Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet: the blog

Entertaining Shakespeareana

Samuel Pegge (the younger) on Edward Capell

I have OCRed and mounted the "Brief Memoirs of Edward Capell, Esq." by Samuel Pegge the younger at the Mr. Shakespeare web site.  It is a rare work, published in  Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century Consisting of Authentic Memoirs and Original Letters of Eminent Persons; and Intended As a Sequel to The Literary Anecdotes by John Nichols, F. S. A., vol. I pp. 465-476, 1817.  With friends like Pegge, however, Capell had no need of an enemy, and indeed, with George Steevens in the world, both men had an ample enemy.  This is a roundabout story, so let me begin with an extract from the 1909 Sidney Lee DNB, the entry on the great Shakespeare editor (and outlaw) George Steevens:

"Steevens, in 1789, having procured a block of marble, and having engraved upon it by means of aquafortis some Anglo-Saxon letters, placed it in the window of a shop in Southwark, and caused it to be represented to the Society of Antiquaries that it had been dug up in Kennington Lane, and was the tombstone of Hardecanute. Jacob Schnebbelie [q. v.] produced in good faith a drawing, which was engraved by Baeire and published in the ' Gentleman's Magazine' (1790, i. 217). Samuel Pegge, falling into the trap, read a paper on the inscription before the Society of Antiquaries on 10 Dec. 1789; but the deception was discovered before the disquisition was printed in the 'Archseologia.' An acrimonious correspondence between Steevens and those he hoped to dupe followed in the daily and monthly journals (Gent. Mag. 1790, i. 217, 290-92 ; General Evening Post, 26 Oct. 1790 ; NICHOLS, Lit. Illustrations, v. 430-32). Steevens finally committed the stone to the custody of Sir Joseph Banks, and it was regularly exhibited at his assemblies in Soho Square."

The sad Pegge of this anecdote was, I am fairly certain, the father of the Samuel Pegge who later wrote, more out of revenge than admiration, the Brief Memoir of Capell.  (There were two Samuel Pegges, father and son, and both were antiquaries and fellows of the society of antequaries.  I cannot be certain which wrote the article on Hardecanute, nor, for the purposes of this post, does it matter.  Suffice it to say they both had an ax to grind with Steevens). 

Pegge's "Brief Memoir," while purporting to redress a wrong done to Capell in the Biographia Dramatica of 1782, in fact does him more harm than good.  Nicholl, in the one illuminating footnote to the Pegge article he provides, assigns Steevens as the source of the derogatory observations on Capell published in the Biographia.  It would be much like Steevens.  It was rumored that Steevens bribed a printer to show him proofs of Capell's edition as it proceeded through the presses, and a latter day editor, G. Blakemore Evans has it "Steevens engaged in 'heavy filching from Capell'" (quoted in Murphy, Shakespeare in Print, p. 91).  While the unnamed grist for Pegge's animus must be Steevens, his mill grinds at poor Capell in an entirely deflating manner.  In fact, after reading the "Brief Memoir" one is not entirely sure if Pegge knew Capell or simply knew of him, and was using his memory to strike back at Steevens.  Listen to the sorts of things Capell's memoirist has to say of him:

• "...nothing but his industry could exceed his vanity."
• "...so that, in fact, 33 years of his life were absorbed in these Works : for he did little else..."
• "It cannot be allowed that Mr. Capell had any genius, by which I mean wit or invention ; for nothing original is known to have been written by him."
• "Neither had he any tincture of what is called taste."
• "He is so far rather a Commentator on the old Editors than on the Poet himself ; a task hardly worth the pains of a German Grammarian..." [Oh, how Pegge strikes home here!]
• "His vanity, it must be allowed, was a little aided in this weakness by the irritable state of his nerves, occasioned by a sedentary and secluded life."
• "Mr. Capell's style, it cannot but be confessed, is turgid to a great degree..."
• "The Bust prefixed to his Notes and the "School of Shakespeare," was taken, I presume, when he was in the meridian of health; for it conveys nothing of his features in profile to those who only knew him in the latter part of his life, when he was much afflicted with a scorbutic humour, which shewed itself so much in his face, that his features became coarse, swoln, and disguised."
• "...his constitution, from the nature of those infirmities which carried him off, suffered ultimately by these inamoratas."
• "If you had sufficient address to hear him prose about various readings, transpositions of passages, &c. you might preserve yourself tolerably well in his graces : —but it was labour and sorrow, for he was all over Shakespeare."
• "...it is said that the share he took in them was not the most agreeable, from his being too opiniatre and dictatorial."
• "There was once much intercourse between him and Mr. Garrick ; for I may not call it intimacy, as two men of such predominant vanities could never coalesce for any long time."
• "There was once a moment, but from what degree of duplicity on the part of Mr. Garrick I know not, when Mr. Capell cautioned a friend, in the manner of Pontius Pilate's Wife, "never to have any thing to do with David Garrick ; for, depend upon it, he will deceive you." This was at the close of Mr. Capell's life, when he was, as it were, determined to have the last blow, and when his peevishness, and dissatisfactions, perchance, at feeling himself of no consequence, entirely had soured a disposition that was naturally upon the fret, and easily fermented."
• "It is matter of no surprise that one who had affected so much refinement should fancy himself a man of taste. Painting, and Musick, I think, he-was equally a stranger to..."
• "As he must shew a taste in something, he chose Architecture, and built a house on the faith of his own skill in that Science, for which he paid exceedingly dear, to the great disappointment of those who succeeded to his fortune."
• "Here, for the last twenty years of his life, he passed his hours from May till October, equally unknowing and unknown, for he was of too haughty a spirit to associate with the inhabitants, and too much an humourist to be sought for by the neighbouring gentry."
• "Thus, while he mistook literary industry for genius, he thought preciseness was a proof of a refined understanding ; —long habit had changed the latter into a humoursome particularity and peevishness, which drove his friends from even making him elemosinary visits when he really wished and begged for a little company."

With a memoirist like this, who needs slanderers?  Take that, Steevens!

Shakespeare News Redux

Folger has announced the recent release of the latest in their series of excellent student editions, Henry VI Part 1:

"Henry VI, Part 1 is an uncompromising celebration of early English nationalism and imperialism. It defines the English against the French, whom it degrades as scheming, effeminate, and willing to consort with the devil. The play idealizes the English king Henry V for his successful conquest of much of France during the Hundred Years War. But Henry V has died just as the play begins, and leadership of the English cause in France has passed to Talbot, an indomitable, fierce, almost perpetually enraged, and therefore altogether masculine warrior hero. Yet Talbot is not as fortunate as Henry V. While all of France, we are told, shakes in terror at the name of Talbot, the French still refuse to yield."

Mean time, A. N. Wilson reviews that self same "bloody river of history on stage," the Henry VI cycle:

"...the RSC production, directed by Michael Boyd, which began two years ago in Stratford. It has been an extremely exciting experience: ingenious, energetic staging, with actors swinging through the air on ropes to besiege Orleans, and the stage opening at intervals to receive the screaming, tortured body of Joan of Arc, or the corpses of various monarchs...The "upstart" 25-year-old Shakespeare (as he was called by jealous Robert Greene) did not write every single word of Part I, but our greatest writer was also a great actor-manager, and it was hard not to feel, after seeing all four plays (with Richard III as a macabre semi-comic afterthought, written for the fans of Richard Burbage, who popularised the role), that they do have a kind of unity."

Big of him to say so.  Says no, Brian Vickers, who has recently claimed the bulk of Henry VI part 1 for Thomas Kyd, with an assist by Nash and a dash by young Shakescene: move computational nonsense.

And speaking of nonsense, "Rylance reveals why he had to quit the Globe over Iraq" trumpets the Independent headline.  Iraq not so much.  Actually, "At the time of his departure from the Globe, many suspected that it may have been Rylance's questioning of Shakespeare's authorship – and his outspokenness on these views – that lost him the support of the theatre's board."  Really, ya think?

And moreso... 

Cardenio (?) Staged

The Christian Science Monitor reports on a new staging of "Cardenio":

Playwright Charles L. Mee remembers the phone call. A Harvard scholar, Stephen Greenblatt, had been awarded a $1.5 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and wanted to use the funds to explore how a dramatist crafts a play. Professor Greenblatt had chosen to observe Mr. Mee at work, noting that Mee's cut-and-paste methods of "resituating and appropriating" materials reminded him of William Shakespeare's manner of writing.

"I'm the biggest thief," says Mee, who was honored this past year with the staging of an entire season of his plays at New York's Signature Theatre. He recalls telling Greenblatt that the project wouldn't be fun unless the pair wrote a play together – and then asking Greenblatt if he knew of any lost plays by Shakespeare.

"His answer?" says Mee, " 'Oh yes: 'Cardenio.' "

And so it goes...  Click the CSM link above to read the article.  The new staging will open May 10 at the American Repertory Theatre, in Cambridge, Mass.

But, is it really Cardenio?  Let's review the facts as given in John Freehafer's 1969 PMLA article "Cardenio, By Shakespeare and Fletcher" (JSTOR stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1261138):

"During 1612-13 Shakespeare's company twice acted a play called Cardenno or Cardenna at the court of James I. In 1653 Humphrey Moseley, who had acquired manuscripts of many unpublished plays of that company, entered in the Stationers' Register a play called "The History of Cardenio, by Mr. Fletcher. & Shakespeare." In 1728 Lewis Theobald published Double Falshood, a play based on the story of Cardenio in Don Quixote, as "Written Originally by W. SHAKESPEARE; And now Revised and Adapted to the Stage By Mr. THEOBALD," from three manuscripts which he owned. Taken together, these facts indicate that Double Falshood may be an adaptation of an otherwise lost play by Shakespeare and one of his most eminent contemporaries."

That's pretty much all we have to go on.  The most fantastic "fact" contained in this paragraph is that Theobald claimed to have THREE, no less, copies of the original.  This when no one else seems to have been able to lay their hands on a single copy.  Here is Theobald's explanation from the Preface to the 1728 edition:

"It has been alledg’d as incredible, that such a Curiosity should be stifled and lost to the World for above a Century. To This my Answer is short; that tho’ it never till now made its Appearance on the Stage, yet one of the Manuscript Copies, which I have, is of above Sixty Years Standing, in the Handwriting of Mr. Downes, the famous Old Prompter; and, as I am credibly inform’d, was early in the Possession of the celebrated Mr. Betterton, and by Him design’d to have been usher’d into the World. What Accident prevented This Purpose of his, I do not pretend to know: Or thro’ what hands it had successively pass’d before that Period of Time. There is a Tradition (which I have from the Noble Person, who supply’d me with One of my Copies) that this Play was given by our Author, as a Present of Value, to a Natural Daughter of his, for whose Sake he wrote it, in the Time of his Retirement from the Stage. Two other Copies I have, (one of which I was glad to purchase at a very good Rate,) which may not, perhaps, be quite so Old as the Former; but One of Them is much more perfect, and has fewer Flaws and Interruptions in the Sense."

In the George II testimonial, Holles Newcastle says that Mr. Theobald "with great Labour and Pains, Revised, and Adapted the same to the Stage" and Theobald himself says he came to the actors "as an Editor, not an Author," and that "...a Theatre cannot always subsist on old Stock, but that the Town requires Novelty at their Hands. On the other Hand, they must be so far Judges of their own Art and Profession, as to know that all the Compositions, which are offer’d them, would never go down with Audiences of so nice and delicate a Taste, as in this Age frequent the Theatres."  Now just how much editing and adapting Theobald did he does not say, nor can we guess.

The real problem is the subsequent wherefore.  Theobald says, in the same Preface, "I therefore think it not amiss here to promise, that, tho’ private Property should so far stand in my Way, as to prevent me from putting out an Edition of Shakespeare, yet, some Way or other, if I live, the Publick shall receive from my Hand his whole Works corrected, with my best Care and Ability. This may furnish an Occasion for speaking more at large concerning the present Play:"  And that is just the problem.  When Shakespeare did come to put out his edition of Shakespeare in 1733, for the owners of that "Private Property," Tonsons, he did not include Cardenio in his edition.  It is difficult to see why not, since ownership of the copyright cannot have been the issue.  If he really believed he possessed original Shakespearean material, why did he never produce it in a collected edition?  I know arguments have been made in favor of Theobald, but this seems to me a powerful objection.

Here are links to the text of Double Falsehood for the curious:

• Double Falshood; or, The Distrest Lovers, a careful reading and transcription of the work by John W. Kennedy.
• The original edition is also available at Google Book Search.
• An Internet Archive edition of Miscellaneous Plays and Farces, (1761-1775) contains a copy of the Third Edition of Theobald's Double Falshood (dated 1767, the last play in the book).

Whatever our conclusions about Cardenio, I think we can rest assured that 1.5 million dollars has been well spent... At any rate, it was good for an economy here or there. 

Kindle and Shakespeare Kindle Editions

Site Summary, May 1, 2008

It has been quite some time since I have posted a site summary for Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet, and while this one is certainly not exhaustive, since it does not include the numerous posts to the Works and Editors sections of the web site--which is saying quite a bit--it does include many of the posts made recently to the Contemporaries section and to a few other miscellaneous parts of the site.  Here are the links.  I hope some will find them interesting and useful.

• Central Coast Shakespeare Festival (San Luis Obispo, California)
• Rich, Jennifer. "The Merchant Formerly Known as Jew: Redefining the Rhetoric of Merchantry in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice". EMLS 13.3.
• Gorman, Sara. "The Theatricality of Transformation: cross-dressing, sexual misdemeanour and gender/sexuality spectra on the Elizabethan stage, Bridewell Hospital Court Records, and the Repertories of the Court of the Aldermen, 1574-1607". EMLS 13.3.
• Clement, Jennifer. "The Queen’s Voice: Elizabeth I’s Christian Prayers and Meditations". EMLS 13.3
• Much Ado About Nothing, Photo-Lithographed, By Express Permission, and under the Superintendence of Mr. H. Staunton, from The Matchless Original of 1600, In the Library of the Earl of Ellesmere, Day & Son, 1864, from GBS, full text and PDF.
• Cymbeline Refinished: A Variation on Shakespear's Ending, by George Bernard Shaw, 1936, from Project Gutenberg (Australia).
• The Mirour for Magistrates, Vol. I: Part I by John Higgins; part II by Thomas Blenerhasset; Vol. II: Part III by Ferrers, Cavyll, Chaloner, Phaer, Baldwin, Skelton, Dolman, Sackville, Segar, Dingley, Churchyard, and Drayton; Part IV by Richard Niccols; ed. Joseph Haslewood, London, 1815, reprinted from the edition of 1587, collated with those of 1575 and 1610, from Google Book Search, full view and PDF.
• Letters Written by John Chamberlain During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. Sarah Williams, The Camden Society, 1861, from Google Book Search, full text and PDF.
• Kemps nine daies wonder: performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich from Project Gutenberg.
• The Court and times of James the First : illustrated by authentic and confidential letters, from various public and private collections, ed. Thomas Birch, Robert Williams, London, 1848, vol. I, vol. II, from Google Book Search, full view and PDF.
• John Nichols, The progresses, processions, and magnificent festivities, of King James the First, his royal consort, family, and court; collected from original manuscripts, scarce pamphlets, corporation records, parochial registers, &c., &c. ... Illustrated with notes, historical, topographical, biographical and bibliographical, vol. I, from Google Book Search, 1828.
• Basilikon Doron in A miscellany containing: Richard of Bury's Philobiblon, the Basilikon doron of King James I.; Monks and giants  ed. Henry Morley, 1888, from the Internet Archive, in various formats.
• The Political Works of James I, ed. C. H. McIlwain, Harvard, 1918, from GBS, full text and PDF.
• Demonology, from Forgotten Books at GBS, full text and PDF.
• Mountain Shakespeare Festival (Frazier Park, California)
• English Writers: an attempt towards a History of English Literature.
• Sonnets by Barnes in Specimens of English Sonnets, ed. Alexander Dyce, 1833, from GBS in full view and PDF.
• The Devil's Charter, ed. R. B. McKerrow, 1904, from GBS, full view and PDF.
• The Devils Charter, students facsimile edition, from the Dyce collection, 1913, from GBS, full view and PDF.
• The Poems of Barnaby Barnes, ed. A. B. Grosart, 1875, from GBS, full view and PDF.
• Unnatural Murder: Poison at the Court of James I.
• Wikipedia article on Frances (Howard) Carr
• Article of Francis Howard from TudorPlace
• A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes and Misdemeanors from the Earliest Period to the Year 1783, compiled by T. B. Howell, vol. II, containing an account of both Frances Howard's annulment proceedings of 1613 and her murder trial of 1616.
• Article on Robert Carr from Wikipedia.
• DNB entry for Chamberlain, Leslie Stephen 1887.
• Letters Written by John Chamberlain During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. Sarah Williams, The Camden Society, 1861, from Google Book Search, full text and PDF.
• A great popular biography of Coke is The Lion and the Throne: The Life and Times of Sir Edward Coke: 1552 - 1634, by Catherine Drinker Bowen.  The book won the National Book Award when first published.
• Coke's 1628 Petition of Right.
• Article on Coke from TudorPlace.
• The Dramatic Works of Sir William D'Avenant, eds. James Maidment, W. H. Logan, 1872-74, from GBS in full view and PDF.
  • Volume the First
  • Volume the Second
  • Volume the Third
  • Volume the Fourth
  • Volume the Fifth (containing D'Avenant's Macbeth and The Tempest)
• Simon Forman in the Dictionary of National Biography (Leslie Stephen, 1889)
• Forman's eyewitness account of a production of Cymbeline in April-May, 1611: H. H. Furness' A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: The Tragedie of Cymbeline, J. B. Lippincott Company, London, 1913, from Google Book Search, full view and PDF, pp. 445-447.
• Forman's eyewitness account of a production of Macbeth, April 20, 1611: The New Variorum edition of Macbeth, ed. H. H. Furness, 1901, p. 356).
• DNB entry (Sidney Lee, 1908) for Henry Garnet
• John Gerard, S.J., What Was the Gunpowder Plot? The Traditional Story Tested By Original Evidence, London, 1897; from GBS, full view and PDF.
• A Treatise of Equivocation, edited by David Jardine from the manuscript in the Bodleian Library [MS Laud Misc. 655], 1851, from the Internet Archive.
• Heywood resources from the Luminarium.
• The Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood Now First Collected with Illustrative Notes and a Memoir of the Author in Six Volumes, edited by R. H. Shepherd, John Pearson, 1874, GBS, full view and PDF.  The date given after the play title is the date on the title page, not necessarily the date of composition.  The [IA] in bold after each volume number is a link to the Internet Archive version.  This is the most current standard edition of the works of Heywood.
  • Vol. I [IA]
    • Memoir of Thomas Heywood;
    • Commendatory Poems;
    • The First and Second parts of King Edward the Fourth (1600);
    • The Second Part of King Edward the Fourth;
    • If You Know Not Me, You Know No Bodie ; or, The troubles of Queen Elizabeth (1605);
    • If you know not me, you know no body. The Second Part. (1632).
  • Vol. II [IA]
    • The Fayre Mayde of the Exchange;
    • A Woman Kilde with Kindnesse;
    • The Four Prentises of London. With the Conquest of Jerusalem (1615);
    • The Fair Maid of the West, or A Girle Worth Gold, The First Part (1631);
    • The Fair Maid of the West, of A Girle Worth Gold, The Second Part (1631);
  • Vol. III [IA]
    • The Golden Age : or The lives of Jupiter and Saturne, with the deifying of the Heathen Gods. (1610);
    • The Silver Age, Including The love of Jupiter to Alcmena : The birth of Hercules. And The Rape of Prosperine. Concluding, With the Arraignment of the Moone. (1613);
    • The Brazen Age The first Act containing, the death of the Centaure Nessus, The Second, The Tragedy of Meleager: The Third The Tragedy of Iason and Media. The Fourth. Vulcans Net. The Fifth. The Labours and death of Hercules (1613);
    • The Iron Age : Contayning the Rape of Hellen, &c. (1632);
    • The Second Part of the Iron Age Which contayneth the death of Penthesilea, Paris, Priam, and Hecuba : &c. (1632).
  • Vol. IV [IA]
    • The English Traveller (1633);
    • A Pleasant Comedy, called A Hayden-Head Well Lost (1634);
    • The late Lancashire Witches (1634);
    • Londons Ius Honorarium. Exprest in sundry Triumphs, pagiants, and shews : At the Initiation or Entrance of the Right Honourable George Whitmore, into the Maioralty of the famous and farre renouned City of London (1631);
    • Londini Sinus Salutis, or, Londons Harbour of Health, and Happinesse. Expressed in sundry Triumphs, Pageants and Showes ; at the Initiation of the Right Honorable, Christopher Clethrowe, Into the Maioralty of the farre Renowned City of London (1635);
    • Londini Speculum : or, Londons Mirror, Exprest in sundry Triumphs, Pageants, and Showes, at the Initiation of the right Honorable Richard Fenn, into the Mairolty of the Famous and farre renowned City of London (1637).
  • Vol. V [IA]
    • A Challenge for Beautie (1636);
    • Loves Maistresse : or, The Queens Masque (1636);
    • The Rape of Lucrece (1638);
    • Porta pietatis, or, The Port or Harbour of Piety. Exprest in sundry Triumphes, Pageants, and Showes, at the Initiation of the Right Honourable Sir Maurice Abbot, Knight, into the Maioralty of the famous and farre renowned City London (1638);
    • The Wise-woman of Hogsdon (1638);
    • Londini Status Pacatus : or, Londons Peaceable Estate. Esprest in sundry Triumphs, Pageants, and Shewes, at the Innitiation of the right Honhourable Henry Garway, into the Maioralty of the Famous and farre Renowned City London (1639).
  • Vol. VI [IA]
    • The Royall King, and The Loyall Subject (1637);
    • Pleasant Dialogues and Dramma's, Selected Out Of Lucian, Erasmus, Textor, Ovid, &c. With Sundry Emblems extracted from the most elegant Iacobus Catsius (1637);
    • Fortune By Land and Sea. A Tragi-Comedy (1655).
      
• The Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood with a Life of the Poet and Remarks on His Writings, Ed. J. Payne Collier, 1850 from GBS, full view and PDF.  Dates indicated after each play is the date on the title page of the edition herein presented.  Caution must be exercised when examining any work touched by J. P. Collier.
  • vol. I (1850) [IA]
    • The First Part of King Edward IV (1600);
    • The Second Part of King Edward IV;
    • The Fayre Mayde of the Exchange (1607);
    • Fortune by Land and Sea (1655);
    • The Fair Maid of the West, or A Girle Worth Gold. The first part (1631);
    • The Fair Maid of the West, or A Girle Worth Gold. The second part (1631).
  • vol. II (1851) [IA]
    • The Royall King, and The Loyall Subject (1637);
    • A Woman Kilde With Kindnesse (1607);
    • If You Know Not Me, You Know No Bodie; or, The Troubles of Queen Elizabeth (1605);
    • The second part of If You Know Not Me, You Know No Bodie. With the building of the Royal Exchange : and the Famous Victorie of Queen Elizabeth, in the Yeare 1588. (1606);
    • The Golden Age : or, The Lives of Jupiter and Saturne, with the defining of the Heathen Gods (1611);
    • The Silver Age, including The Love of Jupiter to Alcmena : The Birth of Hercules, and The Rape of Prosperine. Concluding with the Arraignment of the Moon. (1613).
• Thomas Heywood, ed. A. W. Verity, part of the Mermaid Series, general editor Havelock Ellis, "The Best Plays of the Old Dramatists", 1888 from GBS, full view and PDF.  This volume is also available in several copies at the Internet Archive.
  • A Woman Killed with Kindness;
  • The Fair Maid of the West, Part 1;
  • The English Traveller;
  • The Wise-Woman of Hogsdon;
  • The Rape of Lucrece.
• A Woman Killed with Kindness, ed. F. J. Cox, 1907, from GBS in full view and PDF.
• A Woman Killed with Kindness, and The Fair Maid of the West, ed. K. L. Bates, 1917, from GBS in full view and PDF.
• The Captives, ed. Alexander Corbin Judson, 1921 from GBS in full view and PDF.  Authorship disputed.
• The fair maid of the west, or, A girle worth gold : the first part, as it was lately acted before the King and Queen, with approved liking, by the Queens Majesties comedians. London : Printed for Richard Royston ... , 1631. In Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library; facsimile edition from SCETI, University of Pennsylvania.
• Love's Mistress: or, The Queen's Masque, ed. Edmund Goldsmid, 1886 from GBS in full view and PDF.
• How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad, in A Select Collection of Old English Plays, vol. 9, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 1874, GBS, full view and PDF.
• Nicholas Hilliard's "Young Man Among Roses"
• Holinshed, Raphael, d. 1580?. The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland. London : Printed by Henry Denham, at the expenses of Iohn Harison, George Bishop, Rafe Newberie, Henrie Denham, and Thomas Woodcocke, [1587]. In Horace Howard Furness Memorial (Shakespeare) Library.  The is the facsimile edition in its entirety.  There is a handy drop-down menu at the top of the frame to quickly jump to sections of the work by monarch, from William I to Elizabeth I.
• Wikipedia article on Holinshed.
• "Holinshed, Raphael," in Dictionary of National Biography, v. 9, ed. Sidney Lee, 1908, from GBS, full view and PDF.
• The Works of Raphael Holinshed at Project Gutenberg.
• Shakspere's Holinshed: The Chronicle and the Historical Plays Compared, W. G. Boswell-Stone, 1896, from GBS, full view and PDF.
• Chronicle and Romance: Froissart, Malory, Holinshed ; with Introductions and Notes, Harvard Classics, vol. 35, 1910, from GBS, full view and PDF.
• Article on Thomas Howard from TudorPlace.
• Article on Howard from TudorPlace.
• Article on Inigo Jones in the BBC "Historic Figures" series.
• "Inigo Jones" from NNDB.
• Article on Overbury from NNDB.
• Overbury's A Wife, the poem that gained Overbury posthumous fame and proved enormously popular with moralists and male sexists of every stripe from 1613 through the remainder of the reign of James, the reign of Charles I, and even through the Commonwealth.
• The Miscellaneous Works in Prose and Verse of Sir Thomas Overbury, Knt., ed. E. R. Rimbault, 1856, from GBS, full view and PDF.
• Article on Sir Francis Walsingham from the Luminarium Encyclopedia Project.
• Walsingham is portrayed by Geoffrey Rush (none too accurately) in Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett.  The film won the Academy Award in 1998.
• He is also portrayed by Patrick Malahide in the better Elizabeth I, with Helen Mirren as the Queen and Jeremy Irons as Dudley.
• He appears, this time personated by Stephan Murray, in the great, 1970 Elizabeth R, with Glenda Jackson as Elizabeth and Robert Hardy as Dudley.
• In print, he appears in the great Anthony Burgess' A Dead Man in Deptford, (the last novel published during Burgess' lifetime, who also published a novel on the early life and loves of Shakespeare, Nothing Like the Sun, and a Shakespeare Biography).
• Wikipedia article on Sir Henry Wotton.
• The Life of Sir Henry Wotton, by Izaak Walton, transcribed by Irene C. Teas, from Project Canterbury.
• Sir Henry Wotton, from TudorPlace.
• The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, by Logan Pearsall Smith, Clarendon, 1907, in two volumes: vol. I, vol. II.
• Anonymous. THE CHESTER PLAYS: A COLLECTION OF MYSTERIES FOUNDED UPON SCRIPTURAL SUBJECTS, AND FORMERLY REPRESENTED BY THE TRADES OF CHESTER AT WHITSUNTIDE. EDITED BY THOMAS WRIGHT, ( LONDON: PRINTED FOR THE SHAKESPEARE SOCIETY. 1843, in Amyot, Thomas, et al. A Supplement to Dodsley's Old Plays, vol. I. [London]: Printed for the Shakespeare Society, 1853.
• Anonymous.  LUDUS COVENTRIAE. A Collection of Mysteries FORMERLY REPRESENTED AT COVENTRY ON THE FEAST OF CORPUS CHRISTI. EDITED BY JAMES ORCHARD HALLIWELL, LONDON : PRINTED FOR THE SHAKESPEARE SOCIETY, 1841, in Amyot, Thomas, et al. A Supplement to Dodsley's Old Plays, vol. II. [London]: Printed for the Shakespeare Society, 1853.
• "Holinshed, Raphael," in Dictionary of National Biography, v. 9, ed. Sidney Lee, 1908, from GBS, full view and PDF.
• The Works of Raphael Holinshed at Project Gutenberg.
• Shakspere's Holinshed: The Chronicle and the Historical Plays Compared, W. G. Boswell-Stone, 1896, from GBS, full view and PDF.
• Chronicle and Romance: Froissart, Malory, Holinshed ; with Introductions and Notes, Harvard Classics, vol. 35, 1910, from GBS, full view and PDF.

• The Taming of A Shrew, ed. Thomas Amyot, in Amyot, Thomas, et al. A Supplement to Dodsley's Old Plays, Vol. IV, [London]: Printed for the Shakespeare Society, 1853, from Google Book Search, full view and PDF.

• Facsimile edition (The Tudor Facsimile Texts) of the 1596 quarto (there was a 1594 printing) of The taming of a shrew. 1596 (1912), from the Internet Archive.

• Brooke's 'Romeus and Juliet,': Being the Original of Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet', "newly edited" by J. J. Munro, 1908, from Google Book Search, full view and PDF.

• Lodge's Rosalynde: Being the Original of Shakespeare's As You Like It, ed. W. W. Greg, 1907, from Google Book Search, full view and PDF.

• The True Chronicle history of King Leir, and his three daughters, Gonorill, Ragan, and Cordella, the anonymous King Leir in modern spelling. Transcribed by Barboura Flues. Edited for the web by Robert Brazil, from Elizabethan Authors.

• Facsimile edition (The Tudor Facsimile Texts) of The true chronicle history of King Leir. 1605 (1910), from the Internet Archive.

• The Chronicle History of King Leir: The Original of Shakespeare's King Lear, editied by Sidney Lee, 1909, from Google Book Search, full view and PDF.

• The Troublesome raigne of John, King of England : the first quarto, 1591, which Shakspere rewrote (about 1595) as his "Life and death of King John" : part II : a facsimile, by photolithography, from the unique original in the Capell collection at Trinity College, Cambridge (1888), by Charles Praetorius, from the Internet Archive.

• Facsimile edition (The Tudor Facsimile Texts) of The troublesome reign of John, king of England. 1591 (1911), from the Internet Archive.

• The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street by Charles Nicholl.

Southampton Ghost Portrait

It was revealed recently that "Students researching a new display of Tudor portraits in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery have uncovered a ghost figure, which may be Shakespeare's only known patron, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton" (24 Hour Museum, see also Hampshire.net).  The superficial portrait is that of Elizabeth Vernon, Southampton's wife, but an X-Ray revealed the bearded, ghostly image beneath.  It is indeed likely that the underlying image is the third earl, though at an age much riper than the one known by the poet Shakespeare when those fervent sonnets were written.  "The image closely resembles the composition of portraits of the Earl, some of which have been attributed to the Dutch artist Paul van Somer, the National Portrait Gallery said" (The Telegraph). According to the BBC description: "From the man's flamboyant appearance and long auburn hair, experts believe it shows Vernon's husband, Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton."  I don't know what the BBC analyst had for lunch, but inspect the image as I will I cannot see long auburn hair or anything else flamboyant about an elder looking Southampton.  He looks much more akin to the merchant adventurer he became, "Patron of Virginia" as A. L. Rowse would have it, than an object of homoerotic passion.

We are more used to seeing the earl from his Tower portrait, Hamlet-like clad in black, familiar cat at hand, elaborate glove (a gift from a glover's son?) in hand.  (Note also the fashionable wide, flat collar similar to the one worn by Shakespeare--if indeed it is Shakespeare--in the Chandos portrait).  At the time (1603) he was being held under arrest in the Tower for his part in the Essex uprising.  He does not bear the look of a man condemned to life in prison, and as it turned out, he was soon to be freed by the new king, James.  The Tower portrait is attributed to John de Critz (1555-1641).  We are also even more familiar, possibly, with the Hilliard miniature (1594) showing a younger, more effeminate man with, yes, those flamboyant auburn tresses the BBC writer gushes over.  Few are familiar, however, with the so called "Norton" portrait, flamboyant so much moreso, showing an extremely effeminate youth with rouged lips,  delicately laced collar, love-knot ear pendant, long, slender fingers caressing very long, curled hair.  The portrait was thought to be that of Lady Norton for some 300 years on the basis of "a long-yellowed label, now legible only beneath ultraviolet light...daughter of the Bishop of Winton" (The Observer, where the portrait is reproduced in detail).

As I say, the ghost in this week's newly discovered portrait looks much more, to me, like the mature Southampton, his age evident, like the one at the right from Edmund Lodge's Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain, vol. 4, 1835, p. 185, or the even older looking NPG 52.  A high starched collar is evident, with underpropper, and rich attire, but gone is the fair youth, replaced with a self satisfied aristocrat, worldly wise and more than a little weary.  This is a family man, a man who knows what money means and what it can do, a man without the time or inclination, perhaps, for poets or their words when there are new world's to be conquered.  Southampton died of a fever in 1624, along with his eldest son.   

William Percy's Sonnets to the Fairest Coelia

"WILLIAM PERCY, the "Sweet Singer" of these Sonnets, was the third, but second surviving son of Henry, Eighth Earl of Northumberland, by Catherine Neville, eldest daughter and co-heir of John, Lord Latimcr. The Earl, his father, having been committed to the Tower of London, charged with plotting an invasion of England for the purpose of setting free Mary Queen of Scots, perished therein by his own hand on 2ist June, 1585. His mother died 28th October, 1 596, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His eldest brother was born in 1564, and a fifth brother in 1575 ; so that his birth may be approximately assigned to about 1570.

"In the Strafford Papers (vol. ii, p. 168), a Mr. Garrard says in 1638 that "he lives obscurely in Oxford, and drinks nothing but ale." He lived a mal-content and retired many years and died in Penny-Farthing street, — according to Wood's Ashmolean MSS. He was buried in Christ Church Cathedral, 28th May, 1648, and is simply called in the register "William Percy, Esquire." Such is the meagre l of outward biographic fact that has come down concerning this so long forgotten scion of an illustrious House..."

So begins A. B. Grosart's Introduction to The Sonnets of William Percy, first published as Sonnets to the Fairest Coelia in 1594. According to Grosart, Percy wrote much, "...Comoedyes and pastoralls, with their songs ; as also one bookc of cpigrammes, by W. P., Esquire," and his Grace the Duke of Devonshire has other MSS. of his. For the Roxburghe Club Joseph Haslewood edited " The Cuck-quenes and the Faery Pastorall, or Forest of Elves " (1824)..." but I cannot locate a copy on the Internet.  It is a shame a copy written by one in the Shakespeare circle--for he is, at least through his acquaintance with Barnabe Barnes, of whom more below--with a comedic-pastoral theme on the subject of Faeries, written so close to the composition of A Midsummer Night's Dream cannot be conveniently examined.

Percy and Barnes seem to have been close friends.  Percy published a madrigal, prefixed to Barnes' Four Books of Offices (1606), and Barnes dedicated the Offices to "the right noble and virtuous gentlemen, M. William Percy, Esquier, his deerest friend." 

Of Percy's Sonnets, Grosart observes:

"Intrinsically these Sonnets belong to a humble class. They have the plaintive tone of a genuine love-disappointment. That, too, imparts its own music to several of them, e.g., Sonnets vi, xiii, xiiii, xvi, xviii. There are, also, gleams of word-beauty, though "few and far between." Taken altogether, for themselves and from the position of the Author, " Coelia " must be regarded as worthy of a place in the yet unwritten history of our Sonnet-literature, and so of our limited reproduction."  [The volume digitized by Google Book Search is number 23 of only 50 printed.  "Proof-sheets and waste pages have been destroyed."].

One must agree with Grosart's evaluation, but what fodder for imaginative literary speculations...

Barnabe Barnes

This, on the little known Barnabe Barnes, from Morley's 1893 English Writers: an attempt towards a History of English Literature:

"Barnabe Barnes published, in May, 1593, his "Parthenophil and Parthenophe," which is a way of naming "the Maid and her Lover," as Sidney's Astrophel and Stella were names for "the Star and her Lover." It is a collection of a hundred and four sonnets, twenty-six madrigals, and a sestine exact in technical construction. These are followed by twenty-one elegies, a canzone, a translation of the first Idyll of Moschus, twenty odes, four more sestines, and a few sonnets of compliment.

"Barnabe Barnes was the fourth of nine children of Richard Barnes, Bishop of Durham, who died in 1587. A year before his father's death Barnabe entered Brasenose College, but he left Oxford without graduating. In 1591 Barnabe Barnes went with the Earl of Essex into Normandy, to join the French against the Prince of Parma. As a friend of Gabriel Harvey, whom he supported with a sonnet against Nash, Barnabe Barnes received in his own face some of the mud thrown in the Nash and Harvey gutter-war [See Nash's "Have with you to Saffron Walden" where he accuses Barnes of cowardice]. While many of the sonnets in "Parthenophil and Parthenophe" are in the form then commonly used, of three quatrains and a couplet, others vary the rhyming, and some — as the thirtieth, thirty- second, thirty-third, and others — are accurately formed on Petrarch's model. In 1595 Barnabe Barnes published "A Divine Centvrie of Spirituall Sonnets," mainly Petrarchan in their form. Whether he sing of earthly or of heavenly love, the passion is conventional, but there is livelier imagery in the poems upon earthly love. After the death of Elizabeth, Barnabe Barnes published, in 1606, "Foure Bookes of Offices ; enabling privat Persons for the speciall service of all good Princes and Policies." This was followed in the next year (1607) by a tragedy, called " The Divel's Charter," on Pope Alexander VI. and Lucretia Borgia. Barnes died in December, 1609" (pp. 214-215).

Barnes' connections to Shakespeare are tantalizing.  Their common acqaintance is John Florio (p. 463), translator of Montaigne and secretary to Southampton, who was in Barnes' service while he was at Oxford.  Barnes and his friend William Percy, to whom Parthenophil and Parthenophe is dedicated, were both sonneteers in the same circles as Shakespeare in the years when he was, most likely, writing his sonnets.  Barnes, in 1593 wrote a flattering sonnet to Southampton, and at least one widely read biographer (Sir Sidney Lee in his 1898 biography; see also Lee's DNB entry on Shakespeare in 1909) assigned Barnes the role of rival poet of the Sonnets. Later Barnes contributed to the spate of Jacobean plays on witchcraft, necromancy and the daemonic, The Devil's Charter, reflecting the interests of King James, near the same time that Shakespeare wrote Macbeth.  Barnes' play was performed before the King by Shakespeare's company.

Here are several links to Barnes' work:

• Sonnets by Barnes in Specimens of English Sonnets, ed. Alexander Dyce, 1833, from GBS in full view and PDF.
• The Devil's Charter, ed. R. B. McKerrow, 1904, from GBS, full view and PDF.
• The Devils Charter, students facsimile edition, from the Dyce collection, 1913, from GBS, full view and PDF.
• The Poems of Barnaby Barnes, ed. A. B. Grosart, 1875, from GBS, full view and PDF.

Modern Macbeths