THE “HUNDRED MERRY TALES”--THE AUTHORSHIP DISCUSSED.
There is, however, a second hypothesis bearing on the parentage of the
_Tales_. In the _Interlude of the Four Elements_, which came from the
same press a few years before, there is the following passage:--
_Sensual Appetite._ Canst get my master a dish of quails,
Small birds, swallows, or wagtails?
They be light of digestion.
_Taverner._ Light of digestion? For what reason?
_Sen._ For physic putteth this reason thereto,
Because those birds fly to and fro,
And be continual moving.
_Ta._ Then know I a lighter meat than that.
_Sen._ I pray thee, tell me what?
_Ta._ If ye will needs know in short and brief,
It is even a woman’s tongue,
For that is ever stirring.
Now, the ninth story in the Jest-book, in the edition of 1526, is “Of
him that said that a woman’s tongue was lightest of digestion”; and we
have exactly the same notion reproduced. Conversely, the nineteenth
story in the _Tales_ treats “Of the four elements, where they should
soon be found”; and here very curiously an analogous notion about the
qualities of the female tongue discloses itself thus: “The wind said,
‘If ye list to speak with me, ye shall be sure to have me among aspen
leaves or else in a woman’s tongue.’” Water and fire were to be found
in a woman’s eye and in her heart; the earth alone was stationary and
steadfast. And even in the moral we are told that “by this tale ye may
learn as well the property of the four elements as the properties of a
woman.”
These are rough indications, which must go for what they are worth.
And in the same way, No. 3 of the _Tales_ relates an adventure in
connection with the performance of a stage-play in Suffolk, in which
the devil was a person of the drama. Theatrical exhibitions in the
provinces were not of very usual or frequent occurrence in those days.
This particular one is alleged to have taken place in a certain market
town; but, perhaps to prevent the possibility of giving offence, the
name is withheld. But the narrative strikes me, from its minuteness of
detail, as emanating from somebody who was on the spot, rather than
from a secondary source, and from the pains and skill with which the
plot is elaborated as the composition of a professional writer. And the
question arises whether the reporter of the two jests was not also the
author of the stage-play in Suffolk and of the _Interlude of the Four
Elements_.
I submit this suggestively and experimentally, since it appears to me
that, next to More, JOHN HEYWOOD is the most probable candidate for
the honour of having furnished Rastell with the MS. of the _Tales_;
and if he did so, we may have a sort of clue to the authorship of two
dramatic productions not hitherto comprised in the list of his writings.
Nor does the connection of More himself with the _Tales_, even under
such circumstances, absolutely fall to the ground, as Heywood and he
saw a good deal of each other; and Gabriel Harvey, Spenser’s friend,
and an affectionate student of the curious literature of the period,
informs us that some of his (Heywood’s) epigrams were founded on
conceits and devices of More.
There are, nevertheless, clear grounds for regarding this Century of
good things as a gathering to which More and Heywood were contributors,
rather than as the exclusive property of either of them, or of any
one else. For we see, for instance, that in the fortieth story a man
so celebrated and even notorious as Skelton, and at the time of the
publication of the _Tales_ still living, is described as “one Master
Skelton, a poet laureate,” which seems to argue the presence behind the
scenes of an editor not very conversant with contemporary literature
or literary history; and this might be possibly true of Rastell the
printer, but could not be so of More or of Heywood.
But then, only a little way farther--in the forty-eighth anecdote--we
are confronted with the admirable apologue “Of the friar that told the
three children’s fortunes,” where, after declaring to the horrified
mother that of her family one should be a beggar, a second a thief, and
the third an assassin, he consoles her by saying that she might make
the one who was to be a beggar _a friar_, the one who was to be a thief
_a lawyer_, and him who was destined to be a murderer _a physician_.
Here we recognise the touch and individuality of no ordinary pen, and
discover an additional explanation of the reluctance which the compiler
or contributors felt to couple any names with the volume. Attacks
on the Romish Church were treated in 1526 with a larger measure of
toleration than heretofore; but in this jest three obnoxious callings,
including that of More himself, are exposed to satire.
One drawback to the dramatic completeness of the anecdote is the
aspersion which the Friar Mendicant is made to cast on his own cloth;
and we at the same time cannot avoid discerning a trace of the root of
the incident in some _fabliau_ composed in far more primitive times
than those of the appearance of the first English jest-book. For we are
introduced to the wife of a very rich man, standing at the entrance of
her husband’s dwelling, accompanied by her children, and subsequently
with her own hands spreading the repast, of which the friar partakes.
The intention was to create a laugh at the cost of the three vocations;
but the _rédacteur_ neglected to observe all the conditions necessary
to render the hit perfectly true to art.
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