Waugh-Bate Debate #2: the Facts of John Weever's Transcription.

John Weever

“Let us begin with the facts,” Jonathan Bate quite rightly suggests as he launches the initial salvo of his argument for William Shaksper as the poet and playwright William Shakespeare.  His years of public speaking serve him well as he launches into his opening statement in the recent debate between himself and Alexander Waugh.  What could argue his case better, or more simply, than "the facts"?

The facts, however, have troubling discontinuities that Oxfordians (those who believe the Earl of Oxford wrote most if not all of the works attributed to the penname “Shakespeare”) tend to highlight to the considerable annoyance of the Stratfordian community (those who believe William Shaksper wrote most if not all of the works attributed to Shakespeare).

For one good example of a fact, Bate makes clear that proper names often exhibited a wide variation in spelling for the same person in the 16^th and early 17^th centuries.  We are agreed on that and my spelling “Shaksper” above is meant only to make a distinction between the Stratford man and the playwright for purposes of clarity.

But, again, there are discontinuities in the Stratfordian narrative.  Since the Authorship debate has become more competitive, Stratfordians have come into the habit of declaring “facts” based upon insufficient, minor evidence (if it can qualify as “evidence,” at all).  If we examine Mr.Bate’s claim at 21:06 in the YouTube video [link] we will unfortunately find him trying to sneak in a “fact” that is not even remotely proven for all that a book edited by legitimate scholars forwarded it some ten years ago in a weak attempt to quash an Oxfordian talking point: “That [i.e. the Stratford Shakespeare] monument was transcribed within a year of his [i.e. Shaksper’s] death.”

This talking point is key to overcoming the historical fact that there is no record of a Shakespeare funeral monument existing, in Stratford-upon-Avon (or anywhere), until it is mentioned in the front matter to the 1623 First Folio of the plays of Shakespeare.  For anyone who supports the Stratford man (who died in 1616) as the author of the plays, this is an annoying lacuna.  How could seven-plus years pass with no one commenting upon the funeral monument of one of England’s great poets?  Why don’t the Trinity Church records clarify the matter?  Why do no letters from travelers mention it until after the 1620s?

Oxfordians suggest, as the rule, that the monument and the myth of the Stratford author both appeared for the first time in 1623 together with modifications to the simple original monument of a nearly illiterate and notably successful hustler in commodities and loan shark (the latter employment only suggested not proven).  Of course, from the Stratfordian perspective something had to be done. Toward the end of the last century, a transcription from the monument, rediscovered among the papers of the antiquarian John Weever, began to hold out promise.  Since then Stratfordians have circled around the undated entry among undated papers.

While sufficient supporting evidence could not be found, those scholars did notice that there was a another transcription in the same group of Weever “notebooks” from the 1618 tomb of Ferdinando Heybourne.  Also a date that served less well but was worth mentioning.  The transcription from Sir Thomas Gerard’s tomb presents the date of his death as 1618.[1]  Inconveniently, history knows its construction was delayed for an unknown period of time while his son raised funds.  Still some number of Stratfordians are sure that it couldn’t have waited more than a couple of years to be completed.

In 2007, Katherine Duncan-Jones and H. Woudhuysen attempted to forward a claim that the notebooks established that Weever had visited Tong Church, another site of Shakespearean interest, in that year.[2]  At the same time they quietly inserted an entirely created fact that the trip somehow included a stop to do some transcribing in distant Stratford-Upon-Avon:

The latest date in the booklet, which also records his visit to Stratford-Upon- Avon, where he copies down the lines on Shakespeare’s own grave…[3]

The claim that “the booklet” (they’ve forgotten that there are more than one) “also records his visit to Stratford-Upon- Avon” is an intentional misrepresentation.  None of the booklets overtly mentions any visit to Stratford-Upon-Avon.  Nor do they outline an itinerary that passes through the town.

Their evidence that Weever undertook a tour of various tombs, occurring in about 1618, which “also records his visit to Stratford-upon-Avon,” where there was the opportunity to transcribe the text of the monument to Shakespeare, is that there is an undated transcription from the monument of Shakespeare at the end of entirely undated notebooks that include a single reference to the year 1618.  There is no direct statement, dated or undated, anywhere in Weever’s papers that he ever visited Stratford.

Nevertheless, the date seems to have become a Stratfordian fact (which our Mr. Bate has for some reason seen fit to shorten to “one” year after the Stratford man’s death).  The purported evidence for this claim is insufficient by professional standards in every way but Oxfordians are annoying and something simply has to be done.

The exceptional Shakespeare Documented site shows two faces on the matter, perhaps loath to challenge the home team.  Their digital reproduction of the page in question from Weever’s notebooks [link] is labeled “1617-1619”.  The text that follows, however, gives the proper state of the evidence:

Weever made his transcriptions some time between Shakespeare’s death in April 1616 and Weever’s own death in 1632. Later in his notebook, Weever records the “sumptuous” monument of Sir Gilbert Gerard in Ashley, Staffordshire (p. 21). While Sir Gilbert died in 1593, Weever records that “by his side” is the monument of his son, Sir Thomas Gerard, asserting that the latter “dyed” on October 7, 1617 (perhaps extrapolating from Sir Thomas’s will, dated October 6, 1617). Sir Thomas Gerard actually died on January 15, 1618. Considering that a monument might require a year for carving and installation, and because no later monument is recorded in the notebook [itallics mine], a reasonable supposition is that Weever’s notes were compiled in or about 1619.[4]

The dating presented should, by their own assessment, properly read “1616-1632”.

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[1] Another version of the Gerard facts is given in a Shakespeare Documented page quoted below.

[2] Shakespeare Poems, ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones and H. R. Woudhuysen (London, 2007), 438 ff.

[3] Ibid., 438.

[4] Shakespeare Documented.  “John Weever’s transcription of verses from Shakespeare’s monument and tomb” http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/exhibition/document/john-weever-s-transcription-verses-shakespeare-s-monument-and-tomb

• Dating Edward de Vere's Sonnet 110. May 21, 2018. “Shake-speare the poet was now Shake-speare writer for the common stage.  Those who knew he was The Bard, but only knew him as the poet, now knew that he was the person who had written the plays,…”
• Edward de Vere's Memorial For His Son, Who Died at Birth May 1583.  July 5, 2017.  "The brief Viscount Bulbeck being the son of the renowned poet and playwright Edward de Vere, we might have hoped to have the text of the father’s own memorial poem.  As far as traditional literary history is concerned, no such poem has yet been discovered."
• Crocodiles, Prester John and where the Earle of Oxenford wasn't.  January 10, 2018.  “From Cairo he is taken next as part of a 500,000 man military force to conquer the land of Prester John.  That wondrous mythical medieval king also has giant sluices at his control and drowns 60,000 Turks.”
• Enter John Lyly.  October 18, 2016.  "From time to time, Shakespeare Authorship aficionados query after the name “John Lyly”.  This happens surprisingly little given the outsized role the place-seeker, novelist and playwright played in the lives of the playwright William Shakespeare and Edward de Vere."
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.