xlii. 1589. Thomas Nashe.
[From an epistle To the Gentlemen Students of Both Universities, prefixed to Robert Greene’s Menaphon (1589; S. R. 23 Aug. 1589), reprinted from ed. 1610, which has some corrections possibly by Nashe, in McKerrow, iii. 311, with valuable notes (iv. 444) upon the allusions and supposed allusions. The suggestion of Collier that Menaphon was originally printed in 1587 appears to be baseless. Outside the three passages quoted, Nashe praises Watson’s translation of Antigone. McKerrow’s collection of material for the critical discussion of the epistle is so full that I need only compare briefly my conclusions with his. In (i) Nashe seems to me to be criticizing (a) ‘tragedians’, which for me are clearly ‘tragic actors’, while McKerrow inclines to make them ‘writers of tragedy’, and (b) their dramatists, who include blank-verse ‘Art-masters’, which I agree with McKerrow is more likely, in view of the fact that Greene above all flourished his University degree, to mean ‘masters of their art’ than ‘masters of Arts’, and translating tradesmen or serving-men with no education beyond a grammar-school. The slight suggestions that Nashe may have had Marlowe especially in mind are perhaps hardly sufficient to outweigh his statement in Have with you to Saffron Walden (1596) that he ‘neuer abusd Marloe’; and Marlowe was a University man, and no tradesman or serving-man. On the other hand, there is no specific praise of Marlowe with other University poets in the epistle. The whole of (i) is a precise parallel to the following lines by Thomas Brabine, also prefixed to Menaphon:
‘Come foorth you witts that vaunt the pompe of speach,
And striue to thunder from a Stage-mans throate:
View Menaphon a note beyond your reach;
Whose sight will make your drumming descant doate:
Players auaunt, you know not to delight;
Welcome sweete Shepheard; worth a Schollers sight.’
In (ii) I am rather more inclined than McKerrow to think that the ‘Nouerint’ and the ‘Kidde in Æsop’ may glance at Kyd, who was not one of the University group, and was a grammarian, a translator, and very likely already a serving-man. But the attempts to trace him elsewhere in the passage come to very little; nor is one playwright only necessarily in question, so that, although the ‘handfuls of Tragicall speeches’ may point to a play of Hamlet as already extant in 1589, the inference that Kyd was its author becomes extremely thin. In (iii) Nashe attacks the players as parasitic on the poets, in terms closely resembling those used later by Greene in his Groatsworth of Wit (No. xlviii). Probably Roscius is here Alleyn, and Caesar stands for the poets in general. I do not agree with Fleay, L. of S. 10, 99, that the epistle reflects a rivalry between the poets of the Queen’s men and those of Pembroke’s, who indeed did not yet exist, or any other company. The issue is between the University poets on the one hand and the players and illiterate poets on the other.]
P. 311. ‘I am not ignorant how eloquent our gowned age is grown of late; so that euery mechanicall mate abhorres the English he was borne too, and plucks, with a solemne periphrasis, his vt vales from the inkehorne: which I impute, not so much to the perfection of Arts, as to the seruile imitation of vainglorious Tragedians, who contend not so seriously to excell in action, as to embowell the cloudes in a speech of comparison, thinking themselues more than initiated in Poets immortality, if they but once get Boreas by the beard and the heauenly Bull by the deaw-lap. But heerein I cannot so fully bequeath them to folly, as their ideot Art-masters, that intrude themselues to our eares as the Alcumists of eloquence, who (mounted on the stage of arrogance) think to out-braue better pennes with the swelling bumbast of a bragging blanke verse. Indeede it may bee the ingrafted ouerflow of some kil-cow conceit, that ouercloyeth their imagination with a more than drunken resolution, being not extemporall in the inuention of any other meanes to vent their manhoode, commits the disgestion of their cholericke incumbrances to the spacious volubilitie of a drumming decasillabon. Mongst this kind of men that repose eternitie in the mouth of a Player, I can but ingrosse some deep read Grammarians, who, hauing no more learning in their skull than will serue to take vp a commoditie, nor Art in their braine than was nourished in a seruing mans idlenesse, will take vppon them to be the ironicall Censors of all, when God and Poetrie doth know they are the simplest of all. To leaue these to the mercy of their Mother tongue, that feed on nought but the crums that fall from the Translators trencher, I come (sweet friend) to thy Arcadian Menaphon, ...’ P. 315. ‘I’le turne backe to my first text of Studies of delight, and talke a little in friendship with a few of our triuiall translators. It is a common practise now a dayes amongst a sort of shifting companions, that runne through euery Art and thriue by none, to leaue the trade of Nouerint, whereto they were borne, and busie themselues with the indeuours of Art, that could scarcely Latinize their neck verse if they should haue neede; yet English Seneca read by Candlelight yeelds many good sentences, as Blood is a begger, and so forth; and if you intreate him faire in a frostie morning, hee will affoord you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls of Tragicall speeches. But O griefe! Tempus edax rerum, whats that will last alwayes? The Sea exhaled by droppes will in continuance bee drie, and Seneca, let blood line by line and page by page, at length must needes die to our Stage; which makes his famished followers to imitate the Kidde in Æsop, who, enamoured with the Foxes newfangles, forsooke all hopes of life to leape into a newe occupation; and these men, renouncing all possibilities of credite or estimation, to intermeddle with Italian Translations: wherein how poorely they haue plodded, (as those that are neither prouenzall men, nor are able to distinguish of Articles,) let all indifferent Gentlemen that haue trauailed in that tongue discerne by their two-pennie pamphlets: & no maruell though their home borne mediocritie bee such in this matter; for what can bee hoped of those that thrust Elisium into hell, and haue not learned, so long as they haue liued in the Spheres, the iust measure of the Horizon without an hexameter? Sufficeth them to bodge vp a blanke verse with ifs and ands, and otherwhile for recreation after their Candle-stuffe, hauing starched their beards most curiously, to make a Peripateticall path into the inner parts of the Citie, and spend two or three howers in turning ouer French Doudie, where they attract more infection in one minute, then they can do eloquence all daies of their life, by conuersing with any Authors of like argument.’ P. 323. ‘There are extant about London many most able men to reuiue Poetry ... as, for example, Mathew Roydon, Thomas Atchelow, and George Peele; the first of whom, as he hath shewed himselfe singular in the immortall Epitaph of his beloued Astrophell, besides many other most absolute Comike inuentions (made more publike by euery mans praise, than they can be by my speech), so the second hath more than once or twice manifested his deepe witted schollership in places of credite: and for the last, though not the least of them all, I dare commend him to all that know him, as the chiefe supporter of pleasance now liuing, the Atlas of Poetrie, and primus verborum Artifex: whose first increase, the arraignement of Paris, might pleade to your opinions his pregnant dexterity of wit, and manifold varietie of inuention; where in (me iudice) he goeth a steppe beyond all that write. Sundry other sweete gentlemen I know, that haue vaunted their pennes in priuate deuices, and tricked vp a company of taffata fooles with their feathers, whose beauty if our Poets had not peecte with the supply of their periwigs, they might haue antickt it vntill this time vp and downe the Countrey with the King of Fairies, and dined euery day at the pease porredge ordinary with Delphrigus. But Tolossa hath forgot that it was sometime sacked, and beggars that euer they carried their fardels on footback: and in truth no meruaile, when as the deserued reputation of one Roscius is of force to enrich a rabble of counterfets; yet let subiects for all their insolence dedicate a De profundis euery morning to the preseruation of their Caesar, least their increasing indignities returne them ere long to their iugling to mediocrity, and they bewaile in weeping blankes the wane of their Monarchie.’