Volpone and Other Plays (75 page)

II, iii  23.
vapours: this
term is used habitually and often tiresomely by 11, iii Knockem – indeed Eugene Waith in his Yale edition of the
comedy calls his use of the word ‘a kind of verbal tic'. ‘Vapours' means deliberate quarrelsomeness – as in the formal game of vapours played in Act Four – but in the play it is often synonymous with Jonsonian ‘humours', so dut the more eccentric, one-idea characters can be said to have their own ‘vapours'.

II, vi  66.
Iamque opus
, etc.: ‘And now I have finished my task, which neither Jove's wrath, nor fire…' –
Metamorphoses
, xv, 871–2. The passage continues: ‘nor sword, nor the gnawing tooth of time shall ever be able to undo'.

II, v  7.
Orpheus
: the god of music.

10.
Ceres
: mother of Proserpina.

92.
Dutchmen
: it was a popular fallacy that they ate a great deal of butter.

159.
race-bawd
: breeder of bawds; on the analogy of
race-mare
- a brood mare.

177.
Ursa major
: the constellation of the Great Bear; astronomical pun on Ursula's shorter name, Urs, and on her hugeness.

II, vi  34.
some late writers
: see note following.

45.
hole in the nose… third nostril
: this disfigurement would normally be the result of syphilis; Justice Overdo is railing against the evils of tobacco by claiming that smoking can have the same effects as the pox. His speech is a parody of Jacobean pamphlets against smoking by ‘some late writers' (see lines above), of whom King James VI was one.

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.

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.

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.

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 ‘em 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.