7. Though none did. His suit had once been fashionable, but, though still serviceable, was of a sort no longer worn by his fellow townsmen.
25. The coffee-roaster's brazier. The coffee is roasted in a dish that is made to revolve over the coals in an open pan or basin.
74. Beyond the Jewry. Beyond the Jew's quarter, a squalid portion of the city.
90. The Corregidor. The Spanish title for a magistrate.
104. Here had been. The poet, misconceived by his generation, poor, and lonely, has yet a great spiritual personality. Men see the old coat. God, the King for whom he works, sees his real nature; hence heavenly guards attend when this man comes to die.
115. The Prado. The chief fashionable promenade of Madrid.
[FRA LIPPO LIPPI]
Fra Lippo Lippi was born in Florence in 1406. See Vasari's Lives of the Painters for the account of his life on which Browning based his poem. (Vasari's account is quoted in Cooke's Browning Guide Book.)
2. You need not clap your torches. Throughout this lively dramatic monologue it is important to mark every indication of the words or gestures of the auditors; for instance, in lines 13, 18, 26, etc.
7. The Carmine. Fra Lippo Lippi's entrance into the monastery of the friars del Carmine and his education there are described later in the poem. He lived there till he was twenty-six. He had no vocation for the life of a monk and wished to devote himself to painting. He apparently left the monastery on good terms with the friars.