Thursday 10 October 1661

Annotations

• N John Simmons on Sun 10 Oct 2004, 11:21pm

  “A LATE BRUISE…”
  According to Robert Latham’s
  “Shorter Pepys”…”a late bruise in
  one of my testicles”…

• N dirk on Sun 10 Oct 2004, 11:55pm

  The Traytor

  “The Traytor a Tragedie, Written by James Shirley. Acted By her Majesties Servants.” 1631, publ. 1635.

  Play by James Shirley, see
  http://www.britannica.com/shakespeare/micro/544/8.html

  Shirley was one of the leading playwrights in the decade before the closing of the theatres by Parliament in 1642.
  

• N Bradford on Mon 11 Oct 2004, 01:23am

  Ouch!

  (Surely D.W. could have figured that one out. An Editor’s Duty!)

• N daniel on Mon 11 Oct 2004, 01:57am

  *OUCH*
  i suppose such a bruise would disincline many of us gents of “being merry”, anniversary or not!

• N upper_left_hand_corner on Mon 11 Oct 2004, 06:28am

  “Late” in the sense of recent, of course. It isn’t clear when the incident might have happened in the last day or two, though. Wouldn’t he have remarked on it?

• N Mary on Mon 11 Oct 2004, 07:39am

  “caused by a late bruise”

  L&M quote Dr. C.E. Newman, to the effect that this was probably not a bruise, but an episode of inflammation consequent upon a latent infection left by Pepys’ operation for the stone. The inflammation could have been provoked by a temporary constriction, e.g. sitting with the legs crossed for a period of time.

  Too much sitting around in theatres, Sam?

• N Bob T on Mon 11 Oct 2004, 03:01pm

• N JWB on Mon 11 Oct 2004, 05:08pm

• N Todd Bernhardt on Mon 11 Oct 2004, 05:40pm

  re: “a late bruise”

  Could someone with access to L&M please fill in the entire phrase? I appreciate John’s contribution above (and am working with all my might to avoid making a joke about the information’s inclusion in “The Shorter Pepys”), but it doesn’t seem as if the sentence is complete.

  FWIW, things unrelated to Sam’s operation could cause the same pain … for example, chlamydia (a sexually transmitted infection caused by a bacteria called chlamydia trachomatis) can, in men, cause inflammation of the reproductive area near the testicles (a condition known as epidydimitis).

  Uncross your legs, gents.

• N j.simmons on Mon 11 Oct 2004, 06:39pm

  “A late bruise”
  Sorry Todd…all Robt. Latham
  shows, just insert his section of
  the quote. Robt. being a Fellow of
  Magdalene College, Cambridge, where
  he had charge of The Diary itself,
  and has “devoted the past thirty
  years to the study of the diary and,
  in addition to his work on the
  eleven volume edition, is the editor
  of “The Illustrated Pepys.”…Hmmm,
  no pictures for Oct. 10 in that! Makes
  you wonder.

• N vicente on Mon 11 Oct 2004, 07:02pm

  There be I thinking of that frolique in that bumpy coach and ….”…but by a late bruise …” only to be disappointed in the true meaning of ‘late’ ‘bruise’ and ‘frolic’ and he being warned by Bragge that some one be after his bag of loose change that he ties in his english sporran under his inner covering. Oh! well ye live? and ye learn.

• N Louis on Tue 12 Oct 2004, 01:58am

  “So home and entended to be merry, it being my sixth wedding night; but by a late bruise in one of my testicles I am in so much pain that I eat my supper and in pain to bed; yet my wife and I pretty merry.”

  Ipsissima verba, Todd!

• N Pauline on Tue 12 Oct 2004, 02:52am

  “Ipsissima verba, Todd!”
  Louis, I think the rule is that you don’t do this without immediate translation—lest you wax snobbish and subject to our stones.

  “yet my wife and I pretty merry”
  I do like our Sam!

• N Ruben on Tue 12 Oct 2004, 07:48am

  Ipsissima verba
  from Google:
  The Latin term “Ipsissima verba” means, in a UK legal context: “the very words of a speaker.”
  

• N Peter on Tue 12 Oct 2004, 09:29am

  I can never tell the difference between my ipsissima verba and my horse’s mouth.

• N Todd Bernhardt on Tue 12 Oct 2004, 01:06pm

  My sympathies to your horse, Peter! :-)

  Merci, Louis (and j.simmons, and others).

• N Peter on Tue 12 Oct 2004, 02:13pm

  Todd,….It’s why he has such a long face!

• N Mary on Tue 12 Oct 2004, 04:18pm

  “yet my wife and I pretty merry”.

  Now, how do Sam and Elizabeth contrive to be pretty merry when Sam is in so much pain? Perhaps because both are intimately aware of exactly how he got the bruise (if bruise it be) and both manage to find some enjoyment in the memory of the occasion, despite its painful consequences.

• N Robert Gertz on Wed 13 Oct 2004, 03:49am

  “yet my wife and I pretty merry.”

  Sam valiantly does his Duty on the 6th.

  Poor Pepys duo…She with her unmentionable ulcers and he with his censored bruise…But they get by.

  I begin to see why she came back to this guy, even when stuck in the miserable Montague garret that year.

  I suppose the person truly miserable in the household this night was one Will Hewer…Though it’s hard to be certain from post-Diary events which of the Pepys he was most in love with…

• N michael j. gresk m.a. on Wed 13 Oct 2004, 09:06pm

  to: peter, daniel, mary, pauline, ruben, bob t, JWB vincente, louis, et. al. —— many thanks for the educational & entertaining running commentary —- MJG

• N David Ross McIrvine on Sun 17 Oct 2004, 04:59pm

  *The Traitor*

  Probably Shirley’s *The Traytor* was being put on during the Restoration due to its historical basis—the killing, under at least a republican pretext—of a hereditary ruler. Alessandro de Medici had been made hereditary Duke of Florence in 1532, and was assassinated by Lorenzino (or Lorenzaccio) de Medici, who wrote an apology for the murder in which he justified it as an attempt to restore a republic to Florence.

  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/secret/famous/medici.html

  In the 19th century, Alfred de Musset also wrote a play on this subject, titled *Lorenzaccio*.