Read The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare Page 10

  CHAPTER VI.

  THOMAS NASH; THE PICARESQUE AND REALISTIC NOVEL.

  I.

  "There is nothing beside the goodnesse of God, that preserves health somuch as honest mirth, especially mirth used at dinner and supper, andmirth toward bed.... Therefore, considering this matter, that mirth isso necessary a thing for man, I published this booke ... to make menmerrie.... Wherefore I doe advertise every man in avoiding pensivenesse,or too much study or melancholic, to be merrie with honesty in God andfor God, whom I humbly beseech to send us the mirth of heaven.Amen."[245] Such was the advice attributed to a man whose opinion shouldcarry weight, for he had been a "doctor of physicke" and had publishedwith great success a "Breviary of helth" which was a household book inhis time.

  The pensive Sir Philip Sidney was, as we have seen, of a very differentturn of mind. He did not live to read the above wise counsels, but hehad had the opinion of his friend Languet on this subject, and that hadbeen of no avail. His propensity to overthinking is apparent in manyplaces in his writings, especially in his "Arcadia," where he made solittle use of the comical elements he had himself introduced into it.The main incident in his book, the assignation given by Zelmane to bothBasilius and Gynecia and the "mistakes of a night" which follow, wouldhave been from any other pen, only too comical. It is, in fact, thecharacter it bears in Shirley's drama, and it has the same in the manymodern plays founded on similar mistakes, plays which serve to improve,according to Andrew Borde's prescription, if not the morals, at leastthe health of the "Palais Royal" audiences of to-day. With Sidney, thecomic is a vulgar style; he very rarely risks any jests, a portrait ofa cowardly peasant, or of an injured husband.[246] One of his bestattempts in this style is a character in his masque of the "Lady ofMay," the pedant Rombus, who gives quotations which are always wrong andlike Rabelais' scholar, who belongs to "the alme, inclyte and celebrateacademy, which is vocitated Lutetia," is careful to make use of nothingbut quasi-Latin words. In order to relate how he has been unmercifullywhipped by shepherds he declares: "Yet hath not the pulchritude of myvertues protected me from the contaminating hands of these Plebeians;for comming, _solummodo_ to have parted their sanguinolent fray, theyyeelded me no more reverence, than if I had beene some _pecoriusasinus_."[247] But that is an easy way to amuse, and, even at thatepoch, not very new. Rabelais had made a better use of it before Sidney,and after him, without mentioning Shakespeare, Cyrano de Bergeracfurnished more laughable specimens. No phrase of Rombus equals the ordergiven by the Pedant to his son when sending him to Venice to engage incommerce: "Since thou hast never desired to drink of the poolengendered by the hoof of the feathered horse,[248] and as the lyricharmony of the learned murderer of Python has never inflated thy speech,try if in merchandise Mercury will lend thee his Caduceus. So may theturbulent AEolus be as affable to thee as to the peaceful nests ofhalcyons. In short, Charlot, thou must go." Sidney kept entirely tothese ineffectual attempts, and had no desire to go further in hisexamination of the ridiculous side of ordinary men.

  This study was undertaken by several of his contemporaries. One of thepeculiarities of this first awakening of the novel in England, is thatit was nearly complete and produced, if not standard masterpieces, atleast curious examples of nearly all the different kinds of novel withwhich later writers have made us familiar. We have seen already how Lylydepicted courtly life, and tried to use the novel as a vehicle for wiseand philosophical advice; how Greene, Lodge and Sidney busied themselveswith romantic tales; how Greene tried to describe the realities of lifein some of his autobiographical stories. There was something more to doin this line, and the Elizabethan drama offers innumerable examples ofit; but it is not so well known that in the time of Shakespeare, therewere in circulation, besides romantic and chivalrous tales, regularrealistic novels, the main object of which was to paint to the lifeordinary men and characters. These are the least known, but not theleast remarkable of the attempts made by Shakespeare's contemporaries inthe direction of the novel as we understand it.

  Works of this kind took for the most part the shape to which has beenapplied the name of _picaresque_. This was, like the pastoral, importedinto England from abroad: in the sixteenth century it shone withparticular brilliance in Spain. The incessant wars of that vast empireon whose frontiers the sun never set, had favoured the multiplication ofadventurers, to-day great lords, to-morrow beggars; one day dangerous,another day contemptible or ridiculous. "Such people there are livingand flourishing in the world, Faithless, Hopeless, Charityless: let ushave at them, dear friends, with might and main. Some there are, andvery successful too, mere quacks and fools: and it was to combat andexpose such as those, no doubt that _Laughter_ was made." So wrote inour time William Thackeray,[249] who seems to have considered that theage of the _picaro_ had not yet passed away, and that the novelist mightstill with advantage turn his attention to him. However that may be thegreat time for the rascal, the rogue, the knave, for all those personsof no particular class whom adventures had left poor and by no meanspeaceable, for the _picaro_ in all his varieties, was the sixteenthcentury. A whole literature was devoted to describing the fortunes ofthese strange persons; Spain gave it its name of _picaresque_ andspread it abroad but did not altogether invent it. The rogue, who playstricks which deserve a hanging, had already filled and enlivened talesin several languages. Master Reynard, in that romance of the Middle Agesof which he is the hero, is something like a _picaro_. Another of themis Til Eulenspiegel, whose adventures related in German furnished, in1515, the subject of a very popular book;[250] even Panurge could atneed be placed in this great family. Only, with Master Reynard we livein the world of animals and the romance is allegorical; with TilEulenspiegel we find no truth, no probability, merely tricks for tricks'sake, and how coarse they are! With Panurge, we are distracted from the_picaro_ by all the philosophic and fantastic digressions of anextensive tale in which he is not the principal hero. But with theSpaniards, with Lazarillo de Tormes, Guzman d'Alfarache[251] and therest, the _picaro_ holds a place in literature which is peculiarly hisown. Faithless, shameless, if not joyless, the plaything of fortune, byturn valet, gentleman, beggar, courtier, thief, we follow him into allsocieties. From hovel to palace he goes first, opens the doors and showsus the characters. There is no plot more simple or flexible, none thatlends itself better to the study of manners, of abuses, of socialeccentricities. The only defect is that, in order to abandon himselfwith necessary good will to the caprices of Fate, and in order to beable to penetrate everywhere, the hero has necessarily little conscienceand still less heart; hence the barrenness of the greater part of thepicaresque romances and the weak _role_, entirely incidental, reservedin these works for sentiment.

  The success of these Spanish romances was immediate and lastingthroughout Europe. "Lazarillo" and "Guzman" were translated into severallanguages, and were greatly appreciated here and abroad. "What! sir,"says the Burgundian lord in "Francion,"[252] "is it thus that youcruelly deprive me of the narration of your more amusing adventures? Doyou not know that these commonplace actions are infinitely entertaining,and that we take delight in listening even to those of scoundrels andrascals like Guzman d'Alfarache and Lazarillo de Tormes?" "Guzman" hadin France several illustrious translators; the ponderous author of "LaPucelle" and famous academician, Chapelain, was one of them; another wasLe Sage who, before penning this translation, had revived and doubledthe popularity of the picaresque novel in publishing his "GilBlas."[253] In Germany, Grimmelshausen, following the same models, wrotein the seventeenth century his "Simplicissimus." In England "Guzman" wasseveral times translated; "Lazarillo" was continually reprinted duringtwo centuries, and original romances of this kind were published here,among others, by Thomas Nash, in the sixteenth, by Richard Head in theseventeenth, by Defoe and Smollett, in the eighteenth century. Theinitiative of Nash and his group was all the more important andmeritorious because before them the comic element was greatly wanting inthe English prose romance; amusing stories in the manner of the Frenchhad
found translators sometimes, but not imitators; the authors ofArcadias were especially concerned in depicting noble sentiments, andthe gift of observation possessed by the English people ran the risk ofbeing for a long time exercised nowhere but on the stage, or in metricaltales, or in moral essays.

  II.

  Thomas Nash made one of that group of young men, full of spirit, fireand imagination, who shone during the first part of Shakespeare'scareer, who fancied they could live by their pen, and who diedprematurely and miserably. Nash was about thirty-three years old when hedied in 1600; Marlowe was twenty-nine, Peele thirty, Greene thirty-two.

  Nash was born at Lowestoft in 1567:[254] "The head towne in that ilandis Leystofe, in which, bee it knowne to all men, I was borne; though myfather sprung from the Nashes of Herefordshire;" a family that could"vaunt longer petigrees than patrimonies." He studied at Cambridge, inSt. John's College, "in which house once I tooke up my inne for sevenyere together lacking a quarter, and yet love it still, for it is andever was, the sweetest nurse of knowledge in all that university."[255]"Saint Johns in Cambridge," says he at another place, "at that time wasan universitie within it selfe ... having, as I have hearde grave men ofcredite report, more candles light in it everie winter morning beforefoure of the clocke than the foure of clocke bell gave stroakes."[256]Like Greene and Sidney, he imbibed early a passionate taste forliterature; he learnt the classical languages and foreign ones too, atleast French and Italian, and enjoyed much miscellaneous reading; oldEnglish literature, Mandeville, Chaucer, Gower, Skelton, were notforgotten. Following then the usual course, he seems to have travelledon the continent, to have visited Italy and Germany,[257] and to havecome home, also according to custom, to rush into literature: by whichword was then habitually understood fame, poverty, quarrels,imprisonment, and an early death. Not one of these items was wanting inNash's career. A prolific and easy writer, he tried his hand at allkinds of work, composing them rapidly and with visible pleasure, alwaysready to laugh at the follies of others, sometimes at his own, notmelancholy like Sidney, nor downcast like Greene. He very rarely alludesto his miseries without a smile, though he could not help regretting thebetter things he might have done if Fortune had not been so adverse,"had I a ful-sayld gale of prosperity." But "my state is so tost andweather-beaten, that it hath nowe no anchor-holde left to cleaveunto."[258] Having said thus much, he immediately resumes his cheerfulcountenance and in the best of spirits and in perfect good humour goeson describing the great city of Yarmouth, the metropolis of the RedHerring.

  With this turn of mind and an inexhaustible fund of wit, satire, andgaiety, he published numerous pamphlets, threw himself impetuously intothe Martin Marprelate controversy (in which another novelist, Lyly, wasalso taking part); sustained a rude warfare against Gabriel Harvey;[259]wrote a dissertation on social manners: the "Anatomie of absurditie,"1589; a disquisition with an autobiographical turn, which may becompared with those Greene has left; "Pierce Penilesse his supplicationto the Divell," 1592 (it had great success, and was even translated intoFrench, "maimedly translated," says Nash,[260] probably with greattruth); a novel "The unfortunate traveller or the life of Jack Wilton,"1594, which has most undeservedly remained until now the least known ofhis works; a drama, "The Isle of dogs," 1597, which is lost, and forwhich the author was sent to prison; a curious and amusing discourse "inpraise of the red herring," 1599; and many other books, pamphlets, andworks of all kinds.[261]

  Constantly entangled in quarrels, in such a way sometimes that theauthorities had to interfere--for example, in his war with GabrielHarvey, when the destruction of the books of both was ordered--hepreserved to the last his good humour and his taste for people andauthors who knew what it was to laugh. Curiously enough, he combinedthis taste with an intense fondness for pure literature and for lyricalpoetry. Rabelais is among his masters, and so is Aretino, "one of thewittiest knaves that ever God made." Tarleton the jester is among hisfriends, and so is Kemp, the Dogberry of Shakespeare's "Much Ado," thePeter of "Romeo and Juliet," the famous dancer who performed a morrisdance from London to Norwich. And at the same time he bestows withunbounded enthusiasm heartfelt praises upon Spenser, "heavenlySpenser"; upon "immortal" Sidney, whose "Astrophel and Stella" hehimself published in 1591; and upon Marlowe, as the author of theexquisite Hero and Leander poem, "Leander and Hero of whome divineMusaeus sung and a diviner muse then him, Kit Marlow."[262]

  With all his fondness for merry authors, Nash can discern true poetry,and he adores it. If by chance, in the midst of an angry satiricaldisquisition, the word poetry comes to his pen, he is suddenlytransformed, he smiles, he melts; nothing is left in him but humansympathies. "Nor is poetry an art where of there is no use in a man'swhole life but to describe discontented thoughts and youthfull desires,for there is no study but it dooth illustrate and beautifie.... To themthat demaund what fruites the poets of our time bring forth, or whereinthey are able to approve themselves necessarie to the state, thus Ianswere: first and formost, they have cleansed our language frombarbarisme, and made the vulgar sort, here in London, which is thefountaine whose rivers flowe round about England, to aspire to a richerpuritie of speach than is communicated with the comminalty of any nationunder heaven."[263] When a man like Nash could write in such a strain,with a passion for vernacular literature scarcely equalled at any time,there was obviously growing among that "vulgar sort, here in London," apublic for any great man that might appear, a public for WilliamShakespeare himself, who was just then beginning to reach celebrity.Nash does not doubt that it is possible for English to become aclassical language, however rude the garb it first bore. According toNash, Surrey was "a prince in content because a poet without peere.Destinie never defames her selfe but when she lets an excellent poetdie: if there bee any sparke of Adams paradized perfection yet emberd vpin the breasts of mortall men, certainely God hath bestowed that hisperfectest image on poets." Differing from Francis Bacon and a few ofthe grave dignitaries of literature, he has faith in that group ofartists in the first rank of whom he placed heavenly Spenser, who canwell bear comparison with any author of France, Italy, or Spain."Neither is he the only swallow of our summer."[264]

  This fondness for pure literature, for musical verse and lyrical poetry,explains how, satirist as he was, Nash had numerous friends whosefeelings towards him were nothing short of tenderness. "Sweet boy,""Sweet Tom," are not usual expressions towards a satirist; they are,however, applied to Nash both by Greene and by Francis Meres, becausethere was in Nash's mind something besides the customary rancour of bornsatirists, "The man," said Shakespeare,

  "The man that has no music in himself Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; The motions of his spirit are as dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus; Let no such man be trusted."[265]

  A very different sort of a man was Nash; his friends found that he couldbe "mov'd with concord of sweet sounds," and that he could be trusted.As he survived Sidney at a time when a few years meant much for Englishliterature, he could form a far more favourable judgment of the dramathan the well-known one in the "Apologie." The ridiculous performancesnoticed by Sidney had not disappeared, but they were not the only onesto be seen on the stage; dramas of the highest order were being played;actors rendered them with becoming dignity, and, curiously enough to ourideas, Nash adds as a special praise that women were excluded from amongtheir number: "Our players are not as the players beyond sea, a sort ofsquirting baudie comedians, that have whores and common curtezans toplay womens parts, and forbeare no immodest speech or unchast actionthat may procure laughter; but our sceane is more stately furnisht thanever it was in the time of Roscius, our representations honorable andfull of gallant resolution, not consisting like theirs of a Pantaloun, awhore and a Zanie, but of emperours, kings and princes whose truetragedies, _Sophocleo cothurno_ they do vaunt."[266] In the nextcentury, women were allowed to replace on the English stage thenewly-shaven young fellows who used to play Juliet
and Titania; we arehappy to say that so indecent a practice was due to foreign influence.We have Prynne's authority for believing that the first women who hadthe audacity to appear before a London audience were French. Thishappened in 1629 at the Blackfriars theatre. It is true that not longafter, to make up, as it were, for lost time, plays were performed inEngland in which all the parts were taken by women; it is not knownwhether on that occasion they were French.[267]

  Another very important characteristic in Nash is the high ideal he hasshaped for himself of the art of writing, not only in verse, but inplain prose. At a time when English prose was scarcely acknowledged tobe capable of artistic treatment, and when rules, regulations andtheories had, as is generally believed, very little hold upon writers,it is interesting to notice that such an author as Nash, with hisstirring style and unbridled pen, with his prison and tavern life,understood that words had a literary value of their own. They were notto be taken at random, but chosen with care. His theory may on somepoints be disputed, but it is certainly interesting to note that he hada theory at all. First, he desires that a man shall write in his ownvein and not copy others, especially those who by their vogue andpeculiarities, such as Lyly or Greene, were easiest of reach and themost tempting to imitate. He strongly defends himself from having everdone anything of this sort; on the contrary, more than once appeals weremade to him to give judgment in literary matters:

  "Is my style like Greenes, or my jeasts like Tarletons?

  "Do I talke of any counterfeit birds, or hearbes or stones?... This Iwill proudly boast ... that the vaine which I have ... is of my ownbegetting and cals no man father in England but myselfe, neitherEuphues, nor Tarlton, nor Greene.

  "Not Tarlton nor Greene but have beene contented to let my simplejudgment overrule them in some matters of wit. Euphues I read when I wasa little ape in Cambridge, and I then thought it was _ipse ille_: it maybe excellent still for ought I know, but I lookt not on it this tenyeare: but to imitate it I abhorre."[268]

  His vocabulary is very rich; he has always a variety of words at hisdisposal and uses often two or three the better to impress our mindswith the idea in his own. He coins at need new words or fetches themfrom classical or foreign languages. He does not do this in an off-handway, but on purpose and wilfully; he possessed much of that curious carefor and delight in words which is one of the characteristics of the menof the Renaissance. To deal with words was in itself a pleasure forthem; they liked to mould, to adopt, to combine, to invent them. Wordpainting delighted them; Nash has an extreme fondness for it, andsatirical and comical as he is, he often astonishes us by the poeticgracefulness of his combinations of words. In this as in many otherparticulars he imitates, _longe sequens_, the master he seems to haveadmired above others, Rabelais, who, in the tempestuous roll of hisdiverse waters, sometimes washes up on to the sand pearls fit to adornthe crown of any lyrical poet. Fishes appear in Nash's otherwiseunpoetical prose as "the sea's finny freeholders;" the inhabitants of aport town do not sow corn, "their whole harvest is by sea;" they plough"the glassy fieldes of Thetis." He has an instinctive hatred forabstract terms; he wants expressive words, words that shine, thatbreathe, that live. Instead of saying that Henry III. _granted_ acharter and certain privileges in a particular year of his _reign_, hewill write that "he _cheard up their blouds_ with two charters more, andin Anno 1262 and forty-five of his _courte keeping_, he permitted themto wall in their towne."[269] The pleasure of replacing stale,commonplace expressions by rare, picturesque, live ones, and in lieu ofa plain sentence to give an allegorical substitute, has so muchattraction for Nash, that clear-sighted as he is, he cannot always avoidthe ordinary defects of this particular style, defects which he has incommon with many of his contemporaries, not excluding Shakespearehimself, namely, obscurity and sometimes bad taste.

  Another of Nash's tendencies, which he has most decidedly in common withRabelais, consists in the use of a number of expressions in the samesentence for the same idea. Of course one carefully chosen word wouldbe enough; such a man as Merimee, to take an example at the otherextremity of the line, picks out the one term he wants, puts it in itsplace; word and place fit exactly; there is nothing to add or desire.Not so Rabelais; not so either his admirer Nash; the newly-awakenedcuriosities of the Renaissance were too young as yet, too fresh andstrong upon them, to be easily kept down by rule and reflection.Literature too was young then, and young things are endowed with eyesthat stare and admire more easily than old ones. When entering theirword-shop, writers of the sixteenth century were fain to take this word,and this other too, and yet that one more; and when on the threshold,about to go, they would turn and take two or three again. There arepages in Rabelais and pages in Nash where most of the important wordsare supplemented and fortified with a number of others placed there atour disposal as alternatives or substitutes, for the pleasure of ourears and eyes, in case we might like them better. Nash has to expressthis very simple idea: Look at Yarmouth, what a fine town it is! Well,it owes all it is to the red herring. This he formulates in thefollowing manner with quite a Rabelaisian mixture of native and halfLatin words and iterations for most terms of importance: "Doe butconvert, said hee, the slenderest twinckling reflexe of your eye-sightto this flinty ringe that engirtes it, these towred walles, port-cullizdgates, and gorgeous architectures that condecorate and adorne it, andthen perponder of the red herringes priority and prevalence, who is theonely inexhaustible mine that hath raised and begot all this, and,minutely, to riper maturity, fosters and cherisheth it."[270]

  Some critics of his time abused Nash for the liberties he took with thevocabulary, especially for his foreign and compound words. He was readywith this half-serious, half-jocose answer: "To the second rancke ofreprehenders, that complain of my boystrous compound wordes, and endingmy Italionate coyned verbes all in _ize_," such as "tympanize;tirannize," says he elsewhere; "thus I replie: That no winde that blowesstrong but is boystrous; no speech or wordes of any power or force toconfute or perswade, but must be swelling and boystrous. For thecompounding of my wordes, therein I imitate rich men, who havinggathered store of white single money together, convert a number of thosesmall little scutes into great peeces of gold, such as double Pistolesand Portugues. Our English tongue of all languages, most swarmeth withthe single money of monosillables, which are the onely scandall of it.Bookes written in them and no other seeme like shopkeepers' bookes, thatcontaine nothing else save halfe-pence, three-farthings, and two-pences.Therefore what did me I, but having a huge heape of those worth lesseshreds of small English in my _pia maters_ purse, to make the royallershew with them to men's eye, had them to the compounders immediately,and exchanged them foure into one, and others into more, according tothe Greek, French, Spanish, and Italian."[271]

  Nash had a particular literary hatred for mere empty bombast. His lovefor high-sounding words with a meaning was not greater than his aversionfor big sounds without one. Even his friend Marlowe does not escape hiscensure for having trespassed in this particular beyond the limits ofgood taste. Nash wonders "how eloquent our gowned age is growen oflate," and he has nothing but contempt for those "vainglorioustragoedians who contend not so seriously to excel in action, as toembowell the clowdes in a speach of comparison; thinking themselves morethan initiated in poets immortalitie, if they but once get Boreas by thebeard and the heavenlie bull by the deaw-lap."[272]

  His ideas regarding the art of novel writing are very liberal, and heaccepts as belonging to literature many specimens we should sternlyreject. The one point to remember, however, is that he does not acceptthem all; he draws the line somewhere, and in that age when the novelwas in its infancy, there was merit in doing even no more than this. Heis very hard upon the old mediaeval romances, which it is true he seemsto have known only through the abridged and degenerate texts circulatedin his time, for the amusement of idle readers. He readily endorses themoral views of Ascham about them, adding however, what is moreinteresting for us, some literary criticism: "What els I pray you, doethese babl
e booke-mungers endevor but to repaire the ruinous wals ofVenus court, to restore to the worlde that forgotten legendary licenceof lying, to imitate a fresh the fantasticall dreames of those exiledAbbie-lubbers [_i.e._, the monks] from whose idle pens proceeded thoseworne out impressions of the feigned no where acts of Arthur of therounde table, Arthur of litle Brittaine, Sir Tristram, Hewon ofBurdeaux, the Squire of low degree, the four sons of Amon, withinfinite others.... Who is it that reding Bevis of Hampton, can forbearelaughing, if he marke what scambling shyft he makes to end his verses alike? I will propound three or foure payre by the way for the readersrecreation:

  The porter said: By my snout, It was Sir Bevis that I let out."[273]

  Every reader will agree with Nash, I suppose, in condemning this asbalderdash.

  Endowed thus with artistic theories of his own, with an intense love ofliterature, with an inborn gaiety and faculty of observation, Nash addedto the collection of novels of the Shakespearean era, not another Bevisof Hampton, but his "Jack Wilton,"[274] the best specimen of thepicaresque tale in English literature anterior to Defoe. His romance,written in the form of memoirs, according to the usual rule of thepicaresque, is dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, under whosepatronage Shakespeare had already placed his "Venus and Adonis." It hasthe defect of all the romances of the time, in England as elsewhere: itis incoherent and badly put together. But it contains excellentfragments, two or three capital portraits of individuals which showcareful observation, and a few solidly constructed scenes like thevengeance of Cutwolfe which allow us to foresee that one day thedramatic power of the English genius, worn out doubtless by a too longcareer on the stage, instead of dying altogether, will be revived inthe novel.

  Nash, after the manner employed by More in his "Utopia," by Greene inhis "Ciceronis amor," and in our age, with a splendour of fame to whichseveral generations have already borne testimony, by Sir Walter Scott,introduces historical personages in his fiction. The page Jack Wilton,the hero of the tale, a little superior by his rank to the ordinary_picaro_ has, like Gil Blas, little money in his pocket and a few oddsand ends of Latin in his head; he distributes in his conversation thetrite quotations that have remained by him, skilfully enough to persuadethe vulgar that he does not belong to their tribe. "Tendit ad sideravirtus--Paulo majora canamus--Secundum formam statuti," &c., and fromtime to time, when he is greatly elated and wishes to show himself inall his magnificence, he adopts the elegances and similes proper to theeuphuistic style: "The sparrow for his lecherie liveth but a yeere,"&c.[275]

  Wilton is present first with the royal court of England at the siege ofTournay, under Henry VIII. What my credit was at this court "a number ofmy creditors that I coosned can testifie." He lives on the resources ofhis wits, playing tricks worthy a whipping if not a hanging onrespectable persons of limited capacity. His most notable victim is thepurveyor of drink or victualler to the camp, a tun-bellied coward, proudof his pretended noble descent, a Falstaff grown old, whose wit has beenblunted, who has ended by marrying Mistress Quickly, and has himselfbecome tavern keeper in partnership with her. In old days he drank oncredit: now the good fellows tipple at his expense. Such is the end ofall the Falstaffs and all the Scapins. "This great Lorde, this worthieLord," relates the wicked page, "thought no scorne, Lord have mercy uponus, to have his great velvet breeches larded with the droppings of thisdainty liquor," that is, the cider that he sold; "and yet he was an oldeservitor, a cavelier of an ancient house, as it might appeare by thearmes of his ancestrie, drawen very amiably in chalk, on the in side ofhis tent doore."[276]

  The scene between the fat, ruddy host, open-mouthed, blear-eyed, and thefrolicking slender page, who delights in his tricks and covers hisvictim with jesting compliments, is extremely well described. Wiltonfinds his man "counting his barrels, and setting the price in chalke onthe head of everie one of them." He addresses him his "duty veriedevoutly," and tells him he has matters of some secrecy to impart to himfor which a private audience is necessary:

  "With me, young Wilton? quoth he, marie and shalt. Bring us a pint ofsyder of a fresh tap into the 'Three Cups'[277] here; wash the pot!

  "So into a backe roome he lead mee, where after hee had spit on hisfinger, and picked off two or three moats of his olde moth eaten velvetcap, ... he badde me declare my minde, and there upon he dranke to me onthe same."

  Jack is careful not to touch at once on the matter in his head: he knowshis man and attacks him first by that vanity of a noble descent which hepossesses in common with Falstaff. Jack has always borne him affection,"partly for the high discent and linage from whence he sprung, andpartly for the tender care and provident respect he had of pooresoldiers ... he vouchsafed in his own person to be a victualer to thecampe: a rare example of magnificence and courtesie; and diligentlyprovided, that without farre travel, every man might have for his moneysyder and cheese his bellyfull. Nor did he sell his cheese by the wayonely, or his syder by the great, but abast himselfe with his owne handsto take a shoomakers knife: a homely instrument for such a highpersonage to touch, and cut it out equally like a true justiciarie inlittle penny-worthes that it would doo a man good for to looke upon. Solikewise of his syder, the pore man might have his moderate draught ofit (as there is moderation in all things) as well for his doit or hisdandiprat as the rich man for his halfe souse or his denier ..."

  Jack goes on irrepressible, overflowing; it is his best moment; he doesnot want the sport to end too quickly: "Why, you are everie childsfelow: any man that comes under the name of a souldier and a goodfellowe, you will sitte and beare companie to the last pot, yea, and youtake in as good part the homely phrase of: 'Mine host heeres to you,' asif one saluted you by all the titles of your baronie. Theseconsiderations, I saie, which the world suffers to slip by in thechannell of carelesnes, have moved me in ardent zeale of your welfare,to forewarne you of some dangers that have beset you and your barrels.

  "At the name of dangers hee start up, and bounst with his fist on theboord so hard, that his tapster overhearing him cried: 'Anon! anon!sir,' and entering with a bow askt him what he wanted.

  "Hee was readie to have stricken his tapster for interrupting him inattention of this his so much desired relation, but for feare ofdispleasing me he moderated his furie, and onely sending him for theother fresh pint, wild him looke to the barre, and come when he is caldwith a devilles name.

  "Well, at his earnest importunitie, after I had moistned my lips, tomake my lie run glib to his journies end, forward I went as followeth..." And the good apostle stops again; the cider and his own words havemoved him; he is a little fuddled, so is mine host; they both fall toweeping. The innkeeper is ready to believe anything, and at this moment,which is the right one the page at length determines to inform him thatin an assembly where he was present, he heard mine host, the purveyor ofthe camp, accused of connivance with the enemy, by giving information tothe besieged through letters hidden in his empty barrels. High treasonis suspected! How are these dangerous rumours to be dissipated? There isonly one way of doing it, that is in becoming popular in the army, verypopular; he must make himself beloved by all; he must distribute ciderfreely and for a time suppress in his shop the unbecoming custom ofpaying.

  The victualler follows this advice, but soon the trick is discovered;the page is roundly whipped, but being to the core a true picaroon,Wilton does not for all that feel his spirit in any way lessened: "Herelet me triumph a while, and ruminate a line or two on the excellence ofmy wit!" This is all the sorrow and repentance the whip extracts fromhim.

  Shakespeare, two years later, fused the two characters into one, causedthe wit of the page to enter the brain of the fat man, and the blending,animated by his genius, produced the inimitable customer of the "Boar'sHead" tavern.

  After various adventures, Wilton returns to London, and struts about infine clothes, whose originality he describes with an amusing rush oflanguage: "I had my feather in my cap as big as a flag in the fore-top;... my cape cloake of blacke cloth, over-spreading
my backe like athornbacke or an elephantes eares, ... and in consummation of mycuriositie my hands without gloves, all a mode French." The sense of thepicturesque, the careful observation of the effect of a pose, of a foldof a garment, were, before Nash, entirely unknown to English novelwriters, and it was not until the eighteenth century, until the time ofDefoe, Fielding, and, above all, Sterne, that the author of "JackWilton" was excelled in this special talent.

  Soon the page takes up the course of his adventures again, and travelsanew on the continent. He visits Venice, Florence, Rome, refraining witha care for which he is to be thanked from trite descriptions. What's thegood of describing the monuments of Rome? he says; everybody knows them:"he that hath but once drunke with a traveller, talkes of them." SirThomas More contemplating his "Utopia," John of Leyden dragged to thescaffold, the Earl of Surrey jousting for the fair Geraldine "againstall commers," Francis I., conqueror at Marignan, Erasmus, Aretino, "oneof the wittiest knaves that ever God made," and other personages of theRenaissance, figure in the narrative. Faithful to the picaresque plot,Nash conducts his reader into all societies, from the tavern to thepalace, from the haunt of robbers to the papal court, and makes his herono better than he should be. At Marignan, Wilton occupies himselfespecially in discovering quickly who is likely to be the strongest, inorder to attach himself ardently to the winner. At Venice he runs awaywith an Italian lady, deserts his master, the Earl of Surrey, and passeshimself off as the Earl.

  All this is too much at length for honest Nash, and feeling not lessdispleased than ourselves with the wicked actions of his hero, hehimself interposes at times, not without disadvantage to his plot, and,in spite of the improbability of placing such remarks in Wilton's mouth,introduces his own opinions on the persons and incidents of the romance.This is an effect of the impetuosity of his temperament, blameableundoubtedly from an artistic point of view. We shall be indulgent to himif we remember that no author of the time was entirely master of himselfand faithful to his plot. Even Shakespeare rarely resists liketemptation, and when a poetic image comes into his mind, little mattersit to him what character is on the stage; he makes of him a dreamer, apoet, and lends to him the exquisite language of his own emotion. Letus remember how the murderers hired to assassinate Edward's childrendescribe the scene of the murder. They saw "the gentle babes ...girdling one another

  Within their alabaster innocent arms: Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, And, in their summer beauty, kiss'd each other."

  A very improbable remark, it will be admitted, on the part of themurderers. But, then, it is Shakespeare who talks aloud, forgetting thathe is supposed not to be there.

  Nash, with like heedlessness, often interposes in his own person, andtakes the words out of his page's mouth; and his bold, characteristicand concise opinions are very curious in the history of manners andliterature. For example, when he describes the war of the Anabaptistsand the execution of John of Leyden, he sums up thus in a short pithysentence the current opinion of his day among literary people and men ofthe world, on the already formidable sect of the Puritans: "Heare whatit is to be Anabaptists, to bee puritans, to be villaines: you may becounted illuminate botchers for a while, but your end wil be: Goodpeople pray for me."

  His open admiration of the charity of the Catholics at Rome reveals inhim great independence of mind and much courage: "Yet this I must say tothe shame of us Protestants, if good workes may merit heaven they doothem, we talke of them. Whether superstition or no makes themunprofitable servants, that let pulpets decide: but there, you shallhave the bravest Ladies in gownes of beaten gold, washing pilgrimes andpoore souldiours feete, and dooing nothing they and their wayting maydsall the yeare long, but making shirts and bandes for them against theycome by in distresse."

  At Wittenberg, Wilton sees "Acolastus" performed, an old play that wasas popular in England as on the continent,[278] and Nash's severecriticism on the actors shows how well the difference between goodcomedians and common players was understood in London. Nash sharedShakespeare's opinion of the actors who "out-heroded Herod," and hewould have been of Moliere's way of thinking about the performances atthe Hotel de Bourgogne: "One as if he had beene playning a clay floore,stampingly troade the stage so harde with his feete, that I thoughtverily he had resolved to doe the carpenter that sette it uppe someutter shame. Another floung his armes lyke cudgelles at a peare tree,insomuch as it was mightily dreaded that hee woulde strike the candlesthat hung above theyr heades out of their sockets, and leave them alldarke." This severe criticism may serve to reassure us about the way inwhich the great English dramas were interpreted at that period.[279] Andindeed they deserved that some trouble should be taken with them, forin London it was the time of "Romeo and Juliet," of "Midsummer Night'sDream," of "Richard III."

  In fact, Nash does not only possess the merit of knowing how to observethe ridiculous side of human nature, and of portraying in a full lightpicturesque figures now worthy of Teniers and now of Callot; some fatand greasy, others lean and lank; he possesses a thing very rare withthe picaresque school, the faculty of being moved. He seems to haveforeseen the immense field of study which was to be opened later to thenovelist. A distant ancestor of Fielding, as Lyly and Sidney appear tous to be distant ancestors of Richardson, he understands that a pictureof active life, reproducing only, in the Spanish fashion, scenes ofcomedy, is incomplete and departs from reality. The greatest jesters,the most arrogant, the most venturesome have their days of anguish; nobrow has ever remained unfurrowed from the cradle to the grave, and noone has been able to live an impassive spectator and not feel his heartsometimes beat the quicker, nor bow his head in sorrow. Nash caught aglimpse of this, and therefore mingled serious scenes with his picturesof comedy, in order that his romance might the more closely resemblelife. Sometimes they are love scenes as when the Earl of Surreydescribes to us his awakening passion for Geraldine, and how he met herat Hampton Court: "Oh thrice emperiall Hampton Court, Cupids inchauntedcastle, the place where I first sawe _the perfect omnipotence of theAlmightie expressed in mortalitie_!" Sometimes they are tragic scenesfull of blood and tortures. It is true that Nash then falls intomelodrama and conducts his Wilton to a sort of Tour de Nesles where theCountess Juliana, the Pope's mistress, gives herself up to excesses, bythe side of which those of Margaret of Burgundy are but child's play.Murders, rapes, and scenes of robbery multiply under cover of the plaguethat rages at Rome, and the horrors resulting from the pestilence aredescribed with a vigour that reminds us of Defoe, without howeverequalling him. Carts containing the dead go up and down the streets, andlugubrious cries resound: "Have you anie dead to burie? Have you aniedead to burie?" The carts "had manie times of one house their wholeloading."

  Wilton is accused of murders committed in his house; the rope almostabout his neck, he is saved by an English earl, in exile, who seems tohave been imbued with Ascham's teaching, and who reproaches him fortravelling, especially in Italy, where morals are so corrupt and whereimmorality is so dangerous. "Take care," said the earl, "if thou doestbut lend halfe a looke to a Romans or Italians wife, thy porredge shallbee prepared for thee, and cost thee nothing but thy life." The earl,who proves to be a rather pedantic nobleman, passes in review allnations, and proves that they are not worth the trouble of going to see.Wilton, whose personal experience does not justify such unfavourableprognostications, especially now that he is out of danger, is wearied bythis talk, and, pretending important business, gives his chatteringbenefactor the slip. He is soon punished; he is captured by the Jews ofRome; his adventures become more and more mysterious and alarming, andmore and more does melodrama invade the story.

  Sometimes, however, in the midst of these abominations, Nash's tonerises; his language becomes eloquent and his emotion infectious; heshudders himself, horror penetrates him and seizes us; the jests of thepicaroon are very far from our mind, the drama is then as terrible aswith the most passionate romanticists of our century in their bestmoments.

  Few stories of our day
are better contrived to give the sense of thehorrible than the story of the vengeance of Cutwolfe related by himselfjust as he is going to be tortured. After a prolonged search, Cutwolfeat last finds his enemy, Esdras of Granada, alone, in his shirt, and farfrom all help. The unfortunate man implores Cutwolfe, whose brother hehad killed, to make it impossible for him to do any more harm, tomutilate him, but to spare his life. His enemy replies: "Though I kneweGod would never have mercie on mee except I had mercie on thee, yet ofthee no mercie would I have.... I tell thee, I would not have undertookeso much toyle to gaine heaven, as I have done in pursuing thee forrevenge. Divine revenge, of which, as one of the joies above, there isno fulnes or satietie. Looke how my feete are blistered with followingthee from place to place. I have riven my throat with overstraining itto curse thee. I have ground my teeth to powder with grating andgrinding them together for anger, when anie hath nam'd thee. My tonguewith vaine threates is bolne, and waxen too big for my mouth....Entreate not, a miracle maye not reprive thee."

  The scene is prolonged. Esdras continues to beg for his life; he willbecome the slave, the chattel of his enemy. An idea comes into the mindof the latter: Sell thy soul to the devil, and I will pardon thee.Esdras immediately utters horrible blasphemies.

  "My joints trembled and quakt," continues Cutwolfe, "with attendingthem, my haire stood upright, and my hart was turned wholly to fire....The veyne in his left hand that is derived from his heart with no faintblow he pierst, and with the bloud that flowd from it, writ a fulobligation of his soule to the divell: yea more earnestly he praied untoGod never to forgive his soule than manie Christians doo to save theyrsoules. These fearfull ceremonies brought to an end, I bad him ope hismouth and gape wide. He did so: as what wil not slaves doo for feare?Therwith made I no more adoo, but shot him ful into the throat with mypistol: no more spake he after; so did I shoote him that hee might neverspeak after, or repent him. His body being dead lookd as black as atoad."[280]

  This conversation and the sight of Cutwolfe's horrible punishment,recall Jack Wilton to himself. He regrets his irregular life, but not tothe point of refunding the money stolen from the Countess Juliana; richas Gil Bias, he can now, like him, take rank among peaceable and settledfolk; he marries his Venetian lady, and returns to the king of England'sarmy, occupied in giving a grand reception to Francis I. at the Field ofthe Cloth of Gold. There ends the most complete career furnished inEngland, before Defoe, by a character of fiction.

  The primary if not only result of the publication of "Jack Wilton" was,so far as the author himself was concerned, to place him in newdifficulties. His well-known satirical vein, his constant use and abuseof allusions, which often render him obscure, were so well known that itwas considered improbable that he had been writing this time with amerely artistic aim. He had been careful to state in his dedication thatreaders would merely find in his book "some reasonable conveyance ofhistorie and varietie of mirth," and that he was attempting a kind ofwriting new to him; it was to no purpose. Readers were on the look-outfor allusions; they took his historical heroes for living people butthinly disguised, and lined Nash's story with another of their owninvention. The author, who well knew the dangers of suchinterpretations, never ceased to protest that, in this work at least,there was no place for them. When once the public is started upon such atrack, it is no easy matter to make them turn round. Nash had recourseto his usual revenge, that is, to laugh at his interpreters. "I aminformed," he wrote, shortly after his "Wilton" was printed, "there becertaine busie wits abrode that seeke to anagrammatize the name ofWittenberge to one of the Universities of England; that scorn to becounted honest, plaine meaning men, like their neighbours, for not somuch as out of mutton and potage, but they will construe a meaning ofkings and princes. Let one but name bread, but they will interpret it tobe the town of Bredan in the Low countreyes; if of beere he talkes, thenstraight he mockes the countie Beroune in France; if of foule weather ora shower of raine, he hath relation to some that shall raignenext."[281]

  His remonstrances seem to have had very indifferent success, and Nash,to our great loss, did not again attempt novel writing. But the vein wasin him, and it constantly reappears in the variety of pamphlets he hasleft behind him. Fine scenes of comedy, good portraits of ridiculouscharacters to be met in every-day life, amusing anecdotes, nearly allthe elements of a sound comic novel are scattered through his writings.The familiar portraits of the upstart, of the false politician, of theinventor of new sects, portraits at which many observers of human naturein the time of Shakespeare tried their hand, are to be seen in thegallery Nash painted in his "Pierce Penilesse."[282] Conformably to thefitness of things, Nash described himself under the name of Pierce,[283]as Sidney had given his high moral tone, his melancholy and loving soulto the shepherd Philisides, as Greene had told his own miseries underthe name of poor Roberto. Here is Nash's portrait of the upstart who hastravelled abroad and has brought back from his journey nothing morevaluable than scorn for his own country: "Hee will bee humorous forsoothand have a broode of fashions by himselfe. Somtimes, because Lovecommonly wears the liverie of wit, hee will be an _Inamorato poeta_, andsonnet a whole quire of paper in praise of Ladie Manibetter, hisyeolowfac'd mistres.... All _Italionato_ is his talke, and his spadepeake [_i.e._, his beard] is as sharpe as if he had been a pioner beforethe walls of Roan. Hee will dispise the barbarisme of his owne countrey,and tell a whole legend of lyes of his travayles unto Constantinople. Ifhe be challenged to fight ... hee objects that it is not the custome ofthe Spaniard or the Germaine to looke backe to everie dog that barks.You shall see a dapper Jacke that hath beene but once at Deepe, wringhis face round about, as a man would stirre up a mustard pot and talkeEnglish through the teeth, like Jaques Scabdhams, or Monsieur Mingo deMoustrapo; when, poore slave, he hath but dipt his bread in wylde boaresgreace and come home againe, or been bitten by the shinnes by a wolfe;and saith he hath adventured uppon barricadoes of Gurney or Guingan, andfought with the yong Guise hand to hand."

  Like Ben Jonson, Nash met on his way some Politick Would-Bes that"thinke to be counted rare politicians and statesmen, by beeingsolitarie: as who should say, I am a wise man,"[284]--"and when I ope mylips," would have added Shakespeare, "let no dog bark!" He has metinventors of sects, and has heard of pre-Darwinian "mathematicians" whodoubt the fact that there were no men before Adam and are inclined tothink there are no devils at all. Nash strongly condemns theseinventors and mathematicians, drawing at the same time a curious pictureof the state of confusion in religious matters which was then soconspicuous in England: "They will set their self love to study toinvent new sects of singularitie, thinking to live when they are dead,by having their sect called after their names: as Donatists of Donatus,Arrian[s] of Arrius, and a number more of new faith founders, that havemade England the exchange of innovations and almost as much confusion ofreligion in everie quarter, as there was of tongues at the building ofthe Tower of Babel ...

  "Hence atheists triumph and rejoyce and talke as prophanely of the Bibleas of Bevis of Hampton. I heare say there are mathematicians abroad thatwill proove men before Adam; and they are harboured in high places, whowill maintayne to the death that there are no divells."[285]

  Scenes of light comedy abound in Nash; they are especially numerous inhis "Lenten Stuff,"[286] a queer little book, his last work, and onewhich he seems to have written _con amore_. Never was he in betterhumour than when, the year before his death, he betook himself tosinging "the praise of the red herring," Monsieur Herring, SolymanHerring, Sacrapant Herring, Red Herring of Red Herring hall, PaterPatriae, as he is fond of calling him, inventing on each page a new titlefor his hero. There is no event in ancient or modern history where hedoes not discover that "Caesarean Charlemaine Herring" has had a part toplay; no person of however mean or exalted rank who has not had to dealwith "Gentleman Jacke Herring." The fishes made him their king, and thePope made him a saint. The first time he appeared at the Pope's courtwas a great event in Christendom. An English sailor had sold him fo
rthree hundred ducats to the purveyor of the papal kitchen, and"delivered him the king of fishes, teaching hym to geremumble it, sauceit, and dresse it, and so sent him away a glad man. All the Pope'scookes in their white sleeves and linnen aprons met him middle way toentertaine and receyve the king of fishes, and together by the earesthey went, who shoulde first handle him or touch him. But the clarke ofthe kitchin appeased that strife, and would admit none but him selfe tohave the scorching and carbonadoing of it, and he kissed his handsthrice, and made as many _humblessos_ before he woulde finger it; and,such obeysances performed, he drest it as he was enjoyned, kneeling onhis knes, and mumbling twenty _Ave Maryes_ to hymselfe, in thesacrifizing of it on the coales, that his diligent service in thebroyling and combustion of it, both to his kingship and to hisfatherhood might not seeme unmeritorious."[287]

  However careful Thomas Nash had been to act according to the viewsattributed to Dr. Andrew Borde concerning the cultivation of mirth as apreservative of health, he reached what this authority calls "the mirthof heaven," with much more rapidity than might have been expected. Hismirth diet was obviously adulterated and mingled with wrath and sorrow.He had been born in 1567, and we read about him in a comedy performedat Cambridge in 1601, these verses which are friendly if not verypoetical:

  "TOM NASH HIS GHOST."]

  "Let all his faultes sleepe with his mournfull chest, And there for ever with his ashes rest, His style was wittie, though it had some gall, Some things he might have mended, so may all, Yet this I say, that for a mother witt, Few men have ever seen the like of it."[288]

  The manner in which his friend Dekker represents him, shortly after,reaching the Elysian fields, leaves little doubt that his life wasshortened not only by his angry passions, but by sheer want: "Marlow,Greene and Peele had got under the shades of a large vyne, laughing tosee Nash, that was but newly come to their colledge, still haunted withthe sharpe and satyricall spirit that followed him heere upon earthe:for Nash inveyed bitterly, as he had wont to do against dryfistedpatrons, accusing them of his untimely death, because if they had givenhis Muse that cherishment which she most worthily deserved, hee had fedto his dying day on fat capons, burnt sack and sugar, and not sodesperately have venturde his life and shortned his dayes by keepingcompany with pickle herrings."[289]

  III.

  Some of Shakespeare's contemporaries attempted to give their readers"the like" of Nash's wit, and tried their hand either at the picaresquenovel or at the reproduction of scenes taken from ordinary life, ofwhich Greene also had left some examples. The comic school was far fromequalling the fecundity of its romantic rival; it existed however, andthough absolutely forgotten now, it helped to keep up and improve thenatural gift of observation which belonged to the English race.

  One of the most extraordinary ventures ever attempted in the picaresquestyle was made by Henry Chettle, another member of the group to whichGreene, Nash, and the others belonged. He was, like Nash himself, apersonal friend of Greene, and published after his death his"Groats-worth of wit," 1592, for which, as we have seen, he had to offerin his next pamphlet explanations and apologies, among others, toShakespeare. Chettle seems to have followed the literary career usual inhis time; he composed many dramas alone[290] or in collaboration; he wasperpetually borrowing money from the notorious Henslowe, and he wasoccasionally lodged in Her Majesty's prisons. In 1595 he published his"Piers Plainnes seaven yeres prentiship,"[291] in which we find, mingledtogether, Sidney's Arcady, Greene's romantic heroes, and the customaryincidents of picaresque novels. The scene is laid in Tempe; there areMenalcas and Corydons; there are sheep who are poetically invited bytheir keeper to eat their grass:

  "Sport on faire flocke at pleasure Nip Vestaes flouring treasure."

  There is too Piers Plain, now a shepherd but formerly nothing short of apicaro, who has seen much and has followed many trades, and served manymasters. His companions asked for his story, and he very willinglyagreed to tell them what he had been, "and what the world is," no meansubject to be sure, and no wonder that he "cravde pardon to sit becausethe taske was long, which they willingly graunted." Piers, according tothe picaresque traditions, had been the servant of many masters; hetells his experience of them in the first person, following also in thisthe rules of the picaresque tale. He first introduces us to a swaggeringand cowardly courtier, and plays his part in intrigues and conspiracies.Then he describes the "vertuous and famous virgin AEliana," Queen ofCrete, who delighted in hunting, and went to the woods "Diana-like." Tobe "Diana-like," she dressed as follows:

  "On her head she wore a coronet of orientall pearle; on it a chaplet ofvariable flowers perfuming the ayre with their divers odors, thencecarelessly descended her amber coloured hair ... Her buskins were richlywrought like the Delphins spangled cabazines; her quiver was ofunicornes horne, her darts of yvorie; in one hand she helde a boarespeare, the other guided her Barbary jennet, proud by nature, but nowemore proude in that he carried natures fairest worke, the Easterneworlds chiefe wonder." In a somewhat similar style Zucchero painted theQueen, not of Crete, but of England, and when dressed in this fashion,Her Majesty too, was supposed to be represented "Diana-like."

  Of the misrule in Crete, and of the dangers AEliana runs from theincestuous passions of her uncle, and of her escape through theprovidential intervention of Prince AEmilius, we shall say nothing; norof the "frolicke common-wealth" established in Thrace, feeling as we dosome sympathy with Corydon, who interrupts the speaker, saying: "Reachhither thy bottle that we may drinke round; I am sure thou must needesbe dry with talking when I am so a thirst with hearing." Piers passesfrom the court to the shop of a dealer in old clothes and an usurer. Heleads a very miserable life, and we have sordid descriptions of scenesin low life with which Chettle was better acquainted than with the lovesof AEmilius and AEliana. Princes and princesses come in again; there arerevolutions, awful dangers and marvellous deliverances. All endshappily, and Piers and his hearers agree to meet "at theyr ploughman'sholidaye. Where what happened, if Piers Plainnes please, shall peradventure be published." This "adventure" never took place. Theincoherent mixture of the picaresque, romantic, and Arcadian taleresulted in such an unpalatable compound that even novel-readers ofShakespeare's time objected to a narration of this kind, and did nottrouble Chettle with a demand for its continuation.

  His reputation therefore rests mainly on his dramas. One of his mostfrequent associates in writing them, and one of the most prolific andgifted, Thomas Dekker, was also something of a novelist. He has left,besides a great quantity of plays, a number of pamphlets written verymuch in Nash's vein,[292] in which there is some excellent realism,together with the most amusing and whimsical fancies.[293] Hisbiography is a mere repetition of his friend's life, and the words:Henslowe, drama, penury, pamphlets, prison, quarrels, put together, willgive a sufficient idea of the sort of existence led by him as well as byso many of his associates.[294] He wrote some of his plays alone, manyothers with numberless collaborators, such as Chettle, Drayton, Wilson,Ben Jonson (with whom he afterwards had a violent quarrel), Haughton,Day, Munday, Hathaway, Middleton, Webster, Heywood, Wentworth Smith,Massinger, Ford, Rowley, and even others, for the dramatic faculty wasthen so very common that any one, so to say, was good enough to act as acollaborator in writing plays.

  He had many traits in common with Nash: the same excellent faculty ofobservation, the same gaiety and _entrain_, with powers of his own toassociate it with the most exquisite tenderness and pathos; the samelove for literature and for the poets, for Chaucer, for Spenser, whosearrival in the Elysian fields he describes in a way to tempt the pencilof a painter: "Grave Spenser was no sooner entred into this chappell ofApollo, but these elder fathers of the divine furie gave him a lawrerand sung his welcome; Chaucer call'd him his sonne and plac'd him at hisright hand. All of them, at a signe given by the whole quire of theMuses that brought him thither, closing up their lippes in silence, andturning all their eares for attention to heare him sing out the rest
ofFayrie Queenes prayses."[295]

  But a marked difference between Dekker and Nash resulted from the factthat Dekker had not only a love of poetry, but a poetical faculty of ahigh order. He went far beyond the picturesqueness of Nash'sword-painting, and reached in his prose as well as in his verse truelyrical emotion and pathos; he had, said Lamb, "poetry enough foranything;"[296] and while Nash's gaiety, true and hearty as it is,takes often and naturally a bitter satirical turn, Dekker's gaietythough sometimes bitter, more usually takes a pretty, graceful, andfanciful turn. "Come, strew apace, strew, strew: in good troth tis apitty that these flowers must be trodden under feete as they are like tobe anon ...

  "DEKKER HIS DREAM."]

  "Pitty? come foole, fling them about lustily; flowers never dye asweeter death than when they are smoother'd to death in a Lovers bosome,or else pave the high wayes over which these pretty, simpering, settingthings call'd brides must trippe."[297]

  Intimate literary ties, however, existed between Nash and Dekker; manypassages in the one remind us of similar things in the other, the resultsometimes of actual imitation, sometimes of involuntary reminiscences.Dekker was well aware of the family likeness between the two, so much sothat we see him once calling Nash's ghost to his assistance, as one fromwhom he might most naturally gain help: "And thou into whose soule ...the raptures of that fierie and inconfinable Italian spirit werebounteously and boundlesly infused; thou sometimes secretary to PiercePennylesse and master of his requests, ingenious, ingenuous, fluent,facetious T. Nash, from whose aboundant pen hony flow'd to thy friends,and mortall aconite to thy enemies; thou that madest the doctor a flatdunce[298] ... sharpest satyre, luculent poet, elegant orator, get leavefor thy ghost to come from her abiding and to dwell with meawhile."[299]

  Nash's ghost was most certainly hovering about Dekker when he waswriting the pamphlet from which this apostrophe is taken; it taught himhow to disrobe for our amusement the heroes of antique legends of theirdignified looks and dresses, and place their haloed selves in the opendaylight of the street below our window. With all his admiration forMarlowe's performance Nash had told, in very ludicrous fashion indeed,the story of Hero and Leander, associating in a manner unwarranted byancient historians their fate with the vicissitudes of Great Yarmouthand the red herring. In the same way Dekker makes choice of thatexquisite tale of Orpheus which reads so pathetically in the prose ofKing Alfred, and he tells it thus:

  "Assist mee therefore, thou genius of that ventrous but zealous musicionof Thrace, Euridice's husband, who being besotted on his wife, of whichesin none but ... should be guiltie, went alive with his fiddle at'sbacke, to see if he could bail her out of that adamantine prison. Thefees he was to pay for her were jigs and countrey-daunces: he paid them;the forfeits if he put on yellow stockings and lookt back upon her, washer everlasting lying there, without bayle or mayne-prize. The lovingcoxcomb could not choose but look backe, and so lost her: perhaps heedid it because he would be rid of her. The morall of which is, that if aman leave his owne busines and have an eie to his wives dooings, sheelegive him the slip though she runne to the divell for her labour."[300]

  Dekker did not write novels properly so called, but his prose worksabound with scenes that seem detached from novels, and that were so wellfitted for that kind of writing that we find them again in the works ofprofessional novelists of his or of a later time. His "Wonderfull yeare1603," from which Defoe seems to have taken several hints, abounds inscenes of this sort.[301] It is a book "wherein is shewed the pictureof London lying sicke of the plague. At the ende of all, like a meryepilogue to a dull play sundry tales are cut out in sundry fashions ofpurpose to shorten the lives of long winters nights that lye watching inthe darke for us." Some of these tales are extremely well told, forDekker is more successful in describing the humours than the terrors ofthe plague. In one of them we find another copy of the fat hostler sowell described already by Nash and, as it seems, inspired by areminiscence of the picture in "Jack Wilton." Dekker's man is notthinner, cleaner, nor braver than Nash's victualler. He is a countryinnkeeper: "a goodly fat burger he was, with a belly arching out like abeere-barrell, which made his legges, that were thicke and short liketwo piles driven under London bridge.... In some corners of [his nose]there were blewish holes that shone like shelles of mother of pearle ...other were richly garnisht with rubies, chrisolites, and carbunckles,which glistered so oriently, that the Hamburgers offered I know not howmany dollars for his companie in an East-Indian voyage, to have stoode anightes in the poope of their Admirall, onely to save the charge ofcandles.

  "In conclusion he was an host to be ledde before an Emperour, and thoughhe were one of the greatest men in all the shire, his bignes made himnot proude, but he humbled himself to speake the base language of atapster, and uppon the Londoners first arrival, cried: 'Welcome! a clothfor this gentleman!' The linnen was spread and furnisht presently witha new cake and a can, the roome voided, and the guest left, like aFrench Lord, attended by no bodie."[302]

  This new-comer, freshly arrived from London was flying on account of theplague; but it so happened that he had himself already contracted thedisease; he was scarcely seated before it grew upon him and he felldead. Great was the terror in the inn. The host, the maids, all theinmates ran from the corpse and left the house; the terror spread in theborough; no one would even walk near the place.

  "At last a tinker came sounding through the towne, mine hosts being theauncient watring place where he did use to cast anchor. You mustunderstand he was none of those base rascally tinkers that with a bandogand a drab at their tayles and a picke staffe at their necks will take apurse sooner then stop a kettle. No this was a devout tinker, he didhonor God Pan; a musicall tinker, that upon his kettle-drum could playany countrey-dance you cald for, and upon Holly-dayes had earned moneyby it, when no fidler could be heard of. Hee was onely feared when hestalkt through some towns where bees were, for he strucke so sweetely onthe bottome of his copper instrument that he would emptie whole hivesand leade the swarmes after him, only by the sound."

  These two beings, the host and tinker, depicted as vividly by Dekker asCallot would have drawn them, meet in the open air, and the formeroffers the tinker a crown if he undertakes to bury the dead man. Thetinker haggles for better payment and they agree for ten shillings."The whole parish had warning of this presently ... therefore tenshillings were leveyed out of hand, put into a rag, which was tyed tothe ende of a long pole and delivered, in sight of all the parish, whostood aloofe stopping their noses, by the head boroughs owne selfe inproper person." Nothing dismayed by this awful array, the tinker sits attable, drinks deep, takes the corpse on his back and carries it to afield. Before committing it to the earth he carefully searches itspockets and empties them; he then makes a parcel of the clothes "andcarrying that at the end of his staffe on his shoulder, with the purseof seven pounds in his hand, backe againe comes he through the towne,crying aloud: 'Have you any more Londoners to bury; Hey downe a downedery; Have you any more Londoners to bury?' The Hobbinolls running awayfrom him as if he had beene the dead citizens ghost, and he marchingaway from them in all the hast he could, with that song still in hismouth."

  Another sort of writing congenial to Dekker's temperament, and whichnovelists of a later date continued to cultivate after him, are thoseseries of counsels or praises in which, with due seriousness, the thingis recommended or praised which ought to be avoided. An example of thiskind of satirical composition is the famous "Quinze joyes de mariage,"in which the pleasant humours of a young wife are described in such away as to deter even a Panurge from marrying. Another example is the"Grobianus"[303] Latin poem of the German F. Dedekind, which enjoyed animmense reputation throughout Europe in the sixteenth century; itcontains ironical advice to a gallant with regard to his behaviour sothat in any given circumstances he may be as objectionable and improperas possible.

  Dekker translated both works into English, but with many alterations, sonumerous indeed, especially in the last, that his book may be co
nsideredalmost original.[304] He called it "The Guls Horne-booke," or alphabet.He gives in it a lively description of the humours of gallants in thetime of Shakespeare, of the places they used to frequent, and thecompany they liked to meet. Grobianism differs from the picaresque taleby the absence of a story connecting the various scenes, but itresembles it in the opportunity it affords for describing a variety ofcharacters, humours, and places. In the same way as we follow the picaroin the houses of his several masters, we here follow the gallant fromhis rooms to his ordinary, and from St. Paul's to the play. We climbwith him to the top of the cathedral, we show our new garments in thewalks, meet courtiers, soldiers and poets at dinner, stroll at night inthe dark streets of the city and fall in with the watch. Here, again,Dekker paints from life scenes with which he was familiar, and we havebut to follow his footsteps to become acquainted with the haunts of theBohemians of his time, and of the great men too, of Jonson andShakespeare themselves.

  The scene at the theatre is the most original and lively of all. Theserio-comic advice to the gallant how he "should behave himself in aplayhouse"[305] is a perfect picture of what was daily taking place, bethe play Shakespeare's "Hamlet" or Dekker's "Patient Grissil."[306] Ofcourse the gallant must sit on the stage and "on the very rushes," whichin the theatre, and also in palaces and houses, continued as in theMiddle Ages to serve for carpets;[307] he will not care for thedisapprobation of the groundlings, but must plant himself valiantly,"beating downe the mewes and hisses of opposed rascality.

  "For do but cast up a reckoning; what large commings-in are pursd up bysitting on the stage? First a conspicuous eminence is gotten; by whichmeanes, the best and most essencial parts of a gallant (good cloathes, aproportionable legge, white hand, the Persian lock, and a tollerablebeard), are perfectly revealed."

  Of course you must choose with the greatest care your time to come in."Present not your selfe on the stage especially at a new play until thequaking Prologue hath, by rubbing, got [colour] into his cheekes and isready to give the trumpets their cue that hees upon point to enter; forthen it is time, as though you were one of the properties, or that youdropt out of ye hangings, to creepe from behind the arras, with yourtripos or three-footed stoole in one hand and a teston (_i.e._, sixpence) mounted betweene a forefinger and a thumbe in the other; for ifyou should bestow your person upon the vulgar when the belly of thehouse is but halfe full, your apparell is quite eaten up, the fashionlost ..."[308]

  When the play is well begun, there is also a special behaviour toobserve: "It shall crowne you with rich commendation to laugh alowd inthe middest of the most serious and saddest scene of the terriblesttragedy; and to let that clapper your tongue, be tost so high that allthe house may ring of it: your lords use it; your knights are apes tothe lords, and do so too ... be thou a beagle to them all.... [At]first, all the eyes in the galleries will leave walking after theplayers and onely follow you; the simplest dolt in the house snatches upyour name, and when he meetes you in the streetes, ... heele cry: 'heessuch a gallant.' ... Secondly you publish your temperance to the world,in that you seeme not to resort thither to taste vaine pleasures with ahungrie appetite; but only as a gentleman to spend a foolish houre ortwo, because you can doe nothing else; thirdly you mightily dis relishthe audience and disgrace the author." Perhaps the next time he will bewise enough to offer you a dedication sonnet "onely to stop your mouth."

  The getting away must not be less carefully performed than the gettingin. If you owe the author a particular grudge, mind you leave just inthe middle of his play: "bee it Pastoral or Comedy, Morall or Tragedie,you rise with a screwd and discontented face from your stoole to begone: no matter whether the scenes be good or no; the better they are,the worse you distast them. And being on your feet, sneake not away likea coward; but salute all your gentle acquaintance, that are spred eitheron the rushes or on stooles about you; and draw what troope you can fromthe stage after you. The mimicks are beholden to you for allowing themelbow roome; their poet cries perhaps, 'A pox go with you'; but care notfor that; there is no musick without frets."

  But the rain outside may deprive you of the benefits of this carefullylaid plan. In that case, and this is the last piece of advice, here iswhat you must do: "If either the company or indisposition of the weatherbinde you to sit it out, my counsell is then that you turne plain ape:take up a rush, and tickle the earnest eares of your fellow gallants tomake other fooles fall a laughing; mewe at passionate speeches; blareat merrie; find fault with the musicke; whew at the children's action,whistle at the songs."

  Dekker knew only too well such gallants as those he describes, and ifhis picture of a theatre in Shakespeare's time seems now somewhatexaggerated, if we cannot conceive "Hamlet" or "Romeo" performed whilegallants on the stage tickle each other's ears with rushes picked fromthe stage boards, let us remember as a confirmation of his accuracy thatsuch customs were prevalent, not only in England, but in Europe. InFrance especially, even in the time of the Grand Roi, when Moliere andCorneille were shining in all their glory, we have Moliere'scorroborating evidence that these customs had not been abolished.Moliere was annoyed by the same malpractices as Shakespeare, only he didnot, like Shakespeare, who never complained of anything or anybody, keephis displeasure to himself. He recurs in more than one of his plays tothe indecent behaviour of marquesses sitting on the stage, and there isscarcely one of the particulars mentioned by Dekker which does not findplace in Moliere's angry pictures of ill-bred gallants:

  "The actors began; every one kept silence; when ... a man with largerolls entered abruptly crying out: 'Hulloa, there, a seat directly!' anddisturbing the audience with his uproar, interrupted the play in itsfinest passage....

  "Whilst I was shrugging my shoulders, the actors attempted to continuetheir parts. But the man made a fresh disturbance in seating himself,and again crossing the stage with long strides, although he might havebeen quite comfortable at the wings, he planted his chair full in front,and, defying the audience with his broad back, hid the actors fromthree-fourths of the pit.

  "A murmur arose, at which any one else would have felt ashamed; but he,firm and resolute, took no notice of it, and would have remained just ashe had placed himself if, to my misfortune, he had not cast his eyes onme....

  "He began asking me a hundred frivolous questions, raising his voicehigher than the actors. Every one was cursing him; and in order to checkhim, I said, 'I should like to listen to the play.'

  "'Hast thou not seen it, marquis? Oh! on my soul I think it very funny,and I am no fool in those matters. I know the canons of perfection andCorneille reads me all that he writes.'

  "Thereupon he gave me a summary of the piece informing me, scene afterscene, of what was about to happen; and when we came to any lines whichhe knew by heart, he recited them aloud before the actor could say them.It was in vain for me to resist; he continued his recitations, andtowards the end rose a good while before the rest. For those fashionablefellows, in order to behave gallantly, especially avoid to listen to theconclusion."[309]

  Grobianism and the picaresque novel, long survived both Nash and Dekker.English, Spanish, and French rogues, invented or imitated, swarmed inthe English literature of the seventeenth century, without, however, inany case reaching the level attained by "Jack Wilton." Both kinds ofwriting had to wait for the time of Swift and Defoe to reach theirhighest point. Defoe has left the best examples of the picaresque taleextant in English literature, and Swift revived Grobianism withunparalleled excellence in his "Directions to Servants" and his"Complete Collection of genteel and ingenious conversation, according tothe most polite mode and method now used at court and in the bestcompanies of England."[310]

  As for the "Quinze joyes," turned also into English by Dekker, itspopularity was equally great in England; a new and different translationwas published in the seventeenth century and had several editions. Itwas prefaced with a note "to the Reader," in which the satirical aims ofthe author in this study of woman's foibles is accentuated by a tone ofpretende
d praise, savouring of Grobianism and anticipating the sort ofridicule which was to be relished by Pope and the critics of QueenAnne's time. "This treatise ... will at least shake, if not totallyexplode, that common opinion, viz., that women are the worst piece ofthe Hexameron creation.... This is the composition of some amorousperson, who, animated with the same spirit and affection as I am, hathundertaken, and judged it his duty too, to satisfie you, and he hopes sofar as to work upon you a persuasion that the modesty, bashfulness,debonairete and civility, together with all qualifications that adornand beautifie the soul, are as exemplarily eminent in women of this ageas ever they were in any of the former; and instruct you to set a valueon their actions as the best creatures in the worst of times, whosevertue must needs shine with the greater lustre, being subject to thevain assaults and ineffectual temptations of men grown old, like thetimes, in wickednes, malice and revenge."[311]

  CAPRICORNUS.]

  FOOTNOTES:

  [245] "The first and best part of Scoggins Iests ... being apreservative against melancholy, gathered by Andrew Boord," London,1626, 8vo. Many of the jests, tricks, and pranks recounted here are tobe found in other collections of such anecdotes, English as well asforeign. For example, the coarse story explaining "how the French kinghad Scogin into his house of office, and shewed him the King ofEngland's picture" appears in Rabelais, where however the two kings playexactly opposite parts. Andrew Borde died in 1549.

  [246] One of the few passages which would raise a laugh even to-day isthe rapturous speech with which good Basilius greets the morning afterhis "mistakes of a night": "Should fancy of marriage keep me from thisparadise? or opinion of I know not what promise bind me from paying theright duties to nature and affection? O who would have thought therecould have been such difference betwixt women? Be jealous no more OGynecia, but yield to the preheminence of more excellent gifts," &c.(bk. iv. p. 410). See also the ridiculous fight between Clinias andDametas pp. 276 _et seq._; and a story told in verse, bk. iii. p. 390.Moliere built his "Ecole des maris" upon a similar plot.

  [247] "Arcadia," ed. of 1633, p. 619.

  [248] That is to drink of the fountain of Hippocrene, to write verse."Puis donc que tu n'as jamais voulu t'abreuver aux marais fils del'ongle du cheval emplume et que la lyrique harmonie du savant meurtrierde Python n'a jamais enfle ta parole, essaye si dans la marchandiseMercure te pretera son Caducee. Ainsi le turbulent Eole te soit aussiaffable qu'aux pacifiques nids des alcyons. Enfin, Charlot, il fautpartir" ("Pedant joue," 1654).

  [249] "Vanity Fair," chap. viii.

  [250] Many of his adventures are made up of old anecdotes which werecurrent in Europe during the Middle Ages, and which the success ofEulenspiegel again put into circulation. The very coarse anecdoteconnected with the death of Til (chap. xcii.) is the subject ofChaucer's Sompnoures tale. The story in chapter lxxx. of the innkeeperwho asks payment for the smell of his dishes, and who is paid with atinkling of coins, is also very old, and was afterwards made use of byRabelais. "Til" was very popular in France and in England. It wastranslated in both countries; in the latter one, under the title: "Herebeginneth a merye Jest of a man that was called Howleglas," London,Copland, [1528?], 4to.

  [251] "Guzman de Alfarache," by Mateo Aleman appeared in 1598 or 1599.The first edition of "Lazarillo de Tormes" was published a few yearsbefore the middle of the sixteenth century. All efforts to ascertain itsauthorship have proved fruitless. See Alfred Morel Fatio "Lazarille deTormes," Paris, 1886, Introduction. As to the antiquity of some of theadventures in "Lazarillo," see _Athenaeum_, Dec. 29, 1888, p. 883.

  [252] "Histoire comique de Francion," par M. de Moulinet (_i.e._,Charles Sorel), Paris, 1622 (?), 8vo. It was translated into English "bya person of honour," probably Robert Loveday: "The comical history ofFrancion," London, 1655, fol.

  [253] "Le Gueux ou la vie de Guzman d'Alfarache, image de la viehumaine," translated by J. Chapelain, Lyon, 1630. Le Sage published his"Gil Blas" in 1715, and his translation of "Guzman" in 1732. "Guzman"was several times translated into English, once by J. Mabbe: "The Rogue,or the Life of Guzman de Alfarache," London, 1623, fol.

  [254] He was baptized in November of that year. The discovery is due toDr. Grosart. Memorial Introduction to the "Works" of Nash, vol. i. p.xii.

  [255] "The Complete Works of Thomas Nashe ... for the first timecollected," ed. Grosart, London, 1883-4, 6 vol. 4to; "Nashe's lentenstuffe," 1599, vol. v. p. 277; "Have with you to Saffron Walden," vol.ii. p. 256; "Lenten Stuffe," v. p. 241.

  [256] Nash's letter "to the Gentlemen Students," prefacing his friendGreene's "Menaphon," 1589.

  [257] This has been doubted, for the statement was considered mainly torest upon the dedication of "An almond for a parrat," and Nash'sauthorship of this work is no longer accepted (Grosart, i. p. 4). But asgood evidence, at least, for Nash's probable travels, is derived fromhis "Jack Wilton," in which more than one statement comes, to allappearance, from an actual eye-witness.

  [258] "Lenten Stuffe," "Works," vol. v. p. 204. The first time heappeared in print was when he prefaced with the above-mentioned letterGreene's "Menaphon" in 1589.

  [259] In his "Quip for an upstart courtier," 1592, Greene had spokenirreverently of Harvey's low extraction. Harvey heaped abuse uponGreene, being rather encouraged than stopped by the death of hisopponent. In the same year, Nash, with great courage, rushed to therescue of his friend and of his memory; when this was done he continuedthe war on his own account with great success, till the authoritiesinterfered and stopped both combatants.

  [260] "My Piers Penilesse ... being above two yeres since maimedlytranslated into the French tongue." "Have with you to Saffron Walden,""Works," vol. iii. p. 47.

  [261] His principal writings are distributed as follows in Dr. Grosart'sedition:--I. "Anatomie of Absurditie," 1589; various Martin Marprelatetractates. II. "Pierce Penilesse," 1592; "Strange newes," 1593, andother writings against Harvey. III. "Have with you to Saffron Walden,"1596 (against Harvey); "The terrors of the night or a discourse ofapparitions," 1594, in which Nash on many points anticipates Defoe. IV."Christ's tears over Jerusalem," 1593, a long pious discourse. V. "Theunfortunate traveller," 1594; "Lenten Stuffe," 1599. VI. "The tragedieof Dido," 1594 (in collaboration with Marlowe); "Summers last will andtestament," a play by Nash alone.

  His "Isle of dogs" is lost, having been suppressed as soon as performed.The troubles Nash got into on account of this unlucky play are thuscommemorated by him: "The straunge turning of the Ile of Dogs from acommedie to a tragedie two summers past, with the troublesome stir whichhapned about it is a generall rumour that hath filled all England, andsuch a heavie crosse laide upon me as had well neere confounded mee."("Lenten Stuffe," vol. v. p. 199).

  [262] "The unfortunate Traveller," vol. v. p. 93; "Lenten Stuffe," vol.v. p. 262.

  [263] "Pierce Penilesse," "Works," vol. ii. pp. 60, 61.

  [264] "The unfortunate Traveller, or the Life of Jack Wilton," "Works,"vol. v. p. 60, and Prefatory letter to Greene's "Menaphon."

  [265] Greene's "Groats-worth," "Works," vol. i. p. 143; Mere's "PaladisTamia"; "Merchant of Venice," act v. sc. 1.

  [266] "Pierce Penilesse," "Works," vol. ii. p. 92.

  [267] "Histrio-mastix," 1633, 4to, p. 215. Coryat reports on hearsay(1608) that women had already appeared at that date on the Englishstage; but he is careful to note that he had never personally witnessedthis extraordinary phenomenon; and he adds that he was greatlyastonished to see in Italy women perform their parts in a play "with asgood a grace, action and gesture and whatsoever convenient for a playeras ever I saw any masculine actor" ("Crudities," London, 1776, vol. ii.p. 16).

  [268] "Strange newes of the intercepting certaine letters," 1592,"Works," vol ii. p. 267.

  [269] "Lenten Stuffe," vol. v. pp. 226, 244, 216.

  [270] "Works," vol. v. p. 231.

  [271] Preface to "Christ's teares," edition of 1594, "Works," vol. iv.p. 6.

  [272] Prefatory letter to Greene's "Menaphon."

  [273] "Anatom
ie of Absurditie," 1589, "Works," vol. i. p. 37.

  [274] "The unfortunate Traveller, or the Life of Jack Wilton," 1594,"Works," vol. v.

  [275] In these cases, Nash, or rather his hero (for Nash does nothimself make use of this language which he in no way admired, but onlyputs it into the mouth of his self-confident good-for-nothing as thefinishing touch to his portrait), adopts Lyly's style entirely,alliteration and all: "The sparrow for his lecherie liveth but a yeere,he for his trecherie was turned on the toe."

  [276] "Works," vol. v. pp. 15 _et seq._

  [277] Name of a room in the tavern.

  [278] It was translated into English from the Latin by John Palsgrave:"Acolastus," London, 1540, 4to. As to this play and its author,Gulielmus Gnapheus (Fullonius) of the Hague, who had it represented in1529, see C. H. Herford, "Studies in the Literary Relations of Englandand Germany in the Sixteenth Century," Cambridge, 1886, 8vo, pp. 84 _etseq._, 108 _et seq._

  [279] _Ibid._ p. 71. _Cf._ "Returne from Parnassus," 1601, ed. Macray,Oxford, 1886, act iv. sc. 3, pp. 138 _et seq._, where the rules of goodacting are also under discussion. Shakespeare's opinions on the same arewell known ("Hamlet," act iii. sc. 2, A.D. 1602).

  [280] "Works," vol. v. p. 183.

  [281] "Christs teares" (preface of the edition of 1594), "Works," vol.iv. p. 5. He recurs again to the same topic in his "Lenten Stuffe"(1599), and complains that when he talks of rushes it is taken to meanRussia, &c.

  [282] "Pierce Penilesse his supplication to the Divell" (1592), "Works,"vol. ii.

  [283] Nash speaks of himself as being Pierce: "This is a predestinatefit place for Pierse Pennilesse to set up his staff on." "LentenStuffe," "Works," vol. v p. 201.

  [284] "Works," vol. ii. _Cf._ Ben Jonson: "Sir Politick (speaking toPeregrine):

  "First for your garb, it must be grave and serious, Very reserv'd and lock'd; not tell a secret On any terms, not to your father; scarce A fable, but with caution" ("The Fox," act iv. sc. 1).

  [285] "Works," vol. ii.

  [286] "Nashe's Lenten Stuffe, containing the description ... of GreatYarmouth ... with a ... praise of the Red Herring," 1599, "Works," vol.v.

  [287] "Lenten Stuffe," vol. v. p. 280.

  [288] "The Returne from Pernassus," ed. W. D. Macray, Oxford, 1886, p.87.

  [289] "A Knights Conjuring," 1607, "Works," ed. Grosart, vol. v. p. xx.

  [290] Only one of this sort has been preserved: "The tragedy of Hoffmanor a revenge for a father," published in 1631. Chettle died about 1607.

  [291] London, 1595, 4to. It has never been reprinted; only one copybelonging to the Bodleian Library is known to exist.

  [292] Some also are in Greene's and Harman's vein; for example, his"Belman of London," 1608, and his "Lanthorne and candle-light," 1608, inwhich he describes, with no less success than his predecessors, "themost notorious villanies that are now practised in the kingdome."

  [293] "Dramatic Works, now first collected," London (Pearson), 1873, 4vol. 8vo; "Non-Dramatic Works," ed. Grosart, London, 1884, 5 vol. 4to,which non-dramatic works are the following:

  I. "Canaans Calamite, Jerusalem's misery," 1611 (a poem on the siege anddestruction of Jerusalem by the Romans); "The wonderfull yeare 1603" (onthe plague of London); "The Batchelars banquet," 1603 (an adaptation ofthe "Quinze joyes de mariage"). II. "The seven deadly sinnes of London... bringing the plague with them," 1606; "Newes from Hell," 1606,shortly after reprinted as "A Knights conjuring"; "The double P. P., apapist in armes," 1606 (in verse); "The Guls Horne-booke," 1609; "Jeststo make you merie," 1607. III. "Dekker his dreame," 1620 (in verse);"The Belman of London," 1608; "Lanthorne and candle-light," 1609; "Astrange horse race, at the end of which comes in the catch-polesmasque," 1613. IV. "The dead tearme or ... a dialogue betweene the twocityes of London and Westminster," 1608; "Worke for armourers ... openwarres likely to happin," 1609; "The ravens Almanacke, foretelling of aplague," &c., 1609; "A rod for run-awayes, in which ... they may beholdmany fearefull Judgements of God ... expressed in many dreadfullexamples of sudden death," 1625. V. "Foure birdes of Noahs Arke," 1613;"The pleasant comodie of Patient Grissil," 1603 (with Chettle andHaughton).

  [294] Only there was this notable difference, he died old, at aboutseventy years of age, probably in 1641.

  [295] "A Knights conjuring," 1607. In the same happy retreat Dekker,gives a place to Watson, Kyd, Marlowe, Greene, Peele, Nash, Chettle, whocomes in "sweating and blowing, by reason of his fatness" ("Non-DramaticWorks," vol. v. p. xx.).

  [296] "Notes on the Elizabethan Dramatists"; "Philip Massinger; ThomasDekker."

  [297] "Satiro-mastix or the untrussing of the humorous poet," 1602."Dramatic Works" vol. i. p. 186. This is the play Dekker wrote as arevenge for Ben Jonson's "Poetaster," 1601, in which he was himselfridiculed under the name of Demetrius.

  [298] _I.e._, Gabriel Harvey, Nash's obstinate adversary.

  [299] "Newes from Hell," "Non-Dramatic Works," vol. ii. pp. 102-103.

  [300] "Newes from Hell," "Non-Dramatic Works," vol. ii. p. 101.

  [301] "Non-Dramatic Works," vol. i. _Cf._ Defoe's "Journal of the plagueyear ... 1665," London, 1722.

  [302] "Non-Dramatic Works," vol. i. pp. 138 _et seq._

  [303] "Grobianus. De morum simplicitate, libri duo. In gratiam omniumrusticitatem amantium conscripti," Francfort, 1549, 8vo. It wastranslated into English by "R. F.," a little before Dekker adapted it:"The schoole of slovenrie: or Cato turned wrong side outward ... to theuse of all English Christendome," London, 1605, 4to. In the samecategory of works may be placed Erasmus's famous: "Moriae Encomium,"Antwerp, 1512, 4to, translated by Sir T. Chaloner: "The Praise ofFolie," London, 1549, 4to. Many scenes in the comedies of the period arewritten in a style akin to Grobianism. They are especially to be foundin Ben Jonson; see, for example, his satire of courtiers in "Cynthia'srevels," act iii. sc. 1 and 3, &c.; note how their elegancies of speechare mostly derived from plays and novels.

  [304] "The Bachelars banquet ... pleasantly discoursing the varioushumours of women," 1603; "The Guls Horne-booke," 1609; "Non-DramaticWorks," vols. i. and ii.

  [305] "Non-Dramatic Works," vol. ii. pp. 246 _et seq._

  [306] 1603; with Chettle and Haughton.

  [307] A scene at court. "_Amorphus_ (to the prentice courtier Asotus):If you had but so far gathered your spirits to you as to have taken up arush when you were out, and wagged it thus, or cleansed your teeth withit; or but turn'd aside ..." &c. Ben Jonson, "Cynthia's Revels," actiii. sc. 1.

  [308] _Cf._ Ben Jonson: "Why, throw yourself in state on the stage, asother gentlemen use, sir."--"Away, wag; what, would'st thou make animplement of me? 'Slid, the boy takes me for a piece of perspective, Ihold my life, or some silk curtain, come to hang the stage here"("Cynthia's Revels," Induction).

  [309] "Les Facheux," act i. sc. 1 (Van Laun's translation, vol. ii. p.97); _cf._ "Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes," sc. vi.

  [310] The connection of Swift with Grobianism was noticed in his time,and a new translation of Dedekind's poem, "Grobianus or the compleatBooby," 1739, was dedicated by Roger Bull "to the Rev. Dr. JonathanSwift, ... who first introduced into these kingdoms ... an ironicalmanner of writing, to the discouragement of vice, ill-manners andfolly." To come to even nearer times, Flaubert's "Bouvart et Pecuchet"may be taken as a branch of Grobianism.

  [311] "The fifteen comforts of rash and inconsiderate marriage ... doneout of French," London, 1694, 12mo, fourth edition.

  HEROICAL DEEDS IN A HEROICAL NOVEL, 1665.]