Edward de Vere in Palermo: the final analysis.

Edward de Vere in Transit:

Pt. 1 - How Edward de Vere Didn't Depart Italy (it turns out).

Pt. 2-1 - The Earle of Oxenford a famous man for Chivalrie

Pt. 2-2 - Crocodiles, Prester John and where the Earle of Oxenford wasn't.

Pt. 2-3 - Edward de Vere in Palermo: the final analysis.

Standard Citation: Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “Edward de Vere in Palermo: the final analysis.”Virtual Grub Street. 29 January 2018.

So far, in the previous two sections of this part 2 of Edward de Vere in transit, we have seen that:

1) Edward Webbe claims to have been present at famous events in an order that they did not occur;

2) He provides few details about the places he visited and the few he gives are almost always invented;

3) Nearly all of the correct details of his travels in Russian and the Near East can be found in Hakluyt’s then recently published, and enormously popular, Principal Navigations and Francesco Sansovino’s also popular  Historia Vniversale Dell Origine Et Imperio De Tvrchi;

6) Webbe claims to have visited the land of the mythological figure Prester John;

7) He claims to have tarried with Prester John himself;

8) He claims to have frolicked with unicorns in Prester John’s menagerie;

9) He claims to have seen Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford, challenge all comers to combat in Palermo, Italy.

10) History provides no further evidence of the existence of the man “Edward Webbe” or his adventures than appears in his Travailes.

Morever, Webbe’s general description of Egypt could almost be taken entirely from Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones (seven books of Natural Questions).  The mythological relationship between the dolphin with the crocodile began with the Naturalis Historiae (Natural History) of the Elder Pliny and a similarity of appearance between the two was a staple of medieval depictions of sea monsters.  There is every reason to suspect that Edward Webbe is not the “a simple man void of learning” that he represents himself to be.

Webbe returns to England, from his years of sailing and (mostly) slavery, through Italy.  His adventures do not end at the Italian shore.  As in his earlier adventures, description is flawed where it is not lacking and the gripping dramatic crises come rapid fire.  He is well treated, in Bologna, by an English Bishop called “Doctor Poole”.  The only English bishop to fit that description was the famous Doctor Pole who had been dead some 30 years at the time of his visit.  In Rome he meets with mixed treatment and escapes the English College, in that city, and the English Cardinal Allen, by managing to petition the Pope for relief.

In Naples he is tortured for 7 months upon suspicion of being an English spy.  Upon his release, he is informed by the Italians and Spaniards that England has lost its battle with the Spanish Armada and the Queen been taken prisoner.  The year, then, is 1588, and is confirmed by the fact that he arrives back in England in May of 1589.

But what can all of this mean?  What are we to make of it?

There would seem to be three possibilities.  First, Edward Webbe may actually have gone through the adventures he claimed to have survived.  The details could be so fantastical not because he has created them from Latin, Italian and English texts at hand and a fertile imagination but “for that my memory faileth me, by meanes of my great and greeuous troubles.”

Failing this, a pamphleteer named Edward Webbe may have invented his adventures to try to get a piece of the highly lucrative market in travel accounts.  He may have found writing pamphlets was not something by which he could thrive and have made his first pamphlet his last (disappearing thereafter from the scene).

The third option may be the most likely:  A pamphleteer not named Edward Webbe sought to profit by such a travelogue under the pseudonym “Edward Webbe”.  He used the pseudonym but once and went on writing under others and under his own name.  Or perhaps it was he who abandoned pamphleteering after that final attempt to make it pay his bills.

This pamphleteer who wrote what must then be a fictional account left us extensive hints as to his identity if he happened to continue in the trade under his name and others.  By his own description, Webbe entered service and traveled to Russia when he was 7 years of age.  Any formal schooling he received would have had to come before then.  Yet rather than the simple man the author portrayed himself to be, he was clearly well educated. He could read Latin and Italian and was fluent enough in English to write the sophisticated introductory acrostic poem.

Our mystery pamphleteer knew the publishing trade well enough to place his product with William Wright who had just begun publishing the work of Robert Greene, the premiere pamphleteer at the time.  He also had some personal reason to include a chivalrous, dauntless Earl of Oxford in his story. Regardless of these hints, the author could arguably be anyone.  That said, the hints point toward someone in particular.

In the year 1589 — the year before the Travailes was published — Robert Greene, the premiere pamphleteer in London at the time, extended young Thomas Nashe the high compliment of inviting him to write the preface for his volume Menaphon.  Nashe had just been sent packing by his college at Cambridge.  He was determined to make a living by his pen.  Greene saw him as a useful ally and helped him find work.

Freelancing was a hand-to-mouth living, at the time, when one managed to make a living from it at all.  As I pointed out in my Discovered a New Shakespeare Sonnet [link] Nashe surely had to write many more pages under pen names or anonymously than we have yet to attribute to him in order to make ends meet.  He would have to have been continually productive over a wide range of projects.

Two years after the mention of Edward de Vere in Webbe’s Travails, in the dedication to his Strange News, Nashe would announce to the world his delight at being the good friend and drinking buddy of “the most copious Carminist of our time, and famous persecutor of Priscian, his verie friend Maister Apis lapis… Gentle M[aster] William”.  Because the dedication is troublesome for the argument that the traditional Stratford candidate was Shakespeare it is disputed that Apis Lapis (Stubborn Ox) could be the Earl of Oxford.  Had the authorship question not required a convenient blindness all would suddenly be able to see that the Carminist was very likely De Vere.  Thomas Nashe was delighted to be the friend of the Earl of Oxford and wanted to ingratiate himself by a little public flattery.

If the fact that Webbe shared his publisher with the mentor of Thomas Nashe and that he shared Nashe’s trait of flattering the Earl of Oxford in his works are not enough to argue for the possibility that Nashe wrote the Travails in order to cash in on the tremendous popularity of the travelogue genre, there is yet another, and even more striking, shared characteristic.

Two years later still, in 1594, a much more mature Nashe would write a collection of stories disguised as a travelogue called “The Unfortunate Traveller”.  His protagonist, Jack Wilton, travels with Edward de Vere’s famous literary uncle, the Earl of Surrey, who would engage in a tournament in Florence where he “made all his encounterers new scoure their armor in the dust.”  Surrey announces his intent to travel through Italy doing feats of arms.  As he does, however, a letter arrives from Henry VIII ordering him back to England and he and Wilton part ways.

On the other side of the ledger, it must be admitted, Webbe’s Travails are not in a style (better said “lack of style”) that Thomas Nashe had ever employed in any of his acknowledged works.  Actually, it is as far from the slashing style that Nashe so loved as a style can possibly be.  So much so that De Vere’s secretary, Anthony Munday, with his much less ornamented style, begins to come to mind.  For his part, he had a direct relationship with the publisher William Wright who published several of his works between 1580-85.

The one thing that can be said with perfect certainty, regardless who wrote the Travailes, nothing but the base events that could have been gleaned from Hakluyt’s 1589 Principal Voyages and Sansovino’s Universal History… of the Turks rise above the level of fiction (lurid inasmuch as possible).  Not a single detail that can be verified proves to be remotely correct.  Thus Edward de Vere riding through Italy challenging all comers can only be understood to be one more such fiction.  As regards the Earl of Oxford’s travels in Italy, in 1575-6, it has zero evidentiary value.

• Let the sky rain potatoes! December 16, 2017. "In fact, the sweet potato had only just begun to be a delicacy within the reach of splurging poets and playwrights and members of the middle classes at the time that The Merry Wives of Windsor (the play from which Falstaff is quoted) was written.  The old soldier liked to keep abreast of the new fads."
• Leonard Digges and the Shakespeare First Folio.  November 30, 2017.  "Upon receiving his baccalaureate, in 1606, Leonard briefly chose to reside in London. After that he went on an extended tour of the Continent which ended around the year that Shaksper died."
• Falstaff's Sack. August 7, 2017.  'The question Mr. Hart addresses is “Just what is sack?”.  This is not the first time the question has been addressed but his is a particularly thorough attempt at an answer.'

• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.