Re: *IDLE CELL*
art
> art wrote:
>> In stead thereof scoffing Scurrilitie,
>> And scornfull Follie with Contempt is crept,
>> Rolling in rymes of shameles ribaudrie
>> Without regard, or due Decorum kept,
>> Each idle wit at will presumes to make,
>> And doth the Learneds taske vpon him take.
>> .
>> But that same gentle Spirit, from whose pen
>> Large *streames of honnie and sweete Nectar* flowe,
>> Scorning the boldnes of such base-borne men,
>> Which dare their follies FORTH so rashlie throwe;
>> Doth rather choose " to sit in *IDLE CELL* ",
>> Than so himselfe to mockerie to sell.
ignoto <ign...@tarpit.org> wrote:
> "cell... small humble dwelling"
> (Shakespeare's Words: a Glossary by David and Ben Crystal).
> One does not 'choose to sit' in the Tower.
> There is no reason to think that Willy is the same poet
> as him (or her) from whence flow "streames of honnie and
> sweete Nectar". In fact, given Willy is DEAD there
> is every reason NOT to identify them.
----------------------------------------------------
http://www.shakespearefellowship.org/etexts/si/11-6.htm
<<the expression "dead of late," it has been remarked by others,
means, "not that he is literally dead but that he is in retirement."
This reading is not only necessary to make it fit in with what follows
— "to sit in idle-cell" — but is also supported by other passages in
the same writer. The reference is evidently to some one who, having
been prominent in the writing of poetry, and in connection with
dramatic comedy, had lately not been much in evidence.>>
........................................................
TOTHEONLI__ *E* BEGETTE *R* OFTHESEINSVINGSON
NETSMRWHA *L* LHAPPIN_ *E* SSEANDTHATETERNIT
IEPROMISE-__ *D* BYOVREV *E* RLIVINGPOETWISHET
HTHEWELLW *I* SHINGA_ *DVE* NTVRERINSETTINGF
ORTH <= 35 =>
--------------------------------------------------
http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~ahnelson/DOCS/16will2.html
.
1562 Will of the 16th Earl of Oxford
PRO PROB11/46, ff. 174-6v (28 July 1562)
.
T{estamentum} Ioh{ann}is de Vere Comit{is} de Oxinford
.
In the name of God Amen. I *Iohn DE VEER* Erle of Oxinforde,
Lorde greate Chamberlayne of Englonde Vicounte Bulbeck &c,
__ *being of hole and parfecte MYNDe*
------------------------------------------------------
. King *John* > Act IV, scene II
BASTARD: But as I travell'd hither through the land,
. I find the people STRANGEly fantasied;
. Possess'd with rumours, full of *IDLE DREAMS*,
. Not knowing what they FEAR, but full of FEAR:
. And here a prophet, that I brought with me
. From FORTH the streets of Pomfret, whom I found
. With many hundreds treading on his heels;
. To whom he sung, in rude harsh-sounding rhymes,
. That, ere the next Ascension-day at noon,
. Your highness should DEliVER up your crown.
.......................................................
. Measure Fore Measure > Act IV, scene I
DUKE VINCENTIO: O place and greatness! millions of false eyes
. Are stuck upon thee: volumes of report
. Run with these false and most contrarious quests
. Upon thy doings: thousand escapes of wit
. Make thee the father of their *IDLE DREAMS*
. And *RACK thee in their FANCIES* .
------------------------------------------------------
>>>>> Art wrote:
>>>>> Oxford's biography, his extant VERse, & his correspondence
>>>>> suggest his plays would have been deeply intellectual.
>>>>> ----------------------------------------------
>>>>> SPENSEr dedication in Fairie Queene (1590)
>>>>> To the right Honourable the Earle of Oxenford,
>>>>> Lord high Chamberlayne of England. &c.
>>>>> *Vnder a [SHADY VELE] is therein writ* ,
>>>>> And eke thine owne long *liuing MEMORY* ,
>>>>> Succeeding them in TRUE nobility:
>>>>> And also for the loue, which thou doest beare
>>>>> To th' *HELICONian* ymps, and they to thee,
>>>>> They vnto thee, and thou to them most deare:
>> ----------------------------------------------------
>>> ignoto <ign...@tarpit.org> wrote:
>>>> "The most significant dedication to Oxford for our purposes
>>>> is in Spenser's Faerie Queene. Spenser wrote 14 dedicatory
>>>> sonnets for the work, and he praises Oxford
>>>> for his high birth and for his kindness to poets:
>>>>. And also for the love, which thou dost bear
>>>>. To th'Heliconian imps, and they to thee,
>>>>. They unto thee, and thou to them most dear:
>>>>. Dear as thou art unto thyself, so love
>>>>. That loves and honors thee, as doth behoove.
>>>> "Helicon" is the legendary home of the muses (who are called by Spenser
>>>> the "Heliconian maids" at FQ 2.12.31.2) and the "imps" are their
>>>> offspring; thus the "Heliconian imps" are poets. Oxford is called not a
>>>> poet himself but a lover of poets, and his generous patronage surely
>>>> entitled him to that honor. He couldn't be called "Maecenas" here
>>>> because Spenser reserves that name in another dedicatory sonnet for
>>>> Francis Walsingham, "the great Maecenas of this age," a much more
>>>> significant patron.
>>>> Among the other recipients of Spenser's dedicatory sonnets, some, such
>>>> as Christopher Hatton, Lord Burghley, and the Earl of Essex were also,
>>>> like Oxford, occasional poets, but they are praised not for their poetry
>>>> but for their character and accomplishments. However, both Lord
>>>> Buckhurst and Raleigh, whose names had appeared with Oxford's in
>>>> Puttenham's list of Elizabethan poets, are highly praised by Spenser for
>>>> their fine poetry. Thus, to judge by Spenser's dedicatory sonnets to the
>>>> Faerie Queene, Oxford's reputation as a poet was not worth mentioning
>>>> compared to Buckhurst's or Raleigh's, and even Oxford's considerable
>>>> reputation as a patron was dwarfed by Walsingham's."
>>>>http://shakespeareauthorship.com/rep.html
>>>> The dedications were appended to the first edition of 1590-
>>>> so the dedication falls in the middle of the period
>>>> most Oxfordians seem to *imagine* as Oxford's prime.
>> ----------------------------------------------------
>> bobgrum...@nut-n-but.net wrote:
>>> Ah, so--thus either Oxford was writing poetry (which was
>>> getting published) but not doing so well enough for Spenser
>>> to praise him for it, or he was no longer writing poetry,
>> -----------------------------------------------------
> art wrote:
>> 1) Edward de Vere spent time in the Tower prior to 1591:
>> .................................................
>> *The Teares of the Muses* (1591) Edmund Spenser
>>http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/muses.html
>> .
>> And he the man, whom NATURE selfe had made
>> To mock her selfe, and *TRUTH* to imitate,
>> With kindly COUNTer vnder *Mimick SHADE* ,
>> Our pleasant *Willy* , ah is dead of late:
>> With whom all ioy and iolly meriment
>> Is also deaded, and in dolour drent.
----------------------------------------------------
ignoto <ign...@tarpit.org> wrote:
> 'Willy' is the pastoral pseudonym of Sir Phillip Sidney:
> "Eglogve.
> Made long fince vpon the death of Sir Phillip Sidney
> ...
> Ye Shepheards Boyes that leade your flocks a field
> The whilft your fheepe fafely round about,
> [Br]eake me your Pipes that pleafant sound did yeeld,
> [Si]ng now no more the Songs of Colin Clout:
> Lament the end of all our joy,
> Lament the fource of all annoy.
> WILLY is dead."
> by A[rthur].W[arren].
> First published in 1602 in Francis Davison's collection entitled:
> "A poetical rapsody containing, diuerse sonnets, odes, elegies,
> madrigalls, and other poesies, both in rime, and measured verse."
----------------------------------------------------
Clowne. : if the man goe to this water & drowne himselfe,
. it is *WILL HE, NILL HE* , he goes, marke you that,
. but if the water come to him, & drowne him, he drownes
. not himselfe, argall, he that is not guilty of
. his owne death, shortens not his owne life.
---------------------------------------------------
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature (1907–21).
XI. The Poetry of Spenser. § 15. His Complaints.
http://bartleby.com/213/1115.html
<<In The Ruines of Time, dedicated to the countess of Pembroke,
[Spenser] makes the female genius of the ruined city Verulam lament,
in touching stanzas, the death of Sidney, from which he passes to
indignant reflections on the neglect of poetry by the great, in
evident allusion to his own treatment by Burghley.
The same strain is taken up in The Tears of the Muses, where the nine
sisters are made in turn to bewail the degraded state of the stage and
the different forms of literary poetry. Of their laments, the most
characteristic, as showing Spenser’s lack of sympathy with the
development of
the English *drama* , is that of Thalia:
............................................
And him beside sits ugly Barbarisme,
And brutish Ignorance, ycrept *of late*
Out of dredd darknes of the deepe Abysme,
Where being bredd, he light and heaven does HATE:
They in the mindes of men now tyrannize,
And the faire Scene with rudenes FOULE DISGUIZE.
All places they with follie have possest,
And with vaine toyes the *VULGARE* entertaine;
But me have banished, with all the rest
That whilome wont to wait upon my traine,
Fine Counterfesaunce, and unhurtfull Sport,
DELIGHT, and Laughter, DECKT in seemly sort.
............................................
Here, doubtless, he alludes to the growing popularity of the plays of
Greene and Marlowe, as compared with the classical “court comedies” of
___ “pleasant Willy” (Lyly),
who ceased to write for the stage about 1590, and who, therefore, is
spoken of as “dead of late.” >>
----------------------------------------------------
http://www.shakespearefellowship.org/etexts/si/11-6.htm
<<Dean Church in his Life of Spenser mentions that Sir Philip Sidney
had somewhere been spoken of as "Willie" and thinks that the verses
may allude to him. To this theory he recognizes two very vital
objections:
1) Sir Philip Sidney had never attempted anything in the dramatic line
except some "masking performances," and to these the laudatory
expressions would be, he says, "an extravagant compliment."
2) Instead of Sir Philip Sidney being in retirement [i.e., "dead of
late"] in 1590 he had already been actually dead for nearly four
years. This further difficulty, he thinks, might be got over by
supposing that the work had been written some year's earlier and had
been kept back until 1590. To ante-date the work to such an extent as
to make the stanzas applicable to the events of Sidney's life would
throw out of gear the whole sequence of the production of Spenser's
works and the personal allusions they contain, as well as the relation
of his works to the events of his own life.
The key to this mystery, we believe, is to be found in a work of
Spenser's published in the early years of the particular period of De
Vere's life with which we are at present occupied. In December, 1579,
Spenser issued his first considerable work, "The Shepherd's Calender."
This set of poems is simply a series of burlesques upon prominent men
of the day, who appear in the guise of "shepherds," and who express
themselves under disguises more or less penetrable. In some cases the
names given to them suggest their real names, in other cases there is
no suggestiveness about them; in some cases it is quite understood
whom they represent, in others they remain as yet undistinguished.
Spenser himself appears as "Colin Clout," Gabriel Harvey as
"Hobbinol," Archbishop Grindal as "Algrind."
Looking over the names of the various "shepherds," we find that there
is indeed one called "Willie." So that when in 1590 Spenser speaks of
the Willie "from whose pen large streams of honey and sweet nectar
flow," it is natural to suppose that, in accordance with his practice
in other cases, he was carrying forward the same person as the one who
had figured in the 1579 poem under that name, but who, in the
meantime, had given such a manifestation of his powers that by the
year 1590 he was able to speak of him in terms which, as Dean Church
remarks, "we now-a-days consider, and as Dryden in his day considered,
were only applicable to Shakespeare."
It has therefore been a matter of considerable surprise that
notwithstanding the great amount of attention that has been paid by
writers on Elizabethan literature to the question of who it was that
Spenser meant by "Willie" in the above verses, it never seems to have
occurred to anyone to connect him with the "Willie" who appears in
Spenser's earlier poems. Yet the very manner in which he casually
introduces the name is suggestive of an allusion to his first great
work. The question, then, which concerns us immediately is this: what
are the probabilities that the "Willie" in "The Shepherd's Calender"
was the Earl of Oxford? And if a strong case can be made out for such
an identification we shall be entitled also to claim for him the
allusion in the "Tears of the Muses," especially if the later
representation of "Willie" fits in with the special circumstances of
Oxford at the later date. We shall also have made an important
contribution to the evidence that Oxford was "Shakespeare." William
Shakspere of Stratford, we point out in passing, was a mere boy of
fourteen at the time when Spenser's "Willie" makes his appearance in
Elizabethan poetry.
On turning to the poems in "The Shepherd's Calender" we find that
"Willie" figures prominently in two of them. Under the month of March
his role is somewhat subordinate; but under the month of August he
appears in what is probably the most widely known and the best
executed of the series; having found its way into modern anthologies:
its superior quality suggesting its being one of the latest composed
of the set. This piece is neither more nor less than a verse-making
contest between two rival poets named "Willie" and "Perigot." In view,
therefore, of the general character of the work, its deliberate
representation of eminent contemporaries, taken along with the
literary situation at that time, the poetic rivalry between Philip
Sidney and the Earl of Oxford, there is, to begin with, something more
than a mere presumption that the two rival poets, "Willie" and
"Perigot," were Oxford and Sidney. We therefore ask the reader to
recall Oxford's verse, beginning "Were I a king" and Sidney's
rejoinder "Wert thou a king," already quoted in this chapter: verses
which, from subsequent developments, must have been written shortly
before Spenser's poem was published. Then let him turn to this poem of
Spenser's and read it with the other verse-making episode in mind. It
plunges immediately by its opening lines into the cause of their
antagonism. "Tell me, Perigot . . . wherefore with mine thou dare thy
music match?" And this he follows up with a further challenge whether
"in ryhmes with me thou dare strive." Then, as if to put the matter of
identification beyond doubt, a third party called "Cuddy" is
introduced as arbitrator, and he assumes office with the irrelevant
remark: "What a judge were Cuddy for a king."
If any doubt remained as to whether or not the two shepherds
represented Oxford and Philip Sidney it ought to be quite removed by
the closing part of the poem. After the competition, Cuddle must needs
finish up with some "verses" which he claims to have got from Colin
Clout (Spenser). These are not even doggerel. In the place of rhymes,
he simply repeats the same words over and over again, and these,
together with other words and phrases that make up the "verses," form
but a verbal jumble composed of characteristic words from the poems of
the two rival writers. To appreciate all the fun of Cuddie's lines
one's mind must have been in some measure steeped in the two sets of
poems. If, however, before reading Cuddy's "verses" the reader will
turn to the last stanza quoted in the preceding chapter, and also note
the few phrases we subjoin here from Oxford's and Sidney's early
poems, he may be able to enter into the humour of Cuddy's "doleful
verse."
Oxford:
. "The more my plaints I do resound
. The less she pities me."
. "The trickling tears that fall adown my cheeks."
. . "Help ye that are aye wont to wail,
. . . Ye howling hounds of hell.
. . Help man, help beast, help birds and worms
. . . That on the earth do toil."
Sidney:
. "Thus parting thus my chiefest part I part."
. "Alas, sweet brooks do in my tear's augment."
. "A simple soul should breed so mixed woe."
. "Love ... bred my smart."
"Void," "House," "Bred," "Nature," are all words which seem to stand
forth in Sidney's somewhat limited vocabulary. Even in the competition
itself there is a frequent suggestion of the distinctive expressions
of the two men. One example of each will suffice.
From a poem by Sidney:
. "Such are these two, you scarce can tell
. Which is the dainter bonny belle."
Spenser's poem:
. "I saw the bouncing bellibone
. Hey, ho, the bonnibell."
From a poem by Oxford:
. "Patience perforce is such a pinching pain."
Spenser's poem:
. "But whether in painful love I pine
. Hey, ho, the pinching pain."
A careful weighing of this poem can leave but little doubt as to the
identity of "Willie" and "Perigot" with Oxford and Philip Sidney: the
only question is whether "Willie" is Oxford or Sidney. If we associate
the contest in Spenser's poem with Sidney's "matching" of Oxford's
verse, as we may very reasonably do, then "Willie" is Oxford; for it
is Willie who finds fault with Perigot for matching his, music and
challenges him on that account to another matching of rhymes.
This, then, is, the position: The circumstances of Oxford fit in with
and afford a very strong presumption of his being the historic
prototype of Spenser's "Willie" in the early poem, "The Shepherd's
Calender." Between the writing of this poem and the writing of the
"Tears, of the Muses" Oxford had been engaged in just those dramatic
activities and had made his name in the precise department, Comedy, in
which Spenser's "Willie" had evidently won renown. And at the time
when "The Tears of the Muses" was written, Oxford had withdrawn
apparently from dramatic activity and was seemingly "sitting in idle
cell" precisely as Spenser describes "Willie" to be doing. Are we to
believe that all this, is a series of meaningless coincidences?
Minor points in corroboration of the theory that Oxford and Spenser's
"Willie" are one and the same person [291] may be noticed. The
shepherd, "Willie," in the other poem in which he appears, remarks:
. "Alas! at home I have a sire,
. A stepdame eke as hot as fire
. That duly-a-days counts mine" (sheep).
(Day by day keeps a close watch over me and my affairs.) The reference
to Oxford's domestic position, to the surveillance exercised by
Burleigh, and to the irascible Lady Burleigh is obvious. Then in
Spenser's sonnet to the Earl of Oxford, which occupies a prominent
position amongst those with which he prefaces the "Fairie Queen," he
puts special emphasis upon Oxford's ancient and noble lineage. We find
the same note reflected in the verses in "The Tears of the Muses"
referring to Willie, whom he represents as "scorning the boldness of
base-born men." From this it is evident that "Willie" was not "base-
born," but rather a man distinguished for his high birth.
We have every reason to believe, then, that we have not only solved
the long-standing mystery of the "Willie" in "The Tears of the Muses,"
but have incidentally secured the testimony of no less an authority
than the poet Spenser, that the powers of Edward de Vere were
recognized to be such as to justify his being described in terms,
which are said to be only applicable to Shakespeare. The fact that a
solution proposed for one problem furnishes incidentally a reasonable
solution to another is additional evidence in its favour. The
testimony is also valuable as showing that, notwithstanding the non-
appearance of work avowedly from his pen, he had given evidence, not
of a falling off, but of such a development of his powers as to create
a marked impression in the mind of his, great contemporary. It is
evidence, too, that he had produced much more poetry than we have
under his own name, for the few short lyrics can hardly be described
as "large streams." The solution of this mystery enables us, moreover,
to add another link to [292] our chain of interesting evidence; for we
find that some important verses which are supposed by several writers
to have reference to Shakespeare are found on examination actually to
refer to Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford; whilst the personal
description they give is strikingly suggestive of Berowne in "Love's
Labour's Lost." Finally, the two sets of references, the one appearing
in 1579 and the other in 1590, link together the opening and the
closing phases of this middle period of his life. The former
presenting him as a poet, and the latter as a dramatist, together help
to make good the claim we have made for him: that he is the personal
embodiment of the great literary transition by which the lyric poetry
of the earlier days of Queen Elizabeth's reign merged into the drama
of her later years. Thus we get a sense both of the literary unity of
the times, and of the great and consistent unity of his own career.
Assuming that we have here the correct interpretation of these
allusions, there is every reason to believe that we have their
counterpart in the writings of "Shakespeare." The two enigmatical
sonnets in which he plays upon the word "will" finish with the
striking and emphatic sentence:
. "For my name is Will."
Before leaving this point we must not overlook the statement made by
Dean Church that Sidney had elsewhere been referred to as Willie. No
reference is given, but we take it to be an allusion to a poem which
appeared in Davison's "Poetical Rhapsody" (1602), another of the
numerous miscellaneous collections of poetry in which much of the
Elizabethan work has been preserved. There Sidney's death is mourned
as the death of Willie. It is only in the first edition, however, that
this appears; in later editions this is altered, as though the writer
or editors had had their attention drawn to a mistake — a possible
misreading of Spenser's earliest work — whilst the following footnote
by the modern editor appears: "I cannot recall any other poem in which
the name Willie is given to Sidney." Although first appearing in 1602
it is mentioned that the poem had been written a long while ago. Being
an obituary work it is natural to suppose that it was written shortly
after the death of Sidney (1586). Seeing, then, that the writer of the
poem would at that time have only the Shepherd's Calender to go upon,
the mistake was partly excusable. The publication of "The Tears of the
Muses" in 1590 would furnish the grounds for the subsequent correction
of the mistake which had evidently been overlooked in the first
printing.
At the time when "The Tears of the Muses" was published the Earl of
Oxford did certainly appear to be sitting "in *IDLE CELL*."
It is not impossible that the poem of Spenser's may have
revived his literary activity, or it may have been that
he was even at the time deeply immersed in the literary
work which was soon to burst upon the country.>>
--------------------------------------------------------
. King Henry IV, part I > Act V, scene I (Quarto 1)
EARL OF WORCESTER: what with the absent king,
. What with the iniuries of a wanton time,
. The seeming sufferances that you had borne,
. And the contrarious winds that held the king
. So long in his vnlucky Irish wars,
. That all in England *did repute him dead* :
. And from this swarme of faire aduantages,
. You tooke occasion to be quickly wooed
. *TO GRIPE* the general sway into your hand,
.........................................
. *TO GRIPE*
. *PERIGOT*
.........................................
*GRIPE* , n. the *GRIFFIN*
. Ben Jonson - The Alchemist Act II
Subtle: And put into the *GRIPE's egg* .
----------------------------------------------------------
. Windsor, Berkshire
. http://freespace.virgin.net/david.ford2/windsor.html
.
<<Windsor (meaning "Winch-furnished-Riverbank") is the largest
inhabited castle in the World. Legend says the Round Table stood atop
the motte of the Round Tower. The town is mentioned a couple of times
in Arthurian literature. William the Conqueror picked the site for a
defencive wooden motte and bailey castle, soon after 1066. A couple
of generations later it replaced Old Windsor as a Royal Palace as
well. It was totally rebuilt in stone during the 12th & 13th century
when the castle became more popular with the English Kings.>>
.
The Chapel Royal at Windsor Castle was built by King Henry III
and later enlarged by Edward III, in 1363, as a Canonical
Collegiate Chapel. St. George, the country's new patron saint,
was chosen for the dedication. The Royal Chapel had
.
a Silver-Gilt Cup in which is kept:
Part of the Skull of St.Bartholomew.
.
a Cup made of a *GRIFFIN's EGG, in which is kept:
Part of the Skull of St.Thomas the Apostle.>>
--------------------------------------------------------
. *THE GRIFFIN of GRAY's Inn*
http://www.online-law.co.uk/bar/grays_inn/griffin.html
.
<<The arms of the Society are - Sable a Griffin sergeant
or, that is a golden griffin standing on a black field.
It is thought to be borrowed from Richard Aungier,
thrice Treasurer of the Inn, at the turn of the 16th
century, and it is a more spectacular heraldic device
than the plain bars of the de GREY arms which were
previously used - they may be seen above the main
entrance to the Treasury Office in South Square.>>
--------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer