Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

In either case, how are we to account for his statement to Furnivall? Very simply; the poet was mistaken in his recollection of the circumstances. Between the publication of the poem in 1842, and the statement to Furnivall in 1881, a period of time had passed which may well excuse such a lapse of recollection. Readers, moreover, will easily call to mind other instances of Browning's apparent lack of interest in his past work, and of his inaccuracy in referring to his procedure in composing it; see, e. g., Cook's Commentary upon "The Ring and the Book," pages 292 and 319.

One other matter calls for remark; for, of the versions of the story contained in my list, only one more has points of resemblance to Browning worth noting. This is, as we should expect, the version of Mérimée, who alone tells the story for purely literary-not historical or scientific-purposes. He has these points of similarity:

1. The piper is described in part as "un grand homme, basané, sec" ("tall and thin, With . . . swarthy skin"); the only hints of his personal appearance elsewhere in our list are vague statements like Schott's "staturae prodigiosae."

2. One rat survives the general exodus-being too old to walk; but the "magician" sends another rat to get him, and both jump into the Weser, the messenger pulling the old rat by the tail. Browning's surviving rat was probably suggested rather by Verstegen's lame boy; but Mérimée too may have given a hint.

[ocr errors]

3. When the piper asks for his reward, the citizens call to mind qu'ils n'avaient plus rien à craindre des rats" ("We saw with our eyes the vermin sink, And what's dead can't come to life, I think ").

4. A pair of specific sums is mentioned; the citizens promise a hundred ducats, and offer ten ("A thousand guilders! Come, take fifty!").

5. Mérimée makes a good deal of the Saxons in Transylvania; but his account here is not noticeably closer to Browning's than is Verstegen's.

Points 3 and 4, while they do not appear in any other version I have read, are of course such embellishments of the narrative as

The occurrence of the story in Mérimée is noted in Furnivall's Bibliography, p. 113, n. 3.

might well occur independently to two men who were retelling the story for literary purposes. But point 1 is more clearly a reminiscence; and all the resemblances taken together make it seem likely, I think, that Browning had read the story in Mérimée.

Our conclusions are that, in all probability, Browning's chief source was Verstegen, whom he knew either directly, or through a detailed retelling by his father. The form of the name Hamelin is the only detail that can be traced to Howell. The churchwindow, and perhaps the name Koppelberg, are from Wanley. Schott was perhaps used for certain details; Wier was not; and there was probably in the poet's mind a recollection of some details in Mérimée, who had preceded him in the literary treatment of the 'story. It is of course possible, too, that some or all of the hints from Howell, Wanley, Schott and Mérimée, as well as the more important details from Verstegen, were embodied in an account given the poet by his father. In any case, his statements to Furnivall, forty years later, were due to a mistaken recollection of the circumstances.

NOTE. Since this article was written, I have been able to consult O. Meinardus, Der historische Kern der Hameler Rattenfängersage (Zschr. des hist. Vereins fur Niedersachsen, Jahrg. 1882, pages 256 ff.), and S. P. Thompson, The Pied Piper of Hamelin (Sette of Odd Volumes, Opuscula, No. LIII, London, 1905). The material gathered by these two writers throws no new light on the specific question here discussed. Their articles, however, contain interesting extracts from some of the older accounts, including the following, which should be added to the bibliography:

J. Fincelius: Wunderzeichen (Jhena, 1556), p. G. iv. verso.

J. Letzner: Corbeische Chronica (Hamburg, 1590), notes to chapter 20. G. Rollenhagen: Froschmeuseler (Magdeburgk, 1600, and frequently reprinted), Buch III, Theil I, Kap. XIII.

M. Sachs: Kaiserchronik (1605).

M. Schoock: Fabula Hamelensis (Groningae, 1659).

C. F. Fein: Die entlarvte Fabel vom Ausgange der hämelschen Kinder (Hannover, 1749).

College of the City of New York.

GABRIEL HARVEY'S REFERENCES TO MARLOWE

BY HALE MOORE

The obscurity incident to most of the writings of Gabriel Harvey reaches its superlative in the last of his published works, A New Letter of Notable Contents, dated 16 September, 1593. Among the most difficult parts are those which contain certain allusions to Christopher Marlowe and his death some three months before. Harvey's remarks are cast in verse through a group of four poems coming at the end of the prose text. Students of Marlowe and Harvey have generally made no attempt to dig out more than the gist of what the author has here so thoroughly bemuffled. G. C. Moore Smith,2 Hans Berli,3 and Tucker Brooke seem to acquiesce with Dr. McKerrow's, "I can only say that it [the group of poems] was doubtless intended to have some meaning, but that I have in vain attempted to discover what this may be." Bullen had, however, ventured a partial explanation in the introduction to his edition of Marlowe, one which Grosart in editing the Works of Harvey accepted and quoted in full. Fleay has left us some rather original suggestions to help explain difficult allusions here and there; I shall refer to them later. More recently Professor Hubbard has seen Possible Evidence for the Date of Tamburlaine" in the same mysterious poems. An examination of the

1 Works of Gabriel Harvey, ed. Grosart, Huth Library, 1884, 1, 292. (Cited hereafter as G. H.)

2 The Marginalia of Gabriel Harvey, ed. Moore Smith, Stratford-on-Avon, 1913. (Cited hereafter as Marg.)

3 Gabriel Harvey Der Dichterfreund und Kritiker, Zurich, 1913.

• Works of Marlowe, ed. Tucker Brooke, Oxford, 1910, p. 2; also "The Reputation of Christopher Marlowe” in Transactions of the Conn. Acad., XXV, June, 1922, 397-408.

5 Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. R. B. McKerrow, v, 102. (Cited hereafter as T. N.)

6
• Works of Marlowe, ed. A. H. Bullen, 1884-5, 1, lxv.

G. H., III, xiii-xvi.

A Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama, Lon., 1891, II, 64-5.

66

9 PMLA, XXXIII. 436-43. I cannot think Mr. Hubbard correct in assuming that McKerrow seems to have overlooked Bullen's interpretation of the poems," since the former's words more likely imply that he can suggest nothing better. Every reader of his Nashe must perceive how thoroughly he knew Grosart's work, in which, as stated above, Bullen's remarks are quoted in full.

Harvey-Marlowe relations as a whole has led me to reject Mr. Hubbard's thesis and to attempt a more complete solution of the puzzles involved.

Gabriel Harvey, fourteen years the senior 10 of Christopher Marlowe, matriculated at Christ's College, Cambridge, 28 June, 1566, became B. A. 1569-70, and M. A. 1573.11 He held various University offices and fellowships 1573-79, but was checked in his attempt to secure the position of Public Orator in April of 1580. During the next three or four years he was in residence, off and on, studying civil law and hoping for advancement at court. Marlowe had matriculated at Corpus Christi sometime in the Lent term of 1580-81, and he continued a member of the University until taking his M. A. in July, 1587. Although there exists no external evidence that the two men knew each other at this period, there is some basis for speculation. In the Bursar's accounts for the years 1580-84 12 are entered memoranda of the sums paid by the College to Marlowe each quarter on his scholarship. As the amounts varied according to his presence or absence from the University, it is possible to fix certain times at which he and Harvey were both in residence. During the entire summer of 1583 both men were present at the University. Harvey, now a man of thirty-three, was temporarily the Junior Proctor of the University; and it is just possible that the undergraduate may have come under the eye of the older man in some way that might help to explain later enmities. We have some reasons to believe that Nashe 13 and Marlowe were acquaintances as early as their student years at Cambridge, but they hardly seem strong enough to urge the view that Marlowe and Harvey knew of each other at the time through Nashe Nashe states that he himself knew Harvey then:

"When I was in Cambridge and but a childe, I was indifferently perswaded of thee: mee thought by thy apparell and thy gate, thou shouldst have beene a fine fellow." 14

10-11 For these and other references to the academic careers of Harvey, Marlowe, and Nashe consult Marg. and the volumes of the Alumni Cantabrigienses, ed. Venn, Cambridge, 1922

12" Marlowe at Cambridge," G. C. Moore Smith, MLR, Iv, 167-77.

13 Came up during 1581-82; matriculated sizar from St. John's 1582; B. A., 1585-86.

14 T. N., I, 269.

In point of fact Harvey was a well known University character of whom they would not be in complete ignorance. He had been made the butt of Pedantius,15 a college play produced in February, 1580-81; the publication of his correspondence with Spenser had caused so much talk and annoyance at Cambridge 16 that he was obliged to

"interpreate my intention in more expresse termes: and thereupon discoursed eurie particularitie, by way of Articles or Positions, in a large Apology of my duetiful, and entier affection to that flourishing Vniuersitie, my deere Mother " ";

17

and he had been defeated under rather humiliating circumstances for both the Public Oratorship and the Mastership of Trinity Hall. But, however likely it may be that Marlowe knew of Harvey and his brothers in these years, it would seem very doubtful that the older graduate, preoccupied in a complexity of ambitious projects, took any particular notice of young Kit, any, that is, which might color his later opinions. No, I think we may be sure, it was the later relations of Marlowe with Nashe which led Harvey to think and write of them together, as we shall see presently that he does. That Nashe and Marlowe were friends after leaving school is beyond doubt. McKerrow has shown that Nashe did not attack Marlowe in his criticism prefaced to Grene's Menaphon.18 Through his other writings 19 Nashe always speaks of Marlowe as his friend; he even quotes the latter's familiar jest on Richard Harvey.20 After Marlowe's death Nashe saw Dido through the press if he did. not actually collaborate at some time with its composition.21

After Marlowe left Cambridge for London in the summer of 1587 it is impossible to be sure in any detail of his relations with Harvey. The record of the dramatist's personal affairs during these years is of the scantiest kind. We have: 1. A memorandum in the

15 Ed. G. C. Moore Smith, Bang's Materialien, VIII.

16 Cf. Marg., pp. 31-4. See also the letter printed on p. 45.

17 G. H., Four Letters, 1, 180; or in the “Bodley Head Quartos " edition of 1922, p. 31.

18 T. N., IV, 445-6.

19 Ibid., II, 180; ш, 131, 132, 195, 198.

20" An asse, good for nothing but to preach of the Iron Age." Cf. infra, p. 343.

21 On Nashe's part in Dido, see: T. N., IV, 294-5, and Tucker Brooke's Marlowe, pp. 388-9.

« VorigeDoorgaan »