CHAPTER 1
1. Epigraph: Shakespeare, Measure for Measure I.iii.50–53. Angelo pretends to be morally upright and virtuous, but lays plans to seduce a young woman who pleads for the life of her brother, whom Angelo has sentenced to death upon charges of sexual licentiousness (invoking severe laws that had fallen into disuse).
2. Capuchins: Friars of the Franciscan order, their name was derived from the pointed hoods, or capuches, that they wore. It was customary at the time Lewis was writing to regard friars as a class of monks and to use the terms friar and monk interchangeably.
3. St. Francis … St. Mark … St. Agatha: St. Francis of Assisi founded the Franciscan orders and is the patron saint of animals and nature; St. Mark was the author of the second Gospel in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. St. Agatha was a Sicilian martyr. She took a vow of chastity and was persecuted by a high-ranking official, who had her arrested on charges of Christianity in order to try to force her to become his mistress; he imprisoned her in a brothel, then in jail, and ultimately had her tortured to death.
4. Segnora: Lewis’s spelling of senora, the Spanish word for married woman, or madam. Similarly, he uses segnor in place of senor, Spanish for man or sir.
5. Medicean Venus: The Venus of Medici is a famous statue of the Roman goddess of love that was commissioned by the Medici family, rulers of Renaissance Florence and influential patrons of the arts. L. 10 Hamadryad: a wood nymph.
6. chaplet: a string of beads for prayer counting, one-third the size of a rosary.
7. Murcia: a southern Spanish province.
8. St. Barbara: a fourth-century martyr, secluded in a tower by her heathen father and later denounced and put to death at his hands for her devotion to Christianity.
9. seraph: Seraphs are members of the highest order of the nine orders of angels.
10. mauvaise honte: French expression, meaning “false shame” or “shyness.”
11. Cordova: Cordoba, a city in the south of Spain.
12. conde: Spanish, count.
13. watching: sustained, late-night religious vigils.
14. peccadilloes: venial sins, minor faults.
15. Diavolo: Italian, devil.
16. the Prado: a promenade in Madrid.
17. parlour-grate: a screen through which cloistered nuns were able to speak with visitors from the outside world. pistoles: Spanish gold coins.
18. St. Jago: St. James, one of the Apostles, who was reputed to have evangelized Spain.
19. Mount ?tna: volcano in Sicily.
20. vespers: evening prayer service.
21. St. Clare: an Italian noblewoman who dedicated herself to following in St. Francis’s footsteps and founded an order of nuns.
22. Mahomet: eighteenth-century spelling of the name of the founder of Islam, Muhammad.
23. hotel: large mansion, or palace.
24. ph?nix: a paragon, an exceptional individual. From the name of a mythical bird of which only one was believed to exist at a time.
25. glasses: mirrors. p. 25, philtre: magic potion.
CHAPTER II
1. Epigraph: Torquato Tasso (1544–95), L’Aminta I.i.26–31.
2. equipage: carriage, horses, and attendants.
3. jessamine: jasmine.
4. ennui: lack of interest, deep boredom.
5. poniard: dagger.
6. instances: entreaties.
7. Estramadura: a region southwest of Madrid.
8. cientipedoro: a poisonous centipede.
9. the famous battle of Roncevalles: As recounted in the twelfth-century French epic The Song of Roland, Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees was the site of Roland’s defeat at the hands of the Saracens. Lewis apparently conflated the name of Roland’s sword, Durandal, with that of Durandarte. The story of Durandarte and Belerma appears in Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote, vol. II, ch. 23.
10. brand: sword.
11. glaive: lance or spear.
12. Martin Galuppi: not a historical figure.
13. St. Anthony: St. Anthony went to live in the deserts of Egypt and became an ascetic after struggling with and succeeding in warding off a series of temptations by the devil.
CHAPTER III
1. Epigraph: Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona IV.i.5–6 and 44–6. Line 44 is modified, “them” being substituted for “us.” The villains under discussion are highway robbers whom one of the protagonists is in the process of joining.
2. Lindenberg: a town in Germany.
3. Hispaniola: an island in the Caribbean. It now comprises the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
4. Salamanca: a university town in Spain.
5. chaise: a closed carriage for one to three passengers.
6. postillion: a person who rides one of the horses that accompany a carriage on a journey.
7. banditti: Italian, bandits.
8. Bavaria: a region in the south of Germany.
VOLUME II
CHAPTER IV
1. Epigraph: Shakespeare, Macbeth III.iv.93–96 and 106–7. Macbeth addresses the ghost of Banquo.
2. “Perceforest,” “Tirante the White,” “Palmerin of England,” and “the Knight of the Sun”: chivalric prose romances of the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries.
3. “the Loves of Tristan and the Queen Iseult———”: another romance, based upon the tragic history of two lovers that forms part of the Arthurian saga.
4. paternoster: Latin, our father. the Lord’s Prayer.
5. De profundis: “Out of the depths,” the first words of the Latin version of Psalm 130; a prayer of penitence or despair.
6. duenna: an older woman who chaperones a younger woman.
7. corse: corpse.
8. the Great Mogul: chief of the Mogul Empire of the Indian subcontinent.
9. Doctor Faustus: legendary medieval figure who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for a period of unlimited power and was eventually dragged down to hell. The playwright Christopher
