The more outré and grotesque an incident is the
more it deserves to be examined, and the very point which appears
to complicate a case is, when duly considered and scientifically
handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it.
Sherlock
Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles.
To prove beyond reasonable doubt that the poet-playwright Earl of Oxford
is the real man behind the mask of "William Shakespeare,"
it is essential to present documentation published in his lifetime (1550-1604)
showing that Oxford was known to competent witnesses by a nickname approximating
the cognomen associated with the great plays and poems.
Such contemporary testimony is vital to the corroboration of all other
evidence which records Edward de Vere as foremost Elizabethan Court
Poet and admired author of plays—none of which was printed under
his legal name or title.
In "Shakespeare" Identified, J. Thomas Looney argues
persuasively that Oxford is the original of Spenser's "Willie."
the gentle shepherd who engages in a rhyming contest with his rival
"Perigot" (Sir Philip Sidney) in the August eclogue of The
Shepherd's Calendar (published 1580); and also "pleasant Willy,"
the veteran writer of stage comedies
"from
whose pen
Large streams of honey and sweet nectar flow"
in The Tears of the Muses (published 1591). Moreover, Spenser's
characterizations of both "Willie" and "pleasant Willy"'
can be shown from several other circumstances not included in Mr. Looney's
arguments to fit the Poet Earl better than any other known writer of
Spenser's acquaintance. Incidentally, Nicholas Rowe states that John
Dryden held that Spenser had Shakespeare in mind in describing "Pleasant
Willy."
"This same gentle Spirit," typifying the beau ideal of Elizabethan
comedy, has been forced into retirement after years devoted to
"the sweet delights of learning's treasure
That wont with Comic sock to beautify
The painted Theatres, and fill with pleasure
The listeners' eyes and ears with melody."
Spenser tells us that "Willy's" activities have been brought
to a dead end by recent puritanical interdictions against plays. In
the history of the English stage it is chronicled that just such a puritanical
wave of repression was precipitated in 1589-90 when the company of boy
actors long patronized by Lord Oxford presented an objectionable burlesque
of Martin Marprelate, the popular literary symbol of rising ecclesiastical
reform. For some time following, no acting company—not even the
Queen's Men—could secure license to appear publicly in London.
So while Dryden (as well as Edmund Malone) was unquestionably correct
in believing that Spenser's "'pleasant Willy" pictures the
true Bard, the circumstance should be noted that this identification
automatically debars the alleged genius of Stratford as the person intended
on the score of age alone—without emphasizing the fact that Spenser
carefully describes "Willy" as a highly cultured aristocrat,
.scorning the boldness of such baseborn men" (Greene, Peele, Nash
and others) whose ribald satires have brought his own efforts to nought.
In associating him with the pen-name of "William Shakespeare,"
it will also be recalled that throughout his early manhood the Earl
of Oxford enjoyed an outstanding reputation as a "spear-shaker"
in the lists. In many quarters he was looked upon as the coming man
of action, though he was to be effectually thwarted in all such ambitions
by political and social rivals. At the same time, the young nobleman's
gifts as scholar, poet, comedian and theatrical entrepreneur—all
of which are voluminously documented—unquestionably militated against
his advancement in the Tudor regime. Considerable evidence indicates
that the Queen sometimes refused her influence to secure Oxford certain
remunerative posts for which he was well fitted in order to keep him
near her as an entertainer. Thus he was thrown back upon his own mental
resources at critical periods of his life and developed innate creative
faculties by way of compensation.
So in July, 1578, when Gabriel Harvey as orator of the day welcomes
Oxford to Cambridge University to receive an honorary degree, Harvey's
address to the nobleman—as given in full in Ward's Seventeenth
Earl of Oxford—stresses the fact that the Earl's natural potentialities
as a leader in the field of action have been neglected for literary
projects.
He declares that Oxford's fame "demands even more than in the
case of others the services of a poet possessing lofty eloquence."
Then Harvey goes on to say: "For a long time past Phoebus Apollo
has cultivated thy mind in the arts. English poetical measures have
been sung by thee long enough. . . I have seen many Latin verses of
thine, yea, even more English verses are extant; thou hast drunk deep
draughts, not only of the Muses of France and Italy, thou hast learned
the manners of many men, and the arts of foreign countries... O thou
hero worthy of renown, throw away bloodless books, and writings that
serve no useful purpose; now must the sword be brought into play, now
is the time for thee to sharpen the spear and to handle great engines
of war. . . Mars lives in thy tongue. Bellona reigns in thy body. .
. thine eyes flash fire, thy countenance shakes a spear". . .
It must be admitted by any fair-minded student of this case that an
Elizabethan poet and playwright of Lord Oxford's contemporary reputation
who can be adequately documented as (1) Spenser's master comedian, "pleasant
Willy," and (2) a voluminous writer of English measures whose "countenance
shakes a spear, is a claimant to the long-disputed title of "William
Shakespeare" who will not be lightly brushed aside.
I shall now offer additional evidence, more complete and circumstantial
than anything heretofore printed on the vital matter of Oxford's nickname,
which should convince the most skeptical that the literary Earl was
publicly addressed as "gentle Master William" by a contemporary
who is also a recognized authority on personalities of the Shakespearean
Age.
The evidence appears mostly in "The Epistle Dedicatorie"
to Thomas Nash's Strange News of the Intercepting Certain Letters
&c. which was entered for publication on the Stationers' Register
the 12th bf January, 1593.
Nash had written Strange News to defend himself and his intimate
literary and playwriting associates, especially the recently deceased
Robert Greene, from a vicious attack launched against them a few months
previously by Gabriel Harvey (c. 1545-1630), the same pundit-orator
who had addressed Lord Oxford in 1578 as a distinguished poet who might
better devote himself to active spear-shaking.
Not long after delivering his oration, Harvey applied for the post
of private secretary to the literary nobleman, but was rejected in favor
of John Lyly. Now Lyly, as is well known, dedicated his most important
fiction, Euphues and His England to Oxford in 1579 and wrote
and produced all of his sparkling Court comedies while in the Earl's
employ. Coincidently, Shakespeare's early comedies contain many echoes
of the Lyly mannerisms; and the foremost students of Lyly's career are
convinced that Lord Oxford collaborated with his secretary-stage-manager.
Gabriel Harvey certainly believed that Oxford and his protégé
dipped their quills in the same inkhorn; for in his pamphlet entitled
Pierce's Supererogation (1593) Harvey reminds Lyly of earlier
days when he enjoyed "thy old acquaintance in the Savoy, when young
Euphues hatched the eggs that his elder friends laid."
Personal jealousy of Lyly's success and pique with Oxford for having
favored the comedy writer instead of him explains many of Harvey's future
actions. His sharply illuminating burlesque of the Earl for aping the
arts of the Italian Renaissance, Speculum Tuscanismi (The Mirror
of Tuscanism), appeared in 1580. 1
It is a cutting but extremely valuable caricature, written in jolting
English hexameters, the opening volley in Harvey's sniping campaign
against Oxford and the lesser members of his new Shakespearean creative
circle. Harvey belonged to the opposite literary camp of classicists,
headed by Sir Philip Sidney, who fought all realistic innovations in
English poetry. He was also an extremely egotistical and spiteful person
with a full blown inferiority complex (shared by his brothers John and
Richard), as the Harveys had risen in the world of scholarship and social
prestige although their father—"a worthy rope-maker of Saffron
Walden"— undoubtedly owed some of his prosperity to "traffic
with the hangman," as Gabriel's critics claim.
When the "Martin Marprelate" war of pamphlets got under way
in 1588-89, the Bishops of the Church of England were at a distinct
disadvantage in answering the scathing attacks upon their prerogatives
until they employed a group of popular writers, made up chiefly of Robert
Greene, John Lyly and Thomas Nash, to answer the annoying "Martin"
in his own colloquial, hard-hitting style. The Bishops had evidently
followed the advice of Lord Oxford in utilizing the talents of playwrights
and satirists in squelching "Martin," for Greene, Lyly and
Nash are proven protégés of the Earl.
The Harveys appear to have mixed into this vociferous debate, mainly
to attract attention to their own merits; and Greene, Lyly and Nash
were all held up by them as bad examples in the degeneration of current
literary trends.
Greene came back at Gabriel and Richard Harvey in some biting satirical
thrusts in the first printing (now lost) of his Quip for an Upstart
Courtier (c. 1592); and when Thomas Nash's spirited commentary on
the ups and downs of the creative worker in England appeared in the
summer of 1592 under the title of Pierce Penilesse His Supplication
to the Devil, the Harveys were given another going over with one
of Nash's sharpest goose-quills.
Meanwhile, the gifted and versatile but lamentably irregular Robert
Greene had taken to his death-bed after one midnight banquet too many
of "pickled herring and Rhenish wine."
Gabriel Harvey's long-smouldering grudge against the red-bearded, devil-may-care
satirist, whom he termed one of "the very ringleaders of the rhyming
and scribbling crew," now found opportunity to vent itself.
Hard on the heels of the undertaker, Dr. Harvey betook himself to the
humble lodgings at the home of a Dowgate shoemaker, where Greene had
expired, to gather fetid gossip of the sick-chamber at first hand (as
he boasts) and to gloat over the "wretched passing" of this
master of "impudent pamphletting, phantastical interluding and
desperate libelling" Within a month or so of Greene's burial on
September 4, 1592, Harvey's disgraceful onslaught on the unfortunate
writer appeared in Four Letters and Certain Sonnets, Especially Touching
Robert Greene &c. Featuring the extraordinary slogan, "The
dead bite not," this pamphlet is happily quite unique in English
literature.
Harvey was a master of rhetoric at Cambridge, an authority on Latin
prosody, author of the university text-books, Rhetor and Ciceronianus,
and also a Doctor of Civil Law, but the Four Letters proves him
shockingly bereft of the sense of decency and humanity one would expect
to govern a normal university don and legal light. It is not too much
to say that Harvey descends with ghoulish zest to the charnel-house
and the latrine for similes with which to dishonor the dead humorist.
In his Palladis Tamia (1598), Francis Meres states the case
as it must have appeared to many Elizabethans when he says:
"As Achilles tortured the dead body of Hector, and as Antonius
and his wife Fulvia tormented the lifeless corpse of Cicero:
so Gabriel Harvey hath showed the same inhumanity to Greene that
lies full low in his grave."
Not content with bedaubing the decreased playwright's remains with
verbal nastiness, Harvey also took occasion in the Four Letters
to denounce, reprove, twit and nag several of Greene's most gifted colleagues,
such as the deceased ballad-maker and stage comedian, William Elderton,
John Lyly, George Chapman, the Earl of Oxford—first by title in
an inverted apology for The Mirror of Tuscanism and later under
contemptuous references to his loss of social prestige through his activities
as a common playwright. Finally, the enraged pedant brought his stoutest
birch rod whistling about Tom Nash's ears. Every one of these persons,
it will be noted, had a recorded hand in the development of the Shakespearean
stage. And it is significant to find at this early date (1592) that
several portions of the Harvey diatribe are devoted to the evil influence
of "pelting- Comedies (that) busy the Stage, as well as some graver
Tragedies," wherein "some old Lads of the Castle have sported
themselves with their rapping babble." 2
This obvious reference to the Oldcastle-Falstaff characterization is
followed by other hits at "hypocritical Hotspurs," as well
as "gouty Devils, and buckram Giants," these being cited as
current examples of poor taste and historical distortion. Such comments
upon the influences exerted by the Henry IV comedies should not be overlooked
in fixing the true chronology of the Shakespeare plays. Harvey's remarks
are reproduced in the new Variorum Edition of 1 Henry IV.
When the Four Letters was published in the early autumn of 1592.
Thomas Nash was out of London, as he tells us in the second edition
of Pierce Penilesse, because the plague was still rife in the
city and "fear of infection detained me with my Lord in the Country."
But upon his return, "with my Lord" (of Oxford), Tom appears
to have set promptly to work to vindicate himself, his dead comrade
Greene, Lord Oxford and their professional circle from Harvey's libelous
strictures.
This devastating rejoinder, Strange News, is a classic of invective,
scintillating with wit and merciless in the skill with which Nash flays
his asinine tormentor. More than that, it is one of the key documents
to the Oxford-Shakespeare mystery. Study of Strange News is absolutely
essential to a true understanding of the personal character of the playwriting
Earl of Oxford, and of the position he occupied as a man among men in
the year of grace, 1592.
I have said that Nash is a recognized authority on personalities of
the Shakespearean Age. Prof. George B. Harrison, editor of the famous
Elizabethan Journals, makes the flat statement in his valuable little
work called Introducing Shakespeare (Penguin Books), that the collected
writings of Nash (together with Greg's edition of the Diary and Papers
of Philip Henslowe) "have actually revolutionized modern notions
about Shakespeare and his plays."
No truer words have been spoken by an honest Stratfordian. But Harrison
should have gone further. He should have included Gabriel Harvey's writings
in this category. For Nash and Harvey fully interpret as well as abuse
each other, and in the course of their controversy give us more unconventional
and graphic information about the real Shakespeare through their extensive
commentaries on the poet-playwright Earl of Oxford and his bohemian
companions than can be gathered from any other contemporary publications.
By thee same token, we can be very sure that if there had been any person
such as the conjectured genius of Stratford-on-Avon writing the same
type of "pelting Comedies" that Harvey attacks with such avidity
at this time, the trivial and vulnerable background of the runaway butcher's
apprentice and holder of horses would certainly have come in for thorough
dissection, ridicule or apology in the course of this acrimonious and
long-continued contest between the Shakespearean and anti-Shakespearean
schools of expression. But William of Stratford is neither nominated
nor personalized under any recognizable metaphor by either Harvey or
Nash. He was patently non-existent as a literary figure so far as the
evidence of the eight books 3
in which the disagreeable Doctor and lusty Tom quarrel over the relative
merits of their opposing creative sects during the years 1592 to 1597.
At the same time, the Earl of Oxford is accorded extensive attention—pro
and con—both under his distinguished title and under less
distinguished but vastly human and entertaining descriptive references.
No other living nobleman of the era is given a fraction of the same
notice by these pamphleteers. The significance of this circumstance
cannot henceforth be ignored by anyone who makes any pretence of understanding
Oxford's real position in the Elizabethan creative world. At the same
time it makes plain the motive back of the imperative order issued to
the Stationers' Company on June 2, 1599 by Bancroft, Bishop of London
and Whitgift, Bishop of Canterbury:
"That all Nash's books and Doctor Harvey's books be taken wheresoever
they may be found and that none of their books be ever printed hereafter."
Oxford, the Lord Chamberlain of England, had been written up disrespectfully
by friend and foe alike. His activities as a common playwright and companion
of "lewd" penmen had been too freely discussed. Hence, the
tardy official effort to expunge the evidence, just as certain other
testimony, such as the records of the Lord Chamberlain's Office, the
records of the Master of the Revels and various telltale items which
would fully corroborate his connection with the Shakespearean theatre
were even more effectually eliminated.
In Strange News Nash makes a determined effort to arouse Lord
Oxford from the creative lethargy into which "our pleasant Willy
dead of late" has sunk, following proscription of his acting companies
by puritanical statute in 1589-90. Young Nash wants the master-comedian
to join him in giving the coupe-de-grace to the bitter enemy
of their professional circle. With a gay and irreverent ruffle of drums
before the public house where the brilliant veteran now spends his leisure
"in idle cell," Tom calls him out to give battle for the true
Shakespearean cause.
The Epistle Dedicatorie of Strange News has never been adequately
interpreted 4 nor generally
understood because it is composed in the esoteric, neo-classical jargon
affected by the University Wits, of which Nash is a past master. The
style of expression is as typical of the rarified intellectual atmosphere
of the day as the mannerisms of Oscar Wilde and his fin-de-siècle
school are of the last decade of the 19th century. Likewise, identification
of certain real life characters addressed and the significance of situations
obliquely referred to must be inevitably lost upon the casual reader
who has not made a special study of both the human and humanist elements
that shaped the times.
Classically derived nicknames and strange phrases, pregnant with meaning
for Nash and his contemporaries of the Elizabethan writing fraternity,
require explanation to bring them within the orbit of present day understanding.
Nash is an avowed satirist and incorrigible punster. But despite his
prideful knowledge of the ancients, which he rarely misses an occasion
to display, he is essentially contemporary—not to say modern—in
his point of view, an extremely well informed and accurate historian
of the Shakespearean period.
I will first reproduce The Epistle Dedicatorie in which Lord Oxford
is addressed as it appears in the original printing of 1593 with sufficient
modernization of spelling to make it legible to modern readers. Then
we can go over the composition, paragraph by paragraph and phrase by
phrase, if necessary, to discover its full import.
The Epistle Dedicatorie
To the most copious Carminist of our time, 1
and famous persecutor of Priscian, 2
his verie friend 3 Master
Apis Lapis: 4 Tho.
Nashe wisheth new strings to his old tawnie Purse, 5
and all honourable increase of acquaintance in the Cellar. 6
Gentle M (aster) William, 7
that learned writer Rhenish Wine & Sugar, 8
in the first book of his Comment upon Red-noses, hath this saying:
veterem ferendo injuriam invitas nonam; which is as much in English
as one Cup of nipitaty pulls on another. In moist consideration whereof,
as also in zealous regard of that high countenance you show unto Scholars,
9 I am bold, instead
of new Wine, to carouse to you a cup of news: Which if your Worship
(according to your wonted Chaucerism) 10
shall accept in good part, I'll be your daily Orator to pray that
that pure sanguine complexion of yours 11
may never be famished with pot-lucke, that you may taste till your
last gasp, and live to see the confusion of both your special enemies,
Small Beer and Grammar rules. 12
It is not unknown to report, what a famous Pottle-pot
Patron you have been to old Poets in your days, 13
& how many pounds you have spent (and, as it were, thrown into
the fire) upon the dirt of wisdom, called Alchemy: Yea, you have been
such an infinite Maecenas to learned men, 14
that not any that belong to them (as Summers, and who not) but have
tasted of the cool streams of your liberalitie. 15
I would speak in commendation of your hospitalitie likewise, but
that it is chronicled in the Archdeacon's Court, and the fruits it
brought forth (as I guess) are of age to speak for themselves. 16
Why should virtue be smothered by blind circumstance? An honest
man of Saffron Walden kept three sons at the University together a
long time; and you kept three maids together in your house a long
time. 17 A charitable
deed, & worthie to be registered in red letters.
In his editorial notes to The Epistle Dedicatorie, McKerrow says: "In
(the second edition of Strange News) for the passage 'Yea,
you have been. . . red letters,' the following is substituted".
Yea, you are such an infinite Maecenas to
learned men, that there is not that morsel of meat they can carve
you, but you will eat for their sakes, and accept very thankfully.
18 Think not, though under
correction of your boon companionship, I am disposed to be a little
pleasant, I condemn you of any immoderation either in eating or drinking,
for I know your government and carriage to be every way Canonical.
Verily, verily, all poor Scholars acknowledge you as their patron,
providitore, and supporter, for there cannot a thread-bare Cloak sooner
peep forth, but you strait press it to he an outbrother of your bounty:"
19 three decayed Students
you kept attending upon you a long time.
Shall I presume to dilate of the gravitie of your round cap, and
your dudgeon dagger? 20 It
is thought they will make you called upon shortlie to be Alderman
of the Steelyard. 21
And that's well remembered; I heard say, when this last Term was removed
to Hertford, you fell into a great studie 22
and care by yourself, to what place the Steelyard should be removed;
I promise you trulie it was a deep meditation, and such as might well
have beseemed Elderton's parliament of noses to have sit upon.
A Tavern in London, 23
onlie upon the motion, mourned all in black, and forbare to girt her
temples with ivy, because the grandame of good fellowship was like
to depart from amongst them. And I wonder verie much, that you sampsownd
not yourself into a consumption 24
with the profound cogitation of it.
Diu vivas in amore jocisque, whatsoever you do, beware of keeping
diet. Sloth is a sin, and one sin (as one poison) must be expelled
by another. What can he do better that hath nothing to do, than fall
a drinking to keep him from idleness?
Fah, methinks my jests begin already to smell of the cask, with
talking so much of this liquid provender.
In earnest thus; There is a Doctor 25
and his Fart that have kept a foul stinking stir in Paul's
Churchyard; I cry him mercie, I slandered him, he is scarce a Doctor
till he hath done his Acts: this dodipoll, this didopper, this professed
poetical braggart, hath railed upon me, without wit or art, in certain
four pennyworth of Letters and three farthing-worth of Sonnets; now
do I mean to present him and Shakerley to the Queen's fool-taker
26 for coach-horses:
for two that draw more equallie in one Oratorical yoke of vainglory,
there is not under heaven.
What say you, Master Apis Lapis, will you with your eloquence
and credit shield me from carpers? 27
Have you any odd shreads of Latin to make this letter monger a cockscomb
of? 28
It stands you in hand to arm yourself against him; for he speaks
against Conycatchers, and you are a Conycatcher, 29
as Conycatching is divided into three parts: the Verser, the
Setter, and the Barnacle.
A Setter I am sure you are not; for you are no Musician:
30 nor a Barnacle;
for You never were of the order of the Barnardines; 31
but the Verser I cannot acquit you of, 32
for M(aster) Vaux of Lambeth brings in sore evidence of a breakfast
you won of him one morning at an unlawful game called rhyming. 33
What lies not in you to amend, play the Doctor and defend.
A fellow that I am to talk with 34
by and by, being told that his Father was a Rope-maker, excused the
matter after this sort; And hath never saint had reprobate to
his Father? They are his own words, he cannot go from them. You
see here he makes a Reprobate and a Rope-maker, voces convertibiles.
Go to, take example by him to wash out dirt with ink, and run up to
the knees in the channel, if you be once wetshod. You are amongst
grave Doctors, and men of judgment in both Laws everie day: 35
I pray ask them the question in my absence whether such a man as I
have describ'd this Epistler to be, one that hath a good handsome
picker-devant, and a pretty leg to study the Civil Law with, that
hath made many proper rhymes of the old cut in his days, and deserved
infinitely of the state by extolling himself and his two brothers
in every book he writes: whether (I say) such a famous pillar of the
Press, now in the fourteenth or fifteenth year of the reign of his
Rhetoric, giving money to have this his illiterate Pamphlet of Letters
printed (whereas others have money given them to suffer themselves
to come to Print) it is not to be counted as flat simony, and be liable
to one and the same penaltie?
I tell you, I mean to trounce him after twentie in the hundred,
and have a bout with him with two staves and a pike for this gear.
If he get anything by the bargain, let whatsoever I write hence-forward
be condemned to wrap bombast in.
Carouse to me good luck, for I am resolutely
bent; the best blood of the brothers shall pledge me in vinegar. O
would thou hadst a quaffing bowl, which, like Gawain's skull 36
should contain a peck, that thou mighst swap off a heartie draught
to the success of this voyage.
By whatsoever thy visage holdeth most precious I beseech thee,
by John Davies' soul and the blue Boar in the Spittle 37
I conjure thee, to draw out thy purse, and give me nothing for the
dedication of my Pamphlet.
Thou art a good fellow, I know, and hadst rather spend jests than
money. Let it be the task of thy best terms, to safeconduct this book
through the enemy's country.
Proceed to cherish thy surpassing carminical art of memory 38
with full cups (as thou dost): let Chaucer be new scoured against
the day of battle, and Terence come but in now and then 39
with the snuff of a sentence, and Dictum puta, We'll strike
it as dead as a doornail. Haud teruntij estimo, We have cat's
meat and dog's meat enough for these mongrels. 40
However I write merrily, I love and admire thy pleasant witty humor,
which no care or cross can make unconversable. 41
Still be constant to thy content, love poetry, hate pedantism. Vade,
vale, cave ne titubes, mandataq; frangas.
Thine entirely,
Tho. Nashe
Robert Detobel offers an alternative view on Apis Lapis.
Love's Labours Lost and Nashe
(Word Document, 127 kb)
These writings by Robert Detobel originally appeared on the newsgroup
humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare.
Love's Labours Lost, Nashe, and
Archdeacon (Word Document, 70 kb)
Notes
1. See Harvey's Three Proper and Familiar Letters
(1580). back
2. In Act I, Scene 2 of 1 Henry IV Prince Hal
calls the Fat Knight, "my old lad of the castle." back
3. The Nash-Harvey pamphlets appeared, and should
be read in the following order: (1) Nash: Pierce Penilesse (1592);
(2) Harvey: Four Letters (1592); (3) Nash: Strange News
(1593) (4) Harvey: Pierce's Supererogation (1593); (5) Nash:
Christ's Tears Over Jerusalem (2nd ed. 1594); (6) Harvey: New
Letter of Notable Contents (1593); (7) Nash: Have With You to
Saffron Walden (1596); (8) Harvey: Trimming of Thomas Nash
(1597). back
4. My able colleague, Mr. Gerald W. Phillips of Surrey,
England, was the first scholar to interpret The Epistle Dedicatorie
of Strange News from the Oxfordian angle. His findings were published
in 1936 in his study of Lord Burghley In Shakespeare. I had been
working on the present interpretation, off and on, for a year or two
before Mr. Phillips sent me his book. I found he had anticipated me
in defining "Apis" as the sacred bull, but his explanation
of "Lapis" struck me as too vague and well-bred. Altogether,
Mr. Phillips devotes only one pap of his volume to the discussion of
Nash's address to Lord Oxford. I think it will be voted worthy of this
more thorough analysis. C. K B. back
