WAN A ‘ AC SS ~ SN Aaa ‘ AN YY SS NY SS \\ SAS . . YS RAS SA ACK . ~S ANY RAY S SAS AN . A OO OO _ a Ss . ‘ N | eau f AN ANS k BeNty NS NY S of , Yi Ze . \ \S _ \\ Kaew de te tLe Lip tii GE HY YE: Ld é ty ROY . AQ WS WY THE UNIVERSITY _ OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY 820.9 Cl5ar SERGE _ SAR _ Return this book on or before the Latest Date stamped below. A charge is made on all overdue __ books. Unof E. Library JAN £9 1946 17625-S Columbia University STUDIES IN ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY NEw YORK SALES AGENTS LONDON HUMPHREY MILFORD AMEN CORNER, E. C. SHANGHAI EDWARD EVANS & SONS, LTp. 30 NorTH SZECHUEN ROAD THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE BY CHARLES W. CAMP, PH. D. INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH IN WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY Nef York COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 1924 All rights reserved COPYRIGHT, 1924 BY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS Printed from type. Published, March, 1924. 3 \ e a —< icf a wt Vik owed: a gy NS pov — be in 5 o i prey ted Nu Nuc! & at — ney & ’ oa be eb a Via J. G. WHITTIER’s The Shoemakers Ho! workers of the old time styled The Gentle Craft of Leather! Young brothers of the ancient guild, Stand forth once more together! Call out again your long array, In the olden merry manner! Once more, on gay St. Crispin’s day, Fling out your blazoned banner! Rap, rap! upon the well-worn stone How falls the polished hammer! Rap, rap! the measured sound has grown A quick and merry clamor. Now shape the sole! now deftly curl The glossy vamp around it, And bless the while the bright-eyed girl Whose gentle fingers bound it! eeoreeee ee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eens The foremost still, by day or night, On moated mound or heather Where’er the need of trampled right Brought toiling men together; Where the free burghers from the wall Defied the mail-clad master, Than yours, at Freedom’s trumpet-call, No craftsmen rallied faster. eee eeeereeeer eee seers eeeereeere eee eee eee eeeee The red brick to the mason’s hand, The brown earth to the tiller’s, ' The shoe in yours shall wealth command, Like fairy Cinderella’s! As they who shunned the household maid Beheld the crown upon her, So all shall see your toil repaid With hearth and home and honor. Then let the toast be freely quaffed, In water cool and brimming, ‘All honor to the good old Craft, Its merry men and women!” Call out again your long array, In the old time’s pleasant manner: Once more, on gay St. Crispin’s day, Fling out his blazoned banner! 5520382 a » . y) Azewet ‘ 3 % Aesest hts ) FUMNAU AY eih)s IMAL oye iy KA hed ea ; vi, ? ri BAR Wi * f Weyl ites PREFACE Though the subject of the merchant and craft guilds is a favorite one among historical writers, it has not attracted students of literature. However frequently the artisan appears in the poems and plays of the Middle Ages and Elizabethan period, he has not as yet been the subject of study as a literary figure. Shakespeare’s England, 1916, 2 volumes, though care- ful in its treatment of the literature and history of the period, has almost nothing to say on this subject. The author, therefore, has made a study of the artisan and his family at work and at play as they appear in English literature during the period, approximately, 1557 to 1642. Consideration is also given to the devel- opment of the treatment of artisans, simple and direct in the early period of Elizabeth’s reign and imitative and sophisticated in the reigns of James I and Charles I. This volume does not contain all that the writer has to say on the subject of craftsmen in literature. Further discussion of the subject will soon be ready for publication. The author is under obligation for stimulus and guidance to Professors A. H. Thorndike, H. M. Ayres, and W. W. Lawrence, all of Columbia University; and for certain suggestions to Professor J. H. Cox of West Virginia University. CHARLES W. CAMP. is 1 " at r Géy Take a Mi “ bN m NPE Se Bie a ! , ; vf ; fish . CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE SE MLLIREDR CUE ORGR EE Lila erat Set Alte eC erp eee Saya Ne. Peon aRN I. THe CRAFTSMAN AS A HEROIC FIGURE. ....... 18 II. THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST. . 24 Prime eORAPTSMAN AND) HIS) WORK) (js. 0 AT EV) SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN ....0.0. 06... 99 IPIE CREAR MANY tLe he) a hye ee es DS Pa THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE INTRODUCTION Attention in this essay is devoted to individuals and types rather than to organizations. For a complete understanding of the craftsman or craftswoman, how- ever, brief mention must be made of the medieval and Renaissance guilds. As may be seen from the bibliography, much has been written on the history of guilds. A few words, therefore, are all that need be said here of the craft guilds. Originating from the beginning of the 11th to the middle of the 13th century, the craft guilds at- tained their greatest power in the 14th and 15th centuries. Formed for self-defense against barons, they protected themselves not only by co-operation, but also by self-criticism, since defective workmanship or dishonest trading on the part of any members of the guild would injure the reputation of the rest. In the 14th century the old idea of fraternity grad- ually died out, and the guilds became powerful com-— mercial and civic organizations. Toward the end of the reign of Edward III were established the following merchant companies, called the twelve great livery companies: mercers, grocers, drapers, fishmongers, goldsmiths, skinners, merchant-tailors, haberdashers, 1 2 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE salters, ironmongers, vintners, and cloth-workers. They are interesting in that the Lord Mayor of London was chosen from their ranks and in that from their number several famous capitalists and philanthropists emerged. These were Simon Eyre, draper, founder of Leadenhall, Thomas Gresham,! builder of the Royal Exchange, and Richard Whittington, mercer, founder of Whittington College. Instances of government interference in affairs of trade, of some interest and importance, may be studied in the acts of the Privy Council. A good illustration is the Statute of Apprentices, 1563. It compelled certain poor persons to work for arbitrarily assigned wages termed ‘‘reasonable wages.” There were restrictions on the hiring of a man from another parish. Working hours were regulated so as to gain the best effects of daylight, night work being forbidden as not conducive to good workmanship. Technical education was pro- vided for apprentices, and the proportion of these to journeymen was regulated. Artisans might apprentice only the sons of freemen; shopkeepers and merchants might apprentice only the well-to-do. English apprenticeship probably started in the 13th century.2. Toward the end of this century the records become more numerous. By 1300, London records were kept of the enrollment of apprentices; in the country this system was adopted later. It involved a youth’s binding himself to a master craftsman by indenture; i. e., by contract for a definite term, usually seven years, * Gresham was a mercer, according to The Dictionary of National Biography, and Hazlitt’s Livery Companies, p. 182; he was a grocer, according to Heywood’s If you know not me. * Dunlop and Denman: English Apprenticeship and Child Labor, p. 18. INTRODUCTION > with certain agreements. In the 15th century the re- cording of the contract was emphasized. There was also a proviso that apprentices must be twenty-four at the end of their term, and must remain single until that time. The length of the term varied: the gold- smiths, inasmuch as their craft involved much dex- terity and skill, insisted upon a ten-year period; certain of the lesser trades were satisfied with less than seven years. } A feature of the system which is very. important, but sometimes overlooked, is the personal relation be- tween the master and the apprentice, and frequently between the latter and the mistress and fellow-appren- tices and journeymen. Not only in the shop, but also in the home and in his private life did the apprentice come under the care and discipline of the master. He was supplied with food, lodging, clothes, and education, not only in the craft, but also, to some extent, in read- ing and writing. He ate with his fellows at the master’s table, was strictly guarded and watched as to his out- side amusements, being forbidden, in accordance with the terms of his indenture, to frequent taverns, to play dice or cards, or to be guilty of any incivility.2 The aim of the system was to furnish a skilled workman and an upright citizen. The master, in turn, was obliged to clothe, feed, and instruct the apprentice in the proper manner, or he was liable to be fined.‘ (Guild officers went on rounds of inspection, a supervision which became especially prominent in the 16th century.) The master had a > Dunlop, p. 55. * A master was fined for improperly clothing his apprentice. Clode: History of the Guild of the Merchant-Taylors, p. 521. 4 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE legal right to punish, within certain limits, a way- ward apprentice.> Apprentices could be discharged for damages. If the latter amounted to over forty shillings, and the apprentice was over eighteen, he was con- sidered a criminal. Runaway apprentices were sought in different towns as if they were fugitive slaves. On the apprentice’s being captured and returned, the master was authorized to bind him with chains.* The well-behaved apprentice, however, was not considered a bondman, nor did his position extinguish his right to be regarded as one of the gentry.’ Indeed, well-to-do parents often apprenticed their sons to one of the more dignified companies, that they might profit by the discipline and training rather than by the knowledge of the technique of the particular craft. The position of apprentice in the mercer’s com- pany, e.g., was more dignified than in any other com- pany; such an apprentice did not have to supply his master with water from a tankard, as did other ap- prentices. Thus it is that the four royal born youths in Heywood’s Four Prentices of London are appren- ticed to a mercer, grocer, goldsmith, and haberdasher, all worshipful companies. Whittington, not poor as the popular tradition would have us believe, was of well- to-do parents and apprenticed to a mercer. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, appren- ticeship was one of several avenues to citizenship. Freedom of the town was hereditary. One could be- come a burgess by gift, purchase, marriage, or by ° In the 15th century the Merchant-Taylor Guild fined a man for unlawfully bruising his apprentice. Clode, p. 510. ° R. Brodsky: Das Lehrlingswesen in England, p. 28. * Strype: Complete History of England, vol. 2, pp. 485-6. INTRODUCTION 5) serving as an apprentice to a freeman. If he was not the eldest son of a freeman, he would probably have to serve an apprenticeship to become free.’ The 16th century, however, introduced certain changes. Skill was no longer regarded as a requisite for admittance to a guild (the freedom of which also implied freedom of the town); but admittance other than by apprenticeship was exceptional.’ By 1560, qualifications for apprentices, such as birth (appren- tices must be of English blood), class, age, education, property, and physique, were stressed. Apprentices were generally forbidden to do any trading, but the Newcastle adventurers allowed them to bargain with limited stock after five years of service. The turning over of apprentices to another master was also re- stricted in the 16th century. The Statute of Appren- tices transformed apprenticeship from a guild system to a national one. A chief aim was to produce English goods of a high order. This statute extended the com- pulsory seven years’ apprenticeship of the woolen in- dustry to all the trades. Sufficient labor was further insured by the poor law of 1601 which compelled parents having too many children to apprentice some of them. The attire of apprentices was plain. At the end of the 16th century they were compelled to wear blue gowns in winter, and blue coats down to their calves in summer. Flat cloth caps, shining shoes, and plain stockings completed the attire. Apprentices were strictly forbidden to wear silk; they were allowed to carry no weapons except a pocket-knife. Apprentices, however, sometimes wore decorative apparel, as several * Dunlop, p. 40. ® Dunlop, p. 50. 6 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE prohibitory statutes show; e.g., an ordinance of the mayor, 1582, restricting the gay clothes of apprentices. The results of such a system of education and dis- cipline were fairly favorable. The apprentice was not overworked; he sometimes had spending money; and he enjoyed many holidays. In his adolescent stage, he was better off in a position of mild servitude than were many unguarded youths of a later period. He came to have a feeling of responsibility as a citizen, without, however, much knowledge of how to show it. Several apprentices often became a mob, and were especially rowdyish in Tudor times. They were in- volved in such uprisings as Evil May Day, 1517.2° When any event occurred which did not meet with their approval, the nearby apprentices would cry, “clubs,”’ which was a signal to all apprentices in the neighborhood to arm themselves with cudgels from the shops, and to decide the matter by force. Their energies were boisterous, but seldom well directed. An achievement in which apprentices prided them- selves was the destruction of bawds’ houses on Shrove Tuesday. The noise and carnage did not end there, however; the ostensible purpose furnished an excuse for wrecking even comparatively innocent establish- ments. In literature the apprentice occupies a somewhat | conspicuous position when compared with that of 7° In order to prevent a repetition of the Southwark disorder, the authorities were especially watchful of apprentices on Mid- summer Night, 1592. They were to be kept by their masters indoors; theaters and other meeting places were to be closed. Acts of the Privy Council, vol. 22, p. 549. *? The Roman plays of Shakespeare vividly portray the blind but brutish violence of the lower classes. INTRODUCTION fi journeyman, craftsmaster, or mistress. Authors show such bad aspects of the apprentice as have just been commented on. But they also tend to glorify him, especially in the late 16th century. It is not the mature and experienced journeyman or master that is usually chosen for the subject of a heroic story, but it is the youthful apprentice. After the seven years’ term of service, the appren- tice became free, and worked as journeyman for inde- pendent masters and for daily wages. In the 15th century the rule became stricter against employing for journeymen any but apprenticed men. In the Middle Ages, journeymen formed guilds, “yeomen guilds,” and occasionally rose in revolt against the master crafts- men.!? At first these associations amounted to little, but by the time of Elizabeth and James they were recognized by the municipality. Journeymen at these later times often married and ceased to wander. Their associations differed from those of the old master craftsmen mainly in being smaller: they had no chance to deal directly with the consumer.® Conditions were hard for them; they usually had to work in suburbs and to set up there on opening shops for themselves.** Their goal was to become independent masters, but industry and ability were frequently unrewarded. In the 16th century it became increasingly difficult to become a member of a guild; those already members tended to exclude any but their immediate relatives. There was often required of a candidate for admit- tance to a guild (a requisite stressed in the 17th cen- 12 Lipson: Introduction to Economic History of England, p. 361. *% Lipson, p. 362. ** Besant, p. 219. 8 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE tury) a masterpiece which embodied original crafts- manship of his particular trade. When this was not required, a test of some kind was usually called for. If the work therein was defective, the candidate might be taken as a hireman (at unsteady pay) in the trade, or be taken to perform in that craft certain functions in which he was efficient. Test work was first used in the tailor’s craft, one of the first to become capi- talistic.1° If this testing was carried on reasonably and fairly, it was an efficient standard of admittance; but impossible requirements in test-work might be made by those who were determined to exclude a candidate. Hence the condition of journeymen did not necessarily imply any lack of dexterity. Greene’s Defense of Con- nycatching, e. g.,17 presents a journeyman tailor more skilled in his profession than any of the master tailors in the neighborhood. The journeyman has a rather inconspicuous place in English literature with such few exceptions as are to be found in Deloney’s, Dekker’s and Rowley’s work. Something has already been said about the master- craftsman in his relation to the apprentice and journey- man, his necessary qualifications as a teacher and householder. It now remains to consider him as an individual. In the Middle Ages, the master-craftsman was considered fairly respectable and dignified, but he came to be gradually superseded by the merchant. In order to prevent this extinction, the more enterprising ones, such as Simon Eyre, became themselves merchants by speculating whenever possible; or by being trans- 7° Dunlop, p. 220. ** Unwin: Industrial Organization, p. 47. *" Grosart: Greene, vol. 11, p. 87. INTRODUCTION 9 ferred from a handicraft to one of the twelve merchant companies. They aspired to become more than mere shopkeepers; they aimed at becoming merchants on a large scale, as Shakespeare’s Antonio or Heywood’s Gresham. Thereafter it was their ambition to become aldermen, mayors, and perhaps knights. The Lord Mayor of London was elected from one of the twelve companies, but local mayors were often members of smaller guilds.1® We have thus far spoken of the boy as an appren- tice. Girls also were apprenticed to craftsmasters and mistresses, although rarely.12 Women might become independent mistresses of a craft, but this also was rare. As early as the 14th century there were cases of girls being apprenticed. But few of those appren- ticed, either then or in the late Renaissance, ever be- came independent mistresses of a craft.2? The female apprentice was often occupied with helping the crafts- man’s wife in domestic work rather than with learning a trade. Her father would, in most cases, not pay the expenses (slight though these were) of apprenticing her, but hired her out as a maid of all work. This was much to the disadvantage of a girl; she had long hours © and sometimes heavy work, with no such compensating qualities as the male apprentices had who learned one thing well. Both before and after the Statute of Apprentices, the wives and daughters of craftsmen frequently helped them at their work. A woman who had assisted 18 In Middleton’s Mayor of Queenborough Simon the tanner is made mayor. 1° Phillis Flower; e.g., in The Fair Maid of the Exchange was a sempstress’s apprentice. 2° Dunlop, p. 153. 10 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE her husband at his work for seven years, might, on his decease, take up his trade. Seven years was the minimum term for women as well as for men, accord- ing to the Statute of Apprentices.” Thus we find women in the silk-weaving, dyeing, sewing, spinning, and brewing crafts. Inasmuch, however, as a woman’s time was frequently divided between household duties and the shop, she could seldom hope to become as efficient at a craft as a man who devoted his whole time to it. But her industry and solicitude for her husband’s success, as presented in 16th and early 17th century literature often arouse our interest.?* Something deserves to be said about the dress of the craftsman’s or merchant’s wife, since it is associ- ated with her increasing pride in the 17th century, her aspirations toward the courtly class, and her emergence as the social equal of her husband. In 1570 the citizen’s wife wore plain but colored clothing and linen caps. But by the 17th century, fashionable ruffs, farthingales, and elaborate aprons appeared. Stubbes, in The Anatomy of Abuses, 1583, complains of the number of artificers’ wives who wear velvet caps daily, and of the merchants’ wives who wear French hoods. Women of these classes also wore exquisite imitation jewels. After this cursory historical introduction to the crafts in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, brief 2+ Dunlop, p. 148. 7? One of the poor laws of Elizabeth gave commands to the poor to apprentice their girls until the age of twenty, and the boys until the age of twenty-four. *8 Deloney’s sketch of Eyre’s wife or Rowley’s Cicely are instances. *4 This is illustrated in Massinger’s City Madam, 1682. INTRODUCTION 11 attention will now be given to some of the literature of these periods that relates to craftsmen. The Middle Ages may be hastily surveyed by a con- sideration of the work of one writer who reflects many phases of medieval literature, Chaucer. In the prologue to his Canterbury Tales are a number of artisans, the haberdasher, carpenter, weaver, dyer, upholsterer”> and wife of Bath (clothworker)”* being especially sub- stantial, prosperous, and proud. In a number of his tales, moreover; e. g., in the cook’s fragmentary story of a riotous apprentice and in the miller’s and carpen- ter’s tales there are good presentations of artisans. In the 16th century, preceding Elizabeth, literature was both satirical and idealistic. Cheating devices of craftsmen are represented in Skelton’s poem, The is “An Haberdassher and a Carpenter, A Webbe, a Dyere, and a Tapicer, Were with us eek, clothed in o liveree, Of a solempne and greet fraternitee. Ful fresh and newe hir gere apyked was;* Hir knyves were y-chaped noght with bras, But all with silver, wroght ful clene and weel, Hir girdles and hir pouches every-deel. Well semed ech of hem a fair burgeys, To sitten in a yeldhalle on a deys. Everich, for the wisdom that he can, Was shaply for to been an alderman. For catel hadde they y-nogh and rente, And eek hir wyves wolde it wel assente; And elles certein were they to blame, It is ful fair to been y-clept ‘ma dame,’ And goon to vigilyes al bifore, And have a mantel royalliche y-bore.” The Prologue, lines 360-380. * The privilege of wearing silver instead of brass was re- served for persons of a certain social eminence. See E. P. Kuhl’s Chaucer’s Burgesses in Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, vol. 18. 26 Chaucer’s treatment of the Wife of Bath anticipates Mas- singer’s treatment of the city wife in his City Madam. 12 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE Tunning of Elynour Rumming, Barclay’s Ship of Fools, Cocke Lorell’s Bote, and Powell’s Wyll of the Devyll; More’s Utopia, however, translated into English in 1551, contains praise of certain crafts. In the following chapters representative works from the time of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation to about 1642 will be carefully considered. A certain change in liter- ary attitude is roughly paralleled in all the literary forms (excepting the Lord Mayor’s Show) that we con- sider: prose, verse (including ballads??), and drama. Time and political vicissitudes alter literary themes: the Cavalier poetry introduces a different attitude; Deloney’s idealistic writing in the late 16th century is supplanted by Rowlands’ harsh and satiric presenta- tion of artisans in the first two decades of the 17th century ; Dekker’s and Rowley’s kindly attitude in their shoemaker plays of the late 16th and early 17th cen- tury respectively is supplanted by -satire and harsh realism in the work of later dramatists like Fletcher, Middleton, and Shirley. ** Confusion between the old traditional type of ballad and the Elizabethan may be obviated by a consideration of the words of F. B. Gummere: “On the whole, aside from remoter origins, the ballad under Elizabeth, so far as it had any literary meaning, evidently covered on the one hand poems of love or satire which more or less vaguely suggested the French type, and, on the other, poems independent of such influence, pointing back to the traditional ballad, with its refrain, its tune, and its hints of the dance. But any occasional poem, grave or gay, which appeared as a broad- side could take the name unchallenged.” F. B. Gummere’s Old English Ballads, p. xxiii. CHAPTER I THE CRAFTSMAN AS A HEROIC FIGURE As depicted in the literature under consideration, artisans are extremely fond of spectacular shows, ex- hibitions, and parades of various kinds. This is weil illustrated in the Lord Mayor’s Show, a ceremony in which are often represented former patriotic and philanthropic mayors who rose from the craftsmen’s ranks. The novels of Thomas Deloney are rich in heroic craftsmen. In Jack of Newbury, the weaver, Jack, brings two hundred and fifty of his own workmen to Queen Katherine to fight against the Scots at Flodden Field. In the same author’s Thomas of Reading, the clothiers provide King Henry I. with soldiers to fight against Lewis, the French king. A craft which is best represented in this respect is the so-called Gentle Craft or shoemakers’ guild, the popular guild of the late 16th century. In the second part of Deloney’s Gentle Craft, Stukeley and Strang- widge, sea-captains, visit the shop of Peachy, the shoe- maker, and are insolent to the shoemakers, who defend themselves with their tools. Peachy and his men defeat the two sea-captains. It afterwards becomes the custom for two of Peachy’s men at a time to whip Stukeley and Strangwidge, so that the latter dread shoemakers and repent their former insolence. The feud is finally * Jack of Newbury, chap. 20. 13 14 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE settled by the Duke of Suffolk. Peachy, moreover, at his own cost, arms thirty of his own servants, and leads them to the king, who needs soldiers to defeat two thousand Frenchmen who have landed in the Isle of Wight. Seven of Peachy’s men are chosen as the king’s own guard; and Peachy, their captain, is made the king’s shoemaker. In the prose version (as well as in the play) of George a Green, the shoemakers of Merry Bradstead have ordered that all strangers in the town shall trail their staffs. When Robin Hood and George a Green and their followers refuse, many shoemakers of the town come out, armed with cudgels, to compel them to conform to this old custom. The shoemakers do not desist from their vigorous fighting until they recognize George a Green among their opponents. Robin Hood and George soon fraternize with them, because of their valor. When George tells them that he and Robin Hood have traveled from Sherwood Forest to Bradstead to prove what mettle was in their fraternity, this is as good as a plaster to every man’s broken head. More illustrative still of the craftsmen’s pride in their own heroic exploits and intimately associated with the folk history of the Gentle Craft, are the stories of Crispine and Crispianus in the first part of Deloney’s Gentle Craft. The stories of Crispine and Crispianus are warlike, and are based on tradition dear to the shoemaker’s guild. The tyrant, Maximinus, perse- cutes the sons of the English sovereign, Crispine and Crispianus. As a refuge, they apprentice themselves to the shoemakers’ trade. Crispine is wooed and won by the emperor’s daughter, Ursula. His brother, THE CRAFTSMAN AS A HEROIC FIGURE 15 Crispianus, meanwhile, fights bravely against the Persians in France, and defeats the opposing gen- eral, Iphicratis. Shoemakers feel greatly flattered on finding that both of these apprentices are of noble blood, and that Crispianus has fought so nobly in battle. The popularity of these warlike stories is attested by the fact that several plays and chapbooks are based upon them. There is a non-extant play, Crispin and Crispianus, acted by the shoemakers’ companies of towns before 1643.2 It was apparently a rough dramatization of Deloney’s story. Rowley, in his Shoe- maker a Gentleman, 1609, dramatizes Deloney’s nar- rative, making a stirring play. Two chapbooks that follow Deloney and that underwent several editions are The Shoemakers’ Glory and The History of Crispin and Crispianus. Crude and improbable though these stories of the Gentle Craft are, they are valuable as illustrations of the craftsmen’s pride. They have im- portance in this study, inasmuch as many of these extravagant tales were believed by credulous crafts- men, especially apprentices, and constantly referred to by them. Another feature of the works just described is no- ticeable; i. e., the love of the craftsman for association with royalty. A favorite theme in Deloney’s novels is the entertainment of the king by the hero-craftsman. In Jack of Newbury, to take an illustration, Jack the weaver is rewarded for his prowess and patriotism by Queen Katharine’s “putting forth her lillie white hand and giving it to him to kiss.’ Another illustration is * Referred to in Halliwell’s Dictionary of Old English Plays. * Chapter 2. 16 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE in the fact that three princes in Deloney’s Gentle Craft apprentice themselves to shoemakers. Craftsmen, then, were particularly fond of being (if only in the least degree) associated with, or in proximity to royalty, and boasted of any such relation for a long time after- ward. A nod or a smile from a king or the enlistment of one of the royal family in one of the great com- panies was considered an exceptional honor. The ar- tisans themselves often aspire to no less than knight- hood and ladyship. This theme occurs frequently in the literature to be discussed. Keen-sighted persons realize that this weakness and susceptibility to flattery exist in craftsmen, and often sway the latter or his family by working on this trait. It is partly for this reason that demagogues like Bolingbroke in Richard IT and Antony in Julius Caesar succeed so well in dealing with craftsmen and citizens, and that Coriolanus, with his inability to flatter, fails so wretchedly. The popular story of Jane Shore is given much tragic force by the fact that she, a goldsmith’s wife, is “beloved of a king,” and advanced to royal eminence and power, only to be cast down utterly during the period of his successor. A work, partly prose* and partly verse, which extols craftsmen to an extravagant degree is Richard John- son’s Nine Worthies of London, 1592, dedicated to Sir William Webbe, Knight and Lord Mayor.® It has, for the most part, the favorite theme of the valiant appren- tice of low birth, who does deeds of patriotic prowess. Seven of the nine are thus celebrated; the others, Sir Henry Pritchard and especially Sir Thomas White, * Prose parts are concerned with dialogues and extravagant eulogies of Clio and Fame; the verse deals with the worthies’ accounts of their own histories, and their boasting. 5° Harleian Miscellany, vol. 8. THE CRAFTSMAN AS A HEROIC FIGURE 1 are celebrated for less spectacular but equally substan- tial services to the nation. The heroes, with the excep- tion of Sir Thomas White of the period of Queen Mary, are medieval craftsmen like those celebrated in the Lord Mayor Shows, about whom certain popular and frequently erroneous traditions have collected. The first one, Sir William Walworth, fishmonger and mayor, is an important figure in a study of craftsmen. He is sometimes mentioned as a patriotic model to be followed by soldier craftsmen. As he is famous for his fighting ability and military glory, he is an ever- present figure in the Lord Mayor Shows in which the Mayor-elect is from the ranks of the fishmongers.‘® Walworth is represented as the aged soldier who de- feated the rebels of Kent and Essex, stabbing Tyler, the leader of the rebellion. He speaks in high praise of himself, as do all the worthies successively (and as do some of those in the Lord Mayor’s Show). A romantic and patriotic hero of the chivalric period of the Black Prince, the merchant-tailor, Sir John Hawkwood, is very popular. He is celebrated in the Merchant-Tailor Lord Mayor Shows; e. g., in Webster’s Monuments of Honor. He boastfully describes his conduct in battle as follows: That day, the prince of Wales, surnamde ‘the Black’ Did mount me on a gallant English steed; Where I bestride me so upon his backe, That none incountred me that did not bleed. * These spectacular Lord Mayor Shows celebrate exemplary and patriotic mayors of past time; i.e., those valorous in battle and those famous for philanthropy, as White and Pritchard. They differ from Johnson’s work, however, in being an equal tribute to the craft itself of the Lord Mayor, and in going into some description of its early history. 18 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE This Hawkwood was fourth of the dubbed knights, and was given a gold chain by the Black Prince. He fights for the Duke of Milan, a service for which he gains castles and towers, and helps Spain against the Pope. Others of the nine who distinguish themselves in a similar way are Sir William Sevenoake, a grocer; Sir John Bonham, a mercer and knight; Sir Christopher Croker, a vintner and knight; and Sir Hugh Caverley, a silk-weaver and knight. This work is clumsy and lacking in, force, partly owing to the fact that the heroes boastfully rehearse their own deeds in childish and stereotyped manner. It goes into no detail or differentiation of the various crafts represented; but it illustrates well the interest of the craftsman in shows and spectacles. Ballads and songs are not deficient in this praise of the valiant artisan. Beginning about 1590 and con- tinuing until about 1605 there are commemorative ballads of patriotic heroism on the part of craftsmen. Perhaps song is the best medium for this; exploits can be better represented thus than on the stage. Of several ballads that enter into extravagant praise of the apprentice as a soldier, The Honor of a London Prentice’ is a good instance. This apprentice defeats twenty Turkish knights in a tournament. Imprisoned with two hungry lions, he thrusts his arms down their throats, tears their hearts out, and throws them at those looking on. * Evans’ Old Ballads, vol. 3, page 35. Seek all the world about, And you shall hardly find, A man in valour to exceed A prentice gallant mind. THE CRAFTSMAN AS A HEROIC FIGURE 19 Ballads somewhat similar to this one are Deloney’s Shoemakers Song on Crispianus Night;? A Use of Ex- hortation to the London Prentices, 1643;° The Jovial Broom Man; How Wat Tyler and Jacke Straw re- belled against King Richard II;" A Ballad in Praise of London Prentices and what they did at the Cockpit playhouse in Drury Lane, 1617.22, Women as well as men from the ranks of the artisans are sometimes the subjects of such ballads, as is the case with Long Meg of Westminster, the stalwart victuallar, subject of a lost ballad written in 1590, ca., The Coy Cook Maid portrays an energetic craftswoman who is a match for men. This cook, wrongly called coy, is courted in vain by Irish, Welsh, Spanish and Dutch suitors. She breaks a Scotch suitor’s head with her ladle, and threatens tu thrust a spit through a French suitor. She is finally won by a poor English tailor. This ballad is interesting partly because of its satire on foreigners. As was stated before, the popular shoemakers’ guild is well celebrated in this respect. Shoemakers are valiant in the prose and dramatic work on George a Green. A shoemaker is a soldier in Locrine, 1595, and in Dekker’s Shoemakers’ Holiday, 1599. A play called Crispin and Crispianus, acted by the shoemakers’ com- panies of towns before 1643,1* Rowley’s Shoemaker a ® The Gentle Craft, Part 1, end of chap. 9. ® Percy Socy. Pub., vol. 1, p. 67. 7° Roxburghe Ballads, vol. 2, p. 129. 72 Deloney’s Strange Histories, Canto 10. #2 Percy Socy. Pub., vol. 1, p. 94. 78 Roxburghe Ballad Socy., vol. 3, p. 626. 74 “Crispin and Crispianus cost more trouble: the princes could ever borrow their tools from any journeyman shoemaker; but then the robes and decorations of the queens and nobles were forced to be carried up and down in knapsacks.” The Original Works of William King, LL. D., vol. 1, p. 180. 20 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE Gentleman, 1609, and Rawlin’s Rebellion, 1637,» follow to a greater or less degree Deloney’s stories of valiant shoemakers. In Shakespeare’s Henry V, 1599, the king appeals to his fellow-countrymen to fight with him on the day called “the feast of Crispian.’** This day, celebrating the patron saint of the shoemakers, lends a certain spirit of fraternity and co-operation to Henry’s stirring appeal, reviving in the minds of the artisans the warlike and chivalric stories of the heroes of the Gentle Craft. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile This day shall gentle his condition.*’ Two plays that deal with popular uprisings of craftsmen and the repression of these in each case by a patriotic mayor and craftsmen are Heywood’s Edward IV, Part I, 1600; and the anonymous play, The Life and Death of Jack Straw, 1598. In the latter, William Walworth, fishmonger and Lord Mayor, the stock figure in the fishmonger Lord Mayor’s Shows, gathers patriotic Englishmen and succeeds in quelling the rebellion and in stabbing Straw, one of the leaders. According to the play, Walworth’s dagger is put in the city arms by the king. An interesting play of this nature is Anthony Brewer’s Love-Sick King, 1605. Grim the collier of Newcastle leads an army of his own workmen, and 7° This play presents tailors as valiant fighters, but follows roughly the plan of Rowley’s Shoemaker a Gentleman. *¢ Shakespeare is unhistorical here, the date of the Battle of Agincourt being unknown. *" Henry V, Act 4, sce. 8, lines 60-64. “gentle his condition,” i.e., make him a gentleman. THE CRAFTSMAN AS A HEROIC FIGURE | 21 takes King Canute prisoner. Grim is not in the least slow in claiming this credit for the Newcastle colliers, and declares that Newcastle strength has set England free: | If you wo’d rake hell and Phlegitan, Acaron and Barrathrum, all these Low countries cannot yeeld you such a company. Tara, ra, ra, ra, ra, O brave master, Now for a company of conquering colliers.**® For his national service, Grim is made the king’s coal- bearer. The most famous extant illustration in drama of the success of craftsmen in battle is Thomas Heywood’s Four Prentices of London, 1594, ca. This, together with Bold Beauchamps, a lost play, dramatizing the exploits of Thomas, first Earl of Warwick, is referred to in Beaumont and Fletcher’s burlesque, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, 1613. The play has no real delineation of craftsmen; aside from the fact that we are told that the Earl of Bouillon’s four sons are ap- prentices to four of the great crafts, they do not refer to any features of their crafts as Rowley’s or Dekker’s craftsmen do to theirs. The banished earl, disguised as a London citizen, apprentices his sons as follows: Godfrey, to a mercer; Guy, to a goldsmith; Charles, to a haberdasher; Eustace, to a grocer. All high born Yet of the city-trades they have no scorn.*°® oeereeseeseer eee ere eee eeeeeeeerer eee estes eeeeeeee eee Kings themselves have of these trades been free. 18 A. Brewer: The Love-Sick King. A. E. H. Swaen edition, line 1680. Grim is alluding to the popular association of colliers with devils. 1° Page 408. Text is Dodsley: Old English Plays, vol. 6. i] 22 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE Guy speaks of the advantage of knowing a trade, inas- much as all kingdoms are subject to Fortune’s frowns; and a banished prince who is skilled in some trade will never want. These princes fight bravely, recover Jerusalem from the infidels, and Guy becomes ruler. Each of the champions bears on his shield the arms of the trade to which he was bound.” The tribute paid to craftsmen as fighters in some of these plays; e.g., A Shoemaker a Gentleman or The Four Prentices of London, is not as great as it might appear at first sight. In the former play, Crispianus, the prince, is the noble and valiant person (he is shoe- maker only as a temporary makeshift) ; Barnaby, the journeyman, is the cowardly churl. In The Rebellion we have the noble Giovanni contrasted with the real tailor and coward, Vermine. In Heywood’s play these noble youths are craftsmen but for a time. The best tribute to craftsmen is seen in the wishes of Eustace — and Charles that they had apprentices from the dif- ferent towns to help them fight. Certain plays to be considered later, some of which may have been written with those just described in mind, such as Alarum for London, Coriolanus, The Famous History of the Life and Death of Captain Thomas Stukeley, as well as such a burlesque as The Knight of the Burning Pestle, illustrate the helplessness of untrained citizens in battle. In Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster, for ex- ample, the captain exhorts the citizens to leave their *° Eustace’s grocers’ arms on his shield may have suggested to Beaumont and Fletcher to make Ralph a grocer’s apprentice in The Knight of the Burning Pestle. : A ballad, that is non-extant, perhaps dealing with the same theme, is The honours achieved in Fraunce and Spaine by four prentices of London, 1592. THE CRAFTSMAN AS A HEROIC FIGURE 23 base crafts and shops and to fight nobly; i.e., not in honor of their crafts, but in spite of the fact that they are craftsmen.”? *? Act 5, se. 1, of Philaster. A rather exceptional treatment in the later drama is in Fletcher and Massinger’s The Double Marriage, after 1622. Here the citizens support Sesse against the tyrant, Ferrand, and make him King of Naples. CHAPTER II THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST This chapter represents the craftsmen more as they aspired to be than as they actually were, but it has historical significance, inasmuch as the Elizabethan age was one of speculation. A brief account of the history of the merchant-tailors will illustrate the as- piration of craftsmen from early times through the reign of James I to be considered merchants, a mer- chant being frequently a master-craftsman as well.? The tailors were granted a charter, incorporated a company, and given the name of tailors or linen- armorers by King Edward I. As the company grew, it became a rich and powerful fraternity, taking the function of trading. Henry VII gave the tailors the title of “merchant-tailors,” in recognition of their trad- ing privileges. Their pride in the title is shown in The Merchant-Tailors’ Song; and in Lord Mayor shows that celebrate the election of a mayor who is a tailor, Henry VII is presented among the other kings free of that company, and his charter forming them a trading company is mentioned. Dekker artfully describes the aspiration of craftsmen toward world-wide trade, at the prosperous period of the accession of James I. “Taylors meant no more to be called merchant-taylors, but * Whether or not a merchant was a master-craftsman, he frequently began as a manual worker, this applying sometimes even to the great merchant-adventurers. 24 THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 25 merchants, for their shops were all lead forth in leases to be turned into ships, and with their sheares (instead of a Rudder) would they have cut the Seas (like Leuant Taffaty) and sayld to the West Indies for no worse stuffe to make hose and doublets of, than beaten gold.’”’ The praise of altruistic craftsmen and civic officials from their ranks is to be found in Johnson’s Nine Worthies of London. White, a merchant-tailor; Prit- chard, a vintner and knight; and Sevenoake, a grocer, are instances. The self-made man is a favorite subject in Deloney’s fiction. A brief introduction to this important writer may now be given. He gives a well-rounded delineation of artisans. Himself a silkweaver, Deloney is entirely sympathetic; his very themes are those most pleasing to craftsmen: the rise of the industrious artisan, and especially the exploits of artisans in battle. There is extremely little of the darker aspect of city life, which appears in later literature; i.e., faithlessness within the home, and cheating and bitter rivalry within the shop. Instead, nearly everything is presented in a cheerful atmosphere. There is merry singing accom- panying the work (and frequently, which is not the case at present, the songs glorify the work itself), Robin, a journeyman shoemaker, being an especial ex- ponent of this. There is throughout a spirit of fra- ternity and co-operation. Comic byplots, though often coarse, are humorous, consisting generally of merry pranks. There is a certain amount of romance with the realism, a most successful instance being the love story of Crispine and Ursula. In Deloney’s portraits of several energetic, competent, and proud women, he * The wonderfull yeare, 1603, Grosart, vol. I, p. 100. 26 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE anticipates an interest in, though a different treat- ment of, the craftsman’s wife on the part of several Jacobean writers. His three novels are Jack of Newbury, celebrating weavers; The Gentle Craft, in two parts, dealing with shoemakers; and Thomas of Reading, celebrating clothiers, — all written between 1596 and 1600. Each novel is a collection of loosely connected stories, usually centering about craftsmen and craftswomen. The stories range from moral ones to coarse farces and horseplay. Taken all in all, there is much charm in the writer; he influenced literature dealing with crafts. Jack of Newbury, 1596, depicts a historical figure, John Winchcomb, a clothier of the time of Henry VII and Henry VIII, who may have built the church vestry of Newbury. Deloney’s treatment follows the main events of Winchcomb’s life. He is first presented as an industrious and steady weaver’s apprentice, who, at the death of his master, is intrusted by his mistress with the charge of all the workers for three years. She rejects three wealthy suitors, a tanner, tailor, and parson, and woos and weds Jack. Her aggressiveness contrasts with his passiveness, it being a common theme with Deloney to depict a man who is overruled by his wife. On the death of his wife, Jack becomes a rich and eminent clothier, afterwards marrying one of his own poor but industrious servants. Jack often shows to his servants pictures of great men of humble descent, usually sons of craftsmen. To Jack’s workers this serves as an example and an incen- tive to industry. Some of the pictures are as follows: King Agathocles of Sicily, a poor potter’s son; Iphi- crates, an Athenian general, son of a cobbler; Emperor THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 27 Aelius Pertinax, and Marcus Aurelius, sons of weavers; and Emperor Diocletian, son of a bookbinder.* The novel presents some of the trials of the artisan as well as his success and festivities. The clothworkers present to the king a petition stating the difficulty of selling cloth, and requesting permission to traffic with foreign countries. Cardinal Wolsey, at that time Lord Chancellor, and a bitter foe to artisans, delays the granting of the petition. This is partly because of his hearing of a statement from Jack to the effect that the cardinal would never have his present position had his father (a butcher) been as slow in killing a calf as Wolsey is in granting poor men’s suits. This reflec- tion on the cardinal’s low birth causes Wolsey to im- prison the clothiers for a time. Their petition, how- ever, is finally granted. Not only the chief figures in Deloney’s novels, but also some of the incidental persons are represented as rising from humble positions to eminence, partly through their own merits and partly through good fortune. An instance is in the story of Pert, a former draper, who is imprisoned because of his debts to several persons, including Jack. Jack, now a burgess for Newbury, sees Pert at work as a porter, and gives him capital to furnish a draper’s shop again. He prospers, becoming sheriff and finally alderman. Many disconnected stories abound, some of them dealing with horseplay and introducing popular well known individuals, such as Will Sommers, the court ® Similarly, in Heywood’s If You Know not Me, You Know Nobody, Gresham and his friends are shown pictures of illustri- ous citizens who were formerly poor craftsmen. In this senti- mental passage, tears of admiration are brought to their eyes, and ambition to be remembered after death is aroused. 28 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE fool. The unity of such a work as Jack of Newbury is to be found not in plot, but in the constant dealing with weavers and clothiers, and in the personality and influence of Jack. In Thomas of Reading, also, we have a collection of many loosely connected stories, centering approx- imately about the following clothiers: Thomas Cole of Reading, Tom Dove of Exeter, Gray of Gloucester, William Fitzallen of Worcester, Sutton of Salisbury, Simon of Southampton, Hodgkins of Halifax, Cutbert of Kendall, and Martin Briam of Manchester. As the previously described novel, this one is full of antiqua- rian interest. It has apparently a greater proportion of fiction, although Cole is mentioned by historians; e.g., in Fuller’s Worthies of England; Coates’ History of Reading mentions him as a rich clothier. The novel treats certain clothing centers and popular clothiers that have become associated with these. Certain interesting parallels to Jack of Newbury may be mentioned. There are several instances in which the clothiers entertain one of the royal family; e.g., on one occasion*t the two princes, William and Robert, and on another® King Henry I, at Worcester, who ‘‘returned to London, with great joy of his Com- mons.” A somewhat more important parallel is one in which the clothiers make various requests to the king. One of these is that all cloth measures be standardized, a matter which is settled by the king’s calling the length of his own arm a yard and the standard.® Another * Chapter 5. 5 Chapter 7. ‘ Another tradition states that a yard was the length of another king’s arm, that of Edward I. THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 29 request is that people may be made to take as current the cracked coins of which the clothiers have a store. A third request is that those who rob clothiers may instantly be hanged. All these requests are granted. ‘Still another comparison with Jack of Newbury is in the picture of the substantial and prosperous Thomas Cole of Reading. We do not get the presentation of the clothiers at work, as we did in the case of the weavers. But Cole is said to have daily in his house a hundred men servants and forty maids; he maintains two or three hundred people, spinners and carders, and many householders. The clothiers were an honnred livery company. Though the trade was last of the twelve great ones, this novel attempts to show that it was an eminent and respectable calling; it was the chief craft, dealing with the greatest merchandise; the younger sons of knights and gentlemen who inherited no land, gen- erally took to this trade.’ A story in the novel that illustrates this is that of the Earl of Shrewsbury’s daughter, Margaret, who, left resourceless, is adopted by Gray’s wife as an apprentice. She is untrained for any manual work, but reveals her high breeding in the fact that she can read and write; she is, therefore, apprenticed to an honorable craft. Thomas of Reading is interesting and important be- cause of its influence on several other works. Three non-extant plays dealing with clothiers are supposed, in the main, to be based on this novel as a source. Deloney’s Gentle Craft, Part 1, 1597; and Part 2, perhaps early in 1598, deals with shoemakers, the popular guild of the late 16th century. The prevailing * This is brought out in Deloney’s introduction. 30 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE attitude in literature toward this guild is kindlier thar toward most crafts, even the great livery companies. The novel is rich in the agreeable features also seen in the other two novels, such as a spirit of fraternity, cheerfulness, folk stories and realistic treatment of the artisans’ lives. Important figures are Crispine and Crispianus, celebrated in chapbooks, ballads, plays, and pageants. The story used is drawn from the familiar patron saint legend. Substantial shoemakers are Richard Casteler, who,. because of his industry and early rising, is called “Cock of Westminster,’ and who contributes to the poor of Westminster and forty pounds to the poor children of Christ’s Hospital ;? Peachy, a Fleet Street shoemaker, who has forty tall workmen besides apprentices, whom he has wait on him on holidays with sword and buck- ler ;? and Simon Eyre. The story of Simon Eyre and his rise from poverty as a London shoemaker’s apprentice to riches and the position of Mayor of London, is one which may distort actual truth as the story of Whittington does, in claim- ing that the latter was of low birth. “Albeit he descended from mean parentage, yet, by God’s bless- ing, in the end he came to be a most worthy man in the com- monwealth.” A story of Eyre’s early life is associated with a folk story of interest. On Sunday morning it was the apprentices’ custom to breakfast on pudding-pies (i. e., puddings of baked meats). One Sunday, Eyre, having no money ‘‘to pay the shot” (i.e., his share of the ex- * Thomas Deloney’s The Gentle Craft. Part 2. Edited by A. F. Lange. Wh af: a rir" THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 31 pense), borrows from the others, promising that if ever he becomes Lord Mayor of London, he will give a breakfast to all London apprentices. This is, of course, realized in the Shrove Tuesday pancake feast. Another feature of the story is interesting and typical of a number of self-made craftsmen, as Whittington, and Thornton in Brewer’s The Love-Sick King; i.e., they have a premonition in their days of youth and poverty that they will some day become famous. Having served his apprenticeship, Eyre gets a shop and marries. His marriage is very fortunate, for his wife is a good assistant to him in his work. Her in- terest is especially in his welfare, as we shall see later. He hires a French journeyman, who tries to persuade him to buy a certain cargo of five thousand pounds worth of lawns, cambric, and other articles of linen, commodities very rare in London at that time. His wife also persuades him to bargain with the Greek merchant for the cargo, and to say that he does so in behalf of one of the chief aldermen in the city. “For in the morning thou shalt go to him in thy doublet of sheep’s skins, with a smuched face, and thy apron before thee, thy thumb leather and hand-leather buckled close to thy wrist, with a foule band about thy neck, and a greasie cap on thy head.’’*° She tells him that he must afterwards dress like an alderman to give an impression of dignity and wealth, having a beard fashioned like an alderman’s, a fair doublet of tawny satin with a damask cassock that is furred about the skirts, breeches of black velvet, a white band about the neck, cuffs on the wrists, a black velvet gown, and gloves on his hands, and a gold ring 1° Page 67. 32 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE on his forefinger. This pictures well the dress of an alderman, an official that ambitious craftsmen strove to become, and illustrates, together with the above quoted passage, Deloney’s interest in clothing and his skill in describing it. His wife, moreover, will have the handsome barber accompany him to the merchant, as if he were his man. The deceptive plan is success- ful; Eyre succeeds in purchasing the cargo on credit, all steps having been laid out by his wife. The Mayor and the Mayoress invite the Eyres to supper. Eyre’s wife is especially proud of associating with the mayor and other great ones, and talks about it to her friends, her pride consisting chiefly in the fact that her husband is “the rich shoemaker that bought all the goods in the great argozy:” ““Of a truth,’ quoth she, ‘although I sate closely by my ladie’s side, I could eat nothing for very joy to heare and see that we were so much made of. And never give me credit, husband, if I did not hear the officers whisper as they stood behind me and all demanded one of another what you were and what I was. “0,” quoth, one, “do you see this man. Mark him well, and marke his wife well, that simple woman that sits next my ladie — what are they?” “What are they?” quoth another. “Marry, this is the rich shoomaker that bought all the goods in the great argozy. I tell you there was never such a shoomaker seen in London since the city was builded.” “Now, by my faith,” quoth the third, “I have heard much of him to-day among the mer- chants in the street, going between the Two Chains.” Credit me, husband, of mine honesty this was their communications. Nay, and do you not remember, when the rich citizen drank to you — which craved pardon because he knew not your name — what my Lord Maior said? “Sir,” quoth he, “his name is Master Eyer.” Did you mark that? And presently thereupon he added these words: “this is the gentleman that bought” — and so forth. “The gentleman” — understood you? Did you heare him speake that word?’ THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 33 “In troth, wife.’ quoth he, ‘my lord uttered many good words of me, I thank his Honour, but I heard not that.’ “*No?’ quoth she. ‘I heard it well enough, for by and by he proceeded further, saying: “I suppose, though he sit here in simple sort, he is more sufficient to beare this charge than myselfe.” Yea, thought I, he may thank his wife for that, if it come so to passe.’ ’’*? This excellent passage compares with some of the best delineations in drama. Condensed as it is, abound- ing in key words, as “gentleman,” “lady,” “merchant,” and expressions, as “I have heard much of him today among the merchants,” and “he is more sufficient to beare this charge than myselfe;” i.e., the mayoralty, it portrays an aspiring craftswoman, a type which is treated much in drama of the early 17th century. But there is this feature about her that differentiates her from some of the craftsmen’s wives portrayed by Jonson, Marston, and Massinger, and Dekker’s Dame Margery in The Shoemakers’ Holiday. Her interest is less in gay clothing and ceremonies than in the fact that she and her husband have actually accomplished something of note. Keen and energetic as she is, she hears such words as those quoted above, and thinking not of empty titles and fancy raiment alone, she regards such talk as a harbinger of future success, a view which is entirely overlooked by her dull and passive husband. Dekker shifts the emphasis in his Dame Margery to an interest in gorgeous attire, not in com- mercial enterprise. The initiative in Dekker’s play is in Hyre. Eyre speculates in various commodities and becomes very rich. Offered the position of sheriff, he is re- 11 Pages 71 and 72. 34 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE luctant to take so great a place. His wife, however, is always at hand to encourage him. She ealls to his attention his great wealth, and appeals to his religion and patriotism: “You have enough to discharge the place whereunto you are called, with credit, and where- fore sendeth God goods but therewithall to do him and your country service?’’?? Eyre is chosen mayor and becomes a draper. In accordance with his youthful vow, he invites, on Shrove Tuesday, the apprentices to a pancake breakfast in his own house. He builds Leadenhall, where there is a market every Monday for leather, where shoemakers may buy of tanners. Deloney’s Gentle Craft, as was stated before, is in part the source of several plays; e. g., Dekker’s Shoe- makers’ Holiday, 1599. In this play, Eyre is repre- sented as very industrious, bustling, and humorous, far more realistic than the puppet figure of Deloney. The fact of his having so many journeymen is an in- dication of success, since these were expensive; many masters could afford only apprentices. Eyre buys from a ship captain a certain commodity which eventually enriches him. He is made sheriff, and later (partly because of the death of certain aldermen) Lord Mayor of London. Unlike Gresham or Thornton, Eyre is in- different as to forms, ceremony, or display. Indeed, the early part of the play does not present him as ever expecting to be Mayor. Entertaining the King at a banquet, he is not in the least abashed nor ex- cited (as many tradespeople would be) in the presence 72 Page 79. ** The purchase of the commodity is slurred over in Dekker’s play; in Deloney’s novel, on the other hand, it is given some elaboration. THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 35 of royalty. The king calls the building, erected in Cornhill by Eyre, ‘“Leaden Hall,” because Eyre found, in digging for it, the lead to cover it. He also grants to the shoemakers, at the request of Eyre, a patent to hold two market days for leather in Leaden Hall. Eyre is one of the most natural and carefree of men, one who is well described by a nobleman to the king: Your grace will think when you behold the man, Hee’s rather a wild Ruffian than a Maior; Yet thus much Ile ensure your Majestie, In all his actions that concerns his state, He is as serious, provident, and wise As full of gravitie amongst the grave, As any Maior hath been these many yeares.** Eyre’s vow to give the apprentices a pancake break- fast on Shrove-Tuesday reappears here. He fulfils this vow out of a spirit of fraternity for his workmen, not out of any special love for display. The apprentices call Shrove-Tuesday Saint Hugh’s Holiday.” The interesting theme of speculation may be briefly touched on. It draws us away somewhat from a study of handicraftsmen, but is still connected with their aspirations and ideals, for the artisans in this literature are desirous of becoming famous speculators. The opening lines of Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, Salarino’s poetic speech in The Merchant of Venice,?* and parts of Fletcher and Massinger’s Beggars’ Bush, 1622, portray with imaginative force the power of the suc- cessful merchant, and also the dangers that he has to undergo. ** Volume 1 of 1873 edition of Dekker, p. 70. *® Dekker’s Shoemakers’ Holiday will be described more fully later. act. 1. sc.’ 3. 36 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE Speculation is often closely associated with the founding of institutions, such as colleges or hospitals. This is usually accomplished only by the mature and successful speculator, but even the ambitious appren- tice or craftsman’s son frequently looks forward to embodying his dreams in the founding of some build- ing. Cromwell in Thomas Lord Cromwell, 1602, the young son of a Putney blacksmith, is conscious of future greatness: I’ll build a palace where this cottage stands, As fine as is King Henry’s house at Sheen.*’ William Rowley’s New Wonder, or A Woman Never Vexed, pr. 1632, deals with the foundation in 1197 by Walter Brune, a merchant, of the Hospital of Our Lady ; and with the enlarging and bettering of Ludgate Prison in the 15th century by Stephen Foster, the mayor (son of a fishmonger), and Agnes, his wife. Abounding in absurdities and anachronisms, the play is interesting as illustrative of the pomp that attended any civic institution. Two plays that deal with Thomas Gresham, grocer, the founder of the Royal Exchange, are Byrsa Basilica,18 a Latin play written by J. Rickets in 1570; and Thomas Heywood’s If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part 2, 1606. The latter portrays Gresham as a typical self-made man between whom and the nobly born man there is an enmity. Vicis- situdes of the speculator are well represented here. One day Gresham and his friends are caught in a storm. The inconvenience caused him calls to his mind a ERC Ly (BCs ges 78 A description of the play is in Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare Gesellschaft, vol. 34, p. 281. THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 37 the desirability of having a roofed exchange for mer- chants to transact business in; he resolves that he shall establish such a one. In a sentimental manner, Hey- wood describes how Gresham and his friends are shown pictures of charitable citizens, merchants and craftsmen, such as Sir John Allen, Sir Richard Whit- tington, mercers who benefited their country in various ways. Gresham and his friends are moved to tears of admiration, and Gresham fervently declares that he will build an Exchange, so that he will be remembered after death. The building is finally erected with much ceremony and pomp. Gresham, the Mayor, and sheriffs lay gold on top of the first bricks. The queen herself and the ambassadors are entertained by Gresham." She calls the place the Royal Exchange and knights Gresham. Gresham is throughout the play a strange combina- tion of altruism and worldliness; he is utilitarian, is interested in useful trades and pursuits, but his in- dustry has as its goal the placing of him in the public view. On thinking of the future craftsmen who will transact business in the Exchange, he says: Some shall prove masters, and speak in Gresham’s praise, In Gresham’s work we did our fortunes raise.’° Certain plays that deal with craftsmen becoming local Mayors are The Mayor of Quinborough, of uncertain date and authorship (perhaps largely by Middleton), which tells how the witty tanner, Simon, becomes Mayor of Quinborough ; and Anthony Brewer’s 18 Heywood follows Stow’s description. Annals, p. 1131, the companies in their liveries await the Queen’s progress. 2° Shakespeare Soc. Pub., vol. 6, p. 107, 1. 10-12. 38 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE Love-Sick King, 1605.71: The latter play, like many in its class, has a number of improbabilities and anachro- nisms. It pictures a poor Newcastle peddler, whose sole possessions are needles and a lambs-skin, selling his lambs-skin for a groat, investing the latter in a commodity of iron ore which later turns out to be an ore of gold. With his wealth, Thornton builds a wail, a hundred feet high and twelve in breadth, around Newcastle, and reédifies Allhallows Church. This play should be considered together with a lost play, The History of Richard Whittington, 1605, deal- ing with a historical character and one far more cele- brated as a popular hero than Thornton. According to popular stories”? and a charming ballad, Sir Richard Whittington’s Advancement, the main facts of Whittington’s life are ag follows: He is a poor boy”? of Lancashire who is taken by a London mercer to serve him as a scullion. Disgusted with his low estate he runs away, but the London bells give him heart again: London’s bells sweetly rung Whittington’s back return; Evermore sounding so, Turn again, Whittington; For thou, in time, shall grow Lord Mayor of London.** So he returns to his apprenticeship. The master is about to sail away to speculate with his merchandise. Whittington “‘ventures” his sole possession, a cat, on *1 Edited by A. E. H. Swaen. °* Variants of the story will not be considered here. °° He was of well-to-do parents, bound apprentice to a mercer, the mercers being the foremost of the twelve great companies. ** From the ballad, The History of Sir Richard Whittington’s Advancement. It is in Percy Socy. Pubs., vol. 1. THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 39 this voyage. The cat is taken to a country which is badly troubled with rats and mice. The king, therefore, gives “heaps of gold” for the cat. Whittington becomes a speculating merchant, marries his master’s daughter, becomes sheriff, and three times Lord Mayor of Lon- don. He lends generously of his wealth to the king to carry on war in France, and is kind to poor people and widows. He founds Whittington College, and gives to Newgate Prison. The non-extant play, in all probability, took a similar form to the story just described, since dramatists tend to follow popular tradition rather than history. As- suming, then, that this was the general trend of the lost play, one may see several parallels between The Love-Sick King and The History of Richard Whit- tington. Each came poor, aS was popularly but er- roneously supposed, a stranger to a large town. There is in each an anticipation of future wealth and great- ness. Thornton’s whisperings in the ear correspond to the agreeably prophetic bells of the Whittington story. Each begins his speculation with a trifling article: Thornton with a lambs-skin, Whittington with a cat, objects which are afterward associated with their names. Thornton is ridiculed because of his humble lambs-skin, as Whittington very probably is because of his cat. Each becomes unexpectedly rich and eminent because of his peculiar venture. Each marries a relative of his former master. Each be- comes Mayor in the town of his prosperity, one in Newcastle, the other in London. Each remembers the poor, and contributes something to the nation and to individual poor people. Brewer apparently attempts, on the suggestion of the Whittington play, to arouse 40 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE for Thornton an admiration equal to that long since held for Whittington.” On first considering these two treatments of enter- prising craftsmen and traders, one might consider that both should be relegated to the nursery with Cinderella, Puss in Boots, and similar specimens of fairy lore. But, however improbable they are, they may have a basis in possibility, as reflecting some typical Elizabethan merchant under the guise of a medieval one. The Elizabethan period is one which shows many vicissitudes in trade as well as in other kinds of fortune. A rich merchant might suddenly lose all he had; on the other hand, one with almost nothing might become successful. The original article ven- tured might be a cat, a lambs-skin, or almost anything. The story of Whittington’s cat is not wholly impossible, as cats were greatly in demand in some parts of the world. A possible explanation of the rumors in regard to the cat and the lambs-skin is that these commodities reaped a fair amount of profit for the speculators ; with that profit they made more, and gradually became rich. For the purpose of drama and ballad, however, it is more convenient to state that “heaps of gold” were given for a cat. The names of craftsmen were perpetual not only in the buildings that they contributed toward erecting, but also in certain verse epitaphs. One of the best of these is An Epitaph of Maister Frances Benison.*® His success as a haberdasher and philanthropist is com- mented on. *5 A number of these features of comparison have been men- tioned by Swaen in his edition of Brewer’s play. *° It is in Collmann’s Ballads and Broadsides, p. 79. Many other similar epitaphs are in this volume. THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 41 A combination of the craftsman’s interest in spec- tacular exhibitions and of his pride in civic distinctions is to be found in the Lord Mayor’s Show.?’ Devised, for the most part, by poets and dramatists in sym- pathy with craftsmen, these spectacles present the mayors rather as what they aspire to than as what they frequently are; as merchant-adventurers rather than as handicraftsmen. There is, then, much oppor- tunity for imaginative and poetic representation, a representation, which, because of the clumsy and in- congruous physical devices of these pageants, arouses much satire and burlesque on the part of later poets and dramatists. The Lord Mayor’s Show, celebrating the Mayor’s investiture in office, at its height in the reign of James I, is an outgrowth in the middle of the 16th century of the Midsummer Show.”® The following procedure, as outlined by Nathan Drake, is typical of all Lord Mayor Shows. On the day of St. Simon and St. Jude, October 28th, the Mayor, having been chosen from one of the twelve great livery companies, enters office. On the next day, October: 29th, he goes by barge decorated with the city’s arms, toward Westminster. Near him goes the Queen’s barge with the mayor’s arms on it. ‘Next before him” goes the barge of the livery of his own company and of some trading company, as the mer- chant-adventurers. Each company goes in order with ?7 Collections of these shows are in F. W. Fairholt’s Lord Mayors’ Pageants, vol. 10 of the Percy Society Publications. Good criticisms of them are in R. Withington’s English Pag- eantry, 2 volumes. ** The Midsummer Show was a pageantic ceremony, combin- ing religious allegory with folk-lore and civic celebration. 42 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE its proper barge. The mercer’s company is always first, with its huge representation of the Virgin; this order is always kept, except that the company of which the mayor of that year is free is always second. The twelve companies are often used to represent pillars of the commonwealth or the twelve seasons. At Westminster, the mayor takes the oath of office, and then returns by water to Paul’s Wharf through Cheapside. They pass on horseback with pomp and music to Guildhall, where they dine. The new and old mayor ride on horseback, both in scarlet gowns, and the latter with a gold chain about his neck. Aldermen follow in two’s, all in scarlet; those who were former mayors wear gold chains.?° Beginning with 1585, the dramatists, especially Munday, Middleton, Dekker, and Heywood, become the writers of the poetry for the spectacles. Trade sym- bolism is frequently stressed; e. g., in Peele’s Decensus Astraeae, 1585, the mayor, who is a skinner, is dressed like a Moor and rides on a lynx. Certain trade proper- ties, such as the Golden Fleece for the drapers, the goldsmith’s forge for the goldsmiths, the Lemnian forge for the ironmongers, fur bearing animals for the skinners, and the Virgin for the mercers, become established. Certain stock personages proper to each company; i.e., formerly free of that company, and representing valor, industry, altruism, and nationalism, appear whenever that company has its mayoralty show. Of special interest in this connection are the heroic figures, Sir Francis Drake, England’s True Jason,°*° 7° English Pageantry, vol. II, p. 18. °° The drapers’ Lord Mayor’s Show affords opportunities for introducing much imaginative poetry; e. g., in Heywood’s Porta THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 43 Sir John Hawkwood, and Sir William Walworth, free of the drapers’, tailors’, and fishmongers’ company respectively.*? Inasmuch as the Lord Mayor’s Show was stereotyped, for the most part, the subject may be best treated by considering with some care one of the best and most representative of the Lord Mayor’s Shows; i. e., Dek- ker’s London’s Tempe, 1629.*2 In this work, which was written in 1629 for the Honorable James Campbell, mayor and ironmonger, there is much emphasis on the craft and its commercial significance. Dekker unites. the charm and fascination in constructive labor with. the more popular poetic presentation of a craft’s world- wide significance and importance. The glory and ro- mance of the merchant-adventurers are also introduced.. Dekker begins by giving some history of the Lord Mayor’s Show. There follows a water show, presentinz Oceanus, crowned, in a silver scallop shell drawn by two sea-horses. He glorifies the Thames and London: New Troy’s towers on tiptoe rize To hit heaven’s roofe. The second show presents a sea on which is a sea-lion,. because it is one of the supporters of the East India Company, of which the Mayor is free. Tethys rides. on the lion. The third show presents an estridge biting a horseshoe. Pietatis, 1638, there is the following praise of the sheep: Of patience, and of profit th’ emblem is, In former ages by the heroes sought; After from Greece into Hesperia brought; She’s cloth’d in plenteous riches, and being shorne, Her fleece an order and by emperours worne. 321 Hawkwood and Walworth have been already discussed in: Johnson’s Nine Worthies of London. #2 Percy Socy. Pubs., vol. 10, The Lord Mayor’s Pageant. 44 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE The fourth show is the most interesting to us, be- cause of its bearing on the ironmongers’ trade and work. It presents the Lemnian forge at which are Vulcan, the smith, and his servans, the Cyclopes, work- ing on the anvils. The smiths sing to the sounding of the anvil in praise of iron: Brave iron, brave hammer, from your sound, The art of musicke has her ground; On the anvile thou keep’st time, Thy knick-a-knock is a smithes best chyme. ! Yet thwick-a-thwack, Thwick, thwacka-thwack, thwack, Make our brawny sinews crack, Then pit-a-pat pat, pit-a-pat, Till thickest barres be beaten flat. We shooe the horses of the sunne, Harness the dragons of the moone, Forge Cupid’s quiver, bow and arrowes, And our dame’s coach that’s drawn with sparrowes. Till thwick-a-thwack, etc.** The passage has onomatopoetic value, suggesting by its sound the hammering on the anvil. The manifold uses of iron are also mentioned: it is used in the manu- facture of implements of war, ships, bulwarks, fur- naées, and tools for practically all trades. The dialogue between Jove and Vulcan, though undramatic, is in- teresting on account of its praise of iron: 58 Cf. Whittier’s Shoemakers. “Rap, rap! upon the well worn stone How falls the polished hammer! Rap, rap! the measured sound has grown A quick and merry clamor.” In Jordan’s The Cheaters Cheated, are lines on ironmongers. THE ARTISAN AS SPECULATOR AND PHILANTHROPIST 45 Iron, best of metals, pride of minerals. Hart of the earth, hand of the world, which fals Heavy when it strikes home. By iron’s strong charmes Ryots lye bound. Warre stops her rough allarmes. Iron, earthquakes strikes in foes; knits friends in love; Iron’s that mainehinge on which the world doth move; No kingdomes globe can turne, even, smooth and round, But that his axletree in iron is found; For armies wanting iron are puffes of wind, And but for iron, who, thrones of peace would mind?** The imitative and the childish tendencies of artisans have frequently been mentioned. The spectacle of the Lord Mayor’s Show, therefore, played a large part in the imagination of artisans and citizens, and may have had an influence on their love of acting and mimicry. The mayor, with gold chain®* and scarlet robe, on horse- back, the procession, the spectacles, and the homage paid to former greatness lingered in the imagination of the bourgeois class, especially the craftsmen’s wives and apprentices. Each apprentice with ambition cher- ished the dim possibility that he would become, in the indefinite future, Lord Mayor. The homage paid, how- ever, was chiefly to the outward ceremonies (the aver- age craftsman regarding the Mayor and aldermen as a boy does a procession of soldiers) and was inclined *¢ Cf. Whittier’s Shipbuilders. “Up,- Up,- in nobler toil than ours No craftsmen bear a part; We make of nature’s giant powers The slaves of human art.” *5 Interest in material representations of grandeur and great- ness are also manifested in Murley, the brewer, in Drayton and Munday’s Sir John Oldcastle. He is prevailed on, through the promise of knighthood, to give freely of his wealth. The golden spurs which represented knighthood are fondled by him as toys would be by a child. 46 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE to disregard the trying and responsible nature of the office. Such a highly spectacular and bombastic cere- mony was naturally subject to ridicule and burlesque. Beaumont and Fletcher’s Knight of the Burning Pestle ridicules the love of craftsmen for pomp and glory. The Lord Mayor’s Show and its clumsy wooden repre- sentations are ridiculed in Shirley’s A Contention for Honor and Riches, 1633, and Honoria and Mammon, 1652. Several ballads; e. g., Oh, London is a fine Town, describe the clumsy imitations of nobility on the part of craftsmen. As a conclusion, the Lord Mayor’s Show may be said to be a very old ceremony, and one that still exists in certain sections of the world. Although it is true that each company vaunted itself over all others in its Lord Mayor’s Show, nevertheless, co-operation and mutual support on the part of all the companies, especially of the twelve great ones, were stressed. Extravagant and spectacular to the extreme, the Lord Mayor’s Show had, nevertheless, a place in art; and, in its insistence on justice, fraternity, co-operation, industry, and pa- triotism, it upheld the original idea and purpose of the guild system. CHAPTER iit THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK Before considering craftsmen at work it will be interesting to discuss a few charming ballads in which they appear. Two fantastic ballads are The Merry Pranks of Robin Goodfellow,’ Robin Goodfellow being a fairy apprentice to a tailor; and The Miller and the King’s Daughter.2. We shall discuss Elizabethan ballads far more realistic than these which still border on folklore, though to a lesser extent than medieval ballads do. They present sovereigns traveling incog- nito, like Haroun Alraschid, among citizens. These ballads have a fresh, out-of-door atmosphere. They deal with the advancement of craftsmen, and their favorite theme; i.e., that of being associated with royalty. The advancement of these craftsmen is not dependent on any artistic skill or initiative on their part, but on sheer good fortune; hence these ballads differ from that on Whittington. King James I and the Tinker? was apparently written during the reign of James I. The mender of kettles and lover of ale meets the king whom he does not know; they drink healths to each other. The tinker expresses his desire to see the king, who is hunting on the border. He is greatly surprised to find that this * Percy Socy. Pub., vol. 2. ? Jamieson’s Popular Ballads and Songs, vol. 1, p. 315. * Percy Socy. Pub., vol. 17, p. 109. AT 48 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE stranger is the king. The sovereign is so pleased with the tinker that he gives him money and land, and knights him. The tinker’s pride in his craft is ex- pressed in the last stanza: Sir John of the Dale he has land, he has fee, At the court of the king who so happy as he? Yet still in his Hall hangs the tinker’s old sack, And the budget of tools which he bore at his back. Several charming ballads deal with millers and present them as substantial and prosperous citizens. An instance is The Miller in his best array.‘ It presents a prosperous miller who rides singing to Manchester to woo a baker’s daughter. The other suitors from the artisan ranks, however, are delineated somewhat better than the miller. Thus, the glover borders his gloves with bleeding hearts pierced with darts. The butcher woos her, but she is afraid that he may dress her as he does a calf. The tailor woos her, promising her rich clothing and strange fashions. The miller wins her by talking of his wealth and mill, but especially by teach- ing her “to daunce a downe.” Two companion ballads make interesting illustrations of this type, and present variety in characterization. . These are: A pleasant new Ballad of the Miller of Mansfield in Sherwood and of King Henry the Seconde® and A Merry Ballad of the Miller and King Henry the second.® Neither of these Elizabethan ballads has rela- tion to actual history; it is hardly conceivable that an aristocratic Norman king could fraternize, as the one in the ballad does, with a miller. The first ballad * Shirburn Ballads, p. 116. * Shirburn Ballads, p. 216. * Shirburn Ballads, p. 311. THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 49 tells how the king, after hunting in Sherwood Forest, is feasted by a miller and his wife, though unknown to them. The second describes how the king rewards the miller’s hospitality by inviting him and his family to court. There is still another craftsman about whom and his associations with a king several stories and ballads were concerned; i.e., the tanner of Tamworth. His story somewhat resembles those just narrated of the tinker and the miller and their friendship with kings.’ In one respect, however, the Elizabethan ballad to be described is of far more importance for our study; it skillfully delineates the tanner as such. It is, therefore, the first of these ballads just considered to fuse ro- manticism with realism. A merye, pleasant and delectable history between kinge Edward IV, and a Tanner of Tamworth, 1600,° depicts in Part 1 a well dressed and prosperous tanner, a member of one of the richer crafts. He is on horse- back, wearing a good russet coat and sitting on a cowhide. He meets the King in hunting attire who asks the way to Drayton Basset. The surly tanner will 7 Besides these ballads, Heywood’s King Edward IV treats the figure. ® Arber’s Stationers’ Register, vol. 8, p. 173; Roxburghe Bal- lads, vol. 2, p. 168. It is in two parts. The King and the Barker (Ritson’s Pieces of ancient popular poetry, p. 61) is a medieval ballad describing a gruff tanner or barker who meets the king and thinks that the latter is a highwayman. However, they exchange horses, and the tanner is thrown from the horse. A final reconciliation results. King Henry IV and the Tanner of Tamworth, 1564 (Stationers’ Register, vol. 2, p. 338) and King Edward IV and the Tanner of Tamworth, 1586 (Stationers’ Register, vol. 2, p. 45), are apparently on the same theme. The Tanner of Tamworth also appears in Heywood’s play, King Edward IV. 50 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE not direct him, and rudely refuses the king’s invitation to a dinner, stating that he has more groats with him than the stranger has. Moreover, he takes the king for a thief who has stolen the lordly attire that he wears, and is perhaps trying to steal the tanner’s valu- able cowhide. The second part describes how the king exchanges his steed for the tanner’s mare, the tanner not forget- ting, however (since he is suspicious of the king), to transfer his valuable cowhide to the steed that he is about to mount. After the tanner has seated himself on the back of the king’s steed, the latter is so fright- ened by the black horns and black tail of the cowhide which he carries that he runs away with the tanner. The latter is heavily thrown, but soon recovers, to be dismayed at the five hundred lords and knights that have obeyed the summons of the king’s bugle. Again he shows the. zealous craftsman’s interest in his work by fearing that they are all thieves who have come to steal his cowhide. The king, revealing himself to the tanner, is so pleased with the amusement that the latter has caused him that he gives him Plumpton Parke, three tene- ments, and five hundred pounds a year “‘to maintaine thy good cowhide.”’ The tanner thanks him, saying: If ever thou comest to merry Tamworth, thou shalt have clouting leather for thy shone. We have in this ballad, then, a good portrait of a substantial tanner, proud of his trade, whose precious cowhide is the direct cause of the humorous accident which he suffers. , In considering realistic descriptions of manual THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 51 workers in poetry, one cannot afford to overlook a vivid presentation by Spenser of smelters. Spenser, it is true, was little concerned with craftsmen, nor are smelters to be strictly considered artists or crafts- men ; but the varied appeal of the following description of the workers in Mammon’s cave to sight and feeling is hardly excelled by any other description of labor: And every feend his busie paines applyde To melt the golden metall, ready to be tryde. One with great bellows gathered filling ayre, And with forst wind the fewell did inflame; Another did the dying bronds repayre With yron tongs, and sprinckled ofte the same With liquid waves, fiers Vulcans rage to tame, Who, maystring them, renewd his former heat: Some scumd the drosse that from the metall came; Some stird the molten owre with ladles great: And every one did swincke, and every one did sweat.’ The verse description of Jack of Newbury’s work- shop anticipates the modern factory system. In a large room two hundred men are each working at a loom. A boy is beside each man, making quills on which the weavers wind the thread which forms the woof of cloth. A hundred singing’ women card or comb the wool. In another room two hundred girls are spinning and singing. A hundred and fifty poor children separate the coarse from the fine wool. Fifty shearmen clip the nap from the cloth. There are eighty rowers, whose task is to roughen the cloth. Forty men work in a dye-house and twenty in a fulling mill.?° ® Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Book 2, Canto 7, part of stanza 35 and stanza 36. 7° Cleansing and thickening are done in the fulling mill. 52 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE The weavers’. song represents the cheerful atmos- phere of the shop. The singers look back to a golden age in which great heroes like Hercules were spinners, in which princes were shepherds and queens were bakers, and in which concord abounded but envy did not exist. Following is a stanza of the song. When Hercules did use to spin, And Pallas wrought upon the loome, Then Love and Friendship did agree To keep the bands of amity. King Henry VIII who is visiting Jack’s establishment, is presented by the workmen with a gilt beehive and golden bees!! to represent a commonwealth and its industrious artisans. The king is greatly pleased with Jack’s industrial system. In Thomas of Reading the clothiers are not described at work, but Cole’s substantiality is evident. He has a hundred men servants and forty maids, several hun- dred spinners and carders. ' An interesting inventory of the shoemakers’ tools, given in Deloney’s Gentle Craft, Part 1, deserves a few words of introduction, as it is associated with a tradi- tion dear to the shoemakers’ guild. Hugh, a Welsh prince and shoemaker’s apprentice, becomes a religious martyr. His fellow shoemakers visit and comfort him in prison; he expresses his gratitude toward their chivalry and kindliness by singing a song in their honor, and calling them the Gentle Craft. The shoe- makers regard him as a saint, and after his martyr- dom make their tools out of his bones, this being the ** The simile of the commonwealth and the bees is also in Hobbes’ Leviathan and Shakespeare’s Henry V, not to mention other parallels, outside of our period. THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 53 hypothetical origin of the expression, “St. Hugh’s bones,” as applied to the tools on the back of a journey- man shoemaker. The words of the shoemakers are as follows: And mark what St. Hughe’s bones shall be: First a drawer and a dresser; Two wedges, a more and a lesser; A pretty block three inches high, In fashion squared like a die, Which shall be called by proper name A heel-block; the very same, A hand-leather, and a thumb-leather likewise, To pull our shoo-thread, we must devise; The needle and the thimble shall not be left alone, The pincers and the pricking-aule, and the rubbing-stone; The aule-steele and tackes, the sow-haires beside, The stirrop, holding fast while we sowe the cowhide; The whetstone, the stopping-stick, and the paring-knife— All this doth belong to a journeyman’s life. Our apron is the shrine to wrap these bones in: Thus shrowd we Saint Hugh in gentle lamb’s skin.*? Several ballads enter, to some extent, into a humor- ous description of the making of beer. Instances are Allan O’Maut,® John Barleycorn,* and A Pleasant New Ballad of the Bloody Murther of Sir John Barley- Corn. The last of these will serve as an illustration. Barleycorn is ploughed, but revives after rain. He is then cut down and bound like a thief. After being stacked and beaten until the flesh falls from his bones, he is fanned and sifted, steeped in a vat, dried over 12 Deloney’s The Gentle Craft, Part 1, chap. 4. 18 Jamieson’s Popular Ballads and Songs, vol. 2, p. 237. 14 Jamieson’s Popular Ballads and Songs, vol. 2, p. 240. 16 Jamieson’s Popular Ballads and Songs, vol. 2, p. 251. 54 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE a fire, ground in a mill, and boiled in a vat. He is finally stored in a barrel, and his blood drawn out through a tap. In a few dramatic works, artisans are well delineated as workers. Unfortunately, though the drama is rich in photographic sketches of dishonest and disagreeable tradesfolk in their shops (in the plays especially of Middleton and the later ones of Dekker), we have very few plays besides Dekker’s Shoemakers’ Holiday and Rowley’s A Shoemaker a Gentleman that skillfully interweave romance of pure and youthful love with the joy in craftsmanship. These two important plays will now be considered, together with others that combine, to some extent, the romantic plot with the craft element. Dekker’s The Shoemakers’ Holiday, 1599, has already been considered from one viewpoint; i.e., that of the self-made man. A brief summary of the play will be given. One plot is concerned with the love of Lacy, the thriftless Earl of Lincoln’s son, for Rose, the daughter of the Lord Mayor of London. The two fathers are anxious to prevent such union of noble with base blood. Lacy is sent to fight against France, but remains in London disguised as a Dutch journeyman shoemaker, being finally hired by Simon Eyre. The other plot deals with Eyre and his journeymen shoemakers. Ralph, one of these, is pressed for the war against France. He is not diffident himself about going to war, but Eyre and the other journeymen clamor at the thought that they shall lose so good a workman, and that Ralph’s wife will be unsupported. Ralph, departing, gives his wife, Jane, a pair of shoes cut out by Hodge, stitched by Firke, seamed by him- THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 535) self, which he says he will always know from other shoes.?¢ The play abounds in humor and merriment. Dame Margery, Eyre’s wife, constantly finds fault with the servants. Her imitation of fashionable people is vividly portrayed.’ Lacy, singing in Dutch, is hired by Eyre, who is persuaded to do this by the journeymen. The latter wish to have such an amusing fellow to help the passing away of working hours. He furnishes amusement for them all, joins in their morris dance, in which he is discovered by Rose as he dances with other shoemakers. Later on, the father of Rose dis- covers her with Lacy. Rose, that the situation may be explained to her father, persuades Lacy to pretend that he is trying a pair of shoes on her, a ruse which succeeds.’ The Mayor is greatly disgusted when he finds that his daughter has run off with a shoemaker. The pathetic part, which somewhat resembles the Enoch Arden story, is concerned with Ralph and Jane. Jane is obliged to work in a sempster’s shop, for, as Eyre had said to her on her husband’s departure for war, “these prettie fingers must spin, must card, must worke.”’ As she works, she is wooed by a citizen, Hammon, whom, though loving, she rejects, inasmuch as her husband may still be alive. His suit is well portrayed, although it may have too much sentiment. Moreover, the atmosphere of the shop is vividly pre- 76 This is a beautiful dramatic touch; the shoes form a symbol of Ralph and Jane’s union. It is to the credit of the play that the incident is made so vivid and introduced so early. 17 She will be considered in the passage with aspiring crafts- women. 18 It is strange that the idea occurs to her and not to him. Shoemaking was actually Lacy’s trade once, when he was travel- ing in Wittenberg. 56 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE sented; the progress of his suit is worked in with the details of her work: HAM. How prettily she workes, oh prettie hand! Oh happie worke..... JANE. Sir, what ist you buy? What ist you lacke sir? callico, or lawne, Fine cambricke shirts, or bands, what will you buy? HAM. That which thou wilt not sell, faith yet Ile trie: How do you sell this handkercher? JANE. Good cheape. Ham. And how these ruffles? JANE. Cheape too. HAM. All cheape, how sell you then this hand? JANE. My hands are not to be sold. Ham. To be given then, nay faith I come to buy. JANE. But none knowes when. ececeeeveveeveeeeveeeree ec eevee e@ Ham. Looke how you wound this cloth, so you wound me.** By a false report that her Ralph was one of the soldiers killed in France, Jane is misled into consenting to marry Hammon. Meanwhile, Ralph returns for war, lame, friendless, penniless, and homeless. The shoemakers, his comrades, welcome him back to his old work, but can give him no information as to the whereabouts of his wife. He receives, later, an order to make a pair of shoes on a certain model for a lady who is to be married shortly. The model consists of one of the shoes that Ralph had given his wife on leaving for war. He instantly rec- ognizes the shoe: 7° 1873 ed. of Dekker’s Dramatic Works, vol. 1, p. 46. This courting somewhat reminds one of the poetic epistle of Drayton in which Shore, a goldsmith, shows King Edward IV all of his choice jewels for sale; but the fairest of all the jewels in the shop, his wife, Jane, is not for sale. THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 57 this shoe I durst be sworne Once covered the instep of my Jane: This is her size, her breadth, thus trod my love, These true-love knots I prickt, I hold my life, But this old shooe I shall find out my wife.’° He gains the promise of the assistance of his fellow- journeymen. When he tries on the shoes for his wife, she does not recognize him; travel and lameness have changed him. But since he resembles Ralph, she gives him gold for Ralph’s sake. The journeymen shoemakers, armed with clubs, take Jane from Hammon and restore her to Ralph. Firk, the mischief-lover, to furnish further amusement, arranges it so that the Lord Mayor mistakes Ralph and Jane for the Dutch shoemaker and Rose, an error which protracts the comedy somewhat. Something should be said about the excellent charac- terization of the craftsmen. Eyre and his three jour- neymen are all delineated as shoemakers, but each is differentiated from the others. Eyre is the bustling, energetic, humorous, but perfectly calm person, who, as he himself says, feels as young and hearty at fifty-six as he felt many years before. He has won and kept the good will of his workmen who are elated at his success and appointment as Mayor. Ralph is the seri- ous, hard-working man, evidently a skilled artisan from what the others say about him. Hodge, who is made master of the shop after Eyre has become Mayor, has a vision of becoming Mayor, or Alderman, at least, in the future. Firk is the most interesting of the jour- neymen; he has a ready wit. True to its genre, the 2° Page 54. 58 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE play presents his wit in form of terms most pertinent to a craftsman: they shall be married together by this rush, or else turn Firk to a fir- kin of butter to tan leather withall. They shall be knit like a paire of stockings in matrimony.’’* Firk is conscious of his own rank, that of second jour- neyman, and vies with Hodge in making shoes for great ones, such as court ladies.22 The base work; i.e., the making of shoes for ordinary people, is given to Hans, the new journeyman. Firk is somewhat vexed at the fact that he, the elder journeyman, is called to break- fast after Hans, the new one. The Shoemakers’ Holiday is a composite of all the most pleasing forms of literature on the crafts. There is the old spirit of fraternity, illustrated in the jour- neymen’s work in the shop, and in their united resolve to help Ralph recover his wife. There is also the charm- ing poetry of contentment in fellowship and mutual labor; e. g., Second Three Men’s Song, part of which is as follows: Cold’s the wind, and wet’s the rain, Saint Hugh be our good speed, Ill is the weather that bringeth no gain, Nor helps good hearts in need. Trowl the bowl, the jolly nut-brown bowl, And here, kind mate, to thee; *? Pages 59, 60. : *? Something that is emphasized in literature is the love that craftsmen had of being associated with royalty or eminence, either in the way of working for such high classes, or gaining even a slight recognition from such, a nod from an earl or a king. THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 59 Let’s sing a dirge for Saint Hugh’s soul, And down it merrily.’® Eyre’s speech to Ralph, departing for war, touches on the chivalric stories of craftsmen, and especially of shoemakers in wars. There are technical details of the craft, and frequent references to tools, such as stirrop, heele-block, etc. The industrious and enterprising craftsman is presented in the person of Simon Eyre. Pathos is in the story of Ralph and Jane, and romantic charm in this, in the Lacy-Rose story, and in the deer hunt and morris dance. There is also a touch of satire in Dame Margery’s affectations, an anticipation of a favorite later type of city wife. There are many highly individualized tradesfolk. In short, the play portrays charmingly the life, with its various joys and sorrows. of the craftsman and craftswoman. William Rowley’s A Shoemaker a Gentleman,** 1609, is almost as valuable a contribution to this genre as is Dekker’s play. Sources for the play are the first two tales of the first part of Deloney’s Gentle Craft. The battle scenes are stirring and vivid, but highly extravagant; the scenes of martyrdom are affected. Both these series of incidents are important, however, as they appertain to ancient traditions of the Gentle Craft. The battle scenes, including Crispianus’ noble conduct in battle, and the religious element have al- ready been discussed. Like Dekker, Rowley is more skillful in depicting shop scenes than in describing wild and improbable 28 Dekker’s Shoemakers’ Holiday. Its position in the play ha; not been found with certainty; it is sometimes given in Act 5, se. 4. This might be compared with Martin Parker’s ballad, I'he Three merry Cobblers, Roxburghe Ballad Socy., vol. 2, p. 586. *4 C. W. Stork, William Rowley. 60 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE adventures. His art in The Shoemaker a Gentleman is in the realistic treatment of the various characters at their work as shoemakers, of their zest and joy in their work, and of the romantic plot which is skillfully interwoven with the shop scenes. The sons of the British king, under the names of Crispinus and Crispianus become apprenticed to a shoemaker for a term of seven years. The shoemaker is a respectable, quiet man, with a great fondness for using (or just as often misusing) big words. His wife, Sisly, is a loud-spoken woman, a ruler of her husband, and, taken all in all, she is something of a scold. As in The Shoemakers’ Holiday, so here also the shoe- maker and his wife present certain contrasts to one another. With all her faults, however, she is a good worker. She spins the thread for the journeymen, Ralph and Barnaby. They jest and sing in the mean- time. Sisly: ‘‘Thou seest I am at defiance with my worke till it be done, for I am alwaies spitting on my toe.”’ She is probably here using her foot to fasten the thread.2> The journeymen, Ralph and Barnaby, are glad to have Crispinus and Crispianus employed, as their fair faces will draw the custom of pretty wenches. An afternoon holiday is given in favor of the two new apprentices. The shoemaker expresses further his spirit of fellowship by saying: Provide dinner, Sis, Master, journimen, and Prentises, one table serves for all; wee feed as all fellowes.”*® Crispinus and Barnaby go to the home of Leodice, the emperor’s daughter, to fit her with shoes. She takes an interest in Crispinus, but hesitates to love 26 Page 177, lines 11-12. °* Act 1, sc. 2, p. 183, line 185, THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 61 him on account of his low birth. At all events, she pretends that her shoes do not fit, simply that she may have a chance of seeing Crispinus again. Her nurse, a figure like the nurse in Romeo and Juliet, tells her that several of Leodice’s own relatives were craftsmen. This information satisfies her, and when Crispinus reappears with her shoes she prepares to woo him. She first pretends to find fault with him for courting her nurse. Then, in what she pretends is a magic glass, but which is only a mirror, she shows him his future wife; i.e., herself. He tells her of his high birth, and they agree to marry secretly the next day.’ Meanwhile, an officer comes to the shoemaker’s shop to press the journeymen and apprentices for war against the Vandals. Barnaby pretends that he has an ulcer about the heart, and is thus unfit for war,”® but the noble blood of Crispianus asserts itself, and he is desirous of going to war. He goes, therefore, greatly to the sorrow of the shoemaker’s wife, who has a great affection for him. Crispinus, returning, gives a false excuse for his lateness, saying that he stayed at court all night, fear- ing he would be drafted. The wife hits upon the real cause of his tardiness, and scolds him for it. Her rage increases when, later on, Crispinus tells her that his wife is going to give birth to a child. There follows a lively and humorous scene”? in which the shoemaker *7 Act 2, sc. 3. The scene is an excellent one. ?8 Barnaby’s reflection on the advantages of remaining home in safety resembles the famous soliloquy of Falstaff in Henry IV, Part I, in which he claims that discretion is the better part of valor. racy. 4, se. 1. 62 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE tries to appease his raging wife. On Crispinus’ telling her that he is of noble blood, she is quieted: I ever thought they were some worshipfull mans sonnes, they were such mannerly boys still.*° Sisly persuades them to set fire to the houses in the neighborhood so that public attention may be engaged while Leodice is brought secretly into her house. Leodice gives birth to a boy, who, as Crispianus says, shall plant a whole race of kings. Nor shall he scorne, till that race be runne, To call himself a Prince, yet a Shoemaker’s sonne.** The shoemakers in livery, with attendant music, usher in the princess and her child. Barnaby’s request that the shoemakers may have a holiday each year on the 25th of October, is granted. Crispianus is made British king in the South, Crispinus in the North. The latter builds a church to St. Alban, the first British martyr. The play is especially valuable, as before said, for its realistic shop scenes, its careful attention to details as to characters, tools, processes in the work of the craft.*? To a far greater extent than any play of the period it introduces craftsmen’s tools, such as stirrup, awl, etc.** In its lively shop scenes and in its depiction of fellowship and fraternity in the Hugh episode, and in its realism, it compares well with Dekker’s play. The play can hardly be said to establish the valor of shoemakers in battle, however. The shoemaker, 8° Line 254, 5. a3" Act Byrseria: °* In this respect it resembles The Shoemakers’ Holiday. °° A stirrup is an instrument used to put over the knee and under the foot to hold work tight upon the knee. THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 63 enthusiastic over Crispianus’ warlike exploits, which seem a credit to his craft, does not consider the fact that the bravery exhibited is by a prince, not by the genuine shoemaker, Barnaby, who is brave only in leading the shoemakers to fight with staves when he is fairly certain that no more fighting is needed. These two plays on the Gentle Craft illustrate what excellent products issued when Deloney’s tales were in large measure the sources. We may, therefore, truly regret the loss of several plays, perhaps as realistic and charming as these two, one at least of which is based partly on Deloney’s Thomas of Reading. About 1596 Haughton, Day, and perhaps Samuel Rowley col- laborated on The Six Yeomen of the West, a murder play.** Plays related to this one are the two parts of The Six Clothiers of the West, entered 1601. This was also a murder play, snd was written by Haughton, Hathway, and Wentworth Smith. There is also the second part of Tom Dough by Day and Haughton. All of these characters appear in Thomas of Reading; The Six Yeomen of the West was based on part of Deloney’s tale. Haughton’s art in comedy and in realistic pre- sentation of life is demonstrated in Englishmen for my Money. But that a play involving clothiers in which Haughton collaborated approaches the detail of the clothiers’ craft to the extent to which Dekker or Rowley treat that of the shoemakers’ craft, is doubtful, for Browne, a clothier, in Englishmen for my Money is not delineated with the least attention to his craft. Rawlins’ Rebellion, 1637, roughly follows in outline Rowley’s Shoemaker a Gentleman and is thus indirectly indebted to Deloney’s novel. 34 Yeomen here are clothiers. 64 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE Dekker’s Match me in London, printed 1631, is a play somewhat difficult to classify. It presents none of the zest in labor so characteristic of the two shoe- maker plays recently described; on the other hand, it pictures a tyrannical, lustful monarch, and his abduc- tion of a craftsman’s wife, thus utilizing a theme that became common. In its vivid presentation of shop scenes,*> in its romantic love story, interwoven in a manner similar to the treatment of the Ralph-Jane plot, in its idealization of the shoemaker, Bilbo, and in its accurate delineation of him and Cordolente as shoemakers, it deserves a place here. In Cordova there live two lovers, Cordolente and Tormiella. The latter’s father has arranged that she marry another; so the lovers, accompanied by the witty and friendly shoemaker, Bilbo, escape to Seville. Here Cordolente opens a shop with miscellaneous wares, millinery, garters, gloves, and girdles. Bilbo is a sales- man in the shop, but has not forgotten his old trade, for he says to the new apprentice, Lazarillo: there’s not any Diego that treads upon Spanish leather, goes more upright upon the soles of his conscience than our master does.*® Out of regard for Cordolente, Bilbo says that he has left his trade, in which he had men-servants and maid- servants under him ‘‘to weare a flat cap here and cry what doe you lacke.” Tormiella works in the shop, embroidering muffs for ladies, and selling articles. The King, disguised as a citizen, together with a lady, enters the shop, ostensibly *5 Vividness and detail are common to early and late plays on the crafts. 86 Dekker’s Dramatic Works, 1873 ed., vol. 4, Act 2, p. 150. THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 65 to buy a pair of gloves for a lady whom he claims has a hand the size of Tormiella’s. Therefore he has her try on a pair of gloves. Bilbo’s art as a salesman appears; he calls attention to the fine quality of the leather and the aroma of the gloves. There is a fore- shadowing of the king’s plot to abduct Tormiella in such expressions as: BILBO. You shall have all the ware open’d i’ the shop... but you shall be fitted. KING. It needs not: that which is ope’d already shall serve my turne.*’ Bilbo, trying to persuade them to buy certain articles which he claims are cheap for their quality, says: “T assure your worship, my master will be a looser by you.’ The King and lady lure Tormiella and the apprentice away, pretending that they want her to look at certain embroidery that they will employ her to work on. The apprentice is sent back to fetch a glove that the lady falsely says she dropped, and meanwhile Tormiella is abducted. The King tries in vain to make her his mistress. She is the object of the Queen’s jealousy and hatred, and has, on the whole, a wretched time at court. Cordolente comes to court, boldly asks for his wife, and mentions the abuses and tyrannies of rulers. As he gains nothing by this method, he determines to use a stratagem, disguises himself as a shoemaker, and fits his wife with shoes. She pretends not to recognize him at first; he leads up to an introduction by desir- ing that she accept him again for her shoemaker, as formerly (i.e., he identifies the office of shoemaker *" Page 156. ** Page 157. 66 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE with that of husband). He is a poor shopkeeper ‘‘whose ware is taken up by the king.’’*® TorM. Ile not change Thee for a thousand Kings; there’s gold. Corp. I’me only taking instructions to make her a lower chopeene.*® She finds fault that she’s lifted too high.** The king is finally persuaded to restore Tormiella to her husband. Cobblers appear in a number of plays. Their business is mending, not making, shoes, and they are often con- sidered botchers; i.e., clumsy workmen.*? They are usually depicted in literature as cheerful and witty individuals; they are generally treated, especially in the early drama, with a sympathy kindred to that for the shoemakers. In Julius Caesar the cobbler is the only craftsman that has a ready wit and that puns on his craft. One source of the wit of cobblers lies in the fact that their tools and materials, as last, end, sole, awl, and mend have sounds that convey a physical and technical meaning and at the same time an abstract and general meaning. Such conditions readily lend themselves to puns. Another play, in which Dekker collaborated with Haughton and Chettle, was Patient Grissel, 1600. It comprises the well known medieval story, and artfully contrasts Grissel’s contentment as a helper to her °° Page 211. *° Chopeene is a high shoe worn by court ladies. *t The incident as a whole is somewhat reminiscent of the Ralph-Jane plot. * For example, in Rowley’s Shoemaker a Gentleman Barnaby explains the poor workmanship of Crispinus to Leodice by say- ing, ‘‘He’s but a cobbler yet.” THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 67 father, Janiculo, the country basket maker, with the sadness of her life at court. The famous lyric of Babulo, the witty clown and basket-maker, beginning “Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers, etc.” is general in its praise of honest labor; no special attention is given in the play to basket-making. Two plays of Dekker that present well the atmos- phere of crafts are If it be not good, the Devil is in it, 1612; and The Honest Whore, Part I, 1604, and Part II, 1630, the end of Part I containing the famous words of Candido the linen-draper: “Christ the first true gentle- man that ever breathed.” Dekker and Middleton’s Roaring Girl likewise contains vivid pictures of shop life. Several plays deal with the craft of millers. Faire Em, the Miller’s Daughter of Manchester, 1587," is a play that deals with mill scenes. Fletcher and William Rowley’s play, The Maid in the Mill, 1623, is worthy of some attention. It portrays realistically a miller (whose craft was a synonym for cheating and trickery from the Middle Ages) who nobly demands of the king his abducted daughter, Florimel.** The play is, there- fore, a tribute to a despised craft, as Rawlins’ Rebellion is to that of the tailors. In the house of her abductor, Count Otrante, Florimel sings songs which deal with her former trade. The following examples are almost in the spirit of Dekker’s early plays. ‘2 The ballad, The Miller’s Daughter of Manchester, was per- haps the source of this play. There was a lost, undated play, The King and Miller of Manchester, referred to on page 124 of Ritson’s English Songs, vol. 2. ‘4 The behavior of Cordolente in Match me in London is similar. 68 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE Now having leisure, and a happy wind, Thou mayst at pleasure cause the stones to grind; Sails spread, and grist here ready to be ground; Fy, stand not idly, but let the mill go round!*® Shall the sails of my love stand still? Shall the grist of my hopes be unground? Oh fy, oh fy, oh, fy! Let the mill, let the mill go round!*°® A number of ballads deal with millers, often in a figurative way. A Song‘ is a late ballad that relates to the contentment of a miller, as a few lines of it will illustrate. How happy the mortal That lives by his mill; That depends on his own, Not on fortune’s wheel. His mill goes clack, clack, clack, How merrily, how merrily, His mill goes clack. The tinker is a stock figure in the literature of the period. He is often represented as a wanderer who makes more holes in a kettle than he mends. The fol- lowing song is typical of tinkers: Have you any work for a tinker, mistress? Old brass, old pots, or kettles? I’le mend them all with a tink, terry, tink, And never hurt your mettles.** The blacksmith is a figure celebrated in a number f* Act 6, st. 2. ** Act’ 6, at. (a: *" D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy, vol. 3, p. 125. Jack Miller’s Song is another figurative ballad. *8 The Tinker, from Catch that Catch can, 1667, Percy Socy. PVMe VOL Ley 155. THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 69 of ballads and songs.*® One of the best portrayals of a blacksmith is that of Hodge in the play called Thomas Lord Cromwell, 1602. Hodge, a Putney blacksmith, travels to Italy with Cromwell. If the seas get rough, says Hodge, he will call on Vulcan, lord of the smiths, whose godhead will protect them. At Florence they are robbed of all their possessions. Hodge is about to take up his old trade, but expresses the hesitation of a local craftsman thus: I am not acquainted with the humour of the horses in this country; whether they are not coltish, given much to kicking, or no; for when I have one leg in my hand, if he should up and lay t’other on my chaps, I were gone.”° The importance of such a utilitarian trade as his is stressed by Hodge; the rich or noble may at any time be reduced to want, but if trained to work at some trade, they may subsist anywhere.*? Four plays of interest that introduce the figure of the collier are Ulpian Fulwel’s interlude, Like Will to Like, 1568; Richard Edwards’ Damon and Pithias, 1571; Grim the Collier of Croydon, written about 1600; and Anthony Brewer’s Love-Sick King, 1605. To a certain extent, these plays depict colliers consistently ; *° For example, The Blacksmith, Percy Socy. Pub., vol. 1, p. 126; and Who will be the smith’s man? Percy Socy., vol. 1, p. 152. Other ballads, frequently hardly more than doggerel, that summarize the features of one or more crafts, are The Merchant- Taylor's Song, The Conny Barber, The Brewer, London’s ordi- nary, and The Jolly Tradesmen. 5° Thomas Lord Cromwell, A. F. Hopkinson edition, Act 3, Ses Dp. 20: 51 There is a similar observation in The Four Prentices of London. 70 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE blackened hands and faces associate the collier with the devil. The best portrait of a collier, and one that shows him to best advantage as a citizen and craftsman is in Brewer’s The Love-Sick King, 1605, in the character of Grim of Newcastle. His conduct in war has already been mentioned. As director of seven hundred colliers for the coal merchant, Randal, he encourages them, telling them not to be ashamed to carry coals. Some day he intends to be a lord, and all colliers under him shall be ladies with black masks. A feature of great interest is his pride in Newcastle and its valuable product, coal. At first worried for fear the Croydon colliers in rivalry will learn to make charcoal out of wood, he soon assures everyone that the superior excellence of Newcastle coal to that of Croydon will be at once recognized. Having been granted the position of the King’s coal-carrier, he asks that Newcastle colliers be placed above Croydon col- liers. This is a unique and important feature. There are many instances of rivalry between allied crafts, but none in drama so excellent as this of a craftsman’s civic pride in his work. The drawer is another favorite figure in the drama. As his name implies, his chief duty is to draw wine and to supply guests with it.°? This trade is well rep- resented in Heywood’s Fair Maid of the West, 1621 (?). Clem, a drawer in the service of Besse, reflects his trade in all of his actions. Indeed, in the long list of craftsmen that Heywood presents in his plays, Clem 5° Drawers or tapsters appear in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Barry’s Ram Alley, Nabbes’ Covent Garden, etc. THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 71 is one of the very best portraits. He appears to good advantage as an artisan in the frequency with which he uses puns on his craft. In this respect he resembles the shoemakers, for like the tools of their craft, so the term “draw’’ may be extended to have several mean- ings. He says to Besse, who disguises herself as a man and wears a sword: “If you should swagger and kill anybody, I being a Vintner should be called to the Barre.’’** There is the following dialogue between him and the bully of the play: CLEM. If you lug me by the eares again, Ile draw. ROUGHMAN. Ha, what will you draw? CLEM. The best wine in the house.** He will not remain on land, but accompanies his mistress on her naval expedition against the Spaniards: No, it shall be seene that I who have beene brought up to draw wine, will see what water the ship drawes, or Ile beray the voyage... I doubt not but to prove an honour to all the Drawers in Cornwall.°* Clem’s ready mention of the various wines testifies to his enthusiasm as a salesman: What wine will you drinke? Claret, Metheglin, or Muskadine, Cyder or Pyrrey, to make you merry, Aragoosa, or Peter-see-mee, Canary or Charnico?°® He is daring, adventurous, proud and aspiring. He marches to the banquet and dances with the Moors. 58 Heywood: Dramatic Works, 1874 ed., vol. 2, p. 284. 54 Page 292. In Heywood’s Fortune by Land and Sea, a drawer thinks that a man is slain, and exclaims: “They have drawn blood of this gentleman that I have drawn many a quart of wine to.” 55 Page 311. 5° Page 301. 5* Page 397. 72 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE Thinking that his mistress has been captured, he falls to his old trade again, and never discontinues talking about his pints and “‘pottles.” ‘I am Clem of Foy, the Bashaw of Barbarie, who, from a Courtier of Fesse, am turned a Drawer in Florence.” A craft of some importance in the literature is that of the tailors. Proud of their title, “merchant-tailors,” and of the fact that many kings and princes were free of the company,°® the tailors enjoyed a certain emi- nence. Individual tailors are sometimes represented, however, who are mere botchers; i. e., poor workmen. In The Weakest Goeth to the Wall, 1600, is depicted a botcher, Barnabie Bunch, as a jolly and witty devotee of English ale. He is a contrast to the French tailor type in his national preferences. His trade was formerly that of an English ale-draper (an ale-house keeper), and he claims that in England, but not in France, a poor person can get ale for a penny. While at work with his shears, he complains about the bad smelling socks of the French. But his prevailing cheerfulness, singing while toiling, his reverence for the tailor’s craft, and his promise to the apprentices, on being made sexton, not to ring the morning bell until it is past five (thus giving them an extra hour’s sleep), remind us of the excellent early creations of Dekker. Some of the leading satirical works on tailors are among the later ballads, such as The Maidens Frollick, in which six girls, disguised as seamen, press fourteen timid tailors for service.®® In An Answer to the Maidens 5§ This is seen in their mayoralty shows and in The Merchant Taylor’s Song, Evans’ Old Ballads, vol. 3, p. 8. °° Roxburghe Ballad Socy., vol. 3, p. 402. THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 73 Frollick, one of the tailors says, on discovering the fraud: Calling my wife, she’d ’a ended the strife; But from my own part I ne’er fought in my life — I’m a tailor. Another humorous ballad of this type is one called A Dreadful Battle between a Taylor and a Louse,® which tells how a tailor attacks a louse with all his weapons: needle, shears, etc., protecting himself with only a thimble. He finally conquers her and throws her into his “hell.’’® Since tailors are fashioners and caterers to pride, they are at times represented as artistic. In the pro- logue to Lyly’s Midas, 1592, are the words: Come to the taylor, hee is gone to the painters to learne how more cunning may lurke in the fashion, then can be expressed in the making.** Taylor’s Prayse of the Needle, printed in 1640, gives some realistic detail of the arts of sewing and em- broidery.®* They are glorified in the usual stereotyped ways by reference to their antiquity; their universal *° Roxburghe Ballad Socy., vol. 7, p. 466. Ballads with somewhat similar themes are A Leicestershire Frolic and Courageous Betty of Chick Lane. ‘2 “Hell” was the name given to a compartment under a tailor’s table in which he threw stolen material from gar- ments. Cf. Overbury’s description of a tailor in Characters and Stephen’s description of a tailor’s man in Essayes and Char- acters. * The same play goes into some treatment of the re Motto, as an artist who studies the court fashions. Cf. conversation between Pennyboy, iy and the “ap ara a Jonson’s Staple of News, act 1, sc. ** Realism appears in the mention of a number of eriene: and types of needle work. 74 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE and manifold use; by the fact that illustrious persons of past and present practiced the arts; and because the arts themselves are associated with) beauty in their power to depict nature. In The Fair Maid of the Exchange, 1607, perhaps by Thomas Heywood, there is a female apprentice, Phillis, who visits the shop of a pattern drawer with whom she is in love, and says that she wants him to do a piece of work in the following way: Onely this handkercher, a young gentlewoman, Wish’d me acquaint you with her mind herein: In one corner of the same, place wanton love, Drawing his bow shooting an amorous dart, Opposite against him an arrow in a heart, In a third corner, picture forth disdaine A cruell fate unto a loving vaine. In the fourth draw a springing Laurel tree Circled about with a ring of poesie: and thus it is: Love wounds the heart, and conquers fell disdaine, Love pitties love, seeing true love in paine: Love seeing’ Love, how faithfull Love did breath, At length impald Love with a Laurell wreath.** There is a ballad of a certain literary merit that celebrates the dignified and ancient craft of weaving, ennobling it as an art rather than as a mere com- mercial pursuit. The ballad, whose opening lines are lost, gives the words of a father who is apprenticing his son to the weaver’s craft. He mentions the ancient dignity of the craft; there is, moreover, practical value in having such an art at one’s fingers’ ends: For skill doth stay when goods be gone and riches all be spente. ** Heywood: Dramatic Works, vol. 2, 1874 ed., pp. 31, 32. THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 75 The father does not fail to observe that Minerva practiced the art. An arte whose end was never knowne, a curious®® arte and fine, even such as Pallas, heavenly dame, did practice many a tyme. Therefore, to doe thy father’s will thy paines do thou imploye so shalt thou be a commonwealth a member of great joy.°°® Artistry in the goldsmith’s craft is to be found in Drayton’s Epistle, Edward IV to Jane Shore, in his England’s Heroical Epistles, 1597. The story of Jane Shore is a very popular one, many works having been written about her.* Jane Shore, wife of Matthew Shore, a citizen (and, according to Heywood’s play, Drayton’s poems, and the ballads, a goldsmith), prostitutes herself for King *® Curious; i.e., the art was one in which there was much to be learned, and much accuracy to be used. *¢ Shirburn Ballads, appendix IV. ** At least a dozen works besides the prose chronicles deal with it; and there are many references to it in historical and literary works. There is a poem on the subject by Thomas Churchyard in Mirror for Magistrates, one by Anthony Chute, and two by Michael Drayton in his Heroical Epistles. There are also a number of ballads on Jane Shore; and there are plays that introduce or refer to her, as the various plays on Richard III, as well as dramas in which she plays a conspicuous part, as The Booke of Shoare, The Life and Death of Master Shoare, 1599 (doubtless confused with Heywood’s King Edward IV, in two parts, 1600) ,* a lost play of 1602 called Jane Shore, and Nicholas Rowe’s Jane Shore, 1714. * In Pimlyco is a reference to a play called Shore and its popularity. *® She married young. When the king tempted her, ‘“‘the respect of his royaltie, the hope of gay apparel, ease, pleasure, and other wanton wealth, was able soone to perse a soft tender heart.” — Hall: Chronicle, S. 363. ; 76 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE Edward IV. Her motive, brought out carefully in some accounts, is pride.** A concubine and person of much power, influence, and beneficence in the court during the king’s lifetime, she is condemned by his successor, Richard III, to do public penance as a whore. Drayton’s Epistle is a combination of romance and realism, and may have been used by Heywood in his King Edward IV. It describes how King Edward IV comes disguised to see the famous Jane Shore in her husband’s goldsmith shop in Lombard Street, London. Poetic and imaginative though the picture is, it gives the atmosphere of the goldsmith’s shop excellently well. The craftsman’s wife being in the shop is typical of many shops, especially as depicted in the literature of the 17th century. A handsome wife or daughter was not only a worker in the shop, but was also frequently exhibited by the master there, because she attraeted customers. It became a rather frequent theme in the 17th century drama for the prodigal gallant to revenge himself on the deceptions of the craftsman by seducing this wife or daughter. So it is with this poem to some extent: the city meanness may be represented by the goldsmith, Matthew Shore, and the prodigal and lustful gallant may be typified in King Edward IV. The king begrudges the city such a beauty as Jane Shore, greater than any in the court. In technical terms familiar to her through her knowledge of the jeweler’s and goldsmith’s craft, he presents his suit to her, flattering her beauty, and luring her by an appeal to her aspirations in such words as “kingly state.” If now thy Beauty be of such Esteem, Which all of so rare Excellency deem? What would it be, and prized at what Rate, THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 17 Were it adorned with a Kingly State? Which being now but in so mean a Bed, Is like an un-cut Diamond in Lead, E’er it be set in some high-prized Ring, Or garnished with rich Enamelling; We see the Beauty of the Stone is spilt, Wanting the gracious Ornament of Gilt.*° The king continues, giving a description of the gold- smith, whose quick eye has observed the king’s interest in something in his shop: Passing thy Shop, thy Husband call’d me back, Demanding what rare Jewel I did lack, I want (thought I) one that I dare not crave, And one, I fear, thou wilt not let me have. He calls for Caskets forth, and shews me store; But yet I knew he had one Jewel more, And deadly curs’d him, that he did deny it, That I might not for Love or Money buy it. The cook is an interesting figure in literature of the period. Sometimes he is represented as a tyrant in the kitchen, as in Thomas Nabbes’ Microcosmus, 1637; at other times he is depicted as one having rare deco- rative talents. The cook in Fletcher’s Rollo, 1624, and Furnace, the cook in Massinger’s New Way to Pay Old Debts, 1632, are excellently delineated. The most poetic and comprehensive description of a cook’s craft, one that may have influenced later de- scriptions of cooks, is in Jonson’s Staple of News, 1625. Lickfinger’s description of his office, that of a cook, is almost worthy to compare with the treatment of shoemakers in Rowley’s and Dekker’s plays above de- scribed : 6° Lines 23-32. 18 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE A master-cook! why, he’s the man of men, For a professor! he designs, he draws, He paints, he carves, he builds, he fortifies, Makes citadels of curious fowl and fish, Some he dry-dishes, some motes round with broths; Mounts marrow-bones, cuts fifty-angled custards, Rears bulwark pies, and for his outer works, He raiseth ramparts of immortal crust; And teacheth all the tactics, at one dinner: What ranks, what files, to put his dishes in; The whole art military. Then he knows The influence of the stars upon his meats, And all their seasons, tempers, qualities, And so to fit his relishes and sauces. He has nature in a pot, ’bove all the chymists, Or airy brethren of the Rosie-cross. He is an architect, an engineer, A soldier, a physician, a philosopher, A general mathematician.”° The opening part of The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll, 1600, has some excellent poetry on the art of painting. Earl Lassingbergh, disguised as a painter, makes a picture of his love, Lucilia, who reproves him for being a mercenary painter. He replies that painting is an art that approaches that of the creation of the world: the world With all her beautie was by painting made. Looke on the heavens colour’d with golden starres, The firmamentall ground of it all blew: Looke on the ayre where, with a hundred changes, The watry Rain-bow doth imbrace the earth: Looke on the summer fields adorned with flowers, — 7° The Works of Ben Jonson, 1875 edition, vol. 5, Act 4, se. 1, p. 252. These lines are also found in Jonson’s masque Neptune’s Triumph. The lines were taken from Posidippus’s Athenaeus. THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 719 How much is natures painting honour’d there? nature her selfe divine, In all things she hath made is a meere Painter."* An important feature of the artisan and his labor is in the work and trade songs. These frequently ex- press a deep interest in the labor and give a vivid atmosphere to the scene. A number of the work songs have been discussed already.” A song that is very vivid in its picture of the work in question is one from Ralph Roister Doister; Annot knits, Tibet sews and Madge spins on the distaff: Pipe Mery Annot, etc., Trilla, Trilla, Trillarie, Worke Tibet, worke Annot, worke Margerie. Sewe Tibet, knitte Annot, spinne Margerie, Let us see who shall winne the victorie. Pipe merrie Annot, etc., Trilla, Trilla, Trillarie, What Tibet, what Annot, what Margerie, Ye sleepe, but we doe not, that shall we trie. Your fingers be nombde, our worke will not lie. Pipe mery Annot, etc., Trilla, Trilla, Trillarie, Nowe Tibet, nowe Annot, nowe Margerie, Nowe whippet apace for the maystrie, But it will not be, our mouth is so drie."* 11 A. H. Bullen, Old Plays, vol. 3, p. 100. St. Bonaventura, a 13th century Franciscan, compares the human artificer to the “Great Artificer.” De Reductione Artium ad Theologiam, section 26. 72 Those already discussed are the lyric in Patient Grissel beginning: “Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers;” the weavers’ song in Jack of Newbury; and the journeymen shoe- makers’ poem about St. Hugh’s bones in Deloney’s Gentle Craft. Part 1. 7° Act 1, se. 3. 80 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE What could be more vivid as a description of tired and sleepy working girls, trying in vain to continue their work? The attempt to ward off sleep by singing and competing with one another is arrested by in- creasing drowsiness, naturally accompanied by numb fingers and dry mouths. In any treatment of crafts and craftsmen, we are necessarily involved, to a certain extent, in a considera- tion also of trades. Traders on a small scale, such as peddlers and costermongers, frequently came from the ranks of the craftsmen, and manufactured some of their own wares.” Their trade cries contributed much to the noise and bustle of the street. The screaming of the fish-wives and oyster-wives became proverbial in the 16th and 17th centuries. Various works testify to the confusion caused by these tradesmen; e. g., Lydgate’s London Lickpeny. This gives the atmosphere of several medieval trade centers: in Westminster were sold felt hats and spectacles for the dignified and learned lawyers and scholars; in Cheapside the mercers cried out their wares of velvet, silk, and lawn; in Canwick Street the drapers congregated. Jacobean works that represent trade scenes and cries are Jon- son’s Silent Woman and Bartholomew Fair. Inasmuch as a thorough study of the trade cries is impossible here, attention will be given to some of the more literary selections, and the types of salesmanship that these represent. It must be understood that these rhymes were generally sung and not spoken; hence they had an additional attraction which is lost to the reader. Certain of the works to be considered re- “* C. Hindley’s History of the Cries of London is a good guide for this study. THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 81 semble some of the preceding ones; but they vary from them in stressing the products for sale rather than the character of the craftsman or trader in question. These early trade and work songs are seldom paral- leled in the present day; although it is true that factory hands and laborers often sing or whistle in unison while at work, their songs seldom appertain to the work in which they are engaged. The dealers and merchants of today attempt to catch the prospec- tive buyer’s attention by some appeal to his desire rather than by any exhibition of singing.” In the depiction of tradesmen and artisans in Elizabethan literature, on the other hand, we have trade songs ex- tant; in certain cases the music of these has been preserved. Some of the finer ones, when given by a clear and musical voice, will catch the ear, just as a beautifully decorated shop window will attract the eye. Some trade songs deal with the selling of brooms; e. g., in Wilson’s Three Ladies of London Female Con- science tries to sell her brooms for old boots and shoes. In the interesting medley called The London Chanti- cleers, Heath, the broomman, sings out his wares, mentioning that it is necessary for women to keep *® There are, however, a few exceptions to this. Doubtless the following trade song has often been observed during the Christmas season: “Holly wreaths, holly wreaths, Come and buy your holly wreaths.” I have also observed the following song on one occasion: “Ten a bunch for celery hearts, All sweet celery hearts, Ten a bunch.” 82 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE their rooms clean in order to gain the good will of the fairies. Two ballads that represent the praise of ale are The Merry Hostess™* and Good Ale for my Money.” The first of these presents a very lively picture of a tavern in which are many customers composed of craftsmen, and a hostess who praises the ale that she sells. Miscellaneous trade songs are typified very well in The Traders Medley,"® The Common Cries of London,” and Heywood’s verses called The Cries of Rome.®° One of the most poetic trade songs is in Oliphant’s Musa Madrigalesca.*: Fine knacks for ladies; Cheap, choice, nice and new. Good pennyworths but money cannot move; I keep a fair, but for the fair to view. A beggar may be liberal of love. Tho’ all my wares be trash, my heart is true. An interesting phase of this study is that which deals with the psychology of advertising. There have always been keen salesmen who know how to devise songs that have a universal appeal to customers. Still others rapidly read the various traits and desires of prospective customers and invent a song on the spur of the moment. There will follow, then, a few instances of the more poetic appeals to customers. An instance is in the following words sung by 7° Roxburghe Ballad mantis vis 3; P. 306. ** Roxburghe Ballads, vol. *8 J. Ashton’s Century of Béllods, p. 7° J. P. Collier’s Book of Roxburghe Ballads, p. 207. 8° They are at the end of his Rape of Luerece. 81 Page 165. THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 83 George, a mercer’s young and outwardly attractive apprentice in Middleton’s Anything for a Quiet Life: What is’t you lack, you lack, you lack? Stuffs for the belly or the back? Silk grograns, satins, velvet fine, The rosy-colour’d carnadine, Your nutmeg hue, or gingerline, Cloth-of-tissue or tabine, That like beaten gold will shine In your amourous ladies’ eyne, Whilst you their softer silks do twine? What is’t you lack, you lack, you lack?*’ This melodious passage illustrates good salesmanship. The young apprentice’s vivid presentation of the wares and his artful suggestion of “amorous ladies” un- doubtedly stimulated many customers.®° There are many songs that advertise clothing or certain personal decorations, and as a consequence are often associated with subtle flattery. For example, there is a trade song in G. Markham and W. Sampson’s play, Herod and Antipater. The dealer in the song be- ginning Come will you buy— claims that he has gums that can puff out fallen cheeks, and mentions several preparations to protract youth, and to promote love and fruitfulness. The Painter’s Song of London** de- scribes a merchant who tries to sell paint to girls to give them a good complexion. A more interesting specimen of this type is The Pedlar’s Lamentation. 8? Act 2, sc. 2, opening lines. ** In Act 1, sc. 3 of Massinger’s Renegado Vitelle, acting as shopkeeper, advertises his china ware in poetic language. The passage has, however, less concreteness than the above passage of Middleton. 8* Percy Socy. Pub., vol. 1, p. 152. ees Collier’ sA Book of Roxburghe Ballads, p. 304. 84 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE Here, the dealer exhibits his miscellaneous assortment of wares which comprise dresses, hoods, coifes, laces,. gloves, perfumes, hair powders and song-books. I’ll make you fine; Young Billy shall look as spruce as the day, And pretty sweet Betty more finer than May. One of the most poetic and artful of trade songs. is that sung by Autolycus in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale.®® Lawn, as white as driven snow; Cyprus, black as e’er was crow; Gloves, as sweet as damask roses; Masks for faces, and for noses; Bugle-bracelet, necklace-amber, Perfume for a lady’s chamber; Golden quoifs, and stomachers, For my lads to give their dears; Pins and poking-sticks of steel, What maids lack from head to heel: Come, buy of me, come; come buy, come buy; Buy, lads, or else your lasses cry; Come, buy, etc. A branch of salesmanship that offers good oppor- tunities for a keen merchant is the selling of ballads. It is a subject that draws us somewhat away from a study of craftsmen; but, since craftsmen, like many people of slim education, are superstitious, they take a deep interest in ballads that describe monstrosities, such as Autolycus’ one about a usurer’s wife who “was brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden.’ Craftsmen are especially interested in ballads that cele- brate their own exploits, as the Ballad of the London “Act, 4, 80.o. 87 Winter’s Tale, Act 4, sc. 3. THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 85 Prentice, exhibited by Ditty, the ballad dealer, in The London Chanticleers.®® One phase of the artisan and his work that is stressed in the 17th century literature deals with his cheating in trade. This treatment is not new with the 17th century; in the Middle Ages certain trades, such as the miller’s®® were especially open to criticism. In the early years of Elizabeth’s reign some of the plays of Robert Wilson expose the abuses in trade; F. T’s De- bate betweene Pride and Lowliness, 1570, c.,®° and Gascoigne’s Steel Glas, 1576, are poems which do like- wise. The last mentioned work anticipates a Utopia in the industrial and commercial world only when certain deceptions in trade are discontinued. Among other criticisms the author accuses cutlers of selling rusty blades and hiding cracks with solder; goldsmiths of using soldered crowns; upholsterers of selling feath- ers with dust; and pewterers of infecting tin with lead.*? The prose of the period frequently represents crafts- men as deceivers or as the victims of cheating. The jest-book is a form of popular prose that sometimes deals with artisans. In its commonest form the jest- book introduces a character who is invariably success- ful in any trick, however contemptible and stupid, that he plays on someone else, the victim usually being an extreme type of gull. We see this tendency of jesting in some of Deloney’s characters, especially in the Green King, who is successful in a number of jests. A few ®§ The play is in Dodsley’s Old English Plays, vol. 12. The passage referred to is in scene 3. 3° Chaucer’s reeve’s tale of a miller is an illustration. °° This is the source of Greene’s Quip for an Upstart Courtier. *1 W. C. Hazlitt ed., vol. 2, pp. 211, 212 86 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE of these tracts which lay emphasis on craftsmen are The Pleasant Conceites of Old Hobson the Merry Londoner, 1607,°2 The Mad Pranks and Merry Jests of Robin Goodfellow, 1588; Tarlton’s Newes out of Purgatory,®= on or before 1590; Scoggin’s Jests, 1565; Tarlton’s Jests;°* and The Cozenages of the Wests, 1613.° Two works somewhat like the jest-books are The Tinker of Turvey, or The Cobler of Canterbury*® and Westward for Smelts, 1603.°" Both of these works are somewhat imitative of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, in that several characters tell stores appropriate to their occupation and rank that picture rivalry between different trades and crafts. In the prose of Greene and Dekker are representa- tions of artisans and traders who are either cheated by professional sharpers or who are deceptive them- selves. Greene’s Notable Discovery of Coosnage, 1591-2, and Dekker’s Jests to Make You Merry, 1607, are in- stances of the former type. One of the best illustrations of the craftsmen as deceivers is Greene’s Quip for an Upstart Courtier, 1592,°° a prose work partly allegorical, partly humor- *? This work, which was published by Richard Johnson may be found in Percy Socy. Pubs., vol. 9. In Heywood’s If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody the same well known haber- dasher appears but is delineated differently. ** Shakespeare Society, 1920. ** Shakespeare Socy., 19-20. °> Shakespeare Socy., 25-26. This work, which tells how Alice West, a fortune teller, deceives many craftsmen, throws light on the superstitions of the latter. °6 The Tinker of Turvey, 1600, c., is a modification of an earlier tract, The Cobler of Caunterburie, 1590. °7 Percy Socy., vol. 21. *’ The work may be found in Collier’s Miscellaneous Tracts. The source of Greene’s work is F. T’s Debate betweene Pride and Lowliness. THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 87 ous, and partly realistic. Greene treats craftsmen as mischievous sharpers in general, but in a somewhat good-humored way, presenting them as sly rogues rather than as malicious scoundrels. Nevertheless, this study introduces representatives of some sixty crafts (including all of the twelve great companies except the salters and fishmongers) nearly all of whom are accused of cheating, and their deceptive tricks are described. The work also charges them with pride, a trait to be later on censured by Dekker. The story tells how, on a spring day, from opposite directions there appear to a certain dreamer one in fine velvet breeches and another in plain cloth ones. The former, representing one of noble blood, claims priority in England. Cloth-breeches, the English citizen, however, claims a better right to it as representative of “the old and worthie customs of the gentilitie and yeomanrye of England,’ and a wearer of what his forefathers wore before there was pride. To Velvet- breeches’ claim that he was called from Italy and condescended to come into England, Cloth-breeches replies: Is an ancient honor tied to an outward bravery or not rather true nobility, a minde excellently qualified with rare vertues?’°® Velvet-breeches, he continues, is the refuse of Italy, and is coming to degenerate England also. A court session is arranged to decide it, Velvet- breeches being plaintiff. The disputants wait now for jurymen. One craftsman or tradesman appears after another, their merits and vices are weighed while they are considered for eligibility to the jury. In this way °° Page 16. 88 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE the deceits in the different trades are exposed. To take an illustration, Velvet-breeches will not have a mer- chant, mercer, goldsmith, or draper, because each of these is often a usurer. Criticisms of other craftsmen follow. A tanner, shoemaker, and currier appear. Cloth-breeches criticises the private gains of the tan- ner, a craftsman who is, for the most part, prosperous. The tanner has many devices to make leather quickly, but of poor quality. He uses fats wrongly in the treat- ment of hides. Instead of letting a hide lie for nine months, he lets it lie only three months. Marle and ashenbark are used to make the leather appear good, but it is really no more lasting than paper. The tanner cares nothing for others; he thinks mainly of marrying his daughter to a rich esquire. The currier, continues Cloth-breeches, is also bad. He uses mixed kitchen stuff, instead of tallow. He buys leather pieces, calf skins, etc., and sells them at too high a price to the poor shoemaker, who must buy in small quantities. Despite the fact that shoemakers are the victims of more fortunate tanners and curriers, the latter some- times are in league with a rascal shoemaker “that neither respecteth God, the commonwealth, nor his company.’’?°> Shoemakers often join a neat’s leather vamp to a calf’s leather heel. A skinner, joiner, sad- dler, waterman, cutler, bellows-mender, plasterer, and printer appear. Velvet-breeches approves of some of them because he gets them to do superfluous work for his clothes. Cloth-breeches, however, has a series of accusations: the skinner takes a cheap skin, and swears that it came from Muscovy or Calabria; the saddler stuffs his pannels with straw; the joiner puts 70° Page 46. THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 89 sap into the mortesels (i.e., mortices) ; the cutler cheats poor men. Cloth-breeches makes charges of one kind or another against nearly all craftsmen: the brick- layer makes chimneys that do not transmit smoke properly; the butcher, partly forced to cheat because the grazier charges him exorbitant sums for cattle, puts fresh blood on an old cow, and sells it for new; the brewer is far too sparing of his malt; the baker, whose chief interest is in making his daughter a gentle- woman, puts yeast and salt in the bread to make it heavy ; tapsters and victuallers put much froth in their cans, and add more to the score than the customer ordered or received ; vintners treat colorless wines with the strongly colored, and dilute the more expensive ones with the cheaper; cooks serve cheap and old meats; the tinker makes three holes where he mends one,? and is partly a highway robber; chandlers use dross over wicks and put tallow on the outside; haber- dashers trim up old felts to pass for new; grocers adulterate spices with dross and refuse; millers take double toll, and have false hoppers to convey away the meal. The crafts that receive the largest amount of censure are several of the rich livery companies, especially those connected with the clothing industry, the mem- bers of which were, together with those of several other companies, guilty of usury. Velvet-breeches complains of the usury and extortion of goldsmiths as follows: ...they let young gentlemen have commodities of plate for ten in the hundred, but they must loose the fashion in sellinge 102 The making of several holes while mending one was a proverbial charge against tinkers, as several of the ballads illustrate. 90 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE it againe ..... beside they are most of them skilde in alcumy, and can temper metals shrewdly,’®’ with no little profite to themselves and disadvantage to the buier.*°* The draper keeps such a dark shop that no man can choose a piece of cloth with accuracy.’ He has the clothworker draw and stretch the cloth to make it seem large, a practice which weakens it. The clothworkers make cloth appear to have a fine nap by pressing and powdering it; they prove themselves the draper’s min- isters to execute his subtleties. Cloth-breeches then accuses the weavers of drawing out thread in such a way as to make it seem heavily woven, though it is really slenderly woven. They steal much yarn froia poor country wives. Referring to the foreign customs introducing themselves into English dress at this time, Cloth-breeches says of a Dutch shoemaker and a French milliner that ‘‘they be of Velvet-breeches’ acquaintance, upstarts as well as he, that have brought with them pride and abuses into England.’?* Their superfluities are spoken of; they take work from London handi- craftsmen. The various craftsmen conclude that Cloth-breeches is the better and more ancient of the two. He was a companion to kings, nobility, etc., whereas Velvet- 702 Cf. Jonson’s The Alchemist. *°8 Page 57, line 1. In Eastward Hoe, by Marston, Chapman, and Jonson, printed in 1605, Quicksilver, the goldsmith’s way- ward apprentice, though he has learned no industry from his trade, is familiar with deceptive devices of goldsmiths. He proposes to “blanche copper ;”’ i. e., sublime it with arsenic, make it malleable and tenacious like silver, and then sell it for silver. He also intends to dissolve parts of angels in nitric acid and put dross on them in such a way that they shall recover their weight and shape. 7°4 Cf. Michaelmas Term. *°° Page 65, line 5. THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 91 breeches, begot of pride, and having come from Italy, is a raiser of rents and an enemy of the Commonwealth. A writer more Puritanical than Greene, and one who describes the deceptions of several crafts is Philip Stubbes. To testify partly that Stubbes and Greene were truthful in some of their accusations against craftsmen, mention might be made of some of the Elizabethan laws.?°° Statutes were directed against some of the stretching and drawing tricks of weavers and tuckers. In Stubbes’ Anatomy of Abuses, Part 2, 1583, he presents in the form of a dialogue complaints against various crafts and trades. There is here, then, much similarity to what has already been said about Greene’s work. Deceits of miscellaneous crafts are exposed; those of fashioners, such as tailors, are harshly criti- cised as they are in the work of Greene, Rich,‘ and Dekker. Stubbes departs for once from this stereotyped registering of vices in his humorous description of barbers. These are necessary, for men look beastly with long unkempt hair. With their several cuts, the Italian, French, and Spanish, they can make cus- tomers look handsome or terrible. They twirl mus- taches from one ear to the other. Lathering is graphic- ally described. The customer is perfumed, sprinkled with fragrant waters, and entertained by music. The extreme politeness of barbers is also mentioned. Dekker’s Worke for Armorours, 1609, an allegory that throws light on the industrial and social evils of the age, is sympathetic with the poorer crafts, but 1°6 New Shakespeare Socy., Series 6, 12, page XIV. 1°7 Barnaby Rich: The Honesty of this age, 1614. 92 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE hostile to the richer ones, such as the mercers and goldsmiths. Cheating in trades is well represented in Dekker’s Seven Deadly Sins of London, 1606, and Newes from Hell, 1606. Ballads that represent deceptions in trade are The miller and his Sons,” “Merry Tom of all Trades,” “True Blew the Plowman,” “Robin Conscience,” “Poor Robins Dream,” and “Death’s Dance.” One of the traits of craftsmen and their families is pride. This is not slighted in literature; we see some of it in Simon of Southampton’s wife,?°* but there is more of this treatment in 17th century literature. Nash, Greene, Dekker, Stubbes, Rich, Rowlands, and Taylor frequently hold pride up to ridicule. Thomas Nash, with all his humor and vivacity, is at times Puritanical and harsh in his characterization. In his “Pierce Pennilesse,” 1592, he pictures the excessively proud artisans and merchants,?°? some of whom work them- selves by flattery into the good graces of noblemen. In his Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem, 1593, there is disdain of the citizen for the countryman, and of one craft for a lower; e. g., the shoemaker for the cobbler, and the cobbler for the carman.1*° Nash criticises strongly the use of face paints and powders by women, and their style of dress. In Stubbes’ Anatomy of Abuses, the writer is not only opposed to pride in dress, but is also opposed to the attending of shows and the playing of dice or cards. Henry Crosse’s Vertues Common- *°* Deloney’s Thomas of Reading. *°® Collier ed., p. 2. *7° McKerrow ed., vol. 1, p. 135. Part 1, New Shakespeare Socy., Series 6, 6. THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 93 wealth,»? 1603, parallels some of the accusations of Stubbes in regard to counterfeit gentility. In some of the works of Greene, Dekker, and Rich, where the element of pride is stressed, it is largely fostered by the constant changing of fashions on the part of tailors, mercers and barbers. Greene, in his Defence of Conny-catching,“? combines the tailor’s catering to pride with his deception in trade. He changes the style each week, and takes advantage of the fact that he is supplied with the material for clothing; for, owing to the changing styles, foolish customers do not know how much velvet to send. The tailor asks for more material than is needed for the suit and steals the remainder. The relation of tailors to pride in their introduction of new fashions is seen in the following works of Dekker: Newes from Hell, A Knight’s Conjuring, The Gull’s Hornbook, Lanthorne and Candle-Light, A Strange Horse Race, and The Divels Last Will and Testament.” In the last named work, which is allegorical, Hypocrisie is represented as being bound to a Puritan tailor, and making with him nothing but cloaks of religion of a thousand colors. Dekker anticipates here the ridicule of Puritanical hypocrisy in the Cavalier period. We shall see then how Puritans have Biblical texts embroidered on their garments. The dramatists especially ridicule Puritan women, who were mainly of the middle classes, and whose trades dealt especially with the fashions and sports that they themselves condemn. They were starchers, bugle-makers, tire-women, feather-makers, 722 Grosart’s Occasional Issues, vol. 7. 72% Grosart ed., vol. 11. 94 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE confect-makers, and French fashioners.* Barnaby Rich’s Honesty of this Age, 1614,7> and Samuel Row- lands’ Martin Markall, 1610, in their enumeration of several useless trades, carry on the criticism of tailors as caterers to pride. Taylor’s The World runnes on Wheels? is an inter- esting instance of rivalry between crafts. There is emphasized the evil effect that the introduction of coaches has on the watermen’s trade?’ and several of the others; e.g., the ancient and profitable trade of wheelwrights.138 A most excellent illustration of the artisan’s cheating in trade combined with his pride and hatred of the high born classes is Middleton’s play, Michaelmas Term, 1607.11° It embodies several disagreeable aspects of the craftsman: cheating devices, usury, keen insight into customers, materialism, indifference to any family ties, suspicion in regard to his wife, love of worldly honor, wealth, and lands, desire to gain the wonder and the envy of fellow-craftsmen less fortunate. The figure of chief interest is Quomodo, a prosperous woolen-draper who darkens his shop and attributes the 74* Randolph’s The Muse’s Looking Glass gives a good picture of a Puritan feather-maker. 72° Percy Socy. Pub., vol. 11. 72° Printed in 1630. ‘47 Watermen did not form a craft, but they composed an organization which, as we shall see, aspired to social eminence in a manner somewhat similar to that of craftsmen. Most of Taylor’s works here referred to are in Spenser Socy. Pub., vol. 2 to vol. 4. *28 The wheelwrights made carts. ‘2° The element of rivalry between the highborn and the low- per is especially characteristic of Massinger’s New Way to Pay ld Debts. THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK 95 condition to the weather.?2° His two attendants and accomplices are Shortyard and Falselight, their names being suggestive of their characteristics. His trust in the deviltry of these decoys is expressed thus: Go, make my coarse commodities look sleek; With subtle art beguile the honest eye.**?’ Together with Gum, the mercer, and Profit, the gold- smith, Quomodo, the draper, is represented as a usurer. His usury as a means of obtaining possession of the lands or estates of others is the chief source of interest in the play. He looks longingly at the land of a certain gallant, Easy, who, wishing ready money with which to defray the expense of a banquet with his friends, tries to borrow money from Quomodo.?”? The latter, declaring that he has no money at hand, offers Easy a commodity of cloth, something which bankrupt gallants frequently received and tried to sell quickly. Shortyard acts as a decoy, and pretends to Easy that he himself is in debt, and that his name is Blastfield. Shortyard pretends that he, also, is trying to borrow money from Quomodo; and Easy is thus led to take up this commodity of cloth with Shortyard. Quomodo artfully leads up to a suggestion that Easy be one of the signers of the bond by politely insinuating that +20 Act 2, Scene 3. Dishonest tradesmen’s darkening their shops is a practice alluded to at times. Cf. Brome’s City Wit, Act 1, Scene 1. Ht Dyce ed., vol..1, p. 421. Another play that is excellent in its presentation of the various deceits of tradesmen is Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, 1614. 122 We have here a situation somewhat like that in The Mer- chant of Venice. A prodigal is in need of ready money from a close-fisted usurer, who knows how to take his advantage over his borrower’s helplessness. 96 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE Easy has no substance. The gallant’s pride, which Quomodo has been constantly observing, leads him to say positively that he has land and wealth, and signs the bond to prove it :178 Master John Blastfield esquire, i’ the wold of Kent: and Master Richard Easy, of Essex, gentleman, both bound to Ephes- tian Quomodo, citizen and draper of London; the sum, two hundred pound. Falselight, the other accomplice, appearing as a young man needing ready substance with which to start busi- ness, pays sixty pounds for Easy’s two hundred pounds’ worth of cloth. The time being past when Easy had promised to pay for the cloth, he is arrested on Quomodo’s suit by Shortyard and Falselight, who are disguised as sergeant and yeoman. The yearning for land and estates on the part of craftsmen is well typified in Quomodo’s joy on reflect- ing that Easy’s land of Essex will be his: The land’s mine; that’s sure enough, boy, now shall I be divulg’d a landed man throughout the livery; one points, another whispers, a third frets inwardly; let him fret and hang! Es- pecially his envy I shall have that would be fain, yet cannot be a knave, like an old lecher*** girt in a furr’d gown, whose mind stands stiff, but his performance down. Now come my golden days in. Whither is worshipful Master Quomodo and his fair bedfellow rid forth? To his land in Essex whence come those goodly loads of logs? From his land in Essex. Where grows this pleasant fruit, says one citizen’s wife in the row? At Master Quomodo’s orchard in Essex. O, O, does it so? I thank you for that good news, i’ faith.*’® A fine journey in the Whitsun holydays, i’faith, to ride down be ACh) a BCi ase 724 Lecher — leather. 745 Act’ 3, sc.'4,.p.2475, THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS WORK a4 with a number of citizens and their wives, some upon pillions, some upon side-saddles, I and little Thomasine i’ th’ middle, our son and heir, Sim Quomodo in a beach-colour taffeta jacket, some horse-length, or a long yard before us,*??* — there will be a fine show on’s, I can tell you. Easy is brought into Quomodo’s shop and is con- fronted by the prospect of imprisonment unless some- one will stand bail for Easy on a single bond of “body, goods, and lands, immediately before Master Quomodo.”’ Successful though Quomodo is thus far, he is even- tually outwitted himself by a conspiracy of Thomasine, his wife, Easy, and his own accomplices. Not only in this play which so darkly presents city life, but also in many others of this period are illustra- tions of the way in which fashioners, such as gold- smiths, mercers, and tailors, cater to the whims and desires of stylish gallants. In Marmion’s Fine Com- panion, 1633,27 various craftsmen; e. g., tailors, semp- sters, and haberdashers cater to the interest of Careless, the “fine companion’, in new clothes and in new toys. Most politely do they flatter him and suggest new styles. Barbers are frequently introduced into plays. As- sociated with the Barber Surgeon’s Guild, they had the privilege not only of cutting hair but also of letting blood and extracting teeth. The plays frequently rep- resent them as cheats and as pretenders to greater surgical skill than they had. In Marston’s Dutch 126 Act 4, sc. 1, p. 490. There is a situation similar to this in Middleton’s Trick to Catch the Old One. In this play, Hoard, an Seteee anticipates marrying a rich widow and riding to 127 Tt is in Thomas White’s Old English Drama, vol. 4. The reference is to Act 1, sc. 4. 98 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE Courtesan one who acts as a barber blinds his customer with soap, and then steals his money bag. In Beaumont and Fletcher’s Knight of the Burning Pestle, in Middle- ton’s Anything for a Quiet Life, and in the anonymous play, A Knave in Graine, are represented the barbers’ double occupation of haircutting and surgery, especially in connection with the treatment of venereal diseases.?2® Barbers, as well as mercers, tailors, and other fash- ioners, are frequently depicted as extravagant in their encouragement of foreign fashions. The element of pride in the artisan and his family is an interesting feature that will be stressed, some- what apart from their work, in the next chapter. +28 Quack surgery and aspirations of the unlearned to practice medicine and surgery are well represented in the following passage: ‘In the time of Henry VIII, there was a great rabblement there, that took upon them to be surgeons. Some were sow- gelders, with tinkers and coblers. ..... In two dressings they did commonly make their cures whole and sound for ever, so that they neither felt heat nor cold, nor no manner of pain after.” From J. Halle’s An Historiall Expostulation, 1565. Percy Society, vol. 11. CHAPTER IV SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN Something has already been said incidentally about the way in which artisans love to exhibit themselves in fashionable clothing, or in processions, such as the Lord Mayor’s Show. The catering on the part of fash- ioners to pride in customers was also discussed. French and Spanish tailors are especially unpopular, not only because they cater to pride, but also because they put many English artisans out of work. They brought in fashions strange and new with golden garments bright: The farthingale, and mighty cuffes, with gownes of rare delight. Our London dames in Spanish pride did flourish everywhere.’ The master craftsman as a social climber has been ‘discussed in the passage dealing with Middleton’s Michaelmas Term; something remains to be said about the aspirations of the artisan’s wife or daughter or apprentice, as this is a favorite theme in 17th century popular literature, especially the drama. Writers like Beaumont and Fletcher mercilessly; satirize pride in * From The Lamentable Fall of Queen Elnor, Roxburghe Ballads, vol. 2, p. 362. During the apparent period of this ballad, the late 16th cen- tury, there was much rivalry between England and Spain. The story is also in Peele’s Edward I 99 100 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE the artisan class; Ben Jonson and his collaborator, Marston,’ do likewise. Middleton carries on the realistic and satirical depiction of craftsmen and craftswomen as apes of the nobility, and influences some of Dekker’s later plays in this respect. Disciples of Jonson, such as Brome, Cartwright, Randolph, Field, Marmion, Mayne, Glapthorne and Nabbes carry on his tradition, in this respect frequently repeating him or one another.? Some of these stock figures of the artisan class, as the apprentice or the craftswoman, occur also in the plays of miscellaneous writers, such as Cooke, Mass- inger, Ford, Tatham, and Shirley. Apprentices appear in some of the plays of Brome and especially of Shirley. In the plays of these later writers they are portrayed differently from the way in which 16th century writers portray them. The artisan’s imitation of the nobility is manifested — in one or more of the following ways: copying of words, expressions, or gestures of noblemen, wearing attire like that worn in court, intermarrying with knights or earls, trying to obtain possession of lordly manors or estates. The yearning for land is a trait particularly conspicuous in the figure of Quomodo. Some of the childish forms of imitation, however, remain to be considered first. Marston’s Dutch Courtesan, 1605, affords a good illustration of a vintner’s ambitious wife who has squires, gentlemen, and knights at her table to dine. Ashamed of the fact that her husband is a craftsman, fs Marston, Chapman, and Jonson collaborated in Hastward oe. * For example, Cartwright’s Ordinary and Mayne’s City Match are rough copies of Jonson’s Alchemist and Silent Woman respectively. SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 101 she has things spread handsomely, so as to disguise her bringing up.‘ I was a gentlewoman by my sister’s side —I can tell ye so methodically. Methodically! I wonder where I got that word? O! Sir Aminadab Ruth bad me kiss him methodically! I had it somewhere, and I had it indeed.° In Middleton’s Chaste Maid in Cheapside, 1630, is the family of Yellowhammer, a goldsmith. The parents are desirous of marrying their son, Tim, and daughter, Moll, to wealth and renown. The former is thus sent to Cambridge, where he learns Latin, and the latter is taught dancing. The parents are unsuccessful in marrying their daughter as they wish to; but they succeed in marrying their son to a Welsh knight’s niece, their object being to gain eminence and exhibit a seemingly learned young couple: Tim with his Latin quotations and his wife with her Welsh language. As such plays frequently develop, however, Tim finds that he has married a woman of a shady past and limited fortune. Mistress Quickly in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2, 1597-9, hostess of a tavern in Eastcheap, is an instance of one from the ranks of the artisans who imitates the words and gestures of the nobility. A source of the humor in the play is to be seen in her misuse and confusion of words; e.g., using “confirmities’” for “infirmities”. Indeed, Shakespeare’s depiction of imi- * Pinnacia Stuff, in Jonson’s New Inn, is a gaudily dressed tailor’s wife, ashamed to be considered the wife of an artisan. This behavior is like that of the family in Brieux’s Three Daughters of M. Dupont. MPA) S,.sc..2. act 2) sc.) 4: 102 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE tative and childish traits among artisans is as excellent as is that of any of the other dramatists. The love that citizens (as portrayed in literature) have for association with royalty or knighthood is frequently an important governing motive in their actions. Hence, Mistress Quickly is persuaded by Falstaff, the knight, to withdraw the lawsuit which she had against him on account of his debts. Falstaff’s tact is observable in the fact that he works on some of her characteristics that are typical of the citizen class, and flatters her very courteously. She bears in mind the important fact that this knight had promised to marry her and make her his lady. He had told her on the same day not to talk to Goodwife Keech, the butcher’s wife, nor to such poor people, for before long she would be called ‘‘Madam.’’? The development of the city woman in 16th and 17th century literature may be studied by considering a few miscellaneous works in which she appears. The wife of the craftsman from medieval times to 1601) is often represented as a valuable assistant to her husband in his work, or as an ardent worker in some other craft apart from his. Thus she is represented in several ballads; e. g., the medieval How a Merchande dyd hys Wyfe Betray; and Elizabethan parallels: Penny-wise, pound-foolish, 1631; The Penny-worth of Wit, 1560 c., and The Chapman of a Pennyworthe of Wit. In Deloney’s fiction the wife is frequently represented as the superior of her husband in intellect and initiative, and as an excellent fellow-worker; e. g., the wife of Simon Eyre. Exceptions, however, which have been already pointed out, exist in the literature " Henry IV, Part 2, Act 2, sc. 1. SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 103 even of medieval times, a period in which the wife’s subservience to her husband was strongly insisted on. In Chaucer’s Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, the wives of the successful artisans are represented as proud of the social eminence that their husbands’ prosperity brings them. In Chaucer’s remarkable por- trait of the Wife of Bath he depicts a very individu- alized clothmaker who alone represents several aspects of the craftsman’s wife as she appears in the literature of the period from 1557-1642, an age of individualism as contrasted with medieval emphasis on institutions. This Wife of Bath has excellent skill in her trade of cloth-making, as several of the craftsmen’s wives in Deloney’s, Dekker’s, and Rowley’s literature have skill in their trades. She has also the yearning for social eminence and prestige, as depicted in some of the craftsmen’s wives in Stubbes’ Anatomy of Abuses, in Deloney’s fiction, and in the plays of Dekker, Jonson, Marston, Middleton, Massinger, and others. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath has still another trait that appears in the later drama (most of which appears long after the death of Elizabeth) : she desires sovereignty over her husband.® Coming to our period, we have several well deline- ated craftsmen’s wives in Deloney’s fiction; e. g., the industrious and enterprising wife of Simon Eyre, be- fore commented upon. Far though Deloney is from being a satirist of artisans, he depicts in Thomas of Reading several vain city wives. These accomplish nothing that is worth while, but in their desire to § Excellent discussions of the Wife of Bath are in G. L. Kittredge’s Chaucer’s Discussion of Marriage, in Modern Philology, April, 1912; and in W. W. Lawrence’s Marriage Group in ‘The Canterbury Tales,’ in Modern Philology, Oct., 19138. 104 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE travel to London, and to dress gaily as craftsmen’s wives do there, they anticipate a type common in Jacobean literature. The wives of Simon and Sutton prevail on their husbands to let them go to London, Simon’s wife claiming that a woman should not be cooped up, but should enjoy the greatest pleasure, which is to see the fashions and manners of unknown places. The London merchants and their wives are hospitable to them; but the fine clothes of these women excite the envy of the clothiers’ wives, “‘and grieved their hearts they had not the like.”® Simon’s wife sees no reason why the country dames, who are as beautiful as the city wives, and whose husbands are as rich as the Londoners, do not dress as well as the London merchants’ wives. She tries to persuade her husband to give her London apparel.*® She pretends, moreover, . that she is sick and about to die, and that her cure will be effected only if she is given London clothes. Her husband finally gives in; she is provided with fine Cheapside gowns, being content with no other kind. The rest of the clothiers’ wives follow her example, so that ever since, according to the story, “the wives of Southampton, Salisbury, Gloucester, Worcester, and Reading, went all as gallant and as brave as any Londoners’ wives.’ It is apparent that Deloney, writing as early as the last four years of the 16th century, had studied enough of the pride of craftsmen and merchants and their wives to anticipate some of the later portraits of artisans and citizens by Jonson, ® Aldrich and Kirtland ed., Chap. 6, p. 65. *° Chap. 6, p. 74. In Dekker’s Batchelor’s Banquet is another such wheedling wife. SLE LG Ds ONeas SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 105 Middleton, and Massinger. Simon’s wife not being satisfied with a fine gown unless it is of an especially stylish type, a Cheapside gown, is paralleled in Mass- inger’s portrait of a city wife who not only wants a coach, but also one drawn by four Flanders mares.” Interesting portrayals of craftsmen’s wives are seen in Rowley’s Shoemaker a Gentleman, 1609; and in Dekker’s Shoemakers’ Holiday, 1599. In the former play, Sisley, the shoemaker’s wife, is an industrious and skillful assistant to her husband in his work. Shrewish and overbearing though she is, the contrast to her meek husband, she does at no time express dissatisfaction with her low station in life. In Dekker’s play, though an earlier one than Rowley’s, there is _ presented a somewhat later stage of development of the craftsman’s wife. After Eyre, the shoemaker, puts on his alderman’s gown, his wife, Margery, realizes that she must now dress according to her high social station and get a French hood. Marston, Chapman, and Jonson’s Eastward Hoe, printed in 1605, is an extremely important member of a group of partially domestic plays in which craftsmen are introduced. Touchstone, a goldsmith, has two apprentices: Gold- ing, an industrious one; and Quicksilver, a lazy and wayward one. He has a wife who is at times indus- trious in the shop, but who is carried away by a desire for pomp and social eminence. This last tendency of hers is inherited in extreme degree by one of her daughters, Gertrude. Gertrude shuns her parents and their industry, will have nothing more to do with 12 The City Madam, 1682. 106 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE Chittizens,= and imitates the fashions of the court. She wears French and Scottish fashions in dress, and wants to be a “lady” and ride in a coach. Imitating still further the fashions of a lady, she reads chivalric romances. After she obtains temporary possession of a coach, her favorite expression becomes: “as I am a Lady.” Clever characterization on the part of the dramatists may be seen in this last expression. It is the custom of artisans, as they are presented in litera- ture, to use such exclamations as the following: “As God shall mend me,” “As true as I live,’’** and “‘As I am a true woman.” Gertrude’s “As I am a Lady” is thus merely a modification of this custom of artisans, a change of a word or two, as “woman” for “lady.” This shows that Gertrude, advanced socially as she sup- poses, unconsciously reveals the traits of the humbler classes from which she originated. Quicksilver, the wayward apprentice, is similar to Gertrude in some respects. He wears fine clothes, carries a sword, dwells on the fact that his mother was a gentlewoman, and quotes from the popular and spectacular plays of the period, The Spanish Tragedy and Tamburlaine. After being discharged from the goldsmith’s service because of laziness, he conspires with Security, a usurer, to obtain the inherited land of Gertrude. As subtle and cunning as a gallant, Quick- silver knows just where to appeal to Gertrude, and *8 Chittizens, i.e., citizens. Cf. in Marston’s What you Will, 1607, Celia, the daughter of a merchant. ** Henry IV, Part 1, Act 3, sc. 1. Hotspur tells his wife, Kate, to leave off such expressions as these, for they sound like oaths from the “base artisans.” 1° Henry IV, Part 2, Act 3, sc. 3. Mistress Quickly says these words. SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 107 persuades her with the promise of a fine new gown to sign a deed giving over her land. Sir Petronel, who passes for a knight, agrees to marry Gertrude and take her to his castle. She is easily persuaded to ride in a coach (the object of her heart’s desire) to her knight’s castle. She is doomed to disappointment, however, for the supposed knight is on another adventure. She soon realizes that her knight and his famous castle are imaginary, and wails over the decay of chivalry.** She is so hard pressed that she is even willing to sell her ladyship, and returns to her father, the goldsmith, who receives her reluc- tantly. Meanwhile, Quicksilven and Petronel have wild schemes about taking a trip to Virginia on a search for gold. Quicksilver steals articles from Touchstone, the goldsmith, in order that they may be provided for the voyage. They squander their money, are ship- wrecked, and later arrested. In prison Quicksilver recites the ballad of Mannington whose fall resembles his own. Golding, the industrious apprentice and former fellow of Quicksilver’s, now an alderman’s deputy, is the magistrate over the two prodigals, but acts leniently, and soon releases them. The play con- cludes with a general reconciliation. Certain works of a similar nature but more tragic in outcome may be briefly considered. A Warning for 1° Cf. a story by Rowlands in Good News and Bad News, 1622. A citizen’s wife marries a knight in order to become ‘‘madam’d, worship’d, ladifide,”’ and to ride in a coach. Her knight getting in debt, she is reduced to beggary. Cf. the ballads, The Slowmen of London, D’Urfey’s Pills, vol. 6,. p. 98; and Perkin in a Coal Sack, in which a collier’s wife desires. a coach. D’Urfey’s Pills, vol. 6, p. 254. 108 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE Faire Women, 1599,*" is one of several domestic trage- dies concerned with craftsmen. Anne Saunders, the heroine and wife of the merchant-tailor, is the typically ambitious wife of an artisan. Anne desires more money for fine clothing than her husband is willing to give. Mistress Drury, a fortune- teller, takes advantage of Anne’s anger at her husband; and working on her superstitions, prophesies that she will be a widow and a happy one: A gentleman, my girl, must be the next, A gallant fellow, one that is beloved, Of great estates, "Tis plainly figured here,**® And this is called, the Ladder of Promotion. PORE Cag cteeenet the next Shall keep you in your hood and gown of silk, And when you stir abroad ride in your coach, And have your dozen men all in a livery, To wait upon you.*® Fascinated by this vivid prophecy, and soothed into thinking that fate absolves human responsibility, Anne comes to believe that it is God’s will that her husband must die, and, therefore, has she not a right to profit by it? She is now ready to condone the murder of her husband by Captain Browne, her paramour. She is executed, together with him and his accomplices. The story of Jane Shore, as it is given in Part 1 of Heywood’s King Edward IV, printed in 1600,” might also be called appropriately A Warning for Fair Women. It is concerned not only with a fair woman, *7 R. Simpson’s School of Shakespeare, vol. 2. *§ Lines 635-638. 7° Lines 649-653. 2° It is in volume 1 of the 1874 edition of Heywood’s works. SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 109 but also with a fair woman who works in her husband’s shop. This situation is a favorite one with the later dramatists, who often show the way in which this frequently builds up a craftsman’s trade by attracting | customers to his shop, and how it also often results in licentiousness and marital infidelity.21 This play represents both results of the attractive wife used partly as a worker and partly as a fascinating orna- ment in the shop. The theme, which has been considered before, deals with Jane Shore, the wife of Matthew Shore, a gold- smith, her amours with King Edward IV, her power in court, and her downfall and disgrace after the latter’s death. It will not be treated fully here; but something will be said about Jane’s waiting on the king, who poses as a customer;”? inasmuch as there is interweaving of the details of the craft with the romantic story.’ King Edward IV, dressed as an ordinary man, enters 21 Instances are in Middleton’s Family of Love and Field’s Amends for Ladies, printed in 1618. In the latter play Seldom and his beautiful wife work in a shop. The wife is subjected to many temptations. An allusion to the purpose of the fair wife in the shop is in the words of Lord Proudly to Seldom: “Did not I set thee up, Having no stock but thy shop and fair wife?” Act 4, se. 3. “ ..thy shops with pretty wenches swarm, Which for thy custome are a kinde of charme To idle gallants.” From Pasquils Palinodia, 1619. Grosart’s Occasional Issues, vol. 5, p. 141. *2 Heywood owes something here to Drayton’s treatment of the theme in Edward IV to Jane Shore, one of his Heroical Epistles, 1597. 23 As has been said before, there are few such cases outside of the novels of Deloney, and some of the plays of Dekker. 110 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE the shop, describing to himself Jane’s beauty in terms of jewels, such as diamonds, the description being suggested by the jewelry in the shop. JANE. What would you buy, sir, that you look on here? KinG. Your fairest jewel, be it not too dear. First how this sapphire, Mistress, that you wear? MANES AC rebels if some lapidary had the stone, more would not buy it than I can demand. ’Tis as well set, I think, as ere ye saw. KInG. ’Tis set, indeed upon the fairest hand that e’er I saw. JANE. You are disposed to jest. But for value his maiestie might wear it. Kine. Might he, ifaith? JANE. Sir, tis the ring I mean. KinG. I meant the hand.** Jane says that the king looks like a chapman, as her unloving husband was. The king reveals himself to Jane, and offers his love, but she does not yield to him then.” The irony and dramatic foreshadowing is further intensified by the entrance of Shore himself. This keen salesman interprets their subdued conversation into a haggling over the price of some article, and thinks that he can persuade the king to buy more easily than his wife can. The king, continuing, says: Youle not be offered fairlier I beleeve. JANE. Indeed, you offer like a gentleman; But yet the jewell will not so be left. SHORE. Sir, if you bid not too much under-foot, I’ll drive the bargain twixt you and my wife. 74 Pages 64 and 65. 75 Page 66. SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 111 KinG. (aside) Alas, good Shore, myself dare answer No. Nothing can make thee such a jewell foregoe. She saith you shall be too much loser by it. SHORE. See in the row, then, if you can speede better. Matthew Shore is discontented on seeing that it is the king, and becomes suspicious of his motive. Keep we our treasure secret, yet so fond As set so rich a beauty as this is In the wide view of every gazer’s eye?’® Jane ponders, but eventually accepts the king’s pro- posal, and becomes his paramour. She is partly per- suaded by Mistress Blague, a neighbor, who pictures vividly to Jane the sovereignty and renown that she will have in court. From several ballads on the subject of Jane Shore one that may be briefly considered is The Woeful Lamentation of Jane Shore, a goldsmith’s Wife in London, sometime King Edward the Fourths Concu- bine in two parts.”” Tragic, moral, romantic, poetic (sung to the tune of Live with me), it has realism as to the goldsmith’s craft, and illustrates powerfully the aspiration of a craftswoman to nobility. Matthew Shore, the goldsmith, describes Jane’s cir- cumstances as his wife, before she had committed adultery with the king: No London Dame, nor merchant’s Wife, Did lead so sweet and pleasant life. 2¢ Page 68. 27 Phillips’ Old Ballads, vol. 1, p. 145. Other ballads dealing with her are Deloney’s Lamentation of Shore’s Wife and a burlesque called King Edward and Jane Shore. 112 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE Thou hadst both gold and silver store, He describes how in Turkey he set thy Picture there in gold, For Kings and Princes to behold.** Thus it was that Jane’s parents had married her while she was young to one of the richest representa- tives of a wealthy and honorable craft. But is Jane satisfied? She has wealth and dignity, but no love for her husband. Exhibited by him in his shop to attract customers, her great beauty naturally attracts many highborn admirers. If Rosamond that was so fair, Had cause her sorrows to declare; Then let Jane Shore with sorrow sing, That was beloved of a King. Then wanton wives in time amend, For Love and Beauty will have end.’® In Maiden years my Beauty bright Was loved dear by Lord and Knight, But yet the Love that they required, It was not as my Friends desir’d. ceeeeevoeeoeveepeeeeereeeesveeeree eee ee eevee To Matthew Shore I was a Wife, Till Lust brought Ruin to my life, And then my life I lewdly spent, Which makes my Soul for to lament. In Lombard street I once did dwell, As London yet can witness well, Where many gallants did behold ?8 These quotations are from Part 2 of the ballad, Roxburghe Ballads, vol. 2, p. 115. *® The last two lines of this stanza form the refrain. SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 113 My Beauty in a Shop of gold.*° At last my name in Court did ring Into the Ears of England’s King, Who came and lik’d, and love requir’d, But I made coy what he desir’d: Yet mistress Blague, a Neighbour near, Whose Friendship I esteemed dear, Did say, Jt is a gallant thing To be beloved of a King.*’ osreeeoereeeer eevee ee eee eee eee e eevee eee So it is that Jane Shore yields to the temptation of riches and fame. Advanced to high power by the king, she is philanthropic and honored. After King Edward IV dies, his successor, Richard ITI, forces Jane to do public penance as a whore. Massinger’s City Madam, 1632, also presents trouble brought to bear upon city women and apprentices who are dissatisfied with their social station. The wife and daughters, Anne and Mary, of Sir John Frugal, a prosperous merchant, have “hopes above their birth”’ of becoming countesses. Their dress is in harmony with these anticipations; they wear, moreover, mirrors at their girdles. Superstitious as many such uncultured people are, they have a star-gazer study their fortunes for them. These women show an advance’ over the aspirations even of Gertrude in Hastward Hoe. She desired to have a coach, to marry a knight, and thus °° Note the frequency with which gold is mentioned. This applies also to Part 2. °* Heywood in Edward IV, Part 1, 1874 ed., vol. 1, p. 75, similarly depicts the fascination that court life has for Jane Shore and for people of her class. These are the words of mistress Blague: “Now mistress Shore, bethink ye what to do, Such suitors come not every day to woo.” 114 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE be called ‘‘lady.”” These daughters in The City Madam even go so far as to specify the kind of coach, the kind of cooks, French and Italian, and they not only wish to be called “lady,” but also to have complete sover- eignty over their future husbands. Anne wants coaches, each drawn by four Flanders mares.?? Mary desires even more: she wants the more fashionable country sports, large manors, countless cattle, and to have such complete power over her husband that she will be spoken of as Lady Plenty, and her husband never mentioned. These proud women, however, are soon humbled, for Luke, the brother of Sir John Frugal, gains control over John’s goods and forces the women to wear old clothes and take subordinate positions as a penalty for their affectations. Several of Shirley’s plays have fashionable women who are more successful than Gertrude in Eastward Hoe is in disguising their low descent: they do not utter words unconsciously that reveal their former associations with the city trades. Shirley’s Hyde Park, 1632, is a fair illustration. Mistress Bonavent, who is supposed to be the widow of a merchant, wishes to marry again.** She does not need to desire some of these attributes of wealth as the women previously mentioned do; she already has them, but is discontented. She has command, attendants, jewels, a coach, a livery, a monkey, a squirrel, and a *° Flanders mares are very expensive and fashionable animals. In Glapthorne’s Wit in a Constable, 1639, Clare, the niece of an alderman, despises craftsmen, their dress, manners, etc., and she says that she will marry only one who can give her a coach and four horses. *8 Her husband is in reality still alive. SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 115 tailor of her own. Her fashionable and idle life is very different from the industry of the wives depicted in Deloney’s fiction. We shall now say something about the development of the apprentice in the hands of authors, as this, like the craftsman’s wife, is a stock figure in the literature. In the Middle Ages the rigid system of apprenticeship doubtless held many youths in check that would other- wise have been led astray. But with the Renaissance, emphasis on institutions was superseded by individu- alism: the apprentice came to realize his importance as a civic and even as a national figure, hence the emphasis laid on the warlike and patriotic apprentice in all forms of the literature of the period from 1590-1600 especially.*4 Interest in battles, armies, processions, and shows, fostered by the writings of Deloney, Heywood, and Rowley, who appeal to apprentices, leads gradually to the apprentices’ indolence and slackness in work, to their frequenting of theaters, taverns, and gambling houses. The best general description of the apprentices of shopkeepers and craftsmen, and of their chores and amusements is by a late writer, Shirley, in his Honoria and Mammon, 1639. Squanderbag compares the life of a soldier to that of an apprentice: Is not this better than a tedious ’prenticeship, Bound by indentures to a shop and drudgery, Watching the rats and customers by owl-light? Tied to perpetual language of, What lack ye? . 54 This theme continues almost until the closing of the theaters in scattered works; e. g., Rawlins’ Rebellion, 1639, a rough copy of Rowley’s Shoomaker a Gentleman, 1609. 116 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE Which you pronounce, as ye had been taught, like starlings: If any gudgeon bite, to damn your souls For less than sixpence in the pound? Oh base! Your glittering shoes, long graces, and short meals, Expecting but the comfortable hour Of eight o’clock, and the hot pippin-pies, To wake your mouth up? All the day not suffered To air yourselves, unless your minikin mistress Command you to attend her to a christ’ning, To bring ‘home plams, oc. i. 550 saute stele ee ee You have some festivals, I confess, but when They happen, you run wild to the next village, Conspire a knot, and club your groats a-piece For cream and prunes, not daring to be drunk; Nothing of honour done. Now you are gentlemen, And in capacity to be all commanders, If you dare fight.*°® We have riotous and extravagant apprentices in several plays, Hastward Hoe, 1605, being a good illus- tration. Quicksilver, the goldsmith’s apprentice of this play, wears gay clothes and a sword, visits theaters and quotes freely from the more spectacular and popu- lar plays of the period. He is dishonest, having learned much trickery in the goldsmith’s craft, trickery which he can easily employ anywhere. He also understands well the nature of others, and deceives Gertrude, his master’s daughter, by working on her childish desire for fine clothes and a coach. In the same play there is an industrious fellow-apprentice of Quicksilver called Golding, who by perseverance and honesty gradually wins the good will of his master and becomes an alder- man’s deputy and magistrate. Just as the ballad on Jane Shore serves as a warning to the craftsman’s wife who is discontented with her Ta CU etek: SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN | 117 station in life, so also certain ballads are directed against the wayward apprentice. An excellent Ballad of George Barnwell** describes a thievish, lustful, and murderous apprentice. It has a moral and tragic note, as has also George Lillo’s tragedy, George Barnwell, or the London Merchant, 1731. This ballad was often used aS a warning to apprentices. Like the ballad on Jane Shore, the present one is forcible and dramatic partly because of its being told in the first person. George, the apprentice, tells how he was tempted by a harlot to steal his master’s money and run away. Fascinated by her, he is led to murder his master and rich uncle for their money. After the money is all spent, the harlot deserts him. Both culprits are caught and sentenced to execution. The next ballad to be considered has more realistic touches as to the craft of the apprentice; i. e., that of a goldsmith. It is called A Ballad, and dated 1576, in the Stationer’s Company.*? George Mannington diso- beys the statutes against gorgeous attire of appren- tices. After he is arrested for his misdeeds, he sings as follows: I had a master good and kinde, That would have wrought me to his minde. False mettall of good manners I Did daily coyne unlawfully. ‘ sreeceevereeeeoeereeeees eee eevee eveereeer eee e eee Now cried I, Touch-stone,** touch me still, *¢ Percy Socy. Pub., vol. 1, p. 35. It is in two parts. *7 Percy Socy. Pub., vol. 1, p. 51. 78 Touch-stone is his master. A touchstone is also a stone used by goldsmiths to test the purity of gold and silver. Note the number of technical expressions. 118 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE And make me current by thy skill. Farewell, Cheapside, farewell, sweet trade Of goldsmiths all, that never shall fade, Farewell, dear fellow prentices all, And be you warned by my fall. Shun usurer’s bonds etc.*® Cooke’s Greenes tu Quoque, 1614,* and Mayne’s City Match, 1639, depict extravagant and riotous appren- tices. In the former, Spendall, a mercer’s apprentice, is suddenly made master of the shop, on his master’s being knighted. Spendall is carried away by his un- expected advance, and has an expectation that he will some day become Lord Mayor: A Lord? by this light, I do not think but to be Lord Mayor of London before I die, and have three pageants carried before me, besides a ship and an unicorn. Prentices may pray for that time; for, whenever it happens, I will make another Shrove Tuesday for them.** He becomes extravagant, squandering his money on dice games, and is finally arrested for his extravagance. In The City Match, Plotwell, a grocer’s apprentice, is lured from his trade by Templars to see an extravagant lady. He is easily led to despise his trade on being called ‘‘base mechanic,’’*? and becomes riotous. In both *° This alludes to the custom of goldsmiths, as well as of several richer types of craftsmen, of lending out money on usury. These verses are appropriately read by Quicksilver, the gold- smith’s riotous apprentice in Hastward Hoe, as he is in prison for debt and misdeeds. *° The date of writing is uncertain. It is in Dodsley’s Old English Plays, vol. 7. *t Page 19. TAUCK (Ly sBIes ae SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 119 of these plays a keen interest is shown by craftsmen in pageants and spectacles. Massinger’s City Madam, 1632, shows some variation in the delineation of apprentices from that in Kastward Hoe. As in the two preceding plays, the two appren- tices, Goldwire and Tradewell, are bound, not to a mean shopkeeper, but to a great speculating merchant, Sir John Frugal. They are, moreover, sons of gentle- men, a fact which increases their pride. They are, therefore, not only interested in fine clothes, but also in the larger aspects of nobility, such as the possession of estates. In talking of Frugal’s many ventures, they mention his buying of manors. Luke Frugal, the mer- chant’s brother, appealing to the respectable caste of the apprentices, and holding out to them the joy of going in a coach to Brentford, of having attendants, and of wearing the attire of gallants, tempts them to become rich by stealing from their master’s wealth of which they are stewards: Are you Gentlemen born, yet have no gallant Tincture Of Gentry in you? you are no mechanicks, Nor serve some needy Shop-keeper, who surveys His Every-day-takings.** After these apprentices have embezzled from their master, Luke, who is a great hypocrite, has them ar- rested on a charge of conspiracy against his brother. To their complaining fathers he says that masters never prospered since gentlemen’s sons became appren- tices, for they are too frequently at tennis courts and ordinaries.** cect 2, sc. 1. ** Act 5, sc. 1. As does Massinger’s New Way to Pay Old Debts, this play shows the enmity between the noble born and the self-made man. 120 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE Writers of some importance in this treatment of low born city people who have attained social eminence are James Shirley and Richard Brome, a follower of Jonson. In their treatment of such people who are or have been artisans or are at least relatives of artisans, they frequently represent them as having successfully cast off their crude manners of the city artisans. They are thus representing artisans who seem very dissimilar to those represented by Deloney, Dekker, Heywood, or Rowley. Brome’s New Academy, 1658, shows more clearly than any play thus far considered the advance of the apprentices over their dependent positions as described in earlier works, and illustrates well the intermarrying between the highborn and the low born. Cash, an apprentice to a successful merchant, Mat- chill, is frequently at feasts and revels, and dresses in silver lace and satin. In this finery he appears at dances with gallants, some of whom are in debt to his own master. Cash is an excellent picture of an apprentice, but one of a special kind, entirely unlike the unsophisticated ones of earlier writers such as Deloney and Dekker. Strigood differentiates him from the low type of apprentice who goes with his sweet- heart to Islington or Hogsden for prunes, cream, and ale. As for his bravery ’Tis no new thing with him, I know him of old. This sute’s his worst of foure. And he’s one Of the foure famous Prentices o’ th’ time. None of the Cream and Cake-boys, nor of those, That gall their hands with..... , or their cat-sticks, SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 121 For white-pots, pudding-pies, stew’d prunes, and Tansies. To feast their Titts at Islington or Hogsden. But haunts the famous Ordinaries o’ th® time, Where the best chear, best game, best company are frequent. Lords call him Cousin at the Bowling Green; And the great Tennis-Court.** Certain it is that Cash does not reveal by his talk or actions that he is an apprentice. Cash is, moreover, a man of the world, with a ready action by which to extricate himself when he is involved in any suspicion of a scandal. - After long attempts to imitate fashionable society, it seems that the apprentices and city women as de- picted by Shirley and Brome have succeeded in losing their former crudeness. Much has already been said, especially in connection with the Lord Mayor Show, about the admiration that artisans had for dramatic and pageantic spectacles. They took a keen interest in the display of fine clothing, processions, or emotions. A well known illustration of this is in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1594-5. Six craftsmen: Quince, a carpenter; Snug, a joiner; Bottom, a weaver; Flute, a bellows-mender ; Snout, a tinker; and Starveling, a tailor, present an interlude on the wedding night of Duke Theseus of Athens. Their childish clumsiness and love of imitation are well represented. The juxtaposition of realism and pseudo-romanticism which lacks the necessary imagi- nation on the part of the artisans is one source of the humor. Bottom wants to be Pyramus, Thisbe, and the lion, as he likes to roar. Each actor clumsily ex- *5 Act 3, sc. 2. There are references here to the servile task that apprentices of the meaner trades were obliged to do, if they wished spending money. 122 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE plains his part, having little knowledge of stage con- ventions, and blunders on certain words; e. g., Pyramus calls ‘‘Ninus’ tomb” “‘Ninny’s tomb.’’*¢ In several of Jonson’s plays are criticisms of the clumsy theatrical performances of amateurs. In his Tale of a Tub, 1633, To-Pan, a tinker, Medlay, a cooper, and Clay, a tile-maker, take part in a play. Medlay, the original and self-centered cooper who designs the masque, claims to have upon his rule the just propor- tions of a knight or squire.*7 In Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, 1614, there is a puppet show*® representing the story of Hero and Leander. Leander is a dyer’s son in Puddle-Wharf. The story of Damon and Pythias is confused with this, and the ghost of Dionysius ap- pears on the stage. Humor is furnished by the futile attempts of Busy, the Puritan baker, to break up the show. A favorite subject of craftsmen for presentation on the stage is knight-errantry and patriotism, especially when the heroes of such romances are from the crafts- men’sown ranks. Heywood’s Four Prentices of London, 1600 ¢., is a good illustration of this type, a type which meets with ridicule in the hands of Beaumont and Fletcher and Jonson. The best satire on craftsmen’s thirsting for military renown is Beaumont and Fletcher’s Knight of the Burning Pestle, 1611. A citizen is going to have some- thing represented on the stage in honor of his grocer’s trade. At his wife’s suggestion, who also takes keen interest in it, he will have a hero kill a lion with a pestle. Ralph, his apprentice, is given the chief part, Ot RARD Op BCs t. “" Act 4) secre ey ACE. Deer. SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 1238 and because of his grocer’s trade he calls himself the “Knight of the Burning Pestle.” One apprentice is his dwarf; another is his squire. He constantly imitates the language of chivalry; e.g., that of Palmerin, an old chivalric romance, and quotes Hotspur’s speech about honor in Henry IV, Part 1.4° Although Ralph has pledged himself to defend Mistress Merrythought, who is in trouble, he runs away as soon as his pestle has been seized. He goes to fight against a giant, Barbarossa,*° who turns out to be only a barber. Ralph knocks him down, and frees his prisoners, who have been tortured in various ways by the barber’s quack surgery. One has had stinging powder applied to cure the itch; another has had the gristle of his nose cut off; others are kept in a hot tub as a cure for syphilis. Ralph falls in love with Susan, a cobbler’s maid, who has inspired him to do these deeds of arms. His master is so pleased with his performances that he will make him next year the captain of the Lord Mayor’s barge. In Shirley’s interlude, A Contention for Honor and Riches, 1633, and in his morality, Honoria and Mam- mon, 1659, are satirical thrusts at the Lord Mayor’s Show. In the former,*! Clod, a country fellow, ridicules civic officers, shop-keepers, and Lord Mayor Shows with ships swimming upon men’s shoulders. Two ballads among others which satirize the Lord Mayor’s Show are Oh London is a fine Town* and *° Other instances of the burlesque on tales of chivalry are in the character of Puntarvolo in Hvery Man Out of his Humor and in Petronel in Eastward Hoe. Pact) 6, eC. 4. °? Scene -1. 52 D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy, vol. 4, p. 40. 124 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE Upon my Lord Maior’s Day, being put off by reason of the Plague.** In the latter the mayor is “‘forbad to goe a feasting in his scarlet gown.” Nor shall they hear the players tall, Who mounted on some mighty whale, Swim with him through Cheapside. Craftsmen welcome any occasion for displaying spectacular things, and are most pleased by the presen- tation of something exciting. In Tatham’s play, The Rump, 1660, apprentices externalize their dissatisfac- tion with the Rump Parliament by burning rumps of mutton in public. In the Fishmongers’ Lord Mayor Shows, Sir William Walworth, former Mayor and fishmonger, frequently appears, bearing the head of the rebel, Wat Tyler, whom he had slain. In Mark Antony’s speech to the mob in Julius Caesar, he works upon the excitability of those present, increasing their pity by showing the rent mantle of Caesar and then Caesar’s own bloody corpse, stabbed in several places. Indeed, Shakespeare, who will be considered more fully later, is as excellent as any other writer in his delineation of craftsmen in crowds, and their love of sights. Although the craftsmen in literature like most of all to see represented on the stage military exploits of their own members, they also glorify a military hero apart from their ranks if he offers a sufficiently spectacular career. Thus, in Julius Caesar, 1599, the interest of the fickle mob (a fair part of which is composed of artisans) is centered on three military heroes successively, Pompey, Caesar, and Brutus, in honor of whom they wish to give pageants and spec- 5% Percy Socy., vol. 1, p. 28. SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 125 tacles.** In Coriolanus, 1609, it is Coriolanus’ stubborn and tactless refusal to cater to the craftsmen’s extreme love of a spectacle and dramatic speech, that brings about the tragedy. In Antony and Cleopatra, 1607-8, Cleopatra fears that the base “‘mechanic slaves” will stage her tragic fall, and perhaps turn it into a vulgar comedy.*® Thou, an Egyptian puppet, shalt be shown In Rome, as well as I: mechanic slaves, With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers, shall Uplift us to the view; in their thick breaths, Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded, and forced to drink their vapour. Meese hits «sss eats SAUCY VLICLOTS Will catch at us, like strumpets; and scald rhymers Ballad us out o’ tune: the quick comedians Extemporally will stage us, and present Our Alexandrian revels; Antony Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness I’ the posture of a whore.” In a previous chapter much has been said about works that praise craftsmen in battle. There are, however, reactions in the period of James I and Charles I to this adulation of craftsmen in battle. Two works that present citizens in general as desiring a disreputable peace rather than a settling of the trouble by fighting are Cartwright’s The Siege, acted before °* In the three Roman plays, the mob is said to be composed largely of Roman artisans, but they have the traits of English ones. 5° Act 5, sc. 2. Cleopatra says these words to Iras. °° Boy actors took the roles of women in Pre-Restoration drama. 126 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 16438,°7 and Shakespeare’s King John, 1593. Several miscellaneous works represent craftsmen as _ ridicu- lous in their attempts at fighting. Thus, in Mayne’s Amorous War, 1648, the Bithynian craftsmen, in fight- ing against Thrace, arm themselves with appropriate weapons: butchers with cleavers, tailors with yards and bodkins, and shoemakers. with awls.** They are clumsy and unorganized when it comes to fighting. In Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster, the captain exhorts the citizens to leave their base crafts and to fight nobly; i.e., even though they are craftsmen.*® In The Famous Victories of Henry V and in Rowley’s Shoo- maker a Gentleman® the cobbler is a cowardly type of fighter. A Larum for London, printed in 1602, and The Famous History of the Life and Death of Captain Thomas Stukeley, printed in 1605, bring out the fact that trained soldiers are more successful fighters than citizens or craftsmen. In A Larum for London, the citizens with poor success try to beat back the opposing Spaniards. We are undone for want of discipline.** Craftsmen are frequently represented as the leaders *" Printed for H. Moseley, 1651. PACE EC a. * Act. 6, se. 1: °° This play has been considered carefully in the preceding chapter. The prince, Crispianus, who is for a time apprentice to a shoemaker, fights nobly; Barnaby, the journeyman, on the other hand, is a cowardly type of soldier. ** R. Simpson’s School of Shakespeare, vol. 1. Stukeley was a rich clothier’s son, according to a ballad on him. According to Deloney’s Gentle Craft, Part 2, Stukeley is several times defeated by Peachy, a shoemaker. ** Malone Society Reprints, 1913. *> Line 6380. SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 127 or members of popular uprisings. Hardly any of these works are flattering to craftsmen, for they are repre- sented here as lacking in bravery, organization, and decision. In The Life and Death of Jack Straw, 1593, the artisan-soldiers are alluded to thus: Be none but tilers, thatchers, millers, and such like, That in their lives did never come in field.** In Woodstock a butcher shows great discontent with the existing government; and in Shirley’s Arcadia, 1640, Thumb, a miller, puts himself at the head of the rebels, but is lacking when it comes to actual fighting. A play of this type that delineates craftsmen with realism is Ford’s Perkin Warbeck, printed in 1634. The First Part of the Contention of the two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, 1590; and Shakes- peare’s Henry VI, Part 2, 1590-2, which follows the Contention in the parts that deal with the artisan-rebel, Jack Cade, are other instances. The first of these plays represents Perkin as sup- ported in his uprising by Heron, a bankrupt mercer; John a Water, the mayor of Cork; Skelton, a tailor; and Astley, a scrivener. Heron and Skelton are indi- vidualized well. Heron had aspired to be “a viscount at least,” even when he traded but in remnants.*’ Skelton’s references to terms from his own trade for metaphors is interesting. ** Dodsley’s Old English Plays, vol. 5. Ne ea ** Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare Gesellschaft, 1899. *7 Act 2, sc. 3, p. 153, Dyce edition. 128 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE AG ENE he that threads his needle with the sharp eyes of in- dustry shall in time go through-stitch with the new suit of preferment.** Skelton also speaks of the pressing-iron of reproach. These artisans are far from brave: when captured, they quail before King Henry VII, in strong contrast to Warbeck, who conducts himself throughout the play with fearless and dignified demeanor. There is more of the element of satire in The First Part of the Contention etc. and in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2. In the Contention® are several realistic touches on craft. An illustration apart from the Jack Cade rebellion is the quarrel between an armorer and his apprentice, a story which is paralleled in Shakespeare’s play.”° Several apprentices speak of Cade, the leader of the rebels, as follows: GEORGE. Jack Cade the Diar’* of Ashford here, He means to turne this land, and set a new nap on it. NICK. I marry he had need so, for ’tis growne threedbare... Georce. I warrant thee, thou shalt never see a Lord weare a leather aperne nowadaies. NICK. But sirrha, who comes more beside Jacke Cade? Grorcre. Why theres Dicke the Butcher, and Robin the Sadler, and Will etc., and we must all be Lords or squires, as soone as Jacke Cade is King.** Cade boasts about his bravery, asserts that his fa- ther was a Mortemer, and calls himself Lord Mortemer. The artisans nearby whisper to one another that Cade’s *ec Act 2, se. (3; p. 154: °° Facsimile Text. AP ACUI eG. hoe 72 “Diar;” i.e, dyer. 72 In Henry VI also the artisans are well portrayed. SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 129 father was a bricklayer, and that his mother was the daughter of a peddler. Trying to gain the support of a rabble composed partly of artisans, Cade appeals to them in various ways; e.g., he endows a butcher with greater trade privileges than he has had hitherto, promises them all plenty of beer, and knights himself and them. Cruel and destructive, he has a clerk hanged because he can write (reading or writing being accomplishments hate- ful to Cade); and has London Bridge burned. Like Leyden, the tailor who leads the Munster rebels,*? Cade is socialistic and defends stealing. According to him, wives are common property. Another point of resem- blance between Cade’s situation and Leyden’s is that Cade nearly starves, and lives on herbs. This rebel has no personality or leadership. The fragments of his army, like himself, lack organizing power, and vacillate between Cade and his more vic- torious opponent, Clifford. Cade is finally killed by one of his own group, Eyden, who is desirous of obtain- ing knighthood and the thousand crowns offered for Cade’s head. Something has already been seen in these previously mentioned works about the inconsistency of mobs, composed to an extent of artisans. Sir Thomas More, 1590, contains a good picture of a mob, the hatred of which is directed especially against foreign merchants and artisans who displace English craftsmen.’* There is a vivid presentation of apprentices, armed with clubs,7> who burn the houses of foreigners and release 78 This is well satirized in Rowland’s Hells Broke Loose. 74 Shakespeare Socy., vol. 3; Dyce edition, 1844. The play borrows something from Hall’s Chronicle, fol. 59 (b), ed. 1548. "® Page 17. 130 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE the prisoners. In their wild clamor about their griev- ances, they lack general and wholehearted nationality, are greatly swayed by personal prejudices and private desires. An instance is in the desire of Doll, the wife of a carpenter, to hear Sir Thomas More speak: Sanwa a made my brother Arthur Watchins Seriant Safes yeoman: lets heare Shreeve More.** Like the members of the mob in Julius Caesar, these are appeased by More’s eloquent and tactful speech, which upholds the divine right of kings, condemns rebellion, and appeals to the emotion rather than to the reason of the listeners. A ballad which, like the play just described, deals with the hatred of English toward foreign merchants or artisans is The Story of Ill May-Day in the time of King Henry VIII.” It tells of the uprising of English artisans on May-eve, 1517, against foreigners who monopolized their trade. The rebels free those who have been imprisoned for hostility to foreigners. In the treatment of artisans as members of a mob, rather than as individuals, Shakespeare is supreme. Although he does not deny that the citizen or artisan is of some importance in the state (as is shown by the fact that Bolingbroke, afterwards King Henry IV, Gloster, and Mark Antony seek the support of the citizens or mayor), he shows (following the dramatic tradition of his time) little admiration or sympathy for the laboring man en masse. He usually emphasizes the meaner qualities of artificers: susceptibility to flattery, fickleness, inconsistency, avarice, and craving ** Page 26, line 17. *7 Evans’ Old Ballads, vol. 3, p. 15. SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 131 for social recognition by great ones. Hence, in Romeo and Juliet, 1594-5,"* citizens with clubs join in the fray between the servants of the house of Montague and the house of Capulet. It is mainly because these citizens like to get into a quarrel; some of them show no prefer- ence for either house. In King Henry VIII, likewise, 1612, the noisiness of apprentices and their readiness to decide quarrels by the use of clubs and stones are emphasized.7° The porter comments on the fact that these are the noisy youths so boisterous in playhouses. More interesting for our study is Shakespeare’s treatment of the artisan as related to nobility or roy- alty. Much has been already said about the desire of artisans for recognition by knights or kings. The Lord Mayor’s Show, as beforesaid, frequently illustrates this; e. g., in the Merchant-Taylors’ Show, great pride is manifested in the fact that many kings and nobles were free of that company. The presentation by arti- sans of plays and pageants on royal occasions is brought out in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and Henry VIITI®’ respectively. In the latter play, the citizens are said to take great interest in the coronation ceremony of Queen Anne, and to prepare pageants for the occasion. Attention will be given to several plays of Shakes- peare in which demagogues obtain popularity through appealing by promises, courtesy, flattery, etc., to mobs consisting in large measure of craftsmen. We shall first consider Richard IT, 1595. Bolingbroke, the cousin of Richard II, whom the king has banished, understands well the various subtle arts by which he "* Act 1, se. 1. TA Cheat: SOx ties tie CUP SOnCk, 132 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE may obtain the friendship of the commons. Taking advantage of the king’s unpopularity, partly due to the heavy taxation and social unrest of the period, Boling- broke represents himself as the special friend of the common people: the trading and working classes. He therefore misses no opportunity of smirking at them and showing them various courtesies. The king, after banishing Bolingbroke, describes him as follows: Ourself and Bushy, Bagot here and Green Observed his courtship to the common people; How he did seem to dive into their hearts With humble and familiar courtesy, What reverence he did throw away on slaves, Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles And patient underbearing of his fortune, As ’twere to banish their affects with him. Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench; A brace of draymen bid God speed him well And had the tribute of his supple knee, With ‘Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends;’ As were our England in reversion his, And he our subjects’ next degree in hope.*? The most excellent pictures of mobs consisting largely of artisans are in Julius Caesar, 1599, and Coriolanus, 1609. In Julius Caesar many aspects of the working peo- ple’s nature are brought out. Though these are called Roman citizens and artificers, they answer well for a delineation of English ones. The love of the artisans for holidays and spectacles is brought out in the first ** Act 1, sc. 4, lines 23-36. A parallel may be noted in this outcast’s tactful behavior to that of the dethroned King Edward IV, as described in Bulwer- Lytton’s Last of the Barons. Both of these statesmen appeal strongly to the commercial classes. SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 133 scene. In this feast of Lupercal various craftsmen are presented; the leader, a shoemaker, one from the popular guild of the late 16th century, is especially witty. He puns on certain words peculiar to his craft: “mend,” “‘sole,’”’ and “awl.” These artisans are assem- bled to celebrate Caesar’s triumph. Their fickleness and inconsistency are well described by Marullus, the tribune. The latter reminds them that they had form- erly made as much ceremony and display over Pompey, Caesar’s enemy, when Pompey passed in triumphal chariot through the Roman streets. Their fickleness and love of pomp may also be seen in their wishing later to crown and celebrate Brutus, and last of all, making even Antony a popular hero.*? In Casca’s story of the offering of the crown to Caesar* the undesirable qualities of craftsmen are stressed: they have ‘‘chopped hands,” “sweaty night-caps,” and ‘‘stinking breath.” After the assassination of Caesar, the artisans ex- hibit their tendency to settle all things by violence, by a club law, as it were.*t Brutus appeals to their nobler sentiments by suggesting that they are patriotic free- men and not base bondmen, he satisfies them, even though he gives no sound explanation as to his reason for killing Caesar. They are quieted temporarily with the feeling that Caesar was killed because he was ambitious, “ambitious” being a word which, as it ** That some of these craftsmen appear also at Antony’s speech seems evident from the fact that he refers to their witnessing the offer of the crown to Caesar on the Lupercal. Barach 1, -6c,, 2. It must be borne in mind, however, that Casca is a sour person, tending to belittle whatever he describes. ** The stage directions do not mention clubs. In Robert Man- ° tell’s presentation of the play, however, these citizens are armed with clubs, like unruly apprentices. 134 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE appears later, they do not understand, but vaguely suppose has something to do with tyranny. In their tendency to furnish a popular hero for any occasion, they desire to bring Brutus home with triumph, to give him a statue with his ancestors, and (which further confirms the fact that they do not understand the reason for the assassination) to crown Brutus, the assassin of the very Caesar whom they had previously wished to celebrate. Now that Brutus has left them with a vague idea of Caesar’s “‘ambition,” it remains for Antony to dis- lodge that attribute of Caesar from their minds. He pretends, therefore, in a flattering way, to appeal to their reason; but he actually appeals to their emotion, avarice, admiration for large estates and for world. power. He hath brought many captives home to Rome, Whose ransom did the general coffers fill. What could appeal more forcibly to an excitable crowd whose tendency is to glorify military heroes? What could appeal more to the hearers’ avarice than the same sentence? | When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept, Ambition should be made of sterner stuff. What could appeal more to their sympathy than this gentler attribute of the great conqueror, whose ten- derness seems to have leaned to just such people as themselves? To the uncultured artisans so excited by dramatic and spectacular scenes, what could appeal more than Antony’s presentation of Caesar’s mantle and body and his vivid characterization of each of SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 135 the conspirators cruelly butchering the great national demigod ? The above words. illustrate how emotional these commons are: Antony’s appeal is not to reason or judgment. Of the three reasons why Caesar was not “ambitious:” 1, that he enriched the country as a whole; 2, that he wept for the poor; 3, that he thrice refused a crown, only the last has any connection with ambition. Moreover, if we take Casca’s words as to Caesar’s unwillingness to refuse the crown, it is not even an indication, far less a proof, that Caesar was not ambitious. In Coriolanus, stubborn insistence of craftsmen on form and timeworn ceremonies, and Coriolanus’s re- fusal to comply are large determining factors in the tragedy. The mutinous citizens represent English craftsmen. The hungry citizens, armed with clubs, threaten the government if they are not fed immedi- ately. The tactful Menenius quiets them by his fable which represents them as having a definite place in the government. Marcius (later Coriolanus) casts several aspersions on them, calling them “gnawing rats,’’®® describes their fickleness, and their preference for a man’s bows and flattery rather than his heart. Even to gain the consulship, he does not intend to show the commons the many wounds which he has received *° That the mob is composed in large part of craftsmen is attested to in Coriolanus’ words to his mother: “Do not bid me Dismiss my soldiers, or capitulate Again with Rome’s mechanics.” Act 5, sce. 3. 8° Cf. Shirley’s Doubtful Heiv in which a captain expresses a similar attitude toward craftsmen. Act 1. 136 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE in battle.8? Though craftsmen seem to make a fair proportion of the fighting body, Coriolanus is probably correct in saying that they are base born cowards,** having often deserted in battle. Though he exaggerates frequently, he would not be apt to tell an absolute lie. Coriolanus is finally persuaded to conform to the custom of the commons by showing his wounds and saying something to them, a form of procedure which he does contemptuously. He is then elected consul. The tribunes, however, call the attention of the citizens to the scornful way in which Coriolanus had shown his wounds, and his sarcastic manner of address.®® The artisans” are so exasperated that they withdraw their former election of him as consul, and effect his banish- ment from the city. When the citizens hear that a Volscian invasion, partly led by Coriolanus, is threatened, some assert that they did not want to banish him. These two Roman plays of Shakespeare picture ex- cellently well the inability of uncultured artisans (or uncultured persons of any kind) to act as statesmen or electors of statesmen. Fickle, tending to extol a hero at one moment, and to destroy him at the next; unreliable, inclined to worship rank rather than prin- ciple, the craftsmen in these plays are well pictured as. Phen SSCL Ry, SPU ACE 2.) 8th os da Ws Aap IE | gs 2 °° That artisans have a large part in this seems evident from Menenius’ ironic words to the tribunes regarding their unstatesmanlike behavior: “You have made fair hands, You and your crafts! You have crafted fair!” Act 4, se. 6, lines 115-116. SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 137 failures in their attempts to interfere with the govern- ment.°? Several miscellaneous works describe artisans as leaders or members of popular uprisings. In verse there is Daniel’s treatment of the Jack Cade rebellion in his Civil Wars.*? In prose there are Lodge’s Life and Death of William Longbeard, and Rowlands’ Runna- gates Race (in his Martin Markall). The following satirical prose works of Taylor combine an interest in communism with fanatic religious zeal: The Whole Life and Progresse of Henry Walker the Iron-monger, Jack a Lent, A Tale ina Tub, and A Full and compleat Answer Against the Writer of a Tale in a Tub. The Munster uprising is treated in the prose work, Mock-Mayjesty: or, The Siege of Munster, and Leyden is described in Nash’s Unfortunate Traveller; but the best satirical treatment is given in Rowlands’ poem, Hells Broke Loose, 1605.°* This is such a fine satire that it will be briefly discussed. * Bulwer-Lytton’s Rienzi also has a good portrait of the lack of understanding in artisans. Rienzi, the Roman tribune, in improving the condition of the commons, gathers several sup- porters of the craftsmen, led by a blacksmith, Cecco del Vecchio. They withdraw their support from Rienzi as soon as he is no longer able to furnish them with pageants, shows, and holidays. As in Coriolanus and Julius Caesar, ceremony and form are loved by artisans; e.g., Cecco becomes a confirmed enemy of Rienzi because the latter in a procession has not bowed to the blacksmith who stood among those looking on. Book 9, end of chapter 1. The disinclination of artisans to fight or to undergo sacrifices is also brought out. F. Tupper’s Shakespearean Mob, in “Publications of the Modern Language Association,” 1912, is an excellent study of the treatment of mobs by Shakespeare and other dramatists of his period. ®? Book 6, stanza 1. ** Hunterian Club ed., vol. 1. 138 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE The poem censures German Anabaptists, and typifies them in the form of various craftsmen. These wished to have plurality of wives, to govern things in their own way, and to cheat. John Leyden, a Dutch tailor, Tom Mynter, a parish clerk, Knipperdulling, a smith, and Crafteing, a joiner, first spread these ideas: John Leyden, but a Taylor by his trade, Of Munster towne a King would needes be made: A Parrish Clarke, a Joyner, and a Smyth, His nobles were, whom hee tooke counsell with.’ * They capture Munster, and make Leyden king. He claims that Adam, like himself, was a tailor (referring to the far-fetched story of Adam and Eve’s sewing aprons of fig leaves) ; since we are all Adam’s sons, we ought to be all kings, and be free from any govern- ment. His lack of direction of the uprising, and his appeal to the various craftsmen are expressed as follows: Let’s turne the world cleane upside downe, (mad slaves) So to be talk’d of, when were in our graves. Brave Knipperdulling, set thy Forge on fire. It shall be done this present night (quoth hee,) Tom Mynter, leave amen unto the Quier. Quoth Tom, I scorne henceforth a Clarke to bee, Carnellis, hang thy wooden Joyners trade, For Noble-men apeece you shall be made. And fellowmates, nobles and Gallants all, To Maiestie you must your mindes dispose; My Lord Hans Hogg, forsake your Butchers stall. Hendrick the Botcher, cease from heeling Hose. °* Page 11. SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 139 Classe Chaundler, let your Weick and Tallow lye, And Peeter Cobler, cast your old Shooes by.°° Their lack of judgment is further ridiculed in their rebellion against restrictions as to more than one wife, against taxation and penalties of any kind: Since animals and fishes do not have to pay taxes, why should man? What reason is it when the hands have stole, To put the Legs into a wodden hole?*® Thinking that they shall have permanent possession of Munster, they ring bells, For joy a Taylor is become a King. Leyden commands the poorer craftsmen, such as joiners and smiths, to force the rich merchants, mercers, and goldsmiths, to supply them gratis with silks, jewelry, and rich food. Their grand state does not last long, however, for they are soon besieged by the Duke of Saxony. They are then compelled to eat old shoes, chandlers’ and scriveners’ old wares tc prevent themselves from starving. Leyden, loving the theatrical and spectacular, sends his wife to play the part of Judith and save them. The rebels are finally captured, tortured, and executed. The satire succeeds well in ridiculing a blind and unorganized artisan uprising, the love of the rebels for perpetuating their names; their boasting of high °* Pages 17 and 18. 96 Wodden hole, i.e., wooden hole, the stocks. *? This was a characteristic of many artisans also who were not anarchists; e. g., Gresham in Heywood’s If You Know Not: me, You Know Nobody, Part 2, written in the same year as Hells Broke Loose, 1605. Vanity of Vanities, 1659; and The Lamentations of a Bad Market, 1660, are ballads that satirize John Leyden. 140 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE lineage; their comparing themselves with kings (it is brought out in the rebels’ clamors that Tamburlaine, though at first only a shepherd, became king) ; and their love of the theatrical and spectacular. A play somewhat late for our study is interesting partly because of its own merits and partly because of its reflection on contemporary politics. Tatham’s The Rump, 1660,°* represents apprentices as rowdies who claim considerable rights in the government. They threaten dire revenge on Hewson, a one-eyed shoe- maker who had risen to rank under Cromwell, and demand a free parliament. Their derision of Hewson, whom they pelt with turnips, is expressed as follows: FIRS?. He has spun a fine thread to-day. SECOND. It may bring him to his end. FIRST. St. Hugh’s bones must go to the rack and there let him take his last, — Whoop, Cobler!**® In the fifth act*”° apprentices, whooping as usual, enter with faggots on their shoulders and rumps of mutton on spits. “Roast the rump” is their cry: they are about to make a public ceremony that represents the destruction of the Rump Parliament. On wood which is painted like a pile of faggots they turn and roast a rump of mutton, carousing and drinking in the meantime.*°? The play ends in a victory for the Royalists, and disparagement of Mrs. Cromwell and Hewson. The ** J. Maidment and W. H. Logan edition of 1879. Ta CL) A Clon. 40° Act 5, p. 269. *°s According to Pepys’ Diary, vol. 1, page 24, rumps of mutton were actually burned at this time by butchers in the Strand. SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 141 discomfited Hewson is represented as speaking the following words: Have you any old boots or shoes to mend? I have helpt to underlay the Government this twenty years, and have been upon the mending hand, but I fear now I shall be brought to my last, and therefore ought to mind my end.*°’ Although artisans liked to imitate the courtly classes and to intermarry with the nobility, the two classes hated one another. The rivalry between gallants and artisans is a favorite theme with the writers on city life; e.g., Middleton in his Michaelmas Term. The gentry had from early times scorned craftsmen and traders, had used the terms, ‘“‘tailor,” ‘cobbler,’ “col- lier,” “base cogging merchant,” etc., as synonyms of disgust, although they depended on these substantial workers for their existence. The craftsmen, in turn, swindled the gallants, and resorted to usury whenever such practices were possible. Several plays represent well the hatred between the self-made man and the man of high blood. In Arden of Feversham, 1592, Mosbie, the despised tailor, kills the rich Arden with the pressing iron that Arden had belittled as the stamp of the tailor’s craft. In Histriomastix, 1599, the de- pendence of the higher classes on tradesmen is stressed. Massinger’s New Way to Pay Old Debts, 1632, is one of the best works to show the growing hatred between the two classes. +o? Act 5, p. 276. Note the frequency of terms like “mend,” “end,” and “last,” which are technicalities of the shoemakers’ alate that satirize Hewson are A Hymn to the Gentle Craft, 1659; The Gang, 1659; and The Traitor’s Downfall, 1660. 1°8 Plays that represent to a certain extent this mutual hatred and relation between the gentry and the artisan class are Shirley and Chapman’s The Ball, 1632, and Shirley’s Gamester, 1637. 142 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE One result of the Puritan Revolution was the eleva- tion of people of low rank to positions of eminence. Cromwell, a brewer’s son, advanced himself and others. He soon forsook the Dray and Sling, and Counted a Brew-house a petty thing, Unto the. stately Throne of a King... It far surpast a Tun.*°* As his wife says of him, “he could give titles of honor to the meanest peasants — made brewers, draymen, coblers, tinkers, or anybody, lords.”’?** Besides Crom- well himself, others of low rank are Woodfleet, son of a custard maker, one of the competitors after Crom- well’s death for the Protectorship; and Hewson, a one- eyed shoemaker, who becomes eminent in Cromwell’s service. The Puritan Revolution was, then, social and industrial as well as religious and political. With the advent. of the Cavaliers, ridicule of the craftsmen and Puritans increased. The Puritans were usually of the middle class, and often represented some trade. Something may be said, before closing this chapter, of the attitude of dramatists toward Puri- tans.?°° Actors and dramatists naturally hated Puri- tans and ridiculed them at every opportunity, because these sought the suppression of plays. As early as 1601, Sir Toby Belch, in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, says to the austere steward, Malvolio: Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale??*’ *°* From the ballad, The Traitor’s Downfall, Roxburghe Bal- lad Socy., vol. 7, p. 660. Another ballad that satirizes Cromwell and his family is Joan’s Ale was new. 195 The Rump, Act 5, se. 1. 1°86 This study will, of course, be restricted to the Puritans who represent trades. das Wo ter tallest SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 143 The others express their disgust at Malvolio’s inter- ference with their revelry, several of them calling him a Puritan. In a number of plays Puritans are intro- duced as victims of satire. Thus, Chapman’s An Hu- morous Day’s Mirth, 1599, pictures Florila, a Puritan wife of an old husband. The Puritan, published in 1607,?° is a satire on the middle class, and on Puritans. In Thomas Killigrew’s Parson’s Wedding, 1640, Crop, a secrivener and Brownist,'°® is a figure that receives attention. In Mayne’s City Match, c. 1639, and in Middleton’s Family of Love, printed in 1608, are more intimate associations of Puritans with crafts. In the former, a sempstress is spoken of as being’ a Puritan at her needle; i. e., she sews religious designs in petticoats, as was the custom of Puritans then." In The Family of Love, Puritan extremists are satirized, especially in the person of an apothecary’s wife. The most interesting feature of Puritans in this study is in their stubborn opposition to plays or fairs. Several amusing characters of this type are Hob, in Fletcher’s Women Pleased; Oliver, in Middleton’s Mayor of Queenborough; and Busy, in Jonson’s Bar- tholomew Fair. In The Mayor of Queenborough, 1596, Simon, a tan- ner, and Oliver, a Puritan and fustian-weaver, are candidates for the mayoralty. Oliver was also twice ale-conner; i.e., an officer who keeps account of ale. 198 Tt has the initials, ‘“W. S.”, and was hence erroneously thought to be by Shakespeare. The play is in C. F. T. Brooke’s Shakespeare Apocrypha. 10° Brownism was a theory of church government named after the sixteenth century Puritan, Robert Browne, who introduced it. REOLLet 2..8C. 2s 144 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE Simon is chosen mayor, to the chagrin of Oliver. The latter, a so-called Puritan rebel, is captured and ridi- culed by his captors in their presentation of a play. ule STANely Wale RT Ie Meahalet eats the only way To execute a Puritan, is seeing of a play.**' The Puritans themselves, however, were frequentlv engaged in these very crafts that catered to vanity, and this fact furnishes the theme for an excellent satire on Puritans; i.e., Thomas Randolph’s Muse’s Looking- Glass, 1638.112. The scene is in the neighborhood of Black-Fryars, which was noted for Puritans and feathermakers and for a combination of both. There are two Puritans: Bird, a featherman, with feathers for the play-house; and Mrs. Flowerdew, wife to ua haberdasher of small wares, with pins and looking- glasses. Talking of the corruption of the times, they criticize the play before they see it. Bird, who has a somewhat guilty conscience in spite of his prudery, says that such performances often ridicule persons who try to sell false wares. They scold Roscius, the player, because of his vain profession; but he, in turn, points out that both of them have crafts that wait on vanity: pins for laces, ruffs, etc., and feathers which give wing to pride. These Puritans are finally persuaded to see the play, which is called The Muse’s Looking-Glass. Afraid of being corrupted by even looking at it, they criticize it throughout the whole performance. Roscius says that this performance cures beholders of sin and ignorance, a statement which reconciles the Puritans to an extent. "i Ce DytBC he **2 Dodsley’s Old English Plays, vol. 9. SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 145 Neither in this chapter nor in the preceding ones have all the works introducing artisans been men- tioned. In many works these characters are so poorly delineated that little would be gained by discussing them. The repetitious feature of many works is also obvious: the heroic apprentice is a theme treated in many works in prose, verse (including ballad), and drama; cheating of craftsmen is treated also in these different forms of literature. Some miscellaneous works, though not mentioned as yet, are of some gen- eral interest. There are humorous domestic ballads that hardly contribute anything directly to this study, but that are of some interest to the general reader. One of the most interesting of domestic ballads touch- ing on crafts is The Industrious Smith.1% This poem is very vivid in its description of an alehouse. It tells of a smith who becomes poor and asks his wife to help him by selling ale. She consenting, they get a girl, Besse, to welcome the guests. Very noisy customers frequent the place thereafter; these flirt with the smith’s wife and maid, and refuse to pay their bills. The wife answers the smith’s remonstrance in every case by the following words which form the humorous refrain of the ballad: These things must be if we sell ale. Other ballads dealing with drunkenness are The Jovial Tinker, The Drunken Butcher of Tideswell, and Half a dozen good Wives. The Cooper of Norfolke, The **8 Roxburghe Ballads, vol. 2, p. 94. Romantic rather than realistic ballads are The Merry Pranks of Robin Goodfellow, The Devonshire Nymph, True Love Exalted, and Deloney’s Patient Grissel. 146 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE Cobbler of Colchester, and The Pinnyng of the Basket are equally interesting. Certain late ballads in D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge Mel- ancholy describe craftsmen in detail, often introduc- ing vulgar or obscene associations with work or tools. Satirical and unpleasant works not restricted to crafts are certain versified portrayals of social climbers, their intermarriages with those of higher rank, and the consequent degradation of society. Instances are Cornu-copiae, Pasquils Nightcap,’“* printed in 1612; and Pasquils Palinodia, 1619.1 Ballads with some- what similar themes are The Jolly Miller, The London Prentice, The Country Wake, and The Lamentation of an ale Wifes Daughter. Interesting prose works that introduce craftsmen among other individuals and that contain much satire and punning on the technical terms of the craft are the Character books. They repeat much that has already been given in this chapter, presenting among other persons citizens and artisans who defraud cus- tomers and who aspire to nobility. Elizabethan imita- tions of Chaucer’s works and some of Dekker’s poems, one on a merchant, the other on an artificer, in his Papist Encountred, 1606, show an approximation to this type. Some instances in prose are John Stephen’s E'ssayes and Characters, 1615, in which are delineated among others a tapster and a tailor’s man; John Tay- lor’s An Armado, 1627, in which the state of appren- ticeship is gently satirized, his A Bawd, 1635 (partly 44 Grosart’s Occasional Issues, vol. 5. 15 Grosart’s Occasional Issues, vol. 5. 18 Collections of these works are J. O. Halliwell’s Books of Characters and H. Morley’s Character Writings of the 17th Century. SOCIAL ASPIRATIONS OF THE ARTISAN 147 verse), in which four of the greatest livery companies, the mercers, grocers, fishmongers, and goldsmiths are subjected to uncomplimentary comparisons; Don Lup- ton’s London and the Country Carbonadoed and Quar- tered into severall Characters, 1632, which stresses the courtesy of alewives and the dishonesty of goldsmiths; Whimzies, 1631, in which painters, peddlers, news- paper writers, launderers, almanac-makers, and ex- change-men are held up to ridicule, attention being given to the psychology of advertising; Sir Thomas Overbury’s Characters, 1614, in whicha tailor, a tinker, an almanac-maker, a quack-salver, and a French cook are described; Nicholas Breton’s Good and Bad, 1616, in which are contrasted a good and a bad merchant; John Earle’s Micro-Cosmographie, 1628, in which are described bakers, cooks, shopkeepers, citizens, and aldermen. The Wandering Jew telling Fortunes to Englishmen, 1649, is a rather unique work that presents among others a cobbler, an alderman’s super- cilious son, a citizen’s fashion-loving wife and an apprentice, the youngest son of a gentleman, all de- sirous of knowing their fortune, as are the patronizers of Alice West. In this work the various eccentricities and desires of the inquirers are exposed. \ CONCLUSION Twentieth century readers, as well as students of the Middle Ages and Elizabethan period, may be in- terested in the preceding study of the medieval and Elizabethan craftsman in literature. Modern writers, such as Carlyle, Ruskin, Morris, Whittier, Longfellow, Rolland, Hauptmann, Ibsen, D’Annunzio, and Guiterman revert at times to the master-craftsman and his artistry, or to the medieval guild system, with its original emphasis on co-opera- tion, brotherhood, and equality. Persistence even to the present day of a theory somewhat like that of the guild may be seen in the fact that the place formetly occupied by the latter is now occupied, to a certain extent, by the Trade Unions, the Mechanics’ Association of American cities, the Masonic Order, and Guild Socialism. Medieval and Elizabethan apprenticeship, though not at any time a perfect system, was a far better method of education for young persons than many of the later forms; e. g., the rigid factory system of the 18th and 19th centuries. To the modern reader one of the most interesting aspects of this study is found in the treatment of the self-made man, whose rise to prominence presents a few parallels to the typical self-made man of more recent date. Although the stories of Whittington, Eyre, and Thornton are apparently exaggerated accounts of the fulfillment of seemingly idle dreams, such narra- 149 150 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE tives are possible. What could be more illustrative po- etically of the speculating and commercial Elizabethan age than Whittington’s dream and its fulfillment as described in the ballad? What, moreover, could be more illustrative of the great age of inventions, the 19th and 20th centuries? How could we have the five and ten cent store, the cheap automobile, or the aeroplane, were it not for such dreamers as the Woolworths, Henry Ford, Langley, and the Wright brothers? The story of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp and that of Oid Fortunatus, with all their wealth of romance and oriental splendor, are not more interesting, and are far less significant than the story of Sir Richard Whitting- ton, who, according to popular tradition, through the original venture of a cat, became a great speculator, philanthropist, and mayor, celebrated in prose, ballad, drama and pageant. BIBLIOGRAPHY CATALOGUES AND DICTIONARIES ApAMs, W. D. Dictionary of the Drama, 2 vols. London, 1904. ADAMs, W. D. 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The Pleasant Conceites of Old Hobson, 1607. Percy Socy., vol. 9. A Pleasant New Ballad of the Bloody Murther of Sir John Barley-Corn. In Jamieson’s Popular Ballads and Songs, vol. 2, p. 251. PowELL, T. Tom of All Trades, 1631. In New Shakespeare Socy., series 6, 2. RANDOLPH, T. The Muses Looking-Glass, 1638. In Dodsley’s Old English Plays, vol. 9. Rawlins, T.. The Rebellion, 1637. In Hazlitt-Dodsley’s Old English Plays, vol. 14. . BIBLIOGRAPHY 161 RicH, B. The Honesty of this Age, 1614. In Percy Socy., vol. 11. RICKETS, J. Byrsa Basilica, 1570. In Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare Gesellschaft, vol. 34, p. 281. Roserts, H. Fame’s Trumpet, 1589. In H. Huth’s Fugitive Tracts, Series 1. ROBERTS, H. Haigh for Devonshire, 1600. In the February, 1885, issue of the Western Antiquary is an account by W. B. Rye of this plagiarism of Thomas of Reading. ROWLANDS, S. Doctor Merrie-Man, 1609. In Hunterian Club ed. of Rowlands’ works, vol. 2, pp. 11, 12. ROWLANDS, S. Good News and Bad News, 1622. In Hunterian Club, vol. 2. ROWLANDS, S. Hells Broke Loose, 1605. In Hunterian Club, vol. 1. ROWLANDS, S. The Knave of Harts. In Percy Socy., vol. 9. ROWLANDS, S. Knaves of Spades and Diamonds. In Percy Socy., vol. 9, pp. 104 and 111. ROWLANDS, S. A Paire of Spy-Knaves. In Hunterian Club, vol. 2. Row.rey, W. A New Wonder, 1632. In Hazlitt-Dodsley’s Old English Plays, vol. 12. Row.Ley, W. A. Shoemaker a Gentleman, 1609. Edited by C. W. Stork. Phil., pub. for the University, 1910. The Plays of William Shakespeare. To which are added notes by S. Johnson and G. Steevens. Coriolanus, 1609. Vol. 7. Henry IV. 2 parts. 1597-9. Vol. 5. Julius Caesar, 1599. Vol. 8. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1594-5. Vol. 3. Richard II, 1595. Vol. 5. A Winter’s Tale, 1611. Vol. 4. SHIRLEY, J. Dramatic Works with notes by W. Gifford and A. Dyce. 6 vols. London, 1833. —Honoria and Mammon, 1639. Vol. 6. —Hyde Park, 1632. Vol. 2. 162 THE ARTISAN IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE STEPHEN, J. Essayes and Characters, 1615. In J. O. Halliwell’s Books of Characters. Character 26. STUBBES, P. Anatomy of Abuses, part 2, 1588. In New Shakes- peare Socy., Series 6, 12. Tariton’s Jests, Shakespeare Socy., 1920. Tarlton’s Jigge of a horse loade of Fooles (before 1588). In Shakespeare Socy., 1920. Tarlton’s Newes out of Purgatory (before 1598). In Shakes- peare Socy., 1920. TATHAM, J. The Rump, 1660. J. Maidment and W. H. Logan ed. of 1879. TAYLOR, J. A Full and compleat answer against the Writer of a Tale in a Tub. In Spenser Socy., vol. 7. — Jack a Lent. In Spenser Socy., vols. 2-4. — Praise of Clean Linnen. In Spenser Socy., vols. 2-4. — Praise of Hempseed. In Spenser Socy., vols. 2-4. — Praise of the Needle. In Spenser Socy., vol. 7. — Superbie Flagellum. In Spenser Socy., vols. 2-4. —A Tale in a Tub. In Spenser Socy., vol. 7. -—— Travels of Twelve-Pence. In Spenser Socy., vols. 2-4. — The True Cause of the Watermen’s Suit concerning Players. In Spenser Socy., vols. 2-4. —The Whole Life and Progresse of Henry Walker the Iron- monger. In Spenser Socy., vol. 7. — The World runnes on Wheels. In Spenser Socy., vols. 2-4. Taylor’s Pastorall. In Spenser Socy., vols. 2-4. Thomas Lord Cromwell, 1602. Ed. by A. F. Hopkinson. London, 1899. The Tinker of Turvey, 1600 c. Ed. by J. O. Halliwell. London, 1859. Tom Tyler and his Wife. In J. S. Farmer’s Six Anonymous Plays. The Traitor’s Downfall, 1660. In Roxburghe Ballad Socy., vol. 7, p. 660. BIBLIOGRAPHY 163 Upaut, N. Ralph Roister Doister, 1553 ¢. Edited by W. H. Williams and P. A. Robin. London, 1911. A Warning for Fair Women, 1599. In R. Simpson’s School of Shakespeare, vol. 2. The Weakest Goeth to the Wall, 1600. Amersham, England. Issued for subscribers by J. S. Farmer, 1913. Westward for Smelts, 1608 c. In Percy Socy., vol. 21. Witson, R. The Pedler’s Prophecy. Amersham, England. Is- sued for subscribers by J. S. Farmer, 1918. The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll, 1600. In vol. 3 of A. H. Bullen’s Old Plays. 4 vols. Library of Congress, 1882. WITHER, G. Haleluiah, 1641. Hymns 42, 53, and 54. In Spenser socy., vol. 27. The Woeful Lamentation of Jane Shore, a Goldsmith’s Wife in London, sometime King Edward the Fourths Concubine. 2 parts. In Philips’ Old Ballads, vol. 1, p. 145. INDEX Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, 150. Alchemist, The, 100n. An arte whose end was never known, 74-75. Anatomy of Abuses, 10, 91, 103. Antony and Cleopatra, 125. arene for a Quiet Life, 83, apprentices, 2-7; changing treatment of them in liter- ature, 115-121; dress of, 5, 6; girls as apprentices, 9, 10; apprentices in litera- ture, 6, 7, 115-121. Statute eae D, 20, apprenticeship, 2-7. Arden of Feversham, 141. Autolycus, 84. barbers in literature, 91, 97, Barnaby Bunch, 72. Barry, L., 70n. Bartholomew Fair, 80, 148. Beaumont and Fletcher, 12, 21, 22n., 23, 46, 122, 1238,. 126. Besant, Sir W., 7. blacksmiths, 68, 69, 145. Bloody Murder of Sir John Barleycorn, The, 58. Bonaventura, St., 79n. Breton, N., 147. Brewer, A., 20, 21, 31, 69. Brodsky, R., 4. Brome, R., 120, 121. Brooke, C. F. T., 148n. Brownism, 148n. Bullen, A. H., 79n. Bulwer-Lytton, 132n., 187n. Byrsa Basilica, 36. Cade, J., 128, 129. Carlyle, T., 149. Cartwright, W., 126. Character books and works of kindred nature, 146, 147. Character writings of the 17th century, 146n. Chaste Maid in Cheapside, A, 101. Chaucer, G., delineation of ar- tisans, 11, 85n., 103. Chaucer, G., Wife of Bath, 11, 108, 103n. Chaucer’s Burgesses, 11n. Chronicles, 28. Chute, A., 75n. City Madam, The, 113, 114, 119. City Match, The, 100n., 118, 143. Clem, drawer, 70-72. Clode, C. M., 3, 4. clothiers in literature, 28, 29, 63, 1038, 104. 100n., 125, 165 166 Cobler of Canterbury, The, 86, 86n. Cobler of Colchester, The, 146. Collier, J. P., 82n., 83. colliers in plays, 69, 70. BOs and speculation, 24- Contention, The, 128, 129. co-operation among artisans, eet 35, 44, 51-60, 62, 66, cooks in literature, 77, 78. Cooke, J., 118. Coriolanus, 135-137. Coy Cook Maid, The, 19. craftsmen as communists and as religious fanatics, 137- 140; as founders of. insti- tutions, 34, 36-40; as mem- bers of a mob, 129-141; as soldiers, 13-23, 46, 122- 129; their interest in dra- matic productions, 41-45, 121-125. Crispin and Crispianus, 19n. Crispin, St., 20. Crispinus and Crispianus, 14, 15, 60-63. Cromwell, O., 140-142. Damon and Pithias, 69. D’Annunzio, G., 149. daughter of the craftsman, 9, 105-107, 113, 114. Debate between Pride and Low- liness, by F. T., 86n. Defence of Connycatching, 98. Dekker, T., 12, 24, 25, 34, 35, 43, 44, 45, 54-59, 64-67, 72, 79n., 91-98, 104n., 105, 146. Deloney, T., 12-16, 25-34, 51, 52, 58, 53n., 63, 103, 104. Deloney’s influence on litera- INDEX ee dealing with crafts, Dodsley, R., Z1n., 118n., 127n., 144n. Doubtful Heir, The, 135n. Drake, Sir F., 42, 48. drawers in literature, 70-72. Drayton, M., 75-77, 109n. matte M., and Munday, A., n. Dunlop, O. J., and Denman, R. D., 1; Sn300m D’Urfey, T., 68n., 128n. Dutch Courtesan, The, 97, 98. Eastward Hoe, 90n., 105-107, 116, 119, 123n. Edward IV, 49n., 108-111. een IV to Jane Shore, 75- Edwards, R., 69. _ Elizabethan ballads, 12n. Elizabethan imitations of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, 86. English Apprenticeship and Child Labor, 1, 8n., 5n. English Pageantry, 41n., 42n. Englishmen for My Money, 638. Evans, T., 18n., 130n. Everyman out of His Humour, 128n. Eyre, S., 30-35, 54-59, 105, 149. Faerie Queene, 51. Fair Maid of the Exchange, The, 74. Fair Maid of the West, The, 70-72. Fairholt, F. W., 41n. Falstaff, Sir John, 102. Field, N., 109n. INDEX Brecher, J. 12, 21, 22n., 23; 46, 67, 77, 78, 122, 128, 126, 143. Ford, H., 150. Ford, J., 127, 128. Four Prentices of London, The, 1, Fulwel, U., 69. Gamester, The, 141n. Gang, The, 141n. Gascoigne, G., 85. Gentle Craft, the, 13-16, 20, 26, 29-85, 52, 58, 53n., 63, 66. George a Greene, 14. George Barnwell, ballad, 117. George Mannington, ballad on, 117, 118. Gilds and Companies of Lon- don, 1-12. Glapthorne, 114n. Good News and Bad News, 107n. Greene, R., 86-91, 93. Gresham, T., 27n., 36, 37. Grim the Collier of Croyden, 69. Grosart, A. B., 98n. Guild Socialism, 149. Gummere, F., 12n. Hall, E., 75n. Halliwell, J. O., 15n., 146n. Harleian Miscellany, 16n. Haughton, W., 63; with Dekker and Chettle, 66, 67; with Hathway and Smith, 638. Hauptmann, G., 149. Hawkwood, Sir J., 17, 18, 48. Hazlitt, W. C., 1, 2. Hells Broke Loose, 187-140. 167 Henry IV, 61n., 101, 102, 106, 106n. Henry V, 20. Henry VI, 128, 129. Henry VIII, 181. Heywood, T., 20-22, 27n., 36, 37, 42n., 70-72, 74, 108-111, 118n., 139n. Hindley, C., 80n. GN of the Cries of London, n. Hobson, 86. Honest Whore, The, 67. aren of a London Prentice, é, Honoria and Mammon, 46. Hyde Park, 114, 115. Hymn to the Gentle Craft, A, 141n. Ibsen, H., 149. If it be not Good, the Devil is in it, 67. If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody, 27n., 36, 37, 139n. Ili May-Day, ballad, 130. Industrial Organization in the pt and 17th Centuries, n. Industrious Smith, The, 145. hangin! Nees 138, 14, 26- Jack Straw, Life and Death of, 20, 127. Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare Gesellschaft, 36n. Jamieson, 538n. Jane Shore, 75-77, 108-113. jest-books, 85, 86. Johnson, R., 16-18, 25. Jonson, B., 77, 78, 80, 90n., 168 95n., 100, 100n., 101n., 105- 107, (116,219 1225 123n5 148. journeymen, 7, 8; in plays, 53- 63; the masterpiece, 7, 8. Julius Caesar, 66, 132, 135. King and the Miller of Mans- field, The, 48, 49. King Edward IV and the Tan- ner of Tamworth, 49, 50. King James I and the Tinker, 47, 48. King John, 126. Kittredge, G. L., 103n. Knave in Grain, A, 98. Knight of the Burning Pestle, The, 22n., 46, 122, 123. Kuhl, E. P., 11n. Lamentable Fall of Queen Elnor, The, 99, 99n. Langley, S. P., 150. Lawrence,, W. W., 103n. Like Will to Like, 69. Lipson, E., 7n. Livery Companies of London, Locrine, 19. London Chanticleers, The, 81. London Lickpeny, 80. London’s Tempe, 43-45. Long Meg, 19. Longbeard, W., 137. Longfellow, H. W., 149. Lord Mayor’s Show, The, 41- 45, 128, 124. Love-Sick King, The, 20, 21, 37, 38, 69. Lydgate, J., 80. Maid in the Mill, The, 67, 68. INDEX Malone Society Reprints, 126n. Mantell, R. B., 1338n. Marmion, §S., 97. Marston, J., 90n., 97, 98, 105- 107, 118;°123r: Masonic Order, The, 149. Massinger, P., 10n., 77, 88n., 113, 114, 218: master-craftsman, the, 3, 4, 8, 9 Match Me in London, 64-66. Mayne, J., 100n., 126, 1438. Mayor of Queenborough, The, 37, 143 Measure for Measure, 70n. Merchant cf Venice, The, 35. merchant-tailors, 3n., 24, 25. Merry Ballad of the Miller and Ske Henry the Second, A, Michaelmas Term, 94-97. Micro-Cosmographie, 147. Middleton, T., 36, 37, 54, 67, 94-97, 98, 109n., 141, 143. Midsummer Nights Dream, 184 BU BP. pie in his best array, The, 48. Miller of Mansfield, The, 48. millers in literature, 48, 67, 68. Mirror for Magistrates, T5n. Mock-Majesty, 137. modern parallels to guilds, 149. Monuments of Honor, The, 17. Morley, H., 146n. Morris, W., 149. Muse’s Looking Glass, The, 144, Nabbes, T., 70n., 77, 100. Nash, T., 92, 187. Needle, Praise of the, 738. INDEX New Academy, The, 120, 121. New Inn, The, 101n. New Shakespeare Society, 9in., 92n. New Way to Pay Old Debts, A, 77. New Wonder, A, 36. Niue Worthies of London, The, 16-18, 25. Old Ballads, 18n., 130n. Oliphant, T., 82. Parker, M., 59n. Pasquils Palinodia, 109n., 146. Patient Grissel, 66, 67. Pedlar’s Lamentation, The, 82. Peele, G., 42, 99n. Pepys, S., 140n. Percy Society, 19n., 47n., 69n., 83n., 117n. Perkin Warbeck, 127, 128. Fhilips, A., 111n. Pieces of Ancient Popular Po- etry, 49n. Pills to Purge Melancholy, 68n., 128n. Pimlyco, 75n. - Popular Ballads, 53n. Porta Pietatis, 42n. Privy Council, Acts of the, 1, 6n. Puritan Revolution, 142. Quickly, Mistress, 101, 102. Quip for an Upstart Courtier, Ralph Roister Doister, 79, 8U. Randolph, T., 144. Rawlins, T., 20, 22, 68, 67. Rebellion, The, 20, 22, 63, 67. 169 Renegado, The, 88n. Rich, B., 91, 94. Richard [, 131, 182. Richard III, several plays on, 75n. Shakespeare’s play, 130. Ritson, J., 49n. Roaring Girl, The, 67. Robin Goodfellow, 47. Rolland, R., 149. Romeo and Juliet, 181. Rowe, N., 75n. Rowlands, S., 107n., 137-140. Rowley, W., 19, 20, 36, 54, 59- 63, 67, 68, 105. Roxburghe Ballads, 19n., 82n., 145n. Roxburghe Ballad Society, 19n. 72n., 73n., 82n. Royal Exchange, the, 36, 37. Rump, The, 140, 141, 142n. Ruskin, J., 149. self-made man, the, 25-40. Shakespeare Apocrypha, 148n. Shakespeare Society, 37n., 86n., 29n. Shakespearean Mob, The, 137n. Shakespeare’s plays, 20, 35, 61n., 66, 69, 84, 121, 122, 126, 128-131, 135-137. Shipbuilders, The, 45n. Shirburn Ballads, 48n., 75n. Shirley, J., 46, 114, 115, 116, 123, 135n., 141n. Shirley and Chapman, 141n. Shoare, The Book of, 75n. Shoemaker a Gentleman, A, 15, 54, 59-638, 105. Shoemakers, The, 44n. shoemakers’ guild, the, 13-16, 19, 20, 29-35, 54-68. 170 Shoemakers’ Holiday, The, 33- 35, 54-59, 105. Siv John Oldcastle, 45n. Sir Thomas More, 129, 130. Six ae AR of the West, The, Six Yeomen of the West, The, 63 Ce social and industrial aspects of the Puritan Revolution, 142-144. Spenser, E., 51. Spenser Society, 94n. Staple of News, The, 77, 78. Stow, J., 37n. Strange Horse Race, A, 93. Strype, J., 4n. Stubbes, P., 10, 91, 103. tailors in literature, 72-74. Tatham, J., 140, 141, 142n. Taylor, J., 73, 94. Thomas Lord Cromwell, 36, 68, 69. Thomas of Reading, 28, 29, 52, 63, 103, 104. Thornton, 31, 37-40, 149. Etre Merry Cobblers, The, n. Tom Dough, 63. trade songs, 80-85. Trade Union, the, 149. Traitors Downfall, The, 141n. INDEX Tupper, F., 137n. twelve great livery companies, ’ Unwin, G., 8n. Upon my Lord Mayor’s Day being put off, 124. Walworth, W., 17, 20, 43. Warning des Fair Women, A, Weakest Goeth to the Wall, The, 72. Webster, J., 17. . Westward for Smelts, 86. What You Will, 106n. Whittier, J. G., 44n., 45n. Whittington, Sir R., 38-40, 149, 150. wife of the craftsman, the, 9, 10, 102-115; her skili as a worker, 10, 103; her dress, 10, 104-108. Winter’s Tale, The, 84. Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll, The, 78, 79. Withington, R., 41n., 42n. Wonderful Year, The, 24, 25. Woodstock, 127. Woolworths, the, 150. work songs, 51-58, 67, 68, 79, 80. Wright brothers, the, 150. ol ‘Le ae! Ming } 7 hae ate ae 4 ul eer! IOS EAKLLIES S SAE OMAA Le bey RV MMW NNN na RBANA iil 47322745