Title-page
HYMENAEI The Latin means ‘marriage ceremonies’, the plural
signalling that the masque and the barriers that followed are considered
a single ‘work’.
Hymenaeus was also an
alternative name for Hymen, the god of marriage, and for the marriage
song, or epithalamium itself. Juno and Hymenaeus had appeared as figures
in the lost masque for the marriage of Philip Herbert and Susan de Vere
on 27 December 1604 (
Chambers,
ES, 3.377).
14 Iam . . . Hymenaeus ‘Now the bride will come, now will the
marriage-song be sung’ (Catullus, 62.4).
16 Valentine Sims One of the printers for King’s Ent., also a text with complex marginalia.
16 Thomas
Thorp Stationer responsible for the quartos of Sej. and Volp. (and for
Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 1609).
Title-page Magnificently . . . 1606] Q; not
in F1
1 subjected submitted (literally, ‘thrown beneath’, from Lat.).
OED, Subject v. 6, gives the meaning ‘be attributed to, inhere in a
subject’, citing this as the first instance, but its Latinate sense is
more appropriate.
2 objected
to placed before (OED, Object
v. 2). Jonson distinguishes between the power
of the understanding to command and internalize concepts, and the
passivity of the senses in merely responding to what they see and
hear.
3 taking
engaging, charming.
3 impressing making a firm imprint.
4–5 So . . .
souls The identification of the eternal ‘soul’ with the
masque’s underlying invention or conception and, by implication, with
the work of the poet, whereas the ephemeral ‘body’ is equated with the
element of scenic display, is at the heart of Jonson’s validation of his
work in the genre. Cf. the ironic ‘Painting and carpentry are the soul
of masque’ in Expostulation, (6.375–80), line
50.
6 sensually ‘with subservience to the senses or the lower
nature’ (OED, 2); cf. Neptune, 38–9: ‘For there is a palate of the understanding as
well as of the senses’.
8 personators performers; those who (im)personated the ideal
characters of the masque. OED credits
Jonson with the first use.
9 magnificence A key term carrying several meanings: (1)
sumptuousness, splendour; (2) that which pertains to the glory or
reputation of court and monarch; (3) that which indicates royal
generosity; (4) the Aristotelian virtue combining liberality and good
taste (cf.
Blackness, 4 and n.). Magnificence was
to have been the moral virtue allegorized in the culminating book of
Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, intended to
celebrate Elizabeth and her court.
10 curious
studiously inquisitive. The quality which Jonson claimed to find in
Prince Henry, when he dedicated Queens to him
(see Queens, 25).
10 hearty
Full of ‘heart’ or intellectual substance.
Chapman’s Ovid’s Banquet of
Sense (1592), speaks of ‘high and hearty invention
expressed in most significant and unaffected phrase’, and in Davenant’s
Luminalia (1637), Henrietta Maria commanded
Inigo Jones ‘to make a new subject of a Masque . . . that with high and
hearty invention might give occasion for variety’.
11 inventions A technical rhetorical term: ‘The finding out or
selection of topics to be treated, or arguments to be used’ (OED, 1. d).
11–12 grounded . . . learnings Jonson aims specifically at Samuel
Daniel,
The Vision of the Twelve Godesses, who
wrote of his goddesses in 1604: ‘though these images have oftentimes
divers significations, yet it being not our purpose to represent them
with all those curious and superfluous observations, we took them only
to serve as hieroglyphics for our present intention . . . without
observing other their mystical interpretations’ (Spencer and Wells,
1967, 26). Daniel
himself was aiming at the learned apparatus of Jonson’s
King’s Ent.
12–13 voice . . .
sense Outwardly the text speaks to the immediate present,
inwardly its sense is founded on general truths.
13 or doth
either does.
13 removed
arcane, secret.
14 squeamishly fastidiously, daintily (OED, 2).
15 sharpness intellectual acuteness (OED, 2a).
15 devices especially,] Q,
F1; devices, especially F2
15 devices
especially, The punctuation of Q and F1, adopted here,
suggests that the objections are specifically to learning being deployed
in the ephemeral masque. F2’s ‘devices,
especially’ has generally been accepted by modern editors, with its
focus on the shortcomings of the audience. Either punctuation is
possible, but the former has some Jonsonian authority.
17 fastidious easily disgusted, over-nice (
OED, Fastidious
a. 3). The word, however, also carries something of the older
sense of ‘disdainful, scornful’ (
OED, 2.
b). Cf. the character of Sir Fastidious Brisk in
EMO, and
New Inn,
Ded. A fashionable word at the time (see
H&S, 9.449).
18 trenchers platters, originally made of flat bread (OED, Trencher1, 3), later of wood, earthenware, or metal.
18–19 Italian . . .
salad To characterize the Italians as fond of salad was a
commonplace.
Cf. Lyly,
Midas (c.
1590), Prol., 9, ‘There must be salads for the Italian’;
Massinger,
The Great Duke of Florence (1636),
2.2, on Italians: ‘That think when they have supped upon an olive, / A
root, or bunch of raisins, ’tis a feast’. But Jonson is also alluding to
fashionable imitation of Italian poetic fashions, of Petrarchan
love-poetry, or the dramatic pastoral mode of Guarini’s
Pastor Fido. Peacock (
1991) suggests that he was
specifically ridiculing Daniel’s Italianate theory of the masque. In
fact both Jonson and Jones took many ideas from Italian festivals.
19 salad
Any mixture of herbs or vegetables.
20 meats
Any kind of food, not necessarily animal flesh.
22 nectar
The drink of the gods.
22 metheglin A spiced mead, originally Welsh.
23 ‘They can drink bad wine if it pleases them.’
25 ‘They may proceed, if it does not upset their
stomachs.’ This and 23 are adapted from
Martial, 10.45.5–6.
27 masques Used in the restricted sense of ‘masked performers’.
A double masque of men and women, Bacon said, ‘addeth state and variety’
(‘Of Masques and Triumphs’, in
Essays, 1625).
These were much less frequent than single-sex masques, though appearing
especially in marriage celebrations. Cf.
Campion, The Lords’
Masque (1613).
27 scene curtain; painted, as 336 suggests, with clouds.
28 being
drawn Unlike the curtain for Blackness,
which was dropped.
28 an
altar Jonson may be modelling this on Robert Cotton’s Roman
altar that he had seen at Conington. See McKitterick (1997), 116–17.
29–31 I.oni. . . SACR. The words imitate classical inscriptions in
typographical layout and employment of abbreviation. ‘Though it clearly
follows the well-known formula of dedication to Jupiter,
[the
inscription
] has no basis in antiquity and has no parallel among the
Humanist fakes. Such a departure is due to Jonson’s desire to stress the
word
Vnio’ (Gordon,
1975, 307). Footnote numbers refer to
Jonson’s marginal notes, found at the end of the present text.
29 Abbreviation of Iunoni Optimae
Maximae, ‘To the best and greatest Juno’. A variation of the
conventional epithets for Jupiter, optimus
maximus.
30–1 UNIONI
SACR. For Sacra. ‘Sacred to
marriage’.
31 SACR.1] footnote numerals, this edn; marked with alphabetic
superscripts, Q
JONSON'S
MARGINALIA 1 Mystically implying, that both it, the place, and
all the succeeding ceremonies were sacred to marriage, or Union; over which
Juno was president: to whom there was the like altar erected at Rome, as
she was called
Iuga Iuno, in the street which thence was
named
Iugarius; see Festus; and at which altar the rite was to join
the married pair with bands of silk, in sign of future concord.
1 it the
altar itself.
sacred . . .
Festus A close translation of
Giraldi (
1548),
160, including the citation of Festus.
Iuga Iuno ‘Juno the yoke’. In Ripa’s image
of Matrimony (1603), 306, a young man appears with a yoke and fetters.
Festus Sextus Pompeius
Festus, scholar of the second century
ad,
whose abridgement of Verrius Flaccus’s
De verborum
significatu (‘On the meaning of words’), or at least of that
part of it which survived, was frequently reprinted in the Renaissance.
(There was also a further ‘epitome’ of Festus compiled by Paulus
Diaconus in the eighth century, and some other fragments survive, which
were often published together with Festus.) All references to Festus are
found in intermediary sources, and it seems unlikely that Jonson
consulted it at first hand.
rite . . . concord Suggested by Alexander (
1586), 134: ‘it was
said that the bride and groom were bound together with a band of purple
and white, or a vari-coloured garment, as was the Latin custom, or they
went equally under the yoke, by reason of which Juno is called
iugalis, as if they were bound equally by the
most equal law and with harmonious minds, and would enter into a life of
mutual partnership’. This may also have suggested the colours of the
bridegroom’s costume. See also Chapman,
Hero and
Leander, 5.348–58, where the priest has ‘ribands of white and
blue’, and ‘took the disparent silks, and tied / The lovers by their
waists, and side to side, / In token that thereafter they must bind / In
one self sacred knot each other’s minds’.
This commentary is heavily dependent upon
Gordon’s researches (
1975), 156–84, 282–9. All of his references have been
checked. Some additional sources are noted (especially Jonson’s use of
Scaliger), and it appears that Jonson actually checked his originals
rather more frequently than Gordon implied. Where appropriate, an
initial note offers a general summary of the possible sources, followed
by detailed notes and translation of Jonson’s Latin and Greek citations.
References to Barnabé Brisson,
De Ritu Nuptiarum
(‘On the rites of marriage’), are to the first Paris edition of 1564; to
Antoine Hotman,
De Veteri Ritu Nuptiarum (‘On the
ancient rites of Marriage’) first published 1585, as reprinted in the
collected edition of the works of his brother, Francois Hotman,
Franc. Hotmani Iuris consulti Operum tomus primus
(‘The first volume of the works of Francois Hotman, lawyer’) (Geneva,
1599); and to
Alexandro ab Alexandri,
Genialium Dierum
Libri Sex (‘Six books of the days of marriage’)
are to the edition of 1586.
1 Iugarius; see Festus;
and] this edn; Jugarius. See Fest. and, Q
32–46 For Jonson’s sources for the details of costumes
and properties in Roman wedding rites, see Introduction and his marginal
notes. Many of the symbols are further explained by Reason at
138–87.
2 Those were the
quinque cerei
which Plutarch
in his
Quaestiones
Romanae mentions to be used in nuptials.
2 The reference is in Brisson (
1564), 35, though
it is very likely that Jonson consulted Plutarch directly.
quinque cerei ‘five wax
lights’.
Plutarch . . .
Romanae
Roman Questions, 2, in
Moralia, 263F–264B. Plutarch asks, ‘Why in the marriage rites
do they light five torches, neither more nor less, which they call
cereones?’, and gives several answers, including
the symbolic significance of the number five (see .), and
that ‘since light is the symbol of birth and women are enabled by nature
to bear, at the most, five children at one birth, the wedding company
makes use of exactly that number of torches’.
33 one. . .
bridegroom The device
of having actors represent the couple being honoured was echoed in
Campion’s The Lords’ Masque.
33 one. . .
bridegroom The device
of having actors represent the couple being honoured was echoed in
Campion’s The Lords’ Masque.
33–4 bound . . . white The colours are suggested in
Alexander, Genialium Dierum. See Jonson’s marginal
note
1 and n.
34 twist Thread formed by twisting two or more fibres
together.
3 The dressing of the bridegroom, with the
ancients, was chiefly noted in that
quod
tonderetur. Juvenal,
Saturae,
6.
[26–7
]:
Iamque a tonsore
magistro pecteris. And Lucan, 2, where he makes Cato negligent
of the ceremonies in marriage, saith:
Ille nec horrificam
sancto dimovit ab ore Caesariem.
3 The . . .
tonderetur An exact
translation and quotation from Hotman (
1599), ch. 17, ‘On the cutting of the
hair’ (546). He quotes the line from Juvenal, though with slightly
different wording, and refers (547), as Jonson does, to Lucan on Cato’s
negligence, though quoting a different passage, suggesting that Jonson
returned to, or had originally worked from, both of the originals.
quod tonderetur ‘his hair
was cut’.
Iamque . . .
pecteris ‘Now your hair is dressed by a master barber.’
Juvenal addresses a man preparing for marriage.
Lucan Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (
ad 39–65). His
De Bello Civili (‘On the
Civil War’) was an important source for Jonson. See
Sej., 2.178–87n., and
Queens,
passim.
Ille . . . Caesariem:
Civil War,
2.372: ‘The husband refused to remove the shaggy growth from his
reverend face’ (Loeb).
3 6] Q;
not in F
35 hymen God of marriage.
35 saffron-coloured Cf.
Ovid, Met.,
10.1–2, where Hymen is ‘clad in a saffron mantle’.
36 socks Light shoes, or short stocking reaching to the
calf.
4 See how he is called out by Catullus,
In Nuptiis Iuliae et Manlii:
Cinge tempora floribus suave olentis amaraci etc.
4 Catullus . . .
Manlii The epithalamium
by Catullus (c. 84–54 bc), number 61 in modern editions, was known under the title
‘On the marriage of Julia and Manlius’. It is one of the most
significant classical models for the genre, and Jonson drew on it in
several parts of this masque. Cinge . . . amaraci ‘Bind your brows with flowers of fragrant
marjoram’ (61.6). The quotation is in Brisson, 24, though not there
attached to Hymen. Jonson certainly consulted this poem
independently.
5 For so I preserve the reading there in Catullus
[61.15
],
Pineam quate taedam, rather than to change it
spineam; and moved by the authority of Virgil in
Ciris [439
], where he says,
Pronuba nec castos incendet pinus amores: and Ovid,
Fasti, 2.
[558
],
Expectet puros pinea
taeda dies. Though I deny not there was also
spinea taeda, which Pliny calls
nuptiarum facibus auspicatissimam,
Naturalis
Historiae, 16.18, and whereof Sextus Pompeius Festus hath left
so particular testimony. For which, see the following note.
5 The right reading of line 15 of Catullus’s poem
– whether it should be pineam (‘pine’) or spineam (‘thorn’) – was a matter of debate.
Renaissance editions differ. The sources Jonson cites are to be found in
Alexander, 137, note e, who prefers pineam, and Brisson, 33–4, who favours spineam, as well as in the commentaries to
Renaissance editions of Catullus, which perhaps might be the more likely
sources. Pineam . . .
taedam ‘Brandish the pine-torch’ (Orgel). Pronuba . . . amores ‘Nor
does the nuptial pine inflame chaste loves’ (Orgel). Expectet . . . dies ‘Let
the pine-torch anticipate pure days’ (Orgel). spinea taeda ‘a torch of thorn’. nuptiarum . . .
auspicatissimam ‘most auspicious for the torches of a marriage
ceremony’.
6 This by the ancients was called
camillus, quasi minister (for so that signified in the
Etrurian tongue),
and was one of the three, which by Sextus Pompeius were said to be
patrimi et matrimi, pueri praetextati tres, qui
nubentem deducunt: unus, qui facem prafert ex spina alba, duo qui
tenent nubentem. To which confer that of Varro,
De Lingua Latina, 6:
Dicitur in nuptiis camillus, qui cumerum fert; as also that of
Festus, 3:
Cumeram vocabant antiqui vas quoddam, quod opertum in
nuptiis ferebant, in quo erant nubentis utensilia, quod et camillum
dicebant: eo quod sacrorum ministrum κάμιλλον
appellabant.
6 The first quotation from Festus is in Alexander,
137, note
d. The quotation from Varro and the
second from Festus come from Brisson, 40.
camillus . . . minister ‘
camillus, that is a servant’. Brisson, 41: ‘young male and
female servants were called
camillos and
camillas in holy rites; whence Mercury was called
in the Etruscan language
camillus; that is,
servant of the gods’. (This is perhaps a more likely source than the
identical passage in Alexander, 552, note
m,
suggested by Gordon,
1975.)
patrimi . . . nubentem ‘three boys, having father and mother
living, wearing the fringed toga of youth, escort the bride: one bears
in front the torch of whitethorn, two support the bride’.
confer compare.
Varro (116–27
bc), one of the greatest scholars of Rome,
credited with 490 books. Of the 25 books of
On the
Latin Language, books 5–10 are partly extant. The reference
Jonson gives reproduces Brisson, and is incorrect (actually 7.34),
evidence that Jonson did not consult Varro directly.
Dicitur . . . fert ‘He
who brings the
cumera is called
camillus in weddings.’
Cumeram . . . appellabant ‘The ancients
would call a
cumera a certain vessel which they
would carry closed in marriage ceremonies, in which were the bride’s
utensils; which they also called a
camillus; for
that reason they called the ministrant of the rites
kamillon.’
6 Etrurian] Q (Hetruriā)
38 whitethorn The common hawthorn.
39 flasket
OED gives ‘long, shallow basket’, but
here it must mean a container with a lid.
40–1 hair . . . loose A later European, not a Roman custom; a sign
of virginity. At Frances Howard’s second marriage, to Robert Carr, she
again had her hair down, which prompted Arthur Wilson later to castigate
her: ‘She thinking all the world ignorant of her sly practices, hath the
impudence to appear in the habit of a virgin, with her hair pendant
almost to her feet’ (quoted in Lindley,
1993, 132). Erasmus inveighed against
the custom: ‘Is it not enough that her husband is satisfied as to her
virginity, without the public being called to witness? What does such
nonsense achieve, except to make impertinent tongues wag about a maiden
who is, more often than not, quite irreproachable?’ (
The Institution of Marriage, in Rummel,
1996, 105).
41 sprinkled with grey See
160–1.
42 wether’s a male sheep, a ram. See . and Jonson’s marginal note
19n.
42 zone girdle; the original Latin and Greek sense.
OED mistakenly credits Jonson with the
first use; it is also found in Chapman’s continuation of Marlowe’s
Hero and Leander (1598), 3.213, and Dekker,
Satiromastix (
1602).
43 Herculean knot Complex knot on the bride’s girdle. See
Jonson’s marginal note
22 and n.
44 auspices witnesses; see Jonson’s marginal note
7n.
7 Auspices were
those that hand-fasted the married couple, that wished them good luck,
that took care for the dowry, and heard them profess that they came
together for the cause of children. Juvenal,
Saturae, 10.
[336
],
Veniet cum
signatoribus auspex. And Lucan, 2.
[371
],
Iunguntur taciti, contentique auspice Bruto. They were also
styled
pronubi,
proxenetae,
paranymphi.
7 From scattered phrases in Hotman, chs. 2–4. He
gives the quotations from Juvenal and Lucan, though the precise
references are to be found in Brisson, 22, and Alexander, 132, note a. Jonson, however, could no doubt have
identified them for himself. Auspices The meaning here, ‘responsible witnesses’, is
distinct from the more familiar sense of ‘diviners of omens’, though
deriving from it, since originally the auspex
would have conducted divination at the time of betrothal to ensure the
fortunate future of the marriage. Veniet . . . auspex ‘The auspex will come with the witnesses.’ Iunguntur . . . Bruto ‘They were joined
together silently and contentedly with Brutus as auspex.’ pronubi (Lat.) Men who were ministers at nuptials. Here used
of the pages who attended bride and groom. It is more usually found in
the feminine form pronubae, signifying the
matrons who conducted the bride to the nuptial chamber. proxenetae (Greek)
Literally, an ‘agent’ or ‘broker’. Hotman calls them conciliatores, interpretes et internuncii, all terms for
intermediaries; here it means those who acted as mediators between the
families of bride and groom. paranymphi (Greek) ‘bridegroom’s friends’.
45 water . . . fire See
152–5 and Jonson’s marginal note
15n.
45 water . . . fire See
152–5 and Jonson’s marginal note
15n.
8 The custom of music at nuptials is clear in all
antiquity. Terence,
Adelphi, 5.
[905
]:
Verum hoc mihi mora est, tibicina, et hymenaeum qui
cantent. And Claudian in
Epithalamium:
Ducant pervigiles carmina tibiae, etc.
8 Brisson, 48–9, notes that the use of the flute
is evidenced by ‘not a few places in the authorities’. He cites Terence
(but attributing it to Act 6, Scene 7), and Claudian (but reading Dicant pervigiles) among a number of other
authorities Jonson does not mention. It seems probable that Jonson
supplied the references from his own reading. Verum . . . cantent ‘But there’s a hitch.
They’re waiting for the musician and the choir for the marriage hymn’
(Loeb). Epithalamium
i.e. Fescennine Verses, 4.30. Ducant . . . tibiae ‘All
night long let the music of the flute resound’ (Loeb).
48 A formula at the beginning of ancient rites. Cf.
Virgil,
Aeneid, 6.258:
procul, o procul este, profani, ‘Stand afar, afar off, you who
are profane’, addressed by a priestess to the followers of Aeneas as he
is about to descend into the underworld.
50 mysteries sacred rites.
51 But who
Except those who.
56 simple
free from duplicity, honest.
59 curtain] Q (Cortine)
60 holiday
festival, consecrated day.
61 admiration wonder.
63 more . . .
light The extravagance of the lighting at the masque was one
sign of its richness and splendour.
65 fane
temple.
70 bound
confine.
72 king . . .
peace James’s motto, Beati Pacifici
(‘Blessed are the peacemakers’), and his pacific politics are frequently
invoked approvingly in Jonson’s masques.
73–4 she . . .
increase Queen Anne at the time of the masque had three
children, the Princes Henry and Charles, and Princess Mary, who died in
1606, and she was pregnant with Princess Sophia, who died shortly after
birth (the princesses’ tombs stand in front of hers in Westminster
Abbey).
75 you
i.e. James and Anne.
76 proved
experienced.
78 race
offspring, family.
80 See
Ovid’s description of originary chaos, in
Met., 1.9: ‘the warring seeds of
ill-matched elements’ (Loeb).
82 discord . . .
music The celebration of music as
discordia
concors, ‘a concord of discord’, is a commonplace, and alluded
to again at
272. Cf.
Peacham,
The Complete Gentleman (
1622): ‘How doth
music amaze us, when of sound discords she maketh the sweetest harmony’
(ed. Heltzel,
1962, 116).
83 Sit now
The King and Queen sit throned in the centre of the audience.
85 maids
To apply the word to both male and female is unusual, though not
unprecedented, in the period.
86 sacrificed] Q (sacrifiz’d)
86 sacrificed Q spells this ‘sacrifiz’d’ for the rhyme.
89–90 Here . . . men This entry of potentially hostile forces
anticipates the fully developed antimasque. Because it is performed by
courtiers, not the professional actors of the later antimasques,
however, their dance would not have been characterized by disorderly
gesture, and, as Jonson’s marginal note
9 indicates, the point was not to
dismiss them as irreducibly evil, but to reform and reincorporate the
qualities they represented within the larger harmony of the work.
89 microcosm Literally, ‘little world’. Here it means both the
globe depicting the world, and the human frame, each of which reflect
the macrocosm, or ‘great world’ of the universe. For a description of
the scene, see
551–8.
89 figuring Man A Renaissance commonplace. Combining all four
elements, and at the same time poised between brute creation and the
angels, endowed with soul as well as body, ‘Man is all symmetry, / Full
of proportions, one limb to another, / And to all the world
besides . . . He is in little all the sphere’ (George Herbert, ‘Man’,
13–15, 22). Or, as Donne put it: ‘I am a little world made cunningly’
(Holy Sonnets, 7.1).
89 contentious music The impression of strife in the music might
have been created by instrumentation (cf. Queens,
22–3, Pan’s Ann., 56–7, 75–8) as well as by
musical style. The battaglia was a musical piece
imitating the sounds of battle, and some such composition might have
been provided here.
90–5 whose . . . Ashley] Q; not in F1
90–5 whose. . . Ashley
These details, and those of the female performers (220–3), were omitted
in F. Presumably Jonson was saving the reputations of the participants,
in the light of the later scandals which befell Frances Howard.
91 heraldry Alluding to the function of the herald in settling
questions of precedence in processions.
96 humours The four bodily fluids whose mixture in different
proportions characterized an individual. (See EMI).
96 affections The feelings or passions. Thomas Wright (in
The Passions of the Mind,
1601; Jonson
contributed a commendatory poem to the 2nd edn, 1604) characterizes them
as hate, love, fear, and hope, and avers that ‘when these affections are
stirring in our minds, they alter the humours of our bodies, causing
some passion or alteration in them. They are called perturbations for
that . . . they trouble wonderfully the soul, corrupting the judgement
and seducing the will, inducing (for the most part) to vice’ (1604; rpt.
1971, 7–8). Plutarch,
Morals, trans. Holland
(
1603),
834–5, explains: ‘Pythagoras and Plato . . . hold that the Soul hath two
parts, that is to say, the reasonable and the unreasonable; but to go
more near and exactly to work, they say, it hath three; for they
subdivided the unreasonable part into concupisible and irascible’
(quoted in
H&S,
10.470); it is this division which Jonson employs here.
9 That they were personated in men hath,
already, come under some grammatical exception. But there is
more than grammar to release it. For, besides that
humores and
affectus are
both masculine
in genere, not one of the specials but in
some language is known by a masculine word. Again, when their influences
are common to both sexes, and more generally impetuous in the
male, I
see not why they should not so be more properly presented. And, for the
allegory, though here it be very clear, and such as might well escape a candle,
yet because there are some must complain of darkness that have but thick
eyes, I am contented to hold them this light. First, as in natural
bodies, so likewise in minds, there is no disease or distemperature but
is caused either by some abounding humour or perverse affection;
after the same manner, in politic bodies (where order, ceremony, state,
reverence, devotion, are parts of the mind) by the difference or
predominant will of what we metaphorically call humours and
affections
all things are troubled and confused. These, therefore, were tropically brought
in, before marriage, as disturbers of that mystical body, and the rites
which were soul unto it; that afterwards, in marriage, being dutifully
tempered by her power, they might more fully celebrate the happiness of
such as live in that sweet union to the harmonious laws of nature and
reason.
9 That . . .
exception A number of Jonson’s comments scattered through the
masques answer criticisms that must have been levelled at Jonson after
their performances (see, e.g., King’s Ent.,
marginal note 78; Blackness, 75–92 and n.; Haddington, 8; Queens,
563–6). The ‘grammatical’ objection was, presumably, that of the four
humours, choler and melancholy are both feminine nouns in Greek, phlegm
is neuter, and in Latin sanguis (‘blood’) is
masculine. release it free it,
from the charge of incorrectness. in genere ‘in gender’. The general terms,
unlike those of the individual humours, are both masculine. specials individuals. more . . . male In humoural
theory all humans were made up of a mixture of the four elements, but
women were dominated by the cold and moist humours, men by hot and dry;
the male, therefore, was thought more active than the female. escape not need. distemperature disorder,
imbalance. abounding
excessive. metaphorically . . .
affections The metaphorical extension of the physiological
theories of the humours was commonplace in the period, though its
fashionable excesses are criticized in EMO, Induction, 86–112. tropically figuratively, metaphorically. that mystical body i.e. the
‘one flesh’ of the married couple. (See, for example, Genesis, 2.24;
Matthew, 19.5–6.)
97 several distinct, separate.
97 ensigns signs or emblems of their character.
98 offered
to encompass made as if to surround.
102 untemp’rèd unbalanced, improperly mixed. Q’s spelling,
‘vntempred’, might indicate the pronunciation of the final syllable,
rather than ‘untemper’d’. (Cf. ‘tempered’ at 283.)
107 numerous harmonious, measured; possibly also carrying the
sense ‘abundant, copious’, though
OED, 1
classes this as a rare usage. See Jonson’s marginal note
10 and n. for the
Pythagorean belief that number is the source of wisdom.
10 Alluding to that opinion of Pythagoras; who held
all reason, all knowledge, all discourse of the soul to be mere number.
See Plutarch,
De Placitis Philosophorum,
[1.3
].
10 Plutarch Gordon (
1975), 163, quotes Philemon Holland’s
1603
translation of
Moralia, 876E–877C:
‘Pythagoras . . . held that the principle of all things were numbers and
their symmetries, that is to say, the proportions that they have in
their correspondency one unto another; which he calleth otherwise
Harmonies: and these elements that be composed of them both, are termed
by him Geometrical . . . And our soul (as he saith) doth consist of the
quaternary number; for there is in it, understanding, science, opinion,
and sense; from whence proceedeth all manner of art and knowledge.’ The
treatise
De Placitis Philosophorum (‘On the
Doctrines of the Philosophers’) is now considered spurious.
110 highest
part Reason is the highest human faculty, that which
distinguishes humankind from the animals.
111–13 her
hair . . . sword Jonson assembles details from the four
descriptions of Reason (
Ragione) in Ripa,
Iconologia (
1603), 424–6, though the lamp derives
from his description of Wisdom (
Sapienza), 441,
and no source has been traced for her long white hair (cf. the long
golden locks of Truth at
792).
111–12 crowned
with lights In Ripa’s third description Reason’s helmet is
crested with a flame because it ‘shows that it is the property of Reason
to mount towards Heaven and seek to resemble God’.
112 blue In Ripa’s first description he explains the colour:
‘because Reason must always conform to heaven, and have splendour and
brightness’. There are no stars on the costume of any of Ripa’s
descriptions of Reason, but Poesia (Poetry) has a
dress spangled with stars which ‘signify divinity’ (406).
112 semined sown, powdered. OED
gives this as a Jonsonian coinage (King’s Ent.,
362), from Lat. seminare.
112–13 white . . . figures This band appears in Ripa’s second
description, since ‘it is by the use of such figures that Arithmetic
provides proof of the reality of things, just as Reason which lodges in
our soul tests and recognizes all that pertains to our good’.
112 band] Q (Bend)
113 lamp In Ripa’s second description of Sapienza (441) this signifies ‘the light of the intellect,
which by God’s special gift burns in our soul, but is never consumed or
diminished’.
113 sword In Ripa’s second depiction the sword is explained as
‘the rigour that one must give to reason to maintain the field of virtue
free from the vices, predatory on the good of the soul’.
116 yield
you render you, cause you to be.
117 act
action.
118 orgies
rites, ceremonies (the original, unpejorative, classical sense; cf. Oberon, 39, Pan’s Ann.,
167). Jonson, however, does use the now dominant negative sense,
associated with drunkenness, in Pleasure Rec., 79
and Und. 70.104.
11 ῎ΟὌργια with the Greeks
value the same that
ceremoniae with the Latins,
and imply all sorts of rites, howsoever, abusively, they have been made
particular to Bacchus. See Servius to that of Virgil,
Aeneid, 4.
[301–2
]:
Qualis commotis excita
sacris Thyas.
11 Closely based on Giraldi, 667, where Servius is
mentioned, and a slightly longer version of the quotation from Virgil is
given, but without reference.
῎Οργια ‘Orgia’.
abusively improperly.
Servius (fourth century
ad). His
commentary, cited in many Renaissance editions of Virgil, existed in
shorter and longer versions, the latter not published until 1600. Though
Jonson undoubtedly knew and used this commentary, here it actually adds
nothing of moment; Jonson simply took the name from Giraldi. Throughout
these marginal notes Jonson seems to take references to Servius from
intermediary sources; but see Tudeau-Clayton (
1998), 143–9, for Servius’s general
significance.
Qualis . . .
Thyas ‘Like a follower of Bacchus raised to a frenzy by the
shaken emblems’; part of a passage describing Dido enraged by the rumour
that Aeneas is about to depart.
118 slender
price little value.
119 souls . . .
love perfect love combines the spiritual and the physical.
120 Contracts . . . one ‘Union is
Unitas,
the number one. This is the
monas of Macrobius,
at once male and female, at once even and odd, not itself a number, but
the source and origin of number, the beginning and the end of all
things . . . And further, this is the ineffable One of the
neoplatonists’ (Gordon,
1975, 163–4).
120 therein
i.e. into this one world.
120 Jove
The king of the gods, husband of Juno. One is the number of the supreme
God. ‘The world is One and has its source in the One. And this unity,
this oneness of the universe is a union effected by love and a union in
love’ (Gordon,
1975, 164). Jove stands for God, who has ‘ordered all things
in measure, number, and weight’ (The Apocryphal Book of Wisdom, 11.17),
and is called, by Thomas Campion, ‘Author of number, that hath all the
world / In harmony framed’ (ed. Davis,
1969, 48).
12 Macrobius, in
Somnium
Scipionis, 1.
12 Macrobius (late fourth–fifth centuries
ad).
OCD considers him to be
Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius, praetorian prefect of Italy in 430, but
other identifications have been offered. His
Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis (‘Commentaries on the Dream
of Scipio’) was a vital text in transmitting Pythagorean and Platonic
ideas through the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The passage is
1.6.7–8: ‘one is called
monas, that is Unity, and
is both male and female, odd and even, itself not a number, but the
source and origin of numbers. This monad, the beginning and ending of
all things, yet itself not knowing a beginning or ending, refers to the
Supreme God’ (Stahl,
1952, 100–1).
127 urge
proffer (as justification).
129 still
always.
129 jars
conflicts.
130 humorous irrational, controlled by the humours and not by
reason.
130 will
desire to.
131 Inform
Discipline (OED, Inform v. 4).
131 safer
more morally sound (OED, Safe a. 4).
133 confounds defeats, overthrows.
134 clear
explain, make clear.
134 authentic
grounds authoritative sources.
135 amazed (1) ‘stunned or stupefied as by a blow’ (OED, 1); (2) ‘lost in wonder’ (OED, 4).
136 rank arrange.
138 each other
side stand side by side.
144 genial
nuptial, procreative.
13 Properly, that which was made ready for the
new-married bride, and was called
genialis,
a generandis liberis. Servius in
Aeneid, 6.
[603–4
].
13 Derived from Hotman, 562, including the Latin,
and the reference to Servius. (Again, the Virgilian reference is
unimportant in itself.) a . . . liberis ‘from the generation of children’.
148 tede
torch of pinewood; from Lat. taeda.
149 token of
increase sign of fertility. Chapman,
Hero
and Leander, 5.320–2, explains: ‘For light was held a happy
augury / Of generation, whose efficient right / Is nothing else but to
produce to light’ (and see Jonson’s marginal note
5n.). Brisson’s comment (
1564, 33,
misnumbered 23) that torches ‘were carried in honour of Ceres at
marriages’ may, Gordon suggests, have influenced Jonson. Ceres is
described by Ovid (
Heroides, 2.42) as the
‘torchbearing goddess’. She was goddess of harvest and increase, and
appears in the betrothal masque in Shakespeare,
Temp. to promise fertility.
150 ominous] Q (omenous)
150 ominous
of good omen, presaging good fortune.
14 See Ovid,
Fasti,
6.
[129–30
],
Sic fatus, spinam, qua tristes pellere posset a
foribus noxas, haec erat alba, dedit.
14 Brisson, 34, quotes Ovid, explaining that: ‘the
ancients believed that whitethorn had the power to turn aside
witchcraft’. Sic . . .
dedit ‘So saying, he gave her a thorn with which she could
drive off all grim harm from the doors; this thorn was white’
(Orgel).
152 Like
Likewise.
15 Plutarch, in
Quaestiones Romanae [1
]. And Varro,
De Lingua
Latina, 4.
15 Brisson, 47 (actually 46), cites Plutarch and
quotes Varro (though the reference he and Jonson give is wrong; it is
actually 5.16). Plutarch
Moralia 263E. In answering the question ‘why do
they bid the bride to touch fire and water?’ Plutarch asks, among other
questions, ‘is it because fire purifies and water cleanses, and a
married woman must remain pure and clean?’ (Loeb). Varro The passage reads:
‘Therefore, he says, the conditions of procreation are two: fire and
water. Thus these are used at the threshold in weddings, because there
is union here, and fire is male, which the semen is . . . and the water
is the female because the embryo develops from her moisture.’
153–5 Cf. Chapman, Hero and
Leander, 5.361–4: ‘Since to ingenerate every human creature, /
And every other birth produced by Nature, / Moisture and heat must mix;
so man and wife / For human race must join in nuptial life.’
155 for . . .
race to perpetuate their families.
16 Pliny,
Naturalis
Historiae, 21.8.
[11
].
16 Brisson, 31, speaks of the saffron veil covering
the bride, citing Pliny (also in Alexander, 136 note o). In fact Pliny
is scarcely relevant.
156 shamefastness modesty, bashfulness.
157 ingenuous] Q; ingenious
F1
157 ingenuous noble in nature or character (OED, 2). OED, 4. b gives 1673 for the first use of the meaning
‘innocent, artless’ which might also seem appropriate in this context.
It is possible that the use here is a predating, but the dominant sense
in the period is probably intended. F1 printed ‘ingenious’, a common
alternative form in the period, but it is clearly an error.
159 liberal
free from restraint. See .
160 grey,17] this edn; footnote marker placed after ‘That’ (159) in Q
17 Pompeius Festus; Brisson;
Hotman;
de ritu nuptiarum.
17 Hotman] this edn; Hotto Q
17 Brisson, 23, Hotman, 544, both cite Festus for
the snowy fleece. de ritu
nuptiarum ‘concerning marriage rites’.
161 state,] G; state. Q, F1
162–7 Cf. Chapman, Hero and
Leander, 5.340–6: ‘Next did go / A noble matron that did
spinning bear / A housewife’s rock and spindle, and did wear / A
wether’s skin, with all the snowy fleece, / To intimate that even the
daintiest piece / And noblest-born dame should industrious be; / That
which does good disgraceth no degree.’
162 útensíls domestic implements. The stress pattern is usual in
the seventeenth century.
18 Varro,
De Lingua
Latina, 6, and Festus in
Fragmenta.
18 Brisson, 40, cites both Varro and Festus, but he
refers the latter to Paulus’s epitome, which Jonson seems to have
interpreted as implying Fragmenta (a collection
sometimes published separately). Despite this variation in attribution,
it is most likely that Jonson took this reference from the secondary
authorities. Varro Actually
7.34, where ‘the contents of the cumerum are
unknown to most of the uninitiated persons who perform the service’.
19 Festus,
ibidem.
19 Festus is cited in all the authorities. Brisson,
45, alone, however, has the bride wear the fleece (as does Chapman in
the passage quoted in 162–7n.); Hotman, 545, and Alexander, 136, have
the fleece spread before her, as does Plutarch in Moralia, 271F.
165 rock
Distaff holding the wool or flax for spinning.
20 Plutarch, in
Quaestiones
Romanae, and
in Romulo.
20 Brisson, 37, refers to Quaestiones; Hotman, 545, to The Life of
Romulus. Quaestiones
Romanae
Roman Questions, 2 (Moralia 271F–272A). in Romulo in The Life of Romulus,
15.3–4, which suggests that the spindle derives from the fact that ‘when
the Sabines . . . were reconciled with [the Romans,] it was agreed that
their women should perform no other tasks for their husbands than those
which were connected with spinning’. This is not Jonson’s emphasis.
167 Gives
check Causes difficulty.
167 highest
blood Woman of the highest social rank.
21 Pliny,
Naturalis
Historiae, 8.48.
21 Brisson, 24, gives this reference to Pliny, but,
as Orgel notes, it is incorrect, and no other relevant passage has been
traced.
22 That was
nodus
Herculeanus, which the husband, at night, untied in sign of good
fortune, that he might be happy in propagation of issue, as Hercules was, who
left seventy children. See Festus,
in voce cingullus.
22 Translated from Brisson, 25, who quotes Festus.
Alexander, 136 note t, specifies the reference.
Hercules . . . children
Hercules, as well as begetting children by his wives, was supposed to
have impregnated the fifty daughters of Thespius, king of Boetia, who
were placed by their father in Hercules’ chamber on successive nights.
In some versions of the myth Hercules is claimed to have performed the
feat in one night, which Sir Epicure Mammon wishes to emulate (Alch., 2.2.37–9). in voce ‘under the word’.
174 five . . .
is Chapman,
Hero and Leander, 5.322–40,
has a similar exegesis of five as the nuptial number, made up of the
feminine number two and masculine three. See Jonson’s marginal note
24n.
23 Plutarch, in
Quaestiones Romanae [2
].
23 Plutarch
Moralia, 264A–B: ‘the odd number was considered
better and more perfect . . . for the even number admits division and
its equality of division suggests strife and opposition; the odd number,
however, cannot be divided; it always leaves behind a remainder of the
same nature as itself’. He goes on to make the same point as
Martianus.
24 See Martianus Capella,
De
Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, 6,
in numero
pentade.
24 Martianus . . .
Mercurii Martianus
Capella probably composed his treatise De nuptiis
Philologiae et Mercurii (‘On the marriage of Philology and
Mercury’) in the first part of the fifth century ad. Like Macrobius’s work, it was influential in the
transmission of neoplatonic ideas throughout the Middle Ages and into
the Renaissance. in numero
pentade
‘on the number five’. The actual reference is
7.735: ‘The number five is composed of both sexes, since three is
masculine, and two is reckoned as feminine.’
179 style
designate.
180–2 you . . .
common Five cannot be divided by two, the remainder of one is
therefore ‘common’ to both sides.
184–5 gods . . .
odds Cf.
Virgil, Eclogues, 8.56, ‘the god
delights in an uneven number’.
189 rack Mass of cloud driven by the wind.
189 juno Most of the details are drawn from Ripa,
Iconologia (
1603), 57,
Carro
dell’ Aria (‘Chariot of the air’; his description of Juno is
not in the earlier edition). She is depicted as: ‘a matron seated above
in a nobly ornamented throne, with a white veil, which covers her head
and is bound round with a fascia after the fashion of an antique and
regal crown, full of green, red, and azure jewels . . . In her right
hand she holds a thunderbolt, and in the left she has a tambourine. The
chariot is drawn by two most beautiful peacocks, birds consecrated to
this goddess
[and then quoting the tag from Ovid that appears in
Jonson’s marginal note 26
] . . . The various colours, and the other
things spoken of above, signify the mutations of the air, by the
phenomena which appear in it, such as rain, serenity, force of winds,
cloud, tempest, snow, dew, lightning, thunder: and these are signified
by the tambourine.’
25 With the Greeks Juno was interpreted to
be the air itself. And so Macrobius,
De Somnium Scipionis, 1.17.
[15
], calls her. Martianus
Capella
[2.149
], surnames her
Aeria, of reigning
there.
25 Abbreviated from Giraldi (1584), 157–8, who also
cites Macrobius and Martianus. That Jonson supplies the precise
reference to Macrobius (not in Giraldi) suggests he may have checked
this source.
With . . . itself
In Greek the name for Juno,
ἥρα (‘Hera’), is an anagram of
ἀήρ (‘air’), as Giraldi notes (158).
De Somnium Scipionis ‘So
also Juno is called
[Jupiter’s
] sister and wife, for she is air; she is
called sister because the air is made of the same seeds as the sky, and
she is called wife because air is subordinate to the sky’ (trans. Stahl,
1952, 158).
This endorses the way Jupiter presides over the masque set. Giraldi
(158) makes the same point.
26 They were sacred to Juno, in respect of their
colours and temper, so like the air. Ovid,
De Arte Amandi [1.627
],
Laudatas
ostendit
avis Iunonia pennas; and
Metamorphoses, 2.
[531–2
],
Habili Saturnia curru
Ingreditur liquidum pavonibus aethera pictis.
26 That peacocks were Juno’s birds was a
commonplace. The first quotation from Ovid is in Ripa,
Iconologia (
1603), 57, the second in Conti (1616), 69, though Jonson
could well have known both.
so . . .
air Derived from Conti (1616), 71:
ut-pote
aereo temperamento, ‘as if with an airy temperament’.
De . . . pennas
The Art of Love: ‘The bird of Juno displays her
excellent feathers’ (Orgel).
Habili . . . pictis ‘Saturnia
[= Juno
], mounting her swift
chariot, was borne back through the yielding air by her gaily decked
peacocks’ (Loeb).
26 avis] F2;
aves Q, F1
27 She was called
Regina Iuno with
the Latins, because she was
soror et coniux Iovis,
deorum et hominum regis.
27 Regina ‘Queen’.
soror . . . regis ‘sister and consort of Jove, king of gods
and men’. The Latin is quoted exactly from Giraldi (1584), 162. Juno,
like Jupiter, was a child of Kronos and Rhea. (And see marginal note
25n.)
28 Read Apuleius describing her, in his 10
of the Ass [30
].
28 Apuleius . . .
Ass From Giraldi (1584),
158: ‘Apuleius in 10 describes her thus: a woman of handsome appearance,
having a white diadem on her head, and carrying a sceptre in her
hand.’
191 fascia band (the Latin sense).
29 After the manner of the antique
band, the varied
colours implying the several mutations of the air, as showers, dews,
serenity, force of winds, clouds, tempest, snow, hail, lightning,
thunder, all which had their noises signified in her timbrel; the
faculty of causing these being ascribed to her, by Virgil,
Aeneid, 4.
[120, 122
], where he makes her say:
His ego nigrantem commista grandine nimbum Desuper
infundam, et tonitru coelum omne ciebo.
29 band] Q (Bend)
29 The details of this description are drawn from
Ripa’s Iconologia: see . The quotation from Virgil is
taken from Conti (1616), 71, where, as in Jonson’s marginal note, line
121 is omitted. His . . .
ciebo ‘I will pour on them a black rain mingled with hail, and
wake all the heavens with thunder.’
30 Lilies were sacred to Juno, as being
made white with her milk, that fell upon the earth when Jove took
Hercules away, whom by stealth he had laid to her breast. The rose was also
called
Iunonia.
30 Lilies . . .
breast Cf. Conti (1616), 68: ‘It is related that Jove once,
while Juno was sleeping, placed the infant Hercules at her breast from
which, when he was forced away, the part of her milk which fell in the
heavens created that which is called the Milky Way, but that which fell
to earth made the lilies white that before were yellow.’ rose . . .
Iunonia Jonson
misunderstood his authorities. Giraldi (1584), 158, reads: Iunonis enim flos lilium. et rosa Iunonia
vocabatur, ‘for the flower of Juno is the lily, and it is
called the Juno rose’.
193 timbrel tambourine.
193 golden
feet Given in Giraldi (
1548), 158; the ultimate source is
Hesiod,
Theogony, 454.
31 So was she figured at Argos, as a stepmother insulting on the
spoils of
her two
privigni, Bacchus and Hercules.
31 A close translation of Giraldi, 158–9. stepmother . . . Hercules
Bacchus and Hercules were the offspring of Jove’s adulteries, with
Semele and Alcmena respectively. Juno attempted at various times to
destroy both of them out of jealousy. insulting . . . spoils Juno has under her feet the
lion-skin, which was, famously, the trophy of Hercules’ killing and
flaying of the Nemean lion in the first of his twelve labours. It is
much less familiarly a sign of Bacchus (who is usually associated with
the panther or the fawn), and relates either to the incident in
Jupiter’s war against the Titans, when, wearing a lion’s skin, he killed
one of the Giants, and was therefore given the name Euhyius or ‘good
son’ (Giraldi, 391; Conti, 1616, 268), or to his transformation into a
lion when abducted by pirates on his journeyings. privigni ‘stepsons’.
195 the
region of fire the
uppermost region of the air (see
562–3n.).
195 whirl
circularly In the absence of any drawings of Jones’s setting
it is difficult to be precise about which parts of this upper scene were
turned by machinery. Pory’s description (see .) does not mention this
turning effect, but presumably only a circular band revolved, on which
the region of fire was depicted, separating the level on which masquers
and musicians sat from the image of Jupiter above.
196 Jupiter . . . top Jupiter was presumably represented by a
statue, not an actor. For the significance of Jupiter’s placement see
Jonson’s marginal note
25n. In view of the later invocation of Homer’s golden chain
(
281), however,
Jonson may also have been influenced by the allegorization of the myth
which has Jupiter binding Juno ‘with a golden chain, hanging two great
masses of iron at her heels . . . Juno is the air; the two weights of
iron be the earth and water, between which two and the superior bodies
she hangeth chained: and this golden chain is the coherent
concatentation and depending of things united so in order, as none but
only the almighty Jupiter can dissolve the same’ (Abraham Fraunce,
The Third Part of the Countess of Pembroke’s
Ivychurch, 1592, 15). This myth is also described by Conti
(1616), 69, 72, but he allegorizes it differently.
196 brandishing his thunder
Jupiter tonans (‘Jupiter the thunderer’) was one
of the names of the king of the gods. Jonson chooses not to give a
thunderbolt to Juno, as Ripa does.
197 iris Iris, the rainbow, was the messenger of Juno (cf.
Shakespeare, Temp., 4.1.71, where Iris describes
herself as ‘the watery arch and messenger’ of Juno). Conti (1616), 474,
explains: ‘It is wisely said by the ancients that Iris sat under the
throne of Juno, because she is born in the lower part of the air, below
the clouds. For the cause of that heavenly bow, called Iris, is a ray of
the sun sent into a hollow cloud, which is broken up when it is turned
back into the sun itself.’
32 See Virgil,
Aeneid,
4.
[59
]:
Iunoni ante omnes cui vincla iugalia curae: and in another
place
[4.166–7
]:
Dant signum prima et
Tellus, et pronuba Iuno. And Ovid, in
Epistula Phyllis [Demophoonti]:
Iunonemque
toris quae praesidet alma maritis.
32 Conti (1616), 67–8, gives these citations and
references, in the same order. Iunoni . . . curae ‘To Juno, before all guardian of the bonds
of marriage’. Dant . . .
Iuno ‘Primal Earth and nuptial Juno gave the sign.’ Jonson
reproduces Conti’s misquotation of Virgil. This offers clear evidence
that he did not check his source here – though he quotes the lines
correctly at marginal note 45. Epistula . . . [Demophoonti] i.e. Heroides, 2.41. Iunonemque . . . maritis
‘and by Juno, the kindly ward of the bridal bed’ (Loeb).
32 toris] H&S; terris Q, F1
199 upon
the discovery when it was revealed.
201 anagram
The Latin spelling of her name, Iuno, is an
anagram of Unio.
204–5 The appearance of Juno is accompanied with music
– which, this speech implies, might continue under Reason’s words.
206 what these
intend Ambivalent; either (1) the journey on which this
married couple are setting out (OED,
Intend v. 6 b); or (2) that which is signified
(OED, 20. b) by these musical
concords.
208 faculties attributes, powers.
33 They were all eight called by particular surnames
of Juno, ascribed to her for some peculiar property in marriage, as
somewhere after is more fitly declared.
213 stricken] this edn; stroken Q; strooken
F
215 keep . . .
confound ensure that you should not spoil or confuse.
216 measured
steps dances.
218–23 ] Q; not in F1
218 to . . . show so that they might best be seen.
219 rule . . . statures The ladies were not arranged, as might
more usually be expected, in order of social rank, but by height.
220–3 For biographies, see the complete List of
Masquers, 1.cxliii-clxiii.
220 Knollys] Q (Knolles)
221 Cecily] this edn; Ci. Q
222 Dorothy] this edn; Dor. Q
224–5 descent . . . earth John Pory (Masque Archive,
Hym., 1) describes the scene: ‘Above the globe of
earth hovered a middle region of clouds, in the centre whereof stood a
grand consort of musicians, and upon the cantons or horns sat the
ladies, 4 at one corner, and 4 at another, who descended upon the stage,
not after the stale downright perpendicular fashion, like a bucket into
a well, but came gently sloping down.’ Nicoll (
1937), 66, describes an arrangement of
levers and pulleys that might have been used to bring the ladies down
from their position at either side of the stage (Jones had no flying
machine for descents from above in the temporary staging used for
masques until 1631: see
Chlor., 55).
226 came
after was based on.
227 rare exceptional.
232 genial
bower nuptial chamber.
233 grateful welcome.
234–5 excites . . .
delights Though Jonson founds much of the rest of the masque
on the anticipation of the wedding night, the marriage was not intended
to be consummated until the couple were older (as was customary in
youthful marriages).
240 Haste] Q (Hast)
240 Hesperus The evening star.
242 full . . . lutes The consort of lutes would include
instruments of various sizes and pitches, and therefore give a full
sound, and was available only in the substantial musical establishment
at court.
242 full . . . lutes The consort of lutes would include
instruments of various sizes and pitches, and therefore give a full
sound, and was available only in the substantial musical establishment
at court.
243 person
of ceremony i.e. as a symbolic attribute (of Reason) (OED, Ceremony n.
4).
247 traces
rows.
249 Hours
Mythologically, the three daughters of Zeus and Themis: Eunomia
(‘Discipline’), Dike (‘Justice’), and Eirene (‘Peace’). In one version
they brought up Juno, and were her servants. They were associated with
the fertility of nature (as they are in ‘To the Right Honourable Jerome
Weston’, Und. 74.16–18), and also with the
maintenance of social order (as in Two Kings) –
both of which are symbolically appropriate to this masque.
250 these
The male masquers.
251 In better
temper More temperately. The harmonious power of the music and
dance will moderate the intemperance which the humours and affections
demonstrated earlier.
252 abstracted abstract, arcane.
252 names
See Jonson’s marginal notes and nn. All these names of Juno’s attributes
are drawn from classical authorities, mediated largely through
Giraldi.
254 Curis Spear.
34 This surname Juno received of the Sabines; from
them the Romans gave it her of the spear, which in the Sabine tongue was
called
curis, and was that which they named
hasta caelibaris, which had stuck in the body of
a slain sword-player, and
wherewith the bride’s head was dressed, whereof Festus,
in voce
caelibar gives these reasons:
Ut quemadmodum illa coniuncta fuerit cum corpore gladiatoris, sic
ipsa cum viro sit; vel quid matronae Iunonis curitis in tutela
sint, quae ita appellabatur a ferenda hasta: vel quod
fortes viros genituras ominetur; vel quod nuptiali iure imperio viri
subiicitur nubens, quia hasta summa armorum, et imperii
est,
etc. To most of which Plutarch in his
Quaestiones
Romanae [87
] consents, but adds a better in
Romulus [15.5
]: that when they divided the bride’s hair with
the point of the spear,
σύμβολον
εἶναι τοῦ μετὰ μάχης καὶ πολεμικῶς τὸν πρῶτον
γάμον
γενέσθαι, it noted their first nuptials with the
Sabines
were contracted by force, and as with enemies. Howsoever, that it was a
custom with them, this of Ovid,
Fasti, 2.
[560
]
confirms:
comat virgineas hasta recurva comas.
34 Though the many names of Juno (of which Jonson
uses only some) are listed variously in all the mythographers, the bulk
of this marginal note derives, like the following exegeses, from
Giraldi. Its first part is a compression, but largely a translation of
167–8. The long passage from Festus is reproduced exactly from Giraldi;
who also mentions the first Plutarch source and Ovid’s Fasti, though he quotes directly from neither. Brisson, 23,
quotes the same passage from Festus, though with some variations, and
provides a longer version of the quotation in Greek from Romulus. This
is a composite note, where Giraldi is supplemented by Brisson. hasta caelibaris ‘the
caelibarian spear’.
34 caelibar] Q (Celibar)
(34) Ut . . . est ‘That just as the spear had been joined with the
body of the gladiator, so she herself was joined with the man; or
because they are under the protection of the matron Juno-of-the spear,
who was so called from carrying a spear; or because it omened that brave
men were to be born; or because in accordance with marriage law the
bride is subordinated to the command of her husband, and the spear is
the greatest of weapons and implies command’ (Orgel). σὺμβολον . . . γενέσθαι ‘is a reminder that the first marriage
[of Romans and Sabines] was attended with war and fighting’ (Loeb). Sabines See marginal note 53
and n. comat . . . comas
‘let [not] the bent-back spear comb down thy maiden hair’ (Loeb).
34 sint] H&S; sit Q,
F
34 σύμβολον] F2;
σὺμβολον Q, F1
34 εἶναι] H&S;
ειναι Q, F1
34 γενέσθαι] F2;
γενὲσθαι Q, F1
255 Unxia Anointer.
35 For the surname of
Unxia
we have Martianus Capella his testimony,
De Nuptiis
Philologiae et Mercurii, 2:
quod unctionibus
praeest. As also Servius,
libro quarto
Aeneid, where they both report it a fashion with the Romans that before the
new-married brides entered the houses of their husbands they adorned the
posts of the gates with woollen tawdries, or fillets, and
anointed them with oils or the fat of wolves and boars, being
superstitiously possessed that such ointments had the virtue of
expelling evils from the family: and thence were they called
uxores, quasi unxores.
35 Though Giraldi, 162, is the primary source for
this note, Jonson also consulted Scaliger, whom he does not mention, and
Brisson, 43. Giraldi has: ‘That Juno is named Unxia, according to
Martianus, is seen to derive truly from this reason: that it was an old
custom of the Romans that the newly married entering into the house, the
posts were anointed with animal fat (axungia).
For it was held in that religion that they thought that animal fat would
ward off most evils. The grammarian Servius, on the fourth book of the
Aeneid, says it was the custom that newly
married girls as they came to the threshold of the husband’s house,
before they entered, adorned the posts with woollen fillets and anointed
them with oil, and thence were called uxores
(wives). But Pliny and Massurius record that it was customary to anoint
posts not with oil or animal fat, but wolf-fat, so that no sort of evil
potion could be brought in.’ quod . . . praeest ‘because she is in charge of anointings’.
This phrase is not in Martianus, nor in exactly this form in the other
authorities. libro quarto
Aeneid ‘the fourth book of the Aeneid’
[459]. tawdries A silk ‘lace’
or neck tie; abbreviated form of ‘tawdry laces’, itself an abbreviation
of ‘St Audrey’s lace’. fillets
hair bands. fat . . . boars
Derived directly from Scaliger, Poetices, 3.100
(ed. Fuhrmann, Deitz, and Vogt-Spira, 1994–8, 3.66): ‘the posts, adorned
with woollen fillets, they anointed with oil or the fat of wolves or
boars’. Landus in his commentary on Catullus, 61, also mentions the fat
of boars, which Giraldi does not, but Jonson’s phrasing clearly derives
from Scaliger. uxores . . .
unxores ‘wives as anointers’. Brisson, 43, correctly quotes
Servius, for where Giraldi writes et inde sunt uxores
dictae, Servius has et inde uxores dictae
sunt, quasi unxores.
256 Juga Yoke.
36 She was named
Iuga, propter
Iugum, as Servius
says, for
the yoke which was imposed in matrimony on those that were married, or
(with Sextus Pompeius Festus)
quod iuges sunt eiusdem iugi pares, unde et
coniuges, or in respect of the altar (to which I
have declared before) sacred to Juno,
in vico Iugario.
36 A reordering and compression of Giraldi, 160,
with the reference to Servius, and the quotation from Festus. Iuga . . . Iugum ‘Juga,
because of Iugum’ (‘the yoke’). The feminine form
of the goddess’s name derives from the neuter word for a yoke. as Servius says Giraldi locates
Servius’s note as that to Aeneid, 4.16, Dido’s
claim that she intends to ally herself with no one in the chains of
marriage.
(36) quod . . . coniuges ‘because yoked creatures are equals
beneath the same yoke, whence also married people’ (coniuges – literally, ‘those yoked together’). before . . .
Iugario See Jonson’s
marginal note 1.
256 office
role, function.
257 Gamelia Nuptial goddess.
37 As she was
Gamelia, in sacrificing to her they took away the gall, and
threw it behind the altar; intimating, that after marriage there should
be known no bitterness nor hatred between the joined couple which might
divide or separate them. See Plutarch,
Praecepta
Coniugalia [27
]. This rite I have somewhere
following touched at.
37 As . . .
Coniugalia Derived
closely from Giraldi, 160. somewhere
following i.e. 289 (and see n.).
37 Praecepta Coniugalia] this edn;
Connub. Prae. Q
258 Iterduca Journey’s guide.
38 The title of
Iterduca she
had amongst them,
quod ad sponsi aedes,
sponsas comitabatur; or was a protectress of their journey.
Martianus Capella,
De Nuptiis Philologiae et
Mercurii, 2.
[149
].
38 Directly from Giraldi, 162, where he has ‘Interduca’ (as does Conti, 1616, 70). Iterduca, is, however, the first mention of this
cognomen of Juno, and source of the next marginal note, as it is in
Martianus, and it is also Brisson’s preferred form. The book reference
to Martianus is not in Giraldi. quod . . . comitabatur ‘because she
accompanied brides to the house of the bridegroom’.
259 Domiduca Guide home.
39 The like of
Domiduca,
quod ad optatas domus duceret, Martianus,
ibid.
39 quod . . . duceret ‘because she led them to the homes they
desired’. The phrase is found in Giraldi, 159, but is not there
attributed to Martianus. This implies that Jonson probably returned to
the original (as does marginal note 38).
260 Cinxia Girdle.
40 Cinxia the same author gives
unto her as the defendress of maids when they had put off their girdle
in the bridal chamber. To which, Festus:
Cinxiae Iunonis nomen
sanctum habebatur in nuptiis, quod initio coniugii solutio erat
cinguli, quo nova nupta erat cincta. And Arnobius, a man
most learned in their ceremonies,
Adversus
Gentes, 3.
[115
], saith:
unctionibus superest
unxia.
Cingulorum cinxia replicationi.
40 A typically composite note. It begins with a
close translation and exact Latin quotation from Giraldi, 162–3, except
that he does not give there either the praise of, or a book reference
to, Arnobius. Both quotations and the Arnobius citation are in Brisson,
25–6, though Jonson’s wording in the first part of his note is closer to
Giraldi. same author i.e.
Martianus, cited in Giraldi. Cinxiae . . . cincta ‘The name of Juno
Cinxia was held sacred in marriage because at the beginning of
the union there was an untying of the girdle with which the new bride
was encircled’ (Orgel). Arnobius A teacher of rhetoric in Roman North Africa who
converted to Christianity, c. 295 ad, and composed seven books Adversus Nationes, defending Christianity against a charge of
novelty by demonstrating that Roman customs themselves had changed over
time (OCD). unctionibus . . . replicationi ‘Unxia
assists anointings, Cinxia the undoing of girdles’ (Orgel).
40 Cingulorum] F1;
Cinguloruus Q
260 quit . . .
zone having taken off her belt, which signified her
virginity.
261 Telia Perfected. See .
41 Telia signifies
Perfecta, or as some translate it,
Perfectrix; with Julius Pollux,
Onomasticon, 3,
῎Ηρα τελεία, values
Juno
Praeses Nuptiarum, who saith the attribute descends
of
τέλειος, which with the ancients signified
marriage,
and thence were they called
τέλειοι that entered
into that estate. Servius interprets it the same with
Gamelia,
Aeneid, 4,
ad verbum: et Iunone secunda. But it implies
much more, as including the
faculty to mature, and perfect; See the Greek Scholiast on Pindarus,
Nemeo in Hymno ad Theaeum Uliæ filium
Argivum. τέλειος δὲ ὁ γάμος διὰ τὸ κατασκευάζειν
τὴν τελειότητα τοῦ βίου: that is, nuptials are therefore called
τέλειοι because they effect perfection of life, and do note that
maturity which should be in matrimony. For before nuptials she is called Juno
παρθένος,
that is,
virgo; after nuptials,
τελεία, which is
adulta, or
perfecta.
41 Like the previous note, a synthesis of Giraldi,
161–2, and Brisson, 26. The bulk is in Giraldi, though Jonson compresses
and rearranges it, but a couple of phrases derive from Brisson, who
gives the reference to Servius, and the title of Pollux’s work. Perfecta ‘[She who is]
perfect’. Perfectrix
‘She who makes perfect’. Pollux (second century ad). Scholar
and rhetorician; his Onomasticon is a thesaurus
of information on Greek names and terms. ῎ΗἬρα τελεία ‘Hera teleia’ (‘Perfect Hera’). The
words appear in reverse order at the beginning of Giraldi’s treatment.
Praeses Nuptiarum
‘Protector of (or presider over) marriage’, in Brisson, 26. attribute . . . marriage
Translated directly from Brisson, 26. Aeneid . . . secunda The reference, taken
from Brisson, 26, is to Servius’s commentary on Aeneid, 4.45: ‘on the phrase: “and with the aid of Juno”’.
41 ῎,Ηρα
τελεία] H&S;
ἡρα τέλεια Q, F1
(41) Greek . . .
Pindarus Giraldi, 161, gives the reference to the
Nemean Odes, 10. 17–18, saying that Pindar
‘speaking of Hebe, the wife of Hercules, calls Juno, mother of Hebe,
τέλειαν’, and then quoting
him. The Loeb translation is: ‘of Herakles, whose bride Hebe, most
beautiful of goddesses, walks on Olympus beside her mother the
fulfiller’.
Nemeo . . .
Argivum ‘in the Nemean ode to Theaeus of Argos, son of Ulia’.
The title appears in various forms in Renaissance editions; Jonson
copies Giraldi.
τέλειος . . .
βίου The Greek is translated into Latin by Giraldi, 161, and
thence to English by Jonson ‘that . . . life’.
do . . . matrimony This phrase, which is not in
the sources, might be a covert comment on the particular occasion of
this marriage. For though the couple were technically over the age at
which they could consent to marriage (twelve for girls, fourteen for
boys), they could scarcely be called ‘mature’.
For . . .
perfecta From Giraldi,
162, neatly stitched to the preceding borrowing from a page earlier.
παρθένος ‘virgin’.
H&S note: ‘She was
so called at her temple in Samos, and at one of her three temples at
Stymphalus in Arcadia; there her attributes were “maid”, “perfect”, and
“widow”; . . . Pausanias (2.38.2) says of the lake Canathos in Nauplia
that she recovered her virginity by bathing in it every year.’ Giraldi,
162, explains that she was ‘maid’ before her marriage to Jove, ‘perfect’
when she married, and ‘widow’ finally when she disagreed with (or sat
apart from) Jove.
adulta
mature, adult.
41 Argivum] this edn; Argi. Q
41 τελεία] H&S;
τέλεια Q, F
263 this] Q; the F1
263 provoked summoned (to dance).
266 spirits
The vital spirits which, in Renaissance physiology, animated the body
and mind. Pronounced as a monosyllable.
269 meet
appropriate.
272 discording
string See .
275 neat elegant.
275 curious skilfully crafted.
275 measure dance (specially choreographed for the masquers).
275 device inventiveness.
276–7 invention . . . inventor Q and F have ‘invention’ for both,
which clumsily implies that from the ‘invented’ dance steps the dancers
abstracted the spirit put into them by the choreographer’s underlying
idea or ‘invention’. The clear distinction of ‘author’s brain’ and ‘their feet’ later
in the sentence suggests that the second ‘invention’ is a compositorial
or scribal error. For the use of ‘author’ to refer to the choreographer,
rather than the poet himself, cf. Queens, 625,
where Giles is again credited as the author of the masque dance.
277 inventor] this edn; Invention Q, F1
278 strains Sections of the dance, and of the music which
accompanied it.
279 letters The dances arrived at a series of stationary figures,
here successively spelling out Essex’s name. (Cf. Queens, 622–3, where Prince Charles’s name is spelt out, and
Robert White, Cupid’s Banishment, 1617, where the
names of the king and queen were traced.)
281 golden . . .
heaven See Jonson’s marginal note
42, and cf.
Gold.
Age, 13n,
Forest 11.47–8. The image of
concord between earth and heaven is central to the masque.
42 Mentioned by Homer,
Iliad,
8.
[19–22
],
which many have interpreted diversely: all allegorically. Plato
in
Theaeteto [153c–d
], understands it to be the
sun,
which while
he circles the world in his course, all things are safe and preserved:
others vary it. Macrobius (to whose interpretation, I am specially
affected in my allusion) considers it thus, in
Somnium
Scipionis, 1.14.
[15
]:
Ergo cum ex summo Deo
mens, ex mente anima sit; anima vero et condat, et vita compleat
omnia quae sequuntur, cunctaque hic unus fulgor illuminet, et in
universis appareat, ut in multis speculis, per ordinem positis,
vultus unus; cumque omnia continuis successionibus se sequantur,
degenerantia per ordinem ad imum meandi: invenietur pressius
intuenti a summo deo usque ultimam rerum faecem una mutuis se
vinculis religans, et nusquam interrupta connexio. Et haec est
Homeri catena aurea, quam pendere de caelo in terras deum iussisse
commemorat. To which strength and evenness of
connection, I have not absurdly likened this uniting of Humours and
Affections by the sacred powers of marriage.
42 Homer
In the
Iliad Zeus challenges the other gods: ‘Let
down out of the sky a cord of gold; lay hold of it all you who are gods
and all who are goddesses, yet not even so can you drag down Zeus from
the sky to the ground’ (Lattimore).
Plato . . . sun Directly from Valeriano,
Hieroglyphica (
1602), 639; first published in 1556,
and expanded in many editions.
Ergo . . . commemorat ‘Accordingly, since Mind emanates from
the Supreme God and Soul from Mind, and Mind, indeed, forms and suffuses
all below with life, and since this is the one splendour lighting up
everything and visible in all, like a countenance reflected in many
mirrors arranged in a row, and since all follow on in continuous
succession, degenerating step by step in their downward course, the
close observer will find that from the Supreme God even to the
bottommost dregs of the universe there is one tie, binding at every link
and never broken. This is the golden chain of Homer which, he tells us,
God ordered to hang down from the sky to the earth’ (Stahl,
1952, 145).
42 8] Orgel; θ Q
42 Theaeteto] H&S;
Thæteto Q, F1
42 which while] Q; with
which while H&S
289 gall
Cf. Chapman, Hero and Leander, 5.365–9: ‘Then one
of Juno’s birds, the painted jay, / He sacrificed, and took the gall
away; / All which he did behind the altar throw, / In sign no bitterness
of hate should grow / ’Twixt married loves.’
293–300 Jonson closely imitates
Catullus, 61.61–70, though the Latin
poet addresses only Hymen: ‘No pleasure can Venus take without thee,
such as honest fame may approve; but can, if thou art willing. What god
dare match himself with this god? No house without thee can give
children, no parent rest on his offspring; but all is well if thou art
willing. What god dare match himself with this god?’ (Loeb).
294 merit
with be as deserving of commendation as.
296 Except that which is accompanied with shame of
fornication. Cf.
448–52.
297 Reflecting the oft-repeated anxiety that a man
cannot know he is father of his children; marriage is represented as a
safeguard against illegitimacy.
298 house
family, lineage.
298 prosp’rous] Q;
prospe’rous F1
301 dissolved disengaged. The dancers had remained hand in hand
in their chain while Reason spoke.
301 took . . . persons Pory records that ‘the women took in men,
as namely the prince (who danced with as great perfection and as settled
a majesty as could be devised), the Spanish ambassador, the Archduke’s
ambassador, the duke, etc. And the men gleaned out the queen, the bride,
and the greatest of the ladies’ (Electronic Edition, Masque Archive, Hym., 1). In the initial stage of the revels the
‘taking out’ of members of the audience was carefully arranged. (Prince
Henry was only eleven years old.)
302 measures . . . corantos The social dances, which began with
the slower, statelier measures, and proceeded to quicker dances in
triple time.
302 the
whilst i.e. as they moved to take out their partners.
307 haste] Q (hast)
312 make
mate, spouse.
313 by
speech Rather than by song, as the first time; Q’s comma makes
the contrastive force evident.
314 Idalian
star A name of Venus; from Idalium in Cyprus which was sacred
to her. Cf. Propertius, 4.6.59, and Jonson’s marginal note
43 and n.
43 Stella Veneris,
or Venus, which when it goes before the sun, is called
Phosphorus, or
Lucifer; when it
follows,
Hesperus, or
Noctifer (as Catullus translates it). See Cicero,
De Natura Deorum, 2.
[53
]; Martianus Capella,
De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, 8. The nature
of this star Pythagoras first found out; and the present office Claudian
expresseth in
Fescennina [4.1–2
]:
attollens thalamis Idalium iubar dilectus Veneri
nascitur Hesperus.
43 The two names of Venus as morning and evening
star are commonplaces, for which Jonson scarcely needed to assemble
authorities. He might have collected some of his material from Giraldi,
556, who supplies references to Cicero and Martianus. For Pythagoras
Jonson returned directly to Martianus or to the commentaries on
Catullus.
Stella Veneris
‘Star of Venus’.
Phosphorus . . . Lucifer Greek and Latin for ‘light-bearer’.
Hesperus . . .
Noctifer Greek and Latin for ‘night-bearer’.
as . . . it Catullus, 62.7:
nimirum Oetaos ostendit Noctifer ignes, ‘For sure
the night-star shows his Oetaean fires’ (Loeb). The commentary of
Antonius Parthenius on this line (1604, 192): ‘The star, Venus, as
Cicero teaches, was called in Greek Phosphoros, in Latin Lucifer, when
it preceded the sun: when, however, it follows, Hesperos, which is
interpreted in Latin by Catullus as
noctifer.’
De Natura
Deorum ‘On the Nature of
the Gods’.
The . . . out
Probably derived from the commentary of Parthenius (1604, 192), who,
like Martianus, 8.882, mentions Pythagoras.
present office i.e. the function of Hesperus on
this occasion.
attollens . . .
Hesperus ‘Hesperus, loved of Venus, rises and shines for the
marriage with his Idalian rays’ (Loeb), quoted in Achilles Statius’s
commentary on Catullus (
1604), 194.
315 their
war i.e. the consummation of the marriage; a familiar conceit
for sexual activity.
316 her
influence The beneficent effect of the planetary Venus.
44 It was a custom for the man to stand
there, expecting the approach of his bride. See
Hotman,
De [Veteri] Ritu Nuptiarum.
44 Hotman, 545: ‘When the new bride approaches the
house of the man, the bridegroom was standing at the threshold, calling
her to him.’ Orgel wrongly refers to 548, on the bride’s hesitation at
entering the house.
44 Hotman] this edn;
Hotto. Q
319 bated
diminished, nearly extinguished.
45 Alluding to that of Virgil,
Aeneid, 4.
[166–8
]:
Prima et Tellus, et
Pronuba Iuno Dant signum: fulsere ignes, et conscius aether
connubii, etc.
45 Prima . . . connubii ‘Primal Earth and nuptial Juno give the
sign; fires flashed in heaven, the witness to their bridal.’ This
anticipates the coming together of Dido and Aeneas. Alexander, 132, note
e, and Brisson, 45, each give half of the
quotation. (But see Jonson’s marginal note 32n.)
321 i.e. your
repair i.e. your retirement as the married couple to your
nuptial chamber.
326 loves
Cupids.
46 Statius, in
Epithalamium:
Fulcra,
torosque deae, tenerum
premit agmen Amorum. And Claudian, in
Epithalamium:
Pennati passim pueri, quo quemque vocavit umbra,
iacent. Both which prove the ancients feigned many Cupids. Read also Propertius,
Elegiae, 2.29.
46 These authorities are mentioned in Giraldi,
558–9, but he gives neither the quotations from the first two, nor the
full reference to Propertius. Jonson cites the same authors (with some
additions) in Beauty, marginal note 45, and this
is probably a case of his trusting his memory. Epithalamium
Silvae, 1.2.54. Fulcra . . . Amorum ‘About the posts and
pillars of her couch swarm a troop of tender Loves.’ Pennati . . . iacent
‘Here and there, wherever the shade invites them, rest winged boys’
(Claudian, Epithalamium of Honorius and Maria,
10–11). Propertius This poem
recounts the way the poet is assaulted in his sleep by an ‘innumerable
crowd of little loves’.
327 sparrows Supposed to be particularly lecherous, and therefore
associated with Venus.
327 doves
Supposed to mate for life, and again associated with Venus (cf. Haddington, 27, Und.
2.(4).3).
329 against you
come in anticipation of your coming.
330 Cypria
Venus, so named from Cyprus, whence she was carried from Cythera after
she emerged from the sea.
47 Venus is so induced by Statius,
Claudian, and others, to celebrate nuptials.
47 A general observation about the appropriateness
of the invocation of Venus’s presence at a wedding, not a comment on the
cognomen Cypria. In the epithalamia of both Statius and Claudian Venus
(rather than Juno) has a central presence.
330 strows
strews. The spelling is retained for the rhyme.
332 call ‘away’!] this edn; call,
Away Q
333 pressed
compelled, conscripted (
OED, Press
v.
2 d.). Cf.
402.
333–5 pay . . .
rites The pleasures of the marriage bed are imagined as
repayment for the debt incurred by their postponement in the extended
revels. More generally sexual intercourse was characterized as both a
right and a debt owed by a married couple to each other, a concept
derived from 1 Corinthians, 7.3–5 (see Dubrow,
1990, 24–7).
336 the . . . again The painted curtain was drawn in front of the
scenery.
337 their
intermixed dances The social dances which mixed masquers with
the audience, and male with female.
337 returned . . . places The audience returned to their seats,
the male and female masquers to their original dancing positions –
perhaps to the ‘chain’.
338 urged exhorted.
340 know
know how.
355 The circle symbolizes eternity and perfection
(see Haddington, 225–7).
356 adventer chance. The original spelling of adventure is
retained for the sake of the rhyme.
358 ceston
girdle.
48 Venus’s girdle, mentioned by Homer,
Iliad,
14.
[214–17
]: which was feigned to be
variously wrought with the needle, and in it woven love, desire,
sweetness, soft parley, gracefulness, persuasion, and all the powers of
Venus.
48 Homer reads: ‘She spoke, and from her breasts
unbound the elaborate, pattern-pierced zone, and on it are figured all
beguilements, and loveliness is figured upon it, and passion of sex is
there, and the whispered endearment that steals the heart away even from
the thoughtful’ (Lattimore). Conti (1616), 204, adds: ‘a variously
coloured cestus, in which pleasantness, and sweet
conversation, and benevolence, and flatteries, persuasions, deceits, and
sorceries were enclosed’. Jonson draws on Conti, but deliberately omits
the more ambivalent qualities of Venus.
48 14] Orgel; ξ Q
360 Hymen and his musicians move inside the circle
made by the dancers.
361 sacrificers sacrificial priests. Though they are not here
described as such, musicians in masques frequently appeared as ‘priests’
of one sort or another.
367 name of
dignity title of honour (and see Jonson’s marginal note
49n.).
49 See the words of Aelius Verus in Spartianus.
49 The citation is from Brisson, 21, where the
context is one of distinguishing the dignity of a wife from that of a
concubine. Spartianus His Life of Aelius Verus is in Scriptores Historiae Augustae, 1. At 5.11, Aelius justifies
his amours, saying to his wife ‘let me indulge my desires with others;
for “wife” is a term of honour not pleasure’ (Loeb). It scarcely seems
likely that Jonson actually had the original in mind.
369 hair A
commonplace poetic metaphor for beams of light.
50 So Catullus, in
Nuptiis Iuliae
et Manlii hath it:
Viden’,
ut faces splendidas quatiunt comas? and by and by
after:
aureas quatiunt comas.
50 Viden’ . . . comas ‘Do you see how the torches shake their
shining locks?’ (Catullus, 61.77–8). aureas . . . comas ‘shake their golden
locks’ (ibid., 95).
370 gait
Act of going (OED, Gait n.2 6).
371 front the
state stand before the King’s throne.
372 honours
bows.
376–81 Jonson explicitly turns to the political union of
English and Scots under James. See Gordon (
1975), 168–74, for the way in which
the treatises advocating the union use vocabulary that is often close to
Jonson’s praise of the project.
378–9 By uniting England and Scotland in his person
James has made the kingdom of Britain extend over the whole island.
378 realms
Pronounced ‘reams’, a full rhyme (see EMI, 5.5.18).
383 state throne.
384 the
bride The ‘personated’ bride, rather than the real Frances
Howard.
384 auspices witnesses; see Jonson’s marginal note
7n.
385 staff stanza.
385–7 but . . . whole As with Haddington,
278, Jonson privileges the authority of the literary text over accuracy
in representing the event.
51 It had the name
a thalamo, dictum est
autem, θάλαμος
cubiculum nuptiale primo suo
significatu, παρὰ τὸ
θάλλειν
ἅμα,
quod est simul
genialem vitam agere. Scaliger in
Poetices.
51 Quoted exactly from Scaliger, Poetices (1994), 3.64. a . . . agere ‘from the thalamos, and the
nuptial chamber is called θάλαμος because of its original significance,
from “flourishing together”, that is, leading a procreative life
together’ (Orgel).
51 θάλλειν] F2;
θάλειν Q;
θἀλειν F1
51 ἅμα] H&S;
ἄμα Q,
F1
388–9 nemo . . .
thalassionis ‘no learned man will order me to write a wedding
song in words inappropriate to a wedding’. Adapted from
Martial, 1.35.6–7, though there it is
part of a defence of writing risqué verses.
388–9 nemo . . .
thalassionis ‘no learned man will order me to write a wedding
song in words inappropriate to a wedding’. Adapted from
Martial, 1.35.6–7, though there it is
part of a defence of writing risqué verses.
390 EPITHALAMION The genre stretches back to classical antiquity,
and many marriage songs drawing on that tradition were composed during
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, of which Spenser’s
Epithalamium (the Latin form) is the most
celebrated. Its various possibilities were minutely categorized by
Scaliger in his
Poetices (which, as Jonson’s
marginal notes demonstrate, he consulted). For discussion of the genre,
see Tufte (
1970).
Dubrow (
1990),
214–21, analyses this poem in detail, locating it within the subgenre of
the epithalamium ostensibly delivered at the bedchamber, and emphasizing
Jonson’s celebration of communal values.
394 object
obstacle; in the Latinate sense of ‘something thrown in the way’; OED, Object n. 2
wrongly gives 1564 as the last instance.
394 stay
hinder.
396 turtles
turtle doves; supposed to mate for life, an emblem of love and
associated with Venus.
52 This poem had for the most part
versum intercalarem, or
carmen amoebaeum;
yet that not always one, but oftentimes varied, and sometimes neglected
in the same song, as in ours you shall find observed.
52 The terms derive from Scaliger (1994), 3.68, 94.
This poem i.e. the genre
of epithalamium. versum
intercalarem Literally, ‘inserted verses’, or ‘a refrain’.
Scaliger observes: ‘We will also address Hymen through exclamations;
they sometimes invoke him as the god of weddings through inserted lines,
sometimes immediately at the very beginning of a poem.’ The invocation
of Hymen in Catullus, 62.4, is described as versus
intercalaris in Parthenius’s commentary (1604), 145. carmen amoebaeum
Literally, ‘alternating verses’; normally used of lines or stanzas
spoken by different people, as in Catullus, 62. Scaliger rather
puzzlingly writes: ‘but an alternating song – not only with Hymen’s
name, but also with “Run, drawing the woof-threads, ye spindles run”’.
Jonson seems to have taken Scaliger’s quotation of the refrain from
Catullus, 64.323–81, to indicate that the term also means a refrain.
yet . . . observed Jonson
does not have a regular refrain, nor are each of the stanzas spoken by
different groups; but, as he suggests, he is imitating his Catullan
models.
398 alarm
call to war.
400 prove
experience.
402 pressèd
forced to enlist.
409 rap
seize, ravish.
53 The bride was always feigned to be ravished
ex gremio matris; or, if she were wanting,
ex proxima necessitudine, because that had succeeded well to
Romulus,
who by force gat wives for him, and his, from the Sabines. See Festus, and
that of Catullus
[61.3–4
]:
qui rapis teneram ad
virum virginem.
53 Translated, and the Latin quoted, exactly from
Brisson, 31, which cites Festus and quotes Catullus. ex gremio matris ‘from
her mother’s bosom’. wanting
lacking. ex proxima
necessitudine ‘from the nearest relation’. Romulus. . . Sabines Romulus,
the mythical founder (with his brother Remus) of Rome, populated his
city with male outlaws of all kinds. To ensure its continuance he
invited the Sabine peoples, original inhabitants of the territory
outside Rome, to a festival, and then seized their young women as wives
for himself, and for his associates. qui. . .
virginem ‘you who carry
off the tender virgin to a husband’.
415 Hesperus The planetary Venus appearing as the evening
star.
419 more
perfect A woman was said to be made perfect by union with a
man (see
261 and
486). Cf. the
refrain of Donne’s ‘Epithalamium made at Lincoln’s Inn’: ‘Today put on
perfection and a woman’s name’; and
Haddington,
305–81.
421–2 Just as the bride changes her name to that of her
husband, so Hesperus becomes Phosphorus when he appears in the morning
(see Jonson’s marginal note
54).
54 When he is Phosphorus, yet the same star, as I
have noted before.
423–52 This passage is loosely based on
Catullus,
61.152–201.
423 adventer dare, venture. See also .
55 At the entrance of the bride the custom
was to give her the keys, to signify that she was absolute mistress of
the place, and the whole disposition of the family at her care.
Festus.
55 A compressed translation of Brisson, 45. Festus
is a red herring; though cited in Brisson, his brief entry under clavim refers only to the keys as a sign of happy
childbirth, a significance Brisson downplays and Jonson does not
use.
56 This was also another rite, that she might not
touch the threshold as she entered, but was lifted over it. Servius saith,
because it was sacred to Vesta. Plutarch in
Quaestiones Romanae remembers
divers causes.
But that
which I take to come nearest the truth, was only the avoiding of
sorcerous drugs, used by witches to be buried under that place, to the
destroying of marriage-amity, or the power of generation. See Alexander
in Genialibus and Christ. Landus
upon Catullus.
56 This is another composite note. From Landus’s
commentary on Catullus, 61.162, Jonson could have obtained the
references to Servius and Alexander; from Brisson, 44, the reference to
Plutarch, but the wording of the latter part of Jonson’s marginal note
comes directly from Scaliger. Servius saith In the commentary on Virgil, Eclogues, 8.29.92.
(56) Plutarch. . . causes
Moralia, 271D, does not in fact mention the
reason that Jonson goes on to cite.
But . . . generation The wording here is a direct translation
of Scaliger (1994), 3.84.
Christ.
Landus An error for Constantius Landus (Costanzo Landi), Count
of Campiano, whose text and commentary, according to
H&S, was first published at
Pavia in 1550. (I have used the version in the 1604 edition of Catullus,
158–73.)
430 In a way that prophesies a happy future.
431–2 Based on
Catullus, 61.177–9: ‘Let go, young boy,
the smooth arm of the damsel, let her now come to her husband’s
bed.’
432–4 Cf. Claudian, Carmina
Minora, 25.116–19. ‘Soon as they reached the doors of the
marriage-chamber they empty baskets full of red spring flowers, pouring
forth showers of roses and scattering from their laden quivers violets
gathered in Venus’s meadow’ (Loeb).
436 As As
if.
436 mead
meadow.
441–6 Referring to a Roman rite that demanded that the
torch be removed from the bedchamber rather than be extinguished and
left there, where it could become an ill omen. See Jonson’s marginal
notes
57–9 and nn.
57 For this look Festus
in voce rapi.
57, 58, 59 For . . .
ibid. Both references to Festus are in Alexander, 138, note
l.
57 in . . . rapi ‘on the word rapi’.
443 dead
i.e. extinguished.
58, 59 Quo utroque mors
propinqua alterius
utrius captari putatur. Festus,
ibid.
58, 59 Quo . . . putatur ‘By each of which deeds the other’s early
death is thought to be desired’ (Orgel). The complete quotation from
Festus, which Jonson translates at 442–6, is given in Alexander. In Q
this quotation is given for both notes, bracketed together.
58, 59 ] Q (cd})
58, 59 vtrius] Q (state 2); vltrius Q (stat
1), F1
58, 59 Quo utroque mors
propinqua alterius
utrius captari putatur. Festus,
ibid.
58, 59 Quo . . . putatur ‘By each of which deeds the other’s early
death is thought to be desired’ (Orgel). The complete quotation from
Festus, which Jonson translates at 442–6, is given in Alexander. In Q
this quotation is given for both notes, bracketed together.
58, 59 ] Q (cd})
58, 59 vtrius] Q (state 2); vltrius Q (stat
1), F1
455 vulgar
of the people. The word did not necessarily carry the negative overtones
of its modern use.
458 Bembo, in his oration in praise of love at the
end of Castiglione,
The Courtier, says that ‘a
kiss may be said to be rather a coupling together of the soul, than of
the body’.
H&S cite
Petronius, Satyricon, 79: ‘We . . . with kisses
everywhere made exchange of our wandering spirits.’ And cf. Donne, ‘The
Expiration’, 1–2: ‘this last lamenting kiss, / Which sucks two
souls’.
465 Joys] this edn; “Ioyes Q, F1
466 Affect
Pretend, counterfeit.
472 cockles
The image of kisses close as the shells of the cockle is also used in
Cynthia (F), 5.4.443, and Cat., 2.1.344–5.
60 A frequent surname of Venus, not of the place, as
Cypria, but
quod parere
faciat, ἡ τὸ κυεῖν
παρέχουσα.
Theophilus,
Phurnutus,
and the grammarians upon Homer. See them.
60 From Giraldi, 553, who suggests the derivation
of the name from the Greek phrase Jonson quotes. Percy Simpson sternly
rebukes this ‘absurd etymology’, observing that ‘Cypris is, of course,
“the Lady of Cyprus” – Horace’s diva potens
Cypri’. In other words, Jonson, following his authorities, makes a
false distinction between the name here and at 330. quod . . . παρέχουσα ‘because she brings
about birth, the one who causes conception’ (Orgel). Theophilus i.e. Scholiast
Venetus B on Iliad, 5.458. Phurnutus i.e. L. Annaeus
Cornutus, De Natura Deorum Gentilium, 24.198n.
Both of these are cited from Giraldi.
60 παρέχουσα] Wh;
παἲρχουσα Q, F1
475 i.e. May you entwine closer than ivy. The twining
of ivy round the elm or oak is a commonplace emblem of marriage.
484 Genius
In Latin, literally, ‘that which is just born’. The deity is the spirit
which defined the individual, born and dying with him. More generally
considered as the presiding deity of a family, and therefore important
at marriage, and thence extended to the idea that every place had a
genius, which ‘expressed the totality of its
traits at the moment of constitution’ (
OCD). See Jonson’s marginal note
61 and n.;
King’s
Ent., 53n.
61 Deus Naturae, sive
gignendi. And is the same in the male as Juno in
the female.
Hence
genialis lectus, qui nuptiis sternitur, in honorem
Genii. Festus.
Genius meus, quia me genuit.
61 This note is assembled from two sources Jonson
used, and acknowledged, for the figure of Genius in King’s Ent., marginal note 9: Giraldi, and Rosinus, Antiquitatum Romanorum libri decem (‘Ten books on
the Antiquities of Rome’) (1584), though in neither is the exact opening
Latin phrase to be found. There may be another unlocated source, or
Jonson may have coined it to fit the general tenor of the opening of
Giraldi’s article on Genius. The subsequent Latin quotations from Festus
(under Genialis lectus and Genium) derive from Giraldi. Deus. . .
gignendi ‘God of nature,
or of begetting’. And. . .
female
Iuno was the Latin name for the female genius, as
Jonson could have found in Rosinus, 2.14. genialis . . . Genii ‘the “genial” bed,
which is made at weddings in honour of the Genius’. Genius . . . genuit ‘My
Genius, because he begot me.’ In Giraldi and Rosinus, as in Festus, this
quotation is attributed to one Aufustius.
484 enlarge
set free.
487–8 An echo of Spenser, Epithalamium, 385–7, to Cynthia: ‘Incline thy will t’effect
our wishfull vow, / And the chaste womb inform with timely seed, / That
may our comfort breed.’
62 She hath this faculty given her by all
the ancients. See Homer,
Iliad,
8, Lucretius,
in primo, Virgil in
Georgicon, 2.
[329
], etc.
62 Gordon, 288–9 comments: ‘This is vague. Jonson
seems to have had in mind Conti where he talks of Venus as
rerum omnium procreatricem [1616, 211
] and quotes
the
Georgics, book 2, and Lucretius
[213
] . . .
the passage from the
Georgics is only appropriate
if one has in mind Conti’s interpretation of the allegory of Venus.’ But
the reference to
Iliad, 8 is wrong, and is not
given in Conti. (Wheeler,
1938, 193, suggests that Jonson may
have had in mind 5.429, or 14.198–221, or 14.292–351.)
62 8] this edn; θ Q, F1
489–510 Based on the ending of
Statius, Silvae,
1.2.268–77: ‘May merciful Cynthia hasten the tenth month for
the bringing-forth, but spare her, Lucina, I pray thee; and thou, O
babe, spare thy mother, hurt not her tender womb and swelling breasts;
and when Nature in secrecy has marked thy features, much beauty mayst
thou draw from thy father, but more from thy mother. And thou, loveliest
of Italian maids, won at last by a husband worthy of thee, cherish the
bonds he sought so long; so may thy beauty suffer no loss, and the fresh
prime of youth abide for many a year upon thy brow, and that comeliness
be slow to age’ (Loeb).
489 Inform
Activate, impart life to (OED, Inform
v. 3).
491 ten
moons As in Statius, but ‘nine moons’ in Haddington, 376.
492 Cynthia
Goddess of the moon, and protectress of childbirth.
499 either
grandsire’s In this addition to the source in Statius, Jonson
underlines the political aim of the marriage to effect reconciliation
between the two families – Essex’s ‘spirit’ had actually led him into
rebellion against Queen Elizabeth.
502 two] Q; to F1
502 races
families.
510 Cf. ‘To the most noble . . . Robert, Earl of
Somerset’, 23–4, a poem written at the time of his marriage to Frances
Howard in 1613 which, with no doubt unintended irony, voices the
identical sentiment.
510 forms
The dominant meaning is the hope that their bodies will age more slowly
than their years suggest, retaining beauty and vigour. There may be some
suggestion of the philosophical meaning, ‘the essential determinant
principle’ (OED, Form n. 3), but Jonson simply seems to be following Statius
here.
511–12 left . . . wishing there was nothing one could wish to
add.
512 court seek to win favour by flattery.
515 wanting lacking.
516 furniture That which ‘furnished’, or embellished the
performance.
516 complement (1) that which completes; (2) observance of due
ceremony (OED, Complement n. 8).
517 habits costumes.
517 envy disappointment.
519 Yet] new paragraph in
Q
522 fashion style, pattern.
524 Persic Persian.
525 carnation flesh-coloured, pink. Pory described the men as
dressed in ‘crimson’, which implies a rather deeper hue (though the
costumes no doubt appeared darker by candlelight).
525 lawn fine linen.
526 tricked
up before artfully arranged in front.
526 degrees Literally ‘steps’; suggesting overlapping folds.
527 Their
bodies The part of their costumes above the waist.
528 to
express the naked to indicate the body underneath (cf.
543–5).
528 thorax cuirass; armour for the chest and back. (OED mistakenly gives the first use as
1824.)
528 girt encircled.
529 labels Strips of cloth or leather which hung from the
shoulders and from the belt over the short skirt of Greek military
costume.
530 suitable conforming.
531 bases skirts beneath the labels.
531 watchet light blue.
531 chevroned adorned in a chevron pattern.
532 several-coloured different coloured.
532–3 distinguishing . . . pairs Each Affection was coupled with a
Humour, and each pair wore the same colour, but it is impossible to say
how they were paired, or what was considered the appropriate
colours.
534 tacked attached.
535 oes (or ‘oos’) Circular spangles or sequins which might be
arranged in various patterns or cover the whole garment.
536 compass curving.
537 greaves leg armour.
537–8 answering . . . to with the same design as.
539 ladies’
attire Three portraits attributed to Johann de Critz survive
depicting the ladies’ costume for the masque. Those at Berkeley Castle
and at Welbeck Abbey – which may be of the same person – depict one very
much according to the description that follows (
Illustration 22). They have been
called portraits of the Countess of Bedford, but
H&S suggest they may be of the
Countess of Rutland. The other, at Woburn, is of the Countess of Bedford
(
Illustration 21),
but departs significantly from the description, in that there is no
underskirt, and the colours are different. Whether this indicates that
the Countess exercised her prerogative to change the costume for the
performance itself, or whether the dress was subsequently adapted (as
masque costumes often were) before the portrait was painted, is
impossible to determine.
541 Juno’s
birds peacocks.
542 zone belt.
545 answer equal.
547 adorned . . . jewels John Pory commented: ‘they had every one
a white plume of the richest heron’s feathers, and were so rich in
jewels upon their heads as was most glorious. I think they hired and
borrowed all the principal jewels and ropes of pearl both in court or
city’ (Masque Archive, Hym., 1). The sparkling of
candlelight on jewellery was part of the striking effect of masques,
frequently commented on by observers, and its display signified the
status of the performers (see Beauty,
Introduction).
548 transparent] F1; trasparent Q
548 verge edge.
548–9 fastened . . . manner The portraits show the transparent veil
ballooning out at the back, tied in at the waist, and hanging down
almost to the bottom of the dress. It may have been supported by wires
(as are the costumes of the winds in Beauty).
552 ΜΙΚΡΟΚΟΣΜΟΣ Microcosmos (see
89). The structure was mounted on a
spindle which was turned below stage (
machina
versatilis). The convex front was painted to appear like a map
of the world, and when it turned, the concave structure revealed the
masquers seated within. Nicoll (
1937), 64–5, conjectures that it must
have been ‘at least ten or twelve feet in diameter’. Jonson may have
been influenced by Martianus Capella,
De Nuptiis,
1.68, where, before the thrones of Juno and Jupiter, is ‘a sphere with a
great variety of carved figures; it had been so made out of a compound
of all the elements that nothing that is believed to be in nature was
missing from it . . . This sphere seemed to be an image and model of the
world’ (trans. Stahl, 26). Pory’s comment that ‘before the sacrifice
could be performed Ben Jonson turned the globe of the earth standing
behind the altar’ has been taken to imply that the author himself
manipulated the machinery. Jonson as stagehand seems rather unlikely,
and Pory is probably only referring to him as the author of the idea of
the turning device.
553 expressed depicted.
553 heightened . . . waves As in maps of the period, wavy lines
indicated the waves of the sea.
555 masque group of masquers.
555 runningly rapidly.
556 composition orderly arrangement. Pory noted that they ‘sat
somewhat like the ladies in the scallop-shell last year’ (i.e. in Blackness).
556 mine . . . metals The inside of the turned globe was painted
in gold and silver. ‘Mine’ could mean simply ‘rich store’.
556–7 lights . . . seen Nicoll (
1937), 133–4, quotes Angelo
Ingegnieri’s 1598 instructions on lighting, including the observation:
‘The man who is able to arrange this illumination so that only its
splendour is seen, and its effect created without any member of the
audience being in a position to say whence or how it is obtained,
unquestionably does much to add to the magnificence of a show.’ The
light from the glasses in which candles or lamps were placed could be
directed by reflectors, which concealed the light sources from the
audience’s view.
560 Atlas . . . Hercules Atlas held up the world, and Hercules in
the course of his labours briefly took his place (see Pleasure Rec., 1n.).
561 of
relieve in relief (the
first recorded example in OED). Jonson’s
spelling, Releue in Q, suggests that he has
French in mind; the word was also in the early seventeenth century
rendered as relievo, reflecting its Italian
origins. This variety indicates the novelty of the technical term.
561 tralucent translucent.
561 as
naturals like real clouds. Nicoll (
1937), 136, suggests that the clouds
‘were cut out so that one flat showed through an opening of that in
front while the material of which they were made allowed the light
behind to filter through’.
561 curtain] Q (Cortine)
562–3 three . . . air The fiery, airy, and watery regions. Fire,
the lightest, is the highest, the watery is nearest to the earth, and
the airy mediates between them. The interconnectedness of the elements
is relevant to the cosmic theme of the masque.
Du Bartas, in Sylvester’s translation
(1592), describes the ‘links of th’holy chain, which tethers /
The many members of the world together . . . Water, as arm’d with
moisture and with cold, / The cold-dry Earth with her one hand doth
hold; / With th’other th’Air: the Air, as moist and warm, / Holds Fire
with one; Water with th’other arm’ (
Divine Weeks,
ed. Snyder, 1979, 144).
567–8 proper . . . made
Du Bartas, 147,
explains that hail is engendered in the middle region of the air.
569 nimbi
clouds.
Virgil, Aeneid, 2.616, has Pallas ‘gleaming
with storm-clouds’; Homer,
Iliad, 15.308, Apollo
with ‘his shoulders wrapped in cloud’.
H&S cite Servius’s commentary on
Virgil: ‘It is a glittering light by which the heads of the gods are
surrounded: and thus they are commonly depicted.’
570 terms Strictly a statue representing only the upper part of
the body; here probably alluding to the statues of Atlas and Hercules as
marking the limits or edges of the scene, which seem, at 559–60, more
likely to have been full-length representations.
63 Atlas and Hercules, the figures mentioned
before.
570 the
engine The device for lowering the ladies.
571 by . . . shadows The shadows of the descending machine as
they passed over the statues made them seem to bow.
573 rapture excitement.
575 sphere
of fire Whirling circles of lights were also used in Daniel’s
Tethys Festival (
1610), and more elaborately in
Campion’s
The Lords’ Masque where they imitated
the movements of the stars. See Nicoll (
1937), 135–6.
576–7 motion . . . mover The device is not mentioned by Pory in his
otherwise attentive account.
578 objected interposed.
579 And] new paragraph in Q
580–95 ] Q; not in F1
580–95 All references to Jonson’s colleagues are removed
in F1.
580 The
design and act See Blackness, 60n.
581 Inigo] Q (Ynygo)
585 Alfonso
Ferrabosco (1575–1628). In 1592 he was granted an annuity,
after the death of his father (of the same name) who had been a musician
at Elizabeth’s court. Appointed to the violin consort in 1601, in 1604
he became an extraordinary groom of the Privy Chamber as a musical
instructor to Prince Henry. He composed songs for Jonson’s masques from
Blackness to Oberon,
after which his only recorded contribution is to the songs or dances for
Augurs. See Epigr.
130.
585 divine
sphere Of heavenly harmony.
586 absolute free from defect.
587 all . . . otherwise The ensuing tribute to Giles implies that
Ferrabosco was not responsible for the music for the masquers’ dances,
but for the songs, and perhaps for other music, such as that which
accompanied the appearance of the goddesses.
587 made
to contributed to (OED, Make
v.1 79 a.).
587–8 the
soul . . . invention The contrast between the fulsomeness of
the compliment to Ferrabosco and the ‘modest’ praise of Jones suggests
strongly the relative weight Jonson attributed to music as against
scene.
589 abrupt broken, incomplete.
591 Thomas
Giles (d. 1617). From 1610 a servant of Prince Henry as a
dancing master at a salary of £50 p.a.; he is also acknowledged as a
choreographer in Haddington, Beauty, and Queens. He was not the man
of the same name who was, in 1584, Master of the Paul’s Boy’s theatre
company.
595 ‘A well-known book cannot change author’ (
Martial, 1.66.9,
Loeb).
596 solemnity occasion of ceremony.
596 barriers See Introduction.
596 mention evidence, trace (OED,
Mention n. 4).
597–8 a
mist . . . perfumes Presumably incense was burned to produce
the perfumed mist. At 812 Error is described negatively as ‘clad in
mists’, but there seems no such moral significance here. There are a
number of parallels, of which the closest is the masque inset in
Beaumont and Fletcher’s
The Maid’s Tragedy,
1.2.11, which begins as ‘Night rises in mists’ (though T. W. Craik in
his 1988 edition believed the ‘mists’ to be dark fine linen attached to
Night’s costume). At the beginning of
Pan’s Ann.,
a Shepherd enters ‘
with a censer and perfumes’,
and in
Love’s Tr., 70, the Chorus ‘walk about
with their censers’ to purify the place. Dessen and Thomson (
1999), 144, give a
few further examples.
598 battle (1) piece imitating a battle (see
89); (2) a trumpet call to
arms.
598 sounded . . . stage Exactly what the ‘stage’ looked like is
not made plain, nor whether it was in any way decorated scenically. It
must have been sufficiently high for a trumpeter and/or other musicians
to be concealed beneath it. The normal height of the stage was 4–6 feet
from the floor.
598–602 two . . . bough On this first entrance Truth and her imitator
are represented simply, allowing for the contrast with the revelation of
divine Truth at the end of the masque.
601 palm
Ripa in his first
description of Truth (
Verità), explains that the
palm ‘signifies her power, because . . . the palm does not submit to
weight, as Truth does not surrender to contrary things, and even if many
people impugn her, nonetheless she lifts herself up and grows higher’
(1603, 499).
601 sustained held up.
603 expostulated demanded of, argued with (‘this transitive use
with a personal object is rare’,
H&S).
605 habit
dress.
606 Truth as the daughter of time is, as Jonson’s
marginal note demonstrates, a mythological and proverbial commonplace.
Industry is not her literal parent, but symbol of the effort needed to
seek Truth.
64 Truth is feigned to be the daughter
of Saturn, who
indeed, with the ancients was no other than Time, and so his name
alludes, Κρόνος. Plutarch in
Quaestiones. To which confer the Greek adage: ἄγει δὲ πρὸς φως
τὴν
α᾽λήθειαν χρονὸς.
64 of] F1;
not in Q
64 From Giraldi, 37, who quotes Plutarch and the
Greek adage. Cf. Gold Age, 17n.; Time Vind., 15. Plutarch
Moralia, 266E–F: ‘And why do they consider Saturn
father of Truth? Is it that they think, as do certain philosophers, that
Saturn (Kronos) is Time (Chronos) and Time discovers the truth? Or
because it is likely that the fabled Age of Saturn, if it was an age of
the greatest righteousness, participated most largely in truth?’ (Loeb).
confer compare. ἄγει . . . χρονὸς ‘Time brings
truth to light.’
64 τὴν] F2; τὲν Q, F1
607 these] Q; the F1
609 salute the
light Cf. Envy in Poet., Ind., 1:
‘Light, I salute thee; but with wounded nerves.’
610 illusive deceptive. (OED
gives first instance as 1679, but it is found in a number of
early-seventeenth-century texts.)
611–12 The creation by enchantment of a false ‘double’
of a virtuous figure is also found in the figure of Marion in
Sad Shep. and in
Spenser, The Faerie
Queene – the false Una in Book 1, the false Florimell
in Books 3–4.
613 Opinion says that Truth has actually described
her own birth in the previous lines.
617 position proposition, thesis; a formal term in logic.
619 insociate solitary. The only recorded use of this Latinate
word.
622 brow
expression of the face. Opinion bears an expression equally confident as
that of Truth.
65 Hippocrates in a certain epistle to
Philopoemon describeth her:
mulierem, quae non mala
videatur, sed audacior aspectu et concitatior. To which Cesare
Ripa in
his
Iconologia alludeth in these words:
faccia, ne bella, ne dispiacevole, etc.
65 Hippocrates . . .
concitatior Compressed
from Giraldi, 37, on Veritas (‘Truth’):
‘Hippocrates in a certain epistle to Philopoemon describes her in this
manner: a beautiful woman, magnificent, with simple, fine apparel,
shining with light, whose eyes glittered with a pure light and seemed to
imitate the brightness of the heavens or the stars. The same writer in
the same place describes Opinion . . . in this manner: a woman who does
not look evil, but rather bold and vehement.’ (Jonson uses the beginning
and end.) Ripa
Iconologia, under Opinione
(1603, 369): ‘A woman soberly adorned, with a face neither beautiful nor
ugly; but she shows herself bold and prone to grasp everything which
appears in front of her, and for this reason she has to keep the wing in
her hands and on her shoulder as Hippocrates said.’ faccia . . . dispiacevole
‘a face neither beautiful nor displeasing’.
624 shows
appears.
624 sensual
eyes Those that judge merely by the eye and the experiences of
the senses, rather than reason.
627 fantastical Acting as an illusory product of the fantasy.
628 first . . .
things In the Garden of Eden, where Eve was created to join
Adam.
629 from . . .
springs The debate revisits and revises the significances
attributed to number in the masque. Earlier the symbolism had been
philosophical, here it is considered from a ‘realistic’ perspective:
that without marriage of male and female, procreation is impossible. Cf.
the parodic version in Daw’s madrigal (Epicene,
2.3.24–5): ‘No noble virtue ever was alone, /But two in one.’
631 unprofitable unfruitful.
631 been] Q (bin)
632 The . . .
marrïage The ‘family tree’ of the human race (as in the ‘Jesse
tree’ which traces the ancestry of Christ).
636–7 Alluding to God’s love through which Christ was
wrapped in the ‘earth’ of a human form, and by whose birth Mary was
glorified. But ‘Love’ is also Cupid, and clearly so from 642.
640 genial
nuptial, but also generative.
642–3 Deriving from Tibullus, 3.8.5–6, where it is
Venus, rather than Marriage, who is the flame’s source: ‘From her eyes,
when he would burn the gods amain, doth fierce Love kindle his twin
torches’ (Loeb). Cf. Cynthia (F), 5.4.363, Und. 7.24–5 and 19.1–2.
643 skies
heavens.
644 wings
puts wings upon.
652–7 A version of
Plutarch, Moralia,
140A: ‘Just as line and surfaces, in mathematical parlance,
have no motion of their own but only in conjunction with the bodies to
which they belong, so the wife ought to have no feeling of her own, but
she should join with her husband’ (Loeb).
652 approved demonstrated.
657 anadem
wreath.
658–9 An exact translation of
Plutarch, Moralia,
139F, but whereas he goes on to use it as a reason for the
wife’s obedient mirroring of the husband, Truth here uses it as an image
of mutuality.
661 Alluding to familiar conceits of love poetry:
the reflection of lovers in each other’s eyes, and their images being
imprinted in each other’s hearts.
662 out
i.e. out loud.
663 urged
offered as an argument.
665 satiety] Q; societie
F
665 satiety ‘weariness or dislike of an object of desire caused
by gratification or attainment’ (OED, 1.
b.).
668–9 That avarice springs out of unhappy marriage is
a somewhat odd thought. The greediness of women, and their spending of
their husband’s treasure is frequently asserted as part of misogynist
attacks, but that does not quite seem to be the meaning here.
670 where
whereas.
671 An] F1; And Q
672 Recalling
Martial, 10.47.5–6, translated by
Jonson as ‘A quiet mind, free powers’ (see 4.220).
674 Euripus See Jonson’s marginal note
66 and n. The fast-flowing current
was frequently invoked in poetry of the period.
66 A narrow sea between Aulis, a port of Boeotia,
and the isle Euboea. See Pomponius Mela, 2.
66 Pomponius
Mela Early Roman geographer, writing
c.
40–50
ad. The reference is to
De Situ Orbi, 2.8: ‘Euripo this inlet is called;
it bears a very rapid tide from the sea, reversing itself no less than
seven times a day and, again, seven times during the night. So strong is
the wind and current that all navigation is frustrated’ (trans. Berry,
1997). Jonson
could have found the reference in C. Stephanus,
Dictionarium Historicum, Geographicum, Poeticum (1553).
678 Opinion ridicules many of the standard
prescriptions for good wifely behaviour found in Plutarch, and
frequently re-echoed in the period.
680–4 Cf. Erasmus,
The Institution
of Marriage: ‘there are some women to whom nothing is so
delightful as their husband’s absence, while his presence makes them
restless and foul-tempered; you could compare them to the moon, which is
dull and dark when close to the sun, but ever brighter as it moves away.
A good wife should do the opposite: when her husband is by her, she must
share his joy; when he is away, she must stay indoors and behave as if
she were a widow’ (Rummel,
1996, 98). Both Jonson and Erasmus draw
on
Plutarch, Moralia, 139C.
685 Wives are hidden away out of a sense of shame
analogous to that which affects those who have gained their commercial
monopolies by begging them from courtiers or the king. The stress falls
on the first and third syllables, as it does in John Taylor,
The Praise . . . of Beggary,
1621, ‘Yet shall
my beggary no strange suits devise / As monopolies to catch fleas or
flies’.
686–8 Cf.
Plutarch, Moralia,
140A. The advice was endlessly repeated in treatises on
marriage.
686 list
desire.
686 a serious
fit a sudden desire to be solemn.
688 Juvenal, Satires, 3.100–1,
characterizes flatterers: ‘If you smile, your Greek will split his sides
with laughter; if he sees his friend drop a tear, he weeps, though
without grieving’. In
Sej., 1.27–38 there is a
more extended paraphrase of Juvenal. Memory of this source may colour
this passage.
691 ropes
tightropes.
692 tumblers acrobats.
694 Where
Whereas.
695 spin . . .
fate Alluding to the myth of the Fates who spin the thread of
life.
697–702 now . . .
sphere A (per)version of the celebration of oneness in the
earlier masque.
701 inspire breathe. Cf. Genesis, 2.7: ‘And the Lord God formed
man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath
of life; and man became a living soul.’
702 this] Q; their F1
705 soul . . .
unity Cf. Erasmus,
The Institution of
Marriage: ‘The husband is to the wife what the spirit is to the
body’ (Rummel,
1996, 95).
706–7 Doth . . .
sway (Marriage) demonstrates the singleness of mind that comes
from (the wife’s) obedience to (her husband’s) authority. The syntax is
tangled, but the sentence offers a further instance of the strictness of
the band of marriage.
708 suffers no
compare allows no comparison.
711 Would
Who would.
712 make
mate.
713 she
Truth. (Addressing the audience.)
713 err,] G; erre! Q, F1
713 whole heaven
mistake is totally in error.
714–41 A close translation of
Catullus, 62.39–58, an epithalamic poem
in which the songs of girls and youths alternate.
714 close in
closes hidden in an enclosed space.
718–19 The awkward syntax, which prompted Gifford and
H&S to emend to
‘’tis withered’, is explained by Orgel as an example of the rhetorical
device
apo koinu, where ‘same’ is both the
subject of ‘is’ and object of ‘have desired’. Alternatively it can be
read by understanding ‘which’ as implied before ‘when’.
718 is] Q, F1; ’tis G, H&S
721 hers
An exact translation of Catullus’s suis.
Presumably implying her friends, the maidens and young men, or else her
family.
721 body’s
stain i.e. sexual intercourse.
723 Or
Either.
724–5 The first line is not in Catullus; the second
contradicts the original, which invokes, rather than rejects Hymen.
Opinion claims that the effect of the conquest of virginity is to make
the maiden undesirable, and therefore vindicates her opposition to
marriage.
728 extols
lifts up (Catullus reads extollit).
730 sprout] Q (sproote)
730 sprout
Q’s spelling ‘sproote’ (a comparatively unusual
form in the period) makes the rhyme more evident.
733–4 married . . . elm Vines were trained on elm trees in Roman
viticulture, and the image is a common emblem for marriage.
737 unmanured Catullus has inculta,
‘uncultivated’. ‘Manure’ still retained its older sense of ‘cultivate’
in the seventeenth century, though the now dominant sense of ‘fertilize
with dung’ was also current, and suggests that the word was not very
sensitively chosen.
738 equal
wedlock Seventeenth-century writers on marriage struggled to
reconcile ideals of equal partnership with a firm belief in husbandly
superiority. Here the equality may simply be that of social class.
745 bride] F1; Brides Q
747 descended the hall i.e. came down from the stage to the hall
floor. The combatants enter at the same end of the hall, presumably
through the two doors in the screen to the left and right of the
stage.
748 Earl
of Nottingham Charles Howard (1536–1624), a senior courtier,
privy councillor and Lord Admiral, who had led the defence against the
Armada. The second Earl of Essex shared the command of the Cadiz
expedition (1596) with him, but was in intense rivalry with him. After
Essex’s failed rebellion in 1601, Nottingham was a commissioner at his
trial.
748 Lord
High Constable The president of the court of chivalry,
originally the commander of the royal armies. In the reign of Henry Ⅷ
the office was merged in the crown – so that Nottingham’s nomination was
only ‘for that night’.
749 Earl
of Worcester Edward Somerset (1553–1628), a leading courtier
and privy councillor. In the Essex rebellion, he was taken prisoner by
Essex, and gave evidence against him at his indictment.
749 Earl
Marshal The official responsible both for organizing
ceremonial occasions, and for overseeing the work of the heralds.
750 accoutred attired for the tournament.
752 They
placed When they were positioned.
754–72 Whose . . . Digby] Q; not in F1
754–5 names . . . orthography It is not obvious why Jonson claims
that he sets out the names exactly as they have been offered to him.
While it might be no more than a claim that this is the ‘authorized’
list, it seems to imply some uncertainty on his part.
755 orthography spelling.
757–72 For biographies, see Masquers and Tilters,
1.cxliii–clxiii.
773 the
bar The central rail across which the barriers were
fought.
774 join
begin the combat.
776 retire
Truth leaves the hall.
776 in . . .
appear She reappears translated into divinely sanctioned
Truth.
778 insulting scornfully bragging.
780 speaks thy
name Opinion ironically suggests that Truth’s conduct confirms
that her name is falsely assumed.
782–3 Mars . . . Venus The god of war was the adulterous lover of
the goddess of love.
783 music] Q; masque F1
784 a
striking . . . hall A number of methods were suggested for
producing a sudden flash of light. Serlio’s Architettura (1551), includes instructions on producing
lightning, where a bowl containing sulphur and a candle was shaken up
and down so that the sulphur was made to fly out and ignite; he also
suggests that camphor could be dropped into a bowl of water ‘which
burning makes the most beautiful light and sweet-smell’ (Chambers, ES, 4.363–5). Alternatively a bank of candles
might be revealed from behind shutters (Sabatini also offers a version
of this device).
784 a
striking . . . hall A number of methods were suggested for
producing a sudden flash of light. Serlio’s Architettura (1551), includes instructions on producing
lightning, where a bowl containing sulphur and a candle was shaken up
and down so that the sulphur was made to fly out and ignite; he also
suggests that camphor could be dropped into a bowl of water ‘which
burning makes the most beautiful light and sweet-smell’ (Chambers, ES, 4.363–5). Alternatively a bank of candles
might be revealed from behind shutters (Sabatini also offers a version
of this device).
784 messenger The literal meaning of the Greek word ‘angel’.
786 Princes Used generally of those of high rank (and at
827).
786 attend
listen to.
787 Truth is
descended Presumably Truth re-enters during this speech in her
chariot.
787 second
thunder The first ‘thunder’ is, presumably, the noise of a
battle sounded below the stage at the first entrance (at
598).
788 judicial
state That Truth here appears in a judicial context suggests
that she takes on some of the attributes of the goddess Astraea, or
Justice, returning to earth (see Gold. Age,
87).
789 grace . . .
part award victory to the supporters of marriage.
791–816 No single source has been found for Jonson’s
representation, which brings together attributes of divine, moral, and
judicial truth. He drew in part on various figures in Ripa’s
Iconologia, but his image is a synthesis of
diverse elements, not all of which have been located. Middleton, in
The Triumphs of Truth (
1613), has the figure of Zeal describe
Truth in very similar terms – probably drawing directly on Jonson’s
work.
791 crown of
stars Gordon (
1975), 182, suggests that this ‘indicates her affinity with
heaven’. In
King’s Ent., 43–52, Theosophia, or
Divine Wisdom, is represented ‘all in white, a blue mantle seeded with
stars, a crown of stars upon her head’. It may also connect her with the
figure of Astraea, who, on her departure from earth, became the
constellation Virgo.
792 orient
lustrous, radiant. Golden hair is also an attribute of Astraea (see Gold. Age, 84).
793–4 No source has been identified, but this connects
the figure of Truth with the Homeric golden chain which is central to
the previous night’s masque (281, and Jonson’s marginal note
42 and n.)
796 enchased set.
796 eagles’
eyes The eagle was proverbially able to look upon the sun. In
Spenser, The Faerie Queene, 1.10.47, the spirit
of ‘heavenly Contemplation’ is characterized as ‘persaunt (piercing) /
As Eagle’s eye’. Astraea was represented as having a piercing gaze, as
is Ripa’s figure of
Guistizia (Justice), who
‘with eyes of the acutest sight has also a jewel at her neck in which an
eye is sculpted’. (And see
809.) Cf.
Und. 84.4.9–10.
797 sight
insight, understanding.
798–9 milk-white . . . serpents The primary referent is to Matthew,
10.16: ‘wise as serpents, harmless as doves’, which Jonson cites in his
representation of Theosophia in
King’s Ent., 48.
The
Geneva Bible
glosses this verse: ‘by the mixing of these beasts’ natures together, He
will not have our wisdom to be malicious, nor our simplicity mad, but a
certain form of good nature as exquisitely framed of both of them, as
may be’. Ripa’s representation of
Giustitia
Divina, ‘Divine Justice’ (1603), 188, has a white dove above
her head, signifying the Holy Spirit, ‘through which Divine Justice
communicates itself to all the princes of the world’. In Middleton’s
version, the serpents under Truth’s feet are more conventionally a sign
that she ‘treads down all subtlety and fraud’ (
The
Triumphs of Truth, B3v).
800 Ripa’s figure of Doctrine (
1603), 112, has
her arms spread wide ‘as if to embrace everybody’.
801 Ripa’s figure of Sincerity (
1603), 455–6,
carries a heart in her left hand as a sign that she has no need of
concealment. In
King’s Ent., 145, Agape, or
‘loving affection’, has ‘in her hand a flaming heart’.
802 Ripa’s first version of Truth holds a sun: ‘to signify that
truth is the friend of light, or rather that she is the clearest light,
which shows what she is. One can also say that it represents the sun
which is God, without whose light there is no truth.’ Doctrine also
holds a sceptre with a sun at its top to indicate ‘the power that
doctrine has over the horrors of the night of ignorance’ (113).
803–4 Suggesting the keys of St Peter, the guardian of
heaven’s gates (and appearing as an attribute of Authority or Power in
Ripa, 35–6).
Q’s spelling, ‘Kayes’, indicates that this was a full rhyme.
803 keys] Q (Kayes)
(but ‘Keyes’ at 845)
804 displays opens to the view.
805 mirror
Carried by Ripa’s second representation of Truth, and there signifying
that truth ‘is perfect when the intellect is in agreement with
intelligible things, as a mirror is good when it returns the true image
of things’. Here, however, the dominant sense is of the mirror of
conscience.
806 dressed guided.
807 her
coach As at line
817, this implies that Truth entered in a chariot, though
then ‘triumphant gait’ (
810), reads rather oddly, since ‘gait’ is almost always used
of walking.
807–8 Hypocrisy . . . Slander . . .Vainglory Three versions of the
perversion of true speech.
812–13 Error . . .
Unity Again it is not clear whether these were ‘real’ figures
or represented pictorially on Truth’s chariot, but Unity makes a clear
connection with the previous night’s entertainment.
815 trumpet Not normally an attribute of Truth; here it may be
intended to recall either the angelic trumpet which heralds the Last
Judgement, or the trumpet which is the attribute of Fame. Fame has its
double in Rumour, as Truth’s double is Opinion, and both have the
trumpet as an attribute. Rumour’s trumpet is answered by the trumpet of
Fama Buona (‘Good Fame’) in Ripa (
1603), 143, where
it signifies ‘the universal cry, scattered through the ears of mankind’.
The frontispiece to Ralegh’s
History of the World
(
1614) (see
Illustration 125),
depicts both
fama bona and
fama
mala with trumpets.
818 related just described.
821 disclosed revealed.
825 For] G; “For Q
825–6 For . . .
cause This is marked as a sententia in
Q.
826 That] G; “That Q
827 see
The injunction to the audience implies that Opinion has also re-entered
at some point.
828–30 This suggests that the simple robe Opinion wore
is replaced by a variegated robe, which might appropriately signify the
adage quoted by
Ripa of
Opinion:
Quot capita, tot sententiae,
‘there are as many opinions as heads’ (369).
828 forcèd
affected, artificial.
836 It] G; “It Q
836 This line is marked as a sententia in Q.
836 to right] Q; a right F1
838 prop
support.
839–40 Truth presumably offers her crown to James,
together with her other attributes (though Jonson seems to have
abandoned practical necessity in his poetic sequence – she would have to
put down the objects carried in her hands before removing the
crown).
842–4 doves . . .
serpents The same attributes are associated with Theosophia in
King’s Ent. 46–7: ‘in her one hand she
sustained a dove, in the other a serpent; the last to show her subtlety,
the first her simplicity’.
844 these
rays i.e. those depicted emanating from the sun she
carries.
846 Designing Signifying.
846 ported
having gates (OED, Ported a. 1, says it is rare, and gives only one
example, from Chapman, 1611).
850 they the combatants.
852 Vivite . . . munus ‘Live in harmony,
and learn to perform our duty’ (Claudian, Carmina
Minora, 25.130).
1 it the
altar itself.
sacred . . .
Festus A close translation of
Giraldi (
1548),
160, including the citation of Festus.
Iuga Iuno ‘Juno the yoke’. In Ripa’s image
of Matrimony (1603), 306, a young man appears with a yoke and fetters.
Festus Sextus Pompeius
Festus, scholar of the second century
ad,
whose abridgement of Verrius Flaccus’s
De verborum
significatu (‘On the meaning of words’), or at least of that
part of it which survived, was frequently reprinted in the Renaissance.
(There was also a further ‘epitome’ of Festus compiled by Paulus
Diaconus in the eighth century, and some other fragments survive, which
were often published together with Festus.) All references to Festus are
found in intermediary sources, and it seems unlikely that Jonson
consulted it at first hand.
rite . . . concord Suggested by Alexander (
1586), 134: ‘it was
said that the bride and groom were bound together with a band of purple
and white, or a vari-coloured garment, as was the Latin custom, or they
went equally under the yoke, by reason of which Juno is called
iugalis, as if they were bound equally by the
most equal law and with harmonious minds, and would enter into a life of
mutual partnership’. This may also have suggested the colours of the
bridegroom’s costume. See also Chapman,
Hero and
Leander, 5.348–58, where the priest has ‘ribands of white and
blue’, and ‘took the disparent silks, and tied / The lovers by their
waists, and side to side, / In token that thereafter they must bind / In
one self sacred knot each other’s minds’.
This commentary is heavily dependent upon
Gordon’s researches (
1975), 156–84, 282–9. All of his references have been
checked. Some additional sources are noted (especially Jonson’s use of
Scaliger), and it appears that Jonson actually checked his originals
rather more frequently than Gordon implied. Where appropriate, an
initial note offers a general summary of the possible sources, followed
by detailed notes and translation of Jonson’s Latin and Greek citations.
References to Barnabé Brisson,
De Ritu Nuptiarum
(‘On the rites of marriage’), are to the first Paris edition of 1564; to
Antoine Hotman,
De Veteri Ritu Nuptiarum (‘On the
ancient rites of Marriage’) first published 1585, as reprinted in the
collected edition of the works of his brother, Francois Hotman,
Franc. Hotmani Iuris consulti Operum tomus primus
(‘The first volume of the works of Francois Hotman, lawyer’) (Geneva,
1599); and to
Alexandro ab Alexandri,
Genialium Dierum
Libri Sex (‘Six books of the days of marriage’)
are to the edition of 1586.
1 Iugarius; see Festus;
and] this edn; Jugarius. See Fest. and, Q
2 The reference is in Brisson (
1564), 35, though
it is very likely that Jonson consulted Plutarch directly.
quinque cerei ‘five wax
lights’.
Plutarch . . .
Romanae
Roman Questions, 2, in
Moralia, 263F–264B. Plutarch asks, ‘Why in the marriage rites
do they light five torches, neither more nor less, which they call
cereones?’, and gives several answers, including
the symbolic significance of the number five (see .), and
that ‘since light is the symbol of birth and women are enabled by nature
to bear, at the most, five children at one birth, the wedding company
makes use of exactly that number of torches’.
3 The . . .
tonderetur An exact
translation and quotation from Hotman (
1599), ch. 17, ‘On the cutting of the
hair’ (546). He quotes the line from Juvenal, though with slightly
different wording, and refers (547), as Jonson does, to Lucan on Cato’s
negligence, though quoting a different passage, suggesting that Jonson
returned to, or had originally worked from, both of the originals.
quod tonderetur ‘his hair
was cut’.
Iamque . . .
pecteris ‘Now your hair is dressed by a master barber.’
Juvenal addresses a man preparing for marriage.
Lucan Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (
ad 39–65). His
De Bello Civili (‘On the
Civil War’) was an important source for Jonson. See
Sej., 2.178–87n., and
Queens,
passim.
Ille . . . Caesariem:
Civil War,
2.372: ‘The husband refused to remove the shaggy growth from his
reverend face’ (Loeb).
3 6] Q;
not in F
4 Catullus . . .
Manlii The epithalamium
by Catullus (c. 84–54 bc), number 61 in modern editions, was known under the title
‘On the marriage of Julia and Manlius’. It is one of the most
significant classical models for the genre, and Jonson drew on it in
several parts of this masque. Cinge . . . amaraci ‘Bind your brows with flowers of fragrant
marjoram’ (61.6). The quotation is in Brisson, 24, though not there
attached to Hymen. Jonson certainly consulted this poem
independently.
5 The right reading of line 15 of Catullus’s poem
– whether it should be pineam (‘pine’) or spineam (‘thorn’) – was a matter of debate.
Renaissance editions differ. The sources Jonson cites are to be found in
Alexander, 137, note e, who prefers pineam, and Brisson, 33–4, who favours spineam, as well as in the commentaries to
Renaissance editions of Catullus, which perhaps might be the more likely
sources. Pineam . . .
taedam ‘Brandish the pine-torch’ (Orgel). Pronuba . . . amores ‘Nor
does the nuptial pine inflame chaste loves’ (Orgel). Expectet . . . dies ‘Let
the pine-torch anticipate pure days’ (Orgel). spinea taeda ‘a torch of thorn’. nuptiarum . . .
auspicatissimam ‘most auspicious for the torches of a marriage
ceremony’.
6 The first quotation from Festus is in Alexander,
137, note
d. The quotation from Varro and the
second from Festus come from Brisson, 40.
camillus . . . minister ‘
camillus, that is a servant’. Brisson, 41: ‘young male and
female servants were called
camillos and
camillas in holy rites; whence Mercury was called
in the Etruscan language
camillus; that is,
servant of the gods’. (This is perhaps a more likely source than the
identical passage in Alexander, 552, note
m,
suggested by Gordon,
1975.)
patrimi . . . nubentem ‘three boys, having father and mother
living, wearing the fringed toga of youth, escort the bride: one bears
in front the torch of whitethorn, two support the bride’.
confer compare.
Varro (116–27
bc), one of the greatest scholars of Rome,
credited with 490 books. Of the 25 books of
On the
Latin Language, books 5–10 are partly extant. The reference
Jonson gives reproduces Brisson, and is incorrect (actually 7.34),
evidence that Jonson did not consult Varro directly.
Dicitur . . . fert ‘He
who brings the
cumera is called
camillus in weddings.’
Cumeram . . . appellabant ‘The ancients
would call a
cumera a certain vessel which they
would carry closed in marriage ceremonies, in which were the bride’s
utensils; which they also called a
camillus; for
that reason they called the ministrant of the rites
kamillon.’
6 Etrurian] Q (Hetruriā)
7 From scattered phrases in Hotman, chs. 2–4. He
gives the quotations from Juvenal and Lucan, though the precise
references are to be found in Brisson, 22, and Alexander, 132, note a. Jonson, however, could no doubt have
identified them for himself. Auspices The meaning here, ‘responsible witnesses’, is
distinct from the more familiar sense of ‘diviners of omens’, though
deriving from it, since originally the auspex
would have conducted divination at the time of betrothal to ensure the
fortunate future of the marriage. Veniet . . . auspex ‘The auspex will come with the witnesses.’ Iunguntur . . . Bruto ‘They were joined
together silently and contentedly with Brutus as auspex.’ pronubi (Lat.) Men who were ministers at nuptials. Here used
of the pages who attended bride and groom. It is more usually found in
the feminine form pronubae, signifying the
matrons who conducted the bride to the nuptial chamber. proxenetae (Greek)
Literally, an ‘agent’ or ‘broker’. Hotman calls them conciliatores, interpretes et internuncii, all terms for
intermediaries; here it means those who acted as mediators between the
families of bride and groom. paranymphi (Greek) ‘bridegroom’s friends’.
8 Brisson, 48–9, notes that the use of the flute
is evidenced by ‘not a few places in the authorities’. He cites Terence
(but attributing it to Act 6, Scene 7), and Claudian (but reading Dicant pervigiles) among a number of other
authorities Jonson does not mention. It seems probable that Jonson
supplied the references from his own reading. Verum . . . cantent ‘But there’s a hitch.
They’re waiting for the musician and the choir for the marriage hymn’
(Loeb). Epithalamium
i.e. Fescennine Verses, 4.30. Ducant . . . tibiae ‘All
night long let the music of the flute resound’ (Loeb).
9 That . . .
exception A number of Jonson’s comments scattered through the
masques answer criticisms that must have been levelled at Jonson after
their performances (see, e.g., King’s Ent.,
marginal note 78; Blackness, 75–92 and n.; Haddington, 8; Queens,
563–6). The ‘grammatical’ objection was, presumably, that of the four
humours, choler and melancholy are both feminine nouns in Greek, phlegm
is neuter, and in Latin sanguis (‘blood’) is
masculine. release it free it,
from the charge of incorrectness. in genere ‘in gender’. The general terms,
unlike those of the individual humours, are both masculine. specials individuals. more . . . male In humoural
theory all humans were made up of a mixture of the four elements, but
women were dominated by the cold and moist humours, men by hot and dry;
the male, therefore, was thought more active than the female. escape not need. distemperature disorder,
imbalance. abounding
excessive. metaphorically . . .
affections The metaphorical extension of the physiological
theories of the humours was commonplace in the period, though its
fashionable excesses are criticized in EMO, Induction, 86–112. tropically figuratively, metaphorically. that mystical body i.e. the
‘one flesh’ of the married couple. (See, for example, Genesis, 2.24;
Matthew, 19.5–6.)
10 Plutarch Gordon (
1975), 163, quotes Philemon Holland’s
1603
translation of
Moralia, 876E–877C:
‘Pythagoras . . . held that the principle of all things were numbers and
their symmetries, that is to say, the proportions that they have in
their correspondency one unto another; which he calleth otherwise
Harmonies: and these elements that be composed of them both, are termed
by him Geometrical . . . And our soul (as he saith) doth consist of the
quaternary number; for there is in it, understanding, science, opinion,
and sense; from whence proceedeth all manner of art and knowledge.’ The
treatise
De Placitis Philosophorum (‘On the
Doctrines of the Philosophers’) is now considered spurious.
11 Closely based on Giraldi, 667, where Servius is
mentioned, and a slightly longer version of the quotation from Virgil is
given, but without reference.
῎Οργια ‘Orgia’.
abusively improperly.
Servius (fourth century
ad). His
commentary, cited in many Renaissance editions of Virgil, existed in
shorter and longer versions, the latter not published until 1600. Though
Jonson undoubtedly knew and used this commentary, here it actually adds
nothing of moment; Jonson simply took the name from Giraldi. Throughout
these marginal notes Jonson seems to take references to Servius from
intermediary sources; but see Tudeau-Clayton (
1998), 143–9, for Servius’s general
significance.
Qualis . . .
Thyas ‘Like a follower of Bacchus raised to a frenzy by the
shaken emblems’; part of a passage describing Dido enraged by the rumour
that Aeneas is about to depart.
12 Macrobius (late fourth–fifth centuries
ad).
OCD considers him to be
Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius, praetorian prefect of Italy in 430, but
other identifications have been offered. His
Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis (‘Commentaries on the Dream
of Scipio’) was a vital text in transmitting Pythagorean and Platonic
ideas through the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The passage is
1.6.7–8: ‘one is called
monas, that is Unity, and
is both male and female, odd and even, itself not a number, but the
source and origin of numbers. This monad, the beginning and ending of
all things, yet itself not knowing a beginning or ending, refers to the
Supreme God’ (Stahl,
1952, 100–1).
13 Derived from Hotman, 562, including the Latin,
and the reference to Servius. (Again, the Virgilian reference is
unimportant in itself.) a . . . liberis ‘from the generation of children’.
14 Brisson, 34, quotes Ovid, explaining that: ‘the
ancients believed that whitethorn had the power to turn aside
witchcraft’. Sic . . .
dedit ‘So saying, he gave her a thorn with which she could
drive off all grim harm from the doors; this thorn was white’
(Orgel).
15 Brisson, 47 (actually 46), cites Plutarch and
quotes Varro (though the reference he and Jonson give is wrong; it is
actually 5.16). Plutarch
Moralia 263E. In answering the question ‘why do
they bid the bride to touch fire and water?’ Plutarch asks, among other
questions, ‘is it because fire purifies and water cleanses, and a
married woman must remain pure and clean?’ (Loeb). Varro The passage reads:
‘Therefore, he says, the conditions of procreation are two: fire and
water. Thus these are used at the threshold in weddings, because there
is union here, and fire is male, which the semen is . . . and the water
is the female because the embryo develops from her moisture.’
16 Brisson, 31, speaks of the saffron veil covering
the bride, citing Pliny (also in Alexander, 136 note o). In fact Pliny
is scarcely relevant.
17 Hotman] this edn; Hotto Q
17 Brisson, 23, Hotman, 544, both cite Festus for
the snowy fleece. de ritu
nuptiarum ‘concerning marriage rites’.
18 Brisson, 40, cites both Varro and Festus, but he
refers the latter to Paulus’s epitome, which Jonson seems to have
interpreted as implying Fragmenta (a collection
sometimes published separately). Despite this variation in attribution,
it is most likely that Jonson took this reference from the secondary
authorities. Varro Actually
7.34, where ‘the contents of the cumerum are
unknown to most of the uninitiated persons who perform the service’.
19 Festus is cited in all the authorities. Brisson,
45, alone, however, has the bride wear the fleece (as does Chapman in
the passage quoted in 162–7n.); Hotman, 545, and Alexander, 136, have
the fleece spread before her, as does Plutarch in Moralia, 271F.
20 Brisson, 37, refers to Quaestiones; Hotman, 545, to The Life of
Romulus. Quaestiones
Romanae
Roman Questions, 2 (Moralia 271F–272A). in Romulo in The Life of Romulus,
15.3–4, which suggests that the spindle derives from the fact that ‘when
the Sabines . . . were reconciled with [the Romans,] it was agreed that
their women should perform no other tasks for their husbands than those
which were connected with spinning’. This is not Jonson’s emphasis.
21 Brisson, 24, gives this reference to Pliny, but,
as Orgel notes, it is incorrect, and no other relevant passage has been
traced.
22 Translated from Brisson, 25, who quotes Festus.
Alexander, 136 note t, specifies the reference.
Hercules . . . children
Hercules, as well as begetting children by his wives, was supposed to
have impregnated the fifty daughters of Thespius, king of Boetia, who
were placed by their father in Hercules’ chamber on successive nights.
In some versions of the myth Hercules is claimed to have performed the
feat in one night, which Sir Epicure Mammon wishes to emulate (Alch., 2.2.37–9). in voce ‘under the word’.
23 Plutarch
Moralia, 264A–B: ‘the odd number was considered
better and more perfect . . . for the even number admits division and
its equality of division suggests strife and opposition; the odd number,
however, cannot be divided; it always leaves behind a remainder of the
same nature as itself’. He goes on to make the same point as
Martianus.
24 Martianus . . .
Mercurii Martianus
Capella probably composed his treatise De nuptiis
Philologiae et Mercurii (‘On the marriage of Philology and
Mercury’) in the first part of the fifth century ad. Like Macrobius’s work, it was influential in the
transmission of neoplatonic ideas throughout the Middle Ages and into
the Renaissance. in numero
pentade
‘on the number five’. The actual reference is
7.735: ‘The number five is composed of both sexes, since three is
masculine, and two is reckoned as feminine.’
25 Abbreviated from Giraldi (1584), 157–8, who also
cites Macrobius and Martianus. That Jonson supplies the precise
reference to Macrobius (not in Giraldi) suggests he may have checked
this source.
With . . . itself
In Greek the name for Juno,
ἥρα (‘Hera’), is an anagram of
ἀήρ (‘air’), as Giraldi notes (158).
De Somnium Scipionis ‘So
also Juno is called
[Jupiter’s
] sister and wife, for she is air; she is
called sister because the air is made of the same seeds as the sky, and
she is called wife because air is subordinate to the sky’ (trans. Stahl,
1952, 158).
This endorses the way Jupiter presides over the masque set. Giraldi
(158) makes the same point.
26 That peacocks were Juno’s birds was a
commonplace. The first quotation from Ovid is in Ripa,
Iconologia (
1603), 57, the second in Conti (1616), 69, though Jonson
could well have known both.
so . . .
air Derived from Conti (1616), 71:
ut-pote
aereo temperamento, ‘as if with an airy temperament’.
De . . . pennas
The Art of Love: ‘The bird of Juno displays her
excellent feathers’ (Orgel).
Habili . . . pictis ‘Saturnia
[= Juno
], mounting her swift
chariot, was borne back through the yielding air by her gaily decked
peacocks’ (Loeb).
26 avis] F2;
aves Q, F1
27 Regina ‘Queen’.
soror . . . regis ‘sister and consort of Jove, king of gods
and men’. The Latin is quoted exactly from Giraldi (1584), 162. Juno,
like Jupiter, was a child of Kronos and Rhea. (And see marginal note
25n.)
28 Apuleius . . .
Ass From Giraldi (1584),
158: ‘Apuleius in 10 describes her thus: a woman of handsome appearance,
having a white diadem on her head, and carrying a sceptre in her
hand.’
29 band] Q (Bend)
29 The details of this description are drawn from
Ripa’s Iconologia: see . The quotation from Virgil is
taken from Conti (1616), 71, where, as in Jonson’s marginal note, line
121 is omitted. His . . .
ciebo ‘I will pour on them a black rain mingled with hail, and
wake all the heavens with thunder.’
30 Lilies . . .
breast Cf. Conti (1616), 68: ‘It is related that Jove once,
while Juno was sleeping, placed the infant Hercules at her breast from
which, when he was forced away, the part of her milk which fell in the
heavens created that which is called the Milky Way, but that which fell
to earth made the lilies white that before were yellow.’ rose . . .
Iunonia Jonson
misunderstood his authorities. Giraldi (1584), 158, reads: Iunonis enim flos lilium. et rosa Iunonia
vocabatur, ‘for the flower of Juno is the lily, and it is
called the Juno rose’.
31 A close translation of Giraldi, 158–9. stepmother . . . Hercules
Bacchus and Hercules were the offspring of Jove’s adulteries, with
Semele and Alcmena respectively. Juno attempted at various times to
destroy both of them out of jealousy. insulting . . . spoils Juno has under her feet the
lion-skin, which was, famously, the trophy of Hercules’ killing and
flaying of the Nemean lion in the first of his twelve labours. It is
much less familiarly a sign of Bacchus (who is usually associated with
the panther or the fawn), and relates either to the incident in
Jupiter’s war against the Titans, when, wearing a lion’s skin, he killed
one of the Giants, and was therefore given the name Euhyius or ‘good
son’ (Giraldi, 391; Conti, 1616, 268), or to his transformation into a
lion when abducted by pirates on his journeyings. privigni ‘stepsons’.
32 Conti (1616), 67–8, gives these citations and
references, in the same order. Iunoni . . . curae ‘To Juno, before all guardian of the bonds
of marriage’. Dant . . .
Iuno ‘Primal Earth and nuptial Juno gave the sign.’ Jonson
reproduces Conti’s misquotation of Virgil. This offers clear evidence
that he did not check his source here – though he quotes the lines
correctly at marginal note 45. Epistula . . . [Demophoonti] i.e. Heroides, 2.41. Iunonemque . . . maritis
‘and by Juno, the kindly ward of the bridal bed’ (Loeb).
32 toris] H&S; terris Q, F1
34 Though the many names of Juno (of which Jonson
uses only some) are listed variously in all the mythographers, the bulk
of this marginal note derives, like the following exegeses, from
Giraldi. Its first part is a compression, but largely a translation of
167–8. The long passage from Festus is reproduced exactly from Giraldi;
who also mentions the first Plutarch source and Ovid’s Fasti, though he quotes directly from neither. Brisson, 23,
quotes the same passage from Festus, though with some variations, and
provides a longer version of the quotation in Greek from Romulus. This
is a composite note, where Giraldi is supplemented by Brisson. hasta caelibaris ‘the
caelibarian spear’.
34 caelibar] Q (Celibar)
(34) Ut . . . est ‘That just as the spear had been joined with the
body of the gladiator, so she herself was joined with the man; or
because they are under the protection of the matron Juno-of-the spear,
who was so called from carrying a spear; or because it omened that brave
men were to be born; or because in accordance with marriage law the
bride is subordinated to the command of her husband, and the spear is
the greatest of weapons and implies command’ (Orgel). σὺμβολον . . . γενέσθαι ‘is a reminder that the first marriage
[of Romans and Sabines] was attended with war and fighting’ (Loeb). Sabines See marginal note 53
and n. comat . . . comas
‘let [not] the bent-back spear comb down thy maiden hair’ (Loeb).
34 sint] H&S; sit Q,
F
34 σύμβολον] F2;
σὺμβολον Q, F1
34 εἶναι] H&S;
ειναι Q, F1
34 γενέσθαι] F2;
γενὲσθαι Q, F1
35 Though Giraldi, 162, is the primary source for
this note, Jonson also consulted Scaliger, whom he does not mention, and
Brisson, 43. Giraldi has: ‘That Juno is named Unxia, according to
Martianus, is seen to derive truly from this reason: that it was an old
custom of the Romans that the newly married entering into the house, the
posts were anointed with animal fat (axungia).
For it was held in that religion that they thought that animal fat would
ward off most evils. The grammarian Servius, on the fourth book of the
Aeneid, says it was the custom that newly
married girls as they came to the threshold of the husband’s house,
before they entered, adorned the posts with woollen fillets and anointed
them with oil, and thence were called uxores
(wives). But Pliny and Massurius record that it was customary to anoint
posts not with oil or animal fat, but wolf-fat, so that no sort of evil
potion could be brought in.’ quod . . . praeest ‘because she is in charge of anointings’.
This phrase is not in Martianus, nor in exactly this form in the other
authorities. libro quarto
Aeneid ‘the fourth book of the Aeneid’
[459]. tawdries A silk ‘lace’
or neck tie; abbreviated form of ‘tawdry laces’, itself an abbreviation
of ‘St Audrey’s lace’. fillets
hair bands. fat . . . boars
Derived directly from Scaliger, Poetices, 3.100
(ed. Fuhrmann, Deitz, and Vogt-Spira, 1994–8, 3.66): ‘the posts, adorned
with woollen fillets, they anointed with oil or the fat of wolves or
boars’. Landus in his commentary on Catullus, 61, also mentions the fat
of boars, which Giraldi does not, but Jonson’s phrasing clearly derives
from Scaliger. uxores . . .
unxores ‘wives as anointers’. Brisson, 43, correctly quotes
Servius, for where Giraldi writes et inde sunt uxores
dictae, Servius has et inde uxores dictae
sunt, quasi unxores.
36 A reordering and compression of Giraldi, 160,
with the reference to Servius, and the quotation from Festus. Iuga . . . Iugum ‘Juga,
because of Iugum’ (‘the yoke’). The feminine form
of the goddess’s name derives from the neuter word for a yoke. as Servius says Giraldi locates
Servius’s note as that to Aeneid, 4.16, Dido’s
claim that she intends to ally herself with no one in the chains of
marriage.
(36) quod . . . coniuges ‘because yoked creatures are equals
beneath the same yoke, whence also married people’ (coniuges – literally, ‘those yoked together’). before . . .
Iugario See Jonson’s
marginal note 1.
37 As . . .
Coniugalia Derived
closely from Giraldi, 160. somewhere
following i.e. 289 (and see n.).
37 Praecepta Coniugalia] this edn;
Connub. Prae. Q
38 Directly from Giraldi, 162, where he has ‘Interduca’ (as does Conti, 1616, 70). Iterduca, is, however, the first mention of this
cognomen of Juno, and source of the next marginal note, as it is in
Martianus, and it is also Brisson’s preferred form. The book reference
to Martianus is not in Giraldi. quod . . . comitabatur ‘because she
accompanied brides to the house of the bridegroom’.
39 quod . . . duceret ‘because she led them to the homes they
desired’. The phrase is found in Giraldi, 159, but is not there
attributed to Martianus. This implies that Jonson probably returned to
the original (as does marginal note 38).
40 A typically composite note. It begins with a
close translation and exact Latin quotation from Giraldi, 162–3, except
that he does not give there either the praise of, or a book reference
to, Arnobius. Both quotations and the Arnobius citation are in Brisson,
25–6, though Jonson’s wording in the first part of his note is closer to
Giraldi. same author i.e.
Martianus, cited in Giraldi. Cinxiae . . . cincta ‘The name of Juno
Cinxia was held sacred in marriage because at the beginning of
the union there was an untying of the girdle with which the new bride
was encircled’ (Orgel). Arnobius A teacher of rhetoric in Roman North Africa who
converted to Christianity, c. 295 ad, and composed seven books Adversus Nationes, defending Christianity against a charge of
novelty by demonstrating that Roman customs themselves had changed over
time (OCD). unctionibus . . . replicationi ‘Unxia
assists anointings, Cinxia the undoing of girdles’ (Orgel).
40 Cingulorum] F1;
Cinguloruus Q
41 Like the previous note, a synthesis of Giraldi,
161–2, and Brisson, 26. The bulk is in Giraldi, though Jonson compresses
and rearranges it, but a couple of phrases derive from Brisson, who
gives the reference to Servius, and the title of Pollux’s work. Perfecta ‘[She who is]
perfect’. Perfectrix
‘She who makes perfect’. Pollux (second century ad). Scholar
and rhetorician; his Onomasticon is a thesaurus
of information on Greek names and terms. ῎ΗἬρα τελεία ‘Hera teleia’ (‘Perfect Hera’). The
words appear in reverse order at the beginning of Giraldi’s treatment.
Praeses Nuptiarum
‘Protector of (or presider over) marriage’, in Brisson, 26. attribute . . . marriage
Translated directly from Brisson, 26. Aeneid . . . secunda The reference, taken
from Brisson, 26, is to Servius’s commentary on Aeneid, 4.45: ‘on the phrase: “and with the aid of Juno”’.
41 ῎,Ηρα
τελεία] H&S;
ἡρα τέλεια Q, F1
(41) Greek . . .
Pindarus Giraldi, 161, gives the reference to the
Nemean Odes, 10. 17–18, saying that Pindar
‘speaking of Hebe, the wife of Hercules, calls Juno, mother of Hebe,
τέλειαν’, and then quoting
him. The Loeb translation is: ‘of Herakles, whose bride Hebe, most
beautiful of goddesses, walks on Olympus beside her mother the
fulfiller’.
Nemeo . . .
Argivum ‘in the Nemean ode to Theaeus of Argos, son of Ulia’.
The title appears in various forms in Renaissance editions; Jonson
copies Giraldi.
τέλειος . . .
βίου The Greek is translated into Latin by Giraldi, 161, and
thence to English by Jonson ‘that . . . life’.
do . . . matrimony This phrase, which is not in
the sources, might be a covert comment on the particular occasion of
this marriage. For though the couple were technically over the age at
which they could consent to marriage (twelve for girls, fourteen for
boys), they could scarcely be called ‘mature’.
For . . .
perfecta From Giraldi,
162, neatly stitched to the preceding borrowing from a page earlier.
παρθένος ‘virgin’.
H&S note: ‘She was
so called at her temple in Samos, and at one of her three temples at
Stymphalus in Arcadia; there her attributes were “maid”, “perfect”, and
“widow”; . . . Pausanias (2.38.2) says of the lake Canathos in Nauplia
that she recovered her virginity by bathing in it every year.’ Giraldi,
162, explains that she was ‘maid’ before her marriage to Jove, ‘perfect’
when she married, and ‘widow’ finally when she disagreed with (or sat
apart from) Jove.
adulta
mature, adult.
41 Argivum] this edn; Argi. Q
41 τελεία] H&S;
τέλεια Q, F
42 Homer
In the
Iliad Zeus challenges the other gods: ‘Let
down out of the sky a cord of gold; lay hold of it all you who are gods
and all who are goddesses, yet not even so can you drag down Zeus from
the sky to the ground’ (Lattimore).
Plato . . . sun Directly from Valeriano,
Hieroglyphica (
1602), 639; first published in 1556,
and expanded in many editions.
Ergo . . . commemorat ‘Accordingly, since Mind emanates from
the Supreme God and Soul from Mind, and Mind, indeed, forms and suffuses
all below with life, and since this is the one splendour lighting up
everything and visible in all, like a countenance reflected in many
mirrors arranged in a row, and since all follow on in continuous
succession, degenerating step by step in their downward course, the
close observer will find that from the Supreme God even to the
bottommost dregs of the universe there is one tie, binding at every link
and never broken. This is the golden chain of Homer which, he tells us,
God ordered to hang down from the sky to the earth’ (Stahl,
1952, 145).
42 8] Orgel; θ Q
42 Theaeteto] H&S;
Thæteto Q, F1
42 which while] Q; with
which while H&S
43 The two names of Venus as morning and evening
star are commonplaces, for which Jonson scarcely needed to assemble
authorities. He might have collected some of his material from Giraldi,
556, who supplies references to Cicero and Martianus. For Pythagoras
Jonson returned directly to Martianus or to the commentaries on
Catullus.
Stella Veneris
‘Star of Venus’.
Phosphorus . . . Lucifer Greek and Latin for ‘light-bearer’.
Hesperus . . .
Noctifer Greek and Latin for ‘night-bearer’.
as . . . it Catullus, 62.7:
nimirum Oetaos ostendit Noctifer ignes, ‘For sure
the night-star shows his Oetaean fires’ (Loeb). The commentary of
Antonius Parthenius on this line (1604, 192): ‘The star, Venus, as
Cicero teaches, was called in Greek Phosphoros, in Latin Lucifer, when
it preceded the sun: when, however, it follows, Hesperos, which is
interpreted in Latin by Catullus as
noctifer.’
De Natura
Deorum ‘On the Nature of
the Gods’.
The . . . out
Probably derived from the commentary of Parthenius (1604, 192), who,
like Martianus, 8.882, mentions Pythagoras.
present office i.e. the function of Hesperus on
this occasion.
attollens . . .
Hesperus ‘Hesperus, loved of Venus, rises and shines for the
marriage with his Idalian rays’ (Loeb), quoted in Achilles Statius’s
commentary on Catullus (
1604), 194.
44 Hotman, 545: ‘When the new bride approaches the
house of the man, the bridegroom was standing at the threshold, calling
her to him.’ Orgel wrongly refers to 548, on the bride’s hesitation at
entering the house.
44 Hotman] this edn;
Hotto. Q
45 Prima . . . connubii ‘Primal Earth and nuptial Juno give the
sign; fires flashed in heaven, the witness to their bridal.’ This
anticipates the coming together of Dido and Aeneas. Alexander, 132, note
e, and Brisson, 45, each give half of the
quotation. (But see Jonson’s marginal note 32n.)
46 These authorities are mentioned in Giraldi,
558–9, but he gives neither the quotations from the first two, nor the
full reference to Propertius. Jonson cites the same authors (with some
additions) in Beauty, marginal note 45, and this
is probably a case of his trusting his memory. Epithalamium
Silvae, 1.2.54. Fulcra . . . Amorum ‘About the posts and
pillars of her couch swarm a troop of tender Loves.’ Pennati . . . iacent
‘Here and there, wherever the shade invites them, rest winged boys’
(Claudian, Epithalamium of Honorius and Maria,
10–11). Propertius This poem
recounts the way the poet is assaulted in his sleep by an ‘innumerable
crowd of little loves’.
47 A general observation about the appropriateness
of the invocation of Venus’s presence at a wedding, not a comment on the
cognomen Cypria. In the epithalamia of both Statius and Claudian Venus
(rather than Juno) has a central presence.
48 Homer reads: ‘She spoke, and from her breasts
unbound the elaborate, pattern-pierced zone, and on it are figured all
beguilements, and loveliness is figured upon it, and passion of sex is
there, and the whispered endearment that steals the heart away even from
the thoughtful’ (Lattimore). Conti (1616), 204, adds: ‘a variously
coloured cestus, in which pleasantness, and sweet
conversation, and benevolence, and flatteries, persuasions, deceits, and
sorceries were enclosed’. Jonson draws on Conti, but deliberately omits
the more ambivalent qualities of Venus.
48 14] Orgel; ξ Q
49 The citation is from Brisson, 21, where the
context is one of distinguishing the dignity of a wife from that of a
concubine. Spartianus His Life of Aelius Verus is in Scriptores Historiae Augustae, 1. At 5.11, Aelius justifies
his amours, saying to his wife ‘let me indulge my desires with others;
for “wife” is a term of honour not pleasure’ (Loeb). It scarcely seems
likely that Jonson actually had the original in mind.
50 Viden’ . . . comas ‘Do you see how the torches shake their
shining locks?’ (Catullus, 61.77–8). aureas . . . comas ‘shake their golden
locks’ (ibid., 95).
51 Quoted exactly from Scaliger, Poetices (1994), 3.64. a . . . agere ‘from the thalamos, and the
nuptial chamber is called θάλαμος because of its original significance,
from “flourishing together”, that is, leading a procreative life
together’ (Orgel).
51 θάλλειν] F2;
θάλειν Q;
θἀλειν F1
51 ἅμα] H&S;
ἄμα Q,
F1
52 The terms derive from Scaliger (1994), 3.68, 94.
This poem i.e. the genre
of epithalamium. versum
intercalarem Literally, ‘inserted verses’, or ‘a refrain’.
Scaliger observes: ‘We will also address Hymen through exclamations;
they sometimes invoke him as the god of weddings through inserted lines,
sometimes immediately at the very beginning of a poem.’ The invocation
of Hymen in Catullus, 62.4, is described as versus
intercalaris in Parthenius’s commentary (1604), 145. carmen amoebaeum
Literally, ‘alternating verses’; normally used of lines or stanzas
spoken by different people, as in Catullus, 62. Scaliger rather
puzzlingly writes: ‘but an alternating song – not only with Hymen’s
name, but also with “Run, drawing the woof-threads, ye spindles run”’.
Jonson seems to have taken Scaliger’s quotation of the refrain from
Catullus, 64.323–81, to indicate that the term also means a refrain.
yet . . . observed Jonson
does not have a regular refrain, nor are each of the stanzas spoken by
different groups; but, as he suggests, he is imitating his Catullan
models.
53 Translated, and the Latin quoted, exactly from
Brisson, 31, which cites Festus and quotes Catullus. ex gremio matris ‘from
her mother’s bosom’. wanting
lacking. ex proxima
necessitudine ‘from the nearest relation’. Romulus. . . Sabines Romulus,
the mythical founder (with his brother Remus) of Rome, populated his
city with male outlaws of all kinds. To ensure its continuance he
invited the Sabine peoples, original inhabitants of the territory
outside Rome, to a festival, and then seized their young women as wives
for himself, and for his associates. qui. . .
virginem ‘you who carry
off the tender virgin to a husband’.
55 A compressed translation of Brisson, 45. Festus
is a red herring; though cited in Brisson, his brief entry under clavim refers only to the keys as a sign of happy
childbirth, a significance Brisson downplays and Jonson does not
use.
56 This is another composite note. From Landus’s
commentary on Catullus, 61.162, Jonson could have obtained the
references to Servius and Alexander; from Brisson, 44, the reference to
Plutarch, but the wording of the latter part of Jonson’s marginal note
comes directly from Scaliger. Servius saith In the commentary on Virgil, Eclogues, 8.29.92.
(56) Plutarch. . . causes
Moralia, 271D, does not in fact mention the
reason that Jonson goes on to cite.
But . . . generation The wording here is a direct translation
of Scaliger (1994), 3.84.
Christ.
Landus An error for Constantius Landus (Costanzo Landi), Count
of Campiano, whose text and commentary, according to
H&S, was first published at
Pavia in 1550. (I have used the version in the 1604 edition of Catullus,
158–73.)
57, 58, 59 For . . .
ibid. Both references to Festus are in Alexander, 138, note
l.
57 in . . . rapi ‘on the word rapi’.
58, 59 Quo . . . putatur ‘By each of which deeds the other’s early
death is thought to be desired’ (Orgel). The complete quotation from
Festus, which Jonson translates at 442–6, is given in Alexander. In Q
this quotation is given for both notes, bracketed together.
58, 59 ] Q (cd})
58, 59 vtrius] Q (state 2); vltrius Q (stat
1), F1
60 From Giraldi, 553, who suggests the derivation
of the name from the Greek phrase Jonson quotes. Percy Simpson sternly
rebukes this ‘absurd etymology’, observing that ‘Cypris is, of course,
“the Lady of Cyprus” – Horace’s diva potens
Cypri’. In other words, Jonson, following his authorities, makes a
false distinction between the name here and at 330. quod . . . παρέχουσα ‘because she brings
about birth, the one who causes conception’ (Orgel). Theophilus i.e. Scholiast
Venetus B on Iliad, 5.458. Phurnutus i.e. L. Annaeus
Cornutus, De Natura Deorum Gentilium, 24.198n.
Both of these are cited from Giraldi.
60 παρέχουσα] Wh;
παἲρχουσα Q, F1
61 This note is assembled from two sources Jonson
used, and acknowledged, for the figure of Genius in King’s Ent., marginal note 9: Giraldi, and Rosinus, Antiquitatum Romanorum libri decem (‘Ten books on
the Antiquities of Rome’) (1584), though in neither is the exact opening
Latin phrase to be found. There may be another unlocated source, or
Jonson may have coined it to fit the general tenor of the opening of
Giraldi’s article on Genius. The subsequent Latin quotations from Festus
(under Genialis lectus and Genium) derive from Giraldi. Deus. . .
gignendi ‘God of nature,
or of begetting’. And. . .
female
Iuno was the Latin name for the female genius, as
Jonson could have found in Rosinus, 2.14. genialis . . . Genii ‘the “genial” bed,
which is made at weddings in honour of the Genius’. Genius . . . genuit ‘My
Genius, because he begot me.’ In Giraldi and Rosinus, as in Festus, this
quotation is attributed to one Aufustius.
62 Gordon, 288–9 comments: ‘This is vague. Jonson
seems to have had in mind Conti where he talks of Venus as
rerum omnium procreatricem [1616, 211
] and quotes
the
Georgics, book 2, and Lucretius
[213
] . . .
the passage from the
Georgics is only appropriate
if one has in mind Conti’s interpretation of the allegory of Venus.’ But
the reference to
Iliad, 8 is wrong, and is not
given in Conti. (Wheeler,
1938, 193, suggests that Jonson may
have had in mind 5.429, or 14.198–221, or 14.292–351.)
62 8] this edn; θ Q, F1
64 of] F1;
not in Q
64 From Giraldi, 37, who quotes Plutarch and the
Greek adage. Cf. Gold Age, 17n.; Time Vind., 15. Plutarch
Moralia, 266E–F: ‘And why do they consider Saturn
father of Truth? Is it that they think, as do certain philosophers, that
Saturn (Kronos) is Time (Chronos) and Time discovers the truth? Or
because it is likely that the fabled Age of Saturn, if it was an age of
the greatest righteousness, participated most largely in truth?’ (Loeb).
confer compare. ἄγει . . . χρονὸς ‘Time brings
truth to light.’
64 τὴν] F2; τὲν Q, F1
65 Hippocrates . . .
concitatior Compressed
from Giraldi, 37, on Veritas (‘Truth’):
‘Hippocrates in a certain epistle to Philopoemon describes her in this
manner: a beautiful woman, magnificent, with simple, fine apparel,
shining with light, whose eyes glittered with a pure light and seemed to
imitate the brightness of the heavens or the stars. The same writer in
the same place describes Opinion . . . in this manner: a woman who does
not look evil, but rather bold and vehement.’ (Jonson uses the beginning
and end.) Ripa
Iconologia, under Opinione
(1603, 369): ‘A woman soberly adorned, with a face neither beautiful nor
ugly; but she shows herself bold and prone to grasp everything which
appears in front of her, and for this reason she has to keep the wing in
her hands and on her shoulder as Hippocrates said.’ faccia . . . dispiacevole
‘a face neither beautiful nor displeasing’.
66 Pomponius
Mela Early Roman geographer, writing
c.
40–50
ad. The reference is to
De Situ Orbi, 2.8: ‘Euripo this inlet is called;
it bears a very rapid tide from the sea, reversing itself no less than
seven times a day and, again, seven times during the night. So strong is
the wind and current that all navigation is frustrated’ (trans. Berry,
1997). Jonson
could have found the reference in C. Stephanus,
Dictionarium Historicum, Geographicum, Poeticum (1553).