicion.

(V.iii.37–40)

'You may, sir – 'tis an easy passage' she responds, recalling the narrow 'passages' through which Deflores led Alonzo to his secret death, and looking forward to the final purge of the castle's hidden corruption announced in her death-speech

O come not near me, sir, I shall defile you:  
I am that of your blood was taken from you  
For your better health; look no more upon't,  
But cast it to the ground regardlessly,  
Let the common sewer take it from distinction.

(V.iii.149–53)

**Figure 2.** Beatrice (Mary Ure) pores over Alsemero's book of _Secrets in Nature_ , Royal Court, 1961. Photograph by Sandra Lousada.

Here is disclosed the final secret of the castle/body – the death which John Donne imagined as a grotesque evacuation through the 'sordid _postern_ , by which I must be thrown out of this world.'

#### **MASTERS AND SERVANTS**

Deflores' privileged access to the castle's secrets is symbolised by the bunch of keys he carries at his belt. Among the play's more conspicuous properties, they are visually and imaginatively linked to the key that opens up the secrets of Alsemero's closet – and which is subsequently used to lock away Deflores and Beatrice in that same space (IV.i.18; IV.ii.111; V.iii.87, 114) – as well as to the wardrobe key that Isabella will use in her plan to penetrate the 'labyrinth' of her wooers' pretences (IV.iii.45). On the literal level, Deflores' keys are the badge of his servantly office, but they become the sign of a mastery so absolute that, in a neat metatheatrical joke, it even enables him to hide a naked rapier in the conventionally inaccessible space/time between the acts. The keys represent not merely his physical management of the castle's interior spaces, however, but the growing psychological and sexual control that reveals him as him the true 'master of the mystery', including the forbidden zone of sexuality and death where 'servant obedience' metamorphoses into the 'master sin, imperious murder.'

As we have seen, the transformation of Beatrice's lover from a 'Gallant young Gentleman, of the Garrison of the Castle' into an ill-favoured and detested manservant was the dramatists' most prominent alteration to their source material; and this degradation appears even more significant because of the paradoxical way in which it was combined with the elevation of Reynolds' mere accessory to become joint protagonist of the tragedy. Conscious of being 'out of his place' in more than the dismissive sense employed by Alsemero (I.i.131), and consumed by acrimony at the 'hard fate [that] thrust [him] out to servitude' (II.i.48), Middleton and Rowley's Deflores joins the ranks of treacherous servants who abound in the drama of the time – creatures whose egotistical resentment at the 'obsequious bondage' that constitutes 'the curse of service' ( _Othello_ , I.i.45, 34) renders them by turns conniving, deceitful, subversive, or openly rebellious.

There were, of course, good material reasons why such figures should have exercised so compelling a grip upon the early modern imagination. The feudal idea of master-servant relationships continued to provide the paradigm for virtually all structures of authority in the period, so that even the most powerful noblemen owed service to a royal 'master', who was himself imagined as the servant of God. At the same time, however, the structures of mutual obligation on which this ideal rested were widely perceived to be in decay; and the resulting tensions are apparent not merely in imaginative literature, but in the numerous tracts and manuals that address the conduct of household government. These latter chart a widening disparity between loftier forms of service and the role performed by domestic servants, which was increasingly seen as degrading drudgery, governed not by traditional love and fidelity but by the base demands of contract and wages. From the perspective of commentators like 'I.M.', the corrupting effect of substituting mere pecuniary obligation for the supposedly 'undissoluable bond of assured friendship' between masters and servants was to render what he called ' _the Gentlemanly profession of Servingmen_ ' no longer suitable to a gentleman's ambition, since it threatened to reduce him to 'the degree of a servile drudge'.

The false servants of the drama are nightmare embodiments of such anxieties, figurations of the fear that, once the bonds of heaven are slipped, society's greatest enemies may appear not from without, but from deep within the social order – from the bosom of the family itself. Because their rebellion mimics that of Lucifer, who thought it 'Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven' ( _Paradise Lost_ , i.263), they are often demonic figures, like Mephistophilis, in Marlowe's _Dr Faustus_ , the diabolic servant whose sole desire is to encompass his master's destruction. As the archetype of false service, Mephistophilis became the progenitor of a whole line of treacherous subordinates – among them Iago, Edmund, Malvolio, and Caliban, as well as Bosola in Webster's _Duchess of Malfi_ , Mosca in Jonson's _Volpone_ , the diabolically named D'Avolos is Ford's _Love's Sacrifice_ , and (not least) Deflores himself. Because of his psychological complexity, Deflores is among the most compellingly depicted of these figures: eaten up by the same social resentment that gnaws at Iago, he is seen as the 'serpent' of a new Temptation (II.i.218, V.iii.67), responsible for the loss of that 'blest' Garden of 'man's first creation' to which Alsemero naively dreamed that love would return him (I.i.6–12); yet, by virtue of his tortured infatuation with Beatrice, he is able to attract something of the dark pathos that Webster discovers in Bosola. Having 'tumbled into th' world a gentleman' (II.i.49), he is now humiliatingly consigned to the performance of a lackey's trivial 'errands' (II.i.30, 59): his master can order him to retrieve a fallen glove – only to expose him to the gall of his mistress's disdain for this display of 'officious forwardness' (I.i.219–20). The tormenting irony of Deflores' situation is that his desire for Beatrice is exactly proportionate to her power to humble him: this, surely, is what underlies his ironic description of the glove she throws at him as 'a favour come – with a mischief (I.i.224). His sickness lies not simply in his need to see her, but in his desperation 'to come into [the] sight' of 'her blessed eye' (II.i.31, 50) – to expose himself to the very gaze that has taught him to scan ugliness in such self-lacerating detail:

**Figure 3.** Bob Hoskins as Deflores, BBC Television 1993.

she baits me still

Every time worse than other, does profess herself  
The cruellest enemy to my face in town,  
At no hand can abide the sight of me . . .  
I must confess my face is bad enough,  
But I know far worse has had better fortune . . .  
And yet such pick-hatched faces, chins like witches,  
Here and there five hairs, whispering in a corner  
As if they grew in fear one of another,  
Wrinkles like troughs, where swine-deformity swills  
The tears of perjury that lie there like wash  
Fallen from the slimy and dishonest eye.

(II.i.32–45)

In the case of Deflores, social resentment and ambition on the one hand, and sexual desire on the other, do not constitute discrete motives (as moderns might easily suppose), but are simply different aspects of the same nexus of emotions – a point beautifully underlined in the servant's ecstatic physical response when his mistress condescends to inspect his 'scurvy' complexion – 'Her fingers touched me – / She smells all amber!' (II.ii.81–2) – where the sexual arousal produced by Beatrice's perfume is inseparable from his ability to sniff out its costly ingredients. Yet, of course, this decayed gentleman would never wish to construe his relationship to a mistress in crassly material terms, and one advantage of the abject position in which he is placed by her disdain is that it enables Deflores to reinvent his drudgery as a mode of courtship. The rhetoric of courtly love which the Renaissance inherited from the medieval chivalric code, imagined love as a kind of sublime 'service' offered by a knight to his lady; and the paradigm of such relationships was one in which the wooer abased himself before a woman of higher rank – typically the chatelaine of his lord's castle. When Deflores reacts to Beatrice's tongue-lashing in II.i with the reminder that 'True service merits mercy' (II.i.63), he makes adroit use of the knightly servitor's plea to his conventionally cruel mistress, implicitly transforming his despised 'errand' (11. 59, 74) into a piece of chivalric errantry for which amatory reward is due. Ironically the expected earnest of a lady's 'mercy' would have been precisely such a 'favour' as Deflores pretends to have received from Beatrice at the end of the opening scene – the glove or sleeve that a knight could wear on his helm as proof of his lady's acceptance.

The connection that this would-be suitor forges between the two forms of service has its effect on Beatrice's own language; for, in the following scene, having dismissed Alsemero's offer to challenge Alonzo to a duel by way of gallant 'service' (II.ii.21, 26), she proceeds to 'serve [her] turn' (1. 68) upon Deflores by herself equivocating on the two meanings of 'service', luring him into a murderous undertaking that he in turn chooses to accept as though it were some quest of pure chivalry:

BEATRICE

Hardness becomes the visage of a man well,  
It argues _service_ , resolution, manhood,  
If cause were of _employment_ . . .

[DEFLORES]

I would but wish the _honour of a service_  
So happy as that _mounts_ to . . .  
It's a _service_ that I kneel for to you.

(II.ii.92–117)

The final irony of this exchange lies in the way that Beatrice's complicity in equivocation draws Deflores so deeply into his own courtly charade that he begins to take it as reality: for when he returns to announce the fulfilment of the 'service' that he 'sued and kneel'd for' (III.iii.23, 54, 110), he appears genuinely outraged at her offer of mere financial recompense, responding with the indignation appropriate to a deliberate violation of social decorum:

What, _salary_? Now you move me . . .  
Do you place me in the _rank_ of _verminous fellows_ ,  
To destroy things for _wages_? Offer _gold_? . . .

I could ha' _hir'd_

A _journeyman_ in murder at this rate,  
And mine own conscience might have slept at ease,  
And have had the work brought home.

(III.iii. 63–71)

'Salary', 'wages', 'hire': to soil oneself with such considerations is to be reduced from the stately rank of a gentleman to the rank state of a menial, some louse-ridden peasant, or mercenary tradesman. If she chooses to disparage him in this fashion – instead of raising him to her level with the reward that courtly convention dictates – then he will debase her in the act of revolutionary levelling that becomes the ground of his sexual conquest:

Look but into your conscience, read me there –  
'Tis a true book, you'll find me there your equal.  
Push! fly not to your birth, but settle you  
In what the act has made you, you're no more now –  
You must forget your parentage to me.

(III.iii.132–6)

Playing on Beatrice's appeal to 'the distance that _creation_ / Set 'twixt thy blood and mine' (ll. 130–1) he disparages her with a contemptuous term for the most servile kind of lackey ('You're the deed's _creature_ ', 1. 137), consigning her to a moral enslavement that matches his own social abjection:

by that name

You lost your first condition; and I challenge you,  
As peace and innocency has turn'd you out;  
And made you one with me.

(III.iii.137–40)

Like husband and wife they have become 'one flesh', joined – as we are reminded by the play's recurrent punning on the 'blood' that once stood for noble birth, but that now represents only the imperatives of desire and the brute fact of murder – by the very thing that once divided them; 'Justice invites your _blood_ to understand me' (1. 100). Confronting his accusers in the final scene, Deflores makes it clear that his conquest of Beatrice-Joanna is the delicious extreme of a servingman's revenge: where his mistress once rebuked him for seeking to make Alonzo's death 'the murderer of my honour' (III.iii.122), he now proclaims possession of a 'reward' that consists less in the enjoyment of her body, than in his capture of 'her _honour_ 's prize' – his triumphant assault on the very attribute of rank that set her so humiliatingly above him. Standing possessed of this deeply sexualised object of the hatred and desire that made him 'as greedy . . . As the parched earth of moisture' (III.iii.107–8), Deflores exults in a usurpation so absolute that it amounts to an act of revolutionary annihilation:

I thank life for nothing

But that pleasure; it was so sweet to me  
That I have drunk up all, left none behind  
For any man to pledge me.

(V.iii.168–71)

### **Performance History**

_The Changeling_ was licensed by Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, on 7 May 1622 for performance by the Lady Elizabeth's Men at the Phoenix, an indoor playhouse belonging to Christopher Beeston and situated in Drury Lane, close to the most fashionable part of London. Although surviving records are sparse, it seems to have enjoyed immediate and continuing success, being chosen for a court performance on 4 January 1623/4, and remaining in the Phoenix repertory until 1636, when Beeston thought it valuable enough to appeal to the Lord Chamberlain after a breakaway company took it to the Salisbury Court. Following Beeston's death in 1638, his son William was careful to have his own rights to the play confirmed by the Chamberlain's office, and it stayed in his possession until the outbreak of civil war closed the theatres in 1642. After the Restoration, _The Changeling_ was among the first plays to be revived at the re-opened Salisbury Court, where Pepys saw the Duke of York's Company perform it on 23 February, 1660/1, reporting that 'it takes exceedingly'. His claim is borne out by the fact that it was again staged at Court on 30 November 1668. Evidently it continued in the company's repertory well after their move to their new scenic theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1661. By the 1670s, however, the tragedy must have begun to seem old-fashioned; and in the high Restoration theatre, with its self-consciously neo-classical aesthetic, it descended into the oblivion shared by most pre-war plays: apart from an adaptation by William Hayley, entitled _Marcella_ , which had three performances in November 1789, there are no records of any further revivals before the mid-twentieth century.

Oddly enough, much of the play's early reputation seems to have depended on what is sometimes dismissed as an inferior sub-plot. Seventeenth-century allusions typically single out 'the changeling', Antonio, as the centre of dramatic interest; and a series of comic actors, including William Robbins and Timothy Reade, achieved fame in the role. Even after the Restoration, John Downes placed Thomas Sheppey's Antonio on a par with the great Betterton's early triumph as Deflores. Only the great popularity of the part can account for the inclusion of 'The Changeling' among the gallery of characters displayed in the frontispiece of Francis Kirkman's _The Wits_ (1672) – even though no such personage actually appears in this collection of 'drolls' (Fig. 4). In the twentieth century, by contrast, the revival of critical interest fostered by T. S. Eliot, William Empson, Una Ellis-Fermor and others decisively shifted the focus of attention away from the comic world of Antonio to the tragic story of Beatrice-Joanna and Deflores. However, just as more recent criticism has tended to emphasise the coherence of the whole design, so the most successful stage versions have invariably been those that have sought to realise the close integration of the sub-plot, without which the tragic action can feel crowded and improbably hasty.

**Figure 4.** Frontispiece to Francis Kirkman, _The Wits_ (1672). Courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

The lead here was given by Tony Richardson's landmark production for the English Stage Company at the Royal Court in 1961. Although this was promoted as the first revival since Pepys, there had in fact been scattered amateur productions in London (1950, 1954) and Oxford (1956), as well as radio versions in 1950 and 1960. But it was the Royal Court that successfully advertised _The Changeling_ 's claims to a permanent place in the classical repertoire. Richardson admired the play for the modernity he recognised in the 'almost Strindbergian love-hate relationship' between Beatrice and Deflores, in its 'existentialist' approach to individual responsibility, and in the boldness of its generic mixtures; and, although some reviewers were disconcerted by his emphasis on 'abrupt switches from farce to thriller, and from thriller to tragedy,' others were surprised to discover a tragedy that resembled _Macbeth_ in its unblinking analysis of characters who become trapped in the consequences of their own crimes.

The success of the Royal Court's initiative helped to ensure a steady trickle of revivals over the next fifteen years, including productions by the Oxford Stage Company (Jeanette Cochrane Theatre, 1966), the Birmingham Repertory Theatre (1973), and the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre (1976), as well as television adaptations by Granada (4 January 1965), and the BBC (20 January 1974), while across the Atlantic it began its American stage life with a production by Elia Kazan for the Lincoln Center Repertory Company in 1964. _The Changeling_ 's popularity reached a new peak between September 1978 and June 1979, when there were no fewer than six professional productions on the British stage, with notable versions by Peter Gill at the Riverside Studios and Terry Hands at the Royal Shakespeare Company's Aldwych Theatre.

Like Richardson, both Gill and Hands stressed the close thematic relationship between the two plots. Hands, in particular, made their juxtaposition seem less discordant by emphasising the savage verbal wit and elements of black comedy in the main plot – though some reviewers were troubled by a 'note of exultant farce' that seemed to compromise the tragic catastrophe. Both directors made imaginative use of the madhouse scenes: Gill's capering madmen 'congregate[d] beneath the audience, howling and banging instruments before spilling out on to the stage' where their postures echoed the Dance of Death murals of Elizabeth Da Costa's set; between scenes they were used to move furniture and props 'as if to evoke the way insanity suddenly invades the main plot.' Hands' lunatics remained on stage throughout the final movement of the play, providing a silent commentary on the madness consuming Alsemero's household, while lighting that fell in parallel bars across the stage suggested that castle and madhouse alike were simply different kinds of prison. In each case, parallels in characterisation and plot were underlined by the staging: at the Riverside, Beatrice and Isabella were made to 'pass each other in opposite directions like two mirror images, each invisible to the other'; at the Aldwych, Lollio spied on Antonio's wooing of Isabella in III.ii from the same concealed position that Deflores had used to observe Alsemero's wooing of Beatrice in II.ii. Both productions implied 'that uncontrolled sexuality is madness', but Hands' relatively restrained treatment of Isabella's wooing scenes seemed to indicate 'that the mad are more controlled in their desires than the sane.'

Such was the interest generated by these productions that the following decade alone witnessed a further twenty-six professional revivals. Television adaptations were mounted by the BBC in 1974 and 1993, and by the 1990s _The Changeling_ 's reputation was sufficiently established to generate a series of experimental re-visionings evidently intended to breathe new life into an all-too-familiar classic. Many of these productions, including the television versions, dispensed with the sub-plot; but the best work generally followed the pattern set by Richardson, Gill, and Hands, treating Isabella's story as a satiric meta-commentary on Beatrice-Joanna's tragedy. Thus, for example, Richard Eyre's 1988 National Theatre production opened with a dumb-show featuring a pile of bodies representing the denizens of an asylum; as the bodies began to stir, 'o]ut of the pile emerge[d] the figure of Beatrice-Joanna' who was placed 'puppet-like, on the stage', to be followed by the equally puppet-like figure of Alsemero. At the end of the play the lunatics reappeared as Alsemero stepped forward to speak his epilogue; grouping themselves 'as in the opening dumb-show,' they surrounded him at the conclusion of his speech and took him back to the pile of bodies. Other details of the staging further underlined the connections between the play's two worlds: 'the asylum's inmates, dressed in grey, [resembled] shadows of the castle's inmates', whose lives 'they mirrored only a little distortedly'; while, 'in a witty piece of grouping . . . De Flores and his madhouse counterpart, Lollio, literally look[ed] down on this world of tormented . . . lust from a curved balcony high up in the roof.' In William Dudley's set, church, castle, and madhouse were indiscriminately 'dominated by a great iron grill', once again emphasising the 'concern with imprisonment' in both plots; and, in a particularly effective touch, the Lyttelton stage was fitted with a false proscenium, supported on either side by two zig-zagging staircases over which Alibius' madmen swarmed in contorted postures, framing the entire action of the play ([Fig. 5).

**Figure 5.** Set for the 1988 National Theatre Production. Photograph by Jock McDougall.

The idea of madness as a unifying theme was continued in Michael Attenborough's 1993 Royal Shakespeare production, whose programme was decorated with a collage of quotations on the subject, including a passage from _As You Like It:_ 'Love is merely a madness; and . . . deserves a dark house and a whip as madmen do.' This was an explanatory strategy borrowed from Terry Hands' programme for the same company, which contained information about various forms of mental illness – as did those for the Contact Theatre Company (1978) and the Crucible Theatre Company (1984), both of which cited R. D. Laing's then fashionable study of schizophrenia, _The Divided Self_. The idea of psychological splitting has been mirrored in a succession of programme covers – beginning with the Riverside production – where a female portrait is either split like a mask to reveal another face beneath, or divided into a light and dark side. In the text itself it is Beatrice-Joanna whom Alsemero accuses of having worn a 'black mask' or 'visor / O'er her] cunning face' (V.iii.3, 47–8), but in production the idea has more often been projected onto Deflores: at the Aldwych, for example, Emrys James wore a half-mask – ostensibly to conceal his deformity, but also suggesting a split personality, like that figured in the red birthmark covering half of Bob Hoskins' face in the 1993 television adaptation ([Fig. 3). It was Beatrice's divided self that was represented, however, in the more elaborately theatrical version of this conceit that Hands added to the wedding masque in Act IV: here, while Beatrice was 'married in effigy to her beloved Alsemero . . . at the back of the stage her actual body [was] enthusiastically humped by De Flores.'

Whilst the theme of universal madness has provided a number of directors with the key to establishing a proper relationship between the tragic and comic halves of the play, few have been as successful in developing a satisfactory balance between its twin protagonists. Reviewers have typically blamed this on the shortcomings of individual performances, but its root cause may lie in directorial failure to completely grasp the social parameters on which the psychology of Middleton and Rowley's characters depends. Actors who stress the passive, child-like side of Beatrice, easily fall in the shadow of Deflores; those who emphasize her wilfullness and aggressive sexuality, tend to diminish the terrifying force of his personality. In Richardson's production, for example, Mary Ure seemed a mere puppet in the hands of Robert Shaw's Deflores, who impressed reviewers with the 'dark fire' of an 'artist in hatred', driven to extremes of villainy by the irresistible force of 'obsessive desires'; and at the Riverside, Emma Piper was generally upstaged by Brian Cox's powerful but surprisingly sympathetic villain (Fig. 6), whose 'pain . . . [and] self-hatred . . . offset by . . . brutal intelligence and terrifying bursts of speech' almost persuaded Robert Cushman that he was the real victim of the play.

**Figure 6.** Deflores as sympathetic villain: Brian Cox (Deflores) and Emma Piper (Beatrice-Joanna) at the Riverside Studios, 1978. Photograph by Douglas H. Jeffery, courtesy of Riverside Studios.

By contrast, the 'voluptuous magnetism' of Diana Quick's Aldwych Beatrice (Fig. 7), with her 'see-nipples-and-die costume', not only eclipsed Emrys James' abstract, intellectualised, and rather 'avuncular' Deflores, but seemed hard to reconcile with the naivety apparent in her response to the murder (' 'tis impossible thou canst be so wicked . . . To make his death the murderer of my honour' III.iii.120–3); as a result, the panic that overwhelms the heroine after her marriage ('This fellow has undone me endlessly' IV.i.1) was shorn of pathos, provoking only incredulous laughter from the audience. Similar problems beset Elizabeth McGovern's otherwise fascinating performance in the second BBC adaptation (11 December 1993). McGovern made Beatrice's peculiar combination of naivety, sensuality, and solipsistic wilfulness seem entirely plausible: from the beginning she was able to suggest an undercurrent of sick fascination in her aversion to Deflores; but by overplaying the element of deliberate erotic temptation in the scene where she engages him as Alonzo's murderer, she made Beatrice's shocked reaction to the servant's demand for sexual reward appear comically improbable. It was perhaps because her surrender seemed prompted as much by her own secret desires as by Deflores' threats and importunities, that her degradation from virgin to whore was registered with such crudity in the final scene: Alsemero (Hugh Grant) came upon his wife at her dressing-table, decked out in a scarlet petticoat and low-cut corset that contrasted with the severe black of the other costumes, her cheeks daubed with heavy rouge and a conspicuous beauty-spot, and a goblet of red wine clutched in her unsteady hand. The completeness of this transformation was registered by the way in which her ostensibly penitent speech of farewell was spoken as she caressed Deflores' face, before he died with his head cradled in her lap.

**Figure 7.** Beatrice as sensual temptress: Diana Quick as Beatrice-Joanna and Emrys James as Deflores, Royal Shakespeare Company, 1978. Photograph by Reg Wilson, courtesy of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

A better balance was achieved by the Royal Shakespeare Company's pairing of Malcolm Storry and Cheryl Campbell in the 1993 RSC version: less ugly than usual, this Deflores exhibited a 'charm, wit, and intelligence' that made him a plausible partner for Campbell's selfish aristocrat, so that they became true 'partners in evil: she . . . no less infatuated than he'. This production was more explicit than any of its predecessors about the admixture of sick attraction tainting Beatrice's obsessive aversion to Deflores from the beginning: just as he could not be in the same room 'without digesting her from top to toe', so 'she [could not] be near him without enjoying his cannibalism;' and what began as duel 'between coquettish freedom and insane devotion' emerged as 'a warped [and surprisingly moving] love-story' whose dying protagonists 'are in a way as striking as Antony and Cleopatra or Romeo and Juliet. Only their world is different.'

The main weakness of this conspicuously post-Freudian version was that it seemed to leave the central love affair unanchored in any readily comprehensible social context. This was something that Richard Eyre had consciously sought to address at the National Theatre in 1988. Searching for a way 'to make more visibly apparent the Jacobean interdependence of rank and money' and to reanimate the tensions generated by the social gap between the protagonists, Eyre settled on race as a substitute for rank and set his production in a nineteenth-century Spanish slave colony. George Harris' Deflores, a freed man appointed as steward to Vermandero's household, was 'no Jacobean cutpurse, but a lordly black in white livery who clearly awakes fierce sexual longings in his mistress'. 'Tall and] dignified,' with conspicuous tribal scars replacing the pock-marks of the script ([Fig. 8), Harris was 'an engaging, simple villain', who gave 'a performance of remarkable containment,' marked by 'a cool, sometimes chilling nonchalance'. The introduction of colour as a motivating factor in the central relationship had a complex effect: it made unexpected capital out of the play's debt to _Othello_ by creating a Deflores who was not merely a reworking of Iago, but who attracted some of the pathos of Shakespeare's Moor by virtue of his status as a racial outsider – thereby inviting further sympathy for his transgressive relationship with Beatrice. However, Harris' 'limited ability to explore the rhythms of the verse' meant that he was unable to exploit the ferocious ironies of Deflores' language, and his emotional restraint made for a certain lack of electricity between the lovers, so that in the end 'the promised evocation of passion fail[ed] to materialise.'

**Figure 8.** The death scene: George Harris as Deflores and Miranda Richardson as Beatrice-Joanna, National Theatre, 1988. Photograph by John Haynes.

Different problems beset Simon Curtis' attempt to evoke a social context for his 1993 television adaptation. Making creative use of the small screen to build up the claustrophobic feel of the castle's interior spaces, Curtis gives peculiar intensity to the exchanges between Beatrice and her rival lovers: the wooing scene between Alsemero and Beatrice, dominated by heavily barred windows, from behind which the camera itself first observes the scene – rather as Deflores spies on the lovers from a gallery above – becomes particularly oppressive. However, despite its meticulously rendered Jacobean costumes and set designs that carefully mimic seventeenth-century Dutch interiors, this is a production that seems oddly insensitive to the play's historical dimensions, not just in its strenuously naturalistic acting style, which often obscures the nuances of the verse, but in its treatment of Deflores and Diaphanta as servants who belong to a completely different regime of service from the one imagined by Middleton and Rowley. While the play is careful to specify that both servants are of gentle birth, Bob Hoskins and Adie Allen speak in accents that clearly set them apart from the castle's elite. As a result the erotic tension between Deflores and Beatrice seems to derive more from the nineteenth-century class hostility that animates a play like _Miss Julie_ , than from the specifically early modern anxieties about 'rank' and 'place' that give Middleton and Rowley's dialogue its vicious cutting edge. A contemporary audience need not be expected to understand the historical particularity of the emotions that drive the protagonists of this tragedy to their doom, but it is, I believe, essential for directors and actors to do so, if they are bring this five hundred year-old masterpiece alive.

### **A Note on the Text**

_The Changeling_ survives in a single seventeenth-century edition whose nature and textual source are discussed in the Appendix. The present edition has been prepared using N. W. Bawcutt's facsimile of the British Library copy (shelfmark 162.k.10), collated with copies from the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Folger Shakespeare Library (including a copy of the 1668 issue). The text has been thoroughly modernised; and since the punctuation of Q is often careless, bearing little relation to what we know of the dramatists' own practice, I have altered it freely, while being as attentive as possible to whatever clues it may have to offer about meaning; spelling conforms as much as possible to modern practice, and (where it does not affect the metre) I have amended some of Q's contracted forms to their modern equivalents – so that 'y'are', for example, becomes 'you're' – in a fashion that seems to me in accord with the colloquial feel of the play's style.

The five act divisions are those of Q, and correspond to the staging practice of the indoor theatres, where the dramatic action was habitually punctuated by four entractes, which provided the occasion for musical interludes. The scene divisions, by contrast, follow those proposed by Dyce and adopted by nearly all subsequent editors – except that I have amalgamated Dyce's III.i and III.ii, on the grounds that, although the stage is technically empty for a brief period, the action – as indicated by the s.d. _'Exeunt at one door and enter at the other_ ' – is imagined as continuous.

## **FURTHER READING**

### **Editions**

N. W. Bawcutt, ed., _The Changeling_ , Revels Plays (London 1958). A reliable text with a comprehensive and lively introduction.

N. W. Bawcutt, ed., _The Changeling_ , Revels Student Edition (Manchester 1998). An updated and simplified version of the original Revels edition, aimed at A-level students and junior undergraduates.

Joost Daalder, ed., _The Changeling_ , New Mermaids (London 1990)

G. W. Williams, ed., _The Changeling_ , Regents Renaissance Drama (London 1967). Reliable student edition, beginning to show its age.

### **Reception and Performance History**

Roberta Barker and David Nicol, 'Does Beatrice Joanna Have a Subtext?: _The Changeling_ on the London Stage,' _Early Modern Literary Studies_ 10.1 (May, 2004): 3.1–43 (18). Feminist essay which uses recent performance history to critique the notion of Beatrice's unconscious infatuation with Deflores.

Sara Jayne Steen, _Ambrosia in an Earthen Vessel: Three Centuries of Audience and Reader Response to the Works of Thomas Middleton_ (New York 1993). Useful guide to the play's reception on stage and in the study.

### **Authorship**

Cyrus Hoy, 'The Shares of Fletcher and his Collaborators in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon (V),' _Studies in Bibliography_ 13 (1960), 77–108. The first systematic attempt to assign the shares of Middleton and Rowley in _The Changeling_.

MacD. P. Jackson, _Studies in Attribution in Middleton and Shakespeare_ (University of Salzburg: Salzburg 1979). A key text in the establishment of the Middleton canon; Jackson was a pioneer of the contemporary scientific approach to authorship studies.

### **Critical Studies**

Thomas L. Berger, 'The Petrarchan Fortress of _The Changeling_ ,' in G. W. Williams, ed., _Renaissance Papers_ (1969), 185–212. Excellent account of Middleton and Rowley's quasi-allegorical use of Vermandero's castle and its relation to medieval love-allegory.

Bruce Boehrer, 'Alsemero's Closet,' _JEGP_ 96 (1997) 349–68. Stimulating exploration of the motif of secrets in the play.

Muriel Bradbrook, _Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy_ , 2nd ed. (Cambridge 1980). Key text in the establishment of the play's seriousness; gives a rather negative account of the sub-plot.

Norman A. Brittin, _Thomas Middleton_ (New York 1971). Useful general introduction to Middleton's writing.

Lois E. Bueler, 'The Rhetoric of Change in _The Changeling,' ELR_ 14 (1984), 95–113. Explores the significance of the play's title.

Mark Thornton Burnett, _'The Changeling_ and Masters and Servants,' in Garrett A. Sullivan, Patrick Cheney, and Andrew Hadfield, eds., _Early Modern English Drama: A Critical Companion_ (New York 2006), pp. 298–308. Sound essay on the play's social parameters.

Swapan Chakravorty, _Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton_ , (Oxford 1996). Historicist monograph which includes an excellent chapter on _The Changeling_.

Anthony B. Dawson, 'Giving the Finger: Puns and Transgression in _The Changeling_ ', in A. L. Magnusson and C. E. McGee, eds., _The Elizabethan Theatre_ XII (Toronto 1993), pp. 93–112. Outstanding essay on Middleton and Rowley's word-play.

Dorothy M. Farr, _Thomas Middleton and the Drama of Realism_ (New York 1973). Sensible introductory study.

T. S. Eliot, 'Thomas Middleton', in _Elizabethan Dramatists_ (London 1927). Eliot's essay, with its sensitive response to the play's verse, played an important part in the early twentieth-century rehabilitation of Middleton.

Roger Holdsworth, ed., _Three Jacobean Revenge Tragedies_ (London 1990). Casebook which includes an excellent selection of essays on _The Changeling_ , representing a variety of more recent approaches.

David M. Holmes, _The Art of Thomas Middleton_ (Oxford 1970). Another sound introductory study.

Lisa Hopkins, 'Beguiling the Master of the Mystery,' _MRDE_ 9 (1997) 149–61. A feminist account of the play's symbolic topography which complements Boehrer's study of secrets.

Robert Jordan, 'Myth and Psychology in _The Changeling,' RenD_ ns.2 (1970), 157–65. Explores the play's use of mythic material to illuminate the psychology of its characters.

Mohammed Kowsar, 'Middleton and Rowley's _The Changeling:_ The Besieged Temple,' _Criticism_ 28 (1986), 145–66. The castle as a bastion of patriarchal law and authority.

Anne Lancashire, 'The Emblematic Castle in Shakespeare and Middleton,' in J. C. Gray, ed., _Mirror up to Shakespeare: Essays in Honour of G. R. Hibbard_ (Toronto 1984), pp. 223–41. Beginning as an emblem of female chastity, Vermandero's castle ends as a version of Macbeth's hell-castle.

Richard Levin, _The Multiple Plot in English Renaissance Drama_ (Chicago 1971). Places _The Changeling_ in the context of other plays making use of double-plot designs.

T. McAlindon, _English Renaissance Tragedy_ (London 1986) Introductory study with a good essay on _The Changeling_.

Cristina Malcolmson, '"As Tame as the Ladies": Politics and Gender in _The Changeling,' ELR_ 20 (1990), 320–39. Lively feminist reading.

Michael Neill, '"Hidden Malady": Death, Discovery, and Indistinction in _The Changeling_ ,' in _Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy_ (Oxford 1997). Links the play's symbolic topography with the motif of secrets.

—— 'Servant Obedience & Master Sins: Shakespeare and the Bonds of Service,' in _Putting History to the Question: Power, Politics and Society in English Renaissance Drama_ (New York 2000). A wide-ranging essay which complements Burnett's account of the motif of service in _The Changeling_.

—— '"A woman's service": Gender, Subordination, and the Erotics of Rank in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries,' _Shakespearean International Yearbook_ 5 (2005), 127–44. Places _The Changeling_ alongside _Twelfth Night_ and _All's Well that Ends Well_ as a study of the erotic aspects of domestic subversion.

Robert Ornstein, _The Moral Vision of Jacobean Tragedy_ (Madison 1960). Old-fashioned, but still persuasive account of the play's ethical dimension.

Christopher Ricks, 'The Moral and Poetic Structure of _The Changeling,' E.Crit_. 10 (1960), 296–99. Classic study of Middleton's word-play.

Leo Salingar, _Dramatic Form in Shakespeare and the Jacobeans_ (Cambridge 1986). Includes a solid account of the play's design and its use of the double-plot.

—— ' _The Changeling_ and the Drama of Domestic Life,' _E &S 33_ (1979) 92–3. _The Changeling_ as domestic tragedy.

Michael Scott, _The Changeling_ (London 1989). Compact introductory study with a useful account of the play's performance history.

J. L. Simmons, 'Diabolical Realism in Middleton and Rowley's _The Changeling,' RenD_ ns 11 (1980), 135–70. Links the play both to early modern demonology and to Jacobean court scandal.

Anne Pasternak Slater, 'Hypallage, Barley-brake, and _The Changeling_ ,' _RES_ 34 (1983), 429–40. Uses the rhetorical figure of hypallage (reversal) as a key to the play's design.

Roger Stilling, _Love and Death in Renaissance Tragedy_ (Baton Rouge 1976). Wide-ranging study of the erotics of death and dying.

T. B. Tomlinson, _Elizabethan and Jacobean Tragedy_ (Cambridge 1964). Combative Leavisite account of English Renaissance drama.

Martin Wiggins, _Journeymen in Murder: The Assassin in English Renaissance Drama_ (Oxford 1991). Relates the character of Deflores to other tool-villains in the drama of the period.

Martin White, _Middleton and Tourneur_ (New York 1992). Lively introductory study.

### **Sources**

John Reynolds, _The Triumph of God's Revenge_ (1621). The full text of this is available at www.acblack.com/thechangeling.

## **ABBREVIATIONS**

### **Editions**

Bawcutt (1958) | N. W. Bawcutt, ed., _The Changeling_ , Revels Plays (London 1958)

---|---

Bawcutt (1998) | N. W. Bawcutt, ed., _The Changeling_ , Revels Student Edition (Manchester 1998)

Black | M. W. Black, ed., _The Changeling_ (Philadelphia 1966)

Bruster | Douglas Bruster, ed., _The Changeling_ , in Gary Taylor et al., eds., _The Oxford Middleton_ (Oxford – forthcoming)

Dilke | C. W. Dilke, ed., _Old English Plays_ Vol. 4 (London 1815)

Dyce | Alexander Dyce, ed., _The Works of Thomas Middleton_ Vol. 4 (London 1840)

Ellis | Havelock Ellis, ed., _Thomas Middleton_ Vol. 1 (London 1887)

Frost | David Frost, ed., _The selected plays of Thomas Middleton_ (Cambridge 1978)

Sampson | M. W. Sampson, ed., _Thomas Middleton_ (London 1915)

Williams | G. W. Williams, ed., _The Changeling_ , Regents Renaissance Drama (London )

### **Other Abbreviations**

Bacon | Francis Bacon, _Essays_ , intro. Oliphant Smeaton (London 1906)

---|---

Barker and Nicol | Roberta Barker and David Nicol, 'Does Beatrice Joanna Have a Subtext?: _The Changeling_ on the London Stage,' _Early Modern Literary Studies_ 10.1 (May, 2004): 3.1–43 (18)

Chakravorty | Swapan Chakravorty, _Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton_ , (Oxford 1996)

Craik | T. W. Craik, proposed emendations in _NQ_ , March-April 1977, 120–2, and August 1980, 324–7

Dent | R. W. Dent, _Shakespeare's Proverbial Language: An Index_ (Berkeley, Calif., 1981)

_E.Crit_. | _Essays in Criticism_

_ELR_ | _English Literary Renaissance_

_Gerardo_ | Gonzalo de Sespedes y Menses's novel _Gerardo The Unfortunate Spaniard_ , trans. Leonard Digges (London 1622)

Holdsworth | Roger Holdsworth, ed., _Three Jacobean Revenge Tragedies_ (London 1990)

'I.M.' | 'I.M.' in _A Health to the Gentlemanly Profession of Servingmen; or, The Servingmans Comfort_ (London 1598)

_N &Q_ | _Notes and Queries_

Neill, 'Hidden Malady' | Michael Neill, _Issues of Death_ (Oxford 1997), Chapter 4, '"Hidden Malady": Death, Discovery, and Indistinction in _The Changeling_.'

_OED_ | _Oxford English Dictionary_

Partridge | Eric Partridge, _Shakespeare's Bawdy_ (London 1947)

Q | 1653 quarto of _The Changeling_

Reynolds | John Reynolds, _The Triumph of God's Revenge_ (London 1621)

Shakespeare | _The Arden Shakespeare: Complete Works_ , ed. Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson and David Scott Kastan (Walton-on-Thames 1998)

Tilley | M. P. Tilley, _A Dictionary of Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries_ (Ann Arbor 1950)

_TLS_ | _Times Literary Supplement_

Williams, _Dictionary_ | Gordon Williams, _A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature_ , 3 vols. (London 1994)

Williams, _Glossary_ | Gordon Williams, _A Glossary of Shakespeare's Sexual Language_ (London 1997)

## **KEY**

**A GUIDE TO THE EDITED VERSION OF THE PLAY TEXT**

**Copy-text**. This is explained in the Note on the Text.

New Mermaids preserve the words of the original copy-text, and the verse lineation, but modernise spelling and punctuation, making the plays more accessible to readers.

**s.p.** = speech prefix, these are in CAPITALS

**s.d.** = stage direction. These are printed in italic to distinguish them from the spoken text. Additional stage directions inserted by the Editor for clarification are in [square brackets]. A stage direction that is centred denotes a key moment of action in the play.

**Verse lines are**

Staggered when distributed between

Two or more speakers

**ed.** = editorial emendation: wherever the editor has made a substantial change to the copy-text this is recorded in a footnote. The footnote will give the emended reading followed in brackets by the copy-text reading. The editor may also add a note in explanation.
_Title_ The word 'changeling' had a range of meanings, nearly all of which seem relevant: the nominal 'changeling' of the play is the pretended fool Antonio, whose disguise provides the opportunity for the 'amazing . . . change' with which he (like his rival, Franciscus) hopes to stun Beatrice into submission (III.iii.118–21); but Antonio's choice of masquerade is a reminder that 'changeling' also meant a 'half-witted person, idiot or imbecile' ( _OED_ n. 4). This meaning must have derived from what is probably the word's most familiar sense – one metaphorically appropriate to Beatrice's transformation from beautiful virgin to '[deformed] whore' (V.iii.31, 77) – 'a child (usually stupid or ugly) supposed to have been left by fairies in exchange for one stolen' ( _OED_ n. 3). More simply it referred to 'one given to change, a fickle or inconstant person' ( _OED_ n. 1) – a sense fitting not only Beatrice, whose 'giddy turning' leads her twice to 'change [her] saint' (I.i.153–4), but Alsemero, whose conversion from fearless traveller to abject lover fills Jasperino with incredulity ('have you changed your orisons?' I.i.34). Finally, a 'changeling' might also be 'a person . . . (surreptitiously) put in exchange for another' ( _OED_ n. 2) – a sense made apposite by Deflores' adulterous usurpation of Alsemero, and even more conspicuously by Diaphanta's role as Beatrice's physical surrogate on the wedding night. (For other possible applications, see Frost p. 413).

## **DRAMATIS PERSONAE**

[ _In the castle_ ]

|

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VERMANDERO, _father to Beatrice_

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TOMAZO DE PIRACQUO, _a noble lord_

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ALONZO DE PIRACQUO, _his brother, suitor to Beatrice_

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ALSEMERO, _a nobleman, afterwards married to Beatrice_ | 5

JASPERINO, _hisfriend_

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DEFLORES, _servant to Vermandero_

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BEATRICE, _daughter to Vermandero_

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DIAPHANTA, _her waiting woman_

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[Gentlemen and Gallants | 10

Gentlewomen]

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Servants

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[ _In the madhouse_ ]

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ALIBIUS, _a jealous doctor_

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LOLLIO, _his man_ | 15

PEDRO, _friend to Antonio_

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ANTONIO, _thechangeling_

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FRANCISCUS, _the counterfeit madman_

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ISABELLA, _wife to Alibius_

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Madmen | 20

[Fools]

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**THE SCENE:** _Alicant_

| 

### **ACT I. [SCENE i.]**

_Enter_ ALSEMERO

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[ALSEMERO]

|

'Twas in the temple where I first beheld her,

|

And now again the same – what omen yet

|

Follows of that? None but imaginary.

|

Why should my hopes of fate be timorous?

|

The place is holy, so is my intent; | 5

I love her beauties to the holy purpose,

|

And that, methinks, admits comparison

|

With man's first creation – the place blest,

|

And is his right home back, if he achieve it.

|

The church hath first begun our interview, | 10

And that's the place must join us into one,

|

So there's beginning and perfection too.

|

_Enter_ JASPERINO

|

JASPERINO

|

O sir, are you here? Come, the wind's fair with you:

|

You're like to have a swift and pleasant passage.

|

ALSEMERO

|

Sure you're deceivèd, friend – 'tis contrary | 15

In my best judgement.

|

JASPERINO What, for Malta?

|

If you could buy a gale amongst the witches,

|

They could not serve you such a lucky penn'orth

|

As comes a' God's name.

|

ALSEMERO Even now I observed

|

The temple's vane to turn full in my face; | 20

I know it is against me.

|

JASPERINO Against you?

|

Then you know not where you are.

|

ALSEMERO Not well indeed.

|

JASPERINO

|

Are you not well, sir?

|

ALSEMERO Yes, Jasperino –

|

Unless there be some hidden malady

|

Within me that I understand not.

|

JASPERINO And that | 25

I begin to doubt, sir: I never knew

|

Your inclination to travels at a pause

|

With any cause to hinder it till now.

|

Ashore you were wont to call your servants up,

|

And help to trap your horses for the speed; | 30

At sea I have seen you weigh the anchor with 'em,

|

Hoist sails for fear to lose the foremost breath,

|

Be in continual prayers for fair winds –

|

And have you changed your orisons?

|

ALSEMERO No, friend,

|

I keep the same church, same devotion. | 35

JASPERINO

|

Lover I'm sure you're none: the stoic

|

Was found in you long ago; your mother

|

Nor best friends, who have set snares of beauty –

|

Ay, and choice ones too – could never trap you that way.

|

What might be the cause?

|

ALSEMERO Lord, how violent | 40

Thou art! I was but meditating of

|

Somewhat I heard within the temple.

|

JASPERINO

|

Is this violence? 'Tis but idleness

|

Compared with your haste yesterday.

|

ALSEMERO

|

I'm all this while a-going, man. | 45

_Enter_ SERVANTS

|

JASPERINO

|

Backwards, I think, sir. Look, your servants.

|

1 SERVANT

|

The seamen call: shall we board your trunks?

|

ALSEMERO

|

No, not today.

|

JASPERINO 'Tis the critical day

|

It seems, and the sign in Aquarius.

|

2 SERVANT [ _Aside_ ]

|

We must not to sea today, this smoke will bring forth fire. | 50

ALSEMERO

|

Keep all on shore. I do not know the end –

|

Which needs I must do – of an affair in hand

|

Ere I can go to sea.

|

1 SERVANT Well, your pleasure.

|

2 SERVANT [ _Aside_ ]

|

Let him e'en take his leisure too: we are safer on land.

|

_Exeunt_ SERVANTS

_Enter_ BEATRICE, DIAPHANTA, _and_ SERVANTS  
[ALSEMERO _greets_ BEATRICE _with a kiss_ ]

JASPERINO [ _Aside_ ]

|

How now! The laws of the Medes are changed, sure! Salute a | 55

woman? He kisses too – wonderful! Where learnt he this? And

|

does it perfectly too , he ne'er rehearsed it

|

before. Nay, go on: this will be stranger and better news at

|

Valencia than if he had ransomed half Greece from the Turk.

|

BEATRICE

|

You are a scholar, sir.

|

ALSEMERO A weak one, lady. | 60

BEATRICESA

|

Which of the sciences is this love you speak of?

|

ALSEMERO

|

From your tongue I take it to be music.

|

BEATRICE

|

You are skilful in't, can sing at first sight.

|

ALSEMERO

|

And I have showed you all my skill at once;

|

I want more words to express me further, | 65

And must be forced to repetition:

|

I love you dearly.

|

BEATRICE Be better advised, sir:

|

Our eyes are sentinels unto our judgements,

|

And should give certain judgement what they see;

|

But they are rash sometimes, and tell us wonders | 70

Of common things, which when our judgements find,

|

They can then check the eyes, and call them blind.

|

ALSEMERO

|

But I am further, lady; yesterday

|

Was mine eyes' employment, and hither now

|

They brought my judgement, where are both agreed. | 75

Both houses then consenting, 'tis agreed;

|

Only there wants the confirmation

|

By the hand royal – that is your part, lady.

|

BEATRICE

|

Oh, there's one above me, sir. [ _Aside_ ] For five days past

|

To be recalled! Sure mine eyes were mistaken: | 80

This was the man was meant me – that he should come

|

So near his time, and miss it!

|

JASPERINO

|

We might have come by the carriers from Valencia, I see, and

|

saved all our sea-provision; we are at farthest, sure. Methinks I

|

should do something too: I meant to be a venturer in this | 85

voyage. Yonder's another vessel, I'll board her – if she be lawful

|

prize, down goes her top-sail.

|

_Enter_ DEFLORES

|

DEFLORES

|

Lady, your father –

|

BEATRICE Is in health, I hope.

|

DEFLORES

|

Your eye shall instantly instruct you, lady:

|

He's coming hitherward.

|

BEATRICE What needed then | 90

Your duteous preface? I had rather

|

He had come unexpected. You must stall

|

A good presence with unnecessary blabbing;

|

And how welcome for your part you are,

|

I'm sure you know.

|

DEFLORES Wilt never mend this scorn, | 95

One side nor other? Must I be enjoined

|

To follow still whilst she flies from me? Well,

|

Fates do your worst, I'll please my self with sight

|

Of her, at all opportunities,

|

If but to spite her anger. I know she had | 100

Rather see me dead than living, and yet

|

She knows no cause for't but a peevish will.

|

ALSEMERO

|

You seemed displeasèd, lady, on the sudden.

|

BEATRICE

|

Your pardon, sir, 'tis my infirmity;

|

Nor can I other reason render you | 105

Than his or hers of some particular thing

|

They must abandon as a deadly poison,

|

Which to a thousand other tastes were wholesome:

|

Such to mine eyes is that same fellow there,

|

The same that report speaks of the basilisk. | 110

ALSEMERO

|

This is a frequent frailty in our nature;

|

There's scarce a man amongst a thousand sound,

|

But hath his imperfection: one distastes

|

The scent of roses, which to infinites

|

Most pleasing is, and odoriferous; | 115

One oil, the enemy of poison;

|

Another wine, the cheerer of the heart

|

And lively refresher of the countenance.

|

Indeed this fault – if so it be – is general:

|

There's scarce a thing but is both loved and loathed; | 120

Myself, I must confess, have the same frailty.

|

BEATRICE

|

And what may be your poison, sir? I'm bold with you.

|

ALSEMERO

|

What might be your desire perhaps – a cherry.

|

BEATRICE

|

I am no enemy to any creature

|

My memory has, but yon gentleman. | 125

ALSEMERO

|

He does ill to tempt your sight, if he knew it.

|

BEATRICE

|

He cannot be ignorant of that, sir:

|

I have not spared to tell him so; and I want

|

To help my self, since he's a gentleman

|

In good respect with my father, and follows him. | 130

ALSEMERO

|

He's out of his place then, now. [ _They talk apart_ ]

|

JASPERINO

|

I am a mad wag, wench.

|

DIAPHANTA

|

So methinks; but for your comfort I can tell you we have a

|

doctor in the city that undertakes the cure of such.

|

JASPERINO

|

Tush, I know what physic is best for the state of mine own body. | 135

DIAPHANTA

|

'Tis scarce a well governed state, I believe.

|

JASPERINO

|

I could show thee such a thing with an ingredient that we two

|

would compound together, and if it did not tame the maddest

|

blood i'th'town for two hours after, I'll ne'er profess physic

|

again. | 140

DIAPHANTA

|

A little poppy, sir, were good to cause you sleep.

|

JASPERINO

|

Poppy? I'll give thee a pop i'th' lips for that first, and begin there

|

 _Kisses her_ ]: poppy is one [simple indeed, and cuckoo-what-you-call't

|

another. I'll discover no more now; another time I'll show

|

thee all. | 145

BEATRICE

|

My father, sir.

|

_Enter_ VERMANDERO _and_ SERVANTS

|

VERMANDERO O Joanna, I came to meet thee.

|

Your devotion's ended?

|

BEATRICE For this time, sir.

|

 _Aside_ ] I shall [change my saint, I fear me: I find

|

A giddy turning in me. [ _Aloud_ ] Sir, this while

|

I am beholding to this gentleman | 150

Who left his own way to keep me company;

|

And in discourse I find him much desirous

|

To see your castle – he hath deserved it, sir,

|

If ye please to grant it.

|

VERMANDERO With all my heart, sir.

|

Yet there's an article between: I must know | 155

Your country. We use not to give survey

|

Of our chief strengths to strangers; our citadels

|

Are placed conspicuous to outward view,

|

On promonts' tops, but within are secrets.

|

ALSEMERO

|

A Valencian, sir.

|

VERMANDERO

|

A Valencian? | 160

That's native, sir – of what name, I beseech you?

|

ALSEMERO

|

Alsemero, sir.

|

VERMANDERO Alsemero! Not the son

|

Of John de Alsemero?

|

ALSEMERO The same, sir.

|

VERMANDERO

|

My best love bids you welcome.

|

BEATRICE He was wont

|

To call me so, and then he speaks a most | 165

Unfeignèd truth.

|

VERMANDERO O sir, I knew your father;

|

We two were in acquaintance long ago

|

Before our chins were worth Iulan down,

|

And so continued till the stamp of time

|

Had coined us into silver. Well, he's gone, | 170

A good soldier went with him.

|

ALSEMERO

|

You went together in that, sir.

|

VERMANDERO

|

No, by Saint Jacques, I came behind him.

|

Yet I have done somewhat too. An unhappy day

|

Swallowed him at last at Gibraltar | 175

In fight with those rebellious Hollanders –

|

Was it not so?

|

ALSEMERO Whose death I had revenged,

|

Or followed him in fate, had not the late league

|

Prevented me.

|

VERMANDERO Ay, ay, 'twas time to breathe.

|

Oh, Joanna, I should ha' told thee news, | 180

I saw Piracquo lately.

|

BEATRICE [ _Aside_ ] That's ill news.

|

VERMANDERO

|

He's hot preparing for his day of triumph,

|

Thou must be a bride within this sevennight.

|

ALSEMERO [ _Aside_ ] Ha!

|

BEATRICE

|

Nay, good sir, be not so violent: with speed

|

I cannot render satisfaction | 185

Unto the dear companion of my soul,

|

Virginity, whom I thus long have lived with,

|

And part with it so rude and suddenly.

|

Can such friends divide never to meet again,

|

Without a solemn farewell?

|

VERMANDERO Tush, tush! There's a toy. | 190

ALSEMERO [ _Aside_ ]

|

I must now part, and never meet again

|

With any joy on earth. [ _Aloud_ ] Sir, your pardon,

|

My affairs call on me.

|

VERMANDERO How, sir? By no means!

|

Not changed so soon, I hope? You must see my castle

|

And her best entertainment ere we part – | 195

I shall think myself unkindly usèd else.

|

Come, come, let's on. I had good hope your stay

|

Had been a while with us in Alicant;

|

I might have bid you to my daughter's wedding.

|

ALSEMERO [ _Aside_ ]

|

He means to feast me, and poisons me beforehand. | 200

[ _Aloud_ ] I should be dearly glad to be there, sir,

|

Did my occasions suit as I could wish.

|

BEATRICE

|

I shall be sorry if you be not there

|

When it is done, sir – but not so suddenly.

|

VERMANDERO

|

I tell you, sir, the gentleman's complete, | 205

A courtier and a gallant, enriched

|

With many fair and noble ornaments:

|

I would not change him for a son-in-law

|

For any he in Spain, the proudest he –

|

And we have great ones, that you know.

|

ALSEMERO He's much | 210

Bound to you, sir.

|

VERMANDERO He shall be bound to me,

|

As fast as this tie can hold him, I'll want

|

My will else.

|

BEATRICE  _Aside_ ] I shall want [mine if you do it.

|

VERMANDERO

|

But come, by the way, I'll tell you more of him:

|

ALSEMERO [ _Aside_ ]

|

How shall I dare to venture in his castle, | 215

When he discharges murderers at the gate?

|

But I must on, for back I cannot go.

|

BEATRICE [ _Aside_ ]

|

Not this serpent gone yet? [ _Drops a glove_ ]

|

VERMANDERO Look, girl, thy glove's fallen –

|

Stay, stay – Deflores, help a little.

|

DEFLORES Here, lady. [ _Offers the glove_ ]

|

BEATRICE

|

Mischief on your officious forwardness! | 220

Who bade you stoop? They touch my hand no more:

|

[ _Removes the other glove_ ]

There _ ] For t'other's sake I part with this –

|

Take 'em, and draw thine own skin off with 'em!

|

_Exeunt_ VERMANDERO, ALSEMERO, JASPERINO, _and_ SERVANTS

|

DEFLORES

|

Here's a favour come – with a mischief! Now I know

|

She had rather wear my pelt tanned in a pair | 225

Of dancing pumps than I should thrust my fingers

|

Into her sockets here. [ _Tries to pull the glove onto his hand_ ]

|

I know she hates me,

Yet cannot choose but love her.

|

No matter: if but to vex her, I'll haunt her still,

|

Though I get nothing else, I'll have my will. _Exit_ | 230

### **[ACT I. SCENE ii.]**

_Enter_ ALIBIUS _and_ LOLLIO

|

---|---

ALIBIUS

|

Lollio, I must trust thee with a secret,

|

But thou must keep it.

|

LOLLIO

|

I was ever close to a secret, sir.

|

ALIBIUS

|

The diligence that I have found in thee,

|

The care and industry already past | 5

Assures me of thy good continuance.

|

Lollio, I have a wife.

|

LOLLIO

|

Fie sir, 'tis too late to keep her secret: she's known to be married

|

all the town and country over.

|

ALIBIUS

|

Thou goest too fast, my Lollio. That knowledge | 10

I allow no man can be barred it;

|

But there is a knowledge which is nearer,

|

Deeper, and sweeter, Lollio.

|

LOLLIO

|

Well, sir, let us handle that between you and I.

|

ALIBIUS

|

'Tis that I go about, man – Lollio, | 15

My wife is young.

|

LOLLIO

|

So much the worse to be kept secret, sir.

|

ALIBIUS

|

Why, now thou meet'st the substance of the point:

|

I am old, Lollio.

|

LOLLIO

|

No, sir, 'tis I am old Lollio. | 20

ALIBIUS

|

Yet why may not this concord and sympathize?

|

Old trees and young plants often grow together,

|

Well enough agreeing.

|

LOLLIO

|

Ay, sir, but the old trees raise themselves higher and broader

|

than the young plants. | 25

ALIBIUS

|

Shrewd application – there's the fear man:

|

I would wear my ring on my own finger;

|

Whilst it is borrowed it is none of mine,

|

But his that useth it.

|

LOLLIO

|

You must keep it on still, then; if it but lie by, one or other will | 30

be thrusting into't.

|

ALIBIUS

|

Thou conceiv'st me, Lollio: here thy watchful eye

|

Must have employment, I cannot always be

|

At home.

|

LOLLIO I dare swear you can not.

|

ALIBIUS I must look out.

|

LOLLIO

|

I know't, you must look out, 'tis every man's case. | 35

ALIBIUS

|

Here, I do say, must thy employment be –

|

To watch her treadings, and in my absence

|

Supply my place.

|

LOLLIO

|

I'll do my best, sir; yet surely I cannot see who you should have

|

cause to be jealous of. | 40

ALIBIUS

|

Thy reason for that Lollio? 'Tis a comfortable question.

|

LOLLIO

|

We have but two sorts of people in the house, and both under

|

the whip: that's fools and madmen – the one has not wit

|

enough to be knaves, and the other not knavery enough to be

|

fools. | 45

ALIBIUS

|

Ay, those are all my patients, Lollio.

|

I do profess the cure of either sort –

|

My trade, my living 'tis, I thrive by it –

|

But here's the care that mixes with my thrift:

|

The daily visitants, that come to see | 50

My brainsick patients, I would not have

|

To see my wife. Gallants I do observe

|

Of quick enticing eyes, rich in habits,

|

Of stature and proportion very comely –

|

These are most shrewd temptations, Lollio. | 55

LOLLIO

|

They may be easily answered, sir: if they come to see the fools

|

and madmen, you and I may serve the turn, and let my mistress

|

alone – she's of neither sort.

|

ALIBIUS

|

'Tis a good ward, indeed. Come they to see

|

Our madmen or our fools, let 'em see no more | 60

Than what they come for; by that consequent

|

They must not see her: I'm sure she's no fool.

|

LOLLIO

|

And I'm sure she's no madman.

|

ALIBIUS

|

Hold that buckler fast, Lollio: my trust

|

Is on thee, and I account it firm and strong. | 65

What hour is't, Lollio?

|

LOLLIO

|

Towards belly-hour, sir.

|

ALIBIUS

|

Dinner time? Thou mean'st twelve o'clock?

|

LOLLIO

|

Yes, sir; for every part has his hour: we wake at six and look

|

about us, that's eye-hour; at seven we should pray, that's knee-hour; | 70

at eight walk, that's leg-hour; at nine gather flowers, and

|

pluck a rose, that's nose-hour; at ten we drink, that's mouth-hour;

|

at eleven lay about us for victuals, that's hand-hour; at

|

twelve go to dinner, that's belly-hour.

|

ALIBIUS

|

Profoundly, Lollio! It will be long | 75

Ere all thy scholars learn this lesson, and

|

I did look to have a new one entered – stay,

|

I think my expectation is come home.

|

_Enter_ PEDRO, _and_ ANTONIO _like an idiot_

PEDRO

|

Save you, sir. My business speaks it self:

|

This sight takes off the labour of my tongue. | 80

ALIBIUS

|

Ay, ay, sir;

|

'Tis plain enough, you mean him for my patient.

|

PEDRO

|

And, if your pains prove but commodious, to give but some

|

little strength to his sick and weak part of nature in him. [ _Gives_

|

_him money_ ] These are but patterns to show you of the whole

|

pieces that will follow to you, beside the charge of diet, washing, | 85

and other necessaries fully defrayed.

|

ALIBIUS

|

Believe it, sir, there shall no care be wanting.

|

LOLLIO

|

Sir, an officer in this place may deserve something: the trouble

|

will pass through my hands. | 90

PEDRO

|

'Tis fit something should come to your hands then, sir.

|

[ _Gives him money_ ]

LOLLIO

|

Yes, sir, 'tis I must keep him sweet, and read to him. What is his

|

name?

|

PEDRO

|

His name is Antonio – marry, we use but half to him, only Tony.

|

LOLLIO

|

Tony, Tony, 'tis enough, and a very good name for a fool. What's | 95

your name, Tony?

|

ANTONIO

|

He he he! Well, I thank you cousin, he he he!

|

LOLLIO

|

Good boy! Hold up your head. He can laugh: I perceive by that

|

he is no beast.

|

PEDRO

|

Well, sir, if you can raise him but to any height, | 100

Any degree of wit – might he attain

|

(As I might say) to creep but on all four

|

Towards the chair of wit, or walk on crutches –

|

'Twould add an honour to your worthy pains,

|

And a great family might pray for you, | 105

To which he should be heir, had he discretion

|

To claim and guide his own. Assure you sir,

|

He is a gentleman.

|

LOLLIO

|

Nay, there's nobody doubted that, at first sight I knew him for a

|

gentleman – he looks no other yet. | 110

PEDRO

|

Let him have good attendance and sweet lodging.

|

LOLLIO

|

As good as my mistress lies in, sir; and, as you allow us time

|

and means, we can raise him to the higher degree of

|

discretion.

|

PEDRO

|

Nay, there shall no cost want, sir. | 115

LOLLIO

|

He will hardly be stretched up to the wit of a magnifico.

|

PEDRO

|

Oh no, that's not to be expected, far shorter will be enough.

|

LOLLIO

|

I'll warrant you I'll make him fit to bear office in five weeks: I'll

|

undertake to wind him up to the wit of constable.

|

PEDRO

|

If it be lower than that it might serve turn. | 120

LOLLIO

|

No, fie, to level him with a headborough, beadle, or

|

watchman were but little better than he is; constable,

|

I'll able him. If he do come to be a justice afterwards, let

|

him thank the keeper. Or I'll go further with you: say I do

|

bring him up to my own pitch, say I make him as wise as | 125

my self?

|

PEDRO

|

Why there I would have it.

|

LOLLIO

|

Well, go to, either I'll be as arrant a fool as

|

he, or he shall be as wise as I, and then I think 'twill serve his turn.

|

PEDRO

|

Nay, I do like thy wit passing well. | 130

LOLLIO

|

Yes, you may; yet if I had not been a fool, I had had more wit

|

than I have too. Remember what state you find me in.

|

PEDRO

|

I will, and so leave you. Your best cares I beseech you. _Exit_

|

ALIBIUS

|

Take you none with you, leave 'em all with us.

|

ANTONIO

|

Oh, my cousin's gone! Cousin, cousin, oh! | 135

LOLLIO

|

Peace, peace, Tony! You must not cry child – you must be

|

whipped if you do. Your cousin is here still: I am your cousin,

|

Tony.

|

ANTONIO

|

He, he! Then I'll not cry, if thou be'st my cousin. He, he,

|

he! | 140

LOLLIO

|

I were best try his wit a little, that I may know what form to

|

place him in.

|

ALIBIUS

|

Ay, do, Lollio, do.

|

LOLLIO

|

I must ask him easy questions at first. – Tony, how many true

|

fingers has a tailor on his right hand? | 145

ANTONIO

|

As many as on his left, cousin.

|

LOLLIO

|

Good; and how many on both?

|

ANTONIO

|

Two less than a deuce, cousin.

|

LOLLIO

|

Very well answered! I come to you again, cousin Tony: how

|

many fools goes to a wise man? | 150

ANTONIO

|

Forty in a day sometimes, cousin.

|

LOLLIO

|

Forty in a day? How prove you that?

|

ANTONIO

|

All that fall out amongst themselves, and go to a lawyer to be

|

made friends.

|

LOLLIO

|

A parlous fool, he must sit in the fourth form at least, I perceive | 155

that. I come again, Tony: how many knaves make an honest

|

man?

|

ANTONIO

|

I know not that cousin.

|

LOLLIO

|

No, the question is too hard for you. I'll tell you, cousin – there's

|

three knaves may make an honest man: a sergeant, a jailor, and | 160

a beadle; the sergeant catches him, the jailor holds him, and the

|

beadle lashes him; and, if he be not honest then, the hangman

|

must cure him.

|

ANTONIO

|

Ha ha ha! That's fine sport cousin!

|

ALIBIUS

|

This was too deep a question for the fool, Lollio. | 165

LOLLIO

|

Yes, this might have served yourself, though I say't. Once more,

|

and you shall go play, Tony.

|

ANTONIO

|

Ay, play at push-pin cousin. Ha he!

|

LOLLIO

|

So thou shalt: say how many fools are here –

|

ANTONIO

|

Two, cousin – thou and I. | 170

LOLLIO

|

Nay, you're too forward there. Tony, mark my question: how

|

many fools and knaves are here? A fool before a knave, a fool

|

behind a knave, between every two fools a knave, how many

|

fools, how many knaves?

|

ANTONIO

|

I never learnt so far, cousin. | 175

ALIBIUS

|

Thou putt'st too hard questions to him, Lollio.

|

LOLLIO

|

I'll make him understand it easily. – Cousin, stand there.

|

ANTONIO

|

Ay, cousin.

|

LOLLIO

|

Master, stand you next the fool.

|

ALIBIUS Well, Lollio. | 180

LOLLIO

|

Here's my place. Mark now, Tony: there a fool before a knave.

|

ANTONIO

|

That's I cousin.

|

LOLLIO

|

Here's a fool behind a knave, that's I; and between us two fools

|

there is a knave, that's my master: 'tis but we three, that's all.

|

ANTONIO

|

We three, we three, cousin. | 185

MADMEN _within_

FIRST MADMAN _(Within)_

|

Put's head i' th' pillory, the bread's too little.

|

SECOND MADMAN _(Within)_

|

Fly, fly, and he catches the swallow.

|

THIRD MADMAN _(Within)_

|

Give her more onion, or the devil put the rope about her crag.

|

LOLLIO

|

You may hear what time of day it is, the chimes of Bedlam goes.

|

ALIBIUS

|

Peace, peace, or the wire comes! | 190

THIRD MADMAN _(Within)_

|

Cat-whore, cat-whore! Her Parmesan, her Parmesan!

|

ALIBIUS Peace, I say! – Their hour's come: they must be fed, Lollio.

|

LOLLIO

|

There's no hope of recovery of that Welsh madman was undone

|

by a mouse that spoiled him a parmesan – lost his wits for't.

|

ALIBIUS

|

Go to your charge, Lollio; I'll to mine. | 195

LOLLIO

|

Go you to your madmen's ward, let me alone with your fools.

|

ALIBIUS

|

And remember my last charge, Lollio. _Exit_

|

LOLLIO

|

Of which your patients do you think I am? Come, Tony, you

|

must amongst your school-fellows now: there's pretty scholars

|

amongst 'em, I can tell you; there's some of 'em at _stultus, stulta_ , | 200

_stultum_.

|

ANTONIO

|

I would see the madmen, cousin, if they would not bite me.

|

LOLLIO

|

No, they shall not bite thee, Tony.

|

ANTONIO

|

They bite when they are at dinner, do they not coz?

|

LOLLIO

|

They bite at dinner indeed, Tony. Well, I hope to get credit by | 205

thee; I like thee the best of all the scholars that ever I brought

|

up, and thou shalt prove a wise man, or I'll prove a fool my self.

|

_Exeunt_

### **ACT II. [SCENE i.]**

_Enter_ BEATRICE _and_ JASPERINO _severally_

---

BEATRICE

|

O Sir, I'm ready now for that fair service,

|

Which makes the name of friend sit glorious on you.

|

Good angels and this conduct be your guide – [ _Gives a paper_ ]

|

Fitness of time and place is there set down, sir.

|

JASPERINO

|

The joy I shall return rewards my service. _Exit_ | 5

BEATRICE

|

How wise is Alsemero in his friend!

|

It is a sign he makes his choice with judgement.

|

Then I appear in nothing more approved

|

Than making choice of him;

|

For 'tis a principle, he that can choose | 10

That bosom well who of his thoughts partakes,

|

Proves most discreet in every choice he makes.

|

Methinks I love now with the eyes of judgement,

|

And see the way to merit, clearly see it.

|

A true deserver like a diamond sparkles – | 15

In darkness you may see him, that's in absence,

|

Which is the greatest darkness falls on love;

|

Yet is he best discernèd then

|

With intellectual eyesight. What's Piracquo

|

My father spends his breath for? And his blessing | 20

Is only mine as I regard his name,

|

Else it goes from me, and turns head against me,

|

Transformed into a curse. Some speedy way

|

Must be remembered – he's so forward too,

|

So urgent that way, scarce allows me breath | 25

To speak to my new comforts.

|

_Enter_ DEFLORES

DEFLORES [ _Aside_ ] Yonder's she.

|

Whatever ails me, now alate especially

|

I can as well be hanged as refrain seeing her;

|

Some twenty times a day – nay not so little –

|

Do I force errands, frame ways and excuses | 30

To come into her sight; and I have small reason for't,

|

And less encouragement, for she baits me still

|

Every time worse than other, does profess herself

|

The cruellest enemy to my face in town,

|

At no hand can abide the sight of me, | 35

As if danger, or ill luck hung in my looks.

|

I must confess my face is bad enough,

|

But I know far worse has better fortune –

|

And not endured alone, but doted on –

|

And yet such pick-hatched faces, chins like witches, | 40

Here and there five hairs, whispering in a corner

|

As if they grew in fear one of another,

|

Wrinkles like troughs, where swine-deformity swills

|

The tears of perjury that lie there like wash

|

Fallen from the slimy and dishonest eye – | 45

Yet such a one plucked sweets without restraint,

|

And has the grace of beauty to his sweet.

|

Though my hard fate has thrust me out to servitude,

|

I tumbled into th' world a gentleman –

|

She turns her blessed eye upon me now, | 50

And I'll endure all storms before I part with't.

|

BEATRICE [ _Aside_ ]

|

Again!

|

This ominous, ill-faced fellow more disturbs me

|

Than all my other passions.

|

DEFLORES [ _Aside_ ] Now't begins again:

|

I'll stand this storm of hail though the stones pelt me. | 55

BEATRICE

|

Thy business? What's thy business?

|

DEFLORES  _Aside_ ] [Soft and fair!

|

I cannot part so soon now.

|

BEATRICE  _Aside_ ] The villain's [fixed.–

|

 _Aloud_ ] Thou [standing toad-pool.

|

DEFLORES [ _Aside_ ] The shower falls amain now.

|

BEATRICE

|

Who sent thee? What's thy errand? Leave my sight.

|

DEFLORES

|

My lord your father charged me to deliver | 60

A message to you.

|

BEATRICE What, another since?

|

Do't and be hanged, then! Let me be rid of thee.

|

DEFLORES

|

True service merits mercy.

|

BEATRICE What's thy message?

|

DEFLORES

|

Let beauty settle but in patience,

|

You shall hear all.

|

BEATRICE A dallying, trifling torment! | 65

DEFLORES

|

Signor Alonzo de Piracquo, lady,

|

Sole brother to Tomazo de Piracquo –

|

BEATRICE

|

Slave, when wilt make an end?

|

DEFLORES [ _Aside_ ] Too soon I shall.

|

BEATRICE

|

What all this while of him?

|

DEFLORES The said Alonzo,

|

With the foresaid Tomazo –

|

BEATRICE Yet again! | 70

DEFLORES

|

Is new alighted.

|

BEATRICE Vengeance strike the news!

|

Thou thing most loathed, what cause was there in this

|

To bring thee to my sight?

|

DEFLORES My lord your father

|

Charged me to seek you out.

|

BEATRICE Is there no other

|

To send his errand by?

|

DEFLORES It seems 'tis my luck | 75

To be i'th' way still.

|

BEATRICE Get thee from me.

|

DEFLORES [ _Aside_ ] So!

|

Why, am not I an ass to devise ways

|

Thus to be railed at? I must see her still;

|

I shall have a mad qualm within this hour again –

|

I know't, and, like a common Garden-bull, | 80

I do but take breath to be lugged again.

|

What this may bode I know not; I'll despair the less

|

Because there's daily precedents of bad faces

|

Beloved beyond all reason: these foul chops

|

May come into favour one day 'mongst his fellows. | 85

Wrangling has proved the mistress of good pastime;

|

As children cry themselves asleep, I ha' seen

|

Women have chid themselves a-bed to men. _Exit_

|

BEATRICE

|

I never see this fellow, but I think

|

Of some harm towards me, danger's in my mind still, | 90

I scarce leave trembling of an hour after.

|

The next good mood I find my father in,

|

I'll get him quite discarded – Oh, I was

|

Lost in this small disturbance and forgot

|

Affliction's fiercer torrent that now comes | 95

To bear down all my comforts.

|

_Enter_ VERMANDERO, ALONZO, TOMAZO

VERMANDERO You're both welcome;

|

But an especial one belongs to you, sir,

|

To whose most noble name our love presents

|

The addition of a son, our son Alonzo.

|

ALONZO

|

The treasury of honour cannot bring forth | 100

A title I should more rejoice in, sir.

|

VERMANDERO

|

You have improved it well. Daughter, prepare:

|

The day will steal upon thee suddenly.

|

BEATRICE [ _Aside_ ]

|

Howe'er, I will be sure to keep the night,

|

If it should come so near me.

|

[BEATRICE _and_ VERMANDERO _talk apart_ ]

TOMAZO Alonzo.

|

ALONZO Brother? | 105

TOMAZO

|

In troth I see small welcome in her eye.

|

ALONZO

|

Fie, you are too severe a censurer

|

Of love in all points – there's no bringing on you:

|

If lovers should mark every thing a fault,

|

Affection would be like an ill-set book, | 110

Whose faults might prove as big as half the volume.

|

BEATRICE

|

That's all I do entreat.

|

VERMANDERO It is but reasonable,

|

I'll see what my son says to't. – Son Alonzo,

|

Here's a motion made but to reprieve

|

A maidenhead three days longer; the request | 115

Is not far out of reason, for indeed

|

The former time is pinching.

|

ALONZO Though my joys

|

Be set back so much time as I could wish

|

They had been forward, yet, since she desires it,

|

The time is set as pleasing as before; | 120

I find no gladness wanting.

|

VERMANDERO May I ever

|

Meet it in that point still. You're nobly welcome, sirs.

|

_Exeunt_ VERMANDERO _and_ BEATRICE

TOMAZO

|

So. Did you mark the dullness of her parting now?

|

ALONZO

|

What dullness? Thou art so exceptious still.

|

TOMAZO

|

Why let it go, then: I am but a fool | 125

To mark your harms so heedfully.

|

ALONZO Where's the oversight?

|

TOMAZO

|

Come, your faith's cozened in her, strongly cozened:

|

Unsettle your affection with all speed

|

Wisdom can bring it to – your peace is ruined else.

|

Think what a torment 'tis to marry one | 130

Whose heart is leapt into another's bosom:

|

If ever pleasure she receive from thee,

|

It comes not in thy name, or of thy gift –

|

She lies but with another in thine arms,

|

He the half-father unto all thy children | 135

In the conception; if he get 'em not,

|

She helps to get 'em for him in this passion;

|

And how dangerous

|

And shameful her restraint may go in time to,

|

It is not to be thought on without sufferings. | 140

ALONZO

|

You speak as if she loved some other, then.

|

TOMAZO

|

Do you apprehend so slowly?

|

ALONZO Nay, and that

|

Be your fear only, I am safe enough:

|

Preserve your friendship and your counsel brother

|

For times of more distress; I should depart | 145

An enemy, a dangerous, deadly one

|

To any but thyself that should but think

|

She knew the meaning of inconstancy,

|

Much less the use and practice. Yet we're friends:

|

Pray let no more be urged, I can endure | 150

Much, till I meet an injury to her;

|

Then I am not myself. Farewell, sweet brother –

|

How much we're bound to heaven to depart lovingly! _Exit_

|

TOMAZO

|

Why here is love's tame madness, thus a man

|

Quickly steals into his vexation. _Exit_ | 155

### **[ACT II. SCENE ii.]**

_Enter_ DIAPHANTA _and_ ALSEMERO

---

DIAPHANTA

|

The place is my charge; you have kept your hour,

|

And the reward of a just meeting bless you!

|

I hear my lady coming. Complete gentleman!

|

I dare not be too busy with my praises,

|

They're dangerous things to deal with. _Exit_

ALSEMERO This goes well: | 5

These women are their ladies' cabinets,

Things of most precious trust are locked into 'em.

|

_Enter_ BEATRICE

BEATRICE

|

I have within mine eye all my desires:

|

Requests that holy prayers ascend heaven for,

|

And brings 'em down to furnish our defects, | 10

Come not more sweet to our necessities

|

Than thou unto my wishes.

|

ALSEMERO We're so like

|

In our expressions, lady, that unless I borrow

|

The same words, I shall never find their equals.

|

BEATRICE

|

How happy were this meeting, this embrace, | 15

If it were free from envy! This poor kiss

|

It has an enemy, a hateful one,

|

That wishes poison to't. How well were I now

|

If there were none such name known as Piracquo,

|

Nor no such tie as the command of parents! | 20

I should be but too much blessed.

|

ALSEMERO One good service

|

Would strike off both your fears, and I'll go near it too,

|

Since you are so distressed: remove the cause,

|

The command ceases; so there's two fears blown out

|

With one and the same blast.

|

BEATRICE Pray let me find you, sir. | 25

What might that service be so strangely happy?

|

ALSEMERO

|

The honourablest piece about man – valour.

|

I'll send a challenge to Piracquo instantly.

|

BEATRICE

|

How? Call you that extinguishing of fear

|

When 'tis the only way to keep it flaming? | 30

Are not you ventured in the action,

|

That's all my joys and comforts? Pray no more, sir.

|

Say you prevailed, you're danger's and not mine then:

|

The law would claim you from me, or obscurity

|

Be made the grave to bury you alive. | 35

I'm glad these thoughts come forth – O keep not one

|

Of this condition, sir! Here was a course

|

Found to bring sorrow on her way to death:

|

The tears would ne'er ha' dried till dust had choked 'em.

|

Blood-guiltiness becomes a fouler visage, | 40

And now I think on one – [ _Aside_ ] I was to blame,

|

I ha' marred so good a market with my scorn:

|

'T had been done questionless. The ugliest creature

|

Creation framed for some use, yet to see

|

I could not mark so much where it should be. | 45

ALSEMERO

|

Lady!

|

BEATRICE  _Aside_ ] Why men of art [make much of poison,

|

Keep one to expel another. Where was my art?

|

ALSEMERO

|

Lady, you hear not me.

|

BEATRICE I do especially, sir.

|

The present times are not so sure of our side

|

As those hereafter may be: we must use 'em then | 50

As thrifty folks their wealth, sparingly now,

|

Till the time opens.

|

ALSEMERO You teach wisdom, lady.

|

BEATRICE [ _Calling_ ]

|

Within there, Diaphanta!

|

_Enter_ DIAPHANTA

|

DIAPHANTA Do you call, madam?

|

BEATRICE

|

Perfect your service, and conduct this gentleman

|

The private way you brought him.

|

DIAPHANTA I shall, madam. | 55

ALSEMERO

|

My love's as firm as love e'er built upon.

|

_Exeunt_ DIAPHANTA _and_ ALSEMERO

_Enter_ DEFLORES

DEFLORES [ _Aside_ ]

|

I have watched this meeting, and do wonder much

|

What shall become of t' other; I'm sure both

|

Cannot be served unless she transgress. Happily

|

Then I'll put in for one; for if a woman | 60

Fly from one point, from him she makes a husband,

|

She spreads and mounts then like arithmetic –

|

One, ten, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand –

|

Proves in time sutler to an army royal.

|

Now do I look to be most richly railed at, | 65

Yet I must see her.

|

BEATRICE  _Aside_ ] Why, [put case I loathed him

|

As much as youth and beauty hates a sepulchre,

|

Must I needs show it? Cannot I keep that secret,

|

And serve my turn upon him? See he's here –

|

[ _Aloud_ ] Deflores.

|

DEFLORES [ _Aside_ ] Ha! I shall run mad with joy: | 70

She called me fairly by my name, Deflores,

|

And neither 'rogue' nor 'rascal'.

|

BEATRICE What ha' you done

|

To your face alate? You've met with some good physician;

|

You've pruned yourself, methinks: you were not wont

|

To look so amorously.

|

DEFLORES Not I. | 75

 _Aside_ ] 'Tis the same [physnomy to a hair and pimple

|

Which she called scurvy scarce an hour ago:

|

How is this?

|

BEATRICE Come hither – nearer, man.

|

DEFLORES [ _Aside_ ]

|

I'm up to the chin in heaven.

|

BEATRICE Turn, let me see –

|

Faugh! 'Tis but the heat of the liver, I perceiv't; | 80

I thought it had been worse.

|

DEFLORES  _Aside_ ] Her [fingers touched me –

|

She smells all amber!

|

BEATRICE

|

I'll make a water for you shall cleanse this

|

Within a fortnight.

|

DEFLORES With your own hands, lady?

|

BEATRICE

|

Yes, mine own, sir: in a work of cure | 85

I'll trust no other.

|

DEFLORES [ _Aside_ ] 'Tis half an act of pleasure

|

To hear her talk thus to me.

|

BEATRICE When we're used

|

To a hard face, 'tis not so unpleasing,

|

It mends still in opinion, hourly mends –

|

I see it by experience.

|

DEFLORES [ _Aside_ ] I was blest | 90

To light upon this minute, I'll make use on't.

|

BEATRICE

|

Hardness becomes the visage of a man well,

|

It argues service, resolution, manhood,

|

If cause were of employment.

|

DEFLORES 'Twould be soon seen,

|

If e'er your ladyship had cause to use it. | 95

I would but wish the honour of a service

|

So happy as that mounts to.

|

BEATRICE We shall try you –

|

Oh, my Deflores!

|

DEFLORES How's that?

|

[ _Aside_ ] She calls me hers already, 'my Deflores'! –

|

[ _Aloud_ ] You were about to sigh out somewhat, madam. | 100

BEATRICE

|

No, was I? I forgot – Oh!

|

DEFLORES There 'tis again,

|

The very fellow on't.

|

BEATRICE You are too quick, sir.

|

DEFLORES

|

There's no excuse for't now I heard it twice, madam:

|

That sigh would fain have utterance, take pity on't,

|

And lend it a free word – 'las how it labours | 105

For liberty, I hear the murmur yet

|

Beat at your bosom.

|

BEATRICE Would creation –

|

DEFLORES

|

Ay, well said, that's it!

|

BEATRICE Had formed me man!

|

DEFLORES

|

Nay, that's not it.

|

BEATRICE Oh, 'tis the soul of freedom!

|

I should not then be forced to marry one | 110

I hate beyond all depths; I should have power

|

Then to oppose my loathings – nay, remove 'em

|

For ever from my sight.

|

DEFLORES O blest occasion!

|

Without change to your sex, you have your wishes:

|

Claim so much man in me.

|

BEATRICE In thee, Deflores? | 115

There's small cause for that.

|

DEFLORES Put it not from me:

|

It's a service that I kneel for to you. [ _Kneels_ ]

|

BEATRICE

|

You are too violent to mean faithfully,

|

There's horror in my service, blood and danger:

|

Can those be things to sue for?

|

DEFLORES If you knew | 120

How sweet it were to me to be employed

|

In any act of yours, you would say then

|

I failed, and used not reverence enough

|

When I receive the charge on't.

|

BEATRICE [ _Aside_ ] This is much methinks;

|

Belike his wants are greedy, and to such | 125

Gold tastes like angels' food. – [ _Aloud_ ] Rise.

|

DEFLORES

|

I'll have the work first.

|

BEATRICE [ _Aside_ ] Possible his need

|

Is strong upon him – [ _Gives him money_ ] there's to

|

encourage thee:

|

As thou art forward and thy service dangerous,

|

Thy reward shall be precious.

|

DEFLORES That I have thought on; | 130

I have assured myself of that beforehand,

|

And know it will be precious – the thought ravishes.

|

BEATRICE

|

Then take him to thy fury.

|

DEFLORES I thirst for him.

|

BEATRICE

|

Alonzo de Piracquo.

|

DEFLORES His end's upon him:

|

He shall be seen no more.

|

BEATRICE How lovely now | 135

Dost thou appear to me! Never was man

|

Dearlier rewarded.

|

DEFLORES I do think of that.

|

BEATRICE

|

Be wondrous careful in the execution.

|

DEFLORES

|

Why, are not both our lives upon the cast?

|

BEATRICE

|

Then I throw all my fears upon thy service. | 140

DEFLORES

|

They ne'er shall rise to hurt you. [ _Rises_ ]

|

BEATRICE When the deed's done,

|

I'll furnish thee with all things for thy flight:

|

Thou may'st live bravely in another country.

|

DEFLORES

|

Ay, ay, we'll talk of that hereafter.

|

BEATRICE [ _Aside_ ] I shall rid

|

Myself of two inveterate loathings at one time: | 145

Piracquo and his dog-face. _Exit_

|

DEFLORES O my blood!

|

Methinks I feel her in mine arms already,

|

Her wanton fingers combing out this beard,

|

And, being pleased, praising this bad face.

|

Hunger and pleasure, they'll commend sometimes | 150

Slovenly dishes, and feed heartily on 'em –

|

Nay, which is stranger, refuse daintier for 'em.

|

Some women are odd feeders – I'm too loud:

|

Here comes the man goes supperless to bed,

|

Yet shall not rise tomorrow to his dinner. | 155

_Enter_ ALONZO

ALONZO

|

Deflores.

|

DEFLORES My kind, honourable lord?

|

ALONZO

|

I am glad I've met with thee.

|

DEFLORES Sir.

|

ALONZO Thou canst show me

|

The full strength of the castle?

|

DEFLORES That I can, sir.

|

ALONZO

|

I much desire it.

|

DEFLORES And if the ways and straits

|

Of some of the passages be not too tedious for you, | 160

I will assure you, worth your time and sight, my lord.

|

ALONZO

|

Pooh! That shall be no hindrance.

|

DEFLORES I'm your servant, then.

|

'Tis now near dinner time; 'gainst your lordship's rising

|

I'll have the keys about me.

|

ALONZO Thanks, kind Deflores.

|

DEFLORES

|

He's safely thrust upon me beyond hopes _Exeunt_ | 165

_In the act-time_ DEFLORES _hides a naked rapier_

### **ACT III. [SCENE i.]**

_Enter_ ALONZO _and_ DEFLORES

---

DEFLORES

|

Yes, here are all the keys: I was afraid, my lord,

|

I'd wanted for the postern – this is it.

|

I've all, I've all, my lord – this for the sconce.

|

ALONZO

|

'Tis a most spacious and impregnable fort.

|

DEFLORES

|

You'll tell me more, my lord. This descent | 5

Is somewhat narrow, we shall never pass

|

Well with our weapons, they'll but trouble us.

|

[ _Takes off his sword_ ]

ALONZO

|

Thou sayest true.

|

DEFLORES Pray let me help your lordship.

|

[ _Takes off_ ALONZO's _sword_ ]

ALONZO

|

'Tis done. Thanks, kind Deflores.

|

DEFLORES Here are hooks, my lord,

|

To hang such things on purpose.

|

ALONZO Lead, I'll follow thee. | 10

_Exeunt at one door and enter at the other_

DEFLORES

|

All this is nothing; you shall see anon

|

A place you little dream on.

|

ALONZO I am glad

|

I have this leisure; all your master's house

|

Imagine I ha' taken a gondola.

|

DEFLORES

|

All but myself, sir, [ _Aside_ ] which makes up my safety. | 15

 _Aloud_ ] My lord, I'll place you at a [casement here

|

Will show you the full strength of all the castle.

|

Look, spend your eye a while upon that object.

|

ALONZO

|

Here's rich variety, Deflores.

|

DEFLORES Yes, sir.

|

ALONZO

|

Goodly munition.

|

DEFLORES Ay, there's ordnance, sir – | 20

No bastard metal – will ring you a peal like bells

|

At great men's funerals. Keep your eye straight, my lord,

|

Take special notice of that sconce before you:

|

There you may dwell awhile. [ _Takes up the rapier_ ]

|

ALONZO I am upon't.

|

DEFLORES

|

And so am I. [ _Stabs him_ ]

|

ALONZO Deflores! O Deflores, | 25

Whose malice hast thou put on?

|

DEFLORES Do you question

|

A work of secrecy? I must silence you. [ _Stabs him_ ]

|

ALONZO

|

Oh, oh, oh!

|

DEFLORES I must silence you. [ _Kills him_ ]

|

So, here's an undertaking well accomplished.

|

This vault serves to good use now – Ha! what's that | 30

Threw sparkles in my eye? – Oh, 'tis a diamond

|

He wears upon his finger. It was well found:

|

This will approve the work. What, so fast on?

|

Not part in death? I'll take a speedy course then:

|

Finger and all shall off. So, now I'll clear | 35

The passages from all suspect or fear. _Exit with the body_

|

### **[ACT III. SCENE ii.]**

_Enter_ ISABELLA _and_ LOLLIO

---

ISABELLA

|

Why, sirrah? Whence have you commission

|

To fetter the doors against me? If you

|

Keep me in a cage, pray whistle to me,

|

Let me be doing something.

|

LOLLIO

|

You shall be doing, if it please you: I'll whistle to you, if you'll | 5

pipe after.

|

ISABELLA

|

Is it your master's pleasure or your own

|

To keep me in this pinfold?

|

LOLLIO

|

'Tis for my master's pleasure, lest, being taken in another man's

|

corn, you might be pounded in another place. | 10

ISABELLA

|

'Tis very well, and he'll prove very wise.

|

LOLLIO

|

He says you have company enough in the house, if you please to

|

be sociable, of all sorts of people.

|

ISABELLA

|

Of all sorts? Why here's none but fools and madmen.

|

LOLLIO

|

Very well – and where will you find any other, if you should go | 15

abroad? There's my master and I to boot too.

|

ISABELLA

|

Of either sort one – a madman and a fool.

|

LOLLIO

|

I would even participate of both then, if I were as you: I know

|

you're half mad already; be half foolish too.

|

ISABELLA

|

You're a brave, saucy rascal! Come on, sir, | 20

Afford me then the pleasure of your bedlam:

|

You were commending once today to me

|

Your last come lunatic – what a proper

|

Body there was without brains to guide it,

|

And what a pitiful delight appeared | 25

In that defect, as if your wisdom had found

|

A mirth in madness; pray sir, let me partake,

|

If there be such a pleasure.

|

LOLLIO

|

If I do not show you the handsomest, discreetest madman – one

|

that I may call the understanding madman – then say I am a | 30

fool.

|

ISABELLA

|

Well, a match: I will say so.

|

LOLLIO

|

When you have a taste of the madman, you shall (if you please)

|

see Fools' College o' th'other side. I seldom lock there: 'tis but

|

shooting a bolt or two, and you are amongst 'em. _Exit_ | 35

_Enters presently_ [ _drawing_ FRANCISCUS _after him_ ]

Come on, sir; let me see how handsomely you'll behave yourself

|

now.

|

FRANCISCUS

|

How sweetly she looks! Oh, but there's a wrinkle n her brow as

|

deep as philosophy. Anacreon, drink to my mistress' health, I'll

|

pledge it. Stay, stay, there's a spider in the cup – no, 'tis but a | 40

grape-stone; swallow it, fear nothing, poet; so, so, lift higher.

|

ISABELLA

|

Alack, alack, 'tis too full of pity

|

To be laughed at. How fell he mad? Canst thou tell?

|

LOLLIO

|

For love, mistress. He was a pretty poet too, and that set him

|

forwards first; the Muses then forsook him, he ran mad for a | 45

chambermaid – yet she was but a dwarf neither.

|

FRANCISCUS

|

Hail, bright Titania!

|

Why standst thou idle on these flowery banks?

|

Oberon is dancing with his Dryades;

|

I'll gather daisies, primrose, violets, | 50

And bind them in a verse of poesy. [ _Approaches_ ISABELLA]

|

LOLLIO

|

Not too near – you see your danger.

|

[ _Threatens_ FRANCISCUS _with a whip_ ]

FRANCISCUS

|

O hold thy hand, great Diomed!

|

Thou feedst thy horses well, they shall obey thee;

|

 _Drops onto all fours_ ] [Get up, Bucephalus kneels. [ _Kneels_ ] | 55

LOLLIO

|

You see how I awe my flock: a shepherd has not his dog at more

|

obedience.

|

ISABELLA

|

His conscience is unquiet; sure that was

|

The cause of this. A proper gentleman!

|

FRANCISCUS

|

Come hither, Aesculapius, hide the poison. | 60

LOLLIO

|

Well, 'tis hid. [ _Puts away the whip_. FRANCISCUS _rises_ ]

|

FRANCISCUS

|

Didst thou never hear of one Tiresias,

|

A famous poet?

|

LOLLIO

|

Yes, that kept tame wild geese.

|

FRANCISCUS

|

That's he, I am the man. | 65

LOLLIO

|

No!

|

FRANCISCUS

|

Yes, but make no words on't: I was a man

|

Seven years ago.

|

LOLLIO

|

A stripling, I think you might.

|

FRANCISCUS

|

Now I'm a woman, all feminine. | 70

LOLLIO

|

I would I might see that.

|

FRANCISCUS

|

Juno struck me blind.

|

LOLLIO

|

I'll ne'er believe that; for a woman they say, has an eye more

|

than a man.

|

FRANCISCUS

|

I say she struck me blind. | 75

LOLLIO

|

And Luna made you mad: you have two trades to beg with.

|

FRANCISCUS

|

Luna is now big-bellied, and there's room

|

For both of us to ride with Hecate;

|

I'll drag thee up into her silver sphere,

|

And there we'll kick the dog and beat the bush | 80

That barks against the witches of the night;

|

The swift lycanthropi that walks the round,

|

We'll tear their wolvish skins, and save the sheep.

|

LOLLIO

|

Is't come to this? Nay, then my poison comes forth again.

|

[ _Shows the whip_ ] Mad slave indeed – abuse your keeper! | 85

ISABELLA

|

I prithee, hence with him, now he grows dangerous.

|

FRANCISCUS [ _Sings_ ]

|

_Sweet love, pity me:_

|

_Give me leave to lie with thee_.

|

LOLLIO

|

No, I'll see you wiser first: to your own kennel.

|

FRANCISCUS

|

No noise, she sleeps; draw all the curtains round, | 90

Let no soft sound molest the pretty soul

|

But love, and love creeps in at a mouse-hole.

|

LOLLIO

|

I would you would get into your hole.

|

_Exit_ FRANCISCUS

Now, mistress, I will bring you another sort: you shall be fooled

|

another while – [ _Calls_ ] Tony, come hither, Tony! | 95

_Enter_ ANTONIO

Look who's yonder, Tony.

|

ANTONIO

|

Cousin, is it not my aunt?

|

LOLLIO

|

Yes, 'tis one of 'em, Tony.

|

ANTONIO

|

He, he! how do you, uncle?

|

LOLLIO

|

Fear him not mistress, 'tis a gentle nidget: you may play with | 100

him as safely with him as with his bauble.

|

ISABELLA

|

How long hast thou been a fool?

|

ANTONIO

|

Ever since I came hither, cousin.

|

ISABELLA

|

Cousin? I'm none of thy cousins, fool.

|

LOLLIO

|

O mistress, fools have always so much wit as to claim their | 105

kindred.

|

MADMAN ( _Within_ )

|

Bounce, bounce! He falls, he falls!

|

ISABELLA

|

Hark you – your scholars in the upper room

|

Are out of order.

|

LOLLIO

|

Must I come amongst you there? Keep you the fool, mistress. I'll | 110

go up and play left-handed Orlando amongst the madmen.

|

_Exit_

ISABELLA

|

Well, sir.

|

ANTONIO

|

'Tis opportuneful now, sweet lady! Nay,

|

Cast no amazing eye upon this change.

|

ISABELLA

|

Ha! | 115

ANTONIO

|

This shape of folly shrouds your dearest love,

|

The truest servant to your powerful beauties,

|

Whose magic had this force thus to transform me.

|

ISABELLA

|

You are a fine fool indeed.

|

ANTONIO Oh, 'tis not strange:

|

Love has an intellect that runs through all | 120

The scrutinous sciences; and, like

|

A cunning poet, catches a quantity

|

Of every knowledge, yet brings all home

|

Into one mystery, into one secret

|

That he proceeds in.

|

ISABELLA You're a parlous fool. | 125

ANTONIO

|

No danger in me: I bring nought but Love

|

And his soft wounding shafts to strike you with –

|

Try but one arrow; if it hurt you,

|

I'll stand you twenty back in recompence. [ _Kisses her_ ]

|

ISABELLA

|

A forward fool, too!

|

ANTONIO This was Love's teaching: | 130

A thousand ways he fashioned out my way,

|

And this I found the safest and the nearest

|

To tread the galaxia to my star.

|

ISABELLA

|

Profound withal! Certain you dreamed of this –

|

Love never taught it waking.

|

ANTONIO Take no acquaintance | 135

Of these outward follies; there is within

|

A gentleman that loves you.

|

ISABELLA When I see him,

|

I'll speak with him; so in the meantime

|

Keep your habit, it becomes you well enough.

|

As you are a gentleman, I'll not discover you – | 140

That's all the favour that you must expect.

|

When you are weary, you may leave the school,

|

For all this while you have but played the fool.

|

_Enter_ LOLLIO

ANTONIO [ _Seeing him_ ]

|

And must again. – He he! I thank you, cousin,

|

I'll be your valentine tomorrow morning. | 145

LOLLIO

|

How do you like the fool, mistress?

|

ISABELLA

|

Passing well, sir.

|

LOLLIO

|

Is he not witty, pretty well for a fool?

|

ISABELLA

|

If he hold on as he begins, he is like

|

To come to something! | 150

LOLLIO

|

Ay, thank a good tutor: you may put him to't; he begins to

|

answer pretty hard questions. – Tony, how many is five times

|

six?

|

ANTONIO

|

Five times six, is six times five.

|

LOLLIO

|

What arithmetician could have answered better? How many is | 155

one hundred and seven?

|

ANTONIO

|

One hundred and seven, is seven hundred and one, cousin.

|

LOLLIO

|

This is no wit to speak on: will you be rid of the fool now?

|

ISABELLA

|

By no means, let him stay a little.

|

MADMAN ( _Within_ )

|

Catch there, catch the last couple in hell! | 160

LOLLIO

|

Again! Must I come amongst you? Would my master were come

|

home! I am not able to govern both these wards together. _Exit_

|

ANTONIO

|

Why should a minute of love's hour be lost?

|

ISABELLA

|

Fie, out again! I had rather you kept

|

Your other posture; you become not your tongue, | 165

When you speak from your clothes.

|

ANTONIO How can he freeze

|

Lives near so sweet a warmth? Shall I alone

|

Walk through the orchard of the Hesperides

|

And cowardly not dare to pull an apple?

|

This with the red cheeks I must venture for. [ _Kisses her_ ] | 170

_Enter_ LOLLIO _above_

ISABELLA

|

Take heed, there's giants keep 'em.

|

LOLLIO [ _Aside_ ]

|

How now fool, are you good at that? Have you read Lipsius?

|

He's past _Ars Amandi_ ; I believe I must put harder questions to

|

him, I perceive that –

|

ISABELLA

|

You are bold – without fear, too.

|

ANTONIO What should I fear, | 175

Having all joys about me? Do you but smile,

|

And Love shall play the wanton on your lip,

|

Meet and retire, retire and meet again;

|

Look you but cheerfully, and in your eyes

|

I shall behold mine own deformity, | 180

And dress my self up fairer; I know this shape

|

Becomes me not, but in those bright mirrors

|

I shall array me handsomely.

|

LOLLIO Cuckoo, cuckoo – _Exit_

|

[ _Enter_ ] MADMEN _above, some as birds, others as beasts_ , [ _uttering fearful cries_ ]

ANTONIO

|

What are these?

|

ISABELLA Of fear enough to part us,

|

Yet are they but our schools of lunatics, | 185

That act their fantasies in any shapes

|

Suiting their present thoughts: if sad, they cry;

|

If mirth be their conceit, they laugh again;

|

Sometimes they imitate the beasts and birds,

|

Singing, or howling, braying, barking – all | 190

As their wild fancies prompt 'em.

|

_Enter_ LOLLIO.

ANTONIO These are no fears.

|

ISABELLA

|

But here's a large one, my man.

|

ANTONIO

|

Ha he! That's fine sport indeed, cousin.

|

LOLLIO [ _Aside_ ]

|

I would my master were come home! 'Tis too much for one

|

shepherd to govern two of these flocks; nor can I believe that | 195

one churchman can instruct two benefices at once: there will be

|

some incurable mad of the one side, and very fools on the other.

|

– [ _Aloud_ ] Come, Tony.

|

ANTONIO

|

Prithee, cousin, let me stay here still.

|

LOLLIO

|

No, you must to your book, now you have played sufficiently. | 200

ISABELLA

|

Your fool is grown wondrous witty.

|

LOLLIO

|

Well, I'll say nothing; but I do not think but he will put you

|

down one of these days.

|

_Exeunt_ LOLLIO _and_ ANTONIO

ISABELLA

|

Here the restrainèd current might make breach,

|

Spite of the watchful bankers. Would a woman stray, | 205

She need not gad abroad to seek her sin –

|

It would be brought home one ways or other:

|

The needle's point will to the fixèd north,

|

Such drawing Arctics women's beauties are.

|

_Enter_ LOLLIO

LOLLIO

|

How dost thou, sweet rogue? | 210

ISABELLA

|

How now?

|

LOLLIO

|

Come, there are degrees – one fool may be better than another.

|

ISABELLA

|

What's the matter?

|

LOLLIO

|

Nay, if thou giv'st thy mind to fools'-flesh, have at thee!

|

[ _Tries to kiss her_ ]

ISABELLA

|

You bold slave, you! | 215

LOLLIO

|

I could follow now as t'other fool did:

|

'What should I fear,

|

Having all joys about me? Do you but smile,

|

And Love shall play the wanton on your lip,

|

Meet and retire, retire and meet again; | 220

Look you but cheerfully, and in your eyes

|

I shall behold my own deformity,

|

And dress my self up fairer; I know this shape

|

Becomes me not –'

|

And so as it follows; but is not this the more foolish way? Come, | 225

sweet rogue: kiss me, my little Lacedemonian. Let me feel how

|

thy pulses beat. Thou hast a thing about thee would do a man

|

pleasure, I'll lay my hand on't. [ _Grabs indecently at her_ ]

|

ISABELLA

|

Sirrah, no more! I see you have discovered

|

This love's knight-errant, who hath made adventure | 230

For purchase of my love. Be silent, mute –

|

Mute as a statue – or his injunction

|

For me enjoying shall be to cut thy throat:

|

I'll do it, though for no other purpose;

|

And be sure he'll not refuse it. | 235

LOLLIO

|

My share, that's all! I'll have my fool's part with you.

|

ISABELLA

|

No more – your master!

|

_Enter_ ALIBIUS

ALIBIUS Sweet, how dost thou?

|

ISABELLA

|

Your bounden servant, sir.

|

ALIBIUS Fie, fie, sweetheart,

|

No more of that!

|

ISABELLA You were best lock me up.

|

ALIBIUS

|

In my arms and bosom, my sweet Isabella, | 240

I'll lock thee up most nearly. Lollio,

|

We have employment, we have task in hand.

|

At noble Vermandero's, our castle-captain,

|

There is a nuptial to be solemnized –

|

Beatrice Joanna, his fair daughter, bride – | 245

For which the gentleman hath bespoke our pains:

|

A mixture of our madmen and our fools,

|

To finish, as it were, and make the fag

|

Of all the revels, the third night from the first;

|

Only an unexpected passage-over | 250

To make a frightful pleasure, that is all –

|

But not the all I aim at: could we so act it,

|

To teach it in a wild, distracted measure,

|

Though out of form and figure, breaking Time's head,

|

It were no matter, 'twould be healed again | 255

In one age or other, if not in this.

|

This, this, Lollio! [ _Shows him money_ ]

|

There's a good reward begun,

|

And will beget a bounty, be it known.

|

LOLLIO

|

This is easy, sir, I'll warrant you – you have about you fools and

|

madmen that can dance very well; and 'tis no wonder: your best | 260

dancers are not the wisest men – the reason is, with often

|

jumping they jolt their brains down into their feet, that their

|

wits lie more in their heels than in their heads.

|

ALIBIUS

|

Honest Lollio, thou giv'st me a good reason,

|

And a comfort in it.

|

ISABELLA You've a fine trade on't: | 265

Madmen and fools are a staple commodity!

|

ALIBIUS

|

O wife, we must eat, wear clothes, and live:

|

Just at the lawyers' haven we arrive,

|

By madmen and by fools we both do thrive.

|

_Exeunt_

### **[ACT III. SCENE iii.]**

_Enter_ VERMANDERO, ALSEMERO, JASPERINO, _and_ BEATRICE

---

VERMANDERO

|

Valencia speaks so nobly of you, sir,

|

I wish I had a daughter now for you.

|

ALSEMERO

|

The fellow of this creature were a partner

|

For a king's love.

|

VERMANDERO I had her fellow once, sir;

|

But heaven has married her to joys eternal, | 5

'Twere sin to wish her in this vale again.

|

Come, sir, your friend and you shall see the pleasures

|

Which my health chiefly joys in.

|

ALSEMERO

|

I hear the beauty of this seat largely.

|

VERMANDERO

|

It falls much short of that.

|

_Exeunt, except for_ BEATRICE

BEATRICE So, here's one step | 10

Into my father's favour – time will fix him.

|

I have got him now the liberty of the house.

|

So wisdom by degrees works out her freedom:

|

And if that eye be darkened that offends me –

|

I wait but that eclipse – this gentleman | 15

Shall soon shine glorious in my father's liking

|

Through the refulgent virtue of my love.

|

_Enter_ DEFLORES

DEFLORES

|

My thoughts are at a banquet for the deed;

|

I feel no weight in't, 'tis but light and cheap

|

For the sweet recompense, that I set down for't. | 20

BEATRICE

|

Deflores?

|

DEFLORES Lady?

|

BEATRICE Thy looks promise cheerfully.

DEFLORES

|

All things are answerable: time, circumstance,

|

Your wishes and my service.

|

BEATRICE Is it done, then?

|

DEFLORES

|

Piracquo is no more.

|

BEATRICE

|

My joys start at mine eyes; our sweet'st delights | 25

Are evermore born weeping.

|

DEFLORES I've a token for you.

|

BEATRICE

|

For me?

|

DEFLORES But it was sent somewhat unwillingly –

|

[ _Shows the finger_ ]

I could not get the ring without the finger.

|

BEATRICE

|

Bless me! What hast thou done?

|

DEFLORES Why, is that more

|

Than killing the whole man? I cut his heart-strings! | 30

A greedy hand thrust in a dish at court

|

In a mistake hath had as much as this.

|

BEATRICE

|

'Tis the first token my father made me send him.

|

DEFLORES

|

And I made him send it back again

|

For his last token; I was loath to leave it | 35

And I'm sure dead men have no use of jewels –

|

He was as loath to part with't, for it stuck

|

As if the flesh and it were both one substance.

|

BEATRICE

|

At the stag's fall the keeper has his fees –

|

'Tis soon applied: all dead men's fees are yours, sir, | 40

I pray bury the finger, but the stone

|

You may make use on shortly – the true value

|

(Take't of my truth) is near three hundred ducats.

|

DEFLORES

|

'Twill hardly buy a capcase for one's conscience, though,

|

To keep it from the worm, as fine as 'tis. | 45

Well, being my fees, I'll take it –

|

Great men have taught me that, or else my merit

|

Would scorn the way on't.

|

BEATRICE It might justly, sir.

|

Why thou mistak'st, Deflores: 'tis not given

|

In state of recompence.

|

DEFLORES No? I hope so, lady: | 50

You should soon witness my contempt to't then.

|

BEATRICE

|

Prithee, thou look'st as if thou wert offended.

|

DEFLORES

|

That were strange, lady: 'tis not possible

|

My service should draw such a cause from you.

|

Offended? Could you think so? That were much | 55

For one of my performance, and so warm

|

Yet in my service.

|

BEATRICE

|

'Twere misery in me to give you cause, sir.

|

DEFLORES

|

I know so much, it were so – misery

|

In her most sharp condition.

|

BEATRICE 'Tis resolved then. | 60

Look you, sir, here's three thousand golden florins:

|

I have not meanly thought upon thy merit.

|

DEFLORES

|

What, salary? Now you move me!

|

BEATRICE How, Deflores?

|

DEFLORES

|

Do you place me in the rank of verminous fellows

|

To destroy things for wages? Offer gold? | 65

The life blood of man! Is any thing

|

Valued too precious for my recompence?

|

BEATRICE

|

I understand thee not.

|

DEFLORES I could ha' hired

|

A journeyman in murder at this rate,

|

And mine own conscience might have slept at ease, | 70

And have had the work brought home.

|

BEATRICE [ _Aside_ ] I'm in a labyrinth:

|

What will content him? I would fain be rid of him.

|

[ _Aloud_ ] I'll double the sum, sir.

|

DEFLORES You take a course

|

To double my vexation, that's the good you do.

|

BEATRICE [ _Aside_ ]

|

Bless me! I am now in worse plight than I was; | 75

I know not what will please him. _[Aloud_ ] For my fear's sake,

|

I prithee make away with all speed possible;

|

And if thou be'st so modest not to name

|

The sum that will content thee, paper blushes not –

|

Send thy demand in writing, it shall follow thee; | 80

But prithee take thy flight.

|

DEFLORES You must fly too then.

|

BEATRICE

|

I?

|

DEFLORES I'll not stir a foot else.

|

BEATRICE What's your meaning?

|

DEFLORES

|

Why are not you as guilty, in (I'm sure)

|

As deep as I? And we should stick together.

|

Come, your fears counsel you but ill: my absence | 85

Would draw suspect upon you instantly;

|

There were no rescue for you.

|

BEATRICE He speaks home.

DEFLORES

|

Nor is it fit we two, engaged so jointly,

|

Should part and live asunder. [ _Tries to kiss her_ ]

BEATRICE How now, sir?

This shows not well.

|

DEFLORES What makes your lip so strange? | 90

This must not be betwixt us.

|

BEATRICE [ _Aside_ ] The man talks wildly.

DEFLORES

|

Come kiss me with a zeal now.

|

BEATRICE  _Aside_ ] Heaven, I [doubt him!

DEFLORES

|

I will not stand so long to beg 'em shortly.

|

BEATRICE

|

Take heed, Deflores, of forgetfulness:

|

'Twill soon betray us.

|

DEFLORES Take you heed first! | 95

Faith, you're grown much forgetful, you're to blame in't.

|

BEATRICE

|

He's bold, and I am blamed for't.

|

DEFLORES I have eased you

|

Of your trouble – think on't: I'm in pain,

|

And must be eased of you; 'tis a charity.

|

Justice invites your blood to understand me. | 100

BEATRICE

|

I dare not.

|

DEFLORES Quickly.

|

BEATRICE Oh, I never shall!

|

Speak it yet further off, that I may lose

|

What has been spoken, and no sound remain on't.

|

I would not hear so much offence again

|

For such another deed.

|

DEFLORES Soft, lady, soft – | 105

The last is not yet paid for! Oh, this act

|

Has put me into spirit; I was as greedy on't

|

As the parched earth of moisture when the clouds weep.

|

Did you not mark, I wrought my self into't –

|

Nay, sued and kneeled for't? Why was all that pains took? | 110

You see I have thrown contempt upon your gold:

|

Not that I want it not, for I do piteously –

|

In order I will come unto't, and make use on't –

|

But 'twas not held so precious to begin with,

|

For I place wealth after the heels of pleasure; | 115

And were I not resolved in my belief

|

That thy virginity were perfect in thee,

|

I should but take my recompense with grudging,

|

As if I had but half my hopes I agreed for.

|

BEATRICE

|

Why 'tis impossible thou canst be so wicked, | 120

Or shelter such a cunning cruelty,

|

To make his death the murderer of my honour.

|

Thy language is so bold and vicious,

|

I cannot see which way I can forgive it

|

With any modesty.

|

DEFLORES Push! You forget yourself: | 125

A woman dipped in blood, and talk of modesty?

|

BEATRICE

|

O misery of sin! Would I had been bound

|

Perpetually unto my living hate

|

In that Piracquo, than to hear these words.

|

Think but upon the distance that creation | 130

Set 'twixt thy blood and mine, and keep thee there.

|

DEFLORES

|

Look but into your conscience, read me there –

|

'Tis a true book, you'll find me there your equal.

|

Push! Fly not to your birth, but settle you

|

In what the act has made you, you're no more now; | 135

You must forget your parentage to me –

|

You're the deed's creature: by that name

|

You lost your first condition; and I challenge you,

|

As peace and innocency has turned you out

|

And made you one with me.

|

BEATRICE With thee, foul villain? | 140

DEFLORES

|

Yes, my fair murd'ress; do you urge me?

|

Though thou writ'st 'maid', thou whore in thy affection,

|

'Twas changed from thy first love – and that's a kind

|

Of whoredom in thy heart – and he's changed now

|

To bring thy second on, thy Alsemero, | 145

Whom (by all sweets that ever darkness tasted!)

|

If I enjoy thee not, thou ne'er enjoy'st:

|

I'll blast the hopes and joys of marriage,

|

I'll confess all – my life I rate at nothing.

|

BEATRICE

|

Deflores –

|

DEFLORES I shall rest from all love's plagues then, | 150

I live in pain now: that flame-shooting eye

|

Will burn my heart to cinders.

|

BEATRICE O sir, hear me!

|

DEFLORES

|

She that in life and love refuses me,

|

In death and shame my partner she shall be.

|

BEATRICE

|

Stay, hear me once for all _ ] I make thee master | 155

Of all the wealth I have in gold and jewels:

|

Let me go poor unto my bed with honour,

|

And I am rich in all things.

|

DEFLORES Let this silence thee,

|

The wealth of all Valencia shall not buy

|

My pleasure from me. | 160

Can you weep Fate from its determined purpose?

|

So soon may you weep me.

|

BEATRICE Vengeance begins:

|

Murder, I see, is followed by more sins.

|

Was my creation in the womb so cursed,

|

It must engender with a viper first? | 165

DEFLORES

|

Come, rise, and shroud your blushes in my bosom.

|

[ _Raises her_ ]

Silence is one of pleasure's best receipts:

|

Thy peace is wrought for ever in this yielding.

|

'Las, how the turtle pants! Thou'lt love anon

|

What thou so fear'st and faint'st to venture on. | 170

_Exeunt_

### **ACT IV. [SCENE i.]**

[ _Dumb show_ ]

|

---|---

_Enter_ GENTLEMEN, VERMANDERO _meeting them with action of  
wonderment at the flight of_ PIRACQUO. _Enter_ ALSEMERO, _with_  
JASPERINO _and_ GALLANTS; VERMANDERO _points to him, the_  
GENTLEMEN _seeming to applaud the choice_.  
[ _Exeunt in procession_ VERMANDERO,] ALSEMERO, JASPERINO,  
 _and_ GENTLEMEN. [ _Enter_ ] BEATRICE _the Bride following_ [ _them_  
 _across the stage_ ] _in great state, accompanied with_ DIAPHANTA,  
ISABELLA, _and other_ GENTLEWOMEN. [ _Enter_ ] DEFLORES _after all,  
smiling at the accident_; ALONZO'S _Ghost appears to_ DEFLORES _in  
the midst of his smile, startles him, showing him the hand whose  
finger he had cut off. They pass over in great solemnity_ [ _and exeunt_ ].

_Enter_ BEATRICE

BEATRICE

|

This fellow has undone me endlessly:

|

Never was bride so fearfully distressed.

|

The more I think upon th'ensuing night,

|

And whom I am to cope with in embraces –

|

One that's ennobled both in blood and mind, | 5

So clear in understanding (that's my plague now),

|

Before whose judgement will my fault appear

|

Like malefactors' crimes before tribunals,

|

(There is no hiding on't) – the more I dive

|

Into my own distress. How a wise man | 10

Stands for a great calamity! There's no venturing

|

Into his bed, what course soe'er I light upon,

|

Without my shame, which may grow up to danger:

|

He cannot but in justice strangle me

|

As I lie by him, as a cheater use me. | 15

'Tis a precious craft to play with a false die

|

Before a cunning gamester: here's his closet,

|

The key left in't, and he abroad i'th' park –

|

Sure, 'twas forgot; I'll be so bold as look in't.

|

Bless me! A right physician's closet 'tis, | 20

Set round with vials, every one her mark too.

|

Sure he does practise physic for his own use,

|

Which may be safely called your great man's wisdom.

|

What manuscript lies here? ' _The Book of Experiment_,

|

_Called Secrets in Nature_ ' – so 'tis, 'tis so: | 25

'How to know whether a woman be with child or no' –

|

I hope I am not yet – if he should try though!

|

Let me see: folio forty-five – here 'tis,

|

The leaf tucked down upon't, the place suspicious:

|

'If you would know whether a woman be with child or | 30

not, give her two spoonfuls of the white water in Glass C' –

|

Where's that Glass C? Oh, yonder I see't now –

|

'and if she be with child, she sleeps full twelve hours after, if not,

|

not'.

|

None of that water comes into my belly: | 35

I'll know you from a hundred; I could break you now

|

Or turn you into milk, and so beguile

|

The master of the mystery, but I'll look to you.

|

Ha  which is next, is ten times worse:

|

'How to know whether a woman be a maid, or not.' | 40

If that should be applied, what would become of me?

|

Belike he has a strong faith of my purity,

|

That never yet made proof; but this he calls

|

'A merry sleight, but true experiment' –

|

The author 'Antonius Mizaldus': | 45

'Give the party you suspect the quantity of a spoonful

|

of the water in the glass M, which upon her that is a maid

|

makes three several effects: 'twill make her incontinently

|

gape, then fall into a sudden sneezing, last into a violent

|

laughing – else dull, heavy and lumpish.' | 50

Where had I been?

|

I fear it, yet 'tis seven hours to bedtime.

|

_Enter_ DIAPHANTA

DIAPHANTA

|

Cuds, madam, are you here?

|

BEATRICE [ _Aside_ ] Seeing that wench now,

|

A trick comes in my mind: 'tis a nice piece

|

Gold cannot purchase; [ _Aloud_ ] I come hither, wench, | 55

To look my lord.

|

DIAPHANTA [ _Aside_ ] Would I had such a cause

|

To look him too. [ _Aloud_ ] Why, he's i' th' park, madam.

|

BEATRICE

|

There let him be.

|

DIAPHANTA Ay, madam, let him compass

|

Whole parks and forests, as great rangers do,

|

At roosting-time a little lodge can hold 'em. | 60

Earth-conquering Alexander, that thought the world

|

Too narrow for him, in the end had but his pit-hole.

|

BEATRICE

|

I fear thou art not modest, Diaphanta.

|

DIAPHANTA

|

Your thoughts are so unwilling to be known, madam;

|

'Tis ever the bride's fashion towards bedtime | 65

To set light by her joys, as if she owed 'em not.

|

BEATRICE

|

Her joys? Her fears thou wouldst say.

|

DIAPHANTA Fear of what?

|

BEATRICE

|

Art thou a maid, and talkst so to a maid?

|

You leave a blushing business behind,

|

Beshrew your heart for't!

|

DIAPHANTA Do you mean good sooth, madam? | 70

BEATRICE

|

Well, if I'd thought upon the fear at first,

|

Man should have been unknown.

|

DIAPHANTA Is't possible?

|

BEATRICE

|

I will give a thousand ducats to that woman

|

Would try what my fear were, and tell me true

|

Tomorrow, when she gets from't: as she likes, | 75

I might perhaps be drawn to't.

|

DIAPHANTA Are you in earnest?

|

BEATRICE

|

Do you get the woman, then challenge me,

|

And see if I'll fly from't; but I must tell you

|

This by the way: she must be a true maid,

|

Else there's no trial, my fears are not hers else. | 80

DIAPHANTA

|

Nay, she that I would put into your hands, madam

|

Shall be a maid.

|

BEATRICE You know I should be shamed else,

|

Because she lies for me.

|

DIAPHANTA 'Tis a strange humour!

|

But are you serious still? Would you resign

|

Your first night's pleasure, and give money too? | 85

BEATRICE

|

As willingly as live; alas, the gold

|

Is but a by-bet to wedge in the honour.

|

DIAPHANTA [ _Aside_ ]

|

I do not know how the world goes abroad

|

For faith or honesty; there's both required in this.

|

[ _Aloud_ ] Madam, what say you to me? And stray no further: | 90

I've a good mind in troth to earn your money.

|

BEATRICE

|

You're too quick, I fear, to be a maid.

|

DIAPHANTA

|

How? Not a maid? Nay, then you urge me, madam!

|

Your honourable self is not a truer

|

With all your fears upon you –

|

BEATRICE [ _Aside_ ] Bad enough, then. | 95

DIAPHANTA

|

Than I with all my lightsome joys about me.

|

BEATRICE

|

I'm glad to hear't: then you dare put your honesty

|

Upon an easy trial.

|

DIAPHANTA Easy? – Anything.

|

BEATRICE

|

I'll come to you straight. [ _Goes to the closet_ ]

DIAPHANTA  _Aside_ ] [She will not search me? Will she?

|

Like the forewoman of a female jury? | 100

BEATRICE [ _Aside_ ]

|

Glass M. Ay, this is it. [ _Aloud_ ] Look, Diaphanta,

|

You take no worse than I do. [ _Drinks_ ]

|

DIAPHANTA And in so doing,

|

I will not question what 'tis, but take it. [ _Drinks_ ]

|

BEATRICE [ _Aside_ ]

|

Now if the experiment be true, 'twill praise itself,

|

And give me noble ease. [ _Diaphanta gapes_ ] – Begins already: | 105

There's the first symptom; and what haste it makes

|

To fall into the second, [ _Diaphanta sneezes_ ] there by this time!

|

Most admirable secret! On the contrary,

|

It stirs not me a whit, which most concerns it.

|

DIAPHANTA

|

Ha ha ha!

|

BEATRICE  _Aside_ ] [Just in all things and in order | 110

As if 'twere circumscribed; one accident

|

Gives way unto another.

|

DIAPHANTA Ha ha ha!

|

BEATRICE

|

How now wench?

|

DIAPHANTA Ha ha ha! I am so – so light

|

At heart! Ha ha ha! So pleasurable!

|

But one swig more, sweet madam?

|

BEATRICE Ay, tomorrow; | 115

We shall have time to sit by't.

|

DIAPHANTA Now I'm sad again.

|

BEATRICE

|

It lays itself so gently too. Come, wench –

|

Most honest Diaphanta I dare call thee now.

|

DIAPHANTA

|

Pray tell me, madam, what trick call you this?

|

BEATRICE

|

I'll tell thee all hereafter; we must study | 120

The carriage of this business:

|

DIAPHANTA I shall carry't well,

|

Because I love the burden.

|

BEATRICE About midnight

|

You must not fail to steal forth gently,

|

That I may use the place.

|

DIAPHANTA Oh, fear not, madam,

|

I shall be cool by that time. [ _Aside_ ] The bride's place, | 125

And with a thousand ducats  for a justice now –

|

I bring a portion with me, I scorn small fools.

|

_Exeunt_

### **[ACT IV. SCENE ii.]**

_Enter_ VERMANDERO _and_ SERVANT

---

VERMANDERO

|

I tell thee, knave, mine honour is in question,

|

A thing till now free from suspicion,

|

Nor ever was there cause. Who of my gentlemen

|

Are absent? Tell me and truly, how many, and who?

|

SERVANT

|

Antonio, sir, and Franciscus. | 5

VERMANDERO

|

When did they leave the castle?

|

SERVANT

|

Some ten days since, sir – the one intending to Briamata,

|

th'other for Valencia.

|

VERMANDERO

|

The time accuses 'em: a charge of murder

|

Is brought within my castle gate – Piracquo's murder; | 10

I dare not answer faithfully their absence.

|

A strict command of apprehension

|

Shall pursue 'em suddenly, and either wipe

|

The stain off clear, or openly discover it.

|

Provide me wingèd warrants for the purpose. | 15

See, I am set on again.

|

_Exit_ SERVANT

_Enter_ TOMAZO

TOMAZO

|

I claim a brother of you.

|

VERMANDERO You're too hot,

|

Seek him not here.

|

TOMAZO Yes, 'mongst your dearest bloods!

|

If my peace find no fairer satisfaction,

|

This is the place must yield account for him, | 20

For here I left him, and the hasty tie

|

Of this snatched marriage, gives strong testimony

|

Of his most certain ruin.

|

VERMANDERO Certain falsehood!

|

This is the place indeed: his breach of faith

|

Has too much marred both my abusèd love – | 25

The honourable love I reserved for him –

|

And mocked my daughter's joy. The prepared morning

|

Blushed at his infidelity; he left

|

Contempt and scorn to throw upon those friends

|

Whose belief hurt 'em. Oh, 'twas most ignoble | 30

To take his flight so unexpectedly,

|

And throw such public wrongs on those that loved him!

|

TOMAZO

|

Then this is all your answer.

|

VERMANDERO 'Tis too fair

|

For one of his alliance; and I warn you

|

That this place no more see you. _Exit_

_Enter_ DEFLORES

|

TOMAZO The best is, | 35

There is more ground to meet a man's revenge on. –

|

Honest Deflores!

|

DEFLORES That's my name indeed.

|

Saw you the bride? Good sweet sir, which way took she?

|

TOMAZO

|

I have blest mine eyes from seeing such a false one.

|

DEFLORES [ _Aside_ ]

|

I'd fain get off: this man's not for my company; | 40

I smell his brother's blood when I come near him.

|

TOMAZO

|

Come hither, kind and true one; I remember

|

My brother loved thee well.

|

DEFLORES O purely, dear sir!

|

[ _Aside_ ] Methinks I am now again a-killing on him,

|

He brings it so fresh to me.

|

TOMAZO Thou canst guess, sirrah – | 45

An honest friend has an instinct of jealousy –

|

At some foul guilty person?

|

DEFLORES

|

'Las, sir, I am so charitable, I think none

|

Worse then my self – you did not see the bride then?

|

TOMAZO

|

I prithee name her not! Is she not wicked? | 50

DEFLORES

|

No, no, a pretty, easy, round-packed sinner,

|

As your most ladies are – else you might think

|

I flattered her – but sir, at no hand wicked,

|

Till they're so old their chins and noses meet,

|

And they salute witches. – I am called, I think, sir. | 55

 _Aside_ ] His company even [o'erlays my conscience. _Exit_

|

TOMAZO

|

That Deflores has a wondrous honest heart –

|

He'll bring it out in time, I'm assured on't.

|

Oh, here's the glorious master of the day's joy;

|

'Twill not be long till he and I do reckon. | 60

_Enter_ ALSEMERO

|

Sir!

|

ALSEMERO You are most welcome.

|

TOMAZO You may call that word back:

|

I do not think I am, nor wish to be.

|

ALSEMERO

|

'Tis strange you found the way to this house, then.

|

TOMAZO

|

Would I'd ne'er known the cause! I'm none of those, sir,

|

That come to give you joy, and swill your wine; | 65

'Tis a more precious liquor that must lay

|

The fiery thirst I bring.

|

ALSEMERO Your words and you

|

Appear to me great strangers.

|

TOMAZO Time and our swords

|

May make us more acquainted. This the business:

|

I should have had a brother in your place – | 70

How treachery and malice have disposed of him,

|

I'm bound to enquire of him which holds his right,

|

Which never could come fairly.

|

ALSEMERO You must look

|

To answer for that word, sir.

|

TOMAZO Fear you not:

|

I'll have it ready drawn at our next meeting. | 75

Keep your day solemn. Farewell, I disturb it not;

|

I'll bear the smart with patience for a time. _Exit_

|

ALSEMERO

|

'Tis somewhat ominous this: a quarrel entered

|

Upon this day. My innocence relieves me,

|

_Enter_ JASPERINO

|

I should be wondrous sad else. – Jasperino, | 80

I have news to tell thee, strange news.

|

JASPERINO I ha' some too,

|

I think as strange as yours. Would I might keep

|

Mine, so my faith and friendship might be kept in't!

|

Faith sir, dispense a little with my zeal,

|

And let it cool in this.

|

ALSEMERO This puts me on, | 85

And blames thee for thy slowness.

|

JASPERINO All may prove nothing,

|

Only a friendly fear that leapt from me, sir.

|

ALSEMERO

|

No question it may prove nothing; let's partake it, though.

|

JASPERINO

|

'Twas Diaphanta's chance – for to that wench

|

I pretend honest love, and she deserves it – | 90

To leave me in a back part of the house,

|

A place we chose for private conference;

|

She was no sooner gone, but instantly

|

I heard your bride's voice in the next room to me;

|

And, lending more attention, found Deflores | 95

Louder then she.

|

ALSEMERO Deflores? Thou art out now.

|

JASPERINO

|

You'll tell me more anon.

|

ALSEMERO Still I'll prevent thee:

|

The very sight of him is poison to her.

|

JASPERINO

|

That made me stagger too, but Diaphanta

|

At her return confirmed it.

|

ALSEMERO Diaphanta! | 100

JASPERINO

|

Then fell we both to listen, and words passed

|

Like those that challenge interest in a woman.

|

ALSEMERO

|

Peace, quench thy zeal – 'tis dangerous to thy bosom.

|

JASPERINO

|

Then truth is full of peril.

|

ALSEMERO Such truths are.

|

Oh, were she the sole glory of the earth, | 105

Had eyes that could shoot fire into kings' breasts,

|

And touched, she sleeps not here! Yet I have time,

|

Though night be near, to be resolved hereof;

|

And prithee do not weigh me by my passions.

|

JASPERINO

|

I never weighed friend so.

|

ALSEMERO Done charitably. | 110

That key will lead thee to a pretty secret

|

By a Chaldean taught me – and I've spent

|

My study upon some. Bring from my closet

|

A glass inscribed there with the letter M;

|

And question not my purpose.

|

JASPERINO It shall be done, sir. | 115

ALSEMERO

|

How can this hang together? Not an hour since,

|

Her woman came pleading her lady's fears,

|

Delivered her for the most timorous virgin

|

That ever shrunk at man's name, and so modest,

|

She charged her weep out her request to me, | 120

That she might come obscurely to my bosom.

|

_Enter_ BEATRICE

|

BEATRICE [ _Aside_ ]

|

All things go well: my woman's preparing yonder

|

For her sweet voyage, which grieves me to lose;

|

Necessity compels it; I lose all else.

|

ALSEMERO [ _Aside_ ]

|

Push! Modesty's shrine is set in yonder forehead. | 125

I cannot be too sure, though. [ _Aloud_ ] My Joanna!

|

BEATRICE

|

Sir, I was bold to weep a message to you –

|

Pardon my modest fears.

|

ALSEMERO [ _Aside_ ] The dove's not meeker.

|

She's abused questionless.

|

_Enter_ JASPERINO

|

[ _Aloud_ ] Oh, are you come, sir?

|

BEATRICE [ _Aside_ ]

|

The glass, upon my life! I see the letter. | 130

JASPERINO

|

Sir, this is M.

|

ALSEMERO 'Tis it.

|

BEATRICE [ _Aside_ ] I am suspected.

|

ALSEMERO

|

How fitly our bride comes to partake with us!

|

BEATRICE

|

What is't, my lord?

|

ALSEMERO No hurt.

|

BEATRICE Sir, pardon me –

|

I seldom taste of any composition.

|

ALSEMERO

|

But this, upon my warrant, you shall venture on. | 135

[ _Gives her the glass_ ]

BEATRICE

|

I fear 'twill make me ill.

|

ALSEMERO Heaven forbid that.

|

BEATRICE [ _Aside_ ]

|

I'm put now to my cunning: th'effects I know,

|

If I can now but feign 'em handsomely. [ _Drinks_ ]

ALSEMERO [ _To_ JASPERINO]

|

It has that secret virtue it ne'er missed, sir,

|

Upon a virgin. [BEATRICE _gapes, then sneezes_ ]

|

JASPERINO  _To_ ALSEMERO] [Treble qualitied! | 140

ALSEMERO [ _To_ JASPERINO]

|

By all that's virtuous, it takes there, proceeds!

|

JASPERINO [ _To_ ALSEMERO]

|

This is the strangest trick to know a maid by.

|

BEATRICE

|

Ha ha ha!

|

You have given me joy of heart to drink, my lord.

|

ALSEMERO

|

No, thou hast given me such joy of heart, | 145

That never can be blasted.

|

BEATRICE What's the matter sir?

|

ALSEMERO [ _To_ JASPERINO]

|

See now, 'tis settled in a melancholy

|

Keeps both the time and method. [ _To_ BEATRICE] My Joanna,

|

Chaste as the breath of heaven, or morning's womb

|

That brings the day forth, thus my love encloses thee! | 150

[ _Embraces her_ ] _Exeunt_

### **[ACT IV. SCENE iii.]**

_Enter_ ISABELLA _and_ LOLLIO

---

ISABELLA

|

O heaven! Is this the waxing moon?

|

Does love turn fool, run mad, and all at once?

|

Sirrah, here's a madman, akin to the fool too,

|

A lunatic lover.

|

LOLLIO

|

No, no! Not he I brought the letter from? | 5

ISABELLA

|

Compare his inside with his out, and tell me.

|

[ _Gives him the letter_ ]

LOLLIO

|

The out's mad, I'm sure of that, I had a taste on't.

|

 _Reads_ ] 'To the bright Andromeda, chief chambermaid [to the

|

Knight of the Sun, at the sign of Scorpio, in the middle region,

|

sent by the bellows-mender of Æolus. Pay the post.' | 10

This is stark madness.

|

ISABELLA [ _Takes the letter_ ]

|

Now mark the inside.

|

[ _Reads_ ] 'Sweet lady, having now cast off this counterfeit cover of

|

a madman, I appear to your best judgement a true and faithful

|

lover of your beauty.' | 15

LOLLIO

|

He is mad still.

|

ISABELLA

|

'If any fault you find, chide those perfections in you which have

|

made me imperfect: 'tis the same sun that causeth to grow, and

|

enforceth to wither –'

|

LOLLIO

|

O rogue! | 20

ISABELLA

|

'– shapes and trans-shapes, destroys and builds again. I come in

|

winter to you dismantled of my proper ornaments: by the sweet

|

splendour of your cheerful smiles, I spring and live a lover.'

|

LOLLIO

|

Mad rascal still!

|

ISABELLA

|

'Tread him not under foot, that shall appear an honour to your | 25

bounties. I remain, mad till I speak with you from whom I

|

expect my cure, yours all, or one beside himself, Franciscus.'

|

LOLLIO

|

You are like to have a fine time on't: my master and I may give

|

over our professions – I do not think but you can cure fools and

|

madmen faster then we, with little pains too. | 30

ISABELLA

|

Very likely.

|

LOLLIO

|

One thing I must tell you, mistress: you perceive that I am privy

|

to your skill; if I find you minister once and set up the trade, I

|

put in for my thirds – I shall be mad or fool else.

|

ISABELLA

|

The first place is thine – believe it, Lollio – | 35

If I do fall –

|

LOLLIO I fall upon you.

|

ISABELLA So.

|

LOLLIO

|

Well, I stand to my venture.

|

ISABELLA

|

But thy counsel now: how shall I deal with 'em?

|

LOLLIO

|

Why, do you mean to deal with 'em?

|

ISABELLA

|

Nay, the fair understanding – how to use 'em. | 40

LOLLIO

|

Abuse 'em! That's the way to mad the fool, and make a fool of

|

the madman, and then you use 'em kindly.

|

ISABELLA

|

'Tis easy – I'll practise. Do thou observe it.

|

The key of thy wardrobe?

|

LOLLIO

|

There – fit yourself for 'em, and I'll fit 'em both for you. | 45

[ _Gives her the key_ ]

ISABELLA

|

Take thou no further notice than the outside. _Exit_

LOLLIO

|

Not an inch, I'll put you to the inside.

|

_Enter_ ALIBIUS

ALIBIUS

|

Lollio, art there? Will all be perfect, think'st thou?

|

Tomorrow night, as if to close up the solemnity,

|

Vermandero expects us. | 50

LOLLIO

|

I mistrust the madmen most; the fools will do well enough: I

|

have taken pains with them.

|

ALIBIUS

|

Tush, they cannot miss! The more absurdity,

|

The more commends it, so no rough behaviours

|

Affright the ladies – they are nice things, thou know'st. | 55

LOLLIO

|

You need not fear, sir: so long as we are there with our

|

commanding pizzles, they'll be as tame as the ladies themselves.

|

ALIBIUS

|

I will see them once more rehearse before they go.

|

LOLLIO

|

I was about it, sir. Look you to the madmen's morris, and let me

|

alone with the other. There is one or two that I mistrust their | 60

fooling: I'll instruct them, and then they shall rehearse the

|

whole measure.

|

ALIBIUS

|

Do so – I'll see the music prepared. But, Lollio,

|

By the way, how does my wife brook her restraint?

|

Does she not grudge at it? | 65

LOLLIO

|

So, so – she takes some pleasure in the house, she would abroad

|

else. You must allow her a little more length, she's kept too

|

short.

|

ALIBIUS

|

She shall along to Vermandero's with us:

|

That will serve her for a month's liberty. | 70

LOLLIO

|

What's that on your face, sir?

|

ALIBIUS Where, Lollio, I see nothing.

|

LOLLIO

|

Cry you mercy, sir, 'tis your nose; it showed like the trunk of a young elephant.

|

ALIBIUS

|

Away, rascal! I'll prepare the music, Lollio. _Exit_

LOLLIO

|

Do, sir; and I'll dance the whilst. [ _Calls_ ] Tony! Where art thou, | 75

Tony?

|

_Enter_ ANTONIO

ANTONIO

|

Here, cousin, where art thou?

|

LOLLIO

|

Come, Tony, the footmanship I taught you.

|

ANTONIO

|

I had rather ride, cousin.

|

LOLLIO

|

Ay, a whip take you! But I'll keep you out. Vault in, look you, | 80

Tony: fa, la, la, la, la. [ _Dances_ ]

ANTONIO Fa, la, la, la, la. [ _Dances_ ]

LOLLIO

|

There, an honour. [ _Bows_ ]

ANTONIO

|

Is this an honour, coz? [ _Bows_ ]

LOLLIO

|

Yes, and it please your worship.

|

ANTONIO

|

Does honour bend in the hams, coz? | 85

LOLLIO

|

Marry does it: as low as worship, squireship – nay, yeomanry

|

itself sometimes; from whence it first stiffened, there rises a

|

caper.

|

ANTONIO

|

Caper after an honour, coz?

|

LOLLIO

|

Very proper: for honour is but a caper, rises as fast and high, has | 90

a knee or two, and falls to th'ground again. You can remember

|

your figure, Tony? _Exit_

ANTONIO

|

Yes, cousin, when I see thy figure, I can remember mine.

|

_Enter_ ISABELLA [ _like a madwoman_ ]

ISABELLA

|

Hey, how he treads the air! Shough, shough, t'other way – he

|

burns his wings else. Here's wax enough below, Icarus – more | 95

than will be cancelled these eighteen moons.

|

[ANTONIO _falls_ ]

He's down, he's down! What a terrible fall he had!

|

Stand up, thou son of Cretan Daedalus,

|

And let us tread the lower labyrinth;

|

I'll bring thee to the clew. [ _Pulls him_ ] | 100

ANTONIO

|

Prithee, coz, let me alone.

|

ISABELLA Art thou not drowned?

|

About thy head I saw a heap of clouds

|

Wrapped like a Turkish turban, on thy back

|

A crook'd chameleon-coloured rainbow hung

|

Like a tiara down unto thy hams. | 105

Let me suck out those billows in thy belly, [ _Bends over him_ ]

Hark how they roar and rumble in the straits!

|

Bless thee from the pirates!

|

ANTONIO

|

Pox upon you, let me alone! [ _Rises_ ]

ISABELLA

|

Why shouldst thou mount so high as Mercury, | 110

Unless thou hadst reversion of his place?

|

Stay in the moon with me, Endymion,

|

And we will rule these wild rebellious waves,

|

That would have drowned my love.

|

ANTONIO

|

I'll kick thee if again thou touch me, | 115

Thou wild, unshapen antic; I am no fool,

|

You bedlam.

|

ISABELLA But you are, as sure as I am, mad.

Have I put on this habit of a frantic,

|

With love as full of fury, to beguile

|

The nimble eye of watchful jealousy, | 120

And am I thus rewarded? [ _Reveals herself_ ]

ANTONIO

|

Ha! Dearest beauty!

|

ISABELLA

|

No, I have no beauty now,

|

Nor never had, but what was in my garments.

|

You a quick-sighted lover? Come not near me! | 125

Keep your caparisons, you're aptly clad;

|

I came a feigner to return stark mad. _Exit_

_Enter_ LOLLIO

ANTONIO

|

Stay, or I shall change condition,

|

And become as you are.

|

LOLLIO

|

Why Tony, whither now? Why, fool? | 130

ANTONIO

|

Whose fool, usher of idiots? You coxcomb,

|

I have fooled too much.

|

LOLLIO

|

You were best be mad another while then.

|

ANTONIO

|

So I am, stark mad; I have cause enough,

|

And I could throw the full effects on thee, | 135

And beat thee like a Fury.

|

LOLLIO

|

Do not, do not! I shall not forbear the gentleman under the

|

fool, if you do. Alas, I saw through your fox-skin before now!

|

Come, I can give you comfort: my mistress loves you, and there

|

is as arrant a mad-man i' th' house as you are a fool – your rival, | 140

whom she loves not. If, after the masque, we can rid her of him,

|

you earn her love, she says, and the fool shall ride her.

|

ANTONIO

|

May I believe thee?

|

LOLLIO

|

Yes, or you may choose whether you will or no.

|

ANTONIO

|

She's eased of him, I have a good quarrel on't. | 145

LOLLIO

|

Well, keep your old station yet, and be quiet.

|

ANTONIO

|

Tell her I will deserve her love. [ _Exit_ ]

LOLLIO

|

And you are like to have your desire.

|

_Enter_ FRANCISCUS

FRANCISCUS [ _Sings_ ]

|

'Down, down, down a-down a-down'; and then with a  
horse-trick

|

To kick Latona's forehead, and break her bowstring. | 150

LOLLIO

|

This is t'other counterfeit – I'll put him out of his humour

|

 _[Takes out letter and reads_]: 'Sweet Lady, having now cast this

|

counterfeit cover of a mad-man, I appear to your best

|

judgement a true and faithful lover of your beauty.' This is

|

pretty well for a madman. | 155

FRANCISCUS

|

Ha! What's that?

|

LOLLIO

|

'Chide those perfections in you which made me imperfect.'

|

FRANCISCUS

|

I am discovered to the fool.

|

LOLLIO

|

I hope to discover the fool in you, e're I have done with you.

|

'Yours all, or one beside himself, Franciscus.' This madman will | 160

mend sure.

|

FRANCISCUS

|

What do you read, sirrah?

|

LOLLIO

|

Your destiny, sir: you'll be hanged for this trick, and another

|

that I know.

|

FRANCISCUS

|

Art thou of counsel with thy mistress? | 165

LOLLIO

|

Next her apron-strings.

|

FRANCISCUS

|

Give me thy hand.

|

LOLLIO

|

Stay, let me put yours in my pocket first [ _Puts away the letter_ ]:

|

your hand is true, is it not? It will not pick? I partly fear it,

|

because I think it does lie. | 170

FRANCISCUS

|

Not in a syllable.

|

LOLLIO

|

So, if you love my mistress so well as you have handled the

|

matter here, you are like to be cured of your madness.

|

FRANCISCUS

|

And none but she can cure it.

|

LOLLIO

|

Well, I'll give you over then, and she shall cast your water next. | 175

FRANCISCUS

|

Take for thy pains past. [ _Gives him money_ ]

LOLLIO

|

I shall deserve more, sir, I hope. My mistress loves you, but must

|

have some proof of your love to her.

|

FRANCISCUS

|

There I meet my wishes.

|

LOLLIO

|

That will not serve, you must meet her enemy and yours. | 180

FRANCISCUS

|

He's dead already.

|

LOLLIO

|

Will you tell me that, and I parted but now with him?

|

FRANCISCUS

|

Show me the man!

|

LOLLIO

|

Ay, that's a right course now: see him before you kill him in any

|

case; and yet it needs not go so far neither – 'tis but a fool that | 185

haunts the house and my mistress in the shape of an idiot: bang

|

but his fool's coat well-favouredly, and 'tis well.

|

FRANCISCUS

|

Soundly, soundly!

|

LOLLIO

|

Only reserve him till the masque be past; and if you find him

|

not now in the dance yourself, I'll show you. In, in! My | 190

master! [ _Dances_ ]

FRANCISCUS

|

He handles him like a feather. Hey! [ _Exit dancing_ ]

_Enter_ ALIBIUS

ALIBIUS

|

Well said! In a readiness, Lollio?

|

LOLLIO

|

Yes, sir.

|

ALIBIUS

|

Away then, and guide them in, Lollio; | 195

Entreat your mistress to see this sight.

|

Hark, is there not one incurable fool

|

That might be begged? I have friends.

|

LOLLIO

|

I have him for you – one that shall deserve it too. [ _Exit_ ]

ALIBIUS

|

Good boy, Lollio. | 200

[ _Enter_ ISABELLA, _and_ LOLLIO _ushering in the_ MADMEN _and_ FOOLS.]  
 _The_ MADMEN _and_ FOOLS _dance_

'Tis perfect! Well, fit but once these strains,

|

We shall have coin and credit for our pains.

|

_Exeunt_

### **ACT V. [SCENE i.]**

_Enter_ BEATRICE. _A clock strikes one_

---

BEATRICE

|

One struck, and yet she lies by't! O my fears!

|

This strumpet serves her own ends, 'tis apparent now,

|

Devours the pleasure with a greedy appetite,

|

And never minds my honour or my peace,

|

Makes havoc of my right; but she pays dearly for't – | 5

No trusting of her life with such a secret,

|

That cannot rule her blood to keep her promise.

|

Beside, I have some suspicion of her faith to me,

|

Because I was suspected of my lord,

|

And it must come from her. – Hark, by my horrors, | 10

Another clock strikes two! [ _Clock_ ] s _trike_ [ _s_ ] _two_

_Enter_ DEFLORES.

DEFLORES Psst! Where are you?

|

BEATRICE

|

Deflores!

|

DEFLORES Ay – is she not come from him yet?

|

BEATRICE

|

As I am a living soul not.

|

DEFLORES Sure the devil

|

Hath sowed his itch within her! Who'd trust

|

A waiting-woman? | 15

BEATRICE

|

I must trust somebody.

|

DEFLORES

|

Push! They are termagants;

|

Especially when they fall upon their masters

|

And have their ladies' first-fruits, they're mad whelps,

|

You cannot stave 'em off from game royal. Then | 20

You are so harsh and hardy, ask no counsel –

|

And I could have helped you to a 'pothecary's daughter

|

Would have fallen off before eleven, and thanked you too.

|

BEATRICE

|

O me! Not yet? This whore forgets herself.

|

DEFLORES

|

The rascal fares so well – look, you're undone, | 25

The day-star by this hand! See Phosphorus plain yonder.

|

BEATRICE

|

Advise me how to fall upon some ruin;

|

There is no counsel safe else.

|

DEFLORES Peace! I ha't now,

|

For we must force a rising, there's no remedy.

|

BEATRICE

|

How? Take heed of that.

|

DEFLORES Tush! Be you quiet, | 30

Or else give over all.

|

BEATRICE Prithee, I ha' done then.

|

DEFLORES

|

This is my reach: I'll set some part a-fire

|

Of Diaphanta's chamber.

|

BEATRICE How? Fire, sir?

|

That may endanger the whole house.

|

DEFLORES

|

You talk of danger when your fame's on fire? | 35

BEATRICE

|

That's true, do what thou wilt now.

|

DEFLORES Push! I aim

|

At a most rich success, strikes all dead sure:

|

The chimney being a-fire, and some light parcels

|

Of the least danger in her chamber only,

|

If Diaphanta should be met by chance then, | 40

Far from her lodging – which is now suspicious –

|

It would be thought her fears and affrights then,

|

Drove her to seek for succour; if not seen

|

Or met at all – as that's the likeliest –

|

For her own shame she'll hasten towards her lodging. | 45

I will be ready with a piece high-charged,

|

As 'twere to cleanse the chimney – there 'tis proper,

|

But she shall be the mark.

|

BEATRICE I'm forced to love thee now,

|

'Cause thou provid'st so carefully for my honour.

|

DEFLORES

|

'Slid! It concerns the safety of us both, | 50

Our pleasure and continuance.

|

BEATRICE One word now:

|

Prithee, how for the servants?

|

DEFLORES I'll dispatch them,

|

Some one way, some another in the hurry,

|

For buckets, hooks, ladders. Fear not you:

|

The deed shall find its time, and I've thought since | 55

Upon a safe conveyance for the body too.

|

How this fire purifies wit! Watch you your minute.

|

BEATRICE

|

Fear keeps my soul upon't, I cannot stray from't.

|

_Enter_ ALONZO _'s ghost_

DEFLORES

|

Ha! What art thou that tak'st away the light

|

'Twixt that star and me? I dread thee not: | 60

'Twas but a mist of conscience – all's clear again. _Exit_

BEATRICE

|

Who's that, Deflores? Bless me! It slides by. [ _Exit ghost_ ]

Some ill thing haunts the house, 't has left behind it

|

A shivering sweat upon me – I'm afraid now.

|

This night hath been so tedious. Oh, this strumpet! | 65

Had she a thousand lives, he should not leave her

|

Till he had destroyed the last – [ _Clock strikes three_ ]

List! O my terrors,

Three struck by St Sebastian's!

|

[VOICES] _Within_ Fire, fire, fire!

|

BEATRICE

|

Already! How rare is that man's speed!

|

How heartily he serves me! His face loathes one, | 70

But look upon his care, who would not love him?

|

The east is not more beauteous than his service.

|

[VOICES] _Within_

|

Fire, fire, fire!

|

_Enter_ DEFLORES [ _with_ ] _servants_. [ _They_ ] _pass  
over_ [ _the stage. A bell rings_ ].

DEFLORES

|

Away! Dispatch! Hooks, buckets, ladders! That's well said!

|

The fire bell rings, the chimney works, my charge | 75

The piece is ready. _Exit_

_Enter_ DIAPHANTA

BEATRICE Here's a man worth loving! –

|

[ _Sees_ DIAPHANTA]

Oh, you're a jewel!

|

DIAPHANTA Pardon frailty, madam:

|

In troth I was so well, I ev'n forgot myself.

|

BEATRICE

|

Y'have made trim work!

|

DIAPHANTA What?

|

BEATRICE Hie quickly to your chamber;

|

Your reward follows you.

|

DIAPHANTA I never made | 80

So sweet a bargain. _Exit_

_Enter_ ALSEMERO

|

ALSEMERO O my dear Joanna,

|

Alas, art thou risen too? I was coming,

|

My absolute treasure.

|

BEATRICE When I missed you,

|

I could not choose but follow.

|

ALSEMERO Th'art all sweetness!

|

The fire is not so dangerous.

|

BEATRICE Think you so, sir? | 85

ALSEMERO

|

I prithee, tremble not. Believe me, 'tis not.

|

_Enter_ VERMANDERO, JASPERINO.

VERMANDERO

|

O bless my house and me!

|

ALSEMERO My lord your father.

|

_Enter_ DEFLORES _with a piece_

VERMANDERO

|

Knave, whither goes that piece?

|

DEFLORES

|

To scour the chimney. _Exit_

VERMANDERO

|

Oh, well said, well said! | 90

That fellow's good on all occasions.

|

BEATRICE

|

A wondrous necessary man, my lord.

|

VERMANDERO

|

He hath a ready wit, he's worth 'em all, sir.

|

Dog at a house on fire – I ha' seen him singed ere now.

|

_The piece goes off_

Ha! There he goes!

|

BEATRICE [ _Aside_ ] 'Tis done.

|

ALSEMERO Come, sweet, to bed now; | 95

Alas, thou wilt get cold.

|

BEATRICE Alas, the fear keeps that out.

|

My heart will find no quiet till I hear

|

How Diaphanta, my poor woman, fares –

|

It is her chamber, sir, her lodging chamber.

|

VERMANDERO

|

How should the fire come there? | 100

BEATRICE

|

As good a soul as ever lady countenanced,

|

But in her chamber negligent and heavy.

|

She 'scaped a mine twice.

|

VERMANDERO Twice?

|

BEATRICE Strangely twice, sir.

|

VERMANDERO

|

Those sleepy sluts are dangerous in a house,

|

And they be ne'er so good.

|

_Enter_ DEFLORES [ _with the body of_ DIAPHANTA]

DEFLORES O poor virginity, | 105

Thou hast paid dearly for't!

|

VERMANDERO Bless us! What's that?

|

DEFLORES

|

A thing you all knew once – Diaphanta's burnt.

|

BEATRICE

|

My woman, oh my woman!

|

DEFLORES Now the flames

|

Are greedy of her – burnt, burnt, burnt to death, sir!

|

BEATRICE

|

O my presaging soul!

|

ALSEMERO Not a tear more, | 110

I charge you by the last embrace I gave you

|

In bed before this raised us.

|

BEATRICE Now you tie me:

|

Were it my sister now she gets no more.

|

_Enter_ SERVANT

VERMANDERO

|

How now?

|

SERVANT

|

All danger's past; you may now take your rests, my lords, the fire | 115

is thoroughly quenched. Ah, poor gentlewoman, how soon was

|

she stifled!

|

BEATRICE

|

Deflores, what is left of her inter,

|

And we as mourners all will follow her;

|

I will entreat that honour to my servant, | 120

Ev'n of my lord himself.

|

ALSEMERO Command it, sweetness.

|

BEATRICE

|

Which of you spied the fire first?

|

DEFLORES 'Twas I, madam.

|

BEATRICE

|

And took such pains in't too? A double goodness!

|

'Twere well he were rewarded.

|

VERMANDERO He shall be –

|

Deflores, call upon me.

|

ALSEMERO And upon me, sir. | 125

_Exeunt_

DEFLORES

|

Rewarded? Precious! Here's a trick beyond me!

|

I see in all bouts both of sport and wit,

|

Always a woman strives for the last hit. _Exit_

### **[ACT V. SCENE ii.]**

_Enter_ TOMAZO

---

TOMAZO

|

I cannot taste the benefits of life

|

With the same relish I was wont to do.

|

Man I grow weary of, and hold his fellowship

|

A treacherous bloody friendship; and because

|

I am ignorant in whom my wrath should settle, | 5

I must think all men villains, and the next

|

I meet, whoe'er he be, the murderer

|

Of my most worthy brother – ha! What's he?

|

_Enter_ DEFLORES, _passes over the stage_

Oh, the fellow that some call honest Deflores!

|

But methinks honesty was hard bestead | 10

To come there for a lodging, as if a queen

|

Should make her palace of a pest-house.

|

I find a contrariety in nature

|

Betwixt that face and me: the least occasion

|

Would give me game upon him; yet he's so foul | 15

One would scarce touch him with a sword he loved

|

And made account of; so most deadly venomous,

|

He would go near to poison any weapon

|

That should draw blood on him – one must resolve

|

Never to use that sword again in fight, | 20

In way of honest manhood, that strikes him;

|

Some river must devour it, 'twere not fit

|

That any man should find it. – What again?

|

_Enter_ DEFLORES

He walks a-purpose by, sure to choke me up,

|

To infect my blood.

|

DEFLORES My worthy noble lord! | 25

TOMAZO

|

Dost offer to come near and breathe upon me?

|

[ _Strikes him_ ]

DEFLORES

|

A blow! [ _Draws his sword_ ]

TOMAZO Yea, are you so prepared? [ _Draws_ ]

I'll rather like a soldier die by th'sword

|

Than like a politician by thy poison. [ _Advances on him_ ]

DEFLORES

|

Hold, my lord, as you are honourable. | 30

TOMAZO

|

All slaves that kill by poison are still cowards!

|

DEFLORES [ _Aside_ ]

|

I cannot strike: I see his brother's wounds

|

Fresh bleeding in his eye, as in a crystal.

|

[ _Aloud_ ] I will not question this, I know you're noble:

|

I take my injury with thanks given, sir, | 35

Like a wise lawyer, and as a favour

|

Will wear it for the worthy hand that gave it.

|

[ _Aside_ ] Why this from him, that yesterday appeared

|

So strangely loving to me?

|

Oh, but instinct is of a subtler strain; | 40

Guilt must not walk so near his lodge again –

|

He came near me now! _Exit_

TOMAZO

|

All league with mankind I renounce forever,

|

Till I find this murderer. Not so much

|

As common courtesy, but I'll lock up: | 45

For in the state of ignorance I live in,

|

A brother may salute his brother's murderer,

|

And wish good speed to th'villain in a greeting.

|

_Enter_ VERMANDERO, ALIBIUS and ISABELLA

VERMANDERO

|

Noble Piracquo!

|

TOMAZO Pray keep on your way, sir;

|

I've nothing to say to you.

|

VERMANDERO Comforts bless you, sir. | 50

TOMAZO

|

I have forsworn compliment; in troth I have, sir.

|

As you are merely man, I have not left

|

A good wish for you, nor any here.

|

VERMANDERO

|

Unless you be so far in love with grief

|

You will not part from't upon any terms, | 55

We bring that news will make a welcome for us.

|

TOMAZO

|

What news can that be?

|

VERMANDERO Throw no scornful smile

|

Upon the zeal I bring you; 'tis worth more, sir.

|

Two of the chiefest men I kept about me,

|

I hide not from the law, or your just vengeance.

|

TOMAZO Ha! | 60

VERMANDERO

|

To give your peace more ample satisfaction,

|

Thank these discoverers.

|

TOMAZO If you bring that calm,

|

Name but the manner I shall ask forgiveness in

|

For that contemptuous smile upon you;

|

I'll perfect it with reverence that belongs | 65

Unto a sacred altar. [ _Kneels_ ]

VERMANDERO Good sir, rise!

|

Why now you overdo as much o' this hand,

|

As you fell short o' t'other. Speak, Alibius.

|

ALIBIUS

|

'Twas my wife's fortune – as she is most lucky

|

At a discovery – to find out lately | 70

Within our hospital of fools and madmen,

|

Two counterfeits slipped into these disguises:

|

Their names, Franciscus and Antonio.

|

VERMANDERO

|

Both mine, sir, and I ask no favour for 'em.

|

ALIBIUS

|

Now that which draws suspicion to their habits: | 75

The time of their disguisings agrees justly

|

With the day of the murder.

|

TOMAZO O blest revelation!

|

VERMANDERO

|

Nay more, nay more, sir – I'll not spare mine own

|

In way of justice – they both feigned a journey

|

To Briamata, and so wrought out their leaves, | 80

My love was so abused in't.

|

TOMAZO Time's too precious

|

To run in waste now; you have brought a peace

|

The riches of five kingdoms could not purchase.

|

Be my most happy conduct, I thirst for 'em:

|

Like subtle lightning will I wind about 'em, | 85

And melt their marrow in 'em.

|

_Exeunt_

### **[ACT V. SCENE iii.]**

_Enter_ ALSEMERO _and_ JASPERINO

---

JASPERINO

|

Your confidence, I'm sure, is now of proof:

|

The prospect from the garden has showed

|

Enough for deep suspicion.

|

ALSEMERO The black mask

|

That so continually was worn upon't

|

Condemns the face for ugly ere't be seen – | 5

Her despite to him, and so seeming bottomless.

|

JASPERINO

|

Touch it home then: 'tis not a shallow probe

|

Can search this ulcer soundly; I fear you'll find it

|

Full of corruption. – 'Tis fit I leave you:

|

She meets you opportunely from that walk; | 10

She took the back door at his parting with her. _Exit_

ALSEMERO

|

Did my fate wait for this unhappy stroke

|

At my first sight of woman? – She is here.

|

_Enter_ BEATRICE

BEATRICE

|

Alsemero!

|

ALSEMERO How do you?

|

BEATRICE How do I?

|

Alas, sir! How do you? You look not well. | 15

ALSEMERO

|

You read me well enough, I am not well.

|

BEATRICE

|

Not well, sir? Is't in my power to better you?

|

ALSEMERO

|

Yes.

|

BEATRICE Nay, then you're cured again.

|

ALSEMERO

|

Pray resolve me one question, lady.

|

BEATRICE

|

If I can. | 20

ALSEMERO

|

None can so sure. Are you honest?

|

BEATRICE

|

Ha ha ha! That's a broad question, my lord.

|

ALSEMERO

|

But that's not a modest answer, my lady:

|

Do you laugh? My doubts are strong upon me.

|

BEATRICE

|

'Tis innocence that smiles, and no rough brow | 25

Can take away the dimple in her cheek.

|

Say I should strain a tear to fill the vault,

|

Which would you give the better faith to?

|

ALSEMERO

|

'Twere but hypocrisy of a sadder colour,

|

But the same stuff. Neither your smiles nor tears | 30

Shall move or flatter me from my belief:

|

You are a whore.

|

BEATRICE What a horrid sound it hath!

|

It blasts a beauty to deformity;

|

Upon what face soever that breath falls,

|

It strikes it ugly. Oh, you have ruined | 35

What you can ne'er repair again!

|

ALSEMERO

|

I'll all demolish and seek out truth within you,

|

If there be any left. Let your sweet tongue

|

Prevent your heart's rifling – there I'll ransack

|

And tear out my suspicion.

|

BEATRICE You may, sir – | 40

'Tis an easy passage. Yet, if you please,

|

Show me the ground whereon you lost your love:

|

My spotless virtue may but tread on that

|

Before I perish.

|

ALSEMERO Unanswerable –

|

A ground you cannot stand on, you fall down | 45

Beneath all grace and goodness, when you set

|

Your ticklish heel on't. There was a visor

|

O'er that cunning face, and that became you;

|

Now Impudence in triumph rides upon't.

|

How comes this tender reconcilement else | 50

'Twixt you and your despite, your rancorous loathing,

|

Deflores? He that your eye was sore at sight of,

|

He's now become your arms' supporter, your

|

Lips' saint.

|

BEATRICE Is there the cause?

|

ALSEMERO Worse: your lust's devil,

|

Your adultery.

|

BEATRICE Would any but yourself say that, | 55

'Twould turn him to a villain.

|

ALSEMERO It was witnessed

|

By the counsel of your bosom, Diaphanta.

|

BEATRICE

|

Is your witness dead then?

|

ALSEMERO 'Tis to be feared

|

It was the wages of her knowledge: poor soul,

|

She lived not long after the discovery. | 60

BEATRICE

|

Then hear a story of not much less horror

|

Than this your false suspicion is beguiled with:

|

To your bed's scandal, I stand up innocence,

|

Which even the guilt of one black other deed,

|

Will stand for proof of – your love has made me | 65

A cruel murd'ress.

|

ALSEMERO Ha!

|

BEATRICE A bloody one.

|

I have kissed poison for't, stroked a serpent:

|

That thing of hate – worthy in my esteem,

|

Of no better employment, and him most worthy

|

To be so employed – I caused to murder | 70

That innocent Piracquo, having no

|

Better means than that worst, to assure

|

Yourself to me.

|

ALSEMERO Oh, the place itself e'er since

|

Has crying been for vengeance, the temple

|

Where blood and beauty first unlawfully | 75

Fired their devotion, and quenched the right one –

|

'Twas in my fears at first; 'twill have it now.

|

Oh, thou art all deformed!

|

BEATRICE Forget not, sir,

|

It for your sake was done: shall greater dangers

|

Make the less welcome?

|

ALSEMERO Oh, thou shouldst have gone | 80

A thousand leagues about to have avoided

|

This dangerous bridge of blood – here we are lost.

|

BEATRICE

|

Remember, I am true unto your bed.

|

ALSEMERO

|

The bed itself's a charnel, the sheets shrouds

|

For murdered carcasses – it must ask pause | 85

What I must do in this; meantime you shall

|

Be my prisoner only, enter my closet.

|

_Exit_ BEATRICE. [ALSEMERO _locks her in the closet_ ]

I'll be your keeper yet. Oh, in what part

|

Of this sad story shall I first begin?

|

_Enter_ DEFLORES

– Ha!

This same fellow has put me in – Deflores! | 90

DEFLORES

|

Noble Alsemero!

|

ALSEMERO I can tell you

|

News, sir: my wife has her commended to you.

|

DEFLORES

|

That's news indeed, my lord! I think she would

|

Commend me to the gallows if she could,

|

She ever loved me so well, I thank her. | 95

ALSEMERO

|

What's this blood upon your band, Deflores?

|

DEFLORES

|

Blood? No, sure, 'twas washed since.

|

ALSEMERO

|

Since when, man?

|

DEFLORES Since t'other day I got a knock

|

In a sword-and-dagger school – I think 'tis out.

|

ALSEMERO

|

Yes, 'tis almost out, but 'tis perceived though. | 100

I had forgot my message: this it is,

|

What price goes murder?

|

DEFLORES How sir?

|

ALSEMERO I ask you, sir.

|

My wife's behindhand with you, she tells me,

|

For a brave bloody blow you gave for her sake Upon Piracquo.

|

DEFLORES Upon? 'Twas quite through him, sure! | 105

Has she confessed it?

|

ALSEMERO As sure as death to both of you,

|

And much more than that.

|

DEFLORES It could not be much more –

|

'Twas but one thing, and that is she's a whore.

|

ALSEMERO

|

It could not choose but follow. O cunning devils,

|

How should blind men know you from fair-faced saints? | 110

BEATRICE ( _Within_ )

|

He lies! The villain does belie me!

|

DEFLORES

|

Let me go to her, sir.

|

ALSEMERO Nay, you shall to her! –

|

Peace, crying crocodile, your sounds are heard!

|

Take your prey to you – get you into her, sir.

|

_Exit_ DEFLORES. [ALSEMERO _locks him in the closet_ ]

I'll be your pander now: rehearse again | 115

Your scene of lust, that you may be perfect

|

When you shall come to act it to the black audience

|

Where howls and gnashings shall be music to you.

|

Clip your adul'tress freely – 'tis the pilot

|

Will guide you to the Mare Mortuum, | 120

Where you shall sink to fathoms bottomless.

|

_Enter_ VERMANDERO, ALIBIUS, ISABELLA, TOMAZO, FRANCISCUS,  
 _and_ ANTONIO

VERMANDERO

|

O Alsemero, I have a wonder for you.

|

ALSEMERO

|

No sir, 'tis I – I have a wonder for you.

|

VERMANDERO

|

I have suspicion near as proof itself

|

For Piracquo's murder.

|

ALSEMERO Sir, I have proof | 125

Beyond suspicion, for Piracquo's murder.

|

VERMANDERO

|

Beseech you hear me. These two

|

[ _Points at_ ANTONIO _and_ FRANCISCUS] have been disguised

E'er since the deed was done.

|

ALSEMERO I have two other

|

That were more close disguised than your two could be,

|

E'er since the deed was done. | 130

VERMANDERO

|

You'll hear me! These mine own servants –

|

ALSEMERO

|

Hear me! Those nearer than your servants,

|

That shall acquit them and prove them guiltless.

|

FRANCISCUS

|

That may be done with easy truth, sir.

|

TOMAZO

|

How is my cause bandied through your delays! | 135

'Tis urgent in blood, and calls for haste;

|

Give me a brother alive or dead –

|

Alive, a wife with him; if dead, for both

|

A recompense for murder and adultery.

|

BEATRICE ( _Within_ )

|

Oh, oh, oh!

|

ALSEMERO Hark! 'Tis coming to you. | 140

DEFLORES ( _Within_ )

|

Nay, I'll along for company.

|

BEATRICE ( _Within_ ) Oh, oh!

|

VERMANDERO

|

What horrid sounds are these?

|

ALSEMERO Come forth, you twins

|

Of mischief.

|

_Enter_ DEFLORES _bringing in_ BEATRICE [ _both wounded_ ]

DEFLORES Here we are; if you have any more

|

To say to us, speak quickly, I shall not

|

Give you the hearing else – I am so stout yet, | 145

And so, I think, that broken rib of mankind.

|

VERMANDERO

|

An host of enemies entered my citadel

|

Could not amaze like this. Joanna! Beatrice! Joanna!

|

BEATRICE

|

O come not near me, sir, I shall defile you:

|

I am that of your blood was taken from you | 150

For your better health; look no more upon't,

|

But cast it to the ground regardlessly,

|

Let the common sewer take it from distinction.

|

Beneath the stars, upon yon meteor [ _Points at_ DEFLORES]

Ever hung my fate, 'mongst things corruptible, | 155

I ne'er could pluck it from him; my loathing

|

Was prophet to the rest, but ne'er believed:

|

Mine honour fell with him, and now my life.

|

Alsemero, I am a stranger to your bed,

|

Your bed was cozened on the nuptial night, | 160

For which your false bride died.

|

ALSEMERO Diaphanta!

|

DEFLORES

|

Yes, and the while I coupled with your mate

|

At barley-break – now we are left in hell.

|

VERMANDERO

|

We are all there, it circumscribes us here.

|

DEFLORES

|

I loved this woman in spite of her heart; | 165

Her love I earned out of Piracquo's murder.

|

TOMAZO

|

Ha! My brother's murderer!

|

DEFLORES Yes, and her honour's prize

|

Was my reward – I thank life for nothing

|

But that pleasure; it was so sweet to me

|

That I have drunk up all, left none behind | 170

For any man to pledge me.

|

VERMANDERO Horrid villain!

|

Keep life in him for further tortures.

|

DEFLORES

|

No, I can prevent you: here's my penknife still;

|

It is but one thread more [ _Stabs himself_ ] – and now 'tis cut.

|

Make haste, Joanna, by that token to thee – | 175

Canst not forget! – so lately put in mind:

|

I would not go to leave thee far behind. _Dies_

BEATRICE

|

Forgive me, Alsemero, all forgive!

|

'Tis time to die, when 'tis a shame to live. _Dies_

VERMANDERO

|

Oh, my name is entered now in that record, | 180

Where till this fatal hour 'twas never read.

|

ALSEMERO

|

Let it be blotted out, let your heart lose it,

|

And it can never look you in the face,

|

Nor tell a tale behind the back of life

|

To your dishonour; justice hath so right | 185

The guilty hit, that innocence is quit

|

By proclamation, and may joy again.

|

 _To_ TOMAZO] [Sir, you are sensible of what truth hath done:

|

'Tis the best comfort that your grief can find.

|

TOMAZO

|

Sir, I am satisfied: my injuries | 190

Lie dead before me, I can exact no more,

|

Unless my soul were loose, and could o'ertake

|

Those black fugitives that are fled from thence

|

To take a second vengeance; but there are wraths

|

Deeper then mine, 'tis to be feared, about 'em. | 195

ALSEMERO

|

What an opacous body had that moon

|

That last changed on us! Here's beauty changed

|

To ugly whoredom; here servant obedience

|

To a master sin, imperious murder.

|

I, a supposed husband, changed embraces | 200

With wantonness – but that was paid before;

|

[ _To_ TOMAZO] Your change is come too, from an ignorant wrath

|

To knowing friendship. Are there any more on's?

|

ANTONIO

|

Yes, sir, I was changed too, from a little ass as I was to a great

|

fool as I am; and had like to ha' been changed to the gallows but | 205

that you know my innocence always excuses me.

|

FRANCISCUS

|

I was changed from a little wit to be stark mad,

|

Almost for the same purpose.

|

ISABELLA  _To_ ALIBIUS] Your change is still [behind,

|

But deserve best your transformation:

|

You are a jealous coxcomb – keep schools of folly, | 210

And teach your scholars how to break your own head.

|

ALIBIUS

|

I see all apparent wife, and will change now

|

Into a better husband, and never keep scholars

|

That shall be wiser than myself.

|

ALSEMERO

|

Sir, you have yet a son's duty living – | 215

Please you, accept it; let that your sorrow,

|

As it goes from your eye, go from your heart:

|

Man and his sorrow at the grave must part.

|

### **EPILOGUE**

ALSEMERO

|

---|---

All we can do to comfort one another,

|

To stay a brother's sorrow for a brother, | 220

To dry a child from the kind father's eyes

|

Is to no purpose, it rather multiplies:

|

Your only smiles have power to cause re-live

|

The dead again, or in their rooms to give

|

Brother a new brother, father a child – | 225

If these appear, all griefs are reconciled.

|

_Exeunt_ OMNES

FINIS

## **APPENDIX: THE TEXT**

### **(i) The 1653 Quarto**

There exists only one seventeenth-century edition of _The Changeling_ – a quarto printed early in 1653 by Thomas Newcombe for the bookseller, Humphrey Moseley. The printer can be identified from the ornament on Sig. B1; while the publisher is named on the title-page attached to thirteen of the surviving copies (see p. 1). Somewhat mysteriously, however, the imprint on the four remaining copies omits any reference to the publisher or his shop. Various explanations have been offered for this omission, but the reason for it remains obscure: Joost Daalder (p. xliii), arguing that Puritan hostility to the theatres in the interregnum meant that 'even the printing of a new play could get one into trouble,' speculates that Moseley commissioned a new title-page in order to avoid such unwelcome attention. There is, however, little evidence to support this hypothesis, and Douglas Bruster's more mundane conjecture that Moseley's address was deleted simply in order to facilitate sale by other booksellers seems more plausible. Indeed the fact that enough sheets survived from the original print-run to enable Moseley's widow to republish his edition with a fresh title-page in 1668 suggests that, having seriously overestimated his likely sales, Moseley might have had good reason to widen his market by wholesaling some copies to other retailers.

An editor's task is necessarily simplified by the fact Moseley's edition constitutes the only surviving early text of Middleton and Rowley's play; but it is also complicated by the fact that this edition appeared over thirty years after the play was first performed, more than a quarter of a century after the deaths of the authors. This means that the play appeared without the benefit of any input from the dramatists themselves or from the company which had once owned it. We also have no means of knowing the source and nature of the manuscript that Moseley supplied to Newcomb, though it probably came from reliable sources. A bookseller and publisher with marked royalist connections, Moseley did much to satisfy the continuing interest in drama during the interregnum years, from the outbreak of Civil War in 1642 to the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, when the London theatres were closed. He produced work by Shakespeare, Webster, and Fletcher, among others; and, in the same year in which he published _The Changeling_ , secured his claims over fourteen other plays (including three more by Middleton) with a block entry on the Stationers' Register. In all likelihood Moseley acquired his rights to _The Changeling_ – along with those for _The Spanish Gypsy_ (1623), published later in the same year – from the financially embarrassed theatrical entrepreneur, William Beeston, the former owner of the Cockpit, where these two plays had originally been staged under the management of his father, Christopher. The Lord Chamberlain had confirmed both plays as William's 'propriety' in 1639. However, the fact that _The Spanish Gypsy_ , which scholars nowadays credit principally to Dekker and Ford, appeared over the names of Middleton and Rowley alone, suggests that Moseley's connection with Beeston, who must surely have known the real authors, was not a close one.

Moseley's copy, perhaps acquired from Beeston along with the publication rights, does not appear to have been an authorial manuscript, since scholars are agreed that Q lacks many of the authorial spellings and linguistic habits peculiar to its two dramatists – though Rowley's fondness for ' 'um' as an abbreviation for 'them', for example, is as marked in the scenes usually attributed to him as ' 'em' in the scenes given to Middleton. But, if the manuscript supplied to Newcomb was non-authorial, what was its origin? In his  Revels edition, N. W. Bawcutt, adducing the clear marking of entries and exits, as well as one or two theatrical-sounding stage directions, conjectured that 'the source of the printed text was probably a transcript from a theatrical prompt-copy' (Revels, p. xvi). While the term 'prompt-copy' may itself be misleading – as recent theatre-historians, aware of the physical difficulties of successful prompting in early modern playhouses have argued – it is clear that acting companies will have needed a working copy of the play-text in addition to the precious 'allowed copy' submitted for the approval of the Master of the Revels, and the individual 'parts' distributed to the actors. However, in the case of _The Changeling_ , the evidence for the text's theatrical origins is rather slender – and Bawcutt himself seems to have abandoned his claim by the time he produced his facsimile edition fifteen years later. As Bruster and others have noted, Q's entrances are often marked late – after a speaker has registered the entrant's presence on the stage – whereas in manuscripts marked up for playhouse use it was usual to mark an entrance early, so that the book-keeper could alert the actor in good time. Furthermore, Q's stage directions are generally sparser than we might expect from a theatrical manuscript; and, while some – notably the unique _'In the act-time_ DEFLORES _hides a naked rapier_ ' at the beginning of Act III – must have been composed by someone with the material conditions of performance in a private theatre clearly in mind, there is no reason why that should not have been Middleton, whose experience in writing for these houses stretched back nearly twenty years to his work with the boy companies at the beginning of the century.

Another commonly recognised clue to a text's playhouse origins is evidence of cutting; and some scholars have been attracted by the possibility, first advanced by E. H. C. Oliphant, that two scenes may have been excised from the sub-plot in the text that has come down to us: on the one hand the characters of Antonio and Franciscus, the pretended fool and madman, are not only allowed to remain unnamed in the spoken text, but are introduced in a somewhat abrupt fashion, without any attempt to prepare the audience for their appearance in the madhouse; on the other hand, the wild dance of fools and madmen, meant to be performed by Alibius' inmates as part of Beatrice's wedding revels, never eventuates – even though it has promised to be the spectacular climax of the sub-plot. If the dramatists were originally careful to fill these apparent gaps, then any excision must presumably have occurred as a result of theatrical cutting. However, even those, like Roger Holdsworth, who are attracted by Oliphant's thesis, admit that such carelessness about motivation and the naming of characters is relatively common in the period: Vermandero himself – as Bruster (p. 3) points out – remains anonymous for more than half the play, until Alibius names him in III.iii. As far as the 'madmen's morris' is concerned, it has, of course, been commissioned to wind up the wedding festivities on 'the third night from the first' (III.ii.249): this must be the night signalled by the arrival of Alibius and Isabella at the castle in the final scene (V.iii.121) just before the public indictment of Beatrice and Defores; so the time-scheme actually allows no opportunity for it to be performed, except via the rehearsal at the end of Act IV – though it is conceivable, I think, that this antimasque may have been repeated after the epilogue in imitation of those 'jigs' that traditionally rounded off performances in the outdoor theatres.

Moseley's text seems to have been printed with reasonable care by the standards of the time – though, in accordance with usual printing-house practice, it was proofed only in the course of printing, and then in a somewhat unsystematic way, with corrections made only to the outer formes of the B, D, and G gatherings. Most of these involve nothing more than obvious misprints – although there are two instances in which the proof-reader seems to have borne in mind the demands of sense and/or metre (II.i.149; II.ii.131). Apart from a number of surviving misprints and occasional missing words, the main deficiencies of the Q text are in its treatment of the verse: there are numerous examples of mislineation (especially where two half-lines, or a line and a half have been crammed into a single line), verse is several times set as prose, and in a few instances prose is mistakenly set as verse. Such errors are particularly common in the scenes attributed to Middleton and seem, more often than not, to derive from the dramatist's manuscript habits, though sometimes the compositor may have been compelled to save space as a result of poor casting off. Where other kinds of lineation problem arise it is often difficult to be sure whether they result from faulty transcription by a scribe or compositor, or simply from the author's habits of composition. Rowley's madhouse scenes present particular difficulties, since they frequently involve dialogue in which some characters speak in verse while their interlocutors reply in prose: theatrical convention dictated that verse was normally used to mark the speech of characters of higher rank, while prose was assigned to their inferiors; but prose could also be used (as in _Hamlet_ , for example) to signal the falling away from decorum entailed by madness. In _The Changeling_ the result is that Alibius and Isabella speak almost entirely in verse; their servant Lollio is predictably a prose speaker; the pretended fool, Antonio, employs prose when in disguise, but reverts to verse when speaking _in propria persona_ ; while the pretended madman, Franciscus, mixes prose and verse in his imposture, but, like his rival, is naturally a speaker of verse. In the mixed dialogue that results, however, it is sometimes hard to be sure whether some of Isabella's lines, for example, are to be treated as incomplete verse or as prose, or whether (influenced by her interlocutors) she sometimes sinks to prose (see e.g. III.ii.42–3) – as she seems to do when herself feigning madness (see e.g. IV.iii.94–6); by the same token it is equally hard to know whether the iambic beat apparent in some of Lollio's lines is purely accidental, or whether, influenced by Isabella or Alibius, he occasionally rises to verse (see e.g. I.ii.17, 34). In addition to this, Rowley (who did not have a particularly subtle ear for the music of iambic verse) sometimes produces lines of such disconcerting metrical awkwardness that, if they are verse at all, can only be accounted for as crude syllabics (see e.g. I.ii.83–7). Middleton, by contrast, was a genuinely innovative dramatic poet, who treats the verse form with considerable freedom, not only making extensive use of feminine endings and hexameters, but sometimes composing lines that might be a syllable or two short (e.g. III.iii.137), or include one or more extra-metrical syllables (e.g. III.iii.139), without ever losing the rhythmic pulse. To complicate matters further, the Q text is marked by a fondness for contractions that sometimes overrides the requirements of metre – thus, for example, Q prints ' 'tis' at I.i.21 where the metre appears to require 'it is', just as it prints 'that's' for 'that is' at I.i.78, ' 'bout' for 'about' at II.ii.27, and ' 'Twas' for 'It was' at V.iii.56: it is possible that such seeming aberrations reflect the habits of whoever was responsible for the manuscript copy, but they may simply reveal the strength of the dramatists' shared predilection for idiomatic speech. The combined effect of all these metrical uncertainties was to license nineteenth-century editors like Dilke and Dyce to iron out perceived irregularities in the verse; a modern editor, however, must proceed more circumspectly, listening with particular care for Middleton's characteristically spiky rhythms, before deciding whether or not to emend the text.

### **(ii) Lineation** | **This edition** | **Q**

---|---|---

**I.i** | |

146–7 | O . . . thee / Your . . . ended | _one line_

162–3 | Alsemero . . . son / Of . . . Alsemero | _one line_

164–6 | He . . . wont / To . . . most / Unfeignèd | He . . . speaks / A . . . truth

210–11 | He's much / Bound . . . sir | _one line_

212–13 | As . . . want / My . . . else | _one line_

224–6 | Here's . . . know / She . . . pair / Of . . . fingers | Here's . . . now / I . . . tanned / In . . . fingers

**I.ii** | |

30–1 | You . . . into't | _as verse_ (You . . . by / One . . . into't)

33–4 | Must . . . be / At home | _one line_

81–2 | Ay . . . patient | _one line_

83–7 | And . . . defrayed | _as verse_ (And . . . commodious / To . . . sick / And . . . are / But . . . pieces / That . . . charge / Of necessaries / Fully defrayed.

89–90 | Sir . . . hands | _as verse_ (Sir . . . something, / The . . . hands

94 | His . . . Tony | _as verse_ (His . . . half / To . . . Tony)

166–7 | Yes . . . Tony | _as verse_ (Yes . . . say't; / Once . . . Tony)

193–4 | There's . . . for't | _as verse_ (There's . . . madman, / Was . . . Parmesan / Lost . . . for't)

**II.i** | |

9–10 | Than . . . him / For . . . choose | _one line_

52–3 | Again! / This . . . me | _one line_

56–7 | Soft . . . fair ! / I . . . now | _one line_

57–8 | The . . . fixed / Thou . . . pool | _one line_

60–1 | My . . . deliver / A . . . you | _one line_

61–2 | What . . . since? / Do't . . . then | _one line_

64–5 | Let . . . patience, / You . . . all | _one line_

66–7 | Signor . . . lady, / Sole . . . Piracquo | _one line_

69–70 | The . . . Alonzo, / With . . . Tomazo | _one line_

73–4 | My . . . father / Charged . . . out | _one line_

74–5 | Is . . . other / To . . . by | _one line_

75–6 | It . . . luck / To . . . still | _one line_

121–2 | May . . . ever / Meet . . . sirs | May . . . still: / You're . . . sirs

137–8 | She . . . passions; / And . . . dangerous | _one line_

142–3 | Nay . . . that / Be . . . enough | _one line_

**Il.ii** | |

5–6 | This . . . well: / These . . . cabinets | _one line_

12–13 | Were . . . like / In . . . borrow | _one line_

25–6 | Pray . . . sir. / What . . . happy | _as prose_

48–9 | I . . . sir: / The . . . side | _one line_

51–2 | As . . . now, / Till . . . opens | _one line_

63–4 | One . . . thousand – / Proves . . . royal | _one line_

69–70 | And . . . here. – / Deflores | _one line_

72–3 | What . . . done / To . . . physician | _one line_

77–8 | Which . . . ago: / How . . . this | _one line_

79–80 | Turn . . . see. / Faugh . . . perceive't | _one line_

81–2 | Her . . . me! / She . . . amber | _one line_

83–4 | I'll . . . this / Within . . . fortnight | _one line_

85–6 | Yes . . . cure / I'll . . . other | _one line_

86–7 | 'Tis . . . pleasure / To . . . me | _one line_

87–8 | When . . . used / To . . . unpleasing | _one line_

89–90 | It . . . mends – / I . . . experience | _one line_

90–1 | I . . . blest / To . . . on't | _one line_

93–4 | It . . . manhood, / If . . . employment | _one line_

94–5 | 'Twould . . . seen, / If . . . it | _one line_

96–7 | I . . . service / So . . . to | _one line_

97–8 | We . . . you – / O . . . Deflores | _one line_

101–2 | There . . . again, / The . . . on't | _one line_

106–7 | For . . . yet / Beat . . . bosom | _one line_

109–10 | Oh . . . freedom! / I . . . one | _one line_

112–13 | Then . . . 'em / For . . . sight | _one line_

113–4 | O . . . occasion! / Without . . . wishes | _one line_

115–6 | In . . . Deflores? / There's . . . that | _one line_

116–17 | Put . . . me: / It's . . . you | _one line_

120–1 | If . . . knew / How . . . employed | _one line_

124–5 | This . . . methinks; / Belike . . . such | _one line_

127–8 | Possible . . . need / Is . . . thee | _one line_

130–2 | That . . . ravishes | _as prose_

134–5 | His . . . him: / He . . . more | _one line_

135–7 | How . . . now / Dost . . . man / Dearlier rewarded | How . . . me! / Never . . . rewarded

144–6 | I . . . rid / Myself . . . time: / Piracquo . . . dog-face | _as prose_

146–7 | O . . . blood! / Methinks . . . already | _one line_

157–8 | Thou . . . me / The . . . castle | _one line_

159–61 | And . . . straits / Of . . . you, / I . . . lord | _as prose_

162–4 | I'm . . . then. / 'Tis . . . rising / I'll . . . me | _as prose_

**III.i** | |

9–10 | Here . . . lord, / To . . . purpose | _one line_

11–12 | All . . . anon / A . . . on | _one line_

13–14 | I . . . glad / I . . . house | _one line_

20–4 | Ay . . . awhile | _as prose_

25–6 | Deflores . . . Deflores, / Whose . . . on | _one line_

26–7 | Do . . . question / A . . . you | _one line_

**III.ii** | |

29–31 | If . . . fool | If . . . show / You . . . may / Call . . . fool

44–6 | For . . . neither | For . . . mistress, / He . . . first; / The . . . Chambermaid / Yet . . . neither

47–51 | Hail . . . poesy | _as prose_

53–5 | O . . . kneels | _as prose_

62–3 | Didst . . . poet | _one line_

67–8 | Yes . . . ago | _one line_

77–83 | Luna . . . sheep | _as prose_

87–8 | Sweet . . . me: / Give . . . thee | _one line_

90–2 | No . . . mouse-hole | _see Commentary_

119–25 | Oh . . . strange! / Love . . . all | _one line_

135–6 | Take . . . acquaintance / Of . . . within | _one line_

137–8 | When . . . him, / I'll . . . time | _one line_

144–5 | And . . . cousin; / I'll . . . morning | And . . . Valentine / Tomorrow morning

149–50 | If . . . like / To . . . something | _one line_

151–3 | Ay . . . six | Ay . . . begins / To . . . is/Five . . . six

155–6 | What . . . seven | What . . . is/One . . . seven

166–7 | How . . . freeze / Lives . . . alone | _one line_

172–4 | How . . . that | How . . . Lipsius? / He's . . . harder / Questions . . . that

175–6 | What . . . fear, / Having . . . smile | _one line_

184–5 | Of . . . us, / Yet . . . lunatics | _one line_

217–18 | What . . . fear, / Having . . . smile | _one line_

224–8 | Becomes . . . not –' / [ _prose_ ] And . . . on't | Becomes . . . more / Foolish . . . Lacedemonian. / Let . . . thing / About . . . on't

238–9 | Fie . . . sweetheart / No . . . that | _one line_

270–1 | You've . . . on't: / Madmen . . . commodity | _one line_

**III.iii** | |

29–30 | Why . . . more / Than . . . heart-strings | _one line_

48–51 | It . . . sir. / Why . . . given / In . . . lady; / You . . . then | _as prose_

60–1 | 'Tis . . . then. / Look . . . florins | _one line_

68–9 | I . . . hired / A . . . rate | _one line_

73–4 | You . . . course / To . . . do | _one line_

89–90 | How . . . sir? / This . . . well | _one line_

90–1 | What . . . strange? / This . . . us | _one line_

94–5 | Take . . . forgetfulness, / 'Twill . . . us | _one line_

97–8 | I . . . you / Of . . . pain | _one line_

101–2 | Oh . . . shall! / Speak . . . lose | _one line_

104–5 | I . . . again / For . . . deed | _one line_

105–6 | Soft . . . soft – / The . . . act | _one line_

124–5 | I . . . it / With . . . modesty | _one line_

125–6 | Push . . . yourself: / A . . . modesty | _as prose_

159–60 | The . . . buy / My . . . me | _one line_

**IV.i** | |

30–1 | If . . . C | If . . . not, / Give . . . C

32–4 | Where's . . . now: / [ _prose_ ] and . . . not | Where's . . . child, / She . . . not

56–7 | Would . . . cause / To . . . madam | Would . . . too. / Why . . . madam

81–2 | Nay . . . madam, / Shall . . . maid | _as prose_

82–3 | You . . . else, / Because . . . me | _one line_

102–3 | And . . . doing, / I . . . it | _one line_

111–12 | As . . . accident / Gives . . . another | _one line_

113–15 | Ha . . . light! / At . . . pleasurable! / But . . . madam | Ha . . . pleasurable. / But . . . madam

115–16 | Ay . . . tomorrow; / We . . . by't | _one line_

117–18 | It . . . wench – / Most . . . now | It . . . Diaphanta / I . . . now

120–1 | I'll . . . study / The . . . business | _as prose_

121–2 | I . . . well, / Because . . . burden | _one line_

122–3 | About midnight / You . . . gently | _one line_

**IV.ii** | |

3–4 | Nor . . . gentlemen / Are . . . who | Nor . . . absent / Tell . . . who

7–8 | Some . . . Valencia | Some . . . Briamata, / Th'other . . . Valencia

17–18 | You're . . . hot / Seek . . . here | _one line_

33–4 | 'Tis . . . fair / For you | _one line_

35–6 | The . . . is, / There . . . on | _one line_

43–4 | O . . . sir! / Methinks . . . him | _one line_

60–1 | 'Twill . . . reckon. / Sir! | _one line_

67–8 | Your . . . you / Appear . . . strangers | _one line_

68–9 | Time . . . swords / May . . . business | Time . . . acquainted; / This . . . business

73–4 | You . . . look / To . . . sir | _one line_

74–5 | Fear . . . not: / I'll . . . meeting | _one line_

85–6 | This . . . on, / And . . . slowness | _one line_

97–8 | Still . . . thee: / The . . . her | _one line_

104–5 | Such . . . are. / Oh . . . earth | _one line_

110–11 | Done charitably. / That . . . secret | _one line_

133–4 | Sir . . . me – / I . . . composition | _one line_

143–4 | Ha, ha, ha! / You . . . lord | _one line_

**IV.iii** | |

80–1 | Ay . . . la | Ay . . . out, / Vault . . . la

86–8 | Marry . . . caper | Marry . . . yeomanry / Itself . . . stiffened, / There . . . caper

90–2 | Very . . . Tony | Very . . . high, / Has . . . again, / You . . . Tony

94–100 | Hey . . . had! / Stand . . . Dedalus, / And . . . labyrinth; / I'll . . . clew | Hey . . . way, / He . . . Icarus, / More . . . moons; / He's . . . up, / Thou . . . lower / Labyrinth . . . clew

**V.i** | |

14–15 | Hath . . . trust / A . . . woman | _one line_

30–1 | Tush . . . quiet, / Or . . . all | _one line_

32–3 | This . . . a-fire / Of . . . chamber | _one line_

33–4 | How . . . sir? / That . . . house | _one line_

36–7 | Push . . . aim / At . . . sure | _one line_

51–2 | One . . . now: / Prithee . . . servants | _one line_

52–3 | I'll . . . them, / Some . . . hurry | _one line_

76–7 | Here's . . . loving! – / Oh . . . jewel | _one line_

78–9 | Hie . . . chamber; / Your . . . you | _one line_

80–1 | I . . . made / So . . . bargain | _one line_

83–4 | When . . . you, / I . . . follow | _one line_

84–5 | Th'art . . . sweetness! / The . . . dangerous | _one line_

95–6 | Come . . . now; / Alas . . . cold | _one line_

105–6 | O . . . virginity, / Thou . . . for't | _one line_

108–9 | Now . . . flames / Are . . . sir | Now . . . are / Greedy . . . sir

110–12 | Not . . . more, / I . . . you / In . . . us | Not . . . embrace / I . . . us

115–17 | All . . . stifled | All . . . lords, / The . . . gentlewoman / How . . . stifled

124–5 | He . . . be – / Deflores . . . me | _one line_

**V.iii** | |

14–15 | How do I? / Alas . . . well | _one line_

40–1 | You . . . sir – / 'Tis . . . please | _one line_

53–4 | He . . . your / Lips' saint | _one line_

54–5 | Worse . . . devil, / Your adultery | _one line_

56–7 | It was witnessed / By . . . Diaphanta | _one line_

91–2 | I . . . you / News . . . you | _one line_

142–3 | Come . . . twins / Of mischief | _one line_

208–9 | Your . . . behind, / But . . . transformation | _one line_
_Names_ Daalder (following William Power, 'Middleton's Way with Names,' _NQ_ 205 [1960], 26–9, 56–60, 95–8, 136–40, 175–9) suggests that the names of many of the major characters are meant to be ironically significant, and in the case of DEFLORES a homonymic play on 'deflowers' seems unavoidable. Other possibilities include: BEATRICE = 'she who makes happy', or 'blessed one'; JOANNA = 'the Lord's grace'; ALIBIUS = 'he who is elsewhere'; DIAPHANTA = 'diaphanous' or 'red hot'. TOMAZO, in his scepticism about his brother's death, may recall 'Doubting Thomas' in John 20:25. However, these names (like all those in the main plot) are directly derived from Reynolds' _Triumphs of God's Revenge_ – including that of Alibius, which was borrowed from History V, the novella immediately following the story of 'Alsemero and Beatrice-Ioana'. Of course this need not exclude the possibility that Reynolds himself chose the names for their suggestiveness, nor that Middleton and Rowley might have preserved them for the same reason.

6 _friend_ Q; but the respectful 'sir' with which Jasperino habitually addresses Alsemero suggests that his role is more that of a superior manservant (albeit a gentleman and confidant whom Alsemero condescends to address as 'friend' – see e.g. I.i.13, 15; and cf. II.i.2)

17 _changeling_ idiot, fool ( _OED_ n. 4; and see below, _Title_ ). Despite the fact the Q _Dramatis Personae_ seems to nominate Antonio as the title-character, there is no reason to suppose that the dramatists were responsible for this list; and it seems unlikely that the play would have been named for such a relatively minor figure. However, although the sub-plot is often cut in modern productions, the part of the pretended fool does appear to have been responsible for much of _The Changeling_ 's popular currency in the seventeenth century (see Introduction p. xxxiii), and the popular use of 'Tony' as a synonym for fool seems to have been inspired by Middleton's character ( _OED_ n1 1).

22 _The Scene_ The action of the main plot is entirely confined to Vermandero's castle in the Valencian port of Alicante, except for the opening scene which is imagined as taking place outside a church beside the castle gate. The subsidiary action takes place in the mad-house supervised by Alibius.
I.i Author: Rowley (and Middleton?) Q marks act, but not scene divisions; the latter were added by Dyce.

1 _'Twas . . . too_ With Alsemero's pseudo-pious sophistry, compare Bacon's description of falling in love: 'as if man, made for the contemplation of heaven and all noble objects, should do nothing but kneel before a little idol, and make himself subject, though not of the mouth (as beasts are), yet of the eye, which was given them for higher purposes' ( _Of Love_ , p. 29). _temple_ church

2 _omen_ The irony of the positive construction that Alsemero gives to the beginnings of his affair with Beatrice is suggested by the sour admonition which the same episode provokes in Reynolds.

3 _of_ ed. (or Q); cf. l. 106

6 _holy purpose_ i.e. matrimony

7–9 _that . . . it_ marriage can be compared to the Garden of Eden, the blessed paradise which was intended as man's true home, and which he can regain through nuptial bliss. On the persistent Fall motif in the play, see Frost, pp. 413–14.

12 _beginning and perfection_ The love which began in the church will be perfected there in matrimony; but Alsemero also plays on the idea of man's ultimate salvation as the 'perfection' of what began in Eden.

13–21 _the wind's . . . against me_ In Reynolds Alsemero's departure is held up by genuinely adverse weather, here the contrary winds are merely a wilfully contrived excuse.

17–18 _If . . . penn'orth_ For this superstition see Webster and Rowley, _A Cure for a Cuckold_ , IV.ii.97, on 'The winds that Lapland witches sell to men'; and cf. _Macbeth_ , I.iii.11.

18 _penn'orth_ pennyworth (as Q); but the word was frequently pronounced and sometimes spelt in the contracted form required by the metre here

19 _a' God's name_ in God's name – i.e. in the natural course of events, for nothing (but with an implied contrast between God's work and the devil's) _Even now_ The metre requires elision here (Ev'n now).

20 _temple's vane_ weather-vane on the church tower

21 _it is_ ed. ('tis Q). Whoever was responsible for the ms. copy from which Q was printed seems to have had a fondness for colloquial contractions, often preferring them even when the metre requires an uncontracted form.

23 _not well_ The trick of repeating a word or phrase and giving it a new meaning is a standard clown's trick and one of which Rowley was particularly fond – see Bawcutt (1958) p. xl.

24 _hidden malady_ On the importance of this motif in the play, see Introduction pp. xvi-xvii, xxiii–xxvi and Neill, 'Hidden Malady'.

27 _inclination_ Dilke (inclinations Q). The awkward double plural, together with _it_ in the following line make it likely that Q is a compositor's error. Bruster notes that Middleton was fond of the word, while it does not appear elsewhere in Rowley – one of a number of indications that the former may have been involved in the composition of this scene. In this instance the word is scanned as five syllables: depending on metrical requirements, the _-ion_ ending can be treated as either one syllable (as at l. 12) or two (as at ll. 35, 66, 77, 185).

30 _help . . . speed_ help them harness your horses in order to speed up your departure

34 _orisons_ prayers

35 _devotion_ 'a veiled reference to Beatrice' (Daalder)

36 _stoic_ Stoic moral philosophy, popular in the Renaissance, taught the need to subject all emotions to the absolute control of reason.

48 _critical_ In astrology, the _crisis_ was a particular conjunction of the heavenly bodies supposed to determine the outcome of a given set of events; in medicine, it referred to the turning point (for better or worse) in an illness.

49 _Aquarius_ astrological sign of the Water-carrier, supposedly propitious for sea travel

50 _this . . . fire_ Proverbial cf. Tilley S569 'No smoke without fire'. The seaman's allusion to the heat of Alsemero's passion ironically anticipates the fire in which Diaphanta is burnt in V.i (Daalder).

54 s.d.2 Q adds 'Joanna' at the end of the s.d., presumably because a scribe or compositor, finding he had accidentally abbreviated 'Beatrice Joanna' (as the name appeared in his copy), assumed that 'Joanna' must refer to a separate character.

55 _laws of the Medes_ On the supposedly unbreakable laws of the Medes, see Daniel 6:8.

57 _In my conscience_ On my word; To my knowledge (stock phrase)

59 _Greece_ Under Turkish rule since 1460.

61 _sciences_ branches of knowledge (including arts and humanities). Cf. III.ii.120–5, where Antonio proclaims love's superiority to 'all the scrutinous sciences'.

63 _sing . . . sight_ sight read (begins the persistent association of eyesight with sexual desire – see Introduction pp. xvi, xix–xxi).

68–72 _eyes_ . . . _blind_ Cf. III.ii.72–5.

68 _sentinels_ Cf. Bacon, 'Of Love', p. 29: 'love can find entrance not only into an open heart, but also into a heart well fortified, if watch be not kept.' The figuration of the human body as a castle was a popular Renaissance trope deriving from medieval allegory – see Introduction pp. xix–xxvi, and Neill, 'Hidden Malady'.

74 _employment_ Alsemero's pretense of reason is ironically undermined by the unconscious play on 'employ' = copulate.

76–8 _houses . . . royal_ Alsemero's conceit imagines his suit as a bill which has been passed by the two houses of parliament, eyesight and judgement, and now awaits the royal signature (i.e. the grant of Beatrice's hand in marriage).

78 _that is_ ed. (that's Q)

79 _one above me_ A standard formula for God – but in this case referring to her father. Patriarchal theory construed fathers as God's deputies in the domestic realm, just as monarchs were his vice-regents in the larger kingdom.

79–80 _For . . . recalled_ If only I could recall the last five days (i.e. the period of her betrothal to Alonzo de Piracquo)

83 _come . . . carriers_ used land-transport

84 _we . . . sure_ it's clear we're not going to travel any further now

85–7 _venturer . . . sail_ Standard tropes of sexual predation. Merchant-venturing and piracy were often closely linked in early modern voyaging; lowering one's topsail was a sign of surrender.

92 _stall_ forestall (i.e. prejudice, damage in advance – _OED_ 'forestall' v. 5). It remains possible that Dilke's emendation to _stale_ is correct: neither Middleton nor Rowley elsewhere employs _stall_ as a verb, but Middleton has 'stale your friend' in _Wit at Several Weapons_ (I.i.139).

93 _A good presence_ i.e. her father's impressive demeanour. A lord's 'presence' or 'countenance' included his retinue of servants.

96 _One . . . other_ In any way at all

102 _peevish_ A variety of senses are probably involved: foolish, mad; spiteful, malignant; perverse, headstrong, capricious; ill-tempered, childishly querulous ( _OED_ n. 1–5). _will_ In addition to the modern sense, its meanings included 'desire' and 'sexual appetite'; sometimes used to refer to the sexual organs themselves.

103 _displeasèd_ ed. (displeas'd Q)

104 _infirmity_ 'weakness', but also 'sickness' – cf. Alsemero's identification of love as a disease at l. 24

106 _his or hers_ this or that person's _of_ Dilke (or Q) _particular_ personal; peculiar ( _OED_ a. 31, 7a-b)

106–8 _some . . . wholesome_ Cf. 'one man's meat is another man's poison' ( _Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs_ , p. 522 – though not in Tilley).

109 _fellow_ person of low esteem (frequently applied to servants) ( _OED_ n. 10a, c)

110 _basilisk_ fabulous monster, reputedly able to kill with a single glance. Beatrice's instinctive aversion to Deflores – like his ugliness (II.i.37 ff.) and his servile position (II.i.48–9) – is an addition to Reynolds' story (see Introduction, p. xii).

112 _a thousand sound_ a thousand men with [otherwise] perfectly sound constitutions. However, since _f_ and long _s_ (as in Q) were easily confused, it may be that Dilke was correct in emending to _found_. Bruster cites Laurentius, quoted in Burton's treatise on madness, _The Anatomy of Melancholy_ (1621): 'for scarce is there one of a thousand that dotes alike' (1.3.2).

113 _distastes_ dislikes

114 _infinites_ an infinite number of people

115 _odoriferous_ fragrant

116–18 _One . . . countenance_ Cf. Psalm 104:15: 'wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart'.

116 _oil_ probably castor oil, a powerful purgative often used in cases of poisoning

118 _lively_ invigorating ( _OED_ adj. 4d)

122 _I'm_ ed. (I am Q)

123 _What_ ( _And what_ Q) Both metre and sense suggest that Dilke was correct in supposing Q's _And_ was repeated from the previous line.

126 _tempt_ make trial of, put to the test ( _OED_ v. I, 1–2) _knew it_ Scanned as a single syllable ( _knew't_ ).

128 _want_ lack means

130 _respect_ repute, standing _follows_ i.e. as a servant; but the simultaneous recognition of Deflores' rank as a gentleman born draws attention to the potential contradiction in his social position (cf. II.i.48–9)

131 _place_ social rank; domestic office

132 _mad_ wild, extravagant in gaiety; sexually infatuated ( _OED_ adj. 7a; 4a) _wag_ mischievous fellow; habitual joker ( _OED_ n2 1–2)

134 _doctor_ i.e. Alibius. Diaphanta pretends to take 'mad' literally.

135 _physic_ medicine – here implying sex (Daalder)

136 _well governed state_ healthily regulated condition ( _OED govern_ v. 4, 6), but playing on the political sense of the words.

137–8 _thing . . . together_ i.e. her vagina filled with their combined sexual juices

138 _compound_ The bawdy pun on 'pound' is enabled by recollection of the (phallic) mortar-and-pestle as the usual instrument for compounding substances in an apothecary's shop.

141 _poppy_ opiate

143 _simple_ plant or herb employed for medical purposes ( _OED_ n. 6)

143–4 _cuckoo-what-you-call't_ probably Cuckoo-pintle (wild arum), so called after its phallic shape, a diuretic and purgative used to treat digestive problems; or perhaps Cuckoo-spit – a name for Lady's Smock or Cuckoo-flower, another diuretic and expectorant, sometimes used in the treatment of madness

144 _discover . . . show_ Bawdy _double entendre_.

147 _devotion_ act of worship, religious service ( _OED_ n. 2)

148 _change . . . saint_ (1) change from religious to secular worship; (2) change the object of my adoration (from Piracquo to Alsemero)

149 _giddy_ (a) whirling; dizzy ( _OED_ a. 2c-d); (b) mad ( _OED_ a. 1a) _turning_ (a) whirling; vertigo ( _OED_ n. 1b); (b) conversion, desertion to another side; change ( _OED_ n. 10, 11)

156 _survey_ Accent on second syllable here.

157 _strengths_ strongholds ( _OED_ n. 10)

159 _promonts_ promontories _within . . . secrets_ On the trope of secrets in the play, see Neill, 'Hidden Malady', and Introduction, pp. xix–xxvi.

160 _Valencian_ Accent on third syllable.

161 _native_ i.e. to this region

162–3 _Alsemero_ Probably scanned as three syllables in l. 162 (Als[e]méro) and four in l. 163 (Álseméro).

165 _then_ i.e. whenever he uses the phrase; in this case he speaks more truly than he knows, since Beatrice does indeed welcome Alsemero.

166 _I . . . father_ The prior acquaintance of the two men is not part of Reynolds' story.

168 _Iulan_ A coinage from _Iulus_ Ascanius, the younger son of Aeneas in Virgil's Aeneid (I, 267), whose name, according to the commentator Servius, derived from a Greek word meaning 'the first growth of beard'.

170 _coined . . . silver_ turned our hair silver

173 _Jacques_ Disyllablic.

175 _Gibraltar_ Accent on first and third syllables. The rebellious Dutch won a decisive victory over their former Spanish masters in a naval engagement here on 15 April 1607. The detail is from Reynolds.

178 _late league_ The Treaty of the Hague, 9 April 1609, instituted a twelve year truce between the Dutch and Spanish.

179 _Prevented_ Forestalled ( _OED_ v. II, 5)

182 _hot_ ardently, urgently (with a suggestion of sexual excitement ( _OED_ adv. 2; adj. 6c) _his_ . . . _triumph_ i.e. his wedding day. In sixteenth and seventeenth-century parlance, the weddings and funerals of the great, along with coronations, royal entries and other forms of street pageantry were included in the category of 'triumphs', along with the celebrations of military conquest modelled on the 'triumphs' of Roman generals. Since the wedding of Alonzo and Beatrice has not so far been mentioned, Dilke's emendation of Q _this_ to _his_ must be correct.

189 _such friends_ Ostensibly Beatrice refers to the allegorized companionship between her soul and virginity, but she is also referring to her reluctance to part with Alsemero ( _friend_ = lover, _OED_ n. 4) – just as 'dear companion' (1. 186) at first seems to refer to Alonzo.

190 _toy_ foolish fancy; trifle ( _OED_ n. 4, 5); in the context of Beatrice's virginity, a bawdy significance is also possible (see Williams, _Glossary_ , pp. 211–12)

194 _changed_ Ironic in view of his daughter's aside at l. 148.

195 _entertainment_ The bawdy sense, 'sexual diversion', charges Vermandero's invitation with unconscious irony.

196 _unkindly usèd_ The metre requires elision of the _y_ in _unkindly_ , while _used_ is disyallabic.

202 _occasions_ business affairs ( _OED_ n.1 6a) _suit_ fit my inclinations ( _OED_ v. 14a)

204 _but not_ but I wish it were not

205 _gentleman's complete_ Apparently glancing at Henry Peacham's _The Complete Gentleman_ published in the same year that _The Changeling_ was first performed (1622), just as the next line probably remembers the original of all such courtesy books, Baldassare Castiglione's _The Courtier_ (1528; trans Sir Thomas Hoby, 1561).

211 _bound_ obliged; Vermandero plays on an alternative sense, 'tied'.

212–13 _want my will_ fail to achieve what I wish for (and mean to bring about)

213 _mine_ Beatrice plays on _will_ = (sexual) desire.

214 _by_ along

216 _murderers_ small cannon (typically deployed to protect the entrance to a castle). Alsemero refers to the deadly effect produced on him by Vermandero's announcement of the impending marriage; however, he may also have in mind the 'killing' effect of Beatrice's eyes – a standard trope of love-poetry, in which the lady's eyes were figured as firing darts or bullets at her lover – thus beginning the progressive association of Vermandero's castle with the body of his daughter (see Introduction, pp. xxiii–vi, and Neill, 'Hidden Malady', pp. 179–80, 193–4). Ironically Beatrice herself will soon become a literal murderer.

218 _serpent_ One of a number of references in the play that associate Beatrice's fall with the Genesis story. Deflores, like his partial model, Iago in Shakespeare's _Othello_ , is identified with the Devil, who in the form of a serpent tempted Eve. Cf. III.iii.165, V.iii.67. s.d. It is unclear whether the dropping of the glove is accidental, or meant as a conscious invitation to Alsemero; but the fact that it occurs during an aside expressing her pathological aversion to Deflores suggests that it may be unconsciously aimed at him – a suggestion supported by the elaborate play with the phallic suggestiveness of fingers in Deflores' soliloquy, as well as in two later scenes (I.ii.27–31; III.iii.26–38, 88).

219 _Deflores . . . little_ The command emphasizes the servile role that Deflores, in spite of his gentle birth, is forced to play in Vermandero's household.

222 s.d. As at 218, 219 and 221, the gesture, while not specified in Q, is clearly implicit in the dialogue. Throwing down a glove was a traditional gesture of challenge, and Beatrice may even emphasize this by striking Deflores in the face with it.

223 _draw . . . skin_ as a snake might do; but also, as Daalder points out, drawing attention to the pustular, pock-marked complexion that so obsesses both Beatrice and Deflores himself (II.i.33–45, 53; II.ii.40–1, 72–7, 146)

224 _favour_ In the rituals of chivalric or courtly love, gloves were among the most common forms of 'favour' offered by ladies to their knightly 'servants', and often worn in tournaments as tokens of their love. In the 1993 BBC version, Bob Hoskins expressed his physical infatuation by pressing the glove to his nose and inhaling deeply. _with a mischief_ with a vengeance ( _OED_ n. 9b).

225 _She had_ Metre requires elision here.

227 _sockets_ i.e. the fingers of the gloves; but _socket_ also = vagina ( _OED_ n. 4a) the obscene suggestiveness of Deflores' gesture is underlined by Lollio's similarly indecent word-play in the following scene (I.ii.30–1). For a contemporary example of such bawdy symbolism see the story (cited in Chakravorty, p. 147) of Prince Henry's refusal to accept the glove dropped by Frances Howard, Countess of Essex, at a dance, 'saying publicly, he would not have it, it is stretched by another, meaning the Viscount [i.e. her lover, Robert Carr, Viscount Rochester].'

230 _get_ (1) possess; (2) beget _will_ lust; sexual satisfaction
I.ii Author: Rowley. As in much of Rowley's portion of the play, the boundary between verse and prose is often uncertain in this scene. Alibius speaks in verse but is given many irregular or incomplete lines (e.g. 2, 7, 11, 13, 16, 19); Lollio (as befits his lowly rank) generally speaks in prose, but some of his lines seem to fit the verse pattern (e.g. 3, 14, 17).

1 and 3, 8, 17 _secret_ Continues the motif of secrets from I.i.159. Cf. also II.ii.68, IV.i.25, 108, IV.ii.111, 139, V.i.6. Lollio characteristically interprets _secret_ as = private parts (Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 271).

10 _knowledge_ i.e. carnal knowledge

14 _handle_ With bawdy implication.

17 _worse_ (1) harder (the meaning Alibius is meant to assume); (2) less appropriate

21 _this_ i.e. this marriage of January and May _concord_ agree, be in harmony ( _OED_ v. 2) _sympathize_ have an affinity in nature, harmonize ( _OED_ v. 2)

24–5 _old . . . plants_ i.e. his cuckold's horns would make Alibius seem taller (Daalder)

27 _I . . . finger_ The bawdy implication of Alibius' remark ( _ring_ = vagina – see Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 26) is immediately picked up in Lollio's ensuing lines.

32 _Thou conceiv'st me_ You get my point

34 _At . . . out_ Lollio normally speaks in prose, but here his speech fits the metre, forming an acceptable hexameter with Alibius' lines. Here (and sometimes elsewhere) the layout of Q makes it impossible to be sure whether verse or prose is intended. _look out_ leave the house (e.g. on business)

35 _look out_ exercise vigilance _case_ Lollio puns on _case_ = sexual organ (Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 66).

37 _treadings_ (1) where she goes; (2) acts of copulation ( _OED_ v. _tread_ 8a)

38 _Supply . . . place_ Fulfil my office (as head of the household); but Lollio will deliberately misunderstand _place_ to mean 'vulva' (Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 237)

41 _comfortable_ reassuring

42 _house_ Holdsworth (p. 269) noting that the word could also mean 'playhouse', suggests that 'a knowing glance outwards should accompany the line' (cf. III.iii.108).

47 _cure_ A conveniently ambiguous term: (1) care, charge ( _OED_ n. 3); (2) medical treatment ( _OED_ n. 5a); (3) restoration to health ( _OED_ n. 6a).

49 _care_ anxiety

50 _daily visitants_ Madmen are several times represented on the stage as being a source of entertainment (see e.g. _Northward Ho_ , IV.iii.27–36; _Duchess of Malfi_ , IV.ii.61–114) It is generally assumed that this was the practice at Bethlehem Hospital, the London madhouse familiarly known as 'Bedlam' on which Alibius' asylum appears to be modelled; Carol Thomas Neely, however, has argued that visiting Bedlam for amusement was a stage convention, and that it was not until the eighteenth century that the madhouse (partly as a result of its representations in the theatre) became a place of entertainment – see _Distracted Subjects: Madness and Gender in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture_ (Ithaca, 2004), Chap. 6, 'Bedlam in History and Drama.'

53 _habits_ clothes

54 _comely_ handsome

55 _shrewd_ wicked, depraved ( _OED_ a. 1a); dangerous ( _OED_ n. 2); grievous ( _OED_ n. 6b); cunning ( _OED_ a. 13a)

57 _serve the turn_ Daalder suggests a play on the bawdy sense ('provide sexual service' – see Williams, _Glossary_ , pp. 273–4).

59 _ward_ defence ( _OED_ n.2 8); method of keeping watch ( _OED_ n.2 1)

61 _by . . . consequent_ consequently

63 _madman_ With a play on the gendered sense of 'man'.

64 _buckler_ shield

72 _pluck a rose_ urinate

77 _new one_ i.e. a new patient

78 _is . . . home_ has been fulfilled s.d. _like an idiot_ The frontispiece to Francis Kirkman's collection of drolls, _The Wits_ (1672), includes amongst its representations of popular stage characters a figure captioned 'Changeling', wearing a long-skirted gown and a tall pointed cap, with what appears to be a child's primer dangling from his right hand; this is generally taken to be Antonio, and may provide a guide to the original costuming (see Introduction, p. xxiv, and Fig. 4).

83–7 _And . . . defrayed_ Q prints this passage as verse; and, since most of Pedro's lines, including his other big speech at ll. 100–8, are in verse, it is arguable that Rowley intended to write syllabics here. However the lines are almost impossible to speak as verse.

83 _commodious_ beneficial

85 _patterns_ samples

86 _pieces_ gold coins ( _OED_ n. 13 b-c)

86–91 _the charge . . . hands then_ Neely ( _Distracted Subjects_ , pp. 194–5, 199 n.25) suggests that Alibius was intended as a satirical portrait of Helkiah Crooke, the notoriously corrupt master of Bethlehem from 1619–33, and this episode may allude to his scandalous extortion of fees and donations. Middleton and Rowley may have been familiar with Crooke's anatomical treatise, _Mikrocosmographia_ (see V.ii.153).

92 _sweet_ clean and sweet-smelling

95 _Tony . . . fool OED_ suggests that the common use of Tony to mean 'fool' (or, as a verb, 'to make a fool [of someone]'), may actually derive from _The Changeling_ , since no other examples are recorded before the 1650s; however Lollio's 'a very good name for a fool' suggests that the term was already in common use (unless some now lost satiric allusion was intended).

99 _no beast_ The idea that laughter is one of the traits that distinguishes men from beasts goes back to Aristotle, _De Partibus Animalium_ III, 10.

108 _He . . . gentleman_ Compare Deflores' insistence on his own gentle birth at II.i.49.

109–10 _at first . . . other_ Given Antonio's appearance ' _like an idiot_ ' this is clearly meant satirically; but it may also suggest that Lollio has seen through his disguise.

111 _have . . . attendance_ be well looked after _sweet lodging_ clean quarters – but Daalder suggests a bawdy _double entendre_

112 _As . . . in_ Perhaps implying that Lollio already guesses Antonio's designs.

116 _magnifico_ Originally a Venetian magnate – hence any person of distinction and authority.

118 _I'll . . . I'll_ ed. (Ile warrant you Q; Bawcutt: I'll warrant you I; Williams: I warrant you I'll)

118–19 Like Dogberry in _Much Ado About Nothing_, constables were presented on the stage as notoriously stupid.

121 _headborough, beadle, watchman_ parish officers ranked successively below the constable.

123 _able him_ make him fit for _justice_ Like constables, justices of the peace were frequently satirized for their stupidity (see e.g. Shallow and Silence in 2 _Henry IV_ , and Greedy in Massinger's _A New Way to Pay Old Debts_ ; and cf. IV.i.125–6).

128 _arrant_ absolute, complete; but the Q spelling 'errant' suggests that the meaning 'erring' or 'confused' is also present

129 _serve . . . turn_ be adequate for his purposes (perhaps with a bawdy innuendo)

130 _wit_ Includes both 'intelligence' and 'good sense'. _passing_ exceptionally

132 _Remember . . . in_ Another appeal for money.

135 _cousin_ Need not imply kinship – often simply used as a term of intimacy and affection ( _OED_ n. 5).

141 _try_ test _form_ school class

144–5 _true fingers_ (1) fingers excluding thumbs; (2) honest fingers – tailors were proverbially dishonest

148 _deuce_ pair

150 _goes to_ make up; Antonio chooses to understand Lollio as meaning 'visit'. The use of a singular verb with a plural subject is not uncommon in the period (cf. 1. 189 and _II.ii.10)_.

153–4 _All . . . friends_ Then, as now, jokes at the expense of lawyers were commonplace. Cf. Tilley L130: 'Lawyers's houses are built on the heads of fools'.

155 _parlous_ dangerously cunning (originally a contracted form of 'perilous')

160 _sergeant_ court officer charged with arresting offenders and executing legal orders ( _OED_ n. 4a)

161 _beadle_ (here) court officer charged with enforcing discipline

165 _deep_ (1) profound; (2) crafty

166 _this . . . yourself_ this would have done for someone as intelligent as you (but with the implication that his joke is also well suited to a crafty knave like Alibius)

168 _push-pin_ popular children's game (but with obscene innuendo – see Williams, _Dictionary_ , p. 1120)

171 _forward_ prompt, eager ( _OED_ n. 6a); presumptuous ( _OED_ n. 8)

172 _before_ (1) in front of; (2) in preference to; (3) before revealing himself as

173 _behind_ (1) to the rear of; (2) following (i.e. serving) _between . . . knave_ (1) a knave stands between each pair of fools; (2) of any two fools, one is likely to be a knave

181–4 _Here's . . . master_ 'The others of course are really the knaves who are trying to make a fool of Alibius' (Bawcutt)

184 _We three_ Cf. _Twelfth_ Night, II.ii.16–7; alluding to the stock image of two idiots over the caption 'We three, loggerheads be' – the third being the viewer himself (in this case, Alibius).

185 s.d. In the original staging the shrieks and howls of the inmates will have issued from the so-called 'discovery space', until the Madmen finally burst onto the stage in III.ii. In a play much concerned with dark 'secrets' and hidden sickness, their off-stage presence develops a symbolic resonance – one emphasised in Richard Eyre's 1988 National Theatre production, in which the entire performance was framed by a kind of false proscenium made of spiral staircases and scaffolding around which the denizens of the madhouse clung in grotesque postures: this was, in effect, the 'hell' that 'circumscribes' the characters in the final scene (V.iii.164); cf. Introduction, p. xxxv and Fig. 5.

186 _the . . . little_ there's not enough bread

187 _Fly . . . swallow_ Alluding to a proverbial impossibility: 'Fly and you will catch the swallow' (Tilley S1024); but given that the other Madmen's speeches register hunger, probably punning on _swallow_ , as Daalder suggests.

188 _rope_ (1) hangman's rope; (2) rope of onions _crag_ neck

189 _chimes of Bedlam_ cries of the mad

190 _wire_ whip made of wire

191 _Cat-whore . . . Parmesan_ Spoken by the 'Welsh madman'. The Welsh were proverbially fond of cheese; and the speaker is abusing his cat for failing to prevent the theft of his Parmesan by a mouse (see l. 206) – _her_ being stage-Welsh for 'my'.

194 _spoiled him_ despoiled him of

197 _last charge_ i.e. to keep a close watch on Alibius' wife

200 _amongst_ go amongst, join

201 _at . . . stultum_ i.e. they have reached only as far the second declension in their Latin grammars; fittingly, the noun they are declining means 'stupid'.

207 _prove_ (1) become; (2) turn out to have been (all along)
II.i Author: Middleton

1–2 _service . . . friend_ For Jasperino's role as both servant and friend, see _Dramatis Personae_ above; but Daalder is probably right to suppose that, since Beatrice is thinking of Vermandero, _service_ also carries an erotic suggestion.

3 _conduct_ document conferring privilege of entry (not in _OED_ – presumably an abbreviation of 'safe-conduct', n. 2)

5 _return_ take back (to Alsemero).

10–12 _For . . . makes_ Presumably on the grounds that a true friend (as theorists of friendship had insisted from classical times) is a 'second self'.

11 _bosom_ intimate friend

13–19 _Methinks . . . eyesight_ Beatrice's conviction that her love is the product of insight rather than the notoriously unreliable impressions of the eye is undercut by the repeated emphasis upon her obsession with outward appearances.

15–16 _A . . . him_ For the idea that diamonds were luminous, see _Titus Andronicus_ , II.iii.226–30; and cf. III.i.30–1.

18 _discernèd_ ed. (discern'd Q)

20–1 _his_ i.e. Vermandero's

20–3 _blessing . . . curse_ Just as, in the formal rite of blessing, a father became the conduit of God's grace, so his curse was the most terrible thing a child could experience.

21 _as . . . name_ in so far as I respect his honour (by obeying his wishes)

22 _turns . . . me_ rounds on me with all its power ( _OED turn_ v. 57; _head_ n. 29, 57a)

23–4 _Some . . . remembered_ i.e. some way of disposing of Alonzo – but at this point Beatrice cannot quite bring herself to say it.

24–5 _he's . . . way_ Ambiguous – 'forward' sounds like a complaint against Alonzo's over-zealous suit, but it may (as Daalder supposes) simply refer to Vermandero's eager determination to conclude the match.

26 _my new comforts_ i.e. her affair with Alsemero. But note Deflores' entrance (Daalder).  
s.d. Though this speech, like ll. 76–88, takes the form of a soliloquy, it is in fact an extended aside. The aside was typically employed for ironic and often comic effect, but a number of the key scenes in Middleton's part of the play (e.g. II.ii, III.iii, IV.i) make extensive use of the device, including such extended passages of reflection, to emphasize the isolation of the characters as they brood over inward secrets.

27 _alate_ of late ( _OED_ adv. _arch_.).

28 _refrain_ Stress on first syllable.

32 _baits_ bites and tears as dogs attack a chained animal ( _OED_ v.1 3) – cf. ll. 80–1; but perhaps (as Daalder suggests) with a subdued pun on _baits_ = tempts ( _OED_ v.1 11)

35 _At no hand_ Under no circumstances; On no account

36 _danger_ Cf. l. 90.

40 _pick-hatched_ Bruster conj. (pickhaird Q); cant term for a brothel – deriving from the 'hatch' or half-door, defended with 'picks' (or spikes) commonly used in the London stews ( _OED_ picked-hatch) – here presumably indicating a face pock-marked as though from syphilis. Bruster's own text prints _pig-haired_ (= bristly), a contemptuous term found in Middleton's _A Trick to Catch the Old One_ (IV.iv.298–9). Editors who retain Q take _pick-haired_ to mean 'covered in spiky hairs' – i.e. 'bristly', or perhaps 'sparsely bearded'.

44 _wash_ (1) watery discharge; (2) pig-swill ( _OED_ n. 9; 11a)

46 _sweets_ pleasures ( _OED_ n. 3a)

47 _grace of beauty_ Deflores may be thinking of the classical Three Graces – thus the 'grace of beauty' would be the goddess of beauty herself; but 'grace' (or 'mercy') was what the courtly lover, imitating the language of religion, sought from his mistress (cf. 1. 63).  
 _sweet_ sweetheart ( _OED_ n. 4). In the popular character-book, _Sir Thomas Ouerbury: His Wife_ , we are told of ' _A Serving-man_ ' that 'His inheritance is the Chamber-mayd, but [he] often purchaseth his Master's daughter, by reason of opportunity' (1618 edition, Sig. E1v).

48–9 _Though . . . gentleman_ In fact many gentlemen were employed as upper servants in great households, but Deflores' disdain for service as a form of degrading 'servitude' echoes the complaints of contemporary pamphleteers, such as 'I.M.' in _A Health to the Gentlemanly profession of Servingmen: or, The Servingmans Comfort_ (1598), who argued that changing conditions of employment were rendering domestic service no longer suitable for persons of gentle birth.

52–3 _Again . . . me_ Q prints this as one line, but its dash after 'Again' – like that after 'So' (1. 77) – may indicate that the word is extra-metrical.

53 _ominous_ Cf. I.i.2.

56 _Soft and fair_ Directed at himself – cf. Tilley S601: 'Soft and fair goes far'; and Proverbs 15:1 'A soft answer turneth away wrath'.

57 _fixed_ (1) immoveable; (2) transfixed (i.e. by the sight of her)

58 _standing toad-pool_ stagnant water in which poisonous toads were generated (cf. _Othello_ IV.ii.62–3: 'a cistern for foul toads / To knot and gender in') _amain_ with full force

59–61 _thee . . . you_ The social distance between Beatrice and Deflores is registered by the way that Beatrice uses the singular pronouns ( _thee, thou, thy_ ) customarily used in addressing servants, children and social inferiors, while Deflores employs the more respectful plural forms ( _you, your_ ). Cf. also II.ii.72, III.iii.168–70.

63 _True . . . mercy_ Begins a series of equivocations, elaborated in II.ii and III.iii, on the meanings of service. Delivering messages belongs to Deflores' function as a household servant, but by using the term _mercy_ he seeks to cast himself in the role of a courtly lover offering a more exalted kind of _service_ to the lady of the castle. The lady's grant of 'mercy' often involved a 'favour' such as Deflores claims at I.i.224. Cf. also l. 48 and Introduction, p. xxx.

65 _dallying_ (1) idly chattering, time wasting ( _OED_ v. 1, 4); (2) playing mockingly ( _OED_ v. 3); (3) amorously playful  
 _trifling_ (1) mocking, deceitful ( _OED_ v.); (2) frivolously time-wasting. Gordon Williams ( _Dictionary_ , p. 1422) notes that the verb _trifle_ was 'used with the sense of coit from c. 1560.'

68 _Slave_ While the regime of service in early modern England did not include literal slavery, 'slave' persisted as term expressing extreme social contempt.

77 _devise_ Accent on first syllable.

78 _still_ all the time

79 _qualm_ bout of sickness – like Alsemero's at I.i.24 Deflores' desire is figured as an illness; and cf. Beatrice's fits of trembling below (1. 91)

80 _common Garden-bull_ i.e one of the bulls kept for baiting at Paris Garden, near the theatres in Southwark

81 _lugged_ worried, baited (as by dogs)

84 _chops_ Literally 'jaws' – here a metonym for the face.

85 _his fellows_ other faces as deformed as mine

91 _of_ for  
 _hour_ Scanned as two syllables.

98 _our_ Vermandero makes use of the royal plural on this formal occasion, no doubt because in confirming the betrothal he speaks for his entire lineage.

99 _addition . . . son_ title of my son, together with the marks of honour belonging to that dignity (cf. _King Lear_ I.i.136: 'the name and all th'addition to a king')

100 _treasury of honour_ the entire store of noble titles

102 _improved it well_ amply augmented the honour belonging to that title ( _OED improve_ v.2 4a)

104 _keep the night_ preserve the night for myself. Beatrice plays on Vermandero's 'steal' to suggest that the wedding will involve a kind of theft (of her virginity), and implies that she will not allow the marriage to be consummated – an ironic anticipation (as Daalder points out) of what will actually happen on the night of her wedding to Alsemero.

105 _If . . . near_ (1) If that day should actually come; (2) If it should affect me so intimately ( _OED near_ adv.2 16b)

108 _all points_ every respect  
 _bringing on you_ (1) advancing your attitude, educating you; (2) exciting you sexually. Q has no punctuation after _you_ , and Frost suggests that the meaning might therefore be 'I cannot make you realise that . . .'; but the syntax seems strained, and Dilke was surely right to suppose an error by the compositor.

110 _ill-set_ badly type-set

114 _motion_ application (as to a court) ( _OED_ n. 8b)

117 _pinching_ pressing; troublesome ( _OED_ v. 7)

121 _wanting_ lacking

121–2 _May . . . still_ May I always satisfy your wish for happiness in such matters ( _OED satisfy_ v. 7)

123 _dullness_ gloomy lack of interest ( _OED_ n. 3)

124 _exceptious_ disposed to find fault

126 _To . . . heedfully_ To be so much on the lookout for things that may harm you _Where's the oversight?_ What have I overlooked?

127 _cozened_ deceived, cheated

137 _in this passion_ ed. (in his passions Q; Bruster, _conj_. Sampson: in his absence) i.e. the state of sexual arousal produced by the fantasy that she lies in her lover's embrace

138–9 _And . . . to_ 'and what dangerous and shameful consequences will eventually result from restraining her' (Frost)

142 _and_ if

149 _Yet_ (1) Nevertheless; (2) Still (with the implication that if Tomazo persists it will destroy their friendship)  
 _we're_ Q _corr_. (w'are; we are Q _uncorr_.)

153 _bound_ obligated

154 _love's tame madness_ picking up the theme of love-sickness and linking it to the sub-plot (cf. e.g. IV.iii.1–4). The idea that love constituted a form of madness is elaborated at great length in the section on love melancholy in Robert Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_ (1621) – see also Introduction, pp. xvi-xvii.

155 _vexation_ Scanned as four syllables.
II.ii Author: Middleton

1 _charge_ responsibility

3 _Complete gentleman_ Perfect gentleman – as at I.i.205, the phrase probably alludes to Henry Peacham's conduct book, _The Complete Gentleman_ , published in the year of _The Changeling's_ first performance.

4–5 _I . . . with_ i.e. if Diaphanta is too effusive in her praise of Alsemero, Beatrice may become jealous

6–7 _These . . . 'em_ In _Gerardo_ , Isdaura's waiting maid, Julia, is described as 'Secretary to my most hidden thoughts' (sig. H5); compare also the character of ' _A Chamber-maide_ ' in Overbury's _Wife:_ 'She is her mistresses she Secretary, and keepes the box of her teeth, her haire, & her painting very priuate' (1618 edition, sig. G7v).

6 _women_ waiting-women  
 _their_ ed. (the Q)  
 _cabinets_ either (a) a small, private room (in which costly paintings and other treasures were often kept), or (b) a chest for jewels and other precious possessions; figuratively (c) a secret receptacle ( _OED_ n. 4–6). In _Othello_ , the waiting-woman Emilia is similarly described by Othello as 'A closet, lock and key of villainous secrets' (4.1.22).

7 _locked_ ed. (lock Q)

10 _brings 'em down_ i.e. the prayers succeed in bringing the things requested back to earth. For the irregular grammar here, see I.ii.150.  
 _furnish our defects_ supply us with what we lack, make up for our deficiencies

11 _our necessities_ what we need

17–18 _an enemy . . . to't_ i.e. Alonso, who would wish their kiss poisoned, if he knew of it; ironically, as we learn at l. 57, their entire rendezvous is being watched by an even more dangerous enemy, Deflores – the 'poison' that Beatrice is destined to 'kiss' (see V.iii.67).

21 _service_ As ll. 27–8 show, it is chivalric 'service' that Alsemero has in mind.

23–4 _remove . . . ceases_ A paraphrase of the scholastic tag, _ablata causa, tollitur effectus_ ('the cause removed, the effect ceases').

25 _blast_ puff of breath  
 _find_ understand

26 _happy_ fortunate

27 _about_ ed. ('bout Q – another instance of unnecessary colloquial contraction)

31 _ventured_ put at risk

32 _That's_ Who are

33 _you're_ ed. (your Q)

34–5 _The law . . . alive_ either you'd fall victim to the law or you'd have to go into hiding

36–7 _one . . . condition_ one thought of this kind

38 _to bring . . . death_ to make me die of grief

41 s.d. Most eds. begin the aside at the beginning of the line, but Q's dash after _one_ suggests that the first part of the line is spoken aloud and that _I think on one_ probably means 'I am thinking about [how to find] one' rather than 'I have one in mind'.

42 _marred . . . market_ Semi-proverbial (cf. Tilley M672: 'He has made a good market').

43 _done questionless_ (1) 'there is no doubt it would have been done by now;' (2) 'done with no questions asked'

46 _make . . . poison_ turn to poison to good account ( _OED_ v.1 18d)

47 _Keep . . . another_ A standard nostrum of early modern medicine, enshrined in the proverb 'one poison expels [drives out] another' (Tilley P477).

49 _not . . . side_ favourable to our cause

52 _time opens_ future unfolds

54 _service_ Ricks (p. 299) suggests an ironic _double entendre_ – Diaphanta will 'serve' Alsmero in a way she does not yet imagine.

55 _private way_ Perhaps another ironic _double entendre_ (Ricks).

56 _My . . . upon_ My love for you is as unshakeable as any on which a mistress ever rested her hopes

57 _I have watched_ Possibly an indication that an earlier stage direction has been lost: Deflores was perhaps meant to appear 'above', like Lollio in the parallel episode at III.ii.170 ff., to spy on the lovers – as he did in the 1978 Royal Shakespeare Company production.

58 _t'other_ Alonzo

59 _served_ sexually satisfied  
 _Happily_ Perhaps

60 _put . . . one_ apply for a share (with sexual innuendo – cf. IV.iii.34)

61–2 _Fly . . . mounts_ 'De Flores uses the language of falconry . . . with [a] sexual suggestion' (Bawcutt 1998).

61 _point_ position; with a quibble on _point =_ penis (Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 241)

64 _sutler_ supplier of provisions; 'if a woman, sometimes a prostitute' (Bawcutt (1998))  
 _army royal_ grand army ( _OED_ royal a. 10b)

66 _put case_ suppose

68 _secret_ Cf. I.ii. 1–8.

69 _serve . . . him_ make use of him for my own purposes; but with an unconscious sexual innuendo (cf. I.ii.57)

72 _you_ Beatrice's flattering approach is marked by her switch to the respectful plural pronoun.

74 _pruned_ preened, decked out ( _OED_ v.1 1–2)

75 _look so amorously_ (1) look so lovable, desirable ( _OED amorous_ a. II); (2) gaze so fondly, lustfully [at me] ( _OED amorous_ a. I, 2)

76 _physnomy_ physiognomy

77 _scurvy_ (1) covered with diseased scabs ( _OED_ a. 1); (2) worthless, contemptible ( _OED_ a. 2)

80 _Faugh!_ The exclamation is extra-metrical.  
 _heat of the liver_ In Galenic medicine the liver was the seat of love and the passions; an overheated liver could produce excess of desire, but might also result in physical symptoms.

81 _fingers_ Already eroticised by Deflores' play with Beatrice's glove at I.i.224–7.

82 _amber_ ambergris – an ingredient of costly perfumes. The detail shows how Deflores' erotic excitement is directly linked to Beatrice's rank and wealth.

83 _water_ medicinal tincture ( _OED_ n. 16a); however, Deflores' response at ll. 86–7 suggests that he chooses to understand it as meaning 'semen' (Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 332).

94 _employment_ Like _service_ capable of a sexual interpretation.

95 _use_ With the additional sense 'employ sexually'.

96 _honour of a service_ Deflores emphasises the chivalric sense of _service_ ; but _honour_ also = virginity (and hence vagina – Williams, _Glossary_ , pp. 161–2).

97 _mounts_ bawdy _double entendre_

97 _try_ put to the test ( _OED_ v. 7a; with unconscious sexual innuendo – see Williams, _Dictionary_ , p. 1430: _try =_ 'have sexual experience of')

102 _on't_ of it _quick_ Perhaps with an unconscious play on _quick_ n. = sexual centre (see Williams, _Dictionary_ , p. 1129).

103 _for't now I_ This edition (for't, now I Q; for't now; I Dilke and most eds). _now I heard_ given that I have now heard

107 _creation_ Four syllables, stress on final syllable.

112–13 _remove . . . sight_ Beatrice's euphemism for murder takes her obsession with eyesight and appearance to its logical extreme.

113 _occasion_ opportunity ( _OED_ n. 1a)

117 _It's . . . you_ Deflores adopts the supplicant posture of a knight seeking acceptance as his lady's 'servant' (cf. also Antonio's offer of himself as Isabella's 'servant' at III.ii.117, and Alsemero's offer of 'service' to Beatrice at II.ii.21).

118 _too . . . faithfully_ too passionate to mean what you say

122 _act_ (1) action; (2) sexual congress (Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 24)

124 _the charge on't_ your instructions for it

126 _angels' food_ manna (see Psalm 78:24–5)

129 _forward_ eager (to carry out my will), bold ( _OED_ a. 6a, c)

131 _myself of that_ Q _corr_. (myselfe that Q _uncorr_.)

132 _ravishes_ enraptures; but the sexual sense ('rapes'), which Beatrice does not hear, emphasizes the gap between the two kinds of 'reward' they envisage.

133 _Then . . . fury_ In the 1993 BBC version Beatrice joined the kneeling Deflores on this line, as though mimicking the ritual of marriage vows – which she appeared to seal with the kiss she gave Deflores at l. 147, after her contemptuous aside about 'his dog-face'.

133 _thirst_ Cf. Deflores' metaphors of sexual desire as thirst for 'blood' of a different kind (III.iii. 107–8; V.iii. 170–1; and below l. 146).

135 _He . . . more_ Deflores cleverly exploits Beatrice's self-deceiving euphemism at ll. 112–13. _lovely_ Not only 'beautiful', but also 'lovable' and 'amorous' ( _OED_ a. 1–3).

137 _Dearlier_ (1) More richly; (2) Lovingly; (3) At greater cost ( _OED_ a. 2a, 3, 4a, 5a, 6a)

139 _upon the cast_ dependent on the throw of this dice

141 s.d. Most eds. insert this s.d. at 1. 135, but the visual pun created by the sight of Deflores rising even as he speaks of Beatrice's 'rising fears' is entirely in accord with Middleton's ironic technique.

143 _bravely_ splendidly, ostentatiously ( _OED_ adv. 2)

146 _his dog-face_ Beatrice imagines Deflores as one of those monstrous dog-headed humans ( _cynopheli_ ) described by Pliny and his medieval successors, including the fabled Sir John Mandeville; Bawcutt (1958) suggests that Beatrice may be coining a mock-title for Deflores, 'His Dog-Face' (on the model of His Lordship).  
 _blood_ sexual desire

151 _Slovenly_ Nasty, disgusting ( _OED_ a. 3)

154–5 _supperless . . . rise . . . dinner_ Extends the sexual metaphor from 11. 150–3.

159 _ways_ doorways, gateways ( _OED_ n. 1f)  
 _straits_ narrow places ( _OED_ n. 1a; and cf. a. 3a)

160 _tedious_ irksome ( _OED_ a. 2)

163 _'gainst . . . rising_ i.e. until such time as you rise from the table

164 _keys_ For the symbolic significance of these instruments in Deflores' 'work of secrecy' (III.i.27), cf. the key with which Beatrice opens Alsemero's closet to discover _'The Book of Experiment / Called Secrets in Nature_ ' (IV.i.18–25), and the 'key of [the] wardrobe' which Isabella obtains from Lollio in order to penetrate the secret of Antonio's and Franciscus' disguise (IV.iii.44). See also Introduction, p. xx.

165 _safely_ securely, without any risk (to me) – ironic  
s.d. _act-time_ Unlike outdoor playhouses, such as the Globe, where the action was continuous, the so-called 'private' theatres, including the Cockpit and Salisbury Court, allowed for intervals between the acts, during which music was customarily played.  
s.d. _DEFLORES_ . . . _rapier_ An altogether unusual stage-direction, since the interval between acts is a kind of non-time from which the characters are conventionally excluded: Deflores' exploitation of it becomes a way of representing his unfettered access to the castle's innermost 'secrets'.
III.i Author: Middleton.

2 _postern_ rear door or gate

3 _sconce_ small fort designed to defend a castle gate ( _OED_ n.3 1). Holdsworth, 'Notes on _The Changeling_ ,' _N &Q_ ns. 234 (1989) 344–6, suggests a pun on _sconce_ n.2 = jocular term for the head, and argues that 'this must mean that he intends to club Alonzo with one of the large, heavy keys he is carrying, the very one he is now showing his victim'; Bruster inserts stage directions to this effect at III.i.24 ff.

5 _tell me more_ 'have more to say, be even more impressed [when you have seen more]' – with an ironic innuendo

9 _lord_ Scanned as two syllables here.

10 s.d. This helps the actors to mime the narrow, winding descent. Most editions begin a separate scene at this point, but since the s.d. indicates that the action is effectively continuous, there seems no point in doing so.

12 _A place . . . on_ i.e. the grave

16 _casement_ Corruption of _casemate_ ( _OED casement_ n. 4) which is the word in Reynolds: 'A vaulted chamber built in the thickness of the ramparts of a fortress, with embrasures for the defence of the place' ( _OED casemate_ n. 1).

20 _munition_ fortification

21 _bastard metal_ corrupt alloy _peal_ (1) changes rung on a set of bells; (2) discharge of cannons, esp. in salute ( _OED_ n. 2, 3)

22 _great men's funerals_ a by-word for hypocritical behaviour (see Webster, _White Devil_ , V.ii.296–7)

24 _dwell_ (1) fix your attention; (2) remain when dead

24 _I . . . upon't_ I can see it. Deflores' reply twists the phrase to mean 'I have found my target'.

30 _vault_ Presumably represented by the curtained 'discovery space' at the rear of the stage.

31 _sparkles . . . diamond_ Uncanny echo of II.i.15.

33 _approve_ serve as proof of

34 _Not . . . death_ An ironic recollection of the marriage vow 'till death us do part' – cf. III.iv.37–8.
III.ii Author: Rowley

1 _sirrah_ term of address expressing authority, reprimand or contempt

5 _doing_ fornicating

5–6 _I'll . . . after_ Daalder suggests that Lollio plays on the proverbial expression 'to dance after someone's pipe' ( _Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs_ , p. 166); the proverb is not in Tilley, but is recorded in _OED_ (v. 1 e) from 1562.

6 _pipe_ obscene _double entendre (pipe =_ penis; Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 236)

8 _pinfold_ pound for stray livestock; place of confinement. Daalder suggests a play on _pin =_ penis (Williams, _Glossary_ , pp. 235–6).

10 _pounded_ (1) held in a pound; (2) pounded with a (phallic) pestle _another place_ obscene innuendo

16 _abroad_ into the world at large _to boot_ as well

18 _participate_ partake (i.e. sexually)

20 _brave_ bold (in a pejorative sense) _saucy_ insolent; lascivious ( _OED_ a. 2a–b)

21 _bedlam_ See above, I.ii.50.

22 _once_ earlier

23 _last come_ most recently arrived _proper_ handsome ( _OED_ a. 9)

26 _In . . . defect_ i.e in your description of it

32 _a match_ it's a deal

34 _o' th' other side_ ed. (o'th' side Q)

35 _shooting a bolt_ undoing a bolt – with a play both on the proverb 'A fool's bolt is soon shot' (Tilley, F515) and on the obscene meanings of 'bolt' and 'shoot'

36 _handsomely_ decently ( _OED_ adv. 5)

39 _Anacreon_ Greek poet who celebrated the pleasures of wine (probably addressed to Lollio)

40 _spider . . . cup_ According to folk-belief, since spiders were venomous, they could poison a drink, and to swallow one could be fatal (cf. _Winter's Tale_ , II.i.39–45).

41 _grape-stone_ Pliny ( _Natural History_ VII, vii) records the legend that Anacreon choked to death on a grapeseed.

42–3 _Alack . . . tell_ l. 42 is one syllable short, l. 43 one syllable too long. Dilke may have been right to read 'it is' for _'tis_ , and _canst thou tell_ may similarly be a mistake for 'canst tell'; but the scansion in these sub-plot scenes of mingled verse and prose is often unusually rough.

44–5 _set . . . forwards_ started him off. Poetic inspiration (like love) was sometimes thought of as a kind of divine madness, the _furor poeticus_ – cf. _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ , V.i. 12–20.

47, 49 _Titania, Oberon_ 'Oberon' was the traditional name for the fairy king, but the conjunction with 'Titania', the name given to Oberon's consort in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ , suggests that Franciscus is probably remembering Shakespeare's comedy (see Introduction, pp. xviii–xix).

49 _Dryades_ wood-nymphs. Lollio implies that Isabella's husband is entertaining himself with other women.

50 _daisies . . . violets_ Daalder notes the symbolism of these flowers (freshness, excellence, and chastity).

51 _poesy_ (1) poetry; (2) posy of flowers ( _OED_ n. 1, 4)

53 _Diomed_ Diomedes, King of the Bistonians in Thrace, who fed his horses on human flesh; Hercules tamed these savage steeds by feeding them Diomedes' own corpse.

55 _Get up_ Mount  
 _Bucephalus_ the mighty charger of Alexander the Great, which only the king himself could ride  
s.d. ' _Kneels_ ' Repeats Deflores' gesture at II.ii.117.

59 _proper_ (1) handsome; (2) complete, thorough ( _OED_ a. 9, 7)

60 _Aesculapius_ Greek god of medicine _poison_ i.e. the whip, but picking up the image from l. 40.

61 _hid_ A visual parallel with Deflores' concealment of the rapier at the beginning of Act III may be intended here.

62–3 _Tiresias . . . poet_ Not a poet, but a blind prophet from Thebes.

64 _wild geese_ prostitutes (see Williams, _Dictionary_ , pp. 143–4)

67–70 _I was . . . woman_ Tiresias spent seven years as a woman, before changing back into a man.

69 _might_ might have been

72 _Juno . . . blind_ When Tiresias revealed that women derived more pleasure from sex than men, the marriage goddess, Juno, punished him with blindness.

73–4 _eye . . . man_ i.e. between her legs – an ironic gloss on Beatrice's 'eyes of judgement' (II.i.13)

76 _Luna_ The moon goddess. Not only was the moon credited with the power to drive people 'lunatic', but, as the planet of change, it was supposed to exercise particular influence upon women, because of their monthly cycles – rendering them especially liable to fickleness, change, and emotional instability (cf. V.iii.196 ff.). Lollio implies Tiresias'/Franciscus' time as a woman made him unusually vulnerable to the malign influence of the moon.  
 _two trades_ i.e. blindness and madness  
 _beg_ beg with

77 _big-bellied_ Franciscus' conceit is that the full moon is pregnant.

78 _Hecate_ Greek goddess of witchcraft, frequently identified with the moon goddess Diana/Artemis, and hence often used as a synonym for the moon itself

80 _dog . . . bush_ conventional properties of the man-in-the-moon (see _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ , V.i.251–3). The bawdy implication is that Franciscus himself means to be the man in _her_ moon.

80–1 _bush / That barks_ Franciscus' confused syntax is perhaps encouraged by a pun on _barks_.

82 _lycanthropi_ sufferers from lycanthropia who (like Duke Ferdinand in _The Duchess of Malfi_ ) imagine themselves transformed into wolves. Q prints a comma rather than a semi-colon after _night_ , and it may be that _lycanthropi_ are being imagined as witches of a sort.

90–2 _No . . . mouse-hole_ Noting the rhymes on 'sleeps/creeps', 'round/sound', 'soul/hole', Bruster suggests that these lines may have been intended as a continuation of Antonio's song, forming a lyric with alternating long and short lines.

92 _mouse-hole_ obscene ('mouse' being a term of affection for women)

95 s.d. ed. ( _after_ 'yonder, Tony' Q)

97 _aunt_ (also) prostitute (Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 31)

99 _uncle_ Daalder suggests this may have the cant meaning of 'procurer' – a conjecture made more plausible by the fact that, in _Troilus and Cressida_ , Cressida is pimped by Pandarus, whom she repeatedly addresses as 'uncle'.

100 _nidget_ colloquial contraction of 'an idiot' _play_ copulate (Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 238)

101 _bauble_ (1) fool's baton (usually with a carved fool's head at its tip); (2) penis (Williams, _Glossary_ , pp. 36–7)

103 _cousin_ Isabella probably interprets _cousin_ as a euphemism for 'lover'.

107 _bounce_ the noise made by an explosion, the explosion itself ( _OED_ n.1 2), often (as probably here) representing gunfire (cf. _King John_ , II.i.462; _2 Henry IV_ , III.ii.280) _falls_ i.e from a shot or explosion; but here with a sexual innuendo

108 _upper room_ Perhaps includes a satiric glance at the audience, since 'room' was the contemporary term for a theatre 'box' (see Holdsworth, _Casebook_ , p. 269).

111 _left-handed Orlando_ clumsy imitation ( _OED left-handed_ a. 2) of the hero of Ariosto's epic _Orlando Furioso_

113–14 _'Tis . . . change_ Antonio's abandonment of his fool persona is signified by his shift to a slightly pompous style of blank verse. His reference to this 'change' acts as reminder of his own role as the nominal 'changeling' of the title (see also l. 118).

114 _amazing full_ of amazement; but Antonio may also be referring to the power of her eye to throw a lover into confusion and bewilderment. Literally speaking, to be 'amazed' is to be trapped in a maze or labyrinth – a recurrent motif in _The Changeling_ (cf. III.iii.71; IV.iii. 98–100; V.iii. 148).

121 _scrutinous_ searching _sciences_ branches of learning

122 _cunning_ skilful

124 _mystery_ religious truth known by revelation (hence part of the religious language of courtly love); hidden or secret thing ( _OED_ n. 2, 5a). Cf. also IV.i.25, 38. For the bawdy sense of _mystery_ and _secret_ , see Williams, _Glossary_ , pp. 212, 271, and above I.ii. 1.

125 _proceeds_ advances in a course of study (as to a university degree) _parlous_ (1) dangerously cunning; (a) awful, extraordinary ( _OED_ a. 2)

126 _Love_ i.e. Cupid/Amor

127–8 _soft . . . arrow_ Antonio exploits the phallic suggestiveness of Cupid's arrows.

129 _stand_ give

130 _forward_ (1) presumptuous; (2) lustful – see Ricks (pp. 298–300)

131 _he_ ed. (she Q)

132 _the nearest_ ed. (nearest Q)

133 _tread_ The bawdy sense ('copulate') is probably hinted at. _galaxia_ i.e the Milky Way

136 _outward . . . within_ Continues the motif of secrets within (cf. I.i.159). _discover_ expose

145 _valentine . . . morning_ Perhaps influenced by a song that the mad Ophelia sings in _Hamlet_ (IV.v.48–66).

147 _Passing_ Exceedingly

150 _come to something_ With a bawdy _double entendre_ (Williams, _Glossary_ , pp. 75, 306–7).

151 _put him to't . . . hard_ Bawdy _double entendre_ ( _put to_ = insert penis; see Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 251).

160 _Catch . . . hell_ Cry from the popular game known as 'Barley-brake', referred to by Deflores at V.ii.162–4. The game was played by couples holding hands: one couple were confined to a circle, known as 'hell', and would try to catch the other couples as they ran through it; those caught would have to replace the couple in hell, and the game continued until every pair had served its term there.

164 _out_ out of your role

166 _you . . . clothes_ you talk unbecomingly when you speak in a way that does not match your fool's costume

167 _Lives_ That lives

168 _orchard of the Hesperides_ At the rim of the Western world, this orchard, tended by the nymphs of the evening (Hesperides), bore golden apples that were guarded by a ferocious dragon. Hercules' penultimate task was to pluck three of its apples.

170 s.d.2 Lollio enters to spy on Isabella, as Deflores has previously done on Beatrice-Joanna in II.ii. In both scenes the treacherous servant plans to use his discoveries to blackmail erotic favours from his mistress. For the possibility that the original staging may have given visual emphasis to the parallel, see II.ii.57.

171 _giants keep 'em_ A mocking reference to Alibius and Lollio as keepers of the madhouse; Isabella's substitution of giants for the dragon of the original myth may be an indication that she has caught sight of Lollio above.

172 _Lipsius_ renaissance scholar and populariser of neo-Stoic moral philosophy; but included here for the pun on 'lips'

173 _Ars Amandi_ Ovid's much imitated poem _The Art of Love_ was the most popular erotic manual of the day.

176 _but smile_ ed. (smile Q) – Lollio's otherwise completely accurate repetition of this speech at ll. 217–24 suggests that the compositor accidentally omitted 'but' from a line he had already had difficulty accommodating.

178 _Meet and retire_ Kissing is imagined as a kind of playful combat, orchestrated by Cupid.

179–80 _in . . . deformity_ Compare the way in which Deflores is forced to contemplate his own 'deformity' in Beatrice's eyes (see e.g. II.i.26–51).

183 _cuckoo_ Suggesting that Alibius is about to be cuckolded ('cuckold' derives from 'cuckoo').  
s.d. Appearing as though in response to Lollio's cry of 'cuckoo', the madmen's grotesquerie appears like a quasi-allegorical representation of the bestial passions hidden beneath the surface of the play-world, just as their madness mirrors the love-madness that possesses so many of the play's superficially sane characters.

196 _one churchman . . . at once_ The corrupt practice of drawing income from more than one living at a time was widely denounced in the period.

202–3 _put you down_ (1) beat or surpass you ( _OED_ v. 42 e–f); (2) subdue you sexually (Williams, _Glossary_ , pp. 250–1)

205 _bankers_ builders of protective banks and dikes ( _OED_ n.3 2)

208 _needle's point_ Phallic _double-entendre_.

226 _Lacedemonian_ Spartan – i.e. 'whore' (by analogy with Helen of Troy, the adulterous former Queen of Sparta; and perhaps involving, as Sampson suggests, a play on 'laced mutton' – a cant term for a prostitute).

227 _thing_ i.e. her sex

228 s.d. This edition ( _not in_ Q)

230 _knight-errant . . . purchase_ The bathetic descent from the 'adventure' of knight-errantry (associated with courtly love) to the merchant venturing of 'purchase' is significant.

236 _part_ (1) share; (2) role; (3) sexual organ (Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 247) – cf. the fool's 'bauble' (above, l. 101)

238 _bounden_ (1) under obligation for favours received; (2) tied with the bonds of matrimony; (3) made fast in bonds or prison ( _OED_ ppl. a. 4, 2c, 2a)

241 _nearly_ (1) intimately; (2) narrowly, under close surveillance ( _OED_ adv. 2, 1a)

248 _fag_ fag-end ( _OED_ n.2 2)

250–1 _unexpected . . . pleasure_ the madmen will give the guests a delightful frisson of alarm by suddenly rushing through the festivities

253 _measure_ dance

254 _out . . . figure_ ignoring all the customary patterns of the dance _breaking . . . head_ Alibius's conceit imagines a dance so extravagantly out of time as to break the head of Father Time himself.

257–8 This passage (like much of Alibius' excited speech) has caused commentators some difficulty; but it makes best sense to assume that _This, this_ refers to the first part of their reward, an advance payment from Vermandero, which Alibius flourishes as an earnest of the even greater _bounty_ (1. 258) that will follow, if they succeed.

268–9 _Just . . . thrive_ Asylum keepers and lawyers both grow rich by exploiting the same victims, because only a fool or a madman would put his faith in lawyers (or the law).
III.iii Author: Middleton

6 _vale_ i.e. the world (as in the proverbial 'vale of tears')

9 _largely_ [proclaimed] generally, in the world at large ( _OED_ adv. 4)

11 _fix him_ install him permanently ( _OED_ v. 8c)

14 _eye . . . offends_ Cf. Matthew 18:9, Mark 9:47: 'And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out'; the ironic implication is that the true offence lies in her own eye.

14–15 _darkened . . . eclipse_ Beatrice refers to the moment when the light of life is extinguished in Alonzo; but her conceit also depends on the old idea of the sun as the 'eye of heaven'.

17 _refulgent_ radiantly reflecting _virtue_ (1) power, (superhuman) influence; (2) moral goodness ( _OED_ n. 1–2)

19 _weight_ i.e. of sin

20 _For_ Compared with

31–2 _A greedy . . . this_ A recognised peril of contemporary banqueting tables, when diners helped themselves from communal dishes with the aid of sharp knives: a similar episode, involving the poet Thomas Randolph, is recounted in William Heminges' satiric 'Elegy on Randolph's Finger' (1632).

31 _thrust . . . dish_ Suspecting a bawdy _double entendre_ in _dish_ (= 'woman as sexual object' – see _Anthony and Cleopatra_ , II.vii. 125), Daalder sees _thrust_ as underlining the phallic suggestiveness of the finger.

36 _jewels_ also = 'maidenheads'

38 _As . . . substance_ Echoing the biblical notion (repeated in the Anglican marriage service) that man and wife 'shall be one flesh' (Genesis 2:21–4; Matthew 19:6), the ring serves as a reminder that the bond between Alonzo and Beatrice is theoretically unbreakable, since for most purposes a formal betrothal was granted the full moral force of matrimony.

39 _At . . . fees_ A warden or 'keeper' could claim the skin, head, and other parts of any deer killed in his killed in his game-park.

40 _applied_ i.e. the proverb-like remark can be readily applied to Deflores' situation.

43 _three hundred ducats_ i.e. about 135 pounds (a gold ducat was worth about nine shillings) – a gentleman could live modestly on 100 pounds per annum

44 _capcase_ travelling case, casket, or chest

45 _worm_ the gnawings of remorse. Frost suggests a further allusion to the sufferings of hell – 'where their worm dieth not, and the fire is never quenched' (Mark 9:46, 48) – described in the same passage echoed at l. 15 above.

50 _state_ way

53–7 _'tis . . . service_ In _Gerardo_ , the lecherous Biscayner similarly prefaces his sexual conquest of Isdaura by demanding gratitude for 'my good deeds and service' (sig. H4). Deflores' language, though ostensibly referring to his murder of Alonzo, is full of sexual innuendo ( _performance . . . warm . . . service_ ).

54 _cause_ accusation ( _OED_ n. 9)

56 _warm_ energetic, ardent ( _OED_ a. 10a)

58 _'Twere . . . me_ It would make me miserable _misery_ miserliness

61 _three . . . florins_ about three hundred pounds (a florin was worth about two shillings)

63 _salary_ financial reward ( _OED_ n. 2) _move_ enrage ( _OED_ n. 9b)

64–5 _Do . . . wages_ The degradation of feudal service (seen as dependent on reciprocal bonds of obligation) into a mere wage-relationship is a recurrent theme amongst early modern writers on service, such as 'I.M.', who deplore how the old 'kind usage and friendly familiarity', which made domestic service in a great household a suitable calling for a gentleman, has been replaced by the humiliation of 'reward only with bare wages' (pp. 147–58). See Introduction, p. xxviii.

64 _rank_ In the context of _verminous (=_ infested with parasites) a play on _rank =_ evil-smelling is likely.

69 _journeyman_ 'one who, having served his apprenticeship to a handicraft or trade, is qualified to work at it for days' wages . . . as the servant or employee of another' _OED_ n. 1) – in the mouth of the gentleman-born, Deflores, the term is charged with intense social contempt.

70 _slept at ease_ ed. ( _not in_ Q). Most editors accept this conjecture, since the Q line is obviously incomplete.

71 _brought home_ either (i) 'delivered to me by someone who had already carried it out' (Daalder); or (ii) 'brought to its intended conclusion' ( _OED home_ adv. 4a); or perhaps (iii) 'have got someone else to carry out the job in a forcible manner' – cf. l. 87 (Bawcutt 1998)  
 _labyrinth_ Sounded as two syllables here ('lab'rinth'). The audience are probably expected to remember the original _labyrinth_ of ancient Crete, at whose centre lurked the hideous Minotaur, monstrous offspring of Queen Pasiphae's adultery with a bull, which brought death to anyone penetrating the maze (cf. III.ii. 114; IV.iii.97–100; V.iii.148).

84 _stick_ Significantly, the same verb used to describe the bond between ring and finger (1. 37).

86 _suspect_ Accent on second syllable.

87 _speaks home_ addresses the very heart of the matter ( _OED_ adv. 5a)

88 _engaged so jointly_ so mutually committed to this business ( _OED engage_ v. 13); but quibbling on _engaged_ and _joint_ , as a reminder of the bond symbolised by ring and finger

90 _strange_ like that of a stranger

92 _doubt_ dread

94 _forgetfulness_ i.e. of your rank and station

96 _forgetful_ i.e. of your obligations to me (and of the situation in which the crime has placed you)

97 _eased_ (1) relieved from pain; (2) purged ( _OED_ v. 1a; 1c) – compare the dying Beatrice's metaphor at V.iii.150–3. In _Gerardo_ the Biscayner similarly presses his affections on Isdaura by presenting his desire as a 'torment . . . mischief and sickness' for which only she can serve as 'the antidote and wholesome physician' (sig. H4–H4v).

100 _your blood_ (1) your aristocratic nature; (2) your desire; (3) your bloody disposition; (4) the blood with which your crime has stained you

105 _Soft_ Exclamation to enjoin silence or deprecate haste ( _OED_ adv. 8a).

107 _spirit_ (1) courage ( _OED_ n. 13a); (2) sexual desire – sometimes used as a euphemism for the penis, or for semen (Williams, _Glossary_ , pp. 284–5)

107–8 _I . . . moisture_ Cf. II.ii.133.

112 _it not_ ed. (it Q). The emendation is required by both sense and metre.

136 _to me_ when talking to me; as far as I am concerned

137 _creature_ (1) creation (like the fallen Eve, Beatrice has lost her innocent 'first condition' and been, in effect, created anew); (2) puppet, slave ( _OED_ n. 1a; 5)

138 _challenge you_ assert my title to you

140 _one with me_ i.e. Beatrice has become 'one flesh' with Deflores (elucidating the new symbolism of the finger and ring) _foul_ (1) wicked, guilty; (2) physically loathsome, ugly ( _OED_ a. 7a–b; 1a)

141 _urge_ provoke to anger ( _OED_ v. 7b)

142 _whore . . . heart_ Cf. Matthew 5:28.

143–5 _'Twas . . . Alsemero_ Cf. V.ii.197–8.

143 _first love_ In contrast to Reynolds, Middleton and Rowley never suggest that Piracquo was simply foisted on Beatrice by her father.

144 _changed_ i.e. by death

146 _sweets_ sexual pleasures

149 _confess_ Stress on first syllable.

150 _love's_ ed. (lovers Q)

151 _flame-shooting_ This edition (shooting Q; Dyce: love-shooting; Craik: fire-shooting). The line is metrically deficient and some addition is also needed to clarify the sense. The idea of darts or flames being discharged from the mistress' eyes is a common trope in Renaissance love-poetry (cf. I.i.216).

155 s.d. _Kneels_ Deflores' 'Come, rise' at l. 166 makes it clear that Beatrice kneels at some point in this closing dialogue – by echoing Deflores' kneeling at II.ii.117, the gesture expresses the reversed power-relationship between them. In the 1993 BBC production, Deflores knelt with her on 'Let this silence thee'.

155 _master_ A loaded word, in the context of Deflores' servile position in the household.

161 _determined_ (1) resolute; (2) pre-ordained, predestined ( _OED_ ppl. a. 7a; 4)

162 _you_ ed. ( _not in_ Q)

165 _viper_ Cf. I.i.218.

167 _receipts_ (1) recipes – or drugs compounded from a recipe; (2) things received, payments ( _OED_ n. 1–2; 3)

168–70 _Thy . . . thou_ Deflores' sudden switch from the respectful 'you' marks a turning-point in the play: here the singular pronoun expresses intimacy, but also registers the reversal of power-relations between mistress and servant as a consequence of his 'master-sin' (V.ii.199); in the 1993 BBC version Beatrice kissed Deflores on 'Thoul't love anon' . . . .

168 _peace_ Perhaps emphasising Beatrice's newly subordinate position by playing on the _quietus est_ that marked a master's formal discharge of a servant from duty.

169 _'Las . . . on_ Middleton may intend an ironic echo of the Epithalamium in Ben Jonson's, marriage masque, _Hymenaei_ , written to celebrate Frances Howard's first wedding: 'Shrink not, soft virgin, you will love / Anon what you so fear to prove' – see Lisa Hopkins, 'Beguiling the Master of the Mystery,' _MRDE_ 9 (), 149–61 (154–5). _turtle_ turtle-dove (a symbol of love) _pants_ For panting as an expression of orgasmic excitement, see Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 121 (citing _Othello_ , II.i.81, and _Anthony and Cleopatra, IV.ix.16_ ).
IV.i Author: Middleton

1 _fellow_ (1) person of humble station, servant; (2) accomplice ( _OED_ n. 10a; 1b) _undone_ (1) destroyed; (2) ruined by seducing ( _OED_ v. 8a; 8d) _endlessly_ eternally

2 _fearfully distressed_ terribly tormented; tormented by fear

4 _cope with_ have to do with ( _OED_ v. 5); encounter sexually (Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 81)

5 _that's_ ed. (both Q)

11 _Stands for_ Can be reckoned as ( _OED_ v. 71 f)

16 _precious_ Ironic (= 'worthless', _OED_ a. 4b). _die_ dice (original singular form)

17 _Before_ Under the attention of _closet_ small private room or study; or, a private repository of valuables ( _OED_ n. 1a, c; 3a). For the closet as a place of secrets, see Angel Day, _The English Secretary_ (1586), ii. 103 (cited in _OED_ ) 'We do call the most secret place in the house appropriate unto our own private studies . . . a Closet.' Because in early modern households the closet was one of the few rooms likely to be locked, in allegorized descriptions of the human body it was frequently used to figure the privacies of the heart.

21 _every one her mark_ each duly labelled ( _OED mark_ n. 11a)

22 _physic_ medicine

23 _Which . . . wisdom_ Because great men are vulnerable to attempts on their lives, especially through poisoning

24–5 _The . . . Nature_ The title translates that of a work by the French scholar Antonius Mizaldus (1520–78), _De Arcanis Naturae_. However, the tests discovered by Beatrice do not appear in that book – though similar ones are described in his _Centuriae IX. Memorabilium_. The fact that Mizaldus is mentioned by name in the passage quoted at ll. 44 ff. suggests that this is a manuscript compilation put together by Alsemero himself.

35 _water_ Cf. II.ii.83.

38 _master of the mystery_ Apparently echoing Jonson's _Alchemist_ , 4.1.122, where Sir Epicure Mammon, relishing the prospect of success in his alchemical project, declares himself 'master of the mastery'. _mystery_ (1) highly technical practice in a trade or art; (2) secret ( _OED_ n. 8; 5a) _look to_ watch out for

43 _That . . . proof_ Who has never put it to the test

46–50 _Give . . . lumpish_ Although the Alsemero's virginity test may appear absurd to modern eyes, it is not so different from some of those seriously propounded in contemporary medical treatises (see Dale J. Randall, 'Some Observations on the Theme of Chastity in _The Changeling, ELR_ 14 (1984), 347–66).

48 _several_ different _incontinently_ immediately

50 _lumpish_ stupidly lethargic

51 _Where . . . been_ What would have become of me (if I had not found out)

53 _Cuds_ Contraction of 'God save me'.

54 _nice_ scrupulous ( _OED_ a. 7d) _piece_ woman (Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 234)

56 _look_ seek ( _OED_ v. 6d)

59 _parks and forests_ With sexual innuendo (for _park_ = 'woman as sexual landscape', see Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 228). _ranger_ (1) forest officer, gamekeeper; (2) rover, rake ( _OED_ n. 2a; 1a)

60 _roosting-time_ bedtime

61–2 _Earth . . . pit-hole_ For another example of this trope, which can be traced back to Juvenal, _Satire_ X, 168–72, see _Hamlet_ , V.i.192 ff.

62 _pit-hole_ (1) grave; (2) vagina (see Williams, _Glossary_ , pp. 159, 237).

66 _owed_ owned

68 _maid_ virgin

70 _Beshrew_ A plague on _mean . . . sooth_ really mean what you say

72 _Man . . . unknown_ (1) I never would have had anything to do with men; (2) I would have avoided carnal knowledge

75 _when . . . from't_ when it's all over _as she likes_ depending on how much she enjoyed it

77 _Do you get_ Imperative.

78 _fly from't_ renege on my promise

83 _lies_ (1) deceives; (2) lies with a man _humour_ mood, caprice ( _OED_ n. 5, 6a)

86–7 _alas . . . honour_ Most eds. treat this as an aside, but there is no reason why Beatrice should not further encourage Diaphanta by adding honour to gold and pleasure as motives for sleeping with her master.

87 _by-bet_ side-bet ( _OED_ , citing only this example) _wedge in_ secure

88–89 _how . . . honesty_ how much good faith and truthfulness is to be found in the world nowadays. But _honesty_ also carries the senses 'honour, reputation', and (ironically) 'female chastity' ( _OED_ 1c, 3b).

92 _quick_ (1) quick to respond; (2) alive [sexually]; (3) pregnant ( _OED_ a. 21a; 2a; 4b)

93 _urge_ Cf. III.iii.141.

96 _lightsome_ light-hearted

99–100 _She . . . jury_ Alluding to the notorious divorce action of 1613 in which Frances Howard, Countess of Essex, having been examined by a panel of noblewomen and matrons, secured a divorce on the grounds of non-consummation, and was freed to marry her lover, Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, King James' favourite. The pair were subsequently imprisoned for complicity in the murder of Carr's client, Sir Thomas Overbury, who had opposed the match. Interest in the case seems to have been reignited by the pair's release from prison in January 1622, shortly before this play was licensed.

104 _praise_ demonstrate its value

109 _which . . . it_ (although that is) the very thing it is specifically designed to do

110 _Just_ By the book

111 _circumscribed_ confined to the prescribed sequence _accident_ symptom ( _OED_ n. 3)

116 _sit by't_ 'sit and enjoy its effects at leisure' (Bawcutt 1998)

117 _lays itself_ subsides ( _OED_ v. 3a)

121 _The carriage of_ how to carry out

121–2 _carry't . . . burden_ Bawdy _double entendre_.

124 _use_ resort to ( _OED_ v. 17a)

126–7 _I'm . . . fools_ now that I have a dowry, I need not bother with petty fools, I can look to marry a great one – like a justice of the peace (cf. I.ii.123).
IV.ii Author: Rowley 1–16; Middleton 17–150

7 _Briamata_ the name of Vermandero's country house in Reynolds

11 _answer_ be accountable for ( _OED_ v. 1b)

14 _discover_ Cf. III.ii.140.

16 _set on_ harried (by Tomazo)

17 _hot_ passionate, angry

18 _bloods_ kindred ( _OED_ n. 10a)

26, 27 _reserved, prepared_ Stress on first syllable.

30 _belief_ i.e. in Alonzo's good faith

34 _alliance_ kinsmen

36 _There . . . on_ There are other ways for a man to achieve revenge

37 _Honest Deflores_ A reminder that the character of Deflores is partly modelled on that of another disloyal servant, whose sobriquet of 'Honest Iago' belies his real nature as a hypocrite and diabolical tempter (see Introduction, pp. vii, xiii, xxviii).

43 _purely_ absolutely, entirely ( _OED_ adv. 2b)

46 _An honest_ ed. (One honest Q)

51 _round-packed sinner_ i.e. one 'firm in her curves and solid with sin' (Frost)

54 _chins and noses_ ed. (sins and vices Q)

55 _salute_ greet, kiss; begin an acquaintance with ( _OED_ v. 2a, e; 4) – as themselves looking like witches

56 _o'erlays_ distresses, weighs down ( _OED_ v. 2a-b)

58 _bring it out_ either (i) 'show his honest heart', or (ii) 'discover the truth about Alonzo's disappearance'

59 _glorious_ vainglorious ( _OED_ a. 1a)

60 _'Twill_ ed. (I will Q) _reckon_ settle our accounts – i.e. come to blows ( _OED_ v. 11a)

60–1 _reckon. / Sir!_ ed. (reckon sir. Q) s.d. After 'sir' Q.

66 _lay_ appease ( _OED_ v1 3a)

70 _have had_ ed. (have Q)

72 _holds his right_ possesses what is rightfully his (i.e. Beatrice)

73 _come fairly_ come about by lawful means ( _OED fairly_ adv. 4b)

75 _have . . . drawn_ (1) have my answer already drawn up; (2) have my sword drawn and at the ready

76 _Keep . . . solemn_ Observe your wedding day with proper ceremony and reverence ( _OED keep_ v. 12, _solemn_ a. 1)

77 _smart_ pain, suffering ( _OED_ n. 1–2)

83 _so . . . in't_ provided that I could preserve my faith and friendship to you by keeping it back

85 _let . . . this_ allow some cooling in the warmth of my zeal to serve you, so far as passing on this news is concerned _puts me on_ urges me onward ( _OED_ v. 47h)

88 _No . . . though_ Provided the first _it_ is elided ('question't') this line forms a rough but acceptable hexameter.

90 _pretend_ profess ( _OED_ v. 3) _honest_ honourable

96 _out_ wide of the mark, mistaken

97 _prevent_ forestall ( _OED_ v. 5)

102 _challenge_ lay claim to ( _OED_ v. 5) _interest_ right, title ( _OED_ n. 1). Daalder reads this passage to mean that the exchange between Deflores and Beatrice excited _Diaphanta_ 's interest (especially after her promise to act as Beatrice's substitute on the wedding night); but Jasperino's 'like those that . . .' makes it plain that an act of interpretation is involved: the eavesdroppers have heard words that sound as if the servant were asserting a physical claim over his mistress.

107 _And touched_ And if she has had sexual contact with someone ( _OED_ v. 2a)

111 _pretty_ ingenious; admirable ( _OED_ a. 2b; 3)

112 _Chaldean_ seer, soothsayer (after the people described in Daniel 2:2–12, famous for such practices) _spent_ Bruster ( _not in_ Q; Bawcutt: made)

118 _Delivered her for_ Described her as ( _OED_ v. 11a)

121 _obscurely_ in the dark (cf. _OED obscure_ a. 2)

129 _abused_ maligned, libelled ( _OED_ v. 7) s.d. _Enter_ JASPERINO ( _after . . . come, sir?_ Q)

134 _composition_ substance composed of a mixture of ingredients ( _OED_ n. 20a)

135 _upon my warrant_ I swear

138 _handsomely_ skilfully ( _OED_ adv. 3)

139 _secret_ kept from the knowledge of the uninitiated ( _OED_ a. 1e) _virtue_ power, efficacy ( _OED_ n. 11a)

140 _Treble qualitied_ Referring to the three symptoms Beatrice exhibits.

141 _virtuous_ Playing on the efficacious _virtue_ of the drug and its proof of Beatrice's moral _virtue.  
takes_ is having the intended result ( _OED_ v. 11c)  
 _proceeds_ takes effect ( _OED_ v. 5)

146 _blasted_ blighted ( _OED_ v. 8)

148 _Keeps_ ed. (keep Q) _Keeps . . . method_ Follows both the [prescribed] timing and sequence
IV.iii Author: Rowley

1 _waxing_ ed. (waiting Q). It is difficult to make sense of Q _waiting_ , and in some hands _x_ could easily be misread as _it_. Since lunatics were thought to be governed by the moon ( _luna_ ), madness could be expected to increase as it moved towards the full.

2 _at_ ed. ( _not in_ Q)

6 _Compare . . . out_ (1) Compare the contents of the letter with what is written on its outside; (2) Compare his inner self with his outward guise

8–10 _To . . . Aeolus_ A deliberate jumble of astrological and mythical material, laced with bawdy _double entendre_.

8 _bright Andromeda_ Both the brilliant constellation and the beautiful heroine of classical myth (= Isabella) whom Perseus rescued from the dragon (= Alibius).

8–9 _chambermaid . . . Sun_ A mock-astrological description of the relationship between the constellation Andromeda and the Sun, but also recalling the character of 'A Chamber-Mayde' in Overbury's _Wife_ , whose lascivious behaviour is encouraged by her passion for chivalric romance; in particular 'She . . . is so carried away with _The Mirror of Knight-hood_ , she is many times resolved to run out of herself, and become a lady errant' (sig. G8) – the reference is to a popular Spanish romance translated and published in nine parts between 1578 and 1601 – one of whose heroes is the Knight of the Sun. Cf. also _chamber_ = vagina (Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 67).

9 _sign of Scorpio_ (1) the name of the inn where Andromeda is imagined to be lodging; (2) the astrological sign supposed to govern the private parts _middle region_ (1) fifth to eighth months of the astrological year; (2) private parts

10 _Aeolus_ god of the winds – hence linked by bawdy association with _the middle region_. Daalder suggests _bellows =_ phallus. _post_ messenger ( _OED_ n.2 2a)

18 _imperfect_ Referring to his degrading disguise as a madman.

18–19 _'tis . . . wither_ Cf. Tilley, S980: 'The same sun softens wax and hardens clay.'

22 _dismantled . . . ornaments_ stripped of the garments and trappings appropriate to one of my rank

25–6 _that . . . bounties_ whose love will bring honour to you if you treat him generously

33 _skill_ (1) in curing fools and madmen; (2) in erotic matters _minister . . . trade_ (1) treat one patient and set yourself up as a practitioner; (2) commit adultery and become a whore

33–4 _I . . . thirds_ Note the echo of Deflores' 'I'll put in for one' (II.ii.60). _thirds_ share (financial and sexual). 'Thirds' were the third share of captures or of certain fines due to the crown; also the third part of a husband's estate due to his widow ( _OED_ n. 3; 2).

37 _stand to_ stand by (with bawdy _double entendre_ ) _venture_ commercial enterprise, speculation ( _OED_ n. 4a)

39 _Why_ ed. (We Q) _deal_ Lollio deliberately misunderstands her to mean 'copulate' (Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 92).

40 _the fair understanding_ understand my words in the decent sense I intended. Ironically _use_ could also mean 'employ sexually' (Williams, _Glossary_ , pp. 320–21).

41 _Abuse_ (1) Maltreat; (2) Deceive; (3) Ravish, Defile sexually ( _OED_ v. 5; 4; 6)

42 _kindly_ (1) considerately; (2) as creatures of their kind deserve

43 _practise_ plot, employ an artifice or stratagem ( _OED_ v. 9)

44–7 _The key . . . inside_ Compare Beatrice's opening of the closet with Alsemero's key in IV.i – the 'wardrobe' like the 'closet' will presumably have been represented either by the discovery space at the rear of the Phoenix stage or by the same stage-door.

45 _fit_ (1) make ready; (2) prepare for copulation (Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 127)

47 _put . . . inside_ 'I'll allow you intimate access to your lovers' (Bawcutt 1998); but see also Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 251: _put to_ 'of phallic insertion'

49 _solemnity_ i.e. the wedding celebration

55 _nice_ delicate; coy, shy; fastidious, refined ( _OED_ a. 4c; 5a; 7a)

57 _pizzles_ whips made from dried bull-penises

59 _morris_ morris-dance – grotesque dance usually representing characters from the Robin Hood story

60 _the other_ i.e. the fools' performance

62 _measure_ dance – usually of a grave and stately kind ( _OED_ n. 20a)

64 _brook_ tolerate, endure

65 _grudge_ grumble

66 _pleasure_ With sexual _double entendre_.

67 _allow . . . length_ give her more rope – but (cf. _short_ , l. 68) with an obscene reference to the length of a penis (see Williams, _Dictionary_ , p. 800).

70 _month's_ Disyllabic, as the Q spelling _moneths_ indicates.

72–3 _nose . . . elephant_ Lollio implies that Alibius is easily led by the nose; but a phallic joke may also be involved.

78 _footmanship_ skill in dancing (cf. _OED_ n. 1)

79 _ride_ Bawdy _double entendre_.

82 _honour_ bow ( _OED_ n. 5b)

83 _coz_ cousin (cf. I.ii.135)

84 _and_ if

85 _bend in the hams_ (1) bow, make obeisance; (2) show the bent posture of someone suffering from venereal disease (Williams, _Glossary_ : 'ham', p. 150)

86 _Marry_ Abbreviation of 'By Mary'.

87 _from . . . stiffened_ If honour can bend, Lollio suggests, it must first have stiffened (with pride) as it rose from the mere yeomanry into the honourable ranks of the lesser gentry ( _worship, squireship_ ); a quibble on phallic erection is also involved. _rises_ ed. (rise Q)

88 _caper_ (1) leap; (2) fantastical proceeding, freak ( _OED_ n. 1a)

90–1 _has a knee_ Cf. 'makes a knee' = bows.

92 _figure_ (1) set of dance movements; (2) appearance ( _OED_ n. 16; 1c)

94–100 Q prints this entire passage as verse, but its lineation corresponds to no discernible metrical pattern. Editors have made several attempts to re-line the whole speech, but none is entirely satisfactory. Lines 94 and 98–100 make reasonably good iambic verse, but the rest of the speech is clearly prose. The oscillation between metre and prose rhythms, which is also apparent in some of Antonio's and Franciscus' speeches, is a way of representing the disordered quality of mad utterance.

94 _he_ ed. (she Q) _Shough_ Exclamation still used by beaters when driving game birds towards the guns – an obsolete, slightly gutteral form of 'shoo' ( _OED)_.

94–9 _he burns . . . labyrinth_ Referring to the myth of the labyrinth built by King Minos of Crete. Daedalus, the architect of this maze, was imprisoned there with his son, Icarus, but engineered their escape with the aid of artificial wings; Icarus, however, flew too close to the sun, melting the wax with which his wings were attached, and plunged to his death in the Icarian Sea (cf. III.ii.114; III.iii.71; V.iii.148).

95–6 _more . . . moons_ more than will be used up in sealing eighteen months' worth of legal documents

99 _tread . . . labyrinth_ Obscene _double entendre_ (see Williams, _Glossary:_ 'tread' = copulate, p. 313).

100 _clew_ the ball of thread, given to Theseus by Minos's daughter, Ariadne, which enabled the hero to escape from the labyrinth after he had slain the monstrous Minotaur

105 _tiara_ raised head-dress or turban worn by Persians and other Eastern peoples ( _OED_ n. 1), here with a long tail-piece at the back

106 _suck . . . belly_ 'Probably . . . an indecent advance under the guise of an insane allusion to the myth' (Frost).

107 _straits_ (streets Q)

110 _Mercury_ winged messenger of the Gods

111 _reversion of his place_ entitlement to succeed him in his office

112 _Endymion_ beautiful youth with whom the moon-goddess fell in love

113 _rule . . . waves_ The moon-goddess controlled the tides.

116 _antic_ grotesque performer, clown ( _OED_ n. 4)

117 _bedlam_ lunatic (after Bethlehem Hospital, see above I.ii.50)

118 _frantic_ frenzied person, lunatic

122 _Ha . . . beauty_ Metrically amphibious, forming a loose pentameter line with either or both of ll. 120 and 122.

126 _caparisons_ trappings

131 _usher_ door-keeper; assistant schoolmaster ( _OED_ n. 1; 4) _coxcomb_ fool – after the cap, decorated with a cock's comb worn by jesters ( _OED_ n. 3)

136 _Fury_ In classical mythology, one of the three avenging spirits sent from the underworld to punish crimes; generally, a tormenting spirit.

137 _forbear_ spare

142 _ride her_ Obscene word-play on 'rid her' (1. 141).

145 _eased_ relieved (cf. III.iii.99)

146 _old station_ existing position (as a fool)

149 _Down . . . a-down_ Daalder suggests a deliberate echo of Ophelia's mad song in _Hamlet_ (IV.v.167). _horse-trick_ Cf. 'horse-play' and 'trick' = feat of dexterity ( _OED_ n. 5a) – so probably an extravagant dance-leap; but the bawdy sense of 'trick' = sexual act (Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 313) suggests that the familiar horse/whores pun is also involved (cf. _Anthony and Cleopatra_ , I.v.21).

150 _Latona_ mother of the goddess Diana, but here apparently confused with Diana herself, typically depicted as a hunter with a bow

152 _off_ ed. ( _not in_ Q; but cf. l. 13)

158 _discovered_ exposed, revealed

163 _another_ i.e. his 'whore's-trick' with Isabella (1. 149)

168 _yours_ your hand(writing) – i.e. the letter

169 _hand is true_ (1) your handwriting is correct; (2) what you have written is truthful; (3) your hand is honest ( _OED_ a. 4a–b; 3d; 2) _pick_ steal ( _OED_ v. 9a)

175 _give you over_ abandon you _cast your water_ diagnose your condition with a urine sample

180 _meet_ fight a duel with ( _OED_ v. 3a)

182 _and_ given that

187 _well-favouredly_ thoroughly

189 _Only . . . you_ The fact the promised face-off between Antonio and Franciscus, like the masque of madmen itself, never takes place suggests either that there was a change of plan on the part of the dramatists, or (as some scholars have suggested) that a scene has been cut from the surviving text.

192 _him_ himself

193 _Well said_ Well done

197–8 _fool . . . begged_ In cases where an heir was legally declared a congenital idiot, his estate passed to the management of the crown; anyone who wished to enjoy its revenue could 'beg a fool' – i.e. apply through the Court of Wards to be made his guardian.

201 _fit . . . strains_ only fit the music (to the wild dance)
V.i Author: Middleton

1–6 _One . . . secret_ In _Gerardo_ , the maid Julia, similarly substituting for her mistress on her wedding night, is guilty of the same careless indulgence: 'she belike either wearied, or taken with the sweet of so much pleasure, contrary to the order I had given her, fell asleep, and now I knew not which in me was most, my jealousy or fear, and my rage increased the more, when (hearing the clock strike three) I saw so little memory in her of my danger.' Isdaura, 'taking her to be too shallow a vessel for my secrets,' then resolves to kill her (H5-H5v).

1 _lies by't_ continues in sin ( _OED_ v. 3a); Daalder suggests an indecent play on _lie_ and _it_ (= sexual act; Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 172).

2 _serves . . . ends_ A play on sexual 'service' and on 'end' = genital area (Williams, _Glossary_ , pp. 273–4, 113–14) is unavoidable here.

7 _blood_ lustful desires

9 _of_ by

14 _itch_ sexual urge (Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 172)

16 _I . . . somebody_ Metrically amphibious.

17 _termagants_ viragos

18 _fall upon_ attack (with sexual innuendo – see Williams, _Dictionary_ , p. 460)

19 _first-fruits_ Ironically, given its bawdy meaning here, the phrase is biblical and referred originally to the harvest offerings required by God (see e.g. Exodus 23:16, Leviticus 23:10; Numbers 28:26); but St Paul employs it as a figure for Christ's sacrifice as 'the first fruits of them that sleep' (1 Corinthians 15:20); significantly, in view of the extended play on 'falling' and 'rising' in this passage of dialogue, St Paul is discussing the resurrection of Christ and the rising of the dead.

20 _stave . . . royal_ keep them from worrying game which belongs exclusively to the monarch; but 'game' also = wantonness (Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 137), so that _game royal_ could mean something like 'extravagant sexual indulgence'

21 _harsh_ rough, rude – perhaps here 'headstrong' _hardy_ foolhardy ( _OED_ a. 2)

22 _a 'pothecary's_ Dyce (a Apothecaries Q; an apothecary's Dilke)

23 _thanked_ ed. (thank Q)

26 _Phosphorus_ ed. (Bosphorus Q); the morning star – ironically, as Frost points out, _Lucifer_ in Latin; see also Isaiah 14:12 ff. 'How art thou fallen from heaven, O day star, son of the morning . . .' – here, however, Lucifer rises.

27 _how_ ed. (now Q) _fall upon_ have recourse to ( _OED_ v. 70d) _ruin_ (1) downfall ( _OED_ n. 6a) – but with _fall_ picking up the reference to Lucifer at l. 26; (2) dishonour, loss of virginity ( _OED_ n. 6b)

29 _force a rising_ drive everyone out of bed – but with a sardonic play on the fall/resurrection motif (cf. ll. 18, 23, 26, 27)

32 _reach_ scheme ( _OED_ n. 2a)

37 _strikes . . . sure_ will make everything safe and secure (but with an ironic quibble on 'strikes . . . dead')

38–9 _light . . . danger_ inconsiderable bits and pieces unlikely to cause a major fire

41 _is now_ would otherwise be

46 _piece_ gun _high-charged_ with a double loading of powder and shot

47 _there . . . proper_ it would be appropriate for that purpose _proper_ ed. (proper now Q); _now_ probably picked up by eye-skip from l. 48

50 _'Slid_ Contraction of 'By God's (eye)lid'.

56 _conveyance_ riddance ( _OED_ n. 3)

57 _How . . . wit_ Fire was an instrument of purification, used both in alchemical experiment, and (more mundanely) to cleanse foul air: Deflores' remark is itself witty, his conceit being that the very idea of the fire he will light has served to purify his wit (intelligence, ingenuity) – familiarly imagined in metaphors of fire and sparks. In terms of humoral psycho-physiology, heat would nourish wit, whilst the cold and damp of melancholy would dull it.

60 _that star_ i.e. Phosphorus/Lucifer

65 _tedious_ long and wearisome; painful; slow ( _OED_ a. 1; 2; 4)

67 s.d. ed. ( _'Struck 3 a clock' after_ St Sebastian's Q)

69 _rare_ exceptional; remarkably good ( _OED_ a. 5a; 6a)

70 _loathes_ excites loathing in ( _OED_ v. 3)

72 _east . . . beauteous_ The beauty of sunrise is traditionally charged with a Christian symbolism that contrasts ironically with the rising of Deflores' Phosphorus/Lucifer (l. 26). _service_ The bawdy sense is unmistakeable here, although Beatrice is hardly conscious of it.

73 s.d.2 This edition ( _Enter Deflores servants: passe over, ring a Bell_ Q)

74, 90 _well said_ Cf. IV.iii.193.

75 _my charge_ the task entrusted to me – with a play on 'charge' = powder and shot for his 'piece'

80 _reward_ i.e. death

89 _To . . . chimney_ Metrically amphibious.

94 _Dog at_ i.e. he's a dog at – expert in dealing with ( _OED_ n. 17i) _on_ ed. (of Q) s.d. ed. ( _after_ goes Q)

101 _countenanced_ favoured, gave patronage to ( _OED_ v. 5)

102 _heavy_ stupid; clumsy, sluggish ( _OED_ a. 18; 19)

103 _mine_ undermining stratagem, blowing up ( _OED_ n. 3). Beatrice claims that Diaphanta's carelessness has twice come close to involving her in a fatal accident.

105 _And_ Even, if s.d. _with_ . . . _DIAPHANTA_ ed. ( _not in_ Q). Although some editors have disputed this emendation, it is difficult to know what else 'that' and 'thing' (ll. 106–7) can refer to.

105–6 _poor . . . for't_ you have paid a high price for preserving your wretched and unremunerative virginity

113 _no more_ i.e. tears s.d. ed. ( _after_ How now? Q)

126 _Precious_ Abbreviation of 'By God's precious body', but a relatively mild oath in the abbreviated form. In the context of 'rewarded' a quibble on the pecuniary sense is unavoidable.

127 _sport_ (1) fencing; (2) fornication (Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 285)

128 _hit_ (1) strike in fencing; (2) act of coition (Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 158)
V.ii Author: Middleton

10 _hard bestead_ hard put to it ( _OED_ p. ppl. 5)

12 _pest-house_ plague hospital

15 _give me game_ Meaning unclear; Schelling's suggestion, 'cause me to fight with him', has been favoured by most editors, but the passage may be corrupt.

16 _him_ ed. ( _not in_ Q) _he_ 'i.e. one' (Daalder)

22 _devour it_ ed. (devour't Q)

29 _politician_ crafty schemer, practiser of machiavellian 'policy' ( _OED_ n. 1)

31 _still_ always

33 _Fresh bleeding_ Probably alluding, as Bawcutt suggests, to the belief that a corpse would bleed again in its murderer's presence. _crystal_ piece of rock-crystal used by seers in magical art ( _OED_ n. 4)

35–7 _I . . . gave it_ Deflores presumably means that a prudent lawyer will pretend to take a humiliating blow as a token of honour rather than expose himself to the physical and legal dangers of a duel.

42 _came near_ touched me to the quick, affected me deeply ( _OED near_ adv. 12b, 16b); 'almost found me out' (Bawcutt 1998)

45 _lock up_ suppress

48 _speed_ luck, success

51 _compliment_ courtesies of speech

55 _You will_ That you will

56 _news will_ news that will

65 _perfect_ Accent on first syllable.

72 _these disguises_ i.e. of fool and madman – though Daalder suggests that Alibius may be carrying the actual disguises as evidence.

80 _Briamata_ Treated as three syllables (as the Q spelling _Bramata_ may indicate). At IV.ii.7–8 the Servant informed Vermandero that one had pretended to travel to Valencia. _leaves_ permission to depart

84 _conduct_ guide ( _OED_ n. 3)

85 _Like . . . 'em_ A figure for secret murder, based on the belief that lightning could melt the marrow without damaging the skin; Bawcutt (1958) compares Chapman's _Bussy D'Ambois_ : 'A politician must like lightning melt / The very marrow, and not taint the skin' (IV.ii. 188–9).
V.iii Author: Rowley (and Middleton?)

1 _of proof_ (1) armoured, impenetrable; (2) shown to be founded on truth ( _OED_ n. 10a–b, a. 1a; n. 1a)

2–3 _prospect . . . suspicion_ The detail derives from _Gerardo_ (sig. H1v); but here 'garden' inevitably picks up the resonances of the play's recurrent Fall motif.

2 _garden_ If spoken with a rolled _r_ this word becomes (as Daalder suggests) effectively trisyllabic, making the line a regular pentameter.

3 _black mask_ i.e. her treacherous show of scorn ( _despite_ , l. 6) for Deflores. However, Bawcutt (1998) suggests that Beatrice, like other ladies of fashion may actually have worn a black mask to protect her complexion from the sun.

7 _Touch . . . home_ Probe deeply ( _OED_ v. 2d)

10 _that walk_ Jasperino gestures at one of the stage doors, imagined as being the entrace to a garden 'walk'.

12–13 _Did . . . woman_ Cf. I.i.1–12.

13 _She is_ ed. (She's Q)

15 _sir_ ed. ( _not in_ Q). Not only is the Q line one syllable short, but Craik's emendation ensures that the proper stress will fall on the first _you_.

15–18 _You . . . cured_ Returns to the motif of love as a sickness and Alsemero's 'hidden malady' (I.i.23–5).

20 _If I can_ Metrically amphibious.

21 _honest_ (1) truthful; (2) honourable, chaste

22 _broad_ (1) capable of too broad an interpretation (to be easily answered); (2) indecent ( _OED_ a. 10; 6c)

27 _strain . . . vault_ weep enough to fill the heavens with water

29 _sadder_ (1) more melancholy; (2) more sombre ( _OED sad_ a. 5; 8)

30 _stuff_ cloth

32 _whore . . . hath_ Recalling Desdemona's shocked reaction to her husband's use of the same word ( _Othello_ , IV.ii.160). _horrid_ full of horror, abominable ( _OED_ a. 2)

33 _blasts_ blights, withers; brings infamy upon ( _OED_ v. 8 a–b)

37–9 _demolish, rifling, ransack_ Alsemero develops the architectural metaphor latent in Beatrice's _ruined_ and _repair_ , picking up the play's recurrent identification of her body with the structure of the castle itself – see I.i.67, 216.

38–9 _Let . . . rifling_ Let your honeyed tongue [do its best to] stop me plundering the secrets of your heart

41 _easy passage_ easy way into my heart (carrying on the architectural metaphor); the audience are probably meant to hear an unconscious play on _easy_ = sexually compliant (Williams, _Glossary_ , p. 109)

41–2 _passage. Yet . . . / Show_ ed. (passage, yet if you please. / Show Q)

42 _ground_ grounds

43 _My . . . that_ so that my spotless virtue may only [have the chance to] trample on it

47 _ticklish_ (1) unsteady; (2) lecherous (Williams, _Glossary:_ 'tickle', p. 308)

48 _became_ (1) was becoming; (2) suited you because you were a hypocrite

49 _Impudence_ Shamelessness _Impudence . . . upon't_ An allegorical construction – Alsemero imagines Impudence riding her chariot in a street pageant like those Triumphs of Fame, Fortune, Love, and Death popularised by Petrarch and widely illustrated in Renaissance art.

51 _your despite_ one whom you despised

53 _arms' supporter_ (1) the lover who supports your arm; (2) the heraldic figure who supports your coat of arms

53–4 _your . . . saint_ 'that adored person to whom your lips pay devotion' (Frost) – i.e. by kissing. Cf. I.i.148.

54 _there_ that

55 _Your adultery_ i.e. the object of your adulterous passion

56 _It was_ ed. ('Twas Q)

63 _To . . . scandal_ In reply to the scandal attaching to your marriage bed _I . . . innocence_ A slightly obscure turn of phrase, though the broad sense is clear: perhaps 'I stand here defiantly [as the very incarnation of] innocence'; Bawcutt interprets 'I stand up (set up, put forward) my innocence', but _OED_ does not allow for a transitive use of the verb before the nineteenth century; Williams suggests that 'innocence' may have resulted from a misreading of 'innocent'.

65 _your love_ my love for you

67 _stroked a serpent_ The identification of Deflores as a _serpent_ picks up the Fall motif; but the unconsciously erotic connotations of 'stroked' inevitably bring out the phallic suggestiveness of the metaphor (see Williams, _Glossary: serpent_ , p. 273; _snake_ , p. 280; _worm_ , pp. 344–5).

74–6 _temple . . . devotion_ Cf. I.i.1–2.

75 _blood_ (1) Beatrice's aristocratic blood; (2) Alsemero's desire

76 _right one_ i.e. devotion to God

77 _'Twas . . . first_ Cf. I.i.2–4. _it_ i.e vengeance

78 _thou . . . deformed_ Ironically Alsemero now recognises in Beatrice's the 'deformity' she once abhorred in Deflores (see e.g. II.i.43, 53; II.ii.40, 43).

79–80 _shall . . . welcome_ Rather gnomic: Black suggests 'shall the greater dangers I have dared for you make my welcome less?'; but Beatrice seems to mean something more like 'shall greater dangers (i.e. those attendant on the murder) make lesser ones (i.e. those that would follow from my adultery) seem preferable?'

82 _bridge of blood_ i.e. Piracquo's murder as the action that enabled Alsemero and Beatrice to unite in marriage

84 _charnel_ place for storing the bones of the dead; cemetery

85–6 _pause/What_ pause (to consider) what

88 _keeper_ (1) custodian, warder (cf. Alibius and Lollio); (2) one who keeps a mistress ( _OED_ v. 1a; 4 – the latter sense is not recorded before 1676, but would be easily derived from _keep_ v. 20b) _yet_ still

89 s.d. This edition ( _after_ l. 90 Q).

90 _put me in_ intervened in my deliberations (and thereby given me a clue as to what I should do) ( _OED_ v. 45 h); _me_ is probably an ethic dative.

96 _band_ collar or ruff ( _OED_ n. 4a); Daalder suggests 'cuff' as a more likely alternative, but _OED_ offers no clear example of this ( _OED_ n. 3)

98 _Since when, man_ Metrically amphibious.

103 _behindhand . . . you_ in arrears with her debt to you ( _OED: behindhand_ a. 1)

108 _that is she's_ Bruster (that she's Q; Dyce: that she is)

109 _It_ ed. (I Q)

113 _crying crocodile_ According to the lore deriving from medieval bestiaries, crocodiles wept hypocritical tears before devouring their prey.

117 _black audience_ i.e. of devils in hell; given that Alsemero is looking forward to their final judgement, _audience_ may contain the secondary sense 'judicial hearing' ( _OED_ n. 3).

118 _howls and gnashing_ Recalls the 'weeping [or "wailing"] and gnashing of teeth' to which the damned are condemned in the gospels (see e.g. Matthew 8:12, 13:42, 22:13, 24:51, 25:30; Luke 13:23).

119 _Clip_ Embrace ( _OED_ v.11a) _'tis_ May refer to Beatrice herself (Daalder) or to their embrace.

120 _Mare Mortuum_ the Dead Sea – here punningly imagined as a place of the dead, and so as an entrance to hell (much as the River Styx marked the final threshold of the classical underworld).

121 _bottomless_ Because the Dead Sea was rumoured to be bottomless, Rowley associates it with the 'bottomless pit' of hell.

135 _bandied_ tossed aside ( _OED_ v. 2)

136 _urgent in blood_ (1) pressing for prompt action through its effect on my blood (i.e. stirring up my passion); (2) urgent because of the blood that has been spilt. Dilke proposed 'urgent in my blood' – as it happens, a characteristically Middletonian locution (see Bruster, p. 9); however the line can be made to scan satisfactorily if the _r_ in _urgent_ is rolled.

137 _alive or dead_ Bruster (p. 9) notes the occurrence of 'Dead or alive' in Middleton's share of _A Fair Quarrel_ (II.i. 121) – another indication of his possible involvement in this scene (see Introduction, p. x).

139 _adultery_ Since betrothal was normally regarded as binding both in law and in the sight of God, Tomazo (who cannot yet know of her affair with Deflores) regards Beatrice's marriage to Alsemero as adulterous.

140–1 _oh_ Beatrice's cries _'Within_ ', together with the offstage howls of the madmen (I.ii.185–91; III.ii.107, 160) and cries of 'fire' (V.i.68, 73) – like Deflores' 'work of secrecy' and Alonzo's concealed corpse – give theatrical reality to the idea of dangerous secrets hidden 'within' Vermandero's castle (I.i.159). Noting that Beatrice's cries echo those of Alonzo at III.i.28, and conjecturing that 'Alonzo is murdered in the same space that is later used to represent Alsemero's closet', Barker and Nicol suggest that 'the parallel . . . may be intended to emphasise the idea that Beatrice's murder is her punishment for Alonzo's death' (p. 12). Playing on the old idea of orgasm as erotic 'death', a number of productions, including the 1994 BBC version, have made Beatrice's shrieks sound disturbingly like groans of ecstasy.

140 _'Tis coming_ i.e. the 'recompense' Tomazo has demanded

145 _I . . . yet_ I am still strong enough (to listen)

146 _broken rib_ Picks up the Fall motif – Eve having been created from Adam's rib (Genesis 2:21–3).

148 _amaze_ Cf. III.ii.114; III.iii.71; IV.iii.98.

149 _O . . . me_ Note the echo of Isabella at IV.iii.125.

150–1 _I . . . health_ Blood-letting was perhaps the most common treatment in the regime of purgation by which early modern medicine sought to regulate the humoral balance of the body. _Blood_ here includes both the 'blood' of aristocratic lineage, and the 'blood' of diseased passion; visually, it is linked to the actual blood coming from Beatrice's wound, and so to the bloodshed for which it is recompense.

153 _Let . . . distinction_ The familiar analogy between castle and body underlies this figure – cf. the figure of purgation in Helkiah Crooke's anatomical treatise _Mikrocosmographia_ (1618): 'the milt and the reins [bowels] do purge and cleanse the princely palace, and thrust, as it were, out of the kitchen, down the sink, all the filth and garbage' (p. 13).

154–5 _Beneath . . . corruptible_ In the old concentric Ptolemaic universe, while the stars were thought to be 'fixed' in their spheres, eternal and unchanging, everything in the sublunary sphere was subject to mutability, corruption, and decay.

154 _meteor_ By contrast with the 'fixed stars', the violent mobility of meteors and comets, 'shooting stars' that seemed to defy the sublime order of the other heavenly bodies, made them phenomena of ill omen. The figure is particularly appropriate to Deflores as an ambitious servant, conspicuously 'out of his place' (I.i.131).

155 _hung_ ed. (hang Q)

160 _cozened_ cheated. Daalder suggests a quibble on _cousin_ = strumpet ( _OED_ n. 6); but _OED_ gives no example of this usage before 1700.

163–4 _I . . . hell_ Cf. III.ii.160.

164 _circumscribes_ Cf. Marlowe's _Dr Faustus_ (ed. Roma Gill, 2nd ed.) 'Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed / In one self place; for where we are is hell' (v.121–2). _us_ ed. ( _not in_ Q)

167 _honour's prize_ capture of her honour ( _OED: prize_ n.3 1); but the familiar sense of 'reward, trophy' is probably also present

171 _pledge me_ drink a toast to me ( _OED_ v. 5). As Chakravorty (p. 161) points out, Deflores' line is adapted from Thomas Deloney's _The Gentle Craft_ , where St Hugh, forced by a tyrant to drink the poisoned blood of St Winnifred, toasts the shoemakers: 'I drink to you all . . . but I cannot spare you one drop to pledge me.'

173 _prevent_ forestall

175 _token_ i.e. the wound he gave himself in the closet as a proof of his willingness to join her in death

180 _my name_ Both Vermandero's family name and his personal honour are compromised by Beatrice's crime. _that record_ 'the heavenly record which lists criminal actions' (Frost) – or perhaps some imagined roll of dishonour (Daalder). Accent on second syllable of _record_.

182 _it_ i.e. Beatrice's name

185 _so right_ (1) in accordance with justice or righteousness; (2) with such precision ( _OED_ adv. 12; 5, 14, and cf. a. 4b 'right blow')

186 _quit_ acquitted – obsolete past participle of 'quit' = acquit ( _OED_ v. 2b)

187 _proclamation_ manifestation ( _OED_ n. 4) – i.e. because the guilty have been struck down by heavenly justice

188–9 _Sir . . . find_ Although, as Daalder points out, these lines could be meant for Vermandero, they are more likely to be addressed to Tomazo, who appears to respond to them; _Sir_ suggests a change of addressee, and its courteous tone is echoed by Tomazo (l. 190).

188 _sensible_ conscious

196 _opacous_ darkened, lying in (ominous) shadow ( _OED_ a. 1)

198–9 _servant . . . murder_ Alsemero's language underlines the social subversiveness of Deflores' crime, in which murder is compounded by an assault on legitimate rank and authority.

201 _wantonness . . . before_ i.e. Diaphanta, who has already paid for her offence with her life

206 _innocence_ A play on the common use of 'innocent' to mean 'half-wit' or 'imbecile' ( _OED_ n. 3b)

208 _behind_ to come ( _OED_ adv. 4)

211 _break . . . head_ i.e. with cuckold's horns

215 _you . . . living_ you can still count on my duty as your living son

220 _stay_ appease, allay; comfort ( _OED_ v.1 28; v.21b)

221 _kind_ (1) behaving as a father naturally should; (2) loving ( _OED_ a. 1c; 6)

222 _multiplies_ increases the grief

223 _Your only smiles_ Your smiles alone (addressed to the audience)

224 _rooms_ place
**1** Sir Philip Sidney, 'An Apology for Poetry', in Edmund D. Jones (ed.) _English Critical Essays (Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries)_ (London 1947), p. 26.

**2** See Bawcutt (1998) p. 2 for the suggestion that Rowley wrote the part of Lollio as a showcase for his own talents, though there is no conclusive proof that it was his.

**3** Rowley's handiwork has been claimed in parts of up to fifty plays; but, of the sixteen plays widely accepted as his, no more than two or three appear to have been his unaided work (see David Gunby, 'William Rowley', _Oxford Dictionary of National Biography_ ).

**4** Middleton matriculated at Queen's College in 1586, though there is no record of his having taken a degree.

**5** The presence of certain stylistic markers, especially a relatively high number of feminine endings, suggest that Middleton may have had a hand in the opening exchange between Alsemero and Jasperino (I.i.1–45), as well as in Beatrice's death speech (V.iii.153–65) whose poetic intensity is uncharacteristic of Rowley. Other pointers to Middleton's presence include 'inclination' (I.i.27) - a word that occurs in several of his plays, but nowhere in Rowley - and the characteristic use of 'it' as a 'potentially vague substantive' at V.iii.102, 109, 227 (see Bruster, pp. 5, 9, 13, and cf. Commentary, V.iii.138). Roger Holdsworth, 'Notes on _The Changeling, N &Q_ 234 (1989), 344–6, suggests that Middleton may also have been responsible for the first 122 lines of the last scene.

**6** See below, pp. xix-xx. Reynolds' text can be found at www.acblack.com/thechangeling.

**7** Acts I–III occupy no more than two days, and Acts IV-V another two days, while a gap of 'some ten days' (IV.ii.7) intervenes between the end of Act III and Beatrice-Joanna's wedding to Alsemero at the beginning of Act IV.

**8** Ibid, p. 127.

**9** See below, pp. xxviii–xxxiii. The play's quibbling on 'service' is discussed by Christopher Ricks, 'The Moral and Poetic Structure of _The Changeling_ ', _E.Crit_. 10 (), 290–306 (296–9), and Anthony B. Dawson, 'Giving the Finger: Puns and Transgression in _The Changeling_ ', in A. L. Magnusson and C. E. McGee (eds.) _The Elizabethan Theatre XII_ (Toronto ), pp. 93–112 (100–2).

**10** G. de Cespedes y Meneses, _Gerardo The Unfortunate Spaniard_ , trans. Leonard Digges (London 1622), pp. 105–6.

**11** _Gerardo_ , pp. 91, 95.

**12** _Gerardo_ , pp. 103–4.

**13** Critical readings that stress the thematic connections between the two plots include M. C. Bradbrook, _Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy_ (Cambridge ), pp. 206–17; Richard Levin, _The Multiple Plot in English Renaissance Drama_ (Chicago ), pp. 34–48; Nicholas Brooke, _Horrid Laughter in Jacobean Tragedy_ (London ) pp. 70–88; for productions that have similarly emphasized the work's 'organic' unity, see below pp. xxxiv–ix. More sceptical accounts of the play's structure are given by Leo Salingar, _Dramatic Form in Shakespeare and the Jacobeans_ (Cambridge ), pp. 222–35; T. McAlindon, _English Renaissance Tragedy_ (Basingstoke ), pp. 207–9; Robert Ornstein, _The Moral Vision of Jacobean Tragedy_ (Madison ), pp. 179–90.

**14** Robert Burton, 'Democritus to the Reader', in _The Anatomy of Melancholy_ , intro. Holbrook Jackson, 3 vols. (London 1932), I, p. 114, III, p. 49; and cf. Francis Bacon, 'Of Love', in _Essays_ , intro. Oliphant Smeaton (London 1906), p. 29.

**15** See Commentary, III.ii.170.

**16** On this point, see also Mohammed Kowsar, 'Middleton and Rowley's _The Changeling:_ the Besieged Temple', _Criticism_ , 28 (), 145–64 (160–1).

**17** _Anatomy_ , I, pp. 71, 78, 120.

**18** In _The Changeling_ it is possible to see the twists and turns of Burton's 'sublunary maze' reflected in the winding progress of the doomed Alonzo, as Deflores leads him down through the narrow passages of the castle to the hellish secret at its heart (III.i); and they have their rhetorical counterparts in the 'labyrinth' of Beatrice's confusion after the murder (III.iii.71), in the obscene 'lower labyrinth' of Isabella's imagination (IV.iii.99), and the baffled 'amaze' of Vermandero in the final scene (V.iii.148).

**19** See note on p. liv.

**20** Further parallels with _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ are noted by McAlindon (pp. 196–8).

**21** Samuel Purchas, _Microcosmus; or the Historie of Man_ (1619), p. 231.

**22** Daalder, p. xxvi.

**23** Roberta Barker and David Nicol, 'Does Beatrice Joanna Have a Subtext?: _The Changeling_ on the London Stage', _Early Modern Literary_ Studies 10.1 (May ), 3.1–113(3).

**24** Ibid, 43.

**25** John Stachniewski, 'Calvinist Psychology in Middleton's Tragedies', in Roger Holdsworth (ed.), _Three Jacobean Revenge Tragedies: A Casebook_ (Basingstoke ), 226–47 (228).

**26** Cited in Anne Ferry, _The 'Inward' Language: Sonnets of Wyatt, Sidney, Donne and Shakespeare_ (Chicago 1983), p. 59.

**27** John Donne, _Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions_ , 1624 (Ann Arbor 1959), p. 65.

**28** Ibid, 228–9.

**29** For varying accounts of the play's use of architectural allegory, see Thomas L. Berger, 'The Petrarchan Fortress of _The Changeling_ ', _Renaissance Papers_ (), 37–46; Anne Lancashire, 'The Emblematic Castle in Shakespeare and Middleton', in J. C. Gray (ed.), _Mirror up to Shakespeare: Essays in Honour of G. R. Hibbard_ (Toronto ), pp. 223–41; Kowsar, 'The Besieged Temple'; and Neill, _Issues of Death_ , pp. 175–80.

**30** Bacon, 'Of Love', p. 29.

**31** Purchas, _Microcosmus_ , pp. 34, 44, 177–8, 42–3. Noting the play's use of the medieval castle/body allegory, Nicholas Brooke writes that 'the peculiar imaginative power of De Flores' leading Alonso through the dark passages [depends on the suggestion that] it is also a journey through the organs of the female body to an anal death, _and_ a descent into hell' ( _Horrid Laughter_ , p. 85).

**32** _The Sermons of John Donne_ , ed. Evelyn M. Simpson and George R. Potter, 10 vols. (Berkeley 1954), vii, 14, p. 359.

**33** See Commentary, III.i.0 s.d.

**34** See e.g. Mark Thornton Burnett, _Masters and Servants in English Renaissance Drama and Culture_ (Basingstoke ); David Evett, _Discourses of Service in Shakespeare's England_ (Basingstoke 2005); Judith Weil, _Service and Dependency in Shakespeare's Plays_ (Cambridge 2005); Linda Anderson, _A Place in the Story: Servants and Service in Shakespeare's Plays_ (Newark, Del. ); Michael Neill (ed.) 'Shakespeare and the Bonds of Service', special section in Graham Bradshaw and Tom Bishop (eds.) _Shakespearean International Yearbook_ 5 (Aldershot, Hants. 2005).

**35** 'I.M.', _A Health to the Gentlemanly profession of Servingmen: or, the Servingman's Comfort_ (1598) in _Inedited Tracts_ (London 1868), pp. 114–15, 134.

**36** Helen Gardner makes the connection between _The Changeling_ and _Dr Faustus_ in 'The Tragedy of Damnation' – see R. J. Kaufmann (ed.), _Elizabethan Drama; Modern Essays in Criticism_ (New York 1961), pp. 320–41.

**37** For further analyses of the motif of service in _The Changeling_ , see Mark Thornton Burnett, _'The Changeling_ and Masters and Servants', in Garrett A. Sullivan, Patrick Cheney, and Andrew Hadfield (eds.), _Early Modern English Drama: A Critical Companion_ (New York ), pp. 298–308; Swapan Chakravorty, _Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton_ (Oxford ), Chap 7 'Servants and Masters: _The Changeling_ ', pp. 145–65; Neill '"Servant Obedience and Master Sins": Shakespeare and the Bonds of Service', in _Putting History to the Question: Power, Politics and Society in English Renaissance Drama_ (New York ), pp. 13–48, and '"A woman's service": Gender, Subordination, and the Erotics of Rank in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries', _Shakespearean International Yearbook_ , 2005, 127–144; and Leo Salingar, _'The Changeling_ and the Drama of Domestic Life', _Essays and Studies_ 33 (1979), 92–3.

**38** For further discussion of Deflores' systematic confusion of chivalric and domestic service, see Swapan Chakravorty, _Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton_ (Oxford 1996), pp. 147–52.

**39** Cited from Sara Jayne Steen, _Ambrosia in an Earthen Vessel: Three Centuries of Audience and Reader Response to the Works of Thomas Middleton_ (NY: AMS, ), p. 61.

**40** These allusions are discussed in detail by Bawcutt (1958), pp. xxvi–viii.

**41** See Bawcutt (1958), pp. xxvii–viii.

**42** Interview in _Plays and Players_ (April 1961), cited in Michael Scott, _The Changeling_ , Penguin Critical Studies (London ), p. 56.

**43** Ibid.

**44** See e.g. Philip Hope-Wallace, _Manchester Guardian_ , 23 Feb 1961; Anon, _Times_ 22 Feb 1961. Resemblances to _Macbeth_ (which Middleton is now thought to have revised at some point before its appearance in the 1623 Folio) were also noticed by reviewers of Michael Attenborough's Royal Shakespeare Company production 1993: _The Times_ ' Benedict Nightingale (27 May 1993) saw _The Changeling_ as 'an Iberian Macbeth', while in the _Daily Mail_ (6 May 1993), Jack Tinker identified Beatrice as 'The closest blood relation . . . to Lady Macbeth in all literature. . . . Like her more infamous Scottish counterpart, this Spanish beauty also becomes "the deed's creature".' Both reviewers may have been influenced by Helen Gardner's, 'The Tragedy of Damnation' (see esp. pp. 328–31).

**45** Milton Shulman, _Evening Standard_ , 17 Oct 1978; Robert Cushman, _Observer_ , 22 Oct 1978; Wardle, _op. cit_.; Michael Billington, _Guardian_ , 6 Sept 1978; and cf. Bernard Levin, _Sunday Times_ , 22 Oct 1978; Sheridan Morley, _Punch_ , 25 Oct 1978.

**46** Scott, p. 59.

**47** Billington, _op.cit_.

**48** Cushman, _Observer_ , 22 Oct 1978; Irving Wardle, _Times_ , 17 Oct 1978; Billington, _Guardian_ , 17 Oct 1978.

**49** Wardle, _op. cit_.

**50** John Elsom, _Listener_ , 26 Oct 1978. Richard Eyre's 1988 National Theatre production similarly used the parallels between the plots to convey 'a powerful impression that the structured insanities inherent in the social order are more dangerous and less containable than the disorders of the mind which cause individual sufferers to be condemned to exclusion from the world' (Janet Clare, _Renaissance Drama Newsletter_ , Autumn 1988 -cited in Scott, p. 62).

**51** Scott, p. 58.

**52** These included Mark Rylance's modern-dress production for the British Chinese Theatre in which Vermandero's fortress became the Golden Castle Restaurant in Earl's Court, and Deflores was a greasy kitchen-hand who cut off Piracquo's finger 'with the same knife he ha[d] been using for slicing the vegetables' (Malcolm Rutherford, _Financial Times_ , 19 Jan 1991); John Wright's much cut and rewritten version for BAC/Third Party (2001); Jenny Sealey's modern dress production for Graeae at the Phoenix, Exeter, which transposed the action to 1960s Merseyside, where Beatrice became 'a young swinger in a psychedelic miniskirt and a fast-changing world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll' (Lyn Gardner, _Guardian_ , 16 Oct 2002); Manamassi Productions' similarly revamped version at the Southwark playhouse, which 'whipped [the play] into a multicultural twenty-first century world where slippery dealers and street boys rule the day' (Rachel Haliburton, _Evening Standard_ , 15 Oct 2002); and an unusually gory dance-drama directed by Robert Woodruff for the Theater for New Audience at St Clements Church in New York, in which the sexualised violence of the main plot was matched by the spectacle of women strapped to gurneys undergoing cliterectomies in Alibius' hospital. In addition to these reworkings, the play has also been made into a feature film, Marcus Thompson's bizarrely misconceived _Middleton's Changeling_ (1997), starring the Scottish comedian Billy Connolly as Alibius, and the punk-rocker Ian Dury as an oddly expressionless cockney Deflores; shot on location in Spain, it mixed Jacobean costumes with sports trainers, nineteenth-century carriages with Mercedes limousines and police motorbikes, and mangled original dialogue with contemporary slang. Rather more promising – though never brought to fruition – was the American dramatist Sam Shepherd's wholesale rewriting of Middleton and Rowley's story as _The Bodyguard_ (1973/78), a film script commissioned by none other than Tony Richardson – see Johan Callens, _From Middleton and Rowley's 'Changeling' to Sam Shepherd's 'Bodyguard_ ' (Leiston, 1997).

**53** National Theatre prompt-book, 1988. This device was echoed in Declan Donnelan's 2006 production for Cheek by Jowl at the Barbican which underlined the relationship between the two plots by 'turning the actors in the main story into the asylum inmates'; the theatrical climax of the production came 'when the inhabitants of both worlds join[ed] forces in a wild wedding dance that link[ed] love and madness, and suggest[ed] there is scarcely a cigarette paper between them' (Billington, _Guardian_ , 16 May 2006).

**54** David Browne, _What's On in London_ , 29 June 1988; Jim Hiley, _Listener_ , 7 July 1988; Billington, _Guardian_ 25 June 1988.

**55** Peter Kemp, _Independent_ , 25 June 1988.

**56** Thus the 1978 Royal Shakespeare Company programme showed Botticelli's Venus pulling back her face-mask to show a death's head beneath, while that for the 1988 National Theatre production featured Beatrice-Joanna's face in heavy chiaroscuro, her cheeks marked by the same scars worn in performance by George Harris's Deflores (Fig. 8), those on her right cheek oozing blood – a cover-design echoed by that for 2001 BAC/Third Party production.

**57** Scott, p. 60.

**58** This device was replicated in the 2004 Bristol Tobacco Factory production (subsequently transferred to The Pit at the Barbican Centre), where the true nature of Matthew Thomas' decent-seeming and sympathetic Deflores was conveyed by the 'symbolically two-faced make-up' that prepared for his transformation into Beatrice's murderous accomplice – see Roderick Swanston, _Times Literary Supplement_ , on-line review, September 2004.

**59** Cushman, _Observer_ , 22 Oct 1978.

**60** Anon, _Times_ , 22 Feb 1961; Philip Hope-Wallace, _Manchester Guardian_ , 23 Feb 1961.

**61** Billington, _Guardian_ , 6 Sept 1978; Wardle, _Times_ , 7 Sept 1978; Cushman, _Observer_ , 10 Sept 1978.

**62** Shulman, _Evening Standard_ , 17 Oct 1978; Cushman, _Observer_ , 22 Oct 1978; Kenneth Hurren, _What's on in London_ , 9 Nov 1978; Wardle, _Times_ , 17 Oct 1978.

**63** Peter Cromer, _What's On_ , 2 June 1993; Malcolm Rutherford, _Financial Times_ , 27 May 1993.

**64** Benedict Nightingale, _Times_ , 27 May 1993.

**65** Irving Wardle, _Independent on Sunday_ , 30 May 1993; Rutherford, _op. cit_. Wardle too was reminded of a deformed version of Shakespearean love-tragedy: 'like Anthony and Cleopatra they are made for each other.'

**66** Eyre quoted by Christopher Edwards, _Spectator_ , 2 July 1988.

**67** Edwards _op. cit_ ; Hiley, _op. cit_ ; Billington, _Guardian_ , 25 June 1988.

**68** The _Othello_ connection was noticed by several reviewers, including Edwards and Betty Caplan ( _New Statesman_ , 8 July 1988). Barker and Nicol suggest that '[p]laying to a liberal London audience in the dying days of Apartheid, this staging could be seen as encouraging its spectators to formulate an ideologically sympathetic reading of [the central relationship]' (18).

**69** Edwards, _op. cit_.; Maureen Paton, _Daily Express_ , 27 June 1988; Hiley, _op. cit_.
 See Bruster, p. 2; Bawcutt (1973), p. 2.

 This omission seemed serious to Tony Richardson, who chose to stage the masque in his 1961 Royal Court production, making it the occasion for exposing the imposture of Antonio and Franciscus.
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