Gabriel Harvey and the Wiser Sort

Gabriel Harvey, scholar, intimate friend to Spenser, enemy of Nashe, a man with his hand on the literary pulse of his time, and an inveterate marginal annotator wrote this now famous marginalia in his copy of Speght's Chaucer:

And now translated Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, & Bartas himself deserue curious  comparison with Chaucer, Lidgate, & owre best Inglish, auncient & moderne. Amongst  which, the Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia, & the Faerie Queene ar now freshest in request : & Astrophil, & Amyntas ar none of the idlest pastimes of sum fine humanists. The Earle of Essex much commendes Albions England : and not unworthily for
diuerse notable pageants, before, & in the Chronicle. Sum Inglish, & other Histories nowhere more sensibly described, or more inwardly discouered. The Lord Daniel, Mountioy makes the like account of Daniels peece of the Chronicle, touching the Vsurpation of Henrie of Bullingbrooke. which in deede is a fine, sententious, & politique peece of Poetrie: as profitable, as pleasurable.  The younger sort takes much delight in Shakespeares Venus, & Adonis : but his Lucrece, & his tragedie of  Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke haue it in them, to please  the wiser sort. Or such poets : or better : or none.

Vilia miretur vulgus : mihi flavus Apollo
Pocula Castaliae plena ministret aquae :

quoth Sir Edward Dier, betwene iest, & earnest. Whose written deuises farr excell most of the sonets, and cantos in print. His Amaryllis, & Sir Walter Raleighs Cynthia how fine & sweet inuentions? Excellent matter of emulation  for Spencer, Constable, France, Watson, Daniel, Warner, Chapman, Siluester, Shakespeare, & the rest   of owr florishing metricians...I have a phansie to Owens new Epigrams, as pithie as elegant, as plesant as sharp, & sumtime as weightie as breife..." (Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia, G. C. Moore Smith, 1913, p. 232-233).

Mention of the work that put Shakespeare on the literary map, Venus and Adonis, could not be avoided, but Harvey is quick to distance himself from Shakespeare's erotic, if melifluous, poem and stress the opinion among graver critics that Lucrece and Hamlet are worth serious attention.  The Latin tag associated with Dier (Sir Edward Dyer 1543-1607 most of whose poetic works are lost was later resurrected (though now forgotten) by Alden Brooks as a Shakespeare authorial candidate--see Will Shakespeare and the Dyers Hand, 1943) is, of course, from Ovid's Amores and serves as the epigraph to Venus and Adonis, the mention of which must have put Harvey in mind of the passage and then by transference of Dyer. [It means, "Let vile people admire vile things; may fair haired Apollo serve me goblets filled with Castalian water", Apollo being the god of poetry, the Castalian springs being sacred to the Muses--see Venus and Adonis in The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Katharine E. Maus].

This piece of marginialia is important for a couple of reasons.  One, as a testimony to the regard with which Shakepseare was held by a very literate contemporary; and two, as a possible clue to the date of Hamlet.

The story is a bit complicated, but worth retelling to show how great men can be led astray, how ordinary readers can be deceived by the authority of the same great men, and how we must always be mindful that our assumptions and normal parlance is not that of the Elizabethan age.  A full treatment can be found in the Preface to Smith's Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia, cited above, and a summary and comments from J. O. Haliwell-Phillipps Memoranda on the tragedy of Hamlet, (1879), given below:

There was once in existence a copy of Speght's edition of Chaucer, 1598, with manuscript notes by Gabriel Harvey, one of those notes being in the following terms, "the younger sort take much delight in Shakespear's Venus and Adonis, but his Lucrece and his tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke have it in them to please the wiser sort." This note was first printed in 1766 by Steevens, who gives the year 1598 as the date of its insertion in the volume, but, observes Dr. Ingleby, "we are unable to verify Steeven's note or collate his copy, for the book which contained Harvey's note passed into the collection of Bishop Percy, and his library was burnt in the fire at Northumberland House."

[At this point Smith, in quoting this passage from Halliwell-Phillipps, adds the note (for he had inspected the volume himself) "It is curious that this statement should have been made again and again for three-quarters of a century when, as Sir Ernest Clarke has pointed out to me, Joseph Cradock in his Literary and Miscellaneous Memoirs ( 1828) had already denied the fact. 'It has been asserted that Dr. Percy sustained great losses at the
fire at Northumberland house: but I [Cradock] was present when his apartments
were in flames, and can now explicitly declare that all his books and papers were
safely removed.] 

Under these circumstances one can only add the  opinions of those who have had the opportunity of inspecting the volume. Firstly, from a letter of Percy to Malone, 1803, "In the passage which extolls Shakespeare's tragedy Spenser is quoted by name among our flourishing metricians. Now this edition of Chaucer was published in 1598, and Spenser's death is ascertained to have been in January, 1598-9, so that these passages were all written in 1598, and proves that Hamlet was written before that year, as you have fixed it." Secondly, from a letter from Malone to Percy, written also in 1803, in which he gives reasons for controverting this opinion, "when I was in Dublin I remember you thought that, though Harvey had written 1598 in his book, it did not follow from thence that his remarks were then written; whilst, on the other hand, I contended that, from the mention of Spenser, they should seem to have been written in that year; so that, like the two Reynoldses, we have changed sides and each converted the other ; for I have now no doubt that these observations were written in a subsequent year. The words that deceive are, our now flourishing metricians, by which Harvey does not mean now living but now admired or in vogue ; and what proves this is that in his catalogue he mixes the living and the dead, for Thomas Watson was dead before 1593. With respect to Axiophilus I think you will agree with me hereafter that not Spenser, but another person, was meant. Having more than once named Spenser, there could surely be no occasion to use any mysterious appellation with respect to that poet. My theory is that Harvey bought the book in 1598 on its publication and then sat down to read it, and that his observations were afterwards inserted at various times. That passage, which is at the very end and subjoined to Lydgate's catalogue, one may reasonably suppose was not written till after he had perused the whole volume." Thirdly, from Malone's observations on the date of the tragedy, ed. 1821, ii. 369, "In a former edition of this essay I was induced to suppose that Hamlet must have been written prior to 1598, from the loose manner in which Mr. Steevens has mentioned a manuscript note by Gabriel Harvey in a copy, which had belonged to him, of Speght's edition of Chaucer, in which, we are told, he has set down Hamlet as a performance with which he was well acquainted in the year 1598. But I have been favoured by Dr. Percy, the possessor of the book referred to, with an inspection of it ; and, on an attentive examination, I have found reason to believe, that the note in question may have been written in the latter end of the year 1600. Harvey doubtless purchased this volume in 1598, having, both at the beginning and end of it, written his name. But it by no means follows that all the intermediate remarks which are scattered throughout were put down at the same time. He speaks of Translated Tasso in one passage; and the first edition of Fairfax, which is doubtless alluded to, appeared in 1600"  (pp. 46-49).

The long and short of it is, the marginal note does not help us in dating Hamlet because, as Malone perceives, the note could have been made at any time after 1598.  A closer look at Harvey's list of metricians shows that he uses "the present tense in the historic fashion" (Sidney Lee, A Life of William Shakespeare, p. 358).  Watson, mentioned in the list, died in 1592, and Owen's New Epigrams did not appear until 1606.  Hamlet was entered in the Stationers' Register July 26, 1602 and was probably first performed in 1601.  Steevens was completely wrong about the volume containing Harvey's note, but his authority was such that he was followed blindly for nearly a century.