Edward de Vere, Shakespeare and Tycho Brahe.

In this series:

• Becoming Tycho Brahe.
• Edward de Vere, Shakespeare and Tycho Brahe.
• How Tycho Brahe Got an Island.
• Uraniborg: Tycho Brahe’s Cosmic Castle.
• King James VI’s visit with Tycho Brahe at Hveen.
• Tycho Brahe’s Frenemy, Johannes Kepler. (Pending)

Spending hours upon hours in the 16^th century is  not always fascinating.  But the more time one spends the more one begins to read the texts like those who lived in the period. The more one lives in the time.

So then, as I was working on a short essay about Tycho Brahe I was pleased to gather information on the travel of the restless young minor nobleman.  The names were familiar.  Brahe’s nondescript alma mater Rostock where he lost part of the bridge of his nose in a duel.  Backwater Swabia where the science of astronomy was nonetheless being advanced by an astronomer of limited but helpful talents. The famous Universities at Wittenberg and Basle.  Prague, one of the great intellectual centers of the time.

A lack of dependable astronomical charts was beginning to be a problem.  Foremost because they were needed in order to precisely cast the astrological charts that made Tycho and other practitioners most of their living.  But it was also beginning to dawn on those practitioners that Copernicus had changed our relationship to the heavens.  They were growing ever more mathematical now.  Patrons wanted as much to be known to have underwritten verifiable theories regarding the nature of the planets and stars.  They wanted to keep time more precisely, to calculate the trajectory of projectiles,… and, yes, to read God’s messages in the sky.

When Brahe was encouraged by his friends and associates to publish a book on the November 1572 supernova for which he is now famous, his answer belonged to his times.  It was beneath the dignity of a nobleman to publish books.[1]  He was also well aware that specialized texts did not always fare well in the printer's galleys.

His friends succeeded, however.  He had made the most accurate instruments of the time and could do parallax measurements that made clear that the supernova resided beyond the Solar System in the region of the fixed stars.  The fact that so much had been issued throughout Europe about the star that was utterly inaccurate encouraged him to set matters right.  He even allowed his name to appear on the title page.  A tiny print run was issued in late 1573.

After seeing the book  through the press, in Copenhagen,[2] he did what he enjoyed doing.  He traveled visiting universities and astronomers.  This time giving them copies of his book.  He was doing an early form of a book tour.  A particularly favorite friend, Landgrave Wilhelm IV, suffered the loss of a beloved baby daughter during his stay, in early 1575, and, rather than intrude upon his grief, he departed for Frankfurt-on-Main.

Easter was approaching.  To go to Frankfort after Easter was to go to the greatest bustling book fair in all of Europe — probably all the world.  Not only had Brahe coyly agreed to publish his book but he had bought into the publishing idea entirely.  He was introducing himself to distributors.

While the printing press had rapidly resulted in thousands of titles, it was struggling with means to get them before interested customers.[3]  In-house shops could not begin to sell enough to pay the bills.  Contracting with other local shops could do little better.  Networks of booksellers were springing up but the demands on the business were new, poorly understood.  Few practical models existed to distribute books to a national and international audience.

But Frankfort was much more than this.  The market had been a great event for centuries before printed books.  Letters to and from English merchants and intellectuals, in Central Europe, were addressed to them care of agents at the semi-annual Frankfort fair.  Bills of exchange were cashed refilling travelers pockets.  Foreign factors for merchants, governments, etc., were paid their stipends by trusted vendors that provided that financial service from out of their strong boxes.

An upper-class traveler would have instantly understood the words of Shylock, as he mourned the betrayal by his daughter with a gentile, in The Merchant of Venice,

Why there, there, there, there, a diamond gone cost me two thousand ducats in Franckford, the curse never fell upon our Nation till now, I never felt it till now, two thousand ducats in that, and other precious, jewels…

Jewish merchants, for all they were treated poorly, and charged additional fees and a nightly tax called the “Nachtgeld,” made out better in Frankfort than any other fair.  Many traveled the passes of the Alps every year.

That is why Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl ofOxford, left Paris in time for the same fair.[4]  He needed to cash a traveler’s check or two.  He was likely also to be seen strolling through the horse market with a thought toward purchasing one for his trip over the Alps.  He does seem to have stopped first a Padua, after the crossing.  Like Frankfort, the name Padua had connotations known among European travelers.  The horses purchased at the Frankfort fair, for travel to Italy, were generally sold (at a price very favorable to the local dealers) in Padua.  The loss was not great for the wealthy and care of a horse during a stay could be quite expensive and inconvenient.

Brahe, too, traveled over the Alps to Venice.  We have even less detail about his trip than Oxford’s.  He seems to have departed immediately after the fair and to have stayed in Venice for a matter of days before he departed for Ratisbon, the coronation of King Rudolph II and getting to know more of the crème-de-la-crème of European society and science.

Oxford remained in Strasburg until May.  If there was a second chance for a meeting, it was while they were headed in opposite directions.  There is no reason to believe that they did ever meet one another.  But they did share the close common experience, in early 1575, of the young nobleman in Europe.  They may  even have browsed some bookshelves in close proximity.

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[1] Dreyer, A. L. E. Tycho Brahe: A Picture of Scientific Life and Work in the Sixteenth Century (1890), 43.  Brahe, Tycho.  Astronomiae instauratae progymnasmata (1610), 579.

[2] Known, in Latin, as “Hafnia”.

[3] Estienne, Henri. The Frankfort Book Fair. The Francofordiense Emporium of Henri Estienne. (1574, 1911), James Westfall Thompson, tr. 17ff.

[4] see my “Shakespeare Authorship, March the 17th and Social Media.” https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-notes-to-bayles-dictionary-entry-on.html

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• The Fascinating Itinerary of the Gelosi Troupe, 1576.  June 10, 2019.  “The Spanish soldiers had not been paid and unpaid soldiers tend to rob and loot.  The citizens were prepared to give them a fight.  Violent flare ups were occurring everywhere.”
• A Thousand Years of English Terms.  June 2, 2019.  ‘One person did not say to another, “Meet you at three o’clock”.    There was no clock to be o’.  But the church bell rang the hour of Nones and you arranged to meet “upon the Nones bell”.’
• A Most Curious Account of the Funeral of Queen Elizabeth I: April 28, 1603.  April 28, 2019.  “Once it was clear that James I would face no serious challenges, Cecil and the others could begin to give attention to the matter of the Queen’s funeral.”
• The Battle Over Shakespeare's Early and Late Plays. September 24, 2018. “The answers to the post-Oxford dilemma, of course, are three.”
• Stratford Shakespeare’s Undersized Grave.  July 22, 2018.  “Mr. Coll’s considers this evidence to support an old rumor that Shakspere’s head had been stolen in 1794.  But I submit that he is merely making his observation based upon a coincidence.”
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.