Thomas Deloney

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Design in Deloney's Jack of Newbury

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SOURCE: "Design in Deloney's Jack of Newbury," in PMLA, Vol. 88, No. 2, March, 1973, pp. 233–39.

[In the essay below, Dorsinville maintains that in Jack of Newbury Deloney inverted the socio-literary tradition of conduct books and treatises regarding the education of a ruler. The critic argues that Jack's household represents a microcosm of a kingdom—and that its monarch has learned the important values of diligence, hard work, and putting his people's welfare above his own.]

Thomas Deloney's use of weavers, shoemakers, and clothiers in his fiction, and his insistence on the worthiness of their occupations through detailed descriptions and energetic dialogues, have led to the belief that his talent for invention was nurtured solely by jest books and other commonplace sources. Deloney's association with the Guilds and the Corporations, moreover, gave credence to the view that realism was the unique mode he found congenial to his celebration of the middle class. That he glorified the trades is indisputable, but the manner by which he chose to do so appears, upon scrutiny, to be less realistic than hitherto believed.

Walter R. Davis first cautioned against the possible arbitrariness of using realism, as technique and world view, with regard to Deloney's fiction. Though jest-book material appears abundant in Jack of Newbury, Davis points out Deloney's originality in adapting jest-book techniques "to structure an ideal."1 And this ideal is "constructed by the progress of a character, both because the ideal springs from the empirical experience of the character and because, having no preexisting status in an intellectual tradition, it must be defined as the book unfolds" (pp. 250–51).

If Jack of Newbury has, strictly speaking, "no preexisting status in an intellectual tradition," Deloney's manner of giving him one rests upon an inversion of the aristocratic tradition rooted in the Greco-Roman concept of the State and the ruler, available to Deloney in numerous Renaissance romances and books of conduct.2 This aristocratic tradition sees the State in the analogue of an interrelated family, bound by duties and privileges, headed by a benevolent, but ethically rigorous, father figure who, of course, is the Philosopher-King.3 Significantly, three motifs order Deloney's design in his first novel, and they revolve around these rules of conduct and patterns of behavior deemed the highest social and ethical aspirations in the Renaissance. I should like to demonstrate that each of these motifs (the State, the Prince, and his Education) is designed for the purpose of "instruction and delight" of a middle-class audience.

First, there is, in Jack of Newbury, the existence of a State created by economics, which recognizes subordination to the political only for reasons of expedience. That this State is autonomous, with its own code of values, its own standards and life style, is substantiated in the second dominant motif: the figure of the ruler, the Prince of that kingdom who is, of course, Jack. Third, there is the didactic motif: how does one become a prince? This last motif produces a variation on all the treatises written since Plato, and is concerned with the formal rules and measures appropriate for the education of the ruler.4

Deloney's kingdom is the class of skilled craftsmen and tradesmen Wright refers to as the middle class.5 It is the increasingly material, utilitarian world where money—its acquisition, cultivation, and production—reigns. Indeed, money is an essential symbol of the secular order emerging out of the spirit of Reformation, as proof of material success becomes a highly significant sign in the Calvinist doctrine of election. As R. H. Tawney says in Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: "So the epitaph, which crowns the life of what is called success, mocks the dreams in which youth hungered, not for success, but for the glorious failure of the martyr or the saint."6 Here, then, is not the world of the Canterbury Tales, where abnegation of material pursuits is necessary for the success of the journey toward the hereafter.7 Where once reunification with the City of God was sought solely in a spiritual frame, now the more the city is secular, utilitarian, and engaged in the pursuit of gold, the more man senses his station in God's design.

A broad Calvinist background is, consequently, intrinsic to Deloney's use of the middle-class tenet of material success. It often gives a supplementary level of meaning to certain aspects in Jack of Newbury's design, and it adds to Deloney's complexity of vision. But a doctrine that primarily emphasized self-reliance and asceticism can but oppose,8 in its fundamentals, the tradition of the State as a familial community wedded by a divine covenant tothe Prince. Accordingly, although Calvinism needs to be referred to, particularly in the didactic aspect of the novel, it nonetheless remains secondary in the overall design.

The factual evidence for the existence of the secular kingdom is its microcosm: the world of Jack, the immediate household where his business is located. The term "household" is quite significant, in that the business operations which take place are integrated with the traditional order of the home, the analogue for the State. Early in the book, we are made aware of the composition of Jack's kingdom, through the device of the tour he takes with his prospective father-in-law. In the first room, there are men (200) working, helped by boys (200) "making quills"; in the next room, there are women (100) "carding" and maidens (200) "spinning"; further, there are children (80) of "poor silly men," "shearemen" (50), "rowers" (40), workers (40) in the "dyehouse," others (20) in the mill. Since all these people must be fed, a butcher (who slays ten oxen every week), a brewer, and a baker are kept on the premises, supplemented by cooks (5), helpers (6), and an additional unascertained number of helpers.9 All told, this gives a total of approximately nine hundred and forty-four subjects, lorded over by Jack. This is the "household" for which he now wants a wife (a queen) to aid him in governing. Hence his wedding is no ordinary affair, as we shall see later.

Next, there comes the point when Jack is called upon to supply a number of men for a military campaign. No less than a hundred and fifty of his subjects are organized and dressed in the best apparel (p. 30). Is such a deployment of power and riches appropriate for a mere weaver, or even a nobleman? The murmurs of envy with which the troops are greeted by some knights indicate that the "best Noblemen in the Countrie would scarce have done so much" (p. 31). Even Queen Elizabeth is confused, for she refers to the weaver as a "gentleman" and continues to confer upon him the privileged appellation after he corrects her: "Clothier by trade, yet a Gentleman by condition" (p. 32).

Yet, in the structure of the novel, the existence of a kingdom is made more potent by means of allegorical devices such as the beast fable, the pageant and the icon, and symbolical songs translated to accord with the shift in life goals.10 These devices, in supplementing the characteristics of the physical shape of the kingdom, act in a "manner" which is of no uncertain importance. Their function, it would appear, is to juxtapose one kingdom with another or, in economic terms, the busy mercantile middle class with the idle courtier class. A meaningful contrast emerges. Though it would be premature to conclude, as Wright does in another context (pp. 5–6), that the divine rights of kings are increasingly made to pale by the rights of those who derive their power from material goods, nonetheless one fact undoubtedly stands out: two kingdoms exist, and one (Jack's) is distinctly manifesting its strength.

Upon first meeting with the King, Jack tells a beast fable about the ants and the butterflies. Its basic import, which Wolsey quickly grasps, has to do with the worsening plight of the tradespeople as a result of Wolsey's economic policies. Bluntly, we have here a seminal class struggle: the middle class versus the courtiers. More important, Jack's attitude in this scene is revealing. Asked to identify himself at the outset by a royal messenger, Jack, who is surrounded by his men, makes this reply, couched in terms so submissive as to be pregnant with irony:

… it is poore Iacke of Newberrie, who being Marquesse of a mole hill, is chosen Prince of Ants, and heere I stand with my weapons and Guard about mee, to defend and keep these my poore and painefull subjects from the force of the idle Butterflyes, their sworn enemies, least they should disturbe this quiet Commonwealth. (p. 35)

Thus Jack refers to himself as "Marquesse" and "Prince," and he has "subjects" in his "Commonwealth." Possibly, this self-identification can be dismissed as a simple ploy since the meaning of the tale, the class struggle, seems to be so much more important. So far, I have been concerned precisely with the "manner" (the socioliterary tradition) Deloney presents in his story, a manner which is related to "meaning" (the middle-class ethos). The former so informs the latter that it must be first analyzed as closely as possible.

Jack's attitude is further defined when, upon being asked to come and meet the King, he answers:

… his Grace hath a horse, and I am on foote, therefore will him to come to mee … [I would be] a bad Governour that would walke aside upon pleasure, and leaue my people in perill. Herald (quoth hee) it is written, Hee that hath a charge must looke to it, and so tell thy Lord, my King: (p. 36; italics mine)

Need we remind ourselves that this is supposed to be a mere weaver talking? Only a king would refuse to go to another king and, moreover, would compound the slight by asking that he come instead to him. Indeed Jack is a "Governour," a prince who has been educated ("it is written") to consider that his supreme concern should be his people's welfare. The Erasmian overtones, again, are quite clear (Erasmus, pp. 170, 205).

The next allegorical event takes place as Henry VIII goes to Jack's house for a visit. The visit itself, in the manner in which the monarch is received, is significant: he is greeted by Jack's wife with thirty maidens "attending on her" (p. 38). The focus here, however, is on the gift Henry is given: an iconic golden beehive. It is a flourishing hive which rests for protection on the virtues of prudence and fortitude, shown trampling upon menacing serpents. There is an obvious relation to the state. But whose state is it, Jack's or Henry's?

Loe here presented to your royall sight,
The figure of a flourishing Commonwealth:
Where vertuous subjects labour with delight,
And beate the drones to death which liue by stealth.
Ambition, Ennuie, Treason, loathsome Serpents bee,
Which seeks the downefall of a fruitfull tree.
(p. 38)

Davis calls this an "image of an almost Edenic egalitarian commonwealth … reflected concretely in the orderly operation of Jack's household" (Davis, p. 247). We notice the recurrence of key terms ("Commonwealth," "labour"), and understand that this is Jack's kingdom again, a realm portrayed in its "golden prime" (symbolized by the gold texture of the icon), yet threatened by the same forces earlier referred to in the beast fable, in spite (or because) of its secure roots in the honest virtues of labor. But since this kingdom is presented to "your Royall sight," the overall implication is that it functions within the larger kingdom of Henry VIII. Like the previous allegorical device, the present one serves to contrast the two states: Jack's, where pride in hard work is celebrated as the ideal life style; Henry's, where the "ennuie, ambition and treason" of idle serpentine courtiers contribute nothing to Henry's state, while plotting in effect the destruction of Jack's. In Thomas of Reading, Deloney's fourth novel, a similar contrast takes place when Henry VIII, after meeting a group of clothiers and being impressed by their pride in work, grows aware that the security of his crown rests upon the power of the middle class rather than on traditional alliances. He thus reflects to his company of noblemen:

I always thought … that Englands valour was more than her wealth, yet now I see her wealth sufficient to maintaine her valour, which I will seek to cherish in all I may, and with my Sword keepe my selfe in possession of that I haue.… let my brother Robert thinke, that although hee was heyre to England by birth, yet I am King by possession. (pp. 270–71; italics mine)

It is no coincidence that the golden texture of the emblematic beehive ("most richly gilt with gold, and all the Bees therein were also of gold curiously made by Art," p. 38) is carried over in the symbolical "Weavers' Song" which celebrates a time connected to gold: the Golden Age, referred to by countless pastoral poets as the preternatural state of innocence and happiness. The craft of weaving, by virtue of its material, wool, is associated with a very ancient occupation of princes and queens (p. 41, ll. 10–11, 15), Biblical and epic figures (ll. 24–25), when it is not with the "Shepheard" (l. 30), the foremost symbolic type of the Golden Age. With all these associations of antiquity, nobility, and courage, weaving is identified thus as the supreme craft. It precedes the subsequent monarchical structures of the state. In itself, it is symbolic also of harmony and peace (the refrain "loue and friendship," and "band of amitie").

The "Maidens' Song" is equally symbolic in what it is concerned with, fidelity and loyalty. The message for the Prince is "know thy true friend." The story, an account of the undoing of a young maiden by a faithless Scottish knight she has helped to escape, again points out the perils which threaten Henry's state. The deceitful behavior of the courtier is contrasted with the "natural goodness" of the working-class girl.

But we have to turn now to the last and most impressive allegorical event, the pageant, which takes place as the King is about to end his visit. Some children appear, dressed in angelic apparel. From their ranks comes Diana, the goddess of chastity, who presents to the King four prisoners: the goddess of War and her three daughters, Famine, Sword, and Fire. Then two male figures are offered for protection: Fame and Victory. The King and his retinue are enthralled by the performers. Who are they? Jack informs them that these are children of the poor people of the tradesman class (p. 49). The significance of the pageant again implies the existence of two realms: those of Good and Evil. Interestingly, Evil (the four prisoners) has been neutralized by the forces of Good (the male figures), and these forces are identified with the tradespeople, or Jack's household. If the Evil forces are meant to be those of Wolsey and the courtiers, who have misled Henry VIII into undertaking catastrophic expeditions, we may see how once more the world of the middle class is contrasted with that of the court.

In conclusion, it may be observed how all the allegorical and symbolical events are interrelated. In each case, Jack's world, or kingdom, is pitted against the court, the better to manifest its superiority based upon the cardinal virtue of manual labor.

If there is admittedly a kingdom, a state, it follows, as has already been indicated, that Jack is the prince, or the ruler of that realm. How is Jack's standing illustrated? First, the protocol of his second wedding, where "most of the Lordes, Knights, and Gentlemen thereabout, were invited thereunto" (p. 28), indicates this. The bride was escorted by two sons of lords, and we are assured that the "best sort" of company helped the newlyweds to celebrate during the ten days of festivities (p. 29). Yet this prince is the same personage who takes pains to humble himself in front of the Queen, when she mistakenly assumes he is a "gentleman": "Gentleman I am none … but a poore Clothier" (p. 31). We are faced here with the constant parallel, or doubleness, that roots the notion of a middle-class kingdom. Kingdom and middle class are the same and constitute the underlying metaphor which Deloney, conscious of a socioliterary tradition, uses to control his fiction. In Gentle Craft I, for instance, Iphicratis asserts "that a Shoemakers son is a Prince borne, his fortune made him so" (p. 128; italics mine). But middle class and nobility are not the same in the social context (that which exists outside of the work) in which he writes. Thus there is an ambivalence throughout the book: Jack knows he is a Prince and that his household is the microcosmic kingdom of the middle class; but, in relation to the outward social context, he is the epitome of the rising Elizabethan mercantile class that wishes to counterbalance the power of the courtiers. Hence, the show of humility and submissiveness may be interpreted as the ruse of the bourgeois who knows he has to be careful if he wants to replace the power of those of noble birth.

At any rate, Jack's ambivalent stance is resolved when, refusing to be neither gentleman nor "poore Clothier," he proves himself to be a kingly figure. For no less than such a personage would refuse the honor that the typical "nouveau riche" would have quickly accepted: knighthood. He explains himself: "let me Hue a poore Clothier among my people, in whose maintenance I take more felicity, then in all the vaine titles of Gentilitie" (p. 49). "Gentilitie," not "poore Clothier," is the key word here: it represents the formal court life denounced throughout in the allegorical/symbolical events. Jack does not want any of that. He has no use for "honour and worship" (p. 49), but prefers instead his kingdom of "labouring ants and bees … who labour in this life not for our selues, but for the glory of God" (p. 49).

That Jack is a King is further shown in the closing chapter when he gives a tongue-lashing to Sir George, who wants to renege on the marriage promise he has been gulled into making: "Come you to my table to make my maid your strumpet? had you no mans house to dishonor but mine, Sir, I would you should well know, that I account the poorest wench in my house too good to be your whore, were you ten knights" (p. 86). This remonstrance is explained by one of two attributes Sidney demonstrates in his Arcadia, in the character of Evarchus, the Philosopher-King,11 which Erasmus stipulates as befitting the ruler: "liberality," which includes the love the ruler must have for his subjects, a family whose father the King is; and a sense of "order" (Erasmus, pp. 156, 158). The first attribute is dramatized in Chapter ix, in the Randoll Pert episode, when Jack releases Pert from a financial debt until he becomes Sheriff of London, that is, until he can afford to pay him (p. 76). The gesture is quite generous, as the Scrivener and witnesses tell Jack, since Pert stands little chance of achieving such high office. The second, of course, has Jack functioning as an "orderer of disorders" when he effects the marriage between Sir George and the maid who,12 we are told (with an ironic play on words in the manner of Sidney), in order "to become high, she laid her selfe so low, that the Knight suddenly fell ouer her, which fall became the rising of her belly" (p. 82).

The third motif in the novel celebrates the values that are to be adopted, or cultivated, if one wants to become, like Jack, a prince. Upon being introduced in the novel, he is described as "of a merry disposition … honest conversation … well-beloued by Rich and Poore … of decent appareil … every Gentleman's companion" (p. 5). In other words, Jack is full of love for mankind; he carries himself with decorum, he is loved by one and all; he is a good man to have around—all of which are qualities that Erasmus commends (Erasmus, p. 13). But he is also "diligent" and thrifty (p. 6), qualities that differentiate him from the Erasmian prince, who looked askance at manual labor, but which point to the Calvinist work ethic. Because Jack is also a prudent and careful man in regard to matters of love (p. 7), he displays wisdom to the extent that the widow confides in him (p. 9). All these virtues are rewarded when God bestows upon him a rich marriage that epitomizes his ascent to kingship.

There are two stages in the education of this prince: first, sociability based on hard work which yields, second, divine blessings. It is no mere coincidence if Deloney precisely reverses the tradition whereby, in the social hierarchy, the Prince is assured of his station because of birth, lineage, presupposing divine blessings (hence the rules and methods for his education serve as illustration and confirmation of these postulates, rather than stemming from the lessons of experience, as for Deloney's prince). The "informal Calvinism [that] suffuses Deloney's fiction"13 no doubt accounts for this reversal dramatized in Jack's remarks to his former fellow servants: "seeing I am now to holde the place of a Master, it shall bee wisdome in you to forget what I was, and to take mee as I am; and in doing your diligence, you shall haue no cause to repent that God made mee your master" (p. 21). "Wisdome" here signifies the recognition and acceptance of the order of things, what may be otherwise called the "natural order" based on the "natural law" that, from Plato to the Renaissance, philosophers have insisted upon. "God made mee your master" can hardly escape being interpreted, perhaps, as an ironical reference to the aristocratic tradition; but, more likely, when the association with "diligence" is understood as an important qualification, as a sign of divine recompense.

In its essentials, the Deloneian education of the middle-class prince has been stressed. The central insistence on "diligence" and hard work operates throughout the novel and informs the frequent "rags-to-riches" stories which are told as so many illustrations for the one didactic aim. We have an instance of this principle in Chapter v, in the portrait gallery of princes and famous personages Jack keeps in his house for the education of his subjects.14 Different figures from different countries, they share a distinguishing characteristic: they are all from "lowly" origins (potter, gardener, weaver, et al., p. 53). And they acceded to their station not primarily through divine dispensation and certainly not by birth but, most assuredly, because of hard work. Jack stresses this last point to his subjects:

Seeing that my good seruants, that these men haue been aduanced to high estate and Princely dignities by wisdome, learning, and diligence, I would wish you to imitate the like vertues, that you might attaine the like honors … there is none of you so poorly born, but that men of baser birth haue come to great honors. (p. 55)

Episodes such as that of the children who, being adopted by members of Henry's court, later become "famous" (p. 49); the story of Randoll Pert, who became alderman of the city of London (p. 77); the "success" marriage of Jack's maid—all are molded in the ethos that later became the American Dream. To a certain extent, these episodes take on the aura of fairy tales, as if the simple fact of being born in the trading class is a good insurance for success. Again, we may interpret this pattern doubly, as ironical distortion and Calvinist celebration.

What is to be concluded from the foregoing discussion? That there is a definite symbolism underneath the bland surface description of "everyday metropolitan life" is amply demonstrated in the working of the motifs. We have also seen how there is an ordering of devices and themes arranged for the same effect on the audience as by Sidney, Lyly, and other writers: instruction allied to delight. Deloney uses the design at work in Sidney's Arcadia, as well as in Montemayor's Diana, Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, and a number of other Renaissance works which,15 in brief, is that of the ethical-political relation between the individual and the State, as epitomized in the figure of the Prince. But he subverts it for particular ends. Instead of the rule of reason, there is that of prudence, in a utilitarian sense; instead of the controlling absolute of God, there is that of gold; instead of the celebration of the spiritual realm, there is that of the material (not altogether devoid of spirituality, as seen).

What are the ends pursued by Deloney? I agree with most of the critics who have noted Deloney's close affiliation with the Elizabethan middle class. But I agree also with Abel Chevalley, who says that one cannot deduce from this fact that Deloney's novels are so many pedestrian tracts written to justify the patronage he was receiving from the Guilds and the Corporations.16 Undoubtedly, his work was ordered with these groups in mind, but, for an educated man who could read Latin, had read Sidney, who was, moreover, so conscious of a distinct socioliterary tradition that he structured a novel on its inversion, Deloney addressed himself primarily to the more cultured in his middle-class audience.17 They would have recognized and relished the irony conveyed by the two levels in his work: the one (the "manner," the aristocratic tradition underlying the allegory and symbolism) illuminating the other (the "meaning," the middle-class ethos of hard work and material reward). The less sophisticated, unable to appreciate the learned refinement of this doubleness, would still find delight and instruction by simply associating the allegorical devices, the ethical-political tenets, with their popular commonplace versions.18

Deloney's masterful reordering of the Greco-Roman ideal of the State and the ruler in Jack of Newbury, a seemingly realistic work, really gives substance to the conventional niche assigned to him by literary historians: that of standing at the cleavage point between the tradition of the aristocratic romance that culminates in Lyly and Sidney, and that of realism in the novel which Defoe develops. In conceiving with these, as it were, opposite materials a coherent design Deloney achieved a "synthèse de l'état ouvrier" where:

Cordonniers et Tisseurs sont comme les barons ou chevaliers, unis par des liens d'honneur, chacun à son rang. Les grands ont des devoirs à côté de leurs privilèges: Protection, justice envers tous, principalement les femmes et les orphelins. Les Petits ont, à côté de leurs devoirs, des droits imprescriptibles, avant tout le droit de vivre et de bien vivre, en travaillant. (Chevalley, p. 243)

We are left, thus, with the momentous crystallization of the division between two world outlooks, two visions of life. Deloney has subverted one which belongs to a past, when the middle class of artisans was placed at the bottom of a pyramid, by upending the pyramid so as to place them on the top.19

Notes

1Idea and Act in Elizabethan Fiction (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969), p. 241. I am indebted to Walter R. Davis and Joan Hartman for carefully reading and judiciously criticizing this article.

2 See Desiderius Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince (1516; rpt. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1936); Sir Thomas Elyot, The Boke Named the Gouernour (1531; rpt. London: Dent, 1907); Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (1528; rpt. London: Dent, 1928); Roger Ascham, The Schoolmaster (1570; rpt. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1967).

3 For a discussion of that tradition relevant to a romance Deloney seems to have been familiar with, see Walter R. Davis and R. A. Lanham, Sidney's Arcadia (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1966), pp. 137–66.

4 These treatises culminate, in the Renaissance, in Erasmus' The Education of a Christian Prince, which appears to be the immediate source for Elyot's The Boke Named the Gouernour. See Lester K. Born's introduction to Erasmus' treatise, pp. 44–124. Deloney's motifs indicate his knowledge of Erasmus, either in the text or through Elyot. Hereafter, I shall use the term Erasmian as synonymous with the traditional tenets of these books of conduct.

5 Louis B. Wright, Middle-Class Culture in Elizabethan England (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1958), p. 2.

6 (1926; rpt. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1962), p. 198. See also Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–05; rpt. New York: Scribners, 1958), p. 172.

7 R. W. Baldwin, The Unity of the Canterbury Tales (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1955), p. 106.

8 Weber, p. 180.

9Jack of Newbury (1597); the edition used is that of Merritt E. Lawlis, The Novels of Thomas Deloney (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1961). All subsequent references to Deloney's works are included in the text.

10 My understanding of "symbolical" and "allegorical" follows that of most modern scholars, who agree with Northrop Frye: "The contrast is between a 'concrete' approach to symbols which begins with images of actual things and works outward to ideas and propositions, and an 'abstract' approach which begins with the idea and then tries to find a concrete image to represent it" (italics mine). See Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (1957; rpt. New York: Atheneum, 1966), p. 89; also C. S. Lewis, Allegory of Love (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1936), p. 44; Graham Hough, A Preface to the Faerie Queene (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1962), pp. 102–11; Edwin Honig, Dark Conceit, the Making of Allegory (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1959), pp. 3–16. For a historical analysis of these modes in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, see Rosemond Tuve, Allegorical Imagery: Some Medieval Books and Their Posterity (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1966), pp. 3–55.

Specifically, then, I observe a distinction between an "allegorical" event or device and straight allegory, since by "allegory" one would rather mean a "full length, inclusively figurative work" (e.g., The Faerie Queene, Pilgrim's Progress; see Honig, p. 11). The beast fable about the ants and the butterflies is part of a larger work which is not itself allegorical—hence it can hardly be termed allegory. Yet the fact that it is used to incarnate an idea or abstraction, i.e., a middle-class kingdom, makes it an allegorical event. The same is true of the emblematic beehive and the pageant. The two songs are symbolical, however, because they imagistically depart from an actual existing state of affairs (e.g., weaving, or a maid's lament) and thence try to relate to a larger abstract notion (weaving as indicative of archetypal nobility, or the maid's lament as omen for the fall of Princes).

11 Sir Philip Sidney, The Prose Works of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Albert Feuillerat (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1967) 331; see also Davis and Lanham, p. 148.

12 Evarchus is described as an "orderer of disorders," in the Arcadia, p. 338.

13 Davis, Idea and Act, p. 252.

14 H. E. Rollins has pointed out that this gallery is "copied verbatim from Fortescue," the compilation of stories current in Deloney's time, and which served, presumably, for the less educated as "a ready and easy way to establish freely a reputation for erudition." See H. E. Rollins, "Thomas Deloney's Euphuistic Learning and 'The Forest,'" PMLA, 50 (1935), 679–86, who is evidently concerned to show how Deloney's veneer of culture is just that; consequently, Deloney would hardly be aware of the tradition I have been discussing, and, moreover, incapable of writing a novel controlled by its inverted tenets. Interestingly, however, while describing the parallel texts, Rollins wonders whether it is out of "ignorance" or "intention" Deloney mistook the occupation of both Partinax' and Marcus Aurelius' fathers for that of weaver. (While in The Forest it says that the former's father was an "artificer" and the latter's occupation remains unspecified.)

That Deloney borrowed freely from Fortescue is no fault, since it was a matter of common practice for the Elizabethans, as is well known. But that he translated the borrowing to fit his bolstering of the middle class is what is important here. What seems, to Rollins, indicative of Deloney's lack of culture, on the contrary, seems to illustrate better the design we have been unraveling.

15 See Davis and Lanham, pp. 143–44.

16Thomas Deloney, le roman des métiers au temps de Shakespeare (Paris: Editions de la Nouvelle Revue Française, 1926), pp. 240–43.

17 Margaret Schlauch, Antecedents of the English Novel, 1400–1600 (Warsaw: Polish Scientific Publishers, 1963), p. 237; Chevalley, p. 40; see also F. O. Mann, who says that Deloney seems to have been knowledgeable in French as well, The Works of Thomas Deloney (Oxford: Clarendon, 1912), p. viii. The reading of Sidney is presumed from references to the Arcadian myth in Jack of Newbury, p. 62; Gentle Craft II, pp. 225–26.

18 Queenie D. Leavis alludes to these popular commonplaces known to Deloney's audience. See Fiction and the Reading Public (London: Chatto and Windus, 1932), p. 86.

19 The aristocratic pyramidal structure of society is discussed by Davis and Lanham, pp. 137–38. Plato, of course, is the source for this conception of the State; see The Republic, trans. Benjamin Jowett (New York: Airmont, 1968), IX, 359–62.

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