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Monday, April 20, 2026

Clowns and Cunnilingus in Shakespeare, Part 2.

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Tuesday, April 14, 2026

Clowns and Cunnilingus in Shakespeare.

In the series:

Part 1: Clowns

Part 2: Cunnilingus


Those who have read my Capulet, Capulet & Parolles (2020)1 may recall that I assign the first quarto [first edition] of Romeo and Juliet to around 1587. Actually, that date may apply to an earlier version yet. Numerous hints in the first and second quarto make clear the earlier version. Foremost among them is the presence of a character first identified as “clown” and quickly transformed to “servant”.

In the second quarto, the clown receives directions from Lord Capulet to give an invitation to everyone on a list to the next evening's masked ball. This being the second quarto, the clown enters together with Capulet and Paris: “Enter Capulet, Countie Paris, and the Clowne.” By the time the clown speaks, he is designated as “Servant”.

Serv. Find them out whose names are written. Here it is written, that the shoo-maker should meddle with his yard, and the tayler with his last, the fisher with his pensill, & the painter with his nets.2

In the first quarto, Capulet and Paris enter alone. Later comes the direction “Enter Servingman,” Capulet's instructions and the clown's/servant's first speech.

Ser: Seeke them out whose names are written here, and yet I knowe not who are written here : I must to the learned to Iearne of them,...

The clownish babble of the servant is immediately evident in Q2. The illiterate servant/clown's thought that he must find someone who can read comes first in Q1.

Lest one think that Q1 has no demonstrable clown, but only the implication, in Act 1, Scene 4. he is to wait table for supper.

Enter clown]

Clowne: Maddam you are cald for, supper is readie, the Nurce curst in the Pantrie, all thinges in extreamitie, make hast for I must be gone to waite.

In Q2, the speech is given by Servant:

Ser. Madam the guests are come, supper serv'd up, you cald, my young Lady askt for, the Nurse curst in the Pantrie, and everie thing in extremitie : I must hence to wait,...

The presence of a clown, or clowns, in an earlier version is further supported by Q2 referring, in a marginal note, to the character Peter as being played by William Kemp, who would become the foremost clown of the Elizabethan stage after the death of Richard Tarleton in 1588.

As plays matured, during the Elizabethan period, clowns and other minor characters (sentry, wife, ruffian, thief, receiver, etc.) that had earlier been identified by their function, were often given proper names. Their parts were often partially rewritten, as well, giving them more personality. Clowns might graduate to servants or waiters as an intermediate step across several versions toward proper names.

Here we see that the process was accomplished in steps rather than all at once. Both quartos give different clues, each script having evolved separately from the other for use in different performances.

Shakespeare plays with a designated “Clown” are earlier productions. When those plays were revised to be played again, bits and pieces of vestigial evidence of the earlier clowns (and other characters such as John Oldcastle, who became John Falstaff, etc.) was often left behind by harried company scribes and printer's typesetters and proof-readers who needed to get out their product quickly. Together, small errors of authors, scribes and typesetters tended to leave behind a highly informative trail of such clues.

We have already been introduced to Albert Cohn's Shakespeare in Germany in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1865), in the recent post on Hamlet, and shown how it can be considerable help in determining what the earlier versions of certain Shakespeare plays were like and when they were written. The first known record of English players in Europe informs us that a group was in service at Elsinore, Denmark, in 1585. The next year

On June 17, 1586, the players Will Kempe, George Bryan and Thomas Pope, set sail from England as servants of the Danish ambassador, Henrik Ramel, to Elsinore, in Denmark, where they entertained King Frederick II. In September of that year, the Danish and German authorities gave them permission to try their luck in Germany.3

Each is listed, in the front matter of the Shakespeare First Folio as an actor who performed his plays. Various German language translations of Shakespeare plays are extant. Their relationships with the extant English versions indicate that they were translated from earlier versions of the English plays — details consistent with the mid 1580s.

Kemp had already been in the Netherlands where he was referred to, in a letter of March 24, 1586, as “Will, my lord of Leicester's jesting player,”4 having delivered an official letter to England. It is not known whether he was a member of the first English players.

As it happens, a German translation of Romeo and Juliet, quite clearly close to the quarto versions of the play, was published, by Cohn, from an ancient manuscript found in the Imperial Library at Vienna. In it, the Clown is not transformed into Servant but remains designated throughout as “Clown”.

In fact, the clown — designated specifically as Clown — has one of the bigger parts in the entire play. He has already had above a dozen lines before he considers Capulet's order to invite guests.

CLOWN. Well, well, if it cannot be helped, I will do it with all my heart. Now I am Mr. Invite; how shall I find out the houses where they live? I will go and study a little how to address guests that are to be invited5

In all three versions, the illiterate clown/servant comes upon Romeo and Benvolio as they are speaking and asks them to read the names on his list. In this way, Romeo discovers that Rosaline, his love-object, is on the list. He decides to attend the masked ball in order to see her.

In the English language quartos, the clown disappears after the pantry scene with lady Capulet and re-appears briefly, as the character Peter, in Q2, in Act IV, Scene 5, and Servant in the same scene of Q1. He calls for musicians to play indicating an interlude such as was then common in plays. We are informed that Kemp plays Peter. No actor's name is given to Servant. In the German translation, only a stage direction appears: “Doleful music. Juliet is seen lying in the vault.”

In between, in the English quartos, Mercutio plays the clown with witty jests making fun of Romeo for his love-sick behavior. This is only hinted at in the German translation. The German clown has his last big scene when he discovers the dead body of Tibalt and informs Juliet's nurse who informs Juliet. In the English quartos the clown has long been gone and the nurse sees Tibalt's dead body with her “own eyes” and tells Juliet.

In conclusion: the vestiges of a clown part in Q1 & Q2 of Romeo and Juliet strongly indicates that an earlier version existed with clowns playing parts in the fashion practiced until the mid to late 1580s. The German translation of the play actually features the old-style clown part throughout strongly indicating that its source was a mid to late 1580s English version of the Shakespeare play.



2 Daniel, P.A. Quotes from Q1 & Q2 are taken from Romeo and Juliet. Parallel Texts of the First Two Quartos (1874)

3 Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Edward de Vere was Shakespeare (2013). 167. https://www.amazon.com/Edward-Vere-was-Shake-speare-proof/dp/1543136257/ See also, Ravn, V. C. “English Instrumentalists at the Danish Court etc.” Sammelbände Der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, 1906. IV. 550-563. Especially @556 where he reminds us that Kemp was actually already in the Netherlands at the time and only the earlier group of English players (which may or may not have included him) likely performed at Elsinore.

4 Ravn. 557.

5 Cohn, Albert. Shakespeare in Germany in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1865). 323, 324. “PICKELHARING. Nu Nu wan ichs thuen muess, so thue ichs gehrn, iezt bin ich Herr Latein, o wo werd ich die Heuser absinden, wo sie wohnen, ich will gehen vnd ein wenig Studiren, wie man die gåst anrädt wan man sie einladen soll”




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Friday, April 10, 2026

Romeo On the Rebound.

In Arthur Brooke's 1562 rendition of “The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet” we are informed of Romeo that:

To her he writeth oft, oft messengers are sent,

At length, in hope of better speed, himself the lover went,

Present to plead for grace, which absent was not found :

And to discover to her eye his new received wound.

But she that from her youth was fostered evermore

With virtue's food, and taught in school of wisdom's skilful lore;

By answer did cut off th' affections of his love,

That he no more occasion had so vain a suit to move.

So stern she was of cheer, for all the pain he took,

That, in reward of toil, she would not give a friendly look.

And yet how much she did with constant mind retire;

So much the more his fervent mind was pricked forth by desire.

The her to whom he wrote was not Juliet. He'd been smitten with another young woman, at the beginning of the tale, since the main characters first began to go by the names of Romeo and Juliet.

Romeo's love object, at the beginning of the tale, would not take the name Rosaline until Shakespeare provided it as evidenced by the first quarto printing of his play Romeo and Juliet. I've given my reasons for dating the first version of the play to around 1587, in my Capulet, Capulet & Parolles, regardless that it was not published until 1597.1 And, of course, not all of the first quarto of the text needs have been original from the earlier date. There are signs of revision from a version earlier than 1587. Later minor revisions may have been incorporated by stage managers, scribes, etc., or even by Shakespeare himself.

The story began as a 1530 novella by Luigi Da Porto, Di Due Nobili Amanti. He probably had it from earlier variations on the theme of star-crossed lovers from contentious factions, with other character-names, some rumored to have existed as early as the 13th century. Before that, similar tales had appeared as Greek novels from early in the first millennium of the Common Era.

Romeo's first infatuation, unrequited, does not appear in the prose tale by Porto whose more austere approach to story-telling was stripped of all but essential details. He merely attends the festivities following his girlfriend who he reflects is much too stingy with her favors and therefore decides to pursue Juliet instead.2

By the next version of the story of which we are aware — Clizia's L'infelice Amore Dei Due Fedelissimi Amanti Giulia E Romeo Scritto In Ottava Rima3, of 1553 — Romeo is described, in the context of a late chivalric society, as tried in battle and tournament. We are made aware that he has pledged his love to a beautiful lady who is tyrannizing over him.

By the end of the masquerade, however,

He changed the ruler of his heart, bestowing then
Scepter and crown upon a second love,
By whose aid he cast the first one out —
Who once had reigned there as a tyrant.4

By Matteo Bandello's La Sfortunata Morte Di Dui Infelicissimi Amanti (1554), generally the source of further French and English versions of the story, Porto's minimalist and Clizia's chivalric romances are transformed into an early modern tale.

A matter of some amusement still, Marcuccio Guertio would make a cameo appearance by name in Porto, and as Marcuccio Verzio, in Clizia, and plain Marcuccio, in Bandello, because, as in Brooke, where he became known as Mercutio, Juliet shivered to recall “la sua fredda man”5 (“his cold hand”) when he touched hers. This was thought a funny enough joke to live at least 100 years (six known versions) before Shakespeare repurposed Mercutio to be slain by Tybalt provoking Romeo to kill the latter.

Romeo had no back story — no excessive previous infatuation from which the story would begin — in Porto. He is described as “very young,” as more beautiful than any woman in the hall and following along behind his girlfriend. Nor does it appear at length in the long ottava rima poem by Gherardo Boldieri, who just once went by the pen-name Clizia. Instead, it is fair to say he is described as being trapped in the waning pattern of the medieval knight and the chaste, aloof Lady of his devotion.

It would seem to have first grown to be a back story in La Sfortunata Morte (1554) of Bandello — a particular favorite novelist of Shakespeare. In Bandello, a “21 or 22 year old” Romeo is still frustrated but not because of the unmatched virtues of his Lady. He's frustrated because of the very modern reason, that, for all his attentions, he isn't gettin' any. Setting aside medieval euphemism, he considers traveling to try to tame “his unbridled appetite” (“suo sfrenato appetito”), but changes his mind.

At length, his friend, who “loves him like a brother,” and who, some 50 years later, Shakespeare will give the name Benvolio, pleads with him to escape his years-long unrequited obsession and recognize his value. It is he who should be breaking young women's hearts, not vice-versa.

You are a young man—perhaps the handsomest to be found in this our city. You are (if I may be permitted to speak the truth to your face) courteous, virtuous, and amiable; and—what also adorns youth—you are well-versed in letters. Furthermore, you are the sole son of your father, whose vast wealth is known to all...6

His friend encourages him to get out and party more (va a tutte le feste). He takes the advice and begins

going to the parties, yet whenever he caught sight of the aloof lady, he never once turned his gaze toward her, but went about observing and appraising the others, in order to choose the one most to his liking — as if he had gone to a market to buy horses or loaves of bread.7

At the big party of the year, a Christmas masque at the hall of Antonio, head of the Capulet family, he spies the hosts daughter, the most beautiful young woman in all of Verona.

With Shakespeare, Romeo's friend who loves him like a brother is given the name Benvolio, and Romeo's cold lady, Rosaline.

Benvolio. At this same ancient feast of Capulet's

Sups the fair Rosaline whom thou so lov'st,

With all the admired beauties of Verona.

Go thither, and with unattainted eye

Compare her face with some that I shall show,

And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.8

Stage plays requiring less discursion than novellas, Benvolio's advice is reduced to a few lines of iambic pentameter and the partying he suggests (and Romeo attends) is reduced to a single party: a masque at the home of the Capulets.



1 Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Capulet, Capulet & Parolles: Edward de Vere’s Biography in the Works of Shakespeare (2020). https://www.amazon.com/Capulet-Parolles-Shakespeare-Shakespeare-Progress-book/dp/B08LLDM91P/

2 Porto. Of Two Noble Lovers. “tornalo Romeo alla sua casa, considerata la crudeltà della prima a sua donna, che di multo languire poca mercede gli dava, diliberò, quando a lei fosse a grado, i costei, quantunque de’suoi nemici fosse, tutto donarsi.” “returning home Romeo considered the cruelty of his first lady, who offered him scant reward despite all he gave her, he resolved to give himself entirely to this woman, should it please her, even though she belonged to the ranks of his enemies.”

3 Clizia. The Unhappy Love of Two Faithful Lovers, Juliet and Romeo, written in Ottava Rima.

4 Clizia, St. 21. 1-4. Cangiò regno nel cuor, dandone allora

Sceltro e corona alla seconda amata.

Poi, ch’ aitato da lei, la prima fuora

Che tiranna ne fu, n’ebbe scacciata.

5 Clizia. St. 31. 6-7. “Con la sua fredda man, del corpo fuore / Mi traea l’alma”. With his cold hand, he drew the soul out of my body.

6 Bandello. The Unfortunate Death of Two Most Unhappy Lovers. “Tu sei giovine, forsè il piu bello che in questa nostra Citta si truovi; Tu sei (siami lecito su gli occhi dirti il vero) cortere, vertuoso, amabile e (che assaì la gioventù adorna) di buone lettere ornato. Poi unico al Padre tuo figliuolo ti ritruovì, le cui grandi ricchezze a tutti sono notissime...”

7 Ibid. “cominciò andar su le feste, e dove vedeva la ritrosa Donna, mai non volgeva la vista, ma andava mirando e considerando l'altre, per scieglier quella che più gli fosse a grado, come se fosse andato ad un mercato per comprar cavali o pani.”

8 Furness. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet (1899). I.ii.79-84.



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Sunday, March 22, 2026

A Few Details from Hamlet You Might Have Missed.

Standard Citation: Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “A Few Details from Hamlet You Might Have Missed.” Virtual Grub Street,  https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2026/03/a-few-details-from-hamlet-you-might.html [state date accessed].

Those who have read the famous German translation of Hamlet, Brudermord1, may recall that the sentinels at the beginning of the play, are merely designated 1 Sent. and 2 Sent. Horatio and one Francisco have arrived to inspect them. Hamlet arrives immediately after.

The signs are clear throughout that the translator's first interest is to abridge a play he finds much too long. He will not be the last scribe (or audience member) to think so. The scenes in which Hamlet is informed of the ghost and in which the sentinels display the ghost to Horatio are, to him, extraneous and must go. By all indications, quite a number of others are also removed or truncated for the same reason. The play must move at speed.

What may not have come to mind is that in the 1603 first quarto of the play the sentinels are merely designated 1 and 2. There ensues a bit of confusion and 2 is once briefly referred to by name — “Barnardo” — while still designated throughout the scene by the number 2. Horatio is now accompanied by the character Marcellus.

In the 1604 second quarto, the sentinels on watch are given names: Barnardo and Francisco. They are being relieved by Horatio and Marcellus. The names in the first two versions have been gathered together for the new rendition of the scene.

The various editions of Shakespeare's Hamlet tell us a great deal. The German translator of Brudermord gained no time for having left the sentinels without a name. Being minor characters, they did not need one, true. But according to Stratfordian orthodoxy the 1603 quarto is supposed to be a poorly transcribed pirate edition of the 1604 quarto. The sentinels lack names because the stenographer was copying the dialogue as it was being delivered on stage.

And this is just the first of many inconsistencies with that orthodoxy. Only one of two possibilities keep it intact: 1) It is a mere coincidence however improbable; 2) The translator did his work from the pirated text. The fact that Brudermord names the royal councilor Corambus and the 1603 quarto Corambis might seem to confirm the latter conjecture.

But the councilor's name proves to weigh even more powerfully toward the German and the first quarto being legitimate evidence of separate earlier versions of the play. Corambis, also coincidentally, is a hit at William Cecil's motto “Cor unum, via una”. It is more than a little difficult to believe that a stenographer pirating a play could be sufficiently knowledgeable to create such a detail about a character all along called Polonius.2 Even if pirated, the text is a record of a genuine earlier version of the play.

Each of the three texts will prove, upon closer inspection, to be three versions of Shakespeare's Hamlet — progressive revisions by the same author. Together the coincidences are too improbable to be the result inadvertent slip of the pen or on-the-fly revision of an acting company scribe.

As I have pointed out in my “A Few Character Names in the Early Versions of Hamlet”3, Ophelia's name was taken from Jacopo Sanizzaro’s highly popular poem Arcadia (1504) as evidenced by the name of her interlocutor, Montano. Montano's part is cut out of the Brudermord version as being extraneous. He appears only in the 1603 first quarto. By the 1604 quarto he has been renamed Reynaldo.

Edward de Vere's Ulysses & Agamemnon (1584)!

It is important to add that the 1603 version was not written in 1603. It was only published then. In terms of style and maturity, it would appear to have been written in the first half of the 1590s. The Brudermord version does not mention a star. The characters that would become Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in later versions, were only identified as Ruffian 1 and Ruffian 2. The supernova seems unlikely to have been deemed extraneous and might not to have been included in the 1589 source text for the Brudermord translation. However, leaving out the names would gain no time.

Tycho Brahe's Astronomiae instauratae progymnasmata and De mundi aetherei recentioribus, about the famous 1572 supernova, first having appeared in print in 1588, were certainly in the libraries of the Englishmen John Dee and Thomas Digges, who were featured in the texts, and almost as certainly arriving in the libraries of such avid amateurs as William Cecil and Thomas Smith, perhaps even in time to revive Shakespeare's memories of the event for his 1589 version. The names of Brahe's cousins Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, however, do not come before the general public's eye until the publication of Tychonis Brahe Dani epistolarum astronomicarum (1596) which includes their names and coats-of-arms in the frontispiece engraving.

Numerous other factors in the Brudermord manuscript together suggest the year 1589. These I have pointed out in my Back When Ophelia Jumped Off a Cliff: the Hamlet of 15894 The year 1596 seems a little late, maturity-wise, for the first quarto, and the engraving is thought to have been distributed as early as 1586. Still, the present state of the evidence suggests the second quarto was written in 1596 or shortly after.

That the 1623 first folio version of Hamlet takes unique material from both the first and second quartos has been recognized in scholarly circles for some 200 years. Again, a coincidence of cosmic proportions that Shakespeare adapted some details from a pirated addition of his own play. In the same vein, Ophelia mentions her “little coach,” in a moment of distraction, during the Brudermord version of the play. While it does not appear in the first quarto it does reappear in the second quarto.5 The coincidences only begin with these.



1Cohn, Albert. Shakespeare in Germany in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1865) 237-304. “Der bestrafte oder Prinz Hamlet aus Dānnemars.” (with English translation).

2Cor unum, via una = a single heart, a single path; Cor ambis = double hearted, ambitious heart

3Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “Shakespeare’s Character Names: Shylock, Ophelia, etc.” https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2021/07/shakespeares-character-names-shylock.html

4Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Back When Ophelia Jumped Off a Cliff: the Hamlet of 1589 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09WC94FGW/

5 The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet (1604). “Come / my Coach, God night Ladies, god night.”


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