Robert Southwell and the Mystery of W. S.

"The Author to His Louing Cosin Master W. S."

Such is the inscription to Robert Southwell's Saint Peter's Complaint.  Actually, when the poem was published in 1595 the inscription was simply "The Author to His Loving Cosin."  "Master W. S." was added in the 1616 edition, significantly just after Shakespeare's death.  For the living, and especially those with Catholic sympathies, being named by an infamous Jesuit would not have been welcome.

What are the connections between Southwell and Shakespeare?  According to Peter Ackroyd, Southwell was the young Earl of Southampton's "erstwhile spiritual adviser" (Shakespeare, p. 208); the same Southampton to whom Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece are dedicated, and the same man who is supposed by most to be the young man of the Sonnets.  Ackroyd repeats the speculation that Shakespeare may have served briefly as Southampton's secretary (p. 210).  It was the time of plague, when the theatres were closed and Shakespeare was recasting himself as a love poet.

Shakespeare could well have met Southwell at Titchfield House, away from the plague-ridden city.  (Interestingly, Ackroyd notes that the ground-plan for Titchfield House has "an upstairs chamber designated as the "Playhouse Room" where, it may well be, Love's Labour's Lost was first acted--the play is so full of inside jokes and insider parodies that it is often speculated that it was written to be privately performed, and later adapted to the public stage).  Southwell as also related to Shakespeare's mother's family, the Ardens--therefore, Shakespeare's "Loving Cosin."

Michael Wood's Shakespeare (p. 151) has an interesting section on the Shakespeare-Southwell connection where the facts can be read in greater detail.  Southwell was a Jesuit missionary to England, like his predecessor the martyred St. Edmund Campion.  He had been in country since 1586, living the life of a fugitive priest (bringing to mind Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory--persecution has ever been the preoccupation of men).  Topcliffe (Elizabeth's chief torturer of Catholics) had nearly captured him in 1591, but in 1592 "...Elizabeth's Public Enemy Number One had walked the streets in broad daylight...his track as a hunted man naturally led to the Southamptons at Titchfield" (Wood, p. 151).

In the autumn of 1591 Southwell wrote his An Humble Supplication to Her Majesy, where he argued that it was possible to be loyal and Catholic both.  Elizabeth did not agree.  Being a poet, Southwell also wrote, "perhaps just before his capture in July 1592" (Wood, p. 153) his letter "To My Worthy Good Cosen Master W. S." where he urges the superior poet to dedicate himself to spiritual poetry, rather than love poetry.

"POETS, by abusing their talent, and making the lollies and faynings of loue the customarie subiect of their base cndeuours, haue so discredited this facultie, that a poet, a louer, and a Iyer, are by many reckoned but three words of one signification" (Saint Peter's Complaint, p. 4).

Did Shakespeare remember and transmogrify this line when he came to write A Midsummer Night's Dream?:

The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact (5.1.8-9)

In the letter to the reader appended to the poem, he chides the poets of the age:

This makes my mourning muse dissolve in tears,
This themes my heavy pen, — too plain in prose; 
Christ's thorn is sharp, no head his garland wears;
Still finest wits are 'stilling Venus' rose: "
In paynim toys the sweetest veins are spent;
To Christian works few have their talents lent. (13-18)

Certainly Southwell admired Shakespeare's "finest wit," and seems to make reference to Venus and Adonis, which he might have read at Titchfield House--though this may be reading too much into the lines.

Southwell concludes his admonition to W. S. most charmingly:

"Blame me not (good Cosin) though I send you a blame-worthy present; in which the most that can commend it is the good will of the Writer; neither arte nor invention giuing it any credite. If in me this be a fault, you cannot be faultlesse that did importune me to commit it, and therefore you must beare part of the penance when it shall please sharp censures to impose it. In the meane time, with many good wishes, I send you these fewe ditties; adde you the tunes, and let the Meane, I pray you, be still a part in all your musicke" (Saint Peter's Complaint, p. 5-6).

Shakespeare's love of music and knowledge of technical music terms have led many to speculate that if he did not play an instrument, he at least sang--as any Elizabethan actor would have to do.  The passage seems to suggest that he could add tunes to make the ditties melodious, while taking their meaning to heart in his own poetry.

As with most things in Shakespeare biography, there are tantalizing clues, but no conclusive proofs.  The weight of the evidence, however, does seem to indicate that the letter prefaced to Saint Peter's Complaint may well be addressed to Shakespeare.

As noted, Southwell was captured in July 1592, imprisoned and tortured.  He was repeatedly tortured over the next three years and suffered horribly.  He was finally executed, being hung, drawn and quartered, in on February 20, 1595.  He was beatified in 1929, and canonized in 1970.