Selected Works by Earl of Rochester
Author:Earl of Rochester [Wilmot, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141915838
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-03-04T00:00:00+00:00
The title is ironical. What the lady advocates is not platonic love, âfree from sensual desireâ(OED), but coitus reservatus (Sanskrit karezza), in which âby a technique of deliberate control [i.e. âthe art of loveâ (1. 6)] ⦠orgasm is avoided and copulation thereby prolongedâ (OED, s.v. coitus).
7 enjoyment: ejaculation, which âConverts the owner to a droneâ (1. 12).
11â12 sting ⦠gone ⦠drone: cf. âIf once he lose his sting, he grows a Droneâ
(Cowley, Against Fruition (1668), 32).
17what: penis.
23â4Letâs practise then and we shall prove | These are the only sweets of love: Possibly a parody of Marloweâs âCome live with mee and be my love, / And we will all the pleasures proveâ (The Passionate Pilgrim (1599), sig. D5) (Rochester 1953, 228).
Song (As Cloris full of harmless thought)
23 the lucky minute: cf. âTwelve is my appointed lucky Minute, when all the Blessings that my Soul could wish Shall be resignâd to meâ (Aphra Behn, The Lucky Chance (1686?; 1687), 58); âLovers that ⦠in the lucky Minute want the Powârâ (Samuel Garth, The Dispensary (1699), POAS, Yale, VI 735). Treglown isolates a lucky Minute/happy Time/Shepherdâs Hour sub-genre of seventeenth-century erotic lyric and cites examples including Sir Carr Scropeâs song in The Man of Mode (1676) (cf. headnote above), John Glanvillâs The Shepherdâs Hour (1686), and Drydenâs song in Amphitryon (1690), IV i: A Pastoral Dialogue betwixt Thyrsis and Iris (Treglown 1982, 86â7). âThe Lucky Minuteâ also became a popular tune title (Simpson 1966, 106).
Song to Cloris (Fair Cloris in a pigsty lay)
8 ivory pails: the rarity and expensiveness of ivory (£167 per hundredweight in 1905) makes these ivory swill buckets a refinement of mock-epic proportions, like the ivory gate through which Clorisâs false dream reaches her (Odyssey, XIX 562; Aeneid, VI 895).
15 Floraâs cave: the cave in which the Greek nymph Chloris is raped by Zephyrus, the west wind, and from which she emerges as Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers and spring (Ovid, Fasti, V 195). The cave is Ovidâs and the hymeneal gate may be Shakespeareâs (The Winterâs Tale (1609â10; 1623), I ii 196â8), but the phallic pig appears to be Rochesterâs.
31 piercèd: one reader wishes that this dream of rape had been a real rape âperhapsâ (Felicity Nussbaum, The Brink of All We Hate (1972), 62); zone: literally âany encircling bandâ (OED, citing Francis Quarles, Emblemes (1635), 274: âuntie / The sacred Zone of thy Virginityâ), cf. Aphroditeâs zone which creates âthe lucky minuteâ (21.223) for anyone wearing it (Iliad, XIV 214-16, trans. Richmond Lattimore, âthe elaborate, pattern-pieced / zone ⦠[the] passion of sex is thereâ); figuratively that part of the body around which a girdle is fastened; cf. pelvic girdle.
39 legs: the moral disorder is reflected in a rhyming disorder, âfrigs ⦠pigs ⦠legsâ, that is unique in the poem.
40 innocent and pleased: virgo intacta and sexually satisfied.
To Corinna (What cruel pains Corinna takes)
7 the silly art: coyness, âAffected rules of honourâ (I. 12).
9 tyrant: virtue.
13 she: Corinna.
Song (Phillis, be gentler, I advise)
2
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