SPEED ‘Inprimis. She can milk.’
LANCE Ay, that she can.
SPEED ‘Item. She brews good ale.’
LANCE And thereof comes the proverb, ‘God’s blessing of your heart, you brew good ale.’
SPEED ‘Item. She can sew.’
LANCE That’s as much as to say, ‘Can she so?’
SPEED ‘Item. She can knit.’
LANCE What need a man care for a stock with a wench when she can knit him a stock?
SPEED ‘Item. She can wash and scour.’
LANCE A special virtue, for then she need not be washed and scoured.
SPEED ‘Item. She can spin.’
LANCE Then may I set the world on wheels, when she can spin for her living.
SPEED ‘Item. She hath many nameless virtues.’
LANCE That’s as much as to say ‘bastard virtues’, that indeed know not their fathers, and therefore have no names. (3.1.286-303)
Speed reads. ‘Inprimis—in the first place—she can milk’, as has already been established—but this allows Lance to have a moment of slightly lascivious reverie, ay, that she can. Oh yes. (Or else, ruefulness, oh yes, she can certainly get money and other favours out of a man.) Item. She brews good ale—and perhaps ale rather than the usual domestic small beer, suggests an extra skill rather than an ordinary accomplishment. Lance certainly sees it as a particular advantage, worthy of proverbial praise. ‘God’s blessing of your heart, you brew good ale.’ And she can sew, which is as much as to say, ‘can she so?’ with the emphasis on can, and the opportunity for a knowing look, is that the truth? She can knit. There can be various bawdy implications, apparently, which Lance might acknowledge—but he mostly proposes that what need a man care for a stock with a wench when she can knit him a stock? She won’t need a dowry if she can keep her husband in stockings.
All the opportunity for jokes aside—and they’ll largely fall flat (if not accompanied by obscene gestures) in a modern performance—this is a recognisable set of desirable qualities in a lower class woman in the late sixteenth century. She’s able to work for money, not just keep a house: knitting, like sewing, could be piecework for sale, in particular, and poor girls could be sent to school to learn it, especially as the knitting of stockings (rather than their being sewed out of linen and laced up the back) was a relatively new thing.
She can wash and scour, keep house, do heavy cleaning—but also, as Lance suggests, a special virtue, disturbingly, for then she need not be washed and scoured, be beaten (swashed and scourged). And, of course, she can spin, the archetypal, near taken-for-granted skill of any unmarried woman, and, as Lance says, then may I set the world on wheels, when she can spin for her living. She won’t need me to keep her then, she can earn her own money (spinning was near-subsistence labour, sewing slightly more, knitting slightly more again) while I take it easy. (But—inevitably—the distaff is phallic and therefore there’s the suggestion that she’ll be able to continue to earn money through prostitution.)
In addition, as Speed reads, she hath many nameless virtues, which is as much as to say ‘bastard virtues’, that indeed know not their fathers, and therefore have no names. Not going into any more details about them, says Lance, suggestively—or else, he’s run out of things to say in her praise, and so this is a downmarket version of the device of inexpressibility, so many more things he could say about her, but no words. Although here it could also suggest illegitimate children…
Predictable misogyny aside, it is a brilliant snapshot of women’s labour and how it might be valued; it’s an earthy counterpoint to the abstract blazons of upper class women’s virtues and beauties found so much more often. It speaks to the anxieties of the marriage market and the hard economic realities of lower class life and its considerations—which for working men was less about dowries and heiresses and romance than the immediate potential for household income.
Mostly, though, it’s banter, easy laughs, perhaps especially for a more upperclass audience, who might fancy themselves above such considerations and concerns…
