And we are his sisters, and his cousins and his aunts!
art
<<In 1856, William Henry Smith put forth the claim that the author
of Shakespeare's plays was Sir Francis Bacon, a major scientist,
philosopher, courtier, diplomat, essayist, historian and
successful politician, who served as Solicitor General (1607),
Attorney General (1613) and Lord Chancellor (1618).>>
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespearean_authorship_question
---------------------------------------------------
William Henry Smith (From Wikipedia)
.
<<William Henry Smith (*24 June* 1825 ' *6 October* 1891) was
the son of William Henry Smith (1792-1865). He was born in London
and educated at Tavistock Grammar School before joining the
business with his father in 1846. As a result of his involvement,
the business became a household name (W H Smith), and the practice
of selling books & newspapers at railway stations began.
In 1868 he was elected Member of Parliament for Westminster
as a Conservative, and was appointed Financial Secretary to the
Treasury 6 years later when Disraeli returned as Prime Minister.
In 1877 he became First Lord of the Admiralty. The appointment
gave rise to the character of Sir Joseph Porter, KCB,
in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore).
W. S. Gilbert's Pinafore lyrics are scathing:
.
. I grew so rich that I was sent
. By a pocket borough into Parliament.
. I always voted at my party's call,
. And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
. I thought so little, they rewarded me
. By making me the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
.
Smith would be known by the derisive nickname "Pinafore
Smith" during his three years in the post of First Lord.>>
----------------------------------------------------
<<Sir Joseph realizes that Ralph should have been the *CAPTAIN* ,
and the *CAPTAIN* should have been Ralph. He summons both, & they
emerge WEARing one another's uniforms: Ralph is now middle-class,
and in command of the *PINAFORE* , while the former *CAPTAIN*
is now a common sailor. Sir Joseph's marriage with Josephine is
now impossible. As he explains it, "love levels all ranks...to a
considerable extent, but it does not level them as much as that."
He gives her to now-Captain Rackstraw. The former *CAPTAIN* , with
his rank reduced, is free to marry Buttercup. Sir Joseph settles
for his cousin *HEBE* , and all ends in general rejoicing.>>
-----------------------------------------------
"Sir Joseph Porter's Song" Sir William Schwenck Gilbert
("When I was a Lad I served a Term")
from H. M. S. Pinafore (1878)
.
Enter Sir Joseph with Cousin *HEBE*.
.
SONG - SIR JOSEPH.
.
I am the monarch of the sea,
The ruler of the Queen's Navee,
Whose praise Great Britain loudly chants.
.
COUSIN *HEBE*. And we are his sisters, and his cousins and his aunts!
.
RELATIVES. And we are his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts!
.
SIR JOSEPH. When at *ANCHOR HERE* I ride,
. My bosom swells with pride,
. And I snap my fingers at a foeman's taunts;
.
COUSIN *HEBE*. And so do his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts!
.
ALL. And so do his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts!
.
SIR JOSEPH. But when the breezes blow,
. I generally go below,
. And SEEK the seclusion that a cabin grants;
.
COUSIN *HEBE*. And so do his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts!
.
ALL. And so do his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts!
. His sisters and his cousins,
. Whom he reckons up by dozens,
. And his aunts!
.
SONG - SIR JOSEPH.
.
. When I was a lad I served a term
. As office boy to an Attorney's firm.
. I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor,
. And I polished up the handle of the big front door.
. I polished up that handle so carefullee
. That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
.
The object of Gilbert's satire is not so much
the person of publisherand politician W. H. Smith
as the system that in essence de-professionalized
command positions in the British armed forces, & promoted
those with wealth and political connections rather than
military ability. Thus, Gilbert was in effect attacking
the long-standing aristocratic tradition of purchasing
commissions. Instead of "serving a term" as a midshipman
(which was the conventional route leading to officer status
and ship's command), Sir Joseph has taken a strictly political
route to the Admiralty. His being accompanied by "Cousin *HEBE*
"may be Gilbert's method of ridiculing thinking of himself
as an Olypian deity, for *HEBE* was the patron goddess
of youth & youthful beauty, and cupbearer of the gods
- in Greek mythology - her cup was said to have the ability
to retore old men to youthful vigour (as demonstrated by
Sir Joseph's prancing around the stage). That *HEBE*
eventually married the deified hero Herakles may also be
significant in Gilbert's resolving the problem of the marriage
of Sir Joseph and Captain Corcoran's daughter, Josephine. >>
.........................................
I Could Go on Singing (1963)
Gregory Phillips / Matt / Cousin *HEBE*
---------------------------------------------------
http://library.thinkquest.org/5175/images/grave1.jpg
...............................................
. GOOD FREND FOR [IE]{SVS}' SAKE FOR[BE]ARE,
___ TO DIGG THE DV[ST] ENCLOASED [HE]ARE:
. BLESTE BE Ye MAN Yt SPA[RE]S THES STONES,
_ AND CVRST BE HE Yt MO[VE]S MY BONES.
...............................................
On the 14th anniversary of Anne Hathaway's death [Aug. 6, 1637].
Ben Jonson was BURIED UPRIGHT leaning against the WALL
. of his Westminster Abbey crypt as requested:
.
. ' *TWO FEET BY TWO FEET*
. *WILL* do for all I *WANT* '. - Ben Jonson
...............................................
http://library.thinkquest.org/5175/images/grave1.jpg
___________ [IE] [BE] [RE]
__________ [ST] [HE] [VE]
........................................
___ *STIE / HEBE* : *VERE*
........................................
http://shakespeareauthorship.com/array2.html
. 0807d: NTENSH *STIE* VGHENVTT
. 1713d: GI *HEBE* IN
. 1909u: R *VERE* HSI
---------------------------------------------------
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=9047
Fulke Greville
Birth: Oct. 3, 1554
Death: Sep. 30, 1628
http://s3.amazonaws.com/findagrave/photos/2001/222/grevillefulke.jpg
<<Statesman, Author. The son of Sir Fulke Greville, 4th Baron
Willoughby de Broke, he was born in Warwickshire, England, and
educated at Shrewsbury School and Cambridge University. He was
a close friend of Sir Philip Sidney. Greville was a favorite
courtier of Queen Elizabeth I, who knighted him in 1597 and
made him a Rear Admiral in the *Royal Navy*. After serving
four terms in Parliament, he was *Treasurer of the Navy* from
1598 to 1604 and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1614 to 1621.>>
------------------------------------
From The Times Literary Supplement
Alastair Fowler, August 12, 2009
Shakespeare's rivals
Were the Admiral's Men more original and theatrically brilliant
than Shakespeare's company?
*
For almost forty years Andrew Gurr has elucidated Elizabethan stage
conditions. Poring over archival minutiae and anecdotal scraps, he has
become one of our most distinguished authorities on Shakespeare’s
staging, besides being chief academic adviser for the Globe Theatre
reconstruction. His many deservedly successful monographs, not to
mention journal articles, have become indispensable to students and
professors alike. The Shakespearean Stage (1970), now into a fourth
edition which Gurr implausibly claims is “probably final”, treats
Elizabethan acting in general. Shakespeare’s Opposites is a single-
company history, like Reavley Gair’s The Children of Paul’s (1982) or
Gurr’s own The Shakespeare Company (2004). Previously Gurr’s work has
focused on Shakespeare. But now he has embarked on a voyage in
uncharted waters. For Shakespeare’s Opposites treats the rivals of
Shakespeare’s company, the Admiral’s Men: an elusive subject concealed
in peculiarly obscure evidence.
Before 1594, the kaleidoscope of acting companies was becoming
impossible for the City authorities to control. Then deals were done,
and for six years, from about 1594 to 1600, a monopoly – or duopoly –
was granted to two companies only, the Admiral’s and the
Chamberlain’s. The Chamberlain’s (the King’s Men) had Henry Carey,
Lord Hunsdon as patron, and Shakespeare as writer. The patrons of the
Admiral’s Men were Charles Howard and later Prince Henry, then Lord
Palsgrave, Earl Palatine. Only in the late 1590s was the duopoly
encroached on by the companies of three earls – Worcester, Oxford and
Derby – and by the Paul’s Boys and Blackfriars Boys. There were five
competitors by 1602; but even then the duopoly companies continued to
dominate.
The Chamberlain’s Men were a company of sharers: a team performing the
masterpieces of a great dramatist. But the Admiral's Men had Marlowe’s
crowd-pulling plays, with the unmatched star Edward Alleyn to act
them. They were the first company to be controlled by a single
impresario: Philip Henslowe, Alleyn’s father-in-law. They acted
throughout the year for citizen playgoers in outdoor playhouses (the
Rose and subsequently the Fortune), in contrast to the Chamberlain’s
Men, who acted outdoors at the Globe only in summer, and eventually
indoors in winter at Blackfriar’s. In Gurr’s view the stable duopoly
arrangement enabled both companies to meet the demands of repertory
and yet maintain high standards of performance. He judges the
Admiral’s company to be the more original and theatrically brilliant:
necessarily a speculative judgement, since the texts of most of their
plays were lost in the 1621 fire at the Fortune.
Gurr’s adventurous book develops the interesting theme that duopoly
theatre conditions – in particular the familiarity of the actors
through twice-weekly play-going – encouraged a special sort of
disguise play. This may not be convincing as a causal explanation
(modern rep has no comparable effect on dramatic form). But the fact
is beyond doubt: several Admiral’s company plays carry the drama of
disguise to great heights of sophisticated complexity. Look About You
(1595), described here in detail, has no fewer than sixteen inventive
disguises. And in Anthony Munday’s John A Kent and John A Cumber
(1594), John a Kent, disguised as John a Cumber, meets John a Cumber
disguised as John a Kent. (The disguises are as thin as those in Così
fan tutte.) Such disregard of probability, now surviving mainly in
farce, suggests an operatic mode of theatricality, perhaps only
possible before the circumstantial realism of the novel.
The Chamberlain’s Men had their disguise plays too, like Shakespeare’s
The Comedy of Errors (c1590–94) and The Merchant of Venice (1596), and
Ben Jonson’s The New Inn (1629). But none, except Jonson’s, depended
on disguise in quite the same sophisticated way. Gurr sees
metatheatrical disguise as a prime instance of the originality of the
Admiral’s company in adapting to the new repertory challenge. Other
instances were devil plays, plays of “humours”, and “paradoxical”
plays like The Honest Whore (1604).
It is now agreed that touring, although occasionally provoked by
plague, was also a voluntary practice, usual in February (Lent) and
two summer months. Gurr enthuses that tours meant memorizing only a
few plays instead of the normal relentless routine of new plays every
week. This attractive account of the players’ holiday spirit on their
annual progress to country towns, great houses and colleges, contrasts
with his earlier account (left unrevised in the fourth edition of The
Shakespearean Stage) of players preferring London: “living in one
place instead of travelling and, more important, enjoying a steady
income”. Evidence has been coming thick and fast from the ongoing REED
(Records of Early English Drama), showing that companies toured as far
afield as York, Newcastle and Carlisle. Subhash Shanbhag’s map in
Shakespeare’s Opposites shows four times as many venues as the map in
The Shakespeare Company (2004).
Gurr’s idyll of summer travel is plausible enough; but things would
have been a bit different in February fill-dyke. Besides, the
logistics are problematic. The Shakespeare Company took a more
realistic view of travel between venues 150 miles each side of London.
Wagons loaded with props and costumes travelled only ten to fifteen
miles a day, and in the North of England wheeled transport was
severely limited. Even getting to Oxford from Fordwich in Kent in two
days was a tight itinerary. The roads were so bad that the clown Will
Kemp took a month to walk and dance to Norwich. Gurr is surely right
to suppose that travel must have been by water wherever possible
(“normally”). River travel was sometimes feasible and much cheaper. As
to speed, however, Gurr’s only measure is John Taylor’s boast of
rowing 100 miles in a day. But Taylor was an expert waterman, and on
another part of the same journey he struggled to make eight miles in
nine hours. The REED evidence of Cinqe Ports venues certainly suggests
coastal sea routes, at least for return journeys. But travel by sea
and even by estuary was so unpredictable and hazardous that the sands
were often preferrred.
On the question of the size of touring parties, much ingenuity has
been expended. Only two or three suitable plays needed to be taken on
tour; and minimum casting analysis of playtexts by Scott McMillin and
Sally-Beth MacLean arrives at fourteen or so for the usual size of the
cast (assuming extra men and boys were hired locally). But Gurr
asserts: “the entire company travelled together, and did not, as is
usually assumed, send out only a limited party of players. We know
that from the list of Palsgrave’s Men the Cambridge authorities wrote
down in 1616 in their order to ban them from playing”. “Entire
company” presumably means all on the payroll: thirty or more. Travel
for such a large party would have been very expensive. Gurr doesn’t
count costs, although touring companies sometimes failed to break
even. The sole evidence suporting his generalization is the 1616
banning order. Other documents, however, imply other sizes: twenty at
Plymouth in 1618–19, as few as fourteen elsewhere.
It is uncharacteristic of Gurr to throw caution to the winds like
this. Did he omit a “sometimes”? It would be reasonable to suppose
companies did sometimes travel en masse, sometimes in limited parties
like the skeletal travelling households of the period. Again, if
several parties of the same company toured separately to different
venues, itineraries would be less problematic. Gurr’s conclusions from
archaeological evidence are more cautious. A fatal shooting accident
at a performance of Tamberlaine probably occurred when exploding
gunpowder expelled not only wadding but also a scouring rod’s broken-
off tip that had been left in the caliver. Excavation of the Rose site
in 1989 yielded just such a piece of bent iron. But Gurr, determined
not to fall into the anecdotage of New Historicism, concludes that the
cross-connection is “no more than a seductive possibility”.
As impresario, Henslowe kept a famous day-book whose obscurities have
long tantalized historians. Some entries are defective, some missing,
some in another hand, many inconsistent, all in adventurous spelling.
However useful as an aide-memoire to Henslowe, it has been a headache
to others. Gurr’s chapter on it is largely speculation – but the
speculation of a historian uncommonly knowledgeable about the
Elizabethan theatre. He asks many probably unanswerable questions:
were the duopoly companies amicable rivals or unfriendly competitors?
How could Henslowe lend profitably without charging interest? Did the
“gatherers” or doormen substract their wages directly from the
takings? And what exactly were the payments to the Master of the
Revels for (“ltm pd vnto mr tyllnes man the 26 of febreary 1591”)?
Again, if “ne” (new) plays were charged double, why were the takings
not more? Gurr scouts the double payment explanation; but without some
financial implication, the newness would not have been recorded. The
takings may have fallen because people waited to hear if the new play
was any good.
Gurr may not have cracked all the codes of the Diary; but he has much
to tell about Henslowe. At first he was simply landlord of the Rose
theatre, but from about 1597 he was also banker and financier to the
company. And from 1603 to 1613 or so he made his fortune from bear-
baiting. He was a brilliant independent entrepreneur who enabled the
company in every way: paying a debt here, pacifying with a handout
there. If the playhouse was idle, he would stage a fencing exhibition.
He was never extravagant, and managed to keep a tight leash on his
writers. He would secure a new play with ten shillings “lent” to a
potential playwright for an early draft or scenario – what might now
be called a “treatment”. If further drafts stalled, the scenario would
be turned over to a group of collaborators (not always including the
original proposer) who divided up the writing. If all went well, the
collaborators shared a payment “in full” of £6.
After plays had their run, Henslowe took a hand in publication too. He
arranged for publication of selected plays – ten out of 206 known
titles up to 1603 – although legally the company owned and sold the
playtexts. What determined the decision to print? How far was the
printing authorized in the case of unregistered titles? The process
from stage to print usually took three years, single-author plays
being fastest. In sum, Gurr continues the rehabilitation of Henslowe
that he began in the third edition of The Shakespearean Stage.
At times Gurr struggles to synthesize the Diary’s atomistic
information, as shows in the fact that a third of Shakespeare’s
Opposites consists of lists. An invaluable appendix catalogues 229
plays written for the Admiral’s Men, giving dates and partial costs,
with relevant extracts from the Diary. Another supplies brief
biographies of the players, including the cross-dressing Moll Frith
(alias Cutpurse), who played herself in The Roaring Girl. A third
appendix lists records relating to tours, unfortunately too
fragmentary to clarify the itineraries. And a fourth lists Court
performances, sometimes many in the same season.
In Shakespeare’s Opposites Gurr meets a new challenge: the near-
impossible task of making historical bricks with Henslowe’s straw. The
result is an authoritative work, invaluable for every theatre
historian and illuminating to every student of Elizabethan drama.
Andrew Gurr
THE SHAKESPEAREAN STAGE 1574–1642
358pp. £45; paperback, £17.99 (US $90; paperback, $29.99).
978 0 521 50981 7
SHAKESPEARE’S OPPOSITES
The Admiral’s Company 1594–1625
327pp. £50 (US $99).
978 0 521 86903 4
Cambridge University Press.
----------------------------------------------------------
History of Doubts surrounding the authorship of Shakespeare’s Works
http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/?p=38
1728 : Publication of *Captain Goulding’s* Essay Against Too Much
Reading in which he comments on the background Shakespeare would
require for his historical plays and suggests that Shakespeare
probably had to keep “one of those chuckle-pated Historians for his
particular Associate…or he might have starvd upon his History.”
Goulding tells us that he had this from “one of his
(Shakespeare’s) intimate Acquaintance.”
1786 : The Story of the Learned Pig , an anonymous allegory by an
“Officer of the *Royal Navy* ,” in which The Pig describes himself as
having variously been a greyhound, deer, bear and a human being (after
taking possession of a body) who worked as horseholder at a playhouse
where he met the “Immortal Shakespeare” who’s he reports didn’t “run
his country for deer-stealing” and didn’t father the various plays,
Hamlet, Othello, As You Like It, The Tempest , and Midsummer’s
Night Dream. Instead the Pig confesses to be author.
1848 : In The Romance of Yachting by Joseph C. Hart, a former American
consul at Santa Cruz, provides Considerable anti-Stratfordian opinion.
Favors Jonson as probable author of Shakespeare’s plays.
--------------------------------------------------------
.. "THE STORY OF THE LEARNED PIG"
. By an Officer of the *ROYAL NAVY*. (London, 1786).
. http://www.sirbacon.org/links/abaconi1.htm
.
"I soon after contracted a friendship with that great man and first
of geniuses, the "Immortal Shakespeare," and am happy in now having
it in my power to refute the prevailing opinion of his having run
his country for deer-stealing, which is as false as
it is disgracing. The fact is, Sir, that he had contracted
an intimacy with the wife of a country justice near Stratford,
from his having extolled her beauty in a common ballad;
and was unfortunately, by his worship himself, detected
in a VERy awkward situation with her. Shakespeare, to
avoid the consequences of this discoVERy, thought
it most prudent to decamp. This I had from his mouth."
.
The book tells the story of the many re-incarnations which
The Learned Pig can remember, and at the beginning says
that his first recollection is, when he was Romulus. . .
Quirinus was the nickname of Romulus, because he cast or
threw a SPEAR into the Quirinal. Thus we have a 2nd reference
to The Learned Pig being Shakespeare; for he says he was
Romulus,--Romulus was Quirinus,--and Quirinus was Shakespeare!>>
...................................................
Quirinal, a. [L. Quirinals, fr. Quirinus, a name of Romulus.]
Of, pertaining to, or designating, the hill Collis Quirinalis,
or a modern royal place situated upon it.
-------------------------------------------------------
____ * REVEREND WARD *
____ * EDWARD VERE, R.N. *
.....................................
____ * MAR - L.O. *
--------------------------------------------------
Alan Nelson's entry on De Vere from the ONDB
..............................................
<<In 1588, during the Armada battle, Oxford volunteered for
service at Tilbury but refused Leicester's request that
he serve as governor of Harwich, thinking the position
beneath him. When Oxford took his complaint
to the queen, Leicester wrote to Walsingham:
'I am glad I am rid of my [L]ord [O]xford,
*SEEing* he refuseth this and I pray you let me not be
pressed any more for him what suit so EVER he make'.
To cover the earl's dereliction of duty Burghley, in a
propaganda pamphlet issued the same year, refashioned Oxford,
along with other non-combatant noblemen, into national heroes.>>
---------------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer