Early Modern Whale

I find myself with a lecture to refresh on Women beware Women . The famous chess-playing scene, II ii, led me into a scamper round EE...

I am a little under siege with work, but return to my post at this weblog with this strangely tentative and incredulous early picture of...

“And, though fowle, now, be scarce, yet there are clarks , The skie not falling, think we may have larks …” Lines from Ben Jonson’s ‘Invi...

I am to lecture, for the first time in some years, on Ben Jonson. Starting to think about The Alchemist made me think of one of the coins ...

As another seasonal posting to follow on from last year’s effort, http://roy25booth.blogspot.com/2007/01/new-years-gift-1607.html I tho...

“It was the opinion of Lucallus the Noble Roman, that there was as much care to be taken in the well managing a Feast, as in the Mar...

I have been reading A general collection of discourses of the virtuosi of France, upon questions of all sorts of philosophy, and othe...

Yesterday evening I was giving an M.A. class on Shakespeare’s so-called ‘Dark Lady’ sonnets. Instead of doing some solid class preparation,...

“Heartbeating, swelling of the face, want of appetite, greife, sighing, causeles teares, insatiable hunger, extreame thirst, sownings, oppr...

I have been reading, with gratified astonishment, the anonymous publication of 1697, God's judgments against whoring. being an essay to...

I had reason to look at the various early editions of Florio’s translation of Montaigne. I had never seen this ‘comely frontispiece’ before...