(1) The Theatre of Worldlings
(2) Its Author
(3) Spenser's Connection with It
(4) Spenser and Van der Noot
1. The Theater of Worldlings.
In the year 1569 there appeared at London a book entitled, ‘A Theatre wherein be represented as well the miseries and calamities that follow the voluptuous Worldlings, as also the greate joyes and pleasures which the faithfull do enjoy. An argument both profitable and delectable to all that sincerely love the word of God. Devised by John van der Noodt.’1 ‘Seene and allowed according to the order appointed: Imprinted at London by Henry Bynnerman. Anno Domini 1569. Cum Privilegio.’ This book is dedicated to Queen Elizabeth and the dedication is dated May 25, 1569.
The contents are divided into two parts, the first and smaller part being twenty-one verses of about twelve lines each, and the second part containing an elaborate explanation of 107 pages about what is said in the verses.
The verses are called ‘either visions or epigrams, or sonnets or emblems, as you like it’; the first six of them are translated from the Italian poet, Petrarch; the next eleven from the French poet, De Bellay; and the last four from the original Dutch verses of the
author himself. Twenty of these twenty-one verses are illustrated with woodcuts, and this makes the book look like an emblem book - as this first part really is.
The verses from Petrarch, and De Bellay are intended, everyone of them, to give an example of the world's vanity.
In those from Petrarch, the following subjects are treated:
In those from De Bellay we find the following examples of the world's vanity:
After all these examples of the world's vanity, interesting in their variety, beautifully described, but monotonous in representing the same idea, follow the four poems of the author himself. They form the central part of the book, they show us that all the previous examples of the world's vanity serve only as an introduction to the solution of the great prob-
lem which the poet has in his mind. They give the solution of the great problem of that time; they contain the life system of the persecuted Protestants of Europe; they touch the very heart of the thousands of refugees, who fled from persecution; who saw their relatives burned at the stake; who lost everything except life, and who felt the world's vanity to the extreme.
It was at the time when the Duke of Alva was murdering his thousands in the Netherlands, when Lutherans in Germany, Huguenots in France, Puritans in England, during several years had suffered the severest persecution, and all Protestantism was in danger of being annihilated by the Roman Catholic world power, and when no Protestant was safe with his life. At that horrible time in the world's history, Protestants were horror-stricken by the terrible action of Roman Catholicism; they saw in Rome, the Beast of the Apocalypse, the Anti-Christ, and in the Roman Catholic Church the ‘woman sitting on the Beast,’ whose delight was the blood of the martyrs. Their prayer was day and night to God in Heaven for relief, and the solution of their great problem was in the future triumph of Christ; their consolation was in looking upward to the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, where there shall be no vanity of this world, no more persecution of the saints; where dwells their Lord and their God, and where ‘all their tears He shall wipe clean away.’ To these ideas, to this very life-system of the persecuted Protestants, the author, who himself was one of them, gave expression in his Theatre. After all the examples of Petrarch, and De Bellay, showing the world's vanity, he proceeds to print his four poems - (1) on the Anti-Christ, the Beast of the Apocalypse; (2) on the Roman Catholic
Church, the woman sitting on the Beast; (3) on the triumph of the Christ, the faithful man sitting on a white horse; and (4) on the Holy City, the New Jerusalem in Heaven. Because, they form the very pith of the book, I give them here in full:
In reading these verses, after having read those from Petrarch and De Bellay, we see the whole conception of the book. In these verses we meet with the author, and with the very pith and the heart of the book. In all the examples of the world's vanity, taken from Petrarch and De Bellay, the persecuted Protestants read only their own misery and bereaved condition, which, in themselves should have depressed
and disheartened them to death. But that was not the idea of the author. He, one of their leading spirits, their poet and their genius, says to his brethren and sisters: This world's vanity, which we endure, is everywhere, and is no exception in this world; but our hope and our consolation is somewhere else. Our enemy, the Anti-Christ, and the Church of Rome, which is under the leadership of Anti-Christ in persecuting the martyrs, shall fall down as the great Babylon; our Lord and Saviour, Christ, shall be triumphant, and our future is the eternal life in the Holy City of God.
In these four verses the author gives with masterly treatment the four chapters of the life-system of the persecuted Protestants of his time, and the real expression of what lived in the hearts of thousands of refugees in England, in Germany, in France and in the Netherlands. The elaborate prose part that follows in the second part of the book, and covers 107 pages, is nothing but a broad explanation of this great scheme.
Knowing the contents of this book, we do not wonder that it appeared within a few years, successively, in Dutch, in French, in English and in German.
The original edition was in Dutch, published in 1568 at Antwerp;1 then he translated his work in French during the same year; the next year, 1569, appeared his English edition printed at London; and two years later, in 1571, it appeared in German, printed at Cologne.
This book is one of the most striking answers
given from the Protestant side of that time to the dreadful persecutions instigated by the Roman Catholic world power, and one of the best expressions of what lived in the hearts of thousands of persecuted people in the different countries of western Europe.
It is not for this reason only that this book may be called a remarkable one, but for its literary value, and for its illustrations as well.
The best authors on the history of the Dutch literature agree at least in this point, that this and other works of Van der Noot belong to those books, which started a new epoch in national literature, and prepared the way for the work of Hooft and Vondel.1
The English version of this book, especially as regards the first part, containing the verses, is more and more considered to be an event in the history of English literature, as far as the development of the sonnet and of blank verse is concerned.
Speaking about the verses contained in this book, Alexander B. Grosart, the editor of the famous edition of Edmund Spenser's works, says: ‘But this is more than a curiosity of Literature. It is a central fact in the story of our national Literature, and specifically in the story of the origin and the progress of the blank verse which was predestined soon to grow so mighty and marvelous an instrument in the hands of Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare, and onward of Milton, Cowper and Wordsworth.’2
Finally, as regards its illustrations this book, as everybody acknowledges, has the honor of being the first emblem book printed in the English language.
2. Its author.
The author of this book was Sir John van der Noot1 (1539-1595), a nobleman of the Southern Netherlands, born at Brecht, near Antwerp. The ancestors of Van der Noot were, during several centuries, held in great esteem in Brabant, and often enjoyed the highest offices in the state. Our poet, whose real name was Jan Baptista van der Noot, had the advantage of a high education. He knew how to write Latin, was well acquainted with Italian and Spanish, while in the French language he expressed himself nearly as well as in Flemish, his mother tongue. After the death of his father, in 1558, he settled at Antwerp, and after he became of age, we find him among the magistrates of Antwerp. Some years later, Van der Noot was celebrated at Antwerp as a great poet, and even was made poet laureate, which was in Flanders very exceptional A great admirer of the Italian and French humanistic poetry, especially of Petrarch and Marot, Du Bellay and Ronsard, he had much esteem for poetry, ‘which gives immortality,’ and he was well conscious of his own literary abilities, as well as of his noble birth, and his high standing. During the tumultuous days of 1566, when the long fostered spirit of the Reformation inspired the mass of the people more and more with antipathy against the Roman Catholic Church, and at last broke out in the image-breaking, Van der Noot appears as one of the leaders of the Calvinistic people, trying to get hold of the government of the city. But soon, when the Duke of Alva was on his way to the Netherlands, Van der Noot was among the hundred thousand people who fled from the coun-
try, and so, in the year 1569, we find him at London, as one of the thousands of Dutch refugees in that city. Here he stayed for more than two years at least (March, 1567, until May 25, 1569, the date of the dedication of his English version of the Theatre to Queen Elizabeth). At what time he really left London we do not know, but in 1571 we find him in Germany, and during the next year, 1572, the remarkable year of the St. Bartholemew, the year of the first triumph of the sea-beggars, those first invincible sons of liberty, Van der Noot published his German translation of the Theatre, printed at Cologne. But this German translation was no more the same Theatre that was written in Dutch, translated into French and English and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. The sharpest expressions against the Roman Catholic Church were changed and softened. Van der Noot, after having left London, and probably after having been disappointed in a social way, had gone to live in Germany, and had there become acquainted with quite another kind of people, for instance, with the great Dutch humanist, Coornhert, who later proved able enough to convert the young Arminius from Calvinism to Humanism. Under such influences, Van der Noot was converted, probably first from Calvinism, and finally from Humanism to Roman Catholicism, and his German Theatre is the best proof of this conversion. The manifold discussions about principles and dogmas among the Calvinists, and the often one-sided predominance amongst them of intellectualism, and logical ideas, with their unavoidable consequences, accompanied but too often with a lack of kindred feeling, seem to have been unbearable for Van der Noot, a poet of tender feeling, more than of intellectual strength. On the social side not independent, and
probably pretty badly supported; on the literary and artistic side not so much appreciated as he deserved, he did not more feel himself at home among those stubborn Calvinists, who submitted every part of human life to the iron consequences of their infallible dogmas, and who, at that time, had not made enough progress in the finer side of life to pay full attention to the value of poetry and of art. Like Hugo Grotius, like Rousseau, like Robespierre, Van der Noot was of a soft and tender nature, easily aroused to sympathy, as well as to antipathy, using with literary ability the power of his pen like a flash of lightning, and consequently easily misunderstood by posterity, which often does not take the trouble to analyse, and fully to understand, and is but too often satisfied by simply looking at men and events from their outward side. His return to the Roman Catholic Church does not show him in the sublime splendor of a martyr, but for us at least his return is as easily understood as that of his famous English contemporary, Ben Jonson, or as that of his great compatriot, Vondel. The true explanation of Van der Noot's return to the Roman Catholic Church, and of other facts of his life, as, for instance, the real story of the English translation of the verses in his Theatre, have not yet been fully discovered, but it is certainly going too far to say that Van der Noot ‘never hesitated to make the biggest lies,’1 and I fully agree with Dr. Kalff when he says that a ‘Sufficient answer to these questions as yet cannot be given.’2
However this may be, Van der Noot lived in Germany for several years. In 1576 he published there ‘Das Buch Extrasis,’ but in 1578 we find him in
Paris, and a short time afterwards he returned to his native city, after having traveled for eleven years in England, Germany and France. Recommended by the Arch-Duke, Matthias of Austria, who hoped for a while to be governor of the Netherlands, Van der Noot returned to Antwerp as a Catholic, and, as far as we know, lived there till his death in 1595.
His poetical works are (1) ‘Het Bosken’ (1567), containing several little poems; this work has been reprinted many times; (2) The Theatre, in Dutch (1568), in French (1568), in English (1569), in German (1571); (3) The Olympias (Antwerp, 1579), an allegorical-epic poem in twelve books, after the model of the great French and Italian poets of the Rennaisance. Of this work, Aug. Vermeulen mentions several editions; in German it was translated under the title, ‘Das Buch Extasis;’ (4) Lofsang van Brabant (Song in Praise of Brabant), 1580.
In the history of Dutch literature, Van der Noot's place is that of the best known precursor of the great literature of Hooft and Vondel, as ‘the only one from an age in which we till this time did not find one single poet of any importance;’1 as the poet who has been intermediate between the poets of the French Renaissance, and the Dutch poets of the seventeenth century; as ‘the Pleiade-poet of the Netherlands,’ without whom there would have been no Hooft and even no Vondel, at least not so complete and not with so much authority in the language of the jambus,’2 or as ‘one of those who prepared the way for the Renaissance’ in the Netherlands.3
For the history of English literature, his influence
is confined to that of the Theatre, especially to the verses in that book, and secondly to the personal influence he may have exerted on Edmund Spenser. The question of the translation of the poems of Van der Noot's Theatre into English, and the connection of Van der Noot with Spenser is, however, so important that it for a moment requires our special attention.
3. Spenser's connection with ‘the Theatre.’
In the year 1591, Edmund Spenser, among the poems of his Complaints, reprinted the verses which in 1569 had appeared in the Theatre of Van der Noot. By revising, and partly rewriting them, Spenser places these verses so decidedly under his own name, and authority, that nobody can doubt Spenser's authorship of these English translations of Van der Noot's verses, unless for very serious reasons, since Spenser's character is not of such kind as to make it easy for us to assume him guilty of so bold a lie, involving a literary theft of the very worst kind that can be thought of. That Spenser himself supervised the reprint of these verses in 1591 is absolutely certain, since he gives therein an entirely new version of those of Du Bellay, and makes several little corrections in those of Petrarch.1
On the other hand, Van der Noot, in his Theatre in 1569, does not mention Spenser with one word, but, on the contrary, says only that he translated those verses from the original Dutch edition of the Theatre. Consequently, any honest treatment of the question has to start with an endeavor to reconcile all the other facts with the statement of Spenser and with that of Van der Noot, and if possible to reconcile these state-
Jonkheer Jan van der Noot.
Kopergravure, voorkomende in Cort Begryp der XII Boeken Olympiados (1579).
ments. Neither the short solution of the Westminster Review,1 boldly accusing Van der Noot of being a pharisee, who did not acknowledge the production of another author, nor that of De Hoog2 supposing simply that the edition of the Complaints in 1591 was published without Spenser's knowing it, nor that of the Cambridge History of English Literature3 in making a haughty and empty statement, as if there was no question at all, and as if even the name of Van der Noot might be entirely left out in treating Spenser's earliest work, can satisfy anybody who is acquainted with the difficulties in this remarkable question. Recognizing the fact that scholars of reputation who have made this question the subject of their especial research, differ so much, that, for instance, Grosart says: ‘Looking closely into the Petrarch series, it will be felt that their style is decisively that of Spenser in his early manner - Character and cadence are pre-eminently Spenserian here and throughout,’ while, on the contrary, Koeppler says: ‘Die Gedichte des “Theatre” von 1569 zeigen keine Spur der so augenfälligen Färbung der Spenserschen Sprache,’ and a third one, August Vermeulen, after his researches, comes to this conclusion: ‘Whether Van der Noot has known Spenser at all, remains an open question,’4 we have to admit that here is an interesting question, the solution of which has been sought by scholars in the Netherlands, in Belgium, in England, in Germany and in America.
The first and most important question is: how to reconcile the authorship claimed by Spenser in 1591 with the statement of Van der Noot in 1569 that he
translated the verses himself. Now we can prove that when Van der Noot says that he translated those verses from the Dutch, this is anyhow not quite true, and that, to save the honor of Van der Noot, we have to take these words in any possible sense in which the author of the book at that moment might have used them. The comparison of the English translation with the Dutch and the French versions shows clearly that they are translated more from the French than from the Dutch.1 If this be a fact, which nobody can deny, we have to find out what else Van der Noot as an honest man can have meant by the words ‘translated from the Dutch.’ This is indeed not as difficult as it looks. Van der Noot had published his ‘Theatre’ first of all in Dutch, his own mother tongue. So he considered his ‘Theatre’ as a Dutch work. All the other editions, the French, the English and the German, he considered - and he wished other people to consider them - as versions of his Dutch work. That, in his sovereign power over his own work, he, as the author, followed for his English version more the French than the Dutch, did not take away the fact that the original of his book was the Dutch edition. In that sense he certainly could maintain that the English version was a translation from the Dutch, notwithstanding the fact that in making this English translation another, viz., a French translation, had rendered so considerable a service. Furthermore, that he, for his English version, used the assistance of Spenser, at that time a poor young student, hardly seventeen years old, whom he probably paid one penny for each line, just as Rubens used the assistance of his pupils for some details of hundreds of his pictures which were sold under his name, could
not be such an important fact for the author, who was the master of the whole work. The young assistant ‘was in no way a principal in the main undertaking when the volume came out, therefore, it nowhere gave his name. He had done his work, and received his pay - there was no need to acknowledge his services.’1 At that moment Van der Noot could not imagine that the name of his young assistant would one day become famous, and that those translations would play an important part in English literature. As a principal he did what, all over the world, principals do with their young assistants, and with their work. By getting his pay, and no further recognition at that moment, Spenser got just what every young man gets, when the master honors him by asking his assistance. Just as an architect says, with our full consent: ‘I built that house,’ even where he personally did not touch one single stone, so Van der Noot could say: ‘I made this English version of my original Dutch work.’ Van der Noot was here the architect; he was the author of the work which he wrote in Dutch, and the work of translating was of course considered as an insignificant task, for which he might have employed any other unknown person, as well as the young Spenser. Of his original Dutch work, the sovereign author made his different versions with as many alterations as he thought necessary, and with the assistance of such persons as he chose. Looking at the matter from that point of view, he could honestly maintain that he translated his original work into French, English and German, just as we ourselves speak about the French, English and German versions of Van der Noot's Theatre.
Interpreting Van der Noot's statement, from his
point of view as chief author of the work, we can perfectly reconcile the claim of Spenser that he really translated these verses - although in an absolutely strict sense of the word this cannot be maintained either, but has to be taken with some explanation of common sense. The fact that Spenser in this translation of 1569, who, as a boy of seventeen years, supposed that he did the work alone, shows a better knowledge of the French language than when twenty years later in 1591, as a learned man of thirty-eight, he, at least in three places, shows that he failed to understand the French text of the Ruins of Rome by Du Bellay, which he at that time translated,1 this fact shows clearly that Van der Noot, who understood perfectly his French, probably explained to the young Spenser the meaning of the French, and the Dutch texts, and that consequently the translation was not entirely an independent work by the young Spenser. Nevertheless, the masterly expression of the thought in English verses was Spenser's work and the development of the English Literature has made this part of the work for us the most important part. The explanations given by Van der Noot to his assistant-translator, the young Spenser, for the right understanding of the Dutch and the French texts, may have been felt too deeply by the honest Spenser for him to have felt like claiming immediately a full right to call these verses his own, and this, as well as the fact that the translating was done in the service of Van der Noot, may have been the reason for the vague expression, ‘formerly translated,’ added to the title of the verses when Spenser republished them in 1591. At that time, the name of Van der Noot, an apostate from Protestantism, had lost a great part of its fame
among the Reformed people, and the author of the Shepherd's Calendar and The Faerie Queene might not think it desirable to mention publicly his connection with Van der Noot. On the other hand, as soon as it was no longer the fact of their being translations but the masterly character of the English verses that had become important, Spenser could with full right claim them as his own work. The fact that the principal, Dr. Mulcaster, of the Merchant Taylor's school, from which the young Spenser had just graduated when he met Van der Noot, is said by Warton to have given special attention to the teaching of the English language,1 seems to be in full accordance with this view of the question, as it implies that Spenser did not give the customary amount of attention to French and other foreign languages. It can hardly mean that no attention was paid to foreign languages, including French, without some knowledge of which the young Spenser could not have done the work at all.
In so far everything can reasonably be explained if we presume that Spenser really is the translator, while on the other hand, when we for a moment assume that Spenser was not the translator, we are immediately coerced to the absurd conclusion that the author of Shepherd's Calendar (1579), and of the Faerie Queene (1590) chose to publish under his name a few verses, which had been printed twenty years before, in which verses he had no part at all, and that with the chance at any moment of being blamed for so shameless a literary theft by Van der Noot himself, who was still living, or by the real translator, if such an one was alive, or had any living friends.
An additional argument in favor of Spenser's
authorship of these verses is that of Grosart,1 viz., that probably Van der Noot did not master well enough the English language to make these verses. This argument, although perhaps of some value, has been exaggerated very much by Grosart, who goes so far as to suppose that even in prose Van der Noot could not express his thoughts in English. This indeed looks very improbable. A man of noble birth, of high education, and of remarkable capacity, who knew not only his French perfectly, but even his Italian very well, one of the magistrates in the cosmopolitan metropolis of Antwerp, at that time a city where thousands of English people lived, and where the opportunity of learning English was very great, such a man probably spoke and wrote the English language sufficiently to express his thoughts in a language which was at that time so near to Dutch, and so easy for a Dutchman to learn, that the historian, Van Meteren, about the year 1600 calls English ‘only a broken Dutch.’ And that Van der Noot for this reason should have to be considered as not having written himself even the pamphlet entitled ‘Governance and preservation of them that fear the Playe,’ and that there should be no evidence whatever to show that Van der Noot commanded enough of English to write it idiomatically, when living at London for at least two years and a half, and having all sorts of correctors around him, seems to me an unnecessary exaggeration, for which there is ‘no evidence whatever.’
The real reason why Van der Noot, in making his English version of the Theatre, put as much of the work as possible upon other persons in his service, and caused even the prose part to be translated by
another man, seems to me to lie in the character and position of Van der Noot as a nobleman, an aristocrat, a high spirited poet of the Rennaissance, a former magistrate at Antwerp, who had formed the custom of commanding others, and of having everything done as much as possible by other people in his service.
Another interesting question in connection with Spenser's authorship of these translations, is the problem that lies before us in the four ‘visions’ or verses taken from the Apocalypse of St. John. Spenser claims the authorship of the verses translated from Petrarch, and of those from Du Bellay, but he neither reprints nor says a word about the four beautiful and most important verses from the Apocalypse, which, as we saw, form the very pith and kernel of the whole ‘Theatre.’ These verses are in their original Dutch, the only original poems of Van der Noot in this collection, and in their English version they are as beautiful in literary form as any of the others. Did Van der Noot himself translate these four verses? But then it would become very probable that he translated the others as well. Or did Spenser translate also these verses? But then the question arises: Why did Spenser not reprint these four verses with the others in his Complaints? There is great reason to think that Spenser translated them and that Van der Noot did not, and it is not difficult to see why Spenser did not reprint these verses in his volume of ‘Complaints.’ It is very improbable that Van der Noot should have had another man in his service for the translation of only these four verses, and consequently all the evidence for Spenser's authorship of the other verses, operate also as evidence for his authorship of these four. Besides this, it seems to me, from inner evidence, impossible to consider Van der Noot
himself as the translator. Some expressions and thoughts which are found in the Dutch original are left out in the English version, expressions which Van der Noot himself at that time never would have left out. In the second of the four verses, a special verse against the Roman Catholic Church, ‘the woman sitting on the Beast,’ which Van der Noot thus expresses in the Dutch original, is altered in the English:
The expression ‘gaat wt heur’ (go out of her), that is the advice from heaven to leave the Roman Catholic Church, is not to be found in the English version, but is at that moment such a prevailing idea of Van der Noot that he himself when translating these lines never would have left out this main idea, unless we suppose that he accommodated his language to circumstances and conditions in England, just as in later time he did in Germany, which is a possibility. In the same verse, Van der Noot speaks about ‘the blood of the saints, the good witnesses of Jesus’ (‘Van der heylighen bloet, Jesus goede ghetuyghen’), while in the English version we read about ‘The blood of martyrs dere.’ The warmer and more sympathetic expression ‘martyrs dere’ looks, indeed, quite Spenserian, while ‘the good witnesses’ of Van der Noot, looks more like that of the Humanist. It is only a little difference, but one in which speaks the heart of the author, as well as that of the translator in a typical and characteristic way.
Finally, the question why Spenser, although he translated them, did not claim them, and did not re-
print them in his Complaints with the others, is not difficult to answer. These four ‘visions’ are not complaints. These verses on Anti-Christ, on the Woman sitting on the Beast, on Christ, and on the Holy City, were perfectly in their place in Van der Noot's Theatre, ‘an argument both profitable and delectable to all that sincerely love the word of God,’ as the title tells us, but they were not at all in their place in the Complaints. So we can perfectly understand that Spenser, perhaps to keep faith with his publisher, left them out, as not belonging to the kind of poems which he intended to publish in his Complaints.
That Spenser, in the edition of his Complaints, did not mention at all the name of Van der Noot, and his ‘Theatre,’ may find its reason in the fact that Van der Noot had returned to the Roman Catholic Church, and, therefore, as an apostate from Protestantism, had fallen into disgrace among the Protestants. This may have been the reason, as well, why Spenser never claimed the translations of the four verses of the Apocalypse, because he never could claim them, without telling that they were translated from Van der Noot, and since Spenser as a Calvinist could not wish his name to be connected any more with that of the Catholic, Van der Noot, he left them unmentioned.
4. Van der Noot and Spenser
The last question which asks our attention is: What was the relation between Spenser and Van der Noot? And: Has Van der Noot exerted any influence on Spenser, and through Spenser on English literature? I know that this question has to be decided in the main by logical inference rather more than by direct facts. But there is some value in logical reasoning. At least once in a while, logical inferences
do mean something, when applied to creatures pretending to be reasonable beings. For the present purpose I give consideration to the following seven points:
