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Original Research on Elizabethan Authorship Issues Dedicated to the Ever-Living Memory of Ruth L. Miller (1922-2005) |
The Harvey-Nashe Quarrel and Love's Labor's Lost
by Robert Detobel and K.C. Ligon; copyright 2009 PART TWO
In Nashe's mind Harvey's Familiar letters of 1580 and his pamphlets of 1592-3 were so closely interwoven that in Have With You to Saffron-Walden he four times confuses them. The 'confusion' is without doubt on purpose; to mistake one event for the other is to underscore their unity. As he does in his dedication of Strange News (1592), in which he insinuates clearly enough that Harvey's Four Letters are a repetition of his Three Familiar Letters in 1580: "veterem ferendo iniuriam inuitas nouam, which is as much in English as, one cup of nippitaty pulls on another" [Nashe, I.255], less freely translated, "an old injury incites a new one". In Have With You (1596) he chooses the oblique way, conflating four times Harvey's Four Letters of 1592 with the Three Familiar Letters of 1580:
On page 69: "... and afterward, in the year when the earthquake was, he fell to be a familiar Epistler, & made Paul's Churchyard resound or cry twang again with four [our emphasis] notable famous letters: in one of which he interlaced his short but yet sharp judicial of earthquakes, & came very short and sharp upon my Lord of Oxford in a rattling bundle of English hexameters." [Ibid., 69]
Nashe can not possibly have thought that the earthquake of 1580, on which Harvey commented in Three Familiar Letters, had happened in 1592. And in other places he is well aware that "Speculum Tuscanismi" was written in 1580.
On page 78: "I had forgot to observe unto you, out of his first four familiar Epistles, his ambitious stratagem to aspire, that whereas two great Peers being at jar, and their quarrel continued to bloodshed, he would needs... step in the one side, which indeed was the safer side... and hew and slash with his Hexameters, but hewed and slashed he had been as small as chippings, if he had not played duck Friar and hid himself eight weeks in that nobleman's house for whom with his pen he thus bladed. Yet nevertheless Sir James Croft, the old Controller, ferreted him out, and had him under hold in the Fleet a great while, taking that to be aimed & leveled against him, because he called him his old Controller, which he had most venomously belched against Doctor Perne." It is not certain that Nashe's report is in all points correct, but it is known that Harvey was in Leicester's house for a while, after having written his hexameters against the Earl of Oxford; Nashe must also have known that all this happened in 1580. In 1592, when Harvey wrote his Four Letters, Dr. Perne and Sir James Croft were dead.
On page 80: "as those ragged remnants in his four familiar epistles twixt him and Senior Immerito, raptim scripta, Nosti manum & stylum [the hand and style you know], with innumerable other of his rable routs." [Ibid., 80]
Again, the letters exchanged with Spenser were published in 1580 in Three Familiar Letters, the title of the pamphlet of 1592 is "Four Letters", but not "Four Familiar Letters". Four Letters contains in an appendix a sonnet of Spenser but no letter. Then, only the third letter of 1580 containing the libel on Oxford is subscribed "nosti manum & stylum" ["the well-known hand and pen"]. Finally, in 1592 Spenser no longer used the pseudonym Immerito. It is difficult to believe that Nashe was not aware of it (in Pierce Penniless, in 1592, he addresses Spenser by name, not as Immerito). But he mixes up these letters with Harvey's Four Letters of 1592 and his New Letter of Notable Contents of 1593.
On page 127 of Have With You he writes: "as also his writing the wellwiller's Epistlein praise of himself, before his Four Letters a year ago. The compositor that set it swore to me it came under his own hand." [Ibid., III.127]
"A year ago" indicates that Nashe was writing these lines in 1593 or early in 1594, two years before publication. But there is no such epistle of a welwilling friend in Four Letters in 1592, only in Three Familiar Letters in 1580.
Hence, Nashe tells us five times that the letters of 1580 and 1592-3 are parts of one and the same story. Sidney, dead for 6-7 years, had nothing to do with it. It is the earl of Oxford who stood at the center in 1580 and 1592-3 as well. Oxford did not react in 1580, except via Robert Greene in Mammillia II. Nor did Oxford react in 1593... except via Shakespeare, who remains unnamed in the quarrel itself.
As for Harvey, let us first hear what the Arden editor has to say. He does note that there are obvious parallels between Harvey's writings and his depiction by Nashe on the one hand, and Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost on the other. "Holofernes whom he more unmercifully mocks — and indeed the very name Holofernes might be one of the distortions to which Nashe subjects that of Harvey. Holofernes is attended by an obsequious clerical shadow, just as Gabriel was by his parson brother Richard. Armado pawns his linen, as Harvey was said to have done to pay his printer, and is stingy as Harvey to his dependants. The objections to each identification are equally extensive, not the least being the strength of the rival claim. To note only single difficulties in addition, Holofernes's precise pronunciation seems as remote from Harvey (who wrote ‘dettor' and was all for modernity) as does Armado's romantic passion for Jacquenetta. In Love's Labour's Lost Harvey is still to seek."
[Love's Labour's Lost, Arden edition, p. xxxvii.]
Holofernes, though, is rather the incarnation of the pedant pure and simple, the counterpart of Sidney's Rhombus in The Lady of May. As such he shares some features with Harvey, the English "Tubalcain" who invented the English hexameter. But it is in Armado that Harvey is fully caricaturized. He that has still to seek him, must be very loath to find him.
Even the Arden editor cannot overlook that Armado's letters brim over with Harveian phraseology, especially the second letter of Three Familiar Letters on the earthquake:
"that the Earth under us quaked, and the house shaked above: besides the moving, and ratling of the table, and forms, where we sat...And the last final, which we are to judge of as advisedly, and providently, as possibly we can, by the consideration, & comparison of Circumstances, the time when: the place where: the qualities, and dispositions of the persons, amongst whom such, and such an Ominous token is given." [Harvey, I. 41 and 63]
In Love's Labour's Lost (I.i.227-240):
"The time When? About the sixth hour; when beasts
most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down to that nourishment
which is called supper. So much for the time When. Now for the
ground Which? which, I mean, I upon; it is ycleped thy park. Then
for the place Where? where, I mean, I did encounter that obscene
and most prepost'rous event that draweth from my snow-white pen
the ebon-coloured ink which here thou viewest, beholdest,
surveyest, or seest."
It may be objected to it that in his letter Harvey simply applied the rules from Thomas Wilson's Art of Rhetorique, but the language of the whole passage is Harvey's, not Wilson's.
According to Harvey himself, he had once wielded notable influence on young people. The context suggests that these young people were authors. Harvey, according to Robert Greene's quip, was the inventor of English hexameter. It is a fact that both Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser experimented with hexametric verse. The latter even wrote Harvey: "I like your hexameters exceedingly well, that I also ensure my pen sometime in that kind: which I find indeed, as I have heard you often defend in words, neither so hard, nor so harsh, that it will easily and fairly yield itself to our mother tongue." [Ibid., I.35] Spenser was not writing out of mere courtesy to his friend, but nonetheless neither he nor Sidney did carry the experiment very far. Harvey, who lacked poetical talent, seems not to have understood that his failure to establish the hexameter in English poetry and himself as preceptor of English literature was due to the fact "that our vulgar Saxon English standing most upon words monosyllable, and little upon polysyllables, doth hardly admit the use of those fine invented feet of the Greek & Latins" [Puttenham. Art of English Poesie, pp. 112-3] and not, as he thought, to the inimical endeavours of others: "I had no sooner shaken off my young troop, whom I could not associate as before, but they were festivally re-entertained by some nimble wights, that could take advantage of opportunity... like ambitious planets that enhance their own dignities by the combustion of their fellow-planets... Iwis [surely] it were purer euphuism to win honey out of the thistle... Tush, you are a silly humanitian of the old world." [Ibid., II.227.]
Euphuism was the literary current running against Harvey. It is Lyly who was his adversary as early as 1580, it was Greene whom he attacked in 1592. It was their patron, the earl of Oxford, whom he libeled in 1580. "Needs he must cast up certain crude humours of English hexameter verses that lay upon his stomach; a nobleman stood in his way as he was vomiting, and from top to toe he all to bewrayed him with Tuscanism." [Nashe, I.295]
It was Nashe, whom he attacked in Pierce's Supererogation. We will soon learn who Nashe's patron was.
5. Literature and policy
"Industry" is a key word in Harvey's conception of society and literature. In his three pamphlets of 1592-3 he uses the word about twenty times, seventeen times in Pierce's Supererogation alone. Harvey prefers the active to the contemplative way of life, including poetry. To throw away the useless pen is the counsel he gave to Oxford at Audley End in 1578. It is the lack of deeds he mocks in his libel on Oxford in 1580 in his Three Familiar Letters. It is certainly Oxford he means when in the second part of Pierces Supererogation, written in 1589, he writes "It is not the first time that I have preferred a Gentleman of deeds before a Lord of words: and what if I once by way of familiar discourse said?" [Harvey, II.200] In the same pamphlet he regrets to have been compelled to use his pen in a quarrel with Nashe instead of serving "an active and industrious world." [Ibid., II.34] with it. He values mathematics for the practical results, hence, mathematics are "industrious." [Ibid., II.74] Policy and industry are the essence of the new age. [Ibid., II.95]In his Four letters "industry" is contrasted with poetry, Ovid is condemned as a poet who, taking too much poetical license, is obnoxious to the order of the state: "Youth is youth: & age corruptible: better a hundred Ovids were banished than the state of Augustus endangered or a sovereign empire infected... not riot but valour, not fancy but policy must strike the stroke. Gallant gentlemen, bethink yourselves of the old Roman discipline and the new Spanish industry." [Ibid., I.191-2. In his play Poetaster (1601) Ben Jonson takes a similar Augustan stand. Augustus banishes Ovid on grounds similar to those implied in Harvey's rejection of Ovid]Shakespeare seems to be poking fun at it in Love's Labour's Lost when he has the Spanish Don Armado close one of his letters to Jacquenetta with the phrase "Thine in the dearest design of industry". (IV.i.87). The formula is odd. The Arden editor notes that Harvey uses the word several times, but misses Harvey's "Spanish industry" and the parodying character in Shakespeare's play. The only instance he retains is Harvey's praise of Sidney as "esquire of industry." [Ibid., II.102]
Nashe would deride the expression profusely. [Nashe, III.49-50] And further, "One Ovid was too much for Rome; and one Greene too much for London: but one Nashe more intolerable than both.." [Harvey, II.94]But in "Speculum Tuscanismi", his libel on Oxford, Harvey also rubbed Greene's and Nashe's patron's nose (as will be seen) in his political credo, "Nosed like to Naso."
Thus a literary quarrel begun with a libel of Edward de Vere. In his pamphlets Nashe pours ridicule on his adversary Harvey. In the subplot of the play Love's Labour's Lost Shakespeare pokes fun at him. But not once does the name Shakespeare surface in this quarrel. It is Oxford who inhabits the centre.
6. Nashe's mysterious fellow-writerAn unidentified ghost frequents Harvey's pamphlet Pierce's Supererogation. From the very beginning he sides with Nashe, alias Pierce Penniless. He is the "old Ass" in the subtitle of Pierce's Supererogation - A New Praise of the Old Ass. The identity of this "old ass" has attracted little to no curiosity from literary historians, though according to Harvey this "old ass" is the dominating figure of the literary world. Why has no-one ever been eager to know who this figure was? Is it because the "old ass" has been overshadowed by the gigantic shadow of 'William Shakespeare'? But in Harvey's pamphlet William Shakespeare is a non-entity, never named, never alluded to. The old ass, on the contrary, looms large, so large that his great mantle seems worthy only of Shakespeare.
Harvey published his pamphlet in September 1593. He finished the preliminary pamphlet A New Letter of Notables Contents, written later but published earlier, on 16 September 1593. [Pierce's Supererogation consists of three parts. Part 1 and 3 are directed against Nashe. These parts are dated 27 April 1593 by Harvey. Part 2, a reply to Lyly's lambasting of Harvey in the anti-Martiniest pamphlet Papp with a Hatchet in 1589, is separately dated 5 November 1589. The prefatory matter to Pierce's Supererogation is dated 16 July 1593. A New Letter of Notable Contents is dated 16 September 1593. It constitutes a reply to Nashe's peace proposal in the preface to the first edition of Christ's Tears over Jerusalem. Nashe's work mustalready have been printed when it was entered in the Stationers' Register on 8 September 1593 and published immediately afterwards, otherwise Harvey could not have responded on 16 September.] On 21 September 1593 William Reynolds, a mentally deranged soldier, writes a letter to Lord Burghley from which it appears that by that time he had read Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis. "There is another boke made of Venus and Adonis wherein the queen represents the person of Venus, which queen is in great love (forsooth) with Adonis, and greatly desires to kiss him, and she woos him most entirely, teling him although she be old, yet she is lusty, fresh & moist, full of love & life (I beleve a goodel more than a bushel full)... and much ado with red & white, but Adonis regarded her not, wherefore she condemns him for unkindness, those bookes are mingled with other stuff to dazzle the matter." [Duncan-Jones, Katherine. "Much Ado With Red and White: The Earliest Readers of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis (1593) in The Review of English Studies, New Series, Volume XLIV, Number 176, November 1993, p. 488 (modernized spelling).] Can it be possible that in the month of September 1593 the lunatic soldier Reynolds would have read Shakespeare and that the scholar Gabriel Harvey, Edmund Spenser's friend, would have known less than the man in the moon? In the third of his Four Letters written in September 1592 he mentions several authors: "Edmund Spenser, Richard Stanyhurst, Abraham Fraunce, Thomas Watson, Samuel Daniel, Thomas Nash, and the rest." Is Shakespeare simply lumped in with the nameless "rest"? Or among others who Harvey mentions in the same context: "the honorabler sons & daughters of the sweetest & divinest muses that ever sang in English or other language" whom he dares not name "for fear of suspicion of that which I abhor" [Harvey, Works, I. 218-9], namely to meddle with the affairs of the nobility as he had done in 1580. In his New Letter of Notable Contents he names of course Nashe and Greene, and also Marlowe. In Pierce's Supererogation, dated 27 April 1593 (the pamphlet proper) and 16 July 1593 (the prefatory matter), but not entered in the Stationers' Register until September 1593, he mentions not only Greene, Marlowe, Nashe and Chettle but also: Thomas Deloney, Philip Stubbs, Robert Armin and 10 pages later George Gascoigne, Thomas Churchyard, Floyd, Barnabe Rich, Whetstone, Anthony Munday, Stanyhurst, Abraham Fraunce, Thomas Watson and the rather obscure Kiffin (most probably Bartholomew Griffin), William Warner, Samuel Daniel, etc. [Harvey, Works, II. 280 and 290] It is true that he does not mention Michael Drayton, who published his sonnet cycle Idea and his epic poem The Legend of Piers Gaveston in 1593. However, the latter work cannot have been printed in September, as it was registered on 3 December 1593. Idea was registered on 23 April 1593, 5 days after Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis. In September 1593 Drayton could still be seen as a newcomer with few credentials. But Shakespeare? His Venus and Adonis was immediately a great success. But to Harvey the biggest figure in the world of English literature was not Shakespeare, but the "old ass". We have to wait some time to meet him again after the title-page. After a long-winded preface and a bulky load of commendatory poems the pamphlet proper starts on page 31. On page 40 the old ass is back:
"Happy the old father, that begat, and thrice happy the sweet Muses,
that suckled, and fostered young Apuleius... I go not about to
discover an Ass in an Oxes hide..."
So we have an old "father" or "founder", probably the old golden ass of Apuleius, and a young ass in an Ox hide. The young ass is Nashe. Who fathered him? We will meet this ox again. We can only hope that Harvey will be less cryptic in the course of his polemic.
On page 59 the old ass is more explicitly mentioned as the companion of the young ass:
"Divers excellent men have praised the old Ass: give the young ass leave to praise himself, and to practise his minion rhetoric upon other."
Who were these divers excellent men who praised the old ass? The phrase reminds us of the "divers of worship" who we know from Chettle's apology lauded the third playwright for his "facetious grace of writing". Given the slender information it would be overrash to relate Harvey's allusion to Chettle's apology. Fortunately, Harvey will tell us more. On page 69:
"He that breedeth mountains of hope, and with much ado begetteth a molehill (shall I tell him a new tale in old English?), beginneth like a mighty Oxe, & endeth like a sory Ass."
We may understand the "new tale in old English" as the biblical new wine in the old bottles. The old tale must be about the old ass, the new tale about the young one, Thomas Nashe. Nashe would breed great hope but suffer the fate of the old ass, who began like a mighty ox but whose fortunes, apparently, had decayed. On page 79 Harvey gains in clarity:
"Marvel not, that Erasmus has penned the encomium of folly; or that
so many singular learned men have laboured the commendation of the Ass: he it is, that is the godfather of writers, the superintendant of the press, the muster-maister of innumerable bands, the general of the great field: he and Nashe will confute the world... He that has christened so many notable authors; censured so many eloquent pens; enrolled so many worthy garrisons; & encamped so many noble and reverend Lords, may be bold with me. If I be an ass, I have company enough: and if I be no ass, I have favour to be enstalled in such company."
It should be clear by now that Harvey is not speaking of an imaginary figure. "Godfather of the press", "muster master", "general of the field". He certainly could be speaking of the Earl of Oxford and those known to have been his servants or followers: John Lyly, Anthony Munday, Thomas Watson, Robert Greene, Thomas Churchyard, Nashe himself. Is there anybody else who could fit the picture? Certainly not Shakespeare. And was not Melicertus, which was the pastoral name given by Chettle to Shakespeare in 1603, called by Robert Greene in his romance Menaphon the "general of the shepherds", or the poets? We are confronted with the same problem as in the case of Melicertus. Either the "old ass" is an important, the most important precursor of Shakespeare or he is Shakespeare himself. So it seems legitimate to continue asking questions about the old ass.
Furthermore, Harvey's report of this old ass might cause us to begin thinking about the notion of "conspiracy". Here is an important author and patron, often spoken of but never explicitly named. No conspiracy was at work, the social standards of the time were. Harvey does not grow weary of repeating that this old ass played a major role in English literature and was a close friend of Nashe, even his patron and spiritual father. Nashe is named. The old ass is never named. And has not Shakespeare been thought close to Nashe? But Nashe does not mention him. Was this Nashe's "conspiracy"? ??
On page 121 follows a queue of convoluted sentences the meaning of which is not easy to grasp:
"He summed all in brief, but material sum; that called the old Ass, the great A, and the est Amen of the new Supererogation. And were I here compelled to dispatch abruptly, (as I am presently called to a more commodious exercice) should I not sufficiently have discharged my task; and plentifully have commended that famous creature, whose praise the title of this pamphlet professes? He that would honor Alexander, may crown him the great A. of puissance: but Pyrrhus, Hannibal, Scipio, Pompey, Cæsar, divers other mighty conquerors & even some worthies would disdaine, to have him sceptered the est-Amen of Valour. What a brave and incomparable Alexander is that great A that is also the est-Amen of Supererogation."
The passage does not end here but a pause to gather breath seems welcome. The meaning is clouded in allusions which are soon dispelled, though, if we look back to Harvey's libel of Oxford, "Speculum Tuscanismi". In 1593 Harvey renews his attack against Oxford, the old ass, by attacking the young ass, Thomas Nashe. It was in "Speculum Tuscanismi" Harvey had described the earl of Oxford as "Every one A per se A, his terms, and braveries in print" and "Eyed like to Argus, eared like to Midas, nosed like to Naso,/Winged like to Mercury, fittest of a thousand to be employed,/ This, nay more than this does practice of Italy in one year. None do I name...". "A per se A" or "A per se" is the letter A standing alone, the first letter of the alphabet, meaning "incomparable" with the connotation of the beginning. The old ass is an outstanding person; "a passing singular odd man", Harvey calls him in his libel. The beginning and the end, after which there is nothing more, the "est-Amen". Yet Harvey renews his strictures of 1578 and 1580. The "old ass", too, is only "valourous" in words, not in deeds, only a "great general" in the literary world, which is why the great generals of the past would disdain him. Literary accomplishments are vain, supererogatory, if not serving a more valourous end, so Harvey's creed. And the ears of Midas, of course, were ass's ears which Apollo gave him when he decided a musical contest between Apollo and Pan in favour of the latter. The rest of the passage should no longer present difficulties:
"Shall I say, blessed, or peerless young Apuleius, that from the swathing bands of his infancy in print, was suckled of the sweetest nurses... and more tenderly tendered of the most delicious Muses, the most amiable Graces, and the most powerful Virtues of the said unmatchable great A., the great founder of supererogation and sole patron of such meritorious clients."
On page 261 Harvey confirms another time that the old ass and Nashe were close fellows:
"The Ox and the Ass are good fellows".
The phrase stands isolated amidst an enumeration of other beasts. But this enumeration coming from the pen of a consummate classicist like Harvey presents some peculiarities. Harvey seems to be sneaking round something he would fain express in a less veiled manner.
"Virtuous Italy in a longer term of dominion, with much ado bred two
Catos, and One Regulus: but how many Sylvios, Porcios, Brutos,
Bestias, Tauros, Vitellios, Capras, Capellas, Asinios, and so forth.
The world was never given to singularities: and no such monster, as Excellency. He that speaketh as other use to speak, avoideth trouble: and he that doth, as most men do, shall be least wondred at. The Ox and the Ass are good fellows, quaint wizards..."
We should not be deceived by Harvey's devious tactics. He feigns speaking of politics and history, of Cato and Regulus, Brutus, Vitellius, and Anisius. He so does, manifestly. But latently he also speaks of the ox and the ass and of poetry. Porcius is the family name of the two Catos, porcius means pig. Vitellius ist the name of a Roman emperor, vitellius means egg yolk, Brutus is clear enough, Capras is a family name, capra is a goat, Asinius is a Roman family name, asinus is ass. The ox is also present as bull, taurus. But most of the endings are Greek. 'Os' is not a Latin but a Greek ending. Except for taurus, no approximately analogous Greek noun exists for one of the animals. Besides, the Greek did not build their family names after the names of animals and plants as Romans did. To what other end would Harvey, the accomplished classicist, replace the Latin ending by a Greek ending than to insinuate that he is not really speaking of the historical figures but of the "poetical animals", the ox and the ass? And what does Harvey mean by his warning not to try to stand out from the common lot? He had already launched such a warning the previous year in his Four Letters, interestingly by citing Ovid as the wrong example the "ass and his fellow ox" would be following.
Two pages later, on page 263, Harvey, finally, refers to fully identifiable events. He compares the press to a kingdom, namely the ancient kingdom of Assyria, for the sole reason that the use of the name of this kingdom gives him the opportunity to continue his punning on "ass". Proud of his invention he explains the pun at considerable length. Harvey writes sonnets with footnote-sonnets and tells jokes with footnotes. The king of Assyria or the press is Phul-Assar, that is "full ass"-- Nashe, of course. Another "noble King of Assyria" is "Lob-assar-duck", who is clearly Henry Chettle. What Harvey means by this peculiar name is not clear. In part II we advanced the hypothesis that Harvey conveyed Greene's papers to the printer, and might have foisted something into them before transmitting them to John Danter and Chettle; if correct, the nickname "Lob-assar-duck" for Chettle would be understandable, as he would have made a "sitting duck" of the lob or lout Chettle. Be that as it may, Chettle is perfectly recognizable. Harvey refers to the passage in Chettle's tale Kindheart's Dream where the ghost of Robert Greene appears, urging Piers to take up his defense against Harvey's denigrations in Four Letters. "Pierce, more witless than penniless; more idle than thine adversaries ill-employed; what foolish innocence hath made thee (infant-like) resistless to bear whatever injury Envy can impose." When Chettle wrote these lines (probably in November or December 1592) he might have already been setting Nashe's reply to Harvey, Strange News, at John Danter's printing shop. Chettle continues, "Had not my name been Kind-heart, I would have sworn this has been sent to myself; for in my life I was not more penniless than at that instant. But remembering the author of the Supplication, I laid it aside till I had leisure to seek him". It is to these lines that Harvey refers: "Lob-assar-duck, another noble king of Assyria, has already offered fare for it, & were it not that the great Phul Assur himself had forestalled and engrossed all the commodities of Assyria... it should have gone very hard, but this redoubted Lob-assar-duck would have retailed and regrated some precious part of the said commodities and advancement."
But then Harvey also mentions a third king of the "Ass-ar" or "Ass-ur dynasty", the founder and father of Phul-Assur/Nashe. We would expect that this founder is the same as the aforesaid "godfather of the press", the "old ass" and would be called "Phul Vestustass", "full-old ass" or something similar, but Harvey writes, "Phul Assar himself, the famous son of the renowned Phul Bullochus", that is, "full bullock" or "full ox". We may definitively conclude that Nashe is the young ass, the son of the old ass, and that the old ass and the ox are one and the same father of Nashe.
Taking stock once more, we see that on the one hand it has sometimes been suggested that Nashe might have had a hand in or in some way contributed to some of Shakespeare's works, especially the plays Henry VI, Henry IV, and Love's Labour's Lost. A close relationship must at some time have existed between Nashe and Shakespeare. But nothing is to be learned of Shakespeare from Nashe. On the other hand, there is an author who occupies this place left vacant by Shakespeare and is called the Old Ass, alias Ox.
On page 265 Nashe is again designated as the "heir apparent of the old Ass". And on page 322 we meet Nashe and Chettle again as members of a quintet. The other members are Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, and Apis lapis. Nashe is accused by Harvey of having "shamefully misused every friend or acquaintance, as he has served some of his favorablest patrons (whom for certain respects I am not to name), M. Apis lapis, Greene, Marlowe, Chettle, and whom not?". But M. Apis lapis is not named either. For which "respects"? Moreover, Apis lapis is not only an author but also a patron, the patron to whom Nashe dedicated Strange News the year before. We have just met Chettle and Nashe as kings of the "Assyrian dynasty" or the press. Greene and Marlowe were not named there. They were dead by September 1593. So, it is logical to take the name Apis lapis chosen by Nashe as the third of Harvey's "assyrian dynasty of the press", Phul Bullochus, full ox. And so Harvey authenticates the analysis of some Oxfordians [Phillips, Gerald W. Lord Burghley in Shakespeare, London: Thornton-Butterworth, 1936, p. 62; Barrell, Charles Wisner. "New Milestone in Shakespeare Research - Contemporary Proof that the Poet Earl of Oxford's Literary Nickname Was "Gentle Master William", The Shakespeare Fellowship Quarterly, October 1944; Ogburn, Charlton. The Mysterious William Shakespeare. McLean, VA: EPM Publications, Inc. 1984, p. 725. ] who have argued that Apis lapis, alias Master William, does indeed mean Master Beeston(e) but at the same time signifies "stoned bull", Apis meaning the sacred Egyptian bull and "stone" "stoned" or "castrated", hence bullock or ox. Apparently, Harvey also understood it so, naming him in one place Apis lapis, in another "Phul Bullochus".
But where is William Shakespeare? He was not absent. He was a party to the Harvey-Nashe quarrel. As William Shakespe[a]re on the title-page of Love's Labour's Lost. Shakespeare must have been intimately acquainted with Harvey and Nashe. In his second letter of Four Letters Harvey speaks of the "banquet of pickled herrings and Renish wine" which would have been the immediate cause of Greene's mortal illness. Harvey knows that Nashe was present at that "banquet". "Alas, even his fellow-writer, a proper young man if advised in time, that was a principal guest at that fatal banquet..." [Harvey, Works, I.170.] The phrasing implies that there were some other guests besides Nashe. Which Nashe confirms in Strange News. "I and one of my fellows, Will. Monox (hast thou never heard of him and his great dagger?) were in company with him a month before he died, at that fatal banquet of Rhenish wine and pickled herring (if thou will needs have it so)." [Nashe, Works, I.287-8] Nashe's comment suggests that the "banquet of Rhenish wine and pickled herrings" should perhaps be understood rather metaphorically. [Rhenish wine or white wine seems to have been a drink of literati and contain an allusion to Falstaff (see next chapter); "pickle-herring" was perhaps a poor poet's meal.] In 1593 Harvey himself several times puns on the word "ox". But in September 1592, in his Four Letters, he dares not name this Will. Monox, he even dares not state there was a third person. So to speak, Harvey could not pronounce the word "three". Remembering that "tapster", "literature from the tavern", and "villanism" were terms which Harvey regularly applied to the kind of literature Nashe and his ilk produced, we may re-read the following passage in Love's Labour's Lost which Alfred Harbage and others would probably place into the category of stale jokes. The passage looks indeed pale and relatively witless... until we see Don Armado as Harvey and Moth as Nashe. Moth/Nashe teases Armado/Harvey by asking to what amounts three times one and two plus one (deuce-ace). Like Harvey in his Four letters, Armado shies away from saying "three":
Armado. I have promised to study three years with the Duke.
Moth. You may do it in an hour, sir.
Armado. Impossible.
Moth. How many is one thrice told?
Armado. I am ill at reck'ning; it fitteth the spirit of a tapster.
Moth. You are a gentleman and a gamester, sir.
Armado. I confess both; they are both the varnish of a complete man.
Moth. Then I am sure you know how much the gross sum of deuce-ace amounts to.
Armado. It doth amount to one more than two.
Moth. Which the base vulgar do call three.
Armado. True. (I.ii.34-46)
In September 1592 Harvey could not say three. In September 1593, probably encouraged by Nashe's own pert allusions to Oxford, he feels much surer and, following Nashe's example, alludes himself to Oxford with a veil through which it is still possible for us to see.
Copyright 2009 Robert Detobel
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