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Saturday, April 13, 2024

More on the Common Source for George North and Shakespeare on the Kingdom of the Bees.

In this series:


“Just another obvious falsehood...” Dennis McCarthy writes in reply to my revelation that both George North, on the topic of bees, in his manuscript entitled A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels, and Shakespeare on bees in the Archbishop of Canterbury's speech in the play Henry V, are actually close paraphrases (qualify in parts as loose translations) of Book XI of Pliny's Natural Histories and Book IV of Virgil's Georgics. This alone accounts for the similarities between the two Tudor texts.

McCarthy followed with a table of comparison of North's and Shakespeare's texts from his 2018 edition of North's text. I show that each example is taken from 1st century Rome by following each example with the corresponding English translation from the Loeb editions of Pliny's Natural History1 and/or Virgil's Georgics2. The correspondence shows that even 400+ years apart, the English translations that correspond to the Latin original show an unmistakable close relationship to both Tudor authors.

Together with this comparison, I provide key terms from the original Latin text in brackets. There are not many. But they should be simple to look up and they are chosen because they make particularly clear the precise match between the Latin and all of the English texts. Also, the Loeb editions can be downloaded for free from the Internet Archive in order to read the entire text in both languages.




...a single male which in each swarm is called the king; … He is surrounded by certain retainers and lictors as the constant guardians of his authority. [Pliny, 465]


Here follows not only vocabulary but a very specific grammatical match using “some” and “other” precisely as in the Latin of the Georgics.






...a guard is posted at the gates ….they send scouts [speculatores] to further pastures. [Pliny, 445]

They alone have children in common, hold the dwellings of their city jointly, and pass their life under the majesty of law. They alone know a fatherland and fixed home, and in summer, mindful of the winter to come, spend toilsome days and garner their gains into a common store. For some [aliae] watch over the gathering of food, and under fixed covenant labour in the fields; some [aliae], within the confines of their homes, lay down the narcissus' tears and gluey gum from tree-bark as the first foundation of the comb, then hang aloft clinging wax; others [aliae] lead out the full-grown young, the nation's hope; others [aliae] pack purest honey, and swell the cells with liquid nectar. To some [aliae] it has fallen by lot to be sentries at the gates, and in turn they watch the rains and clouds of heaven, or take the loads of incomers, or in martial array drive the drones, a lazy herd [ignavum fucos pecus], from the folds. [Georgics, 207, 209]

It is clear from the two author's texts that North likely had the Pliny and Virgil texts beside him as he wrote. Shakespeare is much looser in his rendition and seems to be writing from memory of his originals.

To some it has fallen by lot to be sentries [custodia] at the gates, and in turn they watch the rains and clouds of heaven, or take the loads of incomers [aut onera accipiunt venientum],... [Georgics, 207]

In the following, Shakespeare even matches the Loeb translation precisely. Both mention Virgil's tent-royal / royal tent, their exact translation of Virgil's praetoria.

Round their king [circa regem], and even by his royal tent [praetoria],... [Georgics, 201]

They build large and splendid separate palaces [amplas, magnificas, separatas, tuberculo eminentes] for those who are to be their rulers... [Pliny, 451]

The two obvious clues that one is reading a redaction or translation of Pliny and/or Virgil (or Aristotle, from whom they took more than a little of their information) are: 1) the hives are said to have a king rather than a queen; and, 2) a moral is drawn upon drones who are said to seek to devour the honey without having worked for it.

We've seen the king. Now the drones.



...drive the drones [fucos], a lazy [ignavum] herd [pecus], from the folds. [Georgics, 207, 209]

When the honey has begun to ripen, the bees drive the drones away, and falling on them many to one kill them. [Pliny, 451].

The moral of the lazy drone was perhaps the most common in Tudor England.

The portions of Pliny and Virgil that may have provided North further inspiration are as follows:





Next will I discourse of Heaven's gift, the honey from the skies. [Georgics, 197]

two seasons are there for the harvest—first, so soon as Taygete the Pleiad has shown her comely face to the earth... [Georgics, 213]

For after the rising of each star, but particularly the principal stars, or of a rainbow, if rain does not follow but the dew is warmed by the rays of the sun, not honey but drugs are produced, heavenly gifts for the eyes, for ulcers and for the internal organs. And if this substance is kept when the dogstar is rising, and if, as often happens, the rise of Venus or Jupiter or Mercury falls on the same day, its sweetness and potency for recalling mortals' ills from death is equal to that of the nectar of the gods.

Honey is obtained more copiously at full moon, and of thicker substance in fine weather. [Pliny, 455]

The first comparison relies on the words Heavens / heaven, continued / continual and obedience. In North the text from which these words are extracted has nothing in particular to do with bees. He is stating a commonplace of the time that the heavens (stars, planets, etc.) obey the god who created them. Writing a text against rebellion, as he was, obedience could only be highlighted from a story about the orderly commonwealth of the bees.

Heaven does not refer to planets, stars, etc., in the Shakespeare quote. The word is a metonym designating god.

As for the use both North and Shakespeare make of the word obedience we need to place the word in its context in each passage..




Bees have their special leader, whom they so much honor, as they will no day depart the hive before they have presented duty and saluted him... [the obedience of bees (in margin)].


George North, Rebellion

Therefore doth heaven divid

The state of man in divers functions,

Setting endeavor in continual motion;

To which is fixed, as an aim or butt,

Obedience: for so work the honey-bees,

Creatures that by a rule in nature teach

The act of order to a peopled kingdom.


Shakespeare, Henry V, I.ii.

In Shakespeare, the quote states the division of labor among the bees has obedience as its aim. The quote refers directly to Georgics IV:


For some watch over the gathering of food, and under fixed covenant labour in the fields; some, within the confines of their homes, lay down the narcissus' tears and gluey gum from tree-bark as the first foundation of the comb, then hang aloft clinging wax; others lead out the full-grown young, the nation's hope; others pack purest honey, and swell the cells with liquid nectar. Etc. Georgics, 207.


Finally, the ancient Romans did not a have a parliament but rather a senate. Tudor England did not have a senate but rather a parliament. Thus North alone translates senate as “Parliament”.4





...they have a government and individual enterprises and collective leaders,... [Pliny, 439]

…the crowd of older bees, who form a kind of senate [senatus],... [Columella, 469]

Again, North seems clearly to have these texts beside him. This particular would seem to show that they also included not only Pliny but Columella's De Res Rustica.5 Shakespeare, on the other hand, is working from memory and mostly recalls the Pliny, however much more vaguely, and the Columella not at all.



1    Pliny the Elder. Natural History (1967). dual language tr. H. Rackham. Book XI. 432-499. Citations are by page number.

2    Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro). Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I-VI (1938). dual language tr. Fairclough, H. Rushton. Georgics IV. 196-237. Citations are by page number.

3    onera = burdens

4    Curiously, Edward de Vere's secretary, John Lyly, also translates senatus as “Parliament” in his description of the commonwealth of bees in his Euphues, his England (1580). See Arber edition, 263. “[The bees] call a Parliament, wher-in they consult, for lawes, satutes, penalties, chusing officers, and creating their king,”

5     Columella, Lucius Junius Moderatus. On Agriculture III. De Res Rustica V-IX (1954). dual language tr. Heffner, Edward H. 468-9.


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Sunday, April 07, 2024

Shakespeare and Bees, Pt. 2.

In this series:

Now we return to our anonymous author on “Shakespeare and Bees”.1 Here the emphasis of the passages is on the delightful product of the bees: honey.


When Romeo is awaiting the arrival of Juliet, Friar Laurence, in his cell, endeavours to solace him in the following words:-

These violent delights have violent ends;

adding :-

The sweetest honey

Is loathsome in his own deliciousness,

And in the taste confounds the appetite;

Therefore , love moderately.

        Act II., Scene 6.

In Henry VIII. Norfolk says, in speaking of Cardinal Wolsey:-

The King hath found

Matter against him that for ever mars

The honey of his language.

        Act III., Scene 2.

In Hamlet we find Ophelia deploring her condition after the remark ' To a nunnery go ' in these words :-

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,

That suck'd the honey of his music vows.

        Act III., Scene 1 .

The same word is also employed by Romeo:-

Oh, my love! my wife!

Death that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,

Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.

        Act V. , Scene 3.

When we bear in mind the regularity of combs and the close arrangement of the cells, the words of Prospero, in his reply to Caliban, will be better understood:-

Thou shalt be pinch'd

As thick as honey-combs, each pinch more stinging

Than bees that made them.

        Tempest, Act I. , Scene 2.

The sting is above alluded to, and also occurs in the following:-

Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing,

Till he hath lost his honey and his sting:

And being once subdued in armed tail,

Sweet honey and sweet notes together fail.

        Troilus and Cressida, Act V., Scene 11 .

This passage would lead us to infer that Shakespeare knew that bees could not withdraw their stings from the wound. In Julius Cæsar we find the following dialogue:-

Cas. The posture of your blows are yet unknown;

But for your words, they rob the Hybla bees,

And leave them honeyless.

Ant. Not stingless too.

Bru. Oh, yes, and soundless too;

For you have stol'n their buzzing, Antony,

And, very wisely, threat before you sting.

        Act V. , Scene 1.

The loss of the queen is thus described: -

The commons, like a hive of angry bees,

That want their leader, scatter up and down .

        2 Henry VI., Act III. , Scene 2.

He did not seem to know the use of drones, for he says :-

Drones suck not eagles' blood, but rob beehives.

        2 Henry VI., Act IV., Scene 1.

As mentioned in Pt. 1, most of medieval and Tudor writing on bees is taken from the Natural History of Pliny the Elder. Shakespeare's knowledge that constituents of bees-wax are carried on the back legs of bees does not seem to feature in any classical author, however, and may have been the observation of another more modern eye. As for wasps attacking bee-hives, this is mentioned in Pliny, but not, that I have yet found, the fact that they do so in order to feed on the honey. Again, this may come from a more modern source — perhaps an expert bee-keeper.


The following passage from The Two Gentlemen of Verona will show that Shakespeare had observed the fights that took place between wasps and bees:-

Injurious wasps! to feed on such sweet honey,

And kill the bees, that yield it, with your stings!

        Act I., Scene 2.

The honey boys steal from the humble-bees,

And for night tapers, crop their waxen thighs.'

        Midsummer Night's Dream, Act III ., Scene 2.

The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,

Were still at odds, being but three.

        Love's Labour Lost, Act III., Scene 1.

How well a worn-out worker is illustrated in the following:-

Since I nor wax, nor honey can bring home,

I quickly were dissolved from my hive,

To give some labourers room.

        All's Well that Ends Well, Act I. , Scene 2.


Actually, to know Pliny, here, is to know that this passage describes the ejection of a drone.


They surfeited with honey, and began

To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a

Little more than a little is by much too much .

        2 Henry IV., Act IV., Scene 4.

Like one besotted on your sweet delights :

You have the honey still, but these the gall

        Troilus and Cressida, Act II., Scene 2.

'We would purge the land of these drones

that rob the bee of her honey.'

        Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Act II., Scene 1.

These are a few of the passages in which bees and honey are referred to, but there a good many more. Indeed, from the frequent allusions made by Shakespeare, this insect must have been a favourite with him, and it certainly furnished him with numerous similes ; and, not content with the word 'honey,' both in a literal and metaphorical sense , he has interwoven it in several endearing epithets, such as 'honey love,' 'honey nurse;' and in Julius Caesar we find the following curious expression:-

Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber.

        Act II., Scene 1.

Many other poets have alluded to bees and honey, but none so frequently as Shakespeare.




1British Bee Journal, Bee-Keepers' Record and Advisor. Volume IX (1891).


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Saturday, April 06, 2024

Shakespeare and Bees, Pt. 1.

In this series:

Beginning on October 29, 1891, an anonymous editor of the British Bee Journal, Bee-Keepers' Record and Advisor1 began a longish multi-issue essay on Shakespeare and Bees. Like so many of such editorial projects in that day it was direct and genuinely informative. We present it here, in Virtual Grub Street, in the spirit of the original.

Most of the reference's to bees in Shakespeare come from where such references come in the works of all Tudor authors. They come from Book XI of Pliny the Elder's 1st century A.D. Natural History.

There was very little scientific study in medieval and Tudor times. Instead the educated members of societies took the word of various Greek and Roman observers of ancient times. Thus Shakespeare repeats Pliny's mistake of identifying the dominant member of the hive as its king rather than its queen. Also the mistake of identifying drones as lazy parasites upon a hive's honey. If a writer repeats these mistakes the reader can be sure he learned his “facts” from Pliny or from Book IV of Virgil's Georgics, or both.


SHAKESPEARE AND BEES .


In his plays Shakespeare frequently alludes to bees and honey. Some of these we have selected

for mention . In The Tempest, Act V. , Scene 1 , the delicate Ariel expresses his enjoyment by saying :-

'Where the bee sucks, there suck I.'

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bottom the Weaver gives orders to his new attendants in the following words :-

'Monsieur Cobweb; good monsieur, get your

weapons in your hand, and kill me a red-hipped

humble-bee on the top of a thistle; and, good

monsieur, bring me the honey- bag.'

Act IV., Scene I.

Drones are also mentioned. Shylock, in speaking of his servant Launcelot, after describing him as a ‘huge feeder ,' adds : -

'Drones hive not with me.'

Shakespeare knew that a hive contains a queen, workers, and drones, for he says :-

Like stinging bees in hottest summer's day,

Led by their master to the flower'd fields .'

Titus Andronicus, Act V. , Scene 1 .

True, he calls the queen 'Master,' but this is still used in some places, and in some parts of Sussex the queen is still called the 'master-bee.' 'Drones hive not with me ' has already been alluded to, and the workers are described in the following lines :-

'So work the honey bees;

Creatures, that, by a rule of nature, teach

The act of order to a peopled kingdom.

They have a king, and officers of sorts :

Where some , like magistrates, correct at home ;

Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad ;

Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,

Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds ;

Which pillage they with merry march bring home

To the tent-royal of their emperor :

Who, busied in his majesty, surveys

The singing masons building roofs of gold ;

The civil citizens kneading up the honey ;

The poor mechanic porters crowding in

Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate ;

The sad-ey'd justice, with his surly hum,

Delivering o'er to executors pale

The lazy yawning drone.'

Henry V., Act I. , Scene II.

In the Second Part of Henry VI. the following passage occurs : -

'How quickly nature falls into revolt

When gold becomes her object.

For this, the foolish over-careful fathers

Have broke their sleep with thought, their brains with care,

When, like the bees, tolling from every flower,

The virtuous sweets,

Our thighs are pack'd with wax, our mouths with honey :

We bring it to the hive; and, like the bees,

Are murdered for our pains.'

Act IV., Scene 4.


In another part of the same play this murder is described , and in it we recognise the old method of the brimstone pit . When the English troops are being repulsed by Joan of Arc, Talbot says:-

'So bees with smoke, and doves with noisome stench ,

Are from their hives and houses driven away.'

Act I., Scene 5 .

Wax is brought forward as a material for sealing in the following passage:-

'Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment ? That parchment , being scriblled o'er, should undo a man? Some say, the bee stings: but I say, ' tis the bee's-wax: for I did but seal once to a thing, and I was never mine own man since .'

2 Henry VI., Act IV., Scene 2 .


Leave, gentle wax ; and, manners, blame us not :

To know our enemies' minds, we'd rip their hearts ;

Their papers , is more lawful.'

King Lear, Act IV. , Scene 6.

And again :-

'Good wax, thy leave, bless'd be

Yon bees, that make these locks of counsel Lovers

And men in dangerous bonds pray not alike

Though forfeiters you cast in prison yet,

You clasp young Cupid's tables .'

Cymbeline , Act III , Scene 2 .

It was at one time thought that pollen was wax, and Shakespeare adopted this idea:

'Our thighs are pack'd with wax.'

Honey is of frequent occurrence, and King Henry V. at Agincourt is made to say:

There is some soul of goodness in things evil,

Would men observingly distil it out :

*

Thus may we gather honey from the weed.

Act IV. , Scene 1 .


Shakespeare did love bee-imagery. It can be found throughout the plays. We will finish the anonymous account in Part 2.



1 British Bee Journal, Bee-Keepers' Record and Advisor. Volume IX (1891).


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The Common Source for George North and Shakespeare on the Kingdom of the Bees.

In this series:

I have mentioned many times that far and away the most common failure of computer-based Shakespeare authorship studies comes from the fact that the persons who design the studies know too little about Tudor times and literature, early movable type publishing, etc. I was alerted to another example of this when listening to a Folger Shakespeare Unlimited interview with Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter regarding their  A Brief Discourse of Rebellion & Rebels by George North (2018).

I excerpt the particular portion of the interview that introduces the subject of Shakespeare taking text on bees from George North's manuscript book ‘A brief discourse of rebellion and Rebells’ below.

BOGAEV: And let’s look at this other passage that you examine in depth, from Henry V, about bees and the order of the universe, which also seems remarkably similar to what North wrote. And, June, perhaps you could lay out some of the highlights of that one for us.

[CLIP from Henry V:]

BISHOP OF CANTERBURY:
…for so work the honeybees,
Creatures that by a rule in nature teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom.

SCHLUETER: Yeah. The overarching claim of George North in his Brief Discourse is that rebellion is always wrong, and rebels will always be punished. And he uses the society of bees, and ants, to show the proper order of things.


[CLIP continues:]

BISHOP OF CANTERBURY:
They have a king and officers of sorts,
Where some like magistrates correct at home,
Others like merchants venture trade abroad,
Others like soldiers armèd in their stings

SCHLUETER: So, this is reflected in the exchange in Henry V between the Archbishop of Canterbury and Exeter. So, again, we see the parallel passages when Canterbury is talking about the society of bees and when George North is talking about the same society.

BOGAEV: So are you saying that what’s so remarkable is that it’s not just that these same words appear in the same order here with the ant, and the bee, and detailing the division of labor in the bees kingdom, and their duties, and comparing it to the divisions among humans, but also that Shakespeare seems to take some of North’s allusions and themes as well?

It is a little bit stunning, here, that McCarthy and Schlueter do not understand what they are seeing. On two different occasions, during this podcast, it is mentioned that the relationship between the George North manuscript and the works of Shakespeare depend upon there being no earlier third work that both might be quoting separately.

McCarthy does mention that North's text seems to be influenced by another:

North's source for some of this material was Thomas Elyot's The Governor.1

But the association with Elyot — for all it likely added little or nothing to North's work — was one that could better have been a source of guidance for McCarthy and Schlueter themselves. There they would have been directed toward the works that did separately provide the bee texts of Elyot, North and Shakespeare:

I wolde that if the reder herof be lerned that he shulde repayre to the Georgikes of Virgile, or to Plini, or Collumella, where he shall fynde the example more ample and better declared.2

It also cites the text that Edward de Vere references in his introductory poem to Thomas Bedingfeld's translation of Cardanus Comforte:

The idle Drone, that labours not at all

Suckes up the sweete, of honnye from the Bee

Who worketh most, to their share least doth fall,...3

Whenever a medieval or Tudor (early modern) writer refers to bees having a king and idle drones who eat the honey produced by the industrious bees (as North and Shakespeare do in the texts referenced by M&S) the reader can rest assured that they are referring to the first century Roman texts of Pliny the Elder (Natural Histories Bk. XI) and/or the fourth book of Virgil's Georgics.

...a single male which in each swarm is called the king...4

Each of the Roman writers' texts can be distinguished, at that point, by what further details are carried over into the new work.

The sentries or guards M&S find at the gates in both Shakespeare and North are taken from Pliny:

To some it has fallen by lot to be sentries at the gates, and in turn they watch the rains and clouds of heaven, or take the loads of incomers, or in martial array drive the drones, a lazy herd, [ignavum fucos pecus] from the folds.5

The drones they guard against are “idle” in North, “lazy yawning” in the more stylistic Shakespeare: each a proper translation of ignavus.

The purveyors in North and merchants in Shakespeare6 come from Pliny, also.

…when the flowers in the vicinity have been used up they send scouts [speculatores] to further pastures.7

Virtually every word of the North passages and the Shakespeare are accounted for in the passages by Pliny and Virgil.

Pliny's text, in particular, was a favorite morality tale of those centuries. Very little science had been accomplished during them with the exception of practical engineering. Instead of developing methodologies, medieval and Tudor intellectuals relied upon ancient works such as Pliny's, Galen's, etc. The most popular became far more than deeply flawed observations only rarely corrected. They became the science texts of the times.



1McCarthy and Schlueter. "A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels" by George North (1576?, 2018). 25.

2Elyot, Thomas. The Boke named The Governour (1531, 1998). Originally at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/%7Erbear/gov/gov1.htm.

3Bedingfeld, Thomas. CARDAnus Comforte translated into Englishe. And published by commaundement of the right honourable the Earle of Oxenford. (1573). EEBO.

4Pliny the Elder. Natural History (XXXX, 1967) Loeb ed. III.461. All English transl. by H. Rackham.

5Virgil (1938). Loeb ed. Transl H. Rushton Fairclough. I.208-9. The Latin terms in brackets refer to the original.

6North: “...officers of sorts some as a guard or scout keep watch for allegiance... some fetch from far as purveyors for the rest...”. Shakespeare: “Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad,...”

7Pliny. III.445. The Latin term in brackets refers to the original.



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