Did Falstaff Write a Poem for Lowe’s Chyrurgerie?

Not everything that might connect Thomas Churchyard with the character Falstaff went into Edward de Vere’s Retainer Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff.  Some that did not can go a long way toward demonstrating how the selection process proceeded.  At the same time, looking at the “close calls” can make clear what might at some point, with the addition of further information, rise to the level of “evidence”.

Just one of Sir John Falstaff’s seemingly unaccountable characteristics, for example, is his mention of having read the ancient physician Galen of Pergamon.  Galen originally wrote in Greek but his works had long been translated into Latin by the 16^th century.  Sir John says of the illness of King Henry IV:

Fal. And I hear, moreover, his Highness is fallen into this same whoreson apoplexy.

Ch.Just. Well, God mend him! I pray you, let me speak with you.

Fal. This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy, an't please your lordship ; a kind of sleeping in the blood, a whoreson tingling.

Ch. Just. What tell you me of it? be it as it is.

Fal. It hath its original from much grief, from study, and perturbation of the brain : I have read the cause of his effects in Galen : it is a kind of deafness.[1]

As I have pointed out in my book, Churchyard was able to read Latin well enough to do a self-serving but serviceable translation from Ovid and a few other odds and ends.

Moreover, in the Henry IV plays, the old pikeman is in the habit of using medical imagery.  Reflecting on the value of honor, he sees the injured soldier in the field in just such terms:

Fal….  Can honour set-to a leg ? no: or an arm ? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is honour? a word. What is that word, honour? air.[2]

It is not unusual that a soldier should picture the effects of the battlefield in such terms.  Somewhat less common, Falstaff describes a man’s love life with the ladies in battlefield terms.  The combatant’s pike is metaphorically… well… it shouldn’t take too much to figure out what it is.  Pikeman and pike, injured, come off the battlefield toward the surgery.

Fal. If the cook help to make the gluttony, you help to make the diseases, Doll : we catch of you, Doll, we catch of you; grant that, my pure virtue, grant that.

Dol. Ay, marry, our chains and our jewels.

Fal. Your brooches, pearls, and ouches: — for to serve bravely is to come halting off, you know: to come off the breach with his pike bent bravely, and to surgery bravely; to venture upon the charged chambers bravely,…[3] 

The Galen, though, is not the kind of reading which might occupy a soldier’s time.  Either in Greek or Latin.  Falstaff was not only a flim-flam man of the highest skills, he was a man with a level of culture not heard of among enlisted ranks.  Few among the enlisted ranks could read English at the time much less Latin.

But, his time in the wars long over, we find Churchyard writing a commendatory poem for Peter Lowe’s Discourse: of the Whole Art of Chyrurgerie. Wherein is exactly set downe the Definition, Causes, Prognostications, and Cures of all sorts of Diseases, both in generall and particular, which at any time heretofore have been practized by any Chirurgion: According to the opinion of all the ancient professors of that Science.

The Noblest Science under sunne,

That most mens lives doe save,

The art that greatest praise hath won,

Whereby great helpe we have,

Is Surgerie, for knowledge there,

In highest grace doth shine.

The skill is honoured eueriewhere,"

for specially griefes divine.

When wrath and rage makes quarrels rise;

And men in furie fight,

In Surgeon such great knowledge lies,

Greene wounds are healed streight.

Flesh cut, bloud lost, and every vaine, .

And sinnowes shronke away,

He can by art restore againe:

And comfort their decay.

The mangled bones are set and knit,

In their owne proper place,

And everie Limme in order fit,

Comes to their force and grace.

By surgeons mean who quickly sees,

The daungers as they are:

And mends the mischiefs by degrees,

with knowledge and great care.

Hath instruments to search each joynt,

Each skull or brused bone.

And can with balmes and oyles anoynt

The nerves and vaines each one.

Knowes all the nature, and each kinde

Of hearbes, of flowers, and weedes,

And can the secret vertue find

Of blossomes, leaves, and seedes.

Heales cankers, ulcers, and old sores,

Hath precious powders small

To eate proud flesh, and rotten sores, ---

And drie up humor all. ---

What griefe of body can be named,

But he can helpe in hast[e]?

Yea though the liver be inflam'd;

Or lights and lungs doe wast[e].

In time and temper he can bring

The lack of each lame part,

As though in hand he had a string,

To leade mans life by art.

Halfegods good Surgeons maybe cald,

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[1] 2 Henry IV. I.ii.

[2] 1 Henry IV. V.ii.

[3] 2 Henry IV. II.iv.

• Desperately Seeking Bridget (de Vere).  August 24, 2014.  "Even most people who assert that the Earl of Oxford was the poet and playwright Shake-speare (a group to which I resoundingly belong) do not seem to know that she was engaged, in 1598, to William Herbert, soon to inherit the Earldom of Pembroke,..."

• Check out Virtual Grub Street's English Renaissance Article Index for articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

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