The Devil is an Ass

by Ben Jonson

ACT III.

3. 1. 8 Innes of Court. ‘The four Inns of Court, Gray’s Inn, Lincoln’s Inn, the Inner, and the Middle Temple, have alone the right of admitting persons to practise as barristers, and that rank can only be attained by keeping the requisite number of terms as a student at one of those Inns.’—Wh-C.

Jonson dedicates Every Man out of his Humor ‘To the Noblest Nurseries of Humanity and Liberty in the Kingdom, the Inns of Court.’

3. 1. 10 a good man. Gifford quotes Merch. of Ven. 1. 3. 15: ‘My meaning in saying he is a good man, is, to have you understand me, that he is sufficient.’ Marston, Dutch Courtesan, Wks. 2. 57. uses the word in the same sense.

3. 1. 20 our two Pounds, the Compters. The London Compters or Counters were two sheriff’s prisons for debtors, etc., mentioned as early as the 15th century. In Jonson’s day they were the Poultry Counter and the Wood Street Counter. They were long a standing joke with the dramatists, who seem to speak from a personal acquaintance with them. Dekker (Roaring Girle, Wks. 3. 189) speaks of ‘Wood Street College,’ and Middleton (Phoenix, Wks. 1. 192) calls them ‘two most famous universities’ and in another place ‘the two city hazards, Poultry and Wood Street.’ Jonson in Every Man in (Wks. 1. 42) speaks of them again as ‘your city pounds, the counters’, and in Every man out refers to the ‘Master’s side’ (Wks. 2. 181) and the ‘two-penny ward,’ the designations for the cheaper quarters of the prison.

3. 1. 35 out of rerum natura. In rerum natura is a phrase used by Lucretius 1. 25. It means, according to the Stanford Dictionary, ‘in the nature of things, in the physical universe.’ In some cases it is practically equivalent to ‘in existence.’ Cf. Sil. Wom., Wks. 3. 382: ‘Is the bull, bear, and horse, in rerum natura still?’

3. 2. 12 a long vacation. The long vacation in the Inns of Court, which Jonson had in mind, lasts from Aug. 13 to Oct. 23. In Staple of News, Wks. 5. 170, he makes a similar thrust at the shop-keepers:

Alas I they have had a pitiful hard time on’t, A long vacation from their cozening.

3. 2. 22 I bought Plutarch’s liues. T. North’s famous translation first appeared in 1579. New editions followed in 1595, 1603, 1610-12, and 1631.

3. 2. 33 Buy him a Captaines place. The City Train Bands were a constant subject of ridicule for the dramatists. They are especially well caricatured by Fletcher in The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Act 5. In addition to the City Train Bands, the Fraternity of Artillery, now called The Honorable Artillery Company, formed a separate organization. The place of practice was the Artillery Garden in Bunhill Fields (see note [3. 2. 41]). In spite of ridicule the Train Bands proved a source of strength during the Civil War (see Clarendon, Hist. of the Rebellion, ed. 1826, 4. 236 and Wh-C., Artillery Ground).

Jonson was fond of poking fun at the Train Bands. Cf. U. 62, Wks. 8. 409; Ev. Man in, Wks. 1. 88; and Alchemist, Wks. 4. 13. Face, it will be remembered, had been ‘translated suburb-captain’ through Subtle’s influence.

The immediate occasion of Jonson’s satire was doubtless the revival of military enthusiasm in 1614, of which Entick (Survey 2. 115) gives the following account:

‘The military genius of the Londoners met with an opportunity, about this time, to convince the world that they still retained the spirit of their forefathers, should they be called out in the cause of their king and country. His majesty having commanded a general muster of the militia throughout the kingdom, the city of London not only mustered 6000 citizens completely armed, who performed their several evolutions with surprizing dexterity; but a martial spirit appeared amongst the rising generation. The children endeavoured to imitate their parents; chose officers, formed themselves into companies, marched often into the fields with colours flying and beat of drums, and there, by frequent practice, grew up expert in the military exercises.’

3. 2. 35 Cheapside. Originally Cheap, or West Cheap, a street between the Poultry and St. Paul’s, a portion of the line from Charing Cross to the Royal Exchange, and from Holborn to the Bank of England.

‘At the west end of this Poultrie and also of Buckles bury, beginneth the large street of West Cheaping, a market-place so called, which street stretcheth west till ye come to the little conduit by Paule’s Gate.’—Stow, ed. Thoms, p. 99.

The glory of Cheapside was Goldsmith’s Row (see note [3. 5. 2]). It was also famous in early times for its ‘Ridings,’ and during Jonson’s period for its ‘Cross,’ its ‘Conduit,’ and its ‘Standard’ (see note [1. 1. 56] and Wh—C.).

3. 2. 35 Scarfes. ‘Much worn by knights and military officers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.’—Planché.

3. 2. 35 Cornehill. Cornhill, between the Poultry and Leadenhall Street, an important portion of the greatest thoroughfare in the world, was, says Stow, ‘so called of a corn market time out of mind there holden.’ In later years it was provided with a pillory and stocks, a prison, called the Tun, for street offenders, a conduit of ‘sweet water’, and a standard. See Wh-C.

3. 2. 38 the posture booke. A book descriptive of military evolutions, etc. H. Peacham’s Compleat Gentleman, 1627 (p. 300, quoted by Wheatley, Ev. Mall in), gives a long list of ‘Postures of the Musquet’ and G. Markham’s Souldier’s Accidence gives another. Cf. Tale Tub, Wks. 6. 218:

—All the postures Of the train’d bands of the country.

3. 2. 41 Finsbury. In 1498, ‘certain grounds, consisting of gardens, orchards, &c. on the north side of Chiswell-street, and called Bunhill or Bunhill-fields, within the manor of Finsbury, were by the mayor and commonalty of London, converted into a large field, containing 11 acres, and 11 perches, now known by the name of the Artillery-ground, for their train-bands, archers, and other military citizens, to exercise in.’—Entick, Survey 1. 441.

In 1610 the place had become neglected, whereupon commissioners were appointed to reduce it ‘into such order and state for the archers as they were in the beginning of the reign of King Henry VIII.’ (Ibid. 2. 109). See also Stow, Survey, ed. Thoms, p. 159.

Dekker (Shomaker’s Holiday, Wks. 1. 29) speaks of being ‘turnd to a Turk, and set in Finsburie for boyes to shoot at’, and Nash (Pierce Pennilesse, Wks. 2. 128) and Jonson (Bart. Fair, Wks. 4. 507) make precisely similar references. Master Stephen in Every Man in (Wks. 1. 10) objects to keeping company with the ‘archers of Finsbury.’ Cf. also the elaborate satire in U. 62, (Wks. 8. 409).

3. 2. 45    to traine the youth
Of London, in the military truth. Cf. Underwoods 62:

Thou seed-plot of the war! that hast not spar’d Powder or paper to bring up the youth Of London, in the military truth.

Gifford believes these lines to be taken from a contemporary posture-book, but there is no evidence of quotation in the case of Underwoods.

3. 3. 22, 3  This comes of wearing
Scarlet, gold lace, and cut-works! etc. Webster has a passage very similar to this in the Devil’s Law Case, Wks. 2. 37 f.:

‘Ari. This comes of your numerous wardrobe. Rom. Ay, and wearing cut-work, a pound a purl. Ari. Your dainty embroidered stockings, with overblown roses, to hide your gouty ankles. Rom. And wearing more taffata for a garter, than would serve the galley dung-boat for streamers.... Rom. And resorting to your whore in hired velvet with a spangled copper fringe at her netherlands. Ari. Whereas if you had stayed at Padua, and fed upon cow-trotters, and fresh beef to supper.’ etc., etc.

For ‘cut-works’ see note [1. 1. 128].

3. 3. 24 With your blowne roses. Compare 1. 1. 127, and B. & Fl., Cupid’s Revenge:

No man to warm your shirt, and blow your roses.

and Jonson, Ep. 97, Wks. 8. 201:

His rosy ties and garters so o’erblown.

3. 3. 25 Godwit. The godwit was formerly in great repute as a table delicacy. Thomas Muffett in Health’s Improvement, p. 99, says: ‘A fat godwit is so fine and light meat, that noblemen (yea, and merchants too, by your leave) stick not to buy them at four nobles a dozen.’

Cf. also Sir T. Browne, Norf. Birds, Wks., 1835, 4. 319: God-wyts ... accounted the daintiest dish in England; and, I think, for the bigness of the biggest price.’ Jonson mentions the godwit in this connection twice in the Sil. Wom. (Wks. 3. 350 and 388), and in Horace, Praises of a Country Life (Wks. 9. 121) translates ‘attagen Ionicus’ by ‘Ionian godwit.’

3. 3. 26 The Globes, and Mermaides! Theatres and taverns. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps has proved that the Globe Theatre on the Bankside, Southwark, the summer theatre of Shakespeare and his fellows, was built in 1599. It was erected from materials brought by Richard Burbage and Peter Street from the theatre in Shoreditch. On June 29, 1613, it was destroyed by fire, but was rebuilt without delay in a superior style, and this time with a roof of tile, King James contributing to the cost. Chamberlaine, writing to Alice Carleton (June 30, 1614), calls the Globe Playhouse ‘the fairest in England.’ It was pulled down Apr. 15, 1644.

Only the Lord Chamberlain’s Company (the King’s Men) seems to have acted here. It was the scene of several of Shakespeare’s plays and two of Jonson’s, Every Man out and Every Man in (Halliwell-Phillips, Illustrations, p. 43). The term ‘summer theatre’ is applicable only to the rebuilt theatre (ibid., p. 44). In Ev. Man out (quarto, Wks. 2. 196) Johnson refers to ‘this fair-fitted Globe’, and in the Execration upon Vulcan (Wks. 8. 404) to the burning of the ‘Globe, the glory of the Bank.’ In Poetaster (Wks. 2. 430) he uses the word again as a generic term: ‘your Globes, and your Triumphs.’

There seem to have been two Mermaid Taverns, one of which stood in Bread Street with passage entrances from Cheapside and Friday Street, and the other in Cornhill. They are often referred to by the dramatists. Cf. the famous lines written by Francis Beaumont to Ben Jonson, B. & Fl., Wks., ed. 1883, 2. 708; City Match, O. Pl. 9. 334, etc. Jonson often mentions the Mermaid. Cf. Inviting a Friend, Wks. 8. 205:

Is a pure cup of rich Canary Wine, Which is the Mermaid’s now, but shall be mine.

On the famous Voyage, Wks. 8. 234:

At Bread-Street’s Mermaid having dined, and merry, Proposed to go to Holborn in a wherry.

Bart. Fair, Wks. 4. 356-7: ‘your Three Cranes, Mitre, and Mermaid-men!’

3. 3. 28 In veluet! Velvet was introduced into England in the fifteenth century, and soon became popular as an article of luxury (see Hill’s Hist. of Eng. Dress 1. 145 f.).

3. 3. 30 I’ the Low-countries. ‘Then went he to the Low Countries; but returning soone he betook himself to his wonted studies. In his service in the Low Countries, he had, in the face of both the campes, killed ane enemie and taken opima spolia from him.’—Conversations with William Drummond, Wks. 9. 388.

In the Epigram To True Soldiers Jonson says:

—I love Your great profession, which I once did prove. Wks. 8. 211.

3. 3. 32 a wench of a stoter! See variants. The word is not perfectly legible in the folios, which I have consulted, but is undoubtedly as printed. Cunningham believes ‘stoter’ to be a cheap coin current in the camps. This supplies a satisfactory sense, corresponding to the ‘Sutlers wife, ... of two blanks’ in the following line.

3. 3. 33 of two blanks! ‘Jonson had Horace in his thoughts, and has, not without some ingenuity, parodied several loose passages of one of his satires.’—G. Gifford is apparently referring to the close of Bk. 2. Sat. 3.

3. 3. 51 vn-to-be-melted. Cf. Every Man in, Wks. 1. 36: ‘and in un-in-one-breath-utterable skill, sir.’ New Inn, Wks. 5. 404: you shewed a neglect Un-to-be-pardon’d.’

3. 3. 62 Master of the Dependances! See Introduction. pp. [lvi], [lvii].

3. 3. 69 the roaring manner. Gifford defines it as the ‘language of bullies affecting a quarrel’ (Wks. 4. 483). The ‘Roaring Boy’ continued under various designations to infest the streets of London from the reign of Elizabeth until the beginning of the eighteenth century. Spark (Somer’s Tracts 2. 266) says that they were persons prodigall and of great expence, who having runne themselves into debt, were constrained to run into factions to defend themselves from danger of the law.’ He adds that divers of the nobility afforded them maintenance, in return for which ‘they entered into many desperate enterprises.’

Arthur Wilson (Life of King James I., p. 28), writing of the disorderly state of the city in 1604, says: ‘Divers Sects of vitious Persons going under the Title of Roaring Boyes, Bravadoes, Roysters, &c. commit many insolences; the Streets swarm night and day with bloody quarrels, private Duels fomented,’ etc.

Kastril, the ‘angry boy’ in the Alchemist, and Val Cutting and Knockem in Bartholomew Fair are roarers, and we hear of them under the title of ‘terrible boys’ in the Silent Woman (Wks. 3. 349). Cf. also Sir Thomas Overbury’s Character of a Roaring Boy (ed. Morley, p. 72): ‘He sleeps with a tobacco-pipe in his mouth; and his first prayer in the morning is he may remember whom he fell out with over night.’

3. 3. 71 the vapours. This ridiculous practise is satirized in Bart. Fair, Wks. 4. 3 (see also stage directions).

3. 3. 77 a distast. The quarrel with Wittipol.

3. 3. 79 the hand-gout. Jonson explains the expression in Magnetic Lady, Wks. 6. 61.

You cannot but with trouble put your hand Into your pocket to discharge a reckoning, And this we sons of physic do call chiragra, A kind of cramp, or hand-gout.

Cf. also Overbury’s Characters, ed. Morley, p. 63: ‘his liberality can never be said to be gouty-handed.’

3. 3. 81 Mint. Until its removal to the Royal Mint on Tower Hill in 1810, the work of coinage was carried on in the Tower of London. Up to 1640, when banking arose, merchants were in the habit of depositing their bullion and cash in the Tower Mint, under guardianship of the Crown (see Wh-C. under Royal Mint, and History of Banking in all the Leading Nations, London, 1896, 2. 1).

3. 3. 86-8 let ... hazard. Merecraft seems to mean: ‘You are in no hurry. Pray therefore allow me to defer your business until I have brought opportune aid to this gentleman’s distresses at a time when his fortunes are in a hazardous condition.’ The pregnant use of the verb timing and the unusual use of the word terms for a period of time render the meaning peculiarly difficult.

3. 3. 106 a Businesse. This was recognized as the technical expression. Sir Thomas Overbury ridicules it in his Characters, ed. Morley, p. 72: ‘If any private quarrel happen among our great courtiers, he (the Roaring Boy) proclaims the business—that’s the word, the business—as if the united force of the Roman Catholics were making up for Germany.’ Jonson ridicules the use of the word in similar fashion in the Masque of Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists.

3. 3. 133 hauings. Jonson uses the expression again in Ev. Man in, Wks. 1. 29, and Gipsies Met., Wks. 7. 364. It is also used in Muse’s Looking Glasse, O. Pl. 9. 175.

3. 3. 147 such sharks! Shift in Ev. Man in is described as a ‘threadbare shark.’ Cf. also Earle, Microcosmography, ed. Morley, p. 173.

3. 3. 148 an old debt of forty. See 2. 8. 100.

3. 3. 149 the Bermudas. See note [2. 1. 144]. Nares thinks that the real Bermudas are referred to here.

3. 3. 155 You shall ha’ twenty pound on’t. As Commission on the two hundred. ‘Ten in the hundred’ was the customary rate at this period (see Staple of News, Wks. 5. 189).

3. 3. 165 St. Georges-tide? From a very early period the 23d of April was dedicated to St. George. From the time of Henry V. The festival had been observed with great splendor at Windsor and other towns, and bonfires were built (see Shak, 1 Henry VI. 1. 1). The festival continued to be celebrated until 1567, when Elizabeth ordered its discontinuance. James I., however, kept the 23d of April to some extent, and the revival of the feast in all its glories was only prevented by the Civil War. So late as 1614 it was the custom for fashionable gentlemen to wear blue coats on St. George’s Day, probably in imitation of the blue mantle worn by the Knights of the Garter, an order created at the feast of St. George in 1344 (see Chambers’ Book of Days 1. 540).

The passages relating to this custom are Ram Alley, O. Pl., 2d ed., 5. 486:

By Dis, I will be knight, Wear a blue coat on great St. George’s day, And with my fellows drive you all from Paul’s For this attempt.

Runne and a great Cast, Epigr. 33:

With’s coram nomine keeping greater sway Than a court blew-coat on St. George’s day.

From these passages Nares concludes ‘that some festive ceremony was carried on at St. Paul’s on St. George’s day annually; that the court attended; that the blue-coats, or attendants, of the courtiers, were employed and authorised to keep order, and drive out refractory persons; and that on this occasion it was proper for a knight to officiate as blue coat to some personage of higher rank’.

In the Conversations with Drummond, Jonson’s Wks. 9. 393, we read: ‘Northampton was his mortal enimie for beating, on a St. George’s day, one of his attenders.’ Pepys speaks of there being bonfires in honor of St. George’s Day as late as Apr. 23, 1666.

3. 3. 166 chaines? PLV. Of gold, and pearle. The gold chain was formerly a mark of rank and dignity, and a century before this it had been forbidden for any one under the degree of a gentleman of two hundred marks a year to wear one (Statutes of the Realm, 7 Henry VIII. c. 6). They were worn by the Lord Mayors (Dekker, Shomaker’s Holiday, Wks. 1. 42), rich merchants and aldermen (Glapthorne, Wit for a Constable, Wks., ed. 1874, 1. 201-3), and later became the distinctive mark of the upper servant in a great family, especially the steward (see Nares and Ev. Man out, Wks. 2. 31). Massinger (City Madam, Wks., p. 334) speaks of wearing a chain of gold ‘on solemn days.’ With the present passage cf. Underwoods 62, Wks. 8. 410:

If they stay here but till St. George’s day. All ensigns of a war are not yet dead, Nor marks of wealth so from a nation fled, But they may see gold chains and pearl worn then, Lent by the London dames to the Lords’ men.

3. 3. 170 take in Pimlico. ‘Near Hoxton, a great summer resort in the early part of the 17th century and famed for its cakes, custards, and Derby ale. The references to the Hoxton Pimlico are numerous in our old dramatists.’—Wh—C. It is mentioned among other places in Greene’s Tu Quoque, The City Match, fol. 1639, News from Hogsdon, 1598, and Dekker, Roaring Girle, Wks. 3. 219, where it is spoken of as ‘that nappy land of spice-cakes.’ In 1609 a tract was published, called Pimlyco or Runne Red-Cap, ’tis a Mad World at Hogsdon.

Jonson refers to it repeatedly. Cf. Alch., Wks. 4. 155:

—Gallants, men and women. And of all sorts, tag-rag, been seen to flock here, In threaves, these ten weeks, as to a second Hogsden, In days of Pimlico and Eye-bright.

Cf. also Alch., Wks. 4. 151; Bart. Fair, Wks. 4. 357; and this play 4. 4. 164. In Underwoods 62 the same expression is used as in this passage:

What a strong fort old Pimlico had been! How it held out! how, last, ’twas taken in!—

Take in in the sense of ‘capture’ is used again in Every Man in, Wks. 1. 64, and frequently in Shakespeare (see Schmidt). The reference here, as Cunningham suggests, is to the Finsbury sham fights. Hogsden was in the neighborhood of Finsbury, and the battles were doubtless carried into its territory.

3. 3. 173 Some Bristo-stone or Cornish counterfeit. Cf. Heywood, Wks. 5. 317: ‘This jewell, a plaine Bristowe stone, a counterfeit.’ See Gloss.

3. 3. 184, 5       I know your Equiuocks:
You’are growne the better Fathers of ’hem o’ late.

‘Satirically reflecting on the Jesuits, the great patrons of equivocation.’—W.

‘Or rather on the Puritans, I think; who were sufficiently obnoxious to this charge. The Jesuits would be out of place here.’—G.

Why the Puritans are any more appropriate Gifford does not vouchsafe to tell us. So far as I have been able to discover the Puritans were never called ‘Fathers,’ their regular appellation being ‘the brethren’ (cf. Alch. and Bart. Fair). The Puritans were accused of a distortion of Scriptural texts to suit their own purposes, instances of which occur in the dramas mentioned above. On the whole, however, equivocation is more characteristic of the Jesuits. They were completely out of favor at this time. Under the generalship of Claudio Acquaviva, 1581-1615, they first began to have a preponderatingly evil reputation. In 1581 they were banished from England, and in 1601 the decree of banishment was repeated, this time for their suspected share in the Gunpowder Plot.

3. 3. 206, 7 Come, gi’ me Ten pieces more. The transaction with Guilthead is perhaps somewhat confusing. Fitzdottrel has offered to give his bond for two hundred pieces, if necessary. Merecraft’s ‘old debt of forty’ (3. 3. 149), the fifty pieces for the ring, and the hundred for Everill’s new office (3. 3. 60 and 83) ‘all but make two hundred.’ Fitzdottrel furnishes a hundred of this in cash, with the understanding that he receive it again of the gold-smith when he signs the bond (3. 3. 194). He returns, however, without the gold, though he seals the bond (3. 5. 1-3). Of the hundred pieces received in cash, twenty go to Guilthead as commission (3. 3. 155). This leaves forty each for Merecraft and Everill.

3. 3. 213 how th’ Asse made his diuisions. See Fab. cix, Fabulae Aesopicae, Leipzig, 1810, Leo, Asinus et Vulpes. Harsnet (Declaration, p. 110) refers to this fable, and Dekker made a similar application in Match me in London, 1631, Wks. 4. 145:

King. Father Ile tell you a Tale, vpon a time The Lyon Foxe and silly Asse did jarre. Grew friends and what they got, agreed to share: A prey was tane, the bold Asse did diuide it Into three equall parts, the Lyon spy’d it. And scorning two such sharers, moody grew, And pawing the Asse, shooke him as I shake you ... And in rage tore him peece meale, the Asse thus dead, The prey was by the Foxe distributed Into three parts agen; of which the Lyon Had two for his share, and the Foxe but one: The Lyon (smiling) of the Foxe would know Where he had this wit, he the dead Asse did show. Valasc. An excellent Tale. King. Thou art that Asse.

3. 3. 214 Much good do you. So in Sil. Wom., Wks. 3. 398: ‘Much good do him.’

3. 3. 217 And coozen i’ your bullions. Massinger’s Fatal Dowry, Wks., p. 272, contains the following passage: ‘The other is his dressing-block, upon whom my lord lays all his clothes and fashions ere he vouchsafes them his own person: you shall see him ... at noon in the Bullion,’ etc. In a note on this passage (Wks. 3. 390, ed. 1813) Gifford advanced the theory that the bullion was ‘a piece of finery, which derived its denomination from the large globular gilt buttons, still in use on the continent.’ In his note on the present passage, he adds that it was probably ‘adopted by gamblers and others, as a mark of wealth, to entrap the unwary.’

Nares was the next man to take up the word. He connected it with ‘bullion; Copper-plates set on the Breast-leathers and Bridles of Horses for ornament’ (Phillips 1706). ‘I suspect that it also meant, in colloquial use, copper lace, tassels, and ornaments in imitation of gold. Hence contemptuously attributed to those who affected a finery above their station.’

Dyce (B. & Fl., Wks. 7. 291) was the first to disconnect the word from bullion meaning uncoined gold or silver. He says: ‘Bullions, I apprehend, mean some sort of hose or breeches, which were bolled or bulled, i. e. swelled, puffed out (cf. Sad. Shep., Act 1. Sc. 2, bulled nosegays’).’

The NED. gives ‘prob. a. F. bouillon in senses derived from that of “bubble.”’

Besides the passages already given, the word occurs in B. & Fl., The Chances, Wks. 7. 291:

Why should not bilbo raise him, or a pair of bullions?

Beggar’s Bush, Wks. 9. 81:

In his French doublet, with his blister’d (1st fol. baster’d) bullions.

Brome, Sparagus Garden, Wks. 3. 152:

—shaking your Old Bullion Tronkes over my Trucklebed.

Gesta Gray in Nichols’ Prog. Q. Eliz. 3. 341 A, 1594: ‘A bullion-hose is best to go a woeing in; for tis full of promising promontories.’

3. 3. 231 too-too-vnsupportable! This reduplicated form is common in Shakespeare. See Merch. of Ven. 2. 6. 42; Hamlet 1. 2. 129; and Schmidt, Dict. Jonson uses it in Sejanus, Wks. 3. 54, and elsewhere. It is merely a strengthened form of too. (See Halliwell in Sh. Soc. Papers, 1884, 1. 39, and Hamlet, ed. Furness, 11th ed., 1. 41.) Jonson regularly uses the hyphen.

3. 4. 13 Cioppinos. Jonson spells the word as if it were Italian, though he says in the same sentence that the custom of wearing chopines is Spanish. The NED., referring to Skeat, Trans. Phil. Soc., 1885-7, p. 79, derives it from Sp. chapa, a plate of metal, etc. ‘The Eng. writers c 1600 persistently treated the word as Italian, even spelling it cioppino, pl. cioppini, and expressly associated it with Venice, so that, although not recorded in Italian Dicts. it was app. temporarily fashionable there.’ The statement of the NED. that ‘there is little or no evidence of their use in England (except on the stage)’ seems to be contradicted by the quotation from Stephen Gosson’s Pleasant Quippes (note 1. 1. 128). References to the chopine are common in the literature of the period (see Nares and NED.). I have found no instances of the Italianated form earlier than Jonson, and it may be original with him. He uses the plural cioppini in Cynthia’s Revels, Wks. 2. 241. See note [4. 4. 69].

3. 4. 32 your purchase. Cf. Alch., Wks. 4. 150, and Fox, Wks. 3. 168: ‘the cunning purchase of my wealth.’ Cunningham (Wks. 3. 498) says: ‘Purchase, as readers of Shakespeare know, was a cant term among thieves for the plunder they acquired, also the act of acquiring it. It is frequently used by Jonson.’

3. 4. 35 Pro’uedor. Gifford’s change to provedoré is without authority. The word is provedor, Port., or proveedor, Sp., and is found in Hakluyt, Voyages, 3. 701; G. Sandys, Trav., p. 6 (1632); and elsewhere, with various orthography, but apparently never with the accent.

3. 4. 43 Gentleman huisher. For the gentleman-usher see note [4. 4. 134]. The forms usher and huisher seem to be used without distinction. The editors’ treatment of the form is inconsistent. See variants, and compare 2. 7. 33.

3. 4. 45-8 wee poore Gentlemen ... piece. Cf. Webster, Devil’s Law Case, Wks. 2. 38: ‘You have certain rich city chuffs, that when they have no acres of their own, they will go and plough up fools, and turn them into excellent meadow.’ Also The Fox 2. 1:

—if Italy Have any glebe more fruitful than these fellows, I am deceived.

As source of the latter Dr. L. H. Holt (Mod. Lang. Notes, June, 1905) gives Plautus, Epidicus 2. 3. 306-7:

nullum esse opinor ego agrum in agro Attico aeque feracem quam hic est noster Periphanes.

3. 5. 2 the row. Stow (Survey, ed. 1633, p. 391) says that Goldsmith’s Row, ‘betwixt Breadstreete end and the Crosse in Cheap,’ is ‘the most beautifull Frame of faire houses and shops, that be within the Wals of London, or elsewhere in England.’ It contained ‘ten faire dwelling houses, and fourteene shops’ beautified with elaborate ornamentation. Howes (ed. 1631, p. 1045) says that at his time (1630) Goldsmith’s Row ‘was much abated of her wonted store of Goldsmiths, which was the beauty of that famous streete.’ A similar complaint is made in the Calendar of State Papers, 1619-23, p. 457, where Goldsmith’s Row is characterized as the ‘glory and beauty of Cheapside.’ Paul Hentzner (p. 45) speaks of it as surpassing all the other London streets. He mentions the presence there of a ‘gilt tower, with a fountain that plays.’

3. 5. 29, 30           answering
With the French-time, in flexure of your body.

This may mean bowing in the deliberate and measured fashion of the French, or perhaps it refers to French musical measure. See Gloss.

3. 5. 33 the very Academies. See note [2. 8. 20].

3. 5. 35 play-time. Collier says that the usual hour of dining in the city was twelve o’clock, though the passage in Case is Altered, Wks. 6. 331, seems to indicate an earlier hour:

Eat when your stomach serves, saith the physician, Not at eleven and six.

The performance of plays began at three o’clock. Cf. Histriomastix, 1610:

Come to the Town-house, and see a play: At three a’clock it shall begin.

See Collier, Annals 3. 377. Sir Humphrey Mildmay, in his Ms. Diary (quoted Annals 2. 70), speaks several times of going to the play-house after dinner.

3. 5. 39 his Damme. NED. gives a use of the phrase ‘the devil and his dam’ as early as Piers Plowman, 1393. The ‘devil’s dam’ was later applied opprobriously to a woman. It is used thus in Shakespeare, Com. Err. 4. 3. 51. The expression is common throughout the literature of the period.

3. 5. 43 But to be seene to rise, and goe away. Cf. Dekker, Guls Horne-booke, Non-dram. Wks. 2. 253: ‘Now sir, if the writer be a fellow that hath either epigrammd you, or hath had a flirt at your mistris, ... you shall disgrace him worse then by tossing him in a blancket ... if, in the middle of his play, ... you rise with a screwd and discontented face from your stoole to be gone: no matter whether the Scenes be good or no; the better they are the worse do you distast them.’

3. 5. 45, 6  But say, that he be one,
Wi’ not be aw’d! but laugh at you. In the Prologue to Massinger’s Guardian we find:

—nor dares he profess that when The critics laugh, he’ll laugh at them agen. (Strange self-love in a writer!)

Gifford says of this passage: ‘This Prologue contains many sarcastick allusions to Old Ben, who produced, about this time, his Tale of a Tub, and his Magnetic Lady, pieces which failed of success, and which, with his usual arrogance, (strange self-love in a writer!) he attributed to a want of taste in the audience.’—Massinger’s (Wks., ed. 1805, 4. 121.)

The Guardian appeared in 1633, two years after the printing of The Devil is an Ass. It seems certain that the reference is to the present passage.

3. 5. 47 pay for his dinner himselfe. The custom of inviting the poet to dinner or supper seems to have been a common one. Dekker refers to it in the Guls Horne-booke, Non-dram. Wks. 2. 249. Cf. also the Epilogue to the present play.

3. 5. 47 Perhaps, He would doe that twice, rather then thanke you. ‘This ill-timed compliment to himself, Jonson might have spared, with some advantage to his judgment, at least, if not his modesty.’—G.

3. 5. 53. See variants. Gifford’s change destroys the meaning and is palpably ridiculous.

3. 5. 77 your double cloakes. ‘I. e., a cloake adapted for disguises, which might be worn on either side. It was of different colours, and fashions. This turned cloke with a false beard (of which the cut and colour varied) and a black or yellow peruke, furnished a ready and effectual mode of concealment, which is now lost to the stage. ’—G.

3. 6. 2 canst thou get ne’r a bird? Throughout this page Merecraft and Pug ring the changes on Pitfall’s name.

3. 6. 15, 16 TRA. You must send, Sir.
The Gentleman the ring. Traines, of course, is merely carrying out Merecraft’s plot to ‘achieve the ring’ (3. 5. 67). Later (4. 4. 60) Merecraft is obliged to give it up to Wittipol.

3. 6. 34-6 What’ll you do, Sir? ...
Run from my flesh, if I could. For a similar construction cf. 1. 3. 21 and note.

3. 6. 38, 9 Woe to the seuerall cudgells,
Must suffer on this backe! Adapted from Plautus, Captivi 3. 4. 650:

Vae illis uirgis miseris, quae hodie in tergo morientur meo.

(Gifford mentions the fact that this is adapted from the classics. I am indebted for the precise reference to Dr. Lucius H. Holt.)

3. 6. 40 the vse of it is so present. For other Latinisms cf. resume, 1. 6. 149; salts, 2. 6. 75; confute, 5. 6. 18, etc.

3. 6. 61 I’ll ... See variants. The original reading is undoubtedly wrong.