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 On the endless road of popular culture, there has always
been a genre of entertainment which supposedly reveals the mysteries of
the underworld. Although whatever insight might be exposed, from the
canting jargon to the details of a crime, accuracy seems to take a
back seat to satisfying curiosity and a need for sensationalism.
Today, there are interesting things to be learned about ourselves by
reading the peculiar genre of Elizabethan pamphleteering known as rogue
literature. Popular with all levels of literate society, these slender
books purported to set down the manner by which con artists of all types
might abscond with decent peoples' money and goods. Ostensibly written as
a public service, to warn and arm society against rogues of all types, in
their fascinating variety, they are an Elizabethan version of mob stories,
with curious and lurid detail. This interest with the underworld and the
seamiest side of life is one which has obvious parallels in modern times,
particularly with readers who are most threatened by and distanced from
such criminals.
This so-called practical element of defending the populace against
these all-too-prevalent creatures falls to second place against the
pleasure of reading about others who have been hoodwinked by them (and
better still, hearing the details about rogues who have been caught
in the
act and punished). This book is a compilation of several rogue pamphlets
published in England between 1552-1612, including some by the playwrights
Robert Greene
and Thomas Dekker. While specialists in Elizbethan literature are no doubt
familiar with these works, they are generally little known, except by
title or reputation (—one might say the same thing about a book such
as
Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, which few have ever read full through).
The plays of Jonson, Dekker, and Greene certainly abound with characters
such as appear exposed in these works; Shakespeare less often, although A
Winter's Tale, Henry IV, and King Lear have overtones of roguery
and vagabondage. [In the latest issue of The Elizabethan Review note
the reference to one of these works,
cited by Delia Bacon (ER, Spring 98)].
In the first pamphlet, A Manifest Detection of Diceplay,
Gilbert Walker maintains that he is "disclosing the principal of
practices of the cheaters' crafty faculty." These disclosures consist
of anecdotes, which are among the most amusing in the book, even
though written early (1552)— Viz. a bawd who was preparing
a draught of ultra-astringent "sweet-water" to shrink the less-than-virginal
cavity of an advertised "virgin," finds that her kitchen boy has
mistakenly washed his face with it, and has become as puckered
as a pickled prune, with barely any face visible.
From a philological standpoint, the vocabulary describing these
types is varied and enormous. Many of the pamphlets collected in Rogues,
Vagabonds, and Sturdy Beggars (—a phrase apparently coined
by Elizabeth, in a proclamation against them), detail nothing more
than elaborate lists of what each brand of perpetrator is
called, what their con-game is, and what lingo is peculiar to their
kind. Viz. Palliard, Whipjack, Kintchin-Cos, Hooker, Swigman,
Jarkman, Tinkard, Curtal, Queerbird, Jacks of the Clock-House...
it is heady stuff, musical and ironic, invented by desperate people
who guarded their language to disarm their victims. A hooker,
by the way, was someone who went about with a long staff, on the
end of which was affixed an iron hook; he would pass by villages
where laundry was airing or drying from upper stories, and remotely
filch selected duds. It smacks of a quaintness which could only
be Elizabethan, and only then thought of as something so vile and
wicked as to be punishable in the typically brutal manner of Elizabeth's
time.
Some of the cant phrases and descriptors were invented by friars
displaced from the monasteries closed by Henry VIII, and have a
latinate flavor (Quaroms, Patrico, Autem-Mort); some were
brought over from soldiers and sailors, who when their assignments
were over, could find no other source of income than cozening to
stay alive. But some of these terms are probably invented whole
cloth by the pamphleteers, never to be used, or heard outside the
pages of the book. After all, ever-changing slang and gutter jargon—then
and now —refuses to be pinned down; words would be changed as soon
as the jig were up. When John Awdley, in The Fraternity of Vagabonds (1561)
lists such rogues as the Curry Favel—one who lies abed all
day and curries his coverlets rather than his horse—the ring of
truth seems subjugated to the need for a long list of colorfully-named
perps, the burden of which seem dearly bought. Thomas Harman's A
Caveat For Common Cursitors (1566) not only has expanded definitions
of these varied street-denizens (Swaddlers, Dummerers, Doxies,
Demanders-for-Glimmer), but goes so far as to classify and name
actual persons living in Middlesex County at the time.
"Upright Men:
Harry Smith. He driveleth when he speaketh.
Thomas Gray: His toes be gone."
He completes this Baedeker of baseness with a glossary of terms and
a sort of Berlitz dialogue:
Rogue: "She hath a Cackling-cheat, a grunting-cheat,
ruff-peck, cassan, and poplar of yarrum."
[Meaning:] "She hath a hen, a pig, bacon, cheese & milk porridge."
Linguistically, Harman's introductory essay to the reader holds one
of those odd mirrors to the times, which spring up now and then in
unlikely places. Under the guise of proving his honesty in the pamphlet
to follow, he writes:
"I thought it necessary, at this second impression, to
acquaint thee with a great fault... calling these vagabonds cursitors in
the entitling of my book, as runners or rangers... derived of this
Latin word curro. Neither do I write it Cooresetores with
a double oo, or cowresetors, with a w, which
hath another signification.
His fussiness over spelling (in 1566, mind) is apposite to those
who insist that Elizabethan orthography was haphazard and devoid
of rules. Looking at the title page (typographically reproduced in
the notes), we see
A Caueat
FOR COMMEN CVR
SETORS VVLGARELY CALLED
Vagabones...
— what are we to make of that immediate contradiction? (It
is further complicated by the Stationer's Register calling
it a "Cavaiat
for commen Torsetors" and our editor referring to it
as "Common
Curstors")—but Harman's text goes on further:
"Is there no diversity between a gardein and a garden, maynteynaunce and maintenance, streytes and stretes?
Those that have understanding know there is a great difference."
Although one has the feeling Harman is talking about an ideal
which could be seldom attained in his day, his protestations against mis-readings
and sloppy spelling is worth reading in its entirety.
At the end of his life, (1591-2), Robert Greene published A
Notable Discovery of Cozenage and The Black Book's Messenger,
both of which pessimistically portray life in London to be frought
with all sorts of characters out to swindle at every turn. It is a
great comedy in the guise of cautionary tales, divided into The
Art of Cony Catching and The Art of Crosbiting both of which
are so minutely examined that the descriptions become more than the "how-to's" seen
in the previous works, they have become playlets. The descriptions
contain dialogue, action cues, characterizations, and complex motives,
as thorough as in any of Greene's theater works.
As the genre hit its stride and began to decline, Thomas Dekker's work
in Lanthorne and Candle- Light (1608) displays much the same attributes
as other cony-catching pamphlets, yet Dekker seems more in control of
his material. He too, has comprehensive descriptions of the same types
we have read about before, but he drops them for more easily-readable
terms, and organizes his material in a more popular manner. He calls
the various predators and victims by more common names, making his enumerated
encounters almost allegorical. Thus we hear of not only conies being
caught, but the warrens in which they live, and ferrets who root them
out. We hear of falconers and concomittant falconry images: casting lures
and bait, Tercel-Gentles, anglers with jades, and such material so rich
in metaphor, it nearly out-lingoes the rogues themselves.
Dekker also makes use of familiar plays to draw comparisons, everything
from Doctor Doddypol to Hamlet. It is a novel approach,
one which causes the material to be more accessible to a mass audience.
In context with the rest of the collection, it is evident that the rogue
genre has branched onto paths which intersect with the highways of the
commonplace; where the anecdotes become diluted into everyday speech
and literature.
The remaining selection, Samuel Rid's The Art of Juggling, seems
pale in comparison, and is literally, a handbook on magic tricks; no
longer shocking, no longer challenging in its language, it is flat and
derivative. The road fans out and disappears.
These reprints are carefully collated and selected by Arthur Kinney
with an eye toward showing the progression in style with a minimum of
intrusion in the body of the work. However, this is despite an introduction
which is inexplicably heavy-handed, with notes glossing the obvious,
giving an alarming impression of the editor. One sample of a dozen suffices
in his giving an authentic Elizabethan quote:
"..men that are abroade se[e]kinge the spoile and confusion
of land are able, if they weare [were] reduced to good subjeccion
[subjection] to give the greatest enimie [enemy] her Majestie hath a stronge
battell
[battle]; And as they ar[e] nowe they are so mych [much] strength..."
Indeed, this is commenting on sand in the desert. However, in the bulk
of the text Mr.Kinney updates the spelling (and why not do that in the
introduction—spare the reader these overelucidations), and we are generally
free from his fussy explications. One which persists, however, is his
expansion of "I[n] th[e]" —an Elizabethan locution if there ever was one, typographically
spoiled by pedanticism.
His footnotes are thorough, if bewildering. Tyburn, for example,
is glossed no fewer than four times in the text, and not always in the
same way. Later, the footnotes inexplicably jump from number 64 to 67.
The two missing notes make their appearance later on, and we are treated
also to 61a, 61b, and 81a. Surely in a reprint, there is the opportunity
to sort such tangles out. There is no need to strew such a scholarly
path with brambles.
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ogues, Vagabonds, and Sturdy Beggars