The Gypsies Metamorphosed

Edited by James Knowles

Introduction

Dates

The Gypsies Metamorphosed was performed three times in 1621: at Burley-on-the-Hill on 3 August; at Belvoir Castle on 5 August, the anniversary of the Gowrie conspiracy; and at Windsor Castle, probably after 30 September and before 20 October. The first two performances were staged during the King’s summer progress to the Midlands, and he probably arrived at Burley early in August. His previous recorded halt, at Castle Ashby on 29 July, required at least one other overnight halt to be arranged, usually Kirby Hall, Northamptonshire, before Burley was reached (Nichols, Progresses, 4.985; Brayshay, 1997, 129). The earliest feasible date, therefore, for the King’s arrival at Burley would have been 31 July, but he may have arrived on 3 August itself, as one contemporaneous copy of Sir John Beaumont’s poem welcoming him is so dated (Leicester Record Office, DG9/2796).

The third performance, held at Windsor Castle, was apparently by royal command: ‘you, sir, that twice / Have graced us already, encourage to thrice’ (WIN, Prol., 17–18). It followed on from the conclusion of the progress and fictionalizes a problem the authorities struggled to contain, namely the adherence of supernumerary court followers after the summer (WIN, Prol., 11n.). Although precise information is sparse, the Windsor performance is often supposed to have occurred between 5 and 11 September (Randall, 1975, 67; W. W. Greg, 1952, 1). The first allusion, however, occurs in John Chamberlain’s letter of 27 October, which also mentions the erroneous rumours of Jonson’s increased pension as a direct result of the ‘service done there’ and his reversion of the Mastership of the Revels granted on 5 October (Masque Archive, Gypsies, 8).

Internal evidence supports a later date. In September 1621 the Lord Treasurership was handed from Henry Montagu, Viscount Mandeville (later Earl of Manchester), to Lionel, Baron Cranfield (later Earl of Middlesex), and the patent was issued on 30 September (Cokayne, Complete Peerage, 8.689). This change may be reflected in the Lord Treasurer’s fortune, which states ‘Your fortune is good and will be to set / The office upright’ (WIN 370–1, emphasis added). This future tense, the allusion to Exchequer reforms, and the hope that pensions might soon be paid again, all suggest the lines are addressed to the new Treasurer. If this is the case, and as we know that James had returned to Lincolnshire by 20 October, the most likely dates for the Windsor performances fall between 30 September and 20 October.

Occasions and venues

The Gypsies Metamorphosed marked the consolidation of the social and political position of James I’s favourite, George Villiers, Marquis of Buckingham, as he entertained the king at his expensive and newly purchased Leicestershire estate, Burley-on-the-Hill (Lockyer, 1981, 63, gives the purchase price as £28,000). Villiers had not only just arrived, he had recently survived a torrid first session of parliament in early 1621, when his family’s involvement in monopolies was debated. As John Chamberlain (1939), 2.374 put it, he had been ‘found parliament proof’ (Butler, 1993, 165; Butler, 1991, 257). Gypsies was, then, conceived at the point where Buckingham’s position was developing beyond the Bedchamber into the role of acknowledged favourite, although he had yet to extend his reach into the formal institutions of government such as the Privy Council (Adams, 1978, 154; Lockyer, 1981, 65).

The impulse to acquire an estate was part investment, part Buckingham’s projection of himself and his family as major aristocrats with regional power. The King’s own verses celebrating this visit to Burley wished to ‘Firm plant’ the Villiers family ‘in their native soil and ground’ (Masque Archive, Gypsies, 2), and William Burton’s Description of Leicestershire (1622) claimed that both his book and the county ‘belong’ to the marquis (¶v). Buckingham had already had his mother elevated to a countess in her own right (creation 1618: see Cokayne, Complete Peerage, 2.391–2), and ensured that many members of the Villiers connection gained profitable offices and marriages. He now furthered his local position by formalizing his long-standing links with the Manners family through marriage to Katherine, daughter of the owner of Belvoir Castle, Francis Manners, sixth Earl of Rutland (Cogswell, 1998, 86–9; Lockyer, 1981, 58–60, 68–9). The two regional performances, then, celebrated the twin bases of Villiers power, and fulsomely acknowledged the origin of that power in royal favour. At Burley, the King was invited to ‘enter here / The house your bounty ’ath built’ (BUR, Porter’s Speech, 12–13).

At both August venues, Gypsies formed part of ‘great provision of plays, masques, and all manner of entertainment’ (Masque Archive, Gypsies, 6), which included two feasts, a sermon to mark the Gowrie anniversary, and a masque to be staged at Belvoir for which preparatory work had started in July 1621 (Masque Archive, Gypsies, 2). Fragmentary remains from Buckingham’s ‘extraordinary expenses’ for August 1621 suggest that hunting formed a major part of the amusement, and there are numerous gifts of dogs and horses, as well as two payments to the fiddlers (SP14/124/128; Masque Archive, Gypsies, 5). Contemporary accounts record the feasting and the poetic tributes paid by the King to Buckingham for the ‘store / Of huge provision’, culminating in his ‘Votum’ (prayer) ‘for the felicity / and fertility of the owners of / this house’ (Masque Archive, Gypsies, 2). The King’s poem echoes the masque’s language, and was itself answered by one of Buckingham’s neighbours and clients, Sir John Beaumont, who wrote ‘My Lord of Buckingham’s welcome’, apparently spoken to mark the King’s arrival (Bosworth-Field, 1629, 140–1; also Leicester Record Office, DG9/2796).

As both of the original venues have been extensively rebuilt, little can be discerned about the setting, although some sense of Belvoir’s earlier form is visible in late seventeenth-century engravings (Bold, 1989, 75–9; for Burley, see ‘Porter’s Speech’, 25n.). Frustratingly little factual information survives about the places of performance, the staging, or the professional personnel involved. Through the State Papers we can associate both the musician Nicholas Lanier and the dancer John Ogilby with the performances. These records show that Jonson was paid £100 and Lanier £200 for the Burley and Belvoir performances, which may reflect the balance of elements in the masque. Other musicians, including a taborer, a piper, a cornetter, and the fiddlers, received £12 16s (Masque Archive, Gypsies, 5). Significantly, Buckingham’s stable accounts include the following entry: ‘Bought a horse for Ben / Jonson per my lord’s command’, priced at £13 (BL, uncatalogued Graham Papers, folder 3). This may have been a post-performance reward, as in the case of Buckingham’s similar gift to the painter Honthorst in 1628, but possibly it provided practical transport that facilitated Jonson’s production of on-the-spot alterations. All the payments involved are large, but Lanier’s £200 reveals the extent of the musical provision, and may suggest that he was involved in some aspect of the design, as had been the case for Lovers Made Men.

Versions

The three different performances generated different texts: the two main versions are those staged at Burley and at Windsor. The second performance at Belvoir is, in essence, a variant of the Burley version, although considerable disagreement exists about how far the revision progressed, and to what extent the Belvoir version was envisaged when the masque was originally written, especially since the Chamber accounts that evidence the July 1621 preparations for a masque at Belvoir may not, necessarily, refer to Jonson’s masque (Masque Archive, Gypsies, 3).

The differences between the versions were established most fully by Greg’s Jonson’s Masque of Gipsies (1952), a groundbreaking scholarly study of the revisions, which reconstructs the underlying texts behind the two main versions. In the notes to this edition the three different texts are referred to by the abbreviations BUR, BEL, and WIN respectively.

At Burley the entertainment consisted of the Porter’s speech of welcome, probably performed as the King arrived (perhaps with the other welcoming verses penned for Buckingham by Beaumont), and the masque proper, which centred on the reading of fortunes for the King, Prince Charles, and the ladies in the audience, who were largely members of Buckingham’s extended kin (BUR 200–414). The fortunes are sandwiched between the arrival of the gypsies and their dialogue with the clowns (rustics), whose pockets they pick. The masque concludes with the gypsies’ reappearance in a transformed state, and five songs in praise of King James. As the only surviving copy of the first issue of the volume that printed the Burley version, John Benson’s duodecimo, Q. Horatius Flaccus his Art of Poetry Englished by Ben Jonson (1640) lacks eight pages (corresponding to BUR 636–783), we have no certain way of knowing what was played in this section. Most editors assume the missing pages contained a version of the Cock Lorel ballad.

The intermediate performance at Belvoir probably largely repeated the Burley version, but with a series of minor alterations to adapt the text for a different location and host (see Appendix 1), including lines that celebrate the Earl of Rutland as ‘Our Buckingham’s father’. Some of the new material alludes to the date of the performance, 5 August, the anniversary of the Gowrie plot against James VI in 1600 (Appendix 1.C), which was customarily marked by sermons and feasting. The status of one potential addition, the Countess of Exeter’s fortune, remains contentious. According to the text her fortune was added ‘late’, and it seems plausible that the choice of a professional actor, the Patrico, as speaker may reflect a rapid revision and the exigencies of performance, yet in the only contemporaneous copy of this section of the masque, the Conway MS (JnB 613), the fortune is included as part of the Burley text. If Jonson was present in the Midlands in August 1621 such localized changes would become more feasible. The Countess of Exeter’s fortune is reprinted here in Appendix 1.B.

At Windsor the text was considerably recast, and the action begins with a Prologue and closes with an Epilogue. The initial arrival of the gypsies, is retained, but the fortunes are offered instead to the great officers at court (325–445), and the King and Prince Charles’s fortunes are augmented (255–72, 299–322). The clowns’ section is also revised (with four additional female parts at 506–19, 629–36), the Cock Lorel ballad is retained, and the dialogue between the gypsies and the clowns concludes, as in Burley, with the reappearance of the gypsies, who, in this version, persuade the clowns to join in the refrain of a ‘blessing’ on King James (969–1042). The final five songs are also repeated. Whereas the Burley text was 872 lines long, excluding the Porter’s speech, the Windsor text (including Prologue and Epilogue) exceeds 1,110 lines.

The difficulties created by three occasions with three varying scripts are compounded by a complex textual situation (see below). None of the texts we have offers a performance version, and they may not necessarily represent what was staged in 1621, especially as the printed texts were issued almost twenty years post-performance, and little is known of the manuscripts that underlie them. It is important to bear in mind the distinctions between versions (scripts), texts (printed or manuscript embodiments of those versions), and exemplars or copies (specific textual witnesses). In particular, what is often called the Windsor version is, most clearly, a revised version of Windsor, prepared for the press, and it might be better called F2/Windsor to recognize that fact.

Titles

The masque appears under a number of different titles: ‘a booke called The Masque of the Gipsies’ was entered in the Stationers’ Register (20 February 1640), although the printed text in Q. Horatius Flaccus: his Art of Poetry (the duodecimo of 1640) uses both ‘The Masque of the Gypsies’ (sig. C10), and ‘The Gypsies Metamorphosed’ (sig. C11). In F2 it is called ‘A Masque of the Metamorphos’d Gypsies’ but ‘The Gypsies Metamorphos’d’ in the half-title (sig. H1v). Both the Bridgewater MS (JnB 612) and the Newcastle MS (JnB 611) call it ‘The Gypsies Metamorphos’d’. Contemporary copies employ both titles: the 1627 catalogue of the Countess of Bridgewater’s books lists ‘The Gypsies masque’ (Huntington Library, MS EL6495), and her son annotates the mis-bound manuscript as ‘the Gypsies Metamorphos’d’. The catalogue of Constantijn Huygens’ library lists another (lost) manuscript of The Gypsies Metamorphos’d (Van Stockum, 1903, 31). The Conway transcript (JnB 613) is headed ‘The Gypsies Maske att Burley’.

None of these titles can simply be assigned to author, editor, or different performances. Greg (1939–59, 2.585) argued that the formulation ‘The Masque of the Gipsies’ in the Stationers’ Register and duodecimo originated with the printer, and that the ‘title at the head of the masque proper’, that is ‘The Gypsies Metamorphosed’, was authorial. The survival of three manuscripts headed by variants of the ‘Masque of Gypsies’ title perhaps complicates this division into authorial and editorial titles. Nor can we simply associate one title with Burley and the other with the Windsor revision, as the Bridgewater MS presents a composite version, and the duodecimo, the avowedly Burley text, still uses ‘The Gypsies Metamorphos’d’ for its half-title.

Modern editions reflect this proliferation of titles. Greg’s authoritative Jonson’s Masque of Gipsies also employed the title Gipsies Metamorphosed (at 1, 120, and 121). The Oxford editors prefer The Gypsies Metamorphosed, repeating this at the start of the masque (10.566). Only Stephen Orgel exactly reproduces the F2 title A Masque of the Metamorphosed Gypsies, repeating the shortened title, ‘The Gypsies Metamorphosed’, after the preliminary matter. This edition continues to use the abbreviated title Gypsies Metamorphosed as it appears in all the complete texts (the duodecimo, Bridgewater MS, Newcastle MS, and F2) to refer to the masque, while retaining the different headings The Masque of the Gypsies for Burley, and A Masque of the Metamorphosed Gypsies for Windsor, reflecting the first page of the printed texts of these versions.

Gypsies and rogues

The resonance of the masque’s central fiction – the arrival of trickster gypsies who tell fortunes and filch the audience’s goods – remains one of its interpretative cruces. The Gypsies Metamorphosed draws on a wide range of representations of gypsies and gypsy lore, conflating gypsies with the masterless men, or ‘counterfeit’ Egyptians (beggars who pretend to be gypsies) whose ‘licentious liberty’ exercised early modern authorities (Mayall, 2004, 58–9, 61). It is difficult to trace precise sources for Jonson’s gypsy lore, as many of the tricks and deceits are repeated throughout popular and oral traditions, and much material undergoes constant recycling between pamphleteers (Mayall, 2004, 66). Indeed, The Gypsies Metamorphosed conflates several overlapping traditions: rogue pamphlets, European gypsy writings, stage gypsies – sometimes depicted as canters like the rogues, sometimes seen as richly and exuberantly costumed exotics.

The late sixteenth century witnessed the development of a sub-genre of rogue writing, in a range of pamphlets and cheap print, delineating types of rogues recognizable by their clothes and mannerisms, their various ‘shifts’ (tricks), and their vocabularies of special ‘canting’ language. The earliest canting occurs in Robert Copeland’s Highway to the Spitall House (1535/6), and the most widely read texts, such as John Awdelay’s Fraternity of Vagabonds (1561) and S. Harman’s Caveat for Common Cursitors (1567), were later reprinted. The Caveat reappeared with a handy index as Groundwork of Coney Catching (1592), and Awdelay’s Fraternity was reissued in 1603, alongside popular ballads, such ‘the 25 orders of knaves’ (entered in Stationers’ Register in 1585–6). Thomas Dekker’s Lantern and Candlelight and The Bellman of London (both 1608) seem to have rekindled the vogue, and both these pamphlets were reprinted in 1620. The most elaborate of the later tracts, Samuel Rid’s Martin Mark-All (1610), describes a complete ‘shadow structure’ to mainstream society, with its own classes, professions, pseudo-religion, and law, an upside-down anti-order (Woodbridge, 2003, 203). Although the close affinity of these pamphlets and jest books suggests that these largely fictive accounts contributed to the perception of the poor as idle and fostered a more punitive regime towards them, the tone of some is light-hearted and celebratory (Rid), while others find humour in distress and capital punishment (Harman). Dekker’s Lantern and Candlelight suggested that canting was a ‘fountain of barbarism’ produced by the fall of Babel, and describes a journey into a ‘wilderness’ filled with ‘monsters’, condemning the counterfeit Egyptians: ‘They are a people more scattered than Jews, and more hated; beggarly in apparel, barbarous in condition, beastly in behaviour, and bloody if met with advantage’ (B3v, G2v).

Among the English rogue writings, Dekker’s Lantern and Candlelight is notable for the theatricality of its beggars, gypsies, and moon-men, and for the image of sexually rapacious ‘land-pirates’ (G3), who cozen naive country folk with palmistry to pick their pockets, and seems to have shaped the masque: Jonson certainly associated Dekker with roguery (Informations, 36). Dekker’s Bellman of London describes a diabolic kitchen and feast prepared for these rogues (C1–2), while ‘The Bellman’s Second Walk’ depicts a ‘Sathanical synagogue’ which judges cases written on flayed scrivener’s skins, in ink of conjurer’s blood drawn from inkstands made from usurers’ skulls (Lantern, C, C4v). Dekker also links hunting and sexuality in a way that might have influenced Gypsies, as his rogues are poachers of venison, ‘hounds themselves, and damnable hunters after flesh’ (G4).

Many other details in Gypsies are borrowed from Rid and Awdelay, such as the name of the Jackman (see 3n.), and from canting vocabularies, but the specific combination of gypsies and cant is more clearly theatrical in origin. Several plays include canting scenes, notably Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl (1611) and Fletcher and Massinger’s Beggar’s Bush (c. 1613–22), and gypsy tricks were well-known staples of improvised theatre such as commedia dell’arte, but the earliest instance of canting gypsies appears to be Middleton’s More Dissemblers Besides Women (c. 1614–19). The ‘merriest lives’ of Middleton’s ‘brave and tawny’ gypsies (3.1.111, 4.2.168) represent an escape from the repressive court and urban worlds. While Middleton’s gypsies are associated with deceit and theft, practising palmistry and fortune-telling as a decoy for pick-pocketing, they are also envisaged as offering an idyllic life, drinking, and singing with Marlovian wiliness: ‘Come live with us, come live with us, / All you that love your eases’ (4.2.75–6). They have a joyful facility with words, playfully conjuring novel and nonsense terms (4.7.82–90). Jonson’s erotic and exotic wanderers show similar linguistic dexterity.

Middleton’s gypsies exit ‘with a strange wild-fashioned dance to the oboes’ (4.2.277 SD) characteristic of their connections to a comedic and festive world. Dancing and antic gypsies also feature in another possible source, the entertainment for James I at Brougham Castle in Cumbria (1617). As this occasion belonged to the King’s return after his progress to Scotland, most of the courtiers who appeared or received fortunes in The Gypsies Metamorphosed were present. Campion’s combination of rustics and gypsies, his evocation of a moonlight world and the gypsies as moon-worshippers, and a ‘chain of prophecies’ offered to the King by gypsies who ‘speak what to thy state belong’, all prefigure Jonson’s show. The Brougham masque moves from the ‘antic hops unused of men’ that herald the wandering ‘sons and daughters of the Fates’, as the gypsies are called, through rustic dances, to an unmasking after the prophecies (Sternfeld, 1967, 615, 617). The Brougham entertainment culminated with Truth, Peace, Love, and Honour offering a hymn of praise and wishes for longevity to the King (Spink, 1968; Spence, 1991, 75–81). Both the mixed mode of this show and its performance practice seem to have fed into The Gypsies Metamorphosed. Even in 1621, Jonson may have sought to outdo his sometime rival, Campion, by producing a yet more adventurous gypsy entertainment (Spink, 1968, 61).

In contrast to the anti-vagrant writings of Harman and Dekker, Jonson’s central figures are described as both ‘rogue gypsies’ and ‘overgrown fairies’ (BUR 436–7, 420–1). The masque refers to them as a ‘loyal’ or ‘royal nation’ (BUR 171, WIN 169) and as ‘gentleman-like’ (BUR 433), terms which look forward to the noble gypsy tradition found in later plays such as Middleton’s The Spanish Gypsy (1623). Gypsies even develops the possibilities in Rid’s descriptions of an alternative political order of pleasure and festivity: they have both festive licence and royal licence (BUR 164–77; 657–59). Their ‘tricks’ and ‘sports’ are done ‘gratia risus’ (BUR 60, 101, 607), and the overall implication seems to be that their thefts are mitigated: they are, after all, ‘restorative’ (BUR 651). Butler (1991), 260 argues that the masque deploys a ‘common courtly figure of speech’ whereby courtiers on progress imagined themselves as gypsies, and that, although the gypsies constantly challenge the bounds of acceptable behaviour and polite convention, Jonson’s playful and teasing presentation renders them sexy and exciting.

In this sense, Jonson’s gypsies are figures of excess and escape. Whereas Dekker associates his ‘moon-men’ gypsies with madness, and the Brougham entertainment replaces ‘homage to the horned moon’ with the mystical light of monarchy, the moonscapes of Gypsies are more magical. The lyrical delicacy and tonal complexity of ‘The fairy beam upon you’ (BUR 189–99) encompasses the antic, the comic, the prophetic, and the enchanted (cf. 430–1, 603). In distant echo of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the woodlands that surround Burley and Belvoir offer enchantment, danger, pleasure, and the beauty of nocturnal revels. These ‘glimpses of the moon’ (Ham., 1.4.53), and the paradox of the (much-imitated) ‘noon of night’ passage (BUR 193), recall the language of light which formed a central part of masque transformations, but may also gesture towards Buckingham’s artistic interests. ‘Nocturnes’, painted to capture an ambiguous combination of beauty and menace, had become fashionable among the Dutch artists living in Rome, and many of these works, with their sophisticated uses of light sources, were collected by Sir Balthazar Gerbier for Villiers during his 1621 trip to Italy (ODNB; Brown and Elliott, 2002, 44; Slatkes, 2001, 306–9).

Some of the sexual ambivalence explored in ‘On Gypsy’ (Epigr. 41) attaches to the exotically ‘brawny’ gypsies (BUR 484), and whereas Dekker (1608, G2v) represents gypsy darkness as disfigurement, here they are ‘olive-coloured’, ‘cleanlier’, and ultimately loyal (BUR 171, 419, 442–3; cf. 657–9). Their exoticism may register a growing interest in European gypsy traditions. Significantly, the Jackman calls for his ‘guittara’ (BUR 48), and the gypsy child carried at his mother’s back probably originates in continental visual sources (BUR 16n.). Although we cannot demonstrate Jonson’s direct knowledge of Italian forms such as the Zingaresca (ballads and popular music associated with gypsy culture), some of the continental material may have been absorbed via the commedia dell’arte. Jonson would have found both zingani and zinganare in Florio’s dictionary, and Florio’s definition of zingani as ‘counterfeit Egyptians, runagate gypsies, roguing knaves, which are thought by their witchcraft to bewitch folks purses, and by telling men’s fortunes and other secret means to pick away and cozen them of their money’ (1611, 3F2) could almost be a summary of Gypsies. Contemporaneously with Gypsies, Jonson wrote a tributary poem for James Mabbe’s translation of Matteo Aleman’s The Rogue (March 1621; see ‘Mabbe’, headnote, p. 610 below). Jonson’s poem ironically remarks that ‘an ill man’ would avoid such a ‘good book’, yet predicts that ‘this Spanish Proteus’, reclothed in ‘a cloth / Finer than was his Spanish’, will ‘be received in court’. Mabbe’s shape-shifting gypsy swerves past moral strictures rather like the masque’s metamorphic gypsies. Mabbe often applauds his protagonists’ skills in language that echoes Jonson’s, as when Guzman comments how ‘in blearing the sight, and picking a man’s purse before his face, some have the soul and conscience of your gypsy, and will make justice a matter of niggling, with a hey pass and repass, come of jack with a whim-wham, ordering things so, as they shall think good, and may make most for their profit’ (The Rogue, B4v; Randall, 1963, 182). Such arguments are close to the gypsies’ slogan: ‘All the world is ours to win in’ (BUR 64).

Another likely influence comes from visual sources, including the numerous representations of gypsy fortune-tellers in prints, for example those by Crispin de Passe, or in Flemish paintings of outdoor pleasures (Griffiths and Hartley, 1997, 37; Katritzky, 2006, 426–7). Many Northern European Caravaggisti imitated their master’s low-life scenes, such as The Cardsharps (Katritzky, 534–5). Caravaggio’s Gypsy Fortune Teller (c. 1593–4), the main inspiration of the genre, presented the irony of a fortune-telling that reduces the recipient’s fortune, as his ring is stolen. In particular, Bartolomeo Manfredi’s paintings developed the contrast between obliquely lit figures and menacing and shadowed background spaces, transforming the exotic, seductive deceitfulness of Caravaggio’s gypsy into a bleakly claustrophobic vision of a world of trickery in which the fortune-teller is herself robbed by an onlooker (Langdon, 2001, 44; Cuzin, 1980, 17). Several of the performers in Gypsies were at the forefront of English art collecting (Arundel, Buckingham, Hamilton, Porter), and would have known of these paintings. Indeed, ‘The Egyptian’ mentioned in the inventory of Buckingham’s collection is probably the copy of Manfredi’s Fortune Teller which Gerbier sourced in Italy in 1621 and which was destroyed in 1945 (see McEvansoneya, 2003, 323).

‘The Farce of the Grand Devil’s Arse’: feasting and farting

Jonson’s masque also engages with more local popular customs and the debates over what constituted ‘lawful recreation’. The performance of the Burley and Belvoir versions during the summer progress, and at the house of a Catholic magnate (and, on 5 August, in conjunction with a sermon), enacted the royal policy of licensed jollity (Marcus, 1986, 106–14). While ‘loath to make a hurly’ (BUR 76), this royal ‘noise of gypsies’ (BUR 658) marks the ambivalent movement between licence and license, as the festivity of Gypsies seems always to teeter between disorder and legality, stretching the bounds of social and generic decorum. As Jonson declared in Informations 311–12, his lost pastoral The May-lord (c. 1611) featured ‘clowns making mirth and foolish sports’. This masque equally tests the bounds of pastoral, by combining clownish sports with aristocrats encouraging and even participating in incipiently riotous pastimes. These tensions culminate in Patrico’s call for the gypsies and rustics to ‘chant out the farce / Of the grand Devil’s Arse’ (BUR 692–3).

Much of the ambiguity surrounding the masque’s rustic sports focuses on the Devil’s Arse cavern and its annual ‘musters’ (BUR 55), which some contemporary sources treated as gypsy events, others as occasions for roguish outlawry (Mayall, 2004, 71). News from the New World, 35, cites a pamphlet in which witches invite the devil to dine in Derbyshire, and Jonson had linked the Peak Cavern with the devil in The Devil Is an Ass (1.3.34–5). The witches’ feast develops Fitzdotterel’s imaginings of a diabolic dinner of ‘three or four dishes o’ good meat’, including ‘a justice head and brains’ (5.8.103–4), together with the stink the departing devil left behind (132). Other sources might include well-known biblical texts and sermons, such as 1 Corinthians, 10 (‘ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table and of the table of devils’), and Raoul de Houdenc’s Songe de Enfer (c. 1214–5) – although of Songe, only 578–82, a pasty of a disloyal whore, might be echoed in BUR 739–42. The Songe was known in England in the early seventeenth century: Sir Kenelm Digby donated a copy to the Bodleian Library in 1634 (Digby MS 86; Mihm, 1984, 30–1, 84).

Although some sources link gypsies and witches, and some descriptions of witches’ sabbats contained diabolic feasts (Randall, 1975, 86; Rowland, 1990, 166), Cock Lorel’s feast owes more to the fantastic than the diabolic. Thus among the more immediate sources, in Pantagruel, 4.46, the devil dines off hobgoblins, students, ‘counsellors, mischief-mongers, [and] multipliers of law-suits, such as wrest and pervert right and law’ (Rabelais, 1994, 629). Florio’s Second Fruits (1591), 12.179, reports a proverbial saying, ‘Of three things the devil makes his mess: of lawyers’ tongues, of scriveners’ fingers, you the third may guess’ (presumably a sexual joke). Florio’s saying is a variation of an English proverb, ‘The devil makes his Christmas pie of lawyers’ tongues and clerks’ fingers’ (Tilley, D258). More broadly, Cock Lorel’s music was associated with bawdy balladry. The tune most commonly linked with Jonson’s lines in the early modern period, and perhaps used in the original performance, was the highly popular ‘Packington’s Pound’.

Cock Lorel’s banquet is the ultimate symbol of the masque’s upside-down and arsy-varsy world. Its strange transformations offer a bizarre parallel to the feasting and hunting of which the masque was part. As one of the central symbols of humanism, the banquet could be a vision of intellectual civility and sociability, while the trope of the Ovidian ‘banquet of sense’ found philosophical potential in sensuality (Jeanneret, 1991, 13–20; Kermode, 1971; cf. Poet., 4.5). However, Cock Lorel’s feast breaks manners and offers an anti-philosophical banquet, climaxing in the scatological rather than the intellectual, with the fart as a climactic moment of bawdy bodily dissonance.

Buckingham and the politics of favour

Despite the remarkable violation of decorum in the Devil’s Arse episode, the gypsies’ charismatic sexiness and trickiness work well in the Burley context, where their flirtatious fortunes flatter the ladies. At Windsor, however, the implications of the gypsies stealing the Garter and filching official seals to grant themselves pardons have more awkward resonances, especially in the context of the criticism that had almost overwhelmed Buckingham in the 1621 parliament. Even if we accept that these gypsies trick but do not steal, and that their thefts, directed at the (arguably) comic rustics, are ultimately restored, the implications are disconcerting. It remains difficult to account for the depiction of Buckingham and his clan as rapacious gallants, given the evidence of the rewards bestowed on Jonson and the general esteem for the masque in court circles (Butler, 1991, 255–6).

The most productive approach separates out the nuanced differences between the representations of Buckingham in the two main versions. Echoing the final line of the Windsor Prologue, ‘Forgive us the fault that your favour hath made’ (20), Martin Butler (1991) has shown how the changed context of the Windsor performance heightened anxieties and emphasized Buckingham’s flawed nature, redeemed only by royal favour: Windsor’s praises are more conditional. ‘Favour’ and the different kinds of power created by different positions – household posts and offices of state – lie at the heart of the Windsor fortune-telling, though this need not mean that competition between aristocrats is simply subsumed by relations with the monarch. Instead, at Windsor, magnates who inherited power and offices now have to compare themselves to, compete with, and engage with, those who have risen by royal preferment, making the great officers of state equal with the masque’s ‘new men’ (BUR 777, WIN 935). Even as the masque erases differences between those empowered by blood and by favour, the emphasis on fortune is more conditional towards Buckingham, yet is also clearer about his right to court influence while royal favour continues. This aspect, stressed in the Porter’s speech at Burley, is restated in the recast King’s fortune (WIN 255–62). Here the punning on ‘wait’ suggests the possibility of an interruption in the stream of favour, which the masque overcomes so that King’s bounty will continue and ‘all desert still overcharge’ (WIN 267, 269).

Although this approach is sensitive to differences of situation between the two versions and to their conflicting depictions of Buckingham, it has unfortunate side-effects in reducing the possibility of poet’s agency. Butler (1991), 272 concedes that his reading suggests a Jonson more at ease with Buckingham than many critics (largely with hindsight) have wished to admit, or than some of his poems imply. Equally, stripping the gypsy imagery of its subversiveness by locating the masque in a more courtly aesthetic, or treating it simply as an adjunct of factional jostling, downplays the violence of some sections (WIN 450–75 for example), the contempt for the rustics (WIN 698–703), and the dissonant scatology (WIN 805–8). These matters seem less tractable to a context of conditional praise, and accentuate the darker aspects of Buckingham’s power.

Genre

Some of this text’s tonal ambiguities arise from its generic strangeness. Although the contemporary titles all label Gypsies as a masque, the main fable – unlike that of court masques that rely upon careful distinctions of fiction, form, and performance – renders the difference between gypsies and clowns uncertain. They often seem less opposing forces than different forms of disorder. Equally, the pivotal point of the masque – the transformation of the scene – is veiled, without obvious scenic effects, and the crucial opposition of antimasque and masque appears only sketchily. The Windsor version intensifies these difficulties by allowing material that might well belong in the antimasque to invade the post-transformation ‘masque’ sequence.

Gypsies combines two elements from the festive culture of the early modern court. The Burley text follows the structure of progress entertainments, in which a welcoming speech might be followed by other amusements such as masques, lotteries, fortune-tellings, poetic dialogues, songs, and feasts scattered throughout the guests’ stay. It also echoes the informal semi-theatrical entertainments staged by the Jacobean court, especially by courtiers linked to the royal bedchamber, the King’s hunting entourage, and Buckingham’s kin and clientage (Butler, 1993b, 160–1; Knowles, 2000, 95–6). During the 1617 progress from Scotland, the entertainment at Houghton Tower, Lancashire, employed ‘witty and sudden’ ‘representations’, ‘disguises’, and ‘masqueradoes’ that aimed to be ‘ridiculous’ and ‘pleasant’ (Spence, 1991, 64). Cock Lorel’s feast may recall Sir George Goring’s court ‘device’ of ‘four huge, brawny pigs, piping hot, bitted and harnessed with ropes of sausages, all tied to a monstrous bag-pudding’ (Nichols, Progresses, 3.496, 495). In the ‘running masque’ (1619–20) and the 1620 show at Salisbury, aristocrats took speaking roles, some comically grotesque, such as madmen (Tom of Bedlam), tailors, barbers, footmen, and cobblers; on one occasion, Buckingham was ‘interlocutor’. Much of the amusement was contributed by popular dances or songs, and Gypsies imitates the informal tone created by a tight-knit group of largely male performers. The Venetian ambassador’s description of one such occasion as ‘a very familiar comedy’ could equally describe Gypsies (CSPV 1619–1621, 390n.). It draws the visiting King and Prince into complex homosocial and familial connections with Buckingham’s extended kin.

Even in the Burley text, the most coherent of the versions, Gypsies has a more fluid structure than is associated with the court masque. It looks back towards earlier modes of masquing, in which disguised aristocrats arrived, performed a sequence of dances, then retired. As Notch says in The Masque of Augurs, ‘Disguise was the old English word for a masque’ (36). Disguisings of this sort emphasize the performance of roles, perhaps highlighting, too, the performer beneath the role, while minimizing verbal and dramatic elements. Gypsies utilizes this convention to bring exotic visitors to a local space, and its central dance sequence also allows displays of aristocratic skills. This structure recalls the loosely sequential entries and ‘English country dances’ of the 1619–20 running masque: the potential for improvising new dance sequences maximizes variety and amusement (Knowles, 2000, 102; Raylor, 2000, 112–13). In contradistinction, Chapman’s Masque of the Twelve Months (1619), the running masque, and the Essex House masque (1621) all offer alternatives to the ‘strictly dialectical structures’ found in Jonson’s masques of this period (Butler, 2007, 378), creating antemasques (inductions) and even antic-masques (entries of grotesque figures) rather than the structured opposition of antimasque and masque. As several of these masques originate within Buckingham’s circle, yet also contain sideswipes at Jonson, Gypsies may embody Jonson’s response to this critique of his aesthetics.

The Windsor version intensifies these generic tensions as its substantial additions fracture the balance between the fortune-telling sequence and the post-transformation hymns to the King. As Butler has noted, Windsor translates a Buckingham-centred event into a James-centred event, but in introducing fortunes for the senior officers of state, it jeopardizes Burley’s playful tone with potentially awkward political implications. The changed location from court-in-the-country to court might suggest that greater decorum was required, and although some aspects of the revisions, such as the Prologue and Epilogue, explain and contain the more disturbing inferences, other additions increase scatological content, heighten the satire, and refashion the post-transformation section. The clowns are first shown to be foolish, then as wishing to join the gypsy band even as they are robbed, and finally as persuaded to join the chorus of ‘The Blessing of the King’s Senses’. Structurally, the masque moves to a reconciliatory or incorporative scheme, rather than using masque to expel antimasque, although its tone still gestures towards the clowns’ exclusion.

The two versions also embody shifts in the meaning of location. The Burley text occupies a symbolic location away from court, during the summer progress, and its freedoms echo the ‘comedy in the wilds’ described by the Venetian envoy, where geographical distance permits greater transgression (CSPV 1619–1621, 390n.). Yet neither Burley nor Belvoir is engaged as a fully imagined place: there is an almost total absence of place-specific reference. In contrast, at court the symbolic and specific geography clash, since urban Windsor has a real textual presence, which complicates the symbolic meanings of the masque’s performance space. The return to the court requires greater formality and the particularity of Windsor intrudes on the fiction, making the symbolic associations of a space outside the norm, represented by the magical and pastoral ethos of Burley and Belvoir, far harder to sustain.

Verse

The significance of the location may also be felt in Gypsies’ variety of verse forms, ranging from Skeltonics (short irregular lines, usually of two or three stresses, of varying syllabic length, utilizing extended rhymes) and trochaic tetrameters, through ballads and ballad forms, to delicate lyrics and complex odelike stanzas. Jonson’s dextrous sensitivity in the employment of verse forms can be seen in the delicacy of ‘The fairy beam upon you’ (BUR 190–9); in the subtle modulation into iambic tetrameters as the Captain ‘recognises’ the King’s hand during his fortune-telling; in the tour de force of rhyming of BUR 467–73; and, most clearly, in the final transformation of the gypsies from short lines with long rhyme sequences into stately hymn-like pentameter in praise of the king (Furniss, 1958, 143–51). This shift seems clearer at Burley, where the Jackman’s first song after the gypsies return ‘changed’ modulates into an ode dominated by octosyllabic couplets (BUR 803–12). By contrast, the final sections at Windsor include more Skeltonic material alongside the ‘Blessing of the King’s Senses’ (WIN 940–68, 978–1042). Paradoxically, while staged in a location that allowed more licence, the text at Burley is actually more decorous than that at Windsor. Windsor’s inclusion of popular verse forms after the return of the supposedly metamorphosed gypsies undermines the poetic transformation.

John Skelton’s ‘babble / And fond ribble rabble’ provides a model loosely underpinning the vocabulary and versification of the gypsy rhyming (Munday, 1601, A4). Direct allusions to Skelton are scarce in Gypsies, but some elements of gypsy vocabulary stem from The Tunning of Eleanor Rumming (c. 1517), whose heroine wears a headdress ‘like an Egyptian / Lapped about’ (Skelton, 1983, 216). More generally, Skelton’s career was more complex than the ‘rude rayling rhymer’ described in Puttenham’s Arte of Poesie (Edwards, 1981, 11) or the jester-poet of The Fortunate Isles, 174–275, and paralleled Jonson’s in several ways. Often associated with radical and popular poetry in the mid-sixteenth century, he had also been compared to Horace, and his claim to laureate status, the humanist project of his verse, and his self-creation through poetry in The Garland or Chaplet of Laurel, all find echo in Jonson’s work. Michael Drayton follows Thomas Churchyard, whose poem in praise of Skelton prefaces the Marshe/Stow edition of 1568, in celebrating a national poet ‘full quick of wit, right sharp of words’ and defending the seriousness of his writing (Edwards, 1981, 15). In the 1630s, Jonson employs Skeltonic metre in a witty plea for payment (Und. 57) that balances begging with a serious point about the supply of entertainment: ‘If the ’chequer be empty, so will be his head’. The suitability of this light manner to address serious matters irreverently but pointedly during a festive season appears to have struck later writers such as Herrick (Cain, 1999, 141), and chimes with Drayton’s advocacy of ‘sprightly’ subjects that also had ‘comeliness in mein’, ‘numbers slight’ but of ‘a noble kind’ (Hunter, 1977, 231, 209). Skelton’s multiple roles as humanist, laureate, and jester may have appealed to Jonson, embodying poetic authority, independence, and the liberty to speak (Griffiths, 2006, 183). As an earlier poet whose writings exhibit the pressures of patronage, Skelton was regarded as a truth-teller ‘under the mask of laughter’ (ODNB, citing John Bale), who spoke both to the court and beyond. The cultivated artlessness of Jonson’s short Skeltonic lines fosters movement between informal and formal, comic and serious, and neatly incorporates elements of popular rhyme with more elevated and courtly versification (Furniss, 1958, 146–7).

Gypsy metamorphosis

The tensions of this text come to rest in its central conceit: metamorphosis. Metamorphosis lies at the centre of the Jonsonian masque. It is a core principle that the masquers are transformed towards virtue by their performance, a self-fashioning which is enacted symbolically in the transformation of antimasque into masque. The metamorphosis achieved in Gypsies is deeply problematic, and its multiple shifts and changes blur any central ethical transformation. Indeed, the punning title, and especially the version used in F2, ‘A Masque of the Metamorphosed Gypsies’, articulates an irresolvable ambivalence: are Villiers and his clan ‘metamorphosed’ into gypsies (as they are for WIN 1–936) or are they gypsies who are translated (back?) into courtiers (WIN 937–1114)?

These questions about identity and the nature of metamorphosis are compounded by the moment of transformation itself, when, as an exemplification of gypsy skill, the Patrico offers to produce ‘The gypsies were here / Like lords to appear’ (BUR 773–4; WIN 931–2) and they return ‘changed in a trice’ (WIN 943). The rapidity of this change, marked in WIN only, and its attribution to gypsy skill rather than divine intervention or royal order, echoes other entertainments from 1620–1 in which rapid and unmotivated transformations occurred. The episode points up the fragility of identity, as the gypsies only return ‘like lords’, leaving the statement hanging that ‘You’ll know ’em for true men’ (BUR 778; WIN 936). Becoming ‘new men’ is always central to the masque, and in texts such as The Irish Masque the Irish envoys are transformed by the removal of their mantles into ‘newborn creatures’ (155). Here, though, the removal of disguises reminds us that many of the performers are new men in a different sense – perhaps unresolved and unfinished – as Villiers and his family have moved rapidly from minor gentry to court magnates.

The Windsor Epilogue, in particular, pointedly frames Jonson’s contribution to these processes. Here, the transformation ‘in a trice’ not only highlights the royal delight in these ‘gypsies of no common kind’ (3) but accentuates the rapidity of ‘how they came transformed’ (5). Raylor (2001), 119 suggests that this passage parodies the automatic transformations of the Essex House Masque and the running masque, but it also distances the poet from the process of transformation. Here, rather than poetic metamorphosis, we have court lycanthropy ‘without spells’, and ‘no magic else’ apart from make-up (12–13). Rather than poetic transformation as found in the masque proper, we are offered a more mundane metamorphosis, ‘fetched off with water and ball’ (14). By stressing the change’s material nature, brought about by the ‘mere barber’ and ‘master fashioner’ (13, 16) in terms which echo the satire elsewhere on Inigo Jones as a mere mechanic, Jonson contrasts this text with his other masques, and insinuates in the final couplet that the gypsies undergo a superficial change of clothes and make-up rather than the substantial transformation effected by poetry. By naming ‘the power of poetry’ (20), Jonson reverses his usual strategy of insisting on the priority of words over visual effects, but he still differentiates true poetic transformation from that presented here. The final ambiguity of Buckingham’s reappearance, emphasized by the insistent repetition that draws attention to metamorphosis as idea and process, echoes the different titles attached to the text. Is this a masque of gypsies, a masque of metamorphosed gypsies, or a masque of those metamorphosed into gypsies?

This edition

The text edited here separates the Burley (BUR) and Windsor (WIN) versions, substantially following the analysis of W. W. Greg in his edition, Jonson's ‘Masque of Gipsies’ in the Burley, Belvoir, and Windsor Versions (1952). The Belvoir (BEL) alterations are provided separately in Appendix 1 (pp. 526–7 below), and variant passages from the Bridgewater MS (JnB 612), which may preserve an intermediate stage of the Windsor and post-Windsor revisions, are placed in Appendix 2 (pp. 579–80 below).

The only witness which contains the unrevised Burley version, the first issue of Benson’s 1640 duodecimo (referenced here as D¹), lacks crucial pages, corresponding to BUR 636–783. All of the other complete exemplars – the second issue of Benson’s text (referenced as D²), F2, the Bridgewater MS, and the Newcastle MS (JnB 611) – are composite versions of the texts performed at Burley, Belvoir, and Windsor, of varying degrees of reliability, and each created at slightly different points in the revision process. Unfortunately F2, the last version to have at least partial authorial approval, is lamentably printed and often garbles the text.

Of these witnesses, the near contemporaneous Bridgewater MS (which dates from before 1627, and may represent an authorial manuscript publication) documents how many, though not all, passages changed between performances. It retains some passages not found in any other witness (printed here in Appendix 2 and as WIN 320–22), as well as versions of some sections that may have been composed before, but excised from, the Burley performance text (see BUR 241–61n., 264–87n.). The Bridgewater MS also contains the Countess of Exeter’s fortune, which may have been added at Belvoir (see Appendix 1), but it lacks the Earl of Buccleuch’s fortune played at Windsor (WIN 428–42) and the final stanza of the Cock Lorell ballad (WIN 806–17).

Following Greg’s analysis, our Burley text is based on the first issue of the duodecimo (D¹), the only viable text, but its missing leaves (BUR 636–783) are supplied with text from the Bridgewater MS. This section is printed in a smaller typeface to acknowledge its uncertain textual status. The Windsor text is based on the poorly-printed F2 text, which has a close relationship with the Newcastle MS, a copy that almost certainly passed from Jonson to his last significant patron, William Cavendish, Earl of Newcastle. F2’s similarity with the Newcastle MS suggests that it embodies Jonson’s last revisions of the text towards print publication; he drew extensively on its material in other late entertainments which he produced for Cavendish (The King’s Entertainment at Welbeck, and ‘The Song of the Moon’). F2 is corrected in the light of the Bridgewater MS. In both Burley and Windsor, the identifications of some of the speakers are supplied from the Conway MS (JnB 613), a contemporary transcript of BUR 201–414 of uncertain textual authority.

To reduce complexity, the Burley text collates D¹, D² (when available), F2, and the Bridgewater MS, but only records substantive variants from the Newcastle MS. In commentary to the Windsor text, annotation focuses on details and revisions specific to that version. Annotation for matters common to both texts will be found in the Burley commentary. A fuller account of the textual issues and witnesses is given in the Textual Essay.

THE MASQUE OF THE GYPSIES

At the King’s entrance

PORTER

If for our thoughts there could but speech be found,

And all that speech be uttered in one sound,

So that some power above us would afford

The means to make a language of a word, 5

It should be ‘Welcome!’ In that only voice

We would receive, retain, enjoy, rejoice,

And all affects of love and life dispense,

Till it were called a copious eloquence;

For should we vent our spirits, now you are come, 10

In other syllabes, were as to be dumb.

‘Welcome, oh, welcome’then, and enter here

The house your bounty ’ath built, and still doth rear

With those high favours, and those heaped increases,

Which shows a hand not grieved but when it ceases. 15

The master is your creature, as the place,

And every good about him is your grace,

Whom, though he stand by silent, think not rude,

But as a man turned all to gratitude,

For what he ne’er can hope how to restore, 20

Since while he meditates one, you pour on more.

Vouchsafe to think he only is oppressed

With their abundance, not that in his breast

His powers are stupid grown; for please you enter

Him, and his house, and search him to the centre, 25

You’ll find within no thanks or vows there shorter,

For having trusted thus much to his porter.

Enter a

GYPSY leading a horse laden with five little CHILDREN bound in a

trace of

scarves upon

him, a SECOND [GYPSY] leading another horse, laden with stolen poultry

etc. The first, leading, gypsy speaks, being the

Jackman.

JACKMAN

Room for the five princes of Egypt, mounted all upon one horse, like

the four sons of Aymon, to make the miracle the more by a head, if it may 5

be. Gaze upon them, as on the offspring of Ptolemy, begotten upon several

Cleopatras in their several counties; especially on this brave spark struck out

of Flintshire upon Justice Jug’s daughter, then sheriff of the county, who

running away with a kinsman of our captain’s, and her father pursuing to

the marches, he great with justice, she great with juggling, they were both 10

for the time turned stone, upon the sight of each other in Chester, till at the

last – see the wonder – a jug of the town ale reconciling them, the memorial

of both their gravities, his in beard and hers in belly, hath remained ever

since preserved in picture upon the most stone jugs in the kingdom.

The famous imp yet grew a wretchock, and though for seven years together he 15

was carefully carried at his mother’s back, rocked in a cradle of Welsh cheese

like a maggot, and there fed with broken beer and blown wine of the best

daily, yet looks he as if he never saw his quinquennium. ’Tis true he can

thread needles on horseback, or draw a yard of inkle through his nose, but

what’s that to a grown gypsy, one of the blood, and of his time, if he had 20

thrived? Therefore, till with his painful progenitors he be able to beat it on

the hoof to the bene bouse, or the stalling-ken, to nip a jan or cly the jark, ’tis

thought fit he march in the infants’ equipage,

With the convoy, cheats, and peckage,

Out of clutch of harman-beckage, 25

To the libkens at the crackman’s,

Or some skipper of the blackmanȉs.

PATRICO

Where the cacklers but no grunters

Shall uncased be for the hunters;

Those we still must keep alive, 30

Ay, and put them forth to thrive

In the parks and in the chases,

And the finer wallèd places,

As Saint James’s, Greenwich, Tibbals,

Where the acorns plump as chibols, 35

Soon shall change both kind and name,

And proclaim ’em the King’s game;

So the act no harm may be

Unto their keeper Barnaby:

It will prove as good a service 40

As did ever gypsy Gervice,

Or our captain, Charles, the tall man,

And a part too of our salmon.

JACKMAN

If here we be a little obscure, it is our pleasure, for rather than we

will offer to be our own interpreters, we are resolved not to be understood: 45

yet if any man do doubt of the significancy of the language, we refer him to

the third volume of Reports, set forth by the learned in the laws of canting,

and published in the gypsy tongue. Give me my guittara, and room for our

chief!

First Dance

The

CAPTAIN danceth forth with

six more to a

stand. After which the Jackman sings.

First Song

JACKMAN

From the famous Peak of Derby,

And the Devil’s Arse there hard by,

Where we yearly keep our musters, 55

Thus th’Egyptians throng in clusters.

Be not frighted with our fashion,

Though we seem a tattered nation;

We account our rags our riches,

So our tricks exceed our stitches. 60

Give us bacon, rinds of walnuts,

Shells of cockles, or of small-nuts,

Ribbons, bells, and saffroned linen,

All the world is ours to win in.

Knacks we have that will delight you, 65

Sleights of hand that will invite you

To endure our tawny faces,

And not cause you cut your laces.

All your fortunes we can tell ye,

Be they for the back or belly, 70

In the moods too, and the tenses

That may fit your fine five senses.

Draw but then your gloves we pray you,

And sit still, we will not fray you,

For though we be here at Burley, 75

We’d be loath to make a hurly.

PATRICO

Stay, my sweet singer,

The touch of thy finger

A little, and linger

For me, that am bringer 80

Of bound to the border,

The rule and recorder,

And mouth of your order

As priest of the game,

And prelate of the same. 85

There’s a gentry cove here

Is the top of the shire

Of the Belvoir-ken,

A man amongst men:

Ye need not to fear, 90

I’ve an eye and an ear

That turns here and there

To look to our gear.

Some say that there be

One or two, if not three, 95

That are greater than he.

And for the room-morts,

I know by their ports,

And jolly resorts,

They are of the sorts 100

That love the true sports

Of King Ptolomaeus,

Our great coryphaeus,

And Queen Cleopatra,

The gypsies’ grand-matra. 105

Then if we shall shark it,

Here fair is, and market.

Leave pig by, and goose,

And play fast and loose,

A short cut and long, 110

With (ever and among)

Some inch of a song,

Pythagoras’ lot,

Drawn out of a pot,

With what says Alchindus, 115

And Pharaotes Indus,

John de Indagine,

With all their paginae,

Faces and palmistry,

And this is all mystery. 120

Lay by your wimbles,

Your boring for thimbles,

Or using your nimbles

In diving the pockets

And sounding the sockets 125

Of simper-the-cockets,

Or angling the purses

Of such as will curse us.

But in the strict duel

Be merry and cruel, 130

Strike fair at some jewel,

That mint may accrue well,

For that is the fuel

To make the tuns brew well,

And the pot ring well, 135

And the brain sing well,

Which we may bring well

About by a string well,

And do the thing well.

It is but a strain 140

Of true legerdemain,

Once, twice, and again.

Or what will you say now

If with our fine play now,

Our knackets and dances, 145

We work on the fancies

Of some o’these nancies,

These trickets and tripsies,

And make ’em turn gypsies.

Here’s no Justice Lippus 150

Will seek for to nip us

In cramp-ring or cippus,

And then for to strip us,

And after to whip us,

His justice to vary 155

While here we do tarry.

But be wise and wary

And we may both carry

The Kate and the Mary,

And all the bright aëry 160

Away to the quarry,

If our brave Ptolemy

Will but say, follow me.

THIRD GYPSY

Captain, if ever at the bousing ken,

You have in drops of Derby drilled your men, 165

And we have served there armèd all in ale,

With the brown bowl, and charged in bragget stale;

If mustered thus, and disciplined in drink,

In our strict watches we did never wink,

But, so commanded by you, kept our station, 170

As we preserved ourselves a loyal nation,

And never did yet branch of statute break

Made in your famous palace of the Peak.

If we have deemed that mutton, lamb, or veal,

Chick, capon, turkey, sweetest we did steal, 175

As being by our Magna Carta taught

To judge no viands wholesome that are bought;

If for our linen we still used the lift,

And with the hedge, our Trade’s Increase, made shift,

And ever at your solemn feasts and calls, 180

We have been ready with th’Egyptian brawls,

To set Kit Callet forth in prose or rhyme,

Or who was Cleopatra for the time:

If we have done this, that, more, such, or so,

Now lend your ear but to the Patrico. 185

CAPTAIN

Well, dance another strain, and we’ll think how.

FIRST GYPSY

Meantime in song do you conceive some vow.

Second Dance

Second Song

PATRICO

The fairy beam upon you, 190

The stars to glister on you,

A moon of light,

In the noon of night,

Till the fire-drake hath o’ergone you.

The wheel of Fortune guide you, 195

The boy with the bow beside you,

Run ay in the way

Till the bird of day

And the luckier lot betide you.

CAPTAIN

goes up to the King.

200

CAPTAIN

Bless my sweet masters, the old and the young,

From the gall of the heart and the stroke of the tongue.

With you, lucky bird, I begin: let me see,

I aim at the best, and I trow you are he.

Here’s some luck already, if I understand 205

The grounds of my art, here’s a gentleman’s hand.

I’ll kiss it for luck’s sake: you should by this line

Love a horse and a hound, but no part of a swine,

To hunt the brave stag not so much for the food

As the weal of the body and the health of the blood. 210

You’re a man of good means and have territory store,

Both by sea and by land, but were born, sir, to more,

Which you, like a lord, and the prince of your peace,

Content with your havings, despise to increase.

You are no great wencher, I see by your table, 215

Although your Mons Veneris says you are able.

You live chaste and single, and have buried your wife,

And mean not to marry by the line of your life,

Whence he that conjectures your quality learns

You’re an honest good man and have care of your bairns. 220

Your Mercury’s hill, too, a wit doth betoken,

Some book-craft you have, and are pretty well-spoken.

But stay! In your Jupiter’s mount, what’s here?

A king! A monarch! What wonders appear!

High! Bountiful! Just! A Jove for your parts! 225

A master of men, and that reign in their hearts!

I’ll tell it my train,

And come to you again.

Third Song

JACKMAN

To the old, long life and treasure, 230

To the young, all health and pleasure,

To the fair, their face

With eternal grace,

And the foul to be loved at leisure.

To the witty, all clear mirrors, 235

To the foolish, their dark errors,

To the loving sprite,

A secure delight,

To the jealous, his own false terrors.

CAPTAIN

goes up again.

240

CAPTAIN

Could any doubt that saw this hand,

Or who you are, or what command

You have upon the fate of things,

Or would not say you were let down

From heaven, on earth to be the crown 245

And top of all your neighbour kings?

To see the ways of truth you take

To balance business, and to make

All Christian differences cease,

Or till the quarrel and the cause 250

You can compose, to give them laws,

As arbiter of war and peace.

For this, of all the world you shall

Be stylèd James the Just, and all

Their states dispose, their sons, and daughters, 255

And for your fortune, you alone,

Among them all shall work your own

By peace, and not by human slaughters.

This little from so short a view

I tell, and as a teller true 260

Of fortunes, but their maker, sir, are you.

Third Dance

In which the Prince’s fortune is offered at by the

SECOND GYPSY

As my captain hath begun

With the sire, I take the son. 265

Your hand, sir.

Of your fortune be secure,

Love and she are both at your

Command, sir.

See what states are here at strife 270

Who should tender you a wife,

A brave one,

And a fitter for a man,

Than is offered here you can-

Not have one. 275

She is sister of a star,

One the noblest now that are,

Bright Hesper,

Whom the Indians in the east

Phosphor call, and in the west 280

Hight Vesper.

Courses even with the sun

Doth her mighty brother run

Of splendour:

What can to the marriage night, 285

More than morn and evening light

Attend her?

The Lady Marquess Buckingham’s by the

THIRD GYPSY

Hurl after an old shoe,

I’ll be merry whate’er I do, 290

Though I keep no time,

My words shall chime,

I’ll overtake the sense with a rhyme.

Face of a rose,

I pray thee depose 295

Some small piece of silver, it shall be no loss,

But only to make the sign of the cross.

If your hand you hallow,

Good fortune will follow,

I swear by these ten 300

You shall have it again,

I do not say when.

But, lady, either I am tipsy,

Or you are to fall in love with a gypsy;

Blush not Dame Kate, 305

For early or late

I do assure you it will be your fate.

Nor need you be once ashamed of it, madam,

He’s as handsome a man as ever was Adam.

A man out of wax, 310

As a lady would ask;

Yet he is not to wed ye,

He’s enjoyed you already,

And I hope he has sped ye:

A dainty young fellow, 315

And though he look yellow,

He ne’er will be jealous,

But love you most zealous.

There is not a line in your hand but doth tell us,

And you are a soul so white and so chaste, 320

A table so smooth, and so newly rased,

As nothing called foul

Dare approach with a blot,

Or any least spot,

But still you control, 325

Or make your own lot,

Preserving love pure, as it first was begot.

But, dame, I must tell ye,

The fruit of your belly

Is that you must tender, 330

And care so to render,

That as yourself came

In blood and in name

From one house of fame,

So that may remain, 335

The glory of twain.

Fourth Dance

In which the

Countess of Rutland’s by the

THIRD GYPSY

You, sweet lady, have a hand too,

And a fortune you may stand to, 340

Both your bravery and your bounty,

Style you mistress of the county.

You will find from this night

Fortune shall forget her spite,

And heap all the blessings on you 345

That she can pour out upon you.

To be loved where most you love

Is the worst that you shall prove,

And by him to be embraced,

Who so long hath known you chaste, 350

Wise, and fair, whilst you renew

Joys to him, and he to you:

And when both your years are told,

Neither think the other old.

The Countess of Buckingham’s by

355

FOURTH GYPSY

Your pardon, lady, here you stand,

If some should judge you by your hand,

The greatest felon in the land

Detected.

I cannot tell you by what arts, 360

But you have stolen so many hearts,

As they would make you at all parts

Suspected.

Your very face, first; such a one,

As being viewed, it was alone 365

Too slippery to be looked upon,

And threw men.

But then your graces, they were such

As none could e’er behold too much,

Both every taste and every touch 370

So drew men.

Still blessed in all you think or do,

Two of your sons are gypsies too:

You shall our queen be, and see who

Importunes 375

The hurt of either yours or you,

And doth not wish both George and Sue,

And every bairn beside all new,

Good fortunes.

Fifth Dance

380

In which the

Lady Purbeck’s by the

SECOND GYPSY

Help me, wonder, here’s a book

Where I would forever look!

Never yet did gypsy trace

Smoother lines in hand or face. 385

Venus here doth Saturn move

That you should be queen of love,

And the other stars consent,

Only Cupid’s not content;

For though you the theft disguise, 390

You have robbed him of his eyes;

And to show his envy further,

Here he chargeth you with murther,

Says, although that at your sight

He must all his torches light, 395

Though your either cheek discloses

Mingled baths of milk and roses,

Though your lips be banks of blisses,

Where he plants and gathers kisses,

And yourself the reason why 400

Wisest men for love may die.

You will turn all hearts to tinder,

And shall make the world one cinder!

The Lady Elizabeth Hatton’s by the

FOURTH GYPSY

Mistress of a fairer table 405

Hath no history nor fable,

Others’ fortunes may be shown,

You are builder of your own.

And whatever heaven hath gi’n you,

You preserve the state still in you, 410

That which time would have depart,

Youth, without the help of art

You do keep still, and the glory

Of your sex is but your story.

Sixth Dance

415

During which, enter the

clowns,

COCKEREL,

CLOD,

TOWNSHEAD,

and

to them

PUPPY.

COCKEREL

Oh, the Lord! What be these, Tom, dost thou know? Come hither,

come hither, Dick, didst thou ever see such? The finest olive-coloured spirits.

They have so danced and jingled here as if they had been a set of overgrown 420

fairies.

CLOD

They should be morris-dancers by their jingle, but they have no napkins.

COCKEREL

No, nor a hobby-horse.

CLOD

Oh, he’s often forgotten, that’s no rule; but there is no Maid Marian nor

Friar amongst them, which is the surer mark. 425

COCKEREL

Nor a fool, that I see.

CLOD

Unless they be all fools.

TOWNSHEAD

Well said, Tom Fool! Why, thou simple parish-ass thou, didst thou

never see any gypsies? These are a covey of gypsies, and the bravest new covey

that ever constable flew at. Goodly game-gypsies! They are gypsies o’this 430

year, o’this moon, in my conscience.

CLOD

Oh, they are called the moon-men, I remember now.

COCKEREL

One shall hardly see such gentleman-like gypsies though, under a

hedge, in a whole summer’s day, if they be gypsies.

CLOD

Male gypsies all! Not a mort amongst them. 435

PUPPY

Where, where? I could never endure the sight of one of these rogue

gypsies. Which be they? I would fain see ’em.

CLOD

Yonder they are.

PUPPY

They can cant and mill? Are they masters in their arts?

TOWNSHEAD

No, bachelors these, they cannot have proceeded so far; they have 440

scarce had the time to be lousy yet.

PUPPY

All the better. I would be acquainted with them while they are in clean

life. They will do their tricks the cleanlier.

COCKEREL

We must have some music, then.

PUPPY

Music! We’ll have a whole poverty of pipers. Call Cheeks upon the 445

bagpipes and Tom Ticklefoot with his tabor. He could have mustered up the

smocks o’th’ two shires and set the codpieces and they by the ears, I wusse.

Here’s my twopence towards it. Clod, will you gather the pipe money?

CLOD

I’ll gather’t an you will, but I’ll give none.

PUPPY

Why, well said! Claw a churl by the arse and he will shit in your fist. 450

COCKEREL

Ay, or whistle to a jade and he’ll pay you with a fart.

CLOD

That’s all one, I have a wife, and a child in reversion, you know it well

enough, and I cannot fat pigeons with cherry-stones. I’ll venture my penny

with you.

COCKEREL

Well, there’s my twopence; I’ll be jovy: my name’s Cockerel, and I am 455

true bred.

TOWNSHEAD

Come, there’s my groat, never stand drawing indentures for the

matter; we’ll make a bolt, or a shaft on’t now.

CLOD

Let me see, here’s ninepence in the whole.

PUPPY

Why, there’s a whole ninepence for it. Put it all in a piece for memory and 460

strike up for mirth sake.

TOWNSHEAD

Do, and they’ll presently come about us for luck sake. But look to

our pockets and purses for our own sake.

CLOD

That’s warning for me, I have the greatest charge I am sure.

[Enter]

PIPERS.

465

A country dance, during which the GYPSIES come about them prying; and after the

PATRICO

Sweet doxies and dells,

My Roses and Nells,

Your hands, nothing else:

We ring you no knells 470

With our Ptolemy bells,

Though we come from the fells,

And bring you good spells,

And tell you some chances

In midst of your dances, 475

That fortune advances

To Prudence or Francis,

To Cicely or Harry,

To Roger or Mary,

Or Meg of the dairy, 480

To Maudlin or Thomas.

Then do not run from us,

Although we look tawny,

We are healthy and brawny,

Whate’er your demand is, 485

We’ll give you no jaundice.

PUPPY

Say you so, old gypsy? ’Slid these go to’t in rhyme; this is better than

canting by t’one half.

TOWNSHEAD

Nay, you shall hear them. Peace, they begin with Prudence, mark

that. 490

PUPPY

The wiser gypsies they, marry.

TOWNSHEAD

Are you advised?

PUPPY

Yes, and I’ll stand to’t, that a wise gypsy, take him i’th’ time o’th’ year, is

as politic a piece of flesh as most justices in the county where he maunds.

THIRD GYPSY

To love a keeper your fortune will be. 495

But the doucets better than him or his fee.

TOWNSHEAD

Ha, Prue, has he hit you in the teeth with the sweet bit?

PUPPY

Let it alone, she’ll swallow it well enough. A learned gypsy!

TOWNSHEAD

You’ll hear more hereafter.

PUPPY

Marry, and I’ll listen. Who’s next, Jack Cockerel? 500

SECOND GYPSY

You’ll steal yourself drunk, I find it here true,

As you rob the pot, the pot will rob you.

PUPPY

A prophet, a prophet! No gypsy, or if he must be a gypsy, a divine gypsy!

TOWNSHEAD

Mark Frances now, she’s going to’t, the virginity of the parish.

PATRICO

Fear not, in hell you’ll never lead apes, 505

A mortified maiden of five escapes.

PUPPY

By’r lady, he touched the virgin string there a little too hard. They are

arrant learned men all, I see. What say they upon Tom Clod? List!

FOURTH GYPSY

Clod’s feet in Christmas will go near to be bare,

When he has lost all his hobnails at post and pair. 510

PUPPY

He’s hit the hobnail o’the head, his own game.

TOWNSHEAD

And the very metal he deals in at play, if you mark it.

PUPPY

Peace, who’s this? Long Meg?

TOWNSHEAD

Long and foul Meg, if she be a Meg, as ever I saw of her inches. Pray

God they fit her with a fair fortune, she hangs an arse terribly. 515

PATRICO

She’ll have a tailor take measure of her britch,

And ever after be troubled with a stitch.

TOWNSHEAD

That’s as homely as she.

PUPPY

The better! A turd’s as good for a sow as a pancake.

TOWNSHEAD

Hark now, they treat upon Ticklefoot. 520

FOURTH GYPSY

On Sundays you rob the poor’s box with your tabor,

The collectors would do it, you save them a labour.

PUPPY

Faith, but little, they do it notwithstanding. Here’s my little Christian

forgot. Ha’ you any fortune left for her, a strait-laced Christian of sixteen?

PATRICO

Christian shall get her a loose-bodied gown, 525

In trying how a gentleman differs from a clown.

PUPPY

Is that a fortune for a Christian? A Turk, gypsy, could not have told her

worse.

TOWNSHEAD

Come, I’ll stand myself, and once venture the poor head o’th’ town.

Do your worst: my name is Townshead, and here’s my hand I’ll not be angry. 530

SECOND GYPSY

A cuckold you must be, and that for three lives,

Your own, the parson’s, and your wive’s.

TOWNSHEAD

I swear I’ll never marry for that, an’t be but to give fortune my foe

the lie. Come, Paul Puppy, you must in, too.

PUPPY

No, I am well enough, I would have no good fortune an I might. 535

FOURTH GYPSY

Yet look to yourself, you’ll ha’ some ill luck

And shortly, for I have his purse with a pluck.

PATRICO

Away, birds, mum,

I hear by the hum,

If beck-harman come 540

He’ll strike us all dumb

With a noise like a drum.

Let’s give him our room

Here, this way some,

And that way others; 545

We are not all brothers.

Leave me to the cheats,

I’ll show ’em some feats.

[Exeunt Gypsies.]

PUPPY

What, are they gone? Flown all of a sudden? This is fine, i’faith! A covey 550

call ye ’em? They are a covey soon scattered methinks, who sprung ’em I

mar’l?

TOWNSHEAD

Marry, yourself, Puppy, for aught I know: you quested last.

CLOD

Would he had quested first and sprung ’em an hour ago for me.

TOWNSHEAD

Why, what’s the matter? 555

CLOD

’Slid, they sprung my purse and all I had about me.

TOWNSHEAD

They ha’ not, ha’ they?

CLOD

As I am true Tom Clod, ha’ they, and ransackled me of every penny! Outcept

I were with child of an owl, as they say, I never saw such luck! It’s enough to

make a man a whore. 560

PUPPY

Hold thy peace. Thou talk’st as if thou hadst a licence to lose thy purse

alone in this company. ’Slid, here be those can lose a purse in honour of the

gypsies as well as thou, for thy heart, and never make word of it. I ha’ lost my

purse too, and more in it than I’ll speak of, but ere I’d cry for’t as thou dost –

much good do’ em with all my heart, I do reverence ’em for’t. 565

COCKEREL

What was there i’thy purse? Was the lease of thy house in it?

PUPPY

Or thy grannam’s silver ring?

CLOD

No, but a mill-sixpence of my mother’s, I loved as dearly – and twopence I

had to spend over and above, beside the harper, that was gathered amongst

us to pay the piper. 570

TOWNSHEAD

Our whole stock, is that gone? How will Tom Ticklefoot do to wet

his whistle then?

PUPPY

Marry, a new collection. There’s no music, else. Masters, he can ill pipe

that wants his upper lip.

TOWNSHEAD

Yes, a bagpiper may want both. 575

COCKEREL

Why, they have robbed Prudence of a race of ginger and a jet ring she

had to draw Jack Straw hither o’ holidays.

TOWNSHEAD

Is’t possible? Fine-fingered gypsies, i’faith!

COCKEREL

And Meg has lost an enchanted nutmeg, all gilded over, she had to

put in her sweetheart’s ale o’ mornings, with a row of pins, which pricks the 580

poor soul to the heart, the loss of ’em.

CLOD

And I have lost, beside my purse, my best bride-lace, and a hap’orth of

hobnails, and Frances her thimble with a skein of Coventry blue she had to

work Will Lichfield’s handkerchief.

COCKEREL

And Christian her Practice of Piety with a bowed groat, and the ballad 585

of Whoop Barnaby, which grieves her worst of all.

CLOD

And Ticklefoot has lost his clout, he says, with a threepence and four tokens

in it, beside his taboring stick, even now.

COCKEREL

And I my knife and sheath and a pair of dog’s-leather gloves.

TOWNSHEAD

Have we lost ne’er a dog amongst us? Where’s Puppy gone? 590

PUPPY

Here, goodman Townshead, you ha’ nothing to lose it seems but the

town’s brains you’re trusted with.

PATRICO

Oh, my dear marrows,

No shooting of arrows

Or shafts of your wit, 595

Each other to hit

In your skirmishing fit.

Your store is but small,

Then venture not all,

Remember each mock 600

Doth spend o’the stock.

And what was here done,

Being under the moon

And at afternoon,

Will prove right soon 605

Deceptio visus

Done gratia risus.

There’s no such thing

As the loss of a ring,

Or what ye count worse, 610

The miss of a purse.

But, hey for the main,

And pass o’the strain,

Here’s both come again!

And there’s an old twinger, 615

Can show you the ginger,

The pins and the nutmeg,

Are safe here with slut Meg.

Then strike up your tabor,

And there’s for your labour. 620

The sheath and the knife,

I’ll venture my life,

Shall breed you no strife,

But like man and wife,

Or sister and brother, 625

Keep one with another,

And light as a feather,

Make haste to come hither.

The Coventry blue

Hangs there upon Prue; 630

And here one opens

The clout and the tokens;

Deny the bowed groat

And you lie in your throat;

Or the taborer’s ninepence, 635

Or the six fine pence.

As for the ballet

Or book, what you call it,

Alas, our society

Mells not with piety, 640

Himself hath forsook it

That first undertook it,

For thimble or bride-lace

Search yonder side-lass.

All’s to be found 645

If you look yourselves round;

We scorn to take from ye,

We had rather spend on ye;

If any man wrong ye,

The thief’s among ye. 650

TOWNSHEAD

Excellent, i’faith, a most restorative gypsy. All’s here again; and

yet by his learning of legerdemain he would make us believe we had robbed

ourselves, for the hobnails are come to me.

COCKEREL

Maybe he knew whose shoes lacked clouting.

PUPPY

Ay, he knows more than that or I’ll never trust my judgment in a gypsy 655

again.

COCKEREL

A gypsy of quality, believe it, and one of the king’s gypsies this, a

drinkalian or a drink-braggetan: ask him. The king has a noise of gypsies as

well as bearwards.

PUPPY

What sort or order of gypsy, I pray, sir? 660

PATRICO

A flagonfeakian.

A Devil’s-Arse-o’-Peakian,

Born first at Nigglington,

Bred up at Filchington,

Boarded at Tappington, 665

Bedded at Wappington.

TOWNSHEAD

’Fore me, a dainty derived gypsy!

PUPPY

But I pray, sir, if a man might ask you, how came your captain’s place first

to be called the Devil’s Arse?

PATRICO

For that, take my word, 670

We have a record

That doth afford,

And says our first lord,

Cock Lorel he hight,

On a time did invite 675

The devil to a feast,

The tail of the jest

(Though since it be long)

Lives yet in a song,

Which if you would hear 680

Shall plainly appear

Like a chime in your ear:

I’ll call in my clerk,

Shall sing’t like a lark.

COCKEREL

Oh, ay, the song, the song in any case! If you want music we’ll lend 685

him our minstrel.

PATRICO

Come in my long shark,

With thy face brown and dark,

With thy tricks and thy toys,

Make a merry, merry noise 690

To these mad country boys,

And chant out the farce

Of the grand Devil’s Arse.

Song

JACKMAN

Cock Lorel would needs have the devil his guest, 695

And bad him into the Peak to dinner,

Where never the fiend had such a feast

Provided him yet at the charge of a sinner

His stomach was queasy (he came thither coached);

The jogging had made some crudities rise; 700

To help it he called for a puritan poached

That used to turn up the eggs of his eyes.

And so, recovered to his wish,

He sat him down and he fell to eat:

Promoter in plum broth was his first dish, 705

His own privy kitchen had no such meat.

Yet though with this he much were taken,

Upon a sudden he shifted his trencher

As soon as he spies the bawd and bacon,

By which you may note the devil’s a wencher. 710

Six pickled tailors sliced and cut,

Sempsters, tirewomen, fit for his palate,

With feathermen and perfumers put

Some twelve in a charger to make a grand sallat.

A rich fat usurer stewed in his marrow, 715

And by him a lawyer’s head and green sauce,

Both with his belly took in like a barrow,

As if till then he never had seen sauce.

Then carbonadoed and cooked with pains,

Was brought up a cloven sergeant’s face; 720

The sauce was made of his yeoman’s brains

That had been beaten out with his own mace.

Two roasted sheriffs came whole to the board,

The feast had nothing been without ’em;

Both living and dead they were foxed and furred, 725

Their chains like sausages hung about ’em.

The next dish was the mayor of a town,

With a pudding of maintenance thrust in his belly,

Like a goose in the feathers dressed in his gown,

And his couple of hench-boys boiled to a jelly. 730

A London cuckold, hot from the spit,

And when the carver up had broke him,

The devil chopped up his head at a bit,

Both horns were very near like to choke him.

The chine of a lecher too there was roasted, 735

With a plump harlot’s haunch and garlic,

A pander’s pettitoes, that had boasted

Himself for a captain, yet never was warlike.

A large fat pasty of midwife hot,

And for a cold baked meat into the story, 740

A reverend painted lady was brought,

Was coffined in crust till now she was hoary.

To these an overgrown justice of peace,

With a clerk like a gizzard trussed under each arm,

And warrants for sippets laid in his own grease, 745

Set over a chafing-dish to be kept warm.

The jowl of a jailor served for fish,

A constable soused with vinegar by,

Two aldermen lobsters asleep in a dish,

A deputy tart, a churchwarden pie. 750

All which devoured, he then for a close

Did for a full draught of Derby call;

He heaved the huge vessel up to his nose,

And left not till he had drunk up all.

Then from the table he gave a start, 755

Where banquet and wine were nothing scarce,

All which he blew away with a fart,

From whence it was called the Devil’s Arse.

PUPPY

An excellent song and a sweet songster, and would ha’ done rarely in a

cage with a dish of water and hempseed; a fine breast of his own! 760

COCKEREL

Oh, he would chirp in a pair of stocks sumptuously. I’d give anything

to see him play loose with his hands when his feet are fast.

PUPPY

O’my conscience, he fears not that: I protest I admire him.

PATRICO

Is this worth your wonder?

Nay then you shall under- 765

Stand more of my skill.

I can, for I will,

Here at Burley o’ th’ hill,

Give you all your fill,

Each Jack with his Jill, 770

And show ye the King,

The Prince too, and bring

The gypsies were here

Like lords to appear,

With such their attenders 775

As you thought offenders,

Who now become new men,

You’ll know ’em for true men.

For he we call chief,

I’ll tell’t you in brief, 780

Is so far from a thief

As he gives ye relief

With his bread, beer, and beef,

And ’tis not long syne

Ye drank of his wine, 785

And it made you fine,

Both claret and sherry.

Then let us be merry,

And help with your call

For a hall, a hall! 790

Stand up to the wall,

Both goodmen and tall,

We are one man’s all!

Make it a jolly night,

If not a holy night, 795

Spite of the constable,

Or Mas’ Dean of Dunstable.

ALL

A hall, a hall, a hall!

[Enter] the GYPSIES changed.

Dance

800

After which,

ascending up, the JACKMAN sings.

First Song

JACKMAN

The sports are done, yet do not let

Your joys in sudden silence set;

Delight and dumbness never met 805

In one self subject yet.

If things opposed must mixed appear,

Then add a boldness to your fear,

And speak a hymn

To him, 810

Where all your duties do of right belong,

Which I will sweeten with an undersong.

CAPTAIN

Glory of ours, and grace of all the earth,

How well your figure doth become your birth,

As in you form and fortune equal stood, 815

And only virtue got above your blood.

Second Song

PATRICO

Virtue! His kingly virtue which did merit

This isle entire, and you are to inherit.

FOURTH GYPSY

How right he doth confess him in his face, 820

His brow, his eye, and every mark of state,

As if he were the issue of each Grace,

And bore about him both his fame and fate.

Third Song

JACKMAN

Look, look, is he not fair, 825

And fresh and fragrant too,

As summer sky, or purgèd air,

And looks as lilies do

That were this morning blown?

FOURTH GYPSY

Oh, more, that more of him were known! 830

THIRD GYPSY

Look how the winds upon the waves grown tame

Take up land-sounds upon their purple wings,

And catching each from other, bear the same

To every angle of their sacred springs.

So will we take his praise and hurl his name 835

About the globe in thousand airy rings,

If his great virtue be in love with fame,

For that contemned, both are neglected things.

Fourth Song

PATRICO

Good princes soar above their fame, 840

And in their worth

Come greater forth

Than in their name.

Such, such the father is,

Whom every title strives to kiss, 845

Who on his royal grounds unto himself doth raise

The work to trouble fame and to astonish praise.

FOURTH GYPSY

Indeed, he is not lord alone of the estate,

But of the love of men and of the empire’s fate.

The muses, arts, the schools, commerce, our honours, laws, 850

And virtues hang on him as on their working cause.

SECOND GYPSY

His handmaid Justice is,

THIRD GYPSY

Wisdom his wife,

FOURTH GYPSY

His mistress Mercy,

FIFTH GYPSY

Temperance his life.

SECOND GYPSY

His pages Bounty and Grace, which many prove,

THIRD GYPSY

His guards are Magnanimity and Love, 855

FOURTH GYPSY

His ushers Counsel, Truth, and Piety,

FIFTH GYPSY

And all that follows him, Felicity.

Fifth Song

JACKMAN

Oh, that we understood

Our good! 860

There’s happiness indeed in blood

And store,

But how much more

When virtue’s flood

In the same stream doth hit? 865

As that grows high with years, so happiness with it.

CAPTAIN

Love, love his fortune then,

And virtues known,

Who is the top of men,

But make the happiness our own, 870

Since where the prince for goodness is renowned,

The subject with felicity is crowned.

THE GYPSIES METAMORPHOSED (BELVOIR)

Appendix 1:

Additional and substitute passages from the Belvoir version

A. Substitute passage 1 (replacing BUR 86–9)

BURLEY	BELVOIR
There’s a gentry cove here	There be gentry-coves here
Is the top of the shire,	Are the chief of the shire,
Of the Belvoir- ken,
A man amongst men:

B. Additional fortune (after BUR 354)

And the Countess of Exeter’s by the

PATRICO.

354.1

PATRICO

Madam, we knew of your coming so late,

We could not well fit you a nobler fate

Than what you have ready made.

An old man’s wife 354.5

Is the light of his life,

A young one’s but his shade.

You will not importune

The change of your fortune,

For if you dare trust to my forecasting 354.10

’Tis presently good, and it will be lasting!

C. Substitute passage 2 (replacing BUR 779–95)

BURLEY	BELVOIR
For he we call chief,	For he we call chief
I'll tell't you in brief,	I'll tell't you in brief, BEL 780
Is so far from a thief	Is so far from a thief
As he gives ye relief	As he gives ye relief
With his bread, beer, and beef,	With his bread, beer, and beef,
And 'tis not long syne	The fifth of August
Ye drank of his wine,	Will not let sawdust BEL 785
And it made ye fine,	Lie in your throats,
Both claret and sherry.	Or cobwebs or oats,
Then let us be merry,	But help to scour ye.
And help with your call	This is no Gowrie
For a hall, a hall!	Hath drawn James hither, BEL 790
Stand up to the wall,	But the good man of Belvoir,
Both goodmen and tall,	Our Buckingham's father.
We are one man's all!	Then so much the rather
Make it a jolly night,	Make it a jolly night,
If not a holy night,	For 'tis a holy night, BEL 795

A MASQUE OF THE METAMORPHOSED GYPSIES

The

Prologue at

Windsor

As many blessings as there be bones

In Ptolemy’s fingers and all at once

Held up in an Andrew’s cross for the nonce,

Light on you, good master! 5

I dare be no waster

Of time or of speech

Where you are in place;

I only beseech

You take in good grace 10

Our following the court,

Since ’tis for your sport

To have you still merry,

And not make you weary.

We may strive to please 15

So long, some will say, till we grow a disease.

But you, sir, that twice

Have graced us already, encourage to thrice;

Wherein if our boldness your patience invade,

Forgive us the fault that your favour hath made. 20

THE GYPSIES METAMORPHOSED

Enter a GYPSY leading a horse laden with five little CHILDREN bound in a trace of scarves

upon him, a SECOND [GYPSY] leading another horse laden with stolen poultry. The first,

leading, gypsy speaks, being the Jackman.

JACKMAN

Room for the five princes of Egypt, mounted all upon one horse, like

the four sons of Aymon, to make the miracle the more by a head, if it may 5

be. Gaze upon them, as on the offspring of Ptolemy, begotten upon several

Cleopatras in their several countries; especially on this brave spark struck

out of Flintshire upon Justice Jug’s daughter, then sheriff of the county;

who running away with a kinsman of our captain’s, and her father pursuing

her to the marches, he great with justice, she great with juggling, they were 10

both for the time turned stone upon the sight each of other in Chester, till at

last – see the wonder – a jug of the town ale reconciling them, the memorial

of both their gravities, his in beard and hers in belly, hath remained ever

since preserved in picture upon the most stone jugs of the kingdom. The

famous imp yet grew a wretchock, and though for seven years together, he 15

were very carefully carried at his mother’s back, rocked in a cradle of Welsh

cheese, like a maggot, and there fed with broken beer and blown wine o’the

best daily, yet looks he as if he never saw his quinquennium. ’Tis true he

can thread needles o’horseback or draw a yard of inkle through his nose, but

what’s that to a grown gypsy, one of the blood, and of his time, if he had 20

thrived? Therefore, till with his painful progenitors he be able to beat it on

the hard hoof, to the bene bouse, or the stalling-ken to nip a jan and cly the

jark, ’tis thought fit he march in the infants’ equipage,

With the convoy, cheats, and peckage,

Out of clutch of harman-beckage, 25

To their libkins at the crackman’s,

Or some skipper of the blackman’s.

PATRICO

Where the cacklers but no grunters,

Shall uncased be for the hunters;

Those we still must keep alive; 30

Ay, and put them out to thrive

In the parks, and in the chases,

And the finer wallèd places,

As St James’s, Greenwich, Tibballs,

Where the acorns, plump as chibols, 35

Soon shall change both kind and name,

And proclaim ’em the King’s game;

So the act no harm may be

Unto their keeper Barnaby:

It will prove as good a service, 40

As did ever gypsy Gervice,

Or our captain, Charles, the tall man,

And a part too of our salmon.

JACKMAN

If we here be a little obscure, it is our pleasure, for rather than we will

offer to be our own interpreters, we are resolved not to be understood: yet 45

if any man doubt of the significancy of the language, we refer him to the

third volume of Reports, set forth by the learned in the laws of canting, and

published in the gypsies’ tongue. Give me my guittarra, and room for our

chief!

[First] dance, which is the entrance of the CAPTAIN with six more [GYPSIES] attendant; 50

after which the JACKMAN sings.

Song

JACKMAN

From the famous Peak of Derby

And the Devil’s Arse there hard by,

Where we yearly keep our musters, 55

Thus th’ Egyptians throng in clusters.

Be not frighted with our fashion,

Though we seem a tattered nation;

We account our rags our riches,

So our tricks exceed our stitches. 60

Give us bacon, rinds of walnuts,

Shells of cockles, and of small-nuts,

Ribbons, bells, and saffroned linen,

All the world is ours to win in.

Knacks we have that will delight you, 65

Sleight of hand that will invite you

To endure our tawny faces,

And not cause you quit your places.

All your fortunes we can tell ye,

Be they for the back or belly, 70

In the moods too, and the tenses

That may fit your fine five senses.

PATRICO

Stay, my sweet singer,

The touch of thy finger

A little, and linger 75

For me that am bringer

Of bound to the border,

The rule and recorder,

And mouth of the order,

As priest of the game, 80

And prelate of the same.

There be gentry coves here

Are the chief of the shire,

You need not to fear,

I have an eye and an ear 85

That turns here and there,

To look to our gear.

And for the room-morts,

I know by their ports

And their jolly resorts, 90

They are of the sorts

That love the true sports

Of King Ptolemeus,

Our great coryphaeus,

And Queen Cleopatra, 95

The gypsies’ grand-matra.

Then if we shall shark it,

Here fair is and market.

Leave pig by, and goose,

And play fast and loose, 100

A short cut and long,

Some inch of a song,

Pythagoras’ lot,

Drawn out of a pot,

With what says Alchindus? 105

And Pharaotes Indus,

John de Indagine,

With all their paginae

Of faces and palmistry,

And this is all mystery. 110

Lay by your wimbles,

Your boring for thimbles,

Or using your nimbles,

In diving the pockets

And sounding the sockets 115

Of simper-the-cockets,

Or angling the purses

Of such as will curse us.

But in the strict duel

Be merry and cruel, 120

Strike fair at some jewel,

That mint may accrue well,

For that is the fuel

To make the tun brew well,

And the pot ring well, 125

And the brain sing well,

Which we may bring well

About by a string well,

And do the thing well.

It is but a strain 130

Of true legerdemain,

Once, twice, and again.

Or what will you say now

If with our fine play now,

Our feats and our fing’ring, 135

Here without ling’ring,

Cozening the sights

Of the lords and the knights,

Some one of their Georges

Come off to save charges? 140

Here’s no Justice Lippus

Will seek for to nip us

In cramp-ring or cippus,

And then for to strip us,

And after to whip us, 145

His justice to vary,

While here we do tarry.

But be wise and wary,

And we may both carry

The George and the Garter 150

Into our own quarter.

Or durst I go further

In method and order:

There’s a purse and a seal,

I’ve a great mind to steal, 155

That when our tricks are done

We might seal our own pardon.

All this we may do,

And a great deal more too,

If our brave Ptolemy, 160

Will but say, follow me.

THIRD GYPSY

Captain, if ever at the bousing ken

You have in draughts of Derby drilled your men,

And we have served there armèd all in ale,

With the brown bowl, and charged in bragget stale; 165

If mustered thus and disciplined in drink,

In our long watches we did never shrink,

But, so commanded by you, kept our station,

As we preserved ourselves a royal nation,

And never yet did branch of statute break, 170

Made in your famous palace of the Peak.

If we have deemed that mutton, lamb, or veal,

Chick, capon, turkey, sweetest we did steal,

As being by our Magna Carta taught

To judge no viands wholesome that are bought. 175

If for our linen we still used the lift,

And with the hedge, our Trade’s Increase, made shift;

And ever at your solemn feasts and calls,

We have been ready with the Egyptian brawls,

To set Kit Callet forth in prose or rhyme, 180

Or who was Cleopatra for the time.

If we have done this, that, more, such or so,

Now lend your ear but to the Patrico.

CAPTAIN

Well, dance another strain, and we’ll think how.

Second Dance, First Strain 185

Second Song

PATRICO

The fairy beam upon you,

The stars to glister on you,

A moon of light

In the noon of night, 190

Till the fire-drake hath o’ergone you.

The wheel of Fortune guide you,

The boy with the bow beside you

Run ay in the way

Till the bird of day 195

And the luckier lot betide you.

CAPTAIN

Bless my sweet masters, the old, and the young,

From the gall of the heart and the stroke of the tongue.

With you, lucky bird, I begin: let me see,

I aim at the best and I trow you are he. 200

Here’s some luck already, if I understand

The grounds of mine art, here’s a gentleman’s hand.

I’ll kiss it for luck’s sake – you shall by this line

Love a horse and a hound, but no part of a swine,

To hunt the brave stag, not so much for the food, 205

As the weal of your body and the health o’ your blood.

You’re a man of good means and have territories store

Both by sea, and by land, and were born, sir, to more,

Which you like a lord, and the prince of your peace,

Content with your havings, despise to increase. 210

You are no great wencher, I see by your table,

Although your mons Veneris says you are able.

You live chaste, and single, and have buried your wife,

And mean not to marry, by the line of your life.

Whence he that conjectures your quality learns, 215

You’re an honest good man and have care of your bairns.

Your Mercury’s hill, too, a wit doth betoken,

Some book-craft you have and are pretty well-spoken.

But stay, in your Jupiter’s mount, what’s here?

A king, a monarch, what wonders appear! 220

High, bountifull, just, a Jove for your parts,

A master of men and that reign in their hearts!

I’ll tell it my train,

And come to you again.

Third Song 225

JACKMAN

To the old, long life and treasure,

To the young, all health and pleasure;

To the fair, their face

With eternal grace,

And the foul to be loved at leisure. 230

To the witty, all clear mirrors,

To the foolish, their dark errors;

To the loving sprite,

A secure delight,

To the jealous, his own false terrors. 235

After which the King’s fortune is pursued by the

CAPTAIN

Could any doubt that saw this hand

Or who you are, or what command

You have upon the fate of things,

Or would not say you were let down 240

From heaven on earth to be the crown,

And top of all your neighbour kings?

To see the ways of truth you take

To balance business and to make

All Christian differences cease, 245

Or till the quarrel and the cause

You can compose, to give them laws,

As arbiter of war and peace.

For this, of all the world you shall

Be stylèd James the Just, and all 250

Their states dispose, their sons and daughters,

And for your fortune you alone,

Among them all shall work your own,

By peace, not by human slaughters.

But why do I presume, though true, 255

To tell a fortune, sir, to you,

Who are the maker here of all,

Where none do stand, or sit in view,

But owe their fortunes unto you,

At least what they good fortune call? 260

Myself a gypsy here do shine,

Yet are you maker, sir, of mine.

Oh, that confession could content

So high a bounty that doth know

No part of motion but to flow, 265

And giving, never to repent.

May still the matter wait your hand,

That it not feel, or stay, or stand,

But all desert still overcharge.

And may your goodness ever find 270

In me, whom you have made, a mind

As thankful as your own is large.

Second Dance, Second Strain

After which, the Prince’s fortune is offered at by the

SECOND GYPSY

As my Captain hath begun 275

With the sire, I take the son.

Your hand, sir.

Of your fortune be secure,

Love and she are both at your

Command, sir. 280

See what states are here at strife

Who shall tender you a wife,

A brave one;

And a fitter for a man

Than is offered here, you can- 285

Not have one.

She is sister of a star,

One the noblest now that are,

Bright Hesper,

Whom the Indians in the east 290

Phosphor call, and in the west

Hight Vesper.

Courses even with the sun

Doth her mighty brother run,

For splendour. 295

What can to the marriage night,

More than morn and evening light,

Attend her,

Save the promise before day

Of a little James to play 300

Hereafter

’Twixt his grandsire’s knees, and move

All the pretty ways of love

And laughter?

Whilst with care you strive to please 305

In your giving his cares ease,

And labours,

And by being long the aid

Of the empire, make afraid

Ill neighbours; 310

Till yourself shall come to see

What we wish, yet far to be

Attending,

For it skills not when, or where

That begins, which cannot fear 315

An ending.

Since your name in peace or wars,

Nought shall bound until the stars

Up take you.

And to all succeeding view, 320

Heaven a constellation new

Shall make you.

Second Dance, Third Strain

The Lord Chamberlain by the

JACKMAN

Though you, sir, be chamberlain, I have a key 325

To open your fortune a little by the way.

You are a good man,

Deny it that can,

And faithful you are,

Deny it that dare. 330

You know how to use your sword and your pen,

And you love not alone the arts, but the men;

The Graces and Muses everywhere follow

You, as you were their second Apollo;

Only your hand here tells you to your face 335

You have wanted one grace

To perform what has been a right of your place:

For by this line, which is Mars his trench,

You never yet helped your master to a wench.

’Tis well for your honour he’s pious and chaste, 340

Or you had most certainly been displaced.

The Lord Keeper’s fortune by the

PATRICO

As happy a palm, sir, as most i’the land,

It should be a pure and an innocent hand,

And worthy the trust, 345

For it says you’ll be just,

And carry that purse,

Without any curse

Of the public weal

When you take out the seal; 350

You do not appear

A judge of a year.

I’ll venture mylife

You never had wife,

But I’ll venture my skill 355

You may when you will.

You have the King’s conscience too in your breast,

And that’s a goodguest,

Which you’ll have true touch of,

And yet not make much of, 360

More than by truth yourself forth to bring

The man that you are, for God and the king.

The Lord Treasurer’s fortune by the

THIRD GYPSY

I come to borrow, and you’ll grant my demand, sir,

Since ’tis for no money, pray lend me your hand, sir; 365

And yet this good hand if you please to stretch it,

Had the errand been money, could easily fetch it.

You command the king’s treasure, and yet, on my soul

You handle not much for your palm is not foul:

Your fortune is good and will be to set 370

The office upright and the king out of debt,

To put all that have pensions soon out of their pain,

By bringing th’ Exchequer in credit again!

Second Dance, Fourth Strain

The Lord Privy Seal’s by the 375

SECOND GYPSY

Honest and old,

In those the good part of a fortune is told.

God send you health,

The rest is provided, honour and wealth,

All which you possess, 380

Without the making of any man less;

Nor need you my warrant, enjoy it you shall,

For you have a good privy seal for it all.

The Earl Marshal’s by the

THIRD GYPSY

Next the great master who is the donor, 385

I read you here the preserver of honour,

And spy it in all your singular parts

What a father you are, and a nurse of the arts.

By cherishing which, a way you have found

How they, free to all, to one may be bound, 390

And they again love their bonds; for to be

Obligèd to you is the way to be free.

But this is their fortune. Hark to your own:

Yours shall be to make true gentry known

From the fictitious, not to prize blood 395

So much by the greatness as by the good;

To show and to open clear Virtue the way

Both whither she should and how far she may;

And whilst you do judge twixt valour and noise,

T’extinguish the race of the roaring boys. 400

The Lord Steward’s by the

FOURTH GYPSY

I find by this hand

You have the command

Of the very best man’s house i’the land.

Our Captain and we 405

Ere long will see

If you keep a good table.

Your master’s able,

And here be bountiful lines that say

You’ll keep no part of his bounty away. 410

Thus written too frank

On your Venus’ bank,

To prove a false steward you’ll find much ado,

Being a true one by blood and by office too.

Second Dance, Fifth Strain 415

Lord Marquess Hamilton’s by the

THIRD GYPSY

Only your hand, sir, and welcome to court!

Here is a man both for earnest and sport.

You were lately employed,

And your master is joyed 420

To have such in his train

So well can sustain

His person abroad,

And not shrink for the load.

But had you been here, 425

You should have been a gypsy, I swear;

Our Captain had summoned you by a doxy,

To whom you would not have answered by proxy,

One, had she come in the way of your sceptre,

’Tis odds you had laid it by to have leapt her. 430

The Earl of Buccleuch’s by the

PATRICO

A hunter you have been heretofore,

And had game good store;

But ever you went

Upon a new scent, 435

And shifted your loves

As often as they did their smocks or their gloves.

But since that your brave intendments are

Now bent for the war,

The world shall see 440

You can constant be

One mistress to prove,

And court her for your love:

Pallas shall be both your sword and your gage,

Truth be your shield, and Fortune your page. 445

Second Dance, Sixth Strain, which leads into Third Dance.

During which enter the clowns COCKEREL, CLOD, TOWNSHEAD, PUPPY,

whilst the Patrico and Jackman sing this song.

Song

PATRICO

Why, this is a sport, 450

See it north, see it south,

For the taste of the court,

JACKMAN

For the court’s own mouth.

Come Windsor, the town,

With the mayor, and oppose, 455

We’ll put them all down,

PATRICO

Do-do-down like my hose.

A gypsy in his shape

More calls the beholder

Than the fellow with the ape, 460

JACKMAN

Or the ape on his shoulder.

He’s a sight that will take

An old judge from his wench,

Ay, and keep him awake,

PATRICO

Yes, awake on the bench; 465

And has so much worth,

Though he sit i’the stocks,

He will draw the girls forth,

JACKMAN

Ay, forth i’their smocks.

Tut, a man’s a man; 470

Let the clowns with their sluts

Come mend us if they can,

PATRICO

If they can, for their guts.

Come mend us, come lend us their shouts and their noise,

BOTH

Like thunder, and wonder at Ptolemy’s boys. 475

COCKEREL

Oh, the lord! What be these? Tom, dost thou know? Come hither,

come hither Dick, didst thou ever see such? The finest olive-coloured spirits,

they have so danced and jingled here, as if they had been a set of overgrown

fairies.

CLOD

They should be morris-dancers by their jingle, but they have no napkins. 480

COCKEREL

No, nor a hobby-horse.

CLOD

Oh, he’s often forgotten, that’s no rule; but there is no Maid Marian nor

Friar amongst them, which is the surer mark.

COCKEREL

Nor a fool that I see.

CLOD

Unless they be all fools. 485

TOWNSHEAD

Well said, Tom Fool! Why, thou simple parish-ass thou, didst thou

never see any gypsies? These are a covey of gypsies, and the bravest new covey

that ever constable flew at! Goodly, game-gypsies. They are gypsies o’this

year, o’this moon in my conscience.

CLOD

Oh, they are called the moon-men, I remember now! 490

COCKEREL

One shall hardly see such gentleman-like gypsies though, under a

hedge in a whole summer’s day, if they be gypsies.

TOWNSHEAD

Male gypsies all, not a mort among them.

PUPPY

Where? Where? I could never endure the sight of these rogue gypsies.

Which be they? I would fain see ’em. 495

CLOD

Yonder they are.

PUPPY

Can they cant or mill? Are they masters of their arts?

TOWNSHEAD

No bachelors these, they cannot have proceeded so far; they have

scarce had their time to be lousy yet.

PUPPY

All the better. I would be acquainted with them while they are in clean 500

life, they’ll do their tricks the cleanlier.

COCKEREL

We must have some music then, and take out the wenches.

PUPPY

Music! We’ll have a whole poverty of pipers. Call Cheeks upon the

bagpipe and Tom Ticklefoot with his tabor. See where he comes!

[Enter MUSICIANS, PRUDENCE, FRANCES, MEG, and CHRISTIAN.] 505

COCKEREL

Ay, and all the good wenches of Windsor after him. Yonder is Pru

o’the park.

TOWNSHEAD

And Frances o’the castle.

PUPPY

And long Meg of Eton.

CLOD

And Christian o’ Dorney. 510

TOWNSHEAD

See the miracle of a minstrel!

COCKEREL

He’s able to muster up the smocks of the two shires.

PUPPY

And set the codpieces and they by th’ears at pleasure.

TOWNSHEAD

I cannot hold now. There’s my groat, let’s have a fit for mirth sake.

COCKEREL

Yes, and they’ll come about us for luck sake. 515

PUPPY

But look to our pockets and purses, for our own sake.

CLOD

Ay, I have the greatest charge. Gather the money.

COCKEREL

Come girls, here be gypsies come to town. Let’s dance ’em down!

The Clowns take out their wenches, Prudence, Frances, Meg, [and] Christian.

Country Dance, during which the gypsies come about them prying, and after the 520

PATRICO

Sweet doxies and dells,

My Roses and Nells,

Scarce out of the shells,

Your hands nothing else.

We ring you no knells 525

With our Ptolemy’s bells,

Though we come from the fells,

But bring you good spells,

And tell you some chances

In midst of your dances, 530

That fortune advances,

To Prudence or Francis,

To Cicely or Harry,

To Roger or Mary,

Or Peg of the dairy, 535

To Maudlin or Thomas.

Then do not run from us,

Although we look tawny,

We are healthy and brawny,

Whate’er your demand is, 540

We’ll give you no jaundice.

PUPPY

Say you so old gypsy? ’Slid these go to’t in rhymes; this is better than

canting by t’one half.

TOWNSHEAD

Nay, you shall hear ’em. Peace, they begin with Prudence, mark

that. 545

PUPPY

The wiser gypsies they, marry.

TOWNSHEAD

Are you advised?

PUPPY

Yes, and I’ll stand to’t, that a wise gypsy, take him at time o’year, is as

politic a piece of flesh as most justices in the county where he stalks.

THIRD GYPSY

To love a keeper your fortune will be, 550

But the doucets better than him or his fee.

TOWNSHEAD

Ha, Pru, has he hit you i’th’teeth with a sweet bit?

PUPPY

Let her alone, she’ll swallow it well enough. A learned gypsy!

TOWNSHEAD

You’ll hear more hereafter.

PUPPY

Marry, and I’ll listen. Who stands next? Jack Cockerel? 555

SECOND GYPSY

You’ll ha’ good luck to horse-flesh o’my life,

You ploughed so late with the vicar’s wife.

PUPPY

A prophet, a prophet! No gypsy, or if he be a gypsy, a divine gypsy!

TOWNSHEAD

Mark Frances now, she’s going to’t, the virginity o’the parish.

PATRICO

Fear not, in hell you’ll never lead apes, 560

A mortified maiden of five escapes.

PUPPY

By’r-lady, he touched the virgin string there a little too hard. They are

arrant learned men all, I see. What say they upon Tom Clod? List!

FIRST GYPSY

Clod’s feet will in Christmas go near to be bare,

When he has lost all his hobnails at post and pair. 565

PUPPY

He’s hit the right nail o’th’ head, his own game.

TOWNSHEAD

And the very metal he deals in at play, if you mark it.

PUPPY

Peace, who’s this? Long Meg?

TOWNSHEAD

Long, and foul Meg, if she be a Meg, as ever I saw of her inches.

Pray God they fit her with a fair fortune. 570

PUPPY

They slip her, and treat upon Ticklefoot.

FIRST GYPSY

On Sundays you rob the poor’s box with your tabor,

The collectors would do it, you save them a labour.

PUPPY

Faith, but a little, they’ll do it non upstante.

TOWNSHEAD

Here’s my little Christian forgot. Ha’ you any fortune left for her, 575

a strait-laced Christian of sixteen?

PATRICO

Christian shall get her a loose bodied-gown,

In trying how a gentleman differs from a clown.

PUPPY

Is that a fortune for a Christian? A Turk or a gypsy could not have told her

a worse! 580

TOWNSHEAD

Come, I’ll stand myself, and once venture the poor head o’the town.

Do your worst, my name’s Townshead, and here’s my hand; I’ll not be angry.

THIRD GYPSY

A cuckold you must be and that for three lives,

Your own, the parson’s, and your wive’s.

TOWNSHEAD

I swear I’ll never marry for that, an’t be but to give fortune my foe 585

the lie. Come, Paul Puppy, you must in too.

PUPPY

No, I’m well enough, I would ha’ no good fortune an I might.

FOURTH GYPSY

Yet look to yourself, you’ll ha some ill luck,

And shortly, for I have his purse at a pluck.

PATRICO

Away, birds, mum, 590

I hear by the hum,

If beck-harman come

He’ll strike us all dumb

With a noise like a drum.

Let’s give him our room, 595

Here, this way some,

And that way others;

We are not all brothers.

Leave me to the cheats,

I’ll show ’em some feats. 600

[Exeunt Gypsies.]

PUPPY

What, are they gone? Flown all of a sudden? This is fine, i’faith! A covey

call y’em? They are a covey soon scattered, methink. Who sprung’em, I mar’l?

TOWNSHEAD

Marry, yourself, Puppy, for aught I know: you quested last.

CLOD

Would he had quested first, and sprung ’em an hour ago for me. 605

TOWNSHEAD

Why, what’s the matter, man?

CLOD

’Slid, they ha’ sprung my purse, and all I had about me.

TOWNSHEAD

They ha’ not, ha’ they?

CLOD

As I am true Clod, ha’ they, and ransackled me of every penny. Outcept I

were with child of an owl, as they say, I never saw such luck. It’s enough to 610

make a man a whore.

PUPPY

Hold thy peace. Thou talk’st as if thou hadst a licence to lose thy purse

alone in this company. ’Slid, here be those can lose a purse in honour of the

gypsies as well as thou, for thy heart, and never make word of it. I ha’ lost my

purse, too. 615

COCKEREL

What was there i’thy purse, thou keep’st such a whining? Was the

lease of thy house in it?

PUPPY

Or thy grannam’s silver ring.

CLOD

No, but a mill-sixpence I loved as dearly, and a twopence I had to spend

over and above, besides the harper that was gathered amongst us to pay the 620

piper.

TOWNSHEAD

Our whole stock, is that gone? How will Tom Ticklefoot do to wet

his whistle then?

PUPPY

Marry, a new collection, there’s no music else, masters. He can ill pipe

that wants his upper- lip money. 625

PRUDENCE

They have robbed me, too, of a dainty race of ginger and a jet ring I

had to draw Jack Straw hither o’ holidays.

TOWNSHEAD

Is’t possible? Fine-fingered gypsies, i’faith.

MEG

And I have lost an enchanted nutmeg, all gilded over, was enchanted at

Oxford for me to put i’my sweetheart’s ale o’ mornings, with a row of white- 630

pins that prick me to the very heart, the loss of them.

CLOD

And I have lost, besides my purse, my best bride-lace I had at Joan Turnip’s

wedding, and a ha’porth of hobnails. Frances Addlebreech has lost somewhat

too, besides her maidenhead.

FRANCES

I have lost my thimble, and a skein of Coventry blue I had to work 635

Gregory Lichfield a handkerchief.

CHRISTIAN

And I, unhappy Christian as I am, have lost my Practice of Piety, with

a bowed groat and the ballad of Whoop Barnaby, which grieves me ten times

worse.

CLOD

And Ticklefoot has lost his clout, he says, with a threepence and four tokens 640

in’t, besides his taboring stick even now.

COCKEREL

And I my knife and sheath and my fine dog’s-leather gloves.

TOWNSHEAD

Ha’ we lost never a dog amongst us? Where’s Puppy?

PUPPY

Here, goodman Townshead. You have nothing to lose it seems but the

town-brains you are trusted with. 645

PATRICO

Oh, my dear marrows!

No shooting of arrows,

Or shafts of your wit,

Each other to hit

In your skirmishing fit? 650

Your store is but small,

Then venture not all.

Remember each mock

Doth spend o’the stock,

And what was here done 655

Being under the moon

And at afternoon,

Will prove right soon

Deceptio visus

Done gratia risus. 660

There’s no such thing

As the loss of a ring,

Or what you count worse,

The miss of a purse.

But, hey for the main, 665

And pass of the strain,

Here’s both come again!

And there’s an old twinger,

Can show ye the ginger,

The pins and the nutmeg 670

Are safe here with slut Meg.

Then strike up your tabor,

And there’s for your labour.

The sheath and the knife,

I’ll venture my life, 675

Shall breed you no strife,

But like man and wife,

Or sister and brother,

Keep one with another,

And light as a feather, 680

Make haste to come hither.

The Coventry blue

Hangs there upon Prue,

And here’s one opens

The clout and the tokens; 685

Deny the bowed groat

And you lie i’your throat;

Or the taborer’s ninepence,

Or the six fine pence.

As for the ballet, 690

Or the book what-you-call-it,

Alas, our society

Mells not with piety;

Himself hath forsook it,

That first undertook it. 695

For thimble or bride-lace

Search yonder side-lass.

All’s to be found,

If you look yourselves round!

We scorn to take from ye, 700

We had rather spend on ye;

If any man wrong ye,

The thief’s among ye.

TOWNSHEAD

Excellent, i’faith, a most restorative gypsy. All’s here again. And

yet by his learning of legerdemain he would make us believe we had robbed 705

ourselves.

COCKEREL

A gypsy of quality, believe it, and one of the King’s gypsies, this. A

drinkalian or a drink-braggetan, ask him? The King has his noise of gypsies

as well as of bearwards and other minstrels.

PUPPY

What sort or order of gypsies, I pray, sir? 710

PATRICO

A flagonfeakian,

A Devil’s-Arse-o’-Peakian,

Born first at Nigglington,

Bred up at Filchington,

Boarded at Tappington, 715

Bedded at Wappington.

TOWNSHEAD

’Fore me, a dainty derived gypsy.

PUPPY

But I pray, sir, if a man might ask on you, how came your Captain’s place

first to be called the Devil’s Arse?

PATRICO

For that take my word, 720

We have a record

That doth it afford

And says our first lord,

Cock Lorel he hight,

On a time did invite 725

The devil to a feast;

The tail of the jest,

(Though since it be long),

Lives yet in a song,

Which if you would hear, 730

Shall plainly appear.

I’ll call in my clerk,

Shall sing like a lark.

Come in, my long shark,

With thy face brown and dark, 735

With thy tricks and thy toys,

Make a merry, merry noise

To those mad country boys,

And chant out the farce

Of the grand Devil’s Arse. 740

Song

JACKMAN

Cock Lorel would needs have the devil his guest,

And bad him once into the Peak to dinner,

Where never the fiend had such a feast

Provided him yet at the charge of a sinner. 745

His stomach was queasy for coming there coached,

The jogging had caused some crudities rise.

To help it he called for a Puritan poached,

That used to turn up the eggs of his eyes.

And so, recovered unto his wish, 750

He sat him down and he fell to eat;

Promoter in plum-broth was the first dish,

His own privy kitchen had no such meat.

Yet though with this he much were taken,

Upon a sudden he shifted his trencher 755

As soon as he spied the bawd and bacon,

By which you may note the devil’s a wencher.

Six pickled tailors sliced and cut,

Sempsters, tirewomen, fit for his palate,

With feathermen and perfumers, put 760

Some twelve in a charger to make a grand salad.

A rich fat usurer stewed in his marrow,

And by him a lawyer’s head and green sauce,

Both which his belly took in like a barrow,

As if till then he had never seen sauce. 765

Then carbonadoed and cooked with pains

Was brought up a cloven sergeant’s face;

The sauce was made of his yeoman’s brains

That had been beaten out with his own mace.

Two roasted sheriffs came whole to the board 770

(The feast had nothing been without ’em);

Both living and dead they were foxed and furred,

Their chains like sausages hung about ’em.

The very next dish was the mayor of a town,

With a pudding of maintenance thrust in his belly, 775

Like a goose in the feathers dressed in his gown,

And his couple of hench-boys boiled to a jelly.

A London cuckold hot from the spit,

And when the carver up had broke him,

The devil chopped up his head at a bit, 780

But the horns were very near like to have choked him.

The chine of a lecher too there was roasted,

With a plump harlot’s haunch and garlic,

A pandar’s pettitoes that had boasted

Himself for a captain, yet never was warlike. 785

A large fat pasty of midwife hot,

And for a cold baked meat into the story,

A reverend painted lady was brought,

Was coffined in crust till now she was hoary.

To these an overgrown justice of peace, 790

With a clerk like a gizzard trussed under each arm,

And warrants for sippets, laid in his own grease,

Set o’er a chafing dish to be kept warm.

The jowl of a jailor served for fish,

A constable soused with vinegar by, 795

Two aldermen lobsters asleep in a dish,

A deputy tart, a churchwarden pie.

All which devoured, he then for a close

Did for a full draught of Derby call.

He heaved the huge vessel up to his nose, 800

And left not till he had drunk up all.

Then from the table he gave a start,

Where banquet and wine were nothing scarce

All which he flirted away with a fart,

From whence it was called the Devil’s Arse. 805

And there he made such a breach with the wind,

The hole too standing open the while,

That the scent of the vapour before and behind

Hath foully perfumed most part of the isle.

And this was tobacco, the learnèd suppose, 810

Which since in country, court, and town,

In the devil’s clyster-pipe smokes at the nose

Of polecat and madam, of gallant and clown.

From which wicked weed, with swine’s flesh and ling,

Or anything else that’s feast for the fiend, 815

Our Captain and we cry ‘God save the King!’

And send him good meat and mirth without end.

PUPPY

An excellent song and a sweet songster, and would have done rarely in

a cage with a dish of water and hempseed; a fine breast of his own. Sir, you

are a prelate of the order, I understand, and I have a terrible grudging now 820

upon me to be one of your company. Will your Captain take a prentice, sir?

I would bind myself to him body and soul, either for one-and-twenty years,

or as many lives as he would.

CLOD

Ay, and put in my life for one, for I am come about, too. I am sorry I had no

more money i’my purse when you came first upon us, sir. If I had known you 825

would have picked my pocket so like a gentleman, I would have been better

provided. I shall be glad to venture a purse with your worship at any time

you’ll appoint, so you would prefer me to your Captain. I’ll put in security

for my truth, and serve out my time, though I die tomorrow.

COCKEREL

Ay, upon those terms, sir, and in hope your Captain keeps better cheer 830

than he made the devil, for my stomach will ne’er agree with that diet, we’ll

be all his followers. I’ll go home and fetch a little money, sir, all I have, and

you shall pick my pocket to my face, and I’ll avouch it, a man would not desire

to have his pocket picked in better company.

PUPPY

Tut, they have other manner of gifts than picking of pockets or telling 835

fortunes if they would but please to show ’em, or thought us poor country

mortals worthy of them. What might a man do to be a gentleman of your

company, sir?

COCKEREL

Ay, a gypsy in ord’nary or nothing.

PATRICO

Friends, not to refel ye, 840

Or any way quell ye,

To buy or to sell ye,

I only must tell ye

Ye aim at a mystery

Worthy a history. 845

There’s much to be done

Ere you can be a son

Or brother of the moon,

’Tis not so soon

Acquired as desired. 850

You must be ben-bousy,

And sleepy and drowsy,

And lazy and lousy,

Before ye can rouse ye

In shape that avows ye. 855

And then you may stalk

The gypsies’ walk

To the coops and the pens,

And bring in the hens,

Though the cock be sullen 860

For loss of the pullen,

Take turkey or capon,

And gammons of bacon,

Let nought be forsaken.

We’ll let you go loose, 865

Like a fox to a goose,

And show you the sty

Where the little pigs lie,

Whence if you can take

One or two and not wake 870

The sow in her dreams,

But by the moonbeams,

So warily hie

As neither do cry,

You shall the next day,875

Have licence to play

At the hedge a flirt

For a sheet or a shirt.

If your hand be light,

I’ll show you the sleight, 880

Of our Ptolemy’s knot,

It is, and ’tis not;

To change your complexion

With the noble confection

Of walnuts and hog’s grease 885

Better than dog’s grease;

And to milk the kine,

Ere the milkmaid fine

Hath opened her eyne.

Or if you desire 890

To spit or fart fire,

I’ll teach you the knacks

Of eating of flax,

And out of your noses

Draw ribbons for posies, 895

As for example

Mine own is as ample

And fruitful a nose

As a wit can suppose.

Yet it shall go hard 900

But there will be spared

Each of you a yard,

And worth your regard,

When the colour and size

Arrive at your eyes. 905

And if you incline

To a cup of good wine

When you sup or dine,

If you chance it to lack,

Be it claret or sack,910

I’ll make this snout

To deal it about,

Or this to run out

As it were from a spout.

TOWNSHEAD

Admirable tricks, and he does ’em all se defendendo, as if he would 915

not be taken in the trap of authority by a frail, fleshly constable.

PUPPY

Without the aid of a cheese.

CLOD

Or help of a flitch of bacon.

COCKEREL

Oh, he would chirp in a pair of stocks sumptuously. I’d give anything

to see him play loose with his hands when his feet were fast. 920

PUPPY

O’my conscience, he fears not that an the marshal himself were here. I

protest I admire him.

PATRICO

Is this worth your wonder?

Nay then, you shall under-

Stand more of my skill. 925

I can, for I will,

Give you all your fill,

Each Jack with his Jill,

And show you the King,

The Prince too, and bring 930

The gypsies were here

Like lords to appear,

With such their attenders

As you thought offenders,

Who now become new men, 935

You’ll know them for true men.

ALL

A hall, a hall, a hall!

[Enter] the GYPSIES changed.

Dance.

PATRICO

Why, now ye behold 940

’Twas truth that I told,

And no device.

They are changed in a trice,

And so will I

Be myself by and by. 945

I only now

Must study how

To come off with a grace

With my Patrico’s place.

Some short kind of blessing 950

Itself addressing

Unto my good master,

Which light on him faster

Than wishes can fly,

And you that stand by 955

Be as jocund as I,

Each man with his voice

Give his heart to rejoice,

Which I’ll requite

If my art hit right 960

Though late now at night

Each clown here in sight

Before daylight,

Shall prove a good knight,

And your lasses, pages, 965

Worthy their wages,

Where fancy engages

Girls to their ages.

CLOD

Oh, anything for the Patrico. What is’t, what is’t?

PATRICO

Nothing but bear the bob of the close, 970

It will be no burden, you well may suppose,

But bless the sovereign and his senses,

And to wish away offences,

CLOD

Let us alone bless the sovereign and his senses.

PATRICO

We’ll take them in order as they have being, 975

And first, of seeing.

From a gypsy in the morning,

Or a pair of squint eyes turning,

From the goblin and the spectre, 980

Or a drunkard, though with nectar,

From a woman true to no man,

Which is ugly besides common,

A smock rampant and that itches

To be putting on the britches: 985

Wheresoe’er they ha’ their being,

Bless the sovereign and his seeing.

From a fool and serious toys,

From a lawyer three parts noise, 990

From impertinence, like a drum

Beat at dinner in his room;

From a tongue without a file,

Heaps of phrases and no style,

From a fiddle out of tune, 995

As the cuckoo is in June;

From the candlesticks of Lothbury,

And the loud pure wives of Banbury,

Or a long pretended fit

Meant for mirth, but is not it, 1000

Only time and ears outwearing:

Bless the sovereign and his hearing.

From a strolling tinker’s sheet,

Or a pair of carrier’s feet, 1005

From a lady that doth breathe

Worse above than underneath;

From the diet and the knowledge,

Of the students in Bears’ College;

From tobacco, with the type 1010

Of the devil’s clyster-pipe;

Or a stink all stinks excelling,

A fishmonger’s dwelling:

Bless the sovereign and his smelling.

4 1015

From an oyster and fried fish,

A sow’s baby in a dish,

From any portion of a swine;

From bad venison and worse wine,

Ling, what cook soe’er it boil, 1020

Though with mustard sauced and oil;

Or what else would keep man fasting:

Bless the sovereign and his tasting.

Both from bird-lime and from pitch, 1025

From a doxy and her itch,

From the bristles of a hog,

Or the ringworm in a dog,

From the courtship of a briar,

Or St Anthony’s old fire; 1030

From a needle or a thorn

I’the bed at ev’n or morn,

Or from any gout’s least grutching:

Bless the sovereign and his touching.

Bless him, too, from all offences, 1035

In his sports as in his senses,

From a boy to cross his way,

From a fall, or a foul day.

Bless him, oh bless him heav’n, and lend him long

To be the sacred burden of all song, 1040

The acts and years of all our kings t’outgo,

And while he’s mortal, we not think him so.

After which ascending up the Jackman sings.

First Song

JACKMAN

The sports are done, yet do not let 1045

Your joys in sudden silence set;

Delight, and dumbness never met

In one self subject yet.

If things opposed must mixed appear,

Then add a boldness to your fear, 1050

And speak a hymn

To him,

Where all your duties do of right belong

Which I will sweeten with an undersong.

CAPTAIN

Glory of ours, and grace of all the earth, 1055

How well your figure doth become your birth,

As if your form and fortune equal stood,

And only virtue got above your blood.

Second Song

PATRICO

Virtue! His kingly virtue, which did merit 1060

This isle entire, and you are to inherit.

FOURTH GYPSY

How right he doth confess him in his face,

His brow, his eye, and every mark of state,

As if he were the issue of each Grace,

And bore about him both his fame and fate. 1065

Third Song

JACKMAN

Look, look, is he not fair

And fresh, and fragrant too,

As summer sky or purgèd air,

And looks as lilies do, 1070

That were this morning blown?

FOURTH GYPSY

Oh, more, that more of him were known!

THIRD GYPSY

Look how the winds, upon the waves grown tame,

Take up land sounds upon their purple wings,

And catching each from other, bear the same 1075

To every angle of their sacred springs.

So will we take his praise and hurl his name

About the globe in thousand airy rings,

If his great virtue be in love with Fame,

For, that contemned, both are neglected things. 1080

Fourth Song

PATRICO

Good princes soar above their fame,

And in their worth

Come greater forth,

Than in their name. 1085

Such, such the father is

Whom every title strives to kiss,

Who on his royal grounds unto himself doth raise

The work to trouble fame and to astonish praise.

FOURTH GYPSY

Indeed, he is not lord alone of all the state, 1090

But of the love of men and of the empire’s fate.

The muses’ arts, the schools, commerce, our honours, laws

And virtues hang on him as on their working cause:

SECOND GYPSY

His handmaid Justice is,

THIRD GYPSY

Wisdom his wife,

FOURTH GYPSY

His mistress Mercy,

FIFTH GYPSY

Temperance his life. 1095

SECOND GYPSY

His pages Bounty and Grace which many prove,

THIRD GYPSY

His guards are Magnanimity and Love.

FOURTH GYPSY

His ushers Counsel, Truth, and Piety,

FIFTH GYPSY

And all that follows him Felicity.

Fifth Song 1100

JACKMAN

Oh, that we understood,

Our good.

There’s happiness indeed in blood

And store,

But how much more 1105

When virtue’s flood

In the same stream doth hit?

As that grows high with years, so happiness with it.

CAPTAIN

Love, love his fortune then,

And virtues known, 1110

Who is the top of men,

But make the happiness our own;

Since where the prince for goodness is renowned,

The subject with felicity is crowned.

THE END 1115

The Epilogue

At Burley, Belvoir, and now last at Windsor

(Which shows we are gypsies of no common kind, sir),

You have beheld, and with delight, their change,

And how they came transformed may think it strange,

It being a thing not touched at by our poet: 5

Good Ben slept there, or else forgot to show it.

But lest it prove like wonder to the sight

To see a gypsy, as an Ethiop, white,

Know that what dyed our faces was an ointment,

Made and laid on by Master Wolf’s appointment, 10

The court lycanthropos, yet without spells,

By a mere barber, and no magic else.

It was fetched off with water and a ball,

And to our transformation, this is all,

Save what the master fashioner calls his; 15

For to a gypsy’s metamorphosis,

Who doth disguise his habit, and his face,

And takes on a false person by his place,

The power of poetry can never fail her,

Assisted by a barber and a tailor. 20

FINIS

Appendix 2:

Bridgewater alternative passages and versions

A. After 502: passage found only in the Bridgewater MS = BUR 445–51.

PUPPY

Music! We’ll have a whole poverty of pipers. Call Cheeks upon the bagpipe

and Tom Ticklefoot with his tabor. Clod, will you gather the pipe money?

CLOD

I’ll gather it, an you will, but I’ll give none.

PUPPY

Why, well said! Claw a churl by the arse and he’ll shit on your fist.

COCKEREL

Ay, or whistle to a jade and he’ll pay you with a fart. 5

CLOD

Fart? It’s an ill wind blows no man to profit. See where the minstrels come

i’ the mouth on’t.

B. After 570: in the Bridgewater MS = BUR 515–19. Replaced by WIN 571.

TOWNSHEAD

. . . she hangs an arse terribly.

PATRICO

She’ll have a tailor take measure of her britch,

And ever after be troubled with a stitch.

TOWNSHEAD

That’s as homely as she.

PUPPY

The better! A turd’s as good for a sow as a pancake. 5

C. After 706: in the Bridgewater MS and D²; not in the Newcastle MS F2 = BUR 653–6

[TOWN]

. . . for the hobnails are come to me.

COCKEREL

Maybe he knew whose shoes lacked clouting.

PUPPY

Ay, he knows more than that, or I’ll never trust my judgment in a gypsy

again.

D. After 733: in the Bridgewater MS only

COCKEREL

Oh, ay, the song, the song in any case! If you want music we’ll lend

him our minstrel.

E. 835–8 additional speech for Cockerel from the Bridgewater MS and D² (for minor D² variants, see collations, 835, 836).

PUPPY

Tut, they have other manner of gifts than telling of fortunes or picking of

pockets.

COCKEREL

Ay, an if they please to show them or thought us poor country folks

worthy of them.

PUPPY

What might a man do to be a gentleman of your company, sir? 5

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

The Gypsies Metamorphosed (1621)

Edited by James Knowles

Introduction

Dates

Occasions and venues

Versions

Titles

Gypsies and rogues

‘The Farce of the Grand Devil’s Arse’: feasting and farting

Buckingham and the politics of favour

Genre

Verse

Gypsy metamorphosis

This edition

THE MASQUE OF THE GYPSIES

THE GYPSIES METAMORPHOSED

THE GYPSIES METAMORPHOSED (BELVOIR)

Appendix 1:

Additional and substitute passages from the Belvoir version

A.

Substitute passage 1 (replacing BUR 86–9)

B.

Additional fortune (after BUR 354)

C.

Substitute passage 2 (replacing BUR 779–95)

A MASQUE OF THE METAMORPHOSED GYPSIES

THE GYPSIES METAMORPHOSED

The Epilogue

Appendix 2:

Bridgewater alternative passages and versions

A.

After 502: passage found only in the Bridgewater MS = BUR 445–51.

B.

After 570: in the Bridgewater MS = BUR 515–19. Replaced by WIN 571.

C.

After 706: in the Bridgewater MS and D2; not in the Newcastle MS F2 = BUR 653–6

D.

After 733: in the Bridgewater MS only

E.

835–8 additional speech for Cockerel from the Bridgewater MS and D2 (for minor D2 variants, see collations, 835, 836).

After 706: in the Bridgewater MS and D²; not in the Newcastle MS F2 = BUR 653–6

835–8 additional speech for Cockerel from the Bridgewater MS and D² (for minor D² variants, see collations, 835, 836).