Peele mentions at least one daughter but probably three in a
letter central to Prechter’s theory while no official records concerning his
family and life apart from literary activities have survived. De Vere being a
nobleman, we have many more official records about his life including that he
had three daughters alive at the time of the letter. By the non-sequitur that documented
daughters vs. un-documented daughters establishes a probability that the person
with documented daughters wrote a letter mentioning daughters he finds evidence
that De Vere wrote the letter under the name George Peele. The same class of
logical non-sequitur is applied to an illness mentioned in the letter.
Another Peele signature exists on a receipt for the
production of a play acted at Oxford before Albertus de Lasco, Palatine of
Siradia, in Poland, in 1583. The play was entitled Dido. The play is attributed
to William Gager. Some suggest that Peele probably also contributed. According
to Prechter “Shakespeare recalls this very production” in the player’s speech
of Aeneas’s tale to Dido in Hamlet having signed himself as Peele on the
receipt for payment for the 1583 play.
Mr. Prechter further detects a pattern of similar language
between the letter, the accompanying manuscript poem and the works of
Shakespeare/Vere. In 1 Henry VI, and throughout the canon, he finds Shakespeare
using the word accident to mean “incident” just like George Peele. But
Shakespeare is thought only to have written a very small portion of that play,
if any at all, and not the portion with the usage he highlights. Among the leading
candidates for the other portions of the play is Peele.
For all that centuries of scholars have asserted a detectable
difference in the styles and vocabulary of Shakespeare and Peele such that
their styles can be distinguished in anonymous plays and their portions of plays
of collective authorship, Prechter finds them identical. Their handwriting he
also finds identical based upon the letter and the manuscript poem by Peele.
Far more to the point,
however, is the demonstrable fact that all native English writers of
Tudor times used accident as we use the word incident.
Christopher Marlowe was neither Edward de Vere nor George Peele when he wrote
in the epigram “In Gerontem. XX.”
Accounts the time of every odd event,
Not from Christ's birth, nor from the
prince's reign,
But from some other famous accident,
Which in men's general notice doth
remain,—
The siege of Boulogne, and the plaguy
sweat,
The going to Saint Quintin's and
New-Haven,
The rising in the north, the frost so great,…[2]
And while Marlowe also demonstrably influenced the works of
both Shakespeare and Peele, his usage of the word accident played no
part in that influence. It was simply the most common usage.
I must now try my luck — not being aware of precisely how
many Tudor writers are presently advanced,
by various persons and their theories, as being a front for Shakespeare
and/or Vere — and give several more examples, among dozens harvested in less
than a half-hour, from other hopefully unchallenged writers.
The first we have from Gabriel Harvey’s personal letter book
covering from 1573 to 1580. It has been my impression that the earlier in the century
the more accident meant incident.
besides daylye freshe newes and a thousande both ordinary and
extraordinary occurrents and accidents in the worlde we ar[e] yet
(notwithstanding all and singular the premises) to take instructions[3]
Even then, however, the word had a common range of meaning. Elsewhere
in Harvey, and the other authors we will mention, various shadings of the meaning
are used. This pattern continues at least into the second half of the 17th
century.
In William Painter’s highly popular Palace of Pleasure
(1566, 1575), for example, we repeatedly find the most common
usage.
THE THIRTY-SIXTH NOUELL.
Andreuccio of Perugia being come to Naples to buy horses, was
in one night surprised, with three marueilous accidentes.[4]
But Painter also shares another common usage, from time to
time, explicitly connecting accidents to
fortune.
Fortune prepared a new accident[5]
This to say that accidents are the unexpected results of
Fortune. Not only negative results but positive, as well, as is evident
throughout Tudor literature including Shakespeare in The Tempest.
By accident most strange, bountiful
Fortune,
Now my dear lady, hath mine enemies
Brought to this shore;[6]
They need only be unexpected. In this way they are slightly
modified from the accidents in the previous examples. Fortune, it may be
recalled, is a constant theme with Shakespeare but William Painter was not an
allonym of Edward de Vere.
In Thomas Middleton’s The Spanish Gipsy, first played sometime
in the 1620s, we still have the full old fashioned accident = incident usage.
Fernando. A strange mischance: but what
I have, my lord
Francisco, this day noted, I may tell
you
An accident of merriment and wonder.[7]
Being a public play, the audience is expected to understand perfectly
what has been said because it is the way that all use the word in their daily
lives. George Peele sharing his usage for accident with Shakespeare,
then, is actually George Peele and Shakespeare both sharing the usage with all
of Tudor England.
As for the 1583 play Dido, attributed to William
Gager, in which Mr. Prechter finds the origin of the player’s speech in Hamlet
his theory is once again incorrect. John Stowe described a popular detail of the performance of Dido in
his continuation of Holinshed’s 1587 chronicle.
at the setting out of a verie statelie tragedie named Dido,
wherein the quéenes banket (with Eneas narration of the destruction of Troie)
was liuelie described in a marchpaine patterne[8]
Not wanting to add a downer to the festivities celebrating Lasco’s
visit, Aeneas’s tragic tale was not spoken but rather represented in a giant
marzipan served to the audience. The lack of any such speech in the play — written and acted in Latin — can be verified
at The Philological Museum site.[9]
An English translation is also provided. Gager's speech, it turns out, was not "caviar," but, rather, "marzipan to the general".
By way of disclaimer, my conjecture that connections between Vere’s 1584 Ulysses and Agamemnon and Hamlet show that the player’s speech likely came from the former is explained at some length in my Variorum Edition Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584) (The Early Plays of Edward de Vere, Book 1).[10] I, too, have wondered, however, whether the very first version of Hamlet might not have been among the many unnamed plays said to have been performed in order to celebrate Lasco’s visit, he having been a Polish nobleman.
[1] “George
Peele, His Only Surviving Letter, and its Connection to the Earl of Oxford and
Shakespeare.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5oOp2GXVJw
[2] Bullen,
A. H. The Works of Marlowe, III.224.
[3] Scott,
Edward John Long. Letter Book of Gabriel Harvey, A.D. 1573-1580. (1884),
80.
[4] Painter,
William. Painter’s Palace of Pleasure (1575, 1890), I.143.
[5]
Painter, III.136.
[6]
Shakespeare. The Tempest, I.ii.209
[7] Dyce,
Alexander. The Works of Thomas Middleton (1840). “The Spanish Gipsy”
IV.153.
[8]
Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587). 1355. The Holinshed Project. Oxford
University. http://english.nsms.ox.ac.uk/holinshed/texts.php?text1=1587_9134
[9]
Gager, William. Dido. https://philological.cal.bham.ac.uk/gager/plays/dido/index.html
[10]
Shakespeare. Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JD7KM1T
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
- The un-Bad Quarto of Shakespeare’s Henry V. May 14, 2022. “The speaker of the famous epilogue at the end of Shakespeare’s 2 Henry IV asks the listeners’ patience.”
- The Death of Sir Edward Vere, son of the 17th Earl of Oxford and Anne Vavasour. May 8, 2022. “Mr. Sedgwick wrote to me for a prayer for Sir Edward Vere.”
- How Shakespeare gave Ben Jonson the Infamous Purge. November 7, 2021. “Of course, De Vere could not openly accuse Jonson of having outed him as Shakespeare.”
- 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?”
- Check out the Shakespeare Authorship 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.
1 comment:
The reference to Gager's Dido is interesting. He wrote in Latin and Puttenham in Arte of English Poesy 1589 used his own translation by memory to illustrate figures in the Book . He uses precisely the same method on Shakespeare's Plays without crediting them, but thus proving that theyb were written prior to 1589. See my book Ch 9.
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