> Does the Penguin *reprint the Clutag Press version or *revise it (as Logan
> suggests the American version he's reviewing does), do you know?
... and further on the question of revisions (as this is preoccupying me at
the moment), to what degree is Thomas Randolph's _Hey For Honesty_ revised?
It's first published in 1650, about fifteen years after Randolph dies, and
that version mentions the battle of Marston Moor, which suggests a quite
considerable degree of prescience on Randolph's part.
It's an awkward problem, as there's a lulu of hunk of thieves' cant in one
of the speeches, and this would obviously have one set of implications if
written in 1630 and another if it is first composed twenty years after that.
Enquiring Minds want to know ...
R. Rodent.
**********************************************
Hig.:
Attend, attend; I Higgen the grand Oratour.
Begin to yawn, lend me your Asses ears;
Give auscultation. Higgen , whose Pike-staffe Rhetorick,
Makes all the world obey your Excellence
By cudgelling them with Crab-tree eloquence.
By lusty Doxies, there's not a Quire Cove,
Nobler then I in all the bowsing Kens
That are twixt Hockly 'ith' hole and Islington .
By these good stampers, upper and neather Duds;
Ile nip from Ruffmans of the Harmanbeck ,
Though glimmer'd in the fambles, I cly the chates:
I'le stand the Pad or Mill, the Churches deneir.
Nip bungs, dupp gibbers leager, lowze and bowse.
Liggen in strommel, in darkmans for pannum
Should the grand Ruffian come to mill me, I
VVould scorn to shuttle from my Poverty.
Pen.:
So, so, well spoke, my noble English Tatter,
Lead up the Vant-guard, muster up an army,
An army royal of Imperial Lice.
Hig.:
And J will be the Scanderbeg of the Company,
The very Tamberlane of this ragged rout;
Come follow me my Souldiers--
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