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Friday, November 14, 2025

The Horses of Shakespeare and Luigi Pulci

In this series:

Starting from Sidney Lee's assertion that the description of Adonis's horse, in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis (1593), was influenced by Salustius Du Bartas's La Seconde Semaine (1584-90), we have sampled horse literature of the 16th century France and Italy translated into English. Our examples by no means exhausted the literature on the subject. Nor do they exhaust the authors Shakespeare might have read on the subject.

We have not mentioned Barnabe Googe, fellow member of the Elizabethan theater scene. He describes the prime features of the horse in his 1577 translation of Konrad Heresbach's Four Books of Husbandry. His description echoes the others of the time with the standard variations. He praises thick manes. He also has the common habit of citing the standard ancients on nature and husbandry: Pliny, Virgil, Columela, etc.

Thomas Bedingfeld, whose Cardanus Comforte Edward de Vere patronized and Shakespeare frequently quoted in his plays, translated Claudio Corte's Art of Riding (1584). The book is dedicated to training, however, rather than buying, breeding or chivalry. The curvet performed by Adonis's horse is a subject dwelt upon by Bedingfeld and a favorite maneuver among England's elite horsemen among whom Vere ranked high.

Each of these translations were published well before Venus and Adonis. While Joshua Sylvester first published his translation of Du Bartas well after Venus and Adonis first appeared, earlier partial editions were published perhaps as early as 1591 and manuscripts possibly circulated before that. The translation of the Second Weeke, however, — in which the horse references appear — was only entered in the Stationers Registers in 1598 creating substantial doubt that Shakespeare could have borrowed from it for his poem.

One more description of the horse merits attentions, here, for unique reasons. Luigi Pulci's poem Morgante was first published in its final form in 1482. It is a romance epic. Stanzas 106 and 107 of the Canto XV have been advanced as a possible model for Shakespeare's lines. We give them here with on-the-fly literal translation.

Canto XV


CVI

Egli avea tutte le fattezze pronte

Di buon cavai, come udirete appresso,

Perché nato non sia di Chiaramonte:

Piccola testa e in bocca molto fesso:

Un occhio vivo, una rosetta in fronte;

Larghe le nari; e'l labbro arriccia spesso;

Corto l'orecchio e lungo e forte il collo;

Leggier si, ch’alla man non dava un crollo.


[He had all the features attractive
In a good horse, as you will hear,
For he was not born of Chiaramonte:
Small head and very cleft mouth1:
A lively eye, a rosette on the forehead;
Large nostrils; and thickly curled lips;
Short ears and a long and strong neck;
So light, he did not fight the hand.]


CVII

Ma una cosa nol faceva brutto,

Ch’ egli era largo tre palmi nel petto,

Corto di schiena e ben quartato tutto,

Grosse le gambe, e d’ ogni cosa netto,

Corte le giunte, e ’1 piè largo, alto, asciutto,

E molto lieto e grato nello aspetto ;

Serra la coda, ed anitrisce e raspa,

Sempre le zampe palleggiava e innaspa.2


[Nothing about him fell short:
He was three spans wide at the chest,
Short-backed and well-quartered throughout,
Thick in the legs, in every detail neat,
Short jointed, and feet broad, high, and lean,
And very happy and pleasing in appearance;
His tail curled, and whinny harsh,
His hooves always restless and stamping.]

Both descriptions included large nostrils, broad chest, a lively vs. a scornful eye, etc. But the actual similarity is the fact that both descriptions are two stanzas short and contain but a few points selected from the standard description of the superior stallion.

What presumably has attracted scholars is the fact that most of the other texts we have mentioned were didactic poems that accordingly included much longer and more inclusive descriptions. Pulci's description reminds us of Shakespeare's because each was a talented poet who knew not to be thorough but selective — not to over-write.

Du Bartas, who was also writing something of an epic did not know this distinction. His was intended to be a didactic poem. Therefore, he allowed his description to interrupt the flow of his poem to an extent that can try a reader's patience.

But yet another irony, here (for we have mentioned that much is ironic in the scholarly analysis of Adonis's horse), Pulci's interest vis-a-vis horses merits our attention entirely for reasons other than relate to the poem Venus and Adonis. Pulci's Morgante is a link in the centuries long chain of Italian poems about the hero Orlando — the chain that arrived at Ariosto's Orlando Furioso a poem that greatly influenced the works of Shakespeare. Obscure little Luigi Pulci was also a major influence upon the great french raconteur François Rabelais who influenced Shakespeare to a much smaller degree.

Pulci's Morgante was a retelling of an earlier anonymous version of the tale.3 In turn, his own version was sampled in the retelling by Matteo Maria Boiardo, Orlando Innamorato (bk. 1&2, 1483; bk. 1-3, 1495). Boiardo's retelling was incorporated into both Francesco Berni's (1518) and Lodovico Domenichi's (1545) retellings of the same name. A strong case has been presented for Shakespeare having taken from Berni's (and perhaps a bit from Boiardo's) version for use in his plays Othello and Love's Labours Lost. The last original work in this line, prior to Shakespeare, was Ariosto's far more popular continuation of Boiardo's work, Orlando Furioso (1532), from which Shakespeare took a great deal, most notably the trope of posting poems on trees, in As You Like It, and the tragic falling out between Claudio and Hero in Much Adoe About Nothing.

So then, we can say with considerable confidence that Shakespeare had read the versions of the Orlando story by Boiardo, Berni and Ariosto. Traditional scholars who do not wish add polyglot to Shakespeare's long list of talents demand that he read Ariosto only in John Harington's 1591 English translation. While the claim does not hold up, no similar convenience is available to them regarding Boiardo or Berni. There was no translation available from those authors during the Stratford man's lifetime and they must fall back upon Ben Jonson or John Florio, etc., having provided him extended cribs of the texts.

We have been impressed elsewhere with Shakespeare's unusually exhaustive research into obscure works in the romance languages for his plays.4 It is quite possible that he did search out and read Pulci's Morgante. Of which there also was no translation.



1 I can only assume that this refers to a pronounced philtrum. A “cleft mouth” is often mentioned in medieval and Tudor times as a very positive trait.

2 Pulci, Luigi. Il Morgante; test e notes a cura di Giugliemo Volpi (1914) II.54.

3 See Riana, Pio. “La Materia del Morgante: in un Ignoto Poema Cavalleresco del Secolo XV.” Il Propugnatore. May-June 1869. 7-36.

4 See my Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584). The Early Plays of Edward de Vere, Book 1 (2018), in particular. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JD7KM1T.



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Saturday, November 08, 2025

Shakespeare and Joshua Sylvester (or Maybe Not).

In this series:
Sidney Lee introduced the theory, in his French Renaissance in England (1910), that Shakespeare's description of Adonis's horse, in the 1593 poem Venus and Adonis, was too close to a similar description in Joshua Sylvester's Divine Weekes and Workes to be mere coincidence.

With Sylvester's faithful translation (1613 ed., pp. 286-8) of Du Bartas's account of a 'goodly jennet' (ce beau Ienet) may well be compared Shakespeare's animated description of a ' courser ' catching sight of a 'jennet' in Venus and Adonis (lines 271-4, 295-8 , 301-4) . Shakespeare probably consulted the French text.1

The edition of Sylvester's work that Lee referenced was published in 1613, twenty years after the publication of Shakespeare's poem, therefore Lee suggested that the similarity must have come from Shakespeare reading the original by Du Bartas, published in two parts in 1578 and 1584. He was one of a modest number of scholars, at that point, that credited Shakespeare with being able to read French fluently.

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas's poetic account of the creation of the world, entitled  La Sepmaine; ou, Creation du monde (1578) and a second week, La Seconde Semaine (1584, additions and revisions published until 1590), intended to give an account of mankind's life after being expelled from the Garden of Eden, were immediately enormously popular. Du Bartas died in 1590, without completing the second week.


Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis was published in 1593. The line in question reads “Thin mane, thicke taile, broad buttock, tender hide”. It could arguably be a condensation from several lines describing Cain's horse in La Seconde Semaine.

Sylvester was born about 1563.2 An uncle of some wealth paid for some three years of schooling, at Southampton grammar school. At that time the school's head master required the students to speak only french. The master left after those years and there is no further record of Sylvester's life until the title page of his first published work — a translation of Du Bartas's Canticle of the Victorie obteined by the French King, Henrie the Fourth, at Yvry (1591) — identified him as a member of the Company of Merchant-Adventurers.

Not pleased to make his living as a member of the Company, he was attempting to improve his lot through dedications to various written works — predominantly, translations from the works of Du Bartas. Reference appears in the Stationers' Registers to his Du Bartas' Week in 15913. His Salustius Du Bartas his weeke or Seven Dayes work is formally entered on May 25, 1594.4 An Essaie of the second weeke of the noble Learned and Divine Salustius Du Bartas was entered in 1598.5

The work initially appeared, Alexander Grosart informs us, in a number of “fragmentary issues,” at first, with “dateless title-pages”. These fragmentary issues are not publicly available. They began to be gathered together in 1605, as a single work, and were so often reprinted thereafter as to make clear their great popularity.

Unbeknownst to Lee, then, portions of Sylvester's translation were being circulated as early as 1591 or even slightly before. Shakespeare could have seen it before the publication of Venus and Adonis in 1593. The passage in Sylvester, however, is given in the Second Week, which is entered in the Stationers in 1598, thus unlikely to have been available before 1593. Some have suggested that Sylvester's description of the horse, from Du Bartas, could have been influenced by Shakespeare's poem instead.

Thus begins our meandering journey back and forth through the 15th century Florentine court of Lorenzo de' Medici, stopping briefly at the works of Rabelais, of Matteo Boiardo, various 16th century Italian and English penmen, and Du Bartas's original Semaines. All of this arriving, in the end, at a shocking new finding regarding Shakespeare.

Stratfordian scholars at large, needing an English language model for Shakespeare's description of Adonis's horse, in the poem Venus and Adonis, needed first to quash Lee's suggestion that the uneducated Shakespeare's model was from Du Bartas's original Semaines. To this end, it was soon pointed out that Shakespeare and Sylvester both described their hero's exemplary horse as having a “thin mane”. But Du Bartas's original did not. Sylvester had chosen to translate “Sur qui flotte un long poil crespement espandu” as “Whereon a long, thin, curled mane doth flow.” Perhaps because the french “poil” can refer to short hair which he interpreted to mean “thin”.

Once the thin mane became the main point of identification, it was noted that numerous works were potential matches. Thomas Blundeville’s Arte of Ryding, in particular, contained a similar list of features of the exemplary horse with a thin mane. Not only that but the book was published in 1560 — leaving Shakespeare time to read it before he began his own list during the composition of Venus and Adonis.

Then, as so often happens in these matters, irony struck. Blundeville's book was by-and-large a translation from the Italian of Frederigo Grisone's Gli Ordini Di Cavalcare (1550). The Ordini, it turns out was the source for Du Bartas's description of Cain's horse in the fourth day of the Seconde Semaine. Du Bartas followed Grisone closely yet he has no “thin mane”. Somehow the thin mane skipped from Grisone, past Du Bartas, and reappeared in Sylvester.

Du Bartas, however, was not translating Grisone's work but co-opting only individual items from it's list of superior characteristics of the horse, toward an original work of poetry. Himself not an expert horseman but rather a poet, he needed an impressive description of Cain's horse. Grisone's “thin mane” didn't make the cut, as it were.

As for Blundeville, he recommends a horse with a “crisp mane,” in accordance with the Grisone quote above, garnishing it with the observation that “the creast whereof neither too thick nor too thin”6. Elsewhere he gives “his mane would be thin and long, albeit I do not mislike the opinion of those that would have it to be thicke”7. In fine, both Grisone and Blundeville could equally be cited as the source of a thin or a thick mane.

Those who have done surveys of the matter inform us that thick manes were more often approved in medieval literature and thin in Tudor times. It was a common topic.

But the irony does not end with translations of Grisone that don't keep his “thin mane” which somehow, nonetheless, skips a generation in order to appear in Sylvester's translation and Venus and Adonis. There is another passage in which the mane of Adonis's horse is mentioned:

His eares up prickt, his braided hanging mane

Upon his compast crest now stand on end,8

Edmund Malone, in the 1821 edition of his variorum Shakespeare, notes that the verb “stand” implies the noun “mane” is a plural: “Our author uses mane, as composed of many hairs, as plural.”9 Of course, Grisone, writing in Italian, does the same in the key passage that Du Bartas left out: “I crini rari... crespi”10. In English “mane” is always a singular noun, in Italian it can be “crini,” a plural noun .



1Lee, Sidney. French Renaissance in England (1910). 337n.

2The details of Joshua Sylvester's life, here, are almost entirely taken from Alexander Grosart's two volume Complete Works (1880) of the poet. No other biographical information seems to have been discovered — only bibliographical.

3 Arber, Edward. Transcript of the Stationers' Registers (1875). II.278. “Entred for his Copie vnder th [e h]andes Of master Judson and master Watkyns a book in English Entituled, SALUSTIUS DU BARTAS his weeke or Seven Dayee woork. August 14, 1591.”

4Grosart, Alexander. Complete Works of Joshuah Sylvester (1880). I.xii. Citing Arber. “Entred for his Copie vnder thandes of master Judson and master Watkyns a book in English Entituled, Salustius Du Bartas his weeke or Seven Dayes work, 25th May, 1594: Edward Blunt.”

5Grosart, Alexander. Complete Works of Joshuah Sylvester (1880). I.xii. “A booke Called An Essaie of the second weeke of the noble Learned and Divine Salustius Du Bartas: Translated by Josua Siluester 1598, vjd. Provided that this entrance shall not be effectuall if any other have right to this booke by any former entrance.”

6 Blundeville, 6.

7 Ibid. 3. A correct translation of Grisone's “non vitupero l’opinion di chi vuole che siano folti,” etc. @ viii.

8 Rollins, Hyder Edward. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: the Poems (1938). 33.

9 Malone, Edmund. The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare. XX.26.

10Grisone, Frederigo. Gli Ordini di Cavalcare (1550). viii. “the mane thin... crisp”.



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Sunday, October 12, 2025

Sonnet 8 and Sonnet 8.

In the notes to volume 16 of James O. Halliwell's The Works of Shakespeare, we learn the following regarding Sonnet 8 from the 1609 Sonnets of Shake-speare.1

This sonnet occurs in the following form in a manuscript miscellany of the first part of the seventeenth century,—


In laudem musice et opprobrium contemptorii ejusdem.


                                1.

Musicke to heare, why hearest thou musicke sadly?

Sweete wth sweetes warre not, joy delights in joy ;

Why lovest yu that wch thou receavest not gladly.

Or els receavest wth pleasure thine annoy?


                                2.

If the true concord of well tuned soundes

By unions maried, doe offend thy eare,

They doe but sweetlie chide thee, whoe confoundes

In singlenes a parte wch thou shouldst beare.


                                3.

Marke howe one stringe, sweet husband to another,

Strikes each on each by mutuall orderinge,

Resemblinge childe, and syer, and happy mother,

Wch all in one this single note dothe singe:

Whose speechles songe, beeinge many, seeming one.

Singe this to thee, Thou single shalt prove none.


W. Shakspeare.


Frederick J. Furnivall thought he'd discovered the copy and presented his finding in an article entitled “An Early Ms. Copy of Shakspere’s Eighth Sonnet” in The Academy, December 1880.2


AN EARLY MS. COPY OF SHAKSPERE's EIGHTH SONNET.

London: Dec. 17, 1880.


In the Additional MS. 15,226, a little miscellany of poems, &c., in the British Museum, is a copy of Shakspere's eighth sonnet, in a hand which Prof. S. R. Gardiner and I think to be of the earlier part of James I.'s reign, and having some various readings. Though these may be of little or no value, yet Shakspere students may be glad to see them, and I accordingly send you a transcript of the sonnet.

These early MS. copies are very rare. The present one may have been printed before, but I have not seen the print, and it is not noticed in the Cambridge Shakspere.


Before the article went to press he'd been informed that Halliwell had priority.

Furnivall did us the favor of specifying the manuscript for his copy as British Library Additional MS. 15226. He also printed his text with a number of Halliwell's orthographic modernizations restored to the original.

MS 15226 would not seem to be publicly available in digital facsimile. The description in the Folger Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450–1700 (CELM) is followed by a particularly spare catalog of the contents.

Add. MS 15226

An octavo miscellany of verse and prose, in several largely secretary hands, written from both ends over a long period, 149 leaves, in modern half blue morocco. c.1627-c.1673.

The secretary hands suggest entries could have been made during the 16th century, before italic became the norm. But some of the works copied are said to be copied from books published as late as 1637 when a partial version of “An Epitaph upon King James” (f. 26r) was published in William Camden's Remaines. Being only partial would suggest that the copyist could have had his original from any time after March of 1625.

Hyder Rollins surely saw 15226 before he assigned it “ later than 1640”.3 Raymond Alden has it “probably dating (according to Dr. C. W. Wallace) from the period of the Commonwealth”.4

Of course, the “several” hands suggests more than one owner probably over a period of time. The Latin title and identification of Shakespeare as author are of particular interest. We've already noticed that some of the extremely rare manuscript copies of the sonnets had titles that seem to have pre-dated the 1609 published copy. None of them, however, were attributed any author. The attribution here strongly suggests the copy was taken from 1609 Sonnets directly or at second-hand.

Several of the items listed in the CELM description have Latin titles that are not original to the associated work. The song ‘Hence, all you vain delights’ (f. 28v-9r) from Beaumont and Fletcher's, The Nice Valour, for a particular example, is entitled  “In laudem Melancholie”. The song was first published in A Description of the King and Queene of Fayries (London, 1634). The little information available concerning Add. MS. 15226 suggests that one of the owners of the manuscript book was in the habit of providing his own Latin titles. It is unlikely that the title here for Sonnet 8 was ever in more general circulation or ever applied by Shakespeare. The text is otherwise so close to the 1609 that there can be little doubt that this was the copyist's source.

Of the rare number of manuscript copies of poems attributed to Shakespeare, this copy of Sonnet 8 attracts the least attention. Likely because the text is so close to the poem as published in 1609.



1Halliwell, James O. The Works of Shakespeare (1865). 433.

2 “An Early Ms. Copy of Shakspere’s Eighth Sonnet” in The Academy, Vol. 28. December 1880. 462.

3Rollins, Hyder. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare. The Sonnets. (1944). I.23n.

4Alden. Raymond Macdonald. The Sonnets of Shakespeare (1916). 33.



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Sunday, September 28, 2025

The Sonnets of Shakespeare: Sonnet 86.


86


WAS it the proud full saile of his great verse,

Bound for the prize of (all to precious) you,

That did my ripe thoughts in my braine inhearce,

Making their tombe the wombe wherein they grew?

Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write,

Above a mortall pitch, that struck me dead?

No, neither he, nor his compiers by night

Giving him ayde, my verse astonished.

He nor that affable familiar ghost

Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,

As victors of my silence cannot boast,

I was not sick of any feare from thence.

But when your countinance fild up his line,

Then lackt I matter, that infeebled mine.



3. inhearce] Schmidt (1874): Enclose as in a coffin. enhearse, inhearce, inhearse] OED. To put into a hearse.

4. (all to precious)] all too precious

13. countenance] approval. Double entendre likely upon “face / likeness”.

13. fild] filled


Commentary in Alden:


1.] —Furnivall: [This line] probably alludes to the swelling hexameters of Chapman's Englishing of Homer.

4.] —Malone: Cf. R. & J., II, iii, 9-10:

The earth, that's nature's mother, is her tomb;

What is her burying grave, that is her womb.

—Rolfe: We find the same thought in Lucretius, v. 259: "Omniparens eadem rerum commune sepulchrum."

—Walsh: Cf. ["To Time," by "A. W.," in Davison's Poetical Rhapsody:] "Thy womb, that all doth breed, is tomb to all."

—Verity: Cf. Spenser, Ruins of Time:

The seeds of which all things at first were bred

Shall in great Chaos' womb again be hid.

5. spirit . . . spirits.] —Massey [finds here the chief evidence of Marlowe as rival poet:] Sh. speaks of Marlowe and identifies him with the "familiar" spirit, Mephistopheles, just as Thorpe does when he dedicates the translation of Lucan's first book to Edward Blunt, and alludes to Marlowe as a "familiar spirit." [Marlowe was generally believed to practice necromancy as a student of black magic.

9-10.] —Steevens: Alluding perhaps to the celebrated Dr. Dee's pretended intercourse with an angel, and other familiar spirits. 

—Massey: Who does not recognize Faustus, his necromancy, and his boasts of what he will have the spirits do for him? Who does not see that Sh., thinking dramatically, has identified Marlowe with Faustus and thrown him on the stage, where, in vision — if it be not an actual fact that the play was running at the Curtain Theatre while Sh. was composing that sonnet — he sees his familiar Mephistopheles "gulling him nightly" with such intelligence as that "in Hell are all manner of delights." [Cf. especially the line in Dr. Faustus, "They say thou hast a familiar spirit," etc.] (Qu. Rev., 115: 447.) Henry Brown, [taking Davies as rival poet, thinks Drayton may have been the] intelligencer alluded to, as aiding Davies, like an evil spirit, with dark suggestions, (p. 193.)

—G. Stronach, [(N. & Q., 9th s., 12: 141) taking the sonnet series to be a miscellany like the Pass. Pilgrim, believes that this sonnet was written about Sh. by Barnes.]


Was Shakespeare Gay? What Do the Sonnets Really Say?

Commentary in Rollins:


1. proud full saile] —Beeching (ed. 1904): So in Sonnet 80.6: “proudest sail.”—Brooke (ed. 1936):4 The proud full-sail,’ verse like a ship with all canvas spread.—In the line Lee (ed. 1907) denies a reference to Chapman: Chapman’s poetic style, though very involved, cannot be credited with exceptional dignity. Shakespeare’s words will not bear too literal an interpretation.— Pooler (ed. 1918): This, if not ironical, could apply only to Marlowe’s verse or Chapman’s, and Marlowe died in 1593; would good verse be inspired by the gulling of an affable ghost?—Tucker (ed. 1924): The epithets all belong to the picture of a great galleon with full-spread sails setting forth to win rich ‘prizes’ on the Spanish main (as did Raleigh in 1597). Meanwhile the poet hints that the rival is seeking, not (as he himself does) the love of the patron, but a rich material return.

9. affable familiar ghost] —Gissing, 1883 (Letters, 1927 ed., p. 132), calls this a “marvellous phrase.”—In lines 9 f. Steevens (ed. 1780) sees an allusion “to the celebrated Dr. Dee’s pretended intercourse with an angel, and other familiar spirits.”

13. fild up] —Tucker (ed. 1924): Shakespeare was not afraid of the verse of his rival in itself, but only when the patron lent it his countenance. This ‘fill’d up’ anything that might be lacking in it.



General Commentary:


—Tyler: To Professor Minto (Characteristics of English Poets, 2nd edit., p, 221 seq.) is due the identification of the rival poet of the Sonnets with George Chapman, an identification so complete as to leave no reasonable doubt on the matter.

5. by spirits taught, etc.] —Tucker: This cannot mean ‘taught by other men of genius’ (the ‘compeers’ of 1. 7), since ‘other’ would be indispensable; nor would these teach him to write ‘above a mortal pitch.’ The ‘spirits’ are the disembodied geniuses of the past, from whom the rival, as a man of learning, derived inspiration and matter. It is true that, when alive, such geniuses were ‘mortal,’ but as now spirits, they are something more, and their influence may be supposed to be of a higher nature.

—Sams, Eric: Only an implacable pre-conviction could torture those words into confessing any connection with “Marlowe” or “Chapman”. Marlowe was dead to begin with, in 1593; and there is no record that Chapman's innocuous claim to have conversed with the spirit of Homer was made before 1609. Besides, their two candidatures cancel each other out. Above all, neither of them can be shown to have sought Southampton's favour at a time when he was Shakespeare's well-known patron.

...neither of them can be shown to have sought Southampton's favour at a time when he was Shakespeare's well-known patron.

    But Barnaby Barnes did, with a sonnet which has a line filled with Southampton’s countenance, and in 1593, when Venus and Adonis was published. Barnes, furthermore, was a notorious occultist. His intimate friend Wllliam Percy asks him, by name, in his own Sonnets to Coelia (1594): “What tell'st thou me, by spells thou hast won thy dear?”

10. gulls him.] —Tucker: It is difficult to believe that this means ‘deludes,’ since the rival writes ‘above a mortal pitch,’ etc. More probably, a ‘gull’ being a young unfledged bird, to ‘gull’ is to treat as such, i.e. to feed him with what he cannot obtain for himself. The food is ‘intelligence,’ or what we should call ‘ideas.’


Editor's Commentary:


—Purdy: 5. spirits... spirits] (“Closing the Deal” Virtual Grub Street.) “refers to Edmund Spenser's call to the ghost of Sir Philip Sidney, in the poem Ruine of Time (1596), to inspire (breathe into) him:

O noble spirite! live there ever blessed,

*

Thereto doo thou my humble spirite raise,

And into me that sacred breath inspire,

Which thou there breathest perfect and entire.”

—Purdy: 9-10. affable...gulls] (“Closing the Deal” Virtual Grub Street.) Sir Walter 'Raleigh (then a particularly affable intimate of that circle) “gulling” him after their return to their lodgings each night.'



Sources Cited:


Alden, Raymond Macdonald. The Sonnets of Shakespeare from the Quarto of 1609 with variorum readings and commentary (1916).

Malone, Edmund. Plays and Poems of W. Sh., with the corrections and illustrations of various commentators... etc. (1821). [James Boswell.] 

Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “How Shakespeare's Rival Poet Sonnets Prove Edmund Spenser the Rival.” Virtual Grub Street,  https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2025/08/how-shakespeares-rival-poet-sonnets.html

Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “Closing the Deal: Edmund Spenser was the Rival Poet.” Virtual Grub Street, https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2025/08/closing-deal-edmund-spenser-was-rival.html

Rolfe, W. J. Shakespeare's Sonnets (No date. c. 1904)

Rollins, Hyder. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare. The Sonnets. Volume 1. (1944).

Sams, Eric. “Who was the Rival Poet of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 86?” Accessed September 28, 2025. https://ericsams.org/index.php/on-shakespeare/essays-and-reviews/166-who-was-the-rival-poet-of-shakespeare-s-sonnet-86

Tyler, Thomas. Shakespeare's Sonnets (1890). 33.

Tucker, T.G. The Sonnets of Shakespeare Edited from the Quarto of 1609 (1924).

Verity, A. W. The Works of William Shakespeare, Vol. 8. Sonnets. Introduction and Notes by A. W. Verity

Walsh, C.M. Shakespeare's Complete Sonnets. A new arrangement,... (1908).



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