Elizabethan Popular Culture

Popular Reading

Popular Reading Greene Raised From the Grave From the title-page to John Dickenson's "Greene in Conceipt," 1598. Someone once said that he didn't care who wrote the nation's laws if he could write its songs. If by songs we mean all that we now call the media which form the public mind, then he had a point. In Elizabethan times the public was always ready (like some people The Bible mentions) to hear a new thing, especially if it was sensational. Thomas Nashe, no mean exploiter of the public taste himself, has this to say in his Anatomy of Absurdity (1589) about some popular writers: Another sort of men there are, who, though not addicted to such counterfeit curiosity, yet are they infected with a farther improbability; challenging knowledge unto themselves of deeper mysteries, whenas with Thales Milesius they see not what is under their feet; searching more curiously into the secrets of nature, whenas in respect of deeper knowledge, they seem mere naturals; coveting with the phoenix to approach so nigh to the sun, that they are scorched with his beams and confounded with his brightness. Who made them so privy to the secrets of the Almighty, that they should foretell the tokens of his wrath, or terminate the time of his vengeance? But lightly some news attends the end of every term, some monsters are booked, though not bred, against vacation times, which are straightway diversely dispersed into every quarter, so that at length they become the alehouse talk of every carter: yea, the country ploughman feareth a Calabrian flood in the midst of a furrow, and the silly shepherd committing his wandering sheep to the custody of his wrap, in his field-naps dreameth of flying dragons, which for fear lest he should see to the loss of his sight, he falleth asleep; no star he seeth in the night but seemeth a comet; he lighteth no sooner on a quagmire, but he thinketh this is the foretold earthquake, whereof his boy hath the ballad. Thus are the ignorant deluded, the simple misused, and the sacred science of astronomy discredited; and in truth what leasings will not make-shifts invent for money? What will they not feign for gain? Hence come our babbling ballads, and our new found songs and sonnets which every rednose fiddler hath at his fingers' ends, and every ignorant ale-knight will breathe forth over the pot, as soon as his brain waxeth hot. Be it a truth which they would tune, they interlace it with a lie or two to make metre, not regarding verity, so they may make up the verse; not unlike to Homer, who cared not what he feigned, so he might make his countrymen famous. But as the straightest things being put into water seem crooked, so the crediblest truths if once they come within compass of these men's wits, seem tales. Were it that the infamy of their ignorance did redound only upon themselves, I could be content to apply my speech otherwise than to their Apuleian [asinine] ears, but sith they obtain the name of our English poets, and thereby make men think more basely of the wits 73 74 Elizabethan Popular Culture of our country, I cannot but turn them out of their counterfeit livery, and brand them in the forehead, that all men may know their falsehood. Well may that saying of Campanus be applied to our English poets, which he spake of them in his time: 'They make (saith he) poetry an occupation, lying is their living, and fables are their movables; if thou takest away trifles, silly souls, they will famish for hunger.' It were to be wished that the acts of the venturous, and the praise of the virtuous were, by public edict, prohibited by such men's merry mouths to be so odiously extolled, as rather breeds detestation than admiration, loathing than liking. What politic councillor or valiant soldier will joy or glory of this, in that some stitcher, weaver, spendthrift or fiddler hath shuffled or slubbered up a few ragged rimes, in the memorial of the one's prudence, or the other's prowess? It makes the learned sort to be silent when they see unlearned sots so insolent. One of the best anonymous plays of the Elizabethan (or any other) period of English literature is Arden of Faversham, based on a...