How terms betwixt him and th’ Emperor stand.
[p. 291] a Hoy. A small vessel like a sloop, peculiarly Dutch. Pepys, 16 June, 1661, speaks of hiring ‘a Margate hoy’.
Act V: Scene ii
[p. 323] a Lapland Witch. cf. Paradise Lost, Book II, l. 666:—
To dance
With Lapland witches, while the labouring moon
Eclipses at their charms.
Act V: Scene iia
[p. 329] the German Princess. Mary Morders, alias Stedman, alias Kentish Moll, a notorious imposter of the day, who pretended to be a Princess from Germany. She had been transported to Jamaica in 1671, but returning too soon and stealing a piece of plate, was hanged at Tyburn, 22 January, 1673. Her adventures formed the plot of a play by Tom Porter, A Witty Combat; or, The Female Victor (4to, 1663). Kirkman’s Counterfeit Lady Unveiled (8vo, 1673), contains very ample details of her career. Pepys went to visit her ‘at the Gatehouse at Westminster’, 29 May, 1663. In talk he was ‘high in the defence of her wit and spirit’ (7 June, 1663). 15 April, 1664, the diarist further notes: ‘To the Duke’s house and there saw The German Princess acted by the woman herself ... the whole play ... is very simple, unless, here and there, a witty sprinkle or two.’ This piece was doubtless identical with Porter’s tragi-comedy.
[p. 329] four Shillings, or half a Crown. Four shillings was the price of admission to the boxes on the first tier of the theatre; half a crown to the pit. These sums are very frequently alluded to in prologue and epilogue. Dryden in his second epilogue to The Duke of Guise (1682), after referring to the brawls and rioting of the pit, says:—