Pinnace, when thus applied to a woman, was almost always used with a conscious retention of the metaphor. Dekker is especially fond of the word. Match me in London, Wks. 4. 172:
—There’s a Pinnace (Was mann’d out first by th’ City), is come to th’ Court, New rigg’d.
Also Dekker, Wks. 4. 162; 3. 67, 77, 78.
When the word became stereotyped into an equivalent for procuress or prostitute, the metaphor was often dropped. Thus in Bart. Fair, Wks. 4. 386: ‘She hath been before me, punk, pinnace and bawd, any time these two and twenty years.’ Gifford says on this passage: ‘The usual gradation in infamy. A pinnace was a light vessel built for speed, generally employed as a tender. Hence our old dramatists constantly used the word for a person employed in love messages, a go-between in the worst sense, and only differing from a bawd in not being stationary.’ A glance at the examples given above will show, however, that the term was much more elastic than this explanation would indicate.
The dictionaries give no suggestion of the origin of the metaphor. I suspect that it may be merely a borrowing from classical usage. Cf. Menaechmi 2. 3. 442:
Ducit lembum dierectum nauis praedatoria.
In Miles Gloriosus 4. 1. 986, we have precisely the same application as in the English dramatists: ‘Haec celox (a swift sailing vessel) illiust, quae hinc agreditur, internuntia.’
1. 6. 62 th’ are right. Whalley’s interpretation is, of course, correct. See variants.
1. 6. 73 Not beyond that rush. Rushes took the place of carpets in the days of Elizabeth. Shakespeare makes frequent reference to the custom (see Schmidt). The following passage from Dr. Bulleyne has often been quoted: ‘Rushes that grow upon dry groundes be good to strew in halles, chambers and galleries, to walk upon, defending apparel, as traynes of gownes and kertles from dust.’ Cf. also Cyn. Rev. 2. 5; Every Man out 3. 3.
1. 6. 83 As wise as a Court Parliament. Jonson refers here, I suppose, to the famous Courts or Parliaments of Love, which were supposed to have existed during the Middle Ages (cf. Skeat, Chaucer’s Works 7. lxxx).