David Bruce: Ben Jonson's THE NEW INN, OR THE LIGHT HEART: A Retelling (Free PDF)

Ben Jonson's THE NEW INN, OR THE LIGHT HEART: A Retelling (Free PDF) 

Ben Jonson’s 

The New Inn, 

Or The Light Heart: 

A Retelling

 

David Bruce

 

 

 

 

DEDICATED TO MOM AND DAD

 

Copyright 2021 by Bruce D. Bruce

 

Educate Yourself

Read Like A Wolf Eats

Feel Free to Give This Book to Anyone Free of Charge

Be Excellent to Each Other

Do you know a language other than English? If you do, I give you permission to translate this book, copyright your translation, publish or self-publish it, and keep all the royalties for yourself. (Do give me credit, of course, for the original retelling.)

I would like to see my retellings of classic literature used in schools. Teachers need not actually teach my retellings. Teachers are welcome to give students copies of my eBooks as background material. For example, if they are teaching Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, teachers are welcome to give students copies of my Virgil’s Aeneid:A Retelling in Prose and tell students, “Here’s another ancient epic you may want to read in your spare time.”

Books Then, Books Now, Books Forever

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cast of Characters                                                           1

Chapter 1                                                                          5

Chapter 2                                                                        37

Chapter 3                                                                        89

Chapter 4                                                                      130

Chapter 5                                                                      176

Editions                                                                         201

Notes                                                                             202

Appendix A: About the Author                                  213

Appendix B: Some Books by David Bruce                214

 

 

 

CAST OF CHARACTERS

THE SCENE: Barnet, England

https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/GOODSTOCK, the HOST of the inn.

LOVEL, a complete and consummate gentleman, a soldier and a scholar, and a melancholic guest in the inn. At one point in the play, the Host asks him whether his name is Love-ill or Love-well. 

https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/FERRET, who is also calledSTOAT and VERMIN, is Lovel’s man-servant, a fellow of a quick, nimble wit. His names suggest leanness. 

https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/FRANK, the Host’s son, borrowed to be dressed as a lady.

NURSE, a poor charwoman in the inn, with an eyepatch over one eye, who tends the Host’s son.

FRANCES, the Lady Frampul, reputed the Lord Frampul’s sole daughter and heir, the barony descending upon her. She is a lady of great fortunes and beauty, but she is fantastical (devoted to fancies). She thinks nothing a felicity but to have a multitude of servants (men who admire her) and be called mistress by them. She comes to the inn to be merry, with only a chambermaid and her guests, etc. The word “frampold” means “bad tempered, cross, and peevish.” But applied to a horse, it means “spirited, fiery, and mettlesome.” 

https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/PRUDENCE, the chambermaid, is elected sovereign of the entertainments in the inn; as Queen of the Festivities, she governs and commands all. Prudence is the Lady Frampul’s secretary, aka confidant.

LORD LATIMER and LORD BEAUFORT are a pair of young lords who are guests to the Lady Frampul. Both of them fall enamored of persons at the inn. Old French latimier means “Latin speaker.” A beau fort is a beautiful fortress. Lord Beaufort is attracted to beauty.

SIR GLORIOUS TIPTOE, a knight and colonel, has the luck to think well of himself and to think he is without a rival. He talks gloriously of anything, but he is very seldom in the right. He is Lady Frampul’s guest and her love-servant, too. He becomes friends with the Fly of the inn and the “militia” below stairs, and the servants Trundle, Barnaby, etc. His kind of “glorious” is “vainglorious.” A man who goes on tip toes is a man who bears himself with pride.

https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/FLY is the parasite of the inn, the “inspector-general” of the house, one who is the inflamer of the reckonings — that is, he inflates customers’ bills. A parasite lives off someone else.

https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/PIERCE, the drawer, knighted by Colonel Tiptoe, is called by him SIR PIERCE and is aka younghttps://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/ANON, one of the chief of the“infantry,” aka metaphorical foot-soldiers. A drawer is a bartender. Bartenders had to pierce casks of alcoholic beverages, and they cried “Anon” — “Soon” — to customers who required their help. 

https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/JORDAN, the chamberlain, another of the metaphorical militia and a metaphorical officer, commands the tertia — the “regiment,” as of infantry — of the beds. A jordan is a chamber pot.

JUG, a tapster, is a thoroughfare of news — he collects and shares gossip. A tapster is a bartender.

https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/PECK, the ostler. An ostler is a hostler: one who takes care of horses. A peck is a measure of the oats that horses eat.

BAT BURST, a broken citizen, is an in-and-in man. Brick-bats could be used to break things. “Burst” means bankrupt. “In-and-in” was a dice game. Bat Burst is a bankrupt gambler.

https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/HODGE HUFFLE, Bar Burst’s champion. “Huffle” means “bluster.” “Hodge” is a nickname for someone named Roger. In Elizabethan and Jacobean theater, Roger is often the name of a rustic character.

NICK STUFF, Lady Frampul’s tailor. Tailors were stereotyped as dishonest and lecherous. Stuff is woven fabric.

https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/PINNACIA, a wife. A pinnace is a go-between or bawd. A pinnace is also a boat.

https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/TRUNDLE, a coachman.

https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/BARNABY, a hired coachman.

STAGGERS, the blacksmith. https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Only talked about. He is frequently drunk.

TREE, the saddler. https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Only talked about. A saddler makes, repairs, and buys and sells saddles. A tree is the framework of a saddle.

FIDDLERS.

SERVANTS.

NOTE

Ben Jonson’s society existed before the age of modern medicine. Doctors in his society believed that the human body had four humors, or vital fluids. Each humor made a contribution to the personality, and for a human being to be sane and healthy, the four humors had to be present in the right amounts. If a man had too much of a certain humor, it would harm his personality and health.

Blood was the sanguine humor. A sanguine man was optimistic.

Phlegm was the phlegmatic humor. A phlegmatic man was calm.

Yellow bile was the choleric humor. A choleric man was angry. 

Black bile was the melancholic humor. A melancholic man was gloomy.

 

CHAPTER 1

— 1.1 —

The Host of the Light Heart Inn and Ferret, the servant of Lovel, a melancholic guest at the inn, talked together. The Host had a light heart — he was usually cheerful — and he wanted his customers to also have light hearts.

The sign of the Light Heart Inn could be seen from where they stood. It was a two-sided sign with a rebus — a pictorial representation of a name or proverb — on each side. One rebus depicted “Light Heart,” and the other depicted “A heavy purse makes a light heart.”

The Host said, “I am not pleased — indeed, you are in the right — nor is my house pleased if my sign could speak, the sign of the Light Heart.”

He pointed at the sign and said, “There you may read it; so may your master, too, if he looks at it.

“It shows a heart weighed in a scale with a feather, and outweighed, too, by the feather! This rebus is a brain-child of my own, and I am proud of it!”

A rebus is a pictorial representation of a name. The heart in the scale outweighed by a feather means “light heart.” The word “light” can also mean happy and frivolous.

The Host continued, “And if His Worship — your master, Lovel — thinks to be melancholy here in spite of me or my wit, he is deceived.

“I will maintain the rebus against all humors and all complexions in the body of man or in the isle of Britain. That’s my word!”

A humor is a characteristic disposition. Lovel’s humor was to be melancholic. The Host’s humor was to be light and cheerful and sanguine.

“You have reason for your belief, my good Host,” Ferret said.

“Sir, I have rhyme, too,” the Host said.

He turned the sign to the other side and said, “Whether it be by chance or art, ‘a heavy purse makes a light heart.’ There it is expressed!”

The sign showed the images of a purse of gold and two turtle-doves and a heart with a lantern or a candle inside it.

“First, a purse of gold means ‘a heavy purse’, and then two turtle-doves, who are mates for life, means ‘makes,’ and then a heart with a light stuck in it means ‘a light heart’!”

The Host continued, “Old Abbot Islip could not invent better, nor could Prior Bolton with his bolt and tun.”

Abbot Islip and Prior Bolton also had rebuses. Abbot Islip’s rebus showed an eye and the slip of a tree. A slip is a small cutting that can be used for grafting. Prior Bolton’s rebus showed a bird-bolt and a tun. A bird-bolt is a weapon such as a blunt arrow used to kill birds, and a tun is a large cask of beer or wine.

The Host continued, “I am an innkeeper and know my grounds — my fundamental principles — and I study them; by the brain of man, I study them.

“I must have jovial guests to drive my plows and whistling boys to bring my harvest home, or I shall hear no flails thwack. “

The Host needed jovial guests who would drink and be merry and pay their bills at the inn.

Flails were tools used when harvesting grain. The Host harvested metaphorical grain when his customers paid their bills.

The Host continued, “Here your master and you have been this fortnight, drawing fleas out of my mats and impounding them in cages — flea-traps — cut out of cards, and those roped round with packthread drawn through bird-lime — a fine and subtle trick!”

Bird-lime was a sticky substance used to catch birds. 

The Host continued, “Or your master and you have been poring through a magnifying glass at a captive crab-louse or a cheese-mite, which are to be dissected, as the jokes of nature, with a clean, bright Spanish needle — such speculations do become the age, I confess!”

Lovel was a natural scientist; he studied nature and its creatures.

The Host continued, “As if measuring an ant’s eggs in relation to the silkworm’s eggs with an ingenious instrument of thread shall give you their just difference, to a hair!

“Or else the reviving of dead flies with crumbs — another ingenious experiment of natural science — which I have seen you busy at through the key-hole, but never had the fate to see a fly —”

Lovel entered the room as the Host continued to speak:

“— alive in your cups nor have I once heard, ‘Drink, my Host,’ nor some other such cheerful chirping charm come from you.”

— 1.2 —

“What’s that?” Lovel asked. “What’s that?”

He stood with crossed arms — the sign of a melancholic man.

Ferret, Lovel’s servant, said to him, “A buzzing of my Host about a fly! A complaining murmur that he has.”

The Host said to Lovel, “Sir, I am telling your stoat here, Monsieur Ferret — for I hear that’s his name — and I dare tell you, sir, that if you have a mind to be melancholy and musty, there’s other places for you to reside. There’s Footman’s Inn at the town’s end, by which I mean the stocks, or Carrier’s Place, at the sign of the Broken Wain.”

Stocks are used to punish criminals. The criminals’ head, hands, and/or feet would be restrained, and people who did not like the criminals could torment them. 

A wain is a wagon. The Broken Wain Inn had the image of a broken wagon on its sign.

Charles’ Wain, which is part of the constellation Ursa Major (Big Bear), resembles a wagon.

The Host continued, “They are mansions of state! Take up your harbor — your lodging — there. At these mansions of state, there are both flies and fleas, and all variety of vermin for inspection or dissection.”

These “mansions of state” were poor inns.

Lovel replied, “We have set our rest up here, sir, in your Light Heart Inn. This is our long-term lodging.”

“Sir, set your heart at rest, you shall not do it — unless you can be jovial,” the Host said. “By the brain of man, be jovial first and drink, and dance and drink!

“Your lodging here with your daily states of melancholy is an absolute libel against my house and me. And, then, your scandalous commons — your daily food —”

“— what about it, my Host?” Lovel interrupted.

“Sir, they do scandalize upon the road, here,” the Host said. 

The Light Heart Inn was in a good location on a well-traveled road, and the Host felt that his customers ought to eat better food that Lovel had been ordering. 

The Host continued, “A poor quotidian — ordinary — neck of mutton, roasted dry, to be grated! And that driven down with beer and buttermilk mingled together or with clarified — separated — whey instead of claret wine!

“It is against my freehold, my inheritance, my Magna Carta, cor laetificat, to drink such balderdash or bonny-clabber!” 

Psalm 104.15 states, “Et vinem laetificat cor hominis.” This means, “And wine gladdens the heart of man.”

Balderdash is adulterated beer. It can be beer mixed with wine, or beer mixed with milk. The word also means “a jumble of words” in addition to meaning “a jumble of liquors.”

Bonny-clabber is sour buttermilk.

A good customer ate good cuts of meat and drank good wine. Lovel was not a good customer.

The Host continued, “Give me good wine, whether it is from a Catholic country or a Christian country.”

This society was anti-Catholic, but the Host did not care from which kind of country wine came from, as long as it was good wine.

The Host continued, “Wine is the word that gladdens the heart of man, and mine’s the house of wine. ‘Sack,’ says my bush; ‘be merry and drink sherry’ — that’s my posy!”

Sack is white wine. Sherry is an alcoholic drink.

A “bush” is a bunch of ivy. It was hung up as a sign of an inn. The Host may be using “bush” metaphorically — his sign is much different from a bunch of ivy. Or he may have had a bunch of ivy as well as his sign advertising his inn.

A “posy” or “poesy” is a short saying engaged on the inside of a ring. 

The Host’s personal motto was “Be merry and drink sherry.”

The Host continued, “For I shall never feel joy in my Light Heart Inn as long as I conceive a sullen guest or anything that’s earthy!”

Melancholic people were associated with the earth, which was thought to be heavy and dull.

“Capricious Host!” Lovel exclaimed.

“I don’t care if I am capricious,” the Host said.

“But you are airy — cheerful — also,” Lovel said. “I am not trying to defraud you of your rights, or encroach upon your privileges or great charter — for those are every ostler’s language now.”

Some ostlers talked about their rights and privileges. Some highly born people thought that these ostlers were acting above their station in life.

Lovel continued, “I say you were born beneath those smiling stars that have made you lord and owner of the Heart, of the Light Heart in Barnet; however, allow those of us who are more saturnine to enjoy the shade of your good roof yet.”

The Host was jovial and usually cheerful; Lovel was saturnine and often gloomy.

“Sir, I keep no shades nor shelters, I, for either owls or reremice,” the Host said.

Shades are sequestered places.

Reremice are bats.

Owls and bats are birds of the night. They are regarded as ominous signs.

— 1.3 —

Frank, the Host’s son, entered the room.

Ferret said to the Host, “He’ll make you a bird of night, sir.”

One kind of figurative bird of night is a procurer.

The Host had given Ferret no reason to think that about him.

This was a rough kind of joking.

The Host spoke quietly to Frank, “Bless you, child.”

He then said to Lovel and Ferret, “You’ll make yourselves such.”

Another kind of figurative bird of night is a thief.

Lovel and Ferret had given the Host no reason to think that about them.

This was a rough kind of joking.

“Is that boy your son, my Host?” Lovel asked.

“He’s all the sons I have, sir,” the Host answered.

“Pretty boy!” Lovel said. “Does he go to school?”

Ferret answered for the Host, “Oh, Lord, sir, he prates Latin as if he were a parrot or a boy-actor on the stage.”

Lovel said, “You … praise him fitly.”

“To the pitch he flies, sir,” Ferret said.

The pitch is the highest point of a bird of prey’s flight.

Ferret continued, “He’ll tell you what is the Latin for a looking-glass, a beard-brush, a rubber, or a quick warming pan.”

“What’s the meaning of that?” Lovel said.

Ferret bawdily explained:

“A wench, in the inn-phrase, is all of these: a looking-glass in her eye, a beard-brush with her lips, a rubber with her hand, and a warming pan with her hips.”

Ferret was punning. A rubber can be a towel as well as a hand, and the word “quick” can mean “living,” as in “quick warming pan,” or it can mean a fast (quickly) warming pan.

A Scotch warming pan is a wench; a traveler in Scotland wanted his bed warmed before he got into it, so a serving-maid lay in his bed and warmed it. As you would expect, in some versions of this tale, the serving-maid takes off her clothes.

“This is in your scurrilous dialect,” the Host said. “But my inn knows no such language.”

“That’s because, my Host,” Ferret said, “you profess the teaching him yourself.”

The Host, who kept bad language out of his inn because of his child, said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Sir, I do teach him somewhat. By degrees and with a funnel, I make shift to fill the narrow vessel; he is but yet a bottle.”

“Oh, let him lose no time, though,” Lovel said.

“Sir, he does not,” the Host replied. 

“And let him less lose his manners,” Lovel said.

Both education and manners are important.

“I provide for those, too,” the Host replied.

He then said, “Come hither, Frank. Speak to the gentleman in Latin. He is melancholy; say that I long to see him merry, and merrily I would like to treat him.”

Frank said to Lovel, “Subtristis visu’ es esse aliquantulum patri, qui te laute excipere, atque etiam tractare gestit.”

This means, “You present a somewhat melancholic appearance to my father, who is eager to welcome and treat you cheerfully.”

Lovel said, “Pulchre.”

This means, “Excellent.”

The Host said to Frank, “Tell him that I fear that his excessive reservedness bodes for us some ill luck.”

Frank said to Lovel, “Veretur pater, ne quid nobis mali ominis apportet iste nimis praeclusus vultus.”

This means, “My father is afraid that a too-reserved face will bring an evil omen to us.”

“Belle,” Lovel said. “Prettily spoken. A fine child!”

He then asked, “You would not part with him, my Host?”

The Host asked, “Who told you I would not?”

“I am only asking you,” Lovel replied.

“And I answer: To whom? For what?” the Host said.

“To me,” Lovel said, “To be my page.”

A page is a boy who is the personal attendant to a man of rank who can educate him in chivalry and gentlemanly behavior.

The Host replied, “I know no mischief yet that the child has done to deserve such a destiny.”

“Why do you say that?” Lovel asked.

Usually, people regarded being a page as a good thing.

“Go down, boy,” the Host said to Frank, “and get your breakfast.”

Both Frank and Ferret exited.

The Host then said to Lovel, “Trust me, I would rather take a fair noose, wash my hands, and hang him myself, make a clean riddance of him, than —”

Surprised, Lovel said, “What!”

The Host continued, “— than damn him to that desperate course of life.” 

Lovel said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Do you call being a page desperate, this occupation which by a line of institution, law, and custom from our ancestors has been conveyed down to us, and received in a succession, to be the noblest way of breeding up our youth in letters, arms, fair carriage and bearing, discourses, civil exercise, and all the blazon — record of virtues — of a gentleman?

https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/“Where can he learn to vault, to ride, to fence, to move his body more gracefully, to speak his language purer, or to tune his mind or manners more to the harmony of nature than in these nurseries of nobility?”

The Host said, “What you say was true. Yes, that was true when the nursery’s self was noble, and when only virtue made it, not the market, when titles were not offered for sale at the drum of public proclamation or common auction; when goodness gave the greatness, and when greatness gave the recognition and respect. Then, every house became an academy of honor, and those parts — well, we see those parts deviated from in the practice now, quite far from the institution.”

In other words, all of these virtues that were practiced then are no longer practiced now. The “virtues” of the Host’s “today” bear little resemblance to their originals. “Today,” for example, King James I sells titles for money when previously titles were granted for the virtue of excellence. Knights became knights through showing courage on the battlefield, not by paying the king money. Because of these changes, being a page “nowadays” is not a good thing, according to the Host.

“Why do you say so?” Lovel asked. “Why do you think so enviously? Don’t pages still learn there the Centaurs’ skill, the art of Thrace, which is to ride? Don’t they still learn Pollux’ skill, which is to fence? Don’t they still learn the Pyrrhic gestures, which are to both dance and spring in armor, so that they can be active for the wars?”

Centaurs are half-horse, half-man. Pollux (aka Polydeuces), the twin brother of Castor, was famed as a boxer. The Pyrrhic gestures are war-games that will help prepare their practitioners for battle.

Lovel continued, “Don’t pages still learn to study figures of speech and the numbers and proportions of rhetoric that may make them great in counsels and the arts grave Nestor and the wise Ulysses practiced — ‘To make their English sweet upon their tongue,’ as Reverend Chaucer says?”

Nestor was an aged king who advised Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks against the Trojans in the Trojan War. Odysseus was a master of rhetoric in both Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

The Friar in the Prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales was described in this way: “Somewhat he lisped, for his wantonness, / To make his English sweet upon his tongue.”

“Reverend” is a title indicating great respect.

“Sir, you are mistaken,” the Host said. “What will a page of today learn?

“To play Sir Pandarus and be a bawd, as my copy of Chaucer has it, and carry messages to Madam Cressida.”

Pandarus was a go-between who enabled his niece Cressida and the Trojan warrior Troilus to have an affair. 

The Host continued, “Instead of riding the brave steed in the mornings, to mount the chambermaid; and instead of a leap of the vaulting horse, to ply the vaulting house.”

A vaunting horse is a piece of gymnastics equipment; a vaulting house is a brothel.

The Host continued, “For exercise of arms, a set of dice, or two or three packs of cards, to show the cheating trick and nimbleness of hand; to mis-take and steal a cloak from my lord’s back, and pawn it; to ease my lord’s pockets of a superfluous watch, or to geld a jeweled ornament of an odd stone, or so.” 

A stone can be a testicle.

The Host continued, “To pinch three or four buttons from off my lady’s gown.”

Buttons were sometimes made of gold.

The Host continued, “These are the arts or seven liberal deadly sciences of pagery, or rather paganism, as the times are now. 

“To which, if the page applies himself, he may, perhaps, take a degree at Tyburn a year the earlier, come to deliver a lecture upon Aquinas at St Thomas a Waterings, and so go forth a laureate in a hemp circle!”

Tyburn was a place where public executions were held, as was St. Thomas a Waterings. A hemp circle is a noose.

St. Thomas a Waterings was located on a road taken by pilgrims to St. Thomas Becket’s shrine in Canterbury. The pilgrims watered their horses at St. Thomas a Waterings, which is how it got its name. St. Thomas Aquinas’ name contains a pun in aqua, Latin for “water.”

The Host was saying that pages no longer learned correct behavior; instead, they learned low behavior. 

“You’re tart, my Host, and talk above your seasoning,” Lovel said. “You talk above what you seem to be; it should not come under your cap and occur to you, I think, this vein of salt and sharpness and these blows upon learning now and then.”

Normally, the host of an inn would not have such critical opinions about the doings of well-born people.

Lovel then asked the Host, “How long have you, if your dull guest may ask it, practiced this brisk and lively trade of keeping the Light Heart — your mansion, your palace here, your hostelry?”

“In truth, I was born to something, sir, above running an inn,” the Host said.

“I easily suspect that,” Lovel said. “My Host, what is your name?”

“They call me Goodstock,” the Host said.

A person who comes from good stock is well — that is, highly — born.

“Sir, you confess and reveal it, both in your language and discourse, and in your bearing,” Lovel said.

“Yet, sir, not all are sons of the white hen,” the Host said.

Eggs from white hens were valued more highly than eggs from brown and black hens. This was a metaphor for saying that not all people are highly born.

The Host continued, “Nor can we, as the ballad singer says, come all to be wrapped soft and warm in Lady Fortune’s smock when she is pleased to trick or trump mankind. Some may be wearing coats, as jacks, queens, and kings do in the playing cards, but then some must be knaves, some varlets, bawds, and ostlers, as aces, deuces, and cards of ten, to face and brazen it out in the game that all the world is.”

The face cards in a pack of playing cards are King, Queen, and Jack. A Jack is a knight’s knave — a servant to a knight.

Lovel said, “But it being in your free will, as it was, to choose what parts (as in a play) you would sustain, I think a man of your sagacity and clear nostril should have made another choice than of a place so sordid as the keeping of an inn, where every jovial tinker, for his chink, aka money, may cry, ‘My Host, to crambe! Give us drink, and do not slink, but skink, or else you stink!’” 

The Latin word sagacitas refers to a keen sense of smell.

Crambe is a game in which a player gives a word or phrase and the next player must rhyme to it.

“Skink” means “draws liquor.”

Lovel continued, “Such people call you by the surnames ‘Rogue,’ ‘Bawd,’ and ‘Cheater’ — they are known synonyma— synonyms — of your profession.”

The Host replied, “But if I am not a rogue, a bawd, or a cheater, who then is the rogue — in understanding, sir, I mean? Who errs? Who tinkles and makes jingles then, or impersonates Tom Tinker?”

Tinkers had a reputation for being rogues.

The Host replied, “Your weasel — Ferret — here may tell you that I talk bawdy and teach my boy it; and you may believe him, but, sir, you do so at your own peril if I do not do that, and it is at his — Ferret’s — peril, too, if he does lie and affirm falsely that I do it.

“No slander strikes, much less hurts, the innocent. 

“If I am honest, and if all the cheat is just of myself in keeping this Light Heart, where I imagine all the world’s a play, and where I imagine all the state of affairs and the state of men’s affairs, all the events and passages of life, where I imagine all these things to commence new scenes, to come in, to go out, and to change and vanish; and if I have got a seat to sit at ease here in my inn to see the comedy, and to laugh and chuckle at the variety and throng of humors and dispositions that come jostling in and out always, as if one drove away from here another one — why, will you envy me my happiness because you are sad and lumpish and low-spirited?

“Will you carry a loadstone in your pocket to hang knives on, or jet rings to entice light straws to leap at them?”

Loadstones and jet rings are amusing toys. A loadstone is a magnet. When a jet ring is rubbed, electromagnetism is created that will attract light objects such as straws.

“Aren’t you taken with the alacrities — the liveliness and sprightliness — of a host? Greater and more just, sir, is my wonder why you chose my house — a Fiddlers’ Hall, the seat of noise and mirth, an inn here — to be drowsy in and lodge your lethargy in the Light Heart, as if some cloud — some trouble — from court had been the harbinger of your arrival here, or Cheapside debt-books, or some mistress’ order, after she sees your love growing corpulent, to give it a diet by absence — some such moldy passion!”

The Host wondered why Lovel would choose an inn — a place of liveliness and music — to be gloomy in. Could the reason be problems at court, money problems, or love problems?

Lovel thought, Unhappily, he has guessed correctly.

Ferret entered the room and said, “My Host, you’re called for.” 

Some new guests had arrived at the end.

The Host said loudly, “I am coming, boys.”

He exited.

Lovel asked, “Ferret, have you been plowing with this mad ox, my Host? Or has he been plowing with you?”

“For what purpose, sir?” Ferret said.

“Why, to find my riddle out,” Lovel said.

The riddle was this: Why are you here in this inn, Lovel?

One of the answers the Host had guessed was the correct answer to the riddle.

In Judges 14:14, Samson posed a riddle: “Out of the eater came forth meat [food], and out of the strong came forth sweetness” (King James Bible). The answer was honey from bees that had made their home in the carcass of a lion. Samson told the answer to his wife, who revealed it to her people, the Philistines, with whom Samson had made a bet. The Philistines told Samson the answer to his riddle, and in Judges 14:18, Samson said, “If ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle” (King James Bible).

Cuckolds — men with unfaithful wives — were said to have invisible horns. The reference to the “mad ox” — the Host — was a joke that the Host was a cuckold, although the Host had given Lovel no reason to think that.

Ferret replied, “I hope you believe, sir, that I can find other discourse to be gossiping about my master with hosts and ostlers.”

“If you can, it is well,” Lovel said. “Go down and see what guests have come in, and then tell me what you have learned.”

Ferret exited.

— 1.4 —

Alone, Lovel said to himself, “Oh, love, what passion are you! So tyrannous and treacherous! First to enslave and then betray all who in loyalty do serve you! The result is that neither the wisest nor the wariest creature can ignore you no more than he can bear burning coals in his bare palm or bosom, and he can conceal or hide you less than he can conceal or hide a flash of inflamed powder, whose whole light lays it open to all discovery, even of those who have but half an eye, and less of nose!

“A host to find me out! A host who is, commonly, the log a little on this side of the signpost!”

According to Lovel, most hosts of inns have little more than the intelligence and sensitivity of a log — the support-post of the sign of the inn.

Lovel continued, “Or, at the best, some round-grown thing, a drinking-jug decorated with a bearded face, that and who pours out to the guests and takes in and receives from the fragments of their jests! 

“But I may wrong this Host out of sullenness, or out of my mistaking, misjudging humor.” 

The Host of the Light Heart Inn was a man of wit and intelligence.

Lovel continued, “I pray that you, fantasy — my delusive imagination — be laid to rest again. And, gentle melancholy, do not oppress me; I will be as silent as the tame lover should be, and as foolish.”

— 1.5 —

The Host returned and said, “My guest, my guest, be jovial, I ask you. I have fresh golden guests, guests of the game, guests who are gamesome, guests who seek entertainment, three coachfuls of guests! Lords and ladies newly arrived! And I will announce them to you and you to them, shttps://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/o that I can spring a smile in this brow of yours. You are like the rugged Roman alderman, old master Gross, surnamed Agelastos, who was never seen to laugh but at an ass.”

“Agelastos” is Latin for “unsmiling,” and it was the nickname of Marcus Licinius Crassus, who laughed just once in his life. The story is that rich Romans regarded thistles, properly prepared, as a delicacy, and they would not allow poor Romans to eat them. Agelastos laughed when he saw an ass eating thistles for free.

Ferret entered the room and said to Lovel, “Sir, here’s the Lady Frampul —”

“What!” Lovel said.

Ferret continued, “ — and her train of guests and servants: Lord Beaufort and Lord Latimer, the Colonel Tiptoe, with Mistress Pru the chambermaid, Trundle the coachman—”

“Stop!” Lovel ordered. “Settle the bill with the house and get my horses ready; tell the groom to bring them to the back gate.”

Ferret exited to carry out his orders.

“What do you mean by this, sir?” the Host asked.

“To take fair leave of your inn, my Host,” Lovel answered.

The Host replied, “I hope, my guest, that although I have talked somewhat above my share at large, and have been in the altitudes, the extravagants or regions beyond the ordinary boundaries — that is, although I have acted and talked above my social station — I hope that neither myself nor any of mine have given you the reason for you to quit my house thus so suddenly.”

“No, I affirm that is not the reason for my leaving, I swear on my faith,” Lovel replied. “Excuse me from such a rudeness. I was now beginning to relish and love you as a friend, and I am heartily sorry that any occasion should be so compelling to urge my abrupt departure thus. But — necessity’s a tyrant and commands me to leave.”

The Host said, “She shall command me first to set fire to my bush — the bunch of ivy that serves as one sign of my inn — and then to break up my house. Or if that will not serve, to break with all the world, turn country bankrupt in my own town upon the market day and be proclaimed for not paying my bills for my butter and eggs all the way to the last measure of oats and bundle of hay, before you shall leave me.

“Before that happens, I will break my Heart; I will order coach and coach-horses, lords and ladies, to pack up and go packing!

“All my fresh guests shall stink! 

“I’ll pull my sign down, convert my inn to an almshouse, or to a hospital for lepers or the poor folks who sell switches as whips or whisks; turn it into an academy of rogues, or give it away to be an independently run school to breed up beggars in and send them to the canting universities.

“I will do all and any of that before you leave me.”

“Cant” is the secret language of thieves. Calling universities “canting” is an insult.

Lovel replied, “Truly, I confess that I am loath, my Host, to leave you; your expressions both take and hold me. 

“But in case I stay, I must enjoin you and your whole family and household to privacy, and to conceal me. For the secret is, I would not willingly see or be seen by any of this gang, especially the lady.”

“By the brain of man,” the Host said, “what monster is she? Is she a cockatrice in velvet, who kills like this?”

A cockatrice is a basilisk: a monster that can kill something merely by meeting its gaze.

Lovel was behaving as if one look at or by Lady Frampul would kill him.

“Oh, say good words, my Host,” Lovel said. “She is a noble lady, great in blood and fortune; she is beautiful, and she is a wit! 

“But she is of so resolute a capricious naturehttps://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/ that she thinks nothing is a happiness except to have a multitude of servants; and to get them, although she is very chaste, yet she ventures upon these dangerously steep precipices that would make her not seem chaste to some prying, narrow natures.”

The kind of servants Lady Frampul wanted were men who were devoted to her. This kind of servant was not necessarily slept with.

Lovel continued, “We call her, sir, the Lady Frances Frampul, daughter of and heir to the Lord Frampul.”

“Who?” the Host asked. “The Lord Frampul? He who lived in Oxford first as a student, and afterward married the daughter of —”

The Host paused as if trying to remember the name.

Lovel finished for him, “— Sylly.”

“Right,” the Host said, “of whom the tale went that he turned puppet-master —”

Lovel interrupted, “— and traveled with young Goose, the man who mounted puppet shows —”

The Host interrupted, “— and lay and lived with the gypsies for half a year, away from his wife.”

“He is the very same man — the mad Lord Frampul!” Lovel said. “And this same Lady Frampul is his daughter, who is as cock-brained and foolish as ever her father was!

“There were two daughters, Frances and Laetitia, who was nicknamed Lettice, but Lettice was lost young, and, as the rumor flew then, the mother upon that happening lost her wits and became mentally disturbed.

“A foolish weak woman, she went away in a melancholy. Because she had brought her husband no children but girls, she thought that he did not love her. And he, as foolish as she, too late repenting the reason she had given, went afterward in quest of her and has not been heard of since.”

“A strange division of a family!” the Host said.

Lovel said, “And a family scattered, as in the great confusion of language during the time of the Tower of Babel!”

Genesis 11:9 states, “Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth” (King James Bible).

“But yet the lady, the heir, enjoys the land,” the Host said.

Lovel said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/And she takes all lordly ways how to consume it as nobly as she can, if clothes and feasting, and the authorized and sanctioned means of riotous revelry will do it.”

Conspicuous consumption by women in the form of fancy clothing and fancy feasting can be paid for through the sale of land.

“She shows her extraction,” the Host said, “and I honor her for it.”

— 1.6 —

Ferret entered the room and said to Lovel, “Your horses, sir, are ready and the house is dis —”

Lovel interrupted and finished the word, “— pleased, do you think?”

“I cannot tell,” Ferret said. “But dis-charged I am sure it is.”

“Charge it again, good Ferret, and make unready the horses,” Lovel said. “You know how: Chalk and renew the rondels. I have now decided to stay here at the inn.”

Scores (aka bills or tabs) were written down in chalk in inns. A rondel is a round sign — a circle — meaning a unit of money.

“I easily and readily thought you would, when you would hear what’s purposed,” Ferret said.

“What’s that?” Lovel asked.

“To throw the house out of the window!” Ferret said.

This was a proverb meaning to engage in riotous merry-making.

“By the brain of man, I shall have the worst of that!” the Host said. “Won’t they throw my household stuff out first? Cushions and table covers, chairs, stools, and bedding? Won’t their sport be my ruin?”

“Don’t fear, my Host, I am not of the fellowship,” Lovel said.

“I cannot see, sir, how you will avoid it,” Ferret said. “All of them know already, all of them, that you are in the house.”

“Who knows?” Lovel asked.

“The lords,” Ferret said. “They saw me and inquired about you.” 

“Why were you seen?” Lovel asked.

“Because indeed I had no medicine or drug, sir, to make me invisible,” Ferret said. “I had no fern-seed in my pocket, nor had I an opal wrapped in a bay-leaf in my left fist to charm their eyes with.”

“Fern-seed” was supposed to be an invisible seed that would make its possessor also invisible.

An opal was supposed to make clear the sight of its possessor while clouding the sight of other people near its possessor.

The Host said to Lovel, “He gives you reasons as round and circular — complete and accomplished — as Gyges’ ring, which, the ancients say, was a hoop ring; and that is, as round as a hoop!”

A hoop ring is a plain-band ring.

Ferret’s reasons were circular: They went round and round, meaning that Ferret’s reasons did not truly answer the question.

In Plato’s Republic, the shepherd Gyges finds a ring that makes him invisible.

“You will have your rebus still, my Host,” Lovel said.

“I must,” the Host replied.

“My lady, too, looked out of the window and called me,” Ferret said.

“My Lady” is the Lady Frances Frampul.

Prudence, the chambermaid of the Lady Frances Frampul, entered the room.

Ferret saw her and said, “And see where Secretary Pru comes from her, employed upon some embassy to you —”

The word “secretary” meant “confidant.”

Secretary Prudence had come as an ambassador to Lovel from Lady Frampul.

The Host said, “I’ll meet her and see if she comes upon that employment.”

He then said to Prudence, “Fair lady, you are as welcome as your Host can make you.”

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Forbear, sir,” Prudence replied. “I am first to have my audience before the compliment. My address is to this gentleman.”

She had come upon that employment they suspected she had come upon.

“And it is in state,” the Host said. “Yours is an official ambassadorship.”

He was mildly joking. Prudence was a chambermaid and a confidant, not an official ambassador.

https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Prudence said to Lovel, “My lady, sir, as glad of the encounter to find a servant here, and such a servant, whom she so values, with her best respects desires to be remembered, and invites your nobleness to be a part today of the society and mirth intended by her and the young lords, your fellow-servants, who are alike desirous of enjoying the fair request; and to that end have sent me — their imperfect orator — to obtain it.”

The Lady Frampul had recognized Lovel; he was a former servant — that is, an admirer of hers.

Prudence continued, “Which if I may, they have elected me and crowned me with the title of a sovereign of the day’s entertainments devised in the inn, provided that you will be pleased to add your consent to it.”

The Lady Frampul enjoyed entertainments, and she wanted Lovel to be a part of them.

Lovel replied, “Provided that I will be pleased, my gentle mistress Prudence? You cannot think me of that coarse condition to begrudge you anything.”

A mistress can be a female boss. Prudence was a chambermaid, but Lovel was allowing her to tell him what he should do.

The Host said, “That’s nobly said, and like my guest.”

Lovel said to Prudence, “I congratulate Your Honor, and I should cheerfully lay hold on any opportunity that could advance it. But for me to think that I can be any rag or particle of your lady’s care, more than to fill her list — she being the lady who professes always to love no soul or body but for ends that are her entertainments, and is not reluctant to speak this but does proclaim it in all companies — her Ladyship must pardon my weak counsels, and my weaker will, if it declines to obey her.”

Lovel was saying that Lady Frampul simply needed him to fill the lists; for example, to be the fourth player in a game of cards that required four people. He was saying that was the only reason she wanted him to participate in her games.

Prudence replied, “Oh, Master Lovel, you must not give credit to all that ladies publicly profess or talk at random and without prudent consideration to their servants. Their tongues and thoughts often lie far asunder.

“Yet, when they please, they have their cabinet-counsels — private counsels — and reserved thoughts, and can remove themselves to a private place as well as others.”

In other words, not all of what women say publicly can be believed; however, women do have private conversations in which they reveal real and private thoughts.

“Aye, the subtlest of us!” the Host said. “All that is born within a lady’s lips —”

Prudence finished the sentence for him, “— is not the issue of their hearts, my Host. It does not necessarily come from their hearts.”

The Host said, “Either kiss or drink before me.”

This idiom meant: You have taken the words out of my mouth.

Possibly, the idiom also meant: You spoke before me and in my presence; now kiss or drink in my presence.

The Host tried to kiss her.

Prudence said to the Host, “Wait, excuse me; my errand is not done.”

She said to Lovel, “Yet, if Her Ladyship’s slighting or disesteem, sir, of your service has formerly begot any offence that I do not know of, here I vow to you upon a chambermaid’s simplicity, preserving always the honor of my Lady, that I will be bold to hold the mirror up to her to show Her Ladyship where she has erred and how to tender satisfaction, provided that you grant that you will undergo the day’s venture.”

As the Lady Frampul’s intimate confidant, Prudence could criticize the Lady Frampul. 

The Host said to Lovel, who was silent a long time because he was thinking, “What do you say, sir? Where are you? Are you within?”

The Host thumped Lovel on the chest to make him alert again.

Lovel made his mind up and said, “Yes, I will wait upon her and the company.”

“It is enough, Queen Prudence,” the Host said. “I will bring him, and I swear on this kiss.”

 He kissed Prudence, and then she exited.

“I have longed to kiss a Queen!” the Host said.

“There is no life on earth except being in love!” Lovel said. “There are no studies, no delights, no business, no intercourse, or trade — method — of sense or soul, except what is love! 

“I was the laziest creature, the most unprofitable sign — more semblance — of nothing, the veriest and greatest drone, and slept away my life more than the dormouse until I was in love!”

Drones are literally male honeybees whose job is to impregnant the Queen bee, while other bees do the work of gathering the honey and maintaining the nest. Figuratively, a drone is a person who lives off the work of others. 

Dormice spend much of their lives sleeping.

Lovel continued, “And, now, I can outwake the nightingale, outwatch an usurer and outwalk him, too, stalk like a ghost that haunts near a treasure, and all that fancied treasure, it is love!”

Usurers kept a close watch on their creditors, and when necessary they pursued them relentlessly.

The Host asked, “But is your name Love-ill, sir, or Love-well? I would like to know that.”

“I do not know myself which of the two it is,” Lovel said. “But it is love that has been the hereditary passion of our family, my gentle Host, and, as I guess, my friend.

“The truth is, I have loved this lady long and ineffectively, with desire enough but with no success; for I have always forborne to express it in my person to her.”

“How did you express your love to her then?” the Host asked.

Lovel answered, “I have sent her toys (trifles of rhymes or prose, or small gifts), verses, and anagrams, samples of wit, mere trifles she has commended, but she didn’t know from where or whom they came, nor could she guess.”

These anagrams were acrostic poems in which each line begins with a letter of the name of a loved one.

“This was a pretty riddling way of wooing!” the Host said.

True.

“I often have been, too, in her company,” Lovel said, “and I have looked at her a whole day, admired her; loved her and did not tell her so, loved always, looked always and loved, and loved and looked and sighed. But, as a neglected man, I came off the field and retired from the encounter, and unregarded —”

“Could you blame her, sir,” the Host said, “when you were silent and said not a word?”

“Oh, but I loved the more,” Lovel said, “and she might read it best in my silence, had she been —”

The Host finished the sentence, “— as melancholic as you are.”

He added, “Please tell me, why would you stand mute, sir?”

Lovel answered, “Oh, thereon hangs a history, my Host. 

“Have you ever known, or heard, of Lord Beaufort, who served so bravely in France? I was his page and, before he died, his friend. I followed him, first in the wars; and then in the times of peace I waited on his studies, which were right.

“He had no King Arthurs, no Rosicleers, no Knights of the Sun, no Amadis de Gauls, no Primalions, and no Pantagruels, all of which are public nothings. He had no abortives of the fabulous, dark cloister, sent out to poison courts and attack manners.”

All of the above names were names of characters in chivalric romances. Lovel (and Ben Jonson) regarded them as “public nothings.” The “abortives of the fabulous, dark cloister” were romances copied by monks.

Lovel continued, “But he did have the acts of great Achilles, Agamemnon’s acts, sage Nestor’s counsels, and Ulysses’ sleights, Tydides’ fortitude, as Homer wrought them in his immortal imagination, to serve as examples of the heroic virtue.” 

The Lord Beaufort did have the good taste to revere the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer. One of the characters in the Iliadwas Tydides: the Greek warrior Diomedes, the son of Tydeus.

Achilles, a Greek, was the greatest warrior of the Trojan War. Agamemnon was the leader of the Greeks against the Trojans. Nestor was an aged advisor to Agamemnon. Ulysses was the trickiest of the Greeks; he came up with the idea of the Trojan Horse. Diomedes was an important Greek warrior, and he was the youngest of the Greek kings fighting the Trojans.

Lovel continued, “And, as Virgil, that master of the epic poem, limned — described — Pious Aeneas, his religious prince, bearing his aged parent on his shoulders, carried him from the flames of Troy with his young son, and these Lord Beaufort brought to imitate and to use as examples.”

In Virgil’s Aeneid, Aeneas flees the sack of Troy while carrying his aged father on his shoulders and leading his young son by the hand. Aeneas was pious (in Latin, pius), which means he gave respect where respect was due, including to his gods, his city, and his family.

Lord Beaufort’s library was select: He had chosen the best examples of the heroic virtue from the works of the ancient epic poets.

Lovel continued, “Lord Beaufort gave me first my breeding, I acknowledge, and then he showered his bounties on me, like the Hours who open-handed sit upon the clouds and press the liberality of heaven down to the laps of thankful men.”

The Hours are goddesses who preside over seasonal changes: from spring to summer, from summer to autumn, etc.

Lovel continued, “But then the trust committed to me at his death was above all, and left so strong a tie on all my powers as time shall not dissolve it, until time dissolve and loosen itself, and bury all!

“The trust he gave to me was the care of his brave heir, and only son! Who being a virtuous, sweet, young, promising lord has cast his first affections on this lady.” 

Lord Beaufort’s brave heir, now that Lord Beaufort had died, was now himself Lord Beaufort.

Lovel continued, “And although I know and may presume her such as out of her disposition will return no love, and therefore might without prejudice be made the courting-stock — object of courtship — for all to practice on” — a whipping-stock is a source of pain; for many, a courting-stock is also a source of pain — “as she practices her scorn on all of us, yet, out of a religion — a scruple of conscience — to my charge and out of a professed debt to his father, I have made a self-decree never to reveal my personal feelings, although my passion burns me to cinders.”

The Host said, “Then you’re not so subtle or half so read in love-craft as I took you. Come, come, you are no phoenix; if you were, I would expect no miracle from your ashes.”

The Phoenix was a mythological bird that when old burned itself to ashes and then miraculously arose as a young bird.

The Host continued, “Take some advice; be always that rag of love you are. Burn on until you turn tinder.”

Tinder was sometimes made of partially charred rags.

The Host continued, “This chambermaid may happen to prove the steel to strike a spark out of the flint, your mistress, who may yet beget bonfires. You do not know what light may be forced out and from what darkness.”

“No,” Lovel said. “I am so resolved that I will love still and always although I will not confess that I love.”

“That’s, sir, as it chances,” the Host said. “We’ll throw the dice for it. Cheer up!”

“I do,” Lovel said.

 

CHAPTER 2

— 2.1 —

Lady Frampul and Prudence, her chambermaid, talked together as Prudence pinned one of Lady Frampul’s gowns on herself. Prudence was being dressed very well for a purpose that Lady Frampul had in mind: Prudence was going to be the Queen of the Festivities that Lady Frampul would hold at the Light Heart Inn.

“Come, wench, this dress will serve,” Lady Frampul said. “Dispatch, make ready. This dress was a great deal too big for me, which made me stop wearing it after wearing it only once.”

The dress was made by her tailor.

In this society, the word “wench” could be used affectionately. Its use was not necessarily derogatory.

She then asked, “How does it fit? Will the ends of the corset come together?”

Prudence, who had a much fuller figure than Lady Frampul, struggled with the gown to bring the ends of the corset together and said, “With difficulty.”

“You must make do with it,” Lady Frampul said. “Pride feels no pain. Girt thee hard, Pru — pull hard on the lacings. Pox on this errant tailor! He angers me beyond all limit of patience. These base people who work with their hands never keep their word in anything they promise.”

Prudence replied, “It is their trade, madam, to swear and break — to swear their word and then break it. They all grow rich by breaking more than their words; their honesties and credits are always the first commodity they put off.”

She was saying that tailors often break their word, and they often make money through dishonest means. Often, they break their word when they promise that a dress will be delivered by a certain date.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/And their credit grows worse and then worst, it seems, which makes them do it so often,” Lady Frampul said. 

Although the tailors’ breaking their promises and doing dishonest actions might make them money in the short term, word soon got out about them and they ended up making less money in the long term, and so they had to double down on breaking their promises and doing dishonest actions.

Lady Frampul added, “If he had broken his promise with only me, I would have not cared, but with the company, the body politic —” 

The body politic was her entourage at the Light Heart Inn. The tailor’s breaking his promise affected her entourage. The dress had been intended for Prudence, who would be Queen of the Festivities and would rule over the entourage.

Prudence interrupted Lady Frampul’s sentence, “— the tailor frustrates our whole design, having that time, and the materials in so long before!”

The tailor had all the materials and all the time he needed to make the dress and deliver it on time to Lady Frampul.

“And he to fail in all and disappoint us!” Lady Frampul said.

They were disappointed and dis-appointed. The word “appoint” means “accoutre” — impressively clothe.

Lady Frampul continued, “The rogue deserves a torture —”

Prudence suggested, “He should be cropped with his own scissors —”

She meant that the tailor’s ears should be shortened and cut off with his own scissors.

“Let’s devise a torture for him,” Lady Frampul said. 

Prudence continued, “— and have the stumps seared up with his own cering candle!”

“To cere” means “to cover with wax” or “to wrap in a cerecloth.” A cerecloth is a shroud. Tailors used cering candles to waterproof garments. Of course, Prudence was punning on “searing.”

Lady Frampul suggested, “Crop his ears close to his head, so his head will roll on his pillow! I’ll have the lease of his house cut out to form measuring tapes.”

Prudence asked, “And shall we strangle the tailor with them?”

Lady Frampul replied, “No, I would have no life touched, but he should be a little stretched on his own yard — his own measuring rod.”

The rack was an instrument of torture in which the victim was stretched. The victim’s arms were pulled in one direction, and the victim’s legs were pulled in the opposite direction. The use of a measuring rod as a rack was a comic image because most measuring rods — yard sticks — used by tailors were too short to be used that way. Lady Frampul’s tailor, however, was very short.

She added, “He should have the strappado.”

The strappado was a torture in which the victim’s hands were tied behind his back and he was lifted high with a pulley. He was then dropped partway down and his fall was suddenly dropped so his arms would be pulled out of their sockets. 

Prudence suggested, “Or have an ell — 45 inches — of taffeta drawn through his guts by way of an enema and set on fire with aqua-vitae?”

Aqua-vitae was alcohol or brandy, which would soak the taffeta and then be set on fire.

Lady Frampul said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Burning in the hand with the pressing iron cannot save him.”

An alternative to the death punishment was being branded on the hand. People who could read Latin were sometimes given this punishment instead of being executed. Avoiding death by being able to read Latin was known as benefit of clergy.

“Yes,” Prudence said. But she finished putting on the dress and said, “Now that I have finally gotten this dress on, I do forgive him for what robes he should have brought but did not.”

“You are not cruel, although you are strait-laced I see, Pru!” Lady Frampul said.

She was punning on cruel (severe) and crewel (a cheaper material for people who could not afford silk). She was also punning on “strait-laced” as meaning 1) tightly laced, and 2) strict in morality.

“This dress is well,” Prudence said.

“It is rich enough, but it is not what I meant you to have,” Lady Frampul said. “I would have had you braver — more splendidly dressed — than myself, and far brighter. It will fit the players yet, when you have done with it, and yield you somewhat.”

When Prudence was finished with the dress, she could sell it to actors, who would use it as a costume.

“Madam, it would be ill-bred and absolutely sordid and mercenary of me to allow a suit of clothing of yours to end up there,” Prudence said.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Tut, all of us are players and but serve the scene,” Lady Frampul said. “Pru, dispatch. Finish your dressing. I fear you do not like the duty I have for you to perform because you are so long fitting yourself for it.”

She handed Prudence a scarf and said, “Here is a scarf to make you a finer knot.”

A knot is an ornamental bow.

“You send me a feast of clothing, madam,” Prudence said.

“Wear it, wench,” Lady Frampul said.

“Yes, I will,” Prudence said, “but with the permission of Your Ladyship, I would tell you that this can but bear the face of — look like — an odd journey.”

“Why, Pru?” Lady Frampul asked.

Prudence answered, “A lady of your rank and quality has come to a public inn, with so many men, young lords, and others in your company, and not a woman with you but myself, a chambermaid!”

Such an action can cause serious gossip.

“You fear that you will be over-laid, Pru?” Lady Frampul said. “Don’t worry; I’ll bear my part and share with you in the adventure.”

“To be over-laid” means 1) “to be over-laden, aka over-burdened,” and 2) “to be overly having sexual intercourse.”

Another pun is “bear my part,” which means “play my role,” and “bare my part,” which means “bare my genitalia.”

“Oh, but the censure and the gossip, madam, is the main concern,” Prudence said. “What will they say of you, or judge of me, who is transformed with quality clothing like this, above all the bound of fitness or decorum?”

Many people in this society regarded dressing above one’s station in life as a sin. In some cases, it was a crime.

“What, Pru!” Lady Frampul said. “Have you turned into a fool upon the sudden, and now talk idly in your best clothes? Do you shoot bolts and sentences — maxims — to frighten babies with?”

“Bolts” are arrows. A proverb stated, “A fool’s bolt is soon shot.” Anyone who shoots all the arrows in a quiver leaves him- or herself open to attack. A bolt is also a roll of fabric.

Lady Frampul continued, “As if I lived to any other degree or level than what’s my own, or sought myself, outside myself, away from my home, my natural place!”

“Your Ladyship, please pardon me for my fault,” Prudence said. “If I have over-shot, I’ll shoot no more.”

“Yes, do shoot again, good Pru,” Lady Frampul said. “I’ll have you shoot, and aim and hit; I know that what you say shows the love that is in you, and so I do interpret it.”

“Then, madam, I’d crave a farther leave,” Prudence said.

She wanted to make a request.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Be it to license, it shall not lack an ear, Pru,” Lady Frampul said.

This meant, “Even if you want permission to live free and without restraints and licentiously, I will listen to what you say.”

Lady Frampul continued, “Tell me, what is it?”

“I have in mind a toy — a piece of fun — to raise a little mirth to the design you have in hand,” Prudence said.

“Out with it, Pru, if it will chime of mirth,” Lady Frampul said. “If it results in mirth, I am for it.”

Prudence said, “My Host has, madam, a pretty boy in the house: a dainty, delicate child, who is his son, and who is of Your Ladyship’s name, too. His name is Francis. This boy, if Your Ladyship would borrow him and give me permission to dress him as I would, should make the finest lady and kinswoman to keep you company, and deceive my lords upon the matter. This will be a fountain — a gushing source — of sport and entertainment.”

One of the lords in the inn might even be attracted to the boy, thinking him to be a lady.

“I understand you, and I understand the source of mirth that it may breed,” Lady Frampul said, “but is the child bold enough, and well assured?”

“He is as bold and well assured as I am, madam,” Prudence said. “Hold him in no more suspicion than you hold me.”

https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/The Host entered the room.

Prudence said, “Here comes my Host. Will it please you to ask him for the loan of his son, or will you let me make the proposal?”

“You make the proposal, Pru,” Lady Frampul said.

— 2.2 —

“Your Ladyship and all your retinue of attendants are welcome,” the Host said.

“I thank my hearty Host,” Lady Frampul said.

“Your sovereignty is also welcome here,” the Host said, referring to Prudence.

He added, “Madam, I wish you joy in the possession of your new gown.”

“I should have had a new gown, my Host,” Lady Frampul said, “but Stuff, our tailor, has broken his word with us; you shall be of the counsel — you shall know the details.” 

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/He will deserve to hear such confidences, madam,” Prudence said to Lady Frampul. 

She then said, “My lady has heard that you have a pretty son, my Host; she’d like to see him.”

“Aye, I am very eager to see him,” Lady Frampul said. “I ask you to please let me see him.”

“Your Ladyship shall see him immediately,” the Host said.

He called, “Ho!”

Pierce Anon, one of the Host’s employees, replied, “Anon!”

“Tell Frank to come here, Anon, to my lady,” the Host said. 

Pierce the bartender was called “Anon,” aka “Quickly.” Pierce Anon, like many tapsters, aka bartenders, used that word often when serving customers.

The Host then said to Lady Frampul about his son, “He is a bashful child, unpretentiously brought up in a rude, devoid-of-culture hostelry. But the Light Heart Inn — it is his father’s, and it may become his.

Frank, the Host’s son, entered the room.

https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/“Here he comes,” the Host said. 

He then said, “Frank, salute and greet my lady.”

Frank said to Lady Frampul, “Madam, I do what I am designed to by my birthright as heir of the Light Heart Inn: I bid you most welcome.”

“And I believe your ‘most,’ my pretty boy,” Lady Frampul said, “being so emphasized by you.”

Frank said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/If you believe my ‘most welcome’ to be true, Your Ladyship is sure to make it most welcome.”

“Prettily answered!” Lady Frampul said. “Is your name Francis?”

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Yes,” Frank said. 

Lady Frampul, whose first name was Frances, responded, “I love my own name all the better.”

“If I knew your name, I should make haste to do so, too, good madam,” Frank said.

“My name is the same name as yours,” Lady Frances Frampul said.

Frank said, “My name then acknowledges the luster it receives by being named after you.”

“You will excel me in compliment, and you will gain influence over me with flattery,” Lady Frampul replied.

“By silence,” Francis said. 

He would not admit to exceling over her, and he would not admit to flattering her.

“A modest and a fair well-spoken child,” Lady Frampul said.

The Host said, “Her Ladyship shall have him, sovereign Pru, and whatever else I have besides; divide my heart and Heart — my heart and my Light Heart Inn — between you and your lady. Make your use of it. My house is yours, and my son is yours. Behold, I tender him to your service.”

The Host then said to his son, “Frank, become what these brave ladies would have you become.”

Somehow, the Host knew already that these ladies wanted to dress his son up as a lady. He may have been eavesdropping at the door. That would explain how he knew that Prudence was now Lady Frampul’s “sovereign.” (Earlier, when he had kissed Prudence, he said that he had always wished to kiss a queen.) Good hosts and good servants often know more about the people they serve than those people think they know.

The Host then said to Lady Frampul, “Only remember this: There is a charwoman in the house, and she is Frank’s nurse.”

A nurse’s job was to take care of children.

The Host continued, “She is an Irish woman I took in who was a beggar, and she waits upon him. She is a poor defenseless simpleton, but she is as insolent, meddlesome, persistent, and stubborn as ever one was. She will vex you on all occasions, never be off, or away from you, except in her sleep, or in her drink, which makes her sleep. She does so much love him, or rather she dotes on him. 

“Now, we need for the Nurse a shape — a stage costume or disguise — in which we may dress her. I’ll help provide the clothing. We need to outfit her with a rich taffeta cloak, an old French hood, and other pieces heterogeneous enough to go with these items.”

Prudence said, “We have brought a suit of apparel down because this tailor failed us in the main.”

The extra suit of apparel would be for the Nurse. She needed to be better dressed because she was now playing the role of the servant to a lady.

The Host said, “She — the Nurse — shall advance the game.”

“Set about it, then, and send Trundle, the coachman, here to me,” Prudence said.

“I shall,” the Host said. 

He then whispered to Prudence, “But Pru, let Lovel have fair treatment.”

“He shall have the best,” Prudence replied.

“Our Host, I think, is very playful!” Lady Frampul said.

Prudence asked her, “How do you like the boy?”

“He is a miracle!” Lady Frampul answered.

“Good madam, take him in and select a suit of clothing for him,” Prudence said. “I’ll give our Trundle his instructions, and wait upon Your Ladyship in the instant.”

“But, Pru, what shall we call him when we have dressed him?” Lady Frampul asked.

“Call him My Lady Nobody, or anything else — whatever you want to call him,” Prudence answered.

“We’ll call him by my sister’s name, Laetitia,” Lady Frampul said, “and so it will contribute to our mirth, too, that we have in hand.”

In Latin, “Laetitia” means “Gladness.” The name would remind them of the mirth they had in mind.

— 2.3 —

https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Lady Frampul and Frank exited from the room as Trundle the coachman entered it. 

Prudence said, “Good Trundle, you must immediately make ready the coach and lead the horses out just half a mile into the fields, wherever you will, and then drive in again, with the coach-window blinds put down so no one can see in. Go to the back gate and so on to the backstairs, as if you brought in somebody to my lady — a kinswoman whom she sent for. 

“Make that your answer if you are asked, and spread that gossip in the house.”

Trundle replied, “What trick is this, good Mistress Secretary, that you’d put upon us?”

“Us?” Prudence said. “Do you speak plural?”

She was asking if he, a coachman, was using the majestic plural.

Trundle had meant by “us” himself and the people in the house, but he replied, “Me and my mares are ‘us.’”

“If you so join them, elegant Trundle,” Prudence said, “you may use your figures of speech.”

She was punning. The word “join” can mean 1) “harness together,” and 2) “construe.”

Prudence continued, “I can but tell you plainly that it is my lady’s service.”

“Good Mistress Prudence, you can speak plainly enough,” Trundle said. “I know you are secretary to my lady, and I know that you are Mistress Steward.”

A steward takes care of the finances of a household — the steward does not do the cleaning and other work, but the steward hires (and fires) and pays the people who clean and who do other work. The steward also oversees their work and judges its quality.

Prudence said, “You’ll still be trundling, and have your wages stopped now at the audit.”

“Trundling” means going on. Prudence meant that Trundle would be still be talking and not working. As Mistress Steward, Prudence would be his boss. She was saying that if she wanted, she could hold an audit — an examination — of expenses, and she could fire him.

Trundle said, “It is true, for you are Gentlewoman of the Horse, too. Or whatever else you want to be, besides, Pru.”

The Gentleman of the Horse is in charge of the horses. As a carriage driver, Trundle would work for the Gentlewoman of the Horse as well as for Mistress Steward. Of course, Prudence would hold both jobs.

Trundle continued, “I think it is in my best interest to obey you.”

Prudence replied, “And I think so, too, Trundle.”

They exited.

— 2.4 —

Lord Beaufort and Lord Latimer talked together. They were a pair of young lords, servants and guests to the Lady Frampul.

Lord Beaufort said, “Why, here’s return enough of both our ventures, even if we make no more exploration.”

“Ventures” can mean 1) financial undertakings, or 2) adventures. They had been spending money to travel in search of interesting people and sights.

“What, than of this parasite?” Lord Latimer asked.

“Oh, he’s a dainty one,” Lord Beaufort said. “The parasite of the house.”

They were talking about a man named Fly. A parasite is a person who lives on the work of other people.

The Host entered the room.

Lord Latimer said to Lord Beaufort, “Here comes my Host.”

“My lords, you both are welcome to the Heart,” the Host said.

“To the Light Heart, we hope,” Lord Beaufort said.

“And the merry Heart, I swear,” Lord Latimer said. “We never yet felt such a fit of laughter as your glad Heart has offered us since we entered.”

“How did you come by this property?” Lord Beaufort asked the Host.

By “property,” he did not mean the Light Heart Inn, but the parasite within it. A property is a tool. Fly lived off the work of the Host, but he did help out in some ways.

“Who?” the Host asked. “My Fly?”

“Your Fly, if you call him that,” Lord Beaufort said.

“Nay, he is that,” the Host said. “And he will always be that.”

Fly would continue to be a parasite; he would continue to be a fly.

“In every dish and pot?” Lord Beaufort asked.

“In every cup and company, my lords,” the Host answered. “He is a creature of all liquors, all complexions. Be the drink what it will, he’ll have his sip.”

Fly was a drinker as well as a parasite.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/He’s fitted with a name,” Lord Latimer said.

“And he takes joy in it,” the Host said. “I had him, when I came to take the inn here, assigned to me over in the inventory as an old implement, a piece of furniture, and so he does remain.”

The Host was saying that when he acquired the inn, Fly came with it.

Lord Beaufort said, “We thought he was just such a thing.”

“Is he a scholar?” Lord Latimer asked.

“Nothing can be less a scholar,” the Host said. “But he colors for it: He attempts to act the part. As you can see, he wears a scholar’s black clothing, and he speaks a little tainted, fly-blown Latin after the Schoolmen.”

The Schoolmen were medieval theologians and philosophers.

Lord Beaufort said, “He speaks the Latin of Stratford of the Bow, for Lily’s Latin is to him unknown.”

William Lily was the author of a well-respected Latin grammar.

“What calling has he?” Lord Latimer asked.

The Host replied, “Only to call in, inflame the reckoning, be bold to charge a bill, and to bring up the shot in the rear, as his own word is.”

The Host was punning and using words and phrases that had both a military meaning and an inn-employee meaning.

“To call in” means 1) “to call soldiers to withdraw,” and 2) “to shout out an order.”

“To inflame” means 1) “to set [e.g., a town] on fire” and “to [unethically] increase” a customer’s bill.

“To charge a bill” means 1) “to charge a bill-man” (a bill is kind of weapon), and 2) “to charge a customer’s bill.”

“To bring up the shot in the rear” means “to bring up in the rear the soldiers armed with firearms,” and 2) “to bring up an account in a rear room,” or possibly, “to bring up an account in arrears.”

Lord Beaufort asked, “And he does it in the discipline of the house, as corporal of the field, maestro del campo?”

A corporal of the field is a superior officer.

A maestro del campo is a quartermaster, but “campo” was a slang word for “privy.”

Lord Beaufort was saying that in a way, Fly was a superior officer: He was the quartermaster of the chamber pots. (Actually, a servant named Jordan took care of those, but Fly had a superior position to that of Jordan.) In military terms, a quartermaster is in charge of the pitching and maintaining of an army camp.

The Host said, “Yes, and he is the visitor-general of all the rooms. He has formed a fine militia for the inn, too.”

A visitor-general is an inspector.

The “militia” was the other employees of the inn.

“And he means to bring it to public notice?” Lord Beaufort asked.

The Host replied, “Yes, along with all his other titles. Some call him Deacon Fly, some call him Doctor Fly, some call him Captain Fly, and some call him Lieutenant Fly; but my folks call him Quartermaster Fly, which he is.” 

— 2.5 —

Tiptoe and Fly entered the room. Tiptoe was a braggart knight and colonel who bore himself proudly, and Fly, as we have just learned, was a parasite. 

They did not see the Host, Lord Beaufort, and Lord Latimer, who were off to the side.

Tiptoe said, “Come, Quartermaster Fly.”

The Host said quietly to Lord Beaufort and Lord Latimer, “Here’s one who has already gotten his titles.”

Tiptoe was a knight: Sir Glorious Tiptoe.

“Doctor!” Tiptoe said to Fly.

“Noble colonel!” Fly said to Tiptoe. 

He then said, “I am no doctor, but yet I am a poor professor of ceremony here in the inn, and I am a retainer to the Host. I discipline the house.”

“Poor” can mean 1) impoverished, and 2) of low quality.

“Retainer” can mean “parasite.”

Tiptoe said, “You read — give — a lecture to the family here; when is the day?”

“This is the day,” Fly said.

He and Tiptoe would discuss such topics as fencing on this day.

“I’ll hear you, and I’ll regard you as a doctor,” Tiptoe said. “You shall be one — you have a doctor’s look! You have a disputative face, as if you were of Salamanca.”

Salamanca had a famous university: The University of Salamanca was the oldest university in Spain.

Because he did not know who Tiptoe was, the Host asked Lord Beaufort and Lord Latimer, “Who’s this?”

“He is the glorious Colonel Tiptoe, Host,” Lord Latimer said. 

“He is one who talks upon his tiptoes, if you’ll hear him,” Lord Beaufort said.

“To walk upon tiptoes” means “to bear oneself with pride.”

Tiptoe said, “You have good learning in you, macte Fly.”

Macte is Latin for “honored.”

Fly responded, “And I say macte to my colonel.”

Tiptoe and Fly were members of a mutual admiration society.

The Host said quietly to Lord Beaufort and Lord Latimer, “Well macte-d of them both.”

“They are matched, truly,” Lord Beaufort said.

They were well matched as fools. Well, at least Tiptoe was a fool. Fly sometimes pretended to be a fool.

Tiptoe asked, “But, Fly, why macte?”

Fly answered, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Quasi magis aucte, my honorable colonel.”

In other words, Fly was saying, “I say macte as if macte, aka m acte, meant magis aucte, aka ‘more great.’”

Quasi magis aucte means “as it were, more great (that is, greater).” 

Auctus, actua, auctum is a Latin adjective meaning “large, abundant, ample, enriched, enlarged.” Fly had used aucte to go with macte. The -e ending of aucte is used to indicate the masculine vocative. 

Tiptoe said, “What, are you a critic?”

The Host said to himself, “There’s another title to your profession, Critic Fly.”

It was another title for Fly to use to refer to himself.

Lord Latimer said, “I fear a taint here in the mathematics. They say parallel lines never meet, but he has met his parallel in wit and school craft.”

Lord Latimer meant that Fly had met his parallel — Tiptoe— in wit (intelligence) and school craft (education). They were alike in lack of intellect.

Lord Beaufort said, “They run side by side, not meet, man; mend your metaphor, and save the credit of your mathematics.”

If Fly and Tiptoe were equals, they ran side by side without colliding. They did not meet.

“But, Fly, how did you come to be here, imprisoned in this inn?” Tiptoe asked.

“Upon suspicion of drink, sir,” Fly answered, “I was taken late one night, here, with the tapster and the under-officers, and so deposited here.”

“I will redeem you, Fly, and get you a better place,” Tiptoe said. “I will get you a job with a fair lady.”

“A lady, sweet Sir Glorious?” Fly said.

“A sovereign lady,” Sir Glorious Tiptoe answered. “You shall be the bird to sovereign Pru, Queen of our sports. You shall be her Fly, the Fly in household, and in ordinary; you shall be the bird of her ear, and she shall wear you there! You shall be a Fly of gold, enameled like a brooch, and a school-Fly.”

Fly would be Prudence’s bird, or confidant. “A bird of one’s own brain” meant “a secret.” Fly would know Prudence’s secrets.

An ordinary is an inn, and “in ordinary” meant “a member of the regular staff.”

A school-Fly is Fly as a student.

The Host said quietly to Lord Latimer and Lord Beaufort, “The schools, then, are my stables or the cellar, where Fly studies deeply, at his hours, cases of cups — I do not know how spiced with conscience.”

The word “case” means “pair,” and the phrase “cases of conscience” means “cases that concern morality.”

The Host continued, “I do not know how spiced with conscience for the tapster and the ostler. As whose horses may be cozened with buttered hay, or what jugs filled up with froth? That is his way of learning.”

Horses will not eat buttered hay. A dishonest ostler could give buttered hay to horses, and sell the same buttered hay over and over.

One way for a tapster to cheat customers was to serve them more froth than beer.

These were the tricks that Fly was learning at “school.”

The Host had spoken loudly enough to be noticed by Tiptoe, who asked Fly, “What antiquated feather’s that, who talks?” 

“A man of the first feather” was a showy man — a show-off.

The Host was wearing a velvet hat with a large feather as a decoration.

Fly replied, “He is the worshipful Host: my patron. His name is Master Goodstock, and he is a merry Greek and cants in comely Latin, and spins like the parish top.”

Every village had a large top that served as entertainment during cold weather when peasants could not work. Whipping the top kept them warm — and out of mischief.

A merry Greek is a roisterer.

“I’ll set him up like a top, then,” Tiptoe said.

He asked the Host, “Are you the dominus? Are you the master?”

“I am the factotum here, sir,” the Host said.

A factotum is someone who does many kinds of work — or all the work.

Tiptoe asked, “Are you the Host real — royal — of the house, and the cap of maintenance?”

A cap of maintenance is a symbol of authority.

The Host answered, “I am the lord of the Light Heart, sir, cap-à-pie — from head to toe — whereof the feather is the emblem, colonel, put up with the ace of hearts!”

The Host’s rebus for the Light Heart Inn included a feather.

In other words: I am the best card in a pack of playing cards.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/But why are you in cuerpo?” Tiptoe asked. “I hate to see a host, and someone who is old, in cuerpo.”

“Cuerpo?” the Host said. “What’s that?”

Cuerpo means “without a cloak.”

Tiptoe said, “It’s wearing light, skipping hose and doublet — the horse-boy’s garb!”

“Skipping” is an insulting word meaning “slight” or “vain.” A doublet is a jacket. 

Tiptoe believed that the Host ought to be better dressed than he was.

He continued, “Poor white and parti-colored cuerpo — they don’t partake of the gravity of a host, who should be king-at-arms — the chief herald — and master of ceremonies in his own house. Hosts should know all to the goldweights. They should know the exact amount that can be charged.”

Lord Beaufort said, “Why, that his Fly does for him here, your bird.” 

Fly knew how much he could overcharge the Host’s guests.

“But I would do it myself, if I were my Host,” Tiptoe said. “I would not speak to a cook of quality, your Lordship’s footman, or my lady’s Trundle, in cuerpo! If a dog but stayed below the second floor and required service, that would be a dog of fashion, and well-nosed.” 

A dog can be 1) an animal, or 2) a gallant.

“Well-nosed” can mean 1) keen-scented, or 2) of distinguished appearance.

Tiptoe then talked about how he would dress as a Host serving customers:

“If such a dog could present himself, I would put on the Savoy chain about my neck, the ruff and cuffs of Flanders, then the Naples hat, with the Rome hatband, and the Florentine agate, the Milan sword, the cloak of Genoa set with Brabant buttons, all my given pieces — except my gloves, the natives of Madrid — to entertain him in.”

Tiptoe’s fashion sense was international.

Tiptoe continued, “And I would compliment a tame coney as I would a prince who sent it!”

That is, he would compliment a tame, timid person serving as the prince’s messenger the same way that he would compliment a prince: To both he would behave courteously. 

One meaning of “a coney” is a rabbit, which is known as a timid creature.

The Host said, “The same deeds, though, do not become every man. What is suitable for a colonel will not be suitable for a host.”

Tiptoe said, “A Spanish host is never seen in cuerpo; he is never seen without his paramentos, cloak, and sword.”

Paramentos are ornaments.

Fly said to Tiptoe, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Sir, he has the father of swords within. It is a two-handed longsword, with a Cornish blade, styled of Sir Rud Hudibras.”

Sir Rud Hudibras was the son of a mythical king. At this time, a two-handed longsword was old-fashioned.

“And why a longsword, bully bird?” Tiptoe said. “What is your reason?”

In this society, the word “bully” was a positive word meaning “jolly.”

Fly said, “To note him as a tall — valiant — man and a master of fence.”

“But does he teach the Spanish way of Don Luis?” Tiptoe asked.

Don Luis was a Spanish fencer.

Fly replied, “No, he teaches the Greek master, he does.”

Actually, the two systems of fencing were identical: They were the same system. Fly’s words revealed his ignorance because Fly thought that Euclid was a Greek master of fencing. Actually, Euclid was an ancient Greek mathematician known for geometry. The Euclidean system of fencing — which was the Spanish system of fencing — was so called because the fencers took up their stances and made movements with geometrical precision.

“What do you call him?” Tiptoe asked. “What’s the Greek master’s name?”

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Euclid,” Fly replied.

“Fart upon Euclid!” Tiptoe said. “He is stale and antique. Give me the moderns.”

“Sir, he minds no moderns,” Fly said.

He then quoted an expression of impatience that appeared in Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy: “Go by, Hieronimo!”

“Who was Hieronimo?” Tiptoe asked.

Fly answered, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/The Italian who fenced with Abbot Antony in the Blackfriars, and with Blinkinsops the bold.”

“Aye, by the Virgin Mary, those are the names of famous fencers,” Tiptoe said. “What has become of them?” 

The Host answered, “They had their times, and we can say they were. So had Carranza his, so has Don Luis.”

Carranza wrote a treatise titled The Philosophy of Arms on the topic of fencing.

“Don Luis of Madrid is the sole master now of the world!” Tiptoe said.

The Host said, “But Euclid demonstrates mastery of this in the other world! He — he’s for all; he’s the only fencer of name now in Elysium.”

“He’s for all” meant that he was willing to face anyone in a fencing match.

As an ancient Greek, Euclid was long deceased, and so he was in Hades: the Land of the Dead. The place in Hades where good souls went was Elysium, aka the Elysian Fields.

Fly said, “Euclid does it all by lines and angles, colonel, by parallels and sections. He has his diagrams.”

“Will you be flying, Fly?” Lord Beaumont asked.

“He will be flying at all game,” Lord Latimer said. “And why not? The air’s as free for a fly as for an eagle.”

Lord Beaumont said quietly to Lord Latimer and the Host about Fly, “A buzzard he is in his contemplation and ‘deep’ thought!”

Buzzards were useless for hawking.

Incredulous, Tiptoe said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Euclid is a fencer, and he is in the Elysium!”

The Host joked, “He fenced a prize-fight last week with Archimedes, and beat him, I assure you.”

By “assure,” he meant “promise.”

Archimedes was an ancient mathematician and inventor.

Tiptoe said, “Do you assure me? For what?”

The word “assure” can mean 1) promise, or 2) insure.

The Host deliberately misunderstood him to be willing to make a bet on who had won the fencing match.

“For four in the hundred — that is, four percent,” the Host joked. “Give me five, and I assure you again.”

Tiptoe said, “Peremptory — obstinate — Host, you may be taken — beaten — in the wager. But where, whence had you this information?”

“Upon the road,” the Host joked. “A post-messenger who came from thence — Elysium — three days ago, here, left the information with the tapster.”

Fly said, “The tapster is indeed a thoroughfare of news. He is Jack Jug with the great belly, a witty fellow!”

“Your bird here heard him,” the Host said.

Tiptoe asked Fly, “Did you hear him, bird?”

The Host said quietly to Fly, “Speak in the faith of a fly.”

The Host was telling Fly to go along with the joke. 

The Host then exited. 

“Yes,” Fly said, “and he told us about one who was the Prince of Orange’s fencer —”

“Stevinus?” Tiptoe asked.

The late Simon Stevinus was a mathematician and inventor, but he was not known for fencing.

Fly replied, “Sir, the same. He had challenged Euclid at thirty weapons, more than Archimedes ever saw, and he used machines mostly of his own invention.”

Normal fencing bouts lasted six rounds, not thirty; in each round, a different weapon was used.

“This may have credit and chimes — rings out — reason, this!” Tiptoe said. 

He believed what he had heard about events in Elysium.

Tiptoe continued, “If any man endanger Euclid, bird, observe (he had the honor to quit Europe this forty year) that it is Stevinus. He put down Scaliger.”

“And Scaliger was a great master,” Fly said.

“Not of fencing, Fly,” Lord Beaufort said.

This was true. Scaliger was a master of Greek and Latin — he was a Greek and Latin scholar.

“Excuse Fly, lord,” Tiptoe said. “Scaliger went on the same grounds.”

Tiptoe was saying that Joseph Scaliger did a kind of fencing in his controversial discussions of mathematics. 

Lord Beaufort said, “On the same earth, I think, as other mortals?”

“I mean, sweet lord, the mathematics,” Tiptoe said. “Basta!” 

Basta! means “Enough!”

Tiptoe continued, “When you know more, you will take less green honor — you will be less naïve, and you will praise him more. https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/He had his circles, semicircles, quadrants —”

Fly said, “He wrote a book on the quadrature of the circle.”

Tiptoe said, “Cyclometria, I read —”

The title was actually Cyclometrica Elementa. 

As Tiptoe and Fly talked loudly together, Lord Beaufort and Lord Latimer talked quietly together.

Lord Beaufort said quietly to Lord Latimer, “He read the title only.”

Lord Latimer quietly replied, “And the indice.”

He meant the index or table of contents, or both.

Lord Beaufort said quietly, “If it had one, yes, but whether it had one, quaere — it is a question.”

Cyclometrica Elementa did have a table of contents.

He then said, “What insolent, half-witted things these two are!”

Lord Latimer said, “It is true that all smatterers and dabblers are insolent and impudent.”

Lord Beaufort said, “They lightly and commonly go together.”

True: Insolence and impudence go together.

Lord Latimer said, “It is my wonder that two animals should hawk at — fly at — all discourse thus. They fly every subject to the mark or retrieve —”

Tiptoe had attempted to discourse learnedly on many subjects, but he had failed in every attempt. Fly may have simply been leading Tiptoe on to make him reveal his foolishness.

A hawk would retrieve felled game when the hunters had hit their mark — the animal or bird they had aimed at.

Lord Beaufort quietly said, “And never have the luck to be in the right.”

Lord Latimer quietly said, “It is some folk’s fortune.”

Lord Beaufort said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Fortune’s a bawd and a blind beggar; their fortune is their vanity, and it shows most vilely!”

Tiptoe said, “I could take the heart now to write to Don Luis in Spain, to ask him to make a progress — a journey — to the Elysian Fields next summer —”

Lord Beaumont said quietly, “And persuade him to die for the fame of fencing with a shadow!” 

The way to journey to the Elysian Fields is to die. Shadows are ghosts in Hades: the Land of the Dead. 

Lord Beaumont then said, “Where’s my Host? I wish he had heard this bubble break, indeed.”

— 2.6 —

The Host entered, accompanied by the richly dressed Prudence, the Nurse, Lady Frampul, and Frank, the Host’s son, who was dressed and disguised as a woman.

“Make way!” the Host said. “Stand by for the Queen Regent, gentlemen.”

Lady Frampul’s entertainment was going to start. Part of the entertainment was play-acting. Everyone was supposed to treat Prudence the chambermaid as if she were a queen. As Queen of the Festivities, Prudence could rule on petitions presented to her. For example, Tiptoe had said that he would get Fly a better job — a job working for Prudence. Others could present petitions concerning love.

Tiptoe said to Fly, “This is your queen who shall be, bird, our sovereign.”

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Transformed Prudence!” Lord Beaumont said.

He reached out to touch her.

Playing her role, Queen Prudence said, “My sweet lord, hands off. It is not now as when plain Prudence lived and handed Her Ladyship —”

Joking, the Host finished her sentence “— the chamber pot.”

Not amused, Queen Prudence said, “The looking-glass, my Host; lose your house metaphor and tavern jest! Play your role properly.”

They were acting. Prudence was pretending to be a Queen, and the others had to act as if she were a Queen. The Host was not playing his role when he made rude jokes about her.

Queen Prudence continued, “You have a negligent memory indeed; speak a host’s proper language. Here’s a young lord — Beaufort — who will make your rude joking a precedent, otherwise. He will copy you and make rude jokes.”

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Well acted, Pru!” Lord Latimer said.

“This is the first minute of her reign!” the Host said. “What will she do forty years from now? God bless her!”

Queen Elizabeth I had reigned for forty-four years. 

Queen Prudence said to Lord Beaufort, “If you will kiss or compliment, my lord, behold a lady.”

She pointed to the disguised Frank and continued, “She is a stranger, and my lady’s kinswoman.”

Lord Beaufort said, “I do confess my rudeness that I had need to have my eye directed to this beauty.”

He seemed taken by the disguised Frank at first sight of him as a woman. Of course, he did not know that Frank was the Host’s son.

The disguised Frank said, “My beauty was so little that it needed a perspicil — a telescope.”

He was displaying modesty.

Lord Beaumont asked the disguised Frank, “Lady, what is your name?”

The disguised Frank answered, “My lord, my name is Laetitia.”

“Laetitia!” Lord Beaumont said. “That is a fair omen, and I take it as such!”

“Laetitia” is a fair omen because the name means “gladness.”

Lord Beaumont kissed the disguised Frank and said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Let me have always such lettuce for my lips.” 

A nickname for Laetitia is Lettice.

Lord Beaumont then asked, “But what is the name of your family, lady?”

“Sylly, sir,” the disguised Frank said. 

Lord Beaumont asked, “You are my lady’s kinswoman?”

“My lady” is Lady Frampul.

“I am so honored to be,” the disguised Frank said.

The Host said quietly to Lady Frampul, “Already it takes! Your practical joke is working!”

Lady Frampul replied quietly to the Host, “Your son is an excellent fine boy.”

The Nurse said to the Host, “He is descended of a right good stock, sir.”

Of course, Frank was. He was the son of Goodstock, the Host.

Lord Beaufort quietly asked the Host, “Who’s this? An antiquary?”

Antiquaries study old things. Lord Beaufort was joking about the Nurse’s age.

The Host replied, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/By the old-fashioned dress she wears, you’d swear she is an antiquity! She’s an old Welsh herald’s widow, and she’s a wild Irish born, sir.” 

She was not from the English settlement at Ulster.

The Host continued, “And she’s a hybrid — a mongrel of Welsh by marriage and Irish by birth — who lives with this young lady — Laetitia — a mile off here, and studies Vincent against York.”

Augustine Vincent, herald of Windsor, and Ralph Brook, herald of York, were authors and rivals. Brook published a catalogue of nobility, and Vincent corrected his errors.

Lord Beaufort said, “She’ll conquer, if she reads Vincent.”

The Latin word vinco means “I conquer.”

He continued, “Let me study her.”

He closely observed the Nurse.

The Host said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/She’s perfect in most pedigrees, most descents.”

The Nurse had studied Vincent, and so knew much about nobility. 

Lord Beaufort thought, She is a bawd, I hope, and knows how to blazon a coat.

Bawds were go-betweens who helped men and women to have sex.

Lord Beaufort wanted to sleep with “Laetitia.”

The Nurse knew how to blazon a coat: how to paint a heraldic device such as a coat of arms.

By “blazon [blaze on] a coat,” Lord Beaufort also meant “set on sexual fire a petticoat.”

The Host said, “And she judges all things with a single eye.”

The Nurse had a single eye; she was wearing an eye patch. “To judge with a single eye” is an idiom for “to judge fairly.”

The Host then said, “Fly, come here.”

He said quietly to Fly, “Do not reveal anything of what you see to your Colonel Toe, or Tip, here, but keep all secret, even if it stands in the way of your preferment and promotion. Seek social advancement off from the road — not in a direct manner — discretely, no flattery for it, no lick-foot and no servility, on pain of losing your proboscis, my lickerish Fly.”

Fly wanted to get what he could from Tiptoe; he wanted to be Tiptoe’s parasite, at least for a while. Doing favors for Tiptoe could get him in Tiptoe’s favor.

“Lickerish” can mean 1) “fond of good food,” and 2) “lustful.”

The Host was telling Fly not to reveal to Tiptoe the trick of dressing Frank as a woman. Doing so could get Fly fired from the inn. Flies fed from their proboscis. If Fly got fired, he could no longer eat at the inn.

Tiptoe had seen but not heard Fly and the Host conferring. 

He asked Fly, “What does old velvet-head say?”

The velvet-head was a velvet cap decorated with a feather worn by the Host.

Fly said, “He will present me himself, sir, if you will not.”

Fly was saying that either the Host or Tiptoe would present him to Queen Prudence. Fly wanted to be presented to Queen Prudence because his sponsor could ask her for some boon to benefit Fly, such as a better job.

Actually the Host had not said he would present Fly to Queen Prudence. Fly was hoping that Tiptoe would do the presenting.

Tiptoe said, “Who, he present? What? Whom? A host, a groom, divide the thanks with me? Share in my glories! Lay up — nonsense! I say no more.”

A “groom” is a servant.

“Lay up” meant “go and lie down” — it is an idiom for “nonsense.”

Tiptoe wanted to have the “honor” of presenting Fly to Queen Prudence by himself — no sharing the “honor” with the Host.

The Host said, “Then be silent, sir, and hear the sovereign: Queen Pru.”

Tiptoe was unwilling to be silent, especially when asked to be silent by someone whom he considered to be his inferior.

He said, “Ostlers to usurp upon my Sparta or province, as they say? No broom but mine! I am the only one to sweep away a challenge!”

Sparta was located in Laconia. The Spartans were ferocious warriors on land.

The word spartos means “broom.”

The Host said to Tiptoe, “Still, colonel, you mutter!”

Tiptoe said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/I dare to speak out, just as one in cuerpo can speak out.”

Tiptoe believed that he could speak out just as much as the Host could speak out, but the Host wanted to hear Queen Prudence speak.

Fly began, “Noble colonel —”

Tiptoe interrupted, “And carry what I ask —”

If he asked for something, he expected to get what he asked for.

The Host interrupted, “Ask what you can, sir, so long as it is in the house.”

The Host was in the business of satisfying guests’ requests. If Tiptoe asked for a certain kind of food and drink, the Host would sell it to him as long as it was available to sell.

Tiptoe said, “I ask for my rights and privileges, and although for form I please to call it a suit or request, I have not been accustomed to be repulsed.”

He was not used to hearing the word “no.”

Queen Prudence, who with the others had been listening to Tiptoe and the Host quarrel, said, “No, sweet Sir Glorious, you may still command —”

Yes, he could still ask for what he wanted.

The Host quietly commented on Queen Prudence’s sentence, “Yes, Tiptoe, you can ask and go without.”

Queen Prudence said, “But yet, sir, being the first, and having called it a suit, you’ll see it shall be such as we may grant.”

She would grant what she could.

Lady Frampul said, “Otherwise, if the request is not such as she may grant, the request will deny itself.”

Queen Prudence said, “You hear the opinion of the court.”

Tiptoe said, “I pay no mind to court opinions.”

Queen Prudence said, “But the court opinion is my lady’s, though.”

Of course, Queen Prudence was not a real Queen; the real lady with authority here was Lady Frampul.

Tiptoe said, “My lady is a spinster at the law, and my petition is of right.”

A spinster is an unmarried woman. Although Lady Frampul had the title “Lady,” she was entitled to no special treatment by the judge. Unmarried women had few rights, unless they were the daughters of a viscount or higher social rank.

Tiptoe’s petition was of right — he thought — because of his insistence on his rights and privileges.

Tiptoe wanted people such as the Host to show subservience to him. He also wanted them to show a degree of respect to his friend the Fly.

Queen Prudence asked, “What is your petition of right?”

Tiptoe said, “It is for this poor learned bird.”

“The Fly?” the Host asked.

Tiptoe replied, “This professor in the inn, here. This professor of small matters.”

Of course, “small matters” can mean “matters of little importance,” but it can also mean “narrowly focused matters.” Many modern professors become experts in narrowly focused matters, aka narrowly focused topics.

The others began to comment quietly, out of Tiptoe’s hearing.

Lord Latimer quietly said, “How Tiptoe commends the Fly!”

He had called Fly a professor.

The Host said quietly, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/As to save himself in him.”

By praising one’s friends, one praises oneself for having such good people as friends.

Lay Frampul said quietly, “So do all politicians in their commendations.”

The Host said quietly, “This is a state-bird — a politician — and the verier — truer — fly!”

In other words, Tiptoe was more of a fly than Fly was.

Talking about Fly, Tiptoe said, “Hear him propound problems —”

He meant: Hear Fly put forward problems for discussion.

Queen Prudence said, “Bless us, what’s that? What do you mean?”

Tiptoe said, “Or argue by syllogisms, elenchize.”

A syllogism is an argument with two premises and a conclusion.

“To elenchize” is “to use a syllogism to refute a syllogism that has been defended.”

Lady Frampul said, “To be sure, petards to blow us up.”

Petards are bombs used to attack defensive strongholds. The petards she meant were words.

Lord Latimer said, “These are some enginous strong words!”

“Enginous” means “ingenious engines.”

The “engines” are the petards.

The Host said, “Tiptoe intends to erect a castle in the air and make his fly an elephant to carry it.”

To erect a castle in the air and have an elephant carry it means to make too much fuss over something trifling.

Tiptoe said, “He is a bird of the arts, and his name is Fly.”

Queen Prudence said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Buzz! Nonsense!”

The Host said, “Blow him off, good Pru. His interjections will mar everything if you don’t.”

Tiptoe said, “The sovereign’s honor is to cherish learning.”

Queen Prudence said, “What, in a fly?”

“In anything industrious,” Tiptoe replied.

Queen Prudence said, “But flies are busy — they are meddlesome!”

“There’s nothing more troublesome, or importune, than a fly,” Lady Frampul said.

“There’s nothing more domestic, tame, or familiar than your fly in cuerpo,” Tiptoe said.

The Host said, “That is, when his wings are cut, he is tame indeed, but when his wings are not cut, there is nothing more impudent and greedy, licking —”

Lady Frampul interrupted, “— or saucy, good Sir Glorious.”

Queen Prudence said to Tiptoe, “Stop your advocateship.”

She then looked at Fly and said, “Except that we shall call you Orator Fly, and send you down to the sideboard and the dishes.”

“A good flap, that!” the Host said.

A fly-flap is an instrument used to swat flies. In this context, a “good flap” is a “good put-down.”

Queen Prudence said, “Commit yourself to the steam of the kitchen!”

Lady Frampul said, “Or else condemn yourself to the bottles.”

Queen Prudence said, “And pots. There is his quarry — his prey.”

The Host said, “Your bird — Fly — will chirp far better below.”

“And make you finer music,” Lady Frampul said.

“His buzz will there become him,” Queen Prudence said.

Tiptoe said to Fly, “Come away. Leave with me. Buzz in their faces. Give them all the buzz, dor in their ears and eyes; hum, dor, and buzz!”

“To give someone the dor” meant “to insult them.”

Tiptoe continued, “I will statuminate — prop up — and underprop — support — you. If they scorn us, let us scorn them — we’ll find the Thoroughfare below, and quaere — query — him.” 

The Thoroughfare was Jug, the tapster who acquired news and gossip.

Tiptoe continued, “Leave these relicts — these forsaken people. Buzz; they shall see that I, in spite of their jeers, dare to drink, and with a fly.”

Tiptoe and Fly exited. 

Lord Latimer said, “This is a fair removal at once of two impertinent, presumptuous persons!

“Excellent Pru, I love you for your wit and intelligence, no less than your state, position, and dignity.”

“One must preserve the other,” Queen Prudence said. 

Lovel entered the room. The others did not address him at first.

Lady Frampul asked, “Who is this man here?”

“Oh, he is Lovel, madam,” Queen Prudence said. “He is your sad, grave, serious servant.”

“Sad?” Lady Frampul said. “He is sullen still, and wears a cloud about his brows. I don’t know how to approach him.”

“I will instruct you, madam, if that is all,” Queen Prudence said. “Go to him and kiss him.”

“What, Pru?” Lady Frampul said.

“Go and kiss him,” Queen Prudence said. “I command you to kiss him.”

“You are not wild, licentious, and demented, are you, wench?” Lady Frampul said.

“No,” Queen Prudence said. “I am tame and exceedingly tame, but I am still your sovereign.”

“Has too much splendid clothing made you mad?” Lady Frampul said.

“No, nor has it made me proud,” Queen Prudence said. “Do what I enjoin you to do. Do not dispute my prerogative with a look or a frown. Do not detract and decline. You know that the authority is mine, and I will exercise it swiftly if you provoke me.”

Lady Frampul said, “I have woven a net to ensnare myself!”

She then said to Lovel, “Sir, I am enjoined to tender you a kiss, but I do not know why or wherefore. I know only that the royal pleasure will have it so and urges it. Don’t triumph over and be elated by my obedience, seeing it forced thus.”

She kissed him and said, “There it is.”

“And it is welcome,” Lovel said. 

He said to himself, “Was there ever a kiss that was so relished thus, or had such a sting like this — a kiss of so much sweet nectar, but mixed with bitter aloes?”

Queen Prudence said, “No murmuring nor repining; I am fixed in my judgment and firmly resolved.”

Lovel continued his reverie: 

“It had, I think, a quintessence — the highest essence — of both nectar and aloes, but that which was the better drowned the bitter.

“How soon it passed away! How unrecovered! 

“The distillation — the refined essence — of another soul was not as sweet as this kiss! And until I meet again that kiss, those lips, like relish, and this taste, let me fall into a consumption, be consumed by ardor, and here waste! Let me waste away from love-sickness!”

Queen Prudence said, “The royal assent is passed and cannot alter.” 

“You’ll turn into a tyrant,” Lady Frampul said.

“Don’t be a rebel,” Queen Prudence said. “The name of rebel is odious.”

“Will you hear me out?” Lady Frampul asked.

“No, not on this topic,” Queen Prudence said. “Would you make laws and be the first who breaks them?”

Lady Frampul had made Prudence Queen, and as such Prudence could make laws — orders — and expect them to be obeyed. But now Lady Frampul disliked some of those laws and wished to break them.

Queen Prudence continued, “The example is pernicious in a subject, and in a person of your quality, most pernicious.”

A subject ought to obey a Queen, and a subject who is a person of quality especially ought to obey a Queen.

“Excellent Princess!” Lord Latimer said.

“Just Queen!” the Host said.

“Brave sovereign!” Lord Latimer said.

“A she-Trajan, this Prudence is!” the Host said.

The Roman Emperors who have gone down in history as the Five Good Emperors are 1) Nerva (reigned 96–98 CE), 2) Trajan (98–117), 3) Hadrian (117–138), 4) Antoninus Pius (138–161), and 5) Marcus Aurelius (161–180), who presided over the most majestic days of the Roman Empire.

The Host and Lord Latimer were giving Queen Prudence high praise.

Lord Beaufort, who was and had been preoccupied with the disguised, dressed-as-a-woman Frank, said, “What is it? 

“Proceed, incomparable Pru! I am glad I am scarcely at leisure to applaud you.”

He was happy to be preoccupied with Frank.

Lord Latimer said to Lord Beaufort, “It’s well for you that you have so happy expressions.”

Lord Beaufort was able to come up with expressions such as “incomparable Pru.” He was also able to express his affection for Frank through such actions as ignoring everyone except Frank.

Lady Frampul said, “Yes, cry her up with acclamations, do, and cry me down, run all with sovereignty! Prince Power will never lack her parasites.”

The title “Prince” could refer to people of either sex. Prince Power is Queen Prudence. 

Queen Prudence said, “Nor will Lady Murmur lack her false complaints and grumbles.”

Lady Murmur is Lady Frampul.

Using the royal plural, Queen Prudence then said, “Master Lovel, for so your document here — your bill of complaint — exhibited in our high court of sovereignty at this first hour of our reign, declares against this genteel and noble lady a disrespect you have conceived, if not received, from her —”

Lady Frampul seemed to dislike Lovel — that was his complaint against her.

The Host said, “Received, not conceived; so the charge lies in our bill.”

“We see it, Lovel’s learned counsel,” Queen Prudence said. “Stop your complaining.”

The Host was Lovel’s learned counsel. Lovel was Lady Frampul’s servant: He loved and served her.

Queen Prudence continued conversing about Lovel, “We who love our justice above all our other attributes, and have the nearness and intimacy to the situation to know your extraordinary merit, as also to discern this lady’s goodness, and find how loath she’d be to lose the honor and reputation she has had in having so worthy a servant, although only for a few minutes, do here enjoin —”

“Good!” the Host said.

Queen Prudence continued, “— charge, will, and command her Ladyship, on pain of our high displeasure and the committing of an extreme contempt to the court, our crown and dignity —”

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Excellent sovereign, and remarkable Pru!” the Host said.

Queen Prudence continued, “— to entertain you for a pair of hours. Choose the hours for when you please, on this day — with all respects and valuation of a principal servant, to give you all the titles, all the privileges, the freedoms, favors, rights, she can bestow —”

“Large, ample words, of a splendid extent!” the Host said.

Queen Prudence continued, “— or can be expected from a lady of honor or quality, in discourse, access, courtship to a lady —”

“Good,” the Host said.

Queen Prudence continued, “— not to give ear or admit conference with any person but yourself; nor when you are there, of any other topic but love, and the companion of it, noble courtship, and for your two hours’ service, you shall take two kisses —”

“Noble!” the Host said.

Queen Prudence continued, “— for each hour, a kiss, to be taken freely, fully, and legally, before us, in the court here and in our presence —”

“Splendid!” the Host said.

Queen Prudence continued, “— but those hours passed, and the two kisses paid, the binding contract is never to hope for the renewing of the time or of the suit on any circumstance.”

Yes, Lovel could talk about love to Lady Frampul for two hours and be kissed by her twice, but afterward he must never do those things again.

“A hard condition!” the Host said.

“Had it been easier, I would have suspected the sovereign’s justice,” Lord Latimer said.

The Host said, “Oh, you are servant — suitor — my lord, to the lady and you are a rival to Lovel. In point of law, my lord, you may be challenged and objected to.”

The Host believed that Lord Latimer loved Lady Frampul.

“I am not jealous!” Lord Latimer said.

Perhaps he loved someone else.

The Host said, “Of so short a time your Lordship need not be jealous, especially with it being done in foro — in open court.”

“What is Lovel’s answer?” Queen Prudence asked.

Would Lovel agree to spend two hours with and receive two kisses from Lady Frampul with the condition that afterward he must never do those things again?

The Host said, “Lovel craves time, madam, to consult with his learned counsel.”

Queen Prudence said, “You be his learned counsel, and go consult together quickly.”

Lovel and Host walked aside to talk together quietly.

“You are no tyrant?” Lady Frampul said to Queen Prudence. “You don’t think you are being a tyrant here?”

“If I am, madam, it would be best for you to impeach me!” Queen Prudence replied.

Lord Latimer said, “Beaufort —”

Preoccupied with Frank, Lord Beaufort said, “I am busy. Please let me alone. I have a cause in hearing, too.”

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/In what court?” Lord Latimer asked.

“In Love’s Court of Requests!” Lord Beaufort replied.

“Bring it to the sovereignty,” Lord Latimer said. “It is the nobler court, before Judge Pru, who is the only learned mother of the law and lady of conscience, too!”

Queen Prudence was judging the appeals and petitions of the inn customers.

Lord Beaufort said, “It is well enough before this Mistress of Requests where it is.”

He was referring to Frank’s Nurse, with whom he now talked quietly.

Meanwhile, the Host and Lovel were also talking quietly together at a side of the room.

The Host said to Lovel, “Let them not scorn you. Bear up, Master Lovel, and take your hours and kisses. They are a fortune.”

“Which I cannot approve and put to the test, and much less make use of,” Lovel said.

“Still in this cloud of melancholy!” the Host said. “Why cannot you make use of them?”

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Who would be rich to be so soon undone?” Lovel said. “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/The beggar’s best is wealth he does not know, and just to show it to him inflames his want.”

Lovel did not want two hours of happiness with Lady Frampul if they would be followed by an unhappy remaining lifetime without Lady Frampul.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Two hours of the height of love does not tempt you?” the Host asked.

Lovel replied, “That joy is too, too narrow if it would attempt to contain a love as infinite as mine, and once the two hours have passed they would leave an eternal loss. 

“Who so prodigiously desires a feast that they would forfeit health and appetite to see it?

“Or who just to taste a spoonful would forgo all taste of delicacy and delight forever afterward?”

The Host said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/These yet are hours of hope.” 

“But all hours following are years of despair, ages of misery!” Lovel said. “Nor can so short a happiness but spring — start — a world of fear with the thought of losing it. It is better to be never happy than to feel a little happiness, and then lose it forever.”

“I confess that Queen Prudence made it a strict injunction,” the Host said, “but then the hope is it may not be kept. A thousand things may intervene. We see the wind shift often, thrice a day sometimes. Decrees may alter upon better legal application and riper legal hearing. The best bow may warp — the strongest bow may bend — and the hand may vary and apply a greater or lesser pressure on the bow. Pru may be a sage in law, and yet not be bitter.”

A sage is a wise person; the herb sage is bitter. The Host was hoping that Prudence might change her mind and revoke her strict injunction. 

The Host continued, “Sweet Pru, smooth Pru, soft, debonair, and amiable Pru may do as well as rough and rigid Pru, and yet maintain her venerable and respected Pru, majestic Pru, and serenissimus — most famous and most splendid and most serene — Pru.

“Try but one hour first, and as you like the loose of that, draw home and try the other.”

“Loose” means 1) upshot, and 2) shooting of an arrow. To draw a bow home is to draw back the string as far as it will go.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/If one hour could make the other hour happy,” Lovel said, “I would attempt it —”

The Host interrupted, “— put it on, and do. Advance, and exert yourself.”

Lovel said, “Or in the blest attempt that I might die!”

He meant literally “die” in an attempt to get the love of Lady Frampul, but the Host deliberately misinterpreted this intended meaning of “die.” His misinterpretation gave the word “die” a bawdy meaning. In this society, one meaning of “die” is “ejaculate.” 

The Host said, “Aye, by the Virgin Mary, there would be happiness indeed — happiness transcendent to the melancholy that you intended.”

The melancholy that Lovel intended was literally dying in an attempt to win Lady Frampul’s love.

The Host continued, “It — the dying that is ejaculation — would be a fate above a monument and all inscription to die so. It would be a death for emperors to enjoy, and the kings of the rich East to pawn their regions for, to show their treasure, open all their mines, spend all their spices to embalm their corpses, and wrap the inches up in sheets of gold that fell by such a noble destiny!”

The “inches” were 1) those of the height of an emperor, and 2) those of Lovel’s penis.

“Fell” referred to 1) the death of the emperor, and 2) the falling of Lovel’s penis after ejaculation.

The Host continued, “And as for the wrong to your friend Beaufort, that fear’s away. He rather wrongs himself, following fresh light — a new love — and new eyes to swear by.”

Lovel had vowed to stay away from Lady Frampul because Lady Frampul was in love with Lord Beaufort, the son of Lovel’s friend and patron. But Lord Beaufort’s actions now showed that he was enamored of the disguised-as-a-woman Frank.

The Host continued, “If Lord Beaufort changes, it is no crime in you to remain constant and to keep loving the same person: Lady Frampul. And upon these conditions, at a game so urged upon you.”

Lord Beaufort had once cast his affection upon Lady Frampul, but clearly Lord Beaufort had now cast his affection at first sight upon the disguised-as-a-woman Frank. So why shouldn’t Lovel pursue Lady Frampul?

Queen Prudence interrupted their conversation: “Sir, your resolution —”

She wanted to know what Lovel had decided after conferring with the Host.

The Host asked, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/How is the lady — Lady Frampul — inclined toward spending two hours with Lovel?”

Queen Prudence replied, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Sovereigns are not accustomed to ask their subjects’ consent and approval where it is due, but only where it is conditional.”

In other words, Lady Frampul had to do what her Queen — Prudence — had told her to do: Spend two hours with Lovel and give him two kisses. Lady Frampul’s feelings about the matter were of no concern to Queen Prudence.

Lord Latimer and the Host talked aside.

“A royal sovereign!” the Host said.

“And a rare stateswoman,” Lord Latimer said. “I admire her bearing in her new rule.”

The Host said to Lovel, “Come, choose your hours. It is better to be happy for a part of time than not to be happy for the whole, and it is better to be happy for a short part of your life than never. 

“Shall I appoint the hours and pronounce them for you?”

“At your pleasure,” Lovel said. “As you please.”

The Host said to Queen Prudence, “Lovel designates his first hour after dinner, and his second hour after supper. What do you say? Are you content with these hours?”

“I am content,” Queen Prudence said.

“I am content,” Lady Frampul said.

“I am content,” Lord Latimer said.

“I am content,” the disguised-as-a-woman Frank said.

“What’s that?” said Lord Beaufort, who had not been paying attention to anyone other than the disguised-as-a-woman Frank. “I am content, too.”

“You have reason to be content,” Lord Latimer said. “You have taken the opportunity to do some wooing, and we have observed it.”

The Nurse, who was protective of Frank and who had an Irish accent, said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Trot’, I am not content; in fait’ I am not.”

[The Nurse, who was protective of Frank and who had an Irish accent, said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Truly, I am not content; in faith I am not.”]

The Host asked the Nurse, “Why aren’t you content, good Shelee-nien?”

“Shelee-nien” means “Sile-daughter.” “Sile” is a form of Celia. The Nurse’s full name is Shelee-nien Thomas. This means: Celia, daughter of Thomas.

The Nurse, who was possibly drunk, said about Lord Beaufort, “He tauk so desperate, and so debausht, so bawdy like a courtier and a lord, God bless him, one who tak’th tobacco.”

[The Nurse, who was possibly drunk, said about Lord Beaufort, “He talk so desperate, and so debauched, so bawdy like a courtier and a lord, God bless him, one who takes — uses — tobacco.”]

The Nurse was not happy about Lord Beaufort’s being attracted to the disguised Frank.

“Very well mixed,” the Host said.

In this society, the noun “mix” meant “dung and filth,” and it meant “fool or a vile person.” As an adjective, it meant “filthy and foul.”

Lord Beaufort was a mix: He was a courtier and a lord, but the Nurse believed that he displayed some not-so-good traits.

The Host asked, “What did Beaumont say?”

“Nay, nothing to the purposh, or very little, nothing at all to purposh,” the Nurse replied.

[“Nay, nothing to the purpose, or very little, nothing at all to purpose,” the Nurse replied.]

“Let him alone, Nurse,” the Host advised.

“I did tell him of Serly, which is a great family come out of Ireland, descended of O’Neill, MacCon, MacDermot, MacMurrough, but he paid no attention,” the Nurse said.

“Nor do I,” the Host said. “Good queen of heralds, ply the bottle and go to sleep.” 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 3

— 3.1 —

Tiptoe, Fly, and Jug talked together.

Tiptoe said to Fly, “I like the design of your militia well! It is a fine militia, and it is well ordered, and the division is neat! It will be desired only that the expressions were a little more Spanish, for there’s the best militia of the world!”

Tiptoe greatly valued anything Spanish.

He continued, “To call them tertias — the tertia of the kitchen, the tertia of the cellar, the tertia of the chamber, and the tertia of the stables.”

Tertia is a Latinization of a Spanish word: tercio.

A tertia is a division of infantry. It also means “a third.”

Fly replied, “That I can, sir, and I can find very able, fit commanders in every tertia.”

“Now you are in the right!” Tiptoe said. “As in the tertia of the kitchen, you yourself being a person elegant and delicate of taste in sauces, there you will command as prime maestro del campo [quartermaster], chief master of the palate, for that tertia. Or the cook under you will command that tertia because you have a more important position: You are the marshal, and the officer in the field next to the Host.”

Tiptoe named the next — the second — commander of a tertia: “Then for the cellar, you have young Anon, who is a rare fellow — what’s his other name?”

“Pierce, sir,” Fly answered.

“Sir Pierce,” Tiptoe said. “I’ll have him be a cavalier.”

A cavalier is 1) a horseman (knight), or 2) a roisterer. 

As a knight, Pierce would be Sir Pierce.

Tiptoe continued, “Sir Pierce Anon will pierce us a new hogshead!”

Tiptoe then named a subordinate officer for Sir Pierce: “And then your thoroughfare, Jug here, his alferez [Spanish word for an ensign], an able officer. Give me your beard, round Jug, I take you by this handle.”

Tiptoe pulled Jug’s beard.

Drinking jugs had depictions of a bearded face.

Tiptoe continued, “And I do love one of your inches!”

His inches were probably his height. Tiptoe liked people who were as tall as Jug. Or perhaps Tiptoe loved other kinds of inches.

Tiptoe named the third commander of a tertia, “In the chambers, Jordan, here. He is the don del campo [gentleman of the field] of the beds.”

A jordan is a chamber pot, another kind of jug.

Tiptoe moved on to the next and final commander of a tertia: “And for the stables, what’s his name?”

“Old Peck,” Fly answered.

“Maestro del campo Peck!” Tiptoe said. “His name is curt, a monosyllable, but he commands the horse well.”

A curtal is a horse with a cropped tail.

In this society, the word “horse” could be plural.

Fly said, “Oh, in an inn, sir, we have other horse.”

He was playing with language. The words “horse” and “whores” sound alike, and often whores could be found at the inns of the time.

Fly continued, “Let those troops rest a while. Wine is the horse that we must charge with here.”

The bartenders charged customers for the wine they drank.

Tiptoe said, “Bring up the troops — bring wine, or call for wine, sweet Fly; it is an exact, accomplished militia, and you are an exact professor and practitioner. Lipsius Fly you shall be called, and Jouse.”

Justus Lipsius was a respected scholar of the time.

“Jowse” is the juice of the grape — wine. It is also a variant of the non-Latinized form of the name Justus: Joest.

Ferret and Trundle entered the room.

Tiptoe began to joke about Ferret’s name.

“Jack Ferret!” Tiptoe said. “He’s welcome, the old trench-master, and colonel of the pioneers.”

Trenchers are wooden plates. As Lovel’s servant, Ferret served him at meals.

Pioneers are ditch-diggers; ferrets dig burrows. 

Tiptoe continued, “What can you make bolt for us now? A coney or two out of Tom Trundle’s burrow here, the coach?”

A “coney” is 1) a rabbit, or 2) a prostitute.

Ferrets were used in hunting to go into an animal’s burrow and make the animal bolt out of its safe haven into the sight of the hunters.

A carriage or coach could bring prostitutes to an inn.

Tiptoe said about Trundle the carriage driver, “This is the master of the carriages! How is your driving, Tom? Good as it was?”

“It serves my lady, and our officer Pru,” Trundle said. “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Twelve miles an hour! Tom has the old trundle still.”

Twelve miles an hour was an exaggeration; it was very fast for the time.

Tiptoe said, “I am taken with the family here, fine fellows, viewing the muster roll of the men.”

The family was the servants of the inn.

“They are splendid men,” Trundle said.

Ferret said, “And of the Fly-blown discipline all, the quartermaster!”

Fly was the figurative quartermaster.

A bad quartermaster might bring the troops fly-blown meat to eat. Fly-blown meat had fly eggs deposited in it.

“The Fly’s a rare bird in his profession,” Tiptoe said. “Let’s sip a private pint with him. I would have him quit this light sign of the Light Heart, my bird, and this lighter — even more frivolous — house — it is not for his tall and growing gravity, so cedar-like,https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/ to be the second to a host in cuerpo who knows no elegancies.

“Let Fly use his own dhttps://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/ictamen — order or pronouncement — and his genius; I would have him fly high and strike at all.”

Falcons darted at and struck their prey.

Pierce Anon entered the room.

https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Tiptoe said, “Here’s young Anon, too.”

“What wine is it you want, gentlemen: white or claret?” Pierce Anon asked.

“White, my brisk Anon,” Tiptoe said.

“I’ll draw you Juno’s milk that dyed the lilies, colonel,” Pierce Anon said.

In mythology, milk dripped from the goddess Juno’s breasts, fell to the ground, and created lilies.

“Do so, Pierce,” Tiptoe said.

As Pierce Anon exited the room, Peck entered it.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/A plague on all jades!” Peck complained. “What a clap he has given me!”

Jades are 1) poor horses, and 2) whores.

A clap is 1) a blow, or 2) a case of gonorrhea.

“Why, what is it now, cousin?” Fly asked.

In this society, the words “cousin” and “cuz” often simply meant “friend.”

Fly took Peck aside.

Tiptoe asked, “Who’s that?”

Ferret answered, “Peck the ostler.”

Fly and Peck talked quietly and privately.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/What ails you, cousin Peck?” Fly asked.

“Oh, me! My haunches!” Peck complained. “As sure as you live, sir, he — the horse — knew perfectly I meant to cheat him. He did leer so on me, and then he sneered, as if he were one who would say, ‘Take heed, sirrah.’ And when he saw our half-peck, which you know was only an old court-dish — a bunch of bad scraps left over from the meals of other horses — lord, how he stamped!

“I thought it had been for joy, when suddenly he cuts me a back caper with his heels and takes me just on the crupper — right on my butt. Down come I and my whole ounce of oats! “

An ounce of oats is short rations for both human beings and horses.

Peck continued, “Then he neighed out as if he had a mare by the tail.”

Fly said, “Truly, cousin, you are to blame when you treat the poor dumb Christians — the horses — so cruelly. You defraud them of their dimensum — their fixed allowance. Yonder’s Colonel Tiptoe’s horse — I looked in on him — keeping our Lady’s Eve!”

The Eve of the Annunciation was a fast day.

Fly continued, “The devil a bit of food he has got yet, since he came in! There he stands, and looks and looks, but it is your pleasure, coz, that he should look lean enough.”

“Coz” means cousin. Often it simply means friend.

Tiptoe’s horse was starving: It had not been fed edible food since Tiptoe arrived at the inn.

“He has hay in front of him,” Peck said.

“Yes,” Fly said, “but the hay is as gross as hemp, and the hay will choke as soon as a hemp rope would choke him unless he eats it buttered.”

Horses won’t eat buttered hay, and so the hay would not choke the horse.

Fly continued, “He had four shoes, and good ones, when he came in; it is a wonder that just by standing still he should have cast three.”

Peck had removed three of the horse’s shoes in order to sell them or to charge Colonel Tiptoe for replacing them.

“Truly, Quartermaster,” Peck said, “this trade is a kind of mystery that corrupts our standing manners quickly.” 

Trades are skilled labor; they are mysteries to those who don’t know the skills involved.

“Standing” means “customary,” but also refers to horses standing in stalls.

Peck continued, “Once a week I meet with such a brush — a setback — to mollify me. Sometimes a pair of setbacks, to awaken my conscience, yet still I sleep securely.”

Cheaters grow used to cheating, and despite a setback now and then, they are accustomed to sleep soundly.

“Cousin Peck,” Fly said, “you must use better dealing, indeed, you must.”

“Truly,” Peck said, “to give good example to my successors, I could be well content to steal but two girths and now and then a saddle-cloth, change a bridle for exercise, and stay there — leave it at that.”

In order to be a good example to other ostlers, Peck might be willing to steal a little, not a lot.

To “change a bridle for exercise” means to “steal a bridle to exercise the action of stealing so that I don’t forget how to do it.”

“If you could, there would be some hope for you, coz,” Fly said. “But the fate is yhttps://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/ou’re drunk so early you mistake — steal — whole saddles, and sometimes a horse.”

Peck began, “Aye, there’s —”

He was interrupted by Pierce Anon’s arrival. Pierce was carrying wine.

“— the wine,” Fly said, finishing Peck’s sentence. “Come, coz, I’ll talk with you soon.”

“Do,” Peck said. “Lose no time, good Quartermaster.”

The two men returned to the others.

Tiptoe said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/There are the horse come, Fly.”

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Charge!” Fly said. “In, boys, in.”

Jordan entered the room.

Fly said about Jordan, “Lieutenant of the ordnance, tobacco, and pipes.”

The ordnance was fire to light the pipes.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Who’s that?” Tiptoe said. “Old Jordan, good! A suitable and necessary vessel.”

Jordans are chamber pots; they are necessary vessels.

Tiptoe continued, “New-scoured he is. Here’s to you, Marshal Fly. In milk, my young Anon says.”

Tiptoe drank the toast to Fly. 

Pierce Anon said, “Cream of the grape that dropped from Juno’s breasts and sprung the lily!”

The cream of the grape is white wine.

Pierce Anon continued, “I can recite your fables, Fly. Here is also the blood of Venus, mother of the rose!”

He was referring to red wine. 

In mythology, Venus’ feet were scratched by rose thorns as she ran to her lover, whose name was Adonis. Her blood splashed a white rose, turning it red.

Music was heard coming from further within the inn.

Jordan said, “The dinner has gone up from the kitchens.”

A whistle sounded within.

Jug said, “I hear the whistle calling the servants to wait on the tables.”

“Aye, and the fiddlers,” Jordan said. “We must all go wait on the diners.” 

Pierce Anon said, “A pox on this waiting, Quartermaster Fly.”

It was a job he disliked.

Fly replied, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/When chambermaids are sovereigns, their ladies wait on them. Fly scorns to breathe —”

Peck interrupted, “— or blow upon them.”

One meaning of “fly-blown” was “to lay eggs.”

Peck was making a joke about Fly scorning to make the ladies pregnant.

Pierce Anon asked, “Old parcel Peck, are you there? How are you now? Are you lame?”

A parcel peck is a small amount; Peck gave small amounts of feed to the horses.

Peck had been kicked in the butt by a horse. He could very well be lame.

“Yes, indeed,” Peck said. “It is ill halting — limping — before cripples.”

Beggars faked being cripples in order to arouse sympathy in people so they would give the beggars money. To halt — limp — before cripples is ill because they are wise to the trick and cannot be fooled. Peck is a cheat, but he is among other cheats at the inn who know his tricks.

Peck continued, “I have got a dash — a blow — from a jade here that will stick by me.”

Pierce Anon said, “Oh, you have had some fantasy, fellow Peck. You have had some revelation —”

“What?” Peck said.

Pierce Anon said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/To steal the hay out of the racks again —”

By stealing the hay out of the horses’ feeding trough, Peck could sell it again.

“I told him so,” Fly said. “He could steal it when the guests’ backs were turned.”

Pierce Anon said, “Or bring his peck of feed the bottom upwards, heaped with oats, and cry, ‘Here’s the best measure upon all the road!’” 

Peck could hold the feed container upside down, with oats piled on top of the container and inside the bottom rim to make the container look as if it were completely filled with oats.

Pierce Anon continued, “When, you know, the guest put in his hand to feel and smell the oats, the guest grated all his fingers upon the wood —”

At least one guest had discovered that trick.

“Mum!” Peck said. “Quiet!”

Pierce Anon continued, “— and found out your cheat.”

Peck said, “I have been in the cellar, Pierce.”

He meant that he knew about Pierce Anon’s tricks as a bartender.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/You were then there, upon your knees,” Pierce Anon said. “I remember it. You were begging to have the fact of your cheating concealed. I could tell more about the soaping of saddles, cutting of horses’ tails, and cropping — pranks of ale and hostelry —” 

Peck adulterated the saddle-soap to save money; he also cut and cropped horses’ tails to sell the horsehair for use in brushes.

Of course, Pierce Anon had his own tricks of ale and hostelry.

Fly interrupted Pierce Anon, whom Tiptoe had said that he would make a cavalier, “— those tricks of yours Peck cannot forget, he says, young knight, no more than you can forget other deeds of darkness done in the cellar.”

“Well said, bold professor,” Tiptoe said to Fly.

“We shall have some truth explained,” Ferret said.

The truth would be about other tricks.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/We are all mortal, and we have our visions,” Pierce Anon said.

The visions can be faulty, and cheaters can help visions to be faulty, as Peck now pointed out: “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Truly, it seems to me that every horse has his whole peck of feed, and tumbles up to the ears in litter.”

The horses may have seemed to be well fed and well cared-for to Peck (or so he pretended), and he went to lengths to make them seem well fed and well cared-for to other people, but the horses knew that they were not well fed and well cared-for.

Litter is straw that serves as bedding for animals.

Hay is nutritious; straw is not. Straw is the bare stalk. Hay is the stalk plus the rest of the plant, including the nutritious seeds. Hay is a nutritious crop grown for animals. Straw is a byproduct of a grain crop; it is what is left after the nutritious parts have been removed.

Fly said, “When, indeed, there’s no such matter, not a smell of provender.”

Ferret said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/There’s not as much straw as would tie up a horse-tail!”

Tying up a horse’s tail kept it clean and out of the harness. But in Peck’s stable there was not enough straw to do even that.

Fly said, “Nor is there anything in the rack but two old cobwebs, and as much rotten hay as had been a hen’s nest!”

Trundle said, “And yet Peck is always eager to sweep the mangers.”

Peck would sweep the mangers — the horses’ feeding troughs — to find uneaten hay to reuse.

“But he puts in nothing,” Ferret said.

Peck doesn’t put enough — or any — hay in the mangers.

Pierce Anon said, “These are fits and fancies that you must leave, good Peck.”

The inn employees all cheated their customers, but Peck was taking it too far.

Fly said to Peck, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/And you must pray that it may be revealed to you at some times whose horse you ought to cozen and cheat, with what conscience, the how, and the when.”

According to Fly, there is a time and a place for cheating, but you must find that time and place. Overdoing it can result in getting caught and punished.

Fly added, “A parson’s horse may suffer —”

Pierce Anon interrupted, “— a horse whose master is double beneficed. Put in that.”

A parson was supposed to have one and only one benefice: a permanent Church appointment in which pastors are allotted money and property in return for their pastoral services.

Fly and Pierce Anon agreed that it’s OK to cheat some kinds of people, such as rich, corrupt parsons.

Fly said, “A little greasing in the teeth — it is wholesome and keeps him in a sober shuffle — a slow gait.”

Greasing a horse’s teeth kept the horse from eating. Not eating resulted in a lack of energy.

Pierce Anon said, “His saddle, too, may lack a stirrup.”

The stirrup could be stolen and sold.

Fly said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/And, it may be sworn that his learning lay on one side and so broke it.”

The parson’s books were in a pack on one side of the saddle and so broke the stirrup on that side — at least, that’s the excuse that Peck could use to explain the loss of the stirrup.

Peck said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/They always have oats in their cloak-bags — clothes-bags — to affront us.”

Some parsons brought their own oats for their horses so that they wouldn’t have to pay the ostlers for oats.

Fly said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/And therefore it is a meritorious duty to tithe such soundly.”

In other words, it’s OK to tithe rich parsons — to take a tenth of the parson’s money — because rich parsons cheat by having two benefices and because they are miserly.

Pierce Anon said, “And a grazier’s horse may —” 

Graziers grazed cattle to get them ready for sale. They were proverbially greedy. 

Ferret said, “Oh, they are pinching puckfists!”

A puckfist is literally a puffball fungus. Figuratively, it is a braggart or a miser. Here, it is a pinching — tightly gripped — puckfist, and so the primary meaning is miser. (Misers have tightly closed fists; the hands of generous people are open.)

In other words, graziers are miserly.

Trundle said, “And they are suspicious.”

Pierce Anon finished the sentence he had started, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/— suffer before the master’s face, sometimes.”

Fly said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/The grazier shall think he sees his horse eat half a bushel —”

Pierce Anon said, “When the sleight is, after the horse’s gums are rubbed with salt until all the skin comes off, the horse shall only mumble — chew as if with toothless gums — like an old woman who is chewing tough meat — and drop the food out again.”

“Well argued, cavalier,” Tiptoe said to Pierce Anon.

Fly said, “It may do well, and go for an example. But, cousin, have care of understanding horses — horses that understand they are being cheated — horses with angry heels, nobility horses with aristocratic owners, and horses that know the world.

“Let them have food until their teeth ache, and rub their coats until their ribs shine like a wench’s forehead. 

“These horses’ owners are devils if you don’t do these things, and they will look into your dealings and discover that you are cheating.”

He was saying that in part so that Tiptoe would hear it and think that his horse was being well taken care of.

Peck said, “For my own part, I wish that the next horse of the pampered breed I cheat may be foundered.”

Founder is a disease that makes horses lame.

Fly said, “Say, ‘Foun-de-red.’ Prolate it right.”

Fly wanted Peck to lengthen the pronunciation of “foundered” by making it three syllables: found de (the) red. The disease called “founder” is inflammation of the hoof, and red is the color of inflammation.

Peck said, “And of all four hooves, I wish it. I love no crupper compliments.”

“Crupper” refers to a horse’s hindquarters. “Crupper compliments” are kicks.

Pierce Anon asked, “Whose horse was it?”

Peck answered, “Why, Master Burst’s.”

“Has Bat Burst come?” Pierce Anon asked.

“He has been here an hour,” Peck answered.

“Who is Burst?” Tiptoe asked.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Master Bartholomew Burst,” Pierce Anon answered. “He is one who has been a citizen, and then a courtier, and is now a gambler. He has had all his whirls and bouts of fortune, and as a man would say, ‘Once a bat, and always a bat!’ He is a reremouse, aka bat, and he is a bird of twilight.”

Pierce Anon was saying of Bartholomew Burst: ‘Once a thief, always a thief.” 

“Bat” is 1) a shortened form of Bartholomew, and 2) a creature of the night, which is literally a nocturnal animal or bird and figuratively a thief.

Pierce Anon continued, “He has broken — gone bankrupt — thrice.”

Tiptoe said, “Then he is your better man, as the Geno’way proverb says. Men are not made of steel.”

A proverb stated, “In Genoa there are mountains without wood, sea without fish, women without shame, and men without conscience.”

This infers that the Genoese know the value of a well-timed bankruptcy.

Pierce Anon said, “Nor are they bound always to keep their promises or their principles.”

“Thrice honorable colonel!” Fly said to Tiptoe. “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Hinges will crack —”

Tiptoe finished Fly’s sentence: “— although they are made of Spanish iron.”

Pierce Anon said about Bat Burst, “He is a merchant still, he is an adventurer at in-and-in, and he is our thoroughfare’s friend.”

In-and-in is a dicing game.

Jug was the thoroughfare: the man whom travelers confided in and told their news and gossip to.

Tiptoe asked, “Who? Jug’s friend?”

“The same,” Pierce Anon said, “and a fine gentleman was with him.”

Peck said, “He was Master Huffle.”

“Who? Hodge Huffle?” Pierce Anon asked.

“Who’s he?” Tiptoe asked.

Pierce Anon said, “He is a cheater, and another fine gentleman, a friend of the chamberlain’s — that is, a friend of Jordan’s. He is Master Huffle, and he is Burst’s Protection.”

Master Huffle is Burst’s friend, and when necessary, his bodyguard.

Fly said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/He fights and vapors — blusters — for Bat Burst.”

Pierce Anon said, “He will be drunk so civilly —”

Fly interrupted, “So discreetly —”

Pierce Anon continued, “— and punctually! Just at his hour.”

Fly said, “And then he will call for his jordan with that hum and state as if he pissed Aristotle’s Politics!”

Master Huffle could be pretentious.

Pierce Anon said, “And he will sup with his taffeta night-gear here so silently!”

“Taffeta night-gear” literally means “taffeta dressing gown,” but “taffeta night-gear” here may figuratively mean a wench.

Fly said, “No talk! Nothing but music!”

Pierce Anon said, “A dozen bawdy songs.”

Tiptoe asked, “And does the general — the Host — know this?”

Fly said, “Oh no, sir, dormit — dormit patronus, still. The master sleeps.

“Bat Burst and Master Huffle will steal in to bed —”

Pierce Anon interrupted, “— in private, sir, and pay the fiddlers with such modesty next morning.”

Fly said, “They will take a disjune — a breakfast — of muscadel and eggs!”

This breakfast was regarded as an aphrodisiac.

Pierce Anon said, “And pack away in their trundling cheats — coaches — like gypsies!”

To pack away meant to leave with all their possessions. Mat Burst and Master Huffle will pack up and leave in the morning — they hope without paying.

Trundle said, “Mysteries, mysteries, Ferret.”

“Aye, we see, Trundle, what the great officers in an inn may do,” Ferret said. 

Some people — “great officers” — at an inn may sleep, dine, and dash — sleep, eat, and run away without paying.

Ferret continued, “I do not say the officers of the Crown, but the Light Heart.”

Ben Jonson was careful not to insult the officers of the royal monarchy. He also was making an in-joke: At this time there was an inn named the Crown Inn.

“I’ll see the Bat and Huffle,” Tiptoe said.

Ferret opted out of the visit: “I have some business, sir, I crave your pardon —”

“What is your business?” Tiptoe said.

Ferret answered, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/To be sober.”

Such visits as Tiptoe intended involved drinking.

He exited.

Tiptoe said, “A pox on you, go, get you gone then. Trundle shall stay.”

Trundle said, “No, I beseech you, colonel. Your Lordship has a mind to be drunk in private with these brave gallants; I will step aside into the stables and salute — visit — my mares.”

He exited.

Pierce Anon said, “Yes, do, and sleep with them. Let him go, the base whipstock.”

A whipstock is the handle of a whip.

Pierce Anon added, “He’s as drunk as a fish now, and almost as dead.”

To be as drunk as a fish is to be very drunk.

Ferret and Trundle had left because of class differences. Colonel Tiptoe was of a higher social class than Ferret and Trundle were — they were servants. Bat Burst and Master Huffle were also of a higher social class than they were. Sometimes servants could joke with those of a higher class, but socially drinking in private with those of a higher class would make most servants uncomfortable.

Pierce Anon was the bartender; he would serve the wine, so he stayed with Tiptoe. 

Fly stayed because he had become friendly with Tiptoe, and he was hoping that Tiptoe could be advantageous to him. Fly was a parasite, after all.

Tiptoe said, “Come, I will see the flickermouse, my Fly.”

A flickermouse is a bat.

They all exited.

— 3.2 —

Musicians entered the room and played. 

Queen Prudence, ushered by the Host, entered the room and took her seat of judicature. The Nurse, the disguised Frank, Lord Beaufort, and Lord Latimer followed them. Also entering the room were Ferret, Trundle, Jug, and Jordan, who waited on the others. The Nurse, the disguised Frank, Lord Beaufort, and Lord Latimer would assist Queen Prudence by acting as judges. 

This was a Court of Love. Lovel had a complaint against Lady Frampul: He loved her, and she did not return his love. Lovel was the appellant, and Lady Frampul was the defendant. Queen Prudence and the other judges would hear the cases each made and then judge them.

This was the first of two hours that Lovel was allowed to be with Lady Frampul and talk about love. At the end of each hour, Lady Frampul would give Lovel a kiss.

Queen Prudence said, “Here is the first hour set in advance; but first produce the parties, and clear the court. The time is now of price — the time is now valuable.”

The Host ordered, “Jug, get you down, and Trundle, get you up.”

The Host was telling Jug to leave and go to the cellar and telling Trundle to get up on the bench with the judges.

The Host continued, “You, Trundle, shall be the crier. Ferret here shall be the clerk.”

The crier made court announcements and called on people to testify.

The clerk kept a record of the trial. To be a clerk, Ferret had to know how to read and write. Not everyone in this society could do those things.

The Host ordered, “Jordan, you smell without — outside — until the ladies call you.”

The Host was punning. “Smell about” meant 1) sniff about, and 2) stink. As readers will remember, a jordan is a chamber pot.

The Host continued, “Take down the fiddlers, too. Silence that noise deep in the cellar, safe.”

In this society, a noise is a band of musicians. 

Jug, Jordan, and the musicians exited.

“Who keeps the watch?” Prudence asked.

Someone had to keep track of the time: Lovel was allowed to spend one hour with Lady Frampul.

The Host answered, “Old Shelee-nien here is the Madam Tell-clock.”

The Host continued to play with language. A “tell-clock” is an idler, but here he used it to mean a time-keeper.

The Nurse said, “No, fait’ and trot’, sweet maister, I shall sleep; i’fait’, I shall.”

[The Nurse said, “No, by my faith and truth, sweet master, I shall sleep; in faith, I shall.”]

Lord Beaufort said, “I pray that you do sleep then, screech-owl.”

A screech-owl is a bird of ill omen. 

Lord Beaufort continued, “She brings to mind the fable of the dragon that kept the Hesperian fruit. I wish I could charm her asleep!”

Ladon was the dragon that entwined itself around the tree of golden apples and guarded them in the garden of the Hesperides.

If the Nurse were to go to sleep, Lord Beaufort hoped that he and the disguised-as-a-woman Frank, whom Lord Beaufort did not know was disguised as a woman, could have fun.

The Host said, “Trundle will do it with his hum.”

Again, the Host was punning, this time on the word “hum.” Trundle will make the Nurse fall asleep with his hum, meaning low murmur, or with his hum, meaning strong ale.

The Host then said, “Come, Trundle. Precede him, Ferret, in the form and due process of the court.”

Ferret would read out loud the necessary words, and Trundle would repeat them in a loud voice.

Ferret said, “Oyez, oyez, oyez.”

Trundle repeated, “Oyez, oyez, oyez.”

“Oyez” means “Be quiet and pay attention.” 

Ferret said, “Whereas there has been awarded …”

Trundle repeated, “Whereas there has been awarded …”

Ferret said, “By the Queen Regent of Love …”

Trundle repeated, “By the Queen Regent of Love …”

Ferret said, “In this high court of sovereignty …”

Trundle repeated, “In this high court of sovereignty …”

Ferret said, “Two special hours of address …”

Trundle repeated, “Two special hours of address …”

Ferret said, “To Herbert Lovel, appellant …”

Trundle repeated, “To Herbert Lovel, appellant …”

Ferret said, “Against the Lady Frampul, defendant …”

Trundle repeated, “Against the Lady Frampul, defendant …”

Ferret said, “Herbert Lovel, come into the court …”

Trundle repeated, “Herbert Lovel, come into the court …”

Ferret said, “Make challenge in your first hour …”

Trundle repeated, “Make challenge in your first hour …”

“Make challenge” means “Make your case.”

Ferret said, “And save yourself and your bail.”

Trundle repeated, “And save yourself and your bail.”

Bail was meant to be a guarantee that the appellant and the defendant came to the place of trial.

Lovel entered the room, bowed, and sat at one side.

The Host said, “Look at where he, bowing, comes into the court! 

“Clerk of the sovereignty, note down his appearance and how accoutered — how clothed and equipped — he comes as designated to the court!”

Queen Prudence’s Court of Love parodied a trial by combat.

In a trial by combat, first the two combatants enter, and then they must swear an oath that they are not bringing into the arena of combat any weapons other than those allowed. Also, they must swear that they have not brought any enchantments or charms with them.

Ferret wrote and said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/It is done. Now, crier, call the Lady Frampul, and by the name of:

“Frances, Lady Frampul, defendant …” 

Trundle repeated, “Frances, Lady Frampul, defendant …”

Ferret said, “Come into the court …”

Trundle repeated, “Come into the court …” 

Ferret said, “Make answer to the award …”

Trundle repeated, “Make answer to the award …”

Ferret said, “And save yourself and your bail.”

Trundle repeated, “And save yourself and your bail.”

Lady Frampul would make an answer to the award given by the court to Lovel. He had been awarded two hours of love-conversation with her and two kisses from her.

She entered the room and sat on the opposite side of the room, confronting Lovel.

The Host said about her, “She makes a noble and a just appearance. Set it down likewise, and set down how armed — furnished and ready — she comes.”

Ferret wrote.

Queen Prudence said, “Usher of Love’s court, give them their oath according to the form, upon Love’s missal.”

The Host, who was serving as the court usher, said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Arise, and lay your hands upon the book.”

The book was not a Bible.

The Host continued, “Herbert Lovel, appellant, and Lady Frances Frampul, defendant, you shall swear upon the liturgy of love, Ovid’s De Arte Amandi, that you neither have, nor will have, nor in any wise do bear about you, anything or any things, pointed or blunt, within these lists, other than what are natural and allowed by the court: no enchanted arms or weapons, stones of virtue, herb of grace, charm, character or sign of the occult, spell, philter, or other power than Love’s only, and the justness of your cause. So help you Love, his mother, and the contents of this book.” 

The lists are fields of combat at a tournament. The contestants joust in enclosed spaces.

“Stones of virtue” are stones with magical properties, but the word “stones” can mean “testicles” and so the phrase can mean “powerful testicles.”

“Herbs of grace” means “herb-grace”; that is, it is the herb rue, which is associated with regret.

A philter is an aphrodisiac or a love-potion.

Ovid’s book Ars Amatoria — The Art of Love — is a book about sexual seduction.

De Arte Amandi — Concerning the Art of Loving — is the Host’s version of the title of Ovid’s book.

Love is Cupid, and Love’s mother is Venus.

The Host said, “Kiss it.”

Kissing the book meant that they were swearing the oath that the Host had asked them to swear: They had not brought any banned articles or occult spells to the place of combat.

Lovel and Lady Frampul kissed the book.

The Host ordered them, “Return to your seats.”

They returned to their seats. 

The Host then said, “Crier, bid all to be silent.”

Trundle cried, “Oyez, Oyez, Oyez.”

As before, Ferret read the necessary words for the trial, and Trundle the crier repeated them loudly.

Ferret said, “In the name of the sovereign of Love …” 

Trundle repeated, “In the name of the sovereign of Love …” 

Ferret said, “Notice is given by the court …”

Trundle repeated, “Notice is given by the court …”

Ferret said, “To the appellant and defendant …”

Trundle repeated, “To the appellant and defendant …”

Ferret said, “That the first hour of address proceeds …”

Trundle repeated, “That the first hour of address proceeds …”

Ferret said, “And Love save the sovereign!” 

Trundle repeated, “And Love save the sovereign!” 

Then Trundle cried loudly, “Every man or woman keep silence, on pain of imprisonment.”

Any man or woman who interrupted the proceedings unnecessarily would be imprisoned.

Ferret would take written notes during the trial. He would capitalize the word “Love” when it meant Cupid, the god of love.

Queen Prudence asked Lovel and Lady Frampul, “Do your endeavors — that is, do all you can do — in the name of Love.”

Lovel said, “I am ready to make my first approaches, then, in love.”

Lady Frampul requested, “Tell us what love is, so that we may be sure there’s such a thing, and that it is in nature.”

“Is in nature” means “really exists.” Lord Beaufort supposedly loved, or had loved Lady Frampul, and she had noticed his attentions to the disguised Frank.

“Excellent lady,” Lovel said, “I did not expect to meet an infidel — an unbeliever — much less an atheist here in Love’s lists! An atheist of so much unbelief to raise a question of Love’s existence —”

The Host said, “Well charged!”

The Host was punning. Jousters charge at each other in tournaments, and accusers make charges and arguments in trials.

Referring to love as masculine, Lovel continued, “I rather thought, and with religion — piously — think, that if all the character of love had been lost, his lines, dimensions, and whole signature (particularity of form) razed and defaced with dull humanity — ordinary people — that both his nature and his essence might have found their mighty instauration — restoration — here, here where the confluence of fair and good mhttps://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/eets to make up all beauty. 

“For what else is love, but the most noble, pure affection of what is truly beautiful and fair?

“What else is love but the desire of union with the thing beloved?”

Lovel had a spiritual view of love.

Lord Beaufort’s view of love, as would soon become apparent, was different. 

Lord Beaufort asked Queen Prudence, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Have the assistants of the court their votes and writ of privilege to speak them freely?”

A vote was an expression of opinion. A writ of privilege was a note that exempted a person from a crime. 

Lord Beaufort wanted to speak freely and without negative consequences. He wanted to give his view of love.

Queen Prudence answered, “Yes, to assist, but not to interrupt.”

She meant to assist in achieving an understanding of love.

Lord Beaufort said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Then I have read somewhere that man and woman were in the first creation both one piece, and being cleft asunder, ever since then love had been an appetite — a desire — for the two halves to be rejoined. As for example —”

He kissed the disguised Frank.

Lord Beaufort’s view of love was physical in nature.

In Plato’s Symposium, in which the characters discuss love, the comic playwright Aristophanes tells a tale about human beings having four hands, four legs, two heads, two sets of genitals, and so on. Basically, they were two humans joined together. They threatened the gods, and so Zeus, king of the gods, cut each of the beings in half. Of course, the two beings who had been cut from the original singular being want to be reunited. The original sexes of these beings were both-male, both-female, and androgynous (half-male and half-female), and so today we find two men wanting to unite, two women wanting to unite, and a man and a woman wanting to unite. This is Aristophanes’ explanation of sexual love and why people feel “whole” when they meet their mate.

The Nurse said, “Cra-mo-cree! What meansh ’tou?” 

[The Nurse said, “Love of my heart! What do you mean by that?”]

Lord Beaufort said, “Only to kiss and part.”

He may have meant: Just to take a kiss and then separate himself from the disguised Frank. 

The Host said, “So much is lawful.”

Lord Latimer said, “And it accords with the prerogative — the right and privilege — of Love’s court.”

Lord Beaufort, however, may have meant: Just to seduce and ’part — seduce and then depart and run away.

Lovel recognized the source from which Lord Beaufort had gotten his story: “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/It is a fable of Plato’s in his Banquet, and uttered there by Aristophanes.”

Plato’s Symposium or Banquet is a dialogue in which at the end of a banquet the characters discuss love.

The Host said, “It was well remembered here, and put to good use. But go on with your description of what love is: the desire of union with the thing beloved.”

Lovel said, “I meant that as a definition. For I make the efficient cause, what’s beautiful and fair; the formal cause, the appetite of union; and the final cause, the union itself.”

Lovel was using Aristotelian terms. In other words:

What’s beautiful and fair, whether spiritually or physically, or both, is the means that causes and promotes love. (This is the efficient cause.)

The appetite of — desire for — union is the ideal essence of love. (This is the formal cause.)

The union itself, whether spiritual or physical, or both, is the end and outcome for which love is produced. (This is the final cause.)

Lovel continued, “But more fully, if you’ll have it, by description, it is a flame and ardor of the mind. It is dead in the proper corpse — that is, the body of the subject or lover — but it is quick and alive in another’s body. Love transfers the lover into the loved.”

In other words, the lover “dies” in his or her own body, but “lives” in the body of the beloved. The lover does not think of him- or herself, but instead is always thinking of the beloved.

Lovel continued, “The he or she who loves does engrave or stamp the idea — that is, the form or archetype — of what they love, first in themselves; and, similar to mirrors, their minds take in the forms of their beloved, and reflect them.”

By implication, the beloved will be attracted to that reflection.

Lovel continued, “It is the likeness of affections that is both the parent and the nurse of love.

“Love is a spiritual coupling of two souls, so much more excellent as it least relates to the body.

“Love is circular and perfect and complete, eternal, not feigned or made, but born.

“Love is so precious that nothing can value it but itself.

“Love is so free that nothing can command it but itself.

“And in itself love is so round and liberal that where it favors, it bestows itself.”

Lord Beaufort said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/And that do I.”

Lovel and Lord Beaufort both loved, but they loved in different ways. Lovel loved spiritually; Lord Beaufort loved physically.

Lord Beaufort said to the disguised Frank, “Here my whole self I tender, according to the practice of the court.”

The Nurse said, “Ay, ’tish a naughty practish, a lewd practish. Be quiet, man, dou shalt not leip her here.”

[The Nurse said, “Aye, it is a naughty, sinful practice, a lewd, sexually sinful practice. Be quiet, man. You shall not leap on her and have sex with her here.”]

Lord Beaufort said to the Nurse, “Leap her? I lip her — I kiss her. Foolish queen at arms, your blazon — your description — is false. Will you blaspheme your office?”

Lovel said, “But we must take and understand this love at length and in full still as a name of dignity, not pleasure.”

The Host said to Lord Beaufort, “Do you note that, my light young lord?”

In this culture, the word “light” can mean “lascivious.”

Lovel said, “True love has no unworthy thought.

“True love has no light, loose, unbecoming appetite or strain.

“Instead, true love is fixed, constant, pure, immutable.”

Lord Beaufort said, “I don’t relish these philosophical feasts.

“Give me a banquet of sense like that of Ovid.”

In 1595, George Chapman wrote a poem titled “Ovid’s Banquet of Sense.”

Lord Beaufort continued, “Give me a form to take the eye; a voice to take my ear; pure aromatics to go to my sense of smell; a soft, smooth, dainty hand to touch; and for my taste give me ambrosiac kisses to melt down the palate.”

Ambrosia is the food of the Greek and Roman gods. Aphrodisiacs are food and drink that inspire lust. “Ambrosiac” is a portmanteau word.

Lovel said, “The earthly, lower form of lovers are taken only with what strikes the senses, and they love by that loose scale.” 

In this context, a scale is a ladder. A virtuous soul can scale a metaphorical ladder and reach Absolute Beauty. The earthly, lower forms of lovers are on that ladder, but they have much higher to climb.

A scale is also equipment that weighs. The earthly, lower form of lovers are taken with light love. A woman with light heels is a promiscuous woman whose heels are frequently up in the air as she lies on her back. Such a woman can be beautiful and can give delight, but there is a higher form of love.

Lovel continued:

“I grant that we like what’s fair and graceful in an object, and I grant that it is true that we would use it — our liking of what’s fair and graceful — in the all-perfection we desire in both our civil and our domestic deeds.

“Those civil and our domestic deeds include the ordering of an army (a multitude of people), and they include our style and manner of expression, apparel, gesture, building, or what not.

“It is true that all arts and actions do aspire to their beauty.”

In other words, the earthly, lower form of lovers are seeking beauty, and it is true that the beauty they seek is all-perfection. But they have higher to climb. They are like someone who can see a beautiful landscape from a height but if they were to climb higher, they would see much more beauty. They also are like people who see the beautiful exterior of a house, but if they were to go inside the house they would see much more beauty, including the beauty of the owner of the house. The house cannot love, but the owner of the house can love. The earthly, lower form of lovers are those who see the physical beauty of a lover without seeing the lover’s beautiful soul.

Lovel continued:

“But let me put the case: 

“In travel I may meet some gorgeous structure, with a brave frontispiece — an aesthetically pleasing entrance. Shall I stay captive in the outer court, surprised and overwhelmed with that, and not advance to know who dwells there and inhabits the house?

“There is my friendship to be made, within, with what can love me in return; not with the walls, doors, windows, architrabes [molding around doorways and windows], the frieze [upper part of a wall], and coronice [molding on top of a wall].”

In this society, the word “friend” can mean “lover.”

Lovel continued:

“My end is lost in loving of a face, an eye, lip, nose, hand, foot, or other part, whose all is only a statue, if the mind does not move and affect me — only the mind can love in return.

“The end of love is to have two made one in will and in affection. 

“The end of love is that the minds be first joined, not the bodies.”

Lord Beaufort said, “Give me the body, if it is a good one.”

He kissed the disguised Frank, who said, “Nay, my lord, I must appeal to the sovereign Prudence for better treatment, if you continue your practice — your kissing.”

Trundle shouted, “Silence, on pain of imprisonment! Hear the court.”

Lovel continued explaining what love is:

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/The body’s love is frail, subject to change, and alters still with it.

“The mind’s love is firm, one and the same, and proceeds first from weighing and well examining what is fair and good, and then weighing and well examining what is fair and good in reason and fit in manners.

“That breeds good will, and good will breeds desire of union.

“So knowledge first begets benevolence, benevolence breeds friendship, and friendship breeds love.

“And where love serves and steps aside from this, it is a mere degenerate appetite. It is lost, morally perverse, depraved affection, and it bears no mark or character of true love.”

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/How I am changed!” Lady Frampul said. “By what alchemy of love or language am I thus translated and changed in form! Lovel’s tongue is tipped with the philosopher’s stone, and that has touched and transformed me through every vein!”

The philosopher’s stone was supposed to be able to transform base metals into gold or silver.

The word “vein” can refer to 1) veins of blood, and 2) veins of metal ore.

Lady Frampul continued, “I feel that transmutation of my blood, as if I have quite become another creature, and all he speaks, it is projection!”

Projection is the final step in the creation of a philosopher’s stone: It is a test of the stone’s power. After the philosopher’s stone was created, a small part of it would be cast onto molten base metal; the philosopher’s stone would then transmute — turn — the base metal to gold.

Lady Frampul was saying that Lovel’s words had metaphorically transformed her from base metal into gold.

Queen Prudence said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Well feigned, my lady; now her parts begin!”

These parts were acting parts.

Queen Prudence believed that Lady Frampul was like an actress acting a part — a role — in this play-court. 

Lord Latimer said, “And she will act them subtly and artfully.”

“She fails me if she does not,” Queen Prudence said. 

Lovel continued his discourse on love:

“Nor do they trespass within bounds of pardon — those people who, giving way and license to their love, divest him — the soul — of his noblest ornaments, which are his modesty and shamefacedness.

“And so they do who have unfit designs upon the parties — the persons — they pretend to love.

“For what’s more monstrous, what’s more an unnatural monstrosity, than to hear me protest truth of affection to a person whom I would dishonor?

“And what’s a greater dishonor than defacing another’s good while simultaneously forfeiting my own, and drawing on a fellowship of sin?

“From the stigma and reproach of which, though for a while we both may be kept safe by caution and avoiding public notice, yet the conscience cannot be cleansed. 

“For what was hitherto called by the name of love becomes destroyed then with the fact of sin. The innocency once lost, the abating of affection soon will follow; and love is never true that is not lasting, no more than any love can be pure or perfect that entertains more than one object.

“Dixi.”

Dixi is Latin for “I have spoken.” In the law courts, it means, “I rest my case.”

Lady Frampul said, “Oh, speak and speak forever! Let my ear be always feasted and filled with this banquet! No sense can ever surfeit and overindulge on such truth. It is the marrow — the essence — of all lovers’ tenets!

“Who has read Plato, Heliodore, or Tatius, Sidney, d’Urfé, or all Love’s fathers, like him?

“He’s there the Master of the Sentences, their school and doctrine, their commentary, text, and gloss, and he breathes the true divinity of Love!”

All of the authors she mentioned had written about love.

Plato, of course, is the author of such dialogues as the Symposium.

Heliodore of Syria wrote a romance titled Aethiopica.

Achilles Tatius wrote The Loves of Leucippe and Cleitophon.

Sir Philip Sidney wrote Arcadia.

Honoré d’Urfé wrote a pastoral novel titled L’Astrée.

Peter Lombard wrote Sententiae.

When Lady Frampul called Lovel “the Master of the Sentences,” she was complimenting his speaking ability and ability to compose sentences orally. Of course, she was also praising his knowledge of love literature.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Excellent actor!” Queen Prudence said. “How she hits a bull’s-eye and exactly imitates this passion!”

Lady Frampul said, “Whereas I have lived in heresy so long out of the congregation of Love, and stood irregular and outside and not in conformity with Love, by all Love’s canons.”

Lord Latimer, who was not sure that Lady Frampul was playing a part, asked, “But do you think she is acting?”

Queen Prudence replied, “Upon my sovereignty, pay close attention to her now.”

Prudence, a chambermaid, was playing the part of a Queen. Why couldn’t Lady Frampul be playing the part of a woman newly in love with Lovel?

“I shake, and I am half jealous,” Lord Latimer said.

Lord Latimer apparently had a crush on Lady Frampul.

Lady Frampul said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/What penance shall I do, to be received into and reconciled to the Church of Love? 

“Shall I go in procession barefoot as a pilgrim to his image and say some hundred penitential verses there, out of Chaucer’s Troilus and Cressid?”

In Troilus and Creseyde, Troilus’ love is betrayed. Such a choice of texts can make Lovel believe that Lady Frampul is playing a role instead of revealing her true feelings. On the other hand, Troilus loves sincerely, and so perhaps Lady Frampul loves Lovel sincerely.

Lady Frampul continued, “Or to Cupid’s mother’s shrine shall I vow a wax candle as large as the town maypole is, and pay for it? 

“Order me to do anything this court thinks fit, for I have trespassed against, offended against, and blasphemed against Love.

“I have, indeed, despised his deity, whom, until this miracle wrought on me, I knew not.

“But now I adore Love, and I would kiss the rushes that bear this reverend gentleman, Lovel, Love’s priest, if that would expiate and atone and make amends — but I fear it will not.”

In this society rushes were strewn on the floor. Lovel was standing on some rushes. Lady Frampul was saying that she would kiss the ground — that is, the rushes — beneath his feet.

Lady Frampul said, “For although he is somewhat struck in years and old enough to be my father, he is wise, and only wise men love; the others covet. 

“I could begin to be in love with him, but I will not tell him yet because I hope to enjoy the other hour with more delight, and test him farther.”

Lovel may or may not have heard this last paragraph. When he heard Lady Frampul talk about his age, he may have turned away.

Queen Prudence said to Lady Frampul, “Most Socratic lady! Or if you will, most ironic and dissembling lady.”

Queen Prudence then said to Lovel, “May God give you joy of your Platonic love here, Master Lovel.”

She then said to Lady Frampul, “But pay him his first kiss yet, in the court, which is a debt and due, since the hour has run its course.”

Lady Frampul said, “How swift is time, and how slyly it steals away from them who would hug it, value it, embrace it! I would have thought it had run scarcely ten minutes, when the whole hour has fled.”

She then said to Lovel, “Here, take your kiss, sir, which I most willingly tender you in court.”

She kissed him.

Lord Beaufort said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/And we do imitate —”

He kissed the disguised Frank.

Lady Frampul said, “And I could wish it had been twenty kisses — provided that Queen Prudence’s poor narrow nature had decreed it so. But that is past and irrevocable, now. She did what her nature allows according to her latitude —”

Queen Prudence said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Beware you do not conjure up a spirit you cannot lay.”

She was in part being bawdy. The “spirit” that would be conjured up could be a penis. The expression, however, also means “Don’t start something you can’t finish.”

“I dare you!” Lady Frampul said. “Do your worst. Show me just such an injustice; I would thank you to alter your award.

She was saying that she wanted Queen Prudence to order that she — Lady Frampul — must kiss Lovel twenty times.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Surely, she is serious!” Lord Latimer said. “I shall have another fit of jealousy. I feel a grudging vexation and secret desire!”

The Host said to Lovel, “Cheer up, noble guest! We cannot guess what this may come to yet. The brain of man or woman is uncertain.”

“Tut, Lady Frampul dissembles!” Lovel replied. “She is acting! All that comes from her is feigned and counterfeit. If it were not, the Spanish monarchy, with both the East and West Indies, could not buy off the treasure of this kiss, or half give balance for my happiness.”

The Host said, “Why, as it is yet, it gladdens my Light Heart to see you roused thus from a sleepy humor of drowsy, non-essential melancholy, and it gladdens my Light Heart to see all those brave parts of your soul awake that did before seem drowned and buried in you, so that you express yourself as if you had ridden the muse’s horse, or got Bellerophon’s weapons!”

Bellerophon was a warrior who captured and rode the winged horse Pegasus, which was the Muses’ horse. Bellerophon, however, attempted to ride Pegasus to the top of Mount Olympus so he could join the gods — an act of hubris that motivated Jupiter, king of the gods, to send a gadfly to sting Pegasus. This caused Bellerophon to fall off Pegasus.

Fly entered the room.

The Host asked, “What is the news with Fly?”

Fly answered, “I bring news of a newer lady, a finer, fresher, braver, bonnier beauty, a very bona-roba — a showy woman — and a bouncer in yellow, glistening, golden satin!”

The showy woman could bounce while on top of a man in bed. Or she could simply be a loud woman and bounce her words around.

Lady Frampul said, “Pru, adjourn the court.”

Queen Prudence ordered, “Cry, Trundle!”

Trundle cried:

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Oyez, any man or woman who has any personal attendance to give to the court.

“Keep the second hour, and may Love save the Sovereign!”

 

 

 

CHAPTER 4

— 4.1 —

Jug, Barnaby, and Jordan talked together. Barnaby was a hired coachman.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Oh, Barnaby!” Jug said.

“Welcome, Barnaby!” Jordan said. “Where have you been?”

“In the foul weather,” Barnaby said.

“Which has wet you, Ban,” Jug said.

Barnaby said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/I’m as dry as a woodchip!”

He was referring to being thirsty.

He said, “Good Jug, a cast of your name, as well as your office; bring in two jugs!”

The word “cast” means “a couple,” but it is normally used when speaking of hawks. The word “cast” also means a quantity of ale — the amount made at one time.

“By and by,” Jug said. 

He exited.

“What lady’s this you have brought here?” Jordan asked.

“She’s a great lady!” Barnaby said. “I know no more. She is one who will test you, Jordan. She’ll find your gauge, your circle, your capacity.”

A great lady can be well born, and a great lady can be a very big lady.

He was joking about the capacity of a jordan, aka chamber pot, but perhaps he was also joking about the size of Jordan’s sexual equipment.

Barnaby then asked, “How are old Staggers the blacksmith and Tree the saddler? Do they still keep their penny-club?”

In this society, friends who were members of the lower class would often contribute a penny for an entertainment, such as the drinking of alcohol.

Jordan answered, “And they keep the old catch — tune — too, of ‘Whoop Barnaby.’”

“Do they sing at me?” Barnaby asked.

“They’re rioting and reeling at it in the parlor now,” Jordan said.

Staggers and Tree were drinking and singing now.

Jug returned with the wine.

“I’ll go to them,” Barnaby said. “Give me a drink first.”

Jordan handed Barnaby a drink and asked, “Where’s your hat?”

“I lost it by the way as I was driving the carriage,” Barnaby said.

He drank and then said, “Give me another.”

“Another hat?” Jug asked.

“Another drink,” Barnaby said.

“Take heed of taking cold, Ban,” Jug said. 

“Ban” was a nickname for Barnaby.

Barnaby said, “The wind blew my hat off at Highgate, and my lady would not allow me to alight to pick it up, but made me drive bare-headed in the rain.”

“So that she might be mistaken for a Countess?” Jordan asked.

In this society, the fashion was for the drivers of great personages such as Countesses to wear no hats.

“Truly, that is likely enough!” Barnaby said.

The lady he had driven was not a Countess, but she wished to appear to be a Countess. 

Barnaby added, “She might be an over-grown Duchess, for all I know.”

As would soon become apparent, she was a very big woman.

“What, with one man?” Jug said.

He meant a single serving-man. A real Duchess would have more than one servant. This particular serving-man was not Barnaby, who was the woman’s hired driver. 

Barnaby said, “At a time — they carry no more, the best of them.”

Barnaby was talking bawdily. In the missionary position, a woman carries the weight of a man. According to Barnaby, the best women carry no more than the weight of one man at a time.

Jordan said, “Nor do the splendidly dressed.”

“And she is very splendidly dressed!” Barnaby said about the woman he had driven.

Jordan said, “She has on a stately gown and petticoat!”

“Have you spied her petticoat, Jordan?” Barnaby said. “You’re a notable peerer, an old rabbi at a smock’s hem, boy.”

Rabbis have much knowledge. Barnaby was teasing Jordan by saying that Jordan’s specialized knowledge was about women.

Jug said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/As he is chamberlain, he may do that by his place.”

Chamberlains were in charge of bed-chambers and chamber-pots.

“What’s her squire?” Jordan asked.

The squire was her single serving-man: He was a personal attendant.

Barnaby answered, “Her squire is a toy, a plaything, to whom she gives an allowance of eight-pence a day. He is a slight mannet — a little man — to transport and squire her up and down.

“Come, show me to my playfellows: old Staggers and father Tree.”

“Here, this way, Barnaby,” Jordan said. 

They exited.

— 4.2 —

Tiptoe, Bat Burst, Master Huffle, and Fly talked together in the courtyard of the inn.

Tiptoe said, “Come, let’s take in fresco — in the open air — here one quart.”

“Two quarts, my man-of-war, my warrior,” Bat Burst said. “Let’s not be stinted!”

Master Huffle called, “Advance three jordans, varlet of the house.”

He was ordering three pots of wine. Apparently, Fly would not get a pot.

Tiptoe whispered to Fly, “I do not like your Burst, bird; he is saucy. He was some shopkeeper?”

“Yes, sir,” Fly answered.

Tiptoe whispered, “I knew it. He was a broken-winged, bankrupt shopkeeper! I nose — detect — them immediately. He had no father, I am sure, who dared to acknowledge that Bat Burst was his son. He was some foundling in a stable, or the church porch, brought up in Christ’s Hospital for poor children, and so bound to be an apprentice. Then he was master of a shop, and then one of the Court of Inquest, which judges cases involving debts of under forty shillings. Then he went bankrupt, or leapt to the position of an alderman. The original — the origin — of both bankrupts and aldermen is a church porch.”

Bat Burst was probably a defendant in the Court of Inquest, not one of the jurors.

Unwanted babies were left on church porches.

Aldermen are civil officers, or they are the head, master, or warden of a trade guild.

“The original of some, my colonel,” Fly said.

Tiptoe said, “In good faith, a church porch is the original of most of your shop citizens; they’re rude animals! And let them get but ten miles out of town, thttps://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/hey will out-swagger all the wapentake.”

Tiptoe had little respect for the aldermen whom he called shop citizens.

“What’s that?” Fly asked.

Tiptoe answered, “A Saxon word to signify the hundred.”

They were referring to sub-divisions of English counties.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, another kind of alderman is “The senior judicial person in an English hundred.”

Some aldermen of a lower status such as those in trade guilds would pretend to be aldermen of a different, higher-status kind once they were among people who did not know them.

Pierce Anon came over to them, set down three pots of wine, and exited.

Bat Burst said, “Come, let us drink, Sir Glorious, some brave health uhttps://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/pon our tiptoes.”

His words were ambiguous. They could mean: 1) Let’s drink a health — draught — to the Tiptoes, or 2) While we drink, let’s stand on our tiptoes.

Tiptoe raised his jug and said, “To the health of the Bursts!”

His words were ambiguous. They could mean: 1) Let’s drink a health — draught — to the Bursts, or 2) Let’s drink a health — draught — to the bankrupts.

One meaning of “burst” is “bankrupt.”

“Why Bursts?” Bat Burst asked.

“Why Tiptoes?” Tiptoe asked.

“Oh, I beg your mercy!” Bat Burst said, apologizing.

“It is sufficient,” Tiptoe said.

“What is so sufficient?” Master Huffle asked.

“To drink to you is sufficient,” Tiptoe said.

“On what terms?” Master Huffle asked.

He was suspicious.

Tiptoe replied, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/That you shall give security to pledge me.”

In some circumstances, a man who was going to drink would ask someone to pledge him — to guard him while he was drinking — because a man who is drinking is in a vulnerable position if enemies are near him. A drinking man’s throat is exposed.

Tiptoe, however, should have been among friends. By asking Master Huffle to pledge — to guard — him, he was implying that Bat Burst was his — Tiptoe’s — enemy.

Master Huffle said, “As long as you will name no Spaniard, I will pledge you.”

In England, the Spanish were in bad repute because of the Spanish Armada, which attempted to escort an army from Flanders to England in 1588. 

Master Huffle disliked the Spaniards; Tiptoe loved the Spaniards.

Master Huffle did not want Tiptoe to drink to any Spaniard.

Tiptoe said, “I rather choose to thirst, and will thirst forever, than leave that cream of nations unpraised. Perish all wine and liking for wine!”

He spilled his drink on Master Huffle. Deliberately doing this, of course, was an insult.

Master Huffle said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/What, spill it? Spill it at me?”

He was asking if the spill was deliberate.

“I care not, but I spilt it,” Tiptoe said.

He did not care for Master Huffle, but he was not quite saying that he spilled the drink on Master Huffle on purpose.

“Nay, please be quiet, noble bloods,” Fly said.

He did not want them to fight.

Bat Burst said, “No Spaniards I cry, with my cousin Huffle.”

Bat Burst was another person who did not like the Spaniards.

“Spaniards?” Master Huffle said. “They are pilchers!”

Pilchers are thieves.

“Do not provoke my patient blade,” Tiptoe said with his hand on the hilt of his sword. “It sleeps and would not hear you; Huffle, you are rude and do not know the Spanish mental and physical constitution.”

“What is the recipe?” Bat Burst asked. “Name the ingredients.”

Tiptoe said, “Valor —”

“Two ounces of valor!” Bat Burst said.

Tiptoe said, “Prudence —”

“Half a dram!” Bat Burst said.

A dram is one-eighth of an ounce in Apothecaries’ weight, and one-sixteenth of an ounce in Avoirdupois weight. The Apothecaries’ grain equals the troy.

Tiptoe said, “Justice —”

“A pennyweight of justice!” Bat Burst said.

A pennyweight is one-twentieth of an ounce.

Tiptoe said, “Religion —”

“Three scruples of religion!” Bat Burst said.

A scruple is one twenty-fourth of an ounce.

Tiptoe said, “And of a gravedàd —”

Gravedàd is Spanish for gravity and dignity.

“A face-full of gravedàd!” Bat Burst said.

He meant that Spaniards had only the appearance of gravedàd.

Tiptoe said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/The typical Spaniardcarries such a dose of it in his looks, actions, and gestures that it breeds respect to him even from savages, and reputation with all the sons of men.”

Bat Burst asked, “Will it give him credit with gamblers, courtiers, citizens, or tradesmen?”

“He’ll borrow money on the stroke of his beard, or the twist of an end of his mustaccio [mustache]!” Tiptoe said. “His mere cuello, or ruff about his neck, is a bill of exchange in any bank in Europe! Not a merchant who sees his gait but will immediately furnish him upon his pace!”

A glance at a well-dressed Spaniard as he walked would be enough to show that he deserved credit.

Master Huffle said, “I have heard that the Spanish name is terrible to children in some countries, and it is used to make them eat their bread and butter, or take their wormseed — their extract of wormwood.”

In other words: Children, eat your food and take your medicine, or the Spanish boogeyman will get you.

Supposedly, wormseed aided digestion.

“Huffle, you do shuffle,” Tiptoe said. “Your arguments are shifty.”

Pinnacia and a squire arrived and walked over to them. They were the “Countess” and her servant who had arrived with the hired driver Barnaby.

Pinnacia was much bigger than her squire: her personal servant. She was well dressed indeed — like a high-born lady. 

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/By God’s eyelid, here’s a lady!” Bat Burst said.

“And a lady gay!” Master Huffle said.

A pinnace is a boat, and Tiptoe, Huffle, and Bat Burst used nautical words to talk about Pinnacia.

“A well-trimmed lady!” Tiptoe said.

“Well-trimmed” meant “well-dressed,” but to trim someone was to cheat that person.

“Let’s lay her aboard,” Master Huffle said.

“Lay her aboard” meant “approach her,” but the words also have a sexual meaning.

“Let’s hail her first,” Bat Burst said.

Tiptoe said to Pinnacia, “By your sweet favor, lady —”

Pinnacia’s squire said, “Good gentlemen, be civil; we are strangers. We are visitors.”

Bat Burst said, “We will treat you as if you were Flemings, sir!”

Bat Burst was saying that they would be welcome. The Dutch had an international reputation for heavy drinking, and so they were very welcome at an inn.

“Or Spaniards!” Master Huffle said.

“There are people here who have been at Seville in their days, and at Madrid, too!” Tiptoe said.

Pinnacia said about her squire, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Heis a foolish fellow. I ask you to ignore him: He is my Protection.”

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/In your protection he is safe, sweet lady,” Tiptoe said. “So shall you be in mine.”

Pinnacia was much larger than her squire.

“A share, good colonel,” Master Huffle said.

“A share of what?” Tiptoe asked.

“Of your fine lady!” Master Huffle said.

He then said to Pinnacia, “I am Hodge; my name is Huffle.”

“Huffle” means “bluster.” “Hodge” is a nickname for someone named Roger.

Tiptoe said, “Huffling Hodge, be quiet.”

“And I ask you to also be quiet, glorious colonel,” Bat Burst said. “Hodge Huffle shall be quiet.”

Master Huffle immediately began to sing:

“A lady gay, gay.

“For she is a lady gay, gay, gay.

“For she’s a lady gay.”

Angry, Tiptoe said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Bird of the vespers, vespertilio Burst, you are a gentleman of the first head, but that head may be broken, as all the body is, Burst, unless you tie up your Huffle, quickly.”

A bird of the vespers is a bird of the evening. A bird of night is a thief.

Vespertilio is Latin for “bat.”

A “gentleman of the first head” is a social upstart; it means the first gentleman in a family, as opposed to a family with many ancestors who were gentlemen.

Master Huffle said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Tie up dogs. Do not tie up a man.”

“Nay, please, Hodge, be still,” Bat Burst said.

“This steel here rides not on this thigh in vain,” Tiptoe said about his sword.

Master Huffle said, “Do you show your steel and thigh, you vain-glorious excrement? https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Then Hodge sings the ballad ‘Samson,’ and no ties shall hold.”

In Judges 16:6-14, Samson had Delilah tie him up, and then he broke the bonds.

Tiptoe and Master Huffle fought.

Hearing the noise, Pierce Anon, Jug, and Jordan entered the scene.

Pierce Anon said, “Keep the peace, gentlemen. What do you mean by fighting?”

“I will not discompose myself — ruin my composure — for Huffle,” Tiptoe said.

Fighting, or attempting to stop the fighting, everyone exited, except Pinnacia and her squire.

Pinnacia said to her squire, “You see what your entreaty and pressure still of gentlemen to be civil brings on?”

True, her squire had asked the gentlemen to be civil, but they had ended up fighting.

Pinnacia continued, “A quarrel, and perhaps manslaughter! You will carry your goose about you still, your planing-iron, your tongue to smooth everything! Is not here fine stuff?”

A “goose” is 1) a smoothing-iron (the handle resembled a goose), and 2) a swelling caused by venereal disease. 

“Why, wife —” her squire said.

Pinnacia interrupted, “— your wife! Haven’t I forbidden you that? Do you think I’ll call you husband in this gown, or anything in that jacket but Protection? Here, tie my shoe and show my velvet petticoat and my silk stocking! Why do you make me a lady if I may not act like a lady in fine clothes?”

Her squire wore the velvet jacket of a footman; his wife was dressed like a fine lady. She was playing the role of a fine lady, and her husband was playing the role of a servant.

“Sweetheart, you may do what you will with me,” her squire said.

“Aye, I knew that at home,” Pinnacia said. “I knew what to do with you. But why was I brought here? To see fashions?”

“To see fashions” meant “to learn people’s ways.”

Her squire replied, “And wear them, too, sweetheart, but this wild company —”

“Why do you bring me in wild company?” Pinnacia asked. “You’d have me tame and civil in wild company? I hope I know wild company are fine company, and in fine company, where I am fine myself, a lady may do anything, deny nothing to a fine party. I have heard you say it.”

Pierce Anon walked over to them and said, “There is a company of ladies above — on the upper floor of the inn — who desire Your Ladyship’s company, and to take the safety of their lodgings, from the attack of these half-beasts, which were here even now, the Centaurs.”

When Pirithous, the King of the Lapiths, married Hippodamia, he invited the half-man, half-horse Centaurs to the wedding feast. The Centaurs got drunk, and tried to rape Hippodamia and carry away the Lapith women. Pirithous and the Lapiths fought back and defeated the Centaurs.

“Are they fine ladies?” Pinnacia asked.

“Some very fine ladies,” Pierce Anon answered.

“As fine as I?” Pinnacia asked.

Pierce Anon replied, “I dare not make any comparisons because I am a servant, sent —”

Pinnacia interrupted, “Spoken like a fine fellow! I wish you were one; I’d not then deny you, but thank your lady.”

By “servant,” she meant male admirer of a lady.

Pierce Anon exited, and the Host walked over to them and said, “Madam, I must request that you afford a lady a visit — a lady who wishes to excuse some harshness of the house you have received from the brute guests.”

Some of the things the men had said about her were not complimentary, and they had quarreled in her presence.

“This is a fine old man!” Pinnacia said. “I’d go with him if he were a little finer!”

She may have meant that she would have an affair with the Host if he were of a higher social class.

“You may, sweetheart,” her squire said. “It is my Host.”

He meant that she could go with the Host as he escorted her to the ladies on the upper floor of the inn.

“My Host!” Pinnacia said.

She was surprised that he was the Host of the inn.

“Yes, madam,” the Host said. “I must bid you welcome.”

“Do, then,” Pinnacia said.

“But do not stay,” her squire said.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/I’ll be advised by you, yes!” Pinnacia said.

She meant: I’ll be advised by you — fat chance!

They went into the inn.

— 4.3 —

Lord Latimer, Lord Beaufort, Lady Frampul, Prudence, the disguised Frank, and the Nurse talked together.

Referring to the fight between Tiptoe and Master Huffle that had recently ended, Lord Latimer asked, “What more-than-Thracian barbarism was this?”

The Thracians worshipped Bacchus, god of wine, and they worshipped Mars, god of war. Tiptoe and Master Huffle had been drinking and fighting.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/The battle of the Centaurs with the Lapiths!” Lord Beaufort said.

“There is no taming of the monster drink,” Lady Frampul said.

Drinking leads to many unnecessary fights.

“But what a glorious beast our Tiptoe showed!” Lord Latimer said. “He would not discompose — ruin his composure — himself, the Don! Your Spaniard never does discompose himself.”

“Don” is a Spanish title.

“Yet how Tiptoe talked and roared in the beginning!” Lord Beaufort said.

Prudence said, “And ran as fast as a knocked marrowbone —”

People knocked bones sharply to get the marrow to run out.

“So they all did at last, when Lovel went down and chased them around the court,” Lord Beaufort said.

Lord Latimer said, “For all Tiptoe’s Don Luis, or fencing after Euclid!”

Lovel had showed himself to be a good fencer. Tiptoe had not.

Lady Frampul said, “I never saw a lightning-bolt shoot so as my servant Lovel did. His rapier was a meteor, and he waved it over them like a comet as they fled from him!”

Comets and meteors were bad omens. Lovel was a bad omen for Tiptoe and Master Huffle.

Lady Frampul continued, “I noted Lovel’s manhood! Every stoop he made was like an eagle’s at a flight of cranes (as I have read somewhere).

Sophocles’ Ajax has a speech that describes how a flock of chattering birds react with terror and silence when the birds see an eagle.

“Splendidly expressed,” Lord Beaufort said about Lady Frampul’s words.

“And like a lover!” Lord Latimer said.

“Of Lovel’s valor, I am!” Lady Frampul said. “He seemed to be a body rarified to air, or it seemed that his sword and arm were of one piece — they went together so!”

The Host and Pinnacia entered the room.

“Here comes the lady, ” Lady Frampul said.

“A bouncing bona-roba, as the Fly said,” Lord Beaufort said.

“She is some giantess!” the disguised Frank said. “I’ll stand off to the side for fear she will swallow me.”

Lady Frampul looked over the silk gown that Pinnacia was wearing and asked, “Isn’t this our gown, Pru, that I ordered from my tailor?”

“It is the fashion you ordered!” Prudence said. 

“Aye, and the same silk!” Lady Frampul said. 

She felt the silk gown and said to Prudence, “Feel it! Surely, it is the same silk!”

Prudence felt the silk and saw the bottom of the petticoat that Pinnacia was wearing under the gown.

She said, “And it is the same petticoat, lace and all!”

When Lady Frampul had ordered the gown and petticoat from Stuff, she had supplied Stuff with the materials needed to make the clothing. Now she and Prudence recognized the silk cloth and the lace.

“I’ll swear it is mine,” Lady Frampul said. “How did it come to be here? Make a bill — a writ — of inquiry.”

Prudence said to Pinnacia, “You’ve a fine suit of clothing on, madam, and a rich one!”

“And of a skillful making!” Lady Frampul said.

“And it’s new!” Prudence said

Pinnacia replied, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/As new as day.”

Lord Latimer said to the others, “She answers like a fishwife.”

Fishwives advertised their fish as being “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/As new — fresh — as day.”

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/I put it on since noon, I assure you,” Pinnacia said.

“Who is your tailor?” Prudence asked.

“I tell you to tell me, what is your fashioner’s name?” Lady Frampul said.

A fashioner is a tailor.

“My fashioner is a certain man of my own,” Pinnacia said. “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/He’s in the house; his name doesn’t matter.” 

The Host said, “Oh, but to satisfy this bevy of ladies, of whom a pair here longed to bid you welcome, tell them his name.”

The pair of ladies who had asked Pinnacia to visit them were Lady Frampul and Prudence.

“He’s one, in truth, I title my Protection,” Pinnacia said.

She then said to the Host, “Tell him to come up here.”

The Host called downstairs, “Our new lady’s Protection!”

He asked Pinnacia, “What is Your Ladyship’s title?”

She replied, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Countess Pinnacia.”

The Host called downstairs, “Countess Pinnacia’s man-servant, come to your lady!”

Her squire entered the room.

He was immediately recognized.

Prudence said to Lady Frampul, “This is your Ladyship’s tailor: Master Stuff!”

“What!” Lady Frampul said. “Stuff? He is the Protection?”

Stuff was a small man; bodyguards tend to be large.

The Host said, “Stuff looks like a remnant — a scrap — of clothing.”

Stuff was very small compared to the size of his wife.

Falling to his knees, Stuff said, “I am ruined. I have been discovered!”

Prudence said to Lady Frampul, “It is the suit of clothing you ordered, madam, now without doubt. And this is some device to bring it home with.”

“To bring it home” means to complete the task. Completing the task meant delivering the gown to Lady Frampul, who had ordered it.

Pinnacia asked Stuff the tailor, “Why are you upon your knees? Is this your lady godmother?”

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Mum, Pinnacia, be quiet,” Stuff said. ‘It is the Lady Frampul, my best customer.”

“What dramatic show is this that you present us with?” Lady Frampul asked. “What do you mean by this?”

“I beg Your Ladyship, forgive me,” Stuff said. “She did but assay — try — the suit of clothing on.”

“Who?” Lady Frampul said. “Which she?”

“My wife, indeed,” Stuff said.

Pinnacia was Stuff’s wife.

“What? Mistress Stuff? Your wife!” Lady Frampul said. “Is that the answer to the riddle?”

The riddle was this: Who is Pinnacia?

Prudence said, “We all looked for a lady — a Duchess or a Countess at the least — to be the answer to the riddle.”

Stuff said, “She is my own lawfully begotten wife in wedlock. We have been coupled now seven years.”

He meant “lawfully gotten,” not “lawfully begotten.”

“And why is she thus disguised?” Lady Frampul said. “You are dressed like a footman, ha? And she is your Countess?”

A Countess would ride in the coach, while the footman would run alongside the coach.

Answering the question why she was dressed like a lady and her husband was dressed like a footman or squire, Pinnacia said, “To make a fool of himself, and of me, too.”

“I beg you, Pinnace, be quiet,” Stuff said.

Pinnacia replied, “Nay, it shall all come out, since you have called me your wife and openly dis-ladied me! Although I am dis-countessed, I am not yet dis-countenanced. These shall see.”

“Silence!” the Host said.

Ignoring the Host, Pinnacia said, “It is a foolish trick, madam, he has. For although he is your tailor, he is my beast.”

Ben Jonson’s Epigram 25 is titled “Sir Voluptuous Beast.” It is about a husband who has sex with his wife while she is dressed in various outfits.

Pinnacia continued, “I may be bold with him and tell his story. When he makes any fine garment that will fit me, or any rich thing that he thinks of worth, then I must put it on and be his Countess before he carries it to the owners.

“He hires a coach and four horses, and he runs in his velvet jacket thus to the towns of Romford, Croydon, Hounslow, or Barnet, the next bawdy road, and he takes me out of the carriage, carries me upstairs, and throws me upon a bed —”

Stuff’s fetish was having sex with his wife while she was pretending to be a great lady.

Shocked, Lady Frampul said, “Be silent, you immodest woman!”

Lady Frampul then said to the others, “She glories in the bravery of the vice.”

“It is a quaint vice!” Lord Latimer punned.

In this society, the word “quaint” can also mean “cunt.”

Lord Beaufort said, “A fine species — kind — of fornicating with a man’s own wife, found out by — what’s his name?”

“Master Nick Stuff,” Lord Latimer said.

This was a way of committing adultery without committing adultery: Have the wife pretend to be another woman. 

The Host said, “The very figure of preoccupation in all his customers’ best clothes.”

Pinnacia occupied the clothing before Stuff’s customers received it, while Stuff occupied his wife’s vagina before his customers received the clothing.

Lord Latimer said, “He lies with his own succuba in all your names.”

Stuff could pretend that Pinnacia was Lady Frampul.

A succuba is a female demon that has sex with men while they are sleeping.

Lord Beaufort said, “And all your credits.”

“Credits” meant 1) cloth that had been provided to the tailor to make clothing from, and 2) reputations.

“Aye, and at all their costs,” the Host said.

They were scandalized. They regarded it as immoral for a person to dress above his or her station. Pinnacia was NOT a countess. In some times and places, dressing above one’s station in life was illegal.

Lord Latimer asked, “This gown was then bespoken for the sovereign?”

The sovereign was “Queen” Prudence. Lady Frampul had ordered the gown so that Prudence could wear it as she played the role of Queen of the Festivities at the Light Heart Inn.

“Aye, by the Virgin Mary, it was,” Lord Beaufort said.

Lady Frampul said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/And it is a main offence committed against the sovereignty, being not brought home to me in the time appointed; beside the profanation, which may call on the sentence of the court.”

The profanation was Pinnacia’s wearing the gown. 

Such an offence and a profanation ought to be punished.

The Host said, “Let him be blanketed. Call up the quartermaster. Deliver him over to Fly.”

If Nick Stuff were to be blanketed, he would be tossed in a blanket.

“Oh, my good lord!” Stuff said.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Pillage the pinnace,” the Host said.

“Let his wife be stripped,” Lady Frampul said. 

“Blow off her upper deck!” Lord Beaufort said.

“Tear all her tackle!” Lord Latimer said.

“Pluck the polluted robes over her ears, or cut them all to pieces,” Lady Frampul said. “Make a fire of them!”

Prudence said, “To rags and cinders burn the idolatrous vestures!”

Fly and some other servants entered the room. Having heard the commotion, they had been listening outside the room.

The Host said, “Fly and your fellows, see that the whole sentence is thoroughly executed.”

“We’ll toss him bravely until the stuff stink again,” Fly said.

Fly was threatening to toss Stuff in the air until he soiled his clothing.

The Host added, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/And send her home, divested to her flannel, in a cart.”

Lord Latimer said, “And let her footman beat the basin before her.”

In this culture, prostitutes were stripped and sometimes whipped, and then they walked behind or stood in a cart as they were paraded around town while someone beat on a basin to attract notice. People rented basins from barbers or used their own basins to beat on and make noise.

“The court shall be obeyed,” Fly said.

“Fly and his officers will do it fiercely,” the Host said.

“Merciful Queen Pru!” Stuff said, appealing to her good nature.

“I cannot help you,” Prudence said.

Fly exited with Stuff and Pinnacia.

“Go on your ways, Nick Stuff,” Lord Beaufort said. “You have nicked it for a fashioner of venery.”

For a long time, Stuff had nicked — stolen — the use of the clothing. He had also “nicked it” — that is, hit the target. In this case, the target was his wife’s vagina.

Lord Latimer said, “For his own hell, though he run ten miles for it.”

In this culture, the word “hell” could mean “vagina.”

“Oh, here comes Lovel for his second hour,” Prudence said.

She would be Queen Prudence again. 

Lord Beaufort said, “And after him comes the type and image of Spanish valor.”

He was referring to Tiptoe.

— 4.4 —

Carrying a paper, Lovel entered the room. Tiptoe followed him.

Lady Frampul asked Lovel, “Servant, what have you there?”

This kind of servant was a man who loved and served a woman.

Lovel replied, “A meditation, or rather a vision and revelation, madam, and it is about beauty, our former subject.”

In their first hour together in Queen Prudence’s Court of Love, Lovel and Lady Frampul had talked about love and beauty.

“Please let us hear it,” Lady Frampul said.

Lovel read out loud:

“It was a beauty that I saw,

“So pure, so perfect, as [that] the frame 

“Of all the universe was lame [defective]

“To [Compared to] that one figure, could I draw

“Or give least line of it a law!

“A skein of silk without a knot!

“A fair march [gait] made without a halt [without limping]! 

“A curious [artful] form without a fault!

“A printed book without a blot.

“All beauty, and without a spot.”

Lady Frampul said, “They are noble words, and they deserve a note — music — set to them as noble as the words.”

Lovel, the author of the lines, replied, “I have tried my skill to close the second hour, if you will hear them. My boy by that time will have got it perfect.”

His serving-boy would have learned the lines by then, and he would sing them at the close of the second hour in the Court of Love.

Lady Frampul said to Lovel, “Yes, gentle servant. I would like to hear the lines sung.”

She then said to herself, “With what calm he speaks after this noise and tumult, so unmoved, with that serenity of countenance as if his thoughts did acquiesce and rest satisfied in that which is the object of the second hour and nothing else!”

The topic of the second hour would be valor — courage. Lady Frampul knew that because she was the person who would propose that topic.

Queen Prudence said, “Well, then, summon the court.”

Lady Frampul said, “I have a suit to the sovereign of Love, if it may stand with and be consistent with the honor of the court, to change the topic from love to valor, in order to hear it said what true valor is, which often begets true love.”

For the first hour, they had talked about love. Now they would talk about courage. A man who shows that he is courageous, as Lovel had done, often deserves — and gets — love.

Lord Latimer said, “It is a question fit for the court to take true knowledge and cognizance of, and the change to this topic of valor has my just assent.”

“I am content,” Queen Prudence said, agreeing with Lord Latimer.

“I am content,” Lord Beaufort said. 

“Content,” the disguised Frank said. “I am content. Give him his oath.”

The Host said, “Herbert Lovel, you shall swear upon The Testament of Love to make answer to this question propounded to you by the court: What is true valor?”

The Testament of Love is a medieval romance by Thomas Usk. Medieval romances were about both love and valor. Hero-knights followed the Code of Chivalry, performed daring deeds, and idealized women.

The Host continued, “And therein you shall swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help thee, Love, and your bright sword at need.”

Lovel put his hand on the book and swore, “So help me, Love, and my good sword at need!”

He then began to explain what true valor is:

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/It is the greatest virtue, and the safety and safeguard and confidence of all mankind; the object of it is danger. It is a certain mean in between fear and over-confidence.”

He was referring to Aristotle’s ethical theory of the mean between extremes. Valor (true courage) is the mean (middle) between too much courage (rashness) and too little courage (cowardice).

Lovel continued, “True valor is no inconsiderate rashness. It is no vain appetite and rashness of wrongly encountering formidable things.

“But true valor is a true science of distinguishing what’s good or evil. It springs out of reason and tends to perfect honor; the end goal of true valor is always honor and the public good. 

“It is no valor for a private cause or reason.”

“It isn’t?” Lord Beaufort asked. “Not for a reputation?”

He believed that a man could choose to be courageous in order to get a good reputation. 

For example, a man who fought duels could get a reputation for valor.

Lovel replied, “Reputation is man’s idol set up against God, the maker of all laws, who has commanded us that we should not kill, and yet we say we must kill for reputation.”

Dueling for honor sometimes resulted in a death.

Lovel continued, “What honest man can either fear for his own reputation, or else will hurt another’s reputation?

“Fear to do base, unworthy things is valor. If base, unworthy things are done to us, to suffer and endure them is valor, too. 

“The duty of a man who is truly valiant is worthy of consideration in three ways: 

“The first is in respect of matter and cause, which always is danger.

“The second is in respect of form, wherein he must preserve his dignity.

“And the third is in the end, which must be always lawful.”

A valiant man who takes action must do so in a dangerous situation (if valor is to be involved), must do so in a way that preserves and protects his dignity, and must do so to accomplish a lawful end or goal — he must take action for a good reason and a good cause.

Lord Latimer objected, “But men, when they are heated and in passion, cannot consider.”

He was saying that sometimes when a man is angry, the man must act in a dangerous situation without first taking the time to think things through. 

“Then it is not valor,” Lovel replied. “I never thought an angry person valiant. Virtue is never aided by a vice. What need is there of anger and of violent, tumultuous emotion, when reason can do the same things, or more?”

Lord Beaufort objected, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Oh, yes, it — anger — is profitable, and of use. It makes us fierce and fit to undertake an enterprise.”

Lovel replied, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Why, so will alcoholic drinks make us both bold and rash, and so will frenzy and madness, if you will. But do these make us valiant? 

“They are poor helps, and virtue does not need them.

“No man is made more valiant by being angry, except he who could not be valiant without anger; so that it comes not in the aid of virtue but in the stead of it.”

“He holds the right,” Lord Latimer said.

Lovel held the right opinion: He was making sense.

Lovel continued, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/And it is an odious kind of remedy to owe our health to a disease.”

Tiptoe said, “If man should follow the dictamen — order or pronouncement — of his passion, he could not avoid or escape —”

Lord Beaufort finished Tiptoe’s sentence, “— discomposing himself.”

“Discomposing himself “meant “ruining his composure.”

Tiptoe had been angry at Bat Burst and Master Huffle. They had fought, but when Lovel drew his rapier and had chased them, Tiptoe had been discomposed — he had run away instead of showing valor.

Lord Latimer said, “According to Don Luis!”

“Or Carranza!” the Host said.

Don Luis and Carranza were two of Tiptoe’s favorite Spanish authorities on fencing.

Lovel said to Tiptoe, “Good Colonel Glorious, while we discuss valor, dismiss yourself.”

“You are not concerned,” Lord Latimer said.

Tiptoe had not shown valor, and so he ought not to participate in a discussion of true valor.

Lovel said to Tiptoe, “Go drink, and gather together the ostlers and the tapsters, the under-officers of your regiment; compose — make — your peace with them, and be not angry-valiant!”

Tiptoe, who had been angry but who had not been valiant in the recent fight, exited. In his case, anger was in the stead of valor and virtue.

“How does angry-valor differ from true valor?” Lord Beaufort asked.

Lovel said:

“Thus:

“First, it differs in the efficient, or that which makes it, for it proceeds from passion, not from judgment.

“Second, it differs in that brute beasts have it, and wicked persons — there it differs in the subject.

“Third, it differs in the form. It is carried out rashly and with violence.

“Fourth and finally, it differs in the end, where it does not respect and regard truth or public honor, but only pure revenge.

“Now, over-confident and undertaking — rebuking — valor sways from the true valor in two other ways:

“First, as being a trust in our own faculties, skill, or strength, and not a trust in the right or conscience (sense of right and wrong) of the cause that works it.

“And second, in the end, which is the victory and not the honor.”

Lord Beaufort said, “But the ignorant valor that knows not why it undertakes, but does it to escape the infamy and bad reputation merely —”

Lovel interrupted and finished Lord Beaufort’s sentence, “— is worst of all.”

He then said, “That kind of valor lies in the eyes of the on-lookers, and it is called valor with a witness — and it is valor with a vengeance.”

“Right,” Lord Beaufort said.

Lovel said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/The things true valor is exercised about are poverty, restraint, captivity, banishment, loss of children, and long disease. The least thing it is concerned about is death.”

True valor is used in the fight against poverty, restraint, captivity, banishment, loss of children, and long disease.

For example, health-care workers show valor when they take care of people who are ill with a contagious disease. The health-care workers may catch the disease.

Lovel continued:

“Here valor is beheld, properly seen; about these it is present. 

“Valor is not beheld in trivial things, which merely require our confidence. Valor is more than confidence.

“And yet to those bad things — poverty, restraint, captivity, banishment, loss of children, and long disease — we must object and we must subject and expose ourselves, only for honor; if any other consideration be mixed with honor, we quite put out valor’s light.”

This kind of honor is gained through taking action.

Lovel continued:

“And as all knowledge, when it is removed or separated from justice, is called craft rather than wisdom, so a mind affecting or undertaking dangers for ambition or any personal pretext, not for the public, deserves the name of daring, not the name of valor, and over-daring is as great a vice as over-fearing.”

“Yes, and often greater,” Lord Latimer said. 

Lovel said, “But as it is not the mere punishment, but the cause that makes a martyr, so it is not fighting or dying, but the manner of it that renders a man himself. 

“A valiant man ought not to undergo or test a danger except worthily, and by selected ways: He undertakes the dangerous venture with reason, not by chance.

“His valor is the salt to his other virtues; they are all unseasoned without it. The waiting-maids, or the concomitants — ancillary effects — of it, are his patience, his magnanimity, his confidence, and his constancy, calmness, and peace of mind.

“He can assure himself against all rumor, he despairs of nothing, and he laughs at insults because he knows himself to be advanced in a height where injury cannot reach him nor aspersion touch him with disgrace!”

Lady Frampul said, “This is the most manly uttered of all! 

“It is as if Achilles had the chair in valor, and Hercules were only a lecturer!”

Lady Frampul was rating Achilles, the greatest warrior of the Trojan War, above Hercules, the great PanHellenic hero. 

Achilles became angry at Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek forces arrayed against Troy, and so Achilles stopped fighting. Many Greek warriors died because their best fighter was staying in his camp and was not on the battlefield. Later, Hector, the greatest warrior of the Trojans, killed Patroclus, Achilles’ best friend, in battle. Out of anger, Achilles killed Hector and desecrated his body.

Hercules sometimes became insane (due to the machinations of the goddess Juno, who hated him), and he sometimes became drunk. In a fit of insanity he killed his wife and children. Hercules was a formidable killing machine, and he fought and killed monsters.

Both Achilles and Hector are thought of as men of valor, yet both sometimes acted out of anger or insanity, and so in those cases they were not measuring up to Lovel’s definition of true valor.

Perhaps Lady Frampul was acting and so she was not really in love with Lovel.

And yet, at the end of the Iliad, Achilles gives up his anger, accepts the death of Patroclus, and allows Hector’s father, King Priam, to ransom Hector’s corpse so that he can give his son a decent burial and allow Hector’s soul to enter the Land of the Dead. Achilles begins to fight again, not out of anger, but out of belief that he is fighting for a just cause: It was the Trojan prince Paris who ran away with the lawfully wedded wife of King Menelaus of Sparta — a violation of xenia, aka hospitality.

Perhaps Achilles is more valiant than Hercules.

And perhaps Lady Frampul was not acting and so she was really in love with Lovel.

Lady Frampul said, “Who would not hang upon those lips forever — those lips that strike such music? I could discourse about them, but modesty is such a schoolmistress that it keeps our sex in awe.”

Queen Prudence said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Or you can feign, my subtle and dissembling lady mistress!”

She thought that Lady Frampul was acting a role.

“I fear she means it, Pru, in too good earnest!” Lord Latimer said. 

Lovel continued his discourse on true valor:

“The purpose of an injury or insult is to vex and trouble me. Now, nothing can do that to a man who is valiant. 

“He who is affected with the least injury is less than it. It is but reasonable to conclude that that which hurts should be stronger still than that which is hurt. 

“Now, no wickedness is stronger than what opposes it: Even Lady Fortune’s self, when she encounters virtue, leaves the field of battle both lame and less.”

Say that every day a bully beats up a smaller child. Every day the smaller child fights back but is defeated. Which person shows valor? Which person shows virtue? The bully who picks the fight, knowing that he will win, or the smaller child who fights back, knowing that he will lose? Should the smaller child feel worthless because he lost, or should he feel worthy because he resisted injustice? If the smaller child is worthy and the bully is unworthy, should we say that the bully is stronger? 

Of course, the bully is physically stronger, but other kinds of strength exist. For example, strength of character exists.

Is it stronger to be valiant and virtuous or is it stronger to be a bully and unvirtuous?

Lovel continued:

“Why should a wise man, then, confess himself the weaker, by the feeling of a fool’s wrong?”

“There may an injury or insult be meant me. I may choose if I will accept it.” 

In some societies, master fighters — such as samurai — decline to fight someone whom they think is unworthy. They will fight only people whom they respect. Bullies, however, fight those they do not respect — they fight those whom they are sure they can defeat.

If a fool insults you, should you be insulted? Or should you ignore the insult because it comes from a fool and you don’t care what fools think?

Tiptoe, as well as Bat Burst and Master Huffle, were all fools who insulted each other and fought each other.

Lovel continued, “But we are now come to that delicacy and tenderness of sense that we think an insolence worse than an injury — we bear words worse than deeds. https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/We are not so much troubled with the wrong as with the opinion of the wrong. Like children, we are made afraid with visors and masks and disguises.”

In Homer’s Iliad, Hector returns to Troy to ask his mother to pray to the gods, and while he is there, he is able to see his wife and his young son, who screams with fear when he sees Hector wearing his helmet. When Hector takes off his helmet, his son recognizes him and stops crying.

Lovel continued, “Such poor sounds as is the lie or common words of spite, wise laws thought never worthy a revenge. And it is the narrowness of human nature, our poverty and beggary of spirit, to take exception at these things. 

“He laughed at me! He made a joke at my expense! A third took place of me!”

This society took social position seriously. For example, people of the upper classes entered a room in order of precedence. The person of highest social position entered the room first, followed by the others in order of descending social position. People sometimes argued about who should go before the other. In fact, heralds of the College of Heralds decided who had precedence over another person.

Lovel continued:

“How so very ridiculous are all these quarrels!

“They are signs of a queasy and sick stomach, laboring with lack of a true injury. The main part of the wrong is our vice of taking it.”

“Or our interpreting it to be such,” Lord Latimer said. 

Lovel replied, “You take it rightly. 

“If a woman or child should call me a liar, would I be angry? 

“No, not if I were in my wits. Surely, I would think it no kind of a disgrace. No more is theirs a disguise, if I will think it, if given by those who are to be held in as contemptible a rank or worse.

“I am kept out of a masque, sometimes thrust out of one, or I am made to wait a day, two, three, for a word from a person of great social position, a word that, when it comes forth, is all frown and impudence.” 

In this culture, sometimes a masque — an entertainment featuring masked performers — would have too many people attending it, and the people of greater social rank would throw out people of lower social rank.

“What laughter should this breed, rather than anger, out of the tumult of so many vexations, to feel with contemplation my own quiet!

“If a great person, a giant of the time, should do me an affront, surely I will bear it either out of patience or necessity. 

“Shall I do more for fear than for my judgment?

“For me now to be angry with Hodge Huffle, or Burst, his bankrupt dependent, if he should be saucy, or our own type of Spanish valor, Tiptoe — who, if he were now necessitated to beg, would ask an alms like Conde Olivares, the Prime Minister of Spain — would be just to make myself such a vain animal as one of them. 

“If light wrongs don’t touch me and make me angry, no more shall great wrongs; if a few wrongs don’t touch me and make me angry, many wrongs shall not touch me and make me angry.

“There’s nothing so sacred with us but may attract a sacrilegious person, yet the thing is no less divine because the profane can reach it.

“The man who is not hurt in battle is the man who is shot-free in battle — not the man who is not hit.”

Apparently, Lovel meant not hurt mentally as well as physically. A person who is not hit by shot can yet be hurt by shot. Think of a shell-shocked soldier.

Lovel continued:

“So he who does not yield to wrongs is valiant, not he who escapes them. 

“They who pull down churches and deface the holiest altars cannot hurt the godhead.

“A calm, wise man may show as much true valor amid these popular provocations as can an able captain show confidence by his bravely making his way through an enemy’s country.

“A wise man never goes the people’s way, but, as the planets always move contrary to the world’s motion, so does he to opinion.

“He will examine if those accidents, which common fame calls injuries, happen to him deservedly or not. 

“If they come to him deservedly, they are not wrongs, then, but his punishments.

“If they come to him undeservedly, and he is not guilty, then the doer of them first should blush, not he.” 

“Excellent!” Lord Latimer said.

“Truth, and right!” Lord Beaufort said.

“An oracle could not have spoken more truthfully!” the disguised Frank said.

“Or been more believed!” Lady Frampul said.

Queen Prudence said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/The whole court endorses your meaning, sir! And look, your second hour has almost ended.”

“It cannot be!” Lady Frampul said. “Oh, clip the wings of Time, good Pru, or make Time stand still with a magic spell. Distil the gout into Time, cramps, all diseases to arrest Time in the foot and fix Time here.

“Oh, for a way to keep back all clocks, or make the sun forget his motion! 

“If I only knew what drink the Time now loved, I would set my Trundle at him, my own Barnaby!”

Trundle was a drinker and could get Time drunk. Barnaby was also a drinker.

Queen Prudence said, “Why, I’ll consult our Shelee-nien Thomas.”

She shook the Nurse, who was asleep.

The Nurse awoke and said, “Er grae Chreest!”

[The Nurse awoke and said, “For the love of Christ!”]

“Don’t wake her,” Lord Beaufort said.

When the Nurse was asleep, she was not keeping an eye on Lord Beaufort and the disguised Frank.

The Nurse said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Tower een cuppand’usque bagh doone.”

[The Nurse said, “Give us a cup of whiskey.”]

Queen Prudence said, “Usque bagh’s her drink. But it will not make the Time drunk.”

“As it has her,” the Host said, referring to the Nurse, who was already asleep again.

He then said to Lord Beaufort, “Away with her, my lord, but marry her first.”

“Her” was Laetitia: the disguised Frank.

Lord Beaufort and the disguised Frank exited.

Queen Prudence said, “Aye, that’ll be entertainment soon, too, for my lady: Lady Frampul.”

She was referring to Lord Beaufort’s marrying a boy: Frank.

Queen Prudence continued, “But she has other game to fly at yet. The end of the hour has come.”

She said to Lady Frampul, “Your kiss.”

Lady Frampul was supposed to kiss her servant, Lovel, a second time to mark the end of the second hour.

“My servant’s song, first,” Lady Frampul said. 

“I say the kiss, first,” Queen Prudence said, “and I so enjoined it. At your own peril, commit contempt of the court by not kissing your servant.”

Lady Frampul said to Lovel, “Well, sir, you must be paid, and legally.”

She kissed him.

Queen Prudence said to Lovel, “Nay, nothing, sir, beyond that kiss.”

Lovel said, “One more kiss! I take exception! I object! This was but half a kiss, and I would reciprocate it.”

“The court’s dissolved, removed, and the play ended,” Queen Prudence said. “No sound or breath of love more; I decree it.”

Lovel complained, “From what a happiness has that one word thrown me into the gulf of misery! To what a bottomless despair! How like a court removing or an ended play shows my abrupt, unrestrained, and precipitate condition.”

Lovel was quoting from John Donne’s poem “The Storm”:

“And all our beauty, and our trim, decays, 

“Like courts removing, or like ended plays.” 

The poem is about the calm or peace that follows a war. We might expect that such calm would be welcome, but Donne’s speaker finds no relaxation in the calm: 

“In calms, Heaven laughs to see us languish thus.” 

People can worn out by war and be unable to enjoy peace. Or people can find that being in danger makes them feel vibrantly alive, and they can find peace boring.

Lovel and Lady Frampul had been contestants in the Court of Love, and now the contest — which had been in part a parody of two jousters in a tournament — was over.

Queen Prudence’s Court of Love had removed (her authority was ending, and so the court was no longer in existence) and the “play” that she, Lovel, and Lady Frampul had performed had now ended. Lovel had won the contest — all had agreed with his views on love and valor — and yet he now was enjoined from being with Lady Frampul. This kiss was supposed to be his last. For Lovel the calm was not welcome.

The Court of Love may also have removed from Queen Prudence’s jurisdiction to Lady Frampul’s jurisdiction, but that did not help Lovel because he felt that she had been only acting a role when she had publicly professed love for him. Lovel felt that actually Lady Frampul disdained him.

Lovel continued:

“By how much more my vain hopes were increased by these false hours of conversation! Didn’t I prophesy this of myself, and didn’t I give the true prediction? 

“Oh, my brain, how are you turned, and my blood congealed, my sinews slackened, and my marrow melted, so that I can’t remember where I have been, or what I am? 

“Only my tongue’s on fire, and, burning downward, it hurls forth coals and cinders to say this temple of love will soon be ashes!

“Come, Disdain of Love, now, and be my mistress. No more of Love’s ingrateful and ungrateful and harsh tyranny, his wheel of torture and his pits of bird-lime, his nets of nooses, whirlpools of vexation, his mills to grind his servants into powder.”

The wheel of torture was an implement of torture: A criminal was tied to a wheel, and then torturers broke the criminal’s bones.

Bird-lime was used to catch birds.

Small birds were caught in nets, and the holes in the nets were like nooses that strangled the birds.

Lovel continued, “I will go catch the wind first in a sieve, weigh smoke and measure shadows, plow the water and sow my hopes there, before I stay in love.”

In other words: Rather than stay in love — a love that was not reciprocated — Lovel preferred to do things that are impossible to do.

“My jealousy is off,” Lord Latimer said. “I am now secure.”

Was he in love with Lady Frampul?

Lovel said:

“Farewell the craft of crocodiles, woman’s piety and their practice of it, in this art of flattering and fooling men! 

“I have not lost my reason, although I have lent myself out for two hours, thus to be disgraced by a chambermaid, Prudence, and the good actor, her lady, before my Host of the Light Heart here, who has laughed at all —”

“Who, I?” the Host said.

“Laugh on, sir,” Lovel said. “I’ll go to bed and sleep, and dream away the whim of love, if the house and your sly, underhanded drunkards let me.”

Everyone exited except Lady Frampul, Prudence, and the Nurse.

Lady Frampul said, “Pru.”

Prudence answered, “Sweet madam?”

“Why would you let him go away like this?” Lady Frampul asked.

She was talking about Lovel.

Prudence answered, “In whose power was it to make him stay, more proper than my lady’s power?”

“Why in your lady’s?” Lady Frampul asked. “Aren’t you the sovereign?”

“Would you in conscience, madam, have me vex his patience more?” Prudence said.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/No, but I would have you apply the cure,” Lady Frampul said, “now that his patience is vexed.”

“That’s but one person’s work,” Prudence said. “Two cannot do the same thing handsomely and fitly.”

When a man is lovesick because of a woman, only that woman can cure his lovesickness.

Lady Frampul asked, “But didn’t you have the absolute authority?”

Queens are powerful.

“And weren’t you in rebellion, Lady Frampul,” Prudence asked, “from the beginning?”

“I was somewhat obstinate, I must confess,” Lady Frampul said, “but obstinateness sometimes becomes and graces a beauty, being only a visor — a mask — put on. You’ll let a lady wear her mask, Pru! You’ll let a lady disguise her true feelings!”

“But how do I know when Her Ladyship is pleased to leave the mask off, unless she tells me so?” Prudence asked.

“You might have known that by my looks and language, had you been either watchful or observant,” Lady Frampul said. “One woman reads another’s character without the tedious trouble of deciphering, if she but gives her mind to it. 

“You knew well it could not befit any reputation of mine to submit first, having stood aloof so long, without conditions for my honor.”

Prudence replied, “I thought you expected none, you so jeered him, and put him off with scorn —”

“Who, I, with scorn?” Lady Frampul said. “I did express my love to idolatry rather, and so I am justly plagued, not understood.”

Lady Frampul believed that she had expressed her love of Lovel so strongly that her love was idolatrous.

Prudence said, “I swear I thought you had dissembled, madam, and I suspect you are doing so yet.”

Prudence thought that Lady Frampul had been putting on an act when she said she loved Lovel.

“Dull, stupid wench!” Lady Frampul said. “Stay in your state of ignorance still, be damned, an idiot chambermaid! Has all my care, my breeding you in fashion, your rich clothes, honors, and titles wrought no brighter effects on your dark soul than thus? 

“Well! Go your ways. If the tailor’s wife weren’t to be demolished, ruined, and stripped, you should be the she who would be demolished, ruined, and stripped, I vow.”

Prudence had pride.

Tearing off her gown, which had been given to her by Lady Frampul, she said, “Why, take your spangled articles of clothing, your costumes, your gown, and your scarves!”

“Pru, Pru, what do you mean?” Lady Frampul said.

“I will not buy this play-actor-boy’s bravery at such a price, to be upbraided for it, thus, every minute,” Prudence said.

In this society, women did not act on stage. Instead, boys performed the roles of the women in plays. The rich gowns of upper-class women sometimes were sold and became stage costumes.

“Don’t take it so to heart,” Lady Frampul said.

She had spoken out of anger, without thinking first.

“The tailor’s wife?” Prudence said. “There was a word of scorn!”

“It was a word that fell from me, Pru, by chance,” Lady Frampul said.

“Good madam, please to undeceive yourself,” Prudence said. “I know when words do slip and when they are darted with all their bitterness. Stripped? Demolished? An idiot chambermaid, stupid and dull? Be damned for ignorance? I will be so, and think I do deserve it, that and more, much more I do.”

She wept.

The Host entered the room.

“Here comes my Host!” Lady Frampul said. “No crying, good Pru.”

She then asked, “Where is my servant Lovel, Host?”

“You have sent him up to bed,” the Lost said. “I wish that you would follow him, and make my house amends!”

“Would you advise it?” Lady Frampul said.

“I wish that I could command it,” the Host said. “My Light Heart should leap until midnight.”

One kind of leaping is dancing; another kind is leaping on someone and having sex.

“I ask you not to be sullen and melancholy,” Lady Frampul said. “I yet must have your counsel and advice.”

She said to Prudence, “You shall wear, Pru, the new gown yet.”

“After the tailor’s wife?” Prudence asked.

“Come, don’t be angry or grieved,” Lady Frampul said. “I have a plan.”

Lady Frampul and Prudence exited.

The Host said to the Nurse, who was still asleep, “Wake, Shelee-nien Thomas!”

He shook the Nurse awake and asked, “Is this your heraldry and keeping of records, to lose the main — to miss out on the important thing? Where is your charge?”

Her charge — her responsibility — was Frank. She was supposed to watch over him.

“Gra Chreest!” the Nurse said.

“Go ask the oracle of the bottle at your girdle,” the Host said. “There you lost it.”

The Nurse had a small bottle of whiskey attached to her belt instead of the keys or small Bible many women carried. The whiskey had made her fall asleep and give Lord Beaufort the opportunity to run off with the disguised Frank.

The Host then said sarcastically, “You are a sober setter of the watch!”

The Nurse exited.

 

CHAPTER 5

— 5.1 —

Fly entered the room, and he and the Host talked together.

The Host said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Come, Fly, and legacy, the bird of the Heart; the prime insect of the inn, professor, quartermaster, as ever you deserved your daily drink, paddling in sack and licking in the same, now show that you are an implement — tool — of value and help raise a nap to us out of nothing.”

Sack is white wine. Insects can fall into the wine, paddle around in the wine, and use their proboscis to suck up the wine.

The Host wanted Fly’s help in weaving together all the various actions going on in the inn. The surface of cloth is called nap, and it gets worn away with age. The Host wanted the events happening in his inn to be good. Lots of people were gloomy, and the Host wanted them to be merry.

He then asked Fly, “You saw them married?”

Fly replied, “I do think I did, and I heard the words, ‘I, Philip, take you, Laetice.’

“I gave her away, too. I was then the father Fly, and I heard the priest do his part as far as five nobles would lead him in the lines of matrimony.”

Nobles are gold coins.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Where were they married?” the Host asked.

“In the new stable,” Fly said.

“Ominous!” the Host said. “I have known many a church that has been made a stable, but not a stable made a church until now.”

He was referring to churches that after the Reformation had been desecrated. Apparently, the Host was OK with that particular kind of churches being desecrated, and he did not want them to return to being churches.

The Host continued, “I wish them joy. Fly, was he a full priest?”

Fly, punning on “full” as meaning “with his belly full,” said, “He had the belly for it. He also had his velvet sleeves and his branched — embroidered — cassock; a long, sweeping gown; and all his formalities — insignia of office. He was a good crammed divine!”

The priest was dressed like a doctor of divinity, and he was crammed with theological knowledge — and with food.

Fly continued, “I went not far to fetch him — the next inn, where he was lodged — for the action of performing the marriage.”

“Had they a marriage license?” the Host asked.

Fly answered, “They had a license of love, I saw no other; and they had a purse to pay the dues both of church and house. The angels flew about.”

They needed a marriage license to get married, but Lord Beaufort had money and the angels — gold coins — flew about as he paid the priest to marry them without a license. Lord Beaufort also paid all other necessary fees.

About the flying angels, the Host said, “Those birds send luck, and mirth will follow.”

He thought about bad events and said, “I had thought to have sacrificed to merriment tonight in my Light Heart, Fly, and like a noble poet to have had my last act best, but all fails in the plot.”

He had thought that the Light Heart Inn would enjoy much merriment this night, but things were not working out for the most part.

The Host continued, “Lovel has gone to bed; the Lady Frampul and sovereign — Queen — Pru have fallen out; Tiptoe and his regiment of mine-men” — miners, because they worked in the cellar of the inn — “are all drunk dumb, from his whoop Barnaby to his hoop Trundle. They are his two tropics: the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.”

Barnaby and Trundle were the kind of people Tiptoe now associated with and by implication felt most comfortable around.

“Whoop Barnaby” is a song, and hoops are the bands on a quart pot of an alcoholic beverage.

The Host continued, “There is no project to rear laughter on but this: the marriage of Lord Beaufort with Laetitia.”

https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Seeing Lady Frampul and Prudence approaching, the Host said, “Wait, what’s here? The satin gown redeemed, and Pru restored in it to her lady’s grace!”

At one point, Lady Frampul was intending to burn the gown that Pinnacia had been caught wearing, but Lady Frampul had obviously decided not to do that because Prudence was now wearing it.

Fly said, “She is set forth in it, rigged for some employment!”

“An embassy at least!” the Host said.

“Some conference of state!” Fly said.

The Host said, “It is a fine tack about — a reversal of course — and worth the observing.”

https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/The Host and Fly stood to the side and watched.

— 5.2 —

Lady Frampul and Prudence, who was magnificently dressed in the gown that Pinnacia had worn, entered the room.

“Sweet Pru, aye, now you are a Queen indeed!” Lady Frampul said. “These robes do royally and you become them, and just so they become you. Rich garments are fit only for the parties they are made for; they shame others.

“How did they look when they were on Goody — Goodwife — Tailor’s back? Like a caparison for a sow, God save us!”

Usually, caparisons are cloths that are put on a horse’s back, not on a pig’s back.

Lady Frampul said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Your putting them on has purged and hallowed them from all the pollution intended by the mechanics — the artisans who labor with their hands.”

Stuff the tailor was the mechanic meant.

She continued, “Hang him, poor snip, a secular — unlearned — shop-wit!”

Stuff the tailor was “poor snip.” 

Lady Frampul continued, “He has nothing but his shears to assert a claim by, and his measures. His apprentice may as well put in for his needle and plead a stitch.”

Stuff the tailor’s dignity was no more than that of his apprentice, who got all his dignity from wielding a needle and making stitches.

Lady Frampul continued, “The clothes have no taint in them now of the tailor.”

Prudence said, “Yes, they do. They have the taint of his wife’s haunches, which are thick of fat. I smell his wife’s haunches on the fabric.”

Prudence had smelled Pinnacia’s grease — sweat — when putting on the gown. In fact, she still smelled Pinnacia’s grease on the clothing.

Lady Frampul said, “It is restorative, Pru! With your but chafing — warming — it, a barren hind’s grease may work miracles.”

The word “but” meant “just” or “only,” but in fact Prudence’s butt would chaff the gown.

Lady Frampul referred to a “barren hind.” “Barren” means “childless.” “Hind” can mean 1) deer, 2) behind, aka butt, or 3) menial.

Lady Frampul continued, “Just find Lovel’s chamber door, and he will rise to you!”

Lady Frampul believed that Pinnacia’s sex pheromones, which were in her sweat, could cause Lovel to end his renunciation of love. He would “rise” — that is, 1) rise out of bed, and 2) get an erection.

She continued, “Or, if you please, feign to be the wretched party herself — Pinnacia — and come to him in forma pauperis to crave the aid of his knight-errant valor to the rescue of your distressed robes! Name just your gown and he will rise to that.”

In forma pauperis means “as a pauper.” In courts of law, paupers were able to sue or to defend themselves without cost. 

Her distressed robes were the gown that Pinnacia had sweated in.

Prudence said, “I’ll fire the charm first.”

She would burn the costume first before she would pretend to be Pinnacia. She was not interested in giving Lovel an erection — at least not when the erection was caused solely by the clothing she was wearing. 

Prudence continued, “I had rather die in a ditch with Mistress Shore, without a smock, as the pitiful story has it, than owe my wit to clothes, or have my wit beholden.”

Elizabeth “Jane” Shore, who was the mistress of King Edward IV of England, was supposed to have died in a ditch. People thought that the place was named Shoreditch because of this, but the story is apocryphal.

The Host said quietly to Fly, “Prudence still has the spirit of Pru!”

“And smelling of the sovereign!” Fly quietly replied.

Prudence said to Lady Frampul, “No, I will tell him the truth as it is indeed. I come from the fine, froward, frampul lady, one who was run mad with pride and who was wild with self-love.”

The word “frampul” is a variant of the adjective “frampold,” which means “bad tempered, cross, and peevish.” But applied to a horse, it means “spirited, fiery, and mettlesome.”

Prudence continued:

“I will tell him that I come from the fine, froward, frampul lady, who after recently encountering a wise man who scorned her, and knew the way to his own bed without borrowing her warming pan — that is, without taking her with him to warm his bed — she has recovered part of her wits, so much as to consider how far she has trespassed, upon whom, and how.”

Really, if Lovel were to have an erection, Prudence believed, it ought to be caused by Lady Frampul. It ought not to be caused by the clothing Prudence was wearing.

Prudence continued, “And now she sits penitent and solitary like the forsaken turtledove, in the volary — large bird-cage — of the Light Heart, the cage she has abused, mourning her folly, weeping at the height she measures with her eye from whence she has fallen since she did branch it — flourish — on the top of the wood.”

Turtledoves mate for life; they are symbols of faithfulness.

Lady Frampul said, “I tell you, Pru, to abuse me enough — that is, to treat me as you think fit — any coarse way to humble me. 

“But either bring me home again or bring me Lovel again.

“You do not know my sufferings — what I feel. My fires and fears are met; I burn and freeze.”

In this society, burning and freezing were considered to be symptoms of lovesickness.

Lady Frampul continued, “My liver’s one great coal, and my heart has shrunk up with all the fibers and the mass of blood.”

We think of the heart as being the seat of love; this society thought of the liver as being the seat of love.

She continued:

“Within me is a still lake of fire curled with the cold wind of my gelid — ice-cold — sighs, which drive a drift of sleet through all my body and shoot a cold February through my veins.

“Until I see him, I am drunk with thirst and surfeited with hunger of his presence.

“I don’t know whether I exist or not, or whether I speak, or whether you hear me.”

“Stop your expressions,” Prudence said. “I’ll once more venture for and help Your Ladyship, provided that you will use your fortunes reverently.”

Lady Frampul said, “I will use my fortunes religiously, dear Pru.

“Love and his mother — Cupid and Venus — I’ll build them separate churches, shrines, and altars, and overhead I’ll have, in the stained-glass windows, the story of this day painted round for the poor laity — ordinary worshippers — of love to read.” 

Some stained-glass windows are round, and her story would be told around the area because she would build more than one church that would have a round stained-glass window devoted to telling her story.

Lady Frampul continued, “I’ll make myself their book, nay, their example, to bid the viewers of the stained-glass windows to take occasion — opportunity — by the forelock and play no after-games of love hereafter.”

One must seize Opportunity by the forelock when she runs near you. If you are late in grabbing her forelock, you will lose Opportunity because the back of her head is bald.

An after-game is a second game played to improve one’s outcome after a bad outcome from the first game.

The Host now came forward with Fly, revealing their presence to Lady Frampul and Prudence.

The Host said, “And here your Host and his Fly witness your vows. And like two lucky-omened birds, we bring the presage of a loud jest: Lord Beaufort has been married.”

Lord Beaufort had shown great interest in Frank, the Host’s son, who had been disguised as a woman.

Lady Frampul responded, “Ha!”

Fly said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/They are all-to-be-married.”

This meant: They are completely married.

“To whom?” Prudence said. “Not your son?” 

“The same, Pru,” the Host said. “If Her Ladyship could make truce a little with her passion, and give way to their mirth now running —”

Lord Beaufort’s marrying a boy could very well be mirthful.

“Runs it mirth, let it come,” Lady Beaufort said, “It shall be well received and much made of it.”

Prudence said, “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/We must make much of this; it was our own conception.”

It had been their plan to disguise Frank as a woman.

— 5.3 —

Lord Latimer entered the room and said, “Strew the room with green rushes! Raise the fiddlers, chamberlain! Call up the house in all readiness!”

Green rushes were strewn on floors for celebrations of such events as weddings.

“This will rouse Lovel,” the Host said.

“And bring him on, too,” Fly said.

Lord Latimer said, “Shelee-nien Thomas — the Nurse — runs like a heifer bitten with a gadfly about the court, crying against Fly and cursing.”

“For what, my lord?” Fly said.

Lord Latimer replied, “It is best that you hear that from her. It is not an office, Fly, suitable for my narration.”

Seeing Lord Beaufort and the disguised Frank approaching, Lord Latimer said, “Here comes the happy couple!

“Joy to you, Lord Beaufort!”

“And to my young lady, too!” Fly said about the disguised Frank.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/May God give you much joy, my lord!” the Host said.

— 5.4 —

Lord Beaufort, the disguised Frank, Ferret, Jordan, Pierce Anon, Jug, some fiddlers, and a servant walked over to them.

“I thank you all,” Lord Beaufort said. “I thank you, Father Fly.”

He then said to Madam Frampul, “Madam, my cousin, you look discomposed. I have been bold with a salad after supper of your own lettuce here.”

He was punning on the name “Lettice,” which is a nickname for women named “Laetitia.”

“You have, my lord,” Lady Frampul said. “But laws of hospitality and fair rites would have made me acquainted.”

Lord Beaufort was a guest of Lady Frampul at the inn. As such, he should have let her know that he was going to marry the disguised Frank, whom he thought was a female friend of hers.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/In your own house, I do acknowledge that,” Lord Beaufort said. “If I had not let you know in that case, I would have much trespassed against you.

“But in an inn, and a public inn, where there is license of all fellowship, a pardon by regular process of law may be applied for in court: the Court of Love.”

The Court of Love would allow people to marry suddenly, and in this case, to marry without informing Lady Frampul in advance.

https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/“A pardon will be applied for, my lord, and it will be granted,” Lady Frampul said. “I do not see how any storm or tempest can help it now.”

A fit of anger would not annul the marriage.

Prudence said to Lady Frampul, “The thing being done and past, you bear it wisely and like a lady of judgment.”

“She is that, Secretary Pru,” Lord Beaufort said.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Why do you call me Secretary Pru, my wise lord?” Prudence said. “Is your brain lately married?”

She was asking why he didn’t call her Queen Pru. Was his brain addled because of his marriage?

“Your reign is ended, Pru,” Lord Beaufort said. “You are no sovereign now. Your term is out, and your dignity of office has expired.”

“I am annulled,” Prudence said to Lady Frampul. “How can I negotiate with Lovel without a new commission?”

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Your gown is your commission,” Lady Frampul said.

Prudence was Queen Prudence once more.

“Have patience, Pru,” the Host said. “Wait. Bid the lord joy.”

This meant: Wait for a while before you begin exercising your royal authority. First, wish Lord Beaufort joy.

“And this brave lady, too,” Queen Prudence said. “I wish both of them joy.”

It was traditional to wish joy to a newly married couple.

“Joy!” Pierce Anon said

“Joy!” Jordan said.

“All joy!” Jug said.

“Aye, the house full of joy!” the Host said.

Fly said, “Play the bells; fiddlers, crack your strings with joy!”

Music played.

Queen Prudence said to the disguised Frank, “But Lady Lettice, you showed a neglect un-to-be-pardoned — not to be pardoned — towards my lady, your kinswoman, because you did not consult with her before you married.”

Lord Beaufort said, “Good politic Pru, urge not your state-advice, your after-wit — wisdom after the event, aka hindsight — it is close to upbraiding.”

He was recognizing Prudence as Queen at the Light Heart Inn.

Lord Beaufort then said, “Get our marriage bed ready, chamberlain, and, Host, get a bride-cup ready. You have splendid delicacies and good ingredients; an old host upon the road always has his provocative drinks.”

Provocative drinks either encouraged lust (they were aphrodisiacal) or appetite (they were medicinal).

Lord Latimer whispered to Lord Beaufort about the Host, “He is either a good bawd or a physician.”

Lord Beaufort whispered back, “It was well he didn’t hear you; his back was turned.”

He then said loudly, “A bed, the genial bed, the marriage bed! Tonight I play for a brace — a pair — of boys.”

He hoped to get the disguised Frank pregnant with twin boys this night.

“Give us points, my lord,” Queen Prudence said. 

Points are laces. For example, laces connected the doublet (jacket) to the breeches. Bridegrooms would tear off some of their laces to show their impatience to go to bed. 

Tearing off his laces, Lord Beaufort said, “Here, take them, Pru, my codpiece point and all.” 

A codpiece is a bag — a piece of clothing — which covered a man’s genitals. 

He then said, “I have clasps: my Lettice’s arms.”

He was punning. Clasps are other kinds of fastenings for clothing, as well as embraces from a beloved.

Lord Beaufort said to the servants, “Here, take the laces, boys.”

He took off his doublet — his jacket.

He then said to the servants, “What? Is the chamber ready? Speak! Why do you stare at each another?”

“No, sir,” Jordan said.

“And why not?” Lord Beaufort asked.

“My master has forbid it,” Jordan answered. “He yet doubts that you are married.

“Ask his vicar general, his Fly here,” Lord Beaumont said.

“I must make that good,” Fly said. “I can verify it. They are married.”

“But I must make it bad, my hot young lord,” the Host said. “Give him his doublet again; the air is piercing.”

The Host then said to Lord Beaufort, “You may take cold, my lord. See whom you have married — your Host’s son, and a boy!”

He pulled off Frank’s headdress, revealing that Frank had been in disguise.

“You are deceived,” Fly said to Lord Beaufort.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Much joy, my lord!” Lady Frampul said.

Queen Prudence said, “If this is your Laetitia, she’ll prove a counterfeit mirth and a clipped lady.”

Gold coins were sometimes clipped. Bits of gold were shaved from the edges of the coins, making them less valuable. If too much gold was clipped from the coins, they were no longer legal currency.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/A boy! A boy!” a servant said. “My lord has married a boy!”

“Raise all the house in shout and laughter: a boy!” Lord Latimer said. 

Lord Beaufort had loved physically without first knowing spiritually the person he loved.

“Wait, who is here?” the Host said, seeing the Nurse approaching. “Peace, rascals, stop your throats! Quiet!”

— 5.5 —

The Nurse entered the room and said, “That maggot, that worm, that insect! Oh, my child, my daughter! Where’s that Fly? I’ll fly in his face, the vermin. Let me come to him.”

“Why, Nurse Shelee?” Fly asked.

“Hang you, you parasite, you son of crumbs and leftovers!” the Nurse said. “You have ruined me and my child, my daughter, my dear daughter.”

The Host asked, “What does this mean?”

Daughter? What daughter?

“Oh, sir, my daughter, my dear child is ruined by this your Fly here,” the Nurse said. “My dear child was married in a stable and given to a husband.”

Frank was married in a stable and given to a husband. Isn’t Frank the Host’s son, and isn’t Frank a boy?

The Host said, “Stint your crying, Harlot, if that is all. Didn’t you sell him — Frank — to me for a boy? And brought him in boy’s rags here to my door to beg an alms of — charity from — me?”

“I did, good master, and I crave your pardon,” the Nurse said. “But she is my daughter, and she is a girl.”

The Host asked, “Why did you say that it was a boy and why did you sell him then to me with such entreaty for ten shillings, Carline?”

A carline is a witch.

The Nurse answered, “Because I heard you were a charitable man, good master, and would raise him well. I would have given him to you for nothing gladly. Forgive the lie of my mouth! It was to save the fruit of my womb. A parent’s needs are urgent, and few know as well as I that tyrant over good natures.

“But you relieved her and me, too, the mother, and took me into your house to be the nurse, for which may Heaven heap all blessings on your head for as long as there is still one blessing that can be added!”

The Host said, “Surely you speak quite like another creature than you have lived here in the house, a Shelee-nien Thomas, an Irish beggar.”

The Nurse was not speaking with a heavy Irish accent. 

“So I am, God help me,” the Nurse said.

True, she was speaking differently. 

“Who are you?” the Host asked. “Tell me.”

He added, “The match is a good match for anything I see.”

If Frank was a girl, then the marriage was a real marriage. Real marriages ought to be celebrated.

The Host ordered, “Ring the bells once again.”

The musicians began to play.

Lord Beaufort yelled, “Stint, I say, fiddlers! Stop playing!”

They stopped playing, and he started to leave.

“No going off, my lord,” Lady Frampul said. “You can’t leave now.”

Lord Beaufort responded, “Nor coming on, sweet lady, things thus standing!”

He was punning. His words had a bawdy meaning. A thing is a penis, and a stand is an erection. “Coming on” means what you think it means.

He did not want to consummate the marriage.

Fly said to the Host, “But what’s the heinousness of my offence, or the degrees of wrong you suffered by it, in having your daughter matched — married — thus happily into a noble house, by marrying a brave young blood and a prime peer of the realm?”

The Host’s son — uh, daughter — had married a lord.

“Was that your plot, Fly?” Lord Beaufort asked.

He thought that this had been a plot to make him marry an impoverished girl, someone of lesser social class than even the daughter of an innkeeper.

“Give me a cloak,” Lord Beaufort said.

He was intent on leaving.

He then said, “Take her again among you. I’ll have none of your Light Heart fosterlings —foster children — no inmates or inn-mates or lodgers, supposititious fruits of a Host’s brain and his Fly’s hatching, to be put upon me.”

“Supposititious” can mean “founded on false suppositions.” Lord Beaufort had thought that he had married the daughter of the Host, but now it seemed to him that he had been mistaken. To him it seemed that the Host and Fly had conspired to make him marry someone to whom he now did not wish to be married. 

Lord Beaufort said, “There is a royal court of the Star Chamber that will scatter all these mists, disperse these vapors, and make clear the truth. Let beggars match with — marry — beggars. 

“The royal court of the Star Chamber shall decide this; I will try it there.”

The Star Chamber was a judicial body that was feared because of its power.

This society had laws against providing lodging for paupers, and Lord Beaufort was threatening to turn in the Host for providing lodging to the Nurse and her child. Lord Beaufort was also threatening to turn in the Host and Fly for arranging a marriage under false pretenses.

The Nurse said, “Nay, then, my lord, I see it’s not enough for you to be licentious, but you will also be wicked.

“You’re not content just to take my daughter against the law” — they had not had a marriage license — “but, having taken her, you would repudiate and cast her off now at your pleasure, like a beast of power, without all cause or any semblance of a cause that either a noble or an honest man should dare to except against: her poverty.”

The poverty of the Nurse’s daughter was the ignoble reason why Lord Beaufort did not want to be married to her.

The Nurse asked, “Is poverty a vice?”

Lord Beaufort said, “The age counts it so.”

Many people regard poverty as a vice.

The Nurse said, “God help Your Lordship, and your peers who think so, if there are any who think as you do! If not, God bless them all, and help the number of the virtuous, if poverty should be a crime. You may say that our beggary is the result of an accident of birth, but you cannot say there is a deeper cause such as a lack of character; our poverty is no inherent baseness.

“And I must tell you now, young lord of dirt, as an incensed mother, she — my daughter — has more and better blood running in those small veins than all the race of Beauforts have in mass, although they distill their drops from the left rib of John of Gaunt.”

Lord Beaufort was a “young lord of dirt.” He owned much land, but he was not now a good person. “Dirt” can mean 1) land, or 2) excrement.

John of Gaunt and his mistress Catherine Swynford were the ancestors of the Beauforts. In 1397 the two married, and in 1398 King Richard II legitimized their children. Eve was made from Adam’s left rib, and without legitimization the Beauforts would have descended from the female line.

The Host asked the Nurse, who was a student of heraldry, “Old mother of records, you know her pedigree, then. Whose daughter is she?”

The Nurse answered, “She is the daughter and co-heir to the Lord Frampul, this lady’s sister!”

“My sister!” Lady Frampul said. “What is her name?”

“Laetitia,” the Nurse answered.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/She is the girl who was lost?” Lady Frampul asked.

“The true Laetitia,” the Nurse answered.

“Sister! Oh, gladness!” Lady Frampul said.

She then asked the Nurse, “Then you are our mother?”

“I am, dear daughter,” the Nurse answered.

Lady Frampul kneeled and said, “On my knees, I bless the light I see you by.”

The Nurse replied, “And to the Author of that blest light, I open my other eye, which has now for almost seven years been shut dark, as my vow was, never to see light until such a Light restored it as It restored my children or your dear father, who, I hear, is no longer living.”

The Nurse took off her eye patch, and Lady Frampul stood up. 

“Give me my wife,” Lord Beaufort said. “I own her now, and I will have her.”

By “own,” he meant that he recognized their marriage. Frank — uh, Laetitia — was a member of the wealthy Frampul family, not the impoverished son of an innkeeper or impoverished daughter of a beggar.

“But you must ask my leave first, my young lord,” the Host said. “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Leave is but light.”

“Leave is but light” means “It is easy to ask permission.” The Host was claiming that it was his prerogative to give Frank (Laetitia) to whomever he wanted.

The Host then ordered, “Ferret, go bolt your master, Lovel. Here’s events that will startle him.”

Ferrets made animals such as rabbits bolt from their lairs.

Ferret exited.

“I cannot keep the passion in me,” the Host said. “I am even turned into a child, and I must weep.”

He then ordered, “Fly, take away my Host.”

The Host removed his disguise — his hat and false beard — and gave the items to Fly.

He then said, “Take my beard and cap here away from me, and fetch my Lord.”

“Fetch my Lord” meant “Fetch me the clothing that will make me look like a lord again.”

Fly exited.

The Host said to Lord Beaufort, “I am Laetitia’s father, sir, and you shall now ask for my consent before you have her.” 

The Host said to the Nurse, “Wife, my dear and loving wife! My honored wife! Who here has gained but I? I am Lord Frampul, the cause of all this trouble. I am he who has measured — traveled — all the shires of England over, Wales and her mountains, seen those wilder nations of people in the Peak and Lancashire; their pipers, fiddlers, strewers of rushes, puppet-masters, jugglers, and gypsies, all the sorts of vagabonds who use the cant or language of thieves, and colonies of beggars, tumblers, traveling entertainers with performing apes, for to these savages I was addicted, wanting to search their natures and make odd discoveries and explorations! 

“And here my wife, like a she-Mandeville, ventured in diligent search after me.”

Sir John Mandeville was a man who wrote about his travels.

Fly returned, carrying Lord Frampul’s robes, which Lord Frampul — the Host — put on.

“I may look up and wonder,” the Nurse (Lord Frampul’s wife) said. “I cannot speak yet to my lord and husband.”

“Take heart and breath,” the Host (Lord Frampul) said. “Recover yourself. You have recovered me, who here had coffined myself alive in a poor hostelry in penance of my wrongs done to you, whom I long since gave up as lost.”

“So did I give you up for lost,” the Nurse (Lord Frampul’s wife) said. “Until, stealing my own daughter from her sister, I lighted on this error that has cured all.” 

Lord Beaufort said, “And in that cure include my trespass, mother, and father, for my wife —”

He was referring to the Host (Lord Frampul) and the Nurse (Lord Frampul’s wife) as his father-in-law and his mother-in-law.

The Host (Lord Frampul) said, “No, the Star Chamber.”

Lord Beaufort had threatened to sic the Star Chamber on the Host.

“Away with that!” Lord Beaufort said. “Never mention that! You sour the sweetest lettuce that was ever tasted.”

“May God give you joy, my son,” the Host (Lord Frampul) said. “Don’t cast her off again.”

He was acknowledging Lord Beaufort as his son-in-law.

Lovel entered the room.

The Host (Lord Frampul) said to him, “Oh, call me father, Lovel, and call the Nurse your mother if you like. But take your mistress first, my child. I have power to give her now, with her consent; her sister has been given already to your brother Beaufort.”

Lovel took Lady Frampul by the hand; this was a handfast — a marriage contract. Her father — seemingly the Host, but actually Lord Frampul — would be his father-in-law. In addition, the Nurse — actually Lord Frampul’s wife — would be his mother-in-law. Lord Beaufort, who had married Frank — actually Laetitia — would be his brother-in-law.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Is this a dream now, after my first sleep?” Lovel asked. “Or are these fantasies made in the Light Heart and sold in the New Inn?”

In this society, some people thought that morning dreams were true, but this was not morning. Lovel was having a hard time believing these new developments.

“Best go to bed and dream it over, all,” the Host (Lord Frampul) said. “Let’s all go sleep, each with his turtledove, aka mate.” 

He ordered, “Fly, provide us lodgings, get beds prepared; you’re master now of the inn. You are now the Lord of the Light Heart. I give it to you.”

The Host (Lord Frampul) then said to the others, “Fly was my fellow gypsy. All my family — that is, my inn employees — indeed, were gypsies, tapsters, ostlers, chamberlains, reduced and impoverished vessels of citizenship.”

Earlier, the Host (Lord Frampul) had said that Fly was a legacy that came with the inn. Now, he was saying that Fly was a gypsy. Apparently, he was now telling the truth.

The Host (Lord Frampul) continued, “But here stands Pru neglected, who is the most deserving of all who are in the house or in my Heart. Although I cannot help her to a fit husband, I’ll help her to that which will bring her one: a just portion — a good dowry. I have two thousand pounds in bank for Pru. She may call for it whenever she will.”

“And I have as much,” Lord Beaufort said. 

He would also give Prudence two thousand pounds.

“There’s somewhat yet: four thousand pounds!” the Host (Lord Frampul) said. “That’s better than sounds the proverb ‘Four bare legs in a bed.’”

The full proverb is “More belongs to marriage than four bare legs in a bed.” A good and happy marriage is more likely when financial security is present. 

Lovel said, “Prudence has the power to coin her mistress and me up to whatever amount she will.”

In other words, Prudence could rely on Lovel and Lady Frampul for financial assistance. She could get any amount of money from them at any time.

“https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Infinitely powerful Pru!” Lady Frampul said.

“But I must do the crowning act of bounty!” Lord Latimer said. 

“What’s that, my lord?” the Host (Lord Frampul) asked.

“Give her myself, which here, by all the holy vows of love, I do,” Lord Latimer said. “https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/Spare all your promised portions; she is a dowry so all-sufficient in her virtue and her manners that fortune cannot add to her.”

Lord Latimer wanted to marry Prudence.

Previously, he had seemed to be interested in Lady Frampul. Perhaps Pinnacia’s pheromones were affecting him.

“My lord,” Prudence said to Lord Latimer, “your praises are instructions and lessons to my ears, whttps://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/newinn/facing/hence you have made your wife to live your servant.”

She would be his wife and servant — in this context, “his wife and servant” meant that she would be his loving wife.

The Host (Lord Frampul) called, “Lights! Get us all individual lights!”

They would get candles and lamps to light their ways to their rooms.

“Wait,” Lovel said. “Let my mistress — Lady Frampul — just first hear my vision sung, my dream of beauty, which I have brought, prepared, to bid us joy and light us all to bed; it will be in the stead of airing of the sheets with a sweet odor.”

There would not be time to air the sheets, but they could hear the air — the tune — of the song he had written.

The Host (Lord Frampul) said, “It will be an incense to our sacrifice of love tonight, where I will woo afresh, and, like Maecenas, having but one wife, I’ll marry her every hour of life hereafter.”

Maecenas, the patron of Virgil, author of the Aeneid, and his wife quarreled frequently, but he loved her and always made up with her. Each reconciliation was like a new marriage.

They exited, with a song — Lovel’s song:

“It was a beauty that I saw,

“So pure, so perfect, as [that] the frame 

“Of all the universe was lame [defective]

“To [Compared to] that one figure, could I draw

“Or give least line of it a law!

“A skein of silk without a knot!

“A fair march [gait] made without a halt [without limping]! 

“A curious [artful] form without a fault!

“A printed book without a blot.

“All beauty, and without a spot.”

 

 

EDITIONS

Jonson, Ben. The New Inn. Michael Hattaway, editor. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1988. Print.

***

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson 

7 Volume Set. Volume 6.

Ben Jonson (Author), David Bevington (Editor), Martin Butler (Editor), Ian Donaldson (Editor).

Cambridge University Press, 2012. Print.

***

Jonson, Ben. The Devil is an Ass: and Other Plays. Kidnie, Margaret Jane, editor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print. 

 

NOTES

— 1.4 —

That like the rugged Roman alderman,

Old master Gross, surnamed Agelastos,

Was never seen to laugh but at an ass.

(1.4.6-8)

Source of Above: Jonson, Ben. The New Inn. Michael Hattaway, editor. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1988. Print.

II. That Crassus never laughed but once, and that was at an Asse eating Thistles, seems strange to the Doctor,⁹yet he gives no reason for this, but only that the object was unridiculous, & that laughter is not meerly voluntary. But these are no reasons: for a more ridiculous object there cannot be, then to see such a medley of pleasure and pain in the Asses eating of Thistles;¹⁰ for whilst he bites them, they prick him, so that his tongue must needs be pricked, though perhaps his lips may be hard, and not so easily penetrable; when arose the Proverb, Like lips, like lettice.¹¹ But there was something else in this that moved Crassus to laugh: For he saw here the vanity both of most men taking pleasure in those things which are accompanied with much pain and sorrow: Besides, he saw here the folly of the Roman rich men, who held Thistles for such a dainty dish, that they would not suffer poor men to eat thereof, engrossing them with great summes of money to themselves, which notwithstanding the Asses did eat on free cost. Was it not then a ridiculous thing to see rich men pay so dear for Asses food, and to debarre poore men from that meat which they permitted to Asses?¹²

Source of Above: An excerpt from this book and these pages:

Alexander Ross (1652) Arcana Microcosmi, Book II, Chapter 15, pp. 174-179.

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/ross/ross215.html#9

Roman farmer Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella (4 BC-70 AD) writes about cheese-making in De Re Rustica (Book VII, Chapter VIII):

“Cheese should be made of pure milk, which is as fresh as possible, for if it is left to stand or mixed with water, it quickly turns sour. It should usually be curdled with rennet obtained from a lamb or a kid, though it can also be coagulated with the flower of the wild thistle or the seeds of the safflower, and equally well with the liquid which flows from a fig-tree if you make an incision in the bark while it is still green. […]”

Source of Above: Jess, “What Did the ancient Romans eat?” Medium. 9 September 2020

https://medium.com/equestrian-explorers/what-did-the-ancient-romans-eat-9ba2b595046c

The below information comes from “The History of Artichokes”:

Thistles—in the form of artichokes and cardoons—have been on the human table since at least the days of ancient Greece and Rome.

[…]

Both today’s cultivated artichoke and cardoon are, scientists believe, descended from the wild cardoon, a tougher, meaner, and pricklier plant, likely a native of north Africa and Sicily. Pliny the Elder mentions two types of edible thistles known to first-century Romans: one which “throws out numerous stalks immediately it leaves the ground,” which sounds like a cardoon; the other “thicker, and having but a single stem” and purple flowers, which may be a progenitor of the modern globe artichoke. This last, according to Pliny, had a number of beneficial medicinal effects, among them curing baldness, strengthening the stomach, freshening the breath, and promoting the conception of boys. Though Pliny doesn’t mention it, it was also purportedly an aphrodisiac. The Roman ate them pickled in honey and vinegar, and seasoned with cumin.

[…]

Similarly, wild thistles—the atrociously spiny stuff Winnie-the-Pooh’s doleful donkey Eeyore munches in his Gloomy Place—are said to have edible (even delicious) leaf ribs. I personally can’t attest to this, but even devoted wild-food aficionados agree that wild thistle is a challenge to gather, unless you happen to be wandering through the woods wearing elbow-length leather gloves.

Source of Above: Rupp, Rebecca, “The History of Artichokes.” National Geographic. 12 November 2014

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/artichokes

— 4.3 —

Pinnacia said:

It is a foolish trick, madam, he has;

For though he be your tailor, he is my beast.

(4.3.63-64)

Source of Above: Jonson, Ben. The New Inn. Michael Hattaway, editor. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1988. Print.

The below is Ben Jonson’s Epigram #25:

XXV. — ON SIR VOLUPTUOUS BEAST. 

While BEAST instructs his fair and innocent wife,
In the past pleasures of his sensual life,
Telling the motions of each petticoat,
And how his Ganymede mov’d, and how his goat,
And now her hourly her own cucquean makes,
In varied shapes, which for his lust she takes:
What doth he else, but say, Leave to be chaste,
Just wife, and, to change me, make woman’s haste. 

Source of Above: Jonson, Ben. The Works of Ben Jonson. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, and Co., 1853. 787.

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/jonson/epigram25.htm

Ganymede is a beautiful shepherd boy whom Zeus, king of the gods, loved and made his cupbearer.

A cucquean is a woman with an unfaithful husband.

— 5.5 —

And, like Maecenas, having but one wife, 

I’ll marry her every hour of life hereafter. (5.5.155-56)

Source of Above: Jonson, Ben. The New Inn. Michael Hattaway, editor. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1988. Print.

The below information comes from William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology:

Tere’ntia

2. Also called TERENTILLA, the wife of Maecenas. Dio Cassius (54.3) speaks of her as a sister of Murena and of Proculeius. The full name of this Murena was A. Terentius Varro Murena: he was perhaps the son of L. Licinius Murena, who was consul B. C. 62, and was adopted by A. Terentius Varro. Murena would thus have been the adopted brother of Terentia: Proculeius was probably only the cousin of Murena. [See Vol. III. p. 540b.]

We know nothing of the early history of Terentia, nor the time of her marriage with Maecenas. She was a very beautiful woman, and as licentious as most of the Roman ladies of her age. She was one of the favourite mistresses of Augustus; and Dio Cassius relates (54.19) that there was a report at Rome that the emperor visited Gaul in B. C. 16, simply to enjoy the society of Terentia unmolested by the lampoons which it gave occasion to at Rome. The intrigue between Augustus and Terentia is said by Dio Cassius to have disturbed the good understanding which subsisted between the emperor and his minister, and finally to have occasioned the disgrace of the latter. Maecenas however had not much right to complain of the conduct of his wife, for his own infidelities were notorious. But notwithstanding his numerous amours, Maecenas continued to his death deeply in love with his fair wife. Their quarrels, which were of frequent occurrence, mainly in consequence of the morose and haughty temper of Terentia, rarely lasted long, for the natural uxoriousness of Maecenas constantly prompted him to seek a reconciliation ; so that Seneca says (Ep. 114) he married a wife a thousand times, though he never had more than one. Once indeed they were divorced, but Maecenas tempted her back by presents (Dig. 24. tit. l. s. 64). Her influence over him was so great, that in spite of his cautious temper, he was on one occasion weak enough to confide to her an important state secret respecting the conspiracy of her brother Murena. (D. C. 54.3, 19, 4.7 ; Suet. Aug. 66, 69 ; Frandsen, C. Cilnius Maecenas, pp. 132-136.)

Source of Above: William Smith. A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. London. John Murray: printed by Spottiswoode and Co., New-Street Square and Parliament Street. In the article on Soranus, we find: “at this present time (1848)” and this date seems to reflect the dates of works cited. 1873 Æ probably the printing date.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0104%3Aalphabetic+letter%3DT%3Aentry+group%3D4%3Aentry%3Dterentia-bio-2

The below information comes from Suetonius: The Lives of the Twelve Caesars:

C. Clinius Maecenas

But though seemingly in possession of all the means and appliances of enjoyment, Maecenas cannot be said to have been altogether happy in his domestic life. We have already alluded to an intrigue between Augustus and his wife Terentia; but this was not the only infringement of his domestic peace; Terentia, though exceedingly beautiful, was of a morose and haughty temper, and thence quarrels were continually occurring between the pair. Yet the natural uxoriousness of Maecenas as constantly prompted him to seek a reconciliation; so that Seneca remarks that he married a wife a thousand times, though he never had more than one. Her influence over him was so great, that in spite of his cautious and taciturn temper, he was. on one occasion, weak enough to confide an important state secret to her, respecting her brother Murena, the conspirator. Maecenas himself, however, was probably in some measure to blame for the terms on which he lived with his wife, for he was far from being the pattern of a good husband. His own adulteries were notorious. Plutarch relates of him the story of the accommodating husband, Galba, who pretended to be asleep after dinner in order to give him an opportunity with his wife.

Source of Above: Suetonius: The Lives of the Twelve Caesars; An English Translation, Augmented with the Biographies of Contemporary Statesmen, Orators, Poets, and Other Associates. Suetonius. Publishing Editor. J. Eugene Reed. Alexander Thomson. Philadelphia. Gebbie & Co. 1889.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0132%3Alife%3Dmaecenas

Ben Jonson's THE NEW INN, OR THE LIGHT HEART: A Retelling (Free PDF) 

SOME BOOKS BY DAVID BRUCE

(Lots of FREE PDFs)

RETELLINGS OF A CLASSIC WORK OF LITERATURE

Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/731768

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZEHJnB1_5RpznJDgrdO9Fzkz0R5nqF6n/view?usp=sharing

Ben Jonson’s The Arraignment, or Poetaster: A Retelling 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1144681

https://anecdotesandmusic.wordpress.com/2022/05/02/david-bruce-ben-jonsons-the-arraignment-or-poetaster-a-retelling-free-pdf/

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S1nIEZ7fgHIyV4-ZDozfJ4FcVUlaC13_/view?usp=sharing

Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair: A Retelling 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/759774

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SIoalHNdD99q9jKmXO3kVvh8ydxB4to8/view?usp=sharing

Ben Jonson’s The Case is Altered: A Retelling 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1112743

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WHn6mnGPDbZlTus6A644w0TCg_QoNDE4/view?usp=sharing

Ben Jonson’s Catiline’s Conspiracy: A Retelling 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1098400

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uQOLh10ExHMrx9z-P-5qUxaHc2CQTD0x/view?usp=sharing

Ben Jonson’s The Devil is an Ass: A Retelling 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/953165

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17vGtkBruVyQ09aeFtVStum9NCixZtfN1/view?usp=sharing

Ben Jonson’s Epicene: A Retelling 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1073045

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dsXMV0sZ26Y9gwFFeu_Kry1cNcz2te6c/view?usp=sharing

Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humor: A Retelling 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1104946

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14-GEUj96Fxm_Oopp2YyICHPXskE8QLCp/view?usp=sharing

Ben Jonson’s Every Man Out of His Humor: A Retelling 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1121591

Ben Jonson’s The Fountain of Self-Love, or Cynthia’s Revels: A Retelling 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1129496

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-fdVc1npRztXd35ghACIA5SMMo060w8b/view?usp=sharing

Ben Jonson’s The New Inn: A Retelling 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1081049

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13yJqpwBvx7Z-NI7SgwQkgsEDj7UOpy3q/view?usp=sharing

Ben Jonson’s Sejanus’ Fall: A Retelling 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1138210

Ben Jonson’s The Staple of News: A Retelling 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1088627

Ben Jonson’s Volpone, or the Fox: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/745087

Christopher Marlowe’s Complete Plays: Retellings

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/911460

Christopher Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/871108

Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus: Retellings of the 1604 A-Text and of the 1616 B-Text

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/824058

Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/904128

Christopher Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/880308

Christopher Marlowe’s The Rich Jew of Malta: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/909794

Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, Parts 1 and 2: Retellings

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/890081

Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/238180

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16MC3INNAzLtjT4TqGtUmxBKYmp6Lnc5k/view?usp=sharing

Dante’s Inferno: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/89244

Dante’s Purgatory: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/210951

Dante’s Paradise: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/238110

The Famous Victories of Henry V: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/781086

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yj-AAS0oRbapdSeAw33gg6k2il78N7Yu/view?usp=sharing

From the Iliad to the Odyssey: A Retelling in Prose of Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/287203

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hRMimR9VchgFI7q5nBKmE6udiotCzq7c/view?usp=sharing

George Peele’s The Arraignment of Paris: A Retelling 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/942964

George Peele’s The Battle of Alcazar: A Retelling 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1006013

George’s Peele’s David and Bathsheba, and the Tragedy of Absalom: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/993326

George’s Peele’s Edward I: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1061540

George Peele’s The Old Wives’ Tale: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/918341

George-A-Greene, The Pinner of Wakefield: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1108197

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18MYbD9wENgFqSMC_s-PijXsorVQguFWx/view?usp=sharing

The History of King Leir: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/800724

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MdkCVAtxuWZrgkCNMwrJ2uDLNDwjnFBk/view?usp=sharing

Homer’s Iliad: A Retelling in Prose

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/264676

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18tiAjtd5a6Qil0FHIss2UpCEacizaij3/view?usp=sharing

Homer’s Odyssey: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/87553

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rn5b3A6TFJngdZ_DC0daL9jZBToiSy-P/view?usp=sharing

Jason and the Argonauts: A Retelling in Prose of Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/337653  

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11fFWYrzu_YBK_Zb8aYQkYDvj5tDjSYPw/view?usp=sharing

The Jests of George Peele: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1064210

John Ford: Eight Plays Translated into Modern English

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/989979

John Ford’s The Broken Heart: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/792090

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PVkKm5BxBYE8uUY9IzcjdEQZ5ipGmxlm/view?usp=sharing

John Ford’s The Fancies, Chaste and Noble: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/989291

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19JQQmLv_b3Oy3N3yhRpQM0b5ymAFh_zy/view?usp=sharing

John Ford’s The Lady’s Trial: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/985699

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16F0PoPepXJJAX2RBn2lVK1Apvp6gwO9g/view?usp=sharing

John Ford’s The Lover’s Melancholy: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/946285

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DTu7EkdqS8PEuljstF4KMnW9d3S5CiXc/view?usp=sharing

John Ford’s Love’s Sacrifice: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/925020

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aE9jUQfe3e4acoJ63kIaqY57Mi9hrJja/view?usp=sharing

John Ford’s Perkin Warbeck: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/937190

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14GOL5rPf6lcYb-e7ml9_BDzcFufbPjo1/view?usp=sharing

John Ford’s The Queen: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/930049

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14GOL5rPf6lcYb-e7ml9_BDzcFufbPjo1/view?usp=sharing

John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/771031

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V9aUtdKeYWY6DRoVimK-Vq6J8a6DL9JN/view?usp=sharing

John Webster’s The White Devil: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1000808

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19zCtHbfGVamswILTd8MUDWC1pabCUEs8/view?usp=sharing

King Edward III: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/814530

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_gqk9Es--Qvi8EjqY_4OztVsCiVJcQ0j/view?usp=sharing

The Merry Devil of Edmonton: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/957047

Robert Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/915455

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bX1a4cbdne38rgJ2sy4A4_8SIQ_ljnCW/view?usp=sharing

The Taming of a Shrew: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1052341

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10FsrQNk4Z1TAbiW_5VCD303VnEZqR6tP/view?usp=sharing

Tarlton’s Jests: A Retelling

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/772884

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QcGqnBsSPsRdPwctADo6DytHqZSyDMkG/view?usp=sharing

The Trojan War and Its Aftermath: Four Ancient Epic Poems

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/486330

Virgil’s Aeneid: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/277646

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yl8jYM0EJwB99WnoNlZRQEIms6UJIpFW/view?usp=sharing

William Shakespeare’s 5 Late Romances: Retellings in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/724666

William Shakespeare’s 10 Histories: Retellings in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/776868

William Shakespeare’s 11 Tragedies: Retellings in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/776890

William Shakespeare’s 12 Comedies: Retellings in Prose

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/715562

William Shakespeare’s 38 Plays: Retellings in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/777062

William Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV, aka Henry IV, Part 1: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/396839

William Shakespeare’s 2 Henry IV, aka Henry IV, Part 2: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/502075

William Shakespeare’s 1 Henry VI, aka Henry VI, Part 1: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/675826

William Shakespeare’s 2 Henry VI, aka Henry VI, Part 2: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/687115

William Shakespeare’s 3 Henry VI, aka Henry VI, Part 3: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/694202

William Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/660279

William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/561440

William Shakespeare’s As You Like It: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/411180

William Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/474177

William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/651995

William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/607757

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/521558

William Shakespeare’s Henry V: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/494583

William Shakespeare’s Henry VIII: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/702433

William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/417297

William Shakespeare’s King John: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/667943

William Shakespeare’s King Lear: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/549148

William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/640495

William Shakespeare’s Macbeth: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/371976

William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/530136

William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/485384

William Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/510046

William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/389517

William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/432053

William Shakespeare’s Othello: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/469501

William Shakespeare’s Pericles, Prince of Tyre: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/588726

William Shakespeare’s Richard II: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/633694

William Shakespeare’s Richard III: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/598141

William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/385811

William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/424622

William Shakespeare’s The Tempest: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/437521

William Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/626171

William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/569421

William Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/617533

William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/404123

William Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/575743

William Shakespeare’s The Two Noble Kinsmen: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/712849

William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale: A Retelling in Prose 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/539561

OTHER FICTION

Candide’s Two Girlfriends (Adult)

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/247531

The Erotic Adventures of Candide (Adult)

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/249299

Honey Badger Goes to Hell — and Heaven

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/306009

I Want to Die — Or Fight Back

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/83479  

“School Legend: A Short Story”

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1123252

“Why I Support Same-Sex Civil Marriage”

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/34568

CHILDREN’S BIOGRAPHY

Nadia Comaneci: Perfect Ten

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/96982

PERSONAL FINANCE

How to Manage Your Money: A Guide for the Non-Rich

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/469305

ANECDOTE COLLECTIONS

250 Anecdotes About Opera

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/310277

250 Anecdotes About Religion

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/106782

250 Anecdotes About Religion: Volume 2

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/106861

250 Music Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/427367

Be a Work of Art: 250 Anecdotes and Stories

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/105419

Boredom is Anti-Life: 250 Anecdotes and Stories

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/156495

The Coolest People in Art: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/97814

The Coolest People in the Arts: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/159914

The Coolest People in Books: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/98030

The Coolest People in Comedy: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/98364

Create, Then Take a Break: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/254240

Don’t Fear the Reaper: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/98212

The Funniest People in Art: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/99002

The Funniest People in Books: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/99313

The Funniest People in Books, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/105652

The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/105939

The Funniest People in Comedy: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/99159

The Funniest People in Dance: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/98588

The Funniest People in Families: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108542

The Funniest People in Families, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108809

The Funniest People in Families, Volume 3: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108821

The Funniest People in Families, Volume 4: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108830

The Funniest People in Families, Volume 5: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108841

The Funniest People in Families, Volume 6: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108857

The Funniest People in Movies: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/34647

The Funniest People in Music: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/100442

The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/100473

The Funniest People in Music, Volume 3: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/100544

The Funniest People in Neighborhoods: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/106442

The Funniest People in Relationships: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108060

The Funniest People in Sports: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/107239

The Funniest People in Sports, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/107576

The Funniest People in Television and Radio: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/106234

The Funniest People in Theater: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/104257

The Funniest People Who Live Life: 250 Anecdotes 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/107847

The Funniest People Who Live Life, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108564

The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds, Volume 1: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/34822

https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog4.wordpress.com/4

The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/35011

Maximum Cool: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/97550

The Most Interesting People in Movies: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108582

The Most Interesting People in Politics and History: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108392

The Most Interesting People in Politics and History, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108398

The Most Interesting People in Politics and History, Volume 3: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108422

The Most Interesting People in Religion: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/107097

The Most Interesting People in Sports: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/107857

The Most Interesting People Who Live Life: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108598

The Most Interesting People Who Live Life, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108801

Reality is Fabulous: 250 Anecdotes and Stories

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/209963

Resist Psychic Death: 250 Anecdotes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/97267

Seize the Day: 250 Anecdotes and Stories

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/96869

PHILOSOPHY FOR THE MASSES

Philosophy for the Masses: Ethics

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/374071

Philosophy for the Masses: Metaphysics and More

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/374629

Philosophy for the Masses: Religion

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/376026

DISCUSSION GUIDE SERIES

Dante’s Inferno: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/342391

Dante’s Paradise: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/345337

Dante’s Purgatory: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/344723

Forrest Carter’s The Education of Little Tree: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/340944

Homer’s Iliad: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/364356

Homer’s Odyssey: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/360552

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/352848

Jerry Spinelli’s Maniac Magee: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/339978

Jerry Spinelli’s Stargirl: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/340610

Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/352048

Lloyd Alexander’s The Black Cauldron: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/339002

Lloyd Alexander’s The Book of Three: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/339120

Lloyd Alexander’s The Castle of Llyr: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/338589

Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/339720

Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/350434

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/348104

Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/351719

Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/349030

Nancy Garden’s Annie on My Mind: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/339564

Nicholas Sparks’ A Walk to Remember: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/356224

Virgil, “The Fall of Troy”: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/356868

Virgil’s Aeneid: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/358529

Voltaire’s Candide: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/346971

William Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/355953

William Shakespeare’s Macbeth: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/354870

William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/355465

William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/354231

William Sleator’s Oddballs: A Discussion Guide

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/353345

***

GOOD DEEDS SERIES (PLURAL)

The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds: Volume 1

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qQ-aJ4kjGQti20c3G2CPm1zile51Yd-5/view?usp=sharing

https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog4.wordpress.com/4

The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds: Volume 2

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h1ZaZEixmzjGLHI5_57AwTFuQ02g8lL3/view?usp=sharing

https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog4.wordpress.com/4

The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds: Volume 3

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12iOTDEzHV6P576LGAijcPQgpt1ogax0R/view?usp=sharing

https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog4.wordpress.com/4

The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds: Volume 4

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z0-CAMz-4ulX29CAIHNU16Z912eNqt-v/view?usp=sharing

https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog4.wordpress.com/4

The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds: Volume 5

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y7DlPdu-eZwA23gEHPT2YWMT0W5r8eu7/view?usp=sharing

https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog4.wordpress.com/4

The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds: Volume 6

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zHZv2iTHQnbVY0n_LihTWXKOvUr4_hyr/view?usp=sharing

https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog4.wordpress.com/4

The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds: Volume 7

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FSCTtviio4xrX7e07-OuAgYpxmWlIPuk/view?usp=sharing

https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog4.wordpress.com/4

***

You’ve Got to Be Kind: Volume 1

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GfiQMNnQ4G0CHGt1AZQQIPODV596k30j/view?usp=sharing

You’ve Got to Be Kind: Volume 2

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OHcETsSaWbIhFPIZWeW0laO6mdHVbcph/view?usp=sharing

You’ve Got to Be Kind: Volume 3

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XZCFlAWhtXPnf35OGlUoh991i05D0Bs0/view?usp=sharing

You’ve Got to Be Kind: Volume 4

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Cj8yIDLmFFG6dGzLpoVE3RrQ3-LhKV0d/view?usp=sharing

You’ve Got to Be Kind: Volume 5

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LxqLrwm898Chg3mnRY2NiGZA4FkFdOXR/view?usp=sharing

You’ve Got to Be Kind: Volume 6

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PmAxX5C-viQF0GfIpsM7mTtsyQ9lfm8J/view?usp=sharing

You’ve Got to Be Kind: Volume 7

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Bq_SmSf4rsWdtqA7p0kN9tJ5ip3gqEht/view?usp=sharing

***

The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 1)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FqbObI95XKwIr1QWn0lBFDSNsIENTR9B/view?usp=sharing

The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 2)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QWF5bRarJBauD7Qdb-_99K9UuQBL_fZ7/view?usp=sharing

The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 3)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gUUA4ms-CX7BvVlOaNmpYswPN-eBfKIa/view?usp=sharing

The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 4)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BXLhqmY1qOEaF4u5IMRpSCm7H6jy2mj_/view?usp=sharing

The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 5)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pks6XXM4T-r_r4cBBSmUIlP0jARS8i-0/view?usp=sharing

The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 6)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ohXsEp79jwf8OdlIXI7I3nPIotjX5wWb/view?usp=sharing

The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 7)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_orz__RY0T3A-kpa7fpbS8koDwp0I91p/view?usp=sharing

***

The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 1)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13X4KOLTIvPVwSBo1ijX0aJABB8wbgZyT/view?usp=sharing

The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 2)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wbRuc4G0EdFeM4UVWk6LwbxDKkF19T2s/view?usp=sharing

The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 3)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ksyO9KnAJ6yGpK5CNMY12Ry9HTQ9vxm1/view?usp=sharing

The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 4)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NuAM7qAb_XLRGHxUTMLrm2PhOfjU7Fk8/view?usp=sharing

The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 5)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T5HB-AwL4S61aj4lLK3K5Q0ulgQbarR7/view?usp=sharing

The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 6)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PYx6MyYI9YY_RKCv3nUZnENwv0jIxfRn/view?usp=sharing

The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 7)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I8aphNRXnok_slWALv8s8TjJ344sZVml/view?usp=sharing

***

COMPOSITION PROJECTS

Composition Project: Writing an Autobiographical Essay

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1138445

Composition Project: Writing a Hero-of-Human-Rights Essay

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/481598

Composition Project: Writing a Problem-Solving Letter

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1138745

TEACHING

How to Teach the Autobiographical Essay Composition Project in 9 Classes

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/487660

***

IT’S A WONDERFUL WORLD SERIES (Stories and Anecdotes and Opinions)

It’s a Wonderful World: Volumes 1-7

https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/690

***

THE RELATIONSHIP BOOKS SERIES

The Relationship Books (Volume 1-8)

https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/674

BE KIND AND BE USEFUL SERIES (Stories and Anecdotes and Opinions)

Be Kind and Be Useful: Volumes 1-5)

https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/686

***

BRUCE’S MUSIC RECOMMENDATIONS SERIES

Bruce’s Music Recommendations: Volumes 1-8

https://anecdotesandmusic.wordpress.com/2022/04/26/bruces-music-recommendations-free-pdfs/

***

davidbruceblog #1

http://davidbruceblog.wordpress.com/

davidbruceblog #2

https://davidbrucemusic.wordpress.com

davidbruceblog #3

https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com

davidbruceblog #4

https://davidbruceblog4.wordpress.com

David Bruce Books: Free PDFs

davidbrucebooks: EDUCATE YOURSELF

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com

Anecdotes, Arts, Books, and Music

https://anecdotesandmusic.wordpress.com

George Peele: English Dramatist

https://georgepeeleenglishdramatist.wordpress.com

David Bruce’s Books at Blogspot

https://davidbrucebooks.blogspot.com

David Bruce’s Books at WIX

https://bruceb22.wixsite.com/website/blog

David Bruce’s Books at Smashwords 

http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/bruceb

David Bruce’s Books at Apple Books

https://itunes.apple.com/ie/artist/david-bruce/id81470634

David Bruce’s Books at Kobo 

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?query=david%20bruce&fcsearchfield=Author

David Bruce’s Books at Barnes and Noble

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/%22David%20Bruce%22;jsessionid=D4DEC0519518F94804E91EDDBB9A431F.prodny_store02-atgap06?Ntk=P_key_Contributor_List&Ns=P_Sales_Rank&Ntx=mode+matchall

Teaching Stuff

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

How to Teach the Autobiographical Essay Composition Project in 9 Classes

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

William Sleator’s Oddballs: A Discussion Guide

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

Composition Project: Writing a Problem-Solving Letter

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

Composition Project: Writing a Hero-of-Human-Rights Essay

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

Composition Project: Writing an Argument Paper with Research

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

Composition Project: Writing an Employee Manual

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

Composition Project: Writing an Evaluation or Review

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

Composition Project: Writing a Famous-Plagiarist/Fabulist Report

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

How Do I Write a Resume, List of References, and Job-Application Letter

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

How Do I Write Humor and Satire?

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

Composition Project: The Set of Instructions

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

Composition Project: Writing a Manual

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

Composition Project: Writing a Media Opinion Essay

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

Composition Project: Interview About On-the-Job Writing

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

Composition Project: Writing a Progress Report

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

How Do I Write the Introductory Memo Assignment?

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

How to Teach the Argument Paper Composition Project in 10 Classes

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

How to Teach the Famous-Plagiarist Research Report Composition Project in 8 Classes

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

How to Teach the Manual Composition Project in 8 Classes

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

How to Teach the Resume, Job-Application Letter, and List of References Composition  Project in 6 Classes

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

Free Writing Handouts with Anecdotes: Volume 1

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

Free Writing Handouts with Anecdotes: Volume 2

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

Free Writing Handouts with Anecdotes:  Volume 3

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/teaching-guides/

DANTE INFERNO HAIKU PDF

https://cosplayvideos.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/dante-inferno-haiku.pdf  

DANTE PURGATORY HAIKU PDF

https://cosplayvideos.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/dante-purgatory-haiku-pdf.pdf

DANTE PARADISE HAIKU PDF

https://cosplayvideos.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/dante-paradise-haiku.pdf

davidbrucehaiku #1 through #10 (Free PDFs)

https://davidbruceblog.wordpress.com/patreon/

davidbrucehaiku #11

https://davidbrucemusic.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/davidbrucehaiku-11.pdf

davidbrucehaiku #12

https://cosplayvideos.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/davidbrucehaiku-12.pdf

davidbrucehaiku #13

https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com/2019/04/08/davidbrucehaiku-13/

https://cosplayvideos.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/davidbrucehaiku13.pdf

davidbrucehaiku #14

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/davidbrucehaiku/

davidbrucehaiku #15

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/davidbrucehaiku/

davidbrucehaiku #16

https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/davidbrucehaiku/