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Saturday, November 16, 2024

Lord Burghley to Sir Robert Cecil. December 2, 1594. The Wedding of Elizabeth de Vere.

I thank you for sending to me the copy of her Majestie's letters to the French Kyng, assuring myself that there could no such marye come out of any knuckles but of hers that in all graces by nature, by calling, by long experience, is of such perfection as none can attayn unto. In this letter, though I knolledg my weaknes to judg therof, yet I see every sentence full of matter of great vallue, in a princely kyndness to a Kyng very acceptable, in congratulating his escape very comfortable, in advising him how to preserve his person more carefull than she is for herself, otherwise than she leaveth all to the care of God, in advise further to remove the nursery of his common enemies, without relenting to contrary counsells, so wisely and religiously, as of all these thyngs I am sure no secretary nor orator could so lyvely express her princely mynd.

For her hope to have me dance, I must have a longer tyme to leran to go, but I will be ready in mynd to dance with my hart, when I shall behold her favorable disposition to do such honor to her mayd, for the old man's sake. I wish her Majesty would send some treasure into Irland, and that her Treasurer might see to the orderly expence therof better than his clerks have done these six yeres.

Your loving father,

W. BURGHLEY.

The argument of my letter hath tempted my hand to wryte thus much.1

Our source informs us that this letter alludes “to the preparations for the marriage of Lord Burghley's granddaughter, Elizabeth Vere, eldest daughter of Anne Countess of Oxford, with William Earl of Derby.” Robert Cecil is managing the Treasury more and more as Burghley's “gout” keeps him more often and longer abed.2 He exchanges frequent letters for his father's advice and approval on key topics. Personal matters lighten the fare. For this reason we can look over the shoulders at the daily lives of the major players in Queen Elizabeth's Court.

Here we learn that the Queen has sent her regards, through Robert's previous letter, teasing the decrepit Burghley that she expects to see him dance at the wedding. His heart, he replies, will dance because the Queen will be greatly honoring the wedding with her attendance. Such small (and sometimes not so small) tokens of affection regularly pass between them at this point in their lives, Burghley working remotely from his house on the Strand (occasionally in the country, at Theobalds) and the Queen in whichever of her palaces she has chosen to reside.

Another letter to Burghley has taught us that the Earl of Derby had proposed to Elizabeth Vere in May of the year.3 The formal betrothal was also postponed — in this instance until June.4 The authorship implications of Derby's various situations are largely unrealized as of yet, three of which gave us plays by Shakespeare.

Yet several other letters between Robert Sidney and his wife inform us that the wedding was planned for January 19, 1594/5, and, for some reason, postponed to exactly a week following.

By January 26: Preparations for the marriage of the Earl of Derby. The marriage was originally to have taken place on January 19. Sir Robert Sidney, Jan 9, Greenwich, ‘to my most dear wife, the Lady Sidney’: ‘I cannot possibly be with you till after my Lord of Derby’s marriage, which will be on Sunday come sennight [Jan 19]’; [January]: ‘My head is so full of a masque that the Queen and certain idle lords, my friends, have brought me into... This masque will be chargeable’; Monday [Jan 20]: ‘Sweetheart. Our masque is put off till Sunday next and the marriage also’. Sidney spent £500. [Hannay, 64-5].5

I have yet to discover the reason.

I have made it clear, in my Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof6, that I subscribe to the theory that Edward de Vere wrote A Midsummer's Night Dream for the wedding reception. Stanley-ites assign it to the bridegroom, William Stanley, who they believe wrote the works of Shaksepeare. The partisans for each of the candidates for alternative authorship claim the play for their own.

What is particularly curious is that many traditional Stratfordian scholars, for some 200 years now, have asserted that Shakspere of Stratford wrote the play for the same wedding. Also that it was a masque or distinctively masque-like. Karl Elze provides just one of a number of excerpts to this effect in the New Variorum of the play:

... we feel throughout the play that like the masques it was originally intended for a private entertainment. The resemblance to the masques is still heightened by the completely lyrical, not to say operatic stamp, of the Midsummer Night's Dream. There is no action which develops of internal necessity, and the poet has here, as Gervinus says, ' completely laid aside his great art of finding a motive for every action.' ... In a word, exactly as in the masques, everything is an occurrence and a living picture rather than a plot, and the delineation of the characters is accordingly given only with slight touches...7

There is a strong possibility, then, that Sir Robert Sidney danced in the first performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream while the Earl of Oxford, Baron Burghley and the Queen looked on. Or did Oxford, perhaps, participate as well?



1 Queen Elizabeth and her times, II. 440-1.

2 See my “What caused the death of William Cecil, Baron Burghley, in 1598?” Virtual Grub Street, August 06, 2023. https://vgs-pbr-reviews.blogspot.com/2023/08/what-caused-death-of-william-cecil.html

3 Titherley, A. W. Shakespeare's Identity: William Stanley, 6th Earl Of Derby (1592). 24. “...on 9th May the Countess Alice wrote a letter to Sir Robert Cecil, Elizabeth’s Uncle, sarcastically wishing his niece a better husband than William...”

4 Titherley citing Lafranc, Abel. Sous Le Masque de William Shakespeare (1919). The reason they give, however, is ludicrous.

5 Folgerpedia, 1595. https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/mediawiki/media/images_pedia_folgerpedia_mw/a/ab/ECDbD_1595.pdf citing The Letters (1595-1608) of Rowland Whyte, ed. Michael G. Brennan, Noel J. Kinnamon and Margaret P. Hannay (Philadelphia, 2013).

6 Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1543136257/

7 Furness, Horace Howard. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: A Midsommer Nights Dreame (1895). Citing K. Elze (Essays, &c, trans. by L. Dora Schmitz, p. 32, 1874).


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Sunday, November 10, 2024

John Lee to Lord Burghley, March 18, 1571/2.

Here John Lee, an agent of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, in Antwerp, informs his master on various ongoing matters. The city was the nexus of European commerce, economic and political. Information from all countries and parties was constantly flowing through. Every government in Europe or with business in Europe had agents in the city. Perhaps as much as half of the continent's international mail passed through the port arriving and/or departing on tall-masted ships to parts throughout the globe. More than half of the official secretaries and messengers of the countries on that globe ate, drank and kept rooms at the taverns as they passed through on their business.

In March 1572, England was trying to recover from rebellions in the Catholic north of the country to place Mary, Queen of Scots, on the throne. Mary was under house arrest at Sheffield Castle, as far away from potential allies as possible. As we see, Lee's news, then, largely regarded Mary's allies: the Scots, France and the Catholic church.

Of special interest is Lee's information that the Earl of Oxford already “has put away the Countess his wife” to revenge himself against Burghley for refusing to intercede with the Queen for the release of the head of his faction, the Duke of Norfolk. Oxford's wife was Burghley's daughter, Anne. At this point, they had only been married for a few months. If this was only a rumor, as of that point, it is an informative one as Oxford did, in fact, refuse to take up residence with Anne, his countess, and chose, instead, to live at the royal court without her.

Mr. Egremont' Ratclitfe will very shortly be sent hence, by appointment of the Duke of Alva, with letters of great importance to the King of Spain. The Earl of Westmoreland was earnestly requested by the Spanish Ambassador to take the carriage of them, but he refused. Mr. Ratcliffe signified to my man Butler (who has attended him ever since my last coming over, by my appointment, and who is not known to have ever attended upon me) that he would open his letters by the way, and disclose their secrets, trusting thereby to purchase grace of the Queen. Markenfeld has been sent from the Pope to the King of Spain, and it is thought that the latter will land certain men in Ireland, and that the Pope will presently send 12,000 crowns to be employed in Scotland. Lord Seaton has gone to confer with the Regent of Scotland, Earl Morton, and the Scotch King's party, to see if he can procure them to join with the Scotch Queen's party, to the behoof of the Queen of Scots.

There was a bruit that the Earl of Northumberland was delivered to Berwick, and Lord Seaton apprehended in England, which caused the Countess of Northumberland to send hither in haste, and both his sons (who remain here as pledges) came hither to learn the truth thereof.

The Papists in the Low Countries hope some attempt shortly against the Queen, for they hear that the French King has manned 20 ships of war, and that the Duke of Alva has sent into Germany to take up bands of horse and foot. They further affirm that there was like to have been a mutiny there the 27th of last month, when it was thought that the Duke of Norfolk should have passed; so that they be fully persuaded that the Queen dare not proceed further therein, and affirm that the Duke has secret friends, and such as may do very much with the Queen, and that the Earl of O[x]ford, who has been a most humble suitor for him, has conceived some great displeasure against you for the same, and has put away the Countess his wife. What other vain imaginations they have conceived of the Queen going to see the Earl of Sussex, and what words were spoken to him by her, I spare to write, nothing doubting but that the Queen rests in greater security than they imagine, which I pray God long to continue.


P. S. Thanks for your letter. If you would write to Norton, it might help me to find out what I cannot obtain by any other means.



Source: State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth, Addenda 1566-1579 (1871). 386-7.


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Saturday, November 09, 2024

The Sonnets of Shakespeare: Sonnet 52. Edward de Vere unlocks his memories of Elizabeth.

 


52

SO am I as the rich whose blessed key,

Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,

The which he will not ev’ry hower survay,              3

For blunting the fine point of seldome pleasure.

Therefore are feasts so sollemne and so rare,

Since sildom comming in the long yeare set,           6

Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,

Or captaine Jewells in the carconet.

So is the time that keepes you as my chest,              9

Or as the ward-robe which the robe doth hide,

To make some speciall instant speciall blest,

By new unfoulding his imprison’d pride.                  12

Blessed are you whose worthinesse gives skope,

Being had to tryumph, being lackt to hope.


4. For blunting] —Pooler (1918): lest it should blunt. Schmidt (1874, 5. v.for): i. e. because it would blunt, = that it may not blunt.—With the line Malone (ed. 1780) compares Horace, “voluptates commendat rarior usus,” and Alden (ed. 1916) trustingly repeats him. No such line occurs in Horace, but A. S. Pease has kindly located it for me in Juvenal, XI.208.

seldome] seldom enjoyed


8. captaine] Malone (ed. 1780): Of superior worth.

carconet] carcanet. Malone (ed. 1780): An ornament worn round the neck.— Dyce (Glossary, 1867): A necklace.—Schmidt (1874): Collar of jewels.— Percy Macquoid (Sh.’s England, 1917, II, 116 f.): Carcanets were hanging collars of linked ornamental design set with important jewels surrounded by smaller stones, from which often hung little pendants. ... As they were of considerable value, their use was confined to Royalty and ladies of the Court.


9. chest] Time. Memory. The place in which “ his sweet up-locked treasure” is up-locked.


12. his imprison’d pride] the garment's pride.


Line 13, 14] Lee (ed. 1907): Blessed are you whose excellence is such that your presence brings me triumph, your absence fills me with the hope of a meeting.—Pooler (ed. 1918): [Blessed are you] whose goodness is so great that I can take delight in your presence, and in your absence hope for your return. —GWP: Lee and Poole are both mistaken here, altering the meaning in order to make it fit the man from Stratford. Blessed are you who being near brought (past tense, otherwise the rarely opened memories / poems would not be his carefully preserved connection to her) and being distant (her presence lacked) is so worthy that he may hope to be allowed in her presence once again. This monument poem, like all the others, is written to Queen Elizabeth who once he had and now he lacks.



—Rendall: The more private chambers house the wardrobe for the robes of state, the jewel-case (§§ 48, 52, 65, a figure familiar in the Plays), the cabinet or safe (§ 48) kept under lock and key, which reveal the surroundings of the writer.... The full-length illustration in Sonnet §52 admirably depicts the passion for gorgeous dress and pageantry, which was so marked a feature of the age...

Sonnet §52 may be regarded as a counterpart of §48, depicting the satisfaction that attends on home-return. Among all the Sonnets there is none more opulent in tone and movement, nor any that more confidently assumes equality of state on either side. Peer speaks to peer.

Was Shakespeare Gay? What Do the Sonnets Really Say?

—GWP: There is no satisfaction, here, as per Rendall. Only hope. And the separation has lasted a long time.


—Beeching: compare Sonnet 52 —

'I'herefore are feasts so solemn and so rare.

Since, seldom coming, in the long year set

So is the time that keeps you as my chest,

Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,

To make some special instant special blest —

with I Henry IV, III, ii, 56 —

My presence, like a robe pontifical,

Ne'er seen but wonder'd at; and so my state,

Seldom but sumptuous, showed like a feast.

And won by rareness such solemnity,—


—Pooler: Perhaps a continuation of xlviii.


—Butler: 52 Q is a somewhat lame apology for his not having come to see his friend as often as he used to do...

By his system, Butler renumbers this sonnet 72.


—Wilber: Sonnet 52 makes use of a dirty Elizabethan pun in the line "So is the time that keeps you as my chest, Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide, To make some special instant special blest, By new unfolding his imprisoned pride." In those times, “pride” was used as a euphemism for an erect penis.


—Cartwright: By his system, Cartwright numbers this sonnet 53.


—Bray: By his system, Bray numbers this sonnet 32.


Sources:


Alden, Raymond Macdonald. The Sonnets of Shakespeare (1916).


Beeching, H.C. The Sonnets of Shakespeare (1904).


Bray, Denys. The Original Order of Shakespeare's Sonnets (1925)


Butler, Samuel. Shakespeare's sonnets reconsidered (New Edition, 1927).


Cartwright, Robert. The Sonnets of Shakespeare Rearranged and Divided (1859).


Dyce, Alexander. Glossary (The Works of William Shakespeare, vol. IX). London, 1867.


Lee, Sidney. Complete Works of William Shakespeare (ed. 1907)


Malone, Edmund. Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, with the corrections and illustrations of various commentators (etc.) (1821).


Macquoid, Percy. Shakespeare’s England (1917).


Pooler, C. Knox. The Works of Shakespeare: Sonnets (1918).


Rendall, Gerald. Shakespeare Sonnets and Edward de Vere (1930).


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


Schmidt, Alexander. Shakespeare-Lexicon (1874, 1875).


Wilber, Jennifer. "Was William Shakespeare Bisexual? Exploring the Bard’s Sexual Orientation" 

https://owlcation.com/humanities/Was-William-Shakespeare-Bisexual-Exploring-the-Bards-Sexual-Orientation



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Saturday, November 02, 2024

Introducing the Shakespeare Authorship Vault and the Seashore of Bohemia.

Life is a convoluted piece of work, to be sure. Digging away in the mines of literary scholarship the begrimed miner does well to remember the fact.

As the result, I have gathered vast ranges and profound depths of information in the folders into which I place my ore for transportation to the surface. With luck, an almost inexplicable alchemy will make a bin of the ore here and there into a small bit of silver and gold. But even the metaphor of alchemy has its limitations and most of the processing arrives at iron — essential for building but not particularly precious.

Because there is a vast labyrinthine Internet sufficiently well indexed that the tiny corner which has been dedicated to collecting millions of digital facsimile editions of the written / printed word, from ancient times to the present, can be accessed, I can accomplish an astonishing amount mining alone. Far more, as it turns out, than I could accomplish by signing onto a corporation, profit or non-profit.

Nearly as much of the search, it very much bears mentioning, is done in the notes and bibliographies in those facsimile books. The pre-Internet world built an impressive and vitally important part of the Internet search machinery.

The necessarily slapdash indexing system that I have managed to cobble together over the years for thousands of harvested items struggles mightily to facilitate access to tens of thousands. More and more of the ore sits waiting in its folder. So much more that it can even be difficult to recall what sits waiting exactly where. So much more than there is likely to be time to process in the end.

All of this said, I have long been considering options to better organize this ore and to turn as much as possible into useful information. Looked at from any number of sides, it comes to me that there is much more useful information to be had than is generally subsumed into the essay form.

Publishing raw notes, references and data can provide a valuable service. To shift to a new metaphor, they are the seeds for essays many of which I will not be available to write. They will also seed those I am able to write. But what should be the format?

As fate would have it, these thoughts have come together at the same time that Anne Katherine, a member of my Edward de Vere was Shakespeare Facebook group, has asked “can anyone point me to documentation about Bohemia having a sea coast in the 16th century?” It is a question that has had to wait its turn in the quasi-eternal queue. This seemed a promising candidate for the first safety deposit box (0001) in my new Shakespeare Authorship Vault blog. If the pieces came properly together I would have: 1) an introductory essay (this); 2) an essay to answer Ms. Katherine's question (pending); and could withdraw and display a box filled with the collection of the materials consulted in the process of chasing down the answer (the final step).

So far, this seems to be coming together provisionally well. The first item of information to be passed along is that the search has taken vastly too much time. In the better questions it always does. They actually resolve into numerous tiny but absolutely essential processual queries each of which can take days to answer as precisely as is possible.

The first clue, in this instance, was a common reference in 1880 editions of Robert Greene's Pandosto or Dorastus and Fawnia to a German essay on the mysterious source for Greene's work which is the main source for Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. For one example:

In a series of articles contributed to Englische Studien (1878, 1888), Caro traced the germ of the romance to certain events which occurred in the fourteenth-century history of Poland and Bohemia. Duke Ziemowit of Massow, conceiving suspicions of his wife, cast her into prison, where she bore a son. By the duke's orders, the queen was strangled, but the boy, carried away in secret, was brought up by a peasant woman. The king never ceased to lament his action, and eventually his son was restored to him. We may see in the unfortunate wife the prototype of Bellaria and Hermione, and in the cup-bearer Dobek that of Franion and Camillo. Caro further imagined that in Dorastus' description of himself as "a knight born and brought up in Trapolonia” , there is a reference to Massow. The name Sicilia he took to be a corruption of Silesia. It is significant in this connection, that Greene makes the wife of Egistus a daughter of the Emperor of Russia.1

This quote has been waiting to be used toward the question as to whether or not Bohemia had a seashore at any time in its medieval or early modern history. It turns out to be the essential first step.

To this I will add that German journals such as the Englische Studien were among the better sources of Shakespeare scholarship in their day. In general, the German scholarly journals added immeasurably to Shakespeare studies in German and English. This particular journal, however, seems only to have published work in German.



1 Greene, Robert. Pandosto or Dorastus and Fawnia (1588, 1907). P.G. Thomas, ed. xv-xvi.


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Saturday, October 19, 2024

Twisted Twine, Lustie Ver: Branding with Puns in Tudor Times.

It has recently been brought up, in a comment thread, at the Edward de Vere was Shakespeare Facebook Group, that “ever the same” in Shakespeare's sonnet 76 gives every appearance of being a pun on Queen Elizabeth's motto Semper Eadem: “ever the same”. This resolves with ease to “E. Ver, the same”:

Why write I still all one, E. Ver, the same,

And keep invention in a noted weed,

That every word doth almost tell my name,

Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?

(The italics are my own.) This is punning on a level that was much appreciated by Tudor readers — including Tudor monarchs.

Interested to investigate more deeply, member Patrick Roux has asked 'are there extant examples of Edward de Vere using “Ver” or “Ver.” in his communications?' And the answer does, indeed, prove to be particularly interesting.

Perhaps it is best, however, to begin with the works of Thomas Twine. Though little known now, even to scholars, he was quite popular during the 1570s. As I have pointed out in my Shakespeare in 1573 (2021):

81. In 1573, Twine was at the height of his fame. In that year he published his continuation of the translation of the Aeneid left unfinished at Thomas Phaer’s death which would be both authors’ signature work to this day. It was one of several books he published in that year, including The Breuiary of Brytayne, etc., which he dedicated to “Edward Deuiere Lorde Bulbeck, Erle of Oxenford, Lorde great Chamberlayne of England”.1

As it turns out, one can get a good idea of what portions of the Aeneid Twine translated because they contained an unusual number of instances of the words “twine” and variations upon “twisted,”and “twisted twine.”

This was true of all of the works of Thomas Twine. Not only that, but his friends were in on the branding. In the Breviary, a commendatory poem entitled “A freind, in prayse of the Authour,” includes the line “The Latin thou, the English Twyne did twyst,...”.

So then, it need not come as any surprise that an echo poem written by Edward de Vere appears in the Arundel Harington manuscripts under the heading “The best verse that ever th'author made” that includes the following lines:

O heavens quod she whoe was the fyrst that bredd in me this fevear – vear

whoe was the fyrst that gave the wound whose scar I wear for ever. vere

what cruell Cupide to my harmes vsurpes the golden quiver. vere

what wight fyrst caughte this hart & can from bondage yt deliver vere2

It is worth pointing out that the second quoted line would easily support the pun we are discussing: “the wound whose scar I wear for E Ver.”

All of these copies make clear that the author was Edward de Vere and the melancholy maid was Anne Vavasour. Because their illegitimate son was born on March 21, 1581 [N.S.], and the two separated at that point as lovers, the poem was very likely written before November of 1580.

Thus one of the poems Vere's close friend Thomas Watson contributed to the 1573 anthology An Hundreth Sundrie Flowers makes clear that Vere's name was regularly the instrument of pun and branding at least by that date.

The lustie Ver which whillome might exchange

My griefe to joy, and then my joyes encrease,

Springs now elsewhere, and showes to me but strange,...3

The pun here being upon the name Vere and the common Latin word for spring, ver. Another young woman is melancholy. This time because the “lustie Ver” once shown on her and now shines on someone other than her.

All the young women at court are said to have been greatly disappointed when Edward de Vere — the greatest catch at court — chose to marry Anne Cecil, on December 16, 1571. Likely this is the cause of the maid's grief.

In Watson's Latin envoi to his book Hekatompathia or Passionate Century of Love (1582) — a book he dedicated “To the Right Honorable my very good Lord Edward de Vere, Earle of Oxenford, etc.” — he turns the pun around.

Et tamen exhibitum Vero, qui magna meretur

Virtute et vera nobilitate sua.

*

Dum famulus Verum comitaris in aurea tecta,

Officj semper sit tibi cura tui.4


[And also [Vere / True] stands forth, who displays

Such great virtue [lustiness] and his true nobility.

*

While the family [Vere /true] accompanies the golden canopy,

The office forever entrusted to the care of you and yours.]5

I go more into the close relationship between Watson, Vere and Shakespeare and their poetries in my Shakespeare in 1573 and in various essays on my Virtual Grub Street linked from my Edward de Vere was Shakespeare Group and Page. There more there than Vere puns.

While there is much more to be revealed on the subject, I will finish for present purposes with one final example that seems yet to be noticed. An epistle attached to the 1609 First Quarto of the play Troilus & Cressida — published some five years after the death of Edward de Vere — entitled after a fashion long considered a mystery.

A never writer, to an ever reader. Newes.

At the beginning of the 17th century, the Middle English and early modern English “ne” construction, meaning not, was rarely used. While it had gone out of use, however, it was well known from the reading of any educated person.

The author of the epistle, we should know, was quite well aware of the construction by the fact that the title was surely meant to be read among insiders as “A Ne Ver writer, to an E. Ver reader” or “A Not Vere writer, to an E. Vere reader.”

Perhaps Mr. Roux will consider his question answered.


1 Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Shakespeare in 1573: Apprenticeship and Scandal (2021). 81. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096GSQV14

2Hughey, Ruth. The Arundel Harington Manuscript of Tudor Poetry (1960). [179], II.215. Close variations appear in the contemporary manuscript collections Bodleian MS., Rawlinson Poetry, 85, fol. 11r., Archbishop Marsh's Library, MS. 183 Z 3.5.21, fol. 20V, and Folger MS. I,112, fol. 12r.

3Cunliffe, John W. The Complete Works of George Gascoigne (1907). A Hundreth Sundrie Flowers (1573). “Hearbes” I.334.

4 Arber, Edward. Thomas Watson Poems (1870). 32.

5 Sonnet 125. “Were't ought to me I bore the canopy,...” 



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