“What are you, sir?
Ananias. Please you, a servant of the exiled brethren,
That deal with widows’ and with orphans’ goods,
And make a just account unto the saints:
A deacon.
Subtle. O, you are sent from Master Wholesome,
Your teacher?
Ananias. From Tribulation Wholesome,
Our very zealous pastor.”
After accusing Ananias of being related to the “varlet that cozened the Apostles,” Subtle meets Tribulation himself, the Amsterdam pastor, whom he treats with scant courtesy:
“Nor shall you need to libel ’gainst the prelates,
And shorten so your ears against the hearing
Of the next wire-drawn grace. Nor of necessity
Rail against plays, to please the alderman
Whose daily custard you devour; nor lie
With zealous rage till you are hoarse. Not one
Of these so singular arts. Nor call yourselves
By name of Tribulation, Persecution,
Restraint, Long-patience, and such like, affected
By the whole family or wood of you,
Only for glory, and to catch the ear
Of your disciple.”
To which hard thrust Tribulation meekly makes response:
“Truly, sir, they are
Ways that the godly brethren have invented
For propagation of the glorious cause.”
Every word of this harangue of Subtle’s would tell upon a sympathetic audience. So popular was the play itself, that a common street song was made out of it, the first verse of which we find Credulous singing in “The Ordinary:”
“My name’s not Tribulation,
Nor holy Ananias;
I was baptized in fashion,
Our vicar did hold bias.”[57]
Act iv. sc. 1.
This comedy appeared twenty years after “The Alchemist,” and yet the song was still popular. Many a lad with a Puritan name must have had these rhymes flung into his teeth. Tribulation, by the way, is one of the names given in Camden’s list, written four years later than Ben Jonson’s play. This name, which has been the object of an antiquary’s, a playwright’s, a ballad-monger’s and an historian’s ridicule (for Macaulay had his fling at it), curiously enough I have not found in the registers. But its equivalent, Lamentation, occurs, as we have seen, in the “Chancery Suits” (1590-1600), in the case of Lamentation Chapman. Restraint is met by Abstinence Pougher, and Persecution by Trial Travis (C. S. P. 1619, June 7).
Still more severe, again, is this same dramatist in “Bartholomew Fair,” which was performed in London, October, 1614, by the retinue of Lady Elizabeth, James’s daughter. Pouring ridicule upon the butt of the day, whose name of “Puritan” was by-and-by to be anagrammatized into “a turnip,” from the cropped roundness of his head, this drama became the play-goers’ favourite. It was suppressed during the Commonwealth, and one of the first to be revived at the Restoration.[58] The king is said to have given special orders for its performance. Whether his grandfather liked it as much may be doubted, for it once or twice touches on doctrinal points, and James thought he had a special gift for theology.
Zeal-of-the-land Busy is a Banbury man, which town was then even more celebrated for Puritans than cakes. Caster, in “The Ordinary,” says—