English drama -- Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600 -- History and criticism
If Lamb had known and read the first work published by Rowley, it is
impossible to imagine that it would not have been honored by the tribute
of some passing and priceless word. Why it has never been reissued
(except in a private reprint for the Percy Society) among the many less
deserving and less interesting revivals from the apparently and not
really ephemeral literature of its day would be to me an insoluble
problem, if I were so ignorant as never to have realized the too obvious
fact that chance, pure and simple chance, guides or misguides the
intelligence, and suggests or fails to suggest, the duty of scholars and
of students who have given time and thought to such far from unimportant
or insignificant matters. "A Search for Money; or, a Quest for the
Wandering Knight Monsieur L'Argent," is not comparable with the best
pamphlets of Nash or of Dekker: a competent reader of those admirable
improvisations will at the first opening feel inclined to regard it as a
feeble and servile imitation of their quaint and obsolescent manner; but
he will soon find an original and a vigorous vein of native humor in
their comrade or their disciple. The seekers after the wandering knight,
baffled in their search on shore, are compelled to recognize the sad
fact that "the sea is lunatic, and mad folks keep no money, he would
sink if he were there." The description of an usurer is memorable by
its reference to the first great poet of England, among whose followers
Rowley is far from the least worthy of honor. "His visage (or vizard),
like the artificial Jew of Malta's nose," brings before the reader in
vivid realism the likeness of Alleyn or Burbage as he represented in
grotesque and tragic disguise the magnificent figure of Marlowe's
creative invention or discovery by dint of genius. (I do not remember
the curious verb "to rand" except in this little book: "he randed out
these sentences": I presume it to be the first form of "rant.") The
account of St. Paul's in 1609 is very curious and scandalous: "the very
Temple itself (in bare humility) stood without his cap, and so had stood
many years, many good folks had spoke for him because he could not speak
for himself, and somewhat had been gathered in his behalf, but not half
enough to supply his necessity."
When we pass from "the Temple" to Westminster Hall we come upon a sample
of humor which would be famous if it were the gift of a less
ungratefully forgotten hand.
"Here were two brothers at buffets with angels in their fists about the
thatch that blew off his house into the other's garden and so spoiled a
Hartichoke."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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