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22 Plays
H4 V , 'He to Virginia, like some cheating Bankrout, and leaue my
Creditour ith'suddes'. J. Cooke, Greenes Tu quoque, 1614, B3 V : 'I am
spent, and this rogue has consumed me; I dare not walke abroade to
see my friends, for feare the Seneants should take acquaintance of me:
my refuge is Ireland, or Virginia] necessitie cries out, and I will presently
to Westchester.' In 1610 the Council of Virginia issued a True
Declaration of the estate of the Colonie in Virginia, With a confutation of
such scandalous reports as haue tended to the disgrace of so worthy an
enterprise', and again in 1612 the Council further authorized R. I.'s
work, The New Life of Virginea: Declaring the former successe and present
estate of that plantation, the author complaining in the dedication to Sir
Thomas Smith (A3 V ), that 'the mahtious and looser sort (being accompanied
with the licentious vaine of stage Poets) haue whet their tongues
with scornfull taunts against the action it selfe [i.e. the plantation], in
so much as there is no common speech nor publlke name of any thing
this day, (except it be the name of God) which is more vildly depraued,
traduced and derided by such vnhallowed lips, then the name of
Virginea'.
129. Dol Teare-sheet. Cf. E.M.O. v. ii. 22, 'a kinsman to mstice
Silence', for a similar reference to the second part of King Henry IV.
Cunningham noted that the name of the heroine in Jonson's next
comedy, Dol Common, was a blending of the two names given here.
ii. vi. ii, 12. omnia secunda; . . . saltat senex. A Roman proverb
elaborately explained by Erasmus in the Adagia, in. i. xl (1558, col. 742),
of various occasions when a religious rite was interrupted and the worshippers
coming back to renew it found that one old man had preserved
the rite unbroken by continuing to dance. It is here used generally:
'All's well; the old boy is cutting capers.'
17. the silenc'd ministers, i i. 11. 80.
23. vpon my dexterity. A suitable oath for a barber,
32. bride-ale. T. of T. I, i. 95.
42. sleek'd, smoothed. R. Holme, in The Academy of Armory, Part ii,
411-2, describes 'The Sleek stone, a ball made of glass, which Laundresses
and Drawers of Cloath use to polish or sleeken their Linnen with'.
56. for heate. Like Osnc in Hamlet, v. 11. 93-4.
57. is marshalling of. This construction was originally a verbal substantive:
'he is a marshalling of.' Cf. Timon of Athens, v. i. 183, 'Why,
I was writing of my epitaph'.
59. Sphinx. Sej. in. 65.
60. the beare-garden, or Paris Garden, on the Bank-side in Southwark.
Cf. iii. i. 16, Ep. cxxxiii. 117, Und. xliii. 147.
62. cups. The heads of the three animals would be represented on
the covers: Otter speaks of his 'bull-head' in iv. ii. 138.
iii. i. i. pauca verba. E.M.I. iv. ii. 40 ii.
4. You were best. In these phrases the 'you' was originally dative,