No Poul | trounerie, | like urg | ing why ? | wherefore?

3.5.52.

you are one

O' the deepest Politiques I ever met.

Compass' language is intentionally ambiguous: a politique may be I. 'a sagacious, prudent person; a skilled politician': or 2. a shrewd schemer.'

3.5. 56. For metre, see note on 1. 1. 61.

That you are ac | cessar | y tó | his death,

3. 5. 58.

the corruption of one thing in nature, Is held the Generation of another. The terms corruption and generation were frequently employed in mediæval philosophy to denote contrary processes. Their use originated from Aristotle's treatise, De Generatione et Corruptione. Cf. Middleton and Dekker, The Roaring Girl 3. 4: 'Would you know a catchpoole rightly deriu'd, the corruption of a Cittizen is the generation of a serieant.'-NED. 3. 5. 69. For metre, see note on I. 2. 9.

This baggage Knight. | Peace to you all | Gentlemen,

3.5.70. Mushrome. The use of this term to signify 'an upstart, a worthless fellow,' is found in several passages of Jonson's works. In Every Man Out (Wks. 2. 36), Macilente rails against

Such bulrushes; these mushroom gentlemen,
That shoot up in a night to place and worship.

See also Catiline (Wks. 4. 221):

And we must glorify

A mushroom! one of yesterday!

The Silent Woman (Wks. 3.370): 'A mere talking mole, hang him! no mushroom was ever so fresh.'

Upton refers this last quotation to Plautus' Bacch. 4. 7. 23: Iam nihil sapit,

Nec sentit; tanti'st, quanti est fungus putidus.

The term is also used in a derogatory sense in Plautus' Trinummus 4. 2. 12:

Pol hic quidem fungino generest.

3. 5. 71. For metre, see notes on I. 1. 28; 1. 1. 81.

Me with a Chal | lenge: | which I | come to | anticipate.

3. 5. 76.

Captaine, you are a Coward,

If you not fight i' your shirt.

In his desire to save his clothes, the courtier avails himself of the opinion that it is a mark of valor to fight without any sort of protection; cf. Massinger, The Maid of Honour (Wks. 3. 8):

Gasp. I will raise me a company of foot;

And, when at push of pike I am to enter

A breach, to show my valour I have bought me
An armour cannon-proof.

Bert. You will not leap, then
O'er an outwork, in your shirt?
Gasp. I do not like

Activity that way.

3.5.77. Sir I not meane.

note on 2. I. 13.

For the omission of do, see

3.5.92. you ha' read the Play there, the New Inne. For a discussion of the relation of this play to The New Inn, and of Jonson's debt to Greek philosophy for his ideas of valor, see Introduction, p. xxv.

3. 5. 96. For metre, see note on 2.5.44.

Lies for a private cause. | Sir, Íle | redargue: you,

3. 5. 98. For metre, see note on 1. 3. 16.

I long to heare | a man | dispute | in his shirt

3. 5. 100. His valour will take cold. His valour will cool; it will lose the support of passion.

3.5. 113. Towne-top's his Author! According to Nares, the town-top or parish-top was one bought for public exercise in a parish. Stevens says: 'This is one of the customs now laid aside. A large top was formerly kept in every village, to be whipped in frosty weather, that the peasants might be kept warm by exercise, and out of mischief while they could not work.'-Nares, Glos. The implication of Compass' remark is, possibly, that Silkworm has not read the treatises

on fencing and dueling (such as Saviola's Of Honour and Honorable Quarrels), but has picked up his information by listening to the gossip about the town-top.

3. 5. 116. o' the first head. See note on 2. 3. 57. 3.5.122. Perdu's. See the Glossary. Shakespeare, Lear 4.7.35:

To watch, poor Perdu

With this thin helme.

Rushw. Hist. Coll. (Ser. 4. 2. 1173): 'Our Purdues lie so near the Enemy, as to hear them discourse.'

Chapman, The Widow's Tears (Wks. 3. 23):

Revolts from manhood,
Debaucht perdus, have by their companies
Turn'd Devill like themselves.-NED.

3. 5. 123. For the metre, see note on I. I. 28.

The one, that they are shot free; | the other,

sword free.

3. 5. 134. For the metre, see note on 2. 6. 74.

Or ignorance | being | the root | of it.

3.5.137. exemplified Malefactors. See the Glossary, s. v. exemplified.

3.5.139.

'This is evidently meant of Scribe Prynne, and may be considered as the retort courteous to the histrionical contempt with which he had assailed the dramatic writers.'-G.

Gifford made two mistakes in this note. Jonson could not have meant William Prynne, because this play was acted in 1632, and Prynne did not lose his ears until May, 1633; see DNB. He probably refers to Alexander Gill the younger, with whom 'Jonson had a long-standing feud, which began as early as 1623, in consequence of the elder Gill's patronage

of Wither's satires.'-DNB. The difficulty with this identification is the fact that Gill did not actually lose his ears: on November 1, 1628, he was sentenced to degradation from the ministry, to a fine of 2000 £, and to the loss of both ears; but on the intercession of his father, Laud consented to mitigate the fine, and forego the corporal punishment; and on November 30, 1630, a free pardon was signed by Charles I.— DNB. That Jonson did actually refer to Gill is shown by his retort to Gill's attack Uppon Ben Johnson's Magnetick Ladye, in which he speaks as if the sentence by statute were equivalent to its execution :

Shall the prosperity of a pardon still

Secure thy railing rhimes, infamous Gill,
At Libelling? Shall no Star-chamber peers,
Pillory, nor whip, (nor cart) nor want of ears,
All which thou hast incurr'd deservedly,
Nor degradation from the ministry,
To be the Denis of thy father's school,
Keep in thy bawling wit, thou bawling fool?
Thinking to stir me, thou hast lost thy end,
I'll laugh at thee, poor wretched tike: go send
Thy blatant music abroad, and teach it rather
A tune to drown the ballads of thy father:
For thou hast nought in thee, to cure his fame,
But tune and noise, and echo of his shame.
A rogue by statute, censur'd to be whipt,

Cropt, branded, slit, neck-stockt:-Go, you are stript!

The expression, histrionical contempt, does not, as Gifford implies, mean a contempt expressed in a satiric drama; the passage means:

And is a feigned or acted comtempt

Of what a man fears most; it being an evil
In his own judgement unavoidable.

See the Glossary, s. v. histrionicall.

3.5. 145. Theeves adjudg'd to die. Theft was a capital offense. See Harrison's Elizabethan England, p. 236: 'In cases of felony, manslaughter, robbery, murder, rape, piracy, and such capital crimes as are not reputed for treason or hurt of the estate, our sentence pronounced upon the offender is,

to hang till he be dead.' Idem, p. 243: Witches are hanged, or sometimes burned; but thieves are hanged (as I said before) generally on a gibbet or gallows.'

3. 5. 147. The e in entertainment, &c, which originally preceded the final syllable, is sometimes retained, and, even where not retained, sometimes pronounced' (Abbott, § 488).

As being a spéciall en | tertain | e ment

3. 5. 147. a special entertainment For our rogue People. The amusement which the people derived from executions is suggested in a passage in The Devil is an Ass (Wks. 5. 136): Thou mayst have a triumphal egression. Pug. In a cart, to be hang'd!

Iniq.

Iniq. No, child, in a car,

The chariot of triumph, which most of them are.

See also Boulton, The Amusements of Old London 2.244: 'Could the taste of Londoners for horrors, the interest in suffering which appeared in half their sports and amusements, be better displayed than in the records of their delight in the exhibitions of Tyburn and Tower Hill? We believe that no spectacle of the last century, no coronation, no triumphal progress of captured standards to St. Paul's, or treasure to Mint during the first Mr. Pitt's great war, ever drew such crowds into the streets as when Balmerino and Kilmarnock went to Tower Hill, or Lord Ferrers or Dr. Dodd, Jack Sheppard or John Rann, made the long and doleful journey from Newgate to Tyburn.... When the criminal was notorious, or distinguished, or pitied, or execrated above the common, his agony was prolonged by crowds in such numbers as lengthened the passage through the streets by hours. The space of time which lay between the stroke of the bell at midnight under the condemned man's cell window in Newgate Gaol and the claiming of his body by his friends, or by the surgeons for dissection, . . . was a time of revel and merrymaking for his fellow-citizens.'

3. 5. 152. For the metre, see note on 2. 5. 44.

That might be avoid | ed. Í, | and with | assurance,