Thomas Nabbs

Totenham Court - A Pleasant Comedy

1639. H. Hills, 1709.

The Deer fed well, Sir, only a Mischance. Some Cuckold's Cur (for I saw him run towards London) had pulled down two or three young Deer.

Slip is making his report to the Keeper of Marrowbone [Marylebone] Park, who replies, 'Well, Sirrah, round you the South-side o' th' Park; and meet me at the great Oak.' (Act 1, Scene 5).

What a dainty life the Milk-maid leads
When over the flow'ry Meads
She dabbles in the Dew,
And sings to her Cow...

The play is set in 'Totenham [Tottenham] Court and the fields about it'. Act 1, Scene 3 ends with Cicely the milkmaid's offstage song.

The Park here has fine conveniences, or Totenham-Court's close by. Tis suspected that fine City Ladies give away fine things to Court Lords for a Country Banquet there...I will go to my Cows and leave you to the Fare of the Morning: Despair not of a Customer; but be sure I catch you not napping; for if I do, I have less Mercy than Prentices at Shrovetide. I hate hedge-coupling worse than fasting at Christmas.

In the park Cicely encounters a distressed maiden, Bellamie, who is fleeing from her uncle, and whose bedraggled appearance leads Cicely to mistake her for a whore. See the George Bernard Shaw entry for an opinion on hedge-coupling in the park some 250 years later.

The Park's reputation as a haunt of prostitutes was frequently alluded to by contemporary dramatists. In The Roaring Girl (Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker, 1611), Laxton tells his coachman to drive 'to the hither end of Marybone Park, a fit place for Moll to get in' (Act 3, Sc 1). A real-life character, Moll Cutpurse was a notorious prostitute, pick-pocket and highway robber. In A Fair Quarrel (Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, 1614) Trimtram sings:

He that the reason would know, let him hark,
Why these three were buried near Marybone Park;
These three were a pander, a bawd and a whore,
That sucked many dry to the bones before...