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The fayre mayde of the Exchange:[...]
1607

STC 13317 copy 1, title page

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STC 13317 copy 1, title page
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Title: The fayre mayde of the Exchange: with the pleasaunt humours of the cripple of Fanchurch. Very delectable, and full of mirth.
Date: London : Printed [by Valentine Simmes] for Henry Rockit, and are to be solde at the shop in the Poultrey vnder the Dyall, 1607.
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call number and opening: STC 13317 copy 1, title page & sigs. G2v-G3r
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Item Title
The fayre mayde of the Exchange: with the pleasaunt humours of the cripple of Fanchurch. Very delectable, and full of mirth.
Item Date
London : Printed [by Valentine Simmes] for Henry Rockit, and are to be solde at the shop in the Poultrey vnder the Dyall, 1607.
Repository
Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call Number
STC 13317 copy 1, title page

STC 13317 copy 1, signatures G2 verso and G3 recto

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STC 13317 copy 1, signatures G2 verso and G3 recto
Click image to enlarge

Institution Rights and Document Citation

Terms of use
Images that are under Folger copyright are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This allows you to use our images without additional permission provided that you cite the Folger Shakespeare Library as the source and you license anything you create using the images under the same or equivalent license. For more information, including permissions beyond the scope of this license, see Permissions. The Folger waives permission fees for non-commercial publication by registered non-profits, including university presses, regardless of the license they use. For images copyrighted by an entity other than the Folger, please contact the copyright holder for permission information.

Copy-specific information
Title: The fayre mayde of the Exchange: with the pleasaunt humours of the cripple of Fanchurch. Very delectable, and full of mirth.
Date: London : Printed [by Valentine Simmes] for Henry Rockit, and are to be solde at the shop in the Poultrey vnder the Dyall, 1607.
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call number and opening: STC 13317 copy 1, title page & sigs. G2v-G3r
View online bibliographic record

Item Title
The fayre mayde of the Exchange: with the pleasaunt humours of the cripple of Fanchurch. Very delectable, and full of mirth.
Item Date
London : Printed [by Valentine Simmes] for Henry Rockit, and are to be solde at the shop in the Poultrey vnder the Dyall, 1607.
Repository
Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call Number
STC 13317 copy 1, sigs. G2v-G3r

Institution Rights and Document Citation

Terms of use
Images that are under Folger copyright are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This allows you to use our images without additional permission provided that you cite the Folger Shakespeare Library as the source and you license anything you create using the images under the same or equivalent license. For more information, including permissions beyond the scope of this license, see Permissions. The Folger waives permission fees for non-commercial publication by registered non-profits, including university presses, regardless of the license they use. For images copyrighted by an entity other than the Folger, please contact the copyright holder for permission information.

Copy-specific information
Title: The fayre mayde of the Exchange: with the pleasaunt humours of the cripple of Fanchurch. Very delectable, and full of mirth.
Date: London : Printed [by Valentine Simmes] for Henry Rockit, and are to be solde at the shop in the Poultrey vnder the Dyall, 1607.
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call number and opening: STC 13317 copy 1, title page & sigs. G2v-G3r
View online bibliographic record

Erin A. McCarthy, "The Fayre Mayde of the Exchange: Venus and Adonis quoted and referred to by title," Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/191.

Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 13317 copy 1. See Shakespeare Documentedhttps://doi.org/10.37078/191.

The Fayre Mayde of the Exchange, possibly written by Thomas Heywood, and printed in 1607, alludes to lines 229-40 of Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis. In these lines Venus likens her body to a deer park and offers Adonis a private tour of the grounds. Shakespeare’s popular narrative poem, first printed in 1593, is also named specifically in the play.

In The Fayre Mayde, Bowdler, who is described in the dramatis personae (character list) as “an humorous gallant,” tells Cripple that he wishes to woo Mall Berry but that he is “not furnish’d of a courting phrase, to throw at a dogge,” much less at the “glorious angell.” When Cripple asks if he can remember anything from his reading, Bowdler admits that he “neuer read any thing but Venus and Adonis.” Cripple replies encouragingly: “Why that’s the very quintessence of loue.” Unfortunately, neither Bowdler nor Mall quite understands the poem — Bowdler asks her to “alight [her] steede,” although, as Cripple notes, “shees not on horsebacke,” while Bowdler’s offer to smother her with kisses simply makes her wonder why his breath is so hot. When his efforts go unrewarded, he concludes that the poem itself is to blame: “Venus her selfe with all her skill could not winne Adonis, with the same wordes: O heauens! was I so fond then to thinke that I could conquer Mall Berry? O the naturall fluence of my owne with had been farre better!”

If the play was in fact written by Heywood, it would be consistent with what Katherine Duncan-Jones has shown was a lifelong interest in the poem, which he also alluded to in Oenone and Paris (1594) and The Brazen Age (1613). Venus and Adonis was tremendously popular, as demonstrated by its many re-printings and the range of references and allusions to the work. This particular passage was alluded to and reworked by many authors in a wide range of contexts. The same lines quoted in The Fayre Mayde are included in The Dumbe Knight (1608) and transcribed by Henry Colling.

The Folger Shakespeare Library owns two copies of this edition; the copy shown here was previously owned by the Shakespeare scholar and forger John Payne Collier and then by Herbert T. Griffiths, before Mr. Folger purchased it. Five more copies are held at the British Library, the National University of Scotland, the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, and the Huntington Library.

 

 

Written by Erin A. McCarthy

Sources

DEEP: Database of Early English Playbooks. Ed. Alan B. Farmer and Zachary Lesser. Created 2007. Accessed 22 January 2016. <http://deep.sas.upenn.edu>.

Hilton Kelliher, “Unrecorded Extracts from Shakespeare, Sidney and Dyer.” English Manuscript Studies, 1100-1700 2 (1990): 163–87.

F.J. Furnivall, C.M. Ingleby, and L. Toulmin Smith, comps., The Shakspere Allusion-Book: A Collection of Allusions to Shakspere from 1591 to 1700, ed. John Munro (London: Oxford University Press, 1932): 1:177.

Last updated June 8, 2020