Percy Allen noted that the 10-line "To the Reader" poem echoes the 49th stanza of VENVS AND ADONIS: Look, when a painter would surpass the life In limning out a well-proportion'd steed, His art with nature's workmanship at strife, As if the dead the living should exceed; So did this horse excel a common one In shape, in courage, colour, pace, and bone. This Figure, that thou here seest put, It was for gentle Shakespeare cut; Wherein the Grauer had a strife with Nature, to out-doo the life: O, could he haue but drawne his wit As well in brasse, as he hath hit His face; the Print would then surpasse All, that vvas euer vvrit in brasse. But, since he cannot, Reader, looke Not on his Picture, but his Booke. The First Folio is a collection of the Shakespeare plays, and thus does not include VENVS AND ADONIS or LUCRECE, or the SONNETS & A LOVER'S COMPLAINT. Jonson had to have been relying on the Readers' awareness of those earlier works -- or, of VENUS at least -- in order to understand his allusion to that telling stanza. A "graver" and a "painter" do essentially the same thing, in that they create artistic representations of some living subject -- be it a HORSE painted by a painter, or a MAN whose image is 'cut' by a Graver (or Engraver) -- to be viewed by the public in an art gallery or on a printed page. Both poems contrast the artist with 'nature'/'Nature' (which created both the Horse in V&A and 'Shakespeare' in B.I.'s poem), the 'painter' attempting to 'surpass' the life (i.e. the living horse), his painting 'exceed'-ing the subject of his workmanship, and the 'Grauer' attempting also to 'surpasse' by 'out-doo'-ing the life of 'Shakespeare'. Both poems rhyme 'life' with 'strife' -- both reference an artist being at strife with Nature. There can be no doubt that Jonson was deliberately echoing this V&A stanza, inviting us to compare the true 'gentle Shakespeare' with the 'Figure' which is meant to represent him in brass by referring back to the "well-proportion'd steed' that did "excel a common one" -- the word 'gentle' here meaning 'Noble' (as Roger mentions), AS OPPOSED TO 'common'. Shakspere was the commoner from Stratford -- and 'Shakespeare', by implication, was a Nobleman who -- by definition -- excels, or ranks higher than, a fellow from the lower classes. And that nobleman's name, indeed, was Edward de Vere.
@@rstritmatter You had plenty on your plate, so don't sweat it! I thoroughly enjoyed your presentation as-is. We shall soon be seeing all the out-of-print works of Percy Allen return to print, thanks to the efforts of James Warren, so the V&A stanza I've cited will become more widely known amongst Oxfordians and -- it is to be hoped -- amongst Stratfordians and all the non-Oxfordian Non-Stratfordians out there. I know others have pointed this out, but it should be noted that not only does this 10-line poem have 40 metrical feet, but it also contains 17 capital letters -- though it should have had 18 of them, in that line 4 starts with "with" instead of "With" -- the 1st letter of the 1st word in a line of poetry is supposed to be capitalized, as all the other 9 lines are, making line 4 stand out as a 'mistake'. Aside from the capital 'S' in the name 'Shakespeare', the other capitalizations used for the words 'Figure', 'Grauer', 'Nature', 'Print', 'Reader', 'Picture', and 'Booke', could all have been spelled with lower case letters and been acceptable. The typographer seems to have purposely used a total of 17 capital letters -- calling attention to that number by deliberately starting line 4 incorrectly with that lower case 'w'. I'm sure Alexander Waugh is already aware of this poem's inclusion of the tell-tale numbers '17' and '40'. In fact, I've probably heard him mention this in one of his many excellent videos. I can hardly wait to see the Shakespeare Allusion Book you two have been working on! It's my understanding that it is to be in print maybe sometime later this year...?
Fantastic presentation, that was fascinating. Regarding Trithemius's Steganographia, I remember there was a letter from John Dee to William Cecil, about Dee being excited to have found a copy of the book in the Low Countries to bring back to England. (Of course I'm imaging that Jonson ended up with Dee's copy!) One thought I had: maybe the key for choosing which feet of the poem to select would be a little more persuasive if it was presented as something like "count to the 11th and 9th feet of the poem 2 times"? At first I was wondering why just use the value of the "I" and the combined values of the letters, why isn't the value of the "B" used? When I saw that the poem is composed of two sections of twenty feet, that made sense to me. Amazing that this poem has forty feet! Keep up the great work, can't wait to hear more about Jonson and his work.
Interesting record about that Trithemius book. I will try your wording for the calculation in my next talk on this, which will be for a roomful of cryptographers -- but I must work through the original text as the first encounter with the idea, since I want no part in the fiction that I figured this out. That's my strength in this case. I saw that someone else had a really fascinating idea that had been long overlooked and seemed to have a profound bearing on a subject in which I had an interest. It has taken along many intriguing byways. . . . glad to have company along the road. Jonson, it turns out, is even more interesting to Oxfordians than all but the most committed Jonson scholars. It turns out the Oxfordians have a lot of answers to questions they have had but dared not ask out loud. The way they've waltzed around that epigram and its devious wording (which they know full well) is a sight to behold. But Jonson is full such sleights, as the best Jonson scholars (Dutton et al.) know full well.
Jonson was posthumously associated with the mythological figure Virbius. Given that this figure involves the idea of doubling, I guess it is possible that those who associated Virbius with Jonson were evoking (amongst other things) Jonson’s shapes within shapes notion.
Wonderfully interesting and informative thank you. The events surrounding Elizabeth Stuart and her husband Frederick V Elector Palatine of Heidelberg when they moved briefly to Prague in 1619 and left in haste in 1620 may account for the timing of the Stratford monument and of the First Folio. Given their love of theatre it is possible that they were also grand possessors of many of the hitherto unpublished plays. Heidelberg castle fell in September 1622. General Horace Vere was then stationed at nearby Mannheim with an expeditionary force. It is possibly not the failure of the Spanish match so much as the reason for its failure that is relevant here.
Thank you for this excellent and informed commentary that captures so much relevant context in few words. I agree, they should also be considered as probable "grand possessors" of the MS.
I thoroughly enjoyed this presentation. Others may have noted this, but the body of the To the Reader poem has 17 capital letters. The 17th word from the end of the poem is "ever." As you point out, there are 40 feet in the poem. So, in keeping with the rule of threes, there may be two more 40s and one more 17! 🤔
Wonderful lecture, thanks. 56:20 I recommend E. J. Moeran's beatiful setting of Nashe's poem, especially the rendition by the National Chamber Choir of Ireland.
Great presentation, Roger. A quick, small edit - your slide of the two "noble Henries" has the date circa 1523, but should be 1623. This is great background on the FF!
Wonderful presentation, thank you. (Im only a third of the way through, but wanted to share that the book "Triumphal forms; structural patterns in Elizabethan poetry" by Fowler (which I think is on Archive) provides some fascinating insights into the literature, especially poetry, of the Elizabethan period.
Just think, I could go to university to learn about this nonsense and end up with a huge debt and be largely unemployable. All this knowledge can be found for free on the internet or for the price of a few secondhand books. Better to become an autodidact and avoid attending tedious lectures at 9 am and ending up with a worthless English degree.
Please bear in mind that this video was brought to you in considerable measure by Coppin State University. Also, English degrees are definitely not worthless. But I do understand your sentiment given the bad reputation English departments have given to themselves through decades of anti-intellectual hostility to the authorship inquiry. It is now beginning to break down.
Agree to a large extent, though the friends. interactions, and discussions found in receiving a few degrees are themselves worthy of some value. Those experiences cannot be as deeply found solely via internet learning.
@@rstritmatter English degrees aren't worthless...? You have exposed the English Department as a lie, so how could a degree not be at least worthless? A college degree today is the doorway to a cubicle job at a woke corporation, and/or massive debt. Considering how much an English degree costs, and that you yourself have shown that students are going into debt to be propagandized by fools and liars, it's seems that an English Degree has negative value, and as the original commenter pointed out, there is nothing available in an University English class that can't be obtained in an old book or a new video. I know. I spent years of my life earning an English Degree, and more years paying it off, only to learn much later that everything they told me about Shakespeare was a lie, and that they know it but are too cowardly and career-minded to admit it.
Love the presentation, but can’t quite follow the decryption of Jonson. If we have B = 2 and I = 9 How do we get 11 feet, then 9 feet, etc.? Why not 2 feet then 9 feet or 11 feet then 2 feet? Sorry if I missed it.
As explained, perhaps not clearly enough, Jonson's solution begins by adding the gematria equivalents of Jonson's initials: B+J (2+9) = 11. The keys, then, are 11 and 9. This allows Jonson to make use of all forty feet in his surface epigram (11+9x2=40).
You add the initials together to make 11. Count eleven feet, then count nine feet. Do this twice. The solution assumes that the reader knows how to add two numbers together.
A fine example of an artistic presentation of great scholarship. Excellent, as we have come to expect. Thank you, Roger.
Thanks Mark. There are a couple of mislabeled pieces but overall I'm pretty happy with it.
@@rstritmatter As every writer and editor knows, there is always one more typo.
"...hit His face"....hid His face.
Your work on this is deeply appreciated. Each pesentation sheds new light on this and opens new paths to follow.
Thank you so much, Mississauga!
Percy Allen noted that the 10-line "To the Reader" poem echoes the 49th stanza of VENVS AND ADONIS:
Look, when a painter would surpass the life
In limning out a well-proportion'd steed,
His art with nature's workmanship at strife,
As if the dead the living should exceed;
So did this horse excel a common one
In shape, in courage, colour, pace, and bone.
This Figure, that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;
Wherein the Grauer had a strife
with Nature, to out-doo the life:
O, could he haue but drawne his wit
As well in brasse, as he hath hit
His face; the Print would then surpasse
All, that vvas euer vvrit in brasse.
But, since he cannot, Reader, looke
Not on his Picture, but his Booke.
The First Folio is a collection of the Shakespeare plays, and thus does not include VENVS AND ADONIS or LUCRECE, or the SONNETS & A LOVER'S COMPLAINT. Jonson had to have been relying on the Readers' awareness of those earlier works -- or, of VENUS at least -- in order to understand his allusion to that telling stanza.
A "graver" and a "painter" do essentially the same thing, in that they create artistic representations of some living subject -- be it a HORSE painted by a painter, or a MAN whose image is 'cut' by a Graver (or Engraver) -- to be viewed by the public in an art gallery or on a printed page. Both poems contrast the artist with 'nature'/'Nature' (which created both the Horse in V&A and 'Shakespeare' in B.I.'s poem), the 'painter' attempting to 'surpass' the life (i.e. the living horse), his painting 'exceed'-ing the subject of his workmanship, and the 'Grauer' attempting also to 'surpasse' by 'out-doo'-ing the life of 'Shakespeare'. Both poems rhyme 'life' with 'strife' -- both reference an artist being at strife with Nature.
There can be no doubt that Jonson was deliberately echoing this V&A stanza, inviting us to compare the true 'gentle Shakespeare' with the 'Figure' which is meant to represent him in brass by referring back to the "well-proportion'd steed' that did "excel a common one" -- the word 'gentle' here meaning 'Noble' (as Roger mentions), AS OPPOSED TO 'common'.
Shakspere was the commoner from Stratford -- and 'Shakespeare', by implication, was a Nobleman who -- by definition -- excels, or ranks higher than, a fellow from the lower classes. And that nobleman's name, indeed, was Edward de Vere.
Correct. And that deserves more attention than I gave it in this talk.
@@rstritmatter You had plenty on your plate, so don't sweat it! I thoroughly enjoyed your presentation as-is. We shall soon be seeing all the out-of-print works of Percy Allen return to print, thanks to the efforts of James Warren, so the V&A stanza I've cited will become more widely known amongst Oxfordians and -- it is to be hoped -- amongst Stratfordians and all the non-Oxfordian Non-Stratfordians out there.
I know others have pointed this out, but it should be noted that not only does this 10-line poem have 40 metrical feet, but it also contains 17 capital letters -- though it should have had 18 of them, in that line 4 starts with "with" instead of "With" -- the 1st letter of the 1st word in a line of poetry is supposed to be capitalized, as all the other 9 lines are, making line 4 stand out as a 'mistake'. Aside from the capital 'S' in the name 'Shakespeare', the other capitalizations used for the words 'Figure', 'Grauer', 'Nature', 'Print', 'Reader', 'Picture', and 'Booke', could all have been spelled with lower case letters and been acceptable. The typographer seems to have purposely used a total of 17 capital letters -- calling attention to that number by deliberately starting line 4 incorrectly with that lower case 'w'.
I'm sure Alexander Waugh is already aware of this poem's inclusion of the tell-tale numbers '17' and '40'. In fact, I've probably heard him mention this in one of his many excellent videos.
I can hardly wait to see the Shakespeare Allusion Book you two have been working on! It's my understanding that it is to be in print maybe sometime later this year...?
Wonderful talk. Thank you.
Fantastic presentation, that was fascinating.
Regarding Trithemius's Steganographia, I remember there was a letter from John Dee to William Cecil, about Dee being excited to have found a copy of the book in the Low Countries to bring back to England. (Of course I'm imaging that Jonson ended up with Dee's copy!)
One thought I had: maybe the key for choosing which feet of the poem to select would be a little more persuasive if it was presented as something like "count to the 11th and 9th feet of the poem 2 times"? At first I was wondering why just use the value of the "I" and the combined values of the letters, why isn't the value of the "B" used? When I saw that the poem is composed of two sections of twenty feet, that made sense to me. Amazing that this poem has forty feet!
Keep up the great work, can't wait to hear more about Jonson and his work.
Interesting record about that Trithemius book.
I will try your wording for the calculation in my next talk on this, which will be for a roomful of cryptographers -- but I must work through the original text as the first encounter with the idea, since I want no part in the fiction that I figured this out. That's my strength in this case. I saw that someone else had a really fascinating idea that had been long overlooked and seemed to have a profound bearing on a subject in which I had an interest. It has taken along many intriguing byways. . . . glad to have company along the road.
Jonson, it turns out, is even more interesting to Oxfordians than all but the most committed Jonson scholars. It turns out the Oxfordians have a lot of answers to questions they have had but dared not ask out loud. The way they've waltzed around that epigram and its devious wording (which they know full well) is a sight to behold. But Jonson is full such sleights, as the best Jonson scholars (Dutton et al.) know full well.
Speaking of the pronunciation of names... in the UK, Pembroke is pronounced Pembrook; Buckingham is Bucking - um,; Derby is Darby.
Jonson was posthumously associated with the mythological figure Virbius. Given that this figure involves the idea of doubling, I guess it is possible that those who associated Virbius with Jonson were evoking (amongst other things) Jonson’s shapes within shapes notion.
Wonderfully interesting and informative thank you. The events surrounding Elizabeth Stuart and her husband Frederick V Elector Palatine of Heidelberg when they moved briefly to Prague in 1619 and left in haste in 1620 may account for the timing of the Stratford monument and of the First Folio. Given their love of theatre it is possible that they were also grand possessors of many of the hitherto unpublished plays. Heidelberg castle fell in September 1622. General Horace Vere was then stationed at nearby Mannheim with an expeditionary force. It is possibly not the failure of the Spanish match so much as the reason for its failure that is relevant here.
Thank you for this excellent and informed commentary that captures so much relevant context in few words. I agree, they should also be considered as probable "grand possessors" of the MS.
I thoroughly enjoyed this presentation. Others may have noted this, but the body of the To the Reader poem has 17 capital letters. The 17th word from the end of the poem is "ever." As you point out, there are 40 feet in the poem. So, in keeping with the rule of threes, there may be two more 40s and one more 17! 🤔
Wonderful lecture, thanks. 56:20 I recommend E. J. Moeran's beatiful setting of Nashe's poem, especially the rendition by the National Chamber Choir of Ireland.
Great presentation, Roger. A quick, small edit - your slide of the two "noble Henries" has the date circa 1523, but should be 1623. This is great background on the FF!
Correct. Thanks.
Wonderful presentation, thank you. (Im only a third of the way through, but wanted to share that the book "Triumphal forms; structural patterns in Elizabethan poetry" by Fowler (which I think is on Archive) provides some fascinating insights into the literature, especially poetry, of the Elizabethan period.
Congratulations. Looking forward to your next presentation!
Please feel free to leave questions or challenges. For more on the authorship question, here's my website: shake-speares-bible.com/
Excellent!
Just think, I could go to university to learn about this nonsense and end up with a huge debt and be largely unemployable. All this knowledge can be found for free on the internet or for the price of a few secondhand books. Better to become an autodidact and avoid attending tedious lectures at 9 am and ending up with a worthless English degree.
Please bear in mind that this video was brought to you in considerable measure by Coppin State University. Also, English degrees are definitely not worthless.
But I do understand your sentiment given the bad reputation English departments have given to themselves through decades of anti-intellectual hostility to the authorship inquiry. It is now beginning to break down.
Agree to a large extent, though the friends. interactions, and discussions found in receiving a few degrees are themselves worthy of some value. Those experiences cannot be as deeply found solely via internet learning.
@@rstritmatter I have 2 English degree, undergrad and grad. Learned a lot, and learned how to think, analyze, research, which for me was helpful.
@@MundaSquire Glad to hear it.
@@rstritmatter English degrees aren't worthless...? You have exposed the English Department as a lie, so how could a degree not be at least worthless? A college degree today is the doorway to a cubicle job at a woke corporation, and/or massive debt. Considering how much an English degree costs, and that you yourself have shown that students are going into debt to be propagandized by fools and liars, it's seems that an English Degree has negative value, and as the original commenter pointed out, there is nothing available in an University English class that can't be obtained in an old book or a new video. I know. I spent years of my life earning an English Degree, and more years paying it off, only to learn much later that everything they told me about Shakespeare was a lie, and that they know it but are too cowardly and career-minded to admit it.
Proud to say I now have Charlotte Armstrong's book...
Glad to hear it.
thank you!
Love the presentation, but can’t quite follow the decryption of Jonson.
If we have B = 2 and I = 9
How do we get 11 feet, then 9 feet, etc.?
Why not 2 feet then 9 feet or 11 feet then 2 feet?
Sorry if I missed it.
As explained, perhaps not clearly enough, Jonson's solution begins by adding the gematria equivalents of Jonson's initials: B+J (2+9) = 11. The keys, then, are 11 and 9. This allows Jonson to make use of all forty feet in his surface epigram (11+9x2=40).
You add the initials together to make 11. Count eleven feet, then count nine feet. Do this twice. The solution assumes that the reader knows how to add two numbers together.
30:12 - "... iambic tetrameters ... de-da de-da de-da de-da de-da de-da ... ??
de-da de-da de-da de-da
Wherin /the gra/ ver had / a strife.
26:10 - I presume the caption should read "circa 1623".
Yes, sorry. I think that's the worst glitch. Thanks for the attentive viewing.