Leonard Digges, the First Bardolator

Leonard Digges (1588 - 1635) was an Oxford scholar, poet and translator.  He is best known for his commendatory poem to Shakespeare in the First Folio:

To the Memorie of the deceased Authour Maister W. Shakespeare

Shake-speare, at length thy pious fellowes give
The world thy Workes : thy Workes, by which, out-live
Thy Tombe, thy name must when that stone is rent,
And Time dissolves thy Stratford Moniment,
Here we alive shall view thee still. This Booke,
When Brasse and Marble fade, shall make thee looke
Fresh to all Ages : when Posteritie
Shall loath what's new, thinke all is prodegie
That is not Shake-speares; ev'ry Line, each Verse
Here shall revive, redeeme thee from thy Herse.
Nor Fire, nor cankring Age, as Naso said,
Of his, thy wit-fraught Booke shall once invade.
Nor shall I e're beleeve, or thinke thee dead.
(Though mist) untill our bankrout Stage be sped
(Imposible) with some new straine t'out-do
Passions of Juliet, and her Romeo ;
Or till I heare a Scene more nobly take,
Then when thy half-Sword parlying Romans spake.
Till these, till any of thy Volumes rest
Shall with more fire, more feeling be exprest,
Be sure, our Shake-speare, thou canst never dye,
But crown'd with Lawrell, live eternally.

While conventional as poetry, the work is interesting on two accounts: first, it dates the Stratford monument to a time prior to 1623; and second, it mentions specifics from the plays, the "Passions of Juliet, and her Romeo," and "Then when thy half-Sword Parlying romans spake."  Digges was obviously a play goer as well as a poet.  The "half-Sword parlying romans" must refer to Julius Caesar which was not in print until the Folio itself was published.

Digges is less well known for his commendatory poem to the 1640 edition of Poems: Written by Wil. Shakespeare, Gent. (see the facsimile edition at The Rare Book Room).  I render it here in transcription:

Vpon Master W ILLIAM S H A K E S P E A R E,
the Deceased Authour, and his P O E M S .

Poets are borne not made, when I would prove
This truth, the glad rememberance I must love
Of never dying Shakespeare, who alone,
Is argument enough to make that one.
First, that he was a Poet none would doubt,
That heard th’applause of what he sees set out
Imprinted; where thou hast (I will not say
Reader his Workes for to contrive a Play:
To him twas none) the patterne of all wit,
Art without Art unparaleld as yet.
Next Nature onely helpt him, for looke thorow
This whole Booke, thou shalt find he doth not borrow,
One phrase from Greekes, nor Latines imitate,
Nor once from vulgar Languages Translate,
Nor Plagiari-like from others gleane,
Nor begges he from each witty friend a Scene
To peece his Acts with, all that he doth write,
Is pure his owne, plot, language exquisite,
But oh ! what praise more powerfull can we give
The dead, then that by him the Kings men live,
His Players, which should they but have shar’d the Fate,
All else expir’d within the short Termes date;
How could the Globe have prospered, since through want
Of change, the Plaies and Poems had growne scant.
But happy Verse thou shalt be sung and heard,
When hungry quills shall be such honour bard.
Then vanish upstart Writers to each Stage,
You needy Poetasters of this Age,
Where Shakespeare liv’d or spake, Vermine forbeare,
Least with your froth you spot them, come not neere;
But if you needs must write, if poverty
So pinch, that otherwise you starve and die,
On Gods name may the Bull or Cockpit have
Your lame blancke Verse, to keepe you from the grave:
Or let new Fortunes younger brethren see,
What they can picke from your leane industry.
I doe not wonder when you offer at
Blacke-Friers, that you suffer : tis the fate
Of richer veines, prime judgements that have far’d
The worse, with this deceased man compar’d.
So have I seene, when Cesar would appeare,
And on the Stage at half-sword parley were,
Brutus and Cassius : oh how the Audience,
Were ravish’d, with what wonder they went thence,
When some new day they would not brooke a line,
Of tedious (though well laboured ) Catilines;
Sejanus too was irksome, they priz’de more
Honest Iago, or the jealous Moore.
And though the Fox and subtill Alchimist,
Long intermitted could not quite be mist,
Though these have sham’d all the Ancients, and might raise,
Their Authours merit with a crowne of Bayes.
Yet these sometimes, even at a friends desire
Acted, have scarce defrai’d the Seacoale fire
And doore-keepers : when let but Falstaffe come,
Hall, Poines, the rest you scarce shall have a roome
All is so pester’d : let but Beatrice
And Benedicke be seene, loe in a trice
The Cockpit Galleries, Boxes, all are full
To heare Maluoglio that crosse garter’d Gull.
Briefe, there is nothing in his wit fraught Booke,
Whose sound we would not heare, on whose worth looke
Like old coyned gold, whose lines in every page,
Shall passe true currant to succeeding age.
But why doe I dead Sheakspeares praise recite,
Some second Shakespeare must of Shakespeare write;
For me tis needlesse, since an host of men,
Will pay to clap his praise, to free my Pen.

It is impossible to date this poem, since it was published five years after Digges' death.  Nor is it possible to say how Benson, the publisher of the Poems got hold of it. It is informative, however, in its references to play houses (the Bull, the Cockpit the Fortune), playwrights (mainly Ben Jonson), and Shakespeare's plays themselves, of which few contemporary descriptions survive.  It might be regarded as an answer to Robert Greene's long-lived insult against Shakespeare (Greene of the upstart crow, 1592), since it insults in its turn the "needy poetasters of this age."   Certainly it confirms posterity's judgment.  Whether it can be said to be foundational is another matter.  It compares Shakespeare with Jonson, the majordomo of poetasters, and finds Ben's line laboured, and irksome.  This is well on the way to the bardolatry embraced by the next century and spearheaded by Garrick.

Julius Caesar in particular must have impressed Digges, because here he expands the reference he made in the earlier poem:

So have I seene, when Cesar would appeare,
And on the Stage at half-sword parley were,
Brutus and Cassius : oh how the Audience,
Were ravish’d, with what wonder they went thence,
When some new day they would not brooke a line,
Of tedious (though well laboured ) Catilines;
Sejanus too was irksome, they priz’de more
Honest Iago, or the jealous Moore.

Oh how the audience were ravish'd...

We hear of Falstaff, Hal, Poines, Beatrice and Benedick, Malvolio...

Briefe, there is nothing in his wit fraught Booke,
Whose sound we would not heare, on whose worth looke
Like old coyned gold, whose lines in every page,
Shall passe true currant to succeeding age.

This is welcome testimony for being contemporary, or nearly so.  It is also odd in that it is prefaced to an unauthorized book of poems, NOT, plays.

Benson's Poems is an odd volume all around.  It contains a knock-off of the Droeshout engraving, with lines lifted from Ben Jonson's "To the memory of my beloved, the Author," and then the Digges poem and a shorter one by John Warren.  It does not contain Venus and Adonis or The Rape of Lucrece, but does contain the Sonnets from the 1609 edition, with the exception of eight of them, but regroups them and gives them unauthorized titles.  It also contains much spurious material--the non-Shakespearean poems from the 1612 edition of The Passionate Pilgrim, including Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," Raleigh's "Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd." It also reproduces Milton's Epitaph reproduced from the 1632 Second Folio, Basse's Elegy on Shakespeare (and subscribed "W. B."), and much other eclectic, non-Shakespearean material.  The purpose being, one supposed, to pad out the volume.

Be that as it may, it is remarkable to observe in Digges' poem the seeds of the bardolatry that would sweep the next century, down to his uncritical acceptance on Shakespeare's plots as original and the idea that he never plagiarized another author, both outrageous ideas in the light of modern scholarship.

Digges' knowledge of Shakespeare must have been personal.  There is a close connection.  His mother, after the death of her first husband, Thomas Digges (Leonard's father and the famous astronomer), married (1603) Thomas Russell, Shakespeare's friend and one of the overseers of his will ("And I doe intreat & Appoint the saied Thomas Russell Esquier & ffrauncis Collins gent to be overseers hereof " see the transcript of the will at the National Archive).  Russell lived at Alderminster, just four miles from Stratford.  Interestingly, Sir Dudley Digges, Leonard's brother, was an officer of the Virginia Company, and may have been at least one of the connections used by Shakespeare to gain inside knowledge of the loss of the Sea Venture and the shipwreck that became the basis for The Tempest.