POETICKS

On Three Shakespeare-Related Poems By John Davies

We have three poems called epigrams, by John Davies of Hereford, that people debating who wrote the works of Shakespeare cannot avoid discussing. The most important of them is the following, which was published in 1610:

To Our English Terence, Mr Will. Shake-speare

Some say (good Will), which I, in sport, do sing,
Hadst thou not played some Kingly parts in sport,
Thou hadst been a companion for a King;
And been a King among the meaner sort.
Some others rail; but, rail as they think fit,
Thou hast no railing, but, a reigning Wit:
And honesty thou sowst, which they do reap;
So, to increase their stock which they do keep.

Needless to say, the views of Gulielmus-Affirmers and Rejectors about the meaning of this poem are decidedly incompatible. What is perhaps their worst clash begins even before the body of the poem. It concerns just what Davies meant by “Terence.”

Oxfordian Charlton Ogburn has trouble with this because Terence wrote comedies, and Shakespeare was a great tragedian. Well, the probability, as Irvin Matus theorizes, is that Davies was merely complimenting Shakespeare for his gift for verbal clarity and elegance, Terence having been most esteemed by the Elizabethans for such a gift. According to Matus, Terence “was in the curriculum of Westminster School, one of the great schools of the day, ‘for the better learning (of) the pure Roman style.’” Almost every contemporary writer commenting on Shakespeare’s style praised its mellifluousness or the like. And most of what Shakespeare wrote was clear, particularly when contrasted to the style it replaced, Lyly’s euphuism, which was very ornate and affected-seeming.

Carrying on for Ogburn, Diana Price suggests that Davies described Shakespeare as a Terence because Terence was a front man for aristocrats, as none other than famed literary historian Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) held. He thought that only aristocrats could have been refined enough to write elegantly.  Terence was an African slave.  (However, as John W. Kennedy said about this at HLAS when a Gulielmus-Rejector repeated Montaigne’s opinion, “In Roman times, being a slave had virtually no bearing on literacy. Teachers were slaves.”) The English scholar, Roger Ascham (1515-1568) is also brought up in support of the Terence-as-Front view, for his posthumous The Scholemaster (1570) asserts without evidence that Terence’s name was on some works he did not write.

Price argues her case further by pointing out the hyphen Davies used in Shakespeare’s name, which “Anti-Stratfordians theorize . . . signifies a pseudonym, and in this instance the sobriquet, ‘our English Terence,’ reinforces this theory.” That’s because Terence in his time was “accused of taking credit for the plays of aristocratic authors Scipio and Laelius.” Fascinating lapse of logic this: “Shake-speare” equals “Terence,” according to Davies; “Terence” equals his front-man, Shaksper and “Shake-speare” equals Oxford, according to Price. Which leads to Shaksper equals Oxford.

There are many reasons to believe Davies considered Terence a genuine author, not anyone’s front, in his title. Where in the poem does Davies suggest that Terence was, as Terence may have been, indebted to Scipio and Laelius, or that Shakespeare was any kind of front? Since we see no references to any of these stories about Terence, the only reasonable conclusion is that Davies was speaking of Shakespeare as “our Terence” because Shakespeare was one of the great writers of English comedies just as Terence was one of the great writers of Latin comedies.

Terry Ross has more to say in response to Price’s take on Terence. He states that except for a few explicit reference to Laelius or Scipio, Terence, in Shakespeare’s time, was always referred to as a genuine author.  “His name was not proverbial for a ‘front.’” Ross draws attention to the front matter to the 1609 quarto of Troilus and Cressida which describes that play as deserving of serious discussion “as the best comedy in Terence or Plautus.” Clearly, whoever wrote this was calling Terence a superior writer of comedy, like Plautus, as well as using the Roman to compliment Shakespeare as a writer.

Another allusion to Terence occurs in a poem of 1614 that brings up Shakespeare by Thomas Freeman:

….Who loves chaste life, there’s Lucrece for a teacher;
Who list read lust, there’s Venus and Adonis,
True model of a most lascivious lecher.
Besides, in plays thy wit winds like Meander,
Whence needy new composers borrow more
Than Terence doth from Plautus or Meander….

Freeman is clearly saying “new composers” borrow more from Shakespeare than Terence did from Plautus or Meander. In other words, Terence, for Freeman, is indeed a borrower, but still a playwright, and Shakespeare not a borrower, but one borrowed from.

There’s also Meres, who lists “the best poets for comedy … among the Latines” as “Plautus, Terence, Naevius, Sext. Turpilius, Licinus Imbrex, and Virgilius Romanus”; Shakespeare is listed as one of “the best for Comedy among us.” Meres as clearly as Freeman speaks of Terence as a genuine (superior) playwright. Ross, drawing on Don Cameron Allen’s Francis Meres’s Treatise “Poetrie”: A Critical Edition, adds that “Textor, an important Meres source for his list of the best Latin poets, does not even mention the Scipio/Laelius rumors in his capsule bio of the playwright, although Textor does mention Terence’s having been a slave and his having been born in Africa.

In his First Folio eulogy to Shakespeare, Ben Jonson compares him to “tart Aristophanes, / Neat Terence, witty Plautus ….” all of whom he plainly considered playwrights of note.  Add to these George Puttenham (1529-1590), who said, “There were also Poets that wrote onely for the stage, I means playes and interludes, to recreate the people with matters of disporte, and to that intent did set forth in shewes & pageants, accompanied with speach the common  behauiours and maner of life of priuate persons, and such as were the meaner sort of men, and they were called Comicall Poets, of whom among the Greekes Menander and Aristophanes were most excellent, with the Latines Terence and Plautus.”

All this is not enough to satisfy the Guliemus-Rejectors. They claim that any educated person of Shakespeare’s time who read the Davies poem would be aware of Ascham’s or Montaigne’s opinion of Terence, and would have as likely thought of him as a front as they would have thought him a genuine (important) playwright. Ross points out, however, that even in the few cases when some Elizabethan writer discusses the Scipio/Laelius rumors, they do not consider him essentially as a front. “Sidney in his Apology said, ‘Laelius, called the Romane Socrates [was] himselfe a Poet; so as part of Heautontimo- roumenon in Terence, was supposed to bee made by him’ — note the qualifying ‘was supposed’ and the limited scope of Laelius’s possible contribution to Terence’s work. Sidney’s other references to Terence speak of him as the author of the works attributed to him.”

Ascham does say that “some Comedies” with Terence’s name on them were written “by worthy Scipio, and wise Laelius, and namely Heauton: and Adelphi.” But he leaves four of Terence’s comedies to him. Elsewhere in Ascham’s The Scholemaster, Terence shows up as a genuine writer of the works credited to him, never as a front of some sort. As for Montaigne, he explicitly states that he thought Scipio and Laelius wrote the comedies of Terence in one of his essays, but whenever he elsewhere refers to those comedies, he treats them as by Terence. That is, he writes of Terence not as a front but as an author.

The long and the short of it is that there is little reason to suspect from the title alone that Davies is not complimenting Shakespeare as a fine dramatist. There is strong support for this in the body of the poem. Davies, with no hint whatever of irony, says there that Shakespeare was an actor who could have been a companion of the king had he not been an actor. He also says Shakespeare has a “reigning wit” and sows honesty. Nowhere does he say anything against his poem’s subject. It would therefore be ridiculously against sane poetic decorum for his title to disparage him.

But, argue some Gulielmus-Rejectors, what about the two poems in Davies’s book after his poem to Shakespeare that are, respectively, to “No-body” and to “Some-body.”  Shouldn’t they make one suspicious?  Not me. Evidently, Davies wanted to flatter two friends who were shy, so what? Actually, the sequence of poems the poem and the ones to “No-body” and “Some-body” are part of supports the proposition that Davies was complimenting Shakespeare. Here on the titles of the poems in it, in order:

155. To my worthily-disposed friend, Mr. Sam. Daniell.

156. To my well-accomplishÆd friend Mr. Ben Johnson.

157. To my much esteemed Mr. Inego Jones, our English Zeuxis and Vitruvius.

158. To my worthy kinde friend Mr. Isacke Simonds.

159. To our English Terence Mr. Will: Shake-speare.

160. To his most constant, though most unknowne friend; No-body.

161. To my neere-deere wel-knowne friend; Some-body.

162. To my much-regarded and approved good friend Thomas Marbery, Esq.

163. To my right deere friend approved for such, John Panton Esquire [followed by others to his dear pupil, his beloved friend, etc.]

According to Pat Dooley, Diana Price’s husband, we’re supposed to notice how different from the others Davies’s poem to Shakespeare is. “When Davies is personally acquainted with someone it is very obvious. It would appear that he does not have such a relationship with Shakespeare. We then have the odd choice of playwright. Terence was believed to be a front for aristocratic playwrights and other Elizabethan writers said as much.”

Right. So let’s go through the list again, this time with their titles as Dooley would take them to be (and shortened):

155. To my friend Daniell, compliments (with, perhaps, some teasing).

156. To my friend Johnson, compliments (with, perhaps, some teasing).

157. To my friend Jones, compliments (with, perhaps, some teasing).

158. To my friend Simonds, compliments (with, perhaps, some teasing).

159. To my non-friend, Shake-speare, derision and scorn.

160. To my friend No-body, compliments (with, perhaps, some teasing).

161. To my friend Some-body, compliments (with, perhaps, some teasing).

162. To my friend Marbery, compliments (with, perhaps, some teasing).

163. To my friend Panton, compliments (with, perhaps, some teasing).

Hmmmm.

I’ve already given the gist of my interpretation of the poem, itself, but will now present my detailed reading.  I find no concealed meanings in it. Davies, for me, Davies considers Shakespeare a superior dramatist, as Terence was. He reports that Shakespeare had played some “Kingly parts in sport.” To “play a part” is, of course, what actors do. He did this “in sport,” as Davies writes his poem “in sport,” which surely indicates that he played the “Kingly parts” as an artist—that is, his playing the parts in sport emphasizes his actions as those of an actor. Strongly supporting this is another of Davies’s epigrams. It is to the actor Robert Armin who acted in Shakespeare’s company, and is believed to have played the fools in Shakespeare’s plays after 1599. In it Davies says of Armin that he “in sport . . . wisely play(s) the fool.” Elsewhere in that poem Davies makes it unambiguous that he considers Armin an actor.

According to Davies, some persons said that if “good Will” had not been an actor, he could have been a companion to a King. This seems a simple compliment like telling a lawyer that if he hadn’t gone into law, he might have become a baseball star. As “a companion for a King,” he would have been a king himself for lower types. That stands by iteself, but I suspect Davies is here suggesting that “the meaner sort,” or persons Davies looks down on, do not now think much of Will but would, being status-conscious boobs, if he were a king’s companion.

Some make fun of the notion, railing at it, but Shakespeare is above trivial insults. In the words of the clumsy couplet with which Davies ends his poem, he describes Will as sowing honesty, which then also meant “honour.” This, those who railed reaped, to increase their own stock of honour/honesty. To me it looks like “which they do keep” is in the poem to finish off the line and provide a rhyme for “reap.” I’d read the final line to mean, simply, “thus they increase the stock of honesty they have on hand.”

Gulielmus-Rejectors don’t consider the poem so straight-forward. Ogburn accepts that Davies was testifying that Shakespeare, the writer, acted (an important admission most Gulielmus-Rejectors would be uncomfortable with). He goes further, though, and finds evidence that Davies also testified that Shakespeare was a nobleman. How? Why, only a noble could be “a companion for a king,” the word, “companion” deriving from the Latin word, “comes,” which (approximately) means “count.” What can one say against such strained reasoning?

Diana Price paraphrases this poem as follows:

“To our own Battillus (by which she means a front although copious research has shown that the Romans considered the actual Battillus simply a poor poet who stole from other poets, not a front), Master Will: Shake-speare

“Scuttlebutt has it, my good man Will (which I, just for fun, put in verse), that had you not behaved arrogantly, as though you were the king of the troupe, you would still be a member of the King’s Men, and a king among those lowly actors and shareholders. Some of the King’s Men criticize you, as they believe you crossed them. But you don’t get abusive. You keep your condescending sense of humor. And you have inspired the King’s Men to value honesty, because now they take more care to hold on to their “Stock” of playbooks (“which they do keep”). They do not want them sold out from under them by someone dishonest like you. So now they will guard their assets (“increase their stock”), and it will be more difficult for you to get your hands on them, since you are no longer a partner in the operation.

I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide who has a better grip on the poem, Price or I.

Price, incidentally, also finds a few Shakespearean scholars unable to follow the poem to support her characterization of it as “cryptic.” But it is quite straight-forward for such a poem from such a time. I won’t say I’ve got it exactly, but I do think I’ve gotten it as close as one can get any such poem from that far back. I am certain I’ve shown that the poem is not cryptic (although anyone can force mystery into it, or any poem, if sufficiently driven to by a need to ambiguate it–and find some Shakespearean scholar to agree with one).

Regardless of how she interprets the poem, Price is sure it presents no “contemporaneous personal literary evidence” (a term she refuses explicitly to define) for him. I do not concur. It is true that Davies does not explicitly say anywhere in the poem that he personally knew Shakespeare. In support of this, she notes that he used the editiorial “our” in referring to him. On top of that, he starts his poem not by telling us his opinion of Shakespeare but what “some” said about him.

Yet, John Chamberlain write in a letter of Spenser, “our principal poet,” as having died without indicating that he had personally known him, and his testimony satisfies Price as personal evidence that Spenser was a writer. The reasoning seems to be that if one testifies that an alleged writer is a person in some way other than as a writer, it makes the testimony personal. Chamberlain does mention a few details about a person named Spenser beside the fact that he died, but I claim Davies tells us at least as much that is personal about Shakespeare– as well as suggests he knew him personally.

Before I turn to what Davies said in his “English Terence” poem to indicate that, I feel it would be useful to examine two poems by Davies that were published before it that most Shakespearean scholars, if not most Gulielmus-Rejectors, agree are about William Shakespeare the author. The first is from his Microcosmos (1603):

Players, I love yee, and your Qualitie,
As ye are Men, that pass time not abus’d:
And some I love for painting, poesie W.S. R.B.
And say fell fortune cannot be excus’d,
That hath for better uses you refused:
Wit, Courage, good shape, good partes and all goode,
As long as all these goods are no worse us’d,
And though the stage doth staine pure gentle bloode
Yet generous yee are in minde and moode.

This has two marginal notes besides the one with the initials: “Simonides saith, that painting is a dumb Poesy, & Poesy a speaking painting” and “Roscius was said for his excellency in his quality, to be only worthy to come on the stage, and for his honesty to be more worthy then to come thereon (‘then’ being almost certainly a form of ‘than’).”

These lines seem clearly to speak of the “Players” Richard Burbage (R.B.) and William Shakespeare (W.S), as—respectively—a painter and a poet, Thomas Middleton having written that Burbage was “excellent both player and painter” and Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, among other documents, confirming that someone with the initials, W.S., was a poet. Note that Davies speaks of personal traits of R.B. and W.S.: they are “generous . . . in mind and mood.” How would he know that if he weren’t personally acquainted with these men? Okay, someone could have told him, but is it really likely that he would have written the two poems quoted so far, and a third, about an actor he seems to know a lot about, and describes as a poet, like himself, without ever making his personal acquaintance? Even granting that he did not know Burbage or Shakespeare, surely he bestows as  much personhood on them by describing them each as actors who were gifted in a second art, and possessing the personal trait of generosity, as Chamberlain bestows on Spenser when he described his place and time of death, his vocation as a poet and he came “lately out of Ireland.”

Davies’s other poem to Shakespeare–or to W.S.–is the following, from his The Civil Warres of Death and Fortune (1605):

Some followed her by acting all mens parts Stage Players
These on a Stage she rais’d (in scorne) to fall:
And made them Mirrors, by their acting Arts,
Wherin men saw their faults, though ne’r so small:
Yet soome she guerdond not, to their desarts; W.S. R.B.
But, othersome, were but ill-actioned all:
Who while they acted ill, ill staid behinde,
(By custome of their maners) in their minde.

Again, the poet indicates a knowledge of W.S. and R.B. as men by referring to how the two acted off the stage; that is, he claims that when they acted the roles of evil characters (“acted ill”), their minds remained uncontaminated “By custome of their maners,” or due to the propriety of their real-life manners. He is also aware that the two have not be rewarded to the extent he thinks they should have been, which indicate that, at the very least, he thinks of them as real persons who can be slighted, just as he thinks of them as real persons who have a vocation as stage players.

Davies’s later-published poem combines with these in granting Shakespeare personhood (and indicating that her probably knew him personally). Here it is, again:

To Our English Terence, Mr Will. Shake-speare

Some say (good Will), which I, in sport, do sing,
Hadst thou not played some Kingly parts in sport,
Thou hadst been a companion for a King;
And been a King among the meaner sort.
Some others rail; but, rail as they think fit,
Thou hast no railing, but, a reigning Wit:
And honesty thou sowst, which they do reap;
So, to increase their stock which they do keep.

Yes, Davies addresses Shakespeare as “our,” not “my,” “English Terence.” The reason for that should be obvious to anyone: to claim another is a great writer in the eyes of everyone is a somewhat larger compliment that to claim he is a great writer in one’s own eyes, alone, and Davies wanted to compliment Shakespeare. And why should he intrude himself into this single great compliment by saying, “My Friend, The English Terence, Mr. Will: Shake-speare?” I’ve already discussed the reference to Terence and why that is certainly a compliment. Moreover, the poem’s centering a group on nine poems, all the others of which are to friends of Davies’s, strongly suggests that this one was to a friend of his, too.

We aren’t finished with the title of the poem, though, for–look: it makes “Shake-speare” a gentleman! Do pseudonyms get coats of arms, or do actual persons?

It is also true that Davies starts the main text of his poem with a reference to what certain others say about Shakespeare. But this is not “impersonal,” just a report as to what the person, Shakespeare, is having said about him. Moreover, Davies indicates they say about him, which makes it his own view, too. That is, he is directly reporting that he believes that if Shakespeare had not been an actor (with a mention of some of the kinds of roles he played), he’d be a big man in some court. Poetic hyperbole, but not hugely, since commoners could and did sometimes rise to positions of political power in those times. So both “some” and Davies are testifying that Shakespeare was an actor who might have been “more,” two data that seem to establish him as a genuine person the way Chamberlain established Spenser as one.

Stronger evidence is in those three lines, too: Davies’s use of the intimate second person singular–”thou. This is not something he did in the other poems in this set, but does twice more in this poem. Surely, it is relevant that he also addressed Shakespeare as “good Will,” using a nickname–in other words, addressing him as a familiar acquaintance who was a good person. Later, Davies reveals his knowledge that Shakespeare does not rail, and has honesty, or honor, which he sows. He could be speaking here only of his writing, but taken in context with everything else we know he said about Shakespeare, that seems less likely than that he was speaking of him as a person.

(An interesting side-point is that Shakespeare is presented as alive through Davies’s use of the present tense in describing him in this poem. As if the fact that this “Shake-speare” was an actor, and not a companion of kings or the equivalent, weren’t enough to distinguish him from Oxford, this suggests Shakespeare was alive in 1610 or 1611, when the poem was published. That’s six or seven years after Oxford died. The poem, of course, was written before 1610, but had to have been written after 1603, when Shakespeare began acting “King’s roles”–as a member of the King’s Men.)

I can’t claim that the three epigrams by Davies that I’ve discussed are certain personal evidence for Shakespeare, but they surely seem as strong personal evidence for him as Chamberlain’s for Spenser, or the law books John Marston’s father left him in his will that Price counts as evidence that he was an author. The evidence of Meres, and of Heywood when he wrote of personal knowledge that Shakespeare, long after Oxford was dead, was upset that his name was falsely attached to some of Heywood’s poems, which I consider equally personal (and contemporaneous), are corroboration. Assuming we ignore posthumous evidence, the way Price does. It is not likely that Diana Price will ever agree to that, however.