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Favorite "Shakespeare, Co-Author" Bloopers Part 6 ("praise")

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Jim KQKnave

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Feb 11, 2012, 11:23:59 AM2/11/12
to
"Shakespeare: Co-Author" p175 compares these
lines from Titus 1.1.167-68:

...outlive thy father's days,
And fame's eternal date, for virtue's praise!

with these from Peele's Edward 1:

...worthie men at armes,
For chivalrie and worthie wisdoms praise."

Shakespeare often refers to the praise of
some abstraction. Searching only early Shakespeare
(1,2,3H6,LLL,TGV,TofS,KJ,R&J,CofE,R2,R3,Luc,V&A) I find:

3H6 4.6
To sin's rebuke and my Creator's praise.

LLL 4.2
..O, pardon, love, this wrong,
That sings heaven's praise with such an earthly tongue.

LLL 4.3
To things of sale a seller's praise belongs,

And he also has another example of "for virtue's":

LLL 5.2
For virtue's office never breaks men's troth.

Of course, the association of "fame", "eternity" and
time is well-known in Shakespeare (this example
also has "outlive"):

Sonnet 38:
Eternal numbers to outlive long date.
(Titus 1.1. has "outlive thy father's days,
And fame's eternal date").

LLL 1.1.
Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,
Live register'd upon our brazen tombs
And then grace us in the disgrace of death;
When, spite of cormorant devouring Time,
The endeavor of this present breath may buy
That honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge
And make us heirs of all eternity.

And the association of "outlive" and "days" occurs
elswhere in Shakespeare:

1H4 5.2
If he outlive the envy of this day,

H5 4.1
He let him outlive that day to see His greatness and to teach

H5 4.3
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

as well as similar thoughts with "outlive":

Ham 3.2
Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life

Per 5.1
And you, sir, to outlive the age I am,
And die as I would do.

R3 1.3:
Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen,
Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self!

There are also some thoughts in the sonnets
that use "outlive" with "praise". The first
one is the rest of the example above from
sonnet 38:

Eternal numbers to outlive long date.
If my slight Muse do please these curious days,
The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise.

(that one also has "days").

Sonnet 101
Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
Excuse not silence so; for't lies in thee
To make him much outlive a gilded tomb,
And to be praised of ages yet to be.

Oops!

=======================================
Despite the many candidates proposed as the "true" author
of Shakespeare's works by the tin foil hats on this newsgroup,
William Shakespeare of Stratford remains the only candidate
supported by the historical evidence.

http://tinyurl.com/cojgwl

see also

http://ShakespeareAuthorship.com

The Droeshout portrait isn't unusual at all!
http://shakesandbacon.yolasite.com

Agent Jim

Peter Groves

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Feb 11, 2012, 5:18:59 PM2/11/12
to
On Feb 12, 3:23 am, Jim KQKnave <kqkn...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> "Shakespeare: Co-Author" p175 compares these
> lines from Titus 1.1.167-68:
>
> ...outlive thy father's days,
> And fame's eternal date, for virtue's praise!
>
> with these from Peele's Edward 1:
>
> ...worthie men at armes,
> For chivalrie and worthie wisdoms praise."
>
> Shakespeare often refers to the praise of
> some abstraction. Searching only early Shakespeare
> (1,2,3H6,LLL,TGV,TofS,KJ,R&J,CofE,R2,R3,Luc,V&A) I find:
>
> 3H6 4.6
> To sin's rebuke and my Creator's praise.
>
> LLL 4.2
> ..O, pardon, love, this wrong,
> That sings heaven's praise with such an earthly tongue.
>
> LLL 4.3
> To things of sale a seller's praise belongs,

I don't personally set much store by this kind of test myself, partly
because the numbers are so low, but if you're going to play the game
you have to follow the rules: none of these is an example of
"[abstract noun]'s praise", still less of "for (...) [abstract noun]'s
praise".

Peter G.

Mark Steese

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Feb 11, 2012, 8:18:01 PM2/11/12
to
Jim KQKnave <kqk...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in
news:0babf0dc-b7a1-4d5d...@t30g2000vbx.googlegroups.com:

> "Shakespeare: Co-Author" p175 compares these
> lines from Titus 1.1.167-68:
>
> ...outlive thy father's days,
> And fame's eternal date, for virtue's praise!
>
> with these from Peele's Edward 1:
>
> ...worthie men at armes,
> For chivalrie and worthie wisdoms praise."
>
> Shakespeare often refers to the praise of
> some abstraction.

Looking at the actual text of Vickers's book reveals how misleading this
is. The paragraph in which the above comparison appears begins "Some of
Peele's words and phrases may be distinctive, but the many parallels
between *Titus* and his poems and plays show that his diction was basically
unadventurous, the same limited range of words and phrases doing duty in
many different contexts. Peele had a generalized vocabulary, in which
military and heroic terms used for the Earl of Essex could be reused for a
Roman hero without any sense of incongruity. It is no surprise, then, to
find passages from *Titus Andronicus* echoing the language of *Edward I*, a
play set in medieval England." The example above is but one of the many
presented by Vickers in this passage:

...Titus hopes that Lavinia will 'outlive thy father's days | And
fame's eternal date, for virtue's praise!' (I.I.167-8): Edward
celebrates his 'worthie men at armes, | For chivalrie and worthie
wisdoms praise' (673-4). Saturninus assures Tamora that 'he comforts
you | Can make you greater than the queen of Goths' (I.I.268-9):
Lluellen welcomes Meredeth as 'the man, | Must make us great'
(768-9) -- both are instances of what grammarians call the 'zero
relative' form, the word 'who' being omitted. Saturninus announces
'I'll trust by leisure him that mocks me once' (I.I.301): the Queen
Mother is sure that something wished for 'wil come by leasure'
(219). Titus laments: 'The dismall'st day is this that e'er I saw'
(I.I.384): David welcomes 'The sweetest sunne that ere I saw to
shine' (1002). Saturninus promise Tamora that 'This day shall be a
love-day' (I.I.490): Mortimer urges himself to 'make their love
holidaies' (1244). Titus, a Roman general, promises Saturninus that
tomorrow morning 'we'll give your grace *bonjour*' (I.I.494): King
Edward 'bids his Souldiers *Bien veneu*' (111). We expect to find a
Capitol in ancient Rome (Tit., I.I.12, 41, 77), but may be surprised
to find a medieval English king apostrophizing 'O glorious Capitoll,
beautious Senate house' (102)...

Vickers does *not* claim that "the praise of some abstraction" is a feature
found in Peele but not in Shakespeare; nor does he suggest that any one of
the parallels cited would, in and of itself, demonstrate Peele's
authorship.

And most notably, most of the parallels Vickers cites were actually
discovered by Dover Wilson, who published them in his edition of *Titus
Andronicus*, and to whom Vickers gives full credit. As he puts it (168-
169): "One of the most valuable features of Dover Wilson's edition remains
his citing of parallel passages in Peele's poems and plays. Since readers
will find it difficult to track down an edition more than fifty years old,
and since none of the mainline editions published since then...has included
this material, I should like to quote some of it. Wilson arranged it in the
sequence of the play's action, but I group it according to the works being
echoed, to show how many of his own writings Peele recalled. I shall also
add some parallels of language and style that I have myself noticed."

Fifteen pages of examples follow. You think you've found a few that
parallel other passages in Shakespeare as well as Peele, but that hardly
addresses the fact that *all* the examples cited have parallels in Peele's
undisputed works.

> Oops!

Indeed.
--
It can be hard, sometimes, to come home to Van Nuys. -Sandra Tsing Loh

Peter Groves

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Feb 11, 2012, 8:36:02 PM2/11/12
to
On Feb 12, 12:18 pm, Mark Steese <mark_ste...@yahoo.com> wrote:
What baffles me is why anyone who admires Shakespeare as a writer
wouldn't be happy to jettison Act 1 of Titus. I suppose if you're the
Pope, heresy is heresy, however trivial, especially if its source is
the Antichrist himself, Brian Vickers. You've got to plug every chink
in the dyke to keep out the great sea of reason and common-sense.

Peter G.

Peter Gl.

John W Kennedy

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Feb 12, 2012, 1:21:43 AM2/12/12
to
On 2012-02-12 01:36:02 +0000, Peter Groves said:
> What baffles me is why anyone who admires Shakespeare as a writer
> wouldn't be happy to jettison Act 1 of Titus.

Well, there are sad instances in past generations of bardolaters who
were only too happy to discard any passages that they didn't like. But
the gulf between the worst and the best in "Titus" is so /very/
great....

--
John W Kennedy
"The blind rulers of Logres
Nourished the land on a fallacy of rational virtue."
-- Charles Williams. "Taliessin through Logres: Prelude"

Jim KQKnave

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Feb 12, 2012, 1:55:34 PM2/12/12
to
On Feb 11, 10:18 pm, Peter Groves <metrical...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't personally set much store by this kind of test myself, partly
> because the numbers are so low, but if you're going to play the game
> you have to follow the rules: none of these is an example of
> "[abstract noun]'s praise", still less of "for (...) [abstract noun]'s
> praise".
>
> Peter G.

At least you're thinking this time Groves. I should have
said "the praise of something other than a real person",
since only real people can praise. But you miss a more
important point: some of these associations are present
in Peele as well, such as the association of "outlive" with
"virtue". But that comes from the 1593 poem "Honour of
the Garter", which was probably written and performed
after Titus appeared, and thus it was Peele who was
copying/stealing/borrowing from Shakespeare, not Peele
writing Titus 1.1. In any event, there are far too many
associations with Shakespeare's habits of thought to
make the line anything but Shakespearean.

As far as the quality of 1.1 Titus, claiming that the gulf
between the best and worst of it is "so great" is just a
lot "just so" nonsense. I find it to be one of the best
things he wrote, and far better than much of R2 and R3,
among others.
=========================================
Despite the many candidates proposed as the "true" author
of Shakespeare's works by the tin foil hats on this newsgroup,
William Shakespeare of Stratford remains the only candidate
supported by the historical evidence.

http://tinyurl.com/cojgwl

see also

http://ShakespeareAuthorship.com

Dr. Benigrew Dimplestad

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Mar 22, 2012, 2:08:13 PM3/22/12
to
Den söndagen den 12:e februari 2012 kl. 18:55:34 UTC skrev Jim KQKnave:

> As far as the quality of 1.1 Titus, claiming that the gulf
> between the best and worst of it is "so great" is just a
> lot "just so" nonsense. I find it to be one of the best
> things he wrote, and far better than much of R2 and R3,
> among others.

I agree. Two Gentleman of Verona (see below) really is bad, while the verse of
Titus 1.1 is some of the best writing Shakespeare ever did. You can argue that
some of the action seems contrived, such as the sudden killing of Titus' son,
but it works on stage.

SPEED. Twenty to one then he is shipp'd already,
And I have play'd the sheep in losing him.
PROTEUS. Indeed a sheep doth very often stray,
An if the shepherd be awhile away.
SPEED. You conclude that my master is a shepherd then, and
I a sheep?
PROTEUS. I do.
SPEED. Why then, my horns are his horns, whether I wake or sleep.
PROTEUS. A silly answer, and fitting well a sheep.
SPEED. This proves me still a sheep.

or

Not so; but it hath been the longest night
That e'er I watch'd and the most heaviest.

"most heaviest"?

or

JULIA. It seems you lov'd not her, to leave her token.
She is dead, belike?
PROTEUS. Not so; I think she lives.
JULIA. Alas!
PROTEUS. Why dost thou cry 'Alas'?
JULIA. I cannot choose
But pity her.
PROTEUS. Wherefore shouldst thou pity her?
JULIA. Because methinks that she lov'd you as well
As you do love your lady Silvia.
She dreams on him that has forgot her love:
You dote on her that cares not for your love.
'Tis pity love should be so contrary;
And thinking on it makes me cry 'Alas!'

Alas. Simplistic stuff, and no doubt from a very young Shakespeare.

Dr. Benigrew Dimplestad
15 De Surmontstratt
Amstelveen, Netherlands



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