1. 1. 41 ff. Why, any Fraud;
Or Couetousnesse; or Lady Vanity;
Or old Iniquity. Fraud is a character in Robert Wilson’s The Three Ladies of London, printed 1584, and The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London, c 1588, printed 1590. Covetousness appears in Robin Conscience, c 1530, and is applied to one of the characters in The Staple of News, Wks. 5. 216. Vanity is one of the characters in Lusty Juventus (see note [1. 1. 50]) and in Contention between Liberality and Prodigality, printed 1602 (O. Pl. 4th ed., 8. 328). She seems to have been a favorite with the later dramatists, and is frequently mentioned (I Henry IV. 2. 4; Lear 2. 2; Jew of Malta 2. 3, Marlowe’s Wks. 2. 45). Jonson speaks of her again in The Fox, Wks. 3. 218. For Iniquity see Introduction, p. xxxviii.
The change in punctuation (see variants), as well as that two lines below, was first suggested by Upton in a note appended to his Critical Observations on Shakespeare. Whalley silently adopted the reading in both cases.
1. 1. 43 I’ll call him hither. See variants. Coleridge, Notes, p. 280, says: ‘That is, against all probability, and with a (for Jonson) impossible violation of character. The words plainly belong to Pug, and mark at once his simpleness and his impatience.’ Cunningham says that he arrived independently at the same conclusion, and points out that it is plain from Iniquity’s opening speech that he understood the words to be Pug’s.
1. 1. 49 thy dagger. See note [1. 1. 85].
1. 1. 50 lusty Iuuentus. The morality-play of Lusty Juventus was written by R. Wever about 1550. It ‘breathes the spirit of the dogmatic reformation of the Protector Somerset,’ but ‘in spite of its abundant theology it is neither ill written, nor ill constructed’ (Ward, Eng. Drama 1. 125). It seems to have been very popular, and the expression ‘a lusty Juventus’ became proverbial. It is used as early as 1582 by Stanyhurst, Aeneis 2 (Arber). 64 and as late as Heywood’s Wise Woman of Hogsdon (c 1638), where a gallant is apostrophised as Lusty Juventus (Act 4). (See Nares and NED.) Portions of the play had been revived not many years before this within the tragedy of Thomas More (1590, acc. to Fleay 1596) under the title of The Mariage of Witt and Wisedome. ‘By dogs precyous woundes’ is one of the oaths used by Lusty Juventus in the old play, and may be the ‘Gogs-nownes’ referred to here (O. Pl., 4th ed., 2. 84). ‘Gogs nowns’ is used several times in Like will to Like (O. Pl., 4th ed., 3. 327, 331, etc.).
1. 1. 51 In a cloake to thy heele. See note [1. 1. 85].
1. 1. 51 a hat like a pent-house. ‘When they haue walkt thorow the streetes, weare their hats ore their eye-browes, like pollitick penthouses, which commonly make the shop of a Mercer, or a Linnen Draper, as dark as a roome in Bedlam.’ Dekker, West-ward Hoe, Wks. 2. 286.
With your hat penthouse-like o’er the slope of your eyes. —Love’s Labour’s Lost 3. 1. 17.
Halliwell says (L. L. L., ed. Furness, p. 85): ‘An open shed or shop, forming a protection against the weather. The house in which Shakespeare was born had a penthouse along a portion of it.’ In Hollyband’s Dictionarie, 1593, it is spelled ‘pentice,’ which shows that the rime to ‘Juventus’ is probably not a distorted one.
1. 1. 52 thy doublet all belly. ‘Certaine I am there was neuer any kinde of apparell euer inuented that could more disproportion the body of man then these Dublets with great bellies, ... stuffed with foure, fiue or six pound of Bombast at the least.’—Stubbes, Anat., Part 1, p. 55.