Sub.Royal Dol!
Spoken like Claridiana,[1] and thyself.
Face.For which at supper, thou shalt sit in triumph,
And not be styled Dol Common, but Dol Proper,
Dol Singular: the longest cut at night,
Shall draw thee for his Doll Particular.
[Bell rings without.
Sub.Who's that? one rings. To the window, Dol: [Exit Dol.]—pray heaven,
The master do not trouble us this quarter.
Face.O, fear not him. While there dies one a week
O' the plague, he's safe, from thinking toward London.
Beside, he's busy at his hop-yards now;
I had a letter from him. If he do,
He'll send such word, for airing of the house,
As you shall have sufficient time to quit it:
Though we break up a fortnight, 'tis no matter.
Re-enter Dol.
Sub.Who is it, Dol?
Dol.A fine young quodling.[2]
- ↑ Spoken like Claridiana,] The heroine of that interminable romance, the Mirror of Knighthood, who, after a world of turmoil and fighting, espouses the knight of the sun, the darling of "the fair Lindabrides," so often mentioned by our poet.
- ↑ Dol. A fine young quodling.] "A quodling, or codling; metaphorically, a too soon ripe-headed young boy. By the same metaphor below he is called a puffin, i.e. malum pulmoneum."
This strange note Whalley found in Upton, and continued,
To his most worsted worship.] Dol grows quite facetious at "don Provost's" expense. Crewel, a word which frequently occurs in our old poets, and seldom without suggesting a pun, as here, means a finer kind of yarn, of which trimmings were occasionally made. "His most worsted worship," in the present exaltation of Dorothy's mind, is, perhaps, his most baffled worship. Not the worst quibble in these volumes.
