Lettice & Lovage, by Peter Shaffer
Fran contributes the bulk of this information; some of the rest I got from the OED and other sources. You can scroll through the entries in the huge list, which are all jumbled up, or you can click on an item in the table just below, which is also jumbled but shorter. Don't be too tough on my pronunciation keys. I take responsibility for all opinions and most mistakes.
- Lettice
- Several meanings: a kind of whitish-gray fur, or a ruff made from this fur; an alternate spelling of 'lattice'; an alternate spelling of 'lettuce'; a personal name derived from Laetitia 'joyful, glad'.
- Lovage
- (a) Lettice's explanation: from loveache, pronounced love-H, 'love-parsley'. The name of the herb was spelled that way in Middle English, sure enough, but the explanation is a folk etymology. (b) The word apparently comes from ligusticum, which ultimately began as an adjective for Ligurian. Liguria is an old name for part of northwestern Italy including Genoa.
- Fustian
- A coarse fabric of cotton and flax; more recently, a thick twilled cotton with a short pile, usually dyed olive or some other dark color. As an adjective, it means 'bombastic, high-flown, inflated'.
- John Fustian
- In 1585 he was a yeoman-merchant in Wiltshire, England. A freeholder (he owned land) and member of what would later become the upper middle class, educated enough to write his name but probably not able to keep accounts, obligated to provide military service under some circumstances. Regarded in the county if not absolutely respected.
- Ottomite
- Turkish. You know the Ottomite dynasty as Ottoman.
- Architrave
- Pronounced ARK ih trave to rhyme with autoclave. Architectural term: the lowest division of the entablature; the main beam that rests on the abacus of the capital of a column. Architrave Place is fictional, we think. The word will be familiar to anyone who knows about Palladian style.
- Palladian
- Pronounced pa LAID ee an. A "classical" style of architecture named for Andrea Palladio (1518-1580), who wrote the book. Books.
- Ogival
- Pronounced oh JIVE al. Pointed like a Gothic arch.
- Endored
- Pronounced en DORD. Lettice explains this correctly in Act 1.
- Coney
- I'm still going back and forth on the pronunciation. CUNN ee would be more correct, but the joke in Act 1 rests on CONE ee. It means a rabbit.
- Candlemas
- Feast of the purification of the Virgin Mary, February 2, celebrated with a great display of candles.
- Miasma
- Pronounced my AZ ma. A noxious exhalation; poisonous particles or germs suspended in the air. Lettice loves this word but may think it means something else.
- Samite
- Pronounced SAM ite. A rich silk fabric.
- Puffin
- A large Atlantic sea bird. Because many people believed it had no wings, they sometimes deemed it a fish, and it was OK to eat it in Lent. Look, I don't explain them, I just write this stuff down.
- Turgid
- Pronounced TURR jid. Swollen, puffed up.
- Gavotte and Coranto
- Dances in triple time, both somewhat vigorous. The Coranto involves a running or leaping step.
- Farrago
- Pronounced, follow me closely here, fa RAY go. A random collection, hodgepodge.
- Marmalade
- Pronounced MAR ma laid, though Lettice may say mar ma LAHD in Act 1. Her story about the name is hooey; it comes from the Portuguese word for "quince," the fruit it was first made from.
- Herbs
- Whether you pronounce the H depends on your dialect.
- Forte
- Pronounced FORT. A person's strong suit.
- Cedilla
- Pronounced seh DILL ah. The little hook under the letter ç.
- Flagon
- Pronounced FLAG un. A bottle or a lidded jug. Does Lettice use the word incorrectly in Act 2?
- Idolator
- Pronounced eye DOLL ah ter. A worshiper of an idol.
- Debauching
- The CH sounds like the CH in change.
- Crinoline
- A stiff fabric of horsehair and cotton.
- Buckler
- A small round shield. Does Lettice say "shield and buckler" when she should have said "sword and buckler"?
- Formidable
- Put the stress on the first syllable.
- Guillotine
- Pronounced gill oh TEEN.
- Corolla
- Pronounced co ROLL ah. A little crown. The last actual English word used by a Japanese carmaker.
- Granolithic
- Put the stress on LITH. A kind of concrete.
- Incorrigible
- Put the stress on CORR.
- Osseous
- Pronounced OSS ee us. Bony.
- Scone
- It rhymes with ton or upon. These pronunciations do not apply to the place in Scotland.
- Parsimony
- Pronounced PAR sih muh nee. Carefulness in spending. When English people use this word about French people, it means stinginess.
- Pediment
- Pronounced PED ih ment. Back to Palladian architecture. In a Greek-style building, the triangular part over a portico, similar to a gable.
- Rennet
- Pronounced REN et. A preparation, originally from calves' stomachs, used to curdle milk at the start of cheesemaking.
- Tansy
- An aromatic, bitter-tasting plant, only mildly toxic. A pudding or omelet flavored with the juice of tansy. Try this recipe, or rather try this recipe with great caution.
- Serpentine
- Pronounced SERR pen tine (rhymes with curtain time, not quarantine).
- Whilst
- One syllable, with a long eye.
- Oxford Street
- A major shopping street in London, sort of like East Clayton before the Gap closed.
- Portobello Road
- A zone of London where flea-marketers, produce sellers and small retailers are located. Right, I'm just going to tell you this once: It's Portobello—no A's in the name. So called after the harbor in Panama where English buccaneers made a habit of taking stuff away from the Spanish. Porto Bello, see, it has nothing to do with any Porta or any Bella. This will be on the test.
- Mr. Bardolph
- The soldier Bardolph appears in Shakespeare's Henry IV and Henry V plays. He is best known for his clamant red nose but also has a name for being a drunk, a thief and a friendly cutpurse. Our Mr. Bardolph probably has nothing in common with him but the name.
- Shell Building
- Oh, yes, it's there: click here to view one photo. The problem with the Shell Building (click here for another image) is not that it is so ugly in itself, but that it takes up space that used to hold human-scale buildings, some distinguished, some ordinary, but in a sense organic with the history of London. Don't get me started.
- Hedgehog
- Well, maybe they did eat them, in fricassee or even baked and endored, but the other meaning of hedgehog resembles a meatloaf with onions or something sticking out to simulate the spines.
- Quaff
- We're looking for recipes to make Elizabethan cordials. Here is a recipe for an angelica liqueur that may resemble Quaff—but I am not suggesting that you try the stuff. Stick to your Jaegermeister, is my advice.
- Bed-presser
- See Henry IV Part 1, Act 2 Scene 4. It's probably meant to be obscene. Well, duh.
- Sad stories of the death of kings
- See Richard II, Act 3 Scene 2.
- Marvell
- Pronounced like Captain Marvel.
- Earl's (or Earls) Court
- To locate this area of west London, find the statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens and look to the south. Suburban when it was developed, but the city has washed over it and far beyond it now. The emphatically aristocratic Eynsford-Hill family lived there in Shaw's Pygmalion; more recently Earl's Court has been home to colonies of expatriate Australians and others. On your London map look for Stratford Road, near the Coptic Church and the Earl's Court Road police station; I conjecture that this became Rastridge Road, where Lettice has her downstairs flat.
- Wiltshire
- A county in south central England, remote in 1585 and still a bit remote in 2002. It has Neolithic and Bronze Age hill forts; Sarum Hill, Stonehenge and a river called the Avon are found there. (That last doesn't signify much, because "Avon" just means "river.") The Countess of Pembroke, famous dead person, lived there. Today the British armed forces use parts of Wiltshire for training and maneuvers. Think eastern North Carolina. (A hidden joke in the script? Wiltshire has a town called Mere.)
- Staffordshire
- A county in central England. An industrial area noted for metal and ceramic products.
- Devon(shire)
- A county in southwestern England, noted for the quality of its dairy products (Devonshire clotted cream, a delight in your mouth but N.G. to your ears and arteries) and for the beauty of its coastlines. Devon has no fewer than five national parks.
- Regency Street Polytechnic
- Well, Regency Street is near Westminster School in southwest London. Institutions that used to be called polytechnics are now colleges or technical colleges, but this particular one is probably made up, though there is a Westminster Technical College nearby. English informants associate the word "polytechnic" with a gray institution of no great charm.
- Kensington and Putney
- Kensington, north of Earl's Court, was an upscale suburb, now a fashionable district of the metropolis. Putney, across the Thames, was a cheaper and less desirable area when Lotte's father moved from their house in Kensington to a flat there. But all these points are relative: property that might have cost ten thousand pounds in 1960 now goes for hundreds of thousands.
- Islington Market
- Islington is a close-in and therefore highly urbanized northern district of London. The market there is not as classy as the one in Portobello Road.
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