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Dekker’s THE SHOEMAKER’S HOLIDAY In Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday, Firke is normally concerned with sexual humor, but he makes an allusion to mythological bawdry that has not been noted. In a familiar myth, Vulcan is suspicious of the chastity of his wife, Venus.’ To test her, he places an invisible metal net in the marriage bed. When Vulcan leaves, Mars arrives, and as Mars and Venus jump into the bed they are caught motionless, in the act. Vulcan then calls his fellow gods to see the lovers, and the gods laugh at all three players in the embarrassing comic scene. In The Shoemaker’s Holiday, Firke cleverly helps Lacey, who is disguised as the shoemaker Hans, marry Julia. Firke causes their fathers, the Earl of Lin- coln and the former Lord Mayor-who are against the marriage-to arrive at the wrong wedding just at the moment when their children are getting married elsewhere. When the fathers demand an explanation, he feigns innocence: “Is he married? God give him joy, I am glad of it. They have a fair day, and the sign is in a good planet, Mars in Venus” (17.1 13-15).’ This comment has puz- zled editors, who conclude that Firke’s understanding of planetary motion is “astrologically fa~lty.“~ But while Firke is pretending to allude to the planets, he is actually throwing salt in the fathers’ wounds by alluding to the story of Mars being caught in carnal embrace with Venus. The frustrated machinations of the fathers are like those of Vulcan. Firke implies that if they were to go find their children, they might see the consummation and not the wedding. One does not need to consult astrology in order to imagine Mars in Venus. -MICHAEL BAIRD SAENGER, University of Toronto NOTES I. The story is told by Ovid in Metamorphoses (4.170 ff.) and in the Ars Amatoria (2.561 ff.). One of the most entertaining settings of the story is when the blind bard Demodocus sings it to Odysseus and the Phaeacians in the Odyssey (8.266 ff.). 2. Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker‘s Holiday, ed. R. L. Smallwood and Stanley Wells (Balti- more: Johns Hopkins UP, 1979). 3. Smallwood and Wells 183 n. Webster’s THE WHITE DEVIL When Paulo Giordano Ursini, Duke of Brachiano, wishes to murder his wife Isabella in order to enjoy the charms of Vittoria Corombona, Camillo’s wife (Camillo will also die, according to plan, by “accident,” when doing gymnastics on a vaulting horse), he has recourse to a “doctor,” of whom Flamineo, Brachiano’s secretary, says, “[Hle will poison a kiss, and was once 73

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Page 1: Webster's the White Devil

Dekker’s THE SHOEMAKER’S HOLIDAY

In Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday, Firke is normally concerned with sexual humor, but he makes an allusion to mythological bawdry that has not been noted. In a familiar myth, Vulcan is suspicious of the chastity of his wife, Venus.’ To test her, he places an invisible metal net in the marriage bed. When Vulcan leaves, Mars arrives, and as Mars and Venus jump into the bed they are caught motionless, in the act. Vulcan then calls his fellow gods to see the lovers, and the gods laugh at all three players in the embarrassing comic scene.

In The Shoemaker’s Holiday, Firke cleverly helps Lacey, who is disguised as the shoemaker Hans, marry Julia. Firke causes their fathers, the Earl of Lin- coln and the former Lord Mayor-who are against the marriage-to arrive at the wrong wedding just at the moment when their children are getting married elsewhere. When the fathers demand an explanation, he feigns innocence: “Is he married? God give him joy, I am glad of it. They have a fair day, and the sign is in a good planet, Mars in Venus” (17.1 13-15).’ This comment has puz- zled editors, who conclude that Firke’s understanding of planetary motion is “astrologically f a~ l ty . “~ But while Firke is pretending to allude to the planets, he is actually throwing salt in the fathers’ wounds by alluding to the story of Mars being caught in carnal embrace with Venus. The frustrated machinations of the fathers are like those of Vulcan. Firke implies that if they were to go find their children, they might see the consummation and not the wedding. One does not need to consult astrology in order to imagine Mars in Venus.

-MICHAEL BAIRD SAENGER, University of Toronto

NOTES

I . The story is told by Ovid in Metamorphoses (4.170 ff.) and in the Ars Amatoria (2.561 ff.). One of the most entertaining settings of the story is when the blind bard Demodocus sings it to Odysseus and the Phaeacians in the Odyssey (8.266 ff.).

2. Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker‘s Holiday, ed. R. L. Smallwood and Stanley Wells (Balti- more: Johns Hopkins UP, 1979).

3. Smallwood and Wells 183 n.

Webster’s THE WHITE DEVIL

When Paulo Giordano Ursini, Duke of Brachiano, wishes to murder his wife Isabella in order to enjoy the charms of Vittoria Corombona, Camillo’s wife (Camillo will also die, according to plan, by “accident,” when doing gymnastics on a vaulting horse), he has recourse to a “doctor,” of whom Flamineo, Brachiano’s secretary, says, “[Hle will poison a kiss, and was once

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minded, for his masterpiece, because Ireland breeds no poison, to have pre- pared a deadly vapour in a Spaniard’s fart that should have poisoned all Dublin” (2.1.298-303). Upon hearing Flamineo’s words, Brachiano exclaims, “0 Saint Anthony’s fire!” (304).

Of Saint Anthony’s fire, Christina Luckyi’s note reads: “Saint Anthony’s fire or ignis sacer (sacred fire), probably slang for breaking wind” (40). Luck- yi refers the reader to Dent (96).’

St. Anthony’s fire, in medicine, is another name for erysipelas,* a deadly contagious disease affecting humans and mature swine.3 By his utterance, Brachiano suggests that he considers his duchess, Isabella, a pig.4 The irony here is that to become infected, she has to come into intimate contact with another swine. Since it is her habit, before retiring for the night, to kiss a por- trait of her husband, and since Doctor Julio has infected the duke’s portrait, or “dead shadow” (2.2.28), “with an oil /And other poisoned stuff’ (29-30), the duchess receives her contagion at the lips, or mouth, of Brachiano, rounded in the duchess’s imagination in response to her kiss. The osculatory “0” (2.1.304) gives forth “Saint Anthony’s fire” (304), a disease deadly to “swine,” in a gust of contempt whose moral equivalent is passing wind.

The duke’s mouth thus performs the function of a nether part of the body when metaphorically he transforms both conjugal love and religion to excre- ment. He has no more respect for his nominal Catholicism than he does for the sacramental character of marriage. Accordingly, when he exclaims “0 Saint Anthony’s fire!” given the context delineated by Flamineo, Brachiano insults the patron saint of Padua, to which the duchess has repaired, contra- vening Brachiano’s command that she go to her room (“take your chamber”; 2.1.268): “No sir, I’ll presently to Padua, / I will not stay a minute” (268-69). Brachiano’s sardonic ejaculation, “0 Saint Anthony’s fire!” not only betrays his sacrilegious state of mind but also points toward the means he will employ to murder the duchess:

No more; I must employ three honest doctor, You must to Padua and by the way Use some of your skill for us. (2.1.3 12-14)

-NATHAN A. CERVO, Franklin Pierce College

NOTES

1. John Webster, The White Devil, ed. Christina Luckyi, The New Mermaids (London: A & Black, 1996). The reference is to R. W. Dent, John Websrer’s Borrowing (Berkeley: U of Cali- fornia P, 1960).

2. Charles P. Emerson and Jane Elizabeth Taylor, Essentials ofMedicine, 14th ed. (Philadel- phia: Lippincott, 1944) 7 4 7 4 9 . “Erysipelas is most common on the face [. . .I” (747).

“Sr. Anrhony’s Fire. Erysipelas is so called from the tradition that those who sought the inter- cession of St. Anthony recovered from the pestilential erysipelas called the sacredfire, which

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proved extremely fatal in 1089.” Dicrionary of Phrase and Fuble, ed. E. Cobham Brewer, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen, and Haffelfinger, n.d.) 34.

3. “Verer. A deadly bacillar disease of mature swine, characterized by fever, red discoloration of the skin of the abdomen, injection of the mucous membranes. loss of appetite, enlargement of the spleen, and petechial hemorrhages.” Merriam- Websrer New Inrernarional Dicrionary, 1927.

4. “St. Anthony was originally a swineherd and, therefore, the patron saint of pigs.” Dicrionary of Phrase and Fable 34.

Swift’s A TALE OF A TUB

Whereas many scholars of Jonathan Swift have commented on the follow- ing passage from “A Digression concerning Criticks” in A Tale of A Tub, none has recognized its allusions to the twelve Labors of Hercules.’ The narrator of the tale is explaining the degree to which the modem critic is “a Discoverer and Collector of Writers Faults” (95). However, in Swift’s ironic posturing as narrator, the narrator does not recognize how unflattering his comments are as he aligns critics with four of the Herculean labors:

NOW, from this Heavenly Descent of Criticism, and the close Analogy it bears to Heroick C‘irtue, ‘tis easie to Assign the proper Employment of a True Anfienr Genuine Critick; which is, to travel thro’ this vast World of Writings: to pursue and hunt those Monstrous Faults bred within them: to drag out the lurking Errors like Cacus from his Den; to multiply them like Hydra’s Heads; and rake them together like Augeas’s Dung. Or else drive away a sort of Dangerous Fowl, who have a perverse Inclination to plunder the best Branches of the Tree of Knowledge, like those Stimphalian Birds that eat up the Fruit. (95)

We recall that Hera first drives Hercules mad; afterward, he attacks his favorite nephew Iolaus and kills six of his own children and two siblings of Iolaus.* After being purified by King Thespius, Hercules goes to Delphi where the Pythoness advises him to travel to Tiryns and serve King Eurystheus for twelve years by completing whatever tasks Eurystheus assigns. Although the narrator of the passage uses a different order of labors than that of the origi- nal myth, the references are nonetheless clear.

The first labor to which he refers is actually the tenth. Eurystheus instructs Hercules to steal the famed cattle of Geryon. After defeating the three-head- ed, three-bodied, six-handed Geryon, Hercules drives the herd through the Alps into Italy. While he rests the herd on the shores of the Tiber, Cacus, a three-headed shepherd who lives in a cave nearby, steals two bulls and four heifers and drags them by their tails into his cave. When Hercules hears one of the heifers braying, he traces it to Cacus’s cave and, despite his flaming belches, severely beats him and takes back the cattle.

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