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beget Tales, Tempests, and suchlike drolleries—to mix his head with other men’s heels.
Note. It is virtually certain that ‘servant-monster’ is an allusion to Caliban; and it is probable that by ‘a nest of antics’ and ‘suchlike drolleries’ Jonson means the tricks of Autolycus and the anti-masks introduced into both The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest. Another gibe at the popularity of Caliban is probably found in a line of the Prologue (1616) to Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour:
‘You that have so graced monsters, may like men.’[1]
- ↑ The Revels Accounts for 1611 record that the King’s Players gave court performances of The Tempest, ‘at Whitehall before the King’s Majesty’ on November 1, and of ‘a play called The Winter’s Night’s Tale’ on November 5. Both were repeated at court in 1613.
