¹ The locus classicus for this aspect of decorum is Horace's Ars Poetica (pp. 112–118). The catalogue of special types and their corresponding characteristics by which Horace sets forth the doctrine is imitated in the prologue to Richard Edwards' court play, Damon and Pithias (1571). The speeches of all characters, Edwards concludes, should be “correspondent to their kind,” and he proclaims that he learned about this decorum from Horace “at school” {Chief Pre-Shakespearean Dramas, ed. Joseph Quincy Adams, Boston, 1924, p. 572). Compare Jonson's remark to Drummond “That Sidney did not keep a decorum, in making everyone speak as well as himself,” and again “That Guarini, in his ‘Pastor Fido,‘ kept not decorum, in making shepherds speak as well as himself could.” Pastoral literature, being an aristocratic kind but dealing with common rustics, presents a dilemma with respect to decorum. To preserve decorum personae, which is what Jonson has in mind exclusively, the writer runs the risk of violating the decorum required by his own character, that of his audience, and that of his subject matter.

² At one point in The Epitome, anticipating the charge of sedition, Martin puts words of warning into Bridges' mouth, and a marginal note admits, “Here is indecorum personae in this speech, I know; for the Doctor should not give me this warning, but you know my purpose is to play the dunce after his example,” The Marprelate Tracts, ed. William Pierce (London, 1911), p. 17. Subsequent references to this work will be indicated in the text as Tracts.

³ Stultitiae laus, she Moriae encomium, ed. I. B. Kan (The Hague, 1898), p. vii.

⁴ “For if any shall obiect that the graue authoritie of Archbishops & Bishoppes shall receiue a checke, whitest they are brought to deale with those, whome they iudge fewe, young, vnlearned, and not comparable to themselues … let vs grant the great difference which they make of yeares and learning, yet the speech of Elihu giueth them sufficient answere, that this vnderstanding is not tyed to such outward respectes but to the reuelation of Gods spirit. . . .” This statement, which epitomizes the Puritan contention on the central issue of spiritual authority, is from page 2 of the preface to the book which Bridges was answering, A Brief and plaine declaration, concerning the desires of all those faith-full Ministers, that haue and do seeke for the Discipline and reformation of the Church of Englande: etc. (London, 1584). Usually referred to as the Learned Discourse from its subtitle, this manifesto is attributed by A. F. Scott Pearson, Thomas Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism, 1535–1603 (Cambridge, England, 1925), p. 273 and note, to William Fulke, a young Puritan leader who later defected to the Conformist side.

⁵ Pierce, Tracts, p. 33. Henry Bradley attributes the play to one William Stevenson, but considers it possible that Bridges “may have assisted William Stevenson in the composition or revision of the play.” (Representative English Comedies with introductory essays . . . and other monographs by various writers under the general editorship of Charles Mills Gayley, New York, 1903, “From the Beginnings to Shakespeare,” p. 200.) But whether Martin's assertion is true or not, its main function in his satirical strategy is to establish the idea of Bridges as a theatrical personality.

⁶ Leonard Wright, A Friendly Admonition to Martine Mar-prelate, and his Mates (London, 1590), p. 2.

⁷ The Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. Ronald B. McKerrow (London, 1904), n, 341. Donald McGinn presents strong evidence that An Almond for a Parrat is indeed Nashe's work in “Nashe's Share in the Marprelate Controversy,” PMLA, LIX (1944), 952–984.

⁸ McKerrow, Nashe, i, 60. McGinn argues convincingly in the place cited that none of the anti-Martinist tracts except An Almond for a Parrat is Nashe's.

⁹ [Richard Harvey], Plaine Percevall the Peace-Maker of England, etc. (London, 1590), p. 3.

¹⁰ One of the reasons why Waldegrave, the printer, gave over the clandestine publication of the Martinist tracts was that, as he is reported to have told one of his workmen, “all the Preachers that I have conferred withall do mislike yt” (“The Deposition of Henry Sharpe, a bookbinder at Northampton, on the 15th October 1589,” An Introductory Sketch to the Martin Marprelate Controversy, ed. Edward Arber, London, 1897, p. 99), and the preachers with whom he would confer would certainly be Puritans. William Cartwright, the leading figure of the Puritan cause, and Martin's own idol, wrote later that he was able “to make good proof that from the beginning of Martin unto this day, I have continually upon any occasion, testified both my mislike and sorrow for such kind of disordered proceeding” (Pierce, Tracts, p. 238 n.). Pierce refers to Strype's Whitgift, App. III, pp. 231–232.

¹¹ On the likelihood that Marvell voted to remonstrate against the Declaration, see Pierre Legouis, Andre Marvell, poète, puritain, patriote, 1621–1678 (Paris and London, 1928), p. 273. See also the letters to William Popple of 21 March and 14 April 1670 (The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell, ed. H. M. Margoliouth, Oxford, 1927, ii, 299–303).

¹² The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Andrew Marvell, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (Fuller Worthies' Library), in (1873), 116–117. Subsequent references to this work will be indicated in the text as Marvell.

¹³ “I saw the cause of Christ's government, and of the Bishops' antichristian dealing to be hidden. The most part of men could not be gotten to read anything written in the defence of the one, and against the other. I bethought me, therefore, of a way whereby men might be drawn to do both; perceiving the humours of men in these times (especially of those that are in any place) to be given to mirth. I took that course” (Pierce, Tracts, pp. 238–239).

¹⁴ A Reproof to the Rehearsal Transprosed in a Discourse to its Author by the Author of the Ecclesiastical Politie (London, 1673), p. 105.

¹⁵ Grosart, Marvell, in, 469. On Martin Parker, “most distinguished of professional ballad-writers and leader of a group of lesser Caroline singers,” see Hyder E. Rollins, “Martin Parker, Ballad-Monger,” Modem Philology, xvi, 9 (Jan. 1919), 449–474; on the Puritan petition to the Long Parliament against him, to which Marvell refers here, see pp. 459–460. Additional references to Martin Parker are collected by Rollins in “Martin Parker: Additional Notes,” Modern Philology, xix, 1 (Aug. 1921), 77–81. Needless to say, Samuel Parker's “relation” to him is Marvell's invention.

¹⁶ Preface to Religio Laid in The Works of John Dryden, ed. Sir Walter Scott, revised by George Saintsbury (Edinburgh, 1885), x, 27.

¹⁷ Parker's most conspicuous reference to the theater is actually a very pejorative one: he speaks of “the wild and hair-brain'd Youths of the Town . . . that pretend to no other stock of Learning, but a few shavings of Wit gather'd out of Plays and Comedies …” (Discourse of Ecclesiastical Politie, pp. xxi-xxii of the Preface). Later in the same book he asserts that a certain historical fact “cannot but be known to every man that is not utterly ignorant of the Civil Law, as he in the Comedy who supposed Corpus Juris Civilis to be a Dutchman” (p. 51), which is as close as he comes to justifying Marvell's charge.

¹⁸ Grosart, Marvell, iii, 262. Perhaps Marvell intends a double reference to the two theatrical companies in London and to the established clergy's supposed pretentions to dictate policy to the King and his ministers, among whom the Duke of Buckingham was at that moment most conspicuous.