The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

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The Vision of Delight (1617)

Edited by Martin Butler

INTRODUCTION

The Vision of Delight was danced in the Banqueting House, Whitehall, on Twelfth Night 1617, and repeated on 19 January. Its design combined two motifs. In the antimasque, a contrast was presented between the grotesque world of monstrous inversions and ‘phantasms’ presided over by Fant’sy and the more elevated note of visionary insight voiced by Wonder. In the main masque, the fiction affirmed that the King’s presence was so powerful that it changed the climate, forcing winter away and creating a ‘perpetual spring’ (190). The courtly masquers danced in the roles of Glories of the Spring, and their arrival persuaded Fant’sy, under the influence of Wonder, to attest to James’s transforming power.

This was a highly innovative masque that initiated several new directions in English court festival. Much of the underlying design was drawn from a Florentine festival text that had been staged for the wedding of Cosimo de’ Medici in 1608, Notte d’Amore, by the poet Francesco Cini and designer Giulio Parigi. This was an elaborate entertainment, consisting of four spectacular intermedii punctuating an evening’s social dancing. The first scene was a view of Florence, over which Hesperus descended, calling on Night to bring mortals rest. Night brought in Oblivion, Silence, Repose, and Sweet Sleep, but she was challenged by Love, who complained that the spectators were readier for delights than dreams, and Night gave place to him. The second scene was a garden, above which the Moon and Stars voiced their astonishment at finding Night absent; they descended and danced with Endymion. The third scene changed to a series of fantastic sights: ‘castles in the air, mountains, rocks, seas, buildings burning or in ruins; with men, some sailing, some falling; with various other dreamlike apparitions, the whole thing sustained by the rainbow’. One of the Hours called on Morpheus, good and bad dreams, and sleep-disturbing phantasms to show themselves. The dreams appeared in the form of stunted, monstrous, and unfinished shapes, and danced together until Love bade them to depart and trouble only those who were sleeping. The final scene returned to the garden, and here Aurora brought in the dawn, leaving the bed of her lover Tithonus, who lamented her departure. The Stars, Loves, Moon, Endymion, and Aurora all danced together, until they were forced to depart by the coming of the sun (see Welsford, 1923, 403–4; Welsford, 1927, 200–2; Nagler, 1964, 102–3). Jonson’s masque simplifies the structure of its source and makes it less episodic, but the basic outline and some of the details are very similar. The Vision of Delight reworks the motifs and theme of a Florentine model in English terms. It would probably have struck well-informed spectators as more consciously Italianate than any previous entertainment. Probably the choice of this material was as much due to Inigo Jones, recently returned from his second visit to Italy and deeply engaged with Italian visual culture, as it was to Jonson.

The masque also shows some French influence, for this was the first time that Jonson used the conventions of Parisian court ballet, in which the evening opened with loosely related antimasque ‘entries’. The she-monster and her children may have been imitated from a French court festival, Le Ballet de la Foire Saint-Germain (performed in Paris, c. 1606), in which dancers were conjured by a midwife out of a grotesque wooden figure representing a fat woman (Welsford, 1927, 185). However, the characters to which the woman gives birth in The Vision of Delight are Italian: six ‘burratines’ and six pantaloons. It is perhaps not coincidental that one, or possibly two French ballets were performed in London early in 1617 (Walls, 1996, 229–30).

The financial records include a payment to Pierce Parminit and the ‘the French musicians’ for ‘services in the maskes . . . at Christmas last past’ (Masque Archive, Vision, 10). But while the musicians were French, the evening’s musical vocabulary seems to have reinforced the masque’s Italian colouring, for The Vision of Delight preserves the first printed reference in English to the new stylo recitativo. This form of dramatic monody (also mentioned in the F2 text of Lovers Made Men, the composer for which was Nicholas Lanier) had first been heard in Italy at the end of the sixteenth century. No English music for recitative survives before Lanier’s Hero and Leander (1628 or later), and some music historians have speculated that F2 does not reflect what actually happened in performance. Because The Vision of Delight was not printed until 1640, it is possible that the phrase ‘stylo recitativo’ was incorporated into the text at a later date, and hence, perhaps, that it was added only after recitative had become an established musical style in England (Emslie, 1960; Duckles, 1967). It is striking that, although Jonson’s description says ‘Delight spake in song’, the speeches that follow are stanzaic and are suitable for setting as ayres. Other characters who ‘spake’ (48, 131, 162) have long couplet speeches which would have been unsuitable for recitative. Music from the masque survives only for the final song (British Library Egerton MS 2013; JnB 736), and this, as one would expect, was not set as recitative. It is conceivable that the term stylo recitativo owed its presence in Vision of Delight to the masque’s position in F2. It was printed after Lovers Made Men, out of chronological sequence, and the printers might simply have carried across the explanatory phrase from the preceding text.

In response to arguments that recitative was unlikely to have been used this early, Peter Walls (1996), 86–103, has more boldly noted that stylo recitativo was already an established term in Italian and German musical sources, and that several of Jonson’s masques around 1615–17 use fluid and irregular verse forms which may imply the adoption of some through-composed music even before this date. The direction ‘Delight spoke again’ (18) after the first antimasque points to the use of recitative, since one would normally have expected to read ‘sang again’ at this point. Walls further notes that several varieties of declamatory setting were in use at this time, and that stylo recitativo need not imply a musical form that Italian ears would have heard as ‘recitative’. Complete certainty is impossible, but if Lanier was the composer for The Vision of Delight as well as Lovers Made Men, these two masques could well have formed an early stage in the English absorption of declamatory musical styles.

Designs for one scene and four costumes have been conjecturally identified in Inigo Jones’s sketches (see notes to 1, 17, 107). An unusual spectator at the first performance was the Native American princess Pocahontas, who had recently arrived at court with her husband, Captain John Smith (see Masque Archive, Vision, 4). However, a more momentous presence was the favourite, George Villiers, who had been raised to an earldom only hours before the performance. One letter-writer called this ‘a day of oblation and sacrifice on which the Viscount Villiers was adored with the title of Earl of Buckingham’ (Lockyer, 1981, 28). Buckingham not only appeared with the masquers, but celebrated his promotion by partnering Queen Anne in the revels. He must have seemed almost as much the centre of the occasion as the King.

The Vision of Delight was not printed until F2, although some scribal copies circulated, for a version of Fant’sy’s speech survives in British Library Harleian MS 4955 (the ‘Newcastle’ manuscript; JnB 735). Its design perhaps had some long-term impact on the opening sections of James Shirley’s The Triumph of Peace (1634), and on William Davenant’s Luminalia (1637), this last also being closely based on Notte d’Amore; both of these were designed by Inigo Jones. Modern revivals were staged at the Kingsway Theatre, London, in 1908, and at His Majesty’s Theatre, London, in 1911, as the finale to a gala performance for the coronation of George V (see Performance Archive).

 

THE VISION OF DELIGHT
Presented at court in Christmas, 1617

 The  scene, a  street in perspective of fair building discovered.  DELIGHT is seen to

come as afar off, accompanied with GRACE, LOVE, HARMONY, REVEL,

SPORT, LAUGHTER;

 

WONDER following.

Delight spake in song (

 

stylo recitativo):

DELIGHT

   Let us play and dance and sing,5

Let us now turn every sort

O’the pleasures of  the spring

To the graces of a  court;

From air, from cloud, from dreams, from toys,

To sounds, to sense, to love, to joys.10

Let your shows be new, as strange,

Let them oft and sweetly vary;

Let them haste so to their change

As the  seers may not tarry;

Too long t’expect the  pleasing’st sight15

Doth take away from the delight.

Here the first antimasque   entered, a   SHE-MONSTER delivered of six   BURRATINES

that dance with six PANTALOONS; which done, Delight spoke again:

Yet hear what your Delight doth  pray:

All sour and sullen looks away,20

That are the servants of the day;

Our sports are of the  humorous Night,

Who  feeds the stars that give her light,

 And useth, than her wont, more bright

To help the vision of Delight.25

Here the NIGHT rises, and took her chariot bespangled with stars.

Delight proceeds:

 See, see! Her sceptre and her crown

Are all of flame, and from her gown

A train of light comes waving down.30

This night in dew she will not steep

The brain, nor lock the sense in sleep,

But all awake with phantoms keep,

And those to make Delight more deep.

35   By this time the NIGHT and MOON being both risen, Night,

hovering over the place,   sung:

NIGHT

 Break,   Fant’sy, from thy  cave of cloud,

And spread thy purple wings!

Now all thy figures are allowed,

And various shapes of things.40

Create of airy forms a stream;

It must have  blood, and naught of  phlegm,

And though it be a waking dream,

THE CHOIR

 Yet let it like an odour rise

To all the senses here,45

And fall like sleep upon their eyes,

Or music in their ear.

The scene here changed to cloud, and FANT’SY breaking forth, spake:

FANT’SY

  Bright Night, I obey thee, and am come at thy call,

But it is no one dream that can please these all;50

Wherefore I would know what dreams would delight ’em,

For never was Fant’sy more loath to affright ’em.

And Fant’sy, I tell you, has dreams that have wings,

And dreams that have  honey, and dreams that have stings;

Dreams of the  maker, and dreams of the  teller,55

 Dreams of the kitchen, and dreams of the cellar;

Some that are tall, and some that are dwarfs,

Some that  are  haltered, and some that wear scarfs;

Some that are  proper, and signify  o’ thing,

And some another, and some that are nothing.60

For say the French   farthingale and the  French hood

Were here to  dispute, must it be understood

A  feather, for a  wisp, were a fit  moderator?

Your  ostrich, believe it, ’s no faithful translator

Of perfect  Utopian; and then  it were an  odd piece65

To see the  conclusion peep forth at a  codpiece.

The politic  pudding hath still his two ends,

Though the  bellows  and the bagpipe were  ne’er so good friends;

And who can report what offence it would be

For the  squirrel to see a dog climb a tree?70

 If a dream should come in now to make you afeard,

With a  windmill  on his head and  bells at his beard,

Would you straight  wear your spectacles here at your toes,

And your boots o’your brows, and your spurs o’your nose?

Your whale he will swallow a  hogshead for a pill,75

But the maker o’the mousetrap is he that  hath skill.

And the nature  of the  onion is to draw tears,

As well as the  mustard – Peace!  Pitchers have ears,

And   shuttlecocks wings; these  things, do not mind  ’em.

 If the bell have any sides, the clapper will find ’em.80

 There’s twice so much music in beating the  tabor

 As i’the  stockfish, and somewhat less labour.

 Yet all this while no proportion is boasted

’Twixt an egg and an ox, though both have been roasted;

For grant  the most barbers can play o’the  cittern,85

Is it requisite a lawyer should  plead to a  gittern?

 You will say now the  morris bells were but bribes

To make the heel forget that  e’er it had  kibes;

I say let the wine  make  ne’er so good jelly,

The  conscience o’the bottle is much i’the belly.90

For  why, do but take  common counsel i’your way,

And tell me who’ll then set a  bottle of hay

Before the old usurer, and to his horse

A slice of  salt-butter, perverting the course

Of civil society? Open that gap,95

And out skip your fleas, four-and-twenty   at a clap,

With a chain and a  trundle-bed following at th’heels,

And will  they not cry then,  the world runs  a-wheels?

 As, for example, a belly and no face,

With the bill of a  shoveller, may here come in place,100

The  haunches of a drum with the  feet of a pot,

And the tail of a  Kentishman to  it – why not?

Yet would  I take the stars to be cruel

 If the crab and the rope-maker ever fight duel

 On any  dependence, be it right, be it wrong —105

But mum; a  thread may be drawn out too long.

Here the second antimasque of     PHANTASMS   came forth,   which danced.

Fant’sy   proceeded:

Why, this you will say was fantastical now,

As the  cock and the bull, the whale and the cow;110

But vanish away, I have change to present you,

And such as I hope will more truly content you.

 Behold! The  gold-haired  Hour descending here,

That  keeps the gate of heaven and  turns the year,

Already with her sight how she doth cheer,115

And makes another face of things appear.

Here one of the Hours descending, the whole scene changed to the

bower of   Zephyrus, whilst PEACE sung as followeth:

PEACE

 Why look you so, and all turn dumb,

To see the  opener of the new year come?120

My presence rather should invite,

And aid, and urge, and call to your  delight.

The many pleasures that I bring

Are all of youth, of heat, of life and spring,

And were prepared to warm your blood,125

Not fix it thus as if  you statues stood.

THE CHOIR

We see, we hear, we feel, we taste,

We smell the change in every flower;

We only wish that all could last,

And be as new still as the hour.130

The song ended, Wonder spake.

WONDER

  Wonder must  speak or break. What is this? Grows

The wealth of nature here, or art? It shows

 As if  Favonius, father of the spring,

Who in the verdant meads doth reign sole king,135

Had roused him here and shook his feathers, wet

With purple swelling  nectar, and had let

The sweet and fruitful dew fall on the ground

To force out all the flowers that might be found;

 Or  a  Minerva with her needle had140

Th’enamoured earth with all her riches clad,

And made the downy Zephyr as he flew

Still to be followed with the spring’s best hue!

The gaudy peacock boasts not in his train

So many lights and shadows, nor the rain- 145

Resolving  Iris, when the sun doth court  her,

Nor  purple pheasant while his  aunt doth sport her

To hear him crow, and with a  perchèd pride

Wave his  discoloured neck and purple side!

I have not seen  the place could more surprise;150

It looks, methinks, like one of  Nature’s eyes,

Or her whole body set in  art! Behold,

How the  blue  bindweed doth itself enfold

With honeysuckle, and both these entwine

Themselves with  bryony and  jessamine, 155

To cast a kind and odoriferous shade!

FANT’SY

 How better than they are, are all things made

By Wonder! But awhile refresh thine eye,

 I’ll put thee to thy oft’ner what and why.

Here, to a loud music, the bower opens, and the masquers   discovered as 160

the GLORIES OF THE SPRING.

Wonder again spake:

WONDER

 Thou wilt indeed. What better change appears?

Whence is it that the air so sudden clears,

And all things in a moment turn so  mild? 165

Whose breath or beams have got proud earth with child,

Of all the treasure that great Nature’s worth,

And makes her every minute to bring forth?

How comes it winter is so quite forc’d hence,

And locked up under ground? That every sense 170

Hath several objects? Trees have got their  heads,

The fields their coats? That now the shining  meads

Do boast the  paunce, the lily, and the rose,

And every flower doth laugh as Zephyr blows?

That seas are now more even than the land? 175

The rivers run as smoothèd by his hand;

Only their heads are  crispèd by his stroke.

How plays the yearling with his  brow scarce broke

Now in the open grass, and frisking lambs

Make wanton  saults about their dry-sucked dams, 180

 Who to repair their bags do rob the fields?

 How is’t each bough a  several music yields?

The  lusty throstle,  early nightingale

Accord in tune, though vary in their tale?

The chirping swallow called forth by the sun, 185

And crested lark doth his  division run?

The yellow bees the air with murmur fill?

The finches carol, and the  turtles  bill?

Whose power is this? What god?

FANT’SY

Behold a king

Whose presence maketh this perpetual spring, 190

The  glories of which spring grow in that bower,

And are the marks and beauties of his power.

To which the Choir answered:

CHOIR

 ’Tis he, ’tis he, and no power else

That makes all this what Fant’sy tells; 195

 The founts, the flowers, the birds, the bees,

The herds, the flocks, the grass, the trees

Do all  confess him; but  most these

Who call him  lord of the four seas,

King of the less and greater isles, 200

And all those happy when he smiles.

Advance! His favour calls you to advance,

And do your this night’s homage in a  dance.

Here they danced their   entry, after which they sung again:

Again, again! You cannot be 205

Of such a true delight too free,

 Which who once saw would ever see;

And if they could the object  prize,

Would, while it lasts, not think to rise,

But wish their bodies all were eyes. 210

They danced their main dance, after which they sung:

In  curious  knots and mazes so

The spring  at first was taught to go;

And Zephyr, when he came to woo

His  Flora, had their  motions too, 215

And thence did Venus learn to lead

Th’ Idalian  brawls,  and so  to tread

As if the wind, not she, did walk;

Nor pressed a flower, nor bowed a stalk.

They danced with     ladies, and the whole revels followed; after which 220

  AURORA appeared,  the   Night and Moon descended, and this epilogue followed:

AURORA

  I was not wearier where I lay

By frozen   Tithon’s side tonight,

Than I am willing now to stay

And be a part of your delight. 225

But I am urgèd by the day,

Against my will, to bid you come away.

THE CHOIR

They yield to time, and so must all.

As night to sport, day doth to action call,

Which they the rather do obey 230

Because the morn with roses strews the way.

  Here they danced their going off, and ended.

1–3 SDs] six lines in F2, all centred; F2 centres sds throughout
scene,] Wh; SCENE. F2
1 street in perspective Inigo Jones’s perspective of a street (Illustration 71; Orgel & Strong, 1.274–5) is the only surviving scene design for this masque. It is an architectural fantasy loosely based on a print of a stage set designed in 1560 by the Sienese artist Bartolomeo Neroni, and on the prototypical ‘comic’ and ‘tragic’ scenes published by the sixteenth-century architectural theorist Sebastiano Serlio (Peacock, 1995, 82–4).
1–3 delight . . . wonder Of the eight characters who enter here, only two speak. Perhaps the other six were musicians, or formed the choir that responded to Night, Peace, and Aurora. Their identities may have been imitated from Jonson’s source, the Florentine festival Notte d’Amore (see Introduction), in which Love appears in the company of revellers named Playfulness, Laughter, Dancing, Singing, and Contentment (Nagler, 1964, 102).
3 wonder Although Wonder enters here, his function is to remain as a silent observer until 132. The association between wonder and silence is attested elsewhere, for example WT, 5.3.21–2: ‘I like your silence; it the more shows off / Your wonder’.
4 stylo recitativo in recitative style; midway between song and speech. This new style of dramatic monody (also mentioned in Lovers MM, 13, collation) had first been used in Italy some ten years earlier. It is impossible to be sure whether Delight sang in what we would recognize as recitative, and since no English recitative survives before Nicholas Lanier’s Hero and Leander (1628?), some music historians have argued that the term was probably inserted into the text after its performance, and does not reflect what was done in 1617. Against this is the direction ‘Delight spoke again’ (18), which seems to reaffirm the use of recitative rather than a stanzaic style. See Introduction, and the full discussion in Walls (1996), 86–103.
5 sh] G; not in F2
5–10 ] this edn; F2 puts stanza break after line 8
5–16 In F2, these lines are divided into two asymmetrical stanzas of four and eight lines, but the rhyme scheme suggests a pair of six-line stanzas, and the sense of 9–10 obviously links to 5–8. Probably F2’s stanza division is a compositorial error, and the verses should be divided symmetrically.
7 the spring Such language is calendrically at odds with the January performance, but the device of this masque is that James’s presence miraculously brings an early spring to Whitehall. Cf. 120n., 215n. There is a similar seasonal mismatch in Pan’s Ann., which celebrates springtide renewal even though the season is winter.
8 court;] this edn; Court. F2
14 seers spectators; those who see (OED, 1).
15 pleasing’st] G; pleasing’t F2; pleasing F3
17 entered, a] Nichols; enter’d. A F2
17 she-monster This entry recalls Le Ballet de la Foire Saint-Germain (performed at the French court, c. 1606), in which a midwife caused dancers to appear out of a grotesque wooden figure representing a fat woman (Welsford, 1927, 185). Inigo Jones has a sketch showing a lady in a farthingale inside which a smaller figure seems to be concealed (Illustration 69; Orgel & Strong, 1.266). Possibly it is a design for this masque, and represents an artificial lady built as a giantess, who could be pushed on with the antimasquers hidden inside her skirts. In this design (and in its partner, a lady surrounded by clouds, Illustration 70; Orgel & Strong, 1.267) there are suggestions of doors in the dress.
17–18 burratines … pantaloons Stock characters from Italian commedia dell’arte: the pantaloon is the lean and foolish old man, and the burratine (from Italian burattino = puppet) is a low-life character or servant. Presumably they danced some kind of master/servant action. Florio defines the burratine as ‘a silly gull in a comedy’ (OED). He appears in nearly half of the fifty commedia scenarios printed in 1611 by Flaminio Scala, and is pictured as a lower-class figure by Bertelli (1594), 2.70, 78. See also Duchartre (1929), 120, 301.
19 pray:] G; pray F2
22 humorous (1) damp, full of vapours; (2) moody, capricious. ‘Humorous night’ is a frequent collocation. Cf. Rom., 2.1.32.
23 feeds The notion that Night feeds the stars is opaque, unless it is understood as being glossed by the next stanza, which describes the flames that emanate from her sceptre, crown, and gown. The stars appear as characters in the masque’s source, Notte d’Amore.
24 Who comports herself more brightly than normal.
28–34 Welsford (1923), 403, compares the description of Night with the car of Night that appeared in the 1579 festivals at the wedding of Francesco de’ Medici and Bianca Capello in Florence. Night was accompanied by ‘shades and phantasms, made of black gauze so that they were transparent, and with a black but sweet smelling smoke issuing out of their mouths’, and sang that her heralds were troops of phantoms, dreams, and chimeras, ‘di fantasmi, di sogni, e di chimere’.
35–6 It is possible that the moon was simply a technical effect designed by Jones; cf. the use of the moon’s trajectory to mark the night’s progress in Oberon. However, at the end of the masque Night and Moon descend together (221), so the moon may have been a painted figure or a non-speaking performer.
36 sung] (word centred above speech in F2)
37 sh] G; not in F2
37 Fant’sy] this edn; Phant’sie F2 (and throughout); Phant’sy JnB 735 (but at 108 JnB 735 reads ‘Phan’sy’)
37 Fant’sy In the hierarchy of illusions that the masque sets up, Fant’sy embodies the delightful but unreliable dream. His images are strange and enigmatic but have no basis in reality or higher (prophetic) truth; they issue from the anarchic, uncontrolled imagination. There is some similarity to Phantastes (Imagination) in Spenser’s Faerie Queene, a melancholic figure who lives in a room filled with swarms of flies and decorated with images of monstrosities: ‘Infernal hags, centaurs, fiends, hippodames, / Apes, lions, eagles, owls, fools, lovers, children, dames’ (Fairie Queene, 2.2.50). Jonson may particularly have had in mind Macrobius’s influential discussion of dreams, In Somnium Scipionis, which classifies them into five groups. In Macrobius, phantasmata are one of two kinds of non-predictive dream. They come between sleeping and waking, in the ‘first cloud of sleep’ (prima somni nebula), and produce distorted images. The drowsy dreamer ‘thinks he is still fully awake and imagines he sees spectres rushing at him or wandering vaguely about, differing from natural creatures in size and shape, and hosts of diverse things, either delightful of disturbing’: in se vel passim vagantes formas a natura seu magnitude seu specie discrepantes, variasque tempestates rerum vel laetas vel turbulentas (see Hawkins, 1967, 286–7). By contrast, horamata are prophetic visions, one of three kinds of dreams that are truthful and predictive. The distinction between false phantasms and the priestly visio gives Jonson the structural opposition on which the masque turns, moving from a world of illusions towards divine insight into the true inner glory of Jacobean kingship.
37 cave of cloud Perhaps echoing the cave or ‘cloud-wrapped palace’ in which Sleep lives in Ovid’s account of Ceyx and Alcyone (Met., 11.590–632). Cf. Arthur Golding’s 1567 translation, ‘Whose court the clouds continually do closely overdreep’ (Ovid’s Metamorphoses, ed. Nims, 292). Ovid names Phantasos as the third son of Sleep, the bringer of dreams involving inanimate objects.
42 blood … phlegm Two of the four bodily humours that in Galenic physiology determined an individual’s temperament. The sanguine (bloody) temperament is hot and amorous, the phlegmatic is sluggish (see EMI (Q), Introduction).
42 phlegm] F2 (fleame)
44–5 Echoed in Love’s Tr., 66–9.
49 sh] not in F2
49–106 Fant’sy’s nonsense speech imitates the logic of a dream, with images that seem anarchic but are subliminally linked. They mingle human and animal, animate and inanimate, and add a vein of bawdy. The underlying theme – if any – is difficult to establish, but it seems to involve a reassurance that, however crazy the figures are that Fant’sy presents, they are not intended to offend the audience and can be enjoyed without danger. The speech also considers the difficulty of finding dreams that will be pleasing to all the different spectators, and advances an argument in defence of the pleasures of court festival against those moralists who would see such enjoyments as ethically suspect (see Butler, 2007b). Stephen Orgel’s Yale edition, arguing that Fant’sy’s meaning is a satire on the lechery and gluttony of court life, excavates a covert moralized message based on links between his images and emblems in Ripa and Alciato. But although ingenious, Orgel’s emblematic connections are not all persuasive (e.g. see 104n.). Rather, the thrust of 51–2, 71–6, and 83–6 is that the audience should feel delighted rather than threatened by such playful illusions. The rationale behind the emendations to this speech adopted in the present edition is discussed in the Textual Essay.
54 honey . . . stings i.e. visions that please some people will seem painful to others. The underlying idea is proverbial (Dent, H553).
55 maker poet.
55 teller clerk; in the Exchequer, an official responsible for payments and receipts. As a lowly drudge, he is the antithesis to the inspired poet.
56 Dreams produced by food, and by drink.
58 are] JnB 735; were F2
58 haltered wearing nooses; prisoners (unlike the courtiers, who wear ‘scarfs’).
59 proper (1) elegant; (2) literal.
59 o’ thing one thing. A comic rhyme for ‘nothing’ (60); cf. ‘odd piece’ and ‘codpiece’ (65–6).
61 farthingale] F2 (Verdingale)
61 farthingale hooped skirt; a new style of dress. Contemporary correspondence attests to its fashionableness. See Chamberlain (1939), 1.426.
61 French hood A style of headpiece current in Tudor times but very outmoded by 1617. For a slightly later example, see Leonard Lessius’s Hygiasticon (1634): ‘For these loose times, when a strict sparing food / More’s out of fashion than an old French hood’ (cited in OED). Pol-Marten promises Audrey a French hood in Tub, 4.5.95, a comedy set in the 1550s.
62 dispute Argue their rival claims. Presumably they would be arguing over which style was best. The feather (a synecdoche for the courtiers who wear extravagant plumes: see next note) acts as umpire, but isn’t qualified or capable of judging between them.
63 feather Fashionable wear. Spectacular ostrich feathers often decorated the headpieces of masque costumes, and would have been worn both by men and women in the audience. This fashion was deplored by puritans. See Dekker and Middleton’s The Roaring Girl (ed. P. Mulholland), 2.1.117.
63 wisp (1) bundle; (2) straw figure, presented to a scold in token of her railing (see OED, 2b; and 3H6, 2.2.144); (3) an allusion to the proverb, ‘as wise as a wisp’ – i.e. foolish, and thus unsuited to act as judge in a disputation.
63 moderator umpire.
64 ostrich From which the courtiers’ feathers came. The ostrich would be a suitable moderator because in iconography it was associated with justice, though there also seems to be a hit at the spectators’ extravagant fashions; ‘Your ostrich’ here is equivalent to ‘your feathers’. Ripa’s Iconologia (1603), 279, explains the ostrich was linked to Giustitia because it was capable of digesting anything, no matter how difficult or knotty. Other emblems associate it with greed (Ingordigia) and gluttony (Gola).
65 Utopian The language of Utopia (literally, ‘no place’), a non-existent tongue. Presumably Fant’sy means that the ostrich cannot translate the language of dreams into English. Sir Thomas More’s Utopia contains some verses supposedly in the Utopian language, written in an alphabet unlike any European script.
65 it were] F2, JnB 735; ’twere G
65 odd piece] F3; od-piece F2, JnB 735 (subst.)
66 conclusion (1) decision; (2) end; with the innuendo ‘penis’ suggested by it peeping through a codpiece. Possibly this means that men shouldn’t attempt to interfere in debates about women’s fashions; or that you won’t find rational judgements being made in sexual situations.
66 codpiece Bag-like flap on the front of a pair of breeches, sometimes spectacularly decorated.
67 pudding sausage (an image perhaps developed from the protruding phallus of 66?). The pudding is ‘politic’ (i.e. crafty) because it has two ‘ends’: (1) two physical extremities; (2) two objectives, by virtue of its pointing in two directions at once.
68 bellows . . . bagpipe Two bag-like instruments, each of which produces wind. I take 67–8 as a summary of Fant’sy’s reflections so far on the difficulty of finding dreams that please all the masque’s spectators. The pudding suggests that even simple things have complex ‘ends’, whereas the bellows and bagpipe, which look similar to one another, have different reasons for being but are alike in more ways than you would suppose.
68 and the] F2, JnB 735; and Wh
68 ne’er] F3; nev’r F2, JnB 735
70 squirrel . . . tree i.e. for the natural order to be reversed. The image suggests the difficulty of pleasing everyone at once: one spectator’s idea of normality will not be the same as another’s.
71–80 These lines reassure the spectators that however disturbing Fant’sy’s dreams seem to be, they should not be upset or offended by them. Although the dreams are upside-down, the spectators themselves can safely stay the right way up.
72 windmill A common symbol of folly or quixotism, especially after the appearance of the English translation of Don Quixote (1612). ‘He has windmills in his head’ is proverbial (Tilley, W455).
72 on his] F2, JnB 735; on’s Morley
72 bells worn by fools.
73–4 wear . . . nose i.e. turn yourself upside down, wearing clothes at the wrong ends of your body. John Taylor’s Mad Fashions, Odd Fashions (1642) has a woodcut showing a figure dressed in just such an inverted way. See Capp (1994), plate 7.
75 hogshead Large liquor cask, of more than fifty gallons’ capacity. The whale has no discrimination, because he is large enough to consume anything.
76 hath skill has greater delicacy, being an artificer in small things; hence, someone of more refinement than the whale (i.e. the dreams will please all kinds of spectators, no matter how varied in their tastes). The association of mousetraps with ingenuity is frequent with Jonson. See Bart. Fair, Ind., 108, and Pan’s Ann., 97.
77 of the] F2; of JnB 735
77–8 onion . . . mustard Objects recognizable according to their natural effects, as opposed to the inverted attributes of 69–74. Some things will always stay the same, no matter how reversed the world around them.
78 mustard –] Orgel; mustard; F2
78 Pitchers have ears Someone is listening; proverbial (Dent, P363*).
79 shuttlecocks] F2 (Shitlecocks)
79 shuttlecocks wings ‘light banter is flying around’ (Orgel).
79 things,] H&S; things F2, JnB 735
79 ’em.] H&S; ’em, F2; ’em JnB 735
80 If this has any meaning, it will eventually emerge.
81–2 The sense is: ‘More will be gained from entertaining amusement than from laborious sobriety’; Orgel glosses more pithily, ‘It is better to enjoy oneself than work.’ This couplet begins a new train of thought: 81–92 defends the legitimacy of court festival against those who hold that, for reasons of morality, indulgence in pleasure should not be tolerated.
81 tabor small drum, used to accompany dances.
82 Perhaps something has been lost from this line; the metre is improved if one reads ‘As there is i’the stockfish’.
82 stockfish dried fish, that must be beaten before cooking.
83–4 i.e. you can have both a roasted egg and a roasted ox, but that doesn’t mean the two things are the same (‘proportion’ means ‘equivalence’). Although Fant’sy’s dreams seem to mix up categories, essential distinctions will stay in place.
85 the most F2 and the manuscripts agree on this reading, but perhaps Jonson originally wrote ‘that most’?
85 cittern A string instrument with a pear-shaped body, strung with wire and played with a plectrum. Citterns were commonly kept in barbers’ shops for customers to amuse themselves with by playing while they were waiting. See Epicene, 3.5.48; and cf. Pleasure Rec., 201n., and Gypsies (Burley), 48.
86 plead] F2; play JnB 735
86 gittern A short-necked lute, similar to the mandore, with a rounded back, and played with a plectrum; a close ancestor of the modern guitar (Sadie, New Grove Dictionary of Music). Fant’sy’s point is that just because some people have music with their work, it’s not necessary for everyone to do so; lawyers would look ridiculous if they took instruments into their courts. Pleasure and business can be kept separate; delights can be legitimately indulged if the time is right.
87–90 These lines are a rebuke to killjoys. The general idea is: you will perhaps object that pleasures are merely an attempt to make us ignore the troubles of existence, but I say let’s allow our senses to enjoy them while they can, and not postpone them for the sake of mistaken notions of propriety.
87 morris bells Small metal bells worn on the legs of morris dancers.
88 e’er] F3; ev’r F2, JnB 735 (subst.)
88 kibes chilblains.
89 make . . . jelly i.e. be used for inferior culinary purposes.
89 ne’er] F3; nev’r F2, JnB 735 (subst.)
90 conscience proper judgement; i.e. rather than make jelly from the wine, it’s better to use it for what it was intended by drinking it.
91 why,] JnB 735; why? F2
91 common counsel everyday advice, which says it’s futile to expect people to do things that go against their natures (such as forgoing their pleasures). The city of London’s governing body was also called the ‘Common Council’.
92 bottle bundle.
94 salt-butter An inferior grade of butter, used by the parsimonious. See Wiv., 2.2.220, ‘Hang him, mechanical salt-butter rogue’; Nashe, Works (ed. McKerrow), 1.170; and Dickens’s Pickwick Papers, chapter 37. Fant’sy means it would reverse common sense to feed hay, intended for a horse, to an old usurer, and give the cheap butter he feeds on to the horse; you have to use things according to what they’re good for.
96 at] F2; in JnB 735
96 at a clap all at once.
97 trundle-bed Low bed set on castors, kept under a standing bed when not in use.
98 they people; presumably, moralists who disapprove of innocent pleasures.
98 the . . . wheels Proverbial (Tilley, W893), with the implication ‘everything’s going to pot’. Tilley cites Steven Guazzo, Civil Conversation, bk 4 (trans. Bartholomew Young, 1586), 2.117: ‘Seeing the world to go on wheels, and backward in his course, in exalting the wicked’; and T. Adams, Works (1630), 611: ‘The proud gallant . . . and his adorned lady . . . are riders too; . . . the world with them runs upon wheels.’ See also Ant., 2.7.86. With the whole passage, H&S compare John Taylor’s satirical pamphlet, The World Runs on Wheels (1623), the title-page of which shows the globe on a coach being pulled on a chain by the devil and a whore (dressed in farthingale and feathers); reproduced by Capp (1994), plate 3.
98 a-wheels] F2; on wheels JnB 735
99–102 The hybrid person described here recollects the figure of Nobody in the Althorp entertainment. Possibly he, and some of the other grotesques mentioned in this speech, appeared among the ‘phantasms’ that danced at 107.
100 shoveller spoonbill, a large-beaked duck. Perhaps a phallic protrusion?
101 haunches thighs – round and hefty, like a kettledrum.
101 feet . . . pot pots for feet.
102 Kentishman Mythically supposed to sport tails. See Tub, 2.1.37, and Tilley, K17. Thomas Fuller’s Worthies of England (1662) says that this was an ‘outlandish’ proverb ‘cast by foreigners as a note of disgrace on all the English, though it chanceth to stick only on the Kentish at this day’. Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary (1617) explains that ‘The Kentishmen of old were said to have tails because, trafficking in the Low Countries, they never paid full payments of what they did owe, but still left some part unpaid’ (cited by Tilley). The insult is discussed in Thomas Deloney’s Strange History (1602), and Drayton’s Poly-Olbion (1612).
102 it –] Orgel; it; F2, JnB 735 (subst.)
103 I take In a Bodleian Library copy of F2, Vet. A2 d. 73, a contemporary hand has inserted ‘not’ between these two words – an emendation that improves the metre and, perhaps, the sense.
104 Another fantastic impossibility. The crab, notoriously, walks sideways, and the rope-maker walks backwards, as he twists strands together through his machinery; hence a duel between the two could never take place, since they could never meet in the same spot. At this time it was customary to speak of crabs as walking backwards. See Cynthia (F), 4.3.140, ‘This play is called the crab, it goes backward’; the ‘backward yielding’ crab in Haddington, 238; and Hamlet, 2.2.202–4, ‘for yourself, sir, shall grow old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward’. For the rope-maker, cf. Robert Greene, A Quip for an Upstart Courtier (1592), E4: ‘I have heard them say, that witches says their prayers backward, and so doth the rope-maker earn his living by going backward’; R. A., The Valiant Welshman (1615), G3: ‘is not the rope-maker in danger that made it [the rope]? / Clown. No, for he goes backward when ’tis made, and therefore cannot see before what will come after’; and John Taylor, Taylor’s Motto (from All the Works, 1630, 56): ‘like a rope-maker, I in my trade / Have many hundred times run retrograde’. In his edition Stephen Orgel suggests that the line carries a satirical comment about courtly sloth and gluttony, and cites two adjacent images in the Emblems of Andrea Alciato (nos. 92 and 93) which depict a rope-maker as an icon of wasted effort, and a parasite carrying a dish of crabs. But this is very abstruse, as it depends on the spectators making specific connections to a single printed source. The obvious point that Jonson probably expected spectators to pick up is about obliquity of motion: you can’t make people do things that go against their natures. See Butler (2007b).
105 On] F2; or JnB 735
105 dependence ground of a quarrel. Cf. EMI (F), 1.5.90.
106 thread . . . long Proverbial (Dent, T252, ‘To spin a fair thread’), but also continuing the allusion to the rope-maker.
107 phantasms] F2 (Phantos’mes); Phantomes JnB 735
107 phantasms Spelled ‘phantomes’ in the Newcastle manuscript (a spelling that recurs at 33 in F2), but F2’s spelling ‘Phantos’mes’ suggests a overlay of meanings that were not yet wholly separate: (1) mental illusions; (2) apparitions; (3) fancies. Cf. JC, 2.1.65: ‘Like a phantasma or a hideous dream’. Orgel & Strong, 1.270, conjecturally attribute to this antimasque a sketch showing two grotesques, one a ‘bulbous Chinese figure, the other a strange bird’.
107 came] F2; comes JnB 735
107 which] F2; That JnB 735
108 proceeded] F2; proceeds JnB 735
110 cock . . . bull This eventually became a proverbial idiom for a tall story, though Jonson’s usage predates OED’s earliest example, from Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1621 edition), 2.2.4.
113 Behold!] this edn; Behold F2, but c.w. at foot of D1v is Behold!
113 gold-haired Hesiod calls the Hours ‘rich-haired’ in Works and Days, 74. Cf. also the Panegyre, 20–30, and Two Kings, 1–11.
113 Hour The Horae, or Hours, were the daughters of Zeus and Themis: Irene (Peace), Eunomia (Order), and Dike (Justice). They controlled the passage of the seasons, and are so introduced here, though they are not usually associated with the new year; the phrase ‘opener of the new year’ (120) more properly belongs to Janus (see Ovid’s Fasti, 1.88: anni tacite labentis origo). Irene is the Hour of choice, because of James’s pursuit of peace at home and abroad. It is James’s Peace that moves the court to Wonder and shifts the masque into a more visionary mode.
114 keeps . . . heaven A Homeric colouring: the Hours guard the gates of the sky and control the alternation of day and night in the Iliad, 5.749–51, 8.393–5. Starnes and Talbert (1955), 171, suggest Jonson was copying Charles Estienne’s Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (1573), which says the Hours keep the gates of heaven (ianuae caeli custodes). However, although Jonson often drew on this work of reference, this is hardly an arcane point.
114 turns the year regulates the season.
117 Zephyrus The west wind; mild and gentle. For Zephyrus’s association with spring, see Ovid’s Fasti, 5.201–4
119 sh] G; not in F2
120 opener . . . year This alludes to the masque’s function as a calendrical festival celebrating the winter season. However, the imagery of the main masque that follows is more appropriate to springtide than to January, and the inclusion of Flora, Zephyrus, and Aurora echoes the Highgate Entertainment, which was written for 1 May 1604. James’s presence brings a premature but miraculous spring into the wintry season. See also 7n., 215n.
122 delight.] this edn; delight, F2
126 you statues] Wh; your Statutes F2; your Statues F3
132 sh] G; not in F2
132 Wonder] WONDRR F2
132 speak or break Because since the beginning of the masque, Wonder has been silently watching it unfold from the sidelines. ‘Break’ = ‘burst’.
134–49 This passage involves several allusions to Claudian’s The Rape of Proserpine, 2.88–99: ille novo madidantes nectare pennas concutit et glaebas fecundo rore maritat, quaque volat vernus sequitur rubor; omnis in herbas turget humus medioque patent convexa sereno. sanguineo splendore rosas, vaccinia nigro imbuit et dulci violas ferrugine pingit . . . non tales volucer pandit Iunonius alas, nec sic innumeros arcu mutante colores incipiens redimitur hiems, cum tramite flexo semita discretis interviret umida nimbis, ‘Zephyrus shook his wings adrip with fresh nectar and drenches the ground with their life-giving dew. Whereso’er he flies, spring’s brilliance follows. The fields grow lush with verdure and heaven’s dome shines cloudless above them. He paints the bright roses red, the hyacinths blue, and the sweet violets purple . . . Not the wings of Juno’s own bird display such colouring. Not thus do the many-changing hues of the rainbow span young winter’s sky when in curved arch its rainy path glows green amid the parting clouds’ (Loeb).
134 Favonius The Roman name of Zephyrus; ‘father of the spring’ because his mildness ushers in the season.
137 nectar Drink of the gods.
140, 144 ] lines indented, in F2
140 a] F2; as if contemporary emendation in Bodleian Library Vet. A2 d. 73
140 Minerva Roman goddess of the arts. It is tempting to emend ‘a Minerva’ to ‘if Minerva’, which would be syntactically parallel to ‘As if Favonius’ (134), but ‘as if’ may already be implied. Jonson uses the construction of indefinite article followed by proper noun elsewhere, for example, Epigr. 104.4: ‘A new Susanna, equal to that old’.
146 Iris The rainbow.
146 her] F3; ber F2
147 purple pheasant Echoing Martial, 3.58.14, ‘picta perdix’. Also imitated in Forest 2.28, ‘purpled pheasant’.
147 aunt mistress.
148 perchèd aspiring; perked up.
149 discoloured highly coloured.
150 the place could any place that could.
151 Nature’s eyes In addition to the implied personification, there is perhaps a suggestion of OED, Eye, 3e, ‘seat of intelligence or light’ (applied to a country or province). Jonson has some parallel usages: ‘The heart of Scotland, Britain’s other eye’ (referring to Edinburgh: Informations, 318); ‘Let our nephews see / Thee quickly come the garden’s eye to be’ (Und. 65.7–8); ‘She was earth’s eye’ (‘Epitaph on Cecilia Bulstrode’, 8).
152 art! Behold,] this edn; art? behold! F2
153 blue bindweed] Wh (subst.); Blew-binde weed F2
153 bindweed convolvulus, the slender tendrils of which twine themselves around other plants.
155 bryony ‘the white vine, which runs winding about the bodies of trees like a snake’ (Bartholomew Yong, 1598, cited in OED).
155 jessamine jasmine; a fragrant climbing shrub. This passage recalls Titania’s bower; cf. MND, 2.1.251–2, 4.1.41–3.
157–8 How . . . Wonder! Fant’sy laughs at Wonder, being amused by his naivety in mistaking realities for ideals. But by 189–95 he has changed his mind.
159 I’ll make you ask more questions.
160 discovered] F2; are discovered G
163 sh] G; not in F2
165 mild?] Wh; milde, F2
171 heads Full growth of leaves.
172 meads meadows.
173 paunce pansy.
177 crispèd curled into waves. Figuratively, like the curling or ‘crisping’ of hair, as in Challenge, 49–50: ‘Was there not a curl in his hair that I [= Love] did not sport in, or a ring of it crisped that might have become Juno’s fingers?’ See also Devil, 2.6.78, Und. 2.9.10, and 19.5–6.
178 brow scarce broke horns barely sprouting. Imitating Horace, Odes, 3.13.4–5.
180 saults leaps. For ‘wanton saults’, cf. Devil, 2.6.75 (a text written just before Vision).
181 Who, to replenish their udders, hungrily devour the grass.
182, 185 indented in F2
182 several varying.
183 lusty throstle full-throated thrush.
183 early nightingale The nightingale is usually represented as singing at night; perhaps ‘early’ implies that it is heard before the dawn (the performance time of the masque). See 220–32 below.
186 division descant; a rapid melody.
188 turtles turtle-doves.
188 bill Caress each other; bill and coo.
191 glories . . . spring The phrase alludes to the masquers, as detailed in the sd at 160–1. However, the identity of the masquers is only lightly characterized, and there is little in the way of mythological fiction to explain their appearance. ‘Glories of the Spring’ is a convenient shorthand that gives them a function in the occasion.
194 sh] G; not in F2
196 ] indented in F2
198 confess him i.e. acknowledge the King’s authority.
198 most most of all.
199–200 lord . . . isles ‘Lord of the isles’ was one of the titles anciently attached to the Scottish crown; see Barriers, 379n. The ‘four seas’ are the seas bounding Great Britain on all sides; the ‘less and greater isles’ the various islands off the north and west coasts of Scotland.
203 a dance] a’dance F2
204 entry An anglicized form of the French term ‘entrée’, associated with the Parisian balet de court, meaning the formal opening dance performed by the masquers. This is Jonson’s earliest use of this term. Cf. Lovers MM, 60; Time Vind., 273; Neptune, 296; Fort. Isles, 380; and Walls (1996), 231.
207 Which delightful spectacle anyone who saw once would wish to gaze on for ever.
208 prize value (it) properly.
212 curious artful; intricate.
212 knots (1) entanglements; (2) ornamental flower-beds; (3) intricate dance patterns.
213 at first i.e. from its first time of being.
215 Flora Goddess of flowers, associated with the spring. Ovid recounts her rape by Zephyrus (Fasti, 5.183–228).
215 motions (1) movements, such as the wind performs; (2) dance steps.
217 Idalian Relating to Idalium, in Cyprus; a grove consecrated to Venus.
217 brawls Dances, performed by a group in a ring.
217–18 and . . . walk A compliment used of the Volscian queen Camilla in Virgil, Aeneid, 8.808–9. Cf. Queens, 447–55.
217 to] Wh; not in F2
220 ladies] F2; the ladies G
220 ladies It is tempting to suppose that the word ‘the’ has dropped out before ‘ladies’. Cf. the parallel phrases in Merc. Vind., 189, and Pleasure Rec., 272.
221 aurora The dawn.
221 the Night  . . . Moon] Wh; (the Night . . . Moone) F2
221 Night . . . descended Cf. 3–6n.
222–31 Music for this song survives in British Library Egerton MS 2013; see the electronic edition. The setting is not stylo recitativo, but a short air.
222 sh] Wh; not in F2
223 Tithon’s] F2 (Tythons); Titans JnB 736
223 Tithon’s Tithon was Aurora’s husband; a mortal who was granted immortality but not eternal youth, he was ‘frozen’ by his debilitating age. In Notte d’Amore, Tithonus has a song lamenting the departure of Aurora from his bed.
a note on the masquers The only masquers mentioned in the contemporary accounts are George Villiers, Earl of Buckingham, and Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery. See Masque Archive, Vision, 4.
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