Philip Sparrow of Stratford-upon-Avon

[Sabrina Feldman]

HLAS-ers,

What do you make of the play character Philip Sparrow of Stratford-
upon-Avon, an apparent lampoon of William Shakespeare from the play
Guy, Earl of Warwick? Here is my discussion of Philip Sparrow's
significance for the Shakespeare authorship debate, very slightly
adapted from Chapter Eight of The Apocryphal William Shakespeare
(http://apocryphalshakespeare.com/).

***

In 1941, the respected Shakespeare scholar Alfred Harbage first
discovered that the clown Philip Sparrow of Stratford-upon-Avon, one
of the two main characters in the obscure old English play The
Tragical History, Admirable Atchievments and Various Events of Guy,
Earl of Warwick (the other main character being Guy himself) appears
to burlesque William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. Harbage’s
discovery initially received little attention, but has slowly been
attracting interest from scholars and writers including E. A. J.
Honigmann in 1954, John Berryman in the later half of the twentieth
century, Helen Cooper in 2006, and Katherine Duncan-Jones in 2009.

The only known edition of Guy, Earl of Warwick was printed in 1661
under the initials “B.J.,” but its content and old-fashioned style
strongly indicate a composition date between 1589 and 1594. The author
may have been a young Ben Jonson, although Guy, Earl of Warwick is not
one of Jonson’s acknowledged works. Other possible authors are Robert
Greene and Thomas Nashe, both of whom took relish in skewering their
contemporaries in comical satires during the period when the play is
most likely to have been written.

Guy, Earl of Warwick’s author used an allegorical personage, Time, to
introduce each of his five acts, a practice seldom used after 1590. In
the play’s final chorus Time says that the author is still a young
man: “For he’s but young that writes of this Old Time.” Ben Jonson
turned eighteen in 1590, so his youth does not preclude his
authorship. More tellingly, Time alludes to an ongoing dispute over
the proper clerical dress, declaring that he “doth not strike at
Surplices and Tippits.” In 1588 the pseudonymous Puritan author
“Martin Marprelate” published a pamphlet in which he derided those who
refuse “to wear the surplice, cat, tippet, &c.,” further connecting
Guy Earl of Warwick to the period around 1590.

Guy of Warwick was a legendary medieval hero from the county of
Warwickshire, England whose exploits were perenially interesting to
the Elizabethans. They saw him as a Christian candidate for the Nine
Worthies, nine heroic role models selected from three pagan heroes,
three Old Testament heroes, and three Christian heroes. Guy’s legend
tells that as a young man he fell in love with an Earl’s daughter, the
beautiful Lady Felice, who declared she could only marry the most
renowned knight in the world. To win her hand Guy traveled on the
European continent and in England for seven years, proving his valour
by rescuing maidens, winning tournaments, and battling strange and
wondrous creatures including a dragon, giant, monstrous boar, and wild
cow. After many such chivalric adventures, Felice finally consented to
marry Guy.

No sooner were Guy and Felice married than Guy became consumed by
remorse for neglecting God in his pursuit of Felice. He embarked on a
pilgrimage of atonement to the Holy Land, where he battled infidels
and renounced worldly vanities. Eventually Guy returned in secret to
England, living as a hermit in a cave by the River Avon. Shortly
before his death he and the faithful Felice were joyfully reunited.

The version of his legend told in Guy, Earl of Warwick begins with Sir
Guy’s decision to leave his wife “Phillis” forty days after their
marriage to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Phillis pleads with Guy
to stay home because she is expecting a child, but Guy tells her to
give the baby up to Herod if it is a boy. On his journey to Jerusalem
Guy is accompanied by his Warwickshire squire, Philip Sparrow of
Stratford-upon-Avon, a provincial clown and food thief who cheerfully
abandons his pregnant mistress Parnell to follow Guy on his chivalrous
adventures. As a lack-Latin poet of lofty ambitions who leaves the
mother of his child behind in his native village of Stratford to make
his way in the world, Philip Sparrow is exceedingly likely to be a
caricature of William Shakespeare. Strengthening the connection,
Philip’s last name Sparrow (then pronounced Spear-O) calls to mind
Shake-Spear.

Early English poets who sought to honor their fellows with bird
imagery traditionally called upon birds that symbolize grace, majesty,
power, beauty, or immortality. These include swallows, swans, eagles,
nightingales, and the phoenix. The sparrow, a small and drab bird that
tends to hop around rather than soar in the sky, does not belong to
this class. The Elizabethans regarded it as a commonplace and
lecherous bird. Any sparrow was then called Philip Sparrow, as other
birds are still called Jenny Wren, Robin Redbreast, Tom Tit, and Jack
Daw.
As portrayed by the author of Guy Earl of Warwick, William/Philip is
more concerned with preserving his life and maintaining his stomach
than with assisting Guy on his chivalric adventures. Although he often
behaves in a ridiculous fashion, Philip exudes a happy self-
confidence. In one scene he describes himself as “plumb as a pudding.”
He serves Sir Guy much as Sancho Panza serves Don Quixote—as a comic
sidekick whose bumbling antics are a foil to his master’s noble
purposes.

When we first meet Philip he is telling his father of his plan to
leave Stratford: “I, being a young man and a scholar, will go travel
to try the fruits of my learning.” Old Sparrow is concerned about
where his son will go. Philip wants to go to Rome: “Faith Father, Romo
Romulus, even to Rome, Morter morteribus, with a Morter on my Head.
But Father I’ll come upon ye with a Verse, Prapria que maribones
tribiunter masculae dogstones.” Philip’s Latin knowledge and extempore
rhymes are not impressive, but he takes pride in them.

Old Sparrow tells Philip it would be a bad time to leave because the
whole parish has been talking about how he got Neighbor Sparling’s
daughter Parnell pregnant. Philip murmurs to himself, “How comes the
Old fox to know this?,” but brazenly denies responsibility for the
pregnancy: “Who, I get her with child? Father, why I take to witness
the back side of our barn door, I never kissed her but twice in all my
life.” Old Sparrow calls Parnell on stage, and she sorrowfully tells
Philip, “O Mr. Sparrow, I little thought you would have used me thus!”
Defiant, he says she should begin looking for a different husband: “If
there be ever a one in the parish can use you better, let him take you
and the child too for me.” Even after Old Sparrow orders his son to
marry Parnell and make amends, he replies flippantly, “How like an old
fool you talk, Father, why, she had more need make me amends; for I
have made her look pretty and plump, and she has made me look like a
shotten Herring. But Father, take your blessing from me, for I must
needs be walking.” Philip sings a little song of parting:

Honey sops queen Mary’s pence,
Tears parts at going hence,
Ego volo Domine tu,
Sparrow will come with joy to you.

His tearful father and weeping mistress bid farewell and leave the
stage. Philip informs the audience that his real plan is not to travel
to Rome but to “go serve the bravest Man in all the world,” Sir Guy of
Warwick. He is blithely unconcerned about Parnell’s fate, hoping that
if she gives birth before he returns, some “honest fellow” will “pay
for the nursing of the child, and I’ll do as much for him another
time.”

After Philip Sparrow catches up with Guy on the European continent, he
tells Guy that he enjoyed the ocean journey “but for one thing”: he
could not “get a can of beer for any money.” He is baffled by Guy’s
piety and asceticism, as he never gives a thought to anything but
himself and his appetites. When a hermit happens upon them, Philip
wants to attack him: “Here comes an old man, I’ll kill him.” In
contrast the kindly Guy tells the hermit, “God bless thee Father and
send thee happiness on Earth and Heaven when thou diest.”

After spending some time with Guy on his adventures, Philip ponders “a
question of some difficulty”: whether Guy’s spirit or his own appetite
for food is greater. He compares the two using a homely country
analogy: “If he have the valour to knock down a Dun Cow, I have the
courage to cut her rup, and the confidence to carbonado her quarters.”
This seems to be a jesting allusion to William Shakespeare’s
background as a leather worker’s son who sometimes slaughtered calves
for his father in high style, according to tradition.

While Guy and Philip are conversing with the hermit, whom Philip
mistakenly believes is named “Father Emmot,” the hermit says that
Guy’s fame and glory are known throughout Europe. Offended that the
hermit did not mention his own exploits, Philip asks, “And Father
Emmot, did you never hear of the famous actions and valorous
achievements of one Squire Sparrow?” This is too much for Guy, who
responds, “Away, you hedge-bird.” Instead of taking his leave Philip
boasts about how he got Parnell pregnant in doggerel rhymes:

Philip is his Name,
A bird of Venus, and a Cock of the Game,
Who once being in Love with pretty Parnell,
Did crack her Nut, and thou mayst pick the Kernel;
She is a Peacock every man doth vayle
His bonnet to her, when she shews her tail.

“Leave talking of your trundle, Sirrah,” demands Guy. “Why so?”
replies Philip. “My Mistress Parnell is as precious to me, as your
Lady Phillis is to you, we have gotten them both with child; and all
the difference is, that Phillis is your wedded Wife, and Parnell is my
unmarried Mistress, and we must needs run up and down killing of Dun
Cows, Dragons, Wild-boars and Mastiff Dogs, when we have more work at
home then we can well turn our hands to.” Philip really believes he
and Guy have a lot in common.

After taking their leave of the hermit, but not before Philip shamed
Guy by trying to cadge a meal off the poor man, Guy and Philip make
their way to the Castle of Donather where a monstrous giant is rumored
to live. Guy instructs Philip to find an entrance to the castle. The
cowardly squire refuses to do so because he might get hurt. Annoyed,
Guy says that a Sparrow can fly from danger. “O Master I must
confess,” Sparrow responds, “I have been something loftily minded in
my young days, but Parnell and the rest of the pretty wenches in our
Parish have so plucked my plumes, that I was never good mounter since
i’faith.”

It turns out the castle is inhabited not by a giant but by a sorcerer,
who causes Guy to fall into eternal sleep. No sooner has Guy fallen to
the ground than Oberon, King of the Fairies, wakes him up so that he
might free the realm from the feared sorcerer’s enchantments. As they
converse, Philip comes running on stage yelling “Fire, fire, fire!” To
save his skin from the dangers of the Castle he had run into the
forest and hid in a bush, but when the bush was struck by lightning he
was forced to come smoldering and stinking forth.

As Philip is recounting this story he notices Oberon’s little fairy
attendants. “But Master, what fine little Hop O’my Thumbs have you got
here.” “Sirrah, take heed what you say for these are Fairies,” warns
Guy, but Philip decides it would be fun to fight the little creatures.
“Fairies, quotha, I care not what they be, I’ll have about with them
for a bloody nose…ye whoreson little pigpies, you, I’ll tickle ye
i’faith.” The fairies promptly attack Philip, pull him down to the
ground, and pinch him hard in the buttocks. He complains to King
Oberon, whose name he misconstrues as King Colberon and King
Muttonbone. “Learn your little monkeys to pair their nails with a
pestilence; for my posteriors will feel the print of them this
fortnight at the least.”

This episode may have loosely inspired the scene in the Bard’s A
Midsummer Night’s Dream in which the country clown Bottom encounters
Oberon’s fairies and misconstrues their names.
After Guy conquers the sorceror’s enchanted castle with Oberon’s help,
he and Philip Sparrow continue to the Holy Land where Guy fights
against “those misbelieving Saracens.” Philip disgraces himself by
running from combat to hide under a bush, although he does sneak once
into the sleeping pagan’s camp to steal “their Snapsacks with all
their Victuals.” Guy calls him a “cowardly slave,” but Philip
maintains that he helped by cutting off the heads of Saracens whom Guy
had already slain.

After their adventures in the Holy Land, Philip accidentally becomes
separated from Guy on their return to England. Guy becomes a hermit in
Warwickshire, while his lost squire wanders around in a European
forest worrying about his food supplies. He runs into Guy’s son
Rainborne who has been searching throughout the world for his lost
father.

Rainborne Art thou a Christian? Prethe where wer’t born?

Philip I’faith Sir I was born in England at Stratford upon Avon on
Warwickshire.

Rainborne Wer’t born in England? What’s thy name?

Philip Nay I have a fine finical name, I can tell ye, for my name is
Sparrow; yet I am no house Sparrow, nor no hedge Sparrow, nor no
peaking Sparrow, nor no sneaking Sparrow, but I am a high mounting
lofty minded Sparrow, and that Parnell knows well enough, and a good
many more of the pretty Wenches of our Parish i’faith.

Rainborne is not impressed by Philip’s character, but to honor his
father he takes on the clown as his squire. The two men return to the
English court, where Philip is delighted by how much food he is given
to eat. Despite all the meals he manages to disgrace himself by
stealing a leg of pork while attending on his master at court one day.
As he tells the story:

I began to draw near the fire, and look over my shoulder upon the
victuals, at last I spied a Fat leg of Pork; O how my Teeth did water
to look upon't! I had not stood long, but seeing every body busy, I
whipped the leg of Pork into my Pocket, and stood very mannerly with
my hands at my back, as though I had done nothing; but it was not
long, e're the Fat Pork with the heat of the Fire began to fry out of
my Slops, and all the dogs in the House came Snukering and licking
about my Breeches, and not content with that, but one unmannerly Cur
above all the rest, popped his Nose into my Pocket, snatched out the
leg of Pork, & tore away all the tone side of my Breeches, that I was
fain to go out edgling like a Crab i’faith; but I'll ne’re steal Pork
again while I live.

In addition to apparently making fun of William Shakespeare as the
hungry, cheerfully amoral clown Philip Sparrow, the author of Guy Earl
of Warwick scattered joking references throughout the play to
Mucedorus, a popular late Elizabethan play attributed to Shakespeare
in the seventeenth century. King Charles II, who ruled England between
1660 and 1685, owned a personal copy of Mucedorus bound in a volume
labeled “Shakespeare Volume 1.” The 1610 edition of the play notes
that it had recently been “Amplified with new additions, as it was
acted before the King’s Majesty at White-hall on Shrove-Sunday night.
By his Highness’s Servants usually playing at the Globe.” This
establishes that Mucedorus was performed by William Shakespeare’s
theatrical company. The play was also assigned to William Shakespeare
in a 1656 play list compiled by Edward Archer. Despite this direct
evidence that the Stratford actor wrote Mucedorus, modern scholars do
not assign it to him.

To sharpen the satire, all the verbal jabs against Mucedorus’s author
found in Guy, Earl of Warwick point to the same scene in Mucedorus in
which the country clown Mouse searches a forest for Prince Mucedorus
(in double disguise as a shepherd disguised a hermit) and the missing
Princess Amadine. Long overlooked, these links between Guy Earl of
Warwick and Mucedorus were first detailed by John Peachman in a 2006
scholarly article.

When the hard-of-hearing Mouse encounters Mucedorus in the woods,
disguised as a hermit, he wonders why Mucedorus claims to be an
“emmet,” the old English word for ant:

Mouse Here’s through the woods, and through the woods, to look out a
shepherd & a stray king’s daughter, but soft who have we here, what
art thou?

Mucedorus I am an hermit.

Mouse An emmet, I never saw such big emmet in all my life before.

In Guy Earl of Warwick, the hard-of-hearing Philip Sparrow becomes
confused after he and Sir Guy encounter a hermit on the continent:

Guy Ye cowardly Rogue wilt thou kill a Hermit?

Philip An Emmot quotha, 'tis one of the foulest great Emmets that ever
I saw.

In Mucedorus, Mucedorus insists to Mouse that he is not an emmot, he
is a hermit:

Mucedorus I tell you sir, I am an hermit, one that leads a solitary
life within these woods.

Mouse O I know thee now, thou art her that eats up all the hips and
haws, we could not have one piece of fat bacon for thee [we ate no
bacon because of you] all this year.

Just as Mouse talks about “hips and haws” in connection with a lack of
food, when Philip becomes separated from Guy at the conclusion of
their pilgrimage he wanders through the woods complaining that he has
had nothing but hips and haws to eat for two weeks:

Philip A Pilgrimage, quotha, marry here's a Pilgrimage indeed, why? I
have lost my Master, and have been this fortnight in a Wood, where I
have eat nothing but Hips and Haws.

Back in the forest scene from Mucedorus, Mouse protests his bravery to
Mucedorus:

Mouse … I’ll prove mine office good, for look sir when any comes from
under the sea or so, and a dog chance to blow his nose backward, then
with a whip I give him the good time of the day…

Amused by the phrase “blow his nose backward,” the author of Guy Earl
of Warwick had Philip repeat it:

Philip I know if you hear my Master’s name you’ll blow your Nose
backward, and then your Laundress will call you Sloven.

Mucedorus ends his forest conversation with the clueless Mouse by
asking where he can find him at Court:

Mucedorus But where shall I find you in the Court?

Mouse Why, where it is best being, either in the kitching a eating or
in the buttery drinking: but if you come I will provide for thee a
piece of beef & brewis knockle deep in fat, pray you take pains
remember maister mouse.

Likewise, William Shakespeare’s hungry counterpart Philip Sparrow
longs for a piece of beef and brewis:

Philip Have ye ever an Ambry in your Cottage, where a Man may find a
good Bag-pudding, a piece of Beef, or a Platter of Bruis knockle deep
in Fat; for I tell thee old fellow, I am sharp set, I have not eat a
good Meal this Fortnight.

John Peachman, the independent scholar who discovered these parallels,
was not sure what to make of them, but he speculated that William
Shakespeare was associated with Mucedorus in the popular mind. He
wrote, “The rarity of these parallels makes it almost certain that
they are not coincidental. The hermit/emmet joke and the rather
extraordinary phrase ‘blow your/his nose backward’ appear to be unique
to these two plays. ‘Piece of beef and brewis knuckle deep in fat’,
though not unique, is certainly rare, and ‘hips and haws’ is uncommon.
That all the parallels occur in the one scene in Mucedorus, and in
each case the lines involve the respective clowns Mouse and Sparrow,
simply underlines how unlikely it is that the parallels are
coincidental.”

Far from being coincidental, a logical inference is that the author of
Guy Earl of Warwick used William Shakespeare’s comic alter-ego Philip
Sparrow to ridicule William’s playwriting style in Mucedorus. But this
one conclusion would turn modern Shakespearean scholarship upside
down.

[Mark Steese]

Sabrina Feldman <sabrinama...@gmail.com> wrote in
news:7528eab1-b164-4c4a...@w19g2000yqb.googlegroups.com:

> HLAS-ers,
>
> What do you make of the play character Philip Sparrow of Stratford-
> upon-Avon, an apparent lampoon of William Shakespeare from the play
> Guy, Earl of Warwick? Here is my discussion of Philip Sparrow's
> significance for the Shakespeare authorship debate, very slightly
> adapted from Chapter Eight of The Apocryphal William Shakespeare
> (http://apocryphalshakespeare.com/).
>
> ***
>
> In 1941, the respected Shakespeare scholar Alfred Harbage first
> discovered that the clown Philip Sparrow of Stratford-upon-Avon, one
> of the two main characters in the obscure old English play The
> Tragical History, Admirable Atchievments and Various Events of Guy,
> Earl of Warwick (the other main character being Guy himself) appears
> to burlesque William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. Harbage's
> discovery initially received little attention, but has slowly been
> attracting interest from scholars and writers including E. A. J.
> Honigmann in 1954, John Berryman in the later half of the twentieth
> century, Helen Cooper in 2006, and Katherine Duncan-Jones in 2009.

Ever since the English decided to raise William Shakespeare from a
talented playwright into a God, people have been scouring the works of
his contemporaries looking for references to him - after all, this God
among men could hardly have failed to attract attention. Unsatisfied
with the indisputable allusions to Shakespeare, which generally treat
him as though he were merely a talented playwright, some people have dug
deeper and yet deeper looking for Bardic spoor. Sometimes they find it,
as in the now-famous passage from Greenes Groats-Worth of Wit; more
often, they do not, but that won't stop them from believing that they
have.

This tendency to imagine one has seen Shakespeare where he is not goes
at least as far back as 1799, when George Chalmers argued that Jonson's
poem "On Poet-ape" must be about Shakespeare. Chalmers, of course, did
not endorse Jonson's scorn of poor Poet-ape: quite the contrary, the
fact that Jonson could have heaped such abuse on the Immortal Bard
merely proved his "malignity" in the face of "Shakspeare's superiority;
a superiority, which his self-sufficiency lessened, and his malice
reviled."

Few took this seriously at the time: in William Gifford's 1816 edition
of Jonson's epigrams, he dismissed Chalmers in a footnote with superb
sarcasm:

Poor Poet-ape, &c.] Mr. Chalmers will take it on his death that the
person here meant is Shakspeare! Who can doubt it? For my part, I am
persuaded, that GROOM IDIOT in the next epigram is also Shakspeare;
and, indeed, generally, that he is typified by the words 'fool and
knave,' so exquisitely descriptive of him, wherever they occur in
Jonson.

This has not stopped later Bardolators and Bardoclasts from taking
Chalmers's identification seriously, the former concurring with Chalmers
about Jonson's envy of Shakes, and the latter concluding that Jonson was
providing a scrupulously accurate portrait of the mediocre hack Shaxper
who fronted for (or plagiarized) the One True Bard. Both conclusions are
equally fatuous.

> The only known edition of Guy, Earl of Warwick was printed in 1661
> under the initials "B.J.," but its content and old-fashioned style
> strongly indicate a composition date between 1589 and 1594. The author
> may have been a young Ben Jonson, although Guy, Earl of Warwick is not
> one of Jonson's acknowledged works.

No one among those scholars who are capable of appreciating the stylistic
qualities of the various Early Modern English playwrights has ever
proposed that *The Tragical History* might be Jonson's work - though
several have indignantly rejected the attribution.

> Other possible authors are Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe, both of
> whom took relish in skewering their contemporaries in comical satires
> during the period when the play is most likely to have been written.

Neither Greene nor Nashe is a plausible candidate for authorship; for one
thing, both of them could write. Halliwell-Phillipps was willing to believe
*The Tragical History* could be identified with "A Play, called the Life
and Death of Guy of Warwicke, written by John Day and Thomas Decker," which
was entered in the Stationers' Register in 1619, although A. H. Bullen, who
edited an 1881 edition of Day's works, rejected the identification - "I
doubt whether either of the authors, if they had tried, could have written
so execrably."

> Guy, Earl of Warwick's author used an allegorical personage, Time, to
> introduce each of his five acts, a practice seldom used after 1590. In
> the play's final chorus Time says that the author is still a young
> man: "For he's but young that writes of this Old Time." Ben Jonson
> turned eighteen in 1590, so his youth does not preclude his
> authorship.

No, but the abysmal quality of the play itself certainly does.

> More tellingly, Time alludes to an ongoing dispute over
> the proper clerical dress, declaring that he "doth not strike at
> Surplices and Tippits." In 1588 the pseudonymous Puritan author
> "Martin Marprelate" published a pamphlet in which he derided those who
> refuse "to wear the surplice, cat, tippet, &c.," further connecting
> Guy Earl of Warwick to the period around 1590.

[snip]

> ...On his journey to Jerusalem Guy is accompanied by his Warwickshire

> squire, Philip Sparrow of Stratford-upon-Avon, a provincial clown and
> food thief who cheerfully abandons his pregnant mistress Parnell to
> follow Guy on his chivalrous adventures. As a lack-Latin poet of lofty
> ambitions who leaves the mother of his child behind in his native
> village of Stratford to make his way in the world, Philip Sparrow is
> exceedingly likely to be a caricature of William Shakespeare.

For values of "exceedingly likely" that correspond to "not very likely
at all, in fact."

> Strengthening the connection, Philip's last name Sparrow (then
> pronounced Spear-O) calls to mind Shake-Spear.

That's backwards: the available evidence indicates that 'sparrow' was
pronounced much the same way in the 16th century as it is now, but
'speare' may well have been pronounced 'spare.'

Of course, Philip's *first* name calls to mind Philip Sidney, whose last
name, like Sparrow's, begins with an 's.' In fact, it is every bit as
likely (i.e., not at all) that the character is meant to represent
Philip Sidney as it is that he is meant to represent William
Shakespeare.

Sidney himself played on the common phrase 'Philip Sparrow' in Sonnet 83
of his *Astrophel and Stella*, which is titled "To a Sparrow," and
begins "Good brother Philip, I haue borne you long..." The first edition
of *Astrophel and Stella* was printed in 1591, and the poems had been
widely circulated in manuscript for many years before that.

> Early English poets who sought to honor their fellows with bird
> imagery traditionally called upon birds that symbolize grace, majesty,
> power, beauty, or immortality. These include swallows, swans, eagles,
> nightingales, and the phoenix. The sparrow, a small and drab bird that
> tends to hop around rather than soar in the sky, does not belong to
> this class.

See above: Sidney associated *himself* with a sparrow.

> The Elizabethans regarded it as a commonplace and lecherous bird. Any
> sparrow was then called Philip Sparrow, as other birds are still
> called Jenny Wren, Robin Redbreast, Tom Tit, and Jack Daw.

More to the point, the Elizabethan audience would have been reminded not
only of Sidney's own "To a Sparrow," but of John Skelton's poem *The Boke
of Phyllyp Sparowe*, a long mock-lament about a pet sparrow slain by a cat:
the sparrow is likened to "Noble Hector of Troye": Sidney, who was only 31
when he died of wounds received at the battle of Zutphen, was also likened
to Hector.

[snip]

> When we first meet Philip he is telling his father of his plan to
> leave Stratford: "I, being a young man and a scholar, will go travel
> to try the fruits of my learning." Old Sparrow is concerned about
> where his son will go. Philip wants to go to Rome: "Faith Father, Romo
> Romulus, even to Rome, Morter morteribus, with a Morter on my Head.
> But Father I'll come upon ye with a Verse, Prapria que maribones
> tribiunter masculae dogstones." Philip's Latin knowledge and extempore
> rhymes are not impressive, but he takes pride in them.

There is, of course, not the slightest trace of evidence that William
Shakespeare took pride in his barely adequate knowledge of Latin, or
that he considered himself a scholar. Conversely, Philip Sidney did
fancy himself a scholar, and is (unlike Shakespeare) known to have
traveled throughout Europe.

> Old Sparrow tells Philip it would be a bad time to leave because the
> whole parish has been talking about how he got Neighbor Sparling's
> daughter Parnell pregnant. Philip murmurs to himself, "How comes the
> Old fox to know this?," but brazenly denies responsibility for the
> pregnancy: "Who, I get her with child? Father, why I take to witness
> the back side of our barn door, I never kissed her but twice in all my
> life." Old Sparrow calls Parnell on stage, and she sorrowfully tells
> Philip, "O Mr. Sparrow, I little thought you would have used me thus!"
> Defiant, he says she should begin looking for a different husband: "If
> there be ever a one in the parish can use you better, let him take you
> and the child too for me." Even after Old Sparrow orders his son to
> marry Parnell and make amends, he replies flippantly, "How like an old
> fool you talk, Father, why, she had more need make me amends; for I
> have made her look pretty and plump, and she has made me look like a
> shotten Herring. But Father, take your blessing from me, for I must
> needs be walking."

And this is, again, the opposite of what we know of Shakespeare, who
actually married Anne Hathaway after it became clear that she was
pregnant with their first child. But what of Philip Sidney? It is known
that he courted Penelope Devereux (cf. "Parnell" and "Penelope"); her
father, Walter Devereux, the 1st Earl of Essex, was believed to be in
favor of the match, but Philip never married her; she was eventually
married to Lord Rich.

> Philip sings a little song of parting:
>
> Honey sops queen Mary's pence,
> Tears parts at going hence,
> Ego volo Domine tu,
> Sparrow will come with joy to you.

The first line is an obvious spoof of the motto of the Order of the
Garter, 'Honi soit qui mal y pense' ('Evil to him who thinks evil of
it). This makes no sense as a poke at Shakespeare, but what of Philip
Sidney? As it happens, Sidney was knighted in 1583 because his friend,
Prince John Casimir, who was to receive the Order of the Garter, was
unable to attend the ceremony and asked Sidney to go there in his stead:
absent a knighthood, Sidney was deemed unqualified to receive the honor
even as a proxy. Sidney never received the Order himself

> His tearful father and weeping mistress bid farewell and leave the
> stage. Philip informs the audience that his real plan is not to travel
> to Rome but to "go serve the bravest Man in all the world," Sir Guy of
> Warwick. He is blithely unconcerned about Parnell's fate, hoping that
> if she gives birth before he returns, some "honest fellow" will "pay
> for the nursing of the child, and I'll do as much for him another
> time."

It should be noted that Sidney was the heir presumptive to the title borne
by his uncle, Ambrose Dudley: Earl of Warwick.

[snip]

> After spending some time with Guy on his adventures, Philip ponders "a
> question of some difficulty": whether Guy's spirit or his own appetite
> for food is greater. He compares the two using a homely country
> analogy: "If he have the valour to knock down a Dun Cow, I have the
> courage to cut her rup, and the confidence to carbonado her quarters."
> This seems to be a jesting allusion to William Shakespeare's
> background as a leather worker's son who sometimes slaughtered calves
> for his father in high style, according to tradition.

That "tradition" was first recorded by John Aubrey, who was born a
decade after Shakespeare's death, and who quite inaccurately stated that
John Shakespeare was a butcher. Aubrey is a wonderfully entertaining
writer, but he is horribly unreliable: in his brief notes on
Shakespeare, he also alludes to "The Humour of the Constable in
Midsomernight's Dreame," having apparently confused A Midsummer Night's
Dream and Much Ado About Nothing. Aubrey also wrote "I thinke I have
been told that he left 2 or 300 pounds per annum there and thereabout
[i.e., Stratford-upon-Avon] to a sister"; Shakespeare did in fact leave
a bequest to his sister Joan, but it consisted of a one-time gift of
twenty pounds, "all my wearing apparel," and the right to maintain her
residence in Stratford "for her natural life under the yearly rent of
12d [i.e., a shilling]." It would be foolish indeed to imagine any
connection between a joke about the Dun Cow of Dunsmore Heath and
Aubrey's fanciful ideas about Shakespeare's youth.

[snip]

> In addition to apparently making fun of William Shakespeare as the
> hungry, cheerfully amoral clown Philip Sparrow, the author of Guy Earl
> of Warwick scattered joking references throughout the play to
> Mucedorus, a popular late Elizabethan play attributed to Shakespeare
> in the seventeenth century. King Charles II, who ruled England between
> 1660 and 1685, owned a personal copy of Mucedorus bound in a volume
> labeled "Shakespeare Volume 1." The 1610 edition of the play notes
> that it had recently been "Amplified with new additions, as it was
> acted before the King's Majesty at White-hall on Shrove-Sunday night.
> By his Highness's Servants usually playing at the Globe." This
> establishes that Mucedorus was performed by William Shakespeare's
> theatrical company. The play was also assigned to William Shakespeare
> in a 1656 play list compiled by Edward Archer. Despite this direct
> evidence that the Stratford actor wrote Mucedorus, modern scholars do
> not assign it to him.

Even by the eccentric standards of the Bardoclasts, there is no "direct
evidence that the Stratford actor wrote Mucedorus." Although numerous
editions of the play were published during Shakey's lifetime (see below),
it was never attributed to him either directly or indirectly before 1656 -
and if Edward Archer's list were to be considered "direct evidence" that
Shakes wrote Mucedorus, it would also be "direct evidence" that he wrote
Peele's *The Arraignment of Paris* and Kyd's *The Spanish Tragedy* - and
that William Sampson wrote *Love's Labours Lost*!

The first extant edition (Q1) of Mucedorus was published in 1598, Q2 was
published in 1606, Q3 in 1610, and Q4 in 1615, all during Shakey's
lifetime, and Shakespeare's name never appeared on the title page. *Nine*
more editions appeared between 1616 and 1668, and none of those had a
title-page attribution to Shakespeare, either: nor was Mucedorus included
in the First, Second, Third, or Fourth Folio.

The fact that it was performed by Shakespeare's theatrical company is
hardly evidence of his having written it - the King's Men performed many
plays that are known to have been written by other playwrights - in 1610
they also performed Jonson's *The Alchemist* and *Sejanus*, and *Othello* -
which, according to you, "the Stratford actor" didn't write. Since you
reject the evidence of the title page of the 1622 quarto of *Othello*, and
the fact that *Othello* was included in the First Folio, you should also be
obliged to reject the much weaker evidence for Shakey's authorship of
Mucedorus: the fact that you accept that evidence while rejecting the
attribution of *Othello* is more revealing than you realize.

> To sharpen the satire, all the verbal jabs against Mucedorus's author
> found in Guy, Earl of Warwick point to the same scene in Mucedorus in
> which the country clown Mouse searches a forest for Prince Mucedorus
> (in double disguise as a shepherd disguised a hermit) and the missing
> Princess Amadine. Long overlooked, these links between Guy Earl of
> Warwick and Mucedorus were first detailed by John Peachman in a 2006
> scholarly article.

Let it be noted that one of the sources for the play Mucedorus was
Philip Sidney's *Arcadia*, which features Musidorus, a clear inspiration
for the title character.

[snip]

> Far from being coincidental, a logical inference is that the author of
> Guy Earl of Warwick used William Shakespeare's comic alter-ego Philip
> Sparrow to ridicule William's playwriting style in Mucedorus. But this
> one conclusion would turn modern Shakespearean scholarship upside
> down.

An equally logical inference is that the allusions to Mucedorus are
further mockery of Sir Philip Sidney. And why, you may ask, did the
playwright mock Sir Philip Sidney, a widely-admired figure? Ay, there's
the rub. The answer lies in the fact that the 1661 edition of *The
Tragical History* was printed for William Gilbertson and Thomas Vere.
Now, what Elizabethan nobleman do we know of who was both praised for
his playwriting skills and famously feuded with Philip Sidney? Could it
be...Edward de *Vere*, the 17th Earl of Oxford? Why, yes! Obviously, the
author of *The Tragical History* was none other than Edward de Vere, who
used the play to heap scorn on his old opponent, mocking the mourning over
his early death by alluding to a mock-lament over a dead sparrow.

(Note: the above is not intended to be taken seriously. It is, however,
just as compelling, if not moreso, than the claim that 'Philip Sparrow' is
a spoof of William Shakespeare. I also note that while Jonson, Greene,
Nashe, Dekker, and Day were all too talented to be blamed for *The Tragical
History*, the quality of Edward de Vere's extant verse suggests that the
play would've been right in his wheelhouse.)
--
The boughs rustled, and the air was stirred by the muffled beat of their
wings: I could see them, like unearthly, boding shapes, as they swooped
between me and the stars. -Bayard Taylor

[Sabrina Feldman]

Mark,

The argument that Philip Sparrow of Stratford is likely to be a
caricature of William Shakespeare is a little-known Stratfordian
argument that has really only emerged over the last decade. I'm not
aware of any Stratfordian to have written about Philip Sparrow who
hasn't admitted this as a reasonable possibility or strong
likelihood.

I posted this here because I thought it might be of interest to HLAS-
ers. I'm not looking for a quarrel with you.

Sabrina

[Mark Steese]

Sabrina Feldman <sabrinama...@gmail.com> wrote in

news:9e3b7398-1968-4b20...@m24g2000yqh.googlegroups.com:

> Mark,
>
> The argument that Philip Sparrow of Stratford is likely to be a
> caricature of William Shakespeare is a little-known Stratfordian
> argument that has really only emerged over the last decade.

And I expressed my opinion of that argument, which is something you
specifically invited the posters here to do. What's the problem?

> I'm not aware of any Stratfordian to have written about Philip Sparrow
> who hasn't admitted this as a reasonable possibility or strong
> likelihood.

As I noted, and will note again, both Bardolators (your "Stratfordians")
and Bardoclasts (that would be you) see Shakespeare in texts where he is
not present. I'm well aware that Katharine Duncan-Jones and Michael
Wood, among others (including John Berryman, who really ought to have
known better), take the nonsense about Philip Sparrow representing
Shakespeare seriously.

> I posted this here because I thought it might be of interest to HLAS-
> ers. I'm not looking for a quarrel with you.

You said, and I quote, "What do you make of the play character Philip
Sparrow of Stratford-upon-Avon, an apparent lampoon of William
Shakespeare from the play Guy, Earl of Warwick?" I answered the question
that you asked. If you don't like getting answers, then don't post
questions.
--
"Create"? A slip of the word processor? No. The word signals
Watsonville's belated entry into modern madness where technicians make
promises traditionally reserved for the gods. -Frank Bardacke

[book...@yahoo.com]

Well, I appreciate that Ms Feldman shares what seems to be growing
interest in viewing the Phillip Sparrow character as a possible
caricature of Shakespeare. The mere fact that Warwickshire references
occur in Guy invite speculation.

If more could be made of the motive for limning Shakespeare at all, it
would be clearer; like, were there factions like the University Wits
vying for preferment that took the form of caricature? To what end?
Just witty colleagues poking fun?

Maybe some alternate authorship commentators will tell us how it is.

[book...@yahoo.com]

Now I find that the poet John Skelton, c1460-1529, wrote satiric
poetry, including what seems to be a mock heroic poem, "Phyllyp
Sparrow," the lament of a Norwich schoolgirl for her pet bird killed
by a cat. See this at
http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Skelton/philip_sparrow.htm
>
>

[Paul Crowley]

On 09/06/2012 03:11, Mark Steese wrote:

> Sabrina Feldman <sabrinama...@gmail.com> wrote

>> Strengthening the connection, Philip's last name Sparrow
>> (then pronounced Spear-O) calls to mind Shake-Spear.

> That's backwards: the available evidence indicates that
> 'sparrow' was pronounced much the same way in the 16th
> century as it is now, but 'speare' may well have been
> pronounced 'spare.'

It's neither backwards nor forwards. Both of you
are just plain wrong. The 'ear' sound in 'spear' was
distinguished from the 'air' sound in 'spare' in much
the same way as today:

The following rhymes come from Spenser's FQ,
Shake-speare's Sonnets and his long poems
{figures in brackets {} indicate multiple rhymes}:

speare (is rhymed with) feare{5), forbeare, heare{5},
neare{9}, reare{4}, sheare, teare, theare, Vmbriere,
vpreare. weare, were{5}. whileare, whyleare

speares (is rhymed with) beares, heares {2 }, steares

Whereas:

spare (is rhymed with) aire, are, aware, bare{2},
care{3}, compare, etupaire, faire{2}, fare{5}, lare,
misfare, prepare {2), rare {4), share, square, vare,
whileare

spared (is rhymed with) cared, fared{2}, prepared,
shared, vnpared

spares (is rhymed with) fares

sparing (is rhymed with) daring, staring

> Of course, Philip's *first* name calls to mind Philip Sidney,
> whose last name, like Sparrow's, begins with an 's.' In fact,
> it is every bit as likely (i.e., not at all) that the character is
> meant to represent Philip Sidney as it is that he is meant
> to represent William Shakespeare.

There seem to me to be clear references to Sidney.
But that would date the composition to before
1586, when he became a highly-respected and
much-mourned 'war hero'. IMHO the original text
was probably written before 1586.

The only way this trivial work could be attributed
to Oxford would be to say it was produced when
he was a child. But, while Oxford had a 'difficult'
relationship with Sidney, he was 4.5 years older
than him, and would not have bothered writing
anything passing critical on him until the mid-
1570s. So that rules out Oxford as author.

Possibly it was written some acolyte -- e.g. Lyly.
That would mean that William of Stratford had
been identified before 1586 as a possible stand-
in candidate, OR that the text was revised after
he emerged as such.

Nothing about this play makes much sense to
me. Of course, that's always the case when the
author cannot be identified.


Paul.

[Mark Steese]

book...@yahoo.com wrote in
news:ca76t7d3s3f1ii5bp...@4ax.com:

> On Fri, 08 Jun 2012 22:24:00 -0800, book...@yahoo.com wrote:

[snip]

>>Well, I appreciate that Ms Feldman shares what seems to be growing
>>interest in viewing the Phillip Sparrow character as a possible
>>caricature of Shakespeare. The mere fact that Warwickshire references
>>occur in Guy invite speculation.

The problem being that there is no evidence that anyone in the 1590s
associated Warwickshire with Shakespeare, but there is abundant evidence
that they associated Warwickshire with Guy of Warwick, a celebrated
culture hero whose name was being applied to structures and natural
features in Warwickshire as early as 1394, when "Guy's Tower" was added
to Warwick Castle. In 1423 Richard de Beauchamp, the 13th Earl of
Warwick, sponsored the building of a chantry with a statue of Guy at the
site where Guy supposedly lived as a hermit: the village there is known
as Guy's Cliffe to this day.

It would be interesting to trace the historical references to Guy and
Shakespeare and find out when the latter became more famous than the
former: books celebrating Guy ("Warwick's Mirror and all the World's
Wonder") were being published as late at 1770.

>>If more could be made of the motive for limning Shakespeare at all, it
>>would be clearer; like, were there factions like the University Wits
>>vying for preferment that took the form of caricature? To what end?
>>Just witty colleagues poking fun?

There are many adjectives that could justly describe "The Tragical
History, Admirable Achievements, and Various Events of Guy, Earl of
Warwick," but witty is not among them.

>>Maybe some alternate authorship commentators will tell us how it is.
>
> Now I find that the poet John Skelton, c1460-1529, wrote satiric
> poetry, including what seems to be a mock heroic poem, "Phyllyp
> Sparrow," the lament of a Norwich schoolgirl for her pet bird killed
> by a cat. See this at
> http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Skelton/philip_sparrow.htm

You could also have found that out by reading my first response to
Feldman. I also noted that Philip Sidney alludes to the common usage of
'Philip Sparrow' in his sonnet "To a Sparrow." And Shakespeare himself
alludes to it in the play *King John*:

Bast. Iames Gournie, wilt thou giue vs leaue a while?

Gour. Good leaue good Philip.

Bast. Philip, sparrow, James...

This is usually repunctuated to "Philip? Sparrow!" in modern editions,
the interpretation being that the Bastard, who has recently been
knighted, is annoyed at Gurney's presuming to address him by his given
name. In any case the allusion to Philip Sparrow seems clear. As it
happens, Shakespeare may have had the Guy of Warwick play in mind when
he composed this scene: a few lines earlier, the Bastard mentions one of
Guy of Warwick's legendary foes, "Colbrand the Gyant, that same mighty
man."
--
At the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, a very curious figure stood
in the California State Building: a medieval knight in armor, mounted on
a horse, composed entirely of prunes. -Douglas Sackman

[Sabrina Feldman]

Mark, I am very interested in your response to my question, which I
read carefully, and I appreciate your posting your thoughts. Your
answer was definitive -- everything I wrote was backwards and wrong,
it seems -- and you had no further questions for me, so I felt ready
to let the matter drop. I'm more used to debating with people along
the lines, "You made some good points with A, B, and C. While I
concede that such-and-such might have occurred, your conclusion seem
far-fetched because of this and that. And your argument fails to take
into account E and F. As a result, it seems much more likely to me
that G occurred." Instead, there's sort of a predator-prey
relationship between Stratfordians and anti-Stratfordians here that I
find fascinating but unsettling.

Sabrina

[BCD]

***Stated with sincerity and welcome good spirit!

***Not responding for Mark, but floating an answer to your observation
(other HLAS-ers will, doubtless, correct me where I'm wrong): Most of
those posting here are HLAS veterans who have served long and well in
their cause, whatever their specific cause might be. We generally have
seen, time and time again, the responses the other side makes to the
usual points; but the child born of such intercourse is frustration, as
rarely is a point conceded, no matter how telling the response, no
matter how well-grounded the refutation, no matter how good-spirited or
respectful the counter-argument. If I am not mistaken, the refulgent
Mr. Crowley indeed posted a gracious concession once upon a time in the
oft-cited Ray Mignot matter, which did him honor; but this is the only
"Gulp, I was wrong" known to me. Well-grounded refutations of rash
statements (such depositions to the effect of "There were no Italians in
Elizabethan London," "Churches in poor parishes could not have stained
glass," "Poets don't write about weather or the seasons" come to mind
because recent) are met with silence, and, if not silence, then generic
abuse. I do not mention carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, accidental
judgements, casual slaughters, or deaths put on by cunning and forced
cause, let alone purposes mistook falling on th'inventors' heads. New
posters willy-nilly harvest the fruit of this heritage; and if a
response is merely brusque or mildly exasperated, it may be regarded as
the product of unusual consideration and even generosity.

***One grows accustomed to the local ethos, in time. The abuse, the
frustration, the exasperation--these are simply window-dressing, simply
a resinous fragrance to give a characteristic tang to the atmosphere.
One could do worse than to hang out with the knowledgeable and/or
spirited folks here, whatever their persuasion may be.

Best Wishes,

--BCD

[sasheargold]

On Jun 9, 11:06 am, Paul Crowley <dsfdsfd...@sdfsfsfs.com> wrote:
> On 09/06/2012 03:11, Mark Steese wrote:
>

> > Sabrina Feldman <sabrinamariefeld...@gmail.com> wrote

> >> Strengthening the connection, Philip's last name Sparrow
> >> (then pronounced Spear-O) calls to mind Shake-Spear.
> > That's backwards: the available evidence indicates that
> > 'sparrow' was pronounced much the same way in the 16th
> > century as it is now, but 'speare' may well have been
> > pronounced 'spare.'
>
> It's neither backwards nor forwards.  Both of you
> are just plain wrong.  The 'ear' sound in 'spear' was
> distinguished from the 'air' sound in 'spare' in much
> the same way as today:

I'd say you're right but for reasons beyond the ones you give.

So you don't believe that Oxford was Lyly? By'r lady, that's rare.
Whom do you think were his acolytes (given that you contend most
Elizabethan writers were de Vere himself)?

> That would mean that William of Stratford had
> been identified before 1586 as a possible stand-
> in candidate, OR that the text was revised after
> he emerged as such.

What do you mean 'identified'? How? By whom?

>
> Nothing about this play makes much sense to
> me.

No surprizes there, then.

> Of course, that's always the case when the author cannot be identified.

Rubbish.


SB.

>
> Paul.

[Bob Grumman]

I tried to make this response yesterday but my computer wouldn't let
me.

Mark's pleasant rejoinder has almost convinced me that you're right to
consider Sparrow a satire on Will Shakespearo, Sabrina. I find little
to fault in the writing of the material froma that play you quote, and
continue to be bemused to find people claiming that some text or
another could not be by Shakespeare because it is so badly written. I
believe the difference been a writer's best writing and worst can be
huge, especially a superior writer's earliest compared to his best.
Leaving aside the level of my writing at its best, it seems to me that
there is a huge improvement between some of my early efforts and my
latest. It is therefore hard for me accept that the same is not true
of Shakespeare. I also doubt that Mucedorus is worse than Timon of
Athens or Shakespeare's earliest plays. As I believe I told you when
reading your manuscript, I think that this sample of it is among the
best of your chapters. It makes me more and more wish I had time to
read both the Guy play and Mucedorus. The only thing about it that
bothered me, although I don't agree with it here and there, was your
writing, "Despite this direct evidence that the Stratford actor wrote
Mucedorus, modern scholars do not assign it to him," without then
saying why they don't--which is because Heminges and Condell didn't,
and because they don't find the style Shakespearean, and perhaps other
reasons.

--Bob

[ignoto]

On 11/06/12 1:07 AM, Bob Grumman wrote:
> I tried to make this response yesterday but my computer wouldn't let
> me.
>
> Mark's pleasant rejoinder has almost convinced me that you're right to
> consider Sparrow a satire on Will Shakespearo, Sabrina. I find little
> to fault in the writing of the material froma that play you quote, and
> continue to be bemused to find people claiming that some text or
> another could not be by Shakespeare because it is so badly written. I
> believe the difference been a writer's best writing and worst can be
> huge, especially a superior writer's earliest compared to his best.
> Leaving aside the level of my writing at its best, it seems to me that
> there is a huge improvement between some of my early efforts and my
> latest. It is therefore hard for me accept that the same is not true
> of Shakespeare. I also doubt that Mucedorus is worse than Timon of
> Athens or Shakespeare's earliest plays.

I actually quite like Timon (I /certainly/ prefer it to that cream puff, RJ)

> As I believe I told you when
> reading your manuscript, I think that this sample of it is among the
> best of your chapters. It makes me more and more wish I had time to
> read both the Guy play and Mucedorus. The only thing about it that
> bothered me, although I don't agree with it here and there, was your
> writing, "Despite this direct evidence that the Stratford actor wrote
> Mucedorus, modern scholars do not assign it to him," without then
> saying why they don't--which is because Heminges and Condell didn't,
> and because they don't find the style Shakespearean, and perhaps other
> reasons.

Right, Bob, but, to be clear, there is /no/ direct evidence that
Shakespeare wrote Mucedorus. If Heminge and Condell had said he did,
then that would be a good reason to think so (because it is a direct
statement from a credible source); assignation on the basis of style or
literary allusion are kinds indirect evidence.

Ign.

>
> --Bob

[Mark Steese]

ignoto <ign...@tarpit.blah> wrote in
news:C6GdndiU0av52UXS...@netspace.net.au:

Mucedorus doesn't even have title-page evidence going for it, like A
Yorkshire Tragedy, The London Prodigall, et al. do: although Mucedorus
went through four quarto editions during Shakespeare's lifetime, and
several more afterwards (sixteen or seventeen, altogether - it was a
very popular text), it was never printed with Shakey's name or initials
on the title page.

The first datable association of Shakey with Mucedorus appeared in
Edward Archer's 1656 edition of the Middletown-Rowley-Massinger play The
Old Law. Archer attached a list of five hundred plays to the edition
("an exact and perfect Catalogue of all the Playes, with the Authors
names," etc.). This list attributes a number of canonical plays to
Shakespeare, as well as "Mucidorus" and several other apocryphal plays
-- but it also credits Shakespeare with "Hieronimo, both parts" (i.e.,
The Spanish Tragedy, now attributed to Kyd), "Arraignment of Paris" (now
attributed to Peele), and "Trick to Catch the Old One" (Middleton).
Moreover, it gives no author for "Cymbelona [sic]" "Troilus and
Cressida," and "Timon of Athens." Troilus and Cressida was of course
printed with Shakespeare's name on the title page during his lifetime:
Archer's listing it as an anonymous work gives further indication that
his research was not conducted with great care.

The quality of Mucedorus (which I didn't comment on in my previous post)
is difficult to judge: most scholars believe that the text that has come
down to us is a "bad quarto" version of a longer work. In his
*Elizabethan Popular Theatre: Plays in Performance* (Abingdon:
Routledge, 2005), Michael Hattaway writes that

A contemporary noted that a performance of *Mucedorus* (including
intervals?) lasted three hours: the extant script would last perhaps
an hour and a half. (132)

The 1610 quarto of Mucedorus includes scenes that did not appear in the
earlier quartos: most scholars attribute these scenes to a different
author (the 1610 title page states that the play has been "Amplified
with new additions").

As to whether Shakespeare could have written either the original text of
Mucedorus or the 1610 additions, I make no claim to knowledge; my
comments in the previous post concerned the claim that the play about
Guy of Warwick printed in 1661 (written c. 1590?) might be by Ben
Jonson, Robert Greene, or Thomas Nashe, attributions that I still think
are preposterous.

The issue of whether 'Philip Sparrow' is a caricature of Shakespeare is,
of course, separate from the question "Who wrote Mucedorus?" John
Peachman, who has the blog guyofwarwick.blogspot.com, is a Shakespearian
who believes Sparrow is a parody of Shakespeare and rejects the
attribution of Mucedorus to Shakes. He comments on Feldman's book in
this post:

http://guyofwarwick.blogspot.com/2012/02/temp.html

Peachman writes that Feldman quoted a paper of his fairly, "but, as you
would expect, interprets differently the verbal links between Mucedorus
and Guy of Warwick that I noted."

Even though I still don't believe that Philip Sparrow is a spoof of Ol'
Shakes, I could easily be wrong. But I do agree with Peachman that the
Sparrow-Shakespeare connection has no bearing on Shakespeare's
authorship of his canonical works.
--
The least objectionable of the inland scavengers is the raven,
frequenter of the desert ranges, the same called locally "carrion crow."
He is handsomer and has such an air. -Mary Austin

[Bob Grumman]

On Wednesday, June 13, 2012 3:42:27 AM UTC-4, ignoto wrote:
> On 11/06/12 1:07 AM, Bob Grumman wrote:
> > I tried to make this response yesterday but my computer wouldn't let
> > me.
> >
> > Mark's pleasant rejoinder has almost convinced me that you're right to
> > consider Sparrow a satire on Will Shakespearo, Sabrina. I find little
> > to fault in the writing of the material froma that play you quote, and
> > continue to be bemused to find people claiming that some text or
> > another could not be by Shakespeare because it is so badly written. I
> > believe the difference been a writer's best writing and worst can be
> > huge, especially a superior writer's earliest compared to his best.
> > Leaving aside the level of my writing at its best, it seems to me that
> > there is a huge improvement between some of my early efforts and my
> > latest. It is therefore hard for me accept that the same is not true
> > of Shakespeare. I also doubt that Mucedorus is worse than Timon of
> > Athens or Shakespeare's earliest plays.
>
> I actually quite like Timon (I /certainly/ prefer it to that cream puff, RJ)

I'm not a big Romeo and Juliet fan, but what does Timon have that compares with Mercutio or the nurse? Aside from that, the narrative of Romeo and Juliet is much more suspenseful and interesting than Timon's. There's action, too! I think Willie could have made quite a good comedy out of it. Timon, as I remember it, is a plodding lesson play, with all the lessons in bold-face, and Timon isn't my kind of guy.

> > As I believe I told you when
> > reading your manuscript, I think that this sample of it is among the
> > best of your chapters. It makes me more and more wish I had time to
> > read both the Guy play and Mucedorus. The only thing about it that
> > bothered me, although I don't agree with it here and there, was your
> > writing, "Despite this direct evidence that the Stratford actor wrote
> > Mucedorus, modern scholars do not assign it to him," without then
> > saying why they don't--which is because Heminges and Condell didn't,
> > and because they don't find the style Shakespearean, and perhaps other
> > reasons.
>
> Right, Bob, but, to be clear, there is /no/ direct evidence that
> Shakespeare wrote Mucedorus. If Heminge and Condell had said he did,
> then that would be a good reason to think so (because it is a direct
> statement from a credible source); assignation on the basis of style or
> literary allusion are kinds indirect evidence.
>

Agreed.

--Bob
>
> >
> > --Bob

[BCD]

***Just to put on record that I find *Timon* to be both deeply touching
and intense. Rather as with a tragic ballet (I'm thinking of *Swan
Lake*), one doesn't go to it for any richness of story, nor to plumb the
depths of character; one goes to it to be drawn along a simple
succession of events as they lead inexorably to a conclusion as
inevitable as it is uncomfortable. It has a simplicity, an intensity of
focus which seems very "modern drama" to me. Perhaps if we approach it
for "the Shakespeare experience," we will be disappointed. Bob's not
finding Timon to be his sort of guy goes, I think, to the heart of the
matter; if you don't personally empathize with Timon, and/or find him to
be annoyingly naif, likely you can't enter into his reversal to a
sufficient degree to appreciate the play. Anyhow, I like it very much.

Best Wishes,

--BCD

[Arthur Neuendorffer]

> Sabrina Feldman <sabrinamariefeld...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> The argument that Philip Sparrow of Stratford is likely to be a
>> caricature of William Shakespeare is a little-known Stratfordian
>> argument that has really only emerged over the last decade.

Mark Steese <mark_ste...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> And I expressed my opinion of that argument, which is something you
> specifically invited the posters here to do. What's the problem?

The problem? .....
Sabrina seems to be incapable of responding:

"You made some good points with A, B, and C.
While I concede that such-and-such might have occurred,
your conclusion seem far-fetched because of this and that.
And your argument fails to take into account E and F.
As a result, it seems much more likely to me that G occurred."

..............................................
IMO, Mark Steese won the argument hands down.

1) Philip Sparrow of Stratford is *primarily* Philip Sidney.
2) Philip Sparrow of Stratford is secondarily Will Shakspere.
------------------------------------------------------------------
September 9, 1566: 12 yr.old Philip Sidney visits Stratford
................................................................
September 9, 1513: The Battle of Flodden Field
September 9, 1603: George Carey dies from Mercury poisoning!
September 9, 1608: Shakespeare's Mother, Mary, buried
September 9, 1634: Lt. Hammond (Ham.Lt.) visits Stratford
September 9, 1746: John Ward plays Othello in Stratford
------------------------------------------------------------------

> Sabrina Feldman <sabrinamariefeld...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I'm not aware of any Stratfordian to have written about
>> Philip Sparrow who hasn't admitted this as a reasonable
>> possibility or strong likelihood.

Which should certainly make one a little suspicious.

Mark Steese <mark_ste...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> As I noted, and will note again, both Bardolators (your "Stratfordians")
> and Bardoclasts (that would be you) see Shakespeare in texts where he
> is not present. I'm well aware that Katharine Duncan-Jones and Michael
> Wood, among others (including John Berryman, who really ought to have
> known better), take the nonsense about Philip Sparrow representing
> Shakespeare seriously.

------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.gradesaver.com/astrophil-and-stella/study-guide/section4/

Astrophil and Stella by Philip Sidney Summary and Analysis
............................................
<<Sonnet 83. Astrophel criticizes the sparrow that has crept into
Stella's favor with its sweet song. Astrophel allowed the sparrow to
spend time with Stella despite his jealousy because he did not think
that the sparrow would take advantage of him. But the sparrow has
become ambitious, chirping his song into Stella's ear and kissing her.
Astrophel warns Philip that if he does not exercise caution in his
behavior with Stella, Astrophel will strangle him.

Analysis: This sonnet is similar to Sonnet 59, in which Astrophel
complains that Stella makes more of her dog than of him. ["In respect
all the world knows, Puppies are gotten by Dogs, and Children by
Men."] In this sonnet, however, Astrophel talks to a sparrow (Philip).
The sparrow is actively pursuing Stella, not just enjoying her
attention as a pet. Astrophel feels threatened by Stella's enjoyment
of the sparrow and warns Philip to retreat or suffer a broken neck.
The use of a sparrow in this sonnet is a reference to poet John
Skelton's mock elegy, "Philip Sparrow."
............................................
LIX

Deere, why make you more of a dog then me?
If he doe loue, I burne, I burne in loue;
If he waite well, I neuer thence would moue;
If he be faire, yet but a dog can be;
Little he is, so little worth is he;
He barks, my songs thine owne voyce oft doth proue;
Bidden, perhaps he fetched thee a gloue,
But I, vnbid, fetch euen my soule to thee.
Yet, while I languish, him that bosome clips,
That lap doth lap, nay lets, in spite of spite,
This sowre-breath'd mate taste of those sugred lips.
Alas, if you graunt onely such delight
To witlesse things, then Loue, I hope (since wit
Becomes a clog) will soone ease me of it.
.........................................
LXXXIII

Good brother Philip, I haue borne you long;
I was content you should in fauour creepe,
While craftely you seem'd your cut to keepe,
As though that faire soft hand did you great wrong:
I bare with enuie, yet I bare your song,
When in her necke you did loue-ditties peepe;
Nay (more foole I) oft suffred you to sleepe
In lillies neast where Loues selfe lies along.
What, doth high place ambitious thoughts augment?
Is sawcinesse reward of curtesie?
Cannot such grace your silly selfe content,
But you must needs with those lips billing be,
And through those lips drinke nectar from that toong?
Leaue that, Syr Phip, least off your neck be wroong!
..................................
John Skelton's "Philip Sparrow."

PLA ce bo!
Who is there, who?
Di le xi!
Dame Margery,
Fa, re, my, my.
Wherefore and why, why?
For the soul of Philip Sparrow
That was late slain at Carrow,
Among the Nunnės Black.
For that sweet soulės sake,
And for all sparrows’ souls,
Set in our bead-rolls,
Pater noster qui,
With an Ave Mari,
And with the corner of a Creed,
The more shall be your meed.

When I remember again
How my Philip was slain,
Never half the pain
Was between you twain,
Pyramus and Thisbe,
As then befell to me.
I wept and I wailed,
The tearės down hailed,
But nothing it availed
To call Philip again
Whom Gib, our cat, hath slain.

Gib, I say, our cat,
Worried her on that
Which I lovèd best.
It cannot be exprest
My sorrowful heaviness,
But all without redress!
For within that stound,
Half slumbering, in a sound
I fell down to the ground.

Unneth I cast mine eyes
Toward the cloudy skies.
But when I did behold
My sparrow dead and cold,
No creature but that would
Have ruèd upon me
To behold and see
What heaviness did me pang:
Wherewith my hands I wrang,
That my sinews cracked,
As though I had been racked,
So pained and so strained
That no life wellnigh remained.

I sighed and I sobbed,
For that I was robbed
Of my sparrow’s life.
O maiden, widow, and wife,
Of what estate ye be,
Of high or low degree,
Great sorrow then ye might see,
And learn to weep at me!
Such pains did me fret
That mine heart did beat,
My visage pale and dead,
Wan, and blue as lead:
The pangs of hateful death
Wellnigh had stopped my breath.
*
Like Andromach, Hector’s wife,
Was weary of her life,
When she had lost her joy,
Noble Hector of Troy;
In like manner alsó
Increaseth my deadly woe,
For my sparrow is go.

It was so pretty a fool,
It would sit on a stool,
And learned after my school
For to keep his cut,
With ‘Philip, keep your cut!’

It had a velvet cap,
And would sit upon my lap
And seek after small worms,
And sometime white bread-crumbs;
And many times and oft
Between my breastės soft
It would lie and rest;
It was proper and prest.

Sometime he would gasp
When he saw a wasp;
A fly or a gnat,
He would fly at that;
And prettily he would pant
When he saw an ant.
Lord, how he would pry
After the butterfly!
Lord, how he would hop
After the gressop!
And when I said, ‘Phip, Phip!’
Then he would leap and skip,
And take me by the lip.
Alas, it will me slo
That Philip is gone me fro!

Si in i qui ta tes
Alas, I was evil at ease!
Di pro fun dis cla ma vi,
When I saw my sparrow die!
----------------------------
Art Neuendorffer

[Sabrina Feldman]

Hi Bob,

Thanks for chiming in, and I'm glad to see that you sort of agree with my interpretation of Philip Sparrow's significance! Work was extra crazy this week, with three competing deadlines, so I missed seeing posts on this thread after Sunday. I agree with you that I didn't adequately explain why modern scholars don't assign Mucedorus to William Shakespeare in this chapter. I do write at length about this topic elsewhere in the book, but I could/should have done more in the passage you quote. Another thing to add to my list of Second Edition improvements, should I ever find time.

I'm amused that anyone would argue here that the case for Philip Sparrow of Stratford-upon-Avon as a lampoon of Sir Philip Sidney is somehow comparable or even superior to the case for Philip Sparrow as a lampoon of William Shakespeare / the author of Mucedorus. I find the Philip Sidney interpretation so exceedingly unlikely that I don't know actually how to argue against it without sounding rude. I suppose that's how you Stratfordians here at HLAS feel about alternative authorship theories all the time (though you don't hesitate to engage in the fray!).

Sabrina

[Arthur Neuendorffer]

Sabrina Feldman <sabrinamariefeld...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
<<I'm amused that anyone would argue here that the case for Philip
Sparrow of Stratford-upon-Avon as a lampoon of Sir Philip Sidney is
somehow comparable or even superior to the case for Philip Sparrow as
a lampoon of William Shakespeare / the author of Mucedorus. I find the
Philip Sidney interpretation so exceedingly unlikely that I don't know
actually how to argue against it without sounding rude.>>

Heaven forbid someone should be rude at HLAS.

Art Neuendorffer

[Mark Steese]

Sabrina Feldman <sabrinama...@gmail.com> wrote in

news:6583445e-1eca-4668...@googlegroups.com:

> Hi Bob,
>
> Thanks for chiming in, and I'm glad to see that you sort of agree with
> my interpretation of Philip Sparrow's significance! Work was extra
> crazy this week, with three competing deadlines, so I missed seeing
> posts on this thread after Sunday. I agree with you that I didn't
> adequately explain why modern scholars don't assign Mucedorus to
> William Shakespeare in this chapter. I do write at length about this
> topic elsewhere in the book, but I could/should have done more in the
> passage you quote. Another thing to add to my list of Second Edition
> improvements, should I ever find time.
>
> I'm amused that anyone would argue here that the case for Philip
> Sparrow of Stratford-upon-Avon as a lampoon of Sir Philip Sidney is
> somehow comparable or even superior to the case for Philip Sparrow as
> a lampoon of William Shakespeare / the author of Mucedorus.

The two cases are precisely comparable: both of them rely on
coincidental resemblances and ignore the much greater number of ways in
which the character does not resemble the supposed target. That was kind
of the point, really.

> I find the Philip Sidney interpretation so exceedingly unlikely that I
> don't know actually how to argue against it without sounding rude.

It was *intended* to be exceedingly unlikely. Did you miss the paragraph
beginning "Note: the above is not intended to be taken seriously"? The
whole point of the demonstration was to show how easy it is to find
'evidence' for any conclusion one chooses.

In reality, there is no evidence that the character 'Philip Sparrow' was
intended to be a lampoon at all. Rustic clowns were stock characters
in Early Modern literature. The only trait unambiguously shared by
Sparrow and Shakespeare is their birthplace: and the first and only
mention of Stratford in The Tragical History comes in the fifth act,
five long acts after Sparrow first shows up to depress us with his
antics. If the author of The Tragical History wanted his audience to
associate Sparrow with Shakespeare, he could have easily portrayed
Sparrow as a player and/or a playwright and/or a poet, or at least
established him as a native of Stratford before the last act. Instead,
he portrayed Sparrow as a rustic squire who accompanies his heroic
master on a crusade to the Holy Land - something that no one then and no
one now would associate with Shakespeare.

To see how an Early Modern playwright would go about lampooning one of
his fellows, look at Jonson's early play *The Case is Altered*. There is
little doubt among scholars that the character Antonio Balladino is a
lampoon of Anthony Munday - Jonson is not in the least bit subtle
about it. In the first scene of the play, Balladino is identified as
"pageant poet to the city of Milan," paralleling Munday's role as
pageant poet to the city of London, and several lines later Peter Onion
tells Balladino, "Indeed that's right, you are in print already for the
best plotter," a clear allusion to Meres's *Palladis Tamla*, in which
he refers to "Anthony Mundye our best plotter."

Balladino's name is itself a broad and obvious joke, 'Antonio' =
'Anthony,' and 'Balladino' alludes to Munday's fame as a balladeer.
There is no need to come up with a strained 'Spear/Sparrow' joke to
explain the name.

And Jonson ridicules Munday's old-fashioned style not by cryptic
allusions to Munday's plays but by having Balladino discuss his writing
style with the other characters:

Why look you, sir, I write so plain, and keep that old decorum,
that you must of necessity like it: marry you shall have some now
(as for example, in plays) that will have every day new tricks, and
write you nothing but humors: indeed this pleases the gentlemen, but
the common sort they care not for't; they know not what to make
on't; they look for good matter they, and are not edified with such
toys.

There is nothing even remotely comparable to this in the character of
Sparrow. And Jonson was restrained compared to the author(s) of *The
Return from Parnassus*, who made sure the audience would get the joke by
having Burbage and Kempe come out on stage and talk about Shakespeare
and Jonson by name!

Having said all that, I freely acknowledge that I can't prove that
Philip Sparrow is *not* meant to be a spoof of Shakespeare; and I may be
wrong to believe that Sparrow is nothing more than a stock character in
a bad play. But even the strongest evidence for Sparrow being Shakespeare,
viz., the reference to Stratford-upon-Avon, is susceptible to another
explanation (and this time I'm not spoofing): perhaps Shakespeare
*played* Sparrow onstage, and ad-libbed the reference to Stratford.
There is some reason to believe that players occasionally ad-libbed
their lines, and that their ad libs made it into the printed texts of
the plays; and there is also circumstantial evidence that Shakespeare
was familiar with The Tragical History.

There is, of course, no more evidence that Shakespeare acted in The
Tragical History than there is that he was parodied by it; it is a
pleasing fancy, nothing more - though I imagine I could spin it into
quite a yarn if I were as Bardolatrous as Eric Sams or James Shapiro.
--
The main house contained a carefully tuned piano at which Harris,
without any previous musical training, could play and thereby invoke his
Lily Queen into "electro-vital form." -Robert Hine

[Arthur Neuendorffer]

Sabrina Feldman <sabrinamariefeld...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Guy of Warwick was a legendary medieval hero from the county of
> Warwickshire, England whose exploits were perenially interesting to
> the Elizabethans. They saw him as a Christian candidate for the Nine
> Worthies, nine heroic role models selected from three pagan heroes,
> three Old Testament heroes, and three Christian heroes. Guy’s legend
> tells that as a young man he fell in love with an Earl’s daughter, the
> beautiful Lady Felice, who declared she could only marry the most
> renowned knight in the world. To win her hand Guy traveled on the
> European continent and in England for seven years, proving his valour
> by rescuing maidens, winning tournaments, and battling strange and
> wondrous creatures including a dragon, giant, monstrous boar, and wild
> cow. After many such chivalric adventures, Felice finally consented to
> marry Guy.
>
> No sooner were Guy and Felice married than Guy became consumed by
> remorse for neglecting God in his pursuit of Felice. He embarked on a
> pilgrimage of atonement to the Holy Land, where he battled infidels
> and renounced worldly vanities. Eventually Guy returned in secret to
> England, living as a hermit in a cave by the River Avon. Shortly
> before his death he and the faithful Felice were joyfully reunited.
>
> The version of his legend told in Guy, Earl of Warwick begins with Sir
> Guy’s decision to leave his wife “Phillis” forty days after their
> marriage to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Phillis pleads with Guy
> to stay home because she is expecting a child, but Guy tells her to

> give the baby up to Herod if it is a boy. On his journey to Jerusalem

> Guy is accompanied by his Warwickshire squire, Philip Sparrow of
> Stratford-upon-Avon, a provincial clown and food thief who cheerfully
> abandons his pregnant mistress Parnell to follow Guy on his chivalrous
> adventures. As a lack-Latin poet of lofty ambitions who leaves the
> mother of his child behind in his native village of Stratford to make
> his way in the world, Philip Sparrow is exceedingly likely to be a

> caricature of William Shakespeare. Strengthening the connection,

> Philip’s last name Sparrow (then pronounced Spear-O) calls to mind
> Shake-Spear.

-----------------------------------------------------
Guy of Warwick = Dudley of Warwick?

Felice = Lettice / Elizabeth / Lady Douglas?
-----------------------------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dudley,_1st_Earl_of_Leicester

<<Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, KG (24 June 1532 or 1533 – 4
September 1588) was an English nobleman and the favourite and close
friend of Elizabeth I from her first year on the throne until his
death. She giving him reason to hope, he was a suitor for the Queen's
hand for many years.

Robert Dudley adopted the ancient heraldic device of the earls of
Warwick, the bear and ragged staff. The town of Warwick felt this
during a magnificent visit by the Earl in 1571 to celebrate the feast
of the Order of Saint Michael, with which Leicester had been invested
by the French king in 1566. "Aparelled all in white ... the
proportions and lineaments of his body" made such an impression that
he was accounted "the goodliest [best looking] male personage in
England" by the onlookers. He shortly afterwards founded Lord
Leycester's Hospital, a charity for aged and injured soldiers still
functioning today.

With Lady Douglas Sheffield, a young widow of the Howard family, he
had a serious relationship from about 1569. He explained to her that
he could not marry, not even in order to beget a Dudley heir, without
his "utter overthrow": "You must think it is some marvellous cause ...
that forceth me thus to be cause almost of the ruin of mine own
house ... my brother you see long married and not like to have
children, it resteth so now in myself; and yet such occasions is
there ... as if I should marry I am sure never to have [the Queen's]
favour". Although in this letter Leicester said he still loved her as
he did at the beginning, he offered her his help to find another
husband for reasons of respectability if she so wished. The affair
continued and in 1574 Lady Douglas gave birth to a son, also called
Robert Dudley.

Lettice Knollys was the wife of Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex and
first cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth on her mother's side.
Leicester had flirted with her in the summer of 1565, causing an
outbreak of jealousy in the Queen. After Lord Essex went to Ireland in
1573, they possibly became lovers. There was much talk, and on Essex'
homecoming in December 1575, "great enmity between the Earl of
Leicester and the Earl of Essex" was expected. In July 1576 Essex
returned to Ireland, where he died of dysentery in September. Rumours
of poison, administered by the Earl of Leicester's means, were soon
abroad. An official investigation conducted by Henry Sidney, Lord
Deputy of Ireland and Leicester's brother-in-law, did not find any
indications of foul play but "a disease appropriate to this
country ... whereof ... died many".

On 21 September 1578 Leicester secretly married Lady Essex at his
country house at Wanstead, with only a handful of relatives and
friends present. He did not dare to tell the Queen of his marriage;
nine months later Leicester's enemies at court acquainted her with the
situation, causing a furious outburst. The marriage of her favourite
hurt the Queen deeply. She never accepted it, humiliating Leicester in
public: "my open and great disgraces delivered from her Majesty's
mouth".>>
-----------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer