SOURCE: "Polemic, the Rhetorical Tradition, and The Unfortunate Traveller," in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. LXIII, No. 3, July, 1964, pp. 408-21.

Though much has been written about Thomas Nashe's implication in the Marprelate controversy and even more about his literary dispute with the Harveys, no one has examined The Unfortunate Traveller with an awareness of the polemic so manifest in it, nor has the evidence of this polemic been observed in its rhetorical context.¹ Indeed, the personal invective of the Harvey exchange is absent or veiled, and the the singularity of cause of the Marprelate dispute has become diffused among a wide variety of subjects. With but one notable exception the polemic subjects and situations have, furthermore, been attenuated by what is oftentimes raucous humor. Polemic is, nevertheless, almost ubiquitous, whether directly stated in the lengthy denunciation of John Leiden and the Anabaptists or flimsily integrated in the discussion preceding the outwitting of the clerks, in the declamation against travel, and in the characterizations of Esdras, Bartol, and Cutwolfe. It is unmistakable in references to the Jews, the Pope and Roman Catholicism. Certainly the satire which Sidney Lee and Agnes Latham² have remarked reveals a polemic attitude on the part of the author. Even if the incidents and characterizations did not emerge so distinctly eristic, the form of presentation of events, characters, and dialogue compels attention.

Written or articulated, the oration, from the classical era through the medieval³ and into Renaissance times, remained the principal form for enunciation of any polarity. Jack Wilton uses this rhetorical form to persuade the wine keeper and army captain to implement his roguish plots, to extricate himself from a difficult social situation, to decry a class of people, and to praise the questionable Aretina. Heraclide attempts to dissuade the infamous Esdras, and Vanderhulke welcomes the Duke of Saxony in diverse but none the less eloquent oratory. The culmination of all the oratory occurs when Cutwolfe at once praises himself, blames his victim, appeals for approval from his auditors, defends his action on the bases of reason and tradition, all in the midst of a declamation which is a self-accusation.

In her essay Miss Latham writes, "one of Nashe's literary connections was with the world of the theatre and it seems likely that this helped him to accumulate horrific themes and to decorate them with appropriate rhetoric."⁴ While it cannot be denied that the theater contributed to Nashe's awareness of the effectiveness and appeal of violent action, the theater cannot receive credit for his "appropriate rhetoric." The method of education is responsible for the rhetoric of the stage. Nashe with Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kyd, Greene, and all other dramatists of the day learned the "colours of rhetoric" from his earliest years in school.⁵ That Richard II should seldom utter a sentence without amplifying it into a declamation, and that Falstaff should satirize such declamations testify to the familarity of both playwright and audience with the whole tradition. Early education required study and imitation of the classical authors; more advanced education presupposed this knowledge and practice as it concentrated on producing skilled dialecticians and disputants. What more natural than that the product of such an education employ in his writings the method in which he was trained? Only with an effort would he not so write. Only with an effort would he avoid polemic.

And controversy was Nashe's métier, else he would not have prolonged the Harvey dispute. McKerrow says of him, "in invective he stands perhaps without a rival"⁶ in Elizabethan England. What Nashe himself termed a "phantasticall Treatise," therefore, invites re-examination to reveal its rhetorical character and the proclivity of its author for polemic.

The most immediately discernible bit of contentiousness is the Munster episode. The recounting of the Munsterian uprising constitutes such a departure from roguish exploits that it is not surprising that Nashe soon dissociates Jack Wilton from this portion of the narrative, though, as we shall see, it is not the first indication of Nashe's disputatious inclination. While he gives no evidence of participation in the war between the French and the "Switzers," Jack says upon arrival in Germany that he proceeds from a battle "where he was Martialist in earnest," to this battle "like a crowe … where there is carrion." Thus, polemic situation follows polemic situation. The commentary becomes polemic as Wilton points up inconsistencies in Anabaptist tenets and practice:

They would vaunt there was not a pease difference betwixt them and the Apostles; they were as poore as they, of as base trades as they, and no more inspired than they, and with God there is no respect of persons; onely herein may seeme some little diuersitie to lurk, that Peter wore a sword, and they count it flat hel fire for anie man to weare a dagger; nay so grounded and grauelled were they in this opinion, that now when they should come to Battell, theres neuer a one of them would bring a blade (no, not an onion blade) about hym, to dye for it (p. 233)

—not without typical Wilton humor, of course. After describing "fals Iohn Leiden and his fraternitie," as "they howle, they expostulate with God to grant them victorie, and vse such vnspeakable vehemence a man wold thinke them the onely wel bent men vnder heaven" (p. 234), Nashe has Wilton bow out. He says, "let me dilate a little more grauely than the nature of this historie requires, or wilbe expected of so yong a practitioner in diuinty," and for six pages in the McKerrow edition Nashe "dilates a little" against the Anabaptist sect. The tenor of these paragraphs is not that of the merry Jack. In the style of a fanatical preacher propounding questions and answering them unequivocally, the disquisition moves through a condemnation of Anabaptist howling of prayers, their devious quoting of scripture, and their attitude toward authority.

Nashe underscores the polarity of his approach with such a phrase as "those which I speake against," or the vehement declaration, "Those furnaces of Falsehood and hammer heads of Heresie must bee dissolued and broken." Lynette Feasey commends Nashe for courage in so thinly disguised championship of the persecuted English Puritan-Separatists whom he would deride but defend.⁷ The defense to which she refers comes near the end of the long digression:

Pittifull and lamentable was their vnpittied and well perfourmed slaughter. To see euen a Beare (which is the most cruellest of all beasts) too-too bloudily ouer-matcht, and deformedly rent in peeces by an vnconscionable number of curres, it would mooue compassion against kinde, and make those that (beholding him at the stake yet vncoapt with) wisht him a sutable death to his vgly shape, now to recall their hard-harted wishes, and moane him suffering as a milde beast, in comparison of the fowle mouthd Mastiues, his butchers. (p. 240)

While the conjecture that the Anabaptists are in reality English Puritan-Separatists may be subject to question, of course such a substitution is not without precedent. It was the course of prudence to avoid verisimilitude in the representation of any situation touching on Tudor political decrees. Spenser realized this hard fact when he too feebly cloaked his attack on Burghley and Elizabeth. A denunciation of Cardinal Wolsey is assurance that Nashe never removes far from England. In speaking of the confiscation of churches, Nashe interpolates,

The name of Religion, bee it good or bad that is ruinated, God neuer suffers vnreuenged: He say of it as Ouid said of Eunuchs: Qui primus pueris genitalia membra recidit, / Vulnera quae fecit debuit ipse pati. … So would he that first gelt religion or Church-liuings had bin first gelt himselfe or neuer liued; Cardinal Wolsey is the man I aim at. (p. 238)

Nowhere else in the narrative does Nashe so flagrantly disregard character and fictional limits. His belligerence is patent, nevertheless, in the incident involving the "coystrell Clearkes," whom Jack chose for his third bit of "scutcherie." The acts of knavery which precede implicate individuals whom Jack regards as amusing butts for tricks; however, the group of clerks belong to a profession for which Wilton, perhaps Nashe, has an antipathy. We are told that there was a "companie of coystrell Clearkes (who were in band with Sathan, and not of anie Souldiers collar nor hat-band)." Wilton scorns their meticulousness in dress and declares, "the most of these aboue-named goose-quill Braggadoches were mere cowards and crauens, and durst not so much as throwe a pen-full of inke into the Enemies face, if proofe were made: wherefore on the experience of their pusillanimitie I thought to raise the foundation of my roguerie" (p. 226). If they represent Gabriel Harvey, as one critic perspicaciously suggests,⁸ we need look no further to explain Jack's vehemence and delight in his self-styled role as "God's scourge."

Greater narrative integration occurs in the treatment of prejudices which Nashe probably held in common with his fellow Elizabethans. The extent to which he is being satiric in the dialogue and concretions expressive of antipathy for other nations may be deliberately enigmatic. Antithetical as these two approaches are—support of national prejudices or ridicule of these prejudices—Nashe is taking a polemic stand. An "English Earle" articulates a sustained, categorical opposition to association with foreigners, particularly through travel in foreign countries. Cain and the Israelites should serve as examples of caution to Jack against the enslavement travel forces upon man. "He that is a traueller," the earl says, "must haue the backe of an asse to beare all, a tung like the taile of a dog to flatter all, the mouth of a hogge to eate what is set before him … if this be not the highest step of thraldome, there is no libertie or freedome" (p. 297). From the Italians, the earl continues, one can expect poisoned food, a cut throat, revenge nourished as long as thirty years for the slightest offense. French, Spanish, and Italians are derided for their emphasis on fine clothing and obsequious manners; the French can teach a man only to distinguish wines, while the Spanish boast excessively but can cite excellence only in their bread, have no meat, and lie in foul straw every night. Italy, the paradise of earth, teaches the "art of atheisme, of epicurising, whoring, poysoning, the art of Sodomitrie" (p. 301). Finally, the earl concludes his tirade against travel with a panegyric on England which reduces him to tears, while the rascal Jack thinks only, "that is worse than a vpbraiding lesson after a britching" (p. 303).

In opposition to the plethora of literature which implicitly glorified travel, Nashe sets the earl's account of its evils. Not in this speech, however, does he exhaust anti-Spanish and anti-Italian bias. The characters Bartol of Italy and Esdras of Granada embody the sinister barbarity Elizabethans associated with these two countries. Both countries were strongholds of Roman Catholicism, and Papists in England whether with factual proof or for convenience were identified with traitorous plots; furthermore, anti-Spanish propaganda had been so prevalent prior to the defeat of Philip's invincible armada that certainly more than five years would elapse before Spaniards would cease to smack of cunning and treachery. Indeed, even treatises on gentility, for all their general advocacy of moderation, contain hostility toward Spaniards and Italians.⁹ Henry VII had welcomed Italian humanists and honored their patrons;¹⁰ contrariwise, his son had expelled Italians from the court even before the religious cleavage with Rome.¹¹ Though translations of the works of the Italian humanists flourished in England during Elizabeth's reign and the Italian language was studied,¹² the image of the Italian made the more vivid by many of these translations was one of truculence and villainy.

Nashe employs the current pictures of the people of both Spain and Italy in hyperbolic adventures intended, it would seem, to titillate readers most fearfully. Esdras, "the ugliest of all blood suckers," boasts of his terrible deeds:

My owne mother gaue I a boxe of the eare too, and brake her necke downe a paire of staires, because she would not goe in to a Gentleman when I bad her: my sister I sold to an old Leno, to make his best of her: anie kinswoman that I haue, knew I she were not a whore, myselfe would make her one. (p. 291)

Bartol of Italy, Esdras' companion, declares, "five hundred rapes and murders have we committed betwixt us." When account is later given of the murder of Bartol by Esdras, English readers no doubt were expected to applaud the manifestation of retributive justice at the same time as they reaffirmed their conviction of Spanish treachery. The polemical attitude toward southern Europeans reaches its apex as Cutwolfe proclaims the perfidy of his Spanish victim and indicts himself and his countrymen with the words, "my thoughtes traueld in quest of some notable newe Italionisme, whose murderous platforme might not onely extend on his bodie, but his soul also … no true Italian but will honor me for it" (pp. 325-26).

Bartol and Cutwolfe are supported in projecting an image of Italian villainy by the characterization of the Pope, who, we are told, authorized Esdras the Bandetto "because he [Esdras] had assisted him in some murthers" (p. 287). The Pope has many concubines; one Juliana is monstrous in her lust, a poisoner, plotter, and murderer. When thwarted in one plan "shee fared like a franticke Bacchinall, she stampt, she star'd, shee beate her head against the walls, scratcht her face, bit her fingers, and strewd all the chamber with her haier." Ironic justice triumphs as she drinks the poison she had prepared for another. In addition to his "sin-absolued whores," the Pope has "oilegreased priests borne with a blacke sant on the diuells backes in procession to the pit of perdition" (pp. 310-11). Though he has a Jewish physician, at an alleged attempt by a Jew on his life, the Pope determines to exterminate all the Jews in Rome. He relents and issues instead the proclamation: "all fore-skinne clippers, whether male or female, belonging to the old Iurie, should depart and auoid vpon pain of hanging, within twentie daies after the date thereof."

The Jews are another group assailed in the narrative. If the Spanish and Italian tales are gruesome, no less terrorizing is the Jewish situation into which Jack literally hurls himself. He falls into the cellar of the Jew Zadoch, who sells him to the physician Zacharie for his annual anatomical dissection. Though Jack experiences vicariously every phase of the proposed dissection, the physician does not have the opportunity to perform it. During the time of preparation for the scientific investigation, Jack (an omniscient observer in a dark, locked closet) gathers proof of the niggardliness, covetousness, churlishness of the physician. Lewis Brown associates the whole episode with the case in London against Roderigo Lopez, the Jewish physician who emigrated to England from Portugal. The Lopez scandal had not matured in 1593; therefore, Brown believes, Nashe was reluctant to make too direct an attack because Lopez was shielded by the queen. Besides, reconstruction of the facts served to stigmatize the papacy.¹³

Diamante, Jack's courtesan, has meanwhile fallen into Zadoch's power, and we are told, "he was a Iew, and intreated her like a Iew … he scourged her. The ballet of the whipper of late days here in England¹⁴ was but a scoffe in comparison of him" (p. 310). Later the courtesan exclaims, he "usde me … iewishly and tyrannously." Whereas Zacherie escapes from Rome before the previously mentioned proclamation takes effect, Zadoch receives his presumably just punishment. Nashe expects his readers to agree, for he concludes the episode with an address to the gentle sex, "Triumph, women, this was the end of the whipping Iew, contrived by a woman, in revenge of two women, herself [Juliana] and her maide." Such rejoicing is to follow the description of Zadoch's execution, which Nashe prefaces, "Ile make short worke, for I am sure I haue wearyed all my readers." When he actually had wearied his readers in the long discourse on the Anabaptists he did indeed make short work of it. In two brief sentences he accounted for John Leiden and his followers. Here, he seems confident that his readers are not weary but enthusiastic as he savors every detail of the torture. The more than two hundred words unfold a cunningly devised agony for each member of the Jew's body, followed by Nashe's comment: "Triumph, women, this was the end of the whipping Iew."¹⁵

One of the techniques employed by the Marprelate writers in their controversy was vivid depiction of phases of Elizabethan life. These they styled and adapted in a manner which would deride their opponents. Anti-Martinists, among whom Nashe is classified even by the cautious McKerrow, ridiculed the Marprelate tracts and condemned their style. Travis L. Summers-gill writes that they must have studied the style carefully because they imitate and even try to outdo its liveliness of expression and jest-book anecdotage.¹⁶ This style in polemic writing was not initiated by the Martinists, however. In his article on early Tudor prose, Professor Marsh observes "homely, racy, street-corner humor … as a component of invective or for its own sake" in earlier controversial writings.¹⁷ Whatever the origin, Nashe has learned to weld humor, description, and word economy for effective satire. He may be taunting readers for their sadistic enjoyment of gruesome details or for their romantic escapism in Arthurian tales; he does it in humorous prose satiric in purpose.

Human nature seems to change little in its avidity for stories. Nashe twits those who revel in accumulating ghastly tales by using the professional comedian's method of giving a crudely humorous twist to the most distressing human situations. Thus, the sweating sickness, torture, and death are fantastically funny. Since plagues occurred periodically throughout Europe, often with high incidence of fatalities, and England was in the throes of a severe pestilence as Nashe composed his narrative, the references to sweating sickness had both a pertinence and special horror.¹⁸ Nashe, nevertheless, has "cookes … cashierd into kitchin stuffe," a woman "hauing three chins, wipe them all away one after another, as they melted to water," and masons who "paid nothing for haire to mix their lyme, nor Glouers to stuffe their balls with, for then they had it for nothing; it dropped off mens heads and beards faster than anie Barber could shaue it" (pp. 228-29). Dreadful battle tales are accorded similar commentary: "anie man might giue Armes that was an actor in that Bat-tell, for there were more armes and legs scattered in the Field that day than will be gathered vp till Doomesday" (p. 231).

Overtones of humor appear in the descriptions of the imprisonment of the innocent wife, the rape of Heraclide, the torture of Zadoch, and notably in Cutwolfe's address from the wheel of torture. Regarding the latter, Latham points out that the jingling introduction, called the "glose vpon the text" of the avenger's speech, "Prepare your eares and your teares, for neuer tyll this thrust I anie tragecall matter vpon you," prepares more for farce than for tragedy. Not only the jingle recurs, but the utter absurdity of the situation becomes obvious when Cutwolfe expresses his physical reaction in the moment of success in stalking Esdras, "O, so I was tickled in the spleene with that word, my hart hopt and danst, my elbowes itcht, my fingers friskt, I wist not what shoulde become of my feete, not knewe what I did for joy" (p. 321). The hiss, "Now I have you!" may be an American Western-movie cliché, but it conveys a more sinister intent than Nashe's picture of a dancing villain. Though he is afire for revenge, Cutwolfe calmly lies down on Esdras' doorstep for the night and upon rising in the morning rings the doorbell. If Nashe is not writing a satire on the Senecan revenge stories enjoying such a vogue in London, we must assume that he was totally unconscious of the effect of words and word pictures on a reader.

Fredson Bowers has clearly demonstrated the influence of the wide diffusion of tragic stories by Italian novelists in Les Histoires Tragiques of Belleforest and other collections.¹⁹ With the Italian novelle translated or reworked in English, these novels introduced lurid stories of revenge-murder which could hardly have escaped Nashe. The stage had offered the theme with varying degrees of importance in Kyd's Hamlet and The Spanish Tragedy, Greene's Alphonsus King of Aragon, the anonymous Selimus, Peele's Battle of Alcazar and Locrine, Marlowe's Jew of Malta, perhaps Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, all before The Unfortunate Traveller was published. Revenge was not revenge in the early novels and plays if the soul of the victim might be dispatched to heaven—the problem Shakespeare's Hamlet faced when he discovered his uncle at prayer. Nashe may well have been acquainted with Machiavelli's The Prince; if not, Gentillet's Discourse was readily available to him. In the Discourse Gentillet says,

According to the honour of his [Machiavelli's] Nation, vengeances, and enmities are perpetuall and irreconcilable; and indeed, there is nothing wherein they take greater delectation, pleasure and contentment than to execute a vengence; insomuch as, whensoever they can haue their enemie at their pleasure, to be revenged vpon him they murder him after some strange & barbarous fashion, and in murdering him, they put him in remembrance of the offence done vnto them, with many reproachfull words and injuries to torment the soule and bodie together; and sometimes wash their hands and their mouthes with his blood, and force him with hope of his life to give himselfe to the diuell; and so they seeke in slaying the bodie to damne the soule, if they could.²⁰

For all the similarity, Nashe depicts a ludicrous character in his revenger. Cutwolfe says to his victim Esdras,

I haue riuen my throat with ouerstraining it to curse thee. I haue ground my teeth to pouder with grating & grinding them together for anger when any hath namde thee. My tongue with vaine threates is bolne, and waxen too big for my mouth: my eyes haue broken their strings with staring and looking ghastly, as I stood deuising how to frame or set my countenance whe I met thee. I haue neere spent my strength in imaginarie acting on stone wals, what I determined to execute on thee. (p. 324)

It is impossible to view with terror an adult who practices his ferociousness before a mirror, who actually re-enacts his devilish plan over and over, whose elbows itch, fingers frisk, and feet become uncontrollable. The episode concludes, furthermore, with an additional reason to affirm Nashe's satiric intent. Jack Wilton seems to relish every detail of the executioner's torture, not without humorous metaphors and puns, but he then promptly responds to the moral lesson purportedly to be derived from all tragedy—in two brief sentences he determines upon and effects a reformation in his life.

Revenge tragedy is not the only kind of drama which Nashe assails satirically. The comedy which depends upon violent gesticulation, loud screaming, and crude sport becomes part of his attack on universities. The evening entertainment at Wittenberg is the comedy Acolastus, in which one of the actors

stampingly trode the stage so harde with his feete that I thought verily he had resolued to do the Carpenter that set it vp some vtter shame. Another flong his armes lyke cudgels at a peare tree, insomuch as it was mightily dreaded that he wold strike the candles that hung aboue their heades out of their sockettes…. Another did nothing but winke and make faces…. The onely thing they did well was the prodigall childs hunger, most of their schollers being hungerly kept; & surely you would haue sayd they had bin brought vp in hogs academie to learne to eate acornes, if you had seene how sedulously they fell to them. (pp. 249-50)

Mockery of medieval romances occurs in the tale of the Earl of Surrey's love for Geraldine. This tale is so typically the traditional romance, with the Earl's dispatch to Italy to fight for Geraldine's honor so in accord with the Arthurian quest literature, that the posturing of the Earl before the imprisoned courtesan Diamante as a Geraldine-substitution becomes a hilarious farce of the courtly love tradition.

To recapitulate momentarily: Nashe's lapses from his narrative betray his polemic spirit indubitably. His identification of particular characters with treachery reveals personal prejudice or perhaps a satiric attitude toward Elizabethan prejudices or a deliberate effort to increase the existing prejudices. His satires of literary types and themes display a mitigated form of polemic.

In no manner is his polemic bent more certain, however, than in his frequent use of the oration. The oration, designedly a vehicle for polemic, is essential to the entire narrative. Dialogues are occasionally brief exchanges, but more often they extend into full rhetorical deliveries, analysis of which discloses their faithful adherence to the prescribed divisions of the classical oration. If we trace through Wilton's adventures, we discover declamations of praise, blame, accusation, defense, and persuasion.

The initial bit of knavery which Jack recounts contains a long encomium of the wine keeper, craftily phrased to dispose him to accept Jack's advice and practice liberality, especially toward Jack, in the dispensing of his liquor. Next, Jack exercises his persuasive powers to rid himself of the parasitic "mechanicall captaine." Lest the reader overlook his method in this instance, Jack states, "I entertained him with this solemn oration." With but a digression for the enjoyment of the reader, he continues until the captain is led to perform an action which heaps derision upon himself to the complete satisfaction of Wilton. The dilation on the Anabaptists constitutes a sermon-oration containing accusation and blame in order to dissuade imitation. Nothing could be more commendatory than the Earl of Surrey's panegyric on the "statlie Geraldine." Arrival at Wittenberg brings Jack to the very fountainhead of disputation. An oration is in progress, and in it orators receive ridicule poured brimful and running over as the "bursten belly inkhorne orator called Vanderhulke" addresses the Duke a "ridiculous oration." The occasion of the "solempe disputations" affords opportunity to satirize types of orators and their unimaginative dependence upon Cicero. At this time the persuasive power of oratory is attested in the result of Tully's delivery of his oration pro Roscio Amerino which Erasmus requests of the conjurer Cornelius Agrippa. Erasmus seeks to see and hear Cicero "in that same grace and maiestie he pleaded his oration pro Roscio Amerino, affirming that til in person he beheld his importunitie of pleading, hee woulde in no wise bee perswaded that anie man coulde carrie awaye a manifest case with rethorike so strangely." Yet, in compliance with his petition, "in entered Tullie, ascended pleading place, and declaimed verbatim the forenamed oration, but with such astonishing amazement, with feruent exaltation of spirit, with soule-stirring iestures, that all his auditours were readie to install his guiltie client for a God" (p. 252).

Even in the "pernicious curtizãs house" we are on the brink of a declamation when Jack imparts to Tabitha and Petro the nature of his disturbing dream—their murderous plot on his life. Before they can speak, Jack makes this observation, "as they were readie to enter onto a coulourable common place of the deceitfull friuolousness of dreames … I started out of my bed, and drew my rapier and cryde, Murther."²¹ Later, Jack's deviousness leads him to jail, where he is again involved with the pander Petro. Jack delivers a short declamation against panders in general, but Petro de Campo in particular, beginning "O, the heathen heigh passe and the intrinsecall legerdemaine of our special approued good pandor" and continuing through a diatribe which terminates, "he was seene in all the seuen liberall deadly sciences, not a sinne but he was as absolute in as sathan himselfe" (p. 260). Epideictic speech disappears only long enough for Jack to obtain his release from jail. As if in celebration, he begs leave to speak a word or two about "this Aretine," his liberator. The word or two expands into four hundred. Curiously, this encomium of the most vilifying polemicist of the century²² is located in the very center of Nashe's narrative (pp. 264-66).

Jack is once again speech-making, this time to extricate himself as the impostor Earl of Surrey when visà-vis the true Earl of Surrey. The momentarily dumb Wilton recovers eloquently: "No Englishman would I haue renowmed for bountie, magnificence, and curtesie but you; vnder your colours all my meritorious workes I was desirous to shroud," and he continues impassionately to climax with the question, "What is the glory of the Sunne, but that the Moone and so many millions of starres borrow their lights from him?"

Vastly different is the setting when the next oration is delivered. Jack reports the compassionate appeal that Heraclide makes to "the ugliest of all blood-suckers, Esdras of Granada," that he spare her—a speech interrupted only long enough for her to swoon and for Esdras to revive her and demand that she yield. "Twixt life and death thus she faintly replied" with a fluent and fervid plea. Esdras counters with a declaration of his heinous crimes. A melodrama of verbal braggadocio and physical truculence ensues until Nashe decides he has exploited the situation sufficiently and laments, "would I had neuer vndertooke this tragicall tale," but then he bethinks himself of its further possibilities; he admonishes, "let not your sorrow die, you that haue read the proeme and narration of this eligiacall historie" (p. 292). There follows a short speech to elicit compassion from the reader for this courageous woman, who presently is able to articulate her own "resons discourse"—a condemnation of her beauty which has proved a curse, a comparison of her self with a hog, and finally a determination to join her dead husband. She concludes by addressing God, the angels, saints, martyrs, Agamemnon, and the knife: "point, pierce, edge, enwiden, I patiently affoorde thee a sheath; spurre forth my soule to mount poste to heauen" (p. 295). The "eligiacall historie" goes into a new phase as Heraclide, "throughlie stabd," in falling strikes her head against her husband's presumably dead body and revives him. Fortunately, activity replaces oratory, and therefore we may proceed to the culmination of all the oratory, the polymorphic example of polemic.

At the outset there is no equivocation about the form: "Cutwolfe begins his insulting oration," we are told. Already, the reader is being influenced against the speaker. A polemic situation—society against the murderer Cutwolfe—involves another polemic situation—the avenger Cutwolfe against the murderer Esdras, against whom society would also align itself. The polemic form is employed to persuade readers and auditors of the valor of ignominious deeds. Within this oration are two briefer orations, one a plea for time to prepare for eternity, the other, contrariwise, an abjuration of all means to eternity. Revenge and damnation of a soul, the orator avers, bring one closer to the "throne of the Almightie." Oppositions in the form of ideas, characters, and situations pile upon each other in this tragicomic conclusion to Nashe's "outrageous chronicle."

Obviously I have made no attempt to classify this unusual work into a specific genre. My purpose has been to call attention to the incidence of Nashe's propensity for contentiousness even in fictitious tales and to relate that evidence to his age, which inculcated the polemic form through its educational system, nurtured polemic through violent religious oppositions, and perhaps matured it through commitment to an intensive nationalistic spirit.

Notes

¹ Travis L. Summersgill ("The Influence of the Marprelate Controversy Upon the Style of Thomas Nashe," Studies in Philology, XLVIII [1951], 145-60) refers to the rhetorical character of the educational system but does not develop this influence on Nashe's style.

² Sidney Lee in DNB (s.v. "Thomas Nashe") discusses The Unfortunate Traveller as a "parody of those medieval story-books of King Arthur and Sir Tristram which he had already ridiculed in his 'Anatomie of Absurditie'"; Agnes Latham, "Satire on Literary Themes and Modes in Nashe's Unfortunate Traveller," English Studies, n.s. 1 (1948), 85-100.

³ For a recent challenge to the assumption that an unbroken rhetorical tradition can be traced through the Middle Ages, see James J. Murphy, "John Gower's Confessio Amantis and the First Discussion of Rhetoric in the English Language," Philogolical Quarterly, XLI (1962), 401-11. Two other articles by the same author are significant in any discussion of medieval rhetoric: "The Earliest Teaching of Rhetoric at Oxford," Speech Monographs, XXVII (1960), 345-47; and "The Arts of Discourse, 1050-1400," Mediaeval Studies, XXIII (1961), 194-205.

⁴ Latham, p. 89.

⁵ See Kenneth Myrick, Sir Philip Sidney as a Literary Craftsman (Cambridge, Mass., 1935); The Praises of Folly, ed. and trans. Hoyt Hopewell Hudson (Princeton, 1941); Sister Miriam Joseph, Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of Language (New York, 1947), and Maurice B. McNamee, S.J., "Literary Decorum in Francis Bacon," St. Louis University Studies, Series A, Humanities, I (1950), 1-52, for the influence of education in Ciceronian oratory on such unrelated Renaissance writings as Defense of Poesy, Praise of Folly, the dialogues of many of Shakespeare's plays, and Advancement of Learning.

⁶The Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. Ronald B. McKerrow (London, 1958), v, 1. In quoting from The Unfortunate Traveller I use volume II of this edition, to which page references are given parenthetically in my text.

⁷ Lynette Feasey, "The Unheroic Hero," Times Literary Supplement, 2 Oct. 1948, p. 555.

⁸ Feasey, p. 555.

⁹ James Cleland, Hero-Paideia, or The Institution of a Young Nobleman (1607): "if you would go to Spaine, I will neither coūcel you, nor be your guide: for there the best Noble-man of the Land shal be corrupted: blasphemie and contempt of al holinesse and Religion are so ordinairie and usual"; Certain Precepts left by a Father to his Son and a Man of Eminent Note in this Kingdom (1615), attributed to Lord Burleigh, advises: "Suffer not your sonnes to passe the Alpes, for they shall exchange for theyr forraine travell … but others vices for their owne vertues Pride, Blasphemy, and Atheisme for Humility, Reverence, and Religion."

¹⁰ Julia Cartwright (The Perfect Courtier: Baldassare Castiglione, His Life and Letters [New York, 1927] 1, 182-87) describes Henry's patronage and his honoring of the Duke of Urbino.

¹¹ There were, nevertheless, Italian artists and architects in England throughout his reign, and it was of course no new thing for royal patronage to be influenced by political expediency: see J. D. Mackie, The Earlier Tudors 1485-1558 (Oxford, 1952), pp. 571-600.

¹² Florio, in the dedicatory epistle to Second Frutes (1591), notes the use of Castiglione's Courtier and Guazzo's Dialogues by Englishmen learning Italian. In order to stimulate interest in the study of languages, Ascham in The Scholemaster praises Elizabeth's "perfit readines in Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish." Later, he places the responsibility for circulation of the morally degrading translations on "the sutle and secrete Papistes at home [who] procured bawdie bookes to be translated out of the Italian tonge, whereby ouer many yong willes and wittes allured to wantonnes, do now boldly contemne all seuere bookes that sounde to honestie and godlines."

¹³ Lewis Brown, "The Unfortunate Traveller by Thomas Nashe," Journal of Jewish Lore and Philosophy, I (1919), 251.

¹⁴Works, IV, n. 310, explains the reference to the "ballet of the whipper."

¹⁵Works, IV, n. 315, suggests an account of a local torture as inspiration for this section.

¹⁶ Summersgill, pp. 145-60.

¹⁷ T. N. Marsh, "Humor and Invective in Early Tudor Polemic Prose," Rice Institute Pamphlet, XLIV (1957), 79.

¹⁸ Herbert G. Wright, "Some Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Writers on the Plague," Essays and Studies, n.s. VI (1953), 42-43.

¹⁹ Fredson Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy (Princeton, 1940).

²⁰ Quoted by Bowers, p. 52. Nashe need not, however, have read Innocent Gentillet's commentary on Machiavelli, so widely diffused through London was his prejudiced interpretation. W. Gordon Zeeveld in his Foundations of Tudor Policy (Cambridge, Mass., 1948) has established the early influence of Machiavelli's writings in England.

²¹ The italics are mine.

²² Aretino referred to himself as the "censor of the proud world," and indeed the emperor, kings, and popes feared his vitriolic pen: see Edward Hutton, Pietro Aretino: The Scourge of Princes (London, 1922). Because of his eloquence and vehemence in controversy, Lodge called Nashe the "True English Aretine," but it is Aretino's obscenity and general amorality which made him a fit choice for Nashe's "searcher and chiefe Inquisiter to the colledge of curtizans."