Well, Tendit ad sydera virtus, there’s great virtue belongs (I can tell you) to a cup of cider.
Jack is an unreliable narrator. That much is clear from this quote alone. The Latin there at the beginning translates into English, according to him—he can tell you—as something to do with cider when in fact most translations put it quite differently. Not only is it not to do with cider, but even the virtus is wrong. Most translations will come up with “power tends to stars.” If the narrator can’t get that right, well, is anything to trust?
A proper fellow-page of yours called Jack Wilton by me commends him unto you, and hath bequeathed for waste-paper here amongst you certain pages of his misfortunes. In any case, keep them preciously as a privy token of his goodwill towards you.
Not quite the opening sentence, but close enough. Truth be told, the opening sentence of the narrator (which follows prefatory material signed in the name of the author, Thomas Nashe) sounds like a typo. Well, judge for yourself:
“Gallant squires, have amongst you; at mumchance I mean not, for so I might chance come too short commons, but at nouus, noua, nouum, which is in English, news of the maker.”
Rather than trying to make sense of that, best to move down one and judge the opening by its second and third lines. The narrator introduces himself by name—Jack Wilton—and identifies the recollections of his travels as one of misfortune. This he also classifies as an act of goodwill. Even in the absence of Jack’s unreliably regarding the translation of Latin into English (the Latin here doesn’t mean “news of the maker” per se, but merely a “news, news, news”), from these very first words it should ring a bell of suspicion that perhaps he is not entirely on the up and up, as they say.
Men and people that have made holiday to behold my pained flesh toil on the wheel, expect not of me a whining penitent slave, that shall do nothing but cry and say his prayers, and so be crushed to pieces. My body is little, but my mind is as great as a giant’s; the soul which is in me is the very soul of Julius Caesar by reversion. My name is Cutwolf.
Episodic in nature and philosophical in diversion, the text is sometimes rambling and not always coherent, but never boring. For the most part it features some lighthearted events or, if not, then a rather lighthearted tone toward dramatic events. As Jack’s narrative draws to a conclusion, however, things turn quite dark and sinister. The tonal shift is extreme, the subject matter upsetting: rape, suicide and the mistaken assumption that Jack is the perpetrator of the violence. At times—especially in the more ranting philosophical sections, Jack’s voice as narrator seems to be subsumed by the author Nashe. The result is a little confusing. The story of the rape is likewise handed over to another—the “wearish dwarfish writhen-faced cobbler” Cutwolf—but it is still Jack telling the story. So, there’s that to keep the attentive reader busy.
The first traveller was Cain, and he was called a vagabond runagate on the face of the earth. Travel (like the travail wherein smiths put wild horses when they shoe them) is good for nothing but to tame and bring men under.
Throughout—on occasion—the narrator turns his attention to the experience of traveling. The very act of leaving the homeland of England becomes something of a metaphor for adventure, the unknown, the search for knowledge, the appeasement of boredom and the pursuit of danger. The unfortunate traveler seems to be, in Jack’s mind, the person who does not travel at all.
