“Fuimus Troes” (Aeneid 2).

THE TRUE TROJANS.

Edited by Chris Butler, Sheffield Hallam University.

Contents.

Introduction.

--- First Publication and Authorship. 3.

--- Dates of Composition and Performance. 4.

---Sources. 6.

---Type of Play. 8.

---Major Thematic Concerns.

---James as “Second Brute”. 11.

---Prince Henry and Chivalric Values. 13.

---James/Charles as Second Augustus. 15.

---Tranlatio Imperii. 17.

---The Golden Age (and the Marriage of Princess Elizabeth

and Frederick V, Elector Palatine). 19.

---National Identity. 22.

---Editorial Procedures. 24.

Works Cited in the Introduction and Notes. 25.

“Fuimus Troes” (Aeneid 2). The True Trojans. 29.

Appendix 1: Fisher’s Epithalamium. 139.

Introduction.

First Publication and Authorship.

“Fuimus Troes” (Aeneid 2). The True Trojans (hereafter referred to as Fuimus Troes) was first published, anonymously, in a quarto-sized edition, in London, 1633. Wood, the seventeenth-century historian of Oxford, affirmed that Jasper Fisher was the author of Fuimus Troes, and this attribution has been widely accepted.[1]

Jasper Fisher was born in Carleton, Bedfordshire in 1591, the son of William Fisher, “deputy auditor for Yorkshire” (Foster 500), and Alice Roane of Wellingborough. After matriculating at Magdalen Hall, Oxford (1607), Fisher obtained his BA (1611), MA (1614) and BD and DD (1638). While still at Oxford, he contributed a Latin poem to Epithalamia (1613), the university’s volume celebrating the wedding of James I’s daughter Princess Elizabeth and Frederick V, Elector Palatine (see Appendix 1). In 1624, Fisher became rector of St. Nicholas Church in the “somewhat straggling” village of Wilden, Bedfordshire (Page, Counties 223), and, in 1627, married Elizabeth Sams. Their two children (Jasper and Elizabeth) were baptized at Wilden.

In addition to Fuimus Troes, Fisher published sermons, including The Priest’s Duty and Dignity (1635), which argues that while priests should not be regarded as infallible (in the Roman Catholic manner), nor should every believer assume the right to interpret scripture according to his/her own lights. Notwithstanding its promotion of Anglican views, the sermon could be read as implicitly criticising the absolutist position espoused by Stuart monarchs. On the priest’s role as mediator of God’s laws, Fisher insists it is “[t]he law which he speaks, not which he makes of which he is the lawyer, not the law-giver” (16). Conversely, in True Law of Free Monarchies (1598), James I (who equated the authority of kings with that of bishops) had asserted: “Kings were the authors and makers of the laws, and not the laws of the king”. Comparing these statements, it seems justifiable to assume that Fisher was no mere mouthpiece for the Stuart polity.

In later life, according to a manuscript note by Oldys, Fisher became blind, “whether from old age or an accident is not known. Wood calls him “an ingenious man, as those that knew him have divers times informed me”” (Bradley). Fisher’s death, in 1643, is recorded on a monument on the north wall of the chancel in St. Nicholas Church (Page, Counties 226).

Dates of Composition and Performance.

Neither the date of composition of Fuimus Troes, nor the date of its one attested performance is known. Curran cites Brinkley’s assessment that “1625 is probably the latest possible date [of composition] for Fuimus Troes” (261). This supposition is based on the assumption that because the play contains a song in Scottish dialect it was written with a view to pleasing King James I, who died in 1625 (see Bentley 304 and Hazlitt 447). However, the inclusion of a song in Scottish dialect may well have pleased King Charles after 1625. Apparent analogical references not only to the death of Prince Henry (1612; see 3.7.1.ff), but also (arguably) to the disasters which befell Frederick V, the Elector Palatine suggest that the play was written after 1620 when “Frederick’s forces were … defeated at the Battle of White Mountain, outside Prague, on 8 November” (Yates, Rosicrucian 34). In any case, as Hopkins remarks: “It seems reasonable to assume [that the play’s] … dates of composition and [original] performance … were close together” (39).

In the early seventeenth-century, academics who wrote plays “tried to maintain their amateur profile by keeping their works unpublished” (Elliott, Plays 181). Fuimus Troes would have been “written exclusively for the use of student actors, not for any profit that might be gained from either the printed page or the professional stage” (181). This would explain why, if the play was written around (or several years before) 1625, it remained unpublished until 1633. It does not, however, explain why the play eventually was printed in that year. Possibly Fuimus Troes was restaged, or considered for revival, in the early 1630s.

To consider this possibility, it will be useful to discuss Cartwright’s The Royal Slave. The latter play was performed in Christ Church hall, at Oxford University, before King Charles and Queen Henrietta. It received “a warm reception from the entire court, especially the queen, who made a special request to have it performed by her own company … at Hampton Court the following January” (Elliott, Drama 652-3). It must be acknowledged that The Royal Slave is a very different play to the comparatively dry Fuimus Troes. Nonetheless, there is evidence here of a relationship between successful academic drama and subsequent re-presentations at court, around the Christmas season. Royal attendance at academic drama was more frequent under James and Charles than it had been with Elizabeth. Consequently, academic drama can be said to have had more contact with the court after 1603 than during the Elizabethan period. Certainly, “Oxford’s proximity to London ensured that the worlds of court, capital and university remained in close connection” (Fincham 180). In this context, it is worth noting that Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (which, like Fuimus Troes, features an encounter between Romans and Britons on British soil around the time of the birth of Christ) was revived “on Charles I’s return from his Scottish coronation [1633]” (Kerrigan 133) and performed “at court on 1 January 1634, when, according to the Master of the Revels, it was “well liked by the King” (Warren 6). Also, the inclusion of over a dozen songs in Fuimus Troes, in addition to “triumphs” (3.7.49.sd) and a masque, suggests the play was written (or had been revised and extended) with a view to making its otherwise rather old-fashioned (Senecan) treatment of a historical subject as entertaining for a courtly audience as possible. Bearing in mind Charles I’s Scottish coronation of 1633, a song in Scottish dialect may have been included by special request, for “from the accession of the new dynasty it became increasingly fashionable for the university to produce verses to commemorate the births, marriages, deaths and peregrinations of the Stuarts, with as many as eight collections being published in the decade after 1630” (Fincham 180).

Sources.

The play’s list of Dramatis Personae cites the main historical sources. Camillus and Brennus, we are told, come from Livy’s history Book 5. The majority of the remaining characters derive from either Julius Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic Wars or Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain.[2] Whoever composed the list of Dramatis Personae was meticulous, not only listing two “lad[ies] mentioned” who do not appear onstage during the play, but also listing the character of Cassibelane twice: once as Caesar’s “Cassibellaunus” and again as Geoffrey’s “Cassibelane”. The author of this list was either careless or keen to assert an equivalence between Caesar and Geoffrey’s texts as “history”.

Indeed, I feel Fuimus Troes may offer more to the modern reader as a dramatisation of the historiographical contest between native and classical (Latin) texts for discursive eminence in the early decades of the seventeenth-century than to the modern playgoer as an early modern representation of historical characters in conflict. Investigation of character-psychology is not a priority in the play. Only Rollano, the cowardly Belgian who prefers tackling dead capons to live Romans, Eulinus, the lovesick noble given to neo-platonic excess in his utterance and Spenserian intensity in his dreams, and Nennius, the British champion who wins Caesar’s sword in one-to-one combat, emerge as memorable characters. However, the play becomes more fascinating if its two main sources (Caesar and Geoffrey) are regarded as the real protagonist and antagonist among the Dramatis Personae. And though the traitor Androgeus, as character, may not captivate an audience with his pallid vacillations, as a Geoffrey-derived creation he attracts the informed reader’s eye by appearing onstage with his Caesarian double, Mandubratius (Mandubrace). For Mandubratius and Androgeus are the same “historical” character under two different names. In such ways, “the play calls attention [both] to its use of Galfridian non-history and to its own story as a mixture” (Curran 22).

Of course, Fuimus Troes has other sources besides those cited in the list of Dramatis Personae. The playwright paraphrases Tacitus, Lucian and others, among Latin authors. He also includes abundant echoes of early modern English poets and dramatists such as Spenser, Shakespeare and Kyd. Other details derive from English/British chroniclers and antiquarians such as Holinshed and Camden. In addition, eulogistic imagery familiar from the many masques and pageants written after the accession of King James in 1603 is often employed by Fisher as patriotic ammunition. Details of such borrowings and adaptations can be found in the notes accompanying the text of the play in this edition.

Type of Play.

Under conditions affected by strict state censorship (as obtained under the Tudor-Stuart polities), the distancing effect inherent in “history plays” allowed playwrights to comment obliquely on contemporary political issues in relative safety. Also, a dramatist might claim he did not seek to criticise the existing regime in his history play, but rather wished to demonstrate “universal” laws of government in a historical setting. After all, “kings, by understanding these laws, could rule wisely and well” (Ribner 19). Nonetheless, “historical eras were chosen for dramatisation particularly because they offered direct parallels with the events of the dramatists’ own times” (17).

As mentioned, a frequent “source of entertainment for the Stuart royalties was provided by the plays performed at the Oxford and Cambridge colleges” (Boas 401). Given the perceived function of the history play as a means of recommending, in acceptable terms, a style of government to a monarch, it comes as no surprise to find that many academic plays were history plays. However, from 1605-1636, Cambridge “had the monopoly of the royal presence at its entertainments” (409). We can assume, therefore, that the performance of Fuimus Troes at Magdalen did not receive a royal audience. But academic plays did not require a royal audience to justify their existence: “In the training of young men for public life, either in the church or state, plays were regarded as a branch of rhetoric whose educational function was to hone the skills of the future preacher, orator and statesman in the classical style” (Elliott, Plays 180). Fuimus Troes, then, may not have been written to advise a king, but to assist in the training of young men who later would be in positions where they would be called upon to advise their monarch or his council. As we know, Fisher not only became a rector after leaving Oxford, he also preached sermons which touched on controversial areas of doctrine.

As for why an academic history play like Fuimus Troes should contain so many songs, it appears that at Oxford, in the Tudor-Stuart period, bachelors were sometimes admitted to Master’s status only on condition that they write a play well-stocked with songs (see Elliot, Plays 179). This provided Oxford’s musical scholars (including choristers) with an opportunity to perform new work before a large audience.

Completing ignoring the play’s musical content, Ribner regards Fuimus Troes as “an academic exercise in the vernacular [which] cannot be said to have had … much influence … upon … the mainstream of English drama”. Yet, he concedes:

The play is interesting as a late survival of the type of rigid imposition of Senecan form on chronicle matter [as, for example, in The Misfortunes of Arthur [1587-8]]. Fisher’s play does, however, show some influence of the popular dramatic tradition in that the serious historical matter is combined with a romantic love affair and with comic interludes provided by a cowardly clown (228).

Aspects of Fuimus Troes may certainly be regarded as a throwback to Elizabethan Senecan tragedy. Its patriotic welding of “British” (i.e. Galfridian) material to a classical form follows the practice inaugurated by “the first original English tragedy extant [based on the] Senecan model, Gorboduc” (Charlton 140-1). In lieu of presenting action, the many “long, static and declamatory speeches” (Cuddon 806) in both plays strive for rhetorical effect at the expense of the (relative) naturalism cultivated by commercial dramatists after Marlowe. Similarly, stichomythia tends to appear in plays regarded as Senecan (see Fuimus Troes 5.1.22ff). While this device may be “highly effective in the creation of tension and conflict” (Cuddon 864), it can also make characters seem like interchangeable conduits of rhetorical technique rather than distinct individuals. In addition, the authors of Gorboduc and Fuimus Troes appear to have designed their plays to deliver clear moral messages. Characters in both plays assert that national tragedy follows private rebellion. At the end of Gorboduc, surviving Britons are told: “These mischiefes spring when rebells will arise, / To worke revenge and iudge their princes fact, / This, this ensues, when noble men do faile / In loyall trouth, and subiectes will be kinges” (5.2.242-5; in Cunliffe). Fisher’s Androgeus likewise says: “Thus, civil war by me and factious broils / Deface this goodly land” (5.5.1-2). Admittedly, Androgeus is a traitor: this speech might be read as expressive of his remorse (and so not primarily didactic). But the patriotic Belinus sententiously concurs: “No way half so quick / To ruinate kingdoms as by home-bred strife. Thus, while we single fight, we perish all” (5.2.8-10). Also, Fisher’s play, like Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy (an “amalgam of Seneca and popular tradition” [Charlton 144]), has Mercury guide the ghosts of illustrious soldiers from the classical underworld back “to this upper sky” (Fuimus, induction 38) to watch the living wreak revenge.

In place of the customary Senecan moralising chorus, however, Fisher puntuates the main action with songs, dances, triumphs and a masque (though the first song in Act 2 Scene 8 strikingly resembles a Greek tragic chorus). Given that opera began as “chanted tragedy” (Cuddon 616) and “musicologists … have charted in the masque the development of a musical style which, in projecting the words of songs in recitative and arioso setting, may have contributed to the rise of opera” (Lindley ix-x), Fisher’s play may be given some credit for a role in the development and combination of existing dramatic forms which culminated in opera.

Major thematic concerns.

James as “Second Brute”.

The Tudor monarchs “exploited their Welsh ancestry to claim descent from the early British kings as a way of legitimising their rule” (Wymer 4), basing their claims largely on genealogical “evidence” contained in Geoffrey’s history. Then, in 1603, James I became king of an ambiguous amalgamation of realms. As a result:

just when all this body of [Galfridian] mythical material was beginning to be historically discredited by the emergence of “modern” historiography and proper antiquarian research, it was being reinvigorated poetically by the reunion of Britain under James, … [who] was hailed as the second Brute in the pageantry which accompanied his Royal entry into London in 1604 and in many other poems and pageants over the next few years (Wymer 5-6).

Thus, Munday’s The Triumphs of Reunited Britania (1605) declares that James, “a second Brute”, is descended from the first (Trojan) Brute “by the blessed marriage of Margaret, eldest daughter of King Henrie the Seaventh, to Iames the fourth king of Scotland” (47-9). James, however, was a better Brute, for “whereas the first Brutus had “severed and divided” the kingdom of Britain among his sons, the new Stuart king would make “one happy Britannia again, peace and quietness bringing that to pass which war nor any other means could attain unto”” (King 41).

With this in mind, it seems legitimate to ask if Fuimus Troes endorses James as a “second Brute”. As Ronan observes, history plays “provided … audiences … with the aesthetic pleasure of ironic endings” (16); i.e. plays that “end” happily end ironically for an audience which knows that history holds unhappiness in store for some of the characters onstage at the play’s close. Obviously, this device affords not only “aesthetic pleasure” for an audience, but also a means of sending a message to a reigning (currently happy) monarch. In Fuimus Troes, Caesar is told by Hulacus, a druid soothsayer, “Be Saturn, and so thou shalt not be Tarquin” (5.1.45). Primed by Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (among many other works), the audience knows that Caesar, as ruler, will become, or come to be perceived as, a tyrant (as did Tarquin) and invite assassination by Brutus. (The name “Brutus” here is another source of irony; Caesar—or James, the second Brute—is told: “Rule as Saturn or be killed by another second Brute…”). So while the play’s conclusion seems to celebrate the union of Caesar and Cassibelane, it indicates elsewhere their shared destinies as would-be absolutists. (Charles I, of course, was to meet a fate comparable to Caesar’s in 1642.)

Prince Henry and Chivalric Values.

Nennius, “a character among Geoffrey’s most brazen fictions … symbolised not only British identity and defiance against Rome, but also continuity [in that he] objected to the renaming of Troynovant into what was to become “London”” (Curran 162; stress added). Likewise, in Fuimus Troes, Nennius represents continuity, in a Stuart context, with the Elizabethan era, espousing Spenserian-Elizabethan chivalric, militant Protestant values. In this he resembles James I’s son Prince Henry, who “ever much reverenced [the] memory and government” of Elizabeth I (Sir John Holles, in Strong 2). As a result of his “reverence” for Elizabeth I’s reign, Henry’s court tended to be the focus-point for a faction of opposition to James’s policies.

Given the positive portrayal of Nennius in Fuimus Troes as a Spenserian chivalric hero, we might suppose that Fisher, like Drayton, was in the pro-Henry / anti-James camp. “For Drayton’s generation (and the one that followed),” says Helgerson, an “intense nostalgia for the age of Elizabeth went hand in hand with a disdain for the Stuart monarch and his court” (129). Drayton, it should be noted, dedicated Polyolbion (1612) to Prince Henry. Indeed, poets at this time frequently reiterated “themes of laudation of Henry living and lament for him dead … [identifying him] with other worthies, like Hector … [and celebrating] his prowess in the lists” (Strong 19).[3] Fisher also compares Nennius with Hector (3.7.19) and shows his knightly prowess in single combat with Caesar himself (3.2). It is worth observing, then, that Prince Henry was closely connected with Oxford: “a census [of scholars at the university] was drawn up [in 1610] … at the request of the prince of Wales” (Porter 35). It is also known that “the prince’s college chapel of Magdalen [Fisher’s college] was draped in black” for Henry’s funeral (Fincham 180).

Reading Nennius as analogue for Henry, then, must lead us to view Fuimus Troes as, to some extent, a challenge to the authority of James I, in that it presents feudal values (i.e. values consistent with a belief in the limited authority of a monarch) in a more positive light than that accorded to values consistent with a belief in the absolute powers of the monarch. Here, I feel, it would be helpful to consider the comparable tension between feudal and absolutist values which exists in a prototype for Spenser’s epic The Faerie Queene: Tasso’s Jerusalem Liberated. In Book Five of the latter work:

Rinaldo slays Gernando [another noble] … in a fight over honour and precedence … Goffredo [the king] resolves to punish the offender … [But Rinaldo] refuses even to submit to trial … For Rinaldo, the freeborn nobleman, submission to the law is a sign of servile subjection. The state and its claims must give way before the higher claim of honour and lineage … Tasso leaves no doubt concerning the official allegiance of his poem. It supports Goffredo … [But the notion that] Tasso’s … allegiance [to absolutist state values] is only official, that his poem betrays a ‘secret solidarity’ with the feudal, romantic ideology that it ostensibly rejects, has been a commonplace of criticism almost since the poem was issued (Helgerson 45-6).

Fisher’s play conforms to the same pattern. After all, it is virtually inevitable that the character who heroically (and successfully) challenges no less a personage than Julius Caesar to single combat and takes part in an exciting duel onstage (or on page) will cut a more dashing figure than the representative of state values (i.e. the king), whatever the “official” line of the poem or play in question. Indeed, this “pattern” may be a generic feature common to epics and revenge tragedies exploring heroic-epic values. Choosing to represent Prince Henry as Nennius, then, as an application of this generic “feature”, may be regarded as a political gesture on the dramatist’s part.

James/Charles as Second Augustus.

The relationship of Britain, or England, or whatever name we choose to give to James’s ambiguous realm(s), to classical and Catholic Rome is of central importance to the play. Caesar’s Rome is the Britons’ enemy, but it also represents (as imperial power) a model of excellence to be imitated and surpassed. “In place of Geoffrey’s belief that the Britons resembled the Romans because both descended from Troy, [the governing elite of Stuart Britain] began to embrace the idea that the Roman mission to conquer and civilize had translated westwards and been inherited by Britain” (Kerrigan 114).

In this context, it is significant that James’s “accession medal is the first example of a British monarch adopting the title and dress of a Roman emperor” (King 81). At the pageant welcoming him to London, James was “hailed as a new Augustus … The character of Roman Emperor is [thus] imposed over that of Trojan Prince [“second Brute”] to herald a great imperial reign” (Parry 14). Identification with Augustus, though, not only involves the presentation of the monarch as an emperor who ushers in a new golden age of peace, but may also give rise to concern over the political dangers associated with an absolutist model of rule. For “a state which breaks out of the shell of an ageing empire and claims its autonomy—as Henry VIII broke free of the power of Rome … is likely to be imprinted not just with the ideology but the vices of the apparatus that fostered it” (Kerrigan 114). The growing tendency for English monarchs to represent themselves as Roman emperors represented a clear threat to those who favoured a parliamentarian system. This threat became more serious under James who consistently espoused his belief in his divine right to rule absolutely and reached its presumptuous apogee under Charles. For example, Rubens’s panels for Whitehall, commissioned by Charles, represented James not only as a Roman emperor but as a Roman emperor turned god: “the central oval of the ceiling shows the apotheosis of James … [the king is] borne heavenwards on an imperial eagle” (Parry 28). Like the Romans Julius and Augustus, and the Stuart James, Charles, such imagery implies, is a future god. Gods do not need parliaments to ratify their decrees.

At the Christmas festivities of 1631-2, Charles played Caesar; he led captive kings in Aurelian Townshend’s Albion’s Triumph, and bought Mantegna’s Triumph of Caesar in 1629. This painting, along with twelve portraits of Roman emperors by Titian, “held a particular significance for Charles, for … he was increasingly disposed to cast himself in an imperial role as Emperor of Great Britain, a style already adopted by King James but more grandiosely assumed by Charles” (Parry 49). Albion’s Triumph ends in the joint apotheosis of Charles and Henrietta.

Turning to Fuimus Troes, we find expressed the idea that the Britons can be beaten by the Romans only because a number of British tribes have gone over to Caesar’s side (5.2.5-10). But the British tribes have defected not through fear of Caesar but in opposition to their king’s tyranny: Cassibelane usurps the claims of Androgeus and Themantius to the throne (at least, according to Androgeus and Themantius), refuses to compromise on the question of where Eulinus should be tried for killing Hirildas, and persecutes the tribal chieftain Mandubrace, apparently for political reasons. Whether Cassibelane is in the right or wrong on these issues, the obvious implication is that it is his autocratic style of government that sets in motion the chain of events that leads to the British defeat by Caesar. Had Cassibelane’s “parliament” been given its due, the Romans could have been repulsed. As Themantius pointedly declares: “A body politic must on two legs stand” (5.5.37).

Translatio Imperii.

The concept of translatio imperii (the translation of empire) became “extremely influential in the Middle Ages, when the Roman empire was ‘translated’ first to the Franks under Charlemagne and subsequently to the Germans as the Holy Roman Empire, and in a rather different form in the Renaissance, when Spain, France and England all saw themselves as heirs to Rome … [In the use the Tudors made of Geoffrey’s material,] we can see a deliberate imitation of Virgil’s use of the legend of the Trojan Aeneas to support the political position of Augustus. Just as empire had passed from Troy to Rome, so now it passed to New Troy, London” (Rivers 59, 61).

The Renaissance historian Panvinio “locates the main triumphal succession not in the papacy but in the Holy Roman Empire … from Romulus to Charles V” (Miller 47). Charles V (“the second Charlemagne”), on being elected as Holy Roman Emperor in 1519, was perceived as “the potential Lord of the World … due to the Hapsburg dynastic marriage policy which had brought … vast territories under his rule” (Yates, Astraea 1), “territories more extensive than the ancient Roman empire” (Miller 2).

This reading of history extended into the reign of Charles I. George Lauder, a Scot and a “robust poetic supporter of Charles in his early reign” (Miller 120), represented Charles as another Charlemagne: “his royall brow / Crown’d with triumphant bayes …may HEE … take his place / In Charlemaigne’s fair chayre” (Miller 120-1). Poets such as Lauder, then, were asserting that a new “Charles the Great” was the heir to the British throne at the time Fuimus Troes was written (if a date of composition based on supposed analogical references to Frederick’s downfall is accepted [see below]). Also, this new Charlemagne occupied the throne when the play was finally published. Hence, it is intriguing to find, in the play’s opening scene, Brennus (who “throughout the sixteenth-century and well into the seventeenth … continued to be invoked as a figure for England’s / Britain’s independence from, rivalry with, and primordial superiority to Rome” [Schwyzer 15]), referring anachronistically to “Charles his wain” (line 17) as the starting point for his victorious campaign against Rome. Charles’s Wain, of course, was an old name for the Great Bear constellation. As Berry and Archer observe:

An important figurative strand within Union-inspired literature expands on classical allusions to the British as ‘the nations on whom the Pole Star looks down’, whose island ‘lies under the Great Bear’, the constellation ‘that circleth ever in her place’ … Following the acceptance of Copernicus’s hypothesis of the earth’s planetary status, both the new Britain and its ruler are equated with the polar stars as the ‘loadstone’ or fixed points within the newly mobile globe (124).

With a new Charlemagne reigning at the new imperial/geographical centre of the world, Charles’s empire supersedes that of old Rome (previously regarded, at least by the ancient Romans themselves, as the centre of the known world), thereby “reversing the Roman conquest of Britain” (Miller 121). In this way, Charles may be said to “appropriate the triumphal boast of Julius Caesar: ‘hee shall come and see, and overcome’ (Miller 121; quoting Lauder). Fisher participates in the same discursive field, cancelling Caesar’s boast by having Caesar himself admit, regarding his British campaign: “Nor can I write now, ‘I came over, / And I overcame’” (3.4.19-20). Also, Fisher interrogates the notion that Caesar discovered Britain by implying that the pole star lures Caesar to Britain precisely so that Rome’s imperial authority may be transmitted: “I long to stride / This Hellespont [i.e. the Channel]” declares Caesar in Act 1, “Disclosing to our empire unknown lands / Until the arctic star for zenith stands” (2.33-6). That is, the arctic star will not only magnetically distort the borders of the Roman Empire and de-centre Rome, but the island it shines upon (Britain) will replace Rome as the “zenith” of the world. In asserting that the Britons are no less “true Trojans” than the Romans, and in showing Nennius the British hero defeating Julius Caesar in single combat, taking Caesar’s sword as a sign of victory to be paraded in a triumphal procession, Fisher announces that the imperial mantle is being translated from pagan (or Catholic) Rome to Christian (Protestant) Britain. Thus, the “triumphs” in Act 3 Scene 7, though they appear only as a stage direction in the text of the play, in performance would presumably play a major role, representing the moment of translatio imperii.

The Golden Age (and the Marriage of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick V, Elector Palatine).

The Christian Holy Roman empire was to be created by (ostensibly) peaceful means, not conquest. Charles V “had providentially inherited territories in Europe which recalled the Roman Empire [and] … did not entertain the ambition of achieving a world empire by conquering other states” (Yates, Astraea 25-6; emphasis added). But the dream of Charles V peacefully ruling a united Christian world ended with the reformation. After that, individual national monarchs “representing the ordered rule of the One within their individual realms—took over something of the imperial role” (Astraea 28). James was represented as having providentially united the island of Britain for the first time since the birth of Christ. Thus, “the small world of the Tudor union [of the houses of Lancaster and York] and the Tudor pax” and the slightly larger world of (symbolic) British union under James and the Jacobean pax “have behind them the vaster European perspectives of the Hapsburg union and the Hapsburg pax; and behind these again is the august concept of Holy Roman Empire, reaching out in ever-widening influence to include the whole globe” (54).

James I saw dynastic union as the means by which a Christian empire could expand without recourse to arms. Accordingly, he decided his daughter, Princess Elizabeth, should marry “Frederick V, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, … the senior Elector of the Holy Roman Empire who … was [putatively] descended from Charlemagne” (Strong 56-7). An account published in Heidelberg in 1613 of a masque intended to be performed at the marriage of Elizabeth and Frederick provides

insight as to how the Palatine match was viewed … The argument [of the masque states:] … ‘although the poets say, divisus ab orbe Britannus; yet the marriage, made in heaven, and consummated on earth, of the only daughter of this wise King of Great Britain with the Serene Prince Frederick V, Elector of Palatine … had given occasion … to believe, that one day, if it pleased God, the world (quitting its errors) would come to give recognition to Truth which resides solely in England and the Palatinate’ (Strong 135).

In other words, the marriage of Elizabeth and Frederick brought the dream of a world Protestant empire one step closer to fulfillment.

Early modern plays featuring Roman characters set in the decades before the birth of Christ participate in the belief that Christ awaited the coming of Augustus in order to be born into a world stable enough to facilitate the growth of Christianity (see 5.6.62-3 and note). A further implication of this belief in the providential function of imperially-ensured peace was that, in the Stuart period, the creation of a reformed Christian world empire (larger than that governed by Augustus) would see the return of Christ and the completion of history. Consequently, Fuimus Troes includes not only several references to Astraea, the goddess of justice whom Virgil had predicted, in Eclogue 4, would return to earth for a new golden age (see 3.8.16), but also millennial imagery (5.2.16-21). The fact that Fuimus Troes takes its title from Virgil’s Aeneid becomes highly significant in this context, for the latter work had come to be seen as “a semi-sacred poem glorifying the historical framework of the Saviour’s birth” (Yates, Astraea 1). Moreover, from a Christian perspective, the reference to the prophecies of Daniel in the final scene (“The world’s fourth empire Britain doth embrace” [line 20]) suggests that, after the final defeat of Rome, the reign of Christ on earth will begin.

However, hopes for a reformed Christian empire were shown to be unrealistic following the outbreak in Europe of the Thirty Years War around 1620, and the play seems to allude to this disappointment. The heroine of Fuimus Troes, Landora, is referred to as a “phoenix” (4.2.40; as Yates points out, “the return of the golden age and the rebirth of the phoenix are symbols with parallel meanings” [Astraea 38]). But instead of performing a glorious resurrection, this phoenix commits suicide after being involved in a somewhat sordid subplot. Eulinus, a Briton, impersonating the man Landora loved, had been sleeping with her. In the notes to 1.4.85-7, it is suggested that this subplot refers analogically to Frederick V claiming Elizabeth as his bride on the strength of his descent from Charlemagne. Here, there is only space to observe that the name “Landora” is an anagram of “a Roland”. A Roland, it might be felt, must love (and serve) a (descendant of) Charlemagne. In any case, when his country has been ravaged as a result of his actions, Eulinus laments: “Shall ensigns be displayed, and nations rage / About so vile a wretch?” (4.2.34-5). As mentioned, the Thirty Years War was to devastate Europe following Frederick’s attempt to reign as King of Bohemia. In the aftermath of the Battle of White Mountain, “propaganda pamphlets against Frederick … delighted to show him as a poor fugitive [“a wretch”] with one of his stockings coming down” (Yates, Rosicrucian 34). Certainly, events following his marriage to Elizabeth showed that Frederick was no Charlemagne.

The play concludes not with the dynastic union of Britain and Rome through marriage, but with the “masculine embrace” of Cassibelane and Caesar (Mikalachki 96-7). Translatio imperii, it seems, is achieved between men at a symbolic level (via exchanged gifts [5.6.36-40], trophies won in single combat, etc.) not through men and women in a biological manner.

National identity.

If England depends, to an extent, on Scotland as other for self-definition, what happens when England “merges” with Scotland? Or is English identity, insofar as it can be said to exist at all, simply the product of such mergers? “‘My muse is rightly of the English strain, / That cannot long one fashion entertain.’ Drayton mocks both himself and the English for their lack of any single fixed identity. Yet in this self-mockery there is also pride” (Helgerson 14). By definition, an empire is a nation with an identity crisis, a notional space with shifting boundaries. To become (or extend) an empire is to admit change. “To be like the Greeks [or the Trojans] … to base one’s identity and the identity of one’s country on a project of imitative self-transformation is precisely to adopt “the English strain”, as Drayton defines it” (14). To possess a fluid identity is to possess a recipe for successful imperialism. The mission of world rule is transferred from Rome to Britain because Britain possesses the more flexible identity; put another way: Britain lacks a sense of identity even more than the Romans do.

Are the Britons savages or Trojans? Caesar’s spy, Volusenus, describes the Britons as exotic barbarians: “their statures tall and big, / With blue-stained skins, and long, black, dangling hair / Promise a barbarous fierceness” (2.4.10-12). “The catalogue of British forces offers similar imagery, as the Ordovices are said to ‘rush half-naked on their foes’ [2.5.43]. But British warriors are elsewhere referred to as ‘worthy [k]nights’ [2.8.4]” (Curran 23). Nennius is a chivalric hero, fighting alongside cannibals who “gnaw and suck / Their enemies’ bones” (2.5.62-3). If they are descended from Trojans, these Britons no longer act like it. As Samuel Purchas asks in a marginal note of 1625: “Were not wee our selves made and not borne civill in our Progenitors dayes? and were not Caesars Britaines as brutish as Virginians? The Romane swords were best teachers of civilitie to this & other Countries neere us” (in Wymer 4). The alliteration Purchas found so ready to hand (“Britaines … brutish)” should be noted. As a result of ongoing developments in historiographical method, Britain’s Trojan ancestry (via Brute) had become material for self-mocking word-play. Through its fusion of Latin and “British” sources, Fuimus Troes participates in this self-mockery (for example, see 3.8.38 for a comparable equation of Britons with “brutes”) at the same time that it refuses to relinquish the notion that the Britons, no less than the Romans, are “true Trojans”.

Editorial Procedures.

I have based this edition on the quarto edition of Fuimus Troes (1633). Spelling and punctuation have been modernised. In some cases, vocabulary has been (silently) modernised. Elisions in the original have also been silently regularised, except where metre would be affected by the change. The “-ed” form is used for unstressed terminations in past tenses and past participles, and “-èd” for stressed. Unaccented vowels have occasionally been given accents to correct what I regard as faulty metre. I have also corrected what I consider to be obvious errors (such changes are referred to in the relevant footnotes). Square brackets enclose any additions to or changes in the stage directions.

It will be noticed that this edition contains a great many notes. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, I have not included a glossary. Therefore, every word which I felt a modern reader might not understand is glossed in a note below the text. Secondly, the play contains a great many classical allusions which require explanation for a modern reader. Thirdly, there has been very little criticism written about this play. Therefore, I have attempted to include every salient piece of commentary I could find, distributed in relevant footnotes. Hence, this edition functions as a compilation of existing criticism on Fuimus Troes. Finally, as explained in the introduction, I find it useful to regard Fisher’s sources (especially Geoffrey and Caesar) as characters in the play. To enable the reader to discern these “characters” beneath their disguises, I have given perhaps more examples of “source-passages” than is customary in most editions.

Works Cited in the Introduction and Notes.

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---. “Drama.” Tyacke 641-58.

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“Fuimus Troes” (Aeneid 2).°

THE TRUE TROJANS,°

Being

a story of the Britons’ valour at the Romans’ first invasion.

London.

Printed by J[ohn] L[egatt] for Robert Allot,° and are to be sold at the sign of the

Bear in Paul’s churchyard, 1633.

Publicly° represented by the gentlemen students° of

Magdalen College° in Oxford.

Quis Martem tunicâ tectum adamantinâ dignè scripserit?°

Dramatis Personae.

Mercury [characters

Furius Camillus.° from] Livy

Brennus. ° Book 5.

Julius Caesar.°

C. Volusenus.°

Q. Laberius, alias Labienus.° [characters

Q. Atrius. from]

Comius Atrebas.° Caesar’s

Cassibellaunus,° imperator° Britannorum. Commentaries

Mandubratius,° princeps Trinobantum. on the

Cingetorix, petty king in Kent. Gallic War

Carvilius, petty king in Kent. Books 4 and 5.

Taximagulus, petty king in Kent.

Segonax, petty King in Kent.

Androgeus,° Lud’s son.

Themantius, Lud's son.

Cassibelane,° Beli Mawr's° son. [Characters

Nennius, Beli Mawr’s son.° from]

Belinus, a chief nobleman.° Geoffrey’s

Hirildas, nephew to Cassibelane. Monuments

Eulinus, nephew to Androgeus. Book 4.

Cridous, King of Albania.

Britael, King of Demetia.

Guerthed, King of Ordovicia.

Names feigned:

Lantonus, druid or priest.

Hulacus, druid or priest.

Landora, lady mentioned.°

Cordella, lady mentioned.

Rollano, a Belgic.

Chorus of five bards or poets laureate.

Soldiers.

Shipmen.

Servants.

[Enter] Mercury,° conducting° the ghosts of Brennus and Camillus in complete armour and with swords drawn.°

Mercury: As in the vaults of this big-bellied earth

Are dungeons, whips and flames for wicked ghosts,

So° fair Elysian fields, where spotless souls

Do bathe themselves in bliss. Among the rest,

Two pleasant groves by two sorts are possessed: 5

One by true lovers crowned with myrtle boughs,

Who, hand in hand, sing paeans of their joy;

Brave soldiers hold the second, clad in steel,

Whose glittering arms brighten those gloomy shades,

In lieu of starry lights.° From hence I bring 10

A pair of martial imps,° by Jove’s decree,

As sticklers° in their nations’ enmity.

Furius Camillus, and, thou Briton bold,

Great Brennus, sheathe your conquering blades. In vain

You threaten death, for ghosts may not be slain.° 15

Brennus: From the unbounded ocean and cold climes

Where Charles his wain° circles the northern pole,

I first led out great swarms of shaggy Gauls

And big-boned Britons.° The white-pated Alps,

Where snow and winter dwell, did bow their necks° 20

To our victorious feet. Rome, proudest Rome,

We clothed in scarlet of patrician blood,°

And ’bout your Capitol pranced our vaunting steeds,

Defended more by geese than by your gods.°

Camillus: But I cut short your fury, and my sword 25

Redeemed the city,° making your huge vast trunks

To fat our crows and dung our Latin fields.°

I turned your torrent to another coast,°

And what you quickly won, you sooner lost.

Mercury: Leave these weak brawlings. Now swift time hath spent 30

A Pylian age, ° and more, since you two breathed,

Mirrors° of British and of Roman valour.

Lo, now the black imperial bird° doth clasp

Under her wings the continent, and Mars,

Trampling down nations with his brazen wheels, 35

Fights for his nephews° and hath once more made

Britons and Romans meet. To view these deeds,

I, Hermes, bring you to this upper sky,

Where you may wander, and with ghastly looks

Incite your country-men. When night and sleep 40

Conquer the eyes; when weary bodies rest

And senses cease,° be furies° in their breast.

Never two nations better matched, for Jove

Loves both alike. Whence then these armèd bands?°

Mavors° for Rome, Neptune for Albion stands.° 45

Brennus: Then let war ope° his jaws as wide as hell

And fright young babes; my country-folk, more stern,

Can out-look Gorgon. Let the Fates,° transposed,°

Hang beaten flags° up in the victors’ land.°

Full dearly will each pace of ground be sold, 50

Which rated is at dearest blood, not gold.°

What, are their ruined fanes,° demolished walls

So soon forgot? Doth Allia° yet run clear?°

Or can three hundred summers slake their° fear?

Camillus: Arise, thou Julian star, whose angry beams° 55

Be heralds to the north of war and death.°

Let those black calends° be revenged, those ghosts

(Whose mangled sheaths deprived of funeral rites,

Made the six hills° promise a Cadmus crop°)

Be expiated with a fiery deluge. 60

Jove rules the spheres, Rome all the world beside,

And shall this little corner be denied?°

Mercury: Bandy no more these private frowns, but haste,

Fly to your parties and enrage their minds,

Till at the period° of these broils,° I call 65

And back reduce° you to grim Pluto’s hall.

Exeunt.

The True Trojans.

Act 1 Scene 1.

Duke° Nennius, alone.

Nennius. Methinks I hear Bellona’s° dreadful voice,

Redoubled from the concave shores of Gaul.°

Methinks I hear their neighing steeds, the groans

Of complemental° souls, taking their leave,

And all the din and clamorous rout° which sounds 5

When falling kingdoms crack in fatal flames.

Die, Belgics,° die like men. Free minds need have

Naught but the ground they fight on for their grave,

And we are next. Think ye the smoky mist

Of sun-boiled seas can stop the eagle’s eye,° 10

Or can our wat’ry walls keep dangers out,°

Which fly aloft,° that thus we, snorting,° lie,

Feeding impostumed humours° to be lanced

By some outlandish° surgeon,°

As they° are now, whose flaming towns, like beacons, 15

Give us fair warning, and even gild our spires,°

Whilst merrily we warm us at their fires?

Yet we are next, who, charmed with peace and sloth,

Dream golden dreams. Go, warlike Britain, go,

For olive bough exchange thy hazel bow,° 20

Hang up thy rusty helmet, that the bee

May have a hive or spider find a loom.

Instead of soldiers’ fare and lodging hard

(The bare ground being their bed and table), lie

Smothered in down, melting in luxury. 25

Instead of bellowing drum and cheerful flute,

Be lulled in lady’s lap with amorous lute.°

But, as for Nennius, know I scorn this calm.

The ruddy planet at my birth bore sway—

Sanguine adust° my humour, and wild fire 30

My ruling element.° Blood and rage and choler°

Make up the temper° of a captain’s valour.

Exit.

Act 1 Scene 2.

[Enter] Julius Caesar, Comius, Volusenus, Laberius, soldiers with ensign° (a two-necked

eagle, displayed sable),° drum, ancient,° trumpet. A flourish.

Caesar: Welcome thus far, partners of weal and woe;

Welcome, brave bloods. Now may our weapons sleep,

Since Ariovist° in cock-boat° basely flies;

Vast Germany stands trembling at our bridge,°

And Gaul lies bleeding in her mother’s lap. 5

Once the Pellean duke° did eastward march

To rouse the drowsy sun, before he rose,

Adorned with Indian rubies, but the main°

Bade him retire. He was my type.° This day,

We stand on nature’s western brink.° Beyond, 10

Nothing but sea and sky. Here is nil ultra.°

Democritus, make good thy fancy,° give me

More worlds to conquer, which may be both seen

And won together. But methinks I ken

A whitish cloud° kissing the waves, or else 15

Some chalky rocks surmount the barking flood.

Comius, your knowledge can correct our eyes.°

Comius: It is the British shore, which ten leagues hence

Displays her shining cliffs unto your sight.

Caesar: I’ll hit the white.° That sea-mark° for our ships 20

Invites destruction and gives to our eye

A treacherous beck.° Dare but resist,° your shore

Shall paint her pale face with red crimson gore.

Comius: Thus much I know, great Caesar, that they lent

Their secret aid unto the neighbour Gauls,° 25

Fostering their fugitives with friendly care,

Which made your victory fly with slower wing.

Caesar: That’s cause enough.° They shall not henceforth range

Abroad for war, we’ll bring him° to their doors.

His ugly idol shall displace their gods, 30

Their dear Penates,° and in desolate streets

Raise trophies high of barbarous bones, whose stench

May poison all the rest. I long to stride°

This Hellespont,° or bridge it with a navy,°

Disclosing to our empire unknown lands° 35

Until the arctic star° for zenith stands.

Laberius: Then raise the camp and strike a dreadful march

And unawares pour vengeance on their heads.

Be like the wingéd bolt of angry Jove,

Or chiding torrent whose late-risen stream 40

From mountains bended top runs raging down,

Deflow’ring all the virgin dales.

Caesar: First, let’s advise,° for soon to ruin come

Rash weapons which lack counsel grave at home.

Laberius: What need consulting where the cause° is plain? 45

Caesar: The likeliest° cause without regard° proves vain.

Laberius: Provide for battle, but of truce no word.

Caesar: Where peace is first refused should come the sword.°

Laberius: But ’tis unlike° their self-presuming might

Will curbéd be° with terms of civil right.° 50

Caesar: ’Tis true, yet so we stop the people’s cry,°

When we propose and they do peace deny.

We’ll therefore wise ambassadors dispatch

(Parents of love, the harbingers of leagues,

Men that may speak with mildness mixed with courage, 55

Having quick feet, broad eyes, short tongues, long ears)

To warn the British court,

And further view the ports, fathom the seas,

Learn their complotments,° where invasion may

Be soonest entertained.° All this shall lie 60

On Volusene, a legate° and a spy.

Volusenus: My care and quickness shall deserve this kindness.

Meantime, unite and range° your scattered troops,

Embark your legions at the Iccian shore°

And teach Erinyes° swim, which crawled before. 65

Exeunt.

Act 1 Scene 3.

[Enter] Cassibelane, Androgeus, Themantius, Belinus, attendants.

Cassibelane: Although the people’s voice constrains me hold

This regal staff,° whose massy weight would bruise

Your age and pleasures, yet this, nephews, know:

Your trouble less,° your honour is the same,

As if you wore the diadem of this isle. 5

Meanwhile, Androgeus, hold unto your use

Our lady-city Troynovant° and all

The toll and tribute of delicious Kent,

Of which each quarter can maintain a king.

Have you, Themantius, Cornwall’s dukedom large, 10

Both rich and strong in metals and in men.°

I must to Verulam’s fencèd town° repair,

And as protector for the whole take care.°

Androgeus: My heart agrees. Henceforth, ye sovereign cares,

State-mysteries, false graces, jealous fears, 15

The linings of a crown, forsake my brain.

These territories neither are too wide

To trouble my content, nor yet too narrow

To feed a princely train.

Themantius: All thanks I render. Your will shall guide ours. 20

With treble-twisted love, we’ll strive to make

One soul inform three bodies, keeping still

The same affections both in good and ill.

Now am I for a hunting match. Yon thickets

Shelter a boar which spoils the plough-man’s hope— 25

Whose jaws with double-sword, whose back is armed

With bristled pikes, whose fume inflames the air,

And° foam besnows the trampled corn. This beast

I long to see come smoking to a feast.

Exit Themantius. Enter Rollano.

Belinus: Here comes my Belgic friend, Landora’s servant. 30

What news, Rollano, that thy feet so strive

To have precedence° of each other? Speak.

I read disturbèd passions on thy brow.

Rollano: My trembling heart quavers upon my tongue,

That scarce I can with broken sounds vent forth 35

These sad, strange, sudden, dreary, dismal news.

A merchant’s ship, arrived,° tells how the Roman,

Having run Gaul quite through with bloody arms,

Prepares for you. His navy, rigged in bay,

Only expects a gale. Further, they say, 40

A pinnace,° landed, from him brings command

Either to lose your freedom or your land.

Cassibelane: And dares proud Caesar back our untamed surges?

Dreads he not our sea-monsters, whose wild shapes

Their theatres ne’er yet in picture saw?° 45

Come, sirs, to arms, to arms. Let speedy posts

Summon our petty kings and muster up

Our valorous nations from the north and west.

Androgeus, haste you to the Scots° and Picts,°

Two names which now Albania’s kingdom° share. 50

Entreat their aid, if not for love, yet fear

For° new foes should imprint swift-equal fear

Through all the arteries of our isle.°

Belinus, thy authority must rouse

The vulgar troops within my special charge.° 55

Fire° the beacons. Strike alarums loud.

Raise all the country ’gainst this common foe.

We’ll soon confront him in his full career.

This news more moves my choler° than my fear.

Exeunt.

Rollano, alone.

Rollano: I am by birth a Belgic, whence I fled 60

To Germany for fear of Roman arms.

But when their bridge bridled the stately Rhine,°

I soon returned, and thought to hide my head

In this soft halcyon’s nest,° this Britain isle.

But now, behold, Mars is a-nursing here, 65

And ’gins to speak aloud.

Is no nook safe from Rome? Do they still haunt° me?

Some peaceful god transport me through the air,

Beyond cold Thule,° or the sun’s bedchamber,

Where only swine or goats do live and reign; 70

Yet these° may fight. Place me where quiet peace

Hushes all storms, where sleep and silence dwell,

Where never man nor beast did wrong the soil,

Or crop the first fruits,° or made so much noise

As with their breath. But foolish thoughts, adieu. 75

Now catch° I must, or° stand or fall with you.

Exit.

Act 1 Scene 4.

[Enter] Eulinus, Hirildas.

Eulinus: The court a wardrobe is of living shapes,

And ladies are the tissue-spangled suits

Which nature wears on festival high days.°

The court a spring, each madam is a rose.

The court is heaven, fair ladies are the stars. 5

Hirildas: Aye, falling stars.

Eulinus: False echo, don’t blaspheme that glorious sex,

Whose beauteous rays can strike rash gazers blind.

Hirildas: Love should be blind.

Eulinus: Pray, leave this cynic humour, whilst I sigh 10

My mistress’ praise: her beauty’s past compare;

Oh, would she were more kind or not so fair.

Her modest smiles both curb and kindle love.

The court is dark without her. When she rises,

The morning is her hand-maid, strewing roses 15

About love’s hemisphere. The lamps above

Eclipse themselves for shame, to see her eyes

Out-shine their chrysolites° and more bless the skies

Than they the Earth—

Hirildas: Give me her name.

Eulinus: —Her body is a crystal cage, whose pure 20

Transparent mould not° of gross elements

Compacted, but° the extracted quintessence

Of sweetest forms distilled, where graces bright

Do live immured, but not exempt from sight…

Hirildas: I prithee speak° her. 25

Eulinus: Her model is beyond all poets’ brains

And painters’ pencils. All the lively nymphs,

Sirens and dryads are but kitchen-maids,

If you compare. To frame the like Pandore,°

The gods repine,° and nature would grow poor… 30

Hirildas: By love, who is’t? Hath she no mortal name?

Eulinus: For here you find great Juno’s stately front,

Pallas’ gray eye, Venus her dimpled chin,

Aurora’s rosy fingers, the small waist

Of Ceres’ daughter and Medusa’s hair 35

Before it hissed…°

Hirildas: Oh love, as deaf as thou art blind! Good Eulinus,

Call home thy soul and tell thy mistress’ name.

Eulinus: Oh, strange! What, ignorant still, when as so plainly

These attributes describe her? Why, she is 40

A rhapsody of goddesses! The elixir°

Of all their several perfections. She is

(Now bless your ears) by mortals called Landora.

Hirildas: What, Landora the Trinobantic lady°?

How grow your hopes?° What metal is her breast?° 45

Eulinus: All steel and adamant. ’Tis beauty’s pride to stain

Her lily white with blood of lovers slain.°

Their groans make music, and their scalding sighs

Raise a perfume, and, vulture-like, she gnaws

Their bleeding hearts. No gifts, no learned flattery, 50

No stratagems can work Landora’s battery.°

As a tall rock maintains majestic state,

Though Boreas° gallop on the tottering seas

And, tilting, split° his froth out, spurging° waves

Upon his surly breast, so° she resists, 55

And all my projects on her cruel heart

Are but retorted to° their author’s smart.

Hirildas: Why then, let scorn succeed thy love and bravely

Conquer thy self, if thou wilt conquer her.

Stomachs with kindness cloyed, disdain must stir.° 60

Eulinus: Most impious thoughts! Oh, let me rather perish

And, loving, die, than, living, cease to love.

And when I faint, let her but hear me cry,

“Aye me, there’s none which truly loves, but I”.

Hirildas: Oh, ye cross° darts of Cupid! This very lady, 65

This lady-wasp,° woos me, as thou dost her,

With glances, jewels, bracelets of her hair,

Lascivious banquets and most eloquent eyes.

All which my heart misconsters° as immodest,

It being pointed for another pole. 70

But hence learn courage, coz.° Why stand you dumb?

Women are women, and may be o’ercome.

Eulinus: Your words are earwigs° to my vexéd brain,

Like henbane° juice or aconite° diffused,

They strike me senseless. 75

My kinsman and Hirildas, to my end,°

But I’ll ne’er call you counsellor or friend. Adieu.

Hirildas: Stay, stay. For now I mean with gentler breath

To waft you to your happy landing place.

Seeing this crocodile pursues me flying, 80

Flies you pursuing, we’ll catch her by a trick.

With promise feigned, I’ll point° a Cupid’s stage,°

But in the night, and secret, and disguised,

Where thou, which art my self,° shalt act my part.

In Venus’ games, all cozening° goes for art.° 85

Eulinus: Blest be these means, and happy the success.

Now ’gin I rear my crest above the moon°

And in those gilded books read lectures of

The feminine sex.° There moves Cassiope,°

Whose garments shine with thirteen precious stones, 90

Types of as many virtues; then her daughter,°

Whose beauty without° Perseus would have tamed

The monstrous fish,° glides with a starry crown;

Then just Astraea° combs her golden hair;

And my Landora can become the skies 95

As well as they. Oh, how my joys do swell!

He mounted not more proud whose burning throne

Kindled the cedar-tops and quaffed whole fountains.°

Fly then, ye wingéd hours, as swift as thought,

Or my desires. Let day’s bright wagoner° 100

Fall headlong and lie buried in the deep,

And, dormouse-like, Alcides’ night° out-sleep.

Good Tethys,° quench his beams, that he ne’er rise

To scorch the Moors, to suck up honey-dews

Or to betray my person.° 105

But prithee, tell, what mistress you adore?

Hirildas: The kind Cordella,° loving and belov’d.

Only some jar of late about a favour

Made me inveigh ’gainst women. Come, away,

Our plots desire the night, not babbling day. 110

Eulinus: We must give way. Here come our reverend bards

To sing in synod,° as their custom is,°

With former chance comparing present deeds.°

Exeunt.

Act 1 Scene 5.

Chorus of five bards laureate, [comprised of] four voices and a harper, attired.

First Song.

1: At the spring

Birds do sing,

Now with high,

Then low cry;

Flat, acute; 5

And salute

The sun born

Every morn.

All: He’s no bard that cannot sing

The praises of the flow’ry spring. 10

2: Flora,° queen,

All in green,

Doth delight

To paint white

And to spread 15

Cruel red

With a blue

Colour true.

All: He’s no bard that cannot sing

The praises of the flow’ry spring. 20

3: Woods renew

Hunter’s hue.

Shepherd’s gray,°

Crowned with bay,°

With his pipe 25

Care doth wipe,°

Till he dream

By the stream.

All: He’s no bard that cannot sing

The praises of the flow’ry spring. 30

4: Faithful loves,

Turtle doves,

Sit and bill

On a hill.

Country swains 35

On the plains

Run and leap,

Turn and skip.

All: He’s no bard that cannot sing

The praises of the flow’ry spring. 40

5: Pan° doth play

Care away.

Fairies small,

Two foot tall,

With caps red 45

On their head,

Dance around°

On the ground.

All: He’s no bard that cannot sing

The praises of the flow’ry spring. 50

6: Phyllis° bright,

Clothed in white,

With neck fair,

Yellow hair,

Rocks doth move 55

With her love

And make mild

Tigers wild.

All: He’s no bard that cannot sing

The praises of the flow’ry spring. 60

Second song.

Thus spend we time in laughter,

While peace and spring do smile,

But I hear a sound of slaughter

Draw nearer to our isle.

Leave then your wonted prattle, 65

The oaten reed° forbear,

For I hear a sound of battle,

And trumpets tear the air.

Let bagpipes die for want of wind,

Let crowd° and harp be dumb. 70

Let little tabor come behind,

For I hear the dreadful drum.

Let no birds sing, no lambkins dance,

No fountains murmuring go.

Let shepherd’s crook be made a lance, 75

For the martial horns do blow.

Exeunt.

Act 2 Scene 1.

[Enter] Cassibelane, Cridous, Britael, Guerthed, Nennius, Belinus, Eulinus, [with] Volusenus

following.

Cassibelane: Heavens favour Cridous, fair Albania’s° king,

And Britael decked with the Demetian° crown.

The same to famous Guerthed, whose command

Embraces woody Ordovic’s° black hills.°

Legate, you may your message now declare. 5

Volusenus: By me, great Caesar greets the Briton state.

This letter speaks the rest.

Cassibelane: Then read the rest.

Volusenus: [Reads] “Caesar, Proconsul° of Gallia, to Cassibelane, King of Britain.

Since Romulus’ race, by will of Jove,

Have stretched their empire wide, 10

From Danube’s° banks, by° Tigris swift,

Unto Mount Atlas’ side,

And provinces and nations strong,

With homage due obey,

We wish that you, hid in the sea, 15

Do likewise tribute pay,

Submitting all unto our wills,

For rashly aiding Gaul,

And noble lads for hostages

Make ready at our call. 20

These, granted, may our friendship gain,

Denied, shall work your woe.

Now take your choice: whether you’d find

Rome as a friend or foe.”

Cassibelane: Bold mandates are unwelcome to free princes. 25

Legate, withdraw; you shall be soon dispatched.

Exit Volusenus.

Cridous: He writes more like a victor than a foe,

Whose greatness, risen from subduéd nations,

Is fastened only with fear’s slippery knot.

Nor can they fight so fierce for wealth or fame, 30

As we for native liberty. With answer rough

Bid him defiance. So thinks Cridous.

Guerthed: Guerthed maintains the same, and on their flesh

I’ll write my answer in red characters.

Britael: Thou ravenous wolf,° imperious monster Rome, 35

Seven-headed hydra,° know we scorn thy threats.

We can oppose thy hills with mounts as high

And scourge usurpers with like cruelty.

And thus thinks Britael.

Eulinus: Let Caesar come. Our land doth rust with ease 40

And wants° an object whose resisting power

May strike out valorous flashes from her veins.

So shadows give a picture life. So flames

Grow brighter by a fanning blast. Nor think

I am a courtier and no warrior-born, 45

Nor love object,° for well my poet° says,

“Militat omnis amans”: each lover is a soldier.

I can join Cupid’s bow and Mars his lance.

A pewter-coat° fits me as well as silk.

It grieves me see our martial spirits trace 50

The idle streets while weapons by their side

Dangle and lash their backs, as t’were to upbraid

Their needless use.° Nor is it glory small

They° set upon us last, when their proud arms

Fathom the land and seas and teach both poles. 55

On then. So great a foe, so good a cause,

Shall make our name more famous. So thinks Eulinus.

Cassibelane: Then, friends and princes, on this blade take oath,

First, to your country, to revenge her wrongs,

And next, to me, as general, to be led 60

With unity and courage.

They kiss the sword.

All: The gods bless Britain and Cassibelane.

Nennius: Now, royal friends, the heirs of mighty Brute,°

You see what storm hangs hovering o’er this land,

Ready to pour down cataclysms° of blood. 65

Let ancient glory then inflame your hearts.

Beyond the craggy hills of grim-faced death,

Bright honour keeps triumphant court, and deeds

Of martial men live there in marble rolls.

Death is but Charon° to the Fortunate Isles,° 70

Porter to fame.°

What though the Roman, armed with foreign spoil,

Behind him lead the conquered world and hope

To sink our island with his army’s weight,

Yet we have gods and men and horse to fight, 75

And we can bravely die. But our just cause,

Your forward loves and all our people edged

With Dardan° spirit, and the powerful name

Of country bid us hope for victory.

We have a world within ourselves,° whose breast 80

No foreigner hath, unrevengèd, pressed

These thousand years. Though Rhine and Rhone can serve°

And envy Thames his never captive stream,

Yet maugre° all, if we ourselves are true,

We may despise what all the earth can do.° 85

Cassibelane: Let’s then dismiss the legate with a frown

And draw our forces toward the sea to join

With the four kings of Kent, and so affront

His first arrival. But, before all, let

Our priests and druids in their hallowed groves 90

Propitiate the gods and scan events

By their mysterious arts.

Exeunt.

Act 2 Scene 2.

[Enter] Eulinus, Hirildas, Rollano.

Hirildas: Well, so. Your tongue’s your own, though drunk or angry.

Rollano: Umh!

[Hirildas] seals his mouth.

Hirildas: Speak not a word upon your life. Be dumb.

Rollano: Umh!

[Hirildas] gives him money.

Hirildas: I’ll winch up thy estate.° Be Harpocrates.° 5

Rollano: Umh!

Hirildas: Thy fortunes shall be double-gilt.° Be midnight.°

Rollano: Umh!

Hirildas: [Aside] An excellent instrument to be the bawd

To his dear lady. [To Rollano] But, Rollano, hark. 10

What words, what looks, did give my letter welcome?

Rollano: Umh!

Hirildas: Nay, now thy silence is antedated.° Speak.

Rollano: Umh!

Hirildas: I give thee leave, I say. Speak. Be not foolish. 15

[Hirildas unseals his mouth.]

Rollano: Then (with your leave), she used,° upon receipt,

No words, but silent joy purpled her face,°

And, seeing your name, straight clapped it to her heart

To print there a new copy, as she’d° say

The words went by her eyes too long a way. 20

Hirildas: You told her my conditions, and my oath

Of silence, and that only you be used?

Rollano: All, sir.

Hirildas: And that this night—

Rollano: Aye, sir.

Hirildas: You guard the door—

Rollano: Aye, sir. 25

Hirildas: But I ne’er mean to come.

Rollano: No, sir? Oh, wretch!

Shall I deceive when she remains so true?

Hirildas: No, thou shall be true,° and she remain deceived.

I’ll lie, and yet I will not lie.° My friend, 30

Eulinus, in my shape, shall climb her bed.

This is the point.° You’ll promise all your aid?

Rollano: Your servant to command, and then reward.

Eulinus: We’ll draw thee meteor-like by our warm favour

Unto the roof and ceiling of the court. 35

We’ll raise thee (hold but fast) on fortune’s ladder.

Exit Rollano.

This fellow is a medley of most lewd

And vicious qualities: a braggart, yet a coward;

A knave, and yet a slave; true to all villainy,

But false to goodness. Yet now I love him 40

Because he stands just in the way of love.°

Hirildas: Coz, I commend you to the Cyprian queen°

Whilst I attend Diana in the forest.

My kinsman Mandubrace and I must try

Our greyhounds’ speed after a light-foot hare. 45

Exit Hirildas.

Eulinus: Oh love, whose nerves unite in equal bonds

This massy frame; thou cement of the world,

By which the orbs and elements agree,°

By which all living creatures joy to be,

And, dying, live in their posterity. 50

Thy holy raptures warm each noble breast,

Sweetly inspiring more soul. Thy delight

Surpasses melody, nectar and all pleasures

Of Tempe,° and of Tempe’s oldest sister,

Elysium°—a banquet of all the senses! 55

By thy commanding power, gods into beasts

And men to gods are changed, as poets say.

When sympathy rules, all like what they obey.

But love triumphs when man and woman meet

In full affection. Double vows then fill 60

His sacred shrine. Yet, this to me denied,

More whets my passion.° Mutual love grows° cold.

Venus, be thou propitious to my wiles

And laugh at lovers’ perjuries and guiles.

Exit.

Act 2 Scene 3.

[Enter] Lantonus, Hulacus [and] two druids, in long robes [with] hats like pyramids [and] branches of mistletoe.

Lantonus: That souls immortal are, I easily grant,

Their future state distinguished, joy or pain,

According to the merits of this life,

But then, I rather think, being free from prison

And bodily contagion, they subsist 5

In places fit for immaterial spirits,

Are not transfused from men to beasts, from beasts

To men again, wheeled round about by change.

Hulacus: And were it not more cruel, to turn out

Poor naked souls stripped of warm flesh, like landlords 10

Bidding them wander? Then (forsooth) imagine

Some unknown cave or coast, whither° all the myriads

Of souls deceased are shipped° and thrust together!

Nay, reason rather says: as at one moment

Some die and some are born, so may their ghosts, 15

Without more cost, serve the succeeding age.

For sure they don’t wear,° to be cast aside,

But enter straight less or more noble bodies,

According to desert of former deeds:

The valiant into lions, coward minds 20

Into weak hares, th’ambitious into eagles,

Soaring aloft, but the perverse and peevish

Are next indeniz’d into° wrinkled apes,

Each vice and virtue wearing seemly shapes.°

Lantonus: So you debase the gods’ most lively image,° 25

The human soul, and rank it with mere brutes,

Whose life, of reason void, ends with their sense.

Enter Belinus.

Belinus: Hail to heaven’s privy counsellors. The king

Desires your judgement of these troublesome times.

Lantonus: The gods foretold these mischiefs long ago. 30

In Eldol’s° reign, the earth and sky were filled

With prodigies, strange sights and hellish shapes:

Sometimes two hosts with fiery lances met,

Armour and horse being heard amid the clouds;

With streamers red, now march these airy warriors, 35

And then a sable hearse-cloth wraps up all,°

And bloody drops speckled the grass, as falling

From their deep-wounded limbs,

Whilst staring comets shook their flaming hair.

Thus all our wars were acted first on high, 40

And we taught what to look for.°

Hulacus: Nature turns° step-dame to her brood and dams

Deny their monstrous issue. Saturn, joined

In dismal league with Mars, portends some change.

Late in a grove by night, a voice was heard 45

To cry aloud, “Take heed, more Trojans come.”°

What may be known or done, we’ll search and help,

With all religious care.°

Belinus: The king and army do expect as much,

That powers divine, perfumed with odour sweet 50

And feasted with the fat of bulls and rams,

Be pleased to bless their plots.

Lantonus: All rites and orisons due shall be performed.

Chiefly, night’s empress° fourfold honour craves,

Mighty in heaven and hell, in woods and waves. ° 55

Exeunt.

Act 2 Scene 4.

[Enter] Caesar, Volusenus, Laberius, soldiers.

Caesar: What land, what people and what answer, show.

Volusenus: We saw a paradise whose bosom teems

With silver ore, whose seas are paved with pearl.°

The meadows richly spread with Flora’s tapestry;

The fields even wonder at their harvest loads.° 5

In crystal streams the scaly nations play,°

Fringed all along with trembling poplar trees.

The sun in summer, loath to leave their sight,

Forgets to sleep, and, glancing,° makes no night.°

Then, for° the men: their statures° tall and big, 10

With blue-stained skins and long black dangling hair,

Promise a barbarous fierceness.° They scarce know,

And much less fear, our empire’s might, but thus

Returned defiance:° [Reads]°

“Cassibelane, King of Britain, to Julius Caesar, Proconsul of Gallia. 15

Seeing your empire’s great, why should it not suffice?

To covet more and more is tyrant’s usual guise.°

To lose what Jove you gave, you’d think it but unjust.

You have your answer then: defend this isle we must,

Which, from the world cut off, and free from her first day, 20

Hath iron more for swords than gold for tribute’s pay.

If amity, and like° fear, succour° to Gaul imparts,

Pardon,° for this small brook could not divide our hearts.°

We hope the gods will help (and fortune back) our cause,

Who take arms but to keep our lives, our wives and laws. 25

As you from Troy, so we our pedigree do claim.

Why should the branches fight when as° the root’s the same?°

Despise us not because the sea and north us close.°

Who can no further go, must turn upon their foes.

Thus, rudely° we conclude: wage war or change your will. 30

We hope to use a lance far better than a quill.”

Caesar: I grieve to draw my sword against the stock

Of thrice-renownéd Troy,° but they are rude°

And must be frighted ere we shall be friends.°

Then let’s aboard and, hoisting sails, convey 35

Two legions over, for I long to view

This unknown land and all their fabulous rites°

And gather margarites° in my brazen cap.°

Nature nor fates can valorous virtue stop.

Laberius: Now Caesar speaks like Caesar: stronger and stronger. 40

Rise like a whirlwind. Tear the mountain’s pride.

Shake thy brass harness, whose loud clattering may

Waken Gradivus where he sleeps on top

Of Haemus,° lulled with° Boreas’ roaring base,

And put to flight this nation with the noise. 45

A fly is not an eagle’s combatant,

Nor may a pygmy with a giant strive.

Exeunt.

Act 2 Scene 5.

[Enter] Cassibelane, Belinus and attendants, [with] Comius following.

Comius: Health and good fortune on Cassibelane tend.

My love to you and Britain waft me hither

To make atonement° ere the Roman leader

Bring fire and spoil and ruin on your heads.

No herb can ever grow where once he treads. 5

Nothing withstands his force. Be not too hardy°

But buy a friend with kindness, lest you buy

His anger dearly.

Cassibelane: Comius, speak no more. He knows our mind.

Comius: Oh, let not rage so blind your judgement but 10

Prevent with ease the hazard of a war—

Of war (a word composed of thousand ills).

Oh, be not cruel to yourselves. I’ll undertake,

Without discredit, to appease his wrath

If you’ll cashier° your soldiers and receive 15

Him like a guest, not like an enemy.

Cassibelane: False-hearted Gaul, dar’st thou persuade e’en me

For to betray my people to the sword?

Now know I thou art sent for to solicit

Our princes to rebel, to learn our strength. 20

Lay hands on him: a spy.

All: A spy, a spy, a traitor and a spy.

They chain him.

Comius: Is this the guerdon° of my loving care?

You break the laws of nature, nations, friends.

But look for due revenge at Caesar’s hand. 25

Cassibelane: Expect° in prison thy revenge. Away with him.

Exit Comius.

Belinus, have you mustered up our forces?

Belinus: Yes, if it please your highness.

Cassibelane: And what are the particulars?

Belinus: First, Cridous leads from the Albanian realm, 30

Where Grampius’° ridge divides the smiling dales,

Five thousand horse, and twenty thousand foot,

Three thousand chariots manned. The Brigants° come,

Decked with blue-painted shields, twelve thousand strong.

Under the conduct of Demetia’s prince, 35

March twice three thousand, armed with pelts° and glaves,°

Whom the Silures° flank, eight thousand stout,

Greedy of fight, born soldiers the first day,

Whose gray-goose-wingèd shafts ne’er flew in vain.

Then Guerthed, mounted on a shag-hair steed, 40

Full fifteen thousand brings, both horse and foot,

Of desperate Ordovicians, whose use° is

To rush half-naked on their foes, enraged

With a rude noise of pipes.

Your province bounded with that boiling stream 45

Where Sabrine°—lovely damsel—lost her breath,°

And with curled-pated Humber, Neptune’s heir,

Affords eight thousand cars,° with hooks and scythes,

And fifty thousand expert men of war

(All brave Logrians, armed with pike and spear), 50

Each nation being distinguished into troops,

With gaudy pennons° flickering in the air.

Beside these, Kent is up in arms, to blunt

The edge of their first furious shock.

Cassibelane: We’ll now invite them° to a martial feast, 55

Carving with falchions° and carousing healths

In their lives’ moisture. Well returned, Androgeus.

Enter Androgeus.

Have you obtained, or is your suit denied?

Androgeus: Our message told unto the Scots, their king,

With willing sympathy, levies a band: 60

Ten thousand footmen, whose strange appetites

Murder and then devour and dare gnaw and suck

Their enemies’ bones. Conducted thence, we saw

The Pictish court and, friendly° entertained,

Receive eight thousand, whose most ugly shapes, 65

Painted like bears and wolves° and brinded° tigers,°

May kill and stonify° without all weapons.

More aid they promise, if more need. These forces,

Led by Cadallan, hither march with speed.

Cassibelane: ’Tis well. Our kings consent for common good. 70

When all are joined, we shall o’er-spread the hills,

And, soldiers thicker than the sand on shore,

Hide all the landing coasts. Ere next day break,

The rocks shall answer what the drum doth speak.

Exeunt.

Act 2 Scene 6.

[Enter] Hulacus, Lantonus, ministers.

Lantonus: That ceremonious fear,° which bends the heart

Of mortal creatures and displays itself

In outward signs of true obedience,

As° prayer, kneeling, sacrifice and hymns,

Requires again help from immortal deities 5

As promise, not as debt. We laud° their names;

They give us blessings and forgive our blames.

Thus, gods and men do barter. What in piety

Ascends, as much descends again in pity—

A golden chain reaching from heaven to earth. 10

Hulacus: And now’s the time, good brother, of their aid,°

When danger’s black face frowns upon our state.

Away, away, ye hearts and tongues profane;

Without devotion, mysteries are vain.°

They kneel, elevate hands thrice.

Lantonus: Draw near, ye heavenly powers 15

Who dwell in starry bowers,

And ye who in the deep

On mossy pillows sleep,

And ye who keep the centre

Where never light did enter, 20

And ye whose habitations

Are still among the nations,

To see and hear our doings

(Our births, our wars, our wooings).

Behold our present grief. 25

Belief doth beg relief.

Both: (going around) By the vervain° and lunary,°

By fern-seed° planetary,°

By the dreadful mistletoe°

Which doth on holy oak grow. ° 30

Draw near, draw near, draw near.

Hulacus: Help us, beset with danger,

And turn away your anger.

Help us, begirt with trouble,

And now your mercy double. 35

Help us, oppressed with sorrow,

And fight for us tomorrow.

Let fire consume the foe-man.

Let air infect the Roman.

Let seas entomb their fury. 40

Let gaping earth them bury.

Let fire and air and water

And earth conspire their slaughter.

Both: [going around] By the vervain and lunary,

By fern-seed planetary, 45

By the dreadful mistletoe

Which doth on holy oak grow.

Draw near, draw near, draw near.

Help us, help us, help us.

Lantonus: We’ll praise then your great power, 50

Each month, each day, each hour,

And blaze in lasting story,

Your honour and your glory.

High altars lost in vapour,

Young heifers free from labour, 55

White lambs for suck still crying

Shall make your music, dying.

The boys and girls around,

With honeysuckles crowned,

The bards with harp and rhyming, 60

Green bays their brows entwining,

Sweet tune and sweeter ditty

Shall chant your gracious pity.

Both: [going around] By the vervain and lunary,

By fern-seed planetary, 65

By the dreadful mistletoe

Which doth on holy oak grow.

Draw near, draw near, draw near.

We’ll praise, we’ll praise, we’ll praise.

The image of the moon (the shrine) opens.

Hulacus: Fix, holy brother, now your prayers on one: 70

Britain’s chief patroness.° With humble cry,

Let us invoke the moon’s bright majesty.°

They kneel.

Lantonus: Thou, queen of heaven, commandress of the deep,

Lady of lakes, regent of woods and deer,

A lamp dispelling irksome night, the source 75

Of generable° moisture,° at whose feet,

With garments blue and rushy garlands dressed,

Wait twenty thousand naiads. Thy crescent

Brute elephants adore,° and man doth feel

Thy force run through the zodiac of his limbs.° 80

Oh, thou first guide of Brutus to this isle,°

Drive back these proud usurpers from this isle.

Whether the name of Cynthia’s silver globe

Or chaste Diana with a gilded quiver

Or dread Proserpina, stern Dis° his spouse, 85

Or soft Lucina, called in child-bed throes,

Doth thee delight—rise with a glorious face,

Green drops of Nereus° trickling down thy cheeks,

And with bright horns, united in full orb,

Toss high the seas, with billows beat the banks, 90

Conjure up Neptune and the Aeolian slaves,°

Contract both night and winter in a storm,°

That° Romans lose their way and sooner land

At sad Avernus° than at Albion’s strand.

So mayst thou shun the dragon’s head and tail.° 95

So may Endymion° snort° on Latmian bed.°

So may the fair game fall before thy bow.

Shed light on us, but lightning on our foe.

Hulacus: Methinks a gracious lustre spreads her brow,

And with a nod she ratifies our suit. 100

[Voice] within [the shrine]: Come near and take this oracle.

Lantonus: Behold, an oracle flies out from her shrine,

Which both the king and state shall see before

We dare unfold it.

Exeunt.

Act 2 Scene 7.

[Enter] Brennus’s ghost [and] Nennius in night-robes.

Brennus: Follow me.

Nennius: “Follow”? What means that word?° Who art? Thy will?°

Brennus: Follow me, Nennius.

Nennius: He names me. Sure it is some friend which speaks.

I’ll follow thee, though’t be through Stygian lakes. 5

Brennus: ’Tis ancient Brennus calls, whose victories

Europe and Asia felt, and still record.

Dear Nennius, now’s the time to steel thy courage.

Canst thou behold thy mother° captive, then

Look back upon thy ancestors, enrolled 10

Among the worthies,° who spread wide her fame?

First let thy eyeballs pour out poisoned beams

And kill them with disdain who dare but lift

Their hand against her. No! No consul must

Boast of her thralldom and out-brave our walls. 15

I wonder that such impudent owls should gaze

Against the splendor of our British cliffs.

Play thou a second Brennus. Let thy lance,

Like an Herculean club, two monsters tame:

Rome’s avarice and pride. So, come life or death, 20

Let honour have the incense° of thy breath.

Exit.

Nennius: Farewell, heroic soul. Thou shalt not blush

At Nennius’ deeds. The smallest drop of fame

Is cheap if death and dangers may it buy.

Yet give thy words new vigour to my spirits 25

And spur the Pegasus of my mounting thoughts.

I’ll follow thee o’er piles of slaughtered foes

And knock at Pluto’s gate. I come. Come life or death,

Honour, to thee I consecrate my breath.

Exit.

[Enter] Caesar, [with] Camillus’s ghost following.

Camillus: Julius, stay here. Thy friend Camillus speaks. 30

Caesar: Oh, thou preserver of our present race,

Our city’s second founder!° What dire fate

Troubles thy rest that thou shouldst trouble mine?

Camillus: Only to bid thee fight.

Caesar: Thou shalt not need.

Camillus: And bid thee take a full revenge on this, 35

This nation° which did sack and burn down Rome,

Quenching the coals with blood, and kicked our ashes,

Trampling upon the ruins of our state,

Then led the Gauls in triumph thorough° Greece,

To fix their tents beside Euxinus’ gulf.° 40

Caesar: Is this that northern rout,° the scourge of kingdoms,

Whose names, till now unknown, we judgéd Gauls,

Their tongue and manners not unlike?

Camillus: Gauls were indeed the bulk, but Brennus led

(Then brother to the Briton king)° those armies, 45

Backed with great troops of warlike islanders.

To thee belongs° to render bad for ill.

Oh, be my spirit doubled in thy breast,

With all the courage of three Scipios,°

Marius° and Sylla,° that° this nation, fierce 50

In feats of war, be forced to bear our yoke.

Exit.

Caesar: So mayst thou sweetly rest, as I shall strive

To trace your steps.° Nor let me live if I

Thence° disappointed ever seem to fly.

Exit.

Act 2 Scene 8.

[Enter] Chorus.

First song.

Ancient bards have sung,

With lips dropping honey

And a sugared tongue,

Of our worthy knights:

How Brute did giants tame,° 5

And, by Isis’° current,

A second Troy did frame

(A centre of delights);

Locrinus, eldest son,°

Did drown the furious Hun° 10

But burnt himself with Elstrid’s love;°

Leil, rex pacificus;°

Eliud,° judicious

How heavenly bodies roll above;°

Wise Bladud founded hath 15

Both soul and body’s Bath°

(Like Icarus, he flew);°

How first Molmutius wears

A golden crown, ° whose heirs

More than half the world subdue.° 20

[Enter soldiers]

Second song.

Thou nurse of champions, oh, thou spring

Whence chivalry did flow;

Thou diamond of the world’s great ring,°

Thy glorious virtue show.

Thou many a lord hast bred, 25

In catalogue of fame read,°

And still we have

As captains brave

As° ever Britons led.

Then dub a dub dub.° 30

The soldiers join [with] tantara.°

Chorus: Cassibelane, with armour gay

And strongly couchèd lance,

His courser° white, turned into bay,°

On carcasses shall prance.

What a crimson stream the blade 35

Of Nennius’ sword hath made.°

Black Allia’s day°

And Canae’s fray°

Have for a third long stayed.°

Then dub a dub, dub. 40

The soldiers join [with] tantara.

[Exeunt.]

Act 3 Scene 1.

Noise of ships landing and the battle within. [Enter] Caesar, Volusenus, Laberius, Atrius, ensign, drums, flag.

Caesar: Our landing cost us dearly, many lives

Between the ships and shore being sacrificed.

Our men with heavy armour clogged, and ignorant

Of all the flats and shallows, were compelled

To wade and fight, like Tritons: half above, 5

Half under water.° Now we surer tread

Though much diminished by so many lost.

Come on. Come on.

They march and go out.

[Enter] Cassibelane, Cridous, Britael, Guerthed, the four kings of Kent, Nennius, Androgeus, Themantius, Eulinus, Hirildas, Belinus, Rollano, ensigns, drum. A march [plays].

Cassibelane: So let them land. No matter which they choose—

Fishes or crows—to be executors;° 10

They’ll find the land as dangerous as the sea.

The nature of our soil won’t bear a Roman,

As Irish earth doth poison poisonous beasts.°

On then. Charge close, before they gather head.

Nennius: Brother, advance. On this side, I’ll lead up 15

The new-come succours° of the Scots and Picts.

They march and go out.

[Enter] Caesar [accompanied.]

Caesar: What, still fresh supplies come thronging from their dens?

The nest of hornets is awake. I think,

Here’s nature’s shop.° Here men are made, not born,

Nor stay nine tedious months, but in a trice 20

Sprout up like mushrooms at war’s thunderclap.°

We must make out a way.°

Exeunt.

[Enter] Rollano, armed cap-a-pie.°

Rollano: Since I must fight, I am prepared to fight,

And much enflamed with noise of trump and drum.

Methinks I am turned lion and durst meet 25

Ten Caesars. Where° all these covetous rogues

Who spoil the rich for gain and kill the poor

For glory?° Blood-suckers and public robbers.

Laberius enters. Rollano retires afraid but, [Laberius] being gone out, [Rollano] goes forward [again].

Rollano: Nay, stay, and brag Rollano did thee kill.

Stay, let me flesh my sword° and wear thy spoils. 30

Laberius re-enters with an ensign.

Laberius: Come, will ye forsake your ensign and fall off?°

I call to witness all the gods: I here

Perform my duty. Thou canst not ’scape.

Rollano would fly, fights, falls as [though] wounded.

Now die, or yield thyself.

Rollano: I yield, I yield. Oh, save my life, I yield. 35

I am no Briton, but by chance come hither.

I’ll never more lift weapon in their quarrel.

Laberius: How may I trust your faith?

Rollano: Command me any thing.

Laberius: Lay down your neck.

Treads on it.

Give up your sword. 40

Beats him with it.

Base coward, live.° Such foes will ne’er do hurt.

Exit Laberius.

Enter Eulinus, Androgeus [and] Belinus, with bloody swords.

Eulinus: Rollano, what, at stand?° Pursue the chase.

Rollano: I made their strongest captain fly. This hand,

This martial hand, I say, did make him fly.

Eulinus: Some silly scout. 45

Rollano: He was a match for Cyclops. At each step,

The ground danced, and his nostrils blew the dust;

Armed as the god of battle pictured is.°

Eulinus: What were his looks?

Rollano: His brows were like a stormy winter night, 50

When Juno, scolding, and Mars, malcontent,

Disturb the air. At each look, lightning flies.

Jove ’gainst the giants needed but his eyes.°

Eulinus: How eloquent is fear!

Rollano: So came he stalking with a beam-like spear. 55

I gave the onset then received his charge,

And next blow cleft his morion.° So, he flies.

Eulinus: Oh, bravely done. Here comes a straggling soldier.

Enter Laberius.

Rollano: ’Tis he! ’Tis he! I care not for vainglory.

It’s sweeter live than dead to be a story.° 60

[He] runs away.

Eulinus: Oh, valiant coward, stay. There’s not a spark

Of British spirit doth enlive° thy corpse.

Exeunt.

Act 3 Scene 2.

Nennius, pursuing.

Nennius: Fight, Britons, fight. The day is ours. I’m cloyed

And glutted e’en with slaughter. There some fly,°

And, flying, die, and, dying, mangled lie.

I twice broke through the ranks, yet cannot find

That vent’rous captain Caesar, on whose breast 5

I long to try my blade and prick that bladder

Puffed with ambition and victorious fight.

Caesar enters.

Caesar: We may confess they come of Trojan kind;

A hundred valiant Hectors here we find.

Nennius: Fairly encountered. Let our blades discuss 10

Who hath the justest cause, and on this combat

May Victory her equal balance hang.

Caesar: Thou seem’st a worthy prince, and Caesar’s match.

They fight. [Caesar] wounds Nennius in the head, who staggers, fights, and recovers Caesar’s fallen sword, and puts him to flight.°

Nennius: Stay, stay. Thou art at home. Here’s Campus Martius.°

The Britons, sought-for, see thy frighted back.° 15

Return and take possession of our isle,

And by thy death be styled Britannicus.°

Leave not thy blade unsheathed. A tyrant’s heart

To his own sword a scabbard should impart.°

Ye senators and gaily-gowned Quirites,° 20

Open the Capitol’s ivory gates and lead

Fat bulls with garlands green and gilded horns.

Let supplications last for twice ten days—

Caesar returns a victor.

Prepare the laureate coach and snow-white steeds, 25

Embroidered canopy and scarlet gowns;°

Let altars smoke, and tholes° expect our spoils—

Caesar returns in triumph: basely flies

And leaves his conquest in weak infancy.°

For had he won this coast, yet many blows 30

Must pass, ere he could pass the Thames. And then,

Ere he touch Humber, many nations° must

Be tamed. And then, before he Tweed can drink

And climb the craggy rocks of Caledon,°

A life is° spent, yea, many thousand lives. 35

Oh, my wound rages, and tormented brain

Doth labour of a fury, not a Pallas.°

This blade was steeped in poison. Oh, I’m poisoned!

Well didst thou fly, ° or I had made thee taste

Thine own provision.° Now my wrath and pain 40

With double force shall flow in purple streams.

The three infernal ladies° with wire whips

And speckled snakes shall lackey close° my steps,

Whilst that I offer hecatombs° of men.

The Latian shepherd’s brood° shall ban° those stars 45

Whose glimmering sparks° led their audacious pines°

To lie so far from home in foreign soil.°

When cedars fall, whole woods are crushed, nor die

Can Nennius private without company.

Enter Laberius.

Thou runn’st upon thy death. 50

Laberius: A Roman never daunted was with looks,

Else had not Sarmatian° and Libyan° bugbears°

Been captive led in chains.

Nennius: But our looks kill.

[They] fight. Laberius falls.°

Die slave, by Caesar’s sword. Thou art his friend;

Die as the ransom of his greater ghost, 55

And learn as well as I how venom smarts.

Be thou my post to the Tartarian prince°

And tell him Nennius comes. But first, I’ll send

More of you headlong home a nearer way

Than by the cloudy Alps. 60

Exit. A retreat [is] sounded.

Act 3 Scene 3.

[Enter] Cassibelane, Belinus, Lantonus.

Cassibelane: Now hot alarums die in fainter notes.

Tempestuous night is gone. Victorious joy

(As when pale Eos° cleaves the eastern fogs

And, blushing more and more, opes half her eye,

With holy water° sprinkling all the meads, 5

Whose clear reflex° serves as her morning glass)

Doth paint with gaudy plumes the checkered sky.

The only° name of victory sounds sweeter,

Than all mellifluous rhetoric.

Lantonus: Thanks to Andates,° whose power kingdoms feel. 10

Andates, greatest goddess, in whose train

Fear, red-faced anger and confusions wheel.

Murder and desolation run before,

But joyful shouts, mirth, olive-budding peace

And laurel-crowned triumph, at her back, 15

Do pace with stately steps. Thy temple is

The earth, where furious monarchs play the priests;

Armies of men imbrue° thy altar-stones.

Thanks also to the trident-shaker’s mace,

Drawn by two ramping° sea-horses, at whose beck° 20

The waters, wrinkled, frown or smoothly smile.

But thou, heaven’s diamond,° fair Phoebus’ sister,

Nor Delian dames° nor the Ephesian towers°

Shall blazon more thy praise. Thy influence strong°

Struck up the sandy ooze, that madding waves 25

Battered their ships and dashed their bended sails

And, with a tempest, turned them round in scorn.°

Cassibelane: But where’s the answer which her idol gave?

Can you expound the sense?

Lantonus: Dread sovereign, thus runs the oracle: 30

“Loud doth the king of beasts roar;

High doth the queen of birds° soar,

But her wings, clipped, soon grow out;

Both° repent they are so stout°

Till “C” ’gainst “C” strike a round, ° 35

In a perfect circle bound.”°

The meaning, wrapped up in cross,° doubtful terms,

Lies yet thus open: that disastrous fate

Must be the prologue to a joyful close.

The rest we’ll search out if our skill don’t fail. 40

Belinus: Renowned Cassibelane, might my counsel speak!

Cassibelane: I know thy loyal heart and prudent head,

Upon whose hairs time’s child, experience, hangs

(A milk-white badge of wisdom), and canst wield

Thy tongue in senate and thy hands in field. 45

Speak free, Belinus.

Belinus: We forfeit fame and smother° victory

By idle lingering. The foe, discomfited,

Must needs be much amazed. His ships, dismembered,°

Do piecemeal float upon the waves. The horse° 50

Whose succour he expects are beaten back

By friendly winds.° His camp contracted is

(A tithe of° soldiers left, the rest all slain),

His chief munition spent or lost. Provision

(An army’s soul), but° what we give, he wants.° 55

What then shall hinder to destroy their name,°

So none again shall venture, but our isle

Rounded with Nereus’ girdle° may enjoy

Eternal peace?

Cassibelane: I like thy warning. With united stroke 60

Of all our nations, we’ll his camp beleaguer,

Devouring ships and men. But one mischance,

My brother’s wound (his mortal wound I fear),

Turns all to wormwood.° Why were ye dumb, ye idols?

No sainted° statue did foretell this grief. 65

Come, let’s go visit him. You may, lord general,

Set Comius free. We love not to insult

But render good for ill.

Exeunt.

Act 3 Scene 4.

[Enter] Caesar, Volusenus, [accompanied].

Caesar: Heaven, sea and wind and all the elements

Conspire to work us harm. Our ships in Gaul,

Wind-bound, at length put forth and come in view,

Are tossed and torn. Our navy on° the shore

With civil discord break each other’s planks.° 5

The airy rulers° are displeased. All day,

Noises and nimble° flashes mixed with rain

Amaze° our soldiers.

To make grief full, my daughter’s death I hear.°

When, powerful Fortune,° will thy anger cease? 10

Never till now did Caesar Fortune fear.

Mount Palatine,° thou throne of Jove,° and ye°

Whose lesser turrets pinnacle Rome’s head,

Are all your deities fled? Or was I bold°

To out-go nature° and our empire stretch 15

Beyond her limits? Pardon then my fault.

Or do we basely faint?° Or is our might

Answered with like, since Troy ’gainst Troy doth fight?

Nor can I write now, “I came over, and

I overcame”;° such foes deny such haste.° 20

Volusenus: The islanders consult, and sure° intend

Some sudden stratagem. And now the scales

Poise equal day and night,° when rougher seas

And stormy Pleiads may our passage stop.°

Caesar: Then sirs, to ship. Compelled, I leave this land 25

But° to return, if gods do not withstand.°

Exeunt.

Act 3 Scene 5.

[Enter] Cassibelane, Belinus, Lantonus [and] Nennius in a chair.

Nennius: We won the day, and all our foes are fled?

Belinus: Yes, noble Nennius. Scattered on the shore,

Thick lay the Latins, and the glutted stream

Spews up her dead, whom death hath taught to swim

Though ignorant alive. Their flowing blood 5

Made a new Red Sea. But those few we lost,

Sweetly reposed upon their mother’s breast,

And wounded all before,° kept in their face

A warlike frown.°

Nennius: Where is false Caesar’s° sword, called Crocea Mors,° 10

Which never hurt, but killed? Let it be placed

Within my tomb.°

Belinus: Here is the fatal blade.

Nennius: Death like a Parthian° flies, and, flying, kills.

In midst of conquest came my deadly wound.

Accursed weapon, more accursed man, 15

Who serpent-like in poison bathes his sting.

Tiber doth breed as venomous beasts as Nile.°

We scorn such cruel craft.° But death draws near.

A giddy horror seizeth on my brain.

Dear brother and thou,° holy priest of heaven, 20

Witness my words: I leave my country free

And die a victor. Thus, with lighter wing,

My purified soul mounts to her first best cause.°

I long even to behold those glorious cloisters

Where Brutus, great Dunwallo and his sons, 25

Thrice noble spirits, walk.°

Thou mighty enginer° of this wondrous globe,

Protect this isle, confound all foreign plots;

Grant Thames and Tiber never join their channels,

But may a natural hate derived from us 30

Live still in our long-trailèd progeny.°

(My eyes do swim in death.)

Before this land shall wear the Roman yoke,

Let first the adamantine axle crack,

Which binds the ball terrestrial to her poles,° 35

And dash the empty air; let planets drop

Their scalding jelly and, all flame being spent,

Entomb the world in everlasting smoke.

Come faster, death. I can behold thy grim

And ugly jaws with quiet mind. Now, now, 40

I hear sweet music, and my spirit flies.

He dies.

Cassibelane: His breath is gone who was his country’s prop

And my right hand. Now only doth he crave

To see him° laid with honour in the grave.

[Exeunt.]

Act 3 Scene 6.

[Enter] Eulinus, Hirildas.

Eulinus: A mind content, oh, ’tis a mind of pearl,

A mint of golden thoughts, a heaven on earth!

When eager longer meet full but their scope,

And hopes are actuated beyond hope.°

So Jason joyed,° the golden fleece obtained;° 5

So Hercules joyed, the golden fruit being gained;

So Venus joyed, the golden ball to hold;

So Midas joyed, when he turned all to gold;

So, and much more, rejoiced the Phrygian swain,°

When he conveyed the fairest (except mine) 10

Which air did ever kiss. His brazen keel,

Proud of° her burden, sliced the capering brine.

The Tritons blew their horns, and sea-gods dance;°

Before, behind, about his ship,° they prance.

The mermaids skip on high but to compare 15

Their dangling tresses with her silken hair.

These° were but shadows° of my bliss. A robe

Of pure beatitude° wraps me round about,

Without a speck or blemish, nor can invention

Wish more unto me than I have: Landora. 20

I’m rich, free, learnèd, honoured, all, in this.

Who dares conceive against the female sex

But one base thought? Lo, here I stand, their champion,

And will maintain he is a beast, a devil,

Begot between a bitch-wolf and an incubus.° 25

Women—all good, all perfect, and all gracious

Men-making creatures, angels clad in flesh—

Let me adore your name.

Hirildas: And let me speak.

Why, Landora loves not you, but me in you.°

Eulinus: But I in you° enjoy Landora’s love. 30

Hirildas: But she enjoys not your love, cause unknown.°

Eulinus: No matter I in you, or you in me,

So that° I still possess my dearest dear.

A paltry fancy last night in her bed

Turmoiled my thoughts, which since I shaped in rhymes, thus… 35

Hirildas: Prithee, let’s hear. I know thou art turned poet.

Eulinus: [reads] “The Dream.

Night having drawn the curtain, down I lie

By one°; for worse,° Saturnius° left the sky.

Slumb’ring at last (for love can hardly sleep), 40

Straight-ways I dreamed (for love doth revels keep°):

A damsel fair, and fashioned for delight

(Our day-born objects do return at night),

With flow’ry chaplet and red velvet gown,

Which from her breast was fastened along down 45

With rich enamelled locks, all which one key,

Whose bright gold ’bout her silver neck did play,

Could open and divorce. A veil most fair

(Such whiteness only Paphian doves° do wear)

With false light did her beauteous front improve. 50

From this arch,° Cupid shot his darts of love.

With gentle strain,° she took me by the hand

(Touches in love do more than tongue’s command),

Then leads me with an amorous smile along

(He’s easily led whom beauty draws, more strong 55

Than cable-ropes). An altar we descry,

Where frankincense and amber fumes did fly

In little rolling° curls. A reverend priest,

With snowy beard waving upon his breast,

There kneeling, did his eyes in sorrow steep, 60

Whose passionate cry made me, though ignorant,° weep.

Phlegon’s° hot breath no sooner licks up dew

Than joy had dried those tears, for, lo, I view

A circular room,° all built with marble dear—

The title: “Nature’s Storehouse”. Most strange here 65

It seemed. I know not how we came, nor whence,

Nor any passage saw to get from thence,

But, oh, the rich delight and glorious fire

Which dazzled me, no heart can more desire.

Her first, my guide, oped her spice-breathing door:° 70

“Ask what thou wilt, this is the ark of store.°

No vows are here repulsed,” she said. But I,

Surprised with extreme joy and ecstasy,

By chance a scorpion’s tail behind her spied°

(Pity, such° beauty such° a monster hide). 75

Trembling, yet silent, doubtful what to crave;°

Lo, wit a stink and fearful screech, this brave°

And glorious dame doth vanish, and a dart,°

Which still I quake at, struck me to the heart.

But, waking, I revived, and found in bed 80

Such sovereign balm would cure old Pelias° dead.”°

Hirildas: Ha, ha. Your tedious dream hath made me drowsy.

But hark, we must attend the funeral pomp.

[Exeunt.]

Act 3 Scene 7.

The funeral [cortege, including Cassibelane,] passes over the stage.° Nennius’s escutcheon° [and] armour, [and] Caesar’s sword borne; [the procession includes figures carrying] torches [and other] mourners.

Cassibelane: Set down that heavy load with heavier hearts.°

Could virtuous valour, honourable thoughts,°

A noble scorn of fortune, pride and death,

Myriads of vows and prayers sent to heaven…

Could country’s love or Britain’s genius° save 5

A mortal man from sleeping in his grave,

Then hadst thou lived, great Nennius, and outlived

The smooth-tongued Greek.° But we may more envy,

And less bewail, thy loss, since thou didst fall

On honour’s lofty field-bed,° on which stage 10

Never did worthy° act a statelier part.

Nor durst pale death approach with cypress° sad,

Till flourishing bay° thy conquering temples clad.

A funeral elegy [is] sung to the harp.

Mourners: Turnus° may conceal his name,

Nennius had Aeneas’ fame.° 15

Hannibal, let Afric’ smother,

Nennius was great Scipio’s brother.°

Greece, forbear Achilles’ story,

Nennius had brave Hector’s glory.°

Thrush and nightingale be dumb, 20

Sorrowful songs befit a tomb.

Turn, ye marble stones, to water.°

Isis’ nymphs,° forswear all laughter,

Sigh and sob upon your bed,

Heli’s° noble son is dead. 25

A banquet [is] served over the stage. [Enter] Rollano with a leg of a capon and a tankard of wine.

Rollano: I like such slaughtering well of birds and beasts,

Which wear no swords, nor shake a fatal pike,

When hogsheads bleed, and oxen, mangled, lie.

Oh, what a world of victuals is prepared

For sacrifice and feasting. Forty thousand 30

Fat bullocks! Then the parks and forests send

Full thirty thousand wild beasts, armed with horns

And dangerous teeth; the main battalion

Consists of sheep (a hundred thousand, fat);

The wings° are both supplied with birds and fowls, 35

Sans number, and some fish for succours serve—

A goodly army.° Troynovant doth smoke

And smells all like a kitchen. The king, princes

And nobles of the land a triumph hold.°

Music and songs, good cheer and wine; and wine 40

And songs, and music and good cheer. Hey, brave!°

No more shall barley broth° pollute my throat,

But nectar—nectar of the grapes’ sweet blood.

Come, heavenly potion—wine, whose gentle warmth

Softens the brain, unlocks the silent tongue; 45

Wit’s midwife, and our spirits’ vestal priest, °

Keeping alive the natural heat. A health,

A health (to make short work)° to all the world,

So will it sure go round.

[He] steals behind.°

The triumphs.° Cassibelane, [the] four Kings of Kent, Cridous, Britael, Guerthed, Androgeus, Themantius, Hirildas, Eulinus, Belinus take [their] places.

Cassibelane: Sorrow must doff her sable weeds, and joy 50

Furbish the court with fresh and vernant° colours,

Else should we seem ungrateful to the gods.°

Triumphs° must thrust out obsequies, and tilt

With tourney° and our ancient sport called Troy, °

Such as Iulus,° ‘bout his grandsire’s tomb, 55

Did represent,° and, at each temple’s porch,

Games, songs and holy murdering of beasts.

They sit down. A dancing masque of six° enters. Then the epinicion° [is] sung by two bards:

1 bard: The Roman eagle, threat’ning woe,

The sea did shadow with her wing,

But our goose-quills° did prick her so, 60

That from the clouds they down her bring.

Both: Sing then, ye hills and dales, so so° clear,

That Io Paean° all may hear.

1 bard: They° may us call Isles Fortunate.°

They sought for life here, not for fame.° 65

All° yield to them, they° to our state.

The world knows but our double name.°

Both: Sing then, ye streams and woods, so so clear,

That Io Paean all may hear.

Androgeus and Themantius play at foils.° Then Hirildas and Eulinus play.

Eulinus: ’Twas foully played.°

Hirildas: You lie. ’Twas fairly hit. 70

Eulinus: I’ll give a quittance.°

Hirildas: Do your worst, vain braggart.

They take swords° [and] fight. Hirildas [is] slain.

Oh, I am slain.

Cassibelane: Hold, hold. My nephew’s slain before my face.

Life shall be paid with life.

Androgeus: He° shall not die. °

Cassibelane: “Shall not”? Your king and uncle says he shall. 75

Eulinus: No kingly menace or censorious frown

Do I regard (tanti° for all your power),

But the compunction of my guilt doth send

A shuddering chillness through my veins enflamed.

Why do ye stare, ye grisly powers of night? 80

There, there, his soul goes. I must follow him.

Offers to kill himself, is hindered.

Androgeus: He was provoked and did it in defence,

And, being my kinsman, shall be judged by laws

Of Troynovant. Such custom claims our court.°

Cassibelane: No custom shall bar justice. I command 85

That he appear before us.

Androgeus: Trials are vain when passion sits as judge.

Cassibelane: I’ll soon rebate this insolent disdain.

Exeunt Androgeus, Themantius, Eulinus.

Let not this dismal chance deface our joy,

Most royal friends. 90

Cridous: War being silenced, and Enyo’s° rage

In hell fast fettered, sound we now retreat,

That soldiers may re-greet their household gods,

Their children cling about their armèd thighs.

Britael: And place their trophies ’bout their smoky halls. 95

There, hang a gauntlet bright, here, a stabbed buckler;°

Pile up long pikes° and, in that corner, plant

A weighty sword, brandished by some centurion.

Not he who ne’er on snaky perils trod,

But happy he who hath them stoutly passed,° 100

For danger’s sauce gives joy a better taste.

Guerthed: Great monarch, if thy summons call us back,

We tender here our service, men and arms,

As duty bids and binds.

Cassibelane: Should he° return, our province dares him front.° 105

So, a most kind adieu unto all three.

Exeunt Cridous, Britael, Guerthed.

Cingetorix, Carvilius, Taximagulus, Segonax…

I know your faithful love. Kent’s fourfold head

Will check rash rebels and as firmly stand

As hearty oaks, who bear off Aeolus’ blows

And with a whistle but deride his force.° 110

Exeunt [the] four kings of Kent.

Burst, gall,° and dye my actions in flame-colour.°

I saw Hirildas fall and breathe his soul

Even in my face, as though hell watched a time°

To crush° our pomp and glory into sighs.

The conduits of his vital spring,° being ripped, 115

Spurtle’d° my robes, soliciting revenge. Belinus,

Attach° the murderer, and if abettors

Deny obedience, then, with sword and fire,

Waste their dominions. For a traitor’s sake,

Whole towns shall tremble and the ground shall quake. 120

Exeunt.

Act 3 Scene 8.

[Enter] Androgeus, Themantius, Mandubrace.°

Androgeus: Shall Justice° and just Libra° ne’er forsake

Th’embroidered belt?° No sign of them on earth?

Are gods dim-sighted grown, or do they sleep

The morning and carouse the afternoon,

That mortal motions tumble thus by chance? 5

Cleave, thou blue marble ceiling, that heaven’s king,

With clearer aim, may strike a tyrant’s crown,

Nor spend his brimstone° bullets ’gainst some hill

Or innocent° pine.

Mandubrace: Your injuries run low. Mine break all bounds: 10

My father butchered at his lawless will,

I banished from my lands, deposed from rule,

Owing my life to night and flight.°

Themantius: I do confess, you may complain aloud

And tear the element° with a dolorous note, 15

Call down Astraea from her crystal chair

Or call up Nemesis° from the direful deep

To expiate your wrongs.

Else would the manes° of your father slain,

In a white sheet come sliding to your bed 20

And be revenged on you.° He gave you life.

How can you better spend it than to wreak°

His death and slaughter? [To Androgeus] But our case and cause°,

Brother, is not the same:° Eulinus slew

His innocent friend, and we defend the fact,° 25

With hostile noise drowning law’s reverent voice,

But murder out-cries both.° Give me, then, leave

To be a neutral. My young years, unfit

For any desperate course, can but complain

The king, our uncle, doth not use us well. 30

Exit.

Androgeus: Usurpers use this method still:° at first

He, as protector, slyly got the stern,

During our nonage.° Then the commons’ voice

(Bought with a fawning brow and popular grace°),

Confirms his regiment,° we° appointed shares, 35

With empty titles to beguile our thoughts,

Like puppet-lords, dressed up with crown and scarf,°

Glad that we live and hunt and reign o’er brutes.°

Our uncle is the king who, when he saw

His throne established and his foes repulsed, 40

Grown big° with prosperous fortune, proudly spurns

All fear of God or man.°

Mandubrace: His anger, nursed by jealousies,° must feed

On princes’ flesh, who lose both state and life

If they but look awry.° A tyrant’s growth, 45

Reared up by ruins,° thence may learn his fall:°

For whom all fear, he justly feareth all.

Androgeus: In antiphones° thus tune we female plaints,

But plots and force beseem us.° Thus, great Caesar

Shall pull him down below us. Thou, Mandubrace, 50

Sure pledges take of our revolt and quickly

Implore his aid. Blow up his drooping fire

With hopeful terms. But let him stronger come.°

Mandubrace: I fly unseen, as charmers° in a mist.

Grateful° Revenge, whose sharp-sweet relish fats 55

My apprehensive° soul!° Though all were pared off°

Which doth accrue from fortune, and a man left

As barely poor° as nature thrust him out,°

Nay, worse, though spirits boil, rage, anger, care

And grief like wild horse tear the affrighted° mind, 60

Though wrongs excoriate the heart, yet all is sweetened

If vengeance have her course. I reck not how;°

Let commonwealth expire, and owls proclaim

Sad desolation in our halls. Let heaps

Of dust and rubbage° epitaph our towns.° 65

Let fire and water fight: who° first shall spoil

This universal frame. From north or south,

Revenge, th’art welcome. No sin worse than pity—

A tyrant’s only physic° is phlebotomy.°

Exeunt.

Act 3 Scene 9.

[Enter] chorus.

First Song.

Rejoice, oh Britain,

Britain, oh, rejoice.

The stormy cloud passed over

And only made a noise.

A clattering sound was heard, 5

And still we felt no wound.

Rejoice, rejoice,

Thou happy British ground.

Oh, that sweet Plenide,

Eloquent° Orone,° 10

Were now to chant our victories

With a melodious tone,

And rousing echo from the dales

With harmony to sound.

Rejoice, rejoice, 15

Thou happy British ground.

Second song.°

Gang,° ye lads and lasses,

Sa° wimble° and sa wight,°

Fewl mickle° teen° betide ye

If ye ligg° in this plight.° 20

Be bonny,° buxom,° jolly,

Trip° haydegues° belyve,°

And gif° night gars° the welkin° merk,°

Tom piper, do you blive.°

Hidder, eke and shidder,° 25

With spicèd sew ycramd,°

Sa that unneath° thilke° borrells°

May° well ne° yede° ne° stand.

As leef° as life do weet° it,

When timbarins° ‘gin sound,° 30

For harvest gil° pranked up° in lathe°

To lout it low° around.

[Exeunt.]

Act 4 Scene 1.

[Enter] Caesar, Volusenus, attendants.

Caesar: A story is’t or fable, that, stern Mars,

Thy weight did Romulus’ sleepy mother° press°

Since we, thy brood° degenerous,° stand at gaze,

Charmed in the circle of a foaming flood,

And trail our dastard pikes? Burst Janus’ prison,° 5

Roar as thou didst at Troy, drown° Stentor’s° voice

By many eights,° which Pindus° may re-beat,°

Which Caucasus may, as a catch,° repeat,

And Taurus° low° the same, that pygmies small

May squeak, “it thunders,” and dive into burrows. ° 10

Let the four winds, with dreadful clamour, sing

Thy° anger through the affrighted world.

What Lemnian chain° shackles our mounting eagle?°

The moon’s round concave is too strait° a cage

For her advancèd pinions. 15

Enter Mandubrace, wounded and bloody,° with Androgeus’s young son.°

Mandubrace: If pity can have room in angry breast,

Favour a Briton prince, his father slain,°

His regiment bereft,° his dearest blood

Drawn by the sword of false Cassibelane.

Having got crown, he then struck at my head, 20

Nor can I safely suck my native air.

His coz° Androgeus, also, and whole regions,

In open war, withstand his violence.

Lo, Albion’s aged arms spread wide t’enchain

Thee as her patron, in a true-love knot. 25

Wherefore, dread Caesar, let thy mercy strike

Revengeful fire,° and be justly styled

[He] kneels.

Tamer of tyrants. Then fame blows aloud:

When valour helps the weak, pulls down the proud.

Caesar: Arise, unhappy prince, our deeds shall show 30

We grant thy suit. (To Volusenus) Fortune repents at last.

The moon is changed. The globe° doth to us turn

Her shining cheek and woos us with a smile.

[To Mandubrace] But what firm signs of faith, what faithful aid,

What furtherance° can you give at our arrival? 35

Mandubrace: See here, Androgeus’ heir, whose tender age

His father ventures° and makes bold with nature

To pledge his darling. He and thirty more

Of noble linage° shall assure our faith.

Besides, I pawn my life. 40

Caesar: Enough. I’ll once more cross the seas,°

For your good, more than mine, that° happier sky

May bless your towns with peace, your fields with plenty,

Perpetual spring, in gay perfumed attire,

Surname° your isle, the Garden of the West.° 45

Mandubrace: Thanks, gracious Caesar. For this kind acceptance,

My knee doth kiss the ground, my lip your knee.°

Pardon ye gods (if any haunt our land),

Ye nymphs and lares,° fawns and silvans wild,

That thus I bring a stranger on our coasts, 50

Whose foreign shape° and language may affright

Our lazy clowns,° and on my country’s back

Once° tread victorious steps. Be pleased to view

Wrongs now redressed, neglected first by you.°

Caesar: Now, Volusene, 55

Our glorious state,° like the noon-pointed sun,

When he bestrides the lion’s flaming fleece,°

Doth north-west roll his burning brand, whose fire

The ocean’s blue lake cannot stop, but flies

With brighter blaze to thaw the frozen isles. 60

But how proceeds our preparation?

Volusenus: Many strong ships are built, five legions armed,

Ready to launch.

Caesar: Blow gently, Africus.°

Play on our poops. When Hyperion’s son°

Shall couch in west his foam-bedappled jades, 65

We’ll rise to run our course.

Exeunt.

Act 4 Scene 2.

[Enter] Eulinus.

Eulinus: Though Orpheus’ harp, Arion’s lute,° the chimes

Whose silver sound did Theban towers raise,°

Though sweet Urania° with her ten-string lyre,

Unto whose stroke the daily-rolling spheres

Dance their just measures,° should with tune and tone 5

Tickle my air-bred ear,° yet can their notes

Those fabulous stones° more° enter than my soul.

Lead,° poppy, slumber stupefy° my heart,

But bedlam grief acts gambols° in my brain.

The centaur’s wheel,° Prometheus’ hawk,° the vulture 10

Of Tityus,° Sisyphus’ never mossy stone,

The tale of Danaids’ tub° and Tantalus’ gaping

Are but flea-bitings to my smart. I’ve slain

A kinsman—more, a friend—I dearly loved,

Nay, more: no cause provoking but in rash 15

And hellish choler.

I had thought my love had cannon-proof been ‘gainst

A world of injuries, when see, all is split

By a small wind. Cursèd be thou, my sword,

The instrument of fury; cursèd hand, 20

Which mad’st the thrust; but most accursèd part,°

Whose ruddy flesh, triangular, boiled in flame,

Like an Aetnean or Vesuvian salamander.°

That breast I so could hug, that faithful breast,

That snowy white, I with dark sanguine stained, 25

And from the wounds’ red lips, his panting heart

Did seem to speak: “Is this a friendly deed?”

Oh no, Hirildas. Bears can harmless play,

Lions can dally, and sheathe up their claws,

I only, worst of brutes, kill friends in jest. 30

Why dost Androgeus, kindly-cruel, keep

Me from their sentence?° Say° law bids me die—

If law should not, I’ll make that law myself.°

Shall ensigns° be displayed, and nations° rage

About so vile a wretch? Shall foreign hooves 35

Kick up our trembling dust, and must a Caesar

Redeem my folly with a kingdom’s fall?

First may I stop black Cerberus’ triple jaws.°

Die, die, thou hast out-lived thyself. Thou° only,

Phoenix of females,° still dost bind and bound 40

My runagate° spirit in these walls of mud.°

From thee and for thee ’tis I breathe. Yet how

Borrow can I his shape or use mine own?°

Odious before, now worse than hell-born goblin,

With brand° and chains, to scare this dove, all quaking 45

’Twixt wrath and fear.° But time may favour win.

When hope doth fail, then knife or rope begin.

Exit.

Act 4 Scene 3.

[Enter] Cassibelane, Belinus, Rollano.

Cassibelane: Wisdom, confirm my sense:° what seemed their number?

Rollano: Rising from shore, conjecture might descry

A thousand ships, with painted prows, to pave

The briny fields of Neptune—their broad sails

Did Nereus canopy, Titan’s° taper veil— 5

As nations twenty-nine ’gainst Troy built up

A floating Delos° of a thousand ships

To plough the liquid glass. No frame of Pallas,°

No crafty Sinon,° but those wooden horse°

Did Troy dis-Troy.° So Troynovant shall feel 10

Her mother’s° fate. Achilles comes again,°

And Pergamus° again shall sink in dust.

They threaten.

Exit.

Cassibelane: Wonder!° What, can their arsenals spawn so fast?

Last year, his barks and galleys were deboshed.° 15

This spring, they sprout again. Belike° their navy,

Like the Lernean adder,° faster grows,

The more ‘tis pruned. They come their last. Lord deputy,

Lead on the present troops and levy new.

’Twere best, I think, to let him land, lest view 20

Of his huge navy should our commons fright.°

Retire ourselves to some place of advantage,

Entice him from his ships. So, cut the veins

Which nourish both. Enclosed, he cannot ’scape.

Belinus: I rather judge we should oppose his footing, 25

Using the benefit of our natural mound.°

Cassibelane: Uncertain ’tis where, when, he makes in-road.

To furnish all, unlikely, to neglect

Any were dangerous as Pelides’ heel.°

Our shores are large° and level. Then,° t’attend 30

His time and leisure would exhaust the state,°

Weary our soldiers.

Belinus: All places may be strengthened more or less,

As, by° last year, discretion° now may guess.°

The cliffs themselves are bulwarks strong; the shelves 35

And flats refuse great ships; the coast so open,

That every stormy blast may rend their cables,

Put them from anchor, suffering double war—

Their men, pitched battle, and ships, naval fight.°

For charges,° ’tis no season to dispute— 40

Spend something or lose all. Shall he° maintain

A fleet to enthrall us, we detract° small costs

When freedom, life and kingdom lie at stake.°

Cassibelane: But the assailants are the flower of Italy

Backed with four-hundred Gallic horse, all tried 45

And gallant troops, joined in one martial body

To give a fuller stroke, when° we, defendants

Scattered along, can° weak resistance make,

Plainness° of ground affording us no shelter.

Belinus: For what serves art and engines, mounts° and trenches, 50

But to correct the nature of a plain?

A few on firm land may keep out a million

Weakened by sea, false footing, billows’ rage,

And ponderous arms, when as,° received within,°

He prospers by our spoil; we feed a viper,° 55

And malcontents and rebels have a refuge.°

Nor were it safe to venture all at once,

When, one fought field being lost, swift ruin runs°

And, rushing, throws down all.

Cassibelane: We know our strength and his. We’ll fight in field, 60

Some dozen miles from sea. An open theatre

Gives lustre° to our prowess. To keep him out°

Supposes fear, not manhood. No, let him march

Till he rouse death° and stride his future grave.

Belinus: Your will commands, and mine obeys. 65

Exeunt.

Act 4 Scene 4.

[Enter] Caesar, ensign, drum, trumpet, flag, soldiers, shipmen. The noise of landing [is heard].

Caesar: The coast is clear. Our honour is the goal.

In vain doth Tagus’ yellow sand° obey,°

Rhine’s° hornèd front,° and nimble Tigris, running

For wager with the wind, which skims his top;°

In vain from Ganges to Hesperian Gades,° 5

The bounds° marked out by Jove’s two base-born sons,°

Our echoed name doth sound,° if we recoil

From hence again not victors.°

Ye pilots old, who were begot on mermaids,

Whose element is the sea, bred and brought up 10

In cradles rocked with storms and wooden walls,°

Fear not to grapple with their° seas. Fear not

Their bulks,° brave veterans; that extended mass

Is not of iron but can bleed and die.

They were not dipped in Styx,° nor are they giants 15

Or wild poetic centaurs we assail.

Let then this voyage quit° our credit lost,°

And let rage° lash on° courage. Here’s the game.

Life may be lost, but sure we’ll hold fast fame.

They march about and go out. The [sound of the] whole battle [is heard] within. [Enter] Cassibelane, Belinus, soldiers.

Cassibelane: Our first attempt doth prosper. They, retiring, 20

Scud° to the bosom of their fir-tree vaults°

And, under hatches, hide themselves from death.

The Cornish band made havoc of their ranks,

Like Scythian wolves° midst of a bleating fold.

The jingling lances, rattling chariot-wheels 25

Madded their horse. The bowmen merrily shot.

Belinus: Yet would° our tributary kings had succoured!°

We are decayed,° they much in number grown,

And surely will make head° again.

Cassibelane: Fear not. Thou knowest I can, even with a whistle, 30

Hide Kent with glittering arms—more flaming sparkles°

Paint not a freezing night,° nor speckled bees

Buzz not about sweet Hybla’s° bloomy head.

But what need millions when some thousands serve?

Oh, did my brother live, we’d climb the Alps, 35

Like brave Mulmutius’ sons, make Romulus’ wolf

Howl horror in their streets, and Rome look pale,

As when the Punic captain eyed her walls. °

[They] march out.

[Enter] Caesar [and] Volusenus, [accompanied].

Caesar: Are ye the men who never fought in vain,

Who wear Bellona’s favours° in your scars? 40

Aye, ye are they. What then benumbs our spirits?

Our empire from Quirinus’° narrow centre

Doth, circling, spread,° and finds no brink nor bottom.

Titan° no later sets nor earlier wakes

Than he beholds our provinces. Why then, 45

What privilege hath this place? Have we or they

The Phrygian powers?° Have they Palladium° got?

No, no. Those gods our Capitol keep with joy;°

These° only have undaunted minds from Troy.

Enter Q. Atrius.

What news, good Atrius?

Atrius: No good news from Atrius. 50

When ominous earth with shade° and cloudy vapours

Had darkness° doubled, storms began to sound,

The dappled south,° rough-footed° Aquilo,°

Came rushing like two rams whose steelèd horns

Dart fiery sparks. The clouds, crushed, breathe out flames.° 55

Thunder and lightning daunt all ears and eyes.

The winds and billows strive who° loudest roar.

The sky distilled° in rain, his room° to fill,

Ambitious waves would climb the starry hill.°

Our ships are battered all—some forty sunk.° 60

Caesar: What devil°-Cacus drags our fortune back?°

Doth she move retrograde and hoist us up,

That we may fall at height?° Why dost Camillus

Each night torment my sleep and cry “revenge”?

I strive against the stream. 65

Enter Androgeus, Mandubrace, soldiers.

Androgeus: Thus join we standards° and resign the keys

Of Troynovant with all our warlike forces.

Mandubrace: By me° the Trinobants submit, and Cenimagnians,

Segontiacks, Ancalites, Bybrocks and Cassians—°

Six worthy nations do desire thy guard. 70

Caesar: All, all shall know our love.

Mandubrace: The tyrant lies on Isis’ flow’ry banks,°

Where a full choir sing of white-surpliced° swans.°

The ford’s unlevel belly they have fenced

With sharp stakes under water.° 75

Caesar: Nor stakes, lakes, fords, nor swords shall check our progress.

Those downy swans shall hear more funeral notes.°

Their kings° departed,° Nennius dead, whose loss

Would tears extort even from pumicean eyes°

(Had Britain nursed but such another champion, 80

They might have stuck their darts on our barred gates,

And Latium trembled with contrary fates),°

In what now lies their hope?

Mandubrace: Great numbers still remain. Nay, worse, they laugh

At death and boldly trust (as druids preach) 85

Their souls who die in fight shall live in joy.

Hence, count they dangers benefits, and die

With freedom in their mouth,° and willful rage.

But let soft mildness wait on women. Let

Thy wrath ring through the woods in dusty noise 90

To tell thy coming. ° No man’s built so lofty

But his foundation meets the humble dust,

Which, undermined, how high° he pierced the clouds,

So deep he sinks.

Hostile and civil foes° shake top and root, 95

As winds invade above and vines below,

And so will we.

Caesar: No doubt. This blow shall like an earthquake move

The roots and pillars of this sea-clipped isle.

A cloud of vultures shall attend our camp, 100

And no more shall the fields bear vert but gules.°

The grain engrained in purple dye shall lose

His verdant hue.° Bones, marrow, human limbs

Shall, putrefying, reek, whose vapoured° slime,

Kindled on high,° may breed long-bearded stars° 105

To tell° more mischief and out-beard Apollo.°

Mandubrace: Let’s waste no time, lest more unto him flock,

As humours glide to guard the wounded member.

Caesar: Atrius, let our ships be drawn on shore,

New-rigged and mended.° I must needs confess him 110

A darling of the gods, under whose colours

Stars, winter, sky and tempests serve in pay

And know both march and skirmish by his drum.

Exeunt.

Act 4 Scene 5.

[Enter] Rollano, [with] Eulinus, hearkening.

Rollano: Oh, my dear lady, hast thou slain thyself?

So fairly pure, so kindly chaste, so—

[He] cries.

A Venus and Diana mixed in one.

She eat her meat with studs of pearl, she kissed

With rubies, and she looked with diamonds bright. 5

Fish seas° and fowl the air, hunt all the earth

For such another bit and lose your labour.

Eulinus: Oh, why dost thou complain?

Rollano: Had she not killed her self, no cruel Atropos,°

No fury,° could, for pity, cut her thread. 10

She was the lodestone of all eyes, the whetstone

Of all brains, ° the touchstone of all hearts.° She was—

Cries.

Eulinus: Oh, my presaging thoughts in ugly form

Suggest some tragedy. Speak—yet stay a while.

I know thou kill’st with speaking.° Be then dumb. 15

Let sound ne’er give those notions airy robes.°

Yet speak. Dispatch me.° Fear’s as bad as death.

Oh, could no tongue affirm it! Is she dead?

Rollano: My mistress is.

Eulinus: Wither, ye pleasant gardens where she trod; 20

White lilies, droop, and blasted° daisies, wink°

And weep in pearly dew. Blind Vesper,° mourn;

Hang thy cold tears° on every grassy blade.

Groan loud, ye woods, and tear your leafy hair.

Let wind and hoary frost kill every flower, 25

For she is gone who made continual May.

Let foggy mists envelop sun and stars,

For she is gone who made perpetual day.

Confounded° nature, stand amazed. Dissolve°

Thy rolling engines and unbrace° the seas. 30

Fling all into their first disordered lump,

For thy chief paragon, thy rich masterpiece,

The jewel° for which thou didst venture all,

Is lost, is lost. And can I live to speak it?

How died she?

Rollano: By a poisoned draught. 35

Eulinus: The very word (poison) infects my breath. °

Durst thou° presume to pass that coral porch?°

Were not her lips sufficient antidote?

Durst thou descend through those close-winding stairs°

With treacherous intent? How could thy venom 40

Seize on her and not, sweetened, lose his virtue,°

Or, rather, vicious° quality? May toads,

Dragons and mandrakes° be thy gallipots,°

This° body was a casket° for the graces,

No cask° for poison. With her, dies all love. 45

Cupid may break his bow, his arrows burn,

Then quench his taper° in a flood of tears.

Is she dead?

Rollano: Or° in a long trance.

Eulinus: She may revive.

I’ll visit her. Art° may prolong her days, 50

Whether she will or no…

Exeunt.

Act 4 Scene 6.

[Enter] chorus.

First song.

Alecto° rising from the lakes

Of night’s sad empery,°

With knotty bunch of curlèd snakes

Doth lash fair Britany.

More ghastly monster did not spring 5

From the Hibernian° flood,°

With which Morvidus° combating,

Of foe became his food.

Shall no more shepherds in the shade

Sit whistling without care? 10

Shall never spear be made a spade,

And sword a ploughing-share?

Grant, heaven, at last, that music loud

Of bloody Mars be still,

That British virgins° in a crowd° 15

With hymns the sky may fill.

Second song.

Nor is Landora’s loss

The least part of our mournful muse.

Jove, Juno for to cross,

This Trojan dame° for bride did choose,° 20

Where she doth shine

’Bove Gwendolin,

The Amazon of her days,°

And Marcia wise,

Law to devise.° Oh, sound Landora’s praise. 25

There doth she shine above,

Clear as great Delia’s° hornèd bow,°

Bright as the queen of love,°

To shoot down gentle beams below.

Sabrina,° dare 30

Not to compare

With her most splendent rays.

A ring the sky,

A gem her eye.° Oh, sound Landora’s praise.

[Exeunt.]

Act 5 Scene 1.

[Enter] Caesar, Androgeus, Mandubrace, [accompanied, and] soldiers.

Caesar: Thus gain we ground, yet still our foes will fight

Whether they win or lose. With bloody drops

Our path is printed. Thames his maiden-cheeks

Blush with vermilion.° Nations crave our league

On every side, yet still Cassibelane braves us 5

Nor will submit.

Androgeus: Not far hence Verulam lies, his chiefest fort,°

By nature guarded round with woods and fens,°

By art enclosèd with a ditch and rampart—°

From hence we must dislodge the boar. 10

Mandubrace: There are but two ways to assail this town°

(Both which I know). Your parted army must

Break through both at once, and so distract

His doubtful rescues.

Enter Volusenus with Hulacus prisoner.

Hulacus: Draw° slaves unwilling, I dare meet my death 15

And lead° my leader.°

Volusenus: You’ll repent anon,

Hulacus: If I do ill,° but not for suffering ill.

Volusenus: Your stoical apathy° will relent I know.

[To Caesar] This priest I caught within a shady grove,

Devoutly kneeling at a broad oak’s foot. 20

Now he awaits your doom.°

Caesar: What god adore you?

Hulacus: Him whom all should serve.

Caesar: What’s the moon?

Hulacus: Night’s sun.

Caesar: What’s night?

Hulacus: A foil to glorify the day.

Caesar: What most compendious° way to happiness? 25

Hulacus: To die in a good cause.

Caesar: What is a man?

Hulacus: An hermaphrodite of soul and body.°

Caesar: How differ they in nature?

Hulacus: The body hath in weight, the soul in length.°

Caesar: One question more: what dangers shall I pass? 30

Hulacus: Many, by land and sea, as steps to glory.

Throw Palatine° on Esquiline; on both

Heap Aventine° to raise one pyramid for a°

Chair of estate, where thy advancèd head,

Among those heroes pictured in the stars 35

(Orion, Perseus, Hercules), may consult

With Jove himself.° But shun the senate house.°

March round about the Caspian Sea.° Search out

’Mong cedars tall the Arabian phoenix nest.°

Run counter to° old Nile till thou discover 40

His sacred head wrapped up in cloudy mountains,°

And, rather than work fail,° turn Hellespont

Out of his channel;° dig that isthmus down

Which ties great Africk.° Shun the Senate house.°

Be Saturn, and so thou shalt not be Tarquin.° 45

A Brutus strong

Repays in fine°

Thy brutish wrong

To Brutus’ line.°

Caesar: We’ll talk at leisure more. 50

Exeunt.

Act 5 Scene 2.

[Enter] Cassibelane [and] Belinus, [accompanied].

Cassibelane: No ramparts keep him back. He presses forward

Though every stamp he treads seems to conjure

The fates from their infernal center. None

But he durst be so bold.

Belinus: Yes, when Britons lead, and Mandubrace, insulting 5

With naked sword, calls on° the lagging soldiers;

When fierce Androgeus, with° revolted nations,

Usher his army. No way half so quick

To ruinate kingdoms as by home-bred strife.

Thus, while we single fight,° we perish all. 10

Cassibelane: Aye, aye, those treacherous caitiffs!° Rebel slaves!

Oh, may their country’s heavy curse them sink

Below the nine-fold brazen gates of hell.

That princox° proud! Aye, ’twas a ’scape° in policy.

I should have slain the whelps with their good sire.° 15

Let Britain’s climacterical° year now run,

The series break of seventy kings.° Nay, let

One urn conclude° our ashes and the world’s.°

Befall what will, in midst of horror’s noise

And crackling flames, when all is lost, we’ll die 20

With weapons in our hands, and victory scorn.

There’s none that die so poor as they are born.

Faithful Belinus, let a post° command

The Kentish kings to set upon° his° fleet°

Whilst we here bid the base.° Four thousand charioteers 25

(Such as did glide upon the Phrygian plains

And, wheeling, double service do perform:

Both horse-man’s speed and foot-man’s stable strength)°

Still do remain.° With these and flocking voluntaries°

We’ll give him once more battle. Let the captains 30

Enter and hear my charge.°

Enter captains. [Cassibelane] stands on a throne.

Subjects and fellow-soldiers, we must now try

For ancient freedom° or perpetual bondage.

There is no third choice. The enragèd foe

With cruel pride, proud avarice, hath spoiled 35

From east to west, hunting for blood and gain,

Your wives and daughters ravished, ransacked towns,

Great bellies ripped with lances, sprawling° babes,

The spouse about her husband’s neck run through

By the same spear. Think on these objects, 40

Then choose them for your lords who spoil and burn

Whole countries and call desolation peace.°

Yield, yield, that he,° ennobled by our spoils,

May climb the Capitol with triumphant car,°

You led, fast-fettered, through the staring streets 45

For city dames to mock your habit strange

And fill their arras-hangings with our story.

No. Brennus’ ghost forbid, who this night stood

Before my eyes and, grimly furious, spake:

“Shall Britain stoop to Roman rods and hatchets 50

And servile tribute? Will ye so defame

Your ancestors and your successors wrong,

Heirs but of ° slavery?” Oh, this day make good

The glory of so many ages past!

I see you are incensed and wish to use 55

Your weapons, not your cares.

All: To arms, to arms, to arms. We’ll fight and die.

Exeunt.

Act 5 Scene 3.

[Enter] Eulinus, in a nightcap, unbraced,° [carrying a] viol and a poniard.° [He] plays and sings to the viol.

Eulinus: So the silver-feathered swan,

Both by death and colour wan,

Loves to sing before she die,°

Leaving life so willingly.

But how can I sing a note 5

When dead hoarseness stops my throat?

Or how can I play a stroke

When my heart-strings all are broke?

[Speaks] Come, guilty night, and with black velvet wings

Mantle me round; let melancholic thoughts 10

Hang all my brain with blacks, this darksome grove

My gallery,° so all things suit° my mind.

Such funeral colours please a gasping° heart.

I died with thee, Landora, once. Now only

Some struggling spirits are behind,° to be 15

Laid out with most thrift on thy memory.

Where shall I first begin my last complaint,

Which must be measured by my glass of life?°

At° thee, Hirildas, slain in furious mood,°

By whose help only I enjoyed my love? 20

Or thee Landora, dying for his sake,

And in thy death including mine?

Or at my country’s wrack,° whose surface torn

Doth for my vengeance° importune the pole?°

Or at my self? Aye, there is sorrow’s spring.° 25

Shall I go wand’ring, lurk in woods unknown,

A banished hermit, and sigh out my griefs,

Teaching the pretty birds to sing my dear,

My dear Landora? There to feed on acorns,

Drink the clear fountain and consume° with weeping, 30

Were but an easy life, an easy death.

My violent passion must have sudden vent.°

Refinèd soul° (whose odoriferous light

The damnèd hags stare at, and whining elves,°

Thinking it heaven in hell)°, behold my pangs; 35

Pity my dying groans and be more soft.

Oh, may our shadows° mingle. Then shall I

Envy° no more those citizens above°

The ambrosian junkets° of the Olympian hall

And all that gorgeous roof.° But cowards talk. 40

Come, thou last refuge° of a wearisome life;

Draws his poniard.

A passport to the Elysian land, a key

To unlock my grievèd inmate.° Lo, I come.

Oh, let this river from my eyes, this stream

Unbuttons.°

From my poor breast, beg favour° of thy ghost. 45

Oh, let this lukewarm blood thy rigour° steep°

Stabs [himself].

And mollify thy adamantine heart.

Leander-like,° I swim to thee through blood.

Be thy bright eyes my Pharos° and conduct me

Through the dull night of gloomy Erebus.° 50

Flow, flow, ye lively drops, and from my veins

Run winding to the ocean of my bliss.

Tell her my love, and if she still shall doubt,

Swear that ye came directly from my heart.

I stay too long. (Stabs [himself] again.) 55

Sweet lady, give me welcome.

Though I shall pass twelve monsters as° the sun,°

Or° twelve Herculean labours on° a row,

Yet one kind look makes all my journey sweet.

Thou fairy queen of the Tartarian court,° 60

To whom Proserpine may the apple give,

Worthier than she, to warm old Pluto’s bed,

See thy poor vassal weltering in his gore.

I faint, I faint.

I die, thy martyr, as I lived, thy priest. 65

Great goddess be propitious … sweet Landora—

Falls and dies.

Act 5 Scene 4.

The four kings of Kent march over the stage. A drum [is] struck up within. Q. Atrius comes with Cingetorix prisoner. [Enter] Rollano, running, [and] Volusenus [who] meets him.

Rollano: What shall I do? How shall I ’scape?

[He] falls [over] for fear.

Volusenus: I scorn to take advantage. Rise and fight.

Rollano: I had rather be killed quickly, quickly.

Volusenus: Then die, as thou desirest.

Thrusts at him.

Rollano: Oh, let me wink° first. 5

[He] bawls aloud.

I shall never endure it. Oh, oh, I am peppered and salted.°

Exit Volusenus. Rollano crawls away.

[Enter] Cassibelane, Belinus, [accompanied].

Cassibelane: Oh, that base fortune° should great° spirits damp

And fawn on muddy° slaves; that envious fate

Should ripen villainy with a Syrian dew°

And blast sweet virtue with a Sirian flame.° 10

A catalogue of mischiefs do concur:°

Our British Hector, Nennius, dead;° our kings,

Angry to be refused, sit still at home;

And then those traitors with their train augment

His huge and expert army. Nothing stops him— 15

Rivers nor ramparts, woods nor dangerous bogs.

On this side° Thames, his dismal ensigns shine.

Last, Kent’s unhappy rulers are° at sea

O’erthrown, and our men almost spent. Then, general,

In desperate pride and valour’s scornful° rage, 20

Let us run headlong through their armèd° tents

And make their camp a shambles,° so to raise

Our lofty tombs upon their slaughtered heaps.

Belinus: Nay, rather first, let’s parley for peace.

Cassibelane: Ye country-gods and nymphs who Albion love, 25

Old father Neptune, all ye powers divine,

Witness my loyal care: if human strength,

Courage and policy could a kingdom save,

We did our best. But Discord, child of hell,°

Numbers of train-men° and each captain picked 30

Out of a province° make us bow or break.

In vain we strive when deities do frown.

When destinies push, Atlas himself comes down.

Enter Comius.

Belinus: No mediator is so fit as Comius. And here’s the man.

Comius: Do not the dangers which environ you 35

Call for a good conclusion° (which I wish,

As friend to both sides)?

Cassibelane: No, Comius. There is more behind° than Caesar

Hath overrun.° Our charioteers still drive,

Our harness still is worn. Through woods and lakes 40

We’ll tire his dainty soldiers, then set fire

On towns and sacrifice ourselves, our wives,

Our goods and cattle in one public flame,

That wind may blow our ashes in his face.

Comius: So shall dead elements° curse your causeless° fury. 45

Rather conclude some friendly peace.

Cassibelane: Thus far we hear you: if with honoured terms

And royal looks he will accept our faith,

We will obey—but never serve.

Comius: I’ll undertake as much.° 50

Exeunt.

Act 5 Scene 5.

[Enter] Androgeus, Themantius.

Androgeus: Thus, civil war by me and factious broils

Deface this goodly land. I am revenged.

The cause, Eulinus, dead, my anger dies.

He° is our uncle and in danger’s mouth—

Both claim relenting pity. Whom peace made 5

A rampant lion, war hath made a lamb.°

Caesar shall not proceed, for private ends,

To captivate our isle,° whose clamorous curse

Doth knock, I know, at heaven’s star-nailed gates

For that° Jove’s bird,° imped° with our plumes, o’er-flew 10

The ocean’s wall to seek her prey in Britain.°

Themantius: Aye, we have made a rod for our own backs.

Fetters of gold are° fetters. No gap worse

To let destruction in by than to call

A foreign aid, who, having seen our weakness 15

And tasted once the fatness of our land,

Is not so easily thrust out as admitted.

Such medicine is worse than the malady,

Fretting the bowels of our kingdom.

Androgeus: I know their° hatred just and here resign 20

All my birthright to thee, my second self.

I must forsake my country’s sight and seek

New fortunes with this emperor, in hope

To be raised up by his now-rising wheel.

Themantius: Oh, do not so, dear brother. So to part 25

Were to divide one individual soul.°

Nor think me so ambitious. I can live

A private life and see a regal crown

With no more envy than I see the sun

Glitter above me. Let not Lud’s two sons 30

Be parted by a sea. I hold your presence

At higher price than a whole kingdom’s pomp.°

Keep then your right.° Like those admirèd twins,°

Let us rejoice, mourn, live and die together.

Androgeus: You shall a sceptre gain.

Themantius: And lose a brother. 35

Androgeus: Bear you the sovereign power of this land.

Themantius: A body politic must on two legs stand.°

I’ll bear a part, so to diminish envy.

Androgeus: I must away, and shun the people’s eye.

Themantius: If to your self unkind, be kind to me. 40

For my sake, stay at home. Why will you fly?

Think you a step-dame soil gives sweeter sap?

Androgeus: Aye, for trees transplanted do more goodly grow.

Themantius: And I’ll count men but stocks° when they do so.

Androgeus: I am resolved, all troubles brought asleep,° 45

To leave you with a parting kiss.

Themantius: And by that kiss

May I transfuse° my soul or quite expire.

Brothers have often for a kingdom fought—

We strive to lose it. This is holy° strife.

But here I vow: if e’er that sacred lace° 50

Shall gird my temples, Rome must keep her bounds

Or fish for tribute in the dreadful deep. °

Act 5 Scene 6.

[Enter] Caesar, Mandubrace.

Androgeus: Let gracious favour° smooth war’s rugged brow.

Cassibelane will compound.° All rage must end.

We choose you umpire for a friendly close. °

Caesar: It is my glory to end all with peace,

And for that cause I Comius sent in haste 5

For to conduct him° hither.

[A trumpet sounds.]

Themantius: This trump gives warning of the king’s approach.

[Enter] Cassibelane, Comius, Lantonus.

Cassibelane: Fate, and no fault of mine, makes me appear,

To yield as far as honour gives me leave.

Caesar: Hail, valorous prince. Disdain not this ingrafting° 10

Into Rome’s empire, whose command encloses

The whole Levant, and whose large shadow hides

The triple-bounded earth° and bellowing seas.

Cassibelane: We shall observe your will, so° you impose

A league, no yoke. 15

They shake hands.

Caesar: Thus we determine: that crown still shall stand.

Reign as the total monarch of this isle°

Till death unkings you. ’Twere, Androgeus, best

You in our train kept honourable place

And let Themantius wear the royal wreath. 20

[To Cassibelane] You must forgive the towns which did revolt,

Nor seek revenge on Trinobants but let

Young Mandubrace possess his father’s princedom.

Cassibelane: Be all wrongs drenched in Lethe.°

Androgeus: Pardon my rash attempts. 25

Cassibelane embraces Androgeus and Mandubrace.

Mandrubrace: Count me your loyal friend.

Caesar: In sign of league, you shall us pledges give

And yearly pay three thousand pound of silver

Unto our treasury.° So let these decrees

Be straight proclaimed through Troynovant, whose tower 30

Shall be more fairly built at my charge as

A lasting monument of our arrival.°

Cassibelane: All shall be done. Renownèd prince, whose worth,°

Unparallelled both as a friend and foe,

We do admire, 35

Accept this surcoat,° starrified° with pearls

And diamonds, such as our own shores breed.

Caesar: And you receive this massy° cup of gold,°

Love’s earnest,° and memorial of this day.

By this, suppose our senate calls you friend. 40

They sit together.

Lantonus: Now time, best oracle of oracles,

Father of truth, the true sense doth suggest°

Of Diane’s answer.

The lion and the eagle do design°

The British and the Roman states, whose arms 45

Were painted with those animals;° both fierce,

Weary at last conclude. The semi-circles,

First letters of the leaders’ names, we see

Are joined in true love’s endless figure.°

Both come of Trojan race, both nobly bold; 50

Both matchless captains on one throne, behold.°

Caesar: Now, the Tarpeian Rock° o’erlooks the world,

Her empire bounded only by the ocean,

And boundless fame beats on the starry pole.

So Danube, crawling from a mountain’s side, 55

Wider and deeper grows and, like a serpent,

Or pyramid reversed,° improves his bigness°

As well as length, till, viewing countries large,

And fed with sixty rivers, his wide mouth

On the Euxine sea-nymph° gapes, and fear doth stir, 60

Whether he will disgorge° or swallow her.°

Cassibelane: Since the great guide of all, Olympus’ king,

Will have the Romans his viceroys on earth;°

Since the red, fatal eyes° of crow-black night

Fling their malignant influence on our state; 65

Since Britain must submit, it was her fame°

None but a Julius Caesar could her tame.

While trumpets sound, Androgeus and Themantius, embracing, take leave. All depart.

Act 5 Scene 7.

[Enter] chorus.

First song.

Come, fellow bards, and sing with cheer

Since dreadful alarums° we shall no more hear.

Come, lovely peace, our saint divine;

Olive and laurel do love for to twine.

The graces and muses and nymphs in° a round,° 5

Let voice beat the air, and feet beat the ground.

So, hell’s black image chased away,

Eos° doth dandle the goldilocked° day.

So, Bruma° banished, all forlorn,

Cupid and Flora the spring do adorn. 10

And so, the grim fury of Mars laid in grave,

A merrier ending doth friendly peace crave.

Second song (a morris°).

The sky is glad that stars above

Do give a brighter splendour.

The stars unfold their flaming gold 15

To make the ground more tender.

The ground doth send a fragrant smell,

That air may be the sweeter.

The air doth charm the swelling seas

With pretty chirping metre. 20

The sea, with rivers, water doth

The plants and flowers dainty.

The plants do yield their fruitful seed,

That beasts may live in plenty.

The beasts do give both food and cloth, 25

That man high Jove may honour.

And so the world runs merrily round

When peace doth smile upon her.

Oh then, then, oh; oh then, then, oh,

This jubilee° last for ever, 30

That foreign spite or civil fight

Our quiet trouble never.

Exeunt.

[Enter] Mercury, reducing° the ghosts of Camillus and Brennus.

Camillus: How bravely Caesar passed the angry main.

Brennus: How bravely was he back repulsed again.

Camillus: How did he wheel his sword in Nennius’ face.

Brennus: How did he lose his sword and fly apace.

Camillus: How did, again, his army fill° your coast. 5

Brennus: Aye, when our princes did conduct his host.°

Camillus: How did they pierce through Isis’ dangerous flood.

Brennus: But made her swell and bankrupt° with their blood.

Camillus: Mirror of captains,° Julius, still hath won.

Brennus: But we may justly brag of two for one.° 10

Camillus: Confess, our valorous race hath now repaid

The Allian massacre° and our city’s flame.°

See how they° yield, and yearly tribute pay.

Brennus: No, proud dictator,° both do, weary, stand

On equal terms; both wish a peaceful league. 15

But if they shall° oppress, know°: generous° spirits

Will break this compact° like a spider’s web.

Mercury: Jove’s will is finished, and (though Juno frown

That no more Trojan blood shall dye the stage)°

The world’s fourth empire° Britain doth embrace.° 20

The thunder-bearer,° with a Janus look,°

At once views ruddy morn and cloudy west.°

Her° wings, displayed o’er this terrestrial egg,

Will shortly hatch a universal peace,

For Jove intends a favour to the world.° 25

It now remains that you two martial wights°

Cease from your braving° one another’s worth.

You must be friends at last. The close° is sweet

When, after tumults, hearts and hands do meet.

Exeunt.

Nec Lusisse pudet, sed non incidere Ludum.°

FINIS.

Appendix 1.

Fisher’s Epithalamium.

Below is the Latin text of Jasper Fisher’s contribution to Epithalamia, the 1613 Oxford volume of poetry celebrating the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick V, Elector Palatine.

Plaudite iam colei, fit conjux Herculis Hebe:

Pulchrior Ista tamen, fortis & iste magis.

Nomina temporibus fallacia Fata dedistis,

Ut benè compensent Februa damna Febris:

Iste dies Domini, quo Princeps sydera scandit;

Quo nubit Princeps, Iste dies Veneris.

Faemineam Thamesin Rhenus complectitur vinis,

Masculus, Hinc ingens Oceanus dabitur.

Angli Saxonibus, Germanis Saxones orti.

Hoc igitur thalamis fit FREDERICE Tuis,

Ut soror atq; Avia est eadem Germania nostrae

Iam patriae. Davo Sphinx fatìs ista pater.

The following translation is my own (with suggestions from Matthew Steggle and Lisa Hopkins):

Applaud, now, heaven, the marriage of Hercules and Hebe has taken place.

She is more beautiful, but he is braver.

Fate has dedicated a time with a fallacious name (February [i.e. fever month]),

Compensating well for a damned fever [i.e. Prince Henry’s death by typhoid].

This day of our Lord [i.e. this Sunday] when a prince (Frederick) mounts the stars

By marrying a princess is (also) a day belonging to Venus [St. Valentine’s Day°].

Let the masculine Rhine embrace the feminine Thames (like trained vines);

Thus a great ocean will be given to the Anglo-Saxons, descended from

the German Saxons.

Through your nuptials, Frederick, Germany is the sister and grandmother of

Our homeland. Our father is the Sphinx who has said these things to Davus.

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[1] “The Huntingdon Library copy of the quarto has a manuscript attribution “By W. Rider”, but this is dismissed by Bentley because nobody of that name was associated with Magdalen in the seventeenth century” (Bradley).

[2] Part of Fisher’s purpose in using Geoffrey’s history as a principal source for a play may have been to celebrate Oxford’s history as an institution of learning. “Geoffrey’s signature appears in the list of witness appended to six different twelfth-century charters … all of them connected with religious foundations in or near Oxford … Twice Geoffrey signed himself magister. The island of Oseney, in Oxford, with which the first charter deals, was in the parish of St. George and belonged until 1149 to the five or six Augustinian canons of the secular college of St. George’s. It has been suggested that Geoffrey himself may have been a canon of that college … For twenty-three years of his life … the evidence is … that Geoffrey was resident in Oxford … although [at that time, the town] was still far from being a University” (Thorpe 11-3).

[3] A collection of elegies for Henry was, like Fuimus Troes, first published in 1633.

° Fuimus Troes] We were Trojans (Aeneid 2.325-6). The very title ““Fuimus Troes” (“we were Trojans”) suggests that the play’s project is to insist that what is commonly assumed to be a distinctively Roman association should become applicable to Britain as well” (Curran 19). Hopkins refers to the “bizarre typography” of the play’s full title “Fuimus Troes Aeneid 2 The True Trojans…”, as given in the title-page of the quarto, observing that “the reference to “Aeneid 2” is in fact misleading: the play’s plot, nomenclature, and moral all owe a very great deal more to Geoffrey of Monmouth than to Virgil, although it is from the latter that the resonant phrase “fuimus Troes” itself is derived” (38). The current edition modernises the quarto’s typography, reading “Fuimus Troes” as a quotation and “Aeneid 2” as the author’s citation of the title’s source, with “The True Trojans” being a sub-title.

° The True Trojans] “Who are the “True Trojans”? The answer, which constitutes the play’s basic thesis, is that the Britons have at least as good a claim to Trojan ancestry as their Roman foes … the true “Trojans” are what we used to be, and we ought to reach back into the past and reclaim this forgotten way of defining ourselves … [Geoffrey’s] British History positioned Britain directly beside Rome as its eternal foil … [Moreover,] Rome needs to be dislodged from its exalted perch of assumed superiority, while Britain, far too easily under-rated, has been the victim of a historical misassessment that must be corrected” (Curran 20).

° Robert Allot] This would seem to be the Robert Allot identified by Honigmann as a student at Cambridge around 1592, who died in 1642. He was “part of a literary circle that included … Drayton”. Allot “was an important agent in the process of redirecting texts that normally circulated in manuscript and found their resting places in private collections … into the more public world of print”. His work “signalled print’s growing importance as the medium of literary transmission” (Marotti, DNB sub Robert Allot).

° Publicly] “Virtually every member of [a] college was expected to participate [in plays put on at Oxford in the early decades of the 17^th-century] … This left no one to fill the scaffolds that were erected in the hall for the audience, and so the plays were thrown open to the public” (Elliott, Plays 183).

° gentleman students] In plays at Oxford at this time, “the actors were principally recent bachelors and undergraduates, as were the playwrights” (Elliott, Plays 183).

° Magdalen College] At Oxford, in the Tudor-Stuart period, academic plays “took place principally in those colleges with large numbers of undergraduates, such as Christ Church, Magdalen and Saint John’s. These colleges also had halls large enough to accommodate the audience” (Elliott, Plays 181).

° Quis Martem … scripserit?] “Who may worthily write of Mars garbed / In adamantine mail?” (Horace, Ode 6 lines 13-14).

° Furius Camillus] When Brennus’s Gauls occupied Rome (see notes to the character “Brennus” below), the experienced Roman general (and former dictator) Camillus was in exile at Ardea. Reinstated as dictator by the besieged Romans, Camillus returned to Rome and led the defeat of the Gauls (Livy 320ff.) Like the British leader Cassibelane, Camillus was (temporarily) appointed ruler of a previously non-autocratic state in order to deal with a military emergency. On the other hand, Camillus resembles Julius Caesar in that, when celebrating his triumph over the Veii tribe, he had made himself “particularly conspicuous”, entering “the city riding on a chariot drawn by white horses, which seemed to place him on a level too high for a citizen or a mortal. People thought it a religious transgression for the dictator to put himself on a footing with Jupiter and the Sun in using these horses” (Livy 307). Julius Caesar was said to have “transgressed” in an identical manner. Interestingly, “Charles [I] … modelled himself on [such as] Camillus … triumphators who saved the Roman state in its most serious danger” (Miller 119). Thus, “a commission [of 1633] associates Charles directly with the Roman triumph … Van Dyck’s Charles I on Horseback with M. de St Antoine shows the king … riding through a triumphal arch, his magnificent white horse evoking the white horses that drew the chariot of a Roman triumphator” (123).

° Brennus] “Throughout the sixteenth-century and well into the seventeenth, Brennus continued to be invoked as a figure for England’s / Britain’s independence from, rivalry with, and primordial superiority to Rome” (Schwyzer 15). In Geoffrey, Brennus is a son of Molmutius Dunwallo, the law-making king of early Britain (89-90). He conquers Rome with an army of Britons and Gauls. In Livy, Brennus is the general of the Transalpine Gauls who occupy Rome (c. 390 BC). On entering the city, Brennus “committed every excess which wanton barbarity could dictate. After continuing there some time, he was defeated and driven out of it by Camillus” (Hazlitt 44). Livy implies that Camillus kills Brennus along with the rest of the Gaulish army. However, the Gaulish Brennus described in Diodorus Siculus, Pausanias and Justin invades Greece (c. 279 BC), attacks the temple at Delphi and is destroyed there. Though Fisher (following the English authors Higgins and Spenser) conflates these characters, Polydore Vergil states “that the other Brennus, the invader of Greece, was not [Livy’s] Brennus” (Curran 127).

° Julius Caesar] Roman general who conquered Gaul (58-50 BC) and invaded Britain (55-54 BC). The action of the play is set prior to Julius Caesar’s becoming dictator of the Roman Empire (49-44 BC).

° Volusenus] “a military tribune and a man of sound judgement and great courage” (Caesar 94).

° Laberius, alias Labienus] Caesar’s second-in-command (Caesar 51).

° Comius Atrebas] After conquering the Atrebates (a Belgic tribe in northern France), Caesar made Comius their king, “a man of whose courage, judgement, and loyalty he had a high opinion, and who was greatly respected in Britain” (Caesar 120).

° Cassibellaunus] Cassibelane appears twice in the list of Dramatis Personae: here, among the characters found in Caesar’s Commentaries and, below, among the characters found in Geoffrey’s History. Curran’s analysis casts light on this duplication: “Just how compatible Caesar was with Geoffrey, and just how much of the British History Caesar had effectively demolished, became a central dilemma for English writers. A writer as influential as Holinshed, for example, could present both accounts in their entirety but imply Caesar’s superiority by noting his advent as a great step forward in historical knowledge: “More certaintie from hence forth appeareth in the historie,” proclaims the margin. But Holinshed could at the same time insist that Caesar might be right about Cassibellaunus and still be ignorant of the Galfridian royal lineage in his background … Holinshed exemplifies the tendency … to draw upon Caesar extensively and to assume his authority, while simultaneously trying to deny or steer around the negative implications of this authority” (157-8). The duplication of Cassibelane/Cassibellaunus in the list of dramatis personae, here, would appear to exemplify the same tendency Curran observes in Holinshed. On the one hand, Caesar’s authority is assumed, indicating that Cassibelane actually existed; on the other hand, Caesar does not provide the whole “truth” about Cassibelane. Hence, the character in Fuimus Troes is sometimes the same character as Caesar’s Cassibellaunus but, at other times, he is Geoffrey’s Cassibelane. Accordingly, he is listed twice.

° imperator] “It was an ancient custom dating from the days of the Republic that Roman generals were only acclaimed as imperator after winning an actual victory in the field. Under the Empire, emperors had assumed the practice of accepting such a salutation themselves after any victory won in their name” (Salway 199). Cassibelane celebrates a triumph over the Roman army at 3.7.49.sd., though it is his brother Nennius who defeats Caesar in single combat and brings away the latter’s sword among the spoils of victory. In Act 5, Caesar and Cassibelane embrace each other, fulfilling an oracle that “C” (for Caesar) and “C” (ostensibly for Cassibelane) will unite. In the note to 5.6.51 it is suggested that the union of “C” and “C” may signify the union of the secular (Roman) and spiritual (Christian) empires, heralding a new golden age. Since Constantine was, historically, “the first British imperator” (Miller 121), by referring to Cassibelane as “imperator”, here, the playwright implies a comparison with Constantine.

° Mandubratius] “Mandubratius, Mr Camden observes, is by Eutropius, Bede, and the more modern writers called Androgeus, which in the British language signifies vir malus, a bad man; a name of infamy fixed on him for having been the first who betrayed his country.—Camden’s “Britannia,” 2.237, edit. 1772” (Hazlitt 508). “The distinction between Caesar and Geoffrey may be illustrated by [Fuimus Troes’s] treatment of the problem of Mandubratius and Androgeus. Mandubratius was mentioned by Caesar as a young leader of a nation called the Trinobantes … Androgeus, on the other hand, was Geoffrey’s adaptation of Mandubratius … [The playwright, Fisher] found he could not decide. He makes Mandrubratius and Androgeus two different people … The play betrays a wish … that the glorious non-history [derived mainly from Geoffrey] could be kept as history, that events as [recorded by Caesar] … and events as seen from the perspective of [Geoffrey’s] glorious epic narrative could somehow coincide” (Curran 21-3).

° Androgeus] See notes to the character Mandubratius.

° Cassibelane] According to Geoffrey, when Lud, the oldest son of King Heli (i.e. Beli Mawr), died, his sons, Androgeus and Tenvantius, were too young to govern the kingdom (of a portion of Britain). Accordingly, Lud’s younger brother “Cassivelaunus was preferred in their stead. As soon as he was crowned King he gained such high esteem for his bounty and his prowess that his fame was spread abroad through far-distant kingdoms [i.e. tribal areas in Britain]. As a result the kingship of the entire realm came into his hands” (106). In this way, Cassibelane could be regarded as an “emperor” of several kingdoms. However, in Caesar, Cassibelane’s claims are less grand. During his first expedition, Caesar heard of no “British king”. It was only on arriving in Britain for the second time that Caesar “found that larger British forces had now been assembled from all sides by Cassivellaunus, to whom the chief command and direction of the campaign had been entrusted by common consent. Cassivellaunus’ territory is separated from the maritime tribes by a river called the Thames, and lies about seventy-five miles from the sea. Previously he had continually been at war with the other tribes, but the arrival of our army frightened them into appointing him their supreme commander” (135-6). “The name of Cassivellaunos … is usually interpreted as “Lover (i.e. devotee) of Belenos” (“Beli Mawr”).

° Beli Mawr’s] Beli Mawr, i.e. Beli the Great, “was the ultimate progenitor of the Brythonic ruling tribe, from whom a number of the most powerful ruling houses in the British Celtic West claimed some kind of descent … Some have argued … that the name Beli Mawr relates to the Gaulish god known as Belinos or Belenos” (“Beli Mawr”).

° Nennius] The younger brother of Lud and Cassibelane (Geoffrey 106). “A centrally important figure in the play, it is he who is given the opening speech [after the inductive scene with Brennus and Camillus], conveying his awareness of Caesar’s impending invasions and of the British need to be valiant and remain free. The fighting spirit of the Britons is personified in him, and it is a spirit linked to a proud, long-standing national tradition” (Curran 167).

° Belinus] In Geoffrey, Belinus (not to be confused with the earlier Belinus, brother of Brennus) is “the commander-in-chief of [Cassibelane’s] army, with the help of whose planning and advice the whole kingdom was governed” (108). Nennius’s History of the Britons refers to ““Bellinus, son of Minocan” as a king of Britain in Julius Caesar’s time … Geoffrey, who has put Belinus centuries earlier, does not ignore this. He assumes that there was another man of the same name, and duly finds him in [Historia Anglorum by] Henry of Huntingdon, who mentions such a man and makes him a British commander” (Ashe 89 and 139).

° Landora, lady mentioned] Landora, like Cordella (the next character named in the list), does not appear onstage during the play. Intriguingly, in Ford’s The Broken Heart (published, like Fuimus Troes in 1633), a male character (Thrasus), listed under “speakers’ names”, also does not appear onstage (indeed, the character is dead before the play’s action begins). Noting that “no Shakespeare text published before his death has such a list [i.e. of dramatis personae]”, Random Cloud tends to regard lists of dramatic personae as an editorial imposition which took root most firmly after the early eighteenth-century “in a tradition that stems from Pope’s appropriation of Rowe” (95-6). However, judging from the evidence of Fuimus Troes and The Broken Heart, it seems that, by 1633, publishers, having become more aware of play-texts as reading-texts, had already begun to prepare lists of characters with readers in mind, as opposed to spectators/auditors. Notwithstanding this hypothesis, the non-appearance of Landora and Cordella in Fuimus Troes means that no women appear onstage during the entire play. Thus, we may assume that Fisher deliberately avoided bringing female characters onstage. Since female characters in a play performed at Magdalen College in the early 17^th-century would certainly have been played by young men, the playwright (and future rector), without being a “puritan”, may have had doubts about writing a play which called for young men to dress as desirable women. John Rainoldes, “a leading Oxford divine” (Jardine 57), had written, in Th’ Overthrow of Stage-Playes (1599): “A womans garment beeing put on a man doth vehemently touch and moue him with the remembrance and imagination of a woman; and the imagination of a thing desirable doth stirr up the desire” (in Jardine 57). However, “the objections of … such as … Rainolds to “stage-plays” fell largely on deaf ears in Oxford” (Elliott, Drama 642). But Fisher would not have had to share Rainoldes’s “hysterical” (Jardine 57) views to regard a play without female roles as an effective means of avoiding controversial matters. (Indeed, the play closes with a maxim from Horace’s Epistle 1: “Nec Lusisse pudet, sed non incidere Ludum”, which may be translated: “Playing is not shameful if one knows where to draw the line”.) Bearing in mind the publication date of Fuimus Troes, it should also be noted that, in the late 1620s / early 1630s, there was a heightening of the ongoing controversy surrounding female dramatic roles and woman actors, which may have some bearing on the non-appearance of Landora and Cordella. In 1629, a French company had brought women players to London. They were hissed and pelted from the (commercial) stage. Clearly, the commercial theatre was still not ready to allow women on the stage. More relevant to the case of an academic drama which features a masque (and which may have been considered for performance at court), however, is the fact that, in 1632, Queen Henrietta’s performance in Walter Montague’s The Shepherd’s Paradise and other productions turrned not just female acting but female representation “into a livewire issue” (Tomlinson 190). Even to include female characters in a play in the early 1630s would necessarily lead to the question of who would “play” them, and, thus, allude indirectly to the queen’s “behaviour”. Cordella’s name, of course, reminds most readers of Shakespeare’s Cordelia, a female character part of whose virtue consisted of saying “nothing” (1.1.85).

°1.sd. One of the god Mercury’s functions was to conduct the souls of the dead to the underworld. Therefore, he could be expected to guide ghosts back to the land of the living when required.

° 1.sd. conducting] leading.

°1.sd. “The opening of the play neatly crystallizes [its] dual allegiances [to] … the trappings of the classical past [and] … the dominant discourses of the reign of Charles I … by its deft co-option of yet a third time-frame. The opening tableau of “Mercury, conducting the ghosts of Brennus and Camillus…” unmistakably recalls the celebrated beginning of Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (1590?), which had inaugurated the genre of revenge tragedy on which Fuimus Troes draws so heavily. Mercury’s ensuing description of the Elysian fields, paralleling that offered in Kyd by the ghost of Don Andrea, completes the resemblance, as does the fact that, in both plays, the ghosts will eventually return to conclude the action. Reminiscences of The Spanish Tragedy are certainly appropriate in Fuimus Troes, for … both plays negotiate, albeit with markedly different degrees of emphasis, the interpenetration of classical and Christian cultures and ideologies” (Hopkins 38-9).

°3. So] So too are there.

°1-10. In Virgil’s Aeneid, the underworld consists of two sections: “Elysian fields”, for the blessed, and Tartarus, for the damned (6.542-3). In the opening sequence of The Spanish Tragedy, Kyd muddies Virgil’s scheme by describing “three ways” (59): “that on the right-hand side / Was ready way unto the … fields, / Where lovers live, and bloody martialists, / But either sort contain’d within his bounds. / The left-hand path … / Was ready downfall to the deepest hell” where “all foul sins [were] with torments overwhelm’d. / ‘Twixt these two ways … the middle path” which leads to the “fair Elysian green” (59-73). However, the only inhabitants of the latter zone mentioned by Kyd are Pluto and Proserpine. Virgil, incidentally, does not separate lovers and warriors into separate “groves” but allows them to frolic intermixedly (Aeneid 6.638ff). Finally, just as Fisher locates Elysian fields in “the vaults of this big-bellied earth”, Plutarch says the Elysian Fields are at the centre of the earth (Lemprière sub Elysium).

°11. imps] spirits.

°12. sticklers] umpires, seconds, mediator. “A stickler was a sidesman to a fencer, so called because he carried a stick, wherewith to part the combatants” (Hazlitt 450).

°14-15. sheathe your … death] The ghosts of Brennus and Camillus have been brandishing their swords at each other.

°17. Charles his wain] Charles’s Wain was an old name for the Great Bear constellation. “The name is held to be a corruption of “Churl’s wain” (peasant’s cart). Another version derives it from “Charlemagne’s wain” (Brewer). Fisher’s genitive form (“Charles’s his”) endorses the latter derivation. By referring anachronistically to Charlemagne in the opening scene, the playwright encourages his audience to interpret characters and events from the play’s period as being analogous to individuals and circumstances in other periods, including the “present”. “Anachronisms make a Then into a Now” (Ronan 30). “The Renaissance, a time of growing historical sophistication, invented the term anachronism but certainly recognised that intentional anachronism had been a tradition for thousands of years … If original spectators can be assumed to notice an anachronism, it must be an intentional one … The most interesting moments to analyse [in Renaissance history plays] are those when the dramatist prompts a spectator to travel from the play’s chief historical chronotope to some present-day or eternal one” (16, 20).

°18-19. I first … Britons] Livy describes Brennus as “the Gallic chieftain” (322). In Geoffrey, Brennus is a Briton who conquers Gaul. Leading a combined army of Britons and Gauls, Geoffrey’s Brennus conquers Rome. In this way, Geoffrey’s account simultaneously “corrects” and is corroborated by Livy’s.

° 19-20. The white-pated …necks] “Tradition says that [the Gauls], attracted … especially by the wine, which was an indulgence then new to them, had crossed the Alps … that Arruns of Clusium had exported wine into Gaul with the express purpose of encouraging them to come … and that Arruns was the one who led them over the Alps” (Livy 317-8).

° 22. scarlet of patrician blood] “A probable quibble on the play’s Roman aristocrats wearing purple vesture” (Ronan 78).

°24. geese] During their siege of Rome, the Gauls scaled a steep cliff, seeking to penetrate the citadel of Capitol Hill in the night. “They emerged on the summit in such silence that not only did the guards fail to hear them, but the dogs as well … But the geese sacred to Juno heard them … and this proved Rome’s salvation. For Marcus Manlius … was alerted by their honking and the beating of their wings” (Livy 332).

° 25-6. But I … city] Curran astutely notes: “The presence of Camillus [who was not mentioned by Geoffrey in his account of Brennus’s triumph at Rome] surely establishes the primacy of Livy’s account [over Geoffrey’s]. Camillus even points out to Brennus that “I cut short your fury,” and he is not contradicted” (Curran 140).

° 25-7. But I … fields] “In a more regular battle at the eighth milestone on the road to Gabii, where [the Gauls] had gone after taking flight [from Rome, the Gauls] were defeated … under the leadership and auspices of Camillus. The slaughter was total … not even a messenger survived to report the disaster” (Livy 334). In Geoffrey, Brennus and the Gauls defeat the Romans: “The city was invested and the invaders distributed all the hidden treasures of the citizens among their own troops” (99).

°28. I turned … coast] I diverted your might, encouraging you to attack another country (Greece). This detail is in neither Livy nor Geoffrey. Pausanias describes how “Brennos … persuaded the Gauls to march on Greece” (455). Since this invasion took place c.279 BC, the “Brennos” in question cannot be the Brennus who led the assault on Rome c.390 BC.

°31. Pylian age] 300 years. Nestor, king of Pylos, was famous for longevity. “The ancients are all agreed that he lived three generations of men, which length of time some suppose to be 300 years, though more probably only 90, allowing 30 years for each generation” (Lemprière). That a Pylian age here equals 300 years is made clear by line 54 (“three hundred summers”). Brennus was said to have conquered Rome c. 390 BC; Julius Caesar invaded Britain in 55-54 BC.

°32. Mirrors] Instructive examples.

°33. black imperial bird] The eagle was the symbol of the Roman Empire, carried on military standards. See note to 1.2.1.sd.

°36. nephews] grandsons, descendants (i.e. the Romans) via his sons Romulus and Remus. “When the Vestal [virgin Rhea Silvia, alias Ilia], having been ravished, became the mother of twin sons, she named Mars as the father of her dubious progeny” (Livy 8).

°40-42. When night … breast] In classical literature, ghosts often appear to heroes in dreams to instruct them as to their heroic duty. See Act 2 Scene 7.

°42. furies] immortal ministers of vengeance; the classical equivalent of a conscience.

° 44. bands] troops.

°45. Mavors] Mars.

° 44-5. Whence then … stands] Why then (if Britain and Rome share Jove’s love) are these two states about to fight? Well, Mars supports Rome and Neptune, Albion (Britain); therein lies the conflict (as far as the gods are concerned). According to a relatively late mythological tradition, Neptune was the father of the giant Albion (see Ashe 4). Thus, Munday, in The Triumphs of Reunited Britania, writes: “Neptune put his son Albion the giant in possession of this land [i.e. the future Britain]” (lines 47-8).

° 46. ope] open.

° 48. the Fates] the three goddesses in charge of human destinies.

°48. Let the Fates, transposed] Let the Fates, having reversed their hitherto pro-Roman policy. This line echoes the description in Livy’s fifth book (cited as a main source of the play in the list of Dramatis Personae) of the turning of the tide in Rome’s first encounter with the Gauls: “But now Fortune had reversed her course, now the favour of the gods and man’s intelligence were on Rome’s side” (334). The altering of “Fortune” to “the Fates” may be accounted for by the fact that Pausanias, differing from other authorities, named one of the Fates as Fortune (Lemprière sub Parcae). The same idea (of the transference of divine favour from one imperial power to another) is expressed in the lines from which Fisher took the title for his play: “We Trojans, with Ilium and all its Teucrian glory / Are things of the past; for cruel Jove has quite gone over to the Greeks” (Aeneid 2.325-7).

°49. beaten flags] the flags of the defeated armies.

° 49. the victors’ land] Brennus asserts the British will be the victors, since the forthcoming war is to take place in Britain (“the victors’ land”).

° 51. Which rated … gold] A pointed jibe at the Romans. In the final stages of the Gauls’ siege of Rome, “as both hope and food failed [the Romans, they] finally bade the authorities negotiate surrender or ransom on whatever terms they could”. The Roman tribunes and Brennus “fixed on an amount: a thousand pounds of gold was the price put on the nation that was destined to rule the world” (Livy 333).

°52. fanes] temples.

°53. Allia] The Allia is an Italian river which joins the Tiber.

° 53. Doth Allia … clear?] Isn’t the river Allia still red with Roman blood? As Livy writes: “A great slaughter took place along the bank of the Tiber [where it is joined by the Allia]” (323).

° 54. their] the Romans, i.e. the descendants of the Romans who survived the massacre at Allia.

°55. Arise, thou … beams] Camillus addresses the comet which appeared in the sky after the death of Julius Caesar. “The comet was clearly visible in the sky for seven nights after Caesar’s murder”. The comet’s beams are described as “angry” because the comet registered “the gods’ displeasure at Caesar’s murder” (Plutarch 358).

° 56. Be heralds … death] After Caesar’s assassination, “his great guardian spirit, which he had relied on throughout his life, looked after his interests even after his death by avenging his murder. It harried and hunted his assassins to the ends of the earth, over land and sea, until not one of them remained” (Plutarch 358). Since Caesar is still alive at the time Camillus speaks, his guardian spirit may be regarded as attendant on him. Thus, Caesar himself is the “Julian star”, a living sign of revenge, to be enacted on the descendants of the Gauls who slaughtered many Romans 300 years previously.

°57. black calends] terrible times.

°59. the six hills] the six hills of Rome we abandoned to the Gauls. When the Gauls entered Rome, the Romans “took the following decisions: the young fighters with their wives and children were to retire to the citadel and [the] Capitol [Hill] … and from this fortified place they were to defend gods and men”. The rest of the Romans (the elderly, the plebians, etc.) either remained in the city or fled into the countryside. Thus, those Romans the Gauls slew upon entering the city were left unburied on six hills.

°59. Cadmus crop] the Greek hero Cadmus sowed a dragon’s teeth and caused armed men to spring from the soil. Presumably, Camillus means that, as a result of the Gauls leaving Roman carcasses unburied, Roman soldiers have now sprung from Roman soil to punish the Gauls.

°62. little corner] a condescending attitude to Britain is put into the mouth of a Roman character to rouse patriotic indignation in an English audience.

° 65. period] end.

° 65. broils] troubles, battles.

° 66. back reduce you] lead you back.

° 1.1.1.sd. Duke] An anachronistic title; appropriately so, as Nennius acts like a chivalric knight.

°1. Bellona] goddess of war, sister of Mars.

° 1-2. Methinks I … Gaul] Nennius imagines he can hear the deaths of Gaulish allies across the English Channel.

° 4. complemental] whole complements of.

° 5. rout] disturbance, row.

° 7. Belgics] “Natives of Gallia Belgica, a province comprising the Duchy of Treves, part of Luxembourg, and the departments of the Meuse, Moselle, Meurthe, and Vosges” (Hazlitt).

° 10. The eagle’s eye] The eagle is the symbol of the Roman empire. In the following scene, Julius Caesar will act as “the eagle’s eye” when he spots the white cliffs of the British coast across the English Channel (1.2.14-6).

° 9-11. Think ye … out] Nennius’s complaints about Britain’s lack of coastal defence (at a time of Roman belligerence in mainland Europe) may be intended to reflect Prince Henry’s concerns regarding the state of early seventeenth-century England’s navy. “The navy was to become for Henry a major obsession. In 1603 England was supreme at sea and James had inherited the finest navy afloat”. However, “Nottingham, the Lord High Admiral was already sixty-seven in 1603, but this was not to deter him from clinging on to power until 1618 with, needless to say, catastrophic results … In January 1612 [the shipwright, Phineas] Pett describes the Prince [Henry] summoning all the shipwrights to Greenwich “about a resolution of building ships”. Bishop Goodman “reports the Prince pressing the [Privy] Council in November [1611] to sanction the construction of eight galleons and in December outlining massive navy reforms … All this points to the conclusion that the navy was the principal focus of Henry’s interest during the period following his creation … the Prince saw maritime might as central to the country’s power and prosperity” (Strong 35, 38).

° 12. Which fly aloft] the Roman armies (represented by eagle-standards) can fly over the “wat’ry walls” of the channel in their boats.

° 12. snorting] snoring.

° 13. Feeding impostumed humours] Clogging our nasal passages with pus.

° 14. outlandish] foreign; i.e. the Roman armies will clear the blocked nasal passages of the slumbering Britons by “lancing” their heads with weapons.

° 12-4. thus we … surgeon] Lines in William Crosse’s epic fragment Belgiaes Troubles, and Triumphs (1625) bear curious similarities to expressions used by Nennius in this opening speech. In Crosse’s poem, the English also sleep irresponsibly in the midst of danger, but they are contrasted with the Dutch: “Nor doe the Dutch like Lethargists secure, / Sleepe being prickt” (in Miller 117). The similarity of Fisher’s “snorting” sleepers’ “humours” being “lanced” to Crosse’s “Lethargists … being prickt” might seem only fortuitous unless it is observed that Crosse attended Oxford at the same time as Fisher. “In 1612, [Crosse] … contributed verses on the death of Henry, prince of Wales, to Justa Oxoniensum” (Goodwin) and in the following year to the same collection of epithalamia celebrating the marriage of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick, the Elector Palatine, to which Fisher contributed. After leaving Oxford, Crosse, like Fisher, took holy orders. What makes the relationship between Fuimus Troes and Belgiaes Troubles particularly dynamic is the fact that Crosse’s poem implicitly accuses the English of cowardice, while Fisher’s play features a cowardly Belgic Gaul. See also note to lines 23-7.

° 15. they] the Gauls on the continent.

° 16. gild our spires] the flames from across the Channel burn so high, they are reflected on British towers.

° 20. For olive boughs exchange thy hazel bow] exchange your weapons of war, such as bows made of hazel-wood, for symbols of peace (olive boughs).

° 23-7. Instead of … lute] Similar ideas are found in Crosse’s Belgiaes Troubles (see note to lines 12-14). Miller paraphrases and cites: “In the years of Jacobean peace, the English have lost their warlike qualities, and “like Iades have liv’d in pomperd ease”” (117).

° 30. adust] burnt.

° 29-31. The ruddy planet … ruling element] Mars (“the ruddy planet”), influenced my birth. Consequently, my bodily fluids are burnt blood-red, and the aspect of my character typified by fire raging out of control dominates my nature.

° 31. choler] anger.

° 32. temper] quality, constitution, condition (Crystal and Crystal).

° 1.2.1.sd. ensign] military banner.

° 1.sd. a two-necked … sable] That the eagle is black (“sable”) and two-necked “is likely to have anachronistically suggested the Habsburgian Holy Roman Empire as well as the ancient one” (Ronan 190). “The eagle is, with the lion, the animal appearing most frequently in European coats of arms … The eagle’s legendary heroic qualities led many rulers to take it for their insignia … A striving for symmetry in head-on two-dimensional depictions soon favoured the double eagle, already in evidence … from 1433 on in the insignia of the Holy Roman empire … It has been speculated that the two-headed eagle originally relates to the double function of the Roman emperor and German king” (Biedermann). The emblem of Charles V, Holy Roman emperor in the mid-16th-century, showed a bi-necked black eagle between two columns.

° 1.sd. ancient] flag.

° 3. Ariovist] Ariovistus, king of a German tribe.

° 3. cockboat] a small boat. (“A very few of the strongest [of the German army] tried to swim the river [the Rhine, fleeing Caesar’s army]—including Ariovistus, who had the luck to come across a small craft moored to the bank” [Caesar 72].)

° 4. Vast Germany … bridge] Prior to invading Britain, Caesar had overseen the building of a bridge over the Rhine. The bridge’s construction took only ten days, according to Caesar’s memoir (117). The bridge enabled the Roman legions to attack previously aggressive German tribes on native soil.

° 6. the Pellean duke] Alexander the Great, born in Pella, Macedonia.

° 8. the main] the Indian Ocean.

° 9. type] model for emulation; prefiguring forerunner. “In a moment of leisure [Caesar] was reading one of the histories of Alexander and became very quiet and withdrawn for a long time, and his eyes eventually filled with tears. In astonishment, his friends asked him what the matter was. “Don’t you think it’s sad,” he said, “that while Alexander was already ruling over a vast empire at such a young age, I haven’t yet achieved anything remarkable?” (Plutarch 311). It’s not enough for Caesar that he has subdued Gaul and defeated Germany, he feels he must now extend the boundaries of the known world in order to emulate Alexander properly.

° 9-10. He was … brink] Just as Alexander once stood on the easternmost edge of the known world, so do I now stand on the known world’s westernmost edge.

° 11. nil ultra] the point beyond which nothing exists. This phrase implies that Caesar imagines the world to be flat (see note to 2.4.9.). Thus, pagan knowledge of the world is shown to be incomplete. This, in turn, implies that the advent of Christianity is required to perfect the Roman world empire in the form of a Christian empire. Since the borders of the “known world” were marked by two columns (“the Pillars of Hercules”) standing near Cadiz in Spain (see note to 4.4.6.), Caesar’s phrase would remind the early modern academic reader/auditor of the device of Charles V (especially when heard spoken beneath an ensign showing a black, bi-necked eagle [see note to 1.2.1.sd], and following the covert reference to Charlemagne in the opening scene [line 17], for Charles V was “called the second Charlemagne” [Yates, Astraea 1]). Charles V, Holy Roman emperor in the mid-16^th-century, was regarded as “the potential lord of the world … due to the Hapsburg dynastic marriage policy which had brought such vast territories under his rule”. Consequently, he occasioned the “revival of a universal imperialist hope” (Yates 1). Charles’s device showed two columns, bearing the motto “Plus Oultre” (“More beyond”). “As well as its obvious meaning that [Charles’s] was an empire which extended further than that of the Romans, which had been bounded by the columns of Hercules, the device carried with it [the] prophetic implication that the discovery of new worlds was providentially timed to coincide with the coming of one who should be Dominus mundi in a wider sense than was known to the Romans” (23).

° 12. Democritus … fancy] the existence of infinite worlds was postulated by the philosopher Democritus.

° 12-5. give me … cloud] Caesar regards the act of “seeing” (discovering) a new world as being simultaneous with the act of “conquering” it. Having expressed this idea, Caesar then sets eyes on Britain for the first time (“methinks I ken…”). In Book 15 of Orlando Furioso, Ariosto’s prophetess says “it has pleased Gods to keep the ways to … as yet undiscovered lands unknown until the time when he will raise up a new emperor” (Yates, Astraea 23).

° 17. Comius, your … eyes] Caesar had a “high opinion” of Comius’s judgement. Accordingly, “he instructed Comius to visit as many [Gaulish] tribes as possible” (Caesar 120). Thus, Caesar expects Comius to have information about the “whitish cloud” he can see across the Channel.

° 20. white] a metonymic reference to Dover cliffs; “the white” may also mean the bull’s-eye (the centre of the target in ancient archery contests was often white).

° 20. sea-mark] beacon. Cf.: “Here is my journey’s end, here is my butt / And very sea-mark of my utmost sail” (Othello 5.2.274-5).

° 22. treacherous beck] a self-betraying summons; i.e. the whiteness of the cliffs attracts the attention of those who would destroy their inhabitants.

° 22. Dare but resist] Caesar addresses the distant island.

° 24-5. Thus much … Gauls] “Caesar made active preparations for an expedition to Britain, because he knew that in almost all the Gallic campaigns the Gauls had received reinforcements from the Britons” (Caesar 119). However, “although there was much intercourse between Gaul and Britain, the military aid which Caesar says the Gauls received from the Britons cannot have been the real reason for the invasion. Such assistance could hardly have been of much importance … Probably [Caesar’s] main motive was to secure the glory of leading an army to victory in a distant and unknown land, the wealth of which was reputed to be much greater than it really was” (Handford 266).

° 28. That’s cause enough] By finding a legal justification for attacking Britain, Caesar hopes to appear as not a pirate but a minister of divine vengeance

° 29. him] Mars; i.e. war itself.

° 31. Penates] household gods. “In Roman antiquity, the Penates were often understood as the guardian deities of the state as well as of the individual household” (Berry and Archer 126-7).

° 33. I long to stride] Caesar’s hubris is implied by his wish to be a giant capable of crossing the English Channel in a single stride. The idea of crossing a narrow channel in a single stride brings to mind the Colossus, a giant statue of Apollo which was believed to have stood over the harbour at Rhodes. This, in turn, recalls Shakespeare’s Cassius saying Caesar “doth bestride the narrow world / Like a Colossus” (Julius Caesar, 1.2.136-7). “Rome produced putative giants … Like the “giant brethren” in Jonson’s Catiline (5.9.75), Romans had not just size and power but also potential monstrosity … the power to become one of the “prodigies and monsters / That Rome hath teem’d with since she first knew Mars” (Catiline 1.1.95-6)” (Ronan 153). Spenser, in The Faerie Queene, describes a giant (Albion) entering Britain “on dry-foot”. However, Spenser had earlier explained that Britain was part of mainland Europe at that time (Ashe 6).

° 34. Hellespont] narrow channel. The actual Hellespont was between Asia and Europe.

° 34. bridge it … navy] The Persian monarch Xerxes built a bridge of boats across the Hellepont in order to invade Greece. Xerxes’s presumptuous attempt to subdue the sea was held to be justly punished by the subsequent destruction of his ships.

° 35. Disclosing to … lands] By extending the Roman empire’s western boundary, Caesar sought to emulate Alexander the Great, who had extended his empire (and its geographical knowledge) eastward as far as the Indian Ocean (see lines 6-9).

° 36. arctic star] “Arcturus (the bear-ward) … is the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere and can be found by following the curve of the Great Bear’s tail” (Brewer sub Arctic Region). See lines 16-17 of the opening scene.

° 43. advise] take counsel amongst ourselves.

° 45. cause] business, matter to hand.

° 46. likeliest] most promising.

° 46. regard] due consideration.

° 48. Where peace … sword] We should give them a chance to surrender before we attack.

° 49. unlike] unlikely that.

° 49-50. But ‘tis … be] “This island [Britain], stiff-necked and stubborn-minded … ungratefully rebels … frequently … against foreign kings … For what can there … be … more disgraceful or unrighteous in human affairs, than … to refuse due honour to those of higher dignity” (Gildas 10).

° 50. civil right] law acknowledged by civilised states.

° 51. yet so … cry] in this way, we prevent the people we conquer from claiming that we are tyrants. Caesar is keen to ensure that his military conquests are perceived as legal acts.

° 59. complotments] secret plans.

° 58-62. And further … spy] Caesar “thought it would be of great advantage … to make himself acquainted with the lie of the land [in Britain], the harbours, and the landing-places … the character and strength of the tribes which inhabited it, their manner of fighting and customs … In order to get this information before risking an expedition, he sent a warship in command of Volusenus … His orders were to make a general reconnaissance and return as soon as he could” (Caesar 119).

° 61. legate] messenger.

° 63. range] arrange, put in order.

° 64. Iccian shore] Portus Itius, i.e. Calais. For his second expedition against Britain, Caesar “ordered all the ships to be assembled at Portus Icius, the starting-point for the easiest crossing to Britain—a run of about thirty miles” (Caesar 129). “In that part of Gallia there was in those daies an haven called Itius Portus (which some take to be Calice [Calais]) and so the word importeth an harbourgh as then able to receive a great number of ships” (Holinshed 3.1.22).

° 65. Erinyes] the Greek name for the furies; Volusenus exhorts Caesar to become a minister of divine vengeance over sea, not just over land as previously.

° 1.3.1-2. Although the … staff] See note to “Cassibelane” in the list of Dramatis Personae.

° 4. Your trouble less] While your troubles (duties) will be fewer.

° 7. Troynovant] “New Troy”, i.e. London. “Once he had divided up his kingdom, Brutus decided to build a capital … He came at length to the River Thames … There then he built his city and called it Troia Nova” (Geoffrey 73).

° 6-11. Meanwhile, Androgeus … men] Cassibelane’s popularity as king, says Geoffrey, meant that “the kingship of the entire realm came into his hands, instead of into those of his nephews. However, Cassivelaunus had such a sense of family solidarity that he did not wish the young men to be cut off from the kingship, and he allotted [large shares] of his realm to the two of them” (106).

° 12. Verulam’s fenced town] Verulamium, later St. Albans.

° 13. And as … care.] “Cassivelaunus himself remained in authority over [Androgeus and Themantius] and over the princes of the entire island, for he was the overlord by virtue of his crown” (Geoffrey 106).

° 28. And] And whose.

° 32. precedence] stressed on the second syllable.

° 37. arrived] that has arrived

° 41. pinnace] “small speedy boat with a single mast” (Crystal and Crystal).

° 44-5. Dreads he … saw?] Cassibelane’s reference to “sea-monsters” is perhaps intended to put the audience in mind of the monsters customarily shown surfacing on the seas of maps of the British Isles, such as those published in Drayton’s Poly-Olbion (1612) or in John Speed’s The Theatre of the Empire in Great Britain (1611). Alternatively, the audience may have been reminded of “two artificiall sea monsters, one in fashion of a whale, the other like a dolphin” used in Prince Henry’s investiture processions in June 1610 (King 41). Indeed, the assertion that the Romans had never seen the like of Britain’s sea-monsters in “their theatres” suggests that Fisher is referring to sea-monsters which had featured in English masques.

° 49. Scots] “During the Roman period, and for some centuries after, Scotti was a … synonym for the Celtic Irish … but in the latter half of the fifth century [AD] a group [of “Scots” from Ireland] … planted itself in Argyll” (Ashe 18). The Scots of “Albania’s kingdom” (Scotland), mentioned by Cassibelane, are, therefore, an anachronism: “how generall soever the name of Scots then was, sure it is, that no speciall mention of them is made by anie writer, till about 300 yeares after the birth of our saviour” (Holinshed 21).

° 49. Picts] “The name [Picts] was applied vaguely to Caledonian tribes … So far as [their] heartland can be defined, this lay north of the Firth of Forth … The Irish called them Cruithne, meaning strictly “picture people”, in allusion to their custom of tattooing with woad, which inspired the epithet “Pict” itself—a Latin term bestowed by Romans, not a native one. They may have been simply Britons who remained outside the Empire” (Ashe 16). Elsewhere, Ashe notes: “Greek and Welsh writers indicate that the initial letter [of “Britain”] may once have been P, in which case a connection can be traced with Celtic words meaning “figure” or “picture”, and the reference may be to the natives’ custom of tattooing themselves with designs in woad” (10). Thus, the Picts and the Britons may originally have been a single tribe.

° 50. Albania’s kingdom] Scotland.

° 52. For] That.

° 53. Through all … isle] This line’s shortness may indicate Cassibelane’s haste in giving orders.

° 55. The vulgar … charge] i.e. the Catuvellauni forces. Hazlitt emends the quarto’s “my” to “thy” on the grounds that Belinus is in “charge” of Cassibelane’s forces. However, if it is remembered that Cassibelane was chief of the Catuvellauni tribe, first, and ad hoc king of Britain, second, the quarto’s reading makes perfect sense.

° 56. Fire] Disyllabic. (Alternatively, Hazlitt emends by adding “all” after “Fire”.)

° 59. moves my choler] rouses my anger.

° 62. But when … Rhine] See note to 1.2.4.

° 64. halcyon’s nest] kingfisher’s nest; a safe and stable place. “The ancient Sicilians believed that the kingfisher laid its eggs, and incubated for fourteen days on the surface of the sea, during which period, before the winter solstice, the waves were always unruffled” (Brewer). Britain, being an island separate from the rest of the (known) world (according to Virgil [see note to 2.1.79]) could be considered exempt from the violence of the Iron Age. Sir Richard Fanshawe, in An ode upon occasion of His Majesty’s proclamation (1630), wrote: “White Peace … Seems here [i.e. in Britain, “the island which we sow, / (A world without the world)”] her everlasting rest / To fix, and spreads her downy wings / Over the nest: // As when great Jove, usurping reign, / From the plagued world did her exile, / And tied her with a golden chain / To one blest isle … // A safe retreat to all that came” (in Rivers 17-18).

° 67. haunt] pursue, afflict.

° 69. Beyond cold Thule] i.e. to the end of the world. Thule was “the name given by the ancients to an island, or point of land, six days’ sail north of Britain, and considered by them to be the extreme northern limit of the world” (Brewer). “Camden supposes Shetland to be the place so often distinguished by the name of Thule” (Hazlitt).

° 71. these] even these; i.e. even swine and goats.

° 69-74. Beyond cold … fruits] Rollano imagines a golden world of eternal peace (“where only swine or goats do live and reign”) beyond the known world, a place where the effects of original sin are unknown (where Adam did not “crop the first fruits”). It is as though by travelling north, or west (to “the sun’s bedchamber”), and discovering a new world, explorers can recover humanity’s lost innocence.

° 76. catch] endure; cf.: “a noble nature / May catch a wrench” (Timon of Athens 2.2.2-3).

° 76. or] and either.

° 1.4.1-3. The court … days] “The court resembles a collection of every-day garments made animate, while the ladies of the court are like those delicate and beautiful items with which we dress trees on special holidays.”

° 18. chrysolites] gemstones; cf.: Othello 5.2.151-3.

° 21. not] is not.

° 22. but] but is.

° 25. speak] describe.

° 29. Pandore] Pandora: a mortal female endowed by the gods with every feature, ornament and skill considered beautiful and pleasing in women. The quarto’s spelling is retained here for the sake of meter and rhyme. In Dekker’s Old Fortunatus (1599) we learn that “Some call [Eliza, i.e. Queen Elizabeth I] Pandora” (in Barton 305). At 4.2.40, Eulinus’s beloved Landora is called a “phoenix”, a mythical figure often associated with Queen Elizabeth. It should perhaps also be noted that the invented name “Landora” rhymes with Pandora (the standard spelling of Pandore).

° 30. repine] would be reluctant.

° 35-6. Medusa’s hair … hissed] Minerva transformed the beautiful woman Medusa’s hair into snakes as a punishment for having sexual intercourse with Neptune in the goddess’s temple.

° 41. elixir] compound, distillation.

° 44. Trinobantic lady] lady of Troynovant (“New Troy”); i.e. lady from London (see 1.3.7 and note).

° 45. How grow your hopes?] How far have you got with her?

° 45. What metal is her breast?] Has her breast repelled the arrows of love?

° 46-7. ’Tis beauty’s … slain] Cf.: “Her [i.e. Hero’s] wide sleeves … / Where Venus … strove / To please … proud Adonis … / Her kirtle blue, whereon was many a stain / Made with the blood of wretched lovers slain” (Marlowe, Hero and Leander 1.11-6; stress added).

° 51. work Landora’s battery] gain entrance to Landora’s impregnable fortress.

° 53. Boreas] the north wind.

° 54. split] a mix of spill and spit?

° 54. spurging] splurging, wasting, perhaps combined with expelling (as in purging).

° 55. so] just so, in this way.

° 57. retorted to] turned back upon.

° 58-60. let scorn … stir] play hard to get, treat her mean to make her keen.

° 65. cross] perverse.

° 66. lady-wasp] bothersome lady.

° 69. misconsters] misinterprets.

° 71. coz] cousin.

° 73. earwigs] malicious, scandalising. An old superstition maintained that earwigs crept into human ears in order to penetrate the brain.

° 74. henbane] poisonous plant.

° 74. aconite] poison: “wolfsbane, or monk’s hood” (Ford, Broken Heart 1.1.37.n).

° 76. to my end] till I die.

° 82. point] suggest, appoint.

° 82. Cupid’s stage] a place where acts of love may be performed.

° 84. which art my self] being my closest friend and, therefore, virtually identical to my own self.

° 85. cozening] deception, trickery.

° 85. In Venus’ … art] Any trick is justifiable in the game of love.

° 85-7. In Venus’ … moon] “The trouble with [the] German Protestant princelings [James I considered as potential husbands for his daughter Elizabeth] is that none was thought to be grand enough for a daughter of the king of Great Britain” (Strong 56). The Elector Palatine, Frederick V, however, being descended from Charlemagne, was considered worthy of marriage to Elizabeth. Indeed, by marrying Elizabeth, Frederick might be thought (from the Stuart point of view) to “rear [his] crest above the moon” (that is, improve his family’s pedigree via union with the reincarnation of Elizabeth I, who was often associated with Diana, the moon). Fisher’s Eulinus poses as a man (Hirildas) whom Landora holds worthy of her love, just as Frederick had appeared to be heraldically qualified to marry Elizabeth. As events turned out, however, Frederick did not live up to the name of his ancestor, Charlemagne. (Evidently “these means” had not been “blest”, so “the success” was not “happy”.) Arguments in favour of Frederick’s suitability based on his legendary “descent” may consequently have come to be regarded (from the British point of view) as a kind of “cozening … in Venus’ games” (85). Fisher himself had his family arms and crest registered when the officers of the College of Arms visited Bedfordshire in 1634 (see Blaydes 107).

° 87-9. Now ‘gin … sex]. Now able to lift my head, I look past the moon and find useful information about women in the stars

° 89. Cassiope] Cassiopeia, who was transformed into a constellation as a punishment for boasting of her beauty. The quarto’s spelling is retained for the sake of the meter.

° 91. her daughter] Andromeda.

° 92. without] even without.

° 91-3. then her … fish] then Andromeda, whose beauty by itself would have tamed the sea-monster had not Perseus rescued her.

° 94. Astraea] the goddess of justice, the constellation Virgo.

° 97-8. He mounted … fountains] i.e. Phaethon, who tried to drive the chariot which belonged to his father, Phoebus (the sun), and almost caused a universal conflagration.

° 100. bright wagoner] the plough constellation, Charles’s Wain.

° 102. Alcides’ night] the night when Hercules (Alcides) was conceived, which lasted as long as three normal nights.

° 103. Tethys] a sea-goddess; here, the sea itself.

° 99-105. Fly then … my person] Come quickly, night, and last three times your usual length. Better yet, oh sea, quench the sun so night can last forever. Then I can spend forever in bed with Landora without her realising I’m not who she thinks I am.

° 107. Cordella] This character never appears on stage in the play (see note to the character “Landora” in the list of Dramatis Personae). Cordella’s name “seems deliberately designed to echo the name of [Lear’s daughter] Cordelia” (Hopkins 44-5). Indeed, with nothing else to go on, any reader or audience is likely to supply details using Shakespeare’s heroine. It is, perhaps, telling that Hirildas refers to Landora as a “crocodile” (80). In Jonson’s Volpone (1606), Corvino upbraids Celia thus: “Whore, / Crocodile, that hast thy tears prepared” (3.7.119-20). From this, it seems possible to infer that Cordella represents sincere (because platonic?) love, which cannot be adequately expressed, while Landora represents (in Hirildas’s view) sensual love, which manifests as self-aggrandising effusion.

° 112. in synod] together, in assembly.

° 112. To sing … is] “The whole intellectual life of the Gauls in pre-Roman times was carried on by means of oral teaching, and closely associated with their trained eloquence was their power of memorizing … [The] druids … taught entirely by means of poetry orally transmitted” (Chadwick 47).

° 113. With former … deeds] of past events which offer insight into things happening now and things to come. “[W]e are meant to consider the advent of Caesar as only the latest episode of a great British tradition; there is a vast, magnificent story in the background of the play. References to the songs of the bards call attention to this idea … we hear about the Britons’ institution for recording and celebrating their own history, about their medium for remembering. But the playwright’s dependence on Caesar for much of his information serves as a reminder that in the Renaissance, the capacity of this memory was much in doubt. The irony of this play is that it takes as the culmination of a long tradition the very event which, as men in the playwright’s time were coming to realise, effectively begins British history” (Curran 24).

° 11. Flora] goddess of flowers.

° 23. gray] gray hair. The suggestion seems to be that the hunter’s outdoor life makes him look healthy, while the shepherd’s hair goes gray with worry for his flock.

° 24. bay] a laurel wreath, the shepherd is a poet.

° 25-6. With his pipe … wipe] Forgets his troubles while playing on his pipe.

° 41. Pan] the shepherds’ god of nature.

° 43-7. Fairies small … around] The early modern poet Richard Corbet (1582-1635) blamed Protestantism (and monarchs such as Elizabeth and James) for the fairies’ departure from England: “But since of late Elizabeth / And later James came in, / [The fairies] never danced on any heath … By which we note the fairies / Were of the old profession [i.e. the fairies were Catholics]” (Ashe 108-9).

° 51. Phyllis] typical name for a country maid.

° 66. oaten reed] the shepherd’s musical instrument, reed-pipe.

° 70. crowd] fiddle (Hazlitt).

° 2.1.1. Albania’s] Scotland’s

° 2. Demetian] “Men speak loosely of the whole land to the north of the Bristol Channel as Demetia … a Latinized form of Dyfed [in south-west Wales]” (Thorpe 318).

° 4. Ordovic’s] Geoffrey calls “Gueithaet” king of “Venodotia” (108), “a Latinized form of Gwynedd [a county of north-west Wales]” (Thorpe 369); the Ordovices were an ancient Celtic tribe “chiefly situated in southern Gwynedd” (Salway 45).

° 1-4: Geoffrey refers to Cridous, “Gueithaet” and “Britahel” as three kings “holding sway” of their respective regions under Cassibelane (108).

° 8 Proconsul] the governor of a Roman province, acting on behalf of the consul.

° 11. the Danube’s] The river Danube was usually regarded as marking the northern boundary of the Roman empire.

° 11. by] by way of.

° 35. Thou ravenous wolf] See note to 4.4.24.

° 36. Seven-headed hydra] Rome is a seven-headed monster because it is built on seven hills.

° 41. wants] lacks

° 46. Nor love object] Nor suggest my pursuit of love is an impediment to my being a warrior.

° 46. my poet] Ovid. While it seems unlikely that a Briton would refer to Ovid as “my poet” in 55 BC, this reference indicates how far Rome may be said to have “conquered” Britain via cultural imports before its legions first arrived. “Colonial encounters rarely happen—especially around trading empires—without a pre-history of interaction. A country drawn into tribute-paying will absorb in advance some of the culture of its stronger neighbour” (Kerrigan 126).

° 49. pewter-coat] suit of armour.

° 50-3. our martial … use] our potential warriors wander around town carrying weapons which beat against their wearers’ backs as though to punish them for bearing arms without using them.

° 54. They] The Romans.

° 63. Brute] Brutus, first king of the Britons, great-grandson of Aeneas. “Encouraging his countrymen, [Nennius] conspicuously invokes their ancestry” (Curran 167).

° 65. cataclysms] deluges (Steevens, in Hazlitt).

° 70. Death is but Charon] Death (in war) is no more than a short passage, Charon being the ferryman who conducts the souls of the newly-dead over the rivers Styx and Acheron to the infernal regions.

° 70. Fortunate Isles] islands where the souls of the virtuous resided after death.

° 71. Porter to fame] i.e. death in war is a route to eternal glory.

° 78. Dardan] Trojan.

° 79. We have … ourselves] In Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, the unsavoury Cloten expresses a similar idea: “Britain’s a world / By itself” (3.1.12-3). “The idea of Britain being “a world by itself” was a popular one in Shakespeare’s day” (Nosworthy 75). Later, in Cymbeline, Innogen says: “I’th’ world’s volume / Our Britain seems as of it but not in’t” (3.4.138-9). The idea has its earliest expression in Virgil, when the herdsman Meliboeus expresses his concern that he might be sent from Italy as far as “Britain—that place cut off at the very world’s end” (Eclogue 1.66).

° 82-3. Though Rhine … serve] Though German tribes are prepared to submit to Rome.

° 84. maugre] despite.

° 84-5. Yet maugre … do] “The same sentiment is introduced by Shakespeare into King John Act 5 Scene 7: “This England never did, nor never shall / Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror. / But when it first did help to wound itself … nought shall make us rue, / If England to itself do rest but true”” (Hazlitt).

° 2.2.5. I’ll winch … estate] “A metaphor, from engines by which weights are raised or winched up” (Hazlitt).

° 5. Harpocrates] the god of silence, often represented holding one finger to his mouth.

° 7. double-gilt] rich.

° 7. Be midnight] Be silent as the hour of midnight.

° 13. antedated] no longer required, untimely.

° 16. used] uttered.

° 17. purpled her face] made the blood rush to her cheeks.

° 19. as she’d] as if to.

° 29. thou shall be true] technically, you won’t be lying.

° 30. I’ll lie … lie] I’ll tell a lie, but I will not lie down with her.

° 32. point] aim, purpose.

° 40-1. Yet now … of love] Yet now I must seem to love him (and perhaps truly do love him) because he currently intercepts (as a barrier) the love I feel for Landora.

° 42. Cyprian queen] Venus.

° 48. By which … agree] i.e. love holds the universe and all of nature together.

° 54. Tempe] a valley between Olympus and Ossa, the most delightful place on earth.

° 55. Elysium] paradise.

° 61-2. Yet this … passion] But being rejected excites me more than being accepted would.

° 62. grows] soon grows.

° 2.3.12. whither] “whether” in quarto.

° 13. shipped] “slipped” in quarto; Hazlitt emends to “shipp’d”.

° 17. wear] wear out, waste away.

° 23. indeniz’d into] re-housed as.

° 1-24. That souls … shapes] “One [of Fisher’s] druid[s], in accordance with Caesar’s Commentaries, espouses the doctrine of metempsychosis. But the other druid seems attached to [the] Galfridian notion of a pagan Britain ripe for Christianity; he argues for a heaven, a place where the immortal soul can travel, “fit for immaterial spirits”” (Curran 23). Lucan, in Pharsalia, “expressly states that souls, according to the Druids, do not go down to the gloomy underworld … but proceed elsewhere and that death “is but the mid-point of a long life”” (Graves 57). Caesar wrote: “A lesson which [the Druids] take particular pains to inculcate is that the soul does not perish but after death passes from one body to another” (32-3). However, Kendrick believes the Gauls did not share with Pythagoras the belief in “an instant metempsychosis, perhaps into animal as into other human bodies, but rather in the survival of the identity of the deceased in its recognisable form” (in Spence 52). See 3.5.23-26 and note.

° 25. most lively image] closest likeness.

° 31. Eldol] a king of ancient Britain (Geoffrey 105).

° 35-6. With streamers … all] This vision of a transition from “streamers red” to “a sable hearse-cloth” may be an echo of Tamburlaine’s intimidating use of white, red and black “streamers” as markers of increasing threat during his siege of Damascus in Marlowe’s play (see Tamburlaine Part 1 4.2.111-22 and following scenes).

° 41. And we … for] see 1.4.113 and note.

° 42. turns] “tunes” in quarto.

° 46. Take heed … come] There “is confusion [in Fuimus Troes] over who are the true Trojans … This, the first mention of Trojans in the text of the play, immediately sets up a worrying equivalence between friend and foe” (Hopkins 42).

° 47-8. What may … care] However: “The rich and powerful corporation of the Druids does not appear to have played any part as a body in the [Gaulish] resistance to the Romans” (Handford 261).

° 54. night’s empress] (the goddess of) the moon.

° 54-5. fourfold honour … waves] each of the moon’s four aspects requires honouring; i.e. the moon must be worshipped as goddess of 1) the night-sky; 2) the underworld (where, as Hecate, she reigns); 3) the woods (where, as Diana, she hunts); and 4) the sea which she controls.

° 2.4.1-3. We saw … pearl] “Britain yields gold, silver and other metals, to make it worth conquering. Its seas, too, produce pearls, but they are of a dark, bluish-grey colour” (Tacitus 63). “Julius Caesar is said to have dedicated a breastplate decorated with British pearls in the temple of Venus Genetrix at Rome” (Mattingly 145). In 54 BC, Cicero twice “recorded having had letters both from Caesar and his own brother Quintus who was serving as an officer in Caesar’s expeditionary force. The first time he records that they tell of a complete lack of silver, the second confirms the failure to acquire booty … There is very little doubt … that profit in cash and kind [i.e. in the form of “tribute”, hostages, etc.] was very much to the fore among Roman motives for these campaigns in 55 and 54 BC” (Salway 39).

° 5. The fields … loads] Tacitus is more circumspect than Caesar’s scout: “The [British] soil will produce good crops … they are slow to ripen, though they shoot up quickly—both facts being due to the same cause, the extreme moistness of the soil and atmosphere” (63). Caesar himself notes: “By far the most civilized inhabitants [of Britain] are those living in Kent … whose way of life differs little from that of the Gauls [on the continent]. Most of the [British] tribes in the interior do not grow corn but live on milk and meat” (136).

° 3-6. The meadows … play] Britain’s “plains are spacious, its hills are pleasantly situated, adapted for superior tillage, and its mountains are admirably calculated for the alternate pasturage of cattle, where flowers of various colours … give it the appearance of a lovely picture. It is decked … with divers[e] jewels, with lucid fountains and abundant brooks wandering over the snow white sands; with transparent rivers, flowing in gentle murmurs” (Gildas 9-10). “[I]t is well known for its plentiful springs and rivers abounding in fish. Salmon and eels are especially plentiful” (Bede 37). “It provides in unfailing plenty everything that is suited to the use of human beings. It abounds in every kind of mineral. It has broad fields and hillsides which are suitable for the most intensive farming and, in which, because of the richness of the soil, all kinds of crops are grown in their seasons … and there too grow flowers of every hue … it has … beauty-spots where clear springs flow into shining streams which ripple gently and murmur … What is more, it is watered by lakes and rivers full of fish” (Geoffrey 53).

° 9. glancing] looking (lingeringly) sidelong at the land.

° 8-9. The sun … night] “It is believed that there are also a number of smaller islands [besides Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man], in which according to some writers there is a month of perpetual darkness at the winter solstice. Our inquiries on this subject were always fruitless, but we found by accurate measurement with a water-clock that the nights are shorter than on the continent” (Caesar 135). On this subject, Tacitus is more imaginative: “Their [i.e. the Britons’] day is longer than in our part of the world. The nights are light, and in the extreme north so short that evening and morning twilight are scarcely distinguishable. If no clouds block the view, the sun’s glow, it is said, can be seen all night long: it does not set and rise, but simply passes along the horizon. The reason must be that the flat extremities of the earth cast low shadows, and do not raise the darkness to any height; night therefore fails to reach the sky and stars” (62-3). “Tacitus, who seems to have been uninterested in and somewhat ignorant of certain scientific facts widely known in the ancient world [imagines] a disc-like earth, although its spherical shape was known to Greek scientists as early as the fourth century BC, and through them to many Romans. He apparently thought that the sun passed across just below the horizon, and that the flat edges of the earth were not high enough to cast shadows to the sky, hence the night glow in the extreme north” (Mattingly 144). In Act 1 Scene 2, Fisher’s Caesar calls Britain “nature’s western brink” (10), declaring, “Here is nil ultra” (11). Both statements are consistent with a belief that the earth is flat. See note to 1.2.11.

° 10. for] as for.

° 10. statures] (physical) dimensions; comparable to the modern term “statistics”.

° 11. With blue-stained … fierceness] “All the Britons dye their bodies with woad, which produces a blue colour, and this gives them a more terrifying appearance in battle. They wear their hair long” (Caesar 136) “Diodorus Siculus also stresses the “terrifying aspect” of the Gauls and their deep and harsh voices” (Chadwick 50).

° 12-4. They scarce … defiance] Gildas complains that Britain (i.e. its inhabitants), being “stiff-necked and stubborn-minded, from the time of its first being inhabited, [often] ungratefully rebels” and refuses to pay “due honour to those of higher dignity” (10). He quotes Porphyry: “Britain is a land fertile in tyrants”, where “tyrants” means “usurpers of the imperial dignity” (10-11 and note).

° 14-31. Cassibelane’s reply to Caesar is, for the most part, a translation of the British king’s letter to Caesar in Geoffrey (107-8).

° 16-7. Seeing your … guise] “The play casts Caesar as a grasping tyrant whom the world has made an idol” (Curran 20). Thus, Caesar’s greed anticipates “papistical tyranny” (20).

° 22. like] shared.

° 22. succour] Britain’s aiding Gaul is not mentioned in Cassibelane’s letter in Geoffrey.

° 23. Pardon] Pardon that.

° 23. for this … hearts] for this small division of loyalties on our part should not be enough to make Britain and Rome enemies.

° 27. when as] it being the case that.

° 26-7. As you … same?] “What you have sought from us, Caesar, is an insult to yourself, for a common inheritance of noble blood comes down from Aeneas to Briton and to Roman alike, and our two races should be joined in close amity by this link of glorious kinship” (Geoffrey 108). “Cassibelane’s logic does not persuade Caesar, however, and that is unsurprising, for his metaphor brings with it the ideological baggage of the question found in so many 1633 texts, of when descent from an ancestor becomes so temporally and generationally remote that it ceases to be meaningful” (Hopkins 42).

° 28. close] enclose, surround; render isolated from civilisation.

° 30. rudely] harshly, abruptly; without rhetorical ornament.

° 32-3. I grieve … Troy] “By Hercules!” [Caesar] exclaimed. “Those Britons come from the same race as we do, for we Romans, too, are descended from Trojan stock” (Geoffrey 107). John Twyne (a Catholic historian in the early modern period) attacked “in particular the Galfridian notion that Caesar had had Britain’s Trojan ancestry on his mind when he formulated his invasion plan. Twyne pointed out that Geoffrey had not just misrepresented Caesar, but actually portrayed him as at that time thinking something which in no way agreed with how Caesar had characterised his own thoughts. A glance at Caesar’s writings would show how unlikely he would have been to understand Britain as sharing a common descent with him; instead, Caesar articulated a lack of knowledge about the Britons’ origin … Later, Clement Edmunds … says that [Caesar’s remarks in his Commentaries] showed [the Britons] to be a people “not knowing whence they came”. Edmunds views Caesar as the only source of knowledge on the Britons’ descent and conclusive proof of the Britons’ primitive ignorance about themselves” (Curran 151).

° 33. rude] uneducated, uncivilised, and therefore unaware of their inferiority to us.

° 33-4. but they … friends] “All the same [Caesar continues, weighing how to treat the Britons, given that they are also “Trojans”], unless I am mistaken, they have become very degenerate when compared with us … living as they do beyond the deep sea and quite cut off from the world” (Geoffrey 1-7).

° 36-7. I long … rites] Like “discoverers” and investors in the New World in the early modern period, Caesar justifies his imperial expedition on scientific (and anthropological) grounds.

° 38. margarites] pearls (here, pronounced as two syllables: “mar-grets”).

° 38. brazen cap] helmet.

° 43-4. Gradivus … Haemus] Gradivus is another name for Mars, the god of war. Though he had a temple near Rome, Mars preferred to live among the warlike Thracians. Thus, he would be likely to sleep on top of Haemus, a high mountain separating Thrace and Thessaly. Mount Haemus “received its name from Haemus, son of Boreas and Orithyia, who … was changed into this mountain for aspiring to divine honours” (Lemprière 261).

° 44. lulled with] Because Mount Haemus is so high, Boreas the north wind’s roaring is so distant that it serves to lull Mars to sleep while lying on the peak.

° 2.2.3. make atonement] negotiate a settlement.

° 6. hardy] foolhardy; daring.

° 15. cashier] dismiss, decommission.

° 23. guerdon] reward, recompense.

° 26. Expect] Wait for.

° 31. Grampius] the Grampians, a Scottish mountain range.

° 33. Brigants] a tribe of northern England.

° 36. pelts] shields (Hazlitt).

° 36. glaves] broadswords (Hazlitt).

° 37. Silures] ancient British tribe, inhabitants of South Wales.

° 42. use] custom.

° 46. Sabrine] River-goddess, usually called Sabrina, as at 4.6.30.

° 46. Where Sabrine … breath] Locrinus, king of Loegria (part of Britain, roughly equivalent to modern England minus Cornwall), deserted his wife, Gwendolen, taking Estrildis as his queen. In revenge, Gwendolen gathered Cornish troops and proceeded to wage war on Locrinus. After Locrinus died in battle, Gwendolen seized control of Loegria. “She ordered Estrildis and her daughter [by Locrinus] Habren to be thrown into the river which is now called the Severn”. Hence, “this river is called Habren in the British language, although by a corruption of speech it is called Sabrina in the [Latin] tongue” (Geoffrey 77). Cf.: Milton’s Comus lines 824-42.

° 48. cars] chariots.

° 52. pennons] banners, flags.

° 55. them] the Romans.

° 56. falchions] curved broad swords.

° 64. friendly] in a friendly way.

° 66. wolves] See note to 4.4.24.

° 66. brinded] striped.

° 61-6. Ten thousand … tigers] “Charles I’s journey to Scotland [in 1633] means that the question … of when [does] descent from an ancestor becomes so temporally and generationally remote that it ceases to be meaningful … is asked about the king himself: when does a Stuart—particularly one who had never lost his Scottish accent—cease to be a Scot? And, by extension, when do the Scots—who while not positively unfriendly in Fuimus Troes do nevertheless “gnaw and suck / their enemies’ bones” and are “Painted like bears and wolves and brinded tigers”—become part of a British identity?” (Hopkins 42).

° 67. stonify] petrify.

° 2.6.1. fear] awe, reverence.

° 4. As] Such as.

° 6. laud] Given Lantonus’s benign view of “outward signs” of worship, this may be a punning allusion to Archbishop Laud’s controversial reinstatement of certain ceremonial forms of worship in the Anglican church. In the build-up to the civil war, the Church of England (under Laud) was “criticised by radical Protestants for its “magical ceremonial rites”” (K. Thomas 79). However, a similar phrase to Fisher’s occurs in Shakespeare’s earlier play, Cymbeline: “Laud we the gods” (5.5.47).

° 11. of their aid] their aid’s most required.

° 14. Without devotion … vain] Without faith, rituals are empty forms.

° 27. vervain] the “holy herb”, regarded as sacred by the druids.

° 27. lunary] moonwort.

° 28. fern-seed] the asexual spores of ferns (previously believed to be seeds).

° 28. planetary] Magical herbs have to be gathered “in their correct planetary hours” (Graves 28).

° 29. dreadful mistletoe] Shakespeare calls mistletoe “baneful” (Titus Andronicus 2.3.95), “perhaps in allusion … to the tradition that it was once a tree from which the wood of Christ’s cross was formed; or possibly with reference … to the connection of the plant with the human sacrifices of the Druids” (Brewer).

° 30. Which doth … grow] “The Druids … hold nothing more sacred than mistletoe and the tree on which it grows, provided it is a hard-oak. They also choose groves of hard-oak for its own qualities, nor do they perform any sacred rites without leaves from these trees … [T]hey believe that anything growing on oak-trees is sent by heaven and is a sign that the tree has been chosen by God himself. Mistletoe, however, is rarely found on hard-oaks, but when it is discovered, it is collected with great respect on the sixth day of the moon” (Pliny 216).

° 71. Britain’s chief patroness] Expelled from Italy, after killing his father accidentally, Brutus (great-grandson of the Trojan hero Aeneas) visited a deserted island called Leogetia. There, he found a temple of Diana, the goddess of the moon. Brutus offered sacrifice to Diana in the temple then fell asleep. The goddess appeared to Brutus, in a dream, and told him to sail west, past Gaul (France), until he came to an island (Albion, later Britain), adding: “Now it is empty and ready for your folk. Down the years this will prove an abode suited to you and to your people; and for your descendants it will be a second Troy” (Geoffrey 64-5). Hence, the druids address Diana as “Britain’s chief patroness”.

° 72. the moon’s bright majesty] Fuimus Troes “shows signs of nostalgia [for the Elizabethan period]: there is a neo-Elizabethan devotion to “the moon’s bright majesty”, depicted as being the essential originator of British identity since she was “first guide of Brutus to the isle [2.6.81]” (Hopkins 39).

° 76. generable] generating, causing generation.

° 76. moisture] dew.

° 79. Brute elephants adore] Pliny credited elephants with “respect for the stars, sun and moon” (108), remarking that elephants worshipped the moon by holding branches aloft with their outstretched trunks as though in offering.

° 79-80. man doth … limbs] In the early modern period, the moon was held to have a more direct effect on the human body than the other “planets”.

° 81. See note to line 71.

° 85. Dis] the Gaulish equivalent of Pluto, the god of the underworld. “The Gauls all claim to be descended from Father Dis, declaring that this is the tradition preserved by the Druids” (Caesar 34).

° 88. Nereus] a sea-deity; i.e., here, the sea itself: the moon is imagined as rising from out of the ocean.

° 91. Aeolian slaves] Since Aeolus is the god in control of winds, “Aeolian slaves” are the winds themselves, subject to Aeolus.

° 91-2. Conjure up … storm] The Moon-Goddess controls the sea and winds, like a sorceress.

° 93. That] So that.

° 94. Avernus] the entrance of hell.

° 95. the dragon’s head and tail] the two points in the sky marking where the sun and moon’s paths intersect. In myths describing celestial phenomena, eclipses were said to be caused by a dragon having devoured the sun and moon. Thus, the Moon-deity addressed by Lantonus wishes to shun the sites of its encounters with its dragon-enemy.

° 96. Endymion] shepherd granted eternal youth by Jupiter, and loved by Diana, the goddess of the moon.

° 96. snort] snore.

° 96. Latmian bed] the top of Mount Latmus, where Diana visits Endymion in the night.

° 2.7.2. What means that word?] Nennius is a “duke” (1.1.1.sd) and not accustomed to following orders.

° 2. Thy will?] What do you want?

° 9. mother] motherland.

° 11. worthies] great heroes of world history

° 21. incense] tribute, offering.

° 32. second founder] For his services to Rome, Camillus was known as a “second Romulus”.

° 35-6. this, / This nation] Hopkins reads the repetition of “this” as an indication that Camillus is spluttering in fury (43). The word “this” is similarly repeated for rhetorical effect in Gorboduc: “This, this ensues, when noble men do faile…” (5.2.244; in Cunliffe).

° 39. thorough] disyllabic form of “through”.

° 40. Euxinus’ gulf] the Black Sea.

° 41. rout] rabble, mob.

° 44-5. Brennus led … king] Livy’s Camillus is made to speak Geoffrey’s script.

° 47. To thee belongs] It is up to you.

° 49. Scipios] Scipio was the name of a famous family in Rome, many of whose members were renowned for bravery in serving the republic.

° 50. Marius] a famous Roman soldier.

° 50. Sylla] rival of Marius.

° 50. that] so that.

° 53. trace your steps] emulate your feats.

° 54. Thence] From there (i.e. Britain). Caesar, therefore, perjures himself by not committing suicide after the failure of his first attempt to conquer the island.

° 2.8.5. How Brute … tame] According to Geoffrey, when Brutus arrived in Albion, it was inhabited by a small number of giants. After Brutus and his comrades had explored the island, “they drove the giants … into the caves in the mountains”. Later, the giants attacked Brutus and killed many Britons. “However, the Britons finally gathered together … and overcame the giants and slew them all, except Gogmagog” (72-3).

° 6. Isis’] The name “Isis” usually refers to the part of the Thames in or near Oxford, but occasionally in Fuimus Troes it appears to be used as an alternative name for the entire river.

° 9. eldest son] oldest son of Brutus.

° 10. the furious Hun] Locrinus forced Humber, the king of the Huns, who had invaded Britain, to retreat until a river blocked his way. Humber drowned himself in the river, which took his name (Geoffrey 75).

° 11. But burnt … love] Locrinus’s passion for one of Humber’s prisoners (Estrildis, the daughter of the king of Germany), led him to break a promise he’d made to Corineus, ruler of Cornwall, to marry the latter’s daughter Gwendolen. This breach of contract resulted in civil war (see 2.5.46 and note; Geoffrey 77).

° 12. Leil, Rex Pacificus] Leil, king of Britain, “a great lover of peace and justice”; he “took advantage of the prosperity of his reign to build a town in the northern part of Britain which he called Kaerleil after himself” (Geoffrey 79-80).

° 13. Eliud] a king of Britain.

° 13-14. judicious / How … above] passing judgements in accordance with the regular movements of the stars.

° 15. Wise Bladud … bath] Bladud, king of Britain, “built the town of Kaerbadum, … now called Bath, and … constructed the hot baths there which are suited to the needs of mortal men” (Geoffrey 80). Being himself an inventor of genius, Bladud “chose Minerva [the goddess of wisdom], as the tutelary deity of the baths” (80). Thus, Fisher calls him “wise”. Indeed, “from such advocates as John Bale, John Stow, and William Slatyer, Englishmen had become attached to the notion that Britain had developed schools of higher learning as early as Bladud’s reign, in the ninth century BC, and that pre-Roman British kings had cultivated civilised achievements” (Curran 158). According to one legend, “Bladud was a leper whose initial enthusiasm for Bath arose from the fact that the water and the impregnated mud there had cured him” (Thorpe, note in Geoffrey 80). Presumably, the waters in Bath were also used for baptism.