﻿PLAGIAEISM AMONG ELIZABETHAN PAMPHLETEERS 



155 



rogues and criminals, and from this point on is purely a conny 

 catching" pamphlet. The first game described corresponds to mod- 

 ern blackmail in method. Rowlands advertises it as ''a new tricke 

 to fetch in the pence." In reality it was treated ten years before 

 in "A Notable Discovery of Coosnage" from which Rowlands 

 calmly stole it. The game is simply this. Certain rogues after dis- 

 guising themselves as official summoners or apparitors go to citi- 

 zens, gentlemen, or wealthy farmers who have not conducted them- 

 selves in all ways as they should and threaten them with process 

 or citation, at the same time offering to remain quiet provided their 

 silence is properly rewarded." The individuals so approached are 

 always of some standing and have everything to lose by exposure. 

 As a result they are willing to pay a liberal amount of hush-money. 

 Rowlands designates the practice as ''A monstrous abuse of author- 

 itie, and hindrance to the courts of Justice, that have the oversight 

 of such offences." Greene concludes that these conny catchers 

 ''discredite, hinder, and prejudice the court of the Arches, and the 

 Officers belonging to the same. ' '-^ 



The next example of plagiarism in ''Greenes Ghost" deserves 

 little attention, being at most but the theft of an idea. Rowlands 

 devotes a short paragraph to bigamists, who ''ride up and downe 

 the countrie, like yong merchants a wooing, and they will marie 

 everie moneth a new wife, & then fleece her of all she hath, that 

 done run away, and learne where another rich widow dwelleth and 

 serve her after the same sort: so rounding England, till they have 

 pickt up their crummes, and got enough to maintaine them all their 

 life after."-* This idea is a direct borrowing from "The Defence" 



-- In A Quip for an Upstart Courtier Greene accuses the official summoners of 

 this breach of duty, citing Chaucer as authority. Works, XI, 255. 



The extracts are not given in full because of the subject matter. Greenes 

 Ghost, I, 9-10. A Nota'ble Discovery of Coosnage, X, 44-46. 



This is one of the cribbings in Greenes Ghost which Professor F. W. Chandler 

 points out in his The Literature of Roguery. (Boston and New York, 1907). The 

 following paragraph from the work (Vol. I, 103-104) includes, I think, all but one 

 of the pilferings in Greenes Ghost to which Professor Chandler calls attention : 

 "Samuel Rowlands in "Greenes Ghost Haunting Conie-catchers" (1602) pretended 

 , to edit what is really a theft from previous conny-catching pamphlets, those of 

 Greene especially. . . . Among his fifteen stories appear the tricks of colliers, 

 as detailed in the "Blacke Bookes Messenger ;" the trick of reclaiming other's prop- 

 erty at inns and fairs, from the Groundworke of Conny-catehing ;" the story of a 

 false cry of justice, from the "Disputation Between a Hee Conny-catcher and a 

 Shee Conuy-catcher ;" the fraud of blindfolding a victim in Paul's as if by mistake, 

 from the "Thirde Part of Connycatching ;" and an abridgement of the bigamist 

 story, from the "Defence of Conny catching." Rowlands' theft of the story of the 

 hooker is also pointed out. (Vol. I, 100, n. 2.) 



This would seem to be a formidable list of borrowings in one small pamphlet. 

 And yet it tells considerably less than half the story. 



