1. 2. 257. Heauen gates is undoubtedly to be regarded as a compound word. Cf. N.E.D., s.v. Heaven-gate: 'c. 1250 Gen. & Ex. 1620 Her, heuengate amongus us;' also, '1688 Bunyan Jerus. Sinner saved (1886) 48 To see so vile a one knock at heaven-gates for mercy.' 1. 2. 264-5. From Ovid, Amor. 3. 8. 2-4, as noted by Gifford: Ingenium quondam fuerat pretiosius auro. Marlowe translates thus: Wit was sometimes more precious than gold; Works, ed. Bullen, 3. 194. 1. 3. 1. Good morrow, Lawyer. 'It should be observed, that Ovid is still in the cap and gown which he had assumed upon the entrance of his father.' (G.) 1. 3. 3. Let's see, what's here? Whalley and Gifford here insert Numa in decimo nono! of the quarto, and farther on the latter comments: 'As Whalley brought back the date of this law from the 4to, it is here retained; though with some little injustice, perhaps, to Jonson. He had discovered, I imagine, the impropriety of attributing regulations of a warlike nature to Numa, and therefore omitted the title upon a revision of the play' (ed. 1875, 2. 388). Nicholson places the Latin in a note and explains: 'Numa in this nineteenth [chapter of his laws].' with the remark, 'The above, however, is but a poor specimen of it.' Cf. Pope, Ep. to Dr. Arbuthnot 127-8: As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came. 1. 3. 13. S'light . . . law. Too much immersed in cases, and cased too much in thy gown.' (N.) 1. 3. 15. In sprightly poesies habillaments. '... Know I wrot Those idle rimes to note the odious spot And blemish that deformes the lineaments Of moderne Poesies habiliments.' Marston, Scoourge of Villainy 2, Sat. 6, 23–26. I. 3. 22-3. Note . . accents. An allusion to the Pythagorean doctrine that the heavenly bodies made music as they moved, each of the seven planets producing one note of the musical scale. Cf. line 45. I. 3. 32-3. Plautia Delia. The object of Tibullus' first passion, whom he names Delia, is variously asserted to have been Plautia, Plancia, Plania, and even Flavia. Cf. Introduction, under Plautia, and Tibullus. In El. 3. 9. 31 Ovid mentions Delia and Nemesis as mistresses of Tibullus. 1. 3. 34. Corinna. Cf. Ovid, Trist. 4. 10. 57-60: Carmina quum primum populo juvenilia legi, Barba resecta mihi bisve semelve fuit: Moverat ingenium, totam cantata per urbem, Cf. also Amor. 2. 27. 27-30, which Riley thus renders: 'May my cheerful lines be to you in place of great wealth: even many a fair wishes to gain fame through me. I know of one who publishes it that she is Corinna. What would she not be ready to give to be so?' This passage makes against the view that Corinna represented Julia, daughter of the emperor: had Corinna been known to be Julia, no other woman would have dared pretend to be Corinna. In Jonson's time, however, Corinna was identified with the daughter of Augustus; cf. Chapman's argument prefixed to Ovid's Banquet of Sense, published 1595. This question is discussed in the Introduction, under Ovid and Julia. 1. 3. 49. Hence Law, and welcome, Muses. Gifford's note on lines 8-9 is more apropos here: 'We hear no more of Ovid's law; yet he was somewhat farther advanced in it than Jonson seems to admit he was apparently a very respectable advocate. He tells Augustus that he had pleaded causes in his youth with success, as one of the Centumviri; and that, when he heard private disputes as a judge, the losing parties were satisfied with the equity of his decision: Nec male comissa est nobis fortuna reorum, But this passage has been regarded as referring to the functions of a judge rather than to those of a counsel. Ovid's indolence and physical weakness, which kept him from entering the senate, must have affected his activity in his profession. Smith (Dict. of Greek and Roman Biog.) thinks Am. 1. 15. 6. warrants the conclusion that he did not practise law at all. But he was a decemvir: cf. Fasti 4. 383. I. 3. 51. And now made one. Whalley prints new, with the explanation: 'The first folio has, "And new made one." And so reads the quarto of 1602. On their authority I have given the present text.' but the two copies Possibly the quarto Whalley is right in regard to the quarto; of folio 1616 which I have examined have now. reading is slightly preferable, but either makes good sense. 1. 3. 65. Houres. 'A dissyllable.' (N.) I. 3. 71-2. Strooke . . planet. Cf. the current expressions, 'sun-struck' and 'moon-struck'. In the 16th century, many men who had died were reported as having been 'planet-struck.' 1. 3. 75. Crackt our sinnewes. Cf. 5. 3. 299-300, where Jonson ascribes a similar expression to Crispinus, whose phraseology is there derided. Shakespeare uses a like phrase in Tempest 3. 1. 26. 2. 1. 15 ff. After the speech of Albius, Gifford has the stage direction: Enter CHLOE, and two Maids. At the time when Poetaster was produced, women's parts were taken by young men or boys. In this convention the Elizabethans followed the Greeks, among whom female parts were always taken by youths, and the Romans, who allowed women to appear only in the mimes. Jonson was especially fortunate in this instance, since the children's companies at Paul's and the Blackfriars must have been better able to present female parts than were the adult companies at the public playhouses. Sidney Lee (Shakespeare 37 note) says: 'Shakespeare alludes to the appearance of men or boys in women's parts when he makes Rosalind say laughingly to the men of the audience in the epilogue to As you like it, "If I were a woman, I would kiss as many," &c. Similarly, Cleopatra on her downfall in Antony and Cleopatra, 5. 2. 220 seq., laments: Men taking women's parts seem to have worn masks. Flute is bidden by Quince play Thisbe "in a mask" in Midsummer Night's Dream (1. 2. 53).' Cf. also Chapman, May-Day (printed 1611) 3. 4: 'Qu. Is this my boy, Leonoro? Le. For fault of a better, sir. Qu. Afore heaven 'tis a sweet-faced child, methinks he should show well in woman's attire. "And he took her by the lily-white hand, and he laid her upon a bed." I'll help thee to three crowns a week for him and she [sic] can act well. Hast ever practised, my pretty Ganymede?' In France and Italy women appeared on the stage before they did in England. Thus Thomas Coryat: 'I was at one of their Play-houses [he is writing from Venice, 1608] where I saw a Comedie acted. The house is very beggarly and base in comparison of our stately Play-houses in England: neyther can their Actors compare with vs for apparell, shewes and musick. Here I obserued certaine things that I neuer saw before, For I saw women acte, a thing that I neuer saw before, though I haue heard that it hath beene sometimes vsed in London, and they performed it with as good a grace, action, gesture, and whatsoeueur conuenient for a Player, as euer I saw any masculine Actor' (Crudities 2. 16–17). Notwithstanding Coryat's assertion that he had heard (previous to 1608) of women acting on the London stage, we have no reason to believe they actually did appear until after the Restoration. 'About the same time that [movable] Scenes first enter'd upon the Stage at London, Women were taught to Act their own Parts (Historia Histrionica 11). Movable scenes seem first to have been used in Davenant's Siege of Rhodes, ?1661. In his London Stage 1. 42, Baker says that Killigrew's company opened a new theatre in Vere street, Nov. 8, 1660, and that on Dec. 8, 1660, the first English actress appeared on the London stage, in the part of Desdemona. He also records a company of French actors, including women, as acting at the Blackfriars and the Fortune in 1629: there was great hostility to them. 2. I. 15. Chloe. He introduces us into the house of the rich bourgeois Albius, who has been ill-advised enough to marry one of the emancipated great ladies of the period, Chloe by name, and who, by her help, obtains admission to court society.' Thus Brandes, Shakespeare I. 392. Now Chloe does not prove, upon close study, 'one of the emancipated great ladies'; on the contrary, for all her harping on her gentle birth, she is as bourgeois as her unpretending husband-whom, by the way, she does anything but 'help' into court society. Chloe is tolerated by Cytheris and the courtiers only because her house is a convenient rendezvous for intriguers, and her husband lavish of entertainment to courtly birds of prey. Chloe is no grande dame, nor even a modest gentlewoman: her clothes, her vocabulary, her ignorance and vulgarity, all prove her the typical city wife who does not know when she is being made a fool of. Such as she were continually the objects of dramatic ridicule. 2. I. 17. Strew some roses, and violets here. Rooms were usually rush-strewn, but on special occasions (cf. the wedding preparations at the opening of Satiromastix) flowers were scattered about. Too often the rushes were allowed to lie and gather dirt and moisture until they had become foul, when, instead of sweeping them out, the elegant and yet frugal housewife caused juniper or frankincense to be burned in her rooms. Cf. Cynthia's Revels 2. 1; Every Man Out 2. 2. 2. I. 17-18. Fye, felt. To feel a smell is now set down as a vulgar Scotticism.' Thus Cunningham, GC. 2. 571. 2. 1. 22. Obsequiously. The speeches of Albius and Chloe abound in absurd and bombastic expressions, due to their efforts to adopt what they suppose is the language of courtiers. 2. I. 31-34. Cf. Timon (the University play) 2. 1: Callimela. Is this a cittizen? The wyfes of cittizens doe beare the sway, Whose very hands theire husbands may not touch (There are a number of notable parallels in idea and plot between this Timon and Poetaster.) 2. 1. 36-40. She . . . her. This, of course, is addressed to Crispinus. Nicholson comments: 'I suspect a pun, and that the doting Albius would embrace his wife, but that she pushes away his arm, and hits him on the head. Otherwise, the "bumps on the head" are dragged in apropos of nothing.' 2. I. 46-7. And entertaine. 'i. e. SO as to entertain them.' (N.) Or perhaps: 'In order that we may entertain them.' 2. 1. 52-3. Your pack-needles, horse-combs, hobby-horses, &c. The figure of a horse, made of wicker-work, so contrived as to fasten about a man's waist, and draped to conceal his legs, was used in the ancient morris-dance. This hobby-horse, having been at length thrust out from among the stage properties, had wide posthumous fame: cf. Hamlet 3. 2. 144. See Much Ado, ed. Furness, 3. 2. 67 note; L.L.L., ed. Furness, 3. 1. 30 note. 2. 1. 57. Gaine sauours sweetly from any thing. 'When Jonson thus gave us the meaning of the Latin saying Dulcis odor lucri ex re qualibet, he forgot that the occasion from which it took its rise, was much posterior to the age in which the persons of this drama lived. Tho' possibly Vespasian might not have been the author of it, but only made it more memorable by the application to which he put it.' (W.) 2. 1. 60. The most precious balsamum. Cf. 'my balsamum,' line 72. Pliny has a long-and of course unreliable-account of balsamum. 'But to all other odours that of balsamum is considered preferable, a plant that has been only bestowed by Nature upon the |