1. Though Jonson’s poem is based on the Epistles of Philostratus, it is not so much a translation as a synthesis of scattered passages. The similarities are startling, as these extracts from Philostratus show: ‘So set the cups down and leave them alone, especially for fear of their fragility; and drink to me only with your eyes; it was such a draught that Zeus too drank – and took to himself a lovely boy to bear his cup. And, if it please you, do not squander the wine, but pour in water only, and, bringing it to your lips, fill the cup with kisses and so pass it to the thirsty’ (33); ‘I first and foremost, when I see you, feel thirst, and against my will stand still, and hold the cup back; and I do not bring it to my lips, but I know that I am drinking of you’ (32); ‘And if ever you sip from the cup all that is left becomes warmer with your breath and sweeter than nectar. At all events it slips by a clear passage down to the throat, as if it were mingled not with wine but with kisses’ (60); ‘I have sent you a garland of roses, not to honour you (though I would like to do that as well), but to do a favour to the roses themselves, so that they may not wither’ (2). The beautiful melody of ‘Drinke to me, onely, with thine eyes’ is traditional; the first known copy was published in London around 1790 as ‘A favourite glee for three voices’.

2. Jonson’s views on literary borrowings can be found in Discoveries: ‘The third requisite in our poet or maker is imitation, to be able to convert the substance or riches of another poet to his own use […] Not to imitate servilely (as Horace saith) and catch at vices for virtue, but to draw forth out of the best and choicest flowers, with the bee, and turn all into honey […]’

1. Sung to Celia by Volpone in Act III of Volpone. The poem is actually a version of Catullus’s famous poem ‘Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus’, which Jonson later included in The Forrest.

2. try, taste.

3. trifles.

1. Salomon was a thirteen-year-old boy chorister-actor who, according to Jonson’s conceit, acted the roles of old men with such conviction that the Fates took pity on him. He acted in Jonson’s Cynthia’s Revels and The Poetaster.

2. The Fates.

1. From Cynthia’s Revels, Act I, sc. ii. The play was premiered at the Blackfriars Theatre in January 1600 by the Children of the Chapel, a theatre company that consisted solely of boy actors, who were chosen for their looks and voices, before being trained.

2. A ‘division’ is both the dividing of slow notes into quick ones, and separation from a person.

1. It is sung in Act II, sc. vi, of The Devil is an Ass (1616) by Wittipol, a young Gallant, who with his friend Manly seeks to seduce Mrs Frances Fitzdottrel, the wife of a foolish country squire. For a fuller version of the poem, see ‘Her Triumph’ from Under-woods.

2. The last ten lines were also set by Delius, as one of his Four Old English Lyrics (1919), and Elizabeth Maconchy (1930).

1. from Cynthia’s Revels, Act IV, sc. iii.

1. Sung in Cynthia’s Revels, Act V, sc. vi, by Hesperus. Diana (Cynthia) is the goddess of the moon, chastity and hunting. Hesperus is the name given to the planet Venus when it appears after sunset.