In This Series:
- How Ben Jonson Outed Edward de Vere as Shakespeare.
In my Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof (2013, 2017) I laid out the case that Ben Jonson had outed Edward de Vere, in the character of Ovid, in his play Poetaster (1603). After a time, the finding was challenged by the Oxfraudian Mark Johnson. Mr. Johnson offered John Marston as the model for Ovid where the character and the playwright shared characteristics and did not address the parts of the character that didn't fit.
Like many poets, Marston did indeed write at length in imitation of Ovid. Like Jonson's Ovid, Marston did indeed rebel against his father's wish that he study the law. But scholars have long considered it a certainty that he is mocked in the character of Crispinus in Poetaster. The match is compelling.
Among the items left unaddressed, then, the following:
273.... As it happens, out of all the thousands of lines from the Amores, and tens of thousands of lines from the works of Ovid, which might have been quoted, it is the portion of the poem which contains these lines:
Kneele hindes to trash: me let bright Phoebus swell,
With cups full flowing from the Muses well.1
The original Latin from which the lines are translated was the motto on the title page of Shake-speare’s Venus and Adonis.2
The humble Stratford man, we are to believe, chose the Latin original as the motto for Venus and Adonis. It may or may not be unfair to assume that Mr. Johnson would claim the lines issuing from the mouth of Ben Jonson's Ovid ̶ out of all the many tens of thousands of lines (or more) that poet wrote ̶ is mere coincidence.
Nor does Mr. Johnson mention that Act 4, Scene IX, of Poetaster is a satire on Shakespeare's (not Marston's) Romeo and Juliet.
Shee appeareth above, as at her chamber window.
Julia. Ovid ? my love ?
Ovid. Here, heavenly Julia.
So then, Jonson makes Ovid share the identity of Romeo and Julia of Juliet, his point being that Shakespeare/Oxford had written himself and Anne Vavasour into Romeo and Juliet in a convenient repackaging of their scandalous affair in 1580. In the other scenes of Poetaster, their stories diverge in telling ways that re-contextualize the events to Queen Elizabeth's royal court.3
280. In Act 4 of The Poetaster, however, they have fallen in love. In [scene IX] Ovid approaches as Julia stands upon a balcony. Ovid has recognizably become “Romeo” and Julia “Juliet”. An undeniable take-off on the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet ensues. References to Shake-speare’s play disappear in the remainder of Act 4. The two young lovers recognizably become Oxford and Anne Vavasor or rather Shake-speare and his Dark Lady: both short-tempered, impossibly high-spirited and swearing at each other. Augustus will catch them at their wantonness, though the details did not survive performance to appear in the published versions, and both have been banished from the Court.
Ovid. Banisht the court? Let me be banisht life;
Since the chiefe end of life is there concluded:4
Ovid goes on to mourn his loss in a speech that cleverly invokes the loss of access to a female rather than a male monarch. In the published versions, the Act ends with considerable confusion, unusually short scenes, and complete lack of flow, and Romeo and Juliet having decidedly become the original Ovid and Julia once again.5
The erratic quality of the published texts that have come down to us may be in response to a court action that was taken against Jonson for his portrayal of the character Ovid.6
Nor do Mr. Johnson's problems end here. Thomas Dekker wrote his play Satiromastix in reply to Poetaster. In his introduction to the play Dekker mused
I wonder what language Tucca would have spoke, if honest Capten Hannam had bin borne without a tongue? Ist not as lawfull then for mee to imitate Horace, as Horace Hannam?7
The character Tucca ̶ servant to Ovid ̶ , in Poetaster, Dekker informs us, was modeled on a well-known English soldier, Captain Hannam.
Hannam's name shows up in English history from time to time.8 One such time is in a May 21, 1573, letter from William Fawnt a receiver in the service of the Baron Burghley. Fawnt writes of
righte honorable [John W]ooton and my sealfe, rydynge peasably by the hyghe way, from gravesend to rochester had thre calyvers charged with bullettes dyscharged at us by thre of my L. of oxenfordes men dauye wylkyns Jhon hannam and deny the frenche man whoe lay preuylye in a diche...9
The men were waiting in ambush. Among Oxfordians this is (quite correctly) the robbery described in Shakespeares Henry IV, Pt. 1.10 Regardless, young Ovid's servant in Poetaster, Tucca, was a servant in life to the young Edward de Vere. Again, Marston fails to be a match and while Edward de Vere is a perfect one.
1 Jonson, Ben. Poetaster by Ben Jonson and Satiromastix by Thomas Dekker (1913). Penniman ed. 13, I. i. 83-4.
2 Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof (2013). 273. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1543136257/
3 see also Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Capulet, Capulet and Paroles (2020). 34-41. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08LLDM91P
4 Jonson, Poetaster 121, IV. Viii. 1-2.
5 Purdy. Vere. 280.
6 See my “How Shakespeare gave Ben Jonson the Infamous Purge.” Virtual Grub Street, 11/7/21. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2021/11/how-shakespeare-gave-ben-jonson.html
7 Dekker, Thomas. Poetaster by Ben Jonson and Satiromastix by Thomas Dekker (1913). Penniman ed. 268.
8 See my “Hangin’ with Shakespeare’s Military Peeps.” Capulet, Capulet & Parolles (2020). 73-83.
9 Nelson, Allan. Monstrous Adversary: The Life of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (2003). 95-6.
10 See my Edward de Vere's Retainer Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff (2017). 31-6. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077LVLXY2/
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
- The Gospel of Shaksper According to Gilbert. Chapter 2. October 9, 2022. Tell me, friend. Have you heard the Good News?
- Sir John Eliot on Ben Jonson and Pens-for-Hire in General. August 31, 2022. “It was understood (at least by Eliot), that the hat-trick was to tap the King’s resources to reward one’s poet.”
- July 1571: Edward de Vere becomes engaged to Anne Cecil. July 9, 2022. “Philip’s father, Sir Henry Sidney, and mere Sir William Cecil had been negotiating for some two years in preparation for Anne reaching the marriageable age of 16.”
- 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.”
- Shakespeare Authorship, March the 17th and Social Media. May 13, 2018. “This is how international financial transactions had been accomplished for centuries until the 16th century and beyond. The traveler had to carefully make arrangements ahead or be stranded and extremely vulnerable at some point in his trip.”
- 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.
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