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Campion's Art of English Poesie and Middleton's Chaste Maid in Cheapside

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2021

Elisabeth Lee Buckingham
Elisabeth Lee Buckingham*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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Extract

The study of certain metrical problems brought me recently to examine more carefully than hitherto Campion's Observations in the Art of English Poesie. In illustrating his points regarding verse writing Campion, it will be recalled, makes use of “diuerse light poems” of his own, and in Chapter vi, devoted to “English Trochaick verse,” he includes one entitled The eight Epigramme. While reading this I was teased by the impression of having heard the scandal there related somewhere else in one of the dramas of the time, but it was not until I had canvassed a large number of Elizabethan plots that the christening scene in A Chaste Maid in Cheapide came to mind.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , September 1928 , pp. 784 - 792
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1928

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References

page 786 note 1 All page references are to the Mermaid edition of Middleton, Volome 1, edited try Havelock Ellis.

page 786 note 2 Page 186, same scene.

page 786 note 3 Page 182.

page 786 note 4 Allwit. How does this suit fit me, Davy? Dory. Excellent neatly;

My master's things were ever fit for you, sir,

E'en to a hair, you know.

Allvit. Thou'st hit it right, Davy:

We ever jumped in one this ten years, Davy; (II, 3, 202),

page 787 note 5 III, 2, page 211.

page 787 note 6 III, 2, page 212.

page 787 note 7 Ibid.

page 787 note 8 Ibid., page 217.

page 787 note 9 IV, 1, page 233.

page 787 note 10 There is a similar break in the old edition, says Havelock Ellis. This passage has evidently suffered some change here, or else has been hastily and carelessly written. If the former suggestion is correct, there might possibly be something in Mr. Fleay's guess—A Biographical Chronicle of tke Englisk Drama 1559-1642, II, 96—that “the Master of the Revels corrected this play before publication.”

page 788 note 12 V, 1, pace 245.

page 788 note 13 I, 2, page 184.

page 789 note 14 And where some merchant! would in soul kiss hell

To buy a paradise for their wives, and dye

Their co nscience in the bloods of prodigal heirs

To deck their night-piece, yet all this being done,

Eaten with jealousy to the inmost bone—,

Than feed the wife plump for another's veins?—

These torments stand I freed of; I'm as clear

From jealousy of a wife as from the charge:

O two miraculous blessings! tis the knight

Hath took that labor all out of my hands:

I may sit still and play; he's jealous for me,

Watches her steps, sets spies; I live at ease,

He hath both the cost and torment: when the string

Of his heart frets, I feed, laugh, or sing.

page 790 note 15 I, 2, page 183.

page 790 note 16 A slight similarity to Campion's second and third lines is found here. The servants seeing All wit take off his hat at Six Walter's approach comment on his condition.

page 790 note 17 1st Ser. Now 'a stands bare as well as we; make the most of him,

He's but one peep above a serving-man,

And so much his horns make him.

The epigram reads:

Yet the vulgar cu'rywhere salutes him

With strange signes of homes ....

page 790 note 17 V, 1, page 245.

page 790 note 18 Page 182.

page 790 note 19 III, 2, page 218.

page 791 note 20 Campion, lines 8, 9, and 10.

page 791 note 21 I, 2, page 182. The italics are mine.

page 791 note 22 I, 2, page 182.

page 791 note 23 Campion's Works, Clarendon Press. Oxford, 1909, page 360: “In spite of Campion's disclaimer of any personal point in these lines, they certainly seem to refer to Baraabe Barnes and Gabriel Harvey.”

page 792 note 24 F. G. Flemy gives 1612, Biographical Chronicle, II, psge 96. Professor A. H. Thorndike, Shakespeare's Theater, psge 50, ssys “sbout 1611-1614.”