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Tuesday, August 15, 2023

To D.W.R. In re the 'Frauds and Beating the Bush with Young Shakespeare.

The comment threads resolve themselves into the normal patterns in the Edward de Vere was Shakespeare Facebook Group. Little qualifies as scholarly debate. It's not difficult to understand that social media does not encourage it. Mostly there is the attempt to keep one's pet theory alive in the face of aggressive partisan attack.

“This is an Oxfordian site,” writes D.W.R.

which hardly draws anyone except Oxfordians with a keen interest in the subject, which means you are accomplishing nothing here but annoying the natives. I am not an Oxfordian and participate because Gilbert surfaces lots of obscure but relevant information. You don't bring anything useful, just repeating the same worn assertions about non existent evidence and rejecting even well established facts. 

I was particularly pleased to see D. become a member of the group. He had contributed precise scholarly comments of the kind I rarely see, relating to Tudor history and Shakespeare Authorship, over at Tudor Topics. I am pleased to say that he has continued to do the same here.

So then, I understand his frustration. I hope he will understand that the “annoying the natives” has been much more insulting and discourteous in the past. The Oxfrauds — for all they continue to be dismissive and otherwise annoying — have remained for two main reasons:

  1. They having reined in their havoc to discourtesy, and,

  2. They give the Oxfordians here — myself included — a workout against the mostly (but not entirely) unfair challenges we face.

Sometimes the challenges can be quite helpful, I have found. Their middle school tactic of trying to shame an interrogator for slips of the pen/keyboard persists, however. It should be beneath their dignity but then they appear to have none.

As an example of how they can come in quite handy from time to time — when one simply ignores the vast amount of their inside-Oxfraud drivel — M.J. Is endlessly fond of the following observation:

In 1573, Oxford was still writing doggerel such as the following:

For he that beats the bush the bird not gets, But who sits still, and holdeth fast the nets.

The quote is from “The Earl of Oxford to the Reader” in the front matter of Cardanus Comfort (1573), a translation by his one time tutor Thomas Bedingfield.

THe labouring man, that tilles the fertile soyle,

And reapes the haruest fruite, hath not in deede

The gaine but payne, and if for all hys toyle

He gets the strawe, the Lord wyll haue the seede.

The Manchet fyne, falles not vnto his share

On coursest cheat, his hungrye stomacke feedes

The Landlord doth, possesse the fynest fare

He pulles the flowers, the other pluckes but weedes.

The Mason poore that buildes the Lordlye halles

Dwelles not in them, they are for hye degree

His Cotage is, compact in paper walles

And not with bricke, or stone as others bee.

The idle Drone, that labours not at all

Suckes vp the sweete, of honnye from the Bee

Who worketh most, to their share least doth fall,

Wyth due desert, reward will neuer bee.

The swiftest Hare, vnto the Mastiue slowe

Oft times doth fall, to him as for a praye:

The Greyhounde thereby, doth misse his game we know

For which he made, such speedy hast awaye.

So hee that takes, the payne to penne the booke

Reapes not the giftes, of goodlye golden Muse

But those gayne that, who on the worke shal looke

And from the soure, the sweete by skill doth chuse.

For hee that beates the bushe the byrde not gets.

But who sittes still, and holdeth fast the nets.1

The point to the genuine scholar (pro or am), of course, is that something needs investigation here. But M.J. is an unremitting partisan and it destroys his competence as a scholar. It does, however, free him from any more meaningful research and nuance than is necessary to mimic a few keywords and concepts in comment threads.

To beat the bush while others catch the bird had been a popular proverb long before young Vere's time. Some six years later Edmund Spenser will put it in his Shepheard's Calendar in the mouth of the character Cuddie.

CUDDIE. To feed youth’s fancy, and the flocking fry,
Delighten much: what I the bet for-thy?
They han the pleasure, I a slender prize.
I beat the bush, the birds to them do fly:
What good thereof to Cuddie can arise?2

One Kurt Kreiler asserts that Cuddie is Oxford on the basis of the image. The which goes to prove that those Oxfordians who declare findings by guess can also be clueless. Or maybe not on this occasion. I've yet to find the time to investigate this one of his claims.

Vere and Spenser were traveling in the same company in the mid-1570s as I have pointed out in some length in my Shakespeare in 1573. And Spenser is demonstrably the Rival Poet of the sonnets as I have pointed out in my Was ShakespeareGay? A very special prize in this box of Cracker Jacks: That makes Sir Walter Raleigh far-and-away the leading candidate for “That affable familiar ghost / Which nightly gulls him with intelligence.”3

Even in Rabelais' world it was an old and common proverb. We find it in Gargantua & Pantagruel, I.ii., (with which Shakespeare was familiar):

"Il battoit les buissons san prendre les oisillons..."4

Urquhart has it, in his wonderful translation:

He would beat the bushes without catching the birds5

Like Vere, Rabelais includes the old proverb among a several page list of common proverbs. Writing in prose, as opposed to verse, he did not stand vulnerable to the charge of doggerel. He was, however, intentionally sophomoric in this as in so much. It was a particularly popular trope. I've yet to find the Latin original but suspect it is referenced somewhere in Erasmus's Adagiorum.

Another example can be found in Richard Edward's Paradise of Dainty Devises, published in 1576 from a manuscript anthology Edwards assembled from the poems of his students at Elizabeth's royal court, sometime before his death, on October 31, 1566, and circulated privately.


His mynde not quietly setled he writeth this.

as the waxe doeth melt, or dewe consume awaie,

Before y Sonne, so I behold through careful thoughts decaie:

For my best lucke leads me, to suche sinister state,

That I doe wast with others loue, that hath my self in hate.

And he that beats the bushe, the wished birde not getts,

But suche I see as sitteth still, and holds the foulyng netts.


The Drone more honie sucks, that laboureth not at all,

Then doeth the Bee, to whose most pain, least pleasure doth befall:

The Gardner sowes the seeds, whereof the flowers doe growe,

And others yet doe gather them, that tooke lesse paine I knowe.

So I the pleasaunt grape haue pulled from the Vine,

And yet I languish in greate thirst, while others drinke the wine.


Thus like a wofull wight, I woue my webb of woe,

The more I would wede out my cares, the more thei seme to grow

The whiche betokeneth hope, forsaken is of me,

That with the carefull culuer climes, the worne & withered tree.

To entertaine my thoughts, and there my happe to mone,

That neuer am lesse idle loe, then when I am alone.6


The poet signed himself, “E.O.,” Edward, Earl of Oxford. The young Edward de Vere actually wrote the lines M.J. reviles for being immature when he was no older than 16 years of age. Probably younger. But then unremitting partisans don't have to do homework.

D.W.R. I am pleased to have you in the group. I hope you will choose to reply to 'Frauds only when it suits your purposes. They can help us be better scholars by showing us where our knowledge or expression could use improvement. And better partisans because that is what the circumstances require of us so persistently that we cannot perfectly aviod it (sadly also a lesson they teach us). Just ignore the rest.

Oh, and if they engage in ad hominem attack, please do report it to me.




1Cardano, Girlamo. Cardanus comforte translated into Englishe. And published by commaundement of the right honourable the Earle of Oxenford (1573). Bedingfeld tr. Early English Books Online.

2Kreiler, Kurt. Anonymous Shakespeare. 3.4.1. Edmund Spenser, The Shepheardes Calender, 1579. 3.4.1. The Shepheardes Calender (anonymous-shakespeare.com)

3Sonnet 86.

4Rabelais, Francois. Gargantua et Pantagruel (no date, 1913). Clouzot ed. 52..

5 Gargantua and Pantagruel Translated Into English by Sir Thomas Urquhart and Peter Le Motteux (1900). Whibley, ed.

6Rollins, Hyder Edward. The Paradise of Dainty Devices (1927). 77-8.



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