poetic structure and style, which the author sometimes illustrates from
interludes and verses of his own. Bk. i praises poetry in general, on
familiar but non-controversial humanist lines, and discusses with some
classical erudition the origin of various types of poetry, as tragedy,
comedy, and pantomime (c. 11), comedy (c. 14), tragedy (c. 15), staging
(c. 17), pastoral (c. 18). In a brief account of English poets (c. 31)
occurs: ‘But the principall man in this profession at the same time
[Edward’s] was Maister Edward [_sic_] Ferrys a man of no lesse mirth
and felicitie that way, but of much more skil, and magnificence in his
meeter, and therefore wrate for the most part to the stage, in Tragedie
and sometimes in Comedie or Enterlude, wherein he gaue the king so
much good recreation, as he had thereby many good rewardes.... Of the
later sort I thinke thus. That for Tragedie, the Lord of Buckhurst
and Maister Edward Ferrys for such doings as I haue sene of theirs do
deserue the hyest price: Th’ Earle of Oxford and Maister Edwardes of
her Maiesties Chappell for Comedy and Enterlude.’
xlii. 1589. THOMAS NASHE.
[From an epistle _To the Gentlemen Students of Both
Universities_, prefixed to Robert Greene’s _Menaphon_ (1589;
S. R. 23 Aug. 1589), reprinted from ed. 1610, which has some
corrections possibly by Nashe, in McKerrow, iii. 311, with
valuable notes (iv. 444) upon the allusions and supposed
allusions. The suggestion of Collier that _Menaphon_ was
originally printed in 1587 appears to be baseless. Outside the
three passages quoted, Nashe praises Watson’s translation of
_Antigone_. McKerrow’s collection of material for the critical
discussion of the epistle is so full that I need only compare
briefly my conclusions with his. In (i) Nashe seems to me to
be criticizing (_a_) ‘tragedians’, which for me are clearly
‘tragic actors’, while McKerrow inclines to make them ‘writers
of tragedy’, and (_b_) their dramatists, who include blank-verse
‘Art-masters’, which I agree with McKerrow is more likely, in
view of the fact that Greene above all flourished his University
degree, to mean ‘masters of their art’ than ‘masters of Arts’,
and translating tradesmen or serving-men with no education
beyond a grammar-school. The slight suggestions that Nashe
may have had Marlowe especially in mind are perhaps hardly
sufficient to outweigh his statement in _Have with you to
Saffron Walden_ (1596) that he ‘neuer abusd Marloe’; and Marlowe
was a University man, and no tradesman or serving-man. On the
other hand, there is no specific praise of Marlowe with other
University poets in the epistle. The whole of (i) is a precise
parallel to the following lines by Thomas Brabine, also prefixed
to _Menaphon_:
‘Come foorth you witts that vaunt the pompe of speach,
And striue to thunder from a Stage-mans throate:
View _Menaphon_ a note beyond your reach;
Whose sight will make your drumming descant doate:
Players auaunt, you know not to delight;
Welcome sweete Shepheard; worth a Schollers sight.’
In (ii) I am rather more inclined than McKerrow to think that
the ‘_Nouerint_’ and the ‘Kidde in _Æsop_’ may glance at Kyd,
who was not one of the University group, and was a grammarian,
a translator, and very likely already a serving-man. But the
attempts to trace him elsewhere in the passage come to very
little; nor is one playwright only necessarily in question, so
that, although the ‘handfuls of Tragicall speeches’ may point
to a play of _Hamlet_ as already extant in 1589, the inference
that Kyd was its author becomes extremely thin. In (iii) Nashe
attacks the players as parasitic on the poets, in terms closely
resembling those used later by Greene in his _Groatsworth of
Wit_ (No. xlviii). Probably Roscius is here Alleyn, and Caesar
stands for the poets in general. I do not agree with Fleay, _L.
of S._ 10, 99, that the epistle reflects a rivalry between the
poets of the Queen’s men and those of Pembroke’s, who indeed did
not yet exist, or any other company. The issue is between the
University poets on the one hand and the players and illiterate
poets on the other.]
P. 311. ‘I am not ignorant how eloquent our gowned age is grown of
late; so that euery mechanicall mate abhorres the English he was borne
too, and plucks, with a solemne periphrasis, his _vt vales_ from the
inkehorne: which I impute, not so much to the perfection of Arts,
as to the seruile imitation of vainglorious Tragedians, who contend
not so seriously to excell in action, as to embowell the cloudes in
a speech of comparison, thinking themselues more than initiated in
Poets immortality, if they but once get _Boreas_ by the beard and the
heauenly Bull by the deaw-lap. But heerein I cannot so fully bequeath
them to folly, as their ideot Art-masters, that intrude themselues to
our eares as the Alcumists of eloquence, who (mounted on the stage of
arrogance) think to out-braue better pennes with the swelling bumbast
of a bragging blanke verse. Indeede it may bee the ingrafted ouerflow
of some kil-cow conceit, that ouercloyeth their imagination with a
more than drunken resolution, being not extemporall in the inuention
of any other meanes to vent their manhoode, commits the disgestion of
their cholericke incumbrances to the spacious volubilitie of a drumming
decasillabon. Mongst this kind of men that repose eternitie in the
mouth of a Player, I can but ingrosse some deep read Grammarians, who,
hauing no more learning in their skull than will serue to take vp a
commoditie, nor Art in their braine than was nourished in a seruing
mans idlenesse, will take vppon them to be the ironicall Censors of
all, when God and Poetrie doth know they are the simplest of all. To
leaue these to the mercy of their Mother tongue, that feed on nought
but the crums that fall from the Translators trencher, I come (sweet
friend) to thy _Arcadian Menaphon_, ...’ P. 315. ‘I’le turne backe to
my first text of Studies of delight, and talke a little in friendship
with a few of our triuiall translators. It is a common practise now a
dayes amongst a sort of shifting companions, that runne through euery
Art and thriue by none, to leaue the trade of _Nouerint_, whereto
they were borne, and busie themselues with the indeuours of Art, that
could scarcely Latinize their neck verse if they should haue neede;
yet English _Seneca_ read by Candlelight yeelds many good sentences,
as _Blood is a begger_, and so forth; and if you intreate him faire
in a frostie morning, hee will affoord you whole _Hamlets_, I should
say handfuls of Tragicall speeches. But O griefe! _Tempus edax rerum_,
whats that will last alwayes? The Sea exhaled by droppes will in
continuance bee drie, and _Seneca_, let blood line by line and page by
page, at length must needes die to our Stage; which makes his famished
followers to imitate the Kidde in _Æsop_, who, enamoured with the Foxes
newfangles, forsooke all hopes of life to leape into a newe occupation;
and these men, renouncing all possibilities of credite or estimation,
to intermeddle with Italian Translations: wherein how poorely they
haue plodded, (as those that are neither prouenzall men, nor are able
to distinguish of Articles,) let all indifferent Gentlemen that haue
trauailed in that tongue discerne by their two-pennie pamphlets: & no
maruell though their home borne mediocritie bee such in this matter;
for what can bee hoped of those that thrust _Elisium_ into hell, and
haue not learned, so long as they haue liued in the Spheres, the iust
measure of the Horizon without an hexameter? Sufficeth them to bodge
vp a blanke verse with ifs and ands, and otherwhile for recreation
after their Candle-stuffe, hauing starched their beards most curiously,
to make a Peripateticall path into the inner parts of the Citie, and
spend two or three howers in turning ouer French _Doudie_, where they
attract more infection in one minute, then they can do eloquence all
daies of their life, by conuersing with any Authors of like argument.’
P. 323. ‘There are extant about _London_ many most able men to reuiue
Poetry ... as, for example, _Mathew Roydon_, _Thomas Atchelow_, and
_George Peele_; the first of whom, as he hath shewed himselfe singular
in the immortall Epitaph of his beloued _Astrophell_, besides many
other most absolute Comike inuentions (made more publike by euery mans
praise, than they can be by my speech), so the second hath more than
once or twice manifested his deepe witted schollership in places of
credite: and for the last, though not the least of them all, I dare
commend him to all that know him, as the chiefe supporter of pleasance
now liuing, the _Atlas_ of Poetrie, and _primus verborum Artifex_:
whose first increase, the arraignement of _Paris_, might pleade to
your opinions his pregnant dexterity of wit, and manifold varietie of
inuention; where in (_me iudice_) he goeth a steppe beyond all that
write. Sundry other sweete gentlemen I know, that haue vaunted their
pennes in priuate deuices, and tricked vp a company of taffata fooles
with their feathers, whose beauty if our Poets had not peecte with the
supply of their periwigs, they might haue antickt it vntill this time
vp and downe the Countrey with the King of _Fairies_, and dined euery
day at the pease porredge ordinary with _Delphrigus_. But _Tolossa_
hath forgot that it was sometime sacked, and beggars that euer they
carried their fardels on footback: and in truth no meruaile, when as
the deserued reputation of one _Roscius_ is of force to enrich a rabble
of counterfets; yet let subiects for all their insolence dedicate a _De
profundis_ euery morning to the preseruation of their _Caesar_, least
their increasing indignities returne them ere long to their iugling
to mediocrity, and they bewaile in weeping blankes the wane of their
_Monarchie_.’
xliii. 1590. ROBERT GREENE.
[From _Francescos Fortunes: Or, The second part of Greenes Neuer
too Late_ (1590), reprinted in _Works_, viii. 111. For the
Roscius story, cf. No. xii and ch. xi.]
P. 129. A palmer, telling the tale of Francesco, which contains some
probably autobiographical matter on the hero’s writing for the stage
(cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Greene), is interrupted by a request for his
‘iudgement of Playes, Playmakers and Players’. After observing that
‘some for being too lauish against that facultie, haue for their
satiricall inuectiues been well canuased’, he sketches the growth
of comedy at Athens and Rome, where ‘couetousnesse crept into the
qualitie’ and ‘the Actors, by continuall vse grewe not onely excellent,
but rich and insolent’. This is illustrated (p. 132) by a rebuke of
Cicero to Roscius, ‘Why _Roscius_, art thou proud with _Esops_ Crow,
being pranct with the glorie of others feathers? of thy selfe thou
canst say nothing, and if the Cobler hath taught thee to say Aue
Caesar, disdain not thy tutor, because thou pratest in a Kings chamber:
what sentence thou vtterest on the stage, flowes from the censure of
our wittes, and what sentence or conceipte of the inuention the people
applaud for excellent, that comes from the secrets of our knowledge.
I graunt your action, though it be a kind of mechanical labour; yet
wel done tis worthie of praise: but you worthlesse, if for so small a
toy you waxe proud’. _Publius Seruilius_ also bade a player ‘bee not
so bragge of thy silken roabes, for I sawe them but yesterday make a
great shew in a broakers shop’. The palmer concludes, ‘Thus sir haue
you heard my opinion briefly of plaies, that Menander deuised them for
the suppressing of vanities, necessarie in a common wealth, as long as
they are vsed in their right kind; the play makers worthy of honour for
their Arte: & players, men deseruing both prayse and profite, as long
as they wax neither couetous nor insolent’.
xliv. 1591. SAMUEL COX.
[This letter of 15 Jan. 1591 to an unknown correspondent,
brother of one Mr. Lewin, occurs with other letters by Cox
in the letter-book of Sir Christopher Hatton (Nicolas,
_Hatton_, xxix), to whom he was secretary.]
Has his letter ‘reprehending me in some sort for my sharpness against
the use of plays’. Cites view of Fathers, especially Chrysostom.
Regrets present toleration of ‘these dangerous schools of licentious
liberty, whereunto more people resort than to sermons or prayers’.
Now ‘rich men give more to a player for a song which he shall sing in
one hour, than to their faithful servants for serving them a whole
year.... I could wish that players would use themselves nowadays, as
in ancient former times they have done, which was only to exercise
their interludes in the time of Christmas, beginning to play in the
holidays and continuing until twelfth tide, or at the furthest until
Ashwednesday, of which players I find three sorts of people: the first,
such as were in wages with the king and played before him some time at
Hallowmass, and then in the later holidays until twelfthtide, and after
that, only in Shrovetide; and these men had other trades to live of,
and seldom or never played abroad at any other times of the whole year.
The second sort were such as pertained to noblemen, and were ordinary
servants in their house, and only for Christmas times used such plays,
without making profession to be players to go abroad for gain, for in
such cases they were subject to the statute against retainers. The
third sort were certain artisans in good towns and great parishes, as
shoemakers, tailors, and such like, that used to play either in their
town-halls, or some time in churches, to make the people merry; where
it was lawful for all persons to come without exacting any money for
their access, having only somewhat gathered of the richer sort by the
churchwardens for their apparel and other necessaries.’
xlv. 1591. SIR JOHN HARINGTON.
[From _A Preface, or rather a Briefe Apologie of Poetrie, and of
the Author and Translator_, prefixed to Harington’s translation
of Ariosto’s _Orlando Furioso_ (1591), reprinted in Gregory
Smith, ii. 194.]
Harington upholds poetry on humanist lines, and answers the objections
of Cornelius Agrippa. P. 209. ‘The last reproofe is lightnes &
wantonnes.... First, the Tragicall is meerly free from it, as
representing onely the cruell and lawlesse proceedings of Princes,
mouing nothing but pitie or detestation. The Comicall, whatsoeuer
foolish playmakers make it offend in this kind, yet being rightly vsed,
it represents them so as to make the vice scorned and not embraced....
And for Tragedies, to omit other famous Tragedies, that that was played
at _S. Iohns_ in Cambridge, of _Richard the 3_, would moue
(I thinke) _Phalaris_ the tyraunt, and terrifie all tyrannous
minded men from following their foolish ambitious humors, seeing how
his ambition made him kill his brother, his nephews, his wife, beside
infinit others, and, last of all, after a short and troublesome raigne,
to end his miserable life, and to haue his body harried after his
death. Then, for Comedies, how full of harmeles myrth is our Cambridge
_Pedantius_? and the Oxford _Bellum Grammaticale_? or, to
speake of a London Comedie, how much good matter, yea and matter of
state, is there in that Comedie cald the play of the Cards, in which
it is showed how foure Parasiticall knaues robbe the foure principall
vocations of the Realme, _videl_, the vocation of Souldiers,
Schollers, Marchants, and Husbandmen? Of which Comedie I cannot forget
the saying of a notable wise counseller that is now dead, who when some
(to sing _Placebo_) aduised that it should be forbidden, because
it was somewhat too plaine, and indeed as the old saying is, _sooth
boord is no boord_, yet he would haue it allowed, adding it was fit
that _They which doe that they should not should heare that they
would not_.’
xlvi. 1592. THOMAS NASHE.
[From _Pierce Penilesse his Supplication to the Diuell_ (1592;
S. R. 8 Aug. 1592), reprinted in McKerrow, i. 149.]
[Extracts.] P. 211. ‘There is a certaine waste of the people for whome
there is no vse, but warre: and these men must haue some employment
still to cut them off.... To this effect, the pollicie of Playes is
very necessary, howsoeuer some shallow-braind censurers (not the
deepest serchers into the secrets of gouernment) mightily oppugne
them. For whereas the after-noone beeing the idlest time of the day;
wherein men that are their owne masters (as Gentlemen of the Court,
the Innes of the Courte, and the number of Captaines and Souldiers
about _London_) do wholy bestow themselues vpon pleasure, and that
pleasure they deuide (howe vertuously it skils not) either into
gameing, following of harlots, drinking, or seeing a Playe: is it not
then better (since of foure extreames all the world cannot keepe them
but they will choose one) that they should betake them to the least,
which is Playes? Nay, what if I prooue Playes to be no extreame; but
a rare exercise of vertue? First, for the subiect of them (for the
most part) it is borrowed out of our English Chronicles, wherein our
forefathers valiant acts (that haue line long buried in rustie brasse
and worme-eaten bookes) are reuiued, and they themselues raised from
the Graue of Obliuion, and brought to pleade their aged Honours in
open presence: than which, what can be a sharper reproofe to these
degenerate effeminate dayes of ours? How would it haue ioyed braue
_Talbot_ (the terror of the French) to thinke that after he had lyne
two hundred yeares in his Tombe, hee should triumphe againe on the
Stage, and haue his bones newe embalmed with the teares of ten thousand
spectators at least (at seuerall times) who, in the Tragedian that
represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding? I will
defend it against any Collian, or clubfisted Vsurer of them all, there
is no immortalitie can be giuen a man on earth like vnto Playes.... All
Artes to them are vanitie: and, if you tell them what a glorious thing
it is to haue _Henrie_ the fifth represented on the Stage, leading
the French King prisoner, and forcing both him and the Dolphin to
sweare fealty, I, but (will they say) what do we get by it? Respecting
neither the right of Fame that is due to true Nobilitie deceased, nor
what hopes of eternitie are to be proposed to aduentrous mindes, to
encourage them forward, but onely their execrable luker, and fillthie
vnquenchable auarice. They know when they are dead they shall not be
brought vpon the Stage for any goodnes, but in a merriment of the
Vsurer and the Diuel, or buying Armes of the Herald, who giues them the
Lyon, without tongue, tayle, or tallents, because his maister whome
hee must serue is a Townesman, and a man of peace, and must not keepe
any quarrelling beasts to annoy his honest neighbours. In Playes, all
coosonages, all cunning drifts ouer-guylded with outward holinesse,
all stratagems of warre, all the cankerwormes that breede on the rust
of peace, are most liuely anatomiz’d: they shewe the ill successe of
treason, the fall of hastie climbers, the wretched end of vsurpers, the
miserie of ciuill dissention, and how iust God is euermore in punishing
of murther.... Whereas some Petitioners of the Counsaile against them
obiect, they corrupt the youth of the Cittie, and withdrawe Prentises
from theyr worke; they heartily wishe they might bee troubled with none
of their youth nor their prentises; for some of them (I meane the ruder
handicrafts seruants) neuer come abroade, but they are in danger of
vndoing: and as for corrupting them when they come, thats false; for no
Play they haue, encourageth any man to tumult or rebellion, but layes
before such the halter and the gallowes; or praiseth or approoueth
pride, lust, whoredome, prodigalitie, or drunkennes, but beates them
downe vtterly. As for the hindrance of Trades and Traders of the Citie
by them, that is an Article foysted in by the Vintners, Alewiues, and
Victuallers, who surmise, if there were no Playes, they should haue
all the companie that resort to them, lye bowzing and beere-bathing in
their houses euery after-noone.... Our Players are not as the players
beyond Sea, a sort of squirting baudie Comedians, that haue whores
and common Curtizens to playe womens partes, and forbeare no immodest
speech or vnchast action that may procure laughter; but our Sceane
is more statelye furnisht than euer it was in the time of _Roscius_,
our representations honourable, and full of gallant resolution, not
consisting, like theirs, of a Pantaloun, a Whore, and a Zanie, but
of Emperours, Kings, and Princes; whose true Tragedies (_Sophocleo
cothurno_) they do vaunt. Not _Roscius_ nor _Æsope_, those admyred
tragedians that haue liued euer since before Christ was borne, could
euer performe more in action than famous _Ned Allen_.... If I euer
write any thing in Latine (as I hope one day I shall) not a man of any
desert here amongst vs, but I will haue vp. _Tarlton_, _Ned Allen_,
_Knell_, _Bentlie_, shall be made knowne to _France_, _Spaine_, and
_Italie_: and not a part that they surmounted in, more than other, but
I will there note and set downe, with the manner of theyr habites and
attyre.’
xlvii. 1592. ROBERT GREENE.
[From _A Quip for an Upstart Courtier: Or, A quaint Dispute
between Velvet Breeches and Cloth Breeches. Wherein is plainely
set downe the disorders in all Estates and Trades_ (_Works_, xi.
205).]
A jury is being empanelled between the disputants, who represent new
and old ideals of gentry. P. 289. ‘An ouerworne gentleman attired in
veluet and satin’ is followed by ‘two pert Applesquires: the one had
a murrey cloth gowne on, faced down before with gray conny, and laid
thicke on the sleeves with lace, which he quaintly bare vp to shew his
white taffata hose, and black silk stockings: a huge ruffe about his
necke wrapt in his great head like a wicker cage, a little Hat with
brims like the wings of a doublet, wherein he wore a jewell of glasse,
as broad as a chancery seale: after him followed two boies in cloakes
like butterflies: carrying one of them his cutting sword of choller,
the other his dauncing rapier of delight.’ The ‘ouerworne gentleman’ is
a poet, the ‘applesquires’ a player and the usher of a dancing school.
Velvet Breeches thinks the poet ‘a proud fellow’, the others ‘plaine,
honest, humble men, that for a penny or an old-cast sute of apparell
will do anything. Indeed quoth Cloth Breeches you say troth, they are
but too humble, for they be so lowly, that they be base minded: I mean
not in their lookes or apparell, for so they be peacockes and painted
asses, but in their corse of life, for they care not how they get
crowns, I meane how basely so they haue them, and yet of the two I hold
the Plaier to be the better Christian, although in his owne imagination
too full of selfe liking and selfe loue, and is vnfit to be of the Iury
though I hide and conceale his faults and fopperies, in that I haue
beene merry at his sports: onely this I must say, that such a plaine
country fellow as my selfe, they bring in as clownes and fooles to
laugh at in their play, whereas they get by vs, and of our almes the
proudest of them all doth line. Well, to be breefe, let him trot to the
stage, for he shall be none of the Iury.’
xlviii. 1592. ROBERT GREENE.
[From _Greens Groatsworth of Wit_ (1596; S. R. 20 Sept. 1592),
reprinted in Grosart, xii. 131, and C. M. Ingleby, _Shakespere
Allusion-Books_, Part i (1874, _N. S. S._); cf. ch. xxiii, s.v.
Greene.]