A 1572 Oxford Letter and the Player’s Speech in Hamlet.

The humblest tasks of scholarship often bear unexpected fruit.  I have been transcribing the personal letters of Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford, for a number of weeks now. It is by no means the first time I have read the letters. For just one example, my “Did Shakespeare Die of a Stroke”[1] depended upon them at some length. I quote them a number of times in my Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof (2013, 2017)[2].

While doing so, I was reminded of a passage in Oxford’s September 1572 letter to the Baron Burghley, his father-in-law.

I would to god your lordship would let me understand some of your news, which here doth ring doubtfully in the ears of every man of the murder of the admiral of France and a number of noblemen and worthy gentlemen, and such as greatly have in their lifetimes honored the Queen’s Majesty our mistress, on whose tragedies we have a number of French Aeneases in this city that tell of their own overthrows with tears falling from their eyes, a piteous thing to hear but a cruel and far more grievous thing we must deem it then to see.[3]

I say “reminded” because a search of my numberless files containing detail great and miniscule from every aspect of Shakespeare Authorship revealed that I had left a note to myself on the matter some months before.

What is particularly interesting in this passage is that the “Aeneases in this city that tell of their own overthrows with tears falling from their eyes” refers to the second book of Virgil’s Aeneid. In that book, Aeneas describes to Dido the fall of Troy. Oxford compares the tales of the Frenchmen who have escaped to London from the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of the protestants in France, some weeks before, to that told by Aeneas.

Aeneas’ tale, the reader may recall, is precisely the speech Hamlet calls upon the player to recite in The Tragicall Historie that bears his name. It seems both Oxford and Shakespeare shared an attachment to the speech finding it deeply moving.

It should be added, Oxford’s uncle, the Earl of Surrey, was the first to translate the second book of Virgil’s Aeneid into English. It was also the first long poem to be written in the iambic pentameter that was soon so popular that the meter was adopted by Shakespeare (and others) as the dominant meter of Elizabethan plays.

The player’s speech has been a source of consternation among Shakespeare scholars for above 200 years.  Why was Aeneas’ tale chosen as the subject?  Why was it in an earlier, more florid style? Why was there a player’s speech in  the play at all?  It serves, after all, no essential function. Shakespeare was not in the habit of doing such things. The majority view seems to have been that Shakespeare was satirizing the style of the theater prior to his time.

As is so often the case, Frederick Fleay proves to have taken the correct side of the debate. He cited Joseph Ritson’s position:

Ritson has gone so far as to say that in his opinion these lines were extracted from some play which Shakspere at an early period had either produced or projected on the story of Dido and AEneas. This is very near the true view, I think.[4]

Ritson just called ‘em as he saw ‘em, as his rule, and then let matters drop and went on his way. Fleay fleshed out the argument admirably well, and, then, failed to close his argument for the one important reason he failed to close so many. He could not imagine that the plays of Shakespeare were written by anyone other than Shakspere of Stratford-Upon-Avon.

 

As usual, though, Fleay could not close the deal.  He could not credit a Hamlet written before 1592 when the Stratford man was only 26 years old.  Therefore he could not credit the First (“Bad”) Quarto of Hamlet as a much earlier version of the play.  It could only be a badly botched pirate copy.

The fact that the "bad quarto" is a considerably earlier version of Hamlet and included the player’s speech nonetheless could not point out to him that the earlier play could be a play from the 1580s by Shakespeare himself. 

If we credit Hamlet’s own introduction,

I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted; or, if it was, not above once; for the play, I remember, pleased not the million; 'twas caviare to the general;[5]

When the play in question was revised to be replayed the various parties involved complained (like Essex’s players about playing Richard II) that the lines were ridiculously outdated and he or a play dresser replaced them.

So attached was Shakespeare to the lines that he inserted them and the player to speak them in one early (of the many) revision(s) of The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet. As I have already pointed out in my Variorum Edition of Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584)[6] there are surprising connections between it and Hamlet.  In particular, between it and the player’s speech in Hamlet.  That, I submit, is because the player’s speech was originally part of the Epilogue to Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584).

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[1] Did Shakespeare Die of a Stroke”. Virtual Grub Street, August 3, 2014. http://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2014/08/did-shake-speare-die-of-stroke.html

[2] Edward De Vere was Shake-speare: at long last, the proof (2013, 2017). https://www.amazon.com/dp/1543136257/

[3] Letters: Earl of Oxford to Baron Burghley, September 1572. [Spelling modernized.].  Virtual Grub Street, June 14, 2020. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2020/06/letters-earl-of-oxford-to-baron_14.html

[4] ‘On the Extract from an Old Play in "Hamlet"’ MacMillan’s Magazine, Vol. XXXI. November 1874, to April 1875 (1875). 135-38@135.

[5] New Variorum Edition of… Hamlet (No date. c. 1918). II.ii.414-16.

[6] Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584) (The Early Plays of Edward de Vere). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JD7KM1T

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Shakespeare and Painter’s Palace of Pleasure. May 19, 2020. “…there is no richer source for clues to who was Shakespeare.”
• What About Edward de Vere’s Twelfth Night of 1600/01? January 28, 2020. “Leslie Hotson, who brought the Orsino-Orsino coincidence to the attention of the Nevillians seems to have made one particular mistake that is all to our point.”
• Malvolio’s Crow's Feet and “the new Mappe”. October 14, 2019. “Percy Allen’s candidate is not mentioned by any of these parties. The traditionalists, of course, could not consider it possible because it would suggest far too early a date for the play.”
• The Battle Over Shakespeare's Early and Late Plays. September 24, 2018. “The answers to the post-Oxford dilemma, of course, are three.”
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
• Check out the English Renaissance Letter Index for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.