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Explanatory Notes to "A Mirror for Young Ladies at their Toilet" (DIMEV 3454)

RubricC’est le myrroure . . . testes bealment adressere. There seems to be a play on words here as adressere can have both a literal meaning of arranging something, such as hair, as well as a more figurative meaning of moral rectitude, apt for a work suggesting leaving behind worldly vanity for spiritual progress. Thus, we could gloss the second half of the rubric as “instructing/rectifying their heads (i.e., minds) virtuously.”back to note source

13Ne. The text seems somewhat corrupt here, as the only manuscript reads “Be” for “Ne”, which ruins the acrostic (see Textual Note to this line).back to note source

lace. The poem’s use of the imagery of a snare seems to be playing with the idiomatic expression dethes las, which the MED defines as “death’s grasp” (las (n.), sense 4).back to note source