ElizabethanDrama.org presents the Annotated Popular Edition of The SCORNFUL LADY by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher Performed c. 1609-1610 First published 1616 Featuring complete and easy-to-read annotations. Annotations and notes © Copyright ElizabethanDrama.org, 2018 This annotated play may be freely copied and distributed. 1 THE SCORNFUL LADY By Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher Performed c. 1609-1610 First Published 1616 Persons Represented in the Play. INTRODUCTION TO THE PLAY Elder Loveless, a Suitor to the Lady. The Scornful Lady is a "City Comedy", its scene London; Young Loveless, a Prodigal, and brother to Elder thus, its characters are neither royalty nor nobility, but Loveless. "regular" citizens. Almost plotless, our play examines the Savil, Steward to Elder Loveless. need some people have to manipulate their admirers. A very funny play, The Scornful Lady is notable for its extensive Lady, target of Elder Loveless’ suit. use of animal-related insults and imagery. The lecherous old Martha, the Lady’s sister. servant Abigail in particular is the target of a great deal of Abigail Younglove, a waiting Gentlewoman of entertaining abuse. the Lady. NOTES ON THE TEXT Welford, a Suitor to the Lady. Sir Roger, Curate to the Lady. The text of The Scornful Lady is taken from Warwick Bond's edition of the play, as it appears in Volume I of The Hangers-on of Young Loveless: Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, cited at Captain. #3 below. Traveller. The Scornful Lady was published multiple times in the Poet. 17th century, the first time in 1616; as is the normal practice Tobacco-man. on this website, our edition remains faithful to the original 1616 quarto to the greatest degree possible. Morecraft, an Usurer. Widow, a Rich Widow. NOTES ON THE ANNOTATIONS Wenches, Fiddlers, Attendants. Mention of Bond, Dyce, Colman and Weber in the annotations refers to the notes provided by each of these The Scene: London editors in their respective editions of this play, each cited fully below. The most commonly cited sources are listed in the footnotes immediately below. The complete list of footnotes appears at the end of this play. Footnotes in the text correspond as follows: 1. OED online. 2. Crystal, David and Ben. Shakespeare's Words. London; New York: Penguin, 2002. 3. Bond, R. Warwick, ed. The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Volume I. London: George Bell & Sons and A. H. Bullen, 1904. 4. Dyce, Alexander. The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1879. 7. Colman, George. The Dramatic Works of Beaumont and Fletcher. London: Printed for John Stockdale, 1811. 9. Weber, Henry. The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher. Edinburgh: James Ballantyne and Company, 1812. 2 NOTE on the IAMBIC PENTAMETER Most of The Scornful Lady was originally published in prose; early editors, however, recognized that much of this prose was clearly written in iambs, and many of the speeches could easily be broken up into iambic, or near iambic, pentameter. As a result, many early editors, such as Alexander Dyce and Warwick Bond, did exactly that. And while they did not always agree on exactly how every speech should be divided, their decision to do so was the correct one. The edition you have in front of you employ's Bond's divisions. The concerned reader, however, may still wonder why it is that so many of the lines in The Scornful Lady are irregular; after all, both Beaumont and Fletcher were perfectly capable of writing in strict iambic pentameter when they wanted to. So why do so many lines contain extra syllables, or slip momentarily into meters other than iambic? One may rightfully ask whether these speeches should really be presented in verse at all. Editor R. Warwick Bond presents in his notes to B&F's A King and No King a solid argument for printing the questionable speeches as verse: recognizing that the lines contain too much "metrical suggestion" to believe the authors intended them to be presented as prose, Bond argues that the verse is really a hybrid of prose and pure, strict iambic pentameter, so as to make the speech less stylized than that which might be given to nobles and other higher-ranked members of society; the verse was therefore intentionally made less regular by our authors to make the speeches more fitting for the more earthy members of "ordinary" society who populate the play. As a result, it is suggested that you generally not concern yourself terribly with following the iambic pentameter as you read The Scornful Lady. There are plenty of other challenges with respect to the play's language, numerous literary and topical allusions, and dense metaphors to keep your intellect occupied. AUTHORSHIP. E.H.C. Oliphant (The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1927), in his study of the collaborations of Beaumont and Fletcher, assigns to our two authors the following scenes: Beaumont: Act I.i; Act II.i; first part of Act IV.i; Act V.ii. Fletcher: Act I,ii; Act II.ii and iii; Act III; second part of Act IV.i, and all of Act IV.ii; Act V.i, iii and iv. The OBSSESIVE USE of the WORD CAST. Wordsmiths will be interested to pay attention to the recurring use of the word cast, with so many of its meanings, throughout the play - a total of 17 appearances. It is employed by our authors as a verb, a noun, and an adjective, as well as in various phrases. By itself, cast is used to mean (1) to bestow; to scheme or contrive; to toss (present tense verbs); and schemed (past tense verb); (2) pair; and analysis (nouns); and (3) dismissed (adjective). 3 In addition, cast appears in the following expressions: cast off (meaning to cast off; thrown away; and dismissed); cast a fortune (to diagram the arrangement of the planets as part of an astrological forecast); bridling cast (a parting drink); cast up (to vomit); cast up a reckoning (to make a calculation); and cast one's eyes upon (to look or glance upon). SETTINGS, SCENE BREAKS and STAGE DIRECTIONS. The original editions of The Scornful Lady did not identify scene settings, nor were there any scene breaks; we have adopted those suggested by Bond. As is our normal practice, some stage directions have been added, and some modified, for purposes of clarity. Most of these minor changes are adopted from Bond and Dyce. 4 THE SCORNFUL LADY By Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher c. 1609-1610 ACT I. SCENE I. A Room in Lady’s House. Enter the two Lovelesses, Savil the Steward, and a Page. Entering Characters: the two Lovelesses are brothers; Elder Loveless is courting the unnamed Lady, whose house they have entered; Savil, an elderly man dressed in old- fashioned livery, is the steward of Elder. Lady, the title character, and an obnoxious and selfish woman, has decided that if Elder wants to continue to woo her, he must travel to France for a year. Elder's younger brother, Young Loveless, is a spendthrift, who, by failing to make payments on his mortgage, has forfeited all of his property to the money-lender Morecraft. 1 Elder. Brother, is your last hope past to mollify 2 Morecraft’s heart about your mortgage? = Morecraft is a money-lender, typically referred to in Elizabethan drama as a usurer. 4 Young. Hopelessly past. I have presented the usurer 4-7: Young uses an extended drinking metaphor to describe Morecraft's taking possession of all of his property, and thus his wealth, thanks to his defaulting on the loan Morecraft has made to him; in this era, a failure to make a single payment could lead to the loss of one's entire security, hence Young's allusion in line 7 to Morecraft receiving more than he paid for. with a richer draught than ever Cleopatra swallowed; he 5: richer draught = more powerful drink or potion. Cleopatra = Plutarch wrote in his Lives that Cleopatra enjoyed testing the effects of various poisons on condemned prisoners; she herself died by the bite of an asp, to avoid being taken prisoner by Octavian. 6 hath sucked in ten thousand pounds worth of my land, = drawn or drunk in. more than he paid for, at a gulp, without trumpets. = without a flourish of trumpets as would normally 8 accompany the drinking of healths at public functions.3 Elder. I have as hard a task to perform in this house. 10 Young. Faith, mine was to make an usurer honest, or 12 to lose my land. 14 Elder. And mine is to persuade a passionate woman, or to leave the land. – Savil, make the boat stay. 15: leave the land = these words parallel Young's lose my land in form and alliteration. stay = wait. 16 [Exit Page.] 17: Savil passes the instruction on to the Page, who leaves 18 to carry it out. 5 I fear I shall begin my unfortunate journey this night, 20 though the darkness of the night, and the roughness of the waters, might easily dissuade an unwilling man. 22 Sav. Sir, your father’s old friends hold it the sounder 23f: Savil tries to dissuade his master from taking this foolish trip to France. hold it = "maintain that it is". the sounder = meaning both more (1) healthy in body, and (2) financially secure, describing Elder's body and estate respectively in the next line (24). 24 course for your body and estate to stay at home, and = fortune, property. marry and propagate − and govern in your country − 26 than to travel for disease, and return following the court 26: for disease = ie.