Pembroke, William Herbert, 3d earl of, 1580–1630

Pembroke, William Herbert, 3d earl of, 1580–1630,

English courtier and patron of letters. Son of Mary Herbert, countess of Pembroke, and nephew of Sir Philip Sidney, he was tutored by the poet Samuel Daniel and succeeded his father to the earldom in 1601. Prominent at court, he became (1611) a privy councilor and served as lord chamberlain of the royal household (1615–25) and lord steward (1626–30). He also furthered the exploration and colonization of America. Shakespeare's First Folio (1623) was dedicated to him and his brother, and he has been doubtfully identified with the “Mr. W. H.” mentioned in the publisher's dedication of the 1609 edition of the Sonnets. Pembroke College, Oxford, was named in his honor while he was chancellor of the university (1617–30).
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Authors were not the only ones to write dedications to their plays; publishers, editors, and players did too. In the Shakespeare First Folio (1623), the editors of the volume, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two former players with Shakespeare in the King's Men, dedicate the book to William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke (who was also Lord Chamberlain in 1623), and his brother Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery. The Herberts were sons of Mary, Countess of Pembroke, the sister of Philip Sidney, and both had been raised in Wilton House, the site of a literary coterie including Samuel Daniel and Edmund Spenser. The two brothers were chosen as dedicatees because of their "likings of the seuerall parts, when they were acted, as before they were published." The editors now offer the plays to them as Shakespeare's "Orphanes" in need of "Guardians."

Heminge and Condell, however, register a certain unease with dedicating mere plays to two such illustrious brothers. They repeatedly allude to the subliterary status of plays, calling them "trifles" and "the most, though meanest, of things," which they hope can be "made more precious, when they are dedicated to "Temples," or eminent persons like William and Philip.

Twenty-four years later, Philip Herbert, now 4th Earl of Pembroke and Earl of Montgomery, had another folio collection of plays dedicated to him-the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio (1647)-by ten former members of the King's Men (the six upper names belong to long-standing members of the King's Men, the four lower ones to players who joined the company a few years before the theaters were closed in 1642). The former players say they chose Pembroke not only because of his family's history of literary patronage, but also because he and his brother were "Patrons to the flowing compositions of the then expired sweet Swan of Avon Shakespeare." Furthermore, the players were supported financially and politically "for many calme yeares" by Herbert, "deriv[ing] a subsistence to our selves, and Protection to the Scene." As in the Shakespeare Folio, the players feel that Herbert deserves to be the patron of the literary remains of their dead friends-and, of course, the players surely hoped to reap some reward from Herbert too.

John Lyly's Six Court Comedies (1632) contains a dedication from its publisher, Edward Blount, who was also one of the publishers of the Shakespeare First Folio. Lyly was dead when this collection of his plays was published, but he was not quite as well known as Shakespeare or Beaumont and Fletcher were when their folios were issued, in part because his plays had been written close to fifty years before this collection came out. Blount therefore feels he must explain to the book's dedicatee, Richard Lumley, that Lyly was admired in "Elizaes Court" and that he has chosen to publish these plays because once again, "Light Ayers are now in fashion." Blount offers these plays to Lumley out of his own "Debts of dutie and affection, in which I stand obliged to your Lordship."

Thus, whereas the Shakespeare Folio and Beaumont and Fletcher Folios were dedicated to the Herberts because they liked Shakespeare's plays and had close ties to the King's Men, the dedication in Lyly's collection derives from the publisher's own interests. Blount has no idea whether Lumley likes Lyly's plays, and, in fact, he worries that they may not "sute so well with your more serious Contemplations."

The Beard of Avon

http://www.radiofreemike.com/beard.html

The Beard of Avon

SHAKESPEARE was an uneducated glover's son, from a provincial village, who left no firm evidence that he went to any sort of school. The only real proof that he wielded a pen with his own hand consists of six signatures on legal documents, where the spelling of "Shakspere" isn't even consistent. How did a bumpkin like that -- innocent of Oxford and Cambridge -- write dramatic masterpieces about royalty in Denmark, or gentlemen in Verona? The puzzle is very English. An American would say, "He had talent," and let it go; we have an indifferently-educated Mississippi drunk named William Faulkner to suggest that literary genius isn't a matter of where you get your B.A. But class structure in England has bred a handful of theories insisting that the author of Shakespeare's plays must surely have been some educated aristocrat, like Francis Bacon, or Sir Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford.


Amy Freed's new play takes these theories (or "heresies") and spins them in a blender. It's a fun light comedy. From the advance publicity I thought she'd been swayed too much by the Oxfordians -- the theorists who champion Edward de Vere -- but The Beard of Avon gives just enough credence to the de Vere idea to make fun of modern Shakespeare worship. That's her real ambition. "Shakespeare festivals are next door to Renaissance fairs, if you ask me," Freed has said in one published interview, "and that's coming from someone who performed in them and did the hey-nonny-nonny-green-show thing."


The play opens in a Stratford barn, and follows "Shakspere" to London, where he fulfills a long-fermenting dream to be an actor. He plays bit parts in "pageants for the unwashed" like Scurvy Wives or Roister Doister. Shakspere has no training, but he can improve the lines of almost any sorry script, and this poetic facility snatches the attention of Sir Edward de Vere, a nobleman with a secret trunk full of half-finished plays. De Vere doesn't want his name connected with the scripts -- playwriting is such a low profession -- but he does want them performed. So Shakspere becomes his tinker, his stalking horse, his "beard"; and their first collaboration is a gory potboiler called Titus Andronicus.


This collaboration idea, which I think is Freed's, strikes a perfect compromise between the Shakespeare tradition and the de Vere heresy. The real Edward de Vere knew about court life, the law, sea travel, and all the other topics Shakespeare had no experience of; he knew Europe, especially the relevant towns in Italy, and he was bisexual, which might account for some of the Sonnets. But he couldn't write. De Vere left behind a collection of poems written in a pompous embarrassing voice that no one with an ear for language would mistake for Shakespeare's. ("Come hither, shepherd swain! / Sir, what do you require? / I pray thee show to me thy name; / My name is Fond Desire." Etc.) So Freed makes "Shakspere" a ghostwriter. That works well. Everyone knows that Shakespeare cribbed his plots.


Freed exaggerates both men to humanize Shakespeare. Her Edward de Vere is an arrogant bastard and Shakspere just a humble bumpkin: You wouldn't want to put a bronze bust of either one in your theater lobby. Matthew Boston, as Shakspere, is downright ugly -- his balding scalp, long hair, and a thin mustache give him the look of a state-fair carny with a mullet -- and he speaks a rude low English. Marco Barricelli swaggers around in dashing patterned clothes, flowing hair, and a pirate's beard; his de Vere is a louche, imperious blowhard. Both men are cartoons, but they serve Freed's myth-deflating point.


The play is not airtight, but Mark Rucker's production has the benefit of Charles Dean's stuffy, secretive Francis Bacon and Kandis Chappell's brilliant Elizabeth I -- a willful, white-faced virgin queen who may or may not have written The Taming of the Shrew. Freed sprinkles her dialogue with a mixture of modern and Elizabethan diction that can be funny as well as lame. ("That bulging manuscript betrays thee, Bacon ... Or art thou glad to see me?") And the ending resorts to a maudlin lesson about the transformative power of love.


Freed makes the play work by refusing to take the "authorship question" too seriously. Her point is light and quick: We know so little about Shakespeare, who can say how much help he had? Fair enough. Shakespeare's genius was for language and character; the rest was either research or collaboration. "The writer does not have to read the whole of Freud," argued Anthony Burgess, in his own (fanciful) book about Shakespeare, "he merely has to filch something from a paperback glossary or a learned man met on a bus." On the shelves of a writer, "instead of phalanges of rich uniform bindings, there are old racing guides, dog-eared astrological almanacs, comic periodicals, secondhand dictionaries, unscholarly history books, notebooks full of odd facts picked up in lying-in hospitals or taxidermist's shops. When Shakespeare achieved a library, if he ever did," Burgess insists, "we can be sure it was not like Bacon's."



Michael Scott Moore

The Tyndale Society

The Tyndale Society was founded in 1995, five hundred and one years after Tyndale's birth. With members worldwide, the Society exists to tell people about William Tyndale's great work and influence, and to pursue study of the man who gave us our English Bible, spreading knowledge of the Word of God in English so that men, women and children everywhere could understand it for themselves.

Tyndale is one of the founders of modern English. Our Bible, since 1526, has properly been in a language that still speaks directly to the heart. His phrases are used today; ‘let there be light’, ‘the signs of the times’, ‘the powers that be’, and many more.

Because of Tyndale, English speakers across the world for nearly five centuries have been able to take for granted that they can have access to a complete Bible.

A great deal of research on Tyndale and his significance remains to be done — in the fields of history, theology, biblical studies, literature, translation-theory, art and language. The Society encourages this work through its academic conferences in Europe and North America, and its annual journal Reformation. The Society also sponsors publications.

All members receive the Tyndale Society Journal. Regular lectures are held for members and guests — among them each autumn in Gloucester Cathedral, in the University of Oxford and at Lambeth Palace. The Society also organises a wide (and growing) programme of social events such as visits to places of interest to members, film screenings, regular get-togethers, and an annual carol service. See the list of events for details.

No Tyndale, No Shakespeare

"No Tyndale, No Shakespeare"
Tyndale and the English Language
We all quote Tyndale's words without knowing it. He was a master of the pithy phrase, near to conversational English, but distinct enough to be used like a proverb. In his Bible translations, Tyndale coined suchphrases as:
"let there be light," (Genesis 1)
"the powers that be," (Romans 13)
"my brother's keeper," (Genesis 4)
"the salt of the earth," (Matthew 5)
"a law unto themselves," (Romans 2)
"filthy lucre" (1 Timothy 3) and
"fight the good fight"(1 Timothy 6).
We use these phrases because they are well formed. Their alliteration, rhyme and word repetitions say what we need to say, with the force we need, so even those who never read the Bible still use them. Tyndale's sense of rhythm and poetic proportion gives force to such classic sentences as these:
"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find;
knock and it shall be opened unto you" (Matthew 7)
"In him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17)
"The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." (Matthew 26)
Besides phrases and sentences, Tyndale coined or revived many words that are still in use. He constructed the term "Jehovah" from an odd Hebrew construction in the Old Testament, and we frequently hear the word spoken on our doorsteps. It was he who named the Jewish holiday Pesah "Passover." We use his word when we say that someone is being made a "scapegoat." Tyndale was a pioneer in the use of ordinary language for poetic aphorism. His phrases are as widely used as Shakespeare's "the milk of human kindness," or "to be or not to be," and it well may be that he made Shakespeare possible.

webpage contributed by Christina and Matthew DeCoursey

Let There Be Light

The “Let There Be Light” exhibition was originally put together by the British Museum to celebrate the 500th Anniversary birth of William Tyndale (1494 – October 6, 1536) the first to translate the Bible into English from the original languages of Greek and Hebrew. In so doing Tyndale not only gave us our English Bible but also gave us our English language. Only two complete examples of Tyndale’s 1526 English New Testament exist. The exhibit explores Tyndale’s role in producing the first English Bible translated from Greek and Hebrew, and the legacy he left to the language through such phrases as “Let there be light,” “the powers that be,” “Fight the good fight,” “Eat, drink and be merry,” “the fat of the land,” “signs of the times,” “Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you,” and “Am I my brother’s keeper?” What Tyndale did affects the lives of all English-speaking people. For his efforts Tyndale was tied to a stake, strangled with a rope and burned outside a castle near Brussels on October 6, 1536. His crime: Translating the scriptures from Greek and Hebrew into vernacular English so that commoners could read the Bible for themselves.

Tyndale’s 1526 translation into common English was simple, direct, and had dignity and harmony. The King James “Authorized” Version of 1611 was taken almost entirely from Tyndale’s translation. According to Dr. Daniell, “83 percent of the King James New Testament is Tyndale exactly.”

Sir Walter Raleigh

from Raleigh Trevelyan's bio of Sir Walter Raleigh

p.27
For a short while he joined a circle of wild aristocratic young courtiers, mostly Catholics or crypto-catholics, including Charles Arundell, Francis Southwell, the earl of Sussex and Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford and premier earl of England; also on its fringe was Lord Henry Howard, son of the poet earl of Surrey and brother of the Duke of Norfolk, both executed.

p.28
Oxford was married to the daughter of the great Lord Treasurer Burghley..,but temporarily separated from her. At one time Oxford had been a special favorite of the Queen, who still had an affection for him and respect for his ancient lineage. He was also a poet, and has even been put forward as the "real" author of Shakespeare's early plays.

p.28
The man he was warning her against in this roundabout way was none other than the Earl of Oxford. It was to no avail. Anne (Vavasour) was in love with Oxford, and they wrote poems to one another. When she had a child by him, the furious Elizabeth invoked her usual penalty: she sent both to the Tower. Anne's uncle, Sir Thomas Knivet, also a courtier, challenged Oxford to a duel.

p 30
Oxford's attitude towards Raleigh suddenly changed, and Raleigh became one of his enemies. It could well have been because of this foolish poem, or that Oxford had found out that Raleigh was spying for Walsingham.... Meanwhile, Oxford's hate campaign against Sidney was unabated, and the venom was now directed just as much against Raleigh, whom he proposed to have murdered.

p.31
Oxford had also quarrelled with Arundell and Southwwell, accusing them of Catholic plots against the queen. Then he attacked Lord Henry Howard, another who had developed an intense and even more dangerous hatred against Raleigh, for reasons unknown but no doubt connected with his Catholicism; a secret homosexual and an embittered Iago figure, this "Harry" lived under the shadow of the fact that both his father and brother had been attainted. Arundell retaliated with wild accusations about Oxford's "detestable vices" and unpure life", sometimes invoking
Raleigh as a witness. He also claimed that Oxford had urged both him and Raleigh to murder Sidney.

p36
Burleigh had asked him to intercede with her (QE) over a delicate family matter, in connection with his errratic son-in-law the Earl of Oxford, who had been in disgrace ever since his duel with Sir Thomas Knivet. Oxford had been banned from Court, whereas Knivet had been forgiven. Not only that, but Oxford was still refusing to take back his wife.....Oxford contined to regard him with contempt, as an insolent
commoner, who had wormed his way into his circle and had then betrayed him.

p.204 on Love's labor's lost
Holofernes may well have had an element of Hariot in him, also of Giordano Bruno. But he does point strongly to John Florio, of Italian Jewish descent, a famous teacher and translator of Montaigne. The title of the play had quite obviously been taken from Florio's well-known remark about the over-prevalence of lewd literature: "It were labout lost to speak of love". Then we have a direct quotation from Florio's book "First Fruits": Venetia, chi non te vede, non to prese