“MERRY TALES AND QUICK ANSWERS.”
But there is a second work which, in point of date and character, is
sufficiently near to that which we have just quitted to warrant a
conclusion that the editor had in its production an eye to the earlier
book. Many of the jests in _Merry Tales and Quick Answers_, printed
about 1530, resemble those which I have almost convinced myself that
Sir Thomas More and John Heywood contributed to the volume from
Rastell’s press; but, on the whole, the collection is of inferior
interest and value, and owes more to foreign and classical sources.
There is even here, however, a curious coincidence between the
fifty-third story and a feature in the Interlude before referred
to. In the anecdote the man, who is not worthy to open the gate to
the king, proposes to fetch _Master Couper_ to do it, while _Tom
Couper_ is introduced in the same sort of casual way into the dramatic
performance. Among these tales the fellow who entertained so humble an
opinion of his worth was a true coeval type, while he who elsewhere
could only see in his sovereign lord “a man in a painted garment” was a
Radical born out of his time. Yet both jests bespeak such a liberality
of temper as could enjoy a laugh at the two pieces of bucolic ignorance
alike, which makes our thoughts return naturally to More.
In indelicacy there is not much to choose between the two series; but
it has always been a misapprehension to deduce from the equivocal
situations and language, which go so far to make the marrow of these
popular compilations, a proof of the tolerance among our ancestors
of a freedom of speech no longer admissible. The grossness of early
English literature is not displayed, after all, most conspicuously
in jest-books, but in the drama; and we have assuredly nothing which
parallels in obscenity the old popular literature of the French.
There is, however, one important consideration to be taken into
account when we enter on the study of this class of material, whether
prose, poetical or dramatic,--and that is, the social station of
the individuals into whose mouths these broad pleasantries are put.
Occasionally, no doubt, expressions are ascribed, rightly or wrongly,
to men, and even to women, in an exalted rank of life, which seem
revolting to modern taste; but, although such traits do not, as a rule,
find their way into type, distinguished persons of the present day
are capable of a good deal in this direction, and in the last century
high-born dames delivered utterances which would certainly be now
viewed as extremely improper, without concealment or a consciousness of
having said anything unconventional.
The standard of politeness has perhaps been raised, if that of morality
has not. We confine ourselves in our vices to the closet, and observe
good behaviour in the street, and even, on the whole, at the theatre.
But, to return to the more immediate subject, the coarseness and
ribaldry which distinguish and season the early jest-books principally
emanate from the lower strata of the population--from the folk, in
fact--which is no whit superior at this moment to the use and enjoyment
of a similar phraseology and a similar description of merriment. Place
the carter and the bargeman, the market-woman and the orange-wench, of
the reign in which we live, side by side with the analogous characters
when the _Hundred Merry Tales_ appeared, and see whether in three
centuries and a half refinement has made much progress! _Pares cum
paribus._
I insist on this point a little, because the moral and virtuous ladies
and gentlemen of the Victorian era are in the habit of averting their
faces from the lamentable depravity of former ages, as if it were some
once rampant monster now defunct, and because the change in our manners
is vulgarly attributed to the influence of the Court. The latter
delusion arises from the common error of mistaking cause for effect;
the open profligacy of former reigns is discarded in the same way as
that of our literature and theatre; the _modus vivendi_ of the Georges
is archæological; if such doings and sayings are any longer, they are
under the rose.
But it is a pharisaical absurdity to give out that there is no such
matter as low life upstairs nowadays. Alas! it is too rife; and, it
being so, we have surely no right to be so very hard on Whitechapel and
the New Cut. That the general tone of the British community is higher
and purer proceeds from the influential preponderance of the middle
class; and the court, and in general the aristocracy, conform to the
march of civilisation.
Queer stories must be _inter nos_. Altered circumstances have rendered
it impracticable to bring them into print or to introduce them upon
the boards. Be thankful for small mercies; but do not, my dear
contemporaries, flatter yourselves that you are, warp and woof, much
better than those who read on their first appearance the _Hundred
Merry Tales_ and the _Merry Tales and Quick Answers_, or that by
reading them you would be made much worse!
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