His
description
as 'a fellow.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v03
'
His excesses, on the other hand, are those of a poet who forgets
that he is now committed to prose. He enters upon a pedestrian
task, unprepared to forego poetical flight; and, freed from the
restraints which verse imposes, he strains even the limits of a
more willing prose. With coherence of structure he is not greatly
concerned. His sentences, long and rambling, are yet incapable
of expressing his wealth of thought, and are, therefore, expanded
by frequent parentheses. When he aims at emphasis, he occasion-
ally employs Lyly's trick of antithesis, or, perhaps, the epigram-
matic effect of the oxymoron? : but his favourite artifice is that of
a jingle of words’, which lacks effect as it lacks dignity.
The same excess characterises his use of ornament, for which
he depends, not upon erudite display, but, rather, upon a free use
of clever conceits in which sentiment is ascribed to inanimate
objects. Sparingly used as an accompaniment to highly-wrought
verse, the device is capable of excellent results, but, when frequently
employed in ordinary prose, it soon becomes smothered by its own
sweetness. Sidney, in short, rides the 'pathetic fallacy' to death ;
he is for ever hearing 'tongues in trees'; and commonplace thought,
arrayed in delicate fancy, often leads to grotesque effect".
Sidney's prose style is, however, not all extravagance, it con-
tains much that suggests the happier moods of a cultured mind.
The famous prayer of Pamela, for instance, reads with a noble
liturgical ring; pregnant apophthegms, scattered here and there,
gleam like jewels of thought“, while even the writer's foibles could
6
1 Thus, a bare house is said to be '& picture of miserable happiness and rich
beggary': maidenly charms are described as “a wanton modesty, an enticing
soberness. '
2 Cf. . in the dressing of her hair and apparel she might see neither a careful art
nor an art of carefulness, . . . a neglected chance. . . could not imperfect her perfection' (see
Arcadia, ed. 1674, p. 244).
3 E. g. a sewing operation is described in the following terms : 'the needle itself
would have been loth to have gone fromward such a mistress but that it hoped to
return thitherward very quickly again, the cloth looking with many eyes upon her,
and lovingly embracing the wounds she gave' (ed. 1674, p. 260).
* Cf. 'all is but lip-wisdom that wants experience': 'the journey of high Honor
lies not in plain ways': 'a lamentable tune is the sweetest musick to a woful mind. '
## p. 355 (#377) ############################################
Its Style
Style and Influence 355
produce, at times, distinctly virtuous results, when they enter into
some of his most glowing descriptions? . Sidney's extravagances
were, in fact, not altogether a vain display. Lyly, in an age of
poetry, gave to prose the subtle effects of harmony and balance;
Sidney incidentally showed how dull prose might be lit up with
flowers of fancy; and his work is, for all time, a rich mine of
poetic ore.
The popularity of the work may be gauged from its frequent
reappearances, as well as from its subsequent influence upon
various writers. Upon the drama, in particular, its influence was
considerable. It popularised the new machinery of the disguise
of the sexes; it also suggested fresh situations arising out of
fanciful realms such as Arden and Bohemia ; while its love-
passages must also have induced greater interest in the characteri-
sation of women. It furnished episodes for more than one type
of work. It supplied King Lear with the under-plot of Gloucester
and his sons; Quarles with the material for his metrical tale
Argalus and Parthenia (1629). Dramatic works, like Day's Ile
of Guls (1606), Beaumont and Fletcher's Cupid's Revenge (1615)
and Shirley's Arcadia, are, in some sort, adaptations of its theme? ,
while Webster's Duchess of Malfi is indebted to it for certain
figures and phrases". Moreover, it inspired Lodge's Rosalynde,
and lady Wroth's Urania (1621), both of which are imitations
in novel form; and, lastly, its style set the fashion which helped
to ring out the reign of Lyly.
While Sidney thus dreamed of his golden world, there was one
who, under less happy circumstances, was to traverse the same
fields. Robert Greene is the second great romancer of the Eliza-
bethan period, in which he appears as a picturesque but pathetic
Bohemian, with 'wit lent from Heaven but vices sent from Hell. '
Before he had finished with Cambridge, his moral nature was
tainted, and, after that, his way lay perpetually over stormy seas.
A glimpse of happier things seemed promised in 1586, but, once
again, his evil genius led him astray, until, finally, he was rescued
1 Cf. the oft-quoted description of the land of Arcadia (ed. 1674, p. 6), and the
description of the field for shepherds’ sports : 'through the midst (of the field] there
ran a sweet brook which did both hold the eye open with her azure streams and yet
seek to close the eye with the purling noise upon the pebbles it ran over : the field
itself being set in some places with roses and in all the rest constantly preserving a
flourishing green,
the roses added such a ruddy shew unto it as though the field were
bashful at its own beauty' (ed. 1674, p. 68).
• To these might be added Glapthorne's Argalus and Parthenia; Shirley's Andro-
mana ; Mucedorus ; McNamara Morgan's Philoclea (1754).
3 See Notes and Queries, 10 Ser. vol. II, pp. 221 ff.
23-2
## p. 356 (#378) ############################################
356
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
by a poor shoemaker in 1592, under whose rough shelter he made
a pathetic end. His life had been one of struggle and drift, a
wayward course of frustrated good intentions; and these things
left their impress upon what he wrote, and upon his manner of
writing. In the first place, he wrote merely to sell, and, as a
consequence, he resembles a sensitive barometer, indicating the
literary vogue from day to day. When Lyly was popular, Greene
adopted his methods; when romance was called for, he also com-
plied; his attempt at the pastoral followed Sidney's success; while
his realistic pamphlets responded to a yet later demand. Secondly,
with numerous creditors ever driving him on, he resorts in his
haste to plagiarism and repetition? He repeats himself without
a blush : about thirteen pages of his Myrrour of Modestie occur
in his Never too late, and parts of Planetomachia reappear in
Perimedes the Blacksmith; from Euphues, he abstracts numerous
similes, while from T(homas) B(owes's) translation of Peter de la Pri-
maudaye's French Academy (1586), he takes entire passages when
they please his fancy. And yet, though in life he followed the
worse, he approved the better; his work is free from licentious-
ness, he never 'gave the looser cause to laugh. ' His better self
is revealed when, in his earlier work, he writes as a 'Homer of
women,' when he sings in Menaphon a tender cradle-song, or when
he works into his verse the saddening refrain of his life's story.
Greene's chief romances are Pandosto (1588), Perimedes the
Blacksmith (1588) and Menaphon (1589). The first deals with
the story of Dorastus and Fawnia, which Shakespeare afterwards
refined in his Winter's Tale, adding such characters as Autolycus
and Paulina, and removing from those he adopted their puppet-
like stiffness. Perimedes embodies an evening tale, told by the
fireside of the idyllic blacksmith, the story being based upon one
in the Decameron (Giorn. II, Nov. II); the motive is that of the
separation and reunion of kindred, and the chief figure is the
noble Mariana In Menaphon, the scene is laid in the realm of
Arcadia, where occur the adventures of the shipwrecked princess
Sephestia, who is loved by the shepherd Menaphon, but is duly
restored to her husband and son, disguised as shepherds. Sidney's
influence is apparent here, primarily, in the pastoral background;
but, when Menaphon promises Sephestia that the mountaine tops
shall be thy mornings walke, and the shadie vallies thy evenings
arbour,' it is further evident that Sidney, rather than Lyly, has
become the model of style. The plot, apparently, is taken from
2 Cf. Hart, H. C. , Notes and Queries, 10 Ser. vol. iv.
## p. 357 (#379) ############################################
Greene's Romances
357
the narrative of Curan and Argentile in Warner's Albion's
England; and the Thracian Wonder by a later pen, is a dramatic
adaptation of the pastoral romance?
Other romances of Greene, though of less importance, must
also be mentioned. In 1584 appeared his Gwydonius and Arbasto,
two romances of an earlier heroic type, which were followed, in
1592, by Philomela, an attractive story, in honour of lady Fitz-
water. The central incident of this last romance consists of a
wager, made by a jealous husband, concerning his wife's fidelity-
a favourite theme of Boccaccio—and the work is confessedly
‘penned to approve of women's chastity. "?
From the point of view of art, Greene's romantic fiction cannot
be said to rank very high, though it comprises interesting narra-
tives, of moral and learned tendency, which waft their readers
into the pleasant but fanciful realms of Bohemia and Arcadia.
There is, however, considerable lack of structural skill, of artistic
restraint and verisimilitude, in dealing with the affairs of the
heart; as with Sidney, the art of story-telling in prose was yet in
its infancy. But one pleasing feature of these works is the skill
with which women-portraits are drawn : for the romances embody
such creations as Myrania and Fawnia, Mariana and Sephestia,
women of the faithful and modest type. It was only after 1588
that the reverence and sympathy which these portraits betray on
the part of their author was to change into the 'bitterest hate. '
In Alcida, a love pamphlet of 1588, he first revealed 'woman's
wanton ways'; and, subsequently, he depicted fascinating sirens
such as Infida (Never too late) and Lamilia (Groatsworth of Wit),
who form a marked contrast with his earlier types. Excellent
occasional verse is another outstanding feature of these prose
romances; it culminates in Menaphon, as, for instance, in the
lines of Melicertus on the description of his mistress, while the
cradle song beginning
Weepe not my wanton! smile upon my knee!
When thou art olde, ther's grief inough for thee!
is notable even among Elizabethan lyrics.
1 See Brereton, J. le Gay, Mod. Lang. Rev. vol. II, pp. 34–38, and Adams, J. Q. , Jr. ,
Mod. Phil. in, Jan. 1906.
? He also wrote other prose pamphlets reminiscent of earlier types of composition :
thus, in his Planetomachia (1585), a dispute between the planets Venus and Saturn as
to their respective influences on mankind, are to be found traces of the old débat,
together with reminiscences of the ancient faith in the misticall science of astro-
nomie': Orpharion (1588), on the other hand, embodies an imaginary dream, while
in the Spanish Masquerado (1588) Greene turns from love to politics and indulges in
a fierce tirade against the affairs of Spain.
## p. 358 (#380) ############################################
358
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
Less interesting, because less tragic, is the personality of
Thomas Lodge, who also was responsible for certain romances.
During his Oxford days, he fell under Lyly's influence, which
accounts for the Euphuistic strain which pervades all his works.
His restless, unsettled career was typical of his age. He began
with law, took to literature and ended as a medical man, while,
from time to time, he indulged in lengthy cruises abroad. His first
romance, Forbonius and Prisceria (1584), is a slight performance,
and consists of a story of blighted affection, the subject of which
seeks refuge in a pastoral life. Rosalynde, Euphues Golden
Legacie (1590) 'fetcht from the Canaries,' is, on the other hand,
one of the most pleasing of all the romances, and, upon it,
Shakespeare, as is well known, based his As You Like It. It is
a fresh story, steeped in idyllic sentiment, the charm of which
even a Euphuistic manner is unable to dull. Lodge
have written it on a cruise to the straits of Magellan, whence
“every line was wet with the surge'; but the environment worked
only by way of contrast, for pastoral scenes and rural notes are
the products of this pen at work on the high seas. The story itself is
based on The Tale of Gamelyn, a fourteenth century ballad of the
Robin Hood cycle, which relates how the hero, defrauded by his
elder brother, takes to the forest and becomes an outlaw! This
story of earlier England is removed by Lodge into the region of
pastoral romance, and the English outlaws become Arcadians of
the Italian type, polished in speech and courtly in manner. A love
element is woven into the tale ; Rosalynde and Alinda, as well as
Phoebe, appear on the scene; and the plot develops, as in the
Arcadia, by means of disguisals of sex. The narrative is also
varied by the insertion of occasional verse, though the variations
lack subtlety and the inserted eclogues frequently drag. But
where the treatment most suffers is in the handling of character,
which reveals no development, and is, moreover, stiff and formal.
Shakespeare appreciated the charm and freshness of the woodland
scenes, and he appropriated the elements of a good love-tale; but
he also detected the unreality of Lodge's creations, and, while he
quickens them into life in his own incomparable way, through the
humours of Touchstone he smiles at the inconsistencies and un-
realities which he takes care to remove. Another of Lodge's.
romances, Margarite of America, written in the winter of 1592
and published 1596, was also claimed to have been written at sea,
on a voyage to South America with Master Thomas Cavendish;
and the story, apparently, was taken from a Spanish work in the
i Cf. vol. 1, p. 298.
## p. 359 (#381) ############################################
Ford, Breton and Munday
359
Jesuit library at Santos, Brazil. A number of Cavendish's men
certainly stayed at that place, and some are known to have been
lodged at the Jesuit college. But the Spanish element is easily
overrated ; and several of its sonnets are borrowed from Italian
sources, more particularly from Lodovico Dolce and Paschale? .
The remaining works of a romantic kind present nothing new.
Emanuel Ford's Parismus (1598), and its sequel, Parismenos
(1599), are obvious imitations of the works of Greene. The scene
is placed in Bohemia, and the action is made up of the usual
excitements of princely love and war; the general tone, however,
is less scrupulously moral than is the case with Greene, whence
Meres's censure of Ford's work as being 'hurtful to youth. It
should be added that the story thus handled by Ford is reminiscent
of Romeo and Juliet, and it is more than probable that the writer
owes an unacknowledged debt to that dramatic work. Nicholas
Breton is another of Greene's successors, his chief romantic work
consisting of Strange Fortunes of two excellent princes (1600).
Like Ford, he manages to shake himself free of faded Euphuisms,
but his methods of romance are the methods of Greene, stiffened,
perhaps, by a sense of inartistic symmetry. Nor must the Spanish
romances, popularised by Anthony Munday in his English transla-
tions, be entirely forgotten. Between 1580 and 1590, he produced
those versions of the Amadis and Palmerin cycles which represent
modifications of the Arthurian romance. The works were viewed
with disfavour by the cultured classes, on account of their pre-
posterous plots, and the crudeness and inaccuracy of their render-
ing. Munday achieved a popular success, but he added little to
his reputation, or to the dignity of the Elizabethan romance.
Before the last decade of the century was well advanced, a
marked change came over works of fiction. By a sort of normal
reaction, idealism gave way to realism, the romance to the realistic
pamphlet and story, and, from Arcadia and Bohemia with their
courtly amenities, the scene moved to London and its everyday
life. The chief writers of this type of work were Greene, Nashe and
Deloney, who, however, differ somewhat in the methods they adopt.
Greene relates his own life-story, a grim narrative, which reveals,
incidentally, much of the seamier side of life; and this he follows
up with a series of revelations as to the tricks and knaveries of
London rogues. Nashe, on the other hand, while less gloomy,
1 Cf. Kastner, L. E. , Mod. Lang. Rev. vol. 11, ii, 156-8.
3 Note the song 'In Praise of a Deggar's life,' a variant on the earlier theme of the
mean estate, See Davison's Poetical Rapsody, Collier's reprint, p. 161.
## p. 360 (#382) ############################################
360
Elizabethan Prose Prose
Fiction
is more satirical in what he has to say. He deals with follies
and quackeries, rather than vices, and, while his methods are
sufficiently trenchant, he has an eye to the humorous side of
things: in his picaresque novel, the rogue becomes a hero. Deloney,
again, has neither the grim realism of the one nor the force-
ful satire of the other. He is content to depict citizen life with a
proper regard for the dignity of the crafts, and with a quiet sense
of humour, which is by no means inconsistent with his more
serious intentions.
Greene's autobiographical work begins in his Mourning Gar-
ment (1590) and Never too late (1590). He does not, as yet, deal
directly with London life, though his own experiences, lightly
veiled, form the nucleus of the tales. The Mourning Garment
is an adaptation of the story of the Prodigal Son, with the addition
of pastoral details as reminders of his earlier craft. But Greene is
no longer 'Love's Philosopher,' as, indeed, he confesses; Philador
gets into difficulties through the society of women, those Panthers
that allure, the syrens that entice,' and the succeeding details are
those of the Biblical narrative. In Never too late, the author's
career is more closely followed. Here, it is Francesco who im-
personates Greene; and he relates how he had married a gentle-
woman, whom he abandoned for one less worthy, and how he was
helped in his distress by strolling actors. These are well-known
incidents in the life of Greene; but, when Francesco subsequently
becomes reconciled to his injured wife, Greene pathetically suggests
an event which, unhappily, found no counterpart in his actual life.
In 1592, further autobiographical work was penned by Greene on
his death-bed, when the veil concealing the author's identity is de-
liberately lifted. The main facts of his life are again dealt with, and,
in the Groatsworth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance,
the writer is careful to state that Roberto is himself. The other
death-bed pamphlet, The Repentance of Robert Greene, is still
more direct; its style is, perhaps, inferior to that of his earlier
work, and the writer seems intent on painting his life in the most
sombre colours.
More direct descriptions of London life appear in further
pamphlets, in which Greene exposes rogues and depicts honest
tradesmen. The former object underlies his Notable Discovery
of Coosnage (1591). Awdeley and Harman, as has been seen, had
dealt with the vagabond classes, and had specified for public
benefit the various classes of knaves, while Copland's Hye Way
to the Spyttel Hous gave the earliest account of the thievish cant
>
## p. 361 (#383) ############################################
1
Greene's Realistic Work 361
known as 'pedlyng frenche' Greene, however, is indebted to none
of these, except, perhaps, for the general idea. He is concerned
with neither pedlars, nor gypsies, nor itinerant rogues; his aim,
rather, is to warn country people against the snares of London. It
is the wiles of panders and courtesans, card-sharpers and swindlers,
that he undertakes to reveal, and this the Notable Discovery
accomplishes. So successful was he, in fact, that an attempt
was made upon his life, and A Defence of Conny-Catching
appeared as an impudent rejoinder. In 1592, Greene followed up
the attack by A Disputation between a He Conny-Catcher and a
She Conny-Catcherl, a lurid description of the London demi-
monde, which concludes with a pathetic account of the reclaiming
of a courtesan. And in The Blacke Booke's Messenger of the same
ye Greene once more wages war with rascals, by sketching the
grimy career of a celebrated rogue, one Ned Browne, whose
belated repentance takes place in the neighbourhood of the
scaffold.
Besides dealing in this way with roguery, Greene also gives
some attention to the more respectable side of London life, in his
Quip for an Upstart Courtier or a Quaint Dispute between
Velvet-Breeches and Cloth-Breeches (1592). The dispute is as to
whether the courtier (i. e. Velvet-Breeches), or the tradesman
(Cloth-Breeches) is deserving of the greater respect, and the
decision is duly referred to a jury of tradesmen. This brings
together a body of typical citizens, and is thus a device which
enables the author to introduce his projected class-descriptions.
The work reveals Greene's democratic sympathies, for he not only
finds much interest in his commonplace types, but he also takes
care, while giving short shrift to his upstart courtier, to assign more
flattering treatment to the London tradesman. And this democratic
attitude is not devoid of a certain significance, especially when a
similar sympathy appears in Deloney's work: it explains, in some
measure, the impulse which originated this realistic section of
Elizabethan fiction. The form of the work is that of the medieval
dream-vision, the fundamental idea, apparently, being taken from
an anonymous poem, A Debate between Pride and Lowliness.
All this work of Greene had meant a considerable contribution
to the literature dealing with contemporary life. With the author
i Conny-catchers were London rogues who duped simple people by various tricks
and who primarily obtained their name from those typical cheats, the pedlars—those
gaderers of cony skynnes
That chop with laces, poyntes, nedles and pyns (Copland);
quoted by Hart, H. S. , see Notes and Queries, 10 Ser. vol. IV, p. 484.
## p. 362 (#384) ############################################
362 Elizabethan Prose Fiction
>
we pass through tavern doors, enter haunts of iniquity and become
witnesses to the low cunning, the sordidness and the violence of
the society found there. Bohemian life is laid bare, various
characters of low life are drawn; and, in the middle of it all, a
notable youth is pointed out, as he, a veritable Shakescene, is
engaged in patching up old plays for the stage.
The next great realist, Thomas Nashe, was another of those
university wits who lived hard, wrote fiercely and died young.
He seems to have travelled in Germany and Italy; by 1589, he
had done with Cambridge, and was endeavouring, in the metropolis,
to live by his pen.
His description as 'a fellow. . . whose muse was
armed with a gag tooth and his pen possessed with Hercules'
furies' shows how he struck a contemporary', but his vigour was
of the cheerful kind. With all his boisterousness, there is about
him an unconquerable gaiety, and, in spite of hopes of patronage
deferred, and an imprisonment on account of his unfortunate play,
the Isle of Dogs (1597), it was the ludicrous, rather than the
morbid, in life, that appealed to him.
Like his friend Greene, Nashe was responsible, in the first
place, for certain pamphlets dealing with the social life of London;
but he does not confine himself, as was the case with Greene, to
the outcast and the pariah, nor, on the other hand, does he find
much attraction in the steady-going citizen. His attack is directed
against respectable roguery, against foolish affectations and empty
superstition, and these things proved excellent whetstones for his
satirical wit. His Anatomie of Absurditie (1589) is a characteristic
study of contemporary manners. He plays with the theme of
Stubbes's Anatomy of Abuses (1583); but, while he does not deny
that much evil was abroad, he yet contrives to find much that is
amusing in the 'licentious follies' assailed by the puritan. In
Pierce Pennilesse, his Supplication to the Divell (1592), where he
figures as Pierce, Nashe gives a fair taste of his quality. He pillories,
among others, the travelled Englishman who would be humorous
forsooth, and have a broode of fashions by himselfe'; the brainless
politician who thought to be counted rare . . . by beeing solitarie';
and those inventors of religious sects who were a confusion to
their age. The result is a gallery of contemporary portraits,
faithfully reproduced, and tempered with wit. In 1593, he wrote
Christ's Teares over Jerusalem, a pamphlet which throws light
upon the morals of Elizabethan London, and, incidentally, depicts
the gamester, the threadbare scholar and tavern life generally.
1 For Nashe's share in the Marprelate coutroversy, see post, chap. XVII.
a
## p. 363 (#385) ############################################
Nashe's Unfortunate Traveller
363
He rails against those who put all their felicity in going
pompously and garishly, and then he turns his attack upon
dunce' preachers and usurers. The former he accuses of 'hotch-
potching' Scripture, 'without use or edification'; the latter had
drawn from Lodge his Alarum against Usurers (1584), while
their evil practices were numbered among notorious crimes in the
109th canon of 1603. The object of his ridicule in his next
pamphlet, Terrors of the Night (1594), is the superstition of the
age, and here Nashe amuses himself by discoursing on dreams,
devils and such like, in a way that must have proved entertaining
to many of his contemporaries. But his merriest effort was
reserved for his last: in Lenten Stuffe (1599), he writes in praise
of the red herring after a visit to Yarmouth, and his wit runs
riot, as he suggests the part which that homely fish had played in
the history of the world.
All this pamphleteering work, however, was completely over-
shadowed by his picaresque novel The Unfortunate Traveller or
the life of Jack Wilton, which appeared in 1594, and which was the
most remarkable work of its kind before the time of Defoe. It
relates the lively adventures of the rogue-hero, an English page,
who wanders abroad, and comes into contact with many kinds of
society. He enters taverns and palaces, makes acquaintance with
people worthy and unworthy, and so passes in review the Germany
and Italy of his day. The scene opens in the English camp before
Tournay, where the page is engaged in his knavish tricks. He
terrifies, for instance, a dull army victualler into distributing his
stores, so that the army had 'syder in boules, in scuppets and in
helmets. . . and if a man would have fild his bootes, there hee
might have had it. ' Such a humorist became, perforce, a
traveller, and he first appears at Münster in time to enjoy the con-
flict between the emperor and the anabaptists; then, in the
service of the earl of Surrey, he makes for Italy. Passing through
Rotterdam, the two travellers meet with Erasmus and Sir Thomas
More; they witness at Wittenberg an academic pageant and the old
play Acolastus, besides solemn disputations between Luther and
Carolostadius, and, finally, they strike up an acquaintance with the
famous magician, Cornelius Agrippa. At Venice, Jack elopes
with a magnifico's wife, but is overtaken once more by the earl at
Florence, where the latter enters a tournament on behalf of his
English lady-love Geraldine'. The page then moves on alone to
1 The authenticity of the episodes relating to Surrey is discussed in Courthope,
History of English Poetry, vol. 1, p. 77.
## p. 364 (#386) ############################################
364 Elizabethan Prose Fiction
Rome, where he remains for a short period in an atmosphere of
plague, robbery and murder, and, having learned, both by experi-
ence and bearsay, the gruesome horrors of the place, he finally
leaves the 'Sodom of Italy' for the less lively scenes of his own
country.
The form of this work, in the first place, is of great interest, for
it resembles the picaresque type indigenous to Spain. But this
need not imply that Nashe was a mere imitator ; on the contrary,
though he may have derived a definite stimulus from Lazarillo
de Tormes, the elements of his work represent a spontaneous
English growth. The Spanish rogue-novel was the outcome of a
widespread beggary brought about by the growth of militarism
and the decline of industry, by the increase of gypsies and the
indiscriminate charity of an all-powerful church. Similar social
conditions prevailed in Elizabethan England, though from different
causes, and the conditions which produced Lazarillo produced The
Unfortunate Traveller. It has, moreover, been shown, that while
Lyly and Sidney were indebted to Spain for certain elements in
their works, yet the ultimate origins of English courtesy-books
and of the Euphuistic manner, were wholly independent of Spanish
influence. ,
And so, in general, it may be said, that parallels exist-
ing between the Spanish and English literatures of the time were
the result of similar national conditions, of influences which were
common to both? In each case, the English development was later
than the Spanish but not due to it. Moreover, as regards Nashe in
particular, the matter and design of his novel would be quite
naturally suggested by the material of his pamphlets, and, possibly,
by reminiscences of his travels; while his choice of the realistic
form is partly accounted for by his strongly expressed scorn of
romances in general, as the fantasticall dreams of those exiled
Abbie lubbers [the monks). '
When compared with the Spanish picaresque type, The Un-
fortunate Traveller will be found to possess many points of
similarity. There is the same firm grasp of the realities of life, the
same penetrating observation and forceful expression; there are
the same qualities of humour and satire, the same rough drafts
of character-sketches; and the aim is that of entertainment rather
than reform. From the picaresque novel, however, it diverges in
its English mixture of tragedy with comedy, and, again, in the fact
6
1 See Underbill, Spanish Literature in the England of the Tudors ; Chandler,
Romances of Roguery (Pt I, the Picaresque Novel in Spain); and Utter, "The Beginnings
of the Picaresque Novel in England,' Harvard Monthly, Apr. 1906.
## p. 365 (#387) ############################################
Its Literary Qualities 365
that the animating impulse of its rogue-hero is not avarice but a
malignant and insatiable love of mischief. The Spanish picaro,
also, generally belonged to the lowest class and was wont to
confine his attentions very largely to Spanish society, but Jack
Wilton, a page, moves further afield and reviews no less expansive
a scene than that of western Europe in the first half of the six-
teenth century.
As regards its form in general, the work may be classified as a
novel of manners, though, obviously, it deals with different material
from that employed by Lyly in his Euphues. It also represents
our first historical novel. Nashe had promised some 'varietie of
mirth’; he had also proposed a “reasonable conveyance of history';
and thus the great intellectual and religious movements of the
preceding age are duly represented. They are represented, too, at
their most significant moments, and by the most impressive
personalities. Erasmus and Sir Thomas More are the representa-
tives of the humanistic movement; Surrey the courtier stands for a
vanishing chivalry; the militant Luther and the anabaptists repre-
sent religious thought; while the supernatural pretensions of Cor-
nelius Agrippa point to a still active superstition'. In this device
of mingling history with fiction, Nashe is practically original. In
introducing a tragic element into his work, he probably aimed at
presenting a more complete picture of actual life than was
possible by means of comedy alone; but in this he is not altogether
successful. His tragedy is apt to border upon the melodramatic,
and he is much happier in the comic vein. For his comedy, he
depends upon lively situation; he scorns Euphuistic wit, and futile
word play, as well as those cruder conceits which 'clownage kept
in pay. He is alike successful in his large bold outlines, and in
his detailed descriptions; his scenes are the more effective on
account of their incidental detail, and he is fully alive to the effect
of a pose, of the fold of a garment. ' The action is one of uniform
movement, retarded by no irrelevant episode or unnecessary
description; the novelist is proof even against the attractions of
Rome with its storied associations. The movements of the hero
are never lost sight of, and, in view of these facts, the work is
something more than a mere succession of scenes. It is true that
the author occasionally allows himsel some latitude in the matter
of personal reflections, but they can never be said to become
intrusive. For instance, he puts into the mouth of one of his
characters at Rome certain words of warning on the evils of travel;
his ardent enthusiasm for poetry is revealed when he writes,
i See Kollmann, "Nash's Unfortunate Traveller,' etc. , Anglia, XXI (x), 80–140.
'
## p. 366 (#388) ############################################
366
Prose Fiction
Elizabethan
6
6
concerning poets: “None come so neere to God in wit, none more
contemn the world. . . despised they are of the world because they
are not of the world'; and, again, his orthodox spirit cannot forbear
to point a moral to his story of the anabaptists: 'Heare what it is,'
he writes, “to be anabaptists, to be puritans, to be villains. '
The main characteristics of Nashe's mature prose are its
naturalness and force. Most of his contemporaries had aimed at
refinement rather than strength, they relied upon artifice which
soon lost its power of appeal. But Nashe, dealing with plain
things, writes in plain prose, and it was but natural for the satirist
of contemporary affectations to dismiss from his practice the prose
absurdities of the time. While he was at Cambridge, Euphues had
appeared to him as beyond all praise, and considerable regard for
Euphuistic effects appears in his earlier work. But, later, he dis-
carded, and helped Greene to discard, the specious aid of counterfeit
birds and hearbes and stones,' and his later 'vaine,' he took pride
in stating, was of his own begetting' and called 'no man father in
England. ' In the novel, the hero occasionally makes use of Euphuistic
similes and Latin tags, but a dramatic intention underlies this device,
for the page has frequently to‘engage his dupes with silver-sounding
tales. ' · From Nashe's later work, all this is absent; he successfully
aims at a familiar style, and the result embodies the strength
and weakness of actual conversation. In thus turning from
books to life, Nashe, like later writers in dialect, produces a style
fresh and picturesque, vivid, terse and droll: he avoids abstract
terms, and discards what is hackneyed. But, on the other hand,
not infrequently, he is faulty in his syntax, and inartistic, even
vulgar, in his colloquialisms. Not merely content with the force-
fulness of the ordinary conversational manner, he aims at heighten-
ing its effects in several ways; his scorn becomes more emphatic
in such descriptions as 'piperly pickthanke' and 'burlybond
butcher'; he is audacious in adaptation and coinage alike; he is a
lover of 'boystrous compound words,' for 'no speech or wordes of
any power or force . . . but must be swelling and boystrous. ' He
also appreciated the charm of Biblical phrase, for that stately
diction occasionally slips from his 'teare-stubbed pen,' while his
description of the anabaptists is the earliest example of Scott's
happy manner of dealing with the covenanters. In general, the
page's description of Aretino holds good of Nashe:
.
His penne was sharpe pointed like ponyard. . . . With more then musket
shot did he charge his quill where he meant to inveigh. . . . His sight pearst
like lightning into the entrailes of al abuses. . . . He was no timorous, servile,
flatterer of the common-wealth wherein he lived.
## p. 367 (#389) ############################################
Thomas Deloney
367
But, while the realistic type of work failed to attract as many
writers as the romance, Greene and Nashe do not stand alone.
Lodge's contribution consisted of The Life and Death of William
Longbeard (1593), which dealt, in humorous and realistic fashion,
with the story of a daring rogue. Breton wrote his Miseries of
a
Mavillia, which betrayed some want of acquaintance, however, with
the scenes of low life described; and, in 1595, appeared Chettle's
Piers Plainnes seaven yeres Prentiship, in which the picaro Piers
relates his life-story to Arcadian shepherds in Tempe. The work
thus hesitated between the Arcadian, the romantic and the
picaresque types, but its most successful passages are those which
relate to the hero's life in London, and to the haunts of usurers
and dealers in old clothes. Dickenson also adopted the same type
in his Greene in conceipt new raised from his grave (1598), a work,
which, following the methods of Greene, concerned itself, primarily,
with the tragic story of a fair Valeria of London, and, incidentally,
with low life in the metropolis.
More than ordinary interest is, however, attached to the
realistic prose fiction of Thomas Deloney, for he is the last of the
Elizabethans to come into his inheritance. As a novelist, he is,
practically, a recent discovery, though his work of the pamphlet
and ballad kind had previously been recognised. But, apart from
this, his prose tales possess considerable interest in themselves, no
less for their attractive narrative, their humour and colouring, than
for the fact that they help to fill in that picture of contemporary
life, which had been outlined, only in part, by the other writers.
Elizabethan prose fiction had, hitherto, been mainly concerned with
the wit and romance of rogues and gallants; Deloney as the
painter of the trading classes, discovers the humour, and even the
romance, of the prosaic citizen.
Born in 1543, Deloney seems to have worked for some time as a
silk weaver at Norwich, but, by 1586, he had moved to London,
and, before 1596, had written some fifty ballads. In this latter
year, however, he incurred official anger for introducing the queen
into one of his ballads in 'fond and indecent sort,' and was com-
pelled, in consequence, to seek temporary hiding. With his
ballads now silenced as well as his looms, he turned his attention
to literary work of another kind, and, having produced, between
1596 and 1600, his three prose narratives, before the century closed
he 'dyed poorely' and was 'honestly buried. '
His three works are built up on a common plan; a framework
See Lange, A. F. , The Gentle Craft,' Palaestra, XVIII.
## p. 368 (#390) ############################################
368
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
is constructed out of historical or legendary material, and into
this are then worked bourgeois descriptions of contemporary life;
each narrative, moreover, is devoted to the glorification of a craft,
and the craft is eulogised either by relating the story of some
successful captain of industry, or by glorying in the less tangible
forms of its earliest patrons.
Thomas of Reading is written to the honour and glory of the
clothiers' craft; it is designed to portray their honourable estate
under Henry I (thanks to a hint supplied by William of Malmes-
bury), and this it does by relating certain incidents in the lives of
six master-clothiers of the west country, whose wealth is repre-
sented by long lines of wagons creaking their way to London,
their importance by the ceremony paid them by royalty. To these
main incidents is added much humorous and descriptive matter, as
well as a somewhat tragic love-story concerning duke Robert.
There is no attempt at historical verisimilitude, for, in describing
Thomas and his fellows, the novelist is obviously sketching Eliza-
bethans. The humour, which is plentiful, arises out of a clever
reproduction of inn scenes and gossiping wives, but the love
passages are somewhat ineffective, being conducted on lines which
are strictly Euphuistic. The second novel, Jack of Newbury,
perpetuates the fame of a wealthy Berkshire weaver, one John
Winchcomb (1470—1514), and, at the same time, it commemorates
the ancient glories of the company of weavers. The hero is an
affable apprentice, who is wooed and won by his master's widow,
and, thereby, is raised to affluent circumstances. Subsequently, he
confounds his betters by his patriotism and philanthropy, enter-
tains Henry VIII in his Newbury establishment and helps his
fellow-weavers in Wolsey's despite. There is, in addition, the
usual digression and comic interlude. The widow's wooing, the
hero's fifteen pictures with their didactic intention, and the practi-
cal jokes played upon a jester and an Italian, are all characteristic
of Deloney's vein of humour. The work is amusing, in spite of
its crudity, while it also lights up the humbler but respectable
spheres of Elizabethan life.
The Gentle Craft, the third work, consists of a series of tales,
dedicated to the shoemaking cult. The first two stories, Sir Hugh
and Crispine and Crispinus, relate to early and noble patrons of the
gentle craft; but these works are not in Deloney's best style. They
aim at romantic and Euphuistic effects, and the author, obviously,
is uneasy under the greatness of his themes. The third story,
Simon Eyre, moves into the actual, and relates the career of the
a
## p. 369 (#391) ############################################
Deloney's Gentle Craft
369
philanthropic founder of Leadenhall (c. 1450), who, from a shoe-
maker's apprentice became lord mayor. A comic underplot is
added, in which a Frenchman and a Dutchman clumsily intrigue in
broken English for the hand of a serving-maid, and this forms an
excellent counterpart to Simon's stately progress through cere-
monies and banquets. The principal figure in the next story,
Richard Casteler, is that of Long Meg of Westminster, a
serving-maid, whose rattling deeds of 1540 or thereabouts had,
before 1582, become the subject of both ballad and pamphlet'.
The story consists of a series of attempts made by Meg and her
rival, Gillian, to win the love of the hero-apprentice. A most
effective situation is brought about when the two maids arrive at
the same hour at the supposed trysting-place in Tuttle Fields.
They each awkwardly offer an awkward explanation for their
presence there, but each sturdily refuses to leave the field; and
in this humour, they sat them down, and sometimes they stalkt round about
the field, till at last the watch met with them, who, contrary to Gillian's mind,
took pains to bring them home together. At what time they gave one another
such privie flouts that the watchmen took no little delight to hear it.
The upshot of it all is that the desirable Richard marries neither,
whereupon Meg indulges in a soliloquy reminiscent of Falstaff:
Wherefore is griefe good? ' asks the disappointed maid, 'Can it recall folly
past? No. Can it help a matter remediless? No. What then? Can grief
make unkind men courteous ? No. Then wherefore should I grieve? Nay,
soeing it is so, hang sorrow! I will never care for them that care not for me. '
The next story, Master Peachey and his men, gives a breezy
account of the cudgelling administered by the sturdy master-
shoemaker to certain insolent court bullies, and then goes on to
describe the rebuff experienced at the hands of a widow by the
journeyman Tom Drum, who, previously, had been an unfailing
diplomat in affairs of the heart. Tom's character is touched with
exquisite humour, while he has a pretty turn of verse, which he
exploits on his road to London, as follows:
6
The primrose in the grene forest,
The violets they be gay,
The double dazies and the rest
That trimly deck the way,
Doth move the spirits with brave delight
Who beauty's darlings be,
With hey tricksie, trim go tricksie
Under the greenwood tree.
1 For an account of Long Meg and the contemporary allusions to her fame, see
Chandler, Literature of Roguery, vol. 1, pp. 14+5.
E. L. III. CH. XVI.
24
## p. 370 (#392) ############################################
370
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
The last story is concerned with tavern-haunters and the
decayed race of minstrels. In it appears the figure of Anthony
Now-Now, one of the last of his tribe, from whose lips come the
following lines with their significant burden:
When should a man shew himself gor and kind?
When should a man comfort the sorrowful mind ?
O Anthony, now, now, now.
When is the best time to drink with a friend?
When is it meetest my money to spend ?
O Anthony, now, now, now.
In these works of Deloney, there is much that differs materially
from all previous types. Deloney, obviously, is far removed from
Lyly, though he, too, produces novels of manners, but it is the
bourgeois type which he handles, the city, not the court; he writes
to amuse rather than to instruct, and humour, not wit, is the main
ingredient of his style. He has reminiscences of the romance and
its peculiar style, but they form no real part of his production as a
whole; he succumbs to Euphuism when he diverges from his real
path, and these Euphuistic passages are precisely those which reveal
his limitations, namely, an occasional want of taste and an inability
to deal with certain situations which he creates. This is clearly seen
in the stilted character of all the love-passages and in the unreal
effect of the quasi-pathetic scene in Thomas of Reading. Romantic
themes, moreover, are as uncongenial to him as is the romantic
style. Passion lies outside bis ken; to him, love is rather a
matter of side-splitting laughter, a creator of absurd situations, a
provoker of rough practical jokes. His characters, therefore, have
but little in common with Greene's feminine creations, with Sidney's
Arcadians, or with Lodge's sylvan lovers. Nor does his work stand
much nearer to the rogue-novel of Nashe, though it deals abun-
dantly in practical jokes; for, while in the picaresque type these
jests form the narrative and are an end in themselves, in Deloney
they aim at describing manners, at affording an insight into con-
temporary life, or they are a device for inserting light interlude
into the body of the narrative. And, moreover, the hero, in
Deloney, is by no means a rogue: he is endowed, on the contrary,
with perhaps more than his share of virtue.
The influences which seem to have decided the actual form
of Deloney's novels are of various kinds. In the first place,
their bourgeois colouring was the result of circumstances;
a life spent within hearing of the looms had brought him into
## p. 371 (#393) ############################################
His Literary Characteristics
371
close sympathy with crafts and craftsmen. Then, again, his
earlier ballads, to some extent, suggest his material and shape
his style : so that in Deloney the ballad-maker, the potential
novelist is already visible. His themes in verse had been partly
historical', partly romantic and partly journalistics, and these
elements, particularly the first and the last, enter into his novels.
But his ballading days did more than suggest certain themes: the
experience simplified his style and encouraged him to adopt a more
self-effacing prose than even that of Nashe, for, in Nashe, the
scholar and the theorist are still visible. Deloney's 'quaint and
plain discourse,' with its lack of 'pickt words and choice phrases,
was, as he maintained, best fitted for 'matters of merriment,
especially as, for the most part, he treated of neither courtiers nor
scholars. Deloney's debt to the contemporary stage is also con-
siderable; that he had observed to some purpose is evident from the
happy parody which he devises of Falstaff's famous soliloquy. From
the stage, also, he borrows the idea of the comic underplot, which
forms an effective feature in all three works. To the same source
must, also, be ascribed his skilful dialogue, which is more natural,
less stilted than any that had yet appeared: while his use of
dialect and broken English in his attempts at verisimilitude, the
skill with which he drops and resumes the thread of his narrative,
must, again, have resulted from his observation of dramatic methods.
When Greene and Lyly wrote, the stage was yet to develop;
Deloney, writing at a later date, does not fail to profit by its rapid
extension, and his story of Simon Eyre, under Dekker's hands, was
to pass easily into comedy form, in The Shoemaker's Holiday".
Deloney's attraction for modern readers lies, to some extent, in
his scenes of London life. Familiar places like Billingsgate and
Islington, Fleet Street and Cheapside, appear in his works, though
it is the varied humanity which throngs those scenes that most
engages the attention. With great gusto, he portrays London
tradesmen and their apprentices, dignified aldermen and bragging
captains, stately city dames and rough serving-maids; dress is
described with knowledge and relish; he appreciates both the gay
1 Cf. the ballads, Edgar, King John, Wat Tyler and Flodden.
: Cf. also Patient Grissel, Rosamund, Lancelot du Lake.
3 Cf. Lamentation of Page's wife of Plymouth and The Execution 14 Most
Wickett Traitors.
Wm Rowley's play The Shoemaker a Gentleman (1610) was based upon the first
two stories in The Gentle Craft. Henslowe also records a tragedy The Six Yeomen of
the West founded on Deloney's Thomas of Reading (see Schelling, Elis.
His excesses, on the other hand, are those of a poet who forgets
that he is now committed to prose. He enters upon a pedestrian
task, unprepared to forego poetical flight; and, freed from the
restraints which verse imposes, he strains even the limits of a
more willing prose. With coherence of structure he is not greatly
concerned. His sentences, long and rambling, are yet incapable
of expressing his wealth of thought, and are, therefore, expanded
by frequent parentheses. When he aims at emphasis, he occasion-
ally employs Lyly's trick of antithesis, or, perhaps, the epigram-
matic effect of the oxymoron? : but his favourite artifice is that of
a jingle of words’, which lacks effect as it lacks dignity.
The same excess characterises his use of ornament, for which
he depends, not upon erudite display, but, rather, upon a free use
of clever conceits in which sentiment is ascribed to inanimate
objects. Sparingly used as an accompaniment to highly-wrought
verse, the device is capable of excellent results, but, when frequently
employed in ordinary prose, it soon becomes smothered by its own
sweetness. Sidney, in short, rides the 'pathetic fallacy' to death ;
he is for ever hearing 'tongues in trees'; and commonplace thought,
arrayed in delicate fancy, often leads to grotesque effect".
Sidney's prose style is, however, not all extravagance, it con-
tains much that suggests the happier moods of a cultured mind.
The famous prayer of Pamela, for instance, reads with a noble
liturgical ring; pregnant apophthegms, scattered here and there,
gleam like jewels of thought“, while even the writer's foibles could
6
1 Thus, a bare house is said to be '& picture of miserable happiness and rich
beggary': maidenly charms are described as “a wanton modesty, an enticing
soberness. '
2 Cf. . in the dressing of her hair and apparel she might see neither a careful art
nor an art of carefulness, . . . a neglected chance. . . could not imperfect her perfection' (see
Arcadia, ed. 1674, p. 244).
3 E. g. a sewing operation is described in the following terms : 'the needle itself
would have been loth to have gone fromward such a mistress but that it hoped to
return thitherward very quickly again, the cloth looking with many eyes upon her,
and lovingly embracing the wounds she gave' (ed. 1674, p. 260).
* Cf. 'all is but lip-wisdom that wants experience': 'the journey of high Honor
lies not in plain ways': 'a lamentable tune is the sweetest musick to a woful mind. '
## p. 355 (#377) ############################################
Its Style
Style and Influence 355
produce, at times, distinctly virtuous results, when they enter into
some of his most glowing descriptions? . Sidney's extravagances
were, in fact, not altogether a vain display. Lyly, in an age of
poetry, gave to prose the subtle effects of harmony and balance;
Sidney incidentally showed how dull prose might be lit up with
flowers of fancy; and his work is, for all time, a rich mine of
poetic ore.
The popularity of the work may be gauged from its frequent
reappearances, as well as from its subsequent influence upon
various writers. Upon the drama, in particular, its influence was
considerable. It popularised the new machinery of the disguise
of the sexes; it also suggested fresh situations arising out of
fanciful realms such as Arden and Bohemia ; while its love-
passages must also have induced greater interest in the characteri-
sation of women. It furnished episodes for more than one type
of work. It supplied King Lear with the under-plot of Gloucester
and his sons; Quarles with the material for his metrical tale
Argalus and Parthenia (1629). Dramatic works, like Day's Ile
of Guls (1606), Beaumont and Fletcher's Cupid's Revenge (1615)
and Shirley's Arcadia, are, in some sort, adaptations of its theme? ,
while Webster's Duchess of Malfi is indebted to it for certain
figures and phrases". Moreover, it inspired Lodge's Rosalynde,
and lady Wroth's Urania (1621), both of which are imitations
in novel form; and, lastly, its style set the fashion which helped
to ring out the reign of Lyly.
While Sidney thus dreamed of his golden world, there was one
who, under less happy circumstances, was to traverse the same
fields. Robert Greene is the second great romancer of the Eliza-
bethan period, in which he appears as a picturesque but pathetic
Bohemian, with 'wit lent from Heaven but vices sent from Hell. '
Before he had finished with Cambridge, his moral nature was
tainted, and, after that, his way lay perpetually over stormy seas.
A glimpse of happier things seemed promised in 1586, but, once
again, his evil genius led him astray, until, finally, he was rescued
1 Cf. the oft-quoted description of the land of Arcadia (ed. 1674, p. 6), and the
description of the field for shepherds’ sports : 'through the midst (of the field] there
ran a sweet brook which did both hold the eye open with her azure streams and yet
seek to close the eye with the purling noise upon the pebbles it ran over : the field
itself being set in some places with roses and in all the rest constantly preserving a
flourishing green,
the roses added such a ruddy shew unto it as though the field were
bashful at its own beauty' (ed. 1674, p. 68).
• To these might be added Glapthorne's Argalus and Parthenia; Shirley's Andro-
mana ; Mucedorus ; McNamara Morgan's Philoclea (1754).
3 See Notes and Queries, 10 Ser. vol. II, pp. 221 ff.
23-2
## p. 356 (#378) ############################################
356
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
by a poor shoemaker in 1592, under whose rough shelter he made
a pathetic end. His life had been one of struggle and drift, a
wayward course of frustrated good intentions; and these things
left their impress upon what he wrote, and upon his manner of
writing. In the first place, he wrote merely to sell, and, as a
consequence, he resembles a sensitive barometer, indicating the
literary vogue from day to day. When Lyly was popular, Greene
adopted his methods; when romance was called for, he also com-
plied; his attempt at the pastoral followed Sidney's success; while
his realistic pamphlets responded to a yet later demand. Secondly,
with numerous creditors ever driving him on, he resorts in his
haste to plagiarism and repetition? He repeats himself without
a blush : about thirteen pages of his Myrrour of Modestie occur
in his Never too late, and parts of Planetomachia reappear in
Perimedes the Blacksmith; from Euphues, he abstracts numerous
similes, while from T(homas) B(owes's) translation of Peter de la Pri-
maudaye's French Academy (1586), he takes entire passages when
they please his fancy. And yet, though in life he followed the
worse, he approved the better; his work is free from licentious-
ness, he never 'gave the looser cause to laugh. ' His better self
is revealed when, in his earlier work, he writes as a 'Homer of
women,' when he sings in Menaphon a tender cradle-song, or when
he works into his verse the saddening refrain of his life's story.
Greene's chief romances are Pandosto (1588), Perimedes the
Blacksmith (1588) and Menaphon (1589). The first deals with
the story of Dorastus and Fawnia, which Shakespeare afterwards
refined in his Winter's Tale, adding such characters as Autolycus
and Paulina, and removing from those he adopted their puppet-
like stiffness. Perimedes embodies an evening tale, told by the
fireside of the idyllic blacksmith, the story being based upon one
in the Decameron (Giorn. II, Nov. II); the motive is that of the
separation and reunion of kindred, and the chief figure is the
noble Mariana In Menaphon, the scene is laid in the realm of
Arcadia, where occur the adventures of the shipwrecked princess
Sephestia, who is loved by the shepherd Menaphon, but is duly
restored to her husband and son, disguised as shepherds. Sidney's
influence is apparent here, primarily, in the pastoral background;
but, when Menaphon promises Sephestia that the mountaine tops
shall be thy mornings walke, and the shadie vallies thy evenings
arbour,' it is further evident that Sidney, rather than Lyly, has
become the model of style. The plot, apparently, is taken from
2 Cf. Hart, H. C. , Notes and Queries, 10 Ser. vol. iv.
## p. 357 (#379) ############################################
Greene's Romances
357
the narrative of Curan and Argentile in Warner's Albion's
England; and the Thracian Wonder by a later pen, is a dramatic
adaptation of the pastoral romance?
Other romances of Greene, though of less importance, must
also be mentioned. In 1584 appeared his Gwydonius and Arbasto,
two romances of an earlier heroic type, which were followed, in
1592, by Philomela, an attractive story, in honour of lady Fitz-
water. The central incident of this last romance consists of a
wager, made by a jealous husband, concerning his wife's fidelity-
a favourite theme of Boccaccio—and the work is confessedly
‘penned to approve of women's chastity. "?
From the point of view of art, Greene's romantic fiction cannot
be said to rank very high, though it comprises interesting narra-
tives, of moral and learned tendency, which waft their readers
into the pleasant but fanciful realms of Bohemia and Arcadia.
There is, however, considerable lack of structural skill, of artistic
restraint and verisimilitude, in dealing with the affairs of the
heart; as with Sidney, the art of story-telling in prose was yet in
its infancy. But one pleasing feature of these works is the skill
with which women-portraits are drawn : for the romances embody
such creations as Myrania and Fawnia, Mariana and Sephestia,
women of the faithful and modest type. It was only after 1588
that the reverence and sympathy which these portraits betray on
the part of their author was to change into the 'bitterest hate. '
In Alcida, a love pamphlet of 1588, he first revealed 'woman's
wanton ways'; and, subsequently, he depicted fascinating sirens
such as Infida (Never too late) and Lamilia (Groatsworth of Wit),
who form a marked contrast with his earlier types. Excellent
occasional verse is another outstanding feature of these prose
romances; it culminates in Menaphon, as, for instance, in the
lines of Melicertus on the description of his mistress, while the
cradle song beginning
Weepe not my wanton! smile upon my knee!
When thou art olde, ther's grief inough for thee!
is notable even among Elizabethan lyrics.
1 See Brereton, J. le Gay, Mod. Lang. Rev. vol. II, pp. 34–38, and Adams, J. Q. , Jr. ,
Mod. Phil. in, Jan. 1906.
? He also wrote other prose pamphlets reminiscent of earlier types of composition :
thus, in his Planetomachia (1585), a dispute between the planets Venus and Saturn as
to their respective influences on mankind, are to be found traces of the old débat,
together with reminiscences of the ancient faith in the misticall science of astro-
nomie': Orpharion (1588), on the other hand, embodies an imaginary dream, while
in the Spanish Masquerado (1588) Greene turns from love to politics and indulges in
a fierce tirade against the affairs of Spain.
## p. 358 (#380) ############################################
358
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
Less interesting, because less tragic, is the personality of
Thomas Lodge, who also was responsible for certain romances.
During his Oxford days, he fell under Lyly's influence, which
accounts for the Euphuistic strain which pervades all his works.
His restless, unsettled career was typical of his age. He began
with law, took to literature and ended as a medical man, while,
from time to time, he indulged in lengthy cruises abroad. His first
romance, Forbonius and Prisceria (1584), is a slight performance,
and consists of a story of blighted affection, the subject of which
seeks refuge in a pastoral life. Rosalynde, Euphues Golden
Legacie (1590) 'fetcht from the Canaries,' is, on the other hand,
one of the most pleasing of all the romances, and, upon it,
Shakespeare, as is well known, based his As You Like It. It is
a fresh story, steeped in idyllic sentiment, the charm of which
even a Euphuistic manner is unable to dull. Lodge
have written it on a cruise to the straits of Magellan, whence
“every line was wet with the surge'; but the environment worked
only by way of contrast, for pastoral scenes and rural notes are
the products of this pen at work on the high seas. The story itself is
based on The Tale of Gamelyn, a fourteenth century ballad of the
Robin Hood cycle, which relates how the hero, defrauded by his
elder brother, takes to the forest and becomes an outlaw! This
story of earlier England is removed by Lodge into the region of
pastoral romance, and the English outlaws become Arcadians of
the Italian type, polished in speech and courtly in manner. A love
element is woven into the tale ; Rosalynde and Alinda, as well as
Phoebe, appear on the scene; and the plot develops, as in the
Arcadia, by means of disguisals of sex. The narrative is also
varied by the insertion of occasional verse, though the variations
lack subtlety and the inserted eclogues frequently drag. But
where the treatment most suffers is in the handling of character,
which reveals no development, and is, moreover, stiff and formal.
Shakespeare appreciated the charm and freshness of the woodland
scenes, and he appropriated the elements of a good love-tale; but
he also detected the unreality of Lodge's creations, and, while he
quickens them into life in his own incomparable way, through the
humours of Touchstone he smiles at the inconsistencies and un-
realities which he takes care to remove. Another of Lodge's.
romances, Margarite of America, written in the winter of 1592
and published 1596, was also claimed to have been written at sea,
on a voyage to South America with Master Thomas Cavendish;
and the story, apparently, was taken from a Spanish work in the
i Cf. vol. 1, p. 298.
## p. 359 (#381) ############################################
Ford, Breton and Munday
359
Jesuit library at Santos, Brazil. A number of Cavendish's men
certainly stayed at that place, and some are known to have been
lodged at the Jesuit college. But the Spanish element is easily
overrated ; and several of its sonnets are borrowed from Italian
sources, more particularly from Lodovico Dolce and Paschale? .
The remaining works of a romantic kind present nothing new.
Emanuel Ford's Parismus (1598), and its sequel, Parismenos
(1599), are obvious imitations of the works of Greene. The scene
is placed in Bohemia, and the action is made up of the usual
excitements of princely love and war; the general tone, however,
is less scrupulously moral than is the case with Greene, whence
Meres's censure of Ford's work as being 'hurtful to youth. It
should be added that the story thus handled by Ford is reminiscent
of Romeo and Juliet, and it is more than probable that the writer
owes an unacknowledged debt to that dramatic work. Nicholas
Breton is another of Greene's successors, his chief romantic work
consisting of Strange Fortunes of two excellent princes (1600).
Like Ford, he manages to shake himself free of faded Euphuisms,
but his methods of romance are the methods of Greene, stiffened,
perhaps, by a sense of inartistic symmetry. Nor must the Spanish
romances, popularised by Anthony Munday in his English transla-
tions, be entirely forgotten. Between 1580 and 1590, he produced
those versions of the Amadis and Palmerin cycles which represent
modifications of the Arthurian romance. The works were viewed
with disfavour by the cultured classes, on account of their pre-
posterous plots, and the crudeness and inaccuracy of their render-
ing. Munday achieved a popular success, but he added little to
his reputation, or to the dignity of the Elizabethan romance.
Before the last decade of the century was well advanced, a
marked change came over works of fiction. By a sort of normal
reaction, idealism gave way to realism, the romance to the realistic
pamphlet and story, and, from Arcadia and Bohemia with their
courtly amenities, the scene moved to London and its everyday
life. The chief writers of this type of work were Greene, Nashe and
Deloney, who, however, differ somewhat in the methods they adopt.
Greene relates his own life-story, a grim narrative, which reveals,
incidentally, much of the seamier side of life; and this he follows
up with a series of revelations as to the tricks and knaveries of
London rogues. Nashe, on the other hand, while less gloomy,
1 Cf. Kastner, L. E. , Mod. Lang. Rev. vol. 11, ii, 156-8.
3 Note the song 'In Praise of a Deggar's life,' a variant on the earlier theme of the
mean estate, See Davison's Poetical Rapsody, Collier's reprint, p. 161.
## p. 360 (#382) ############################################
360
Elizabethan Prose Prose
Fiction
is more satirical in what he has to say. He deals with follies
and quackeries, rather than vices, and, while his methods are
sufficiently trenchant, he has an eye to the humorous side of
things: in his picaresque novel, the rogue becomes a hero. Deloney,
again, has neither the grim realism of the one nor the force-
ful satire of the other. He is content to depict citizen life with a
proper regard for the dignity of the crafts, and with a quiet sense
of humour, which is by no means inconsistent with his more
serious intentions.
Greene's autobiographical work begins in his Mourning Gar-
ment (1590) and Never too late (1590). He does not, as yet, deal
directly with London life, though his own experiences, lightly
veiled, form the nucleus of the tales. The Mourning Garment
is an adaptation of the story of the Prodigal Son, with the addition
of pastoral details as reminders of his earlier craft. But Greene is
no longer 'Love's Philosopher,' as, indeed, he confesses; Philador
gets into difficulties through the society of women, those Panthers
that allure, the syrens that entice,' and the succeeding details are
those of the Biblical narrative. In Never too late, the author's
career is more closely followed. Here, it is Francesco who im-
personates Greene; and he relates how he had married a gentle-
woman, whom he abandoned for one less worthy, and how he was
helped in his distress by strolling actors. These are well-known
incidents in the life of Greene; but, when Francesco subsequently
becomes reconciled to his injured wife, Greene pathetically suggests
an event which, unhappily, found no counterpart in his actual life.
In 1592, further autobiographical work was penned by Greene on
his death-bed, when the veil concealing the author's identity is de-
liberately lifted. The main facts of his life are again dealt with, and,
in the Groatsworth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance,
the writer is careful to state that Roberto is himself. The other
death-bed pamphlet, The Repentance of Robert Greene, is still
more direct; its style is, perhaps, inferior to that of his earlier
work, and the writer seems intent on painting his life in the most
sombre colours.
More direct descriptions of London life appear in further
pamphlets, in which Greene exposes rogues and depicts honest
tradesmen. The former object underlies his Notable Discovery
of Coosnage (1591). Awdeley and Harman, as has been seen, had
dealt with the vagabond classes, and had specified for public
benefit the various classes of knaves, while Copland's Hye Way
to the Spyttel Hous gave the earliest account of the thievish cant
>
## p. 361 (#383) ############################################
1
Greene's Realistic Work 361
known as 'pedlyng frenche' Greene, however, is indebted to none
of these, except, perhaps, for the general idea. He is concerned
with neither pedlars, nor gypsies, nor itinerant rogues; his aim,
rather, is to warn country people against the snares of London. It
is the wiles of panders and courtesans, card-sharpers and swindlers,
that he undertakes to reveal, and this the Notable Discovery
accomplishes. So successful was he, in fact, that an attempt
was made upon his life, and A Defence of Conny-Catching
appeared as an impudent rejoinder. In 1592, Greene followed up
the attack by A Disputation between a He Conny-Catcher and a
She Conny-Catcherl, a lurid description of the London demi-
monde, which concludes with a pathetic account of the reclaiming
of a courtesan. And in The Blacke Booke's Messenger of the same
ye Greene once more wages war with rascals, by sketching the
grimy career of a celebrated rogue, one Ned Browne, whose
belated repentance takes place in the neighbourhood of the
scaffold.
Besides dealing in this way with roguery, Greene also gives
some attention to the more respectable side of London life, in his
Quip for an Upstart Courtier or a Quaint Dispute between
Velvet-Breeches and Cloth-Breeches (1592). The dispute is as to
whether the courtier (i. e. Velvet-Breeches), or the tradesman
(Cloth-Breeches) is deserving of the greater respect, and the
decision is duly referred to a jury of tradesmen. This brings
together a body of typical citizens, and is thus a device which
enables the author to introduce his projected class-descriptions.
The work reveals Greene's democratic sympathies, for he not only
finds much interest in his commonplace types, but he also takes
care, while giving short shrift to his upstart courtier, to assign more
flattering treatment to the London tradesman. And this democratic
attitude is not devoid of a certain significance, especially when a
similar sympathy appears in Deloney's work: it explains, in some
measure, the impulse which originated this realistic section of
Elizabethan fiction. The form of the work is that of the medieval
dream-vision, the fundamental idea, apparently, being taken from
an anonymous poem, A Debate between Pride and Lowliness.
All this work of Greene had meant a considerable contribution
to the literature dealing with contemporary life. With the author
i Conny-catchers were London rogues who duped simple people by various tricks
and who primarily obtained their name from those typical cheats, the pedlars—those
gaderers of cony skynnes
That chop with laces, poyntes, nedles and pyns (Copland);
quoted by Hart, H. S. , see Notes and Queries, 10 Ser. vol. IV, p. 484.
## p. 362 (#384) ############################################
362 Elizabethan Prose Fiction
>
we pass through tavern doors, enter haunts of iniquity and become
witnesses to the low cunning, the sordidness and the violence of
the society found there. Bohemian life is laid bare, various
characters of low life are drawn; and, in the middle of it all, a
notable youth is pointed out, as he, a veritable Shakescene, is
engaged in patching up old plays for the stage.
The next great realist, Thomas Nashe, was another of those
university wits who lived hard, wrote fiercely and died young.
He seems to have travelled in Germany and Italy; by 1589, he
had done with Cambridge, and was endeavouring, in the metropolis,
to live by his pen.
His description as 'a fellow. . . whose muse was
armed with a gag tooth and his pen possessed with Hercules'
furies' shows how he struck a contemporary', but his vigour was
of the cheerful kind. With all his boisterousness, there is about
him an unconquerable gaiety, and, in spite of hopes of patronage
deferred, and an imprisonment on account of his unfortunate play,
the Isle of Dogs (1597), it was the ludicrous, rather than the
morbid, in life, that appealed to him.
Like his friend Greene, Nashe was responsible, in the first
place, for certain pamphlets dealing with the social life of London;
but he does not confine himself, as was the case with Greene, to
the outcast and the pariah, nor, on the other hand, does he find
much attraction in the steady-going citizen. His attack is directed
against respectable roguery, against foolish affectations and empty
superstition, and these things proved excellent whetstones for his
satirical wit. His Anatomie of Absurditie (1589) is a characteristic
study of contemporary manners. He plays with the theme of
Stubbes's Anatomy of Abuses (1583); but, while he does not deny
that much evil was abroad, he yet contrives to find much that is
amusing in the 'licentious follies' assailed by the puritan. In
Pierce Pennilesse, his Supplication to the Divell (1592), where he
figures as Pierce, Nashe gives a fair taste of his quality. He pillories,
among others, the travelled Englishman who would be humorous
forsooth, and have a broode of fashions by himselfe'; the brainless
politician who thought to be counted rare . . . by beeing solitarie';
and those inventors of religious sects who were a confusion to
their age. The result is a gallery of contemporary portraits,
faithfully reproduced, and tempered with wit. In 1593, he wrote
Christ's Teares over Jerusalem, a pamphlet which throws light
upon the morals of Elizabethan London, and, incidentally, depicts
the gamester, the threadbare scholar and tavern life generally.
1 For Nashe's share in the Marprelate coutroversy, see post, chap. XVII.
a
## p. 363 (#385) ############################################
Nashe's Unfortunate Traveller
363
He rails against those who put all their felicity in going
pompously and garishly, and then he turns his attack upon
dunce' preachers and usurers. The former he accuses of 'hotch-
potching' Scripture, 'without use or edification'; the latter had
drawn from Lodge his Alarum against Usurers (1584), while
their evil practices were numbered among notorious crimes in the
109th canon of 1603. The object of his ridicule in his next
pamphlet, Terrors of the Night (1594), is the superstition of the
age, and here Nashe amuses himself by discoursing on dreams,
devils and such like, in a way that must have proved entertaining
to many of his contemporaries. But his merriest effort was
reserved for his last: in Lenten Stuffe (1599), he writes in praise
of the red herring after a visit to Yarmouth, and his wit runs
riot, as he suggests the part which that homely fish had played in
the history of the world.
All this pamphleteering work, however, was completely over-
shadowed by his picaresque novel The Unfortunate Traveller or
the life of Jack Wilton, which appeared in 1594, and which was the
most remarkable work of its kind before the time of Defoe. It
relates the lively adventures of the rogue-hero, an English page,
who wanders abroad, and comes into contact with many kinds of
society. He enters taverns and palaces, makes acquaintance with
people worthy and unworthy, and so passes in review the Germany
and Italy of his day. The scene opens in the English camp before
Tournay, where the page is engaged in his knavish tricks. He
terrifies, for instance, a dull army victualler into distributing his
stores, so that the army had 'syder in boules, in scuppets and in
helmets. . . and if a man would have fild his bootes, there hee
might have had it. ' Such a humorist became, perforce, a
traveller, and he first appears at Münster in time to enjoy the con-
flict between the emperor and the anabaptists; then, in the
service of the earl of Surrey, he makes for Italy. Passing through
Rotterdam, the two travellers meet with Erasmus and Sir Thomas
More; they witness at Wittenberg an academic pageant and the old
play Acolastus, besides solemn disputations between Luther and
Carolostadius, and, finally, they strike up an acquaintance with the
famous magician, Cornelius Agrippa. At Venice, Jack elopes
with a magnifico's wife, but is overtaken once more by the earl at
Florence, where the latter enters a tournament on behalf of his
English lady-love Geraldine'. The page then moves on alone to
1 The authenticity of the episodes relating to Surrey is discussed in Courthope,
History of English Poetry, vol. 1, p. 77.
## p. 364 (#386) ############################################
364 Elizabethan Prose Fiction
Rome, where he remains for a short period in an atmosphere of
plague, robbery and murder, and, having learned, both by experi-
ence and bearsay, the gruesome horrors of the place, he finally
leaves the 'Sodom of Italy' for the less lively scenes of his own
country.
The form of this work, in the first place, is of great interest, for
it resembles the picaresque type indigenous to Spain. But this
need not imply that Nashe was a mere imitator ; on the contrary,
though he may have derived a definite stimulus from Lazarillo
de Tormes, the elements of his work represent a spontaneous
English growth. The Spanish rogue-novel was the outcome of a
widespread beggary brought about by the growth of militarism
and the decline of industry, by the increase of gypsies and the
indiscriminate charity of an all-powerful church. Similar social
conditions prevailed in Elizabethan England, though from different
causes, and the conditions which produced Lazarillo produced The
Unfortunate Traveller. It has, moreover, been shown, that while
Lyly and Sidney were indebted to Spain for certain elements in
their works, yet the ultimate origins of English courtesy-books
and of the Euphuistic manner, were wholly independent of Spanish
influence. ,
And so, in general, it may be said, that parallels exist-
ing between the Spanish and English literatures of the time were
the result of similar national conditions, of influences which were
common to both? In each case, the English development was later
than the Spanish but not due to it. Moreover, as regards Nashe in
particular, the matter and design of his novel would be quite
naturally suggested by the material of his pamphlets, and, possibly,
by reminiscences of his travels; while his choice of the realistic
form is partly accounted for by his strongly expressed scorn of
romances in general, as the fantasticall dreams of those exiled
Abbie lubbers [the monks). '
When compared with the Spanish picaresque type, The Un-
fortunate Traveller will be found to possess many points of
similarity. There is the same firm grasp of the realities of life, the
same penetrating observation and forceful expression; there are
the same qualities of humour and satire, the same rough drafts
of character-sketches; and the aim is that of entertainment rather
than reform. From the picaresque novel, however, it diverges in
its English mixture of tragedy with comedy, and, again, in the fact
6
1 See Underbill, Spanish Literature in the England of the Tudors ; Chandler,
Romances of Roguery (Pt I, the Picaresque Novel in Spain); and Utter, "The Beginnings
of the Picaresque Novel in England,' Harvard Monthly, Apr. 1906.
## p. 365 (#387) ############################################
Its Literary Qualities 365
that the animating impulse of its rogue-hero is not avarice but a
malignant and insatiable love of mischief. The Spanish picaro,
also, generally belonged to the lowest class and was wont to
confine his attentions very largely to Spanish society, but Jack
Wilton, a page, moves further afield and reviews no less expansive
a scene than that of western Europe in the first half of the six-
teenth century.
As regards its form in general, the work may be classified as a
novel of manners, though, obviously, it deals with different material
from that employed by Lyly in his Euphues. It also represents
our first historical novel. Nashe had promised some 'varietie of
mirth’; he had also proposed a “reasonable conveyance of history';
and thus the great intellectual and religious movements of the
preceding age are duly represented. They are represented, too, at
their most significant moments, and by the most impressive
personalities. Erasmus and Sir Thomas More are the representa-
tives of the humanistic movement; Surrey the courtier stands for a
vanishing chivalry; the militant Luther and the anabaptists repre-
sent religious thought; while the supernatural pretensions of Cor-
nelius Agrippa point to a still active superstition'. In this device
of mingling history with fiction, Nashe is practically original. In
introducing a tragic element into his work, he probably aimed at
presenting a more complete picture of actual life than was
possible by means of comedy alone; but in this he is not altogether
successful. His tragedy is apt to border upon the melodramatic,
and he is much happier in the comic vein. For his comedy, he
depends upon lively situation; he scorns Euphuistic wit, and futile
word play, as well as those cruder conceits which 'clownage kept
in pay. He is alike successful in his large bold outlines, and in
his detailed descriptions; his scenes are the more effective on
account of their incidental detail, and he is fully alive to the effect
of a pose, of the fold of a garment. ' The action is one of uniform
movement, retarded by no irrelevant episode or unnecessary
description; the novelist is proof even against the attractions of
Rome with its storied associations. The movements of the hero
are never lost sight of, and, in view of these facts, the work is
something more than a mere succession of scenes. It is true that
the author occasionally allows himsel some latitude in the matter
of personal reflections, but they can never be said to become
intrusive. For instance, he puts into the mouth of one of his
characters at Rome certain words of warning on the evils of travel;
his ardent enthusiasm for poetry is revealed when he writes,
i See Kollmann, "Nash's Unfortunate Traveller,' etc. , Anglia, XXI (x), 80–140.
'
## p. 366 (#388) ############################################
366
Prose Fiction
Elizabethan
6
6
concerning poets: “None come so neere to God in wit, none more
contemn the world. . . despised they are of the world because they
are not of the world'; and, again, his orthodox spirit cannot forbear
to point a moral to his story of the anabaptists: 'Heare what it is,'
he writes, “to be anabaptists, to be puritans, to be villains. '
The main characteristics of Nashe's mature prose are its
naturalness and force. Most of his contemporaries had aimed at
refinement rather than strength, they relied upon artifice which
soon lost its power of appeal. But Nashe, dealing with plain
things, writes in plain prose, and it was but natural for the satirist
of contemporary affectations to dismiss from his practice the prose
absurdities of the time. While he was at Cambridge, Euphues had
appeared to him as beyond all praise, and considerable regard for
Euphuistic effects appears in his earlier work. But, later, he dis-
carded, and helped Greene to discard, the specious aid of counterfeit
birds and hearbes and stones,' and his later 'vaine,' he took pride
in stating, was of his own begetting' and called 'no man father in
England. ' In the novel, the hero occasionally makes use of Euphuistic
similes and Latin tags, but a dramatic intention underlies this device,
for the page has frequently to‘engage his dupes with silver-sounding
tales. ' · From Nashe's later work, all this is absent; he successfully
aims at a familiar style, and the result embodies the strength
and weakness of actual conversation. In thus turning from
books to life, Nashe, like later writers in dialect, produces a style
fresh and picturesque, vivid, terse and droll: he avoids abstract
terms, and discards what is hackneyed. But, on the other hand,
not infrequently, he is faulty in his syntax, and inartistic, even
vulgar, in his colloquialisms. Not merely content with the force-
fulness of the ordinary conversational manner, he aims at heighten-
ing its effects in several ways; his scorn becomes more emphatic
in such descriptions as 'piperly pickthanke' and 'burlybond
butcher'; he is audacious in adaptation and coinage alike; he is a
lover of 'boystrous compound words,' for 'no speech or wordes of
any power or force . . . but must be swelling and boystrous. ' He
also appreciated the charm of Biblical phrase, for that stately
diction occasionally slips from his 'teare-stubbed pen,' while his
description of the anabaptists is the earliest example of Scott's
happy manner of dealing with the covenanters. In general, the
page's description of Aretino holds good of Nashe:
.
His penne was sharpe pointed like ponyard. . . . With more then musket
shot did he charge his quill where he meant to inveigh. . . . His sight pearst
like lightning into the entrailes of al abuses. . . . He was no timorous, servile,
flatterer of the common-wealth wherein he lived.
## p. 367 (#389) ############################################
Thomas Deloney
367
But, while the realistic type of work failed to attract as many
writers as the romance, Greene and Nashe do not stand alone.
Lodge's contribution consisted of The Life and Death of William
Longbeard (1593), which dealt, in humorous and realistic fashion,
with the story of a daring rogue. Breton wrote his Miseries of
a
Mavillia, which betrayed some want of acquaintance, however, with
the scenes of low life described; and, in 1595, appeared Chettle's
Piers Plainnes seaven yeres Prentiship, in which the picaro Piers
relates his life-story to Arcadian shepherds in Tempe. The work
thus hesitated between the Arcadian, the romantic and the
picaresque types, but its most successful passages are those which
relate to the hero's life in London, and to the haunts of usurers
and dealers in old clothes. Dickenson also adopted the same type
in his Greene in conceipt new raised from his grave (1598), a work,
which, following the methods of Greene, concerned itself, primarily,
with the tragic story of a fair Valeria of London, and, incidentally,
with low life in the metropolis.
More than ordinary interest is, however, attached to the
realistic prose fiction of Thomas Deloney, for he is the last of the
Elizabethans to come into his inheritance. As a novelist, he is,
practically, a recent discovery, though his work of the pamphlet
and ballad kind had previously been recognised. But, apart from
this, his prose tales possess considerable interest in themselves, no
less for their attractive narrative, their humour and colouring, than
for the fact that they help to fill in that picture of contemporary
life, which had been outlined, only in part, by the other writers.
Elizabethan prose fiction had, hitherto, been mainly concerned with
the wit and romance of rogues and gallants; Deloney as the
painter of the trading classes, discovers the humour, and even the
romance, of the prosaic citizen.
Born in 1543, Deloney seems to have worked for some time as a
silk weaver at Norwich, but, by 1586, he had moved to London,
and, before 1596, had written some fifty ballads. In this latter
year, however, he incurred official anger for introducing the queen
into one of his ballads in 'fond and indecent sort,' and was com-
pelled, in consequence, to seek temporary hiding. With his
ballads now silenced as well as his looms, he turned his attention
to literary work of another kind, and, having produced, between
1596 and 1600, his three prose narratives, before the century closed
he 'dyed poorely' and was 'honestly buried. '
His three works are built up on a common plan; a framework
See Lange, A. F. , The Gentle Craft,' Palaestra, XVIII.
## p. 368 (#390) ############################################
368
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
is constructed out of historical or legendary material, and into
this are then worked bourgeois descriptions of contemporary life;
each narrative, moreover, is devoted to the glorification of a craft,
and the craft is eulogised either by relating the story of some
successful captain of industry, or by glorying in the less tangible
forms of its earliest patrons.
Thomas of Reading is written to the honour and glory of the
clothiers' craft; it is designed to portray their honourable estate
under Henry I (thanks to a hint supplied by William of Malmes-
bury), and this it does by relating certain incidents in the lives of
six master-clothiers of the west country, whose wealth is repre-
sented by long lines of wagons creaking their way to London,
their importance by the ceremony paid them by royalty. To these
main incidents is added much humorous and descriptive matter, as
well as a somewhat tragic love-story concerning duke Robert.
There is no attempt at historical verisimilitude, for, in describing
Thomas and his fellows, the novelist is obviously sketching Eliza-
bethans. The humour, which is plentiful, arises out of a clever
reproduction of inn scenes and gossiping wives, but the love
passages are somewhat ineffective, being conducted on lines which
are strictly Euphuistic. The second novel, Jack of Newbury,
perpetuates the fame of a wealthy Berkshire weaver, one John
Winchcomb (1470—1514), and, at the same time, it commemorates
the ancient glories of the company of weavers. The hero is an
affable apprentice, who is wooed and won by his master's widow,
and, thereby, is raised to affluent circumstances. Subsequently, he
confounds his betters by his patriotism and philanthropy, enter-
tains Henry VIII in his Newbury establishment and helps his
fellow-weavers in Wolsey's despite. There is, in addition, the
usual digression and comic interlude. The widow's wooing, the
hero's fifteen pictures with their didactic intention, and the practi-
cal jokes played upon a jester and an Italian, are all characteristic
of Deloney's vein of humour. The work is amusing, in spite of
its crudity, while it also lights up the humbler but respectable
spheres of Elizabethan life.
The Gentle Craft, the third work, consists of a series of tales,
dedicated to the shoemaking cult. The first two stories, Sir Hugh
and Crispine and Crispinus, relate to early and noble patrons of the
gentle craft; but these works are not in Deloney's best style. They
aim at romantic and Euphuistic effects, and the author, obviously,
is uneasy under the greatness of his themes. The third story,
Simon Eyre, moves into the actual, and relates the career of the
a
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Deloney's Gentle Craft
369
philanthropic founder of Leadenhall (c. 1450), who, from a shoe-
maker's apprentice became lord mayor. A comic underplot is
added, in which a Frenchman and a Dutchman clumsily intrigue in
broken English for the hand of a serving-maid, and this forms an
excellent counterpart to Simon's stately progress through cere-
monies and banquets. The principal figure in the next story,
Richard Casteler, is that of Long Meg of Westminster, a
serving-maid, whose rattling deeds of 1540 or thereabouts had,
before 1582, become the subject of both ballad and pamphlet'.
The story consists of a series of attempts made by Meg and her
rival, Gillian, to win the love of the hero-apprentice. A most
effective situation is brought about when the two maids arrive at
the same hour at the supposed trysting-place in Tuttle Fields.
They each awkwardly offer an awkward explanation for their
presence there, but each sturdily refuses to leave the field; and
in this humour, they sat them down, and sometimes they stalkt round about
the field, till at last the watch met with them, who, contrary to Gillian's mind,
took pains to bring them home together. At what time they gave one another
such privie flouts that the watchmen took no little delight to hear it.
The upshot of it all is that the desirable Richard marries neither,
whereupon Meg indulges in a soliloquy reminiscent of Falstaff:
Wherefore is griefe good? ' asks the disappointed maid, 'Can it recall folly
past? No. Can it help a matter remediless? No. What then? Can grief
make unkind men courteous ? No. Then wherefore should I grieve? Nay,
soeing it is so, hang sorrow! I will never care for them that care not for me. '
The next story, Master Peachey and his men, gives a breezy
account of the cudgelling administered by the sturdy master-
shoemaker to certain insolent court bullies, and then goes on to
describe the rebuff experienced at the hands of a widow by the
journeyman Tom Drum, who, previously, had been an unfailing
diplomat in affairs of the heart. Tom's character is touched with
exquisite humour, while he has a pretty turn of verse, which he
exploits on his road to London, as follows:
6
The primrose in the grene forest,
The violets they be gay,
The double dazies and the rest
That trimly deck the way,
Doth move the spirits with brave delight
Who beauty's darlings be,
With hey tricksie, trim go tricksie
Under the greenwood tree.
1 For an account of Long Meg and the contemporary allusions to her fame, see
Chandler, Literature of Roguery, vol. 1, pp. 14+5.
E. L. III. CH. XVI.
24
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370
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
The last story is concerned with tavern-haunters and the
decayed race of minstrels. In it appears the figure of Anthony
Now-Now, one of the last of his tribe, from whose lips come the
following lines with their significant burden:
When should a man shew himself gor and kind?
When should a man comfort the sorrowful mind ?
O Anthony, now, now, now.
When is the best time to drink with a friend?
When is it meetest my money to spend ?
O Anthony, now, now, now.
In these works of Deloney, there is much that differs materially
from all previous types. Deloney, obviously, is far removed from
Lyly, though he, too, produces novels of manners, but it is the
bourgeois type which he handles, the city, not the court; he writes
to amuse rather than to instruct, and humour, not wit, is the main
ingredient of his style. He has reminiscences of the romance and
its peculiar style, but they form no real part of his production as a
whole; he succumbs to Euphuism when he diverges from his real
path, and these Euphuistic passages are precisely those which reveal
his limitations, namely, an occasional want of taste and an inability
to deal with certain situations which he creates. This is clearly seen
in the stilted character of all the love-passages and in the unreal
effect of the quasi-pathetic scene in Thomas of Reading. Romantic
themes, moreover, are as uncongenial to him as is the romantic
style. Passion lies outside bis ken; to him, love is rather a
matter of side-splitting laughter, a creator of absurd situations, a
provoker of rough practical jokes. His characters, therefore, have
but little in common with Greene's feminine creations, with Sidney's
Arcadians, or with Lodge's sylvan lovers. Nor does his work stand
much nearer to the rogue-novel of Nashe, though it deals abun-
dantly in practical jokes; for, while in the picaresque type these
jests form the narrative and are an end in themselves, in Deloney
they aim at describing manners, at affording an insight into con-
temporary life, or they are a device for inserting light interlude
into the body of the narrative. And, moreover, the hero, in
Deloney, is by no means a rogue: he is endowed, on the contrary,
with perhaps more than his share of virtue.
The influences which seem to have decided the actual form
of Deloney's novels are of various kinds. In the first place,
their bourgeois colouring was the result of circumstances;
a life spent within hearing of the looms had brought him into
## p. 371 (#393) ############################################
His Literary Characteristics
371
close sympathy with crafts and craftsmen. Then, again, his
earlier ballads, to some extent, suggest his material and shape
his style : so that in Deloney the ballad-maker, the potential
novelist is already visible. His themes in verse had been partly
historical', partly romantic and partly journalistics, and these
elements, particularly the first and the last, enter into his novels.
But his ballading days did more than suggest certain themes: the
experience simplified his style and encouraged him to adopt a more
self-effacing prose than even that of Nashe, for, in Nashe, the
scholar and the theorist are still visible. Deloney's 'quaint and
plain discourse,' with its lack of 'pickt words and choice phrases,
was, as he maintained, best fitted for 'matters of merriment,
especially as, for the most part, he treated of neither courtiers nor
scholars. Deloney's debt to the contemporary stage is also con-
siderable; that he had observed to some purpose is evident from the
happy parody which he devises of Falstaff's famous soliloquy. From
the stage, also, he borrows the idea of the comic underplot, which
forms an effective feature in all three works. To the same source
must, also, be ascribed his skilful dialogue, which is more natural,
less stilted than any that had yet appeared: while his use of
dialect and broken English in his attempts at verisimilitude, the
skill with which he drops and resumes the thread of his narrative,
must, again, have resulted from his observation of dramatic methods.
When Greene and Lyly wrote, the stage was yet to develop;
Deloney, writing at a later date, does not fail to profit by its rapid
extension, and his story of Simon Eyre, under Dekker's hands, was
to pass easily into comedy form, in The Shoemaker's Holiday".
Deloney's attraction for modern readers lies, to some extent, in
his scenes of London life. Familiar places like Billingsgate and
Islington, Fleet Street and Cheapside, appear in his works, though
it is the varied humanity which throngs those scenes that most
engages the attention. With great gusto, he portrays London
tradesmen and their apprentices, dignified aldermen and bragging
captains, stately city dames and rough serving-maids; dress is
described with knowledge and relish; he appreciates both the gay
1 Cf. the ballads, Edgar, King John, Wat Tyler and Flodden.
: Cf. also Patient Grissel, Rosamund, Lancelot du Lake.
3 Cf. Lamentation of Page's wife of Plymouth and The Execution 14 Most
Wickett Traitors.
Wm Rowley's play The Shoemaker a Gentleman (1610) was based upon the first
two stories in The Gentle Craft. Henslowe also records a tragedy The Six Yeomen of
the West founded on Deloney's Thomas of Reading (see Schelling, Elis.
