Even now, some 500 years later, the answers for most of the questions are not yet finally answered. Tudor answers were provisional as the rule. The efforts were fitful. One just kept writing until something amounted to an improvement and then everyone copied it. When the next new promising development came along everyone copied that. One just kept writing.
Centuries of bias toward Latin was replaced by bias to sell the maximum possible copies of the new printed books. This meant that the vulgar languages of the population at large soon outpaced the scholarly. This, in turn, meant that rapidly increasing numbers of the common people learned to read the modern languages of their countries accelerating publishing in that line.
But there still remained a market for books in Latin together with a growing market for books in classical Greek. A larger market, actually, than could possibly be supplied any longer by manuscript books. Eventually knowledge of classical languages faded away to become a specialty skill. By the beginning of the 17th century academics such a Robert Burton bemoaned the fact that they were forced to write even their scholarly books mostly in English. Only the quotes could be presented in their original languages and then they must generally be followed by glosses in English.
Many very knowledgeable Latinists had long abandoned writing original material in the language. Like Arthur Golding, in 1573, many published pamphlets on subjects of the most prurient sort like A Briefe Discourse of the late murther of master George Saunders a worshipfull Citizen of London; and of the apprehension, arreignement, and execution of the principall & accessaries of the same. Imprinted at London by Henry Bynneman, dwelling in Knightrider Streete, at the Signe of the Mermayde. Anno 1573.
Bynneman was a publisher of high-end literary works. In the same year, 1573, he published George Gascoigne's infamous anthology A Hundreth sundrie Flowres, the subject of my study Shakespeare in 1573: Apprenticeship and Scandal1. A number of young courtier poets from that year, closely connected with the also young Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, had work appear in the anthology. A few had had other works published by Bynneman.
Golding, of course, was Oxford's uncle, on his mother's side. What is more immediately important, however, is that the main conspirator in the murder of George Saunders was once a servant of the young Earl. The man's name was George Browne.
Presumably mindful of the family connection, and the notoriety it could possibly bring if he were not to intervene, Golding went to work. The pamphlet gives the details, including one particularly affecting detail, and follows them with further description of the godly manner in which the matter was dispatched. The account was made acceptable to the authorities, clergy, etc., by ending with repentance, forgiveness and execution. By the measure of the time, Golding's was a godly work and made sure the Vere family name was not mentioned. It was, of course, a bestseller.
An anonymous play about the murder, entitled A Warning for Fair Women, was published in 1599. It is widely agreed, however, that it was written prior to 1590, in light of its use of dumb-shows, allegory and chorus. While more than one writer had written work about the murder — including the great chronicler John Stowe — the Warning followed the narrative given in Golding. This is only one of the clues that compose the murder mystery of who wrote the play. It is a mystery revisited again and again for centuries. The fact that some assign it to Thomas Kyd itself turns out to be a clue. The name of the likely author has never been announced.
This is where a maddening part comes in (hardly the only one). William Shakespeare has, of course, been floated as author. He seems to have been properly been rejected. Thomas Heywood is often floated as his Apology for Actors references an event that is also mentioned in the Warning.
A woman that had made away her husband,
And sitting to behold a tragedy,
At Lynn, a town in Norfolk,
Acted by players travelling that way,—
Wherein a woman that had murdered hers—
Was ever haunted with her husband's ghost.
The passion written by a feeling pen,
And acted by a good tragedian,—
She was so moved with the sight thereof,
As she cried out, 'The play was made by her,'
And openly confess[ed] her husband's murder.2
At the point in the play, The History of Friar Francis, according to Heywood's version, “presenting a woman, who insatiately doting on a yong gentleman, had (the more securely to enjoy his affection) mischievously and seceretly murdered her husband, whose ghost haunted her,...”
a townes-woman (till then of good estimation and report) finding her conscience (at this presentment) extremely troubled, suddenly skritchcd and cryd out Oh my husband, my husband! I see the ghost of my husband fiercely threatning and menacing me. At which shrill and unexpected out-cry, the people about her moov'd to a strange amazement, inquired the reason of her clamour, when presently un-urged, she told them, that seven yeares ago, she, to be possest of such a Gcntleman... had poisoned her husband, whose fearefull image personated It selfe in the shape of that ghost;...3
But the Apology was published in 1612. Heywood's name never appears in any theater records of the time until 1593. Even then he was younger than 20 years old.
Less known, perhaps, is the fact that the event is thought to be referred to in Hamlet.
Hum, I have heard
That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,
Have, by the very cunning of the scene,
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ.4
Traditional scholars still insist that the play was written in 1600. Those who know my work Back When Ophelia Jumped Off a Cliff: theHamlet of 15895 know that the German translation of the play gives numerous compelling indications of having been done from a 1589 original, by Shakespeare, and it includes the more complete reference to the event. But not as we have it in any English version of Hamlet.
In Germany, at Strasburg, there was once a pretty case. A wife murdered her husband by piercing him to the heart with an awl. Afterwards she buried the man under the thresh old, she and her paramour. This deed remained hid full nine years, till at last it chanced that some actors came that way, and played a tragedy of like import; the woman who was likewise present at the play with her husband, began to cry aloud (her conscience being touched) alas! alas! you hit at me for in such manner did I murder my innocent husband. She tore her hair, ran straight way to the judge, freely confessed the murder which being proved true, in deep repentance for her sins she received the holy unction from the priest, gave her body to the executioner, and recommended her soul to God.6
The specifics of Heywood's story of a play in Lynn have skipped past the English language Hamlets to the 1589 version of Hamlet, been transferred to Strasbourg, and expanded a bit, the translator knowing what will capture his audience.
And this is only where the maddening-ness begins....
1Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Shakespeare in 1573: Apprenticeship and Scandal (2021). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096GSQV14
2Hopkinson, A. F. A Warning for Fair Women (1904). IV.ii.120-30.
3Heywood, Thomas. An Apology for Actors (1612). No page numbers. G1.
4Hamlet, II.ii.564-70
5Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Back When Ophelia Jumped Off a Cliff: the Hamlet of 1589 (2022). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09WC94FGW
6Cohn, Albert. Shakespeare in Germany (1865). 267, 268. “In Teutschland hat sich zu Strassburg ein artiger Casus
zugetragen...”
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
- Rocco Bonetti's Blackfriars Fencing School and Lord Hunsdon's Water Pipe. August 12, 2023. “... the tenement late in the tenure of John Lyllie gentleman & nowe in the tenure of the said Rocho Bonetti...”
On Shakespeare's lameness and historical-fiction biography, etc. August 5, 2023. “Those who support Sogliardo of Stratford and other authorship candidates generally stop by from time to time to remark...”
- Shakespeare CSI: Sir Thomas More, Hand-D. April 22, 2023. “What a glory to have an actual hand-written manuscript from the greatest English writer of all time!”
- Robert Greene and the Construction Shakespeare Never Used. August 9, 2022. 'Our first foray “staring intently into” the texts of Robert Greene has noted that his work utilized far fewer feminine endings than Shakespeare’s.'
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.
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