In this very same chapter on how to deal with Shrews of North’s Dial that North, himself, marked in the table of contents –what we call here the Arden/Shrew chapter (see posts 43-6) –North underscores the last line in a passage stressing the contrarian nature of women. This is in Aurelius’s speech to his wife, Faustine, who as we have seen and will continue to see, was often used as a model for the strong-willed women of the canon.

Naturally women have in all things the spirit of contradiction, for … if he will laugh, they will weep … If he be sorrowful, they will be merry. If he desire peace, they would have war. If he would sleep, they will watch, and if he will watch, they will sleep. Finally, I say that they are of so evil a condition that they love all that we despise and despise all that we love.

–The Dial (144v)

This is clearly the origin of several passages on the contrarian nature of women in Shakespeare’s plays, including Rosalind’s in As You Like It and several lines in Katherine’s final, controversial monologue in Taming of the Shrew. In fact, as we shall see in future posts, Katherine’s entire monologue is constructed from ideas and lines underlined by North in this chapter.

EEBO confirms that no work other than North’s Dial and Shakespeare’s As You Like It places “will laugh” within 30 words of “will weep” within 30 words of “be merry.” This is an exclusive link. The playwright was recalling this passage.

A few pages later, Aurelius continues in this same vein to Faustine, still noting the problems men have with women: “If he doth love them, they account him for light…If he laugh, they say he is a fool; if he laugh not, they say he is solemn” (148r). But elsewhere in The Dial, North writes that women face precisely this same difficulty, using this same kind of language to discuss the eternal dilemma of women, and especially widows, who can never win in the eyes of others no matter what they do:

If she laugh a little, they count her light.
If she laugh not, they count her an hypocrite.
If she go to the Church, they note her for a gadder…
If she go ill appareled, they account her a niggard(300)[1] 

This was clearly the inspiration for the lament of Alice in Arden of Feversham that she can never win in her husband’s eyes no matter what she does: 

If I be merry, thou straightways thinks me light;
If sad, thou sayest the sullens trouble me;
If well attired, thou thinks I will be gadding;
If homely, I seem sluttish in thine eye.  (Arden 13.108-11)

This too would appear to be a unique correspondence. Both passages make precisely the same points about the problems faced by women in a series of if-then statements listed in the same order and in the same sing-song manner. Both begin with essentially the same line: If she be merry (or if she laugh a little), then others will think or count her light. Second line refers to if she is sad or glum. The third notes that if she goes out or dresses up, others will think she is gadding or a gadder. In the last lines, the if-well-attired string from the tragedy corresponds to the if-ill-appareled string in North’s Dial—and, in each, a humble appearance is associated with a niggard or homely and sluttish. Women just cannot win. Though it is difficult to ascertain because it does not contain rare phrases, a search of EEBO for a similar speech containing either gadder or gadding has so far turned up nothing. Once again, it is clear the dramatist was basing Alice’s speech on The Dial. Indeed, this is less an echo or parallel than a seeming effort at memorial reconstruction or a full paraphrasing.

Of course, the dramatist has made a few verbal substitutions, but even these changes are Northern and link back to the Arden-Shrew chapter. For example, the playwright has substituted “If I be merry” for “If she laugh a little,” but this conflates the passage with North’s “If … be merry” (as in North’s earlier passage that was also repeated in As You Like it.) The playwright also uses sullens to oppose merry, and in his Plutarch’s Lives, North also uses this same merry-sullens antithesis: “that no man was of so sullen a nature but he would make him merry” (225).^[2] The playwright also opted for the peculiar phrase “straight ways thinks” for North’s “they count her.” And elsewhere in The Dial, North writes “straight way … thinketh” (594) in a line that conveys the same meaning: to immediately form a new opinion. In other words, by using, if-be merry, merry-sullens and straight ways thinks, the playwright has substituted peculiar Northern wording and phrases into an undeniably Northern passage that links to both a passage and chapter that North himself underscored in North’s own Dial of Princes and placed them in the mouth of North’s half-sister.

[1] Unfortunately, at this point, I do not have access to this particular page of North’s personal 1582 edition of The Dial, but 300 is likely the page.

^[2] Again we find that North was not following his source—Jacques Amyot’s French version of Plutarch’s Lives—but employing his own language. Amyot has “qu’il n’y avoit moeurs si austeres qu’elle n’acoucit: ny nature si farouche qu’elle ne prist & n’amolist.” See Jaques Amyot, Les Vies des Hommes Illustres Grecs et Romains Comparees l’une Avec l’Autre par Plutarque de Chaeronee (Paris: Charles de l’Ecluse, 1571), 118v.

In this very same chapter of The Dial that North marked in the table of contents and used for other passages in Arden of Faversham (see posts 43-6) — and on this same page (149r) examined earlier –directly beneath the emphasized passage on “the fear of the Gods…and the speech of men,” North underlines the following: “For women do more hurt with their tongues than the enemies do with their swords” (see below):

Importantly, this same idea of tongues as weapons also occurs elsewhere in North’s Dial, in which, once again, North underlines part of the passage and writes in the margin: Pittacus: of the tonge (i.e., Pittacus, on the subject of the tongue):

And therefore said Pittacus the philosopher, that a man’s tongue is made like the iron point of a lance, but yet that it was more dangerous than that … I know not that man … but thinks it less hurt the bloody sword should pierce his flesh than that he should be touched in honour with the venomous point of the serpentine tongue. … if as … [with] laws prohibiting for to wear or carry weapon they had like laws also to punish detractive and wicked tongues

(441-441v)

This comparison of tongues with weapons was not uncommon in Elizabethan literature and also appears in Arden of Feversham:

• Dial: if as … [with] laws prohibiting for to wear or carry weapon they had like laws also to punish detractive and wicked tongues (441v)
• Arden: That carry a muscado in their tongue/ And scarce a hurting weapon in their hand  9.20-21).

Another passage in The Dial also emphasizes the commonness of “slanderous tongues:”

The title character of Arden of Feversham also addresses “slanderous tongues” in the same language:

Arden:Who lives that is not touched with slanderous tongues? …
And I will lie at London all this term
To let them see how light I weigh their words(1.345, 358-59)

Here is a table comparing both:

Shared spelling also makes the match compelling: an EEBO search for works that include both relevant groupings—slanderous tongues and light,* weigh, their words—yields only North’s Dial.^[3] Arden does not appear because of two slips by EEBO: the digitized reading of the 1592 quarto mistakenly substitutes staunderous for slaunderous—and the EEBO search does not recognize the quarto’s wey as weigh. This latter quarto spelling of wey was indeed authorial as we also find the same spelling in scene 8: “Whose dowry would have weyed down all thy wealth” (Sig. C4v; 8.89), and these are the only appearances of weigh(ed) in the tragedy. Interestingly, wey(ed) is also an early Northern spelling, appearing 12 times in The Dial (1568),including in similar contexts as Arden: wey … words (131v); money … weyed (128v)and treasure … weyd (3^rd book, 47). North does not use the spelling wey in the corresponding passage on slander but opts for the similar waye. He also uses the spelling slaunderous:

The Dial (1568): wey the sentences more then the wordes (130v)

The Dial (1568): slaunderous tongues … lightly to waye … their words (56)

Arden quarto: slaunderous tongues … light I wey their words (Sig. B3) In other words, the Arden passage uses Northern spellings in a typically Northern comment. Moreover, the playwright did not borrow the wey spelling from North’s passage on “slaunderous tongues”; instead, wey was a common spelling of North’s, as shown in other parts of The Dial.

[1] If you search of EEBO-Proquest “{slanderous tongues}” AND light* PRE/20 weigh PRE/20 “{their words}”, the result is only The Dial.

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 149v, he marked a passage that would inspire a passage in the opening of scene 4 in Arden of Faversham. Now if you turn this page over, from 149v to 149, you find Aurelius’s description of a pained husband: “lifting up his eyes unto the heavens, fetching a grievous sigh from the bottom of his heart, [the husband] said these words…” And this is precisely how Franklin describes the pained-husband Arden, and he does so in the very same scene and exchange in which Arden, borrowing from 149v, talks about “the fear of God or common speech of men….” 

We showed in the prior post that the “fear of God…speech of men” connection is unique. And so too is the rest. Indeed just a search of EEBO for word NEAR/10 sigh NEAR/10 fetch NEAR/10 grievous yields 9 records – and North is responsible for five of them: two editions of The Dial, one from North’s Nepos’ Lives, and two other works quoting North’s Nepos Lives.  Arden of Feversham and three other works have the other examples. When we include his eyes and the heavens, the match is unique.[1]

Yet again, in this same exchange, Franklin also observes that the distracted Arden frequently interrupts himself: “in the middle cutteth off his tale.” In the quarto version, off is spelled of. An EEBO search for cut PRE/0 “of his tale” yields only four results – North’s Plutarch, North’s Doni, Arden and one other work. Even a search for cut off the tale yields only 3 other results, and King John in the First Folio is one of them.[ii]  This is another Northern fingerprint in a passage that begins with a unique Northern grouping.

[1] For example, an EEBO-ProQuest search for word NEAR/10 fetch NEAR/10 sigh NEAR/10 grievous AND his PRE/0 eyes PRE/10 the PRE/0 heavens yields only The Dial and Arden of Feversham.

[2] The original EEBO may have had as many as nine examples of “cut off his tale.”

As we saw in the previous post, 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. For example, North only marked three of the 177 chapters in the table of contents. All three chapters and their titles are relevant to his plays. With one of the chapters that he marked, he underlined and wrote out a subtitle in the margin that he then reused, with minor changes, for the subtitle of Arden of Faversham. Similarly, another one of these chapters gives advice, in effect, on how to tame shrews. Significantly, North also added a number of marginal comments to this particular chapter, which includes vivid descriptions of troublesome wives and the agonies that they could inflict on their husbands. He then used these passages for his two plays, Arden of Feversham and Taming of the Shrew. After all, as Thomas well knew, his half-sister, Alice Arden, who notoriously conspired with her lover to murder her husband, had been the most troublesome wife of all— far more so than Katherine in Taming of the Shrew.

This “Shrews” chapter in The Dial focuses on a long quarrel between the stubborn Marcus Aurelius and his strong-willed wife, Faustine, and the exchanges between them were then used in the plays.

For example, on one of its pages, North highlighted two passages with vertical lines.

As shown in the picture on the left, North wrote “of the wife and husband” next to the first passage, which begins with an underlined sentence that, as we shall soon see, relates to The Taming of the Shrew . In the second part (in the red-circle on the left), Aurelius complains that in most instances, religious teachings and concern for reputation are often enough to keep women virtuous. But, he says, “if the fear of the Gods, the infamy of the person, and the speech of men do not restrain the woman, all the chastisements of the world will not make her refrain from vice” (149v). Previously, in the beginning of this same chapter, Aurelius counsels Faustine against being “deeply rooted in vices” (147r).[1]

Thus, in the opening of scene 4 of Arden of Feversham, as Arden talks with his friend Franklin about the uncontrollable Alice, he makes this exact same point about his wife and uses the same language: 

The passages are expressing the same sentiment in the same language, and reprehension is even a synonym for chastisement. In other words, both are making the sexist claim that if a woman does not fear god or what men will say to or about her, then no amount of chastising will help. Clearly, this is a unique parallel. Just an EEBO search for fear of God (or fear of the Gods) preceding speech of men yields no results other than Arden of Faversham and The Dial.[1]

Even more incredibly, Google also only shows Arden of Feversham with no other results. The Dial does not turn up because of its use of archaic spelling–“if the feare of the gods.” In contrast, Arden of Feversham appears because many published editions include modernized spelling. However, when we try a Google search for “feare of” within 10 words of “speech of men,” we find only The Dial of Princes and two older editions of Arden of Feversham:

There is no doubt that this passage that North marked in 1591 or 1592, in his own translation, that appears in only one of three chapters that he underscores in the table of contents, was the origin of the parallel speech in Arden of Faversham, a tragedy about North’s half-sister that was published anonymously later that year (1592).

[1] The only discoverable passage that even comes close on either EEBO or Google is a fiery religious tract from 1609, and the grouping is merely coincidental. The passage is merely preaching about sinners going to hell; and not commenting on the impossibility of dissuading some malicious women from vice. More, it uses “speech of men” in a different way, and it precedes (rather than follows) “the fear of God.” In deed, it precedes it by 15 words so you have to expand the search. See Samson Lennard., An exhortatory instruction to a speedy resolution of repentance and contempt of the vanities of this transitory life (London: Edward Blount & W. Barret, 1609), “For the speech of men and their slanders can∣not deliuer thee from the fire of hell, but the feare of God, and thy iust dealing proceed∣ing from a liuely faith, in the merits of Christ Iesus; whe∣ther thou bee praised or dis∣praised, returne into thy selfe and thy owne conscience.”

As noted earlier, 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. For example, North only marked three of the 177 chapters in the table of contents. All three chapters and their titles are relevant to his plays –and and two of them, which focus on indomitable wives (often in a sexist way not uncommon in the 16th century), are chapters especially significant to The Taming of the Shrew and Arden of Feversham (which also focus on indomitable wives). We looked at the second of the marked-chapter in the prior post, which had a subtitle that North underlined and repeated in the margin. This subtitle, underlined and written down by North in 1591-2 — Wherein is expressed the great malice and little patience of an evil woman” –was then reused with little change in the subtitle of the publication of Arden of Faversham, a tragedy about his half-sister that was published in 1592: Wherein is shewed the great malice and dissimulation of an evil woman. Both EEBO and Google confirm that no one else has ever written something like this line, except for Thomas North and the author of the anonymous tragedy about his half-sister.

But the relevance of the first of the three chapters that North underscored may be even more obvious to Shakespeare-enthusiasts, for it gives advice, in effect, on how to tame shrews (or shrowes, in North’s spelling).

In the table of contents, North writes, “Rules for married men” next to the chapter and underlines the subtitle: “certaine rules for married men, which if they be matched with shrowes [i.e., shrews] & do observe them may cause them [to] live in quiet with their wives.” As with the other subtitle, this also deals with problematic wives, and it certainly seems to recall The Taming of the Shrew, in which the married men were indeed looking for instructions in how to tame shrews. Also, the First Folio edition of the comedy frequently uses North’s spelling: shrow. Even the penultimate line is “thou hast tam’d a curst shrow.” Finally, in The Taming of the Shrew, Baptista says the following about marrying off his daughter, Katherine, the titular shrow: “The gain I seek is quiet in the match” (2.1.326). That again matches the subtitle: shrow–quiet–match in the context of married men trying to cope with difficult wives.

This chapter appears within a series of similar chapters, all describing how to deal with quarrelling wives. And North started making notes about certain passages in the margins –notes that were then relevant to the plays.

Consider as an example this marginal note: “An evil husband likened to the devil; an evil wife, to hell itself.“

Elsewhere in The Dial, North also writes a relevant line:

This passage and that line clearly inspired the following in The Taming of the Shrew:

Hortensio. Marry, sir, to get a husband for her sister.
Gremio. A husband? a devil.
Hortensio. I say a husband.
Gremio. I say, a devil. Think'st thou, Hortensio, though her father
be very rich, any man is so very a fool to be married to hell?

As North wrote in the margin, the husband is compared to a devil, and the wife is compared to hell. And the play passage even repeats North’s “man is so very a fool,” also from The Dial.
A search of both EEBO and Google indicates that the line man is so very a fool is unique to North and Shakespeare as of 1623. Moreover, both Google and EEBO indicate the phrase appears in only one other known work at any time, a 1653 sermon by Jeremy Taylor (and Taylor may have been borrowing from Shakespeare.)

As clear from the last two posts (and as we will continue to show over the next five), North is using his copy of The Dial of Princes in the 1590s as a workbook for plays that Shakespeare would later stage. In the next post, we will show a passage from the “shrowes” chapter that he used for Arden of Faversham.