Studies in jocular literature

by William Carew Hazlitt

CHAPTER XIV.

“Merry Tales and Quick Answers.”

BUT there is a second work which, in point of date and character, is sufficiently near to that which we have just quitted to warrant a conclusion that the editor had in its production an eye to the earlier book. Many of the jests in Merry Tales and Quick Answers, printed about 1530, resemble those which I have almost convinced myself that Sir Thomas More and John Heywood contributed to the volume from Rastell’s press; but, on the whole, the collection is of inferior interest and value, and owes more to foreign and classical sources.

There is even here, however, a curious coincidence between the fifty-third story and a feature in the Interlude before referred to. In the anecdote the man, who is not worthy to open the gate to the king, proposes to fetch Master Couper to do it, while Tom Couper is introduced in the same sort of casual way into the dramatic performance. Among these tales the fellow who entertained so humble an opinion of his worth was a true coeval type, while he who elsewhere could only see in his sovereign lord “a man in a painted garment” was a Radical born out of his time. Yet both jests bespeak such a liberality of temper as could enjoy a laugh at the two pieces of bucolic ignorance alike, which makes our thoughts return naturally to More.

In indelicacy there is not much to choose between the two series; but it has always been a misapprehension to deduce from the equivocal situations and language, which go so far to make the marrow of these popular compilations, a proof of the tolerance among our ancestors of a freedom of speech no longer admissible. The grossness of early English literature is not displayed, after all, most conspicuously in jest-books, but in the drama; and we have assuredly nothing which parallels in obscenity the old popular literature of the French.

There is, however, one important consideration to be taken into account when we enter on the study of this class of material, whether prose, poetical or dramatic,—and that is, the social station of the individuals into whose mouths these broad pleasantries are put. Occasionally, no doubt, expressions are ascribed, rightly or wrongly, to men, and even to women, in an exalted rank of life, which seem revolting to modern taste; but, although such traits do not, as a rule, find their way into type, distinguished persons of the present day are capable of a good deal in this direction, and in the last century high-born dames delivered utterances which would certainly be now viewed as extremely improper, without concealment or a consciousness of having said anything unconventional.

The standard of politeness has perhaps been raised, if that of morality has not. We confine ourselves in our vices to the closet, and observe good behaviour in the street, and even, on the whole, at the theatre. But, to return to the more immediate subject, the coarseness and ribaldry which distinguish and season the early jest-books principally emanate from the lower strata of the population—from the folk, in fact—which is no whit superior at this moment to the use and enjoyment of a similar phraseology and a similar description of merriment. Place the carter and the bargeman, the market-woman and the orange-wench, of the reign in which we live, side by side with the analogous characters when the Hundred Merry Tales appeared, and see whether in three centuries and a half refinement has made much progress! Pares cum paribus.

I insist on this point a little, because the moral and virtuous ladies and gentlemen of the Victorian era are in the habit of averting their faces from the lamentable depravity of former ages, as if it were some once rampant monster now defunct, and because the change in our manners is vulgarly attributed to the influence of the Court. The latter delusion arises from the common error of mistaking cause for effect; the open profligacy of former reigns is discarded in the same way as that of our literature and theatre; the modus vivendi of the Georges is archæological; if such doings and sayings are any longer, they are under the rose.

But it is a pharisaical absurdity to give out that there is no such matter as low life upstairs nowadays. Alas! it is too rife; and, it being so, we have surely no right to be so very hard on Whitechapel and the New Cut. That the general tone of the British community is higher and purer proceeds from the influential preponderance of the middle class; and the court, and in general the aristocracy, conform to the march of civilisation.

Queer stories must be inter nos. Altered circumstances have rendered it impracticable to bring them into print or to introduce them upon the boards. Be thankful for small mercies; but do not, my dear contemporaries, flatter yourselves that you are, warp and woof, much better than those who read on their first appearance the Hundred Merry Tales and the Merry Tales and Quick Answers, or that by reading them you would be made much worse!