[Play.]

[140]Almost three and twenty. Mrs. Oldfield was only 34 in 1717 but no doubt popular enough to draw a laugh by simpering at this line.
The office of the church ... brute beasts. The Book of Common Prayer (1709) says of matrimony that it is not to be taken in hand "wantonly ... like brute beasts." The fashion of alluding to the Prayer Book in a jocose context, if it did not begin in the reign of Charles II, was at least in vogue than; a couple of instances in Dryden's Wild Gallant will be pointed out in the Clark Dryden, VIII (scheduled to appear in 1962). Another touch of "profaneness" that Collieresque critics objected to in Three Hours was the paraphrase of Holy Writ in Sir Tremendous's line about "ten righteous criticks," p. 153; cf. Key, p. 215.
[141]pistachoe-porridge. An aphrodisiac concoction? (I apologize for my neglect of the pharmaceutical, medical, and alchemical jargon—J.H.S.)
[144]spoils of quarries. Cf. the anecdote of Dr. Woodward in the Key, p. 211; Parker's Key has it also, but in a less complete form.
[145]Shock. Mrs. Townley's lapdog—perhaps named after Belinda's in Rape of the Lock. Of course it may have been a common name for such dogs before Pope wrote the poem; see Twickenham Pope, II, 153.
[147]my pace and my honour. 1717, "Peace."
[148]forgive thee, if thou hadst ... kill'd my lapdog. Parker, with a citation to Rape of the Lock, assigned this speech to Pope, and indeed it smacks of several places in the poem, e.g., III, 157-8, IV, 119-120.
[150]some ... that nauseate the smell of a rose. Cf. Essay on Man, I, 200.
[152]That injudicious Canaille. In view of her bias Phoebe's strictures on the players are of course to be taken in the directly opposite sense.
[155]Parker finds some double-entendres in the dialogue in which Phoebe and Sir Tremendous compliment each other; if such there be, the speakers are unaware of them.
[156]if stones were dissolved, as a late philosopher hath proved. In summarizing his thesis in the preface to his Essay Toward a Natural History of the Earth (1695) Dr. Woodward does say that "the whole Terrestrial Globe was taken all to pieces and dissolved at the Deluge, the particles of Stone ..." According to the DNB, Arbuthnot published a criticism of this book in 1697.
[163]The "old woman" who brings the letter from Madam Wyburn (a name beyond all praise!): Drub, p. 18, calls her "an Old Woman without a Nose," and objects strenuously. One dislikes siding with Drub on anything, but this was indeed an unsavory touch, perhaps one of the embellishments suggested by Cibber while refining the ore of the play into gold during the rehearsal period. Our authors should have ruled against it but they were in no mood to pull punches at this time, though, as stated above, they had to consent to some bowdlerizing after the first night of the play.
[168]a rouge in disguise. 1717, "Rogue."
[171]my Mercury. 1717, "by Mercury."
[173]s.d. in a chair like a sick man. Idea from Crowne, City Politicks, first acted 1682.
[178]fitigue. 1717, "Fatigue."
s.d. powers some drops in. 1717, "pours."
[180]have the any power. 1717, "they."
[182]Townley's concealing Plotwell under the petticoat owes to Mrs. Behn's The Younger Brother (acted 1696, not revived), Mirtilla's hiding "Endimion" under the train of her gown in IV.ii.
invisible i th is very. Typo for "in this very"; 1717 has "on this very." Gay (or Cibber) might have changed "on" to "in" when adding the sentence at the end of Act IV; see next note.
[183]But prithee ... rarities. This sentence is not in 1717, but seems an improvement, as it hints at developments to come and raises the expectations of the audience.
[186]desarts. 1717, "Disserts."
Macedonian queen. Olympias: Underplot in his verses alludes, mock-heroically, to the fabled begetting of Alexander the Great.
mantygers. This spelling may have come from the London 1757 Supplement. 1717, "Mantegers" (OED, mantegar, a kind of baboon).
[191]s.d. leap from their places. Idea from Ravenscroft's The Anatomist: cf. n. to 215.
[199]Come we may (5th line on page). 1717, "Come we now"—perhaps "may" is a misreading.

[Epilogue.]

sound in living. Perhaps another misreading: 1717, "and" for "in."

viol. 1717, "vial." Perhaps another misreading.

[Key.]

[212]knights of the shires, who represent them all. Paraphrase of a line in Dryden's epilogue to The Man of Mode: a mark of literacy in the anonymous writer of our Key.
Heautontimerumenos. Self-tormentor—title of a play by Terence.
[213]another eminent physician's wife ... shall be nameless. Contemporary gossip said that the wife of Dr. Richard Mead was meant: Parker, less considerate than the gentlemanly author of our Key, uses her name, and in Breval (p. 15) Mrs. Oldfield is made to wish that she had not "mimick'd Mrs. M—d" in her role as Mrs. Townley. But it seems likely that any mimicry would be in the mind of the audience rather than in Mrs. Oldfield's performance, or for that matter, the intention of the authors.
[214]Marriage not to be undertaken wantonly. The Key is incorrect in citing the Jonson play; see note to p. 140, above.
[215]letters ... Cocu imaginaire. None of our Key-writer's adducings of Molière is really in point. The hint for the letters came from Act V of anon., The Apparition, acted twice in 1713. The same play has an intriguing valet named Plotwell; here our authors found the name for one of their gallants—Underplot was a happy invention of their own.
Lubomirski ... in Lopez de Vega. Parker (p. 9) is correct in tracing this impersonation of Plotwell's to Ravenscroft's The Anatomist, or the Sham Doctor; the same farce suggested the anxiety of the disguised gallants at the proposals to dissect them in Act V. Ravenscroft's play, first acted in 1696, was popular well into the 18th century and would be well known to the audience. No doubt our authors expected their play to be found infinitely funnier than Ravenscroft's in the comparable parts. It is.
Theatre Italien. Parker (p. 14) says more explicitly that the mummy-crocodile scene is "all stole from a farce" in this collection. Gherardi, vol. VI, does have a farce of the title cited but the only trace of it in Three Hours occurs in the brief joke on Antony and Cleopatra that Townley and Plotwell share on p. 185.

A
SUPPLEMENT
TO THE
WORKS
OF
Alexander Pope, Esq;
Containing,
Such POEMS, LETTERS, &c.

As are omitted in the Edition published
by the Reverend Doctor Warburton: