Volpone and Other Plays
Page 44
72. the Straits, the Bermudas: disreputable alleys, court-yards, etc.; haunts of thieves and prostitutes.
73. quarrelling lesson: discharged solthers often instructed people in duelling.
136. Childermass Day: 28 December – feast of the Massacre of the Holy Innocents.
138. French Barthol’mew: the massacre of French Protestants on St Bartholomew’s Day, 1572.
ACT THREE
III, i Opening stage-directions: the busding life of the Fair continues in the background, while Whit, Haggis, and Brisde enter. Captain Whit, a stage-Irishman, works as a paid informer for the watch – Haggis and Brisde – but he is really a pimp, as becomes clear in the next scene.
11. monsters: freaks. Litlewit mentions some of these in 111, vi, and Wasp extends the catalogue in v, iv.
III, ii 42. heathen man: Ulysses, who did not succumb to the song of the 111, ii sirens, but had himself lashed to the mast; it was his crew who had their ears stopped with wax.
62. Dame Annessh Chare: a spring called after Annis Clare, a rich London widow.
72. Lubberland: a ‘Land of Cockayne’ or Never-Never Land where, traditionally, the pigs run about, ready-roasted, and cry ‘Come eat met’
107. small printed ruffs: the Puritans wore their small runs ‘in print’, i.e. neatly folded. Compare Ananias on ‘that ruff of pride’ in The Alchemist, IV, vii, 51.
III, iii 31. ut parvis, etc.: ‘as I was accustomed to compare great things with III, iii small’, misquoted from Virgil, Eclogues, 1, 23.
III, iv 16. pair of smiths: possibly a bell-like clockwork device which served III, iv as a sort of alarm-clock.
23. Michaelmas term: the autumn term at the Inns of Court (from 29 September), marking the beginning of ‘the London season’.
117. [Thomas] Coriat, or Coryate: the Jacobean traveller and entertainer (c, 1577–1617); Coryat’s Crudities (1611) described his extensive European journey.
117. Cokeley: another jester.
122. the fellow i’ the bear’s skin: an actor from the Fortune Theatre once dressed in a bearskin and was baited by butchers dressed as dogs. A ballad was made out of this in 1612.
III, v 53. ‘Paggington’s Pound’: an old dance-tune
85. Westminster Hall: the great hall of the Palace of Westminster where certain Courts sat.
134. rat-catcher’s charms: the rhyme which rid Ireland of rats. ‘Cokes thinks of himself as a kind of Pied Piper to the pickpockets’ Professor Horsman.
273. bought me: ‘The King had the right to sell the guardship and marriage of royal wards (minors who were heirs to tenants holding land from him)’ – Professor Horsman.
276. disparagement: the legal situation is that Grace must either marry Cokes or forfeit her land – unless, as Quarlous now suggests, she can prove that Cokes is her inferior and that marriage to him would be a ‘disparagement’.
III, vi 55. Nebuchadnezzar: a ruler who enforced the worshipping of idols.
IV, i ACT FOUR
Opening stage-directions: the scene is substantially as before, save for the stocks. See p. 321.
IV, ii 70. martyred: a reference to Bartholomew Leggat who was martyred at Smithfield in 1611.
IV, iii 64. Argalus: a lover in Sir Philip Sidney’s pastoral romance, the Arcadia.
65. the play: The Two Nobte Kinsmen (1613) by John Fletcher and William Shakespeare from The Knight’s Tale by Chaucer.
65. Palemon: Palemon and Arcite are rival lovers in Chaucer. Argalus and Palemon are typical figures from romance, and it is ironic that Quarlous and Winwife should associate their names with such courtly paragons.
97. Mercury: appropriate nickname for Edgworth since the messenger-god was swift of foot and thieving.
105. wrestle: a wrestling contest in front of the tent of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and sheriffs was one of the events of St Bartholomew’s Day.
IV, v 37. Ware, Rumford: places of assignation.
78. Bridewell: a prison, or house of correction, for bawds, rogues, and whores.
IV, vi 30. Facinus, etc.: ‘Crime levels those whom it pollutes’ – Lucan, Pharsalia, v, 290 (J. D. Duff’s translation).
90. In te… terrent: ‘in her attacks upon you Fate is powerless’ and ‘whom neither poverty nor death nor bonds dismay’ – snatches from Horace, Satires, 11, vii.
94. Non te, etc.: ‘Look to no one outside yourself’ – Persius, Satires, 1.
150. another use: this is the first hint we have that Quarlous is going to disguise as Trouble-all as part of a plot to see what was written in Grace Wellborn’s book.
ACT FIVE
vi Opening stage-directions: Leatherhead and his door-keepers erect their puppet-stage in full view of the authence, possibly dismantling or removing the stocks. They perhaps continue their work while the second scene is acted, rather as the people of the Fair may have erected their booths and stalls during Justice Overdo’i soliloquy at the beginning of Art Two. See also pp. 321–2.
2. sign: the play-bill, usually with a summary or description of the entertainment, advertising the performance; possibly the ‘banner’ mentioned a second later and certainly the long-winded ‘bill’ which Cokes reads in v, iii.
7. my Master Pod: the Folio has a marginal note by Jonson: ‘Pod was a Master of motions before him.’ Leatherhead is claiming to have been apprentice to an actual puppeteer. Some scholars have interpreted Leatherhead and his puppetry as a satirical attack on Inigo Jones and his splendid spectacular stage-effects and décors.
7. Jerusalem, etc: the five puppet-plays mentioned here on biblical and English historical themes were probably well-known to the original audience at the Hope. No Jacobean puppet-script has survived. The puppet-play later in the act (which is supposed to be the work of Littlewit) is a burlesque of the genre.
10. Shrove Tuesday: the holiday on which London apprentices traditionally thronged the theatres and behaved riotously.
11. Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes’s unsuccessful plot to blow up Parliament on 5 November 1605. Puppet-theatres, no less than others, obviously made box-office hits out of recent history.
v, ii 50. party-coloured: literally, but also with the punning sense of party as faction or division, suggesting that the Puritans were divided among themselves. This speech of Dame Purecraft’s is the greatest admission of Puritan deviousness in the play.
61. silent minister: one of the Puritans excommunicated for failure to comply with the laws approved by the Hampton Court conference of 1604. See Tribulation Wholesome’s speech, The Alchemist, III, i, 38.
Stage-direction ‘the bill’: the advertisement. See above, v, i.
v, iii 22. voluntary: a volunteer, i.e. here one who has given his literary services free and is entitled to free admission. This possibly suggests that Littlewit was anxious to preserve his amateur status.
51. not Leatherhead but Lantern: Leatherhead’s whispered aside to Littlewit is necessitated by his eagerness to conceal his surname from Cokes whom he robbed earlier.
63. at other houses: i.e. at the play-houses of the leading acting companies.
70. the small players, etc.: Leatherhead – or rather Master Lantern – shows Cokes his basketful of puppets, rather as a leading actor might take a young gallant to the tiring-house (see lines 54–60, above) to meet the other players. George Speaight, the puppet-master and scholar who supervised the play-widtin-the-play for George Devine’s Old Vic production in 1950, believes that the puppets should be glove-puppets (see his History of the English Puppet Theatre, 1955, p. 65) and glove-puppets were used in that production – but Puppet Dionysius who, in the debate with Busy, has to ‘take up his garment’ is surely a marionette.
75. one Taylor: a pun referring first to ‘one tailor’ (and tailors were supposed to be timid), second to Joseph Taylor, an actor who was probably in the original cast of Bartholomew Fair at the Hope Theatre in 1614, and third to the Water-poet, John Taylor, who had won a wit combat (by default) at the Hope Theatre.
76. eat ‘e
m all: tailors were proverbially greedy – hence Cokes’s ‘a goodly jest’.
79. [Richard] Burbage: the greatest of Elizabethan actors (1573–1619), creator of many Shakespearean and Jonsonian characters.
81. [Nathan] Field: actor, dramatist, friend of Jonson, probably a member of the original cast of the play (1587–1619).
98. printed book: Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and Leander (1598).
V, iv 39. private house: Elizabethan play-houses were of two broad categories: large open-air theatres where actors played by daylight in the afternoon – the public houses; and small, indoor theatres where performances were given by artificial light, at higher prices and to a more select authence – the private houses.
70. Delia: the lady in Samuel Daniel’s sonnet-sequence (1592).
115. amorous Leander, etc.: the puppet-play is a travesty of Marlowe’s poem Hero and Leander and of Richard Edwardes’ old-fashioned play.
160. Pict-hatch: haunt of prostitutes near Charterhouse.
172. Dauphin, etc.: a ballad, also quoted in King Lear, III, iv.
185. sack… sherry: ‘sack’ was a loose term for all white wines imported from Spain, including sherry. Cokes’s ignorance is shown here.
197. Damon and Pythias (acted 1565).
200. hobby-horse is forgotten: another snatch from a well-known ballad.
289. Dunmow bacon: a flitch of bacon presented to any couple who could prove to a jury of bachelors and maidens of Little Dunmow in Essex that they had spent the past year of their marriage without quarrelling.
313. Dionysius: Dionysius the younger, who was reported to have become a school-master after being expelled from Syracuse.
321. Puppet Dionysius: the folio reads ‘Pup D.’ and most editors give ‘Pup. Damon’. The emendation is Harry Levin’s.
v, vi 1. Dagon: god of the Philistines; used of an idol in general.
15. Shimei: follower of Saul’s who cursed King David (2 Samuel, xvi).
16. Master of the Revels: the official of the Court whose duties included licencing all plays.
19. Baal: heathen god.
44. Grace: the speech is usually given to Quarlous, but Eugene Waith argues that the printer of the Folio confused the abbreviations Qua. and Gra. in this instance.
46. calling: there is a large body of anti-theatrical pamphlets by Puritans who denied that acting could be recognized as a profession. Zeal-of-the-Land Busy marshals the conventional arguments against the profession and when, in line 90, he comes to his ‘main argument’ it is that in Elizabethan theatres boys dressed up as women, against biblical injunctions. Similar charges occur in such writers as Philip Stubbs, Stephen Gosson, and William Prynne. As the Jacobean theatre did not employ actresses. Busy’s line about ‘the male among you putteth on the apparel of the female, and the female of the male’ seems to stem from biblical rhythms.
88. Dagonet: King Arthur’s jester.
90. main argument: see Note on calling, above, line 46.
v, vi 21. et digito, etc.: ‘and restrain your lips with a finger’ – Juvenal, Satires, I, 160.
48. Redde te Harpocratem!: ‘Make yourself a Harpocrates’ – god of silence.
111. ad correctionem, etc.: ‘for correction not destruction; for building up not tearing down,’ from Horace, Epistles, 1.
1. ‘Ben Jonson’, Selected Essays (enlarged edition, 1951), p. 147; reprinted in Ben Jonson: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by J. A. Barish (1963), p. 14.
2. Introduction to Ben Jonson: Selected Works (n.d. [1938]), p. 1.
1. ‘Morose Ben Jonson’, The Triple Thinkers (new edition, 1952), p. 204; reprinted by Barish, p. 61.
1. Shakespeare and Jonson: Their Reputations in the Seventeenth Century Compared (1945), vol. 1, pp. 109–12; The Jacobean and Caroline Stage (1941–). vol. iv, p. 608.
1. Ben Jonson (1925–52). vol. 1, p. 115.
1. ‘The Basis of Shakespearean Comedy’, Shakespeare Criticism, 1935–60, edited by Anne Ridler (1963), p. 201.
1. Shakespeare Criticism, 1935–60, p. 206.
2. Introduction to Ben Jonson: Selected Works, p. 5.
1. Ben Jonson, vol. IX, p. 205.
1. T. M. Raysor, Coleridge’s Miscellaneous Criticism (1936), p. 55.
1. Ben Jonson on the English Stage, 1660–1776 (1935), p. 143.
2. The Fugitive Art: Dramatic Commentaries, 1947–51 (1952), p-183.
3. Curtains (1961), p. 3.
1. See A. V. Judges (editor), The Elizabethan Underworld (1930), passim.
1. Curtains, p. 3.
1. In Search of Theater (1953). p. 129.
1. The Muse in Chains: A Study in Education (1937), p. 4a.
6. In The Presentation: in performance.
21. professors: practitioners, i.e. poets.
23. forehead: good sense.
25. their mistress: their muse, the art of poetry itself.
33. inform: train, mould.
48. abortive features: premature, ill-considered dramatic works.
54. the food of the scene: the staple of our theatrical diet, or subjectmatter for plays.
57. youngest infant: i.e. Sejanus. Note.
62. allowed: given critical acceptance.
62. entirely mine: all my own work, i.e. unconcaminated by collaboration.
70. made obnoxious to construction: exposed to misconstruction.
71. Application: the identification of characters in plays with actual persons.
82. graved: buried.
92. misc’ line: mixed, chaotic.
100. a name: i.e. the name, or profession, of poet.
102. vernaculous: ill-bred.
107. most learned Arbitresses: i.e. the ‘Equal Sisters’, Oxford and Cambridge.
109. reduce: recover, bring back into use.
113. catastrophe: i.e. in Volpone itself; the climax of the action.
114. my promise: Note.
116. of industry: deliberately.
121. goings-out: endings, resolutions.
133. primitiue: ancient, original.
17. coadjutor, novice, etc.: Note.
21. quaking custards: Note.
29. quick: lively.
33. copperas: an acid.
8. the day… chaos: the day of creation.
15. that age: the Age of Gold.
35. shambles: slaughter-house.
56. mallows: coarse greens.
58. Romagnìa: a sweet wine from Greece; Candian wines: malmsey from Crete; Lombard’s vinegar: cheap wine from North Italy.
71. cocker up my genius: give free play to my innate talenets.
6. Pythagoras: Note.
9. Æthalides: the herald of the Argonauts.
12. Euphorbus: a Trojan.
13. cuckold of Sparta: Menelaus, whose wife Helen was abducted by Paris.
17. sophist of Greece: philosopher – i.e. Pythagoras himself
26. ‘By Quaterl’: Note.
27. musics: music of the spheres: trigon: triangle.
31. reformèd: Protestants.
39. moyle: mule.
43. illuminate: having experienced religious illumination or vision.
46. nativity–pie: Christmas–pie; Note.
85. changing: being made.
89. gorcrow: carrion crow.
124. phthisic: consumption. 126. posture: imposture, act.
58. forkèd: ambiguous.
63. perplexed: confusing. 66.chequin: a Venetian gold coin.
46. brain: Note.
52. scotomy: dizziness and loss of sight.
53. left to snort: ceased snoring or breathing.
72. elixir: a liquor thought to be capable of prolonging life for ever, or in alchemical lore the substance for turning other metals into gold.
73. aurum palpabile: Note.
75. cordial: a medicine which restores the heart.
96. colour: pretence. 97. taking: tempting.
103. proper issue: legitimate offspring (i.e. Bonario).
124Rook go with you: M
ay you be rooked – fooled.
156Æson: Jason’s father, who was magically restored to youth by Medea.
9orient: from the East, and therefore especially valuable and lustrous
23visor: mask
63culverin: hand-gun or cannon.
92 fat: grow fat.
4salt: wanton.
12. Laid for this height: aimed for the latitude.
14with licence: with the permission of the Privy Council; legally.
18. vents our climate: comes from our country.
25.speaks: describes
28.tires: attires, clothes
34.lion’s whelping, etc.: Note.
76. ordinary: eating-house.
77. advertisement: information.
78. concealed statesman: government agent in disguise.
82. his character: his code.
85. in policy: for diplomatic reasons.
86. had your languages: was a linguist.
87. And to’t, as sound a noddle: And, in addition, as good a head.