by Thomas Nashe
Herewith all the people, outrageously incensed, with one conjoined outcry yelled mainly: ‘Away with him, away with him! Executioner, torture him, tear him, or we will tear thee in pieces if thou spare him!’
The executioner needed no exhortation hereunto, for of his own nature was he hackster good enough. Old excellent he was at a boneache. At the first chop with his wood-knife would he fish for a man’s heart and fetch it out as easily as a plum from the bottom of a porridge pot. He would crack necks as fast as a cook cracks eggs; a fiddler cannot turn his pin so soon as he would turn a man off the ladder. Bravely did he drum on this Cutwolfe’s bones, not breaking them outright but, like a saddler knocking in of tacks, jarring on them quaveringly with his hammer a great while together. No joint about him but with a hatchet he had for the nonce he disjointed half, and then with boiling lead soldered up the wounds from bleeding. His tongue he pulled out, lest he should blaspheme in his torment. Venomous stinging worms he thrust into his ears to keep his head ravingly occupied. With cankers scruzed345 to pieces he rubbed his mouth and his gums. No limb of his but was lingeringly splintered in shivers. In this horror left they him on the wheel as in hell, where, yet living, he might behold his flesh legacied amongst the fowls of the air.
Unsearchable is the book of our destinies. One murder begetteth another; was never yet bloodshed barren from the beginning of the world to this day. Mortifiedly abjected and daunted was I with this truculent346 tragedy of Cutwolfe and Esdras. To such straight life did it thenceforward incite me that ere I went out of Bologna I married my courtesan, performed many alms-deeds, and hasted so fast out of the Sodom of Italy, that within forty days I arrived at the King of England’s camp347 twixt Ardes and Guines in France, where he with great triumphs met and entertained the Emperor and the French King and feasted many days. And so, as my story began with the King at Tournay and Turwin, I think meet here to end it with the King at Ardes and Guines. All the conclusive epilogue I will make is this: that if herein I have pleased any, it shall animate me to more pains in this kind.
Otherwise I will swear upon an English Chronicle
never to be outlandish Chronicler more
while I live. Farewell as many
as wish me well.
FINIS
5
Nashe’s Lenten Stuff1
CONTAINING
The Description and first
Procreation and Increase of the Town of
Great Yarmouth2 in Norfolk
With a new play never played before,
of the praise of the
RED HERRING
Fit of all Clerks of Noblemen’s
kitchens to be read; and not unnecessary
by all serving men that have short
board-wages to be remembered.
Famam peto per undas.3
To his worthy good patron, Lusty Humfrey,4
according as the townsmen do christen him;
Little Numps, as the Nobility and Courtiers do name him;
and Honest Humfrey, as all his friends and acquaintance
esteem him, King of the Tobacconists hic & ubique,5 and
a singular Mecaenas6 to the Pipe and the Tabour
(as his patient livery attendant can witness) his
bounden Orator T. N. most prostrately offers
up this tribute of ink and paper.
MOST courteous, unlearned lover of poetry, and yet a poet thyself, of no less price than H.S.,7 that in honour of Maid Marian gives sweet Margaret for his Empress and puts the sow most saucily upon some great personage, whatever she be, bidding her (as it runs in the old song) ‘Go from my garden, go, for there no flowers for thee doth grow’; these be to notify to your Diminutive Excelsitude and Compendiate Greatness what my zeal is towards you, that in no straiter bonds would be pounded8 and enlisted, than in an Epistle Dedicatory.
To many more lusty-blood Bravamente signors,9 with Cales beards10 as broad as scullers’ maples11 that they make clean their boats with, could I have turned it over, and had nothing for my labour, some fair words except of ‘Good sir, will it please you to come near and drink a cup of wine?’ After my return from Ireland12 I doubt not but my fortunes will be of some growth to requite you. In the meantime my sword is at your command. And, before God, money so scatteringly runs here and there upon utensilia, furnitures,13 ancients,14 and other necessary preparations (and, which is a double charge, look how much tobacco we carry with us to expel cold, the like quantity of stavesacre15 we must provide us of to kill lice in that rugged country of rebels), that I say unto you, in the word16 of a martialist, we cannot do as we would. I am no incredulous Didymus, but have more faith to believe they have no coin than they have means to supply themselves with it; and so leave them.
To any other carpetmonger17 or primrose knight of primero18 bring I a dedication; and19 the dice overnight have not befriended him, he sleeps five days and five nights to new-skin his beauty, and will not be known he is awaked till his men upon their own bonds (a dismal world for trenchermen when their master’s bond shall not be so good as theirs) have took up commodities or fresh droppings of the mint for him. And then: what then? He pays for the ten dozen of balls he left upon the score at the tennis court; he sends for his barber to depure, decurtate20 and sponge him, whom having not paid a twelvemonth before, he now rains down eight quarter-angels into his hand, to make his liberality seem greater, and gives him a cast21 riding jerkin and an old Spanish hat into the bargain, and God’s peace be with him.
The chamber is not rid of the smell of his feet, but the greasy shoemaker with his squirrels’-skin and a whole stall of ware upon his arm enters and wrencheth his legs for an hour together, and after shows his tally.22 By St Loy, that draws deep,23 and by that time his tobacco merchant is made even with, and he hath dined at a tavern and slept his undermeal at a bawdy house, his purse is on the heild,24 and only forty shillings he hath behind to try his fortune with at the cards in the presence; which if it prosper, the Court cannot contain him, but to London again he will, to revel it and have two plays in one night, invite all the poets and musicians to his chamber the next morning; where, against their coming,25 a whole heap of money shall be bespread upon the board, and all his trunks opened to show his rich suits. But the devil a whit26 he bestows on them, save bottle-ale and tobacco, and desires a general meeting.
The particular of it is that bounty is bankrupt, and Lady Sensuality licks all the fat from the seven liberal sciences,27 that poetry, if it were not a trick to please my Lady,28 would be excluded out of Christian burial, and, instead of wreaths of laurel to crown it with, have a bell with a cock’s-comb clapped on the crown of it by old Johannes de Indagines29 and his choir of dorbellists.30 Wherefore the premisses31 considered (I pray you consider of that word ‘premisses’, for somewhere I have borrowed it) neither to rich, noble, right worshipful or worshipful, of spiritual or temporal, will I consecrate this work, but to thee and thy capering humour alone, that, if thy stars had done thee right, they should have made thee one of the mightiest princes of Germany; not for thou canst drive a coach or kill an oxe so well as they, but that thou art never well but when thou art amongst the retinue of the muses, and there spendest more in the twinkling of an eye than in a whole year thou gettest by some grazierly gentility thou followest. A king thou art by name, and a king of good fellowship by nature, whereby I ominate32 this encomion of the King of Fishes was predestinate to thee from thy swaddling clothes. Hug it, ingle33 it, kiss it and cull34 it now thou hast it, and renounce eating of green beef35 and garlic till Martlemas, if it be not the next style to The Strife of Love in a Dream36 or The Lamentable Burning of Teverton.37
Give me good words I beseech thee, though thou givest me nothing else, and thy words shall stand for thy deeds; which I will take as well in worth, as if they were the deeds and evidences of all the land thou hast. Here I bring you a red herring; if you will find drink to it, there an end, no other detriments will I put you to. Let the can of strong ale you
r constable, with the toast his brown bill,38 and sugar and nutmegs his watchmen, stand in a readiness to entertain me every time I come by your lodging. In Russia there are no presents but of meat or drink: I present you with meat, and you, in honourable courtesy to requite me, can do no less than present me with the best morning’s draught of merry-go-round39 in your quarters. And so I kiss the shadow of your feet’s shadow, amiable donzel,40 expecting your sacred poem of the Hermit’s Tale,41 that will restore the golden age amongst us, and so upon my soul’s knees
I take my leave.
Yours for a whole last42 of red
Herrings.
TH. NASHE.
To his Readers, he cares not what they be.
‘Nashe’s Lenten Stuff’. And why ‘Nashe’s Lenten Stuff’? Some scabbed scald43 squire replies, ‘Because I had money lent me at Yarmouth, and I pay them again in praise of their town and the red herring.’ And if it were so, Goodman Pig-wiggen,44 were not that honest dealing? Pay thou all thy debts so if thou canst for thy life. But thou art a ninny-hammer; that is not it. Therefore, Nickneacave,45 I call it Nashe’s Lenten Stuff as well for it was most of my study the last Lent, as that we use so to term any fish that takes salt, of which the red herring is one the aptest. ‘Oh, but,’ saith another John Dringle,46 ‘there is a book of the Red Herring’s Tale printed four terms since, that made this stale.’ Let it be a tale of haberdine if it will; I am nothing entailed thereunto. I scorn it, I scorn it, that my works should turn tail to any man. Head, body, tail and all of a red herring you shall have of me, if that will please you; or if that will not please you, stay till Easter Term and then, with the answer to the Trim Tram,47 I will make you laugh your hearts out. Take me at my word, for I am the man that will do it This is a light friskin of my wit, like the praise of injustice, the fever quartan, Busiris, or Phalaris,48 wherein I follow the trace of the famousest scholars of all ages, whom a wantonizing humour once in their lifetime hath possessed to play with straws and turn mole-hills into mountains.
Every man can say Bee to a Battledore,49 and write in praise of virtue and the seven liberal sciences, thresh corn out of the full sheaves and fetch water out of the Thames; but out of dry stubble to make an after-harvest and a plentiful crop without sowing, and wring juice out of a flint, that’s Pierce a-God’s name,50 and the right trick of a workman.
Let me speak to you about my huge words which I use in this book, and then you are your own men to do what you list. Know it is my true vein to be tragicus Orator, and of all styles I most affect and strive to imitate Aretine’s,51 not caring for this demure, soft mediocre genus, that is like water and wine mixed together. But give me pure wine of itself, and that begets good blood and heats the brain thoroughly. I had as lieve have no sun as have it shine faintly, no fire as a smothering fire of small coals, no clothes rather than wear linsey wolsey.52
Apply it for me, for I am called away to correct the faults
of the press, that escaped in my
absence from the Prin
ting-house.
THE PRAISE OF THE RED HERRING
The strange turning of The Isle of Dogs1 from a comedy to a tragedy two summers past, with the troublesome stir which happened about it, is a general rumour that hath filled all England, and such a heavy cross laid upon me as had well near confounded me. I mean, not so much in that it sequestered me from the wonted means of my maintenance, which is as great a maim to any man’s happiness as can be feared from the hands of misery, or the deep pit of despair whereinto I was fallen, beyond my greatest friends’ reach to recover me; but that in my exile and irksome discontented abandonment, the silliest miller’s thumb or contemptible stickle-bank2 of my enemies is as busy nibbling about my fame as if I were a dead man thrown amongst them to feed upon.
So I am, I confess, in the world’s outward appearance, though perhaps I may prove a cunninger diver than they are aware; which if it so happen, as I am partly assured, and that I plunge above water once again, let them look to it, for I will put them in brine, or a piteous pickle, every one. But let that pass (though they shall find I will not let it pass when time serves, I having a pamphlet hot a-brooding that shall be called The Barber’s Warming Pan), and to the occasion afresh of my falling in alliance with this lenten argument. That infortunate imperfect embrion of my idle hours, The Isle of Dogs before mentioned, breeding unto me such bitter throws in the teeming3 as it did, and the tempests that arose at his birth so astonishing outrageous and violent as if my brain had been conceived of another Hercules, I was so terrified with my own increase, like a woman long travailing to be delivered of a monster, that it was no sooner born but I was glad to run from it.4 Too inconsiderate headlong rashness this may be censured in me, in being thus prodigal in advantaging my adversaries but my Case is no smothered secret, and with light cost of rough-cast rhetoric it may be tolerably plastered over, if under the pardon and privilege of incensed higher powers it were lawfully indulgenced me freely to advocate my own astrology.
Sufficeth what they in their grave wisdoms shall proscribe I in no sort will seek to acquit, nor presumptuously attempt to dispute against the equity of their judgments, but, humble and prostrate, appeal to their mercies. Avoid or give ground I did. Scriptum est:5 I will not go from it; and post varios casus,6 variant knight-errant adventures and outroads and inroads, at Great Yarmouth in Norfolk I arrived in the latter end of autumn. Where having scarce looked about me, my presaging mind said to itself: ‘Hic Favonius serenus est, hic Auster imbricus;7 this is a predestinate fit place for Pierce Penniless to set up his staff in.’ Therein not much diameter to my divining hopes did the event sort itself, for six weeks first and last, under that predominant constellation of Aquarius or Jove’s Nectar-filler,8 took I up my repose, and there met with such kind entertainment and benign hospitality when I was Una litera plusquam medicus,9 as Plautus saith, and not able to live to myself with my own juice, as some of the crumbs of it (like the crumbs in a bushy beard after a great banquet) will remain in my papers to be seen when I am dead and under ground; from the bare perusing of which, infinite posterities of hungry poets shall receive good refreshing, even as Homer by Galataeon was pictured vomiting in a basin in the temple that Ptolomy Philopater erected to him, and the rest of the succeeding poets after him greedily lapping up what he disgorged.
That good old blind bibber of Helicon, I wot well, came a-begging to one of the chief cities of Greece,10 and promised them vast corpulent volumes of immortality if they would bestow upon him but a tender out-brother’s annuity of mutton and broth, and a pallet to sleep on; and with derision they rejected him. Whereupon he went to their enemies with the like proffer, who used him honourably, and whom he used so honourably that to this day, though it be three thousand year since, their name and glory flourish green in men’s memory through his industry. I trust you make no question but those dull-pated penny-fathers,11 that in such dudgeon-scorn rejected him, drank deep of the sour cup of repentance for it, when the high flight of his lines in common bruit12 was ooyessed.13 Yea, in the word of one no more wealthy than he was (wealthy, said I? nay, I’ll be sworn he was a grand juryman in respect of me), those greybeard huddle-duddles14 and crusty cumtwangs15 were struck with such stinging remorse of their miserable euclionism16 and snudgery,17 that he was not yet cold in his grave but they challenged him to be born amongst them, and they and six cities more entered a sharp war about it, everyone of them laying claim to him as their own. And to this effect hath Buchanan18 an epigram:
Urbes certarunt septem de patria Homeri,
Nulla domus vivo patria nulla fuit.
Seven cities strove whence Homer first should come;
When living, he no country had nor home.
I allege this tale to show how much better my luck was than Homer’s, though all the King of Spain’s Indies will not create me such a niggling hexameter-founder as he was, in the first proclaiming of my bankrout indigence and beggary to bend my course to such a courteous-compassionate clime as Y
armouth, and to warn others that advance their heads above all others, and have not respected, but rather flatly opposed themselves against the friar mendicants of our profession, what their amercements19 and unreprievable penance will be, except they tear ope their oyster-mouthed pouches quickly, and make double amends for their parsimony. I am no Tiresias or Calchas to prophesy, but yet I cannot tell: there may be more resounding bell-metal in my pen than I am aware, and if there be, the first peal of it is Yarmouth’s. For a pattern or tiny sample what my elaborate performance would be in this case, had I a full-sailed gale of prosperity to encourage me (whereas at the dishumoured composing hereof I may justly complain with Ovid, Anchora iam nostram non tenet ulla ratem,20 my state is so tossed and weather-beaten that it hath now no anchor-hold left to cleave unto), I care not if, in a dim far-off launce-skip,21 I take the pains to describe this superiminent22 principal metropolis of the red fish.
