In concert with my penchant for quirkily roguish but ultimately harmless citizen-poets (as opposed to citizen soldiers, though I love them as well, albeit more in the way that some love men in uniform), I’ve decided to dig up John Taylor (pun definitely, and quite cheekily intended. Ha!), the famous Water Poet.
It seems that at least within the context of what I have read (I should post a running list of this at some point) poor John Taylor hasn’t been given much attention. My certified John Taylor credentials, however, allow me to assert that he received quite a bit of attention during his trips ferrying passengers across the Thames. Caricatures aside, though, I’d like to take an honest and soberly analytical crack at a piece or two of Taylor’s. Despite being author of the famous line “A woman, a dog, a walnut tree, / The more you beat them the better they be,” John Taylor’s work makes a meaty plate for any early modernist.
First on the list would be biographical factoids. Of course I admit these can sometimes become predictable and (gasp!) sometimes seem trivial, but for Taylor they bear specific importance to his work. We often tend to think of Shakespeare as having been relatively limited in his education and humble in his upbringing and class (at least until the Globe and other theaters began to bring him significant income), but John Taylor trumps him by far in being able to feed a formidable wit on very little, so to speak. John Taylor literally was “The Water Poet” per the title he claimed in his published work. Having failed to complete grammar school because of difficulties with Latin, he became apprenticed to a waterman in London during his adolescence. Oddly enough, his position as a waterman put him in the perfect position to realize his literary ambitions: watermen predominantly worked ferrying customers to and from the theaters in Southwark, so Taylor’s trade would have put him into contact with playwrights, actors, and all manner of others associated with the theatre business. In fact, he seems to have had a bro-mance of sorts with the Ben Johnson himself.
Taylor was well aware of the inconsistency between his social status and his literary ambitions, using this disconnect as an advertising trick calling attention to the wonder of a mere waterman with wit and talent enough to write. In fact, though, his social status would have given him the perfect background to write social satire and bawdy verse. In addition, it’s my theory that he was able to draw material and insight from multiple social positions: his father was a surgeon, which I imagine may have given his family some level of status, depending on where he practiced. I would be greatly appreciative of anyone who might know about more about the medical field – particularly salary and social status – at this time. That said, I’d like to explore and expose some of what he wrote.
Taylor wrote in a variety of genres and modes, ranging from religious tracts to social commentary and satire. It is generally accepted that his talent fell more on the side of satire and social commentary, but those critics that examine these parts of his body of work seem to do so mostly to examine social history. I’d like to try to strike a balance here between looking at Taylor’s work through a framework of social history, and viewing it in terms of what it does as a piece of literature. Taylor is responsible for writing pamphlets such as A cluster of coxcombs, A late weary merry voyage and journey, and Mercurius Nonsencicus – I’d like to post more on these eventually. For now, though, I found A Bawd : A vertuous Bawd, a modest Bawd: As Shee Deserves, reproove, or else applaud sufficiently interesting and celebratory of the London underworld for discussion here. I’ve posted the full text here in the event that this post sparks a further interest in the text – which I earnestly hope it does!
On an obvious level, and in concert with the majority of critics who have written about Taylor, his work is ripe for social historians and cultural studies critics. In an introductory paragraph to the pamphlet, Taylor outlines the upbringing of a bawd in terms reminiscent of early modern notions of good breeding and the preparation necessary for court life.
Nor is the skill and knowledge of a substantiall or absolute Bawd easily gotten or learned; no my Masters, there is more in the matter then so; Frist, shee is a young prettie Girle, and passeth time away in the instructions, rudiments, and documents of a Whore, till she hath attained (with many hazards) to the yeares of 30 or 35. in all which space she hath not spent her time idlely, but hath beene a creature of much use, having for the com|mon cause, adventur’d the blemmish of her Repu|tation, the rigour of the Lawes, as whippings, Penance, Imprisonments, Fines, Fees to Justices Clarkes, Beadles, and such inferiour Reliques of Authoritie. Besides, her valorous combates and conflicts with Diseases, (wherein shee often ap|proves her selfe one of the profitablest members in a Common-wealth to Physicians and Chyrurgi|ans:) having (I say) passed all these degrees with much perill and jeopardie of her body,* then looke higher and thinke but on the shipwracke of her soule, (an adventure of a greater price then shee is aware of;) then towards the declining of her life, and that her beautie fades, What a deale of charge is shee at with sophisticated Art, White and Red, to emplayster decayed Nature? Her humilitie being such, that when her owne head is bald, shee will weare the cast haire of any hee for shee sinner, that made a voyage in a string from Tyburne, to either Heaven or Hell. And lastly, when as Art can no longer hide the sorrowed or wrinkled deformities of her over-worne Age; then (like a true wel-willer to the old trade shee hath ever followed,) Whoring having left her very unkindly before shee was vvilling to leave it: shee, (as her proper right for her long service) takes upon her the office and authority of a Bawd, and as shee was brought up her selfe, so with mo|therly Care her Imployment is to bring up o|thers, wherein her paines is not small, in hyring Countrey wenches, that come up weekely with Carryers, and putting them in Fashion, selling one Maydenhead three or foure hundred times, and sometimes with great labour and difficulty shee’s forced to perswade mens wiues and daugh|ters; all which considered, a Bawd doth not get her living with so great ease as the world sup|poseth; nor is her adventure, paines, charge and perill to be inconsiderately slighted.
In a quite broad and general way, it would seem Taylor could easily apply much of this description to a courtier holding a public office. The bawd passes her time in instruction during her youth, then moves on to serving the “common cause” in the face of the whims of “Authoritie,” which I would argue we can take as vaguely standing in for the monarch. After having suffered such grueling educatory exercises and complete disdain, the bawd seems to be unable to even seem useful and thus channels her energies toward profiting from the abilities (relatively speaking) of country wenches, wives, and daughters, taking up the supervisory “office and authority of a Bawd.” Interestingly, but not wholly relevant, is the reference to Tyburn in the above paragraph. I’ll have more on it in another post (I’ve committed to quite a bit of future posts over the past two weeks!), but the simple definition is that Tyburn was a town outside of London one could think of as the hanging hubbub of London proper. More than anything, though, it was a place where people went to watch executions.
Even more interesting, however, is what Taylor does with gender. Taylor styles the figure of the bawd as a kind of maternalized virago on the financial front. The virgin mother/whore dichotomy is blasted to pieces here. In the above paragraph, her progression from whoring to “motherly care,” is not prohibited by the virgin/whore dichotomy. Her illicit loss of maidenhead doesn’t prevent her from assuming a maternal role, but seems rather the natural precursor to it: the character of the bawd even suffers “paines” to fashion country wenches, wives and daughters into whores.
*ADDENDUM*
That said, I think that while Taylor breaks down the dichotomy, in this case his work is suspect to such an extent that it actually bolsters the early modern sense of motherhood as you describe it. The didactic sarcasm inherent in Taylor’s praise of the hard-working bawd, rather than breaking down the mother/whore dichotomy in a positive way, promotes the idea that for the period we’re exploring, motherhood is a shifting category: it cannot necessarily be severed from the ‘whore’ part of the equation. One can’t assume mothers CAN be valued for their purity — if there is no clear divide between virginity and whoredom as a spectrum of states of femininity, this means motherhood can be tied up with either, or both. Again, it’s that idea of women as ‘leaky vessels’ : in this case, I think what Taylor is doing here is making the case that the maternal is a muddled affair…that purity or corruption can just ‘leak’ into the bubble of time women experience as maternity. In other words, Taylor uses his sarcasm to show that a woman’s adherence even to the benevolent image of a mother (as he describes in the person of the bawd) does not preclude their being a whore; even a whore can perform the mother, essentially. I may even go so far as to say that for Taylor, the bawd’s social status is what actually motivates her maternity here, so that here even the intentions of motherhood become highly suspect. **end addendum**
On a social level, though, my conviction is that Taylor’s purpose, like mine, was to make the invisible…well, visible. Taylor valorizes the Jack-of-all-Trades, workaday masses we know so little about today, with specializations heaped upon the list of ideological structures we navigate daily. Among the skill sets that the bawd possesses are that of the scholar, arithmetician, astrologist, logician, musician, poet, painter, grocer, and the goldsmith. I don’t think Taylor is championing the individuals specializing in these areas, but of those who dabble in all of them. A champion for the self-made woman, then!
For next time, perhaps something in line with the upcoming holiday would be pertinent. Any other suggestions are always welcome. Till then, thanks for reading, and happy Renaissancing!
