The Martin Marprelate Tracts

Abstract

Joseph Black, ed. The Martin Marprelate Tracts. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008. cxvi+315pp. ISBN-13 9780521875790.1. Of the many timely and clarifying contributions made by Joseph Black's new edition of the Martin Marprelate Tracts, readers will find none as vital as the straightforward purpose at its heart: To encourage more direct familiarity with one of the most remarkable voices of early modern English prose (cxiii). In this objective, as even a cursory inspection of the modernized and fully annotated texts suggests, the edition succeeds admirably. An additional benefit, however, awaits readers in the meticulous, orderly introduction in which Black supplies an apparatus designed not only to review the relevant contexts behind the clandestine Marprelate printing operation but to ruminate over the strikingly wide-ranging effects of Tudor England's most notorious scandal.2. As many readers will recall, Marprelate's distinctive approach to religious reform married conventional calls for the elimination of the English episcopacy with comic-abusive, ad hominem attacks on Church dignitaries. Following closely on the heels of the Armada's defeat, this verbal violence scandalized as much of England as could be scandalized by printed material in 1588-89. Not surprisingly, Elizabeth was impressed with neither Marprelate's advocacy of a Presbyterian ecclesiology nor his gleeful willingness to discuss the personal lives of her bishops. The authorities moved quickly, proscribing the seven Marprelate publications and organizing a national manhunt for the roaming press from which the tracts were issued. Eventually, most of the operation's printers, distributors, patrons, and contributors were captured. All faced examination and fines, and the late-Elizabethan state went on to wage cultural war against Puritanism, all the while keeping vigilant guard against any return of what Richard Hooker called the scurrilous and more then Satyricall immodestie of Martinisme.[1]3. Black prints each of the Marprelate tracts with a brief, two-page introduction, and plentiful notes-236 alone for the first tract, The Epistle-that offer readers a most adept, if not complete, guide to the many topical allusions contained in the tracts. Those who know the tracts are aware of the thousands of gossipy anecdotes and obscure references that Marprelate's shifting, colloquial voice tenders in support of his cause. No major Church official emerges unscathed, and tracking down the specifics, not to mention the accuracy, of the behavior to which Marprelate objects can be daunting, especially across 200 pages of text. But, to be sure, Black has crafted a sensible and efficient edition that, in presenting Martinism in an uncluttered and sturdy format, supplants William Pierce's century-old edition, which can be difficult to obtain, or the nearly-unreadable 1967 Scolar Press facsimile. As Black acknowledges, Pierce was no unaccomplished editor, but his texts of the tracts are far from error-free and his anti-episcopal commentary less than impartial. By contrast, the Scolar edition contains neither preface nor annotations, and its low-quality facsimiles tend to result in exasperation-and depleted vision-instead of edification. A few on-line versions of the tracts exist as well, but these, too, fall well short of the accuracy and diligence that mark Black's edition.4. Since editing the Marprelate pamphlets is not an entirely straightforward task, Black follows practices that, by necessity, reconcile an editor's expectations for the texts in his charge and a publisher's discretion about finances and sales. At issue are not multiple printings of the 1588-89 texts but rather the Marprelate syndicate's extraordinary use of text and page as a provocative arena of dialogical conflict. With their arresting lack of punctuation, especially quotation marks, and ingenuous deployment of mocking margins and headers, the tracts experiment with new forms of polemical aggressiveness (xix). …