11–12 Omnis . . . Epig. XIV
"Every altar makes fair offerings to greet the returning god" (Martial,
8.15.2 in Renaissance editions, with ‘Deum’
substituted for Martial’s ‘Iovem’). See 254n.
below.
Title 1624] F2;
1623 Q
Title Omnis . . . deum See title-page for translation of the
epigraph by Martial. See . below.
title
Martial, 8.15]
this edn; Mart. Lib. viii Epig. ⅹⅳ. Q, F2; followed in both Q and F2 with a half-title, NEPTVNES TRIVMPH.
1 ceasing,]
Nichols; ceasing. Q, F2
2 pillars The pillars are pageant architecture of a kind that
would be appropriate to a ceremonial triumph or entry for a returning
hero. As a pair, they were perhaps intended to evoke the pillars of
Hercules: columns supposedly placed at the Western entrance to the
Mediterranean to mark the limits of the known world, and adopted as a
symbol by the Emperor Charles Ⅴ (with the motto Plus
Oultre) so as to signal that he aspired to a larger empire than
that of the Romans. Charles Ⅴ was the great-grandfather of Philip Ⅳ of
Spain, and hence founder of the dynasty to which Prince Charles would
have allied himself, had he married the Infanta. One of the rich gifts
that Philip Ⅳ had presented to the Prince was Titian’s great portrait of
Charles Ⅴ.
2 NEP. RED.1]
Q ((a) NEP. RED.);
superscript letter omitted F2, as are all
subsequent superscripts and marginalia. All Jonson’s marginalia are
indicated in Q with letters (a–m) placed before
the word or phrase to which they refer; this edition uses numbers
and moves them behind the word or phrase
2 NEP. RED.
Abbreviated from
Neptuno reduci, ‘To Neptune, that
brings back home’, an inscription occasionally found on the coinage of
Vespasian, Titus, and Hadrian, accompanying a figure of Neptune; see
Jonson’s marginal note (printed in this edition at the end of the
masque). J. G. Milne explains (in
H&S) that such designs were
struck when the emperors returned from long journeys, and commemorated
their safe-keeping by the god. The designs marked the return of Titus
from the conquest of Jerusalem,
ad 71
(celebrated at Rome by a joint triumph with Vespasian), and the end of
Hadrian’s tour of the empire,
ad 125. Jonson
uses the motto to allude to Charles’s successful journey home from
Madrid. Jonson’s marginal notes are printed at the end of this text.
2 NEP. RED.1]
Q ((a) NEP. RED.);
superscript letter omitted F2, as are all
subsequent superscripts and marginalia. All Jonson’s marginalia are
indicated in Q with letters (a–m) placed before
the word or phrase to which they refer; this edition uses numbers
and moves them behind the word or phrase
JONSON’S
MARGINALIA 1 In the moneys of Vespasian and Adrian, we find
this put for NEPTUNO
REDUCI, under
Neptunalia,
Feriae, Ⅵ.
NEP.
dicatae.
1–12 ] Q;
not in F2
1–2 These two notes are taken from a single paragraph
in the chapter on Neptune in Giraldi’s
De deis gentium
(
1548), 217:
Nomismata ipse duo conspexi, alterum Vespasiani,
alterum Adriani, quae ambo habebant a tergo has literas,
NEPT.
RED. Hoc est, Neptuno
reduci. Pulchra vero erat imago nudi stantis, in laevi humeri tergo
propendebat amictus, dextera trilorem scuticam, laeva elatum
tridentem tenebat. A Neptuno porro Neptunalia dicta. Huius enim dei
Ⅵ feriae, ait M. Varro . . . Sed iam ipsius dei nomina
interpretemur. Secundus Jupiter aliquando Neptunus vocatus est.
Statius: Dextramque secundi, Quod superest, complexa Jovis.
Jonson’s notes are a paraphrased translation of Giraldi, though he
expanded Giraldi’s brief reference to ‘Statius’. Giraldi’s explanation
of the term
Neptunalia comes from the grammarian
Marcus Terentius Varro, who briefly glosses it when discussing the names
of Roman festivals in
De lingua Latina, 6.3.
1 Adrian The
Emperor Hadrian.
371 NEPTUNO
REDUCI ‘to Neptune, that brings back home’.
371 Neptunalia . . . dicatae ‘Games in honour of Neptune, six
holidays consecrated to Neptune’.
3 SEC. IOV.
Abbreviated from secundo Iove, ‘the second Jupiter’, a
term Statius uses for Neptune in the Achilleid,
1.48–9. In the Achilleid, Thetis tries to avert the
Trojan War, in which her son Achilles will die, by pleading with Neptune
to overwhelm the ship in which Paris carries off Helen, but Neptune
declines to raise a storm or interfere with fate.
2 That is,
Secundo Iovi, for so
Neptune is called by Statius in
Achilleid, 1.
[48–9
],
Secundus
Jupiter:
Dextramque secundi,
quod superest,
complexa Jovis, as
Pluto is called
Jupiter tertius.
2 Secundo
Iovi ‘to the second Jove’. I retain the unmodernized spelling
Iovi, as this is the form from which the name is
abbreviated on Jonson’s column, and as it would have appeared in a real
Roman inscription.
371 Dextramque . . . Jovis ‘and as for the rest, clinging to the
right hand of the second Jove’.
371 Jupiter
tertius ‘the third Jupiter’.
3 stage]
STAGE Q, F2
3 argument plot synopsis, to help the spectators understand the
action. Cf. the final scene of Middleton’s
Women Beware
Women (1622?, ed. John Jowett, in Taylor and Lavagnino,
2007), in which
the Duke is given a plot summary (‘argument’) of his wedding masque
before it is performed for him. Probably the Poet was distributing
multiple copies of a single sheet written by a scribe, like the
manuscript summary that survives for
Queens (see
Masque Archive,
Queens, 1); in which case, he could
have presented his summary of the action at 82–108 as a reading from the
argument. Alternatively, he was perhaps carrying copies of the printed
quarto of the whole text, though these would have been much bulkier.
4 COOK If,
as seems likely, the Cook was a fat character, he was probably played by
the clown William Rowley, who also took starring roles in other masques.
See
Christmas, Introduction;
Pleasure Rec., 4n.,
Augurs,
17n., and
Fort. Isles, 34n.
6 pluck
twitch; but in gaming, ‘pluck for’ meant draw a card (OED, Pluck v. 2d), hence the Poet’s
reply.
7 colour for,
encounter with Technical terms from primero (a card game
similar to poker), meaning ‘already to hold in one’s hand cards of a
corresponding suit’ and ‘to pick a winning card’. H&S compare Sir
John Harington’s epigram on Marcus: ‘Marcus never can encounter right, /
Yet drew two aces, and for further spite / Had colour for it with a
hopeful draught, / But not encountered, it availed him naught’
(Harington,
Letters and Epigrams, ed. McClure,
1930, 228). For
‘pluck’, ‘colour’ and ‘encounter’ used together, see
Epigr. 112.18–20;
OED does not include an entry for ‘colour’ in this
sense. See also
Volp., 3.5.36n.
9 went you
upon was your hand.
9 upon,]
G; vpon? Q, F2
13 this . . .
House Because the Banqueting House was used for ceremonial
feasts and ambassadorial receptions as well as masques.
15 and] Q; the
F2
15 allowance to
it approval of it. The phrase parodies language used in the
licensing of literary and dramatic texts; books could only be published,
and plays performed, if they had official ‘allowance’.
16 confectioner maker of sweetmeats and pastries.
20 engine
device, contrivance.
25 Either’s . . .
mind Although Jonson’s note refers this sentiment to a
classical source, the relationship between poetry and cookery is one of
his recurrent preoccupations, notably the idea of the poet as
‘digesting’ works by previous writers, and having to serve his
customers’ tastes. See
Epicene, Prol. 8–11;
New Inn, Prol.
1–23; and Boehrer (
1997b). The Cook’s presentation of the
antimasque as a dish to be set before the court to give them pleasure
literalizes the metaphor of an audience feasting on or consuming one’s
work that these other Jonsonian passages present.
3 Vide
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophistai, 1,
ex Euphron
comico.
3 Athenaeus
See .,
above. Jonson refers to his
Deipnosophistai, 1.7d,
which preserves an extract from a lost play by the comic poet Euphron:
‘’Twixt cook and poet where’s the difference? / The art of either’s
simply common sense’ (Edmonds,
Fragments,
1961, 3.279). The
context is the story of an artful cook whose master wanted anchovies out
of season: he prepared a turnip so that it looked and tasted like
anchovy.
27 Expect Pay
attention (from Lat. expecto, –are,
to look out for).
31–8 The allegory implied here is fully worked out in
the Intermeans to Staple, in which the onstage
spectators who watch the play include characters named Expectation and
Tattle. ‘Expectation’ plays on ‘Expect’ in line 27, and suggests the
meaning of ‘curious anticipation’.
35 she,] F2;
she. Q
37 But . . .
understand Repeated in
Staple, Induction,
26.
45–77 This passage is reused, lightly adapted, in
Staple,
4.2.4–40.
45 I . . .
cellar i.e. Poetic inspiration depends on wine.
46 oracle . . .
bottle In the final chapters of
Rabelais’s Gargantua and
Pantagruel (5.34–47), Pantagruel and Panurge visit
the Temple of the Holy Bottle, a shrine dedicated to wine. The oracle
tells them ‘drink’ is the word that unites all nations, and inspires
them to spout doggerel poetry. In ch. 46, the oracle is passingly called
‘
la bouteille trismegiste’.
4 Vide Rabelais, 5.
46 Hogshead
Trismegistus A parody of the name Hermes Trismegistus (=
thrice-greatest Hermes), supposedly the author of mystical writings
thought to preserve the wisdom of ancient Egypt. See
Fort. Isles, . A
‘hogshead’ is a liquor cask, of some fifty gallons’ capacity.
46 Trismegistus,]
Nichols;
Trismegistus: Q, F2
47 Pegasus
The winged horse. The fountain Hippocrene, sacred to the muses and so
associated with poetic inspiration, was produced when Pegasus’s foot
struck Mount Olympus. Cf. Jonson’s inscription for the Apollo Room (
Leg. Conv.,
‘Apollo Verses’, 13).
48–77 This praise of cookery invokes the idea of the
symposium or philosophical banquet, at which good food and good ideas go
hand in hand, and perhaps glances ironically at Inigo Jones’s Vitruvian
notion of the architect as the king among artists, whose craft requires
him to be expert in all other disciplines (see
‘Expostulation’, 6.375–80, 10n.). The
speech draws heavily on passages from the
Deipnosophistai (‘The Banquet of the Learned’) by Athenaeus
(Greek author, born in Egypt, fl. 200
ad), a
dialogue on various topics, but especially gastronomy, that preserves
many extracts from lost comedies (Jonson’s copy of this book is now in
the Bodleian Library). Cf. Athenaeus, 9.377f (quoting the Master Cook in
The False Accuser by Sosipater):And 7.290e (quoting a cook in the
Eileithyia of
Nicomachus):The cook goes on to explain that astronomy tells him when food’s in
season, geometry helps organize the kitchen, and medicine fits the food
to men’s palates (translations by Edmonds,
Fragments of
Attic Comedy,
1961, 3.281–5, 267–9). See also Jonson’s note 3.
48 thee –]
Wh; thee,— Q, F2
49 range
group of ovens.
49 dresser
kitchen sideboard.
51 kitchen, where]
Orgel; Kitchin. Where Q, F2; kitchen. What! G
51 cook –]
H&S; Cook! Q, F2
55 read
lecture.
57 For a
professor Among those who profess knowledge in all the arts.
Jonson uses the term for a poet in
Volp., Epistle,
8, and
Discoveries, 203.
59–66 In the Renaissance, cooks would commonly sculpt
pastry into elaborate and fanciful structures for formal banquets. For
the comparison between pastry and fortifications, see Fletcher,
Massinger (and Jonson?),
Rollo, Duke of Normandy (1620?; ed.
Jump, 1948), 2.2.16–19: ‘I have framed a fortification / Out of
rye-paste, which is impregnable, / And against that, for two long hours
together, / Two dozen of maribones shall play continually’; Fletcher,
Women Pleased (1619?; Beaumont and Fletcher,
Dramatic Works, ed. Bowers,
1966), 3.4.14–15: ‘Where’s the castle
custard / He got at court’; Massinger,
The Unnatural
Combat (1624), 3.1.23–4: ‘As tall a trencher-man . . . / As ere
demolished pie-fortification’; and Massinger,
A New Way to
Pay Old Debts (1626;
Plays and Poems, ed.
Edwards and Gibson,
1976), 1.2.24–6: ‘Though I crack my brains to find out
tempting sauces, / And raise fortifications in the pastry / Such as
might serve for models in the Low Countries’. There is a similar but
remoter analogy in Athenaeus,
Deipnosophistai, 9.377b
(quoting an unnamed play by Posidippus that compares a cook to a
general): ‘Here the enemy’s / The whole array of guests, an army corps;
/ They move in force, they’ve had a week or more / Of waiting for this
meal, and now they’re in it; / They’re full of fight and thinking every
minute / They’ll be at close quarters’ (Edmonds,
Fragments,
1961, 3.241).
61 Mounts
i.e. Like canon.
61 fifty-angled Technical developments in Renaissance
fortification were driven by the dominance of gunpowder as a weapon of
war. City defences were often built in elaborate angled or pointed
shapes, intended to render the walls less exposed to attacking forces,
and to allow the defenders greater coverage and flexibility for their
gun positions.
61 custards
open pies; their pastry has been cut to resemble a fort.
67 influence
In astrology, the supposed power of the heavens on sublunary things; an
emanation or occult force.
70 He has]
Wh; He, has Q, F2;
He’has H&S
70 chemists
alchemists, who believed that their processes reproduced the work of
nature.
71 bare-breeched threadbare.
71 brethren . . .
Cross The Rosicrucians, a fictitious group of German mystics
who were thought to have arcane knowledge of nature’s magical workings:
see
Fort.
Isles, 24n.
72 engineer] Q, F2 (Inginer)
75 poet –]
Orgel;
Poet, Q, F2
76 fury
ecstasy; poetic afflatus.
76 shows
proves it.
78 Your
device Please tell me your conceit or governing idea. In
courtly festivity, the ‘device’ was the central subject or conception of
the show, as in
MND, 5.1.48–51: ‘the riot of
the tipsy Bacchanals . . . / That is an old device, and it was played /
When I from Thebes came last a conqueror’. Cf.
Irish, 66.
82 Neptune
God of the sea; frequently associated with Britain, being an island
kingdom, and here used to designate King James.
82 styles
titles: because James was a monarch with multiple kingdoms.
85 chief . . .
riding Neptune was said to have created the horse, and taught
how it could be tamed. See the Homeric
Hymn to
Poseidon, 22.4 (H&S). There may also be an allusion to
James as a patron of horsemanship, given his personal obsession with the
pleasures of hunting. Cf.
Time Vind., 406–28.
86 Albion The
name of the island in ancient times, as recorded by Pliny and Ptolemy,
and used in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s
History of the Kings of
Britain to denote Britain before the arrival of Brute
(Geoffrey,
1966,
72). Here it is adopted as a pseudonym for Prince Charles. The name’s
history and etymology are discussed in John Selden’s notes to
Poly-Olbion (1619): see Drayton,
Works, ed. Hebel,
1961, 4.23–5.
86 the most his
own his dearest and only son.
87 to . . .
known i.e. secret. Jonson never quite explains the nature of
this ‘discovery’, since it would be tactless to admit that James’s
diplomacy had collapsed, but also because at this juncture no one quite
knew for certain what English foreign policy was (see headnote). The
word ‘discovery’ was part of the political discourse of the moment:
Middleton’s allegory of the same events, A Game at
Chess (1624), culminates with ‘checkmate by discovery’, the
thing ‘discovered’ being the perfidiousness of the Spanish (and cf. 356
below).
88 Celtiberia
Northern Spain; ancient writers used the name to refer to peoples living
in the province of Spain between the Ebro in the north, which flows
through Zaragoza, and the Tagus in the south, which flows through Madrid
(OED; OCD). This
passage is a transparent allegory of Charles and Buckingham’s overland
journey to Madrid in March 1623.
89 manager of
horse George Villiers, Marquis of Buckingham, who was James’s
master of horse.
5 A power of Neptune’s by which he is called
Hippius or
Damaeus, and conferred on
a person of special honour in the allegory, as by office;
vide
infra.
5 Hippius, Damaeus ‘equine’, ‘the tamer’. These are cult titles
of Neptune that refer to his role as god of horses and horsemanship,
hence finding a place for Buckingham (James’s master of horse) in the
masque’s royal mythology. They are listed and discussed by Giraldi (
1548), 220–1, 225,
who himself cites Pausanias’s
Description of Greece,
7.21.7–8: ‘Beside the name given by poets to Poseidon
[i.e. Neptune
] to adorn their verses, and in
addition to his local names, all men give him the following names:
Marine, Giver of Safety, God of Horses
[Hippius]. Various reasons could be plausibly
assigned for the last of these surnames having been given to the god,
but my own conjecture is that he got this name as the inventor of
horsemanship’ (Loeb). Jonson uses Latinized forms of the two cult
titles.
Damaeus is a much rarer name than
Hippius, occurring only once in Greek literature (Pindar,
Olympian Odes,
1997, 13.98) and not at all in Latin.
Giraldi, 225, explains it as ‘one who tames horses’ (
quod
videlicet equos domuerit) and derives its etymology from the
Greek
damazo, ‘I tame’. Probably he had in mind the
common Homeric epithet
hippodamos, ‘horse-tamer’.
371 vide
infra ‘see below’.
90 Proteus In
Greek myth, the old man of the sea, who had the power of shape-changing.
H&S take this
as referring to Sir Francis Cottington (1578–1652), the diplomat and
Spanish expert who accompanied Charles to Madrid. However, the collapse
of the Spanish match had undermined Cottington’s favour with the Prince
(Havran,
1973,
80); and since later in the masque Proteus sings, it seems clear that
the part was performed by a musician, and is unlikely to have been meant
as an allusion to the statesman. More probably, Proteus’s presence
alludes to the circumstance that Charles and Buckingham went to Spain in
disguise. Proteus supplies the cunning that not only directs the
protagonists to Spain, but enables them to defeat the Spanish plots; cf.
and
note below.
93 review
behold once more (from Lat. revideo, –ere, to see again).
94 floating
isle Charles was brought home in October by an English naval
squadron (commanded by Sir Francis Stuart, the dedicatee of Epicene).
95 Hesperian
Spanish, after Hesperus, the evening (or western) star.
97 sirens The
fable casts Charles as Odysseus (Ulysses), journeying by sea between
countries and resisting the Infanta’s bewitching charms: see also 271–8.
Possibly this account of him escaping the seductive sirens echoes the
English anxiety that, while at Madrid, he might be forced to convert to
Catholicism. Certainly it plays on the fear of many that for a time he
had effectively become a prisoner of the Spanish.
98 monsters
Odysseus also encountered monsters, such as the Cyclops and the
man-eating Laestrygones.
99 How . . .
lost On 12 September, Charles narrowly escaped drowning in a
storm in Santander harbour (in northern Spain), when he was being
transported in a rowing boat to inspect his flagship. The incident was
commemorated in a fulsome poem by Edmund Waller, ‘Of the danger his
majesty, being prince, escaped in the road at St Andere’ (
Poems, ed. Thorn-Drury,
1901, 1.1–7).
105 our . . .
pledge Prince Charles; here called a ‘pledge’ because while in
Madrid he was effectively a hostage to Spain. Cf. below.
106 Hippius
Buckingham. The name, which means ‘equine’, is one of Neptune’s cult
titles. See Jonson’s note 5, which explains it.
107–9 ‘Who, suffering from so much resentment (for his
part in the Spanish affair), shone out so brilliantly in his own natural
greatness that he demonstrated even to the envious that he was bound to
obey what Neptune had commanded of him’. Envy is here personified,
identified iconographically by her hungry (‘starved’) snakes. The
passage alludes to the whispering campaign that mounted around
Buckingham at home, until the Prince’s safe return, that he had
encouraged Charles to undertake a potentially suicidal mission.
108 starved] Q (steru’d)
110 But . . .
now The Cook queries the lapse of time between Charles’s
return from Spain (5 October) and the performance of the masque (6
January).
112–23 A summary of the astonishing display of popular
rejoicing in London and the provinces that met Charles’s return safe
from shipwreck and from Spanish marriage. John Taylor,
Works (
1630), 103, said there were over one hundred bonfires between
St Paul’s churchyard and London Bridge alone. For a full narrative, see
Cogswell (
1989),
6–12. Jonson emphatically separates Whitehall’s celebrations from such
plebeian junketing.
112 extemporal
(1) impromptu; (2) undisciplined, chaotic.
113 were . . .
sin would be understood to be riotous and inappropriate
excess.
114 Minerva
Goddess of wisdom.
115 rehearse
sing repeatedly.
116 fit (1)
stanza of a ballad; (2) frenzied outcry.
117 country-]
this edn; Countrey, Q
119 Neptune’s
guard Presumably this refers to the yeomen of the guard, the
sovereign’s personal bodyguard.
119 meant
intended to do.
121 Archy
Archibald Armstrong (d. 1672), court fool to James I and Charles I, and
a dwarf, hence his description as a ‘monster’. He was famous for the
bitterness and indiscretion of his jests. He joined Charles at Madrid,
and was apparently given free access to the Infanta’s apartments;
according to James Howell’s
Familiar Letters (ed.
Jacobs,
1892),
1.169, he went ‘blustering among them, and flirts out what he lists’.
Although Archy was given a pension by King Philip, he was a disruptive
presence among the English at Madrid, making undiplomatic jokes about
the Armada, quarrelling with the courtier Toby Matthew, and taunting
Buckingham for mishandling the negotiations. He remained no friend to
Buckingham after his return, and in 1628 spoke approvingly of his
assassination (
ODNB; see also
Discoveries,
233). He was to have led the antimasquers in this masque; see
below.
123 they the
muses (who will provide their harmonious celebrations only when the
noise made by the mob has calmed down).
126 Delos
Island in the Aegean sea, one of the Cyclades; represented in myth as a
floating island. When Leto (Latona) was pregnant with Apollo and Diana,
her children by Jove, Hera commanded the earth to deny her any place of
sanctuary; Neptune fixed Delos in one spot, and Leto gave birth
there.
126 Delos] Q (Delus)
6 Vide
Lucianum,
in Dialogo Iridis et Neptuni.
6 Lucianum In Lucian’s Dialogue of Iris and
Poseidon (Dialogues of the Sea-gods, 9), Iris
(the rainbow) carries Zeus’s command to Poseidon (Neptune) that he fix
the floating island of Delos in a single spot, so that Leto may safely
give birth there.
128 made
emergent caused to issue forth. A Latinism; cf.
Discoveries,
20 and
n.
128 conceive
understand.
132–5 Repeated in Staple,
3.3.35–40.
133 Arion A
poet and musician who worked at the Corinthian court, sixth century bc. Herodotus describes how, when sailing to
Corinth with rich gifts, he was robbed by the sailors and threatened
with murder. Permitted by them to sing, he threw himself from the ship
and was saved from drowning by a dolphin: charmed by his music, it
rescued him and carried him safely to shore.
134 conger
conger eel.
137 tree the
banyan tree, which propagates itself as Jonson describes. Ralegh (
History of the World,
1614, 1.67) claims that one banyan
could hide a troop of horsemen; in
Paradise Lost,
9.1106–7, Milton describes the banyan as ‘a pillared shade /
High overarched’, with ‘echoing walks between’. Jonson closely follows
the description in Strabo’s
Geographia, 15.1.21: see
his marginal note 7. Inigo Jones’s surviving design for the floating
island (
Illustration 93;
Orgel and Strong,
1.376–7) does not precisely reproduce what this description
promises, since it depicts palm trees rather than a banyan, though the
palms are arranged in arcades so as to give the required effect of a
‘
porticus’ (145). Possibly Jones redrew this image
when he revisited his designs while adapting
Neptune’s
Triumph for performance as
The Fortunate
Isles; the banyan is not mentioned in
Fort.
Isles.
7 Vide
Strabo,
Geographia, 15.
7 Strabo His Geographia, 15.1.21, reports
that ‘India produces many strange trees . . . Onesicritus, who even in
rather superfluous detail describes the country of Musicanus, which, he
says, is the most southerly part of India, relates that it has some
great trees whose branches have first grown to the height of twelve
cubits, and then, after much growth, have grown downwards, as though
bent down, till they have touched the earth; and that they then, thus
distributed, have taken root underground like layers, and then, growing
forth, have formed trunks; and that the branches of these trunks again,
likewise bent down in their growth, have formed another layer, and then
another and so on successively, so that from only one tree there is
formed a vast sunshade, like a tent with many supporting columns. He
says also of the size of the trees that their trunks could hardly be
embraced by five men’ (Loeb translation).
140 Musicana
Musicanus, in southern India (Strabo, 15.1.21, 33).
141 bole
trunk.
145 porticus covered walkway (Latin). An architectural term.
154 heterogene . . .
device different in kind from true invention. ‘Heterogene’ is
an obsolete form of ‘heterogeneous’; cf.
Alch., 2.5.11. For
‘device’, see . above.
155 by-works
(1) accompaniments, subsidiary to the main work (cf.
Alch., 2.3.96–7:
‘two / Of our inferior works are at fixation’); (2) work done awry or
amiss; monstrosities (
OED, By-work, 3).
155 outlandish
extravagant; foreign.
156 all the
heaven completely. See
OED, Heaven-wide
adv., citing Chapman’s
Iliad (1611),
23.299: ‘hurled about this way and that, . . . all heaven wide of his
end’; and
Hym., 713.
157 For By
reason of. The Cook rebukes the Poet for letting his high literary
ideals blind him to the need to entertain his audience with more
immediate pleasures (as he spells out at 216–17 below).
160 want
lack.
161 service
course of food.
163 take
please.
165 jump
coincide; agree.
167 boiling
house a department in the royal kitchen; also in
Love Rest.,
95, and
Merc. Vind., 66.
167 SD]
after G; not in Q
168 olla
podrida mixed stew or hotchpotch; literally, ‘rotten pot’
(Spanish). This is a hit against the Spanish ambassador Diego Sarmiento
de Ancuña, Count of Gondomar, whose custom of entertaining visitors to
the Catholic services at the Spanish embassy with an olla
podrida was well known (Dr Glyn Redworth, private
communication). Gondomar established an unusually close friendship with
James during his periods of residency (1613–18, 1620–2), and was widely
blamed for having persuaded him to spend so long pursuing the mirage of
a Spanish alliance.
171 di
stato (gossip about) affairs of state.
173–4 affairs . . .
mysteries Probably, news about the masque preparations, which
the gossips take for secret business.
174 curtains] Q (cortines)
176 master . . .
camels Fictitious official titles, though Whitehall did have a
small exotic zoo. See 193.
178 their
minutes their minute-to-minute goings on.
179 fishes
silent.
179 fishes,]
Morley; fishes. Q
180 proverb
‘Had I fish was never good with garlic’ (Tilley, H7; quoting James
Kelly’s Complete Collection of Scottish Proverbs,
1721: ‘an answer to them that say had I such a thing, I would do so or
so’).
181 quest
inquest; a body of persons appointed to hold an inquiry (OED, Quest n. 2).
183 epicene
gender both sexes. In Latin and Greek, ‘epicene gender’
denotes nouns that can denote either sex without changing their
grammatical gender: hence the child’s reputation for learning (185).
184 Amphibian] Q (Amphibion)
184 Archy See
121; he is ‘amphibian’ (= of double existence) because he is only half a
man.
188 Giblets
Unidentified; another court fool or dwarf?
190 gallimaufry ragout; a hashed dish.
196 laced
mutton prostitute. OED (Laced ppl. a.1 5) suggests that this slang
phrase punningly links the whore’s lace bodice with ‘laced’ in the
culinary sense = ‘meat prepared with lace-like incisions’.
197 frisking
frolicsome; given to whims.
198 corantos
newsbooks. The first printed gazettes on European affairs appeared in
1620. See
News
NW, Introduction.
198 corantos] Q;
Corranto F2
199-200 Ambler,
Buz Offstage characters mentioned in
Staple, 1.5.110,
3.1.2; members of
the fledgling news industry, which was fuelled partly by the gossip
circulating in St Paul’s cathedral, at this time one of London’s prime
meeting points (see
EMO, 3.1.2n.). Ambler’s name
suggests he spends his time walking the aisles of St Paul’s.
200 capon (1)
castrated cock; (2) idiot.
201 underwrites
for (1) substitutes for turkey (the bird); (2) supplies news
from Turkey (the country).
202 gentleman . . .
forest officer in charge of a royal forest.
203 Graces
Street Gracechurch Street, a centre of the poultry trade.
204 cony
rabbit (with an indecent pun). Poulterers sold both poultry and
game.
206 Hogrel The
name is a dialect word meaning a young sheep, older than a lamb but not
yet fully mature, but it is clearly chosen for the pun on ‘butcher’ and
‘hog’.
208 Podrida Putrified. In this period, the less fresh meat was,
the longer it was cooked.
212 performs
it acts as a substitute for the artichoke.
215 dance;]
G; Dance. Q, F2
215 charger
serving dish. The Cook metaphorically compares the collection of
citizens – whom he has individually likened to various foodstuffs – to a
feast of food being brought onto the stage, as if on a platter. The
sweat produced by their dancing supplies the ‘broth’ (214) to the
dish.
218 Nam . . . amat ‘For even a triumph likes fun’. Adapted from
Martial, 7.8.10 (which has si for nam).
219 Orgel and Strong (1.380–1) tentatively associate
with this entry a group of sketches by Inigo Jones depicting grotesque
creatures: a turkey, a fish, and two indeterminate animals. See
Illustration 90. Some of
these may have come out of the cooking pot, though they do not
correspond point by point with the figures that are described by the
child.
221 the
masquers Their
costume is not described, but Orgel and Strong (1.382) tentatively link
them to a design showing a figure sporting a pointed beard of the kind
that Prince Charles wore at the time of his return from Madrid. See
Illustration 95.
221 several
sieges ranked seats. Jones’s sketches include a design for
The Fortunate Isles showing twelve masquers and a
musician (presumably Proteus) sitting on a floating island, deeply
embowered with trees (see
Illustration 93). Cf. . above. The larger scene design
is lost, but it must have included some depiction of the ‘
shore’ (243) at which the floating island eventually came to
land.
221 The
heavens i.e. the upper stage. The SD describes a double
discovery, with the masquers disclosed on the main stage, and Apollo and
the chorus above. It is notable that there is no further mention of
Mercury in this masque, nor is he named in the corresponding SD in Fort. Isles. Perhaps Jonson forgot he had included
him, or changed his plans. For possible problems with the location of
the chorus, see . below.
223 music, the while] F3; musique. the while, Q, F2
225 shepherd . . . seas
Proteus.
8 Proteus,
pastor maris.
8 pastor
maris ‘the shepherd of the sea’. Giraldi (
1548), 228–9, has
a long discussion of Proteus, though this precise phrase does not appear
there.
9 Portunus,
qui portubus praeest.
9 Portunus] Q
(Portumnus)
9 qui . . . praeest ‘who rules over harbours’. Quoted from
Giraldi (
1548),
231:
Portunus deus et ipse marinus, ut ait Servius, qui
portubus prae est. Giraldi goes on to explain that Portunus was
the son of Ino, whom the Greeks called Leucothea, a connection to which
Jonson returns at 349 above.
226 that . . .
keys Portunus, the Roman god who protects harbours and marine
entrances. His mythological function at sea parallels that of Janus on
land. His Greek equivalent is the god Palaemon, in whose honour the
Isthmian games were held (see
249n., and
Love’s
Tr., 88).
235 votes
prayers. From
votum (Lat.), vow; but for ‘votes’ as
‘petitions’ or ‘desires’, cf.
Time Vind., 241n.
238 tyrant’s] Q (Tyrans)
244 SARON God
of navigation; see Jonson’s marginal note 10. Saron reappears in
Jonson’s design for the 1625 royal entry.
10 The god of navigation, with Strabo, Aristides
rhetor, and Pausanias
in
Corinthiacis: whence the proverb grew frequent with the Greeks,
Σάάρωνος ναυτικώτερος,
Sarone magis
nauticus.
10 Σάάρωνος
ναυτικώτερος ‘more nautical than Saron’. This whole note is
paraphrased from Giraldi (
1548), 231:
Saron deus
marinus, qui nauticae arti praeesse existimabant, a quo datum est
mari nomen, ut Graeci scriptores meminere, et qui de Situ orbis
scripserunt, ut Strabo. Aristides rhetor haec ferme in Themistocle
scribit: Nec uti per omne tempus in mari habitent, quem admodum
aiunt Glaucum Anthedonium, et Saronem mari cognominem
[sic
]
eius, et Pausanias in Corinthiacis meminit, qui Althepiae
regioni imperauit. Hinc et proverbium apud Grecos,
Σάάρωνος ναυτικώτερος. The
supporting references that Jonson cites from Giraldi are all
geographical accounts of the Saronic Gulf, named after Saron: Strabo,
Geographia, 8.2.2, 8.6.4, 8.6.22; Aelius Aristides
(prolific Greek author and rhetorician,
ad
117–
c. 81), oration 46; and Pausanias, ‘Of
Corinth’,
Description of Greece, 2.30.7, which says that Saron
was the third mythic king of Troizen, and drowned when out hunting
beside the gulf. H&S observe that the saying ‘more nautical than
Saron’ can be found in the
Paroemiae (Proverbs) of the
sixteenth-century scholar Michael Apostolios, edited by Daniel Heinsius
(1619), 17.27, but Jonson’s source was clearly Giraldi.
244 go
up . . . state The three singers advance towards the throne
(the ‘state’), walking from the stage and across the dancing space,
where they remain for the rest of the performance. But where would Saron
and Portunus enter from? Proteus arrives as one of the passengers on the
floating island, and perhaps the other singers were similarly
introduced, but they are not present in Jones’s design, and Proteus’s
privileged status as the guide and helper of the masquers has already
been laid down in the dialogue (90–2). So perhaps Saron and Portunus
would have made their entries on the seashore discovered at the first
scene change, and joined with Proteus when the floating island came to
land, walking forward with him to fill the space during the complicated
manoeuvres while the masquers disembarked.
250 hearts] Q;
heart F
251 true fires
An echo of the conceit in
Forest 14.59–60: ‘Then / The birthday
shines, when logs not burn, but men.’
252 longings] Q;
longing F2
253 Not] Q;
No F2
253 intermitted broken.
254 odorous
stocks incense-laden logs (continuing the metaphor of
sacrificial fires). The conceit harks back to the motto on the
title-page: the fires burning in the hearts of Charles’s subjects are
the modern equivalent to the fires lit by men of Martial’s day to the
gods.
260 nectar the
drink of the gods.
11 An epithet frequent in Homer and others, given by
them to Thetis,
Panope, Doris, etc.,
᾽Αργυρόπεζα Θέτις.
11 Thetis, Panope,
Doris Three of the Nereides, daughters of Nereus. They are all
mentioned in the list of sea-nymphs in Giraldi (
1548), 235, quoted from Hesiod (
Theogony, 233–60).
11 ᾽Αργυρόπεζα
θέτις ‘silver-footed Thetis’: the usual Homeric epithet.
262 the . . .
feast In Statius’s Achilleid, 1.52–3,
Neptune is depicted returning from a banquet with Oceanus.
266–8 Galatea,
Doris Sea-nymphs, two of the fifty Nereides.
269 Haliclyon
‘Renowned at sea’; an epithet for Neptune, applied to Buckingham in his
capacity as James’s lord admiral. The title is extremely rare, but was
taken from Giraldi and is explained in Jonson’s note 12.
12 Mari inclytus (renowned
at sea). Another of Neptune’s attributes, and given to the same person
with Hippius.
12 Mari
inclytus Quoted from Giraldi (
1548), 225: ‘
ἁλικλύων,
hoc est mari inclytus
Neptunus, a Sophrone in Mimis cognominatus. meminit Hesychius.’
Giraldi’s reference is to a lost comedy by Sophron (fifth century
bc), which uses ‘Haliclyon’ as an epithet of
Poseidon. The extract is recorded by the Alexandrian lexicographer
Hesychius (fifth century
ad).
271 wonder – / saron And] Q, F2 (wonder. / SARON. / – And)
274 laying . . .
tresses ‘Strictly there were only two Sirens; Jonson is
thinking of Nereids or Mermaids’ (H&S). Cf. 132 above.
276 of
for.
280 pawn
Charles, called a ‘pledge’ or hostage at 105 above.
286 takes
it from them take over the music from the soloists. The
confusing syntax seems to suggest that ‘them’ refers
to the island with its masquers, but the masquers have already
disembarked. Probably, ‘them’ looks back to the
opening two words of the stage direction, understood to mean ‘this being
sung by Proteus, Portunus and Saron’ (whom the chorus name at 281).
Presumably the ‘upper chorus’ are Mercury, Harmony,
and the Muses, who accompany Apollo at 222, 231.
287 figure formal dance.
288 Spring . . .
age Elliptical and metaphorical, but the meaning is something
like ‘May all the graces of the age confer the blessings of spring on
this triumph.’ Cf. similar sentiments and associations between spring,
grace, and pleasure in
Vision, 5–8, 123–4.
289 loves i.e.
the numerous Cupids imagined by the poets.
293 sports
playfulness. Cf. the character Sport who appears with Cupid in
Time Vind.,
and see 283n. there.
293 sports,]
Orgel; sports. Q
294 salts
pungency.
295 triumph
Referring to the title of the masque, imagined as a triumphal entry for
the return of the conquering hero.
296 entry The technical term for the formal opening dance
performed by the masquers at the arrival; an anglicization of ‘entrée’
from the French
ballet de court. Cf.
Vision, 204;
Lovers
MM, 60;
Time Vind., 273;
and Walls (
1996),
231.
296 prospective perspective scene. Jones’s study for this (
Illustration 91) is the
only full set design to survive from this masque. It is unclear why the
text should call this the ‘
first prospective’, and
that at 302 the ‘
second’, given that the opening image
of the pillars and the discovery described at 221–3 presumably had some
perspective element, if they were full sets.
297 the
other above The ‘heavens’ (221) from which the upper chorus
have been singing, and which now closes while the scene below is
transformed. But what happened to the chorus? A chorus continues to sing
in some of the subsequent music. Perhaps there were ‘upper’ and ‘lower’
choruses; or the upper chorus descended after the scene change and
joined the other singers around the dancing space.
300 feast] Q;
feasts F2
305 Proteus’
herds seals.
305 orcs
whales; sea-monsters. Drayton,
Works, ed. Hebel (
1961), 4.31, calls
orcs ‘Monsters of the sea, supposed Neptune’s guard’.
305 keep
inhabit.
306 pasture’s] F2; pasture Q
307 path is] Q;
pathes are F2
308 the
ladies The group of ladies sitting among the spectators who
were planning to join the lords in the ‘revels’ at
333. ‘Go up’ here refers to horizontal movement across
the masquing space and the hierarchical organization of the
audience.
309–32 A setting for this song survives in Bodleian MS
Don.c.57. See the Music Edition in the Electronic Edition.
311 the] Q, F2;
us Benson 12mo
313 dressings
attire. Spectators at the masques were expected to dress in finery to
match the splendour of the occasion.
314 parts] Q, F2;
arts Benson 12mo
315 Pallas and the mortal woman Arachne competed at
weaving; when Pallas lost, she turned Arachne into a spider. See Ovid,
Met., 6.1–145.
316 That . . .
less i.e. That you always intended to dance, despite the show
of reluctance that you put on. The song inviting the ladies to dance,
and purporting to overcome their modest denials, was a common convention
of masque form.
317 wear] Q (were)
318 shellfish
spoils pearls.
320 on the shore] Q, F2; long before Benson 12mo
322 greener] Q, F2; green Benson 12mo
323 better-watered higher grade. ‘First’, ‘second’, and ‘third
water’, used to distinguish between the lustre of the highest grades of
diamond, is often applied to other precious stones (OED, Water, n., 20a).
325 ambergris
grey amber, a waxlike substance secreted by whales and found floating in
tropical seas; used at this time in perfumery.
326 Of which] Q, F2; Whereof Benson 12mo
326 Neptune’s
niece Venus. In
The
Iliad, the equivalent Greek goddess, Aphrodite, is
represented as the daughter of Zeus, who was brother to Poseidon
(Neptune). However, Jonson also alludes to the alternative tradition,
that Venus was born from the foam of the sea; see
Hesiod, Theogony, 188–206.
328 a man
Adonis, the mortal youth loved by the goddess Venus.
330 your smiles] Q, F2; and your smiles JnB 606
331 Ambrosian
divine, fragrant.
331 Ambrosian] Q, F2; Ambrosiack JnB 606
333 revels social dances, between masquers and spectators.
335 With] F2;
Which Q
338 peace and
wars Jonson’s ambiguous phrase reflects the uncertainty of
British foreign policy in January 1624. A parliament was due to meet in
February, and many expected it would be asked to approve a military
campaign against Spain. However, although Charles was pressing for
action, James was still intent on avoiding war and in the event only
very limited military action was approved. It had still not even been
publicly confirmed that the aim of achieving a Spanish match was now
over, or that Spain was an enemy rather than an ally. See Cogswell (
1989), 106.
340–51 This dance of sailors repeats the structural joke
of Pan’s Ann., in which an unexpected additional
antimasque arrived belatedly, after the revels had been performed. The
device was perhaps borrowed from Campion’s Masque of
Squires (1613), which ends with a dance of twelve ‘skippers’,
who bring in the barges on which the masquers are to depart.
341 service
portion of food (OED, Service, n.1, 27b); like those served up in the antimasques.
342 relish
gratify the taste.
343 skirts
tail-end.
346 card ‘the
circular piece of stiff paper on which the 32 points are marked in the
mariner’s compass’ (OED, Card, n.2, 4a).
347–8 Castor,
Pollux The guardians of travellers at sea, to whom Neptune
gave power over wind and wave. They sit on the main yard (the yard or
spar on which the mainsail is extended) because they were associated
with St Elmo’s fire, the lights that appear on ships’ masts during
electrical storms. They are classified with Neptune and other marine
deities in
Giraldi, De deis gentium (‘History of the Gods’,
1548), 247–52.
348 hales
hauls, after the sailors’ exclamation ‘hoise and hale’ (OED, Hale n4).
348 hales] Q states 2,
3 (hayles), F2; sayles Q
state 1
349 Leucothe
Leucothea, a sea-goddess, who rescued Odysseus from drowning when his
raft was wrecked by Poseidon (Homer,
Odyssey,
5.333–55). Originally a mortal, Ino, she was transformed into a goddess
when she threw herself into the sea, having been driven mad by Hera (see
Ovid,
Met., 4.416–542). Her son Melicertes, who fell
with her, became the god Palaemon, who is the Greek equivalent to the
Roman god Portunus. See Giraldi (
1548), 224, 231–2; and
above.
349 Leucothe] Q (Leucothoe)
350 Arion See
.
352 Then] Q states 2, 3, F2;
not in Q state 1
358 wiles
Referring to Proteus’s cunning and power of shape-changing. See
above.
361 Nereus God
of the Aegean, father of the fifty Nereides (see ).
362 Indus The
Indian river; here used as a synecdoche for trade to the east and the
fabulous riches it promised. The East India Company had been trading to
India since 1600, though the more profitable routes further east to the
Moluccas had recently been thrown into disarray by the Amboyna massacre
(1623).
364 one flame
Q and F2 read ‘on flame’, which could be correct, but as is confirmed by
the reference to there being ‘no debate’ among the winds (366), the
intention of the chorus is to celebrate the unity of the nation rather
than its excitement. Indeed, the problem with the characters in the
antimasque was that they were too excited. When Jonson reused this line
in
Fort.
Isles, 436, he corrected it to ‘one flame’.
364 one]
H&S;
on Q, F2
a
note on the masquers Aside from Prince Charles, the only
masquers named in the documentation for Neptune as
expected to dance had the masque been performed are the minor courtiers
James Bowey (misnamed Thomas in the accounts) and Thomas Cary, the costs
of whose costumes were underwritten by the crown.
1–12 ] Q;
not in F2
1–2 These two notes are taken from a single paragraph
in the chapter on Neptune in Giraldi’s
De deis gentium
(
1548), 217:
Nomismata ipse duo conspexi, alterum Vespasiani,
alterum Adriani, quae ambo habebant a tergo has literas,
NEPT.
RED. Hoc est, Neptuno
reduci. Pulchra vero erat imago nudi stantis, in laevi humeri tergo
propendebat amictus, dextera trilorem scuticam, laeva elatum
tridentem tenebat. A Neptuno porro Neptunalia dicta. Huius enim dei
Ⅵ feriae, ait M. Varro . . . Sed iam ipsius dei nomina
interpretemur. Secundus Jupiter aliquando Neptunus vocatus est.
Statius: Dextramque secundi, Quod superest, complexa Jovis.
Jonson’s notes are a paraphrased translation of Giraldi, though he
expanded Giraldi’s brief reference to ‘Statius’. Giraldi’s explanation
of the term
Neptunalia comes from the grammarian
Marcus Terentius Varro, who briefly glosses it when discussing the names
of Roman festivals in
De lingua Latina, 6.3.
1 Adrian The
Emperor Hadrian.
371 NEPTUNO
REDUCI ‘to Neptune, that brings back home’.
371 Neptunalia . . . dicatae ‘Games in honour of Neptune, six
holidays consecrated to Neptune’.
2 Secundo
Iovi ‘to the second Jove’. I retain the unmodernized spelling
Iovi, as this is the form from which the name is
abbreviated on Jonson’s column, and as it would have appeared in a real
Roman inscription.
371 Dextramque . . . Jovis ‘and as for the rest, clinging to the
right hand of the second Jove’.
371 Jupiter
tertius ‘the third Jupiter’.
3 Athenaeus
See .,
above. Jonson refers to his
Deipnosophistai, 1.7d,
which preserves an extract from a lost play by the comic poet Euphron:
‘’Twixt cook and poet where’s the difference? / The art of either’s
simply common sense’ (Edmonds,
Fragments,
1961, 3.279). The
context is the story of an artful cook whose master wanted anchovies out
of season: he prepared a turnip so that it looked and tasted like
anchovy.
5 Hippius, Damaeus ‘equine’, ‘the tamer’. These are cult titles
of Neptune that refer to his role as god of horses and horsemanship,
hence finding a place for Buckingham (James’s master of horse) in the
masque’s royal mythology. They are listed and discussed by Giraldi (
1548), 220–1, 225,
who himself cites Pausanias’s
Description of Greece,
7.21.7–8: ‘Beside the name given by poets to Poseidon
[i.e. Neptune
] to adorn their verses, and in
addition to his local names, all men give him the following names:
Marine, Giver of Safety, God of Horses
[Hippius]. Various reasons could be plausibly
assigned for the last of these surnames having been given to the god,
but my own conjecture is that he got this name as the inventor of
horsemanship’ (Loeb). Jonson uses Latinized forms of the two cult
titles.
Damaeus is a much rarer name than
Hippius, occurring only once in Greek literature (Pindar,
Olympian Odes,
1997, 13.98) and not at all in Latin.
Giraldi, 225, explains it as ‘one who tames horses’ (
quod
videlicet equos domuerit) and derives its etymology from the
Greek
damazo, ‘I tame’. Probably he had in mind the
common Homeric epithet
hippodamos, ‘horse-tamer’.
371 vide
infra ‘see below’.
6 Lucianum In Lucian’s Dialogue of Iris and
Poseidon (Dialogues of the Sea-gods, 9), Iris
(the rainbow) carries Zeus’s command to Poseidon (Neptune) that he fix
the floating island of Delos in a single spot, so that Leto may safely
give birth there.
7 Strabo His Geographia, 15.1.21, reports
that ‘India produces many strange trees . . . Onesicritus, who even in
rather superfluous detail describes the country of Musicanus, which, he
says, is the most southerly part of India, relates that it has some
great trees whose branches have first grown to the height of twelve
cubits, and then, after much growth, have grown downwards, as though
bent down, till they have touched the earth; and that they then, thus
distributed, have taken root underground like layers, and then, growing
forth, have formed trunks; and that the branches of these trunks again,
likewise bent down in their growth, have formed another layer, and then
another and so on successively, so that from only one tree there is
formed a vast sunshade, like a tent with many supporting columns. He
says also of the size of the trees that their trunks could hardly be
embraced by five men’ (Loeb translation).
8 pastor
maris ‘the shepherd of the sea’. Giraldi (
1548), 228–9, has
a long discussion of Proteus, though this precise phrase does not appear
there.
9 Portunus] Q
(Portumnus)
9 qui . . . praeest ‘who rules over harbours’. Quoted from
Giraldi (
1548),
231:
Portunus deus et ipse marinus, ut ait Servius, qui
portubus prae est. Giraldi goes on to explain that Portunus was
the son of Ino, whom the Greeks called Leucothea, a connection to which
Jonson returns at 349 above.
10 Σάάρωνος
ναυτικώτερος ‘more nautical than Saron’. This whole note is
paraphrased from Giraldi (
1548), 231:
Saron deus
marinus, qui nauticae arti praeesse existimabant, a quo datum est
mari nomen, ut Graeci scriptores meminere, et qui de Situ orbis
scripserunt, ut Strabo. Aristides rhetor haec ferme in Themistocle
scribit: Nec uti per omne tempus in mari habitent, quem admodum
aiunt Glaucum Anthedonium, et Saronem mari cognominem
[sic
]
eius, et Pausanias in Corinthiacis meminit, qui Althepiae
regioni imperauit. Hinc et proverbium apud Grecos,
Σάάρωνος ναυτικώτερος. The
supporting references that Jonson cites from Giraldi are all
geographical accounts of the Saronic Gulf, named after Saron: Strabo,
Geographia, 8.2.2, 8.6.4, 8.6.22; Aelius Aristides
(prolific Greek author and rhetorician,
ad
117–
c. 81), oration 46; and Pausanias, ‘Of
Corinth’,
Description of Greece, 2.30.7, which says that Saron
was the third mythic king of Troizen, and drowned when out hunting
beside the gulf. H&S observe that the saying ‘more nautical than
Saron’ can be found in the
Paroemiae (Proverbs) of the
sixteenth-century scholar Michael Apostolios, edited by Daniel Heinsius
(1619), 17.27, but Jonson’s source was clearly Giraldi.
11 Thetis, Panope,
Doris Three of the Nereides, daughters of Nereus. They are all
mentioned in the list of sea-nymphs in Giraldi (
1548), 235, quoted from Hesiod (
Theogony, 233–60).
11 ᾽Αργυρόπεζα
θέτις ‘silver-footed Thetis’: the usual Homeric epithet.
12 Mari
inclytus Quoted from Giraldi (
1548), 225: ‘
ἁλικλύων,
hoc est mari inclytus
Neptunus, a Sophrone in Mimis cognominatus. meminit Hesychius.’
Giraldi’s reference is to a lost comedy by Sophron (fifth century
bc), which uses ‘Haliclyon’ as an epithet of
Poseidon. The extract is recorded by the Alexandrian lexicographer
Hesychius (fifth century
ad).