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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 once 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 did 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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Tuesday, March 10, 2026

The Shakespeare Biography and How it Grew.

As Shakespeare became the most famous name in English literature, following the actor David Garrick's famous Shakespeare Jubilee, in 1769, the public wanted to know more about his biography. Very little information was available, but, like so many suddenly lucrative industries, the huge demand resulted in experts and products to meet the demand. Humble household items were discovered which family members confirmed had been used by the man. Anecdotes from his life began to appear.

Actually, even 100 years before the Jubilee, Shakespeare's work had begun growing more popular. The puritans had shut down the theaters for some 18 years before the restoration of the English monarchy, in 1664, in the person of King Charles II. With the Restoration, the theaters opened once again much to the pleasure of the utterly bored English public. But, at first, there were few playwrights left to supply the demand. To fill out the theater schedules old plays were brought back on stage.

By then Shakespeare's plays were particularly old. They were considered to have great potential but to require considerable revision in order to meet the standards of the time. Rewritten, they were indeed highly popular. But no one knew anything of his life. He was a blank waiting to be filled in. The stories began to flow.

Antiquarians kept eye and ear open for new information concerning him. Scouts made modest amounts of money seeking out information to sell to them. Old men provided stories of having met the man. Old retired actors were especially attractive sources and suddenly found themselves a center of attention again. As time passed, sons recounted stories they were sure they remembered their fathers had told them their grandfathers had told about the man.

In short order, thick biographies began to appear, based upon a small number of surviving business and legal records and these stories from actors' tales and sons of sons of sons. These coming to quite little, however, the primary source of biography was his plays. His poems, at first, seemed problematical to the experts, and were left to quietly molder, but, after the Jubilee, the demand for new information was so great that they too were eventually culled for information. The popularity of these biographies made their authors quite famous, in their own right, and served admirably to pay household and seaside vacation expenses.

For all of this, during the years 1578-1585 — the years a young Tudor commoner must be learning a trade — there existed no detail at all. It was in 1790 that the dominant scholar in the Shakespeare Industry at the time, Edmund Malone, “supposed that he might have been a clerk in an attorney's office, thus killing two birds with one stone, and accounting not only for the barren seven years, but for the legal expressions to be found in his works.”1

For another 100 years, Shakespeare scholarship would make its discoveries after this fashion. Scholars would bid to fill each troublesome void with the most promising conjecture that satisfied the requirement that the Stratford man be unquestionably the author of the works. The one fact that was unquestionable, after all, was that the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays declared the Stratford man was their author.

 

So then, Shakespeare had been a law clerk. Well, after he'd been a country schoolmaster, anyway, boning up to teach little tousle-headed monsters Latin. Soon he would be in London valet-parking the horses of wealthy theater-goers and writing Romeo and Juliet at night by romantic candle-light.

Fellow Elizabethan playwright, Christopher Marlowe, on the other hand, also left behind only very limited biographical material. He was also a great writer. But not a single thick biography was being written on his life. His plays were fewer, his grasp of human-nature neither as profound nor as various. Had there been a Jubilee for him it would have begun and ended at that.

Ironically, for these reasons no industry grew up around his works. His scholars could hope for only normal rewards, a normally cloistered academic life. If they invented the slightest thing they would eventually be chastised by their fellows and lose even that much.

Shakespeare scholars, on the other hand, had struck the mother load. Anything they published, so long as it adhered strictly to the Stratford man, and portrayed him as the paragon of all that was admirable in human nature, it hardly mattered what or how much they wrote. If their work was discovered to be contradictory it only required a conjecture or two more to patch matters up. It just meant more words for each of which they received an additional penny or two and the prospect of invitations to speak at the finest universities and ladies auxiliaries.

The situation being as it was it is truly surprising just how much exceptional Shakespeare scholarship was done during the 19th century. While the biographies were abysmally bad and the fraudulent “discoveries” mislead scholars to this day, a dozen or two of names, imperfect though they were, in their own right, were absolutely rigorous about their work. Their efforts have left us an impressive collective work product.

As for the others, it could only be a matter of time before the Shakespeare biography grew so ridiculous that even the general public challenged it. The Industry itself, of course, stood unflinchingly behind the biography. Nevertheless, it lost a large chunk of its market-share to the Bacon Industry.

The problem was that there was no legitimate evidence — except for the letters in the front material of the First Folio — that there was the least connection between the texts of the plays and the life of the Stratford man who lay beneath the floor of Trinity Church, Stratford, in a grave featuring a bit of doggerel verse and a placard above in Latin. The plays that provided most of the playwright's biography were, in fact, seriously at odds with the documented facts of the Stratford man's life.

Fate rarely being kind, a few dissenting voices over the centuries could not begin to turn the momentum of the Shakespeare Industry. Only a famous alternative candidate as author of the plays might manage the feat. Sir Francis Bacon's name was offered. It was a documented fact that he was formally educated in the classics at Trinity College, Cambridge, and law at Gray's Inn where Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors had later been played. His name featured prominently in a manuscript that showed signs of once having contained Shakespeare manuscripts.

Bacon, it was said, hid behind a front man in order to avoid the damage his reputation would suffer from being associated with the immorality of the theater world. While all these factors argued in his behalf, Bacon's life was well and heavily documented and far more from the documents argued against his authorship than for it. Baconians resorted to “discoveries” of codes and ciphers in the Shakespeare text in order to bring the biographies into line.

In the midst of all of this, traditional scholars found themselves having to take up defensive positions on various topics. Shakespeare identified with the noble and ruling classes in his plays, it was determined, because his genius gave him a sense of natural nobility. His plays had French, Italian and Latin sources because he was provided cribs of the original texts from the likes of Ben Jonson and John Florio and because there must have been available English translations records of which have not survived to our day. Shakespeare knew surprising amounts about Italy and the law through tavern conversations with sailors and lawyers.

Bacon's candidacy became untenable for the simple reason that he was not the author. But, still, the wide-ranging inconsistencies of the Stratford biography remained and the authorship question they provoked. The vague and conveniently untestable replies developed by the Industry scholars also remain — bolstered by pop-psychology diagnoses of mental degeneracy in those who express doubt.


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Tuesday, February 24, 2026

How Shakespeare and Ariosto Go Back to the 1570s.

One of the less well-known effects of the invention of the movable type printing press, by Johannes Gutenberg, in Strasbourg, Germany, circa 1440, is that it allowed the birth of renaissance theater, in Ferrara, Italy, to rapidly become known throughout Europe. For a brief time little Ferrara was the center of the literary world — both poetry and theater. But this was only recognized when the works of the various authors began to be published in the early 1500s, in Venice.

At the very end of the 15th century, and very beginning of the 16th, Ercole I de Este, Duke of Ferrara, managed to steer clear of most of the war between the Papal coalition and France. Peaceful and well-defended, the city's studiolo1 grew to become an intellectual nexus.

Ercole's son, Alfonso I, kept Ferrara free, through his fine military mind and diplomacy, and marriage to Lucretia Borgia, until the resolution of the war, in 1529. While he did, the studiolo continued to flourish. Under Ercole, it gave the renaissance the works of Matteo Maria Boiardo, Niccolò da Correggio and Ludovico Ariosto. In what momentum remained, under Alfonso, the world received further works of Ariosto and the works of his students Giovanni Battista Giraldi (pen name Cinthio) and Ercole Bentivoglio, and of the frequent visitor Fra Matteo Bandello.

Most of these names are known among English readers — inasmuch as they are known at all — as favorite authors and influences on the works of Shakespeare — especially Ariosto. The first great work of theater, we are reminded, by Edmund G. Gardner, occurred in the reign of Ercole:

We may take January 25, 1486, as the birthday of the modern Italian drama.2

But looked at more closely, this was the birthday of the modern theater in France and England though they did not quite know it yet. Had there been no printing press they would not likely have known about it until much later.

The play that was shown that day was Ariosto's translation of the Menaechmi of Plautus. It was an enormous success.

By 1573, the London literati already were half a decade into their own renaissance. In that year, a highly personable poet, playwright and aspiring courtier, named George Gascoigne, published his translation of another of Ariosto's plays entitled, The Supposes3, together with the rest of his works to date. As was often the case in those days, he ingratiated himself with a number of other authors by offering to include selections from their work as well in an anthology at the end of his own. The whole was entitled An Hundreth Sundrie Flowres.

Foremost among the “toward young gentlemen,” declared the editors, was one who went under the moniker “Si fortunatus infoelix” a.k.a. “Master F.I.” (for a gentleman did not seek publicity), had also translated some lines of poetry from Ariosto. Those lines were the first eight stanzas of the 31st Canto of far-and-away Ariosto's most famous work, Orlando Furioso.

WHat state to man, so sweets and pleasaunt weave.

As to be tyed, in linkes of worthy love ?

What life so blist and happie might appeare,

As for to serve Cupid that God above ?

If that our mindes were not sometimes infect,

With dread, with feare, with care, with cold suspect:

With deepe dispaire, with furious frenesie,

Handmaides to her, whome we call jelosie.


For ev'ry other sop of sower chaunce,

Which lovers tast amid their sweete delight:

Encreaseth joye, and doth their love advaunce,

In pleasures place, to have more perfect plight.

The thirstie mouth thinkes water hath good taste,

The hungrie jawes, are pleas'd, with eche repaste:

Who hath not prov'd what dearth by warres doth growe,

Cannot of peace the pleasaunt plenties knowe.


And though with eye, we see not ev'ry joye,

Yet mate the minde, full well support the same,

[An] absent life long led in great annoye

(When presence comes) doth turne from griefe to game,

To serve without reward is thought great paine,

But if dispaire do not therewith remaine,

It may be borne for right rewardes at last,

Followe true service, though they come not fast.

Disdaines, repulses, finallie eche ill,

Eche smart, eche paine, of love eche bitter tast,

To thinke on them gan frame the lovers will,

To like eche joye, the more that comes at last:

But this infernall plague if once it tutch,

Or venome once the lovers mind with grutch,

All festes and joyes that afterwardes befall,

The lover comptes them light or nought at all.


This is that sore, this is that poisoned wound,

The which to heale, nor salve, nor ointmentes serve,

Nor charme of wordes, nor Image can be founde,

Nor observaunce of starres can it preserve,

Nor all the art of Magicke can prevaile,

Which Zoroacles found for our availe,

Oh cruell plague, above all sorrowes smart,

With desperate death thou sleast the lovers heart.


And me even now, thy gall hath so enfect,

As all the joyes which ever lover found,

And all good haps, that ever Troylus sect,

Atchieved yet above the luckles ground:

Can never sweeten once my mouth with mell,

Nor bring my thoughtes, againe in rest to dwell.

Of thy mad moodes, and of naught else I thinke,

In such like seas, faire Bradamant did sincke.4

Those who have read my Shakespeare in 15735 know that I have identified Si fortunatus infoelix as a young Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. In the Flowres we have from him a number of what are now called “Shakespearean sonnets,” on the model introduced, during the reign of Henry VIII, by Vere's uncle, Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey. In the translation, here, Vere finds a creative way to include Shakespeare's favorite joy-annoy rhyme-pair.

Some two years later, Vere chose to travel to Italy, long a desire of his. A year later, still, on January 1, 1576, records show that a play was shown at Queen Elizabeth's court recorded by a clerk of the Revels Office as The historie of Error.6 The similarity of this entry to the title of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors has caused many scholars to suggest that the play might have been an earlier version of the Shakespeare play. The Shakespeare is set, not in Italy, from which Vere had yet to return, but in Greece. Because the Stratford man would only have been 12 years old at the time, it has often been asserted that he may have taken the 1576 play and rewritten it making it his own.

The play as we have it is based in part upon the Menaechmi of Plautus. Much of it is widely understood to have been written well before the 1590s — probably no later than the early 1580s. The many passages written in fourteeners and Poulter's Measure would have been outdated by that time. There are indications that many more passages, still, were in the earlier measures and later restructured as prose and iambic pentameter.

The printing press had not only informed English literati that the Renaissance theater had been born but it created a printed literature of their own. Each playwright could observe the most recent developments at the theaters and in print. This created a cycle in which each learned the new popular traits — many culled from books imported from European booksellers — and incorporated them in their own plays which were in turn the source for the next round.

The development of the theater went from fast to faster. Did Shakespeare take most of his plays from earlier authors and merely rewrite them as his own? Or did he write the original plays and revise them — update them — to keep them popular as tastes rapidly changed? In such plays as Comedy of Errors, Henry V, Hamlet7, Troilus and Cressida8, and others, I think the evidence weighs heavily toward the latter option. Those who begin their assessment with an absolute requirement that the Stratford man be the playwright, of course, think otherwise.


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


1  Pardi, Giuseppe. Lo Studio di Ferrara (1903). 22. Per tali fortunate condizioni Ferrara doveva sembrare una tra le città d' Italia più adatte per l'istituzione di uno Studio, che promettesse di riuscire fiorente.”

2  Gardner, Edmund G. The King of Court Poets: A Study of the Work, Life and Times of Lodovico Ariosto (1906).

3  In Italian, I Suppositi.

4  The Complete Works of George Gascoigne (Cunliffe ed.) 1907. 424-6.

5  Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Shakespeare in 1573: Apprenticeship and Scandal (2021) (https://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-1573-Apprenticeship-Authorship-Progress-ebook/dp/B096GSQV14)

6  Steele, Mary Susan. Plays and Masques at Court During the Reigns of Elizabeth, James and Charles (no date). 61.

7  See my Back When Ophelia Jumped Off a Cliff: the Hamlet of 1589 (2022) for much more. (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09WC94FGW/)

8  See my Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584) (2018) for much more. (https://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-Agamemnon-Edward-William-Shakespeare-ebook/dp/B07JD7KM1T/)


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