IV. THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON AS A LITERARY PATRON. SOUTHAMPTON's close relations with men of letters of his time give powerful corroboration of the theory that he was the patron whom Shakespeare commemorated in the sonnets. From earliest to latest manhood-throughout the dissipations of Court life, amid the torments that his intrigue cost him, in the distractions of war and travel-the earl never ceased to cherish the passion for literature which was implanted in him in boyhood. His devotion to his old college, St. John's, is characteristic. When a new library was in course of construction there during the closing years of his life, SouthampSouthampton's collec ton collected books to the value of 360/. wherewith tion of books. to furnish it. This monument of love,' as the College authorities described the benefaction, may still be seen on the shelves of the College library. The gift largely consisted of illuminated manuscripts-books of hours, legends of the saints, and medieval chronicles. Southampton caused his son to be educated at St. John's, and his wife expressed to the tutors the hope that the boy would 'imitate' his father in his love to learning and to them.' References Even the State papers and business correspondence in which Southampton's career is traced are enlivened by references to his literary interests. Especially refreshing are the active signs vouchsafed there of his sympathy with the great birth of English drama. It was with plays that he in his letters joined other noblemen in 1598 in entertaining his to poems and chief, Sir Robert Cecil, on the eve of the departure plays. for Paris of that embassy in which Southampton served Cecil as a secretary. In July following Southampton contrived to enclose in an official despatch from Paris 'certain songs' which he was anxious that Sir Robert Sidney, a friend of literary tastes, should share his delight in reading. Twelve months later, while Southampton was in Ireland, a letter to him from the Countess attested that current literature was an everyday topic of their private talk. 'All the news I can send you,' she wrote to her husband, 'that I think will make you merry, is that I read in a letter from London that Sir John Falstaff is, by his mistress Dame Pintpot, made father of a goodly miller's thumb -a boy that's all head and very little body; but this is a secret.' 1 This cryptic sentence proves on the part of both earl and countess familiarity with Falstaff's adventures in Shakespeare's 'Henry IV,' where the fat knight apostrophised Mrs. Quickly as 'good pint pot' (Pt. I. II. iv. 443). Who the acquaintances were about whom the countess jested thus lightly does not appear, but that Sir John, the father of the boy that was all head and very little body,' was a playful allusion to Sir John's creator is by no means beyond the bounds of possibility. In the letters of Sir Toby Matthew, two of which were written very early in the seventeenth century (although first published in 1660), the sobriquet of Sir John Falstaff seems to have been bestowed on Shakespeare: 'As that excellent author Sir John Falstaff sayes, "what for your businesse, news, device, foolerie, and libertie, I never dealt better since I was a man.” the theatre. 3 "2 When, after leaving Ireland, Southampton spent the autumn of 1599 in London, it was recorded that he and his friend Lord Rutland' come not to Court' but 'pass away the time merely in going to plays every day.' It seems that the fasHis love of cination that the drama had for Southampton and his friends led them to exaggerate the influence that it was capable of exerting on the emotions of the multitude. Southampton and Essex in February 1601 requisitioned and paid for the revival of Shakespeare's 'Richard II' at the Globe Theatre on the day preceding that fixed for their insurrection, in the hope that the play-scene of the deposition of a king might excite the citizens of London to countenance their rebellious design.1 Imprisonment sharpened Southampton's zest for the theatre. The original letter is at Hatfield. The whole is printed in Historical Manuscripts Commission, 3rd Rep. p. 145. * The quotation is a confused reminiscence of Falstaff's remarks in 1 Henry IV II. iv. The last nine words are an exact quotation of lines 190-1. Sidney Papers, ii. 132. • See p. 175. Within a year of his release from the Tower in 1603 he entertained Queen Anne of Denmark at his house in the Strand, and Burbage and his fellow players, one of whom was Shakespeare, were bidden to present the 'old' play of 'Love's Labour's Lost,' whose 'wit and mirth' were calculated 'to please her Majesty exceedingly.' But these are merely accidental testimonies to Southampton's literary predilections. It is in literature itself, not in the prosaic records of his political or domestic life, that the amplest proofs survive of his devotion to letters. From the hour that, as a handsome and accomplished lad, he joined the Court and made lation. London his chief home, authors acknowledged his Poetic adu appreciation of literary effort of almost every quality and form. He had in his Italian tutor Florio, whose circle of acquaintance included all men of literary reputation, a mentor who allowed no work of promise to escape his observation. Every note in the scale of adulation was sounded in Southampton's honour in contemporary prose and verse. Soon after the publication, in April 1593, of Shakespeare's 'Venus and Adonis,' with its salutation of Southampton, a more youthful apprentice to the poet's craft, Barnabe Barnes, Barnes's son- confided to a published sonnet of unrestrained net, 1593. fervour his conviction that Southampton's eyes— 'those heavenly lamps '-were the only sources of true poetic inspiration. The sonnet, which is superscribed 'to the Right Noble and Virtuous Lord, Henry, Earl of Southampton,' runs : Barnabe Receive, sweet Lord, with thy thrice sacred hand (Sprung from a rude and unmanured land) That with your countenance graced, they may withstand Whose patronage can give encouragement To scorn back-wounding Zoilus his band. Vouchsafe, right virtuous Lord, with gracious eyes- Which give and take in course that holy fire- Whom, when time shall have taught, by flight, to rise addresses. Next year a writer of greater power, Tom Nash, betrayed little less enthusiasm when dedicating to the earl his masterly essay in romance, 'The Life of Jack Wilton.' He Tom Nash's describes Southampton, who was then scarcely of age, as 'a dear lover and cherisher as well of the lovers of poets as of the poets themselves.' 'A new brain,' he exclaims, 'a new wit, a new style, a new soul, will I get me, to canonise your name to posterity, if in this my first attempt I am not taxed of presumption.' Although 'Jack Wilton' was the first book Nash formally dedicated to Southampton, it is probable that Nash had made an earlier bid for the earl's patronage. In a digression at the close of his 'Pierce Pennilesse' he grows eloquent in praise of one whom he entitles 'the matchless image of honour and magnificent rewarder of vertue, Jove's eagleborne Ganimede, thrice noble Amintas.' In a sonnet addressed to 'this renowned lord,' who 'draws all hearts to his love,' Nash expresses regret that the great poet, Edmund Spenser, had omitted to celebrate 'so special a pillar of nobility' in the series of adulatory sonnets prefixed to the 'Faerie Queene;' and in the last lines of his sonnet Nash suggests that Spenser suppressed the nobleman's name Because few words might not comprise thy fame." 'See Nash's Works, ed. Grosart, v. 6. The whole passage runs: 'How wel or ill I haue done in it I am ignorant : (the eye that sees round about it selfe sees not into it selfe) only your Honours applauding encouragement hath power to make me arrogant. Incomprehensible is the height of your spirit both in heroical resolution and matters of conceit. Vnrepriuebly perisheth that booke whatsoeuer to wast paper, which on the diamond rocke of your judgement disasterly chanceth to be shipwrackt. A dere louer and cherisher you are, as well of the louers of Poets, as of Poets them selues. Amongst their sacred number I dare not ascribe my selfe, though now and then I speak English: that smal braine I haue, to no further vse I conuert saue to be kinde to my frends, and fatall to my enemies. A new brain, a new wit, a new stile, a new soule will I get mee to canonize your name to posteritie, if in this my first attempt I am not taxed of presumption. Of your gracious fauor I despaire not, for I am not altogether Fames out-cast. . . . Your Lordship is the large spreading branch of renown, from whence these my idle leaues seeke to deriue their whole nourishing.' The complimentary title of 'Amyntas,' which was naturalised in English literature by Abraham Fraunce's two renderings of Tasso's Aminta-one direct from the Italian and the other from the Latin version of Thomas Watson-was apparently bestowed by Spenser on the Earl of Derby in his Colin Clouts come Home againe (1595); and some critics assume that Nash referred in Pierce Pennilesse to that nobleman rather than to Southampton. But Nash's comparison of his paragon to Ganymede suggests extreme youth, and Southampton was nineteen in 1592 CC Southampton was beyond doubt the nobleman in question. It is certain, too, that the Earl of Southampton was among the young men for whom Nash, in hope of gain, as he admitted, penned 'amorous villanellos and qui passas.' One of the least reputable of these efforts of Nash survives in an obscene lovepoem entitled 'The Choosing of Valentines,' which may be dated in 1595. Not only was this dedicated to Southampton in a prefatory sonnet, but in an epilogue, again in the form of a sonnet, Nash addressed his young patron as his 'friend.'1 while Derby was thirty-three. 'Amyntas' as a complimentary designation was widely used by the poets, and was not applied exclusively to any one patron of letters. It was bestowed on the poet Watson by Richard Barnfield and by other of Watson's panegyrists. 'Two manuscript copies of the poem, which has not been printed, are extant -one among the Rawlinson poetical manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, and the other among the manuscripts in the Inner Temple Library (No. 538). Mr. John S. Farmer has kindly sent me transcripts of the opening and concluding dedicatory sonnets. The first, which is inscribed to the right honorable the Lord S[outhampton]' runs : Pardon, sweete flower of matchles poetrye, Ne blame my verse of loose unchastitye For painting forth the things that hidden are, Complaints and praises, every one can write, And passion out their pangs in statlie rimes; Accept of it, deare Lord, in gentle parte, The poem follows in about three hundred lines, and the manuscript ends with a second sonnet addressed by Nash to his patron: Thus hath my penne presum'd to please my friend. Oh mightst thou lykewise please Apollo's eye. No, Honor brookes no such impietie, Yet Ovid's wanton muse did not offend. He is the fountaine whence my streames do flowe- Alike to women, utter all I knowe, As longing to unlade so bad a fraught. My mynde once purg'd of such lascivious witt, THO. NASH. |