SOURCE: Manning, R. J. “Rule and Order Strange: A Reading of Sir John Davies' Orchestra.” English Literary Renaissance 15, no. 2 (spring 1985): 175-94.

[In the following essay, Manning examines the cosmological patterns reflected in the structure of Orchestra and argues that the moral implications of these patterns directly affect the tone and meaning of the poem.]

To judge from recent critical responses, Davies' Orchestra is something of an enigma. On the one hand, it has been seen as a solemn statement of the theme of Order;¹ on the other, as little more than a chaotically exuberant, if finely executed, jeu d'esprit.² To support the latter view, Professor G. A. Wilkes has referred to the rather flippant reception Nashe and Marston, among others, first accorded the poem.³ But this offers little help. It would be imprudent to trust such men, to whom ridicule was a stock-in-trade, and whose remarks spring not from sound literary judgment, but from professional rivalry and personal animus. In this essay I wish to draw attention to the way Davies structures his poem according to specific cosmological patterns. While much of this article is necessarily descriptive, I argue that these cosmological schemes carry with them precise moral implications that bear directly on the poem's tone and meaning. The rival tendencies, either to ignore these allusions altogether, or to subsume them under a much too grand and imprecise notion such as “Order,” have blurred Davies' specific design to the point where we can respond to little more than the poem's quaintness.

Professor Wilkes has warned against the dangers of praising Davies' poetry for the wrong reasons.⁴ But the problem has not been that Orchestra has failed to receive due praise, nor are the reasons for which it has been praised entirely wrong. E. M. W. Tillyard is at least in part correct in insisting on the cosmic and political implications of the dance metaphor; and no one would deny the exuberant fantasy of the poem, even if we still maintain that this is not all the poem has to offer. The problem is that the modern categories “serious” and “unserious” are finally too gross and undiscriminating to catch so nimble a figure as Davies. Nor do we gain anything by resorting to the subterfuge of “ambiguity” in this case,⁵ by claiming that the poem is somehow both “serious” and “unserious” at the same time: this is no less than an admission that the critic cannot make up his mind. The heart of the problem lies in the fact that the intellectual and rhetorical habits that lie behind the composition of Orchestra are largely foreign to us, and modern criticism is at best uneasy about passing judgment on a work which reveals such strong dependence upon them.⁶ To call the poem “Davies's best joke,” as his most recent editor has done,⁷ is to deter precise commentary, for nothing inhibits detailed analysis more than the fear of attending too intently to what turns out to be nothing more than a spoof. Even Tillyard, the work's most grave apologist, has expressed some reluctance to “niggle over details.”⁸

It seems that no one has trusted Davies' selection and arrangement of material sufficiently to examine it carefully,⁹ an omission which is the more surprising in that Davies stresses the distinctive feature of poetry as consisting in its “rule and order strange.”¹⁰ What at first sight appears to be an exuberantly chaotic heap of references to more and more things that dance, upon closer examination consists of an elaborate arrangement of particular mythological and cosmological references that have a precise bearing on the interpretation of the poem. In failing to attend closely to the details of Davies' complex analogies, we have neglected precisely those things that would help resolve the enigma the poem has presented its modern readers. In this article I wish to draw attention to certain formal arrangements of material which clarify three issues crucial to an understanding of the poem: first, the character of Antinous; second, the subject of the amorous discourse between Penelope and her wooer; and thirdly, the covert purpose of Davies' poetic exercise.

ANTINOUS AND THE FOUR ELEMENTS

Antinous' defense of dancing employs an argument from design: since the whole world dances, Penelope ought to dance too. The foundation of the argument is laid in stanzas 16-24. In stanza 17 he claims that the dance of “Fire, Ayre, Earth and Water” constitutes the pattern upon which the motion of the entire universe is based. The studied ambiguity of the last line of this stanza underlines his view:

The Fire, Ayre, Earth, and Water did agree,
By Loves perswasion, Natures mighty King,
To leave their first disordred combating;
          And in a daunce such measure to observe,
          As all the world their motion should preserve.

The syntax of this last line may be construed in two different ways to yield two different meanings: “their motion should preserve all the world,” and “all the world should preserve their motion.” By the first construction the elements' dance is seen to “preserve” the world's existence, since as long as the elemental dance continues the world is sustained; by the second, the dance of the elements is thought to be “preserved” or maintained¹¹ throughout the universe. In Antinous' view everything imitates the basic elemental dance in its motion and movement. The planets therefore repeat the elements' dance (stanza 19),¹² and in stanza 20 the “goodly Architecture” of the earth is attributed to the same pervasive motion. An identical movement governs both the celestial and natural spheres: that of the four elements.

In Orchestra Davies makes frequent use of a simple rhetorical figure known as prolepsis: his first reference to an idea is relatively brief, but then he will treat it at greater length somewhat later.¹³ This can be seen when Antinous makes his second speech. Here the vision of the universe outlined earlier is more copiously illustrated: the elements, treated initially in stanzas 17-18, are dealt with again in stanzas 42-51; the planets (stanza 19) are more fully described in stanzas 34-41; and the “goodly Architecture” of the earth (stanzas 20-21) is elaborated in stanzas 52-58. On the second occasion Antinous attributes these views to Love. But for all the additional detailed examples the notion is the same as before: the elements govern the celestial and natural worlds.

Tillyard saw Love's speech as a perfect illustration of the ordered hierarchy that made up the “Great Chain of Being”; it “begins with the highest heavenly bodies, the fixed stars, goes on to the planets, then to the elements situated between the moon and the earth, then to the inhabitants and materials of the earth itself. …”¹⁴ This is the sequence in which Love marshals his material; but Tillyard's reading leans more heavily upon the shoulder notes to the speech than on the details of the text. The strict hierarchical order of the “chain of being” is abandoned on several occasions, and these departures tend to emphasize the basic elemental pattern that underlies the correspondences and analogies drawn in the speech.

The usual hierarchical order of the planetary spheres in the Ptolemaic system was erected on the distance of the planets from the Earth: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon. Beneath the sphere of the Moon lay the Earth. Antinous cites only four planets: Venus, the Sun, Earth, and the Moon. He abbreviates the number of planets from seven to four, and changes their order. Furthermore, he has destroyed the division between the celestial and the sublunary spheres by elevating the Earth, almost Titan-like, to the status of a planet. Davies selects these four on account of their particular associations with corresponding elements, and implies that the elements have so dominated the celestial spheres that the traditional hierarchy of planets has been subverted.

“The Elements are not only in these inferiour bodies,” claimed Cornelius Agrippa, “but also in the Heavens. … Amongst the stars also, some are fiery, as … Sol: airy, as Venus; watery, as Saturn, and Mercury: and earthy, such as inhabit … the Moon (which notwithstanding by many is accounted watery).”¹⁵ Since Antinous has managed to thrust the Earth to a position among the stars, the Earth itself now represents that element; the Moon retains its association with water; while the Sun and Venus, as Agrippa states, are linked with the elements fire and air respectively. But not only are the celestial spheres represented by planets with specific elemental associations, the order in which they are mentioned is equally determined by the characteristic behavior of those elements: Venus “with the Sunne her dainty feete doth move” (stanza 38) because “air is allied … to fire by warmth”; the Sun is placed between Venus and the Earth, because “fire mingles with air because of its heat, and with earth because of its dryness”; the Earth is positioned between the Sun and the Moon, because “earth is compatible with fire because of its dryness, and with water because of its coldness.” Venus, the first planet mentioned, and the last, the Moon, are also linked, because “air is allied to water by its moisture.”¹⁶ The dance of the planets thus repeats the dance of the elements which “still are carried in a round” (stanza 18). Instead of the celestial hierarchy enshrined in the Ptolemaic system, Antinous celebrates the pervasive motion of the elements which tends to subvert that hierarchy.

Love goes on to describe the dance of the elements themselves: fire (stanza 42); air, illustrated in the dances of “Breath, Speech, Ecchos, Musick, Winds” (stanzas 43-47); water, exemplified in the ebb and flow of the sea (stanzas 49-50); and lastly, earth (stanza 51), which alone remains still and steadfast:

Onely the Earth doth stand for ever still,
Her rocks remove not, nor her mountaines meete,
(Although some witts enricht with Learnings skill
Say heav'n stands firme, and that the Earth doth fleete
And swiftly turneth underneath their feete).

Here it might seem that Davies forgoes the opportunity to add yet another example of dancing to his already considerable list. But instead he makes Antinous refuse to allow the Earth to dance to the new Copernican tune, thereby confirming the predominance of the elementary scheme which Antinous asserts in the face of scientific advance. The earth was the only one of the elements traditionally accorded the epithet immobilis,¹⁷ which it steadfastly retains in spite of Copernicus. Antinous rejects the new cosmology because it does not suit his deeper purposes, even though superficially it would seem to support his basic thesis.

The next level of existence to which Love turns is the Earth's “goodly architecture,” the dance of the streams, the flowers, and birds (stanzas 52-58). The elemental dance is implied on this level of existence too, since these dancers each corresponds to one of the elements. Streams (stanzas 52-54) are, of course, associated with water and additionally with the moon. As Agrippa claimed, “These things are Lunary, amongst the Elements … the Water, as well that of the Sea, as of the Rivers and all moist things” (Agrippa, p. 54 [I,xxiv]). Flowers (stanza 55) are specifically related to the influence of the Sun, and hence by implication to fire:

                                        those flowers that have sweet Beauty too
(The onely Jewels that the Earth doth weare
When the young Sunne in bravery her doth woo).

The dance of the vine about the elm (stanza 56) confirms the connection of vegetation to the element fire: “the Ivie and vine,” Agrippa notes, are “consecrated to Phoebus” (p. 52 [I,xxviii]). Birds of course are creatures of the air: the cranes “keepe such measure in their ayrie wayes” (stanza 57, my italics).¹⁸ The birds' singing further affirms their aerial nature, music being described earlier as “the ayres best speech” (stanza 46). The earth fulfills its elementary function in remaining immobile, and the behavior of rocks and mountains illustrate this: “Her rocks remove not, nor her mountaines meete” (stanza 51). The pattern discerned in the sublunary world thus affirms the universal dominance of the elements already observed among the planets. The following table may conveniently summarize the correspondences traced between the elements, the planets, and the natural world:

Planetary	Elemental	Natural
Venus	Air	Birds
Sun	Fire	Vegetation
Earth	Earth	Rocks, mountains
Moon	Water	Streams, sea

Whenever the elements' pervasive motion in a new area of the universe is asserted, precise correspondences are drawn between one of the elements and a particular constituent of that category of existence. But with each repetition the order of the elements changes, as the following table indicates (the number in brackets refers to that element's position at its first mention in stanza 17):

stanza 17:	fire	air	earth	water
stanzas 38-41:	Venus	Sun	Earth	Moon
	(air)	(fire)	(earth)	(water)
	(2)	(1)	(3)	(4)
stanzas 42-51:	fire	air	water	earth
	(1)	(2)	(4)	(3)
stanzas 51-58:	rocks	streams	flowers	birds
	(earth)	(water)	(fire)	(air)
	(3)	(4)	(1)	(2)

These repetitions confirm the omnipresence of the elemental motion throughout the universe. But they also illustrate another characteristic of their behavior, which Antinous remarks upon at the beginning of his first speech: the elements “changing come one in anothers place” (stanza 18).¹⁹ His subsequent elaboration of the elements' behavior bears this out fully. Each is shown ceaselessly jostling with the others for supremacy.

To Marlowe's hero Tamburlaine, the lesson of the elements' motion and the “wondrous Architecture of the world”²⁰ was plain: “Nature that fram'd us of foure Elements, / Warring within our breasts for regiment, / Doth teach vs all to haue aspyring minds” (2.6.869-71). Similarly, Antinous' worldview reveals his “aspyring mind.” To him nature also shows numerous examples of change, of leadership yielded, and authority successfully overthrown. Each of the planets “doth it selfe advaunce” (stanza 37); Love “doth usurp” (stanza 38); the sun “retires” (stanza 40); the air “with thousand formes … doth her selfe endew” (stanza 40); winds turn “a hundreth wayes” (stanza 47); in the elemental dance the sea is compelled to “lay aside his three forckt Mace” (stanza 50), the symbol of sovereignty;²¹ and in their journeying the cranes' “captain” yields place to his “Lieutenaunt” (stanza 58).

The figure of “Chaunce,” or “Chaunge” as Davies calls her in the 1622 edition of the poem, fittingly and logically concludes the exhaustive demonstration of the elements' dominion over the celestial and natural worlds: her opportunism, rather than the ordered hierarchy of the “Great Chain of Being,” dominates Antinous' worldview. Standing “On a round slipperie wheele that rowleth ay” (stanza 59), she is closely related to the emblematic figures, Occasio and Fortuna, both of whom balance precariously on a wheel,²² to declare the speed of their inconstant motion.²³

The guiding principles behind Antinous' views now become quite clear. Those “spheres,” to whose music he believes all the world's affairs to dance (stanza 59), have little connection with traditional supramundane harmonies.²⁴ This “music” is identified as coming from those all too materialistic spheres upon which Fortuna and Occasio stand. At the beginning of his defense of dancing Antinous protested that “Love” and “chaunce” are almost indistinguishable. Time, earlier called the “measure of all moving” (stanza 23), would now seem to be more precisely identifiable with the movement of Occasio.²⁵ “Time” in the first defense of dancing, and Fortune in the second, are one and the same (Panofsky, p. 72). Antinous thus stands revealed as a self-confessed opportunist seeking to procure his own advancement in “all the worlds great fortunes and affaires” (stanza 59).

THE “MOTIONS SEAVEN” AND THE PRECEDENT OF MIGHTY JOVE

While Antinous' argument up until this point derives from the pervasive motion of the four elements, the last half of this speech is characterized by groups of seven: the seven natural motions (stanza 62), seven dances (stanzas 62-72),²⁶ the seven “ceremonious misteries” of civilized life (stanzas 86-92), and the seven arts (stanzas 92-95). Although the numerical matrix has changed, the philosophical basis remains the same: the whole universe is pervaded by change. Dances in the natural world and among the stars all exemplify this: measures are “full of change” (stanzas 66); galliards are even “more divers” (stanza 67); while currantoes are characterized by “unexpected change” (stanza 69), which by now we really ought to expect. Rhetoric (stanza 93), too, exhibits “licentious change.”Mythological dancers also display the continual presence of mutability in the universe. Proteus, Caeneus, Tiresias, and Venus (stanzas 81-84) all illustrate facility of metamorphosis: Proteus can change himself into various forms—animal, vegetable and elemental;²⁷ Tiresias and Caeneus change sexes; and Venus transforms herself into a fish, a symbol, Spenser notes in his Mutabilitie Cantos, of “continuall change.”²⁸

Symbols of political change center upon the figure of Jove. “What better president than mighty Joue?” is the rhetorical question Marlowe put into the mouth of Tamburlaine, who drew mythological sanction for his habit of overthrowing kings and states from the behavior of the leader of the gods:

The thirst of raigne and sweetnes of a crown,
That causde the eldest sonne of heauenly Ops,
To thrust his doting father from his chaire,
And place himselfe in the Emperiall heauen,
Moou'd me to manage armes against thy state.

(2.5.863-67)

Jove's first introduction to Davies' poem directly alludes to the child of Saturn as a usurper:

                                                                                                    men thus learnd of Love
Sweete Musicks sound with feete to conterfaite,
Which was long time before high thundering Jove
Was lifted up to heav'ns imperiall seate.
For though by birth he were the Prince of Creete,
                    Nor Creete, nor Heav'n should that young Prince
                              have seen
                    If Dancers with their Timbrels had not been.

(stanza 76)

Although the origins of dancing are placed in a time “before high thundering Jove” assumed his “imperiall seate,” the dance of the Curetes enabled the god to assume that seat by their warlike arts: “the Curetes … were the first Mortals that appeared in brazen armour, … they undertook the education of Jupiter, became afterwards his fellow-soldiers in his wars, and placed him in his father's kingdom.”²⁹ Jove's dancing is explicitly associated with the use of military might to assist political aspiration, and also with the concealment and deceit (“counterfaite”), which must necessarily attend such ambition.

Ever since the time when this “yong Prince” assumed control, the heavens are peopled with Jove's own favorites and offspring, who attest his power and influence: “the victorious twinns of Laeda and Jove” now stand “among the Starres” (stanza 71);³⁰ Hercules, Jove's son, is “stellified” (stanza 80); Ganymede, the mortal youth Jove abducted, rides “on the Zodiake” (stanza 80);³¹ Hebe, Jove's cupbearer, is “made divine” (stanza 80; Comes, p. 991). And because Jove inspires all “arts and documents tending to elocution and government,”³² each of his associates presides over the “ceremonious misteries” of civilized life. Each astronomical dancer, by means of Davies' favored rhetorical device, prolepsis, indicates one of the mysteries of civilization listed later: Bacchus (stanza 85) taught religion (stanza 86); the Curetes (stanza 76) first practiced war (stanza 87); Jove's “victorious twinns” (stanza 71) exemplify “glorious tryumph” (stanza 88); Ganymede (stanza 80) is traditionally associated with funerals (stanza 89);³³ Tiresias and Caeneus (stanzas 82-83) represent nuptials (stanza 90);³⁴ Hercules, who “had mens eares fast chayned to his tong” (stanzas 79 and 80), is the first politician (stanza 91);³⁵ and finally, the “Muses” (stanza 80), described later as the daughters of Jove (stanza 123), preside over the “learned Arts” (stanzas 92-95; see Gyraldi, pp. 225-26). The heavens are shown to be the place where those who have exercised political and social arts to advantage receive their reward. The skies are peopled with those who have profited by Jove's patronage or example.

Although it may seem that Antinous has abandoned the elementary schemes that characterized the first part of this second and extended defense of dancing, this is not in fact so. Since the publication of Francesco Colonna's famous Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, it had been customary to associate the amours of Jove with the four elements.³⁶ Davies handles this idea allusively and even alters it in part. The zodiacal sign of Gemini, the first Air sign in the Zodiac, is referred to in stanza 71, but the double image is described as that of the “victorious twinns of Laeda and Jove” reinforcing the Jovian associations; in stanza 85, Antinous refers to Bacchus as the initiator of the worship of Phoebus: Bacchus was, of course, the son of Semele and Jove, and his conception was associated with fire;³⁷ Ganymede, the youth with whom Jove fell in love and abducted, refers to the element water, for he was stellified as the constellation Aquarius, the water-carrier;³⁸ the concealment of the infant Jove (stanza 76) alludes indirectly to the element Earth: his nurse, Rhea, appears as Earth in mythological presentations of the four elements.³⁹ Not without cause does Davies put into the mouth of Antinous a program connecting the four elements with Jove: as we have already seen, Jove and the elements are linked with the “aspiring mind” of the Marlovian overreacher who seeks personal advancement.⁴⁰ “The uses … of Dancing in sundry affaires of mans life,” the last section of Antinous' second lengthy apology,⁴¹ is primarily concerned with the acquiring and keeping of power. The real motive behind “goodly jesture” and “comly show” in Love's dance is “keeping state” (stanza 73).

By associating Antinous with these cosmological and mythographic schemata, Davies has revealed the true nature of his protagonist. In the Odyssey, the character of Antinous is rude and troublesome.⁴² In Davies' hands, the wooer's manners and speech have become more polished, but otherwise he is little changed. Proudly intent on his own ambitions for personal advancement, he is prepared to insinuate them by means of subtle and persuasive flattery. Further discussion will show that his appetites and instincts still bear the marks of the gross sensuality of the Homeric original.

“LOVES SMOOTH TONGUE”: THE PLATONIC DIALOGUE

Throughout his speeches Antinous refers repeatedly to mythological exemplars of persuasive oratory: the Graces, Hercules, Orpheus, Amphion, Proteus, and others.⁴³ However, it has been usual to award victory in this debate much too easily to Antinous. So persuaded was Tillyard of the respectability of the wooer's arguments that he imagined Antinous “would have persuaded Penelope to lay aside her prejudice.”⁴⁴ To those that argue for the fundamentally non-serious nature of the poem, it does not matter much who loses or who wins; the whole poem is put totally under the tutelage of the “light muse,” Terpsichore.⁴⁵ But neither Antinous nor Terpsichore has the final word in the poem. After a vigorous performance the “light muse” is dismissed in favor of her more exalted sister, Urania,⁴⁶ and Antinous is silenced.

The argument between Antinous and Penelope about dancing ultimately resolves itself into a debate concerning the nature of Love, with Antinous' views being firmly placed somewhere near the bottom in a hierarchy of different species of Love. In the Neoplatonic academies it was usual to distinguish different kinds of love. Ficino argued that there were two Venuses and two corresponding Cupids: Venus Coelestis and Amor divinus on the one hand, and Venus vulgaris and Amor humanus on the other. The distinction between them was between a love that is drawn to incorporeal, intelligible beauty, and that which depends upon the visible beauty of the terrestrial world. Pico della Mirandola multiplied these two loves to three, and in so doing allocated each kind of Love to a separate human faculty: thus the highest kind of Love was associated with the Intellect, Amor humanus with Reason, and the lowest, Amore bestiale, with the senses.⁴⁷ In Orchestra Davies distinguishes Antinous, who is associated with the realm of the elements and the senses, from Penelope, who exemplifies the dance of Reason, and both from the dance perceived in Vulcan's magic mirror, presided over by the Heavenly muse, Urania.

Antinous occupies the lowest rung on the Platonic scala. His association with the elements, demonstrated fully in an earlier section of this essay, confirms his attachment to the physical beauty of this world as perceived by the senses.⁴⁸ The anthropomorphic imagery of his two lengthy defenses of dancing shows that he has an almost voyeuristic interest in the corruptible body of the world: the green waves kiss the shore and the sea “embraces” the “timerous Earth” (stanza 50); the hills are “the Earths great duggs” (stanza 52); the flowers “kis” in the breeze (stanza 55). His vision of the universe is profoundly erotic and based on the physical character of the world seen in terms of the human body.

All his interests confirm this attachment to the body. Even his illustrations of the Seven Liberal Arts show that he is more interested in manifestations of the human spirit than in that spirit itself. According to Hermes Trismegistus, what the elements are to the physical make-up of the world, the seven Liberal Arts are to the intellect.⁴⁹ Even when discussing the highest productions of the human intellect Antinous is still drawn to admire “licentious change” (stanza 93). In his catalogue of the celestial spheres the particular planets he mentions are of the lower, and thus according to Macrobius, of the grosser kind (Macrobius, I,xii,14 [pp. 136-37]). The groups of seven that characterize the last half of his second defense of dancing (the seven natural motions [stanza 62], the seven “ceremonious misteries” of civilized life (stanzas 86-92) and the seven arts themselves (stanzas 92-95) also serve to confirm his association with the body. Macrobius calls that number “the regulator and master of the whole fabric of the human body” (Macrobius, I,vi,81 [p. 117]).

In contrast Penelope is associated with the rational dance of the soul. At stanza 26 she admits her admiration for the “heavenly dance,” perceived by “reasons eye,” but opposes Antinous' “frantic jollitie”:

My selfe, if I to heav'n may once aspire,
If that be dauncing, will a Dauncer be:
But as for this your frantick jollitie,
          How it began, or whence you did it learne,
          I never could with reasons eye discerne.

Antinous consistently appeals to and depends upon the bodily senses for his perception of the dance of the universe: “But see”; “But see againe” (stanza 40); “Who doth not see” (stanza 41); “and now behold” (stanza 43), and so on. Finally, he offers to become Penelope's “sences maister” (stanza 48). Penelope, however, relies upon “reasons eye” and rejects Antinous' physical dance. But Penelope need not postpone her dancing until after her death, for she is already engaged in a dance of individual perfection: the dance of her rational soul. Therefore she has no need to participate in Antinous' earthly dance.

At the beginning of his argument Antinous almost sneers at Penelope's “imperious virtue”: “Whence commeth it,” he asks, “That your imperious vertue is so loth / To graunt your beautie her chiefe exercise?” (stanza 16). But by stanza 108 he has come to realize that this “chiefe exercise” lies in the dance of the virtues themselves: “And all the vertues that from her doe flow, / In a round measure hand in hand doe goe.” Her “beautie” is not like that of those “sweet Nimphs that beauties losse do feare” and who are driven to “Phisick” or the “dainty exercise” of the dance as a remedy (stanza 54). Penelope's “beautie” is of the intellectual kind, and this, unlike the nymphs', is in no danger of becoming “corrupt and foule.” This dance of Penelope's “imperious vertue” contrasts also with the “imperious sway” of Chaunce (stanza 69) that so dominated Antinous' earlier view.

Gradually Antinous is led away from his sensuous apprehension of the world until in stanza 108 he glimpses the rational perfection that Penelope embodies: “Could I now see as I conceive thys Daunce, / Wonder and Love would cast me in a traunce.” Slowly, and perhaps reluctantly, he is drawn from the world of the senses to an apprehension of intellectual beauty, from the act of “seeing” to the act of “conceiving” in its rational sense. The cry, “Could I now see,” expresses a longing for the senses, which now fail to apprehend what he admires. At last Antinous is reduced to silence. He remains tongue-tied (stanza 97) at the vision of Penelope's beauty and her reasoning. The same fate awaits Penelope when in stanza 122 she sees the vision in Vulcan's magic mirror:

she was stroken dumbe with wonder quite,
Yet her sweet mind retayn'd her thinking might:
Her ravisht minde in heav'nly thoughts did dwell,
But what she thought, no mortall tongue can tell.

To some extent what Penelope perceives in the mirror is a glorified image of herself and her island: Penelope's “rocky Ile” (stanza 8) becomes in the mirror “the great, fortunate, triangled Ile” (stanza 121); the “thousand Lamps” (stanza 8) that illumine Penelope's castle are magnified as “a thousand sparkling starres” (stanza 124). And just as Penelope is “sitting free” (stanza 101) and engaged in her single dance of rational perfection, so Elizabeth “did sparkle more alone” than all the other beauties in the court (stanza 124). The poem celebrates the “coelestiall glory” of both Penelope and Elizabeth. But where Penelope represents reason, Elizabeth is seen in Platonic terms as the Intellectual Type of all such perfection.

While the vision of Elizabeth offers an idealized reflection of Penelope herself, it also provides a correction to Antinous' vision of the universe. Ultimately Antinous is not totally wrong. Rather he mistakes the world of the senses and the elements for the only true reality. The “glorious English Courts divine Image” (stanza 126) provides a stately corrective to the wildly extravagant view of civilization and the natural world that Antinous offered earlier. Antinous' world is characterized by jostling self-interest, fickleness, and sexual misdemeanor. At times his enthusiasm leads him into faintly ludicrous analogies, such as the undignified funeral that includes a dancing corpse (stanza 89)!⁵⁰ In contrast, what Penelope beholds is characterized by “majestie” (stanza 124), “honor and delight” (stanza 125) and “more then mortall glory” (stanza 127).

The means by which this “glorious workmanship” of the English court is revealed is the skill of the god, Vulcan. His reputation is somewhat rehabilitated in this final section of the poem. Earlier Antinous had scorned him as “the only halting God” (stanza 42) and as “jealous Vulcan” who forged “yron chaynes” to catch the adulterous Venus (stanza 72). Now he assumes his proper and dignified role as the artificer of the gods. Vincenzo Cartari notes, “the poets, when they wished to describe how anything was very artistically devised and skilfully done, said that it was made by Vulcan.”⁵¹ The creation for which Vulcan was usually famed was the arms of Achilles. In the allegorical commentaries of the Renaissance these arms were considered to be nothing less than a representation of the entire universe: the heavens, the stars, the sea and land, cities at peace and at war, and the diverse occupations of man.⁵² Antinous attempts as much in his defenses of dancing, but although he covers the same ground, the result is grotesque and extravagant. His is an earthly and distorted copy of the divine original which, Vulcan reveals, resides in Elizabeth's court.

The poem moves from the tutelage of Terpsichore to that of Urania. In his discussion of the Muses, Gyraldi associates Terpsichore with Venus, and Urania with the heavens of the fixed stars (Gyraldi, p. 226). The transition is appropriate to this Platonic dialogue of Love: for the wooer's concerns can be convincingly connected with those of the lower Venus, “the Mother of that bastard Love” (stanza 38), as Antinous himself calls her. Platonic conversion demands that the poem progress from the lower to the higher Venus, that is, to the realm of Venus Urania. The manifestation of beauty in the created world should give way to “rare Idaes” of Beauty itself. Thus Davies' poem begins on the earthly level and finally struggles to describe “this heavenly state” (stanza 131).

We might describe the development of the poem in terms of the court masque: the poem begins with an antimasque of disorder introduced by Antinous, who marshals the four elements, a troupe of gods and goddesses, and representations of human society; these are then succeeded by the masque proper, the perfect order and grace of the sovereign herself dispelling the false and grotesque views of the antimasque.⁵³

“THIS OUR GOLDEN AGE”: THE POEM'S CONTEMPORARY REFERENCE

There is a two-fold time scheme in the poem: from the point of view of the poem's characters, events move from their present to a vision of the future; but for the poet these characters existed in remote history, and their future is his present. From his point of view the mirror yields not an image of what will happen, but of what is happening in the poet's own time. The poem ultimately reflects current court affairs.

In the same year that Orchestra was entered on the Stationers' Register, 1594, the poem Willobie his Avisa appeared in print. It is a long poème à clef, most probably dealing in covert fashion with the succession of suitors who paid court to Elizabeth throughout her reign.⁵⁴ The fable of Antinous' courtship of Penelope would seem to offer tantalizing opportunities for a young satirist to exercise his ingenuity on the same subject. Given the topical interest of Willobie, and Davies' current reputation for satire of a particularly libellous kind,⁵⁵ such an hypothesis would seem not implausible. The current favorite of Queen Elizabeth in the mid-1590s was the Earl of Essex. The fact that Davies was consistently employed by first Burghley and then Cecil, no friends of Essex, as a producer of literary entertainments,⁵⁶ provides at least circumstantial evidence that suggests Essex as a possible real-life Antinous. We certainly know that in Benjamin Rudyerd's Inns of Court entertainment, Prince d'Amour, Davies impersonated a character Erophilus, a role designed to parody the part Essex assumed in various court pageants.⁵⁷ There is little doubt that the imitation was designed to be unflattering. Such evidence would lend further support to the theory that Davies' self-interested and presumptuous Antinous was intended as a satiric portrait of Essex.

If my hypothesis is correct, then there is no difficulty in conceding the appropriateness of Davies' choice of the disreputable figure from Homer's poem as his “hero.” As long as Antinous was thought to be the official spokesman for anything so grand as the “Elizabethan World Picture,” then it was inconceivable that he should be considered as anything less than respectable. For Tillyard, and those that support his reading of the poem, the association with the character in the Odyssey has been inconvenient and potentially embarrassing. Hence it has been hastily passed over or airily dismissed.⁵⁸ The contorted and finally unconvincing arguments to account for the discrepancy between “respectable” Antinous and Homer's original, that Davies had not read Homer or, if he did, that he read him in some corrupt vernacular translation, only seek to prop up an unsatisfactory interpretation of the poem.⁵⁹ The assumption that Davies failed to keep decorum through ignorance is the most desperate of arguments. It is far simpler, and far more likely, to assume that Davies observes an exact decorum: a disreputable character is used to put forward unacceptable views. In fact, the Machiavellian opportunist that Davies depicts beneath the brilliant disguise of the dashing and eloquent suitor would probably coincide with the way the Cecil faction assessed Essex's character.

The fable of Antinous' wooing functions as a perfect mirror of contemporary events. The Cecil party feared the ambition of Essex, and in depicting the English Court “as it should be” (stanza 126, my emphasis), with Elizabeth presiding alone in majesty, Davies' poem serves to discredit the “presumptuous desire” of Antinous / Essex. The recourse to fable was a prudent, and probably necessary device: Elizabeth was extremely sensitive about open discussion of her courtships, and the punishment of the puritan Stubbes in 1579, for writing a tract criticizing her intended marriage to d'Alençon, remained within living memory. Mythological narrative allowed the poet to present views and opinions which, if expressed openly, could have had dangerous consequences.

If accepted, my hypothesis that the poem is a satire on court affairs explains several things about the poem's textual history and contemporary reception. In 1594, when Orchestra was entered on the Stationers' Register, and in 1596, when it was first published, the outcome of the Essex courtship was unclear, and Davies could not have correctly forecast either rejection or acceptance of “Antinous”’ proposal. Hence, it is only right that the ending of the 1596 version should conclude with the author's confession of inability to describe what Penelope saw in the magic mirror. All he could do was describe what he thought “should be”: he could neither predict nor prescribe what would happen. The poem closes not with a statement that the poem is incomplete, but with a deliberate obfuscation of the ending. The poem merely implies that the right course of action would be the rejection of Antinous' suit. Finally the real life protagonist had to make a decision one way or another.

Twenty-six years after the first edition of Orchestra, in 1622, when Davies was an eminent man of law, he issued an edition of those of his poetical works that he wished to preserve: the long philosophical poem, Nosce Teipsum, a series of courtly compliments to Elizabeth, the Hymnes to Astraea, and Orchestra.⁶¹ Davies suppresses all connection with the young student who wrote bawdy sonnets and libelous Epigrammes. There are also certain changes to the text of Orchestra, which tend to direct attention away from the satire. For the final five stanzas of the 1596 edition Davies substituted five new stanzas which praise the beauty and intricacy of the dance Penelope beheld in the mirror. The effect of these stanzas is merely pretty, but they leave an impression much more favorable to the art of dancing than anything that had been mentioned hitherto. The last verse in 1622 tails off into an incomplete stanza signalled by “So &c. &c.” The words “Not finished” are added to the title page in 1622. By 1622 of course the topical urgency of the poem had passed: Elizabeth and Essex were both dead, Davies had achieved a position of eminence, and the conclusion of the poem no longer mattered. The pretty and inconclusive revised ending does little more than reflect a nostalgia for the “golden age” of Elizabeth's court.⁶²

Notes

1. The view most influentially put forward by E. M. W. Tillyard in The Elizabethan World Picture (1943; rpt. Harmondsworth, 1963), pp. 125-29, and Five Poems 1470-1870: An Elementary Essay on the Background of English Literature (London, 1948), pp. 30-48.

2. G. A. Wilkes, “The Poetry of Sir John Davies,” Huntington Library Quarterly, xxv (1962), 287.

3. Wilkes, 287. See The Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. R. B. McKerrow, Vol. III (London, 1950), 177; John Marston, “The Scourge of Villanie,” Satire XI, ll. 13-36, in The Poems of John Marston, ed. Arnold Davenport (Liverpool, 1961); Thomas Bastard, Chrestoleros: Seven Bookes of Epigrammes (1598), ii, 15. Also Everard Guilpin in Skialetheia, Epigram 18, dismisses Curio (Davies) with the jeer, “he writes nothing worth the reading” (ed. D. Allen Carroll [Chapel Hill, N.C. 1974]). For the enmity between Davies and Marston, see W. F. McNeir, “Marston versus Davies and Terpsichore,” Philological Quarterly, xxix (1950), 430-34.

4. Wilkes, 298.

5. See John Huntington, “Philosophical Seduction in Chapman, Davies, and Donne,” ELH, xliv (1977), 40-59.

6. A tendency observed very early on. John Hoskyns, a fellow student of Davies', noticed the dependence of Orchestra on a rhetorical device: “This only trick made up J. D.'s poem of dancing; all danceth, the heavens, the elements, mens minds, commonwealths, and so by parts all danceth” (Directions for Speech and Style, ed. H. H. Hudson [Princeton N.J., 1935], p. 23).

7. Robert Krueger, ed., The Poems of Sir John Davies (Oxford, 1975), p. lxvi. All quotations from Davies' poems are from this edition.

8. Five Poems, p. 35.

9. This is not to say that Davies' analogies have been disregarded. Tillyard, Five Poems, p. 39, selects some correspondences for discussion, but finally dismisses their importance; Wilkes (p. 288) comments on the “range of implication” and the “universe of analogy,” which Davies draws upon; Sarah Thesiger, “The Orchestra of Sir John Davies and the Image of the Dance,” Journal of the Warburg Institute, 36 (1973), 277-304, outlines the metaphorical implications inherent in the image of the dance. I would argue that Tillyard is too selective, Wilkes too dismissive and Thesiger too general, in so far as she fails to take account of Davies' specific application of this traditional material.

10. Orchestra, stanza 93.

11. NED, s.v. Preserved, 1.

12. “Like this” obviously refers back to the dance of the elements treated in the two preceding stanzas.

13. “Prolepsis when a general word going before, is afterwardes devided into partes” (Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence [1577], sig. flv.) For other examples, see Lee A. Sonnino, A Handbook to Sixteenth Century Rhetoric (1968), s.v. Propositio. Further instances in Orchestra are: stanza 43 developed in 44-47; stanza 77 expanded in stanzas 86-92.

14. Five Poems, p. 39.

15. Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, tr. J[ames] F[rench] (1651), p. 22 (Bk. I, ch. viii). De Occulta Philosophia was first published in 1533. The view is standard, “the unanimous consent of all Platonists,” as Agrippa states. See also Ficino, De Amore, III, iii; “Inest sideribus et elementis quatuor amicitia quaedam” (Commentaire sur le Banquet de Platon, ed. R. Marcel [Paris, 1956], p. 164).

16. Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, tr. William Harris Stahl, Records of Civilization, Sources and Studies, No. 48 (New York, 1952), p. 105 (I,vi,27). A convenient statement of a cosmological commonplace. See also, for example, Francesco Giorgio, De harmonia mundi totius cantica tria (Paris, 1545), p. 51.

17. Giorgio, p. 51: “Ignis sit acutus, subtilis, et mobilis: aer subtilis, mobilis, obtusus: aqua mobilis, obtusa, corporea: terra obtusa, corporea, immobilis.”

18. Ovid, in assigning forms of animate life to each region of the world, allocates the birds to the air: “volucres agitabilis aer” (Metamorphoses, I, 75).

19. Krueger, p. 364, cites Cicero, De natura deorum, II, xxxiii, 84 as a source for this sentiment, but it was a commonplace. See also Ovid, Metamorphoses, XV, 237-51.

20. Marlowe, Tamburlaine, II, vi, 874 in The Works of Christopher Marlowe, ed. C. F. Tucker Brooke (Oxford, 1910). Marlowe's phrase is very close to Davies' “goodly Architecture” (stanza 20), and it is probable that the latter knew this passage. Orchestra similarly relates the four elements to the example of Jove (discussed more fully below). Also the year Orchestra was entered in the Stationers' Register, 1594, saw a revival of Tamburlaine on stage (Brooke, pp. 1-2). Marlowe and Davies, it ought to be remembered, collaborated in their surreptitiously produced volume, All Ovids Elegies: Three Bookes by C. M. Epigrams by J. D. (Middlebourgh, n.d.).

21. “Erat enim ejus imago, homo nudus in mari natans, … et tridentem pro sceptro regio manu tenens” (Albricus, De Deorum imaginibus libellus, cap. xvi). De Neptuno, in Mythographi Latini, ed. T. Muncker (Amsterdam, 1681), II, 319.

22. For classical and Renaissance sources, see Guy de Tervarent, Attributs et symboles dans l'art profane 1450-1600, Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 29 (Geneva, 1958), s.v. Roue. Bonhomme's edition of Andrea Alciati, Emblemata (Lyons, 1551) depicts Occasio standing on a wheel (p. 133). L. G. Gyraldi, De deis gentium varia et multiplex historia (Lyons, 1565), p. 388, quotes the following verse by Pacuvius from the Ad Herennium: “Fortunam insanam esse et caecam et brutam perhibent philosophi / Saxoque instare in globoso praedicant volubili” (The goddess Fortune is mad, blind, and stupid, some philosophers maintain. They declare that she stands upon a revolving globe of stone.) This “saxo globoso” is probably the source of Davies' “rock of Chaunce” (stanza 94).

23. “On whirling wheele declare why dost thou stande? / Bicause I still am tossed too, and froe” (Geoffrey Whitney, “In occasionem,” in A Choice of Emblemes [Leiden, 1586], p. 181): a typical explanation of Occasio's attribute.

24. “There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st / But in his motion like an angel sings”—The Merchant of Venice, V,i,60-61, in William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. Peter Alexander (London, 1951). On the harmony of the spheres, see Macrobius, II,i,1-II,iv,14. Stahl collects numerous classical examples of the notion, which ultimately derives from Plato, Republic, X,617. For another mercenary perversion of this supramundane harmony, see Cyril Tourneur, The Atheist's Tragedy, V,i,8-26, in Jacobean Tragedies, ed. A. H. Gomme (London, 1969).

25. “Occasionem Cicero definit libris de Inventione partem temporis”—Mignault's commentary on Alciati's Emblem 121: In Occasionem (Emblemata, elucidata … Claudii Minois Commentariis [Lyons, 1614], p. 437), alluding to Cicero, De Inventione, I,xxvii,40 (trans. H. M. Hubbell, Loeb Classical Library [London, 1949]). On the relationship of Time to Occasion, see Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology (1939; rpt. New York, 1972), p. 72.

26. viz. Brawles, Rounds, Winding Hayes, Measures, Galliards, Currantoes, Lavoltas.

27. Natalis Comes, Mythologiae (Geneva, 1612), p. 840, interprets Proteus as elementary matter, which takes on various forms.

28. The Faerie Queene, VII,vii,21, in The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition, ed. Edwin A. Greenlaw and others, Vol. VI (Baltimore, Md., 1938).

29. “Curetes … primi omnium mortalium aerea arma induerint, Iovemque nutriverint, et cum illo postea militaverint, eumque in regnum paternum deduxerint” (Comes, p. 967).

30. As the zodiacal sign, Gemini: see Hyginus, Poeticon Astronomicon, II, xxii, in Mythographi Latini, I, 397.

31. As the zodiacal sign, Aquarius: see Hyginus, II, xxix, in Mythographi Latini, I, 404 and Comes, p. 991.

32. Chapman's Homer, ed. Allardyce Nicoll, 2nd ed., Bollingen Series, XLI (New York, 1967), to Homer's Odyssey, I, 528.

33. Comes, p. 991: “Quidam ad solatium coniunctorum ipsi Ganymedi hanc fabulam fictam esse tradiderunt.” For the rape of Ganymede as a motif in late antique funerary art, see F. Cumont, Recherches sur le Symbolisme Funeraire des Romains (Paris, 1966), pp. 97-99, and Panofsky, p. 184.

34. The basis of the connection lies in the fact that both Tiresias and Caeneus represent the union of man and woman in one flesh.

35. See Alciati, Emblem clxxx, and Mignault's commentary.

36. Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, ed. Giovanni Pozzi and Lucia A. Ciapponi, 2 vols. (Padua, 1964), I, 150-70. The triumphs represent the rapes of Europa, Leda, Danae, and Semele.

37. Ovid, Metamorphoses, III,259-315, Comes, p. 469, notes “Semele igne coelesti conflagrarit.”

38. Hyginus, II,xxix, in Mythographi Latini, I, 404, and Comes, p. 991.

39. Cesare Ripa, Iconologia (Rome, 1603), s.v. Elementi. Terra, p. 123: “Rhea … ancora era già rappresentata per la terra.”

40. Tamburlaine, 2.6.863-80; Dr. Faustus, ll. 102-05.

41. Shouldernote to Orchestra, stanza 77.

42. Jean de Sponde (Spondanus) refers to Antinous as “durus et difficilis” (Homeri Odyssea … Io. Spondani Mauleonensis Commentariis [Basel, 1583], p. 15), and comments on his treachery (“Fraus,” p. 241) and pride (“superbia,” p. 155).

43. Alciati, Emblem clxii,1.4 refers to the third grace as Pithus, or eloquence (“Suadela est Pithus, blandus et ore lepos”). Mignault (p. 562) notes that Suadela is the goddess of persuasion (“Suadela, persuasionis Dea”). For Hercules, see Alciati, Emblem clxxx. For Orpheus, see Ripa, s.v. Eloquenza nella Medaglia di Marc Antonio, and Whitney, p. 186, Orphei Musica. Whitney identifies the music of Orpheus with “persuasions sounde.” Krueger, p. 371, cites Golding, who identifies Amphion's harp with “eloquence and justice.” Gyraldi, p. 147, interprets Proteus as sophistry: “alii Proteum sophistum interpretati sunt, qui apparentibus argumentis hominibus illuderet.” Francis Thynne, Emblem xlii, sees Proteus as an example of Eloquence (Emblemes and epigrammes, ed. F. J. Furnivall [London, 1876]). Finally, love is shown as persuasively eloquent, and the poem is dedicated to Richard Martin, described as the seat of “Suada in majestie.”

44. Elizabethan World Picture, p. 128. In Five Poems, p. 32, he confidentially asserts without a shred of evidence, “It would have persuaded Penelope, if he had finished the poem, to yield to Antinous's prayer.”

45. Wilkes, p. 289, referring to Orchestra, stanza 6.

46. Orchestra, stanza 127. The placing of Antinous' speech under the tutelage of Terpsichore is mythographically correct: not only is she the muse of dancing, but Gyraldi, p. 226, also associates her with Venus (Antinous' “flattering Dame,” and “Mother of that bastard love” [stanza 38]), and with “artium dilectio,” the subject of stanzas 92-96. Bacon identifies Terpsichore with “superficial learning, invented and used for delight and levity” (Wisdom of the Ancients, in The Moral and Historical Works of Lord Bacon, ed. Joseph Devey [1874], pp. 266-67). These lower interests are later rejected in favor of the higher aspirations of Urania.

47. Panofsky, p. 145, provides a useful summary of these views. For Ficino, see De Amore, II,vii and VII,iii-xiv; for Pico, see Pico della Mirandola, Commento … sopra una Canzona dello Amore celeste e divino, II, xxiv, in Opere di Girolomo Benivieni (Venegia, 1524). For a summary of the three species of love, Ferinum, Divinum, and Humanum, see G. Sambigucius, In Hermathenam Bocchiam Interpretatio (Bologna, 1556), p. 76.

48. Pico, Commento, I,ix, p. 12: “El corpo mondano è tutto questo che à gliocchi nostri appare fatto … di quattro elementi, Fuoco, Acqua, Aria, e Terra” (The body of the world is all that is perceived by our eyes made of the four elements, Fire, Water, Air, and Earth); and I,xi,p. 14: “Corpo … corrottibile, quali noi veggiamo con gliocchi corporali composto di quattro elementi” (The corruptible body, composed of the four elements, such as we perceive with our bodily eyes).

49. Philippe de Mornay, A Woorke concerning the trewnesse of the Christian Religion, tr. Sir Philip Sidney and Arthur Golding, in The Prose Works of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Albert Feuillerat (1912; rpt. Cambridge, 1968), III, 222.

50. Wilkes's claim that Antinous “compels one analogy to spring from the tail of another without regard for extravagance or absurdity” (289) is correct. But not for the reasons he advances. Rather it confirms Davies' deliberate characterization of Antinous as extravagant and absurd, exhibiting his Terpsichorean superficiality and levity.

51. Imagini delli dei de gl'antichi (Venice, 1647), p. 206; “Et quando vogliono i Poeti descrivere qualche gran cosa fatte con molte arte, e con industria grande la dicono fatta … da Volcano.”

52. George Sandys, Ovid's Metamorphoses Englished, Mythologiz'd (1640), p. 425ff.

53. Krueger argues that Orchestra was presented as a court entertainment in the fashion of a masque: Robert Krueger, “Sir John Davies: Orchestra Complete, Epigrams, Unpublished Poems,” Review of English Studies, N.S. 13 (1962), 2-29, 113-24. Davenant's masque, The Temple of Love (1634), presents an analogous progression to that outlined here: the enemies of chaste love summon an antimasque of the four elements “t'uphold the faction of the flesh” (sig. B3). Eventually the Queen, Indamora, asserts the power of chaste love and banishes its enemies.

54. See B. N. de Luna, The Queen Declined: an Interpretation of Willobie his Avisa, with the Text of the Original Edition (Oxford, 1970).

55. As he says in Epigrammes, xlviii: “ech bastard cast forth rime / Which doth but savour of a Libel vaine / Shal call me father.”

56. For Davies' writing for Burghley and Robert Cecil, see Krueger, pp. xxxi-xxxii, xxxviii, and xliii, and Margarete Seemann, “Sir John Davies: Sein Leben und Seine Werke,” Wiener Beiträge zur Englischen Philologie, 41 (1913), 5-6.

57. See P. J. Finkelpearl, “Sir John Davies and the Prince d'Amour,” Notes and Queries, 208 (1963), 301, and E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. III (Oxford, 1923), p. 213.

58. “Antinous in Homer is a man of misrule and disorder … In Davies Antinous is respectable and so are his arguments” (David Hadas, “The Mind and Art of Sir John Davies”; Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1963), pp. 128-29.

59. The influential Latin translations, those of Spondanus and Strephanus, do not provide an acceptable Antinous where Homer provides a vicious one. George deF. Lord, Homeric Renaissance (1956), pp. 56-73, shows that Renaissance translations were more, rather than less, explicit in their moral condemnation than the Greek original.

60. It might be thought that such an assessment of his character was even sadly prophetic: in the Italian translation of the Odyssey by Lodovico Dolce, Antinous' sin is seen as “lesa maestà” (L'Ulisse tratto dall'Odissea d'Omero [Venice, 1573], p. 172).

61. Nosce Teipsum. Hymnes of Astraea in acrosticke verse. Orchestra, not finished (1622).

62. I would like to thank W. M. Maidment, G. A. Wilkes, A. D. S. Fowler, and D. Farley-Hills for many helpful suggestions. I take full responsibility for my conclusions.