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Wednesday, September 23, 2026

Shakespeare and Catherine de Medici's Famous 1564 Carnival at Fontainebleau.

On the last day of January, in the year 1564, the Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici, and her 13 year old son, King Charles IX, departed Paris, to undertake a two year tour of his new kingdom. The season of Lent would soon be upon them so Catherine commissioned the official court poet, Pierre Ronsard, to arrange a grand month-plus-long carnaval at the favorite party-palace of the french nobility, Fontainebleau. It has since become one of history's most famous galas.

Although Charles was his own man now, and his mother no longer Regent, she still made most of the decisions. Including those related to the grand gala. She was so wise as to avoid any public display of her power for all she was at least equal to the king. The ambassadors of England, Thomas Smith and Nicholas Throckmorton, knew to start with the Queen Mother if they wanted an audience with her son.

Smith not only attended the festivities at Fontainebleau but signed the Treaty of Troyes, together with Charles, in the midst of them. He had been tutor to Edward de Vere, heir to the earldom of Oxford, some years before, during the reign of Queen Mary I. He and the young earl's eventual father-in-law, William Cecil, Baron Burghley, were close friends, as well, having risen together as young stars of Henry VIII's secretariat.

Back in England, Smith commissioned allegorical paintings for his country seat, at Hill Hall, similar to those at Fontainebleau. Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, did so in great profusion for his Kenilworth entertainment of Queen Elizabeth I, in 1575. Numerous accounts of various aspects of the Fontainebleau event had been published (including one by the king's wine-steward) in the years immediately after. They were best sellers in terms of the time. Dudley was intent to compete with the famous fête in an effort to convince the queen to marry him.

Dudley may also have learned of the event first hand from Michel de Castelnau, Lord of Mauvissiere, who had attended in person. Castelnau was something of a special ambassador to England and visited many times. He did not become the resident ambassador until several months after Kenilworth, though. He had played perhaps the single most historical role in the french festivities — which we will come to in its proper place.

So then, Fontainebleau featured a massive pleasure garden, with a carved marble fountain, which would serve as portal to the magical world that had been prepared for the guests. Dudley finished a large in-progress garden with carved marble fountain at Kenilworth in time for the visit of his queen. Each celebration featured a man-made lake with temporary-construction enchanted castle in the midst. The forests around the grounds of each featured a resident hermit who recited poetry. Both celebrations included fireworks displays.

While Fontainebleau was simply far larger and more monumental than Kenilworth and the tournaments more impressive, it was far more impressive still in that its plays and recitations, presented throughout the month, were written by Ronsard. His works are considered among the finest in all of French literature.

Also from the pen of this laureate, and ironically more famous still, is a play that he presented, the text of which has entirely disappeared. We are informed that it was a dramatized translation from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso — the single most celebrated poem of the time.

Kenilworth is thought to have influenced its times, in a signal way, by being remembered by the character Oberon in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

My gentle Pucke come hither; thou remembrest

Since once I sat upon a promontory,

And heard a Meare-maide on a Dolphins backe,

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,

That the rude sea grew civill at her song,

And certaine starres shot madly from their Spheares,

To heare the Sea-maids musicke.1

There is certainly a strong resemblance to such witness accounts as survive of the festivities presented for Elizabeth.

Traditional scholars have imagined 11 year old William of Stratford traveling 14 miles to see the queen and her entertainments the memory of which he brought back to give magic to his most magical play. Oxfordians can take no comfort from such fantasizing, however, as the earl was off visiting Italy at the time and could not himself have witnessed the entertainments, either. Whoever wrote under the name of Shakespeare likely got his information from George Gascoigne's The Princely Pleasures at Kenilworth Castle,2 Robert Laneham's famous letter to his friend Humphrey Martin3 and from other reminiscences that did not find pen and ink.

One detail given by Oberon is not found in any description of the festivities at Kenilworth.

My gentle Pucke come hither; thou remembrest

Since once I sat upon a promontory,

The occasional guess has been made as to when the promontory scene occurred. It seems like it would have caught the attention of those who witnessed the event. But no account remains.

A promontory, it bears mentioning, or rock face of any kind constantly figured in the poetry of Ronsard. It was among his favorite poetical props. Due to the fact that Ronsard wrote nearly all of the entertainment for the fête at Fontainebleau, such rock faces could be found everywhere.

In the opening masque which welcomed the king to the entryway to the world of fable, the gate to the garden at the Orleans' house, his highness stood at the foot of a sheer rock-face.4 Rather than the Lady of the Lake riding a dolphin, a nymph was carried along the water toward the king, riding on a giant seashell, to bid him welcome — presumably a tip of the hat to Botticelli's Birth of Venus.

The nymph explained that the denizens of mythology, facing an increasingly hostile world, bereft of so good a king as he who now stood before them, they had melded into nature, some into the sea, some into the earth, some into caves and crevices. But now that so great a king was crowned, at last, they began, as the nymph spoke, to emerge from all sides. This was the theme of the first masque. Shakespeare may have imagined Oberon, emerging into the famous french scene, to sit looking down from atop the sheer rock-face.

While there is some amount of conjecture to this explanation of the line, there is no doubt that Ronsard was a favorite poet of Shakespeare. The Frenchman's influence is everywhere in his works. We have referred above to perhaps the best known instance. This may be another.

Ronsard wrote two plays for performance before the court at Fontainebleau. One, entitled Le Bergerie, was a play written to be acted by the noble members of the court themselves. The other was a dramatized translation from the most celebrated poem of the day: Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. It was entitled La Belle Genièvre.

The text of The Belle Genievre has since been lost. What little is left to us is an epilogue, spoken before the court by the above mentioned Michel de Castelnau, Lord of Mauvissiere. One particular image has become more famous than any in the lavish Fontainebleau fête.

Le monde est le theatre et les hommes acteurs;

La Fortune, qui est maistresse de la Sceine,

Appreste les habits, et de la vie humaine5

This for the fact that, some 25 years later, it would be adapted by William Shakespeare.

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,6


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


1A Midsummer Night's Dream, II.i.153-59.

2Gascoigne, George. The Princely Pleasures at Kenilworth Castle (1576). I have advanced substantial evidence, in my Shakespeare in 1573: Apprenticeship and Scandal (2021), that Edward de Vere was the poet who went under the moniker Si Fortunatus Infoelix in the anthology section of Gascoigne's An Hundreth Sundrie Flowers (1573). https://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-1573-Apprenticeship-Authorship-Progress-ebook/dp/B096GSQV14

3Laneham, Robert. A LETTER: Whearin part of the Entertainment unto the Queen's Majesty at Killingworth Castle... (no date, 1576).

4Le Recueil des triumphes et magnificences qui ont estez faictes au logis de monseigneur le duc d’Orléans (1564). No page numbers. “...le Roy s'acheminant plus auant arriua pies d'un grand Rocher...”

5Blanchemain, M. Prosper. Oeuvres Complètes de P. De Ronsard (1860). IV.184.

6As You Like It, II.vii.




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Saturday, September 05, 2026

Dressing Shakespeare in the 16th Century: Another Mystery Solved.

Standard Citation: Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “Dressing Shakespeare in the 16th Century: Another Mystery Solved.” Virtual Grub Street,  https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2026/09/dressing-shakespeare-in-16th-century.html [state date accessed].


The first published versions of Elizabethan era plays generally appeared years after the plays first came on stage. The play The Famous Victories of Henry the Fift, for just one example, had to have been played before 1588 — the year in which one of the actors in it died. References to it are everywhere in Shakespeare's two part Henry IV which, it is widely agreed, were first played around 1596. The Famous Victories were first published, however, in 1598 — some 13 years after it was first played. Henry IV, Parts 1&2, were published in 1598 and 1600 respectively.

There were a number of reasons for withholding publication. In the matter of the Henry plays, however, the profusion of new Henry-themed quarto editions, 1598-1600, came about because publishers were aware that Henry V would be the first play on the stage of the Globe Theater once construction was complete.1 There could be no hope of getting hold of the new state of the play. Older versions would have to do — as was often the case — in order to take advantage of what was sure to be a high demand for Henry merch.

As for Henry V, itself, the first quarto was published in 1600. The Globe version would not be published until it appeared in the Shakespeare First Folio of 1623.

I start with this because there are hundred of years of scholarship written about the Henry plays. While much of it places at its center the Folio text of Henry V without crediting this simplest of patterns. Like the recent Arden edition, it would seem, half of that scholarship assigns the composition of the play to 1599, and the quarto editions to dates after it.

A particularly brilliant study by Hereward T. Price2 does a close reading of the texts of the Folio and quartos. His results convince him that the Folio edition is actually the earliest version of the play. And to a considerable degree he is right. But being printed from the least altered transcription of the original play does not mean that the quarto versions came after. And it most certainly does not mean that the play was composed circa 1599.

The famous choruses in the Folio version were written for the Globe performance. Choruses, it is true, were decades out of style by 1599. But Shakespeare saw himself foremost as a poet and he wanted his poetry to be a central part of the grand opening of the Globe. They are not missing from the quartos because they were stripped away in order to shorten the run-time of subsequent showings. They had never been part of the original play to begin with.

The quartos are demonstrably stripped-down versions for showings prior to the Henry IV plays with slight later emendations in an attempt to be consistent with those plays. Not only that, but the emendations were not by Shakespeare. They were done by what was called a “play dresser”. There is no sign that Shakespeare wrote or did any major rewrite of the play after the Henry IV plays. Such “dressing” was a very common practice. By all signs, Shakespeare was satisfied with the play as he wrote it.3

Henry fans — and England was full of them — were, it seems, much like our Trekies. They wanted their favorite characters and they wanted consistency across the franchise.

Falstaff was not yet so much as a glint in the eye when Henry V was first written. In the first two quarto editions, a single reference, by the character Fluellen, to seeing the “fat Knite / With the great belly doublet”, informs us that a play dresser has been at work, in order to bring Shakespeare's wildly popular character into the play. 

The third quarto makes clear that the audience demanded more. The famous death scene was written in by the next dresser who had more sense than to believe he could actually write a part for Falstaff that wouldn't be a mere shadow of the original character. Falstaff himself would be too desperately ill to make a personal appearance. Not only that, but the dresser was not made aware that Fluellen sees Falstaff later in the play. For this reason, the old knight rises from the dead in the third quarto.

Notably, this is corrected in the Folio edition. It lamely explains that the “fat Knight with the great belly doublet” had properly been exiled from the presence of the king. For some bizarre reason, Fluellen merely reflects, in the heat of battle, upon the exile of Falstaff. Again, such inconsistencies are a sure sign of a dresser. 

It is hard to believe, however, that Shakespeare himself did not add the famous image of “a Table of green fields” in the Folio:

He went away as if it were a crysombd childe,

Betweene twelve and one, 

Just at turning of the tide ;

His nose was as sharpe as a pen ;

For when I saw him fumble with the sheets,

And talke of flowers and a Table4 of greene fields,

And smile upon his fingers ends,

I knew there was no way but one.5

In yet another example of the hazards of 16th century playwriting, however, a Folio typesetter momentarily lost track of what line exactly he was setting, resulting in a garbled mess that has stumped scholars now for centuries:

it had beene any Christomed Child: a parted ev’n just betweene Twelve and One, ev’n at the turning o’ th’ Tyde: for after I saw him fumble with the Sheets, and play with Flowers, and smile upon his fingers end, I knew there was but one way: for his Nose was as sharpe as a Pen, and a Table of greene fields.6

If he realized what he had done, he chose not to lose precious time, and left it, thinking it could make no difference. In his defense, book scanning software does the same and worse often enough. Besides, his lapse left me with a 300+ year mystery to solve.

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1 Henry IV Part 1 was quickly republished in 1599 in order to restock for the Globe rush. It was printed from the 1598 edition with minor, largely typographical corrections.

2Price, Hereward T. The Text of Henry V (1921).

3For more on this see my “The un-Bad Quarto of Shakespeare’s Henry V.” Virtual Grub Street, 14 May 2022. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-un-bad-quarto-of-shakespeares-henry.html

4A table was the common word for a painted picture in the 16th century.

5This is my own reconstructed Shakespeare revision of the 3rd Quarto text below to include the table image from the Folio death scene.

He went away as if it were a crysombd childe,

Betweene twelve and one,

Just at turning of the tide;

His nose was as sharpe as a pen;

For when I saw him fumble with the sheets,

And talke of flowers, and smile upon his fingers ends,

I knew there was no way but one.

6“The Life of Henry the Fift.” Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (1623). Histories @ 75.




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Saturday, August 29, 2026

The Biography of Edward de Vere in Shakespeare's Henry Plays Plus a Conjecture or Two.

Those who have read my Edward de Vere's Retainer, Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff 1 know that I attribute the anonymous play The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth to Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, the man who soon after began writing under the pen-name Shakespeare. As usual, traditional scholars claim the play was written by some earlier less talented playwright and later crafted by Shakespeare into The Chronicle History of Henry the Fift.

It is generally conceded that the play had to have been performed prior to September of 1588 due to the fact that Richard Tarleton referred to acting in it and he died in that month. The title page of the first quarto, published in 1598, indicates that the play was performed by the Queen's Majesty's Players2 troop which was formed in 1583 and effectively disbanded in January of 1594. For reasons also provided in the Man Who Was Falstaff, and too long to include here, I assign the date of 1585 plus or minus two years.

As for declaring Vere the author, just two of those many reasons will have to make the point for present purposes. 1) The play opens with Prince Hal's company of roisterers — among which is the historical figure Sir John Oldcastle, baron of Cobham — committing a robbery of the King's receivers at Gads Hill. No record exists of Prince Hal (Henry V) being associated with any such thing. But there is a record of Edward de Vere's servants committing just such a robbery near Gads Hill. 2) The playwright is a great fan of the earls of Oxford. The Earl of Oxford of the time is portrayed as being the constant companion and courageous advisor of Henry IV. He is a constant presence on stage. The actual Earl, however, was an orphaned minor child under care miles away from the king. At Agincourt, in the play, he is given charge of the planting of the famous stakes — a task actually given to Thomas Erpingham. After the victory, he is present at the presentation of Princess Katherine to the victorious Henry V. The actual Earl had been ordered to turn back to relieve the English forces being laid siege at Harfleur.

Of course, Shakespeare carried over the robbery into his Henry IV, Part 1. He added much more theatrically and personally mature comic touches that do not exist in the original. All of the play is far better written. But the original play was well-written for 1585, and highly popular. The Elizabethan theater was rapidly undergoing a revolution. Styles were much cruder in the mid- and early-1580s — including the comic scenes. The style of plays grew vastly more sophisticated over a single generation — a generation that spanned the mere eleven-or-so years between The Famous Victories and Henry IV.

As for Henry's roisterers, in the Famous Victories, the character Derrick became the character Pistol in Shakespeare's The Chronicle History of Henry the Fift. Shakespeare having, in the meantime, grown in the habit of adapting historical chronicles, by the likes of Holinshed and Hall, to structure the central plots of his history plays, Sir John Oldcastle did not return until Henry IV, Part 1. His heirs, the Cobham family, strenuously objecting to him being portrayed as frequenting such company, attacked the play so successfully that the old knight was renamed Falstaff.3 As often happens in such wholesale revisions, the resulting script shows traces of Oldcastle still and a few of his biographical details are carried over into Falstaff.

I've shown that Shakespeare's original Henry the Fift, however, was actually written prior to the Henry IV plays.4 There was no Falstaff in it at all. The character Pistol played the role later transferred to Falstaff, in Henry IV, after which he was given a reduced role made up of leftover bits and pieces of the original Derrick character, in Famous Victories, and a small amount of new material. The Henry the Fift we know from the First Folio was likely a major revision of the original — the most popular and patriotic of the day — to play at the grand opening of “this Woodden O,”5 the Globe Theater, in May of 1599.

The labyrinthine history of the Henry plays has many aspects. The relationship to the life of Edward de Vere becomes even clearer if we recognize that Vere transferred his biography to Prince Hal (Henry V) because he identified with him. Hal was his hero. A considerable part of what is historical fiction in Henry the Fift is, it turns out, fact from Vere's own youth.

The range of correspondences is striking. And some is a bit more conjectural.

In The Famous Victories, Hal is constantly in the company of two characters: Ned (being the common nickname for Edward and Edmund) and Tom. In Henry IV Ned becomes Ned Poins. The name Poins is an alternative spelling of the surname Poyntz. The historical record shows no evidence that Henry V had among his friends anyone named Ned Poyntz. Tom lacks a surname thus cannot be verified. The assumption might then be that here again we have two close friends of the young Edward de Vere.

But neither do we know of a Ned Poyntz in Vere's biography and Tom has no surname. We might hope that future discoveries will resolve the question. Or perhaps the historical record already gives us at least a strong hint or two.

Young Edward de Vere grew frustrated that the Queen had not given permission for him to travel to the continent. In 1574, he left to the Netherlands anyway. It was the scandal of the day and a tutor from his younger days, Thomas Bedingfeld,6 was dispatched to bring him back.

Upon his return to England, the Queen was on her annual Progress. On this occasion she choose to progress to the city of Bristol. Her itinerary scheduled lodging at Acton Hall7, on the outskirts of the city, including August 13th. The Hall had surely been preparing for weeks for the visit thrilled to host the Queen and her court.

Edward de Vere, in the meantime, had been ordered to attend the Queen. He and Bedingfeld departed London on August 5th.8 On August 13th, while at the Hall, the Queen's Council adjourned specifically regarding his matter.

Acton Hall was the seat of the Poyntz family — landed gentry, of long standing, who had risked a great deal in support of Elizabeth's claim to the throne. Far the two most common names in the family for some hundreds of years were Nicholas and Edward.

The second son of the reigning patriarch, Nicholas Poyntz, was named Edward. His wife was pregnant with that Edward, or had just delivered, at about the time of the Queen's visit. A week later, at Bristol, Vere was given an audience to receive his penance for his rash behavior. How many cousin Edward Poyntzs were present, at the time, to receive the Queen we cannot say.

Nicholas Poyntz's father, also named Nicholas, had a son by Joan Berkley, named Edmund. It was his third son.9 When Nicholas died, Joan married Sir Thomas Dyer, father of Edward Dyer the courtier poet. Edmund died in 1568, at the age of 28, in Paris, France. In 2 Henry IV, II.ii.64-5, Ned says: “the worst that they can say of me is, that I am a second Brother”.

As for the character Tom, until his final scene the reader can only wonder why he is in the play at all. His brief lines seem like padding at best. That final scene, however, brief as it is, tells us why he is in the play.

Hen 5. Ah Tom, your former life greeves me,

And makes me to abandon & abolish your company for ever

And therefore not upon pain of death to aproch my presence

By ten miles space10

As I have pointed out, in my Edward de Vere's Retainer Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff, shortly after having grown to the age to take control of his earldom Vere discharged Churchyard.

Falstaff, it may be remembered, was strangely in the habit of threatening to “have ballads” on persons who he felt had slighted him.

and I have not Ballads made on you all, and sung to filthie tunes, let a cuppe of sacke bee my poyson11

Even noblemen like Henry's younger brother, Prince John of Lancaster, were not secure from the threat.12

Vere knew this from personal experience. Tom Churchyard published a poem about the dismissal that accused the young Earl of cruelly abandoning him knowing he was desperately ill and particularly in need of help.13

In the Famous Victories Vere seems only to have had time to refer to the event with a few lines. In Henry IV, he fully explains his side of the story and repeats the final scene.

King ...I banish thee, on paine of death,

As I have done the rest of my Misleaders,

Not to come neere our Person, by ten mile.

For competence of life,...14

Notwithstanding Churchyard's defamatory poem, it is clear from the Henry IV plays that Edward de Vere found Thomas Churchyard to be a fascinating character. There are signs that he and the old soldier may have worked together on at least one project after their war of words.

As long as we are at it, yet another character name was changed before the 1598 & 1600 quarto texts we have of Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2 were finalized. Again, hurried revision has left traces of him arranging for the Gads Hill robbery. He did not, however, appear in The Famous Victories.

His name is Sir John Rossill (Russell). John Russell, as it happens, was the name of the husband of Lady Elizabeth Russell, the sister-in-law of William Cecil, the 1st Baron Burghley, who constantly wrote letters to Cecil complaining bitterly of Edward de Vere's behavior and his treatment of Anne his wife. In the years following Anne's death, in 1588, Lady Russell repeatedly lobbied to forbid their three daughters from being allowed unsupervised in Vere's vicinity.

Lady Russell was the wife of John, Lord Russell, heir to the Earldom of Bedford. She also complained bitterly when her husband, John, died before inheriting the earldom and she was forbidden to style herself the “Dowager Countess of Bedford”. She did so, anyway, and was fiercely protective of the Russell name. The slightest hint of disrespect was known to throw her into a state of apoplexy presumably shortening her life.

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1Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Edward de Vere's Retainer, Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff (2017). https://www.amazon.com/Edward-Veres-Retainer-Thomas-Churchyard-ebook/dp/B077LVLXY2/

2 THE FAMOUS VICtories of Henry the fifth: Containing the Honourable Battell of Agin-court: As it was plaide by the Queen's Majesties Players. 1598.

3 A New Variorum of... The Second Part of HENRY THE FOURTH. Epilogue. “One word more, I beseech you: if you be not too much cloid with Fat Meate, our humble Author will continue the Story (with Sir Iohn in it) and make you merry, with faire Katherine of France: where (for any thing I know) Falstaffe shall dye of a sweat, vnlesse already he be kill'd with your hard Opinions: For Old-Castle dyed a Martyr, and this is not the man. My Tongue is wearie when my Legs are too, I will bid you good night; and so kneele downe before you:...”

4See my Edward de Vere's Retainer, Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff (2017). https://www.amazon.com/Edward-Veres-Retainer-Thomas-Churchyard-ebook/dp/B077LVLXY2/

5The Life of Henry the Fift (Folio, 1623). Prologue. l.13.

6Edward de Vere had arranged for the publication of Bedingfeld's Cardanus Comforte the year before, in 1573, and supplied a prose dedication. The Comforte has become known as “Hamlet's book,” as several Hamlet speeches are based upon it, or upon the original De Consolatione, by Hieronymous Cardanus. It is also the inspiration for Macbeth's “walking shadow” speech.

7Folgerpedia 1574. Citing Royal Treasury Records and Works Accounts. “Aug 13, Fri IRON ACTON, Gloucs; Sir Nicholas Poyntz. Iron Acton manor-house; owned by Sir Nicholas Poyntz (c.1528-1585), formerly an Esquire for the Body to the Queen; a widower in 1574. ‘After dinner the Council sat about the Earl of Oxford’. The Earl came before the Queen at Bristol, August 21.”

See also “THE POYNTZ FAMILY. By the Rev. H. L. THOMPSON, M.A., Rector of Iron Acton” (1879). Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, Vol. IV. (1879-80) 73-85.

8Folgerpedia 1574. Citing Nelson, 113, 115,. Citing letter of Lord Burghley to Sir Francis Walsingham, Theobalds, 3 August 1574 “‘He and Mr Beningfield departed this afternoon to London...to make him some apparel meet for the court’. The Earl left London on August 5.”

9Mclean, John. Historical and Genealogical Memoir of the Family of Poyntz (1886). 96.

10Famous Victories, IX.57-60.

11A New Variorum of... The First Part of HENRY THE FOURTH, II.ii.43-4.

12A New Variorum of... The Second Part of HENRY THE FOURTH, IV.iii.46-9.

13See my Edward de Vere's Retainer, Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff (2017). https://www.amazon.com/Edward-Veres-Retainer-Thomas-Churchyard-ebook/dp/B077LVLXY2/

14Variorum 2 Henry IV, V.v.71-4.



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Thursday, August 20, 2026

Shakespeare, the Earl of Pembroke and the First First Folios.

In the years that Shakespeare's new plays slowed to a trickle (the few there were co-written) — a.k.a. the years after 1604, the year Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, died, a.k.a. the years after William Shakspere chose to retire to his hometown of Stratford upon Avon to quietly live out the rest of his days as a dealer in grain — the playwright Ben Jonson and play-writing partners John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont were the big names in the field.

While Beaumont married a wealthy heiress and stopped writing professionally in 1613 — except for a single court masque — at least three of his plays, written with and without Fletcher, continued to appear in first edition quartos well after his death in 1616. Three more first appeared in print in the 1647 Fletcher and Beaumont First Folio.

Interestingly, the front matter of the Fletcher and Beaumont First Folio was closely modeled on the front matter of the Shakespeare First Folio. Both included dedications to William and Philip Herbert.

“To The Right Honourable Philip, Earle of Pembroke and Mountgomery1... joyned with your (now glorified) Brother, Patrons to the flowing compositions of the then expired sweet Swan of Avon SHAKESPEARE”.2

The 37 congratulatory poems at the front of the Fletcher and Beaumont folio, however, were written by the biggest stars of the literary world of the day. Edmund (styled “Edw.”) Waller, John Denham, John Webster, Richard Lovelace, Thomas Stanley, Richard Corbet, Roger L'Estrange, Robert Herrick, James Shirley. Some had passed away since their commendations. All contributed their poems expressly as personal friends and/or professional admirers.

The unmistakable resemblance is more than a little likely due to the fact that the publisher of the Fletcher and Beaumont Folio was Humphrey Moseley. Moseley kept a constant eye open for works by Shakespeare that he could claim to have first published. His obsession, however, came to naught. He did, however, turn over a copy of the infamous The History of Cardenio — more likely by Fletcher and Philip Massinger — to another Shakespeare obsessive, William Devanant, who died in the midst of editing it. The plan appears to have been for Devanant's popular theater company to put on the play, as a work of Shakespeare, and Humphrey to publish after.

Moseley and his author, James Shirley, once playwright for the Queen Henrietta's Men, wrote the “Stationer to the Reader” and “Letter to the Reader” letters for the Fletcher and Beaumont Folio respectively. Moseley's includes a line that will bring a smile to those who know the Shakespeare First Folio well.

What ever I have seene of Mr. Flechers owne hand, is free from interlining; and his friends affirme he never writ any one thing twice: it seemes he had that rare felicity to prepare and perfect all first in his owne braine;3

It is just one of many instances, in every aspect of his business, that Moseley, like the proverbial American Indian, put every part of the buffalo to use.

The four congratulatory poems in the front of the Shakespeare Folio were written by journeymen who wrote for the press of Edward Blount and/or owed favors to Ben Jonson. Jonson himself — the protégé of William Herbert, the 3rd Earl of Pembroke, brother to Edward de Vere's son-in-law, and one time fiancé to another of Vere's daughters — was the only major name to append his praise. He is also understood to have written most or all of the letters, in the front matter, attributed to John Heminges and Henry Condell, managers of the Globe Theater and the King's Men.

In sum, the Shakespeare First Folio was a production of Vere's family4 edited by Ben Jonson who owed them his status in English society and literature. He owed them, that is to say, any favors they might ask... or command. A mere four congratulatory poems appeared in the front matter of the First Folio, none by major writers, alive or dead, or by anyone who indicated personal knowledge of Shakespeare.

Speaking of Ben Jonson, he was intimately involved in the production of the first ever First Folio, published in 1616. Being a supreme self-promoter, it was a massive volume of his own works. Each individual play was published with a separate dedication to a major figure in the Royal court, in line with his reputation as a shameless social climber, fawning over members of the court and nobility.

Catiline was dedicated to William Herbert, the 3rd Earl of Pembroke. The Alchemist was dedicated to Pembroke's mistress, Mary Wroth.5 A section of Epigrammes was also dedicated to Pembroke, calling on him for protection. Two epigrams were addressed to Wroth. One was addressed to Susan Herbert née de Vere, the Countess of Montgomery, who co-authored the novel The Countesse of Montgomeries Urania6, a landmark of women's literature, which appeared under the name of Wroth alone, Vere's husband being fiercely conservative. None appeared to Pembroke's wife who was persona-non-grata at the court and who did not show well in Worth's novel.

The volume had nine congratulatory poems, three by Francis Beaumont, who was presumably filling out space to spare his friend the embarrassment of having only seven. As the epigrammes make clear, Jonson did not get along well with most of his fellow playwrights and poets. His arrogance and social climbing featured in their poems and plays. The nine poems were from the biggest names of the time, including John Selden, George Chapman, John Davies and Beaumont himself. But the list is notably short.

History has noticed that the name of William Shakespeare does not appear in the Epigrammes — or anywhere in the Folio, at all — for which reason he has generally been declared to be the person addressed under the heading “To the Poet-Ape”. This is a result of scholars long having declared the early versions of Shakespeare's plays to have been written by others and taken over by him in order to explain how those versions could have been composed so early in the Stratford man's life and in pre-Shakespearean styles. The Poet-Ape, however, is virtually certain to have referred to Philip Henslowe, the dominant theater manager of the time, with whom Jonson had an ongoing feud.

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1 William Herbert having died, Philip Herbert then held both the Earldoms of Montgomery and of Pembroke.

2 For more on this, see my essay “The Herbert Brothers' Other First Folio Dedication.” Virtual Grub Street, October 2, 2016. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-herbert-brothers-other-first-folio.html

3 Comedies and Tragedies written by John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont, Gentlmen. (1647). No pagination.

4 See my Edward De Vere was Shake-speare: at long last, the proof. (2013 digital, 2017 paper) for more detail on this. https://www.amazon.com/Edward-Vere-was-Shake-speare-proof/dp/1543136257/

5 These dedications first appeared in the quarto versions of the plays.

6 For much more on this, see my Shakespeare's The Tempest: a Wedding Masque for Susan de Vere (2024). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CY5YYG1F




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