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30 Plays
56. Amadis de Gaule, the greatest of the old romances of chivalry.
Remodelled probably by Juan Lobeira, a troubadour at the court of
King Denis, who may have translated it from a French fabliau (Mod.
Lang. Rev. ii, p. 169). The first edition was printed at Saragossa in
1508. Jonson ranked the work among
publique Nothings;
Abortiues of the fabulous, darke cloyster.
(N.I. i. vi. 126-7.)
and he refers to it contemptuously in the 'Execration upon Vulcan'
(Und. xlm. 29). Compare Dray ton,' Epistle To Master William Jeffreys',
added to The Battaile of Agincourt, 1627, p. 215:
By whom that trash of Amadis de Gaule,
Is held an author most authenticall.
The work would not be recommended to Jonson by Anthony Munday's
translations of the first book in 1590.
Don Quixote. Jonson was equally hostile to this great romance; he
couples it with Amadis de Gaule in Und. xliii. 29. Robert Burton in
The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621, p. 353, gives a solemn warning against
' such Inamoratoes as read nothing but play-bookes, Idle Poems, lests,
Amadis de Gaul, the Knight of the Sun, the seauen Champions, Palmenn
de Oliua, Huon of Burdeaux, &c. Such many times proue in the ende
as mad as Don Quixot.'
57-66. come abroad . . . Ovid, A.A. i. 49, 50, 89-92, 97-9, 42-4:
Tu quoque, materiam longo qui quaeris amori,
ante frequens quo sit disce puella loco. . . .
Sed tu praecipue curvis venare theatns:
haec loca sunt voto fertiliora tuo.
Illic invenies quod ames, quod ludere possis,
quodque semel tangas, quodque tenere veils. . . .
Sic ruit in celebres cultissima femina ludos:
copia iudicium saepe morata meum est.
Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsae. . . .
Ehge cui dicas ' tu mihi sola places'.
Haec tibi non tenues veniet delapsa per auras:
quaerenda est ocuhs apta puella tujs.
65. droning a tobacco pipe. E.M.O. iv. in. 84 n.
67. neuer the neere. T. of T. epilogue, 16.
73. Think he can vanquish them. . . Virgil's 'possunt quia posse
videntur' (Aen. v. 231).
74-9. Penelope her selfe. Ovid, A.A. i. 477-86:
Penelopen ipsam, persta modo, tempore vinces.
Capta vides sero Pergama, capta tamen. . . .