Thomas Dekker's A Knights Conjuring (1607): A Critical Edition [Reprint 2015 ed.] 9783111392714, 9783111030210

Citation preview

STUDIES IN ENGLISH

LITERATURE

Volume LXXVIII

THOMAS DEKKER'S A KNIGHTS CONJURING (1607) A Critical Edition

by

LARRY M. ROBBINS

1974 MOUTON THE HAGUE · PARIS

© Copyright 1974 in The Netherlands Mouton & Co. Ν.V., Publishers, The Hague No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 73-80107

Printed in The Netherlands by Z.N.D., 's-Hertogenbosch

TO MY WIFE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Jonas A. Barish for incisive and invaluable comments on this manuscript. Special thanks are also due to Matthias Shaaber, Curator, and William E. Miller, Assistant Curator, of the Horace Howard Furness Library at the University of Pennsylvania. Both Dr. Shaaber and Dr. Miller have been very generous with their time and advice. Dr. Miller's mastery of the Elizabethan Library has made my task immeasurably easier.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

7

Critical Introduction

13

Textual Introduction

52

Text

67

Explanatory Notes

159

Appendix

230

Bibliography

236

INTRODUCTION

CRITICAL INTRODUCTION

APPRAISAL OF DEKKER'S NON-DRAMATIC PROSE

Critical attitudes toward the work of Thomas Dekker have often been negative or apologetic, and even his admirers cannot give him unqualified praise. In recognizing Dekker's ability to provide entertainment on the stage, Una Ellis-Fermor remarks that "everything he wrote could be played ... most of it better than it can be read." 1 Perhaps the simplest assessment of Dekker's dramatic writings is that of Alfred Harbage: "Dekker wrote some atrocious plays - he was a rogue - but he also wrote some wonderful ones." 2 The good plays are entertaining because of Dekker's accurate and colorful depiction of London life and characters, his witty language, and his sympathy for the converted courtesans, patient wives, and impoverished poets who must at all times confront the forces of the devil. The bad plays fail because the plots are not well-developed or well-integrated, because characters are not fully drawn, or because the dialogue is stiff and dull. The plays that fall in between are "wonderful" in places, "atrocious" in others, and obviously uneven. Dramatic works must first of all "play well" and be well-received by an audience. Dekker was very conscious of his audience, the "two-penny gallery", and provided them with moral themes and witty language. Dekker's success in the theater brought him 1

Jacobean Drama (London, 1936), p. 120. Alfred Harbage, "The Mystery of Perkitt Warbeck", in Studies in the English Renaissance Drama, ed. Josephine W. Bennett, Oscar Cargill and Vernon Hall (New York, 1959), p. 141. 2

14

INTRODUCTION

acclaim but not enough money to provide a steady income. Taking advantage of the fame he acquired as a dramatist, he turned at various points in his career to writing prose pamphlets. The audience of a play is visible and audible. When the Epilogue asks for the "hard hands" of spectators in approval of his efforts, he immediately hears some form of judgment. The main critical criterion for judging prose pamphlets must be "reading well". In passing judgment on Dekker's non-dramatic prose, critics have found the same unevenness that appears in the drama. F. P. Wilson states that "Dekker's style in his satirical pamphlets is indeed vigorous enough, but 'pure', 'lucid', 'straightforward' are the last epithets that we would think of applying to it. His prose is impulsive and turbulent, swirling and eddying with parenthetic clauses in single-barrelled and double-barrelled brackets." 3 Wilson's appraisal, while not necessarily negative, is not enthusiastic. He seems to be wishing for more clarity and less vigor. George R. Price is critical of the structure of Dekker's prose works: "Dekker's structure is often tentative or clumsy, rarely firm and clear." 4 Price's criticism is correct, but he applies standards of structure which do not fit the kind of work Dekker was writing. Dekker's prose works are collections of current events, topographical references, and anecdotes loosely tied together in the manner of a Jest Book. The plots of his satiric surveys of vice do not need to develop clearly. The satirist commands a view of the whole panorama of vice and affectation, selecting at random the subjects to be scrutinized by his wit. Dekker's satiric works are impressionistic descriptions of London Ufe and are only loosely bound together by the perambulations of a night watchman or a professional traveller like the Knight of the Post. A Knights Conjuring has a firmer structure than most of Dekker's prose works because its purpose is to answer Nashe's Pierce Pennilesses Supplication to the Devil (1592). The plot consists of a search for the devil, the obtaining of his answer, and the delivery of the answer 3

The Batchelors Banquet, ed. F. P. Wilson (Oxford, 1929), p. xxvi. Thomas Dekker (New York, 1969), p. 131. References to this work cited hereafter in text. 4

INTRODUCTION

15

to Pierce Pennilesse. In general, Dekker's theory of plot corresponds to his statement in the epistle to the reader of A Strange Horse Race: "The main plot of my building is a moral labyrinth; a weake thred guides you in and out." 5 It is unfair, then, to judge Dekker by critical standards that may not be altogether applicable. He may be, as Bullen says, a "wayward genius",6 who did not always bring together apt language and unified structure in equal proportion. He was at least aware of the kind of structure and style he created. When E. F. Rimbault offered his edition of A Knights Conjuring in 1842 he stated: No apology is necessary for offering the present reprint to the members of the "Percy Society." Independently of the interest attached to it in connexion with one of the most popular productions of the sixteenth century, it contains an amusing and highly wrought picture of manners and passing events, together with incidental notices of Chaucer, Spencer, Watson, Kid, Marlow, Greene, Peele, Nash, Chettle, and other of our poets and dramatic writers, - a sufficient passport for its appearance in the present shape.7 Rimbault's modest appraisal does not go far enough. A Knights Conjuring stands on its own merits as a vigorous, carefully controlled account of contemporary manners and characters. It unites classical traditions such as the journey to Hell with the contemporary literary traditions of Satire, Rogue Literature, and the Jest. It demonstrates Dekker's ability to create within the context of an imaginary journey a realistic appraisal of life in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. A Knights Conjuring is important for its "picture of manners and passing events"; but it is equally important as an imaginative and unified prose work. All Hell breaks loose because the artistry of Dekker sets it loose.

5

Alexander B. Grosart, The Non-Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, IV (London, 1885), 312. References to Grosart cited hereafter in text. « A. H. Bullen, Elizabethans (London, 1924), p. 99. 7 A Knights Conjuring by Thomas Dekker, ed. E. F. Rimbault, Percy Society, V (London, 1842), p. xvi.

16

INTRODUCTION BIOGRAPHY

If Dekker's reference in 1632 to his "threescore years" 8 is meant precisely, he was born in 1572. Evidence from two of his prose works establishes his birthplace as London. 9 There are no records of the schools he attended, but his knowledge of Latin grammar and classical authors suggests schools with standard Elizabethan curricula. He was not enrolled at a university. Between the time Dekker left grammar school (probably around 1588 at the age of 16) and the first appearance of his name in Henslowe's Diary in 1597, nothing is known of his activities. Henslowe's Diary offers concrete information for the years 1597 to 1604. Most of the entries show that Henslowe either paid Dekker for work completed or advanced money for work in progress. Some payments were for Dekker's own plays, but most were for collaborations or for revisions or additions to plays by other authors. Dekker is listed as co-author with Chetile, Day, Drayton, Webster, Wilson, and many other playwrights. As Henslowe's "Cobbler of Poetry"or "Play Patcher", 10 Dekker wrote, coauthored, or revised over 40 plays. The plague of 1603, in addition to claiming the Queen, started Dekker on a new career as a writer of prose pamphlets. The playhouses were closed until April, 1604, forcing those connected with the theater to seek other sources of revenue. Dekker began his prose career by writing a eulogy of the Queen and the loyal subjects who died with her in The Wonderful Yeare. 1603. Not content with reporting the statistics of the plague, at the end of the work he animates the terrible events of 1603 in a series of fictional sketches. Immediately, in his first prose work, Dekker transcends journalistic description to imaginative representation or realistic fiction. After The Wonderful Yeare, Dekker returned to drama, writing 1 Honest Whore (1604), Westward Hoe (1604), The Magnificent 8

Cf. "Epistle Dedicatory", English Villainies, A2v, (STC 6491), the seventh edition of Lanthorne and Candle-light (STC 6485). 9 Cf. The Seven Deadly Sins of London (1606) (Grosart, II, 13) and A Rod for Runaways (1625) (Grosart, IV, 295). 10 Dekker's own terms. Cf. p. 105, 11. 19-20.

INTRODUCTION

17

Enterntainment (1604), Northward Hoe (1605), 2 Honest Whore (c. 1605-1607), The Roaring Girl (1604) and The Whore of Babylon (1606). From 1606 to 1609 he wrote only non-dramatic works, producing 10 pamphlets. The number of new pamphlets decreased after 1609, but Dekker continued his interest in non-dramatic prose until his death in 1632. He also continued writing for the stage, collaborating with Massinger on The Virgin Martyr (1620), and with Rowley and Ford on The Witch of Edmonton (1621). Dekker's career as a dramatist and pamphleteer is accurately described by Phoebe Sheavyn's comment about Elizabethan writers: "In the main the writers had to withstand the withering effects of poverty, official interference, unfair competition and scorn." 1 1 The effects of poverty severely curtailed Dekker's creative output because he was imprisoned for debt three times. He was first in prison in 1597/8 and released as a result of a loan by Henslowe to the Lord Admiral's men: lent unto the companey the 4 of febreary 1598 to dise charge m r decker owt of the counter in the powltrey the some of fortie shillinges I saye dd to thomas dowton...xxxxs 12 He was released again from prison on January 30, 1598/9, thanks to Henslowe: lent unto Thomas downton the 30 of Janewary 1958 to descharge Thomas dickers frome the a reaste of my lord chamberlenes men I saye lent...iij u xs 13 In 1613 Dekker was placed in the King's Bench prison, and this time he stayed seven years. The preface to Dekker His Dreame records the effect of this "devilish" imprisonment. It was a long Sleepe, which for almost seven yeares together seized al my sences, drowning them in a deepe Lethe of forgetfulnesse, and burying me to the World, in the lowest grave of Oblivion. (Grosart, III, 11) 11

The Literary Profession in the Renaissance (Manchester, 1909), p. 7. Henslowe's Diary, ed. R. A. Foakes and R. T. Rickert (Cambridge, 1961), p. 86. 13 Ibid., p. 104. 12

18

INTRODUCTION

Dekker was finally released from the King's Bench in 1619, but he was never free of debt. Dekker appears to have been married twice. F. P. Wilson notes that "Mary wife of Thomas Dekkers" was buried on July 24, 1616, 14 and Mark Eccles records a renunciation of administration by Dekker's widow, Elizabeth, dated Sept. 4, 1632. 15 Three daughters, Dorcas, Elizabeth, and Anne were "christened at St. Giles's, Cripplegate, on 27 October 1594, 29 November 1598 and 24 October 1602". 16 The renunciation of administration, an entry in the burial register of St. James', Clerkenwell for August 25, 1632, of a "Thomas Decker, householder", and the fact that Dekker ceased publishing in 1632, point conclusively to that year as the date of his death. One of the many aspects of Dekker's life that has remained elusive is his Dutch background. His name is Dutch and his knowledge of Dutch language and culture is evident throughout his writings, both dramatic and non-dramatic. The name Dekker does not appear in the records of the established Dutch communities (Norwich and the Dutch reformed church, Austin Friars, London), nor are there any records of a Dekker family migrating from the low countries to England in the sixteenth century. The only significant relationship that I have thus far been able to uncover is most likely only a great coincidence. The registers of the Algemeen Rijksarchief in The Hague record the fact that a Clais Decker, a town official in Scheveningen, was murdered in November, 1477, by a shoemaker. In spite of the lack of specific evidence of Dekker's Dutch origins, his familiarity with the Dutch language and culture is clear, and he far surpasses his contemporaries in the number of allusions to the low countries. The Dutch spoken by Hans in The Shoemakers Holiday is simple but without gross error, and the picture of Hans is sympathetic (recognizing, of course, that Hans is an Englishman in disguise). Although many of the Dutch references are fashionably 14 15 18

"Three Notes on Thomas Dekker", MLR, XV (January 1920), 83. "Thomas Dekker: Burial Place", N&Q, CLXXVII (1939), 157. Wilson, "Three Notes on Thomas Dekker", p. 83.

INTRODUCTION

19

derisive, the general picture of the low countries and their inhabitants is no worse than that of proud Spain, lecherous France, warlike Germany, or apish England itself. Perhaps Dekker was so familiar with the low countries because of the interest aroused by the wars, but his name and visible familiarity with the Dutch suggest that if his immediate ancestors were not Dutch, his background is decidedly influenced by Dutch culture.

NON-DRAMATIC WORKS

In discussing the body of Dekker's non-dramatic work, critics must first face the problem of classification. Seventeen works have been definitely ascribed to Dekker and many more have been attributed to him. 17 The attempts to force these works into clear-cut categories have been tentative and unsuccessful because of the unmanageable variety of form, content, and style. The most convenient and most general classification is that of Alexander B. Grosart who calls those works which are not plays "non-dramatic". It matters little whether one uses the word "pamphlets", the format in which the works were printed or "tracts", a word which has religious connotations but means only "a book or written work treating of some particular topic". 18 The attempts to categorize the prose works according to form or content have proved unsuccessful because the categories chosen have been either too general or too limiting. F. P. Wilson has identified some of Dekker's works as "Plague Pamphlets", cate-

17 For complete chronological lists of all works written by or ascribed to Dekker see the bibliographies in Marie Therese Jones-Davies, Un Peintre de la Vie Londonienne Thomas Dekker, II (Paris, 1958) and George R. Price, Thomas Dekker (New York, 1969). I will discuss works which have been definitely identified, either by name or by internal evidence, as Dekker's. Thus, such pamphlets as Penny-Wise and Pound Foolish and some of the "Plague Pamphlets" ascribed to Dekker by F. P. Wilson will not be discussed. 18 Cf. Oxford English Dictionary, ed. James A. H. Murray, et al. (Oxford, 1933), "Tract", Sb.l2.

20

INTRODUCTION

gorizing them by subject matter. 1 9 The remaining pamphlets do not fall so neatly under one subject heading. Marie-Therese Jones-Davies, after apologizing for attempting to categorize ("Emprisonner en compartiments rigides ... est un exercice factice, illusoire et arbitraire") 20 chooses three categories: "1) la récolte de l'observation, de l'expérience et de la tradition; 2) le fruit de la méditation; 3) le produit des principales dettes littéraires" (I, 92). The first category is too vague because it does not distinguish among form, style, or subject and because it actually describes all of Dekker's works, including the drama. The second category includes only two works, Dekker His Dreame, certainly a result of his prison experience, and Four Birds of Noah's Ark, a book of prayers. The final category is the only specific one of the three, but it forces dissimilar works, some of which contain Dekker's most accurate description and most brilliant satire, into the role of imitations. In attempting to divide Dekker's nondramatic works into three distinct categories, Jones-Davies has made no distinction between genre and subject matter and has created categories which are by no means mutually exclusive. Price says he categorizes by theme (p. 114). He also apologizes for the inadequacy of his categories: "The categories are not entirely logical or mutually exclusive of course; for instance, the plague pamphlets, which are essentially reportage, also contain satiric invective against the cruelty of both city and country folk as well as religious exhortations to escape the wrath of God by amendment of evil ways" (p. 114). Price's six classifications are: "the plague, national peril; social satire; swindles and cozening games; fiction; religion" (p. 114). These categories mix subject matter (plague, national peril, swindles and cozening games), and genre (social satire, fiction, and religious writing). Such a mixture 19

F. P. Wilson, The Plague Pamphlets of Thomas Dekker (Oxford, 1925). Wilson includes The Wonderfull Yeare and A Rod for Run-aways, which have been definitely assigned to Dekker, and Newes from Graves-end, The Meeting of Gallants, London Looke Backe, and The Black Rod and the White Rod, which he attributes to Dekker. 20 Un Peintre de la vie Londonienne Thomas Dekker, II (Paris, 1958), 91. References to this work will be cited hereafter in text.

INTRODUCTION

21

is confusing because many works easily fit into more than one category. These attempts at classification have been unable to achieve the impossible - to divide Dekker's non-dramatic work into logical categories of either form or content. Almost all of the works contain some kind of satire, some humor, some fictional story or description, and some realistic "reportage" of London life. It is not even convenient, therefore, to force Dekker's prose into unusable categories. A more convenient and practical method is to discuss each work in chronological order, describing both form and content. Dekker's first non-dramatic prose work, The Wonderfull Yeare. 1603., begins with a journalistic account of the plague and ends with a series of fictional tales showing how Englishmen react to the ravages of the disease which affected all levels of society from the Queen to a tinker. The purpose of the work, a combination of fact and fiction, is stated in the title: The Wonderfull yeare. 1603. Wherein is shewed the picture of London, lying sicke of the Plague. At the ende of all (like a mery Epilogue to a dull Play) certaine Tales are cut out in sundry fashions, of purpose to shorten the lives of long winters nights, that lye watching in the darke for

us. (Grosart, I, 73) Fiction, Dekker implies, can be a curative for fear. Humor can enliven the dark winter nights of the Plague. I n 1606, Dekker began to write prose pamphlets almost exclusively, and by 1608 he had produced ten works. The first of this group, The Seven Deadly Sins of London (1606), is a rehearsal of an old list with new names from the language and traditions of roguery: "Politicke Bankruptisme, Lying, Candle-light, Sloth, Apishnesse, Shaving, and Crueltie". The graphic and sensational description in this work dramatizes the sordidness of mercantile London in what Dekker calls an "Enterlude of iniquitie" (Grosart, II, 6). Another pamphlet written in 1606 is Newes from Hell, enlarged and reissued in 1607 as A Knights Conjuring. The nature of these two pamphlets will be discussed in full in this introduction. In 1607, Dekker and George Wilkins wrote Jests to Make you

22

INTRODUCTION

Merrie, a collection of jokes and anecdotes in the tradition of the Facetia of Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459) and the Tudor Jest Book, A Hundred Merry Tales (c. 1525). At the end of the work Dekker appends a long tale in which he uses a persona-narrator, "Cock Watt, (the Walking Spirit of Newgate)" to tell tales (Grosart, II, 269). The next work, The Dead Terme (1607) is "written in manner of a dialogue between the two Cityes London and Westminster" (Grosart, IV, 3). It, too, is an account of the villainies of urban life, with the "debat" between the two personified cities providing a vehicle for satire. Each city accuses the other of being the more sinful. In 1608, Dekker began a series which was to prove the most popular of his prose writings. Using Cock Watt and the Knight of the Post as models, he created The Belman of London, "a picture of Villainy, drawn to the life, of purpose that life might be drawne from it" (Grosart, III, 67). The list of the laws and traditions of Vagabonds contained in this work borrows heavily from previous treatises such as John Awdeley's Fraternity of Vagabonds (1561) and Thomas Harman's A Caveat for Common Cursetors (1567). Dekker's description of underworld activities was apparently commercially successful because in the same year he wrote a sequel, Lanthorne and Candlelight, or the Belmans Second Nights Walk. The sequel includes a "Canters Dictionarie" and extensive descriptions of cony-catching, or the methods used to cheat and rob unsuspecting citizens. This work was so popular it went through eight editions by 1638. Another pamphlet written in 1608, The Güls Hornbook, is one of Dekker's most original pieces, although it is an acknowledged adaptation of Frederick Dedekind's Latin poem, "Grobianus". Dekker says in the preface to the reader that the work hath a relish of Grobianisme, and tastes very strongly of it in the beginning: the reason thereof is, that, having translated many Bookes of that into English Verse, and not greatly liking the Subject, I altered the shape, and of a Dutchman fashioned a meere Englishman. (Grosart, II, 199) In chapters with titles such as "How a gallant should behave him-

INTRODUCTION

23

seife in Powles-walke" and "How a gallant should behave himselfe in Play-Houses" Dekker satirizes the affectations of the selfindulgent. A Güls Hornbook has provided a storehouse of "inside information" about daily life in Elizabethan England. In 1609, Dekker published The Ravens Almanack, a mockprognostication which satirizes such popular almanacs as Erra Paters Almanacke, first published in 1536, Platoes Cap (1604), and the well-respected An Almanack and Prognostication for the year 1598 by Thomas Buckminster. Dekker's almanac includes humorous stories that parody the kind of remedies and miscellaneous information contained in the popular almanacs: "A medicine to cure the Plague of a woman's tongue, experimented on a Coblers wife" (Grosart, IV, 197), "An excellent dyet for an Usurer, when his conscience is starved" (Grosart, IV, 229), etc. Work for Armourers (1609) is an allegorical battle between Poverty and Money in which Poverty, Death, Famine, and the Plague lay siege to the city, defended by Money and her lieutenants. The siege is lifted after the conclusion of a "perpetuali truce," stipulating that the two combatants should forever be in league and exist side by side. The work ends with the ironic report that "the rich men feast one another (as they were wont) and the poore were kept poore still in pollicy, because they should doe no more hurt" (Grosart, IV, 166). The Four Birds of Noahs Ark (1609) is a collection of prayers for all ages and classes from the Prince of Wales to "a child before he goeth to his study" (Grosart, V, 17). These prayers, Dekker's clearest and most sincere writing, demonstrate his belief in man's capabilities for virtue. In 1613, Dekker wrote A Strange Horse Race, a formless work characterizing the "races" of "Vertues and Vices" (and many other such "races") and including at the end "The Catchpoles Masque", "The Bankrouts Banquet", and "The Devils Last Will and Testament". In the dedication, Dekker states the satiric purpose of all his writings: "I have therefore not (with the Sturgeon) swomme against the streame; But followed the Humorous Tides of this Age, and (Like Democritus) have faine a Laughing at the world, sithence it does nothing but mocke it seife" (Grosart, III, 309).

24

INTRODUCTION

Dekker's last new prose pamphlet, A Rodfor Runaways appeared in 1625. This work is a denunciation of those who leave the city to escape the plague and in so doing infect the countryside and divert the provisions necessary to keep the remaining inhabitants of the city alive. The plague is described as God's judgment on the city and its inhabitants for their sins. Although variations on the theme of sin and judgment pervade Dekker's prose, no single word can characterize all of his nondramatic writing. Humor and satire dominate in his works because Dekker has "faine a Laughing at the world, sithence it does nothing but mocke it selfe." All the works contain some fiction, either in the form of anecdote, allegory, or a fictional frame. The topographical background is London, and the main themes are man's inclination to vice and his capability for virtue. The purpose of Dekker's works, dramatic and non-dramatic, is to record with accuracy the manifestations of vice and misery and to laugh therapeutically at a world which has gone to the devil.

T H E RELATIONSHIP OF PIERCE PENNILESSES TO THE DEVIL21 A N D NEWES FROM

SUPPLICATION HELL

When Thomas Nashe decided to "go to the Devil" for aid, his Supplication was a tempting invitation to write an answer. Dekker notes in the epistle "To the Reader" in Newes from Hell that he is not the first to take up Pierce Pennilesses Supplication: A supplication was sent to him long since by a poore fellow one Pierce Pennylesse. But the Divel being ful of busines, could never til now have leasure to answere it: Mary now (since Christmas) he has drawne out some spare howres, and shot 2.Arrowes at one mark, in 2.severall Bowes: and of two contrary flights: Wherein hee proves himselfe a damb'd lying Cretan, because hee's found in two Tales, about one matter. But it may be, the first Answere, that hee sent by the Post was in the Morning, (for he strives to speake soberly, gravely, and like a Puritane). The other (sure) in the afternoone, for hee talkes more madly: But so farre from Those fantasticali Taxations &c. Which the Gentleman that drew that forenoones piece, (whom I know not) seemes aloofe off 21

STC 18371, entered in the Stationer's Register August 8, 1592.

INTRODUCTION

25

(like a Spy) to discover, that even in the most triviali and merriest Applications, there are Seria locis, howsoever it bee, sithence wee both have had to doe with the Devili, and that hee's now (by our meanes) brought to the Barre, let him plead for himselfe. (p. 232) The two works to which Dekker refers are Thomas Middleton's The Black Book (1604) 22 and the anonymous The Re turne of the Knight of the Post from Hell (1606). 23 The Black Book catalogues the sins of bawdy houses and ordinaries, graphically describing rogue Ufe. The author of The Returne of the Knight of the Post from Hell professes to be Nashe's "intimate and near companion", but Dekker knows nothing of him. The main issue of this work is the Gunpowder Plot. Of all three works, Dekker's is the most direct answer to the Supplication. Like the others, however, it is not limited to that purpose. Pierce Pennilesse made his supplication to the Devil because he had been denied by everyone else. Near the beginning of the Supplication, Pierce laments: "My vulgar Muse was despised & neglected, my paines not regarded, or slightly rewarded, and I my selfe (in prime of my best wit) laid open to pouerty." 2 4 As a result of his poverty, Pierce resolves to send a supplication to the devil for the release of gold. In the first section of the work Pierce Pennilesse searches London for the Devil, with no success, until he encounters a Knight of the Post, "a fello we that will sweare you anything for twelue pence" (McKerrow, I, 164). The Knight of the Post agrees to become Pierce's messenger, wherupon he opens the supplication and reads it. The second part of the work, the supplication itself, is a satiric rehearsal of the seven deadly sins; it links traditions of classical satire, especially Juvenal, with the medieval attack on the seven deadly sins, reminiscent of Langland's Piers Plowman. According to G. R. Hibbard, Nashe uses these traditions to his own ends in Pierce Pennilesse: "Satire is neither a vehicle for despairing protest, as it had been for Juvenal, 22

STC 17875, entered in the Stationers' Register March 22, 1604. STC 20905, entered in the Stationers' Register January 15, 1606, cancelled February 17, 1606. 24 R. B. McKerrow, ed. The Works of Thomas Nashe (rev. ed. F. P. Wilson), I (Oxford, 1958), 157. References to McKerrow cited hereafter in text. 23

26

INTRODUCTION

nor an impassioned plea for reform, as it had been for Langland, but rather a stage, a convenient platform, on which he can exhibit his virtuosity as a writer." 25 The purpose of Nashe's description of the seven deadly sins is, as the Knight of the Post notes, to practice his wit (McKerrow, I, 217). Nashe's treatment of the sins includes allegory, anecdotes, and detailed descriptions of the variations of vice. In the third section of Pierce Pennilesse, after the Knight of the Post finishes reading the Supplication, Pierce asks him to describe Hell. The account begins with a political satire written in the form of a fable about a bear, a fox, an ape, and a chamelion 26 and told by the Knight of the Post as "the true image of hypocrisie" (McKerrow, I, 226). Most of the description of Hell in the remainder of the section is a translation of a treatise on Demons by Georgius Pictorius, De Illorum Daemonum qui sub lunari collimitio versantur ortu ... Isagoge (1563). After the Knight of the Post finishes his requested account and takes his leave, Pierce himself addresses the reader in the remaining few pages (the fourth section). He anticipates criticism: Whilst I am thus talking, me thinkes I heare one say, What a fop is this, he entitles his booke A Supplication to the Divell, and doth nothing but raile on ideots, and tels a storie of the nature of Spirits. (McKerrow, I, 240) Pierce then rails anew against patrons and poverty and ends "abruptly" with a sincere praise of Spenser and The Faerie Queene. Pierce Pennilesse was immediately successful, going through three editions in 1592, a fourth in 1593, and a fifth in 1595. It became Nashe's most popular work (McKerrow, IV, 80) and quite naturally prompted those who wished to take advantage of its fame to write an answer to the Supplication to the Devil. Pierce Pennilesse was popular because it showed Elizabethans a picture of themselves, walking in Paul's churchyard, going to plays, or committing one or more of the seven deadly sins. It was also 25

Thomas Nashe (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), p. 64. See Donald J. McGinn, "The Allegory of the 'Beare' and the 'Foxe' in Nashe's Pierce Penilesse", PMLA, LXI (1946), 431-453. 26

INTRODUCTION

27

popular because of the magnetism of Nashe's "ingenious, ingenuous, fluent [and], facetious" 2 7 satire. This magnetism, more than anything else prompted the replies to the Supplication. Middleton's The Black Booke answers the "supplication of poore Pierce" in which the Devil comes to L o n d o n in disguise and makes a tour of the bawdy houses, ordinaries, and other places frequented by rogues. Middleton uses the Supplication as an excuse to write his o w n witty description of underground life in L o n d o n . 2 8 The author of The Returne of the Knight of the Post from Hell also uses Pierce Pennilesse as an excuse to write about his own subject, the Gunpowder Plot. Although professing to be an intimate of Nashe, he does not seem to have benefited from Nashe's wit, a fact which he himself admits: If I haue neither the wittie pleasantnes of his conceites, nor the gaulye bitterness of his pens sharpenes, to the first imagine me of a more solide and dull composition lesse affected to delight and variation of humors, and to the latter think it is a bond whereto I have bound my seife euer since my first natiuitie, rather to wish my selfe dumbe then by foule speech, uncomely parables, or fantasticali taxations to win either publique note, or else brutish commendations. (A4 r ) The body of the work, a patriotic denunciation of the enemies of the King, is without satire or h u m o r . 2 9 27

Quoted from the encomium to Nashe deleted from Newes from Hell. For the entire passage, see Appendix, p. 230. 28 Middleton's Devil answers the supplication in the following manner: "to thee, most miserable Pierce, or pierced through and through with misery, I bequeath the tithe of all vaulting-houses, the tenth denier of each heigh pass, come aloft! beside the playing in and out of all wenches at thy pleasure, which I know, as thou mayest use it, will be such a fluent pension, that thou shalt never have need to write Supplication again." (A. H. Bullen, ed., The Works of Thomas Middleton, VIII (London, 1886), 44.) 29 The somewhat indirect answer of this work is: "Now to conclude that Pierce Pennilesse may find the deuil as gratful to him as in times past he was to the iealous painter, and that thy want and pouerty shal not bring thee to too sodaine a desperation euen from these seauen great trees of damnation, and from the fruit of their branches from whence all euills both knowne and concealed receiue their tast, their relishe, and their season: shalt thou and euery other Genius of learning whose crost fortune and neglected vertues, have no other meanes of sustentation, than what shall issue from a worne

28

INTRODUCTION

In Newes from Hell, Dekker notes the two previous attempts to answer the Supplication and then provides his own reply. As in The Black Book and The Return of the Knight of the Post, the specific answer to the supplication takes up very little space, about three pages. The "answer" is actually an acknowledgment of the success of Nashe's style and satire. At one point, Dekker asks Nashe's ghost to carouse to him "in her owne wonted ful measures of wit, that [his] plump braynes may swell, and burst into bitter invectives against the Lieftennant of Limbo". 30 Dekker never matched Nashe's bitterness and facetiousness, however, a fact which more than anything else differentiates the style of the two writers. Whereas Nashe pours out invectives against Harvey or against niggardly patrons, Dekker rarely makes his satire personal (although he proves himself a master of attack in Satiromastix). His satire is coupled with good humor and written with the hope of provoking a laugh or showing Englishmen, himself included, the affectation of an age which mocks itself. When Dekker wrote Newes from Hell in 1606, he could expect to take advantage of the popularity of Nashe's work. But he immediately encountered official interference which apparently prohibited any use of the name of Pierce Pennilesse. The interference involves licensing and possible infringement of copyright. Of the three answers to the Supplication, the first, Middleton's The Black Book, was entered in the Stationers' Register on March 22, 1604,31 and did not contain in the title or sub-titles any reference to Pierce Pennilesse. The other two works, the anonymous The Returne of the Knight of the Post from Hell and Dekker's Newes from Hell, both mention Pierce Pennilesse, and were cancelled shortly after entry in the Stationers' Register. The following entry appears for January 15, 1606:32 Penne, and a more wearied meditation, receiue the mente of prayse, reward, and admiration." (F3r-F3v) 80 Newes from Hell, C2 r , deleted from A Knights Conjuring. Cf. Appendix, p. 233. 31 Edward Arber, A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554-1640, III (London, 1876), 256. 32 Arber, ΙΠ, 309.

INTRODUCTION NATHANIEL BUTTER

Cancelled by A court 17 februarij [1606] hoc anno

29

Entred for his Copie under the hande of Master ffield Warden A booke called The returne of the knighte of the poste from Hell, with the Devilles Answere to PIERCE PENNYLESSE supplication PROVIDED that he get further Auchthoritie before yt be printed

No further authority was recorded for The Returne of the Knight of the Post, but the work was printed anyway by J. Windet for N. Butter, London, 1606. On January 25, 1606, the entry for Ν ewes from Hell appeared. It, too, was cancelled on February 17: 33 William fearbrand Cancelled by A court 17 februarij [1606] hoc anno

Entred for his Copie under the handes of Master Gwyn and the wardens A book called The Divells let loose

The head title to the text of Newes from Hell reads "The Devili let loose, WITH His Answere to Pierce Pennylesse". This work was printed by R. B. for W. Ferebrand, London, 1606, and is undoubtedly the work cancelled in the Stationers' Register. According to the Records of the Court of the Stationers Company 1602 to 1640,34 a dispute between John Windet, printer of The Returne of the Knight of the Post, and Thomas East, famous for his printing of the music of Byrd, Dowland, Morley, and Weelkes, was settled by the order that "m r windet in recompence' of the hindrance he hath done mr. East & for coste of sute shall pay to m r East fforty shillinge". Jackson says that "it is not clear what connexion East had with either of these works" (p. 17n), but E. D. Pendry suggests that "it seems a reasonable conjecture that East held the copyright of Nashe's pamphlet, and regarded the publication of sequels as an infringement of it". 3 5 There is no record of any professional contact between East and Nashe, 36 and 33

Arber, III, 312. Ed. William A. Jackson (London, 1957), p. 17. Thomas Dekker (London, 1967), p. 319. Pendry reprints Chapter IX of A Knights Conjuring. 36 See Paul G. Morrison, Index of Printers, Publishers and Booksellers (Charlottsville, 1961), pp. 26-27. 34 35

30

INTRODUCTION

the dispute between East and Windet did not necessarily have to concern Newes from Hell. Nevertheless, the cancellation of the licenses for both works is sufficient evidence of legal difficulties. A further conjecture is based on the prohibition of the printing of books by Nashe. On June 1, 1599, Archbishop Whitgift and Bishop Bancroft ordered that nine works of satires and epigrams be seized and burnt: Virgedemiae, by Joseph Hall; Pigmalion and the Scourge of Villanye by John Marston, Skialetheia, Microcynicon, and Caltha Poetarum by Thomas Cutwode, Epigrams by Sir John Davies (with Marlowe's Elegies), and the XV Joyes of Marriage.31 The decree also stipulated that "noe Satyres or Epigrams be printed hereafter", and "That all NASSHES bookes and Doctor HARVEYES bookes be taken wheresoever they be found and that none of their bookes be ever printed hereafter." 38 No works of Nashe or Harvey were printed or reprinted after 1599, with the exception of Nashe's play, Summers Last Will and Testament (1600). This decree, therefore, may have influenced the decision to cancel The Returne of the Knight of the Post and Newes from Hell, both of which prominently displayed the name of Pierce Pennilesse. Whatever was responsible for the cancellation of Newes from Hell, the difficulties provided sufficient reason for reissuing the text in a form as distinct as possible from the original. Disguising an old work as a new one is not uncommon. In 1610 Lodge's Scillaes Metamorphosis was reissued under a new title ( A moste pleasant Historie of Glaucus and Scilla) in order to reap the profits from a supposedly new work by a famous author. 39 The same profit motive might apply to Dekker. By changing the external form of the work so completely, Dekker could hope to attract even those readers who might have seen or bought Newes from Hell. He knew very well that the average reader would 37 A translation of the French Quinze Joyes de Mariage. One translation of this work, The Batchelars Banguet (published anonymously in 1603 by Thomas Creede) has been assigned to Dekker, but the attribution has been denied by F. P. Wilson in his edition (Oxford, 1929). 38 Arber, ΙΠ, 677. 3B See R. B. McKerrow, Introduction to Bibliography (Oxford, 1928), p. 177. McKerrow lists other examples.

31

INTRODUCTION

casually examine a book by looking at the title page, the running titles, the first few pages, and the last few pages. All of these were new. And if a reader looked into the middle of the book he found chapter headings, epigraphs, and marginal notes, none of which appeared in Newes from Hell. Even if the reader still recognized the work, there might be enough new material to persuade him to buy the book. Dekker needed the income from his pamphlets; he could hardly allow a work already written to remain uncirculated. With the references to Pierce Pennilesse removed, little remains that could identify A Knights Conjuring as a sequel to Nashe's work and much remains to recommend it as a new work by a well-known author. Although almost the whole text of Newes from Hell is incorporated in A Knights Conjuring, the latter cannot be considered a reprint. The new material and the revisions of the old text are evidence of an effort to differentiate A Knights Conjuring from Newes from Hell and justify issuing the former as a new work.

CONTENTS OF A KNIGHTS

CONJURING

A Knights Conjuring. Done in earnest, Discovered in Jest, was printed in 1607 but not entered in the Stationers' Register. It contains a dedication to "Syr Thomas Glover, Knight", an epistle "To the Reader", and nine chapters, each beginning with a four Une epigraph. The dedication to Sir Thomas Glover is an unabashed request for patronage from a little known relative of a man with the same name, who was the new English Ambassador to Turkey. 40 Dekker first mentions the previous generosity of the famous Sir Thomas Glover and then describes the general contents of the work in a bold advertisement: If you please to read me over, you shall finde much morali matter in words merily set down: and a serious subject inclosde in applications that (to some, whose salt of judgement is taken off) may appeare but triviali and ridiculous, (p. 1) 40

See p. 1 and note. All line references to A Knights Conjuring are to the present edition.

32

INTRODUCTION

The description contains two important requirements for popular writing: it is moral matter, merrily set down. After barely apologizing for his presumption "it being as common to seeke patrons to bookes, as Godfathers to children" (p. 1), he practically shames Glover into proffering patronage: Yet the fashioD of some patrons (especially those that doate more upon mony, who is a common harlot; then on the Muses who are pure maides, but poore ones) is to receive bookes with cold hands and hot livers: they give nothing, and yet have red cheekes for anger, when any thing is given to them. I take you (Sir) to be none of that race: the world bestowes upon you a more worthy Caracter. (pp. 1-2) N o one knows if these bold devices were successful. In the preface to the Reader, Dekker treats readers with the same cynicism he directed toward patrons. The world, he says, handles books in a "scurvy manner"; "when a Reader is intreated to bee curteous, he growes uncivil ... If you write merily, he cals you Bulfon; seriously, he swears such stuffe cannot be yours" (pp. 3-4). Dekker ends the preface on a note of defiance, unusual for a writer who needs public support: Envie (in these civili warres,) may hit me, but not hurt mee: Calumny may wound my name, but not kill my labours; proud of which, my care is the lesse, because I can as proudly boast with the Poet, that Non norunt haec monumenta mori. (p. 4) Not even the slightest suggestion of Pierce Penilesse appears in the dedication or preface. Dekker concentrates on portraying himself as a writer who, like Nashe, must contend with the hard hands of critics and the empty hands of patrons. The text of A Knights Conjuring can be divided into four sections: Chapter I, introduction of theme; Chapters II-IV, journey to Hell; Chapters V-VII, description of Hell; Chapters VIII-IX journey to the Fields of Joy. The introductory chapter is itself divided into two parts, the first written after the second which constitutes the beginning of Newes from Hell. The chapter begins with a pastoral scene, quite suddenly interrupted by a storm of such intensity that, " n o t to be ashamde to borrow the wordes of so rare an English Spirit,) Did not GOD say Another Fiat it had n'ere been day" (p. 8).

INTRODUCTION

33

The rare spirit is John Donne and the poem is "The Storme. To Mr. Christopher Brooke", acknowledged by Dekker in the line following the quotation, "The storme beeing at rest". The movement from somnolent peace in which "sheepe lay nibling in the valleys" to the "battaile of elements" is a movement of style as well as subject; for in the next paragraph the language becomes colloquial and the subject topical. Dekker's brief allusion to the Arcadian pastoral world and his rapid withdrawal from it betray his true literary interest, the chaotic life of the city. The battle of heavenly elements is immediately transferred to specific earthly terms as allegory is reduced "into good English" (p. 8). Dekker explains that the cause of the storm finally became known: At length, the gun-powder was smelt out, and the trayne discovered. It was knowne for certain, that (tho there was no plate lost) there was conjuring abroade, and therefore that was the dambd divell in the vault that digd up all this mischiefe. (pp. 8-9) The Gun-powder Plot does not become the subject for the work as it did in The Returne of the Knight of the Post from Hell. Dekker will not write about a particular "dambd devil" but about the mythical figure of the Prince of Darkness. The real cause of the storm, Dekker continues, was the conjuring of some "mad fellowes" to fetch Nashe's Knight of the Post from Hell. "This yeoman of both Counters, had long ago bin sent with a letter to the Divell, but no answere could ever be heard off" (p. 9). The occasion of the petition is then recounted - "that Gold might be suffred to have a little more liberty" (p. 12) - and the conditions of poverty described by Pierce Pennilesse are reviewed. The description of the Supplication also serves as a transition from the new first part of Chapter I to the text of Newes from Hell which begins with a wager that the supplication would not be answered: (as Rumor goes gossiping up and downe) great wagers were laide in the worlde, &c.: that when the supplication was sent, it would not be received, or if received it would not be read over; or if read over, it would not be answered, (p. 17) The remainder of the first chapter includes a description of the

34

INTRODUCTION

quarrelsome character of the devil and his "infernallship's" difficulty in finding a pen-man to "scribble" the answer to the supplication. When the Devil is unable to find a secretary and threatens to withhold his answer, Dekker offers his own services: "I hearing this, and fearing that the poor suppliant should loose his longing, and be sent away with si nihil attuleris, resolved to doe that for nothing which a number would not for any money" (p. 22). The introductory chapter is similar to the beginning of Pierce Pennilesse. Both Nashe and Dekker immediately introduce the theme of the penniless purse and the ironic tone of the complaint against the unjust treatment of poets by society. Then, as Nashe did in Pierce Pennilesse (McKerrow, 1,162 ff.), Dekker in Chapter II describes the search for the Devil. He is easy to find, "for in the Terme time, my Coralliere Cornuto runs sweating up and downe between Temple barre and Westminster hall, in the habite of a knight Errant, a swearing knight, or a knight of the Poste" (p. 25). The Devil is thus described as the chief of the race of professional perjurers, one of whom is about to begin a journey to his master in Hell. Dekker prepares for the Knight of the Post's journey by drawing "Hell's Map", and showing "Where Hell does lye, and who they are, live there" (p. 24). Hell is described in familiar terms: it is "hotter at Christmas, then t'is in Spaine or France" (p. 27); "like the Glasse-house Furnace in Blacke-friars, the bonefires that are kept there never goe out" (p. 27); and "the miles are not hälfe so long as those betweene Colchester and Ipswich in England" (p. 28). The irony, of course, is that Dekker has no intention of drawing an abstract map of Hell; one need go no further than Black-friars to find out what Hell is like. After drawing the map of Hell in concrete terms, Dekker shifts rhetorically from literal description to an invocation to a mythological character, Orpheus. He asks Orpheus to inspire him and assist him on his journey to Hell and then resolves to follow the Knight of the Post "from the first minute of his jumping a ship-board, to the last of his leaping a shore, and arrival at Tamor Chams court (his good Lord and Maister) the Divell" (p. 35). Chapters III and IV chronicle the Knight of the Post's progress

INTRODUCTION

35

through London to the "Banck-side of Hell". Chapter III contains an address on prodigality delivered by "one of these Acolasti" to his colleagues. The story of the prodigal had many precedents in popular literature, from the medieval debate between "Wynnere and Wastour" to Greene's Groatsworth of Wit. Dekker shows some sympathy for this young prodigal, even though he has admittedly squandered his patrimony, by making the miserly father a cruel and hypocritical man. After listening to the assembled prodigals, the Knight of the Post advises them how to obtain more money and then departs from Graves-end for Hell via Dunkirk, Spain, France, and Venice. The places then discussed are characterized by their reputations. The Netherlands keep "their coffers sound and healthful by the bitter Pills of Warre"; France makes "Apes of Englishmen" by dictating fashions; Spain is the epitome of pride, "the Spanyards bastard"; and Venice is the seat of "Lust, so civilly suted, as if it had bene a Marchants wife". After completion of his tour of the countries along the road to Hell, the Knight of the Post arrives at the Bankside of Acheron where Charon's boat is moored. The chapter concludes with an account of the boat, its passengers, and the "old grisly-fac'd" waterman. The marginal note opposite the description of the passengers, Mors sceptra legionibus

aequat,41

glosses Charon's opinion about the souls of the dead: "Hee that comes in first, sits no better then the last.... Kings and Clownes, Souldiers and Cowards, Churchmen and Sextons, Aldermen and Cobblers, are all one to Charon" (pp. 58-57). As death levels all, so does satire level all; Kings and clowns are all one to Dekker, too, if they pretentiously expect to be spared. Yet unlike the satirist who, in the words of Alvin Kernan, "acts as if God and Nature were withdrawn and he stood alone in the lunatic world to stay its progressive degeneration", 42 Dekker knows he must one day be a passenger in Charon's boat, sitting side by side with Kings and "fellow" clowns. He thus involves himself within the satire and 41

Misquoted here but correctly quoted in Dekker His Dreame: Mors sceptra ligonibus aequat, "Death makes the scepter equal to the hoe." For the source of this quotation cf. p. 57, 1. 5n. 42 The Cankered Muse (New Haven, 1959), p. 21.

36

INTRODUCTION

does not stand aloof from a world "which does nothing but mock it selfe". The third section of the book, beginning with Chapter V, is the descent to Hell. Charon agrees to transport the Knight of the Post and converses along the way about how strangely the world is altred since Pluto and Proserpina were married: For whereas in the olde time, men had wont to come into his boat all flash't, (some with one arme, some with never a leg, and others with heades like calves, cleft to their shoulders, and the mouths of their very wounds gaping so wide, as if they were crying, A boat, a boat,) now contrary-wise, his fares are none but those that are poyson'd by their wives for lust, or by their heires for living, or burnt by Whores, or reeling into Hell out of Taverns, (pp. 66-67) At the "Court gate of Avernus" the Knight of the Post encounters Cerberus, whom he easily bribes, and then passes into Hell to witness an allegorical Court of Sessions at which "Sinne is the Jury", and "Conscience gives in evidence". The Chapter ends with a description of the inhabitants and punishments of Hell: atheists, church-robbers, incestuous ravishers, and polluted villains who must endure "Sulphorous Stench", vermin and eternal horror. Dekker's Hell is not filled with mythological characters and punishments; it is a Hell "clammy and palpable" (p. 77). After the "Infernali Sessions are rejourned", Dekker attends to the purpose of the work in Chapter VI: The Writ for Gold's enlargement now is read, And by the Prince of Darkenes answered. The Devil's answer takes up approximately three pages. He explains how gold "at the first was lame and went up and down with goodmen, but now he is blinde and cares not what foole leads him" (p. 81, margin). He decrees that gold shall ever be pursued but never freed for the general benefit. Concerning the request made by Pierce Pennilesse to hew down the "seaven leaved tree of the deadly sinnes"; the Devil answers summarily that "the suite is unreasonable", sin is too widespread to be eliminated. The Devil then dispatches the Knight of the Post with his answer and com-

INTRODUCTION

37

mands him to deliver his "most harty condemnations" to all the traitors, brokers, and whoremongers in his service on earth. The Devil becomes a satiric persona, giving a perceptive and ironic account of the corruption caused by Gold and the spread of sin, for which he himself is responsible. But the Devil as satirist is an unsavory character, the kind of satiric persona described by Alvin Kernan as a creation whom the author mocks "while using him to attack others". 43 On his way out of Hell, in Chapter VII, the Knight of the Post meets a Usurer who needs a guide to the infernal regions. The Knight of the Post refuses to be the usurer's guide but agrees to tell him about the road and to describe the rivers over which souls must pass. The classical catalogue of the rivers of the underworld is out of place, coming so late in the description of Hell and juxtaposed with the witty characterization of a familiar Elizabethan "devil", the usurer. The two descriptions are placed within the frame of Dekker's promise to report everything that happens to the Knight of the Post; nevertheless, with the petition already answered, all that remains to keep the "plot" together is the Knight of the Post's search for Pierce Pennilesse to deliver the Devil's answer. It is the journey itself which is important to the satire, however; for, as Ronald Paulson says, "a protagonist's wanderings allow for independent satires within a frame, permitting a catalogue form and an ironic reference to the more idealized j ourney of romances' ' . 4 4 Chapter VIII is a further digression, divided into one section with a classical source and one with the description of a contemporary character. The classical influence is that of Lucian, mentioned by Dekker at the beginning of the chapter in a marginal note, "Lucian in Dialog". The reference is to Lucian's "Dialogues of the Dead", in which Charon and Mercury "cast mery reckonings up" (p. 103). In a rapid and forced transition, Dekker returns from the humorous dialogue between two mythological characters to the present: Mercury

43 44

The Cankered Muse (New Haven, 1959), p. 14. The Fictions of Satire (Baltimore, 1967), p. 43.

38

INTRODUCTION

tooke his wings, and away went he to Olympus. The Postes jorney lay nothing neere that path, but inquiring whether one Pierce Pennilesse came not over in his Ferry: and understanding, because hee could not pay his Fare, he was faine to goe a great way about to Elizium, thither in an Irish gallop is our swearing knight gone. Scarce was hee out of kenne, but on the other side of the River stoode a companie crying out lustily, A Boat, hey, a Boat, hey. (pp. 107-108) The "foremost" of this company is William Epps, a brave soldier whose fame seems to have been acknowledged only by Dekker. 4 5 Charon asks who he is, but Epps scorns "to be his owne Chronicle". Finally, "one that sate out of his hearing, but within the reach of the Waterman, (to shorten the way) discoursed all" (pp. 109-110). The picture of Epps is sympathetic and non-ironic, and might have been a dedication to a patron, had dedications been places for sincerity. Epps was one of the many valiant Englishmen who fought in the Low Countries. He died at Ostend, "bravely delivering up his spirit". He is, in fact, the kind of passenger that Charon used to transport before the world was "altered". When the story is finished, Charon "hum'de and cryde well", landed the soldiers, and directed them to "those happie places, which were alotted out to none but Martialists" (p. 113). At this point Chapter VIII ends and with it the reprinting of Newes from Hell. Newes from Hell continues for one more paragraph, some of which Dekker incorporates into the first paragraph of Chapter IX. At the beginning of the last chapter, the Knight of the Post finds Pierce Pennilesse in one of the "Elizian Gardens" and calls him over, "the infernali lawes barring him from entrance into those sacred palaces" (p. 114). The Suppliant receives the Devil's answer "with as fewe words as hee was wont to carry pence in his purse. The poste having as little to say to him" (p. 114), departs on his "other worldly busines", leaving Dekker himself to complete the narrative. The work ends as it began, with a pastoral scene where, as in Hell, the lowest is equal to the highest: 45

Epps is not identified in Newes from Hell except by a marginal note, apparently in a contemporary hand, in one of the Bodleian Library copies, Malone 604. In A Knights Conjuring his name appears in the epigraph to Chapter VIII (p. 103) and in the marginal note, p. 108. Cf. p. 103,1. 4n.

INTRODUCTION

39

Walk into the Groves, you shall heare all sorts of birds melodiously singing: you shall see Swaynes deftly piping, and virgins chastly dancing. Shepheards there, live as merily as Kings, and kings are glad to be companions with Shepheardes. (pp. 115-116)

Dekker then describes the "Fields of Joye", not in the "palpable" terms he used to describe Hell, but with ornate and luxurious descriptions befitting a picture of paradise: the very benches (whereon these blest Inhabitants sit) are sweet beds of violets: the beds whereon they lye, bancks of Muske-roses: their pillows hearts, are hearts ease, their Sheetes the silken leaves of Willow, (pp. 116-

117)

The tour through the Elysian fields ends at the Grove of Bay-trees, inhabited by "none but the Children of Phoebus, poets and musitions". "Old Chaucer" is pictured as if he were the center of a tableau; he is "circled a round with all the Makers or poets of his time, their hands leaning on one anothers shoulders, and their eyes fixed seriously on his" (pp. 121-122). Then, in succession, poets whom Dekker admires and praises enter, "Grave Spencer", "learned Watson", "Industrious Kyd", "ingenious Atchlow" (Thomas Achelow), "Inimitable Bentley" (the actor John Bentley), Marlowe, Greene, Peele, and finally Nashe. After suppressing practically all allusions to Nashe or Pierce Pennilesse, Dekker at last feels free to name and praise his mentor, "still haunted with the sharp and Satyrical spirit that followd him heere upon earth" (p. 123). Nashe complains to his new colleagues that "Barbarisime was now growne to be an Epidemiall disease" on earth and that poets are writing in vain, the two themes of Pierce Pennilesse. When Nashe finishes his invective, Henry Chetile comes in and causes "such a mad noyse" that, in a nod to a medieval tradition, Dekker is awakened from a dream. The final chapter completes the frame which Dekker has built around Newes from Hell. The plot, which is more of a plot than is common in satire because the traveller has a destination and a mission, is completed and the issues settled. Pierce Pennilesse's supplication has been turned down, gold will never be free and the seven deadly sins will always flourish. The only hope remaining is that poor poets will be venerated in the Bay-Tree Grove. The only

40

INTRODUCTION

solace on earth is that in a world which does nothing but mock itself, a good laugh, and a good tale may "shorten the lives of long winters nights, that lye watching in the darke for us".

THEME AND STYLE

Pierce Pennilesse provided both a structural and a thematic framework for A Knights Conjuring. In answering the Supplication Dekker had to treat the theme of vice and its manifestation in the seven deadly sins, especially avarice. The passion for gold leads people to vice as it led Pierce Pennilesse to make his supplication to the Devil. Radix malorum est cupiditas and cupiditas makes misers out of men and profligates out of their sons. The chief sinners in Dekker's eyes are those who withhold gold - misers and usurers, pawnbrokers and second hand dealers. Dekker is contemptuous of this group because of their hypocritical pretense of staying within the limit of the law. Rogues and vagabonds constitute a second group of sinners. These include gamblers, whoremongers, and various kinds of cheaters. In other works, The Belman of London, Lanthorne and Candlelight, and The Güls Hornbook, Dekker makes a complete catalogue of rogues and their specialized cant language. Dekker's material on roguery was derived from earlier exposés of the underworld, especially John Awdeley's The Fraternity of Vagabonds (1565) Thomas Harmon's A Caveat to Common Curse tors (1567), and the anonymous A Manifest Detection of Dice Play (c. 1580). But the exploitation of rogue material is less blatant in A Knights Conjuring than in other rogue pamphlets because Dekker has subjugated the description of sensational activities to his satiric purpose. Nevertheless, the number of topics contained in the theme of vice is as great as the variations of sin. Avarice, prodigality, perversion, war, treason, lust, affectation, and jealousy are but a very few of the major evils. London is the center of sin, "Hell on earth", but the rest of England, the Low Countries, France, Spain, Germany, Hungary, Venice, Rome, Moscow, the Indies, and Africa all have their places in the catalogue.

INTRODUCTION

41

A convenient justification, other than satire, for exposing vice is to warn unsuspecting souls of the evil lurking in the dark. Dekker recognizes both the perpetrators and the victims of vice, gentlemen cozened of their land, prodigals ruined by dicing, drabbing, and drinking, and poor people driven to bankruptcy by usurers. With these examples of what happens to the naive, Dekker provides the "Morali matter" of the book. Dekker's style in A Knights Conjuring is determined by his desire to entertain as well as to improve, to provide "morali matter merily set down", to "fall a Laughing at the world". Previous analyses of Dekker's style have been accurate. Wilson calls the style vigorous, impulsive and turbuleni; Price notes that Dekker employs "vivid fantasy and amusing tricks with language" (p. 157) coupled with "an easy, colloquial, pleasantly ironic tone" (p. 159). Jones-Davies cautions that, "il n'y pas 'un' style unique, mais 'des' styles" (II, 232). Among the several styles, she names "l'exuberance verbale" (II, 250). All would agree that Dekker's style is characterized by movement, whether 'easy' or turbulent; and, I believe, all would agree that Dekker's writing is exuberant. The speech of the young prodigal, for example, has an almost breathless, driving rhythm appropriate to the brash youth who is delivering the attack. Dekker describes him briefly but effectively and then rushes into the speech: At the last, one of these Acolasti, playing at doublets with his puefellowe, (which they might well doe, being almost driven to their shyrtes,) and hearing upon what Theame the rest sung Ex tempore, out-draws his ponyard and stabbing the tables, as if he meant to have murder'd the thirty men, swore he could find in his heart to goe presently (having drunk upsy Dutch,) and pisse even uppon the Curmudgion his Fathers grave: for, sayes hee, no man has more undone me, than hee that has done most for me, ile stand too't, it's better to be the sonne of a Cobbler, then of a common councell man: if a Coblers sonne and heyre run out at heeles, the whoreson patch may mend himselfe; but wee, whose friendes leave us well, are like howre-glasses turn'de up, though wee be never so full, wee never leave running, till wee have emptied our selves, to make up the mouthes of slaves, that for gayne are content to lye under us, like Spaniels, fawning, and receive what falls from our superfluity. Who breedes this disease, in our bones? Whores? No, alack let's doe them right, t'is not their fault, but our mothers, our cockering mothers,

42

INTRODUCTION

who for their labour make us to be called Cockneys, or to hit it home indeed, those golden Asses our Fathers, (pp. 39-40) Dekker begins with a pun on "doublets" and "shyrtes" and then describes the prodigal's brashness by what he does ("stabbing the tables") and by what he says ("he could find it in his heart to pisse even uppon the Curmudgion his Father's grave"). The young man continues with his own puns, analogies, and rhetorical questions. The wry tone of the prodigal who realizes he would be better off as the son of a modest shoemaker saves the speech from being a self-seeking, railing attack. The excess approached in the picture of a young man stabbing tables and pissing on graves is tempered by the humor of his speech. One of the reasons Dekker's style is exuberant and vibrant is that, like a person who has returned from an invigorating journey, he speaks very rapidly in order to say everything in a short time. The Knight of the Post's visit to France shows how Dekker characterizes the French nation by piling pun upon pun: The next place he call'd in at, was France, where the Gentlemen, to make Apes of Englishmen, whom they tooke daylie practising all the foolish tricks of fashions after their Mounsieur-ships, with yards insteede of Leading Staves, mustred all the French Taylors together, who, by reason they had thin haire, wore thimbles on their heads, in stead of Harnesse caps, every man being armed with his sheeres and pressing iron, which he calls there his goose (many of them beeing in France:) All the crosse-caperers beeing plac'd in strong rankes, and an excellent oration cut out and stitch't together, perswading them to sweat out their braines, in devising new cuts, newe french collers, new french codpeeces, and newe french panes in honour of Saint Dennys, only to make the gyddi-pated Englishman consume his revenewes, in wearing the like cloathes, which on his backe at the least, can shew but like cast sutes, beeing the second edition, whil'st the poore French peasant jets up and down, (like a Pantaloun) in the olde threed-bare cloake of the Englishman, so that wee buy fashions of them to feather our pride, and they borrowe rags from us to cover their beggery. (pp. 50-51) The subject is the dictates of French fashions; the entire description is a very elaborate and consistent metaphor in which tailors are made to symbolize Frenchmen. The puns are 1) on sex: "yardes",

INTRODUCTION

43

yardsticks or penises; "thin haire", the result of venereal disease; "french panes", French-style sleeves and venereal disease; 2) on the tailor's profession: "goose", a long handled pressing iron and a fool (also a sexual pun on a kind of venereal disease); "crosscaperers", those who make cuts across a piece of cloth and those who perform lively dances; and 3) on clothes in general: "cast sutes", second hand clothes. The metaphor may be "cut out and stitched together" with puns and parenthetical remarks, but it remains a consistent condemnation of the perversity of French fashions. As a schoolboy in a "Humanist" atmosphere Dekker learned the rhetoric and grammar of Greek and Latin literature. The most prominent, or the most memorable, of these forms are the devices of repetition; e.g., antistrophe, "his eyes are ever watching, his eares ever listning, his pawes ever catching" (p. 70), and antimetabolae, "but for ages of worlds, yea for worlds of ages" (p. 78). Usually, rhetoric does not become obtrusive unless Dekker wishes to achieve a comic effect by exaggeration or pretentiousness. The syntax, except for an occasional inversion, is straightforward. The sentences are long with many dependent and independent clauses, varied by short and simple statements, often at the beginning or end of a paragraph. The language is colloquial and by no means as fantastic as Nashe's "firking flantado amfibologies" (The Unfortunate Traveller, McKerrow, II, 248). Dekker integrates cant words, legal terms, sailing terms, foreign words, and latinate words with the language spoken in London. As Jones-Davies says, "De son contact quotidien avec la société de Londres, il retient les calembours, les adages, les dictons savoureux qui peuplent le cerveau des humbles ou des galants" (II, 232). Dekker himself best characterizes his language and style in iMnthorne and Candle-light: "A Language is nothing els, then heapes of words, orderly woven together" (Grosart, III, 196). The heapes of words in Dekker's long driving sentences are "woven" in inductive and associative patterns of thought and expressed in a combination of classical rhetoric and the rhetoric and rhythm of everyday London speech.

44

INTRODUCTION LITERARY INFLUENCES

The Humanist tradition in England emphasized the importance of the classics in Sixteenth century culture. By a love of Cicero and a love of Christ man could exercise his reason and faith and attain the goal of the good life. Both Christian and classical influences are evident in A Knights Conjuring. Dekker alludes to the Gospels throughout the work, and in the last chapter he refers many times to the Book of Revelation, combining his description of the classical Elysian fields with the Christian vision of the abodes of the blessed. The classical writings most influential in A Knights Conjuring are the works of Virgil, and the satires of the second century Greek writer, Lucian of Samosata, whose laughing attitude toward humanity was consistent with Dekker's. 4 6 Benjamin Boyce outlines the specific influences of Lucian on Dekker: The picture of courtiers laden with trunks of apparel, scholars with books, captains in armor, and many more, all compelled to strip themselves of any earthly luggage before embarking with Charon [p. 59ff.], is a familiar one to the reader of Lucian. A representation of the court of Rhadamanthus with an enumeration of the crimes of the dead begins in his satiric manner but quickly shades off into a sermon of Christian exhortation. Later Mercury and Charon "cast up old reckonings" for Mercury's disbursements exactly as they do in the fourth "Dialogue of the Dead." 47 Dekker acknowledges in a marginal note that the discussion between Charon and Mercury in Chapter VIII is "Lucian in Dialog" (p. 103). In addition to borrowing scenes from Lucian and the argument between Mercury and Charon, Dekker parodies the witty dialogue and imitates the derisive attitude toward the corruption of society. Like Democritus, the "laughing philosopher", 46

For a discussion Lucian's influence in England, especially through More and Erasmus (whose Latin translations of "The Dialogues of the Dead" Dekker was likely to have known), see C. R. Thompson, The Translations of Lucian by Erasmus and St. Thomas More (Ithaca, 1940). 47 "News from Hell. Satiric Communication with the Nether World in English Writing of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries", PMLA, LVH (1943), 411.

INTRODUCTION

45

Lucían stands at a distance from the world, disillusioned and eager to mock the folly of human action. According to C. A. van Rooy, "the ridicule of Lucían is not merely negative, like that of Bion; it is completely nihilistic, and only one thing remains to be serious about, and that is - to raise a laugh". 48 This critical position is extreme, for at least one other writer has seen in Lucían a social consciousness.49 In fact, all satire is written with a social consciousness because the satirist must recognize a moral norm from which the perverse deviate. The desire to raise a laugh is, however, certainly characteristic of Lucian and is his greatest legacy to Dekker. The gift is not without its limitation; laughter alone weakens the ironic force of satire, becoming an end in itself. Ronald Paulson notices this tendency: "More than any of the great ancient Satirists, Lucian is the rhetorician first, the moralist second, and his surprises and constant striving for effect sometimes suggest that the effect is achieved for its own sake." 50 Alvin Kernan maintains that effect for its own sake is always the case in Juvenalian satire: "the satirist goes too far. His language begins very shortly to seem excessive, a mere tour de force rather than an attempt to describe the world accurately." 51 These statements are truer for Nashe than for Dekker. Dekker's rhetoric does not follow the tendency "to separate from representation, producing a narrative whose only function is the exposition of follies, or one in which the satiric interest has been reduced to a general sharpness or pessimism of tone." 52 The function of Dekker's narrative is to provoke laughter as well as to expose follies, and the tone is humorous and not pessimistic. Dekker wants to show the correspondence between the fictional world and the real world; so, like Lucian, he uses Hades to "stand for things as they actually are". 53 The landmarks of Hell are like the landmarks of London; the people of Hell are like 48

Studies in Classical Satire and Related Critical Theory (Leiden, 1965), p. 111. Cf. Β. Baldwin, "Lucian as Social Satirist", Classical Quarterly, LV (November 1961), 199-208. 50 Paulson, p. 40. 51 Kernan, p. 101. 52 Paulson, p. 72. 53 Paulson, p. 34. 49

46

INTRODUCTION

the citizens of London. The irony that there is really no difference between Hell and London is a matter to raise laughter; for, given the reality of poverty, avarice, and pride, would it not be selfdeluding to think that London was not a mirror of Hell? Dekker's acceptance of this reality is not disillusioned. He finds it humorous to see kings and clowns all in the same boat; he thinks it a "Comedy, to see what a crowding ... there was upon the Acheronticque Strond" (p. 57). Dekker's comic detachment prevents A Knights Conjuring from becoming dominated either by ridicule or by nihilism. Dekker's satire is a combination of styles and traditions. He unites medieval Complaint against the evils of society with classical Satire against the perpetrators of evil. To paraphrase the terms of John Peter, Complaint is a conceptual and impersonal form limited to correcting the abuses of an established system. Satire is specific, scornful, and sophisticated and works "in the concrete particularity of real life". 54 A Knights Conjuring recognizes the inadequacies of a system that allows injustice but emphasizes satire against usurers, misers, and cony-catchers. The combination of Complaint against abuses and satire against abusers can exist together in a literary form which Peter calls "Satyre". According to Peter, "'Satyre' was veering from the presentation of semi-allegorical types to the portrayal of familiar contemporary figures."55 Dekker moves in this direction by combining indignation against injustice with ridicule of the familiar Elizabethan gallery of rogues and vagabonds. To classify Dekker as a "Juvenalian" or "Horatian" satirist is difficult because both styles exist in his writings. He recognizes the "vanity of human wishes", but his attitude is not one of despair and his attacks on vice are not bitter. He can be placed among the illustrious company of Horace, Chaucer, Erasmus, and Ben Johnson, whose satire, according to Kernan, verges on the comic, and whose "satirists, without losing their cutting edge, exude good humor, easy laughter, urbanity". 56 Dekker's tendency at times may 54 John Peter, Complaint and Satire in Early English Literature (Oxford, 1956), p. 9. 56 Peter, p. 113. 56 Kernan, p. 29.

INTRODUCTION

47

be toward the Juvenalian satire where the "cutting edge" lays bare vanity and hypocrisy. However, the roughness is smoothed out by good humor and, above all, by the kind of wit which admits sympathy with the human condition. Dekker was receptive to many classical traditions and writers. Martial, who is quoted at the end of the preface to the reader, non normt haec monumenti mori (p. 4), imparts what Peter calls, "a fondness for salacity and double entendre".51 From Ovid's Metamorphoses Dekker took the stories of Pluto and Proserpina and Orpheus and Eurydice, integrating them within the Knight of the Post's journey. The allusions to these and other classical authors, Apuleius, Cicero, Josephus, Pliny, to name just a few, provide literary respectability to the catalogue of sins, preventing A Knights Conjuring from becoming a hack writer's sensational exposé. The classical allusions in A Knights Conjuring are complemented by those to Renaissance writers and traditions, notably the works of Nashe and Greene, the literature of roguery, and the Jest tradition. Nashe's importance, discussed previously, may be summarized here. His works, popular in his own day, contain fantastic language, erudition, and biting wit. Whether writing plays, personal attacks, or impersonal satires, he was, in Dekker's words "haunted with a sharpe and Satyricall spirit" (p. 123). He presses with relentless intensity toward his goals - ridiculing stupidity, anatomizing vice, or railing at the injustices done to poverty-stricken scholars and poets. Dekker himself is one of the first and best critics of Nashe: Ingenious, ingenuous, fluent, facetious, T. Nash: from whose aboundant pen, hony flow'd to thy friends, and mortali Aconite to thy enemies: thou that madest the Doctor a flat Dunce, and beat'st him at two sundry tall Weapons, Poetrie, and Oratorie: Sharpest Satyre, Luculent Poet, Elegant Orator.68 Nashe's pamphlets helped to popularize a form of colorful, humorous, and racy prose. Dekker capitalized on the popularity of Pierce Pennilesse by making the purpose of A Knights Conjuring 57 58

Peter, p. 117. Newes from Hell, C2v. Not in A Knights Conjuring. See Appendix, p. 215.

48

INTRODUCTION

an answer to the Supplication and by making the theme a satirical survey of the sins of the underworld. While he borrowed purpose and theme from Nashe, he did not slavishly borrow style. Nashe's influence did not intrude on Dekker's attitude toward life and art. Dekker laughed but did not rail. At one point in Νewes from Hell, Dekker asks Nashe to let his ghost help him "burst into bitter invectives", not against a Harvey but against the abstract "Lieftennant of Limbo" (C2v). The petition was not granted, for Dekker's invectives are blunted by humor and his bitterness softened by a tone of sympathy. Both Nashe and Dekker took advantage of the demand for rogue literature which had achieved popularity in such pamphlets as A Manifest Detection of the most vile and detestable use of Dice play (1552), John Awdeley's The Fraternity of Vagabonds (1561) and Thomas Harman's A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursetors (1567). All of these works have in common a journalistic display of sin, written with the ostensible moral purpose of warning the populace against the evil practices of rogues and vagabonds. Dekker has been accused of being a "hack writer" for his borrowings from these pamphlets, 59 and one critic, Frank P. Aydelotte, charges him with plagiarism: "He was a typical hack-writer, following the fashion, writing what would sell, unscrupulous in borrowing other men's work, but brilliant in patching it together and dressing it out in the showy rhetoric which Elizabethans loved." 60 The charges are correct, although Dekker's borrowings are limited to rogue material and constitute a very small part of his total work. At times he is even careful to mention his sources, e.g., "Lucian in Dialog", "Grobianisme". Dekker's debt to another rogue pamphlet writer, Robert Greene, does not involve specific borrowing. Greene, author of plays and popular romances, achieved great success with his "cony-catching" pamphlets, exposés of thievery and vice. Greene achieves in his pamphlets what Louis B. Wright calls "journalistic perfection" 61 59

See Ε. H. Miller, "Thomas Dekker, Hack Writer", Notes and Queries, CC (1955), 145-150. 60 Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds (Oxford, 1913), p. 133. 81 Middle Class Culture in Elizabethan England (Ithaca, 1958), p. 439.

INTRODUCTION

49

because he himself is a sinner writing about his repentance for a wasted life. His pamphlets are realistic and credible because he describes explicitly the kinds of rogues, their methods of robbing and cheating, their language, and the mysteries of their secret society. Greene tells the whole sensational and well-documented story in pamphlets such as A Disputation, Betweene a Hee ConnyCatcher, and a Shee Conny-Catcher, whether a Theefe or a Whore, is most hurtfull in Cousonage, to the Commonwealth. Discovering the Secret Villainies of Alluring Strumpets, with the Conversion of an English courtezan, reformed this present yeare, 1592. Read, Laugh and Learne. Greene's realistic pamphlets are very much in the fashion appealing to popular literary tastes. True confessions are mixed with fictional tales and justified by the serious moral purpose of preventing the unsuspecting from falling into the company of "coosening companions" (A Notable Discovery of Coosenage [1591]). Dekker did not consciously imitate Greene as he did Lucían or Nashe. He profited, however, from Greene's success at developing a popular form of realistic fiction. The taste for merry tales had, of course, developed long before Greene and Dekker. Poggio, Boccaccio, Chaucer, and writers of a hundred other tales brought together stories either without connection or loosely connected by a narrative frame. By the end of the sixteenth century, collections of tales, and Jest-books, reached the height of their popularity. According to Wright, "year after year, with the regularity of almanacs, some new purveyor of humor brought out a rehash of the old jokes, with a fresh title to catch the eye of the apprentice and the loiterer in Paul's Walk." 62 Some of the Jest-books approached the form of fictional biography, e.g., Scoggins Jests (1566), Richard Johnson's The Pleasant Conceites of Old Hobson, the Merry Londoner (1607), and Dobsorís Drie Bobs. Sonne and Heire to Skoggin (1607). Dekker and George Wilkins made their contribution to the form in Jests to Make You Merrie (1607), containing 60 jests, and a long tale, told by "Cock Watt". At the beginning of the work Dekker defines a jest: 82

Wright, p. 463.

50

INTRODUCTION

A JEST is the bubling up of wit. It is a Bavin which beeing well kindled maintaines for a short time the heat of laughter.... It is a merrie Gentleman and hath a brother so like him that many take them for Twins: For the one is a Jest spoken, the other is a Jest done. (Grosart, II, 273) Both kinds of jests appear in A Knights Conjuring. The first is seen in the many puns and anecdotes and the second is represented by the work itself, which, as the title page states, is "Done in earnest. Discovered in Jest". Another extremely important influence of the Jest book is its loose form. The reader does not look for a formal plot or character development in a Jestbook, even in "biographies" like Deloney's Jack of Newburie (1597) or Dobsorís Drie Bobs. The tales may simply be numbered or may be loosely connected by a fictional frame such as a journey or banquet. The loose form of the Jest-book helps to account for the seemingly digressive tales and descriptions in popular prose pamphlets. Chapters VII and VIII of A Knights Conjuring, for example, describing a usurer and a valiant soldier, impede the completion of the Knight of the Post's journey, halting the progress of what little plot there is. The digressions are consistent with Dekker's promise to gather "all the memorable occurrents, that presented themselves to the view of our wandring Knight in his jorney" (p. 35). This statement allows Dekker to write whatever pleases him without worrying about plot. The digressions are, after all, "Discovered in Jest". The Jest-book tradition has given Dekker license to be digressive without destroying the loose unity of the work. Jest-books created a precedent for the pamphlets of men like Greene, Nashe, and Dekker where wit is more important than structure. Dekker's uniqueness in A Knights Conjuring results from a fusion of contemporary traditions and classical sources with his own fluent humor. A Knights Conjuring is a journalistic exposé of vice, an imaginary journey to the universe's most sinful places - England, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Venice, and Hell - and to the Fortunate Isles of the Blessed. The loose plot is the answer to Pierce Pennilesse's Supplication to the Devil. The genre is a form of satire in which Dekker ridicules vice and affectation with sympathy for human struggles. A Knights Conjuring demonstrates Dekker's ability to look humorously and accurately at himself and

INTRODUCTION

51

to perceive man's inclination to vice and his desire to improve his mortal condition. The picture of the Isles of the Blessed holds some hope that what is achieved in heaven may somehow be achieved on earth. The fictional framework provided by the journey to the underworld raises the work from the level of journalism to the higher level of imaginative prose fiction in which invention becomes more important than sensationalism. "With the conjuring of my pen", Dekker says, "all Hell shall breake loose" (p. 31).

TEXTUAL INTRODUCTION

DESCRIPTION OF NEWES FROM HELL

NEWES FROM HELL, by Thomas Dekker, 1606. NEWES/ From Hell;/ Brought by the Diuells/ Carrier./ Et me mihi perfide prodis?/ Tho: Dekker./ [device: McK. 249(b)]/ LONDON/ Printed by R.B. for VV. Ferebrand,/ and are to be fold at his fhop in Popes head/ Alley, neere vnto the Royal Exchaunge. 1606, [sic] NOTE: The "W" of "Newes" consists of two "V"'s. The right limb of the first "V" is filed. Coll: 4o, [Al], A2-H4 [$4 (-A2, A4, F4, G4, H4) signed]; 31 leaves. HT] [orn: similar to McK. 295]/ [rule]/ The Deuill let loofe,/ WITH/ His Anfwere to Pierce Pennyleffe. Contents: [A2r]: title. [A2v]: blank. A3r: (orn: 23x80)/ dedicatory epistle: 'To the very Worthy Gentleman,/ Sir lohn Hamden Knight.'/ rom. with 6-line factotum (33 χ 33). A3v: dedicatory epistle ending, signed 'From him that wifhes he could/ be a deferuer of you./ Tho. Dekker.'' [A4r] : blank. [A4v] : To the Reader./ rom. and ital. with 5-line factotum (19 χ 19), ending 'Farewell.' [Blr]: HT and text, rom. and ital. with 5-line factotum (23 χ 21). On H4v: 'FINIS.'/ (orn. 47 χ 45 χ 45). RT] The Deuils Anfwere BE4v, The Diuels Anfwere FG4v [Glv with a period], The Diuels Anfwere [larger type] Hlv-H2v, The Diuels Anfwer, &c. [same type size as Hlv-H2v] H3v-H4v; to Pierce Pennyleffe. B2r-G4r [The Deuils Anfwere. F4r], To Pierce Pennyleße. [larger type, same as Hv], Hlr-H2r, To Pierce Penny lesse, [same type size as Hv] H3r-H4r.

INTRODUCTION

53

CW] B2r calde [cald] C2r in- [ingenious] D4v passen[paffengers] Elr leffe, [leffe] F2r ship, [who] (the last word of the text on F2r is 'knight-') F4v them, [them] Gir ther, H4r Virgins [the] (the last Une of H4r is dropped in all copies but Wood) Type: text (C3r) 30 (29-31) 11. + headline and direction Une 139 (150) χ 83 mm; 91 mm. for 20 11. Notes: STC 6514. Analysis of the running titles suggests that the text was set into type in three sections (B-Ε, F-G, H) and probably by more than one printer. (See below, for a discussion of the printer and of licensing difficulties.) Copies examined: Henry E. Huntington Library (C6514 X, 60124). Bodleian Library (Malone 604), as above; on H3r, 'William Eps' penned in the right hand margin. Bodleian Library (Wood 487), title page: NEWES/ From Hell;/ Brought by the Deuills/ Carrier./ [line penned in: O r the devills answer to Pierce Pennyless']/ Et me mihi perfide prodis?/ Tho. Dekker./ [orn.] ['6d' penned in near bottom right of orn.]/ (the rest as above); contents: A4r: To the Reader., A4v blank; the last Une of H4r appears only in this copy: 'Virgines chaftely dauncing: you fhall beholde', the catchword is 'the' (not 'Virgines' as in other copies). British Museum (96.b.l5 [12]), A3r dedicatory epistle: 'To my moft refpected, louing, and Iudi-/ditious [sic] friend M r . lohn Sturman Gentleman.' (not to 'Sir lohn Hamden Knight' as in all other-copies); A4r To the Reader., A4v blank (as in Bodleian Library [Wood 487]); examination of the text of this copy shows differences only in the dedication, and the differences there are only in two places - the name of the person to whom the work is dedicated and two lines within the dedication itself. (See Appendix, p. 230 for the complete dedication and variants.) The Printer of Ν ewes from Hell. The identity of the printer of Newes from Hell is not clear. McKerrow suggests that R. B. is Richard Bradock, a London printer from 1581 to 1615. McKerrow is uncertain of the identity of R. B., however, because the device on the title page could be assigned to Ralph Blower [Blore], once an apprentice to Richard Tottel. This device, No. 249, had originally appeared in John Wolfe's Italian books but may have come into

54

INTRODUCTION

Blower's hands along with two other devices of Wolfe's, Nos. 216 and 297. 1 A further complication concerns the ornament at the top of Blr. This ornament is similar to No. 295, which is described as "two men blowing horns. The initials I. D. in the centre, standing for the name of John Danter. It is not absolutely certain that the initials are part of the block; possibly it may be a cast factotum with type inserted, but I have not found it with other initials." 2 The initials do not appear in the ornament of Newes from Hell. J. A. Lavin, in his "Additions to McKerrow's Devices", 3 includes two works by Dekker in his list of books with No. 295: 1606 by R. Bfradock] for W. Ferebrand 6514 Dekker T. Newes from hell (B). Has no. 249 on t.-p., which should perhaps be assigned to Ralph Blower; see McKerrow on no. 249 (b). 1606 by E. A[Ude] for N. Butter 6522 Dekker, T. The seuen deadly sinnes of London (A). Lavin had stated earlier in his article that this ornament had "almost certainly passed directly to [Simon] Stafford in 1599 with a third of Danter's ornaments". 4 Lavin's assignment of the printing to Stafford seems logical but does not help in identifying R. B. Ornaments and devices were no doubt passed among printers without any record of the transactions, and it is therefore possible that No. 249 (b) might have come to Bradock as well as to Blower or Stafford. It is also possible that more than one printer was responsible for Newes from Hell. Variations in running titles suggest that the text (not including the preliminary material found in sig. A) was set into type in three sections (B-Ε, F-G, H). The change in spelling of the verso headline from section one to section two (Deuils] Diuels) and the change in type size and spelling in section three (H) 1

Cf. R. B. McKerrow, Printers' and Publishers' Devices in England and Scotland, 1485-1640 (London, 1913), pp. 95-86. 2 McKerrow, Printers' and Publishers' Devices, p. 115. 3 The Library, 5th ser., xxii, no. 3 (September 1968), 191-205. 4 Lavin, p. 197.

INTRODUCTION

55

are evidence at least of different compositors and perhaps of different printers. The identity of the bookseller of Newes from Hell, William Ferebrand, offers no problem. Ferebrand was a bookseller in London, 1598-1609, during which time 29 books were issued under his name.5 Certain entries in Arber state that Ferebrand was required to obtain "better authority" before being allowed to sell some of his books.6 In the case of Newes from Hell, the only work of Dekker's sold by Ferebrand, further authority was not granted, and the entry was cancelled.

RELATIONSHIP OF NEWES FROM HELL TO A KNIGHTS CONJURING

Newes from Hell remains the core of A Knights Conjuring. The changes made to disguise the old work are as follows: A. Title Page. - The title page of A Knights Conjuring is completely new and contains no reference to Newes from Hell or The Devils Answer to Pierce Pennilesse. B. Dedication. - Newes from Hell is dedicated to Sir John Hamden (Mr. John Sturman in the British Museum Copy). A Knights Conjuring is dedicated to Sir Thomas Glover. The dedications bear no resemblance. C. To the Reader. - The letters to the reader are not the same. Newes from Hell mentions Pierce Pennilesse and the two other answers to the Supplication. A Knights Conjuring does not mention the Supplication, concentrating instead on the trials of a writer who must lie "upon the rack of publicke censure". D. Chapter Headings. - Newes from Hell contains no chapter 5

See A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, A Short Title Catalogue (Oxford, 1946) and Paul G. Morrison, Index of Printers, Publishers, and Booksellers in A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, A Short Title Catalogue (Charlottesville, 1950). β In addition to Newes from Hell (STC 6508), the Stationers required further authority for A True Discours of all the Salies Which the Soldiors of Grave Have Made Since the Siege. Ent. 5 Sept., 1602. (STC 12197) and Alarum for London, or the Siedge of Antwerpe. Ent. 29 May, 1600 (STC 16754).

56

INTRODUCTION

headings. A Knights Conjuring is divided into nine chapters, each with a four line epigraph. E. Running titles. - The verso pages of Newes from Hell read "The Diuels Answere", the recto pages read "To Pierce Pennylesse". The verso pages of A Knights Conjuring read "A Knights", the recto pages read "Coniuring". F. Additions. - Dekker adds approximately nine pages before the beginning of Newes from Hell (the first part of Chapter I, Blr-Clr). At the point where the two texts diverge ( N f H , H4r; AKC, Klv), one paragraph remains of Newes from Hell and an eight page chapter of A Knights Conjuring (Chapter IX, K2r-Llv), the first part of which shows signs of revision of the last paragraph of Newes from Hell. Other additions to the text of Newes from Hell consist of marginal notes and four minor revisions of the text: p. 60 - and those were old men] and the old men NfH p. 70 - dragons tale] dragons NfH p. 84 - get him out] get out NfH p. 101 - of this Lethcean] of Lethcean NfH G. Deletions. - The material deleted from Newes from Hell includes a systematic removal of the names of Pierce Pennilesse and Nashe. Only in one place does the name Pierce Pennilesse remain, p. 107, 1. 20. The most important deletion is a seventeen line encomium to Nashe (see Appendix, p. 233). The other deletions are: 1. P. 22, 11. 11-12. if any scribling petition wryter] if Peirce Pennylesse NfH 2. P. 22, 1. 16. resolved to] resolued (euen out of my loue to Pierce Pennylesse, because he hath beene always a companion to Schollers,) to NfH 3. P. 79, 1.9. Supplication, about Golde, and] Supplication for poore Pierce Pennyles, and NfH 4. P. 80, 11. 1-2. during his absence, the Wryter that penn'd the Supplication had ben landed] during his absence) both Pierce Pennyles and the Poet that writ for him haue bene landed NfH 5. P. 84, 11. 14-16. which in the Supplication are likewise requested to be heawen downe] which Pierce-Pennilesse would haue hewen downe NfH In addition to these changes, the text has been edited to remove

INTRODUCTION

57

superfluous words and to correct grammar. Not all errors have been corrected, but the text has been improved. All substantive changes are recorded in the textual notes to this edition. An analysis of the changes in the text of A Knights Conjuring will illuminate two major problems - the identity of the person or persons making the changes and the nature of the copy used to set A Knights Conjuring into type. Because Dekker needed the money from the sale of his pamphlets it can be assumed that he approved and perhaps instigated the reissuing of the old book in a new form. The new dedication and preface to the reader are signed by him, and the style of material added to the beginning and end is unmistakably Dekker's. According to McKerrow, an "officious" printer might add marginal notes and chapter headings, 7 but these show a familiarity with the text and a style that suggest Dekker's hand. One marginal note, Mors Sceptra Legionibus aequat (p. 57), appears (with Legionibus corrected to Leginibus) in Dekker His Dreame (1620), printed by Nicholas Okes. Dekker His Dreame is a long poem in which Dekker uses much of the material about Hell that appeared in A Knights Conjuring. Where this particular note appears in both works, the contexts are similar. Both notes are interpretations of the text, not direct translations. Since the two works were printed sixteen years apart by different printers, it would seem logical that the author was responsible for writing the marginal notes in order to explain his text correctly. A printer may have written marginal notes, but it seems unlikely that he would have chosen an identical note without the author's authority. And if the author's authority existed in one place it probably existed in the other. The epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter are concise summaries of the events contained in the chapters. If an "officious" printer added these, it would appear that he did so with the knowledge and authority of Dekker, who added significant new material to the text of Newes from Hell. The emendations within the text are carefully made. Deletion of words or phrases or changes of words (e.g., winning] ransacking NfH, p. 31) are attempts to 7

An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students (Oxford, 1917), p. 240.

58

INTRODUCTION

clarify and improve. Where references to Pierce Pennilesse or Nashe are eliminated the text is knit back together without disturbing grammar or meaning. Without the copy used by the printer to set A Knights Conjuring, it is impossible to prove who was responsible for the changes. The evidence points to Dekker, however, because of the new material which bears his name, style, and wit. Did the printer of A Knights Conjuring use a manuscript or a printed copy of Newes from Hell? The investigation of this question must begin with the line in which A Knights Conjuring begins to incorporate Newes from Hell: "great wagers were laide in the worlde, &c.:" (Civ, p. 17). Up to this point, Dekker had to supply a new manuscript because no printed material existed. The "