by Thomas Nashe
The Effects of Sloth
Sloth in nobility, courtiers, scholars, or any men, is the chiefest cause that brings them in contempt. For, as industry and unfatigable toil raiseth mean persons from obscure houses to high thrones of authority, so sloth and sluggish security causeth proud lords to tumble from the towers of their starry descents, and be trod underfoot of every inferior besonian.282 Is it the lofty treading of a galliard, or fine grace in telling of a love tale amongst ladies, can make a man reverenced of the multitude? No, they care not for the false glistering of gay garments, or insinuating courtesy of a carpet peer;283 but they delight to see him shine in armour, and oppose himself to honourable danger, to participate a voluntary penury with his soldiers, and relieve part of their wants out of his own purse. That is the course he that will be popular must take, which, if he neglect, and sit dallying at home, nor will be awaked by any indignities out of his love-dream, but suffer every upstart groom to defy him, set him at nought, and shake him by the beard unrevenged, let him straight take orders and be a churchman, and then his patience may pass for a virtue; but otherwise, he shall be suspected of cowardice, and not cared for of any.
The Means to Avoid Sloth
The only enemy to Sloth is contention and emulation; as to propose one man to myself, that is the only mirror of our age, and strive to out-go him in virtue. But this strife must be so tempered, that we fall not from the eagerness of praise, to the envying of their persons; for then we leave running to the goal of glory, to spurn at a stone that lies in our way; and so did Atalanta,284 in the midst of her course, stoop to take up the golden apple that her enemy scattered in her way, and was out-run by Hippomenes. The contrary to this contention and emulation is security, peace, quiet, tranquillity; when we have no adversary to pry into our actions, no malicious eye whose pursuing our private behaviour might make us more vigilant over our imperfections than otherwise we would be.
That state or kingdom that is in league with all the world and hath no foreign sword to vex it, is not half so strong or confirmed to endure as that which lives every hour in fear of invasion. There is a certain waste of the people for whom there is no use, but war; and these men must have some employment still to cut them off. Nam si foras hostem non habent, domi invenient:285 if they have no service abroad, they will make mutinies at home. Or if the affairs of the state be such as cannot exhale all these corrupt excrements, it is very expedient they have some light toys to busy their heads withal cast before them as bones to gnaw upon, which may keep them from having leisure to intermeddle with higher matters.
The Defence of Plays
To this effect the policy of plays is very necesary, howsoever some shallow-brained censurers (not the deepest searchers into the secrets of government) mightily oppugn them. For whereas the afternoon being the idlest time of the day, wherein men that are their own masters (as gentlemen of the Court, the Inns of the Court, and the number of captains and soldiers about London) do wholly bestow themselves upon pleasure; and that pleasure they divide (how virtuously it skills286 not) either into gaming, following of harlots, drinking, or seeing a play: is it not then better, since of four extremes all the world cannot keep them but they will choose one, that they should betake them to the least, which is plays? Nay, what if I prove plays to be no extreme, but a rare exercise of virtue? First, for the subject of them: for the most part it is borrowed out of our English Chronicles, wherein our forefathers’ valiant acts, that have lain long buried in rusty brass and worm-eaten books, are revived, and they themselves raised from the grave of oblivion, and brought to plead their aged honours in open presence: than which, what can be a sharper reproof to these degenerate effeminate days of ours?
How would it have joyed brave Talbot,287 the terror of the French, to think that after he had lain two hundred years in his tomb, he should triumph again on the stage and have his bones new embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectators at least (at several times), who, in the tragedian that represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding!
I will defend it against any cullion,288 or club-fisted usurer of them all, there is no immortality can be given a man on earth like unto plays. What talk I to them of immortality, that are the only underminers of honour, and do envy any man that is not sprung up by base brokery like themselves? They care not if all the ancient houses were rooted out, so that, like the burgomasters of the Low Countries, they might share the government amongst them as states, and be quarter-masters of our monarchy. All arts to them are vanity; and if you tell them what a glorious thing it is to have Henry the Fifth represented on the stage, leading the French king prisoner, and forcing both him and the Dolphin289 to swear fealty, ‘Aye, but,’ will they say, ‘what do we get by it?’, respecting neither the right of fame that is due to true nobility deceased, nor what hopes of eternity are to be proposed to adventurous minds, to encourage them forward, but only their execrable lucre, and filthy, unquenchable avarice.
They know when they are dead they shall not be brought upon the stage for any goodness, but in a merriment of the Usurer and the Devil, or buying arms of the herald, who gives them the lion, without tongue, tail, or tallents290, because his master, whom he must serve, is a townsman, and a man of peace, and must not keep any quarrelling beasts to annoy his honest neighbours.
The Use of Plays
In plays, all cozenages,291 all cunning drifts over-gilded with outward holiness, all stratagems of war, all the cankerworms that breed on the rust of peace, are most lively anatomized. They shew the ill success of treason, the fall of hasty climbers, the wretched end of usurpers, the misery of civil dissension, and how just God is evermore in punishing of murder. And to prove every one of these allegations, could I propound the circumstances of this play and that play, if I meant to handle this theme otherwise than obiter.292 What should I say more? They are sour pills of reprehension, wrapped up in sweet words.
The Confutation of Citizens’ Objections Against Players
Whereas some petitioners of the Council against them object they corrupt the youth of the city, and withdraw prentices from their work, they293 heartily wish they might be troubled with none of their youth nor their prentices; for some of them (I mean the ruder handicrafts’ servants) never come abroad, but they are in danger of undoing. And as for corrupting them when they come, that’s false; for no play they have encourageth any man to tumults or rebellion, but lays before such the halter and the gallows; or praiseth or approveth pride, lust, whoredom, prodigality, or drunkenness, but beats them down utterly. As for the hindrance of trades and traders of the city by them, that is an article foistered in by the vintners, alewives, and victuallers, who surmise, if there were no plays, they should have all the company that resort to them lie boozing and beer-bathing in their houses every afternoon. Nor so, nor so, good Brother Bottle-ale, for there are other places besides, where money can bestow itself. The sign of the smock will wipe your mouth clean; and yet I have heard ye have made her a tenant to your tap-houses. But what shall he do that hath spent himself? Where shall he haunt? Faith, when dice, lust, and drunkenness and all have dealt upon him, if there be never a play for him to go to for his penny, he sits melancholy in his chamber, devising upon felony or treason, and how he may best exalt himself by mischief.
A Player’s Witty Answer to Augustus
In Augustus’ time, who was the patron of all witty sports, there happened a great fray in Rome about a player, insomuch as all the city was in an uproar. Whereupon, the Emperor, after the broil was somewhat overblown, called the player before him, and asked what was the reason that a man of his quality durst presume to make such a brawl about nothing. He smilingly replied: ‘It is good for thee, O Caesar, that the people’s heads are troubled with brawls and quarrels about us and our light matters; for otherwise they would look into thee and thy matters.’ Read Lipsius294 or any profane or Christian politician, and you shall find him of this opinion.
A Comparison Twixt our Players and the Playe
rs Beyond the Sea
Our players are not as the players beyond sea, a sort of squirting bawdy comedians, that have whores and common courtesans to play women’s parts, and forbear no immodest speech or unchaste action that may procure laughter; but our scene is more stately furnished than ever it was in the time of Roscius, our representations honourable, and full of gallant resolution, not consisting, like theirs, of a pantaloon, a whore, and a zany, but of emperors, kings and princes, whose true tragedies, Sophocleo cothurno,295 they do vaunt.
The Due Commendation of Ned Allen
Not Roscius nor Æsop,296 those admired tragedians that have lived ever since before Christ was born, could ever perform more in action than famous Ned Allen.297 I must accuse our poets of sloth and partiality, that they will not boast in large impressions what worthy men, above all nations, England affords. Other countries cannot have a fiddler break a string but they will put it in print, and the old Romans, in the writings they published, thought scorn to use any but domestical examples of their own home-bred actors, scholars, and champions, and them they would extol to the third and fourth generation: cobblers, tinkers, fencers, none escaped them, but they mingled them all in one gallimaufry298 of glory.
Here I have used a like method, not of tying myself to mine own country, but by insisting in the experience of our time. And, if I ever write anything in Latin, as I hope one day I shall, not a man of any desert here amongst us, but I will have up. Tarlton,299 Ned Allen, Knell,300 Bently,301 shall be made known to France, Spain, and Italy; and not a part that they surmounted in, more than other, but I will there note and set down, with the manner of their habits and attire.
The Seventh and Last Complaint of Lechery
The child of Sloth is Lechery, which I have placed last in my order of handling: a sin that is able to make a man wicked that should describe it; for it hath more starting holes than a sieve hath holes, more clients than Westminster Hall, more diseases than Newgate. Call a leet302 at Bishops-gate, and examine how every second house in Shoreditch is maintained; make a privy search in Southwark and tell me how many she-inmates you find; nay, go where you will in the suburbs and bring me two virgins that have vowed chastity, and I’ll build a nunnery.
Westminster, Westminster, much maidenhead hast thou to answer for at the day of judgment; thou hadst a sanctuary in thee once, but hast few saints left in thee now. Surgeons and apothecaries, you know what I speak is true, for you live, like summoners, upon the sins of the people; tell me, is there any place so lewd, as this Lady London? Not a wench sooner creeps out of the shell, but she is of the religion. Some wives will sow mandrake303 in their gardens, and cross-neighbourhood with them is counted good fellowship.
The Court I dare not touch, but surely there, as in the heavens, be many falling stars and but one true Diana.304Consuetudo peccandi tollit sensum peccati.305 Custom is a law, and lust holds it for a law to live without law. Lais, that had so many poets to her lovers, could not always preserve her beauty with their praises. Marble will wear away with much rain; gold will rust with moist keeping; and the richest garments are subject to time’s moth-frets. Clytemnestra,306 that slew her husband to enjoy the adulterer Ægisthus, and bathed herself in milk every day to make her young again, had a time when she was ashamed to view herself in a looking glass, and her body withered, her mind being green. The people pointed at her for a murderer, young children hooted at her as a strumpet; shame, misery, sickness, beggary, is the best end of uncleanness.
Lais, Cleopatra, Helen, if our clime hath any such, noble Lord Warden of the witches and jugglers, I commend them with the rest of our unclean sisters in Shoreditch, the Spital,307 Southwark, Westminster, and Turnbull Street,308 to the protection of your Portership: hoping you will speedily carry them to hell, there to keep open house for all young devils that come, and not let our air be contaminated with their sixpenny damnation any longer.
Yours Devilship’s
bounden execrator
PIERCE PENNILESS
‘A supplication callst thou this?’ quoth the Knight of the Post. ‘It is the maddest supplication that ever I saw; methinks thou hast handled all the seven deadly sins in it, and spared none that exceeds his limits in any of them. It is well done to practise thy wit, but, I believe, our lord will cun309 thee little thanks for it.’
‘The worse for me,’ quoth I, ‘if my destiny be such to lose my labour everywhere, but I mean to take my chance, be it good or bad.’ ‘Well, hast thou any more that thou wouldest have me to do?’ quoth he. ‘Only one suit,’ quoth I, ‘which is this: that, sith opportunity so conveniently serves, you would acquaint me with the state of your infernal regiment; and what that hell is, where your lord holds his throne; whether a world like this, which spirits like outlaws do inhabit, who, being banished from heaven, as they are from their country, envy that any shall be more happy than they, and therefore seek all means possible, that wit or art may invent, to make other men as wretched as themselves; or whether it be a place of horror, stench, and darkness, where men see meat but can get none, or are ever thirsty and ready to swelt310 for drink, yet have not the power to taste the cool streams that run hard at their feet; where, permutata vicissitudine,311 one ghost torments another by turns, and he that all his lifetime was a great fornicator, hath all the diseases of lust continually hanging upon him, and is constrained, the more to augment his misery, to have congress every hour with hags and old witches; and he that was a great drunkard here on earth, hath his penance assigned him, to carouse himself drunk with dish-wash and vinegar, and surfeit four times a day with sour ale and small beer; as so of the rest, as the usurer to swallow molten gold, the glutton to eat nothing but toads, and the murderer to be still stabbed with daggers, but never die; or whether, as some fantastical refiners of philosophy will needs persuade us, hell is nothing but error, and that none but fools and idiots and mechanical men, that have no learning, shall be damned. Of these doubts if you will resolve me, I shall think myself to have profited greatly by your company.’
He, hearing me so inquisitive in matters above human capacity, entertained my greedy humour with this answer. ‘Poets and philosophers, that take a pride in inventing new opinions, have sought to renown their wits by hunting after strange conceits312 of heaven and hell; all generally agreeing that such places there are, but how inhabited, by whom governed, or what betides them that are transported to the one or other, not two of them jump in one tale. We, that to our terror and grief do know their dotage by our sufferings, rejoice to think how these silly flies play with the fire that must burn them.
But leaving them to the labyrinth of their fond313 curiosity, shall I tell thee in a word what hell is? It is a place where the souls of untemperate men and ill-livers of all sorts are detained and imprisoned till the general resurrection, kept and possessed chiefly by spirits, who lie like soldiers in garrison, ready to be sent about any service into the world, whensoever Lucifer, their Lieutenant General, pleaseth. For the situation of it in respect of heaven, I can no better compare it than to Calais and Dover. For, as a man standing upon Calais sands may see men walking on Dover cliffs, so easily may you discern heaven from the farthest part of hell, and behold the melody and motions of the angels and spirits there resident, in such perfect manner as if you were amongst them; which, how it worketh in the minds and souls of them that have no power to apprehend such felicity, it is not for me to intimate, because it is prejudicial to our monarchy.’
‘I would be sorry,’ quoth I, ‘to importune you in any matter of secrecy; yet this I desire, if it might be done without offence, that you would satisfy me in full sort, and according to truth, what the devil is whom you serve? As also how he began, and how far his power and authority extends?’
‘Percy, believe me, thou shrivest me very near314 in this latter demand, which concerneth us more deeply than the former and may work us more damage than thou art aware of; yet in hope thou wilt conceal what I tell thee, I will lay open our whole estate plainly and simply unt
o thee as it is. But first I will begin with the opinions of former times, and so hasten forward to that manifeste verum315 that thou seekest.
Some men there be that, building too much upon reason, persuade themselves that there are no devils at all, but that this word dæmon is such another moral of mischief, as the poets’ Dame Fortune is of mishap. For as under the fiction of this blind goddess we aim at the folly of princes and great men in disposing of honours, that oftentimes prefer fools and disgrace wise men, and alter their favours in turning of an eye, as Fortune turns her wheel; so under the person of this old gnathonical316 companion, called the devil, we shroud all subtlety masking under the name of simplicity, all painted holiness devouring widows’ houses, all gray-headed foxes clad in sheep’s garments; so that the devil (as they make it) is only a pestilent humour in a man, of pleasure, profit, or policy, that violently carries him away to vanity, villainy, or monstrous hypocrisy. Under vanity I comprehend not only all vain arts and studies whatsoever, but also dishonourable prodigality, untemperate venery, and that hateful sin of self-love, which is so common amongst us. Under villainy I comprehend murder, treason, theft, cozenage, cut-throat covetise, and such like. Lastly, under hypocrisy, all machiavellism, puritanism, and outward glozing with a man’s enemy, and protesting friendship to him that I hate and mean to harm, all underhand cloaking of bad actions with commonwealth pretences and, finally, all Italianate conveyances, as to kill a man and then mourn for him, quasi vero317 it was not by my consent; to be a slave to him that hath injured me, and kiss his feet for opportunity of revenge; to be severe in punishing offenders, that none might have the benefit of such means but myself; to use men for my purpose and then cast them off; to seek his destruction that knows my secrets; and such as I have employed in any murder or stratagem, to set them privily together by the ears, to stab each other mutually, for fear of bewraying me; or, if that fail, to hire them to humour one another in such courses as may bring them both to the gallows.