William Shakespeare, Critical Commentary of The Tragedie of Coriolanus
Horace Howard Furness, Jr., A. B.; Litt. D., Ed.

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A fine spotte Steevens: This expression (whatever may be the precise meaning of it) is still in use among the vulgar: ‘You have made a fine spot of work of it,’ being a common phrase of reproach to those who have brought themselves into a scrape.—Boswell: Surely it means a pretty spot of embroidery. We often hear of spotted muslin. [Steevens is possibly right; J. Wright (English Dialect Dict., s. v. Spot Sb. 1.) has ‘Fig. In phrase a proper spot of work, a sad or unfortunate occurrence or business. Sc. “This is a proper spot of work, said the king, beginning to amble about.”—Scott, Nigel, xxxii.’—Ed.]—Bailey (ii, 50): I cannot help regarding ‘spot’ as altogether spurious. Valeria is gaily rallying her friends on their keeping so much within doors, and proceeds, ‘What! are you

sewing?’ Then, turning to the wife of Coriolanus, she exclaims, ‘a fine spot in good faith!’ which is no continuation of the raillery and is supremely flat. To remove this blemish I propose to read: ‘a fine spouse in good faith!’ Then naturally follows: ‘How does your little son?’ By this small change consistency is given to the whole speech, and it accords too with the subsequent part of the dialogue, in which Valeria, in the same style of banter, says to her friend: ‘You would be another Penelope.’ Instead of a fine spouse a speaker nowadays, under the same circumstances, would probably say, ‘What a notable wife!’—Leo (Coriolanus, p. 120): It seems to me highly probable that the First Folio has a misprint in the word ſpotte, for I am disposed to regard this letter as an erroneous repetition of the compositor, who looked at the f in the word ‘fine’ (f and ſ being easily confounded); the words to be composed were not, as I conjecture, ‘a fine ſpotte in good faith,’ but a fine pattern, good faith.—W. A. Wright: That is, a fine pattern; used of the figures in embroidery. Compare Othello, III, iii, 438: ‘Have you not sometimes seen a handkerchief Spotted with strawberries in your wife's hand?’ Of which Othello afterwards (III, iv, 72) says, a sibyl ‘In her prophetic fury sewed the work.’—Case (Arden Sh.): Of ‘spot,’ in the sense of a fine pattern in embroidery, Professor Dowden kindly furnished the following instance: William Teril, A Piece of Friar Bacon's Brazenhead's Prophecie, ‘Now Sempsters few are taught The fine stitch in their spots.’—[Apart from those editors or commentators who offer a conjectural emendation of the word ‘spot,’ the consensus of opinion is in favour of Boswell's interpretation that the word has direct reference to the work of embroidery that Virgilia has in hand.—Ed.]

in good faith Beeching (Falcon Sh.): Notice as characteristic of Elizabethan ladies the extraordinary number of asseverations in this scene.