Study Edition · Essay 6
A Chambermaid
Source: Overbury's Characters (1614 onward), in Henry Morley (ed.), Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century (1891). Text from Project Gutenberg #10699. Archaic verb forms modernized; vocabulary kept and glossed.
A “character” is a short, witty prose sketch of a social type, a genre that was hugely fashionable in Jacobean England. This one mocks a lady's maid: vain, gossipy, romance-addled and, the writer hints, not very chaste. Much of the humour is innuendo, so the notes explain the jokes plainly. Like many of the “Overbury” characters, it may have been written by one of his circle rather than by Overbury himself.
10 sentences: 1 simple, 6 moderate, 3 complex. Hover a number for its paraphrase; click it for the full note.
Key Vocabulary
- chambermaida lady's personal maid
- paintingmake-up; cosmetics
- industrybusy work; diligence
- drawera tavern servant who draws beer
- starchersomeone who starches linen collars and ruffs
- green sicknessan anaemia of young women, jokingly said to be cured by sex or marriage
- goodliestfinest; best
- great bellypregnancy
- lady-erranta female knight-errant, a wandering heroine of romance
- pedanta household tutor; a schoolmaster
- credulityreadiness to believe; gullibility
- articlesformal questions, as in a legal interrogation
- tackedloosely stitched together
- utterancethe power to express oneself in words
- erebefore
The Essay
She is her mistress's she secretary, and keeps the box of her teeth, her hair, and her painting very private.1 Her industry is upstairs and downstairs, like a drawer; and by her dry hand you may know she is a sore starcher.2 If she lies at her master's bed's feet, she is quit of the green sickness for ever, for she has terrible dreams when she's awake, as if she were troubled with the nightmare.3 She has a good liking to dwell in the country, but she holds London the goodliest forest in England to shelter a great belly.4 She reads Greene's works over and over, but is so carried away with the “Mirror of Knighthood,” she is many times resolved to run out of her self and become a lady-errant.5 The pedant of the house, though he promises her marriage, cannot grow further inward with her; she has paid for her credulity often, and now grows weary.6 She likes the form of our marriage very well, in that a woman is not tied to answer to any articles concerning questions of virginity.7 Her mind, her body, and clothes are parcels loosely tacked together, and for want of good utterance she perpetually laughs out her meaning.8 Her mistress and she help to make away time to the idlest purpose that can be, either for love or money.9 In brief, these chambermaids are like lotteries: you may draw twenty ere one worth anything.10
Sentence Notes
In plain English: She is her mistress's private secretary, and keeps the secret box of false teeth, false hair and make-up hidden away.
Reference & context: The joke: the lady's beauty is partly artificial, and only the maid knows it. False teeth and wigs were common among wealthy women of the time.
In plain English: She's always running up and down stairs, like a barman fetching drinks; and her dry, rough hands show she does a great deal of starching.
Reference & context: Fashion: the huge starched ruffs of the period needed constant laundering and re-starching.
In plain English: If she sleeps at the foot of her master's bed, she will never suffer from “green sickness” again, because she has “terrible dreams” while awake, as if the nightmare were visiting her. In other words, the master is sleeping with her.
Reference & context: Innuendo: “green sickness” was believed to strike young unmarried women and to be cured by sexual intercourse. The “nightmare” was imagined as a demon that sat on a sleeper's chest.
Modernized: lie → lies; hath → has
In plain English: She quite likes living in the country, but she thinks London is the best place in England to hide in if she gets pregnant.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A sly comic image: crowded London as a “forest” where a fugitive can disappear.
Reference & context: Social history: an unmarried pregnant servant faced disgrace and dismissal; London's crowds offered anonymity.
Modernized: hath → has
In plain English: She reads Robert Greene's romances again and again, but she is so swept away by The Mirror of Knighthood that she often decides to escape her own life and become a wandering heroine, like a female knight-errant.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: “Run out of her self” is a lovely double phrase: running away from home, and losing herself in fiction.
Reference & context: Literary: Robert Greene (1558–1592) wrote popular romantic prose fiction. The Mirror of Knighthood was a long Spanish chivalric romance translated into English, the same kind of book that drives Cervantes's Don Quixote mad (Part I, 1605).
In plain English: The family's tutor promises to marry her, but he can't get any closer to her; she has been fooled by such promises too many times and has learned her lesson.
Modernized: promise → promises; hath → has
In plain English: She approves of the English wedding service, because it doesn't require a bride to answer any questions about her virginity.
Reference & context: The Church of England marriage service in the Book of Common Prayer asks about impediments to marriage, but not about the bride's past.
In plain English: Her mind, body and clothes all seem loosely tacked together, and because she can't express herself well, she giggles to get her meaning across.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: Two sharp images: a person assembled like a badly sewn garment, and someone who laughs because she lacks the words.
In plain English: She and her mistress waste time together as idly as can be, whether in love affairs or gambling for money.
In plain English: In short, chambermaids are like lottery tickets: you might draw twenty before you find one worth anything.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A punchy closing comparison that is cruel and funny at once, typical of the character genre's ending.
Reference & context: Historical: lotteries were new and fashionable. England's first state lottery was in 1567, and a famous lottery in 1612 raised money for the Virginia colony.
Fun Fact
Starch links this little sketch to a real murder. Overbury was poisoned in the Tower of London in 1613. One of those hanged for the crime in 1615 was Anne Turner, a widow who had made fashionable yellow-starched ruffs popular at court. Legend says the hangman wore a yellow ruff at her execution to shame her, and that the fashion died out almost overnight. This book of “characters,” published after Overbury's death, sold in huge numbers partly because of the scandal.