TheA Cavendish Christening Entertainment survives only in British Library Harleian MS 4955, fols. 48r-52v (JnB 574). The text is part of the familial memorial volume scribed by John Rolleston for William Cavendish, Earl of Mansfield (later Earl, then Duke, of Newcastle). It was first transcribed by William Gifford in The Monthly Magazine (1816) and was incorporated into the footnotes of his 1816 edition. In both Gifford’s collected edition and Cunningham’s later recension, the text is riddled with errors and unexplained lacunae (see collation for 92, 195-221, 214-17). Gifford also adds lines at the end, starting ‘Fresh as the day, and new as are the hours’, which may belong to another entertainment, perhaps for Charles I (see ‘A Song of Welcome’, Print Edition, 6.656). Some of these differences between the Monthly Magazine text and the 1816 multi-volume edition reflect bowdlerisation on the grounds of impropriety (e.g. the omission of 189-211). Nonetheless, many of Gifford’s suggestions about the divisions of the speeches and his emendation at 178 have been followed.

The Manuscript

Harleian MS 4955 (the Newcastle MS) has been studied extensively by Hilton Kelliher, who dates its compilation to between November 1630 and c. 1634 (Kelliher, 1993, 144). With the exception of one inserted bifolium, the volume consists of one paper stock and almost certainly represents fair copies of material received as separates. Cavendish used John Rolleston, later steward at Welbeck, as his secretary for such copying. As Kelliher has demonstrated, the copying of separates or drafts into fair copies, often in a bound volume, was standard Cavendish practice. Many of the surviving separates in the various Cavendish collections are marked ‘Intr’ (for ‘Intrata’) and there are later references to a ‘Booke’ and ‘Maske booke’ into which Cavendish’s own masques were to be copied. (Cf., for example, Nottingham University MS PwV25, Newcastle’s poems, fols. 4, 6, 7, 13, and 30. Fol. 55v reads ‘Poetry ye last that were entered into my Lo: Booke’.)

Harleian MS 4955 contains an important collection of poems and entertainments by Jonson in three groups (fols. 1-55v, 173-181v, 192-204); a Donne collection (fols. 88-144v); three collections of poems by Richard Andrews (fols. 57-87v, 145-172 and 189-190v); and two more miscellaneous groups of poems largely in praise of Jonson (fols. 182-188v and 205-207v). (See also the discussion of this manuscript in Colin Burrow’s Textual Essay on the Poems.) Many of the poems are about members of the Cavendish family, their household, houses or estates, and nearby locations. As a collection the volume functions not simply as a repository for texts by William Cavendish’s famous connections but as a family memorial, and one of its central features is the epitaph for Catherine Ogle and its accompanying drawing (fol. 55; Print Edition, 6.315-6). The family – that is, the Cavendishes in all their branches – are celebrated, and the two main branches – the Derbyshire Cavendishes, Earls of Devonshire, and Nottinghamshire Cavendishes, Earls of Newcastle – are combined. The volume, dating from the early 1630s, reflects William Cavendish’s awareness of the improvement in his status and places him as the Devonshire Cavendishes’ equal, but the volume also associates the family with its properties and estates and, crucially, with the region.

Another approach to Harleian MS 4955, therefore, is to regard it as a regional and topographical volume. One of its major features is the local nature of its texts, notably the journey poem by Richard Andrews that celebrates the Peak District and the two families’ connections to the area (fols. 162v-171v). This poem, which describes a journey undertaken to see the ‘wonders’ of the Peak in August 1627, is addressed to the Earl of Devonshire, and contains dedicatory verses by ‘H.O’, possibly Henry Ogle, which comments on the late author’s constancy to the ‘Cauendishes / Deuon and Mansfield’ and his poetic honouring of the Ogles and Bruces. The poem brings together the different Cavendish families metaphorically and literally, as it visits Buxton ‘chiefly for Viscount Mansfields sake’ and concludes with a return to Chatsworth. It combines the poetic mining of the region by Jonson (whose earlier trip to the Devil’s Arse is both mentioned and echoed in the style of the poem: see Life Record 73) and the actual mineral extraction undertaken by the Devonshire Cavendishes, and may form one half of a parallel pair of poems produced by learned figures associated with the two branches of the family (Martinich, 1998, 440). Dr Andrews was physician poet associated with the Nottinghamshire family, and a companion piece was written by Thomas Hobbes, who acted as tutor to the Devonshire Cavendishes and also had close links with Welbeck and its scientific circle (Raylor, 2001, and Sarasohn, 1999). His De Mirabilibus Pecci (c. 1628, published 1683) almost certainly describes the same 1627 journey.

Kelliher establishes that Harleian MS 4955 is in one hand, which develops from a ‘clumsy and sprawling’ early hand, through ‘experimentation’ in the Donne and Andrews texts, to an accomplished calligraphic hand in the final Jonson entertainments. In particular, Rolleston used an elaborate and heavy script, with large initial letters with multiple flourishes, for headings, titles, speech-headings, and marginalia, although the effect is also partially decorative. (The opening leaf to The King and Queen’s Entertainment at Bolsover, fol. 199, shows the elaborate decorated initials, especially ‘T’ in ‘The Song’ and the contrast between the heavier inked headings and the more delicate italic used for the text.) Kelliher also suggests that the use of the heavy ‘gothic’ script noted by many commentators on this MS may be a ‘conscious archaising’ (Kelliher, 1993, 145), the calligraphic equivalent of the neo-chivalric embellishments of Bolsover Little Castle.

The Cavendish Christening Entertainment belongs to the first group of Jonson material in Harleian MS 4955, which includes The Gypsies Metamorphosed and several poems associated with the Cavendish family. As such, it is less well-presented than the later texts, such as Welbeck (fols. 194-198) and Bolsover (fols. 199-202) and the degree of scribal error and misreading of copy is higher than in the later entertainments. Although the MS uses ruled boxes to position the running titles, titles of the texts, and speech-headings, in copying the Cavendish Entertainment Rolleston only used a single rule to create a left-hand margin (see fol. 48), whereas later a double rule is used, creating a left margin, then a ruled column for speech headings. Later examples of the effect Rolleston sought can be seen this MS, especially fol. 194 (Welbeck opening) and in Bodleian MS Rawl.Poet.16, the Cavendish-Brackley Pastoral, written by Cavendish’s two daughters Jane (later Lady Cheyne and Viscountess Newhaven) and Elizabeth (Lady Brackley, later second Countess of Bridgewater) in the 1640s, where speech headings are separated from the text by rules.

Folios 48-55: The Cavendish (I) Group, and the Date and Auspices

In the first Jonson collection, fols. 1-55v, headed by Gypsies Metamorphosed (fols. 1-30), the Cavendish poems constitute a discrete group, fols. 48-55, although two epigrams on William Cavendish are also found on fols. 39 and 40. Unlike the later Cavendish group, this material is exclusively concerned with the Welbeck connection, while the majority of the texts that surround the entertainment can be dated to 1616-18, including Mr Craven’s poem on Jonson’s journey to Scotland and the poet’s response (47v, accompanied by ‘My Picture Left in Scotland’).

The recent discovery of the Aldersey MS, which describes Jonson’s journey to Scotland in 1618, provides evidence of Jonson’s intimacy with the Welbeck household at an early date. In particular, the MS suggests that the date on the Charles Cavendish epitaph (1618) is not an error but probably records the point of commission. It also confirms that by July 1618 Cavendish was married, as it distinguishes between ‘ould lady Candish’ and ‘his owne Lady’. This has important implications for the potential date of the Cavendish entertainment.

The print edition lays out two possible auspices for the Cavendish Christening Entertainment, one linked to the Devonshires, and one linked to the family at Welbeck. Although it does not resolve all issues around the entertainment, such as the identity of William Cavendish’s house – if there was such, in the Blackfriars – the Aldersey MS increases the likelihood that the text belongs to the Welbeck family rather than the Devonshires. This would also strengthen the inferences we might draw from its situation next to other Welbeck texts in the MS.

This leaves the problem of the date unresolved. We know that Cavendish had a son named Charles, who died aged three in April 1620 (Derbyshire Record Office, MS 46, and HMC Portland MSS, 2.118 give the date as April 1620; the age is given in Collins, 1752, 43). His second son called Charles, who was his third but first surviving son, and who died in 1654, was probably born c. 1626 (there were also three Williams who died in 1626, 1633, and 1637 respectively). Since the child mentioned here is called Charles, the first son who died in 1620 would appear to be the likely subject, except that this then pushes back the date of the marriage of Elizabeth Howard (née Bassett) to William to 1616, as a three year old child in April1620 would have been born in or before April 1617. The difficulty with this proposition is that Henry Howard, Elizabeth’s first husband only died in October 1616, and she is described as his widow in Hilary Term 1617.

The only source for the age of the child (Arthur Collins’s Historical Collections, 1752) is not noted for its accuracy and potentially the date is simply wrong. Other contemporary sources do not mention the age of the child (for example, Nottingham University PwV 11, genealogical notes by William Dugdale), and later sources depend on Collins. The child’s age is not given in the Bolsover Parish Registers. Yet, equally, if the description is not that the child is three but rather in his third year (that is, following one standard way of giving an age as anno aetatis suae), later in 1617 rather than on or before March 1617 would allow time for Howard’s decease, a period of mourning, remarriage, and gestation. One piece of contemporary evidence supports this reasoning, a letter from John Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton dated 25 October 1617 (NA, SP14/93/140) which reports that ‘Sir William Cavendish’ hath a son. A birth in October 1617 would require conception sometime in January 1617, allowing a scant two months for the remarriage, a not impossible timescale. A child born in October 1617 would be in his third year in 1620, although his third birthday would not fall until October of that year. It would also be a fitting tribute to name the child after his recently deceased grandfather (Sir Charles Cavendish died in April 1617).

The Text

In the Cavendish Christening Entertainment Rolleston often compacts speech-headings and speeches into long, loose prose paragraphs inside the rules (10-17, 19-44, 62-73, 74-100, 101-11, 114-32, 133-50, 154-67), only irregularly using the ruled line to differentiate speech headings (see the manuscript images reproduced in the Textual Archive). To some degree he also relied on the heavier, gothic script to differentiate speech-headings and speeches, both when placed in the rules or in the main body of the text. Thus at 69 the SH KECKS is placed in the margin and its place marked in the text with a heavily-inked colon (cf. 135). Indeed, even in the later texts, with the more consistent use of a double-ruled margin, speech headings are distributed in the text, although due to the more consistent use of different scripts the differentiation between speech and speech headings is clearly established (see fol. 200v, the Eros/Anteros dialogue). That said, with one exception (the speeches at 14-16), the difference between dialogue and speech-headings is remarkably clear, and Rolleston displays some dexterity in using his heavier script to separate the two features, sometimes simply by emphasising the punctuation with the heavier script.

From an editorial point the largest problem presented in this initial section of the manuscript is the accumulation of mechanical errors such as eye-slip and oversight. The inexperienced nature of the copyist may also explain the problems with the layout of the songs, especially 196-221 (fol. 51v) where the necessary indentations (found on fol. 52r) are missing, as if Rolleston simply followed straight on from the verse speech above. Mechanical errors occur thoughout the copy, ranging from missing letters, especially ‘t’ and ‘r’ (‘S rawe’, 41; ‘f uite’, 182), to moments of uncertainty where the letters become misformed (‘means’, 49), one unclosed parenthesis (150), and the confused phrase ‘<you> in vs you’ (225) where the deletion is tentative and unclear. There is also evidence of scribal dexterity and neatness, as in the interlined corrections at 70-2 and 84 (‘without’), and the attempts to clarify speech-headings without the heavier script (as at 17) are often perfectly functional. One feature is the problem with the letter ‘r’, not only in the omissions (41, 182) and the changes required at 165, but also in the ambiguous reading at 64.

Only three words or phrases offer real difficulties: ‘slick stone’ (92), ‘sufficiency’ (105), ‘principally’ (145). The last (‘Principallis’) is clear in the MS and may just be a misreading (‘s’ for ‘e’) or a momentary lapse of concentration. ‘Sufficiency’ (written ‘suffitience’) shows signs of an unclear alteration, as the ‘c’ is overwritten, probably from an ‘i’. The difficulty here is whether this should be ‘sufficience’ or ‘sufficiency’, both forms which OED recognises. This latter solution has been adopted as fitting the comic rhythm of Holdback’s phrase ‘we can examine virginity and frigidity, the sufficiency, and capability of the persons’ (105-6). The alteration in ‘slick stone’ is more complex, and certainly the text has been altered from ‘slide stone’ (and not vice versa as H&S argue); the term may simply have confused Rolleston. The sense is perfectly clear from the source (see Commentary 91-2n.).

The various changes and errors in the MS are listed below:

6 sir,] (Sir)

6 woods] wooddes (the second ‘d’ has been overwritten over an ‘e’ and the final ‘es’ added)

10-17] as one paragraph

12 SH DUGS] Drugges:

14 SH KECKS] not in MS

16 SH KECKS] Kecks. (not marked as SH in MS)

17 SH HOLD] Hold: (colon heavily inked)

17 pleasure] pleasures

19-44] as one paragraph

25 an God will,] (and god will)

26 another,] another followed by caret marking interlined material (not present)

30 mistake] followed by an illegible deletion

34 strives] striu’s

36 are . . . uncivil?] (are . . . vncivill?)

37 worshipped . . . be?] (worshipt . . . bee)

41 straw] S rawe,

41 has] ‘h’ has an overwritten correction

49 meanness] meannes with alteration to ‘e’

62-73] as one paragraph

62 SH DUGS] Hold: deleted, replaced with Duggs

64 your] H&S, G, G/C read you (arguing for deletion mark on final ‘r’)

67 you . . . you] (you . . . you)

68 mine.] myne<;>: overwritten by scribe to mark insertion of SH Kecks in margin

69 SH KECKS] in margin in MS, placing marked by heavy colon after myne

70-2 you . . . My] interlined

74-100] Why . . . discretion all one paragraph

84 without] with [caret] out (interlined correction)

92 slick] sli<d>ke

97 stronger,] stronger, <to ho>

101-11] as one paragraph

105 sufficiency] suffitien<i>ce

114-32] as one paragraph

129 forth] interlined correction

129 false] fa<i>lse .

133-50] as one paragraph

135 SH HOLDBACK] in margin in MS, placing marked by heavy colon after sure

139 and] and <your>

145 Principally?] Principallis?

145 the] y<e>e second ‘e’ superscript

147 but] but <yr>

149 if . . . you] (if . . .you

154-67] as one paragraph

157 sir-reverence.] (Sir reverence)

165 you] you<r>

166 Here] here (alteration to final ‘e’)

178 Heaven’s] Heaues

178 where’er] where

182 fruit,] f uite,

225 in us you] <you> in vs you

236-47] these two stanzas placed side by side in columns, 248 centred beneath

It is possible some of these errors may derive from the copy-text. If Rolleston has copied accurately what was in front of him, the copy-text could not have been designed for performance as it lacks most necessary stage directions, including directions for the musicians. In this respect the copy is unlike that for Bolsover, and it may be that the Cavendish Entertainment originates in an abbreviated recension, possibly at one remove from Jonson’s fullest version or the performance text (assuming that such a thing even existed in full). Given Cavendish’s closeness to Jonson, however, it seems probable that he would have had access to authorial copies or drafts.

Particularly difficult is the division and location of the sections of the entertainment, although they would have been perfectly clear to the intended readership of the MS, many of whom were eyewitnesses of the performance. The most problematic section, the opening Forester’s speech (1-7), almost appears to belong to a different text (H&S can only explain it through the most metaphorical of associations between the ‘battle’ (3), ‘hunting’ (4), and ante-supper, although the possible location of the performance, in an imitation forest, may offer an alternative explanation). Equally, the exact articulation between the end of the Mathematician’s speech (194) and the ‘battle’ song (195-221) that follows is unclear (see Introduction), although this is not unusual in transcripts of multi-sectional entertainments which often lack the necessary link-passages. The action – if any – at this point is also undescribed.

The modernised text follows JnB 574 closely. Gifford’s separation of the paragraphs into speeches has been accepted, along with his identification of a missing speech and speech heading. His emendations of ‘cheer’ to ‘cheese’ (155) and ‘purgeth’ to ‘spurgeth’ (207) have not been accepted, as, like many of the verbal difficulties of this text, the source often elucidates JnB 574’s readings. H&S’s errors in transcription – largely a result of the inaccessibility of the MS during World War II – have been noted in the collation. The main crux of the text, ‘Heaues right through his where he rules defused’ (178), has been emended in line with G’s suggestions, which H&S also follow. JnB 574’s version is defective both in sense and metre (see 178n.). There are two substantive changes to JnB 574 at 105 and 145, both of which are supported by G and H&S, although their emendation at 64 has been rejected with some hesitation. It is tempting to make the phrase comply with the proverbial form, but as the deletion in ‘your’ is not proven, it seems reasonable that this may be a deliberate and exasperated variation rather than an error. Entrances and exits for the nurses, notably at 167 (the start of the Mathematician’s speech), have not been added as this would fix the action in a way for which we have no supporting evidence.