A Show of the Nine Worthies

Author(s): John L. Nevinson

Source: Shakespeare Quarterly , Spring, 1963, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Spring, 1963), pp. 103-107
Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2867768

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 A Show of the Nine Worthies

JOHN L. NEVINSON

N i6o8, Thomas Trevelyon, a London scrivener, completed a

large and copiously illustrated commonplace book, which is
now in the Folger Shakespear'e Library, Washington (V. b. 232).

el d Eight years later, being then aged 68 and spelling his name
Trevilyan, he finished another folio of more than a thousand
pages, describing it as "my Spectrum", and as a "Miscelane"
designed to give pleasure to his friends and to himself. In this second copy,
which was formerly in the Leconfield collection and is now in that of Mr.
Boies Penrose, the illustrations in their original complicated order range from
the labors of the months through Biblical and British History, Scripture, and
Allegory to designs for "joyners", gardeners, and embroiderers.
In both folios, nine pages are devoted to the Nine Worthies; there is a gen-
eral similarity between the two, but there are certain significant variations in
text and illustrations. The Nine Worthies belong to that province of learning
which lies between the Exempla of the Middle Ages and the Imprese of the
Renaissance. Their early history in France as "Les neuf Preux" is traced and
illustrated in the monograph by Mr. James J. Rorimer and Miss Margaret Free-
man on the famous tapestries now at the Cloisters of the Metropolitan Museum,
New York.
For England, if one follows the list in Caxton's foreword to the Morte
Darthur (1485), the Worthies should consist of three Pagans, three Jews, and
three Christians-Hector of Troy (or Jason), Alexander of Macedon, and
Julius Caesar; Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabaeus; Charlemagne, King Ar-
thur, and usually Godfrey of Boulogne, for whom local preference could sub-
stitute Guy of Warwick or another. As the mythical element tended to outweigh
the historical, the representation of these personages taxed the artists' skill se-
verely. All the nine Worthies were soldiers, and in ages when knowledge of
historic dress and armor was but slight, their bearded portraits were apt to
look alike; only the Kings could be distinguished by their crowns. The heralds
soon tried to come to the rescue, and just as saints could be picked out by their
attributes, so the Worthies can often be identified solely by their coats of arms.
But the heralds disagreed with one another, and it is not easy to reconcile the
English arms in Gerard Legh's Accedens of Armoury with those, say, in A.
Favyn's Theater of Honour published in translation by Jaggard in i623.
Hector of Troy had a device of two lions confronted (Jason had the golden
fleece); Alexander the Great, a lion sitting rather oddly in an upright arm-
chair and holding a battle-axe; Julius Caesar, a Roman eagle. Joshua's emblem
was the Sun, standing still upon Gibeon; for David there was his harp; and

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 104 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

Judas Maccabaeus had either two birds or his title in Hebrew letters. For the
Christians it was more simple: Charlemagne's device was the double-headed Im-
perial eagle, King Arthur's shield was charged with two or three lions, while God-
frey of Boulogne had his arms as the first King of Jerusalem, a cross potent between
four crosslets. The heraldic tinctures vary considerably.
In the sixteenth century, as the prestige of the saints declined, the popu-
larity of moralities and allegory grew in Protestant countries. The Nine Worth-
ies were depicted by German and Flemish artists from H. Burgkmair and D.
Hopfer to Virgil Solis and Crispin de Passe in a long series of engravings and
woodcuts. Trevelyon pictures them in full armor, standing against a landscape
background, each (except for Charlemagne) holding his lance grounded and
upright-from its point flutters down a long forked pennon with the appropriate
device. The pagans have green pennons, the Jews blue, while red is the Chris-
tian color. The actual set of engravings on which Trevelyon based his figures
has not yet been traced. Its artistic value might well be small, and its style less
Flemish than the work of Lambert Barnard in the painted rooms at Amberley
Castle, Sussex, where only the nine Lady Worthies but not their masculine
counterparts have survived.' The engravings copied would also be not so clas-
sical ("antic") as the stone statues holding shields which Sir Edward Phelips set
to adorn the garden front of his great mansion, Montacute House, Somerset.2
Nearest to Trevelyon's designs come those of the incomplete set of mural
paintings, crudely executed and colored, on the walls of No. 6i, High Street,
Amersham, Buckinghamshire.3 Here the long forked pennons are quite in
Trevelyon's style.
Another set of the Worthies, presumably painted on canvas, was prepared
in July I554 for the visit to the City of London of Queen Mary and her consort
Philip of Spain; these decorated the conduit in Gracechurch Street and were
afterwards preserved in the Church of St. Benet there. John Elder writes:

.... they (i.e. Mary and Philip) came to Graciousstrete where in their
waye the conduit thereof was finely trimmed whereon was painted verye in-
geniouslye the nine Worthies with many notable proverbes and adages, writ-
ten with fayre Roman letters on every side thereof....4

Elder does not mention the incident, recorded both by Foxe' and by the writer
of the Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary,6 that on the same conduit
the Bishop of Winchester saw Henry VIII portrayed holding the Bible inscribed
"Verbum Dei". Afterwards he called for and reprimanded the anonymous
painter, who apologized for his unintentional slight against the Queen, and
taking his paint-brush replaced the Bible with a pair of gloves. A Londoner
of Protestant sympathies would have known this story and probably seen the
paintings, which may have been used again. In Whetstone's Promos and Cas-
sandra (0578), Phallax addresses Dowson, a Carpenter:
1 See Edward Croft-Murray, Archaeological journal, CXIII (1956), io8. See also Robert L.
Wyss, "Die neun Helden", Zeitschrift fur Schweizerische Archiologie, XVII (0957), 73.
2 See Country Life, 20 Oct. I955
3 See F. W. Reader, Archaeological Journal, LXXXIX (0932), I38.
4 Camden Society, No. 48 (i850), p. I47.
5 John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (0583), p. I472
6Camden Society, No. 48 (i850), p. 78.

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 A SHOW OF THE NINE WORTHIES I05

Dispatch, Dowson: up with thy frame quickly,

So space your roomes, as the nyne worthies may
Be so instauld as best may please the eye.
(Pt. 2, I. iv)

Beneath Trevelyon's pictures there are eight to twelve lines of verse in the
Folger copy (foil. I42-I46); in the Boies Penrose book the text is expanded (pp.
469-477), sometimes in prose (Alexander, Arthur), sometimes with Bible quota-
tions (Joshua, David). The verse no longer follows the mediaeval tradition by in-
dicating the fall of princes as in Chaucer's Monk's Tale (lines 64i-680) or in
the pageant verses in British Museum, MS. Harl. 2259, fol. 39 .7 Each worthy in-
troduces himself by name, and at the end of his speech protests his devotion to
the Sovereign, presumably Queen Elizabeth, and takes his leave. To illustrate
the quality of the verse one may quote in full (Folger, fol. i42v):
My name is Alexander, Kynge of Macedone
who in my tyme did overcome the world
which being done I wept for that I hearde
there was not another world to overcome.8
Darius and the Percians can say,
so can the Greeks, the Indians and the Moors
that Alexander's valour hath obtained
Eternall memory most meete for my deserts.
Yet shoulde my duty drive me to this homage
to honour thee, faire Albions majestye
and so of me beinge deade Fame sounds her Trumpe.

This suggests a masque or procession of the Nine Worthies introduced by

Fame, whom Trevelyon actually depicts, with her trumpet and banner em-
broidered with lips and ears, on p. 442 of the Boies Penrose copy. A parallel is
in the Argument of the Mirror for Magistrates,
Fame soundes her Trumpe, King Arthur doth ascend
Tells Mordred's treason....

A full scheme written out fair for such a procession at Chester is among Randle
Holme's papers (British Mus., MS. Harl. 2057, fol. 36).
The Order of our Showe

Tyme and Fame the leaders of the 9 worthies.... The 9 worthies in Com-
pleat Armour with Crownes of gould on there heads, every on having his
Esq. to bear before him his shield and penon of Armes dressed according
as ther lordes where accustomed to be: 3 Assaralits, 3 Infidels, 3 Christians
&c.... After them fame to declare 'the rare virtues and noble deedes of the
9 worthie women....9
7 See F. J. Furnivall, N&Q, 7th ser., VIII (I889), 22.
8 no other world" would improve the metre.
9 This document ends rather pathetically:
(we would intreat your Worship to keep this note in your
(owne handes lest it be too common in the mouthes of our
(adversaryes, which we would not have them to know
(our plot &c.
This is deleted and followed by a scribbled docket:
This show was intended to be made upon the pettition to Mr. Recorder, but . . . it fell
off and nothing was done therein .... aug. i .. i62I.

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Io6 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

Randle Holme also kept the heraldic notes, now torn and defective, with
the doggerel, which John Brock wrote for his Chester show (MS. Harl. 2059,
fol. i). The incomplete Alexander verses are not the same as Trevelyon's, and
in a lower poetic vein one may quote:
I am Arthur of England most heighest in degree
a knighte of all knightes and kinge alsoe
I founded the order of noble Chivalrie
then innumirable of knightes to my courte did flowe
I made the Rounde Table for then as you knowe
of my manhood and mighte which was passinge greate
read the Frenche cronacles which at large doe intreat.

More interesting is the comparison with Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost,

Act V, where a show of the Nine Worthies is to be presented by four characters.
Pompey has been substituted for Julius Caesar, and Hercules for Joshua, in
order to give more ludicrous parts to Costard and to Armado's page. Pompey
is in ridiculous armor "with libbard's head on knee", whilst some of Trevelyon's
figures have lion-mask pauldrons on their shoulders. Costard speaks his Pompey
verses:
I Pompey am,...
... . Pompey surnamd the great,
That oft in fielde with Targ and Shield did make my foe to sweat,
And trauailing along this coast I heere am come by chaunce,
And lay my Armes before the Leggs of this sweete Lasse of France.

These sound like a vulgarized version of Trevelyon's Hector:

My shielde I give and with my shielde my heart

accept it gentle princesse of Hector of Troye.

Shakespeare next introduces the pedant schoolmaster Sir Nathaniel, playing Al-
exander:

When in the world I liud, I was the worldes commander:

By East, West, North, and South, I spred my conquering might:
My Scutchion plaine declares that I am Alisander.

Trevelyon's Alexander verses have already been quoted above, but his Godfrey
of Boulogne uses a similar opening:

I while I lived was called Geffrye a Bullen, Duke ....

Sir Nathaniel gets no further; his speech is interrupted and he breaks down; says
Costard:
0 sir, you have ouerthrowne Alisander the Conquerour: you will be
scrapt out of the painted cloth for this. Your Lion that holdes his Polax sitting
on a close stoole, will be geuen to Aiax. He wilbe the ninth Worthie....

So the play continues, with scant respect for the worthies. The point of the
close-stool joke is obvious when the form of Alexander's device is considered
(see Plate i for detail). The high-backed chair is actually very like a close-
stool. Anyone with Trevelyon's pious background would have found this jest
unpalatable, although he was prepared to include satire against the Roman

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- - - - - z. .... .

PLA
Nin

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 A SHOW OF THE NINE WORTH IE

Church and, in one instance, a tale of Richard Tarlton the actor. At all events
Trevelyon must have heard the jest, since while the Alexander illustration
(PI. i) is from the Folger manuscript (i6o8), in the Boies Penrose copy
(i6i6) the pennons of Hector and Alexander are not green but have been
overpainted a dull magenta; Alexander's lion has in fact been scraped or painted
out.
While one would not go so far as to claim that Shakespeare is parodying
the verses which Trevelyon copied in his book, he certainly is making fun of
a pageant very much like that which Trevelyon illustrated. That Love's Labour's
Lost did not kill the idea of such a show of Worthies is proved by the Randle
Holme papers about Chester. On the other hand Trevelyon did erase Alex-
ander's device and omit much of the verse between i6o8 and i6i6 in order to
prevent his readers laughing at a joke which Shakespeare brought into Love's
Labour's Lost. Research may reveal more about Trevelyon's pageant and verses,
and establish him as a designer of painted cloths and allegorical paintings for
private houses, for masques, and even for the playhouses, but it is most ap-
propriate that one of his manuscripts has found a permanent home in the Folger
Shakespeare Library.

London

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