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A Possible Origin for Mopsa in Sidney's Arcadia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

David C. Mcpherson
David C. Mcpherson*
Affiliation:
Uiniversity of California, Santa Barbara
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Extract

Mopsa, a stupid country wench in Sidney's Arcadia, is such a delightful comic creation that one is curious to know more about her origin and function. William Ringler suggests that the name is ‘probably from Mopsus, a shepherd in Virgil's Eclogues.’ In the Fifth Eclogue one of the two shepherds in the singing contest is named Mopsus. In the Eighth Eclogue the embittered shepherd Damon laments the loss of Nysa, mentioning that she has married Mopsus. Since Sidney uses other names from the Eclogues (Dametas, Menalcas) and since Mopsa is the daughter of a shepherd, Professor Ringler's suggestion has merit.

Virgil is probably not the only source of Mopsa's name, however; I suggest that Sidney is making a kind of pun, humorously combining the name's Virgilian associations with those surrounding the Dutch word mops and its playfully Latinized form Mopsus or, feminine, Mopsa. Mops means ‘pug dog’ and, formerly, by extension, meant ‘countrylout' also; Mopsa in the Arcadia is in a sense ‘doggy’ and is clearly a country lout.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , Winter 1968 , pp. 420 - 428
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1968

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References

1 The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. William A. Ringler, Jr. (Oxford, 1962), p. 384.

2 Adriaan J. Barnouw has pointed out that mops formerly meant ‘country lout'; see his comments in The Fantasy ofPieter Bruegel (New York, 1947), p. 62. For a more detailed and technical etymology, see Johannes Franck, Etymologisch Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal ('S-Gravenhage, 1892), and J., Vercouuie, Beknopt Etymologisch Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (Ghent, 1898).Google Scholar The latter also lists the word Mopsus, defining it as an ‘ironische afleiding von mops [ironic derivation from mops].’ Cf. also the modern German and Dutch word mops, which now means only ‘pug dog.'

3 The Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Albert Feuillerat (Cambridge, T912- 1926), iv, 95-96 (Old Arcadia). What I have to say is somewhat more applicable to the Old Arcadia than to the New. As Ringler points out (pp. xxxvii-xxxviii), the Old Arcadia ‘is a tragi-comedy in five acts, with a serious double p l o t … combined with a comic underplot (Dametas and his wife and daughter [Mopsa]).’ It is this comic underplot in which I am mainly interested, and the importance of it is greatly diminished in the New Arcadia by the addition of much material which has nothing to do with Mopsa. I should point out, however, that all of the passages I cite from Books 1 through m appear substantially unchanged in the New Arcadia, and a few additional ones involving Mopsa appear also, e.g., her telling of a tedious story in a tedious manner and, like Sir Thopas, being asked to desist (1, 240-242).

4 Ben Jonson's Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden in Ben Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson (Oxford, 1925), 1, 149 (11. 611-613).

5 See Bruegel: The Paintings, ed. Fritz G. Grossmann (London, 2nd ed., 1966), Pis. 6 and 12.

6 The drawing, now at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, is reproduced in Bruegel: The Drawings, ed. Ludwig Miinz (London, 1961), PL 150.

7 Two scholars who have written about the engraving have had friends with personal knowledge of this folk tradition. Rene Bastelaer says, ‘M.J. G. Boekenoogen, dc Leyde, pense que ce sujet pourrait 6tre une representation de la proverbiale Vuile Bruid’ (Les Estampes de Peter Bruegel L'Ancien, Bruxelles, 1908, p. 66). Gustav Gliick quotes Mr. Jan Borms of Scheveningen as saying that at Flemish Carnival festivities up until 1914 people were always travestied in couples, the female figure being known as ‘de vuile bruid’ (the ugly bride). See ‘Peter Brueghel the Elder and Classical Antiquity,’ Art Quarterly, vi (1943), 167-187, especially p. 179.

8 Gliick suggests the unlikely thesis that the publisher, Hieronymus Cock, ‘was inclined to provide his prints with Latin inscriptions that seemed nobler to him than Flemish ones’ (p. 180).

9 Bruegel moved in Antwerp's highest circles of humanists and probably knew Latin himself (Gliick, p. 167). That Van Der Heyden had a predilection for bilingual puns is suggested by the fact that he liked to travesty his own name in Latin, calling himself Petals a Merica (Gliick, p. 180). Cock had spent much time with the best painters in Italy and had helped Giorgio Vasari with the lives of the Flemish engravers. See R. H., Wilenski, Flemish Painters, 1430-1830 (New York, 1960,1, 528 Google Scholar and Bénézit, E., Dictionnaire des Pémtres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs (Paris, 1961)Google Scholar, s.v. Cock, Koch (Jeronimus).

10 Virgil, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough (Loeb Classical Library, 1960), 1, 57 (lines 26- 28). The Latin reads:

Mopso Nysa datur: quid non speremus amantes?

iungentur iam grypes equis, aevoque sequenti

cum canibus timidi venient ad pocula dammae.

11 The Fantasy of Pieter Bruegel, p. 62.

12 Edmund, Molyneux in Holingshed's Chronicles (London, 1808), rv, 880 Google Scholar. The best discussion of dating problems on the Arcadia is Ringler's, pp. 364-370.

13 Negotiations concerning the proposed match dragged on through most of 1578, probably because Queen Elizabeth either would not or could not make up her mind. See Malcolm W., Wallace, The Life of Sir Philip Sidney (Cambridge, 1915), p. 187.Google Scholar See also Baughan, D. E., ‘Sir Philip Sidney and the Matchmakers,’ MLR, XXXIII (1938), 506–519.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Poets, Patrons, and Professors: Sir Philip Sidney, Daniel Rogers, and the Leiden Humanists (Leiden, 1962).

15 See A. E. Popham, ‘Pieter Bruegel and Abraham Ortelius,’ Burlington Magazine, LTX (1931), 184-188.

16 Though Sidney could have seen only the first (1570), the number of editions indicate its popularity. Bastelaer, Les Estampes, p. 66, reports that there was a second published by Cornelius Van Thienen, a third by Martin Van Enden, and a fourth by C. F. Visscher. Bastelaer makes no attempt to date these, but biographical data on the publishers show that all of them must be seventeenth century. See Van Thienen [s.v. Van Tienen] in Eugene de, Seyn, Dictionnaire Biographique des Sciences, des Lettres, et des Arts en Belgique (Bruxelles, 1936)Google Scholar; on Van Enden and Visscher, see E. Bénézit, Dictionnaire des Peintres.

17 John, Buxton, Sir Philip Sidney and the English Renaissance (London, 2nd ed., 1965), p. 91.Google Scholar

18 In a famous engraving of 1587 by Hendrick Goltzius we see Lipsius with a book in one hand and the other hand on the head of Mopsus. The engraving is reproduced by Dorsten, Poets, Patrons, and Professors, facing p. 117.

19 For references to critics who deprecate the Old Arcadia and for a generally convincing but occasionally overstated refutation of their views, see Richard A., Lanham, The Old Arcadia in Sidney's Arcadia (New Haven, 1965), pp. 183–405.Google Scholar