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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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