Shakespeare on Gravity

John Dee before Elizabeth I
by Henry Gillard Glindoni

In his William Shakespeare: A Critical Study (1898), Brandes inadvertently made more than one point in favor of a highly educated playwright, William Shakespeare.  Last week I posted his comments upon Shakespeare’s knowledge of circulation of the blood [link]. This week, I conclude the topic, for present purposes, with Brandes on Shakespeare’s understanding of gravity and geology.  While his comments make clear that he chose to accept the Stratford man as the author, his assessment that “several of the men whose society Shakespeare frequented were among the most highly-developed intellects of the period” implies, in particular, Dee, Burghley, Digges and co. That is to say, the company in which Edward de Vere passed his formative years.  Presumably, Brandes would have been slightly more impressed to know that Shakespeare had, in fact, died in 1604, still twelve years earlier, and slightly less impressed for the fact that De Vere also “enjoyed a very different education from [the Stratford man’s], and had, moreover, all desirable leisure for scientific research.”

Another point which some people have held inexplicable, except by the Baconian theory, may be stated thus: Although the law of gravitation was first discovered by Newton, who was born

in 1642, or fully twenty-six years after Shakespeare's death, and although the general  conception of gravitation towards the centre of the earth had been unknown before Kepler, who discovered his third law of the mechanism of the heavenly bodies two years after Shakespeare's death, nevertheless in Troilus and Cressida (iv. 2) the heroine thus expresses herself:—

"Time, force, and death,

Do to this body what extremes you can,

But the strong base and building of my love

Is as the very centre of the earth,

Drawing all things to it."                                        

So carelessly does Shakespeare throw out such an extraordinary divination. His achievement in thus, as it were, rivalling Newton may seem in a certain sense even more extraordinary than Goethe's botanical and osteological discoveries; for Goethe had enjoyed a very different education from his, and had, moreover, all desirable leisure for scientific research. But Newton cannot rightly be said to have discovered the law of gravitation; he only applied it to the movements of the heavenly bodies. Even Aristotle had defined weight as " the striving of heavy bodies towards the centre of the earth." Among men of classical culture in England in Shakespeare's time, the knowledge that the centre point of the earth attracts everything to it was quite common. The passage cited only affords an additional proof that several of the men whose society Shakespeare frequented were among the most highly-developed intellects of the period. That his astronomical knowledge was not, on the whole, in advance of his time is proved by the expression, " the glorious planet Sol " in Troilus and Cressida (i. 3). He never got beyond the Ptolemaic system.

Another confirmation of the theory that Bacon must have written Shakespeare's plays has been found in the fact that the poet clearly had some conception of geology; whereas geology, as a science, owes its origin to Niels Steno,[1] who was born in 1638, twenty-two years after Shakespeare's death. In the second part of Henry IV. (iii. i), King Henry says:—

"O God! that one might read the book of fate,

And see the revolution of the times

Make mountains level, and the continent,

Weary of solid firmness, melt itself

Into the sea ! and, other times, to see

The beachy girdle of the ocean

Too wide for Neptune's hips; how chances mock,

And changes fill the cup of alteration

With divers liquors!"

The purport of this passage is simply to show that in nature, as in human life, the law of transformation reigns; but no doubt it is implied that the history of the earth can be read in the earth itself, and that changes occur through upheavals and depressions. It looks like a forecast of the doctrine of Neptunism.

Here, again, people have gone to extremities in order artificially to enhance the impression made by the poet's brilliant divination. It was Steno who first systematised geological conceptions; but he was by no means the first to hold that the earth had been formed little by little, and that it was therefore possible to trace in the record of the rocks the course of the earth's development. His chief service lay in directing attention to stratification, as affording the best evidence of the processes which have fashioned the crust of the globe.[2]

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[1] Nicolas Steno (née Niels Steensen) 1638 – 1686.

[2] Brandes, George. William Shakespeare: A Critical Study (1898), I. 113-4.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Shakespeare On Blood-Flow. August 19, 2018, “For all of the obvious examples, such as Hamlet’s mention of the supernova that held the attention of all the world, in 1572, and the description of St. Elmo’s Fire in The Tempest, however, the answer lies much more quietly woven into the text of the poems and plays as a whole.”
• Stratford Shakespeare’s Undersized Grave.  July 22, 2018.  “Mr. Coll’s considers this evidence to support an old rumor that Shakspere’s head had been stolen in 1794.  But I submit that he is merely making his observation based upon a coincidence.”

• Shakespeare's Apricocks.  February 21, 2017.  "While he may never have been a gardener, he does seem more than superficially knowledgeable about the gardens of his day.  One detail of such matters that he got wrong, however, is as much to the point as any."

• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
• Check out the Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

Shakespeare On Blood-Flow

Not long ago, a member of a popular Facebook group queried his fellows as to the extent of Shakespeare’s scientific knowledge.  It is an interesting question and well worth investigation.

For all of the obvious examples, such as Hamlet’s mention of the supernova that held the attention of all the world, in 1572, and the description of St. Elmo’s Fire in The Tempest, however, the answer lies much more quietly woven into the text of the poems and plays as a whole.

Scholars have already created a literature of The Bard’s empirical knowledge of nature.  George Brandes, begins his commentary on the subject, in his William Shakespeare A Critical Study, by recognizing that the knowledge in the works goes beyond mere country-boy knowledge:

Shakespeare's knowledge of nature is not simply such as can be acquired by any one who passes his childhood and youth in the open air and in the country. But even of this sort of knowledge he has an astonishing store.[1] 

The tendency to discover Stratford-upon-Avon as a locus for the plants, animals, and such, in the plays, has been proven to be unfounded again and again, but the temptation to announce such “new discoveries” has proven irresistible.  The knowledge is real, the localization imaginary.

The great 19^th century flood of Shakespeare scholarship could only notice so obvious a fact as that the plays contain vast amounts of knowledge some of which the playwright got from works in other languages than English.

Shakespeare seems, in certain instances, to be not only abreast of the natural science of his time, but in advance of it. People have had recourse to the Baconian theory in order to explain the surprising fact that although Harvey, who is commonly represented as the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, did not announce his discovery until 1619, and published his book upon it so late as 1628, yet Shakespeare, who, as we know, died in 1616, in many passages of his plays alludes to the blood as circulating through the body.

It was only one of the many facts that seemed to argue against the work being written by a marginally educated (if that) yokel from a small provincial town.

Before the supporters of Bacon as author of the plays began to devolve into endless, ever more insupportable ciphers, it was becoming ever more popular to assert that only a man of elite education could have brought such knowledge to the work.  Sir Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, seemed the man to fit the bill.

But the ciphers were ever more necessary because Bacon’s biography just didn’t match up without them.  Yes, the plays powerfully suggest a highly educated author, of wide experience, but, upon closer inspection, they don’t suggest Bacon.

Still, Shakespeare’s ease with astronomy, blood-flow and a great deal else remains:

Thus, for example, in Julius Caesar (ii. i), Brutus says to Portia—

You are my true and honourable wife ;

As dear to me as are the ruddy drops

That visit my sad heart.

Again, in Coriolanus (i. i) Menenius makes the belly say of its food—

I send it through the rivers of your blood,

Even to the court, the heart, to the seat o' the brain ;

And, through the cranks and offices of man,

The strongest nerves, and small inferior veins,

From me receive that natural competency

Whereby they live

But apart from the fact that the highly gifted and unhappy Servetus, whom Calvin burned, had, between 1530 and 1540, made the discovery and lectured upon it, all men of culture in England knew very well before Harvey's time that the blood flowed, even that it circulated, and, more particularly, that it was driven from the heart to the different limbs and organs; only, it was  generally conceived that the blood passed from the heart through the veins, and not, as is actually the case, through the arteries. And there is nothing in the seventy-odd places in Shakespeare where the circulation of the blood is mentioned to show that he possessed this ultimate insight, although his general understanding of these questions bears witness to his high culture.[2]

This seems a valid assessment.

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[1] Brandes, George. William Shakespeare A Critical Study (1898), I. 110.

[2] Brandes, I. 112.

• Stratford Shakespeare’s Undersized Grave.  July 22, 2018.  “Mr. Coll’s considers this evidence to support an old rumor that Shakspere’s head had been stolen in 1794.  But I submit that he is merely making his observation based upon a coincidence.”

• 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.

Shakespeare Scholarship in the Internet Age.

Shakespeare scholar, Edward Dowden.

Just recently, a friend, and fellow member of the Edward De Vere was Shake-speare Group, on Facebook, informed me that he had happened upon a reference that might interest me: 

"How Shakspere became acquainted with  the poem of Marianus we cannot tell,  but it had been translated into Latin : “Selecta Epigrammata”, Basel, 1529 and again several times before the close of the sixteenth century"

Shakespeare's Poems: Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, SONNETS, ETC." William J. Rolfe, 1890.[1]

The comment followed a link I had posted to my 2014 essay “Shake-speare's Greek” where I asserted that no translation of the Greek epigrams of Marianus exists before those that we call Shakespeare’s sonnets 153 and 154.

I love to be presented with a legitimate challenge to any of my work.  This does not change the  fact that such challenges are followed by an unpleasant sinking feeling. Had I missed something?  It’s all part of the game, as it were, but still I take a  certain pride in getting a thing right before I present it to the world.

A couple of years ago,  now, I promised another fellow scholar, in my Edward de Vere, Shakespeare and Elizabethan Subjects Information Exchange Facebook group, to provide him citations for my claim, in Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof, that

Her [Queen Elizabeth’s] words will be recorded, almost verbatim, in Shake-speare’s rewrite of his Troublesome Raigne of King John which was surely written shortly afterwards:…[2]

I’ve found my original basis for all but one part of the claim.  But “all but one” is not acceptable and the matter waits until I will trip over the remaining citation.

“For now,” I told myself, "the Selecta Epigrammata of 1529 would have to wait."  I was in hot pursuit of another book.  And then, of course, I just took a peek at who else might have cited the book.  And then, of course, it was all over.  It was the book that would have to wait.

The reference to the Selecta Epigrammata reference had appeared in above a dozen Shakespeare related volumes between 1881 and 1912 (about half of them edited by Rolfe, whose work I highly respect).  Still, there was the (rhetorical) question: “Where did all of these editors/authors find copies of the Selecta Epigrammata of 1529?”  The answer, of course, is that they didn’t. “I see the ref all over the place,” I informed my friend:

but that happens from time to time. There was no Internet in those days. A citation could be highly popular, and, because it was so hard to verify, originally have been taken on someone's word who was wrong.

Not much later, I found the following by Churton Collins (also a scholar who I trust):

"The earliest Latin version I can find is in the Florilegium, edited by Lubinus, Heidelberg, 1603. It is not included in the Selecta Epigrammata, published at Basel, in 1529, as Mr. Sidney Lee asserts, following apparently Dr. Brandes, a perilous guide in Shakespearean matters."[3]

Collins’s aspersion upon Dr. Brandes would prove to be unfounded.  But the general idea that the reference had become “common knowledge” through repeating the error of the original source was correct.

Collins was almost certainly correct but there was only one way to be perfectly certain. There seemed to be nothing to do but to launch a “hail Mary” search for a digitized version of the highly obscure Selecta Epigrammata, Basil, 1529.  Living in the Age of the Internet has its miraculous aspects.  While the 19^th century scholars had to take their best guess, and, in this instance, make a huge collective mistake, which became part of the historical record, I could enter a matrix of search terms  and find two facsimile copies of the 1529 volume.

Less fortunately, the old style typeface did not allow confidence in the search function.  I would have to search the pages of the book manually little by little as I returned to my book project (searching on the Greek alphabet is not yet an available miracle).  I am about halfway through as I write this.

In parallel, I did a search-provenance on the citation. The original source would seem to have been The Sonnets of William Shakspere (1881)[4] edited by Edward Dowden.  Professor Dowden may have had some command of ancient Greek but it is more likely that he assigned one or more classical languages grad students the task of chasing down “the translation  by which Shakespeare read the epigrams of Marianus” that provided the text of sonnets 153 and 154.  More likely still, he probably tapped the memory of his brother John, who seems to have had some level of fluency in the language.[5]  Needless to say, John’s memory was not a perfect one.

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[1] Shakespeare's Poems: Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, Sonnets, Etc. William J. Rolfe, ed. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1890. 183.

[2] Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof. Richmond, VA: The Virtual Vanaprastha, 2013. 179.

[3] Collins, John Churton.  Studies in Shakespeare. New York: Dutton & Co, 1904. 44.

[4] The Sonnets of William Shakspere. Edward Dowden, ed. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1881. 305.

[5] Letters of Edward Dowden and His Correspondents.  London: J. M. Dent & Sons, LTD., 1914. 152.

Last night I was at the closing meeting of the Hellenic

Club at Professor Blackie's. The invitation ran—

Homer, Iliad, I., at 7.45.

Song and Supper at 9.30.

The Club has existed for thirty years. It meets once a

fortnight during the winter, to read Greek.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Stratford Shakespeare’s Undersized Grave.  July 22, 2018.  “Mr. Coll’s considers this evidence to support an old rumor that Shakspere’s head had been stolen in 1794.  But I submit that he is merely making his observation based upon a coincidence.”
• 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.”
• Shakespeare's Apricocks.  February 21, 2017.  "While he may never have been a gardener, he does seem more than superficially knowledgeable about the gardens of his day.  One detail of such matters that he got wrong, however, is as much to the point as any."
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
• Check out the Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

Shakespeare’s King Richard II as Prequel.

Standard Citation: Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “Shakespeare’s King Richard II as Prequel.”. Virtual Grub Street, http://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2018/08/shakespeares-king-richard-ii-as-prequel.html [state date accessed].

The primary differences between The Famous Victories of Henry V and The Chronicle History of Henry V (generally referred to as Henry V) are 1) that the chronicles of Hall and Holinshed have been consulted in the latter play, and 2) that the history of Henry V when Prince Hal is left out of the latter.  As I have pointed out in my Edward de Vere’s Retainer Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff, the Prince Hal story in 1&2 Henry IV is a much more mature production than Henry V:

Shakespeare’s Henry plays, as we find them in the earliest quarto versions of 1599 and 1600, are written in a combination of blank verse and prose.  The quality of Henry V, as displayed in the first published quarto, was a marked improvement over The Famous Victories but still primitive for Shakespeare.  The most beloved portions are just that: portions.  They are not aspects of a consistently mature Shakespearean whole.  The blank verse is frequently irregular with too short and too long lines.  The maintenance of iambics is constantly ignored or substituted.  Both irregularities are indulged simply in order to get through the given line and on to the next.[1]

Traditionally, the more mature quality of the Henry IV plays are declared to be due to the Henry V quarto being a corrupt transcription by an audience member.  The evidence for this is that Shakespeare was too young to write the play in the period suggested by the text of the quarto (the late 1580s or very early 1590s).  There is not a stitch of evidence beyond that.  But, of course, the text of the quarto should argue when Shakespeare wrote the play rather than the Stratford Shakespeare’s age in the 1580s arguing that the play had to be written later than otherwise indicated.

It is for the same reason, more or less, that we must accept that Richard II was written before Henry V.  When the players replied to the Essex conspirators' request to play Richard II, in the year 1600, speaking of “King Richard as being so old and so long out of use” that it would not attract an audience, they were indeed referring to Shakespeare’s Richard II.  And they knew what they were talking about.

There are several pieces of evidence that indicate Richard II, as we have it, was written around 1588.[2]  First, it is so new to the habit of gleaning the details of history from Holinshed that it varies far less from the chronicle than the other history plays (other than the King John of 1589-90 which was based upon George Peele’s original rather than chronicles).  Shakespeare, at that early point, did not yet know how to do anything more with the chronicles than to obey them closely.  There are no added fictional characters.  There is no comic relief.  He did not know how to make a history play more compelling than the underlying chronicles.  Second, it is entirely in verse, a brief phase that Shakespeare went through with the two plays (and some part of Pericles?) following the example of Peele.[3]  Third, both the first version of King John (only minor touches by Shakespeare) and Richard II show unmistakable signs of having been co-written with George Peele.  Neither shows signs of Robert Greene or Christopher Marlowe.  Greene and Marlowe together with Shakespeare and Peele mark publication dates between 1589 and Greene’s death in 1592 (i.e. the Contention plays, The True Tragedy of Richard the Third, Titus Andronicus, possibly 1&2 Henry VI).

The fourth reason that Richard II was written around 1588 is a shocking one.  It is written as a prequel to The Famous Victories.  The  reason it was also referred to by the Essex players as Henry IV is because it is the story of Henry IV as much as Richard II.  Not only that but it introduced the idea of the young Prince Hal (the future Henry V) as a rakish, swaggering, cursing, denizen of the stews:

Percy. His answer was,—he would unto the stews,

And from the common'st creature pluck a glove,

And wear it as a favour; and with that

He would unhorse the lustiest challenger.[4]

This Prince Hal bears only a distant relationship to the version in the Henry IV plays (written circa 1596).[5]  He’s a much cruder guy.  In fact, he is as crude as the Prince Hal depicted at the beginning of The Famous Victories.  The end of Richard II dovetails into the beginning of The Famous Victories.  It is a perfect fit.

But what of the Folio version of The Chronicle History of Henry V with its hotly debated choruses at the beginning of each act?  The expanded text is the text we have come to respect so highly, to consider one of the great plays of the language.  But choruses were outdated even by the 1580s.  How do the pieces fit together with a Henry V written in 1589-90?

Henry V was the great hero of the English people.  The topic was perfect for the opening day of the Globe Theater.[6]  Shakespeare had no time and/or inclination, it would seem, to rewrite the entire old play, in order to updated it and back-fit a full storyline for Falstaff.  Instead he revised key scenes that we have come to think of as having always been part of the play and added the choruses in order to cover the gaps that time and revision had made in the play… and in order to give the world some of the finest poetry in the English language:

Chorus. O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention,

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act

And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,

Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,

Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire

Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,

The flat unraised spirits that have dared

On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth

So great an object: can this cockpit hold

The vasty fields of France? or may we cram

Within this wooden O the very casques

That did affright the air at Agincourt?

                        *

Suppose within the girdle of these walls

Are now confined two mighty monarchies,…

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[1] Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Edward de Vere’s Retainer Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who was Falstaff. 17.

[2] Rolfe, William. “Introduction,”  Shakespeare's Works, Vol. VI. King John. King Richard II. Ed. William J. Rolfe. Citing: Coleridge “Notes and Lectures upon Shakespeare.” Works (Harper's edition), vol. iv. p. 119 foll.  “I feel no hesitation in placing it as the first and most admirable of all Shakespeare's purely historical plays.”

[3] Shakespeare’s / Vere’s prose phase was considerably longer but none of the plays except for The Famous Victories (which appears to have been the last) is presently extant.

[4] Richard II. V.iii.

[5] See my Edward de Vere’s Retainer Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff.

[6] It need not have been the opening day but it does seem the perfect choice.

• Stratford Shakespeare’s Undersized Grave.  July 22, 2018.  “Mr. Coll’s considers this evidence to support an old rumor that Shakspere’s head had been stolen in 1794.  But I submit that he is merely making his observation based upon a coincidence.”

• Thomas Churchyard in The Merry Wives of Windsor. June 04, 2018. “The idea of this stratagem, &c. might have been adopted from part of the entertainment prepared by Thomas Churchyard for Queen Elizabeth at Norwich:…”

• 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."

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