An Annotated Edition

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John Taylor’s Nonsence upon Sence, or Sence upon Nonsence: An Annotated Edition

Emily Cock

Supervised by K.K. Ruthven

Submitted in part-fulfillment of the BA(Hons) Discipline of English and Creative Writing

The University of Adelaide November 2007

To Ken and Kirsty, who’ve had

to live with Taylor and me.

Contents

Abstract ...... 4 Introduction ...... 5 Note on the Text ...... 12 The Text: Part One (1651) ...... 13 Appendix 1: Facsimile of Nonsence (1651) ...... 137 Appendix 2: ‘The Second Part’ (1651b) ...... 138 Appendix 3: ‘The Third Part’ (1654) ...... 151 Works Cited ...... 162 Publications by John Taylor ...... 162 General ...... 170

Abstract

This annotated edition of John Taylor’s Nonsence upon Sence, or Sence Upon

Nonsence is the first of its kind. Nonsence was originally published in three parts between

1651 and 1654, and, as with the majority of Taylor’s writings, has not yet been produced in a scholarly edition.

Taylor’s works have also received very little critical attention, although within his highly productive career he produced prose and verse compositions on politics, religion, travel writing, local history and culture, the mid-seventeenth century gender debate, and a number of paradoxical encomia. He also produced several pieces of what he considered

‘nonsense verse’, including Nonsence Upon Sence, and I investigate his use of the genre, and evaluate the accuracy of this description. Most particularly, through extensive annotation of the text, I identify Taylor’s engagement with contemporary politics, culture and religion, his use of classical and popular literature, and his tactical reuse and revision of material from his own earlier texts. I argue that such close examination of the text reveals the strong political content acknowledged, but as yet undiscussed by critics such as Warren Wooden and P.N.

Hartle, and implicitly denied by the text’s as yet most substantial critic, Noel Malcolm.

Introduction

John Taylor (1578-1653) was a London waterman who achieved fame as the

“Water Poet”. Between 1612 and 1654 he published over 150 works of prose and poetry on subjects ranging from religion and politics, to travel, humour, and local culture. These were particularly popular among the increasingly literate lower and middle classes, while even members of court, and James I himself, complimented the work of “the sculler” (Capp 46). For the most part, however, Taylor styled himself as a popular writer, and has unfortunately remained so. Derided in Pope’s Dunciad as the “swan of Thames” (Evans 1178), he was regarded by playwright Henry

Glapthorne as an author only of nonsense (Hartle 166). His claim to the title of “Poet” was always contentious; writers of his class and poor education were more commonly termed “rhymers”, and Ben Jonson (whom Taylor idolised) referred to him always as

“the water-rhymer”, because “a rhymer / And a poet, are two things” (Capp 75).

While placing Taylor a step above the anonymous balladeers and “pot poets”, posterity has found him too timebound and artistically conservative to be worth studying. Taylor’s works are omitted from major anthologies of English literature published by Longman, Norton and Oxford University Press, although a few pieces are now accessible in some specialist and revisionist collections.1 Not one of his works is currently available in a stand-alone edition.

1 The New Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse (1991), edited by Alastair Fowler, contains some of Taylor’s ‘Epigrams’ from The sculler (1612) and the opening of Sir Gregory Nonsence (1622) (164- 8); Katherine Usher Henderson and Barbara F. McManus’ Half Humankind: Contexts and Texts of the Controversy about Women in England 1540-1640 (1985) includes Taylor’s Juniper (1639), and its reply pamphlet, The womens revenge (1640) (290-327), which Capp attributes to Taylor himself (118- 119); Paul Keegan’s New Penguin Book of English Verse (2000) includes ‘Non-sense’ by Taylor and “Anonymous” (322); Noel Malcolm, includes a number of Taylor’s nonsense works in The Origins of English Nonsense (137-52, 184-212) (1997).

In a cheery aside on the British television show, Time Team, Taylor appears as

“an eccentric Thames ferryman”, whose once-famous trip from London to

Queenborough in a paper boat was found “in the footnote of a very dusty history book in a very dusty corner of a library” (Reynolds and Platt; Taylor’s account of the journey appears in his Praise of Hemp-seed [1620]). In actual fact, Taylor appears in the footnotes of many a “dusty history”. Inverting Jonson’s famous compliment to

Shakespeare, James Mardock has remarked that Taylor was “not for all time, but an age” (1), and in many ways this is true: Taylor suited his age perfectly, and engaged wholeheartedly with the issues, styles and preoccupations of interest to his contemporaries. His work has thus been scoured for evidence of popular political opinion, religion and culture by historians of the seventeenth century such as William

P. Holden and Robert Wilcher, whereas literary critics have largely ignored it. Despite increasing recent interest in early modern popular culture (thanks largely to the historian Peter Burke and the Shakespeare scholar Louis B. Wright) and English Civil

War literature, Taylor’s writing is far less well known than his personality. Recent work on “self-educated” and “labouring class” poets – perhaps Taylor’s greatest hope for rediscovery – has as yet focussed on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most particularly with the poetry anthologies edited by John Goodridge (Ruthven,

“Taylor”). Bernard Capp, who has published the most extensive study of the poet, restricts himself largely to biography, and Noel Malcolm, who includes a number of pieces by Taylor in his anthology of nonsense, locates them within a pre-Lear/Carroll history of the subject without offering a substantial critique of any. Of those who have looked critically at Taylor’s literary works, most offer a broad commentary on his work according to genre. Instead of looking as others have done at either Taylor the

6 man or his writing in general, I have decided in this project to highlight the intricate ingenuity of his poems by critically annotating a representative one: Nonsence.

The text presented here was first printed in quarto, by an unknown London publisher as Nonsence upon Sence, or Sence upon Nonsence (1651). The “Second

Part” (hereafter, 1651b) was printed later the same year, again in quarto by an unknown publisher, and probably in London (Wing 479; Capp’s “1652” [200] is probably due to Lady Day discrepancies in dating). In February 1654 the “Third Part” was published posthumously – again in London by an unknown publisher – as The

Essence, Quintessence, Insence, Innocence, Lye-sence, & Magnifisence of Nonsence upon Sence: or, Sence upon Nonsence (hereafter, 1654). Printed this time in octavo,

1654 was the first to include a verse “In Laudem Authoris” by an unidentified “H.B.”

(2). All three editions are printed in roman type, rather than in the black letter still widely used for popular works (Capp 67), and although their punctuation varies wildly, they contain relatively few printing errors for what would have been reasonably cheap books. The fact that Nonsence could have been printed on two-and- a-half sheets suggests that it would have cost no more than 3d to buy.

The 1654 text has been republished by the Spenser Society (1870-78; reprinted 1967) and more recently by Noel Malcolm (1997). By far the most widely available, Malcolm’s text is in fact a composite of Nonsence and 1654 (210). Presented in an anthology of seventeenth- century “nonsense verse”, it lacks the lines on the death of the Galloway Nag on the grounds that they are “not . . . nonsense” (210), and is minimally – and sometimes erroneously – annotated. In his quest to prove Taylor “the acknowledged master” of nonsense “in his own time if not in ours” (19), Malcolm expressly rejects political interpretations of the work (24) and consequently excludes political references from his annotations.

I have sought to rectify these and other omissions in my own edition. I would argue that Mardock is gravely mistaken in thinking that Taylor’s shift toward “the safer genre of

7 nonsense verse” in the early 1650s marked a departure from politics (12). Instead, as both

Wooden and Hartle (164) claim without elaboration, the three parts of Nonsence present political and religious satire barely concealed beneath a “thin veneer of nonsense” (Wooden

172). While there was no shortage of anti-Parliament pamphlets published in the period

(Wright, Middle-Class Culture 86), Taylor, over eighty and had been arrested at least twice for political dissent (Capp 158), obviously felt the need to veil his criticisms of the government. His most critical pamphlets of this period are thus published not only anonymously or pseudonymously but also – I argue – disguised as “nonsense”.

Taylor’s first “nonsense” verse was a short piece in Laugh, and be Fat mocking the

“Horse verse” of John Hoskyns, who had submitted a dedicatory nonsense poem for publication in Coryats Crudities (Works ii.74). In 1622 Taylor produced his best-known (and most truly “nonsensical”) work, Sir Gregory Nonsence. Short spurts of “nonsense” appear in a number of his writings, some light-hearted and others in deadly earnest. In Crop-eare

Curried (1645), one of his many anti-Parliament pamphlets, Taylor evoked several of the impossibilia later used in his nonsense verse as the ridiculous precursors of a Parliamentary victory (38-40). In his 1648 work, Mercurius Nonsencicus, these impossibilia are mixed with the bitterness of defeat to produce an anarchic nightmare. Taylor’s more jovial nonsense writing was emulated by other writers: these ranged from his contemporary, Martin Parker – who dubbed the hero of his Legend of Sir Leonard Lack-Wit (1633) the son-in-law of Taylor’s

Sir Gregory Nonsence (Capp 45) – to the early nineteenth-century nonsense writer, Henry

Cogswell Knight (Malcolm 28).

The question arises, however, as to whether Taylor’s Nonsence is actually ‘nonsense’, or is merely, on occasion, nonsensical. Critical discourse on nonsense writing has focussed on the work of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, and it is in regard to their works that the definition of ‘nonsense’ has been largely determined. “Pure nonsense”, insists John Munro,

“does not make sense... [It] is entirely dependent on the rejection of what most people consider logical or even normal and an acceptance of the conventions of a completely

8 different universe” (573-4). For Edith Sewell, the “world of Nonsense... is not a universe of things but of words and ways of using them” (17). Taylor, however, is firmly and enthusiastically engaged with the world around him. While wordplay forms an important part of his style (even in some of his most serious texts), Taylor never appears to be writing

Nonsence purely for the sake of nonsense; for every humorous image of Charlemagne playing shuttle-cock, there is a declaration of defiance against puritan “Westminsters sweet Plum broath (made in Hell)” (30). Of the three parts of Nonsence, the second is the most classically

‘nonsensical’ (and congenial), leaning closer to the almost flippant style of Sir Gregory

Nonsence in several sections (such as lines 40-7, which were extended by an anonymous author into a self-standing nonsense verse, published in Wit and Drollery, Jovial Poems in

1656; Malcolm 212). The ‘Third Part’, in contrast, is barely ‘nonsense’ at all; it contains a doggerel about the “sad death of a Scottish Nag” (6), and a blatant polemic against separatists and the government, who between them, he argues, have harmed the country more than could

“The Turks, the Jews, the Canibals and Tartars” (29). If, as Capp asserts, Taylor died in late

1653 (162), this part was of course published posthumously, meaning he no longer had to curb his tongue in order to “keep [his] eares upon [his] head” (Bull, Beare, Horse, sig.E4).

Nonsence, then, is not ‘pure’ nonsense; it is a text riddled with paradox, oxymoron, and bizarre statements, part of, and fashioning, a world turned upside down. As Taylor himself admits, however, “This Nonsence hath a taste of too much sence” (266). The sheer consistency with which normality is inverted fashions a new version of the everyday, in which the tumultuous politics, religions and social changes surrounding Taylor assume a level of ‘normalcy’ akin to Roman mountains conveying passengers to Lichfield, or Agamemnon and Hector joining forces to preach Catholicism in Amsterdam. Archilochus, who was apparently the first writer to depict a “world upside down”, did so after a solar eclipse convinced him that nothing was now impossible after Zeus had darkened the sun; he declared that no one should now be surprised if land animals swapped their diet for that of dolphins

(Curtius 95). From thereon, many classical and medieval authors employed the adynata or

9 impossibilia trope, and disenchanted Royalist writers in the 1640s and 1650s often depicted post-Civil War England as a topsy-turvy world (Curtius 92-6; Smith 13).

Taylor’s “world turned upside down” is not, however, the dystopian lament of other

Civil War pamphleteers; more often than not, it is fun to read. Taylor presents a comic blend of bathos, puns, burlesque, absurdity, and the constant juxtaposition of classical figures with the earthy (and sometimes downright disreputable) people and places of London, such as

Pickthatch, Houndsditch, and the scolopendras (prostitutes) and public houses. This was in itself, as it was for contemporaries such as Robert Herrick, a political move (Corns 102); by utilising carnavalesque tones and imagery, Taylor is able to evoke within the text the world of festivals and holidays banned under the Puritan government. In his own words, “Nonsence is

Rebellion” (Aqua-Musæ, 11). As if a scene from May revels in which the Lord of Misrule controls the show, Taylor presents a world where torpedoes fly, the poet toasts healths with

Mulciber, and Ariadne is feasted on “Tartarian tripes” (13). The cavalry of hobby horses (43), and playing “at Blind-man-buffe for ginger-bread” (48), like the images of Christmas (30, 39,

116, etc), and references to pre-war drama (128, 242, etc) allow Taylor to evoke the ‘good old days’ wherein disorder was limited to festive occasions, not allowed to run riot through the streets (and verse) of “This age wherin no man knowes whether he lives or not lives, whether he wakes, or dreames; when he can hardly trust his eares with what he heares, believe his owne eyes, wherewith he sees, or give credit to his owne heart” (Mercuris Nonsencicus, 3).

Taylor had, after all, insisted in 1644 that Parliament would only be victorious when “the

North Pole shall be translated to Troynovaunt”, a “tame” Cerberus will “cause the many heads of Hydra to be mortified and expire”, and “the Pygmies Giant-like [will wage war] against Heaven” (Crop-eare Curried, 38, 40). Following the execution of the King, it is little wonder that he, like Archilochus before him, now saw such fabulous events as entirely possibly, on par with the everyday of playing “Blind-man-buffe”, or buying a “dish of Dabs in Fish-street” (Nonsence, 48-9).

It has become a commonplace to assert that, had Taylor enjoyed more than a rudimentary education, he might have been a significant early modern author. Taylor himself would be the first to agree. His natural rhythm, however, and vibrant narration, his understanding of his audience and their interests, and the popularity of his work, renders him, at the very least, an enjoyable and important guide to ‘Everyman’s London’. As I hope to prove in my annotation, however, his fiction is by no means inept; in Nonsence, Taylor successfully combines humour and politics with a style that validates his claim to the title of

‘Water Poet’.

Note on the Text

This annotated edition presents the text of Nonsence upon Sence almost as it appeared to its contemporary readers. The spelling and punctuation have thus been retained, and I have emended (in square brackets) only the most obvious printing errors. In some places, broken or missing letters have also been added in square brackets. I have also followed editorial custom in standardising the alphabet: both “u/v/w” and “i/j” have thus been modernised, and long-s has been printed as “s”.

I have taken as my copy-text the 1651 edition of Nonsence, printed in London by an unknown publisher. Textual variations between this text and those published later in 1651

(hereafter, 1651b) and in 1654 (1654) are recorded for ease of reference as footnotes. When noting these I have followed the generally accepted style recommended by Ronald B.

McKerrow in his Prolegomena for the Oxford Shakespeare (73-80). I have also taken a broad approach to the definition of “substantives” by including all variations except those of spelling. The additional materials included in both 1651b and 1654 are here published as appendices.

The Text: Part One (1651)

Nonsence upon Sence:

SENCE,

UPON

NONSENCE:

Chuse you either, or neither.

Written upon white Paper, in a Browne Study, be-

twixt Lammas Day and Cambridge, in the

Yeare aforesaid.

By JOHN TAYLOR.

LONDON, Printed in the Yeare, 1651.

Browne Study. This is the first of the double-meanings that characterise Nonsence: literally a brown-coloured home office, the phrase also denotes “a state of mental abstraction or musing” (OED). In 1651 the word “browne” probably also evoked the Separatist religious group known as the Brownists, which was established in 1581 by followers of Robert Browne

(Cross 243). Taylor attacked Separatist groups throughout his career. The Brownists were a favourite, and high-profile, target both for him and others such as Richard Bernard, Joseph

Hall and Thomas White. The phrase is thus further laden with connotations of religious madness.

Lammas. Lammas Day was an annual religious festival at which “loaves of bread were consecrated, made from the first ripe corn” (OED). It was held on the 1st of August, and marked the start of the harvest season (Hutton 44). Taylor’s nonsensical juxtaposition of the temporal “Lammas Day” and spatial “Cambridge”, and his reference to a non-existent “year aforesaid” typify the style of nonsense employed throughout the text.

Taylor’s jesting use of the title page demonstrates his astute marketing skill as a self- fashioned “Water Poet”, intended to attract both a personal following and browsing customers at local book stalls. His titles were often among the wittiest parts of his work, combining useful synopses with startling paradoxes, as in An arrant Thiefe, whom evry Man may trust:

In Word and Deed exceeding true and just. With a Comparison between a Thiefe and a Booke

(1622; Works ii.113-25). These were often accompanied by eye-catching and sometimes outrageous woodcuts: the frontispiece to Mad fashions (1642), for example, features a topsy- turvy world wherein “The Cony hunts the Dogge, the Rat the Cat, / The Horse doth whip the

Cart (I pray marke that)” (1). His polemic against coaches, World on wheels (1623), depicts the globe as a carriage drawn by the Devil and a whore, while his first work,

The sculler (1612), highlights his unique position as a writing waterman by depicting him in his boat, accompanied by both a Latinised version of the watermen’s catch-call, “Sum primus homo, Vis ire mecum Remis?” (“I am the next man, will you come with me?”), and the invocation, “Read, then judge” (Capp 13). In another neat marketing ploy, pamphlets such as

Taylors Motto (1621) contained lists of Taylor’s previous works, for the convenience of readers who had missed any (Works ii.57).

John Taylor. After being arrested twice for spying and sedition, Taylor tended to publish his most political writings either anonymously or under pseudonyms such as the anagrammatic “Thorny Ailo”, which he used in 1642 for A Seasonable Lecture

(Capp 143, 150, 158). In 1647 he re-released his Mad Fashions as The World Turn’d

Upside Down, this time signing it “T.J.”, which led later scholars to attribute it to

Thomas Jordan (Capp 184). That he felt able to affix his name to Nonsence reveals his faith in the license granted to jesters; as he explained in Taylors Motto, “Poets in

Comedies are fit for Kings, / To shew (them Metaphoricall) such things / As is convenient they should know and heare, / Which none but Poets dare to speake for feare” (Works, ii.48).

Nonsence upon Sence. Taylor had previously used this paradox as the structuring device of Sir Gregory Nonsence (1622): “Thus doe I make a hotch potch messe of

Nonsence, / In darke Enigmaes, and strange sence upon sence: / It is not foolish all, nor is it wise all, / Nor is it true in all, nor is it lies all” (Works, ii.4).

Nonsence upon Sence, &c,

Ount meekly low, on blew presumptuous wings,  1

Relate the force of fiery water Springs,

M Tell how the Artick and Antartick Pole

Together met, at Hockley in the Hole: 

How Etna and Vessuvius, in cold blood,  5

Short Title. &c,] &c. 1651b+ 1. Mount] Mout 1654 4. met,] met 1651b+ 4. Hole:] Hole. 1654 5. Etna] Etne, 1654

1) blew. In early modern times, blue was a colour with both reputable and disreputable connotations. On the one hand it could stand for the virtues of chastity, fidelity, loyalty and modesty (Evans 259); ultramarine, a shade of blue produced from lapis lazuli, and more expensive than any decoration apart from gold leaf, was typically reserved for the Virgin Mary (Finlay 310, 313). On the other hand, beadles, servants and prostitutes confined to the work-house were characteristically dressed in blue (Hoy 1:64; 2:117, 125), and drunks were supposed to “see blue” (Hoy 4:147).

Taylor draws primarily on the “low” connotations of the colour in his paradoxical injunction to “mount . . . low”.

3) Artick and Antartick. These locations were often evoked as the extremities of the earth (Sugden 20), rendering Taylor’s expression an effective coniunctio oppositorum.

4) Hockley in the Hole. As the eventual site of the London bear garden was at this date still a country village, Taylor most probably refers to the Bedfordshire town somewhat infamous for highway robberies and assignations (Sugden 251). The bawdy overtones he thus gives to the Poles’ meeting is the first of his numerous uses of low burlesque.

5) Etna. This Sicilian volcano – the largest in Europe – was known for its activity: it had erupted in 1646-7, and would do so again between 1651 and 1653 (Seach). Its common evocation in drama is exemplified in John Fletcher’s Valentinian (1647) when Alphonso exclaims: “I swell, and burne like flaming Aetna. / A thousand new found fires are kindled in me” (quoted in Hoy 3:219).

5) Vessuvius. Mt Vesuvius, in southern Italy, was most famous for destroying

Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 AD. Its eruption in 1631 sparked its rebirth as a cultural referent (Sugden 547).

Were both drown’d in the Adriatick flood.

Speake truth (like a Diurnall) let thy pen

Camelion like, rouse Lyons from their Den,

Turne frantick Woolpacks into melting Rocks,

And put Olympus in a Tinder box.  10

7. pen] Pen 1651b+ 10. Tinder] tinder 1651b 10. box.] box: 1651b+

6) Adriatick. Etna and Vesuvius are in the west of Italy, while the Adriatic Sea is to the east. While the likelihood of the sea “flooding” across the country is minimal, the alternative image of volcanos trekking into it deliberately (“in cold blood”) and drowning is ludicrous because their “blood” (lava) is hot, and, as St. Isidore explained, mountains are so called precisely because they do not move: mons a non movendo (Ruthven ‘Etymologist’, 12, 30-1).

7) Diurnall. A newspaper (OED). In suggesting that it would be nonsense for a diurnal to “speak truth”, Taylor reveals his Royalist distrust of their use by Parliament during the Civil War, when their news editors were “as very Villaines as could be spew’d from the bottomlesse Pit” (Noble Cavalier [1643], 8). Like other Royalist writers, Taylor regularly attacked “our London Diurnals” for “often stumbl[ing] into most grosse errours” (A preter-pluperfect, spick and span new nocturnall [1643], 1).

Typical is his riposte to the parliamentarian news-sheet, Mercurius Brittanicus, published as Most Curious Mercurius Brittanicus, alias. Sathanicus, Answer’d,

Cuff’d, Cudgell’d, and Clapper-Claude (1644) (Capp 153).

8) Camelion like. A “Camelion” is a “camelopard” or giraffe (OED). This simile exemplifies the “unnatural” natural history that Elizabethan writers derived from

Pliny’s Naturalis Historia (Ruthven “Taylor”). Taylor elsewhere depicts camelions as creatures who “live by the wind” (Funerall Elegie, line 222) and are thus as insubstantial as “Aire, Smoake, Vapours, words and winde” (Mercurius Nonsencicus,

5). This renders paradoxical the notion that they are capable of rousing lions.

Report how Russian Cats do bark like Dogs,

And Scithian Mountains are turn’d Irish Bogs.

Feast Ariadne with Tartarian Tripes,

11. Dogs] dogs 1654 12. Bogs.] Bogs, 1651b

11) Russian . . . dogs. Even prior to the eighteenth-century heyday of “travel liars”

(Adams 9), travel stories published in England were treated with notable suspicion. In

The Preacher’s Travels (1611), John Cartwright asserted that he would only report

“what [his] eyes have seen in more remote parts of the world”, while Baptist Goodall, in The Trial of Travel (1630), urged travel writers to reject “the least of lying wonders told / . . .of foothigh pygmies, dog-eared men / Blue black and yellow”, in favour of the world’s real marvels (quoted in Sterman 31). Travels to Prague (published originally as An English-mans Love to Bohemia, 1620) opens with Taylor’s observation that this

. . . Pamphlet (Reader,) from the Presse is hurld,

That hath not many fellowes in the world:

The manner’s common, though the matter’s shallow,

And ’tis all true, which makes it want a fellow (Works, iii.92).

Taylor also attacked the veracity of Thomas Coryate’s travel stories. When relating

Coryate’s fictional death in Praise of Hemp-seed (1620), he jibed that Coryate would no longer be able to tell stories “Of men with long tailes, faced like to hounds, / Of oysters, one whose fish weigh’d forty pounds,” etc (Works iii. 68).

13) Ariadne . . . Tartarian tripes. Hungry dogs may be said to love dirty puddings, but it is doubtful whether the Greek princess who married Theseus would consider Tartarian offal (“tripe”) a “feast”. It cannot be said for certain whether

Taylor is referring to the classical Tartarus, “the deepest region of the underworld”

(Price & Kearns 534), or the Ottoman Tartary. In effect, the heathen Tartary and devilish Tartarus “fuse in a term of general opprobrium” (Hoy 1:97).

Transform great Cannons to Tobacco-pipes:

Make Venus like a Negro, white as Jet, 15

15. Jet] jet 1651b+

14) Tobacco. Increasingly popular in this period, tobacco was the subject of diverse claims as to its medicinal or detrimental effects. Joshua Sylvester’s pamphlet on Tobacco Battered, and the Pipes Shattered (about their Ears that idlely Idolize so base and barbarous a weed; or at least-wise over-love so loathsome Vanitie:) by a

Volley of Holy Shot Thundered from Mount Helicon (1617) linked it not only to paganism (on account of its American origins) but also to Catholicism because of the

“idolatry” it inspired in its users (Herford and Simpson 194; Pollard 44). Taylor himself referred to it as “Englands bainefull Diety”, aligned it with the Devil, and composed a mock-laudatory verse on it “in the Barbarian tongue” (Works ii.113, ii.252-3).

15) Venus . . . Negro. While the association of black women with sexuality was in no way unusual for the period (and Taylor certainly saw this as the primary quality of

Venus, whom he refers to in his Memoriall (1622) as “the Goddesse (alias Strumpet)

Venus” (Works ii.269), the idea of a black goddess of love and beauty would have seemed nonsensical to an early modern English audience (Boose 47); cf.

Shakespeare’s ironic “Ethiops of their sweet complexion crack [boast]” (Love’s

Labours Lost, IV.iii.268) (Ruthven “Taylor”).

15) white . . . Jet. Such dissimilar similes appear frequently in nonsense verse.

Ultimately, of course, a “Negro [as] white as jet” makes perfect sense in rendering them not white at all, since to Taylor “white Negr[o]es” were “as rare as Phenixes, as scarce as black Swans” (Complaint of Christmas [1631], sig. A2r).

And puffepaste of the Tomb of Mahomet. 

Then mounted on a Windmill, presently

To Dunstable in Derbyshire I’le flie:

From thence I’le take the Chariot of the Sunne

16. puffepaste] puffe-paste 1651b+ 16. of] or 1654 17. Windmill,] Windmill 1651b+ 19. I’le] Ile 1651b+ 19. Sunne] Sunne, 1651b; Sun, 1654

16) puffepaste . . . Tomb . . . Mahomet. This is an unusually violent attack on

Islam for Taylor, who normally refers more vaguely (though still derogatorily) to “the

Turk” (e.g. below, line 46), and reserves his most virulent assaults for groups with a greater presence in London itself, particularly Separatists, Catholics, and Puritans.

17) mounted . . . Windmill. Taylor’s image of mounting a windmill as if it were a horse evokes comparison with the eponymous hero of Cervantes’ Don Quixote

(1605), who tilted against one after mistaking it for a giant (Ruthven “Taylor”).

Taylor’s knowledge of this novel is evident in several direct references to it, as for example in Most Curious Mercurius Brittanicus (1644, 1).

18) Dunstable. The many long, straight stretches along the road from London to

Dunstable (in Bedfordshire) led to the expression “plain as the road to Dunstable”, i.e. clear and straightforward (Evans 366). Mounting a windmill to get there would therefore convolute an otherwise very simple journey.

19) take . . . Sunne. Taylor here offers either a foolhardy plan to steal (“take”) the flying chariot of the Greek sun-god Apollo, or the bathetic image of Apollo as a taxi- cab driver (Ruthven “Taylor”).

And swim to Scotland, and bring newes what’s done.  20

20. Scotland,] Scotland 1651b 20. done.] done: 1651b+

20) swim to Scotland. Scotland and Dunstable are connected by land, and Taylor had in fact walked to Edinburgh in 1618, “not carrying any Money to or fro, neither

Begging, Borrowing, or Asking Meate, Drinke or Lodging”, a feat he recorded in his

Pennilesse Pilgrimage (Works i.121). This was one of several unusual journeys for which Taylor became famous. In 1620 he sailed approximately 40 miles on the

Thames from London to Queenborough (Reynolds and Platt)

In such a Boat which never had a fellow[;]

Having no kinde of mettall or no wood

To help us eyther in our Ebbe or Flood:

For as our boat was paper, so our Oares

Were Stock-fish. (Praise of Hemp-seed, Works iii.73).

In 1619 he visited Europe during the Thirty Years’ War, recording the journey in his Travels to Prague (Works iii.90-100, recte 92-102).

20) newes. Any Scottish “newes” of interest to Taylor would be about the latest developments in the Anglo-Scottish war. This was rooted in nationalism, religion

(particularly the control of the Scottish parliament by strict Presbyterian kirkmen), and vying Royalist and republican factions (Grainger 5-14). By pronouncing Charles

II King of “Great Britain, France and Ireland”, the Scots aimed to force

Presbyterianism on republican England by royal decree (Grainger 6). There is little evidence that Taylor supported Charles II as strongly as other English Royalists did

(Grainger 77-9, 85-6). He certainly resented the Scots, whom he saw as having betrayed Charles I in 1646, for which he was to savage them in The Impartiallest

Satyre that ever was seen (1652) (Capp 187).

From thence Ile soare to silver Cinthia’s lap,

And with Endymion take a nine years nap:

There Ile drinke healths with smug fac’d Mulciber

At all the twelve signes in the Hemisphere.

23. smug fac’d] smug-face 1654 23. Mulciber] Mulciber, 1651b; Mu ciber, 1654

21-22) Cinthia’s lap . . . Endymion. In comparison to the classical myth, in which

Zeus causes Endymion (a mortal shepherd boy loved by the moon goddess Cynthia) to sleep eternally, Taylor’s “nine years” is a mere “nap” (Price and Kearns 188). In placing both himself and Endymion in Cynthia’s “lap”, Taylor paradoxically renders erotic a story centred upon the goddess of virginity (Ruthven “Taylor”).

23) smug fac’d Mulciber. A nonsensical description for the Devil credited with building Pandæmonium, “the palace of all the devils” (Patterson 36), and “Citie and proud seate / Of Lucifer” (Milton, Paradise Lost, X.424-5). Like Taylor playing

“shuttlecock with Charlemaigne” (below, 134), or “Hollophernes. . . [grumbling]

Because an Hostler stole away his boots” (220), the image of Mulciber drinking

“healths” with an English waterman typifies the low treatment of heroic subject- matter in burlesque or travesty (Malcolm 97).

23-24) drinke healths . . . twelve signs. Taylor literally brings the heavens down to earth in presenting the twelve constellations of the zodiac as public houses. Taylor refers positively to drinking and alehouses throughout his work (most particularly in the effervescent Ale ale-vated, 1651), and from 1647 he owned the Crown (later the

Poet’s Head) in Longacre (Capp 154-5). His praise of alcohol evidently led to his reputation for drunkenness: when reprinting Taylor’s Dialogue between a pedler and popish priest in 1699, the publisher Henry Hills affixed a preface defending Taylor’s praise of “Bacchus”, insisting that even “great Ben [Jonson]. . . did often Sack commend” (1).

Tush tell not me these things are past dispute, 25

Ile from th’ Hesperides bring go[l]den fruit: 

Such as the Poets Palfrey Pegasus,

Fetch’d from the fertile Molehill Caucasus.

’Tis not the Persian Gulph, or Epshams Well, 

26. go[l]den] 1651b+ 29. ‘Tis] Tis 1654

26) Hesperides . . . fruit. An absurdly bold statement, because Hercules, the only man to succeed in fetching the golden apples Ge had given Hera upon her marriage, had first to outwit the fruit’s guardians (the Hesperides) and kill the dragon Ladon

(Price & Kearns 261). Such boasts became a staple in comic verse, particularly in the sub-genre of “Bedlamite” or “Poor Tom” verses (Malcolm 87).

27) Palfrey Pegasus. Taylor elsewhere employs this somewhat demeaning description of the winged horse of the Muses to emphasise the genius of his idol

Thomas Nashe, whom he allows to declare masterfully: “Pegasus was my Palfrey”

(Crop-eare Curried [1644], 2). In one of his many self-deprecating statements, Taylor conceded that his own relationship with Pegasus was far less masterful: “Pegasus cast me off his backe,” he admitted, “and I fell into th [sic] Thames, whither was the cause

I serv’d an apprentiship to be a Waterman” (Bull, beare, horse [1638], sig. E1).

28) Molehill Caucasus. In thus describing the Caucasus Mountains, traditionally the dividing line between Europe and Asia, Taylor nonsensically reverses the common expression of making mountains out of molehills (Tilley M1216). His association of Pegasus with the Caucasus (from which even he could not “fetch” golden fruit that are not there), rather than Mt Helicon, also provides a humorous anomaly.

29) Epshams Well. Epsom became the English spa town of choice during the seventeenth century, after a well of water high in magnesium sulphate was found there (Epsom and Ewell Council).

Nor Westminsters sweet Plum broath (made in Hell) 30

Can change my resolution; I have vow’d, 

To speake with silence, and to write aloud, 

31. resolution;] resolution. 1654 32. silence,] silence 1654

30) Westminsters . . . Plum broath . . . Hell. The “broath” is a traditional

Christmas soup of beef, prunes, raisons, white bread, spices, wine, etc (OED). The staunchly Royalist Taylor ironically describes as “sweet” the Hellish “broath” served by the Puritan Parliament in Westminster, and compounds the irony in the first of his many references to Christmas and other festivals. In 1647 Parliament had formally abolished Christmas, Easter, Whitsun, and all other former Church feasts, thereby consolidating its 1641 ban on Sunday dancing and sports and subsequent bans on folk-customs such as the maypole (Hutton 201, 212). Taylor’s criticism of such interdictions was shared by other popular political writers, such as Laurence Price in

Make Room for Christmas (1656), and the anonymous authors of Christmas is My

Name (c1624) and The World is Turned Upside Down (1646) (Rollins Cavalier 160-

2; Old English Ballads 372-5). To imagine members of Parliament – many of whom had continued as early as 1643 to transact business on Christmas Day (Hutton 207) – indulging in a festive plum broth would be, to Taylor, one of the most ludicrous images of his entire poem. “Dev’ls broath” reappears below (line 211).

32) speake . . . silence. This paradox reworks the Christian belief that when the

Word became Flesh, it appeared in the speechless (infans) infant Jesus (Ruthven

“Taylor”). It is paralleled here by the secular paradox of writing out loud.

That Bulls of Basan, and the Circean Swine,

Shall al dance Trenchmore at these works of mine.

Rouse up thou Ghost of Guzman, and apply 35

Thy selfe to me, and let’s write Tempe dry: 

Be rul’d by me, we’le empty all Hellicon,



34. works] words 1651b+ 35. Guzman] Gufman 1654 36. me,] me 1651b+ 38. Babylon;] Babylon: 1651b; Babylon. 1654

33-34) Bulls of Basan . . . Circean Swine . . . Trenchmore. Taylor characteristically blends a classical reference to Odysseus’ transmogrified men

(Odyssey, Book X), and biblical allusion to the Bashan bulls that oppressed the

Psalmist (Psalms, 22:12-13), with an earthy aspect of English culture, thereby evoking a beast-fable image of burly bulls and swine performing an old English country dance called the “Trenchmore” (OED). His resolve to resist such figures in order to vent his own fury is indicative of the dangers he faced in writing against “Westminster” (see the note above on the title page).

35) Ghost of Guzman. Guzman d’Alfarache was the titular hero of Mateo

Aléman’s 1599 picaresque novel, a very popular book translated into English in 1622 as The Rogue (Johnson 1). While Taylor commonly invoked the Muses, and on occasion the ghost of Thomas Nashe (Differing worships, 1; Crop-eare Curried, 1), it is unlikely the Spanish Guzman would have been as accommodating in helping

Taylor attack the Catholic Church (“the whore of Babylon”: see below).

36-37) Tempe . . . Hellicon. The beautiful Tempe valley in Thessaly, celebrated by Horace in his Odes (III, i), and Mt Helicon (whose “fullness” derived from the

Hippocrene and Aganippe springs, which were sacred to the Muses) were both commonly invoked for poetic inspiration (OED; Price and Kearns 12). Taylor’s resolution to “write [them] dry” (and thus exhaust their inspirational potential) is typical of nonsense hyperbole.

In scribling gainst the whore of Babylon; 

The Dunsmore Cowes milke shall make Sillibubs,

38. gainst] ‘gainst 1651b+ 38. whore] Whore 1654

38) whore of Babylon. Protestant interpreters of the Bible identified the city of

Babylon – which is represented in Revelation (17:17-19) as the embodiment of luxury, tyranny and vice – with the Roman Catholic Church (Evans 67). Writers such as Taylor, whose stock allegations against Puritans included sexual profligacy, often listed it as the only whore a Puritan wouldn’t sleep with (Holden 77). Taylor, who castigated the Catholic Church throughout his career, made the association explicit in his Booke of Martyrs (1616): referring to James I’s commentary on Revelation, he praises the King for exposing “Rome’s seven-headed purple beastly Whore” (Capp

122).

39) Dunsmore cow. A monster of English legend, the “Dun Cow” produced inexhaustible milk before it rebelled and was killed by Guy of Warwick (Evans 364-

5).

39) Sillibubs. Literally “a dish made of milk or cream curdled by the addition of wine, cider or other acid, often sweetened and flavoured” (OED), which was often consumed at Christmas (Lalumia 2; for Taylor’s use of Christmas, see above, line 30).

The term was figuratively applied to “something unsubstantial and frothy, esp. floridly vapid discourse or writing” (OED), and it is for this sense in particular that

Taylor links it with the religion of “Tubs”.

And our Religion shall be brought in Tubs. 40

40) Religion . . . Tubs. The disparagement of “Tub preaching” by Taylor and others drew on the proverbial “tale of a tub”, which denoted “any impertinent discourse or story”, or “Idle histories; vaine relations; [or] tales . . . of a rosted horse”

(Tilley T45). Taylor’s pamphlets against Separatist tub-preaching (particularly by tradesmen) include A Tale in a Tub or, a Tub Lecture. As it was delivered by Myheele

Mendsoale, an inspired Brownist, and a most upright Translator. In a meeting house neere Bedlam, the one and twentieth of Decembler, Last 1641 (1642). Taylor here parodies the overblown rhetoric of such “Tub Lectures”, displaying his “happy knack of giving the impression of interminable length and infinite nonsense all within six pages” (Holden 73). The title page of Taylor’s A Swarme of Sectaries, and

Schismatiques: Wherein is discovered the strange preaching (or prating) of such as are by their trades Coblers, Tinkers, Pedlers, Weavers, Sow-gelders, and Cymney-

Sweepers (1641) contains an illustration that literalises the phrase: it depicts the cobbler-preacher, Sam How, sermonising from inside a washing tub. How was an apt target; his most famous sermon, on “The Sufficiencie of the Spirits Teaching, Without

Human Learning”, vehemently praised the very lay preachers Taylor habitually denounced (Watts 82).

Make haste unto the Fayre calld Bartholomew, 

And thence, from the Heroick Mungrell Crew, 

41. Fayre] Faire 1651b; faire 1654 42. thence,] thence 1654

41) Fayre called Bartholomew. Bartholomew Fair was held annually from 1133 to 1855 at West Smithfield on Bartholomew Day (24 August) (Evans 85). It was a significant point of contention between Puritan and liberal factions; while Ben Jonson depicted it as a bustling centre of “Such place, such men, such language and such ware” (Bartholomew Fair [1614], Prologue 2), the Londinania denounced it as “a sort of Bacchanalia, to gratify the multitude in their wandering and irregular thoughts”

(Massingham and Massingham 156). Peter Aretine also decried it in his pamphlet,

Strange newes from Bartholomew-Fair, or, the wandring-whore discovered, her cabinet unlockt, her secrets laid open, unvailed, and spread abroad in Whore and

Bacon-lane, Duck-street and the garrison of Pye-corner. With the exact manner of conveighing St. Jameses Bawbyes to St Bartholomews-Fair, for the use of all the noble hectors, trappans, pimps, dicks merry cullys and mad-conceited lads of Great-

Bedlam. Also the mad flights, merry-conceits tricks, whimsies and quillets used by the wandring-whore, her bawds, mobs, panders, pads and trulls for the drawing in of young hectors, with the manner of her traffick by morter-pieces, and new invented engines never discovered before (1661). Despite Puritan attempts to suppress the festivities, however, the Fair continued to provide a lively centre of London life

(Walford 204).

42) Heroick Mungrell Crew. A mock-heroic description of the hotch-potch

(“Mungrell”) Bartholomew Fair crowd.

Take the fine Gewgaw hobby horses all,

Which we will man, and then a Counsell call,

And conquer Callice, Kent and Christendome, 45

Knock down the Turk, and bravely ransack Rome. 

What can be done more? what more can be sed? 

Let’s play at Blind-man-buffe for ginger-bread: 

43. Gewgaw] gugaw 1651b+ 44. call,] call 1654 46. Turk,] Turk 1651b 46. Rome.] Rome; 1651b; Rome: 1654 47. what] What 1654 48. Blind-man-buffe] Blind man-buffe 1654 48. ginger-bread] Ginger-bread 1654

43) Gewgaw hobby horses. Taylor’s image of a cavalry conquering “Callice, Kent and Christendome” while mounted on “splendidly trifling” (OED “gewgaw”) wicker- work models of horses is typically mock-heroic. Like the Christmas and festival imagery of Robert Herrick’s Hesperides (c1647), however, Taylor’s allusion is complicated by contemporary politics (Corns 102-111). Formerly an important part of festival occasions, in the Puritan 1640s hobby horses were disappearing along with maypoles, Lords of Misrule and church ales (Hutton 201). Finding enough of them in

England to form a cavalry sufficient to “Knock down the Turk” thus becomes an impossibilium.

45) Callice. Calais, on the French coast, had been a British outpost since its capture by Edward II in 1346, until its loss under Mary I in 1553 (Gibson 48). In both his Briefe Remembrance (1618) and Memorial (1622), Taylor depicts this as the most significant event of the Catholic Queen’s “bloudy reigne”, causing her “such griefe, that shee never enjoyed her lifelong [sic] after” (Works ii.293, 318).

45) Kent. Kent was more naturally the landing place for friendly and hostile visitors from the Continent, including Caesar in 55 BC, Hengist and Horsa in 457 AD, and Lewis the Dauphin of France in 1216 (Sugden 291). While it would be ridiculous to conquer the already-English Kent, both it and Calais would provide useful stepping stones for an assault upon all “Christendome”.

46) Turk . . . Rome. Taylor proposes assaults upon two stock enemies of

Protestant England: the Ottoman Muslims, and Roman Catholics.

48) play . . . ginger-bread. The triviality of this anti-climactic successor to the campaigns is compounded by the frivolous connotations of “ginger-bread”, which was at this time often elaborately decorated with gold leaf, etc, and shaped in moulds

(Black 47).

We’le have a dish of Dabs in Fish-street drest, 

And with the Lobsters Lady we will feast.  50

For as the Gout is but a pleasing itch.

The best Beare-garden Bull-dog, was a Bitch. 

We have both eight, and eighteen parts of speech, 

Whereby I find Ash burnes as well as Beech. 

49. Fish-street] Fish street 1651b+ 50. Lady] Ladies 1651b+ 51. itch.] itch: 1651b; itch, 1654 52. Bull-dog,] Bull-dog 1651b+ 53. eight,] eight 1654 54. find] learn 1654 54. Beech.] beech, 1654

49) Dabs. Small flat fish (OED).

49) Fish-Street. An area of London noted for its many fishmongers (Russan and

Russan 90).

50) Lobsters lady. Following his reference to “Dabs”, Taylor may be proposing to

“feast” on the crustacean, although the culinary combination would be somewhat akin to caviar and sausages. In 1651b and 1654, however, the phrase is “Lobsters ladies”, which suggests an alternative, political meaning: the Parliamentary army included a

“verie strong Regiment of extraordinarily armed horse” under the command of Sir

Arthur Haselrig, whom the Royalists nicknamed “Lobsters”, “because of the bright iron-shell with which they were all couvered” (Wroughton 65). To offer “a dish of

Dabs” to the wives of Taylor’s Puritan enemies would be as offensive as serving

Ariadne “Tartarian tripe” (see line 13).

52) best . . . Bitch. Taylor records this anecdote among a number of comical or startling “Bulls” (i.e. edicts) in his Bull, Beare, Horse (1638): “One said, that the best

Bull-dog that ever he saw play at the Beare, was a Brended [‘brinded, streaky brown’

(OED )] Bitch” (C1).

53) eight . . . speech. The traditional eight parts are nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections (MacFayden). That number has been increased by different grammarians further subdividing the categories. Taylor’s “eighteen” either alludes to the work of an unidentified grammarian, or is merely a ridiculing exaggeration of what he considered unnecessary refinements.

54) Ash . . . Beech. Taylor mocks pointless grammatical rules by suggesting in a non sequitur that they can lead to practical knowledge about different types of wood.

Gargantuas scull is made a frying pan,  55

To fry or follow the Leviathan,

That Gogmagog, Nick Wood, or Mariot,

55. Gargantuas] Gargantua’s 1654 55. pan,] pan 1654

55) Gargantua. This giant became famous after the publication of François

Rabelais’ novel, Gargantua (1534). Thomas Urquhart’s English translation, however, would not be available to the mono-lingual Taylor until 1653. Taylor probably refers instead to an older folk-lore figure who appeared, for example, in an English translation (now lost) of François Girault’s Les croniques admirables du puissant Roy

Gargantua (c1534) (Hoy 1:31).

56) Leviathan. This biblical sea-monster appears in Job (41:1-34), Psalms (74:13-

14), and Isaiah (27:1). “Frying” it whole would require a “pan” even bigger than

Gargantua’s skull. Taylor’s alternative plan to “follow” it conjures up the comical image of him chasing the monster while wielding a frying pan like one of the shrewish wives of his Juniper or Crab-tree lectures (1639).

57) Gogmagog. “Gog [from] the land of Magog” (Ezekiel 38:2) became in the medieval period an evil giant reputed to live in the south-west of England (Westwood and Simpson 468-9).

57) Nick Wood. Taylor had written about Nicholas Wood in The great eater, of

Kent, or Part of the admirable teeth and stomacks exploits of Nicholas Wood, of

Harrisom in the county of Kent. His excessive manner of eating without manners, in strange and true manner described (1630).

57) Mariot. William (also John or Ben) Marriott died in 1653. This lawyer and reputed gourmand was to be made infamous in 1652 when “G.F., gent” (probably

George Fidge) published a pamphlet entitled The great eater of Grayes Inn, or The life of Mr. Marriott the cormorant, wherein is set forth all the exploits and acts by him performed, with many pleasant stories of his travells into Kent and other places

(O’Keefe 765). See the note below on “Cormorant” (line 77).

Nor Creatan, Miloe, or Iscariot, 

Were not such valiant Stomick’d men as those

That eat the Devils gowty petitoes. 60

Hark, hark, how from the South fierce Boreas rores: 

58. Creatan,] Creatan 1651b 58. Iscariot] 1651b; Isca iot, 1651; Iscariot 1654 59. Stomick’d] stomack’d 1651b+ 61. hark] Hark 1654 61. rores:] rores 1654

58) Craetan, Miloe. The absence of the comma in later editions suggests Taylor here refers to Milo of Crete, the famous strongman.

58) Iscariot. The odd inclusion of Judas among giants and gluttons may stem from his greed in allegedly betraying Jesus for “thirty pieces of silver” (Matthew 26:25), which Taylor presents as his primary motivation in Virgin Mary (Works i.22).

59) valiant Stomick’d. In a typical pun, Taylor draws on both the literal and metaphoric senses of the phrase.

60) devils gowty Petitoes. Petitoes were pig’s feet prepared as food (OED), and considered a poor dish; hence the expression, “as dull as a Dutchman or a pie of petitoes” (Tilley D654). In contrast, gout was considered the “patrician malady”, which, as Thomas Cogan explained in 1584, was caused by the “excesse and ease” available to “Gentlemen” (quoted in Porter and Rousseau 27). In Christmas (1631),

Taylor wrote scathingly on over-indulgence by “the compleat companie of

Cockbrain’d whimsie-pated Gul-Gallants, the intemperate prodigalls” (A2); it is thus no wonder that he assigns their characteristic disease to the gluttonous Devil, whose cloven foot was thought to be the only part of his body he could not transform

(Oldridge 61).

61) Boreas. In one of his many impossibilia, Taylor inverts the natural order in making Boreas, the north wind, blow from the south.

Give me a Sculler, or a pair of Oares, 

Ile make the Orient and the Occident, 

Both friends at Smithfield in the wild of Kent.

For now Tom Holders Mare hath broke her Crupper, 65

Dresse me a dish of Æ-dipthongs to supper.

62. Sculler,] Sculler 1654 62. Oares,] Oares. 1654 63. Orient] Orient, 1651b+ 64. Kent.] Kent: 1651b+ 65. Crupper,] Cruppe 1654

62) Sculler . . . Oares. Thames passenger boats: a “Sculler” was rowed by one man, while a “pair of Oares” denoted a boat rowed by two (Massingham and

Massingham 472). Boreas’ call for a “Sculler” to help him achieve the succeeding impossibilia is a sly self-compliment by Taylor, who had published his first book as

“The Sculler” (The sculler, Works iii.13, recte 15). The implication is that Taylor himself can achieve the impossible – albeit only in verse.

63) Orient . . . Occident. Like bringing together the “Artick and Antartick

Pole[s]” (above, line 3), this reconciliation of east and west is a geographical coniunctio oppositorum.

64) Smithfield . . . Kent. Smithfield is a town in Cumbria, not the Weald of Kent, which was home to a horse market somewhat infamous for nags which were to give their new owners as much joy as Tom Holder. Taylor himself described the prolific

“cheating” of horse traders there (Bull, beare, horse, E4), while Donald Lupton commented ironically in London Carbonadoed (1632), “He that lights upon a horse in

[Smithfield] from an old hourse-courser, sound both in wind and limb, may light of an honest wife in the stews” (quoted in Sugden 471-2).

65) Tom Holder’s Mare . . . Crupper. Unidentified. This may allude to a popular song or ballad (Malcolm 190). The crupper is a leather strap at the back of the saddle, designed to stop it sliding forward (OED). If the crupper broke, the saddle’s movement would probably cause the mare to buck, and rider to fall off.

66) Æ-dipthongs. The letter Æ (pronounced “ash”) is a vowel, not a diphthong, and while divine ashes were held in greater esteem than any earthly meal, no one would request a supper of terrestrial ashes (Ruthven “Taylor”; Tilley A340).

The Dean of Dunstable hath bought and sold

Twelve lies new printed, for two groats in gold. 

Tis almost past the memory of man,

Since famous Arthur first in Court began: 70

Yet though King Lud did raign in Troynovaunt,

Will Summers was no kin to John a Gaunt. 

68. printed,] printed 1651b; Printed, 1654 72. a] of 1651b+

67-68) Dean of Dunstable . . . lies. The residents of Dunstable, like the road which led to them (see above, line 18), were considered straightforward and blunt; their

Dean would thus never deal in lies (Ruthven “Taylor”). The Dean also features in

Taylor’s Sir Gregory Nonsence (1622), as a rejected candidate for the position of the author’s patron (Works ii. sig. Aa).

68) groats . . . gold. An impossibility, since the groat was an exceptionally low- value coin whose worth would change significantly if it was cast from gold (OED).

70) Arthur. In his Memoriall (1622), Taylor dates Arthur’s reign from 516 to 542

AD, remarking that “Full sixteene yeeres the Diadem he wore, / And every day gaind

Honour more and more” (Works ii.282).

71) King Lud . . . Troynovaunt. According to legend (and recorded as history in the twelfth century by Geoffrey of Monmouth), survivors of the fall of Troy founded a city on the banks of the Thames named “Troia Newydd” or “New Troy”, which was gallicised as Troynovaunt (Flude). “A Long time after Troynouaunt was fram’d”,

Taylor recorded in his own Memoriall, “It was by [King] Lud, Kair-Lud, or Lud- stone nam’d”; after which it became Kaerlundein, and eventually London (Works ii.276; Flude).

72) Will Summers . . . John a Gaunt. Taylor’s statement is based on a non sequitur: nobody had claimed that the Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt (1340-1399) was an ancestor of King Henry VIII’s jester, William Summers (Ruthven “Taylor”).

What news from Trippolie? ware horns there ho:

The West wind blowes South North at Jerico. 

Steere well and steddy, boys look, look to th’ Helme: 75

Fetch Gooseberries that grow upon the Elme:

Like Cormorants, let’s live upon the Ayre, 

74. West wind] West-wind 1654 74. South North] South-North 1654 75. Helme:] Helme, 1654 77. Cormorants,] Cormorants 1651b+ 77. let’s] lets 1651b+

73) Trippolie. This may refer to either the Libyan capital or a city in Lebanon.

Neither appear particularly topical at the time of Taylor’s writing, and though the proximity of “Jerico” in the following line might suggest that the Lebanese city is being referred to, Taylor’s paradoxical style makes it unwise to base the identification on this alone. In either event, “Trippolie” denotes a city within the Ottoman Empire.

73) ware horns. Christians interpreted the crescent moons used on Ottoman flags and other insignia as horns that associated Muslims with the Devil (Ruthven

“Taylor”). Christian men travelling to a Muslim town like “Trippolie” would thus have been expected to beware the locals’ “horns” rather than wear them like a cuckold.

74) West . . . Jerico. To depict the “West wind” blowing from any other compass- point is as geographically nonsensical as making Boreas blow from the south (see above, line 61). “Jerico”, the Biblical town supposedly destroyed by the blowing of horns (Joshua 6:20), was used in a number of contemporary phrases to suggest a particularly out-of-the-way place (Evans 609).

75) Steere . . . Helme. The paradoxical nature of rowing, in which one looks backwards to travel forwards, was not lost on the nautical Taylor.

76) Fetch Gooseberries . . . Elme. An impossible task even for Hercules, since gooseberries are not produced by elm trees.

77) Cormorants. Because these large sea-birds were known for their voracity

(OED), the term was subsequently applied to voracious people: see the note to

“Mariot” (line 57).

And of a Whirlepoole make a marble chaire. 

Blind men may see, and deafe men all shall heare,

How dumb men talk because Cow hides are deare.  80

Go to th’ Utopian Kingdome and relate,

That to their King these lines I dedicate:

Bid him take note of me, and understand, 

He hath not such a Poet in his Land.

78. Whirlepoole] Whirle-poole 1654 78. marble] Marble 1654 78. chaire] Chair 1654 79. heare,] hear 1654 80. talk] talk, 1654 80. Cow hides] Cow-hides 1654 83. me,] me 1651b 83. understand,] understand 1654

78) Whirlepoole. This may refer to either the water phenomenon or a spouting whale (Robin 119). Neither would be conducive to producing the metamorphic rock, marble.

79-80) Blind . . . deare. Taylor’s physical impossibilia might well have been sourced from England’s contemporary economic concerns. Having suffered the century’s worst depression prior to Charles’ execution, the Republic continued to be dogged by economic problems, which would eventually force it into a trade-war with the Dutch (Hoxby 63, 68).

81) Utopian. Taylor had published several works referring to a Utopian world, including, in Laugh, and be Fat (1612) pieces ostensibly in “The Utopian Tongue”

(Works ii.77; see Skretkowicz). He appears to have reserved his use of this and other

“barbarian” languages for his most serious satires, drawing on the “no place” rather than “pleasant place” connotations of utopia. In The Noble Cavalier (1643), for example, Taylor remarks apropos the death of the Puritan “King Pym”: “take a suit of

John Pym’s cloathes well brush’d, pick’d, and lowsed, and stuffe it with straw, which being placed in the Throne will be a suitable Soveraigne to support the . . . pretended

Soveraigne Power of your Utopian Parliament” (7).

Down by the dale with Milk and Creame that flowes.  85

Upon a Hill (below the valley) grows

Hungarian Peacocks, white as crimson Geese, 

85. Milk] milke 1651b; milk 1654 85. Creame] creame 1651b; cream 1654 85 flowes.] flowes, 1651b; flowes 1654 86. valley] Valley 1651b+ 87. Peacocks,] Peacocks 1651b+

85-89) Down . . . Cheese. These lines echo one of the “Epigrams” from Taylor’s first work, The sculler (1612):

Falling a sleepe [sic], and sleeping in a dreame,

Down by the dale that flows with milk & cream,

I saw a Rat upon an Essex cheese,

Dismounted by a Cambrian clad in Freeze.

To bid his worship eate I had no need,

For like a serjeant he began to feed (Works iii.26, recte 28).

(A “Cambrian” is a Welshman; “Freeze” [“frieze”] is a coarse woollen cloth; OED).

P.N. Hartle argues that echoing earlier political texts in Nonsence allows Taylor to invoke their more polemical themes and moods (163), and this dream echo demonstrates a similar technique in regard to light humour. In expecting his audience to remember something they read up to forty years ago, Taylor reveals a belief in his work as being more than topical ephemera.

85) valley . . . flowes. Taylor’s utopian impossibilium evokes medieval representations of a landscape transmuted into food, such as ‘The Land of

Cockaygne’ (Ruthven “Taylor”). Such images had been common in antiquity, and were later construed by Christian theologians as analogues to the Garden of Eden and actualities of the Golden Age before the return of Christ, particularly as depicted in

Isaiah 11:6-7 (Malcolm 81).

87) Hungarian peacocks . . . crimson geese. White peacocks, though rare (and no more common in Hungary than in England), are not impossible. White “crimson geese”, however, are a chromatic impossibility, rendering the line nonsensical; cf.

“Venus like a Negro” (above, line 15).

There sate a Rat upon a Holland Cheese.

No sooner did blind Bayard see the sight:

Two beauteous ugly Witches took their flight 90

To tell the King of China wondrous newes

88. Cheese.] Cheese; 1651b; Cheese: 1654 89. sight:] sight, 1654 91. newes] news, 1651b+

88) Holland Cheese. It would be a great waste for a rat to sequester a Holland cheese, considered among the best in the world (Sugden 254).

89-90) Blind Bayard. In the thirteenth-century geste of Doon de Mayence, Bayard is a swift, bay-coloured horse given by Charlemaigne to the four sons of Aymon; thereafter the name was applied to any valuable horse (Evans 65, 90). In Lincolnshire folklore, a blind horse named “Bayard” helped his farmer owner to escape a witch, and it is presumably this legend that Taylor draws upon here (lines 89-90) (Westwood and Simpson 442-3). Proverbially, to be “as bold as blind Bayard” meant to act recklessly (Tilley B112).

91) King of China. Taylor’s reference to a Chinese “King” is not entirely unusual.

In Blundeville His Exercises (1606) T. Blundeville remarks that “The most mightie

Princes of the world are these fiue, that is, the King of China, otherwise called the great Cham 1. the K. of Persia 2. the great Turke 3. the Emperour of Æthiopia 4. the

Emperor of Russia, otherwise called the great Duke of Muscouia 5” (quoted in Hoy

4:54).

How all Scotch Knaves were hang’d, and English Jews. 

Th’ Athenian Hidra, and the Bird Torpedo

Were catch’d in France, in Mouse-traps neare Toledo. 

92. hang’d,] hang’d 1654 93. Bird] bird 1651b 94. France,] France 1651b+

92) Scotch knaves . . . English Jews. Taylor was as anti-Semitic as his Royalist contemporaries, who would not have approved of Oliver Cromwell’s decision in the

1650s to overturn the 1290 statute that prohibited Jews from living in England

(Ruthven “Taylor”). In his Travels to Hamburgh (1617) Taylor smugly records having met

… some 20. men, women, and children in divers places of Altonagh, all

deformed, some with one eye, some with hare-lips, crooke-bakt, splay-footed,

halfe-nosed, or one blemish or other. I admiring at them was told they were

Jewes, wherein I perceived the Judgement of the high Judge of all, that had

permitted Nature to deforme their formes, whose Gracelesse minds were so

much misshapen through want of Grace (Works iii.78).

Taylor also hated the Scots for having handed over Charles I to the Parliament in

1646, and was to turn his full venom upon them in 1652 with The Impartiallest Satyre that ever was seen (Capp 187). Although Taylor himself may well have thought the extermination of Scots and Jews “wondrous”, it is nonsense to suppose that the “King of China” would have been impressed with the “newes”.

93) Torpedo. Torpedos (rays) were notorious as “the fish / Which, being caught, strikes him that takes it dead” (Marlowe, Edward II I.iv.221-2). In Mad Fashions

(1642), Taylor includes flying “Eeles and Gudgeons” among the signs of a “land

(quite out of order) out of square” (1).

94) Toledo. A city in central Spain famous for the steel of its swords (Hoy 1:121).

The manufacture of mouse-traps would be a somewhat demeaning use of the city’s metallurgical expertise, even in the miraculous capture of creatures found only in tropical oceans (the torpedo) and Lake of Lerna (the many-headed Hydra).

A Scolopendra comming from Pickthatch 95

Made drunke a Constable, and stole the Watch. 

Do what you can Madge howler is an Owle: 

95. from] neare 1651b+ 95. Pickthatch] Pickthatch, 1651b+ 96. Constable,] Constable 1651b+ 96. Watch] watch 1654 97. can] can, 1651b+

95) Scolopendra . . . Pickthatch. Pliny applies the term scolopendra to a sea- monster and a centipede. In English, however, it also came to denote a whore, i.e. a woman with a “sting in her tail” (OED): see the anonymous Dialogue between Mistris

Macquerella, a Suburb Bawd, Ms Scolopendra, a noted Curtezan, and Mr Pimpinello an Usher (1650) (Williams 1204-5). Although Malcolm glosses Taylor’s

“Scolopendra” as the sea-monster (191), its origins in Pickthatch – an infamous brothel district of London (Williams 1021) – supports a sexual interpretation of the word.

96) Watch. Akin to a modern police constable (OED). If the “Scolopendra” were to incapacitate the constabulary, prostitution would not be the only kind of lawlessness on the streets (lines 95-8).

97) Madge howlet. A “howlet” was a young owl, and “Madge” both a popular name for an owl and a disdainful term for a woman (Hoy 1:251). In The Isle of Gulls

(c1605) John Day refers derisively to “the rare and neuer enough wondred at Mopsy, the black swan of beauty & madghowlet of admiration” (II.iv); and in Alexander

Brome’s Covent-Garden Weeded (1632) “Margerie Howlet, a bawd”, is toasted with the words: “Here old Madge, and to all the birds that shall wonder at thy howletship, when thou rid’st in an Ivy-bush call’d a Cart” (I.i) (quoted in Williams 981).

Allegedly both dirty and an ill omen, owls were thus considered comparable to those other birds of the night, prostitutes: Taylor had previously composed paradoxical encomia on both a Common Whore (1622) and Bawd (1624).

And Beans with Buttermilk is rare wild Fowle.

The Coblers daughter, we three both together

We’le match: he’le give a thousand pieces with her;  100

Besides the smoak of Keinsam, and Bell-Swagger,

Who oft at Mims did use his dudgeon Dagger.

99. together] together, 1651b+ 100. match:] match, 1654

98) Beans . . . fowle. Bean dishes, a staple among the lower classes, were associated with poverty and flatulence (Albala 27), while buttermilk and whey were cheap and popular city drinks (Mason 118). Taylor thus pits a pub meal against the delicate “fowle” served to gentry. “Wild fowle”, however, was also a cant term for a whore – a nuance activated by the preceding “Scolopendra” and “Madge howlet”

(Williams 537).

9-100) Cobler’s daughter. Thomas Deloney held in The Gentle Craft (1597) that

“A Shoomakers Son is a Prince born” (69), but it would be the son-in-law who would feel regal if he were to marry a woman with a dowry as substantial as “a thousand pieces”, besides (in a truly nonsensical touch) the “smoak” of one country village, and the braggart squire of another (see below).

101) smoak of Keinsam. Keynsham is a Somerset village on the River Avon. In 1849 J.

Gronow could still refer to it as “smoky Keynsham”, adding that “with equal propriety they might call it foggy” (96-7).

101-102) Bell-Swagger . . . Mims. Mims is a village in Hertfordshire. In Summers travels (1639) Taylor records how,

[A]t Mims, a Cockney boasting bragger

In mirth, did ask the women for Bel-swagger,

But strait the females, like the Furies fell,

Did curse, scold, raile, cast dirt, and stones pell mell (in Malcolm 289).

Taylor attributes the custom to a former squire named Belswagger, who impregnated all the village women (hence his oft-used “dagger”). The particulars of this custom, which John Fletcher refers to in Wit Without Money (c.1614), have been lost (Malcolm 289).

102) dudgeon. An easily-turned wood, often used for dagger hilts (OED).

Then shall the Pericranians of the East,

South, North, and West with every bird and Beast; 

All Knuckle deep in Paphlagonian Sands,  105

Inhabit Transilvanian Netherlands.

‘Tis th’ onely gallant way to gain promotion, 

To squeeze Oyle from the Cinders of devotion,

104. West] West, 1654 105. Knuckle] knuckle 1651b+ 105. Sands,] Sands 1651b 106. Natherlands.] Netherlands: 1651b+ 107. th’] the 1654 108. devotion,] devotion. 1651b; Devotion, 1654

103) Pericranians. Taylor literalises the Greek etymons of pericranium (“on” and

“skull”) to create a land akin to Golgotha (in Hebrew, a “place of skulls”), from which the native “Pericranians” have travelled around the world (Ruthven “Taylor”).

105-106) Paphlagonian . . . Transilvanian Netherlands. The “Pericranians” would need exceptionally long arms in order to have their hands in an area of Asia

Minor bordering the Black Sea (“Paphlagonia”) while inhabiting Transylvania in

Eastern Europe, which had no claim on the Netherlands.

108) Oyle . . . devotion. To squeeze water or blood from a stone was proverbial for attempting such impossible deeds as those Taylor mentions here (Tilley W107).

His substantial use of proverbs is a typical effect of a still predominantly oral culture

(Reay 6), as are his Skeltonic rhymes (see lines 135-152), which would achieve their full effect when read aloud.

Translate our Roundhead Turnips into Carrets,

And turn the lowest Cellers to high Garrets. 110

Let Neptune be a Shepheard, and let Vulcan

Make hast to Greenland, and there drinke his full Kan.

110. Garrets.] Garrets: 1654 111. Shepheard] shepheard 1654

109) Roundhead. A term applied disparagingly to supporters of Parliament in the

Civil War. It may have originated as a class-based insult, alluding to the shaved heads of apprentices involved in the London riots of December 1641, and thus tying the

Parliamentary cause to lower-class disorder (Bennet 211). Taylor ridiculed the

Roundheads throughout his works. Heads of fashions (1642), for example, features on its title page several men with different shaped heads, the largest of which is a devil- eared Roundhead. In another pamphlet, published anonymously as a “defence” against his own Tale in a Tub, Taylor craftily provides various explanations for the nickname, from their “round” way of speaking, to their similarity to eggs, wherein

“the a[l]lusion was not to the Ovall forme of the Egg, but to the addlenesse of the braines in the head, which I hold to be very significant” (Full answer, 3-4).

109-110) Turnips . . . Carrets . . . Cellers . . . Garrets. Taylor here renders religious conversion as impossible as the transmogrification of vegetables, or inversion of buildings.

111) Neptune . . . Shepheard. A nonsensical occupation for the Roman god of the

Sea. Taylor repeats the image below in the dedicatory verse of “John Defistie Cankie”

(line 18).

111-112) Vulcan . . . Greenland . . . Kan. Though known to the medieval world,

Greenland was “lost” in the thirteenth century, prior to its rediscovery in 1585, and was not resettled until 1721 (Sugden 235). It was thus unlikely that even the Roman fire god would be able to find a “Kan” of something to drink in that freezing climate.

Satirical use of feminine rhymes such as “Vulcan / full Kan” came to be known as

“Hudibrastic” after Samuel Butler’s masterful use of them in his Hudibras (1662-80)

(Ruthven “Taylor”; Zillman 354).

Titus Andronicus hath writ a Treat[i]se

Of Mole-hills in the Entrailes of Dame Theatis, 

Wherein a man may learn before he looks 115

To catch mince-pies, with neither nets or hooks. 

There Policy with practice cut and dry’d

Were Carted both in triumph through Cheapside. 

113. Treat[i]se] Treatise, 1654 114. Mole-hills] Molehills 1654 114. Entrailes] Entrails 1651b; entrance 1654 116. mince-pies,] mince-pies 1651b+ 116. or] nor 1651b+ 116. hooks.] hooks: 1651b+ 117. Policy] policy 1651b+ 118. Carted] carted 1654

113-114) Titus Andronicus. This fictitious Roman general was the titular hero of

Shakespeare’s earliest and most violent play, Titus Andronicus (1594). Taylor here draws upon proverbial advice not to make mountains from molehills (Tilley M1216);

Titus’ “treatise” upon molehills would be somewhat akin to the sound and fury of

Taylor’s own paradoxical encomia.

114) Dame Theatis. Thetis was a sea nymph who married a mortal, Peleus, and became the mother of Achilles (Price & Kearns 551).

115-116) learn . . . mince pies. Taylor adds “mince pies” to his Christmas menu

(see above, line 30) while parodying the popular handbooks he would have encountered as a zealous autodidact. These included the instantly popular A Helpe to

Discourse. Or A Misselany of Seriousness with Merriment (1618), which promised to educate middle-class readers in everything from philosophical and mathematical theories, to practical rules of conduct and grammar (Wright Middle-Class Culture,

121-40).

117) Policy . . . practice. Although clearly personified, in 1651b and 1654 both words begin with a lower-case “p”.

117) Cut and dryd. Shaped according to a priori notions (OED) rather than empirical observation.

118) Carted . . . Cheapside. Unlike other processions that might be performed “in triumph”, carting was one of several punishments in contemporary use that relied on public ridicule for their effect. The offender stood in a horse-drawn cart which was then driven around the most crowded areas of London (such as – for a certain Agnes

Oxley – “Newgate m[ar]kett, Chepesyde & Graschurche m[ar]kett”), stopping at various points so that their offence(s) could be proclaimed (Ingram 40-1).

If Monday hang himself, no further seek, 

Henceforward Tuesday shall begin the weeke.  120

No more of that I pray, I am afear’d

There’s not one haire upon Diana’s beard.

Great Agamemnon late combin’d with Hector,

119. himself,] himselfe, 1651b; himselfe 1654 119. seek,] seek. 1654 120. Henceforward] Henceforth 1651b+ 120. weeke.] week: 1651b+

119-120) Monday . . . Tuesday. Taylor borrows this from a famous verse, reportedly written by a Perth shoemaker to commemorate the death of one of

Cromwell’s favourite partisans (named Monday):

Blessed be the Sabbath Day,

And cursed be worldly pelf,

Tuesday will begin the week,

Since Monday’s hanged himself.

(“Pelf” is a contemptuous term for wealth; OED). This allegedly prompted

Cromwell to declare Mondays a holiday for shoemakers (Evans 748).

122) Diana’s beard. Like Shakespeare’s Viola, the Roman goddess of virginity might be “almost sick” for a beard, but she “would not have it grow on [her] chin”

(Twelfth Night, III.i.48-9).

123) Agamemnon . . . Hector. The Greek Agamemnon and Trojan Hector, at war in Homer’s Iliad, would prove an unlikely alliance. Taylor refers frequently to Homer and other classical authors throughout Nonsence. Regretting his lack of formal education, which led “some through ignorance; & some through spite / [To say] that

[he] can neither read nor write” (Taylors Motto, Works ii.57), he keenly read classical texts and histories as well as popular works. He publicised his reading in works such as Taylors Motto (1621), and published his commonplace book as Misselanies, or, fifty Years Gatherings, Out of Sundry Authors in Prose and Verse (1652) (Capp 200).

To preach at Amsterdam an Irish Lector,

Which shall convert the Horse, the Asse and Mule,  125

And all the Beasts in Hipperborean Thule. 

125. Asse] Asse, 1651b+ 125. Mule,] Mule 1654 126. Beasts] beasts 1651b 126. Thule.] Thule 1654

124) Amsterdam. Taylor often evoked the Dutch city of Amsterdam as the spiritual capital of Separatists, whose religious beliefs he described as full of

“Amster-damnable fopperies” (Virgin Mary, Works i.18). Having recently concluded the Eight Years War against Catholic Spain with the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia,

Amsterdam’s residents would be particularly hostile toward anyone preaching

Catholicism.

124) Irish Lector. A Catholic sermon. The staunchly anti-Catholic and anti-Irish

Taylor elsewhere refers to Catholicism as the “Irish Devill” (Mad Fashions, 2). Little wonder, then, that he here likens its followers to gullible animals.

126) Hipperborean Thule. In this nonsense tautology, Taylor describes the northern limit of the classical world (“Thule”) as being in the north (“Hipperborean”)

(OED). Taylor’s spelling of Hyperborean puns bilingually on the word “Horse” (in

Greek, hippos) mentioned in the preceding line (Ruthven “Taylor”). It was popularly believed that the Hyperboreans were “a most blessed Nation . . . They know no debate, they are not troubled with diseases, all men have one desire, which is to live innocentlie” (Solinus sig. D3r-D4).

If Sun-shine will with shaddows but consent

We’le make the winter of our discontent

To force fierce Crook-back into better tune,

And turne Decembers heat to frost in June. 130

When this externall substance of my soule

Did live at liberty, I caught wilde fowle,

127. consent] consent, 1651b 130. June.] June, 1654

128) winter . . . discontent. Taylor paraphrases the opening of Shakespeare’s

Richard III: “Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this son of York” (I.i.1-2). Taylor’s works contain numerous references to Shakespeare’s plays, even in texts – such as Nonsence – published during the Interregnum, when stage plays were banned. The long opening sentence of Crop-eare Curried (1645), for example, not only quotes the same line from Richard III but also contains allusions to

(at least) Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and Love’s Labour’s Lost (Sirluck 95). Taylor had previously linked Sir Gregory Nonsence (1622) to the anarchy of Shakespeare’s

Midsummer Night’s Dream by concluding its dedication (“To Nobody”) with the statement that it is “ending at the beginning . . . as it is ap plawsefully [sic] written and commended to posterity in the Midsummer nights dreame. If we offend, it is with our good will, we came with no intent, but to offend, and shew our simple skill”

(Works sig. Aav; cf. Midsummer Night’s Dream V.i.54-55).

129) Crook-back. Clifford addresses Richard III as “Crook-back” in

Shakespeare’s 3 Henry VI (II.ii.96).

131-132) soule . . . liberty. Taylor here draws upon the Platonic doctrine which held that at birth the immortal soul is imprisoned in a mortal body, from which only death can release it. He also applies Pythagoras’ doctrine of “metempsychosis”, or the transmigation of souls, in imagining himself in different historical personas (Ruthven

“Taylor”).

132) caught . . . fowle. This phrase suggests two different pastimes: either hunting birds in the ornithological sense, or chasing loose women, who were known colloquially as “wild fowl” (Williams 537).

I was a Caitiffe in the Court of Spaine,

And playd at shuttle-cock with Charlemaigne.

Then I did magnifie and mundifie, 135

Then I the Fairy Queene did putrifie,

And purifie again, and dignifie, 

All such as did her greatnesse deifie,

Females did edifie and fructifie,

And amplifie and coldly gratifie.  140

The Lake of Learna I did clarifie,

134. Charlemaigne.] Charlemaigne: 1651b; Charlemaine: 1654 137. again,] againe 1651b; againe, 1654 140. amplifie] amplifie, 1651b; Amplifie 1654

132) Caitiffe. A wretched person (OED). Considering the Anglican Taylor’s failure to secure either aristocratic patronage or support from court poets, it is little surprise he should depict himself as miserable in the Catholic “Court of Spain”.

134) shuttle-cock . . . Charlemaigne. Imagining the medieval King of the Franks indulging in an early version of badminton with a seventeenth-century waterman is an anachronistic breach of decorum characteristic of low burlesque.

135-152) Taylor here playfully takes his virtuoso rhyming-abilities to a Skeltonic extreme. He had performed similar linguistic acrobatics in Aqua-Musae (1644), which includes one eighteen-line passage and one twenty-nine-line passage of single-sound rhyming (9, 10-11).

135-137) mundifie . . . putrifie . . . purife. These are technical terms for different stages in the alchemical process. Putrefaction occurred during the initial stage, and involved decomposing the metal into its prima materia (Abraham 160). It was subsequently refined by a process of mundification or purification (more commonly known as ablution, though this of course wouldn’t fit Taylor’s rhyming scheme)

(Abraham 1).

136) Fairy Queen. Perhaps an allusion to Spenser’s most famous poem, although the figure had a long history in medieval romance, centred on her beneficence, special powers, and reputed beauty (Hamilton 295). It would be nonsense to subject a mythical figure to alchemical processes.

139) Females . . . Fructifie. Since a woman cannot impregnate (“fructifie”) anyone, all objects of her attempts would be but “coldly gratifie[d]”.

141) Lake of Learna. In another absurd boast, Taylor depicts himself, like

Hercules cleaning the Augean stables, cleansing the swamp that housed the many- headed Hydra (Ruthven “Taylor”).

My Verse the Ethiop Queen did beautifie,

With rage my patience I would qualifie,

I can both certifie and testifie

How Death did live, and Life did mortifie:  145

Feare alwayes did my courage fortifie,

He’s crafty that his wits can rectifie:

To villifie, make glad and terrifie,

And with course words old debts to satisifie,

That man Ile ratifie and notifie,  150

To be one that himselfe will justifie,

And fie, fo, fum, concludes him with O fie.

Thus from complexions I have Minerals drawne,

142. beautifie,] beautifie. 1654 143. qualifie,] qualifie. 1654 145. Death] death 1651b 145. Life] life 1654 146. fortifie,] fortifie: 1654 147. rectifie:] rectifie, 1654 150. man] man, 1651b 150. notifie,] notifie: 1651b; notifie 1654 151. justifie] Justifie 1654 152. fie.] fie: 1654

142) Verse . . . Ethiop Queen . . . beautifie. A dangerous gift to “that starr’d Ethiop queen [of Greek legend] that strove / To set her beauty’s praise above / The sea nymphs, and their powers offended” (Milton ‘Il Penseroso’, 19-21).

145) Death . . . live . . . Life . . . mortifie. In Christian philosophy, death “lives” in this world until we die. Our subsequent entry into everlasting life heralds the death or mortification of “death” itself (Ruthven “Taylor”).

151) himselfe . . . justifie. The question of whether Christians were “justified” by their faith or their works was widely debated during and after the Reformation

(Ruthven “Taylor”). Although Taylor derided salvation by works, he nevertheless held that salvation was not possible by faith alone. “Know that thou must appeare before Gods face,” he writes in Taylors Urania (1615), and explain to Him how you have spent the blessings He provided; “If thou hast spent them well, then heav’n is thine, / If ill, th’art damn’d to hell, by doome Divine” (Works i.8; Capp 134).

152) fie, fo, fum. The Giant’s speech from the nursery-rhyme, Jack and the Giant

Killer, quickly passed into popular use. It appears, for instance, in Shakespeare’s King

Lear (III.iv.187), and in Have With You to Saffron-Walden (1596), where Thomas Nashe derides the “precious apothegmaticall Pedant, who will finde matter inough to dilate a whole daye of the first invention of Fy, fa, fum, I smell the bloud of an English-man”

(37).

153) complexions . . . drawne. The balance between the four “humours” thought to determine an individual’s personality was referred to as their “complexion” (OED).

To attempt to draw solid minerals from these elements would be futile.

Brave Captaine Fumble layd his sword to pawne

To ransome Jeffery Chausers Cipresse Gowne, 155

Thersites with a Rush knock’d Ajax downe;

Imperious Momus wrot th’ Atlantick story

Of wars betwixt Achilles and John Dory: 

’Twas dedicated to the Isle of Lundy. 

155. Gowne,] Gowne. 1654 156. downe;] downe 1654 158. wars] Wars 1651b 158. betwixt] beswixt 1654 159. Lundy.] Lundy, 1651b+

154) Captain Fumble . . . pawn. Unidentified. If Taylor is not referring to an actual person, he may instead be concocting a bawdy scenario based on the sexual meanings of “Fumble”, which in this period could suggest an unsatisfactory sexual encounter (Williams 565). If so, the showy (“brave”) Captain’s “sword” might as well be “layd. . . to pawne”; cf. Bell-Swagger’s “dudgeon dagger” (above, line 102).

155) Chausers Cipresse gown. The cypress tree was associated with death, and its common use in coffins led to its metaphoric use in poetic diction. In Twelfth Night, for example, a melancholy lover pleads: “Come away, death, / And in sad cypress let me be laid” (II.iv.51-2) (Ruthven “Taylor”). The “gown” is thus probably a coffin for

Geoffrey Chaucer, whom Taylor eulogised in his Funerall Elegie (1637) as “Englands

Homer” (line 245).

156) Thersitis . . . Ajax. Presuming his audience’s familiarity with the Iliad,

Taylor presents a paradoxical defeat of the greatest Greek hero at Troy by his disabled compatriot, here armed only with a “Rush” for a spear.

157-158) Momus . . . Achilles . . . John Dory. As the Greek god of satire, Momus would be well equipped to record this chronologically impossible battle between the

Greek hero Achilles and a fourteenth-century Genoese buccaneer memorialised in a popular Elizabethan sea-shanty (OED; Runciman viii). The OED’s earliest recording of “John Dory” (rather than plain “dory”) as the name of the fish is dated 1754. In

Christmas (1631), however, Taylor lists a number of fish varieties, including a “poor

John” (3) – thereby opening up the possibility of an even more bathetic showdown between the Greek hero and a fish.

159) Isle of Lundy. Taylor, who often dedicated his own works to bizarre targets

(see the note below to the ‘Dedication’) here proposes that Momus dedicate his work to a small island off the south-west coast of England.

An Emblem right of transit gloria mundi.  160

Let not the distances of place molest us,

Abidos is not forty miles from Sestus:

As Hero lov’d Leander I’le agree, 

Though he and she were mad, what’s that to me? 

‘Tis likely Cleopatra and Antonius 165

Met, but saw not the Cardinall Baronius:

160. right] 1651b+; ight 1651 160. mundi.] mundi, 1654 1651b and 1654 continue: Thus the Great Amadis de Gal was able Great] great 1654 With Nonsence (like sence) to endure a Fable: Fable:] Fable 1654 Thus Mirmidons, upon the plains of Sarum Did beat up Pompies quarters with Alarum. Alarum] alarum 1654 163. Leander] Leander, 1651b+ 163. I’le] Ile 1651b 164. what’s] whats 1651b 165. ‘Tis] Tis 1651b+ 165. likely] like 1654

160) Emblem . . . mundi. Taylor’s anti-Catholicism is revealed in his proposal to employ the phrase used in Papal coronations (sic transit gloria mundi, “thus passes the glory of the world”) in a visual representation of vainglorious transience (Ruthven

“Taylor”).

161) molest. Trouble, annoy (OED).

162-164) Abidos . . . Sestus . . . Hero . . . Leander. Hero (from Sestus) and

Leander (from Abydos, across the Hellespont) were lovers in Greek mythology.

Every night, Leander swam across to Hero, who lit a lamp to guide him. Tragically, the lamp was blown out one night, and Leander drowned. Ovid narrates the story in his Heroides (Books 18 and 19). Christopher Marlowe had retold it mock-heroically in his epyllion, Hero and Leander (before 1593), and Ben Jonson had also burlesqued it in Bartholomew Fair (1614). Taylor’s mocking treatment of these classical lovers is thus not untypical, nor singular in his own oeuvre; in Common Whore (1622) he gleans from “Histories” a number of famous “whores” who have “madly run [the] course” of doomed love, including Helen of Troy, Pyramus and Thisbe, and Sappho

(Works ii.109).

165-166) Cleopatra . . . Antonius . . . Baronius. While to “meet” but not “see” someone is not impossible, it certainly becomes so if you live – like Cleopatra, her lover Mark Antony, and the cardinal – sixteen centuries apart. Caesar Baronius (1538-

1607), a powerful figure in the Italian Catholic Church, became famous in England for his controversial Annales Ecclesiastici (1588-1607). Intended to refute the version of church history presented by the Lutheran Centuriae Magdeburgensis (Wahl 105),

Baronius’ book provoked several reply pamphlets from Taylor’s contemporaries, including Richard Crakanthorpe, Thomas Comber and Alexander Cooke.

The Capitoll, and silken Rock Tarpeyus

In a Seadan to Lichfield shall convey us;

And like a wheele-barrow we’le cut and curry,

And fetch good newes from Shropshire and from Surry: 170

There is no Eunuch of the Race of Brutus,

That either can confute us, or cornute us.

Old Solon was no Jester, nor no Jyber, 

173. Jester] jester 1654 173. Jyber] jyber 1654

167) Capitoll . . . Tarpeyus . . . Lichfield. It is nonsense to suggest that Rome’s

Capitol Hill and the Tarpein Rock on its south side – whose name and “silken” quality derive from Tarpeia, the governor’s daughter who was thrown to her death from it

(Ruthven “Taylor”) – could “convey” you anywhere (cf. above, line 6), let alone to the Staffordshire town of Lichfield, a former Royalist stronghold seriously damaged in the Civil War (Lichfield Council).

169) wheele-barrow . . . cut and curry. While the term “wheele-barrow” could be applied figuratively to a light carriage (OED), it is likely that Taylor – no stranger to bizarre methods of travel (see above, line 20) – here proposes to hasten (“cut and curry”) across the country in an actual wheelbarrow.

170) Shropshire . . . Surry. As Shropshire is in the west of England, and Surrey in the south-east, Taylor uses the names to localise the general expression “from far and wide” (Ruthven “Taylor”).

171) Eunuch . . . race. The “race of Brutus” could not possibly have survived if his three sons had been castrated (Ruthven “Taylor”).

171) Brutus. In his Memoriall (1622) Taylor, following Geoffrey of Monmouth’s

Historia Regum Britanniae (c.1136), dubs Brutus “Britainnes first commanding

King” (Works ii.269). Said to be a descendant of Aeneas, who had been exiled from

Troy, Brutus was himself exiled from Italy for the manslaughter of his father, and thus came to rule Britain from 1108 to 1084 BC.

172) confute . . . cornute. While an intelligent eunuch could certainly “confute”

(prove wrong) a married man, it would be impossible for one to “cornute” (give horns to, i.e. cuckold) him.

173) Solon. The Athenian statesman, lawmaker and poet was famous for his wisdom, not his sense of humour.

And English Thames is better then Romes Tyber:

I tooke a Cammell, and to Naples went I, 175

Of pickled Sausedges I found great plenty;

The Gudgeon catcher there, o’re top’d the Nobles, 

And put the Viceroy in a peck of troubles: 

Brave tag rag multitude of Omnium Gatherum.

Shuffle ’um together, and the Devill father ’um, 180

175. I,] I. 1654 177. there,] there 1654 177. o’re top’d] o’retop’d 1654 178. Viceroy] Vice-Roy 1651b; Vice Roy 1654 179. Gatherum,] Gatherum. 1654

174) Thames . . . Tiber. In his Praise of Hemp-seed (1620) the patriotic Taylor ranked the “noble Thames” above all “the most famous rivers in the world”, declaring: “whilest I can hold a pen / I will divulge thy glory unto men” (Works iii.81, recte 77). To fulfil his promise by linking the Thames with Solon, however, is nonsense, because logically it is a non sequitur (Ruthven “Taylor”).

175) Cammell . . . Naples. A “ship of the desert” would be of little use in crossing the English Channel en route to Naples.

176) pickled Sausedges. Read literally, this is nonsense, as Taylor was more likely to have encountered “pickled Sausedges” in Germany, which he had visited (Travels to Hamburgh, 1617), than in Italy, which he had not (Ruthven, “Taylor”). The phrase is more likely to have been intended metaphorically, describing the “tag rag” followers of the Neapolitan Massenello as thick-headed “Sausedges”, full of mischief

(“pickled”; OED). See lines 175-84, and the note to line 183.

177) Gudgeon catcher. The fisherman and rebel Massenello.

179) tag rag multitude . . . Omnium Gatherum. A tautological way of describing the rabble, or riff-raff (OED). Considering himself an author for the “better sort”,

Taylor wrote with patrician disdain in his Letter to London (1643) about that

“monster, monstrous, many-headed Beast (the multitude)” (9), and in Mercurius

Infernalis (1644) derided “huge multitudes of the off-scum rabble of the people” (2).

He was particularly hostile toward “mislead Beasts” within the Parliamentary army:

“Aske Rebells what’s the reason they rebell,” he remarks in his Noble Cavalier

(1643), “And aske Dogges why they berke, They cannot tell” (8). Taylor evidently saw dire similarities between English and Neapolitan rebels.

180) Devill father ’um. Prosperous enemies, as the “Devil’s children” were said to enjoy the “Devil’s luck” (Tilley D312).

But now and then was squeez’d a rich Delinquent,

By which good means away the precious chinke went:

Renowned was the Rascall Massennello,

In fifteen dayes he was raw, ripe, and mellow:

Laugh, laugh, thou whining foole Heraclitus,  185

And weep thou grinning Asse Democratus:

The gray Horse is the better Mare by halfe,

183. Massennello,] Massennello. 1654 184. mellow:] mellow 1651b; mellow. 1654 185. foole] Foole 1654

181) Delinquent. Largely synonymous with “cavalier”, the term was first applied to Royalists by the Parliamentarians, and defined in a Parliamentary Order dated 27

March 1642 (OED). Taylor’s frequent use of both terms suggests that they lacked the derogatory intensity of “Roundhead”; for example, in Conversion (1643) he refers to

“delinquents [who] hang in chains” (5). In this hudibrastic rhyme (see the note on line

112) Taylor continues his criticism of Massenello’s “tag rag” followers and their

English Civil War equivalents, whom he regarded as swindling Royalists (i.e. depriving them of their “precious chinke”, money) in their pursuit of illegitimate power.

183) Massennello. The well-known exploits of this Neapolitan fisherman, who led a revolt against the Viceroy and became king for a day in 1647, were recorded by

‘T.B.’ in The rebellion of Naples, or The tragedy of Massenello Commonly so called, but rightly Tomaso Aniello di Malfa Generall of the Neopolitans (1649). Taylor was evidently not the only one to see parallels between the English and Neapolitan rebels, as T.B. felt bound to include the unconvincing disclaimer that he was not writing obliquely about England (Wright ‘Reading of Plays’, 92-3).

184) raw . . . mellow. Taylor here employs language more commonly used to describe the maturing of plants than of political careers.

185-186) Laugh . . . Heraclitus . . . weep . . . Democratus. To be at home in

Taylor’s upside-down world, the brooding and cryptic Heraclitus and the “Laughing

Philosopher”, Democritus, must exchange their characteristic personalities

(Nussbaum 178; Furley 11).

187) gray . . . Mare. A misogynistic inversion of the proverb, “The gray mare is the better horse”, which was applied when “the woman is master, or as we say, wears the breeches” (Tilley M647).

The Bull at Bear-Garden, and Walthams Calfe

Are reconcil’d, but not concluded fully

Who pleaded best, Demosthenes or Tully: 190

I am indifferent, fill the other Kan,

Logick hath Art to make an Ape a man: 

I weeping sing, to thinke upon the Quibblins

’Twixt Romane, and Imperiall Guelphs and Giblins. 

How Munsters John a Leide, and Knipperdoling 195

192. Art] art 1651b+ 192. man:] man. 1654 194. ‘Twixt] Twixt 1654

188-190) Bull . . . Walthams Calfe . . . Demosthenes or Tully. The calf was immortalised in the catchphrase used of someone very foolish: “No wiser than

Waltham’s calf, who ran nine miles to suck a bull, and came home athirst” (Tilley

W22). Taylor literalizes the expression to the point of identifying the bull, and comically anthropomorphises them in debate over the merits of the two great orators of Greece (Demosthenes) and Rome (Marcus Tullis Cicero).

192) Logick . . . Ape . . . man. Taylor’s views on the truth-twisting skills of sophistical logicians are evident in his Bawd (1624), wherein he castigates their

“subtill and circumventing speeches, doubtfull and ambiguous Apothegmes, double significations, intricate, witty, and cunning equivocations, (like a skilfull Fencer that casts his eye upon a mans foot, and hits him a knocke on the pate)” (Works ii.95).

193-194) Quibblins . . . Guelphs and Giblins. A trivialising description for the long-lasting debate in the Middle Ages between the opposing papal (Guelph) and imperial (Ghibelline) factions of Italy and Germany (Toynbee 291). Taylor’s contraction of Ghibellines to “Giblins” arouses a derogatory association with “gibble- gabble” (“senseless chatter”: OED) that further burlesques the imperial party

(Ruthven “Taylor”).

195) John . . . Knipperdoling. Johann Bockhold of Leyden, Johann Matthyszoon and Bernhard Knipperdolling were Anabaptist leaders of the 1535 Munster rebellion in Westphalia (Sugden 365). As with Massenello’s revolt (above, line 184), Taylor mockingly draws on the similarities between the Munster and English rebels in order to critique Parliamentary control.

Were barberous Barbers in the Art of poling. 

From Sence and Nonsence, I am wide, quoth Wallice,

But not so far as Oxford is from Callice:

Give me a Leash of merry Blades, right Bilboes, 

True tatterd Rogues, in Breech, Shirts, Skirts, and Elboes,  200

And each of them will make a fit disciple,

To ride up Holborne to the tree that’s triple.

196. Art] art 1651b+ 199. Blades] blades 1654 200. Rogues,] Rogues 1654 201. disciple,] Disciple, 1651b; Disciple. 1654 202. triple.] triple: 1651b; triple; 1654

196) barberous . . . poling. Taylor depicts these “barberous Barbers” as experts at both literal polling (cutting hair short), and recording the non-existent votes which brought them to power (Ruthven “Taylor”). Taylor often used similar class-based insults to attack Separatists (see above, line 40).

197) Wallice. If this refers to the hero of the Scottish Wars of Independence, Sir

William Wallace, his inclusion is akin to Taylor’s mock-heroic depiction of

Charlemagne playing shuttlecock (above, line 134), and exacerbates the anti-Scottish sentiment of the poem. Like the anti-Dutch references in 1654 (particularly lines 5-8), such remarks provide evidence for Taylor’s interest in topicality.

198) Oxford. Charles I’s capital during the Civil War. The “Oxford poets”, including Taylor, gathered there to write Royalist propaganda (Capp 151). For

“Callice” see above, line 45.

199) Leash . . . Blades . . . Bilboes. Taylor here practises some complex punning:

“Blades” first denotes a group of gallants bound together in camaraderie, before

“Bilboes” (swords noted for their blades’ temper and elasticity) returns the word to its literal meaning. The “Bilboes”, with which the “tatterd Rogues” riding to the “tree that’s triple” would be restrained, were “iron bars with sliding shackles” (OED).

200) Breech . . . Skirts . . . Elboes. Ironically, Taylor’s “tatterd Rogues” are well- dressed in breeches, a tail-coat (“Skirts”) and a cloak reaching down to their “Elboes”

(OED).

202) Holborne . . . triple. The Tyburn gallows, built in 1571, were known as “The

Triple Tree” on account of its triangular structure, which enabled twenty-four people to be hanged at once over the three beams (Rumbelow 9). Prisoners en route from

Newgate prison to Tyburn rode along Holborne, St Giles (Evans 558).

A man may think his purse is turn’d a Round-head, 

When all the crosses in it are confounded:

’Tis said that Poetry a thriving trade is, 205

And gets a world of wealth from Lords and Ladies, 

The devill they do, false shamefull Lowne thou ly’st, 

And when thou canst no longer live, thou dy’st.

203. is turn’d a] is turn’d 1651b; is quite turn’d 1654 206. world] World 1654 206. Ladies,] Ladies; 1651b+ 207. devill] Devill 1654

205) Crosses. This was a common term for coins, after the figure of a cross stamped on one side (OED). Taylor ridicules Puritan disapproval of making the sign of the cross; his sense appears more clearly in Mercurius Nonsencicus (1648), where he refers to the “happy condition of Poets, poore and pennylesse, our Purses being turn’d Brownists, not enduring a crosse to come neare ’em” (5). The association of

Roundheads with an empty purse also associates them with the Devil, who was said to

“dance in an empty pocket” (Tilley D233).

205-207) ’Tis said . . . ly’st. Taylor unsuccessfully sought patronage for his writing from several sources, and largely abandoned the quest after publishing his folio Works in 1630 (Capp 63). He often complained of poverty, remarking in

Superbiae Flagellum (1621) that a poet might “take great paines, / And empt his veines, pulverize his braines” for a profit that “Will not suffice one meale to feed a

Cat” (Works i.27).

207) Lowne. A loon.

208) live . . . dy’st. A fatuous (though, in this context, vaguely threatening) truism that reappears with some variation in Taylors Motto (1621) with his defiant boast against the “purblind witch” Fortune that “(spight her teeth) I’l live untill I die”

(Works ii.46).

100

Lend me Rhamnussnes Flanders blade, I’le lash

The sober Centaures, turn great Oaks to Ash:  210

A long Dev’ls broath, be sure you bring a spoon,

Our mornings shall begin at afternoone;

And Minos, Eacus, nor Rhadamantus

209. I’le] Ile 1651b+ 210. Centaures] Centaure 1654

101

209) Rhamnussnes. This may refer to the sixteenth-century French Protestant convert and radical logician, Pierre de la Ramée, who (like other humanists) Latinised his name as Petrus Ramus (Howell 146-7). His influential critiques of Aristotelian and

Scholastic logic would have appealed to Taylor (see “Salamanca” below, line 24).

209) Flanders blade. Swords made in Flanders were considered vastly inferior to those of Toledo (above, 94). In Ben Jonson’s Every Man In His Humour (1601)

Bobadil examines a sword and exclaims: “This a Toledo, pish! A Fleming by heaven!

I’ll buy them for a guilder a-piece” (III.i) (quoted in Sugden 193).

210) Centaures. The half-horse/half-man creatures from Greek myth were considered far from “sober”.

210) Oakes to Ash. The “Flanders blade” would be of little help either in burning oak trees to piles of ash, or achieving the more fantastical transmogrification of them into ash trees.

211) long Dev’ls broath. Taylor reworks the familiar expression, “he must have a long spoon that will eat with the Devil” (Tilley S771), creating a “ropy” liquid (OED) before embarking on the temporal nonsense of the following lines.

212) mornings . . . afternoon. Like King Lear and his Fool, who plan to “go to supper i’ th’ morning. / And . . . go to bed at noon” (III.vi.86-7), Taylor nonsensically recalculates diurnal time.

213) Minos, Eacus, nor Radamantus. Virgil names Minos and Rhadamanth as the severe judges of Erebus (the Underworld) in the Aeneid (VI.432, 566), while Ovid added Aecus in his Metamorphoses (XIII.25) (Hoy 3:123). Taylor allied all three with

Separatists and the Devil in his 1642 pamphlet, Plutoes remonstrance (on its attribution to Taylor, see Capp 203).

102

May roare and rant, but never shall out rant us.

As we are temporall, lets be temporisers,  215

We scorn to be surpriz’d, we’le be surprizers:

Let’s make grim Pluto stink, the welkin rumble,

And Hollophernes bluster, blow and grumble,

Rending up mighty thistles by the roots, 

Because an Hostler stole away his boots;  220

Then with a multiplying Gally pot,

I’le know the projects of the crafty Scot;

215. temporall] Temporall 1654 215. lets] let’s 1651b+ 215. temporisers] Temporizers 1654 219. thistles] Thistles 1651b+ 219. roots] Roots 1651b 220. Hostler] Ostler 1654 220. boots;] boots: 1651b+

103

214) out rant us. In another Hudibrastic rhyme, Taylor’s neologistic variant of

‘outdo’ evokes those loosely-grouped antinomian and pantheistic “Ranters” whose rejection of traditional spiritual authorities evoked widespread contempt (Ruthven

“Taylor”; Cross 1365). In a pamphlet published the same year as Nonsence – Ranters of both sexes (1651) – Taylor set out the “blasphemous opinions” of a group of these separatists, one of whom, John Robins, “declare[d] himself to be the great God of

Heaven” and “his wife [to be] with childe with Jesus Christ” (title page).

217) Pluto . . . stink . . . welkin . . . rumble. Taylor’s boast to disturb both Heaven

(“the welkin”) and Hell (“Pluto”) is rendered empty by realisation that Hell is already supposed to reek of brimstone, while the heavens “rumble” with thunder (Ruthven

“Taylor”).

218) Hollophernes. The Assyrian general of Nebuchadnezzar was beheaded by

Judith after he raped her (Judith 13:1-8). A “grumbling” Holofernes was a familiar figure to early modern audiences, appearing allusively in both Shakespeare’s Love’s

Labours Lost (1598) and John Marston’s What You Will (1601). A popular ballad,

‘The ouerthrow of proud Holofernes, and the triumph of vertuous Queene Iudith’, was published in Thomas Deloney’s Garland of Good Will (1593) (Hoy 1:305-6).

221) Gally pot. A gally pot was “a small earthen glazed pot, esp. one used by apothecaries for ointments and medicines” (OED). Taylor appears to suggest using the pot like a witches’ cauldron or crystal ball to conjure up visions of the Scot’s

“projects”.

222) crafty Scot. Taylor was an avid believer in the proverbially false Scot (Tilley

S154), remarking ironically in Mercurius Nonsencicus (1648) that “all Scots be not

Knaves, nor are all English men over burthened with honesty” (4).

104

And then he shall be forc’d to hide his head

In Tenebris, in Poland, or in Swead.

Fough, this Tobacco stinks: thou dirty Hag 225

Abato faire, Ile put thee in a bag. 

Search Asia, Affrick, and America, 

To find the Goddesse Berecinthia,

And know how Pirramus and Thisbe fell

Together by the eares, late in Bridewell.  230

224. Swead.] Swead: 1651b+ 225. stink:] stinks; 1654 225. Hag] Hag, 1654 226. Abato faire] Stand further near, 1654 227. Affrick,] Affrick 1651b+ 227. America] Americ 1654 229. Thisbe fell] this befell 1654 230. eares,] years 1654

105

224) Tenebris . . . Poland . . . Swead. While a “crafty [and, to Taylor, inevitably

Presbyterian] Scot” might be able to hide in “Tenebris” (Latin, in the dark), his chances of finding sanctuary in either Poland (thought very intolerant toward unorthodox religions) or Sweden (one of the leading Protestant nations of the Thirty

Years War) would be minimal (Sugden 416, 494).

225) Tobacco. See the note on line 14.

226) Abato faire. Unidentified. Grammatically an imperative (perhaps of

“abate”?), the phrase was replaced in 1654 by the impossible command to “Stand further near”.

227-228) Search . . . Berecinthia. It would be nonsensical to travel to these far- flung regions in search of a Celtic fertility goddess (Ann and Imel 504).

229-230) Pirramus and Thisbe . . . Bridewell. The tragic love story of Pyramus and Thisbe is told in Book Four of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In depicting the pair fighting like animals (falling “by the ears”; OED) in Bridewell prison, Taylor follows

Shakespeare’s parody of the story in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1600) by burlesquing them in a manner reminiscent of his treatment of Hero and Leander (lines

164-5).

106

Words are but winde in terme time, but vacations

Are fit to publish silent Proclamations.

There was a businesse never understood,

The womans suit in Law was just and good:

She lost the day, this did her cause disgrace,  235

The Lawyer put some ill into her case. 

Before Ile live this life, Ile take a Knife, 

And drown my selfe, and then what needs a Wife?

231. terme] Terme 1651b+ 231. vacations] Vacations 1651b+ 235. cause] Cause 1651b+ 236. Lawyer] lawyer 1654 236. case] Case 1651b+ 237. Ile] I’le 1651b 237. Ile] I’le 1651b 237. Knife] knife 1654

107

231-232) Words . . . Proclamations. The London year consisted of four ‘terms’

(Michaelmas, Hilary, Easter, Trinity), at which time the Westminster law courts were in session, and the city was at its busiest (Hoy 2:186). Thomas Dekker in The Dead

Tearme (1608) described how “in the open streetes is such walking, such talking, such running, such riding, such clapping too of windowes, such rapping a[t] Chamber doores, such crying out for drink, such buying vp of meate, and such calling vppon

Shottes, that at every such time, I verily beleeue I dwell in a Towne of Warre” (Hoy

2:186); one can only imagine the effect of the actual war. Words would easily disappear in such a hubbub. In light of Taylor’s paradoxical style, however, it becomes apparent that it would be pointless to “publish” (in both the logical sense of

“making public” and the nonsensical one of “printing”) oxymoronic “silent

Proclamations” in “vacations” when no one is there to read them.

235-237) womans . . . case. The lawsuit has not been identified. Lawyers, whose population had increased phenomenally between the mid-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Roth 42), were already notorious for greed and duplicity, while the Law itself was said to possess a “nose of wax, warmed and wrought according to mens pleasures” (Tilley L104). Taylor concluded his own satirical “Inkhorne Disputation, or Mungrell conference, betwixt a Lawyer and a Poet” with the bitter observation that

“Lawyers live upon the times Abuses” (Works iii.29, recte 31).

237-238) Knife . . . drowne. An instrumental nonsense.

108

Strange things are done by art and humane power: 

Quinborough Castle landed neare the Tower. 240

Much like a prodigy old time playd Rex: 

A Kentish Castle came to Middlesex.

May not a man cal’d Newgate dwell at Highgate,

And wed a Widdow at the Pye at Algate?

239. art] Art 1654 239. power:] power, 1651b+ 241. prodigy] prodigy, 1651b; Prodigy 1654 243. Highgate,] Higate; 1654

109

240-242) Quinborough Castle . . . Kentish . . . Middlesex. Shakespeare’s

Macbeth had been led to believe he would not be vanquished “until / Great Birnam

Wood to high Dunsinane Hill / Shall come against him” (Macbeth IV.i.92-4).

“Quinborough” is Queenborough, in Kent, where Edward III had constructed “the perfect castle” (Gascoigne and Gascoigne 23). It served as a Royalist stronghold during the Civil War, until it was seized and demolished by the Parliamentarians in

1650 (Reynolds and Platt). Taylor’s allusion to the “Kentish Castle” coming to

Middlesex (perhaps as building material after its demolition, or in seconded fittings) thus links the fates of Shakespeare’s and his own defeated king.

241) prodigy . . . time . . . Rex. Taylor seems to be implying that a personified

Time – by means of an “unusual or extraordinary . . . occurrence” (“prodigy”; OED)

– “played” or misused the king (“Rex”), resulting in such “Strange things” as a wandering castle, and implicitly, regicide.

243-244) man cal’d . . . Algate. Since “names and natures” were thought to agree, people with an “ill name” were said to be “halfe hang’d already” (Tilley N25, N32).

Taylor himself exploited the belief in constructing anagrams to prove the innate worth or evil of his subjects, such as proving Judas pre-destined to betray Jesus because “in an Anagram Iskarriott is, / By letters transposition, traytor kis” (Virgin Mary, Works i.22). A man called Newgate might thus be expected to be as glum as the prison and its inmates, rather than dwelling in “Highgate” (“high gait”, in good spirits) and living to marry a wealthy widow at the famous “Pye” tavern.

110

Therefore let us like or dislike Presbytery, 245

It will work finely, if it once besquitter ye. 

Bring me a Salamander from Surat in France,

The Alps and the Pirenian hills shall dance.

In Greenwich Parke there smiling Nioby

Shall laugh and lye down like an Oyster Pye. 250

Fame is a lying slut, she told me tales,

That in October Christmas came from Wales:

246. finely,] finely 1654 250. Oyster Pye] Oyster-Pye 1651b

111

245-246) Presbytery . . . besquitter ye. A characteristically scatological insult from an author who declared in his Conversion (1643) that Henry Walker’s books were fit for “Naught, but to wipe his shitten Divels taile” (3). In Crop-eare Curried

(1645) Taylor similarly abused “a Crew of Rascalls called Martinists; whose Laxative

Purity did most shamefully in printed toyes, Pamphlets, and Lying Libells, besquitter all England over” (2). See also the “Dedication” below.

247-248) Salamander . . . hills . . . dance. Taylor demands the impossible in order to achieve the impossible: it would be as difficult to acquire the mythical and fire- dwelling salamander as to make the Alps and Pyrenees (bathetically dubbed “hills”) dance. See the note on lines 5-6.

249-250) smiling Nioby . . . Oyster Pye. The Greek Niobe became emblematic of inconsolable bereavement after the gods murdered her children as punishment for her boasting (Price and Kearns 375). A “smiling Nioby” is thus an oxymoron, while a laughing one is an impossibilium. Taylor furthers his burlesque in likening her to an

“Oyster Pye”, alluding not only to the relatively cheap price of oysters at this time

(Parkes 296) but also to their various sexual connotations. While their visual similarities to both male and female sexual organs gave them their reputation as aphrodisiacs, an “oyster” or “oyster pie” was also slang for a whore (Williams 982).

Taylor thus transforms the formerly tragic Niobe into a jovial, low-brow slut.

251-252) Fame . . . slut . . . Wales. Taylor attacks “Fame” (in the derogatory sense of “rumour”) for presenting him with the sort of travellers’ nonsense that produced barking “Russian cats” (line 11).

112

Believe it, take the wings of Icarus, 

And walke to Hounsditch, and to Erebus,

There tell them plainly how the case stands here, 255

And bring us word how matters do go there.

Unto the Market Ile run presently,

And there a peck of troubles I will buy, 

One told me they would multiply and grow;

All England with them I will plant and sow: 260

Which, as they ripen dayly Ile take care

That every living soule shall have a share.

Ile serve my selfe first, and Ile have such store

In time of need to serve a thousand more.

253. it,] it 1654 253. Icarus,] Icarus 1654 255. here,] here. 1654 258. troubles] rroubles 1654 258. buy,] buy. 1651b 259. grow;] grow: 1654 260. sow:] sow. 1654 261. Which,] Which 1651b+ 262. share.] share: 1654

113

253) wings . . . Icarus. While nobody requires wings to walk, attempts to use the mythical wings of Icarus, which had melted when he flew too close to the sun, would ultimately render you pedestrian anyway.

256) matters . . . there. The “matters” of Houndsditch would be only marginally better than those of the underworld (“Erebus”), because it was occupied mainly by brokers – dealers in old clothes (Sugden 257). Taylor refers to it in Sir Gregory

Nonsence (1622) as a dubious area, quipping: “I come fr[om] Ho[un]dsditch, Long- laine, & fr[om] Bridewel, / Where all that have liv’d ill, have all not dide well”

(Works ii.3).

258) peck of troubles. While it was proverbially common to find yourself “in a peck of troubles” (Tilley P172), only a fool would wish to purchase them.

260) England . . . sow. Taylor’s offer to plant “troubles” throughout England, like a Roman sowing salt into Carthage, makes a mockery of conventional love-thy- neighbour ideals. The offer is rendered even more nonsensical through its redundancy, because Taylor considered England already planted with enough trouble for “every living soule [to] have a share”.

114

But I forget my Theame, O foule offence!  265

This Nonsence hath a taste of too much sence: 

The Asse, Goose, Woodcock, Buzzard, and the Gull,

Beat out their Braines, and put them in my scull; 

And tell the men of Gotham tis thought fit

The Wise men there should lend me a[l]l their wit.  270

For Nonsence I will taxe all Christendome, 

Great Emperours and Kings shall pay me some,

And many a Major, or Justice of the Peace

Will give me Tribute and the Tax increase

To such a height, that Cardinals from Rome 275

Cuckolds and Constables shall pay me some: 

265. Theame,] Theame. 1654 266. Nonsence] nonsence 1651b+ 268. Braines] brains 1651b+ 270. Wise men] wise men 1651b; Wisemen 1654 270. wit.] wit: 1651b+ 271. Nonsence] nonsence 1651b 273. Peace] peace 1651b 274. Tribute] tribute, 1651b; tribute 1654 275. Rome] Rome, 1651b+ 276. Cuckolds] Cuckolds, 1654 276. Constables] Costables 1654

115

265-266) But . . . sence. Belatedly aware that the distinction between “nonsence” and “sence” collapses when discussing England’s “troubles”, Taylor resolves to resume his “Theame” – which is of course nonsense, because pockets of “sence” have been obvious throughout. It is also paradoxical to pretend that a stockpile of largely disparate examples of nonsense is a carefully delineated narrative (Ruthven “Taylor”).

Taylor’s resolution echoes a similar self-instruction in Mercurius Nonsencicus (1648):

“stand to thy promise, beware of writing a wise word, it, and, of, for, by, from, to, at, wherefore, it’s no matter when, or why, make an end to no end, and as thy Title was intrincicall, so let thy Epilogue, and Catastrophe be nonsencicall” (7).

267) Asse . . . Gull. Since all the creatures Taylor lists were considered stupid (see the figurative uses cited in the OED), their “Braines” would only be useful for constructing nonsense.

269-270) Gotham . . . Wise men. In contrast to the true stupidity of the animals, the “Wise men” of Gotham were famous for strategically feigning idiocy to avoid the cost of entertaining King John (Sugden 228).

271-276) Nonsence . . . taxe . . . Cardinals . . . Cuckolds and Constables. While it would be nonsensical for “Emperours and Kings” and others to pay a citizen such as

Taylor financial “Tribute and . . . Tax”, many such people have enough “Nonsence” to spare. These include the “Cardinals” deluded by what Taylor calls in his Memoriall

(1622) “the Romish whore” (Works ii.294), “Cuckolds” rendered fools by their wives, and “Constables” who (according to another pamphlet he published in 1622, O’Toole) deal daily with “sensles [sic] nonsence, checks & Counter checking” (Works ii.18).

116

Strong Hull, with fata[l]l Hell, and Hallifax,

Shall naturally bring me tole and tax.

The mighty stock of Nonsence I will win, 

Shall be the universall Magazine 280

For Universities to worke upon,

The rich Philosophers admired Stone; 

Then I make Poets rich, and Us’rers poore; 

And thus resolv’d, at this time write [no] more. 

278. tax.] tax: 1651b+ 279. Nonsence] 1654; Nonsenc 1651; nonsence 1651b 279. win,] win: 1654 280. Shall be] Shalbe 1651b+ 280. Magazine] Magazine, 1651b+ 281. upon,] upon 1654 282. rich] Rich 1654 282. Stone;] Stone: 1651b+ 283. rich] rish 1654 283. Us’rers] Usurers 1651b+ 284. resolv’d,] resolv’d 1654 284. no] 1651b+; om. 1651

117

277) Hull . . . Hallifax. This “Thieves’ Litany” is first recorded in Antony

Copley’s Wits fittes and fancies (1594) (Ruthven “Taylor”). It is quoted in Taylor’s

Wherrie-Ferry-Voyage (1622) as “From Hull, from Hallifax, from Hell, ’tis thus, /

From all these three, Good Lord deliver us” (Works ii.12). Because the Yorkshire towns of Hull and Halifax were renowned for the severity of their laws against thieves and vagabonds, they were grouped with Hell as the greatest fears of English thieves

(Sugden 241, 257).

208) Magazine . . . Universities. A “Magazine” here denotes a “storehouse of information” (OED). Writing “nonsence” worthy of tertiary study was a challenge

Taylor set himself in Mercurius Nonsencicus (1648): “let thy [writing] be nonsencicall in heroick, duncicall, and naturall, artificiall Verses, beyond the understanding of all the Colledges, or Universities or either Kent or Christendome”

(7). In this, Taylor parodies the assumption of writers such as George Chapman that only a doctus poeta could produce the best poetry (Ruthven, “Taylor”), an assault he continues with the work of “John Defisty Cankie”, below.

282-283) rich Philosophers . . . Us’rers poore. Taylor often lamented the non- existence of “rich” philosophers and poets (see lines 205-7); only by discovering the philosopher’s stone that would change base metals alchemically into gold would they be able to procure wealth. For the anti-Semitic Taylor, this was an impossibility on par with rendering “Us’rers poore”.

284) write [no] more. While the absence of “no” from the 1651 test renders the line perfectly nonsensical, its necessity for the metre (in which Taylor is almost tediously regular) suggests that its inclusion in 1651b and 1654 is a genuine correction.

118

This Dedication is humbly directed to a living 1

man, quartered into foure Offices, viz.) a

Scavenger, a Beadle, a Cobler, and

halfe a Constable

2. Offices,] Offices 1654

119

Dedication. Taylor’s dedications comprise important parts of many of his texts, often combining with the title to establish a serious or comic tone from the outset.

Lacking aristocratic patronage (see lines 205-7), Taylor felt free to dedicate his pamphlets to comic effect. His Works (1630) is thus dedicated “To the most high, most mighty, and most ancient producer, seducer, and abuser of mankind, the world”

(sig. A3). In 1624 he dedicated Praise of cleane Linnen to “Martha Legge”, a London laundress (Works ii.155, recte 164), and in the same year dedicated his Bawd “to the neither noble or ignoble, lord or lady, kind or cruell, learned or ignorant, curreous or currish, Christian or Barbarian, Man or Woman, rich or poore: but to all and every one in generall and particular” (Works ii.91).

His dedication to Nonsence parodies the inflated style typical of eulogistic dedications, with a fustian blend of complex sentences, tautologies, neologisms, ink- horn terms, and sesquipedalian words. He had first used this combination to great effect in 1617, when composing the elaborate dedication to his Travels to Hamburgh

(Works iii.76, recte 78). Taylor also subverts book-manufacturing conventions by placing the dedication and laudatory verses at the end of the pamphlet, and continues this book-turned-upsidedown scheme in the two later parts of Nonsence. The “Second

Part” of 1651b, for example, concludes with a title for “The first Part, after the second, to the foremost sence, and hindmost purpose” (line 141).

2) quartered into foure. A tautological evocation of the brutal “quartering” performed on criminals sentenced to be “hanged, drawn and quartered”.

3) Beadle. In O’Toole (1622) Taylor lambasted officious and “nasty beadles with their breath contaminous”, who “With What are you? & Who goes there? examinus

[sic]” (Works ii.18).

120

O the high and mighty Davidius Vulcanus, Duke and Dominator 5

T  of the Dunghils, and absolute, resolute, dissolute Scavenger of the

Towne and Territories of Gravesend in Norfolk, great Master and

Baron of the wheelebarrow, the only Farmer, Transporter, Lord of

the Soyle, and Privy searcher of all Mixens, and Muckhils, simple or compound, in the Liberties aforesaid. Cleanser, clearer, and 10 avoyder of the most Turpitudinous, Merdurinous, excrementall offals,

Muck and Garbadge. Refiner, Purger, Clarifier, Purifier, Mundifier, 

6. dissolute] dissolute, 1651b+ 8. Wheelebarrow] Wheel-barrow 1651b+ 10. clearer] Clearer 1651b; Cleaver 1654 12. Muck] Muck, 1654

121

5) Davidius Vulcanus. “Vulcanus” suggests the god of fire, and perhaps draws on fire’s purifying capabilities. Taylor’s jovial use of scatology throughout this dedication places him in that “golden age of ‘innocent scatology’ which looks back ultimately to Chaucer” (Smith 170). Its most famous exemplar is François Rabelais, who treated the excremental as an everyday matter, full of earthy comic potential and free from taboo (170).

6) absolute, resolute, dissolute. A typical display of Taylor’s style of Skeltonic rhyming (see also lines 135-52).

7) Gravesend in Norfolk. Sea ports such as Gravesend (in Kent) were considered the haunt of swindlers and loose women, and thus in need of a good clean-up (Sugden

231).

9) Soyle. Excrement (OED).

9) Privy searcher. Taylor describes the position of dunghill-searcher as if it were a royal appointment akin to the Privy Counsellor or Keeper of the Privy Purse. Cf.

“privy member” (Dedication, line 42) (Ruthven “Taylor”).

9-10) simple or compound. The introduction of terms customarily used in banking evokes the traditional belief that “riches were like muck; when it lay upon an heap, it gave but a stench . . . but when it was spread upon the ground, then it was the cause of much fruit” (Tilley M1071; Ruthven “Taylor”).

11) avoyder. In the punning sense of ‘a voyder’ or clearer.

11) Turpitudinous. Taylor’s neologism, from “turpitude”. The earliest usage of

“turpitudinous” recorded by the OED is dated 1935.

11) Merdurinous. Composed of excrement and urine.

12) Mundifier. A cleanser (OED). See line 135 for its alchemical use.

122

Excluder, and Expulser of Putrifactious and Pestiferous Contagions; the Potentissimo, Excellentissimo, Invader, Scatterer, Disperser,

Consumer and Confounder of offensive unsavoury savours, smels,  15 scents, and vapours: Great Soldan, Sultan, and Grand Signiour over all varieties of stinks and stinkards; most Triumphant Termagant,  unresistable Conquerour and Commander of the major and minor

(the great and the lesse) Turditanians, chiefe Corigidor and Beadle of all the Precinct, sole Transplanter, Terrifier, Controler, and 20

15. Consumer] Consumer, 1654 16. vapours] Vapours 1654 17. stinks] stinks, 1654 19. and] & 1651b+

123

14) Potentissimo, Excellentissimo. Cod Latin for “most powerful, most excellent”. Taylor used mock-Latin throughout his works, as for example in Sir

Gregory Nonsence (1622), whose dedicatory addressee is “Mr Trim Tram Senceles

. . . Most Honorificicabilitudinitatibus” (Works ii. sig.Aa). Here Taylor extends an earlier pseudo-Latinism, “honorificabilitudinitatibus”, which appears in, for example,

Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (1595) (V.i.42), and Thomas Nashe’s Lenten

Stuff (1599) (Ruthven “Taylor”; David, 123).

16) Soldan, Sultan and Grand Signiour. Specifically the rulers of Muslim nations (the “Grand Signiour” being the Sultan of Turkey; OED), Taylor uses the terms here for their general connotations of power and leadership, while burlesquing their holders with their new jurisdiction.

17) Termagant. In A World of Words, or Most copious, and exact Dictionary in

Italian and English (1598) John Florio defines this word as “a great boaster, quareller, killer, tamer or ruler of the Vniuerse, the child of the earth-quake and of the thunder, the brother of death” (quoted in Hoy 1:30). The figure was well known to

Renaissance audiences as an overbearing Muslim god in Mystery and Romance plays.

19) Turditanians. Taylor’s scatological neologism acts like “Pericranians” (line

103) in evoking an imaginary country.

19) Corigidor. Corrector.

124

Corrector of Beggers and Vagabonds. The terrible Hue and Cry

Cryer, chiefe Court-Cryer, Jayle-Keeper, and only confiner of the

Hogs; chiefe and most frequent vigilant watchman, demy Constable, and Image of Authority, the most accomplished Cobler, exquisite

Translater, and exaçt Reformer of oppressed, decayed, wicked and 25 oppressed soales: And the onely justiciary rectifier, underlayer and

setter upright of such Brethren and Sisters, as doe go aside, and tread their foot awry in these dayes of vanity, and paths of iniquity: 

In hope (Great Sir) I have not abated you of the least tittle of your

Title, your Honorable stile being so high, that no Christian, Pagan,  30

Heathen, Turke, Jew, Infidell, Cuckold, or Canniball, can never climbe to the top of it, there being a late report that your multiplicity and many affaires of State have disturbed your rest, and impaired your health, insomuch as it is thought your pericranion is crazed or cracked, and you thereby in danger to fall into a Callenturian disease, which 35

21. Cry] Cry, 1651b+ 22. confiner] Confiner 1651b+ 25. wicked] wicked, 1651b+ 25. and] & 1651b+ 26. justiciary] judiciary 1651b+ 29. underlayer] underlayer, 1654 27. and] an 1654 27. Sisters,] Sisters 1654 28. vanity] Vanity 1651b+ 28. iniquity] Iniquity 1654 30. Title] title 1651b+ 33. and] & 1651b+ 125

21) Hue and Cry. A manner of apprehending criminals, wherein “neighbours were bound to join in. . . and to pursue a suspect to the bounds of the manor” (Evans 575).

24-26) Cobler . . . soales. For Taylor’s poor opinion of tradesmen such as cobblers abandoning soles for souls by taking up preaching, see line 40.

35) Callenturian. A disease “incident to sailors within the tropics, characterized by delirium in which the patient, it is said, fancies the sea to be green fields, and desires to leap into it” (OED).

126

is to be doubted may produce a Vertigo in your head, wherby your wit may be troubled with a superfluous flax, which may prove a molestation to your selfe, and the whole Towne, that hath in it selfe, and in every place round about it, more troubles then they can well beare. But if their hard fortune should be, that when you are working 40 to your owne Ends, and that you should call for your Aule, and Death should mistake and bring you your Last, whereby such a privy member as your selfe might be publickly lost; it is feared, griefe would overflow

37. flax] flux 1654 41. Death] death 1654

127

37) flax. Corrected to “flux” in 1654.

41-42) Aule . . . Last. Taylor here puns on the homophones “awl/all” and the ambiguity of “last” as both a temporal term and a shoemaking implement. A cobbler’s

“awl” is “a small tool . . . with which holes may be pierced” (OED) and a “last” is “a wooden model of the foot, on which shoemakers shape boots and shoes” (OED).

128

the whole Towne, and that some of the Townesmen (with the helpe of their wives) would runne starke horne mad: To prevent this great 45

detriment of such a losse as that Towne may undergo in this time of scarcity of wit, wisdome, and wise men; for feare you should fall into the dangerous diseases of the Mubble-fubbles, or the grumbling in the

Gizzard: Therefore (to drive away dumps) and to give you some

Recreation, I have made bold to present your Greatnesse with this 50

Dedication, which if you will vouchsafe but to read and understand,

and in so doing you shall do more for the Author, then he ever was,  or shall do himselfe.

J.T.

48. Mubblefubbles] Mubble-/fubbles 1651+ 48. in] of 1651b+ 49. (to] to 1654 49. dumps)] dumps, 1654 50. Greatnesse] greatnesse 1654 52. he] om. 1654 52. was,] was 1654

129

45) wives . . . horne mad. Considering the frequency of Taylor’s allusions to cuckoldry, and his note regarding the wives’ “helpe”, his “starke horne mad” men are surely “horned” in the sense of cuckolded. Cf. Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor (1597): “If I have horns to make one mad, let the proverb go with me: I’ll be horn-mad” (III.v.150-2).

48) Mubble-fubbles. A state of depression or melancholy (OED).

48-49) grumbling in the Gizzard. A proverbial expression of fretting or worrying (OED).

Taylor’s use may be an early example of the expression, which is absent from Tilley’s dictionary of early modern proverbs.

49) dumps. To describe someone as being “in the dumps” was a common means of denoting melancholy (Tilley D640).

130

Allandro pasqueto Mallatrumpa entangrino liuroe.  1

L Vento Chioli, Mauritambull Teda fulgare, 

I Antro della campo il Danto Cordi sublima

Pantathos, stremo standina eschine vandri

Bene in shendo, tercia penthe dissadi.  5

Mecrops, Sans sida vocifera Randa Bavinea, 

Allatendrea quante, Eltrada Pizminoy venta, 

Mega Pollimunton, Theorba quasie quicunque

Tripolina Tiphon, Quabacondono sapho.

Terra tragmus sophye, sunt diacalcitheo Geata. 10

Avostre Obserdandi Zhean De Fistye Cankie

De Sallamanca Andalowsia.

1. Mallatrumpa] Valatrumpa 1654 1. entangrino] entangrine 1654 2. Vento] vento 1651b 2. Teda fulgere] Tedafulgere 1654 3. Cordi] Corda 1654 4. Pantathos] Pantatos 1654 5. tercia] tircia 1651b; tircia, 1651b 6. Mecrops,] Mecrops 1651b+ 7. quante] quanto 1651b+

131

1-12) Taylor here constructs a nonsense macaronic verse, incorporating Latin, Italian,

French, German and nonce-words in a passage that makes no overall sense (Malcolm 201).

Educated poets composed serious macaronic poetry in virtuoso displays of their linguistic skills. In The Arcadian Rhetorike (1588), for instance, Abraham Fraunce combined English,

Latin, Greek, Italian and Spanish when dedicating his book to Mary, Countess of Pembroke

(2), and John Donne’s dedicatory contribution to Coryats Crudities (1611) included Latin,

English, French and Spanish (sig. d4).

132

Or thus you may English it, in the transcending praise

of the Authour, and his Booke.

Ill PHEBUS blustring blasts shall cease to blow, 15

T And ÆOLUS shall hide his radiant Ra[ie]s,

Till VULCANS Forge be fram’d of SCITHIAN Snow, 

And NEPT[U]NE like a Sh[e]p[h]eard spend his day[e]s;

When SATURNE shall sell Mouse-traps and a[l]low

MARS to sing Madrigalls, and Round delayes:  20

Then shall thy Booke and thee be out of Date,

And scorne the fury of consuming Fate. 

To your worthinesse in all Observance Devoted, 

John Defistie Cankie of Sallamanca in Andalusia.

FINIS.

14. Authour,] Authour 1651b+ 17. SCITHIAN] Scithian 1654 19. Mouse-traps] Mouse-traps, 1651b; Mouse traps 1654 20. Madrigalls] Madrigals 1654 20. Round] round 1651b+ 22. fury] envy 1654 23. Observance] observance 1651b+

133

15-16) Phebus . . . blow . . . Æolus . . . Ra[ie]s. In Taylor’s upside-down world, the sun- god (Phoebus) and god of the winds (Æolus) exchange their characteristic traits. These lines comprise the most translatable Italian of the macaronic verse, referring to the gods through antonomasia. Their “mistranslation” (Phoebus, for example, supposedly arising from translation of “Il Vento”, “the wind”) renders the “translated” poem a multi-lingual non sequitur.

17) Vulcans Forge . . . Scithian snow. In this impossibilium, Taylor employs imagery more typically reserved for Elizabethan blasons of female beauty, such as Christopher

Marlowe’s praise of a woman with “arms far whiter than the Scythian snow” (Marlowe

‘Elegia VI’, line 8).

18) Neptune . . . Sh[e]p[h]eard. Taylor also uses this incongruous choice of occupation at line 111.

19) Saturne . . . Mouse-traps. A bathetic occupation for this Greek god.

20) Mars . . . Round delayes. Pastoral madrigals and simple roundelays would be incongruous pastimes for the Roman god of war.

24) John Defistie Cankie. A similar name appears in Barnabe Barnes’s The Devil’s

Charter (1607) as “Iannes De fisticanckers” (line 1592). In his Armado (1627) Taylor refers to “The Lord-SHIP. . . under the Command of the Noble Don Diego de fisty Cankcemuscod, who was Admirall or high Adellantado of the whole fleete” (Works i.79; McKerrow ‘Notes’,

127). This may be an allusion to the Spanish (and thus Catholic) “Don Diego”, who was berated by many English writers – including Thomas Dekker and John Webster in Sir

Thomas Wyatt (1602; IV.ii.51-58), and Thomas Middleton in Blurt, Master-Constable (1602;

IV.iii.135-7) – for defecating in the Protestant St Paul’s Cathedral. In it uncertain whether this referred

134

135 to a real person, or was used in post-Armada England as a stock Hispanophobic expression

(Saloman 433).

24) Sallamanca . . . Andalusia. The Spanish city of Salamanca (which is not in

Andalusia) was most famous for its University. The people of Andalusia were thought to

“have a good deal of Moorish blood in their veins”, and “smugglers and robbers” were said to be “plentiful among them” (Sugden 18, 446). While thus degrading the city by association,

Taylor also jibes those University-educated poets who had sneered at him (in both reality and his own imagination) throughout his career, by aligning their multi-lingual poems – which were “so mysticall, sophisticall”, he remarks in Nipping (1614), that it is “no marvell others understand them not” (Works ii.263) – with his nonsense macaronic.

136

Appendix 1: Facsimile of Nonsence (1651)

Scans from EEBO supplied in original dissertation. Removed from online version.

137

Appendix 2: ‘The Second Part’ (1651b)

Nonsence upon Sence:

SENCE,

UPON

NONSENCE:

Chuse you whether, either or neither.

The Second Part to the same Sence, and for the

same Reasons aleadged in the former Impression.

In Longitude, Latitude, Crassitude, Magnitude,

and Amplitude, lengthened, widened, enlar-

ged, augmented, encreased, made wider, and

sider, by the addition of Letters, Sillables,

Words, Lines, and far fetch’d Sentences.

Written upon White Paper, in a Browne Study, be-

twixt Lammas Day and Cambridge, in the

Yeare aforesaid.

Beginning at the end, and written by John Taylor

at the Signe of the poore Poets Head, in Phe-

nix Alley, neare the middle of Long Aker, or

138

Covent Garden.

The Second Part, to the Same Sence. 

Short Title. Part,] Part 1654 Short Title. Same] same 1654

139

Hen as a Woodcock did a Phœnix hatch, 1 WOnc e, in the Raigne of Julian the Apostate,  When Spiders nets an Elephant did catch, 

The Alehouse had no fire to make a Toast at;

Then in those merry lamentable dayes, 5

Upon a Christmas Eve neare Michaelmas,

New Market heath did hoarsly sing the prayse

Of Apuleius, or the golden Asse. 

The Adamantine Fall of seven fold Nile, 

Had boyl’d Musk Mellons from the Mount Parnassus,  10

Whereof the singsong wanton Crocodile

Made Romane Cressus smile and Lidian Crassus, 

When Charing Crosse the Son of Summers Leg, 

Had Kitned in the eylids of a Nowne,

2. Once,] Once 1654 3. nets] Nets 1654 8. Of] Or 1654 8. golden] Golden 1654 9. Fall] fall 1654 9. Mellons] Millions 1654 11. Whereof] Whereas 1654 11. singsong] sing song 1654 12. smile] smile, 1654 13. Son; Sun 1654

140

And Christmas Carrols playd at Mumble-peg, 15

With the Buls pizzel of a Market Towne:

Then shall a Pronoune and a Participle

Fight doggedly for wagging of a straw, 

And then Tom Thumb with Gogmagog shal tipple,

And shew the Learned’st Lawyers what is Law:  20

Then Ghastly flesh of Sirens fry’d in steaks, 

And Oyntments drawn from warm ingratitude

Did draw the teeth of two and forty weeks

From out the heels of squemish magnitude.

But yet (O yet) a new layd Madrigall 25

Had bak’d the haunches of a Spanish child,

And match’d ‘em to Sir Guy the Seneschall, 

Who liv’d Adulterously with Bosworth field.

15. Mumble-peg] Mumble peg 1654 16. Towne:] Town; 1654 18. doggedly] diggedly 1654 20. learnd’st] learndst 1654 20. Law:] Law. 1654 21. Sirens] shillings 1654 25. yet] yey 1654 26. child,] child. 1654 27. mach’t ‘em] macht’em 1654 28. field.] field, 1654

141

Whilest this was doing, all undone and Done, 

As men undo a Trowt to make a Loach, 30

For as with spoons a Lord may eat the Sun,

So layes a Bitch her Litter in a Coach.

The Times have bin (but Time is turn’d to pap) 

That men might speake like Sea crabs with a Quill, 

And old Devotion wore a corner’d Cap 35

Upon the stomack of a Water-mill. 

But as a Bag-pipe flying in the Ayre, 

Doth water all the Earth with Scottish Jigs,

So Times do change their turns at Sturbridge Faire;

For all the world now rides on Ale and Wigs.  40

O that my Lungs could bleat like butter’d pease, 

But bleating and my Lungs have caught the itch, 

Which are as musty as the Irish Seas,

29. undone] undone, 1654 33. bin] beene, 1654 34. Sea crabs] Sea-crabs 1654 36. stomack] Stomack 1654 37. Bag-pipe flying] Bag pipe-flying 1654 40. world] World 1654 41. Lungs] wings 1654 42. Lungs] lungs 1654

142

Which in their left side now have both the stitch.

I grant indeed that Rainbows layd to sleep,  45

Snort like a Woodknife in a Ladies Eye,

Which makes her bark to see a pudding creep, 

For creeping puddings always please the wife.

The force of custome makes a man to pisse

A cast of Merlins in King Dido’s mouth:  50

Hence comes the squint ey’d Proverb, which is this,

All men are borne their backsides to the South.

A letter late came from the Stigian Lake

That told me Cerberus himselfe had choak’d:

He took a Mil-stone for a butterd cake,  55

When first red Herrings were at Yarmouth smoak’d: 

The Orientall Chilblains of the West

44. stitch] Stich 1654 45. indeed] indeed, 1654 46. Eye] eyes 1654 47. pudding] Pudding 1654 48. wife] Wife 1654 50. A cast] Acast 1654 53. letter] Letter 1654 55. Mil-stone] Milstone 1654 55. butterd] butter’d 1654 55. cake] Cake 1654 56. When] when 1654

143

Flew like a Collaflower in Chequer broth,

And then the Fairy Queen in Buckrum drest,

Rod through the Ayre, well mounted on a Moth.  60

Man, as he is a Cloakbag, is a Fish, 

But as a humane creature, he’s a Cock: 

Which boyl’d with pindust in chafing-dish, 

Eats like stewd Mustard, made in Vulcans smock. 

Once in an Evening, when the Morning Sun 65

Did hotly quake with cold Meridian splender; 

There was a jolly Fryer told a Nun

That Feminine was Masculine, Male Gender. 

Things have their rimes, as Oysters have their wool:

60. Ayre,] Ayre 1654 61. Man,] Min 1654 61. Fish] fish 1654 62. creature,] Creature 1654 63. boyl’d] boyld 1654 63. chafing-dish] Chafing dish 1654 64. stewd] stew’d 1654 64. Mustard,] Mustard 1654 65. Evening,] evening 1654 65. Morning] morning 1654 66. quake] speak 1654 68. Masculine,] Masculine 1654 68. Gender.] Gender 1654

144

Dogs have their dayes, as Distaffes have their Gall, ] 70

So all men living ought to dwell at Hull,

For Hallifax cannot contain them all:

A Statesman once corrupted is a Gun

That ferrets Screachowls from Belona’s beard,

To make a handsome codpiece for the Sun 75

To weare upon the pommell of his sword.

Man unto Man, is Man, but Man to Man, 

Is Herrings flesh, made of a yard of Ale,

With the ingredients of a Dripping-pan,

Whiles Pancradge Church begets an Issue Male. 80

An Oxe was in a Mouse-trap lately taken; 

Read but the Bookes of Weekly Newes, and note

How many stock-fishes were made fat Bacon,

70. Dogs] Gods 1654 70. dayes,] dayes 1654 72. all:] all. 1654 73. Gun] Gun, 1654 74. beard] Beard 1654 75. codpiece] Codpiece 1654 76. sword] Sword 1654 77. Man,] Man; 1654 79. Dripping-pan] D ipping pan 1654 81. in a Mouse-trap lately] lately in a Mouse-trap 1654 82. Bookes] booke 1654

145

Broyld on the top-mast of a Mussell Boat. 

New Heroglyphick three fold twisted lines 85

Of things that were, and were not, how Augustus

With Ovids Metamorphoses combines,

To try us oftentimes, but never trust us.

The faculties of every humane soule

Are made of Turpentine, and Venson Bones:  90

Ingendred in the night-cap of an Owle

That gives a Glister to the Torrid Zones:

For as a Pistol lisps when he doth court

Three paire of guts, bound up in true loves knots:

So Easter Tearm is curtold but in sport,  95

While Hobby-Horses cur’d are of the Bots. 

Then smooth thy brow with milk-white discontent,

84. top-mast] Top-m st 1654 84. Mussell[ Muss ll 1654 84. Boat.] Boat, 1654 85. three fold] three-fold 1654 85. lines] Lines 1654 90. Turpentine,] Turpentine 1654 90. Bones] bones 1654 93. lisps] 1654; Lspes, 1652 94. knots:] knots, 1654 95. curtold] cu to’d 1654 96. Hobby-Horses] Hobby-horses 1654

146

And raise thy spirits up beneath thy feet:

For Shrovetide now hath swallow’d Jack-a-Lent,

Because few Marriners are in the Fleet. 100

I know I am a man abhor’d of Bels

That ring in concaves of an Heteroclite: 

I know the Cuckolds thoughts of Bath and Wels

Do sizzle, like a Mil-stone in a Net. 

I saw, but what I view’d, I never saw 105

A Row of Teeth pen featherd in a Trowt, 

Whilst Perkins Horse o’rethrew a Case in Law, 

And he himselfe got fee farm of the Gowt.

How can a Mayor rule, but with a laske

That may squirt Steeples in the teeth of Fame: 110

99. Jack-a-Lent] Jack-a-lent 1654 102. concaves] Concave 1654 102. Heterclite:] Heteroclite; 1654 103. Wels] Wels, 1654 104. sizzle,] sizzle 1654 106. Row] row 1654 106. pen featherd] penfeatherd 1654 107. o’rethrew] orethrew 1654 109. rule] Rule 1654 109. laske] Lask. 1654 110. Fame:] Fame? 1654

147

For if they do, their touch stone and their flaske

Will fill the Wind With Polecats of the name. 

The Clock doth strike, when time berayes his hose, 

And Oysters catch the cough with being kinde:

As Puttocks weare their Buttocks in their Nose, 115

So Fables weare their Bables in their mind.

I grant indeed, that whoso may and can,

Can never may, sith may doth can obey; Deep Philosophy.

But he that can and will, may will as man,

But man can will, yet his will cannot may. 120

Call true the Taylor hither presently, 

For he must make a Mantle for the Moone:

Bid Atlas from his Shoulders shake the sky, 

And lend and send me his left handed spoone.

111. touch stone] touch-stone 1654 111. flaske] Flask 1654 112. With] with 1654 113. Clock] clock 1654 113. strike,] strike 1654 115. Nose] nose 1654 118. Philosophy] Ppilosophy 1654 121. true] True 1654 123. Shoulders] shoulders 1654

148

For Prid’s a pitch-fork that the Waine doth fill 125

Of Ursa Mayor (God of Apple Cakes) 

Sloath is the cucking stoole of Holborne hill, 

Much like a Sope-boyler upon a Jakes.

O that I were in love with Bobbin-lace,

Or great with child of Tullies purple Gowne; 130

Then to mine Ankles I would screw my face

To make a paire of Boots for black Renowne. 

Faine would I leave, but leave at me doth grin

As doth a Custard when his nailes doth ake:

Or like a Blew Bore in a Puddings skin, 135

So I must manners leave, for manners sake. 

Then rest my Rimes, before my reasons done, 

125. pitch-fork] Pitchfork 1654 125. Waine] waile 1654 126. Cakes] Cakes, 1654 127. cucking] Cucking 1654 131. face] face, 1654 132. paire] Paire 1654 133. grin] grin, 1654 134. ake:] ake; 1654 135. Blew] blew 1654 135. Puddings] Pudding 1654 136. leave,] leave 1654 137. reasons] reason’s 1654

149

For Women are all wag-tayles when they runne: 

Who sets his wits, my Sence to undermine, is

A cunning man at Nonsence, farewell. Finis. 140

The first Part, after the second, to the formost sence, and hindmost purpose.

138. For] 1654; om. 1652 138. Women] women 1654 138. wag-tayles] Wag tayles 1654 139. wits,] wits 1654

150

Appendix 3: ‘The Third Part’ (1654) THE

Essence, Quintessence, Insence, Inno-

cence, Lye-sence, & Magnifisence

Nonsence upon Sence :

SENCE upon NONSENCE.

The third Part, the fourth Impression, the fifth

Edition, the sixth Addition, upon Condition, that (by

Tradition) the Reader may laugh if he list.

In Longitude, Latitude, Crassitude, Magnitude,

and Amplitude, lengthened, widened, enlarged, aug-

mented, encreased, made wider and sider, by

the addition of Letters, Syllables, Words,

Lines, and farfetch’d Sentences.

And the lamentable Death and Buriall of a

Scottish Gallaway Nagge.

Written upon White Paper, in a Brown Study, be-

twixt Lammas Day and Cambridge, in the

Year aforesayd.

151

Beginning at the latter end, and written by John

Taylor at the sign of the poor Poets Head, in

Phœnix Alley, near the middle of Long

Acre, or Coven Garden.

Anno, Millimo, Quillimo, Trillimo, Daffadillimo,

Pulcher.

152

: In Laudem Authoris.

ust Non-sence fill up every Page? 1

M Is it to save th’ expence

Of wit? or will not this dull Age

Be at the Charge of sence?

But (John) though Fortune play the Whore, 5

Let not the Vulgar know it;

Perhaps if you had not been poor,

You had not been a Poet.

Your Estate’s held in Capite,

It lies upon Pernassus; 10

Complain not then of Poverty,

You are as rich as Crassus. H.B.

153

wift Pepasus lend me thy Hoofes and Wings 1

Tempe, and Aganipp, and such strange things

S As Poets do call Hellicon, and Muses

(That with ingenious wit the braine infuses)

In nimble strains make my invention wag, 5

And tell the sad death of a Scottish Nag.

A Nag of Nags, (as those that knew him say)

Whose birth and breeding was in Galloway,

Which Countrey (though it barren be and bare)

His Mother was a well reputed Mare: 10

He had all paces, and more swift then Wind,

Could trot before and amble well behind;

He had two sorts of gallops, false and true,

That when he did but run, men thought he flew!

Sure he was kin to winged Pegasus, 15

And of the race of great Bucephalus;

But Ile not rake up old Antiquity,

To prove his Ancesters old Pedigree:

Let it suffice, that such a Horse he was

That could in measure bravely pace and passe, 20

A Bay, a gallant Bay, most swift and quick,

154

Not having one base scurvy jadish trick.

There’s many brave men, in their finest trim

Wants what this Nag had, sound of wind and Limb.

He di’d untimely by a sad disaster, 25

And death unluckily unhors’d his master.

Though Horses of diseases have too many,

Yet in his life time he had never any:

He had no Chin-gall, Wind-gall, Navell-gall,

Or Staggers, Spur-gall, Light-gall, Shacksgall, 30

Nor Wormes, or anticore, or Salenders,

Nor Scatches, Dropsie, or the Mallenders,

No Palsey, Feaver vext him, or Pompardy,

No frenzy troubled him, he was so hardy;

No Glanders, Cough, the Yellows, or Pole evill, 35

Or Spavens, Splinters, Fashions, or Colt-evill;

Not Ring-bones, Quitter bones, no Curbs or Hawse,

Were of this Nags death any griefe or Cause;

No Cramp or Canker, Crestfall, or the Vives,

Or bloudy Riffes that shorten Horses lives. 40

He had no Crown-scab, nor was ever found

To have the Hawkes, or Toothach, or Hide-bound,

155

Or Bots, or Botch, or Paps his health did wound.

No tongue-hurt Farley, rotten Frush, or Cloy’d,

No Kybes, or broken wind his health annoy’d; 45

No Bladders, Surbates, Wrench, or Tyrednesse,

No strain, no Scottish fleas, or lowsinesse;

No prick ’ith soale, Neck-creek, or shoulder-splat,

Or Strangle, he ne’r troubled was with that;

He had no Pin and Web, loose-hoof’d, or gravel’d, 50

Bloud-shot, or founder’d whensoere he travel’d:

Horse hip’d he was not, or in’s Groyn a Wen,

Nor Rot i’th Lungs, nor shed his hair, what then

Did kill him? some suppose it was the Pose;

But we are all deceiv’d, ‘twas none of those: 55

No Megrim was his death, or Calenture,

He with a Surfeit dy’d an Epicure.

But change of Pasture, altring of the Ayre

The health of M[a]n or Horse may much impaire:

For by old PAR it plainly doth appear, 60

(Who liv’d in Shropshire sevenscore thirteen year)

59. Man] Min 1654

156

Wus by an Honorable Earles expence,

With Care and Cost to London brought from thence;

But change of Ayre and Dyet took short course,

And layd him dead, like Master FRADSHAMS horse. 65

This Nag in Scotland kept a temperate dyet,

(For Galloway’s a Country free from Riot)

Nor can it be reported any where,

That ever Horse did dye of Surfet there:

With Provender they are not proud, prick’d up, 70

With moderation there they bite and sup;

Their fare is fruitfull Fearne, and wholsome Heath,

Which frugall food preserves long wind or Breath,

Or Mosse as soft as downe or good chop’d straw;

(For Horses there thinke Hay Apocrypha) 75

An English Horse-loafe’s Antichristian,

And all their Nags are Presbyterian:

For had I Aristotiles wit, my pen

Would prove strange Sects in Horses as in men:

The Spanish Jennet, and the Flaunders Mare, 80

Betwixt them many strange opinions are:

The Sumpter Horse will prance a lofty Gate,

157

Proud with the Burthen of ill gotten plate:

The Naples Courser, and the German steed,

The Barbary Horse that ‘mongst the Moors doth breed, 85

The Carthorse, French Cavalla, Irish Hobby,

The Welsh Tit that loves Oats beyond Couse bobby:

A man may write and talke, and wast his wind,

Yet never make these horses of one mind;

And many sects there are that disagree, 90

Who in Religion like to Horses be:

And sure more Horses have to Churches gone

Within these ten years, then was ever known:

This Nag, near Hampton Court did catch his death

And to his Master did his skin bequeath; 95

His Brains, Wit, Reason, and his honesty,

He gave to’s Countrey as a Legacy:

His Corps had near a hundred Graves and Tombs,

In light foot Hounds, Kites, Crows, and Ravens Wombs:

Thus at his Funerall solemnity, 100

He was most swift, and did both run and flie.

158

The third part of the fourth Edition to the five Senses, or Sence aforesaid.

Le say no more, but what I mean to speak, 1 I And speaking what I say shall silence break. Mumbudget, let no words be utter’d neither,

Let’s seperate our speeches close together.

Reich my fierce flye-flap, Van-Trump, stand aloofe, 5

My Arms and Armour’s close Committee Proofe;

Give me a Butterbox with not a rag on,

[I]le pickle him like to a Dutch flap Draggon:

An Ordinance of Parliament shall scatter ye,

Our Ordinance is Ordnance, that can batter ye. 10

Me vat a whee, is Cambria Brittish French,

Dick shifts a Trencher, but Tom keeps the Tr[e]nch.

An Annagram is John King, and King John,

Five quarters of one year is four to one:

May not a M[i]ser write a poor mans want, 15

And give him lodging, cloathing, and provant,

And hang himselfe, and give the Devill his due,

Perhaps the Newes is too good to be true.

I care not where mine Hostess, and mine Host lie,

T’ have meat and drink for nothing, is not costly. 20

159

I could have written mad verse, sad verse, glad verse,

But you shall be contented now with bad verse;

I neither weep or sing of sweet Rebellion,

Or story old I list not now to tell ye on:

The Royall mad Lancastrians, and Yorkists 25

Scarce harm’d so much as some cornuted Forkists,

The most uncivill civill Goths and Vandals

Did not on their owne Countrey bring such scandals.

The Turks, the Jews, the Canibals and Tartars

Ne’re kept such wicked, rude, unruly quarters. 30

Jerusalems, Eleazer, John and Simon

Did ne’re yield Poet baser stuff to rime on.

Like bloudy Sylla, and consuming Marius,

One mischiefe did into another carry us.

Amongst all Trades (some thousands zealous Widgeons) 35

Were hardly more in number then Religions.

In Preachers Roomes were Preach’d, for which I woe am,

The basest people Priests like Jeroboam.

That one may say of London, what a Town is’t?

It harbours in it many a Corbraind Brownist: 40

Tis scatter’d full of Sects, alas how apt is’t

160

To be a Familist, or Annabaptist?

Whilst Knaves (of both sides) with Religions Mantle,

Have rifled England by patch, piece, and Cantle;

That I may say of thee O London, London, 45

What hath thy Wealth, Wit, Sword, & furious Gun done?

And what hath many a mothers wicked son done?

Whereby (against their wills) there’s many undone.

Thrice happy had it been for our tranquility,

If th’Authours of this incivility 50

Had been a little check’d by Gregory Brandon,

With each of them a hempen twisted band on.

FINIS.

161

Works Cited Publications by John Taylor

Because Taylor followed seventeenth-century conventions in providing a plot synopsis within his titles, the short titles listed here are those used for convenience in the introduction and annotations.

Abbreviations: n.d. (no date mentioned); n.p. (no publisher mentioned); n.p.p. (no place of publication mentioned).

The first three items are different versions of the text here edited.

Nonsence Nonsence upon Sence: or Sence, upon Nonsence: Chuse you either, or

neither. Written upon white Paper, in a Browne Study, betwixt Lammas Day

and Cambridge, in the Yeare aforesaid. n.p.: London, 1651.

1651b Nonsence upon sence: or Sence, upon nonsence chuse you whether, either or

neither: the second part to the same sence, and for the same reasons

aleadged in the former impression: in longitude, latitude, crassitude,

magnitude, and amplitude, lengthened, widened, enlarged, augmented,

encreased, made wider, and sider, by the addition of letters, sillables, words,

lines, and far fetch'd sentences. Written upon white paper, in a browne study,

betwixt Lammas day and Cambridge, in the yeare aforesayd, beginning at the

end, and written by John Taylor at the Signe of the poore Poets Head, in

Phenix Alley, neare the middle of Long Aker, or Covent Garden. London(?):

n.p., 1651(?).

1654 The essence, quintessence, insence, innocence, lye-sence, & magnifisence of

nonsence upon sence: or, Sence upon nonsence. The third part, the fourth

impression, the fifth edition, the sixth addition, upon condition, that (by

tradition) the reader may laugh if he list. In longitude, latitude, crassitude,

162

magnitude, and amplitude, lengthened, widened, enlarged, augmented,

encreased, made wider and sider, by the addition of letters, syllables, words,

lines, and farfetch’d sentences. And the lamentable death and buriall of a

Scottish Gallaway nagge. Written upon white paper, in a brown study,

betwixt Lammas day and Cambridge, in the yeare aforesayd. Beginning at

the latter end, and written by John Taylor at the sign of the poor Poets Head,

in Phoenix Alley, near the middle of Long Acre, or Coven [sic] Garden.

Anno, millimo, quillimo, trillimo, daffadillimo, pulcher. London: n.p., 1654.

Ale ale-vated Ale ale-vated into the ale-titude: or, A learned oration before a civill

assembly of ale-drinkers, between Paddington and Hogsdon, the 30. of

February last, anno millimo quillimo trillimo. London: n.p., 1651.

Aqua-Musæ Aqua-Musæ: or, Cacafogo, cacadæmon, Captain George Wither wrung in

the withers. Being a short lashing satyre, wherein the juggling rebell is

compendiously finely firked and jerked, for his late railing pamphlet against

the King and state, called Campo-musæ. Oxford: n.p., 1645.

Armado An armado, or navy of ships and other vessels, who have the art to sayle by

land, as well as by sea. 1627. Works. i.75-94.

Arrant Thiefe An arrant Thiefe, whom evry Man may trust: In Word and Deed exceeding

true and just. With a Comparison between a Thiefe and a Booke. 1622.

Works. ii.113-25.

Bawd Bawd. A virtuous Bawd, a modest Bawd: As Shee Deserves, reprove, or else

applaud. 1624. Works. ii.94-104.

Book of Martyrs The Book of Martyrs. 1616. Works. iii.136-141 (recte iii.138-143).

Briefe Remembrance Briefe Remembrance of All the English Monarchs, from the Norman

Conquest, untill this present. 1618. Works. ii. 295 (recte 296)-321.

163

Bull, beare, horse Bull, beare, and horse, cut, curtaile, and longtaile. With tales, and tales of

buls, clenches, and flashes. As also here and there a touch of our beare-

garden-sport; with the second part of the merry conceits of wit and mirth.

Together with the names of all the bulls and beares. London: M. Parsons, for

Henry Gosson, 1638.

Christmas The complaint of Christmas, and the teares of Twelfetyde. London: James

Boler and H. Gossson, 1631.

Common Whore A Common Whore with all these graces grac’d: Shee’s very honest, beautifull

and chaste. With a comparison between a Whore and a Booke. 1622. Works.

ii.104-113.

Conversion The conversion, confession, contrition, comming to himselfe, & advice, of a

mis-led, ill-bred, rebellious round-head which is very fitting to be read to

such as weare short haire, and long eares, or desire eares long. Oxford(?):

n.p., 1643.

Crabtree Divers crabtree lectures. Expressing the severall languages that shrews read

to their husbands, either at morning, noone, or night. With a pleasant

relation of a shrewes Munday, and shrewes Tuesday, and why they were so

called. Also a lecture betweene a peder and his wife in the canting language.

With a new tricke to tame a shrew. London: J. Oakes for John Sweeting,

1639.

Crop-eare Curried Crop-eare Curried, or Tom Nash his ghost, declaring the pruining of Prinnes

two last parricidicall pamphlets, being 92 sheets in quarto, wherein the one

of them he stretch'd the soveraigne power of Parliaments; in the other, his

new-found way of opening the counterfeit Great Seale. Wherein by a short

survey and ani-mad-versions of some of his falsities, fooleries, non-sense,

blasphemies, forreigne and domesticke, uncivill, civill treasons, seditions,

164

incitations, and precontrivements, in mustering, rallying, training and

leading forth into publique so many ensignes of examples of old reviv’d

rebells, or new devised chimeraes. With a strange prophecy, reported to be

Merlins, or Nimshag's the Gymnosophist, and (by some authours) it is said to

be the famous witch of Endor's. Runton, pollimunton plumpizminoi

papperphandico. Oxford: L. Lichfield, 1645.

Differing worships Differing worships, or, The oddes, betweene some knights service and God’s.

Or Tom Nash his ghost, (the old Martin queller) newly rous’d, and is come to

chide and take order with nonconformists, schismatiques, separatists, and

scandalous libellers. Wherein their abusive opinions are manifested, their

jeeres mildly retorted, and their unmannerly manners admonished. London:

R. Bishop(?) for William Ley, 1640.

Full answer A full and compleat answer against the writer of a late volume set forth,

entituled A tale in a tub, or, A tub lecture: with a vindication of that

ridiculous name called round-heads. Together with some excellent verses on

the defacing of Cheap-side crosse. Also proving that it is far better to preach

in a boat than in a tub. By Thorny Ailo, Annagram. London: F. Cowles, T.

Bates and T. Banks, 1642.

Funerall Elegie Funerall Elegie, in Memory of the Rare, Famous, and Admired Poet, Mr

Benjamin Jonson. Who dyed the sixteenth day of August last, 1637, and lyeth

inter’d in the Cathedrall Church of Saint Peter at Westminster. Ben Jonson.

Ed. C.H. Herford Percy and Evelyn Simpson. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1952.

421-428.

Great eater of Kent The great eater, of Kent, or Part of the admirable teeth and stomacks exploits

of Nicholas Wood, of Harrisom in the county of Kent. His excessive manner

165

of eating without manners, in strange and true manner described. London:

Elizabeth Allde for Henry Gosson, 1630.

Heads of fashions Heads of all fashions being a plain defection or definition of diverse

and sundry sorts of heads, butting, jetting or pointing at vulgar

opinion: and allegorically shewing the diversities of religion in these

distempered times: now very lately written, since calves-heads came in

season. London: John Morgan, 1642.

Juniper A juniper lecture. With the description of all sorts of women, good, and bad:

from the modest to the maddest, from the most civil, to the scold rampant,

their praise and dispraise compendiously related. The second impression.

Also the authors advice how to tame a shrew, or vexe her. London: J[ohn]

O[akes] for William Ley, 1639.

Laugh, and be fat Laugh, and be fat: or, a commentary upon the Odcombyan banket. 1612.

Works. ii.69-80.

Letter to London A Letter sent to London from a Spie at Oxford. Oxford: n.p., 1643.

Mad fashions Mad fashions, od fashions, all out of fashions, or, The emblems of these

distracted times. John Hammond for Thomas Banks: London, 1642.

Memoriall Memoriall of All the English Monarchs, being in number 151 from Brute to

King Charles. 1622. Works. ii.268-294 (recte 295).

Mercurius infernalis Mercurius infernalis; or Orderlesse orders, votes, ordinances, and

commands from Hell, established by a close committee of the Divell

and his angells. Done neither by day, night, nor order, because neither

time, place, person or order is to be observed in the infernall

166

kingdome. The copy of this was found in a chink or cranny of a wall in

Frier-Bacons study. Oxford: L. Lichfield, 1644.

Mercurius Nonsencicus Mercurius Nonsencicus, written for the use of the simple understander. n.p.:

n.p.p., 1648.

Nipping The Nipping or Snipping of Abuses: or, The Wooll-gathering of Wit. 1614.

Works. ii.244-268.

Noble Cavalier The Noble Cavalier Caracterised, and a Rebellious Caviller Cauterised.

Oxford(?): n.p., 1643.

O’Toole To the Honour of the Noble Captaine O Toole. 1622. Works. ii.15-19.

Pedler and priest A dialogue between a pedler and popish priest in a very hot discourse full of

mirth, truth, wit, folly and plain dealing. 1642. London: Henry Hills, 1699.

Plutoes remonstrance Grand plutoes remonstrance, or, The devill horn-mad at Roundheads and

Brownists: wherein His hellish Majestie, by advice of his great counsell,

Eacus, Minos & Radamanthus, with his beloved brethren, Agdistis, Beliall,

Incubus & Succubus : is pleased to declare 1. how far he differs from round-

head, rattle-head or prickeare : 2. his copulation with a Holy Sister : 3. his

deare affection to Romish Catholikes and hate to Protestants : 4. his oration

to the rebells. London: Callacuchlania, 1642.

Praise of cleane Linnen The praise of cleane Linnen. With the commendable use of the Laundres.

1624. Works. ii.155 (recte 164)-170.

Praise of Hemp-seed The Praise of Hemp-seed. With The Voyage of Mr. Roger Bird and the Writer

hereof, in a Boat of browne-paper, from London to Quinborough in Kent.

And also, a Farewell to the matchlesse deceased Mr. Thomas Coriat. 1620.

Works. iii.60-75 (recte 62-77).

Preter-pluperfect nocturnall

167

A preter-pluperfect, spick and span new nocturnall, or Mercuries weekly

night-newes wherein the publique faith is published, and the banquet of

Oxford mice described. n.p.: n.p.p., 1643.

Ranters of both sexes Ranters of both sexes, male and female: being thirteen or more, taken and

imprisoned in the gate-house at Westminster, and in the new-prison at

Clerken Well. Wherein John Robins doth declare himself to be the great God

of Heaven, and the great deliverer, and that his wife is with childe with Jesus

Christ, the Saviour of the world. With divers other blasphemous opinions,

here truely set forth. Maintained before the Right Worshipful Justice

Whittacre, & Justice Hubbert. Written by John Taylor. There is a pamphlet in

this kinde, written with too much haste, I know not by whom, with but few

truths, which in this are more largely expressed. London: John Hammon,

1651.

Sculler The sculler, rowing from Tiber to Thames with his boate laden with a hotch-

potch, or gallimawfry of sonnets, satyres and epigrams. 1612. Works. iii.13-

31 (recte 13-33).

Seasonable lecture A seasonable lecture, or, A most learned oration disburthened from Henry

Walker, a most judicious quondam iron-monger, a late pamphleteere and

now, too late or too soone, a double diligent preacher: as it might be

delivered in Hatcham Barne the thirtieth day of March last stylo novo. Taken

in short writing by Thorny Ailo; and now printed in words at length and not

in figures. London: F. Cowles, T. Bates and T. Banks, 1642.

Sir Gregory Nonsence Sir Gregory Nonsence his newes from no place. 1622. Works. ii. sig. Aa-5.

Superbiae Flagellum Superbiae Flagellum, or the Wip of Pride. 1621. Works. i.24-38.

Summers travels Part of this summers travels, or News from hell, Hull, and Hallifax, from

York, Linne, Leicester, Chester, Coventry, Lichfield, Nottingham, and the

168

Divells Ars a peake. With many pleasant passages, worthy your observation

and reading. London: J[ohn] O[akes], 1639.

Swarme of sectaries A swarme of sectaries, and schismatiques: wherein is discovered the strange

preaching (or prating) of such as are by their trades coblers, tinkers, pedlers,

weavers, sowgelders, and chymney-sweepers. By John Taylor. The cobler

preaches, and his audience are as wise as Mosse was, when he caught his

mare. London: n.p., 1641.

Tale in a Tub A Tale in a Tub or, a Tub Lecture. As it was delivered by Myheele

Mendsoale, an inspired Brownist, and a most upright Translator. In a

meeting house neere Bedlam, the one and twentieth of Decembler, Last 1641.

London: n.p., 1642.

Taylors Motto Taylors Motto. Et habeo, et careo, et curo. I have, I want, I care. 1621.

Works. ii.43-58.

Taylors Urania Taylors Urania. 1615. Works. i.1-8.

Travels to Hamburgh Taylors Travels to Hamburgh in Germany. 1617. Works. iii.76-89 (recte 78-

91).

Travels to Prague Taylors Travels to Prague in Bohemia. 1620. Works. iii.90-100 (recte 92-

102).

Virgin Mary The life and death of the most blessed amongst all women, the Virgin Mary,

The Mother of our Lord, Jesus Christ.1620. Works. i.17-24.

Wherrie-Ferry-Voyage A very Merrie Wherrie-Ferry-Voyage or, Yorke for my Money. 1622. Works.

ii.8 (recte 6)-15.

Womens revenge The womens sharpe revenge: or an answer to Sir Seldome Sober that writ

those railing pamphelets called the Iuniper and Crabtree lectures, &c. Being

a sound reply and a full confutation of those bookes: with an apology in this

169

case for the defence of us women. Performed by Mary Tattle-well, and Ioane

Hit-him-home, spinsters. London: J[ohn] O[akes] for Ja[mes] Becket, 1640.

Works All the Works of John Taylor the Water Poet. 1630. Menston: Scholar P,

1973.

World on wheels The world runs on wheels: or oddes, betwixt carts and coaches. London: E.

A[llde] for Henry Goson, 1623.

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