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you'd no Ink in your Pen: The author uses a play on words to emasculate Ben in terms of his profession as a news-forger. It was a common belief in early modern England that women had more of a sexual appetite than men did, so it is unclear whether Ben did not sexually satisfy his wife, Ruth, or if he could not. The absence of "ink" in Ben's "pen" implies that he might have been impotent, yet the rest of the poem urges young men in similar professions to always please their wives sexually in order to keep them from committing adultery.
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