varlet: a rascal or disreputable character, from the Old French vaslet
of droplets: i.e., only has a little urine left. Possibly a reference to the use of the aspergillum to sprinkle holy water in religious ceremonies, as if Woo is blessing the rug.
chalcedony: a fine mineral, similar to quartz. Named for the Bithynian port town of Chalcedon.
house-broken: versed in sanitary excretory habits suitable for civilised living; in casual speech, meaning docile or peaceably mannered.
Whitsun: Pentecost; from ‘White Sun,’ the seventh Sunday after Easter. This feast commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ’s apostles. Morris-dancing figured heavily in celebrations of Pentecost.
morris-dance: an English folk dance that often incorporates handkerchiefs or other waved props. Shakespearean actor Will Kempe famously morris-danced from London to Norwich in nine days.
scythe: an agricultural tool used to reap crops and/or souls
geometer’s cap: the ceremonial headwear earned by dint of effort and high achievement in the field of spatial mathematics
unhappy: unfortunate
attend: pay attention to
groundlings: the lowest tier of theatregoers in Shakespeare’s day, socially, financially, and geographically. The price for standing-room-only seats below the stage was one penny.
bower: a shaded refuge
fulcrum: support for a lever; from the Latin fulcire, to prop
toughs: hoodlums, ruffians of the common street
aggression uncheck’d: possibly a reference to a lost early draft of Queen Elizabeth’s speech to her troops at Tilbury in 1588 in which she exhorted them to defend against the Spanish Armada
element: favourable environment
doctor of physic: physician. Walter is probably referring to Chaucer’s learned character in ‘The Physician’s Tale,’ one of the early episodes of The Canterbury Tales.
man of middle earth: a mortal existing on Earth, rather than on planes above or below
speak plain: i.e., make it clear
rate of usance: i.e., interest rate
man of Orient birth: an émigré from Eastern Asia
issue: the matter in dispute
line in the sand: Walter is referring to a famous incident in military history. Gaius Popillius Laenas, Senator of Rome, confronted the invading Seleucid Emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanes and drew a circle in the sand around him as a warning. (Legend also has it that the outnumbered Spartan army drew a line in the sand at Thermopylae, although this is unverifiable.)
nomenclature: naming convention
griefs: grievances
of high sentence: of educated verbiage and lofty opinions. Walter here again quotes Chaucer, borrowing from his description of the Clerk.
verily: certainly, truly. Used frequently to fill a pause or render emphasis, as ‘like’ or ‘man’ in the modern vernacular.
tide: time. ‘Miserable tide’ also refers to the water passed on the Knave’s rug, and hints at Shakespeare’s love of sea accident as plot device: see Twelfth Night and The Tempest.
rogues: villains, vagabonds or otherwise disreputable sorts
besmirch: stain, sully
ope: open
Marry: a mild oath, derived from ‘Mary’ (i.e., the Virgin Mary)
twelvemonth: year
Queen: probably not Elizabeth. The work is not set precisely in Shakespeare’s own time, but mixes characters from several historical moments and mindsets. Assuming Two Gentlemen is set in England, the best candidate for the King in question is Edward III, who built up the military, revised the tax structure, reinforced the notion of English exceptionalism, and reigned into old age. He enjoyed great popularity in his own time, but was subject to more critical views thereafter.
issue: offspring
loins: euphemism for genitals
cuckold: a man whose wife, who is the issue here, is cheating on him. Cuckoldry is a favorite Shakespearean trope.
smoking of the pipe: not necessarily tobacco. Recent excavations of Shakespeare’s Stratford home have revealed evidence of cannabis. Furthermore, in Sonnet LXXVI, he claims to ‘keep invention in a noted weed.’
armoury: military storehouse for weapons and ammunition
comedy of errors: a lighthearted play, often featuring mistaken identity as a plotline—another favorite Shakespearean device
shower of gold: a possible reference to the Titian painting Danaë and the Shower of Gold. The 1554 oil-on-canvas piece depicts Zeus descending to Earth to impregnate a woman; this wording might foreshadow the Knave’s tryst with Maude. In his biography Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari notes that Michelangelo critiqued the painting harshly, citing Titian’s inattention to technique as proof that artists from Venice were lazy.
abide: subscribe to a highly respectable philosophy
sirrah: a condescending form of address to a man considered to be in lower social standing than the speaker
pledge fealty: swear allegiance
motley: a garment of many colours, the traditional costume of jesters and fools; wearing motley showed they were excluded from sumptuary laws (laws that reinforced existing social hierarchies by restricting the purchase of clothing, food, and luxuries) and marked their (lack of) place in the social order. The fool was of no class; he was simply a man for his time and place.
jack-a-dandy: a foppish, impertinent person
shrewish: difficult and unpleasant
achievers: those who have attained their goals by their own efforts; also, members of a valued fan base
pox: a curse or disease, often sexually transmittable
condole: mourn over, sympathise with
gentle: well-born, courteous
verdant: green, from the Middle French verdoyant
hey-nonny-no … hey-nonny-nonny: nonsense refrain for lighthearted songs (compare with ‘na-na-na’ today)
blow: as in modern slang usage
good interest: sexual reference, probably. As author Terry Pratchett puts it, ‘the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them.’
common hump, where grass doth grow: the mound on which a woman’s pubic hair grows
country: a vulgar pun on a slang term for female genitals
foot … south … maw … case: double entendres
serve your turn … cool my hot temper: perform the sexual act
painted lady: prostitute
tongue most moved: i.e., capable of dexterous speech and cunning linguistics
nihilist: an adherent to a philosophical doctrine that denies that human existence has any intrinsic purpose, meaning, or value; from the Latin nihil, meaning nothing. No record of the term survives from Shakespeare’s day, but the notion itself arises with surprising frequency in his work.
gentle cock: a reference to 15th-century bawdy poem (‘I have a gentil cok / Crowyt me day …’). The author is unknown but suspected to be a Suffolk monk.
help him to success: i.e., cause him to achieve sexual climax
shillings: coinage established in the Tudor era, valued at one-twentieth of a pound
Neptune: the Roman god of water and horses
humour: temperament, attitude; also, bodily fluid
ere: before
bowling green: a lawn used for bowls. Many towns had lawns and (more disreputably) alleys; private bowling greens were also a feature of upper-class gardens of the day. Lower-class greens and alleys might well have been sloped and uneven, and frequented by those unable to achieve on a level field of play.
I had those words: i.e., I heard that
Jerusalem: the holiest city in Judaism, now capital of the state of Israel
An: if
Cynthia: an uncommon name in Shakespeare’s day; an alternate name for Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt and of the moon. In addition to fueling the Knave’s perception of Walter’s own illogical,
Dionysian tendencies, the divine name indicates Walter’s ‘worship’ of his former wife.
retrograde: opposed
cur: dog
lunatics: insanity, from the Latin luna, moon—appropriate as Walter’s crazed actions here stem from Cynthia
horn: referring to the horns or antlers worn by a cuckold
shrew: a sharp-tongued woman
seek the isle within the brook: engage in coitus
husbandry: the care and management of animals. Walter is punning on his former status as Cynthia’s husband.
cavalier: a gallant gentleman or knight; or, used as an adjective, casual or carefree
l’oeuf: French for ‘the egg,’ i.e., zero; punning on ‘love’
frame: box on a score-sheet, or perhaps a line in a book of gambling accounts. Betting ran rampant in the lower-class Elizabethan bowling alley and contributed to its spotted reputation.
Smokey: a pun on Smoke’s name and insubstantial quality
strain’d: compelled, stirred by force
equivocate: hedge, evade the truth
world of pain … lake of fire: hell; as a Jew, Walter may be thinking of Gehenna, which has a gate and a lake of molten fire. On the other hand, he may simply be paraphrasing Troilus and Cressida: ‘With such a hell of pain and world of charge …’
vulgar tongue: common language
put up thy sword: put your sword back into its sheath. Possibly quoting Christ: ‘Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword’ (Matthew 26:52).
faculty: cognitive or perceptual capacity; from the Latin facultatem, meaning power or ability
arithmetic: i.e., logical capability
fig: a worthless trifle or a rude gesture
I’ll none: i.e., I will not comply
pacifism: an emotional problem
beshrew me: a mild oath
Exeter: the lowest bridging point of the River Exe. Its name stems from the Celtic isca, or water, so this is probably a generic, poetic reference to all water flowing under proverbial bridges.
rakes: debauchees; from ‘rakehell,’ itself from the Middle English rakel, meaning hasty or headstrong
fortnight: two weeks
Mesopotamian: a resident of the region corresponding to parts of modern-day Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran
calmness: placidity, serenity; a quality easily compared
By carriage: in addition to being a means of conveyance, ‘carriage’ refers to one’s demeanour or behaviour. Brandt may be implying that Lebowski chose the Knave by his carriage, i.e., because of how he carries himself.
Flourish: ceremonial fanfare for a court scene
Sans: without, from the French
loaden branches: i.e., branches weighed down with heavy fruit or snow
golden fire: owning a home with fireplace and chimney indicated a higher economic class. Fire is also a traditionally masculine symbol.
pelf: possessions
Job: the subject of a wager between God and Satan; possibly an additional crack at the Knave’s lack of employment
tests in cause betwixt his stance: those organs that dangle between the legs
suits of woe: black clothes of mourning
luminescence: glowing light; as used here, a portmanteau of ‘illumination’ and ‘essence’
rags and tatters: in bits and pieces. Possible nod to same construction as ‘lady of the Strachy’ (‘the lady of rags and tatters’) as seen in Twelfth Night. This theory is best explained by Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke in The Shakespeare Key (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1879).
pieces broke in eight: the Knave confuses the Spanish dollar, worth eight reales, for the English pound. (The coin could literally be broken into eight pieces to make change.) Given the frosty state of affairs between England and Spain at this time, the Knave’s conflation presumably reflects his negative view of Bonnie’s captors.
courier: messenger, from the Latin currere, to run
murk: darkness, from the Old Norse myrkr
visages: faces, countenances
sexton: not a sexual reference, for once
strike: a well-placed hit, attack
palpable: detectable, noticeable
manhood: one’s Johnson
page-boy: a male servant, usually younger than fourteen years old
paederast: a participant in sexual conduct with an adolescent boy, from the Greek paiderastia
in time of ninepins: during the sacred hours set aside for a league match
rug-pissers: urinators upon a carpet or other domestic floor covering
Muscovy: the Russian province centred near Moscow
walrus: a tusked sea-mammal, also called a ‘morse’; from the Old Norse hrossvalr, horse-whale. A surprising amount of information on Elizabethan walrus science is available in Emma Phipson’s The Animal-Lore of Shakespeare’s Time (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co., 1883).
hobby-horse: a loose woman, easy to ride
rank: foul-smelling
flax-wench: a low-quality prostitute. Spinning or working with flax fiber was considered a lower-class occupation.
Lenten: i.e., given up for Lent (Walter is suggesting that Donald has taken leave of his senses); also ‘lenten,’ meaning short or lean.
strumpet: a prostitute. Possible etymologies for the term include the Latin stuprare, to have illicit sexual relations with, or strupum, dishonour or violation; the Middle Dutch strompe, stocking; the French tromper, to cheat or deceive; the Swiss Strubel, rude or unpolished person; the Low Saxon strüne, prostitute; and the list goes on. See Anatoly Liberman, An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008).
fens: swamps
Hail, masters!: Quince’s interruption is best read in context. Bowling ascended to its rightfully great place in Elizabethan history in 1588, when, according to legend, Francis Drake was interrupted mid-game to be informed of the Spanish Armada’s arrival near Cornwall. Quince’s flamboyance should thus be read with a sneering Iberian overtone; given their victory, an English audience would have understood his confidence as just his opinion, man.
Sodomites: in Shakespeare’s time, sodomy referred both to anal intercourse and other unacceptable behaviours, including child molestation and bestiality, considered acts of treason and capital offences. Sodomy was prohibited by a law in 1562 that strengthened an earlier 1533 statute against ‘buggery.’
By Jove!: a mild oath, from the common name for Jupiter. It may allude to the tale of Jove and Ganymede, in which the god falls in love with a beautiful young man and makes him his page-boy.
jade’s tricks: uncooperative and deliberately dilatory behaviour, like that of a ‘jade’ (an old and broken horse) refusing to move
gizzard: the ventriculus or gastric mill; also guts or innards
Coriolanus: Gaius Marcus Coriolanus, assassinated for his failure to betray Rome, as told in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus
Zounds!: a mild oath, for ‘God’s wounds’
porter: gatekeeper, from the Latin porta, gate
short-hair’d damsel: given the Elizabethan preference for long hair on women, this is possibly a nod to the practice of employing boys to play female characters on stage in Shakespeare’s day
flying carpet / From Arabian legend: One Thousand and One Nights had not yet been published in English in Shakespeare’s time. The stories, however, had been circulating for centuries, and some would have doubtless made it to a bustling city like London.
sooth: truth
Fain: gladly, happily
emissary: representative
Take pains: make strong efforts, strive to succeed
troth: truth, faith
dissolution: acts of decay or indulgence, lacking in restraint
witching hours: the time of maximum power for ghosts, demons, and other supernatural beings, usually at midnight or from midnight to 3 a.m.
ringer: a pro
xy or substitute deployed in a foolproof scheme
dervish: a performer of Sufi dances that induce religious ecstasy
jerkins: short, sleeveless, close-fitting jackets worn over doublets
French hose: tight breeches
hawk: a plasterer’s receptacle for mixed concoctions; unlike the Knave’s later mention of eagles, this is not a reference to a despised predatory bird. The Knave is asking Walter if he intends to pass one tool (the ringer) for another (the actual bag of money).
unfold yourself: i.e., reveal your identity
evening star: a celestial light used in navigation; probably Venus
amateurs: lovers, from the French, itself from the Latin amator. The modern use of the term (meaning hobbyist or dabbler) dates from the 18th century; here, Walter questions the nihilists’ manliness.
bescreen’d: concealed, hidden
the big Lebowski: the superior or less modestly achieving Lebowski. Some scholars contend that this name also refers to a now-lost play of that era, appealing to a ravenous and devoted base of theatregoers who would quote the work incessantly, analyse its underlying philosophy, and celebrate it with feasts culminating in ale, Maypole-dancing, and ninepins. The critical debate rages on.
scheme and subtle gore: a cunning, insidious plot involving violence
selfsame: i.e., one and the same
Retain thy state: i.e., stay in your current position or condition, do not change course. As Walter has already acted, the Knave may mean ‘restrain thy state.’
match of open air: a game of bowls played outside. The public green was considered a more reputable place to play than an alley, and this is, after all, a league game.
slops: loose lower garment, wide breeches
low Dutch: what we today simply call Dutch. ‘High Dutch’ would have referred to Germans.
anon: imminently
Pomeranians: a breed of small dog from Pomerania. The region is now eastern Germany, or part of Poland; this term subtly unites Walter’s Polish Catholic ancestry and his dislike of Germans.
car: chariot. Might be used colloquially here to mean a horse-cart or carriage. Shakespeare usually employed this term in reference to the sun god Phoebus, and the chariot that took the sun across the sky; this foreshadows the fiery fate of the Knave’s vehicle.
Two Gentlemen of Lebowski Page 8
