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The Hospitall of Incurable
Fooles
by
William E. Miller
In his article on Thomas Nashe in the Dictionary of National Biography, Sir Sidney lee wrote that Nashe "has been doubtfully credited with a translation from the Italian of Garzoni's 'Hospitall of Incurable Fooles', a satiric essay published by Edward Blount in 1600. But Blount seems to claim the work for himself." Discussing the identity of the translator in his introduction to The Works of Thomas Nashe, R. B. McKerrow remarked that he did "not understand the statement in the D.N.B. article on Nashe, that 'Blount seems to claim the work for himself'."[1]
The title of the book in full is The hospitall of incurable fooles: erected in English, as neer the first Italian modell and platforme, as the vnskilfull hand of an ignorant Architect could deuise. I pazzi, é li prudenti, fanno giustissima bilancia. Printed by Edm. Bollifant, for Edward Blount. 1600. It was entered in the Stationers' Register on March 8, 1599/1600.[2]
McKerrow included in his remarks a collation of the book, broken into details for the preliminaries. He found the order of the book to be A4 a2 B-X4 (X4 blank). The preliminaries he listed as follows: "A2-2v 'To the good old Gentlewoman, and her special Benefactresse, Madam Fortune, Dame Folly (Matron of the Hospitall) makes curtesie, and speakes as followeth.' A3-4v 'Prologue of the Author to the beholders.' (From the Italian.) a1-2v 'Not to the wise Reader.' (Signed 'II pazzissimo'.)"
This analysis reveals the source of McKerrow's failure to comprehend Lee's remark: one of the preliminaries had escaped his notice. In three copies of the work which I have examined there is a letter, not mentioned by McKerrow, entitled "To my most neere and Capriccious Neighbor."[3] The letter is printed on both sides of an inserted single leaf, which is unsigned. Though the leaf is to be found in at least two (probably three) positions relative to the other preliminaries, it must be genuine.[4] The best
In view of the fact that the letter seems important in any discussion of Nashe's part in the translation of the piece, and because it is brief, it will perhaps not be amiss to present it complete.
It appears that scholars have been doubtful of the identity of John of Paul's Churchyard. As McKerrow said, ". . . it seems not to be certainly known what he or it was."[5] It can now be said with considerable confidence that John of Paul's Churchyard was John Hodgson, a hatter and haberdasher,[6] who evidently was gifted with a well marked personality. A John Hodgson, probably identical with Blount's neighbor, is on the tax list for St. Faith's Parish, Ward of Farringdon Within, dated 1 October 41 Elizabeth [1599].[7] Hodgson was assessed at three pounds and taxed eight
The man honored by this burlesque dedication was mentioned in the works of at least two authors better known than Blount. In the epistle "To the Reader" prefixed to Thomas Middleton's Father Hubburd's Tales: or, the Ant and the Nightingale (1604), the writer testifies: ". . . by John of Paul's-churchyard, I swear, and that oath will be taken at any haberdasher's, I never wished this book better fortune than to fall into the hands of a true-spelling printer, and an honest-minded bookseller . . . ." Again the author says: "Here I began to rail, like Thomas Nash against Gabriel Harvey, if you call that railing; yet I think it was but the running a tilt of wits in booksellers' shops on both sides of John of Paul's churchyard; and I wonder how John scaped unhorsing."[9]
Thomas Dekker paid his respects to the celebrity in The Gull's Hornbook (1609). Instructing the gallant how to behave himself in Paul's Walks, he wrote: ". . . Powles may be pround of him, Will Clarke shall ring forth Encomiums in his honour, Iohn in Powles Church-yard, shall fit his head for an excellent blocke, whilest all the Innes of Court reioyce to behold his most hansome calfe."[10]
The source of the attribution of The Hospitall to Thomas Nashe seems to be no better than a mysterious memorandum in a copy of the work: "Tho. Nashe had some hand in this translation and it was the last he did as I heare P. W."[11] The style of the original parts (all of the preliminaries except "Prologue of the Author to the beholders") and that of the translated portions, alike lead to confirmation of McKerrow's conclusion that ". . . there is . . . not the slightest trace of evidence, external or internal, to connect Nashe's name with the book" (Nashe, V, 141). There is nothing that I can find in the method of expression that has more than a superficial resemblance to Nashe's helter-skelter vigor and allusiveness. Finally, there seem to be strong grounds for doubt that Nashe knew enough Italian to translate a book from that language into English. McKerrow remarked that he could not help thinking "that if Nashe had had any
The translator of the book remains unknown. It was probably not Nashe. It may have been Blount, but nothing in the dedicatory letter to John Hodgson reveals the writer of it as the translator of the book. The only evidence known to me that can be used to support Blount's claim is that he presumably knew Italian and translated from that language into English, since he is credited with the translation into English of the Arte Aulica of Lorenzo Ducci (English title: Ars Aulica, or the Courtier's Arte, 1607), and that as its publisher he might have found it convenient and economical to translate The Hospitall of Incurable Fooles himself.
Notes
The Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. R. B. McKerrow; reprint, ed. F. P. Wilson (1958), V, 140-141. Professor Wilson's supplementary notes do not provide additional information on this point.
Edward Arber, A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London; 1554-1640 A. D. (1875-94), III, 158. The book has number 11634 in the Pollard and Redgrave Short-title Catalogue.
At the Folger Shakespeare Library. A copy in the Huntington Library is reproduced on University Microfilm No. 384. In a copy which I examined at the British Museum the collation is as McKerrow gives it.
In Folger copy no. 1, this leaf stands last among the preliminaries; in copy no 3, it stands third, between "Prologue of the Author" and "Not to the wise Reader"; the order in copy no. 4 is like that in copy no. 3; Folger copy no. 2 was not available. Still another order occurs in the Huntington copy: in it the leaf is first among the preliminaries.
McKerrow-Wilson, Nashe, V, 151n. McKerrow here refers to passages in Dekker's The Gull's Hornbook and Middleton's Father Hubburd's Tales, which I shall quote later in my own text.
The haberdashers had absorbed the hatters. See W. Carew Hazlitt, The Livery Companies of the City of London (1892), p. 117.
McKerrow-Wilson, Nashe, V, 140. Is it possible that "P. W." had read and misinterpreted the passage from Middleton already alluded to? Undoubtedly, John of Paul's Churchyard was in danger of unhorsing, not as a partisan of either Nashe or Harvey, but as the keeper of a shop situated in the place of literary combat. Garzoni, like Nashe, was probably influenced by Rabelais (cf. the catalogue of fools in book III, chapter XXXVIII of Gargantua and Pantagruel), but there is no reason to believe that the translator was.
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