Henry Neville’s Twelfth Night in Context.

Henry Neville (1564-1615)

In this series:

• Malvolio’s Crow's Feet and “the new Mappe”
• Henry Neville’s Twelfth Night in Context.
• What About Edward de Vere’s Twelfth Night of 1600/01?

Designed primarily as a source of information and entertainment about Tudor times, the Edward de Vere, Shakespeare and Tudor Topics Facebook group is also intended to encourage us all to become familiar with the context of cultural works by Shakespeare and others.  Discussions of Shakespeare Authorship, in particular, too often fail for a lack of such knowledge.

Recently one of the group members posted a Nevillian (a group which believes that Henry Neville wrote the plays of Shakespeare) claim.  As I’ve pointed out before, the greatest strength of the Nevillian position comes from the fact that his dates of birth and death are quite close to those of William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon.

For centuries it has been a received and unquestionable fact that the poems and plays were written by the Stratford man.  Dating of the individual acts and references in them were then only considered correct if they comported with his biographical dates.  Any seeming conflict (and there were many) was decided in favor of the Stratford biography as a matter of  course.  Facts that didn’t fit, regardless how much they were contorted, were mostly ignored but sometimes were so problematical that they were explained away with lame excuses.  Thus, any conflict with traditional Stratfordian dating was also decided in favor of the dates of Neville.

While the present issue does not involve these coincidences, it does require a knowledge of context with which Nevillians Leyland and Goding seem insufficiently familiar.  Their case is outlined on the other side of this link to the Nevillian blog leylandandgoding.  In late 1600, Leyland and Goding correctly inform us, Ralph Winwood kept the French ambassador Henry Neville informed of events in France during his return to England for consultation. In a letter of November 20, 1600, Winwood mentioned that Virginio Orsino, the Duke of Bracchiano, intended to visit England at some time in the more or less near future.

Winwood informed his correspondent that the Grand Duke de Medici and his Duchess had arrived in Marseilles together with a large entourage including three Florentine princes, Virginio, Giovanni and Antonio.  They had accompanied Maria de Medici, the new Queen of France, to Marseilles.  They expected to meet her groom, the French King Henry IV, there, but were disappointed. Henry was determined not to break off his war against the Duke of Savoy until it was won.  His marriage and various affairs would have to wait.  No one knew how long.

Of the princes, Giovanni returned to Italy with the Grand Duke and Duchess.  Antonio remained to attend Maria and the wedding whenever it would occur.  Virginio Orsino, the Duke of Bracchiano,  was worried that he had insulted the Pope through his management of his Dukedom.

Don Virginio made shew to depart with the Galleys, but afterwards came disguised to Avignon. He hath a purpose to pass through France, and I understand into England and the Low Countries, in which Places he doth desire to pass his time, during the time of this Pope;…[1]

No time schedule is provided.  Orsino intended to pass through France and then to proceed to England and the Lowlands.

Whatever exactly became the young duke’s itinerary, Winwood is writing of him again on December 4^th.

I have been intreated by a Gentleman who doth accompany Don Virginio into England, (whereof in my Letter of the 20th of November I advertized) to address them by some Letter to some one, who wold vouchsafe to make them have the sight of the Court, and access to her Majestie. I have given them a Letter to your Lordship.[2]

Just before this, in the letter, he mentions that the French king did break away from his battle with Savoy — who had been defeated for all intents and purposes — in order to solemnized his marriage to Maria the previous Sunday.  Disguises aside, Virginio attended as originally planned. Now his travel plans have taken definite shape.  He intends to pass over into England in short order.

Leyland and Goding inform their readers that only Neville (among authorship candidates) could have known that the Virginio Orsino, Duke of Bracchiano, was on his way to the English court.  The upcoming holidays would include plays by way of entertainment.  Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night has, as one of its main characters, the Duke Orsino.  Following the lead of Leslie Hotson, in his The First Night of Twelfth Night (1954), they see a powerful piece of evidence that the play was written by Neville for the Twelfth Night festivities of 1600/1 to welcome the young duke.

What Hotson does also point out, but Leyland and Goding do not, is that Neville informs Winwood that he received the second letter on Christmas day.[3]  Mail delivery was much slower in those days.  It is unlikely that the letter of November 20 could have arrived before December 1^st.  The first letter gave no indication of when Orsino might finish the tour of France that he was just beginning and turn his eyes toward England.  It was merely a vague intention without time table.  The arrival of the second letter left Neville twelve days in which to write and rehearse a full-length play.

For Hotson, then, Neville began the play Twelfth Night no earlier than Christmas.  L&G suggest in big bold subheadings that Neville had four to six weeks based upon when the letters were sent from Lyon, France.

Neither Hotson nor our present authors take note that Neville tells Winwood, in the same letter, that he has been laid up with severe kidney stones several days since receiving the second letter.[4]  He also says that he has been expecting for three weeks to return to his ambassadorial duties the Queen’s indisposition leaving him in expectation each day of departing for the French court.[5] He has been expecting his travel orders any day.

---

[1] Memorials Affairs of State in the Reigns Of Q. Elizabeth and K. James I. Collected (Chiefly) from the Original Papers of the Right Honourable Sir Ralph Winwood, Kt.  Volume 1 (1725).  Winwood to Henry Neville, 20 November 1600.

[2] Winwood to Neville, 4 December 1600.

[3] Neville to Winwood, 28 December.

[4] Ibid. “which I sent presently to Mr. Secretary, my self being then in a shrewd Fit of the Stone, which hath likewise forced me to keep in ever since.”

[5] Ibid. “I shall not need to write you much now, because I intend my Dispatch presently after the holydays having indeed stayed for nothing else any time these three Weeks, but for the two Letters which the Queen intends to write with her own Hand to the King and the Queen, which she forbore to write because of a little Rhume she had, which is now past, thanks be to God.”

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Lady Southwell on the Final Days of Queen Elizabeth I.  March 24, 2019.  “her majesty told [Lady Scrope] (commanding her to conceal the same ) that she saw, one night, in her bed, her body exceeding lean, and fearful in a light of fire.”
• Hedingham Castle 1485-1562 with Virtual Tour Link.  January 29, 2019. “Mr. Sheffeld told me that afore the old Erle of Oxford tyme, that cam yn with King Henry the vii., the Castelle of Hengham was yn much ruine,…”
• Why Shakespeare Appears on Title Pages from 1598.  November 20, 2018.  ‘These he finds unconvincing.  The author’s name having appeared in a number of title pages after 1598, he continues, “it would seem foolish for publishers not to attach the Shakespeare brand to his previously unattributed plays—unless they had other reasons not to do so.”’ 
• The Battle Over Shakespeare's Early and Late Plays. September 24, 2018. “The answers to the post-Oxford dilemma, of course, are three.”
• Shakespeare on Gravity. August 26, 2018. “So carelessly does Shakespeare throw out such an extraordinary divination. His achievement in thus, as it were, rivalling Newton may seem in a certain sense even more extraordinary than Goethe's botanical and osteological discoveries;…”
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.