Nashe's "English Seneca"

[Tom Reedy]

Over on HLAS there is a dispute about what Nashe is referring to when
he uses the term "English Seneca" in the thread "Antony, Cleopatra,
Shakespeare and Thomas North". My, Ignoto's, and Robin's
interpretation is that he is referring to the Englsih translations of
Seneca *Tenne Tragedies* (1581), and in his rant he is criticizing Kyd
for (among other things) not having enough education to use Seneca in
the original Latin.

Since we have a few Nashe experts here, would any of them care to
weigh in? Here's a link to Nashe's essay:
http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/TextRecord.php?action=GET&textsid=51

The passage under discussion:

It is a common practise now a daies amongst a sort of shifting
companions, that runne through every arte and thrive by none, to leave
the trade of "Noverint," whereto they were borne, and busie themselves
with the indevors of Art, that could scarcelie latinize their necke-
verse if they should have neede; yet English Seneca read by candle
light yeeldes manie good sentences, as "Bloud is a begger," and so
foorth: and, if you intreate him faire in a frostie morning, he will
affoord you whole Hamlets, I should say handfulls of tragical
speaches.

Here are the points we have made to support the view that he is
criticizing Kyd and the author of the original Hamlet, and that they
are one and the same:

It is a common practise now a daies amongst a sort of shifting
companions, that runne through every arte and thrive by none, to leave
the trade of "Noverint," whereto they were borne, = Kyd's father was a
scrivener and a warden in the Scrivener's Company. A noverint was a
scrivener who worked as a lawyer's clerk writing out deeds, wills, and
other legal documents. The term "noverent" derives from the first line
of many legal documents, "Noverint universi per presentes" (Be it
known to all men by these presents).

yet English Seneca = *Seneca, his Tenne Tragedies* (1581)

read by candle light = a reference to Kyd's mistranslation of Tasso's
'ad lumina' (till dawn) as 'by candlelight',

yeeldes manie good sentences, as "Bloud is a begger," and so foorth =
playwrights using Seneca as a model and source will write sentences
such as "Blood is a beggar". It doesn't mean the sentence is found in
Seneca. This is even more obvious when you take in consideration the
tagged-on "and so forth".

Bloud is a begger = probably a ine from the original now-lost
*Hamlet*.

and, if you intreate him faire in a frostie morning, = alludes to both
the weather in the first act ("'tis bitter cold"; "The air bites
shrewdly; it is very cold"; "It is nipping and an eager air.") and the
ghost whom Horatio and Hamlet entreat. This and the grammar make it
clear that the "him" who is being entreated is the long-dead Roman
playwright Seneca.

he will affoord you whole Hamlets, I should say handfulls of tragical
speaches. = From the English Seneca Hamlet, a play full of tragical
speeches, and other similar plays can be derived by those whose Latin
is insufficient to read him in the original.

TR

[rita]

I’ve always assumed the passage was a dig at Kyd. I think I just took
Nicholl’s word that it was. It seems obvious Nashe is having a go at
someone and Kyd seems the best fit. Nicholl says:

‘The pun on Kyd’s name’ (Nicholl quotes the passage as far as the Kid-
in-Aesop bit) ‘ confirms other hints: Kyd’s father was a scribe or
scrivener (‘the trade of Noverint’); his famous ‘Spanish Tragedy’ was
an epitome of English Senecan drama; and he had recently published
some Italian translations (Tasso’s ‘Householders Philosophie’, issued
in 1588 by Nashe’s own publisher, Thomas Hackett.)’ (Nicholl, ‘A Cup
of News’, pp 52-53)

Then Nicholl also goes on to speculate Kyd was the author of the ‘Ur-
Hamlet’.

About the exact significance of the phrase ‘intreate him fair in a
frostie morning’ though I’m not so sure. You could be right that it’s
another slap at Kyd, but to agree with you I’d have to disagree with
McKerrow, who described it as a ‘meaningless tag’ and cited other
examples. I know one was in ‘An Almond for a Parrot’ and one in a
play by Massinger. Unfortunately I forget which the play by Massinger
was but - again thanks to the Oxfordian website - I found the ‘Almond
for a Parrot’ reference:

‘Alas, you are but young, and never knew what his bumfegging meant,
for, if you did, you would think five hundred fists about your ears
were more than physic in a frosty morning.’

Oh, god. But in context, I promise you it makes sense. ‘Bumfegging’
apparently was just a robust country word for ‘thrashing’. Not a
Nashe coinage - this passage is from a riposte to Martin Marprelate
and Nashe picked up the word from him. The pamphlet deliberately
echoes Marprelate’s aggressively demotic style, which I suppose makes
it slightly likelier that ‘in a frosty morning’ was just some fairly
common contemporary usage perhaps associated with countrified or lower-
class speech. It always reminds me a bit of Quince in MND:

‘Pyramus is a sweet-faced man; a proper man, as one shall see in a
summer’s day...’

‘See in a summer’s day'/'Physic in a frosty morning/'fair in a frosty
morning’ : alliterative, but not adding much sense.

Rita

[sasheargold]

I haven't followed the whole argument yet but we do know that Nashe
wove the names of people he was referencing semi-cryptically into his
texts - Philip Stubbes and
Charles Chester, for example.

Kyd appears to stick out like a sore thumb - if North factored into
any of this, then surely it wasn't beyond sweet Tom to make a pun upon
so punnable a name.


SB.

[John W Kennedy]

There are three possible meanings that must be distinguished:

1) the works of Seneca, translated into English

2) the works of Seneca, in Kyd’s English translation

3) Kyd

I maintain that this third reading is grammatically untenable in the absence of a determiner.

--
SKen Software, LLC
Coming soon to an iPhone near you

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[Gary]

On 09/07/2011 3:49 PM, John W Kennedy wrote:
> There are three possible meanings that must be distinguished:
>
> 1) the works of Seneca, translated into English
>

> 2) the works of Seneca, in KydпїЅs English translation

?????

Kyd made a translation of the works of Seneca?

- Gary

[Peter Groves]

-----Original Message-----
From: ardenm...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:ardenm...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John W Kennedy
Sent: Sunday, 10 July 2011 8:50 AM
To: Forest of Arden
Subject: Re: [Forest of Arden] Re: Nashe's "English Seneca"

There are three possible meanings that must be distinguished:

1) the works of Seneca, translated into English

2) the works of Seneca, in Kyd's English translation

3) Kyd

I maintain that this third reading is grammatically untenable in the
absence of a determiner.

***Rem acu tetigisti, as usual. My determiner of choice would be "our".

Peter G.

[rita]

But Nashe could be careless in his grammar sometimes. Remember the
passage in HWYTSW where he was poking fun at Harvey’s attempts to push
his cronies’ rubbish literary efforts off on the publisher Wolfe?

‘So did he' (Harvey) 'by the philistine poem of Parthenophil and
Parthenope, which to compare worse than itself, it would plague all
the wits of France, Spain or Italy. And when he saw it would not sell,
he called all the world asses a hundred times over, with the
stampingest cursing and tearing he could utter it, for that he having
given it his pass or good word, they obstinately condemned and
misliked it. So did he by Chute's 'Shore's Wife', and his 'Procris and
Cephalus', and a number of other Pamphlagonian things more that it
would rust & iron-spot paper to have but one syllable of their names
breathed over it.’

That ‘So did he by Chute's Shore's Wife, and his Procris and
Cephalus...’ misled people for centuries that it was Chute who’d
written C&P. But when you know it’s not, you can see the ‘his’ must
refer back to Harvey and not Chute.

Rita

> Peter G.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[rita]

No, but he might use 'English Seneca' in the same way Davies used 'our
English Terence' to mean Shakespeare.

Rita

On Jul 10, 6:09 am, Gary <g...@shaw.ca> wrote:
> On 09/07/2011 3:49 PM, John W Kennedy wrote:
>
> > There are three possible meanings that must be distinguished:
>
> > 1) the works of Seneca, translated into English
>

> > 2) the works of Seneca, in Kyd s English translation

>
>         ?????
>
>         Kyd made a translation of the works of Seneca?
>
> - Gary
>
>
>
>
>
> > 3) Kyd
>

> > I maintain that this third reading is grammatically untenable in the absence of a determiner.- Hide quoted text -

[Peter Groves]

-----Original Message-----
From: ardenm...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:ardenm...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of rita
Sent: Sunday, 10 July 2011 8:11 PM
To: Forest of Arden

Subject: [Forest of Arden] Re: Nashe's "English Seneca"

No, but he might use 'English Seneca' in the same way Davies used 'our
English Terence' to mean Shakespeare.

Rita

**** You're missing John's cogent point: 'our English Terence' includes
a determiner.

Peter G.

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

Well, here's the other interpretation. Nashe was using "English
Seneca" in the same way everyone else used that same phrase (or
similar phrases) -- to refer to a person who wrote like Seneca. If
you check EEBO, you find this is keeping with the Elizabethan
tradition of referring to authors as the English version of the
classical author they emulate. In an epigram, John Davies referred to
William Shakespeare as "English Terence," Francis Meres, in Wit's
Treasury, referred to William Warner as "English Homer," Sir John
Harrington referred to Sidney as "English Petrarch" (from the notes to
Book 16 of his translation of Orlando Furioso, 1591) Indeed, EEBO has
dozens of examples of "English Seneca/Homer/Aretine/Petrarch, etc).
And every time it refers to a person. And with that commonplace
interpretation, the sentence really makes sense. "yet English Seneca
read by candlelight yields many good sentences, as Blood is a beggar,
and so forth, and if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will
afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of tragical
speeches..." When you replace "English Seneca" with a person (say,
"Thomas Kyd" or "William Shakespeare"), the sentence makes sense. When
you replace it with "English translations of Seneca," it does not.
After all, the "English translations of Seneca" did not write "Hamlet"
and does not include the sentence "blood is a beggar."

As for the whole passage, here is an alternative explanation:
In an insightful and significant article in the Renaissance Quarterly,
Jessica Winston observed that, in Elizabethan England, “there was
intense interest in [Seneca], especially at the universities and early
English law schools, the Inns of Court, where students and fellows
translated most of the drama and performed a series of Senecan and neo-
Senecan plays.” Winston then sought to explain this peculiar
connection between Seneca and studiers of law, observing that the
ambitious young men would often use Senecan tragedies to help reflect
and hopefully influence the political events and viewpoints of the
aristocracy, to create plays that would provide counsel to the Queen.
In brief, these would-be lawyers thought to use Senecan tragedies to
become like Seneca himself -- a trusted adviser to royalty. “Many of
the translators saw Senecan tragedy as a classical version of advice-
to-princes poetry,” wrote Winston, who then in a footnote added that
“other works of counsel literature by men associated with the law
schools in this period include Thomas North's The Dial of Princess
(1557)…”
The following list helps provide a glimpse of the strong and nearly
exclusive connection between the Inns of Court law schools and Senecan
tragedies up until 1589:

1. Gorboduc (1561-2) -- the first known English tragedy was a
Senecan drama written by the lawyers, Thomas Norton and Thomas
Sackville, and acted by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple.
2. Jocasta (1566) – was a Senecan tragedy penned by the lawyers,
George Gascoigne and Francis Kinwelmersh, at the Gray's Inn. The
future judge, Christopher Yelverton, wrote the epilogue. The play was
mostly a translation of Dolce's Giocasta (1549).
3. Gismond of Salerne (1566-9) was a Senecan Tragedy created by
the gentlemen of the Inner Temple, including the lawyer, Christopher
Hatton. Two Italian works, Dolce's Didone (1547) and Boccaccio's
Decameron, served as sources for the plot.
4. Seneca, His Ten Tragedies (1581) – was a published translation
of ten of Seneca's tragedies, collected by Thomas Newton and
translated by Jasper Heywood, John Studley, Alexander Neville, Thomas
Nuce – all connected to the Inns of Court.
5. The Misfortunes of Arthur (1588) was another Senecan drama,
written by eight law students of Gray's Inn, including lawyers Thomas
Hughes and Francis Bacon. Yelverton helped write the dumb show. The
play has been referred to as a "patchwork of translations" from
Seneca.

Evidently, from the 1560’s to the 1580’s, gentlemen otherwise born to
the trade of law had begun translating Senecan dramas, often from the
Italian – or would translate foreign tales and convert them to plays
in the Senecan style. Even by the late 1580's, men trained in law
were still following this fashion and still feasting on continental
reworkings of Seneca. The 1588 play Misfortunes of Arthur, penned one
year before Nashe’s epistle, was particularly imitative of Seneca.
According to J.W. Cunliffe, 300 of 2022 lines of The Misfortunes of
Arthur were "imitated or simply translated from Seneca's plays."
Cunliffe wrote that it "seems impossible to carry the borrowing of
Senecan material further," and A. P. Rossiter described Misfortunes
as carrying "Seneca-pillagings to a final excess." In 1589, these
young Gray's Inn law students who produced Misfortunes were the last
in a line of would-be lawyers, translating Senecan dramas for the
stage – and were, in the view of some, bleeding Seneca dry, line by
line, page by page.
As we shall see, this nettled the satirist Thomas Nashe for a
variety of reasons. He did not like the fact that people destined to
become lawyers (or born to "the trade of Noverint" as Nashe would put
it) had now started invading his literary realm, trying their hand at
translating and playwriting. Nashe complained about these
moonlighting lawyers in a number of pamphlets and especially in his
preface to Menaphon by Robert Greene. This latter grievance was
particularly significant because it also contained an extremely
intriguing and puzzling reference, an allusion to an impossibly early
Hamlet, penned by someone Nashe called "English Seneca." Here is
the passage in its entirety:

...I will turn back to my first text of studies of delight, and talk a
little in friendship with a few of our trivial translators. It is a
common practice now-a-days amongst a sort of shifting companions, that
run through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of
Noverint whereto they were born and busy themselves with the
endeavours of art that could scarcely Latinize their neck-verse if
they should have need; yet English Seneca read by candlelight yields
many good sentences, as Blood is a beggar, and so forth, and if you
entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole
Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of tragical speeches. But O grief!
Tempus edax rerum, what's that will last always? The sea exhaled by
drops will in continuance be dry, and Seneca, let blood line by line
and page by page, at length must needs die to our stage…

Two common misinterpretations have plagued analyses of this
paragraph because of the supposition that Nashe was discussing Thomas
Kyd in the above passage. First, a number of scholars assume the term
“Noverint” refers to “scrivener” because Thomas Kyd, the most commonly
suspected author of the Ur-Hamlet, was never a lawyer or law student,
but his father had been a scrivener. In 1920, Valdemar Osterberg, who
provided perhaps the strongest arguments that Kyd was the author of
the Ur-Hamlet, became the first to advocate the scrivener
interpretation. But when we read Nashe’s paragraph after Winston’s
recent analysis, we now have no doubt Nashe is referring to the law
students and alumni of the Inns of Court as those followers of Seneca
who were “born” to “the trade of Noverint.” If any doubt remains
about Nashe’s meaning, we can remove it by noting that the sentence
that immediately precedes this passage is necessarily referring to
young upstart lawyers:

“…but when the irregular idiot that was up to the ears in divinity
before ever he met with probabile in the university shall leave pro &
contra before he can scarcely pronounce it, and come to correct
commonweals that never heard of the name of magistrate before he came
to Cambridge…”

This is a criticism of those Inns of Court students, who after
learning a little law, would then return to the country and use their
knowledge to cheat and govern their legally naive neighbors. Indeed,
Nashe’s comment is a paraphrase of the same argument and criticism of
law students that appeared in Abraham Fraunce’s The Lawyer’s Logic
(1588). Fraunce bemoaned the law students’ “continual molestation of
ignorant men,” and criticized those:

who, when their fathers have made some lewd bargain in the country,
run immediately to the Inns of Court, and having in seven years space
met with six French words, home they ride like brave Magnificoes, and
dash their poor neighbours children quite out of countenance, with
Villen in gros, Villen regardant, and Tenant per le curtesie.

Notice again the similarity of the references to the novice
lawyers: “having in seven years space met with six French words” and
“shall leave pro & contra before he can scarcely pronounce it.”
Nashe’s Lenten Stuff also makes clear that the satirist got
into battles with the young upstarts of the Inns of Court, and here he
again expresses his belief that they should not be meddling in
literary matters. Notice how similar the phrasing is:

“…infant squib of the Inns of Court, that hath not half greased his
dining cap, or scarce warmed his Lawyer’s cushion…”…

That audacious young man at the Inns of Court who has “scarce
warmed his lawyer’s cushion” clearly echoes Nashe’s famous complaint
about those in “the trade of Noverint” who “could scarcely Latinize
their neck-verse.” In both cases, he is referring to these law
students as young, inexperienced upstarts who should not be intruding
into the literary realm. And here it is unambiguous that Nashe is
referring to lawyers.
The second common misinterpretation of the passage is that the
plural form used throughout the entire Hamlet passage and the
sentences that follow – " …a few of our trivial translators…shifting
companions...they were born and busy themselves…if they should have
need…famished followers…these men…" -- was merely a convention, that
Nashe used all of these plural terms to allude to Thomas Kyd, alone.
Osterberg clarified the rationale for this belief in the following
manner: "[I]t would be strange if even two, to say nothing of more,
translators from the Italian had started with the same initial
employment. In life it happens very seldom indeed that the careers of
different men coincide as exactly as would be involved in the various
details mentioned by Nashe." The Kyd scholar, Frederick S. Boas, put
forth a similar argument, "as so elaborate an indictment could only be
aimed at a single personage." In other words, Osterberg and Boas both
found it hard to believe that more than one other writer could have
had such a specific history, beginning in the trade of noverint and
then ending up translating and writing Senecan plays. But as shown, a
great number of lawyer translators, who worked from the Italian and
penned Senecan dramas, did indeed exist. The argument of Osterberg
and Boas thus crumbles with its foundational premise. Nashe was
referring to a group, so he was referring to lawyers, so he was not
referring to Kyd.
Thus, Winston’s analysis showing the connection between Senecan
tragedies and the students and alumni of the Inns of Court has
provided us with the Rosetta Stone for the coded allusions in the Ur-
Hamlet passage, allowing us to resolve all prior misinterpretations.
As Nashe stated: a group of men, otherwise destined to the legal trade
of Noverint, had indeed begun translating Senecan dramas. This
practice reached its peak the year before Nashe's epistle with
Misfortunes of Arthur, which was filled with as many as 300 lines
stolen from Seneca. It is this group of students of Noverint who were
the ones bleeding Seneca dry. Thus, to paraphrase Nashe in modern
vernacular:

Let me return my attention to the trivial translators: It is
a common practice nowadays that people otherwise born to the trade of
law (i.e., “noverint”) start trying their hand at art, like
translating and drama, even before they have learned enough Latin to
save them from hanging. Sure, our "English Seneca," read by
candlelight, has given us a few good sentences like "blood is a
beggar" and so forth, and if you read his work on a frosty morning, he
will offer you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of tragical
speeches. But now there have been too many would-be-lawyers
translating Senecan dramas [like the students of Gray’s Inn who wrote
Misfortunes of Arthur], and lately, Seneca is being bled dry, line by
line, page by page.

Yet, Osterberg's argument that Nashe referenced Thomas Kyd in
a pun in the sentences following the Hamlet reference is
indisputable. Here is the ensuing passage:

…which makes his famished followers to imitate the kid in
Aesop, who, enamoured with the fox's newfangles, forsook all hopes of
life to leap into a new occupation and these men, renouncing all
possibilities of credit or estimation, to intermeddle with Italian
translations….And no marvel though their home-born mediocrity be such
in this matter, for what can be hoped of those that thrust Elysium
into hell, and have not learned the just measure of the horizon with
an hexameter? Sufficeth them to bodge up a blank verse with ifs and
ands….”

We know that Nashe, who was fond of puns, is referring to Kyd with his
"kid in Aesop" comment because the sentences that follow describe
Kyd's "Spanish Tragedy." Why does he make such a comment? For
exactly the reason he states. Nashe had begun discussing the students
who were bleeding Seneca dry– and specifically those "famished
followers [of Seneca] …" who "imitate the kid." Here "famished
followers" refers to the lawyer-authors of Misfortunes of Arthur,
whose work was an imitation of Kyd's Spanish Tragedy. When these law
students were not stealing from Seneca, they were stealing from Kyd.
For example, for twenty years, between the mid 1560's and mid 1580's,
dumb shows do not appear in Elizabethan theater. Then Thomas Kyd's
The Spanish Tragedy reintroduced the use of symbolical dumb shows at
the beginning of each act, and the authors of The Misfortunes of
Arthur decided to adopt this same peculiar practice. Thomas Nashe
mentions three other examples of similar emulation. Nashe observed
that these "famished followers" have "thrust Elysium into hell" and
"have not learned the just measure of …an hexameter" and "bodge up a
blank verse with ifs and ands." All of these elements -- the
juxtaposition of Elysium with Hell, the conversion of the hexameter
from the sixth book of the Aeneid into pentameter, and the over-use of
"if's" and "and's," particularly at the beginning of lines in an
effort to maintain the meter – all of these are elements common to
both The Spanish Tragedy and The Misfortunes of Arthur.
Since Nashe is referencing Kyd as the one imitated by the
writers of The Misfortunes of Arthur, there is no reason to assume
that he is referencing Kyd as the Ur-Hamlet author as well. And this
finds support in the fact that Kyd could not have been one of the
lawyer-translators addressed in the Ur-Hamlet paragraph.

[Tom Reedy]

Repetition does not strengthen your arguments.

On Jul 10, 3:34 am, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"

<Den...@NorthofShakespeare.com> wrote:
> Well, here's the other interpretation.  Nashe was using "English
> Seneca" in the same way everyone else used that same phrase (or
> similar phrases) -- to refer to a person who wrote like Seneca.  If
> you check EEBO, you find this is keeping with the Elizabethan
> tradition of referring to authors as the English version of the
> classical author they emulate.  In an epigram, John Davies referred to
> William Shakespeare as "English Terence," Francis Meres, in Wit's
> Treasury, referred to William Warner as "English Homer," Sir John
> Harrington referred to Sidney as "English Petrarch" (from the notes to
> Book 16 of his translation of Orlando Furioso, 1591)  Indeed, EEBO has
> dozens of examples of "English Seneca/Homer/Aretine/Petrarch, etc).

We've asked for your list of such examples, yet you have failed to
provide it.

> And every time it refers to a person. And with that commonplace
> interpretation, the sentence really makes sense.

No, it doesn't, not in context, as you have been shown.

 "yet English Seneca
> read by candlelight yields many good sentences, as Blood is a beggar,
> and so forth, and if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will
> afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of tragical
> speeches..."  When you replace "English Seneca" with a person (say,
> "Thomas Kyd" or "William Shakespeare"), the sentence makes sense.

No, it doesn't. Why would you have to wait for a frosty morning to ask
a person to write tragical speeches? Why would you even entreat him to
do so? Wy would "yield" = "write"?

> When
> you replace it with "English translations of Seneca," it does not.

Yes, it does, as you have been shown. The failure here is in your
comprehension, not in Nashe's grammar. You evidently don't have the
background in Elizabethan literature to understand him.

> After all, the "English translations of Seneca" did not write "Hamlet"
> and does not include the sentence "blood is a beggar."

He doesn't say English Seneca will write Hamlet; he says
(sarcastically, but you miss that also) English Seneca will yield many
"good" (imagine finger quotes" sentences.

And why would Nashe make up an example (Blood is a beggar) out of pure
cloth? As has been explained, this is probably a quote from the now-
lost Ur-Hamlet, just like Greene played on the "tiger's heart" quote.

Who is this "we" who has "no doubt" that your wrong statement is
correct? It has already been explained to you what a noverint is.
Repeating your arguments does not strengthen them, but apparently.
like all the other anti-Stratfordians, repetition is a major strategy.

> If any doubt remains
> about Nashe’s meaning, we can remove it by noting that the sentence
> that immediately precedes this passage is necessarily referring to
> young upstart lawyers:
>
> “…but when the irregular idiot that was up to the ears in divinity
> before ever he met with probabile in the university shall leave pro &
> contra before he can scarcely pronounce it, and come to correct
> commonweals that never heard of the name of magistrate before he came
> to Cambridge…”
>
>         This is a criticism of those Inns of Court students,

But this is singular, not plural. What happened to your argument about
number?

And it has already been explained to you whom this is about.

> who after
> learning a little law, would then return to the country and use their
> knowledge to cheat and govern their legally naive neighbors.  Indeed,
> Nashe’s comment is a paraphrase of the same argument and criticism of
> law students that appeared in Abraham Fraunce’s The Lawyer’s Logic
> (1588).  Fraunce bemoaned the law students’ “continual molestation of
> ignorant men,” and criticized those:
>
> who, when their fathers have made some lewd bargain in the country,
> run immediately to the Inns of Court, and having in seven years space
> met with six French words, home they ride like brave Magnificoes, and
> dash their poor neighbours children quite out of countenance, with
> Villen in gros, Villen regardant, and Tenant per le curtesie.
>
>         Notice again the similarity of the references to the novice
> lawyers:

Ah, so that's where you got the mistaken idea that "noverint" referred
to lawyers!

> “having in seven years space met with six French words”  and
> “shall leave pro & contra before he can scarcely pronounce it.”
>         Nashe’s Lenten Stuff also makes clear that the satirist got
> into battles with the young upstarts of the Inns of Court, and here he
> again expresses his belief that they should not be meddling in
> literary matters.  Notice how similar the phrasing is:
>
> “…infant squib of the Inns of Court, that hath not half greased his
> dining cap, or scarce warmed his Lawyer’s cushion…”…
>
>         That audacious young man at the Inns of Court who has “scarce
> warmed his lawyer’s cushion” clearly echoes Nashe’s famous complaint
> about those in “the trade of Noverint” who “could scarcely Latinize
> their neck-verse.”  In both cases, he is referring to these law
> students as young, inexperienced upstarts who should not be intruding
> into the literary realm.  And here it is unambiguous that Nashe is
> referring to lawyers.

You really should take a survey course in Elizabethan/Jacobean
literature.

TR

[rita]

Ah, yes! Got it. But at least I'm not the only one missing the
point, I think Dennis does too. At any rate, determiners are there in
two of the three instances he quotes as examples of contemporary
usage, though he hasn't included them. Davies actually doesn’t just
call Shakespeare ‘English Terence’, he calls him ‘our English
Terence’; and Meres calls Warner ‘our English Homer’. I couldn’t
check the Harington quote mentioned but apparently Ralegh also
referred to Sidney as ‘our English Petrarch’. Another one.
Determiners beset us on every side.

I have googled for determinerless examples of this kind of 'English
Whosit' usage, but not found any. Dennis, can you cite an example
where someone employs such a usage *without* any determiner -
particularly where it’s used as the subject of a sentence? For
example, if instead of calling Shakespeare ‘our English Terence’
Davies had written something like ‘English Terence wrote many
excellent comedies...’. That would parallel the sort of language you
suggest Nashe is using.

Rita

> Peter G.- Hide quoted text -

[rita]

On Jul 10, 9:34 am, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"

<Den...@NorthofShakespeare.com> wrote:

> Two common misinterpretations have plagued analyses of this
> paragraph because of the supposition that Nashe was discussing Thomas
> Kyd in the above passage.  First, a number of scholars assume the term
> “Noverint” refers to “scrivener” because Thomas Kyd, the most commonly
> suspected author of the Ur-Hamlet, was never a lawyer or law student,
> but his father had been a scrivener.  In 1920, Valdemar Osterberg, who
> provided perhaps the strongest arguments that Kyd was the author of
> the Ur-Hamlet, became the first to advocate the scrivener
> interpretation.  

Is it fair to imply that scholars interpret ‘noverint’ as ‘scrivener’
just to make this quote fit Thomas Kyd? I checked the word in the
OED. In nine early instances from 1592-1748 ‘noverint’ meant ‘writ’;
in four from 1594-1740 it meant ‘scrivener’; but there were none
quoted where it meant ‘lawyer’. In three mid-to-late 19th century
quotes (deriving apparently from Nashe’s usage) the complete phrase
‘trade of noverint’ seems to have been used loosely to mean ‘the
business of attorney or law-clerk’.

So if Nashe used ‘noverint’ to mean lawyer or law student, he was
entirely unique in his age in so doing. OED uses a significant 1594
sample to show how it was used (by Lyly, a friend of Nashe) to mean
‘scrivener’ : ‘With such a Nouerint as cheap side can shew none
such.’ So Cheapside apparently is the natural stamping-ground of
'noverints'. That’s a long way from the Inns of Court, and I don’t
mean in miles.

We’ll all readily admit Elizabethan society was highly class-sensitive
and precise about social status. I doubt anyone could describe a
gentleman-student at the Inns of Court as being ‘born’ to any
‘trade’. Only gentlemen were supposed to attend the Inns, and the
whole essence of being a gentleman was that you weren’t born to a
trade. This must have been especially true of North, whose father I
believe was a baron? Inns of Court students certainly weren’t
destined for the humble life of a law-clerk. Notoriously, and
probably unfairly, they were often seen as spoilt rich kids having a
great time in London on daddy’s money while pretending to study law.
And it’s true that many of them didn’t even go on to practise as
lawyers, as they didn’t need to.

Surely Nashe would just look silly suggesting these well-off, well-
educated gentlemen’s sons were semi-literate fools who should stick to
copying out writs?

Rita

[rita]

On Jul 10, 9:34 am, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"
<Den...@NorthofShakespeare.com> wrote:

>         Nashe’s Lenten Stuff also makes clear that the satirist got
> into battles with the young upstarts of the Inns of Court, and here he
> again expresses his belief that they should not be meddling in
> literary matters.  Notice how similar the phrasing is:
>
> “…infant squib of the Inns of Court, that hath not half greased his
> dining cap, or scarce warmed his Lawyer’s cushion…”…
>
>         That audacious young man at the Inns of Court who has “scarce
> warmed his lawyer’s cushion” clearly echoes Nashe’s famous complaint
> about those in “the trade of Noverint” who “could scarcely Latinize
> their neck-verse.”  In both cases, he is referring to these law
> students as young, inexperienced upstarts who should not be intruding
> into the literary realm.  And here it is unambiguous that Nashe is
> referring to lawyers.

In 'Nashe's Lenten Stuffe' he isn’t complaining about rival writers
emerging from the Inns. He’s defending himself against alleged
misinterpretation by unskilful readers . The whole passage goes:

‘For if but carelessly betwixt sleeping and waking I write I know not
what against plebian publicans and sinners (no better than the sworn
brothers of candlestick-turners and tinkers)’
[Look if I just scribble some careless criticism of ordinary common
citizens, the underclass in fact]
‘and leave some terms in suspense that my post-haste want of argent
will not give me elbow-room enough to explain or examine as I would,’
[and don’t make myself as clear as I might because I’m writing fast to
get money]
‘out steps me an infant squib of the Inns of Court, that hath not
half greased his dining-cap, or scarce warmed his lawyer’s cushion,’
[up pops some stupid little IoC newbie]
‘and he, to approve himself an extravagant statesman,’
[and he, to show how deeply knowing he is about public affairs]
‘ catcheth hold of a rush, and absolutely concludeth it is meant of
the Emperor of Russia,’
[gets the wrong end of the stick entirely/picks on the word ‘rush’ and
flatly announces I’m REALLY satirizing the Emperor of Russia]
‘and that it will utterly mar the traffic into that country if all the
pamphlets be not called in and suppressed wherein that libelling word
is mentioned.’
[and unless my pamphlet is suppressed there’ll be hell to pay and a
trade embargo to boot.]

This is not the same thing at all. One's a complaint - disingenuous,
IMHO - about over-excited young students thinking they see satire in
his work he honestly never meant. The other's a complaint about
undereducated people who don't even know enough Latin to plead they
are 'clerics' when up on a felony charge (implication being, they are
the kind of skanky lowlifes who will need to know this useful formula
some day).

Rita

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

Hi Rita,

On Jul 10, 12:18 pm, rita <rita.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ah, yes!  Got it.  But at least I'm not the only one missing the
> point, I think Dennis does too.  At any rate, determiners are there in
> two of the three instances he quotes as examples of contemporary
> usage, though he hasn't included them.  Davies actually doesn’t just
> call Shakespeare ‘English Terence’, he calls him ‘our English
> Terence’; and Meres calls Warner ‘our English Homer’.   I couldn’t
> check the Harington quote mentioned but apparently Ralegh also
> referred to Sidney as ‘our English Petrarch’.  Another one.
> Determiners beset us on every side.
>
> I have googled for determinerless examples of this kind of 'English
> Whosit' usage, but not found any.  Dennis, can you cite an example
> where someone employs such a usage *without* any determiner -
> particularly where it’s used as the subject of a sentence? For
> example, if instead of calling Shakespeare ‘our English Terence’
> Davies had written something like ‘English Terence wrote many
> excellent comedies...’. That would parallel the sort of language you
> suggest Nashe is using.

Hi Rita. .
Here's one like that: "Thus English Juvenal, thy whip doth good,
Not gently laying on, but fetching blood."
Mill, Humphrey, fl. 1640. Title: A nights search·
Also, in Wit's Miserie, Lodge refers to Nashe as "true English
Aretine" -- not "our English Aretine" and I'm not sure why it would
make a difference. Why couldn't someone refer to "our English Seneca"
just as "English Seneca"?
The sentence runs: "English Seneca ....yields many good sentences such
as "blood is a beggar" ....and if you entreat him fair...he will
afford you whole Hamlets..."
The "him" and the "he" refers to "English Seneca," does it not? After
all, neither Seneca (nor the English translations of Seneca) wrote
Hamlet.
Why would we struggle to recreate an awkward interpretation, when the
most common usage of "English Seneca" has the sentence make sense?
For example, "[Shakespeare] read by candle-light yields many good
sentences as "blood is a beggar," and... if you entreat him fair in a
frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets..."
No additional interpretation necessary.

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

On Jul 10, 1:14 pm, rita <rita.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jul 10, 9:34 am, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"
>
> <Den...@NorthofShakespeare.com> wrote:
> > Two common misinterpretations have plagued analyses of this
> > paragraph because of the supposition that Nashe was discussing Thomas
> > Kyd in the above passage.  First, a number of scholars assume the term
> > “Noverint” refers to “scrivener” because Thomas Kyd, the most commonly
> > suspected author of the Ur-Hamlet, was never a lawyer or law student,
> > but his father had been a scrivener.  In 1920, Valdemar Osterberg, who
> > provided perhaps the strongest arguments that Kyd was the author of
> > the Ur-Hamlet, became the first to advocate the scrivener
> > interpretation.  

Rita:

> Is it fair to imply that scholars interpret ‘noverint’ as ‘scrivener’
> just to make this quote fit Thomas Kyd?  I checked the word in the
> OED.  In nine early instances from 1592-1748 ‘noverint’ meant ‘writ’;
> in four from 1594-1740 it meant ‘scrivener’; but there were none
> quoted where it meant ‘lawyer’.   In three mid-to-late 19th century
> quotes (deriving apparently from Nashe’s usage) the complete phrase
> ‘trade of noverint’ seems to have been used loosely to mean ‘the
> business of attorney or law-clerk’.
>
> So if Nashe used ‘noverint’ to mean  lawyer or law student, he was
> entirely unique in his age in so doing.  

Dennis: Rita that is powerful stuff -- and to the point. I applaud
this argument. In fact, I used something quite like it: [If Nashe was
using "English Seneca" not to mean a person but to refer to the
"English translations of Seneca" then he was unique in his age in
doing so.] But your point on scrivener is really is the crux of the
matter. If he's referring to a scrivener, he's referring to Kyd. If
not, he's not. So if you will indulge me for a moment, let's see if
you and I can sort this out. Such evidence would support your point,
but you missed a few:

"Time was, that Nouerint vniuersi was vnborne, the Lawyer himselfe
knew not what an obligation meant."Thomas Adams, The White Devil,
1612, 49

And "Noverint universi per praesentes, your Lawyer is a Coxcomb. Did
he not doe his duty every night?" Randolph, Thomas, 1605-1635.
Title: A pleasant comedie, entituled Hey for honesty, down with
knavery translated out of Aristophanes his Plutus by Tho. Randolph,
augmented and published by F.J.
Date: 1651 p. 35

The Country Lawyers too Jog down apace
Each with his NOVERINT UNIVERSI Face;
Rides Jabbering along some damn'd Law-Case.
--R. Edwards, Titus Andronicus, or the Rape of Lavinia,
1687

Also from 1748, And what a glorious time would the Lawyers have, on
the one hand, with their Noverint universi's, and suits commenceable
on restitution of goods and chattels;
-- S. Richardson, Clarissa, 1748

But a more important example is "Groatsworth," which clearly follows
the language of Nashe's preface and echoes the same complaints about
actors (to the point where many think Nashe was involved with
Groatsworth too). Are you interpreting Groatsworth's "noverint" to
mean "scrivener" too?
"…Yet was not the father [Gorinius] altogether unlettered, for he had
good experience in a Noverint, and by the universal terms therein
contained, had driven many a young Gentleman to seek unknown
countries...." This likely refers to the mass evictions known as the
dissolution of the monasteries. But regardless of what specific mass
eviction or deportation is being referred to, it is referring to a
major displacement of men through legal means. And it would seem only
a powerful lawyer -- not scrivener -- that could do that. Moreover,
Nashe's sentence that immediately precedes this Hamlet-passage is
necessarily referring to studier(s) of Law.

“…but when the irregular idiot that was up to the ears in divinity
before ever he met with probabile in the university shall leave pro &
contra before he can scarcely pronounce it, and come to correct
commonweals that never heard of the name of magistrate before he came
to Cambridge…”

This is a criticism of those, who after

learning a little law, would then return to the country and use their
knowledge to cheat and govern their legally naive neighbors. Indeed,
Nashe’s comment is a paraphrase of the same argument and criticism of
law students that appeared in Abraham Fraunce’s The Lawyer’s Logic
(1588). Fraunce bemoaned the law students’ “continual molestation of
ignorant men,” and criticized those:

who, when their fathers have made some lewd bargain in the country,
run immediately to the Inns of Court, and having in seven years space
met with six French words, home they ride like brave Magnificoes, and
dash their poor neighbours children quite out of countenance, with
Villen in gros, Villen regardant, and Tenant per le curtesie.

Lawyer's Logic by the way uses many passages from Shepherd's
Calendar to provide examples of logic -- including the Kyd and
newfangles fable that Nashe references right after the passage.

Notice also the similarity of the references to the novice

lawyers: “having in seven years space met with six French words” and
“shall leave pro & contra before he can scarcely pronounce it.”
Nashe’s Lenten Stuff also makes clear that the satirist got
into battles with the young upstarts of the Inns of Court, and here he
again expresses his belief that they should not be meddling in
literary matters. Notice how similar the phrasing is:

“…infant squib of the Inns of Court, that hath not half greased his
dining cap, or scarce warmed his Lawyer’s cushion…”…

That audacious young man at the Inns of Court who has “scarce
warmed his lawyer’s cushion” clearly echoes Nashe’s famous complaint
about those in “the trade of Noverint” who “could scarcely Latinize
their neck-verse.” In both cases, he is referring to these law
students as young, inexperienced upstarts who should not be intruding
into the literary realm. And here it is unambiguous that Nashe is
referring to lawyers.

But the most important argument for the fact that he is using the term
to refer to laws students and alumni of the Inns of Court
is that is the group of men who were almost exclusively writing
Senecan tragedies. So you don't have to assume that all the uses of
plural throughout the entire passage -- "these men" "trivial
translators" "famished followers,' etc are referring to just one man.
It's referring to the group of studiers of law who started writing
such tragedies.

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

Rita:

> We’ll all readily admit Elizabethan society was highly class-sensitive
> and precise about social status.  I doubt anyone could describe a
> gentleman-student at the Inns of Court as being ‘born’ to any
> ‘trade’.  Only gentlemen were supposed to attend the Inns, and the
> whole essence of being a gentleman was that you weren’t born to a
> trade. This must have been especially true of North, whose father I
> believe was a baron?  

Dennis: Hmm. That's an interesting point. But, as Poetaster shows
with the Ovid Sr, Ovid Jr. arc-- the younger brothers in aristocratic
families were indeed destined for law.
In fact, that is how Lady Frances Bushby describes Thomas North,
saying how
that "[Thomas North] was designed for his father's profession of the
law,"
Lady Francis Bushby, Three Men of Tudor Time, London, David Nutt
(1911), pp.175-192, 175. so it would not be strange for someone like
Nashe to refer to such gentlemen as "born to the trade of Noverint."
Also, Nashe was certainly not afraid of criticizing law students who
interfere in matters they shouldn't. As Nashe complained about the
"infant squib of the Inns of Court who hath scarce warmed his lawyer's
cushion" who stuck his nose where it didn't belong. I believe he's
making the same type of argument in the Hamlet-passage.

[Gary]

On 10/07/2011 1:34 AM, den...@NorthofShakespeare.com wrote:
> Well, here's the other interpretation. Nashe was using "English
> Seneca" in the same way everyone else used that same phrase (or
> similar phrases) -- to refer to a person who wrote like Seneca. If
> you check EEBO, you find this is keeping with the Elizabethan
> tradition of referring to authors as the English version of the
> classical author they emulate. In an epigram, John Davies referred to
> William Shakespeare as "English Terence," Francis Meres, in Wit's
> Treasury, referred to William Warner as "English Homer," Sir John
> Harrington referred to Sidney as "English Petrarch" (from the notes to
> Book 16 of his translation of Orlando Furioso, 1591) Indeed, EEBO has
> dozens of examples of "English Seneca/Homer/Aretine/Petrarch, etc).
> And every time it refers to a person. And with that commonplace
> interpretation, the sentence really makes sense. "yet English Seneca
> read by candlelight yields many good sentences, as Blood is a beggar,
> and so forth, and if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will
> afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of tragical
> speeches..." When you replace "English Seneca" with a person (say,
> "Thomas Kyd" or "William Shakespeare"), the sentence makes sense. When
> you replace it with "English translations of Seneca," it does not.
> After all, the "English translations of Seneca" did not write "Hamlet"
> and does not include the sentence "blood is a beggar."
>
> As for the whole passage, here is an alternative explanation:
> In an insightful and significant article in the Renaissance Quarterly,

> Jessica Winston observed that, in Elizabethan England, �there was

> intense interest in [Seneca], especially at the universities and early
> English law schools, the Inns of Court, where students and fellows
> translated most of the drama and performed a series of Senecan and neo-

> Senecan plays.� Winston then sought to explain this peculiar

> connection between Seneca and studiers of law, observing that the
> ambitious young men would often use Senecan tragedies to help reflect
> and hopefully influence the political events and viewpoints of the
> aristocracy, to create plays that would provide counsel to the Queen.
> In brief, these would-be lawyers thought to use Senecan tragedies to

> become like Seneca himself -- a trusted adviser to royalty. �Many of

> the translators saw Senecan tragedy as a classical version of advice-

> to-princes poetry,� wrote Winston, who then in a footnote added that
> �other works of counsel literature by men associated with the law

> schools in this period include Thomas North's The Dial of Princess

> (1557)��

> The following list helps provide a glimpse of the strong and nearly
> exclusive connection between the Inns of Court law schools and Senecan
> tragedies up until 1589:
>
> 1. Gorboduc (1561-2) -- the first known English tragedy was a
> Senecan drama written by the lawyers, Thomas Norton and Thomas
> Sackville, and acted by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple.

> 2. Jocasta (1566) � was a Senecan tragedy penned by the lawyers,

> George Gascoigne and Francis Kinwelmersh, at the Gray's Inn. The
> future judge, Christopher Yelverton, wrote the epilogue. The play was
> mostly a translation of Dolce's Giocasta (1549).
> 3. Gismond of Salerne (1566-9) was a Senecan Tragedy created by
> the gentlemen of the Inner Temple, including the lawyer, Christopher
> Hatton. Two Italian works, Dolce's Didone (1547) and Boccaccio's
> Decameron, served as sources for the plot.

> 4. Seneca, His Ten Tragedies (1581) � was a published translation

> of ten of Seneca's tragedies, collected by Thomas Newton and
> translated by Jasper Heywood, John Studley, Alexander Neville, Thomas

> Nuce � all connected to the Inns of Court.

> 5. The Misfortunes of Arthur (1588) was another Senecan drama,
> written by eight law students of Gray's Inn, including lawyers Thomas
> Hughes and Francis Bacon. Yelverton helped write the dumb show. The
> play has been referred to as a "patchwork of translations" from
> Seneca.
>

> Evidently, from the 1560�s to the 1580�s, gentlemen otherwise born to

> the trade of law had begun translating Senecan dramas, often from the

> Italian � or would translate foreign tales and convert them to plays

> in the Senecan style. Even by the late 1580's, men trained in law
> were still following this fashion and still feasting on continental
> reworkings of Seneca. The 1588 play Misfortunes of Arthur, penned one

> year before Nashe�s epistle, was particularly imitative of Seneca.

> According to J.W. Cunliffe, 300 of 2022 lines of The Misfortunes of
> Arthur were "imitated or simply translated from Seneca's plays."
> Cunliffe wrote that it "seems impossible to carry the borrowing of
> Senecan material further," and A. P. Rossiter described Misfortunes
> as carrying "Seneca-pillagings to a final excess." In 1589, these
> young Gray's Inn law students who produced Misfortunes were the last
> in a line of would-be lawyers, translating Senecan dramas for the

> stage � and were, in the view of some, bleeding Seneca dry, line by

> line, page by page.
> As we shall see, this nettled the satirist Thomas Nashe for a
> variety of reasons. He did not like the fact that people destined to
> become lawyers (or born to "the trade of Noverint" as Nashe would put
> it) had now started invading his literary realm, trying their hand at
> translating and playwriting. Nashe complained about these
> moonlighting lawyers in a number of pamphlets and especially in his
> preface to Menaphon by Robert Greene. This latter grievance was
> particularly significant because it also contained an extremely
> intriguing and puzzling reference, an allusion to an impossibly early
> Hamlet, penned by someone Nashe called "English Seneca." Here is
> the passage in its entirety:
>
> ...I will turn back to my first text of studies of delight, and talk a
> little in friendship with a few of our trivial translators. It is a
> common practice now-a-days amongst a sort of shifting companions, that
> run through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of
> Noverint whereto they were born and busy themselves with the
> endeavours of art that could scarcely Latinize their neck-verse if
> they should have need; yet English Seneca read by candlelight yields
> many good sentences, as Blood is a beggar, and so forth, and if you
> entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole
> Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of tragical speeches. But O grief!
> Tempus edax rerum, what's that will last always? The sea exhaled by
> drops will in continuance be dry, and Seneca, let blood line by line

> and page by page, at length must needs die to our stage�

>
> Two common misinterpretations have plagued analyses of this
> paragraph because of the supposition that Nashe was discussing Thomas
> Kyd in the above passage. First, a number of scholars assume the term

> �Noverint� refers to �scrivener� because Thomas Kyd, the most commonly

> suspected author of the Ur-Hamlet, was never a lawyer or law student,
> but his father had been a scrivener. In 1920, Valdemar Osterberg, who
> provided perhaps the strongest arguments that Kyd was the author of
> the Ur-Hamlet, became the first to advocate the scrivener

> interpretation. But when we read Nashe�s paragraph after Winston�s

> recent analysis, we now have no doubt Nashe is referring to the law
> students and alumni of the Inns of Court as those followers of Seneca

> who were �born� to �the trade of Noverint.� If any doubt remains
> about Nashe�s meaning, we can remove it by noting that the sentence

> that immediately precedes this passage is necessarily referring to
> young upstart lawyers:
>

> ��but when the irregular idiot that was up to the ears in divinity

> before ever he met with probabile in the university shall leave pro&
> contra before he can scarcely pronounce it, and come to correct
> commonweals that never heard of the name of magistrate before he came

> to Cambridge��

>
> This is a criticism of those Inns of Court students, who after
> learning a little law, would then return to the country and use their
> knowledge to cheat and govern their legally naive neighbors. Indeed,

> Nashe�s comment is a paraphrase of the same argument and criticism of
> law students that appeared in Abraham Fraunce�s The Lawyer�s Logic
> (1588). Fraunce bemoaned the law students� �continual molestation of
> ignorant men,� and criticized those:

>
> who, when their fathers have made some lewd bargain in the country,
> run immediately to the Inns of Court, and having in seven years space
> met with six French words, home they ride like brave Magnificoes, and
> dash their poor neighbours children quite out of countenance, with
> Villen in gros, Villen regardant, and Tenant per le curtesie.
>
> Notice again the similarity of the references to the novice

> lawyers: �having in seven years space met with six French words� and
> �shall leave pro& contra before he can scarcely pronounce it.�
> Nashe�s Lenten Stuff also makes clear that the satirist got

> into battles with the young upstarts of the Inns of Court, and here he
> again expresses his belief that they should not be meddling in
> literary matters. Notice how similar the phrasing is:
>

> ��infant squib of the Inns of Court, that hath not half greased his
> dining cap, or scarce warmed his Lawyer�s cushion���
>
> That audacious young man at the Inns of Court who has �scarce
> warmed his lawyer�s cushion� clearly echoes Nashe�s famous complaint
> about those in �the trade of Noverint� who �could scarcely Latinize
> their neck-verse.� In both cases, he is referring to these law

> students as young, inexperienced upstarts who should not be intruding
> into the literary realm. And here it is unambiguous that Nashe is
> referring to lawyers.
> The second common misinterpretation of the passage is that the
> plural form used throughout the entire Hamlet passage and the

> sentences that follow � " �a few of our trivial translators�shifting
> companions...they were born and busy themselves�if they should have
> need�famished followers�these men�" -- was merely a convention, that

> Nashe used all of these plural terms to allude to Thomas Kyd, alone.
> Osterberg clarified the rationale for this belief in the following
> manner: "[I]t would be strange if even two, to say nothing of more,
> translators from the Italian had started with the same initial
> employment. In life it happens very seldom indeed that the careers of
> different men coincide as exactly as would be involved in the various
> details mentioned by Nashe." The Kyd scholar, Frederick S. Boas, put
> forth a similar argument, "as so elaborate an indictment could only be
> aimed at a single personage." In other words, Osterberg and Boas both
> found it hard to believe that more than one other writer could have
> had such a specific history, beginning in the trade of noverint and
> then ending up translating and writing Senecan plays. But as shown, a
> great number of lawyer translators, who worked from the Italian and
> penned Senecan dramas, did indeed exist. The argument of Osterberg
> and Boas thus crumbles with its foundational premise. Nashe was
> referring to a group, so he was referring to lawyers, so he was not
> referring to Kyd.

> Thus, Winston�s analysis showing the connection between Senecan

> tragedies and the students and alumni of the Inns of Court has
> provided us with the Rosetta Stone for the coded allusions in the Ur-
> Hamlet passage, allowing us to resolve all prior misinterpretations.
> As Nashe stated: a group of men, otherwise destined to the legal trade
> of Noverint, had indeed begun translating Senecan dramas. This
> practice reached its peak the year before Nashe's epistle with
> Misfortunes of Arthur, which was filled with as many as 300 lines
> stolen from Seneca. It is this group of students of Noverint who were
> the ones bleeding Seneca dry. Thus, to paraphrase Nashe in modern
> vernacular:
>
> Let me return my attention to the trivial translators: It is
> a common practice nowadays that people otherwise born to the trade of

> law (i.e., �noverint�) start trying their hand at art, like

> translating and drama, even before they have learned enough Latin to
> save them from hanging. Sure, our "English Seneca," read by
> candlelight, has given us a few good sentences like "blood is a
> beggar" and so forth, and if you read his work on a frosty morning, he
> will offer you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of tragical
> speeches. But now there have been too many would-be-lawyers

> translating Senecan dramas [like the students of Gray�s Inn who wrote

> Misfortunes of Arthur], and lately, Seneca is being bled dry, line by
> line, page by page.
>
> Yet, Osterberg's argument that Nashe referenced Thomas Kyd in
> a pun in the sentences following the Hamlet reference is
> indisputable. Here is the ensuing passage:
>

> �which makes his famished followers to imitate the kid in

> Aesop, who, enamoured with the fox's newfangles, forsook all hopes of
> life to leap into a new occupation and these men, renouncing all
> possibilities of credit or estimation, to intermeddle with Italian

> translations�.And no marvel though their home-born mediocrity be such

> in this matter, for what can be hoped of those that thrust Elysium
> into hell, and have not learned the just measure of the horizon with
> an hexameter? Sufficeth them to bodge up a blank verse with ifs and

> ands�.�

>
> We know that Nashe, who was fond of puns, is referring to Kyd with his
> "kid in Aesop" comment because the sentences that follow describe
> Kyd's "Spanish Tragedy." Why does he make such a comment? For
> exactly the reason he states. Nashe had begun discussing the students

> who were bleeding Seneca dry� and specifically those "famished
> followers [of Seneca] �" who "imitate the kid." Here "famished

> followers" refers to the lawyer-authors of Misfortunes of Arthur,
> whose work was an imitation of Kyd's Spanish Tragedy. When these law
> students were not stealing from Seneca, they were stealing from Kyd.
> For example, for twenty years, between the mid 1560's and mid 1580's,
> dumb shows do not appear in Elizabethan theater. Then Thomas Kyd's
> The Spanish Tragedy reintroduced the use of symbolical dumb shows at
> the beginning of each act, and the authors of The Misfortunes of
> Arthur decided to adopt this same peculiar practice. Thomas Nashe
> mentions three other examples of similar emulation. Nashe observed
> that these "famished followers" have "thrust Elysium into hell" and

> "have not learned the just measure of �an hexameter" and "bodge up a

> blank verse with ifs and ands." All of these elements -- the
> juxtaposition of Elysium with Hell, the conversion of the hexameter
> from the sixth book of the Aeneid into pentameter, and the over-use of
> "if's" and "and's," particularly at the beginning of lines in an

> effort to maintain the meter � all of these are elements common to

> both The Spanish Tragedy and The Misfortunes of Arthur.
> Since Nashe is referencing Kyd as the one imitated by the
> writers of The Misfortunes of Arthur, there is no reason to assume
> that he is referencing Kyd as the Ur-Hamlet author as well. And this
> finds support in the fact that Kyd could not have been one of the
> lawyer-translators addressed in the Ur-Hamlet paragraph.

Dennis, assuming that "English Seneca" refers to a person,
how do you explain away the "read by candle light" phrase?
That would seem to be an indicator pointing to Kyd as being
the English Seneca (and author of ur-Hamlet), not North.

In fact, even if your reasoning is correct, I don't see
anything here that points to North as being the English
Seneca. And that, surely, is your main objective? In your
book you claim this is one of the six Elizabethan works that
identify North as an author. How does it do so?

- Gary

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

On Jul 10, 9:20 am, Tom Reedy <tom.re...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Repetition does not strengthen your arguments.
>
> On Jul 10, 3:34 am, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"
>
> <Den...@NorthofShakespeare.com> wrote:
> > Well, here's the other interpretation.  Nashe was using "English> Seneca" in the same way everyone else used that same phrase (or
> > similar phrases) -- to refer to a person who wrote like Seneca.  If
> > you check EEBO, you find this is keeping with the Elizabethan
> > tradition of referring to authors as the English version of the
> > classical author they emulate.  In an epigram, John Davies referred to
> > William Shakespeare as "English Terence," Francis Meres, in Wit's
> > Treasury, referred to William Warner as "English Homer," Sir John
> > Harrington referred to Sidney as "English Petrarch" (from the notes to
> > Book 16 of his translation of Orlando Furioso, 1591)  Indeed, EEBO has
> > dozens of examples of "English Seneca/Homer/Aretine/Petrarch, etc).
>
> We've asked for your list of such examples, yet you have failed to
> provide it.

Dennis; EEBO gives 22 records of "English Homer," 15 records of
"English Seneca" etc. Do you want me to start listing them?

>   "yetEnglish Seneca

>
> > read by candlelight yields many good sentences, as Blood is a beggar,
> > and so forth, and if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will
> > afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of tragical
> > speeches..."  When you replace "English Seneca" with a person (say,
> > "Thomas Kyd" or "William Shakespeare"), the sentence makes sense.

Reedy:

> No, it doesn't. Why would you have to wait for a frosty morning to ask
> a person to write tragical speeches?

Dennis: ?? No, it means reading him "in a frosty morning" will afford
you whole "Hamlets." And the reason for "the frosty morning" is as you
noted another reference to "Hamlet." (And I'm glad you agree that this
non-Shakespearean Hamlet was so similar to the one we have today that
it even included the comments about the cold morning.)

Reedy: Why would you even entreat him to

> do so? Wy would "yield" = "write"?

Dennis: Yield in this sense means to "bear" or "brings forth" or a
tree yields fruit --- and is similar to "afford" later on. English
Seneca yields (brings forth) many good sentences like "blood is a
beggar." He's talking about one writer who wrote that phrase.

> > After all, the "English translations of Seneca" did not write "Hamlet"
> > and does not include the sentence "blood is a beggar."
>

> He doesn't sayEnglish Senecawill write Hamlet; he says
> (sarcastically, but you miss that also)English Senecawill yield many

> "good" (imagine finger quotes" sentences.
>
> And why would Nashe make up an example (Blood is a beggar) out of pure
> cloth?

Dennis: He didn't make up the example, that's the point. It's
obviously a line from a lost play of English Seneca -- such as "Titus
and Vespasian" or "The Jew."
He's playing on one of "English Seneca's" lines. Note the line doesn't
appear in "English translations of Seneca" --so those translations
don't "yield" -- "blood is a beggar," no matter how you try to define
the term.

[Gary]

On 10/07/2011 10:14 AM, rita wrote:

SNIP

> We�ll all readily admit Elizabethan society was highly class-sensitive

> and precise about social status. I doubt anyone could describe a

> gentleman-student at the Inns of Court as being �born� to any
> �trade�.

Unless, perhaps, the person making the description was a
sarcastic smart-ass who occasionally got into trouble
for shooting his mouth off? ; )

- Gary

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

On Jul 10, 1:31 pm, rita <rita.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jul 10, 9:34 am, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"
>
>
> <Den...@NorthofShakespeare.com> wrote:
> >         Nashe’s Lenten Stuff also makes clear that the satirist got
> > into battles with the young upstarts of the Inns of Court, and here he
> > again expresses his belief that they should not be meddling in
> > literary matters.  Notice how similar the phrasing is:
>
> > “…infant squib of the Inns of Court, that hath not half greased his
> > dining cap, or scarce warmed his Lawyer’s cushion…”…
>
> >         That audacious young man at the Inns of Court who has “scarce
> > warmed his lawyer’s cushion” clearly echoes Nashe’s famous complaint
> > about those in “the trade of Noverint” who “could scarcely Latinize
> > their neck-verse.”  In both cases, he is referring to these law
> > students as young, inexperienced upstarts who should not be intruding
> > into the literary realm.  And here it is unambiguous that Nashe is
> > referring to lawyers.
>
> In 'Nashe's Lenten Stuffe' he isn’t complaining about rival writers
> emerging from the Inns.  He’s defending himself against alleged
> misinterpretation by unskilful readers .  The whole passage goes:
>
> ‘For if but carelessly betwixt sleeping and waking I write I know not
> what against plebian publicans and sinners (no better than the sworn
> brothers of candlestick-turners and tinkers)’
> [Look if I just scribble some careless criticism of ordinary common
> citizens, the underclass in fact]

Dennis: Yes, precisely right on this interpretation.

>  ‘and leave some terms in suspense that my post-haste want of argent
> will not give me elbow-room enough to explain or examine as I would,’
> [and don’t make myself as clear as I might because I’m writing fast to
> get money]

Dennis: Right again.

>  ‘out steps me an infant squib of the Inns of Court, that hath not
> half greased his dining-cap, or scarce warmed his lawyer’s cushion,’
> [up pops some stupid little IoC newbie]
> ‘and he, to approve himself an extravagant statesman,’
> [and he, to show how deeply knowing he is about public affairs]
> ‘ catcheth hold of a rush, and absolutely concludeth it is meant of
> the Emperor of Russia,’
> [gets the wrong end of the stick entirely/picks on the word ‘rush’ and
> flatly announces I’m REALLY satirizing the Emperor of Russia]

Dennis: PERFECT description.

> ‘and that it will utterly mar the traffic into that country if all the
> pamphlets be not called in and suppressed wherein that libelling word
> is mentioned.’
> [and unless my pamphlet is suppressed there’ll be hell to pay and a
> trade embargo to boot.]
>
> This is not the same thing at all.  One's a complaint - disingenuous,
> IMHO - about over-excited young students thinking they see satire in
> his work he honestly never meant.  

Dennis: Yes, but the point is he's attacking Inns of Court students.
And he
is attacking their naivete and youthful ignorance --"infant squib"
".."that hath not

"half greased his dining-cap, or scarce warmed his lawyer’s cushion"

You say he's talking about "stupid little newbies'." Exactly! And
that's what he's talking about in the Hamlet passage.

The other's a complaint about
> undereducated people

Dennis responds: Now I disagree if you are trying to imply that the
people Nashe are referring to are not university students or
unschooled. In the sentence just prior, he refers to "the irregular

idiot that was up to the ears in divinity
before ever he met with probabile in the university shall leave pro &

contra before he can scarcely pronounce it..."
He is not talking about someone who is uneducated (he attended the
University after all) simply because he claims he can scarcely
pronounce "pro & contra". That's an exaggeration.
The same exaggeration referring to Inns of Court student as an "infant
squib" or one who “could scarcely Latinize their neck-verse.”
Again: "scarcely pronounce "pro & contra".
Again: "scarcely Latinize their neck-verse"
Neither are implying unschooled -- but referring to them as "stupid
little newbies," who've just learned a few things but don't know
much.

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

>         Dennis, assuming that "English Seneca" refers to a person,
> how do you explain away the "read by candle light" phrase?
> That would seem to be an indicator pointing to Kyd as being

> theEnglish Seneca(and author of ur-Hamlet), not North.

>
>         In fact, even if your reasoning is correct, I don't see

> anything here that points to North as being theEnglishSeneca.  And that, surely, is your main objective?  In your

> book you claim this is one of the six Elizabethan works that
> identify North as an author.  How does it do so?

Dennis responds: Hi Gary, great question. I'm getting to that soon.
First I'm trying to show that the paragraph is referring to the
tradition of inns of court students to write Senecan tragedies and is
specifically referring to those students who had just written "The
Misfortunes of Arthur." They were the ones bleeding Seneca dry and who
were imitating the "Kid" -- specifically Kyd's "Spanish Tragedy."

[Tom Reedy]

On Jul 10, 2:06 pm, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"

"Time was, that 'Know all men by these presents' was vnborne, the

Lawyer himselfe knew not what an obligation meant."Thomas Adams, The
White Devil, 1612, 49


> And "Noverint universi per praesentes, your Lawyer is a Coxcomb. Did
> he not doe his duty every night?" Randolph, Thomas, 1605-1635.
> Title: A pleasant comedie, entituled Hey for honesty, down with
> knavery translated out of Aristophanes his Plutus by Tho. Randolph,
> augmented and published by F.J.
> Date: 1651  p. 35

And "Know all men by these presents", your Lawyer is a Coxcomb. Did he

not doe his duty every night?"

> The Country Lawyers too Jog down apace
> Each with his NOVERINT UNIVERSI Face;
> Rides Jabbering along some damn'd Law-Case.
>              --R. Edwards, Titus Andronicus, or the Rape of Lavinia,
> 1687

The Country Lawyers too Jog down apace

Each with his KNOW ALL MEN Face;

Rides Jabbering along some damn'd Law-Case.

>

> Also from 1748, And what a glorious time would the Lawyers have, on
> the one hand, with their Noverint universi's, and suits commenceable
> on restitution of goods and chattels;
> -- S. Richardson, Clarissa, 1748
>
> But a more important example is "Groatsworth," which clearly follows
> the language of Nashe's preface and echoes the same complaints about
> actors (to the point where many think Nashe was involved with
> Groatsworth too).  Are you interpreting Groatsworth's "noverint" to
> mean "scrivener" too?
> "…Yet was not the father [Gorinius] altogether unlettered, for he had
> good experience in a Noverint, and by the universal terms therein
> contained, had driven many a young Gentleman to seek unknown
> countries...." This likely refers to the mass evictions known as the
> dissolution of the monasteries.  But regardless of what specific mass
> eviction or deportation is being referred to, it is referring to a
> major displacement of men through legal means.

And every document began with "Know all men by these presents", just
as they do today.

> And it would seem only
> a powerful lawyer -- not scrivener -- that could do that.

Lawyers aren't powerful; they work for powerful people, a king, in
these cases.

> Moreover,
> Nashe's sentence that immediately precedes this Hamlet-passage is
> necessarily referring to studier(s) of Law.
>
> “…but when the irregular idiot that was up to the ears in divinity
> before ever he met with probabile in the university shall leave pro &
> contra before he can scarcely pronounce it, and come to correct
> commonweals that never heard of the name of magistrate before he came
> to Cambridge…”
>
>         This is a criticism of those, who after

You need to stop telling people what things are and adopt a more
humble attitude to increase the chances that you will learn. All you
have done so far is illustrate your defective reasoning.

One is in the singular and the other is in the plural. Which is it?

[Gary]

Okay, I'll wait.

But what about my first question? Isn't that "read by
candle light" phrase an indicator to Kyd as being the
"English Seneca" and author of ur-Hamlet? Or do you mean
you'll also address this phrase in the next phase of your
explanation? Because I think it's an important point.

Thanks...Gary

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

I just slapped my forehead. Here's a better one, sans determiner, from
Groatsworth -- which is clearly closely linked to Nashe's preface:

"With thee I ioyne yong Iuuenall, that byting Sa|tyrist, that lastly
with mee together writ a Comedie."
"Young Juvenal" is used as a nickname (sans determiner) in precisely
the same way as "English Seneca."
And just as "Young Juvenal...with me together writ a comedie."
"English Seneca...will afford you whole Hamlets... of tragical
speeches."

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

I'm sorry, why do you think "read by candlelight" points to Kyd?

[rita]

On Jul 10, 6:55 pm, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"

<Den...@NorthofShakespeare.com> wrote:
> Hi Rita,
>
> On Jul 10, 12:18 pm, rita <rita.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > Ah, yes!  Got it.  But at least I'm not the only one missing the
> > point, I think Dennis does too.  At any rate, determiners are there in
> > two of the three instances he quotes as examples of contemporary
> > usage, though he hasn't included them.  Davies actually doesn’t just
> > call Shakespeare ‘English Terence’, he calls him ‘our English
> > Terence’; and Meres calls Warner ‘our English Homer’.   I couldn’t
> > check the Harington quote mentioned but apparently Ralegh also
> > referred to Sidney as ‘our English Petrarch’.  Another one.
> > Determiners beset us on every side.
>
> > I have googled for determinerless examples of this kind of 'English
> > Whosit' usage, but not found any.  Dennis, can you cite an example
> > where someone employs such a usage *without* any determiner -
> > particularly where it’s used as the subject of a sentence?  For
> > example, if instead of calling Shakespeare ‘our English Terence’
> > Davies had written something like ‘English Terence wrote many
> > excellent comedies...’.  That would parallel the sort of language you
> > suggest Nashe is using.
>
> Hi Rita.  .
>  Here's one like that: "Thus  English Juvenal, thy whip doth good,
> Not gently laying on, but fetching blood."
> Mill, Humphrey, fl. 1640. Title: A nights search·

Close, but no cigar. Is this a work of fiction? I don't actually
know anything about Humphrey Mill or 'A nights search'. (Though I
recognise these lines as a rip-off from the c.1606 university drama
The Return From Parnassus, where the character Ingenioso ambles on
reading a satire by Juvenal and says:

I, Iuvenall, thy jerking hand is good,

Not gently laying on, but fetching blood.

Weirdly, Ingenioso is generally read as based on Nashe himself. Small
world.)

But why reject your example? Because to compare like with like we
need a piece of informative prose, not lines from a poem or snatches
of dialogue - somewhere where, with no determiner whatever, an author
just writes 'English Whosit does such a thing'.

> Also, in Wit's Miserie, Lodge refers to Nashe as "true English
> Aretine" -- not "our English Aretine" and I'm not sure why it would
> make a difference.

It does though. Look at the whole thing:
'Lilly, the famous for facility in discourse: Spencer, best read in
ancient Poetry: Daniel, choise in word, and invention: Draiton,
diligent and formall: Th. Nash, true English Aretine.' We know who
he's talking about because he helpfully gives us the name. If Nashe
had written 'Master North, true English Seneca, yields many good
sentences...' we wouldn't have an argument.

>Why couldn't someone refer to "our English Seneca"
> just as "English Seneca"?

Maybe they could, but they don't seem to have done so. I can't find
an example.

> The sentence runs: "English Seneca ....yields many good sentences such
> as "blood is a beggar" ....and if you entreat him fair...he will
> afford you whole Hamlets..."
> The "him" and the "he" refers to "English Seneca," does it not?  After
> all, neither Seneca (nor the English translations of Seneca) wrote
> Hamlet.

But Nashe doesn't say English Seneca 'writes' anything; he says
English Seneca 'yields' something. Of course a work can't write, but
it can certainly yield sentences. It boils down to whether 'English
Seneca' could be just a shorthand way of referring to [The] English
[translation of] Seneca: or an entirely unique example of 'English
Whosit' without a determiner of any kind used as the subject of a
sentence.

> Why would we struggle to recreate an awkward interpretation, when the
> most common usage of "English Seneca" has the sentence make sense?

But it's not a common usage to have an 'English Whosit' entirely
without a determiner, is it? It's very rare. That's why we have
neither of us yet found a clear example. Ninety nine times out of a
hundred it's 'our' English Whosit or 'the' English Whosit - you must
have noticed this while searching, I know I did. Then to find a bald
and determinerless 'English Whosit...does..such a thing' seems
impossible.

> For example, "[Shakespeare] read by candle-light yields many good
> sentences as "blood is a beggar," and... if you entreat him fair in a
> frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets..."
> No additional interpretation necessary.
>

'[The] English [translation of] Seneca read by candle-light yields
many good sentences as "blood is a beggar" ..' also makes sense. And
there I have to leave it, as time's up for me.

Rita

>
>
> > On Jul 10, 12:29 pm, "Peter Groves" <Montive...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: ardenm...@googlegroups.com
>
> > > [mailto:ardenm...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of rita
> > > Sent: Sunday, 10 July 2011 8:11 PM
> > > To: Forest of Arden
> > > Subject: [Forest of Arden] Re: Nashe's "English Seneca"
>
> > > No, but he might use 'English Seneca' in the same way Davies used 'our
> > > English Terence' to mean Shakespeare.
>
> > > Rita
>
> > > **** You're missing John's cogent point: 'our English Terence' includes
> > > a determiner.
>
> > > Peter G.- Hide quoted text -
>

> > > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

[Gary]

On 10/07/2011 2:53 PM, den...@NorthofShakespeare.com wrote:
> I'm sorry, why do you think "read by candlelight" points to Kyd?

Because of something Ignoto posted over at hlas:

********************************************************

As for 'read by candlelight':

'Why 'read by candle light? Perhaps Kyd's worst blunder in
his translation of Tasso (pointed out by Boas, p455) was his
mistranslation of 'ad lumina' (till dawn) as 'by
candlelight', a mistake Nashe did not fail to tease Kyd
with. A few lines later, he even returns to Kyd's blunder by
disparagingly referring to the result of his labours as
'candle stuff'.

Lukas Erne, 'Beyond the Spanish Tragedy: A Study of the
Works of Thomas
Kyd' (MUP, 2001), p150

*********************************************************

- Gary

[rita]

On Jul 10, 8:06 pm, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"

Dennis, these quotes are interesting but not relevant. All they show
is writs being referred to in connection with lawyers. But it’s not
surprising that legal documents are referred to in connection with
lawyers. You need to show us a contemporary example where the word
‘noverint’ is actually used to mean ‘lawyer’, as Lyly used it in 1594
to mean ‘scrivener’.

>
> But a more important example is "Groatsworth," which clearly follows
> the language of Nashe's preface and echoes the same complaints about
> actors (to the point where many think Nashe was involved with
> Groatsworth too). Are you interpreting Groatsworth's "noverint" to
> mean "scrivener" too?
> "…Yet was not the father [Gorinius] altogether unlettered, for he had
> good experience in a Noverint, and by the universal terms therein
> contained, had driven many a young Gentleman to seek unknown
> countries...."

No, I'm interpreting Groatsworth's 'noverint' to mean 'writ' - another
usage which according to OED was even commoner than using it to mean
'scrivener'. But what Greene clearly isn't doing here is using
'noverint' to mean 'lawyer'.

>This likely refers to the mass evictions known as the
> dissolution of the monasteries.

You think? I'd guess he's using it to refer to the way usurers
tricked young heirs out of their lands by legal chicanery. Frequent
complaint.

>But regardless of what specific mass
> eviction or deportation is being referred to, it is referring to a
> major displacement of men through legal means. And it would seem only
> a powerful lawyer -- not scrivener -- that could do that. Moreover,
> Nashe's sentence that immediately precedes this Hamlet-passage is
> necessarily referring to studier(s) of Law.
>
> “…but when the irregular idiot that was up to the ears in divinity
> before ever he met with probabile in the university shall leave pro &
> contra before he can scarcely pronounce it, and come to correct
> commonweals that never heard of the name of magistrate before he came
> to Cambridge…”

Okay, but why would a law student be 'up to the ears in divinity'?
And then go to Cambridge and begin learning the basic techniques of
academic debate? Why would he still be at university anyway? He
could learn civil law there but not common law. He'd get that at the
Inns of Court, in London. And 'irregular idiot' isn't just a term of
abuse you know. 'Irregular' meant 'disorderly, not acknowledging
rules'; and 'idiot' didn't mean stupid exactly, but 'unlearned,
uneducated.' Sounds more like a crack at over-enthusiastic religious
radicals like those who'd so recently given the bishops an interesting
time.

> This is a criticism of those, who after
> learning a little law, would then return to the country and use their
> knowledge to cheat and govern their legally naive neighbors. Indeed,
> Nashe’s comment is a paraphrase of the same argument and criticism of
> law students that appeared in Abraham Fraunce’s The Lawyer’s Logic
> (1588). Fraunce bemoaned the law students’ “continual molestation of
> ignorant men,” and criticized those:
>
> who, when their fathers have made some lewd bargain in the country,
> run immediately to the Inns of Court, and having in seven years space
> met with six French words, home they ride like brave Magnificoes, and
> dash their poor neighbours children quite out of countenance, with
> Villen in gros, Villen regardant, and Tenant per le curtesie.

Well, according to DNB Fraunce was a good student at Cambridge - won a
scholarship, elected Fellow, a real worker. Nose in a book. Probably
slogged away at Gray's Inn too as he was called to the bar after five
years and finally practised as a lawyer. Unfortunately I don't think
he came from a wealthy family, as the Earl of Pembroke says he was
financially supported through uni by Sir Philip Sidney. So, he
probably didn't like the rich-kid types who didn't have to earn their
living at the law, hardly studied and then swanked about when they got
back to the country, parading their 'legal knowledge'. Still, up to
this point he's only saying that they 'dash their poor neighbours
children quite out of countenance', which means they make them feel
abashed and inferior. It isn't quite an accusation of ripping them
off.

It reminds me less of Nashe than Bishop Joseph Hall. Hall was a bit
like Fraunce - good student, poor family, intellectually superior to
rich IoC layabouts who had had everything handed to them on a plate
and then had the gall to lord it over poor scholars. Hall includes a
passage in his Virgidemiarum making exactly the same criticism as
this. Coincidence, eh.

> Lawyer's Logic by the way uses many passages from Shepherd's
> Calendar to provide examples of logic -- including the Kyd and
> newfangles fable that Nashe references right after the passage.
>
> Notice also the similarity of the references to the novice
> lawyers: “having in seven years space met with six French words” and
> “shall leave pro & contra before he can scarcely pronounce it.”

Well I know 'pro and contra' means 'for and against'. But why should
it only be a reference to lawyers, and not to academic or religious
debates?

> Nashe’s Lenten Stuff also makes clear that the satirist got
> into battles with the young upstarts of the Inns of Court, and here he
> again expresses his belief that they should not be meddling in
> literary matters. Notice how similar the phrasing is:
>
> “…infant squib of the Inns of Court, that hath not half greased his
> dining cap, or scarce warmed his Lawyer’s cushion…”…
>
> That audacious young man at the Inns of Court who has “scarce
> warmed his lawyer’s cushion” clearly echoes Nashe’s famous complaint
> about those in “the trade of Noverint” who “could scarcely Latinize
> their neck-verse.” In both cases, he is referring to these law
> students as young, inexperienced upstarts who should not be intruding
> into the literary realm. And here it is unambiguous that Nashe is
> referring to lawyers.

I think I may have already outlined my problems with this
interpretation in another post.

Rita

[rita]

On Jul 10, 8:19 pm, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"

<Den...@NorthofShakespeare.com> wrote:
> Rita:
>
> > We’ll all readily admit Elizabethan society was highly class-sensitive
> > and precise about social status.  I doubt anyone could describe a
> > gentleman-student at the Inns of Court as being ‘born’ to any
> > ‘trade’.  Only gentlemen were supposed to attend the Inns, and the
> > whole essence of being a gentleman was that you weren’t born to a
> > trade. This must have been especially true of North, whose father I
> > believe was a baron?  
>
> Dennis: Hmm. That's an interesting point.  But, as Poetaster shows
> with the Ovid Sr, Ovid Jr. arc-- the younger brothers in aristocratic
> families were indeed destined for law.
> In fact, that is how  Lady Frances Bushby describes Thomas North,
> saying how
> that "[Thomas North] was designed for his father's profession of the
> law," Lady Francis Bushby, Three Men of Tudor Time, London, David Nutt
> (1911), pp.175-192, 175.

Yep. I wasn't saying that gentlemen never became lawyers. (All Inns
of Court men were gentlemen: some Inns of Court men became lawyers:
therefore some gentlemen became lawyers.) I just don't recall any
Elizabethan gentlemen described as being 'born to a trade'. Or to the
law generally being called 'a trade'.

>     so it would not be strange for someone like
> Nashe to refer to such gentlemen as "born to the trade of Noverint."

It would, unless he and his readers recognised no contradiction
whatever between being 'born to a trade' and being a gentleman. Most
Elizabethans did. And anyway as you say, we come back to the meaning
of 'Noverint'. The only contemporary usages cited by OED show
'noverint' as meaning either a writ, or a scrivener. A lawyer
certainly wasn't born to 'the trade of scriveners'. And I don't think
the law could be disparaged as 'the trade of writs', either.

> Also, Nashe was certainly not afraid of criticizing law students who
> interfere in matters they shouldn't.  As Nashe complained about the
> "infant squib of the Inns of Court who hath scarce warmed his lawyer's
> cushion" who stuck his nose where it didn't belong.  I believe he's
> making the same type of argument in the Hamlet-passage.

Not afraid? No, Nashe could punch above his weight, certainly against
IoC men. But I think I've said elsewhere that he's complaining about
them being unskilful *readers* there, embarrassing him by detecting
satirical meanings he never intended (or so he says). That isn't the
same as criticizing them for writing for the public stage.

Rita

[rita]

On Jul 10, 9:20 pm, Gary <g...@shaw.ca> wrote:
> On 10/07/2011 10:14 AM, rita wrote:
>
> SNIP
>

> > We ll all readily admit Elizabethan society was highly class-sensitive

> > and precise about social status.  I doubt anyone could describe a

> > gentleman-student at the Inns of Court as being born to any
> > trade .

>
>         Unless, perhaps, the person making the description was a
> sarcastic smart-ass who occasionally got into trouble
> for shooting his mouth off?    ; )
>
> - Gary

Which Nashe was; but working within the social conventions of his
day. What are his readers meant to understand - that Nashe was
implying lawyers are not really gentlemen at all, but some kind of
artisans? Satire is more than abuse, it has to make sense.
Elizabethans were very litigious, and naturally many of them didn't
like lawyers, and I'm sure many lawyers were crooks. But the law was
acknowledged as a great profession, with many very powerful men
belonging to it. As for the Inns of Court themselves, they had their
own glamour. I quote from Southampton's DNB entry:

'The inns of court were filled with a good many idle, fashionable
young men concerned with dancing, fencing, or the theatre, rather than
with legal statutes; and the comely earl hardly had much time for the
law himself. Significantly, he can be traced at Gray's Inn at a
holiday time when skits, satires, and plays were performed, but there
is little sign that he acquired much technical knowledge of
litigation.'

Typical rich kid.

Rita

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

Dennis responds; Well, then the "trade of noverint" can deal with
lawyers.

Rita:  You need to show us a contemporary example where the word

> ‘noverint’ is actually used to mean ‘lawyer’,

Dennis responds; Actually, Nashe doesn't call anyone a 'noverint." The
phrase is that they are destined to the "trade of noverint" -- and of
course, this can refer to the legal profession, for as you say: "legal
documents [i.e., 'noverint'] are referred to in connection with
lawyers."

> > But a more important example is "Groatsworth," which clearly follows
> > the language of Nashe's preface and echoes the same complaints about
> > actors (to the point where many think Nashe was involved with
> > Groatsworth too).  Are you interpreting Groatsworth's "noverint" to
> > mean "scrivener" too?
> > "…Yet was not the father [Gorinius] altogether unlettered, for he had
> > good experience in a Noverint, and by the universal terms therein
> > contained, had driven many a young Gentleman to seek unknown
> > countries...."

Rita:

> No, I'm interpreting Groatsworth's 'noverint' to mean 'writ' - another
> usage which according to OED was even commoner than using it to mean
> 'scrivener'.  But what Greene clearly isn't doing here is using
> 'noverint' to mean 'lawyer'.

Dennis: Neither did Nashe in his preface. "noverint" refers to the
legal "writ" in both the Nashe's preface and Groatsworth. The
question is whether it is more reasonable to assume that Gorinus's
work with such writs marks him as a lawyer or a scrivener. Clearly,
the former is more reasonable for the extremely, wealthy Gorinius who
forced the mass evictions of many a young man.

Dennis;

> >This likely refers to the mass evictions known as the
> > dissolution of the monasteries.

> You think?  I'd guess he's using it to refer to the way usurers
> tricked young heirs out of their lands by legal chicanery.  Frequent
> complaint.

Dennis: I enthusiastically invite you and your careful eye to check
out "North of Shakespeare" /Chapter Seven. ; )
(Snip excellent points...)

Dennis: Because of the reference to correcting "commonweals that never

[Tom Reedy]

On Jul 10, 8:06 pm, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"
<Den...@NorthofShakespeare.com> wrote:

<snip>

> Dennis responds; Well, then the "trade of noverint" can deal with
> lawyers.
>
> Rita:  You need to show us a contemporary example where the word
>
> > ‘noverint’ is actually used to mean ‘lawyer’,
>
> Dennis responds; Actually, Nashe doesn't call anyone a 'noverint." The
> phrase is that they are destined to the "trade of noverint" -- and of
> course, this can refer to the legal profession, for as you say: "legal
> documents [i.e., 'noverint'] are referred to in connection with
> lawyers."

This is the ultimate in desperation. Nashe clearly refers to the
"trade of noverint". Do you think there's a noverint exchange where
they traded writs? "Trade" refers to occupation, as in making a
living. The trade of noverint was that of a scrivener who engrossed
legal documents in the position of a legal clerk.

Your argument is wrong. Man up and admit it instead of continuing to
embarrass yourself.

> > > But a more important example is "Groatsworth," which clearly follows
> > > the language of Nashe's preface and echoes the same complaints about
> > > actors (to the point where many think Nashe was involved with
> > > Groatsworth too).  Are you interpreting Groatsworth's "noverint" to
> > > mean "scrivener" too?
> > > "…Yet was not the father [Gorinius] altogether unlettered, for he had
> > > good experience in a Noverint, and by the universal terms therein
> > > contained, had driven many a young Gentleman to seek unknown
> > > countries...."
>
> Rita:
>
> > No, I'm interpreting Groatsworth's 'noverint' to mean 'writ' - another
> > usage which according to OED was even commoner than using it to mean
> > 'scrivener'.  But what Greene clearly isn't doing here is using
> > 'noverint' to mean 'lawyer'.
>
> Dennis: Neither did Nashe in his preface. "noverint" refers to the
> legal "writ" in both the Nashe's preface and Groatsworth.  The
> question is whether it is more reasonable to assume that Gorinus's
> work with such writs marks him as a lawyer or a scrivener. Clearly,
> the former is more reasonable for the extremely, wealthy Gorinius who
> forced the mass evictions of many a young man.

No, clearly the meaning you want the word to have is not what Nashe
intended.

Why do anti-Stratfordians insist that Elizabethans acting like 21st
century Americans?

TR

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

Dennis: Well, I think that may be a bit of a spin -- as ALL of the
EEBO quotes referring to "English Seneca" are referring to a person,
and none are referring to "English translations of Seneca" -- whether
in poetry or prose, subject or predicate, with a determiner or
without. So I think you have set an extraordinarily high bar for
interpreting it as a person -- and no bar at all for interpreting it
as "English translations of Seneca."
I mean, not only do I have to find a reference for "English whosis" to
a person-- I had to find one without a determiner. I found that.
Now, it has to be in prose. But why? The question is whether someone
would refer to a contemporary writer with the nickname of a classical
author, fronted by a distinguishing adjective. And they would. Here's
a better example: In Groatsworth, we find: "With thee I ioyne yong

Iuuenall, that byting Sa|tyrist, that lastly with mee together writ a
Comedie." "Young Juvenal" is used as a nickname (sans determiner) in
precisely the same way as "English Seneca."
And just as "Young Juvenal...with me together writ a comedie."
"English Seneca...will afford you whole Hamlets... of tragical
speeches."

And the fact that the adjective is "young" in Groatsworth and
"English" in the preface is not particularly relevant as both are just
modifying the person who wrote like Seneca/ or Juvenal.

> > The sentence runs: "English Seneca....yields many good sentences such

> > as "blood is a beggar" ....and if you entreat him fair...he will
> > afford you whole Hamlets..."
> > The "him" and the "he" refers to "English Seneca," does it not?  After
> > all, neither Seneca (nor the English translations of Seneca) wrote
> > Hamlet.
>

> But Nashe doesn't sayEnglish Seneca'writes' anything; he saysEnglish Seneca'yields' something.  Of course a work can't write, but

> it can certainly yield sentences.

Dennis responds: It certainly can yield sentences but it didn't yield
the quoted sentence. The English translations of Seneca do not have,
present, contain, yield, produce, bear, put forth, include, supply,
provide or afford the sentence "blood is a beggar."
"[The Works of Shakespeare or just Shakespeare], read by candlelight,
yields many good sentences such as "At the length truth will out" --
is True.
"[The Works of Shakespeare or just Shakespeare], read by candlelight,
yields many good sentences such as "After all, tomorrow is another
day" -- is False.

> > For example, "[Shakespeare] read by candle-light yields many good
> > sentences as "blood is a beggar," and... if you entreat him fair in a
> > frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets..."
> > No additional interpretation necessary.
>
> '[The] English [translation of] Seneca read by candle-light yields
> many good sentences as "blood is a beggar" ..' also makes sense.  

Dennis: But that's false. It didn't yield that sentence.

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

On Jul 10, 9:57 pm, Tom Reedy <tom.re...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jul 10, 8:06 pm, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"<Den...@NorthofShakespeare.com> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > Dennis responds; Well, then the "trade of noverint" can deal with
> > lawyers.
>
> > Rita:  You need to show us a contemporary example where the word
>
> > > ‘noverint’ is actually used to mean ‘lawyer’,
>
> > Dennis responds; Actually, Nashe doesn't call anyone a 'noverint." The
> > phrase is that they are destined to the "trade of noverint" -- and of
> > course, this can refer to the legal profession, for as you say: "legal
> > documents [i.e., 'noverint'] are referred to in connection with
> > lawyers."
>

Reedy: > This is the ultimate in desperation. Nashe clearly refers to

the
> "trade of noverint". Do you think there's a noverint exchange where
> they traded writs? "Trade" refers to occupation, as in making a
> living.

Dennis: Um, right.. You seem to be suggesting that "law" would not be
a "trade."
But an EEBO search shows five different works referring to the "trade
of law."
Still other works refer to lawyers working in "trade." As I showed in
my quotes,
lawyers were indeed linked to the term "noverint" because it fronted
legal documents.
And obviously someone who worked in the "trade of" legal documents
could be a lawyer.
This is clearly the interpretation given that 1) Nashe was talking
about a lawyer in the same way just before the passage; and 2) he
referred condescendingly to the "infant squib at the inns of court" in
another passage, and 3) there were groups of law students who were
writing Senecan tragedies, but there weren't a group of scriveners.
The original justification for supposing that in the entire passage
the numerous examples of plural was a convention was based on the
incorrect belief that Nashe couldn't be talking about a group.

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

On Jul 10, 8:42 pm, rita <rita.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jul 10, 9:20 pm, Gary <g...@shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> > On 10/07/2011 10:14 AM, rita wrote:
>
> > SNIP
>
> > > We ll all readily admit Elizabethan society was highly class-sensitive
> > > and precise about social status.  I doubt anyone could describe a
> > > gentleman-student at the Inns of Court as being born to any
> > > trade .
>
> >         Unless, perhaps, the person making the description was a
> > sarcastic smart-ass who occasionally got into trouble
> > for shooting his mouth off?    ; )
>
> > - Gary
>
> Which Nashe was; but working within the social conventions of his
> day.  What are his readers meant to understand - that Nashe was
> implying lawyers are not really gentlemen at all, but some kind of
> artisans?  

Dennis writes: Well, I think you are a bit focused on the word
"trade," which I showed elsewhere was used for the law and lawyers.
The trade of "noverint" (i.e., legal documents) would easily refer to
lawyers. The actual passage refers -- as much of Nashe's entire
preface refers -- to translators who write plays. In this case, those
who should be learning law but decide to take up translating and
penning Senecan tragedies. Also, I showed earlier that Nashe would
refer in a derogatory fashion to Inns of Court law students, mocking
their youthful ignorance. Here's another example. In "A New Companion
to English Renaissance Literature and Culture, Part 1" Michael
Hattaway observes the fact that "Thomas Nashe ridiculed Inns of Court
men who "do wholly bestow themselves upon pleasure, and that pleasure
they divide...either into gaming, following of harlots, drinking, or
seeing a play." This is the exact same point made in the sentences
following the Hamlet-passage where Nashe refers to that group -- those
'famished followers" (of Seneca)/ "these men" who have leaped "into a
new occupation..." ,,,will "make a peripatetical path into the inner
parts of the city, and spend two or three hours in turning over French
Dowdy, where they can attract more infection in one minute...."
In both cases, Nashe is referencing those Inns of Court men who head
to the city and visit harlots.

[Tom Reedy]

On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 3:14 PM, den...@NorthofShakespeare.com <Den...@northofshakespeare.com> wrote:

On Jul 10, 9:20 am, Tom Reedy <tom.re...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Repetition does not strengthen your arguments.
>
> On Jul 10, 3:34 am, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"
>
> <Den...@NorthofShakespeare.com> wrote:
> > Well, here's the other interpretation.  Nashe was using "English> Seneca" in the same way everyone else used that same phrase (or
> > similar phrases) -- to refer to a person who wrote like Seneca.  If
> > you check EEBO, you find this is keeping with the Elizabethan
> > tradition of referring to authors as the English version of the
> > classical author they emulate.  In an epigram, John Davies referred to
> > William Shakespeare as "English Terence," Francis Meres, in Wit's
> > Treasury, referred to William Warner as "English Homer," Sir John
> > Harrington referred to Sidney as "English Petrarch" (from the notes to
> > Book 16 of his translation of Orlando Furioso, 1591)  Indeed, EEBO has
> > dozens of examples of "English Seneca/Homer/Aretine/Petrarch, etc).
>
> We've asked for your list of such examples, yet you have failed to
> provide it.

Dennis; EEBO gives 22 records of "English Homer," 15 records of
"English Seneca" etc. Do you want me to start listing them?

Can you not parse the sentence above? Yes, please list the 15 records of English Seneca.
 

>   "yetEnglish Seneca

>
> > read by candlelight yields many good sentences, as Blood is a beggar,
> > and so forth, and if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will
> > afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of tragical
> > speeches..."  When you replace "English Seneca" with a person (say,
> > "Thomas Kyd" or "William Shakespeare"), the sentence makes sense.

Reedy:

> No, it doesn't. Why would you have to wait for a frosty morning to ask
> a person to write tragical speeches?

Dennis: ?? No, it means reading him "in a frosty morning" will afford
you whole "Hamlets." And the reason for "the frosty morning" is as you
noted another reference to "Hamlet." (And I'm glad you agree that this
non-Shakespearean Hamlet was so similar to the one we have today that
it even included the comments about the cold morning.)

Reedy: Why would you even entreat him to

> do so? Wy would "yield" = "write"?

Dennis: Yield in this sense means to "bear" or "brings forth" or a
tree yields fruit --- and is similar to "afford" later on. English
Seneca yields (brings forth) many good sentences like "blood is a
beggar." He's talking about one writer who wrote that phrase.

You need to read your previous posts. You argue for one view and then argue for another when questioned.
 

> > After all, the "English translations of Seneca" did not write "Hamlet"
> > and does not include the sentence "blood is a beggar."

So now you're saying English Seneca DID write "Hamlet"?
 

>

> He doesn't say English Seneca will write Hamlet; he says
> (sarcastically, but you miss that also) English Seneca will yield many

> "good" (imagine finger quotes" sentences.
>
> And why would Nashe make up an example (Blood is a beggar) out of pure
> cloth?

Dennis: He didn't make up the example, that's the point. It's
obviously a line from a lost play of  English Seneca -- such as "Titus
and Vespasian" or "The Jew."
He's playing on one of "English Seneca's" lines. Note the line doesn't
appear in "English translations of Seneca" --so those translations
don't "yield" -- "blood is a beggar," no matter how you try to define
the term.

So now you're arguing that English Seneca DID write the line.

And you miss my point, but I'm used to it by now.

Your confusion is confusing everyone else.

TR

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

a;ldkfjasd;lkfjasd; whoops, my head hit the keyboard. Um, yeah, I've
always and exclusively been saying "English Seneca" did write "Hamlet"
for a week now, in two different threads, over the course of more than
a dozen different posts. Yes, I think, "English Seneca" is a person,
and I think Nashe is referring to him as the author of "Hamlet." I
think this because Nashe writes that "English Seneca" "will afford you
whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls of tragical speeches." More, I
believe Nashe is referring to Thomas North as English Seneca -- though
I have yet to show evidence here for this. Right now, I am focused on
more trivial matters -- like trying to confirm the fact that Nashe in
the passage is referring to the tradition among Inns of Court students
and alumni to start translating and penning Senecan tragedies. The
ensuing passage, indeed, starts referencing the faults of "The
Misfortunes of Arthur" that have been taken from "The Spanish
Tragedy."

> > Dennis: He didn't make up the example, that's the point. It's
> > obviously a line from a lost play of  English Seneca -- such as "Titus
> > and Vespasian" or "The Jew."
> > He's playing on one of "English Seneca's" lines. Note the line doesn't
> > appear in "English translations of Seneca" --so those translations
> > don't "yield" -- "blood is a beggar," no matter how you try to define
> > the term.
>
> So now you're arguing that English Seneca DID write the line.

a;ldskjaaas;dfj .... darn keyboard.

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

Mr. Reedy, do you not have access to EEBO? Here is the EEBO list of
"English Seneca" -- all of them are referring to a person:

1. Forde, Thomas.

Virtus rediviva a panegyrick on our late King Charles the I. &c. of
ever blessed memory. Attended, with severall other pieces from the
same pen. Viz. [brace] I. A theatre of wits: being a collection of
apothegms. II. Foenestra in pectore: or a century of familiar letters.
III. Loves labyrinth: a tragi-comedy. IV. Fragmenta poetica: or
poeticall diversions. Concluding, with a panegyrick on his sacred
Majesties most happy return. / By T.F. , [London] : Printed by R. & W.
Leybourn, for William Grantham, at the sign of the Black Bear in St.
Pauls Church-yard neer the little north door; and Thomas Basset, in
St. Dunstans Church-yard in Fleet-street., 1661. [i.e. 1660]
Date: 1660
Bib name / number: Wing (2nd ed.) / F1550
Bib name / number: Thomason / E.1806[1]
Physical description: [12], 27, [13], 90, [6], 158, [6], 72, [2], 24
p.
Copy from: British Library

Found: 1 hit(s):
Virtus rediviva 667Kb

...the Roman 155 Cicero, our English Seneca, and that great Dicta|
tor...

2. G. S.

Anglorum speculum, or The worthies of England, in church and state
Alphabetically digested into the several shires and counties therein
contained; wherein are illustrated the lives and characters of the
most eminent persons since the conquest to this present age. Also an
account of the commodities and trade of each respective county, and
the most flourishing cities and towns therein. , London : printed for
Thomas Passinger at the three Bibles on London-Bridge, William
Thackary at the Angel in Duck-lane, and John Wright at the Crown on
Ludgate-Hill, 1684.
Date: 1684
Bib name / number: Wing (2nd ed.) / S22B
Physical description: [8], 224, 369-596, 739-974, [20] p.
Copy from: Harvard University Library

Found: 1 hit(s):
Anglorum speculum, or The worthies of England, in church and state
1401Kb

...He was com|monly called our English Seneca . For his pure,...

3. Gordon, James, Pastor of Banchory-Devenick.

The reformed bishop, or, XIX articles tendered by Philarchaiesa,
well-wisher of the present government of the Church of Scotland, as it
is settled by law, in order to the further establishment thereof. ,
[S.l. : s.n.], 1679.
Date: 1679
Bib name / number: Wing / G1279
Physical description: [16], 300 [1] p.
Copy from: Cambridge University Library

Found: 1 hit(s):
The reformed bishop, or, XIX articles 393Kb

...Hall, ( deservedly termed the English Seneca ) who appealed to...

4. Greene, Robert, 1558?-1592.

Greenes Arcadia, or Menaphon: Camillaes alarum to slumber Euphues in
his melancholy cell at Silexedra Wherein are decyphered, the variable
effects of fortune, the wonders of loue, the triumphs of inconstant
time. A worke, worthy the yongest eares for pleasure, or, the grauest
censures for principles. By Robertus Greene, in Artibus Magister. ,
London : Printed by W. Stansby for I. Smethwicke, and are to be sold
at his shop in S. Dunstanes Church-yard vnder the Dyall, in Fleet-
street, 1616.
Date: 1599
Bib name / number: STC (2nd ed.) / 12275
Physical description: [88] p.
Copy from: Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery

Found: 1 hit(s):
Greenes Arcadia, or Menaphon: Camillaes alarum to slumber Euphues in
his melancholy cell at Silexedra 271Kb

...should haue neede : yet English Seneca read by Candle-light,
yeelds...

5. Greene, Robert, 1558?-1592.

Menaphon Camillas alarum to slumbering Euphues, in his melancholie
cell at Silexedra. VVherein are deciphered the variable effects of
fortune, the wonders of loue, the triumphes of inconstant time.
Displaying in sundrie conceipted passions (figured in a continuate
historie) the trophees that vertue carrieth triumphant, maugre the
wrath of enuie, or the resolution of fortune. A worke worthie the
youngest eares for pleasure, or the grauest censures for principles.
Robertus Greene in Artibus Magister. , London : Printed by T[homas]
O[rwin] for Sampson Clarke, and are to be sold behinde the Royall
Exchange, 1589.
Date: 1589
Bib name / number: STC (2nd ed.) / 12272
Physical description: [96] p.
Copy from: Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery

Found: 1 hit(s):
Menaphon 232Kb

...should haue neede ; yet English Seneca read by candle light...

6. Gualdo Priorato, Galeazzo, conte, 1606-1678.

An history of the late warres and other state affaires of the best
part of Christendom beginning with the King of Swethlands entrance
into Germany, and continuing in the yeare 1640 / written in Italian by
the Count Galliazzo Gualdo Priorato and in English by the Right
Honourable Henry Earle of Monmouth. , London : Printed by W. Wilson :
And are to be sold by John Hardesty, Thomas Huntington, and Thomas
Jackson, at their shops in Ducklane, 1648.
Date: 1648
Bib name / number: Wing / G2167
Physical description: [12], 428, 66 p. :
Copy from: Cambridge University Library

Found: 1 hit(s):
An history of the late warres and other state affaires of the best
part of Christendom 1750Kb

...he usually keepes . Our English Seneca (Doctor Hall ) ...

7. Hall, Thomas, 1610-1665.

Samaria's downfall, or, A commentary (by way of supplement) on the
five last verses of the thirteenth chapter of Hosea wherein is set
forth, Ephraim's dignity, duty, impenitency, and downfall : very
suitable to, and seasonable for, these present times, where you have
the text explained, sundry cases of conscience cleared, many practical
observations raised (with references to such authors as clear any
point more fully) : and a synopsis or brief character of the twenty
kings of Israel, with some useful inferences from them / by Thomas
Hall ... , London : Printed by R.I. for Jo. Cranford ..., 1660.
Date: 1660
Bib name / number: Wing / H440
Physical description: [6], 164, [8] p.
Copy from: Union Theological Seminary (New York, N. Y.) Library

Found: 1 hit(s):
Samaria's downfall, or, A commentary (by way of supplement) on the
five last verses of the thirteenth chapter of Hosea 483Kb

..., but will. As our English Seneca excellently . As a...

8. Johnson, Robert, d. 1670.

Lux & lex, or The light and the lavv of Jacobs house: held forth in
a sermon before the Honourable House of Commons at St Margarets
Westminster March 31. 1647. being the day of publike humiliation. / By
Robert Johnson, Eboraicus, one of the Assembly of Divines. Sermon
preached at a late fast, before the Honourable House of Commons. March
31 Sermon preached at a late fast, before the Honourable House of
Commons. March 31 , London, : Printed by A. Miller, for Philemon
Stephens, at the signe of the Gilded Lion in Pauls Church-yard.,
1647.
Date: 1647
Bib name / number: Wing (2nd ed.) / J818
Bib name / number: Thomason / E.383[6]
Physical description: [8], 38, [2] p.
Copy from: British Library

Found: 1 hit(s):
Lux & lex, or The light and the lavv of Jacobs house: 138Kb

...A good man, saith our English Seneca, should be a common...

9. Leigh, Edward, 1602-1671.

Foelix consortium, or, A fit conjuncture of religion and learning in
one entire volume, consisting of six books : the first treating of
religion in general ... the second of learning ... the third, fourth,
fifth and sixth books particularizing the men eminent for religion or
learning ... : in an alphabetical order / by Edward Leigh ... ,
London : Printed for Charles Adams ..., 1663.
Date: 1663
Bib name / number: Wing / L995
Physical description: [10], 373, [34] p.
Copy from: Union Theological Seminary (New York, N. Y.) Library

Found: 1 hit(s):
Foelix consortium, or, A fit conjuncture of religion and learning
2075Kb

...is styled by some the English Seneca, and M r Bain...

10. Leigh, Edward, 1602-1671.

A treatise of religion & learning and of religious and learned men
consisting of six books, the two first treating of religion &
learning, the four last of religious or learned men in an alphabetical
order ... / by Edward Leigh ... , London : Printed by A.M. for Charles
Adams ..., 1656.
Date: 1656
Bib name / number: Wing / L1013
Bib name / number: Madan / 2217
Physical description: [12], 373, [31] p.
Copy from: Harvard University Library

Found: 1 hit(s):
A treatise of religion & learning and of religious and learned men
1967Kb

...is styled by some the English Seneca , and M r...

11. Lloyd, David, 1635-1692.

Memoires of the lives, actions, sufferings & deaths of those noble,
reverend and excellent personages that suffered by death,
sequestration, decimation, or otherwise, for the Protestant religion
and the great principle thereof, allegiance to their soveraigne, in
our late intestine wars, from the year 1637 to the year 1660, and from
thence continued to 1666 with the life and martyrdom of King Charles
I / by Da. Lloyd ... , London : Printed for Samuel Speed and sold by
him ... [and] by John Wright ... John Symmer ... and James
Collins ..., 1668.
Date: 1668
Bib name / number: Wing / L2642
Physical description: [14], 708 [i.e. 710], [1] p. :
Copy from: Yale University Library

Found: 1 hit(s):
Memoires of the lives, actions, sufferings & deaths of those noble,
reverend and excellent personages that suffered by death,
sequestration, decimation, or otherwise, for the Protestant religion
and the great principle thereof, allegiance to their soveraigne, in
our late intestine wars, from the year 1637 to the year 1660, and from
thence continued to 1666 2533Kb

...one that called him The English Seneca, That he was not...

12. Moore, John, b. 1621.

The banner of Corah, Dathan, and Abiram, display'd, and their sin
discover'd in several sermons, preach'd at Bristol / by John
Moore ... , London : Printed by W. Bonny, for the Author ..., 1696.
Date: 1696
Bib name / number: Wing / M2544
Physical description: [26], 128 p.
Copy from: Bristol (England) Public Libraries

Found: 1 hit(s):
The banner of Corah, Dathan, and Abiram, display'd, and their sin
discover'd 199Kb

...late Bishop of Norwich, that English Seneca, that Painful, Pious
Prelate,...

13. Sandys, George, 1578-1644.

Anglorum speculum, or, The worthies of England in church and state
alphabetically digested into the several shires and counties therein
contained : wherein are illustrated the lives and characters of the
most eminent persons since the conquest to this present age : also an
account of the commodities and trade of each respective county and the
most flourishing cities and towns therein. , London : Printed for John
Wright ... Thomas Passinger ... and William Thackary ..., 1684.
Date: 1684
Bib name / number: Wing / S672
Bib name / number: Arber's Term cat. / II 96
Bib name / number: McAlpin Coll. / IV 181
Physical description: [8], 224, 369-596, 739-974, [16] p.
Copy from: British Library

Found: 1 hit(s):
Anglorum speculum, or, The worthies of England in church and state
1512Kb

...He was com|monly called our English Seneca. For his pure, plain...

14. Scudder, Henry, d. 1659?

The Christians daily walke in holy securitie and peace Being an
answer to these questions, 1. How a man may doe each present dayes
worke, with Christian chearefulnesse? 2. How to beare each present
dayes crosse with Christian patience? Containing familiar directions;
shewing 1. How to walke with God in the whole course of a mans life.
2. How to be upright in the said walking. 3. How to liue without
taking care or thought any thing. 4. How to get and keepe true peace
with God; wherein are manifold helpes to prevent and remove damnable
presumption: also to quiet and to ease distressed consciences. First
intended for private use; now (through importunity) published for the
common good. By Henry Scudder, preacher of the word. , London :
Printed by I. B[eale] for Henry Overton, and are to be sold at his
shop, at the entring in of Popes-head Alley, out of Lumbard-street,
1631.
Date: 1631
Bib name / number: STC (2nd ed.) / 22117
Physical description: [24], 790, [24] p.
Copy from: Folger Shakespeare Library

Found: 1 hit(s):
The Christians daily walke in holy securitie and peace 1009Kb

...Doctor Hall, that true Christian English Seneca. Also Master Bol|
ton, whose...

15. Spencer, John, d. 1680.

Kaina kai palaia Things new and old, or, A store-house of similies,
sentences, allegories, apophthegms, adagies, apologues, divine,
morall, politicall, &c. : with their severall applications / collected
and observed from the writings and sayings of the learned in all ages
to this present by John Spencer ... , London : Printed by W. Wilson
and J. Streater, for John Spencer ..., 1658.
Date: 1658
Bib name / number: Wing / S4960
Physical description: [14], 679, [35] p.
Copy from: Bristol (England) Public Libraries

Found: 1 hit(s):
Kaina kai palaia 3760Kb

..., that have (as our English Seneca said ) Eve's sweet...

[Tom Reedy]

On Jul 11, 10:52 am, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"

<Den...@NorthofShakespeare.com> wrote:
> Mr. Reedy, do you not have access to EEBO?

Whether I do or not is beside the point; as the person making the
claim, it is up to you to provide the evidence for it.

 Here is the EEBO list of
> "English Seneca" -- all of them are referring to a person:
>
> 1. Forde, Thomas.
>
>         Virtus rediviva a panegyrick on our late King Charles the I. &c. of
> ever blessed memory. Attended, with severall other pieces from the
> same pen. Viz. [brace] I. A theatre of wits: being a collection of
> apothegms. II. Foenestra in pectore: or a century of familiar letters.
> III. Loves labyrinth: a tragi-comedy. IV. Fragmenta poetica: or
> poeticall diversions. Concluding, with a panegyrick on his sacred
> Majesties most happy return. / By T.F. , [London] : Printed by R. & W.
> Leybourn, for William Grantham, at the sign of the Black Bear in St.
> Pauls Church-yard neer the little north door; and Thomas Basset, in
> St. Dunstans Church-yard in Fleet-street., 1661. [i.e. 1660]
> Date: 1660
> Bib name / number: Wing (2nd ed.) / F1550
> Bib name / number: Thomason / E.1806[1]
> Physical description: [12], 27, [13], 90, [6], 158, [6], 72, [2], 24
> p.
> Copy from: British Library
>
> Found: 1 hit(s):
> Virtus rediviva 667Kb
>
> ...the Roman 155 Cicero, our  English Seneca, and that great Dicta|
> tor...

This is obscure and needs more context.

> 2. G. S.
>
>         Anglorum speculum, or The worthies of England, in church and state
> Alphabetically digested into the several shires and counties therein
> contained; wherein are illustrated the lives and characters of the
> most eminent persons since the conquest to this present age. Also an
> account of the commodities and trade of each respective county, and
> the most flourishing cities and towns therein. , London : printed for
> Thomas Passinger at the three Bibles on London-Bridge, William
> Thackary at the Angel in Duck-lane, and John Wright at the Crown on
> Ludgate-Hill, 1684.
> Date: 1684
> Bib name / number: Wing (2nd ed.) / S22B
> Physical description: [8], 224, 369-596, 739-974, [20] p.
> Copy from: Harvard University Library
>
> Found: 1 hit(s):
> Anglorum speculum, or The worthies of England, in church and state
> 1401Kb
>
> ...He was com|monly called our  English Seneca . For his pure,...

Referring to Bishop Joseph Hall. That's one, from 1684, almost 100
years after Nashe.

>
>                                                         3. Gordon, James, Pastor of Banchory-Devenick.
>
>         The reformed bishop, or, XIX articles tendered by Philarchaiesa,
> well-wisher of the present government of the Church of Scotland, as it
> is settled by law, in order to the further establishment thereof. ,
> [S.l. : s.n.], 1679.
> Date: 1679
> Bib name / number: Wing / G1279
> Physical description: [16], 300 [1] p.
> Copy from: Cambridge University Library
>
> Found: 1 hit(s):
> The reformed bishop, or, XIX articles 393Kb
>
> ...Hall, ( deservedly termed the  English Seneca ) who appealed to...

Hall again, from 1679. That's two.

>                                                         4. Greene, Robert, 1558?-1592.
>
>         Greenes Arcadia, or Menaphon: Camillaes alarum to slumber Euphues in
> his melancholy cell at Silexedra Wherein are decyphered, the variable
> effects of fortune, the wonders of loue, the triumphs of inconstant
> time. A worke, worthy the yongest eares for pleasure, or, the grauest
> censures for principles. By Robertus Greene, in Artibus Magister. ,
> London : Printed by W. Stansby for I. Smethwicke, and are to be sold
> at his shop in S. Dunstanes Church-yard vnder the Dyall, in Fleet-
> street, 1616.
> Date: 1599
> Bib name / number: STC (2nd ed.) / 12275
> Physical description: [88] p.
> Copy from: Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery
>
> Found: 1 hit(s):
> Greenes Arcadia, or Menaphon: Camillaes alarum to slumber Euphues in
> his melancholy cell at Silexedra 271Kb
>
> ...should haue neede : yet  English Seneca read by Candle-light,
> yeelds...

No, this is the phrase under question. You cannot count this as
referring to a person.

>
>                                                         5. Greene, Robert, 1558?-1592.
>
>         Menaphon Camillas alarum to slumbering Euphues, in his melancholie
> cell at Silexedra. VVherein are deciphered the variable effects of
> fortune, the wonders of loue, the triumphes of inconstant time.
> Displaying in sundrie conceipted passions (figured in a continuate
> historie) the trophees that vertue carrieth triumphant, maugre the
> wrath of enuie, or the resolution of fortune. A worke worthie the
> youngest eares for pleasure, or the grauest censures for principles.
> Robertus Greene in Artibus Magister. , London : Printed by T[homas]
> O[rwin] for Sampson Clarke, and are to be sold behinde the Royall
> Exchange, 1589.
> Date: 1589
> Bib name / number: STC (2nd ed.) / 12272
> Physical description: [96] p.
> Copy from: Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery
>
> Found: 1 hit(s):
> Menaphon 232Kb
>
> ...should haue neede ; yet  English Seneca read by candle light...

Same again.

>
>                                                         6. Gualdo Priorato, Galeazzo, conte, 1606-1678.
>
>         An history of the late warres and other state affaires of the best
> part of Christendom beginning with the King of Swethlands entrance
> into Germany, and continuing in the yeare 1640 / written in Italian by
> the Count Galliazzo Gualdo Priorato and in English by the Right
> Honourable Henry Earle of Monmouth. , London : Printed by W. Wilson :
> And are to be sold by John Hardesty, Thomas Huntington, and Thomas
> Jackson, at their shops in Ducklane, 1648.
> Date: 1648
> Bib name / number: Wing / G2167
> Physical description: [12], 428, 66 p. :
> Copy from: Cambridge University Library
>
> Found: 1 hit(s):
> An history of the late warres and other state affaires of the best
> part of Christendom 1750Kb
>
> ...he usually keepes . Our  English Seneca (Doctor Hall ) ...

Hall again, from 1648, more than 50 years after Nashe. That's three.

>                                                         7. Hall, Thomas, 1610-1665.
>
>         Samaria's downfall, or, A commentary (by way of supplement) on the
> five last verses of the thirteenth chapter of Hosea wherein is set
> forth, Ephraim's dignity, duty, impenitency, and downfall : very
> suitable to, and seasonable for, these present times, where you have
> the text explained, sundry cases of conscience cleared, many practical
> observations raised (with references to such authors as clear any
> point more fully) : and a synopsis or brief character of the twenty
> kings of Israel, with some useful inferences from them / by Thomas
> Hall ... , London : Printed by R.I. for Jo. Cranford ..., 1660.
> Date: 1660
> Bib name / number: Wing / H440
> Physical description: [6], 164, [8] p.
> Copy from: Union Theological Seminary (New York, N. Y.) Library
>
> Found: 1 hit(s):
> Samaria's downfall, or, A commentary (by way of supplement) on the
> five last verses of the thirteenth chapter of Hosea 483Kb
>
> ..., but will. As our  English Seneca excellently . As a...

Hall, 1660. Four.

>                                                         8. Johnson, Robert, d. 1670.
>
>         Lux & lex, or The light and the lavv of Jacobs house: held forth in
> a sermon before the Honourable House of Commons at St Margarets
> Westminster March 31. 1647. being the day of publike humiliation. / By
> Robert Johnson, Eboraicus, one of the Assembly of Divines. Sermon
> preached at a late fast, before the Honourable House of Commons. March
> 31 Sermon preached at a late fast, before the Honourable House of
> Commons. March 31 , London, : Printed by A. Miller, for Philemon
> Stephens, at the signe of the Gilded Lion in Pauls Church-yard.,
> 1647.
> Date: 1647
> Bib name / number: Wing (2nd ed.) / J818
> Bib name / number: Thomason / E.383[6]
> Physical description: [8], 38, [2] p.
> Copy from: British Library
>
> Found: 1 hit(s):
> Lux & lex, or The light and the lavv of Jacobs house: 138Kb
>
> ...A good man, saith our  English Seneca, should be a common...

Hall again, 1647. Five.

>                                                         9. Leigh, Edward, 1602-1671.
>
>         Foelix consortium, or, A fit conjuncture of religion and learning in
> one entire volume, consisting of six books : the first treating of
> religion in general ... the second of learning ... the third, fourth,
> fifth and sixth books particularizing the men eminent for religion or
> learning ... : in an alphabetical order / by Edward Leigh ... ,
> London : Printed for Charles Adams ..., 1663.
> Date: 1663
> Bib name / number: Wing / L995
> Physical description: [10], 373, [34] p.
> Copy from: Union Theological Seminary (New York, N. Y.) Library
>
> Found: 1 hit(s):
> Foelix consortium, or, A fit conjuncture of religion and learning
> 2075Kb
>
> ...is styled by some the  English Seneca, and M r Bain...

Hall, from 1663. Six.

>
>                                                         10. Leigh, Edward, 1602-1671.
>
>         A treatise of religion & learning and of religious and learned men
> consisting of six books, the two first treating of religion &
> learning, the four last of religious or learned men in an alphabetical
> order ... / by Edward Leigh ... , London : Printed by A.M. for Charles
> Adams ..., 1656.
> Date: 1656
> Bib name / number: Wing / L1013
> Bib name / number: Madan / 2217
> Physical description: [12], 373, [31] p.
> Copy from: Harvard University Library
>
> Found: 1 hit(s):
> A treatise of religion & learning and of religious and learned men
> 1967Kb
>
> ...is styled by some the  English Seneca , and M r...

Nope. The one before this is a reprint of this one. You can count one
or the other, but not both.

> 11. Lloyd, David, 1635-1692.
>
>         Memoires of the lives, actions, sufferings & deaths of those noble,
> reverend and excellent personages that suffered by death,
> sequestration, decimation, or otherwise, for the Protestant religion
> and the great principle thereof, allegiance to their soveraigne, in
> our late intestine wars, from the year 1637 to the year 1660, and from
> thence continued to 1666 with the life and martyrdom of King Charles
> I / by Da. Lloyd ... , London : Printed for Samuel Speed and sold by
> him ... [and] by John Wright ... John Symmer ... and James
> Collins ..., 1668.
> Date: 1668
> Bib name / number: Wing / L2642
> Physical description: [14], 708 [i.e. 710], [1] p. :
> Copy from: Yale University Library
>
> Found: 1 hit(s):
> Memoires of the lives, actions, sufferings & deaths of those noble,
> reverend and excellent personages that suffered by death,
> sequestration, decimation, or otherwise, for the Protestant religion
> and the great principle thereof, allegiance to their soveraigne, in
> our late intestine wars, from the year 1637 to the year 1660, and from
> thence continued to 1666 2533Kb
>
> ...one that called him The  English Seneca, That he was not...

Hall, 1668. Seven.

>                                                         12. Moore, John, b. 1621.
>
>         The banner of Corah, Dathan, and Abiram, display'd, and their sin
> discover'd in several sermons, preach'd at Bristol / by John
> Moore ... , London : Printed by W. Bonny, for the Author ..., 1696.
> Date: 1696
> Bib name / number: Wing / M2544
> Physical description: [26], 128 p.
> Copy from: Bristol (England) Public Libraries
>
> Found: 1 hit(s):
> The banner of Corah, Dathan, and Abiram, display'd, and their sin
> discover'd 199Kb
>
> ...late Bishop of Norwich, that  English Seneca, that Painful, Pious
> Prelate,...

Hall, more than 100 years after Nashe. Nine.

>                                                         13. Sandys, George, 1578-1644.
>
>         Anglorum speculum, or, The worthies of England in church and state
> alphabetically digested into the several shires and counties therein
> contained : wherein are illustrated the lives and characters of the
> most eminent persons since the conquest to this present age : also an
> account of the commodities and trade of each respective county and the
> most flourishing cities and towns therein. , London : Printed for John
> Wright ... Thomas Passinger ... and William Thackary ..., 1684.
> Date: 1684
> Bib name / number: Wing / S672
> Bib name / number: Arber's Term cat. / II 96
> Bib name / number: McAlpin Coll. / IV 181
> Physical description: [8], 224, 369-596, 739-974, [16] p.
> Copy from: British Library
>
> Found: 1 hit(s):
> Anglorum speculum, or, The worthies of England in church and state
> 1512Kb
>
> ...He was com|monly called our  English Seneca. For his pure, plain...

Nope. Another repetition of the same passage.

>                                                         14. Scudder, Henry, d. 1659?
>
>         The Christians daily walke in holy securitie and peace Being an
> answer to these questions, 1. How a man may doe each present dayes
> worke, with Christian chearefulnesse? 2. How to beare each present
> dayes crosse with Christian patience? Containing familiar directions;
> shewing 1. How to walke with God in the whole course of a mans life.
> 2. How to be upright in the said walking. 3. How to liue without
> taking care or thought any thing. 4. How to get and keepe true peace
> with God; wherein are manifold helpes to prevent and remove damnable
> presumption: also to quiet and to ease distressed consciences. First
> intended for private use; now (through importunity) published for the
> common good. By Henry Scudder, preacher of the word. , London :
> Printed by I. B[eale] for Henry Overton, and are to be sold at his
> shop, at the entring in of Popes-head Alley, out of Lumbard-street,
> 1631.
> Date: 1631
> Bib name / number: STC (2nd ed.) / 22117
> Physical description: [24], 790, [24] p.
> Copy from: Folger Shakespeare Library
>
> Found: 1 hit(s):
> The Christians daily walke in holy securitie and peace 1009Kb
>
> ...Doctor Hall, that true Christian  English Seneca. Also Master Bol|
> ton, whose...

Hall, 1631. Ten.

                                          15. Spencer, John, d. 1680.
>
>         Kaina kai palaia Things new and old, or, A store-house of similies,
> sentences, allegories, apophthegms, adagies, apologues, divine,
> morall, politicall, &c. : with their severall applications / collected
> and observed from the writings and sayings of the learned in all ages
> to this present by John Spencer ... , London : Printed by W. Wilson
> and J. Streater, for John Spencer ..., 1658.
> Date: 1658
> Bib name / number: Wing / S4960
> Physical description: [14], 679, [35] p.
> Copy from: Bristol (England) Public Libraries
>
> Found: 1 hit(s):
> Kaina kai palaia 3760Kb
>
> ..., that have (as our  English Seneca said ) Eve's sweet...

Hall, 1658. Eleven.

So instead of 15 records of English Seneca unambiguously referring to
a person, you have eleven, all dating from at least 50 years after
Nashe's use of the term, and all referring to Joseph Hall.

And your evidence for determining that Nashe's use refers to Thomas
North is what, exactly?

TR

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

Reedy:
> So instead of 15 records ofEnglishSenecaunambiguously referring to

> a person, you have eleven, all dating from at least 50 years after
> Nashe's use of the term, and all referring to Joseph Hall.

Dennis: And none refer to "English translations of Seneca." Also the
same with English Homer -- referring to a person, not a book.

Reedy:

> And your evidence for determining that Nashe's use refers to Thomas
> North is what, exactly?

Dennis: Obviously I cited "English Seneca" and "English Homer" and
"English Petrarch" and "English Aretine" and "English Juvenal" all
referring to a person as evidence Nashe was using "English Seneca" to
refer to a person. With regard to the evidence Nashe is using "English
Seneca" to refer to Thomas North, I have not yet listed it. But right
now I am having a discussion with Rita about whether Nashe was
referring to a group of upstart lawyers who had starting penning
Senecan tragedies or just one scrivener (Thomas Kyd.)

[Tom Reedy]

On Jul 10, 10:07 pm, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"

There is nothing unique about your method of trying to forge a new
definition of a word to support your theory--you're just a typical
anti-Strat who insists that everybody ignore the plain and simple
meaning of a word and adopt their unique definition instead. I
remember having the same type of argument over the word "utter", which
anti-Strats take to mean "counterfeit" when it is applied to
Shakespeare. Your method is exactly the same.

I take it you're getting what you wanted by publishing your Kindle
book and defending it on newsgroups: attention and argument. Because
you have to know that your theory never will be accepted by anyone but
other cranks. But that's OK, right? You at least possess the Special
Knowledge to which all those fools are blind.

TR

[sasheargold]

I'm curious to know which version of Hamlet Gabriel Harvey referred to
in his marginalia.


SB.

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

Dennis; ? Huh? No, "Noverint" was a shorthand reference to legal
documents and as my quotes showed, the term was often associated with
lawyers.
This is not my interpretation -- but very, very old:

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the definitions of
noverint are:
"1. the trade of noverint: the business of drawing up writs; the
profession of attorney or law-clerk. 2. A scrivener; a law-clerk. 3.
A writ. Also as noverint universi. Obs. "
In the nineteenth century, R.G. White noted the term originated from
a common phrase found on legal documents.

"By the trade of Noverint he [Nashe] meant that of an attorney. The
term was not uncommonly applied to members of that profession, because
of the phrase, Noverint universi per presentes... with which deeds,
bonds, and many other legal instruments then began. And Nash's
testimony accords with what we know of the social and literary history
of the age."

But we also know Nashe was referring to the Inns of Court law students
because he did get into spats with them and referred to them in
similar language. In fact, Nashe is referring to lawyers in the
sentence leading into the passage. Moreover, while a group of lawyers
were known to be penning Senecan tragedies, the same is not true of
scriveners.

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

SB: On Jul 11, 1:06 pm, sasheargold <sashearg...@tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
> I'm curious to know which version of Hamlet Gabriel Harvey referred to
> in his marginalia.

Dennis writes: Great point, SB. As the quote must have been written by
1603 -- and the original, masterpiece version had not been printed
yet, he must have been referring to the staged adaptation, which is
the one Shakespeare wrote and then published with his name on the
title page (Q1.)

[sasheargold]

On Jul 11, 11:51 pm, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"

Ah, must is not a word for princes, Dennis.

Before you print something, you've got to have a manuscript. The truth
is we don't know in what format Harvey read Hamlet.

But it seems rather odd to me that on the one hand he would say that
V&A delights the younger sort but on the other an inferior stage
production of Hamlet would please the wiser folk. Harvey, a
bibliophile who prided himself on his scholarliness and erudition was
surely speaking of a superior, more literary version of the play, and
to which he puts the name of Shakespeare.


SB.

[frode]

In a post on HLAS I argued that the although the passages preceding
and following the line about “English Seneca” are full of allusions to
Thomas Kyd, the line about “English Seneca” is presenting a contrast
to Kyd’s “servile imitation” of Seneca. Like many posters here, I
think “English Seneca” refers to English translations of Seneca, and
that one point is to mock those who can’t read Seneca in Latin. But I
also think Nashe is implying that Seneca read or used in the right way
can inspire great writing, alluding to Hamlet as an example.

Now, notice the correspondence between these two passages, found about
a page apart in Nashe’s preface (my emphasis):

“yet English Seneca READ BY CANDLELIGHT yields many good sentences, as
“Blood is a beggar,” and so forth; and if you intreat him fair IN A
FROSTY MORNING, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say,
handfuls of tragical speeches.”

“in Cambridge, that at that time was an university within itself,
shining so far above all other houses, halls, and hospitals
whatsoever, that no college in the town was able to compare with the
tithe of her students, having (as I have heard grave men of credit
report) MORE CANDLES LIGHTED IN IT EVERY WINTER MORNING before four of
the clock, than the four of the clock bell strokes;”

It is obvious that the candles lighted every winter morning in
Cambridge, were lighted for the students to read or write. Could “read
by candlelight” and “in a frosty morning” from the “English Seneca”-
sentence be alluding to more competent readings/use of of Seneca by
students at Cambridge? (Nashe’s preface is addressed “TO THE GENTLEMEN
STUDENTS OF BOTH UNIVERSITIES”).

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

Dennis responds: The staged rendition is only "inferior" if you
actually have read the masterpiece.
It is, in essence, the same plot after all, same characters, and many
of the same phrases and passages.
How did Harvey read the unperformed masterpiece? Was Shakespeare
circulating it around as if it were an aristocratic closet drama --
while performing a different version at the Globe?
Why wouldn't Harvey be talking about the popular play that
Shakespeare was performing?

[Gary]

On 11/07/2011 6:27 PM, frode wrote:
> In a post on HLAS I argued that the although the passages preceding

> and following the line about �English Seneca� are full of allusions to
> Thomas Kyd, the line about �English Seneca� is presenting a contrast
> to Kyd�s �servile imitation� of Seneca. Like many posters here, I
> think �English Seneca� refers to English translations of Seneca, and
> that one point is to mock those who can�t read Seneca in Latin. But I

> also think Nashe is implying that Seneca read or used in the right way
> can inspire great writing, alluding to Hamlet as an example.
>
> Now, notice the correspondence between these two passages, found about

> a page apart in Nashe�s preface (my emphasis):
>
> �yet English Seneca READ BY CANDLELIGHT yields many good sentences, as
> �Blood is a beggar,� and so forth; and if you intreat him fair IN A

> FROSTY MORNING, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say,

> handfuls of tragical speeches.�
>
> �in Cambridge, that at that time was an university within itself,

> shining so far above all other houses, halls, and hospitals
> whatsoever, that no college in the town was able to compare with the
> tithe of her students, having (as I have heard grave men of credit
> report) MORE CANDLES LIGHTED IN IT EVERY WINTER MORNING before four of

> the clock, than the four of the clock bell strokes;�

>
> It is obvious that the candles lighted every winter morning in

> Cambridge, were lighted for the students to read or write. Could �read
> by candlelight� and �in a frosty morning� from the �English Seneca�-

> sentence be alluding to more competent readings/use of of Seneca by

> students at Cambridge? (Nashe�s preface is addressed �TO THE GENTLEMEN
> STUDENTS OF BOTH UNIVERSITIES�).

I thought it might be useful to read Nashe's entire preface
to Menaphon. I found this version at:

http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Nashe/Preface_Greenes_Menaphon.pdf

http://tinyurl.com/696sks8

I won't pretend that I read or understood it. I have no
idea whatsoever what he is going on about.

- Gary

[Tom Reedy]

On Jul 11, 11:11 pm, Gary <g...@shaw.ca> wrote:

<snip>

>         I thought it might be useful to read Nashe's entire preface
> to Menaphon.  I found this version at:
>
> http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Nashe/Preface_Greenes_Menaphon.pdf
>
> http://tinyurl.com/696sks8
>
>         I won't pretend that I read or understood it.  I have no
> idea whatsoever what he is going on about.
>
> - Gary

Gary the site I gave in the original post to this thread has a bit of
explanation, although mainly concerning Spenser:
http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/TextRecord.php?action=GET&textsid=51

TR

[Tom Reedy]

On Jul 11, 8:59 pm, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"

Because there was a very healthy manuscript culture among the
literati. Besides, doesn't the literary version precede the stage
version in your theory?

TR

[Tom Reedy]

I've been terribly busy the past day, so it might be much later before
I get back to this, but here are a few off-hand comments.

On Jul 11, 5:49 pm, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"

Really? Five? Out of how many? and from what dates?

> > > Still other works refer to lawyers working in "trade." As I showed in
> > > my quotes,
> > > lawyers were indeed linked to the term "noverint" because it fronted
> > > legal documents.

This is how anti-Strats research: concoct a theory and then look for
evidence to support it, ignoring all the contrary evidence. That is
the exact opposite of sound scholarly procedure, in which all the
evidence is looked at and then a theory is constructed to explain it.

> > > And obviously someone who worked in the "trade of" legal documents
> > > could be a lawyer.
> > > This is clearly the interpretation given that 1) Nashe was talking
> > > about a lawyer in the same way just before the passage; and 2) he
> > > referred condescendingly to the "infant squib at the inns of court" in
> > > another passage, and 3) there were groups of law students who were
> > > writing Senecan tragedies, but there weren't a group of scriveners.
> > > The original justification for supposing that in the entire passage
> > > the numerous examples of plural was a convention was based on the
> > > incorrect belief that Nashe couldn't be talking about a group.
>
> > There is nothing unique about your method of trying to forge a new
> > definition of a word
>
> Dennis; ? Huh?  No, "Noverint" was a shorthand reference to legal
> documents and as my quotes showed, the term was often associated with
> lawyers.
> This is not my interpretation -- but very, very old:
>
> According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the definitions of
> noverint are:
>         "1. the trade of noverint: the business of drawing up writs; the
> profession of attorney or law-clerk.

Yes, some attorneys did draw up their own papers, but notice the first
phrase: "The trade of noverint".

2. A scrivener; a law-clerk.  3.
> A writ. Also as noverint universi. Obs. "
>         In the nineteenth century, R.G. White noted the term originated from
> a common phrase found on legal documents.
>
>  "By the trade of Noverint he [Nashe] meant that of an attorney. The
> term was not uncommonly applied to members of that profession, because
> of the phrase, Noverint universi per presentes... with which deeds,
> bonds, and many other legal instruments then began. And Nash's
> testimony accords with what we know of the social and literary history
> of the age."

You are actually quoting White as some kind of lexical authority from
a book on how Shakespeare was actually a lawyer? Really?

Again this is standard anti-Strat procedure. So much has been written
about Shakespeare that someone has said almost anything you want them
to say if you dig deep enough, in this case from 1859.

> But we also know Nashe was referring to the Inns of Court law students
> because he did get into spats with them and referred to them in
> similar language.

Non sequitur.

In fact, Nashe is referring to lawyers in the
> sentence leading into the passage. Moreover, while a group of lawyers
> were known to be penning Senecan tragedies, the same is not true of
> scriveners.

And you know this how?

TR

[Gary]

Thanks anyway, Tom, but I'm getting a "Can't connect"
message when I try the link with both IE and Chrome.
Perhaps you have to be a member to connect?

- Gary

[John W Kennedy]

No, "Can't connect" means you're not connecting at all; it hasn't gotten far enough to know whether you're a member or not. Their server was probably down.

--
John W Kennedy
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected."
-- G. K. Chesterton

[sasheargold]

On Jul 12, 2:59 am, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"

<Den...@NorthofShakespeare.com> wrote:
> On Jul 11, 7:40 pm, sasheargold <sashearg...@tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Jul 11, 11:51 pm, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"
>
> > <Den...@NorthofShakespeare.com> wrote:
> > > SB: On Jul 11, 1:06 pm, sasheargold <sashearg...@tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > > > I'm curious to know which version of Hamlet Gabriel Harvey referred to
> > > > in his marginalia.
> > > Dennis writes: Great point, SB. As the quote must have been written by
>
> > > 1603 -- and the original, masterpiece version had not been printed
> > > yet, he must have been referring to the staged adaptation, which is
> > > the one Shakespeare wrote and then published with his name on the
> > > title page (Q1.)
>
> > Ah, must is not a word for princes, Dennis.
>
> > Before you print something, you've got to have a manuscript. The truth
> > is we don't know in what format Harvey read Hamlet.
>
> > But it seems rather odd to me that on the one hand he would say that
> > V&A delights the younger sort but on the other an inferior stage
> > production of Hamlet would please the wiser folk. Harvey, a
> > bibliophile who prided himself on his scholarliness and erudition was
> > surely speaking of a superior, more literary version of the play, and
> > to which he puts the name of Shakespeare.
>
> Dennis responds: The staged rendition is only "inferior" if you
> actually have read the masterpiece.

So a buffoon like Gullio who had to hire a scholar to write his lines
could actually produce a play that was good enough to impress Gabriel
Harvey? (For those who don't have the book, Dennis believes that the
Gentleman-Player, Sogliardo, the Poet-Ape, Gullio, and so on represent
Will Shakespere).

> It is, in essence, the same plot after all, same characters, and many
> of the same phrases and passages.
> How did Harvey read the unperformed masterpiece?

In manuscript. Shortly after mentioning Hamlet, he speaks of Edward
Dyer's written devices excelling most stuff that was in print,
showing that Harvey wasn't speaking just of published material in this
passage.
Maybe Harvey saw a private performance of the 'better' version.

> Was Shakespeare circulating it around as if it were an aristocratic closet drama --

Why not? His sonnets were passed around among his private friends,
Meres tells us.

> while performing a different version at the Globe?

Why not? Bums on seats.

> Why wouldn't Harvey be talking about the popular play that

> Shakespeare was performing?-


If Harvey is talking about a popular stage play, why doesn't he see
that as something to please the (less sophisicated?) younger sort?


SB.


Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Gary]

On 12/07/2011 12:29 PM, John W Kennedy wrote:
>
> On Jul 12, 2011, at 1:52 PM, Gary wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 12/07/2011 8:35 AM, Tom Reedy wrote:
>>> On Jul 11, 11:11 pm, Gary<g...@shaw.ca> wrote:
>>>
>>> <snip>
>>>
>>>> I thought it might be useful to read Nashe's entire preface
>>>> to Menaphon. I found this version at:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Nashe/Preface_Greenes_Menaphon.pdf
>>>>
>>>> http://tinyurl.com/696sks8
>>>>
>>>> I won't pretend that I read or understood it. I have no
>>>> idea whatsoever what he is going on about.
>>>>
>>>> - Gary
>>>
>>> Gary the site I gave in the original post to this thread has a bit of
>>> explanation, although mainly concerning Spenser:
>>> http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/TextRecord.php?action=GET&textsid=51
>>>
>>> TR
>>
>> Thanks anyway, Tom, but I'm getting a "Can't connect" message when I try the link with both IE and Chrome. Perhaps you have to be a member to connect?
>
> No, "Can't connect" means you're not connecting at all; it hasn't gotten far enough to know whether you're a member or not. Their server was probably down.
>

D'oh! You're right. Thanks, John.

I was able to get to it. But you're right, Tom - the site
has a "bit" of explanation. I think I would need pages of
explanatory notes to get through the preface.

Which is unfortunate, because an understanding of "English
Seneca" can easily be influenced by the larger context in
which it appears.

In any event, I'm still eager to hear from Dennis how any
of this relates to Thomas North.

- Gary

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

Reedy: > Really? Five? Out of how many? and from what dates?

Dennis: That was for the phrase "trade of law" -- and one of the uses
of the phrase was by an Inns-of-Court writer, George Gascoigne. Still
more referred to lawyers practicing a "trade."
The point is we know Nashe is referring to lawyer for all the reasons
I mentioned -- and the hopeful rebuttal that no one would refer to
"law" as a "trade" has now been falsified.

> > > > Still other works refer to lawyers working in "trade." As I showed in
> > > > my quotes,
> > > > lawyers were indeed linked to the term "noverint" because it fronted
> > > > legal documents.
>

Reedy: > This is how anti-Strats research: concoct a theory

Dennis: Um, no. As shown below, the view that Nashe was referring to
lawyers was the original, conventional interpretation -- until
Osterberg argued that it was referring to Kyd and so must have meant
scrivener. Osterberg justified his belief by saying so elaborate an
indictment (starting in the "trade of noverint" and then writing
Senecan tragedies) had to point to a single person. That justification
is false -- because numerous law students at the Inns of Court wrote
Senecan tragedies.

> > > > And obviously someone who worked in the "trade of" legal documents
> > > > could be a lawyer.
> > > > This is clearly the interpretation given that 1) Nashe was talking
> > > > about a lawyer in the same way just before the passage; and 2) he
> > > > referred condescendingly to the "infant squib at the inns of court" in
> > > > another passage, and 3) there were groups of law students who were
> > > > writing Senecan tragedies, but there weren't a group of scriveners.
> > > > The original justification for supposing that in the entire passage
> > > > the numerous examples of plural was a convention was based on the
> > > > incorrect belief that Nashe couldn't be talking about a group.
>
> > > There is nothing unique about your method of trying to forge a new
> > > definition of a word
>
> > Dennis; ? Huh?  No, "Noverint" was a shorthand reference to legal
> > documents and as my quotes showed, the term was often associated with
> > lawyers.
> > This is not my interpretation -- but very, very old:
>

> > According to the OxfordEnglishDictionary, the definitions of

> > noverint are:
> >         "1. the trade of noverint: the business of drawing up writs; the
> > profession of attorney or law-clerk.
>

> Reedy: Yes, some attorneys did draw up their own papers, but notice the first

> phrase: "The trade of noverint".

Dennis: It doesn't matter whether an attorney tried to "draw up his
own papers" -- the reason why the various quotes I referenced linked
lawyers to "noverint" was because that started the phrase that fronted
legal documents. An obvious candidate for someone who worked with
legal documents would be a lawyer.

>
> 2. A scrivener; a law-clerk.  3.
>
> > A writ. Also as noverint universi. Obs. "
> >         In the nineteenth century, R.G. White noted the term originated from
> > a common phrase found on legal documents.
>
> >  "By the trade of Noverint he [Nashe] meant that of an attorney. The
> > term was not uncommonly applied to members of that profession, because
> > of the phrase, Noverint universi per presentes... with which deeds,
> > bonds, and many other legal instruments then began. And Nash's
> > testimony accords with what we know of the social and literary history
> > of the age."
>

Reedy: > You are actually quoting White as some kind of lexical

authority from
> a book on how Shakespeare was actually a lawyer? Really?
> Again this is standard anti-Strat procedure. So much has been written
> about Shakespeare that someone has said almost anything you want them
> to say if you dig deep enough, in this case from 1859.

Dennis responds; I purposefully referenced an old 1859 interpretation
to falsify your accusation that I invented something new.
This was the conventional interpretation until Osterberg and his
followers.

> > But we also know Nashe was referring to the Inns of Court law students
> > because he did get into spats with them and referred to them in
> > similar language.
>

Reedy: > Non sequitur.

Dennis responds; ? More evidence for the fact Nashe is referring to
lawyers in that passage is that in other works he expressed similar
opinions about lawyers in a similar manner. You call that a "non
sequitir"?

[Gary]

On 14/07/2011 12:25 PM, den...@NorthofShakespeare.com wrote:

SNIP

> My view is that Shakespeare wrote the works
> attributed to him -- so he was the one adding all the legal allusions
> and all the foreign elements. They were already in the source play.)

This part of your reply is a bit jumbled, isn't it, Dennis?

Or am I simply misreading, again?

- Gary

[sasheargold]

On Jul 14, 8:25 pm, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"

> Dennis responds: 1) We are talking about "Hamlet Q1" -- and it has the
> same plot, characters, and many of the same phrases and passages as
> the original Hamlet.  Yes, the staged adaptation, when looked at alone
> is quite impressive.  


No, YOU are talking about Hamlet Q1. If Harvey meant that, then he
must have written his comments IN 1603 when it was printed, not BY
1603 as you said earlier.
Yet no scholar as far as I am aware has ever precisely identified the
date of this passage. Are you claiming to be the first person to do
so? The Earl of Essex is mentioned in the present tense, but he was
dead in February 1601. How do you account for this anomaly in your
theory?

Furthermore, if Shakespeare was able to produce a play that is 'quite
impressive', why would he need to hire scholars to write for him, then
claim their work as his own?


SB.

[Tom Reedy]

And my understanding of this theory is that the literary version
preceded the stage version, which was supposedly written by Shikspud
by adapting the literary version. So if Harvey was commenting on the
pre-1603 version, then North was using Shakespeare as a pen name,
especially since both versions carried Shakespeare's name. Or was it
the actor/plagiarist who "enlarged" the 1604 Q, as it says on the
title page? Evidently, since the bedrock of the North theory is that
the title pages are correct. The only difference in Q2 and the Folio
version is less than 90 lines; I suppose those lines are North's
contribution.

McCarthy's theory doesn't make sense any way you look at it. And BTW,
Dennis, nobody here or anywhere else has ever tried "to argue the war
of the theater plays contained not a single caricature of
Shakespeare", that's merely another typical anti-Strat strategy to say
so (which you would know if you had bothered to read out the
literature).

TR
>
> SB.

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

Reedy responds: And my understanding of this theory is that the

literary version
> preceded the stage version, which was supposedly written by Shikspud
> by adapting the literary version.

Dennis: Tom, when you write something about someone or something that
you know is untrue (or show a willing disregard for the truth) and
just to damage reputation, it is called libel. In my book, I
clarify: Shakespeare was Shakespeare. I don't refer to him as
"Shaksper," though this was an occasional spelling.
Anyway, my theory is simple, so it is hard to imagine you're really
confused:
1) Thomas North wrote the original masterpiece Hamlet by 1589, which
is the version that Nashe referenced in his preface (and did so again
when referencing its grave-digger scene in 1594.)
2) Shakespeare adapted this work for the stage by 1594. That is the
work that appeared in 1603 attributed to Shakespeare. And that's the
version he wrote. This isn't hard.

Tom: So if Harvey was commenting on the

> pre-1603 version, then North was using Shakespeare as a pen name,

Dennis: It would help if you actually read the book you're
denouncing. He was commenting on Shakespeare's staged version, which
his theater company was playing probably since 1594 -- and which he
revived for the revenge-and-ghost tragedies of early 1600's.

> especially since both versions carried Shakespeare's name. Or was it
> the actor/plagiarist who "enlarged" the 1604 Q, as it says on the
> title page?

Dennis responds: No, the work was enlarged "according to the true and
perfect copy" -- i.e. according to the original and the title page
doesn't state who was the author of the original. "Sales of Q1 of
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet must have been respectable enough to urge
the publishers to produce a second edition. They had the rights to
Shakespeare’s Hamlet and when a new and larger version of the work was
made available to them, they agreed to print the second edition.
Clearly, they still wanted to advertise the work as Shakespeare’s
Hamlet, to which they had owned the rights, but they still took pains
to be honest in their descriptions. Q1, not Q2, was the version
staged by Shakespeare’s company. Specifically, the Q1 title page
states “as it hath been diverse times acted by his Highness servants
[i.e., King’s Men]...” The title page of Q2, in contrast, has had
this claim removed. This version was not the one that Shakespeare’s
company performed. It states instead that it is “newly imprinted and
enlarged to almost as much again as it was, according to the true and
perfect copy.” So Q2 derived from “the true and perfect copy,” which
is to say, the original, literary masterpiece, while Q1 was printed
“as it hath been…acted.” Both descriptions are true. .... So we know
that 1) Nashe referred to the original Hamlet in 1589, and scholars
agree that Shakespeare did not pen this version, he adapted it; 2)
Shakespeare’s name appears on an adapted Hamlet, (Q1); 3)
Shakespeare’s theater company performed this adapted Hamlet (Q1); 4)
Q2 was printed according to the original version. So the first
edition was Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the one that his company performed,
just as the title page states. And the second edition was the
original version that Shakespeare had adapted.

Tom:

> McCarthy's theory doesn't make sense any way you look at it.

Dennis: You would actually have to read the book in order to
understand it -- but it's pretty straightforward. And if you continue
to misstate what my book says without concern for the truth, you're
crossing over to the legal definition of libel.

Tom: And BTW,

> Dennis, nobody here or anywhere else has ever tried "to argue the war
> of the theater plays contained not a single caricature of
> Shakespeare",

Dennis: Why didn't you, in this sentence, then name who you think
which character in a war-of-theater's play parodied Shakespeare if not
Sogliardo, Gullio, or Asotus? Which character was Shakespeare?

that's merely another typical anti-Strat strategy to say
> so (which you would know if you had bothered to read out the
> literature).

Dennis responds: I've read the literature -- and quote it extensively
in my book -- it is only here that people like you and SB deny that
Shakespeare was Sogliardo. So again which character was used to parody
Shakespeare? I note you neglected to name the characters.

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

On Jul 14, 3:45 pm, Gary <g...@shaw.ca> wrote:
> On 14/07/2011 12:25 PM, den...@NorthofShakespeare.com wrote:
>
> SNIP
>
> > My view is that Shakespeare wrote the works
> > attributed to him -- so he was the one adding all the legal allusions
> > and all the foreign elements.  They were already in the source play.)
>
>         This part of your reply is a bit jumbled, isn't it, Dennis?

Yep, sorry: My view is that Shakespeare wrote the works
attributed to him -- so he was NOT the one adding all the legal

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

By the way, whatever happened to Rita -- who was so intelligent,
polite, challenging, and informed?

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

SB: > No, YOU are talking about Hamlet Q1. If Harvey meant that, then

he

> must have written his comments IN 1603 when it was printed, not BY
> 1603 as you said earlier.

Dennis: Noooo, Harvey was almost certainly talking about the staged
adaptation -- the play Shakespeare put on stage.
This would *later* be printed by 1603. But it was being performed in
1600. In fact, evidence suggests, Shakespeare was performing it by
1594.
The same is true of Meres, who is talking about the staged adaptation
(i.e., the play put on in the theaters in each case.)

SB: > Furthermore, if Shakespeare was able to produce a play that is

'quite
> impressive', why would he need to hire scholars to write for him, then
> claim their work as his own?

Dennis writes: No one -- and I mean no one -- denies that Shakespeare
purchased source plays and hired co-writers to write for him. No one
denies this. No one denies that numerous passages from various plays
-- like the First Act of Henry VI, Part 1 -- are written by other
people. No one -- and I mean no one -- denies that Shakespeare was
getting full authorship credit for extremely close adaptations of
source plays and for plays which he co-authored. (And "Hamlet Q1" is
"quite impressive" only because it is a very close adaptation
(containing passages and phrases) of North's original Hamlet.)
So you are the one who has to be asked this question:
"...if Shakespeare was able to produce a play that is
'quite impressive' [as, in your view, the original 'Hamlet'], why

would he need to hire scholars to write for him, then
claim their work as his own?"

Why would he hire Fletcher for "Two Noble Kinsmen"?
Better yet, why would he hire Wilkins (no scholar at all) to help him
with Pericles?

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

Dennis responds: Well, certainly you agree Meres was referring to the
staged renditions in every case. Or do you think Meres was getting a
hold of the actual masterpiece versions as well? And since Meres also
compliments some umpteen other playwrights, do you think he was
getting their original manuscripts too or the stage plays?

TR: Besides, doesn't the literary version precede the stage
> version in your theory?

Dennis: Yes, of course. That's what people like Nashe were referring
to.

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

- Hide quoted text -

Dennis responds: 1) We are talking about "Hamlet Q1" -- and it has the
same plot, characters, and many of the same phrases and passages as
the original Hamlet. Yes, the staged adaptation, when looked at alone

is quite impressive. 2) So you think the man (Shakespeare) whose
lines Beaumont described as "free" "from all learning" -- wrote the
original Hamlet? (Interesting question that few people think about:
When Shakespeare was adapting the old Hamlet, isn't it fortunate that
he knew he could find the source tale in Belle-Forest's volumes, he
knew how to access these untranslated volumes, and he knew French?
Indeed, when he adapted "The Merchant of Venice" from "The Jew," isn't
it fortunate that he knew the source tale was the "Il Pecorone," knew
where to access this untranslated work, and knew Italian? Isn't it
also odd that Senecan tragedies appeared in the 1580's almost
exclusively at the Inns of court -- and written by lawyers for
lawyers. And isn't it odd that Hamlet has all those esoteric legal
allusions -- like the gravedigger riff on the judicial reasoning of
the Hales v Petit case? My view is that Shakespeare wrote the works
attributed to him -- so he was not the one adding all the legal

allusions
and all the foreign elements. They were already in the source play.)

(For those who don't have the book, Dennis believes that the
> Gentleman-Player, Sogliardo, the Poet-Ape, Gullio, and so on represent
> Will Shakespere).

Dennis; Yes, and I believe Nashe was young Juvenal, Ingenioso, and
Mothe. And Jonson was Horace, Criticus, and Ajax.
And Marston was Hedon and Crispinus. And Dekker was Anaides and
Demetrius Fanning. And what is more, essentially all conventional
scholars
who have written on the wars of the theaters in the last 40 years
believe this too -- including the fact that Sogliardo was
Shakespeare.
It is only here, when people are basking in stratfordalotry, where
people actually try to argue that the war of the theater plays
contained not a single caricature of Shakespeare -- and that the
boasting, scholar-hiring, jack-of-all-trades, social climber who
recites Shakespearean lines was parodying no one at all.

[Tom Reedy]

On Jul 14, 7:18 pm, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"

You know, Dennis, in another time and at another place, I would, and
I'd argue with you until the cows came home, but I'm bored as hell
with reading and arguing moronic theories like yours; I've read
literally hundreds of them, and the only thing different about yours
is the name of the True Author. I have better things to do. Good luck
on establishing the new Shakespeare paradigm. I hope you're happy with
your new reputation as an anti-Stratfordian crank.

TR

[sasheargold]

On Jul 15, 1:18 am, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"

Well, that's where you're wrong. I have accepted that Sogliardo may be
a strike at the Stratford man, and I do so because it suits my agenda,
just as it suits yours.

Beyond that, I don't like your tone or your accusations. I have no
wish to converse with you any further. I had plenty more to say and I
may continue to do so, but I
won't respond to you directly again.


SB.


> So again which character was used to parody Shakespeare? I note you neglected to name the characters.- Hide quoted text -

[John W Kennedy]

On Jul 14, 2011, at 11:36 PM, Tom Reedy wrote:
> You know, Dennis, in another time and at another place, I would, and
> I'd argue with you until the cows came home, but I'm bored as hell
> with reading and arguing moronic theories like yours; I've read
> literally hundreds of them, and the only thing different about yours
> is the name of the True Author. I have better things to do. Good luck
> on establishing the new Shakespeare paradigm. I hope you're happy with
> your new reputation as an anti-Stratfordian crank.

I feel the same way. Maybe it's his interminable infodumps, maybe it's his complete deafness to Early Modern English, maybe it's the way that he thinks he's a genuine scholar even though, having gone through the process of publishing in "Notes & Queries", he still doesn't understand that it's not refereed. But he's done more to make me just plain tired of this endless game of whack-a-mole than anyone else ever has.

--
John W Kennedy
A proud member of the reality-based community.

[rita]

Sorry to have begun an argument and then dropped out, and then
returned when you're all through with it. Tbh I’m too pushed for
time to spend hours on this kind of thing these days, though I really
did enjoy discussing Nashe. It just saddens me a little to think this
obscure little passage is one of his most talked-about bits of prose.

But I was struck that Gary couldn’t make head nor tail of the whole
thing when he first looked at it. Goodness, really? Me neither,
despite having the help of McKerrow and Nicholl. Partly I think
because this is early Nashe, and he’s aiming for a more high-sounding
and scholarly style than the one he later forges. The dreaded Latin
tags are everywhere, the lofty references to obscure practices among
the Sabaeans ( these people burned goat’s beards?????) . All intended
I’m sure to impress us and show how well-read he is.

Gary, Sasheargold, anybody - is there any mileage in taking a look at
the whole thing? I think the context here is particularly important
if you want to understand what he’s driving at – not only the wider
historical picture, but where Nashe is in his life. He’s 22, left
Cambridge, no regular income stream, no job and a career to make.
Then a best-selling author kindly gives him a platform. Nashe knows
the Preface is his golden chance to set out his stall and he grabs it
with both hands. He certainly doesn’t focus much on ‘Menaphon’
itself, does he?

As for the wider picture, we know he’s already involved in the ongoing
Marprelate furore, fighting under the Bishops’ banner, so you would
expect him to reference that, and I think he does. He’s got an eye
already for city life. He’s pretty interested too in Greene’s
specialities, pamphlets for the popular market and stage plays.
Lastly, he’s determined to fight for his place in the literary scene,
and the chutzpah with which he goes about it takes your breath away.
No wonder this preface led on to the Harvey feud.

Rita

[Peter F.]

Rita,

I'm not sure that I could cope with a complete examination
of the whole thing!

On the other hand there are a few extracts which caught my
notice.

1. "But herein I cannot so fully bequeath them to follie, as
their idiote art-masters, that intrude themselves to our
eares as the alcumists of eloquence, who (mounted on the
stage of arrogance) think to outbrave better pens with the
swelling bumbast of a bragging blanke verse."

I find it very hard to see whom he meant, if it wasn't the
Master of Arts Marlowe, even though it is usually assumed
that Nashe and Marlowe had been friends ever since their
time at Cambridge together. Friendly kidding?

2. "...as no hodge plowman in a countrie but would have held
as the extremitie of clownerie..."

That phrase "plowman in a countrie" reminded me of Greene's
"the onely Shake-scene in a countrey", which has always
puzzled me. It's not the same as being the only [whatever]
in *the* country. Nashe seems to be referring to "a country
ploughman", so did Greene similarly mean "the only country
Shake-scene"? Greene's Player said that he was "a countrey
Author" too.

3. "Sundrie other sweete Gentlemen I know, that have vaunted
their pens in private devices, and trickt up a companie of
taffata fooles with their feathers, whose beautie if our
Poets had not peecte with the supply of their periwigs, they
might have antickt it untill this time up and downe the
countrey with the King of Fairies, and dined everie daie at
the pease porredge ordinarie with Delphrigus."

If this passage, as I would argue, concerns those players
attached to Edward Alleyn's troupe, then Nashe now seems to
be on Marlowe's side. I'm confused.

Peter F.

[rita]

Yes, perhaps it was a teeny bit ambitious hoping to plough through the
whole thing. The trouble with picking out isolated passages though is
that they may strike you differently from how they are in context.

Just to take the first passage you quote, you may be interested in
Charles Nicholl's opinion. He points out that Greene would naturally
be jealous of Marlowe's rising success, and that he had already had a
go at him the previous year in something called 'Perimedes the Blacke-
smith' ( Peter, you will know which references he means at once;
Greene was using 'Perimedes' to make cracks about certain writers
'daring God out of heaven with that Atheist Tamburlan' and 'mad and
scoffing poets...bred of Merlins race' )

Nicholl continues:

'Whatever the exact circumstances, the quarrel was still simmering
when Greene wrote 'Menaphon': a remark about a foolish 'Canterbury
tale' told by 'a Cobblers eldest sonne' seems to glance at Marlowe,
who was indeed a Canterbury cobbler's eldest son. The follower of
literary fashion, then, would have little difficulty in identifying
the target when he read, on the first page of Nashe's preface, of
certain playwrights who 'intrude themselves to our ears as the
Alcumists of eloquence'; who 'mounted on the stage of arrogance, think
to out-brave better pennes with the swelling bumbast of bragging
blanke verse'; and whose huge conceit 'overcloyeth their imagination'
and 'commits the digestion of their cholericke incumbrances to the
spacious volubilitie of a drumming decasillabon'. But though Marlowe
is the obvious candidate as arrogant, blank-versifying tragedian, it
is notable that Nashe nowhere insists on the identification. There
are none of the punning little signposts at which he was so adept. He
keeps the butt of his remarks plural, thus steering an agile course
between the expediency of taking Greene's side and the loyalty he owed
to his friend Marlowe. In fact when he does get down to snide
particulars, it is not Marlowe but Thomas Kyd who swims into
focus.' ( 'A Cup of News' p.52)

And then Nicholl goes on to discuss the 'Kid in Aesop' passage.

McKerrow on the other hand thinks Marlowe is definitely NOT the
target: he thinks Nashe is attacking playwrights in general:

'Believing this I must of course abandon the widely received theory
that the passage is an attack upon Marlowe. The general relation of
Nashe to Marlowe, the affectionate language in which he refers to him,
and his statement that he never abused him in his life render it
necessary we should have very strong reasons before assuming Marlowe
to have been the object of attack.' McKerrow goes on to dispute that
the use of dramatic blank verse v. rhyming couplets was a hot subject
of debate at the time, or that Marlowe was seen as the champion of
blank verse, or that the famous passage about 'jigging veins of
rhyming mother wits' has anything to do with a rejection of rhyming
couplets in favour of blank verse. He sees it simply as contrasting
the old farcical jigs with the new tragic drama.

And my opinion, for what it's worth - I'm influenced by the context.
I think running right through this whole preface is a theme of 'world
turned upside down' and a disapproval of people exceeding their
alloted roles. If it isn't illiterate upstarts thinking they can
write, it's the semi-educated assuming they can criticize, or freshers
believing they know better how to organize church and state than the
powers that be. By only the third sentence Nashe (aged 22) is
complaining stuffily about people getting above themselves. He starts
by ridiculing
a) 'mechanical mates', ordinary joes who nowadays use high-falutin
language, naively imitating -
b) 'vainglorious tragedians', ham actors, who think they can impress
not by gesture but by bellowing voice alone, encouraged by their -
c) 'ideot Art-masters', unscholarly instructors, who think a big
shouty speech is all it takes to outdo good writers.

You may understand that first passage differently, but right from the
off it leads me to expect that there is going to be an swelling attack
on people who pretend to be better-educated than they are. And
Marlowe doesn't fit the pattern.

McKerrow by the way is very dubious about interpreting 'Art-masters'
as you do.
'It cannot, I think, here stand for 'masters of Art' nor indicate that
the persons attacked were members of a university. If this had been
the meaning Greene himself - whose fondness for the use of his degree
did not pass unnoticed - would have been included with those who are
attacked. The ordinary sense of the word is one skilled in, or a
professed master of, any art.'(He then quotes from a will of 1624 in
which someone left charity money to place boys 'with a Master or Art-
Masters, as Glovers, Pinners, Shoomakers, or any other Occupation or
Art'.)

And 'ideot' Art-master? An idiot was someone unlearned; not stupid
exactly, but uneducated. Would you call Marlowe uneducated? Would
Nashe?

And my alloted hour is well up, so off I go.

Rita

[Peter F.]

Rita,

Thank you, that's very helpful. Clearly any attempt to make
sense of Nashe with neither Nicholl nor McKerrow to hand is
a risky business! I have four books by Nicholl, but not *A
Cup of News* (although I have read it) and I'm ashamed to
say that I haven't ever even seen a copy of McKerrow!

Yes, I do remember Greene's comments in *Perimedes*, which
I seem to recall being thought the result of his *Alphonsus,
King of Aragon*, an attempt to emulate *Tamburlaine*'s
success, having bombed.

I confess that I am rather taken with Nicholl's idea of a
fine line being trod between the two possible meanings, and
can't help wondering if (whilst actually having the meaning
which your analysis clarifies so well) he could nevertheless
allow Greene to think that he was supporting him in his anti-
Marlowe campaign?

I agree that Marlowe had nothing against rhymed couplets as
such (his poetry contains over 1600 of the little blighters!)
but I think it was probably the interminable procession of
regular masculine end-stopped lines, which blank verse made
much easier to move away from.

Peter F.

> ...
>
> read more »

[rita]

Well, Peter, McKerrow (Ronald Brunlees McKerrow, a.k.a. 'God') is
essential for cracking Nashe; he produced the definitive Complete
Works. Frighteningly well-educated, he was one of the few Edwardian
Englishmen to be fluent in Japanese. I expect he dreamed in Latin. I
don't agree with him on everything, but I keep damn quiet about it
when I don't.

Rita

> ...
>
> read more »

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

Hi Gary,
I finally have the one online Appendix posted on "more satires"
from "North of Shakespeare."
This includes a longer treatment of "Epicene" -- showing why we know
"Sir John Daw" was Thomas North, and of course also showing evidence
North (not Kyd) was "English Seneca," the original author of
"Hamlet."
http://www.northofshakespeare.com/files/AppendixEnglishSeneca4.pdf

Hope you find it interesting!
-- Dennis

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

Hi Rita,
Glad you're back. My view on Nashe's "Ur-Hamlet" passage, can be
found here:
http://www.northofshakespeare.com/files/AppendixEnglishSeneca4.pdf .
But one of the points that have rarely been mentioned about the "Ur-
Hamlet" passage is that the "...the kid in Aesop, who, enamoured with
the fox's newfangles, forsook all hopes of life to leap into a new
occupation...." is a pointed mistake. The kid-fox tale is from
Spenser's "Shepherd's Calendar" not Aesop. What was Nashe trying to
get at with the error? Was it just a slip of the quill. Or does the
error have meaning?
Interestingly, despite all the speculation about the author of the
original Hamlet, it has apparently completely escaped notice that
Nashe actually had made another purposeful Aesopian blunder just a few
sentences prior to the Hamlet reference. As Nashe wrote:

…the glow-worm mentioned in Aesop's Fables, namely the ape's folly, to
be mistaken for fire…

The tale of the ape and the glow-worm is not from Aesop either; it is
from Thomas North's The Moral Philosophy of Doni. Now, there can be
little question whether Nashe’s second Aesopian error was purposeful
or relevant. That Nashe made two different beast-fable
misattributions, one preceding and one following the allusion to
"English Seneca," confirms that the mistake, in and of itself, is
significant. But what does it mean? Certainly, it would seem he's
mocking some writer who had made such an error.
Moreover, this is not the only time that we find a purposeful beast-
fable misattribution uses in an allusive work that mocks contemporary
playwrights. In "Epicene," Jonson also appears to have borrowed
Nashe's Aesopian misattribution, inserting the following line of
dialogue in a conversation with Sir John Daw.

“Ay, and there's an excellent book of moral philosophy, madam, of
Reynard the fox, and all the beasts, called Doni's Philosophy.”

Doni's Philosophy refers to North's Moral Philosophy of Doni, and it
is difficult to pass off Jonson's reference as incidental. According
to Early English Books Online, Jonson's Epicene is the only work that
explicitly refers to North's translation by title. But the most
significant aspect of this beast fable allusion is that it is wrong.
Reynard the Fox is actually from Aesop – not Moral Philosophy of
Doni. Richard Dutton, who has probably produced the most scholarly
and complete edition of Jonson's Epicene, underscores this error and
thinks it must have had some hidden meaning. “It seems an oddly
laboured, and so foregrounded a joke,” writes Dutton. As far as I
am aware, Nashe is the only other writer in history to use an Aesopian
misattribution purposefully, surrounding the Ur-Hamlet passage with
two such errors, and in one of them, Nashe, like Jonson, even refers
to North's Moral Philosophy of Doni (specifically, the ape-glowworm
tale). What do the mistakes mean?
I will write more later.....
--Dennis

> ...
>
> read more »

[rita]

Hi Dennis,

I'm sorry my posts are sporadic these days. This may be the last for
a couple of days too.

Briefly I think Nashe's misattributions here are not significant
enough to form a pattern. I'm following McKerrow, who felt that the
mistaken reference to the Kid fable being in 'Aesop' and not Spenser
was a simple mental glitch, perhaps suggested by E.K.'s comment in his
Glosse: 'This tale is much like to that in Aesops fables, but the
Catastrophe and end is farre different'. He adds that 'it would indeed
have been natural to attribute it to Aesop in any case'. I suppose
because most fables seem to have been fathered onto him.

The 'glow-worm' attribution McKerrow doesn't class as an error at all,
since the story was already to be found in Camerarius's 'Fabulae
Aesopicae' (1571). I don't know when this became available in an
English translation, but of course that wouldn't be any barrier to
Nashe. Although McKerrow doesn't rate Nashe very highly as a scholar
- or not compared with a genuinely well-read man like, erm, Dr Harvey
- nevertheless he expects that fairly early in his education, after
mastering standard school texts he would 'most likely pass to the
study of a collection of Aesopic fables in Latin'.

I see Nashe references the glow-worm fable again the preface to
'Astrophel and Stella' and in 'Strange Newes', but I'm not sure if you
interpret these as significant allusions?

Rita
On Jul 22, 10:37 am, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

On Jul 23, 2:07 pm, rita <rita.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Dennis,
>
> I'm sorry my posts are sporadic these days.  This may be the last for
> a couple of days too.
>
> Briefly I think Nashe's misattributions here are not significant
> enough to form a pattern.  I'm following McKerrow, who felt that the
> mistaken reference to the Kid fable being in 'Aesop' and not Spenser
> was a simple mental glitch, perhaps suggested by E.K.'s comment in his
> Glosse: 'This tale is much like to that in Aesops fables, but the
> Catastrophe and end is farre different'. He adds that 'it would indeed
> have been natural to attribute it to Aesop in any case'.   I suppose
> because most fables seem to have been fathered onto him.
>
> The 'glow-worm' attribution McKerrow doesn't class as an error at all,
> since the story was already to be found in Camerarius's 'Fabulae
> Aesopicae' (1571).  I don't know when this became available in an
> English translation, but of course that wouldn't be any barrier to
> Nashe.  

Dennis responds: Brilliant and nice catch. I can always count on
you, Rita, to bring in substantive challenges. But we know beyond all
doubt that Nashe is referring to the tale as told in the popular and
well known North's Moral Philosophy of Doni (rather than an
untranslated Latin text from Germany) as Nashe clearly echoes North's
phrasings. Nashe refers to the story as the "Apes folly" and notes
"they have nought but their toil for their heat.. and their labour for
their travel."
Likewise North story refers to the "folly" of the "apes" who
"laboured and toiled....quite without profit" and are advised to
"take another way if ye mean to get ye heate." Later, North once
again refers to the apes' "folly." Is this a coincidence? An EEBO
search for all works that place the word "apes" within 8 words of
"folly" [apes NEAR.8 folly] refer to only two works in its massive
database penned at any time before 1900: North's "Moral Philosophy of
Doni" in the ape-glow-worm tale -- and in Nashe's preface, in which he
is referring to the ape-glow-worm tale. So Nashe did know the true
origin of the tale and was definitely referring to North's moral
philosophy of Doni. What is more, we know Nashe couldn't possibly
mistake the origin of Spenser's kid-fox tale as Nashe repeatedly
demonstrates intimate familiarity with both Spenser and Shepherd's
Calendar. Moreover, Doni is a translation from the Italian -- and
Nashe's entire epistle is focused nearly exclusively on translators
and especially translators from the Italian.
Finally, Jonson, a friend of Nashe, who alludes to Nashe's Epistle
and Groatsworth of Wit in his wars of the theater plays makes
*exactly* the same joke in the midst of a slew of allusions to Thomas
North. "Ay, and there's an excellent book of moral philosophy, madam,

of Reynard the fox, and all the beasts, called Doni's

Philosophy." (Reynard the fox is from Aesop not North's Moral
Philosophy of Doni. And there we known beyond all doubt, North's work
is being referenced.) (And that's just one of the undeniable
allusions to Thomas North. I have more, much more, but I will bring
it all together in a concluding summary on Nashe's Hamlet passage.)

[rita]

A bit of a quick response, Dennis (well for me, these days).

I – and I think even the great R B McKerrow – could never claim that
Nashe hadn’t seen North’s translation of Doni. Quite possibly he’d
read it very recently, and it may well have been that particular
version of the apes and the glow-worm which was uppermost in his mind
at the time of writing. The thing is, he is not misattributing when
he calls it a fable in Aesop. Two misattributions to Aesop could look
like a pattern, as if Nashe intended his readers to spot him flagging
up something significant. But the attribution of the glow-worm fable
to Aesop wouldn’t leap out at people as another ‘deliberate mistake’;
because it’s not. For the life of me I don’t see why Nashe wasn’t
entitled to describe something that had been around for nearly twenty
years in the ‘Fabulae Aesopicae’ as a fable in Aesop.

So I think what you’re implying is he would expect his readers to be
so well-read that they’d recognize he was calling something an Aesop’s
fable which, okay, they too would consider an Aesop’s fable; but
referring to it in language they would also instantly recognise as
echoing North’s. And they would therefore have to think to
themselves, ‘Yes, yes, he’s calling it a fable in Aesop – which it is
– but he’s somehow omitting to state that it’s ALSO in North’s
translation of Doni. Hmm, something significant there!’

Frankly, if he did that kind of thing I think he was overestimating
his readership. And if you think Nashe knew Spenser's, or anyone's,
work so intimately he could never make the odd mistake, I think you're
probably overestimating him.

Rita



On Jul 24, 5:55 pm, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

On Jul 24, 2:13 pm, rita <rita.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
> A bit of a quick response, Dennis (well for me, these days).
>
> I – and I think even the  great R B McKerrow – could never claim that
> Nashe hadn’t seen North’s translation of Doni.  Quite possibly he’d
> read it very recently, and it may well have been that particular
> version of the apes and the glow-worm which was uppermost in his mind
> at the time of writing.  The thing is, he is not misattributing when
> he calls it a fable in Aesop.

Dennis: No, he definitely is making an error -- and we know it's
purposeful as we know he's read Doni (and in fact his statement later
about the "quip to the ass" and "goad to the ox" is another Doni
reference). We also know becauyse he makes another purposeful mistake
a few paragraphs later, and Jonson, Nashe's friend, makes the exact
same mistake while referring to the exact same work (North's 'Doni')
in the midst of a slew of references to North. That a German author
may have used Aesop as a sort of wastebasket author in which he can
dump a variety of beast fables from numerous sources does not change
this fact. Indeed, I know of no English author who makes a similar mis-
attribution -- even today, everyone agrees on the Indian origin. And
if there's any question that Nashe is referring to Moral Philosophy of
Doni, the following ends it.
You noted earlier that he also makes the same attribution in two other
places -- one in his preface to Astrophel and Stella. Here's the
entire passage:
"To explain it by a more familiar example, an Asse is no great
stateman in the beastes common-wealth, though he weare his eares,
vpseuant muffe, after the Muscouy fashion, & hange the lip like a
Capcase halfe open, or looke as demurely as a six penny browne loafe,
for he hath some imperfections that do keepe him from the common
Councel: yet of many, he is deemed a very vertuous member, and one of
the honestest sort of men that are [1]; So that our opinion (as Sextus
Empedocus affirmeth) giues the name of good or ill to euery thing. Out
of whose works (latelie translated into English, for the benefit of
vnlearned writers) a man might collect a whole booke of this argument,
which no doubt woulde proue a worthy commonwealth matter [2], and far
better than wits waxe karnell: much good vvorship haue the Author [3].
Such is this golden age vvherein vve hue, and so replenisht vvith
golden Asses of all sortes, that if learning had lost it selfe in a
groue of Genealogies [4], vvee neede doe no more but sette an olde
goose ouer halfe a dozen pottle pots, (vvhich are as it vvere the
egges of inuention) and vvee shall haue such a breede of bookes within
a little vvhile after, as vvill fill all the vvorld vvith the vvilde
fovvle of good vvits; I can tell you this is a harder thing then
making golde of quicksiluer, and vvill trouble you more then the
Morrall of Aesops Glovv-vvorme, hath troubled our English Apes, [5]
vvho striuing to vvarme themselues, vvith the flame of the
Philosophers stone, haue spent all their vvealth in buying bellovves
to blovve this false fyre."

[1] "ass...beastes commonwealth, though he weare his eares, vpseuant
muffe, after the Muscouy fashion, & hange the lip like a Capcase halfe
open, or looke as demurely....he is deemed a very vertuous member, and
one of the honestest sort of men that are ":

The reference to the Ass in the "beastes commonwealth" is, like the
apes-and glow-worm reference in the last sentence a reference to the
beasts commonwealth of North's Moral Philosophy of Doni. In the main
beast-fable that runs throughout the course of Doni, one of the main
characters, the ass, is a lower member of a "common-weale" of animals,
in which the Lion is King and the bull is his main councilor. The ass
is exactly how Nashe describes in the passage, both physically, as
demonstrated in the illustrations and in terms of his character.
Nashe notes the ass "is deemed a very vertuous member, and one of the
honestest sort of men that are." Likewise, the ass in the Doni tale
is the animal who preaches "honestie and vpright dealing."
But even more interestingly, Nashe actually describes how the ass
looks in the illustrations of Doni. http://www.northofshakespeare.com/Nashe.html
Quoting Nashe: "though he weare his eares, vpseuant muffe, after the
Muscouy fashion or hange the lip like a Capcase halfe open..."
Scholars have been troubled by the word "upseuant" or "upsevant," but
it is almost certainly related to "upper" or "head". Thus, the
"upseuant muffe, after the Muscovy fashion" refers to the classic
Russian fur hat -- the head muff with ear flaps -- that commonly known
as the ushanka today and has been around in various forms for many
centuries.. In "Elizabethan critical essays," the scholar George
Gregory Smith, noted that a portrait of Sigismund I of Poland helps
render the meaning of Nashe's phrase as Sigismund is "wearing a fur
cap...which looks just like a muff. " Importantly, when the ear
flaps of the classic Russian head gear are not tied around the chin or
above the head, they will often stick straight out.
Nashe is actually here describing one of the illustrations of the ass
-- http://www.northofshakespeare.com/Nashe.html -- the figure on the
left -- who is talking to the evil mule in North's Dial of Princes.
His ears our out like the Muscovy earflaps, and his mouth his half
open. Nashe also refers to him looking "demurely." In Doni, as the
bull approaches the court of the lion, he was said to look
"demurely." And in the accompanying picture of the Beastes Common-
Wealth in Doni, all the beasts are appearing "demurely" before their
King.
The illustration that Nashe references is a pic of the ass talking to
the mule -- and it is the mule who then tells the tale of the "apes"
and "glow-worm" that Nashe so likes to reference -- and does so within
the next paragraph. This is actually one of the more important
passages Nashe ever wrote. But I won't be able to complete the entire
explanation of the entire passage -- and how it relates to his Hamlet-
passage until tomorrow. But notice already what these two paragraphs
share with Nashe's epistle to Menaphon and especially the "Hamlet"
passage: Apes-glow-worm tale and its misattribution to Aesop, the
tale of the ass in Doni, a reference to translations into English, and
a reference to alchemy. That's not a series of coincidences. Indeed,
both even include a reference to "Hamlet." But more about that later.

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

On Jul 24, 2:13 pm, rita <rita.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
> A bit of a quick response, Dennis (well for me, these days).
>
> I – and I think even the  great R B McKerrow – could never claim that
> Nashe hadn’t seen North’s translation of Doni.  Quite possibly he’d
> read it very recently, and it may well have been that particular
> version of the apes and the glow-worm which was uppermost in his mind
> at the time of writing.  The thing is, he is not misattributing when
> he calls it a fable in Aesop.  Two misattributions to Aesop could look
> like a pattern, as if Nashe intended his readers to spot him flagging
> up something significant.  But the attribution of the glow-worm fable
> to Aesop wouldn’t leap out at people as another ‘deliberate mistake’;
> because it’s not.  For the life of me I don’t see why Nashe wasn’t
> entitled to describe something that had been around for nearly twenty
> years in the ‘Fabulae Aesopicae’ as a fable in Aesop.
>
> So I think what you’re implying is he would expect his readers to be
> so well-read

Dennis responds; All of the contemporary allusions by all satirists to
everyone are extraordinarily esoteric -- but especially Nashe's and
especially in that epistle.
How are readers supposed to know Nashe's fondness for Juvenal as
mentioned in Groatsworth? Or the various references to passages in
various other pamphlets.
You are arguing that readers would know that Kyd's father was a
scrivener, and know abou Kyd's Italian translation and that Kyd's
Spanish Tragedy has converted the hexameter of the Virgil description
of Hell into pentameter. Others have just argued that the "read by
candle-light" reference refers to Kyd's mis-translation of the word
"lumina." Expecting people to know the ape-glowworm tale is from
North's Doni -- a popular book at the time that had already gone
through three editions -- is not unusual. Indeed, you are for some
reason expecting the readers to know a Latin translation of Aesop that
appeared in Germany.

>that they’d recognize he was calling something an Aesop’s
> fable which, okay,  they too would consider an Aesop’s fable; but
> referring to it in language they would also instantly recognise as
> echoing North’s.  

Dennis responds: No, no, no, Nashe didn't purposefully echo it as a
clue. The point was that the echoes prove that Nashe had read the tale
in Doni -- and so he knew about the Indian origin of the tale. So he
couldn't have possibly been confused about it. And indeed, I haven't
been able to find anyone who makes a similar confusion. Even today,
all agree about the Indian origin of ape-glow-worm tale. Moreover, my
other post -- which examines a part of Nashe's other reference to the
ape-glow-worm tale shows just how immersed in "Doni" he really was.

[frode]

Thank you Rita, for how you manage to disagree with Dennis, and still
keep a polite tone. Your insightful counterarguments make this a very
interesting debate. I think John W. Kennedy, Tom Reedy, Peter Groves,
Dominic Hughes, Mark Steese and others have much to learn from you.

[Dominic Hughes]

I admit to having much to learn from Rita as she is extremely
knowledgeable on the subject of Nashe [and it shows splendidly in her
responses to Mr. McCarthy]. I enjoy her posts immensely. That being
said, I don't believe this forum is the proper venue for your personal
commentary about remarks made in debates taking place in an entirely
different arena, and I'd request that if your tender sensibilities are
offended by comments made in HLAS that you confront those comments
there. I hope that my polite tone in this response meets with your
approval.

Dom

[frode]

This forum might not be the proper venue for my “personal commentary

about remarks made in debates taking place in an entirely different

arena”, although I think it applies also to commentaries made in the
two threads about Dennis’ book found on this forum. But this forum is
the right place to thank Rita, since this is where she has written.

I have not had my tender sensibilities offended by comments made in
the HLAS, but I do think the quality of the debate has suffered from
an impolite tone, where many postings seem to be aimed as much at
insulting the debatee, as to bring forth valuable arguments.

Your last sentence might have an ironical touch to it, but yes, I
really appreciate the polite tone in your response.

Frode

[Dominic Hughes]

There may have been some impolite remarks. For instance, I believe it
was impolite of Mr. McCarthy to state that he was asking questions
that would "almost certainly be avoided." Such a statement was not
conducive to elevating the quality of the debate, as it appeared to be
aimed at insulting the debate participants and was not designed to
bring forth valuable arguments. Perhaps Mr. McCarthy could stand to
learn from Rita as well.

With that, I will not waste any more of the forum's time discussing
matters that are taking place in HLAS. I will continue to follow the
debate here with much enjoyment.

Sincerely,

Dom

[frode]

I agree.

Frode

[Gary]

Thanks for the link, Dennis.

It is interesting.

It's also interesting to follow an argument between people
who know more about a subject than you (that is, I) do.

I've noticed that you'll post something that sounds
plausible, then someone like Mark Steese over at hlas will
post a rebuttal which seems to answer the point, then you'll
make a counter-response and so it goes.

But I find it a fun discussion.

- Gary

[Den...@northofshakespeare.com]

It's a fun discussion. I have much more I am going to post soon.
Interestingly, my posts are no longer appearing at HLAS. Is this a
problem with anyone else?

[Dominic Hughes]

It isn't a problem for me.

Dom

On Aug 6, 7:08 am, "den...@NorthofShakespeare.com"

[Gary]

On 06/08/2011 4:08 AM, den...@NorthofShakespeare.com wrote:
> It's a fun discussion. I have much more I am going to post soon.
> Interestingly, my posts are no longer appearing at HLAS. Is this a
> problem with anyone else?

From what several people have said over at hlas and other
newsgroups, there seems to be some problem with accessing
hlas (and other newsgroups) through Google.

Your best bet is to get a newsreader, such as 40tude
Dialog, which is what I use:

http://www.40tude.com/dialog/

and a newsprovider, such as Eternal September (which I've
never used myself but have seen several people recommend):

www.eternal-september.org

- Gary