Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 3).pdf/473

 the Ile of dogges' (l. 779). But there is nothing offensive to authority here. Nashe returns to the question of his indiscretion in more than one passage of Lenten Stuffe, and in particular has a diatribe (McKerrow, iii. 213) against lawyers who try to fish 'a deepe politique state meaning' out of what contains no such thing. 'Talke I of a beare, O, it is such a man that emblazons him in his armes, or of a woolfe, a fox, or a camelion, any lording whom they do not affect it is meant by.' Apparently Nashe was accused of satirizing some nobleman. But this was not the only point of attack. 'Out steps me an infant squib of the Innes of Court and he, to approue hymselfe an extrauagant statesman, catcheth hold of a rush, and absolutely concludeth, it is meant of the Emperor of Ruscia, and that it will vtterly marre the traffike into that country if all the Pamphlets bee not called in and suppressed, wherein that libelling word is mentioned.' I do not suppose that Nashe had literally called the Emperor of Russia a rush in The Isle of Dogs, but it is quite possible that he, or Ben Jonson, had called the King of Poland a pole. On 23 July 1597, just five days before the trouble, a Polish ambassador had made representations in an audience with Elizabeth, apparently about the question, vexed in the sixteenth as in the twentieth century, of contraband in neutral vessels, and she, scouring up her rusty old Latin for the purpose, had answered him in very round terms. The matter, to which there are several allusions in the Cecilian correspondence (Wright, Eliz. ii. 478, 481, 485), gave some trouble, and any mention of it on the public stage might well have been resented. A letter of Robert Beale in 1592 (McKerrow, v. 142) shows that the criticisms of Nashe's Pierce Penilesse had similarly been due to his attack upon the Danes, with which country the diplomatic issues were much the same as with Poland. In Hatfield MSS. vii. 343 is a letter of 10 Aug. 1597 to Robert Cecil from Richard (misdescribed in the Calendar as Robert) Topcliffe, recommending an unnamed bearer as 'the first man that discovered to me that seditious play called The Isle of Dogs'. Doubtful Play

Nashe has been suggested as a contributor to A Knack to Know a Knave (cf. ch. xxiv). THOMAS NELSON. The pageant-writer is probably identical with the stationer of the same name, who is traceable in London during 1580-92 (McKerrow, 198). ''Allot Pageant. 29 Oct. 1590''

1590. The Deuice of the Pageant: Set forth by the Worshipfull Companie of the Fishmongers, for the right honourable Iohn Allot: established Lord Maior of London, and Maior of the Staple for this present Yeere of our Lord 1590. By T. Nelson. No imprint.

Speeches by the riders on the Merman and the Unicorn, and by Fame, the Peace of England, Wisdom, Policy, God's Truth, Plenty,