1 F.Bowers (ed.), Satiromastix, V, ii, 298–307, in Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1953, vol. 1, p. 382.
2 A.Dyce (ed.), ‘Master Francis Beaumont’s Letter to Ben Jonson’, in The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, London, Edward Moxon, 1843–6, vol. 11, pp. 501–2.
3 F.L.Lucas (ed.), The Duchess of Malfi, in The Complete Works of John Webster, London, Chatto & Windus, 1927, vol. 2, p. 34.
4 J.B.Leishman (ed.), The Second Part of the Return from Parnassus (IV, iii, 1772–3), in The Three Parnassus Plays 1598–1601, London, Nicolson & Watson, 1949, p. 337.
5 The epithet is Jonson’s, ‘To the Memory of my Beloved Mr William Shakespeare’, line 55, Ben Jonson, edited C.H.Herford and P.E.Simpson, Oxford, Clarendon Press, vol. VIII, p. 392.
6 O.L.Dick (ed.), Aubrey’s Brief Lives, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1962 (originally published Secker & Warburg, 1949), p. 128.
7 A.Barton, Ben Jonson, Dramatist, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984, p. 94.
8 A.Nicoll, ‘The dramatic portrait of George Chapman’, PQ, XLI (1962), pp. 215–28.
9 F.P.Wilson, Marlowe and the Early Shakespeare, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1953.
10 F.Cioffi, ‘Intention and interpretation in literature’, in D.Newton-De Molina (ed.), On Literary Intention, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1976, p. 69.
11 R.W.Dent, John Webster’s Borrowing, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1960.
1 Hamlet, First Quarto, 1603 (facsimile), Menston, Scolar Press, 1972, Sig. E3r.
2 W.Reavely Gair, The Children of Paul’s. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982, p. 133.
3 References to the folio text are to C.Hinman (ed.), The Norton Facsimile, the First Folio of Shakespeare, New York, W.W.Norton, 1968.
4 Gair, op. cit., p. 133; I.Smith, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars Playhouse, London, Peter Owen, 1966, p. 180.
5 C.T.Onions, A Shakespeare Glossary, enlarged and revised by R.D.Eagleson, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1986, ‘Innovation’. See also H.Child and J.Dover Wilson (eds), Hamlet, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (reprinted) 1954, note to II, ii, 335–6.
6 H.Jenkins (ed.), Hamlet (Arden edition), London, Methuen, 1982, note to II, ii, 330–1. Quotations will be from this edition unless otherwise indicated.
7 Child and Wilson, ed. cit., note to II, ii, 335–6.
8 ibid., note to II, ii, 332.
9 ibid., note to II, ii, 339.
10 A.Harbage, Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions, New York, Macmillan, 1952, p. 44.
11 ibid., p. 45.
12 Jenkins, ed. cit., p. 13.
13 ibid., p. 1.
14 Child and Wilson, ed. cit., p. ix.
15 V.F.Stern, Gabriel Harvey, His Life, Marginalia and Library, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1979, p. 127.
16 R.A.Foakes and R.T.Rickert (eds), Henslowe’s Diary, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1961, p. 55.
17 A.Harbage, Shakespeare’s Audience, New York, Columbia University Press, 1941, Appendix IV, p. 178.
18 Foakes and Rickert, ed. cit., p. 203.
19 Harbage, Shakespeare’s Audience, p. 178.
20 C.Hoy, Introductions, Notes and Commentaries to Texts in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, edited by Fredson Bowers, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980, vol.4, pp. 70–1.
21 C.H.Herford and P. and E.Simpson (eds), Bartholomew Fair, Induction, 106–7, in Ben Jonson, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1938, vol. 6, p. 16.
22 F.Bowers (ed.), Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1953, vol. 4, p. 182.
23 J.D.Jowett (ed.), Henry Chettle, The Tragedy of Hoffman, Nottingham, Nottingham University Press, 1983, line 1406.
24 G.K.Hunter (ed.), Marston, Antonio’s Revenge, London, Edward Arnold, 1966, p. xviii. See also Jenkins (ed.), Hamlet, pp. 7–13.
25 G.Bullough (ed.), Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966, vol.7, pp. 16–17. (Referred to as NDSS hereafter).
26 W.Reavely Gair (ed.), Marston, Antonio’s Revenge, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1978, p. 15. Quotations are from this edition.
27 The story was first recorded in Rowe’s 1709 edition of Shakespeare: ‘She was so well pleas’d with the admirable Character of Falstaff in the two Parts of Henry the Fourth, that she commanded him to continue it for one Play more, and to shew him in Love.’ Quoted in The Merry Wives of Windsor, edited H.J.Oliver (Arden edition), London, Methuen, 1971, p. xlv.
28 Jenkins, ed. cit., p. 10.
29 Gair, ed. cit., I, iii, 22, 24–6; II, i, 49–50, 52; III, iv, 25–6, 41–3.
30 E.Prosser, Hamlet and Revenge, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2nd edn, 1971, pp. 221–7. Also L.L.Martz, The Poetry of Meditation, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1954, pp. 137–8.
31 Martz, op. cit., p. 14, quotes from a Jacobean translation of Luis de Granada: ‘praier is also taken in another more large sense; to wit: for every lifting up of our heart to God…both meditation and contemplation, and every other good thought may also be called a Prayer.’
32 P.R.Horne, The Tragedies of Gianbattista Cinthio, London, Oxford University Press, 1962, pp. 51–2.
33 See my account of Giraldi’s Orbecche and Arrenopia in D.L.Farley-Hills, Jacobean Drama, London, Macmillan, 1988, pp. 50–6.
34 W.Haller (ed.), ‘Areopagitica’, in The Works of John Milton, New York, Columbia University Press, 1931, vol. 4, p. 311.
35 Jenkins, ed. cit., note to I, ii, 72.
36 Farley-Hills, op. cit. p. 55.
37 Jenkins, ed. cit., long note to I, ii, 1 (p. 433).
38 W.Ralegh (ed.), Johnson on Shakespeare, London, Oxford University Press, 1908, reprinted 1929, p. 193.
39 Jenkins, ed. cit., long note to III, iii, 89–95 (pp. 513–15).
40 ibid., note to III, iv, 29.
41 For an amusing example of this see L.Bohannon, ‘Shakespeare in the Bush’, Natural History, vol. 75 (1966).
42 Jenkins, ed. cit., note to I, i, 82 and long note to I, iv, 12–13 (p. 447).
43 J.Dover Wilson, What Happens in Hamlet, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1935, p. 101.
44 A.C.Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy, London, Macmillan, 1905, 2nd edn reprinted 1926, pp. 153ff.
45 Bullough, NDSS, vol.7, p. 52.
46 Jenkins, ed. cit., p. 149.
47 ibid., p. 149.
48 Bullough, NDSS, vol. 7, pp. 51–2.
49 cf. for instance I, v, 47–57 (the Ghost) with III, iv, 91–4, 183–9 (Hamlet).
50 Dover Wilson explicitly counters these assumptions. See M.Weitz, Hamlet and the Philosophy of Literary Criticism, London, Faber & Faber, 1972, originally published by Chicago University Press, 1964, pp. 25–6.
51 R.Brown (ed.), Merchant of Venice, (Arden edition), London, Methuen, 1959, reprinted 1961, I, iii, 93.
52 K.Muir (ed.), Macbeth, (Arden edition), London, Methuen, 1959, reprinted 1961, I, iii, 123–4.
53 Bradley, op. cit., p. 97.
54 Prosser, op. cit., p. 180.
55 Jenkins, ed. cit., p. 155.
56 T.S.Eliot, ‘Hamlet’, Selected Essays, London, Faber & Faber, 1934.
57 Jenkins, ed. cit., pp. 136–40.
58 ibid., long note to V, i, 139–57, (p. 551).
59 A.Holaday (ed.), ‘Dedication of Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois’, in The Plays of George Chapman, The Tragedies, Bury St Edmunds, St Edmundsbury Press, 1987, p. 442.
1 R.A.Foakes and R.T.Rickert (eds), Henslowe’s Diary, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1961, pp. 47, 106–7, 121.
2 A.W.Weiner (ed.), Thomas Heywood’s The Iron Age, New York and London, Garland Publishing, 1979. Quotations are from this edition. For detailed discussion of the dating see pp. xix–xxxv.
3 ibid., p. xxiii.
4 ibid., pp. xxv–xxxiii.
5 Geoffrey Bullough (following J.S. P.Tatlock) attempts a reconstruction of the plot of what he takes to be this play on the basis of a plot fragment extant in the British Museum Library. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973, vol. 6, pp. 98–9.
6 A.W.Weiner, ed. cit., p. xxxiii.
7 K.Palmer (ed.), Troilus and Cressida (Arden edition), London, Methuen, 1982, p. 19. Quotations are from this edition.
8 ibid., note to Prologue 28.
9 Bullough, NDSS, vol.6, pp. 220–1.
10 Weiner, ed. cit., p. [lxvii?].
11 ibid., pp. 167–8 (notes).
12 Quotations from Part 2 are from the edition of R.H.Shepherd, Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood, 1874, reprinted New York, Russell & Russell, 1964, vol.3, pp. 430–1. I make some minor changes in punctuation.
13 Weiner, op. cit., p.xxxv.
14 ibid., p.xxii.
15 ibid., pp.xvi–xviii.
16 e.g. Coriolanus, II, i, 234, ‘Nor, shewing, as the manner is, his wounds/To the people, beg their stinking breaths’; Tempest, Epilogue 11, ‘But release me from my bands/With the help of your good hands:/Gentle breath of yours my sails/Must fill, or else my project fails.’
17 Palmer, ed. cit., Appendix, p. 309.
18 Kenneth Muir makes this suggestion in the note on ‘clapper-claw’ in his edition of Troilus and Cressida, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1982, p. 193, n.2.
19 C.T.Onions, A Shakespeare Glossary, enlarged and revised by R.D.Eagleson, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1986, ‘clapper-claw’.
20 Palmer, ed. cit., pp. 21–2.
21 R.Kimbrough, Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida and its Setting, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1964, p. 21.
22 Palmer, ed. cit., Appendix I, p. 306.
23 G.Taylor, ‘Troilus and Cressida: bibliography, performance and interpretation’, in Shakespeare Studies, xv, 1982.
24 Foakes and Rickert, ed. cit., Introduction, pp. xxx–xxxi. See also J.C.Maxwell’s discussion in his edition of Titus Andronicus (Arden edition), London, Methuen, 3rd edn, 1961, pp. xxii–xxiii.
25 Palmer, ed. cit., Appendix II, p. 309.
26 ibid., Appendix I, p. 306 and Appendix II, p. 307, n. 2.
27 J.B.Leishman (ed.), The Second Part of the Return from Parnassus (IV, iii, 1770–3), in The Three Parnassus Plays 1598–1601, London, Ivor Nicolson & Watson, 1949, p. 337.
28 F.N.Robinson (ed.), Troilus and Criseyde, in Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, London, Oxford University Press, 2nd edn, 1957, V, 1814–25.
29 H.Bergson (ed.), Lydgate’s Troy Book, EETS, n.s. 97, 1906, Millwood, New York, Kraus reprint, 1978, vol. 1, II, 1–11.
30 ibid., vol.3, V, 3546–7, 3567–83.
31 The suggestion is made by L.Hotson, The First Night of Twelfth Night, London, Hart-Davis, 1964, pp. 94ff.
32 M.R.Wooodhead (ed.), Marston, What You Will, Nottingham, Nottingham University Press, 1980. Quotations are from this edition.
33 Faerie Queene, I, vii stanzas 2–11.
34 For the meaning of ‘sore’ as ‘vagina’ see Love’s Labours Lost, IV, ii, 60, and H.A.Ellis’s comment in Shakespeare’s Lusty Punning in Love’s Labours Lost, The Hague and Paris, Mouton, 1973; also M.Green, The Labyrinth of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, London, Charles Skilton, 1974, pp. 4–5. For ‘wound’ see E.Partridge, Shakespeare’s Bawdy, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, revised and enlarged, 1968.
35 Palmer, ed. cit., note to II, ii, 189–90.
1 A.Harbage, Shakespeare’s Audience, New York, Columbia University Press, 1941, Appendix IV.
2 D.Farley-Hills, Jacobean Drama, London, Macmillan, 1988, p. 79.
3 M.Wise (ed.), Marston, The Malcontent, London. Edward Arnold, 1965, Induction, 51–5.
4 A.B.Grosart (ed.), Non-Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, n. p., Huth Library, 1884, vol. 1, p. 116.
5 G.L.Kittredge, ‘Notes on Elizabethan plays’, JEGP, II (1898), pp. 10–13.
6 R.J.C.Wait, The Background to Shakespeare’s Sonnets, London, Chatto & Windus, 1972. pp. 69–86, 106–9.
7 T.M.Parrott (ed.), The Plays of George Chapman, The Comedies, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, reprinted New York, Russell & Russell, 1961, vol. 2, p. 906, note to Gentleman Usher IV, iii, 58–60. The reference (as Parrott notes) is to The Complaint of Rosamond, lines 141–4.
8 Parrott, ed. cit, vol. 2, p. 655.
9 For this interpretation of the role of Zephyr in The Allegory of the Seasons, see E.Wind, Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance, enlarged and revised edition, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1967, pp. 124–5. Reference to Spenser is to Faerie Queene, III, vi, st. xxix–lii.
10 Parrott, ed. cit., vol. 2, p. 892. Both Parrott and Hoy (op. cit., notes to Satiromastix) suggest that both plays refer to an actual Lady Furnivall, but no suitable candidate has been forthcoming.
11 Parrott, ed. cit., vol. 2, p. 892, pp. 755–6.
12 G.K.Hunter (ed.), All’s Well that Ends Well (Arden edition), London, Methuen, 1959, reprinted 1985, p. xxv. Quotations are from this edition.
13 G.K.Hunter, ed. cit., p. xxiv.
14 For Helena’s ‘Marian’ role see R.G.Hunter, Shakespeare’s Comedy of Forgiveness, New York and London, Columbia University Press, 1965, pp. 129–30.
15 G.Sandys, Ovid’s Metamorphosis Englished, Mythologiz’d and Represented in Figures, Oxford, J.Lichfield, 1632, p. 335.
16 ibid., p. 367.
17 J.H.Smith (ed.), Chapman, The Gentleman Usher, London, Edward Arnold, 1970. Quotations are from this edition.
18 See Wind’s discussion of Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’ in Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance, pp. 138–40. See also the discussion of the distinction in Spenser’s Faerie Queene, III, in C.S.Lewis, Images of Life, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1967, ch. 3, and T.P.Roche, The Kindly Flame, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1964, ch. 2. Roche quotes Ficino: ‘There are, then, two Venuses: one is that intelligence, which we have identified with the Angelic Mind, the other is the power of generation attributed to the Soul of the World. Both are accompanied by Love, through which the first contemplates the beauty of God, and the second creates divine beauty in earthly forms’ (p. 101). That the popular dramatists and their audiences were familiar with the distinction between the two Venuses is clear from a reference in Middleton’s Family of Love (ed. S.Shepherd, Nottingham Drama Texts, Nottingham, Nottingham University Press, 1979, IV, ii, 1341–3).
19 P.B.Bartlett (ed.), The Poems of George Chapman, Modern Language Association of America, 1941, reprinted New York, Russell & Russell, 1962, p. 328, lines 71–3.
20 See my Jacobean Drama, pp. 92–3.
21 Smith, ed. cit., pp. xvi–xxi, the text is given in Appendix A, pp. 126–8.
22 P.O.Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, New York, Columbia University Press, 1943, reprinted 1964, p. 239.
23 ibid., p. 300.
24 ibid., p. 210.
25 ibid. p. 356.
26 J.Jacquot, George Chapman, sa vie, sa poésie, son théâtre, sa pensée, Annales de l’Université de Lyon, Paris, 1951, p. 95.
27 Faerie Queene, III, vi, st. xxviii.
28 Smith, ed. cit., note to IV, ii, 156–7.
29 J.G.Price, Shakespeare’s Unfortunate Comedy, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1968.
30 Mark Van Doren points out that one of Helena’s favourite words is ‘nature’, Shakespeare, New York, Doubleday, 1939, p. 184.
31 See Wind, Pagan Mysteries, ch. 5.
32 Smith, ed. cit., note to V, iii, 33.
33 H.B.Charlton, Shakespearean Comedy, London, Methuen, 1938, p. 217.
34 A feature noted by R.G.Hunter, Shakespeare and the Comedy of Forgiveness, p. 106.
35 W.W.Lawrence, Shakespeare’s Problem Comedies, New York, Macmillan, 1931, p. 68, writes: ‘In All’s Well that Ends Well—supremely cynical title—Shakespeare seems deliberately to take revenge on his own idealism of love.’
36 G.K.Hunter, ed. cit., note to I, i, 163–6.
37 Faerie Queene, III, iv, st. xxvi.
38 ibid., III, vi, st xlvii. It is worth noting that Time is a central figure in Spenser’s Garden of Adonis.
39 I have adopted the folio punctuation, which makes the meaning clear. (As also at I, i, 61.)
40 Onions, Glossary (revised Eagleson), ‘word’, 6; and see Oxford English Dictionary, ‘word’, 11a.
41 G.K.Hunter, ed. cit. note to I, ii, 65–7.
42 For ‘canary’ in a bawdy context see Merry Wives of Windsor, II, ii, 62, 65, and for ‘motion’ cf. ‘motion unregenerative’, Measure for Measure, III, ii, 119.
43 For a similar use of ‘pen’ cf. Merchant of Venice, V, i, 237, and compare ‘Pompey the Great’, Measure for Measure, II, i, 215 and Love’s Labours Lost, V, i, 121. See also R.G.Hunter, op. cit. p. 115 and note p. 253.
44 Faerie Queene, III, vi, st. 48.
45 See Wind, op. cit., pp. 115–17.
46 A notable exception is R.G.Hunter, op. cit. ch. 5.
47 See Wind, op. cit., ch. 14 ‘The concealed God’.
48 E.Partridge, Shakespeare’s Bawdy, revised and enlarged, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968, ‘stable’.
49 G.K.Hunter, ed. cit., head-note to I, iii.
50 E.M.W.Tillyard, Shakespeare’s Problem Plays, London, Chatto & Windus, 1950, p. 91. See also G.Bullough (ed.), Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958, vol. 2, p. 375.
51 Wind, op. cit., p. 234.
1 E.Jones, ‘Othello, Lepanto and the Cyprus Wars’, Shakespeare Survey, 21 (1970) pp. 47–52.
2 F.E.Halliday, The Life of Shakespeare, London, Duckworth, 1961, p. 181.
3 Some support is given for this assumption by Leonard Digges’s verses prefixed to Shakespeare’s Poems, 1640, where he contrasts the audience’s preference for Othello over Sejanus (which we know was a Globe play). See B.Vickers (ed.), Shakespeare, the Critical Heritage, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974, vol. 1, p. 28.
4 R.W.Van Fossen (ed.), A Woman Killed with Kindness, by Thomas Heywood, London, Methuen, 1961, p. lix. Quotations are from this edition.
5 See, for instance, the introduction to G.K.Hunter’s edition of All’s Well That Ends Well, pp. xxiii, xxv.
6 M.R.Ridley (ed.), Othello, (Arden edition), London, Methuen, 1962. Quotations are from this edition.
7 G.Bullough (ed.), Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975, vol. 7, p. 239. Bullough’s translation is of the second edition of Gli Hecatommithi, Venice, 1566, which opens: ‘Gli Hecatommithi nella quale si dimostra, che solo, fra gli amori humani e quiete in quello, il quale e fra marito e moglie e che ne dishonesti non puo essere riposo’ (p. 13)
8 Bullough, NDSS, vol. 7, p. 239.
9 ibid., vol. 7, p. 240.
10 F.T.Bowers (ed.), Patient Grissil, in Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1953, vol. 1. Quotations are from this edition.
11 C.Hoy, Introductions, Notes and Commentaries to Texts in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker edited by Fredson Bowers, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980, vol. 1, p. 130.
12 ibid., vol. 1, p. 146.
13 The force of the paradox of a good black man can be illustrated from a contemporary sermon (Robert Wilkinson’s Lot’s Wife, preached at St Paul’s Cross, 1607, p. 42): ‘Thus the accursed seed of Cham, the Egyptians, Moors and Ethiopians, had for a stamp of their father’s sin the colour of their faces.’
14 Hecatommithi, ed. cit., p. 21. A quotation from Menander that Iago may be recalling in describing Michael Cassio as ‘A fellow almost damned in a fair wife’ (I, i, 21).
15 cf. also King Lear, IV, vi, 129. A pictorial example from the twelfth-century Winchester Psalter is illustrated in M.Dames, The Silbury Treasure, London, Thames & Hudson, 1976, p. 111.
16 See, for example, the splendid example in Seracino’s painting of ‘Mars and Venus’ recently shown in the Times exhibition of paintings in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection.
17 J.C.Trewin, Shakespeare on the English Stage 1900–1964, London, Barrie & Rockliff, 1964, p. 175. See also R.Rogers, ‘Endopsychic drama in Othello’, Shakespeare Quarterly, xx (1969), pp. 205–15.
18 Partridge, Shakespeare’s Bawdy, ‘corner’, ‘thing’, ‘use’.
19 ibid., ‘occupation’.
20 T.S.Eliot, ‘Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca’, Selected Essays, London, Faber & Faber, 1934, p. 130; F.R.Leavis, ‘Diabolical Intellect and the Noble Hero’, The Common Pursuit, London, Chatto and Windus, 1952; G.Wilson Knight, ‘The Othello music’, The Wheel of Fire, London, Oxford University Press, 1930 revised and enlarged 1949, London, Methuen.
21 Aristotle, ‘On the Art of Poetry’, in Classical Literary Criticism, translated with an introduction by T.S.Dorsch, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1965, p. 50.
22 ibid. p. 50.
23 C.A.Zimansky (ed.), The Critical Works of Thomas Rymer, London, Oxford University Press, 1956, p. 132.
24 H.B.Charlton, Castelvetro’s Theory of Poetry, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1913, p. 105.
25 Vickers, Critical Heritage, vol. 1, p. 28.
26 C.H.Herford and P. and E.Simpson (eds), Ben Jonson, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1932, vol. 11, p. 317. Quotations are from this edition.
27 ibid., vol. 9, p. 191.
28 ibid, vol 4, p. 351 (line 45).
29 Halliday, Life, p. 235.
30 Herford and Simpson, ed. cit., vol. 1, p. 141.
31 ibid., vol. 5, p. 20, line 116.
32 ibid., vol. 4, p. 350, line 18–20.
33 Quoted in J.W.Cunliffe (ed.), Early English Classical Tragedy, 1912, p. lxvii.
34 Herford and Simpson, ed. cit., vol. 4, p. 351, line 43–8.
35 ibid., vol. 2, p. 3. (The diarist is Manningham).
36 J.D.Duff (ed.) Juvenal Satires, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1970, I, iv, 70–1.
37 Herford and Simpson, ed. cit., vol. 1, p. 141, lines 326–7.
38 ibid, vol. 11, p. 309, lines 31–2.
39 ibid., vol. 5, p. 24, line 32.
40 E.K.Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923, vol. 3, p. 359.
1 F.E.Halliday, The Life of Shakespeare, London, Duckworth, 1961, p. 181.
2 E.K.Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923, vol. 1, pp. 218, 339; vol. 2, pp. 209–10.
3 Halliday, Life, pp. 176–8.
4 D.Mathew, James I, London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1976, p. 127.
5 C.H.McIlwain (ed.), The Political Works of James I, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1918, reissued New York, Russell & Russell, 1965, p. 27.
6 The influence of Basilikon Doron on the play has been much debated, but is not now, I think, in serious doubt. For a summary of the evidence see D.L.Stevenson, The Achievement of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, New York, 1966, pp. 144–55 and J. Bennett, Measure for Meassure as Royal Entertainment, New York, Columbia University Press, 1966, pp. 81–104. Richard Levin has recently attempted to deny the influence on the grounds that some bad arguments have been used to defend it and that the influence cannot be proved (New Readings vs Old Plays, Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1979, pp. 171–93). It is not clear what would constitute ‘proof’ in such cases (there is no ‘proof’, for instance, that Shakespeare used the old play of King Leir in writing Lear). It is illogical to argue that a hypothesis must be ignored because it is not susceptible of absolute proof. Such cases must rest on their overall plausibility and I hope to have added something to the plausibility of the hypothesis in the following pages of this chapter. The crucial point for my argument is not that Shakespeare is actually quoting from Basilikon Doron, but that he is reflecting attitudes in Measure for Measure publicly known to be favoured by James I.
7 J.Bennett, op. cit., p. 81: ‘The whole character of Duke Vincentio was created, not to represent, but to please and flatter the king.’ See also E.Schanzer, The Problem Plays of Shakespeare, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963, pp. 120–6.
8 M.Wine (ed.), Marston, The Malcontent, London, Edward Arnold, 1965. Quotations are from this edition.
9 J.B.Brooks (ed.), The Phoenix by Thomas Middleton, New York and London, Garland Publishing, 1980, pp. 22–4. Quotations are from this edition.
10 Brooks, ed. cit., pp. 11–12.
11 For an account of the book’s popularity see Bennett, op. cit., pp. 82–5.
12 McIlwain, ed. cit., pp. 39, 40.
13 C.Bingham, James I of England, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981, p. 68.
14 J.W.Lever (ed.), Measure for Measure (Arden edition), London, Methuen, 1965, Introduction, pp. xxxiii–iv. Quotations are from this edition.
15 McIlwain, ed. cit., p. 20.
16 ibid., p. 32.
17 Brooks, ed. cit., p. 19.
18 N.W.Bawcutt, ‘Middleton’s “The Phoenix” as a royal play’, N & Q, n.s., III (July 1956), p. 287. Also Brooks, ed. cit., p. 20, n. 56.
19 McIlwain, ed. cit., p. 38.
20 Brooks, ed. cit., p. 21.
21 ibid., pp. 120–4.
22 McIlwain, ed. cit., pp. 34, 36.
23 E.Partridge, Shakespeare’s Bawdy, revised and enlarged, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968, ‘do’. See also Brooks’s note.
24 Mathew, op. cit., p. 320.
25 Stevenson, op. cit., pp. 155–6.
26 ibid., pp. 160–1.
27 Brooks, ed. cit., pp. 115–6.
28 McIlwain, ed. cit., pp. 18–19.
29 Brooks, ed. cit., p. 125.
30 ibid., note to I, iv, 202.
31 D.F.Gless, Measure for Measure, the Law and the Convent, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1979, pp. 156ff.
32 McIlwain, ed. cit., p. 12.
33 G.B.Giraldi Cinthio, De Gli Hecatommithi, Monte Reale, Leonardo Torrentino, 1565, p. [368a?], Sig.81v.
34 ibid., p. 431. ‘Qui dissero i piu maturi, che alla Reale Giustitia e molto degna compagna la Clemenza, perche ella tempera le pene, e che percio si legge, che a Pricipi ella e molto convenevole. Perche induce una certa temperanza ne gli animi loro, che gli fa essere benigni verso i loro soggetti, et conchiusero, che e nella Giustitia e nella Clemenza si era mostrato veramente degno de imperio Massimiano.’
35 G.Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958, vol. 2, p. 474. Quotations are from this text.
36 McIlwain, ed. cit., p. 16.
37 ibid., p. 16.
38 ibid., p. 17.
39 ibid., p. 37.
40 ibid., p. 16.
41 Hecatommithi, p. 432. ‘la quale, come sapete, e l’ultima cosa delle cose terribili.’
42 Lever, ed. cit., tentatively suggests an emendment, but this is not necessary, note to III, i, 120.
43 McIlwain, ed. cit., p. 12.
44 Mathew, op. cit., p. 126, quotes the King: ‘I think, that of all, Geneva is the worst.’ The quotation is from The Geneva Bible, a facsimile of the 1560 edition, Madison, Milwaukee and London, University of Wisconsin Press, 1969.
45 McIlwain, ed. cit., p. 12.
46 Oxford English Dictionary, ‘conception’ 1, which quotes Timon of Athens, I, ii, 115 as a Shakespearean example.
47 McIlwain, ed. cit., p. 16.
48 ibid., p. 16.
49 ibid., p. 12.
50 ibid., p. 17.
51 Gless, op. cit., p. 65.
52 ibid., p. 83.
53 McIlwain, ed. cit., p. 30.
54 ibid., p. 16.
55 J.Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated H.Beveridge, Edinburgh, Calvin Translation Society, 1843, vol. 1, II, 2, 10, p. 311, ‘he who is most deeply abased and alarmed, by the consciousness of his disgrace, nakedness, want and misery, has made the greatest progress in the knowledge of himself.’
56 G.Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire, London, Oxford University Press, 1930, reprinted London, Methuen, 1949, p. 80. ‘The duke, like Jesus, is the prophet of a new order.’ And see Lever, ed. cit., p. lvii.
57 See, for example, W.W.Lawrence, Shakespeare’s Problem Comedies, New York, Macmillan, 1931, p. 83.
58 U.M.Ellis-Fermor, The Jacobean Drama, London, Methuen, 1936, reprinted 1977, p. 262.
59 A.B.Jameson, Shakespeare’s Heroines, Characteristics of Women, 1832, new edition, London, G.Bell, 1913, p. 54. For a summary of critical references to Isabella see Stevenson, op. cit., pp. 80–90, also E.Schanzer, op. cit., pp. 96–112.
60 E.M.Pope, ‘The Renaissance Background of Measure for Measure’, Shakespeare Survey, II (1949), pp. 77–8.
1 J.Munro (ed.), The Shakespeare Allusion Book: A Collection of Allusions to Shakespeare from 1591–1700, London, Chatto & Windus, 1909, vol. 1, p. 272.
2 K.Muir (ed.), King Lear (Arden edition), London, Methuen, 1952, p. xxiv.
3 T.M.Raysor (ed.), Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Shakespearean Criticism, London, J.M. Dent, 2nd edn, 1960, vol. 1, p. 211.
4 H.J.Oliver (ed.), Timon of Athens (Arden edition), London, Methuen, 1963, p. xlii. Quotations are from this edition.
5 M.Bradbrook, ‘The Comedy of Timon: A Reveling Play of the Inner Temple’, Renaissance Drama, 9 (1966), pp. 83–103.
6 J.C.Bulman, ‘The date and production of Timon reconsidered’, Shakespeare Survey, 27 (1974), pp. 111–27.
7 J.C.Bulman, ‘Shakespeare’s use of the Timon comedy’, Shakespeare Survey, 29 (1976), pp. 103–16.
8 R.H.Goldsmith, ‘Did Shakespeare use the old Timon comedy?’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 9 (1958), pp. 31–8.
9 A.C.Bradley had already stressed the similarities between Shakespeare’s two tragedies in Shakespearean Tragedy, London, Macmillan, 1905, 2nd edn, reprinted 1926, pp. 245–7 and note S.
10 J.C.Bulman and J.M.Nosworthy (eds), Timon (Malone Society Reprints), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1980. Quotations are from this edition.
11 The relationship of the two principal texts of King Lear, Q1 (1608) and F1 (1623) is fraught with difficulties that no modern edition has succeeded in overcoming. The new Oxford Complete Shakespeare (1988) provides both texts, which is probably the best solution because it requires the critic to make a distinct choice between the two very different versions. Because Q1 is probably closer to Shakespeare’s original version I have decided to use a facsimile of Q1 reproduced from BM copy C34 K18 prepared by Charles Praetorius, 1885, and all quotations are from this unless otherwise indicated.
12 Bulman, ‘Shakespeare’s use of the Timon comedy’, pp. 111–12.
13 See W.Farnham, Shakespeare’s Tragic Frontiers, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1963, pp. 50–67, for a summary of earlier views on Timon.
14 O.J.Campbell, Shakespeare’s Satire, London, Oxford University Press, 1943, pp. 168–97, argues that Timon of Athens is non-comic satire influenced by Jonson.
15 W.Wells, ‘Timon of Athens’, N & Q, 12th series, 6 (1920), pp. 266–9.
16 H.Dugdale Sykes, Sidelights on Elizabethan Drama, London, Oxford University Press, 1924, pp. 19–48.
17 D.J.Lake, The Canon of Thomas Middleton’s Plays, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1975, Appendix V (pp. 279–86).
18 See Chapter 5, pp. 139ff.
19 F.G.Fleay, Shakespeare Manual, London, Macmillan, 1876, pp. 195–6.
20 Bulman and Nosworthy, ed. cit., p. xv.
21 Lake, op. cit., Bands 1–4 (between pp. 252 and 253) finds only one example of the spelling outside Middleton’s plays or plays attributed to him, a late example in Ford.
22 Bulman and Nosworthy, ed. cit., p. ix.
23 C.Hinman (ed.) The Norton Facsimile, the First Folio of Shakespeare, New York, W.W. Norton, 1968.
24 Lake, op. cit. Band 1 (g). Lake instances: em, ‘em, e’m; has, h’as, ha’s; doe[’]s, do[’]s.
25 I am indebted to the Fellows and Librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge, for a microfilm reproduction of the autograph MS of Game at Chess. Compare the following: MS Timon: d’ost, do’st: II, iii, 755, 758; V, ii, 2206; V, v, 2541, 2542. G at C: do’st, do’s, d’os: I, i, 64; II, ii, 234; I, i, 76; III, i, 234; III, i, 17. MS Timon: ti’s: I, i, 10; I, i, 112; V, ii, 2195. G at C: ti’s: II, i, 4. MS Timon: ther’es: II, iii, 773. G at C: ther’es: I, i, 65. One strange characteristic of the Trinity MS is for Middleton to place an apostrophe after ‘sh’, producing forms like sh’ee, sh’al, sh’all. MS Timon has sh’alt at V, v, 2476. It should be noted that the scribes of the Timon MS have attempted to correct a considerable number of these anomalies.
26 Sykes, op. cit. p. 42.
27 Sykes, op. cit., pp. 22–3, compares this speech with passages in Phoenix and Michaelmas Term in arguing for Middleton’s authorship.
28 See D.L.Farley-Hills, The Comic in Renaissance Comedy, London, Macmillan, 1981, p. 101.
29 J.Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. H.Beveridge, Edinburgh, Calvin Translation Society, 1843, vol.1, II, 8. p. 293.
30 K.Muir, Shakespeare’s Tragic Sequence, London, Hutchinson, 1972, p. 191. ‘It is surely appropriate that, in a society in which everything is subordinated to gold, sexual relations should also be bound by the cash-nexus.’
31 F.Bowers (ed.), The Roaring Girl, in Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1953, vol. 3, V, i, 189, 191.
32 G.Bullough (ed), Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966, vol. 6, p. 267.
33 D.L.Farley-Hills, Jacobean Drama, London, Macmillan, 1988, pp. 183–5.
34 See H.J.Oliver, ed. cit., p. xliv.
35 Sykes, op. cit., pp. 32–5.
36 A Trick to Catch the Old One, 1608, (facsimile), Menston, Scolar Press, 1970, sig. B2v.
37 Gonorill, interestingly, makes a similar judgement of King Leir in the old play ‘For he you know is always in extremes’. Bullough, NDSS, vol. 7 p. 342, line 192.
38 Bullough, NDSS, vol. 7, pp. 310–11.
39 ibid., vol. 7, pp. 270–1.
40 ibid., vol. 7, p. 270.
41 Hecatommithi, p. 383: ‘quanto piu e stretto il legame del sangue, e della Natura, e e maggior l’obligo del Figliuolo verso il Padre, che qualunque altro, che imaginar si possa.’
42 ibid., pp. 395–6: ‘quanto sia piu benigna la natura delle donne, che quella de gli huomini…fu egli nondimeno minore di quelli, che di alcune Donne si potrebbero raccontare.’
43 ibid., p. 396: ‘Egli e vero…che le donne sono verso i padri, e le madri loro amorevolissime, si per lo bisogno, che maggiore ne hanno, che i maschi, si anco perche sono di molle, e di benignissima natura. Ma se aviene, che alcune d’esse, alle male opere volgano la mente di tanto avanzano gli huomini scelerati, che si possono veramente dire furie infernali in corpo humano, e la novella, che io mi apparecchio di raccontarvi, cio vi fara forse piu, che non bisognerebbe palese.’
44 None of the conjectured sources of Lear is as precise as this about the King’s age—much more exceptional for the Elizabethans than for us.
45 cf. Lear V, iii, 272–3: ‘Her voice was ever soft/Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman.’
46 I, i, 44–5 these lines appear only in the folio text.
47 Hecatommithi, p. 398 ‘havendogli spetialmente egli dato tutto il patrimonio, senza ritenersene pure un picciolo, oltre che gli dava tanta auttorita nel Regno.’
48 ibid., p. 399: ‘che s’ella havea cosi in dispregio le ragioni del sangue, e le leggi della natura, le quali constringevano anco le fiere ad amare, chi generate le havea.’
49 ibid., p. 400: ‘conoscendo in te uno spirito grande, e parendomi per cio, che tu non debba meno desiderare la real grandezza, che la desideri io, mi son risoluta di communicar teco questo mio maschio pensiero.’
50 ibid., p. 401: ‘perche il pensare alle cose magnifiche e nulla, s’elle ad effetto non si conducono.’
51 Shakespeare often stores away hints and suggestions for later plays.
52 Hecatommithi, p. 403: ‘di gran nerbo, piglio a traverso Apesio vecchio, e debole, e a capo in giu lo gitto dalle scale, il quale diede cosi gran percossa, che quasi tutto si ruppe.’
53 ibid., p. 405: ‘onde si vede manifestamente, che l’operar male, per havere bene, al fine conduce i malfattori, e gli scelerati, a misero fine.’
54 Bullough, NDSS, vol. 7, p. 343.
55 A.C.Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy, London, Macmillan, 1905, 2nd edn reprinted 1926, p. 281; ‘the hypocrisy is patent to us at a glance’.
56 Line 60 is emended from the folio text.
57 R.Sherwood, The Right, and Prerogative of Kings, London, N[icholas] O[kes] for William Bladon, 1612, pp. 20–1.
58 The folio reading. There are no grounds for accusing Lear of political irresponsibility in abdicating (as asserted for instance by Bullough, NDSS, vol. 7, p. 288). The Emperor Charles V had abdicated to European applause to become a monk in 1555. Stage abdications are not uncommon and generally approved (as in Middleton’s Phoenix and Hengist, King of Kent). See also R.Levin, New Readings vs Old Plays, Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1979, pp. 149–51, who quotes James I as accepting the legitimacy of abdication.
59 C.H.McIlwain (ed.), The Political Works of James I, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1918, reissued New York, Russell & Russell, 1965, p. 34.
60 See for example, Lawrence Humfrey, The Nobles: or, of Nobilitie, London, T.Marshe, 1563, sig. S 3v: ‘But listen Bastards, with whom now each corner swarmeth, who also obtain the highest dignity, what Holy Scripture in the 3rd Chapter of the Book of Wisdom decreeth of them: the Imps shall be banished…so shall this sport of Nobles be turned to sorrow, their mirth to mourning.’
61 McIlwain, ed. cit., p. 36.
62 Fulke Greville, The Life of the Renowned Sir Philip Sidney, London, Gibbings & Co., n.d., p. 163.
63 Bradley, op. cit., pp. 262, 293–4.
64 F; Q reads ‘vertues’. Punctuation is modernized.
65 Trew Law of Free Monarchies, in McIlwain, ed. cit., p. 54.
66 Basilikon Doron, in McIlwain, ed. cit., p. 41.
67 Greville, op. cit., p. 163.
68 Quoted by Muir, ed. cit., p. lii.
69 S.Freud, ‘The theme of the Three Caskets’, Collected Papers, translated under the supervision of Joan Riviere, London, Hogarth Press, 1925, vol. 4, p. 250.
70 Bradley, op. cit., p. 285.
71 McIlwain, ed. cit., p. 37.
72 ibid., p. 34.
73 In The Mirror for Magistrates, Gonerell marries the Scottish King Albany; Bullough, NDSS vol. 7, pp. 323–32.
74 G.P.Krapp (ed.), ‘History of Britain’, The Works of John Milton, New York, Columbia University Press, 1932, vol. 10, p. 18.
75 G.P.V.Akrigg (ed.), The Letters of James VI and I, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California Press, 1984. See especially the introduction, p. 19.
76 Sir Thomas Elyot, Book Named the Governor, London, Dent (Everyman), 1962, II, p. 156, writes: ‘But hard it is alway to eschew these flatterers, which, like to crows, do pick out men’s eyes ere they be dead. And it is to noble men most difficult, whom all men covet to please.’ Francis Bacon writes ‘Of a King’, Essays Civil and Moral, ed. E.T.Bettany, London, 1894, p. 93, 14: ‘His greatest enemies are his flatterers; for though they ever speak on his side, yet their words still make against him.’
77 G.A.Smith (ed.), Marston, The Fawn, London, Edward Arnold, 1964.
78 McIlwain, ed. cit., p. 32.
79 Akrigg, ed. cit., p. 17.
80 Aristotle, ‘On the Art of Poetry’, Classical Literary Criticism, trans. by T.S.Dorsch, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1965, p. 48.
81 The Censor, 2 May 1715.
82 M.R.Ridley (ed.), Antony and Cleopatra (Arden edition), London, Methuen, 1954, I, i, 14–16.
83 C.H.McIlwain, ‘A Speach to the Lords and Commons of the Parliament at White-Hall…1609’, The Political Works of James I, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1918, reprinted, New York, Russell & Russell, 1965, p. 307.
84 ibid., p. 308.
85 McIlwain (ed.), ‘Basilikon Doron’, ed. cit., p. 41.
86 McIlwain (ed.), ‘Trew Law’, ed. cit., pp. 55–6.
87 This quotation from Horace (Epistles, I, ii, 62) is used in Timon of Athens, I, ii, 28.
88 McIlwain, ed. cit., p. 52.
89 H.Granville Barker, ‘King Lear’, Prefaces to Shakespeare, London, Batsford, 1930, reprinted 1963, vol. 2, p. 28.
90 L.Stone, The Crisis of Aristocracy, 1558–1641, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1965, p. 212.
91 I.M., A Health to the Gentlemanly Profession of Serving Men, (attributed to Gervase Markham), London, B.L., 1598, sig. D4v.
92 G.B.Harrison, A Last Elizabethan Journal, London, Constable, 1933, reprinted Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974, pp. 56–7 (under 1 December 1599).
93 Muir, ed. cit., note to I, i, 297–8.
94 ibid., note to I, iii, 5.
95 ‘of kindness’ is added from F.
96 Text from Muir, ed. cit. Q1 is more than usually garbled at this point.
97 R.S.Burns (ed.), John Day’s The Ile of Gulls, New York and London, Garland Publishing, 1980, p. 21, n. 34.
98 ibid., p. 24, n. 39.
99 F; Q reads ‘fellow’.
100 Q1 punctuation modernized.
101 Freud, op. cit., vol. 4, pp. 253–6.
102 Some minor emendations; ‘ague-proof’ is the F reading.
103 F reads ‘great’ for ‘smal’.
104 F.
105 E.A.J.Honigmannin, Shakespeare’s Impact on his Contemporaries, 1982, p. 35, notes that Shakespeare’s affectiveness was particularly noted by his contemporaries