Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Orange-Girl


A street peddler offering oranges in the open air. An orange monger. 

“The riot of images, the virulent volubility of language, all that cloys and satiates in the Elizabethans yet appears to be drawn up with a roar as a feeble fire is sucked up by a newspaper. There is, even in the worst, an intermittent bawling vigour which gives us the sense in our quiet arm-chairs of ostlers and orange-girls catching up the lines, flinging them back, hissing or stamping applause.” 

Virginia Woolf, “Notes on an Elizabethan Play,” The Common Reader (1925).

Cofferer


Someone with a key to the coffers. A treasurer. An officer in the royal household in England, under the controller. 

"The house sat till three o'clock, and then up: and I home with Sir Stephen Fox to his house to dinner, and the Cofferer with us. There I find Sir S. Fox's lady, a fine woman, and seven of the prettiest children of theirs that ever I knew almost. A very genteel dinner, and in great state and fashion, and excellent discourse; and nothing like an old experienced man and a courtier, and such is the Cofferer Ashburnham." 

Samuel Pepys, Diary (December 14, 1666).