Clumsie, adj. 'Appears in writers c. 1600, not used by Shakspere; not in Florio, Cotgrave, Bullokar, Cockeram, Blount, Phillips (1696), nor in Cocker 1704.' N.E.D. 1) = Benumbed or stiffened with cold (obs.). Jack Drum 2. 136; 2 Ant. and Mell. Prol. I. 2) Awkward, &c. J. Hall, Sat. 1. 3. 42. N.E.D. also records clumse, adj., benumbed, unhandy, in Cotgrave 1611 (clumpse). 5. 3. 511. Barmy froth. This expression has been fully treated in note 5. 3. 294. 5. 3. 513. Puffy-inflate-turgidous-ventositous. Puffy. The earliest example in C.D. is from Dryden, Duke of Guise, 2. 2. But the word is common in Marston: Yet puffie as Dutch hose they are within, Faint, and white liuer'd, as our gallants bin. Pygmalion, Author in Praise 23. See also Sat. 2. 139: 'O worthless puffie slaue!' Scourge, 'In lectores' 42; Sat. 4. 55. Inflate. N.E.D. records the verb for 1533, as in Palsgrave 1530; while the pp. adj. occurs in 1480. Inflation occurs in Poetaster 5. 3. 371. Turgidous, adj., obs. The only citation in C.D. is this passage in Poetaster. Not in Marston's extant works. Ventositous, adj. C.D. has not this adjective, but has the obs. noun ventosity, ascribed to Bacon, Adv. of L. 1. In the quarto we find ventosity and not ventositous; so I incline to believe that the adjective was trumped up for this occasion, especially as I do not find it in Marston. 5. 3. 520-1. Oblatrant-furibund-fatuate-strenuous. Oblatrant, adj. The only case noted by N.E.D. is this of Poetaster; but oblatration = railing &c., is noted for c. 1560, while oblatrate is given in 1623 by Cockeram, 'to barke or rayle against one.' Oblatrant is probably, therefore, a word rare in Jonson's time, or even one made by him for this occasion. Not in Marston. Furibund has become established. N.E.D. records it for 1490, Caxton, Eneydos 19. 72, and for 1535, Stewart, Cron. Scot. 2. 610. Not in Marston. Fatuate, pp. adj., rendered fatuous, or silly,-obs. Earliest use in N.E.D. is this of Poetaster. Fatuate as an intransitive verb, now archaic, is recorded for Blount, Glossographia, 1656-1681. Not in Marston. Strenuous is now established only too well. C.D. records it in Milton, Samson Ag. 271; Sir T. Browne, Christ Mor. I. 33. It occurs in Marston: 2 Ant. and Mell. 5. I. 3: 'The fist of strenuous vengeance is clutch'd.' Cf. also 1 Ant. and Mell. Ind. 36. 5. 3. 523. Tumult. Cf. the following speeches from Lucian's Lexiphanes: 'Lexiphanes. I don't know what you will do to me, Sopolis, you and Lycinus, making me drink this medicine. For my part, I'm afraid this draught will prove a draft on my vocabulary. Lycinus. Drink, and don't hesitate, so that you may think and speak hereafter in human fashion. Lexiphanes. There, I obey and drink. Whew! What's this? Here's a great rumbling. I appear to have swallowed a ventriloquist. Sop. Begin to vomit now. Good Lord! First this uv (obs.,= Lat. num), then after it has come up, kåra (so then), then on their heels d'os (quod he), and åμnyéπn (somehow), and Aŵσre (fair sir), and dhrovlev (soothly), and that continual ǎrra (whatsoever). Strain yourself, though, and put your fingers down into your throat. You haven't yet cast up тap (hard by) or σкopdivâσlai (to retch) or TEUτάζεσθαι (to do it again) or σκύλεσθαι (to rend yourself). A lot of things are still down below, and your belly is full of them. But it wouldn't be bad even if some of them should pass downwards; at any rate, σnopôla will make a great noise tumbling out along with a small gust of wind. Well, this fellow is clean now unless something is left over in his lower bowels. You take him next, Lycinus, and amend his education, and teach him what he should say.' Lycinus then gives Lexiphanes full advice as to the authors he should study and the vocabulary he should avoid. Upon this speech is founded the admonition of Virgil to Crispinus. 5. 3. 525. Conscious dampe. Conscious dampe does not occur in Marston, but the two words are found separately. Conscious is found in the Scourge 8. 95; it has been ascribed to Crispinus in Poetaster 3. 3. 25 and 5. 3. 298 (cf. note). Cf. 2 Ant and Mell. 1. 140-2: The sulphur damps, That flew in winged lightning 'bout my couch, N.E.D. remarks on the figurative use of conscious: 'Attrib. to inanimate things as privy to, sharing in, or witnesses of human actions or secrets. Chiefly poet.' Under this head, the earliest citation is Poetaster 5. 3. 298. In various senses, conscious became common in the 17th cent. In the Stage-Quarrel, Small says (p. 107 note): 'Of the words vomited by Crispinus, I can find only one, "conscious," in What You Will [1. 1. 114].' Small's idea is that What You Will had appeared in the spring of 1601, and that it contained some of the words ascribed to Crispinus in Poetaster, but not now found in Marston's works-the explanation being that Marston expunged from What You Will all the words ridiculed by Jonson except conscious. 5. 3. 534. Prorumped. This word is obsolete. The only example in C.D. is this from Poetaster. Not in Marston's works. 5. 3. 540. Clutcht. The verb clutch formerly meant 'to bend or crook' (cf. King John 2. 1. 589). N.E.D. says our present sense of 'to grasp or grip' came in with Marston. See 2 Ant and Mell. I. I. 3; 3. I. 46; 5. 1. 3. Cf. our note 5. 3. 302. 5. 3. 546. Snarling gusts-quaking custard. Cf. Scourge 1. 2. 4: 'Let Custards quake, my rage must freely runne,' where custards seem to be the white-livered gallants whom the writer has already referred to and now means to scourge. In the prologue to Volpone (1605) we have: Nor quaking custards with fierce teeth affrighted, This looks like a hit at Marston; but the phrase quaking custard seems to have been common, and a stock matter of ridicule. Small (Stage-Quarrel 60 note) cites in this connection the Clown's song in Wily Beguiled (Hazlitt's Dodsley p. 229): For she will so heel it, O, her buttocks will quake like a custard. On the passage in Volpone, Gifford comments: 'In the Poetaster Marston (not Decker, as Whalley has it) throws up the words quaking custard: the allusion, however is not to this, but to a burlesque representation of a city feast, of which, in Jonson's days, an immense custard always made a conspicuous part. With this custard a number of foolish tricks were played, at the Lord Mayor's table, to the unspeakable delight of the guests: and some dramatic writer, perhaps, had transferred them, with improvements, to the stage, where they seem to have given equal pleasure.' In Halliwell, we find: 'Custard-politic. The large custard prepared for the Lord Mayor's feast.' Snarl (snarling) occurs in Shakespeare three times. Gust is not infrequent, in the sense of a sudden blast of wind. Probably the phrase here given had been used by Marston, and the combination seemed grotesque to Jonson. 5. 3. 548. Obstupefact, pp., meaning stupefied, is obsolete. It is not in Marston. The only example of this form given in N.E.D. is this of Poetaster; but the verb obstupefy has become established. 5. 3. 552 ff. These pills. The whole of this speech, mutatis mutandis is taken from the very excellent advice which Lycinus gives to Lexiphanes.' (G.) See Introduction. 5. 3. 565. Tutor. What were Marston's attainments in the classics we do not know: he took the B.A. at Oxford in two years, and must have been able to read Greek. But few scholars of that time can have had much classical learning in the eyes of Ben Jonson, though the latter was not a graduate of either university (cf. Conversations p. 19). 5. 3. 574. Gallo-belgick. Cf. Epigram 92, The New Cry: They carry in their pockets Tacitus, In the Character of a London Diurnal, John Cleveland tells us (Works, 1699, pp. 83-4): 'The Original Sinner in this kind was Dutch, Gallobelgicus the Protoplast, and the modern Mercuries but Hans-en-kelders.' As has been pointed out by George Chalmers (Life of Ruddiman, 1794, pp. 102-5), the Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus was not a 'Diurnal,' as the reference in Cleveland might imply, but a kind of Annual Register, established at Cologne in 1588, and written in Latin. From the Brit. Mus. Cat. (Period. Publ. Cologne) we take the following description: 'Mercurius Gallobelgicus: sive rerum in Gallia at Belgio potissimum: Hispania, quoque, Italia, Anglia, Germania, Polonia, vicinisque locis ab anno 1588 usque ad Martium anni praesentis 1594 gestarum, nuncius auctore . . M. Jansonio [pseud., i. e. Michael ab Isselt]. Editio altera, ab infinitis mendis repurgata, etc. Coloniæ Agrippinæ, 1594. 8°. 9072. aa 9. Tom. I only.' Of the 18 volumes published at Frankfurt, by Janson and others, 1596-1630, the British Museum has all but 14-16; also an English translation of the periodical for 1614, printed in London in that year. As the Gallo-Belgicus dealt with current events in Latin, it undoubtedly had resort to some words that 'would have made Quintilian stare and gasp,' and Ben Jonson found in its style a fit source for Marston. In the Staple of News, Jonson gives a satirical account of early London news gathering, with allusions to Nathaniel Butter, one of the first Englishmen to issue a regular news-sheet (cf. Dr. D. Winter's edition of this play, for a full discussion of Elizabethan journalism). 5. 3. 589. Lockt vp. Fleay comments (Chr. 1. 369): "With the locking up of Crispinus in some dark place compare the imprisonment of Malvolio in Twelfth Night.' 5. 3. 593. Branded. Cicero, Pro Sex. Roscio Amerino 20, speaks of the early punishment of calumniators by branding on the forehead with a K. It has been thought that this might have been in accordance with the Lex Remmia (cf. Poetaster 5. 3. 223 and note), of which little is known. Fleay (Chr. 1. 369) remarks upon 'the consummate impudence of Jonson, who had been marked with the Tyburn T, in arraigning Crispinus under the Lex Remmia that he might be branded with the C of calumny.' 5. 3. 599. That coate, and cap. The fantastic and parti-colored cloak and cap of a court-fool. Cf. Satiromastix p. 246: 'Holde I pray, holde, by Sefu I haue put vpon my heade, a fine deuice, to make you laugh, tis not your fooles Cap Master Horace, which you couer'd your Poetasters in, but a fine tricke, ha, ha, is iumbling in my braine.' 5. 3. 605. Oath. Cf. the oath administered by Sir Vaughan to Horace in Satiromastix (pp. 261-3). 5. 3. 611-613. Tauernes, chambers. The two-penny galleries of the Elizabethan playhouse seem to have held a questionable gathering of 'prentices, would-be gallants, and members of the demimonde. The actors' tiring-house was at the back of the stage, upon which it opened (cf. the De Witte picture of the Swan) by two doors. The puisne, or Inns-of-Court freshman, was frequently a mark for unscrupulous players and for hangers-on of the theatre. Gifford notes: 'Mr. Malone thinks the observation of Pope, namely, that "players in Shakespeare's time were led into the buttery by the steward, not placed at the lord's table," originated from an expression in the Taming of the Shrew [Ind. 1. 102.]: "Go, sirrah, take them to the buttery," &c. But there can, I think, be little doubt that Pope had this very passage of Jonson, which has so strangely escaped the commentators, in his thoughts; at any rate, it is fully sufficient to justify the assertion. With great deference to Mr. Malone, I conceive that even the respectable names he mentions, Heminge, Burbage, and Lowin, were seldom to be found at "my lord's table or my ladie's toilette." Shakespeare and, above all, Jonson were, it is to be presumed, free of both; not, however, as players, but as distinguished writers; indeed Jonson's familiar friends are well known to have been among the first for rank and talents in the state.' Now whatever may be our conclusion as to the source of Pope's idea concerning the social status of Elizabethan players, it is to be hoped that the poet at least avoided Gifford's error of basing any conclusion as to actors upon this passage of Poetaster. For neither Marston nor Dekker was ever, so far as we know, an actor, and Jonson's sneers at their haunts and associates has nothing whatever to do with the question of the social privileges or limitations of 'stagers.' It was not at all to the 'quality' the poetaster and his journeymen professed that Jonson here alluded: their personal character, he asserted, barred them from precincts open to himself. 5. 3. 623-4. Vnder the bastoun. On penalty of being cudgeled. Dekker, in The Wonderfull Yeare (ed. Grosart, 1. 78), says that |