78
ROMEO AND JULIET
[ACT II.
| Nurse. | An[C 1] a' speak anything against me, I'll take him down, an a' were lustier than he is, and twenty such Jacks;[E 1] and if I cannot, I'll find those that shall. Scurvy knave! I am none of his flirt-gills;[C 2][E 2] I am none of his skains-mates.[C 3][E 3]165 —[To Peter.[C 4]] And thou must stand by too, and suffer every knave to use me at his pleasure? |
| Peter. | I saw no man use you at his pleasure; if I had, my weapon should quickly have170 been out, I warrant you.[C 5] I dare draw as soon as another man, if I see occa- sion in a good quarrel, and the law on my side. |
| Nurse. | Now, afore God, I am so vexed, that every175 |
- ↑ 163. Jacks] Often in Shakespeare and other writers used contemptuously for fellow, as in Merchant of Venice, iii. iv. 77.
- ↑ 165. flirt-gills] Another form is gill-flirt; a woman of light or loose behaviour; also flirt-gillian (Gill and Gillian for Juliana). Gill was commonly used for wench, as in "Every Jack must have his Gill." Beaumont and Fletcher, Knight of the Burning Pestle, iv. i.: "You heard him take me up like a flirt Gill, and sing baudy songs upon me."
- ↑ 165. skains-mates] Not explained with certainty. Malone supposed it to mean cut-throat companions, from skain or skene (a word well known to Elizabethan writers), a knife. To get the sex, that seems the more suitable, Kinnear conjectures, "I am for none of his skains-mates." Douce supposes that sempstresses is meant, from "skein" of thread. This seems to me not improbable, for sempsters (fem.) had an ill repute; so Westward Hoe (Pearson's Dekker, ii. p. 291), "as stale as … an Exchange sempster"; and compare the opening of the The Roaring Girl, where Mary Fitzallard, disguised as a sempster, is addressed as "emblem of fragility," and is assumed to have immoral designs. M. Mason suggests a blunder for kinsmates (kins-mates, Professor Littledale suggests, = mates of his kind; see Skeat's Chaucer, Glossary, Noskinnes). Walker, "scurvy mates." Staunton says that a Kentishman told him that skain was formerly a familiar term in parts of Kent for scape-grace.
