NOTES AND REFERENCES (SECTION 5)

1 The first copy of Venus & Adonis that we know about was purchased on 12th June 1593. See Samuel Schoenbaum William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life (1976) p.131, for a facsimile of the page in Richard Stonley's account book recording this fact. On the reverse of the title page, unusually, was the famous dedication to the Earl of Southampton by 'William Shakespeare'. It had been registered with the Stationers' Company on 18th April, but without an author's name. Although Southampton was nearly ten years younger than Marlowe, they 'overlapped' at Cambridge for two years, with Southampton at the same college (St. John's) as Thomas Nashe, who was also still there at the time. As Southampton was Burghley's ward, it is of course possible that Marlowe was asked to keep Burghley informed of what he was getting up to.

2 On 15th March 1594/5, Shakespeare was paid, along with Burbage and Kempe, for performances at Court the previous Christmas. It is not clear how he was involved, but it was his first theatrical 'mention'. See E.K.Chambers, William Shakespeare: a study of the facts and problems (1930) Vol.II p.319. Schoenbaum, op. cit. has a facsimile.

3 Francis Meres registered his Palladis Tamia with the Stationers' Company in September 1598. In it he refers to twelve plays by Shakespeare, and this is the first record associating that name with the authorship of plays. Most biographies would have us believe that Robert Greene referred to him as an 'upstart crow' playwright in his Groatsworth of Wit, written in 1592. This is not true. He refers to someone he calls a 'Shake-scene' (i.e. an actor) but does not mention Shakespeare by name at all. A. D. Wraight, in Christopher Marlowe and Edward Alleyn, for example, makes a convincing case for Alleyn being the 'Shake-scene' referred to, as first suggested by Calvin Hoffman (op. cit., p.54).

4 It is from his Elegies (number 15) and goes: Vilia miretur vulgus: mihi flavus Apollo / Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua. Marlowe's translation of this is: "Let base conceited wits admire vild things / Fair Phœbus lead me to the Muses' springs". The relevance of these lines to Marlowe was first pointed out by A.D.Wraight in The Story That the Sonnets Tell (1995) pp.356-7.

5 Archie Webster, way back in September 1923, wrote a short article for The National Review in which he suggested, based almost entirely upon the evidence of the Sonnets, that Shakespeare was in fact Christopher Marlowe. He pointed out that Shakespeare "protests that he is absent from England against his will. His name received a brand, and he was a lonely outcast, disgraced in the eyes of men". He suggested that Marlowe evaded burning at the stake by faking his own death. Webster's title asked the question Was Marlowe the Man?. Since then, every proponent of this theory has given great prominence to the importance of the Sonnets to the case presented.

6 John Kerrigan, in his edition for The New Penguin Shakespeare (p.8) says that "it is a standard scholarly ploy to play up the 'mystery' of the Sonnets, and then announce some astonishing 'solution' to the 'problem': the poems are reordered to produce a supposedly coherent narrative, or the youth and dark lady identified with Elizabethans whom Shakespeare might have known. Those critics who most care about poetry sense that this approach is wrong". I agree, particularly since my own (unpublished) research on the Sonnets shows the original 'Thorpe' sequence to be the one most likely to be the order in which they were originally written.

7 Or, more correctly, two letters: BL Harley MS.6848 f.154 ('touching Marlowe's monstruous opinions') and a letter to Sir John Puckering, BL Harley MS.6849 f.218r,v.

8 For this to refer to Marlowe's death, Sonnet 107 must have been written after 1593. This poem is the one most often used to 'date' the Sonnets, and has produced many ideas as to what the incidents mentioned in it refer to, and therefore when it was written. These have ranged from 1588 (the year of the Armada) to 1603 (the accession of James I). In view of what the Bacon Papers tell us, however, the most likely year would have to be 1594. In that year Essex, helped by the Bacons, uncovered the supposed 'Lopez plot' to kill the Queen, and their good friend Henri de Navarre, by adopting Catholicism, brought peace between France and Spain and allowed his own coronation as King of France (a "balmy time", i.e. when balm is used). This would have been joyful news to Anthony Bacon, and to his friends.

9 Charles Nicholl, in The Reckoning (1992) p.8, reminds us, however, that the more usual version, Quod me alit me extinguit, was a fairly popular motto of the time, appearing, for example, in Samuel Daniel's The Worthy Tract of Paulus Jovius in the same year the painting was completed. This version is also in Pericles (II.2.36), as Hoffman pointed out (op. cit., p.67).

10 One brand new candidate for the 'dark lady' might just be worth registering, however. During his time as tutor to Sir John Harington's young son, at Burley in 1595, Le Doux was joined by a French woman called either Madame Vallereine or Ide du Vault, who was to look after the boy's younger sister. According to Anthony Bacon's friend Jean Castol (LPL Bacon Papers MS.652 f.105), Madame was in fact a de-frocked nun - hence the second name - 'quarrelsome (hargueuse) and incompatible'. Le Doux nevertheless seems to have had a fairly passionate affair with her which was still not over at the time of his departure in January 1595/6. (LPL Bacon Papers MS.654 f.69). Again, for more detail see Wraight's Shakespeare: New Evidence.