Even more interesting was a 1598 reference in a poem by a
Mr. Robert Tofte to having watched a play by Shakespeare. The name of the
playwright does not seem to have been of particular concern to Mr. Tofte.
Curiously, by the reasoning that underlies a certain
theory current among us, Mr. Nicholson’s work, as well as Mr. R.S.’s, can only properly
be assigned to William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon which means it can in turn only
properly be assigned to Thomas North, in the final chain of analysis. The
language matches, by the theory’s mathematics, compel us to accept this
conclusion.
While upon Shakspeare, we may say a few words respecting
rare books that incidentally more or less illustrate him; and, first of
Nicholson’s (not Nichols, as the name is accidentally misprinted in the Catalogue) ‘Acolastus,’ quarto, 1600.
Shakspeare’s ‘Hamlet’ was first printed (though most defectively) in 1603, and
first acted, there is little doubt, in 1602; and Mr. Bright has noted the
following lines in ‘Acolastus,’ as if they established that ‘Hamlet’ must have
been written before 1600, because it is plagiarized by Nicholson: we ask, where
is the plagiarism ? where is even the resemblance?
Art thou a god, a man, or else a ghost?
Com’st thou from heaven, where bliss
and solace dwell,
Or from the airy cold-engendering
coast,
Or from the darksome dungeon-hole of
hell?
Or from the secret chambers of the deep?
Or from the graves where breathless bodies sleep?
We suppose, but we can only suppose, that Mr. Bright had in
his memory, and that very imperfectly, the address of Hamlet to the spirit of
his father. Certainly Nicholson could have known nothing about it, and if there
were any plagiarism at all, it must have been by and not from Shakspeare. ‘True
it is, that Nicholson was a gross and shameless plagiary, but in this instance,
he could have had no such original before him; and we will show that when he did
copy, he had no remorse. Compare, for instance, the following couplet, with two
lines not far from the close of ‘Venus and Adonis’:—
Look, how a bright star shooteth in the
night,
So fast she fled and vanish’d from my sight.
What are
Shakspeare’s words ?—
Look, how a bright star shooteth from
the sky,
So glides he in the night from Venus’s eye.
Nothing would be easier than to multiply instances of Nicholson’s thefts from various authors, but another proof will be sufficient. In one place he exclaims—
If on the earth there may be found a
hell,
Within my soul her several torments dwell.
This is stolen without compunction, and almost verbatim,
from Nash’s ‘Pierce Penniless,’ 1592, where the lines stand :—
Divines and dying men may talk of hell,
But in my heart her several torments dwell.
But Nicholson was not the only author whose work is found in
this Catalogue, who plagiarized from Shakspeare’s ‘Venus and Adonis,’ although Mr.
Bright does not seem to have been aware of the fact: he discovered a
resemblance where none existed, but failed to note it where it really occurred.
A person using the initials R. S. (possibly the compiler also of a collection
of poems, called ‘The Phoenix Nest,’ of which we shall have occasion to speak
hereafter) printed a poem in 1598, under the title of ‘Phillis and Flora,’
where these lines, descriptive of a horse, are met with :—
His mane thin hair'd, his neck high
crested,
Smail ear, short head, and burly
breasted ;
Straight legg’d, large thigh’d, and
hollow hooved,
All Nature’s skill in him was proved.
Compare with them the subsequent well-remembered passage,
relating to a horse, in ‘Venus and Adonis’:—
Round hoof'd, short jointed, the
fetlocks shag and long,
Broad breast, full eye, small head, and
nostril wide,
High crest, short ears, straight legs,
and passing strong,
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide.
If, therefore, Mr. Bright had been bent upon finding plagiarisms
from Shakspeare among his books, he need not have gone far, nor have dwelt upon
such a fanciful proof, as he supposed he had discovered in Nicholson’s ‘Acolastus,’
that ‘Hamlet’ was written before 1600. As regards the illustration of
Shakspeare, there is in the collection a small volume which contains a
remarkable mention, by name, of a particular play, which was printed in the
same year as the book: the name of the play is ‘Love's Labour's Lost,’ and the
title of the volume recording in verse its performance is, ‘ Alba, or the
Month’s Mind of a Melancholy Lover,’ 12mo., 1598. The passage to which we refer
is long, but it begins as follows:—
‘Love’s Labour Lost,’ I once did see, a
play
Ycleped so—so called to my pain.
And then the author (Robert Tofte) proceeds to describe it,
and even states the manner in which the actors performed :—
Each actor play’d in cunning wise his
part,
But chiefly those entrapp'd in Cupid’s snare, &c.
Here was a point, connected with the history of one of
Shakspeare’s very earliest dramatic productions, upon which Mr. Bright might
have dwelt; and, although it has been adverted to before, it might have been
noticed by the compiler of the Catalogue as giving a peculiar value to the work
in which it is found.
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
- More on Thomas North as Shakespeare and author of Arden of Feversham. June 14, 2021. “This is also the reason why the title pages included the address of the shop that was selling the book.”
- 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?”
- Gutenberg, proto-Hack Writers and Shakespeare. May 26, 2020. “A less well known effect of the Reformation was that many young Catholic men who had taken religious orders in order to receive an education began to lead lives at large from monastic discipline. Like Erasmus and Rabelais they took up the pen.”
- 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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