Part 1

, P. 79.

=2. 6. 21 and done the worst defeate vpon my selfe.= _Defeat_ is often used by Shakespeare in this sense. See Schmidt, and compare _Hamlet_ 2. 2. 598:

--A king Upon whose property and most dear life A damn’d defeat was made.

=2. 6. 32 a body intire.= Cf. 5. 6. 48.

=2. 6. 35 You make me paint.= Gifford quotes from the _Two Noble Kinsmen_:

How modestly she blows and paints the sun With her chaste blushes.

=2. 6. 37 SN.= ‘Whoever has noticed the narrow streets or rather lanes of our ancestors, and observed how story projected beyond story, till the windows of the upper rooms almost touched on different sides, will easily conceive the feasibility of everything which takes place between Wittipol and his mistress, though they make their appearance in different houses.’--G.

I cannot believe that Jonson wished to represent the two houses as on opposite sides of the street. He speaks of them as ‘contiguous’, which would naturally mean side by side. Further than this, one can hardly imagine even in the ‘narrow lanes of our ancestors’ so close a meeting that the liberties mentioned in 2. 6. 76 SN. could be taken.

=2. 6. 53 A strange woman.= In _Bart. Fair_, _Wks._ 4. 395, Justice Overdo says: ‘Rescue this youth here out of the hands of the lewd man and _the strange woman_.’ Gifford explains in a note: ‘The scripture phrase for an immodest woman, a prostitute. Indeed this acceptation of the word is familiar to many languages. It is found in the Greek; and we have in Terence--pro _uxore habere hanc_ peregrinam: upon which Donatus remarks, _hoc nomine etiam_ meretrices _nominabantur_.’

=2. 6. 57-113 WIT. No, my tune-full Mistresse?= etc. This very important passage is the basis of Fleay’s theory of identification discussed in section D. IV. of the Introduction. The chief passages necessary for comparison are quoted below.

A CELEBRATION OF CHARIS:

In Ten Lyric Pieces.

V.

His Discourse with Cupid.

Noblest Charis, you that are Both my fortune and my star, And do govern more my blood, Than the various moon the flood, Hear, what late discourse of you, 5 Love and I have had; and true. ’Mongst my Muses finding me, Where he chanced your name to see Set, and to this softer strain; Sure, said he, if I have brain, 10 This, here sung, can be no other, By description, but my Mother! So hath Homer praised her hair; So Anacreon drawn the air Of her face, and made to rise 15 Just about her sparkling eyes, Both her brows bent like my bow. By her looks I do her know, Which you call my shafts. And see! Such my Mother’s blushes be, 20 As the bath your verse discloses In her cheeks, of milk and roses; Such as oft I wanton in: And, above her even chin, Have you placed the bank of kisses, 25 Where, you say, men gather blisses, Ripen’d with a breath more sweet, Than when flowers and west-winds meet. Nay, her white and polish’d neck, With the lace that doth it deck, 30 Is my mother’s: hearts of slain Lovers, made into a chain! And between each rising breast, Lies the valley call’d my nest, Where I sit and proyne my wings 35 After flight; and put new stings To my shafts: her very name With my mother’s is the same. I confess all, I replied, And the glass hangs by her side, 40 And the girdle ’bout her waist, All is Venus, save unchaste. But alas, thou seest the least Of her good, who is the best Of her sex: but couldst thou, Love, 45 Call to mind the forms that strove For the apple, and those three Make in one, the same were she. For this beauty yet doth hide Something more than thou hast spied. 50 Outward grace weak love beguiles: She is Venus when she smiles: But she’s Juno when she walks, And Minerva when she talks.

UNDERWOODS XXXVI.

_AN ELEGY_.

By those bright eyes, at whose immortal fires Love lights his torches to inflame desires; By that fair stand, your forehead, whence he bends His double bow, and round his arrows sends; By that tan grove, your hair, whose globy rings 5 He flying curls, and crispeth with his wings; By those pure baths your either cheek discloses, Where he doth steep himself in milk and roses; And lastly, by your lips, the bank of kisses, Where men at once may plant and gather blisses: 10 Ten me, my lov’d friend, do you love or no? So well as I may tell in verse, ’tis so? You blush, but do not:--friends are either none, Though they may number bodies, or but one. I’ll therefore ask no more, but bid you love, 15 And so that either may example prove Unto the other; and live patterns, how Others, in time, may love as we do now. Slip no occasion; as time stands not still, I know no beauty, nor no youth that will. 20 To use the present, then, is not abuse, You have a husband is the just excuse Of all that can be done him; such a one As would make shift to make himself alone That which we can; who both in you, his wife, 25 His issue, and all circumstance of life, As in his place, because he would not vary, Is constant to be extraordinary.

THE GIPSIES METAMORPHOSED

_The Lady Purbeck’s Fortune, by the_

_Gip._ Help me, wonder, here’s a book, 2 Where I would for ever look: Never yet did gipsy trace Smoother lines in hands or face: Venus here doth Saturn move 5 That you should be Queen of Love; And the other stars consent; Only Cupid’s not content; For though you the theft disguise, You have robb’d him of his eyes. 10 And to shew his envy further: Here he chargeth you with murther: Says, although that at your sight, He must all his torches light; Though your either cheek discloses 15 Mingled baths of milk and roses; Though your lips be banks of blisses, Where he plants, and gathers kisses; And yourself the reason why, Wisest men for love may die; 20 You will turn all hearts to tinder, And shall make the world one cinder.

_From_

A CHALLENGE AT TILT,

AT A MARRIAGE.

_2 Cup._ What can I turn other than a Fury itself to see thy impudence? If I be a shadow, what is substance? was it not I that yesternight waited on the bride into the nuptial chamber, and, against the bridegroom came, made her the throne of love? had I not lighted my torches in her eyes, planted my mother’s roses in 5 her cheeks; were not her eye-brows bent to the fashion of my bow, and her looks ready to be loosed thence, like my shafts? had I not ripened kisses on her lips, fit for a Mercury to gather, and made her language sweeter than his upon her tongue? was not the girdle about her, he was to untie, my mother’s, wherein all the joys and 10 delights of love were woven?

_1 Cup._ And did not I bring on the blushing bridegroom to taste those joys? and made him think all stay a torment? did I not shoot myself into him like a flame, and made his desires and his graces equal? were not his looks of power to have kept the night 15 alive in contention with day, and made the morning never wished for? Was there a curl in his hair, that I did not sport in, or a ring of it crisped, that might not have become Juno’s fingers? his very undressing, was it not Love’s arming? did not all his kisses charge? and every touch attempt? but his words, were they not 20 feathered from my wings, and flew in singing at her ears, like arrows tipt with gold?

In the above passages the chief correspondences to be noted are as follows:

1. _Ch._ 5. 17; _U._ 36. 3-4; _Challenge_ 6. Cf. also _Ch._ 9. 17:

Eyebrows bent, like Cupid’s bow.

2. _Ch._ 5. 25-6; _U._ 36. 9-10; _DA._ 2. 6. 86-7; _Gipsies_ 17-8; _Challenge_ 8.

3. _Ch._ 5. 21-2; _U._ 36. 7-8; _DA._ 2. 6. 82-3; _Gipsies_ 15-6; _Challenge_ 5-6.

4. _Ch._ 5. 41; _Challenge_ 9-10.

5. _U._ 36. 5-6; _DA._ 2. 6. 77-82; _Challenge_ 17-8. Cf. also _Ch._ 9. 9-12:

Young I’d have him too, and fair, Yet a man; with crisped hair, Cast in thousand snares and rings, For love’s fingers, and his wings.

6. _U._ 36. 21; _DA._ 1. 6. 132.

7· _U._ 36. 1-2; _Gipsies_ 13-4; _Challenge_ 5.

8. _U._ 36. 22-3; _DA._ 2. 6. 64-5

9. _DA._ 2. 6. 84-5; _Ch._ 9. 19-20:

Even nose, and cheek withal, Smooth as is the billiard-ball.

10. _Gipsies_ 19-20; _Ch._ 1. 23-4:

Till she be the reason, why, All the world for love may die.

=2. 6. 72 These sister-swelling brests.= ‘This is an elegant and poetical rendering of the _sororiantes mammae_ of the Latins, which Festus thus explains: _Sororiare puellarum mammae dicuntur, cum primum tumescunt_.’--G.

=2. 6. 76 SN.= ‘Liberties very similar to these were, in the poet’s time, permitted by ladies, who would have started at being told that they had foregone all pretensions to delicacy.’--G.

The same sort of familiarity is hinted at in Stubbes, _Anatomy of Abuses_ (