The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (14 page)

Whereas some petitioners of the Council against them object they corrupt the youth of the city, and withdraw prentices from their work, they
²⁹³
heartily wish they might be troubled with none of their youth nor their prentices; for some of them (I mean the ruder handicrafts' servants) never come abroad, but they are in danger of undoing. And as for corrupting them when they come, that's false; for no play they have encourageth any man to tumults or rebellion, but lays before such the halter and the gallows; or praiseth or approveth pride, lust, whoredom, prodigality, or drunkenness, but beats them down utterly. As for the hindrance of trades and traders of the city by them, that is an article foistered in by the vintners, alewives, and victuallers, who surmise, if there were no plays, they should have all the company that resort to them lie boozing and beer-bathing in their houses every afternoon. Nor so, nor so, good Brother Bottle-ale, for there are other places besides, where money can bestow itself. The sign of the smock will wipe your mouth clean; and yet I have heard ye have made her a
tenant to your tap-houses. But what shall he do that hath spent himself? Where shall he haunt? Faith, when dice, lust, and drunkenness and all have dealt upon him, if there be never a play for him to go to for his penny, he sits melancholy in his chamber, devising upon felony or treason, and how he may best exalt himself by mischief.

A Player's Witty Answer to Augustus

In Augustus' time, who was the patron of all witty sports, there happened a great fray in Rome about a player, insomuch as all the city was in an uproar. Whereupon, the Emperor, after the broil was somewhat overblown, called the player before him, and asked what was the reason that a man of his quality durst presume to make such a brawl about nothing. He smilingly replied: ‘It is good for thee, O Caesar, that the people's heads are troubled with brawls and quarrels about us and our light matters; for otherwise they would look into thee and thy matters.' Read Lipsius
²⁹⁴
or any profane or Christian politician, and you shall find him of this opinion.

A Comparison Twixt our Players and the Players Beyond the Sea

Our players are not as the players beyond sea, a sort of squirting bawdy comedians, that have whores and common courtesans to play women's parts, and forbear no immodest speech or unchaste action that may procure laughter; but our scene is more stately furnished than ever it was in the time of Roscius, our representations honourable, and full of gallant resolution, not consisting, like theirs, of a pantaloon, a whore, and a zany, but of emperors, kings and princes, whose true tragedies,
Sophocleo cothurno
,
²⁹⁵
they do vaunt.

The Due Commendation of Ned Allen

Not Roscius nor Æsop,
²⁹⁶
those admired tragedians that have lived ever since before Christ was born, could ever perform more in action than famous Ned Allen.
²⁹⁷
I must accuse our poets of sloth and partiality, that they will not boast in large impressions what worthy men, above all nations, England affords. Other countries cannot have a fiddler break a string but they will put it in print, and the old Romans, in the writings they published, thought scorn to use any but domestical examples of their own home-bred actors, scholars, and champions, and them they would extol to the third and fourth generation: cobblers, tinkers, fencers, none escaped them, but they mingled them all in one gallimaufry
²⁹⁸
of glory.

Here I have used a like method, not of tying myself to mine own country, but by insisting in the experience of our time. And, if I ever write anything in Latin, as I hope one day I shall, not a man of any desert here amongst us, but I will have up. Tarlton,
²⁹⁹
Ned Allen, Knell,
³⁰⁰
Bently,
³⁰¹
shall be made known to France, Spain, and Italy; and not a part that they surmounted in, more than other, but I will there note and set down, with the manner of their habits and attire.

The Seventh and Last Complaint of Lechery

The child of Sloth is Lechery, which I have placed last in my order of handling: a sin that is able to make a man wicked that should describe it; for it hath more starting holes than a sieve hath holes, more clients than Westminster
Hall, more diseases than Newgate. Call a leet
³⁰²
at Bishops-gate, and examine how every second house in Shoreditch is maintained; make a privy search in Southwark and tell me how many she-inmates you find; nay, go where you will in the suburbs and bring me two virgins that have vowed chastity, and I'll build a nunnery.

Westminster, Westminster, much maidenhead hast thou to answer for at the day of judgment; thou hadst a sanctuary in thee once, but hast few saints left in thee now. Surgeons and apothecaries, you know what I speak is true, for you live, like summoners, upon the sins of the people; tell me, is there any place so lewd, as this Lady London? Not a wench sooner creeps out of the shell, but she is of the religion. Some wives will sow mandrake
³⁰³
in their gardens, and cross-neighbourhood with them is counted good fellowship.

The Court I dare not touch, but surely there, as in the heavens, be many falling stars and but one true Diana.
³⁰⁴
Consuetudo peccandi tollit sensum peccati
.
³⁰⁵
Custom is a law, and lust holds it for a law to live without law. Lais, that had so many poets to her lovers, could not always preserve her beauty with their praises. Marble will wear away with much rain; gold will rust with moist keeping; and the richest garments are subject to time's moth-frets. Clytemnestra,
³⁰⁶
that slew her husband to enjoy the adulterer Ægisthus, and bathed herself in milk every day to make her young again, had a time when she was ashamed to view herself in a looking glass, and her body withered, her mind being green. The people pointed at her for a murderer, young children hooted at her as a strumpet; shame, misery, sickness, beggary, is the best end of uncleanness.

Lais, Cleopatra, Helen, if our clime hath any such, noble Lord Warden of the witches and jugglers, I commend them with the rest of our unclean sisters in Shoreditch, the Spital,
³⁰⁷
Southwark, Westminster, and Turnbull Street,
³⁰⁸
to the protection of your Portership: hoping you will speedily carry them to hell, there to keep open house for all young devils that come, and not let our air be contaminated with their sixpenny damnation any longer.

Yours Devilship's

bounden execrator

PIERCE PENNILESS

‘A supplication callst thou this?' quoth the Knight of the Post. ‘It is the maddest supplication that ever I saw; methinks thou hast handled all the seven deadly sins in it, and spared none that exceeds his limits in any of them. It is well done to practise thy wit, but, I believe, our lord will cun
³⁰⁹
thee little thanks for it.'

‘The worse for me,' quoth I, ‘if my destiny be such to lose my labour everywhere, but I mean to take my chance, be it good or bad.' ‘Well, hast thou any more that thou wouldest have me to do?' quoth he. ‘Only one suit,' quoth I, ‘which is this: that, sith opportunity so conveniently serves, you would acquaint me with the state of your infernal regiment; and what that hell is, where your lord holds his throne; whether a world like this, which spirits like outlaws do inhabit, who, being banished from heaven, as they are from their country, envy that any shall be more happy than they, and therefore seek all means possible, that wit or art may invent, to make other men as wretched as themselves; or whether it be a place of horror, stench, and darkness, where men see meat but can get none, or are ever thirsty and ready to swelt
³¹⁰
for drink, yet have not the power to taste the cool streams that run hard at their feet; where,
permutata vicissitudine
,
³¹¹
one ghost torments another by turns, and he that all his lifetime was a great fornicator, hath all the diseases of lust continually hanging upon him, and is constrained, the more to augment his misery, to have congress every hour with hags and old witches; and he that was a great drunkard here on earth, hath his penance assigned him, to carouse himself drunk with dish-wash and vinegar, and surfeit four times a day with sour ale and small beer; as so of the rest, as the usurer to swallow molten gold, the glutton to eat nothing but toads, and the murderer to be still stabbed with daggers, but never die; or whether, as some fantastical refiners of philosophy will needs persuade us, hell is nothing but error, and that none but fools and idiots and mechanical men, that have no learning, shall be damned. Of these doubts if you will resolve me, I shall think myself to have profited greatly by your company.'

He, hearing me so inquisitive in matters above human capacity, entertained my greedy humour with this answer. ‘Poets and philosophers, that take a pride in inventing new opinions, have sought to renown their wits by hunting after strange conceits
³¹²
of heaven and hell; all generally agreeing that such places there are, but how inhabited, by whom governed, or what betides them that are transported to the one or other, not two of them jump in one tale. We, that to our terror and grief do know their dotage by our sufferings, rejoice to think how these silly flies play with the fire that must burn them.

But leaving them to the labyrinth of their fond
³¹³
curiosity, shall I tell thee in a word what hell is? It is a place where the souls of untemperate men and ill-livers of all sorts are detained and imprisoned till the general resurrection, kept and possessed chiefly by spirits, who lie like soldiers in garrison, ready to be sent about any service into the world, whensoever Lucifer, their Lieutenant General, pleaseth. For the situation of it in respect of heaven, I can no better compare it than to Calais and Dover. For, as a man standing
upon Calais sands may see men walking on Dover cliffs, so easily may you discern heaven from the farthest part of hell, and behold the melody and motions of the angels and spirits there resident, in such perfect manner as if you were amongst them; which, how it worketh in the minds and souls of them that have no power to apprehend such felicity, it is not for me to intimate, because it is prejudicial to our monarchy.'

‘I would be sorry,' quoth I, ‘to importune you in any matter of secrecy; yet this I desire, if it might be done without offence, that you would satisfy me in full sort, and according to truth, what the devil is whom you serve? As also how he began, and how far his power and authority extends?'

‘Percy, believe me, thou shrivest me very near
³¹⁴
in this latter demand, which concerneth us more deeply than the former and may work us more damage than thou art aware of; yet in hope thou wilt conceal what I tell thee, I will lay open our whole estate plainly and simply unto thee as it is. But first I will begin with the opinions of former times, and so hasten forward to that
manifeste verum
³¹⁵
that thou seekest.

Some men there be that, building too much upon reason, persuade themselves that there are no devils at all, but that this word
dæmon
is such another moral of mischief, as the poets' Dame Fortune is of mishap. For as under the fiction of this blind goddess we aim at the folly of princes and great men in disposing of honours, that oftentimes prefer fools and disgrace wise men, and alter their favours in turning of an eye, as Fortune turns her wheel; so under the person of this old
gnathonical
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companion, called the devil, we shroud all subtlety masking under the name of simplicity, all painted holiness devouring widows' houses, all gray-headed foxes clad in sheep's garments; so that the devil (as they make it) is only a pestilent humour in a man, of pleasure, profit, or policy, that violently carries him away to
vanity, villainy, or monstrous hypocrisy. Under vanity I comprehend not only all vain arts and studies whatsoever, but also dishonourable prodigality, untemperate venery, and that hateful sin of self-love, which is so common amongst us. Under villainy I comprehend murder, treason, theft, cozenage, cut-throat covetise, and such like. Lastly, under hypocrisy, all machiavellism, puritanism, and outward glozing with a man's enemy, and protesting friendship to him that I hate and mean to harm, all underhand cloaking of bad actions with commonwealth pretences and, finally, all Italianate conveyances, as to kill a man and then mourn for him,
quasi vero
³¹⁷
it was not by my consent; to be a slave to him that hath injured me, and kiss his feet for opportunity of revenge; to be severe in punishing offenders, that none might have the benefit of such means but myself; to use men for my purpose and then cast them off; to seek his destruction that knows my secrets; and such as I have employed in any murder or stratagem, to set them privily together by the ears, to stab each other mutually, for fear of bewraying me; or, if that fail, to hire them to humour one another in such courses as may bring them both to the gallows.

These, and a thousand more such sleights, hath hypocrisy learned by travelling strange countries. I will not say she puts them in practice here in England, although there be as many false brethren and crafty knaves here amongst us, as in any place. Witness the poor miller of Cambridge, that, having no room for his hen-loft but the tester
³¹⁸
of his bed (and it was not possible for any hungry poulterers to come there, but they must stand upon the one side of it and so not steal them but with great hazard) had in one night, notwithstanding, when he and his wife were a-snorting, all the whole progeny of their pullery taken away, and neither of them heard any stirring. It is an odd trick, but what of that? We must not stand upon it, for we have graver matters in hand than the stealing of hens. Hypocrisy, I remember, was our text, which was one of the chief moral
devils our late doctors affirm to be most busy in these days.'