Reference > Cambridge History > Prose and Poetry: Sir Thomas North to Michael Drayton > London and the Development of Popular Literature > Jest Books
  Burlesques Wagering Journeys  

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The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume IV. Prose and Poetry: Sir Thomas North to Michael Drayton.

XVI. London and the Development of Popular Literature.

§ 28. Jest Books.


The atmosphere of the capital made itself felt in many ways, apart from experiments in style and the study of types. There are constant allusions to noted and notorious characters of the city, such as Lanum, Garret, Singer, Pope, Backstead, Field and Hobson. Tarlton became so famous that Gabriel Harvey was proud to have jested with him, and Fitzgeoffrey 134  and Stradling 135  honoured him in Latin epigrams. Some of these characters became the heroes of jest-books, 136  in which old stories were told anew and associated with their names. Yet even in this field, the popular interest in London gives a touch of freshness. The compiler of the Merrie Conceited Jests of George Peele has managed to centre all his detached anecdotes round the attractive and novel personality of literary bohemians. 137  Koggan and Eulenspiegel were traditional figure-heads, in which gipsy cunning blended with bucolic ineptitude. In George Peele, however, we find a consistent character devoted to pleasure and prodigality, who has discarded the inane antics of earlier jest-books, and governs his vagaries by the desire to escape a creditor or gain a dinner. But his frauds are still perpetrated with the heartlessness of an earlier age, and the book does not bear witness to the “civilitie” of London so convincingly as John Taylor’s Wit and Mirth (1635), in which the current witticisms of taverns, ordinaries and bowling-greens are worked up into “yerks” and “clinches.” Here we find the educated man’s amusement at the clown’s misuse 138  of new Latinised words such as Dogberry mutilated, and the Londoner’s contempt for provincial arrogance. 139  The phantasy on a bowling-alley contains conceits as elaborate as those of Overbury and Breton, and other anecdotes 140  have touches of epigrammatic wisdom such as the essayists loved to record. The most noticeable feature is the predominance of the modern repartee—the flash of ridicule or humour struck out of a word taken in two senses—which is often associated with Sheridan.   66
Note 134. Affaniae, 1601. [ back ]
Note 135. Epigrammata, 1607. [ back ]
Note 136. Vide bibl. For origin of Jest-books vide ante Vol. III, Chap. v, pp. 102–107. [ back ]
Note 137. The book was probably compiled after the dramatist’s death. One episode, at least, is taken from A C. Mery Talys, and the conception of the character is similar to that of George Pyeboard in The Puritan (1607). As the earliest known edition of the jests has the same date, the question of imitation cannot be settled. [ back ]
Note 138. Cf. Rowlands’s Letting of Humours Blood, 1600. [ back ]
Note 139. E.g. Jest no. 100, “A toy to mocke an Ape.” [ back ]
Note 140. E.g. no. 127. [ back ]

CONTENTS · VOLUME CONTENTS · INDEX OF ALL CHAPTERS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
  Burlesques Wagering Journeys  
 
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