COMMENTARY NOTES

1ff. The subject of this “chorus” (which substitutes for a standard prologue) is the earlier play in this cycle, Times Complaint, which had been poorly received because the actors had done a bad job.
9 Although the year officially began on March 25, contemporary Englishmen exchanged New Year’s gifts on January 1.
I.i The setting is at Athens.
68 The goddess Cybele was often represented with a turret-shaped diadem (cf. Oxford Latin Dictionary, turriger def. b with exx. cited).
I.ii - iv The setting is before Chrysophilus’ house at Megara (for the location cf. 588, 763, etc.), where it remains through I.iv. As was the custom in academic drama of the time, the five Acts of the play are subdivided into numbered scenes. Each of these, prefaced by a list of the speaking parts in it, is precipitated either by a change in the grouping of characters or when the stage is momentarily cleared. As such, these scene-divisions often serve as a rather imperfect means of indicating entrances and exits, and no discontinuity of time or place is necessarily implied.
107f. By his speech about matter having an appetite for form, Philomathes makes it clear that he is versed in scholastic philosophy. In the following lines there are untranslatable word-plays on nudus, meaning both “in its simplest state” and “naked.”
123 He is speaking of Aphronius’ tuition fees. Evidently Crito has been paying them on the understanding that what he has paid will be subtracted from his debt to Chrysophilus.
166 Autarchia quotes a Latin proverb labia (or labra) lactucas similes habent, for which cf. Erasmus, Adagia I.x.71.
179 A comical inversion of a proverbial saying that had its origin in St. Jerome, Epistle lxvi, sat cito, si sat bene, “quickly enough, if well enough.”
I.v The scene shifts back to Athens.
209 This line cements the equation Athens = Oxford. Cf. cited John Pointer, Oxoniensis Academia, or the Antiquities and Curiosities of the University of Oxford (London, 1744) vi:

As for the Antiquity of Oxford, it must have been a considerable place even in the time of the Romans, for we are told by some Historians, that it was called Bellositum, before the time of the Saxons.

Cf. also Anthony à Wood, The Antient and Present State of the City of Oxford (with additions by J. Peshall, London, 1773) 2, 4, 6f., and 10 note b, and also Survey of the Antiquities of the City of Oxford (edited by the Rev. Andrew Clark, Oxford, 1889 - 99) I.44, who cites various other antiquarians to the same effect, and quotes an anonymous epigram:

Bellositum te rite vocant, Oxonia, patres
namque situ bellum quid magis orbe tuo est?

And likewise the words of the Elizabethan Leonard Hutten, “…this place of Oxford, then knowne or called by the name of Bellesitum, propter montium, pratorum, et nemorum adiacentium amoenitatem” (cf. Charles Plummer, Elizabethan Oxford, Oxford, 1887, 39).
Cf. also the open reference to Oxford’s Broad Street at 233.
222ff Again, he is referring to the previous catastrophe of Times Complaint.
276 A work falsely attributed to Seneca.
301 It would appear that Chrestophilus is deliberately mangling his facts in order to procure an ironic effect: Pamphilus is a character in Terence’s Hecyra, and Thais appears in the same poet’s Eunuchus.
316ff. This passage contains several untransatable puns based on the fact that Aphronius’ words nil novi can be interpreted either as “nothing new” or “I know nothing.”
352 There is probably a pun intended on sophia = “wisdom” and the name Sophia.
385 See the note on 179.
II.4 Much of the Latin in this scene is so extravagantly bizarre that the accompanying translation can only be approximate.
412 Suadae medulla is from Ennius, Annales IX.308, quoted by Aulus Gellius, Cicero, and Seneca.
478 Sophia plays with the double meaning of invideo, “dislike” and “envy.”
III.1 This entire Act transpires at Athens.
573 Halley’s comet made an appearance in 1607.
618 The maxim frustra sapit qui sibi non sapit appears in Sententiae Pueriles by Leonhard Culmann [d. 1562]. It is paraphrase of a fragment of Ennius quoted by Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares VII.vi.6, qui ipse sibi sapiens prodesse non quit, nequiquam sapit.
674 Momus was the Greek god of captious criticism (made famous for Oxford audience by William Gager’s 1592 Momus).
IV.i The setting is back at Chrysophilus’ house in Megara.
IV.ii Now we return to Athens, also the setting for the next two scenes.
739 A comic inversion of Cicero’s definition of a friend as a second self (Epistulae ad Familiares VII.5, and see Erasmus, Adagiorum Chiliades I.i.2).
744 A pickadill or piccadilly was a thing that held up a frilly collar popular at the time (cf. O. E. D. “pickadill” def. 2.
IV.v Back to Megara.
IV.vi Athens.
799 A comic inversion of the Latin proverb mali corvi malum ovum (i. e., a bad son of a bad father: cf. Erasmus, ib. I.ix.25).
803 At a time when Megarans were forbidden to enter Athens, Euclides was so eager for Socrates’ company that he would sneak into the city in disguise (Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae VI, 10).
V.i All of Act V is set at Megara.
967f. This comes from Pliny, Naturalis Historia VIII.lxvii.166.
994 Evidently this is a Latin proverb, something like our “measure twice, cut once” (cf. Erasmus, ib. IV.ii.75).
1036 I. e., marriage.