Tes Irenes Trophæa, or The Triumphs of Peace: Annotations
Sir Francis Jones
Sir Francis Jones (1559-1622),
the Lord Mayor of London and the subject of Squireʼs show.
Society of the Haberdashers
The Worshipful Company of
Haberdashers, one of Londonʼs Great Twelve City Livery Companies.
The Haberdashersʼ Company was associated with fine (usually imported)
fabrics like silk and velvet, while the Drapersʼ Company, claimed jurisdiction over wool and other
types of domestically-produced cloth.
John Squire
John Squire, vicar of St
Leonardʼs parish in Shoreditch, London.
Squire was best known in this period for several
published sermons; this mayoral show appears to be his only dramatic work.
That fact makes him relatively unusual among pageant book authors, most of
whom (like Anthony Munday and Thomas Middleton) were established
playwrights. The attribution of this show to Squire is discussed at greater
length in the General and Textual Introductions to this edition.
Virgil
The ancient Roman poet Virgil,
author of works like The Aeneid and The Georgics (the latter of which is the source of
this epigraph).
Parva sub ingenti matris se subicit umbra
This epigraph is taken from the opening to Book 2 of The Georgics and is translated in the Loeb edition as
[the laurel of Parnassus, too,] springs up, a tiny plant, beneath its mother’s mighty shade(2.137).
Taken together with the showʼs dedicatory epistle, the image conveyed by this epigraph
suggests Squireʼs keen awareness that he was a relatively
greendramatic author among his pageant-writing peers.
Nicholas Okes
Nicholas Okes, printer and
member of the Stationersʼ Company.
Okes was responsible for printing the pageant books of
many of the mayoral shows included in this anthology.
this slight labour
Squire here deploys the rhetorical device of the
humility topos,a common feature of dedicatory epistles in which authors knowingly minimize their own skills and achievements in order to temper the expectations of readers or patrons. Its use here seems especially appropriate given Squireʼs apparently genuine lack of prior experience and reputation as a dramatist.
those real Triumphs (scarce admitting a second)
This phrase highlights the complex relationship between
mayoral show pageant books and the performances they describe. Squire
suggests that the true
Triumphs of Peaceare those displayed in the physical procession through London, while his own pageant book account is merely a secondary reporting of them. On the other hand, the epistle as a whole implicitly makes the case for this printed record as an important means by which that performance (and Francis Jonesʼ own reputation) are recorded for posterity.
Triumphs of Peace
I have retained the pageant bookʼs capitalization here in
order to preserve Squireʼs winking reference to the title of the show.
Three Cranes Wharf
Three Cranes Wharf, one of
several wharves on the north bank of the Thames that played a central role
in Londonʼs shipping industry.
show, or presentment, on the water
Squireʼs show belongs to a thriving contemporary
tradition of water pageants that took place on the Thames and other similar
sites within and beyond London (Shewring and Briggs)
chariot
Waterborne chariots also appear in several other mayoral
shows from the period, including Thomas Middletonʼs Londonʼs Tempe.
a mantle of sea green taffeta
Taffeta is a crisp, airy fabric traditionally woven from silk and
now imitated by nylon, rayon, and related materials. The word
likely entered English from the Persian language via French or Latin (OED
taffeta, n.1).
Squireʼs descriptions often provide an unusually high
degree of detail about the materiality and texture of costumes like these.
As Finlayson notes in her edition, this emphasis seems especially
appropriate given that the performance was sponsored by the Haberdashersʼ
Company, which traditionally exercised jurisdiction over silk merchants
(85). Moreover, because the
silk used to weave taffeta was at this time not produced domestically within
England (or, indeed, most of Europe), the specific reference to this fabric
heightens the unfamiliar and
exoticnature of the showʼs spectacle.
Aeolus the god of winds
Aeolusʼs appropriately placid appearance here contrasts
sharply with his role in works like The Odyssey,
where he represents the unpredictability of the winds and their
capacity to blow mariners off course.
the four parts of the world
The showʼs explicit ambition to encompass the entire globe reflects a contemporary
trend in cartography, literature, and other forms of cultural production
that comparative literature scholar Ayesha Ramachandran has referred to as
worldmaking(7-10).
an antique habit
The appearance of the personification of Asia, as
described by Squire, seems designed to invoke a general impression of the
continentʼs ancient civilizations rather than to accurately represent the
garments of any particular culture or people, past or present.
peach coloured satin
The term
satindescribes not a material but a method of weaving, and satin garments were historically made exclusively from silk. They were thus associated with China as the origin point of the Silk Road by which these materials were historically transported to Europe.
coronet
The diminutive term
coronetmay be intended to suggest that Asia, though possessing some degree of nobility (in keeping with the continentʼs history as the home of many empires and kingdoms), is nevertheless subordinate to Europa (who, by contrast, wears a full-sized
imperial crown).
buskins
A calf-high or knee-high boot or covering for the foot and leg, typically made from cloth or leather; a half-boot(OED buskin, n.1.a).
Panchaian spices
Panchaia is an island described in the works of the ancient
Greek historians Eusebius and Diodorus Siculus. According to these sources,
it is located in the Indian Ocean and possesses a utopian social structure
in which society is led by its wisest and most reasonable members.
Squireʼs identification of the (possibly fictional)
Panchaia as the origin of these spices reflects other dramatic works of the
period; it serves a similar function in a 1604 court masque by Ben Jonson and in James
Shirleyʼs 1646 The Triumph of Beauty. By
1620, the inter-imperial European rivalry over access to spice markets in
South and Southeast Asia had been ongoing for decades, with early ventures
by the Portuguese and Dutch in locations like the Maluku Islands (in modern
Indonesia) and Indiaʼs Malabar Coast facing new competition from English,
French, and Spanish merchants. For the most part, the show lacks explicit
references to such current events, instead favouring more literary and
pseudo-historical allusions like this one. It is nevertheless structured on
a deeper level by contemporary ideas about colonization and racialization,
as this pageant in particular makes evident. These topics are discussed
further in the General Introduction to this edition.
blackmoor
A common early modern variant of the now somewhat more
familiar word
blackamoor,meaning
A black person, esp. an Africanor
any dark-skinned person(OED blackamoor, n.).
I have silently dropped Squireʼs terminal
e(
blackmoorein the original) but otherwise maintain his spelling as an accepted one from the period, especially because it contains a different number of syllables than the more typical
blackamoor.
This term is only the most overt manifestation of a
larger pattern in Squireʼs show by which racial categories and hierarchies
are reinforced through technologies of performance. Recent work in the field
of Premodern Critical Race Studies (PCRS) has illuminated how drama,
literature, and other forms of cultural production from premodern Europe
both responded to existing racial stereotypes and created and sustained new
ones. I discuss this phenomenon further in the General Introduction to this
edition.
a naked shape
This phrase suggests that the performer in the role of
Africa wore a garment designed to imitate the appearance of nudity. Given
the earlier reference to the figure as a
blackmoor,it also seems likely that this garment would have been black or dark in colour. Although blackface achieved through face painting or other cosmetics is the most familiar form of what Ian Smith describes as
[r]acial prostheticsin this period, Farah Karim-Cooper observes that dark fabric was also used in many cases to achieve a similar effect (Smith 34; Karim-Cooper 17-29). In this case, as Smith argues of Shakespeareʼs Othello, the staged
black body is bare, clothing being redundant; it is dressed in black(35).
nutmeg tree
Squireʼs association between nutmeg and the figure of
Africa is unusual, since during this period the spice was cultivated
exclusively in the Banda Islands of modern Indonesia. As with several
other details of this pageant, the emphasis here seems to be less on
geographical or economic accuracy and more on creating a broad-strokes
impression of the diverse trade goods that underpinned Londonʼs wealth and
power.
tawny moor
A name given to tawny or brown-skinned peoples, probably originally to peoples of northern Africa(OED tawny-moor, n.)
The distinction (if any) established through makeup or
costuming between the
blackmoorrepresenting Africa and this figure is unclear. As Mathieu Chapman has recently noted, the language of racial difference in this period involved
many, often overlapping terms that signal aesthetic difference,but such terms were also deployed in highly inconsistent (or even mutually contradictory) ways without necessarily undermining their intellectual and social force (61).
crown of feathers
The practice of creating elaborate feathered garments was noted
among the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican groups in early European colonial
sources, but it would ultimately be attributed to virtually all Indigenous
peoples of the Americas in dramatic works from the period, as seems to be
the case here (Berdan and Anawalt xi,
39; Kuhn).
Parthian
The Parthians were ancient inhabitants of what is now
Iran.
Americaʼs bearing of a Parthian bow reflects a broader
tendency in European discourses of this period to draw connections betwen
Indigenous people and practices of the Americas and those of the ancient Eurasian
world.
Compare, for example, the association of the Amazons of ancient Greek
mythology and history (typically believed to be from Asia Minor) with the groups
of warrior women allegedly encountered by explorers like Sir Walter Raleigh
in Central and South America (Schwarz
49-78).
cluster of grapes
This aspect of Europaʼs appearance recalls the
cornucopia or
horn of plenty,a basket overflowing with produce that was a common symbol of abundance in antiquity. A literal cornucopia also appears later in the show, where it is borne by the figure of Autumn.
my curled billows, ebbs, and tides
Much of the Thames is affected by the tides, including
the section (known colloquially as the Pool of London) where shipping
vessels docked during this period. Oceanusʼs promise to ensure safe,
predictable conditions for travel and trade is therefore especially valuable.
Tagusʼ unvalued sands
The Tagus river flows through the Iberian peninsula,
beginning in Spain and feeding into the Atlantic in Lisbon, Portugal.
Oceanus suggests that the wealth and prosperity of
London (and England as a whole) will excel that of their imperial rival,
Spain, through his support.
Clio
The appearances and attributes of Clio and the other
muses in Squireʼs description are all fairly conventional for the
period.
semined
A heraldic term roughly synonymous with
powdered,meaning
[d]ecorated or ornamented with many spots, small figures, or heraldic devices; spangled(OED powdered, adj.2.a; semined, adj.; Wheeler-Holohan 290, 299).
In medio residens complectitur omnia Phœbus
This Latin passage is now attributed to Ausonius, a Roman
poet who (like numerous others) had some of his works attributed to Virgil
by commentators in medieval and early modern Europe. It translates as
seated in the centre, [Phoebus, i.e., Apollo] embraces all.In a 1564 emblem book that may have served as partial inspiration for Squire, these lines are found alongside a woodcut emblem that roughly resembles the pageant display described here (Sambucus sig. H4v-H5r).
Westminster
Westminster Palace, where the
incumbent Lord Mayor would typically swear an oath of loyalty to the king as
part of the larger procession and show.
Paulʼs Churchyard
St. Paulʼs Churchyard, a space
for shops and public gatherings near the cathedral of the same name.
Peleus
Peleus, mythical king of Phthia
in ancient Greece; husband to the nymph Thetis and father to the demigod
Achilles.
Thespian spring
The Hippocrene, a spring on Mount Helicon (near the ancient
Greek city-state of Thespiae) that was sacred to the Muses.
cloth of gold
A
tissue consisting of threads, wires or strips of gold, generally interwoven with silk or wool; also applied to gilded cloth(OED cloth, n.II.9.c).
As is the case elsewhere in the pageant book, Squire
dwells at length on the quality and presumed expense of fabrics like this
one as a way of highlighting the prosperity that the Haberdashers bring to
London.
collars of esses
Livery collars or chains of office, which often
resembled a chain composed of repeated forms of the letter S.
a sacred fire
Perhaps a reference to the holy flame of Hestia, Greek
goddess of the hearth (analogous to the Roman Vesta, famously attended by
the Vestal Virgins).
landscape
This term entered English from the Dutch language
as a technical term of painters,referring to
[a] picture representing natural inland scenery, as distinguished from a sea picture, a portrait, etc.(OED landscape, n.1.a).
imperial crown
This costuming creates a parallel with the earlier
appearance of Europa, who wore a similar imperial crown to signify her
dominance over the other continents and peoples of the earth.
couchant
One of several terms to describe the
attitudeor position of a heraldic figure. An animal
couchantis lying down with its head raised (Wheeler-Holohan 240). This posture, combining calmness with attentiveness, is seemingly intended to reflect Squireʼs claim that Majesty submits
fiercenessto
a willing servitude.
Parliament robes of purple velvet
Members of the House of Lords in the English Parliament have
worn velvet robes since the medieval period.
the apt cognizance of each oneʼs honour
That is, the headwear worn by each figure appropriately
corresponds to the descending ranks of nobility they occupy.
escutcheoned
The heraldic term
escutcheonrefers to a shield bearing a coat of arms (Wheeler-Holohan 6).
Squireʼs verb-form phrasing indicates that these shields
were depicted on the fabric
streamersor banners mentioned here.
Respublica Beata
Blessed Republic
This use of the term
republicshould be taken in roughly the same sense as it bears in the political writer Sir Thomas Smithʼs De Republica Anglorum, where it refers relatively neutrally to the monarchical
realm of England(as the full title has it) and not to the distinct model of republican government associated with ancient Rome during this period.
Corinthian
The most elaborate of the three orders of classical Greek and
Roman architecture (along with the Doric and Ionic orders).
guarded
Adorned with one or more
guards,referring to an
ornamental border or trimming on a garment(OED guard, n.11.a).
rochet
An ecclesiastical vestment similar to a surplice, typically of white linen and chiefly worn by a bishop(OED rochet, n.1.a).
chief
A heraldic design feature (or
ordinary) in which a contrasting band of colour extends horizontally across the top portion of a shield (Wheeler-Holohan 235).
crossed forms
A heraldic style of cross with flared
armsof equal length, also known as a
cross forméeor
cross pattée(Wheeler-Holohan 33-34).
Catherine
St. Catherine of Alexandria,
whose martyrdom involved a failed attempt to break her limbs on the spokes
of a wheel (in which the wheel itself miraculously broke at her touch)
before she was beheaded. She thus appears here as the patron saint of
craftspeople who work with wheels, like those used to spin yarn, and as the
official patron saint of the Haberdashersʼ Company.
Catherine Wheels
A tool for torture and execution used in Europe from
antiquity to the nineteenth century. Victims typically would be struck with
the wheel to break their bones before having their limbs braided into its
spokes, after which the wheel was sometimes erected on a pole as a public
display.
carding
The process whereby masses of textile fibres are aligned
parallel to one another to prepare them to be spun into yarn. In this period
it was usually achieved by rubbing the fibres between two handheld paddles
(OED
card, v.1.a.i).
bowed
Bowingis another part of the felt-making process, in which a taut bow-string is covered with fibres and then plucked; the vibration of the string helps separate and align these fibres to prepare them for subsequent processing (OED bow, n.II.13).
basoned
To
basonis
[t]o harden the felt on the bason [i.e., the central depression, or basin, that will function as the crown] in hat-making(OED bow, v.).
church dials
Large clock faces displayed on the exterior walls of
churches, where they could be viewed by members of the community
(particularly useful at a time when private, domestic ownership of clocks
was rare in Europe).
Iron Age
The last and most degraded of the eras of human history in
ancient Greek and Roman mythology, especially as outlined by the poets
Hesiod and Ovid. In Ovid, the preceding eras
are the Golden Age, Silver Age, and Bronze Age (to which Hesiod also adds
the Heroic Age), all of which are also mentioned later in the show.
passant guardant
A heraldic term referring to a posture in which an animal
figure is pictured walking with its head and one front leg raised (Wheeler-Holohan 286).
St Laurence Lane
St Laurence Lane, a street
which passed from the Little Conduit to the Guildhall where this mayoral
show, like many others of the period, concludes.
presidents
Squire may here be punning on
precedents,creating a double reference to how Jones will preside over the city in the honourable manner of those who have preceded him in the office.
Francis Tipsley
Francis Tipsley was a member of
the Haberdashersʼ Company who contributed to its sponsored performances on
several occasions; as Tracey Hill notes, he had previously been
paid £5 for painting two bannersfor the 1604 show, and he would later make similar contributions to the 1631 and 1632 shows (112).
his wings
Squireʼs description of Jonesʼs
triumphas winged may be intended to associate it with the Greek goddess Nike (Roman Victoria) as a representation of victory. On the other hand, the gendering of the phrase (
his wings) and the context of the speech as a whole may indicate an even stronger connection to the winged helmet and sandals of the messenger god Hermes (Roman Mercury), both as the protector of travelers and merchants and as a bearer of information.
my wide vast continent
As is the case today, the term
continentin the early modern period typically referred to a contiguous land mass, making Oceanusʼs usage here somewhat unusual (OED continent, v.II). The speech may be intended to suggest that the ocean is itself the largest of all the other continents included in the pageant (that is, Africa, Asia, America, and Europe), as well as the one that links them all together.
Song.
Squireʼs is one of only two surviving mayoral shows to contain a musical score, which
is printed directly above the following song lyrics in the quarto text. As J. Caitlin
Finlayson observes in her edition,
[t]he use of hyphenation on B1v-B2r indicates the number of notes over which a syllable should be sung(80). While I have silently modernized this punctuation in keeping with the editorial standards of the present anthology, these hyphens would have allowed readers of the pageant book to sing the lyrics in time with the melody, enabling the song to enjoy a continued life in performance (however amateur or ephemeral) beyond the confines of the show itself.
We
Finlayson astutely observes that because
B1v and B2r, which contain the musical score, have no catchwords or running titles,the catchword
Theimmediately preceding the song at the bottom of B1r (which does not match this first word in the lyrics) likely refers to the continuation of the show proper on B2v, after the song has concluded (80).
Notes
1.For the rest of the song, refer to the sheet music at the
end of the transcription which also contains the second verse, according to
the first edition of the show. Included is an audio rendition of the
notation.↑
Prosopography
Andrew S. Brown
Andrew S. Brown (he/him/his) is an assistant professor of English at Dalhousie University
in Kjipuktuk, Miʼkmaʼki (Halifax, NS). His research and teaching interests include
early modern drama, book history, digital humanities, ecocriticism, law and literature,
performance studies, and gender and sexuality studies. His work has previously appeared
in the journals English Literary Renaissance, Studies in Philology, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Milton Studies, and Early Theatre. For a full list of publications and links, visit https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4841-9957.
Janelle Jenstad
Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director
of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.
John Squire
Mark Kaethler
Mark Kaethler is Department Chair, Arts, at Medicine Hat College; Assistant Director,
Mayoral Shows, with MoEML; and Assistant Director for LEMDO. They are the author of
Thomas Middleton and the Plural Politics of Jacobean Drama (De Gruyter, 2021) and a co-editor with Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Janelle Jenstad
of Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge, 2018). Their work has appeared in The London Journal, Early Theatre, Literature Compass, Digital Studies/Le Champe Numérique, and Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative, as well as in several edited collections.
Mark’s research interests include early modern literature’s intersections with politics;
digital media and humanities; textual editing; game studies; cognitive science; and
ecocriticism.
Navarra Houldin
Project manager 2022–present. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them)
completed their BA in History and Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. During
their degree, they worked as a teaching assistant with the University of Victoriaʼs
Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies. Their primary research was on gender and
sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America.
Bibliography
Berdan, Frances F. and Patricia Rieff Anawalt, eds. The Essential Codex Mendoza.Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1997.
Chapman, Mathieu. Anti-Black Racism in Early Modern English Drama: The Other “Other.”
Taylor & Francis, 2016.
Finlayson, J. Caitlin, ed. Two London Lord Mayorʼs Shows by John Squire (1620) and John Taylor (1634). Collections XVII. Oxford: Malone Society, 2015. 75–110.
Hill, Tracey. Pageantry and Power. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010.
Karim-Cooper, Farah.
The Materials of Race: Staging the Black and White Binary in the Early Modern Theatre.The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race, edited by Ayanna Thompson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, pp. 17-29.
Kuhn, John.
Inimitable Rarities?: Feather Costumes, Indigenous Artistic Labour and Early Modern English Theatre History.Shakespeare 19.1 (2023): 38-53.
OED: The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Ramachandran, Ayesha. The Worldmakers: Global Imagining in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.
Sambucus, Joannes. Emblemata. Antwerp: Christophe Plantin, 1564. H4v-H5r. Accessed digitally at https://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/french/emblem.php?id=FSAb085.
Schwarz, Kathryn. Tough Love: Amazon Encounters in the English Renaissance. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000.
Shewring, Margaret and Linda Briggs, ed. Waterborne Pageants and Festivities in the Renaissance: Essays in Honour of J.R. Mulryne. Farnham, Surrey: Routledge, 2013.
Smith, Ian.
White Skin, Black Masks: Racial Cross-Dressing on the Early Modern Stage.Renaissance Drama 32 (2003): 33-67.
Virgil. Aeneid, Eclogues, Georgics. Trans. H. Rushton Fairclough. Loeb Classical Library. 2 vols. 1965.
Wheeler-Holohan, V.
Boutell’s Manual of Heraldry. London: Frederick Warne and Co., Ltd., 1931.
Orgography
LEMDO Team (LEMD1)
The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project
director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators,
encoders, and remediating editors.
MoEML Mayoral Shows (MOMS1)
Anthology Leads and General Editors: Mark Kaethler and Janelle Jenstad. The team includes
SSHRC-funded research assistants. Peer review is coordinated by the General Editors
but conducted by other editors and external scholars.
University of Victoria (UVIC1)
https://www.uvic.ca/Metadata
| Authority title | Tes Irenes Trophæa, or The Triumphs of Peace: Annotations |
| Type of text | Annotation |
| Publisher | The Map of Early Modern London and the University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online platform |
| Series | MoEML Mayoral Shows anthology |
| Source |
Annotations written and encoded by Andrew
Brown
|
| Editorial declaration | Prepared according to the MoMS Editorial Guidelines |
| Edition | Released with LEMDO Editions for Peer Review 0.1.4 |
| Encoding description | Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines |
| Document status | draft |
| Funder(s) | Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada |
| License/availability |
Intellectual copyright in this edition is held by the editor, Andrew S. Brown. The XML file of the
Annotations is licensed for reuse under a CC BY-NC-SA
4.0 license, which means that it is freely downloadable without
permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the
editor, MoMS, and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and/or data; (2)
derivatives (e.g., repurposed notes) must be shared under the same CC
BY-NC-SA 4.0 license; and (3) commercial uses are not permitted without the
knowledge and consent of the editor, MoMS, and LEMDO.
|