Deep in Long Plackets: Expounding the Riddle of Rochester's “Scotch Fiddle”

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

¹Quotations and line numbers are to the Keith Walker and Nicholas Fisher edition of Rochester's poem. Tunbridge Wells, located thirty miles southeast of London in Kent, was a fashionable Restoration spa. Epsom Wells, the setting for Shadwell's comedy, was an equally fashionable spa lying fourteen miles southwest of London in Surrey.

²See Ashley Chantler for a review of the glosses provided by many of Rochester's modern editors, including David Brooks, Frank Ellis, Paul Hammond, Harold Love, Paddy Lyons, David Vieth, and Keith Walker. Chantler concludes that the Gallant “expresses himself by touching the Damsell's genitals against her will.” Left unexplained is how he manages to touch her in this way. There is no evidence that this fiddling was ever against her will: far from it—she permits him to take these liberties in public.

³Hammond 90. Hammond's gloss reads “Scotch fiddle: an itch, to be relieved sexually.” Like Chantler and Lyons, he fails to explain how this relief is provided but comes close to glossing the expression “gives her a Scotch Fiddle” as the Damsell permitting the Gallant to dexterously bring her to full arousal.

⁴First published in 1673, Shadwell's play comprises five very long single-scene acts. PDFs of this text are available on Early English Books Online, Bibliographic Number: Wing / S2843. 25 June 2012. <http://eebo.chadwyck.com>. As line numbers are not given, all quotations are referenced somewhat clumsily to the Act along with page and signature numbers.

⁵ Whore was not then synonymous with prostitute for whom the usual term was punk, but was applied to adulteresses and fornicatresses whose motivation was sensual pleasure. For example, in the Dramatis Personae for Epsom Wells, Sarah Woodley is described as very whorish.

⁶For Lucia's exchange with Raines, see Epsom Wells: Act 4, p. 69, sig. K3^r.

⁷Notwithstanding Rochester's mention of Cuff and Kick, whose “Buff Belts, Red Coats, and Shammey Breeches” suggest they are officers in the Holland Regiment of Foot Guards–the Buffs, see Epsom Wells: Act 1, p 17, sig. D1^r. Their names, synonymous with ungentlemanly blows, reflect the unpopularity of Charles' six regiment standing army.

⁸See Epsom Wells: Act 1, p. 15, sig. D4^r. Naïvely unaware of his pandering, Mollie Bisket's husband boasts of his spouse to Raines, “She says you play the best at Cribbach of any body, and she loves gaming mightily, and is as true a Gamester, though I say it.”

⁹The linen shift or smock was introduced late in the fourteenth century and when adopted by Isabel of Bavaria, consort to Charles IV of France, became de rigueur for women throughout Western Europe.

¹⁰The Dictionary entry by Williams is similar to that given in the OED.

¹¹See Henry Peacham, The Art of Living in London (1642). PDFs of the text of this eight-page pamphlet are available on Early English Books Online, Bibliographic Number: Wing (2nd ed.) / P942. 25 June 2012. <http://eebo.chadwyck.com>. The first ordinance suppressing stage plays was enacted in September 1642, and more restrictive measures followed.

¹²Tom o' Bedlam confesses to all of the seven deadly sins (11.76–82), a helpful mnemonic for which is PLAGUES—pride, lechery, anger, gluttony usury, envy, and sloth.

¹³Strict grammarians will argue that Scotch Fiddle is a noun phrase. Unfortunately, the precise noun adjunct—and manuscript variants include Scotch, Scottish, Scots, and possibly Scots' or Scot's—remains uncertain as none of the surviving manuscripts are Rochester holographs. Of note, scansion in the line “Of all his Prattle gives her a Scotch Fiddle” is somewhat strained, perhaps deliberately. The author acknowledges several diverting exchanges with Dr. T. L. Williams, Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Victoria, on seventeenth-century grammar.

¹⁴Charles Stuart was more French than Scots. His mother, Henrietta Maria, was sister to Louis XIII of France; his youngest sister, Henrietta, was married to Philippe, Duc d' Orléans, brother to Louis XIV. Prior to the Restoration, Charles, with his brothers James and Henry, spent their exiles in the Spanish Netherlands and France.

¹⁵Frances Teresa Stewart (1647–1702), the eldest daughter of Walter Stewart, was brought up in the old quarters of the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the court of the exiled queen-consort Henrietta Maria for whom Frances' mother was a lady-in-waiting. In 1667, much to the displeasure of the king and without his permission, she married Charles Stuart (1639–1672), the third duke of Richmond and sixth duke of Lennox, a garter knight and a Scottish peer distantly related on the Lennox side to the king. Widowed in 1672, the duchess of Richmond remained at court but never remarried.

¹⁶Sir Alexander Frazier (c.1607–1681), a Royalist confidant and exile, lived in Scotland Yard after the Restoration and in 1664 was appointed principal physician to Charles II. In his diaries, Samuel Pepys refers to Frazier's skills—slipping calves and curing clap—safely terminating inconvenient pregnancies and treating venereal diseases among Charles' courtiers.