[Enter Lucetta]

LUCETTA        What would your ladyship?

JULIA              Is’t near dinner-time?

LUCETTA I would it were,

That you might kill your stomach on your meat

And not upon your maid.

[Lucetta drops the letter and picks it up again]

JULIA What is’t that you

Took up so gingerly?

LUCETTA Nothing.

JULIA Why didst thou stoop then?

LUCETTA To take a paper up that I let fall.

JULIA And is that paper nothing?

LUCETTA Nothing concerning me.

JULIA Then let it lie for those that it concerns.

LUCETTA Madam, it will not lie where it concerns,

Unless it have a false interpreter.   (1.2.66-78)

 

All the stage directions through here are editorial, especially those regarding the letter. (This is something to which I will need to give Much Thought.) Comic scope in Lucetta’s entrance: does she pop up speedily, having been there all along, waiting for Julia to get over herself? Or does she drag her feet? What would your ladyship? It’s formal, but it also means, what do you want now? changed your mind and got over yourself, have you? Julia could be conciliatory—is’t near dinner-time, is it almost time to eat?—or else lose her nerve again, rather than asking for the letter straight away. Not quite time yet, is the implication, and Lucetta’s (perhaps mock) wounded: I would it were, that you might kill your stomach on your meat and not upon your maid. At least if it were dinner-time you’d be able to vent your spleen, sharpen your fangs on your dinner (lunch!) rather than on me, your poor long-suffering servant. Sniff. That I should be treated in such a way! (Shades of the Nurse in R&J.)

 

But the game starts again, with Lucetta dropping the letter, either by chance or—more likely—on purpose, and then picking it up again: oh, what’s this? what is’t that you took up so gingerly? Why are you being so furtive, what did you pick up just then, so surreptitiously? Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. Why didst thou stoop then? Why bend down like that? Try the truth: to take a paper up that I let fall. (They could be smiling at each other by now, both in on the joke? Or else Julia is so overwrought that she’s not really noticing things properly. Mostly—again—it’s about prolonging this comic set piece.) And is that paper nothing? Hmmmm? Well, nothing concerning me; you’re the one who seems to be so worried about it. Then let it lie for those that it concerns; leave it right there for the person whose business it actually is, seeing as it’s none of yours. And Lucetta’s in, with a bit of quick wit, which might also be an attempt to reassure: madam, it will not lie where it concerns, unless it have a false interpreter. Unless you wilfully, or unfaithfully, misread it, it cannot tell a lie; it speaks the truth to and about the person whom it most concerns: you.