Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/412

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. xn. NOV. 21, 1903.

so) as language could be made. The re- fined Harvey constantly attacks Nashe for obscenity, to which charge some of his writings indisputably laid him open. This is only, however, a sidelong view to show the suitability of the name, which is, I apprehend, applicable to Nashe for other reasons, of more pointed and personal nature. The reference in the name of Onion is to Nashe's tears. It may have become a personal joke. At any rate, it seems a probable one from the following considerations. Harvey refers con- stantly to Nashe's 4 Funeral! Tears of Mary Magdalene,' and his " patheticall veine " and his " compassionatest Tears," as in 'A Newe Letter' (p. 273). And he refers mockingly again to Nashe's * Teares of Christ ' (ibid. p. 291). But specially note Harvey's words, "I pray God the promised Teares of Repent- ance, prove not the Teares of the Onion upon the Theater '"' (ibid. p. 288). These words are addressed to Nashe. To the dramatists, who were also actors, " tears " and " onion " were synonymous terms.

To rain a shower of commanded tears An onion will do well.

Shakespeare's ' Taming of a Shrew.'

Compare further Nashe's "floudsof teares," and his crying and weeping sonnets in the Introduction to ' Pierce Pennilesse ' (edited Collier, p. xxi). And Nashe, the Onion, makes Valentine weep: "I have done but the part of an onion'' 3 (520a). There is a distinct allusion, which I cannot explain, in Valentine's ' Mesopotamia " remarks (549a). Dekker, in his * Gentle Craft' (Pearson, i. 30), uses the expression "You mad Mesopota- mians."

I will now, however, at last "let loose my opinion/' In the cudgel scene in 'The Case is Altered ' (II. iv.) Martino is introduced for the purpose of having a bout with the cudgels with Onion. He has no other busi- ness in the play. He breaks Onion's head and exit. Martino is Martin Marprelate. Juniper is asked to play with Martin, but declines. He plays the part of umpire or sponge - holder : "By your favour, sweet bullies, give them room.' Compare Gabriel Harvey (Juniper): "Though the case be altered, and I now none of the hastiest to aspire for those bucklers" ('Foure Letters,' 1592, i. 185-6). Juniper's words at the end of this scene are : "Martino,do not insinuate upon your good fortune, but play an honest part and bear away the bucklers/' Jonson took his title perhaps from this passage, which is almost, if not quite, the earliest literary use of the proverb. The earliest use I find of "bear away the bucklers" is in

Nashe's 'Epistle' prefixed to Greene's 'Mena- phon,' 1587.

Martin breaks Onion's head. Nashe's first appearance as an author was in 1589 (except- ing the interpolated "epistle" mentioned above; and other pieces of the same date as the one I refer to ' A Countercuff to Martin Junior,' 1589. Lyly and he were the earliest outsiders to wage war against the Martinists. Evidently Jonson thinks Martin Marprelate got the better of Nashe, but it is generally conceded that the reverse was the case, and that Nashe was, as Taylor, the Water Poet, calls him later, " the old Martin-queller." I see no sort of sense at all in this scene, save as a mocking topical allusion to the Mar- prelatists. Jonson never wrote a scene, at least in his earlier career, without an object.

One of the most entertaining portions of Harvey's attacks upon Nashe in ' Pierce's Supererogation' will be found at pp. 247-9 (vol. ii.)- A Nashe is an ass. On this text he rings the changes, a somewhat silly and thin jest, but out of it he spins a deal of ingenious and savage raillery, bringing out copious classical erudition. Elsewhere Nashe is "the very inventor of Asses" (ii. 120), " the olde Asse, the great A, and the est Amen " (ii. 120), " a very Asse in presenti " (ii. 210; applies to Lyly?); and so on. But in the passage first referred to he sets to work to identify Nashe with every known ass Balaam's, Lucian's,/Esop's, Silenus's, Cumane, Apuleius's, Priapus's, Rabbinis, Agrippa's. Achitophel's, &c. ; and a most entertaining assault it is. Nashe resented this identifica- tion with " that famous creature " exceed- ingly. It made him boil over, and no doubt it was a source of much amusement and chaft amongst his companions. I detect an allu- sion to all this in Valentine's words (519b), " Master Onion with a murrain ! Come, come ; put off this lion's hide, your ears have discovered you. Why, Peter ! do I not know you, Peter?" Nashe, the Onion, is the ass disguised in the lion's hide, ^Esop's ass. Nashe had already made use of this ex- pression proverbially (the first example I have noted) in his ' Foure Letters Confuted ' (Grosart, ii. 226) in the same year (1593).

Other traces of Nashe may be found in Onion. Onion says, " I confess Cupid's carouse, he plays super megulum [? sic] with my liquor of life" (540b). This expression for emptying the glass (tapping the inverted edge "on the thumbnail") is a favourite with Nashe, by whom it appears to have been introduced as a proverb. He has it in ' Pierce Penniless ' (1592), in ' Summer's Last Will' (Hazlitt's 'Dodsley,' viii. 58, circa 1592),