Of course it may be said that l. 2006 is entirely independent of l. 2007, and I have punctuated the text so as to suit this arrangement; but the suggestion is worth notice.
2011. From Tes. vii. 35:—'Videvi ancora l'allegro Furore.'—Kölbing.
2017. hoppesteres. Speght explains this word by pilots (gubernaculum tenentes); Tyrwhitt, female dancers (Ital. ballatrice). Others explain it hopposteres = opposteres = opposing, hostile, so that schippes hoppesteres = bellatrices carinae (Statius). As, however, it is impossible to suppose that even opposteres without the h can ever have been formed from the verb to oppose, the most likely solution is that Chaucer mistook the word bellatrices in Statius (vii. 57) or the corresponding Ital. word bellatrici in the Teseide, vii. 37, for ballatrices or ballatrici, which might be supposed to mean 'female dancers'; an expression which would exactly correspond to an M. E. form hoppesteres, from the A. S. hoppestre, a female dancer. Herodias' daughter is mentioned (in the dative case) as þære lyðran hoppystran (better spelt hoppestran) in Ælfric's A. S. Homilies, ed. Thorpe, i. 484. Hence shippes hoppesteres simply means 'dancing ships.' Shakespeare likens the English fleet to 'A city on the inconstant billows dancing'; Hen. V. iii. prol. 15. Cf. O. F. baleresse, a female dancer, in Godefroy's Dict., s. v. baleor. In § 55 of Cl. Ptolomaei Centum Dicta, printed at Ulm in 1641, we are told that Mars is hostile to ships when in the zenith or the
eleventh house. 'Incendetur autem nauis, si ascendens ab aliqua stella fixa quae ex Martis mixtura sit, affligetur.' So that, if a fixed star co-operated with Mars, the ships were burnt.
The following extract from Lewis' translation of Statius' Thebaid, bk. vii., is of some interest:—
'Beneath the fronting height of Æmus stood
The fane of Mars, encompass'd by a wood.
The mansion, rear'd by more than mortal hands,
On columns fram'd of polish'd iron stands;
The well-compacted walls are plated o'er