Merc. Democ. [John Crouch], The maidens complain[t] against coffee. Or, The coffee-house discovered, beseiged, stormed, taken, untyled and lai[d] open to publick view, in a merry couference [sic] between Mr. Black-burnt the coffee-man. Mr. Suck-soul the userer. Mr. Antidote the mountibank. Mr. Purge the apothecarier. Mris. Troublesome the userers wife. Snap-short the usurers man. Toby the brokers man. Dorothy the userers maid. And Joane the brokers maid. Being very pleasant and delightsome for old and young, lads and lasses, boyes and girles, Omnium gatherum, as the devout ironmonger quotes it, in his annotations upon Toby and his dog (London, printed for J. Jones and are to be sold at the Royal Exchange in Cornhil, 1663). [2], 6pp.; 4°. Houghton Library, Harvard University: *EC65 A100 663m2. Hünersdorff

ABSTRACT

The maidens complain[t] is a satirical mock complaint by the Royalist hack John Crouch (c. 1615–c. 1680). The mock complaint was one of the ephemeral verse forms of the mid-seventeenth century, the kind Pepys collected in his ‘penny merriments’. Burlesques of petitions and complaint literature proliferated in the heated controversies and pamphlet wars of the Interregnum and Restoration literary scene. A complaint was a legal device, an utterance of grievance or injustice laid before a court or judicial authority. Writers had long made use of its satirical potential, as is seen in works such as The Maidens Complaint of her Love’s Inconstancie, a popular broadsheet song first published in 1620, and G.M., The Citizens Complaint for Want of Trade (London, n.p., 1663), a satirical verse complaint on the shortage of coin. In the case of The maidens complain[t], the complaint concerns the impotence in men caused by coffee, ironically delivered by some highly libidinous women.