Two Shakespeare Contributions toward An Hundredth Sundrie Flowers (1573)

My first book on the Shakespeare Authorship Question, Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof[1],  was (and remains) intended as a brief biography introducing a Collected Poems of Edward de Vere. The biography grew somewhat out of proportion to its task and is able also to serve as a highly compressed standalone work.

Within the text I introduce many of the works of poetry I intend(ed) to include in the second volume. The detail analyses I intend(ed) to present as the bulk of the critical text. For the purposes of the biography, a goodly number of individual lyrics served as previews, the following, from An Hundredth Sundrie Flowers (1573)[2] included.

73.  If the following Shakespearean sonnet had appeared in the 1609 Sonnets of Shake-speare it is difficult to believe that a reader would see it as the least out of place:

You must not wonder though you thinke it straunge,

To see me holde my lowring head so lowe:

And that myne eyes take no delight to raunge,

About the gleames which on your face doe growe.

The mouse which once hath broken out of trappe,

Is sildome tysed with the trustlesse bayte,

But lyes aloofe for feare of more misshape,

And feedeth styll in doubte of deepe deceipte.

The scorched flye which once hath scapt the flame,

Wyll hardlye come to playe againe with fyre.

Whereby I learne that greevous is the game,

Which followes fansie dazled by desire.

So that I wynke or else holde downe my head,

Because your blazing eyes my bale have bred.[3]

 

The entirely end-stopped lines identify the style of the young Shake-speare, it’s true, but they likewise identify the style of almost all young poets.  This being the introductory biography to The Collected Poems of Edward De Vere, this single example will have to suffice.

Further commentary would have to await  the second volume.

Little did I know the journey that preparing the second volume would take me. I realized, foremost, that I would have to explain why I assigned the poems of Si Fortunatus Infoelix to the Edward de Vere in spite of Robert Prechter’s extensive objections[4]. My reply to the gentlemen’s essay on the subject occupies the bulk of my recently released Authorship In-Progress Journal, Shakespeare in 1573: Apprenticeship and Scandal.[5]

It would also be necessary to return to various Tudor publications which included, in one obscure corner or another, a poem that promised to be by De Vere. My work in that direction resulted in the book / monograph Discovered: A New Shakespeare Sonnet (or three,actually)[6] in which I describe my findings regarding the sonnets and several other poems I was able to assign to De Vere directly.

As for Shakespeare in 1573, it has been brought to my attention that none of the poems I selected from An Hundredth Sundrie Flowers were by Si Fortunatus Infoelix. Being an “In-Progress” journal, the intention had been to show that Gascoigne’s anthology was just that: a volume containing the work of a number of authors. The evaluation of individual poems is another discrete step.

Nevertheless, the above quote from Edward de Vere was Shakespeare and the following sonnet are now provided for those readers who may have felt the lack.

WHen stedfast friendship (bound by holy othe)

Did parte perforce my presence from thy sight,

In dreames I might behold how thou wert loth

With troubled thoughts to parte from thy delight.

When Popler walles enclos'd thy pensive mind,

My painted shadow did thy woes revive:

Thine evening walks by Thames in open wind,

Did long to see my sayling boate arive.

But when the dismold day did seeke to part

From London walles thy longing mind for me,

The sugred kisses (sent to thy deare hart)

With secret smart in broken sleepes I see.

Wherfore in teares I drenche a thousand fold,

Till these moist eyes thy beauty may behold.

Si fortunatus infoelix.

This sonnet was left out of the 1575 second edition as part of the major revision Gascoigne felt necessary to make to the original volume. In the 1573 first edition it was included among the miscellaneous poems, not as part of the poetry and prose narrative “A discourse of the adventures passed by Master F.I.” which had caused the scandal (such as it was).

Among the many fascinating aspects of the latter sonnet is the poet’s reference to his “painted shadow”. He refers in 1573 to a painted image of himself in the possession of his beloved friend. Also, the remnants of a huge poplar forest remained in the environs of the royal palace at Greenwich, which also featured a jetty upon the Thames beside which Queen Elizabeth often walked when in residence. Of course, London is mentioned and the palace of Whitehall is also on the Thames. While Master F.I. included a number of risqué hints in the account of his adventures, these references would seem simply to rehearse small details from a deeply felt friendship.

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[1] Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof (2013, 2015). https://www.amazon.com/dp/1543136257/

[2] Gascoigne, George. An Hundredth Sundry Flowres bound up in one small Posie (1573).

[3] In the first edition this poem went under the moniker Spreta tamen vivunt.  In the second edition it was changed to Si fortunatus infoelix.

[4] Prechter, Robert R. “Hundreth Sundrie Flowres Revisited: Was Oxford Really Involved?” Brief Chronicles, Vol. 10 (2010). 44-77.

[5] Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Shakespeare in 1573: Apprenticeship and Scandal (2021). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096GSQV14

[6] Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Discovered: A New Shakespeare Sonnet (or three, actually)(2015). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00X4JUJAU/ 

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.