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Thursday, May 09, 2024

The Sonnets of Shakespeare: Four Key Versions of Sonnet 2

 










2 [1609 Quarto]


When fortie Winters shall beseige thy brow,

And digge deep trenches in thy beauties field,

Thy youthes proud liuery so gaz'd on now,

Wil be a totter'd weed of smal worth held :

Then being askt, where all thy beautie lies,

Where all the treasure of thy lusty daies;

To say within thine owne deepe sunken eyes,

Were an all-eating shame, and thriftlesse praise.

How much more praise deseru'd thy beauties vse,

If thou couldst answere this faire child of mine

Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse

Proouing his beautie by succession thine.

This were to be new made when thou art ould,.

And see thy blood warme when thou feel'st it could.


Gary Taylor has written an excellent paper on the extant manuscript versions of the 1609 sonnets. In the instance of Sonnet 2 he repeats the thirteen manuscripts of complete or partial versions cataloged in Peter Beal's Index of English Literary Manuscripts, 1450-1625 (London and New York, 1980).


Taylor, 210. citing Jackson, ] No autograph manuscripts have yet been found, but a number of transcripts from the first half of the seventeenth century survive. The Quarto was itself printed from a scribal transcript, as textual scholars have demonstrated; hence, the printed text is at least two removes from Shakespeare's hand.

Rollins, 10] Arnold Davenport (N. & Q., May 2, 1942, pp. 242-244) finds the “seed” of this sonnet in the second eclogue of Drayton’s Shepherds' Garland, 1593, lines 37-57 (1931 ed., I, 51). Six images in 2, he believes, may reproduce six in Drayton. Both poets, however, seem to me to be dealing with commonplaces about old age, though line 2 does show a close parallel with Drayton’s “The time-plow’d furrowes in thy fairest field.”

Taylor, 233] As a parallel for 1. 2 Hyder Rollins cited a line from the Second Eglog of Drayton's

"Shepheards Garland" (1593): "The time-plow'd furrowes in thy fairest field" (1.46). Whoever might be the plagiarist, Drayton's line resembles the manuscript version more closely than it does the Quarto.

GWP] As Taylor points out, there is no evidence, at present, whether Shakespeare was the one who borrowed from Drayton or vice-versa.

Evans, 110] Samuel Daniel, Delia. (1592) 4.8. “Best in my face, how cares have tild deepe forrowes.”

GWP] Those who have read my Discovered: a New Shakespeare Sonnet will be aware that my path to the new sonnets went through copies of Daniel's Sonnets to Delia pirated together, in 1591, with poems by Edward de Vere. The propinquity in print suggests a shared social milieu between Vere and Daniel, circa 1591, somehow also involving Shakespeare.

I give the text of the three most important manuscripts for a discussion of what they reveal. I take them from Alden and from Taylor's collated text.

We begin, then, with the texts and follow with introductory commentary upon some lines of the text. More will follow.


Spes Altera [B2]


When forty winters shall beseige thy brow

And trench deepe furrowes in y1 louely feild

Thy youthes faire Liu'rie so accounted now

Shall bee like rotten weeds of no worth held

Then beeing askt where all thy bewty lyes

Where all ye lustre of thy youthfull dayes

To say within these hollow suncken eyes

Were an all-eaten truth, & worthless prayse

0 how much better were thy bewtyes vse

If thou coudst say this pretty child of mine

Saues my account & makes my old excuse

Making his bewty by succession thine

This were to bee new borne when thou art old

And see thy bloud warme when thou feelst it cold.

W. S.


B2 British Library Add. MS.21433, f. 114v (c. 1630s; Inns of Court)



To one that would die a maide [Y]


When forty winters shall beseige thy brow

And trench deepe furrowes in that louely feild

Thy youthes faire liuery so accounted now

Shall bee like rotten weeds of no worth held

Then beeing askt where all thy bewty lyes

Where all the lustre of thy youthfull dayes

To say within those hollow suncken eyes

Were an all-eaten truth, & worthlesse prayse

O how far better were thy bewtious vse

If thou couldst say this pretty child of mine

Saud my account & make no old excuse

Making his bewty by succession thine

        This were to bee new borne when thou art old

        And see thy bloud warme when thou feelst it cold


Y Yale University, Osborn Collection, b. 205, f. 54' (c. 1625-35)

To one that would die a Mayd [Dobell, F2]


When forty winters shall beseige thy brow

And trench deepe furrowes in that louely feild

Thy youth faire liuerie soe accounted now

Shall bee like like rotten weedes of noe worth heild

Then being ask't where all thy beauty lies

Where all the lustre of thy youthfull dayes

To say within thes hollow suncken eyes

Were an alleaten truth, and worthies pleasure.

How better were thy beauties use

If thou couldst say this prittie childe of mine

Saues my account and makes my old excuse

Making his beauty by succession thine

This were to bee new borne when thou art old

And see thy bloud warme, when thou feelst it cold.


F2 Folger Shakespeare Library, MS.V.a. 170, pp. 163-4 (c.1625-35)



Sample commentary by line:


1. fortie winters]. Schmidt: I hold that this sonnet can only have been written by one who was still very young.

2. furrow imagery] Von Mauntz: Cf. Ovid, Medicamina Formae, 46: "Et placitus rugis vultus aratus erit;" and Tristia, III, vii, 33-34:

Ista decens facies longis vitiabitur annis,

Rugaque in antiqua fronte senilis erit.


4. totter'd] Bullen: A recognised form of "tattered ".

11. sum my count, etc.] Dowden: The excuse of my oldness. Tyler: The account will be . . . settled by his son, whose youthful beauty will furnish an excuse for Mr. W. H.'s oldness, or, perhaps, will furnish the old and customary excuse by proving that he has inherited the beauty of his father.


GWP] Those who know my work on the sonnets in Was Shakespeare Gay: what do the sonnets really say? know that I assert that some of the procreation sonnets were written to Queen Elizabeth I. She would have been 40 years old in 1573. Her courtiers were careful, however, to refer to her as being younger. She continued to tease her people with hopes of marriage and an heir until at least 1581 when she would have been 48 years old.










Taylor reminds us that “T. W. Baldwin, first observed the connection between sonnets 1-17 and a model letter from De Conscribendis Epistolis, translated in Thomas Wilson's popular textbook The Arte of Rhetorique (1553, rev. edn. 1560) as "An Epistle to perswade a young ientleman to Mariage". Several passages in one paragraph seem to have influenced this sonnet (my italics):

what man can be greeued that he is old, when he seeth his owne countenance ... to appeare liuely in his sonne? you shall have a pretie little boie, running up and doune your house, soche a one as shall expresse your loke, and your wiues loke ... by whom you shall seme to bee newe borne.”

These particulars align quite well with my date for this sonnet of 1570-1581 — likely more toward the earlier date.

It was not until the 19th century that a not particularly capable scholar “identified” Henry Wriothesley as the recipient of majority of the 1609 sonnets. Orthodoxy requiring they were written by the Stratford man, they could not possibly be assigned to Elizabeth. The reasoning for Wriothesley, bizarre as it is, was the best option left. Seven of those who copied the thirteen manuscripts of Sonnet 2, free of that orthodoxy, addressed it to a female recipient. Five went with the ungendered title “ Spes Altera”, virtually the exact theme of Elizabeth's courtiers during her child-bearing years.




Sources Cited:


Bullen, A. H. Shakespeare's Sonnets (1921).

Davenport, Arnold. N. & Q., May 2, 1942, pp. 242-244.

Dowden, Edward. Shakespeare's Sonnets (1881).

Evans, G. Blakemore, Ed. The Sonnets (Cambridge, 2006).

Jackson, MacDonald Pairman. "Punctuation and the Compositors of Shakespeare's Sonnets, 1609". The Library, v. 30 (1975). 2-24.

Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Discovered: A New Shakespeare Sonnet (or three, actually) (2015). 

Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Was Shakespeare Gay: what do the sonnets really say? (2015).

Mauntz, Alfred von. Gedichte von William Shakespeare. Berlin (1894).

Schmidt, Alexander . Shakespeare-Lexicon (1874, 1875).

Taylor, Gary. Some Manuscrpts of Shakespeare Sonnets (1985).



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Saturday, May 04, 2024

Book Advertising in Tudor and Stuart Times: Title Pages.

Some of the long succession of long-ish scatter-shot rebuttals by Dennis McCarthy, at the Edward de Vere was Shakespeare Group, deserve to be answered piece by piece as time comes available. McCarthy (advocate of Thomas North as the author of originals of the Shakespeare plays) responded first some two years ago to my observation upon his “lack of knowledge of Tudor publishing and literature” by wittily replying that my own observation that Tudor playwrights did not write their own book blurbs “exposes an ignorance of Tudor practices”. As usual, he uses such words as "irrefutable" by way of evidence.

In particular, he refers to the following:

As publishers became ever more adept at using the pages of their books to the absolute last tittle of benefit, during Tudor and Stuart times, they made their titles pages into advertisements. These advertisements were written by the owner or some member of the crew who had proven to have a talent in that way.

This he describes as “[my] belief that authors never included long titles and subtitles... on their manuscripts”. In this way he tries to save his claim that Shakespeare/North can be shown to have written the title-page blurb to Arden of Faversham thus the play itself.

It is common knowledge, however, that playwrights sold their manuscripts to playing companies. Upon payment, the companies had total rights over the manuscript. They recopied it and often edited it. We have a modest number of surviving manuscripts (a very few in the original author's hand) and none of them exhibits subtitles of any sort.

As for the publisher composing brief, impactful descriptions for the title-pages of popular works to post around London as advertisements the record is clear. It is McKerrow who seems first to have made the general observation:

There are numerous allusions to the posting-up of titlepages in the Elizabethan and Jacobean period, and we hear of the same practice in the time of Pope. It is perhaps in consequence of title-pages being regarded chiefly as advertisements, and as the business of the publisher rather than the author, that custom permitted them to vaunt so shamelessly the varied delights of the book within.1

The evidence is substantial, actually. We might start with Thomas Nashe's Terrors of the Night (1594)

...a number of you there bee, who consider neither premisses nor conclusion, but piteouslie torment Title Pages on everie post: never reading farther of anie Booke, than Imprinted by Simeon [the name of the printer] such a signe [“at the sign of such-and-such”], and yet with your dudgen judgements will desperatelie presume to run up to the hard hilts through the whole bulke of it.2

Being a pamphleteer, Nashe's works were “popular literature” thus subject to this mode of advertising. Published plays were popular and of a lower order still than pamphlets. They were also sold by the playing companies that had purchased them to the publisher. Not by the author. The author's manuscript had been left far behind.3

Next, perhaps, Bk V. Satire ii. Of Hall's Virgidemiarum (1597).

When Maevios first page of his poesie

Nayl'd to an hundreth postes for noveltie,

With his big title, an Italian mot,

Layes siege unto the backward buyers grote.4

By the late 1590s, at least, even poets had reason to fear that their title-pages might join the pamphleteers and playwrights. The serious poet was aghast at the possibility that his poems might be published and title-page plastered all over town (but especially St. Paul's Cathedral). The following should be examples enough. The authors and works are given in the endnotes.

What should I speake of infant-Rimers now,

That ply their Pen as Plow-men do their Plow:

And pester Posts, with Titles of new bookes;5


Whither thus hastes my little book so fast?

To Paul's Churchyard. What? in those cells to stand,

With one leaf like a rider's cloak put up

To catch a termer?6 or lie musty there

With rimes a term set out, or two, before?7


Nor have my title-leaf on posts or walls,
Or in cleft-sticks, advanced to make calls
For termers, or some clerklike serving-man,...8


IF you shall make Pauls Pillars Pennance do

In any sheet of mine, or set to view

The Title of this Book on any Post,

I wish your expectation may be lost;...9

Again, published plays were the lowest level of publication (excepting single sheet fliers and broadsides) for all that they could be quite popular. The author manuscripts were either discarded after making a clean copy or archived for making future such copies. The manuscripts provided to the publisher came from the player company scribes. What manuscripts have survived of published plays contain no title-page blurbs.

Mr. McCarthy does also point out the Thomas North's uncle, George, did write an autograph manuscript with a sub-title or description of modest length. While it doesn't address the specific issue here it does open the door to a number of fascinating facts around Edward de Vere as Shakespeare.

I have just presented the case, in my new study,10 that there is evidence that the pastoralist poet William Browne may have written some or most of the Act 4 masque in Shakespeare's The Tempest. His dedicated patron, William Herbert, the 3rd Earl of Pembroke almost certainly had a hand in the production, regardless. Many scholars think that Shakespeare wrote no more than a few lines of the masque.

Also in the same pastoralist group close around Pembroke, it turns out, was one William Basse, who was a familiar neighbor of the Baroness of Rycote, Bridget de Vere, at around the same time. Basse died in 1653 with a manuscript ready to go to press, entitled “The Pastorals and Other Works of William Basse.” He even drew a title page for it and copied an admirer's commendatory verse behind it. He had never published a book. It is a touching affair.

History remembers Basse for something else, though. He wrote the earliest surviving elegy we have upon the death of Shakespeare.



1McKerrow, Ronald. Printers' & Publishers' Devices in England & Scotland 1485—1640 (1913). xliv.

2Nashe, Thomas. The Works of Thomas Nashe (1905). 343. “Terrors of the Night”.

3This began to change with Ben Jonson after his 1616 folio.

4 Hall, Joseph. The Complete Poems Of Joseph Hall, D. D. (1879). 147. Virgidemiarum (1597). Bk V, Satire. ii.

5 Davies of Hereford, Complete Poems (1878). II.76. “Papers Complaint” (1610-11).

6 termer] a person who lived in London during the law terms. Essentially, an official with a country seat, servant, wife or child to the same, student, the equivalent of a snowbird.

7 Campion, Thomas. The Works of Dr. Thomas Campion (1889). 229 “The Writer to His Book”.

8 Jonson, Ben. The Works of Ben Jonson (1875). 149. “To my bookseller”

9 Eliot, Sir John. Poems or Epigrams, Satyrs, Elegies, Songs And Sonnets, Upon Several Persons And Occasions (1658). 11. “To the Stationer if need be.”

10 Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Shakespeare's The Tempest: a wedding masque for Susan de Vere (2024). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CY5YYG1F/ 





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Saturday, April 13, 2024

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

In this series:


“Just another obvious falsehood...” Dennis McCarthy writes in reply to my revelation that both George North, on the topic of bees, in his manuscript entitled A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels, and Shakespeare on bees in the Archbishop of Canterbury's speech in the play Henry V, are actually close paraphrases (qualify in parts as loose translations) of Book XI of Pliny's Natural Histories and Book IV of Virgil's Georgics. This alone accounts for the similarities between the two Tudor texts.

McCarthy followed with a table of comparison of North's and Shakespeare's texts from his 2018 edition of North's text. I show that each example is taken from 1st century Rome by following each example with the corresponding English translation from the Loeb editions of Pliny's Natural History1 and/or Virgil's Georgics2. The correspondence shows that even 400+ years apart, the English translations that correspond to the Latin original show an unmistakable close relationship to both Tudor authors.

Together with this comparison, I provide key terms from the original Latin text in brackets. There are not many. But they should be simple to look up and they are chosen because they make particularly clear the precise match between the Latin and all of the English texts. Also, the Loeb editions can be downloaded for free from the Internet Archive in order to read the entire text in both languages.




...a single male which in each swarm is called the king; … He is surrounded by certain retainers and lictors as the constant guardians of his authority. [Pliny, 465]


Here follows not only vocabulary but a very specific grammatical match using “some” and “other” precisely as in the Latin of the Georgics.






...a guard is posted at the gates ….they send scouts [speculatores] to further pastures. [Pliny, 445]

They alone have children in common, hold the dwellings of their city jointly, and pass their life under the majesty of law. They alone know a fatherland and fixed home, and in summer, mindful of the winter to come, spend toilsome days and garner their gains into a common store. For some [aliae] watch over the gathering of food, and under fixed covenant labour in the fields; some [aliae], within the confines of their homes, lay down the narcissus' tears and gluey gum from tree-bark as the first foundation of the comb, then hang aloft clinging wax; others [aliae] lead out the full-grown young, the nation's hope; others [aliae] pack purest honey, and swell the cells with liquid nectar. To some [aliae] 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. [Georgics, 207, 209]

It is clear from the two author's texts that North likely had the Pliny and Virgil texts beside him as he wrote. Shakespeare is much looser in his rendition and seems to be writing from memory of his originals.

To some it has fallen by lot to be sentries [custodia] at the gates, and in turn they watch the rains and clouds of heaven, or take the loads of incomers [aut onera accipiunt venientum],... [Georgics, 207]

In the following, Shakespeare even matches the Loeb translation precisely. Both mention Virgil's tent-royal / royal tent, their exact translation of Virgil's praetoria.

Round their king [circa regem], and even by his royal tent [praetoria],... [Georgics, 201]

They build large and splendid separate palaces [amplas, magnificas, separatas, tuberculo eminentes] for those who are to be their rulers... [Pliny, 451]

The two obvious clues that one is reading a redaction or translation of Pliny and/or Virgil (or Aristotle, from whom they took more than a little of their information) are: 1) the hives are said to have a king rather than a queen; and, 2) a moral is drawn upon drones who are said to seek to devour the honey without having worked for it.

We've seen the king. Now the drones.



...drive the drones [fucos], a lazy [ignavum] herd [pecus], from the folds. [Georgics, 207, 209]

When the honey has begun to ripen, the bees drive the drones away, and falling on them many to one kill them. [Pliny, 451].

The moral of the lazy drone was perhaps the most common in Tudor England.

The portions of Pliny and Virgil that may have provided North further inspiration are as follows:





Next will I discourse of Heaven's gift, the honey from the skies. [Georgics, 197]

two seasons are there for the harvest—first, so soon as Taygete the Pleiad has shown her comely face to the earth... [Georgics, 213]

For after the rising of each star, but particularly the principal stars, or of a rainbow, if rain does not follow but the dew is warmed by the rays of the sun, not honey but drugs are produced, heavenly gifts for the eyes, for ulcers and for the internal organs. And if this substance is kept when the dogstar is rising, and if, as often happens, the rise of Venus or Jupiter or Mercury falls on the same day, its sweetness and potency for recalling mortals' ills from death is equal to that of the nectar of the gods.

Honey is obtained more copiously at full moon, and of thicker substance in fine weather. [Pliny, 455]

The first comparison relies on the words Heavens / heaven, continued / continual and obedience. In North the text from which these words are extracted has nothing in particular to do with bees. He is stating a commonplace of the time that the heavens (stars, planets, etc.) obey the god who created them. Writing a text against rebellion, as he was, obedience could only be highlighted from a story about the orderly commonwealth of the bees.

Heaven does not refer to planets, stars, etc., in the Shakespeare quote. The word is a metonym designating god.

As for the use both North and Shakespeare make of the word obedience we need to place the word in its context in each passage..




Bees have their special leader, whom they so much honor, as they will no day depart the hive before they have presented duty and saluted him... [the obedience of bees (in margin)].


George North, Rebellion

Therefore doth heaven divid

The state of man in divers functions,

Setting endeavor in continual motion;

To which is fixed, as an aim or butt,

Obedience: for so work the honey-bees,

Creatures that by a rule in nature teach

The act of order to a peopled kingdom.


Shakespeare, Henry V, I.ii.

In Shakespeare, the quote states the division of labor among the bees has obedience as its aim. The quote refers directly to Georgics IV:


For some watch over the gathering of food, and under fixed covenant labour in the fields; some, within the confines of their homes, lay down the narcissus' tears and gluey gum from tree-bark as the first foundation of the comb, then hang aloft clinging wax; others lead out the full-grown young, the nation's hope; others pack purest honey, and swell the cells with liquid nectar. Etc. Georgics, 207.


Finally, the ancient Romans did not a have a parliament but rather a senate. Tudor England did not have a senate but rather a parliament. Thus North alone translates senate as “Parliament”.4





...they have a government and individual enterprises and collective leaders,... [Pliny, 439]

…the crowd of older bees, who form a kind of senate [senatus],... [Columella, 469]

Again, North seems clearly to have these texts beside him. This particular would seem to show that they also included not only Pliny but Columella's De Res Rustica.5 Shakespeare, on the other hand, is working from memory and mostly recalls the Pliny, however much more vaguely, and the Columella not at all.



1    Pliny the Elder. Natural History (1967). dual language tr. H. Rackham. Book XI. 432-499. Citations are by page number.

2    Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro). Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I-VI (1938). dual language tr. Fairclough, H. Rushton. Georgics IV. 196-237. Citations are by page number.

3    onera = burdens

4    Curiously, Edward de Vere's secretary, John Lyly, also translates senatus as “Parliament” in his description of the commonwealth of bees in his Euphues, his England (1580). See Arber edition, 263. “[The bees] call a Parliament, wher-in they consult, for lawes, satutes, penalties, chusing officers, and creating their king,”

5     Columella, Lucius Junius Moderatus. On Agriculture III. De Res Rustica V-IX (1954). dual language tr. Heffner, Edward H. 468-9.


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Sunday, April 07, 2024

Shakespeare and Bees, Pt. 2.

In this series:

Now we return to our anonymous author on “Shakespeare and Bees”.1 Here the emphasis of the passages is on the delightful product of the bees: honey.


When Romeo is awaiting the arrival of Juliet, Friar Laurence, in his cell, endeavours to solace him in the following words:-

These violent delights have violent ends;

adding :-

The sweetest honey

Is loathsome in his own deliciousness,

And in the taste confounds the appetite;

Therefore , love moderately.

        Act II., Scene 6.

In Henry VIII. Norfolk says, in speaking of Cardinal Wolsey:-

The King hath found

Matter against him that for ever mars

The honey of his language.

        Act III., Scene 2.

In Hamlet we find Ophelia deploring her condition after the remark ' To a nunnery go ' in these words :-

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,

That suck'd the honey of his music vows.

        Act III., Scene 1 .

The same word is also employed by Romeo:-

Oh, my love! my wife!

Death that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,

Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.

        Act V. , Scene 3.

When we bear in mind the regularity of combs and the close arrangement of the cells, the words of Prospero, in his reply to Caliban, will be better understood:-

Thou shalt be pinch'd

As thick as honey-combs, each pinch more stinging

Than bees that made them.

        Tempest, Act I. , Scene 2.

The sting is above alluded to, and also occurs in the following:-

Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing,

Till he hath lost his honey and his sting:

And being once subdued in armed tail,

Sweet honey and sweet notes together fail.

        Troilus and Cressida, Act V., Scene 11 .

This passage would lead us to infer that Shakespeare knew that bees could not withdraw their stings from the wound. In Julius Cæsar we find the following dialogue:-

Cas. The posture of your blows are yet unknown;

But for your words, they rob the Hybla bees,

And leave them honeyless.

Ant. Not stingless too.

Bru. Oh, yes, and soundless too;

For you have stol'n their buzzing, Antony,

And, very wisely, threat before you sting.

        Act V. , Scene 1.

The loss of the queen is thus described: -

The commons, like a hive of angry bees,

That want their leader, scatter up and down .

        2 Henry VI., Act III. , Scene 2.

He did not seem to know the use of drones, for he says :-

Drones suck not eagles' blood, but rob beehives.

        2 Henry VI., Act IV., Scene 1.

As mentioned in Pt. 1, most of medieval and Tudor writing on bees is taken from the Natural History of Pliny the Elder. Shakespeare's knowledge that constituents of bees-wax are carried on the back legs of bees does not seem to feature in any classical author, however, and may have been the observation of another more modern eye. As for wasps attacking bee-hives, this is mentioned in Pliny, but not, that I have yet found, the fact that they do so in order to feed on the honey. Again, this may come from a more modern source — perhaps an expert bee-keeper.


The following passage from The Two Gentlemen of Verona will show that Shakespeare had observed the fights that took place between wasps and bees:-

Injurious wasps! to feed on such sweet honey,

And kill the bees, that yield it, with your stings!

        Act I., Scene 2.

The honey boys steal from the humble-bees,

And for night tapers, crop their waxen thighs.'

        Midsummer Night's Dream, Act III ., Scene 2.

The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,

Were still at odds, being but three.

        Love's Labour Lost, Act III., Scene 1.

How well a worn-out worker is illustrated in the following:-

Since I nor wax, nor honey can bring home,

I quickly were dissolved from my hive,

To give some labourers room.

        All's Well that Ends Well, Act I. , Scene 2.


Actually, to know Pliny, here, is to know that this passage describes the ejection of a drone.


They surfeited with honey, and began

To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a

Little more than a little is by much too much .

        2 Henry IV., Act IV., Scene 4.

Like one besotted on your sweet delights :

You have the honey still, but these the gall

        Troilus and Cressida, Act II., Scene 2.

'We would purge the land of these drones

that rob the bee of her honey.'

        Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Act II., Scene 1.

These are a few of the passages in which bees and honey are referred to, but there a good many more. Indeed, from the frequent allusions made by Shakespeare, this insect must have been a favourite with him, and it certainly furnished him with numerous similes ; and, not content with the word 'honey,' both in a literal and metaphorical sense , he has interwoven it in several endearing epithets, such as 'honey love,' 'honey nurse;' and in Julius Caesar we find the following curious expression:-

Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber.

        Act II., Scene 1.

Many other poets have alluded to bees and honey, but none so frequently as Shakespeare.




1British Bee Journal, Bee-Keepers' Record and Advisor. Volume IX (1891).


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