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 references 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.
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Forget Oxford as Shakespeare and consider William Stanley, 6th. Earl of Derby, as Shaksepeare and Davies’ epigram begins to make sense. The dedication “To our English Terence Mr. Will: Shake-speare” is suspicious quite apart from the allusion to Terence.
“Will:” is abbreviated using a double dot in exactly the same way as Stanley abbreviated his forename in his signature , ” Will: Derby” (see plate VIII in Titherley’s “Shakespeare’s Identity” or the website “The URL of Derby”). Other names are not abbreviated in this way by Davies in The Scourge of Folly (e.g Epigram 155, To my worthily-disposed friend Mr. Sam. Daniell.) The hyphenated “Shake-speare” raises suspicion of a pseudonym. It has been suggested that contemporary printers used a hyphen between “e” and “s” to prevent the font from collapsing and this is why the author’s name appears in this form on the title page of many printed editions of the plays. However, in “The Scourge of Folly” other dedications (using the same font) that contain the two letters in conjunction are set without the hyphen (e.g. Epigram 184 “Against Women that weares locks like womanish men.”) suggesting that Davies’ orthography for the Shakespeare epigram was quite intentional.
The first line of the epigram suggests that it was written with tongue firmly in cheek (“Some say good Will (which I, in sport, do sing)) while the mention of the dedicatee playing Kingly parts in sport (i.e. for amusement) seems to rule out the Stratford Shakespeare who was a professional actor. William Stanley would have been a possible consort for Queen Elizabeth (the term “King” was sometimes used to describe a female monarch) due to his own entitlement to the throne through the female side of his family (the “meaner sort”)
(CF. The death of Mortimer from Henry VI part I
MORTIMER
“For by my mother I derived am
From Lionel Duke of Clarence, the third son
To King Edward the Third;”
and later
PLANTAGENET
Here dies the dusky torch of Mortimer,
Choked with ambition of the meaner sort:)
had he not compromised himself by getting involved with the theatre.
The second half of the epigram seems to be based around puns. “Raile” could be derived from the old French word “reille” and might be punning on one of its meanings “rule” which ties in with the idea of Kingship in the first half of the poem. The last two lines contain probable puns on the names of two plants “honesty” and “stock” (both given without italics) the first of which was known as “The money plant” and the second of which has a number of connotations including monetary and theatrical ones. There is a strong suggestion here of others prospering from the upright efforts of another. Considering what we know about the character of Shakespeare of Stratford it seems highly unlikely that he would have accepted such a situation with equanimity.
John Davies was an intimate of the Stanley family and, although he dedicated epigrams to other members of the clan (as well as scores of other “worthies” of his acquaintance) there is, very oddly, nothing intended for William Stanley, the sixth Earl of Derby….unless, of course, Davies regarded Stanley as “Our English Terence.”
Thanks for visiting, Jeffrey–and for commenting on my essay at length. You’re the first one to do so here. I’m too busy with other matters to wage an all-out campaign against your postition right now. I do have time for a few comments, though. One is that punctuation was, by our standards, crazy in Shakespeare’s day, so I can’t see that the colon in “Will:” means anything. Many printers used a colon similarly–perhaps mainly for nicknames, for I’m sure I’ve seen Jonson referred to in print as “Ben: Jonson.” The main explanation for the hyphen in “Shake-speare” is that it separated two words, as hyphens still do. Its use raises suspicion of a pseudonym only for cranks, I’m afraid. The great probability is that a single printer decided he liked it that way, and some other printers followed his course of action. Here we don’t know, by the way, who used the hyphen, Davies or the printer of his poem. I believe that in my essay I mention that Davies used “sport” to refer to acting. Another poem of his seems to specify that he considered Shakespeare an actor who was also a poet. I find your reading of puns strained–as strained as other readings of puns by anti-Stratfordians that posit a different True Author than you do. Aside from all that, massive direct documentary establishes Will: Shake-speare, the poet, as Will Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon.
Feel free to fire a response to this at me, but don’t be surprised if I fail to answer it. I fear I feel I’ve fully answered the authorship question in my book, Shakespeare and the Rigidniks.
–Bob
Perhaps punctuation in Davies’ time was “crazy” but in Davies’ work it seems pretty consistent; the only abbreviation using a colon which I have been able to find is the case in question. Epigram 156 ” To my well-accomplish’d friend Mr. Ben. Johnson” uses a single dot so that can’t be where you thought you’d seen it abbreviated as Ben: Jonson.
Crank though I might be I still haven’t seen a satisfactory explanation for why the hyphen should be used to divide a proper name in two. If Davies’ printer had a notion to do this sort of thing, why didn’t he adopt the same practise for a name like Edmund Ashfield, (with its Sylvan overtones) the dedicatee of epigram 169? Oh, I forgot, writers and printers were all crazy back in those days.
I’m intrigued by what means you managed to divine that John Davies used the word “Sport” to refer to acting as, on searching the “LEME” (Lexicons of Early Modern English) site, I was unable to discover a single definition of the word which links it with the activity; the nearest I came to it was in one of the definitions by Thomas Thomas (1587) “Play in actes” (which if it connects to the theatre at all, must refer to the play itself rather than those who act in it). Definitions of the word overwhelmingly favour the idea of “mirth” or “jest.” If anyone is straining after a reading it appears that you are in this case.
By contrast, my reading of the puns on the words “Honesty” and “Stocke” (both emphasised by use of a different font style) are not at all strained when viewed in context: ” And honesty thou sow’st, which they do reape.” What could be more obvious than the horticultural allusion?
Finally, if you have time, please direct me to the “massive direct documentary” (sic) which establishes the Stratford Shakespeare as the poet Shakespeare as, in thirty or more years of studying the subject, I’ve failed to come across it. And, no….I won’t be at all surprised if you fail to answer this response.
My book, Shakespeare and the Rigidniks, lists most of the documentary evidence for Shakespeare. I’m hoping to have a third edition out before long. It is presently out of print. But there’s little in it that you wouldn’t already be familiar with. Things like Shakespeare’s monument, the First Folio, all the times his name was on title-pages–as well as the complete absence of direct documentary evidence against him, or for anyone else–e.g., a letter mentioning that Derby wrote Hamlet, for instance.
There are all kinds of explanations for the hyphen’s use besides the obvious one, that it separated two words. One is that Shakespeare was an actor, so perhaps liked an eye-catching name. Artists are strange, you know. One of my poet friends, born Michael Anderson, is now known as “mIEKAL aND.”
Oh, and writers and printers were not crazy back then, but spelling was was erratic enough to be called a bit crazy. Reread my essay–I’m sure I explain “in sport” in it. I think Davies used it in a poem to Robert Armine.
I skimmed through my essay and didn’t find anything about “in sport.” So I went to HLAS and found this in an entry by Terry Ross:
“Terence was an ancient Roman playwright who came from humble origins, just like Shakespeare. Davies’s references to ‘playing’ parts ‘in sport’ refer to acting, and his repeated references to ‘kings’ is a play on the name of the King’s Men; the only other poems in the volume that similarly play on ‘king’ are those to Robert Armin and William Ostler, also members of the King’s Men, and the poem to Armin also refers to playing ‘in sport.’”
I tried to find a copy of Davies’s Armin poem but failed.
Thanks for the replies, but what I really want as documentary evidence is something like a letter that mentions that Will Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon wrote Hamlet, or anything else at all for that matter. There is actually more real documentary proof that Derby was a playwright in the form of a Jesuit spy’s letter of 30.06.1599 that reports that Derby was “busyed only in penning commodyes for the commoun players.”
Without seeing the Armin poem I can’t assess Davies’ use of the “in sport” term; what I would require to convince me is a definition dating from Davies’ time that “sport” referred to acting, and not the opinion of a commentator who fails to supply such evidence in support of such an interpretation. But, even if such was forthcoming, it would not rule out Derby as the real dedicatee of the epigram as it could be construed that by appearing as an actor he had compromised any chance he might have had to become Elizabeth’s consort. Furthermore a name on a title-page can be, and often is, a pseudonym. Other things like the monument, might have been part of a deception or evidence that others had been fooled by the various (supposed) subterfuges.
As for the hyphen, I’d like to have other instances of a proper name being separated in this way by printers of the time. As for your suggestion that it was more “eye-catching” do we have any contemporary play-bills etc., that even mention Shakespeare as an actor and, if so, is the name hyphenated. Strange that you posit all sorts of explanations for the use of the hyphen, but deem the one that says it’s a pseudonym to be the idea solely of cranks!
You mention as part of your documentary evidence for the Stratford man’s authorship lack of documentary evidence against him. This seems to constitute no proof at all in my opinion. In fact there seems to be plenty of indirect contemporary evidence against him. The “Poet Ape” sonnet of Jonson and the “Sogliardo” character in “Every man out of his humour” are generally thought to be allusions to him and hardly accord with the rapturous praise he bestows on the author Shakespeare in the first folio dedication. And I’m sure you are familiar with the “John Benson” parody which is included in the second edition of the sonnets with an engraving based on the Droeshout portrait and begins,
This shadowe is renowned Shakespear’s? Soule of the age
The applause? delight? the wonder of the Stage.
The Ostler poem describes the dedicatee as “The Roscius of these times.”
The Wiki article on Roscius states “By the Renaissance, Roscius formed the paradigm for dramatic excellence.” so I take it that when Davies’ addresses Ostler as “Sole king of actors” he meant just that and the term has nothing whatsoever to do with the King’s Men. I cannot comment on the Armin verse because I can’t find it either.
I still await
Sorry, sent the first part of the reply by mistake?
I was going to say that I’m waiting for someone to explain the “meaner sort” line in the Davies epigram with reference to Stratford Will. The “Arden Shakespeare” editor of Henry VI/1 explains the use of the term in the play as “Those whose claim to the crown, and whose rank, were inferior to his own.” How can this possibly apply to the Stratford actor who had no claim whatsoever to the crown of England? The term would certainly apply to an earl though.
Finally, I was intrigued by the line from the Microcosmos poem that you include in your article,
“And though the stage doth staine pure gentle bloode”
Why would Davies be mentioning “pure gentle bloode” when writing about actors unless he knew of instances when those who possessed it associated themselves with the stage? Shakespeare of Stratford doesn’t appear to have been a member of the blue-blooded set. Is this conjunction of the initials W.S. with a reference to the aristocracy another example of Davies being ” in the know” I wonder?
Jeffrey, I think the main difference between us is that I need less airtight an explanation for things than you do. It just doesn’t and can’t bother me that a few details in the Shakespeare story are odd, and that there’s a lot about him that we don’t know. The reverse is true for you. So, I’m sure we’ll never agree about the authorship. In any case, I really do have too many projects to take care of (or try to take care of) to get into another debate about something I’ve already argued dozens of times, often for years, with skeptics. So this really will be my last post to our discussion. Good luck with your investigation.
–Bob
Thank you, Bob. My investigations won’t lead me any further than the 6th. Earl of Derby as long as the supporters of the orthodox position continue to promise to provide all sorts of hard evidence to prove that their man was the author of the Shakespeare canon only to retire with apologies about lack of time, etc., etc., when pressed to do so.
As far as I’m concerned those who organised the deception about the authorship of the works fooled an awful lot of people at the time (as was the intention!) and still continue to do so, including all those who part with good money when they visit “Shakespeare’s Birthplace” and “Anne Hathaway’s cottage” under the mistaken impression that those places are actually what the Stratford tourist board claims them to be!
Still, congratulations on actually tackling the subject of the Davies epigram. His meanings are often obscure today (and might well have been intentionally so way back then, written only for the “in-crowd” to fully understand) but I personally regard the Will: Shakespeare epigram (along with Donne’s sonnet to “The E. of D.” and Spenser’s “Tears of the Muses” and “Colin Clouts come home againe”) as among the most significantly suggestive pieces of evidence that Derby wrote the Shakespeare works….or at least that those writers believed him to have been the real author.
Thank you, an excellent read. I feel the essay is too defensive about Davies’ motives(though an excellent analysis). Assume for a second Davies knows Terence was a front man: he then hints in these poems that Shakespeare is a front man too. This widens the conspiracy hugely. Davies was a minor figure in the Elizabeth world. If Davies was in the “know” then half of London must have been too. Not a very tight knit conspiracy, is it? Yet no-one let slip this secret openly.
When confronting anti-Stratfordians its best to keep it simple.
And imagine a poem expounding the merits of E.D.V. as a writer of “poesie”. We would never hear the end of it.
Good thinking, Jason–thanks. I’m hoping to get one final edition of my anti-Stratfordian tome, Shakespeare and the Rigidniks, published before too long. If so, I’ll slip your thought about Davies as conspirator into what I say about his Shakespeare-related poems.
all best, Bob
“I was going to say that I’m waiting for someone to explain the “meaner sort” line in the Davies epigram with reference to Stratford Will”
It didn’t mean what it would mean today – “unpleasant”, “nasty”, “miserly”. In the Elizabethan age it simply defined a social rank (or lack of it). In the context of this poem “the meaner sort” are those disqualified from being “companions for a king” – i.e. the general mass of humanity. Amongst them WS would seem like a king because of his huge accomplishments, nobility of bearing, etc.
“I’m intrigued by what means you managed to divine that John Davies used the word “Sport” to refer to acting as, on searching the “LEME” (Lexicons of Early Modern English) site, I was unable to discover a single definition of the word which links it with the activity; the nearest I came to it was in one of the definitions by Thomas Thomas (1587) “Play in actes” (which if it connects to the theatre at all, must refer to the play itself rather than those who act in it.”
Looks like you’ve answered your own question. “Sport” also refers to the play itself rather than to those who act in it (“players”). These days “sport” invariably means competitive sport, but in Shakespeare’s time it meant any kind of entertainment. But you must have seen that for yourself on LEME. As translations of Ludus you have “play in actes, mirth in words, sport, test, dalliance: a pleasant thing and not hard to be done: game, pastime, a pranke, feate, or pageant…” And you might add “revel” (“Our revels now are ended”). Davies is using the word “sport” in two senses: first as jest, second as theatrical entertainment. He is saying “in sport” (jest) that if WS hadn’t damned himself socially by becoming an actor “in sport” (plays) he might have sat at the king’s table. An obvious exaggeration.
I haven’t thought about this essay or the poem involved in a while, and am away from it right now, but I’m sure the “meaner sort” are just the sort of riff-raff Davies would not like to be around as much as he’d like to be around Shakespeare.
Mr. Grumman:
Following is the text of Davies’ poem to Armin:
To honest-gamesome Robin Armin
That tickles the spleen like an harmeless vermin.
ARMINE, what shall I say of thee but this,
Thou art a foole and knave? Both? Fie, I misse;
And wrong thee much, sith thou in deed art neither,
Although in show, thou playest both together.
Wee all (that’s kings and all) but players are
Upon this earthly stage; and should haue care
To play our parts so properly, that wee
May at the end gaine an applauditee.
But most men ouer-act, or misse-act, or misse
The action which to them peculier is;
And the more high the part is which they play,
The more they misse in what they do or say.
So that when off the stage, by death, they wend,
Men rather hisse at them then them commend.
But (honest Robin) thou with harmelesse mirth
Dost please the world; and (so) amongst the earth
That others but possesse with care, that stings;
So makest thy life more happy farre then kings.
And so much more our love should thee imbrace,
Sith still thou liu’st with some that dye to grace.
And yet art honest in despight of lets,
Which earnes more praise than forced-goodnesse gets.
So, play thy part, be honest still with mirth;
Then when th’art in the tyring-house of earth,
Thou being his seruant whom all kings do serue,
Maist for thy part well playd like praise deserue;
For in that tyring-house when either bee,
Y’are one mans men and equall in degree.
So thou, in sport, the happiest men dost schoole –
To do as thou dost – wisely play the foole.
I would like to buy your book. I have the address but would like to know the cost. Please let me know.
Hi, Mark. Thanks for the interesting Davies poem. Ten dollars
to my address will get you a copy of my book. Thanks much for
the interest.
all best, Bob
Just as an FYI, John Davies was an intimate of the de Vere family and his Orchestra (1596), like Davies’ 1595 epithalamium, was composed for the marriage of Elizabeth Vere and William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby.
Please see the excellent article by Warren Hope, PhD, “The Singing Swallow: Sir John Davies and Shakespeare,” Elizabethan Review 21-39.
He is saying “in sport” (jest) that if WS hadn’t damned himself socially by becoming an actor “in sport” (plays) he might have sat at the king’s table. An obvious exaggeration.
Indeed, hyperbole.
And as a footnote, here is the conclusion of Davies poem, in which he praises the “singing swallow,” whom he has already described as one who “under a shadow sings.”
O that I might that singing swallow hear
To whom I owe my service and my love,
His sugr’d tunes would so enchant mine ear,
And in my mind such sacred fury move,
As I should knock at heav’n’s great gate above
With my proud rhymes, while of this heav’nly state
I so aspire the shadow to relate.
I will leave it to the local defenders of the Shakespearean status quo ante to explain why Davies is praising the Earl of Oxford in lines reminiscent of the (unpublished) Shake-Speare Sonnet 29. http://shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/29.html
please correct “swinging Swallow.” Perhaps he was swinging, but Davies does print “singing.” Apologies for the error.
Is there direct evidence that Davies was praising Oxford? I would agree that the passage quoted was influenced by Shakespeare’s sonnet, but why should that require it to be to Oxford? And I’m confused as to what your point here is, Psi.
Will now correct your typo, “>,” which I assume should be “s.”
Hi Bob. Yes. Please see the cited sources. Davies was very close to the Oxford clan in the mid to late 1590s, with many documented connections. Davies personifies Oxford as the swallow perhaps because the name de Vere was punned on the latin Ver, Veris (spring) — see, for example, Thomas Nashe’s 1592 *Summer’s Last Will and Testament,* in which the prodigal Ver, a gentle parody of the then nearly bankrupt de Vere, is a prominent character. I’m sure you’ve heard of the proverb “one swallow does not a summer make.” In this case, Davies is referring to de Vere as the swallow of spring that is announcing the coming summer. Please note how hyperbolic is praise is when applied to de Vere until you factor in “Shakespeare.”
Sorry, Psi, no time to read Warren Hope (whom I’ve read before and found to be just one more crank). What I’d be interested in seeing is some kind of direct evidence that Oxford is the singing swallow, like a title, “To My Pal Ed DeVere.”
I’d tend, by the way, to attribute the hyperbole to DeVere’s being a bigshot who once gave away a lot of money and might do so again, particularly inasmuch as we know he was not Shakespeare.
–Bob
“I find no concealed meanings in it.”
This was your first mistake.
Not a useful remark, Roger–unless you quote where I say this (no doubt I did, but can’t easily find it, probably due to my computer incompetence)–and then indicate why I’m wrong. I think I was speaking of concealed message rather than concealed meanings. Most poems can be said to have concealed meanings, although I would differentiate “concealed” (or secret) meanings from “implicit meanings.” Not many poems have secret meanings. In other words, define your meaning, don’t take it for granted a readers will have the same ones as you.