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The Upstart Courtier B::il:s'fa* A sequence of events that led eventually to Robert /-\ Greene's undoing had, it seems, a rather innocent be- I lgiruring some years before. In the preface to Greene's Menaphon Thomas Nashe, piqued by Marlowe's seeming in- difference, retaliated by compiling a long list of English poets, including even Gabriel Harvey, but not Christopher Marlowe. These uncritical encomiums by Nashe had a rather surprising result. Marlowe, in no doubt of his abilities, viewed Nashe's little ploy with considerable humor but without offense, and in a thrice they were again on good terms. But with the family of the Harveys it was quite different. The Reverend Richard Harvey, Doctor Harvey's younger brother, pounced upon Nashe's favorable mention of his brother, Gabriel and sought to make as much as possible of the dubious tribute. With a great noise, he rose to the defense of Gabriel for the injury he had received in being praised by an unknown upstart Thomas Nashe. It must be said that the harmless Harveys had a genius for losing friends, and they were rarely praised again. Early in 1592, Robert Greene, somewhat put down by Mar- lowe's singularity in dress, consoled himself by reading a poem by one F. T. called The Debate Between Pride and Lowli- ness.In this poem, a debate between a pair of animated velvet tr4 Christopher Marlowe 0564-1 607 ) 3 11.5 breeches and a pair of cloth breeches is placed before a iury representing vaiious trades and professions. Who but Chris- topher Marlowe, seen paradit g in Paul's in gaudy velvet breeches, was Velvet-breeches? Yes, Christopher Marlowe, he who rode about London in all the finery of a gentlemary while his father, a poor shoemaker dressed in cotton galligaskins, walked behind. Then Greene remembered Shakespeare, that contemptible actor who prospered so well by his evil brokery. He was an upstart of anott*t sort, not a courtier, but a nouveau rich who flaunted his wealth in a tasteless display of golden rings on his fingers. Greene worked the broker into his Quip for an llpstar{ Courtier by making him a prospective but rejected juror. Greene did not mention his targets, Marlowe and 'shakespeare, by name but he knew how to make the shoe fit. Shakespeare later took offense at Greene's unflattering and unmistakable description of him as the broker in Quip. As a means of making hii point n Quip while throwing his ene- mies off the scent, Greene made the three Harveys the ostensi- ble targets of the piece. An ingenious idea, but it was not all Greene's. It occurred to him while reading the following passage from F. T.'s poem: For who would set his son to school, quoth he, To study scripture, physic, or the law, But that he beareth good will unto me, If otherwise I hold him but a daw. Who was it but Harvey's father, the ropemaker of Saffron Waldoru who had sent three sons to school to study each in tum, scripture, physic, and the law? Greene thought better of attacking the Harveys, and withdrew the offending Pa-ssage fuom Qiip soon after it was pubtished. Only recently has a copy of Quip been found in which the following passage against the Harveys appears. "And whither arg you gotngi' quoth I? "Marry sir," quoth he, "first to absolve your question, I dwell in Saffron Waldoru and am going to Cambridge to three sons that I keep there at school; such apt childreru sir, as few women have groomed for, and yet they have ill luck. The one, sir, is a Divine to 116 g Louis Ule comfort my soul and he indeed, though he be a vainglorious ass, as divers youths of his age be, is well given to the show of the world, and writ a late The Lamb of God, and yet his parishoners say he is the limb of the devil, and kisseth their wives with holy kisses, but they had rather he should keep his lips for Madge his mare. The second sir, is a physician or a fool, but indeed a physi- ciary and had proved a proper man if he had not spoiled himself with his ashological discourse of the terrible conjunc- tion of Saturn and Jupiter. For the eldest, he is a civilian, a wondrous witted fellow, sir reverence, sir, he is a Doctor, and as Tubalcain was the first inventor of music, so he, God's benision light upon him, was the first that invented English hexameters. But see how in these days learning is little esteemed, for that and other familiar letters and proper treatises he was orderly clapped in the Fleet [prison], but, sir, a hawk and a kite may bring forth a coistrell, and honest parents may have bad children. In the margin Greene has: Such a Richard. By S. Harry look to it for all poets in En- gland will have a blow at your breech for calling them prop- erly makeplays, and will, if you reconcile not yourself, bring your worship on the stage. In Quip Greene describes William Shakespeare as ...a square set fellow well fed and briskly appareled in a black taffeta doublet and a spruce leather jerkin with crystal buttons; a cloak faced afore with velvet, and a Coventry cap of the finest wool; his face something ruby bluistr, cherry-cheeked, like a shred of scarlet or a little darker, like the lees of old claret wine... Greene also has an unmistakable reference to john Marlowe as a tanner and his son: You respect not public commodity, but private gains; not to benefit your neighbor, but for to make the proud princo>g your sory an upstart gentleman; ...you leave no villainy unsought, to bring the blockhead, your sorl to go afore the clown his father, trimly tricked up in a pair of velvet-breeches. Christopher Marlowe (L564-1607 ) v LL7 Later Greene is somewhat kinder to the shoemaker, ]ohn Marlowe, one of his admirers, and relates a fable in which Mercury tells Jupiter: "I have lighted amongst a crew of shoe- makers, the besf fellows that ever I met withal." Greene may have gotten some of his material on the Marlowes fot Quip from Thomas Nashe, who was more personally acquainted with the Marlowes of Canterbury. Nashe later accused Greene of as much, saying: "Nuy, he (Greene) himself hath purloined something from me, and mended his hand in confuting by fifteen paits by following my precedents." Nqshg was privy to Greehe's pelty literaryvendettas and, since he himself was never attaclied, he was not a little pleased that his literary rivals, even a friend like Marlowe, were made the object of some deserving criticism. Nashe himself had railed against upstart young men paradit g it velvet while their father goes about in rags: O, it is a trim thing when Pride, the sory goes before and Shame, the father, follows after. Such precedents there are in our commonwealth a great many, ...carterly upstarts that out- face town and country in their velvets when Sir Rowland Rus- set-coat their dad, goes sagging every day in his round gascoignes of white cotton and hath much ado (poor penny father) to keep his unthrift elbows in reparations. A perfectionist when it came to deflating the pretensions of courtiers or of Puritans, Nashe thought that Greene's Qutp, though it attacked the Harveys and his fellow William Shake - speare somewhat too severely, did not do justice to its ostensi- ble object, the upstart courtier. Nashe later sought to remedy this defect as well as reap literary capital from Greene's name (as he had done with Tarleton's in Tarleton's News from Purga- tory). He called this piece Greene's News from Heaaen and HeIl. Given in Chapter XI, it is one of Nashe's better stories. Greene's The llpstart Courtier was not, as some have sup- posed, directed ai Doctor Harvey, but at Christopher Mar- lowe. Whatever his other faults, the learned and puritanical doctor had never been accused of gaudy dress; rather it was Gabriel Harvey who later in Gorgon described a gaudily dressed Marlowe walking along Paul's Churchyard' In Cobler of Canterbury, Thomas Nashe describes a finely 118 g Louis Ule dressed Christopher Marlowe on his way to Canterbury for the celebration of the wedding of his sistet Margaret. Even then Marlowe was wearing silk, a suercoat of blue satiry and a pair of hose trimmed with velvet thongs; the blue suercoat was set off by the prominently displayed golden pommel of his sword. We recall that the liveried servants of the Countess of Pembroke, on her entry into London, displayed golden chains and blue cassocks. It may be that Christopher Marlowe, sporting the same colors, was in 1592 in the service of the Earl of Pembroke. A new company of players had been formed wearing Pembroke's livery, the Pembroke players, and they performed Marlowe's plays almost exclusively. Mar- lowe's new finery, daily displayed in riding about London in his lord's service, was required by his new position. The Earl's London residence, Baynard Castle, was situated on the Thames, not far from Paul's Churchyard, where Marlowe was reported seen. The Earl of Pembroke's men are first mentioned as playing at Leicester in the last three months of '1,592, and if they were organized at Marlowe's instigatiorL it must have been earlier in that year. Greene's Quip for and Upstart Courtier was entered in the Stationers' Registers on July 20, L592, so that Marlowe had become an "upstart courtier" very likely at least some months before.
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