Like the pieces already noticed, “Kemps applauded Merrimentes of the men of Goteham” have been inserted in the catalogue of his “works.”[xxiv:2] But surely the words of the title-page mean nothing more than ‘merriments in which Kemp had been applauded;’ and since it is not easy to imagine that the scene, as preserved in the printed copy, could have been received with any unusual degree of approbation even by the rudest audience, the probability is, that he enlivened his part,[xxv:1] not only by his ever-welcome buffoonery, but also by sundry speeches of extemporal humour: see a passage in The Travailes of The three English Brothers, cited at p. xv. There can be no doubt that Kemp figured in other “merrimentes” besides those “of the men of Goteham,” though they have not descended to our times: “But,” says Nash to Gabriel Harvey, “by the meanes of his [Greene’s] death thou art depriued of the remedie in lawe which thou intendedst to haue had against him for calling thy Father Ropemaker. Mas, thats true, what Action will it beare? Nihil pro nihilo, none in law; what it will doe vpon the stage I cannot tell, for there a man maye make action besides his part, when he hath nothing at all to say: and if there, it is but a clownish action that it will beare; for what can bee made of a Ropemaker more than a Clowne? Will Kempe, I mistrust it will fall to thy lot for a merriment one of these dayes.” Strange Newes, Of the intercepting certaine Letters, &c. 1592.[xxv:2]
I have only to add, that the present edition of the Nine daies wonder exhibits faithfully the text of the original 4to, which is preserved in the Bodleian Library,[xxvi:1] and which Gifford declared to be “a great curiosity, and, as a rude picture of national manners, extremely well worth reprinting.”[xxvi:2]
A. DYCE.
[v:1] Heywood’s Apology for Actors, Sig. E 2, 1612, 4to.—Tarlton died in Sept. 1588. A tract by Nash, entitled An Almond for a Parrat, n. d. but published about 1589, is dedicated “To that most Comicall and conceited Caualeire Monsieur du Kempe, Jestmonger and Vice-gerent generall to the Ghost of Dicke Tarlton.”
“Letoy.—But you, Sir, are incorrigible, and
Take licence to yourselfe to adde unto
Your parts your owne free fancy; and sometimes
To alter or diminish what the writer
With care and skill compos’d; and when you are
To speake to your coactors in the Scene,
You hold interloquutions with the Audients.
Byplay.—That is a way, my Lord, has bin allow’d
On elder stages to move mirth and laughter.
Letoy.—Yes, in the dayes of Tarlton and Kempe,
Before the stage was purg’d from barbarisme,
And brought to the perfection it now shines with;
Then fooles and jesters spent their wits, because
The Poets were wise enough to save their owne
For profitabler uses.”
—Brome’s Antipodes, 1640, Act ii. sc. 1, Sig. D. 3.
The passage on this subject in Hamlet, Act iii. sc. 2, must be familiar to every reader.