146 Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture
Whilst the unlearned ‘multitude’ will grasp only part of the intended
effect, Jonson’s Entertainment will shape his preferred audience, ‘the
sharpe and learned’ who will be fully capable of understanding the hid-
den meaning of what is on show here. Those who bring the requisite
erudition to the spectacle will immediately, ‘without cloud, or obscuritie,’
discern a deeper level of the Entertainment’s coded message.
Jonson provides glosses upon the names of the figures displayed as
part of the arch at Fen-Church, supplying information about their char-
acters in a kind of key ‘To ope’ the character’ (as he put it in ‘The New
Cry’). We are presented with ‘EVPHROSYNE, or Gladnesse’, ‘SEBASIS, or
Veneration’, and ‘PROTHYMIA, or Promptitude’ (H&S, VII.87, ll.127–8,
141–2, 150–1). The educated onlooker trained in classical languages will
quickly decode these names even in performance. Jonson’s entertain-
ment also incorporates more complex, allusive moments that require
further deciphering. ‘AGRYPNIA, or Vigilence’, is dressed in yellow,
complete with a ‘chaplet of Heliotropium, or turnesole’, a flower whose
defining characteristic – that it turns to follow the direction of the sun – is
epitomized by its name, and which here is used to symbolize ‘care’,
Jonson says (H&S VII.88, ll.167–73, 180). Presumably the connection
Jonson wishes to elicit here is between the heliotrope or sunflower’s
constant alertness to the position of its source of light, and the eternal
wakefulness of Agrypnia as a symbol of vigilance. An allusion to ‘TAGVS
wealthy ore’ contains a submerged etymological pun (H&S VII.93,
l.310). The river Tagus, Jonson’s note tells us, divides Spain and Portugal,
‘and by the consent of Poets stil’d aurifer’, meaning ‘gold-bearing’,
which explains the ‘wealthy ore’ carried by the stream here (H&S VII.93,
l.310n.). Similarly, Electra alludes to the origins of her own name when
she says that ‘No more shall men suppose ELECTRA dead, | Though from
the consort of her sisters fled | Vnto the Arctick circle, here to grace, |
And gild this day with her . . . serenest face . . .’ (H&S, VII.107, ll.704–7).
This is a subtle reference to the derivation of her name from Greek,
as Jonson’s note here reads: ‘Electra signifies SERENITIE it selfe, and is
compounded of ηλιος, which is the Sunne, and αιθριος, that signified
serene’ (H&S, VII.107, ll.707 and n.). Like the ciphered letters through
which Verstegan and his correspondents create a community of shared
meaning, each of these instances helps to constitute an elite group of
readers who are bound together through a common understanding of
coded language. Why would Jonson choose to employ this kind of intri-
cate linguistic device in a work to be performed on a busy day, in from
of a large and noisy crowd, many of whom were unlikely in any case to
appreciate its nuances?
35
I would argue that Jonson uses such moments
9780230239760_10_cha08.indd 1469780230239760_10_cha08.indd 146 11/8/2010 1:59:10 PM11/8/2010 1:59:10 PM
10.1057/9780230298125 - Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture, Edited by Robyn Adams and Rosanna Cox
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