Meaning & Analysis
To be 'penny-white' means to be wealthy or well-off, regardless of other qualities, especially in contrast to physical appearance or social status.
Insights
Wealth Surpassing Other Values
Suggests that financial prosperity ('penny-white') can compensate for perceived deficiencies in beauty, birth, or other social markers, and elevates wealth as the key to acceptance or desirability.
Superficiality of Social Currency
Highlights the tendency of society to judge individuals by their economic status rather than intrinsic or moral qualities—implying that riches can 'whiten' or cleanse other shortcomings.
Irony in Value Systems
Ironically critiques the reversal of priorities: someone unattractive or lacking pedigree may become 'current' or valuable purely through wealth, underscoring society’s fickle standards.
Early Modern Social Commentary
The phrase appears in 17th-century drama and commentary as a sardonic observation on marriage, courtship, and social advancement, reflecting the widespread reality that riches often outweigh all other virtues.
Economic 'Whiteness'
The 'white' in 'penny-white' originally referred to the color of silver coinage (as opposed to 'black money' or counterfeit), associating legitimacy and desirability with economic security.
Gender and Marriage Markets
Frequently applied to women (and sometimes men) in marriage markets, the proverb acknowledges a transactional approach to courtship where financial status is decisive.
Fortune vs. Nature
The saying distinguishes between the gifts of fortune (wealth) and nature (beauty, nobility), humorously noting society’s tendency to prize the former above the latter.
Rhetorical Devices
Metonymy
'Penny-white' uses the coin’s color as a stand-in for legitimate wealth, employing a visual marker to signify status.
Antithesis
Contrasts beauty (or lack thereof) and fortune, as in Dekker's and Mabbe's examples, to underscore the proverb’s social irony.
Irony
Employs subtle irony in elevating wealth as the most 'whitening' or redeeming feature, thereby critiquing shallow or mercenary values.
Transcription
Quotations
Whose estate was now such .. that many principall men became Sutors unto her .. and some of them exceeding rich .. shee was penny-white (as we say).
A Blacke Wench, if she be Penny-white, passes for current money, where a Faire Wench that hath no pence, shalled be nayled vp for a counterfet.
Of the first sort we account the she-Benedictines, commonly called Black Nuns, but, I assure you, penny white, being most richly endowed.
Penny-white, said of her, to whom Fortune has been kinder than Nature.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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