You’re right that the name is the biggest hurdle to communication. I get around it by calling the standin “William of Stratford” and Oxford “Shakespeare the Poet.” In my view, Oxford deserves the name since it was he who made it famous. Had he never used it, who would care whose name it was?

I would like someone to find out what happened in the 1580′s to Oxford, Marlowe(who died supposedly in 1593) and how the Howards and Mary Sidney,Lady Pembroke and Jonson and Thorpe were all interconnected with Emilia Lanyier and John Florio–could all these people have had something to do but specifically WHAT!!! wHEN THE FOLIO APPEARED
who paid for it really, who edited it and what cursive copy(ies) were used to be set to print? Were they all destroyed,the cursive written originals–someone must have some!!!
Good going, excellent controversy!

Thank you for the discussion. Punny thing, Smokey Stover and Howie Hertz the dentist have been giving me nothing but trouble just lately.

In case no one has read my essay in the September 2009 SOSNL about puns in Oxford/Shakespeare’s apocryphal “Sweet Cytherea” sonnet in “The Passionate Pilgrim,” I shall help out and inflict them on you one more time.

Quickly running through the punning: Sweet Cytherea is sitting by a BROOK=ford, a yEE-Ong=EO Adonis=sun=son, who is l-OVE-ly [EO & V], fresh=vers (Dutch), and green=vert (French, ver-de=de ver, Spanish). He is later bored into by a boar=verres (Latin). The ultimately FAIR=Vair queen flops on her back, and Adonis ROSE and then ran away, a fool too froward=ver-nil-is (Vere O is).

We find the charged terms ‘green’, ‘fresh’, ‘lovely’, ‘fair’ and ‘youth’ again, central to the meaning of the Sonnets.

Punning, this exasperating here and gone distraction, is so relentless upon the consciousness. To put it in my own words, What plague is greater than the brief of mind? I ask you.

Wishing a good happy New Year,

William Ray

When Rosalind and Celia in AYLI are discussing how to disguise their real identities with “poor and mean attire” and new names, Rosalind proposes to carry a “boar-spear.” This is one of two times that word is used in Shakespeare. The other time is in Richard III, which was published a year before the first play that carried the name “William Shakespeare” (but after V&A and Lucrece, which used that pseudonym). So did “boar-spear” hint at the connection between de Vere and “Shakespeare”? I wonder.

EEBO lists only four previous authors before Shakespeare who used the word. Three authors had used it once each, until Thomas Lodge’s Euphuist book Rosalynde (which influenced AYLI). Lodge was likely a member of de Vere’s retinue of fellow writers. Rosalynde uses “boar-speare” four times. Curiously, the word “boar” alone does not appear in the book.

Especially with its context of disguise in AYLI, “boar-spear” may be yet another allusion to our disguised author. It seems significant that six of the first nine uses of this word in EEBO are by Lodge and de Vere.

To assume that Marlowe would spy for the very government he so obviously loathed and that he continued to defy in his plays to the point that it led to his death or transportation is one more piece of the kind of nonsense we’ve been handed for centuries by historians who have no understanding of what drives the Theater or the kind of people who have used it throughout time to communicate with audiences hungry for truth. Sadly, even his defenders have gone along with the Marlowe as spy thesis. So far as I know, I’m the only one who’s seen this as a psychological impossibility. For more on Marlowe, you can read The Great Reckoning. For more on the reasons why we have so little information on the early history of the London Stage, check out The Cecils and History.

Is there a diary, appointment book, letter or other documentation to support this assertion?
Thank you.

Reedy: I can honestly say that Roe has proven that it was possible to travel from Verona to Milan via water (I won’t go into the details, but instead leave it up to readers to find out themselves). However, he does not prove that Verona has a seacoast, which is what anyone closely reading the play would think the playwright assumed. Roe himself unknowingly proves that the playwright was ignorant of Italian geography (or–more likely–he didn’t care about it).

Roe makes a big deal out of the fact that Shakespeare never uses the word “seaport”, and he gives a long-winded explanation of the meaning of “road”, as in “roadstead” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadstead). He also praises the playwright’s knowledge and use of nautical terms. However, Roe is mistaken in his idea that a road pertains to inland canals, even though he tries to make it so: “Along select channels of the seas, and in the large and smooth rivers the world over, there are wide places for ships to anchor called ‘roads’ (though some recent dictionaries call them ‘roadsteads’). Roads are the preferred places for ships to ride at anchor, either to be served by lighters, or else to come up, in turn, to a nearby quay, to load or unload passengers or cargo” (37). Roe even provides a photograph of what he believes a road to be on page 58, with the cutline, “…. Landings, or ‘roads,’ were located inside cities and at regular intervals along the length of each canal, much like modern bus stations.”

Roe is mistaken. Roads, or roadsteads, are places for ships to anchor harbors. Roads are not canal quays or docks, nor are they harbors. The playwright clearly refers to roads, and if he is as accurate in his use of nautical terms as Roe claims, he cannot have meant a dock or a quay.

Ken: In order to more fully understand Shakespeare’s usage and understanding (imo) and Roe’s interpretation, we must go beyond the modern usage. I believe there are a number of factors and context that you are ignoring. These are: The consistency of the author’s knowledge of the country, especially its topography; the existence of “roads” on rivers; the opening of TOS which would seem to contradict your assertion, that is, the dialogue between Panthino and Launce, which indicates the author’s knowledge. Here it is again:

Panthino. Launce, away, away, aboard! thy master is shipped and thou art to post after **with oars**. What’s the matter? why weepest thou, man? Away, ass! You’ll,lose the tide_, if you tarry any longer.

Launce. It is no matter if the tied were lost; for it is the unkindest tied that ever any man tied.

To reiterate, Panthino’s use of “tide” is NOT a sea reference but a reference to “moment, opportunity,” similar to the usage in T&C: “Diomedes I cannot, lord; I have important business,The tide whereof is now….” as in “5. A favorable occasion; an opportunity” (OED).

Panthino continues:

Tut, man, I mean thou’lt lose the flood, and, in losing the flood, lose thy voyage, and, in losing thy voyage, lose thy master, and, in losing thy
master, lose thy service, and, in losing thy service—–Why dost thou stop my mouth?

He says “lose the flood,…then the voyage”, not “lose the tide” (ships sail with the tide) which refers to the timed flooding of the canals through the use of locks, necessary when travelling up inclines.

Launce replies later:

Lose the tide, and the voyage, and the master, and the service, and the tied! Why, man, **if the river were dry, I am able to fill it with my tears**; if the wind were down, I could drive the boat with my sighs.

Here Shakespeare is both referring to actual events and punning, thus the reference to “river”; no mention of sea or ocean.

If this were all, you might have a point, but it is only one piece of a larger picture. In Roe’s analysis, Shakespeare demonstrates knowledge of Italian topography. He knows the land north and west of Milan and is aware of the function of “Saint Gregory’s Well”. He is aware of the “tranect,” the ingenious land ferry that connects boats to canals. As we shall see, the opening of TOS indicates a canal rather than a roadstead reference. He is aware of the identity of the “Emperor” of Milan as well as several other points. Given the author’s consistency, why assume that, he would imagine unnecessarily that Milan (or Padua) has a seacoast or large ocean harbor?

There’s more. I looked up references to “roads” and “rivers” and found that several major rivers in the world, including the Thames, have “roads.” Here is a link to a roadstead in a river in Amsterdam that shows one along the river Scheldt, a precedent that there were “”roads” on rivers.

I looked up the glossary of terms used by Shakespeare (road (n.) 1 harbour, anchorage, roadstead), so it’s likely that Shakespeare used the word “road” broadly as a place where vessels were at anchor. Remember these Italian plays are among the few involving inland river and water travel. The author was flexible, thus Antonio’s words: “Sweet lady, you have given me life and living; For here I read for certain that my ships are safely come to road,” conforming to the usage you are explaining. Clearly the author knew that the audience would understand that Valentine and Proteus are referring to a place where vessels are anchored. Shakespeare was not writing a travelogue, and so was not interested in explaining things that puzzle us like Saint Gregory’s Well (or “falling out at tennis” in Hamlet).

Finally we come to the opening of TOS.

The scene is not named near a “harbor” but in “Padua: A Public Place.” We have dealt with the fact that Shakespeare uses “shore” for river in at least one other play. So when, immediately after Baptista and his daughters enter the scene, Lucentio says:

Gramercies, Tranio, well dost thou advise. If, Biondello, thou wert come ashore, we could at once put us in readiness, and take a lodging fit to entertain such friends as time in Padua shall beget.

Why, if Biondello were on a boat on the ocean, does he appear with no stage direction for entrance? If he were in a boat coming to shore from a “road,” why would Lucentio even make the remark? And why would Baptista and his daughters come to a roadstead? Since, as Roe points out, Lucentio is looking to be in readiness
“at once” for lodging, the Inn must be near by. I looked online for “roadsteads” and inns” and only in Hawaii are there any inns in close proximity to “roads.” Most Inns, even in modern times are significant distances from the roads.

Baptista clearly lives close to this “public place.” I suppose one could stretch and say it is a harbor of the sea, but that was not your argument. Plus Baptista’s appearance, as Roe points out, is much more consistent with a canal stop and the surrounding neighborhood (as Roe discovered), than a seaport. Given all these reasons, a canal stop is much more logical than any reference to an ocean harbor or “road.”

All the evidence combined indicates that road had a broader meaning than you acknowledge and that Roe was correct in asserting Shakespeare’s accuracy in this as in so many other points.

Ken