The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare Part 17

[237] Second day of the second Week, "Oeuvres," Paris, 1611, fol., p.

211. After Sidney, Du Bartas thus addresses the Queen:

"Claire perle du nort, guerriere domte-Mars, Continue a cherir les muses et les arts, Et si jamais ces vers peuvent, d'une aile agile, Franchissant l'ocean voler jusqu'a ton isle, Et tomber, fortunez, entre ces blanches mains Qui sous un juste frein regissent tant d'humains, Voy les d'un oeil benin et, favorable, pense Qu'il faut, pour te louer, avoir ton eloquence."

[238] "L'Arcadie de la Comtesse de Pembrok, mise en nostre langue," by J. Baudoin; Paris, 1624, three vol. 8vo. It contains fancy portraits of Sidney and of his sister. The second translation appeared at the bookseller's, Robert Fouet, in 1625, in the same size; it is ornamented with pretty engravings. Of its three parts the first was the work of "un brave gentilhomme," and the two others of Mdlle. Genevieve Chappelain.

It is needless to observe that the great success of D'Urfe's "Astree"

had much to do with this zeal for translating Sidney's pastoral novel.

Baudoin, who died in 1650, was the translator of various other foreign works, among which part of the works of Bacon. Sir Kenelm Digby, whose fondness for romances was great, had in his library a copy of the "Arcadia" in French; this was Baudoin's translation, and it is one of the items of the catalogue drawn in view of the sale of his library ("Bibliotheca Digbeiana," London, 1680, 4to). There was, a little later, a translation in German: "Arcadia ... in unser Hochteutsche Sprach ...

ubersetzt," by Theocritus von Hirschberg [_i.e._, Martin Opitz], Francfort, 1629, 4to.

[239]

"Par la bouche des bons esprits Apollon vous tient a mespris Troupe ignorance et trop hardie, Car vous prophanez ses beaux dons Et faites naistre des chardons Au milieu de vostre Arcadie."

[240] And then it was spelt _Chaksper_, "La critique du theatre anglois," translated from the English of Collier, Paris, 1715, 8vo. In the "Journal des Scavans" for the year 1710 it appears under the shape "Shakees Pear," p. 110.

[241] Thus speaks Clarimond in his harangue against romances: "L'Angleterre n'a pas manque d'avoir aussi son Arcadie, laquelle ne nous a este montree que depuis peu par la traduction qui en a este faite. Je ne trouve point d'ordre la dedans et il y a beaucoup de choses qui ne me peuvent satisfaire.... Il est vrai que Sidney, etant mort jeune, a pu laisser son ouvrage imparfait." In his defence of romances, Philiris answers: "Quant a l'Arcadie de Sidney, apres avoir pa.s.se la mer pour nous venir voir, je suis marry que Clarimond la recoive avec un si mauvais compliment. S'il n'entend rien aux amours de Strephon et de Clajus, il faut qu'il s'en prenne a luy, non pas a l'autheur qui a rendu son livre l'un des plus beaux du monde. Il y a des discours d'amour et des discours d'estat si excellens et si delectables que je ne me la.s.serois jamais de les lire" ("Le Berger extravagant, ou, parmy des fantaisies amoureuses, l'on void les impertinences des romans et de la poesie," vol. iii., Paris, 1628, pp. 70 and 134). Sorel's work was translated into English: "The extravagant shepherd. The anti-romance, or the history of the shepherd Lysis," by John Davies, of Kidwelly; London, 1653, fol. The book has very curious plates; Davies in his preface is extremely hard upon Sidney, and heaps ridicule especially on the head of King Basilius. See _infra_, chap. vii.

[242] Fouquet, however, was very fond of foreign books; the catalogue (dated 1665) of his library, drawn up after his committal, shows that he had a fairly large number of English books. He was the earliest known French possessor of a Shakespeare. The catalogue, it is true, reveals the fact that he preserved it "in his garret":

"Livres in folio qui se trouvent dans le grenier: Comedies de Jazon [_i.e._, Ben Jonson] en anglois, 2 vol., London, 1640 _3l._ Idem, comedies angloises _10s._ Shakespeares comedies angloises _1l._ Fletcher commedies angloises _1l._"

(MS. 9,438 francais, in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.)

The second in date of the French possessors of copies of Shakespeare was, strange to say, no less a person than the patron of Racine and Boileau, the Roi-Soleil himself. Looking over, some time ago, at the Bibliotheque Nationale, the original ma.n.u.script slips made in 1684 by the royal librarian, Nicolas Clement, for his catalogue of the books confided to his care, I found one inscribed: "Will. Shakspeare, poeta Anglicus. Opera poetica, continentia tragoedias, comoedias et historiolas, Anglice, Londres, Th. Cotes, 1632, fol." And to this, considering that he had to deal with a thoroughly unknown person, Clement was careful to add a note that people might be informed what was to be thought of the poet. This is (so far as now known) the earliest French allusion to Shakespeare: "Ce poete anglois a l'imagination a.s.ses belle, il pense naturellement; mais ces belles qualitez sont obscurcies par les ordures qu'il mele dans ses comedies."

[243] Vol. xv. published in 1731.

[244] "Essai sur la pastorale," prefacing "Estelle."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ELIZABETHAN GAIETIES. KEMP'S DANCE FROM LONDON TO NORWICH.]

CHAPTER VI.

THOMAS NASH; THE PICARESQUE AND REALISTIC NOVEL.

I.

"There is nothing beside the goodnesse of G.o.d, that preserves health so much as honest mirth, especially mirth used at dinner and supper, and mirth toward bed.... Therefore, considering this matter, that mirth is so necessary a thing for man, I published this booke ... to make men merrie.... Wherefore I doe advertise every man in avoiding pensivenesse, or too much study or melancholic, to be merrie with honesty in G.o.d and for G.o.d, whom I humbly beseech to send us the mirth of heaven.

Amen."[245] Such was the advice attributed to a man whose opinion should carry weight, for he had been a "doctor of physicke" and had published with great success a "Breviary of helth" which was a household book in his time.

The pensive Sir Philip Sidney was, as we have seen, of a very different turn of mind. He did not live to read the above wise counsels, but he had had the opinion of his friend Languet on this subject, and that had been of no avail. His propensity to overthinking is apparent in many places in his writings, especially in his "Arcadia," where he made so little use of the comical elements he had himself introduced into it.

The main incident in his book, the a.s.signation given by Zelmane to both Basilius and Gynecia and the "mistakes of a night" which follow, would have been from any other pen, only too comical. It is, in fact, the character it bears in Shirley's drama, and it has the same in the many modern plays founded on similar mistakes, plays which serve to improve, according to Andrew Borde's prescription, if not the morals, at least the health of the "Palais Royal" audiences of to-day. With Sidney, the comic is a vulgar style; he very rarely risks any jests, a portrait of a cowardly peasant, or of an injured husband.[246] One of his best attempts in this style is a character in his masque of the "Lady of May," the pedant Rombus, who gives quotations which are always wrong and like Rabelais' scholar, who belongs to "the alme, inclyte and celebrate academy, which is vocitated Lutetia," is careful to make use of nothing but quasi-Latin words. In order to relate how he has been unmercifully whipped by shepherds he declares: "Yet hath not the pulchritude of my vertues protected me from the contaminating hands of these Plebeians; for comming, _solummodo_ to have parted their sanguinolent fray, they yeelded me no more reverence, than if I had beene some _pecorius asinus_."[247] But that is an easy way to amuse, and, even at that epoch, not very new. Rabelais had made a better use of it before Sidney, and after him, without mentioning Shakespeare, Cyrano de Bergerac furnished more laughable specimens. No phrase of Rombus equals the order given by the Pedant to his son when sending him to Venice to engage in commerce: "Since thou hast never desired to drink of the pool engendered by the hoof of the feathered horse,[248] and as the lyric harmony of the learned murderer of Python has never inflated thy speech, try if in merchandise Mercury will lend thee his Caduceus. So may the turbulent aeolus be as affable to thee as to the peaceful nests of halcyons. In short, Charlot, thou must go." Sidney kept entirely to these ineffectual attempts, and had no desire to go further in his examination of the ridiculous side of ordinary men.

This study was undertaken by several of his contemporaries. One of the peculiarities of this first awakening of the novel in England, is that it was nearly complete and produced, if not standard masterpieces, at least curious examples of nearly all the different kinds of novel with which later writers have made us familiar. We have seen already how Lyly depicted courtly life, and tried to use the novel as a vehicle for wise and philosophical advice; how Greene, Lodge and Sidney busied themselves with romantic tales; how Greene tried to describe the realities of life in some of his autobiographical stories. There was something more to do in this line, and the Elizabethan drama offers innumerable examples of it; but it is not so well known that in the time of Shakespeare, there were in circulation, besides romantic and chivalrous tales, regular realistic novels, the main object of which was to paint to the life ordinary men and characters. These are the least known, but not the least remarkable of the attempts made by Shakespeare's contemporaries in the direction of the novel as we understand it.

Works of this kind took for the most part the shape to which has been applied the name of _picaresque_. This was, like the pastoral, imported into England from abroad: in the sixteenth century it shone with particular brilliance in Spain. The incessant wars of that vast empire on whose frontiers the sun never set, had favoured the multiplication of adventurers, to-day great lords, to-morrow beggars; one day dangerous, another day contemptible or ridiculous. "Such people there are living and flourishing in the world, Faithless, Hopeless, Charityless: let us have at them, dear friends, with might and main. Some there are, and very successful too, mere quacks and fools: and it was to combat and expose such as those, no doubt that _Laughter_ was made." So wrote in our time William Thackeray,[249] who seems to have considered that the age of the _picaro_ had not yet pa.s.sed away, and that the novelist might still with advantage turn his attention to him. However that may be the great time for the rascal, the rogue, the knave, for all those persons of no particular cla.s.s whom adventures had left poor and by no means peaceable, for the _picaro_ in all his varieties, was the sixteenth century. A whole literature was devoted to describing the fortunes of these strange persons; Spain gave it its name of _picaresque_ and spread it abroad but did not altogether invent it. The rogue, who plays tricks which deserve a hanging, had already filled and enlivened tales in several languages. Master Reynard, in that romance of the Middle Ages of which he is the hero, is something like a _picaro_. Another of them is Til Eulenspiegel, whose adventures related in German furnished, in 1515, the subject of a very popular book;[250] even Panurge could at need be placed in this great family. Only, with Master Reynard we live in the world of animals and the romance is allegorical; with Til Eulenspiegel we find no truth, no probability, merely tricks for tricks'

sake, and how coa.r.s.e they are! With Panurge, we are distracted from the _picaro_ by all the philosophic and fantastic digressions of an extensive tale in which he is not the princ.i.p.al hero. But with the Spaniards, with Lazarillo de Tormes, Guzman d'Alfarache[251] and the rest, the _picaro_ holds a place in literature which is peculiarly his own. Faithless, shameless, if not joyless, the plaything of fortune, by turn valet, gentleman, beggar, courtier, thief, we follow him into all societies. From hovel to palace he goes first, opens the doors and shows us the characters. There is no plot more simple or flexible, none that lends itself better to the study of manners, of abuses, of social eccentricities. The only defect is that, in order to abandon himself with necessary good will to the caprices of Fate, and in order to be able to penetrate everywhere, the hero has necessarily little conscience and still less heart; hence the barrenness of the greater part of the picaresque romances and the weak _role_, entirely incidental, reserved in these works for sentiment.

The success of these Spanish romances was immediate and lasting throughout Europe. "Lazarillo" and "Guzman" were translated into several languages, and were greatly appreciated here and abroad. "What! sir,"

says the Burgundian lord in "Francion,"[252] "is it thus that you cruelly deprive me of the narration of your more amusing adventures? Do you not know that these commonplace actions are infinitely entertaining, and that we take delight in listening even to those of scoundrels and rascals like Guzman d'Alfarache and Lazarillo de Tormes?" "Guzman" had in France several ill.u.s.trious translators; the ponderous author of "La Pucelle" and famous academician, Chapelain, was one of them; another was Le Sage who, before penning this translation, had revived and doubled the popularity of the picaresque novel in publishing his "Gil Blas."[253] In Germany, Grimmelshausen, following the same models, wrote in the seventeenth century his "Simplicissimus." In England "Guzman" was several times translated; "Lazarillo" was continually reprinted during two centuries, and original romances of this kind were published here, among others, by Thomas Nash, in the sixteenth, by Richard Head in the seventeenth, by Defoe and Smollett, in the eighteenth century. The initiative of Nash and his group was all the more important and meritorious because before them the comic element was greatly wanting in the English prose romance; amusing stories in the manner of the French had found translators sometimes, but not imitators; the authors of Arcadias were especially concerned in depicting n.o.ble sentiments, and the gift of observation possessed by the English people ran the risk of being for a long time exercised nowhere but on the stage, or in metrical tales, or in moral essays.

II.

Thomas Nash made one of that group of young men, full of spirit, fire and imagination, who shone during the first part of Shakespeare's career, who fancied they could live by their pen, and who died prematurely and miserably. Nash was about thirty-three years old when he died in 1600; Marlowe was twenty-nine, Peele thirty, Greene thirty-two.

Nash was born at Lowestoft in 1567:[254] "The head towne in that iland is Leystofe, in which, bee it knowne to all men, I was borne; though my father sprung from the Nashes of Herefordshire;" a family that could "vaunt longer petigrees than patrimonies." He studied at Cambridge, in St. John's College, "in which house once I tooke up my inne for seven yere together lacking a quarter, and yet love it still, for it is and ever was, the sweetest nurse of knowledge in all that university."[255]

"Saint Johns in Cambridge," says he at another place, "at that time was an universitie within it selfe ... having, as I have hearde grave men of credite report, more candles light in it everie winter morning before foure of the clocke than the foure of clocke bell gave stroakes."[256]

Like Greene and Sidney, he imbibed early a pa.s.sionate taste for literature; he learnt the cla.s.sical languages and foreign ones too, at least French and Italian, and enjoyed much miscellaneous reading; old English literature, Mandeville, Chaucer, Gower, Skelton, were not forgotten. Following then the usual course, he seems to have travelled on the continent, to have visited Italy and Germany,[257] and to have come home, also according to custom, to rush into literature: by which word was then habitually understood fame, poverty, quarrels, imprisonment, and an early death. Not one of these items was wanting in Nash's career. A prolific and easy writer, he tried his hand at all kinds of work, composing them rapidly and with visible pleasure, always ready to laugh at the follies of others, sometimes at his own, not melancholy like Sidney, nor downcast like Greene. He very rarely alludes to his miseries without a smile, though he could not help regretting the better things he might have done if Fortune had not been so adverse, "had I a ful-sayld gale of prosperity." But "my state is so tost and weather-beaten, that it hath nowe no anchor-holde left to cleave unto."[258] Having said thus much, he immediately resumes his cheerful countenance and in the best of spirits and in perfect good humour goes on describing the great city of Yarmouth, the metropolis of the Red Herring.

With this turn of mind and an inexhaustible fund of wit, satire, and gaiety, he published numerous pamphlets, threw himself impetuously into the Martin Marprelate controversy (in which another novelist, Lyly, was also taking part); sustained a rude warfare against Gabriel Harvey;[259]

wrote a dissertation on social manners: the "Anatomie of absurditie,"

1589; a disquisition with an autobiographical turn, which may be compared with those Greene has left; "Pierce Penilesse his supplication to the Divell," 1592 (it had great success, and was even translated into French, "maimedly translated," says Nash,[260] probably with great truth); a novel "The unfortunate traveller or the life of Jack Wilton,"

1594, which has most undeservedly remained until now the least known of his works; a drama, "The Isle of dogs," 1597, which is lost, and for which the author was sent to prison; a curious and amusing discourse "in praise of the red herring," 1599; and many other books, pamphlets, and works of all kinds.[261]

Constantly entangled in quarrels, in such a way sometimes that the authorities had to interfere--for example, in his war with Gabriel Harvey, when the destruction of the books of both was ordered--he preserved to the last his good humour and his taste for people and authors who knew what it was to laugh. Curiously enough, he combined this taste with an intense fondness for pure literature and for lyrical poetry. Rabelais is among his masters, and so is Aretino, "one of the wittiest knaves that ever G.o.d made." Tarleton the jester is among his friends, and so is Kemp, the Dogberry of Shakespeare's "Much Ado," the Peter of "Romeo and Juliet," the famous dancer who performed a morris dance from London to Norwich. And at the same time he bestows with unbounded enthusiasm heartfelt praises upon Spenser, "heavenly Spenser"; upon "immortal" Sidney, whose "Astrophel and Stella" he himself published in 1591; and upon Marlowe, as the author of the exquisite Hero and Leander poem, "Leander and Hero of whome divine Musaeus sung and a diviner muse then him, Kit Marlow."[262]

With all his fondness for merry authors, Nash can discern true poetry, and he adores it. If by chance, in the midst of an angry satirical disquisition, the word poetry comes to his pen, he is suddenly transformed, he smiles, he melts; nothing is left in him but human sympathies. "Nor is poetry an art where of there is no use in a man's whole life but to describe discontented thoughts and youthfull desires, for there is no study but it dooth ill.u.s.trate and beautifie.... To them that demaund what fruites the poets of our time bring forth, or wherein they are able to approve themselves necessarie to the state, thus I answere: first and formost, they have cleansed our language from barbarisme, and made the vulgar sort, here in London, which is the fountaine whose rivers flowe round about England, to aspire to a richer puritie of speach than is communicated with the comminalty of any nation under heaven."[263] When a man like Nash could write in such a strain, with a pa.s.sion for vernacular literature scarcely equalled at any time, there was obviously growing among that "vulgar sort, here in London," a public for any great man that might appear, a public for William Shakespeare himself, who was just then beginning to reach celebrity.

Nash does not doubt that it is possible for English to become a cla.s.sical language, however rude the garb it first bore. According to Nash, Surrey was "a prince in content because a poet without peere.

Destinie never defames her selfe but when she lets an excellent poet die: if there bee any sparke of Adams paradized perfection yet emberd vp in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of mortall men, certainely G.o.d hath bestowed that his perfectest image on poets." Differing from Francis Bacon and a few of the grave dignitaries of literature, he has faith in that group of artists in the first rank of whom he placed heavenly Spenser, who can well bear comparison with any author of France, Italy, or Spain.

"Neither is he the only swallow of our summer."[264]

This fondness for pure literature, for musical verse and lyrical poetry, explains how, satirist as he was, Nash had numerous friends whose feelings towards him were nothing short of tenderness. "Sweet boy,"

"Sweet Tom," are not usual expressions towards a satirist; they are, however, applied to Nash both by Greene and by Francis Meres, because there was in Nash's mind something besides the customary rancour of born satirists, "The man," said Shakespeare,

"The man that has no music in himself Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; The motions of his spirit are as dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus; Let no such man be trusted."[265]

A very different sort of a man was Nash; his friends found that he could be "mov'd with concord of sweet sounds," and that he could be trusted.

As he survived Sidney at a time when a few years meant much for English literature, he could form a far more favourable judgment of the drama than the well-known one in the "Apologie." The ridiculous performances noticed by Sidney had not disappeared, but they were not the only ones to be seen on the stage; dramas of the highest order were being played; actors rendered them with becoming dignity, and, curiously enough to our ideas, Nash adds as a special praise that women were excluded from among their number: "Our players are not as the players beyond sea, a sort of squirting baudie comedians, that have wh.o.r.es and common curtezans to play womens parts, and forbeare no immodest speech or unchast action that may procure laughter; but our sceane is more stately furnisht than ever it was in the time of Roscius, our representations honorable and full of gallant resolution, not consisting like theirs of a Pantaloun, a wh.o.r.e and a Zanie, but of emperours, kings and princes whose true tragedies, _Sophocleo cothurno_ they do vaunt."[266] In the next century, women were allowed to replace on the English stage the newly-shaven young fellows who used to play Juliet and t.i.tania; we are happy to say that so indecent a practice was due to foreign influence.

We have Prynne's authority for believing that the first women who had the audacity to appear before a London audience were French. This happened in 1629 at the Blackfriars theatre. It is true that not long after, to make up, as it were, for lost time, plays were performed in England in which all the parts were taken by women; it is not known whether on that occasion they were French.[267]

Another very important characteristic in Nash is the high ideal he has shaped for himself of the art of writing, not only in verse, but in plain prose. At a time when English prose was scarcely acknowledged to be capable of artistic treatment, and when rules, regulations and theories had, as is generally believed, very little hold upon writers, it is interesting to notice that such an author as Nash, with his stirring style and unbridled pen, with his prison and tavern life, understood that words had a literary value of their own. They were not to be taken at random, but chosen with care. His theory may on some points be disputed, but it is certainly interesting to note that he had a theory at all. First, he desires that a man shall write in his own vein and not copy others, especially those who by their vogue and peculiarities, such as Lyly or Greene, were easiest of reach and the most tempting to imitate. He strongly defends himself from having ever done anything of this sort; on the contrary, more than once appeals were made to him to give judgment in literary matters:

"Is my style like Greenes, or my jeasts like Tarletons?

"Do I talke of any counterfeit birds, or hearbes or stones?... This I will proudly boast ... that the vaine which I have ... is of my own begetting and cals no man father in England but myselfe, neither Euphues, nor Tarlton, nor Greene.

"Not Tarlton nor Greene but have beene contented to let my simple judgment overrule them in some matters of wit. Euphues I read when I was a little ape in Cambridge, and I then thought it was _ipse ille_: it may be excellent still for ought I know, but I lookt not on it this ten yeare: but to imitate it I abhorre."[268]

His vocabulary is very rich; he has always a variety of words at his disposal and uses often two or three the better to impress our minds with the idea in his own. He coins at need new words or fetches them from cla.s.sical or foreign languages. He does not do this in an off-hand way, but on purpose and wilfully; he possessed much of that curious care for and delight in words which is one of the characteristics of the men of the Renaissance. To deal with words was in itself a pleasure for them; they liked to mould, to adopt, to combine, to invent them. Word painting delighted them; Nash has an extreme fondness for it, and satirical and comical as he is, he often astonishes us by the poetic gracefulness of his combinations of words. In this as in many other particulars he imitates, _longe sequens_, the master he seems to have admired above others, Rabelais, who, in the tempestuous roll of his diverse waters, sometimes washes up on to the sand pearls fit to adorn the crown of any lyrical poet. Fishes appear in Nash's otherwise unpoetical prose as "the sea's finny freeholders;" the inhabitants of a port town do not sow corn, "their whole harvest is by sea;" they plough "the gla.s.sy fieldes of Thetis." He has an instinctive hatred for abstract terms; he wants expressive words, words that shine, that breathe, that live. Instead of saying that Henry III. _granted_ a charter and certain privileges in a particular year of his _reign_, he will write that "he _cheard up their blouds_ with two charters more, and in Anno 1262 and forty-five of his _courte keeping_, he permitted them to wall in their towne."[269] The pleasure of replacing stale, commonplace expressions by rare, picturesque, live ones, and in lieu of a plain sentence to give an allegorical subst.i.tute, has so much attraction for Nash, that clear-sighted as he is, he cannot always avoid the ordinary defects of this particular style, defects which he has in common with many of his contemporaries, not excluding Shakespeare himself, namely, obscurity and sometimes bad taste.

Another of Nash's tendencies, which he has most decidedly in common with Rabelais, consists in the use of a number of expressions in the same sentence for the same idea. Of course one carefully chosen word would be enough; such a man as Merimee, to take an example at the other extremity of the line, picks out the one term he wants, puts it in its place; word and place fit exactly; there is nothing to add or desire.

Not so Rabelais; not so either his admirer Nash; the newly-awakened curiosities of the Renaissance were too young as yet, too fresh and strong upon them, to be easily kept down by rule and reflection.