The Common Source for George North and Shakespeare on the Kingdom of the Bees.

In this series:

• The Common Source for George North and Shakespeare on the Kingdom of the Bees.
• More on the Common Source for George North and Shakespeare on the Kingdom of the Bees.

I have mentioned many times that far and away the most common failure of computer-based Shakespeare authorship studies comes from the fact that the persons who design the studies know too little about Tudor times and literature, early movable type publishing, etc. I was alerted to another example of this when listening to a Folger Shakespeare Unlimited interview with Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter regarding their  A Brief Discourse of Rebellion & Rebels by George North (2018).

I excerpt the particular portion of the interview that introduces the subject of Shakespeare taking text on bees from George North's manuscript book ‘A brief discourse of rebellion and Rebells’ below.

BOGAEV: And let’s look at this other passage that you examine in depth, from Henry V, about bees and the order of the universe, which also seems remarkably similar to what North wrote. And, June, perhaps you could lay out some of the highlights of that one for us.

[CLIP from Henry V:]

BISHOP OF CANTERBURY:
…for so work the honeybees,
Creatures that by a rule in nature teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom.

SCHLUETER: Yeah. The overarching claim of George North in his Brief Discourse is that rebellion is always wrong, and rebels will always be punished. And he uses the society of bees, and ants, to show the proper order of things.

[CLIP continues:]

BISHOP OF CANTERBURY:
They have a king and officers of sorts,
Where some like magistrates correct at home,
Others like merchants venture trade abroad,
Others like soldiers armèd in their stings

SCHLUETER: So, this is reflected in the exchange in Henry V between the Archbishop of Canterbury and Exeter. So, again, we see the parallel passages when Canterbury is talking about the society of bees and when George North is talking about the same society.

BOGAEV: So are you saying that what’s so remarkable is that it’s not just that these same words appear in the same order here with the ant, and the bee, and detailing the division of labor in the bees kingdom, and their duties, and comparing it to the divisions among humans, but also that Shakespeare seems to take some of North’s allusions and themes as well?

It is a little bit stunning, here, that McCarthy and Schlueter do not understand what they are seeing. On two different occasions, during this podcast, it is mentioned that the relationship between the George North manuscript and the works of Shakespeare depend upon there being no earlier third work that both might be quoting separately.

McCarthy does mention that North's text seems to be influenced by another:

North's source for some of this material was Thomas Elyot's The Governor.¹

But the association with Elyot — for all it likely added little or nothing to North's work — was one that could better have been a source of guidance for McCarthy and Schlueter themselves. There they would have been directed toward the works that did separately provide the bee texts of Elyot, North and Shakespeare:

I wolde that if the reder herof be lerned that he shulde repayre to the Georgikes of Virgile, or to Plini, or Collumella, where he shall fynde the example more ample and better declared.²

It also cites the text that Edward de Vere references in his introductory poem to Thomas Bedingfeld's translation of Cardanus Comforte:

The idle Drone, that labours not at all

Suckes up the sweete, of honnye from the Bee

Who worketh most, to their share least doth fall,...³

Whenever a medieval or Tudor (early modern) writer refers to bees having a king and idle drones who eat the honey produced by the industrious bees (as North and Shakespeare do in the texts referenced by M&S) the reader can rest assured that they are referring to the first century Roman texts of Pliny the Elder (Natural Histories Bk. XI) and/or the fourth book of Virgil's Georgics.

...a single male which in each swarm is called the king...⁴

Each of the Roman writers' texts can be distinguished, at that point, by what further details are carried over into the new work.

The sentries or guards M&S find at the gates in both Shakespeare and North are taken from Pliny:

To some it has fallen by lot to be sentries at the gates, and in turn they watch the rains and clouds of heaven, or take the loads of incomers, or in martial array drive the drones, a lazy herd, [ignavum fucos pecus] from the folds.⁵

The drones they guard against are “idle” in North, “lazy yawning” in the more stylistic Shakespeare: each a proper translation of ignavus.

The purveyors in North and merchants in Shakespeare⁶ come from Pliny, also.

…when the flowers in the vicinity have been used up they send scouts [speculatores] to further pastures.⁷

Virtually every word of the North passages and the Shakespeare are accounted for in the passages by Pliny and Virgil.

Pliny's text, in particular, was a favorite morality tale of those centuries. Very little science had been accomplished during them with the exception of practical engineering. Instead of developing methodologies, medieval and Tudor intellectuals relied upon ancient works such as Pliny's, Galen's, etc. The most popular became far more than deeply flawed observations only rarely corrected. They became the science texts of the times.

1McCarthy and Schlueter. "A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels" by George North (1576?, 2018). 25.

2Elyot, Thomas. The Boke named The Governour (1531, 1998). Originally at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/%7Erbear/gov/gov1.htm.

3Bedingfeld, Thomas. CARDAnus Comforte translated into Englishe. And published by commaundement of the right honourable the Earle of Oxenford. (1573). EEBO.

4Pliny the Elder. Natural History (XXXX, 1967) Loeb ed. III.461. All English transl. by H. Rackham.

5Virgil (1938). Loeb ed. Transl H. Rushton Fairclough. I.208-9. The Latin terms in brackets refer to the original.

6North: “...officers of sorts some as a guard or scout keep watch for allegiance... some fetch from far as purveyors for the rest...”. Shakespeare: “Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad,...”

7Pliny. III.445. The Latin term in brackets refers to the original.

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.