John Weever, Nicholas Breton, Edward, Everard, Guilpin, pamphlet war, Scourge of Villainie, 1598, Virgidemiarum
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76
involve the poets, John Weever, Nicholas Breton and Edward (or Everard) Guilpin when the dispute mutated into a pamphlet war.
Of these satirists Marston put himself at risk of deprecation in the most reckless fashion by presenting himself as a freelance writer. In a much more pronounced and explicit manner than Skelton ever had the opportunity to achieve, he exhibits a subversive independence from authority, remaining aloof from patronage and neglecting to identify himself with jurisdiction that originates anywhere other than with himself. In the Scourge of Villainie (Sept, 1598), for instance, he breaks demonstratively with the system of literary patronage by dedicating it “To his most esteemed, and best beloued Selfe”.
142
He portrays himself as being masterless as well as malcontented; exactly the sort of person characteristically represented as sowing the seeds of sedition in late-Renaissance society. His intention in doing this is, in part at least, to court detraction and in The Scourge he even goes so far as to invite it openly: “Then doe but raile at me,/ No greater honor craues my poesie” (‘In Lectores prorsus indignos’, ll.79-80).
Such self-justifying, preemptive strikes against detractors were a hallmark of formal verse satire in the 1590s.
143
Hall opens his Virgidemiarum with ‘His Defiance to Enuie’, and in his postscript he writes, “I well forsee in the timely publication of these my concealed Satyres, I am set vpon the racke of many mercilesse and preemptorie censures”
142 It is worth noting that Marston goes to greater lengths than some of his contemporaries to stress his independence here. William Rankins, for instance, dedicates his Seven Satires “To his noble minded friend Iohn Salisbury of Llewenni, Esquire of the body to the Queenes most excellent Maiesty”, Seven Satires (1598), ed. Arnold Davenport (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 1948), p.3. In using Marston as an example of the autonomy of the satirical voice here I follow Kernan (1959) who points out that he epitomises the disposition of the late-Elizabethan satirist, whereas some traits are either less pronounced or absent in his contemporaries, p.82.
143 Among these is T. M.’s [Thomas Middleton(?)] Micro-Cynicon (1599) which opens with ‘His Defiance to Envy’ and the equally combative ‘Author’s Prologue’, The Works of Thomas Middleton, ed. A. H. Bullen, 8 vols (Nimmo, 1885-6), VIII. pp.114-16.
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