SECTION LIII. Tusser. Remarkable circumstances of his life. His Husbandrie, one of our earliest didactic poems, examined. ABOUT the same time flourished Thomas Tusser, one of our earliest didactic poets, in a science of the highest utility, and which produced one of the most beautiful poems of antiquity. The vicissitudes of this man's life have uncommon variety and novelty for the life of an author, and his history conveys some curious traces of the times as well as of himself. He seems to have been alike the sport of fortune, and a dupe to his own discontented disposition and his perpetual propensity to change of situation. He was born of an ancient family, about the year 1523, at Rivenhall in Essex; and was placed as a chorister, or singing-boy, in the collegiate chapel of the castle of Wallingford in Berkshire". Having a fine voice, he was impressed from Wallingford college into the king's chapel. Soon afterwards he was admitted into the choir of saint Paul's cathedral in London; where he made great improvements under the instruction of John Redford the organist, a famous musician. He was next sent to Eton-school, where, at one chastisement, he received fiftythree stripes of the rod from the severe but celebrated master Nicholas Udall. His academical education was at Trinity-hall in Cambridge: but Hatcher affirms, that he was from Eton admitted a scholar of King's College in that university, under the year 1543. From the university he was called up to court by his singular and generous patron William lord Paget, in whose family he appears to have been a retainerd. In this department he lived ten years; but being disgusted with the vices, and wearied with the quarrels of the courtiers, he retired into the country, and embraced the profession of a farmer, which he successively practised at Ratwood in Sussex, Ipswich in Suffolk, Fairstead in Essex, Norwich, and other places. Here his patrons were sir Richard South This chapel had a dean, six prebendàries, six clerks, and four choristers. It was dissolved in 1549. b Udall's English interludes, mentioned above, were perhaps written for his scholars. Thirty-five lines of one of them are quoted in Wilson's Arte of Logike, edit. 1567. fol. 67 a. "Suete maistresse whereas," &c. MSS. Catal. Præpos. Soc. Schol. Coll. Regal. Cant. d Our author's Husbandrie is dedicated to his son Lord Thomas Paget of Beaudesert, fol. 7. ch. ii. edit. ut infr. [It was first inscribed to his father Lord William Paget, 1586.-PARK.] e In Peacham's Minerva, a book of emblems printed in 1612, there is the device of a whetstone and a scythe with these lines, fol. 61. edit. 4to. They tell me, Tusser, when thou wert alive, And hadst for profit turned euery stone, Where ere thou camest thou couldst neuer thriue, Though heereto best couldst counsel every one, well', and Salisbury dean of Norwich. Under the latter he procured the place of a singing-man in Norwich cathedral. At length, having perhaps too much philosophy and too little experience to succeed in the business of agriculture, he returned to London; but the plague drove him away from town, and he took shelter at Trinity college in Cambridge. Without a tincture of careless imprudence, or vicious extravagance, this desultory character seems to have thrived in no vocation. Fuller says, that his stone, which gathered no moss, was the stone of Sisyphus. His plough and his poetry were alike unprofitable. He was by turns a fiddler and a farmer, a grazier and a poet, with equal success. He died very aged at London in 1580*, and was buried in saint Mildred's church in the Poultry 8. Some of these circumstances, with many others of less consequence, are related by himself in one of his pieces, entitled the AUTHOR's Life, as follows. What robes how bare, what colledge fare! Thence for my voice, I must, no choice, The better brest', the lesser rest, To serue the queer, now there now heer: not die very aged in 1580; as he was only 57. If he went to college in 1543, aged 20, stayed there three years, and then followed the court for ten years, he must have been 33 at least when he married: this brings us to 1556, and the very next year produced the first edition of his Husbandry; which seems too short a space to furnish the practical knowledge discovered in that work.-ASHBY.] See his Epitaph in Stowe's Surv. Lond. p. 474. edit. 1618. 4to. And Fuller's Worthies, p. 334. [Fuller only collects the date of his death to be about 1580.-PARK.] The livery, or vestis liberata, often called robe, allowed annually by the college. To the passages lately collected by the commentators on Shakspeare to prove that breast signifies voice, the following may be added from Ascham's Toxophilus. He is speaking of the expediency of educating youth in singing. "Trulye two degrees of men, which haue the highest As all the learned Greekes, And Romaines would repine, His verse with scornefull eine". And learned Terence wan, &c.° The other is written by Thomas Twyne, an assistant in Phaer's Translation of Virgil's Eneid into English verse, educated a few years after Edwards at Corpus Christi college, and an actor in Edwards's play of PALAMON AND ARCITE before queen Elizabeth at Oxford in 1566P. It is entitled, "An Epitaph vpon the death of the worshipfull Mayster Richarde Edwardes late Mayster of the Children in the queenes maiesties chapell." O happie house, O place Of Corpus Christi, thou That plantedst first, and gaust the root Plunge up a thousand sighes, for griefe Whilst court a court shall be; and the same, I think, that is licensed to • Fol. 142 b. [The following is one of Turberville's epigrammatic witticisms: Of one that had a great Nose. Stande with thy nose against The sunne, with open chaps, Turb. Poems, 1570, p. 83 b. P Miles Winsore of the same college was another actor in that play, and I suppose his performance was much liked by the queen for when her majesty left Oxford, after this visit, he was appointed by the university to speak an oration before her at lord Windsor's at Bradenham in Bucks; and when he had done speaking, the queen turning to Gama de Sylva, the Spanish ambassador, and looking wistly on Windsore, said to the ambassador, Is not this a pretty young man? Wood, Ath. Oxon. i. 151. 489. Winsore proved afterwards a diligent antiquary. 9 Corpus Christi college at Oxford. bough, branch. At Oxford. While the royal chapel and its singing-boys remain. In a puritanical pamphlet without name, printed in 1569, and entitled, "The Children of the Chapel stript and whipt," among bishop Tanner's books at Oxford, it is said, "Plaies will neuer be supprest, while her maiesties unfledged minions flaunt it in silkes and sattens. They had as well be at their popish service, in the deuils garments," &c. fol. xii. a. 12mo. This is perhaps the earliest notice now to be found in print, of this young company of comedians, at least the earliest proof of their celebrity. From the same pamphlet we Good Edwards, eche astat" shall much Both want and wish for thee! Thy tender tunes and rhymes Wherein thou wontst to play, Eche princely dame of court and towne Shall beare in minde away. Thy DAMON and his Friend, learn, that it gave still greater offence to the puritans, that they were suffered to act plays on profane subjects in the royal chapel itself. "Even in her maiesties chappel do these pretty vpstart youthes profane the Lordes Day by the lascivious writhing of their tender limbs, and gorgeous decking of their apparell, in feigning bawdie fables gathered from the idolatrous heathen poets," &c. ibid. fol. xiii. b. But this practice soon ceased in the royal chapels. Yet in one of Stephen Gosson's books against the stage, written in 1579, is this passage:-"In playes, either those thinges are fained that neuer were, as CuPID AND PSYCHE plaid at PAULES, and a great many comedies more at the Blackfriars, and in euerie playhouse in London," &c. Signat. D. 4. Undoubtedly the actors of this play of Cupid and Psyche were the choristers of saint Paul's cathedral: but it may be doubted, whether by Paules we are here to understand the Cathedral or its Singing school, the last of which was the usual theatre of those choristers. See Gosson's "PLAYES CONFUTED IN FIVE ACTIONS, &c. prouing that they are not to be suffred in a christian common weale, by the waye both the cauils of Thomas Lodge, and the Play of Playes, written in their defence, and other objections of Players frendes, are truely set downe and directly aunsweard." Lond. Impr. for T. Gosson, no date. bl. lett. 12mo. We are sure that religious plays were presented in our churches long after the reformation. Not to repeat or multiply instances, see Second and Third Blast of Retrait from Plaies, printed 1580, pag. 77. 12mo.; and Gosson's Schoole of Abuse, p. 24 b. edit. 1579. As to the exhibition of plays on Sundays after the reformation, we are told by John Field, in his Declaration of God's Judgement at Paris Garden, that in the year 1580, "The Magistrates of the citty of London obteined from queene Elizabeth, that all heathenish playes and enterludes should be banished upon sabbath dayes." fol. ix. Lond. 1583. 8vo. It appears from this pamphlet, that a prodigious concourse of people were assembled at Paris Garden, to see plays and a bearbaiting, on Sunday Jan. 13, 1583, when the whole theatre fell to the ground, by which accident many of the spectators were killed. [As this accident happened three years after the above order was issued, Dr. Ashby supposes that the order extended only to the city, and that Paris Garden was out of that jurisdiction.PARK.] (See also Henry Cave's [Carre's] Narration of the Fall of Paris Garden, Lond. 1588; and D. Beard's Theater of Gods Judgements, edit. 3. Lond. 1631. lib. i. c. 35. p. 212; also Refutation of Heywood's Apologie for Actors, p. 43, by J. G. Lond. 1615. 4to.; and Stubbs's Anatomie of Abuses, p. 134, 135. edit. Lond. 1595.) And we learn from Richard Reulidges's Monster lately found out and discovered, or the Scourging of Tiplers, a circumstance not generally known in our dramatic history, and perhaps occasioned by these profanations of the sabbath, that "Many godly citizens and wel-disposed gentlemen of London, considering that play-houses and dicing-houses were traps for yong gentlemen and others,-made humble suite to queene Elizabeth and her Privy-councell, and obtained leave from her Majesty, to thrust the Players out of the citty; and to pull downe all Play-houses and Dicinghouses within their liberties: which accordingly was effected, and the Play-houses in Gracious [Gracechurch] street, Bishops gate street, that nigh Paules, that on Ludgate-hill, and the White-friers, were quite put downe and suppressed, by the care of these religious senators." Lond. 1628. pp. 2, 3, 4. Compare G. Whetstone's Mirrour for Magistrates of Citties. Lond. 1586. fol. 24. But notwithstanding these precise measures of the city magistrates and the privy-council, the queen appears to have been a constant attendant at plays, especially those presented by the children of her chapel. [So, also, she retained some relics of popery, as tapers on the altar, &c. which greatly offended the puritans.-ASHBY.] estate, rank of life. Hamlet calls Horatio, O Damon dear, in allusion to the friendship of Damon and Pythias, celebrated in Edwards's play. Hamlet, act iii. sc. 2. ́ Pythias. I have said above that the first edition of Edwards's Damon and Pythias was printed by William Howe in But marke the chance, myself to vance, With REDFORD there, the like no where, From PAULES I went, to EATON sent, The fault but small, or none at all, TO LONDON hence, to CAMBRIDGE thence, That to thy HALL, so passinge all, I got at last. There ioy I felt, there trim I dwelt, &c. At length he married a wife by the name of Moone, from whom, for an obvious reason, he expected great inconstancy, but was happily disappointed. Through Uenus' toies, in hope of ioies, I chanced soone to finde a Moone, Of cheerfull hew: Which well and fine, methought, did shine, Before I proceed, I must say a few words concerning the very remarkable practice implied in these stanzas, of seizing boys by a warrant for the service of the king's chapel. Strype has printed an abstract of an instrument, by which it appears, that emissaries were dispatched into various parts of England with full powers to take boys from any choir for the use of the chapel of king Edward the Sixth. Under the year 1550, says Strype, there was a grant of a commission "to Philip Van Wilder gentleman of the Privy Chamber, in anie churches or offices under the king in all this realme, shall greatly lacke the vse of singinge, preachers and lawyers, because they shall not, withoute this, be able to rule theyr BRESTES for euerye purpose," &c. fol. 8 b. Lond. 1571. 4to. bl. lett. Fol. 155. edit. 1586. See also The Authors Epistle to the late lord William Paget, wherein he doth discourse of his owne bringing up, &c. fol. 5. And the Epistle to Lady Paget, fol. 7. And his rules for training a boy in music, fol. 141. |