p. 14 _Armida._ cf. Tasso’s _La Gerusalemme Liberata_, canto xiv, &c. Armida is called Corcereis owing to the beauty and wonder of her enchanted garden. Corcyra was the abode of King Alcinous, of whose court, parks and orchards a famous description is to be found in the seventh _Odyssey_. Martial (xiii, 37), speaks of ‘Corcyraei horti’, a proverbial phrase.
p. 20 _Mum budget._ ‘Mum budget’, meaning ‘hush’, was originally the name of a children’s game which required silence, cf. _Merry Wives of Windsor_, V, iv: ‘I ... cried _mum_ and she cried _budget_.’ cf. also the term ‘Whist’.
p. 22 _Beginning at Eight._ The idea of this little speech is, of course, from Bonnecorse’s _La Montre_, Mrs. Behn’s translation of which will be found with an introduction in Vol. VI, p. 1.
p. 22 _the Bergere._ cf. _The Feign’d Curtezans_ (Vol. II, p. 346): ‘The hour of the Berjere’. and the note on that passage (p. 441).
p. 32 _Ay and No Man._ cf. Prologue to _The False Count_ (Vol. III, p. 100): ‘By Yea and Nay’. and note on that passage (p. 480).
p. 44 _Within a Mile of an Oak._ A proverbial saw. cf. D’Urfey’s _Don Quixote_ (1696), III, Act V, i, where Teresa cries: ‘The Ass was lost yesterday, and Master _Carasco_ tells us your Worship can tell within a mile of an Oak where he is.’
p. 44 _Rustick Antick._ A quaint country dance.
p. 62 _Hypallages._ A figure of speech by which attributes are transferred from their proper subjects to others.
p. 62 _Belli fugaces._ Ovid, _Amorum_, I, 9, has ‘Militat omnis amans et habet sua castra Cupido’, and the idea is common. I have made no attempt to correct the tags of Latinity in this play. Mrs. Behn openly confessed she knew no Latin, and she was ill supplied here. I do not conceive that the words are intentionally faulty and grotesque. Lady Knowell is a pedant, but not ignorant.
p. 65 _Madame Brenvilliers._ Marie-Marguerite d’.ubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers, was executed at Paris 16 July, 1676.
p. 66 _Bilbo-Blades!_ Or oftener ‘bilbo-lords’, = swash-bucklers, cf. _The Pilgrim_ (folio, 1647), V, vi, where Juletta calls the old angry Alphonso ‘My Bilbo Master’.
p. 70 _whip slap-dash._ These nonsensical bywords, which were very popular, are continually in the mouth of Sir Samuel Harty, a silly coxcomb in Shadwell’s _The Virtuoso_ (1676). Nokes, who was acting Sir Credulous, had created Sir Samuel Harty.