In my Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof (2013, 2017) I quoted from Joseph Hall’s Three Last Bookes of Byting Satires (1597).
Sith Pontian left his barren wife at
home,
And spent two years at Venice and at
Rome,
Returned, hears his blessing ask’d of
three,
Cries out, O Julian law! Adultery!
Tho Labeo reaches right (who can deny?)
The true strains of heroic poesy;
For he can tell how fury reft his
sense,
And Phoebus fill’d him with
intelligence.
He can implore the heathen deities
To guide his bold and busy enterprise;
Or filch whole pages at a clap for need
From honest Petrarch clad in English
weed:
While big but oh's! each stanza can
begin,
Whose trunk and tail sluttish and heartless been.[1]
Hall satirizes Edward de Vere under the name “Labeo” who he
later continues to describe as a latter day “Ponticus,” the ignoble nobleman subject
of Juvenal’s eighth satire.
Among my disappointments with this otherwise stunningly
correct description of Vere, is the line “From honest Petrarch clad in English
weed”.
Or filch whole pages at a clap for need
From honest Petrarch clad in English weed:
Surely it is clear that Hall wrote “Plutarch,” and the printer introduced the far less likely name Petrarch, so closely related that the typo was missed when the page was proofed.
It bears mentioning that, while influences from Petrarch can
be traced in Shake-speare’s works, the line above is almost certainly a
misprint that survived the middling proof-reading of the times. The lines almost certainly should read: “Or
filch whole pages at a clap for need / From honest Plutarch clad in English
weed”.[2]
To assert that virtual certainty, however, into the midst of
a decades long partisan spit-fight is worse than useless. To Stratfordian
scholars Labeo/Ponticus only coincidentally resembles Vere, no matter the prohibitive
odds of such a close match, and asserting a typo is no more than a lame attempt
to build up a false case.
Imagine my demented laughter, then, when, in my just
released Shakespeare in 1573: Apprenticeship and Scandal I explained the
source of the saying “using one nail to drive out another,” common among poets circa
1573 and Shakespeare, I wrote:
The original of this adage is in Petrarch but the young poets
would more likely have learned it from Erasmus’s Latin translation “Clavam
clavo pellere”.[3]
The original was, not Petrarch, but Plutarch. Fortune yet again horrifyingly
perverse, I had invented the Shakespeare Authorship Freudian slip.
I have corrected this erratum and uploaded the text
again. Unfortunately, Kindle is certain not to issue an updated text for such a
small change. I hope that this will highlight the item for those who have
purchased copies thus far. This will
have to suffice until there is sufficient reason for Kindle to issue an update.
As for Juvenal’s eighth satire, and what specifically it informs
us Hall felt about the Earl of Oxford, I present the following selections in William
Gifford’s excellent English translation.
“Your ancient house!" no more.—I
cannot see
The wondrous merits of a pedigree;
No, Ponticus;—nor of a proud display
Of smoaky ancestors, in wax or clay
*
What boots it, on the lineal tree to
trace,
Through many a branch, the founders of
our race,
Time-honoured chiefs; if, in their
sight, we give
A loose to vice, and like low villains
live?
*
Fond man! though all the heroes of your
line
Bedeck your halls, and round your
galleries shine,
In wax or stone; yet, take this truth
from me,
Virtue alone is true nobility.
Gifford was familiar with Hall’s imitation. He gives the
following additional notes:
Ver. 89. Say, of dumb animals, &c] Hall, who has
imitated some parts of this Satire very closely, though not in his best manner,
has been rather successful here:
Tell me, thou gentle Trojan, dost thou
prize
Thy brute beasts' worth by their dams'
qualities ?
Say'st thou this colt shall prove a
swift-paced steed,
Only because a Jennet did him breed ?—
The whiles thou see'st some of thy
stallion race,
Their eyes bor'd out, masking the
miller's maze,
Like to a Scythian slave sworne to the
payle,
Or dragging frothy barrels at their tayle?"
and:
Ver. 105. That Rome may, therefore, thee, not thine admire,
&c] Hall again,
And were thy fathers gentle? that's
their praise;
No thank to thee, by whom their name
decays;
By virtue got they it, and valorous
deed,
Do thou so, Pontice, and be honoured.
These are fine lines, but they are much surpassed in beauty
by the following, with which I shall, for the present, conclude my extracts
from this admirable writer:
Brag of thy father's faults, they are
thine own,
Brag of his lands, if they are not
foregone;
Brag of thine own good deeds; for they
are thine,
More than his life, or lands, or golden line."
Lib. IV.
Sat. iii.
Surely the line “Brag of his
lands, if they are not foregone” was meant to sting.
[1] Warton,
Thomas. Satires. By Joseph Hall (1824). Bk. vi. Sat. i. 159.
[2]
Purdy, Gilbert. Edward de Vere was Shakespeare. 241. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1543136257/
[3] Purdy,
Gilbert. Shakespeare in 1573. 51, n.35. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096GSQV14
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.
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