Currer ‘tis time thou wert to Ireland gone
Thy utmost Rate is here but Half-a-Crown
Ask Turner if thou art not fulsome grown.
p. 309 Silvio, Page to Laura Lucretia. (Dramatis Personae.) I have added ‘Silvio’ to the list of actors as he enters according to the stage directions, Act i, 1, and elsewhere. Julio in the same scene refers to him, and Laura Lucretia several times addresses him during the play. Act ii, 1, &c. In Act v, however, he is manifestly confused with Sabina. Laura gives Silvio certain instructions, he approaches Galliard, and his lines have speech-prefix ‘Sab.’ In the following scene the direction is ’.nter Silvio’ and his speech is given to Sabina, Laura moreover addressing him as Sabina. I have no doubt that this confusion existed in Mrs. Behn’s MS.
p. 315 Medices Villa. The Villa Medici was erected in 1540 by Annibale Lippi. The gardens are famous for their beauty. From the avenue of evergreen-oaks with a fountain before the Villa can be obtained a celebrated view of St. Peter’s.
p. 317 I may chance to turn her. Mr. Tickletext was much of the opinion of the celebrated casuist Bauny, who, in his Theologia Moralis, tractatus iv, De Poenitentia, quaestio 14, writes: ‘Licitum est cuilibet lupanar ingredi ad odium peccati ingerendum meretricibus, etsi metus sit, et vero etiam verisimilitudo non parva se peccaturum eo quod malo suo saepe sit expertus, blandis se muliercularum sermonibus flecci solitum ad libidinem.’
p. 319 Amorous Twire. Twire—a sly, saucy glance; a leer. cf. Etheridge’s The Man of Mode (1676), Act iii, III, Harriet. ‘I abominate … the affected smiles, the silly By-words, and amorous Tweers in passing.’ The verb ‘to twire’ occurs in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, xxviii, 12, and frequently elsewhere.
p. 320 Hogan-Mogan. A popular corruption, or rather perversion, of the Dutch Hoogmogend-heiden, ‘High Mightinesses’, the title of the States-General. In a transferred manner it is used as a humorous or Contemptuous adjective of those affecting grandeur and show; ‘high and mighty.’ The phrase is common. Needham, Mercurius Pragmaticus, No. 7 (1648), speaks of the ‘Hogan Mogan States of Westminster’. Tom Brown (1704), Works (1760), Vol. IV, lashes ‘hogan-mogan generals’.
p. 330 Pusilage. French pucelage; virginity; maidenhead. 1724 reading ’.upilage’ misses the whole point and comes near making nonsense of the passage. cf. Otway’s The Poets Complaint of his Muse (4to, 1680), v-vi:
No pair so happy as my Muse and I.
Ne’er was young lover half so fond,
When first his pusilage he lost;
Or could of half my pleasure boast.
p. 322 Back-Sword. A sword with a cutting edge; or single-stick (with a basket hilt).
p. 322 Parades. ‘The lessons defensive are commonly called the parades’.—Sir W. Hope’s Compleat Fencing Master (2nd edition, 1692).