Meaning
- Corinna
- Drury-Lane
- Pride of Drury-Lane
- Sigh – An expression of loss
- For whom no shepherd sighs in vain – Even a shepherd doesn’t want Corinna
- Covent Garden
- Never did Covent Garden boast so bright a battered, strolling toast;
- No drunken rake to pick her up
- No cellar where on tick to sup;
- Returning at the midnight hour;
- Four stories climbing to her bow’r;
- Bow’r;
- Then, seated on a three-legged chair,
- Takes off her artificial hair:
- Now, picking out a crystal eye,
- She wipes it clean, and lays it by.
- Her eye-brows from a mouse’s hide,
- Stuck on with art on either side,
- Pulls off with care, and first displays ’em,
- Then in a play-book smoothly lays ’em.
Meaning
-
Dexterously – With experience
-
Plumpers – Usually artificial lips but here, a padding to fill the jaws.
-
Untwists – Unfolds
-
Rags
-
Contrived
-
Prop
-
Flabby dugs
Proceeding on, the lovely goddess
Unlaces next her steel-ribbed bodice;
Which by the operator’s skill,
Press down the lumps, the hollows fill,
Up goes her hand, and off she slips
The bolsters that supply her hips.
Meaning
- Proceeding on – Further more
- The lovely goddess – Corinna
- Unlaces – Unties
- Steel-ribbed
- Bodice – A woman’s sleeveless undergarment with laces
- Which by the operator’s skill,
- Press down the lumps, the hollows fill,
- Up goes her hand, and off she slips
- Bolsters – Padding
But must, before she goes to bed,
Rub off the dawbs of white and red;
And smooth the furrows in her front
With greasy paper stuck upon’t.
She takes a bolus ere she sleeps;
And then between two blankets creeps.
Meaning
-
Explores
-
Shankers
-
Issues – Discharge of pus
-
Running sores,
-
Effects of many a sad disaster
-
Plaister
-
Dawbs – Daubs
-
Dawbs of white and red
-
Furrows – Wrinkles
-
Bolus – Pill
-
Between two blankets creeps
- Lies – Corinna lies down to sleep
-
Tormented – Tortured
-
With pains of love tormented lies
Or if she chance to close her eyes,
Of Bridewell and the Compter dreams,
And feels the lash, and faintly screams;
Or, by a faithless bully drawn,
At some hedge-tavern lies in pawn;
Or to Jamaica seems transported,
Alone, and by no planter courted;
Or, near Fleet-Ditch’s oozy brinks,
Surrounded with a hundred stinks,
Belated, seems on watch to lie,
And snap some cully passing by;
Or, struck with fear, her fancy runs
On watchmen, constables and duns,
From whom she meets with frequent rubs;
But, never from religious clubs;
Whose favor she is sure to find,
Because she pays ’em all in kind.
Meaning
- Bridewell and the Compter
- Lash
- Faithless – Not trustworthy; cheat
- Bully
- drawn
- At some hedge-tavern lies in pawn;
- Or to Jamaica seems transported,
- Alone, and by no planter courted;
- Or, near Fleet-Ditch’s oozy brinks,
- Surrounded with a hundred stinks,
- Belated, seems on watch to lie,
- Cully – An innocent, gullible person
- Or, struck with fear, her fancy runs
- On watchmen, constables and duns,
- From whom she meets with frequent rubs;
- But, never from religious clubs;
- Whose favor she is sure to find,
- Because she pays ’em all in kind.
Corinna wakes. A dreadful sight!
Behold the ruins of the night!
A wicked rat her plaster stole,
Half eat, and dragged it to his hole.