What Color Were Shakespeare’s Potatoes?

Batata Hispanorum. 
John Gerarde's Herbal (1597)

On This Topic:

• Let the Sky Rain Potatoes;
• What Color Were Shakespeare’s Potatoes?

When I posted my piece “Let the sky rain potatoes!” on Falstaff’s reference to the New World vegetable in The Merry Wives of Windsor I was reminded by one of my readers that the Sweet Potato proper was not orange in color.  While she only felt I had left the impression, however much I had not said as much, her comment sent me looking for early information on the tuber.

What did witnesses say about the potato when it was first discovered in South and Central America?  There turned out to be a small but descriptive literature on the plant during the waning years of the 16^th century.  Some was wrong, some was inexact and some was highly informative.

By the year 1599-1600, when Shakespeare’s play would seem to have been written, the potato was available in London.  It was considered a delectable treat and an aphrodisiac.  But the tuber referred to by the name was not the potato-proper as we know it now. 

The White Potato had indeed been introduced a mere 20 years after the Sweet Potato and was available at least throughout Northern Europe.  But persistent attempts to introduce it into areas with overburdened soil, in England and Ireland, would take more than 100 years still to bear fruit.  The flavor is not a pleasant one.  The means of cooking were unfamiliar as were recipes that might mitigate the natural bitterness.  These factors together with the fact of the close similarity of the above-ground flower to the fearful, poisonous Nightshade (to which the White Potato is, indeed, related), assured the tuber would be given a wide berth.

The literature regarding South American flora was pretty much entirely in Latin and Spanish.  The authors generally gathered their information by observing specimens transplanted in Spain.  Of course, preparation and eating could be observed first hand.

To add to the difficulties of searching out 16^th century information, even those sources who saw the flora first hand, in Peru,[1] and the surrounding areas, such as the Jesuit Joseph de Acosta, received much of their information from the accounts of others.  There was no standardized science of description.  Acosta was thorough when he gave his list of the types of potato[2] but had no idea what characteristics properly identified plants as belonging to the family.  Some of the tubers he describes are not potatoes.  It takes an extra round of research to verify that Falstaff’s (Sweet) Potato was indeed the camote.

Two earlier accounts of the potato, by authors who had gleaned their knowledge in Europe, never having traveled to the New World, are actually more precise and to our point.  Chapter XVIII, De Batatas, of the great botanist Charles de l'Écluse’s Rariorum aliquot stirpium per Hispanias obseruatarum… (1576) informs the reader that all varieties of the potato root  were white.  The skins of the roots were various colors, generally shades of red and purple, white and off-white.[3]

L’Ecluse may also have been the first to record that the potato was customarily baked in coals, cut into slices and dipped in Falstaff’s favorite wine by way of relish, sack![4]  This also clarifies the only other reference to potatoes in Shakespeare.

Thersites. How the devil Luxury, with his fat rump and potato-finger, tickles these together! Fry, lechery, fry!

In Troilus and Cressida [or, more precisely, in Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584)[5]] Thersites refers to a “potato-finger”.  Also in the London of 1584, it would seem, potatoes were customarily cut into strips popularly called potato-fingers.

In his Coronica y historia general del hombre (1598), Doctor Ivan Sanchez Valdez de la Plata described the external color of the potato as “tawny”.[6]  Apparently never having seen a potato, however, or any of the exotic plants discovered in the New World, it is difficult to be sure it is not just another of the many errors in his book.

The entry on Batatas in the Herbario Nuovo (1585), an Italian Herbal by Castore Durante, on the other hand, is delightfully precise.  The inside of a potato is white it bluntly declares.  Happily, he also describes how the root is eaten: cooked in the midst of hot coals, sliced in long thin pieces and dipped in wine and sugar.[7]  Falstaff, of course, prefers his sack with sugar.

The famous English herbalist, John Gerarde has a good deal to say about the potato.  His information, however, is tangential to our subject and requires a short essay of its own.  

---

[1] The Natural & Moral History of the Indies, By Father Joseph De Acosta. Reprinted From The English Translated Edition Of Edward Grimston, 1604. Haklyut Society, 1880.  This edition includes a brief biography of Acosta.  He lived in South America and Mexico from 1571-1587.

[2] Acosta, Joseph.  Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1598). 242.  “Las que agora me ocurren, vltra delas Papas áfon lo principal, fon ocas, y yanaocas, y camotes, y vatatas, y xiquimas, y yuca, y cochuchu, y cavi, y totora, y mani, y otros cuen generos que no me acuerdo.”

[3] Clusius Atrebatensis, Carolus [Charles de l'Écluse].  Rariorum aliquot stirpium per Hispanias obseruatarum ... (1576). 297.  “colore externo inter sé differentia,… aut cortex externus rubescit siue purpurascit… aut pallet, aut candidùs est: omnes verò radices, intus albæ.”

[4] Clusius, 299. “praefertim si cineribus cocta & exteriore pelle repurgata & in talleolas sécta ex pauxillo vino, stillaticique, rosàrum liquoris & sácchari momento edatur.”

[5] Purdy, Gilbert Wesley.  Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584).  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JD7KM1T.

[6] Sanchez Valdez, Ivan.  Coronica y historia general del hombre : en que se trata del hombre en comun, de la diuision del hombre en cuerpo y alma, de las figuras monstruosas de los hombres, de las inuenciones dellos, y de concordia entre Dios y el hombre. (1598). 128. “la corteza de encima, que es aspera, y de color leonada”.

[7] Durante, Castore.  Herbario Nuovo (1585). 66.  “Mangiasi questa radice tenera cruda, cotta sotto la cenere monda, & tagliata in pezzetti con vino, acqua rosa, & zuccaro, quero con olio aceto, & sale.”  Durante himself prefers to eat it dipped in vinegar and salt.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• The Fascinating Itinerary of the Gelosi Troupe, 1576.  June 10, 2019.  “The Spanish soldiers had not been paid and unpaid soldiers tend to rob and loot.  The citizens were prepared to give them a fight.  Violent flare ups were occurring everywhere.”
• A Thousand Years of English Terms.  June 2, 2019.  ‘One person did not say to another, “Meet you at three o’clock”.    There was no clock to be o’.  But the church bell rang the hour of Nones and you arranged to meet “upon the Nones bell”.’
• A Most Curious Account of the Funeral of Queen Elizabeth I: April 28, 1603.  April 28, 2019.  “Once it was clear that James I would face no serious challenges, Cecil and the others could begin to give attention to the matter of the Queen’s funeral.”
• The Battle Over Shakespeare's Early and Late Plays. September 24, 2018. “The answers to the post-Oxford dilemma, of course, are three.”
• Stratford Shakespeare’s Undersized Grave.  July 22, 2018.  “Mr. Coll’s considers this evidence to support an old rumor that Shakspere’s head had been stolen in 1794.  But I submit that he is merely making his observation based upon a coincidence.”
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

The Fascinating Itinerary of the Gelosi Troupe, 1576.

Isabella Andreini Lover of Drusiano Martinelli
Both Members of I Gelosi.

During a tour of Venice, by the French King Henry III, in 1574, he asked to see a performance by the comedy troupe called I Gelosi.[1]  The group may have formed around 1568.  Henry seems to have missed them when they performed in France in 1571.  The reports must have been glowing.

Henry must have agreed that they were exceptional.  Also, their beloved master, the Duke of Mantua, was a brother of the French Duke of Nevers, which couldn’t have hurt.  After he returned from Venice the king invited them to perform again in France.  The troupe appeared in Lyon on January 16, 1576,[2] in order to settle the royal orders and other paperwork always attendant on international travel.

On the 25^th they arrived at Henry’s Court at Blois.  On 27 January the resident ambassador from Mantua, Ferrante Guisoni, reported that they played a comedy before the King and his Court the evening of their arrival.  It was a great success.[3]  The Duke de Nevers reported that they performed a pastoral on February 27^th.

The troupe stayed in through spring and departed on April 23^rd, through Amboise and various towns establishing themselves in Paris by 18 May.  The next day they gave a command performance before the local authorities as a condition of receiving permission to remain.[4]

The next we would seem to have a record concerning any troupe of Italian players, a group led by Drusiano Martinelli is registering with the authorities at Antwerp on September 7, 1576.  The city was bristling under an ever harsher Spanish rule.  The Spanish soldiers had not been paid and unpaid soldiers tend to rob and loot.  The citizens were prepared to give them a fight.  Violent flare ups were occurring everywhere.  All foreigners were required to present references and papers assuring that they were present on legitimate business.

French records of the Gelosi troupe did not include the names of any of the players.  Names and description of the male players in Antwerp were carefully recorded (three female players are mentioned without providing names).  The name of the troupe, however, had not seemed material.  If we place Drusiano Martinelli as the manager of the Gelosi troupe, in 1576, however, the various international records dovetail together so perfectly that it can be said, with almost perfect confidence, that we know the name of the group, the name of the manager, the composition of the group members and its itinerary from the point at which it arrived in Lyon.

Vincent Belando,  however, alone swore in his affidavit that he had been in Antwerp for 14 months.[5]  Without referring to dates, it is noted that he mentioned having played with “his consort” in Paris and planning to return there.  If he remained in Antwerp the entire time, he would likely have been a member of the other Italian troupe that Baschet recorded[6] being in the Lyon area when the Gelosi arrived in January and chose to break off to seek his own fortunes.  Players floated in and out of troupes regularly.

Schrickx thinks it would have been impossible for the troupe to perform given the conditions in Antwerp at  the time and wonders aloud why they stayed.  Martinelli’s troupe did not renew their papers again after October 8.  For his part, Baschet’s next record for the Gelosi regards their arrest in Paris, on December 5. 

The reason for the arrest has been a point of minor historical conjecture.  I suggest that they traveled to Antwerp only to find impossible conditions in which to play.  They did what little street performing they were able while they sought papers to return to France.  Bureaucracies move slowly and they found the circumstances in the lowlands forced them to return without permission and they were eventually arrested for a brief time until the Duke of Nevers arranged for their release.

Soon after, in 1577, Italian tumblers appear in the Exchequer records of the Court of Queen Elizabeth I and a 1578 letter from the Queen’s Privy Council mentions accommodations for “one Drousiano, an Italian, a commediante and his companye”.[7]  There he became part of English literary history.  It is more than a little possible, scholars have long believed, that William Shakespeare somehow came to know of his performances and took away more than an idea or two for his own plays.

But more of that later.

---

[1] Schrickx, Willem.  “Italian Actors in Antwerp in 1576.”  Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire (1972), 796-806 @ 796-7.    Molmenti, Pompeo.  Venice Its Individual Growth from the Earliest Beginnings..., Volume 2, Part 2.  Brown, Horatio, F. tr.  (1907).  22.

[2] Baschet, Louis. Les comédiens italiens à la cour de France... (1882).  71.  Citing Brouchoud, M. C.  Origines du Théâtre de Lyon (Lyon: N. Scheuring, 1865).

[3] Baschet, 72.  “Le soir même, ils ont joué une de leurs comédies devant Sa Majesté, dans la salle où se

sont tenus les États. 11 y avait la plus grande foule. Ils ont fort diverti le Roi et toute la Cour. ”

[4] Baschet, 73-4.  “Le 18 mai, dit l'auteur de l’Histoire manuscrite du Théâtre en France, une troupe de Comédiens Italiens surnommée I Gelosi vint s'établir à Paris, après avoir obtenu la permission des confrères de la Passion, sous la condition d'un écu tournoi par représentation. Ils débutèrent dans la salle de Bourbon le lendemain. ”

[5] Schrickx, 799.  “Vincent Belando Italien comediant juravit : Que comme ainsi soit quil ait esté en ceste dicte ville , et y joué avecq ses consors farches et comèdes, et que estans sesdicts consortz

partiz vers Paris, il est aussy d'intention de soy acheminer vers ledict Paris…”

[6] Baschet, 71.  “…nous croyons qu'il ne faut pas confondre la troupe des Gelosi avec une autre troupe de

comédiens signalée comme étant déjà à Lyon au commencement du mois de novembre de l'année 1576…”

[7] Chambers, E. K.  The Elizabethan Stage (1923).  II.262.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Shakespeare’s Barnacles.  March 3, 2016.  “Prospero will wake, he fears, before they can murder him, and will cast a spell on them.”
• Hedingham Castle Fact Sheet with Virtual Tour Link.  January 20, 2019. “The modern entrance to the keep is on the first floor by way of a stone stair, discharging through the W. wall, where a fore-building used to stand.”
• Did Shake-speare Die of a Stroke?  August 03, 2014. "In October of 1601 De Vere begins to complain of his health again in letters to his brother-in-law, Robert Cecil, who was representing him in certain legal matters at Court."
• Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time.

A Thousand Years of English Terms

King Edward the Confessor
depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry.

Time was a different thing in the Middle Ages.  Vestiges of it survive into our days but with the advent of the clock the greater precision began to change everything.  Not just during the individual day — previously measured in canonical hours of prayer — but in calendar time.

One person did not say to another, “Meet you at three o’clock”.    There was no clock to be o’.  But the church bell rang the hour of Nones and you arranged to meet “upon the Nones bell”.  One didn’t arrange to meet in London on December 3 but rather on St. Winifred’s Day.  The farther back in English history the less likely it was that one knew off the top of one’s head what the calendar date of the given day was.

The British year is still nominally divided into calendar “terms” as a matter of tradition.  Little more is left beside the names.  We even tend to recite them in a different order. 

Through the Middle Ages until early modern times, the first and most important term of the legal year was Michaelmas Term.  Most town and city governments in the realm held their elections just before the Feast of St Michael and All Angels — the source of the term’s name — which falls on 29 September. The new Aldermen were generally paraded through the streets to begin St. Michael’s festivities by sharing a toast at the home of the outgoing mayor.

At the Royal Exchequer, In London, the sheriffs of every county presented their accounting books and the outstanding amounts due the king from his county revenues.  If they did not have the full amount they were not allowed to leave until they had made up the difference in cash on the barrel head.  In parallel, the new sheriffs were also being selected by the king and Exchequer for year-long administrations beginning in the next Hilary Term.

The feast was a chance to celebrate before entering in the nightmare of the imperious Office of the Exchequer.  The actual Michaelmas Term began by law within Octabis Sancti Michaelis — i.e. within the first eight days after the feast.  The business of the Exchequer required so much preparation that it alone opened its term within Quindenas Sancti Michaelis — the first 15 days after.

As the revenues were coming in, the Exchequer was paying out the annuities the king had awarded his allies.  Annuities that were paid every 12 months were almost always paid during Michaelmas (if they were paid on time).  Annuities that were awarded half every 6 months were paid during Michaelmas and Easter Terms.  While the mood was upon him, and the government open for business, the king tended to grant new gifts of lands and offices.

All of those who owed rent to another for lands in fief or copyhold paid their obligations annually, semi-annually or quarterly at the beginning of the terms.  In Michaelmas, in particular, all the kingdom was tallying its credits and debits and entering them in the appropriate official records.

All of these operations were occurring because the terms were expressly law terms.  All of the courts of the realm, from the smallest to the august Parliament itself, opened their doors, receiving and issuing legal process, hearing cases.[1]  Returns upon court process[2] were not due on specific dates.  They were due within the octabis or quindenas of the term or of minor Saints’ Days within the term.  Also, often, at the beginning of a following term. 

The second, chronologically was the Hilary Term, so named because it was calculated from the feast day of St Hilary of Poitiers, on 14 January.  The feast day was first chosen because it fell on the Octabis of Epiphany[3].  Eventually it came to mark the term without reference to Epiphany.

The second in importance and third chronologically was the Easter Term. This began on the Octabis following the Quindenas of Easter[4] — within the 8 days after the fifteenth day after Easter.  Last in importance and chronology was the Trinity Term. 

The Feast of the Trinity fell on the first Sunday after Pentecost — i.e. Trinity Sunday.  The term began as early as the Monday after.  The statutes that first established the annual term schedule (beginning with the Saxon reign of Edward  the Confessor) did not even mention a Trinity Term.  In them there were only three terms.  More than occasionally, after it did begin to appear in official documents, Trinity Term was simply foregone.  This occurred for a range of reasons beyond the present scope.  In a nutshell, the term barely existed.

All terms except for Trinity ended with the beginning of a major religious season.  The realm was handed over from the king’s purposes, pursued during the terms, to the church’s, pursued during the “vacations” between the terms.  Michaelmas ended with Advent.  Hilary Term ended with Lent.  Easter Term ended with Pentecost.

Trinity had no stated termination point.  For practical purposes, it ended when the demands of the annual harvest made it impractical to pursue other business.  After harvest came the harvest festivals.  Following them came the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels and the beginning of the new legal year.

It very much bears mentioning that the system of court terms has continued for nearly a thousand years.  Over those years it was modified by new statutes.  The above dates and rules are the most persistent across those years but practice varied.  In some respects, particularly as regards the Trinity Term, it varied widely.  Regarding the Hilary Term it also varied in substantial ways.  Changes to the rules of Michaelmas and Easter Terms, however, were rare and minor.

---

[1] The various colleges that supplied the clerks and lawyers to the realm observed the same term schedule.

[2] “Returns” actually refer to the given court receiving certification from a given county sheriff that he had delivered its writ or other process to the person to which it was addressed.

[3] Quindenas Epiphaniae

[4] Quindenas Paschae

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Shakespeare’s Barnacles.  March 3, 2016.  “Prospero will wake, he fears, before they can murder him, and will cast a spell on them.”
• The King's Esnecce.  January 13, 2019.  “It comes as no surprise, then, that when Maud’s son, Henry Plantagenet, Count or Duke of most of the western territories of France, and, by terms of the treaty, heir to Stephen, next rose to the throne as Henry II, he was quick to arrange for the safest possible means of transit across the channel.”
• Connections: Henry II, Toulouse, 1159.  November 27, 2018.  “Once he became Chancellor, Becket never looked back.  He abandoned his duties as Archdeacon and preaching duties attached to his other positions.  He outfitted a lavish  household and lived like a secular lord.”
• Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time.

A Most Curious Account of the Funeral of Queen Elizabeth I: April 28, 1603.

Restored wax effigy from the funeral
procession of  Queen Elizabeth I,
 together with the corset it wore.

A matter of hours after Queen Elizabeth’s death, on March 24, 1603, Robert Cecil, representing the members of the Queen’s Privy Council, publicly proclaimed King James VI of Scotland as “James I of England, Scotland, France and Ireland”.  Cecil, Elizabeth’s Secretary of State, had been in communication with James during the final years of the aging Queen’s life, in order to arrange the most peaceful possible transfer of power.

Cecil had clearly been a very busy man during those last days.  He had arranged for the proclamation to be witnessed en masse by the most powerful nobles and gentlemen of England that were then in the city.  At the end they cried out, on cue, as a single voice: “God save King James!”[1]

As the Queen had lain dying, the Councilors agreed upon a story that Elizabeth, unable any longer to speak, and barely able to move, had indicated by blinking on cue that she appointed James as her successor.  She had had no children and would never agree to that point to name a successor.  Whether or not she actually blinked, at the last, is academic.  English history was filled with extended dynastic conflicts following a throne without an heir.  The possibility of civil war was not the vain imagining of timid men.  As her end approached, Cecil secretly and deftly arranged the matter.

As it became clear that the dreaded civil chaos had indeed been avoided, Shakespeare himself briefly noted the events, entering them into literary history:

The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,

And the sad augurs mock their own presage;

Incertainties now crown themselves assured,

And peace proclaims olives of endless age.[2]

The Queen, who had so often during her life been symbolized by the Moon, or by one or another of its classical goddesses, had passed away.  The decades of desperate Court politics to convince her first to marry, and, after children were no longer possible, to declare an heir, had utterly failed.  Nevertheless, the horror at the thought of dynastic battles for the empty throne that she would leave behind did not materialize.

As these matters resolved themselves, the body of Elizabeth was coffined and privately transported to the palace at Whitehall.  There she was watched over in shifts by her Ladies-in-Waiting.

Once it was clear that James I would face no serious challenges, Cecil and the others could begin to give attention to the matter of the Queen’s funeral.  Secure in his throne, James I’s immediate responsibility was to make his progress from Scotland a leisurely one such that he would not arrive until after the funeral.  He may himself have felt that he could not bless the funeral of the woman who executed his own mother, in 1588, with his presence or any of his words in eulogy.

On April 28, then, the Queen who had served the Realm so ably in most respects was buried in Westminster Abbey with the utmost pomp and ceremony.  Her funeral cortege wound its way through weeping crowds.

Now the Cittie of VVestminster was surcharged with multitudes of all sorts of people, in their streetes, houses, windows, leads and gutters, that came to see the obsequie; and when they beheld her statue or picture lying uppon the coffin, set forth in Royall robes, having a crowne uppon the head thereof, and a ball and scepter in either hand, there was such a generall sighing, groning and weeping, as the like hath not beene seene or knowne in the memorie of man; neyther doth any historie mention any people, time or date, to make like lamentation for the death of their souveraygne.[3]

The statue mentioned above was a wax funeral effigy, by John Colt.  Such effigies were a common feature in the funerals of great personages.

The effigy was found, in an advanced state of decay, in 1760,[4] and restored by order of the Chapter of Westminster Abbey for installation in a new wax museum.[5]  Augustus Hare’s description of the figure may have involved a smidgin of literary license.  Still, our picture of the cortege and subsequent history lacks an important detail without it.

The waxwork figures (admission threepence on Mondays and Tuesdays, on other days sixpence) are of the deepest interest, being effigies of the time of those whom they represent, robed by the bands of those who knew them and their characteristic habits of dress. The most interesting of the eleven existing figures is that of Elizabeth, a restoration by the Chapter, in 1760, of the original figure carried at her funeral, which had fallen to pieces a few years before. She looks half-witch and half-ghoul. Her weird old head is crowned by a diadem, and she wears the huge ruff laden with a century of dust, the long stomacher covered with jewels, the velvet robe embroidered with gold and supported on panniers, and the pointed high-heeled shoes with rosettes, familiar from her pictures. The original effigy was carried from Whitehall at her funeral, April 28, 1603.[6]

The corset that graced the original figure also survives in the museum.

---

[1] Nichols.  Progresses… of King James the First (1824),  26.  Citing Howe’s continuation of Stowe’s Chronicle.

[2] Sonnets of Shakespeare, 107.

[3] Stowe’s Chronicle, 815.

[4] Hare, Augustus. Walks in London (1894), 225 “A winding stair leads to the chamber above the Islip Chapel, which contains the few remains of the exceedingly curious wax work effigies which were carried at the public funerals of great personages in the Abbey.”

[5] Hare, 225.  “The exhibition of the waxwork figures formerly produced valuable addition to the small income of the minor canons, though it was much ridiculed as 'The Ragged Regiment' and ' The Play of Dead Volks.'”

[6] Hare, 225-6.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Queen Elizabeth I’s Heart and the French Ambassador.  April 3, 2019.  “…the Queen of England, with the permission of her physicians, has been able to come out of her private chamber, she has permitted me… to see her…”
• Lady Southwell on the Final Days of Queen Elizabeth I.  March 24, 2019.  “her majesty told [Lady Scrope] (commanding her to conceal the same ) that she saw, one night, in her bed, her body exceeding lean, and fearful in a light of fire.”
• Hedingham Castle 1485-1562 with Virtual Tour Link.  January 29, 2019. “Mr. Sheffeld told me that afore the old Erle of Oxford tyme, that cam yn with King Henry the vii., the Castelle of Hengham was yn much ruine,…”
• The Battle Over Shakespeare's Early and Late Plays. September 24, 2018. “The answers to the post-Oxford dilemma, of course, are three.”
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
• Check out the Queen Elizabeth I Biography Page for many other articles.

Shakespeare and the Duke of Norfolk’s Lawes.

I am a hare, a beast of little strength,

Yet making sport, of love and gentle gestes,

For running swift, and holding out at length,

I beare the bell, above all other beastes.
George Turbervile's The Noble Arte of Venerie (1576).

Standard Citation: Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. "Shakespeare and the Duke of Norfolk’s Lawes." Virtual Grub Street,  April 14, 2019.  https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2019/04/shakespeare-and-duke-of-norfolks-lawes.html [date last accessed].

It is no secret that William Shakespeare loved the sports of the nobility of his time.  We know this because he constantly wields imagery drawn from them.  The images are fully knowledgeable of the terminology, rules and skills of each.  He makes no mistakes regarding them.

Foremost among them, he loved horsemanship and hawking.  Not far behind, is his attention to the types and training of hunting dogs.  Deer hunting (venery) itself is the source of a great many images.  Each of these pastimes reveals the poet and playwright to us.  In fact, they were clearly part of the formation of his personality.

 

Also part of his sporting experience was “coursing”.  The sport was an early precursor to today’s greyhound racing.  The hare the dogs chased was not mechanical.  The race was not run on a track.  The fastest dog did not necessarily win.  Dogs that could more effectively execute certain moves won more often than not.

While coursing goes back to ancient times, the version practiced by the nobility of England was codified by Thomas Howard, 4^th Duke of Norfolk.[1]  The rules were considered important enough that Norfolk undertook his “lawes of the Leash or Coursing”[2] by special command of Queen Elizabeth I.

These “lawes” can be checked against the earliest of Shakespeare’s references to the sport.  In 3 Henry VI, Queen Margaret calls upon her king to flee:

Mount you, my lord; towards Berwick post amain:

Edward and Richard, like a brace of greyhounds,

Having the fearful, flying hare in sight,

With firy eyes, sparkling for very wrath,

And bloody steel grasp'd in their ireful hands,

Are at our backs; and therefore hence amain.[3] 

We can check the playwrights veracity against the duke:

2. You ought not to course a hare with more than a brace of greyhounds.

The terminology is correct.  The event is properly described.  The Rule has been obeyed.

In another early play we learn of the premiere point-scoring maneuver of the sport.  Describing his love object, in the play Love’s Labour Lost, Dumaine avers:

Her Amber haires for foule hath amber coted.[4]

Again the Duke:

5. The dog that gives the first turn, if after that there be neither cote, slip, nor wrench, wins the wager.[5]

To “cote” is a specialized term of the sport.  It means to burst ahead of the competitors far enough to get clear of the brace and hare and be able to turn crossways to the rest forcing the hare to turn back.[6]  In more general terms, it means to “outstrip”.

The LLL quote has provoked debate for centuries now.  Surely, it is said, coted must be “quoted”.  Otherwise the line makes no sense.  Just what sense it is supposed to make if “quoted” is changed in, however, seems equally unclear.  The line is meant to say (I paraphrase), “The color of her hair breaks the laws of nature for it is more amber than actual amber.”  Her Amber has coted itself.  It is not possible much less permitted for a hound to cote itself in the sport.

The same mistake of editing ”coted” to “quoted” is made even more blatantly in the play Hamlet.  Sadly, the misquote has become the standard.  The original line makes perfected sense, and, left alone, is a stunningly precise image:

Polonlius. That hath made him mad.

I am sorry that with better heed and judgement

I had not coted him.[7] 

The minute one knows the sport from long personal experience, the passage is brilliantly descriptive.  Polonius thinks he has gotten ahead of Hamlet’s intention and turned Ophelia away like a greyhound coting another.  Shakespeare knows perfectly well that the greyhounds that are coted react with frenzy in the turn and display a determination akin to madness to get close to the hare again.

This is not the only reference to coursing in Hamlet.  Rosencrantz announces his and Guildenstern’s arrival  by explaining that they passed a troupe of players not far back.

To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what

lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you;

we coted them on the way; and hither are they coming, to

offer you service.[8]

This particular reference surely gives Hamlet food for thought.  Like Henry in the quote from 3 Henry VI, above, he is the hare in this image.  He is perceived by Rosencrantz as being pursued.  It is an inexhaustible and wily hare, indeed, who manages to survive the course.

The sport of coursing is so little known by scholars that we have been able to set a few historical failures straight here.  Other challenges are associated with the most famous quote of all, from The Merry Wives of Windsor, in which Mr. Page defends his greyhound “on Cotsall”. 

Slender. How does your fallow greyhound, sir ? I heard say he was outrun on Cotsall.

Page. It could not be judged, sir.

Slender. You'll not confess, you'll not confess.

Shallow. That he will not. 'Tis your fault, 'tis your fault, 'tis a good dog.

Page. A cur, sir.

Shallow. Sir, he's a good dog, and a fair dog ; can there be more said ? He is good and fair.[9]

The passage is actually unlikely to have been written by Shakespeare, however, and the evidence is too involved to address here.  The subject must await its own post.

The complete list of the Duke of Norfolk’s “lawes of the Leash or Coursing” can be found here.

---

[1] The 4^th Duke was later executed by the Queen on June 2, 1572.  For details see my Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof and Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584).

[2] Cox, Harding. “Coursing.”  Coursing and Falconry (1892)  4 ff. Cox’s source (as all writers on coursing) concerning the laws codified by order of Elizabeth I, is Gervase Markham’s Country Contentment (1631).

[3] 3 Henry VI, II.v.

[4] Love’s Labour Lost, IV.iii.89.

[5] Cox, 4.

[6] Ibid., 5.  “15. A cote is when a greyhound goeth endways by his fellow, and gives the hare a turn.”

[7] Hamlet, II.i.110-2.

[8] Ibid., II.ii.305-8.

[9] Merry Wives, I.i. 91.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Shakespeare’s Barnacles.  March 3, 2016.  “Prospero will wake, he fears, before they can murder him, and will cast a spell on them.”
• Hedingham Castle Fact Sheet with Virtual Tour Link.  January 20, 2019. “The modern entrance to the keep is on the first floor by way of a stone stair, discharging through the W. wall, where a fore-building used to stand.”
• Did Shake-speare Die of a Stroke?  August 03, 2014. "In October of 1601 De Vere begins to complain of his health again in letters to his brother-in-law, Robert Cecil, who was representing him in certain legal matters at Court."
• Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time.