Note 194 — NOTE ON SYMBOLS (continued 2)

Jew of Malta, i. 36, ‘Enter Barabas in his Counting-house, with heapes of gold before him’. Later his house is taken for a nunnery; he has hid treasure (536) ‘underneath the plancke That runs along the vpper chamber floore’, and Abigail becomes a nun, and (658) throws the treasure from ‘aboue’. He gets another house, and Pilia-Borza describes (iii. 1167) how ‘I chanc’d to cast mine eye vp to the Iewes counting-house’, saw money-bags, and climbed up and stole by night. Arden of Feversham, I., III. v, IV. i, V. i are at Arden’s house at Feversham. From I. I should assume a porch before the house, where Arden and his wife breakfast and (369) ‘Then she throwes down the broth on the grounde’; cf. 55, ‘Call her foorth’, and 637, ‘Lets in’. It can hardly be a hall scene, as part of the continuous action is ‘neare’ the house (318) and at 245 we get ‘This is the painters [Clarke’s] house’, who is called out. There is no difficulty in III. v or IV. i; cf. III. v. 164, ‘let vs in’. But V. i, taken by itself, reads like a hall scene with a counting-house behind. Black Will and Shakebag are hidden in a ‘counting-house’, which has a ‘door’ and a ‘key’ (113, 145, 153). A chair and stool are to be ready for Mosbie and Arden (130). Alice bids Michael (169) ‘Fetch in the tables, And when thou hast done, stand before the counting-house doore’, and (179) ‘When my husband is come in, lock the streete doore’. When Arden comes with Mosbie, they are (229) ‘in my house’. They play at tables and the murderers creep out and kill Arden, and (261), ‘Then they lay the body in the Counting-house’. Susan says (267), ‘The blood cleaueth to the ground’, and Mosbie bids (275) ‘strew rushes on it’. Presently, when guests have come and gone, (342) ‘Then they open the counting-house doore and looke vppon Arden’, and (363) ‘Then they beare the body into the fields’. Francklin enters, having found the body, with rushes in its shoe, ‘Which argueth he was murthred in this roome’, and looking about ‘this chamber’, they find blood ‘in the place where he was wont to sit’ (411–15).