• 1  See Jennifer Fellows, ed, The Seven Champions of Christendom, 1596-7, Non-Canonical Early Modern P (...)
• 2  See The Nine Worthies of London, 1592, EEBO, British Library, STC (2nd ed.) / 14686, The Pleasant (...)

1Richard Johnson’s biography remains obscure.1 In the dedication to The Nine Worthies of London (1592), he introduces himself as being “a poore apprentice”. Although Johnson spent most of his life in London, a place which is central in several of his works,2 his name cannot be accurately associated with any livery company. This self-proclaimed “title” should rather be taken as an implied reference to his readership, mostly composed of London’s citizens, that is to say former apprentices.

• 3  The Seven Champions of Christendom, op. cit., p. 71.
• 4  Ibid. p. 13.

2His chivalric romances proved very popular and went through numerous re-printings throughout the seventeenth century. In The Seven Champions of Christendom (1596), Richard Johnson imagines the glorious deeds of the patron saints of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France, Italy and Spain. In this prose romance, St George intends to “trauaile, not to furnish himself with any needful thinge, but to accomplish some Honorable aduenture, whereby hys worthy deedes might be eternized in the Bookes of memorie.”3 Richard Johnson gives his hero the opportunity to accomplish many high deeds to sustain his fame. First and foremost, St George kills a burning dragon in Egypt. During the fight, the champion thrusts his sword into the monster’s belly and is sprinkled with venom, which makes him fall onto the ground where “for a time he lay breathless: but yet hauing that good memorie remaining, that he tumbled vnder the branches of the Orringe tree; in which place the dragon could proffer him no further violence.”4 We might wonder what Johnson meant by “that good memorie remaining”. Did he imply that St George suddenly came to his senses and realized he had just been knocked out by the beast? Or was “that good memorie remaining” his own survival instinct? I would tend to think he meant by that the memory of previous heroic deeds achieved by legendary and historical figures, deeds which would in turn inspire other acts of bravery.

• 5  Richard Johnson, Tom of Lincoln, ed. Ryan Harper, The Camelot Project at the University of Rochest (...)

4Johnson’s Tom of Lincoln (1607) is typical of his desire to mix local memory and national tradition. This romance narrates the adventures of Tom, the bastard son of King Arthur, and Angelica, the daughter of the Earl of London.5 Tom becomes a Knight of the Round Table, wins a war in Portugal and visits an island of women led by a Fairy Queen, who begs Tom and his knight to give them their seed in order to repopulate the Fairy Land: “in such sort that the countrey was afterward re-peopled with male children.”

• 7  The Nine Worthies of London, op. cit., title page.

6Financial service and commercial fortune were not enough to single out a merchant or a craftsman from the multitude of citizens that thrived in London’s livery companies. In order to remain in collective memory, their lives had to be told from a different angle. To save some of these citizens from oblivion, Johnson resorted to fiction and encapsulated their alleged acts of bravery, thus turning them into landmarks in the history of England. In The Nine Worthies of London, he composed nine hagiographic biographies of some of London’s most famous citizens: two vintners, two grocers, two merchant taylors, a fishmonger, a mercer, and a weaver. Johnson deemed these industrious Londoners worthy to be remembered and considered the task as his bounden duty. The full title of this work shows that it was aimed at “explayning the honourable exercise of armes, the vertues of the valiant, and the memorable attempts of magnanimious minds. Pleasant for gentlemen, not vnseemely for magistrates, and most profitable for prentises.”7

• 8  The Nine Worthies (Les Neuf Preux) first appeared in Jacques de Longuyon’s Les Vœux du Paon (c. 13 (...)
• 9  In Act V of Love’s Labour’s Lost, Holofernes presents a ridiculous pageant in which Pompey and Her (...)
• 10  William Kuskin has shown that “Caxton casts [Godeffroy of Boloyne’s] exemplary value as allowing a (...)

7Johnson drew his inspiration from the medieval tradition of The Nine Worthies,8 a group of champions including three pagans (Hector, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar), three Jews (Joshua, David and Judas Maccabeus), and three Christians (King Arthur, Charlemagne and Godfrey of Bouillon). These Nine Worthies had embodied the ideal of courage and bravery throughout the Middle Ages. In England, pageants often presented their high deeds9 and William Caxton’s printings of Godeffroy of Boloyne (1481), Le Morte Darthur (1485) and Charles the Grete (1485) turned them into collective literary figures.10 Johnson’s own Worthies distinguished themselves through outstanding martial feats mimicking the heroic deeds of the nine original Worthies. Johnson not so much lied but rather embellished the lives of the middling sort in order to save some local figures from oblivion. In his introductory note, he explains that he took to the task of writing the lives of these Nine Worthies:

• 13  See Thomas Heywood’s 1 Edward IV and 2 If You Know not Me You Know Nobody and Anthony Munday’s pag (...)
• 14  Another mnemonic symbol, the commemorative statue of Sir William Walworth holding his precious dag (...)

9William Walworth’s heroic killing of a peasant rebel serves as a beacon in the transient memory of Elizabethan audiences, which explains why it is mentioned in several plays.13 This glorious deed is enhanced by a visual and symbolic element, the dagger with which Walworth killed Wat Tyler. This weapon is still kept on display at Fishmonger’s Hall as a commemorative pagan relic of a traditional past.14

• 16  See “The Von Restorff Effect as a Function of Difference of the Isolated Item”, William E. Gumenik (...)

12Johnson often resorts to emotionally striking scenes which summon up historical figures. He does not proceed through reductio ad absurdum, but reductio ad factum, the representation of a character being crystallized into a single memorable feat. This forged individual heroic trait has a clear mnemonic function which is quite similar to the “Von Restorff effect” in cognitive psychology. The “Von Restorff effect”, also called “isolation effect”, describes the mental process through which an item that stands out is more easily remembered than any other item.16 In Johnson’s chivalric romances, heroic characters are singled out because their high deeds create a cognitive bias that enhances the memory of the readers. Being transient, memory can easily be adapted to the needs of the present. In the blurred and non-hierarchical collective memory, high deeds may be preserved. This is not survival of the fittest but survival of the bravest. And although Richard Johnson’s works proved very popular in his life time, they unfortunately fell into oblivion and most of these local heroes came to be forgotten, except within London’s livery companies, which continue to feed the flame of remembrance.

• 17  Shakespeare’s Sonnets, ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones, The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series, Walton-on- (...)

13In a similar and more lasting way, Shakespeare also embedded famous Britons in collective memory so as to fight against national oblivion. We have to keep in mind that many different plays were performed every week in each theater and every cast introduced dozens of new characters. In these conditions, the historical figures that were played on the stage could be readily forgotten. In Sonnet 60, Shakespeare laments the passing of time and the disappearance of past glories: “And nothing stands but for [Time’s] scythe to mow: / And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand, / Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.”17 Tempus edax rerum, “time devours all things”, but Shakespeare had the power to fight against oblivion by sustaining his audience’s memory.

• 18  See 2 Henry VI, ed. Ronald Knowles, The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series, Walton-on-Thames, Thomson (...)
• 19  See Greene’s Groats-Worth of Wit, 1592, University of Oregon, Renascence Editions, 2000. http://da (...)

19It seems that Shakespeare has decided to change the name of his pirate in a later version of the play in order not to be accused of plagiarism by other playwrights. Abradas can be found in Robert Greene’s Penelope’s Web (1587) and Menaphon (1589).18 Shakespeare did not want to be remembered as an “upstart crow, beautified with [someone else’s] feathers” or an “[ape imitating] past excellence”.19 Therefore, he preferred to use another name for his pirate, which he found in Cicero’s De Officiis. The audience would not care about such literary borrowings, since they would remember neither Abradas nor Bargulus, but they would certainly be able to associate Suffolk with pirates. Thus, Shakespeare makes up for the fragmented memory of his audience by providing a simple and powerful image he can link Suffolk to:

• 20  “An earl am I, and Suffolk am I called.” (v.v.9).
• 21  In Twelfth Night, Orsino calls Antonio a “Notable pirate, [and] salt-water thief” (v.i.65).

20In this play, Suffolk appears as a self-conscious character who attaches a great importance to his rank – when he introduces himself to Margaret in 1 Henry VI, he first refers to his earldom20 – and who chooses what he wants to be remembered for. Since slaves, bastards and islanders had already been associated with other famous figures in popular memory, he chose to make his mark by opposing pirates, who are always referred to as savages by Shakespeare.21 In that way, pirates become a mnemonic marker in the audience’s memory. When using these far-fetched comparisons, Suffolk imagines that he will be placed next to Cicero, Julius Caesar and Pompey in the hall of fame of great men. But in spite of his efforts, he is bound to remain a secondary character outrivaled by the main protagonists of the Wars of the Roses.

• 22  Thomas Cartelli has underlined the importance of the class conflict in this “garden scene” as foll (...)

21In a similar self-fashioning effort, Jack Cade, the leader of the rebels, also chooses to model his fame according to his will. In Act iv, scene ix, Cade is killed by Alexander Iden, a Kentish gentleman, because he wants to steal a salad in his garden. Cade has trespassed a private property, an enclosed space, and as such he could be considered as a poacher.22 For his defense, the rebel explains that he has been suffering from hunger for several days while he was hiding in the woods:

• 23  “In mediæval armour, a light globular headpiece, either with or without a vizor, and without a cre (...)
• 24  “jocularly referred to as a measure for wine” (1.b in OED). The OED quotes Thomas Heywood’s 1 Edwa (...)

22Cade strangely insists on the word “sallet”, which is repeated four times with two different meanings, a “sallet” being both a vegetable and a helmet with a long tail in the neck.23 At first sight, Shakespeare’s pun on the two meanings of the word “sallet” seems quite awkward in that scene. Cade’s hunger might explain his need for a salad, but the sudden memory of the helmet seems irrelevant in this particular situation. However, we have to take into account the fact that the word “sallet” also ironically referred to a measure for a liquid,24 probably because soldiers used them “instead of a quart pot to drink in”. The sudden reference to the helmet becomes clearer when, feeling parched by the heat, Cade remembers that he used to drink from such a helmet to quench his thirst. Shakespeare’s insistence on the word “sallet” has a rhetorical purpose: it is meant to associate Cade to a powerful image, so that the character and the word will remain linked in collective memory, as if they were the tenor and vehicle of a long-lasting metaphor.

• 25  All’s Well that Ends Well, iv.v.13-15.

23In All’s Well that Ends Well, Lafeu says about Helena: “’Twas a good lady, ’twas a good lady. We may pick a thousand salads ere we light on such another herb.”25 Thus, Lafeu separates refined herbs from vulgar salads as the wheat from the chaff. By associating Jack Cade with the word “sallet” Shakespeare seems to single him out among all his characters, but paradoxically, he also abases him to the condition of a thief. Therefore, the word “sallet” might be considered as a negative mnemonic marker in the play. Shakespeare presents the peasant rebel as a famished man, thus conveying the idea that rebellion can only lead a man to his own demise. Contrary to what Cade imagines, the word “sallet” was not “born to do [him] good,” since his search for a “sallet” results in his own death.

• 26  See 2 Henry VI, op. cit., p. 338.

24One man’s salad is another man’s poison and one man’s death is another man’s fame. In that scene, Alexander Iden is proud to call himself “a squire of Kent” (iv.i.42), “the higher order of the English gentry, ranking immediately below a knight.”26 His killing of the rebel actually gives him the opportunity to accomplish a true chivalric deed:

• 28  Jonathan Baldo, “Wars of Memory in Henry V”, Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 47.2 (Summer, 1996), p. 1 (...)
• 29  Philip Schwyzer, Literature, Nationalism, and Memory in Early Modern England and Wales, Cambridge, (...)

27As Jonathan Baldo28 and Philip Schwyzer29 have shown, memory is of the utmost importance in the shaping of a nation. The past is always recaptured so as to exploit its political or moral value. This re-enactment of past deeds in literature and drama was all the more important since British nationalism had emerged in the sixteenth century. Philip Schwyzer says:

• 31  See Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, (...)
• 32  Historical re-enacting is still practiced today by enthusiastic “re-enactors”: http://www.reenacto (...)

28The repeated performances of history plays in London’s theatres and the circulation of chivalric romances reactivated and stimulated the memory of London’s citizens. Shakespeare and Johnson’s unavowed aim was to retain and recall the heroic deeds of famous historical figures and worthy citizens in their works. Literature can be considered as ars memorativa, a bulwark against oblivion. In Richard Johnson’s romances and Shakespeare’s 2 Henry VI, facts and fiction intermingle and result in a syncretic representation were neither facts nor imagination prevail. Both writers have created early modern “imagined communities”31 sharing the same historical and traditional references thanks to the re-enactment of memorable deeds.32 Johnson has immortalized nine worthy citizens while Shakespeare has recalled the lives of lesser historical figures: Alexander Iden, the Kentish gentleman whose bloody sword attests Jack Cade’s murder and reminds the audience of Wat Tyler’s by William Walworth; William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, who was murdered by pirates, and Jack Cade, who was killed because of a salad.