The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works

by Thomas Nashe

  Gabriel thought it not amiss to take him at his word, because his clothes were all greasy and worn out, and he is never wont to keep any man longer than the suit lasteth he brings with him, and then turn him to grass and get one in new trappings; and ever pick quarrels with him before the year’s end, because he would be sure to pay him no wages. Yet in his provident forecast he concluded it better policy for him to send him back to his master than he should go of his own accord; and whereas he was to make a journey to London within a week or such a matter, to have his blue coat (being destitute of ever another trencher-carrier) credit him up, though it were threadbare. So considered, and so done; at an inn at Islington he alights and there keeps him aloof, London being too hot for him. His retinue or attendant, with a whole cloak-bag full of commendations to his master, he dismisseth, and instead of the thirty-six pounds he ought70 him, willed him to certify him that very shortly he would send him a couple of hens to shrove with.71

  Wolfe, receiving this message, and holding himself palpably flouted therein, went and fee’d bailies, and gets one Scarlet,72 a friend of his, to go and draw him forth and hold him with a tale whiles they might steal on him and arrest him. The watch-word given them when they should seize upon him was ‘Wolfe, I must needs say, hath used you very grossly.’ And to the intent he might suspect nothing by Scarlet’s coming, there was a kind letter framed in Wolfe’s name, with ‘To the right worshipful of the laws’ in a great text hand for superscription on the outside; and underneath at the bottom ‘your Worship’s ever to command, and pressed to do you service, John Wolfe.’ The contents of it were about the talking with his lawyer, and the eager proceeding of his sister-in-law73 against him.

  This letter delivered and read, and Scarlet and he (after the tasting of a cup of dead beer that had stood palling74 by him in a pot three days) descending into some conference, he began to find himself ill-apaid75 with Wolfe’s encroaching upon him and asking him money for the printing of his book, and his diet whiles he was close prisoner, attending and toiling about it, and objecting how other men of less desert were liberally recompensed for their pains, whereas he, whose worth overbalanced the proudest, must be constrained to hire men to make themselves rich. ‘I appeal to you,’ quoth he, ‘whether ever any man’s works sold like mine.’ ‘Ay, even from a child, good Master Doctor,’ replied Scarlet, and made a mouth at him over his shoulder, so soothing him on forward till the bailie’s cue came of Wolfe’s abusing him very grossly; which they not failing to take at the first rebound, stepped into the room boldly (as they were two well-bumbasted76 swaggering fat-bellies, having faces as broad as the back of a chimney and as big as a town bag-pudding77) and clapping the Doctor with a lusty blow on the shoulder, that made his legs bow under him and his guts cry quag again, ‘By your leave,’ they said unto him (in a thundering yeoman’s usher’s diapason), ‘in God’s name and the Queen’s we do arrest you.’

  Without more pause, away they hurried him, and made him believe they would carry him into the City where his creditor was, when coming under Newgate, they told him they had occasion to go speak with one there, and so thrust him in before them for good manners’ sake, because he was a Doctor and their better, bidding the Keeper, as soon as ever he was in, to take charge of him.

  Some lofty tragical poet help me, that is daily conversant in the fierce encounters of raw-head and bloody-bones,78 and whose pen, like the ploughs in Spain that often stumble on gold veins, still splits and stumps itself against old iron and raking o’er battered armour and broken truncheons, to recount and express the more than Herculean fury he was in when he saw he was so notably betrayed and bought and sold. He fumed, he stamped, he buffeted himself about the face, beat his head against the walls, and was ready to bite the flesh off his arms if they had not hindered him. Out of doors he would have gone (as I cannot blame him) or he swore he would tear down the walls and set the house on fire if they resisted him. ‘Whither,’ quoth he, ‘you villains, have you brought me?’ ‘To Newgate, good Master Doctor,’ with a low leg they made answer. ‘I know not where I am.’ ‘In Newgate,’ again replied they, ‘good Master Doctor.’ ‘Into some blind corner you have drawn me to be murdered.’ ‘To no place,’ replied they the third time, ‘but to Newgate, good Master Doctor.’ ‘Murder, murder!’ he cried out; ‘somebody break in or they will murder me!’ ‘No murder, but an action of debt,’ said they, ‘good Master Doctor.’ ‘Oh you profane plebeians!’ exclaimed he: ‘I will massacre, I will crucify you for presuming to lay hands thus on my reverent person.’

  All this would not serve him, no more than Hacker’s counterfeit madness79 would keep him from the gallows, but he was had and showed his lodgings where he should lie by it, and willed to deliver up his weapon. That wrung him on the withers worse than all the rest. ‘What? My arms, my defence, my weapon, my dagger?’ quoth he. ‘My life then, I see, is conspired against, when you seek to bereave me of the instruments that should secure it.’ They rattled him up soundly, and told him if he would be conformable to the order of the prison, so it was; otherwise he should be forced.

  Force him no forces, no such mechanical80 drudges should have the honour of his artillery. Marry, if some worthy magistrate came (as their master or mistress, it might be), upon good conditions for his life’s safety and reservation, he would surrender. The mistress of the house (her husband being absent), understanding of his folly, came up to him and went about to persuade him. At her sight somewhat calmed he was, as it is a true amorous knight and hath no power to deny anything to ladies and gentlewomen, and he told her if she would command her servants forth (whom he scorned should have their eyes so much illuminated as to behold any martial engine of his), he would in all humility despoil himself of it. She so far yielded to him; when, as soon as they were out, he runs and swaps the door to, and draws his dagger upon her with ‘Oh I will kill thee! What could I do to thee now!’ And so extremely terrified her, that she scritched out to her servants, who burst in in heaps, thinking he would have ravished her.

  Never was our Tapthartharath81 (though he hath run through many briars82) in the like ruthful pickle he was then, for to the bolts83 he must, amongst thieves and rogues, and taste of the widow’s alms84 for drawing his dagger in a prison; from which there was no deliverance, if basely he had not fallen upon his knees and asked her forgiveness.

  Dinner being ready, he was called down, and there being a better man than he present, who was placed at the upper end of the board, for very spite that he might not sit highest, he straight flung to his chamber again, and vowed by heaven and earth and all the flesh on his back, he would famish himself before he eat a bit of meat as long as he was in Newgate. How inviolably he kept it, I will not conceal from you. About a two hours after, when he felt his craw85 empty, and his stomach began to wamble, he writ a supplication to his hostess that he might speak with her. To whom (at her approaching) he recited what a rash vow he had made, and what a commotion there was in his entrails or pudding-house, for want of food; wherefore if she would steal to him a bit secretly and let there be no words of it, he would, ay marry would he (when he was released) perform mountains. She (in pity of him) seeing him a brainsick bedlam and an innocent, that had no sense to govern himself, being loth he should be damned and go to hell for a meal’s meat, having vowed and through famine ready to break it, got her husband to go forth with him out of doors, to some cook’s shop at Pie Corner86 thereabouts, or (as others will have it) to the tap-house under the prison, where having eaten sufficient his hungry body to sustain, the devil a scute87 had he to pay the reckoning, but the Keeper’s credit must go for it.

  How he got out of this Castle Dolorous, if any be with child to know, let them enquire of the Minister then serving at Saint Alban’s in Wood Street, who in Christian charity, only for the name’s sake88 (not being acquainted with him before), entered bond for him to answer it at law and, satisfied the house for his lodging and mangery.89 But being restored to the open air, the case with him was little a
ltered, for no roof had he to hide his noddle in, or whither he might go to set up his rest, but in the streets under a bulk he should have been constrained to have kennelled and chalked out his cabin, if the said Minister had not the second time stood his friend, and preferred him to a chamber at one Rolfe’s, a sergeant’s in Wood Street whom, as I take it, he also proved to be equally bound with him for his new cousin’s appearance to the law, which he never did, but left both of them in the lurch for him, and running in debt with Rolfe beside for house-room and diet, one day when he was from home, he closely conveyed away his trunk forth out of doors, and showed him a fair pair of heels.

  At Saffron Walden, for the most part, from that his flight to this present hath he mewed and cooped up himself invisible, being counted for dead, and no tidings of him, till I came in the wind of him at Cambridge. And so I wind up his thread of life, which, I fear, I have drawn out too large, although in three-quarters of it (of purpose to curtail it) I have left descant and tasked me to plainsong; whereof that it is any other than plain truth let no man distrust, it being by good men and true (word for word as I let fly amongst you) to me in the fear of God uttered, all yet alive to confirm it. Wherefore settle your faith immovably, and now you have heard his life, judge of his doctrine accordingly.

  Have with you to Saffron Walden

  (M., III, 60 – 62; 73; 75; 76; 79; 91 – 94; 96 – 102).

  1. This is the only one of the Marprelate pamphlets now widely accepted as being by Nashe. McKerrow printed three others but later came to think they were not his work.

  2. G. R. Hibbard, Thomas Nashe, A Critical Introduction, London, 1962.

  3. Also probably a reference to Nashe’s presence at the ‘fatal banquet’ of Rhenish wine and pickled herring that caused the death of Robert Greene, the playwright (see Have with You, M., I, 287 – 8).

  4. The Three Parnassus Plays, ed. J. B. Leishman, London, 1949.

  5. ibid., p. 245.

  6. L. V. Ryan, Roger Ascham, Stanford, 1963, pp. 16 – 22.

  7. Preface to Greene’s Menaphon, M, III, 317 – 18.

  8. p. 476.

  9. Lenten Stuff, p. 408.

  10. In A Countercuff to Martin Junior, another of the pamphlets once thought to be by Nashe, the writer says ‘If the monster be dead’: the Theses Martinianae, published in July 1589, looked like a posthumous collection. But The Protestation of Martin came out of the Martinist press in October and showed the exequies to have been premature.

  11. An Almond for a Parrot, M., III, 347.

  12. ibid., p. 365. Pamphlets were issued under the names Martin Senior and Martin Junior. The references to Oxford and Cambridge allude to the subtitle of another of the Martinist pamphlets (see M.,V, 471).

  13. An Almond for a Parrot, M., III, 366. The Latin quotation is from Martial, Epigrams, xii, 54 (Red hair, black face, short feet, damaged in one eye’).

  14. op. cit., p. 43.

  15. Strange News, M., I, 313 and 315.

  16. J. Buxton, Sir Philip Sidney and the English Renaissance, London, 1954, p. 119.

  17. The Works of Gabriel Harvey, ed. Grosart, II, 238.

  18. Summer’s Last Will and Testament, p. 148.

  19. op. cit., p. 179.

  20. Thomas Nashe: Selected Works, ed. S. Wells, London, 1964, p. 18.

  21. M., II, 71.

  22. M., III, 348–9.

  23. The Unfortunate Traveller, pp. 340—47.

  24. op. cit., p. 177.

  25. Richard III, II, I.

  26. op. cit., p. 123.

  27. Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem, M., II, 157.

  28. The Unfortunate Traveller, ed. M. Ayrton, London, p. 7.

  29. C. L. Barber, Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy, Princeton, 1959, p. 61.

  30. W. Raleigh, The English Novel, London, 1894.

  31. Raleigh’s view is also that of R. G. Howarth, who writes: ‘By the intensity of his vision and his power to chill the soul with horror which is not just sensation, [Nashe] rises above mere tragedy of blood almost to the tragic plane of Webster.’ (Two Elizabethan Writers of Fiction, Cape Town, 1956, p. 31.)

  32. Have with You, M, III, 33–5.

  33. Lenten Stuff, p. 403.

  1. ‘To have nothing is the great mark of the uncultured’ (Ovid). (M. suggests the tag may have been the printer’s idea.)

  2. Famous comic actor, defended in an oration by Cicero.

  3. John Pace (c. 1523 – 90), jester to Henry VIII and later to the Duke of Norfolk.

  4. Robert Greene died September 1592 (see p. 18).

  5. Disturbance, ‘row’.

  6. M. dismisses the idea that this was Archbishop Whitgift, suggesting it was a patron, perhaps the Earl of Derby.

  7. The first edition was called Piers Penniless his supplication to the Devil. Describing the over-spreading of vice, and suppression of virtue. Pleasantly interlaced with variable delights, and pathetically intermixed with conceited reproofs.

  8. Knight of the Post: A professional false-witness.

  9. Scurvy, contemptible.

  10. Entered Stationer’s Register 20 September 1592.

  11. Perhaps by pp. 79 – 80 (M.).

  12. Literally ‘Let the buyer beware’ (proverb).

  13. Greene says he had a work of this name in preparation, which was to attack scoundrels by name and unrip their villainies (M.).

  14. The Epistles mentioned on p. 49.

  15. ‘Learn, if you are wise, not the things which we inactive people know, but about bristling battle-lines’ (Ovid).

  16. Inkstand.

  17. ‘It is something to lighten a deadly ill by words’ (Ovid).

  18. Curse.

  19. ‘You are killing me, my friends’ (Horace).

  20. ‘An outer garment’ (NED).

  21. Better looking.

  22. Skewers.

  23. the exploits of Untruss: A ballad attributed to Anthony Munday (1553 – 1633).

  24. ‘Learned and ignorant, we are writing poems everywhere’(Horace).

  25. ‘Alas, the wicked fates snatch away good men’ (Ovid).

  26. ‘Thus I prove’ (conclusion of a disputation). Here meaning ‘a scholar’.

  27. ‘My family and ancestors’ (Ovid).

  28. As worn by countrymen, (hence, a name for a simple country squire).

  29. ‘Someone who is travelling light’ (allusion to a line in Juvenal).

  30. Robbers, highwaymen,

  31. Coins.

  32. Opus and Usus: Work and habit, combining to produce hunger.

  33. Fair words.

  34. Bond giving a creditor power to take his debtor’s lands if debt unpaid by certain time.

  35. These manifest conjectures… ability: ‘Having considered these means of getting money, and finding them in my power’ (M.).

  36. Vice in the play Cambyses, 1569.

  37. An ash-wood dish.

  38. Worn by lawyers’ clerks.

  39. An unqualified lawyer.

  40. Facetious title with reference to the devil’s horns and a suggestion of cuckoldry.

  41. Unanimously.

  42. ‘I know not the devil.’

  43. Loose trousers.

  44. Fur.

  45. Night-cap.

  46. ‘He is not at home.’

  47. The tomb of Duke Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, in St Paul’s Cathedral was a meeting-place for gallants and petty criminals. If one failed to cadge a meal and had no money, one was said to ‘dine with Duke Humphrey’ (M.).

  48. ‘A broken-down old fellow’ (M.).

  49. sign… Post: On credit.

  50. Spy, informer.

  51. Not too particular or scrupulous.

  52. ‘Witnesses who have not been carefully hired sell false testimony’ (Ovid).

  53. Hell.

  54. Squire, page.

  55. ‘Through Jesus Christ our Lord’.

  56. Poverty-stricken.

  57. Proverb that the devil dances in an empty pocket.

  58. C
oin.

  59. A writ issued for denying supremacy of the Crown.

  60. Imprisonment.

  61. Capuche, hood, cowl.

  62. Wool, fleece.

  63. Fish-hooks.

  64. Metal tag at the end of a ribbon to help threading, often ornamental.

  65. lists of broadcloths: Waste borders of the fine cloths used for men’s garments.

  66. List would be used as stuffing for bowcases and cushions. (M. suggests should read ‘bowcasers’.)

  67. Stuffed.

  68. See p. 56, n. 34.

  69. Loss of estates, etc., consequent upon crime or breach of agreement.

  70. Pun on ‘mace’ (also a spice).

  71. Baits, nets.

  72. Fools.

  73. ‘Coarse material woven of sedge and resembling matting’ (NED).

  74. Ornamented.

  75. To grease.

  76. A small stove as found in inhospitable homes.

  77. Dark and out of sight.

  78. Sixteen to eighteen gallons.

  79. Looting

  80. Go bankrupt.

  81. Feather brush.

  82. Foot-and-mouth disease.

  83. son of a clothier: Sometimes seen as an attack on Anthony Munday.

  84. ‘As much to Mars as to Mercury’ (i.e. as much to brute force as to craft).

  85. Quorum, a distinguished J.P.

  86. Whimsical, eccentric.

  87. Cut of beard.

  88. Besieged by Henry IV 1591 – 2.

  89. Gournay-en-Bray and Guingamp, besieged 1589 and 1591.

  90. Due de Mayenne, Henri de Guise’s younger brother, captured Gournay, 1589.

  91. ‘My secrets are my own; he is wise in vain who does not know his own business.’

  92. Long hair infested with nits.

  93. Expensive eating-place.

  94. Dashing.

  95. Milksop.

  96. after ten in the hundred: ‘Swears and swaggers for all be is worth’ (H.).

  97. Dried cod.

  98. Salt hake.

  99. ‘War is attractive to those who have never experienced it’ Pindar?).