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LI. Middleton's Acquaintance With The Merrie Conceited Jests of George Peele

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Mildred Gayler Christian
Mildred Gayler Christian*
Affiliation:
H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College
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Extract

Thomas Middleton, dramatist (1580–1627), was not by any means the literary discoverer of the rogue's fascination. Even the moral Harman had lost himself, at times, in the romantic appeal of the vagrants he pictured, and Greene, after a perfunctory moral preface to his series of Conny-catching Pamphlets (1591–92), had given himself more and more unreservedly to revealing the adventurous life of rogues.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , September 1935 , pp. 753 - 760
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1935

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References

1 For information upon other bearers of the same name, see Mark Eccles, “Middleton's Birth and Education,” RES, vii (October, 1931), 431–441.

2 Thomas Harman, writer of A Caveat or Warening, for Commen Cursetors, reprinted by Edward Viles and F. J. Fumivall in The Rogues and Vagabonds of Shakespeare's Youth (New York, 1907), p. 27.

3 The two writers dealt, however, with almost distinct types. Harman rarely went beyond description of vagrants to be found in the country; Greene rarely discussed figures existent outside of London.

4 See my Non-Dramatic Sources for the Rogues in Middleton's Plays (December, 1932), typescript in The University of Chicago Libraries.

5 Compare the opinions hazarded by certain critics on the dates of composition: The Puritan, 1607? (Bullen), 1606 (Schelling); Your Five Gallants, between 1606 and March 22, 1607–08 (Bullen), 1607 (Chambers); and A Mad World, My Masters, between 1606 and October 12, 1608 (Bullen), 1606 (Schelling), and 1604<>1606? (Chambers). The conjectures are voiced by A. H. Bullen in The Works of Thomas Middleton (London, 1885), Introduction; E. K. Chambers in The Elizabethan Stage (Oxford, 1923), iii, 438–442, s.v. the plays named; and F. E. Schelling in Elizabethan Drama 1558–1642 (New York, 1908), s.v. the respective dramas.

6 In “Problems of Authorship in Elizabethan Dramatic Literature,” MP, viii (1910–11), 417.

7 A Mad World, My Masters has long been accepted as a part of the Middletonian canon, no one questioning the assignment.

8 Op. cit., p. xxxi.

9 Loc. cit., pp. 437–439.

10 Op. cit., iii, 442.

11 “The Authorship of The Puritan,” PMLA, xlv (September, 1930), 804–808.

12 Pointed out by F. W. Chandler, The Literature of Roguery (New York, 1907), p. 64, n. 1. To some of these, attention had already been called by W. C. Hazlitt, Shakespeare's Jest-Books (London, 1864), iii, notes.

13 Hazlitt, loc. cit.

14 The opening stage directions to i, iii.

15 He here appears in place of George, who, in the source, acts the magician. See Number xi, “A Jest of George Riding to Oxford.”

16 In view of the facts that this work and The Family of Love both satirize Puritans (one can detect many of the ideas behind the satire of The Family of Love in embryo, as it were, in The Puritan), that both bear the date of 1607 (the latter in SR, “12 Octobris”), and that the latter's prologue says “opinion hath not blaz'd” the author's “fame,” one is led to speculate upon the possibility that The Puritan just antedates The Family of Love, and was printed as by “W. S.” because the real author was still, as he tells us, a nonentity.

17 Number 1 in the collection. Its title reads: “The Jest of George Peele with Four of His Companions at Brainford.”

18 Cf. A Mad World, My Masters, i, i, 79–80 and ii, i.

19 Could this be a reference to Robert Keysar or Caesar, goldsmith and manager of the Children of the Revels, who, in Trinity Term 1609, brought suit against Thomas Middleton for a debt? See H. N. Hillebrand, “Thomas Middleton's ‘The Viper's Brood’,” MLN (January, 1927), pp. 36 ff.

20 The thieving of the play is accomplished by an entirely different method (see ii, iv and v; iii, iii; and so on) but the tone is identical—one of impudent rascality.

21 ii, v, 76–83.

22 Dekker's Lanthorne and Candlelight, Chap, vii, “Rank Riders,” has a somewhat similar “blue coats” incident, but the work appears to have been written after The Belman's success in 1608; that necessarily was after March 14, 1608 (when The Belman was entered in the SR), rather late for Middleton unless A Mad World, My Masters was written after a reading of the MS. of Lanthorne and Candlelight. The SR entry of the play was on October 4, 1608; that of Lanthorne and Candlelight not until October 25, 1608. The postulation of relationship is hardly worth while.

23 The scene occurs in ii, iii.

24 ii, iii, 320–323.

25 Ibid., ll. 349–352, 357, 359–361.

26 Ibid., ll. 369–373, 378–379.

27 ii, iii, 385–386, 391, 395–398.

28 iii, v, 97–100.

29 Ibid., l. 131.

30 Ibid., l. 151.

31 Especially in ii, iii, where Fulk attempted to join the game from which he eventually emerged with so much gain (see p. 759 above).

32 See p. 753 above.

33 The argument here tends to strengthen that advanced previously (p. 755) on a different basis.