Four Monarchies, a Dog, a Cat, and Peg, Meg, or Margaret: “Upward Allusions” in Jonson’s <i>Entertainment at Britain’s Burse</i>

This note suggests identifications of the sources of several hitherto unidentified allusions in Jonson’s Entertainment at Britain’s Burse. The clumsiness of each of these allusions by the entertainment’s central character, the Master, contributes to his characterization as rhetorically inept and thus a figure of dubious credibility. Among the sources discussed here are an epigram by Sir John Davies, which Jonson presents in a way that simultaneously mocks his poetic rival and undermines the audience’s confidence in the Master’s critical discernment. The other allusions discussed include an apparent borrowing from a contemporary tract on usury and a garbled reference to a title of a Neo-Latin treatise. In addition, this note explicates the sources of humor involved in the Master’s reference to the Four Monarchies of the book of Daniel. In sum, the allusions discussed here demonstrate a pattern whereby the Master’s attempts to heighten his rhetoric cause him to fall comically into bathos.