James Mabbe The Rogue by Mateo Aleman 1623

” . . . almost brought to beggars bush . . .”

Usage

The usage is consistent with the literary use. We know the phrase was in use in Oxford before 1623 from the Twyne Correspondence. It seems likely to have to originated with Mabbe, who was a faithful but not literal translator. The phrase does not appear in an edition of 1706 described as being newly “done into English”. In Mabbe’s translation of La Celestina (as The Spanish Bawd) by Fernando de Rojas he uses the similar phrase, “She was as well known to them all, as the begger knows his dish”.

Text

The Rogue: or the life of Guzman de Alfarache by Mateo Aleman was a picaresque novel published in Spain in 1599. The first translation into English was by James Mabbe, who had live in Spain for several years. Mabbe’s translation went through five editions by 1656, and is found in the catalogues of many private libraries. Izaak Walton, in The Compleat Angler (1653) refers to Gusman in the same section in which he refers to Clause and The Beggars Bush play. When Sir John Pennington, former vice-admiral, died in 1646 he had a copy in his library, one of few works of fiction.  Mabbe has been praised for keeping both the structure and style of Aleman’s original, including the wide use of proverbs.

Mabbe was a Fellow and Bursar of Magdalen College, Oxford. We know from the Twyne Correspondence that the phrase was in use in Oxford in 1607 when Mabbe was Senior Dean of Arts.

Mabbe was praised by John Florio and Ben Jonson, and contributed one of the short poems to Shakespeare’s First Folio, issued by his publisher. He also translated some of the works of Cervantes. It possible that Mabbe’s manuscript translations or descriptions of works from Spanish were available to Jacobean playwrights, and used by them as a source of plots. A manuscript version of La Celestina has been tentatively dated to 1598, but it was not published until 1640.

Sources & Further Reading

Mateo Aleman The Rogue: or the life of Guzman de Alfarache, translated by James Mabbe, James Blount, London 1623

Verdague, Isabel, ‘Problems in Translating Guzman de Alfarache into English‘ SEDERI yearbook

Samson, A., ‘Last thought upon a windmill’ Cervantes and Fletcher, in Ardila J.A.G. (ed)  The Cervantean Heritage; The Reception and Influence of Cervantes in Britain, Legenda, Oxford, 2009

Fernando de Rojas, La Celestina or Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea (1499) Tr: James Mabbe 1631

DNB for James Mabbe

Thanks

Richard Coates, Professor of Linguistics, University of the West of England, for this reference

Posted: March 1st, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: Ben Jonson, Brian Twyne, Izaak Walton, Literary, Oxford, dish, proverb | No Comments »