Title-page 6 1625 i.e.
1625/6. Jonson is using the legal calendar, which began the new year on
25 March. The play was acted in early 1626, and registered in the
Stationers’ Register on 14 April 1626.
10 Hor . . . Poet. Horace, The Art of Poetry
(333–4).
11–12 Aut . . . vitae'Poets wish either to instruct or delight,
or to join at once both the pleasant and the useful to life.' (See
Jonson's translation of Horace, Of the Art of Poetry,
7.50, lines 477–8.)
14 I.
B. John Beale, printer.
14 Robert
Allot London bookseller and publisher (d. 1635). His shop was
at the sign of the black bear in St. Paul’s Churchyard. He was the
principal publisher of the Shakespeare second folio in 1632. For Beale
and Allot, see the Textual Essay on F2(2), Electronic Edition.
16 1631 Printed
in 1631, but not issued until the folio of 1640–1.
The Persons of the Play 0.1 The list of dramatis personae in F2 organizes the
cast into significant groups.
Persons of the Play 1, 2, 3 PENNYBOY] F2 (PENI-BOY)
2 canter One adept in the use of jargon or cant. Beggars were
notorious for their use of mysterious cant; cf. . That
Pennyboy Jr’s father, ostensibly dead, has disguised himself as the
Canter remains undisclosed for most of the play, although the identity
of these two figures is tersely disclosed here in the printed list of
dramatis personae.
4 CYMBAL In
her edition
Kifer
remarks a reminiscence of Paul’s comparison of spiritually bankrupt or
uncharitable speech to the sounding of cymbals, 1 Corinthians, 13.1; the
biblical association is strengthened at
5.6.8, when Pennyboy Canter refers
to Cymbal as ‘their tinkling captain’.
4 Staple An official export commodities market, usually
exclusive and under royal protection; also, a warehouse or a quantity of
stored provisions.
4 jeerer sneerer.
5 FITTON
‘Fitton’ (or ‘Fitten’) is a rare word, of uncertain origin, meaning
‘lie’. In the folio revision of Cynthia’s Revels, the
word ‘fictions’ is changed to ‘fittens, fragments’: see collation to Cynthia (Q), 1.4.18.
5 Emissary
OED gives this as the first use of the term to mean
‘informant’ or ‘person sent on a mission’ although Jonson had already
used the term thus in
Devil, 5.5.47; the earlier sense of the
term, ‘outlet’ or ‘duct’, insinuates nasty connotations. See .
6 physic medicine.
7 SHUNFIELD
The name broadly evokes the captain’s fear of the dangers of the
battlefield.
8 MADRIGAL
Part-song, usually on pastoral themes, or a love-poem suitable for
setting in parts. Jonson’s references to the form are scornful:
Und.
42.68 and
Epicene, 2.3.19ff.
8 Poetaster Petty rhymer; see Jonson’s play by that name.
Jonson’s use of this word in Cynthia (Q), 2.4.11, is
the first cited in OED.
9 PICKLOCK
The name implies this lawyer’s disposition to subterfuge; cf.
Bart. Fair,
Ind. 103 and
3.5.234.
9 Westminster The seat of Parliament.
10 Pursuivant-at-arms and heraldet Both terms designate a petty
herald, although ‘heraldet’ seems to be a diminutive of Jonson’s own
devising. A ‘herald’ is an official genealogist, specialist in the
invention of coats-of-arms, and arbiter of aristocratic conduct. The
official organization of English heralds was the College of Heralds, or
College of Arms, the members of which were distributed across three
ranks, the Kings of Arms, the Heralds, and the Pursuivants. Each member
of the College had a traditional name: one of the pursuivants was
‘Bluemantle’, a name parodied in ‘Piedmantle’, a name that evokes
motley, the traditional garb of fools.
11 REGISTER
Senior book-keeper or clerk.
13 THOMAS BARBER] F2 (THO: BARBR)
14 PECUNIA
Money, wealth (Lat.).
14–18, 22–5 indented, F2
14 Infanta (Sp.) Princess. Because of her title, Jonson’s
audience could hardly avoid associating Pecunia with the Spanish Infanta
Maria Anna, whom Prince Charles had courted in 1622–3.
17 BAND Refers
to the ribbons used to bind up official documents, usually sealed with
wax.
18 WAX A
tradition of salacious insinuations about chambermaids triggers bawdy
associations to this name: it takes little to render wax pliant, after
all; morever,
seal could be used to denote sexual
congress, hence Knowell’s reflections (
EMI (F),
2.5.39–40) on how debauched fathers call their sons ‘into
fellowship of vice, / Bait ’em with the young chambermaid, to seal.’
19 secretary One who does the private business of an employer,
especially the handling of his or her correspondence.
19 gentleman-usher male attendant on a lady; harbinger (OED, 26 and 3a). See Induction, 4. A gentleman-usher
would attend on a lady, preceding her, whenever she walked abroad. Like
‘broker’, the term sometimes has a slight bawdy tincture.
19 Her
Grace Pecunia.
20 parcel-poet demi-poet or poetaster.
21 FASHIONER
‘One who makes articles of dress; a tailor, costumier, modiste’ (OED, Fashioner, b, OED’s first
usage).
22 LINENER
shirtmaker.
24–5 F2 (SHOOMAKER. SPVRRIER.)
25 SPURRIER
maker of spurs.
26 DOPPER, Anabaptist; cf. News NW, 164–6.
28 DOGS, two
[LOLLARD and BLOCK]
this edn; DOGGES.II. F2; Block and Lollard, two Dogs. G
29–30 Musicians / NICHOLAS a boy
singer]
Parr; not in F2
32 GOSSIP
confidante. OED gives three senses: a godmother (in
which sense it is used at Induction, 16–17 below), familiar
acquaintance, or a trifling woman.
36 BOOKHOLDER
prompter.
1–4, 13 SDs]
this edn; not in F2 13 SD]
G, subst.; not in F2
The Induction 1 The speaker of the Prologue begins until he is
interrupted; see Prologue 1, where the line is slightly varied.
4 Gentleman-usher door-keeper; see Persons of the Play 19n.
6 O’the stage
At private theatres like the Blackfriars, where this play was first
performed, gallants could rent stools or a place on a bench on stage,
making a show of themselves, of their gestures, clothes, and critical
connoisseurship; cf. Cynthia (Q), Praeludium, 92–5.
(It may have been possible to secure such ostentatious seating at the
public theatres as well; certainly one could rent seats in the ‘lords’
room’, often used as an upper stage at a theatre like the Globe, whether
or not it were allowable to sit on the main stage itself.) Apparently,
women did not purchase such seats, though it may be that the Prologue’s
question at 13–14 about what the noblemen and the wits will think of the
Gossips’ self-display entails a criticism of their transgression of the
proprieties not only of gender, but also of social status.
10 Shrovetide
The three days of indulgence and merriment prior to Lent.
10–11 It’s . . . meet Apparently proverbial; cf. Samuel Rowlands’s
ballad of 1602, ’Tis Merry When Gossips Meet.
12 form
bench.
14 bench With
a play on the judicial sense; see ‘sit upon’ and ‘arraign’ at 17
below.
16 gossips The
term is used here in the specific sense of ‘godmother’.
17 longing
Although Rabbi Busy explains that ‘longing, it is a
disease . . . incident to women’, in
Bart. Fair,
1.6.39–40, the Prologue for the Stage in
Staple does
not specify longing to sex. At
1.6.60, ‘longings’ is used
specifically to denote the appetite for novelty.
17 sit upon
pass judgement on. Jonson was partial to the analogy between legal and
literary judgement. See his reference to ‘the wise and many-headed bench
that sits / Upon the life and death of plays and wits’ in his
commendatory verses for Fletcher’s The Faithful
Shepherdess, as well as the Induction to Bart.
Fair (Induction 73ff.), and his commendatory verses prefixed to
Shakespeare’s first folio ‘Shakes. Beloved’ (5.638–42), lines 27–8.
28 like?] F2 (like?); like. F3
30 Cry you
mercy I beg your pardon.
30 you . . . cause This is the way Jonson seems to misremember
the remark of Shakespeare’s Caesar (
JC,
3.1.47–8): he quotes it derisively in
Discoveries as ‘Caesar did never wrong, but with just cause’
(480–1 and n.).
32 Curiosity
Cf. the opening SD of Time Vind., which announces the
entrance of Fame to an audience of ‘the Curious’.
34 penned
written or, by metaphoric extension, composed or constructed. But the
suggestion in
H&S
that ‘penned’ means ‘feathered’ also has merit.
36 rides post
rides hastily. Originally the specific sense was of riding one leg of a
route divided into stages or ‘posts’, each of a length appropriate for a
horseman to travel at speed, so that messages might be passed from one
post-rider to the next. It would be as inappropriate to ride post in
stockings as to dance in boots.
38 beaten
embroidered.
39 SD]
not in F2
40 lights At
indoor private theatres like the Blackfriars, where Staple was first performed, plays were performed by
candlelight. (At public theatres like the Globe, performances were
illuminated only by daylight.) Candle wicks had to be trimmed (‘mended’)
at regular intervals, obliging a performance pause at act breaks and, as
here, just before the beginning of a play, since the candles would have
already been burning in the period during which the audience was
settling itself.
40 SD]
placement, F3; as marginal note
F2; and similarly passim for all marginal notes in
F2
43 no
fireworks Responding to Tattle’s and Expectation’s nervous
reaction to the Bookholder’s instructions to the Tiremen, the Prologue
reassures the gossips that Staple will not resort to
startling pyrotechnics of the sort sometimes employed to excite the more
vulgar audiences at the public theatres.
45 in travail
in labour, i.e. (1) working on; (2) about to give birth to.
45 travail] F2 (trauell)
46 and] F3; aud
F2
47 like
likely.
48 poet
Jonson’s preferred term for ‘playwright’.
49 abuse him
(By acting his play poorly).
50 tiring-house dressing room.
51 tun large
cask or barrel.
51 spurges
ferments, froths (and so gives off impurities).
52 wort The
mixture of grain, yeast, and water prepared in the first stages of
beer-brewing.
52 work
ferment, ‘stew’.
52–3 a good shroving
dish rich, Shrovetide fare.
53 for a service of
state as a dish served at a banquet.
54 unbraced
loosened.
56 making
composing, devising.
56 repeating
reciting.
58 the book
the script of the play.
58 poetical
fury The phrasing links Jonson’s notorious disposition to
pique with furor poeticus, the violent mania
associated with the inspired enthusiasm described in Plato’s Ion and the subject of the last lines of Horace’s Art of Poetry.
58 sack The
general term for a range of strong, dry white wines imported from Spain
or the Canary Islands; the particular wine in which the poet has
indulged is, apparently, flat and insipid, or ‘dead’.
60 emblem of
Patience Cf.
TN, 2.4.110, ‘she sat like
Patience on a monument’.
61 Prologue. Peace!]
this edn; Prologue, peace. F2
The Prologue for the Stage 2 Characteristically, Jonson here prefers the ear to
the eye as an organ of moral and aesthetic judgement, but it was not
uncommon at this time to speak of hearing a play.
5 maker
Together with ‘poet’, this is Jonson’s preferred term not only for an
author of non-dramatic poetry, but also for a dramatist.
9 salute
greet.
10 such
such-and-such.
10 walk move
on.
13 scene
play.
14–15 How . . . spring Although the use of coaches in England dates
to the mid-1550s, hackney-coaches, available for public hire, only
became available in London in the early 1620s. Jonson had commented on
Hyde Park as a favoured gathering place for those riding in coaches as
early as 1620 in News NW, 201–2; and cf. the remarks
on riding in coaches in East. Ho! (2.3.12–14) and Bart. Fair (4.5.80–1).
14 Hyde Parke] F2 (Hide-parke)
14 show
appear.
15 Medley’s An
ordinary – an eating-and-drinking establishment somewhat more upscale
than a tavern – in Milford Lane, which runs south from the Strand.
16 Dunstan The
Devil and St Dunstan Tavern, near Temple Bar, on the south side of Fleet
Street, in the Apollo Room of which Jonson often met with friends. A set
of rules of conduct that Jonson composed in Latin verse, the Leges Convivales, were engraved over the chimney in
this room and his English verses welcoming those who had come to consult
‘the oracle of Apollo’ were painted over the doorway to the room
(5.420).
16 the Phoenix
A tavern, near the theatre of the same name, in Drury Lane.
20 poetic
elves The effect is at once diminutive and derisive: ‘little
rhymers’.
22 can who
can.
25 He The true
dramatic poet.
26 acme high
point; Jonson uses the term in Discoveries, 662 to
refer, again, to a state of particularly verbal excellence.
27 enterprise
undertake.
29 If . . . that If you do not care for that which.
30 left
ceased.
30 SD]
Parr; not in F2
The Prologue for the Court 1 This prologue takes the form of a sonnet, which
Jonson generally eschews: although he also adopts the form for
Epigr.
103, he expresses his general dislike for sonnets in
Informations,
42–4. See also
Epigr. 56, headnote.
1 not . . . lamp unstudied, fresh.
3 writ . . . meridian of written to suit the taste of.
5 rite solemn
offering.
8 nut-crackers Referring to the habit, ostensibly vulgar, of
cracking and eating nuts during plays.
11–14 Jonson is doing more than asserting that the play
does not submit to the contemporary mania for novelty. He here renders
the relation between accuracy and truth with unusual subtlety and
emphatic latitude: he tells us that the satiric representation of common
folly cannot properly be claimed as a truth, though Fancy might proceed
as if it were and, indeed, subsequent poets may properly imitate such
representations. Gently adjusting the important received idea that
poetry should aim only to represent the True, Jonson proposes that
poetry may set its sights on the merely actual. Here, then, is an
important moment in the complex history of realism.
13 SD]
Parr; not in F2
1.1 The first three scenes are imagined to take place
in Pennyboy Jr’s lodgings.
1.1 ] F2 (Act. I. Scene. I.)
0 SD.1–2] F2 (Peni-boy. Iv. Lether-legge.)
0 SD.3–4]
His . . . tailor] F3;
in right margin, F2, preceded by an asterisk
indicating placement in dialogue
0.3 His
. . .
boots Leatherleg,
Pennyboy’s shoemaker, has just assisted Pennyboy in pulling on a new
pair of boots.
0.4 trouses breeches, not the modern, looser-fitting
trousers.
1 Gramercy
Many thanks. (Fr. Grand merci.)
1 spurrier
spur-maker.
2 presently
at once.
3–9 That this parodies the opening of Donne’s
Elegy on Prince Henry (‘Look to me, faith, and look to
my faith, God’) was first noted by Pottle (
1925); cf.
Informations,
91–6.
3 land
Neatly ambiguous: while Pennyboy calls upon his compatriots (‘land’) to
admire his wit, a counter-meaning betrays him, for he seems at the same
time to be calling upon the land he has inherited to sustain (‘look to’)
his wit, the implication being that his new wealth will compensate for
his dearth of intelligence.
6 those in
addition to those.
6 perspicils
magnifying lenses.
9 looking
after paying attention to, admiring.
10 Now . . . shortly By ‘shortly’ I mean right now. (
OED notes two temporal senses of Shortly
adv. 2: ‘in a short time; not long after the present’ and ‘in
early use also: with little delay, speedily, quickly’. Pennyboy insists
that his use of the word be taken in the second sense.)
10 ’T] F2 (*
’T)
10 strikes
Striking watches had been manufactured since the middle of the sixteenth
century.
10, 15 SD]
in margin, F2, preceded by
asterisk
10–11 One . . . six Normally, of course, the civil day began at
midnight, but there were some inconsistencies of practice. According to
Eustace Clark’s
Almanac,
1633, ‘the Babylonians, Persians, and
Bohemians begin their day at sun-rising, holding till sun-setting; and
so do our lawyers account it in England’ (B3–B3v).
15 drop] F2 (
*drop)
15 wardship
status of being a ‘ward’ or minor, dependent on a guardian or
parent.
16 pupil age
minority; cf.
Cor., 2.2.92.
16 vassalage
(1) being a minor in age (vassal-age); (2) being in a state of
servitude.
17 Liberty
Full rights and prerogatives, as of citizenship, professional
‘mastership’, or majority.
17 come, throw] F2 (come throw)
18 band
collar.
19 sue . . . livery To ‘sue for livery’ is to bring suit for the
delivery from the Court of Wards of one’s inheritance. In this legal
phrase, the term ‘livery’, which remains fairly close to its
etymological origins, means ‘that which is provided or delivered’,
though Pennyboy Jr is also thinking of a less technical meaning of the
term, the uniform or features of clothing that designate one as a
servant or retainer in a particular aristocratic household. In effect,
Pennyboy Jr conceives of his majority at once as an access of property
and as the acquisition of a new suit of clothes, at once idiosyncratic
and fashionable; his persistent immaturity is signalled by the fact that
he seems to regard the property and the clothing as equivalent.
19 mine] F3;
miny F2
20 so much
having such-and-such an income.
22 SD]
in margin, F2, preceded by
asterisk
23 Not come] F2 (*Not come)
23–7 Tailor . . . thee The basic framework of the sentence is
‘Tailor, thou art a vermin thus to retard my longings to beat thee’,
implying that beating tradesmen is one of the special prerogatives of
the moneyed class. The association of tailors with vermin is common
enough, since clothes were frequently infested with lice.
24–5 prick’st . . . seam Recalling ‘prick-louse’, a cant term for
tailors.
25 subtle
artful, delicate.
25 go to An
expression of impatience.
26 longings
Cf. Induction 17;
1.6.60.
27 write man
write myself down as having reached the age of twenty-one; see
EMO, 3.1.167.
28 struck] F2 (strooke)
28 it,] F3; F2
(it)
30 An If.
33 hope his
custom hope to have his business.
34 Fashioner
See The Persons of the Play, 21n.
34 break]
this edn; breake – F2
35 breaking
breaking your appointment. (Playing on breaking a
head, i.e. drawing blood by inflicting a head wound.)
1.2 ] F3 (Act. I. Scene II.); Act. II. Scene. IJ. F2
0 SD]
G (Enter Fashioner.); Fashioner. Peniboy. Thomas /
Barber. Haberdasher. F2
1.2 1 staying
tardiness.
3 hernshaw
heron.
3 hernshaw] F2 (Her’n-sew)
5 Before a
quarter A quarter of an hour earlier.
7 nonage
legal minority, grounds for temporary exemption from debt.
8–9 ere . . . time i.e. before you were demonstrably old enough
to be held accountable for your debts.
11 hell The
space under a tailor’s shop-board, where remnants were stored.
14 for three
lives A standard means of setting the duration of a contract,
designated as in force for the term of the life of the longest-lived of
three specified individuals.
15 copyholder
One who holds land at the will of the landowner proper.
16 SD] F3;
in left margin, F2
16 unquestioned paid without inspection.
16 SD
says tries on. (Says is an obsolete, apocopated form of assays.)
18 sealed . . . custom guaranteed that I will be your customer
for a fixed period.
19 without
outside, in a waiting room.
19 SH
jr] F3 (Ju.); IV F2
20 SD.2]
G (Enter Thomas, Barber); not in F2, but see massed entry
at 1.2.0 SD
21 in
procinctu in preparation (originally, in reference to girding
up for battle).
22 staple See
Persons, 4n.
23–36 This recycles the ‘project’ proposed by the
Factor in News NW, 30–44, Jonson’s masque for
1620.
24 brave
impressive, splendid. An unobtrusive but central term in the vocabulary
of the play, it is used almost exclusively to designate finery and
novelty, as opposed to valour; see its mock-heroic use in the next
scene. Also in lines
37,
47.
27 vent (1)
publish, sell; (2) emit. See also ‘venting’ (
40) and ‘vented’ (
52).
29–30 Barbers were notorious gossips. Cf. the story of
Midas and the ass’s ears, as retold in Lyly’s Midas;
the barber, Motto, cannot restrain himself from betraying the royal
secret, ‘for it is as hard for a barber to keep a secret in his mouth,
as a burning coal in his hand’ (5.2.130–1). Clerimont shocks Truewit in
Epicene by reporting on Cutbeard, a barber who, he
says, trims Morose in utter silence (1.2.32).
32 The ‘coincidence’ that the Staple is situated in
the same building as are Pennyboy Jr’s lodgings invites us to consider
the Staple and Pennyboy as comparable, if not as essentially linked; one
can think of this building as a nursery of prematurity.
36 current
authentic.
37 ’Fore me A
mild adjuration, like ‘Upon mine honour’.
40 venting
emitting (hot air).
42 projected
devised.
43 lies
resides.
47 emissaries
See Persons of the Play, 5n. In their note to the use of the phrase
‘emissary eye’ at
Und. 2.8.17, H&S suggest the direct influence of
the ‘
oculis emissiciis’ of Plautus’
Aulularia (
The Pot of Gold), 1.1.41, a play
that leaves many traces in
Staple.
Parr (ed.
Staple)
cites
Discoveries, 852–3, where ‘the merciful prince’ is
said to have no need of ‘emissaries, spies, intelligencers’.
54 SD This
note is the first of many that summarize or gloss the action at a
particular moment rather than describe the physical behaviour of
characters. This particular instance is perhaps unremarkable, but it
initiates a drift towards others – e.g. the ‘stage directions’ at
3.2.20ff. – that offer
commentary and so resemble marginal glosses in non-dramatic texts far
more than they do stage directions proper.
54 SD]
He . . . talk]
in right margin in F2
55 ordinaries
These upscale taverns, the forerunners of the coffee-houses of the
eighteenth century, were prime sources for fashionable gossip; see
Dekker’s description of the typical ordinary as ‘the very Exchange for
news out of all countries’ (The Gull’s Hornbook,
chapter 5.)
60 Paul’s
This refers less to the bookstalls in the yard of St Paul’s than to
‘Paul’s Walk’ in the middle aisle of the church (see line 70), a
notorious source of gossip and political and commercial news; see John
Earle’s Microcosmographie (L9) and, perhaps more
relevant, Jonson’s own brilliant staging of that fantastical information
exchange in Act 3 of EMO.
60 Exchange
Probably the Royal Exchange, erected by Sir Thomas Gresham in the 1560s
between Cornhill and Threadneedle Street, and not the New Exchange,
which opened in the Strand in 1609 – though both were places of
fashionable resort and important nodes in the circulation of gossip (see
Chalfant (
1978),
72–5). In
My Lady’s Looking Glass (
1616), Barnabe
Riche suggests that, in his daily circuit, the ‘news-monger’ takes in
Paul’s walk at 10 a.m., and then goes to the Exchange at 11 (G1v).
60 Westminster
Hall Location of the Courts of Common Pleas, the King’s Bench,
the Exchequer, and Chancery. Westminster Hall also housed several
booksellers’ stalls.
64 For a sustained attempt to work out thematic
relations among the Staple, the Jeerers, and the College of Canters (the
‘noble whimsy’ of
4.4.80ff), see R. Levin (
1971), 184–91. Levin is careful to
note Jonson’s indebtedness, in the conception of these new clubs and
institutions, to the innovations imagined in several of Aristophanes’
comedies – female government in
The Thesmophoriazusae
and
Ecclesiazusae and the ‘thoughtery’ of
The Clouds.
65 jeerer It
is fitting that modish jeering and the circulation of court gossip and
news be thus closely allied.
68–70 Ambler,
Buzz Jonson had used these names to evoke a similar culture of
urban chatter in Neptune, the masque for 1624; see Neptune 199–200. The two emissaries are not included
in the list of characters and never actually appear on stage here. The
repeated reference to the two is part of Jonson’s attempt, perhaps not
entirely effective, to maintain the impression that the Staple is a
sizable enterprise, despite the limited theatrical resources committed
to the illusion.
69 fine-paced]
H&S (fine-pac’d); fine pac’d
F2
70–3 The competition between Buzz and Burst appears to
allude to the struggle between Matthew De Quester, a naturalized
Dutchman, and Henry Billingsley, of the Merchant Adventurers, for
control of the foreign post. Since 1604, De Quester had held a royal
appointment as postmaster for foreign parts, and in 1625 he asserted
that his authority included supervision of the Merchant Adventurers’ own
sizable foreign mail service, the control of which Billingsley claimed.
In 1626, Billingsley ‘sprung a leak’ when De Quester secured a royal
proclamation (Steele and Crawford,
1967, 1.172) prohibiting Billingsley’s
postal activities. Both men had offices near the Exchanges.
70 froy
handsome, fine (from Dutch fraai, which was not
uncommonly used with an ironic coloration). This passage is elaborated
from Neptune.
71 Exchange] F3 (Exchange); Exhange F2
72 Burst
Jonson reuses the name for a citizen in The New Inn.
With a play on burse or bourse, a
commodity exchange, and also on rupture (73), i.e.
bankruptcy.
75 clerks –] F2 (Clerkes,)
79 good – it is my birthday –] F2
(good. It is my birth-day.)
80 betimes
promptly.
80 a grudging
an inclination (though the phrase also carries a hint of the
pathological, since it was used to describe the uncertain symptoms at
the onset of an illness). OED’s first example in this
sense.
84 office.] F3 (Office.); Office,. F2
86 At
what . . . market? Masters were commonly paid a premium for
taking a young person into an apprenticeship, and the amount of the
premium was unregulated; speaking of a market in these premiums, the
young Pennyboy describes an inherent economic dynamic as if it were an
actual institution.
87 want
lack.
87 SD]
placement, Winter; as marginal note F2
88 Aesop’s
ass In the Aesopian tale of the ass and the lapdog (available
in English versions by both Caxton and Brindley), the ass emulates its
master’s favourite pet by trying to jump up on the master’s lap.
91 Clownish fawning of this sort is as awkward as a
horse attempting to curtsy.
93 he’s] F2 (h’has)
94 made you
Clothes proverbially make the man, or the tailor does; see
Dent, T17∗ and
Lear,
2.2.48, as well as Polonius’s more measured observation that
‘the apparel oft proclaims the man’ (
Ham., 1.3.72), and
line 111 below.
96 musty
ill-tempered (OED, a.2 3, where the earliest citation is from 1620); but setting up
a play on words with another of its senses, mouldy.
98 SD]
placement, Winter; as marginal note
F2
99 Estifania’s Jonson refers to a Lady Estifania in
Devil
(4.4.40); the two references suggest that she may have been a
Spanish perfume and cosmetics dealer dwelling in London.
100 a pair
i.e. pair of perfumed pockets.
100 Thy . . . so i.e. No doubt your bill will reflect this
inflated estimate of cost.
101–2 what . . . invention The young Pennyboy attributes to his
tailor the same imitative habits that shaped the more prestigious
practice of early modern poets and visual artists. In line 104, the
modern Fashioner replies by asserting the utter independence of his
creativity.
103 arras
tapestry.
103 tailors’
libraries Cf.
Pan’s Ann., 100–1.
105 velvets . . . plushes Cf. the ‘plush-and-velvet men’ (32) of
the ‘Ode to Himelf’ appended to The New Inn.
108 wittier
even wittier.
109 do much
upon do much to improve.
113 would . . . up who would have deceived one utterly.
115 speed i.e.
being socially in the swim.
120 you’ve] F2 (you ’haue)
121 broken
torn or worn through; the sentiment is proverbial (
Tilley, S53; and cf.
Fort. Isles, 97).
122 peep-arm
The sole example in
OED.
127 out of
countenance flustered, put down.
129 SD]
this edn; not in F2; Enter Haberdasher,
Linener, and Hatter and Shoemaker. G
130 without
outside, in a waiting room (as at
1.2.19).
130 SD]
placement, Winter; as marginal note
F2
132 In print
Exactly, perfectly (
OED, Print, n. 14).
132 SDs]
Parr; not in F2
132 See your
self Cf. Forest 13 and Cat., 2.1.227–31.
133 O’ . . .
passant Of the most
fashionable design (a ‘block’ being a mould for a hat;
OED,
n. 4a). ‘Passant’ is the French heraldic
term for walking, while looking to the
dexter or right
side.
137–9 Can
conjure . . . presently Renaissance magi would summon demonic
spirits by uttering or writing out their occult names; and they
undertook to confine those spirits within the compass of carefully
inscribed circles.
139 presently
at once.
141 trimmed
barbered.
142 SD]
in right margin in F2
143 God’s so
From the obscene Italian expletive, ‘Cazzo!’, though
the English form seems to have lost the spark of obscenity.
144 I’d . . . spurs I was close to having forgotten my spurs. The
locution may be a glancing inversion of the phrase ‘to win one’s spurs’,
meaning to achieve one’s first honours: the implication would be that
Pennyboy, who is generally more concerned with the trappings of
distinction than with the actions by which one earns distinction, here
expresses relief at not having lost sight of those trappings.
144 I’d] F2 (I’had)
1.3 ] F2 (Act. I. Scene. IIJ.)
0 SD.1
pennyboy canter] F2 (Peni-boy, Canter.)
1.3 0.1 SD
canter Whereas
Persons of the Play, 2, tersely indicates that the Canter is indeed
Pennyboy Jr’s father in disguise, Jonson does little to disclose the
secret.
0 SD.1–2
SD
patched . . . money]
this edn; patched and ragged cloke
G
6 The military idiom begins here with the notion of
a mingled muster of footsoldiers and cavalry.
9 sergeants
(1) officers charged with summoning debtors to court; (2) personal
attendants; (3) inferior executive military officers.
9 margents
(1) margins, periphery; (2) military flanks. Canter implicitly links the
commercial bill to the halberd or battleaxe, making use of a familiar
pun on ‘bill’.
10 jowl jaw
or cheek; thence, face.
11 SD]
in right margin in F2
11 founder
(1) One who sets an enterprise on its foundations; (2) also the master
of a metal-foundry or mint, and thus an appropriate ‘surrogate’ parent
for the young Pennyboy.
16 billmen
soldiers or watchmen armed with bills, weapons with long handles and
hooked blades, and here with a pun on ‘bills’ = ‘statements of
account’.
19 See Persons of the play n. 2.
22 pass (1)
pass over, ignore; (2) with suggestion also of passing or approving
legislative bills.
22, 24 SD]
placement, this edn; as marginal note at 20 in F2 (He takes the bils, and puts them vp in his
pockets.)
22 SD
takes What seems to be a
damaged ‘k’ made it possible for
Winter (ed.
Staple) to misread ‘takes’ as ‘tales’, presumably construing
Pennyboy’s action as tallying.
23 ale and
sugar Heating and sweetening ale or wine just prior to their
consumption was not uncommon; Pennyboy is being nicely hospitable.
25 squibs
firecrackers.
25 master
i.e. a young man now of age. (Not ‘master’ in the sense of one to whom
one owes obedience.)
27 if case in
case, if perhaps.
28 outer works] F2 (outerworkes)
30 pioneers
Low-ranking soldiers who dug trenches and fortifications, especially for
the use of explosives and seige engines.
31 casemates
Vaulted chambers at the base of fortifications, used primarily by those
defending a fortress against seige assault.
31 casemates] F2 (Casamates)
37 SD]
in left margin in F2
34 pieces (1)
coins; (2) firearms; (3) strongholds.
35 strengths
strongholds.
36 amber
ambergris, used for the manufacture of perfumes.
37 ad
solvendum let’s settle up.
37 There . . . etc. Pennyboy is glancing over the totals on the
various bills presented to him and then paying the tradesmen.
38 I
look . . .
totalis I only checked
the totals; I can’t be bothered with itemizing each particular. (In
lines 44–5, Canter ironically praises Pennyboy Junior for being so
generous to tradesmen.)
40–1 A sententious truism from the pseudo-Senecan De remediis fortuitorum: ‘Aut avarus
prodigus est; si prodigus, non habebit, si avarus, non habet’
(10.3). The opposition of the miserly and the prodigal will return in
the play’s last lines.
40 never has
money i.e. professes to have no money to be able to lend or
give. Cf. Shylock in
MV, 1.3.50–5.
43 chanter
Gifford emends to ‘Canter’, despite the reading in F2 and F3. The folio
reading (‘
Chanter’) might suggest that the tradesmen
are reflecting the elder Pennyboy’s singing entrance. And cf.
1.6.70–1.
43 chanter] F2 (Chanter); Canter G
47 long
vacation The period during the summer outside the law terms,
when the fashionable members of society went out of London.
47 cozening
cheating.
51 sirrah
Form of address to a social inferior or intimate acquaintance.
52 box a
money-box.
52 SD]
in left margin in F2 (He giues the
Spurrier, to his boxe.)
53 right
Ripon The high quality of ‘Ripon rowels’, the pointed wheels
on spurs manufactured in the Yorkshire cathedral town of Ripon, is
recorded as proverbial in Fuller’s
Worthies (
1662), 3A3v
v. Their extraordinary strength was sometimes
demonstrated, apparently, by showing them capable of striking through a
coin.
57 Sir Bevis
Bullion A slant allusion to the flamboyant miner Sir Bevis
Bulmer (d. 1615), who worked gold mines in northern England and southern
Scotland. He was knighted in 1604 and, in 1606, was granted a lease of
all gold and silver mines in Scotland.
65 trade in
occupy
[ourselves
] with; cf.
Ant.,
2.5.2.
65 nutmegs
Nutmegs had long been used to spice ale.
1.4 ] F2 (Act. I. Scene. IIII.)
1.4 0.1 The rest of Act 1 is located in the News Office,
in the same building where Pennyboy has his lodgings.
0 SD.1–2]
this edn; Register. Clerke. VVoman. F2; A countrey-/woman/ waites there./ as marginal note
following 11, F2
2 carpet
Used to cover the table.
4, 6, 7, 8, 9 SH
nathaniel]
G; Cle F2
4 I had] F3;
Ihad F2
6 Spinola
Marquis Ambrosio Spinola, since 1605 the commander of the Spanish troops
in the Netherlands, beseiged and eventually triumphed over Breda in
1625. News of Spinola’s incendiary egg-grenades will be recounted in
3.2.
7 That That
which.
8 Golden
Heir Pennyboy Jr, although, as D. F. McKenzie (
1973) pointed out,
the slightly mystifying grandeur of the phrase might have excited the
flickering suspicion of a reference to Charles Stuart, newly
crowned.
9 SD]
Parr, subst.; not in F2
11 A
groatsworth A small amount; a groat was equal in value to four
pence.
12 down into
the country, to a village.
13 butterwoman . . . Nathaniel The first oblique reference to
Nathaniel Butter, leading figure in the nascent news-publishing industry
in London. Baptized in 1583, Butter was made free of the Stationers’
Company in 1604 and began publishing news of the Thirty Years War in the
1620s. Butter’s short quarto newsbooks appeared sometimes weekly.
Whereas Jonson satirizes the implausibility of these news reports and
the fevered interest of their readers, other objections were also
levelled at newsbooks, and Butter was occasionally arrested for
disseminating information regarded as more or less incendiary. Jonson
will play frequently on his name in the course of Staple. A butterwoman is a woman who makes or sells
butter.
16 fit
supply. Echoing The Spanish Tragedy, 4.1.70.
17 Parodying a line from The Spanish
Tragedy (‘It is not now as when Andrea lived’, 3.14.111) and
alluding to the soldier, Thomas Gainsford, who for several years had
assisted Butter in the composing of news pamphlets. Gainsford, who had
died in 1624, is similarly satirized in Captain Buz of Neptune (200) and Captain Pamphlet of ‘An Execration upon
Vulcan’ (79). The Register and Clerk insist that the Staple, with its
systematic record-keeping, aims to settle the trade in news: the news
will no longer be trumped up on demand.
20 attend
wait.
20 policy
prudence, expediency.
1.5 ] F2 (Act. I. Scene. V.)
0 SD.1–2]
this edn; Peniboy. Cymbal. Fitton. Tho: / Barber. Canter. F2; Enter Cymbal
and Fitton, introducing Pennyboy, jun. G; Enter to them Cymbal
and Fitton, introducing Pennyboy Junior; Thomas Barber
and Pennyboy Canter enter after them and stand apart. / Parr
1.5 1 dainty
handsome, pleasant.
4 Examiner
Parr (ed.
Staple) proposes that this means ‘editor’,
though no such usage is recorded in the
OED; 1.4.3 suggests
that ‘examination’ of news is one of the primary fuctions of the
Staple.
5 several
separate, various.
11 coranti,
gazetti broadside serial
(but not strictly periodical) news sheets: the original form of English
printed news referring respectively to the periods when the law courts
were adjourned and when they were in session. The cycle of these terms
had a powerful influence on commerce in general, particularly on the
book trade (for the market in books was much quickened by the influx of
litigants from the countryside), as well as on the circulation of gossip
and fashion. Jonson refers to the
gazetti in
Volp.,
5.4.83 and to the ‘Courants’ in
Und. 43.81.
13 faction
Apparently meant to refer to contentious groups of specifically
religious character.
14 Here, and in the lines that follow, Jonson
reworks Factor’s description, in
News NW (30ff.), of
his project of a staple for news.
14–15 Reformed . . . Protestant . . . Pontificial i.e. Calvinist,
Lutheran, and Catholic.
15 of all which
several of each of which.
16 day-books,
characters, precedents diaries, codes, originals from which
copies are taken.
20 Factors
Representatives, agents.
20 Liegers
Local agents (literally, ambassadors).
22 bears . . . relation makes impressive hearing (Parr, ed. Staple), deserves an impressive report.
23 Mercurius
Britannicus In January 1625, Nathaniel Butter and his
associates began to use the imprint ‘Printed for Mercurius Britannicus’
in most of their newsbooks. The name imitates the title of the earliest
of the continental corantos, the Mercurius
Gallobelgicus, first published in 1594.
24 he . . . in
half i.e. his profit has increased by 50 per cent.
25 I’ll stand to
it I’ll vouch for that.
25–35 For
where . . . prostituted Notice the suspense and arc of this
explanation, which hales within its perimeter a vast culture of
interest, intrigue, concern, and supposition.
26, 27, 30, 31, 32, 34 ]
dashes here are represented by a full stop in F2
29 politic
(1) tactful; (2) calculating.
32 How
Responding to the comma that F2 prints after ‘How’,
H&S detect a deprecating
reference to Edmund Howes, who extended Stow’s
Annals.
Jonson’s disdain for Howes is made plain in
News NW, 21–8 and
note 22.
32 How] F3; How,
F2
33–4 He . . . books The unsettling phrase, which figures reading –
or, perhaps, the physical opening of books or the cutting of their pages
– as a kind of deflowering or even rape, invites us to puzzle over the
meaning of the formulaic phrase ‘gentle reader’, by challenging the
tenderness of readers and that refinement that ostensibly comes from
their high social standing (another meaning of ‘gentle’).
36–41 Because the planned monopoly of the market in
news is to put printed news out of business, pastors and justices of the
peace will no longer be lured into groundless inquests by the sort of
printed accounts of rural enormities reported in News
NW, ‘your printed conundrums of the Serpent in Sussex or the
witches bidding the Devil to dinner at Derby’ (47–9). That the Staple
traffics as much in such accounts as in the foreign political and
military reportage in which Butter specializes is highly polemical:
Jonson implies that news-culture is animated by an indiscriminate
appetite for the sensational.
37 Inquisition Here, an investigation or inquest, but the
phrasing (especially the use of the direct object) is meant to evoke the
fervid ecclesiastical tribunals that sought out and punished heretics
across Catholic Europe.
42–61 Here again Jonson is reworking the Factor’s
reflections in News NW (30–44) on the publishing of
news.
43 Will be
abused Are willfully inclined to be hoodwinked.
44 In . . . lies in believing the lies that.
45 As . . . yourselves As much as you take pleasure in
manufacturing the lies.
49 leaves
ceases.
51–4 Disdainful quips suggesting that print especially
provoked the credulous to belief were commonplace; cf.
WT,
4.4.249–50.
58 stationer
member of the book trade; here, a publisher or, perhaps, a
bookseller.
59 buttering
Cf. .
64 assure
confirm the authenticity of.
66 policy
formal certification.
69 Wit . . . Order
H&S suggest an
imitation here of the titles of such morality plays as
The
Marriage of Wit and Science (
c. 1569) and
The Marriage of Wit and Wisdom (
c.
1579), though the effect of such imitation is, of course, gently
parodic.
70 invite the
times attract contemporary taste.
74 polite
Used in its etymological sense, ‘polished’; cf.
Poet.,
3.1.24.
79 happily
fortunately.
81 as new as
day Proverbial. Jonson denigrates the idiom at
The New
Inn, 4.3.31.
84 SD.1
Thomas . . . forward]
Parr, subst.; not in F2
84, 86, 87, 89 SH
nathaniel]
G; Cla. F2
85, 88, 91, 93 SD]
in left margin in F2
85 SD
Rejoiceth . . . in This
marginal comment in F2 directs Pennyboy Jr to speak intimately with Tom
of his delight in being the subject of Nathaniel’s news that a young
heir has just come of age.
86 this day
seventh-night a week ago.
88 he the
son, Pennyboy Jr.
89 An . . . beggar Pennyboy Canter has brought news of the
father’s death and has been ‘entertained’ (90) or recruited to serve the
young man since.
93 put him in
Either (1) put him, Canter, in your newspaper; or (2) give the clerkship
to Tom.
93 angel A
coin worth about 10s.
97 roll news
account.
98 How . . . us How you acquired this information about us.
102 essay . . . piece Both are terms for a specimen by which a
practitioner demonstrates his or her abilities in a craft – in this
case, a narrative that demonstrates skilled newsmongering.
104 pragmatic
businessman.
105 nemo-scit no one knows.
105 ’Tis as It
depends how.
106 just
moiety exact half share.
106 moiety] F2 (meoytie)
107 moiety] F2 (moeytie)
113 underparted
to divided between.
114 just
exact.
115 Ha’ you
Have you yet hired.
117 carry it
prevail.
117 parts
qualities.
120 decayed
stationer bankrupt bookseller or publisher; see .
123 churchyard
Location of many bookshops, in the yard of St Paul’s.
123 west door
Where advertisements for employment were posted in St Paul’s.
125 pretty
apt.
126–7 Was . . . university Alluding to one of the more notorious
forms of the debasement of honours under James I, in this case a
debasement of academic honours and not the usual debasement of titles of
nobility. During state visits to Oxford (1605) and Cambridge (
1615), academic
degrees were conferred on James’s entire retinue.
129 cittern
Barbers often kept this predecessor of the modern guitar on the premises
for the entertainment of their customers; see
Epicene, 3.5.48 and
Vision,
85. In
Love Rest., 75–6, Robin Goodfellow recounts his
attempt to gatecrash a masque by pretending to be one of the
musicians.
129 cittern] F2 (Cythern)
132 snaps
snatches.
136 SD
He
. . .
place Pennyboy Jr gives
Cymbal £50 as the price of placing Tom in the office clerkship.
136, 144 SD]
in right margin in F2
137 tell
count.
140 SD]
G (Re-enter Nathaniel)
141 SH
nathaniel]
G; Cla. F2
144 creature
dependant, client; one who owes his status to another.
144 SD
They . . . Canter
Cymbal, Fitton, Clerk, etc., say their goodbyes and prepare to exit a
few lines later.
145 Keep me
fair Keep me in your good graces.
147 SD]
G
(Exeunt all but P. jun. and P.
Cant.)
1.6 ] F2 (Act. I. Scene. VI.)
0 SD]
G; Picklock. Peni-boy. Iv. / P.
Canter. F2
1.6 3 cypress
gauzy fabric; when dyed dark, cypress was often used for veils and other
mourning garments.
4 smutting
black or gloomy (
OED, citing this as the sole use in this
sense).
5 twelvepenny
broad ribbons The broadest ribbons commonly available.
6 labels The
ribbons on either side of a bishop’s mitre (
OED, sb.
1, 1).
6 made shift
devised means.
9–11 Burial marshalled by heralds was an expensive
prerogative of the nobility, too expensive for the frugal elder
Pennyboy. Hiring trumpeters would cost less, but Pennyboy regards even
that as a superfluous noise and expense.
16 so opportunely] F2 (soopportunely)
17 compounded
arranged. Since ‘to compound’ often means ‘to make a payment’,
Picklock’s phrasing here may imply that Pennyboy had made some payment
to ensure that his son does not fall under the jurisdiction of the Court
of Wards (as does Grace Welborn in Bart. Fair).
20 of him in
losing him (my father).
20 bailiff
steward, manager, protector.
26 carry a
mine dig a tunnel for explosives, to undermine; cf. .
29 Was Who
was.
34 schedule
codicil.
35 SD]
Parr, subst.; not in F2
36 upon . . . blessing as per his charge and concomitant with
the receipt of his blessing.
39 Cornish
Cornwall had a long-standing reputation, albeit sometimes exaggerated,
for mineral wealth.
40–2 Pecunia . . . Mines See The Persons of the Play, 14n.
43 Ophir In 1
Kings, 9.28, King Solomon fetches gold from Ophir, a passage that,
Parr notes (ed.
Staple), made Solomon the object of special alchemical
interest; Job, 28.16 indicates that Ophir was a proverbial source of
riches. See
Alch., 2.1.4.
44 Subterranean The appellation consolidates the association of
Pecunia’s family with both mining and dirt.
45 her three
names See the discussion at 2 Int. 18–23.
46 Aurelia
Clara Golden (from Lat., aureus), bright or
renowned (from Lat., clara).
48 contracted
family diminished entourage.
48 secretary
See Persons of the Play, 19n.
52–3 two . . . fellow Neither Pawn nor his fellow groom is listed
in Persons of the Play, nor in any stage directions as part of Pecunia’s
entourage.
58 draw
attract.
58 woman,] F2 (woman!)
60 they women
generally.
61 motions
spectacles; esp. puppet-shows.
62 bravery
glamour, splendor.
67 stall-fed
fattened like cattle.
67 crammed
divines overfed clergymen; cf.
The New Inn,
5.1.18.
68 Make love
Pay court.
68 room] F2 (rome)
73 crack (1)
curtsy to the breaking point; (2) fart.
76 Gives out
Lets it be known that.
76 go upon
attack frontally.
77 mouthing
pompous speaking (and perhaps with a play on the cannon’s mouth).
78 Piedmantle
See Persons of the Play, 10n. In the English College of Arms or College
of Heralds, the thirteen-member office that presided over heraldic
matters, there were four pursuivants or junior heraldic officers, each
of whom had a traditional name; ‘Piedmantle’ parodies ‘Bluemantle’, one
of those four names. The satire on Piedmantle keeps the play sharply
attuned to what were felt to be the abuses perpetrated by the College of
Arms: charged with the supervision of funerary pomp, the certification
of genealogies, and the granting and proper display of coats of arms,
its members had enriched themselves by selling coats of arms, and thus
vulgarizing gentlemanly status in much the same way that the king was
felt to have degraded aristocracy by his promiscuous awarding of titles.
The College had no strong tradition of internal harmony, but it grew
increasingly fractious in the early 1620s. Thus, Jonson’s play keeps
gesturing towards an institution that noisily demonstrated the breakdown
of traditional chivalric culture.
79 derive her
trace her lineage.
79 derive] F3;
deriuer F2
83 Apollo The
god of poetry.
88 The line re-emphasizes the gist of the opening
scenes, in which Pennyboy Jr is presented as made, not born.
90 Fear me
not Don’t worry about me.
93 worthy of a
chronicle The recollection of Theocritus (
Idylls, 3.37–8), where a twitch in the eye suggests to
the lover that he is soon to see his beloved, has mock-heroic force,
inviting us to measure the inflated sense of courtship – and, here, the
pursuit of Money – as a kind of heroism.
First Intermean An intermean in a dialogue
between acts of a play.
1 gossip See
Persons of the Play, 32n.
7 Yes, she must be quite a woman when two such
scoundrels act as her agents.
8–10 In keeping with the spirit of sceptical reduction
that infuses the gossips’ conversation, Tattle here suggests that the
aristocratic pursuit of royal favour is merely a kind of begging,
however glamorous. Cf. Brome’s The Court Beggar
(1640), which focuses precisely on this state of affairs.
13 physic
medicine.
13 quacksalver quack. (From early modern Dutch kwaksalver and German Quacksalber (OED)).
15 tolerable
passable.
17–18 I . . . wit Perhaps a valedictory reference to William
Rowley, the King’s Men’s clown in the mid-1620s. Rowley died within
weeks of the first performance of Staple; see and
n.
19 commit (1)
consign to prison; (2) perform.
First Intermean 19 commit] F3;
cemmit F2
20 toy whim,
fancy.
20 no
man . . . eye Proverbial (
Dent, E252), meaning that no man can
impugn his character.
26 there
was . . . in’t i.e. a play without a fool or Vice-figure and a
devil is no play at all. That Tattle’s disdainful preference for the
conventions of morality plays is distinctly old-fashioned and low-brow
is suggested by John Gee’s observation, cited by Gifford, that ‘It was
wont, when an interlude was to be acted in a country-town, the first
question that an hob-nail spectator made, before he would pay his penny
to go in, was whether there be a devil and a fool in the play. And if
the fool get vpon the devil’s back and beat him with his coxcomb till he
roar, the play is complete’ (The Foot out of the
Snare, 1624, K2v).
26 for . . . still (1) always in favour of the devil; (2)
destined to go to hell.
31 matrimony
According to
Parr (ed.
Staple), this is an allusion to the play
Grim the Collier of Croydon, in which Pluto decrees
that all devils should wear horns after a minor demon returns with horns
from a sojourn on earth, where he has married and acquired the horns of
a cuckold.
33 errant A
malapropism for ‘arrant’, or possibly an error in transcription or a
variant spelling.
34 read too
Kifer (ed.
Staple) detects a reference here to Jonson’s claiming benefit
of clergy (by demonstrating his ability to read) after killing Gabriel
Spencer in 1598. Jonson repeats the joke about being able to read as
well as write in
Pan’s Ann., 206–7.
35–6 Mistress
Trouble-Truth Presumably a Puritan.
36 dissuaded
us argued against our going.
36–8 told
us . . . Westminster Here, as in Censure’s speech in the Third
Intermean following, Tattle expresses a tangle of concerns: that the
theatre is a devilish institution with nearly occult power over the
imagination; that the dramatic poet may be abusing his broad cultural
responsibility as a teacher of morals; and that by writing plays for
boy-actors the poet contributes to the corruption of children who should
properly be in school. (Jonson had himself been a student at Westminster
School.)
38 Doctor
Lamb An astrologer jailed for witchcraft in 1608, convicted
for rape of an eleven-year-old girl in 1623, but pardoned by King
James.
42 practise
(1) re-enact the vain gestures and devices seen at the theatre; (2)
connive.
45 proper
attractive.
46 of his
inches with respect to height or – by extension, as here –
rank or general stature.
47 patriot
Though Jonson uses the term in its general sense in
Sejanus (4.290)
and
Volpone (4.1.95), in their editions
Winter and
Kifer allege that it here takes
colour from association with a nascent anti-Stuart faction in
Parliament.
48–9 He
would . . . came A farcical battle between the devil and the
foolish Vice, sometimes culminating in the devil carrying the Vice off
to hell on his back, with the Vice battering the devil about the ears as
they go, was a staple of such popular plays as W. Wager’s
Enough Is as Good as a Feast (printed 1570?) and Robert
Greene’s
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (printed 1594).
Cf.
Devil,
1.1.37 and
91
and
Informations, 319–21.
50 The
Devil of Edmonton A tremendously popular comedy, The Merry Devil of Edmonton was first performed c. 1603, first printed in 1608, and regularly revived and
reprinted; see the prologue to Devil.
51 The surviving version of the play contains no
such episode, but The Life and Death of the Merry Devil of
Edmonton, with the Pleasant Pranks of Smug the Smith (1631), by
T. B., includes the story in which the conjurer, Peter Fabel, having
bargained with a devil to spare his life until an inch-long candle
should burn itself out, pocketed the candle before the devil could set
it alight.
54 shrewd
unfortunate, injurious.
56 jade
brokendown horse.
56 staggers A
disease of large animals that causes them to stagger. Cf.
Shr.,
3.2.49.
57 spice of
’em case of the staggers – but presumably produced, in the
case of the smith, by drinking too much. Jonson makes roughly the same
joke at
Bart.
Fair, 4.4.4.
59 he] F3; hec
F2
60 I . . . much I construed it differently.
60 so.]
this edn; so, F2;
so? F3
63 Expect
Wait.
63 intend (1)
pay attention to; (2) anticipate.
2.1 Act 2 takes place in a room in the house of
Pennyboy Sr.
2.1 ] F2 (Act. II. Scene. I.)
6 Your] F3; You
F2
2 face The
side of a coin that bears the effigy, ‘heads’.
4–5 fall’n . . . estimation For nearly a century, the maximum
legal interest rate had been set at ten per cent; in 1624, that maximum
rate was cut to eight per cent. See below,
2.3.32–49 and
3.4.34.
9–10 I
have . . . of I’m not handsome enough to be a lover.
13–18 ‘There . . . pie-crust.’]
Kifer; There . . . pye-crust. F2
15–16 one . . . sleep one that never dines well, even in his sleep.
That misers deprived themselves by day, but feasted in their dreams was
proverbial, according to
Winter. Cf.
Poet., 1.2.68.
16 acates are
delicacies that are.
22 grace
favour.
24 macerating
mortifying.
29 worship
veneration, respect.
31 free
generous.
32 would . . . in wish that everyone were a beneficiary of.
33 They . . . few There are only a few.
35–6 Yourself . . . almighty The debt to the opening speech of Volp., pervasive in this scene, is especially strong
here, but Jonson is also recalling Horace Epistles,
1.6.37ff., where Horace invents the title ‘Regina’ (i.e. Queen) Pecunia,
and, above all, Aristophanes. The present exchange is modelled largely
on the interview in the Plutus in which Chremylus
demonstrates that Plutus is more powerful than Zeus. In Forest 12, Jonson celebrates ‘almighty gold’ (2) with similar
irony.
35 proper
native, own.
38 use With a
pun on usury.
38–43 All
this . . . Pecunia’s Jonson is not only adapting Aristophanes’
Plutus but also Horace’s Satires, 2.3.37: omnis enim res, / virtus, fama,
decus, divina humanaque pulchris / divitiis parent; quas qui
construxerit, ille / clarus erit, fortis, iustus, ‘Indeed, all
things, divine and human, serve the beauty of riches – virtue,
reputation, honour; and he who hoards it up will be famous, strong, and
just.’ In a similar passage from Epistles, 1.6.36–7,
Horace names Pecunia as she who gives wife, dowry, friends, allegiances,
status, and beauty.
38 this nether
world the world, beneath the heavens.
42 had not
would not have.
43 style
title.
51 complexion
good health.
52 cold
rheums runny nose.
53 green-sicknesses An anaemia to which young women were thought
to be especially susceptible.
53 agues
fevers.
55 grave
honourable.
60 presently
without delay.
62 SD]
G
2.2 ] F2 (Act. II. Scene. II.)
0 SD]
G; Pyed-mantle. Broker. / Peni-boy.Sen. F2
2.2 0 SD
piedmantle See
Persons of the Play, 10n. and 1.6.78n.
2 SD]
Parr, subst.; not in F2
7 present
present myself (and, perhaps, make her the present of her pedigree; for
a similar usage, see Volp., 3.5.12).
9 so noble
study Jonson shared his teacher Camden’s scholarly interest in
heraldry. But Jonson could be as suspicious of esoteric symbol systems
as he was fascinated by them, and that suspicion was reinforced by a
distaste for the proliferation of titles and cheapening of heraldic
honours that James I sponsored.
10 pursuivant
See Persons of the play, 10n.
10 pursuivant]
Wh; Pursiuant F2
11 deduced
her traced her lineage.
12 Indies] F3 (Indies); Indi’es F2
15 brought
her traced her lineage.
16 you . . . else any genealogical endeavour would be
meaningless were it not to trace her lineage to well before the creation
of mankind.
16 nothing, else.]
Kifer; nothing else, F2
17 Your . . . Adam That the earth was created as a kind of
treasure trove of precious metals and gems was a commonplace; that the
human ransacking of that treasure trove expressed infernal allegiances
was also a commonplace (see, for example, Ovid, Met.,
1.125–42 or Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, Bk.
2, metrum 5).
18 Roll
five-and-twenty These would be the records of the College of
Arms.
20 SD]
Parr; not in F2
21 armory the
science of heraldry.
21–2 Elements
. . .
Accidence Edmund
Bolton’s
Elements of Armories (
1610) and Gerard
Legh’s
Accidence of Armory (
1562).
Accidence is
that part of grammar which treats of inflections, or ‘accidents’, of
words; the word is used metaphorically in Legh’s title to imply that the
book treats the rudiments of armoury.
27 induce
introduce (Lat. inducere, lead in).
28 stately
haughty.
29 scrivener
Scriveners, professional scribes, often wrote legal form-letters and
engaged in loan-sharking.
29 can can
accomplish, has influence. That Pecunia esteems Band nearly as much as
Statute, despite Band’s inferior lineage, suggests one of the chief ways
in which Pecuniary values have eclipsed traditional, aristocratic
ones.
31 Rose Most,
but not all, sealing wax was red.
34 wrought
manipulated.
35 tenement
This can refer to either a land holding or an apartment, both meanings
being applicable here.
38 it i.e.
access to Pecunia.
40–1 this . . . sanguine ‘This’ probably refers to a coin
surreptitiously given to Broker by Piedmantle. ‘Complexion’ can refer
both generally to humoural temperament – blood was one of the four
humours and its correlative temperament is ‘sanguine’ – and particularly
to the tincture of the face. Since ‘red’ was a common epithet of gold,
and was often used to denote the colour of gold, ‘sanguine’ would be
doubly appropriate to a bribe made by means of a gold coin (the obverse
or ‘heads’ side of which would bear a ‘red’ complexion).
42 ward Four
senses are relevant here: (1) fortification; (2) part of the mechanism
of a lock; (3) protectorate; (4) wardship.
45 but your
name I ask only your name.
49 of
yourself on your own initiative.
51–2 or . . . Or either . . . or.
52 to appear
in to endorse (anticipating the astronomical metaphor of lines
54–6).
56 concentrics The metaphor derives from traditional astronomy:
since antiquity, the motion of heavenly bodies was understood as
determined by the rotation of crystalline spheres. The heavenly bodies
were originally imagined as embedded in these invisible but material
spheres, but later the spheres came to be conceived of as immaterial,
even abstract; with the exception of the spheres of planetary moons, all
the spheres were understood to be arrayed with the earth at their
centres, though the model eventually required adjustment by means of a
great deal of eccentric array in order to ‘save the appearances’. Broker
evokes a much simpler system, a concentric array of servants around the
Lady Pecunia.
59 SD
mouth derisive
grimace.
59, 61, 63 SD]
in left margin in F2
61 SD]
Kifer
subst.; He ieeres/ him againe. / as
marginal note F2; He jeers him again. F3; Exit Piedmantle. G
62 blasted
blighted.
62–3 eyrie / Of
kestrels Broker is bringing out a latent referent in
Piedmantle’s exit line, transforming the sense of ‘lighting on Her Grace
as she’s taking the air’ into a scene from hawking, in which the
kestrel-Piedmantle pursues his prey, Pecunia – unsuccessfully, as Broker
imagines the scene. Clerimont is similarly dismissive of the ‘cast of
kestrels’, Daw and La Foole, in Epicene, 4.4.154.
62 eyrie] F2 (ayrie)
63 SD]
this edn; Old Peny-/boy leaps / as
marginal note F2
65 heard] F3;
hcard F2
65 thy
dispatches your skilful deflection of petitioners.
66 in] F3; it
F2
68 unctuous
See
Alch.,
2.2.83.
69 vessel . . . stuff
Kifer (ed.
Staple) explains this as a container of drippings and
skimmings from cooking and compares
Bart. Fair,
2.5.60.
69 kitchen stuff]
Kifer; kitchinstuffe F2
2.3 ] F2 (Act.II. Scene.IIJ.)
0 SD]
G; Broker. Peny-boy. Se. / Lick-finger F2
2.3 1 kidney A
complicated, idiosyncratic epithet. The term associates Lickfinger with
the raw materials of his trade, but since kidney is
also a term for ‘temperament’ or ‘character’, Pennyboy Sr seems to be
derisively implying that Lickfinger’s tardiness is entirely, if
disappointingly, typical.
2 To . . . you To wish you had them (i.e. the pox, which Jonson
treats as a plural, ‘pocks’).
5 Knows Who
knows.
10 just
precise.
10 still
always.
11 light-foot
Ralph This may be the ‘Rafe’ of ‘A Grace by Ben Jonson
Extempore before King James’ (8 and n.), ‘the Countess [of Bedford]’s man who won the race’,
identified in Aubrey’s brief life of Jonson as a drawer at the Swan
Tavern near Charing Cross. See Electronic Edition, Early Lives.
13 two stone
28 pounds.
H&S
observe that this is the same amount by which Ursula claims, in
Bart. Fair (2.2.65), to be ‘dropping’ away as the
result of her exertions at the Fair and the vexations that she suffers
there.
14 posting
hastening.
16 knots
intricate designs; cf.
Bart. Fair, ‘I do water the
ground in knots as I go, like a great garden-pot’ (2.2.44–5) and,
similarly,
Tub, 1.1.73–4. And cf.
1H4, 2.2.116.
17 dropped . . . pan dripped (sweat) like oil dripping from a
slotted skimmer as it raises fritters from the frying pan.
19 roasted . . . butter A rich, sweet pastry, stiff enough to be
spit-roasted.
19 SD
sweeps wipes.
19 SD]
in right margin in F2
20 Believe . . . list Proverbial (
Dent, B264.11), and the title of a
play by Philip Massinger in 1631.
20 stayed of
purpose delayed in order.
21 mortified
hung (
OED, Mortify v.6). Fowl, especially game, was hung to tenderize it. The
process conferred a ‘ripeness’ of flavour that was prized by those who
had acquired the taste for such things; dismissive of such gastronomic
sophistication, Pennyboy Sr insists that Lickfinger has taken his time
so that Pennyboy Sr’s meat might deteriorate, and so be had more
cheaply.
23 jealousy
suspicion.
25–6 As indicated at
2.1.16–17, Pennyboy Sr is selling
off meat and fish that he has received as gifts.
32 bating . . . hundred See . above. (Bating = abating,
reducing.)
34–5 Sir . . . out Although Lickfinger seems unpersuaded by the
argument that the reduction in the maximum interest rate would make it
more difficult for the poor to borrow, as fewer would be willing to risk
lending to those of dubious credit, Pennyboy Sr was not the only
economic thinker to resist the new rate cap: John Whistler had made
Pennyboy’s argument in the Commons on 8 March 1624 (Jones,
1989, 194); Sir
Thomas Culpeper had countered the argument in his 1621
Tract against Usury. Note that, at line 43, Pennyboy Sr claims
that it was his custom, before the imposition of the eight per cent cap,
charitably to forgive two of the allowed ten per cent: in lines 47–9, he
focuses his protest on the fact that the lower rate is now compulsory.
See also
Owls, 175 and n.
35–6 Solons . . .
Pompilii Solon was
Athens’s great lawgiver of the fifth century BC; Numa Pompilius – ‘Numae Pompilii’ is the plural form – was the revered
legendary king of early Rome.
38 I . . . to’t I’ll guarantee it, as at
1.5.25.
41 moneys] F2 (moneies)
43 SD]
Kifer; not in F2
46 theirs
i.e. the poor’s.
48 They The
legislators.
49 shortened our
arms inhibited our capacity for bounty.
51 play . . . Fleet will have your ears cropped in the Fleet
prison. The phrase seems also to denote a game, either real or
imagined.
53 jack
smart-aleck. ‘Saucy jack’ and ‘Jack-sauce’ (
Tub, 3.3.47) were
proverbial.
53 that’s
once. that’s certain. Cf. Mrs Pinchwife’s summary announcement
in Wycherley, The Country Wife: ‘Nay, I will go
abroad, that’s once’ (3.1.69).
55 his i.e.
Broker’s.
56 bushel of
eggs i.e. enough to fill an 8-gallon container.
61 custard . . . mayor’s At the Lord Mayor’s Feast, held
annually on 28 October, it was customary for the mayor’s fool to leap
into a huge custard; cf.
Devil, 1.1.97. The casual reference here
reinforces the opposition between Pennyboy Sr’s miserliness and a
culture of festive ‘superfluity’ (66).
69, 70 indent It
was customary to sever the two halves of a legal document produced in
duplicate in such a way as to produce an indented –
i.e. toothlike, notched, or crooked – edge: the match of the two edges
authenticated the document and confirmed the contract. Thus, ‘to indent’
came to mean to make a contract or, less formally, to enter into an
agreement or a bargain. Lickfinger is, of course, insisting that
Pennyboy Sr’s business dealings are ‘crooked’. (The latter replies using
‘indent’ to mean ‘specify by contract’.)
72 spend
Pennyboy Sr’s use of the term here to mean ‘serve’ and ‘consume’ is
characteristically idiosyncratic.
73 red-deer
pies savoury venison pastries; ‘red deer’ designates the
species Cervus elaphus.
74 Cast
Arrange it.
74 coffins
pie-crusts. Lickfinger will keep the sepulchral association of the term
in play with ‘mouldy’ (76), as does Titus in Titus,
5.2.186–9, but this term for a pastry shell was well established and
could pass unremarked.
75–6 I
would . . . house I wish to have a reputation for
hospitality.
76 mouldy
rotten, though this primary sense is linked, by pun, to two meanings of
mould: pie-crust and the earth of a grave.
80 reversion
remnants. The word was most commonly used in a technical sense, as a
right to receive a property or office when the current holder’s term of
use ended or the current holder died. Lickfinger thus sustains the
generally legalistic and morbid verbal character of the exchange.
82 muster-master officer charged with keeping the muster-list of
a military company.
82 what plover’s
that what inexperienced dupe, or ‘pigeon’, is that.
83 pull
pluck, take advantage of.
83 green
inexperienced. Cf.
Bart. Fair, 4.2.49–50: ‘Was there ever green
plover so pulled?’
2.4 ] F2 (Act. II. Scene. IV.)
0 SD]
G; Fitton. Peni-boy. Se. Almanach. / Shvnfield. Madrigal. Lick- / Finger. Broker. F2
2.4 1 money-bawd
usurer. Jonson repeats this satiric naming in the list of characters in
Mag. Lady, where Sir Moth Interest is described as
‘
an usurer, or money-bawd’. The essential
commonality of usury and pimping is also the theme of the terse poem,
Epigr.
57.
1 We’re]
this edn; w’are F2
4 lineation, H&S; two lines F2,
divided after ‘Our selues.’
7, 17, 23 SD]
in right margin in F2
8 as as
if.
11 pickled
i.e. brined.
12 fresh-man
The play on words is admittedly weak: ‘freshman’ (meaning ‘novice’; cf.
below)
being pronounced so that ‘fresh’ might also imply both ‘not salty’ and
‘not putrid’.
13 rogue.] F3 (Rogue.); Rogue, F2
19 singing
resounding. The term sets up the pun on ‘heir’.
19, 20 heir
Pennyboy Sr is punning on ‘air’ (song). For his part, Fitton seems to
use the term quite metaphorically; Pennyboy Sr’s response suggests that
he understands it thus and therefore refuses any sort of loan because he
knows that Madrigal stands only to inherit cultural riches, none of
which are of use to the miserly man.
24 of years
mature, of adult status.
27 costive
reluctant, unyielding. This general sense of the term – as in
Alch.,
1.1.28 and
2.3.26 – derives from a primary and more particular meaning:
constipated. Almanac keeps the medical sense alive in his next
lines.
28 court’sy
generosity. Costive courtesy is sardonically paradoxical.
28–9 pill . . . melancholy. The proverbial phrase ‘a pill to purge
melancholy’ (
Dent,
P324.11) would provide a title not only for Thomas D’Urfey’s
celebrated collection of bawdy songs from 1699, but for volumes of poems
by Thomas Jordan (1639) and James Hind (1652).
31 drench
draught.
33 hare
Context makes the pun on ‘heir’ nicely complicated. Fitton has proposed
‘a fine fresh pullet’ as part of the cure for Pennyboy Sr’s melancholy,
but since ‘pullet’ (like many terms for poultry) was slang for a female
prostitute, the prescription was ambiguous. Lickfinger’s
counter-proposal of a hare/heir implies that Pennyboy Sr’s taste might
better be satisfied otherwise.
33 hare]
Kifer; Haire F2; Heir F3; ’are Parr
35 Ram Alley
Now Hare Place, this passageway near the Inns of Court was notoriously
disreputable, a place of cookshops, brothels, and taverns. Staple was not the first play to make a theatrical spectacle
of this location, having been preceded by Lording Barry’s Ram-Alley of 1611.
36 dosser
pannier, apparently to be carried on the back (Fr. dos), as Cotgrave’s French–English dictionary of 1611 makes clear
by offering as definitions for hotte, ‘Scuttle,
Dosser, Basket to carry on the back’.
38–9 I
must . . . devil. Lickfinger and Almanac are playing on the
proverb, ‘He must needs go whom the devil drives’ (
Dent, D278∗). And cf.
Tub,
3.9.42.
39 SD]
placement, F3, following 41; as marginal
note following 44 F2
41 cogging
jacks cheating rascals.
41 covey
o’wits Jonson is here recycling a phrase from the ‘Epistle
Answering unto One that asked to be Sealed of the Tribe of Ben’ (
Und.
47), written in about 1623. In that poem he distinguishes true
wits from such depraved sneerers as ‘jest / On all souls that are
absent’ (16–17), that ‘covey of wits / That censure all the town’
(22–3). Jeering at the absent is also scourged at
Epigr. 115,
16–19.
42 still call
together perennially gather themselves. Although the phrase,
‘call together’ is idiomatic, ‘call’ carries the supplementary sense of
‘cry out’, and thus evokes the image of a small covey of scavenger birds
cawing over a carcass.
43 eyrie a
brood of birds of prey. For the figurative use, see
Ham., 2.2.315.
48 him absent
Cf.
Epigr.
115.15–17.
49 spake . . . doublet! Alludes to ventriloquists or, rather, to
engastrimanteis or belly-prophets, of whom the
most celebrated in antiquity was Eurykles of Athens. The translators who
prepared the Septuagint cast the false oracles of Leviticus, 19.31 and
Isaiah, 8.19 as ventriloquists, and Jonson is plainly recalling the
rendering of the latter passage in the King James version (the
translators of which had their eyes on the Septuagint), where Isaiah
warns Israel to avoid necromancers and the ventriloquizing ‘wizards that
peep, and that mutter’.
50 fishmonger’s
sleeves Many editors follow
Gifford in alleging a recollection
here of the opening of Suetonius’s life of Horace, where Suetonius
reports that Horace’s father was rumoured to have been a seller of
salted fish and that someone once taunted Horace by remarking how often
he had seen the poet’s father wipe his nose on his arm.
50 fishmonger’s] F3 (Fishmon-/gers); Fishmonger F2
51 currier’s
A currier is a leather-dresser (though the term can also denote one who
grooms horses). Leather dressers, like tanners, were notorious for their
stench.
51 parboiled
The spelling in F2, ‘perboil’d’, may imply ‘thoroughly boiled’ (hence,
wrinkled), rather than the more common sense, ‘partly boiled’ (hence,
mottled, like the dyer’s apron at 52). Cf.
EMI (F),
4.1.11.
52 dyer’s
apron (which would have been stained and blotchy).
53 sodden
stewed.
53 posset
curd hot drink of milk curdled in spiced wine or ale.
57 ethnic
non-Christian.
58 stock
blockhead.
65 clear
settle up.
66–7 Cf. Neptune, 202–3.
67 Poulter
Poulterer, dealer in poultry.
68 pure
utter.
69 brave
splendid.
72 practice
Though it has its modern sense of professional activity, the word
carries the connotation of deceit.
72 tripe-wives female dressers of animal stomachs to serve as
food. On the irresponsible murderousness of doctors, cf.
Volp.,
1.4.32–3.
73 urinal
Used in medical diagnoses.
74 Ephemerides Almanacs featuring astrological prognostications;
cf.
Alch.,
4.6.48.
74 figures
horoscopes. In the opening of Alch., Face threatens to
expose his master Subtle’s deceits, among them ‘Erecting figures in your
rows of houses’ (1.1.96), where houses refers to the
twelve houses of the Zodiac.
75 turning . . . candle-rents flipping through the pages of
almanacs for predictions of revenues from rental properties.
76 And] F3; Aud
F2
76 houses See
.
above.
77 almutens
Prevailing planets in a horoscope. Thus Stargaze in Massinger’s
The City Madam: ‘Mars almuthen, or lord of the
horoscope’ (
2.2.61–2).
77 almacantaras Parallels of altitude that provide a means of
measuring distance upward from the horizon to the pole of the stellar
sphere. (A good analogy is the way in which the parallels of latitude
offer a means of measuring distance from the equator to the north and
south poles of the terrestrial sphere.)
78 for
Pennyboy as far as Pennyboy Sr is concerned.
79 mere bawd
(1) complete rascal; (2) a money bawd (as at 1 above).
84 Like a lame
cobbler The cobbler’s work is conspicuously sedentary; a lame
cobbler would be pre-eminently immobile.
92 these large
attributes i.e. those of dogs and curs.
93 pocky
pock-marked or pox-infected.
96–7 fistula
. . .
ano a fistula, or
abnormal tract, connecting the perianal area to the bowel; in ano, in the anus.
97 dog-leech
Perhaps a term for veterinarian; as likely simply a pejorative term for
doctor or for any scoundrel who pretends to scientific expertise (as at
Alch.,
1.1.103).
98 were ’olesome]
this edn; were’holesome F2
100–1 London . . . last London Bridge was notorious for being in
perpetual disrepair, hence the children’s Singing game, ‘London Bridge
Is Fallen Down’, which seems to date from the thirteenth century.
According to Thomas Middleton, no matter how much was spent in
maintaining its twenty arches, ‘what the advantage of one tide performs,
comes another tide presently and washes away’ (The Black
Book, C3v).
101 thinks,] F3;
thinkes. F2
102 log
Figurative, but not proverbial. In effect, Fitton is calling Pennyboy Sr
something like a blockhead.
104 strike
strike out, erase.
106 quit the
scores pay the bill.
108 butcher’s,] F3 (Butchers); Butehers. F2
111 milords]
this edn; my Lords, F2
112 cogging
jacks See . above.
113 Under the
rose i.e.
sub rosa; ‘
[I
tell you
] confidentially’. The
OED gives 1546 as the first English occurrence of the
phrase, but Tilley gives it as proverbial (
Tilley R185); cf. Beaumont and
Fletcher’s
Beggar’s Bush: ‘if this make us speak /
Bold words, anon: ’tis all under the Rose / Forgotten’ (
2.3.22–4).
113 I could
I’m very tempted to.
115–16 Cf.
Epigr. 107–31 (‘Come: be not angry: you are
Hungry: eat’). Jonson recycles many aspects of this epigram, ‘To Captain
Hungry’, in
Staple and, particularly, in the character
of Shunfield: the epigram inspects the cachet of continental news and
mocks the cowardly soldier who ‘dines out’ on his war stories.
106 SD]
in right margin in F2
117 No Pecunia] F3 (No Pecunia); No, Pecunia,
F2
119 Blushet
Blusher. Used again at 5.5.18, the term may have been Jonson’s coinage:
the
OED gives only two citations of the word. The other
is in
Highgate, 221.
120–1 Alluding to the story recounted in the Odyssey (12.39–44 and 158–200) of how the seafaring
Odysseus indulged his desire to hear the enchanting song of the Sirens,
which had lured so many sailors to their doom, while his men rowed on
unmoved by the song, for they had plugged their ears with beeswax. Here,
Pennyboy Sr ignores the ‘songs’ of Fitton and Almanac, associated
respectively with Courtiership and Natural Philosophy.
122 Provide . . . for you When you provide yourself with better
names, you will be rewarded. Pennyboy Sr suggests that the Jeerers will
have better prospects, if they will address potential benefactors using
better names than ‘dog’ or ‘cur’ (
90), the ‘large attributes’ (
92) with which they
insulted him earlier; he also implies that without better professional
names than ‘Courtier’ and ‘Philosopher’ (or the personal names
associated with those professions, ‘Fitton’ and ‘Almanac’), they cannot
hope to inspire him to generosity.
123 harpy
rapacious person. Jonson’s use of the term to refer to Pennyboy Sr is
unusual, since it is usually reserved for women.
123 it he.
124 SD]
in right margin in F2
128 That . . . favour Fitton is remarking that having been
admitted to the ladies’ presence offers Madrigal (and his fellows) a
happy opportunity for further ingratiation. But the line is available to
witty misconstruction – as if Fitton were saying how lucky the ladies
are to have had the opportunity to hear Madrigal’s verses, an assertion
that would certainly invite the ironists in the audience to
laughter.
130 Mas’]
Wh, subst.; Mas. F2
132 Amphibian
(Cf.
Epicene,
1.4.20, where Otter is described as ‘
animal
amphibium’).
132 SH
almanac] F2 (Alm.); Mad. Wh
135 Helicon
Seemingly an appellation for Madrigal; ‘Helicon’ is the mountain home of
the Muses.
136 fat
thick-headed.
137 unbored
unpenetrated.
142 chink The
verbs ‘chime’ and ‘chink’, both used to describe the sounding of metal
or glass when struck, were given figurative extension (‘chink’ less
commonly than ‘chime’) to describe the consonance of rhyming words; this
sense competes here with the more customary usage of ‘chink’, to
describe the sounding of metal coins against each other or against some
other hard surface. This verbal play gains some partial support from the
obsolete noun ‘rime’, meaning cleft or chink. Cf. New
Inn, 1.3.113.
144 on
departure on the verge of being lost.
145 bring . . . temper render Wax pliable. To temper wax is to
render it malleable, usually by kneading it and raising its
temperature.
148 pipkins
small earthenware pots for cooking.
151 hungry
poor, infertile.
153 marl amend
a sandy soil with marl, a clayey loam.
154 clowns and
hinds country-folk and rustic labourers.
156 the dull
element the earth, the cold and dry member of the traditional
four elements.
157 SD]
Parr, subst.; not in F2
158 a feeling
a gratuity or bribe. This unusual usage is unrecorded in the
OED, but cf.
Devil, 3.3.78.
158 supple
render supple.
160–3 That music and song have the power to master the
will of the hearers was an ancient commonplace. ‘To serve my subtle
turns’ suggests a slightly improper coercion, a suggestion compounded by
Madrigal’s boast that he will make Broker ‘run through . . . a
thumb-ring’, since magi were thought to control the infernal spirits
they summoned by penning them in thumb-rings (cf.
Devil, Prol.,
5–6).
160 through] F3;
thorow F2
160 hoop
finger-ring.
162 ductile
pliable; when used specifically of metal, it denotes a capability of
being drawn out into wire or thread.
164 run
propagate.
164 SD]
G, subst.; not in F2
165 flies
parasites.
168–71 I . . . chimney Jonson closely imitates the description of
Euclio’s miserliness in Plautus’s Aulularia (‘The Pot
of Gold’), 299–301: [PYTHODICUS] . . . quin divom atque hominum clamat continuo
fidem / suam rem periise seque eradicarier / de suo tigillo fumus si
qua exit foras, ‘PYTH . . . . he calls on gods and men to
witness that he’s ruined, wiped out, if even a wisp of smoke escapes his
stingy fire’. Jonson sustains his imitation of Plautus’s excursus on
miserliness in the ensuing lines.
169 windows] F2 (windores)
169 spar up
bar.
173–5 A
wretched . . . abroad! Jonson’s imitation here slightly
softens the sordidness of Plautus’s humour (Aulularia,
302–5): ‘PYTH. quin cum it dormitum, follem obstringit ob
gulam / ANTHRAX Cur? PYTH. ne
quid animae forte amittat dormiens. / ANTHR. Etiamne obturat inferiorem gutturem / ne quid
animai forte amittat dormiens’ (PYTH. And he even ties a bag
over his trap while he’s in bed. / ANTHR. Why? PYTH. So he won’t let any
breath get out while he sleeps. / ANTHR. Yea, and sticks a cork in his
downstairs windpipe / So he won’t let any of that breath get out while
he sleeps).
175–6 cobwebs . . . fingers Cobwebs were customarily used to
staunch the bleeding in small wounds. Cf.
Aulularia,
87 and
MND, 3.1. 160–1 (‘I shall
desire more of your acquaintance, good Master Cobweb; if I cut my
finger, I shall make bold with you.’).
176–8 spiders . . . monkeys Monkeys were occasionally kept as pets
in Jonson’s day (cf.
4.4.162.). That spiders were a favourite food for monkeys was
well known: thus, in Middleton’s
A Game at Chess,
pickled spiders are mentioned as the fare properly offered at ‘a
monkey’s ordinary’ (or tavern; ed. Howard-Hill,
3.3.26–7). But spiders were also
thought of as medicinal for monkeys: Jonson’s protégé, Richard Brome,
refers to spiders as ‘restorative’ to monkeys in Act 5 of
The City Wit and in Cartwright’s
The Siege,
the widow Euthalpe, now a waiting-maid, is charged to ‘feel the monkey’s
pulse, / and cater spiders for the queasy creature’ (in
Plays and Poems, ed. Evans, 545–6). Of course, in Jonson’s
day, the line between nutrition and medication was drawn less firmly
than it is now.
178–80 He . . . withal
Aulularia, 308–13.
178 fat
fatten.
180 hair
Frequently used as stuffing for balls, cushions, and saddles.
180 withal] F3;
with all F2
184 worship
honour, esteem.
185 give
security deposit money or property in earnest of fulfilment of
an obligation or payment of a debt.
186 This can
time Time can accomplish this.
190 both the
changes i.e. the change in my own fortunes for the better and
the change in your fortunes for the worse.
190 SD.2]
G, subst; not in F2
195 top . . . house Cf. .
195 top]
Wh; ’top F2
196 flaunting]
G; flanting F2
201 old Harry
A nickname for the devil.
202 wary
Rhymes with ‘Harry’ (
201).
204 faulted A
common euphemism for ‘shat’.
206 slice
sprig, cutting. Pennyboy Sr’s sparing use of juniper, customarily burned
for its aromatic smoke, may be contrasted with Deliro’s lavishness in
EMO (Characters, 40–1).
208 the
Prodigal The capitalization of the folio text captures how
Pennyboy Sr associates the young Pennyboy with his biblical type.
208 SD
Exit Broker.]
G; not in F2
209 clapper
dudgeon beggar. ‘Dudgeon’ is the wood from which knife handles
were made; because it was customary for a beggar to secure attention by
striking his or her begging bowl with a knife, the knife handle comes to
stand, by metonymy, for the beggar. Like much of the argot associated
with the underclass, this expression seems to have been somewhat
esoteric.
2.5 ] F2 (Act. II. Scene. V. )
0 SD.1–4] F2 (Peny-boy.Iv. Peni-boy. Sen. Piclock. / Canter.) Broker. Pecvnia. Statvte. / Band. Wax. Mortgage. hid in the study.)
2.5 2 Ophir See
.
3 if even
if.
4 daughter o’the
sun See , and also , 95 (and cf.
Volp., 1.1.10–11,
where gold is described as the ‘son of Sol’).
7 Domine
Master.
9 compounds
resolves.
16–17 maunds . . . pad begs on the highway. Pennyboy Canter has
slipped into canting.
20 cogging
jack cheating rascal (as at
2.4.41).
20 uses lends
out usuriously. The laboured play on words enables Jonson to denigrate
Pennyboy Sr for insisting that the usurious
use of
money is comparable to less miserly uses of wealth (cf.
Volp.,
1.1.62).
21 Lets
Loans.
21 more i’the
hundred See and note.
26 SD]
placement, F3; Young / Peny-boy /
is angyry./ as marginal note F2
26 SH] F3 (P. jun.); P. Se. F2
26 John
servant (to Pennyboy Jr). With a play on jack/John.
27 The gist of this is, ‘and, if you go to that [i.e. what’s more], as good a man as
you are’. By a small linguistic trick, the coordinating ‘And’ warrants
the ellipsis of that ‘and’ or ‘an’ which often introduces a protasis in
early modern English.
27 And,] F2; An’
1716
37–8 happiness . . . Worship An appositive construction: the
Canter alleges that his happiness consists in attending on Pennyboy
Jr.
43 SD
The . . . opened This
important spectacular moment presumably entailed the parting of curtains
probably draping the central entrance in the Blackfriars stage façade;
Jonson was plainly seeking an effect comparable to that of the opening
of
Volp. (and cf.
Cat., 1.1.15
SD).
43 SD]
placement, F3, following 44; The study
is / open’d where / she sit in /
state. / as marginal note F2
44–5 and . . . prow Recalls the stunning description, in
Ant.
(2.2.201–7), of Cleopatra’s barge.
45 Gilt] F2 (Guilt)
46 toward (1)
promising; (2) avid.
47 lips This
is startlingly forward. The gesture recalls Doll’s offer of her lips to
Sir Epicure Mammon at
Alch., 4.1.35. Parr (ed.
Staple) may be correct that the line sustains the play’s coy
invitation (for which, see 2.Int.18–26 and 21–2n.) to associate Pecunia
with the Spanish Infanta, famous for her Habsburg lips; if so, we are
invited to observe a contrast between Pecunia’s boldness and the reserve
with which the Spanish Infanta received Prince Charles.
50–7 Gifford observes a debt here to the account of
Medea’s enamourment in the Argonautica of Apollonius
Rhodius (3.286–90), a powerful rendering of desire as inflammation,
though perhaps not an object of Jonson’s direct imitation. More
pertinent, surely, is Jonson’s self-imitation, since the moment strongly
recalls Cynthia: ‘There Cupid strikes Money in love
with the Prodigal’ (Q, Praeludium, 59).
58 loves . . . nature prefers greater aloofness than natural
appetite will permit.
61 SD]
in right margin in F2
62 I like him
I think his prospects good.
63–6 A loose imitation of Virgil’s rendering of
Aeneas’s mental turbulence as he anticipates the attempt to conquer
Latium: animum nunc huc celerem nunc diuidit illuc / in
partisque rapit uarias perque omnia versat, / sicut aquae tremulum
labris ubi lumen aenis / sole repercussum aut radiantis imagine
lunae /omnia peruolitat late loca, iamque sub auras / erigitur
summique ferit laquearia tecti, ‘His racing mind is split,
turning now here, now there, rushing every which way, turning to
everything; as when the sun’s trembling light, reflected from the water
in bronze basins, or the radiant image of the moon skitters everywhere,
and now surges toward the heavens and strikes the panelled roof’; Aeneid, 8.20–5).
63 contrary
mixed, internally vexed.
71 SD]
this edn; not in F2; Kisses them.
G
73 close
intimately.
76 younger.] F3;
yonger, F2
76 SD
the compliment i.e. of
kissing.
76 SD.2]
in right margin in F2
80 observe
(1) attend on; (2) obey.
80 And] Aand F2
83–4 Broker . . . knave Alluding to the proverb, ‘a crafty knave
needs no broker’ (Dent, K122∗); cf.
2H6, 1.2.100, and
EMI (Q), 3.2.24–5.
86 sweeping
(1) majestic; (2) characterized by a sweeping gesture, like that of a
broom (see next line).
87 Thy . . . broom Cf.
Tub, 2.2.24, ‘Master Broom-beard’.
88 The line suggests that gentlemen-ushers, who
waited on ladies, were thought to be effeminate. Cf. Boyet in
LLL.
92 SD]
placement, F3, following 93; as marginal
note F2
94 tuft
chief. The
OED cites this as a nonce usage.
98 By Under
the supervision of.
100 lightly
often. For another observation on the frequent identity of bawds and
usurers, see Epigr. 57.
101 Are you
advised? i.e. ‘You think so?’ Gifford takes this as an
admiring remark, but the remainder of Picklock’s speech suggests,
instead, that these words should be uttered with considerable irony.
102 burgess . . . barn ‘Burgess’ means magistrate; in effect, the
phrase means something like ‘king of the beggars’.
103 SH
pennyboy sr]
G (P. sen.); P. Ca. F2
114 SD]
placement, F3, following 115; as marginal
note F2
115–18 cook’s
shop . . . princess Meals were available at cooks’ shops both
to eat on the premises or to take away. These were not very refined
establishments, but were regarded, rather, as roughly on the level of
alehouses. Taverns were more respectable; many would have kitchens of
their own, but at some it was possible to have a meal brought in, as the
Canter here proposes. Ordinaries, which always had kitchens, were even
more elevated, and Picklock may have had such a venue in mind for the
fashionable party he anticipates.
120 Come . . . in Picklock takes ‘come forth’ to mean ‘be born
in’. Canter corrects him in line 121, but recalls the misunderstanding
in his odd phrase ‘in womb of’ (124), which, given the context, can only
mean ‘in residence in’.
122 Pocahontas
‘That blessed Pocahontas, the great king’s daughter of Virginia, oft
saved my life’, John Smith,
The General History of
Virginia (
1624), (1v). Pocahontas was known to have attended
Vision, Jonson’s masque of 1616, shortly after her
arrival in England.
123 The plural, ‘daughters’, in F2 probably betrays
the influence of Jeremiah, 41.10 at some stage of transmission.
123 daughter] F3 (Daughter); daughters F2
124 in womb of a
tavern See . above. The line alludes to
Pocahontas’s long sojourn at the Bell Savage Inn at Ludgate Hill; the
name of the inn predates her stay but may have contributed to the
nickname she bore during her time in London, La Belle Sauvage.
127–30 Apollo . . . king The Jeerers will repair to The Devil in
Fleet Street, one of Jonson’s own favourite haunts: Jonson may well have
given the name Apollo to his favourite room at the Devil and we may
imagine that he means to compare the Jeerers’ debased conviviality to
the higher (Apollonian) form that Jonson and his friends enjoyed there,
the principles of which Jonson formulated in his Leges
Convivales. Simon Wadloe, tavern-keeper of The Devil, was
celebrated in a handful of popular drinking songs, one tune of which
endured under the name ‘Simon the King’. Cf. ‘Apollo’, 8 and n.
(5.422).
135 have . . . there. Many aristocrats made it a custom while
travelling to set up displays of their arms wherever they lodged, a
practice to which Jonson alludes in passing in
Discoveries,
142–6.
SECOND INTERMEAN 2 on us of
us.
2 witch
Here, ‘prophetess’.
2 forespeak
prophesy. Censure is recalling the discussion at 1 Int. 23ff. in which
the gossips had worried that there might be neither devil nor fool in
the play they have come to see.
4–17 The chic subtlety of modern vice, the difficulty
of discerning the true moral nature of persons (and of modern theatrical
characters) is the central theme of
The Devil Is an
Ass, the concerns of which are reprised here. These lines
recall, particularly,
Devil, 1.1.40–3,
78–85,
115–30 and, more generally, the
mid-Tudor morality plays on which
Devil reflects.
4–5 but . . . witch our combined ages don’t equal that of a
proper witch.
9 to carry him
away See 1 Int. 54–5 and note above.
10 wooden
dagger Traditional token of the Vice-figure in a morality
play. Cf.
Devil, 1.1.85.
10 rush
rushes, i.e. reeds, were used as floor-coverings; hence something of
very little value.
12 Hocus-Pocus Having made the phrase part of his mystical
patter, an eminent carnival conjurer (or ‘juggler’) in Jonson’s day
styled himself ‘The Kings Majesties most excellent Hocus Pocus, and so
was he called, because that at the playing of every Trick, he used to
say’ – in faux-Latin –
Hocus pocus, tontus talontus, vade
celeritur jubeo’ (Thomas Ady,
A Candle in the
Dark,
1655, E3). Hocus-Pocus is discussed in Bawcutt (
1996a,
2000) and
Butterworth (
2005). Cf.
Augurs, 221.
Second Intermean 13 skirts]
this edn; skirts. F2
13 Knave of
Clubs The four knaves (from the pack of cards) ‘come skipping
in’ (231) for the anti-masque dances of
Fort. Isles.
Playing cards often figure in early modern satire, by virtue of their
association with frivolous recreation and gambling. The knave was
especially singled out; see, for example, Samuel Rowlands,
The Knave of Clubs (
1609), where the knave ushers a series
of satiric portraits of London ‘madmen, knaves, and fools’ (A3v). The
surviving contemporary images of the knave of clubs show him in stiff
and jaunty skirt, with no trunk-hose.
14 o’the time
of our own time.
16 Infanta
The capitalization here follows F2, setting up the topical application
which Mirth resists.
21–2 Aurelia . . . person Mirth thus (ineffectually) invites us to
resist seeking an allusion in Pecunia’s name, presumably to the daughter
of Philip II of Spain, the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, governess of
the Spanish Netherlands, but the allusion-to-be-resisted probably also
takes in Isabella’s niece, the Infanta Maria Anna. Efforts to secure a
match between Charles I and Maria Anna, long a matter of Jacobean
foreign policy, had finally collapsed in 1623. See Introduction to Neptune, which describes Prince Charles’s sensational
visit to Madrid.
24 subject to
exception open to criticism.
27 an . . . I
if no one were to know about it but myself.
29 stick the ass’s
ears attach the ass’s ears (as was done to Midas, in
mockery).
30 dressing
coiffure.
39 spread
reveal, identify – but with an obvious pun.
40 butter-box
Slang for ‘Dutchman’: deriving apparently from the custom of Dutch
travellers of carrying boxes of butter with which to enhance the dishes
provided by local victuallers. (On the Dutch taste for butter, cf.
EMI (F), 3.4.30–2.) Of course, Mirth’s reference
also sustains the unremitting allusions to the news publisher, Nathaniel
Butter.
41 dished
dished up.
43 pot-butter
salted butter packed in pots for long storage.
48 seasonable
savoury.
49 almond
butter A paste of ground almonds and other ingredients,
including, sometimes, wine, sugar, or rosewater, used during Lent as a
substitute for dairy butter.
52 so
provided that.
53 July and
December Mirth alludes to the proverb ‘Butter is mad twice a
year’ (
Tilley, B772),
in July, when it is too soft, and in December, when it is too hard.
53 Dixi ‘I have spoken’. The formulation used at the conclusion
of an advocate’s presentation, equivalent to the modern ‘I rest my
case’.
TO THE READERS 1 opened (1)
disclosed; (2) discovered, perhaps by revealing a special setting on the
stage.
Parr (ed.
Staple) supposes that the furniture pertinent to the
Office of the Staple may have been contained within an onstage booth and
revealed by the drawing of curtains at the conclusion of the second
intermean.
3–5 as . . . acts A particularly emphatic way of suggesting that
the spectators’ capacity for judgement had been taken over by the
thoughtless whimsy of the Gossips of the intermeans.
7–12 and . . . times The accusation that the early news publishers
were satisfying the appetite for news with falsified reports apparently
had some currency.
H&S quote the disclaimer addressed to the ‘
Gentle Reader’ of
News from Europe of 19
March 1624: ‘Custom is so predominant in every thing, that both the
reader and the printer of these pamphlets, agree in their expectation of
weekly news, so that if the printer have not wherewithal to afford
satisfaction, yet will the reader come and ask every day for new news;
not out of curiosity or wantonness, but pretending a necessity, either
to please themselves, or satisfy their customers. Therefore is the
printer, both with charge and painstaking, very careful to have his
friends abroad supply his wants at home with pertinent letters, and
acquaint him with the printed copies beyond the seas . . . Which seeing
it is for your sake . . . be so far generous to acknowledge this his
kindness, and doe not dishearten him in his endeavours . . . by making
any doubt of the truth of his intelligence. For to use a little
protestation, I can assure you, there is not a line printed or proposed
to your view, but carries the credit of other originals, and justifies
itself from honest and understanding authority: so that if they should
fail there in true and exact discoveries, be not yet you too malignant
against the printer here, that is so far from any invention of his own,
that when he meets with improbability or absurdity, he leaves it quite
out rather than he will startle your patience, or draw you into
suspicion of the verity of the whole’ (
H&S, 10.274).
15 Ficta . . . veris From Horace’s
Art of Poetry
(338); in Jonson’s rendering, ‘Let what thou feign’st for
pleasure’s sake be near the truth’ (507–8), that is, fiction should be
like truth, if it is to please. Jonson also translated Horace’s line for
the second Prologue to
Epicene and used it, in the
original Latin, as an epigraph to
Devil.
3.1 The first three scenes of Act 3 take place in the
Office of the Staple.
3.1 ] F2 (Act. III. Scene. I.)
0 SD]
Kifer; Fitton. Cymbal, to them Picklocke. / Register. Clerke. Tho: Barber. F2
2 air i.e.
superficial aspect or, even, reputation, though Fitton’s diction is
influenced by the olfactory metaphor of the ‘wrong scent’ (
1). Moreover, because
‘air’ can also mean
tune, Fitton’s choice leads him to
oppose ‘fine sounds’ to ‘reason and proportion’ (
3).
4 cousin
partner.
5 pettifogger A lawyer especially given to shady dealings.
6 trust the
(considerable) responsibility.
7 And he can be expected to take Pennyboy Jr’s side
in our dispute.
10 trap-door
complex trick. This figurative usage predates the first recorded in the
OED, from 1648, but this use of a trapdoor to figure
all manner of deceitful traps is not uncommon: good examples relevant to
law and government may be found in Book V, the Legend of Justice, in
Spenser’s
Faerie Queene (
5.2.12 and
5.6.27).
11 SD.1]
this edn; Enter Picklock
G
12 For Ambler and Buzz, see and
n.
14 all in
pomp in full regalia of the office.
14 SD The
entrance of the staff of the Office, which F2 indicates as part of the
entry stage direction at the beginning of the scene, may take place at
any moment between lines
14 and
39.
17–18 has . . . guardian has secured permission from Pennyboy Sr
for Pecunia and her attendants to indulge themselves.
27 cry . . . credit advertise the authority.
31 migniardise coy elegance.
31 quaint
ingenious.
34 Vertumnus
The Roman god of seasonal change, Vertumnus had the power of
shape-shifting and is here invoked as a kind of patron of
adaptability.
36 colour
feign, deceive.
37 turnpike
turnstile.
39 Straight
Immediately.
42 abroad out
of the office.
43 without
outside.
44 Let us
alone Leave matters to us.
45 SD]
in left margin in F2
46 keep your
state preserve your dignity.
47 have a flight
at A phrase from falconry meaning ‘pursue (as quarry)’.
48 hard but
An abbreviated form of the expression, ‘it shall go hard but’, meaning
‘unless there are insurmountable obstacles’.
48 unto the
retrieve From falconry, with two possible meanings: either
‘back to the lure (and hence to the control of the falconer)’ or ‘to a
second flight’ (and hence into exposure to a second assault from the
falconer’s bird).
49 SD The
note, printed in the margins of F2, indicates the conclusion of the main
dramatic movement of the scene, the conversion of Fitton from suspecting
Picklock to trusting him.
50 engine
stratagem.
50 Cuz
Cousin, i.e. partner, as at
4 above.
51 my error
i.e. my suspicion of Picklock; for which see
5–8 above.
3.2 ] F2 (Act. III. Scene II. )
0 SD.1–3] F2 (Peni-boy.
Iv. P. Canter. Pecvnia. Sta-/tvte. Band. Mortgage.
Wax./Broker. Cvstomers.)
3.2 5 My
creature The object of my patronage, my client.
6 SD
He . . . Tom.]
in left margin in F2
7 writes
Clericus signs documents
‘Clericus’ (i.e. styles himself a clerk).
9 It is best to let your beneficiary speak of your
generosity, rather than boasting of it yourself.
10 Two . . . well Two people – in this case, Tom and Pennyboy Jr
– do not perform a single task – in this case the task of publicizing
Pennyboy Jr’s largesse – well.
11 to . . . courtesies not to get the credit due me.
13 Canter casts this in the form of a paradoxical
proverb (though it seems to be his own invention); Pennyboy Jr responds
to the form in the next line.
13 yourselves]
F3 (your selves); you selues F2
14 sentences
sayings.
20 SD.2]
in right margin in F2
21–2 Jonson thus captures the tenor of much Protestant
news-writing, with its deep fear of united, international Catholic
power. In the ensuing lines that unity crumbles, to the fascination and
(apparent) satisfaction of the consumers of news.
23 the
emperor i.e. the previous emperor. Ferdinand II, the Holy
Roman Emperor, had not abdicated, and would not die until 1637.
23 SD]
placement, F3, following
‘resign’d,’; as marginal note F2
24 trails a
pike serves as a foot soldier. The phrase refers to the normal
carriage of the pike during a march, the pike held just above the
balance point, with its butt end ‘trailing’ a few inches above the
ground.
24 Tilly
Count of Tilly, Johann Tzerclas, the celebrated and much-feared
commander of the forces of the Catholic League since 1618.
25 SD]
placement, F3, following 26
‘Jesuits.’; as marginal note F2
26 Spinola
Marquis of Ambrosio, leader of the Spanish army in the Netherlands; cf.
. The
satire here is intricate, if not downright fussy, for the news here sows
confusion by confounding General Spinola with Father Spinola, a Jesuit
martyred in Nagasaki in 1622. Jesuits were the objects of considerable
suspicion in Stuart England, where they were held to be spies and
ideologues of resistance and sedition. To condense the two Spinolas is
to construct an extravagant bogeyman, concentrating the threats to
Protestant England of Catholic and Spanish power.
27 SD]
placement, F3, following 28
‘Monarchy’; as marginal note F2
28 pretence
to prospects for establishing.
28–32 Fifth . . . Austria The Fifth Monarchy refers to the
thousand-year sacred kingdom, successor to the heathen kingdoms of
Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome, prophesied in Daniel, 7–8; cf.
Alch.,
4.5.26. Many Protestants expected its inception shortly; many
Catholics alleged that Daniel’s prophecy had looked forward to the Holy
Roman Empire itself, yet abiding tensions between emperors and popes
worked consistently to undermine their allegations. The news of a
Spanish king who had been made both pope and emperor, if true, would
seem to offer a triumphant Catholic fulfilment to Daniel’s prophecy.
Fitton muses on Austrian ambitions to establish a Catholic Fifth
Monarchy. In effect, the Staple is selling the happy vision of a
Catholic Europe in which millennial and imperial ambitions are thwarted
by huge rivalries and intrigue.
31 SD]
placement, F3, following 32
‘Maximilian’; as marginal note F2
32 Maximilian
Duke of Bavaria, founder of the Catholic League, and champion of
Ferdinand II. Maximilian had driven the Protestant Elector-Palatine,
Frederick V, from the throne of Bohemia and from his heriditary
territories in 1620. Frederick was the son-in-law of James I, and his
ouster was not only the chief stimulant to English interest in
continental news, but was also a focus of late Jacobean foreign policy:
the latter months of James’s reign were devoted to developing alliances
that might enable Frederick to recover his throne.
33–4 Bouttersheim . . . Scheiterhuyssen Jonson first coined these
names for
Epigr. 107.25–6. Bouttersheim sustains the play’s
relentless running joke associating news and butter (and also gesturing
to the Dutch as the butter-people). Scheiterhuyssen is a broader gesture
of anti-Catholic xenophobia: it Dutchifies the English term
‘shit-house’.
34 Liechtenstein
H&S take this
rather unspecific reference to Lichtenstein as evoking a kind of
inconsequential provinciality; more plausibly,
Parr (ed.
Staple)
takes this as a specific reference to Karl von Liechtenstein, whom
Ferdinand II installed on the throne of Bohemia after the expulsion of
Frederick V. If so, Fitton’s identification of ‘the Baron . . . of
Liechtenstein’ as Lord Paul (
35) is to be understood as yet another instance of the addled
misinformation that circulates under the influence of the Staple.
36 SD]
in right margin in F2
37 A priest!
See line .
above.
37–8 dispensed . . . Society released from his priestly vows, as
are all the members of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits).
39 engineers
The primary modern sense, ‘devisers of mechanical contrivances’, was, in
Jonson’s day, still secondary to the sense, ‘devisers of malicious
stratagems’; Jonson here exploits the ambiguity of the term.
41–2 Jonson responded to the notoriety of Spinola’s
war-machinery as early as
Volp., 2.1.51. The device imagined here adds
a fourth to the three means of travel to the moon enumerated in
News NW,
148–55.
44 Vitellesco
Muzio Vitelleschi, Superior General of the Jesuits since 1615, probably
held his place in the consciousness of Jonson and his contemporaries as
the rector of the English College in Rome during the late 1590s. The
College was the headquarters of displaced English Catholicism, at once a
hospice for exiled English priests and an academy at which priests were
trained for the English mission.
46 SD]
in right margin in F2
47 powdered
spiced or salted, but with a double entendre that
implies an association with gunpowder; see . below.
47 wildfire
highly flammable compounds, difficult to extinguish, formulated for
military use.
49 egg The
OED records no instances of the slang use of ‘egg’
for grenade or bomb prior to the twentieth century.
49 clear
utterly.
52 SD]
placement, F3, following 53 ‘Study,’; as marginal note F2
54 burning
glass Although this is his only direct reference to Galileo,
Jonson was well aware of the contemporary ferment in optics, witness his
lampoon of the optical experiments of the Dutch engineer Cornelis
Drebbel (
Augurs, 75n.,
193n., and 59n. below). Drebbel, who
specialized in the manufacture of lenses, had schemes for concentrating
solar rays in order to provide energy (Harris,
1961, 189–91); Jonson’s friend William
Drummond received a patent in 1626 for a device to set fire to distant
objects. The inspiration for none of these proposals can be traced
directly to Galileo.
55 fire set
fire to.
55 SD]
placement, F3, following ‘Water.’; as marginal note F2
56 moonshine . . . water ‘Moonshine in the water’ was proverbial
(
Dent, M1128∗) for
something insubstantial and unworthy of serious consideration.
59 SH
nathaniel]
G; Cla. F2
59 sir] F3 (Sir); Sit F2
59 Corneliuson Jonson’s naval inventor recalls Cornelis Drebbel
(see .
above), who constructed and sailed a semi-submarine, a ship that could
travel with only its pilot’s head above the water’s surface, from
Westminster to Greenwich in 1621. Drebbel and others devoted
considerable ingenuity to constructing explosive devices that might be
used to sink ships.
59 Corneliuson] F2 (Cornelius-Son)
59 SD]
in left margin in F2
61 Dunkirk
Dunkirk was an infamous haven for pirates, who periodically disrupted
shipping in the Channel.
63 SD, 72 SD ]in margin in
F2
63–5 side . . . ourselves Whereas Cymbal uses side to indicate Tom’s ‘beat’, Pennyboy Jr construes the term
as denoting Catholic partisanship. The byplay gently mocks Pennyboy Jr’s
assumption that all news is and should be partisan, and the mockery
implies that Jonson expects general acceptance of the principle that the
reporting of news should be dispassionate. But Pennyboy Jr’s assumptions
were shared even within the culture of news production, hence the
address ‘to the indifferent Reader’ of the newsbook for 29 March 1625:
‘whereas we have hitherto printed (for the most part) the occurrences
which have come to our hands, from the Protestants’ side, which some
have excepted against: wherefore to give them content, we purpose to
publish (as they come now to our hands) such relations as are printed at
Antwerp, Utopia, or other such like places’ (C1v).
63 SD The
sentence begun in this SD is completed at 72 SD. The printed marginalia
in the folio provide a summary tally of the preposterous news items
proffered by the Staple.
65 Come down
Come down from your elevated seat.
68 keep . . . side circulate news concerning Protestant affairs
or deriving from Protestant sources; see . above and .
below.
69 The line suggests that the Staple fabricates news
and does not simply circulate it; thus, switching sides seems to oblige
Tom to rewrite news he has already written, transforming ‘pontificial’
news into ‘his own’, i.e. Protestant, news.
71 stick be
stubborn.
78 sir] F2 (sit)
79 automa It
is unclear whether this truncated form of automaton
should be taken as an error on Cymbal’s part or as an acceptable
form.
80 snug The
standard meaning, ‘trim’, may be what’s intended here, though
H&S may be correct
in suggesting a connection to the noun,
snug, meaning
‘a rugged projection’. The noun may be being used adjectivally.
82 coasts
From Latin costae, ‘ribs’.
83 right hand
reliable source; cf.
Mag. Lady, 4.6.19.
84–5 eel
boats . . . Holland Complaints about the prominence of the
Dutch in the English fisheries and their contempt for English import
quotas were not uncommon. The Dutch were notorious for fish trading at
Queenhithe during Lent (Johansson, 53–4).
84 Queenhithe
The ancient dock lying on the north side of the Thames, just south of
the Guildhall and St Paul’s.
85 brave
excellent.
86 bottoms
boats.
87 SD]
in left margin in F2
87 SD
in cork shoes ‘Cork’
suggests not only a floating army, but one that could move with silent
stealth; cf.
Lear, 4.5.176–7, ‘It were a delicate stratagem, to
shoe / A troop of horse with felt.’ Note that the news sought from
abroad and diffused by the Staple has come to focus on intrusion and
invasion: armies and (mis)information trace similar itineraries. For
more on cork shoes, see
Devil, 3.4.13n. and
4.4.69n.
89 Harwich In
fact, ten thousand troops were garrisoned at Harwich (on the northeast
coast of Essex) in the latter months of 1625 in expectation of an
invasion by Spinola, whose fleet had just routed Dutch and English
forces at Dunkirk.
90 ordnance] F2 (ordinance)
93 spring
tide (When the tides would be especially high.)
94 engines
mechanical devices or contrivances.
95 curious
abstruse, or pertaining to the occult.
96 SD]
placement, F3, following 98
‘Bodies,’; as marginal note F2
97 SH
nathaniel]
G; Cla. F2
97 reverence . . . ears begging your pardon for my introducing
an indelicate subject.
98 drawing . . . bodies The Clerk takes this preposterous
project seriously, but extracting farts from the dead was also a
proverbial formulation of an impossible undertaking (
Dent, F63).
99 Brotherhood . . . Cross Rumours concerning this fabled secret
society, the Rosicrucians, began to circulate in the late sixteenth
century; the society was said to have been founded in the fifteenth
century. It is fitting that Nathaniel should have news of the
Rosicrucians, who were associated with a variety of occult practices and
lore, and especially with Protestant apocalyptic thought, for Nathaniel
sits opposite to ‘the pontificial side’ (
63) of the Staple office.
99 Rosy Cross] F2 (Rosie Crosse)
104 resents
Parr (ed. Staple) notes the pun from ‘re-scents’.
105 SD]
placement, F3, following ‘Motion,’; as marginal note F2
105 SD
perpetual motion Many
early modern inventors occupied themselves with the construction of such
devices. The same Cornelis Drebbel who devised a vessel to travel almost
entirely underwater in 1621 (see . above) was credited with having
succeeded in constructing a clock wound by a perpetual motion machine
and in 1598 was awarded a patent for the device in his native Holland.
He presented the device to James I in 1604. See
Epicene, 5.3.47–8 and
n.,
Epigr. 97.2.
106 alewife . . . Katherine’s See
Augurs, 87,
for more on this innkeeper (and her bears, who are brought in to dance).
Many breweries were concentrated in the precinct of Saint Katherine’s
and it was a locale especially associated with hard drinking – hence
Pennyboy’s quip at line
107 that the flow of ale at The Dancing Bears is a perpetual
motion – as well as with the Dutch residents who crowded its taverns
(see
Devil,
1.1.61–2).
109 discovery
investigation.
110 SD]
placement, F3, following 112
‘Room’; as marginal note F2
110 made up
prepared.
114 stand it
remain.
115 SD]
placement, F3, following 114, ‘Office’; as marginal note F2
115 SD
House of Fame A
reference to Chaucer’s conception, in the poem of the same name, of an
edifice to which all communication, be it false or true, routes itself,
in which all important deeds are commemorated. (For Jonson’s earlier
reimagining of the House of Fame, see Queens.) Chaucer
also imagined a nearby house of twigs from which all rumour emanates. In
his conception of news, Jonson, like Chaucer, is recalling the classical
idea, often personified (most famously in Virgil’s Aeneid, 4.173–88), of fama, a word that
links together all forms of notoriety, from celebrated eminence to the
deepest ill repute, and all forms of publicity, from formal rhetorical
praise to gossip.
116 curious
(1) inquisitive; (2) careful. In Time Vind., the
Curious, devotees of Fame, are brought in as antimasquers, wasters of
Time, who presides over the main masque.
117 staid
grave.
120 she i.e.
Fame.
120 sport
irresponsible play.
122 SD] I. Cust./ A she Ana-/baptist. / as marginal note F2 (state2); I.
Cust./ A she An-/baptist. / as
marginal note F2 (state 1); I. Cust./ A she/ baptist. / as marginal note F2
(state 3); F3 subst., following
123, ‘News.’
122 SD
dopper The stage
direction here expands the speech heading in F2 at 123, ‘DOP’; in
News NW, on which Jonson draws heavily in
Staple, ‘a world of Doppers’ is discovered in the moon (see
News NW, 166). Although the Doppers of
News NW confer with the lunar Pythagoreans, they are
constrained only to hum and dare not prophesy as they would on earth;
the news that Thomas will offer Dopper at
125ff. below is pitched to satisfy
her interest in prophecy. ‘Dopper’ is a slang term from Dutch for
‘dipper’, ‘one who uses immersion in baptism’ (
OED, Dipper
n.
2). The various early modern
Protestant sects grouped together as Anabaptists were all thus
particularly identified as advocates of adult, or believer’s, baptism
and further characterized as puritanically censorious and committed to
strict behavioural codes. (The usage here and in
News
NW are the first recorded by
OED.) Line
148 below suggests that
Dopper is Dutch.
125 SD
Prophet Baal Perhaps a
reminiscence of the proto-Anabaptist John Ball, the Essex minister who
had been instrumental in fomenting the Wat Tyler rebellion, but the SD
more likely refers to that same false prophet, ‘Ball’, to whom Fletcher
alludes in
The Fair Maid of the Inn (
5.2.79; and see also the
‘astrological tailor’ of Middleton’s
Anything for a Quiet
Life, 5.1, and
Pan’s Ann., 99–100). The designation
‘Prophet’ evokes the millenarian atmosphere that flourished among many
early modern religious radicals (it may also refer to the public
theological disputations or ‘prophesyings’ that had commenced in the
1570s), just as the term, ‘saints’ (
126) – used to name themselves by
whole congregations for whom strictness and fervour were essential to
their spiritual identity, and employed with usually casual derision by
those outside their spiritual circle – reminds us of the quickened
religious energies that animated much early modern political thought
and, hence, much early modern news.
125 SD]
placement, F3, following 126,
‘shortly,’; as marginal note F2
125 SD
Holland Holland, and
Amsterdam in particular, had a reputation as a haven for radical
Protestant groups fleeing persecution, real or notional.
128 a time See
Revelation, 12.14, where the phrase ‘a time . . . and half a time’ is
used ominously to indicate an unspecified fixed duration that must pass
before a crucial next event in the unfolding of the apocalypse can take
place. The term, having entered the vocabulary of contemporary
millenarianism, becomes, for Jonson, a leading instance of pseudo-sacred
cant; cf. the Prophet mentioned in Pan’s Ann. who has
divined that ‘we must conquer in such a time and such a half time, [and] therefore bids us go
cross-legged’ (102–3).
129 Naometry
The esoteric numerological system which the late sixteenth-century south
German scholar Simon Studion elaborated from the biblical texts
describing the dimensions of Solomon’s Temple.
130 cabal body
of esoteric lore.
131 Archy
Archibald Armstrong, fool in the courts of both James and Charles, of
whose satiric attacks Buckingham and Laud were the frequent butts.
‘Archy’ was newsworthy for having been a member of Charles’s entourage
during the prince’s voyage to Madrid. His long coat seems to have been
an important prop; when the council finally acted on Laud’s complaints
in 1637, Armstrong was discharged, banished from court, and sentenced to
have his coat ‘pulled over his head’. Cf.
Neptune, 121 and
n.
132 head
person. The choice of this term gives ironic emphasis to Archy’s
intellect.
133 black
Given the puritan preference for black and modest clothing, it is not
surprising that these ‘saints’ should desire Archy’s long coat.
133 SD]
in right margin in F2
133 SD Like
several of the marginal glosses in F2, the note here is no doubt meant
to summarize the news being proffered, but the sense of the note is
obscure. Though
H&S
cite it, the episode recorded in
The Scots Scouts
(1642), in which Archy reports having been stripped of his signature
coat for having spoken against the bishops and being obliged to wear a
black coat
instead can hardly shed light on the
passage, since it concerns Archy’s
black coat. If
Archy’s customary coat were brightly coloured or motley, he would have
been obliged to replace it with a black coat in the months prior to the
staging of
Staple (in mourning for James); this
unwonted and startling propriety might have provoked Jonson’s gloss.
134 So . . . need For which there is need; i.e. they would
benefit from the peace that Dopper has just wished might be theirs.
134 by the
ears at odds.
138 ninepence
Dopper seeks a discount of 25 per cent on the twelve-penny shilling that
is the Staple’s standard price.
140 That man
Dopper seems to indicate a particular person on stage, probably Tom,
whose reliability as a source or conduit of news she may suspect.
141 SD]
placement, F3, following ‘Signior’; as
marginal note F2
141 SD
Great Turk The Sultan of
Turkey, probably Murad IV, the mad sultan Mustafa I having been deposed
in 1623. Murad IV never converted to Christianity.
143–4 The
controversy . . . Antichrist The controversy between the pope
and the sultan over which of the two is truly the Antichrist.
146 quit . . . Beast divest himself of the signs of damnation.
The phrasing suggests that these marks are damnable practices or
ceremonial trappings and not simply the outward indications of
damnation; the ambiguity over whether religious ceremony is a cause of
damnation or merely the abominable sign of damnation is characteristic
of Protestant anti-Catholic polemic (here extended to the Moslem
sultan). For the ‘marks of the Beast’, see Revelation, 16.2.
147–8 Buzz . . . countryman See
1.2.70–1.
149 family,
nation Both terms were used by the members of the various
puritan sects to indicate the members of a sect or congregation. Though
the Register seems to have remarked on the shared political and regional
identity of Buzz and Dopper, Dopper insists, rather, on a shared
religious affiliation, perhaps implying that this is the only communal
identity that carries significant weight for her.
150 Amboyna An
island in the Moluccas, a Dutch territory since 1605. The 1620s saw a
series of skirmishes between the British and Dutch for control of this
island, raids and conspiracies that reverberated in English
international consciousness and that were an abiding element in the
atmosphere of English news-hunger. In 1623, the Dutch tortured and
massacred the residents of an English trading post in Amboyna, ten
merchants and their staff; the Register’s remark on ‘the justice there’
presumably refers to the plague that descended on Amboyna shortly after
the massacre.
151 Dopper] F2 (Doper)
152 SD]
placement, F3 (2 Cust.), following ‘Miracle’ (see next note); as
marginal note F2
153–4 Any . . . China? Fabulous accounts of missionary activity in
the far east were an important feature in English travel writing and
news. Jonson here fuels his satire of the appetite for news by drawing
on the suspicious derision with which the Jesuits were treated in
English popular discourse.
153 miracles] F2 (states 1 and 2); mirac l F2 (state 3);
miracle F3
154 SD]
placement, F3, following 155
‘Cooks’; as marginal note F2 (A
Coloney / oe Cookes / sent ouer to / convert the /
Canniballs.)
154 SD, 157
cannibals The term does not necessarily mean ‘those who eat
human flesh’ though that sense does seem to be entailed here; prior to
the date of Staple, the term can be used to refer
simply to Caribs, noted more frequently for their fierceness in battle
than for anthropophagy.
155, 163 SH
nathaniel]
G; Cla. F2
158 good-eating properly dieted. I have emended the folio
pointing (taking some warrant from the reading in F3, which also changes
the F2 pointing), though a strained argument might be made for
preserving it: the colony of cooks might be imagined as themselves
serving as meals for the cannibals, who, having eaten the good
colonists, assimilate their values by mere digestion.
158 good-eating]
this edn; good, eating F2; good
eating F3
158 Christians] F3 (Christians); Cbristians F2
159 colonel Lickfinger’s odd title may refer at once to his
undertakings as a colonist (see the preceding line) and to his fantasy
of cooking as a military art at 4.2.21–9. ‘Colonel’ is probably
trisyllabic.
159 SD The
text here is in a confusing state. The marginal note in F2 reads ‘3.
Cust. /
By Colonel / Lickfinger’ and
‘
By’ is plainly an error. In the dialogue that
immediately ensues, no character specifically designated as the third
customer speaks and instead Lickfinger functions as a customer, even
though he is also an employee of the Staple. It is therefore tempting to
emend the note, perhaps to ‘Colonel Lickfinger
[as
Third
] Customer’. Yet at
313, F2 specifically assigns a
speech to ‘3’, who is there quite distinct from the ‘Lic.’ who speaks at
312. (It may be
worth noting that F3 asserts that distinction earlier by reassigning the
speech at
160, ‘Who?
Captain Lickfinger?’ from ‘C. 2’ to ‘C. 3’ If F3 is correct, then the
third customer would have to have entered with the preceding two
customers.) On balance, then, we can suppose a third customer, distinct
from Lickfinger, either to have entered alongside Lickfinger or to have
stepped forward as he enters: one can imagine some comic business –
unscripted, admittedly – in which this third tries to make his or her
purchase, but is ignored as Lickfinger eagerly urges his own
interest.
159 SD]
placement, F3, following 160
‘Lickfinger?’; as marginal note
F2
163 venting
uttering, publishing; also, selling.
165–80 Jonson draws on Deipnosophistae, 14.660f–661a, where Athenaeus reports a dialogue
from Athenion’s lost Samothracians in which a poet,
boasting to a philosopher, tells the story of how an eminent ancient
cook effected the conversion of primitive men from anthropophagy.
166 spit . . . divinity the secrets of cooking.
168 the true
cause i.e. of spiritual reformation and awakening; cf. the
similar usage of ‘the cause’ by Ananias and Tribulation in
Alch.,
3.1.43.
169 to
assistant to.
170 broach
spit.
172 Japhet’s
physic The reference to Japhet’s medicine (‘physic’) primarily
indicates the fire that Prometheus, son of the Titan Japetus, stole from
heaven for the benefit of mankind, but Lickfinger’s phrasing also
recalls Japheth, one of the three sons of Noah, from whom the European
peoples were thought to have descended. The dual reference identifies
the secrets of cookery with the primitivist Hebraism characteristic of
puritan culture; cf. .
175 cook The
emendation has been traditional since 1716; F3 preserves the folio
reading ‘cookes’. The original reading records an arguably acceptable
idiom – i.e. ‘to cook us their meats’ – in which the dative, ‘us’,
serves as a kind of mild intensifier.
175 cook]
1716; cookes F2
176 our
cannibal-Christians i.e. our predatory fellow Christians in
Europe. New World cannibals were reported to eat only enemies. A propos
of European ‘cannibalism’,
Parr, ed.
Staple, Robert Daborn’s
A Christian Turned Turk, in which a Turk declines
conversion to Christianity because of the uncharity of Christians: ‘They
will devour one another as pikes do gudgeons.’
179 Anthropophagi
H&S plausibly
suggest that Jonson would expect this, the Greek word for
cannibal, to have its primary accent on the fourth
syllable.
183 strew out
supplement, decorate.
188 SD]
placement, F3, following 188
‘Hair,’; as marginal note F2
189–90 Jonson proffered the same fantasy to William
Drummond; see
Informations, 383–5.
192 mystery
trade, industry; in this case, barbering.
193–6 bald . . . reverently A diffuse and mild prurience hovers
over these lines. Since one of the well-known effects of venereal
disease was to make the infected person’s hair fall out, remarkable
baldness was often taken as a sign of committed licentiousness.
197 Like
lapwings The precocious departure of the newborn lapwing from
its nest was proverbial, and the image of the newly hatched lapwing with
a shell still on its head, conventional (
Dent, L68 and L69). But the point
here is not that the coachman wears a hat, like the lapwing’s shell, but
that his bald, uncovered head is as smooth as the shell on the lapwing’s
head: coachmen of the elite rode with heads uncovered, for which see
Devil,
2.3.36–7 and
The New Inn, 4.1.17.
197 upon]
G; vpo’ F2
199 about] F3;
abou F2
200 as
dumb . . . fish Proverbial (
Dent, F300), appearing also in
Poet.,
4.3.114ff.,
King’s Ent., 258–9, and
Epicene,
2.2.2.
200 SD
Spalato’s In 1616,
Marcantonio de Dominis, the then Archbishop of Spalato – notorious as
‘Spalato’ in England – took refuge in England after a dispute with Pope
Paul V. Partly because of his advocacy of a unified church in which
papal authority would have no place, he came under the protection of
James I and was preferred to the deanship of Windsor, but in 1622 he
left England for Brussels, then returned to Rome and recanted before
Gregory XV. (On the role of the Marquis de Gondomar in Spalato’s return
to Rome, see . below.) After Gregory’s death in 1623, Spalato was
jailed by the Inquisition; he and his books were posthumously burnt in
1624. Thomas Middleton depicted Spalato in the fickle Fat Bishop in his
play,
A Game at Chess (1624); his posthumous fate was
recounted in a Butter newsbook of 1625. Jonson associates Spalato’s
geographical wanderings with contemporary playwrights’ disrespect for
the unities of place (
202) and his protean spiritual career with the professional
inauthenticities of actors (
203–4). We might reflect that Jonson’s own life, both as an
actor and as a double convert, is also subtly entailed in these
lines.
200 SD]
placement, F3, following 200 ‘Players,’; as marginal note F2
201 King’s
Players
A Game at Chess was performed by the King’s Men,
though the production was shut down after only nine performances.
205–6 He . . . him! William Rowley had the role of the Fat Bishop
in A Game at Chess. Rowley died early in 1626.
207 SD
Gondomar’s . . . Chess
The Marquis de Gondomar, Spanish ambassador to England (1613–18 and
1620–2), was widely suspected by English puritans of scheming for the
restoration of Catholicism in England. His influence with James I
certainly worked to moderate hostilities with Spain and, indeed, he was
an important sponsor of the eventually aborted Spanish match between the
future Charles I and the Spanish Infanta. Spalato had insulted Gondomar
late in the latter’s second stint in England, and Gondomar had
contributed to Spalato’s downfall by persuading his relative, Pope
Gregory XV, to lure Spalato back to Rome. Gondomar was frequently
mentioned in the newsbooks and was the object of much satire; see,
especially, Thomas Scott’s fabricated news accounts of Gondomar’s
machinations,
Vox
Populi (
1620) and
The Second Part
of Vox Populi (
1624). He figures as the Black Knight in ‘the poor English
play’ (
209),
A Game at Chess. His affliction with fistula (ulcer)
was widely known; in Middleton’s play (which draws heavily on Scott’s
Vox Populi), the Fat Bishop refers to the Black
Knight as ‘the fistula of Europe’ (
2.2.46).
207 SD]
placement, F3, following ‘Fistula,’; as
marginal note F2
207–11 A
second . . . posteriors Jokes about the abuse of particular
books by using their pages to wipe the disapproving reader’s buttocks
are common. Jonson probably took the idea for such ‘criticism’ from
Rabelais (Pantagruel, Book IV, ch. 52), but there are
many analogues, including classical ones.
208 excoriation sore.
212 his . . . Brussels Gondomar was in Brussels on a diplomatic
mission to the Infanta Isabella in 1625–6. He no doubt travelled with
the special chair and the special litter that he used to relieve the
discomfort of his fistula; such a chair is brought on stage in A Game at Chess.
212 chair]
conj. Winter; share F2
213 politic
crafty.
214 states
Arguably a specific reference to the States General, i.e. the Protestant
Netherlands.
214 he’s]
this edn; h’has F2
214 hooks i.e.
the hook-shaped supporting components of a door hinge.
215 What . . . have What price are you asking?
216 SD]
in right margin in F2
218 that In a
nice touch, Pennyboy Jr suggests that Pecunia’s enthusiasm for the
Staple, the irrationally quickened economics of information, is itself
news.
219 SD]
placement, F3, following
‘Princess!’; as marginal note F2
220 princess] F3 (Princess); Prinecesse F2
221 SD.1–2]
in right margin in F2
223 covert
haven.
224 rites
ceremonies, displays. Cymbal’s courtship offers an archaic conception of
the proper use or destiny of wealth, one sharply opposed to the
conception embodied in the way Pennyboy Sr treats Pecunia, though not
inconsistent with it. Cymbal counters Pennyboy Sr’s miserliness with a
vision of luxurious expenditure, aristocratic in its association with
‘blood and birth’. Pennyboy Canter dissociates himself from both his
brother’s economy of mere retention and from Cymbal’s economy of mere
display by turning Cymbal’s ‘sordid’ back against him at
243.
230 meat
food.
230 curious
elaborate.
234 his its.
The odd suggestion that the water used to temper wine is somehow proper
to that wine, ‘his’ water, makes a small contribution to Cymbal’s
evocation of extravagant luxury. He promises to infuse music into even
the most mechanical aspects of dining: serving, clearing away dishes,
and even the mixing of wine with water. To say that the water already
belongs to the wine, is ‘his’, is to suggest how unremarkable is the
activity of mixing – yet, however unremarkable, even that will be
accompanied with harmony.
235 I.e. you are as persuasive as – and therefore as
bad as – a courtier, or worse. Pecunia’s use of ‘courtier’ recalls
Doll’s when she dismisses Mammon’s blandishments: ‘Oh, you play the
courtier’ (
Alch., 4.1.66).
237 Excellent] F3; Exellent F2
238 state
Several meanings of the term are pertinent here: pomp, high standing,
person of high standing (
OED, 17 and 18, 16, and
24 respectively).
239–48 Dazzle . . . any Although Jonson seems to imply that the
moral lapse described here was a specifically early modern problem,
these lines derive from three epistles by Seneca, probably by way of the
prose renderings of these same source texts to be found in
Discoveries,
980–5 and
1030–3 – for this seems to be an instance of the practice, to
which Jonson adverts in
Informations, 293, of producing a text in
prose prior to versifying it. The Senecan sources are:
At
excaecant populum et in se convertunt opes, si numerati multum ex
aliqua domo effertur (‘Yet wealth strikes the people blind and
wins them over, when some huge heap is turned out from within the
[rich man’s
] house’,
Epistles, 119.11);
Ab hac divina contemplatione
abductum animum in sordida et humilia pertraximus, ut avaritiae
serviret (‘Our souls, withdrawn from divine contemplation, we
have dragged to sordid and degraded things, that they might serve
avarice’, 110.9); and
Nec tantum parietibus aut lacunaribus
ornamentum tenue praetenditur: omnium istorum, quos incedere altos
vides, bratteata felicitas est. Inspice, et scies, sub ista tenui
membrana dignitatis quantum mali iaceat. Haec ipsa
res . . . pecunia, ex quo in honore esse coepit, verus rerum honor
cecidit, ‘Nor is such a thin veneer stretched across walls and
ceilings: all of those exalted men whom you see prancing about have only
a gilded happiness. Look within and you’ll know how much that is vile
lies beneath that thin membrane of dignity. Ever since that very
thing . . . money, began to be honored, those things in which true honor
inheres lost credit’ (115.9–10).
239 vulgar (1)
belonging to commoners; (2) tasteless.
241 end Deftly
ambiguous: Pennyboy Canter thus suggests ironically that the dazzling
displays that Cymbal says are the proper function, the destiny or ‘end’
of wealth are, in fact, the surest means to exhaust or ‘end’ wealth.
242 contemplate (1) aspire to; (2) consider.
245 membranes
thin sheets or layers (
OED, 3, citing this as the earliest
instance).
248 ’gan . . . any began to have any reputation, began to be in
any way commendable.
248 SD.1–2]
in left margin in F2
249 Band’s mockery suggests the extravagance of the
praise which Fitton has lavished on the Staple in his attempt to enlist
them in persuading their mistress to take up residence there. Band says,
in effect, that it’s a pity that he doesn’t have the godlike power to
transform the Staple by fiat, making it as splendid as he has said it
is. See .
below.
252–3 Wax tells Fitton that he is unwise to lavish his
attentions on her, that it is more important that her mistress view the
Staple than that she herself do so.
256 I thank
you Picklock seems to be ignoring the renewal of Fitton’s
persuasive efforts and responding with pleasure to Wax’s confirmation,
offered at
253, of
Pecunia’s freedom to view the Staple. Note that in the long run Broker
and the ladies-in-waiting find Picklock more persuasive than Fitton, the
lawyer’s approach more attractive than the courtier’s.
257–62 If . . . please Mortgage and Statute imply that they would
have the best chance of winning Pecunia’s favor to the Staple were it an
alienable property, one that could be wrested away from Cymbal (‘him’,
259) or his heirs.
A chattel (
257), for
example, is a moveable property, and much more easy to transfer than
real estate. Pecunia’s ladies know that their mistress’s interest in
Cymbal and the Staple is merely acquisitive.
258 term of
life Although Picklock assures Mortgage that the Staple is
alienable, that it is Cymbal’s to give or deed away, Picklock also
implicitly concedes that Cymbal has tenure of the property only for the
duration of his life. Any transfer of such property would be
impermanent. At
266–7,
Band suggests that Pecunia might be interested if someone could insure
Cymbal’s life (and hence his tenure) for at least seven years.
260 state of
years Like a proprietary interest for ‘term of life’, a ‘state
of years’ is a term-limited property, in this case simply a fixed number
of years, but the difference between the two is very important to
Statute. She is (heartlessly) aware that a property held for term of
life will revert to its original owner (or to the owner’s heirs) once
the tenant dies; property held for term of years, on the other hand,
would not revert upon death of the tenant. Statute knows that her
mistress will prefer a property held for a long fixed term to a property
held for term of life, since life can be short.
261 Statute-Staple,
Statute-Merchant These are both old forms for securing a debt,
by means of an oath sworn before the mayor of a staple market,
authenticated by the seal of the staple. They thus served as devices for
streamlining commercial transactions. The remedy for default was
similarly streamlined: the creditor was entitled to simple seizure of
the debtor’s lands and goods, and the debtor could be summarily
imprisoned: because of the peremptory character of the remedy, statute
merchant came to be known as ‘pocket judgement’. Statute’s glee here has
more than a tincture of rapaciousness.
263, 264 His, he
Referring to Fitton.
265 brooch . . . gem Apparently formulaic: see
Poet., 1.2.131 and
Ham.,
4.7.92–3.
266–70 He . . . thus Let Alderman Security and his deputy merely
insure Cymbal’s life for a single seven-year period and, as soon as he
bestirs himself (‘upon his scarlet motion’) and old Chain, the deputy,
begins silently to twirl his chain, you shall see what we will do on
Cymbal’s behalf. Band and Statute imply that only on such a condition
would they, or could they, interest Pecunia in the Staple.
268 scarlet
Referring to the colour of aldermanic robes.
269 draws (1)
attracts; (2) compels.
270 twirls it
thus i.e. twirls the chain (from which Chain takes his name)
thus. Wax apparently mimics Chain’s self-important gesture here.
270 moving
referring both to the twirling chain and the persuasive force of oratory
(in which case, ‘oratory’ refers to the symbolic display of aldermanic
authority).
272 fine poet
Samuel Daniel. In his ‘Complaint of Rosamund’ (1592), Daniel speaks of
the silent eloquence of amorous eyes (lines 121–2). Jonson had already
reproduced Daniel’s phrasing in
EMO,
3.1.89–90, to less markedly satiric purpose.
273 family of
scorn A play on the Family of Love, the name by which a
secretive group of Protestants, followers of the teachings of Hendrik
Niclaes, were known. ‘Familism’ originated in Holland in the 1540s, and
its influence was felt in England within a decade. Committed to communal
ownership of property and antinomian in tendency, the Familists were
widely suspected of practising adultery.
278 Yes, if
Note that the force of this is concessive; i.e. as if Picklock were
saying, ‘Yes but if, etc.’.
278 much
advance offer considerable advantage.
281–2 Though Broker claims to understand (‘apprehend’)
Picklock’s intentions, his comment is ambiguous: it is unclear whether
Broker understands that he is to help Picklock secure Pecunia as
Cymbal’s bride or as a whore to be pimped out from the Staple.
283 change
exchange. The line initiates a final discussion of strategy that
Picklock and Broker will now carry on unheard as they step aside.
284 meat
food.
285 Bethlem
Gabor The flamboyant general Gabriel Bethlen – in Hungarian,
Bethlén Gábor – ascended to the throne of Transylvania in 1613. In 1619,
he led a famous anti-Habsburg revolt in Hungary, an insurrection that
continued until 1626. Mercurial in his political and religious
allegiances, Gabor was an especially attractive subject for
sensationalist news.
286 SD]
placement, F3, following 286
‘sound:’; as marginal note F2
291 in the air
The apocalyptic cast of this report is, in fact, quite in keeping with
the tenor of the more extravagant newsbooks of the day. Parr (ed. Staple) adduces a report in The
Continuation of the Weekly News, 5 October 1624, of ‘two
fearful and terrible armies in the sky . . . ordered in battle
’rray’.
292 married
Gabor married Catharina von Hohenzollern, sister of the Elector of
Brandenburg, on 2 March 1626.
294 Bavier
Bavaria. See . above.
294 SD.2]
in right margin in F2
295 SH
nathaniel]
G; Cla. F2
295 grey habit
The garb of the Franciscan friars.
297 Tilly See
.,
Tilley.
298–301 Ha’ . . . coronation It was customary for the London guilds
to mount elaborate pageants to celebrate royal coronations, though in
fact the coronation of Charles, on 2 February 1626, was remarkably
lacking in such shows. The coronation had been postponed because of
plague, and the intended public shows were aborted; in
Britain’s Remembrancer (
1628), George Wither refers to the
‘half-built pageants’ and the ‘direful shows’ (K2v) that befit them.
Jonson devised some of these shows, built but not performed; see
Royal Entry (1625) in vol. 5.
301 SD]
placement, F3 (4. Cust.
The Pageants.), following 297 ‘down’; as marginal
note F2
301–2 It . . . understood i.e. the expectation was misguided,
ill-informed. (‘It’ refers to ‘the country’.) Lickfinger’s observation
sustains the play’s steady criticism of prejudice and overheated
interpretive practices.
303 but wood
One of the recurrent themes of Jonson’s quarrel with Inigo Jones was the
vacuity of shows lacking words, and the intellectual primacy of words in
any truly estimable form of theatrical entertainment.
305 May Day In
England a day of secular festivity.
306 Memnon’s
statue The statue at Karnak of Amenhotep III (who was
popularly known as ‘Memnon’) had been famous since the first century BC
for the sounds it made when struck by the sun’s rays. The colossus
apparently acquired its ‘voice’ as a result of damage from an earthquake
in 27 BC; presumably, the expansion of broken rocks on the side warmed
by the sun produced a noisy friction. Attempts to repair the statue in
the third century apparently silenced it. Jonson mentions this statue in
Burse
(199ff.), where the statue of Apollo sings.
307 SD]
placement, F3 (5. Cust. The new Park in the Forrest of Fools.); as marginal note F2
308 fame
rumour.
308–9 Forest . . . park Properly speaking, a forest is a wild or
semi-wild area in the property of the crown. A park may be either wild
or a more domesticated landscape, but is distinguished by being
enclosed. The idea of a ‘forest of fools’ seems to have been inspired by
the tradition of imagining assemblies of the foolish, the leading
instance of which is described in Barclay’s Ship of
Fools (1509).
310 Cuckolds of
antler Cuckolds, husbands of unfaithful wives, were comically
imagined to grow horns.
310 rascals
immature or inferior male deer. The new park is thus designed to
segregate those deer/men with impressive antlers – as if cuckold’s horns
were somehow a sign of virility – from those of less robust constitution
and appearance.
311 heads
antlers.
312 cuckolds-pollard A pollard is a naturally horned animal that
has cast – that is, shed – its horns.
313 SD]
in margin in F2
319 ordered the
rolls set the manuscript rolls of news in order, after the
busy consultation provoked by the inquiries of the morning’s
customers.
3.3 ] F2 (Act. III. Scene. III. )
0 SD.1–2]
G; Shvnfield. Almanack. Madri- /
gal. Clerkes.
f2
0.2 SD]
this edn.; see commentary.
3.3.0 SD.1-2 The
Jeerers
. . . forth The folio reading is
slightly confused here. Unusually, but not uncharacteristically, Jonson
seems to have assigned a metatheatrical title, ‘The Jeerers’, to the
scene, perhaps as a marginal gloss, but this feature seems to have
confused the compositor, who appended the words to the end of line 2.
Gifford attempts to resolve the resultant confusion by assigning the
words, as a kind of expostulation, to Nathaniel; he also entertains the
possibility that they should be assigned to Tom, a suggestion that
H&S and others
adopt. The reading adopted here, with its relineation of the folio
reading for the opening of the scene, eliminates the abnormal brevity of
the first line as originally printed.
1–2 ]
relineated this edn; By . . . Clerkes, / Where . . . know? The
Ieerers. / Alm. Where’s . . . forth. F2
6 Apollo See
.
7–8 Muses . . .
Graces The distinction seems to be between the nine Muses as
austere divine patronesses of the (difficult) arts and the three Graces
as pleasant patronesses of (easy) beauty and pleasure. In the verses
that Jonson composed for inscription over the door to the Apollo room at
The Devil, he observes, ‘He the half of life abuses / That sits watering
with the muses. / Those dull girls no good can mean us; / Wine it is the
milk of Venus’ (‘Verses over the Door . . . into the Apollo’, lines
9–12, 5.422). In the present context, of course, we are invited to
imagine the ‘two gentlewomen called the Graces’ as women of dubious
propriety.
13 Dutch The
Dutch were stereotyped as hard drinkers.
16–17 that . . . Adam For Lickfinger’s belief in the antiquity of
the cook’s trade, see his reference to ‘old Japhet’s physic’ (
3.2.172 and n.).
17 quotes . . . salads i.e. Lickfinger refers to Adam’s having
made broths and salads. Genesis (1.30, 2.16–17, 3.18) suggests that Adam
was a vegetarian, and that meat-eating began with Noah and his sons
after the flood (Gen. 9.3).
18 he’s i.e.
Adam is.
18–19 translated . . . almonds The boast imputed to Lickfinger is
ambiguous. A general term of praise,
immortal also
suggests that Adam has somehow been immortalized in Lickfinger’s
creations.
Translated in leaves the means to
immortality uncertain: Adam’s soul having transmigrated into the
piecrust (for this sense of
translated, see the
fantasia on metempsychosis at
Volp., 1.2.29), his body having been
transmuted into pastry, or the body having been encased in the crust
(for which, see the use of
coffin to mean ‘crust’ at
2.3.74). Jonson
thus lends a necromantic (and slightly macabre) cast to Lickfinger’s
sense of professional self-importance. This also sets up Lickfinger’s
comparison of cook and poet: if Lickfinger’s cuisine is a kind of
embalming, then a cook may be said to confer immortality – a power
commonly claimed by classical and early modern poets.
20–4 He . . . cookery These serio-comic lines rehearse themes from
the encounter between the Cook and the Poet at the opening of
Neptune,
38–44. In
Neptune, the boastful Cook claims
that cookery is superior to poetry (despite their equal antiquity),
whereas Lickfinger insists on their equivalence and ultimate identity.
On the relation of cookery and poetry, see also the first prologue of
Epicene;
Cynthia (Q),
Praeludium, 143–50; ‘Ode (‘Come, leave’)’, 21–30 (6.310); Martial, 9.81,
etc. and, crucially here, Athenaeus,
Deipnosophistae,
1.7f, 7.290b–293e, and
passim.
22 draws
derives.
26 the
magisterium the philosopher’s stone. As a comparable instance
in which the analogy is drawn between alchemical and culinary practices,
Parr, ed.
Staple, cites Overbury’s
Characters
(
1615), in
which the French Cook’s master is said to refer to the cook as ‘his
Alchemist that can extract gold out of herbs, roots, mushrooms or any
thing’ (M3v).
27 juleps
medicated drinks, sweet drinks into which medicines are mixed.
28–33 I
was . . . dinner Cf. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, 290c.
28 olla
podrida A highly spiced stew of mixed meats and vegetables
(Span.); the term was coming to be used metaphorically to denote any
sort of miscellany. In Neptune, the Cook speaks of the
antimasque that he has devised as ‘an Olla Podrida, /
But I have persons, to present the meats’ (168–9). The fantastic
disorder that Jonson builds into many of his antimasques is linked, in
Neptune, not only with the exotic jumble of the
olla podrida, but with the miscellaneous and
irresponsible character of newsbooks, for among those whom the Cook has
enlisted to impersonate his meats are several members and enthusiasts of
the burgeoning news trade: ‘Grave Master Ambler, news-master of Paul’s,
/ Supplies your capon, and grown Captain Buz, / His emissary,
underwrites for Turkey’ both tumble forth from the stewpot, along with a
‘frisking husband / That reads’ his wife ‘the corantos every week’
(198–201).
34–5 Siren . . . Arion Cf.
Neptune, 118–37.
These allusions – to the sirens whose song lured sailors to their deaths
and to Arion whose song charms the dolphins, who save him after he has
been cast overboard by larcenous sailors – maintain the link between the
persuasive power of poetic song and that which has been attributed to
Lickfinger’s cuisine, both here and at 3.2.133–80.
38 conger A
type of eel.
40 rare
excellent, nonpareil.
41 paradoxes
unorthodox beliefs.
41 pseudodoxes false beliefs.
46 o’this
some of this.
46 store
supply.
50, 53, 56 SH
nathaniel]
G; Cla. F2
50 Duke
Humphrey’s The proverb ‘to dine with Duke Humphrey’ (
Dent, D637∗) meant to go
hungry. According to Stow (
Survey, 1.335), poor but
fashionable young men with no place to dine habitually loitered in Duke
Humphrey’s Walk, in the middle aisle of the nave of the old St Paul’s,
where stood a monument mistakenly thought to be the tomb of Duke
Humphrey (though actually the tomb of Sir John Beuchamo), apparently in
hopes of securing a last-minute dinner invitation.
52 obsonare
famem
ambulando provoke an
appetite by walking; Cicero,
Tusculan Disputations,
5.97. Tom seems to misconstrue the passage, apparently
understanding it to mean
slake an appetite by
walking.
54 I . . . you Reported by Gifford to be proverbial, although
editors differ on its meaning. In
A Notable Discovery of
Cosenage (1592), Robert Greene’s guide to Elizabethan
confidence tricks, a ‘setter’ who has acquired personal information
concerning a new arrival in London greets the newcomer as he would an
old friend: ‘What Goodman Barton, how fare all our friends about you?
You are well met; I have the wine for you; you are welcome to town’
(A4
v). The passage suggests that
Parr (ed.
Staple) is correct in surmising that this is a standard idiom
meaning ‘Let me buy you a drink’.
3.4 Location: The house of Pennyboy Sr.
3.4 ] F2 (Act. III. Scene. IV.)
0 SD]
G; Peni-boy. Se. Broker. Cymbal. F2
1 SD]
in right margin in F2
1 SD
started startled.
1 Hercules’
star In Ptolemy’s
Tetrabiblos, 1.9, the star
of Hercules, which is found in the head of the constellation Gemini, is
said to share the astrological qualities of the planet Mars, which
effects disharmony and destruction; see J. Parr (
1945b), 117.
3 charge
i.e. Pecunia.
5 Pennyboy Sr’s motive seems not like that of
Morose in Epicene, who hates the noise of other people
speaking; rather, his miserliness seems to be so great that he has a
horror of expending even words.
8 talk . . . year i.e. the Staple is rumoured to be capable of
producing a profit of £6,000 a year. The rumour is itself important to
Jonson’s conception: once again, the business of news, its capacity to
stimulate curiosity, is shown to be an object of curiosity.
10 SD]
G
(Exit Broker, and returns with Cymbal.)
14 pain, pain
Misers were traditionally supposed to be afflicted by gout; see C. T.
Wright (
1934),
176–97, and cf.
Epigr. 31.
14 SD]
in right margin in F2
15 be
Argus-eyed be as vigilant as Argus. Hera, suspecting that her
husband Zeus had had a dalliance with Io, changed Io into a heifer; Hera
chose the herdsmand Argus to guard Io, because Argus had eyes all over
his body.
17 Bacchus
The god of wine, his name used here metonymically for intoxication
itself. The paired opposition of Apollo, as patron of the rational arts,
and Bacchus, as the god of wild and festive indulgence, is solidly in
place as early as Aeschylus’s Eumenides (458 BC) and
is surely of even greater antiquity.
21 SD]
placement, F3, following ‘short’; as marginal note F2
22 sense i.e.
sense of hearing.
22 SD]
Parr, subst.; not in F2
25 quicker
i.e. more loudly. Pennyboy is opposing quick speech
and his own dead or deteriorating hearing.
27 moiety] F2 (moyetie state 2.; moyetie / state 1)
30 certain . . . casual Jonson could expect that the elder
Pennyboy’s preference for certain profits would have provoked slightly
disapproving responses from his audience, since it comes near to falling
under the strictures on usury, which traditional Christianity
stigmatized for unnaturally guaranteeing profits. A variety of business
practices had been developed for getting around the prohibition on
usury, but the disapproval of its fundamental structure persisted.
Certainly Pennyboy’s insistence that his preference for guaranteed
profit is ‘straight . . . just, and upright’ (
32–3) signals the perversity of
principles.
32 paths.] F2 (paths, / state 2.; paths / state
1.)
34 two i’the
hundred See . above.
36 husbands
caretakers.
36 stocks
supplies of goods.
38 scatters
away wastes (resources).
40 haunches
i.e. breeches or tight-fitting skirts; the figure seems to be Jonson’s
invention (cf. Bart. Fair, 4.5.56).
40 with a pox
The phrase is poised between being an emphatic expletive (of the order
of ‘damn it!’) and being simply descriptive of velvet-covered haunches
infected with venereal disease.
41 taken up
borrowed (on credit), but with an under meaning of ‘infected’.
41 use
interest.
41 SD]
placement, F3, following 42
‘manners.’; as marginal note F2
42 Bate of
Reduce or forgive.
45–68 Who . . . lives Pennyboy’s indictment of the times derives
from Seneca’s
Epistles, 110 and 119, on which Jonson
had already drawn for
3.2.239–48. He had already rendered his Senecan sources in
prose in
Discoveries, 950–1007.
47 kitchens] F3 (Kitchens); kitckins F2
47 SD]
in left margin in F2
48 stews
holding-ponds or tanks for fish soon to be cooked.
48 magazines
storehouses.
49 tissues
sumptuous fabrics, sometimes with gold or silver threads woven in.
49 tissues] F2, state
2; tyssues F2, state 1
50 things] F2 (things –)
52 want
necessary be in need of necessary (things).
53 gold
chamberpots Jonson probably takes his inspiration here from
both
Martial, 1.37 and
More,
Utopia, ed. Surtz and Hexter, 4.152.
54 napkins
handkerchiefs.
54 family
i.e. of retainers, presumably. In the parallel passages in Jonson’s
source, Seneca speaks of matched cohorts of beautiful servingmen.
55 see her
watch her (i.e. Nature).
55 Poor and wise, she]
Wh, subst.; Poore, and wise she, F2
60 Laid . . . show On display (for selection). The suggestion is
that the pomp of all European courts are gathered together as a kind of
shop for the exclusive patronage of ‘the emperor of pleasures’.
62 this
Ambiguously referring both to the emperor’s self-display and to the
admiration it elicits, and thus preparing for the proportionate
expression in
66, ‘as
little yours as the spectators’’.
63 bravery
grand appearance, fine accoutrements.
65 healthful
healthy.
68 entertains
(1) occupies, amuses; (2) entangles, distracts (
OED, IV.9). Cf.
Blackness,
262–4, where the ‘entertainment’ of the daughters of Niger by
their dancing partners must be understood as an entanglement, given that
their partners are described as ‘Sirens of the land’ (255).
69 monopoly
Jonson often imagines central thematic encounters as a competition for
exclusive control of discourse, of representation. Here Cymbal, the
vulgarizing purveyor of information tempered to the taste of the moment,
squares off against a furiously moralizing social satirist – a frenzied
version of Jonson himself – and accuses him of making debate impossible
by monopolizing communication itself.
70 SD]
placement, F3, following ‘all.’; as marginal note F2
72 here] F3;
hete F2
72 an if.
74, 81, 84 SD]
in margin in F2
77 civility
code of behaviour. The term is used ironically here, since its more
common meaning – a generally accepted code of
behaviour – is so obviously inapplicable.
79 venture
highly speculative investment.
80 bark
sea-going vessel with sails. The idiom ‘bark of six’ (or ‘bark of
sixteen’) is not common, though it may refer to tonnage or to the number
of guns with which it was furnished.
80 if even
if.
83 overflow] F2 (ouerflow –)
84 SD]
placement, F3, following 83
‘overflow –’; as marginal note F2
84 Caterpillar,
moth Both terms used commonly figuratively to describe a
socially destructive or parasitic person. Cf.
Epigr. 15.
87 dryfat A
large vessel for storing dry goods. Jonson’s phrase suggests a barrel
that was once watertight, but now, its staves having dried out and
shrunk, useful only for dry storage.
87 SD]
G; not in F2
THIRD INTERMEAN 2 Silver
Street In Cheapside. So named for the silversmiths resident
there, according to Stow.
2 seat
headquarters.
4 receipt
formula. The term can also mean ‘recipe’, as ‘ingredients’ might imply,
but
receipt is primarily used to denote the formula
for medicines and other compounds devised to produce specific, salutary
results. That said, the Gossips will recur to a culinary vocabulary at
11, after the alchemical idiom of
3–10.
6 in
chimia subjected to
alchemical analysis or decomposition; cf.
Alch., 2.3.99 and
East.
Ho!, 4.1.176.
7 aldermanity Cf.
Und. 44.46 and
Mag. Lady,
5.7.82. Probably Jonson’s invention, in comic imitation of
human,
humanity.
10 distilled
reduced to his essence. Mirth sustains the string of chemical
metaphors.
10 are . . . that have neglected that topic.
11 exotic
Parr (ed.
Staple) observes that Jonson is quite
possibly the first to use the word in English (in
EMO,
4.3.24) and that he may well have first run across it in
Rabelais,
Pantagruel, 4.2.
14 come o’
make any approach to.
Third intermean 15 in my] F3 (in
my); my in F2
15–22 bake-house . . . Fields Tattle’s proffered sources of news
are all situated in and around Westminster, with the exception of the
geographically unparticularized bake-house. An element of locally
articulated cultural competition operates here, with Tattle opposing the
court-centred milieu of Westminster to the less exalted commercial
atmosphere of St Paul’s and the City.
16 conduits
fountains, natural gathering places and, thus, sources of gossip.
17 Alm’ries
Both the Great and Little Almonries lie to the west of Westminster
Abbey.
17 the two
Sanctuaries The two precincts that lay to the north and west
of Westminster Abbey afforded substantial protections for those accused
of felonies and treasons, making these areas especially attractive
places of criminal refuge – and therefore, especially productive engines
of news. In 1623, James undertook to curtail the protections of
sanctuary, not only in Westminster, but in the other sanctuaries across
the kingdom.
18 King
Street The main thoroughfare between Whitehall and
Westminster.
18 King Street] F2 (Kings-street)
18 Cannon Row]
Kifer; Chanon-row F2
19 slips Not
only youngsters and cuttings, but also mistakes and counterfeits and,
thence, bastards.
19 Gardiner’s
Lane Running between King and Delahay Streets, Gardiner’s Lane
lay quite close to Jonson’s own residence in Westminster.
21 Bowling
Alley There was almost certainly a bowling alley in what
became Bowling Street in Westminster. Bowling was a common pastime for
citizens and gentlemen.
22–3 how . . . there Here Mirth cheerfully suggests that Tattle
could tell you how many spirits were conjured in Tuttle Fields, even
though no spirits were ever conjured there. Mirth is running away with
herself in cheerful confusion: in the next lines she will speak of Dr
Lamb (for whom, see 1 Int., 38n.) being ridden in lion’s form by the
same boy whom he carries in his teeth.
26 limb imp;
an abbreviated form of the idiom ‘limb of Satan’.
27 the school
Lamb supported himself as an educator early in his career, though there
is no corroborating record of his having been employed at the eminent
Westminster School as this passage implies.
33 An If. The
phrase means, roughly, ‘If it were left to me to decide’. A
characteristic idiom for Censure: cf. 2 Int. 27.
34 cunning
man one possessed of esoteric wisdom, a conjurer. Because
exorcisms and other negotiations with spirits were customarily conducted
in Latin, schoolmasters were often enlisted for the purpose.
36 playboys
Censure alludes both to the annual performance of Latin plays at
Westminster School and to the recruitment of schoolboys and apprentices
to the children’s theatrical companies. Censure seems to share the
puritan suspicion that children were tainted, if not debauched, by their
involvement in the theatre.
38 Terence
The comedies of Publius Terentius Afer, a Roman playwright of the second
century BC, were among the core texts of the early modern grammar school
curriculum, and students often had their first experiences as amateur
actors in termly performances of comedies by Plautus, Seneca, and
Terence.
39 no more
parliaments Charles I first dissolved Parliament in the summer
of 1625, having been denied subsidies for war with Spain.
40 Zeal-of-the-land
Busy Censure’s champion in this campaign for educational
reform is the meddlesome puritan of Bart. Fair. This
nicely concludes this explosion of censoriousness: as Censure fears, the
dramatic poet’s fictions confuse and deceive the injudicious, imposing
themselves as truth. Jonson has already lampooned a less reactionary
form of this ‘supervexated’ credulousness in his treatment of the
Staple’s eager customers.
40 gossip
familiar acquaintance.
41 painful
painstaking, though the primary sense of the term has secondary
relevance here.
43 with a
wanion A formulaic imprecation, meaning, roughly, ‘with a
plague on it’.
4.1 Act 4 takes place in the Devil Tavern.
4.1 ] F2 (Act. IIII. Scene. I.)
1 The Jeerers enter having repaired from dinner in
another room.
1 breathe . . . awhile cease temporarily – ‘take a breather’ –
from pledging healths.
2 dinner A
midday meal.
4 water
urinate. The coarseness suggests that Pennyboy Jr is slightly drunk.
5 jeer
Although jeering has been instanced since early in the play, Pennyboy
Jr’s request for a clarifying definition effectively invites the
audience to a special moment of reflection on the practice. Gifford
proposed that Jonson was staging a game newly in vogue, whereas Parr
(ed. Staple) conjectures that Jonson is inventing a
game that gives formal articulation to tendencies he saw manifest,
informally if insistently, in contemporary social behaviour. Jeering
turns out to be a systematic degradation of satire (and a sharp
inspection of some satirists’ motives): deplorably unconstructive,
jeering replaces the satirist’s fearlessness with a weak
indiscrimination, self-criticism with self-betrayal, and purpose with
pastime.
5 Expect
i.e. You’ll see.
7 use
customarily play.
8 withal
with.
10 grateful] F3;
gratefnll F2
11 Have at
you A phrase of warning, announcing an immediate assault.
12 coat type.
This use of the term derives from the prevalence of liveries, uniforms
designed to indicate either professional or religious association or
service in a particular household.
12 Bedlam A
hospital for the insane in Bishopsgate, established in 1547, when Henry
VIII turned over the dissolved priory of Saint Mary of Bethlehem to the
City of London.
18 of
shifting from being.
19–20 law . . . law The lady’s authority, based on her natural
desirability, exceeds the lawyer’s, based on his professional standing
as expert in the English common law. The terms ‘law of nature’ and
‘common law’ are used casually here as bits of jurisprudential jargon,
though they were linked as having foundational status within different
legal traditions, ‘law of nature’ designating a set of natural or
naturally reasonable legal principles on which a legal system might
rest, and ‘common law’ serving, in a tradition most firmly identified
with the great early seventeenth-century legal authority Sir Edward
Coke, as a set of legal traditions whose foundational authority derived
from their immemorial antiquity.
20 Quit
Equalled, touché.
27 coat-card
A playing card distinguished by a figure wearing a coat; in this
instance, referring to the jack or knave; cf. .
28 last
lowest.
29 readings
versions of a phrase as it appears in different manuscripts.
30 varlet
Technically, a knight’s attendant, and therefore synonymous with the
very technical sense of ‘knave’, but this precise meaning of both terms
was slightly archaic; the more colloquial meaning of both varlet and knave was ‘rogue’.
31 shall who
shall. Canter is saying that if Pennyboy Sr is a knave, then the fool
Madrigal is the knave’s pre-eminent subordinate – in effect, ‘the
biggest fool’.
32 the right-hand
file that line (or ‘file’) of battle which takes precedence.
In
Cor. the phrase is used to designate the patricians
(
2.1.20).
39 ’gainst
supper in preparation for supper (but not now).
40 bale
bundle; the word is sometimes used to denote a bundle of a particular
size (
OED, 2).
43 scurvy
contemptible.
45 patrico
Underworld cant for the priest or patriarch of beggars. The Patrico is
one of the characters in Gypsies.
45 archpriest
This title was used for the senior cleric of the Catholic clergy in
England; these lines insinuate an analogy between the two underground
organizations of the Catholic clergy and the beggars.
46 primate
metropolitan Technically, a metropolitan
presides over an ecclesiastical province, while a primate is either a metropolitan or one who presides over
other metropolitans. In effect, Shunfield develops Madrigal witticism by
describing Canter as a very, very superior rascal, a kind of Archbishop
of Canterbury.
47 shot-clog
Referring to Pennyboy Jr. The compound combines a word for the tally and
a word for a block impediment: a shot-clog is the lumpish member of a
group who gets stuck paying the bill. Cf.
EMO,
5.5.37,
Poet., 1.2.13, and
East. Ho!,
1.1.109.
50–1 so . . . rogue so much in your good graces, but why is this
rogue in comparably high esteem?
51 good
words. i.e. speak gently.
52 jingling
In
Gypsies
(Burley, 420–22, Windsor, 478–80), Jonson alludes to the
jingle of gypsies, perhaps because of a gypsy custom of sewing small
bells to their garments.
53 But . . . in Save for the cant of peddlers and gypsies.
54 SD]
in right margin in F2
58 Provide the
while In the meantime, get ready. Pennyboy Jr is asking the
Canter to prepare to make that proof promised in
56–7, that all professions depend
on cant.
4.2 ] F2 (Act. IIII. Scene. II.)
2 SD]
placement, F3; as marginal note F2
(Lickfinger
is challeng’d by Madrigal / of au
argument.)
4.2 2 SD
of to.
4 gentlewomen]
G; Gentlemen F2
4 gentlewomen Gifford’s emendation of the folio’s reading,
‘gentlemen’, is justified both on metrical grounds and by the formality
of Lickfinger’s challenge, which seems to be warranted by the unusual
presence of these ladies rather than by the customary community of these
men.
5–40 The debate recycles, sometimes verbatim, a
central passage from the encounter between the Cook and the Poet at
Neptune,
38–77, itself much indebted to Jonson’s readings in
Athenaeus’s
Deipnosophistae. Jonson had already drawn
on
Neptune for Lickfinger’s encomium on cookery at
3.3.20–39.
5–7 The
perfect . . . kitchen Madrigal’s affirmation concerns both the
historical origins of poetry and its continued sustenance; he derives
poetry from the lively (‘quick’) inspiration of drink rather than from
the heavy nourishment of food. Cf.
Neptune,
38–45.
8 Oracle of the
Bottle The goal of Panurge and Pantagruel’s pilgrimage in
Books 4 and 5 of Pantagruel; in answer to Panurge’s
earnest request for sacred counsel, the oracle utters the single
exhortation, ‘Trinch’.
9 Trismegistus ‘Thrice-greatest’. The term is the standard
epithet for the mythical Egyptian magus Hermes Trismegistus, held by
many early modern intellectuals to be the source of a primal body of
esoteric knowledge, variously vulgarized by the likes of Plato and
Ptolemy. In Pantagruel, 5.45, the mystified Panurge
refers to the oracle as the ‘Bouteille trimegiste’, thrice-greatest
Bottle.
9 Pegasus
The winged horse the blow of whose hoof unleashed the fountain of
Hippocrene as he sprang to heaven from the mountain of Helicon. Pegasus
often figures as a symbol of poetic inspiration.
12 dresser
kitchen table or sideboard.
19 man o’ men
In the background of this overblown praise of cookery is the residue of
Jonson’s quarrel with Inigo Jones, the brilliant designer for many of
the most impressive entertainments at the Jacobean court. Jones, as
architect, claimed the prestige for which Vitruvius had argued, that
architecture was the pre-eminent human art, and that the architect,
whose practice obliged him to have mastered almost the entire range of
human theoretical and practical learning (see below,
35–7), was, in effect, ‘the man o’
men / For a professor’ (19–20).
20 professor
professional man, specialist (
OED, 5); cf.
Volp.,
Epistle, 8–9, on the ‘professors’ of poetry.
21 builds . . . fortifies Such culinary constructions, known as
‘subtilties’, were not unusual, though they were customarily reserved
for special occasions.
22 curious
exotic.
23 dry-ditches]
H&S; dry-dishes F2
23 dry-ditches Following the comparable passage in
Neptune (60),
Gifford emends F2 ‘dry-dishes’ to this, the standard term of
military engineering for a dry moat. The folio reading might have merit
as Lickfinger’s strained culinary play on this military term.
24 Mounts
marrowbones To represent cannons on edible battlefields. Cf.
Cartwright’s The Ordinary, in which Slicer describes
just such a military ‘subtilty’ (2.1.586–8).
24 fifty-angled The great concern of early modern military
architects was the structure of the enceinte or surface of any
fortification, which was usually distributed into a complex but regular
array of angled walls designed both to minimize the damage effected by
an enemy’s projectiles and to enable the defenders to fire against
enemies attempting to breach the enceinte as well as those in the
foreground of a fortification.
25 bulwark
Rampart, defensive wall or earthwork.
25 outerworks
The outer walls of a fortified structure or the embankments surrounding
the structure.
26 ramparts . . . crust
H&S adduce
Massinger,
A New Way to Pay Old Debts,
1.2.25–6, in which the
cook, Furnace, protests the insufficient appreciation of his efforts, as
when he extends himself to ‘raise fortifications in the pastry, / Such
as might serve for models in the Low Countries’.
30 influence . . . stars Although this might appear simply to be
a parody of the astrological considerations in medical practice, this is
a theme taken up by Athenaeus in the
Deipnosophistae
(9.337f–378d), bolstered by a long quotation from
The
Liar, by the minor Greek dramatist Sosipater; see
Neptune,
48–77 and n.
31 their . . . qualities The referent of ‘their’ is ambiguous,
bridging both ‘stars’ and ‘meats’. The ‘seasons’ of stars are the
periods of stellar influence (or of the lack thereof), though, of
course, the term blurs towards the culinary. ‘Tempers’ refers to those
distinctive mixtures of components that determine the character of an
object, and, specifically, they are the form of an object’s
susceptibility to stellar influence, but it can also be used to
designate the various ways in which the influences of different stars
combine to affect an object. ‘Qualities’, although a general term
perfectly applicable to culinary ingredients, also has a specific
meaning in astrology, referring to very particular planetary
associations of individual stars.
32 so to fit
This operates with double grammar: (1) knows so well how to fit; and (2)
therefore knows how to fit.
33 chemists
i.e. alchemists.
34 Rosy Cross] F2 (Rosie-crosse)
34 Rosy Cross
See and
n.
39 fury
Referring to the
furor poeticus, the inspired madness
of poets, one of the four divine madnesses distinguished by Plato in the
Phaedrus (265b).
41 SD]
in right margin in F2
44 Charybdis
The whirlpool paired with the monster Scylla as the twin hazards that
threatened mariners – of whom the most eminent were Jason and the
Argonauts and Odysseus and his crew. The description of Charybdis in the
Odyssey (12.101–7) is especially vivid.
45 shelves
reefs.
49–56 Pecunia . . . nectar One of the oddest effects in the play
quietly insinuates itself here in Pennyboy Jr’s praise of Pecunia.
However commonplace the praise, it begins with fluency and grace and,
most remarkably, it seems to reflect on Pecunia’s allegorical function,
as embodied wealth, hardly at all. Perhaps this outpouring suggests the
complete loss of the capacity for analysis that is the frequent sign of
Jonson’s obsessives, but the peculiar innocence of Pennyboy’s enthusiasm
somewhat insulates him from satiric inspection. The effect is momentary,
beginning to dissipate at
54 and arrested at
57, when Pennyboy asks for
help.
50 he i.e.
the sun.
52 wrists] F3 (Wrists); wrests F2
54 strawberries] F3 (Strawberries); Stawberries F2
58 SD]
placement, F3, following ‘nurse.’; as marginal note F2
59 Graces See
above, . We may suppose that the Graces are invoked here
because they are the chief attendants of Venus. Fitton’s praise is
especially attuned to his own ‘professional’ concerns, not only because
of the courtier’s special interest in the graceful art of pleasing, but
because the Graces often serve, particularly, as emblems of gratuity, of
the sort of non-compulsory reciprocal obligations that bind a court
society together. For the iconography of the Graces and their
association with social mutalities, see Seneca, De
Beneficiis, 1.3–4.
59 Hours In
the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, the Hours, or Horai
(Gk.), are said to have been the first to receive Aphrodite (Venus) as
she rose new-born from the sea-foam. Daughters of Zeus and Themis, they
preside over the seasons and their procession.
62 as
if . . . spake Pythagoras describes the astronomical harmony
or music of the spheres as inaudible on earth; later, Christian
interpreters explain the inaudibility as a product of the Fall.
62 if that
if.
64 Hebe’s The
daughter of Zeus and Hera, Hebe was charged with pouring out
immortalizing nectar for the gods. She is especially associated with
youth and its beauties.
64 Juno’s
arms The whiteness of Juno’s arms was proverbial as early as
Homer. Parr (ed. Staple) notes the special association
of Juno with money, deriving from the fact that during the Roman empire,
the mint was housed in the temple of Juno Moneta.
64–5 A
hair . . . Morning’s Almanac’s first words are often emended
to ‘An air’, though the emendation seems unwarranted. While the use of
‘hair’ to mean coiffure may be unusual, this use of ‘large’ is not: in
Jonson’s King’s Ent., the goddess of Peace, Irene,
appears ‘placed aloft . . ., her attire white, semined with stars, her
hair loose and large’ (362–3), while in the description of Plenty in his
Magnificent Entertainment for the same occasion
(the pageants for the coronation of James I), Thomas Dekker describes
her hair as ‘large and loosely spreading over her shoulders’ (ed.
Bowers, 1075–6). Ancient poets often describe the rays of the sun as
Apollo’s hair, and the streaming of morning light is also occasionally
rendered thus: Homer twice evokes Eos, the goddess of the morning
(Aurora in Latin), by referring to her shining ringlets; Ovid, for his
part, frequently refers to Aurora’s hair, dewy (Met.,
5.440), unbound (Met., 13.584), and saffron-coloured
(Amores, 2.4.43).
67 Leda
Impregnated by Zeus while he was in the guise of a swan, Leda became the
mother of Helen of Troy.
68 Hermione
Daughter of Helen of Troy and Menelaus, but despite the beauty that she
may be supposed to have inherited from her mother, Hermione is an odd
choice here, since in both Euripides and Ovid she is mentioned primarily
as a figure of immature beauty.
68 Flora
Roman goddess of fertility and of flowers.
70 SD]
in right margin in F2
72 resolves
dissolves.
73 A front too
slippery A brow (or face) too shiny (or smooth). Jonson here
adapts
Horace, Odes, 1.19.8; ‘slippery’ renders Horace’s
lubricus, which (like ‘slippery’) carries
connotations of danger and even deceitfulness. For Jonson’s other
adaptations of Horace’s line cf.
Gypsies (Burley), 366
and
Sad
Shep., 2.1.26.
75 SD]
placement, F3, following ‘o’War?’; as marginal note F2
75 SD
again] F3 subst.; Agaiue F2
77 The idea is that the actuality of Pecunia is too
much for mere verbal rendering. Winter makes the nice suggestion that
‘theme’ – from Greek thema, the topic of a
declamation; the folio reading is ‘Theame’ – is here personified and
described as speaker tongue-tied by the immensity of the rhetorical task
before her.
81 slug
sluggard.
H&S
suggest that Pennyboy is adverting to the cowardice implied by
Shunfield’s name, though surely the primary sense here is simply a
reflection on Shunfield’s belated – although, finally, ‘well pumped’,
impressive – participation in the work of praising Pecunia.
81 SD]
placement, F3, following 80
‘too,’; as marginal
note F2
81 poet-sucker novice poet (and see below, ). The
word is formed on the analogy with ‘rabbit-sucker’, meaning an unweaned
rabbit.
88 affect (1)
like; (2) practice.
90 his rose
Jonson was fond of the story of the painter who could paint nothing but
a rose; he told Drummond the story (
Informations, 386–8)
and alludes to it in the prologue to
Sad Shep. (62).
93 sun . . . metals An alchemical truism; see
Volp., 1.1.10–11.
Winter cites Edward Kelly, an alchemist, visionary, and associate of
John Dee, who writes that gold is begotten of the sun (Kelly,
1970, 77), and
that all inferior metals are potentially gold, but subsist in varying
degrees of ‘immaturity’ (13–14).
96 mother Cf.
2 Int.23 above.
99 ] F2, set off with
curly brackets against 98 and 100
101 lines
dynasties and, referring to the image of rulers on coins, lineaments.
The quiet ambiguity of the line implies that coinage both sustains and
is sustained by the ruler.
104 ] F2, set off with
curly brackets against 102–3
104 Fitton’s interjection is placed marginally in F2
opposite 102 and 103. Its placement is ambiguous: it could equally well
be inserted between 102 and 103 as an interruption to the second stanza
of Madrigal’s song, or, as here, between the second and third
stanzas.
105–10 The difficulty of these lines resolves itself
only with the final line, when we recognize the idiom ‘X takes place of
[i.e. surpasses, takes precedence over] Y’; thus Pecunia takes precedence over all others, as a
torch surpasses a taper, a beacon surpasses a torch, and moonlight
surpasses a beacon. If Pennyboy Jr is not artist enough to sustain the
metrical regularity of Madrigal’s lines, he is shrewd enough to discern
their syntax.
107 F2, set off with curly brackets
against 106
111 F2, set off with curly brackets
against 110
112 I have]
H&S (I haue); I ‘haue F2
112 saraband A
slow Moorish dance form in triple time, thought to be somewhat
lascivious (see Canter’s censure at 137 below). But Jonson contrives
that Madrigal’s saraband is less bawdy than bathetic, its praises of
Pecunia’s generosity gaping to betray the venal culture of which she is
the proper patron, a culture in which titles are for sale, and in which
wealth secures reputations for beauty or virtue.
113 boards
dining tables furnished with food.
121 SH
pennyboy jr]
1716, subst.; Pic F2
121–6 pennyboy jr . . . canter The folio speech headings for 121
and 127 – to Picklock and Pennyboy Jr respectively – are plainly
incorrect. I have followed the edition of 1716, where these assignments
are corrected by a simple swap. Gifford supposes a more complicated
error: he feels that the assignment of 126 to Canter is also incorrect.
He surmises that the headings for 121, 126, and 127 have been scrambled
and so assigns 121 to Pennyboy Jr, 126 to Picklock, and 127 to
Canter.
121 SD]
placement, F3, following 123, ‘Cousins.’; as marginal note F2
126 SH] F2; Pick. G
126 Al-manach
Canter seems to be calling for an etymologizing pronunciation that
highlights the Moorish lineage of early modern astronomy, but the
dramatic force of this pedantry is slightly obscure. (That almanac derives from an Arabic word turns out to be uncertain,
however, and Jonson himself may have thought that the word derived from
the Latin manacus, meaning ‘dial’.) The uncertainty is
compounded by textual difficulties in adjacent lines, for which see the
previous note. Many editors follow Gifford in reassigning the line to
Picklock (and line 127 to Pennyboy Canter) and so, implicitly, accepting
this as an exercise in pedantic, lawyerly etymologizing, though there is
very little to motivate this dramatically: Picklock has not spoken for
170 lines and it makes little sense for him to break silence thus.
Winter, on the other hand, assigns the speech to Pennyboy Jr, a far more
plausible reassignment.
127 SH
picklock]
1716, subst.; P.Iv. F2; P. Can.
G
127 prostitutes his
mistress See Lucian, Timon, 16.
129 win
acquire.
130 Nothing As
printed in F2, this seems to be ironic self-deprecation, but ‘Nothing’
may also be an aside at the end of 129, interjected as the true
conclusion to Pennyboy’s first clause – ‘teach us how to win nothing’. (Such casual typographic handling of speech
sequence is observable at 4.4.88.)
132 want
lack.
133 by my
consent as far as I’m concerned.
134 SD]
placement, F3; as marginal note
F2
135 scattered
dissipated.
137 saraband
See above, . In Devil (4.4.164), dancing the
saraband is included in a list of fashionable improprieties.
138–41 dancing . . .
monsters Canter’s disapproval is complex, for he sees the
dancers as both mechanical (‘engines’) and bestial (‘monsters’), as
hyper-flexible of gesture and feeling and blockish of mind. If we invert
the censured qualities, we may infer a human ideal that is
characteristically Jonsonian: intellectually agile, physically and
emotionally poised, and, unlike the machine or the monster, deeply
intentional in all gestures and behaviour. Yet Canter is not simply the
author’s mouthpiece here. His vehemence may be characteristically
Jonsonian, yet it is also characteristic of the obsessive moralists whom
Jonson’s plays often mock. And Canter’s ironic scorn for the dancer’s
‘subtle feet’ may be contrasted with the unstinted praise of court dancing in Pleasure Rec.,
where the audience is encouraged to ‘admire the wisdom of’ the dancer’s
‘feet’ (225).
140 without them] F3; withou them F2; without ’hem H&S
143 make their
legs bow or, more generally, present themselves.
143 passing as
they pass through.
145–6 cry . . . down promote and denigrate.
148 solicitously attentively, painstakingly.
149 mystery
secret doctrine or ritual.
149 SD]
placement, F3, following 151, ‘Scholar!’; as marginal note F2
150 dainty
fine, delicate.
152 writes like a
gentleman Almanac implies both that Madrigal writes without
pedantry and that his amatory verse has the special force – the
authenticity or the polish, or perhaps both – one would expect of a
gentleman’s discourse. According to Canter (155), the Jeerers’ belief
that gentlemanly discourse is superior to scholarly entails a veneration
of gallant ignorance. For a similar satire on ‘gentlemanly’ versifying,
see Fort. Is., 179–83.
157 gentlemen] F3 (Gentlemen); Centlemen F2
162 brave
splendid.
162 gentleman] F3 (Gentleman); Centleman F2
164 take up
i.e. take up residence.
169 dose] F3;
doze F2
169 sack See
above, Ind., 58n.
170 distance of
hum ‘Hum’ is a cant term – it is introduced as such in the
great beggars’ meeting in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Beggar’s
Bush (gen. ed. Bowers, 2.1.18) – referring to strong ale or
some other alcoholic drink, often used as a medicinal cordial. That sack
and hum were used as medicines, and were carefully meted out, apparently
provoked some mirth, as is suggested in Shirley’s The
Wedding: ‘They say that Canary sack must dance / Again to the
Apothecaries, and be sold for / Physick, in hum-glasses, and thimbles’
(1629, D4v). This use of ‘distance’ to mean ‘measure’ is unusual.
170 SD]
placement, F3, following 173,
‘it.’; as marginal note F2
174 close-stool A chamberpot built into a stool or enclosed in a
box.
174 garlic
Often distributed through the various rooms of a lodging to ward off
plague.
179 Scatter
yourself The phrase, meaning ‘circulate socially’, reminds us
that Pecunia represents, among other things, distributable material
wealth. The verb resonates with its earlier use by Canter at 135.
179 Parnassus
Mountain near Delphi especially associated with the worship of Apollo
and of the Muses. Because of those associations, ‘Parnassus’ is
sometimes used metonymically to mean ‘literary culture’ or ‘the
community of writers’.
180 ivy . . . bays The bay laurel is sacred to Apollo; it was
therefore customary to crown poets with laurel wreaths. The ivy is
sacred to Dionysus; Thalia, the muse of comedy, is usually crowned with
an ivy wreath, and Melpomene, muse of tragedy, is often similarly
crowned. Because both ivy and laurel are evergreen, they were strongly
linked, and ivy wreaths eventually came to be thought of, like those of
laurel, as the proper reward of poetic excellence.
182 all
December The Christmas season is the customary occasion for
the most lavish shows of generosity to clients.
183 vein (1)
style, artistic manner. The use of ‘rich’ here also recalls another
meaning of vein, namely, (2) lode or a seam of ore in a mine, a meaning
suggestive of how Pecunia and her train esteem artistic activity.
189 The poet must
have wine Cf. Und. 57.24–5 and 68.12.
4.3 ] F2 (Act. IIII. Scene.IIJ.)
0 SD]
Kifer; Peni-boy. Se. Peny-boy. Iv. / Lickfinger. &c. F2
4.3 5 almost this
hour almost this entire hour.
8 cogging
jack cheating rascal (as at 2.4.41).
9 SD]
placement, F3; as marginal note
F2
14, 16, 19 SD]
placement, F3 (He would have Pecunia
home, but she/ refuseth, and her Train.) as single SD
following 17,
‘you.’; as marginal
note F2
16 lewd
ill-mannered.
17 I . . . well Parr (ed. Staple) compares
this with the moment in The Contention between Liberality
and Prodigality (2.4) at which Money, having been entrusted to
Prodigality by Fortune, announces, ‘I am, where I like.’
20 SH
statute] F3 (Stat.); Sta. F2
23 money
Though not capitalized in the folio, ‘money’ is here plainly poised
between personification, as another of Pecunia’s names, and mere
impersonal noun. This is the boldest allusion in the play to the
so-called ‘inflation of honours’ under James I, the unprecedented
proliferation of titles as the king rewarded those who had served or
paid him well.
26–7 Echoed in ‘Expostulation’ (6.375–80), lines
103–4.
30–46 Never . . . six-months Gifford alleges a borrowing from lines
234–5 of Aristophanes’s last play, the Plutus, though
Winter’s suggestion (ed. Staple) of a deeper debt to
Zeus’s piteous address to Plutus in Lucian’s Timon
(13, and see also 15) is persuasive.
39 not . . . power Pecunia here claims for herself the
inviolable chastity of the romance heroine.
40 your]
H&S (conj. Coleridge); our F2
49 form Cf.
MND, 1.1.49–50, where Theseus
describes the daughter’s proper subservience to her father by a similar
metaphor – ‘you are but as a form in wax / By him imprinted’: in both
cases, form suggests an authenticating image, that
which alone gives the wax (and that which it might seal) its true
value.
53 disguised
intoxicated (slang).
55–6 our
legs . . . about Although Band’s name primarily refers to a
legal bond or security, it also refers to the sort of
woven band or strip by means of which (along with cords or parchment
tags) seals might be affixed to legal documents. Documents with pendant
seals were usually stored with their seals and bands or tags folded
inside the packet – and when such were eventually unfolded and displayed
the bands or tags often retained their awkward creases.
62 Apollo . . . room This reference to the Apollo Room at The
Devil and St Dunstan’s tavern (for which, see Prologue for the stage,
16n, Dunston) carries other meanings. Besides the insinuation that
scholarship, poetry, and the other arts – all of which are under the
patronage of Apollo, the sun-god – are each somehow subservient to the
power of Money, the line reminds us of the close alchemical connection
between gold and the sun.
65 lares The lares familiares were divine
patrons of a given household or family, but Jonson may be inviting us to
recall the canine association of a different set of deities, the lares praestites or guardians of the state. In the
Roman temple to these lares, the figure of a dog stood
between the images of these guardians (because dogs
are loyal guardians), and the images themselves were sometimes dressed
in the skins of dogs.
67 SD]
placement, F3, following 70,
‘Pump’; as marginal
note F2
70 sink
cesspool.
71 jordan
chamber-pot.
73 SD]
placement, F3 (and spurn him.), following ‘kick’d’; marginal note
F2
74 kindly
i.e. as is appropriate to your kind.
75 SD]
placement, F3 (Kicks him out.); Kicke him,/ out. / as marginal
note F2
77 SD]
placement, F3, following
‘remember,’; as marginal
note F2
78 cozened . . . cousin The play on words is proverbial; see
Dent, C739∗ and C739.11.
80 SD]
in left margin in F2
80 SD
One . . . dogs
Throughout the text of this play, marginal notes include both what we
would recognize as stage directions and what seem to be summaries of the
topics under discussion, but this marginal note fits into neither
category. The note could be a residue of an early stage of composition,
Jonson’s note to himself concerning what to call one of the dogs when he
gets around to drafting 5.4; it could, on the other hand, be a note by
the bookholder or some other playhouse functionary, explaining the
selection, otherwise obscure, of this particular name; or it could be
offered as an aid to the reader. The latter is perhaps the most likely,
given the many other instances in the text of notes designed to orient a
reader.
82 Pecunia . . . whore! Cf.
Devil, 2.1.1–3,
where money is described as ‘a whore, a bawd, a drudge, / Fit to run out
on errands’ and where the flight of money is described as ‘
Via pecunia’.
4.4 ] F2 (Act.IIIJ. Scene.IV.)
0 SD.2] F3; as marginal note F2
4.4 2 heraldet
See Persons of the Play, 10n.
3 prove] F3;
sproue F2
7 Can (Who)
knows.
8–9 blood . . . veins Metaphorical, but not utterly so: it was
both a scientific and popular belief that the earth was a living
organism, and that the resemblance of veins of metal
in the earth to those in human and animal bodies was more than a mere
matter of appearance.
9 limb
Referring both to her own body and to the branches, or limbs, of her family tree.
11 Sol See
4.2.93n.
12 Or The
heraldic term for the colour gold, derived from the French, like most
heraldic terms for colours. (In French, or is the word
for both the colour and the mineral.) But the choice here also takes in
‘ore’, a Germanic derivation: Jonson’s ‘Duke of Or’ thus descends from
both French and German families, both rich.
13 royal
Lightly punning, since a royal was a gold coin worth
about 12s in Jonson’s day. When it was first minted, in the reign of
Edward IV, its value was set at 10s, an equation preserved in Falstaff’s
challenge to Prince Hal, relevant here: ‘thou camest not of the blood
royal, if thou darest not stand for ten shillings’ (IH4, 1.2.114–15).
13 Ophir See
.
14 blazon The
formalized description of a coat of arms; not surprisingly, many aspects
of the blazon that Piedmantle offers are unconventional.
15–16 field . . . second The blue background surface, or field, of the coat of arms is blue; figured against
the field is a sun in its proper colour, gold,
presumably with twelve alternating wavy and straight rays (though beamy is an idiosyncratic term) in the second colour
designated (which, in this case, is gold, indicated second, after
azure). Avoiding repetition – hence the use of second
in lieu of naming Or – is one of the conventions
(which Canter calls the ‘cant’) of the heraldic blazon.
17 it] F3; ti
F2
18 Besants
These gold circles represent the ancient coinage of Byzantium: they were
usually included in coats of arms to indicate that the bearer had
participated in a crusade; in the case of Pecunia they merely indicate
her association with coins.
20–1 Potosi . . . Indies The silver mines of Potosi in Bolivia
(not the West Indies) were the most productive in the world at this
time.
22 Hungary . . . Barbary Though the silver mines of Hungary were
the most important in Europe, the Barbary Coast of North Africa was not
known for silver production, though it was one of the chief conduits of
sub-Saharan gold to European markets.
23 Welsh mine
The mines of Wales mainly produced copper, lead, and zinc. Small amounts
of silver were sometimes found along with lead deposits, but the old
Roman gold mine at Dolaucothi had been abandoned. Although James had
supported a venture to mine precious metals in Wales in 1624, nothing
came of the undertaking.
23 SH]
1716 (PYE.); PEC. F2
25–6 argent . . . first That is, the arms of the Welsh mine is
silver (
argent), and bears three green (
vert) leeks – as leeks are the Welsh national emblem – in a
small gold (
or) square, or
canton,
itself adorned with silver tassels, silver being the
first colour named. It is a rather fussy satiric touch to
raise the question of how silver tassels are to stand out against a
silver field: the image thus evoked – however ‘rarely painted’ (
29) – is proscribed in
the rules of heraldry, though it imputes to Pecunia a tasteless and
irregular fondness for heaps of precious metals.
33 SD]
placement, F3, following 32, ‘Cousin.’; as marginal note F2
38–9 dissection . . . anatomy Dissections were still relatively
rare in England, so instruction in human anatomy was still largely a
verbal activity, though sometimes supplemented with pictorial
information.
40 vena . . . porta The vena porta is the vein
that delivers blood from the stomach, spleen, and intestine to the
liver. In Galenic medicine, however, the vena porta
was understood to supply not blood but chyle, a milky
fluid, from the stomach and intestines to the liver, where it was
converted to blood and then diffused to the rest of the body via the vena cava, which divided into two branches. The
superior vena cava supplies the right auricle of the
heart.
41 meseraics . . . mesenterium Two names for the peritoneal
membrane that supports the small intestine.
43 judicial
astrology Distinguished from natural astrology, the
calculation of times, tides, eclipses, seasons, and so forth, judicial
astrology is concerned with the influence of stars on individual and
collective human affairs.
44 troll
speak nimbly of.
44 trine . . . sextile These are measures of apparent planetary
distance or aspect: planets in trine aspect are
separated by an angular distance of 120 degrees; those in quartile are separated by 90 degrees; sextile, by 60.
45 Platic . . .
partile Judicial astrology allows for what might be called
approximate influence of celestial bodies on terrestrial creatures, but
astrologers were careful to mete out the range of influences. Thus a
heavenly body that was thought to have a particular influence if it were
in a particular position might exert a milder version of the same
influence when it was slightly out of that position. Celestial bodies
within a degree of a given position were said to have partile aspect; those much farther out of a given position,
but still exerting the influence associated with that position, were
said to be in orb, and to exhibit platic
aspect.
45 hyleg The ruling planet at the moment of a person’s
nativity.
46 alchochoden The planet in a natal chart that determines life
expectancy.
46 cusps The
cusp is the strongest point in any astrological house, usually located
at the entrance to that house.
48 muster-master See .
50 bringers-up i.e. those who bring up the rear.
51 Faces . . . hand To turn clockwise until facing the opposite
direction.
52 as you
were A military order instructing troops to stand easy.
52 redoubts
Small fortifications, sometimes isolated and sometimes added on to
larger, more permanent ones.
53 cats
Elevated fortifications. Sometimes the term designates fortifications
erected above larger fortresses; sometimes it denotes a moveable
elevated penthouse used to enable a safe approach to a fortress under
siege.
53 cortines
Flat walls connecting the towers or bastions of a fortress.
54 egg-chinned beardless; i.e. with skin as smooth as the shell
of an egg.
56–7 catalectics . . .
brachy-catalectics
Technical terms for metrical variations at the ends of a line of verse:
in catalectics the final foot of the line is missing a
syllable; in hypercatalectics, the final foot is
missing two syllables; in brachycatalectics, the line
has one or two extra syllables following the final foot.
58 Pyrrhics . . . choriambics The pyrrhic
foot, comprising two short syllables, is relatively familiar, whereas
the epitrite, a four-syllable foot consisting of three
long and one short syllable, variously disposed, and the choriambic, also a four-syllable foot, in which two long
syllables always frame two short syllables, are fairly recondite.
60 scholar
Shunfield finds Canter scholarlike, not only for his learned familiarity
with erudite jargon but also for his lack of gainful employment.
63 fly-blown
tainted. (Meat in which flies have deposited their eggs is
‘fly-blown’.)
63 projects
Courtiers were especially associated with the promotion of a variety of
new economic schemes, sometimes involving implementation of improbable
new technologies.
64 looks . . .
Politics The folio
reading, ‘lookes-out of the politicks’, may be
correct, though the term, ‘look-out’ or emissary, is not to be found
elsewhere before the end of the century, and its plural is usually
‘look-outs’. Dropping the hyphen and understanding ‘politicks’ as a title – probably a reference to Aristotle’s
treatise or, possibly, to Guicciardini’s Discorsi
Politici – resolves the difficulty of the line.
65 ff.
Strongly reminiscent of Epigr. 92, ‘The New Cry’.
65 Although the ‘questions’ that Pennyboy Canter
offers by way of example in line
66 are ones that Fitton and his ilk
would take seriously, he here satirically casts these questions as
instances of the courtly pastime of refined and playful debate, often on
conventional topics.
67 dash fail.
The word was commonly use to describe the rejection of bills in
Parliament (
OED 6).
68 give off
leave off, let it alone.
72 tide
float, carry (
OED, v.2 1b).
73 freight . . . passage Both words can mean ‘payment for
transport’; passage can also mean ‘the property of
currency, acceptability’.
74 mint-phrase freshly coined formulations.
74–5 worst . . . not Alleging that Fitton’s is the worst of all
canting, Canter here offers a formula for determining how much worse it
is than others’: it is to be measured as the amount by which its
pretension to meaning exceeds its emptiness thereof.
80 SD]
placement, F3, following 82,
‘well?’ F3; as marginal
note F2
82 Canters’
College D. F. McKenzie (
1973), 120–1 suggests that this
‘whimsy’ satirizes the reckless innovations of such new educational
institutions as Gresham College, with its practico-scientific
orientation, but the suggestion is not entirely persuasive. Although
Jonson was usually highly sceptical of such modern institutions – hence
the relentless brilliance of the satire of the Staple of News and of the
Ladies’ Collegiate in
Epicene – he had been a resident
at Gresham College and was an admirer of Francis Bacon, whose principles
had powerfully shaped the new college. Very little beyond novelty and
some version of practicality links Gresham’s to the Canters’
College.
88 CANTER
Canter is responding to Pennyboy Jr’s proposal in
87 concerning Lickfinger’s
responsibility by extending it. The layout in F2 suggests that Canter
speaks at the same time as Pennyboy Jr registers Lickfinger’s
departure.
89 read
lecture on.
89 Apicius’ . . .
culinaria This third- or
fourth-century collection of recipes was attributed to an otherwise
unidentified ‘Caelius Apicius’, perhaps to associate it with Marcus (or
Quintus) Gavius Apicius, the celebrated gourmand of the age of Tiberius.
See
Alch.,
2.2.77 and n.
90 doxy
Beggars’ slang for slut.
91 Politics Probably Aristotle’s treatise in this case (cf. above).
94 As Such
as.
95 SD]
in left margin in F2
98 against in
anticipation of.
98 soused] F3 (sous’d); sowc’t F2
103 Westminster
Hall The great hall of Westminster Palace, housing the Courts
of Common Law and Chancery.
104 Pleas,
Bench The two common law courts housed at Westminster: the
Court of Common Pleas handled all cases in which the crown had no
interest; the Court of King’s Bench was originally a criminal court, but
by Jonson’s day was also handling civil actions.
104 Chancery
The Court of Chancery grew out of the administrative work associated
with the royal office of the Chancellor and was originally distinguished
by vernacular pleading and procedure by bill (a procedure taken up in
King’s Bench during the sixteenth century); it was, above all, a court
of equity, as opposed to a court of common law.
104 Fee-farm
Land held in perpetuity and subject only to a fixed rent.
104 fee-tail
Land granted to a particular person and entailed to (i.e. heritable by)
a specified class of his or her heirs.
105 Tenant in
dower A widow with a life interest in some portion of her dead
husband’s estate.
105 at will A
holding terminable at the owner’s pleasure.
106 court roll
The official manorial record of tenants and the details of their
tenure.
106 knight’s
service Land tenure conditional on military service.
106–7 homage,
Fealty ‘Homage’ is the formal acknowledgement of feudal
‘fealty’, the obligation of tenant or vassal to his lord.
107 escuage A
common form of knight’s service, forty days of military service – or a
payment specifically in lieu of such service – as a condition of land
tenure.
107 soccage
Specifically differentiated from knight’s service, soccage is a feudal tenure conditional upon agricultural
service.
107 frank
almoin (Fr. ‘free alms’.) Technically, a tenure bestowed on
God; effectively, land tenure conferred as alms.
108 Grand
sergeanty Tenure conditional upon personal service to the
crown.
108 burgage A
specifically urban tenure conditional on payment of an annual rent.
109 Κατ᾽
έξοχὴν (kat exochēn) par excellence, above
all else.
110 Littleton’s
Tenures The
authoritative work on English property law.
110–11 indeed . . . conveyances Since ‘conveyances’ are formal
transfers of property, usually by deed, it may be that ‘indeed’ is not
used here in its common adverbial sense, but rather as a verb, a bit of
cant newly minted by Pennyboy to mean ‘prepare the deeds for’.
111 make
strike the bargains for.
112 Keep . . . courts Preside over all your (manorial)
courts.
114–15 procure . . . licence Property held in mortmain was in the
control of a corporation and could only be conveyed with royal
permission or licence: Picklock insists that he must help Pennyboy get
more control over his affairs (with the ominous insinuation that this
will work to Picklock’s own advantage).
116 SD]
in left margin in F2
118 painful
painstaking.
118 officer
servant (cf. ).
123 To . . . Bush Though the phrase functions figuratively to
evoke all imprudent courses of action (‘going to the dogs’), there was
indeed a particular tree called ‘Beggar’s Bush’, a rendezvous for
vagrants on the east side of the old London Road between Caxton and
Huntingdon.
136 I’d] F2 (I’had); I had F3
138 colour of
advantage grounds for the allegation. (This usage of ‘colour’
strongly implies that the grounds would be specious.)
139 but rather
I hate.
142 court-rat
Jonson regarded this as an English rendering of a Roman idiom; see his
note on ‘palace-rats’ in the marginalia to
Sejanus
(1.427).
143 broking
base-dealing, grasping. The adjective is often applied to usurers or
pimps.
145 country’s
strength Compare the opening of
Epigr. 108, ‘To True
Soldiers’.
146 his i.e.
his sovereign’s.
147 subject
The word has many relevant meanings here: one under the dominion of a
monarch; that upon which some other agent acts (and, in such phrases as
‘subject to the whip’, that upon which some injury or punishment is
inflicted); a topic or theme.
148 runs . . . hazards runs those heroic risks.
149 You are
pleasant The idiom expresses mild indignation; here it means,
in effect, ‘You mock me’.
155 learnèd
herald Satire here seems braced by a tender reflection on
Jonson’s old schoolmaster, William Camden, Clarenceux King of Arms in
the College of Heralds for twenty years. Camden had died in 1623.
156 arms and
marks coats of arms and tokens of distinction.
157–8 Jonson again casts aspersions on the sale of
honours under James. See above,
4.3.25.
161 a scheme a
natal horoscope.
163 glister
enema.
163 berayed
fouled.
163 ephemerides See and note above. Tables
indicating the positions of celestial bodies during a specified period;
this may also refer to a book in which such tables are compiled. Canter
describes the monkey as having sprayed excrement across the heavens.
165 quack-salver The modern ‘quack’ is an abbreviation of this
term; their meanings are identical.
165 blast
wither.
166 ever-living
garland See .
168 Like most of his contemporary poets, Jonson was
deeply committed to imitative writing, to a poetry infused with the
concerns of earlier poets, with their idioms and their rhythms. At the
same time Jonson could be more than usually dismissive of the sort of
tasteless or insufficiently responsive imitations and borrowings of
which Madrigal is accused.
170 (That . . . worse) i.e. I use the term ‘ulcers’ to keep
myself from calling you by a worse name.
170–1 There . . . times The allegation is given special force by
the fact of a particularly virulent outbreak of plague in 1625.
173 to your
according to your.
176 SD]
placement, F3, following 177, ‘Robe,’; as marginal note F2
179 SD]
G; not in F2
Fourth Intermean 4 akin . . . poet Winter (ed. Staple)
comments that ‘Mirth is right’, though it might be more judicious to
observe that, having staged the scourging of cant and prodigality,
Jonson here invites us to consider, by means of the promptings of Mirth,
that the satirist always runs the risk of being a killjoy. Referring to
this moment as a catastrophe or conclusion, Tattle has already cued our
reflection on the difference between this Fourth Act unmasking and the
proper, but still unknown conclusion to come. (In his note to
‘catastrophe’ (1), Parr (ed. Staple) points out that
this is the catastasis and not the catastrophe, as Tattle claims.)
Jonson has thus taken pains to solicit our resistance to the idea that
satiric unmasking is conclusion enough: satire must make its peace with
forces affiliated with Mirth.
7 him . . . him i.e. Pennyboy Jr’s father, who has been
disguised heretofore as the ‘beggarly’ Canter.
9 lin leave
off. The line is proverbial (see
Dent, B238∗).
14 communicative generous, sociable.
16 chuff
churl; also, miser. In EMO, the killjoy,
Sordido, is described as a ‘chuff’ (Characters, 52).
16 take him
off undercut Pennyboy Jr (though the usage is uncommon).
20 Plant . . . water Parr (ed. Staple) adduces
almost the same phrasing in Bacon’s The Advancement of
Learning: ‘founders of colleges do plant and founders of
lectures do water’ (ed. M. Kiernan, 58). Jonson admired Bacon; whether
his satire on Pennyboy Jr’s scheme redounds to the discredit of Bacon’s
many educational projects is a complicated problem.
22 towardly
promising.
24–6 I
protest . . . leer That the sceptical Censure is so taken with
Fitton, so susceptible to the superficial charms of such courtiership,
is Jonson’s pointed reflection on the shallowness of contemporary
censoriousness.
25 politically The word can mean ‘artfully’, though its
connotations in this sense lean towards social and political craftiness
and not stylistic elegance.
26 leer gaze
ingratiatingly.
29 mere
glister sheer glitter; but ‘glister’ can mean either ‘glitter’
or ‘enema’, and the latter meaning hilariously undercuts the rest of the
line, suggesting that his manner can not only secure the efficacy
(‘make . . . work’) of a medicine (‘physic’), but would make any
medicine churn (another meaning of ‘work’).
34 flyen
flown. ‘To fly in the face of someone’ is to oppose that person.
34 gypsy’s
rogue’s.
35 political
incest A complicated formulation, built on a distant analogy
to the crime, in canon law, of ‘spiritual incest’ (
OED,
Incest, 1b). Spiritual incest may denote marriage or sexual
relations between those connected by a spiritual association or with
someone under a vow of chastity; the substitution of ‘political’ for
‘spiritual’ seems mainly to insist on the secular character of Canter’s
offence. Of course, there is no sexual impropriety in his seizure of
Pecunia and her train, although ‘incest’ casts a darker shadow on the
father’s intrusion on the son’s attachment. But another sense of
‘spiritual incest’ is relevant here, the simultaneous holding of two
benefices, the authority to confer one of which is a right proper to the
other benefice. This sort of (usually economically) self-serving
behaviour was one of the most offensive of spiritual crimes, and Mirth
suggests that there is some such unsettlingly improper greed in the way
the father asserts control of Pecunia, even as the son is about to
possess her.
36 high . . . wit Like the ecclesiastical Court of High
Commission, which would naturally have jurisdiction in matters of
spiritual incest (see preceding note) and which
encroached on the jurisdiction of the secular courts, the Gossips may be
thought of as arrogating to themselves a moral and aesthetic authority
to which they perhaps have no claim. (They have already asserted a
similar claim at Induction,
21–2.) Jonson speaks of the audience elsewhere as a court of
High Commission (
Bart. Fair, Ind. 75); in the Ode (‘Come, leave’),
6.310, lines 1–8, he speaks of the audience as a usurpatious court.
38 cony-catcher con-artist. (A ‘cony’ is a rabbit.) Tattle wants
to see the trickster tricked.
40 The precise sense of the line has been disputed.
Winter supposes the line to refer to the practice of courtiers begging
the crown for properties that should have become its property after the
dissolution of the monasteries, but were being variously retained and
concealed by private persons or churches. Parr (ed. Staple) supposes the phrase to refer more generally to
courtiers’ begging a reward for informing on others. Just as likely,
Censure may be invoking the legal idiom, to beg a
person, meaning to petition the Court of Wards for custody of a
minor, an heiress, or an idiot – this last most pertinent here as a
hilarious disparagement of Pennyboy Jr; such petitions were often
unscrupulously undertaken as a way of expropriating an estate (and cf.
below).
43–4 rhyme . . . rat It was commonly believed that the Irish
exterminated rats by means of rhymed incantations; see Poet., Apol. Dial., 150–1. Jonson may have learned the
northern slang term for doggerel, ‘rat-rime’, during his journey to
Scotland in 1618.
46 hatchments
escutcheons, shields bearing a coat of arms.
46 reverse
invert. Inverting a coat of arms was a formal sign of disgrace.
46 no
gentleman In Jonson’s day, the possession of a coat of arms
was one of the perquisites and distinguishing marks of gentility; the
inversion of arms thus functions as a formal nullification of
gentility.
48 probation
dish A ‘masterpiece’, designed to prove full competence in a
craft – in this case, in cookery.
50 flat
disinherited utterly deprived of his estate.
56 stand i.e.
in a pillory.
63 In the three-handed game of gleek, a mournival is
a hand containing four jacks, queens, kings, or aces; a gleek is a hand
containing three of these cards. A gleek is also a taunt, a harsh
jest.
65 For
As.
0 SD.2]
in right margin in F2
5.1 The first three scenes of Act 5 take place in an
unspecified location.
5.1 ] F2 (Act. V. Scene. I. )
0 SD.1]
Kifer, subst.; Peny-boy.Iv. {to him Tho. Barber. / {after, Picklocke. F2
1, 20 as as
if.
2 a
thing . . . at Said with sad irony. The play here makes its
closest approach to the traditional methods of the Prodigal Son plays,
popular in England and on the continent for nearly a century. These
moral dramas on the theme of the parable in the gospel of Luke
(15.11–32) frequently stage the repentant self-assessment of the
prodigal at the nadir of his humiliation.
4 comitia The term for the assembly in Rome charged with the
election of magistrates. The idea of such an assembly of the beggars
sustains the motif of institutionalization broached with the Staple of
News and continued with the College of Canters. That such institutions
existed among the underclass was not regarded entirely as a fantasy, and
when Pennyboy refers at line 7 to ‘those societies’ he participates in a
diffuse popular discourse concerning informal guilds of beggars,
highwaymen, cony-catchers, and cutpurses.
8 gratulate
welcome.
10 Dauphin
Prince.
12 the
fable . . . time the leading cautionary tale of the
moment.
13 Matter
Subject matter.
13 mark
object.
15 foil thin,
shiny metal backing that provides the reflective surface of a glass
mirror. Pennyboy Jr may be referring to the metaphorical looking-glass
of his situation or to an actual mirror that he holds in his hand, which
he might have consulted as he uttered the first lines of the scene, in
which he reflects on the fit of his clothes. The passage also alludes to
the definition of comedy itself (which Donatus attributes to Cicero and
which Cordatus quotes in
EMO, 3.1.414–17) as a
speculum consuetudinis, imago veritatis: the idea of
comedy as a mirror.
21 epidemical
disease plague. See note to .
22 SD]
not in F2, but see massed entry at
collation 5.1.0 above
25 still
always.
26 The . . . one-and-twenty the next twenty-one years.
27 razed
scraped.
27 razed] F3 (raz’d); rac’d F2
28 In
From.
28 ephemerides See notes to and .
29–30 Or . . . decreed Or if, because of the decrees of Time and
Nature, the day may not be expunged from the calendar.
31 i.e. of tricking prodigal young men out of their
money, as if catching a fish by tickling its gills.
32 loosing
setting loose, and with a play on ‘losing’.
40–52 Cf. Face’s description of the catastrophic
explosion of the alchemical laboratory at the denouement of
Alch.,
4.5.57–62.
47 is
returned has reverted to being.
51 hum (of
rumour).
53 SD]
in right margin in F2
53 SD]
placement, F3, following ‘Lethargy.’; as
marginal note F2
54 like
likely.
55–8 The legal plot here can be difficult to construe.
With Picklock’s assistance, Pennyboy Canter has signed a document
conferring his assets on Picklock: he regards the document as a trust,
with his riotous son as its intended beneficiary. Moreover, he holds
this trust to be conditional, the transfer to be contingent on his
death, and as revocable, an expedient means of providing for his son
should he die during the period of his imposture as Pennyboy Canter. As
Tom reports, ‘Picklock denies the feoffment and the trust’ (
55); that is, Picklock
will argue that the document Pennyboy Canter has signed is ‘an absolute
deed’ (
109), an
unconditional outright grant, and one that encumbers Picklock with no
fiduciary responsibilities to Pennyboy Jr whatsoever – though at 110
below he acknowledges his understanding that Pennyboy Canter intended
the assets to be used for the benefit of his son.
57 as . . . mortality in the event of his death.
58 device
contrivance, trick.
60 SD.2
Pennyboy . . . arras]
G, subst.; not in F2
60 SD.3
picklock
enters]
in right margin in F2
60 velvet
i.e. given to sartorial extravagance.
61 case The
primary sense of the term is, of course, circumstance, but the word can
also denote not only a legal suit (which would hint towards Picklock’s
machinations), but also a suit of clothes – in this case, the patched
cloak that indicates Pennyboy Jr’s fallen circumstances.
69 fall’n out
quarrelled.
69 yours your
follower.
70 trait’rous]
this edn; Traytors F2; Traytor
F3
71 thrown . . . bar disbarred.
72–3 Oh,
good . . . of it Picklock here lays claim to a complex and
nearly incoherent array of innocences: he insists on how scrupulous he
has been (‘heaven knows my conscience’)
and how
blameless (‘silly’) have been his departures from strict scruple (‘the
latitude of it’). He clarifies his position at
76–8, where he claims to be
cleaving to the principles that originally motivated Pennyboy Canter’s
provisions for his son, principles that Canter has since forsaken.
73 silly
innocent, naïve.
74 narrow-minded intellectually narrow, unimaginative; not
devious. (
OED cites this and
Discoveries,
181 as the first instances of ‘narrow-minded’ in its modern sense of
‘illiberal’, but in both cases, that construction seems inappropriate;
OED cites no other instances before the second
half of the eighteenth century, at which point the modern sense of the
compound is plainly primary.)
74–5 dwell . . . lane Cf. Und. 78.12.
76 scarce
obliquity unusual (moral) sophistication.
76 still
continually.
79–80 somewhat . . . estate The obliquity of the response should be
noted: Picklock does not specify on what Pennyboy Jr’s – or his own –
standing rests.
85 civil
slaughter
Winter (ed.
Staple) observes that Jonson is drawing on the legal
opposition between ‘natural’ and ‘civil,’ used to distinguish, for
example, actual death and death ‘before the law’ – as when a person
enters a monastery and becomes virtually dead. In effect, Picklock is
saying that denying Pennyboy Jr his inheritance is a virtual murder,
with the law serving as a kind of weapon.
89 Verlof The Dutch word for ‘furlough’, leave of absence, from
which the English term derives. English furlough was
not yet common, so the F2 reading, ‘vorloffe’,
probably reflects Jonson’s attempt to transliterate a Dutch military
term current during his service as a soldier in the Low Countries.
89 Verlof]
this edn; vorloffe F2
89 brief A
legal writ; the term is derived from Latin
breve.
Winter surmises that a ‘Welsh brief’ may be a begging petition, but can
adduce no other instances of the phrase;
H&S suggest that ‘Welsh’ is
brought in here because Welshmen had a reputation for litigiousness; cf.
the Welsh lawyer in
Wales.
92 he brings?] F3; brings? F2
96 austere
sour, bitter, grim, harsh.
97 verjuice
The juice of unripe grapes.
98 SD]
in left margin in F2
98 SD
as if As Gifford pointed
out, Pennyboy Jr only pretends to fetch the letter; instead he
dispatches a porter to get the deed of trust from Lickfinger (
5.3.2–4).
98 defiance
challenge.
99 commit
i.e. to match in a contest, embroil in hostilities.
101 state
estate.
103 piece
masterpiece.
104 nightcap
Jonson uses the colloquial term for the lawyer’s white cap, or coif.
105 A . . . name And worthy of the name of Picklock.
109 absolute
deed See . above.
112 gratitude
gratuity, in this case a euphemism for ‘fee’.
115 our] F2; your Wh
115 our
Whalley’s emendation to ‘your’ is plausible, since the substitution of
‘our’ for ‘your’ is a common printer’s error, but the attempted
ingratiation of the folio reading is worth preserving.
117 wage law
The phrase may take some colour from the technical device of ‘wager of
law’, whereby the defendant in an action of debt takes an oath denying
the existence of the imputed debt, but its primary force is by means of
analogy with the idiom ‘to wage war’.
5.2 ] F2 (Act. V. Scene. II. )
0 SD]
G; Peny-boy. Can. Peny-boy. Iv. /Picklock. Tho.Barbar. F2
3 SH]
1716, subst.; P. Se. F2
5.2 6 What
trust? See note to above.
8 perfect
completed.
10 emergent
unspecified. Picklock hereby insists that the transfer was not pegged to
some specified occasion – as, for example, the future date of his death.
(As Tom had already reported, ‘Picklock denies the feoffment . . . as
respecting his
[i.e. Pennyboy Canter’s
] mortality’
[5.1.55–7].) The
phrasing here complements the force of ‘perfect’ (
8), consolidating Picklock’s
assertion that the transfer of assets must be taken as
unconditional.
12–29 As
I . . . preferred Aspects of this reminiscence are unusually
grim, at least by Jonsonian standards. The insinuation that the
harshness of Pennyboy Canter’s financial dealings may have driven his
victims to their graves appreciably unsettles the moral simplicity of
the plot. But Picklock may not be recalling Pennyboy’s reflections
faithfully; certainly Canter responds with astonishment.
14 griping
grasping.
15 it i.e.
the ‘grown estate’ or wealth.
18 they’d] F2 (they’had); they had F3
23 You’d] F2 (You’old); You’ld F3
26 What
Whatever name.
27 with with
the eventual return of.
33 not in no
way.
34 Forehead of
steel Comparable to ‘heart of stone’, the phrase also
emphasizes the blatancy of this relentlessness, as if it were ‘written
on’ Picklock’s ‘forehead’.
34 mouth of
brass Implying a ‘brazen’ or ‘trumpeted’ impudence. The phrase
finds its origins in the description of ‘brazen-voiced Stentor’, whom
Hera impersonates at 5.786 in Homer’s Iliad.
36 Engine . . . metals! ‘Engine’, which reinflects the imagery
of line
34, at once
casts Picklock as inhuman, complex, and, like a piece of military
hardware, destructive. ‘Mixed’ suggests not only mechanical complication
but also impurity.
37 change
exchange.
37 syllab’
syllable. ‘Syllabe’ is Jonson’s usual spelling of this word, as in
Grammar, and
Und. 29.10.
39 SD
Parr, subst.; not in F2
39 SD At some
point Pennyboy Jr must receive the deed of trust from the Porter, though
F2 gives no indication of when.
Parr proposes this as the ideal
moment for the delivery of the deed: ‘his challenge to Picklock is
dramatically stronger if the audience suspects that he has not one but
two cards up his sleeve (the hidden Tom and the deed)’. The transfer of
the deed at this moment, Parr (ed.
Staple) continues,
would put ‘the lawyer’s next confident assertion in an ironic
light’.
39 Thither
i.e. to a law-court.
40 it i.e.
Pennyboy Canter’s property.
41 SD]
placement, F3, following ‘tho.’; as marginal note F2
41 SD
him i.e. Pennyboy
Canter.
42 Not that
Not simply because.
43 my parts
my shares in the estate.
43 part depends]
this edn; parts depend F2
53 frontless
carriage shameless conduct. In Latin, the word for forehead,
frons, is also used to denote the capacity for
shame.
54 An
egg . . . nest Proverbial (
Tilley, E81).
55 blood
family, race.
56 witness
testimony.
60 Scattergood Though this is not unusual as a surname, it was
also traditionally used as an allegorical name for a prodigal. There is
a character by this name in John Cooke’s Greene’s Tu
Quoque (1611).
61 I . . . law Ambiguous: (1) ‘I live according to the law’; (2)
‘I use the law to make my living’.
61–2 conscience . . . witnesses Proverbial (
Dent, C601∗), though the proverb
simply translates the Latin adage quoted by Quintilian (
Orator’s
Education, 5.11.41),
Conscientia mille
testis.
62 thousand] F3;
thoussnd
63 subpoena] F3, subst.; Sub-pæna F2
64 attachment
(1) arrest; (2) warrant for arrest.
67 SD]
placement, F3, following ‘Thom.’; as marginal note F2
70 A
rat . . . hangings Although the use of the curtains of
rear-stage for such concealments and such revelations was a theatrical
convention, Picklock’s exclamation entails an unmistakably specific
recollection of
Ham., 3.4.24. In the Induction to
Bart. Fair (6–7),
the Stage-keeper is wary lest the author be lurking behind the
arras.
71–6 Although the news staple has evaporated, Tom
keeps the spirit of reportage alive – even though the accuracy and
slight tediousness of reiteration in this speech and the next
distinguish his report from Staple news.
83 ears A
variety of crimes were punishable by the cropping of ears; the
proverbial phrase ‘to shake one’s ears’ (
Dent, E16) has a slightly
indeterminate force, meaning roughly ‘to respond to stimuli as an animal
would’, although the implied response can be quite various, ranging from
waking up to turning away to self-indulgent indifference.
85 purse-net
A net in the shape of a draw-string purse, used to catch rabbits; ‘to
catch a knave in a purse-net’ was proverbial (
Tilley, K138).
86 worming
moving tortuously. The noun
worm is used to designate
parasites and larvae conspicuous for feeding on foodstuffs or flesh, and
the term was often used metaphorically, as it is in John Taylor’s
reference to ‘law-worms’, corrupt lawyers like Picklock, ‘who make the
common harm their private good’ (
Works, 1630,
Bbb1).
87 engine-head (1) mechanical trap or, perhaps, (2) ingenious
brain, which would be an idiosyncratic sense, developed from the early
modern sense of ‘engineer’ (for which, see and n.)
87 maintenance wrongful abetting of litigation. Because the
crime of maintenance usually involves support for a suit by parties with
no proper legal interest in it, it was an especially lawyerly crime.
88 hole i.e.
hole up. Jonson is drawing on the verb
to hole,
meaning to send to prison or to pillory; he uses the word in
Bart. Fair
(4.6.37–8), as here, to describe the head moving into position
in a pillory. The context here also evokes the image of the worm moving
through the earth. And see note to below.
90 trundle
roll. The image suggests one more association of ‘hole’ (
88): ‘hole’ (
OED,
10) was a game that involved rolling balls through small
arches, rather like the holes in a pillory.
92 yours i.e.
your suit against me.
92 combination conspiracy.
93–5 Do . . . billets Picklock’s threat would seem to have been
effectively neutralized, but this speech brings to conclusion only a
first phase of the struggle with him: though he exults in the
confounding of the lawyer’s plot, the elder Pennyboy has not yet fully
taken in the fact that this victory is the result of Pennyboy Jr’s
improvisatory skill. That realization will issue from the scene that
follows, in which Pennyboy Jr will be seen to have engineered the
recovery of the deed itself.
93–4 Do . . . reversion ‘Reversion’ is a legal term for an estate
that reverts (or has reverted) to the grantor or his heirs, and this
legal sense slightly colours the basic sense of Canter’s challenge,
which is, roughly, ‘Go ahead and try to reciprocate! Crop our ears!’
93 gownèd
vulture Cf. the advocate, Voltore, in
Volpone. In his edition of
Volpone,
Parker notes that
legacy-hunters were often called vultures (
Parker, 86, n.3).
94 quoited
tossed like a quoit; cf. ‘thrown over the bar’, apparently used to
suggest violent disbarment at
5.1.71. Pennyboy Canter here
anticipates Picklock’s disbarring, and with an image that again evokes
the smooth roundness of a head whose ears have been cropped.
94 quoited]
G; coyted F2
95 as . . . billets The comparison is obscure. The common
meanings of ‘billet’ are a short piece of metal (like an ingot) or wood,
or a thick stick used as a weapon, but
Parr (ed.
Staple)
quotes a line from Beaumont and Fletcher’s
The Captain
– ‘Fighting at single billet with a Barge-man’ (1647, Gg3) – that
suggests that ‘billet’ may also have denoted a barge-pole. It is equally
possible that a billet is a short piece of wood attached to a line and
tossed to shore as a bargeman docks, for ‘billet-head’ is an old
ship-building term for simple carved work at the prow of a ship and,
specifically, for that portion of the prow of a whale-boat through which
a harpoon-line travels.
96–8 This . . .
intervalla At the
beginning of this second phase of his defeat, Picklock seems to be
retreating into a posture of indulgent piety; he also seems to be
formulating a new line of attack in which he will accuse both father and
son of insanity. Line
98 seems to mean ‘I can forgive their current ravings in
deference to their
lucida intervalla, the madman’s
temporary interval of sanity.’ (
Parr, ed.
Staple,
suggests that Picklock is thinking specifically of the moment at which
he and Pennyboy Canter made their original pact as Canter’s moment of
lucidity.)
98 SD, 99 SD ]
as marginal note in F2, reading ‘Pick-lock / spies Lick- / finger, and askes / him
a-/side for the / writing.’
5.3 ] F2 (Act. V. Scene.III. / lickfinger. (to them.
2 you –]
this edn; you, F2
3 token you had giv’n me, the keys –]
this edn; token, you had giu’n me the keyes, F2
5.3 3 And by
i.e. ‘And by warrant of’. The construction of the line is not parallel
to that of the preceding line: in lines
2 and
4 Lickfinger answers Picklock’s
question concerning how the writ was transmitted – ‘By the porter that
[i.e. who
] came for it, from
you . . . And
[who
] bade me bring
it’ — but in line
3,
Lickfinger interrupts this answer in order to explain why he entrusted
the document to the porter. This explanatory interruption plainly
responds to Picklock’s shocked, if silent, facial reaction to
Lickfinger’s reference to an unknown porter.
6–15 You . . . among
you The repetitions in these lines do more than emphasize the
ways in which Picklock’s stratagem, of engineering Pennyboy Canter’s
self-betrayal by means of a written document placed in another’s care,
has redounded upon him. The theme of language (and, especially, of
writing) as an extension of the self – often as a dangerously
misappropriable extension of the self – recurs in many of Jonson’s
works.
9 SD The
stage direction, relocated here from its original position in F2 as a
marginal note at line 16, might conceivably be relocated to the very
last line of the preceding scene.
Parr (ed.
Staple)
imagines Pennyboy Jr’s silent display of two props, the deed and the
keys, which display, if timed to correspond to lines
5.2.99 and
5.3.1, would make for a broad, but
handsome comic effect.
9 SD]
placement, F3, following 17,
‘Lickfinger?’; as marginal note
opposite 16–24 F2
11 a sealed
porter a certified porter, his reliability warranted by the
badge he wears indicating his membership in the porters’ guild.
12 scent] F3;
sent F2
16 SD]
placement, F3, following 14,
‘Noose.’; as marginal note F2 after
14
20 carriage
comportment, but with a pun (since
carriage derives
from the verb
to carry).
Winter observes that the same pun
may be found at 5.1.10 of
The London Prodigal, one of
Jonson’s sources.
23–4 The elder Pennyboy’s hedged forgiveness of his
son is nicely linked to the ambivalence that hovers over his reference
to the younger Pennyboy’s cunning defence of his father’s property (and
his own inheritance) as an ‘act of piety and good affection’.
25–6 Too . . . persuade Proverbial. (
Tilley, P614).
28 SD]
placement, F3, following 30,
‘forbid.’; as marginal
note, opposite 27–29 F2
32 bed-staves
Probably the sturdy slats of wood used to support a mattress, with
spares used to beat the bedding up into a condition of plumpness (but
OED gives no certain definition). Their usefulness
as an improvised weapon, ready-to-hand, led to the proverb ‘in the
twinkling of a bed-staff’ (see the discussion by various anonymous
contributors in
N&Q (1858), 347, 436, and 487 and
N&Q (1862), 18 and 359). And see
EMI (F), 1.5.202–3.
34 his
justice
Parr (ed.
Staple) observes that the same conflation of judge and usurer
may be found at 4.5.155 in
Lear, where Lear speaks in
his madness of the usurer as hanging the cozener, and where the furred
gown traditionally associated with the usurer is linked to the judge’s
robes, as here.
37–8 old
worm . . . screwing ‘Screwing’ means ‘interrogating’. ‘Worm’
serves here as more than a term of general disparagement; the term also
denotes the thread of a screw: Jonson thus links the systematically
applied pressures associated with both a judge’s inquisitorial
activities and a usurer’s economic ones.
40 cases of
close-stools containers for chamber-pots.
41 Lollard’s
tower The name of the tower at the southern corner of the west
end of old St Paul’s in London, long used by the Bishop of London as a
prison for heretics.
42 Block-house A slang term for a prison.
43 Lollard
Not a common name for a dog. ‘Lollard’ can denote a religious radical
(specifically, a follower of John Wyclif), but it can also name a
‘lazy-bones’, one who lolls.
43 brave
fine.
44 if so
if.
47 still
always.
49 simples
take medicines work. A simple is a medicine
of single ingredient.
5.4 The remaining scenes of Act 5 take place in a
room in Pennyboy Sr’s house.
Gifford remarks on Jonson’s debt here to the
scene in Aristophanes’
Wasps (891–1008) in which Philoclean
brings his dog to trial for theft of a cheese. Coleridge rather
elaborately insisted ‘I dare not, will not, think that honest Ben had
Lear in mind in this mock mad scene’ (marginalia to Whalley’s edition,
Collected Works, gen. ed. Coburn, 12.3.192), yet
the evidence of
5.3.34
seems to argue, against Coleridge’s fastidiousness, that Jonson writes
here under the influence of both Shakespeare and Aristophanes.
5.4 ] F2 (Act. V. Scene. IIIJ.)
0 SD.1–3]
placement, F3; as marginal note F2
(He is seene / sitting at his / Table with / papers be-
/ fore him.) and as entry direction (Peni.boy. Sen. Porter.)
4 SD]
placement, F3, following ‘Wine!’; as marginal note F2
5 o’my
worship on my honour.
5 canary
sack A moderately sweet white wine from the Canary Islands, a
drink considered slightly more refined than ale or beer – but only
slightly more refined.
6 your badge
The disparaging formulation reduces the porter to his badge of office.
See the note to .
11 frock A
loose outer garment characteristically worn by labourers and peasants;
hence, by the same sort of disparaging synecdoche as at line
6, a labourer or
peasant.
13 state
estate.
14 lusty
healthy.
17 How . . . seventy? The question would not seem so mysterious
to most of those with commercial experience: at a 10 per cent annual
rate of compounding, the maximum allowable prior to 1624 (for which, see
note to ), interest would equal principal in 7.2725 years – so
that ‘principal doubles in seven years’ could stand as a serviceable
rule of thumb.
20 use upon
use i.e. at compound interest.
32 keeper
jailer.
34 tokens
small coins, valued, in this case, at a farthing (i.e. a quarter of a
penny). Tokens were issued locally, often by taverns, in denominations
ranging from a farthing up to a penny; some tokens were of virtually no
intrinsic value, used simply for computation of bills.
37 cross-interr’gatory cross-examination.
38 SD]
placement, F3, following ‘Peace:’; as marginal note F2
38 SD Animal
acts seem to have been a staple of entr’acte entertainment in this
period, and trained dogs had been integrated into the action proper of
many plays prior to Staple: among them Peele’s Old Wives Tale, Shakespeare’s TGV and MND, Marston’s (?) Histriomastix, Middleton
and Rowley’s The Roaring Girl, the anonymous Merry Devil of Edmonton, and, of course, Jonson’s own
EMO.
41 SD]
Parr, subst.; not in F2
46 SD]
in right margin in F2
47 SD]
placement, F3, following 48,
‘me,’; as marginal note F2
51 will know
will concede knowing.
57 tyke
mutt.
58 SD]
placement, F3, following ‘arise,’; as marginal note F2
60 dummerer
The cant term for a beggar who counterfeits dumbness, though it is
tempting to suppose this a compositorial misreading of ‘dumber’, wittier
and metrically more regular.
61 kirtle
gown, skirt, or outer petticoat.
62 Who? Did Block]
Wh, subst; who did? Blocke F2
62 bescumber
befoul with faeces. The term is used in
Poet., 5.3.260,
where it is presented as an example of particularly eccentric (and
distinctively Marstonian) diction.
63 parchment
lace Textile historians give different meanings of the term,
which has been applied to a variety of decorative trims. It may refer to
a very fine lace or decorative cord, made with gold, silver, or silken
thread, wound (or buttonhole-stitched) around a core of fine strips of
parchment or to needlepoint worked upon a parchment pattern.
64 doublet A
close-fitting man’s garment.
65 quit
satisfy. The more common senses of ‘quit’ are ‘requite’, ‘acquit’, or
‘make restitution’: quitting usually restores a proper balance between
the offended and the offender, or debtor and lender. The present usage
is unusual in that it involves satisfying someone in the position of
judge.
65 SD]
placement, F3, following 66,
‘it,’; as marginal note F2
66, 67, 68, 70 it i.e.
his guilt.
69 convinced
convicted.
71–2 SD]
in left margin in F2
73 quirk
notion.
5.5 ] 1716; F2 (Act. V. Scene. II. )
0 SD.1]
Enter the Jeerers]
in left margin in F2
5.5 The jeerers may have entered some lines earlier
and so have witnessed the trial of Pennyboy Sr’s dogs.
3 force
seize.
5 mainprise
The legal device by which an individual stands surety for the release of
a prisoner. The phrase ‘without bail or mainprise’ is a legal
formula.
8 baited
tormented (as in bull- or bear-baiting, a pastime by which the animal is
chained loosely to a stake and dogs set upon it). Since baiting was
thought to render bulls’ flesh more tasty and nutritious, the sale of
flesh from unbaited bulls was subject to penalty in some locations.
Since usurers were commonly described as preying on those to whom they
lent, Cymbal’s phrase entails an idea of retributive justice. Cymbal is
also punning on the homophone ‘bated’, meaning ‘diminished’ or
‘inhibited’.
11 fain
gladly.
13–14 jawbone . . . Assinigo ‘Assinigo’ derives from the Spanish
asnico, little ass; Cymbal is alluding to Samson’s
slaughter of the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. Cf.
‘Expostulation’ (6.375–80), line 20, and
Tro., 2.1.39.
15 ’washing
swashing, forcefully slashing.
18 blushet
See
and n.
20 Pox . . . jests This ironic remark was proverbial (cf.
Tilley, J43 and 44).
28 But . . . Capitol Alluding (somewhat feebly) to the story
recorded in Livy (
History of Rome, 5.47) that the cackling of
geese sacred to Juno alerted Romans guarding the Capitoline hill to an
attack by the Gauls in 390 BC.
31 pike Pike
were known for an appetite so greedy that they often consumed their
young.
33–4 poor . . . john Immature pike were called jacks (see previous note); ‘poor john’ and ‘poor jack’ are
names for dried hake.
35 Jack-a-Lent The name both for a stuffed figure publicly
stoned and burned during Lent (a custom to which Jonson refers in
Tub,
4.2.49–50) and for a Lenten dish.
36 grasshopper . . . dew Both Virgil (
Ecologues, 5. 77) and Pliny (
Natural History,
11.32.94) refer to the grasshopper’s diet of dew; see also
News NW, 163–4.
37 bear . . . claws According to Pliny (
Natural History,
8.54), hibernating bears sustain themselves by sucking their
own fore-paws.
40 Here’s . . . beyond There will be nothing left here.
42 Dust . . . fleas Fleas were thought to be spontaneously
generated out of dust; cf. Pliny,
Natural History,
11.39.115.
43 to rear
’em with which to nourish them.
44 thin . . . lantern The plates through which light passed in
early lanterns were sometimes made of very thin slices of horn or
talc.
44 through] F2 (thorow)
45 gut colon
belly.
45 tell
count, but also, possibly, tell his fortune by examining his intestines,
a reference to hieroscopy, the occult art of divination by inspection of
entrails, an art arguably complementary to Almanac’s astrology.
45 intestina intestines (Lat.).
46 Rascals!]
Kifer; Rascalls (*baw waw) F2
46 SD]
Kifer; as marginal note F2 (*His dogges /
barke.)
49 se
defendendo in self-defence.
56 SD]
placement, F3; as marginal note
F2
57 ’Ware . . . the
hawk! A proverbial slogan (
Dent, H227) warning petty criminals
to beware of an officer of the law.
57 hawk]
Wh; Hawkes F2;
Hawks F3
57 him
Emending to ‘hem’ (i.e. them), ‘em’, or ‘them’ (as in Gifford’s edition)
is plausible, but the F2 reading, expressing enthusiasm for the assault
of the vengeful Canter-raptor, is unexceptionable.
5.6 ] F2 (Act. V. Scene. VI.)
5.6 3 stand
stand up to.
6 panic
frenzied. The word was still new to English at this time and preserved
its association with the particular frenzies induced by the god Pan.
7–8 sounding . . . Cymbal Cf. 1 Corinthians, 13.1.
9 visor
mask.
10 buffon
licence the freedom granted to buffoons or jesters.
10 buffon] F2 (buffon); Buffoon F3
11 SD]
placement, F3, following 12,
‘Life!’; as marginal note F2
14 short . . . anger Jonson is here working with Horace’s
definition of anger as a short madness (Epistles,
1.2.62).
19–23 Nay . . . idol At the same time that all debts and other
economic imbalances are eliminated, Jonson emphasizes the moral and
psychological importance of an appropriate affective relation to wealth
(cf.
below) – and it may be worth noting that Jonson does not propose
anything like the moral imperative of eliminating an affective relation
to wealth.
26–7 The
use . . . famine Both of these sentiments had proverbial
forms; for the former, see
Dent, U23, and for the latter,
Tilley, F441.
29 pens
feathers.
30 grown
overgrown.
36 From . . . come i.e. from the underworld. Misers and usurers
were traditionally thought to be assigned special punishments in
hell.
38 mulcts
penalties.
40 taken
improperly appropriated. Canter’s warning is uncanny, since it
anticipates a punishment for misappropriated property, forfeiture of
that property, that can have no meaning in the afterlife, save to
someone so sunk in avarice that his greed survives death.
44 praemunire Technically, the offence of undertaking litigation
in a foreign court or of alleging the jurisdiction of foreign
authorities in England. The term is given an extended meaning here, as
Canter concedes his own improper arrogation of judicial authority.
46 my cook
Elaborating observations first made by
Cunningham (Gifford [1875], 2.460),
Kifer argues that Jonson here goes
out of his way to establish a link between Lickfinger and the great
legal theorist Edward Coke – mainly in order to forestall suggestions
that Coke is being satirised in the depiction of Pennyboy Sr (Kifer,
1974, 268 and
271). In 1628, after the performance of the play, but before its print
publication, Coke strongly urged parliamentary resistance to new devices
by which the Crown sought to raise revenues, opposing them as a
violation of the liberty of the subject guaranteed by Magna Carta, a set
of concerns to which these lines at least casually allude.
48 trench
infringe upon.
49 guest
lodger.
49 stentor
The noun is derived from the name of the loud-voiced herald of
Iliad, 5.786–7. Cf. Picklock’s ‘mouth of brass’ (
5.2.34).
53 jubilee.
The Levitical year of jubilee, celebrated every fifty years, was an
occasion of rest, emancipation, and restitution. It was customary in
early modern England to designate each quarter-century as a jubilee, a
tradition to which Jonson affiliates this play, first performed in
February 1626 (still 1625 according to ‘old-style’ dating in which the
new year is reckoned to begin on March 25).
53 SD]
placement, F3, following 54,
‘Sir.’; as marginal note F2
54 SH
pecunia's train]
this edn;
Tra. F2
56–7 kissing . . . hands The play concludes with gestures designed
to reaffirm the principle articulated at lines
19–23 above, that wealth should be
the object of appropriate affection.
58 join
theirs applaud.
61 uses The
general meaning, ‘undertakings’, predominates, but other possible
meanings of the word inform the line as well. The meaning ‘habits or
customs’ also applies. At law, a use refers to the
working of a property contingently held: legal use emphasizes the idea
that the value of a property is not intrinsic, but depends on how it is
managed or worked. Even more pertinent is a meaning from homiletics: the
uses constitute that portion of a sermon in which
the preacher proposes practical applications of principles derived from
a scriptural passage – and Pecunia might be said to enable men and women
to act practically on their principles. On the other hand, the meanings
associated with usury – itself one of the meanings of use (which could also mean ‘the employment of borrowed moneys’
or ‘interest’) – would seem to have been effectively banned from
application here, given the importance of Pennyboy Sr’s reform in this
scene.
66 That . . . this Since ‘that’ refers to ‘The sordid and the
covetous’ (
65) and
‘this’ to ‘the prodigal’ (
64), Pecunia presumably gestures first to Pennyboy Sr and
then to Pennyboy Jr.
Epilogue 1 maker’s
poet’s. This was one of Jonson’s favourite terms for his vocation: it
recalls the etymology of
poet, which derives from the
Greek term for a creator, or maker. See
Discoveries, 1665, 1711,
1771.
1 scope aim,
intention.
2 profit and
delight As in the Prologue to
Volpone (8),
Jonson recalls the Horatian dictum that the best poetry ought to both
delight and instruct (
delectando pariterque monendo,
Ars Poetica, 344).
3 clout From
French clou, this is the white pin at the centre of
the archer’s target, by which the target is attached to the butt.
5 tree piece
of wood; in this case, a bow.
5 start
shoot an arrow.
6 crack a
string break or snap a (bow-)string. Since string is often used for ‘sinew’, a sense of personal
physiological failure is also carried beneath the metaphor from
archery.
8 weather
disposition.
9 misconceit
misapprehension.
12 tackle
equipment; the word can also have the specialized meaning ‘arrows’.
Epilogue 12 he’s] F3;
he’is F2
We yet adventure here
to tell you none,
See moreLook
your news be new and fresh, Master Prologue, and
untainted; I
See moreand
make more of it in the reporting?
See moreIn vulgar estimation,
yet am I
See moreTo bend, and these my
agèd knees to buckle
See moreA sordid rascal,
See moreAs I do walk the
streets, whisper and point:
See moreHad their minds
bounded. Now the public riot
See moreBe reason and
proportion, not fine sounds,
See moreAy, therein they abuse
an honourable princess, it is thought.
See morePlain in the styling
her ‘Infanta’ and giving her three names.
See moreClara,
Pecunia to do with any person? Do they any more
but express the
See moreThe golden mean: the
prodigal, how to live,
See moreTheir tinkling captain,
Cymbal, and the rest
See moreShe’ll
come to visit it, as
See moreShe’ll
come to visit it, as
See moreSome news of state, for
a princess.
See moreA
noble whimsy’s come into my brain:
See moreYour
Worship’s barber is
See moreThe trade of money is
fall’n,
See moreGood meal in his sleep,
but sells the
See moreLight
on Her Grace as she’s taking the air.
See moreThat you might ha’ ’em
–
See moreFor my great madam’s
monkey when’t has ta’en
See moreNot ‘Richard’, but
See moreYou hunt upon a wrong
scent still, and think
See moreBe reason and
proportion, not fine sounds,
See moreI will tell
you, sir,
See moreSurfeit and fullness
have killed more than famine.
See moreAppear and let us
muster
See more[To Register, etc.] See more
You have entertained a
See moreLord
Paul, I think.
See moreAt the sign o’the
Dancing Bears –
See moreLay your money
down.
See moreYour countryman.
See moreWhich
he was to maintain in his own name,
See moreWho?
Captain Lickfinger?
See moreBoth for their various
shifting of their scene
See moreAnd dext’rous change
o’their persons to all shapes
See moreMy name is Broker. I am
secretary
See moreBut the vile sordid
things of time, place, money,
See moreMy
lady may see all.
See moreShe
means inheritance to him and his heirs,
See moreNo magic to’t, but old
See moreRun any hazardous
See moreOf
these our times.
See moreAppeared as little yours as the spectators’.
See moreHe has rich ingredients
in him, I warrant you, if they were extracted;
a
See moreThis and much more for
Your good Grace’s sake.
See moreAll the whole world are
canters. I will prove it
See moreHe is
an architect, an engineer,
See moreHer breasts, his
apples! Her teats,
See moreWhate’er it cost
me.
See more‘Is’t a clear business?
Will it manage well?
See moreAnd
Lickfinger shall be my master cook.
See moreAnd treated kindly,
would have made you noble
See moreWith wine, gossips, as
he meant to do; and then to defraud his
purposes!
See more’Tis that that shall
secure you, an
See moreWhich I shall see you
See moreBut I
forgive their
See moreAnd
bade me bring it.
See moreOh,
Lickfinger! Come hither.
See moreI sent
it you, together with your keys.
See moreFor all the passers-by
to see
See moreThe sordid and the
covetous, how to die –
See moreThe golden mean: the
prodigal, how to live,
See more