Jane played the role of a wench in an Elizabethan comedy.

We got wenches on the benches, and bitties with titties
Housing all girlies from city to city

"Can't we use a real girl? Can't Maria just play along?"
"She's at the movies with Chanel."
"Lucky wench. Why can't Ryan just be with a guy? Aren't you offended?"
"Just doing what Rain said to do. And actually, a little, yeah."

… working for Colonel Boone a the time--and two more men whose names I disremember now, and a nigger wench we had for a cook. … So I got onto one of the ponies and led the others down to the spring near camp to water them while the wench was a getting breakfast, and some o' the rest o' the outfit was a fixin the saddles and greasing the wagon.

Whilſt Men have theſe Ambitious Fancies,
And wanton Wenches read Romances,
Our Sex will—What? out with it: Lye:
And Theirs in equal Strains reply.
Originally printed for Jacob Tonson as an anonymous, double-sided pamphlet.

Nancy Basset, 28, likely wench, mulatto
Proved to be free.
Certified free as per General Birch Certificate.
Patience Jackson, 23, very likely wench, mulatto
Says she was born free Rhode Island.
Certified free as per General Birch Certificate.

A colored girl […] was fined ten dollars in the Freedman's Court yesterday, for being drunk and disorderly. Not having the money in her possession, she requested that a guard be sent with her to her residence to procure it. The Provost allowed a guard to wait on the wench, who, as soon as she found herself inside of her own door, locked it, and left the poor guard outside without the money. He returned to court without either the wench or fine.

So complete was this illusion, claims [Eric] Lott, that many audience members, including Mark Twain's mother, believed they were seeing authentic, biologically black performers on New York stages. Of course, wench characters seem to especially test the bounds of authentic performance. Played by men, wenches were nonetheless read by audiences as beautiful women: … [E]xtant photographs and engravings of wench performers do not always represent them as blacked up, […] In antebellum minstrel shows, wench songs were most often sung about mulatto women rather than by them.

This is ſure ſome hide-bound ſtudent, that proportions his expence by his penſion; and wencheth at Tottenham court for ſtewed prunes and cheeſcakes.

He [a man under the influence of the planet Mars] hath a marke or ſcar in his face, is broad-ſhouldered, a ſturdy ſtrong body, being bold and proud, given to mocke, ſcorne, quarrell, drinke, game and wench: which you may eaſily know by the Signe he is in; if in the houſe of ♀ he wencheth, if in ☿s he ſteals, …

In ſhort, Ned has drank, wenched, fought, and beggared himſelf, through an exalted ſolicitude for the general emolument, and is now cloſe pent up in one of our priſons, out of a pure and diſintereſted regard for the welfare of ſociety.

I know a clergyman who, having enjoyed for several years the world's good opinion, was turned off, through a ridiculous pique, by a young nobleman to whom he was preceptor. […] He drank, wenched, and was so complete a gambler, that, had he kept his old situation much longer, he would have ruined the principles of his pupil.

Bundy's reasons for leaving the Cape are obscure. He drinks, but that doesn't dim his powers. He wenches. But so do we all.

Already, you see, I had begun to acquire a taste for rakery and wenching among the London debutantes.

Wench

Meaning

Noun

Verb

Origin

Rhymes