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  • Reginald Forster's Burlesque Ovidian Epistle
  • James Harmer
James Harmer
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
  • The epistle in Ovid of Sappho to Phaonilluded and playd withall

Footnotes

1. ceruse] a cosmetic skin application.

2. trenches] furrows or wrinkles in the skin (OED, n., 4).

3. That is, for Phaon to dare to leave Sappho took no little courage.

4. bang'd] presumably 'mistreated violently'.

5. At flatts] flatly.

6. lyrry] Perhaps a variant of 'lirry-poop', meaning role or part (OED, n., 2), hence 'neither woman was a proper lover'.

7. where horse did kick and fling] the winged horse Pegasus kicked the place from which the Hippocrene spring (the traditional source of poetic inspiration) appeared on Mount Helicon, the home of the Muses.

8. Sappho was famously unattractive physically. 'Frampant' derives from frampold, 'bad-tempered' (OED, a., 1), and in 'smock rampant' the noun (OED 3b) stands synecdochally for 'woman'.

9. black yet] Ovid's Sappho describes Andromeda as 'fusca colore' (36), of 'dark hue'.

10. placket] petticoat or apron (OED, n., 2).

11. Or they] 'or so they say'.

12. Sappho accuses Phaon of counting only a woman of ineffable physical beauty worthy of his love.

13. 'You would swear mightily that my songs and poems graced me.' Forster's 'sweare and stare' uses a phrase for 'uncontrolled rage' (OED, v., 3) to express the ardency of Phaon's avowal.

14. A climactic passage at the corresponding point in Ovid's epistle, where Sappho reveals her troubles with her father and brother, and also that she had a daughter; Forster compresses this turmoil into the single figure of the notional love rival, Cisly.

15. thrummer] No doubt a variant of thrum, thrumb: a tuft, tassel, or fringe (OED, n.2,2a).

16. 'So well turned-out ['smug'] would Phaon be, that Venus might mistake him for one of her own sons.'

17. tophus] a soft or porous, often volcanic, stone.

18. Booker's columes] the accounts of a scribe or book-keeper. The image is of erosion inscribing the smooth rock like paper in a book being inscribed with pen marks.

19. clyster ... looke] 'a weight which they yielded to in a way one can see.'

20. jundred] from 'jundy', 'to elbow, jostle' (OED).

21. embracing-land] punning on Ambracia, the land containing the Leucadian cliff (Forster's 'Dover- cliff'), a high promontory beloved of Apollo which Sappho seeks out to commit suicide.

22. After this point, excepting forty lines burlesquing the conclusion to Ovid's epistle, Forster's text becomes entirely original.

Footnotes

1. The foliation of Add. MS 61744 used throughout is based on my revision of the catalogue collation.

2. These are Bodleian Library, MS *Sancroft 48, fos 31-2 (Archbishop William Sancroft, autograph translation of Heroides I and VII), and MS Rawl. poet f. 146, fo. 32 (R. Herbert, autograph translation of Heroides X). It seems that the next recorded appearance of Heroides XV in ms is Hugh Wormington's compressed translation from 1716, Leeds University Library, Brotherton Collection, MS Lt 80, fo. 37.

3. For this and more on Mundy's acquisition of Loxley Manor, see Victoria County History: Hertfordshire, edited by William Page, 4 vols (London, 1902-14), III, 274.

4. Gary S. De Krey in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford, 2004; hereafter ODNB), s.v. 'Player, Sir Thomas'.

5. On Forster's life see George Edward Cokayne, The Complete Baronetage, 6 vols (Exeter, 1900-9; reprint Gloucester, 1983), III, 219-20; on Forster's drinking, Cokayne cites The Herald and Genealogist, 2 (1863), p. 120. Forster's elevation is recorded in John Logan, Analogia Honorum (London, 1670), sig. N3v (no. 661), and Sir William Dugdale, The Antient Usage in Bearing of such Ensigns of Honour as are Commonly Call'd Arms (London, 1682), sig. K3v (no. 662).

6. See, e.g., Pub. Terentii Comoediae Sex, 2 vols (Amsterdam, 1651), I, sig. *2v. For more on Farnaby, see in particular Richard Serjeantson in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 236 (Detroit, 2001), pp. 108-16.

7. Better parallels for 'Daniel Heinsius versa Graecis In Democritem' are...

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