The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

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To Inigo, Marquis Would-be: A Corollary (1631)

    To Inigo, Marquis Would-Be: A Corollary

 But ’cause thou hear’st the mighty King of Spain

Hath made his Inigo marquis, wouldst thou fain

Our Charles should make thee such? ’Twill not become

All kings to do the self-same  deeds with some.

Besides, his man may merit it, and be 5

A noble,  honest soul. What’s this to thee?

He may have skill and judgement to design

Cities and temples; thou a  cave for wine

 Or ale! He  build a palace; thou a shop

With sliding windows and  false lights atop! 10

He draw a forum with  quadrivial streets;

Thou paint a lane, where  Thumb   the Pygmy meets!

He some  Colossus to bestride the seas

From the famed  pillars of old Hercules;

Thy canvas giant at some channel  aims, 15

Or  Dowgate torrent, falling into Thames,

And, straddling, shows the boys’ brown-paper  fleet,

 Yearly  set out there, to sail down the street.

Your works thus differing, troth, let so your  style.

Content thee to be  Pancridge Earl the while, 20

An earl of show; for all thy worth is show.

But when thou  turn’st a  real Inigo,

Or canst of truth the least  entrenchment pitch,

We’ll have thee styled the Marquis of   New Ditch.

To Inigo, Marquis Would-Be: A Corollary See headnote to previous poem. [Editor: Colin Burrow]
Corollary Appendix or conclusion (OED, †3).
1–2 Philip Ⅳ made the architect Giovanni Baptista Crescenzi (1577–1635) Marqués della Torre and knight of Santiago for his work on the Escorial, for which he designed an octagonal crypt, 1617–35. Crescenzi also enjoyed an enormous salary (Kubler, 1982, 116). It was not until c. 1638, when Jones worked on the plans for a new palace of Whitehall, that he attempted anything comparable.
4 deeds] JnB 489; things JnB 491, JnB 496; thing JnB 494
6 honest The word could mean drunkard or good-time boy; see Epigr. 115 headnote.
8 cave for wine The King’s new cellar was in fact designed by Jones’s associate, Isaac de Caus; see Und. 48.
9–10 Probably alluding to Jones’s design for a four-storey arcade of shops, possibly linked with the Covent Garden development of the 1630s. The design (which might be by a disciple of Jones rather than the man himself) is now in the library of Worcester College, Oxford; illustrated as plate 56 in Harris and Tait (1979), discussed on p. 28 of the same work.
9, 11, 12 build . . . draw . . . paint The mood here is subjunctive: ‘he could’.
10 false lights dummy windows. The phrase could also be used of the trickery of shopkeepers, so associates Jones with deceit (OED, Light n. 1 e).
11 quadrivial going in four directions.
12 Thumb Tom Thumb appears in Fort. Isles. (Presumably Jonson here describes a lost entertainment in which he meets the Pygmy, who is a separate person.)
12 the Pygmy Identified as Jeffrey in some MSS (‘pigmy’ is probably an authorial revision to avoid an obscure allusion); hence Jeffrey Hudson, the Queen’s dwarf (1619–82), who appeared in a masque involving Gargantua (possibly the giant in line 15) on 24 Nov. 1626 in Somerset House, and in Chlor., 131. See Orgel and Strong, 1.389–92. He was said to have been 18 inches (45 cm) tall at the age of seven, and less than 45 inches (114 cm) tall when fully grown. He was once presented in a cold baked pie to King Charles and Henrietta Maria; see Fuller’s Worthies (1662), Rutlandshire, 348–9 (sigs. Yyy1v-Yyy2). He was the subject of Davenant’s mock-heroic poem ‘Jeffereidos’ (Davenant, The Shorter Poems, 37–43). The vogue for giants in masques generally postdates this poem: they appeared in Albion’s Triumph (Jan. 1632), in which giants and pygmies meet, and in Britannia Triumphans (1638).
12 the Pygmy] JnB 489; with Jeffrey JnB 490 subst., JnB 491.5, JnB 492, JnB 493 subst., JnB 495 subst., JnB 496; and Pigmy JnB 494.5
13 Colossus The statue of Apollo at the harbour of Rhodes was said to have been seventy cubits high.
14 pillars . . . Hercules Rocks either side of the straits of Gibraltar, believed by the ancients to have supported the western boundary of the world.
15 aims urinates(?).
16 Dowgate torrent ‘A channel of floodwater carried to the bottom of Dowgate hill, where was located one of the ancient watergates of London in the vicinity of today’s Cannon Street Station’, Chalfant (1978), 69. Jones used elaborate water-effects in Blackness, Fort. Isles, and Love’s Tr., which, since it was performed in Jan. 1631, is most probably on Jonson’s mind here: see Orgel and Strong, 1.408.
17 fleet As represented in Fort. Isles, 419, which could be made to appear to be in motion; see Nicoll (1937), 79, and Orgel and Strong, 1.407–8.
18 Yearly Presumably at the Lord Mayor’s annual feast or similar occasion. It is tempting to emend to ‘yarely’, ‘nimbly’, often used of ships.
18 set out there] JnB 489; there sett out JnB 492
19 style title.
20 Pancridge Earl ‘Earl of St Pancras’ (an area of London associated with comedy and shot-gun weddings). The mock title was used in the annual procession of Finsbury archers. Cf. Tub, 3.6.6.
22 turn’st] JnB 489; prou’st JnB 494
22 real Perhaps puns on OED, Real adj.1: ‘regal, kingly’, and may also pick up on the Spanish context of 1–4 above.
23 entrenchment pitch build a ditch as fortification.
24 New Ditch Donaldson OSA proposes the ‘New River’, Sir Hugh Myddelton’s forty-mile-long artificial river, which supplied water to Londoners; cf. Epigr. 133.194n.
24 New Ditch] JnB 489; Hounsditch JnB 491.5; Houndsditch JnB 492; Town Ditch JnB 490, JnB 493, JnB 495, JnB 496