4 bow of Ulysses Penelope, Ulysses’ wife, after thwarting suitors who assumed that Ulysses was dead, was forced to agree to marry whichever of them could draw his bow. Ulysses arrived after his prolonged voyage on the way home from the Trojan war in time to show that he alone could use the bow, with which he shot them.
4 suitors Q1, Q2, Q3, W1 (shooters W2)
66–75 Nous…croît Montaigne, Essays, Book II, chapter xvii (Charles Cotton’s translation, 1685): ‘We are nothing but ceremony: ceremony carries us away, and we leave the substance of things: we hold by the branches and quit the trunk [and the body]: we have taught the ladies to blush when they hear but that named which they are not at all afraid to do: we dare not call our members by their right names, and are not at all afraid to employ them in all sorts of debauches: ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it; reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it’. The passage continues: ‘… for in the study, the subject of which is man, finding so great a variety of judgements, so great a labyrinth of difficulties one upon another, so great diversity and uncertainty, even in the school of wisdom itself: you may judge, seeing those people could not resolve upon the knowledge of themselves and their own condition, which is continually before their eyes and within them, seeing they do not know how that moves which they themselves move, nor how to give us a description of the springs they themselves govern and make use of, how can I believe them about the ebbing and flowing of the Nile?’
93–94 Hippolytus a character in Racine’s most recent play, Phèdre, first performed on 1 January 1677, and published later in the same year.
114 Chedreux a wig of a particular style, named after its French maker.
121 one Q1, W2 (om. Q2, Q3, W1)
143 picture of nature In Of Dramatic Poesy a play is denned as ‘a just and lively image of human nature, representing its passions and humours, and the changes of fortune to which it is subject; for the delight and instruction of mankind’ (Kinsley and Parfitt, op. cit., p. 25).
154–5 Rarus… Fortuna. Juvenal, Satires, VIII, 73–4:’… We seldom find/Much sense with an exalted fortune joined’ (Stepney’s translation in Dryden’s Juvenal, 1693).
159 nakedness Sir Charles Sedley and others appeared naked on the balcony of a tavern in London on 16 June 1663. In 1677, John Wilmot, 2nd earl of Rochester, and his guests were reported to have run naked through Woodstock Park.
166 Westminster Westminster Hall, part of Westminster Palace, was the principal seat of justice from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century.
170 Horace, Satires, I, i, 1–3.
182 Dionysius and Nero Dionysius I (c. 430–367 B.C), tyrant of Syracuse, and Nero Claudius Caesar (A.D. 37–68), emperor of Rome from A.D. 54 to 68, both fancied themselves poets despite an apparent lack of talent, and won acclaim through the use of their power.
199 thirty legions Montaigne, Essays, III, chapter vii includes this passage (Cotton’s translation): ‘the Emperor Adrian disputing with the philosopher Favorinus about the interpretation of some word, Favorinus soon yielded him the victory; for which his friends rebuking him; ‘You talk simpl/, said he; ‘would you not have him wiser than I who commands thirty legions?’.
202 Lucan Montaigne (Essays, II, chapter viii) says that Lucan was persecuted for his learning. In fact, Lucan (A.D. 39–65), after winning a prize for a poem in praise of Nero in A.D. 60, was forced to commit suicide because of his complicity in the Piso conspiracy.
205 grinning honour In 1 Henry IV Falstaff says of the dead Sir Walter Blunt: ‘I like not such grinning honour as Sir Walter hath’ (V. iii, 58).
208 Maecenas Seneca, Epistulae Morales, 114, 4–8. Seneca describes Maecenas (see All For Love, III, 68) as a man whose loose living marred his greatness.
211 Horace According to David M. Vieth (The Complete Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, New Haven and London, 1968, p. 120), Rochester’s An Allusion to Horace, the Tenth Satire of the First Book was written during the winter of 1675–76 and circulated in manuscript. Dryden is one of the main objects of his satire, and is attacked among other things for his attitude to Shakespeare and his contemporaries:
But does not Dryden find eVn Jonson dull;
Fletcher and Beaumont uncorrect, and full
Of lewd lines, as he calls ‘em; Shakespeare’s style
Stiff and affected; to his own the while
Allowing all the justness that his pride
So arrogantly had to these denied? (ll.81–6).
217 persecuting… Virgil Q1, Q2, Q3, W2 (procuring themselves reputation W1)
220 Zanies Zanni, the Commedia dell’Arte servant who imitates his master’s actions with ridiculous incompetence.
226 Crispinus In Satires, I, iv, 14–16, Crispinus challenges Horace to a competition to see who can write more quickly, and in Satires I, ix, Horace meets in the Via Sacra with a self-important would-be poet who boasts that he can write faster than anyone else. The fairly obvious identification of this poet with Crispinus is made in Jonson’s The Poetaster.
229 Demetri… Tigelli Demetrius is identified by Porphyrio with the ape who repeats Calvus and Catullus in Satires, 1, x, 18, and also trained actresses (Rochester was reputedly responsible for bringing Elizabeth Barry to the stage). Hermogenes Tigellius is described by Horace as a singer (Satires, I, ii and iii) and a fop (I, x, 17). The passage quoted (which normally reads ‘discipularum’) is Satires, I, x, 90–1. Rochester does not include any version of these lines in the Imitation: ‘Demetrius, and you, Tigellius, I bid you go and whine among your pupils’ easy chairs’. The theme of this satire is partly the inadequacy of some people’s judgement of poetry.
235–6 Saxum… arvis Aeneid, XII, 897–8, the description of the battle between Aeneas and Turnus, king of the Rutulians.
An antique stone he saw: the common bound
Of neighb’ring fields, and barrier of the ground…
(Dryden’s translation ll.1300–1; Poems, III, 1421).
240–2 Genua… ictum Aeneid, XII, 905–7, the continuation of the above passage. Turnus attempts to throw the rock at Aeneas:
His knocking knees are bent beneath the load,
And shivering cold congeals his vital blood.
The stone drops from his arms, and, falling short
For want of vigour, mocks his vain effort.
(ibid., ll.1308–11).
245 twelvepenny gallery the cheapest seats in the theatre.
Sternhold Thomas Sternhold (d. 1594) and John Hopkins (d. 1570) produced verse paraphrases of the Psalms. They were taken as types of the bad poet: see, for instance, The Second Part of Absalom and Achitophel, I.403.
248 lion’s skin Aesop’s fable of the ass who dressed himself in a lion’s skin but betrayed his identity by braying. See also the quotation from Juvenal, l.267 below.
250 magistrates Rochester’s Allusion to Horace ends:
I loathe the rabble; ’tis enough for me
If Sedley, Shadwell, Shepherd, Wycherley,
Godolphin, Butler, Buckhurst, Buckingham,
And some few more, whom I omit to name,
Approve my sense: I count their censure fame.
(ll.120–5, Complete Poems, p. 126).
261–2 Vellem… honestum Horace, Satires, I, iii, 41–2. After pointing out how a lover may not only be blind to his love’s failings, but may even be attracted by them, he says: ‘I could wish that we made the same mistake in friendship, and that our moral code gave an honourable name to such an error’.
263–4 slow man… drudge Rochester, An Allusion to Horace, ll.41–3:
Of all our modern wits, none seems to me
Once to have touched upon true comedy
But hasty Shadwell and slow Wycherley.
(Complete Poems, pp. 122–3)
265–8 Canibus… violentius Juvenal, Satires, VIII, 34–7: ‘Lazy curs, bald with chronic mange, who lick the edges of a dry lamp, will hear the names of “Leopard” “Tiger” “Lion”, or of whatever else in the world roars more fiercely’. The passage concludes: ‘Be therefore careful, lest the world in jest/Should thee just so with a mock-title greet’, (Stepney’s translation). There follows an attack on Rubellius Blandus for his pride solely in his kinship to Nero, from which the quotation (ll. 154–5; above) is taken.
271–2 Nigra…est, etc. Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, TV, 1160, 1164.
The sallow skin is for the swarthy put,
And love can make a slattern of a slut…
She stammers, oh what grace in lisping lies;
If she says nothing, to be sure she’s wise.
(Dryden’s translation, ll.145–6, 151–2; Poems, I, 417).
273 ad Aethiopem cygnum Juvenal, Satires, VIII, 33 (the start of the passage quoted above (1.265):’ [to call] an Ethiope a swan’). When Rochester, banished from the Court, returned to London disguised as a mountebank, he set up shop next to an inn called the Black Swan.
279 Rymer The Tragedies of the Last Age Considered and Examined by the Practice of the Ancients and by the Common Sense of All Ages by Thomas Rymer (1641–1713) was published just before All For Love in 1678.
282–3 Vos… diurna Horace, Ars Poetica, 11.268–9. ‘For yourselves, study greek models by day, study them by night’.
286 Oedipus Tyrannus Dryden collaborated with Nathaniel Lee in writing Oedipus, based on the plays of Sophocles, Seneca, and Corneille, staged in September 1678, and published in 1679.
297 Jonson In To the Memory of my Beloved, The Author Mr. William Shakespeare in the First Folio, Jonson wrote: ‘And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek…’ (1.31).
301 Fletcher In terms purely of frequency of production during the Restoration period, the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher were more popular than the plays of any other Elizabethan or Jacobean dramatist. A comparison of Shakespeare and Fletcher is made by Dryden in ’The Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy’, part of the Preface to Troilus and Cressida (1679).