The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

  • You are here:
  • /
  • Works
  • /
  • A Challenge at Tilt (1613-14)

A Challenge at Tilt (1613-14)

Edited by David Lindley

Introduction

A Challenge at Tilt formed part of the extensive celebrations of the wedding of Frances Howard, daughter of Thomas, Earl of Suffolk, to Robert Carr, the King’s favourite, created Earl of Somerset at the time of the marriage. The wedding night, 26 December 1613, was celebrated with Campion’s Somerset Masque, and on 27 December the first part of Challenge – the challenge itself – was issued. There is no direct indication of where this took place, though the second Cupid’s statement that he will bring tilters ‘into the lists before this palace’ suggests that it might have been delivered indoors at a banquet as Prince Henry’s challenge had been three years earlier (see Barriers, Introduction). It is not impossible however, that it could have been uttered in the tiltyard, where ‘the King, Prince, bridegroom and others ran at the ring’ on 27 December (Masque Archive, Challenge, 12). Two days later, on 29 December, Jonson’s Irish Masque received its first performance, and then, on 1 January 1614, the second part of the Challenge, the actual tournament, was contested in the tiltyard at Whitehall, watched from the permanent gallery overlooking the tiltyard by the King and Queen, accompanied by the ambassadors of Spain and the Arch-Duke with their ladies (Finet, Finetti philoxenis, 1656, 16). The King ordered a repeat performance of the Irish Masque on 3 January, and the following night the couple were entertained by the Lord Mayor, when at least one play, and Middleton’s lost Masque of Cupids, were performed. The celebrations were rounded out by the Gray’s Inn offering of The Masque of Flowers, sponsored by Francis Bacon, on 6 January 1614.

The circumstances of this marriage were highly controversial, and are discussed in detail in Lindley (1993), 77–122. Frances Howard’s marriage to the third Earl of Essex in 1605 (celebrated by Hymenaei) had not been consummated at the time, and the Earl had departed abroad on his educational travels. After his return Frances Howard rejected his advances, and at some point fell in love with Robert Carr. She and her family, with the King’s support, in 1613 instituted proceedings for the annulment of her marriage on the grounds of Essex’s impotence. The nullity was finally achieved only after the King intervened to add extra commissioners to those originally appointed, and the scandalized gossip which attended the proceedings was intensified when news of the proposed marriage with Carr emerged. Some of the opposition to Frances’s remarriage was political rather than moral, since by this alliance with the King’s favourite the Howard family consolidated their already massive political power. The Challenge at Tilt was intended to put on public show ‘a general reconcilement made between my lord of Howard and my lords of Pembroke, Southampton, etc. in this conjuncture’, as John More wrote (HMC Downshire, 4.252). The Agent of Savoy, however, reported that ‘many lords have been invited to a certain tilt, but many of them have refused because they are relatives of the Earl of Essex, and others have excused themselves, not being part of this [Howard] faction’ (Orrell, 1979b, 80). Thomas Howard himself, appealing for Edward Sackville to be added to the list of tilters despite his being in disgrace for having killed Lord Bruce of Kinloss in a duel, hoped that the King would ‘give him leave to do honour to his cousin’s marriage, when there is so few that will be willing to take his place if he go out’ (PRO, SP 14/75/37, fol. 64). In the event, as the list of tilters, probably in the hand of William Camden, in BL, MS Harley 5176, fol. 217 (Masque Archive, Challenge, 1) indicates, he did take part.

If some chose to express their disapproval of the match, many others fell over themselves to shower presents upon the highly influential Robert Carr. They were to be discomfited when, in 1615, evidence began to emerge of the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower at the time of the marriage. The subsequent trials and disgrace of Robert Carr and his wife meant that Jonson expunged all mention of the occasions of his entertainments for Frances Howard’s two marriages from the folio of 1616.

The device Jonson invented was a graceful one, based on the myth of Eros and Anteros – a myth he used again in his late entertainment, Love’s Welcome at Bolsover. In the first part of the masque two Cupids dispute over which is the ‘true’ god of Love. Whereas in the debate of Truth and Opinion in the barriers at Hymenaei it is clearly implied that the first has the better case, which is confirmed in the final outcome, here there is no obvious hierarchy, and the resolution provided after the tilting reconciles the two Cupids as equals. This is both emblematically and politically appropriate to the occasion.

It is perhaps significant that, unlike Campion, or Chapman in his 1614 poem, Andromeda Liberata, Jonson makes no effort, either in Challenge or Irish, to confront directly the gossip and rumour which attended the marriage. Though he wrote a poem to Robert Carr (omitted from the 1616 folio), and allowed an earlier poem to Thomas Howard to remain in his published Epigrams, he seems to have had little affection for the Howard family, and was certainly ready to celebrate the changed political situation that resulted from Somerset’s fall in The Golden Age Restored (1616).

For more details about tilting and barriers see the Introduction to Hymenaei. As it turned out, this was to be the last Jacobean tournament presented with the full apparatus of speeches and pageants. Though tilts continued to be held, the fashion for them was waning. (See Young, 1987, 37–42.)

The text was first published in the 1616 folio. It is notably short on supplementary detail. Perhaps this is a consequence of the excision of the occasion, but stage directions in the Barriers for Prince Henry are similarly sparse, suggesting that Jonson was not interested in presenting any more than his own verbal contribution to occasions of this kind. There is no clear evidence for the nature of the printer’s copy, but it probably was a scribal transcript.

 

A CHALLENGE AT TILT, AT A MARRIAGE

 

[Enter] two CUPIDS,

 

striving, the day after the marriage

 

[each with bow and quiver and

disguised as servants].

  FIRST CUPID

 It is my right, and I will have it.

[He starts to leave.]

SECOND CUPID

By what law or necessity? Pray you come back. 5

FIRST CUPID

I serve the man, and the  nobler creature.

SECOND CUPID

But I the woman, and the purer; and therefore the worthier.

Because you are a handful  above me, do you think to get a foot afore me,  sir?

[To the audience] No, I appeal to you ladies.

FIRST CUPID

You are too  rude, boy, in this presence. 10

SECOND CUPID

That cannot put modesty into me, to make me come behind

you though; I will stand for mine inches with you as  peremptory  as an

ambassador. – Ladies, your  sovereignties are concerned in me; I am the   wife’s

page.

FIRST CUPID

And I the  husband’s. 15

SECOND CUPID

How!

FIRST CUPID

Ha!

SECOND CUPID

 One of us must break the wonder, and therefore I, that have

best cause to be assured of mine own truth, demand of thee by what magic

thou wear’st my  ensigns, or hast put on my person? 20

FIRST CUPID

[To the audience] Beware, young ladies, of this impostor; and mothers,

look to your daughters and nieces: a false Cupid is abroad. It is I that am the

true, who, to do these glad solemnities their proper rites, have been  contented

not to put off, but to conceal my deity, and in this habit of a servant to attend

him who was yesterday the happy bridegroom in the  complement of his 25

nuptials, to make all his endeavours and actions more gracious and lovely.

SECOND CUPID

[To the audience] He tells my tale! He tells my tale, and pretends

to my act! It was I that did this for the bride: I am the true Love, and both

this figure and  those arms are usurped by most unlawful power. Can you

not perceive it? Do I not look liker a Cupid than he? Am I not more a child? 30

Ladies, have none of you a picture of me in your bosom? Is the remembrance

of love banished your breasts? Sure, they are  these garments that estrange

me to you! If I were naked, you would know me better. No relic of love left in

an old bosom here? What should I do?

FIRST CUPID

My little  shadow is turned furious. 35

SECOND CUPID

 What can I  turn, other than a Fury itself, to see thy impudence?

If I be a  shadow, what is substance? Was it not I that yesternight waited on

the bride into the nuptial chamber, and,  against the bridegroom came, made

her the throne  of love? Had I not lighted my torches in her eyes, planted  my

mother’s roses in her cheeks? Were not her  eyebrows bent to the fashion of 40

my bow, and her looks ready to be loosed thence, like my shafts? Had I not

  ripened kisses on her lips, fit for a  Mercury to gather, and made her  language

sweeter than his upon her tongue? Was not the  girdle about her he was to

untie my mother’s, wherein all the joys and delights of love were woven?

FIRST CUPID

And did not I bring on the blushing bridegroom to taste those joys, 45

and made him think all stay a torment? Did I not shoot myself into him like a

flame, and made his desires and his graces equal? Were not his looks  of

power to have kept the night alive in contention with day, and made the

morning never wished for? Was there a curl in his hair that I did not sport

in, or a ring of it  crisped that might not have become  Juno’s fingers? His very 50

undressing, was it not love’s arming? Did not all his kisses  charge, and every

touch attempt? But his words, were they not feathered from my wings, and

flew in singing at her ears, like arrows tipped with gold?

SECOND CUPID

Hers, hers did so into his; and all his  virtue was borrowed from

my powers in her, as thy form is from me. But, that this royal and honoured 55

assembly be no longer troubled with our contention, behold,  I challenge

thee of falsehood; and will bring upon the first day of the new year into  the

lists before this palace ten knights armed, who shall undertake, against all

assertion, that only I am the  child of Mars and Venus, and, in the honour of

that lady (whom it is my ambition to serve), that that love is the most true 60

and perfect that still waiteth on the woman and is the servant of that sex.

FIRST CUPID

But what  gage gives my confident counterfeit of this?

SECOND CUPID

My bow and quiver, or what else I can  make.

FIRST CUPID

I take only them; and in exchange give mine, to answer and punish

this thy rashness at thy time assigned, by a  just number of knights, who by 65

their virtue shall maintain me to be the right Cupid and the true  issue of

valour and beauty; and that no love can come near either truth or perfection

but what is manly, and derives his proper dignity from thence.

SECOND CUPID

It is agreed.

FIRST CUPID

In the meantime, ladies, suspend your  censures which is the right; 70

and to entertain your thoughts till the day, may the court hourly present you

with delicate and fresh objects to beget on you pretty and pleasing fancies.

May you feed on pure meats, easy of  concoction, and  drink that will quickly

turn into blood, to make your dreams the clearer and your imaginations the

finer. So they departed. 75

On  New Year’s Day,  he that before is numbered the SECOND CUPID  [winged] came now the

FIRST, with his ten knights, attired in the  bride’s colours; and, lighting from his  chariot,

spake.

FIRST CUPID

 Now, ladies, to  glad your aspects once again with the sight of love,

and make a spring smile i’your faces, which must have looked like winter 80

without me, behold me, not like a servant now, but a  champion, and in my

true figure, as I use to reign and revel in your fancies, tickling your soft

ears with my feathers and laying little straws about your hearts to kindle

 bonfires  shall flame out at your eyes; playing in your bloods like fishes in

a stream, or diving like the boys  i’the bath, and then  rising on end like a 85

monarch and treading  humour like water, bending those stiff   piccadills of

yours under this yoke, my bow, or, if they would not bend, whipping your

rebellious  farthingales with my bowstring, and made ’em run up into your

waists (they have  lyen so flat) for fear of my indignation. What! Is Cupid of

no name with you? Have I lost all reputation, or, what is less, opinion, by 90

 once putting off my deity? Because I was a page at this  solemnity, and would

modestly serve  one for the honour of you all, am I therefore dishonoured by

all, and lost in my value so, that every  juggler that can purchase him a pair

of wings and a quiver is  committed with me in balance, and contends with

me for sovereignty? Well, I will chastise you, ladies, believe it; you shall feel 95

my displeasure for this, and I will be mighty in it. Think not to have those

accesses to me you were wont; you shall wait four of those  galleries off and six

chambers for me; ten doors locked between you and me hereafter, and I will

allow none of you a key. When I come abroad you shall petition me and I will

not hear you; kneel, I will not regard you; I will pass by like  a man of business 100

and not see you, and I will have no  master of requests for you. There shall not

the greatest  pretender to a state-face living put on a more supercilious look

than I will do upon you. Trust me. Ha! What’s this?

The other CUPID enters [in a chariot] with his  company.

SECOND CUPID

 Oh, are you here, sir?  You have got the start of me now, by 105

being challenger, and so the precedency, you think? I see you are resolved to

try your title by arms, then? You will stand to be the right Cupid still? How

now! What ails you that you answer not? Are you turned a statue upon my

appearance? Or did you hope I would not appear, and that hope has deceived

you? 110

FIRST CUPID

Art thou still so impudent to  belie my figure, that in what shape

soever I present myself, thou wilt seem to be the same? Not so much as my

chariot but  resembled by thee, and both the  doves and swans I have borrowed

of my mother to draw it? The very number of my companions emulated, and

 almost their habits? What insolence is this? 115

SECOND CUPID

Good little one, quarrel not. You have now  put yourself upon

others’ valour, not your own, and you must know you can bring no person

hither to strengthen your side but we can produce an equal. Be it Persuasion

you have got there, the  peculiar enchantress of your sex; behold, we have

Mercury here to charm against her, who gives all lovers their true and masculine 120

eloquence. Or are they the Graces you presume on, your known  clients,

 Spring, Beauty, and Cheerfulness: here are Youth, Audacity, and  Favour to

encounter them, three more manly perfections, and much more powerful

in working for love. Child, you are all the ways of winning too weak; there

is no thinking, either with your honour or discretion kept safe, to continue 125

on a strife wherein you are already vanquished. Yield, be penitent early, and

confess it.

FIRST CUPID

I will break my bow and quiver into dust first –  restore me mine own

arms! – or be torn in pieces with  harpies, marry one of the  Furies,  turn into

chaos again, and dissolve the harmony of nature. 130

SECOND CUPID

 Oh, most  stiffly spoken, and fit for the sex you stand for! Well,

give the sign then: let the trumpets sound, and upon the valour and fortune

of your champions put the right of your cause.

FIRST CUPID

’Tis done.

[Trumpets sound to begin the tilt.] 135

 THE TILTING

 After, the second Cupid:

SECOND CUPID

 Now, sir, you have got mightily by this contention, and advanced

your cause to a most high degree of estimation with these spectators, ha’ you

not? 140

FIRST CUPID

Why, what have you done, or won?

SECOND CUPID

It is enough for me, who was called out to this trial, that I have

not lost, or that my side is not vanquished.

Enters  HYMEN to them.

HYMEN

Come, you must yield both: this is neither contention for you, nor time 145

fit to contend. There is another kind of tilting would become love better than

this: to meet lips for lances, and crack kisses instead of staves; which there is

no beauty here, I presume, so young but can fancy, nor so tender but would

venture. Here is the  palm for which you must strive: which of you wins this

bough is the right and best Cupid; and whilst you are striving , let Hymen, 150

the president of these solemnities, tell you something of your own story, and

what yet you know not of yourselves.  You are both true Cupids, and both the

sons of Venus by Mars, but  this the first-born, and was called Eros; who upon

his birth proved a child of excellent beauty, and right worthy his mother,

but after, his growth not  answering his form, not only Venus, but the Graces 155

who nursed him, became extremely solicitous for him, and were impelled

out of their grief and care to consult the oracle about him.  Themis (for Apollo

was not yet  of years) gave answer there wanted nothing to his perfection

but that they had not enough considered or looked into the nature of the

infant, which indeed was desirous of a companion only; for though love, and 160

the true, might be born of Venus single and alone, yet he could not thrive

and increase alone. Therefore if she  affected his growth, Venus must bring

forth a brother to him and name him Anteros; that with reciprocal affection

might pay the exchange of love. This  made that  thou wert born her second

birth. Since when your natures are that either of you, looking upon the other, 165

thrive, and by your mutual respects and interchange of ardour flourish and

prosper; whereas if the one be deficient or wanting to the other it fares worse

with both. This is the love that Hymen requires, without which no marriage

is happy: when the contention is not who is the true love, but (being both

true) who loves most;  cleaving the bough between you, and dividing the 170

palm. This is a strife wherein you both win, and begets a concord worthy

all married minds’ emulation, when the  lover transforms himself into the

person of his beloved, as you two do now . By whose example let your knights,

all honourable friends and servants of love, affect the like peace, and depart

the lists  equal in their friendships forever, as today they have been in their 175

fortunes. And may this royal court never know more difference in humours,

or these well-graced nuptials more discord in affections, than what they

presently feel, and may ever avoid.

BOTH CUPIDS

 To this Love says amen. 

3, 4 SHs first cupid, second cupid] F1 puts 1., 2. throughout
1 striving The SD is not clear. The two Cupids may enter quarrelling, or attempting to push in front of each other. It is possible, on the other hand, that they imitate the statue described by Pausanias, in Eliacis, 23.3.7, where they are depicted struggling for a palm of victory. In Bolsover, 83–5, Eros carries a palm already divided, and gives Anteros half – the solution to this dispute suggested by Hymen at 170–1 below – but there is no specific mention of a palm as the object of contention anywhere in this first part of the challenge.
1–2 each . . . servants That they are dressed as servants, rather than as naked Cupids, is indicated in lines 24 and 32–3; that they carry bows and quivers is made evident from lines 63–4.
3, 4 SHs first cupid, second cupid] F1 puts 1., 2. throughout
3 It The First Cupid’s right of precedence, or else the palm, if one were carried. The First Cupid prepares to march offstage. That they are dressed as servants, rather than as naked Cupids, and therefore are not immediately recognizable, is indicated in lines 24 and 32–3. They do, however, carry the god’s insignia of bows and quivers, as is evident from lines 63–4.
6 nobler creature Echoing the commonplace (but even in the seventeenth century not uncontentious) idea that man, created first in the garden of Eden, was inherently nobler than woman.
8 above taller than.
8 sir?] G; sir: F1
10 rude vulgar, unmannerly (in appealing directly to a noble audience).
12 peremptory resolute, obstinate (cf. Bart Fair, 4.1.57).
12–13 as an ambassador Jonson humorously alludes to the determination with which ambassadors struggled to assert precedence over their fellows, a frequent source of conflict in the invitations to masques and in the seating arrangements for them. For the conflicts that arose in the invitations to the various entertainments for this marriage, see the letter to William Trumbull (HMC Downshire, 4.299–301).
13 sovereignties i.e. women’s supremacy in matters of love.
13 wife’s F1’s ‘wiues’ might imply that the Second Cupid is a servant of all women, but both Cupids in their opening exchange, and their dialogue and exchange at 37–47 specifically link themselves to this particular married couple, suggesting the singular reading. Cf. Devil, 2.7.7 SD: ‘Hee speakes out of his wiues window.’ Clearly here ‘wiues’ means ‘wife’s’ (and also at 4.7.68, 4.7.78, and 5.3.16).
13 wife’s] Wh; wiues F1; wives’ Orgel
15 husband’s] Wh; husbands F1; husbands’ Orgel
18 One . . . wonder This implies that after their exclamations the Cupids stare at each other in a silent ‘fit of wonderment’ (OED, Wonder n. 7a), which the Second Cupid breaks.
20 ensigns identifying signs (their bows and arrows).
23–4 contented not . . . off, but] G; contented (not to put off, but) F1
25 complement completion.
29 those arms the bow and arrow.
32–3 these . . . you it is because I am wearing this servant’s dress that I am not recognized by you.
35 shadow reflected image.
36 What . . . impudence i.e. The only possible response to your impudence is to turn myself into one of the Furies (the three classical goddesses of revenge).
36 turn, other] this edn; turne other, F1
37 shadow . . . substance In neoplatonic terms the ‘shadow’ is the imperfect earthly form of the heavenly reality that is its true ‘substance’.
38 against . . . came in preparation for the groom’s arrival.
39–41 Had . . . shafts Cf. Und. 2.5.17–19.
39–40 my mother’s Venus’s.
40–1 eyebrows . . . shafts A frequent conceit in love-poetry.
42 ripened] F1 (rip’ned)
42 ripened F1’s spelling, ‘rip’ned’ perhaps indicates that Jonson anticipated the pronunciation of the final syllable.
42 Mercury The messenger of the gods, and god of eloquence. He was represented as a handsome youth, hence his presentation here as a lover, though he was generally the prosecutor of Jove’s love-affairs rather than notable for his own amatory adventures.
42–3 language . . . tongue Cf. the Friar, in Chaucer, General Prologue, 264–5: ‘Sometime he lisped, for his wantownesse, / To make his Englissh sweete upon his tonge’; and New Inn, 1.3.68.
43–4 girdle . . . woven Venus’s girdle, symbol of chastity, untied by the groom on the wedding night. Its attributes derive from Homer, Iliad, 14.214–17. See Hym., marginal note 40.
47–8 of power powerful enough.
50 crisped tightly curled.
50 Juno’s The goddess of marriage’s (cf. Hym., passim).
51–2 charge . . . attempt Continuing the familiar image of sexual congress as love’s war. ‘Attempt’ means ‘attack’ (OED, Attempt v. 8).
54 virtue manly power (OED, Virtue 7).
56–7 I . . . falsehood The claim that someone lies was grounds for a duel (cf. Touchstone’s comic elaboration of the kinds of lie in AYLI, 5.4.66–78).
57–8 the lists . . . palace the tiltyard at Whitehall (see Introduction).
59 child . . . Venus Cupid had many genealogies; in the one employed here he is the product of the affair between Mars, god of war, and Venus, goddess of love.
62 gage pledge.
63 make come up with.
65 just exact.
66 issue offspring.
70 censures judgements.
73 concoction digestion.
73–5 drink . . . finer In Renaissance theory, ‘digestion is performed by natural heat’ in the stomach; the liver converts this into blood which takes it through the body (Burton, Anatomy, 1.2.1.5). Foods difficult of digestion were thought to breed melancholy, so Burton recommended as a remedy against troublesome dreams ‘to eat a light supper, and of such meats as are easy of digestion’ (2.5.2).
76 New Year’s Day Between the issuing of the challenge and the tilting itself Jonson’s Irish Masque was performed for the first time. The action of this second part took place in the tiltyard.
76–7 he . . . first Jonson confusingly reverses the numbering of the Cupids, so that now it is the ‘first’ Cupid to speak who defends women. This is a peculiarly literary gesture, since in performance this would not have been a problem; possibly, to emphasize the difference in age on which the resolution turns, the Cupid who is the woman’s servant might have been shorter.
76 winged The Cupids enter now in their ‘true figure’ (82), and that this included wings is implied in 93–4.
77 bride’s colours According to Chamberlain ‘all the other furniture of the one party was murrey and white, which were the bride’s colours’ (Masque Archive, Challenge, 13). ‘Murrey’ is a colour resembling that of the mulberry, a reddish purple or blood red; the term is one used in heraldry.
77 chariot Chamberlain records that ‘there were two handsome chariots or pageants that brought in two Cupids’, but neither he nor Jonson indicates how these were adorned.
79 SH] not in F1
79 glad your aspects (1) gladden your eyes; (2) gladden your faces.
81 champion one who acts as the acknowledged defender of a cause; a chivalric term.
84 bonfires] F1 (bone-fires)
84 shall which shall.
85 i’the bath H&S suggest that the allusion is to the already fashionable city of Bath, where Queen Anne went in May and August 1613, but the image seems much more informal.
85–6 rising . . . monarch rising up as proud as a king.
86 humour i.e. the bodily fluid of the ladies, in whose bloods Cupid is accustomed to play (cf. Love Rest., 227).
86 piccadills] F1 (pickardills)
86 piccadills the high collars or ruffs fashionable at the time, or else specifically the wire stiffeners used to support them.
88 farthingales frameworks of whalebone hoops to extend the skirts. Chamberlain records on 18 February 1613 that at the court celebrations for the marriage of Princess Elizabeth no one wearing a farthingale was admitted ‘which was to gain the more room’ (Chamberlain, Letters, ed. McClure, 1.426.)
89 lyen lain.
91 once on one occasion only.
91 solemnity ceremonial occasion.
92 one one lady, the bride.
93 juggler trickster (OED, 3).
94 committed . . . balance brought into equal competition with me.
97 galleries The most important of the audience at Whitehall watched the tilt from a ‘lavishly decorated permanent viewing place, the general nature and purpose of which is perhaps best conveyed by Stow. He refers to it as “a sumptuous gallery” in which “the princes with their nobility used to stand or sit, and at windows to behold all triumphant joustings and other military exercises” . . . For such occasions, as was the custom in specially-erected viewing stands, the gallery was divided by hangings and tapestries into different “rooms”’ (Young, 1987, 118–19). In addition there were a series of viewing stands at either side of the yard, to which Jonson’s Cupid might also have been alluding.
100 a man of business The meaning may be no more than ‘a busy man’, but the phrase seems to suggest a stronger sense, such as ‘a man engaged in public affairs’, though OED, 22a, gives this meaning only from 1670.
101 master of requests ‘The Court of Requests was part of the king’s council held by the Lord Privy Seal and the Masters of Requests for the relief of persons petitioning the king’ (H&S).
102 pretender to a state-face i.e. someone imitating the haughty look of a courtier. Cf. Amorphus’s description of ‘your face of faces, or courtier’s face’ in Cynthia (Q), 2.3.28, and Epigr. 11.4.
104 company According to Chamberlain, they were dressed in green and yellow, the colours of the bridegroom.
105 SH] not in F1
105–6 You . . . challenger The challenger normally entered the tiltyard first. At 56–7 it was the second Cupid who actually issued the challenge, therefore entitling him to enter first.
111 belie counterfeit.
113 resembled imitated.
113–14 doves . . . mother Conventionally the birds that drew Venus’s chariot.
115 almost . . . habits a costume identical except in colour. As with the barriers in Hym., the tilters do not seem to have been individually identified by their dress, or by carrying imprese (emblems), as was customary.
116–17 put . . . valour entrusted yourself to the protection of others (the tilters on his side).
119 peculiar particular.
121 clients followers. Specifically used of those who owe allegiance or duty to someone of higher rank.
122 Spring . . . Cheerfulness The three graces, Thalia, Aglaia, and Euphrosyne, attendants of Venus; in some versions of the myth they were also the nursemaids of Cupid.
122 Favour Goodwill, kindness.
128–9 restore . . . arms The Cupids had exchanged bows and arrows in the challenge (63–4 above).
129 harpies The mythological half-women, half-birds who seized food from the tables of Phineus, attacked Aeneas and his followers, and were reputed to carry off children and the souls of the dead.
129 Furies See 36n. above.
129–30 turn . . . nature i.e. reverse a different myth of Cupid’s origin, in which he was born out of chaos and gave order to the whole of creation (see Beauty, 271n.).
131 Oh] F1 state 2 (O); I? F1 state 1
131 stiffly obstinately, proudly.
136 the tilting For the contestants, see final note. The intention to use the tilting to signal rapprochement between court factions is illustrated by the fact that among the bride’s supporters were a number of opponents of the Howards, while members of the family tilted on the groom’s side (see Introduction).
137 After i.e. after the tilting is over
138–40 Now . . . not The speech is presumably spoken ironically, suggesting that the tournament came to no clear conclusion.
144 hymen God of marriage.
149 palm (trophy of) victory.
150 whilst . . . striving Though this recalls the phrasing of the opening SD, it would seem unlikely that the Cupids return to actual contention, since this would distract from Hymen’s explanatory narrative.
152–4 You . . . birth The myth of Eros and Anteros, of somewhat misty classical origins, was widely circulated in the Renaissance, and allegorized in a variety of different ways. Merrill (1940) provides a detailed analysis of its transmission, and it is discussed by Gordon (1975), 272–4, and Panofsky (1939), 126–7. While Jonson might have encountered their story in Giraldi or Cartari, various details, including the mention of Themis, suggest that he went to one of the fuller sources, either directly to the orations of Themistius, fourth-century Greek philosopher and rhetorician (published in 1534), whom Merrill sees as having invented the story, or else to Marico Equicola, Libro de Nature d’amore, first printed in 1525, or Celio Calcagnini, Anteros sive de mutuo amore (1544), both of whom included translations of Themistius. Jonson’s version is a close paraphrase of this account. In one allegorization of the myth, Anteros (Anti-Eros) is an opponent of Eros, standing for celestial, pure love as against the imperfect fleshly love of his sibling (Jonson uses this sense in Cynthia (Q), 5.3.0 SD.1 and Love Rest., 132). In another, he is seen as an avenger of offences against love, but here, and in Bolsover (83–5), Jonson follows the interpretation of Anteros’s name as ‘Love-in-return’, so that the story of his birth becomes an allegory of the necessity of mutuality in married love.
153 this the Cupid who supports the man.
155 answering . . . form equalling his beauty.
157 Themis ‘A titaness, the embodiment of divine justice, and the incumbent of the Delphic oracle before Apollo’ (Orgel).
158 of years old enough.
162 affected desired.
164 made made it.
164 thou the Cupid who supports the woman.
170–1 cleaving . . . palm Represented dramatically in Bolsover, 81–5, where Eros enters carrying a palm-branch already split down the middle and eventually gives half to Anteros.
172–3 lover . . . beloved A standard concept in neoplatonic theories of love. Ficino writes: ‘Whenever two men embrace each other in mutual affection, this one lives in that; that one, in this. Such men exchange themselves with each other; and each gives himself to the other in order to receive the other’ (Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love, trans. Jayne, 1985, 55). Sidney, in Arcadia, formulates the idea thus: ‘the true love hath that excellent nature in it that it doth transform the very essence of the lover into the thing loved, uniting and as it were incorporating it with a secret and inward working’ (ed. Skretkowicz, 1987, 71–2). Cf. New Inn, 3.2.70–3.
173 as . . . now i.e. by imitating each other’s appearance.
175 equal . . . friendships This underlines the political hopes for the marriage (see Introduction).
179 SH] F1 (1. 2.)
A Note on the Performers The names of the actors who spoke the text are not recorded. Twenty tilters took part in the tournament, led by the Duke of Lennox and the Earl of Rutland. The other eighteen were the Earls of Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery, Lords Walden, North, Scroop, Chandos, Compton, Norris, Hay, and Dingwall, Sir Thomas Somerset, Edward Sackville, Sir Thomas Howard, Sir Sigismund Zinzen, Henry Howard, Henry Zinzen, and Sir Henry Cary. (See Masque Archive, Challenge, 1.)
See more
See more
See more