Double Falsehood Revisited

April 30, 2011 By upinvermont in Dekker, Thomas, Fletcher, John, Middleton, Thomas, Shakespeare, William 2 Comments

Mea Culpa

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a while.

Ideally, I try not to be hide bound about the rightness of my opinion, preferring to find out whose opinion is right. Whenever I make a mistake, better to correct it or have it corrected (whether I like it or not). If evidence conflicts with my beliefs, then beliefs must change. So, in the spirit of keeping this blog honest, I’m revisiting my last two posts on Double Falsehood: Double Falsehood • It’s not Shakespeare and the second Double Falsehood • Tho. Dekker & Tho. Middleton?. My efforts in both these posts were rewarding (in terms of what I learned by writing them) but I made some mistakes and new information (to me) deserves to be aired.

Tho. Middleton or John Fletcher?

I thought I made a good argument for Middleton, as far as it went. I still do. Some evidence does indeed suggest Middleton, but the stronger evidence suggests Fletcher. Keeping Middleton in the running might be reasonable at the outset (when considering possible authors) but the probable author is Fletcher. The evidence supporting Fletcher comes from an article by Stephan Kukowski entitled The Hand of John Fletcher in Double Falsehood.

Among the reasons for crediting Fletcher, the most compelling is a habit of Fletcher’s composition called elocutionary afterthought. At gutenburg.org, you can find an E-Book of Charles Mills’ publication, Francis Beaumont: Dramatist. Beaumont and Fletcher were the Simon and Garfunkel of the Elizabethan era. Once they met and began to collaborate, they changed the history of British theater. So much so that during the decades immediately following their deaths, their plays were considered superior to Shakespeare’s and Jonson’s. Naturally, a book on Beaumont is going to say something about Fletcher—first and foremost, how does one differentiate their collaboration? What parts of a play are Fletcher’s, what parts Beaumont?

Interestingly, Mills offers us the following passage. I include most of it because that seems simplest. I’ve bolded the passages which most plainly parallel passages in DF.

Here we have blank verse, distinctively Fletcherian with its feminine endings and its end-stopped lines. But, widely as this differs from the earlier rhythm of The Faithfull Shepheardesse and its more lyric precipitancy, the qualities of tone and diction are in the later play as in the earlier. The alliterations may not be so numerous, and are in general more cunningly concealed and interwoven, as in lines 2 to 4; but the cruder kind still appears as a mannerism, the “fire and fierceness,” “hopes,” “hang,” and “head.” The iterations of word, phrase, and rhetorical question, and of the resonant “all,” the redundant nouns in apposition, the tautological enumeration of categories, proclaim the unaltered Fletcher. The adjectives are in this spot pruned, but they are luxuriant elsewhere in the play. The triplets,–“this man, my son, this nature,”–“admit,” “admit,” “admit,” find compeers on nearly every page:

Shew where to lead, to lodge, to charge with safetie,–[163]

Here’s a strange fellow now, and a brave fellow,
If we may say so of a pocky fellow.–[164]

And now, ‘t is ev’n too true, I feel a pricking,
A pricking, a strange pricking.–[165]

With such a sadness on his face, as sorrow,
Sorrow herself, but poorly imitates.
Sorrow of sorrows on that heart that caus’d it![166]

In the passages cited above there happen to be, also, a few examples of the elocutionary afterthought:

You come with thunders in your mouth _and earthquakes_,–

As arrows from a Tartar’s bow, _and speeding_.–

To this device, and to the intensive use of the pronominal “one” Fletcher is as closely wedded as to the repetition of “all,”–

They have a hand upon us,
A heavy and a hard one.[167]

To wear this jewel near thee; he is a tried one
And one that … will yet stand by thee.[168]

Other plays conceded by the critics to Fletcher alone, and written in his distinctive blank verse, display the same characteristics of style: _The Chances_ of about 1615, _The Loyall Subject_ of 1618 (like _The Humorous Lieutenant_ of the middle period), and _Rule a Wife and Have a Wife_ of the last period, 1624. I quote at random for him who would apply the tests,–first from _The Chances_,[169] the following of the repeating revolver style:

Art thou not an Ass?
And modest as her blushes! what a blockhead
Would e’re have popt out such a dry Apologie
For this dear friend? and to a Gentlewoman,
A woman of her youth and delicacy?
They are arguments to draw them to abhor us.
An honest moral man? ‘t is for a Constable:
A handsome man, a wholesome man, a tough man,
A liberal man, a likely man, a man
Made up by Hercules, unslaked with service:
The same to night, to morrow night, the next night,
And so to perpetuity of pleasures.

(….)

Finally, from _Rule a Wife_, a few instances of the iterations, three-fold or multiple, and redundant expositions. In the first scene[171] Juan describes Leon:

Ask him a question,
He blushes like a Girl, and answers little,
To the point less; he wears a Sword, a good one,
And good cloaths too; he is whole-skin’d, has no hurt yet,
Good promising hopes;

and Perez describes the rest of the regiment,

That swear as valiantly as heart can wish,
Their mouths charg’d with six oaths at once, and whole ones,
That make the drunken Dutch creep into Mole-hills; …

and he proceeds to Donna Margarita:

She is fair, and young, and wealthy,
Infinite wealthy, _etc._

Now compare these example to the two found in the Fletcherian portions of DF:

……………….This is a fine Hand,
A delicate fine Hnd, – Never change Colour;
You understand me, – and a Woman’s Hand (DF 4.I.168-70)

And dare you lose these to becomer Advocate
For such a Brother, such a sinful Brother,
Such an unfaithful, treacherous, brutal Brother? (DF 5.I.16-18)

To my knowledge (and reading), there are no comparable examples in Middleton. Of all the reasons for believing that Theobald might have had a manuscript (of some kind), this is, for me, the most compelling. This mannerism is obviously typical of Fletcher. Given that Theobald initially tried to pass off DF as entirely Shakespeare’s (and if he fabricated the entirety of the play) why on earth would he so cleverly and cunningly imitate Fletcher? It makes no sense. I find it easier to believe that Theobald did, indeed, have a manuscript on which he based DF.

But why is Fletcher’s probable hand so evident and Shakespeare’s so lacking?

Why Fletcher Survived

Kukowski, the writer of The Hand of John Fletcher in Double Falsehood, is sympathetic with the possibility that Theobald might have had a manuscript, but speculates that it was already a later revision of an Elizabethan original. Kukowski writes (in reference to a Davanant revision of the Shakespeare/Fletcher collaboration, The Two Noble Kinsmen):

It is interesting that Davenant’s revision of this play left not a line of the passages most confidently ascribed to Shakespeare intact, although several of Fletcher’s passages survive with only minor alteration. Thus, even if Theobald is being scrupulously honest, he may well have had his possession no more than an already much adulterated version of Cardenio.

This, in a nutshell, encapsulates the reasoning of those Shakespearean scholars willing to concede that Double Falsehood might have been a revised Cardenio. An unidentified author, like the Restoration dramatist Davenant, might have already “improved” the Shakespearean portions. Why would Restoration revisionists single out Shakespeare rather than Fletcher? Shakespeare’s style was considered too turgid for the stage – too figurative and opaque. In a book called Shakespeare Improved , by Hazelton Spencer, Spencer sums up Davenant’s editorial intervention this way:

…by far the largest number of D’Avenent’s explicable alterations are due, apparently, to his zeal in elucidation . Shakespeare’s text seemed full of obscurities in language and thought, and for the sake of making it transparent to the audience at Lincoln’s Inn Fields the Laureate was willing to sacrifice metre, imagination, or anything else. [p. 169]

And in an earlier passage Hazelton writes:

The Restoration adapter was not trying to restore his text, the professed aim of the long line of later tamperers, but to improve it. From changing a phrase in order to make its meaning clearer, to changing it because one things of a better phrase, is an easy step/ D’Avenent took it with complete aplomb.

He regarded Shakespeare, I imagine, almost with affection; but he was the victim of his age. The cocksureness of the Restoration intelligentsia is almost incredible. The England of Elizabeth seemed barbarous to the England of Charles II, though less than sixty years had elapsed between the great queen’s death and the accession of that graceless king. In the presence of the masterpieces of old drama, the Restoration critics (all but Rymer) experienced a certain awe; they recognized vaguely a grandeur that was not characteristic of their own art. Dryden wrote:

Out age was cultivated thus at length,
But what we gain’d in skill we lost in strength.
Our builders were with want of genius curst;
The second temple was not like the first.

The Restoration temples were constructed, supposedly, according to the French rules for classical architecture; squared by these, the Elizabethan monuments were seen to be abounding in errors. Thus the critic and adapter of Shakespeare in the later seventeenth century, though he might sincerely enough protest his admiration for the whole, found, when he actually came to consider details, so many faults crying for correction, that while he eulogized in general he had little but condemnation in particular. He was to concede greatness of soul to Shakespeare, but neither a civilized taste nor a competent craftsmanship.

That this D’Avenent’s view is shown by the character of his alterations. [pp. 145-146]

Fletcher’s verse, being much easier, more mellifluous, less figurative and rhetorical than Shakespeare’s, was far more likely to survive, in part and in whole, the restoration scalpel. For this reason, and due to prior example, it makes sense that Double Falsehood could have been a restoration revision of Cardenio; and that Shakespeare’s poetry would have been heavily edited while Fletcher’s verse remained relatively intact. Most interestingly, Theobald claimed that Davenant’s prompter, John Downes, was likely to have transcribed Double Falsehood. This doesn’t mean Davenant ever saw the play, but as with so much else surrounding DF, the information gives ground for speculation. [Double Falsehood, p. 85]

Anyway, that’s the theory.

It gives little reason to include Double Falsehood (DF) in Shakespeare’s canon (any more than any other Restoration revision Shakespeare). The passages, if they ever were Shakespeare’s, are no longer.

Why, then, do scholars care?

For the same reason that a few fossil fragments pique the curiosity of paleontologists. If DF is indeed the lost Cardenio, then at least we know what Cardenio might have been like. If the Fletcherian parts can be shown to be, in all likelihood, by Fletcher, than that circumstantially (if only slightly) strengthens the case for Shakespeare (who was known to have collaborated with Shakespeare around this time). If the remaining text were by Middleton (as I suggested) then the case for Shakespeare is mildly weakened.

Shakespeare collaborated with Middleton in the writing of Timon of Athens. In the now (what I consider) unlikely event that Middleton were shown to be the author of DF, Acts III-V, Shakespeare still wouldn’t be out of the question. A Fletcher ascription, however, does make Dekker (more on that next) less likely.

Fletcher Matters

Since the non-Fletcherian parts of DF are so hopelessly mangled, the best evidence for Shakespeare is to identify DF as Cardenio by, in part, showing that Acts III-V are by Fletcher. And that is exactly what Brean Hammond, in his introduction to Double Falsehood, emphasizes. Hammond writes:

With Theobald’s own further alterations engrafted upon DF, what we now have is a palimpsest or pentimento — at all events, nothing that is straightforwardly Shakespeare-Fletcher. Nonetheless, sophisticated recent analysis of authorship based on linquistic and stylistic analysis lends support to the view that Shakespeare’s hand, and even more plainly Fletcher’s, can be detected in the eighteenth-century redaction. [p. 6]

Hammond doesn’t tell us what sophisticated recent analysis he is referring to. Fletcher? Yes. Shakespeare? I remain very skeptical and I think Brean overstates the case for Shakespeare when he compares the stylometric

Elizabethan Dramatist John Fletcher

evidence to that supporting Fletcher. To my knowledge, none of the Shakespearean scholars (with an established reputation in stylometrics) have demonstrated reasons for favoring Shakespeare. Brian Vickers, author of ‘Counterfeiting’ Shakespeare, writes:

“There is the doubtful tradition that Lewis Theobald acquired the manuscript, adapting it for his own Double Falsehood (1727), but the arguments claiming that Theobald’s text preserves something of Shakespeare and Fletcher’s original seem to me unconvincing.”

Ward Elliot and Robert Vaenza peg Double Falsehood with 11 Discrete Rejections. This puts DF far outside the realm of Shakespearean authorship (on another planet they would say). (To be fair, it appears that they didn’t examine the “Shakespearean” portion separately.)

Only MacDonald Jackson believes that ‘the case for supposing The Double Falsehood to preserve something of the Shakespeare-Fletcher Cardenio is quite strong’. Whether Jackson is basing this statement on stylometrics or Hammond’s claims is unknown. That said, Jackson’s endorsement is qualified. On the last page of the introduction to the Arden edition of Double Falsehood, Brean adds the following:

Yet the concentration of diverse Shakespearean characteristics in, for example, 1.3.53-6 brings Jackson out on the side of [Shakespeare’s] presence in the play. Jackson reserves the right, however, to test a hypothesis that what Theobald owned was a collaboration between Beaumont and Fletcher rather than Shakespeare and Fletcher. [DF, p. 160]

By the close of the introduction, Hammond himself seems to qualify his earlier confidence. He writes:

“The evidence for Shakespeare’s hand is, as we know, much scantier — in truth very scanty.”

The best evidence for Shakespeare appears to be Fletcher.

William Shakespeare or Tho. Dekker?

One of the theories I advanced in my previous posts was that the playwright Thomas Dekker was as good a candidate for the “Shakespearean” parts of DF (if not better) than Shakespeare. After writing the posts, I received the following correspondence from Matthew Partridge, one who was involved in a production of Double Falsehood. He wrote:

I have recently been involved in a production of “Double Falsehood”, which has got me interested in the whole debate around Shakespeare’s authorship of the play. I was intrigued by the two posts on Double Falsehood in your blog Poem Shape. While I don’t necessarily agree with your conclusions, since it is possible to find examples of Shakespearean imagery that corresponds with each of your categories, and examples where he clumsily repeated a word in a speech, they were still thought provoking.

I asked him for examples and he provided them. So, let’s go over them. (This probably won’t interest most of my readers unless, like me, you peculiarly enjoy forensic poetry.) I present Mr. Partridge’s responses, not to argue with them, but so that a reader can more easily weigh the validity of my previous posts.

eyes & their beams

Here’s what I wrote:

Hope’s methodology contributes to identifying authorship, but can’t be the final word (as he himself would assert). There are other reasons for my thinking that Dekker is behind the first two acts. Consider beams. It was as commonplace during Elizabethan times, that the eyes saw by projecting beams. Poets were quick to make use of this conceit, except for Shakespeare. Only once, in his Sonnet 114, does Shakespeare play on this conceit. There are 25 usages of beams in his plays but not one of them is in the context of the eyes’ beams. The beams are always in reference to the sun, the moon, or candles – always in reference to an object that gives off light. By contrast, consider the following from Double Falsehood (Act I Scene i:

Eyes, that are nothing but continual Births
Of new Desires in Those that view their Beams.
You cannot have a Cause to doubt.

This flies against Shakespeare’s practice. (My theory is that Theobald probably would have kept the imagery of the original author, who I believe to be Dekker, while dolling it up with figurative language.) However, Dekker did make use of this conceit in his imagery (from The Shoemaker’s Holiday):

Why, tell me, Oateley : shines not Lacy’s name
As bright in the world’s eye as the gay beams
Of any citizen ?

The Honest Whore Part I:

If ever, whilst frail blood through my veins run,
On woman’s beams I throw affection…

Partridge was able find one other example of the use of “beams” in Shakespeare’s plays. I too, however, found another example of beams in Dekker’s play Old Furtunatus (see below). More importantly, he found further examples wherein Shakespeare played on the conceit. Here are his examples (all comments are his):

Love’s Labour’s Lost has a direct reference to “eye-beams”.

“So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not / To those fresh morning drops upon the rose / As thy eye-beams, when their fresh rays have smote / The night of dew that on my cheeks down flows:” (LLL.4.3)

Additionally, a lot of the imagery involving women and light centres around the brightness/lustre of their eyes.

Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheathed their light (Rape of Lucere)

For she hath blessed and attractive eyes. / How came her eyes so bright? Not with salt tears (MND.2.2)

‘if you can bring Tincture or lustre in her lip, her eye‘ (WT.3.2)

How and which way I may bestow myself / To be regarded in her sun-bright eye. (TGV.3.1)

The ape is dead, and I must conjure him / I conjure thee by Rosaline’s bright eyes (RJ.2.1)

Although it involves a slightly different context, the following extract from Henry V also refers to eyes, lustre and breeding in a way that closely parallels Double Falsehood.

That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not / For there is none of you so mean and base / That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.(H5.3.1)

So, I was flatly wrong in my assertion that Shakespeare never played on this conceit. I was right, however, to the extent that Shakespeare’s use of the word beams in reference to eyes is exceedingly rare: once in his sonnets and once in the entirety of his plays. Does any of this diminish my argument for Dekker? No, but it ups the chances for some small vestige of Shakespeare. On the other hand, the reference to beams could just have easily been an interpolation by a Restoration poet or Theobald’s own meddling. We’ll never know until Cardenio is found.

the image cluster of heat, cold, the eye, frost, burning, kindling, thawing, sun/Hyperion

Double Falsehood

Jul. I do not see that Fervour in the Maid,
Which Youth and Love should kindle. She consents,
As ’twere to feed without an Appetite;
Tells me, She is content; and plays the Coy one,
Like Those that subtly make their Words their Ward,
Keeping Address at Distance. This Affection
Is such a feign’d One, as will break untouch’d;
Dye frosty, e’er it can be thaw’d; while mine,
Like to a Clime beneath Hyperion’s Eye,
Burns with one constant Heat. I’ll strait go to her;
Pray her to regard my Honour: but She greets me.–

Now here is Dekker from Shoemaker’s Holiday:

And for she thinks me wanton, she denies
To cheer my cold heart with her sunny eyes.
How prettily she works, oh pretty hand!
Oh happy work! It doth me good to stand
Unseen to see her. Thus I oft have stood
In frosty evenings, a light burning by her,
Enduring biting cold, only to eye her.
One only look hath seem’d as rich to me
As a kings crown; such is loves lunacy.
Muffled He pass along, and by that try
Whether she know me.

In response to these parallels, Partridge offered his own. He wrote:

There are plenty of extended Shakespearean image clusters related to heat, cold, burning etc. Three examples are:

To flaming youth let virtue be as wax, / And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame / When the compulsive ardour gives the charge / Since frost itself as actively doth burn (Hamlet.3.4)

His falchion on a flint he softly smiteth, / That from the cold stone sparks of fire do fly; / Whereat a waxen torch forthwith he lighteth, / Which must be lode-star to his lustful eye; / And to the flame thus speaks advisedly, / ‘As from this cold flint I enforced this fire, / So Lucrece must I force to my desire. (Rape of Lucere)

‘Such devils steal effects from lightless hell; / For Sinon in his fire doth quake with cold, / And in that cold hot-burning fire doth dwell; / These contraries such unity do hold, / Only to flatter fools and make them bold: / So Priam’s trust false Sinon’s tears doth flatter, / That he finds means to burn his Troy with water.’ (Rape of Lucere)

Some shorter instances:

Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow / As seek to quench the fire of love with words. (Verona.2.7)

Gods, gods! ’tis strange that from their cold’st neglect / My love should kindle to inflamed respect.(Lear.1.1)

A largess universal like the sun / His liberal eye doth give to every one, / Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all, (H5.4.Pro)

Against love’s fire fear’s frost hath dissolution. / The eye of heaven is out (Rape of Lucere)

The following extract from Henry V is also notable since it (1) involves an image cluster of heat, sun & frost (2) is an instance of Shakespeare using the word “frosty” (3) is an example of Shakespeare clumsily repeating a word – (in this case “frosty”).

Is not their climate foggy, raw and dull, / On whom, as in despite, the sun looks pale, / Killing their fruit with frowns? Can sodden water, / A drench for sur-rein’d jades, their barley-broth, / Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat? / And shall our quick blood, spirited with wine, Seem frosty? / O, for honour of our land, Let us not hang like roping icicles / Upon our houses’ thatch, whiles a more frosty people / Sweat drops of gallant youth in our rich fields! (H5.3.5)

Similarly, as well as involving heat, burning, sun and eye, the lines below also associate dew with coldness.

From forth day’s path and Titan’s fiery wheels: / Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye, / The day to cheer and night’s dank dew to dry (RJ.2.3)

My illustration of the image cluster wasn’t so much meant to exclude Shakespeare, but to demonstrate that this sort of image cluster was also typical of Dekker. (I have a soft-spot for Dekker – the most poetic dramatist after Shakespeare.) Whereas some patterns of thought can be atypical, I meant to show that the imagery of DF could also be found in Dekker’s work. So, while the imagery doesn’t exclude Shakespeare, it also doesn’t exclude Dekker. To balance the many examples from Shakespeare, here are some more by Dekker (notice the combination of eyes, burning, and night):

Come therefore, good father, let’s go faster, lest we come too late: for see, the tapers of the night are already lighted, and stand brightly burning in their starry candle-sticks: see how gloriously the moon shines upon us.

[Both kneel.]

1st O. Man.
Peace, fool: tremble, and kneel: the moon say’st thou?
Our eyes are dazzled by Eliza’s beams,
See (if at least thou dare see) where she sits:
This is the great Pantheon of our goddess,
And all those faces which thine eyes thought stars,
Are nymphs attending on her deity.

Here’s another example from Dekker:

The same sun calls you up in the morning, and the same man in the moon lights you to bed at night; our fields are as green as theirs in summer, and their frosts will nip us more in winter: our birds sing as sweetly and our women are as fair…

Dekker’s extent plays are far fewer than Shakespeare’s, and so finding a commensurate number of examples from Dekker isn’t possible.

of dew & flowers

Here’s what I wrote:

When Shakespeare associates dew with flowers, it is refreshing and always life affirming. When searching through Fletcher’s plays, I notice that his imagery also revolves around dew’s restorative powers. Not so, Dekker. Dekker’s associations with Dew are cold and frequently associated with death and illness…

Partridge countered with the following examples:

There are a few Shakespearean juxtapositions of dew, plants and coldness/sadness/death.

And that same dew, which sometime on the buds /Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls / Stood now within the pretty flowerets‘ eyes / Like tears that did their own disgrace bewail.

The herbs that have on them cold dew o’ the night / Are strewings fitt’st for graves. Upon their faces. (Cym.4.2)

Sweet flower, with flowers thy bridal bed I strew / O woe! thy canopy is dust and stones / Which with sweet water nightly I will dew / Or, wanting that, with tears distill’d by moans / The obsequies that I for thee will keep / Nightly shall be to strew thy grave and weep. (RJ.5.3)

Compare these examples with DF:

O Kiss, sweet as the Odours of the Spring,
But cold as Dews that dwell on Morning Flow’rs!

And Dekker:

a sensible cold dew
Stood on thy cheeks, as if that death had wept
To see such beauty alter. [The Honest Whore Part 1]

The frosty hand of age now nips your blood,
And strews her snowy flowers upon your head,
And gives you warning that within few years,
Death needs must marry you… [Old Fortunatus]

I was wrong to write that Shakespeare’s associations with dew and flowers are always life affirming. I might more accurately have written that the preponderance of these associations are life affirming.

women & light

Here’s what I wrote:

Double Falsehood

Th’Obscureness of her Birth
Cannot eclipse the Lustre of her Eyes,
Which make her all One Light.

The Honest Whore Part 1

Those roses withered, that set out her cheeks:
That pair of stars that gave her body light…

Notice the appearance of eyes in both passages. In fact, the habit of thought is almost identical. In both cases, the eyes/that pair of stars give light/Light to her body.

Furthermore, if I search through a Shakespeare concordance, nowhere does Shakespeare equate a woman’s beauty (or body) with light. In fact, Shakespeare usually associates femininity and lightness with… well… being a light-brained wench. The imagery is much more typical of Dekker.

Mr. Partridge countered with the following examples:

Associations of female beauty with light are relatively common in Shakespeare.

‘Tis but her picture I have yet beheld / And that hath dazzled my reason’s light / But when I look on her perfections, (TGV.4.2)

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? / It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. (R&J.2.2)

For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes / This vault a feasting presence full of light. (R&J.5.3)

Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light. /O, if in black my lady’s brows be deck’d, (LLL.4.3)

‘Fair torch, burn out thy light, and lend it not / To darken her whose light excelleth thine: (Rape of Lucrece)

My statement that “nowhere does Shakespeare equate a woman’s beauty (or body) with light” is wrong. In fact, I just rechecked my concordance and can’t fathom what I was thinking. I apparently wasn’t? I’d like to blame it on something. What remains though, is the strong parallel between the habit of thought in DF and Dekker’s passage. The parallel by no means diminishes Shakespeare as a possible source, but it also stands in agreement with Dekker.

the fox & her den

Here’s what I wrote:

Spurgeon also points out that Dekker comes nearest to Shakespeare in his imagery of sport and game. Consider the following from Double Falsehood:

Cam. I profess, a Fox might earth in the Hollowness of your
Heart, Neighbour, and there’s an End.

(Notice the anthimeria of earth, probably an addition by Theobald.) None of Shakespeare’s fox imagery seems drawn from actual experience and none refer to the fox’s den or desire to hide. Shakespeare’s references to the fox are more symbolic. Dekker’s fox imagery, on the other hand, seems drawn from real experience:

The Honest Whore Part 1

Faugh, not I, makes your breath stink like the
piss of a fox.

The Honest Whore Part 2

But the old fox is so crafty, we shall hardly hunt
him out of his den.

The Noble Spanish Soldier

Young cub’s flayed, but the she-fox shifting her hole is fled. The
little jackanapes, the boy’s brained.

Partridge responded with the following examples:

There are 37 references to foxes in Shakespeare’s works. Most of them either relate to (1) a predator (2) someone untrustworthy (3) a bad smell. Given the context it seems that Camillo is clearly comparing Don Bernard’s (un)trustworthiness to that of a fox.

There’s no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune; nor no more truth in thee than in a drawn fox (H4-1.3.3)

Suspicion all our lives shall be stuck full of eyes; For treason is but trusted like the fox, (H4-1.5.2)

O’ the t’other side, the policy of those crafty swearing rascals, that stale old mouse-eaten dry cheese, Nestor, and that same dog-fox, Ulysses, is not proved worthy a blackberry: they set me up (Cressida.5.4)

false of heart, light of ear / bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox in stealth (Lear.3.4)

Or at the fox which lives by subtlety (Venus)

In this case, I think my observations hold up. Shakespeare’s references to fox strike me as largely symbolic while Dekker’s seem more drawn from experience. Also, Shakespeare more readily associates the “den” with lions. I couldn’t find an example of Shakespeare meantiong the fox with his “den”. In DF, the den is implied in the phrase “Hallowness of your heart”.

swiftest wing

Here’s what I wrote:

Consider this passage from Caroline Spurgeon’s Shakespeare’s Imagery:

We have seen that Dekker, alone of these five other dramatists, shows in his images something of Shakespeare’s sympathy with the poor and oppressed, especially with prisoners. There is one characteristic seen in another group of images altogether -that of birds- which I may just mention, as it emphasizes this point. This is the quite remarkably large number of images he has from ‘wings’: soaring and riding on wings, being transported on the wind’s swift wings, escaping by putting on ‘winged feet’, clapping on swift wings and the like… ¶ Next to those of Shakespeare, Dekker’s images… seem more alive and human, more charged with his personality and direct experience that those of any other of the dramatists here analysed… [p. 40]

Double Falsehood

Jul. Fear not, but I with swiftest Wing of Time
Will labor my Return…

Mr. Partridge offered a number of examples from Shakespare:

The three word phrase “swiftest wing of” appears in Macbeth

thou art so far before / That swiftest wing of recompense is slow / To overtake thee.

Shakespeare also associated “wing” with swiftness/time in Henry V

Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies / In motion of no less celerity / Than that of thought.(H5.3.Pro)

He also associated love with wing in Hamlet

I would fain prove so. But what might you think, / When I had seen this hot love on the wing—(Ham.2.2)

Shakespeare also associates “swift” with time

Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets, And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time, (Son.19)

Experience is by industry achieved / And perfected by the swift course of time.(TGV.1.3)

And why not the swift foot of Time? had not that / been as proper? (ASYL.3.2)

Let him have time to mark how slow time goes / In time of sorrow, and how swift and short / His time of folly and his time of sport; (Rape of Lucrece)

‘Mis-shapen Time, copesmate of ugly Night / Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care, (Rape of Lucrece)

As in previous examples (those which have held up), I wasn’t so much claiming that this imagery didn’t appear in Shakespeare, but that another Shakespeare critic, Caroline Spurgeon, had especially noted and appreciated its presence in Dekker.

oaths & exclamations

I picked up a copy of MacDonald P. Jackson’s Studies in Attribution: Middleton and Shakespeare. It was from his work that I concluded that some of the language in the latter three acts of DF were more typical of Middleton than Fletcher. That evidence remains unchanged despite the stronger evidence, in isolated cases, for Fletcher. (The appearance of Middletonian contractions, such as on’t, to’t or h’as/sh’as are not typical of Fletcher. However, their appearance may be due to revision by a Restoration author or may simply be a statistical anomaly. It may also, just to add to the speculation, be because Middleton touched up the original Cardenio? — certainly within the realm of the possible.) Lastly, Dekker, like Shakespeare, shows a preference for hath and doth. We find the language in the first two acts of DF.

Jackson devotes a chapter to differentiating between Middleton and Dekker. One of the ways he does so is by Dekker’s favored use of oaths and exclamations. For example: in God’s name, alack, sblood, O God, God so, God’s my life, sheart, Godamercy, zounds, by God, God’s my pittikins, tush, snails, marry gup, plague found you, God bless him.

None of these oaths and exclamations appear in the first two acts or anywhere else in the play. That argues against Dekker (or they could have been removed by revision). Is there anything else? Jackson writes:

Dekker does not use by this light, berlady, or with a vengeance in the six plays of his undoubted sole authorship, but I notice that both by this light occur in The Merry Devil of Edmonton, a play which has been attributed to Dekker on a fair accumulation of internal evidence.

In DF, by our light appears in the second act:

D. Bern. Mad; Mad. Stark mad, by this Light.

Is this evidence for Dekker? Maybe. It could also be evidence for Shakespeare, since Shakespeare also preferred this oath. Interestingly, The Merry Devil of Edmonton was thought, by some, to be by Shakespeare and has long been included in Shakespeare “apocrypha”. Dekker’s poetic imagination is similar, in some ways, to Shakespeare’s.

the verdict

The argument for Dekker is diminished once Fletcher is assigned the latter three acts of DF. There are, to my knowledge, no other collaborations between Fletcher and Dekker. While there may be hints of Dekker in the first two acts, those same hints could also be construed as evidence for Shakespeare. If the choice were between Dekker and Shakespeare, and if one accepts Fletcher’s presence in the last three acts, then the evidence more strongly suggests Shakespeare than Dekker. I go where the evidence goes (if reluctantly). So, hat’s off to Mr. Hammond. As he himself states, any attempt to identify the progenitors of Double Falsehood must end with caution.

My thanks to the blog Shaksyear, his post Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Baked Beans, Spam, Egg, Sausage, and Double Falsehood: Hasn’t Got Much Shakespeare in It (Part 1 of 3), for prompting me to finally write my own re-visitation.

Also, I am especially grateful to Matthew Partridge for his corrections and response.

Let’s all hope Cardenio shows up.

Double Falsehood • Tho. Dekker & Tho. Middleton?

March 23, 2010 By upinvermont in Middleton, Thomas, Poetry, Shakespeare, William Tags: Dekker, Thomas, Jonathan Hope, The authorship of Shakespeare's Plays, Thomas Middleton, William Shakespeare 9 Comments

April 30 2011: I posted one further and third update: Double Falsehood Revisited. See this for my final thoughts and why I’ve come round to Hammond’s opinion.

Since the previous post, I’ve done some targeted reading, lots of comparisons, and while I still see Middleton in the latter three acts, the evidence argues against a Middleton attribution in the first two acts –

and I go where the evidence goes. (Ego be damned.) Where does it lead? At the moment, my reading argues for Dekker as a more likely candidate/collaborator than Shakespeare. Middleton and Dekker were known to have collaborated and some of their mutually written plays survive. According to Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, their extent collaborations are:

News from Gravesend: Sent to Nobody
The Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinary; or, The Walk’s in Paul’s
The Whole Royal and Magnificent Entertainment of King James through the City of London
The Patient Man and the Honest Whore
The Bloody Banquet: A Tragedy (As if we hadn’t already guessed it was a tragedy.)
The Roaring Girl; or, Moll Cutpurse
The Spanish Gypsy
The Honest Whore Part 1

In fact, Middleton and Dekker were more than just professional associates, they were friends and were aligned against Ben Jonson during the Poet’s War. So, on those grounds at least, a collaboration between Middleton and Dekker is hardly news. (By the way, I’m very fond of Dekker.)

Curiously, I seem to be the only one who’s calling this for Middleton?

And it’s especially curious because Jonathan Hope’s own book, The authorship of Shakespeare’s Plays, makes a stronger case for Middleton than for Fletcher(?) Though he never seems to question the Fletcher attribution! Maybe Hope has other reasons but, if so, he never shares them. But rather than simply make the assertion, you can decide for yourself, I present the evidence.

Jonathan Hope’s inadvertent case for Dekker

Early Modern English (read Elizabethan English) was in flux. Not only was usage changing, but they were changing with a white heat. Hope reasoned that (depending on education, age, or region of birth) the careful reader should be able to detect noticeable and, theoretically, predictable differences in the use of the English language (socio-linquistics). He applied his thesis to six Elizabethan Dramatists: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Dekker, Fletcher, Middleton, and Massinger and characterized their differences through their use of pronouns like who, that, which, or zero (the absence of a pronoun). Hope called them Relative Markers. For example:

The man that I know.
The man who I know.
The man (0) I know.
The man which I know.

In Shakespeare’s day all four could be used regardless of the antecedent (human or inanimate). Hope reasoned that as the decade progressed, the use of “that” and “which” would change in predictable ways. The use of relative markers didn’t confirm his thesis, but they did and do provide another useful tool for sorting out who wrote what. [The use of the auxiliary do form did, by the way, confirm Hope’s thesis, so all was not lost.) Here is what he discovered in reference to the six dramatists:

With the exclusion of Shakespeare (12 plays), Hopes averages are based on 3 plays for Marlowe, 10 plays for Fletcher, 3 for Marlowe, 4 for Dekker, 5 for Middleton and 5 for Massinger. Each of the bars above represents the average of all the plays. First, notice Fletcher’s almost complete avoidance of the pronoun ‘who’. Hope puts it bluntly: “the most striking feature of Fletcher’s relativisation choices… is his extreme avoidance of ‘who’.” In Fletcher’s contribution to The Woman’s Prize, the percentage appears to be less than 1% and never rises above 3%. Middleton’s percentage ranges from 4 t0 14%. But there’s something interesting about Dekker. Hope puts in this way:

It should be stressed immediately that Dekker seems to be unique in the degree to which his idiolectal usage of relative markers varies: other dramatists may vary in one play in one marker (for example The Comedy of Errors in the early Shakespeare sample), none vary in every play, for virtually every marker. This result does not therefore necessarily undermine the use of relativisation as socio-historical linguistic evidence: rather it stresses that relativisation may be greatly affected by generic or stylistic factors. In Dekker we apparently see a writer who uses relativisation as a stylistic strategy more than other early Modern dramatists, and who is capable of shifting his usage and maintaining that shift over the course of a whole play. [98-99]

Hope also offers collaborative authorship or textual (scribal) interference as possibilities. In either case, it’s safe to say that any average representation of Dekker’s practice is going to be misleading (in comparison to the other dramatists). Without reprinting every graph from Hope’s book, suffice it say: Dekker shows far more variability than any other dramatist. Here are Dekker’s usages on a play by play basis:

Now we get to the fun part. Here is Hope’s graph for Double Falsehood:

Hope points out, rightfully, that by Theobald’s day the usage of who had become much more standardized. When editing Shakespeare, Theobald would replace which with who. Hope gives an example:

Shakespeare (Richard II 5.0.1 62-63)

He shall thinke that thou which knowest the way
To plant unrightfull kings, wilt know againe

Theobald (Richard II, page 57)

And He shall think, that Thou, who knew’st the way
To plant unrightful Kings, wilt know again [p. 94]

So… Hope argues that we should expect to see an increases in who usage if Theobald had edited Fletcher and Shakespeare. In the graph above (and in Fletcher’s case) Theobald has presumably (and primarily) replaced the pronoun that with who. What troubles me is that if Hope is going to treat averages as representative stand-ins for what might have characterized the original Double Falsehood text, the alteration for Shakespeare is several times that of Fletcher. Are we to believe that Theobald edited a Shakespearean original differently than the Fletcharian portion? Remember, according to contemporary accounts, Theobald initially thought the entirety of the play was by Shakespeare. I find it hard to believe that Theobald would subconsciously revise Shakespeare in a completely different manner than Fletcher. In fact, many critics have professed perplexity at evidence which suggests that Theobald left the “Fletcharian” portions relatively unscathed while butchering Shakespeare. But perhaps this perplexity only arises if one clings (my loaded verb of choice) to the belief that Shakespeare authored the first two acts. And there’s another problem with the Shakespeare ascription:

One piece of relativisation evidence which is difficult to fit into an assumed Theobald adaptation of a Shakespeare and Fletcher collaboration is the low rate of ‘that’ relativisation in Double Falsehood: 39 per cent.This is lower than the rates for that in the collaborations, and in Theobald’s The Persian Princess. [p. 98-99]

In order to preserve the supposition that Shakespeare was the initial author, Hope theorizes that another editorial hand (like Davenant or other restoration meddlers) must have picked a fight with Shakespeare (but not Fletcher), thus “pre”-altering the first two acts before Theobald got his chance. Hope admits that this is sheer speculation. Without this hypothetical intermediate step, the evidence just doesn’t make sense. But wait a minute, what about Dekker? Lo and behold, in two of Dekker’s plays, the relativisation rates of that are less than 39% – they are 35% and 33%. Dekker is the only dramatist with rates that low. If you average Dekker’s relativisation rates in the four plays that Hope has tallied, it comes to 43.25%. Shakespeare’s average, among 11 plays, is 50.63%. So… if Theobald had been editing Dekker, he would have reduced the number of that pronouns by roughly 4+ percent (if one treats Dekker’s averages as representative). When Theobald rewrote Richard II, according to Hope, the difference is more or less the same, 51% in Shakespeare’s original, to about +- 48% (Hope doesn’t give an exact percentage though he offers a graph). Interestingly, and predictably one might assert, the reduction in that relativisation is closer to what we would expect (and could accept) if Theobald had been editing Dekker. And given Dekker’s wide stylistic disparity, the odds of Dekker resulting in Double Falsehood’s relativisation rates are surely better than Shakespeare.

(This is what I mean when I say that Hope is inadvertently arguing for Dekker rather than Shakespeare.)

And notice the radically increased appearance of the pronoun ‘who’ in Shakespeare’s portion, as compared to “Fletcher’s”. Is there another dramatist who, in any of his plays, comes close to the 30+ % found in Theobald’s Double Falsehood? Yes. Dekker. In his play If This Be Not a Good Play… the relativisation rate for who is 20%, outpacing any of the other dramatists Hope examined. One might argue that it’s unfair to single out Dekker’s individual plays, rather than an average, but remember that Dekker’s usage varies so widely from play to play that averages are misleading (much more so than his rivals). On those grounds, it’s far more likely (according to Hope’s methodology) that the original two acts of Double Falsehood are by Dekker. None of the relativisation rates are beyond the scope of Dekker’s practice, unlike the presumptive Shakespeare; and one doesn’t need to propose an intermediary restoration author.

The Imagery

eyes & their beams

Eyes, that are nothing but continual Births
Of new Desires in Those that view their Beams.
You cannot have a Cause to doubt.

Why, tell me, Oateley : shines not Lacy’s name
As bright in the world’s eye as the gay beams
Of any citizen ?

The Honest Whore Part I:

If ever, whilst frail blood through my veins run,
On woman’s beams I throw affection,

the image cluster of heat, cold, the eye, frost, burning, kindling, thawing, sun/Hyperion.

Double Falsehood

Jul. I do not see that Fervour in the Maid,
Which Youth and Love should kindle. She consents,
As ’twere to feed without an Appetite;
Tells me, She is content; and plays the Coy one,
Like Those that subtly make their Words their Ward,
Keeping Address at Distance. This Affection
Is such a feign’d One, as will break untouch’d;
Dye frosty, e’er it can be thaw’d; while mine,
Like to a Clime beneath Hyperion’s Eye,
Burns with one constant Heat. I’ll strait go to her;
Pray her to regard my Honour: but She greets me.–

Now here is Dekker from Shoemaker’s Holiday:

And for she thinks me wanton, she denies
To cheer my cold heart with her sunny eyes.
How prettily she works, oh pretty hand!
Oh happy work! It doth me good to stand
Unseen to see her. Thus I oft have stood
In frosty evenings, a light burning by her,
Enduring biting cold, only to eye her.
One only look hath seem’d as rich to me
As a kings crown; such is loves lunacy.
Muffled He pass along, and by that try
Whether she know me.

of dew & flowers.

Double Falsehood:

O Kiss, sweet as the Odours of the Spring,
But cold as Dews that dwell on Morning Flow’rs!

a sensible cold dew
Stood on thy cheeks, as if that death had wept
To see such beauty alter. [The Honest Whore Part 1]

women & light

Double Falsehood

Th’Obscureness of her Birth
Cannot eclipse the Lustre of her Eyes,
Which make her all One Light.

The Honest Whore Part 1

Those roses withered, that set out her cheeks:
That pair of stars that gave her body light…

Notice the appearance of eyes in both passages. In fact, the habit of thought is almost identical. In both cases, the eyes/that pair of stars give light/Light to her body.

the opposing wind

Double Falsehood

Oh, the opposing Wind,
Should’ring the Tide, makes here a fearful Billow:
I needs must perish in it.

The Noble Spanish Soldier

What whirlwinds can we raise to blow this storm
Back in their faces who thus shoot at me?

The Honest Whore Part 2

He’s damned that raised this whirlwind, which hath blown
Into her eyes this jealousy :

Note: The use of wind occurs 198 times in Shakespeare. Of all my comparisons, this is the weakest. However, I find it interesting that Double Falsehood and Dekker’s examples all contain the idea of the wind as being in opposition. The same can’t be said for Shakespeare’s usages, which are far more varied and don’t, at first glance (Harvard concordance), contain a single example of an oppositional wind. Shakespeare’s winds are fickle, rude, unruly, vexing, gamboling, etc… but never, strangely, oppositional.

swiftest wing

Consider this passage from Caroline Spurgeon’s Shakespeare’s Imagery:

We have seen that Dekker, alone of these five other dramatists, shows in his images something of Shakespeare’s sympathy with the poor and oppressed, especially with prisoners. There is one characteristic seen in another group of images altogether -that of birds- which I may just mention, as it emphasizes this point. This is the quite remarkably large number of images he has from ‘wings’: soaring and riding on wings, being transported on the wind’s swift wings, escaping by putting on ‘winged feet’, clapping on swift wings and the like… ¶ Next to those of Shakespeare, Dekker’s images… seem more alive and human, more charged with his personality and direct experience that those of any other of the dramatists here analysed… [p. 40]

Double Falsehood

Jul. Fear not, but I with swiftest Wing of Time
Will labor my Return…

the fox & her den

Spurgeon also points out that Dekker comes nearest to Shakespeare in his imagery of sport and game. Consider the following from Double Falsehood:

Cam. I profess, a Fox might earth in the Hollowness of your
Heart, Neighbour, and there’s an End.

The Honest Whore Part 1

Faugh, not I, makes your breath stink like the
piss of a fox.

The Honest Whore Part 2

But the old fox is so crafty, we shall hardly hunt
him out of his den.

The Noble Spanish Soldier

Young cub’s flayed, but the she-fox shifting her hole is fled. The
little jackanapes, the boy’s brained.

On the durability of Imagery

I’m going to conjecture that if the original text had been Shakespeare’s or Dekker’s, some of their imagery would have survived. I’ve read and heard repeated assertions by various Shakespeare scholars that the first two acts of Double Falsehood might have been altered, not just be Theobald, but by the likes of Davenant (or any restoration reviser). They offer this possibility (and not without reason) as a rationalization for the wide discrepancies between what they should find, if there were Shakespeare, and what they do find (which is not Shakespeare). But if Hazelton Spencer’s book SHAKESPEARE improved is any guide, then my conjecture is a possibility. Some of Shakespeare’s (or Dekker’s) core imagery ought to have survived. The kinds of alterations Davenant made often retained Shakespeare’s core imagery (just as Theobald’s revisions of Richard II) :

From Richard II:

Shakespeare:

The which no balme can cure but his heart bloud
Which breathde this poyson

Theobald:

The which no Balm can cure, but his Heart’s Blood,
Who breath’d this Poison

From Hamlet:

Davenant:

“Shews sick and pale with Thought.”

Shakespeare:

“Is sicklied ore with the pale cast of thought.”

From Macbeth:

Davenant:

Better be with him
Whom we to gain the Crown, have sent to peace;
Then on the torture of the Mind to lye
In restless Agony. Duncan is dead;
He, after life’s short feavor, now sleeps; Well:
Treason has done it’s worst; nor Steel, nor Poyson,
No Ferreign force, nor yet Domestick Malice
Can touch him further.

Shakespeare:

Better be with the dead,
Whom we, to gayne our peace, have sent to peace,
Then on the torture of the Minde to lye
In restless extasie
Dancane is in his Grave:
After Life’s fitful Fever, he sleepes well,
Treason ha’s done his worst: nor Steele, nor Poyson,
Malice domestique, forraine Levie, nothing,
Can touch him further.

On the other hand, from Measure for Measure, one finds examples of Davenant’s more destructive editing:

Davenant:

Oh Sister, ’tis to go we know not whither.
We lye in silent darkness, and we rot;
Where long our motion is not stopt, for though
In Graves none walk upright (proudly to face
The Stars) yet there we move again, when our
Courruption makes those worms in whom we crawl.
Perhaps the spirit (which is future life)
Dwells Salamander-like, unharmed in fire:
Or else with wand’ring winds is blown about
The world. But if condemn’d like those
Whome our incertain thought imagines howling;
Than the most loath’d and the most weary life
Which Age, or Ache, want, or imprisonment
Can lay on Nature, is a Paradise
To what we fear in death.

Shakespeare:

I, but to die, and go we know not where,
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot,
This sensible warme motion, to become
A kneaded clod; And the delighted spirit
To bath in fierie floods, or to recide
In thrilling Region of thicke-ribbed Ice,
To be imprison’d in the viewlesse windes
And blowne with restlesse violence round about
The pendant world: or to be worse then worst
Of those, that lawlesse and incertaine thought,
Imagine howling, ’tis too horrible.
The weariest, and most loathed worldly life
That Age, Ache, periury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a Paradise
To what we feare of death

So… while there are exceptions, it’s not unreasonable to wonder if echoes of an original author’s imagery might have survived in Double Falsehood. If so, then I would argue that the core imagery suggests Dekker rather than Shakespeare. Not only that, but if one grants that the original was Dekker, then there’s no need to posit a third hand besides Theobald’s. If the original was Dekker, then Dekker’s imagery survives under a layer of psuedo-Shakespearean additions (figurative language mostly characterized by anthimeria – a hallmark of Shakespare’s style and exactly what Theobald would have imitated).

Shakespeare’s imagery (his pattern of associations) aren’t to be found in lines like: “Teach Sound to languish thro’ the Night’s dull Ear,/Till melancholy start from her lazy Couch,/And Carelessness grow Convert to Attention.” Shakespeare never used the word Laziness and according to OED, they find only three other uses during Shakespeare’s lifetime, one of which by Spenser (who Shakespeare might have read). Shakespeare used the word carelessness only once in all of his known works. Is it possible that Shakespeare used both these words at this particular moment? Yes. Is it likely? I say no, but decide for yourself.

All in all, the first two acts are surprisingly devoid of the imagery Shakespeare favored toward the end of his career. And even if I’m right in suspecting Dekker, Theobald has meddled to such a degree that Dekker’s voice has been completely erased.

If the original was Shakespeare’s, then there’s nothing left of him.

As for Arden, the book will probably sell well and that may be reason enough. I’ll purchase the book, though more to read the reasons for its inclusion in Shakespeare’s canon than to read the play.

The case for Middleton

Thanks to some digital tinkering, I was able to rearrange some of Hope’s graphs. Here are the results:

The graphs compared at right (comparing Middleton to Double Falsehood B – Acts III-V) are my own work. Hope states of the Fletcher/DF-B comparison:

…it will be seen that section B shows a strikingly good fit to the Fletcher comparison sample…

Now look at the comparison between Middleton and DFB. You decide. To me, the Middleton sample is an even better fit. And remember, many scholars have commented that Theobald seems to have left the last three acts relatively unmolested. At minimum, Hope’s own study cannot be used to favor Fletcher over Middleton. Even auxiliary “do” evidence meshes acceptably with a Dekker/Middleton collaboration.

Middleton’s Colloquial Contractions

Using MacDonald Jackson’s own criteria (so far as I know them) the evidence for a Middleton ascription is favored yet again. (Note: I found a copy of Jackson’s Studies in Attribution: Middleton and Shakespeare for a relatively (rolls eyes) cheap $54. It’s being shipped from Berlin, Germany (of all places) and if there’s anything that adds or detracts from my assertions, I’ll duly note them. (I should be getting the book within the next three months…)

E’en for even. This wouldn’t be typical for Theobald, but would be for Middleton.

Double Falsehood

Acts 1-2: 1
Acts 3-5: 2

Thomas Dekker

Middleton’s (Chaste Maid in Cheapside)

Fletcher (Philaster)

Fletcher (The Faithful Shepherdess)

For’t

Double Falsehood

Acts 1-2: 0
Acts 3-5: 4

Middleton’s (Chaste Maid in Cheapside)

Fletcher (Philaster)

Fletcher (The Faithful Shepherdess)

Is’t

Double Falsehood

Acts 1-2: 1
Acts 3-5: 2

Middleton’s (Chaste Maid in Cheapside)

Fletcher (Philaster)

Fletcher (The Faithful Shepherdess)

give’t

Double Falsehood

Acts 1-2: 0
Acts 3-5: 1

Middleton’s (Chaste Maid in Cheapside)

Fletcher (Philaster)

Fletcher (The Faithful Shepherdess)

h’as/sh’as

Double Falsehood

Acts 1-2: 1
Acts 3-5: 2

Middleton’s (Chaste Maid in Cheapside)

Fletcher (Philaster)

Fletcher (The Faithful Shepherdess)

to’t

Double Falsehood

Acts 1-2: 1
Acts 3-5: 3

Thomas Middleton

Middleton’s (Chaste Maid in Cheapside)

Fletcher (Philaster)

Fletcher (The Faithful Shepherdess)

on’t

Double Falsehood

Acts 1-2: 1
Acts 3-5: 5

Middleton’s (Chaste Maid in Cheapside)

64 (give or take 2)

Fletcher (Philaster)

Fletcher (The Faithful Shepherdess)

Anyway

In every case, the use of such colloquial contractions increases in the portion usually ascribed to Fletcher. This makes no sense, but it does if the original author were Middleton. (Admittedly, my sampling is probably too small, but that Middleton favored such contractions in comparison to Fletcher is not in dispute). One has to suffer from willful denial not to see the correspondence. Admittedly, the number of contractions is much lower in Double Falsehood (than in Middleton’s unmolested works) but they are there and tellingly similar to what one finds in Timon of Athens (a collaboration between Shakespeare and Middleton). It’s possible that Theobald edited some of them out – but that’s speculation. On the other hand, I find that far more likely than the supposition that he added them.

There’s the evidence.

You decide.

I’m not going to pretend that I’ve made my case. Far from it. But, as a starting point, I don’t think this post is too shabby.

Ultimately, given that Double Falsehood‘s text has been edited and altered by Theobald (if one accepts an actual manuscript behind the play), I can’t see how any individual’s work will settle the matter. One can only offer likelihoods. It is more likely that Dekker wrote the portion ascribed to Shakespeare; and if that’s the case, then it is more likely that his collaborator would have been Middleton. There are no known collaborations between Dekker and Fletcher.

There is one certainty: Whether or not Shakespeare had anything to do with Cardenio, there is no Shakespeare in Double Falsehood.

Double Falsehood • It’s not Shakespeare

March 17, 2010 By upinvermont in Middleton, Thomas, Opinion, Shakespeare, William Tags: Brean Hammond, Brian Vickers, David Lake, Dr. Dodypoll, Elizabethan Collaboration, Fletcher, John, Funeral Elegy, George Peele, MacDonald Jackson, MM Mahood, Nottingham University, Robert Greene, Robert Valenza, Shakespeare Apocrypha, Shakespeare Authorship Clinic, Shakespeare Authorship Questions, The Life of Tymon Of Athens, Ward Elliot 22 Comments

This post has been updated: Double Falsehood • Thomas Dekker & Thomas Middleton?
April 30 2011: I posted one further and third update: Double Falsehood Revisited. See this for my final thoughts and why I’ve come round to Hammond’s opinion.

“Double Falsehood”, said to be the remnants of a long lost collaboration between Fletcher & Shakespeare, is in the news again.

Arden's New Edition

The different write-ups, including by the New York Times, give the impression that this is a recent discovery, but it’s not. Double Falsehood has been considered and reconsidered again, again and again. The latest academic to throw his eggs into the Double Falsehood basket is Brean Hammond of Nottingham University. None of the articles go into any detail and many of them quote the same statement from Hammond:

In a statement, Mr. Hammond said “the early consensus” on “Double Falsehood” was “that Theobald had either forged it or passed it off as written by Shakespeare,” but more recently “a gradual trickle of belief” has “developed into an irresistible flood.”

It’s probably a flood of evidence eerily similar to another flood of circumstantial evidence that surrounded The Funeral Elegy. Donald Foster was the academic who claimed The Funeral Elegy as Shakespeare’s. Just like Arden, the publishers of the Norton Shakespeare decided to include the Funeral Elegy in their complete edition (fully annotated). Since then, Foster has slunk off to ignominy while his various fair-weather friends have been sadly afflicted with amnesia. Norton has quietly removed the Funeral Elegy. Expect the Arden editors to do the same with Double Falsehood.

By the way, way back when the Funeral Elegy was first claimed for Shakespeare, I might have been the very first to identify John Ford as the writer. Yes. Me. Somewhere, buried in Shaksper (I think), is proof. But that’s been a along time ago and my ambition has never been to be a Shakespeare scholar. I was kicked off Shaksper. Why? Because of my sense of humor. I enjoy the granular linguistic and stylistic analyses that prove and disprove authorship and that makes me a good counterfeiter. Back when I was still an upstanding member of Shaksper, I typed in a play called Dr. Dodypoll. No one had a copy of it (and it’s hard to find) but I found it at an obscure Boston library. There was much speculation that Shakespeare had had a hand in writing it (discovering new works of Shakespeare is a past-time for many in the field).

While typing it in, I guessed that the real author was likely Robert Greene (who famously insulted Shakespeare as a plagiarist) or George Peele (I can’t remember now). I remember that the image clusters, if nothing else, were a dead giveaway. But I thought I’d have some fun, so I forged some Shakespeare. Can you find it? Here it is, for the first time in 15 or 20 years:

Leander. My Lord, he fears that you will be angry with him.
Alphonso. You play the villain: wherefore should he fear?
I only proved her virtues for his sake,
And now you talk of anger. Aye me wretch,
That ever I should live to be thus shamed!

Alberdure. Madame, I swear the Lady is my love;
Therefore your highness cannot charge my father
With any wrong to your high worth of her.
Constantine. Sister, you see we utterly mistake
The kind and princely dealing of the Duke:
Therefore without more ceremonious doubts
Lets reconfirm the contract and his love.

Katherine. I warrant you my Lord – the Duke – dissembles.
It is not love doth speak, for such strong terms
Hath ever love. Dear Sister, do but note
The fruit tree giveth not that is not pruned
For nature teacheth us th’extravagance
Of outward show doth sap the inward stock
In substance and of worth. It is love
That like the gentle drop of rain speaks not
Its name unto the earth yet calls from forth
The ground the weary seed. (Nor yet the voice
Of angels can amaze the knotted bud
As doth a single drop of rain from heaven.)
And so true love should do, for that speaks not
That does in deeds what words may never do.

Alphonso. Here on my knees, at the alter of those feet,
I offer up in pure and sacred breath
The true speech of my heart and heart itself.
Require no more if thou be princely born.
And not of rocks or ruthless tigers bred.

Katherine. My Lord, I kindly cry you mercy now,
Ashamed that you should injure your estate
To kneel to me; and vow before these Lords
To make you all amends you can desire.

Flores. Madame, in admiration of your grace
And princely wisdom, and to gratify
The long wished joy done to my Lord the Duke,
I here present your highness with this cup,
Wrought admirably by th’art of spirits,
Of substance fair, more rich than earthly gems,
Whose value no man’s judgment can esteem.

Alphonso. Flores, I’ll interrupt the Duchess thanks
And for the present thou hast given to her
To strengthen her consent to my desires,
I recompense thee with a free release
Of all offenses twixt thyself and me.

Flores. I humbly thank your excellence.
Katherine. But where is now unkind Earl Lassinbergh,
That injures his fair love and makes her wear
This worthless garland? Come, Sir, make amends,
Or we will here award you worthy penance.

Lassinbergh. Madame, since her departure I have done
More hearty penance than heart could wish,
And vow hereafter to live ever hers.

Katherine. Then let us cast aside these forlorn wreaths,
And with our better fortunes change our habits.

Sure enough, there were other academics on the mailing list who spotted the passage right away – only they thought it was by Shakespeare. The excitement was palpable. Because I wasn’t trying to embarrass anyone (I was just having fun) I told everyone about my forgery within the day – unprompted. They were not amused and I was blackballed. End of story.

The point is not that they were dupes (they had no reason to suspect a practical joke and I didn’t give them much time to consider) but that Shakespeare can be faked and that we’re all guilty of seeing what we want to see. The right Shakespearean scholar would have quickly recognized my little passage as a forgery – if only because the grammar is anachronistic. And who are the right Shakespearean scholars? First and foremost is Brian Vickers, author of ‘Counterfeiting’ Shakespeare. He was among the first scholars who persuasively identified John Ford as the author of the Funeral Elegy. If Brian Vickers comes out in favor of Double Falsehood, then that is the time to sit up and take notice. However, I expect that Vickers is sharpening his pencil to a scalpel’s edge (as I write). Expect blood. Other scholars to look for: MM Mahood, author of Shakespeare’s Wordplay, Edward A. Armstrong, author of Shakespeare’s Imagination, and Marina Tarlinskaja, author of Shakespeare’s Verse: Iambic Pentameter and the Poet’s Idiosyncrasies, Ward Elliot (a Professor of Government) and Robert Valenza (a mathematician and statistician), along with MacDonald Jackson and David Lake. These latter scholars were part of the Shakespeare Authorship Clinic who studied the Funeral Elegy and were detailed in Vickers’ aforementioned book.

When any of these scholars come out in favor, then we’ll have something. As it is, the game is only just afoot.

One thing to know: With the exception of the scholars I’ve provided above, Shakespeare Scholars aren’t necessarily good at recognizing Shakespeare! It takes a certain kind of talent and knowledge to recognize Shakespeare – some of it having nothing to do with a degree in literature. It’s 9 parts science and 1 part intuition. Here’s a beautiful example – Oxford by the Numbers (which includes a rejection of Double Falsehood). That’s why you will find a mathematician and statistician among the scholars who can sort out genuine Shakespeare from the Fletchers or the Theobalds.

Just last night, I found an online copy of Double Falsehood and reread it. I’ll format it and reprint it here for those who are curious (within the week). And having read it, I see lots of imitation, but no Shakespeare. I may go into more detail with another post (because I really, really enjoy this kind of murder mystery) but for now, I’ll be brief. First, just because a play had Shakespeare’s name attached to it (as with Cardenio – from which Double Falsehood is supposedly drawn) doesn’t mean Shakespeare actually had anything to do with it (let alone Fletcher). For example:

The First Part of Sir John Oldcastle, 1600, appeared in two editions bearing the words ‘Written by William Shakespeare.’
The Troublesome Reign of King John. The title-page of the edition of 1611 says: “Written by W. Sh.”
The First Part of the Contention betwixt the Two Famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster and The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of Yorke. These plays were reprinted in 1619. The title page claimed they were “written by William Shakespeare, Gent.”
The Merry Devil of Edmonton Printed as being by Shakespeare in 1653
The History of Cardenio ‘A Play by Mr. Fletcher and Shakespeare;’ entered Sept. 9. 1653. It has been suggested that this play is identical with Double Falsehood.
The Second Maiden’s Tragedy was attributed to Shakespeare by Warburton in the 19th Century (I think). Interestingly, The Second Maiden’s Tragedy was recently argued, by Charles Hamilton, to be the actual lost Cardenio. Hamilton’s assertion that the play was a collaboration between Shakespeare and Fletcher has been discounted, but the play may well have been the lost Cardenio and is now generally thought to be a collaboration between Thomas Middleton and John Fletcher (or Middleton’s in its entirety).

This list, by the way, (which is only partial) along with some of the description, comes from The Shakespeare Apocrypha (lest I be accused of plagiarism!). The commentary on The Second Maiden’s Tragedy, properly called The Lady’s Tragedy, is my own. And notice that Cardenio (three manuscripts of which were reputedly in Theobald’s possession) wasn’t identified as Shakespeare’s until almost 4 decades after his death. Given the sheer number of plays whose authors were inadvertently (and deliberately) misidentified during these decades, there’s no reason to believe Cardenio was an exception. (And it wouldn’t be the first time Middleton’s verse was identified as Shakespeare’s or Fletcher’s.)

Shakespeare's Imagination by Edward A. Armstrong

Though Lewis Theobald claimed to have based Double Falsehood on manuscripts, within a week of having produced Double Falsehood, his play was called a hoax and poets like Pope challenged him to produce the manuscripts. Theobald never did. The obvious inference is that Theobald, who was known to have imitated Shakespeare, either never had the manuscripts or knew that the manuscripts would undercut his claim. What man would let his career go down in flames, would let his reputation be destroyed, if all he had to do was produce manuscripts reputedly in his possession? That hasn’t stopped scholars from rationalizing his behavior.

If Theobald did have manuscripts, but didn’t produce them, then it’s probably because he recognized that Fletcher’s collaborator (if we accept that the original was a collaboration and that Fletcher had a hand in the play) was not Shakespeare. Was it better to conceal the manuscripts (thus giving him plausible deniability – no proof of anything) or to reveal that he had forged Shakespeare? He probably decided the former was the lesser of two evils. It’s obvious to anyone that Theobald meddled with the text (imitating Shakespeare), and claiming that he did so to suit contemporary tastes is the charitable interpretation. It’s more likely, given his behavior, that the original manuscripts weren’t Shakespearean enough, that Theobald knew it, and altered the texts accordingly.

Who was the other collaborator (or author of the entire play) if not Shakespeare? Assuming the manuscripts were real, I put my money on Middleton (Thomas Dekker, see my latest post). There are mannerisms in Double Falshood that could be construed as Fletcher’s (Acts III-V), mannerisms that Theobald probably wouldn’t have recognized (but they’re also similar to Middleton’s); and those mannerisms, interestingly, remain (an argument that Theobald really did have manuscripts). For instance, both Middleton and Fletcher used feminine endings (and heavy feminine endings) to a degree that Shakespeare did not. A small example comes from the start of Act III, Scene i.

Jul. Poor Leonora! Treacherous, damn’d |Henriquez!
She bids me fill my Memory with her Danger;
I do, my Leonora; yes, I fill
The Region of my Thought with nothing else;
Lower, she tells me here, that this Affair
Shall yield a Testimony of her Love:
And prays, her Letter may come safe and sudden.
This Pray’r the Heav’ns have heard, and I beseech ’em,
To hear all Pray’rs she makes.

The formulation ’em for them (and as a feminine ending) is one that you will frequently find in Fletcher’s verse (and Middleton’s, though less so). Curiously, the passages which one might ascribe to Fletcher (if the play was a collaboration and if one grants that Theobald was working from manuscripts) remain relatively unmolested by Theobald. Either that or Theobald was better at forging Fletcher (or Middleton) than Shakespeare (though it’s unlikely that he would have been capable of such fine grained forgery). Also, the congenial metrical flow more nearly matches a Fletcher or Middleton than anything Shakespeare would have written so late in his career (the period when he was collaborating with Fletcher).

The part of the play, however, that is thought to be originally by Shakespeare, strikes me as having Middleton’s genetics with a heavy dose of pseudo-Shakespearean meddling (in Italics) by Theobald – from Act I Scene ii:

Jul. I do not see that Fervour in the Maid,
Which Youth and Love should kindle. She consents,
As ’twere to feed without an Appetite;
Tells me, She is content; and plays the Coy one,
Like Those that subtly make their Words their Ward,
Keeping Address at Distance. This Affection
Is such a feign’d One, as will break untouch’d;
Dye frosty, e’er it can be thaw’d; while mine,
Like to a Clime beneath Hyperion’s Eye,
Burns with one constant Heat. I’ll strait go to her;
Pray her to regard my Honour: but She greets me.–

Enter Leonora, and Maid.

See, how her Beauty doth inrich the Place!
O, add the Musick of thy charming Tongue,
Sweet as the Lark that wakens up the Morn ,
And make me think it Paradise indeed.
I was about to seek thee, Leonora,
And chide thy Coldness, Love.

First of all, notice the repetition of Coy one and feigned One – as if the poet were short of imaginative faculties (hung up on one aspect of Shakespeare’s style). In fact, similar “Shakespearean” formulations will show up again and again [Act 1 Scene iii]:

Th’ Obscureness of her Birth
Cannot eclipse the Lustre of her Eyes,
Which make her all One Light

The phrase Charming Tongue is not one that Shakespeare would have used so late in his career. This formulation only appears once in his entire output (in Titus Andronicus), “charming eyes”, and might well have been Robert Greene’s George Peele’s rather than Shakespeare’s. However, the

Shakespeare's Verse by Marlina Tarlinskaja

phrase is all too typical of the kind of fluff that was being produced by poets in Theobald’s day. The phrase “wakens up the Morn” gives away Theobald’s hand. Why? The phrase never appears in Shakespeare because the formulation wake up is anachronistic. In short, the reputedly Shakespearean passages smack of 18th Century revisionism – what an 18th century poetaster would have thought that Shakespeare sounded like. The claim that some words are unique to Shakespeare is bogus. After all, what else(!) would one expect form an 18th century forger trying to imitate Shakespeare?

The real test is in the meter. That’s something Theobald did not have the wit to imitate. Granted, if Theobald was working from manuscripts, he’s altered the meter, but even so, it smacks of Middleton. Shakespeare’s late metrical and syntactic style is very different from Theobald’s passages (I’ll save that comparison for a later post). Bare in mind, too, that Middleton was himself a natural forger of Shakespeare! Middleton, when he made the effort, could write top-notch poetry in the Shakespearean vein. Middleton, who worked and collaborated with Shakespeare, was heavily influenced by and admired the elder poet – another reason for Shakespearean echoes. [Note: March 25, 2010: While my opinions concerning Middleton remain unchanged, I find that the evidence argues for his authorship of Acts III-V, and Thomas Dekker’s authorship of Acts I & 2]

Here is a passage of Middleton (The Widdow: Act 3 Scene 2):

Ansaldo

I ha’ got myself unbound yet. Merciless villains!
I never felt such hardness since life dwelt in me.
‘Tis for my sins. That light in yonder window —
That was my only comfort in the woods,
Which oft the trembling of a leaf would lose me–
Has brought me thus far; yet I cannot hope
For succour in this plight: the world’s so pitiless,
And everyone will fear or doubt me now.
To knock will be too bold; I’ll to the gate
And listen if I can hear any stirring.

Enter Francisco [aloof]

Was ever man so crossed? — No, ’tis but sweat, sure,
Or the dew dropping from the leaves above me;
I thought ‘t’ad bled again. These wenching businesses
Are strange unlucky things and fatal fooleries;
No mar’l so many gallants die ere thirty.
‘Tis able to vex out a man’s heart in five year,
The crosses that belong to’t: first, arrested –
That set me back two mangy hours at least;
Yet that’s a thing my heat could have forgiv’n,
Because arresting, in what kind soever,
Is a most gentleman-like affliction.
But here, within a mile o’th’town, forsooth,
And two mile off this place, where a man’s oath
Might ha’ been taken for his own security,
And his thoughts brisk and set upon the business,
To light upon a roguy flight of thieves —
Pox on ’em! Here’s the length of one of their whittles.
But one of my dear rascals I pursued so
The jail has him, and he shall bring out’s fellows.
Had ever young man’s love such crooked fortune?

Did you notice Middleton’s echo of Romeo and Juliet – “That light in yonder window“? Compare “Dye frosty“, in Double Falsehood, with Middleton’s “roguy flight”. The trick of coining adjectives (and adverbs) by attaching the -y ending wasn’t a neologistic device that Shakespeare favored. That device grew in favor shortly after his death (adopted by the likes of Middleton). It later ruined scads and scads of 18th century poems and finally died a climactic and ugly death during the start of the 19th century. One should fully expect to see such language if Theobald were to revise Middleton (or Fletcher).

Here’s another interesting comparison (both passages that close scenes) [Double Falsehood: Act 1 Scene ii]:

What must I do? — But That’s not worth my Thought:
I will commend to Hazard all the Time
That I shall spend hereafter: Farewel, my Father,
Whom I’ll no more offend: and Men, adieu,
Whom I’ll no more believe: and Maids, adieu,
Whom I’ll no longer shame. The Way I go,
As yet I know not. — Sorrow be my Guide.

Now compare this habit of thought to the following [The Life of Tymon of Athens: Scene 2]:

We make ourselves fools to disport ourselves,
Upon whose age we void it up again
With poisonous spite and envy.
Who lives that’s not depraved or depraves?
Who dies that bears not one spurn to their graves
Of their friend’s gift?
I should fear those that dance before me now
Would one day stamp upon me. ‘T’as been done.
Men shut their doors against a setting sun.

Timon is by Shakespeare, says you? No, it was a collaboration between Middleton and Shakespeare. The passage above is generally agreed to be by Middleton and can be found in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works.

But, it’s just one comparison and if the case is going to be made for Middleton, it has to be one among many.

Anyway, these few examples don’t add up to an argument, but they give you an idea of the way Double Falsehood might be examined. If, in the long run, the conjecture is that the play was written by Fletcher and Middleton (a first for these two playwrights who were not known to have collaborated), you heard it here first (by gad). That said, it’s also possible that the entirety of the play was written by Fletcher alone, by Middleton alone [Edit: or, as the evidence now suggests, by Dekker and Middleton]. Other plays identified as being by Beaumont & Fletcher, for example, have since been attributed to Middleton. Along with Shakespeare, Fletcher might have had nothing to do with the play. [Edit: Also interesting to note, Dekker’s work has been misidentified as Shakespeare’s in other plays.]

In the meantime, I look forward to hearing from Brian Vickers.

Addendum: After posting this, I googled Dr. Dodypoll. Only to discover that my poetry was published eight years ago! (I wrote a note to the webmaster. I hope he keeps my forgery with an updated explanation, but if not, below is how it appeared – and may still.)

And to think, all this time I’ve been telling people that I’ve never been published. Turns out… I was published in 1600!

Iambic Pentameter (Variants & Long Lines – II) or Tho. Middleton, his Variants, Departures & Hexameters

December 19, 2008 By upinvermont in About Iambic Pentameter, Blank Verse, Dramatic Verse, Guides, Iambic Pentameter, Iambic Pentameter (Variants-II), Meter, Middleton, Thomas, Poetry, Syncope Tags: A Game at Chess, Best Poetry Blog, Better Poetry Blog, drama, elision, Good Poetry Blog, Great Poet, Great Poetry Blog, Great Poets, headless line, heavy feminine ending, hexameter, Jacobean, phyrric, Scansion, spondaic, Thomas Middleton, triple ending, William Shakespeare, Wit at Several Weapons 4 Comments

This is the fourth and final post in a series on scanning Iambic Pentameter – a follow up to my first post on Iambic Pentameter Variants. This post is the deep end. It draws together what has already been discussed, shows how to apply it to some gnarly Iambic Pentameter (as tough as it gets), and adds some final variants, including Long Lines, which haven’t already been discussed. For a look at the other posts, click on the Categories Widget under About: Iambic Pentameter.

[January 11, 2009 – I did a little editing for the sake of clarity and I corrected some typos. If something seems confusing or wrong, let me know.]

This post takes a look at the first 75 lines of a play by Thomas Middleton, a contemporary and co-author of some of Shakespeare’s plays. Middleton’s Blank Verse seems a good place to start if only because it demonstrates so many variants. I thought that showing how I read the verse (which is just my take on it) might be helpful to others.

The material comes from Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works. I opened the book at random to a play called Wit at Several Weapons. I had never heard of it (like much of the material in the book). Middleton is a fine dramatist (perhaps the greatest after Shakespeare) and while his gifts don’t compare to the sustained rhetoric and poetry of Shakespeare, Marlowe or even Webster, his poetry can strike like lightning – brief but brilliant. From his most famous play, A Game at Chess, comes the lovely line: “I’m taken like a blackbird/ In the great snow.”

So far, Wit at Several Weapons is a bawdy, sexual, somewhat sinister play – not the kind of subject matter that lends itself to poetic transcendence. Describing women, Middleton (in the character of the Old Knight), writes: “They must be wooed a hundred several ways,/ Before you obtain the right way in a woman:/ ‘Tis an odd creature, full of creeks and windings,/ The serpent has not more.”

And that’s about as poetic as the play gets – the rest, poetically, is boiler plate at best.

What is more interesting, from a purely aesthetic standpoint, is just how free Middleton is with Iambic Pentameter. He was a Jacobean playwright and he, along with other Jacobean playwrights, took Iambic Pentameter to the breaking point (and beyond) – likewise Webster and Massinger. The rigor of blank verse as much as dissolves with these poets. The verse form wasn’t to see such experimentation again for almost 300 years – the 20th Century.

First, here is the opening of the play, uninterrupted. Or, you can skip this and get on with the analysis.

The First 75 Lines

WittyPate

Sir, I’m no boy, I’m deep in one-and-twenty,
The second year’s approaching.

Old Knight

A fine time
If e’er he mean to make account of any.

WittyPate

Wits, sir?

Old Knight

Ay, wits, sir; if it be so strange to thee
I’m sorry I spent that time to get a fool,
I might have employed my pains a great deal better.
Thou know’st all that I have I ha’ got by my wits,
And yet to see how urgent thou art too;
It grieves me thou art so degenerate
To trouble me for means; I never offered it
My parents from a schoolboy; past nineteen once
(See what these times are grown too!), before twenty
I rushed into the world, which is indeed
Much like the art of swimming; he that will attain to’t
Must fall plump, and duck himself at first,
And that will make him hardy and adventurous
And not stand putting in one foot, and shiver,
And then draw t’other after, like a quake-buttock;
Well he may make a paddler i’ the world,
From hand to mouth, but never a brave swimmer,
Borne up by th’ chin, as I bore up myself
With my strong industry that never failed me;
For he that lies borne up with patrimonies
Looks like a long great ass that swims with bladders:
Come but one prick of adverse fortune to him
He sinks, because he never tried to swim,
When wit plays with the billows that choked him.

WittyPate

Why, is it not a fashion for a father, sir,
Out of his yearly thousands to allow
His only son a competent brace of hundreds,
Or such a toy?

Yes, if he mean to spoil him
Or mar his wits he may, but never I.
This is my humour, sir, which you’ll find constant;
I love wit so well, because I live by’t,
That I’ll give no man power out of my means to hurt it,
And that’s a kind of gratitude to my raiser,
Which great ones oft forget. I admire much
This age’s dullness. When I scarce writ man,
The first degree that e’er I took in thriving,
I lay intelligencer close for wenching,
Could give this lord or knight a true certificate
Of all the maidenheads extant; how many lay
‘Mongst chambermaids, how many ‘mongst Exchange wenches
(Though never many there, I must confess,
They have a trick to utter ware so fast);
I knew which lady had a mind to fall,
Which gentlewoman new divorced, which tradesman breaking,
The price of every sinner to a hair
And where to raise each price; which were the termers
That would give velvet petticoats, tissue gowns,
Which pieces, angels, suppers, and half-crowns:
I knew how to match and make my market,
Could give intelligence where the pox lay ledger,
And then to see the lechers shift a point,
‘Twas sport and profit too; how they would shun
Their adored mistress’ chambers, and run fearfully
Like rats from burning houses! So brought I
My clients o’ the game still safe together,
And noble gamesters loved me, and I felt it:
Give me a man that lives by his wits, say I,
And never left a groat, there’s the true gallant.
When I grew somewhat pursy, I grew then
In men’s opinions too, and confidences;
They put things called executorships upon me,
The charge of orphans, little senseless creatures,
Whom in their childhoods I bound forth to feltmakers,
To make ’em lose and work away their gentry,
Disguise their tender nature with hard custom,
So wrought ’em out in time: there I risse ungently;
Nor do I fear to discourse this unto thee,
I’m armed at all points against treachery.
I hold my humour firm; if I can see thee thrive by thy wits while I live, I shall have the more courage to trust thee with my lands when I die; if not, the next best wit I can hear of carries ’em: for since in my time and knowledge so many rich children of the City conclude in beggary, I’d rather make a wise stranger my executor than a foolish son my heir, and to have my lands called after my wit, thou after my name; and that’s my nature.

The First 75 Lines & Patrick Gillespie: His Interjections

Couple things needing to be said: I wasn’t alive 400 years ago. I don’t know how actors actually spoke their lines or how the Dramatists actually conceived of meter. Nobody has to agree with me. This is just how I have learned to read blank verse, both by reading other scholars on the subject and my own efforts to master the form. Also, I don’t want to give the impression that iambic pentameter overrules any other consideration. Not everything should or needs to be fitted to the iambic pattern. It’s art and instinct.

WittyPate

Sir, I’m no boy, I’m deep in one-and-twenty,
The second year’s approaching.

Old Knight

A fine time

So far, the lines are easily identifiable as Iambic Pentameter. The first line is 11 syllables, ending with a feminine ending (a very common variant), the second is divided at the fourth foot between the two speakers: The second year’s approaching / A fine time. But the next line seems to out & out break with the Iambic Pentameter pattern:

For a youth to live by his wits, then, I should think,

This is a 12 syllable line; but is it hexameter and is it iambic hexameter? Hexameter lines, or long lines, are infrequent but accepted departures from the iambic pentameter pattern in blank verse. They can be found in Shakespeare & become more frequent after him. However, one way to tell if one is dealing with a hexameter line is to count metrical feet. If one simply counts off a foot at every two syllables, then one ends up with this:

for-a-youth-to-live-by-his-wits-trochaic

This would be a Hexameter line, but with too many variant feet to be called Iambic; and would break completely with the Iambic Pentameter pattern of blank verse. The scansion would be very doubtful given the expectations of the time. The division of the feet also works against the phrasing – and this is where scansion is part art and part science. As I mentioned in my previous post, especially as concerns anapests, one sometimes allows the phrasing to define the metrical foot. So, with that in mind, we end up with:

for-a-youth-to-live-by-his-wits-anapestic

This variation is not inconceivable in Jacobean Blank Verse, as far as variants go, but two anapests in a single line is unlikely. One of the advantages to the regularity of Iambic Pentameter, in Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, is that it made the script easier for actors to remember. And that was important. They were frequently acting several different plays during a given week. So, while the line above doesn’t bare the mark of Elision or Eclipsis (as it might have just ten years earlier) it’s a safe bet that the line was probably pronounced as though the anapests were elided.

for-a-youth-to-live-by-his-wits-iambic

In this case, the line is felt, rhythmically, like Iambic Pentameter. The phrase For a is spoken quickly, the a almost disappearing. In the third foot, by his, becomes by’s wits. The whole line, in this wise, has the effect of being spoken quickly or trippingly, as Shakespeare might have said. That said, the line will still have an anapestic ring to it. Poets from this period were content to introduce anapests that could be elided. The effect is a kind of grey area. They were paying lip service to the iambic pattern without being slavish. In the hands of the Jacobean poets, though, such grey areas were frequently overplayed, as in the line above.

If e’er he mean to make account of any.

Notice that ever is elided to read e’er through syncope (the removal of a letter or syllable from the middle of a word) [Sister Miriam Joseph: Shakespeare’s Use of the Arts of Language p. 52]. In this case, either the copyist or Middleton chose to deliberately spell out the elision and, by extension, his concern that the Iambic rhythm be maintained. (And this is the curious feature of this and the play in general. There’s a kind of schizophrenic attentiveness to the meter. On the one hand, as with the line before this one, Middleton or the copyist doesn’t seem concerned with the meter or with indicating where the actors should elide words. Should we care about the meter? Then, with the very next line, Middleton or the copyist elides ever. Does he or doesn’t he care? Here’s my theory:

The iambic meter mattered.

However, Middleton and his contemporaries were frequently writing with great haste and they weren’t thinking of their works as poems to be read by the public. 1.) These plays were to be performed by actors drenched in the practice of performing blank verse – some having performed for and with Shakespeare and Marlowe. Middleton probably didn’t find it necessary to spell out every instance of elision, knowing the actors would “normalize” the lines. 2.) He may have simply overlooked such indications in the haste of writing. 3.) Few plays from this period survive in the author’s original hand. Texts were frequently altered by copyists if only because they couldn’t read the Dramatist’s hand writing.

All these may sound like rationalizations, but the play to remember is Marlowe’s Tamburlaine. This play electrified the public and other Dramatists not just for its subject matter – the drama – but for the genius of its blank verse. The verse form was part and parcel of the drama and dramatists were, in part, appraised by their use of it. These were heady times for the English language.

WittyPate

Wits, sir?

Old Knight

Ay, wits, sir; if it be so strange to thee
I’m sorry I spent that time to get a fool,

The phrase sorry I spent can be elided so that the y and I combine if spoken quickly, somewhat maintaining the Iambic beat.

I might have employed my pains a great deal better.

This line can be elided to read something like: I might ha’employed my pains… (You might think this is a stretch, but Middleton employs this very elision in the next line.)

Thou know’st all that I have I ha’ got by my wits,

This is a deceptively difficult line to scan because of our modern habits of speech. In this case, the subject matter of the Old Knight’s speech gives us a clue. Namely, he’s talking about himself. So, the line could be scanned as follows:

all-that-i-have

George Wright calls this a heavy feminine ending (the final extra syllable in the fifth foot being an intermediate or strong stress). I would be more apt to call it a double closing, (which would then relate it to the double onset – which is what Wright calls an anapestic first foot or anacrusis). But calling the fifth foot in the line above a heavy feminine ending makes sense too (and in the end, it just doesn’t matter). Middleton and other Jacobean poets were increasingly fond of the heavy feminine ending while Shakespeare used it with considerable restraint. The ending allows for greater flexibility but also threatens the rhythm of blank verse. It’s one of the reasons the verse of the Jacobean theater sounds more diffuse, less disciplined and memorable than the earlier verse – (though perhaps only in my opinion).

And yet to see how urgent thou art too;
It grieves me thou art so degenerate

These two lines firmly reestablish the Iambic Pentameter pattern by precluding the need for elipsis. So far, it has been possible to read most of the lines within an iambic and pentameter pattern . But now comes the next line.

To trouble me for means; I never offered it

This is the first line which seems to defy elision. Using syncope, one might be able to elide never to ne’er, but that creates an anapest.

to-trouble-anapestic

This is an acceptable variant and an acceptable scansion, but I’m more inclined to think that we have our first hexameter line.

to-trouble-hexameter

In this case, knowing to what degree anapests were avoided, it makes more sense to me that Middleton would opt to preserve the iambic rhythm – though it makes the line Iambic Hexameter rather than Iambic Pentameter.

My parents from a schoolboy; past nineteen once

I read the line above is an eleven syllable line with a heavy feminine ending.

(See what these times are grown too!), before twenty
I rushed into the world, which is indeed
Much like the art of swimming; he that will attain to’t

And this line beginning Much like is an archly variant line. When I first read it I was completely baffled. I think, though, that it is still an acceptable variant within the larger Iambic Pentameter passage – if only by the slimmest of margins and only on a – once every hundred lines – basis. But that’s just my aesthetic opinion. The verdict? I think it’s a hexameter line with a heavy feminine ending. Middleton can get away with it, perhaps, because the hexameter line is an accepted variant (to judge by the writing of contemporaneous playwrights) and because the heavy feminine ending was, by that time, accepted. Here is how I scan it.

hexameter reading of attain to't

Notice the elision of to it to to’t, as if Middleton knew he was getting away with something. Now this is stretching the limits – expecting an ostensibly 14 syllable line to be an acceptable deviation from a 10 syllable iambic pentameter pattern! Yet, there you have it. The great master himself, William Shakespeare, sometimes peppered his blank verse with hexameter lines. Here is the precedent (taken from Shakespeare’s Metrical Art, Page 147).

How dares thy harsh rude tongue sound this unpleasing news? (Richard II, 3.4.74)

Fleeter than arrows, bullets, wind, thought, swifter things (Love’s Labor’s Lost 5.2.261)

It’s worth stressing that not all metrists accept Hexameter lines as an allowable variant. Some metrists try to regularize all lines so that they fit the iambic pentameter grid. But I don’t see how it can be done in all cases and I tend not to be dogmatic but pragmatic. I can’t see how any metrist could possibly regularize Middleton’s line. I find it easier to believe, given the practice of their day, that hexameters were understood as a “legal” variant.

Must fall plump, and duck himself at first,

The line above is missing an unstressed syllable in the first foot – commonly called a headless line.

headless-line

And that will make him hardy and adventurous
And not stand putting in one foot, and shiver,

The two lines above both end with feminine endings.

And then draw t’other after, like a quake-buttock;

This is another odd line. The iambic pentameter of the blank verse is at the breaking point. I read the line as having a heavy feminine ending – buttock was probably pronounced like butt’ck, syncope reducing a two syllable word to, essentially, one.

Well he may make a paddler i’ the world,
From hand to mouth, but never a brave swimmer,

The line above works as long as one doesn’t put too much stress on brave. The fourth foot would be phyrric and the last foot another feminine ending. Thus:

The two lines, more firmly iambic pentameter, help re-establish the, up to now, heavily varying meter.

Borne up by th’ chin, as I bore up myself

The line above is firmly iambic with the elision of by th’chin to b’th’chin. If you think this is extreme, compare it to Shakespeare: I had rather be set quick i’th’earth. Such elision was normal practice at the time and reflects a syllabic ambiguity which poets of the day seemed to take for granted. Many hypermetrical syllables can be elided in this fashion and apparently were.

With my strong industry that never failed me;
For he that lies borne up with patrimonies
Looks like a long great ass that swims with bladders:
Come but one prick of adverse fortune to him

All the lines above are firmly iambic with feminine endings.

He sinks, because he never tried to swim,
When wit plays with the billows that choked him.

I read the last line as having a phyrric in the fourth foot and a spondaic in the fifth. All in all, these last six lines have re-established the iambic pentameter pattern.

WittyPate

Why, is it not a fashion for a father, sir,

I read this line as having what is called a triple ending – when two unstressesed syllables follow the final stressed syllable of the fifth foot: essentially a feminine ending with an extra unstressed syllable. Thus:

triple-ending

There are also examples of triple endings in Shakespeare.

Out of his yearly thousands to allow
His only son a competent brace of hundreds,

In the line above, syncope reduces competent to comp’tent, mainting a strong iambic rhythm.

Or such a toy?

Old Knight

Yes, if he mean to spoil him
Or mar his wits he may, but never I.
This is my humour, sir, which you’ll find constant;
I love wit so well, because I live by’t,

I read the line above as being headless with a strong feminine ending. An acceptable variant after four strongly iambic pentameter lines.

That I’ll give no man power out of my means to hurt it,

The line above reads like a 14 syllable line by modern standards! However, according to the practice of the day, power can be read (as now) as having one syllable, while out of my could be elided to something like out’o’my means. This would make the line standard iambic pentameter with a feminine ending. It might scan as follows:

out-of-my-means-iambic-reading

Another possibility would be to give power two syllables, making the line hexameter with a feminine ending. I personally find this latter reading more believable:

out-of-my-means-hexameter-reading

This elides of my to o’my – such that the preposition of almost disappears. This is more easily within the practicable elision of the day.

And that’s a kind of gratitude to my raiser,

Gratitude was probably pronounced grat’tude, maintaing the iambic meter with a feminine ending.

Which great ones oft forget. I admire much
This age’s dullness. When I scarce writ man,
The first degree that e’er I took in thriving,
I lay intelligencer close for wenching,
Could give this lord or knight a true certificate

Certificate can be read as certif’cate, making the ending feminine, or the line can be treated as having a triple ending. So far, though, another long stretch of Iambic Pentameter.

Of all the maidenheads extant; how many lay

To me, the line above is most easily read as a Hexameter line.

Mongst chambermaids, how many ‘mongst Exchange wenches

I read the line above as another line with a triple ending. Thus:

exchange-wenches-triple-ending

(Though never many there, I must confess,
They have a trick to utter ware so fast);
I knew which lady had a mind to fall,

The three lines above, perfectly iambic, reestablish the meter.

Which gentlewoman new divorced, which tradesman breaking,

This is an interesting line. It’s probably easiest read as another Hexameter (with a feminine ending). If one is determined to regularize the line, one might use sycnope to quickly slur the last three syllables of gentlewomen (such that, in effect, the word is reduced to two syllables).

The price of every sinner to a hair
And where to raise each price; which were the termers
That would give velvet petticoats, tissue gowns,

Petticoats was probably pronounced Pett’coats, maintaining the Iambic rhythm.

Which pieces, angels, suppers, and half-crowns:
I knew how to match and make my market,

The line above is headless, the stress on I. (Remember, the Old Knight is bragging about himself.) Thus:

i-knew-how-headless-reading

Understanding the rules and standards of the day, the reading above is far more likely than an anapestic reading:

i-knew-how-anapestic-reading

Such a reading as above would be to bring a 21rst Century sensibility to a 17th Century aesthetic.

Could give intelligence where the pox lay ledger,

Intelligence was most likely pronounced intell’gence, again maintaining the iambic line.

And then to see the lechers shift a point,
‘Twas sport and profit too; how they would shun
Their adored mistress’ chambers, and run fearfully

Fearfully could be read as fearf’lly, a feminine ending, or as a triple ending. Either would be acceptable. Frequent triple endings were certainly more frequent among Jacobean playwrights.

Like rats from burning houses! So brought I
My clients o’ the game still safe together,
And noble gamesters loved me, and I felt it:
Give me a man that lives by his wits, say I,

By his wits was probably elided to read by’s wits – maintaining the iambic pattern.

And never left a groat, there’s the true gallant.
When I grew somewhat pursy, I grew then
In men’s opinions too, and confidences;
They put things called executorships upon me,

Executorships was probably pronounced exec’torships, making the line iambic pentameter with a feminine ending.

The charge of orphans, little senseless creatures,
Whom in their childhoods I bound forth to feltmakers,

Reading the line above as an Iambic Pentameter line with a triple ending.

To make ’em lose and work away their gentry,
Disguise their tender nature with hard custom,
So wrought ’em out in time: there I risse ungently;

Risse means rose. The line is hard to read. Most likely, there I can be elided:

there-i-risse-elision

Another possibility is to treat the colon as a midline break (which is what it is in either case) and the phrase there I risse as being a kind of double onset for the next phrase (there I being two unstressed syllables before risse). Remember, a double onset is when an iambic pentameter line begins with an extra unstressed syllable: Not a word, a word, we stand upon our manners (Wright P. 170). This would be, in effect, a reverse of the Epic Caesuras, a very common feature in Shakespeare’s works. For example:

seven-ages-epic-caesuras

This is from As You Like It 2.7.43. Notice the extra unstressed syllable at the midline break.

Nor do I fear to discourse this unto thee,
I’m armed at all points against treachery.

It’s hard to regularize these last two lines. Even in Jacobean England, I doubt that they would have acted the lines as follows:

final-couplet

I’ll be blunt. They’re clumsy. They’re bad lines. The second line could be read as having two anapests – at all points | against treach |. But this isn’t any less clumsy by the standards of blank verse. The lines were ultimately written for the rhyme of thee and treachery. It was traditional, sometimes, to signal the end of a soliloquy or extended speech with a rhyming couplet, but the rhyme, in this case, is poorly executed and not a true rhyme. This may not be a sign of Middleton’s incompetence. It may simply be haste. (Dramatists in these days weren’t writing for posterity but for money – and new plays were needed fast, fast, fast!)

The clumsy meter and rhyme could also reflect on the character of the Knight (although I always doubt these sorts of readings; but it’s possible). After all, the Old Knight is a blow hard and just as he speaks these last two lines he collapses into prose – a curious effect and not often seen mid-speech in the theater of the day. It were as if the old blowhard simply gave up on the pretense of blank verse, exhausted by it, falling into the matter-of-fact discourse of prose – (similar to the rapid fire list of side-effects at the end of a drug commercial).

All in all, I would have to say that Middleton’s blank verse, at least in this opening act, is only just passable. The frequent variants and long lines weaken the overall pattern, sapping it of its vigor and rigorousness. The enjambment and end-stopping is varied, more so than with many of our modern “formalist” poets, but the effect is diluted by the frequent feminine and triple endings. It’s not good blank verse but it’s blank verse as the Jacobeans practiced it.

The passage demonstrates the wild side of Jacobean Blank Verse.