Florentine Ladies, The

Anon. (Before 1665 - unknown date)

Historical Records

Thomas Jordan, "A Prologue to a Play call'd The Florentine Ladies, played in the Night by Gentlemen."

You're welcome to our Ladies, and I know

Most courteous Gallants, Ladies will please you;

Though at this hour, or midnight, else I'le swear

Most of our Knights are lost with the last year:

These creatures are of Florence , and not scorn

To let you know they are Italians born;

Your Ladies, worthy Gentlemen, 'tis thought

Love things that are far fetch't and dearly bought:

Why should not they who of this opinion are

Let you love Ladies that are come so far;

It is a question, and they may mistake

Our Ladies to be Ladies of the Lake;

Which in our English broadness is a Whore,

Then what are we, nay they that keep the door;

What are you too, my Masters? something 'tis

That make your Wives thus follow you to this.

A shrew'd suspicion when our wandring Knights

Arrest strange Ladies, and so late at nights;

But there's no hurt, for if they please but you,

We doubt not they'l content your Ladies too.

Pray take't as 'tis, the best we can afford,

If we do please, why so. Hab nab's the word.

"The Epilogue, on New-Years-Day at Night".

With the New Year these Marriages begin,

Which will be broke e're the next year come in,

Unless your hands do give us, all our pains

In Love is lost, if you forbid the banes:

But if you grant us Licence, and appear

Each day to see us thorow the whole year;

Come to our Wedding, to requite your loves,

Shew us your hands we'l fit you all with Gloves.

Thomas Jordan, A Nursery of Novelties (1665) 16-17.

Theatrical Provenance

Unknown beyond what Jordan says.

Probable Genre(s)

Comedy ending in multiple marriages.

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

None known

References to the Play

None known

Critical Commentary

These poems occur in Jordan's collection of mainly occasional writings A Royal Arbor of Loyal Poesie, reissued in 1665 under the title A Nursery of Novelties. As early as Halliwell (99), they were being taken as evidence for a lost play entitled The Florentine Ladies.

Not listed as a separate piece in Sibley.
Harbage (158) includes it with conjectural date range c.1659-1660.
Listed as a separate entry by Bentley (5.1333), who observes, "These titles would suggest an occasional piece by amateurs, but lines 4-8 of the epilogue seem to be more appropriate for professional players… There seems to be no reason to identify The Florentine Ladies with The Florentine Friend".

For What It's Worth

Richard Brome's lost The Florentine Friend is discussed here.

Jordan's date of birth is disputed, but it is clear that he appears in theatrical records from 1635 onwards: so the performance for which these verses were written can hardly have taken place much earlier than around that date. Indeed, it isn't certain that this describes a pre-1642 play, especially since he seems to have been associated with the Red Bull Theatre even during the interregnum period (see Hulse, "Thomas Jordan").

Addition, January 2017

There is an extant play whose principal characters include ladies from Florence: and which uses the specific phrase "the Florentine Ladyes" to describe them in its opening exchanges. That play is Edward Sharpham's Florence-set comedy The Fleire (1607), in which Signor Antifront, recently unseated as ruler of Florence, disguises himself as a "fleire" or jeerer, while his two spirited daughters Florida and Felicia relocate to London and set up as prostitutes. (They do indeed actually practise this career for a while before being happily married off at the end). The key exchange occurs near the start of the third scene of the play, where a customer is seeking out their brothel:

GENTLEMAN Doe the Florentine Ladyes dwell heere?

FROMAGIA Yes forsooth sir, I am a poore Gentlewoman that followes 'am.

And they are described again, in Act Five, as the "two Florentine Ladies".

Jordan's prologue and epilogue would fit perfectly well with The Fleire, although there is of course a considerable gap in time between what is known of The Fleire and the era of Jordan.

Further addition, January 2017

In fact, it is possible to close that gap a little. Famously, one quarto copy of The Fleire, now at the British Library, is marked up with what appear to be early modern playhouse cuts and adaptations, suggesting that the play did indeed have a later performance history of the sort posited here. The general effect of those cuts, as Clifford Leech notes, is to downplay the role of the central character Antifront, and excise all the descriptions of him as a "Fleire". Whatever this revised play would be called, it could not well be called "The Fleire".

Works Cited

Halliwell, James O. A Dictionary of Old English Plays. London: John Russell Smith, 1860.

Hulse, Lynn. ‘Jordan, Thomas (c.1614–1685)’, Oxford DNB, 2004, online edn, Jan 2008.

Sharpham, Edward. The fleire. London: F. B[urton], 1607.

Site created and maintained by Matthew Steggle, Sheffield Hallam University: updated January 11 2017.