Therefore we must not measure of Martin as he is allied to Elderton or tongd like Will Tony, as he was attired like an Ape on the Stage, or sits writing of Pamphlets in some spare outhouse, but as he is Mar-Prelat of England.
(m)
[From The First parte of Pasquils Apologie ... Printed where I was, and where I will bee readie by the helpe of God and my Muse, to send you the May-game of Martinisme for an intermedium, betweene the first and seconde parte of the Apologie (2 July 1590), in McKerrow, Nashe, i. 135 (Anti-Martinist). It may be doubted whether The May-game of Martinism ever had an existence outside the allusions to it in these pamphlets.]
And when I haue sent you the May-game of Martinisme, at the next setting my foote into the styrroppe after it, the signet shall be giuen, and the fielde fought.
xli. 1589. Richard (?) Puttenham.
[From The Arte of English Poesie (1589; S. R. 9 Nov. 1588), edited by E. Arber (1869); also in J. Haslewood, Ancient Critical Essays, vol. i (1811), and in part in Gregory Smith, ii. 1. On the author, cf. ch. xxiii.]
Most of the treatise (bks. ii, iii) deals with the technicalities of poetic structure and style, which the author sometimes illustrates from interludes and verses of his own. Bk. i praises poetry in general, on familiar but non-controversial humanist lines, and discusses with some classical erudition the origin of various types of poetry, as tragedy, comedy, and pantomime (c. 11), comedy (c. 14), tragedy (c. 15), staging (c. 17), pastoral (c. 18). In a brief account of English poets (c. 31) occurs: ‘But the principall man in this profession at the same time [Edward’s] was Maister Edward [sic] Ferrys a man of no lesse mirth and felicitie that way, but of much more skil, and magnificence in his meeter, and therefore wrate for the most part to the stage, in Tragedie and sometimes in Comedie or Enterlude, wherein he gaue the king so much good recreation, as he had thereby many good rewardes.... Of the later sort I thinke thus. That for Tragedie, the Lord of Buckhurst and Maister Edward Ferrys for such doings as I haue sene of theirs do deserue the hyest price: Th’ Earle of Oxford and Maister Edwardes of her Maiesties Chappell for Comedy and Enterlude.’
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,