In Love’s Welcome Jonson speaks again of ‘Satan’s sumptuous Arse’, Wks. 8. 122.
1. 3. 34, 5. That Hole.
Belonged to your Ancestors?Jonson frequently omits the relative pronoun. Cf. 1. 5. 21; 1. 6. 86, 87; 3. 3. 149; 5. 8. 86, 87.
1. 3. 38 Foure pound a yeere. ‘This we may suppose to have been the customary wages of a domestic servant.’—C. Cunningham cites also the passage in the Alchemist, Wks. 4. 12; ‘You were once ... the good, Honest, plain, livery-three-pound-thrum, that kept Your master’s worship’s house,’ in which he takes the expression ‘three-pound’ to be the equivalent of ‘badly-paid’.
1. 4. 1 I’ll goe lift him. Jonson is never tired of punning on the names of his characters.
1. 4. 5 halfe a piece. ‘It may be necessary to observe, once for all, that the piece (the double sovereign) went for two and twenty shillings.’—G. Compare 3. 3. 83, where a hundred pieces is evidently somewhat above a hundred pounds. By a proclamation, Nov. 23, 1611, the piece of gold called the Unitie, formerly current at twenty shillings was raised to the value of twenty two shillings (S. M. Leake, Eng. Money 2. 276). Taylor, the water-poet, tells us that Jonson gave him ‘a piece of gold of two and twenty shillings to drink his health in England’ (Conversations, quoted in Schelling’s Timber, p. 105). In the Busie Body Mrs. Centlivre uses piece as synonymous with guinea (2d ed., pp. 7 and 14).
1. 4. 31 Iust what it list. Jonson makes frequent use of the subjunctive. Cf. 1. 3. 9; 1. 6. 6; 5. 6. 10; etc.
1. 4. 43 Ô here’s the bill, Sr. Collier says that the use of play-bills was common prior to the year 1563 (Strype, Life of Grindall, ed. 1821, p. 122). They are mentioned in Histriomastix, 1610; A Warning for Fair Women, 1599, etc. See Collier, Annals 3. 382 f.
1. 4. 50 a rotten Crane. Whalley restores the right reading, correctly explained as a pun on Ingine’s name.
1. 4. 60 Good time! Apparently a translation of the Fr. A la bonne heure, ‘very good’, ‘well done!’ etc.
1. 4. 65 The good mans gravity. Cf. Homer, Il., Γ 105: