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Monday, March 18, 2024

George North to William Herle, January 3, 1581 [N.S.]

[Click here for modernized spelling.]

Thanks to the Letters of William Herle Project1 we have access to this letter from George North to the Elizabethan self-taught polyglot and spy William Herle (apparently pronounced hear-ly). As the result of her usual exceptional work, Nina Green informs us that George was the brother of Edward, the 1st Baron North. He is generally known, of recent times, for the manuscript entitled A Brief Discourse of Rebellions & Rebels (1576).2

William Herle was imprisoned and held in solitary confinement for an extended period of time for piracy. He was released after having been of use to Baron Burghley in a matter — a common pattern for recruiting spies. Upon being released he was rumored to have participated in conspiracies against Burghley and others in the government. Shortly after, Herle became an agent of the Burghley for the remainder of his life. It was shortly after that North finished A Brief Discourse.

The date of this letter is a particular benefit. At this point, North knows Herle well and is reporting the news at Elizabeth's court like so many agents of so many courtiers unable to be continuously present. He is likely living nearby — being too low in the hierarchy to merit or afford rooms in Whitehall or any of the other palaces — and attending regularly. The main item of court news at the time was Edward de Vere's scandalous accusation that Henry Howard, Charles Arundel and others were practicing Catholics plotting against the Queen. North is so familiar with the principals that he rehearses their nicknames for Herle. De Vere, the Earl of Oxford, is nick-named “ Monsieur Le Comte,” Howard “hasty,” and Arundel “fine” for the fact that he wears a lot of perfume.

My good & especiall dear frend master Herlle, howe much these that love you do lack you, & speciallie in these dangerous tymes your owne proufe in ofte pleasuring them, doth best knowe: The Portinggale cawsis be utterlie qwalid, for don Antonio is distressid & beseegid in a Nonnerie, which howse the spaniardes will not violat till they have receavid lycence & pardon from theyr pope: notwithstanding Doctor Lopus gevith out to the contrarie / it is thought John Young is gone for the Ilandes or else (beeing safe) he wold not have missed all these fayer wyndes / Master Stafford came to the court the 26. of december what newse he brought may be supposid by the companie and countenance he had hear. For I sawe him the 27. walke [1 word expunged] on the Tarris, having no more to confeer with all but his shadoe The 29. the L. hastie Haward, Charles Arundell, & fine Southwell powdrid with parfumes, wer examenid at my Lord Chauncelars (Monsieur Le Comte de O (as I hear) beeing theyr accusar) wher they answerid so discreetlie for them selves, as they ar ^closelie &^ saflie lowked unto, for losing: The L. [hastie3] at my L Chauncelars Arundell at master vice chamberlaynes, & Southwell at the fleet but a stronggar place provydes for som of bettar countenance (as I hear) God send them in qwycklie if they be faultie, & to receave due reward to theyr desarts: nowe the spring is discoverid I trust the hed wilbe speedelie found & theyr ^water^ course alterid to theyr owne distruction / My L. Chamberlayn & my ladie was not at the court on new yeers daye for his honor is sick at Barnsey, my L. Treasurar lyeth lame of the Goute the more pittie, & my L. of Lecestar with all your other honorable freendes are in hellthe: but speciallie the Quyens Majestie (God be praysid for it) never more pleasant or lustie, which I hope the heavenlie prince of all will long preserve, to the joye & comfort of all true hartid Englyshe men / and thus farr for an orator / Our Iryshe actions remayne as they were but nothing so dangerous as our papists hopid: Capten peerce dwells in the same termes he did, [ ... ] fayer, performid at leasure, & I your poore frend quayles not so long as it is in queston: I hope with others, thoughe I cannot continewe it so well, and puet estre we may be all deceavid: But howe so ever I rest in all fortunes your faythfull & assurid to comaund George North

Master Ledsam as my self hath him comendid unto you, love me still & let me hear agayn from you. London the 3 Januarie 81

[Postscript perpendicular in the left hand margin:] postscrip. After I had endid this lettar (as you see) newse was brought in that John Young was com to the Court: who ther I presently went to have spoken with him, & could not: yet spake with Capten peerce my Cussin Roberts & with ledsam who had the whole discourse of all, don Rodorico is returnid with him as poore as may: they suppose Don Antonio is fled into Fraunce, he was once abourd an Englysheman & offerid 1000 Ducketts with more for his passadge hyther, the faynt hartyd varletts refusid him, so as he was faynt to entar into a frentchman who went a way with him) yet to what place he know[es] not: he made as he sayth the vice admirall of the Spanishe fleet stryke unto him, & howe the Kyng hath at the Ora[ ... ] 30. armadose 40. sayle of tall shippes & 40 saylle of other smaller, the sea is full of them / tis more I herd at the court, for troth that the Erle of Kildar, the L. of Uprossar & one other L. is in hand: god confond all her Majesties enemis



1Letters of William Herle Project 2006 AHRC Centre for Editing Lives and Letters www.livesandletters.ac.uk

Transcript ID: HRL/002/PDF/068. Transcription of BL MS Cotton Vespasian C VII f. 383r - v.

2British Library MS 70520

3hastie] “[harine]” in transcription.



Also at Virtual Grub Street:

Was Shakespeare Gay? What do the sonnets really say?


George North to William Herle, January 3, 1581 [N.S.][Spelling Modernized].

[Click here for original spelling.]

Thanks to the Letters of William Herle Project1 we have access to this letter from George North to the Elizabethan self-taught polyglot and spy William Herle (apparently pronounced hear-ly). As the result of her usual exceptional work, Nina Green informs us that George was the brother of Edward, the 1st Baron North.2 He is generally known, of recent times, for the manuscript entitled A Brief Discourse of Rebellions & Rebels (1576).3

William Herle was imprisoned and held in solitary confinement for an extended period of time for piracy. He was released after having been of use to Baron Burghley in a matter — a common pattern for recruiting spies. Upon being released he was rumored to have participated in conspiracies against Burghley and others in the government. Shortly after, Herle became an agent of the Burghley for the remainder of his life. It was shortly after that North finished A Brief Discourse.

The date of this letter is a particular benefit. At this point, North knows Herle well and is reporting the news at Elizabeth's court like so many agents of so many courtiers unable to be continuously present. He is likely living nearby — being too low in the hierarchy to merit or afford rooms in Whitehall or any of the other palaces — and attending regularly. The main item of court news at the time was Edward de Vere's scandalous accusation that Henry Howard, Charles Arundel and others were practicing Catholics plotting against the Queen. North is so familiar with the principals that he rehearses their nicknames for Herle. De Vere, the Earl of Oxford, is nick-named “ Monsieur Le Comte,” Howard “hasty,” and Arundel “fine” for the fact that he wears a lot of perfume.

My good & especial dear friend, master Herlle, how much these that love you do lack you, & specially in these dangerous times your own proof in oft pleasuring them, doth best know: The Portuguese causes be utterly quailed, for don Antonio is distressed & besieged in a Nunnery, which house the Spaniards will not violate till they have received license & pardon from their pope: notwithstanding Doctor Lopez giveth out to the contrary / it is thought John Young is gone for the Islands or else (being safe) he would not have missed all these fair winds / Master Stafford came to the court the 26. of December what news he brought may be supposed by the company and countenance he had here. For I saw him the 27. walk [***] on the Terrace, having no more to confer withal but his shadow. The 29. the L. hasty Haward, Charles Arundell, & fine Southwell powdered with perfumes, were examined at my Lord Chancellor's, (Monsieur Le Comte de O (as I hear) being their accuser) where they answered so discreetly for themselves, as they are ^closelie &^ safely looked unto, for losing: The L. [hastie4] at my L Chancellor's, Arundell at master Vice Chamberlain's, & Southwell at the Fleet but a stronger place provides for some of better countenance (as I hear) God send them in quickly if they be faulty, & to receive due reward to their deserts: now the spring is discovered I trust the head will be speedily found & their ^water^ course altered to their own destruction / My L. Chamberlain & my lady was not at the court on New Year's Day for his honor is sick at Barnsey, my L. Treasurer lieth lame of the Gout the more pity, & my L. of Lecestar with all your other honorable friends are in health: but specially the Queen's Majesty (God be praised for it) never more pleasant or lusty, which I hope the heavenly prince of all will long preserve, to the joy & comfort of all true hearted English men / and thus far for an orator / Our Irish actions remain as they were but nothing so dangerous as our papists hoped: Captain Peerce dwells in the same terms he did, [ ... ] fair, performed at leisure, & I your poor friend quails not so long as it is in question: I hope with others, though I cannot continue it so well, and puet etre we may be all deceived: But howsoever I rest in all fortunes your faithful & assured to command George North.

Master Ledsam as myself hath him commended unto you, love me still & let me hear again from you. London the 3 January 81.

[Postscript perpendicular in the left hand margin:] postscript. After I had ended this letter (as you see) news was brought in that John Young was come to the Court: who there I presently went to have spoken with him, & could not: yet spake with Captain Peerce my Cousin Roberts & with Ledsam who had the whole discourse of all, don Rodorico is returned with him as poor as may: they suppose Don Antonio is fled into France, he was once aboard an Englishman & offered 1000 Duckets with more for his passage hither, the faint hartyd varlets refused him, so as he was faint to enter into a frenchman who went a way with him) yet to what place he know[s] not: he made as he saith the vice admiral of the Spanish fleet strike unto him, & how the King hath at the Ora[ ... ] 30. armados 40. sail of tall ships & 40 sail of other smaller, the sea is full of them / 'tis more I heard at the court, for troth that the Earl of Kildar, the L. of Uprossar & one other L. is in hand: god confound all her Majesty's enemies.



1Letters of William Herle Project 2006 AHRC Centre for Editing Lives and Letters www.livesandletters.ac.uk

Transcript ID: HRL/002/PDF/068. Transcription of BL MS Cotton Vespasian C VII f. 383r - v.

2The National Archives Prob 11/48/64 http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Probate/PROB_11-48-64.pdf

3British Library MS 70520

4hastie] “[harine]” in transcription.


Also at Virtual Grub Street:

Was Shakespeare Gay? What do the sonnets really say?


Sunday, March 03, 2024

North Authorship Theory in Context: “AROUND(30)” So What?

North Authorship Theory in Context Series:

So then, Dennis McCarthy asserts that Thomas North wrote a stage-direction to Shakespeare's Henry VIII out of a journal he once kept. We have seen, on the other hand, why history has declared the scene in question from Shakespeare's Henry VIII to have been taken directly out of George Cavendish's Life of Cardinal Wolsey. [link] 

What we haven't seen is on what basis McCarthy claims it is mathematically highly probable that Thomas North wrote the original scene. What does entering '"After them" AROUND(30) "next them with"' into the Google search engine have to do with anything?

Numerous contiguous word-strings shared between two short texts has long been known to be strong evidence that one was taken from the other or both from a shared source. But what specific evidence do nondescript word-pairs located “AROUND(30)” words apart in a text provide?

Read carefully, McCarthy does not say that North consulted Cavendish's Wolsey in writing Henry VIII. He says that North used Cavendish to write his travel journal entries from which he later wrote the passage in Henry VIII.

North frequently relied on two historical texts—an unpublished manuscript version of George Cavendish’s Life of Wolsey (1555-56) and chapters on Henry VIII in Edward Hall’s Union (1548)—in order to help add knowing details to his journal entries. He even borrowed from Cavendish’s Life of Wolsey when crafting the entries describing the cardinal’s procession and consistory. North then took these very same source-passages that he used for his journal and reused them in Henry VIII, all the while echoing the language of his journal and modifying the actual historical events so that they more closely resembled his experiences in Italy.

In this way, the fact that Henry VIII copies text directly from Cavendish is transformed into the claim that North borrowed from Cavendish for his journal entries and then borrowed from his journal to write Henry VIII. This because entering '"After them" AROUND(30) "next them with".' in Google Search produces only entries for Henry VIII and the travel journal entry — or, to be more precise, Henry VIII and the ellipses-filled excerpt from North's travel journal that McCarthy provides us on his web-pages.

But what evidence is there that North “frequently relied on” these (or any) “two historical texts” to “add knowing details to his journal”? How is this anything but evidence of a desperate attempt to manufacture a connection between Shakespeare's works and North private papers?

This all accomplishes one thing. A passage in Henry VIII that any literate Tudor can have copied out of Cavendish, under the name Shakespeare, has allegedly been discovered to be a passage that — by virtue of '"After them" AROUND(30) "next them with"' — can only have come from Thomas North's private papers thus only from Thomas North. Shakespeare, then, did not borrow liberally from the works of North but he was North. The common nature of all such Catholic rituals in Western Europe at the time notwithstanding. The lack of word-string matches in the journal text notwithstanding.

The scholarly world has been aware for centuries that the writer known as William Shakespeare borrowed massively from Thomas North's translation of the Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans for his Roman history plays. Already hundreds of lines from North's work, published in 1580, are known to have been drafted into Shakespeare plays.

Having that much of an historical head start, Dennis McCarthy has staked out his bit of Shakespeare Authorship territory claiming that North wrote early originals of the Bard's plays, later adapted by William Shakspere of Stratford under the now world famous name. He has sought to expand the amount of text in the plays attributed to the pen of North through the use of internet search tools. His goal, in doing this, is to establish North as the playwright who wrote the original versions of the plays all of which he then somehow licensed to the Stratford man.

The strongest talents McCarthy brings to the task are: networking to get credentialed partners to order to gain access to commercial publishing venues, to the occasional academic journal and to high-end publicity venues. He clearly has a degree of charisma, delivered with a booming, confident, paced voice and the perpetual five-o'clock shadow always popular with television fans. His sales-pitch is convincing. Outside of building these talents he seems barely to have worked a day in his life (for which I congratulate him as much as anything).

He has some moderate computer-user skills, as well, and has developed a personal approach to collecting data via search engines. His methods, inasmuch as they are known (and that's not much), hold promise in the abstract. In practice not so much. His grasp of the underlying mathematics seems to be conveniently intuitive.

There being hundreds of lines that Shakespeare lifted from North, to begin with, McCarthy's concurring search engine results are guaranteed to stand up to scrutiny. Some number of his great many additional claims will almost certainly prove out if anyone has the time and inclination to tie themselves to that plow while the star does the podcast circuit.

Where the North thesis runs into seemingly insuperable difficulties is in the fact that there is no substantial evidence that he ever wrote a play or poem. History knows him only as a translator. Equally insuperable is the time line that the allegedly twice composed plays would have to meet and the unheard of and impracticable contractual arrangement that would have been necessary. Attempts to torture narratives and search engine data so that North can be claimed to have a history in those ways, or such that his private papers display an exclusive relationship with the works, fail for the fact that they don't remotely conform with the Tudor context in which he lived.

Does this indicate that Thomas North absolutely did not write the works of Shakespeare? It is all but certain that he did not write all or nearly all of them. The reasons are legion. It is not hard to believe, however, that he had some idea that Shakespeare had coöpted his translation work. It is not at all impossible that both saw him as something of a co-author for portions of those plays based on the Plutarch translations. But I suspect that such a possibility cannot capture enough attention and market-share to meet Dennis McCarthy's needs.


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Also at Virtual Grub Street:

Was Shakespeare Gay? What do the sonnets really say?



North Authorship Theory in Context: A Different Set of Parallel Columns.

North Authorship Theory in Context Series:


Dennis McCarthy acknowledges that the Henry VIII stage-direction and passages regarding the Blackfriars trial were borrowed from George Cavendish's Life of Cardinal Wolsey. The text was widely circulated as a manuscript book for nearly a hundred years. I follow McCarthy's own method [link] and provide the correspondence highlighted in colored letters and in parallel columns. I use multiple colors to try to simplify the comparison.

Cavendish Wolsey

Henry VIII

Ye shall understande, as I saide before, that there was a courte erected in the Black Friars in London, whereas sat these two cardinalls [Wolsey and Campeggio] for judges in the same.




First, there was a courte planted with tables and benches, in manner of a consistory, one seat

raised higher (for the judges to sit in) than the other were. Then as it were in the middest of the saide judges [Wolsey and Campeggio], aloafte above them three degrees highe, was a cloath of estate hanged, with a chaire royall under the same, wherein sat the king; and besides him, some distaunce from him, sat the queene ; and under the judges feete sat the scribes, and other necessary officers for the execution of the process, and other things appertaining to such a courte. The chiefe scribe was Doctor Stevens after bishoppe of Winchester, and the apparitour, who was called doctor of the courte, was one Cooke, most commonly called Cooke of Winchester. Then, before the king and the judges, within the courte, sat the archbishoppe of Canterbury, doctor Warham, and all the other bishops. Then stoode at bothe endes within, the consellors learned in the spirituall lawes, as well the king's, as the queene's.

Trumpets, Sennet , and Cornets.


Enter two Vergers , with short silver wands ; next them two Scribes in the habite of Doctors; after them, the Bishop of Canterbury alone; after him, the Bishops of Lincolne, Ely, Rochester, and S. Asaph: Next them, with some small distance , followes a Gentleman bearing the Purse, with the great Seale, and a Cardinals Hat: Then two Priests, bearing each a Silver Crosse: Then a Gentleman Usher bare-headed, accompanyed with a Sergeant at Armes, bearing a Silver Mace: Then two Gentlemen bearing two great Silver Pillers : After them, side by side, the two Cardinals, two Noblemen, with the Sword and Mace. The King takes place under the Cloth of State. The two Cardinalls sit under him as Judges. The Queene takes place some distance from the King. The Bishops place themselves on each side the Court in manner of a Consistory. Below them the Scribes. The Lords sit next the Bishops. The rest of the Attendants stand in convenient order about the Stage.


Car. Whil'st our Commission from Rome is read,

Let silence be commanded .




Then called he againe the queene by the name of

"Katherine queene of Englande, come into the courte," who made no aunswer thereto, but rose incontinent out of her chaire, whereas she sat, and because she could not come to the king directly, for the distance severed betweene them, she toke paine to goe about by the courte, and came to the king, kneeling downe at his feete in the sight of all the courte and people, to whom she sayd in effect these words, in broken Englishe, as hereafter followeth.



Scribe. Say, Katherine Queene of England, Come into the Court.

Crier. Katherine Queene of England , &c


The Queene makes no answer, rises out of her Chaire, goes about the Court, comes to the King, and kneeles at his Feete. Then speakes.

Sir," quoth she, " I beseeche you to doe me justice and right, and take some pitty upon me, for I am a poore woman and a straunger, borne out of your dominion, having here no indifferent counsell, and lesse assuraunce of friendship. Alas! Sir, what have I offended you, or what occaision of displeasure have I shewed you, intending thus to put me from you after this sorte?


Sir, I desire you do me Right and Justice,

And to bestow your pitty on me; for

I am a most poore Woman, and a Stranger,

Borne out of your Dominions: having heere

No Judge indifferent, nor no more assurance

Of equall Friendship and Proceeding. Alas Sir:

In what have I offended you? What cause

Hath my behaviour given to your displeasure ,

These from Life of Cardinal Wolsey (1852), pages 126-7, 8, and Charlotte Porter's edition of Shakespeare's The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight (1912), pages 48-9. Next we repeat some of the description in the Henry VIII stage-direction comparing it to an earlier passage from Cavendish describing Wolsey's daily processions to his office (as it were).


Nowe shall ye understande that he had two crosse bearers and two pillar bearers.


Nowe will I declare unto you his order in going to Westminster Hall, dayly in the tearme season....

Thus went he downe through the hall with a sergeaunt of armes before him bearing a great mace of silver, and two gentlemen carrying of two great pillars of silver...

Then two Priests, bearing each a Silver Crosse: Then a Gentleman Usher bare-headed, accompanyed with a Sergeant at Armes, bearing a Silver Mace: Then two Gentlemen bearing two great Silver Pillers

These from Life of Cardinal Wolsey (1852), pages 32, 37, then, compared to some of the above lines repeated from Charlotte Porter's edition of Shakespeare's The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight (1912), pages 48-9.

As for the importance of knowing Tudor context, for all Thomas North's journal entry does indeed share a considerable number of scattered words (no extended phrases) with the pageant direction from Henry VIII, there is an explanation that is far more probable than North having written the stage direction for the play. First, most are common words regularly in the mouths of all the educated population of England. More particularly Diocesan Cathedrals in England (and all of western Europe to the best of my knowledge) all featured Consistories. Whoever was the presiding officer of the given Consistory sat — exactly as did the Pope in his diocese — in the center, on a raised “estate,” beneath a canopy suited to his rank. The King may well have taken to presiding officer's position as a step in declaring himself Head of the Church of England.

The lesser clergy sat in rank-order, starting with the judges, in lesser chairs, on descending levels. The emblem of office of a Verger in England, as in Rome, was a silver wand/rod. The bearing of crosses in all Consistory processions hardly needs explaining.


What is unique to the Henry VIII scene is the officers carrying “the purse” before the highest officials present. It is a detail, however, that neither appears in Cavendish nor the fragments provided us from the travel journal. I am not aware that this very English touch was ever part of a Papal Consistory (or any other Roman procession).

“The purse” contains the high officiants' seals which will formalize the decisions of the court. It is not mentioned in Cavendish, it would seem, or in North's Journal, but it would have been marched past all of the spectators at an English procession to a Consistory presided-over by a Chancellor or above.

One did not have to go to Rome to see the procession described in Henry VIII. Identical processions to Diocesan Consistories, open to the public, occurred regularly at St. Paul's, in London, and at the Canterbury and York cathedrals.

When history has noticed the scene from Henry VIII it has made the normal observation that it was written from out of Cavendish. This due to the fact that keys lines were taken verbatim, and others nearly verbatim, from the latter. The matches were not a word or two within 30 words but rather continuous matching strings of words.


Next: “AROUND(30)” So What?


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North Authorship Theory in Context: The Exchequer and Stage Directions.

North Authorship Theory in Context Series:


It is too easy to go in search of confirmation of an historical theory with a 21st century eye and to find what one seeks. To find some matching words in a search engine result indicates genuine possibilities but will likely be misinterpreted as mathematical certainties should it fill a need. After all, 2+2=4 in Tudor times just as it does now.

Using a search engine requires at least as much specialized knowledge as operating an automobile. Each time and place in history is a landscape that rewrites most of the driver's manual. Use the standard manual and you will not even know that you have gone wrong. Tudor accountants, for just one tiny example, added their 2+2 at an exchequer. The reason an exchequer was called an “exchequer” is because its 2+2 was added by moving tokens on a segmented board. Used to play chess or perform mathematical calculations, the board was called an (ex)chequer board (L. scaccarium).

When kings and noblemen began keeping track of their treasuries and records of their transactions the western world had yet to adopt the Arabic number system (particularly the placeholder “0”). If you read 2+2 in Medieval and Tudor texts they actually say “II et II sunt IV”. By the mid-16th century +, - and = signs did exist but only (or almost only) Moslems, Italians and child geeks under 13 knew how to use them or the Arabic base-10 number system with its mind-bending “0”.

You can imagine, then, the challenge of subtracting CCXLI from DCCCXC. The monarch's best hope was to hire a bunch of (ac)count(ants) to move tokens on a(n ex)checker board, scribes to write down the results and notch them into wooden receipts, clerks to enter the amounts on the slips of paper onto long scrolls, supervisors to assure the flurry of notes remained properly coordinated and Barons of the Exchequer to protect the scrolls and process, and to order severe punishment for miscreants. The operation required surgical precision because there was absolutely no way to check one's work except to do the whole thing over again.

Arch North theorist, Dennis McCarthy, has not declared any findings regarding the Royal Exchequer that I am aware of. He does declare that a stage-direction for one of the pageants inserted into Shakespeare's Life of Henry VIII is taken from a private travel journal kept by Thomas North in 1555. This based upon the fact that

searches of both EEBO and the many trillions of webpages on Google confirm that North’s entry and Shakespeare’s play are the only two known passages that place after them within 30 words of next them with.

This is, indeed, the result one gets for the Google entry '"After them" AROUND(30) "next them with"'. But this hardly tells the story.

First of all, the second phrase/construction is not properly “next them with”. It is “next them” followed by a comma indicating a new clause follows beginning with the word “with”. Search on '"After them" AROUND(30) "next them" and one seems at first to get much the same result. North uses the construction in a passage in the travel journal describing a Papal Consistory and the same construction appears in Henry VIII.

If we want to understand something of what we may have discovered, we might search on close variations such as 'Shakespeare “next them”'. That it appears once in Henry VIII, is hardly as shocking a discovery as the fact that it is the only time it would seem to have appeared in all the works published under the name of Shakespeare.

So then, “next them” is only used this once in all of “Shakespeare,” in a play that is admittedly co-written, and only in an extensive stage-direction such as playwrights did not as the rule supply but rather the stage manager and company scribe.

McCarthy does also acknowledge that Henry VIII was co-written by John Fletcher — a fact that I have pointed out elsewhere causes the North theory no end of problems. If one enters 'John Fletcher “next them”' into the Google Search Engine one discovers that Fletcher used the construction a mere three times throughout all of his plays. Two of the instances, interestingly, are also in the text of a single extensive stage-direction for a pageant scene such as playwrights did not supply, as the rule, but rather the stage manager and/or company scribe.

Also interesting, both of the plays were likely acted at the Globe theater around 1613 (Fletcher having become the company's main playwright a few years before). The same stage-manager and/or scribe quite possibly composed the stage-directions for the pageant scenes in both plays. That being the case, '"After them" AROUND(30) "next them"' would simply be a coincidence between two very common word-pairs thus not a particularly significant one.

It will be helpful, at this point, to consider these stage-directions themselves. First from Henry VIII, II.iv.:


Trumpets, Sennet , and Cornets.

Enter two Vergers, with short silver wands; next them two Scribes in the habite of Doctors; after them, the Bishop of Canterbury alone; after him, the Bishops of Lincolne, Ely, Rochester, and S. Asaph: Next them, with some small distance, followes a Gentleman bearing the Purse, with the great Seale, and a Cardinals Hat: Then two Priests, bearing each a Silver Crosse: Then a Gentleman Usher bare-headed, accompanyed with a Sergeant at Armes, bearing a Silver Mace: Then two Gentlemen bearing two great Silver Pillers: Afier them, side by side, the two Cardinals, two Noblemen , with the Sword and Mace. The King takes place under the Cloth of State. The two Cardinalls sit under him as Judges. The Queene takes place some distance from the King. The Bishops place themselves on each side the Court in manner of a Consistory: Below them the Scribes . The Lords sit next the Bishops. The rest of the Attendants stand in convenient order about the Stage.

Next, from the opening pageant of The Triumph of Death, from Four Plays or Moral Representations in One, one of the two triumphs attributed to John Fletcher alone.

The TRIUMPH.

Enter Musicians: next them, Perolot with the wound he diedwith. Then Gabriella and Maria, with their wounds: after them, four Furies with Bannerets in[s]crib'd Revenge, Murder, Lust and Drunkenness, singing. Next them, Lavall wounded. Then Chariot with Death drawn by the Destinies.

Neither of the playwrights is likely to have used the construction any more than they are likely to have directed what props and furniture were to be brought out of storage for the production or where the musicians would play what specific musical instruments in the fanfare.

It will be interesting to look into this resemblance further but I do not offer it alone by way of rebuttal. It is only one small piece of a much bigger picture. For the next tranche of information, I present parallel columns, after Mr. McCarthy's manner, though with a few more colors, showing a more probable relationship of the stage-direction for Henry VIII to George Cavendish's Life of Cardinal Wolsey.


Next: A Different Set of Parallel Columns.


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