The Holder of this blog uses no cookies and collects no data whatsoever. He is only a guest on the Blogger platform. He has made no agreements concerning third party data collection and is not provided the opportunity to know the data collection policies of any of the standard blogging applications associated with the host platform. For information regarding the data collection policies of Facebook applications used on this blog contact Facebook. For information about the practices regarding data collection on the part of the owner of the Blogger platform contact Google Blogger.

Thursday, August 20, 2026

Shakespeare, the Earl of Pembroke and the First First Folios.

In the years that the Shakespeare's new plays slowed to a trickle (the few of them co-written) — a.k.a. the years after 1604, the year Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, died, a.k.a. the years after William Shakspere chose to retire to his hometown of Stratford upon Avon to quietly live out the rest of his days as a dealer in grain — the playwright Ben Jonson and play-writing partners John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont were the big names in the field.

While Beaumont married a wealthy heiress and stopped writing professionally in 1613 — except for a single court masque — at least three of his plays, written with and without Fletcher, continued to appear in first edition quartos well after his death in 1616. Three more first appeared in the 1647 Fletcher and Beaumont First Folio.

Interestingly, the front matter of the Fletcher and Beaumont First Folio was closely modeled on the front matter of the Shakespeare First Folio. Both included dedications to William and Philip Herbert.

to the Philip Herbert, “To The Right Honourable Philip, Earle of Pembroke and Mountgomery1... joyned with your (now glorified) Brother, Patrons to the flowing compositions of the then expired sweet Swan of Avon SHAKESPEARE”.2

The 37 congratulatory poems at the front of the Fletcher and Beaumont folio, however, were written by the biggest stars of the literary world of the day. Edmund (styled “Edw.”) Waller, John Denham, John Webster, Richard Lovelace, Thomas Stanley, Richard Corbet, Roger L'Estrange, Robert Herrick, James Shirley — some who had passed away since their commendations — all the living of which were Royalists — all contributed poems as personal friends and professional admirers.

The unmistakable resemblance is more than a little likely due to the fact that the publisher of the Fletcher and Beaumont Folio was Humphrey Moseley. Moseley kept a constant eye open for works by Shakespeare that he could claim to have first published. His obsession, however, came to naught. He did, however, turn over an actually existing copy of the infamous The History of Cardenio to another Shakespeare obsessive, William Devanant, who died in the midst of editing it. The plan appears to have been for Devanant's popular theater company to put on the play and Humphrey to publish after.

Moseley and his author, James Shirley, playwright for the then Queen Henrietta's Men, wrote the “Stationer to the Reader” and “Letter to the Reader” letters for the Fletcher and Beaumont Folio respectively. Moseley's includes a line that will bring a smile to those who know the Shakespeare First Folio well.

What ever I have seene of Mr. Flechers owne hand, is free from interlining; and his friends affirme he never writ any one thing twice: it seemes he had that rare felicity to prepare and perfect all first in his owne braine;3

It is just one of many instances, in every aspect of his business, that Moseley, like the proverbial Indian, put every part of the buffalo to use.

The four congratulatory poems in the front of the Shakespeare Folio were written by journeymen who wrote for the press of Edward Blount and/or owed favors to Ben Jonson. Jonson himself — the protégé of William Herbert, the 3rd Earl of Pembroke, brother to Vere's son-in-law, and himself one time fiancé to another of Vere's daughters — was the only major name to append his praise. He is also understood to have written most or all of the letters, in the front matter, attributed to John Heminges and Henry Condell, managers of the Globe Theater and the King's Men.

In sum, the Shakespeare First Folio was a production of Vere's family4 edited by Ben Jonson who owed them his status in English society and literature. He owed them, that is to say, any favors they might ask... or command. A mere four congratulatory poems appeared in the front matter of the First Folio, none by major writers, alive or dead, or by anyone who indicated personal knowledge of Shakespeare.

Speaking of Ben Jonson, he was intimately involved in the production of the first ever First Folio, published in 1616. Being a supreme self-promoter, it was a massive volume of his own works. Each individual play was published with a separate dedication to a major figure in the Royal court, in line with his reputation as a shameless social climber, fawning over members of the court and nobility.

Catiline was dedicated to William Herbert, the 3rd Earl of Pembroke. The Alchemist was dedicated to Pembroke's mistress, Mary Wroth.5 A section of Epigrammes was also dedicated to Pembroke, calling on him for protection. Two epigrams were addressed to Wroth. One was addressed to Susan Herbert née de Vere, the Countess of Montgomery, who co-authored the novel The Countesse of Montgomeries Urania6, a landmark of women's literature, which appeared under the name of Wroth alone, Vere's husband being fiercely conservative. None appeared to Pembroke's wife who was persona-non-grata at the court and who did not show well in Worth's novel.

The volume had nine congratulatory poems, three by Francis Beaumont, who was presumably filling out space to spare his friend the embarrassment of having only seven. As the epigrammes make clear, Jonson did not get along well with most of his fellow playwrights and poets. His arrogance and social climbing featured in their poems and plays. The nine poems were from the biggest names of the time, including John Selden, George Chapman, John Davies and Beaumont himself. But the list is notably short.

History has noticed that the name of William Shakespeare does not appear in the Epigrammes — or anywhere in the Folio, at all — for which reason he has generally been declared to be the person addressed under the heading “To the Poet-Ape”. This is a result of scholars long having declared the early versions of Shakespeare's plays to have been written by others and taken over by him in order to explain how those versions could have been composed so early in the Stratford man's life and in pre-Shakespearean styles. The Poet-Ape, however, is virtually certain to have referred to Philip Henslowe, the dominant theater manager of the time, with whom Jonson had an ongoing feud.


1 William Herbert having died, Philip Herbert then held both the Earldoms of Montgomery and of Pembroke.

2 For more on this, see my essay “The Herbert Brothers' Other First Folio Dedication.” Virtual Grub Street, October 2, 2016. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-herbert-brothers-other-first-folio.html

3 Comedies and Tragedies written by John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont, Gentlmen. (1647). No pagination.

4 See my Edward De Vere was Shake-speare: at long last, the proof. (2013 digital, 2017 paper) for more detail on this. https://www.amazon.com/Edward-Vere-was-Shake-speare-proof/dp/1543136257/

5 These dedications first appeared in the quarto versions of the plays.

6 For much more on this, see my Shakespeare's The Tempest: a Wedding Masque for Susan de Vere (2024). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CY5YYG1F




Also at Virtual Grub Street:




Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)