North’s Marginal Notes (His Personal Workbook for Early 1590s Plays)

On March 29, 1591, Thomas North purchased a used, 1582-edition of his Dial of Princes for 5 shillings, signing the back and dating the purchase—a copy now kept at the Cambridge University Library.[1] Then he began rereading or skimming certain sections, skipping from here to there, underscoring certain lines and passages, and adding various notes in the margins. In the middle of the book, he dates one personal comment as 1592, helping confirm that this used-copy did not just sit for years unopened; he made use of it immediately and continued flipping through it for the next year or so, perhaps longer. North’s commentary and markings are especially important as they confirm that he used this edition as his own personal research-storehouse and workbook for adding new material to his Arden of Feversham and The Taming of the Shrew. North also made use of it during his original penning of Macbeth. Interestingly. all three plays relate to fierce and (nearly) indomitable wives.[2]

All three plays also have clear links to the early 1590s. North first wrote Arden of Feversham, the true-crime tragedy about Alice Arden’s murder of her husband with her lover Mosby, in 1556-8. The reason the subject had interested him is that Alice Arden was his half-sister; Thomas Arden, his brother-in-law; and Alice’s lover, Mosby, was a North-family servant. North was quite familiar with all the main characters of this true crime tragedy.

The tragedy resurfaced again, perhaps with Shakespeare’s theater company, in the late 1580s to early 1590s, clearly influencing other playwrights from that time period. It was then first published in 1592. North’s marginalia show indisputable links to this publication, suggesting a final touch-up at this time, especially the addition of certain scenes. Still other evidence suggests North wrote The Taming of the Shrew in 1570 while he was in or near Padua, but then in 1591-2 used his recently purchased Dial to rework it, especially editing Katherine’s final monologue. A close adaptation of the play, The Taming of a Shrew, was published in 1594.

Finally, North also used this old copy of The Dial to write Macbeth, the witches of which were partly inspired by the Scottish witchcraft trials of 1591. Many of the famous images and scenes involving Lady Macbeth were partly based on the true-life circumstances of Alice Arden.

Other plays influenced by North’s highlighted passages include A Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Coriolanus, and Richard II. The extensiveness of this relationship between North’s marginalia and Shakespeare’s plays precludes a thorough discussion here, but the posts for this week should help serve as a useful introduction.

We can break down North’s markings into three categories. The first comprises normal large-tome marginalia, the same type we see in many texts of similar size. North would write out certain words or phrases in the margin to identify the subject of the passage that it bordered, e.g., “Pliny” or “The praise of Demosthenes.” Their purpose, of course, is to facilitate later skimming. North did this mostly in the first of the four “books” (i.e., sections) that comprise The Dial.

The translator also frequently made corrections throughout the text. Sometimes, the printer had made a mistake, or North did not like the language he had originally used. So he would cross out the offending text and write out the substitution in the margin. Both types of jottings in a work by North are unsurprising: We also find the same type of corrections and subject-based marginalia in his unpublished journal of his trip to Rome, which he wrote in 1555 at the age of 20.[3]

The third type of markings, and the ones that are by far the most revealing, are the personal ones: the underlining of certain sentences, vertical marginal lines that emphasized certain passages, his highlighting of certain chapters in the table of contents, and his stressing or writing out of certain quotes or ideas. As opposed to the corrections or normal marginalia, these scribblings help identify what particular quotes and ideas interested North in the early 1590s, which were often the same ones that he then reused in the plays adapted by Shakespeare. This will be shown in the next seven posts below:

“Exit Pursued by a Bear:” The Nobleman Antigonus, the Banishment to Sicily, Being Eaten Alive by A Bear, the Sky-Darkening Storm that Kills the Mariners, and the Clamors, Cries, and Roars

Perhaps, the most famous stage direction in the Shakespeare canon occurs in The Winter’s Tale and involves the doomed character Antigonus. He leaves the play abruptly after abandoning the banished baby Perdita on the shores of a distant land: “Exit pursued by a bear,” reads the stage-direction. We soon discover that Antigonus doesn’t survive, and…

by Dennis McCarthy

More of the “Arden” Passage in North’s Marked Chapter

As we saw in the previous posts, in 1591-2, North marked up his own copy of The Dial of Princes, using it as a workbook for plays he was either revising or writing at that time, especially working from chapters that he underscored in the table of contents. In one of these chapters, on page…

by Dennis McCarthy

[1] I must thank investigative reporter and author Michael Blanding for taking pictures of all the pages in The Dial with North’s markings and sending them to me. Even more importantly, he also was the one who alerted me to a number of connections between North’s comments and the Shakespeare canon. This includes the story of Antigonus, used for The Winter’s Tale, and many of the connections to Macbeth (see next chapter.)

[2] This may or may not have to do with the fact that North had likely been recently married at this time. While we still have not been able to uncover the precise date of North’s marriage to his second wife, Judith Bridgewater (nee Vesey), we do know it had to occur sometime after her first husband, Richard Bridgewater, died in 1588.

[3] Since North did highlight some of his corrections in the margin, he also likely had some idea that he could return to this copy to help him correct a possible future edition. However, to have been useful to a printer, North would have either had to transfer these corrections to a clean copy or at least tell the printer to ignore all his personal notes and markings. 

In 1592, North Underlined and Wrote Out the Subtitle to “Arden of Faversham” (1592)

North’s note-writing begins early in this copy of Dial of Princes, even in the prologue and table of contents. Importantly, out of 13 pages in the table of contents listing 177 chapters, North only adds notes to three of those listed chapter titles. All three chapters and their titles are relevant to his plays–and two of them, which focus on malicious or unruly women, are chapters especially significant to The Taming of the Shrew and Arden of Feversham.

As shown in the picture below, in one of these examples, North has underlined a subtitle and repeated it in the margin. This subtitle was necessarily the inspiration for the subtitle he used for Arden of Faversham.

North’s words in the margin are: “The great malice & little patience of an evil woman.” He has underlined it too, and the word-string follows “wherein is expressed.” Thus, it reads “wherein is expressed the great malice and little patience of an evil woman.”  (As shown, there is another marginal comment on this page—“Livia”—but that is merely correcting a mistake: “of Libia.”)

First, it should be clear, North obviously did not underline and then write out this subtitle verbatim in the margin for the sake of some future reader. He was not trying to summarize or draw attention to an adjoining passage. There is no adjoining passage. Indeed, this is why books never have marginalia next to their tables of contents. It would be pointless. North only writes such comments next to three of the 177 chapters in the tables of contents. So it is clear that North wrote this out in the margin for his own edification. His attention for some reason was drawn to this particular chapter, and he especially like the wording of its subtitle. Why?

One clue is the year in which he wrote it—1591-2. North would also publish Arden of Feversham in 1592. The tragedy was about the murder of Thomas Arden by his wife, Alice, and her lover, Thomas Mosby. Alice Arden was actually Thomas’s half-sister; her husband was his brother-in-law, and her accomplice, Mosby, a North family servant. North knew all the people involved in the murder, and evidence suggests he actually first wrote it in the late 1550s. But it seems he also reedited the work for publication in 1592, including reusing the subtitle he noted in the margin. As shown here, he didn’t change it much: 

North’s Subtitle: Wherein is expressed the great malice and little patience of an evil woman
Arden Subtitle: Wherein is shewed the great malice and dissimulation of a wicked woman

This can not be a coincidence. It is essentially the same 13-word line, maintaining the same rhythm throughout, and includes a mere three substituted terms.

If you were to search Google and its more than 130 trillion webpages for all known books, essays, blogs, articles, etc., that include something like these two lines, you will only find The Dial and Arden of Feversham. Indeed, the wording is so peculiar that even if you just search for the shared opening of the subtitle — “wherein is” AROUND “the great malice” –which searches for all pages and texts that place “wherein is” within 10 words of “the great malice,” you still only get these two results. The figure on the left shows a screen-capture of the third page of Google search results, with a column of text boxes added for clarity. All the rest of the pages likewise only show these two results. The same is true for a search of Early English Books Online (EEBO).

In other words, as far as it is possible to tell, no one else has ever put those words together—not in the sixteenth century, not in the seventeenth century, and not since—no one, that is, except for Thomas North and the author of the tragedy about his half-sister.

Gosson’s 1579 Reference to the original “The Merchant of Venice”

The source play for The Merchant of Venice, which was originally titled, The Jew of Venice, is relatively easy to date: 1578. We know this because we can confine its date between a known source, Richard Robinson’s English translation of the Gesta Romanorum (1577), and a known allusion to the drama in Stephen Gosson’s School of Abuse (1579). In Gosson’s controversial pamphlet, he attacks the theater and stage plays – but does single out a few exceptional dramas, including two works, “The Jew & Ptolemy, shown at the Bull.” Gosson describes The Jew as portraying “the greediness of worldly choosers and bloody minds of usurers.”[1] A number of scholars assume this refers to the source drama for The Merchant of Venice because the description combines both peculiar plots. The “bloody minds of usurers” alludes to Shylock’s effort to extract a bloody penalty on the defaulting Antonio. In fact, Gratiano even refers to his bloody mind: “thy desires/ Are wolvish, bloody, starved and ravenous” (4.1. 137-8). Gosson’s other comment — “The greediness of worldly choosers” —refers to the covetous nature of the world-traveling suitors (“all the world desires her/ From the four corners of the earth they come” 2.7.) who had to choose correctly among gold, silver, or lead caskets in order to win the hand of Portia. The greed of the Princes of Morocco and Aragon lead them to the mistaken choice of the gold and silver caskets, respectively. The romantic local hero, Bassanio, observing that “The world is still deceived with ornament” (3.2.74), opts for the sturdy lead casket and thus wins Portia. Indeed, even the full title of Shakespeare’s 1600 publication of the comedy echoes Gosson’s dual description, referring to both the “the extreme cruelty of Shylock, the Jew” and “the obtaining of Portia by the choice of three chests.”

We also know that at least a few of the passages that appear in Shakespeare’s adaptation originally appeared in a similar version in this source-play because Gosson paraphrases these. Specifically, in The Merchant of Venice, before Shylock leaves for the dinner, he warns Jessica not to be tempted by revelers outside the house or the music of the night-masque entering the windows:

What, are there masques? Hear you me, Jessica: 
Lock up my doors, and when you hear the drum
And the vile squealing of the wry-necked fife, 
Clamber not you up to the casements then, 
Nor thrust your head into the public street
To gaze on Christian fools with varnished faces,
But stop my house’s ears—I mean my casements.
Let not the sound of shallow fopp’ry enter
My sober house. (2.5.29-37)

In the same work in which Gosson writes of The Jew, he also provides similar instructions for young women: “You need not go abroad to be tempted, you shall be enticed at your own windows … And if you perceive yourselves in any danger at your own doors … assaulted with music in the night; close up your eyes, stop your ears, tie up your tongues; when they speak, answer not.”[2] Immediately prior, Gosson advises women not to use the theatre to help relieve grief: “lest that laboring to shun Scylla you light on Charybdis.”[3] The Merchant of Venice also uses “shun” with a metaphor involving the same two Homeric monsters: “Thus when I shun Scylla, your father, I fall into Charybdis, your mother” (3.5.14-15).

J. C. Ross, who discovered these verbal similarities, had to assume that Shakespeare was the borrower or else admit that these passages originally appeared in the source work: “It is as if Shylock has been reading Gosson, and is applying this advice to his daughter.” But this is an extraordinary interpretation, as we know that it was Gosson who had seen Shylock. Indeed, Gosson identifies The Jew as one of a few plays he liked in the very tract where these similarities appear.[4]

Thus, the source-play for The Merchant of Venice, which included both the major storyline and subplot and a few similar passages, had appeared by 1579. Also, as Kenneth Muir observes Shakespeare’s Sources: Comedies and Tragedies, we also know the source-dramatist took the casket plot from Robinson’s 1577 translation of the Gesta Romanorum because in the relevant scene he echoes Robinson’s word “insculpt,” which appears nowhere else in the canon.[5] EEBO indicates its scarcity, offering only 44 other works that use the word. But of course, as Gosson, in 1579, refers to the casket plot as already a part of the source-play, The Jew, and since this was borrowed from a 1577 work, the source play for The Merchant of Venice had to have been written sometime between these two publications in 1577 and 1579, so around 1578.

Given the royal patent of 1574, Leicester’s Men was one of the few acting troupes to be able to perform in the city of London. In the summer months, they would naturally use Burbage’s Theater, which was built in 1576 just beyond city limits of Bishopsgate. But in the winter months of the late 1570s, they may have preferred the more sheltered balconies provided by the city Inns, including the nearby Bull Inn on Bishopsgate. Fleay writes that “Gosson, in his ‘School of Abuse,’ 1579, mentions The Jew and Ptolemy [Telemo, perhaps acted at Court by Leicester’s Men, 10th February 1583] as two plays shown at the Bull.”[6]

Scholars have also identified the tell-tale signs of adaptation and abridgement in the extant version of The Merchant of Venice that we have today, which as published with Shakespeare’s name on the title page in 1600. Many have suggested that the 1578 source play likely contained the elements that appear to have been snipped from the extant work, like the reasons for Antonio’s melancholy, an explanation for the close relationship between Antonio and Bassanio, a fuller treatment of the story of Jessica, and, most notably, the missing dinner-masque scene that should occur just prior to Act 2, scene 7.

Specifically, in The Merchant of Venice,the scenes in the middle of the second act induce anxiety for a dinner party that never occurs. The tension flows from the fact that Bassanio invites both Shylock and Lorenzo to a feast on the same night that the Christian Lorenzo plans to elope with Shylock’s daughter and steal his ducats as a dowry. Lorenzo still plans on both eloping and attending the dinner and masque but with Jessica disguised as a boy page so she will not be recognized at the revelry—especially by her father. The gears of this plot remain in motion until Lorenzo comes to fetch Jessica: she is wearing the male disguise, and the opening stage direction is “Enter the masquers, Gratiano and Salerio” (2.6.s.d.). Yet just as the dinner-masque appears set to begin, Antonio abruptly announces that the masque has been cancelled: “No masque to-night. The wind is come about” (2.6.64). The scene ends immediately, and the audience is brought to Act 2, scene 7, with Portia, Morocco, and the caskets. The repeated foreshadowing of Shylock’s interaction with Lorenzo and the concealed Jessica at the revelry as well as Jessica’s disguise as a boy and Gratiano’s and Salerio’s dressed as masquers make little sense in the extant version of the play. But S. A. Small provides the obvious explanation:

A close study of the text indicates that the original text of the play and probably the old play, called The Jew, contained a supper-scene, which probably occurred just before the entrance of Antonio in Act II, Sc. vii. But the proposed supper in The Merchant of Venice seems to be a part of a general masque in which Lorenzo and Jessica were to be the central figures. The supper and masque, then, can be assigned to The Jew…

S. A. Small, “The Jew,” The Modern Language Review 26 (1931): 281-87. [7]

John Dover Wilson also discusses this point and agrees that the dinner and masque were part of the original play and were removed by Shakespeare.[8]

The original dramatist had to adopt the main story about the Jewish usurer and his bond for the pound of flesh from an untranslated Italian text, Il Pecorone, which was printed in Venice in 1565. The prefatory material to North’s translation of The Moral Philosophy of Doni suggest he was in Padua and Venice in 1570, reading “a number of Italian authors”(A.4v). If Gosson’s comment implies we are looking for a late 1570s Leicester Men’s playwright who was familiar with Venice, focused on Italian culture, and skilled at translating Italian works, we have already narrowed down the field of possible candidates for authorship of this 1578 precursor to The Merchant of Venice to Thomas North.

But, of course, it is the passages throughout the play that come from North’s writings, especially his Plutarch’s Lives, and the evidence that he first wrote it for Queen Elizabeth’s 1578 visit to the family estate of Kirtling Hall that confirm his original authorship (See also Michael Blanding’s North by Shakespeare, and expect a video by June of 2021.)

Editors working on various plays often refer to Shakespeare’s reliance on foreign and obscure sources –even when they know that Shakespeare was likely working from a source-play and that this earlier dramatist was the one who had to use that original foreign text. Must we really assume that both Shakespeare and the author of The Jew of Venice found and read Il Pecorone (Venice, 1565) in Italian? They also credit Shakespeare with the casket-plot, even though Gosson indicates it was already part of the play that he had seen. This is an all too common scholarly mistake in which researchers and editors reflexively give credit to Shakespeare for the origination of various elements and characters that were indisputably part of the elder source work. The nineteenth-century editor Horace Howard Furness stresses this oversight: “Thus far we have been dealing with the plot of this play [The Merchant of Venice] as if it were a mosaic, which Shakespeare had combined into one group by gathering its diverse elements from diverse sources, and he has been greatly praised for showing so much dramatic and artistic skill in the combination.” But Furness then notes that this conflicts with the possibility “that Shakespeare was indebted for the framework at least of this drama to an older play, in which the Bond Story and the Casket Story were already combined.” Furness also quotes an early nineteenth-century editor, Francis Douce, to show that scholars had been underscoring this same error for some time:

“Douce refers to the ‘mistake that has been committed by those who speak of Shakespeare’s imitations of the sources of this play, and who forget that one on the same subject had already appeared, and which might have furnished him with the whole of the plot.’ Again, in referring to Tyrwhitt’s conjectures concerning [Shakespeare’s use of] the Gesta Romanorum [as a source for the casket plot], Douce says: ‘He also had forgotten the elder drama mentioned by Gosson.’”

The Merchant of Venice, ed. Horace Howard Furness, A New Variorum Edition (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1895), 319-20.

Douce’s last line effectively encapsulates the last century of all of Shakespeare studies: We have “forgotten the elder drama.”

[1] Stephen Gosson, The Schoole of Abuse, Conteining a plesaunt invective against Poets, Pipers, Plaiers, Jesters, and such like Caterpillers of a Comonwelth; Setting up the Hagge of Defiance to their mischievous exercise, overthrowing their Bulwarkes, by Prophane Writers, Naturall reason, and common experience: A discourse as pleasaunt for Gentlemen that favour learning, as profitable for all that wyll follow virtue (London: Thomas Woodcocke, 1579), 22.

[2] Gosson, The Schoole of Abuse, EEBO document images 43-44.

[3] Gosson, The Schoole of Abuse, EEBO document image 43.

[4] J. C. Ross, “Stephen Gosson and The Merchant of Venice Revisited,” Notes and Queries 50 (2003): 36-37. Ramon Jimenez, a very insightful researcher on the original chronology of the Shakespeare-canon (or source plays), has made a similar argument about Gosson’s paraphrasing of Merchant of Venice in a similarly structured paragraph: “‘It is as if Shylock has been reading Gosson,’ writes one Shakespeare scholar (Ross 37). In view of the phrases Gosson uses to describe the play, it seems far more likely that it is he who has been listening to Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. Gosson uses the same image and the same words and phrases as Shakespeare—in the same context of warning a woman against actors and playmaking.” See Ramon Jimenez, The Date of The Merchant of Venice: The Evidence for 1578; The Oxfordian, (13), 2011, 50-75; 53. I would officially quote and cite him here, but I am fairly sure that I published the argument first – early in 2011.  Regardless, one of us has subconsciously echoed the other, and this argument remains valid either way. Elsewhere, I do indeed rely on Jimenez’s splendid writings, particularly a number of his arguments about the chorus of Henry V and officially cite him.

[5] Kenneth Muir, Shakespeare’s Sources: Comedies and Tragedies (New York: Methuen, 1957), 50.

[6]Frederick Gard Fleay, “A Chronicle History of the London Stage, 1559-1642,” (New York: G.E. Stechert & Co., 1909), 36

[7] S. A. Small, “The Jew,” The Modern Language Review 26 (1931): 281-87.

[8]The Merchant of Venice, ed. John Dover Wilson, The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare (1926; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 21:110-12.

Did Shakespeare Really Adapt Old Plays? (YES! And No-One Denies This!)

As all Shakespeare source-scholars agree, and as umpteen pre-Shakespeare allusions to these earlier plays confirm, and as the first title pages of Shakespeare’s plays make clear, and as Shakespeare’s contemporaries frequently complained: Shakespeare remade old plays. This is not controversial. Yet while this is a fact that few experts deny, it still appears to be a major obstacle for some. They will even refer skeptically to “vanished” or “imaginary” source-plays. But this is a little like referring skeptically to “vanished” or “imaginary” dinosaurs: These earlier plays have left behind so much incontrovertible, fossil evidence that only those who remain innocent of this information, or who are disinclined to believe it, express doubts.

We can confirm the existence of Shakespeare’s source-plays through both internal and external evidence: first, researchers have discovered a number of impossibly early allusions to seemingly “Shakespearean” plays from the 1560s, 1570s, and 1580s—far too early for Shakespeare, who was born in 1564. These references appear in Revels accounts of plays performed before Queen Elizabeth or in comments about recent productions in anti-theater pamphlets or in allusions in contemporary satires.

“How many old plays he revised is an argument for another chapter, but in some cases Shakespeare was clearly collaborating diachronically with an earlier playwright, building upon elements of the older work to create a new whole.”

James L. Marino, The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare,324.

Even more significantly, Shakespeare was not the only person to write adaptations of North’s plays. The Leicester’s Men performances of North’s plays, both in England and on the continent, or the circulation of copies of his plays at Cambridge or the Inns of Court, inspired other writers to attempt their own versions. This includes the 1580’s history play, The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, a German version of Titus and Vespasian (North’s 1561 source-play for Titus Andronicus), Robert Greene’s prose romance, Pandosto (1585, based on North’s recently revised Winter’s Tale), and Thomas Lodge’s prose romance, Rosalynde (1588-90, based on North’s As You Like It). Confirmation of North’s authorship of the early versions of Titus Andronicus and The Winter’s Tale has already appeared in two publications[1] — and will be explored in greater detail on this webpage. But the relevant point for this particular FAQ is that all these older texts and allusions have provided proof upon proof of Shakespeare’s relationship to his plays: “He was,” in the words of Samuel Astley Dunham, “not the author but the adapter of them to the stage.” 

Let us first begin with six plays for which there can be no quibble. With King John, King Lear, Measure for Measure, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V, early versions of these works still exist. And no one denies the close connections between these works and Shakespeare’s later plays.

There are also unambiguous allusions to early productions of Romeo and Juliet (1562), Two Gentlemen of Verona (in 1574 & 1585), The Merchant of Venice (1579), Timon of Athens (1584), and Hamlet (1589) — all before Shakespeare could have written them.

For example, the currently-accepted, primary-source for Romeo and Juliet is a long poem by Arthur Brooke, published in 1562, which includes all the characters and the entire story of the star-crossed lovers. But in the foreword, Brooke notes that he had seen a play on the subject performed on stage, “being there much better set forth than I have or can do.”

Most editors and many scholars of Romeo and Juliet, including Gerald Stacy (right), have written about or have noted the reference to this early source-tragedy.

Likewise, in a 1589 foreword on Inns-of-Court translators and playwrights, the young, wise-cracking satirist Thomas Nashe referred to one influential dramatist as “English Seneca” — that is someone who wrote in the vein of the Roman dramatist, Seneca. Addressing the students of Cambridge, Nashe noted that this English Seneca… “yields many good sentences… and if you entreat him fair [i.e., ask him nicely] in a winter’s morning he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say, handfuls of tragical speeches.” As the word Hamlets is italicized and capitalized in the original (and the play is written in the neo-Senecan vein to boot), most scholars agree that this is a reference to some early version of the Danish tragedy.

Moreover, since Shakespeare was only 25 at that time and may not have even written his first play (let alone penned such a mature tragedy by this date), most contend he used this “Ur-Hamlet” (as it is often called) as the source for his own Danish tragedy, which, according to the standard chronology, he would write some 11 years later. Again, all this is well accepted, and there is no modern edition of Hamlet — whether Norton, Arden, Folger, Penguin, Cambridge, or Oxford — that neglects to mention Nashe’s reference.

As shown in the pic on the left, a Google search for “Ur-Hamlet” yields over 34,000 results.

Again, in 1579, when Shakespeare was 15, the young and priggish Stephen Gosson wrote an anti-theater essay in which he mentioned a few exceptional plays that did rise above reproach. His brief description of both the plot and subplot of one such play, which he called The Jew, matches the dual storylines of The Merchant of Venice, which was also known at the time as The Jew of Venice.[2] Check here for more detailed evidence that Gosson was clearly talking about an early version of Shakespeare’s play.

Again, in the early 1590s, two different historical dramas evoke the assassination scene in Julius Caesar, becoming the first plays to quote the famous lines “Et tu, Brute” and “Caesar shall go forth.”[3] These lines are not part of the historical record and appear nowhere other than in the familiar Roman tragedy, confirming that a play much like Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar existed at least seven years before scholars contend Shakespeare wrote the work.

Moreover, contemporaries also frequently referred to the fact that Shakespeare adapted old plays. Indeed, they would even express aggravation about it.

Thus, statements from literary insiders of the day and in the decades after he died also support what all the other allusions to the early plays demand: Shakespeare revised earlier works.

Finally, it is not even really Shakespeare’s fault that he is now getting full authorial credit for these plays that he produced. After all, he never even published the majority of his plays. And four of the first five title pages of plays that did carry his name or initials clarified that he was merely modifying earlier works. All of this is, in turn, consistent with everything else we know about Shakespeare’s method of operation.

“Shakespeare was an expert at remakes of old plays for the Chamberlain’s/King’s Men.”

Giorgio Melchori, ED., The Second Part of King Henry IV: The New Cambridge Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 10.

While perhaps shocking to some, Shakespeare’s use of source-plays is still important to stress. For once one accepts that Shakespeare used earlier plays, originally written between the 1560s to 1580s, particularly ones from Italian and French sources and often first performed at the Inns of Court and for Leicester’s Men, shouldn’t we at least consider Thomas North as a possible candidate for their authorship? This is especially true since he translated works from Italian and French, was an Inns-of-Court/Leicester Men’s playwright at that time, and hundreds of his passages (not to mention his life) appear in these plays.

Now, once we discover that the satirists of the era — like Thomas Nashe, Thomas Lodge, Gabriel Harvey, and Ben Jonson — all independently identified North as the author of Shakespeare’s source plays; that literally hundreds of passages in the canon derive from Thomas North’s texts; that the playwright even appears to borrow from North’s unpublished journal in manuscript and his “Nepos’ Lives” before he published it; that North even marked the passages in his own “Dial of Princes” that he used in the plays; and that, as shown in Michael Blanding’s “North by Shakespeare,” he also lived the plays; it becomes even harder to deny North’s authorship.

We will continue to expand this page with more descriptions and companion pages, all confirming the existence of these source plays.

[1] Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter, “A Shakespeare/North Collaboration,” Shakespeare Survey 67 (2014), 85-101; Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter, “

[2] Stephen Gosson, The Schoole of Abuse Conteining a plesaunt invective against Poets, Pipers, Plaiers, Jesters, and such like Caterpillers of a Comonwelth; Setting up the Hagge of Defiance to their mischievous exercise, overthrowing their Bulwarkes, by Prophane Writers, Naturall reason, and common experience: A discourse as pleasaunt for Gentlemen that favour learning, as profitable for all that wyll follow virtue (London: Thomas Woodcocke, 1579), 22: “The Jew …, shown at the Bull, the one representing the greediness of worldly choosers and bloody minds of Usurers.”

[3] “Et tu, Brute” occurs in The true Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, and the death of good King Henrie the Sixt … (London: Thomas Millington, 1595), E2. This play was the staged adaptation of 3 Henry VI. “Caesar shall go forth” occurs in Christopher Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris… (London: Edward White, 1594), C8 (EEBO doc. image 23). Marlowe had to complete this play prior to 30 May 1593, the day of his death.

Borrowed Lines and Phrases

For the last 35 entries, we have posted detailed examples of Shakespearean speeches and exchanges that derive from passages originally written by North. But some prefer to just compare the borrowed lines and phrases together — one after the other –with no further explanation. They find this more compelling. So every day this week, we will post a new page that includes a list of nine or ten peculiar lines or echoes that were first written by North and then reused in the plays. We exclude here the Roman tragedies, which, as already shown, include hundreds of lines borrowed from North.

Slideshow for Days 36-42

Day 42:

Day 41:

Day 40:

Day 39:

Day 38:

Day 37:

Day 36:

Joan Pucelle’s and Henry VI’s Ironic Allusions to North’s Disastrous Stories about Caesar

As we have seen, many characters in the Shakespeare canon like to cite various stories from North’s translations–often using them to highlight parallels to their own situation. This especially occurs in the early English histories, with various characters referencing North’s chapters on Julius Caesar in North’s Plutarch’s Lives. This includes Joan Purcelle and Henry VI, whose comparisons of themselves to Caesar are unintentionally ironic. In both situations, they are unwittingly evoking fateful situations that portend their doom.

In 1 Henry VI, Joan Pucelle boldly states: “Now am I like that proud insulting ship / Which Caesar and his fortune bear at once” (1 Henry VI 1.2.138-39).[i] Joan is quoting North’s Plutarch’s Lives, and specifically, Julius Caesar, who with similar pluck once told a ship captain to press forward into the storm: “Fear not, for thou hast Caesar and his fortune with thee.” Joan was trying to make the same claim: that she is divinely endowed with so much celestial and earthly significance that she and her followers may fearlessly venture forth as fate would protect them. The heavenly powers would never take down a vessel stored with so much value.

But, of course, she missed the point: the storm does stop Caesar’s proud ship, which takes on so much water it nearly founders. Caesar and his ship had to turn back. The story helps emphasize Caesar’s reckless hubris, which eventually gets him killed. On the Ides of March, Caesar ignores all warnings from soothsayers and pleas from his wife, and goes to the capitol anyway, where the conspirators are waiting. Likewise, Joan’s military campaign fails, and she is caught and executed.

Earlier in the history sequence, Henry VI also compares himself to the slain Roman Emperor—and, like other characters in the canon who compare themselves to Caesar (e.g., Joan Pucelle, Polonius, and young Edward, one of the “princes in the tower”), he would soon be murdered. Henry’s fateful comment comes in the form of a complaint about the loss of his kingdom: “No bending knee will call thee Caesar now,” says the recently dethroned Henry VI. “No humble suitors press to speak for right, / No, not a man comes for redress of thee” (3 Henry VI 3.1.18-20).

While Henry only means to use Caesar as a metaphor for his loss of power, the playwright made sure that the King inadvertently evokes the image of the Emperor’s assassination. For Henry VI’s words not only echo North’s vivid description of the murder of Julius Caesar in Plutarch’s Lives, when the conspirators surround their victim, pretending to petition him, they also mirror the staging of the assassination in Shakespeare’s tragedy. Specifically, in Julius Caesar, as Caesar walks toward the Senate House, one of the first conspirators to approach the Emperor does so supposedly on behalf of a friend who wants him to read “this his humble suit”(3.1.5). Then, as another conspirator, Metellus Cimber, beseeches Caesar, Brutus tells other plotters, “He is address‘d. Press near and second him” (3.1.30). The Emperor at first assumes these are all sincere requests. “What is now amiss / That Caesar and his Senate must redress?” (3.1.32-33), he asks. Then, as Brutus and Cassius bend and kneel before him, and the other conspirators surround him, Caesar becomes uneasy. Casca is the first to strike from behind: “Speak hands for me!” (3.1.77), he says as he stabs Caesar. The rest of the mob then joins in, with Brutus, Caesar’s favorite, applying the final blow into his groin—“the most unkindest cut of all” (3.2.184), as Mark Antony would later call it.

But the Roman play, of course, more closely follows North’s historical text, which is necessarily the true origin of this language:

[Caesar] would have been contented to have redressed them … Caesar received all the supplications that were offered him, and … his men that were about him pressed nearer to him… (787, 794)

When he [Caesar] was come thither, he [Brutus] made as though he had somewhat to say unto him, and pressed as near him as he could. …

Cimber, who made humble suit…They all made as though they were intercessors for him … Caesar at the first, simply refused their kindness and entreaties: but afterwards, perceiving they still pressed on him, he violently thrust them from him (1055, 1062)

From “The Life of Caesar” and “The Life of Brutus”, North’s Plutarch’s Lives

The scene is so famous it has become the subject of countless reenactments, both on stage and on canvas. See, for example, Karl Theodor von Piloty’s painting of the “Murder of Caesar” (1885) on the left. This painting depicts what, in essence, King Henry unwittingly yearns for when he complains that he will no longer have petitioners surrounding him and kneeling before him as did Caesar. A shown, he even uses the same language of the assassination: Caesar, humble suitors press, redress –as expressed in both the Roman tragedy and North’s translation. In other words, Henry VI is expressing a naïve hope to still be treated just like Julius Caesar and then gets his wish. 

According to conventional chronology, Shakespeare would not write Julius Caesar until 1599, seven years after the plays on Henry VI, which we know had to have been written by 1592. But the analysis here challenges this chronology. The playwright had clearly already focused on North’s chapter and the famous images of Julius Caesar’s assassination prior to his writing of the early English histories.

In reality, as discussed in Michael Blanding’s North by Shakespeare, North wrote the early English histories for Leicester in the late 1570s, as propaganda against Queen Elizabeth’s potential marriage to the Duke of Alencon. And he had written the Roman tragedy based on his own translations of Plutarch’s Lives just before. It was North’s own work on the Plutarchan tragedies that led to the English histories — not the other way around.

[i] Some editions, including Bevington, use the word bare here. But the word is likely supposed to be bear, i.e., to carry. The ship was carrying both “Caesar and his fortune.” Cf. “Can a weak empty vessel bear such a huge full hogs-head?” (2 Henry IV 2.4.61-62).

What About The Title Pages? (They Also Prove Shakespeare Adapted The Plays!)

When Shakespeare died in 1616, the majority of his plays still remained unpublished –and many of the plays that had been published while he was alive and with his name on the title pages are today considered either apocryphal (e.g., Sir John Oldcastle, The London Prodigal, A Yorkshire Tragedy) or a “bad quarto” (i.e. a weaker, briefer, staged adaptation of the more authentic, literary version. ) This will be examined in greater detail in a later post.

Moreover, the first Shakespearean plays that were published while Shakespeare was alive–including Titus Andronicus, Henry VI, part 2, Henry VI, part 3, Romeo and Juliet, Henry IV, part 1— carried no author-name on the title pages. And when Shakespeare’s name or initials did start appearing on the plays, the designation in four of the first five examples did not say “written by,” but “corrected” or “augmented by.”

In the 16th and 17th centuries, title page descriptions such as corrected, amended, augmented, or enlarged were both common and informative. Typically, when it was the original author who made corrections or additions to his own, prior works, printers liked to advertise that fact: clarifying that these changes were made “by the author himself.” Consider as an example the 1595 text, “The Castle of Health,” which was “corrected, and in some places augmented by the first author thereof, Sir Thomas Elyot Knight.” The designation of a work as having been corrected or augmented “by the author” — appears on hundreds of title pages on Early English Books Online.

In contrast, when the work did not claim that it had been “corrected” or “amended” “by the author” this typically implied the work had been corrected by someone else. In Shakespeare’s time, anyone could amend anyone else’s work and then sell it to printers.  And this was quite a common practice.  As an illustration, later editions of the French-English textbook, “The French Schoolemaister,” which was originally written by Claudius Hollyband, was later published by Richard Field “as now newly corrected and amended by P. Erondelle.”  Erondelle was not the original writer but the corrector and augmenter. In 1581, “St. Augustine’s Manual,” obviously supposed to contain the writings of St. Augustine, was published as “Corrected, translated, and adorned, by Thomas Rogers.”  Rogers was not the original writer, but the corrector. The convoluted title-page of The history of four-footed beasts and serpents…, originally published in 1607, provides a nice example of a variety of title-page practices of the era.  It states:

“Collected out of the writings of Conradus Gesner and other authors, by Edward Topsel. Whereunto is now added, The theater of insects…: by T. Muffet, Dr. of Physick. The whole revised, corrected, and enlarged with the addition of two useful physical tables, by J.R. M.D.”[1]

Often, in this era of frequent anonymity, the title-pages never stated who was the original author and/or never clarified who had “corrected” or “amended” or “enlarged” the work.  But in those situations, one could never just assume that the author and the amender were one and the same.  Indeed, when it was the original author who had corrected his works, printers made sure to state this fact.

The same practice was also quite common for plays, especially since in this medium in particular, it was typical practice for one author to revise the work of another.  As Neil Carson, the editor of the theatrical records of Philip Henslowe, wrote (emphasis added): “By far the majority of payments for revisions recorded in Henslowe’s diary are to single authors for changes in other men’s work.  In some cases we do not know the names of the original authors…“[2]

After the first two quarto versions of Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy were published in 1594 and 1599, a 1602 version was described as:

Newly corrected, amended, and enlarged with new additions of the Painters part, and others, as it hath of late been divers times acted. 

Thomas Kyd’s, The Spanish Tragedy (1602)

The printing of this amended play occurred just one year after Philip Henslowe had paid Ben Jonson for additions to this play, though some scholars question whether the published additions are by Jonson or some other writer(s).  Again, the title page does not say who added “the Painter’s part,” but it is unlikely the amender was the original author, Kyd, who had died eight years earlier. 

Once we understand these typical printing practices, the Shakespeare title-pages become even clearer.  Here now are four of the first five plays attributed to William Shakespeare by name or initials on the title page:

  • Title pages of Locrine and Love’s Labour’s Lost
  • Title pages of 1 Henry IV and Richard III
  • Locrine Q1 (1595 — likely first written by Robert Greene): “Newly set foorth, overseene, and corrected. By W.S.”
  • Love’s Labour’s Lost Q1 (1598): “Newly corrected and augmented By W. Shakespeare.”
  • Henry IV, part 1, Q2 (1599): “Newly corrected by W. Shake-speare.” 
  • Richard III Q3 (1602  — “bad quarto”) “Newly augmented, by William Shake-speare.”[iv]

The title pages of these plays are in fact precisely correct:  Just as Ben Jonson or some other writer had “corrected” and “amended” Thomas Kyd’s 1580’s play The Spanish Tragedy in 1602, William Shakespeare “corrected” and “augmented” Locrine, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Henry IV, part 1, and Richard III.  And this was Shakespeare’s main responsibility; he was the gatherer, overseer, adapter, and producer of the plays performed by his theater companies.

Scholars no longer consider Locrine an authentically “Shakespearean” play, and some (like the brilliant Darren Freebury-Jones) have provided significant evidence that its original author was Robert Greene.[5] Still, it is interesting how similar all these title pages are –including Locrine’s. All of them begin with “Newly;” three of the four include corrected; and two of the four have augmented. Indeed, Locrine‘s title page not only matches the others, the play remained part of the official Shakespeare canon for many decades, appearing in both the second and third Folios of 1664 and 1685.

What is more, as noted earlier, these are not the only supposedly apocryphal works attributed to Shakespeare by title-page designation while he was alive. As shown here, the title pages of The London Prodigal and Yorkshire Tragedy were also attributed to Shakespeare.

Today, most scholars accept that Thomas Middleton was the author of Yorkshire Tragedy and have still not resolved who originally wrote The London Prodigal, though all agree it was not by the same person who wrote Hamlet. So was there a wide-ranging conspiracy involving various printers trying to frame Shakespeare for other people’s plays? Of course not. Shakespeare still likely paid for and adapted these works for the stage, perhaps cutting out or conflating characters, trimming passages, maybe moving scenes around. The reason these plays seem so unShakespearean — so much so that were removed from the official canon long after Shakespeare died — is that they were not originally written by Thomas North. Still, Shakespeare’s hand in it was light enough that scholars can still detect that Greene originally wrote Locrine while Middleton wrote A Yorkshire Tragedy.

Richmond Crinkley made a similar point in Shakespeare Quarterly: 

There is certainly external evidence, in that Shakespeare’s initials were applied to a number of works printed during the time he flourished – works which he did not disown and to which indeed he could well have done what he was initially said to have done, “overseen.”  Locrine appeared in 1595 as “Newly set foorth, overseene and corrected by W.S.”  The traditional theory that the printer was trying to capitalize on Shakespeare’s name is surely implausible, since Shakespeare’s name was not by then widely printed.  It is more likely that Shakespeare as a producer and procurer of plays did exactly what the title page said he did.  It is no discredit to him that he did so, it being then something of a producer’s prerogative.

Richmond Crinkley, “New Perspectives on The Authorship Question,” Shakespeare Quarterly (1985) [5]

Indeed, if Shakespeare had staged Greene’s Locrine by 1592, the attack on Shakespeare in Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit as an “upstart crow, beautified with our feathers” makes even more sense.

Finally, these title pages also confirm that Shakespeare was not really trying to fool anyone and show how the Shakespeare-designations slowly evolved over time.  At first, his adaptations of Titus Andronicus, Henry VI, part 2, Henry VI, part 3, Romeo and Juliet, Henry IV, part 1 were all published anonymously.  Then, as the popularity of this powerful play-producer continued to grow, his name started appearing on the title pages  — but not as the original author, just as the one who “newly corrected” or “newly augmented” or “overseene” the works.  There were no conspiracies.  That is what Shakespeare actually did.  Then, starting at about the turn of the century, when Shakespeare was peaking in terms of fame and power, this detail that he was the augmenter would be dropped.  He was designated as the author of the adaptations (see title pages below):

[1] Edward, Topsell, The history of four-footed beasts and serpents… (London: E. Cotes for G. Sawbridge, 1658).

[3] Neil Carson, A Companion to Henslowe’s Diary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 77.

[4] RIII Q1 originally had no name on the title-page, then in 1598 RIII Q2 was depicted as “by William Shake-speare.” In 1602, the title page of RIII Q3 was changed to “Newly augmented, by William Shake-speare,” even though it was simply a reprint of RIII Q2.

[5] Darren Freebury-Jones, “Determining Robert Greene’s Dramatic Canon,” Style, 54.4 (2020), 377-398.

[5] Richmond Crinkley, “New Perspectives on The Authorship Question,” Shakespeare Quarterly 36.4 (1985): 515-522.

Hamlet as Brutus, Polonius as Caesar, & a Burial in Hugger-Mugger

The full title of Thomas North’s Plutarch’s Lives begins: “The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans Compared Together…” And sometimes this is abbreviated to Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, referring to the correspondences that Plutarch drew between Greek and Roman rulers. North then used this same framework for his histories and tragedies, drawing parallels between the main characters in his plays and the historical figures of his translations, e.g., Henry V and Alexander1, King Lear‘s Edgar and Epaminondas; and Northumberland and his son, Hotspur (in 1, 2 Henry IV) and Marcus and Publius Crassus. Similarly, the parallels between Apollonius of Tyre and North’s Pericles were so numerous that, in the play, he switched Appolonius’s name to Pericles.

North also draws similar Plutarchan parallels in Hamlet. For example, Polonius, the busy-body counselor to the murderous Claudius, explains that he once enjoyed acting: “I did enact Julius Caesar,” he says. “I was killed i’th’ Capitol; Brutus killed me.” Hamlet responds with a double-pun: “It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there” (3.2.101-6). This is a Northern joke. In his chapter on the death of Caesar, North explains that “brutes” was a term used to mock Brutus’s family name (792). Hamlet’s “capital” also puns on the location of the murder, and his description of Caesar as a “calf” recalls Brutus’s desire to obscure the crime’s savagery by treating its victim as an exalted sacrificial animal: “Let’s be sacrificers, but not butchers” (2.1.167), says Brutus. As we discovered in his allusion to the story of the tyrant of Pherae, Hamlet knows North’s Plutarch and is able to cite it for appropriate situations. But there is a more ominous purpose to the exchange as well: Hamlet would soon play Brutus to Polonius’s Caesar and stab the counselor to death. Harold C. Goddard also noted these resemblances:

          

  That Polonius acted Julius Caesar characterizes both men: Caesar, the synonym for imperialism, Polonius, the petty domestic despot…. But it is not just Caesar and Polonius. Brutus is mentioned too. And Brutus killed Caesar. In an hour or so Hamlet is to kill Polonius. If Polonius is Caesar, Hamlet is Brutus.

Harold C. Goddard, The Meaning of SHakespeare2

Throughout Hamlet and the early English histories, North stresses the similarities between the civil wars in Caesar’s Rome and the later internal conflicts in both England and Denmark. In all three cases the national strife begins with the same sinister omens—or what North described as the “strange and wonderful signs that were said to be seen before Caesar’s death.” This includes ghosts running up and down the streets, the unusual prominence of owls and other night-birds, especially in the day time, and many “fires in the element,” that is, shooting stars and other strange celestial phenomena. In fact, North’s vivid description of these events appear in Julius Caesar with little change:

North’s PlutarchShakespeare’s Julius Caesar
… touching the fires in the element and spirits
running up and down in the night, also the solitary birds to be seen at noondays sitting in the great market-place… men were seen going up and down in fire;
and, furthermore, that there was
a slave of the soldiers that did cast a marvelous burning flame out of his hand …
— 792-93  		Casca: A common slave—you know him well by sight—
Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn …
Men all in fire walk up and down the streets.
And yesterday the bird of night did sit
Even at noonday upon the marketplace,
Hooting and shrieking …    
Why all these fires, why all these gliding ghosts
Calpurnia: And graves have yawned and yielded up their dead.
Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds
— 1.3.15-16, 25-28; 2.2.18-19  

This same passage also inspired a speech by Hamlet’s friend Horatio in the opening scene of the tragedy in which he observes that the supernatural phenomena recently observed in Denmark—fiery shooting stars and the ghost of Hamlet’s father—were much like those that preceded the chaos of Caesar’s Rome:

 In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
 A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
 The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
 Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets;
 As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood … 
(Hamlet, 1.1.117-21)

This same foreshadowing “of feared events” (1.1.125), Horatio says, is now rattling Denmark. Horatio, who, like Hamlet, also attends Wittenberg University, evidently shares with the Prince a knowledge of Plutarch.

The last acts of Hamlet also include a number of details related to the history of Caesar that extend the similarities to the chaos involving the Roman civil wars. For example, just before the murder of Polonius, his daughter, Ophelia, tells him how she saw the Prince walking about as if in a trance—silent, distracted, staring, sighing, and unbraced (i.e., with his shirt unbuttoned). Likewise, in Julius Caesar, just before the assassination, Portia describes Brutus, her husband, as walking about as if in a trance—silent, distracted, staring, sighing, and unbraced. The similarity of the reaction arises from the similarity of the circumstances. Brutus and Hamlet are both contemplating regicide.

            The parallels continue post-mortem. After Polonius’s death, Claudius worries that his unceremonious burial has agitated the citizenry: “the people muddied, / Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers / For good Polonius’ death—and we have done but greenly, / In hugger-mugger to inter him” (4.5.82-85). Hugger-mugger is a peculiar Northern phrase suggesting a secret, rushed, and disorderly process. North uses it in an eerily similar circumstance, describing Mark Antony’s concerns that a hasty and clandestine burial of Caesar may anger the public: “Then Antonius thinking … that his body should be honorably buried, and not in hugger mugger, least the people might thereby take occasion to be worse offended” (1063-64). 

            The suicide of Mark Antony figures the end of the Julian-saga, and in Antony and Cleopatra the dramatist stages the scene: Antony asks his friend and attendant, Eros, to help him with the task. “Thou art sworn,” says Antony, that in such ruinous times as these “on my command / Thou then wouldst kill me: Do’t. The time is come” (4.14.62, 66-67). Eros reluctantly agrees, telling Antony to turn his head so the attendant would not have to look upon Antony’s “noble countenance,” says farewell, and asks “Shall I strike now?” “Now, Eros,” Antony says. But his friend strikes himself with the sword instead: “Thus I do escape the sorrow / Of Antony’s death” (4.14.85, 93-94), says Eros as he dies.

Likewise, Hamlet’s dear friend, Horatio, also decides on suicide as he comforts the dying Prince: “I am more an antique Roman than a Dane,” Horatio says, as he takes the cup of poison that was meant for Hamlet—just as Eros applies the sword meant for Antony. “Here’s yet some liquor left” (5.2.343-44). But Hamlet stops him and demands that he live to tell his story.

Thus, all throughout the play in Hamlet, the dramatist draws parallels to the events of Rome surrounding Brutus’s assassination of Julius Caesar.

[1] See Judith Mossman, “Henry V and Plutarch’s Alexander,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 45.1, (1994): 57-73 or Ronald S. Berman, “Shakespeare’s Alexander: Henry V” College English, 23.7 (1962): 532-539

[2] Harold C. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951, reprint 2009), 339

Lysimachus, Antiochus, Tyre, Tarsus, Miletum, and the Wise Man Who Wished To Know None of the King’s Secrets

When Thaliard enters in act 1, scene 3 of Pericles, he mentions a story about a wise philosopher who wanted just one thing from a King. As shown, the story comes from “The “The Life of Demetrius” in North’s Plutarch’s Lives.

North’s PlutarchShakespeare’s Pericles and Twelfth Night
but he was much more to be beloved and esteemed for his virtuous and honest conditions… the king made much of him, and giving him good countenance said unto him: “what wilt thou have me give thee of my things, Philippides?”
“Even what it shall please thee, O king, so it be none of thy secrets” (947).[i]		Thaliard: Well, I perceive he was a wise fellow and had good discretion, that,  being bid to ask what he would of the king, desired he might know none of his secrets: Now do I see he had some reason for’t —Pericles 1.3.3-7

Orsino: What shall I do?
Olivia: Even what it please my lord
—Twelfth Night 5.1.116-117

This same chapter includes the name of Lysimachus –and the places Antiochus, Tyre, Tarsus, and Miletum—also all used in Pericles. Simonides, a Greek poet frequently quoted throughout North’s translation, provides the name for another character in the play — while the name of the title character, as well as Cleon, Aeschines, and Philemon, come from North’s chapter on Pericles.

Notice also that Olivia’s response to Orlando’s question in Twelfth also parallels the philosopher’s retort: “Even what it shall please thee, O King.”  

[i] North’s edition here contains a printer’s error here –one of thy secrets –rather than none of thy secrets.

Edgar as the Impoverished, Unperfumed Learned-Theban, Who Stands in Esperance and Knows the Cause of Thunder.

Numerous scholars have discussed King Lear’s unswerving focus on the virtues of poverty and charity –especially in contrast to the corruption of wealth. Throughout the tragedy, many of the characters are forced into destitution and misery–especially Edgar (Poor Tom) and King Lear – only to end up embracing the impoverished and natural state of the human race. This theme of poverty and charity –and their encompassing discussions in the play–derive from two different works of North. We will discuss the first, the fable of the river in The Moral Philosophy of Doni, in a future post.  The other is The Life of Epaminondas in North’s Nepos’ Lives (1602). In fact, the Theban general Epaminondas, a philosopher-warrior who lustily embraced all the miseries of poverty and who is the heroic moral compass of Nepos’ Lives, served as the model for Edgar (Poor Tom), who also lustily embraced all the miseries of poverty and is the heroic moral compass of King Lear.  

King Lear even explicitly compares Edgar to Epaminondas, which is a common canonical device in which North modifies characters and events in order to draw parallels to the historical figures from one of his translations. North then, in the play, overtly relates the play-character to the historical one – as in the explicit comparisons of Henry V to Alexander, Hamlet to Brutus, and both Polonius and Henry VI to Julius Caesar.  

We first meet with Epaminondas in “The Life of Pelopidas” in North’s Plutarch’s Lives, where “Epaminondas, the Theban,” as he is called in the margin, is referred to as “a notable learned man, and a famous philosopher” (670). Likewise, in “The Life of Epaminondas” in Nepos’ Lives, North once again refers to the rugged Theban general as “one of the best learned and most excellent philosophers of the world” (2). Later North writes that he rejected offices of power in order to continue his studies, withdrawing “himself from government only to give himself quietly to the study of philosophy” (4).

Much of the chapter explores Epaminondas’s commitment to a life of poverty: “Now though he was very poor, yet he would never take any thing of his city or friends, he was so well acquainted with poverty, which he bear more patiently through his study of philosophy.”  He was “an enemy unto all superfluity and excess” and often went “ill appareled” and without “perfume,” and he eschewed all dietary delicacies, even to the point of drinking vinegar. Epaminondas also refused all riches offered to him so he would never acclimate to its temptations or opportunities for corruption.

But while he willingly accepted his meager conditions, he also had a keen sense of charity, and “to relieve others, he would make bold to use his friends’ goods.” When a rich citizen asked Epaminondas why he had asked him to give six hundred crowns to another, the learned Theban replied: “because this man, being an honest man, is poor: and thou that hast robbed the commonwealth of much art rich.”

This is why Lear immediately recognizes the obviously destitute Poor Tom as a kindred spirit and explicitly connects him to Epaminondas:

 Lear: First let me talk with this philosopher.
 What is the cause of thunder?...
 I’ll talk a word with this same learnèd Theban.
 What is your study? (3.4.152-56)

Just Lear’s reference to a “learned Theban” identifies the “philosopher” to which he is referring. Not only does North refer to Epaminondas twice in that manner, both in Plutarch and Nepos, but Ben Jonson, who frequently spoofed Shakespeare’s plays, also makes light of this connection in Pan’s Anniversary: “Then comes my learned Theban, the Tinker … He beats to the tune of ‘Tickle-Foot’ Pam, Pam, Pam, brave Epam with a Nondas.” (643).

Edgar, like Epaminondas, has voluntarily rid himself of all wealth as he has adopted the guise of the impoverished Poor Tom. Thus, as Epaminondas “drank vinegar”; Poor Tom “drinks the green mantle of the standing pool” (3.4.132-33). As Epaminondas would go about “ill appareled” and without any perfume, so too does Poor Tom. Lear notes that the seemingly mad beggar owes “the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume” (3.4.102-4). As shown earlier, this full speech on borrowing clothes from beasts comes from yet another Northern passage –in North’s Dial, but the specific reference to perfume is not found in the earlier Dial passage and so connects it to the other Poor-Tom elements related to Epaminondas.

Lear’s question to this poor philosopher—“What is the cause of thunder?”—is a direct hit, for this was an important question that was asked of Epaminondas in North’s brief biography. Remarkably, the Greek philosopher, like Poor Tom, was also caught in a storm, one that terrified his troops and that they considered a bad omen. Older men came to Epaminondas, warning him “he ought not to go any further with his army, since the gods were so manifestly against it.” The extreme thunder particularly alarmed his soldiers, but Epaminondas bravely faced the storm. When they asked him “what that thunder meant?”, he replied that it actually was a threatening sign for their enemies, that it showed “that the enemies’ brains are troubled and astoni[sh]ed.”

This is why Lear sees Edgar (Poor Tom), who also bravely faced the elements and is wearing poor clothes and no perfume and drinks what is tough to swallow, as a confidant—and why he calls him a philosopher and learned Theban and asks him the cause of thunder.

Language and descriptions from the Epaminondas chapter also seeps into other speeches in scenes with Edgar (Poor Tom). For example, Lear’s speech on the plight of the poor and the importance of charity (3.4.23-36) paraphrases Epaminondas’s (2-3), echoing the latter’s poverty, house(less), poor, defend, physic, superflu(x/ity), just.

Gloucester is another character who starts out wealthy and ends up losing everything—including, notoriously, his sight after Cornwall gouges out his eyes. Yet after the rains and his ruin, he responds in an Epaminondian manner to an old friend who has come to help him. He refuses all aid and has a new-found sense of charity. He expresses both in the language of the learned Theban, who also had refused aid in a similar fashion:

Epaminondas, Refusing AidGloucester, Refusing Aid
Even so thou art come to relieve our poverty, as if it were a grief unto us …we need no arms nor money against that that doth us no hurt at all… he hath not gold nor silver enough for me: … I pardon thee: but get thee away …   Pelopidas being a man of great wealth, and his exceeding good friend, could not possibly ever make him take any part of his goods, but rather Pelopidas learned of him to love poverty …   to make him disburse (dispurse) these six hundred crowns unto him. “It is,” says he, “because this man, being an honest man, is poor: and thou that hast robbed the commonwealth of much art rich.” He lived so soberly, and was such an enemy unto all superfluity and excess … —Nepos’ Lives 3-4  Away, get thee away! Good friend, be gone:
Thy comforts can do me no good at all;
Thee they may hurt. …     
Here, take this purse….
Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man, …feel your pow’r quickly! So distribution should undo excess
And each man have enough….
I’ll repair the misery thou dost bear
With something rich about me.
—King Lear 4.1.17-63-70
Doth us no hurt at all
Good friend—not …goods,
Get thee away,
Disburse-man-
superfluity-excess,
Hath … enough		do me no good at all … hurt
Good friend—no-good,
Get thee away,
take this purse, distribution-man-superfluous-excess,
have enough  

Just as Epaminondas refuses aid from one good friend and tells another who tries to help him to get thee away and he needs no money as poverty “doth us no hurt at all;” so too does Gloucester tell a good friend who has offered aid to get thee away and that “Thy comforts can do me no good/ Thee they may hurt.” Both also believe the rich man should disburse (which derives from dis-purse) to relieve the poor. As Epaminondas is an “enemy unto all superfluity and excess,” Gloucester gives the poorer man his purse and believes the superfluous man should undo excess.

More significantly, Edgar is also on stage with Gloucester here, and Edgar begins this scene expressing his commitment to poverty and does so in a way that includes an extremely peculiar link to North’s translation of Epaminondas. Specifically, North writes that as a young man that Epaminondas was “of good capacity and very great hope;” and that in order to avoid the temptations of riches and “great pleasures,” Epaminondas “contemned them.” The Theban philosopher also stressed that if a man avoids all riches and comforts and embraces his destitution, he is then free. He now has no fears or cares. Quoting Epaminondas:

a man that disdaineth to receive liberality and gifts of his friends, and refuseth to take presents offered him by kings, and that hath rejected the benefits of fortune …shall never be assailed to attempt him to do that is unjust, nor his mind shall never be troubled…

Nepos’ Lives, 3

But importantly, where North refers to Epaminondas as being “of very great hope,” in the original translation Simon Goulart uses de tres grande esperance.  




Simon Goulart, Les vies des hommes illustres grecs et romains, 11511

           And esperance is the very word that Edgar uses as he echoes Epaminondas’s embrace of poverty:

Edgar (Poor Tom):
 Yet better thus, and known to be contemned,
 Than still contemned and flattered. To be worst,
 The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune,
 Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear….
North’s Nepos LivesShakespeare
Contemned, hope (esperance);
rejected the benefits of fortune…
his mind shall never be troubled…  		Contemned, esperance;
dejected thing of fortune…
lives not in fear….  

In other words, with the use of esperance, the playwright has conflated North’s language with the original French passage that North was translating – something that only North could do. And one cannot here suppose that Shakespeare was actually making use of Goulart’s text, rather than North’s, because, again, the play also shares North’s idiosyncratic word choices. For example, North’s translates Goulart’s desloge not as dislodge but get thee away–which is also the phrase used in King Lear.

As we shall see, this is not the only time that the playwright has conflated North’s text with the original foreign work North was translating. He also does it with the French of Jacques Amyot in a passage borrowed from North’s Plutarch’s Lives and the Italian of Doni in a passage inspired by North’s Moral Philosophy of Doni. We consider these examples as more smoking gun confirmations that Shakespeare was not obsessively borrowing from North’s translations but adapting his plays.

[1] Simon Goulart, Les vies des hommes illustres grecs et romains, comparees l’une auec l’autre … Traduites de grec en françois par Iacques Amyot … Enrichies de sommaires et annotations par S. G. S. [i.e. Simon Goulart], etc., (Lyon: Paul Frelon, 1611) 4: 1151