- It’s somewhat sad that Ben Jonson (or these novellas’ version of him, at least) still thinks of Kit Marlowe as formative and important—still thinks about him, at all—given that this Kit Marlowe’s recollections of him amount to “oh yeaaaaah, was Jonson like… the fat apprentice?”- Once again we spend a significant amount of time on the prospect of older men fucking boys. I’m remembering one Shakespeare theorist’s work on ‘bearded vs beardless’ as the key sexual dichotomy of the age. Apparently this is all fairly period-accurate, but I do feel the book’s references to pederastry are more pointed than naturalised, and that this is a tell-tale product of a retrospective, Othering gaze. (It is quite wild that Tudors spend so much time engaged in didling boys, given that doing so arguably presented a more serious Spiritual Problem for them than for their successors.)
- This bear handler’s creative spelling is going to fucking kill me. I looked at ‘body-seer’ twelve times before I went ‘oh, Boudicca! Fucking hell, man—‘
- Masques seem like they suck.
- I’m not sure how accurate this is for 1610, as it’s not my area, but dealing with the Scottish speakers in this book is like suddenly being dunked in a vat of Chaucer.
- What’s the significance of Watling Street?
- This ending is essentially ‘hey, if you don’t know “Winter’s Tale”, get fucked.’ Mari suggests that if you don't know “Winter's Tale” you probably aren't reading those novellas, or getting much out of them if you are (Greer being kind of a niche taste).
- The plot action gets rather lost in the language, so I’d like to attempt to sort out the basic through-line.
Kit Marlowe shows up and presents himself as Charles’ tutor. He tries to entice the prince to make some bargain that will lead to his brother’s downfall, but Charles isn’t really interested in doing this. Marlowe’s fae masters want him to help them take Prince Henry alive. Marlowe is still a bit English, so Marlowe, who has some power over dreams, shows up in Ben Jonson’s dreams to say ‘yo, there’s a conspiracy afoot to kill the king (or the prince?)’.
Ben Jonson thus shows up at the castle, where he finds people who should be on watch not on duty. They’ve been drugged and/or disabled by two conspirators, one of whom is the Venetian artificer and the other, the Third Satyr. These are the people Ben Jonson overheard speaking earlier. (If this was a plot to kill the King, was Henry in on it, wanting to usurp his dad?)
The fae then take off fair-spoken Prince Henry for ‘Oberon isn’t a chad’ slander crimes and as a toy. They leave a changeling body to sicken and die (either before the masque happens or soon after). The fae monarchs quickly get bored of Henry and start carrying on with/competing over some demon prince.
Nat Field was supposed to unleash the bear for the fae, to spoil the masque and possibly to kill Henry. He believed this was a dare from the married noblewoman he was trying to get with, but it was all fae bullshit. Nothing came of that.
Now the proper bear handler is in pub-hell-afterlife. Did he get killed over the treason affair somehow, or was he always Something Else? (And is the ‘demon prince’ actually just Henry?) Kit Marlowe then becomes a comet, because pastoral sylvan eternity sux large.
Mari suggests that the fae plot failed completely because of Kit Marlowe’s intervention in alerting Ben Jonson to whatever the two conspirators (unwitting fae patsies) were doing, and that that's why Nat Field's earring nonsense didn't go anywhere. Kit Marlowe slipped into dreams and found his way to Ben Jonson, who gave him the trick of how to leave the world without going over the ice that wouldn't bear him. Kit Marlowe then gave Ben Jonson a plot. Henry was left alone to sicken and die on his own (which Kit Marlowe foresaw).
Perhaps I could have been a more attentive reader here, but I also think the plot could have been more sharply articulated and conveyed. This is more ambiguity than I think productive.
Terms I wanted to look up:
Rout: I don’t remember the sense this was used in, but it can’t have been one of the ones I know well, so let’s skip defeat and party and go with ‘a disorderly or tumultuous crowd of people’ or ‘a pack of wolves’.
Hicketing: hiccuping
Ductile: (of a metal) able to be drawn out into a thin wire, able to be deformed without losing toughness; pliable, not brittle.
Sackbuts: the early forms of the trombone commonly used during the Renaissance and Baroque eras.
Shawms: a loud double-reed instrument which is the ancestor of the oboe.
Capriole: 1 : a playful leap : caper. 2 : a vertical leap by a trained horse that is made with a backward kick of the hind legs at the height.
Cynosure: see last book, centre of attention.
Flapdragoned: see last book, an alternative ‘snapdragon’.
Cattery: I think this is not the modern definition, but can’t find earlier examples.
Porphyry: a rare hard, purple-red stone that was highly prized in antiquity for its distinct color. Because purple was considered the imperial color, porphyry was regarded as a royal stone.
Hirpling: walk with a limp; hobble.
Espaliered: oh I know this one now, it’s to train a tree up a wall, I’m about to do this in the garden with an apple.
Corbies: ravens or crows.
Teind: a tithe derived from the produce of the land for the maintenance of the clergy. It is also an old lowland term for a tribute due to be paid by the fairies to the devil every seven years.
Louted low: bow, curtsey, bend, stoop.
Pantaloon: a Venetian character in Italian commedia dell'arte represented as a foolish old man wearing pantaloons.
Jackstones: jacks, basically, as in the game.
Electuaries: a medicinal substance mixed with honey or another sweet substance.
Succados: applied to FRUIT preserved in SUGAR, either candied or in SYRUP, hence succades have been noted in JARs, but it may have included other forms of CONFECTIONERY for sucking.
Runagate: a person who has run away; a deserter.
Wain: either a wagon or cart or a reference to Charles’ Wain, a bright circumpolar asterism of the northern sky, said to resemble a wagon or cart. It is part of the constellation Ursa Major and includes the seven stars Dubhe, Merak, Phecda, Megrez, Alioth, Mizar, and Alkaid.
Chrysoprase: a gemstone variety of chalcedony that contains small quantities of nickel. Its color is normally apple-green, but varies to deep green. The darker varieties of chrysoprase are also referred to as prase.
Bed-galliards: a lively dance in triple time for two people, including complicated turns and steps, but in bed so probably just fucking.
Carcanets: a necklace or ornamental collar, typically made of gold or set with jewels.
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