Thomas Dekker.
Dekker was fellow of Peele and of the rest;[108] he quarrelled bitterly with Ben Jonson—they beating each other vilely with bad words, that can be read now (by whoso likes such reading) in the Poetaster of Jonson, or in the Satiromastix of Dekker. ’Twould be unfair, however, to judge him altogether by his play of the cudgels in this famous controversy. There is good meat in what Dekker wrote: he had humor; he had pluck; he had gift for using words—to sting or to praise—or to beguile one. There are traces not only of a Dickens flavor in him, but of a Lamb flavor as well; and there is reason to believe that, like both these later humorists, he made his conquests without the support of a university training. Swinburne characterizes him as a “modest, shiftless, careless nature:” but he was keen to thrust a pin into one who had offended his sensibilities; in his plays he warmed into pretty lyrical outbreaks, but never seriously measured out a work of large proportions, or entered upon execution of such with a calm, persevering temper. He was many-sided, not only literary-wise, but also conscience-wise. It seems incredible that one who should write the coarse things which appear in his Bachelor’s Banquet should also have elaborated, with a pious unction (that reminds of Jeremy Taylor) the saintly invocations of the Foure Birds of Noah’s Ark: and as for his Dreame it shows in parts a luridness of color which reminds of our own Wigglesworth—as if this New England poet of fifty years later may have dipped his brush into the same paint-pot. I cite a warm fragment from his Dreame of the Last Judgement;—
“Their cries, nor yelling did the Judge regard,
For all the doores of Mercy up were bar’d:
Justice and Wrath in wrinkles knit his forhead,
And thus he spake: You cursed and abhorred,
You brood of Sathan, sonnes of death and hell,
In fires that still shall burne, you still shall dwell;
In hoopes of Iron: then were they bound up strong,
(Shrikes [shrieks] being the Burden of their dolefull song)
Scarce was Sentence breath’d-out, but mine eies
Even saw (me thought) a Caldron, whence did rise
A pitchy Steeme of Sulphure and thick Smoake,
Able whole coapes of Firmament to choake:
About this, Divels stood round, still blowing the fire,
Some, tossing Soules, some whipping them with wire,
Across the face, as up to th’ chins they stood
In boyling brimstone, lead and oyle, and bloud.”
It is, however, as a social photographer that I wish to call special attention to Dekker; indeed, his little touches upon dress, dinners, bear-baitings, watermen, walks at Powles, Spanish boots, tavern orgies—though largely ironical and much exaggerated doubtless, have the same elements of nature in them which people catch now with their pocket detective cameras. His Sinnes of London, his answer to Pierce Pennilesse, his Gull’s Horne Boke are full of these sketches. This which follows, tells how a young gallant should behave himself in an ordinary:—
“Being arrived in the room, salute not any but those of your acquaintance; walke up and downe by the rest as scornfully and as carelessly as a Gentleman-Usher: Select some friend (having first throwne off your cloake) to walke up and downe the roome with you, … and this will be a meanes to publish your clothes better than Powles, a Tennis-court, or a Playhouse; discourse as lowd as you can, no matter to what purpose if you but make a noise, and laugh in fashion, and have a good sower face to promise quarrelling, you shall be much observed.
“If you be a souldier, talke how often you have beene in action: as the Portingale voiage, Cales voiage, besides some eight or nine imploiments in Ireland.… And if you perceive that the untravellᵈ Company about you take this doune well, ply them with more such stuffe, as how you have interpreted betweene the French king and a great Lord of Barbary, when they have been drinking healthes together, and that will be an excellent occasion to publish your languages, if you have them: if not, get some fragments of French, or smal parcels of Italian, to fling about the table: but beware how you speake any Latine there.”
And he goes on to speak of the three-penny tables and the twelve-penny tables, and of the order in which meats should be eaten—all which as giving glimpses of something like the every-day, actual life of the ambitious and the talked-of young fellows about London streets and taverns is better worth to us than Dekker’s dramas.