This unauthorized text of the Sidney sonnets, however, was in turn reprinted by one Matthew Lownes, with minor corrections. No date is provided on the title page. Neither epistle nor anthology were included.
Nashe was regularly in the company of such gentlemen as those in the anthology to the 1591 edition through his connections with Blackfriars society. As we have already pointed out, he would have been familiar with Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, from at least the time the play The Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage was produced at the Blackfriars theater, in 1584-5. At some point he found a dedicated patron in the 2nd Baron Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain, whose father, the first baron, occupied rooms in the Blackfriars complex. Surely he was talking of some of them in his Anatomy of Absurditie, of 1589, when he wrote:
So it was, that not long since lighting in company with many extraordinarie Gentlemen, of most excellent parts, it was my chance (amongst other talke which was generally traversed amongst us) to moove divers Questions, as touching the severall qualities required in Castiglione[‘]s Courtier;…3
The author whose poems were most numerous in the anthology was Samuel Daniel, who would reissue them soon after as part of his Delia and The Complaint of Rosamond (1592). Works by John Dowland and Thomas Campion also appeared.
Those who have read my Discovered:A New Shakespeare Sonnet (2015) know that I also claim three sonnets for Shakespeare. They meet all of the traditional criteria to identify a Shakespeare poem.
Nashe would move in a wide range of company, from players, to vagabond scholars, to fishermen and gentlemen musicians, gentlemen scholars and earls during his life. Even the higher company, however, didn't pay the bills for any more than the parties they invited him to attend. For the maintenance of daily life he was left with the paltry price he could receive for his pamphlets.4
The anthology of gentlemen's poems at the end of the 1591 Syr P.S. His Astrophel and Stella were more than a little likely gathered from manuscripts such as were frequently shared between such gentlemen during such parties as we mention. It is probably for this reason that the volume was called in. And why it was soon released again (at least by Lownes) without Nashe's epistle or the anthology.
We've already introduced the Marprelate Controversy and some of the pamphlets and participants. Nash was in the thick of it. He joined with Anthony Munday to write several works related to the controversy, at first, then the two wandered farther afield.
Among the anti-Marprelate works was A Theological Discourse of the Lambe of God, and his enemies (1590) by a Doctor of Theology, Richard Harvey. Only a few copies of the tract included an epistle “To the favourable or indifferent Reader” the end of which goes on to attack
one Thomas Nash hath lately done in humanitie, who taketh vppon him in ciuill learning, as Martin doth in religion, peremptorily censuring his betters at pleasure, Poets, Orators, Polihistors, Lawyers, and whome not?5
This is understood to have been a response to Nashe's (now famous) epistle, “To the Gentlemen Readers, health”, at the front of Robert Greene's Menaphon (1589).
Harvey obviously felt a personal injury having seen scholars of his acquaintance insulted. He was supremely condescending.
Iwis this Thomas Nash, one whome I neuer heard of before (for I cannot imagin him to be Thomas Nash our Butler of Pembrooke Hall) albeit peraduenture not much better learned)...
Calling Nash a “butler” for having been a sizar at Cambridge was calculated to deeply offend.
Yet let not Martin, or Nash, or any such famous obscure man, or any other piperly makeplay or makebate, presume overmuch of my patience as of simplicitie, but of choice.
Comparing Nash to Marprelate — the target of their anti-Marpelate disgust — went beyond the pale. Richard Harvey was intent to extinguish Nashe's literary career.
It is quite possible that Nashe delayed responding because he'd not been made aware that a very few copies of Harvey's Lamb of God contained the epsitle “To the favourable or indifferent Reader”. When he did respond, however, he put himself into another controversy that would make him the most famous name in London popular literature. He likely no longer needed to sell his friends' poetry on the sly in order to make ends meet.
Together with the appearance of his most famous work — Pierce Penniless' Supplication to the Devil — the Nashe-Harvey pamphlets had his name pretty much on every tongue in the city. History concurs with the London literary world on both counts.
Again, we find ourselves at the doorstep of exploring Pierce Penniless' Supplication to the Devil. Perhaps this time we will manage to step over the threshold.
HAving spent many yeeres in studying how to live, and liv[ed] a long time without mony: having tired my youth with follie, and surfetted my minde with vanitie, I began at length to looke backe to repentaunce, & addresse my endevors to prosperitie: But all in vaine, I sate up late, and rose earely, contended with the colde, and conversed with scarcitie: for all my labours turned to losse, my vulgar Muse was despised & neglected, my paines not regarded, or slightly rewarded, and I my selfe (in prime of my best wit) laid open to povertie. Where upon (in a malecontent humor) I accused my fortune, raild on my patrones, bit my pen, rent my papers, and rag[ed] in all points like a mad man.6
1Sidney, Philip. Syr P.S. His Astrophel and Stella. Wherein the excellence of sweete poesie is concluded. To the end of which are added, sundry other rare sonnets of divers noble men and gentlemen. London: Thomas Newman, 1591.
2See my Discovered: A New Shakespeare Sonnet (2015). Citing Sidney, Complete Poems. Vol. 1 @ xxiv. (Grossart ed. 1873). “In the Stationers’ Register, under the date of 18th September 1591, we read: ‘Item, paid to John Wolf, when he ryd with an answere to my L Treasurer, beinge with her majestie on progresse for the takinge in of bookes intituled Sir PS Astrophel and Stella.’” https://www.amazon.com/Discovered-Shakespeare-Sonnet-three-actually/dp/1514750406/
3See my Discovered: A New Shakespeare Sonnet (2015). Citing Nashe, Complete. Vol. 1 @ 8. “To the right Worshipfull Charles Blunt Knight, adorned with all perfections of honour or Arte,…” The Anatomy of Absurdity. London: Thomas Hackett, 1589. https://www.amazon.com/Discovered-Shakespeare-Sonnet-three-actually/dp/1514750406/ Castiglione‘s Courtier was a favorite of Shakespeare and Edward de Vere, of course.
4 He is suspected to have begun at some point to sell private manuscript works written for individual patrons/customers as well. None of these manuscripts seems to have survived.
5 McKerrow, Ronald B. The Works of Thomas Nashe Edited from the Original Texts (1905). V.179-80.
6 McKerrow, II.157. With some modernization of the spelling.
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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| Was Shakespeare Gay? What do the sonnets really say? |
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