Act IV: Scene iv
[p. 83] Mirabilis. Aqua mirabilis, a well-known invigorating cordial, cf. Dryden’s Marriage à la Mode (1672), iii, I: ‘The country gentlewoman ... who ... opens her dear bottle of Mirabilis beside, for a gill glass of it at parting.’
[p. 84] Tranghams. Nick-nacks, toys, trinkets, cf. Arbuthnot, History of John Ball (1712-3), Pt. II, c. vi: ‘What’s the meaning of all these trangrams and gimcracks?’
Act V: Scene i
[p. 92] to souse. cf. Florio (ed. 1611): ‘to leape or seaze greedily upon, to souze downe as a hauke.’
[p. 93] this Balatroon. A rogue. The word is very rare. cf. Cockeram (1623): ‘Ballatron, a rascally base knave.’
[p. 95] Rotat omne fatum. This would be an exceptionally rare use of rotare = rotari, intransitive. But Mrs. Behn, as Dryden tells us in his preface to the translation of Ovid’s Heroides (1680) ‘by many hands’, insisted upon the fact that she knew no Latin.
[p. 100] Medicinæ Professores. This is from the Troisième Intermède of Le Malade Imaginaire which commences:—
Savantissimi doctores,
Medicinæ professores,