On Claim that Thomas North wrote Arden of Faversham in 1550s.

In this Series:

• Shakespeare and Thomas North
• The Thomas North Theory Springs Leaks Under Scrutiny.
• More on Thomas North as Shakespeare and author of Arden of Feversham.
• On Claim that Thomas North wrote Arden of Faversham in 1550s.

In defense of his theory that Thomas North wrote The lamentable and true tragedy of M. Arden of Feversham, in Kent, published in 1592, Dennis McCarthy left a comment here, and at the Edward de Vere was Shakespeare Facebook Group[1], which further explained his position. The claims/clarifications in the comment did not, I submit, serve him or his theory well. 

First, Mr. McCarthy states that “North actually wrote the original in the 1550s”. He does  not seem to realize in the least that history records the play Gorboduc, first produced in 1561, at Gray’s Inn, as the first to be written in blank verse. Gascoigne’s Jocasta, produced in 1566, seems to have been the second. Feversham, as we have it, being written in blank verse, McCarthy would appear to be claiming that Feversham was, in actual fact, the first English language play to be written in the form.

Moreover, records show that the murder of Thomas Arden (whose Christian name did not appear in either Holinshed’s Chronicle on the affair or in the play for all it is featured in Mr. McCarthy’s comment) occurred in February of 1550 [O.S.]. If the claim is that North wrote the play before 1557, he then wrote a play in blank verse before Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey’s, blank verse translation, Certain bokes of Virgiles Aeneis turned into English meter by the right honorable lorde, Henry Earle of Surrey, was first published by Tottel in 1557[2]. This was the first widely circulated blank verse work and famous in its time. It is considered the publication that powerfully influenced English poets and playwrights such that they began to write long poems and plays in blank verse.

By no means do Mr. McCarthy’s problems end there. The story line of Arden of Feversham is almost exactly the same as that provided by Holinshed’s Chronicles. Only tiny details of the story differ. For centuries it has been considered a given that plot of the play came from the 1587 Chronicles because it would have been the edition fresh in the public’s mind. By that calculation the play would likely have been presented on the stage in 1588 or shortly thereafter.

The 1587 edition, however, merely reprinted the text of the 1577 first edition with some new spellings and typos. McCarthy’s theory, then, requires that Raphael Holinshed got his chronicle from the 1550s version of Arden rather than vice-versa. Not only that but a text of the 1550s play survived into the 1570s to become Holinshed’s source, was still never cited in any extant text from the decades and was subsequently lost.

So then, for Mr. McCarthy’s theory to prove out, as is regards the play Arden of Feversham:

• Thomas North had to write the first play in blank verse in the English language as opposed to the historical claim for Gorboduc (1561);

• Or North had to write the first version of Arden of Feversham in one of the common forms for plays in the 1550s: i.e. irregular rhymed couplets; Poulter’s Measure couplets; fourteener couplets; or combination thereof;

• And Raphael Holinshed had to learn the details of the Arden murder from North’s play and to have taken them whole cloth as the text of his 1577 Arden chronicle;
• And North had to rewrite the play in iambic pentameter, without changing a detail as it appeared in Holinshed, after he picked up a copy of his own Diall of Princes, on March 29, 1591, from which McCarthy claims he marked out passages to be used for a revised edition of the play;
• Or North had to rewrite the play from his 1550 original having entirely different form and different plot details into an iambic pentameter play newly plotted based upon the distinct details of the Holinshed Arden chronicle of 1577/87. In other words, he had to have written an entirely new and different play after March 29, 1591.
• Within a year an entry in the Stationers’ Registers appears for the play to the printer Edward White. Thus the play  was written, sold to a company of players, played upon the stage, failed to gain sufficient popularity to manage an extended run. The company then sold the play to Shaksper of Stratford. It was rewritten by him, as well, sold to another company of players and brought out for another presumably brief failed stage run after which the new company immediately sold it to White for publication. All of this had to happen within a year (plus a few days).
• If North did not sell the play to a company for performance he had to have rewritten it in iambic pentameter, not for playing but with the design of selling it directly to Shaksper to be again rewritten and sold to a players company for a stage run.

• Only a small portion of Arden being understood as being by Shakespeare we must have North’s unique, individual iambic pentameter style before us in the rest of the text;
• Or Shaksper also managed to bring in a writing partner, within the year, even after North had just rewritten the play;
• Or, the portion of play we identify as being by Shakespeare is the portion written by North and left unrevised. It is the remainder that was rewritten by Shaksper. This is a pattern that would necessarily hold for all Shakespeare plays Mr. McCarthy claims were first written by North and then rewritten by the Stratford man: Richard II, Hamlet, MacBeth, Henry V, Henry IV, etc. Each should show the style of Shakespeare (North) and the distinctive style of the identical co-writer (a.k.a. Shaksper).

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[1] https://www.facebook.com/groups/152168435592240/posts/1020859795389762/?comment_id=1020881188720956

[2] The fourth boke of Virgill, intreating of the loue betweene Aeneas and Dido, translated into English, and drawne into a straũge metre by Henrye late Earle of Surrey, worthy to be embraced was “Jmprinted at London: by John Day, for William Awen, dwellyng in Pater noster rowe, at the sygne of the Cocke.” in 1554. Tottel's 1557 edition is generally credited, however, with making Surrey's blank verse popular and starting the trend toward the form.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• The Thomas North Theory Springs Leaks Under Scrutiny. June 6, 2021. ‘In McCarthy’s video “How We Know Sir Thomas North Wrote Richard II,” at 1:10, we are informed that “there is zero doubt that this was the passage used.”’
• A 1572 Oxford Letter and the Player’s Speech in Hamlet. August 11, 2020. “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?”
• King’s Place: home of the Earl and Countess of Oxford, 1596-1604. November 10, 2020. “In 1596, Elizabeth Trentham received King’s Place, in Hackney, from the estate of one Sir Rowland Hayward. She and her husband, Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, moved in shortly afterward.”
• Shakespeare’s Funeral Meats. May 13, 2020. “Famous as this has been since its discovery, it has been willfully misread more often than not.  No mainstream scholar had any use for a reference to Hamlet years before it was supposed to have been written.”
• 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 Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.