A bit of drama from Aldous Huxley

I have been pondering about the titles of two of Huxley's novels, 'Antic Hay' and 'Brave New World', both of which use words in a slightly odd way.

'Antic Hay' is taken from the beginning of Marlowe's 'Edward II': Act I, Scene I, Line 60 to be precise, in the middle of a speech by Edward's companion, Gaveston, subsequently beheaded by the rebellious barons, without trial.

So we have: '... Like sylvan nymphs my pages shall be clad/ My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns/ Shall with their goat-feet dance antic hay ...'. In which a hay is a country dance, a form of which was popular in England at the time of writing, say around 1595. But a dance of a type which had been around for a while, so antic, that is to say antique or old.

OED explains that the modern sense of antic was derived from the grotesque forms of some ancient stone carvings recovered from holes in the ground in Italy. So while antic and antique were derived from the same Latin root, they had distinct histories and meanings. Only confused by the careless spelling of the Elizabethan era. While the holes in the ground gave rise to the words grotto and grotesque.

'Brave New World' is taken from the end of Shakespeare's 'Tempest': Act V, Scene I, Line 183, in the middle of a short speech from Prospero's sequestered daughter Miranda on the discovery of young men. '... O brave new world/ That has such people in't...'. Written perhaps twenty five years after 'Edward II'.

OED gives two columns to brave and three more to various derived words, such as bravado. The usual current meaning of brave, that is to say brave in the face of danger, comes about half way through the first two columns. It is clear that the meaning of the word was much broader in the seventeenth century that it is now, including fine, grand and handsome, particularly of appearance in general or clothes in particular: one might have said, for example: ' the King put on a brave show for Halloween'.

So in the first case Huxley is having a gentle pop at new fashions which are not very new at all; in the second at a new world, full of creature comforts, which is not, notwithstanding, at all attractive. Or in the long run comfortable, at least to his mind. I am not so sure: I would have thought that they were comforts that most of the billions of us in this world would settle for.

Comforts which, I might add, include recreational drugs. Or at least drug.