May 2014 - The De Vere Society

Transcription

De Vere Society Newsletter
May 2014
Dedicated to the proposition that the works of Shakespeare were written by Edward de Vere,
Earl of Oxford
The de Vere Society Newsletter
President: Christopher Dams Esq.
Editors: Kevin Gilvary, Eddi Jolly, & Jan Cole
Report me and my cause aright To the unsatisfied Hamlet V ii
www.deveresociety.co.uk
Vol. 21. No. 2, May 2014
The De Vere Society regrets to announce
the death of former Chairman, Brian
Hicks, at Cambridge in December 2013.
Contents
The next meeting of the De Vere
Society will take place on: Sat 27 Sept 2014,
at the Thistle Hotel, Marble Arch, London.
The next meeting of the Shakespeare
Oxford Fellowship will take place in
September 2014 at Madison, Wisconsin,
USA.
The next Conference of the
Shakespearean Authorship Trust on
‘Shakespeare and the French Connection’ has
been scheduled for November 2014 at
Shakespeare’s Globe, London.
The 18th annual Shakespeare Authorship
Research Centre conference was held at
Concordia University, Portland, Oregon,
USA in April 2014.
The Société française Shakespeare held
a week-long conference in April 2014 in
Paris, which included a seminar chaired by
Prof. William Leahy of Brunel University on
‘The Many Lives of William Shakespeare:
Collaboration, Biography and Authorship’.
2
Brian Hicks, RIP
3
Hon. Treasurer’s Report
4
Hon. Secretary’s Report
5
Chairman’s Report
6
DVS meeting Birmingham
7
Patrick O’Brien on William Covell
8
Alexander Waugh on John Weever
12
Eddi Jolly on Tycho Momsen
16
Jan Cole on the late English Ovid
24
Letters to the Society
29
Alice Crampin on John Caius
30
Julia Cleave on Seeing Double
32
Ros Barber Shakespeare the Evidence
39
SBT declines £40K
41
Next DVS Meeting
43
Please send us your comments, letters,
suggestions and articles. The Newsletter
editors welcome submissions up to 3,000
words, with files of images sent separately.
The next issue is planned for October 2014.
DVS Newsletter Editor,
[email protected]
Opinions expressed by contributors remain
their own and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of the Editors, the Officers, or the
Society as a whole.
Annual General Meeting
1
May 2014
The de Vere Society Annual General Meeting, 2014
At the Library of Birmingham on 5 April 2014. 1100 - 1130
In attendance: The Society’s President, the Chairman and over thirty other members.
Apologies: Gerit Quealey, Elizabeth Imlay, Marion Peel. Ian Johnson, Peter Cousins, Jessica Lee.
The Minutes of 2013 AGM were read and accepted by the meeting as a true and accurate record.
The Chairman’s Report was given to the meeting (see page 6)
The Hon. Secretary’s Report was given to the meeting (see page 5)
The Hon Treasurer’s Report and Accounts was given to the meeting (see page 4) and accepted.
Elections: Alexander Waugh and Heward Wilkinson were elected as members of the Committee
for a period of three years.
Next meeting: Thistle Hotel, Marble Arch, London on Saturday 27 September 2014.
The next committee meeting will take place on Wednesday 11 June in Somerset.
The next AGM will be held in April 2015. Date and venue to be decided.
The de Vere Society 2014
Hon President
Christopher Dams Esq.
Officers
Chairman
Kevin Gilvary
[email protected]
& Newsletter Editor
Vice-Chairman
Eddi Jolly
Hon Secretary
Richard Malim
[email protected]
Hon Treasurer
Graham Ambridge
[email protected]
Member
Alexander Waugh
Member
Heward Wilkinson
Co-opted member
Gerit Quealy
2
May 2014
DVS mourns the death of Brian Hicks
The Society was saddened to hear of the
recent death of life member and former
Chairmen, Brian Hicks, who died in
Cambridge in December 2013, aged 72.
“It is very difficult to identify him with the poet of
the sonnets or with any of the leading characters in the
plays. Stratfordians acknowledge this would have us
believe that through some miraculous power of genius
Shakspere was able to suppress all his own life
experiences when writing.
“With De Vere no such unrealistic suppression is
required. His life not only fits ‘Shake-speare’; it is
also mirrored throughout the plays in so many
instances with parallels between his own life and
family and characters in the plays as to make mere
coincidence an inadequate explanation
“I remain convinced that there is a case that can be
made for Oxford but acknowledge it has yet to be
proved beyond reasonable doubt. But do remember the
words of that great social economist JK Galbraith,
who said: ‘It is easier to be wrong with the majority
than right with the minority.’”
Brian Hicks addressing the DVS in 2003
“Most us accept that the case for the Stratford Man
has not been proved. Regarding Edward De Vere,
members will vary in the force of their conviction that
there is evidence that establishes him as a likely
candidate for the authorship. Some may not be certain
of this or may lean towards the arguments of him being
part of a collective Shakespeare.
Brian Hicks was a very popular,
committed, and successful chairman of the
De Vere Society either side of the Millennium.
He had become an Oxfordian many years
earlier and his first priority as chairman was to
dispel ‘Oxymyths’, unfounded assumptions
about Oxford which he said was the same
problem for the Strats and their Shakspere
myths. His second priority was to spread the
word and he himself gave many talks to local
societies on the Authorship Question; without
being over-enthusiastic, he persuaded many of
the strong case for Oxford. [See letter page
31. – Ed.]
“However we are a broad church. We need
different viewpoints for healthy debate. We know what
we are and what we are not. We are not simply an
anti Stratfordian Society. We are the De Vere
Society.
“I make this point because I think it is important
to go back to first principles. In moments of doubt
remind yourselves of the key points in the argument:
that with any creative writer there surely has to be
some connection between the life and personal
experiences of the author and his imaginative writings.
This point more than any other raises doubts about
the Stratford Man. Just how do we square what we
know of him with the works of ‘William Shakespeare’?
Despite illness, he attended the DVS
meeting in September 2013 and was delighted
to see the Society thriving, being especially
pleased with Alexander Waugh’s discovery.
Christopher Dams, President of the DVS
3
May 2014
Honorary Treasurer’s Report 2013
Registered Charity:
297855
Honorary Treasurer
Graham Ambridge BA, BEd, FCIEA, FSS, CSci, FIMA, CMath
Tel: 01206 210121
e-mail: [email protected]
1.
The Society’s Accounts for 2013 were audited in March 2014 as a true and accurate record.
2.
The GBP account made a net gain of £865; the Savings account made a net gain of £195 and
the USD made a net loss of $2,138.
3.
The USD account has made a loss of $2,138 because we paid $6,000 to the Shakespeare Oxford
Society for their newsletters from 2006 to Spring 2011. We had been setting aside a suitable
amount annually until we negotiated with the SOS to pay a one-off amount of $6,000 (= £4013)
to clear our debts.
4.
Meetings: We made a loss of £330 on our three meetings in 2013.
5.
In 2013, we claimed the Gift Aid refund for 2012 of £414. There are 20% of our members
who have still not completed a Gift Aid declaration. Providing you pay more than £7.50
income tax per annum, we can claim back £7.50 along with your subscription
6.
Expenses of committee meetings are now being paid, providing that receipts are sent to the
Treasurer.
7.
We have no ties left and the DSP books are now being sold below the cost price, which means
that we have no assets.
8.
Membership during 2013. Our net gain of members in 2013 was 15.
Graham Ambridge Hon. Treasurer Tue. 11/Mar/2014
4
May 2014
Honorary Secretary’s Report 2013
This is the eleventh report I have presented
since first being elected Secretary in May
2003. Before the next AGM, I turn 77 and the
time has come to think of handing over.
provoking paper on good and bad Oxfordian
arguments.
In June a party of Americans and others
invaded Cambridge and we had a joint
meeting under the auspices of Dorna Bewlay
with assistance from Charles Bird,
Elizabeth Everitt, and Patrick O’Brien: our
American friends, Jennifer Newton, Bonner
Cutting, Earl Showerman, and Dr.
Stritmatter gave learned papers on the
subjects as reported in the July 2013
Newsletter. What was not reported was the
most successful bonding session in the Eagle
at the end of the day.
Your Committee has met four times for
administrative matters in 2013/4. Throughout
I have received excellent support from the
committee and the membership generally.
The major part of one meeting, hosted by
Christopher and Marjorie. Dams, was
devoted to strategic considerations: the
Shakespeare Authorship Question and in
particular Oxfordianism have acquired a much
higher profile as a result of the attack on us by
The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. We have
supported the production of Shakespeare
Beyond Doubt ?, one of whose editors is our
new life member, Alexander Waugh. Mr.
Waugh electrified at least part of the nation by
his discoveries inside Covell’s Polimanteia, and
his contribution to that higher profile has
been most gratifying. He agreed to be coopted to the Committee and was able to
advise and add his own ideas. We shall
develop this with the new Committee in 2014.
Our members took a prominent role at the
Shakespearean Authorship Trust
conference in November at The Globe with
papers from Alexander Waugh and our
Chairman Kevin Gilvary on ‘Writ in Choice
Italian’ (available on the website under
archives). The report of this conference
appeared in our last Newsletter, January 2014.
It is clear therefore that the Society
continues in good heart and in good academic
strength. Part of the point of the Committee’s
Strategy Meeting is and will be how to put this
across to academia and those parts of the
public who should be concerned. No doubt
large sums of taxpayers’ money will be wasted
on the continued obsequies for the
quatercentenary of Shakspere’s death.
After the Annual General Meeting at
Lincoln College Oxford in April we heard
papers from our President, Christopher
Dams, on Oxford and his connection to Italy;
Lee Tudor Pole on the business of the
Stationers’ Register; Jan Cole on life at Cecil
House; (available on the website under
archives) and our Chairman Kevin Gilvary,
on Davenant. In September in London we
heard from Marion Peel on the Shakspere
family finances; (available on the website
under archives) Eddi Jolly on the significance
of the Newington Butts performances in
1594; and Alexander Waugh on his Polimanteia
discovery. Tony Pointon gave a thought-
The Society has congratulated the two
American Oxfordian Societies on their merger
into The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship.
Nevertheless, I strongly believe that The De
Vere Society is “The Keeper of the Flame”.
May it always continue to be so!
Richard Malim, Bristol
5

May 2014
Chairman’s Report 2013
The year 2013 has been most eventful for
the Shakespeare Authorship Question and the
Oxfordian Cause. We saw the publication of
Shakespeare Beyond Doubt by the Shakespeare
Birthplace Trust (SBT) and the immediate
rejoinder Shakespeare Beyond Doubt? published
by the unaligned Shakespeare Authorship
Coalition, (SAC) based in California. Soon
afterwards, The SAC offered £40,000 to the
SBT just to appear in a debate entitled
‘Shakespeare Beyond Doubt?’ The SBT,
registered charity no: 209302, has declined.
The DVS committee has worked most
efficiently in 2013 and we welcome Alexander
Waugh and Heward Wilkinson as new
members. Sadly, we will soon be losing the
sterling services of Graham Ambridge as
Hon. Treasurer and Richard Malim as Hon.
Secretary. We need to find dedicated,
efficient, and reliable people to replace them.
We in the De Vere Society enjoyed
excellent meetings in Oxford, Cambridge, and
London. During the year, membership
increased and so did our funds. By far the
greatest moment was the revelation in
September by Alexander Waugh of the covert
reference in 1595 to Oxford as a poet, which
made The Sunday Times in October 2013.
We were pleased to witness the merger of
the SOS and the Shakespeare Fellowship as
the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship. One sad
consequence is that we have been unable for a
while to distribute the SOS newsletter to DVS
members. Do browse their excellent website:
Richard Malim is due to retire as Hon.
Secretary at the next AGM.
We pay a nominal amount to Bryan
Ambridge to maintain the website, which is
currently managed by the Chairman and the
Hon. Secretary. We need a younger, more
dynamic, more socially networked person to
run the website to our advantage.
www.shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org
Meanwhile, in London the Shakespearean
Authorship Trust (unaligned to any particular
candidate) enjoyed a very successful
conference in November 2013. The following
talks by (1) Alexander Waugh: “Shakespeare No True Traveller?” (2) Hank Whittemore:
Richard Paul Roe, The Shakespeare Guide to
Italy” (3) Kevin Gilvary: “Writ in Choice
Italian” (4) Panel, Q&A: Ros Barber, John
Casson, Julia Cleave, Kevin Gilvary, Bill
Leahy, Hank Whittemore; are on-line at:
The newsletter will appear in three editions
in 2014. Jan Cole and Eddi Jolly are now coeditors. Please contribute! In 2014, we look to
bring our two messages to wider audiences:
that there is little to support the case for
William Shakspere of Stratford and that there
is much to support the case of Oxford as the
author of the Shakespeare canon.
www.shakespeareanauthorshiptrust.org.uk
Kevin Gilvary, Titchfield, Hants 
6
May 2014
DVS Meeting
Library of Birmingham April 2014
The De Vere Society met for its AGM on
Saturday 5 April 2014 at the new Library of
Birmingham, which houses The Birmingham
Shakespeare Collection of more than 44,000
books as well as magazines, DVDs, photos,
posters, theatre programmes, scrapbooks,
illustrations. The recently-opened library is a
masterpiece of modern architecture with a
large open foyer next to the Repertory
Theatre. Two elongated sets of escalators
brought us to the main level, the venue of our
meeting and further escalators go through a
yawning gap into the levels of stacks – a
breathtaking experience. At the very top of
the building is the Shakespeare Memorial
Room, with its beautiful wood carvings,
which has been transferred from the Victorian
library.
Eddi Jolly gave a talk in which she
showed how Tycho Momsen first
characterised quartos as “good” or “bad” in
1857 mainly by the use of emotive language
with little supporting evidence. Julia Cleave
in her talk ‘Seeing Double’ challenged the
notion that nobody doubted the Authorship
until Delia Bacon. She gave many interesting
examples of writers who had their suspicions.
Julia brought a spell-binding morning to a
close by recounting some of the activities of
the Shakespearean Authorship Trust.
Jan Cole in her talk, ‘The late English
Ovid’ identified an intriguing reference to
Shakespeare as dead by 1605. Tony Pointon
challenged some sloppy arithmetic amongst
those who claimed that “the Sonnets can be
dated late.” Kevin Gilvary noted that Ben
Jonson was the most prolific writer of
commendatory verses in the Jacobean period
and was probably invited by the stationer,
Edward Blount, to write the verses to F1.
Patrick O’Brien spoke about William
Covell’s life and the likelihood that, as a
fellow of Queens’ College Cambridge, he
would have known the true author of Venus
and of Lucrece, to have been Edward de Vere.
Members came from far and near. Upon
arrival, we were granted an audience, or rather
a private inspection, of the Library’s prize
possession, a copy of Shakespeare’s First
Folio (1623). Many of us had seen a copy
before – but only through bullet-proof glass
but few of us had ever looked upon the
volume in the flesh, as it were. The curators
had to hurry off at 1100 as the Library’s
Board of Trustees had also requested their
own private viewing, before it was made
available temporarily to the public.
Finally, Alexander Waugh brought us up
to date in ‘SAC vs SBT - the chronicle of a
battle’. Many members were genuinely
shocked at the vitriolic abuse which had been
hurled at Alexander in some on-line postings.
The Society’s president, Christopher
Dams, gave a moving tribute to former DVS
chairman, Brian Hicks, who died recently.
After this, the Society’s AGM was held at
which Alexander Waugh and Heward
Wilkinson were elected to the committee.
The President then gave a brief talk on the
Society’s Aims and how we can set about
achieving them.
Our thanks are due in abundance to
Richard Malim for organising the venue, to
Eddi Jolly for preparing such an interesting
cast of speakers, to Colin Jolly for running
the technology and to the Library of
Birmingham for providing us with such an
excellent venue.
KG
7
May 2014
De Vere, Shakespeare and Queens’ College Cambridge
Patrick O’Brien
As an alumnus of Queens’ College
Cambridge, I was perhaps more excited
than most by Alexander Waugh’s discovery
in the Letter attached to Polimanteia. Both
were written by William Covell, a Fellow of
Queens’ (1589 - 99) and published in 1595.
A somewhat pensive Patrick O’Brien
Alexander’s discovery was published in the DVS Newsletter of October 2013. To recap, “Sweet
Shak-speare” in the margin is juxtaposed to “Oxford” – apparently a reference to the University –
and “courte-deare-verse” – an anagram of “our de vere - a secret”.
If, as I believe, Waugh is right in thinking that Covell was giving a not very cunningly coded
message as to the true identity of “Shakespeare,” questions arise as to how Covell knew and how he
had the temerity to risk revealing a secret known only to a limited number of powerful people.
8
May 2014
Queens’ College was founded by Margaret of Anjou, Queen to Henry VI
First, let us recall that the 8 year old Edward De
Vere, then Viscount Bulbeck, was in residence at
Queens’ College from October 1558 until at least
March 1559. He matriculated as “impubes” in
November 1558. This was at about the time when
Sir Thomas Smith was bringing him up in his
house. Smith was a Fellow of Queens’ from 1530
to 1547. At one stage he was University Vice
Chancellor. When he died in 1577 he left that part
of his library that was in Latin or Greek to the
College. It is highly likely that it was Smith who
arranged for the young Edward to spend some
time at his Alma Mater.
What was happening in Queens’ in 1595? To
start at the top, the President was Humphrey
Tindall. In about 1577 he became a Chaplain to
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. On 21st
September 1578 he officiated at his patron’s secret
marriage to Lettice Knollys, Countess of Essex
and mother of Robert Devereux, the 2nd Earl.
Dudley had left Elizabeth’s Progress to contract
the marriage secretly. The couple incurred the
Queen’s grave displeasure when she learned of it
in August 1578.
When the previous President of Queens’, Dr.
Chaderton, also a Chaplain to Robert Dudley, was
made Bishop of Chester in June 1579, Tindall was
parachuted into Queens’ as the new Master. This
was achieved through Dudley’s influence. The
move had been anticipated by the fellowship who
thoroughly disapproved.
Was Covell aware of Edward De Vere’s
membership of Queens’? In 1595 the Fellowship
of Queens’ numbered about 20. None of them
was a Fellow when Viscount Bulbeck matriculated
in November 1558. However, they probably knew
that the College Records showed the matriculation
of such an important member of the nobility. One
of the Fellows was Clement Smith. He was a
Fellow from 1576 to 1611 and a nephew of Sir
Thomas Smith who had applied pressure to the
College to secure him a fellowship. I should be
astonished if Clement Smith, was unaware that
Edward De Vere had matriculated at Queens’. As
for Covell and the rest of the Fellowship – well I
don’t suppose the grapevine was any less
productive in those days than today!
One of their number, Mr. David Yale, wrote to
Lord Burghley, The Lord Treasurer, on 14th July
1578 begging that, if Dr Chaderton were made
Bishop of Chester, the Earl of Leicester might not
be allowed to exert his influence in favour of Mr
Tyndall whom he considered to be unfit on
account of his youth and inexperience in college
affairs. The protest was without effect. On 3rd July
1579 Humphrey Tyndall was elected President on
the recommendation of Burghley. [Searle 356-7]
9
May 2014
So it would appear that the President of
Queens’ enjoyed the patronage or support of both
the Earl of Leicester and Lord Treasurer Burghley
. Burghley had been Edward De Vere’s guardian
during his minority and then his very disapproving
Father-in-Law from 1575 until June 1588 when
his wife Anne Cecil died.
1596 and was appointed his Chaplain. Let us not
forget that Polimanteia was dedicated by Covell to
Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex.
We learn about the performances of Laelia
from an epigram written by a 2nd year
undergraduate at Queens’, John Weever, between
1595 and 1598 and published in 1599. Weever
wrote many humorous epigrams as a young man.
Later in life his main work concerned epitaphs on
gravestones. His early writings – 1599-1601 –
included many allusions to Shakespeare. He wrote
a sonnet in Shakespearian form “Ad Guilielum
Shakespear.” It was probably written by 1598 but
published in 1599. See John Weever by E. A. J.
Honigman.
On 1st March 1595 two of the Fellows were
involved in the performance of a play in College.
The play was Laelia which may be a source for or
have a common source with Twelfth Night –
Gl’Ingannati. The two Fellows were George
Meriton and George Mountaigne. The play was
performed in the presence of Robert Devereux,
2nd Earl of Essex. He was accompanied by a party
of nobles and gentlemen who included Lord
Edmund Sheffield, a cousin of Edward De Vere.
Honie-tong’d Shakespeare when I saw thaie issue
I swore Apollo got them and none other,
Their rosie-tainted features clothed in tissue,
Some heaven born goddesse said to be their mother:
Rose cheekt Adonis with his amber tresses,
Fair fire-hot Venus charming him to love her,
Chaste Lucretia virgine-like her dresses,
Prowd lust-stung Tarquine seeking still to prove her:
Romea [sic] Richard, more whose names I know not,
Their sugred tongues, and power attractive beuty
Say they are saints although that Sts they shew not
For thousands vowes to them subjective dutie:
They burn in love thy children Shakespear het them,
Go wo thy Muse more Nymphish brood beget them.
This was written in about 1597-8. Weever was
plainly aware of Venus and Adonis (1593) the Rape
of Lucrece (1594) Romeo and Juliet and Richard II or
Richard III or both (1597) The Shakespearian form
of the sonnet (rhyming scheme abab cdcd etc) may
indicate that Weever was privy to the Sonnets
which were not yet published but circulating
privately among De Vere’s friends. There is an
echo of Meres’ “Sugred Sonnets among his private
friends.” This would be at least consistent with his
tutor being aware of De Vere’s literary
achievements.
Essex was so impressed by the play that he
arranged for it to be performed again with the
participation of those Fellows before Queen
Elizabeth in London at the celebration of Queen’s
Day on 17th November 1595. Mountaigne
accompanied Essex on his expedition to Cadiz in
10
May 2014
Weever’s Tutor was William Covell. Both
Weever and Covell came from Lancashire. Weever
dedicated his Epigrammes to Richard Houghton
of Houghton Tower in Lancashire. This is the
basis for Honigmann’s argument that Shakspeare
spent the “lost years” as tutor or schoolmaster in
Lancashire.
he allowed the University to deal with the matter.
[Searle Pp 389-90]
Another Fellow was Nathaniel Fletcher,
brother of the dramatist John Fletcher who is
commonly supposed to have collaborated with
Shakespeare on Henry VIII and Two Noble Kinsmen.
John Fletcher was at Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge at this time and had just taken been
admitted B.A. He was, however, still 15 years old.
William Covell was a rather naughty Fellow
and no stranger to intrigue. The Records of the
University Vice Chancellor’s Court show that he
had conducted an affair with a married woman,
Bridget Edwards, who became pregnant. The
adulterous couple were brought before the Court
in 1596. The case was proved. Covell was given a
warning. Bridget Edmunds had to do public
penance wearing a white sheet at St. Botolph’s
Church on three successive Sundays. Not much
gender equality then!
So we find that The President had enjoyed the
support of the Earl of Leicester and the all
important Lord Burghley who had very full
knowledge of the activities of his former ward and
son-in-law, Edward De Vere. Two Fellows,
Mountaigne and Meriton, had a strong interest in
theatre and had attracted the favour of the 2nd
Earl of Essex. Although Essex was not made
Chancellor of the University until 1598, he was
already active in its affairs by early 1595.
The Smith connection would have ensured
that Queens’ Fellows were aware of the De Vere
membership of the college. Dudley died in
September 1588 but the connections with
Burghley and Devereux are possible sources of
the information that De Vere was the author of at
least The Rape of Lucrece. The same connections
may have emboldened the reckless and
iconoclastic Covell to risk giving the secret away
by an anagram.
Finally, what about the force of “our” in “our
de vere”? Is it, ambiguously, Queens’ College’s De
Vere as well as England’s?
H. H. Judge Patrick O’Brien,
St. Bodolph’s Church, Cambridge
Queens’ College 1964-8.
Covell also got into trouble with a sermon he
preached in the University Church in December
1595 on the text “My house is a house of prayer
but ye have made it a den of thieves” attacking
bishops and nobles for misappropriating Church
revenues. It aroused the wrath of the Chancellor
of the University and the Archbishop of
Canterbury. The Vice Chancellor wrote to Lord
Burghley to complain about it. Archbishop
Whitgift was minded to bring Covell before the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners but in the end the
References
W. G. Searle. The History of Queens’ College
Cambridge, 1446-1662. Deighton, Bell & Company,
1871.
E. A. J. Honigmann. John Weever: A Biography of
a Literary Associate of Shakespeare and Jonson, Together
with a Photographic Facsimile of Weever's Epigrammes
(1599). Manchester University Press, 1987
E. A. J. Honigmann. Shakespeare: the ‘lost years’.
Manchester University Press, 1987.
11
May 2014
John Weever – Another Anti-Stratfordian
Alexander Waugh
Although Venus is mentioned by many
English poets of the 1590s, few would disagree
that by the end of that decade the one poet whom
literary society would have most readily associated
with the Roman goddess of love was ‘William
Shakespeare.’ His Venus and Adonis, a witty poem
describing Venus’s relentless efforts to seduce an
obdurate youth was registered for publication in
April 1593. By 1599 it had run to four editions
with a fifth to follow in 1600. Shakespeare was
the first poet among his contemporaries to base a
whole poem on this Ovidian story and we may
confidently deduce from contemporary letters and
printed references that Shakespeare’s Venus and
Adonis was the most talked about Venus poem of
it’s age. Indeed, so famous was this work that
ever since Thomas Edwardes referred to a
contemporary poet by the pseudonym, Adon, in
1595, scholars have unanimously accepted that he
was referring to Shakespeare and no other.
Likewise, when John Weever in 1599, described ‘a
certain poet who had written ‘bald rhymes’ about
Venus we may confidently agree that his literary
contemporaries would all have assumed him to be
referring to Shakespeare.
studied at Queens’ College Cambridge under
William Covell, who, in 1595 (four years before
the publication of Weever’s Epigrammes) had
revealed that ‘Sweet Shak-speare’ was Oxford –
‘our de Vere’.2
It may seem odd then, that Weever’s Epigram
no. 11 (from ‘the Fourth Weeke’) should have
passed, for over four hundred years, unrecognised
as a very obvious allusion to Shakespeare,1 but to
understand why this has happened, we need look
no further than the title: In Spurium quendam
scriptorem. This translates as ‘To Spurius, a certain
writer’.
John Weever 1576-1632
The epigram ‘To Spurius, a certain writer’ at four
lines long, is short and pithy:
Apelles 3 did so paint Venus Queene,
That most supposed he had faire Venus seene,
But thy bald rimes of Venus savour so,
That I dare sweare thou dost all Venus know.
We do not need to consult the OED to know
that ‘spurious’, when applied to writing, is defined
as ‘not really proceeding from its reputed origin,
source or author.’ So what Weever seems to be
telling his readers is that the reputed name of the
writer (most famous for a poem about Venus) is
spurious. Weever, it should be remembered,
Weever’s surface meaning is clear - that the poet
(Shakespeare) has portrayed Venus so perfectly
that he gives the impression that he must have
known her well. But with epigrams of this period,
we should always expect a double meaning, not
least one that is subversive. As Ben Jonson wrote,
12
May 2014
the very word epigram ‘carries danger in the
sound,’4 and Weever’s subversive meaning here, is
not at all hard to spot. He is insinuating, that the
poet has had an affair with Venus, or, to put it
more topically, that he has had an affair with a real
woman whom he portrayed or satirised as Venus
in his Venus and Adonis.
other than a vague similarity between the names
‘Spurius’ and ‘Spurling.’ Neither John nor Philip
Spurling, whosoever they may have been, were
known poets, let alone poets renowned for their
portrayals of Venus in the mid to late 1590s.
Furthermore there is no known reason why
Weever should have chosen to conflate the name
‘Spurling’ with a suggestion of spurious
authorship. Honigmann’s hypotheses must
therefore be ignored.
The basic joke was not original to Weever. It
had already appeared as an epigram in Timothy
Kendall’s Flowers and Epigrammes of 1577, which, in
turn, relied upon a Latin epigram by Henry
Howard, Earl of Surrey.5 Kendall’s version reads:
That ‘Spurius’ is intended to refer to
‘Shakespeare’ is strongly supported by textual
allusion to a poet of Venus and also, perhaps, by
Weever’s numbering. In the introductory letter to
his readers he wrote:
To Cl. Marotus
Apelles learned hand, so fine
did paint fair Venus Queene:
That euery one suposd that he,
had Venus vewd and seen.
But workes of thine Marotus lewd,
of Venus sauour so:
That euery one sure deemes, that thou
dost all of Venus know.
If you looke for some reasons because [why]
I keepe no order in the placing of my Epistles
and Epigrams, let this suffice, I write
Epigrams, and there is an old saying: Non
locus hominem, des homo locum &c: - the
placing gives no grace unto the man, but
man unto the place.8
If I am interpreting this correctly Weever is
going out of his way to deny that he has invested
any significance in the ordering of his epigrams.
Other poets are known to have used ordering or
‘placing’ imaginatively. Note how John Davies
revealed ‘Shakespeare’ to be a pseudonym, not
just by comparing Shakespeare to Terence (the
‘front man’ for poets of Ancient Roman nobility),
but also in the title sequence of his epigrams nos.
156-160:
We must not be distracted by this into thinking
that Weever was plagiarizing Kendall or Henry
Howard by simply repeating their slander on the
French poet Clément Marot, ‘Marotus’ (14961544), for although it is clear that Weever has
borrowed the joke, he has noticeably removed
Marot’s name from his version. In his
introduction ‘To the generous readers’ Weever
explains that epigrams are topical: ‘Epigramms are
much like unto Almanacks serving especially for
the year which they are made.’6 Since Marot died
twenty-two years before Weever was born, and
since there is no discernable reason why Weever
should have called Marot ‘Spurius,’ we may safely
conclude that he was not rehashing an old joke
about Marot, but using it to aim a familiar dart at a
new target.
Epig. 156: To my well accomplish’d friend Mr
Ben Jonson
Epig. 157: To my much esteemed Mr Inego
Jones.
Epig. 158: To my worthy kinde friend Mr Isacke
Simonds
Epig. 159: To our English Terence Mr William
Shake-speare.
Epig. 160: To his most constant, though most
unknown friend: No-body.9
Stratfordian scholar, E. A. J. Honigmann in his
book, John Weever (Manchester 1987), suggested
that Weever’s title dedication ‘In Spurium quendam
scriptorem’ might be a cyphered allusion to ‘(?) John
or Philip Spurling pensioners at Trinity
[Cambridge], c. 1596).’7 Honigmann offers no
evidence to support this self-queried supposition,
Was Weever laying a false scent then, when he
asked his readers to draw no significance from the
ordering of his poems? Both of his Shakespeare
13
May 2014
epigrams are contained in the chapter called ‘The
Fourth Weeke’ – a neat collection of 23 poems
separately dedicated to Sir Edward Warren.10 The
one entitled ‘To Spurius, a certain writer’ is
numbered 11 while the famous Ad Gulielmum
Shakespear is number 22.
evidence. In the year before his death in 1632,
Weever published a learned volume entitled
Ancient Funerall Monuments, being a comprehensive
study of church monuments, which does not
include the Shakspere travesty at Stratford.
That both poems are about Shakespeare and
that both refer to Venus shows that they are
connected. 11 and 22 (apart from the obvious
fact that one is double the other) are similar
numbers in so far as both are represented by twin
or double numerals. Without further Cabbalistic
ado, I simply flag the possibility that Weever, in
numbering his two Shakespeare epigrams 11 and
22, may have been subtly adverting to their
connection, and to the fact that they are both
aimed at the same addressee. If this is the case
and he was intentionally coupling Epigram 11
with Epigram 22, we should also be alert to the
tantalizing possibility that the half-hidden and
subversive double meaning of the first continues
into the veiled narrative of the second. In other
words that the ‘Venus’ with whom Shakespeare is
implicated in Epigram 11, may have borne him
illegitimate offspring, obliquely hinted at in
Epigram 22:
Honie-tong’d Shakespeare when I saw
thine issue
The archives of the Society of Antiquaries in
London hold the manuscript of this book as well
as a secondary folio (MS128) that has been
catalogued as follows:
I swore Apollo got them and none other,
Their rosie-tainted features cloth’d in tissue,
Some heaven born goddesse said to be
their mother…
128. A folio Book marked B. with this title on
the cover, “The Rul’d Paper Booke”.
Containing numerous collections from
Books and manuscripts in the handwriting
of John Weever the Antiquary…
There is no space here for any lengthy analysis of
Weever’s intriguing double-meanings or their
relevance to the biography of Edward de Vere.
Let me instead divert to a brief examination of the
oft’ repeated Stratfordian assertions that John
Weever was a friend of the Stratford Shakspere
and that he recognized him as a poet and
playwright.
On page 18 of this folio may be found a
transcription of the epitaph inscribed upon the
Shakspere monument at Stratford, beside which
appears a handwritten marginal note that reads:
‘Willm
Shakespeare
the
famous
poet.’
Honigmann comments that it was ‘someone –
probably Weever’ who wrote this marginal note.11
It is my contention, however, that Weever wrote
neither the main text nor the marginal note.
Examining the manuscript folio on 25 March
2013, I made the following observations:
The first contention (that Weever knew
Stratford Shakspere personally), is pure
speculation, unsupported by any evidence, and
requires no further comment. The second,
however, (that Weever knew Stratford Shakspere
to be the poet) is supported by documentary
14
May 2014
1 From a comparison of the handwriting of
MS128 with that of letters signed by
Weever (reproduced in Honigmann) it
would appear that the secretarial hand of
MS128 is not Weever’s.
a royal ‘crown’ countermark. When Charles was
beheaded in 1649, some paper makers satirically
replaced the ‘crown’ countermark with the image
of a fool’s cap (hence the name foolscap – now
identified as a paper size). The maker of the paper
of MS128 appears to have replaced Charles I’s
‘crown’ countermark with the Protector’s initials
OC – Oliver Cromwell. I have searched in vain
for corroboration of the OC countermark and for
further identification of the precise ‘hand-andcross’ watermark that is seen in the sheets of
MS128. Edward Heawood’s seminal work,
Watermarks Mainly of the 17th and 18th Centuries
(1950), does not list either.
2 The writer of MS128 has transcribed the
first two words of the Shakspere-Stratford
epitaph ‘Judcio Pilum’ instead of ‘Judicio
Pylium’ - two Classical errors in two
consecutive words, - very unlikely for a
noted Cambridge classicist and scholar of
Weever’s high renown.
3 Holding the papers to the light I note the
customary paper maker’s watermark (a
hand beneath a cross) alternating with a
countermark bearing the initials OC.
I should be grateful to any reader able to
supply further information. If, as I suspect, the
countermark on MS128 turns out to signify a date
within the era of the Protectorate of Oliver
Cromwell, Stratfordians will have to start thinking
of ways of explaining how Weever, who died in
1632, succeeded in scribbling notes onto a piece
of paper which did not come into existence until
1649 or later.
The habit of using twin paper moulds to
produce a countermark on alternate sheets did not
become customary until the second half of the
seventeenth century. During the later reign of
Charles I, batches of paper were manufactured in
which a watermarked makers’ sign alternated with
Notes
1
I spoke briefly of this Weever-Shakespeare allusion at the De Vere Society’s London conference (28 September 2013)
but it seems to have been lost in the accompanying furore over Polimanteia.
2
In Polimanteia (1595); see A. Waugh, ‘A Secret Revealed’ DVS Newsletter, (Oct 2013), pp. 2-4.
3
Apelles: Ancient Greek painter (c. 330 BC) renowned for his beautiful and lifelike portrait of Venus (Aphrodite
Anadyomene).
4
In the dedication of his Epigrammes to the Earl of Pembroke, Jonson wrote of ‘my Epigrammes which, though they carry
danger in the sound, doe not therefore seeke your shelter: For when I made them, I had nothing in my conscience, to
expressing of which I did need a cypher.’ Jonson further tries to placate the censors by explaining in (Epig. 2) that his
readers should not assume that because he had called them Epigrammes his poems were necessarily ‘bold, licentious, full
of gall,/Wormewood, and sulphure, sharpe, and tooth’d withal,’ and in Epigram 18, addressed ‘To my meere English
Censurer’ Jonson explicitly tries to dissociate his epigrammatic style from that of Davies or Weever.
5
For more on the origins of this joke see Andrew W. Taylor: ‘Between Surrey and Marot: Nicholas Bourbon and the
Artful Translation of the Epigram’ Translation and Literature 15.1 (2006) 1-20, and online at
http://130.102.44.246/journals/translation_and_literature/v015/15.1taylor.html
6
John Weever: Epigrammes in the oldest cut, and newest fashion (1599), ‘To the generous Readers,’ A7a. The whole pamphlet is
reproduced in facsimile in Honigmann (1987), see n. 7 below.
7
E. A. J. Honigmann: John Weever (1987), p. 124, n. iv.11
8
Ibid
9
From The Scourge of Folly [1611]. This title sequence is remarked upon by Diana Price in Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography
(2012 ed), p. 63. She overlooks, however, the significance of title of Epig. 160 in which the possessive pronoun ‘his’ is
intended to refer to ‘Shake-speare’ in the preceding epigram.
10
The John Warren who wrote the anti-Stratfordian poem ‘Of Mr William Shakespeare’ printed in the prefatory matter to
the 1640 edition of Shakespeare’s poems, may have been one of the several Johns listed in the pedigrees of the family of
Weever’s friend, Sir Edward Warren of Poynton and Stockport.
11
Honigmann, p. 70.
15
May 2014
Mommsen’s Legacy?
Eddi Jolly
Tycho Mommsen, a German professor, wrote
a letter about the first quartos of Romeo and
Juliet and Hamlet on January 27th 1857. It was
published in ‘The Athenæum’ on 7th February
of that year. The letter merits close attention
and close analysis, because Mommsen’s ‘high
authority’1 has apparently been so influential in
the field of Shakespeare studies. It is a letter
which writes of the second quartos of these
two plays as having priority, of the first quartos
being composed at least in part by MR, and of
those Q1s being ‘bad’2 quartos, even though
those particular terms and phrases would not
be used for another half a century or so.
Indeed, it seems to be Mommsen who
originates these concepts, and for that reason
alone he deserves, or rather necessitates, rereading.
proposed by these early scholars;3 he writes
that the Q1s ‘seem to be no first sketches, as
some have imagined’ (introductory
paragraph).4 The verb here is polysemic;
‘imagined’ can denote ‘thought’, with its
possible connotations of mental reasoning, and
also ‘fancied’, connoting inventive processes.
Instead, Mommsen wishes to ‘state the results
of a careful examination’. ‘State’ is formal, and
the partly Latinate lexis of his grammatical
object connotes scholarly objectivity and
effort. The formality of the lexemes associated
with his conclusions contrasts with the
informality of ‘first sketch’ and ‘imagined’
associated with the unnamed ‘some’. The
contrast might encourage us to accept his
conclusions, in preference to others’
imaginings.
Mommsen’s letter is confident, not to say
forceful, and its language distinctive. Indeed,
his style should rapidly alert readers to his
unmistakeably persuasive intentions. Perhaps it
is inevitable that when new ideas in literature
are presented the language has a markedly
conative function. However, we might also
expect the language used to be objective and
unbiased as possible, so that we find the ideas
persuasive rather than the words.
The opening paragraph initiates a series of
descriptors applied to the first and second
quartos of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet.
Mommsen describes the second quarto (Q2)
of Romeo and Juliet as a ‘genuine text’ (point 12)
like Q2 Hamlet (introductory paragraph) and he
sees both Q2s as ‘the authentic editions’ (point
8) and ‘better text’ (point 15). Mommsen gives
no criteria for establishing or proving any of
these labels. It is true that many scholars
(reading in libraries and studies?) do prefer Q2
Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, but scholarly
preference for the Q2s does not necessarily
preclude the Q1s from being ‘genuine’. Nor
does it preclude them from being ‘good’
theatrical texts.
Descriptors
Mommsen alludes briefly to the proposal of
some nineteenth century scholars writing
between 1825 and 1857 (the first date is when
the first rediscovered Q1 Hamlet was published
and made available to scholars, and it is the
1856 finding of a second copy which
prompted his 1857 letter). Mommsen rejects
the ‘first thoughts’ hypothesis which had been
Mommsen describes the Q1s quite
differently. Q1 Romeo and Juliet is a ‘mutilated
quarto’ (point 16). Q1 Hamlet is pre-modified
16
May 2014
on two separate occasions as ‘mutilated’
(points 4, 10) and on one occasion ‘mutilated
copy’ (point 15) refers to both Q1s.
‘Mutilated’, according to the dictionary,
denotes ‘injured by cutting off a limb, maimed,
to have a material part removed, damaged or
spoiled beyond recognition’, deformed by
being slit or bored’.5 It is a powerful and
emotive word, usually describing bodies, not
plays. It is true that Q1 is shorter than Q2, but
‘shorter’ and ‘mutilated’ are not synonyms. The
use of ‘mutilated’ encourages us to infer that
Q1 is less whole than Q2, that there is
something missing. Q1 Romeo and Juliet is
described as ‘far too bad for Shakespeare’
(point 10) without Mommsen indicating any
criteria for defining ‘good’ Shakespeare.6
Mommsen also twice refers to Q1 Romeo and
Juliet as ‘spurious’ (points 10, 16): ‘spurious’:
‘not genuine, false, sham, forged, simulating
but essentially different, bastard, illegitimate’7 –
it is another potent lexeme. If Q1 Romeo and
Juliet was actually originally a performance text
we might question ‘spurious’, though in this
context Mommsen presumably means ‘false’ or
bastardised Shakespearean text. Later the two
Q1s are described as ‘adulterated editions’
(point 15), along with other unnamed plays
which Mommsen labels similarly. He does not
demonstrate the validity of these descriptors.
Perhaps we are just expected to accept them.
Some may consider the descriptors hyperbolic
rather than exact in this context, even if they
do accept Mommsen’s premise that the Q1s
are less pleasing than the Q2s. We should
certainly note that ‘genuine’, ‘better’,
‘authentic’, ‘adulterated’, ‘mutilated’ and
‘spurious’ are all evaluative modifiers; they
convey Mommsen’s opinion.
shallow repetition’ (point 7), ‘innumerable
blunders’ (point 11), and ‘curious
misunderstandings… on every page’ (point
13). It is not an objective approach. Impartial
labels like ‘variant’, ‘different’, and ‘alternative
readings’ would signal differences between the
quartos without predisposing or prejudicing
the reader’s perceptions. It is quite possible to
refer neutrally to the Q1s as ‘shorter’ texts
(Romeo and Juliet: 2232 lines, Hamlet: 2221) and
the Q2s as ‘longer’ texts (Romeo and Juliet: 3007
lines, Hamlet: 4056). On the other hand, it is of
course perfectly acceptable to declare an
explicit, personal partiality for any of the
quartos. That shows a clear point of view
without influencing the reader, or assuming the
reader’s preferences.
Developing his ‘opinion’
The characteristics Mommsen claims to
discover in the shorter quartos are not limited
to those listed above. Regarding Q1 Hamlet, he
finds ‘striking inconsistencies of the action,
owing… to omissions or transpositions…
which cannot but have originated in foreign
interpolation’ (point 1). Readers are effectively
expected to agree that differences in the action
between the two plays can be separated into
Q1’s version – ‘inconsistent’ – and Q2’s, which
is, implicitly, ‘genuine’. If we could be certain
of the origins of each quarto we might have
grounds for accepting this. However,
Mommsen has already moved on, to use
‘omissions’, which connotes an absence, or
rather a loss, in Q1 of something which is
present in Q2, for that is what ‘omission’ in
this context denotes. This in turns implies, or
assumes, the priority of Q2 – not proven – and
that Q1 derives from it – a hypothesis then,
and actually a hypothesis still, a hundred and
fifty years later, even if there are some scholars
presenting that hypothesis as (virtual) fact.8 A
significant amount of Mommsen’s lexis here
connotes the priority of Q2, including
Mommsen also draws attention to some of
the differences between the two pairs of
quartos. His pejorative descriptions of features
he finds in the first quartos include: ‘errors’
(point 6), ‘vulgarisms’ and ‘every kind of
17
May 2014
‘transpositions’ in the above quotation. Other
lexis with that unspoken assumption includes
‘interpolation’ in Q1 (point 7), ‘interpolated
copy’, ‘additions’, ‘temporary allusions’ (point
10), and ‘tautologous insertions, omissions &
c’ (point 11), all supposedly characteristics of
these Q1s.
Mommsen uses not only assumptions but
also assertions. Indeed, a significant proportion
of his comments are actually unqualified
assertions supporting his view. Point 13 is brief
and illustrates this:
In 1832 Thomas Caldecott saw Q1 Hamlet
as ‘the first conception and comparatively
feeble expression of a great mind’, ‘afterwards
wrought into a splendid drama’ (Q2).9 If we
were to describe the differences between the
quartos in accordance with Caldecott’s implicit
revision hypothesis in mind, we might instead
see Q2 as having dropped some passages from
Q1 (‘deletions’), kept some passages, altered
some (‘alterations’ perhaps including
‘transpositions’) and added some (‘additions’ or
‘expansions’).
The assertive nature of his style is evident in
most of his numbered paragraphs: for
example, ‘There are… very striking
inconsistencies of the action…’ (point 1). ‘The
earliest edition… participates… in the same
errors’ (point 6), ‘both often turn poetry into
prose’ (point 7). His subjective labelling, his
assumptions and his assertions interlock to
reinforce his view of the Q2s as ‘genuine’ and
the Q1s as inferior assemblages of sketches of
the plays, linked by a ‘bad poet’ or similar. His
language supports his premise; he offers a
cohesive argument, albeit a biased one.
13. The most curious misunderstandings of
every kind are found on almost every page.
These four features are typical of any
revision process. The alternative lexis would
reinforce the revision hypothesis, but it too is
not neutral; it too connotes a particular view.
Mommsen’s language is biased, and those who
reproduce that vocabulary are repeating or
reinforcing that bias and the point of view it
supports. It is more objective and more
accurate to use ‘variants’ and ‘differences’, until
we can be definite about which quarto came
first.
This is not to ignore that when Mommsen
offers his ‘opinion’, which denotes his view, or
judgement, or belief, to counter the imagined
‘supposition’ (point 8) of other scholars, he
does use vocabulary which indicates the
speculative nature of his hypothesis. The verb
‘seem’ admits an element of doubt; modal
verbs like ‘may’ and ‘might’ do the same, as do
the adverbs ‘probably’ and ‘possibly’, and
nouns like ‘opinion’ and ‘probability’. There is
also one conditional ‘if’ clause: ‘Even the new
names… if we think them pieced out from
Cor. and Mon., which might mean Courtier and
Man of Polonius’.
He also assumes, or opines, that there can
only be one reason for some of these
differences, ‘which cannot but have originated
in foreign interpolation’ (point 1). When we do
not know precisely what Shakespeare wrote,10
let alone when he wrote it,11 it is rather difficult
to be absolutely positive about his style or
about additions to or ‘foreign interpolations’ in
his writings. Mommsen assumes that he can
identify non-Shakespearean text and hence
attribute it to ‘foreign interpolation’. He may
be right, but really evidence is necessary, even
now, to validate that assumption.
This clause, however, is neither critical to
his ‘opinion’ nor considered significant today
(point 4). In other words, some of Mommsen’s
qualifications do not apply to his basic
argument. If we consider the qualifications
these words provide, we find that they occur
approximately once every fifty-six words. The
biased descriptors occur at a higher rate, of
about once every twenty-five words,12 and are
18
May 2014
buttressed still further by both his assumptions
and assertions.
MRA) that still dominates explanations for the
differences between earlier, shorter quartos
and later, longer publications of several plays.14
His hypothesis shows immediately that his
descriptors reflect and support his opinion;
together they do provide his whole argument
with cohesion.
The ‘results of careful examination’
If a scholar believes that s/he has identified
something as dramatic as the alleged ‘blunders’
and ‘omissions’ and ‘transpositions’ et cetera
of a first quarto it is useful, if not essential, to
try to account for this. Mommsen offers a
quite complex and precise hypothesis for this
with regard to Q1 Hamlet, with several
different steps. He ‘discerns’ (a lexeme
somewhat more authoritative than ‘imagines’):










There are several difficulties here. One is
that there is insufficient contemporary
evidence to prove which if any of the elements
of his proposal are right. We know for instance
that Thomas Heywood suspected that some of
his plays had been ‘coppied onely by the eare’,
though we cannot prove this. We know that
the preliminaries to the first folio refer to
‘stolne and surreptitious copies’,15 though we
do not know exactly what this refers to. We
also know that Heywood deplored those
playwrights who sold first to the stage and
then the printer16 though we do not know to
whom or to what this applies either, and there
is very little discussion about the playwrights
that Heywood was referencing. Nevertheless,
Mommsen has persuaded many scholars to see
these Q1s as composed after Shakespeare’s
equivalent Q2s, and to see the Q1s as inferior
texts. Would his argument have been equally
persuasive with neutral vocabulary describing
the variant features of these different quartos?
‘two hands employed,
‘one after the other…
‘the one probably that of an actor,
‘who put down from memory,
‘a sketch of the original play,
‘as it was acted,
‘and who wrote very illegibly;
‘the other of a bad poet, most probably a
‘bookseller’s hack’,
‘who without any personal intercourse
with the writer of the notes
‘availed himself to make up this early
copy of Hamlet’ (point 5).
Momsen also identifies ‘mistakes of the ear’ as
owing to the first, and ‘misconceptions of the
eye’ to the second, and speculates on the
compositor adding ‘to these blunderings’
(point 5). It is rather frivolous to comment on
the semantics of ‘illegibly’, since that can
denote ‘impossible or very difficult to read’,13
but we might notice the intensifier in ‘very
illegibly’.
There is also a word which we should
probably overlook, ‘reviser’. Mommsen notes
that the quartos are closer at the beginning
than at the end, and suggests ‘this may be
accounted for by the probability that the
reviser’s patience forsook him towards the end
of his irksome task’ (point 3). ‘Reviser’, for
Mommsen, does not appear to have its
modern meaning. In the context of his
‘opinion’, ‘reviser’ must denote the ‘actor’ or
‘bad poet’ or ‘bookseller’s hack’ who drew the
play together for – presumably? – touring in
the provinces. But perhaps the adjective
‘irksome’ also tells us something about
To speculate or hypothesise like this is to
offer up to future scholars the chance to weigh
one’s ideas and to accept or reject them, and in
many ways it is a courageous act. Mommsen’s
speculations seem to have fallen upon fertile
ground, for while this is not quite the account
offered today by many scholars, it bears a
considerable resemblance to the hypothesis of
memorial reconstruction by actors (MR, or
19
May 2014
Mommsen’s attitude to revising. It is similar to
Alfred Hart’s comment about the ‘tiresome
drudgery required for rewriting the bad
quartos’.17 While rewriting and revising are not
particularly exciting tasks, that assessment of
them does not preclude Shakespeare from
having been a reviser, in the modern sense. Or
that ‘Shakespeare tinkered obsessively’ with his
play, as James Shapiro puts it.18
[Shakespeare’s] greatness was bound up in his
gift for second thoughts’.20
Mommsen notes that the Q1s are
‘nevertheless, of considerable practical value’
(point 15). Since Q2 is the ‘genuine’ copy, a
passage in Q1 which coincides with that in Q2
can hardly be thought ‘corrupt’, he writes. (By
implication he also means that a passage,
indeed any passage, in the Q1s which does not
coincide with Q2s’ is presumably corrupt.) He
sees ‘the greatest advantage’ is the ‘scenical
one; for it is common to all the adulterated
editions of Shakspeare [sic] that they explain
much more of the stage business than the
genuine ones; another ‘proof’ that the
foundation of such copies was that of actual
performance’ (point 15). Is it a ‘proof’? Could
there be any other reason for the early
(‘adulterated’) versions of the plays having
more stage directions? Might it be, for
example, that on occasions a young playwright
is slightly more concerned in early plays to be
explicit (perhaps not realising how well actors
might ‘read’ the necessary actions)? It is of
course not true that stage directions are
consistently more explanatory in the early
versions; it takes very little time to establish
this. Familiarity with Q1 Hamlet might permit
some readers to recall this:
We might also wonder whether a playwright
who revises his play might start at the
beginning, make a few changes, find those
changes have consequences and make more, or
become so engrossed and inspired that the
changes become greater and greater. It would
have the same result that Mommsen notices,
of ‘deviations’ being fewer at the beginning of
the play. Counterarguments like this are
common in untangling problems and searching
for solutions but missing from Mommsen’s
letter, though it is quite fair to say that the
brevity of space in ‘The Athenæum’ for a letter
may have limited Mommsen’s opportunities
for a balanced argument. Mommsen himself
suggests he stops because ‘my sheet is nearly
full’ (point 16).
There is additionally an element of fancy in
Mommsen’s writing, though we should
probably just excuse it as just an infelicitous
homage to Shakespeare. In Q1 Hamlet
Mommsen sees ‘an absolute want of that
metaphorical language which was one of the
fairy gifts of the poet from his cradle’ (point
10). The fairy tale of The Sleeping Beauty and the
gifts she was given in her cradle is well known
in England, but it is not usually apparently
alluded to in support of a Shakespeare born
poetical. Mommsen’s image contrasts with Ben
Jonson’s picture of Shakespeare’s approach, ‘to
strike the second heat/Vpon the Muses anuile’19
(i.e. revise). Samuel Schoenbaum is one who
interprets this as meaning that ‘part of
Enter in a dumb show, the KING and QUEEN.
He sits down in an arbour. She leaves him. Then
enters LUCIANUS with poison in a vial and
pours it in his ears and goes away. Then the Queen
cometh and finds him dead and goes away with the
other. (Q1 Hamlet 9.67 onwards.)
In this dumb show Lucianus is the
poisoner. He is supposedly one of the actors
contributing to the memorial reconstruction of
Q1 Hamlet.21 He is perhaps in a hurry (a
tongue-in-cheek speculation) when he does so,
for he seems to have forgotten his own name
as a speech prefix in Q1, where it is simply
‘Murd.[erer]’. In Q2 it is ‘Luc.[ianus]’.He has also
20
May 2014
forgotten some of the details present in the
stage directions for Q2’s dumb show, where
the poisoner is the king:
the two Q1s do include some successful
passages, which the actor putting the play
down from memory does remember. We might
ask how it is that some ‘passages of peculiar
energy’ impress themselves on the
actor/reviser, but that others don’t. The
reverse can be argued, quite logically: Q1 does
have ‘passages of peculiar energy’, but if
Shakespeare revised, he added to them. That
could then be why there are more in the Q2s.
Enter a king and a queen, the queen embracing
him and he her. He takes her up and declines his
head upon her neck. He lies him down upon a
bank of flowers. She seeing him asleep leaves him.
Anon comes in another man, takes off his crown,
kisses it, pours poison in the sleeper’s ears and
leaves him. The queen returns, finds the king dead,
makes passionate action. The poisoner with some
three or four come in again, seem to condole with
her. The dead body is carried away. The poisoner
woos the queen with gifts. She seems harsh awhile
but in the end accepts love. (Q2 Hamlet III.ii.128
onwards.)
Conclusions
It is only fifty years ago that Q1 King Lear
(1608) was relieved of the status of a memorial
reconstruction by one of its editors in the 1960
Cambridge edition of the play:
I thought of the company being in the
provinces, temporarily deprived of its
prompt-book, and desirous of producing a
new one; and I imagined its personnel
gathered round a scribe, each actor dictating
his own speeches in a kind of performance
without action.
There may be a number of reasons for the
differences in the stage instructions in the
quartos, which can comfortably accommodate
Q1’s priority. Perhaps Shakespeare had seen
Q1 performed, wished to clarify or alter his
early stage directions about the dumb show,
and therefore wrote them up in greater detail
in Q2. Or perhaps, as Lukas Erne suggests,
Shakespeare’s Q2 Hamlet is for a reading
audience.22 Or perhaps Shakespeare wanted the
new king in Q2 to be even more incriminated
than in Q1. There are different possibilities,
and since we cannot yet prove which is right,
we can only speculate about it. Perhaps we
should also be concerned that an actor who is
fingered for being a memorial reconstructor
can remember his lines (all six of them) but
not who poisoned the old king in the dumb
show.
We may note that word ‘imagined’, again. The
author of this ‘thought’ about Q1 Lear
‘abandoned’ his scenario, in which he
considered 1608 Lear a memorial
reconstruction.23 Today ‘first sketch’ and
revision are acceptable descriptions for Q1 and
F1 Lear.
However, MR continues as the principal
explanation for other so-called ‘bad’ quartos.
But there are also scholars who have felt that
the alleged ‘bad’ quartos are good theatrical
texts. Some of these, such as Robert Burkhart,
William Bracy, and Albert Weiner, have argued
for abridgement as the explanation for the
brevity of the shorter quartos.24 Some scholars,
like Eric Sams, reject outright the concept of
memorial reconstruction.25 There are other
problems with the hypothesis for Hamlet.
Another ‘careful examination’, of the
underlying French source of Hamlet and of the
Mommsen condemns a range of phrases he
finds in the Q1s: ‘every kind of shallow
repetition,-now of set phrases, oaths,
expletives’. He then juxtaposes something else
he finds in the Q1s: ‘certain lines and passages
of peculiar energy, such as would impress
themselves more literally upon the memory of
the hearer’ (point 7). This appears to mean that
21
May 2014
first two quartos of Hamlet, shows Q1 to be
closer in some details to the source than Q2 is,
and to have almost double the density of
verbal parallels with the source. This is not
consistent with a Q1 deriving from a reporter
or two’s patchy memory of performing in the
play. And when Laurie Maguire systematically
looked at the thirty or so characteristics which
allegedly identified a memorial reconstruction,
she rejected twenty-nine of the thirty-eight
allegedly memorially reconstructed plays.
descriptors, such as ‘interpolation’, ‘mutilated’
‘omissions’ and ‘transpositions’, have been
adopted and are widely used, despite their
inbuilt bias. We can easily find nineteenth
century scholars (for example Grant White, the
Cambridge editors of 1865, Clark and White)
and twentieth century scholars (for example
Chambers, Duthie, Jenkins, Hibbard, Wells
and Taylor, and Irace) repeating one or more
of Mommsen’s descriptors.26
Impartial lexis like differences and variants are
critical for accurate observations about the
texts, even when scholars agree with
Mommsen and others in favour of MR.
Avoiding ‘bad’ or ‘Bad’ quartos as a descriptor,
and defining the texts instead as perhaps shorter
or longer is also important. Such comments are
of course assertions; they stem from a belief,
or opinion, that literary hypotheses need to be
acknowledged as such and need to be robust
enough for interdisciplinary scrutiny.
Mommsen’s enthusiasm is palpable, but
perhaps today his legacy might be not the
hypothesis he is putting forward, but his close
attention to differences and variants between the
shorter and longer quartos.
Hence this return to a foundation stone of
MR, and a little literary archaeology. A careful
examination of Mommsen’s letter shows that
he is brimful of ideas. He has clearly read the
pairs of quartos carefully and sees major
differences between them. However, the
‘opinion’ he expresses is couched in language
which is biased in vocabulary and reasoning,
and it is unbalanced because it refers only
fleetingly to any alternative explanations for
the differences he finds in the quartos. Because
his letter is brief, it may be seen as unfair to
criticise him for lacking counterarguments.
That must be acknowledged. But a matter of
more concern must be that he has been very
influential, so influential that some of his
Endnotes
1
The Cambridge editors’ edition of 1865 refers to ‘the high authority of Mommsen’. Quoted in Horace
Howard Furness, ed., Romeo and Juliet, A New Variorum Edition. 15th ed. (Philadelphia: J.R. Lippincott Co.,
1899), 423.
2
Alfred W. Pollard’s ‘unfortunate label’; Irace, Reforming the ‘Bad’ Quartos, 13
3
Charles Knight, Caldecott, Staunton, Dyce, all quoted in Furness, Hamlet. These saw Q1 Hamlet as
Shakespeare’s first draft, or first thoughts. Horace Howard Furness, ed., Hamlet, A New Variorum Edition
of Shakespeare. Two vols (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1905), II, 25-6.
4
Tycho Mommsen, ‘The Athenaeum’ (7th Feb. 1857), 182. See below.
5
The Chambers Dictionary (Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2003), 985. This is admittedly a
modern English dictionary.
6
Readers may be critical of this comment, for in a 1190 word ‘letter’ Mommsen can hardly evidence all the
‘reasons’ he puts forward to come to his conclusion. This is a fair criticism.
7
Chambers dictionary, 1468.
8
Brian Gibbons writes ‘Romeo and Juliet Q1 is a Bad Quarto… [which] provoked the publication of a Good
Quarto a couple of years later’. Gibbons does not use inverted commas around ‘Bad’ or ‘Good’. Brian
Gibbons, ed., Romeo and Juliet, The Arden Shakespeare (London: Thomson Learning, 2000 (reprint)), 1.
22
May 2014
9
Even a cursory examination of e.g. Peter Alexander’s and Wells and Taylor’s chronologies show this.
10
For example, Edward III is now seen as part of the canon by several scholars.
11
Even a cursory examination of e.g. Peter Alexander’s and Wells and Taylor’s chronologies show this.
12
This includes Mommsen’s criticism of the putative agents such as the ‘reviser’, as ‘unskilful and ignorant’
(point 4).
13
Chambers dictionary, 736.
14
‘Earlier’ and ‘later’ are potentially ambiguous; in this context the comparatives refer simply to date of
publication.
15
Peter Alexander, ed., William Shakespeare. The Complete Works. London and Glasgow: Collins, 1951, xxvi.
16
Thomas Heywood: ‘some haue vsed a double sale of their labours, first to the Stage, and after to the presse’,
quoted by Paul Werstine, in ‘Narratives about Printed Shakespeare Texts: "Foul Papers" and "Bad"
Quartos’, Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Spring, 1990), pp. 65-8.
17
Alfred Hart, Stolne and Surreptitious Copies. A Comparative Study of Shakespeare’s Bad Quartos. Melbourne and
London: Melbourne University Press in Association with Oxford University Press, 1942, 159.
18
James Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (London: Faber and Faber, 2005), 342.
19
Alexander, The Complete Works, xxix.
20
Samuel Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1987, 358.
21
Kathleen O. Irace, Reforming the ‘Bad’ Quartos. Performance and Provenance of Six Shakespearean First Editions
(Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994).
22
Lukas Erne, Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 220ff.
23
George I. Duthie, in King Lear. John D. Wilson and G.I. Duthie, eds., King Lear (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1960), 131.
24
Robert E. Burkhart, Shakespeare’s Bad Quartos: Deliberate Abridgements Designed for Performance by a Reduced Cast.
The Hague: Mouton, 1979. William Bracy, The Merry Wives of Windsor. The History and Transmission of
Shakespeare’s Text. University of Missouri Studies, vol XXV. Columbia: The Curators of the university of
Missouri, 1952. Albert Weiner, ed. William Shakespeare: HAMLET: The First Quarto. New York: Barron’s
Educational Series, 1962.
25
Eric Sams, Taboo or not Taboo? The Text, Dating and Authorship of Hamlet, 1589-1623.
http:/www.ericsams.org.sams_taboo.pdf. Accessed 15th February 2012. See also Eric Sams, The Real
Shakespeare. Retrieving the Early Years, 1564-1594 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995).
26
For instance, Grant White comments on Q1 as an ‘interpolated version of the completed play’ and of Q1’s
‘comparative brevity [being] caused by sheer mutilation’. (Quoted in Furness, vol II, 27). The Cambridge
editors use ‘errors’ as do Clark and Wright (ibid., 31). Chambers writes of Q1’s ‘omissions’, ‘vulgarization’,
and ‘errors of hearing’ (E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare. A Study of Facts and Problems (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1951), 415). Duthie who offers the most sustained and detailed proposal for hw Q1 was
memorially reconstructed, uses ‘corruption’, ‘omission’, ‘authentic texts’ and ‘genuine versions’ inter alia (G.
I. Duthie, The ‘Bad’ Quarto of Hamlet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941), 48, 52, 99, 111).
Jenkins refers to the ‘corruptions of Q1 – omissions… misunderstandings… transpositions’ (Harold
Jenkins, ed., Hamlet, The Arden Shakespeare (London: Methuen, 1982), 19), Edwards refers to Q1 as a
‘corrupt’ version (Philip Edwards, ed., Hamlet Prince of Denmark, The New Cambridge Shakespeare
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 9). Wells and Taylor use ‘omissions’ and ‘interpolations’ (A
Textual Companion, 27), Irace uses ‘transpose’ and ‘omit’ (Irace Reforming the ‘Bad’ Quartos, (13). These are only
a selection of editors over the last century and a half, and only for Hamlet. It is similar for Romeo and Juliet:
Chambers mentions ‘errors’, ‘transpositions’, ‘omissions’ (Chambers, William Shakespeare, 341-2). None of
the synonyms also used by these writers for Mommsen’s alleged characteristics of memorial reconstruction
are quoted here.
23
May 2014
Who was ‘the late English Ovid’ ?
Jan Cole
In the late summer or early autumn of 1605
an anonymous author published a report of
recent and ongoing tragic events in Moscow.
Its title was Sir Thomas Smithes Voiage and
Entertainment in Rushia. With the tragicall ends of
two Emperors, and one Empresse, within one
Moneth during his being there: And the miraculous
preservation of the now raigning Emperor, esteemed
dead for 18 years.1
Hamlet in 1602 and printed the second (long)
quarto of the play in 1604/5. In 1608 William
Jaggard bought up Roberts’ printing business.
The text described political events in
Russia during the visit of the English
ambassador, Thomas Smith (1558-1625),
who incidentally always spelt his own
surname as ‘Smythe’. The events were
ongoing at the time of publication, and as a
result there is some ambiguity regarding dates
and what exactly occurred. However, a letter
from the ambassador to Robert Cecil states
that he had arrived in Moscow on 26 July
1604, and further correspondence shows that
he left at the end of July 1605. He witnessed
the beginning of a period of succession crises
and internecine conflict known in Russian
history as ‘the time of troubles’.
The reigning Tsar, Boris Godunov, died
on or about 13 April 1605, thought to have
been poisoned. His teenage son, Fender
Borisovitz, succeeded but, within a month, a
pretender known as Dmitri appeared,
claiming to be a descendant of Ivan the
Terrible. Entering Moscow with a force of
Polish soldiers, he had himself crowned Tsar
and even wrote to James I proclaiming his
authority and hoping for good relations with
England. He brought with him a Polish
woman, Marina Muisek, who claimed to be a
princess and married her. Godunov’s widow
was forced to witness the marriage.
Sir Thomas Smith 1558-1625
The title page states that it was printed
by ‘I. R. and W. Jaggard for Nathanyell
Butter’. These were all known printers of
Shakespeare’s plays. ‘I.R’ is most likely James
Roberts, the printer who had registered
During the great banquet that followed, a
Pole struck a Russian, who cried out,
‘Murder!’ and this escalated into a massacre
of Russians by Poles in the city. During the
fighting, Gudonov’s widow and son died,
24
May 2014
also thought to have been poisoned or, more
probably, to have knowingly taken poison
themselves. By the end of May 1605 Dmitri
was overthrown and murdered and a new
Tsar, Vasily Shuisky, was elected and
eventually crowned in 1606.2
elaborate English Horace that gives number,
waight, and measure to every word, to teach
the reader by his industries, even our Lawreat
worthy Benjamen, whose Muze approves him
with (our mother) the Ebrew signification to
bee, The elder Sonne, and happily to be the
Childe of Sorrow: It were worthy so excellent
rare witt…
These events reminded the author of Sir
Thomas Smith’s Voyage of a stage-play, in
particular, of Hamlet, which had been played
‘divers times’ in London and also at Oxford
and Cambridge Universities by the time the
1st Quarto was printed in 1603, and whose 2nd
Quarto was in print by 1604/5. There is,
indeed, some resemblance to the characters
in Hamlet: a king dies (supposed poisoned), a
usurper claims the throne, the late king’s wife
and the prince die (supposed poisoned) amid
much bloodshed, and the dynasty collapses.
The author of Sir Thomas Smith’s Voyage made
this comparison and, after bewailing the
death of the Russian prince (the ‘Hamlet’
character) in particular, he says:
The author admits that he’s no poet himself
(though he is evidently acquainted with
poetry and poets):
for my selfe I am neither Apollo nor Appelles,
no nor any heire to the Muses; yet happily a
younger brother…
And then he makes an intriguing
statement. He agrees with ‘the late
English Ovid’ that these events would be
fearful if they were only dreams but,
because they are real, nothing can be said:
I am with the late English quick-spirited,
cleare-sighted Ovid: It is to be feared
Dreaming, and [I] thinke I see many strange
and cruell actions, but say my selfe nothing all
this while: Bee it so that I am very drowsie
(the heate of the Clymate, and of the State)
will excuse mee; for great happinesse to this
mightie Empire is it, or would it have been, if
the more part of their State affaires had been
but Dreames, as they prove phantasmaes for
our yeares. (Quotations from sigs. K, K verso
and K2)
His father’s Empire and Government was
…but as the Poeticall FURIE in a Stageaction, compleat yet with horrid and wofull
Tragedies; a first, but no second to any
Hamlet; and that now Revenge, just Revenge
was coming with his Sworde drawn against
him, his Royall Mother, and dearest Sister, to
fill up those Murdering Sceanes…
The syntactical structure of this section,
with a colon after ‘Ovid’, gives the words that
follow the quality of a quotation, something
that ‘English Ovid’ said or wrote, and with
which the author agrees. However, ‘English
Ovid’ is described as ‘late’. Although ‘late’
could mean ‘recent’ (e.g. ‘these late eclipses in
the sun and moon’), when it is followed by a
personal name it invariably meant, and still
means, ‘recently deceased’.
The author then proposes that something
might be written on these events, and
wonders which English poet might be worthy
of the task. He goes on:
Oh for some excellent pen-man to deplore
their state: but he which would likely,
naturally, or indeed poetically delyneate or
enumerate these occurrents, shall either lead
you thereunto by a poeticall spirit, as could
well, if well he might, the dead living, lifegiving Sydney Prince of Poesie; or deifie you
with the Lord Salustius [du Bartas] divinity, or
in an Earth-deploring, Sententious, high rapt
Tragedie with the noble Foulk-Grevill, not
onely give you the Idea, but the soule of the
acting Idea; as well could, if so we would, the
So the statement with which the author
agrees was something that a recently
deceased author (likened to Ovid) either said
- or might have said - when asked to write
25
May 2014
about real tragic events. To this situation we
might compare, for example, Henry Chettle’s
complaint in England’s Mourning Garment
(1603) that several poets (among them
someone he calls ‘Melicert’) had failed to
write an elegy for the late Queen Elizabeth I.
And the statement that the author of Sir
Thomas Smith’s Voyage agrees with sounds very
like what ‘Melicert’ might have said about
that event:
employing the mythologies of Ovid’s
Metamorphoses.
Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe,
George Chapman, and even Michael
Drayton, had all been compared to Ovid,
though usually in relation to specific works:
Greene for his prose romances, Marlowe for
his translation of Ovid’s Amores, Chapman
for his 1595 poem called Ovid’s Banquet of
Sense, and Drayton for his Heroical Epistles,
based (in structure only) on Ovid’s Heroides.
Greene had died in 1592 and Marlowe in
1593, more than a decade earlier and perhaps
rather too long previously to be referred to as
‘late’. Chapman and Drayton were still alive,
which eliminates them as candidates.
It is to be feared Dreaming, and [I] thinke I see
many strange and cruell actions, but say my
selfe nothing all this while.
The poets whom the author imagined
might be capable of writing about these
Russian events are Sidney (who died in 1586
and was not known for tragedy), du Bartas
(who died in 1590 and was best known for
his religious creation epic, translated by
Joshua Sylvester as Divine Weeks and Works
and recently published in 1605), Fulke
Greville (who was still alive but not yet in
print) and Ben Jonson (who was still alive
and had recently staged Sejanus, which had
got him into trouble with the authorities).
It is just possible that Arthur Golding
could be regarded as ‘the English Ovid’ in
respect of his translation of Metamorphoses, but
he was also still alive in 1605, though he
would die in May the following year.
However, one author was famously
compared to Ovid. Francis Meres had clearly
likened Shakespeare to Ovid in Palladis Tamia
(1598):
Clearly, the author of Sir Thomas Smith’s
Voyage was familiar with courtiers and literary
matters. In his preface to the reader he claims
to have had his information from someone in
the ambassador’s entourage, and he also
knows that Greville was writing poetic
tragedies at a time when they were only
circulating privately. Greville’s Mustapha was
not published until 1609 and even then
appeared anonymously..
As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live
in Pythagoras, so the sweete wittie soule of
Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued
Shakespeare.
Certainly, most scholars today, on being
asked who could claim the title ‘English
Ovid’ would agree with Meres. Recent
scholarship has shown how thoroughly the
plays and poetry are indebted to Ovid, for
example, Jonathan Bate in Shakespeare and
Ovid (1993) and Jeremy MacNamara in
‘Ovidius Naso was the Man’: Shakespeare’s debt to
Ovid’ (online essay, 1992-93). Michelle
Martindale even resurrected the phrase in
Shakespeare and the Uses of Antiquity: an
introductory essay (1994) by claiming that
Shakespeare ‘may have started his career with
The question is, to whom was he referring
as ‘the late English Ovid’? Since the 1590s
several authors had been likened to Ovid,
usually for specific reasons and in relation to
specific works. To be compared to Ovid
usually meant one or both of two things –
either writing amorous, explicitly sexual or
even lewd verse, or writing verse or plays
26
May 2014
a deliberate attempt to present himself as
something of an English Ovid’
player scene where Hamlet is distressed that a
player can speak so eloquently and
powerfully from pretended emotions, while
he himself feels unable to speak from real
ones.3 Could the author of Sir Thomas Smith’s
Voyage be echoing Hamlet’s speeches?
But William Shakespeare (of Stratfordupon-Avon) could not be described as ‘late’
in 1605. He was still alive and his name was
on the title pages of many published plays,
including the Q2 of Hamlet which had
recently rolled off James Robert’s press – a
fact of which the author of Sir Thomas Smith’s
Voyage almost certainly was aware, since he
chose this printer for his own book. It
follows that if he meant that ‘the late English
Ovid’ was Shakespeare, there must have been
a good reason for not identifying him by that
name. If he was happy to identify ‘English
Horace’ as ‘Benjamin’ (Jonson), why did he
not identify ‘English Ovid’ by name?
I discussed this with Alexander Waugh,
who then asked Robert Detobel what he
thought about these parallels. Robert felt that
the author was indeed ‘paraphrasing Hamlet’.4
If this is the case, then the implication is that
'the late English Ovid' used the voice of
Hamlet to express his own thoughts – a
notion that is oddly identical to the
Oxfordian view concerning autobiographical
features in the character of Hamlet.
Interestingly, it was not unusual in this
period for an author to be referred to by the
name of a character he had created or by one
of his book-titles. For example, John Lyly
had been referred to as ‘Euphues’ and
Thomas Nashe as ‘Pierce Penniless’, and so
on. Was the author of Sir Thomas Smith’s
Voyage doing the same thing indirectly?
Hamlet’s silence (alias de Vere’s silence?)
In his given context of Hamlet, what the
author says he agrees with in ‘English Ovid’
is particularly interesting, because the
statement reminds us of Hamlet’s own
concerns with fear, dreaming, sleep, and
silence. Many speeches on these themes can
be recalled from the play. Compare,
particularly, the following:
Conclusion
Since the author of Sir Thomas Smith’s
Voyage considered the events in Russia to be
‘a first, but no second to any Hamlet’, it
would follow that only the author of Hamlet
would be capable of writing another great
tragedy on this subject. Given this context,
there would be a good case for interpreting
‘the late English Ovid’ as the author of
Hamlet, who on the quartos recently
published was ‘William Shakespeare’.
However, the name ‘Shakespeare’ is not
mentioned, despite no quibbles in
mentioning Jonson and the others by their
proper names. This reticence may suggest
that he knew the name ‘Shakespeare’ was a
pseudonym.
O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and
count myself a king of infinite space, were it
not that I have bad dreams.
Hamlet, II,ii,254
Is it not monstrous that this player here, But
in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could
force his soul so to his own conceit …Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak Like
John-a-Dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing.
Hamlet, II, ii, 544-564
Hamlet’s phrase ‘And [I] can say nothing’ is
almost identical to ‘but I myself say nothing
all this while’ and occurs, significantly, in the
27
May 2014
In common with so many other
contemporary allusions, we cannot be
absolutely sure of this interpretation, but this
1605 reference to an unnamed ‘late English
Ovid’ (in the contexts of Hamlet, excellent
penmanship and rare wit) is, to say the least,
intriguing and, from an Oxfordian point of
view, highly significant.
experiences as a soldier in Scotland and the
Netherlands, but he is not known to have
written anything for the stage.
This leaves only Edward de Vere, Earl of
Oxford, as the candidate for ‘late English
Ovid’. Referred to early on as an excellent
poet and a writer of plays, he is regarded by
many today as the author of the works of
‘Shakespeare’, and significantly of the
autobiographical Hamlet.
Let us assume that the term ‘late’ (to refer
to a deceased person) was normally used for,
say, up to five years post-demise. Only three
English authors had died since 1601. These
were Thomas Nashe (d.1601), Thomas
Churchyard (d. April 1604) and Edward de
Vere (d. June 1604).
Footnote
As we know, the world would have to
wait another 200 years for the Russian events
to be written up as a play by Alexander
Pushkin in Boris Godunov (1833). Notably, in
order to write it Pushkin studied
Shakespeare’s tragedies very closely and said
of his play,
Nashe frequently mentions Ovid in his
prose works and wrote one pornographic
poem, his ‘wanton’ elegy, The Choice of
Valentines, that might have been considered
Ovidian He also wrote entertainments and
collaborated in writing plays, but he is not
known for being able to write a great tragedy.
Thomas Churchyard was a prolific writer of
occasional verse mostly about his own
“Not disturbed by any other influence, I
imitated Shakespeare in his broad and free
depictions of characters, in the simple and
careless combination of plots.”5
Endnotes
1. The book is viewable at Early English Books Online (EEBO).
2. Howe, Sonia E. The False Dmitri: a Russian Romance and Tragedy described by British Eye-Witnesses, 16041612, F.A. Stokes, NY, 1916/17 (This book does not, however, mention Sir Thomas Smythe’s Voyage…)
- readable online at Internet Archive (Texts).
3. See also: ‘Hamlet’s Silence’ from Crawford, Alexander W. Hamlet, an ideal prince, and other essays in
Shakespearean interpretation: Hamlet; Merchant of Venice; Othello; King Lear. Boston R.G. Badger, 1916.
Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2009 - readable online at http://www.shakespeareonline.com/plays/hamlet/hamletsilence.html
Jagendorf, Zvi, ‘Fingers on your lips, I pray’: on Silence in Hamlet, English (1978), 27, 121-128. Matheson,
Tom. Hamlet’s Last Words in Shakespeare Survey, vol.48 - readable online at Google books. This essay
mentions Sir Thomas Smith’s Voyage and its author’s comparison of events to Hamlet, particularly in
respect of the deaths of the Queen and Prince by poison, but does not address ‘the late English Ovid’.
4. Many thanks to Alexander Waugh and Robert Detobel for their e-mail exchanges on this.
5. Quoted on Wikipedia entry for ‘Boris Godunov, play by Pushkin’
28
May 2014
Letters to the Society
Dear Kevin,
sonnets were not written by the son of a glovemaker from Stafford but penned by a wealthier man
from the aristocracy? Readers are encouraged to
submit their views in the comments section.
Thanks for sending me the reprint of Martin
Thompson’s article on Brooke House and the plaque
(DVS Newsletter Oct 13). I am pleased that it has
been noticed by the de Vere Society. As a local
historian in Hackney my particular interest is Sir
Rafe Sadleir. I was co-author of the book Sutton
For more than 20 years Tuscany Now has been
offering hand picked luxury villa rentals to clients
worldwide, but we would like to have a wider voice
than simply advertorial content – since members of
our team have studied Shakespeare during English
Literature courses, we try to write articles on topics
that members of our team are invested in/really
interested in.
House a Tudor Courtier’s House in Hackney
which won a SCOLA award as an outstanding
contribution to archaeological publication 2006.
Sadleir was a fellow courtier in the Court of Henry
with Wriothsley, Earl of Southampton and Sadleir
possibly was related to Hamnet Sadler the godfather
to Stratford Shakespere’s twins Hamnet and
Judith.Of course, De Vere was also buried in
Hackney Church. An American visitor to Sutton
House once asked me if I knew where de Vere was
buried ( Sutton House is close to the churchyard) he
understood that de Vere was the real name of
Shakespeare!. Sadleir had a close connection with
Brooke House then Kings Place because he worked
for Thomas Cromwell, who lived there. I think
Sadleir came into possession of the house, briefly,
when Cromwell was executed
The link to Italy is obviously what ties the article
in to Tuscany Now’s relevance, but fundamentally
the piece merely intends to provoke debate in and of
itself. Yes, this would benefit our site, because
Tuscany Now will keep an eye on traffic figures.
Perhaps it will flag Tuscany Now as a brand for a
holiday, in the future. But the primary objective is to
create interesting content which people want to read,
talk about, and share.
I have provided a short summary which should
be appropriate for the ‘Authorship Links’ page on
the De Vere Society web-site.
I first became interested in the authorship
question when Brian Hicks gave a talk to the
Sutton House Society , of which I was chair.. He
made a very convincing case and I have been a
convert ever since. I am now living in Spain near
Toledo and writing a book based on my memoirs.
De Vere and Sadleir will certainly feature.
SEAN MacMAHON
www.tuscanynow.com/blog 11 April 2014
Dear Richard,
Discovering Shakespeare By Edward Holmes
Please pass my sincere thanks to Kevin Gilvary
(and via him to Edward Holmes' widow) for the
copy of Edward’s book that Kevin distributed at the
recent 'Much Ado About Italy' conference at
Shakespeare's Globe.
MIKE GREY,
Toledo, Spain. 4 April 2014.
Dear Richard
The book has been a most entertaining and
enlightening read and will take its rightful place in
my growing library, which has both 'orthodox' and
'unorthodox' texts. I am mightily impressed with the
author's diligent research and evident scholarship
which are of immense help to me as I try to frame
an event for my Society - whether a debate, a
dramatised narrative or a lecture - thank you.
I would like to draw the attention of you and
your society members to our website Tuscany
Now, which features a blog on the Authorship
Question focusing on Shakespeare’s Italian locations
as a basis for discussion. Are these locations the
imaginings of a talented and creative man or do they
point to a man with first-hand knowledge of the
country? It is extremely unlikely William Shakespeare
ever visited Italy – could this argument give
provenance to the idea that the man’s plays and
RAY RUSSELL, President
Sevenoaks Shakespeare Society 28 Nov. 2013
29
May 2014
The Earl of Oxford and Dr John Caius of Cambridge
Alice Crampin
Congratulations to all involved in the
preparation of, and presentations at, a truly
memorable AGM. Some brilliant insights were
displayed and very significant connections
forged.
based at Bletsoe Castle, Bedfordshire. This
marriage linked the family of the Earls of Kent
to Bedfordshire and produced three sons.
Hence, the title passed successively to these
three grandsons of the fourth earl. Reginald, the
fifth earl died in 1573; Henry the sixth earl died
in 1614), and Charles the seventh earl died in
1623. Reginald was only restored to the full
position of an earl a year before he died, but by
this time the family was well established in
Bedfordshire, where it remained for many
generations building a great house at Wrest
Park, Silsoe, with a notable family mausoleum at
nearby Flitton.
Learning about the vituperative and obscene
comments made to Alexander Waugh, after his
Spectator article, was horrifying, but I suppose we
can use the irrational anger of the bloggers to
get a more personal feel for the dangerous
passions of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, and, hence, the background perils in
the decades when the Shakespeare plays were
written.
Of the three brothers, only Charles had issue.
However, Reginald (or Reynold) was married to
Susan Bertie, the slightly older sister of Oxford's
brother-in- law, Peregrine Bertie. Mary de Vere
and Peregrine Bertie's marriage did not take
place till 1577, by which time Susan was already
a widow. Nevertheless it seems quite likely that
the Grey brothers were known to Oxford.
I said that I had been ruminating further on
the potential connections between the Earl of
Oxford and Dr John Caius of Cambridge, who
figures so oddly in the Merry Wives of Windsor. I
was wondering why the character "Kent"
chooses to disguise himself as "Caius" in the
play King Lear. Once again, in attempting to
trace links, I am indebted to the invaluable
genealogical tables published on the Tudor Place
website www.tudorplace.com.ar.
In 1582, Susan remarried. This time she wed
Sir John Wingfield, a member of a prolific and
successful East Anglian family, which the de
Veres had married into in a previous generation.
Elizabeth de Vere, (c1480 -1559), sister of the
fourteenth Earl of Oxford, was married to Sir
Anthony Wingfield, the grandfather of Susan's
second husband. Anthony Wingfield had had a
distinguished court career in the first half of the
sixteenth century. Susan Bertie and John
Wingfield had two sons, the elder of which was
named Peregrine.
In the 16th century, the Earldom of Kent,
and Barony of Ruthin, was held by the Grey
family. The fourth earl was born in 1474,
acceded in 1523 and died in 1562. His father
was the second earl and his mother had been a
Herbert, one of the many children of the first
Earl of Pembroke. However, his older half
brother, Richard, the third earl, had lost all his
money, so the fourth earl had to live as a private
gentleman, rather than an earl. The long lived
fourth earl's son predeceased him in 1545, but
not before he had married Margaret St John,
who came of a prominent family, with
connections to Margaret Beaufort, the mother
of the Tudor line. The St Johns had long been
John had a brother Anthony, no doubt called
after his grandfather. This Anthony, who was
born in 1550, the year of Oxford's birth, was a
distinguished Greek scholar, educated at Trinity
College Cambridge and at Gray's Inn. He
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May 2014
accompanied Peregrine on his embassy to
Denmark in 1582.
the True Chronicle history of King Leir, the name for
the Kent-like character is Perillus. The other
named noble at Leir's court is Skalliger.
Wikipedia tells us that "the noble family of the
Scaliger (also Scaligeri, from de Scalis or della
Scala) were Lords of Verona.”
Anthony would have been at Cambridge in
John Caius ' last years, and in a position to know
of Caius' reputation. Though primarily a medical
man, Caius was also interested in matters of
classical scholarship. These Cambridge Bedfordshire links hint at possible reasons for
the choice of alias for Kent. However, in
William Camden's work The history of the Most
Renowned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth, Late
Queen of England, Containing All the most important
and remarkable Passages of State both at home and
abroad (so far as they were linked with English Affairs)
during her Long and prosperous Reign there occurs a
striking juxtaposition in the account of 1573.
The choice of names for the husbands of the
king's daughters are also interesting. In Leir, they
are the King of Cornwall for Gonerill and the
King of Cambria for Ragan. Cordella marries
the King of Gallia, but Leir had planned to
marry her to the King of Hibernia. Leir would
have united the British Isles into the family!
In Lear, the husbands are Cornwall and
Albany, with Cordelia marrying France, after
rejection by Burgundy. Interestingly, Cornwall
is a subsidiary title for the Prince of Wales, who,
of course, did not exist in Queen Elizabeth's
reign. The situation changed when James I
became king in 1603. Henry Stuart, James eldest
son was Duke of Rothesay had been from his
birth in 1594. However, following his father's
accession to the throne of England, Henry
became automatically Duke of Cornwall, and
was only invested Prince of Wales and Earl of
Chester in 1610. Charles Stuart, his younger
brother, born in 1600, was created Duke of
Albany at birth. It was the traditional title for the
second son of a Scottish monarch.
Not long afterward died also Reginald
Grey Earl of Kent, whom the Queen a year
before had raised from a private man to the
Dignity of Earl of Kent, after that this Title had
lain asleep for the space of fifty years from the
Death of Richard Grey Earl of Kent, who
wasted his Patrimony and was elder brother to
this man's Grandfather. Henry his Brother
succeeded him in his Honour.
Neither must I pass over in Silence John
Caius or Kayes, a famous Physician born at
Norwich, and brought up in the Universities of
Cambridge and Padua, who deceased at this
time, having spent his whole time in Physick,
translated much of Galen and Celsus into
Latine, and commented upon more, and in the
end gave all his Wealth to the Advancing of
Learning, joyning a new College to old GonvillHall in Cambridge and giving a perpetual
Maintenance for 23 students. Whereupon they
grew into one name of Gonvill and Caius
College, wherein he lieth intombed with this
Inscription FUI CAIUS, that is I was Caius.
In accepting Jonson's "He was not of an age,
but for all time ", thereby claiming Shakespeare
for our age, and celebrating certain
anniversaries, we should not forget that his
original auditors certainly lived lives that were
defined by one particular era. These chosen
titles must have resonated at the time of the
composition of King Lear. Did anyone mind the
not totally heroic portrayals of the holders of
these titles, at a time when new young princely
holders had arrived in England just before the
texts were published? Affronts in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries could be dangerous.
Or was the play already so old it did not matter?
I remember that Dr Noemi Magri urged us
persuasively that nothing is done by chance in
Shakespeare. So perhaps there was a deliberate
significance in the linking of Kent with Caius. In
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May 2014
Seeing Double: early doubters of Shakespeare’s identity I
Julia Cleave
In a recent review of Shakespeare Beyond Doubt in
The New Criterion, dated Nov 2013, Paul Dean’s
opening remark recycles a stock Stratfordian
meme:
early modern period, nor until the
nineteenth century. 30 Great Myths about
Shakespeare (2012).
The blurb to Shapiro’s Contested Will is even
balder:
Until 1856, when Delia Bacon published
“William Shakespeare and his Plays: An
For more than two hundred years after
Enquiry Concerning Them” in Putnam’s
Magazine, no one questioned that
William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-
William Shakespeare's death, no one
doubted that he had written his plays.”
James Shapiro Contested Will (2010).
Avon had written the plays ascribed to
him in the First Folio of his works
(1623), and possibly, in part or whole, a
few others not included there. One may
well wonder why anyone ever bothered
to doubt it…
But it is Jonthan Bate who takes the biscuit:
No one in Shakespeare’s lifetime, nor the
first two hundred years after his death
expressed the slightest doubt about his
authorship. Genius of Shakespeare (1998)
In making this all-too-familiar claim, as we all
Ironically, this claim is directly contradicted
know, he is taking his cue from the usual
suspects: Wells, Edmondson, Shapiro and Bate,
and their followers:
in Shakespeare Beyond Doubt by one of the titles
which Hardy Cook selects for his reading list:
R. C. Churchill’s Shakespeare and his Betters: a
History and Criticism of the Attempts Which Have
Been Made to Prove that Shakespeare’s Works Were
Written by Others (1958), which Cook notes,
begins with a history of the subject from the
seventeenth century to the time of writing.
Moreover, it is the modern so-called
disintegrators – within the Stratfordian fold,
who have done more than anyone to
“No one expressed doubt that William
Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon
wrote the works attributed to him, give
or take some suggestions that some of
the plays might have been written in
collaboration with other professional
writers, as was exceptionally common at
that time… until the middle of the
nineteenth century. - Shakespeare Beyond
Doubt (2013).
compromise any absolutist claims to
Shakespeare’s exclusive authorship of the
canon. A point half acknowledged by Stanley
Wells.
Laurie Maguire and Emma Smith state baldly:
No one expressed any doubt or suspicion
about the authorship of the plays in the
But such nuances are lost in the propaganda
wars – the meme in its starkest form has gone
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May 2014
viral. It’s a combination of complacency and
ignorance which is particularly galling to nonStratfordians – and needs to be robustly
challenged. Leaving aside the prevalence of
anonymous, pseudonymous and proxy
authorship which characterised the Elizabethan
theatre, and the swirl of rumours among a
score of Shakespeare’s contemporaries - who
seemed to have felt compelled to drop heavy
hints – from Greene’s (or is it Chettle’s?)
exposé of Shaksper’s pretensions, to Jonson’s
ahead of Delia Bacon, in Chambers’ Edinburgh
Journal, and ending with George Wither’s Great
Assizes Holden on Parnassus, dated 1645. What is
striking is that, collectively – and consistently
through time - they touch on virtually all the
objections which we continue to focus on
today. And, spurred by doubt, are driven to
invent varying scenarios based on doubleness,
hence my title.
1852 Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal
extraordinary unanswered question: What
Author would conceal his name?*
An interesting essay puts the case very
vigorously as well as entertainingly. The
What I propose, instead, is to re-visit a
dozen occasions, over the period of “over two
hundred years” between the 1640s and 1850s
when doubts were cast – and what different
modes and discourses were chosen to express
these, and, on occasion, provide a cover of
deniability. The fact that these doubts surfaced
at intervals over a span of two centuries
Thus asks Mrs Kitty in High Life Below
Stairs,* to which his Grace my Lord Duke
gravely replies: 'Ben Jonson.' 'O no,' quoth my
Lady Bab: 'Shakspeare was written by one Mr
Finis, for I saw his name at the end of the
anonymous author of this piece was actually a
Robert Jamieson. He poses the question: Who
Wrote Shakspeare?
testifies to what we might call an ‘underground
stream’ of doubt. A good question to pose is:
whether these relate to traditions handed down
within particular families – as well as freethinking individuals coming, independently, to
the same conclusion? This is necessarily going
to be a whistle-stop tour. As so often happens,
you embark on a project, thinking it will be
relatively straightforward, and then discover it
merits much more in-depth treatment. So, what
book!' and this passes off as an excellent joke,
and never fails to elicit the applause of the
audience; but still the question remains
unanswered: Who wrote Shakspeare?
I am offering you is some suggestive sampling
of a series of texts – some of which, I
appreciate, will already be at least half familiar
to you.
authentic recorded whatabouts, whenabouts
and whereabouts of WS, actor, owner,
purchaser and chattels and messuage devisor
whilom of the Globe theatre, Surrey-side.
If published anonymously – what critic of
any age would ever have ascribed these works
to Shaksper?
Unfortunately, the search for ‘a local
habitation and a name’ for such a genius is at
once ‘cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d’ by the
I’ve chosen to work backwards, starting with
the article which appeared, just four years
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May 2014
The unsurpassed brilliancy of the writer
throws not one single spark to make noticeable
the quiet uniform mediocrity of the man.
the commentators are now determined to
repudiate.
His final point could have been made by an
Oxfordian:
It will not do to fall back on genius to
explain this discrepancy.
All at once Shakespeare leaves London with
a fortune, and the supply of plays ceases. Is this
compatible with such a genius thus culminating
on any other supposition than the death of the
poet, and the survival of the employer?
His solution to the mystery: Shakspeare kept
a poet. He goes on to posit a scenario in which
the calculating man of ‘commonplace
transactions’ finds a Chatterton-like pale youth
in some garret, whom he employs to pen the
1848 Romance of Yachting Joseph
Hart
plays for him.
Where are the manuscripts he asks?
This eccentric book is a discursive ragbag of
Take besides the custom of the age, the
helter-skelter way in which dramas were got up,
sometimes by half-a-dozen authors at once, of
whom one occasionally monopolised the fame;
and the unscrupulous manner in which
booksellers appropriated any popular name of
the day, and affixed it to their publications.
opinions and observations in which he devotes
over 30 pages to dissing Shakespeare (208 –
243). What seems to have piqued him was a
denigratory ‘Life of Shakespeare’ by Dionysus
Lardner in his Cabinet Cyclopedia 1830-49,vol. II,
p.100. Hart writes:
How comes it that Spenser, Raleigh and
Bacon ignored the acquaintance – and that
Heywood, Suckling and Hales confine
themselves to the works, and seem personally
to avoid the man – the exception being Ben
Jonson – bound by the strongest ties to keep
the secret. He notes what he calls the
“unqualified fib” of Jonson’s description of the
Droeshout portrait.
viciousness and became a common
poacher. And the latter title, in literary
matters, he carried to his grave … It is a
fraud upon the world to thrust his
surreptitious fame upon us … the
enquiry will be Who were the able literary
men who wrote the dramas imputed to
him?
Shakespeare grew up in ignorance and
His [Lardner’s] account of WS is one of
under-hand brokery – speaks of his literary
thievery and pirating propensity: He is A mere
He concludes:
In fine, we maintain we have no more direct
evidence to show that Shakspear wrote
Hamlet’s soliloquy than we have that he wrote
the epitaph on John a Coombe, the ballad on
Sir Thomas Lucy, or the epitaph to spare his
“bones” on his own tombstone – all of which
factotum of the theatre – a vulgar and unlettered man.
Who “left no records of his literary labours”
And merited “the indifference of his
contemporaries”.
Hart’s observations. however, amounts to a
rather confused rant – he seems to be attacking
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May 2014
the idea of ‘Immortal Shakespeare’ as much as
questioning the authorship. He disputes the
authorship of most of the plays, regarding them
as joint productions, often highly derivative,
and vitiated with “gross impurities”. Where its
value lies is in reflecting the existence of a
groundswell of dissenting opinion in the 1830s
and 40s. Hart constantl refers to other
‘commentators’ some of whom he names: Rees,
Chalmers, Lardner, reacting to the excesses of
bardolatry and the discrepancy between the
Even more tantalisingly, are the two directly
contradictory verdicts it provides on Edward de
Vere. Early on in the story, the narrator, and
his companion who turns out to be a ‘Mortimer
De Vere’, come upon a ‘fair seat’. Two
immense gates… flanked by two stone pillars –
on top of one the figure of a boar cut in stone,
supported by a shield of arms of ancient
simplicity, being quarterly gules, and or, … but
what particularly struck me … obelisk, or
pedestal … a tablet … inscription: it was in old
claims for ‘Immortal Shakespeare’ and the
absence of any documentation of a literary life.
characters … bore the date 1572.
This identical inscription, tablet and all, was
1827. De Vere or the Man of
Independence
supposed to have been cut from the wall of the
cabinet or oratory of Edward de Vere, the
seventeenth Earl of Oxford, at Castle
Hedingham in Essex, chief seat of the family.
This is a Regency roman à clef which has
nothing overtly to do with the Shakespeare
authorship – and yet, it does include some
suggestive material from an Oxfordian point of
view. It was attributed to “the author of
He was a poet, and not a very good one,
but ranked with those of his time… and this,
added to the quarrels with his father-in-law,
Tremaine” i.e. Robert Plumer Ward.
Tantalisingly, the title page brings together De
Vere, Shakespeare, and Francis Bacon. And
almost every one of the 26 chapters is headed
by a quote from Shakespeare.
Burleigh, for not saving his friend the Duke of
Norfolk, according, as he thought, to a promise
made, both by the queen and minister, created
a tradition in the family that the inscription was
his.
My free drift
Halts not particularly, but moves itself
In a wide sea of wax.
Shakespeare
Some 40 pages later, we have a rather
different account. Speaking of Mortimer De
Vere:
Power to do good is the true and lawful
end of aspiring: for good thoughts (though
But English history lay before him in the
library, and the puissant De Vere figured with
God accept them), yet, towards men, are
little better than good dreams, except
they be put in act; and that cannot be
without power and place, as the vantage
and commanding ground.
such power and brilliancy, in the earlier part of
it, as to engage his attention. This was
heightened even to devotion by a large and
illuminated manuscript which his research had
discovered on neglected shelves, in which the
family history had been blazoned. Here, besides
a long line of Norman heroes, he found that
Francis Bacon
35
May 2014
Edward, Earl of Oxford, who in the days of
Elizabeth united in his single person the
character of her greatest noble, knight and
poet.
I soon after contracted a friendship with
that great man and first of geniuses, the
‘Immortal Shakespeare’, and am happy in now
having it in my power to refute the prevailing
opinion of his having run his country for deerstealing, which is as false as it is disgracing
This is doubleness of a different kind –
saying and then un-saying - what are we to
make of it? At least we can assume from this
last quote, that the book, given its date, is partly
intended as a compliment to a different
Edward – Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford
With equal falsehood has he been father’d
with many spurious dramatic pieces. ‘Hamlet,
Othello, As You Like It, The Tempest, and A
Midsummer Night’s Dream’, for five, of all which I
and Earl of Mortimer, 1689-1741.
confess myself to be the author.
1786 The Story of the Learned Pig
This is truly seeing double – who is the true
author? Handy dandy – Is it the Immortal
Shakespeare – or is it Pimping Billy?
By an Officer of the Royal Navy
Going back a further 40 years, we have The
Story of the Learned Pig – almost certainly a
reference to Francis Bacon - appearing in 1786,
with this rather delightful frontispiece. It’s a
novel with outrageously picaresque plot-line
turning on transmigration. The narrator
inhabits a series of lives, alternating between
1769 The Life and Adventures of
Commonsense An Historical
Allegory
The author is believed to be Herbert
Lawrence, a physician and a friend of Garrick.
It was popular enough to have a second edition
the animal and human species. His three main
human incarnations are as a Roman – Brutus,
an Elizabethan – Shakespeare – and, finally, as
an eighteenth century general [?]. Here is the
most relevant passage:
in London and to be published in France and
Switzerland in 1777. A century and a half later,
in 1917, it was hailed in a catalogue entry for an
auction that took place in New York as:
The first book of the Bacon-Shakespeare
Controversy. The character of ‘Wisdom’ in the
story can easily be identified as Sir Francis
Bacon by the references to his being often
consulted by Queen Elizabeth and James I, and
to his “Common Place Book” which, of course,
I am now come to a period in which, to my
great joy, I once more got possession of a
human body. My parents, indeed, were of low
extraction; my mother sold fish about the
streets of this metropolis, and my father was a
water-carrier, even that same water-carrier
celebrated by Ben Jonson in his comedy of
EMIH. I was early in life initiated in the
profession of horse-holder for those who came
to visit the playhouse, where I was well-known
by the name of Pimping Billy.
survives.
The story relates the various adventures of
Common Sense, the son of Wisdom and Truth
from the time of Cicero to the reign of George
I. Ch IX of Bk II sees the narrator’s parents
making their way to London:
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May 2014
Upon their arrival they made an
acquaintance with a Person belonging to
the Playhouse; this Man was a profligate
in his Youth, and, as some say, had been
a Deer-stealer, others deny it; but be that
as it will, he certainly was a Thief from
the Time he was first capable of
distinguishing any Thing; and therefore it
is immaterial what Articles he dealt in. I
say my father and his friends made a
sudden and violent Intimacy with this
hyperbolic terms. Under cover of this
supposedly enraged invective, the author, a
Captain Goulding, satirises Bardolatry. Here’s
a flavour of it:
Shakespear has frighten’d three parts of the
world from attempting to write; and he was no
Scholar, no Grammarian, no Historian, and in
all probability, could not write English.
Although his plays were historical, as I have
heard, the History Part was given him in
concise and short, by one of these Chuckles
that could give him nothing else.
Man, who seeing they were negligent,
careless people, took the first opportunity
I will give you a short account of Mr.
Shakespear’s Proceeding; and that I have had
from one of his intimate Acquaintance. His
being imperfect in some Things, was owing to
his not being a scholar; which obliged him to
have one of those chuckle-pated historians for
his particular Associate, that could scarce speak
a Word but upon that subject; and he
that presented itself, to rob them of
everything he could lay his hands on.
Amongst my father’s baggage, he
presently cast his eye upon a commonplace Book, in which was contained, an
infinite variety of Modes and Forms, to
express all the different Sentiments of the
human Mind, together with Rules for
maintain’d him, or he might have starv’d upon
his History. And when he wanted anything in
his Way, as his Plays were all Historical, he sent
to him, and took down the Heads of what was
his Purpose..”
their Combinations and Connections
upon every Subject or Occasion that
might occur in Dramatic Writing.
With these Materials, and with good
Parts of his own, he commenced PlayWriter, how he succeeded is needless to
say, when I tell the Reader that his name
was Shakespear [no ‘e’].
On the one hand this is reductio ad absurdam –
it is difficult to be sure just how seriously to
take him. As well as lampooning, is he making
any kind of serious point about dual authorship
or substituted proxy authorship?
Interestingly, these events are dated pre1587.
1670s - Edward Ravenscroft
1728 An Essay Against Too Much
Reading Captain Goulding
The seventeenth century playwright Edward
Ravenscroft (fl. 1659 – 97) wrote a string of
plays in the 1670s including his own adaptation
of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. The extensive
Before these two mock novels were
published, we have a mock essay which
inveighs against ‘too much reading’ in
37
May 2014
DNB article on him does not include the fact
that he has been reported as saying:
editor of this extraordinary work, Hugh
Macdonald, fails in his introduction to make
any reference to Shakespeare. All the writers
represented come in for abuse:
I have been told by some anciently
conversant with the stage that [Titus
Andronicus] was not originally his but
brought by a private author to be acted.
Shakespeare’s a Mimicke, Massinger’s a Sot
When it comes to the accusations levell’d at
‘the writer of weekly accounts’ significantly he
is not named – though he is identified through
the pun on accounts – and the emphasis on
‘trade’ and ‘profit’ and the suggestion that he
Here we have it – in straightforward
statement – from someone who appears to
have no agenda, but is simply reporting what he
has been told. Here is Shakespeare acting as
playbroker – his most plausible role in the
whole Authorship mystery. It also matches
presides over a company which seeks a patent:
…another then was call’d to an account,
John Ward’s statement, that Shakespeare
supplied the stage with two plays a year.
And this was he, who weekly did pretend,
Accounts of certain news abroad to send.
1645 The Great Assizes Holden on
Parnassus by Apollo and his
Assessors
He was accus’d, that he with Pamphlets vain,
The art of lying had sought to maintain,
My final example takes us one step closer to
Shakespeare’s time, and chiming with all the
heavy hints dropped by his contemporaries
Which trade, he and his fellows us’d of late
about Shake-scene, a rich mummer, Poet-Ape,
Shake-rags and Shake-bags. This is another
teasing work which takes an established satirical
genre – a mock trial of contemporary authors –
and has a great deal of fun with it. On the
second page, the writer of weekly accounts is
identified as William Shakespeare – the joke of
the piece being that the malefactors are the
same as the jurors. Astonishingly, the modern
Of high Parnassus, that they did conspire,
With such success, and profit in the State
A Patent from Apollo to acquire:
That they might thus incorporated bee,
Into a Company of Lyers free.
And when it comes to the judgement on him
delivered by Apollo – he is condemned to pass
back and forward over the river Styx – the
image is of a go-between, a fixer, a dealer.
38
May 2014
Shakespeare: The Evidence
by Ros Barber
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format. Hyper-linked to digitised primary evidence
listing hundreds of items of disputed evidence
sources. A neutral compendium for the curious,
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can read the original texts in their contexts.
39
May 2014
Contribute to the debate
Contains dozens of images of original documents:
manuscripts, title pages, official records. Builds
The Shakespeare authorship question is an
into a central repository for everything we know -
enormous field, and the only way to compile this
or think we know - about William Shakspere of
book is to pick the brains of many, many people.
Stratford, and the author William Shakespeare -
Readers are encourage to suggest any evidence
corralling all evidence which can shed light on
items not currently included, and contribute
whether they are one and the same. No cherry-
arguments and counter arguments, in order to
picking here: every piece of evidence forwarded in
make this book truly comprehensive and truly
both the non-Stratfordian and the Stratfordian
neutral. Currently many readers are Shakespeare
cause is considered.
sceptics, and the author would specifically like to
Open Your Mind
ask more Stratfordians to contribute their points
of view in order to make it more balanced.
If you've been interested in the Shakespeare
Significant contributors to the book will be named
authorship question for some time, you'll probably
on the Acknowledgements page, with the
have some fixed ideas about it. But there is always
contributor's permission.
another way of looking at things. Don't fall prey
Decide for yourself
to confirmation bias: reading evidence to support
your pre-formed beliefs. Instead, open your mind
This book will not tell you what to think. It
to absorb a range of possibilities. If you're a
respects all of its readers as intelligent beings that
relative newcomer to the Shakspeare authorship
will have different perspectives on the evidence
question, this book is also ideal. It is not pressing
and arguments presented. Some will come at the
one point of view on its readers, or attempting to
book with minds made up. Others will come in a
persuade you of a single truth. Its easily digestible
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is determined to let you, the reader, sift through all
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the evidence - no cherry-picking here - and decide
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for yourself.
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Whether you are a firm believer that Shakspere
wrote Shakespeare, or suspect that he didn't, this
If you're not sure the book is for you, have a
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comprehensive knowledge of the problems at
satisfaction is guaranteed. You have 45 days in
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strongest arguments to support your case and how
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best to put them.
40
May 2014
Shakespeare Birthplace Trust declines £40K donation
Letter from Alexander Waugh and John Shahan to Peter Kyle, Chairman SBT Trustees.
8 November 2013
On 4th July, we wrote to you with the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition’s invitation to the Shakespeare
Birthplace Trust to take part in a mock trial of its claim that the identity of the author of the works of William
Shakespeare is ‘beyond doubt.’ On 6th September, you replied, rejecting our invitation.
While we understand the position the Trust is taking, we hope you agree that it would be desirable to
resolve our diametrically opposed views—yours that it is ‘beyond doubt’ that Shakspere of Stratford was the
author Shakespeare; ours that there is ‘reasonable doubt,’ and that the authorship issue should therefore be
regarded as legitimate. While you say that you have ‘nothing to add,’ it yet remains for you to test your stated
position against the opposing case in an orderly, objective and neutral forum that would be appropriate to
and in keeping with the Parliamentary Charter under which the Birthplace Trust operates.
As an inducement to participate, the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition hereby offers to donate £40,000
to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust if it proves, in a mock trial before a panel of neutral judges, that
Shakspere of Stratford wrote the works you attribute to him.
We are, of course, open to alternative formats, procedures and venues for the mock trial, as long as they
are even-handed, they provide a valid test of the Birthplace Trust’s claim, and each side has ample
opportunity to present evidence and for challenges and rebuttals. Both the Coalition and the Trust should be
responsible for the costs of its own team. The Coalition will, however, undertake to raise the funds needed to
pay the costs involved in putting on the mock trial after we have reached agreement on all necessary
arrangements.
A list of those who have pledged to contribute towards the £40,000 donation is enclosed. Once we’ve
reached agreement on all of the important details (format, venue, dates, etc.), the SAC will collect the money
pledged and place it in an escrow account before the trial.
Sincerely yours,
Alexander Waugh
John M. Shahan
Honorary President
Chairman and CEO
Shakespeare Authorship Coalition
Shakespeare Authorship Coalition
41
May 2014
On 6 December 2013, the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition took out
a full page advertisement in the Times Literary Supplement.
Sir Brian Vickers’s response was published by the editor of the Times Literary Supplement, 13
December, 2013:
Sir, In their full-page advertisement (December 6), the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition offered to
pay £40,000 to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust should it prove “before a panel of neutral judges” that he
really did write nearly forty plays, two narrative poems dedicated to members of the nobility and signed
by him, together with the Sonnets and “The Phoenix and the Turtle”. If they would open the competition
to a wider public, I’d happily have a crack at it. But even if they agreed on the “neutral” judges, should
the verdict go against them they would simply dismiss it as further evidence of a conspiracy supposedly
stretching back to 1592 when Green first referred to Shakespeare as a playwright.
The fact is that their case is illusory and delusory. Their “Declaration of Reasonable Doubt” is a
deeply misleading document. In it they try to drive a wedge between the records of Shakespeare as an
actor, and Shakespeare as an author, wilfully suppressing the considerable contemporary references to
him as a poet and dramatist. One single document is enough to refute their case, the celebratory poem that
Ben Jonson wrote for the 1623 Folio, “To the memory of my beloved | The AUTHOR | Mr. WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE \ AND \ what he hath left vs”. To imagine that Jonson was lying would also inculpate
John Heminge and Henry Condell, fellow actors since 1594, who in their preface “To the great variety of
Readers”, regretted that “the Author himself” did not live to have “overseene his owne writings”, and
who “onely gather his works, and give them to you, to praise him … for his wit can no more lid hid then
it could be lost”. To imagine that they were lying would also inculpate Jaggard and Blount, the
publishers, together with about twenty other stationers and printers who had issued his works, the
Stationers Company that guarded publishing, the Master of the Revels who licensed plays, the court
officials who paid his and his company’s performance fees, Queen Elizabeth, James I and several hundred
others in the tightly knit London theatre world over a period of twenty years, all involved in the plot to
deceive posterity that with ramifications would make the Kennedy murder conspiracies seem child’s play.
One can only speculate as to the real motives of the authorship deniers. Rather than expressing
“reasonable doubt”, they and their followers can be summed up in the terms that Francis Bacon used to
describe the process that sustained a belief in astrology: “Imposture held up by credulity”.
BRIAN VICKERS London NW6
Shakespeare Suppressed: a non-fiction research book about Shakespeare’s biography
and his works, 448 pages, by Katherine Chiljan
Scholars have been studying Shakespeare’s plays and poems for over 200 years, but
basic information about these incomparable works, like their composition dates, is
still lacking. Using contemporary evidence that is often ignored or even unknown by
the experts, Shakespeare Suppressed presents fresh and sometimes startling conclusions
about the man and his works. [A review will appear in the next newsletter. KG]
42
May 2014
The de Vere Society

Is dedicated to the proposition that the works of Shakespeare were written by Edward de Vere,
Earl of Oxford.

Has demonstrated that the case for William Shakspere of Stratford as the author of the
Shakespeare canon is very weak in The Man who was Never Shakespeare by A. J. Pointon
and in Shakespeare Beyond Doubt? by John Shahan and Alexander Waugh (eds), among
many others.

Has shown that the traditional chronology for the works of Shakespeare is based on conjecture
and inference in Dating Shakespeare’s Plays by Kevin Gilvary (ed).

Has explored the role of Edward de Vere, seventeenth earl of Oxford, not only as the author of
the Shakespeare oeuvre but also as the leader of the movement to establish drama in early
modern England, in The Earl of Oxford and the Making of Shakespeare by Richard Malim.
Next Meeting Saturday 27 September 2014: 0930 – 1700
Thistle Hotel, Marble Arch, (Bryanston St. entrance) London
Cost £30 per person including tea / coffee and a delicious lunch.
Provisional Programme
Gerit Quealey on Who really won the tennis court quarrel? (Oxford v Sidney).
Michael Le Gassick on Oxford and the anonymous plays of the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century.
Heward Wilkinson on Historical Amnesia and the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
Eddi Jolly on A Bit about a Book – the first two quartos of ‘Hamlet’
Alexander Waugh on The First Folio Deception - its Cause and Effect (1607-1640).
Jan Cole. Sir Thomas Smith’s copy of the ‘Heptameron’
Kevin Gilvary on The De Vere Society’s Aims and Strategies
Discussion - Questions - Suggestions: e.g. aims and strategy: improving the website; use of social
media; the Italian Challenge; future research, meetings and activities.
43

May 2014 - The De Vere Society

Transcription

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