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strange fashion Poor Richard's Almanack), and the like. The work " was divided into groups of verses under various titles of philosophers and other learned men supposed to have opinions and entitled Juries." " 48 Though the book may have been suggested by some Italian work on fortune," it seemingly had no literary ancestry. The author's material is homespun, such as existed among the people for whom it was intended. The fragments, happily preserved, make this deduction fairly safe. The pertinent stanza is as follows:

A mickle truth it is I tell

Hereafter thou'st lead Apes in Hell:
For she that will not when she may,
When she will, she shall have nay.50

Now since this Book of Fortune was meant for a simple people, it was but natural that the author should incorporate folk expressions. A glance at the pages of Mrs. Stopes will reveal the homely features.51 Among available plain terms of course would be " apes in hell." All that was needed therefore-in an age on the alert to pour old wine into new bottles-was a gifted versifier who could lift this pithy bit from its mediæval into a Renaissance setting. In short, though there is no definite evidence that the above actually did happen, the Book of Fortune does fulfill neces

224.

On the unfortunate disappearance of an apparently unique copy of the book see Stopes, S's Industry, 196 f.

Mrs. Stopes's date (c. 1560) seems convincing. Naturally my discussion hangs upon the acceptance of her conclusions. Though the 1672 reprint may have been "revised and expanded" (p. 187)—for which, however, she offers no proof-it is very unlikely that this represented much more than the modernizing of certain terms. Several words occur, for example, for which the NED offers no instances before the 17th c. At any rate, the passage on spinsters (and bachelors: cf. further infra) is an integral part of the framework; and she has, as said, made out a good case in her attempt to identify that work with the one licensed in 1560,-probably the mysterious "Booke of Fortune" of Capt. Cox. 48 Stopes, 187.

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"Stopes, 197. Cf. her discussion on Sir Thomas More's poem on fortune (181 ff.). It is very unlikely that " apes occurs in the 16th c. Professor Gruenbaum has

Italian book on Fortune referred to by her.

searched Italian folklorists for me, and comes to the same conclusion. It

is not in Torriano, Vocabulario Inglese & Italiano (1688).

50 The bachelor's fate is also given (Stopes, 195).

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sary requirements: it is a close link between the unlettered and the sophisticated.

Support of this view is furnished by what one finds in Heywood's Proverbs. Though this compilation first appeared in 1546 52-and was reprinted repeatedly thereafter-it does not contain " apes in hell." The obvious conclusion is that the phrase was not then current, at least as a proverb. Moreover, the omission seems particularly significant in the light of the fact that the Proverbs is a dialogue on marriage. Here surely was a theme that would attract such a picturesque phrase. Furthermore, Heywood's Epigrams on Proverbs (c. 1555-62) 5 likewise omits the proverb. That the expression was widely current before 1560 or so seems therefore, in the light of Heywood, highly improbable.

53

The likeliest explanation then is that "apes in hell" had its origin in the ballad of The Maid and the Palmer. Here it was found and appropriated by the author of that strange medley of the simple and the artificial—the Book of Fortune. And when the early 1570's brought a sophisticated group of writers who ransacked every printed work-Heywood's Proverbs often become a mere groundwork for their interminable pages-the fortune telling manual was likewise culled. Hence it followed that apes in hell" was also seized upon-first apparently by Gascoigne whose indebtedness to proverbs is apparent and was played with by writer after writer as the previous pages have shown.55

54

66

52 Bolwell, "Life and Works of John Heywood" (Columbia Univ. Press, 1921, 130 f.). It was reprinted in 1547, 1549, 1556, 1561 and five more times before 1600 (cf. Bolwell, 130 f.). On the importance of Heywood's work Sharman (cf. Bolwell, 132n.) says: "There is little doubt that, after the appearance of Heywood's book in 1546, a new idea or influence was set working in English literature. The author was by means of this work reminding the public of a property which the owners were inadvertently losing. That same meaning which the romancers before him had attempted to explain with an allegory, Heywood could promptly convey in a proverb. . . . It became the most popular of all popular books."

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5 Bolwell, 133. Berdan (Early Tudor Poetry, 1920, 256) would date some of the Epigrams earlier.

Cf., for examples, op. cit., 400 f., 449. On the latter page is a line that recalls the last lines of the first passage of "The Thirteenth Jury” (Stopes, 190).

85

Apes seem to have a way of eluding the scholar. The "famous ape" of Hamlet is still missing.

II

Shakspere's treatment of the phrase throws light upon Shakspere the man as well as on his method of workmanship. His use of the proverb furnishes another illuminating example of his restraint. "In every thing, I woot," says Chaucer, "ther lyth mesure." So it was with the arch dramatist. He avoided, as seen, the grotesque handling of the expression. Nor is this a unique instance for an interesting parallel may be found in his treatment of animal lore. His pictures, says Sir Walter Raleigh, "of cannibals, skin-clad savages, and the like are less grotesque than those in the prose writers and travellers of his day." 56 Thus is offered another example of how Shakspere takes "his stand with average humanity, and is hardly ever eccentric" (ibid., 11).

Accordingly, his conservatism, or refusal to depart from the center, becomes one with his impeccable taste. In his allusion to apes in hell he sought no novelty. In refusing to play with the idea, as was then customary, his genius gave a literary quality to the phrase not bestowed upon it by any other writer. In The Shrew the saying, to be sure, alludes merely to the destiny of unmarried women; but it is used skilfully and with effect." The situation calls for no more or no less. In Much Ado, on the contrary, where riotous humor among the high-spirited prevails, the proverb gives color and life to an unsurpassed scene. Beatrice, it will be remembered, wishes no husband: "I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face." To Leonato's observation that she may light on one with no beard, she replies wittily (and racily) that other considerations deter her, and adds: "Therefore I will even take sixpence in earnest of the bear-'ard, and lead his apes in hell." At once follows Leonato's quibble: "well, then, go you into hell?" It is the reply which Beatrice, with the ape still uppermost in her thoughts,58 makes that is beyond the critic's praise:

56 "Shakespeare's England," op. cit., 1, 183. Cf. also "His works are not the eccentricities of a solitary genius" (ibid., 44).

67 This passage is in the so-called unShaksperian part. For evidence that Shakspere wrote the entire play see my paper in the Sept. no. of the P. M. L. A. (1925).

56 A veiled reference to the bear associated in the minds of the populace with apes (cf. Bond, "The Shrew," op. cit., 49).

No, but to the gate, and there will the devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say 'Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here's no place for you maids.' So deliver I up my apes, and away to St. Peter for the heavens; he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long.

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Thus did the magician-in lines called "impious nonsense by Warburton and therefore rejected on the ground of being unShaksperian-weave his fancy into the proverb,-and there's magic in the web of it.59

Goucher College.

50 Warburton's remark is of course one of the many curiosities in Shaksperian criticism. But even the wise Dr. Johnson, though he believed the two speeches genuine, said: "Warburton says, 'All this impious nonsense thrown to the bottom is the players, and foisted in without rhyme or reason.' They do not deserve indeed so honourable a place [as the text] yet I am afraid they are too much in the manner of our author, who is sometimes trifling to purchase merriment at too dear a rate."

JOHN DUNTON: PIETIST AND IMPOSTOR

By C. A. MOORE

Any reliable estimate of the character and talents of John Dunton (1659-1733) can be based only upon his early work. That he eventually went mad-as did his more illustrious contemporaries Defoe, Pope, and Swift-we should at least surmise from his later works, especially the political tracts, if we had no more explicit testimony. From the year 1705 onward, indications of paranoia are increasingly pronounced. His main work as author, compiler, hack-master, publisher, and factotum was performed between 1682 and 1706. Mention of Dunton's name in histories of English literature is due almost solely to the fact that during this period he played a very active and original part in journalism. At the same time he was expending a vast deal of energy upon treatises which have long since passed into an oblivion almost undisturbed even by bibliographers. Aside from his reputation as a journalist, Dunton was known to his contemporaries mainly as the author of numerous religious and devotional books. The momentary resurrection of these pious curiosities from long neglect is unquestionably a doubtful service to the cause of pure letters. There is nothing here without which English literature has suffered any serious deprivation. They are of some importance, however, for the additional light they shed upon the egregious dishonesty of the author and, incidentally, also upon the taste of a large English public to which he catered, with evident success, during the closing years of the seventeenth century.

It is a safe generalization that the further we penetrate through the elaborate deceptions Dunton built up round his character and work the more plainly it will appear that he deserves no attention whatever as a creative writer. If a critical posterity has been unfair in its judgment, the injustice has been done chiefly in connection with his contribution to English journalism, the one phase of his activity which has attracted most attention. The historical significance of the Athenian Gazette (1691-96), or the Athenian Mercury as he renamed his "Notes and Queries," has been admitted slowly and grudgingly. Even yet the statement is probably

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