Some Notes on the Poems

Note: This is obviously preliminary, even as an appendix, but procrastination has left this off for so long that I attempt to force its hand by making this available now. I hope to add more later.

The poems generally attributed to Shake-speare comprise a diverse group. It is difficult to see any kind of development over time with them as can be done with the plays because the dates are largely unknown. His first two public poems, Lucrece and Venus, are fairly reliably dated to the years 1593 and 1594. After that, it is much harder to say. The Sonnets may represent a range of years, say ten years or more, and there is no guarantee that the order of the Sonnets as we have received them is the order in which they were written. The dating of the few remaining poems is, perhaps, even more difficult. And, with the exception of Lucrece and Venus, it is even hard to comment on the subject matter of the poems. In short, I have little to say, and I am not about to interpret the poems. What I briefly comment on below are some of the externals regarding the known circumstances of publication of the poems and how that may connect to William Stanley. In the case of the Sonnets, I focus on the few most likely references to the author himself.

The Adonis and Lucrece Poems

Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece were dedicated to Henry Wriothesly, the earl of Southampton. That Wriothesly (mercifully, pronounced ROSE-lee) and Derby knew each other later is known and not at all surprising, both being earls. At the time of the publication of Venus, however, William was not an earl, nor did it look like he would become one as the position was held by his only slightly older brother. By the following year, when Lucrece was registered, he had become an earl. Many commentators have struggled to explain the more familiar tone of the dedication of the second poem, and suggest Shakspur had become an intimate of Southampton's circle. With Derby as Shake-speare, it simply becomes the correct tone of a peer, at the correct time.

There is another connection between these two men that took place that year, for William Stanley married Elizabeth de Vere, the daughter of the earl of Oxford. She had been proposed to Wriothesly, as things were done in those days, and Wriothesly paid a fine for refusing to marry her.

The Phoenix and the Turtle

Shake-speare's The Phoenix and the Turtle appears in a collection of poems appended to Robert Chester's Love's Martyr, itself a hodgepodge based loosely on the idea of the Phoenix, the mythical creature that self-immolates only to rise anew from its own ashes.

Shakes-speare's poem is highly regarded and needs no external reference to make it work, yet many attempts have been made to identify historical personages with Shake-speare's (and the entire compilation's) characters of the phoenix and the turtle (dove). None of these has been widely accepted but perhaps someday a consensus will emerge supporting one of the current theories or a new one.

The only definite connection the poem has to history is its inclusion in this compilation, an investigation into which proves interesting. It may not surprise the reader by this time, that the few facts we know about the circumstances of this poem most closely associate it with William Stanley, of all candidates, by far.

Love's Martyr is dedicated to Sir John Salusbury, a relatively minor but rising member of the nobility. Why would a rare poem by Shake-speare, and poems by Marston and Jonson, appear in this collection? Stratfordians sometimes suggest that Shakspur was looking for or rewarding a patron, but recognize that there is no evidence for this. Yet, as Who's Who in Shakespeare's England [1] puts it:

[Salusbury] knew Marston and Jonson and probably Shakespeare, too

But one must not be led to believe that there is any evidence that Salusbury knew Shakspur. And can any candidate even begin to approach Derby's connection?

Salusbury and Stanley

Salusbury was closely connected to William Stanley by marriage. Stanley grew up with Salusbury's wife and her sister and mother, literally in the same house. Salusbury's wife was Ursula Stanley, and in a surviving letter of William Stanley's, he addresses them as his "lovinge brother" and "good sister". She was the daughter of Joan Halsall, and fathered by William's father, Henry. Henry openly acknowledged his extra-marital relationship with, and children by, Joan Halsall. They remained close and, for example, in 1597, close to the time of this poem, Derby and his wife visited Salusbury at his home in Lleweni, where they were "very royally entertained". [2]

Salusbury's Papers

Carleton Brown [3] has investigated the connection between Robert Chester and Sir John Salusbury, and discovered in the Salusbury papers many poems, most written by Robert Chester and Salusbury himself. Several of the poems contain acrostics referencing Chester's and Salusbury's acquaintances. (These acrostics are standard word games in which, for example, someone's name is spelled out by taking the first letter of each line in a poem. These are easily seen and universally recognized. They are not to be confused with the purely subjective cryptograms that have so embarrassed the Baconian position.) In love poems identified as Salusbury's, the name that most frequently appears in the acrostics is that of Dorothy Halsall.

Brown writes:

in the lyrics addressed to [Dorothy Halsall] a warmth of passion appears which suggests that Sir John found her a thoroughly fascinating person. Dorothy was the natural daughter of Henry Stanley, fourth earl of Derby, by Joan Halsall of Knowsley [William Stanley's home], and was accordingly a sister-in-law of Sir John Salusbury.

So Dorothy, like Ursula, was another daughter by Joan Halsall and Henry Stanley, who also lived at the Derby estate of Knowsley (Dorothy kept the Halsall name while her sister Ursula adopted her father's, Henry Stanley). [4]

A Lover's Complaint

Thorpe published this poem along with the Sonnets, so it is considered to be by Shake-speare. I doubt if it would have caught anyone's attention otherwise. I see no possibility of getting any biographical information out of it or the particulars of its publication at this time.

The Passionate Pilgrim

Titherley has identified a hand-written copy of XVIII ("When that thine eye hath chose the dame") in this collection as written by Derby. The hand-written version, while better than the published version, is more cryptic. I've enjoyed looking into this some, but have no more to say at this time.

The Sonnets

The Sonnets have been extensively analyzed and variously interpreted. They remain obscure, except to the proponents of the individual interpretations who claim to find great clarity in their unique interpretations. The poems seem deliberately written to afford multiple interpretations, and to base any authorship argument on an idiosyncratic interpretation of them seems to me ill-advised. Neither the situations or characters described in them have been identified to my satisfaction or to any general acceptance.

I could, of course, find parallels in Derby's life to interpretations of the Sonnets, just as I could do for the plays. But that is an easy exercise (for virtually any candidate), and it is always unconvincing. As I believe I have said before, even when the author of a work is known, to point out particulars in the author's life as evidenced in the author's work is rarely satisfactory. To use it as a means of establishing the identity of the author is very weak.

That said, I do think the Sonnets describe actual experiences of the poet, unlike some commentators who consider them purely imaginary. I think the author tells us he was lame, his name was Will, and perhaps that he carried the canopy over the Queen in some ceremonial. Regarding the last (sonnet CXXV), if that is the correct interpretation, it only restricts the possibilities to members of the nobility.

More directly, Shake-speare twice tells us that he was lame (sonnets XXXVII and LXXXIX). We know from his letters that Oxford was lame, and that is a point in favor of Oxford's authorship. The author also tells us that his name was Will in at least one sonnet (CXXXVI), and that is a point in Derby's favor.

In short, I think it more likely that Derby was lame than that Oxford was named Will, but in general the indications are at present too vague to say much more. [2]

Notes

Notes on The Phoenix and the Turtle

[1] Alan and Veronica Palmer, (C) 1981, 1999 St. Martin's Press.
[2] I got this from Honigmann's Shakespeare, the Lost Years, who references "Robert Parry's Diary" Archaeologia Cambrensis, 1915, XV.
[3] Poems by Sir John Salusbury and Robert Chester, Early English Text Society, Extra Series, No. 113, 1914.
[4] Searches among Salusbury's papers may have a lot to tell us. I found the following more than a little interesting. It is from The Phoenix and the Turtle, by William Matchett, 1965, in which Matchett discusses some transcripts of letters he has found in the National Library of Wales addressed to Salusbury, including one from William Stanley (with the well-turned phrase "wee shal be partakers of all fortunes"), and one which is:
A letter from Richard Broughton, dated "Ludlow v: Mch" without the year. Judging by earlier letters, Broughton was close to the Derby household and, since he calls Salusbury "cousen", he was probably related to Salusbury's wife. The long letter—which sounds so like Justice Shallow that only with difficulty do I resist quoting its irrelevancies in full—...
Matchett considers it irrelevant because he is only after information concerning Salusbury's connections to Essex, and quotes briefly from the letter concerning that. But perhaps, albeit unknowingly, he has discovered the source of Justice Shallow?
Also, if Broughton "was probably related to Salusbury's wife", he was probably related to William Stanley. Non-sibling relationships were frequently referred to as "cousin". Perhaps we have in 2 Henry IV an in-family joke:
SHALLOW: By yea and nay, sir, I dare say my cousin William is become a good scholar: he is at Oxford still, is he not?
SILENCE: Indeed, sir, to my cost.
SHALLOW: A' must, then, to the inns o' court shortly.
William Stanley was at Oxford prior to attendance at Gray's Inn and, later, Lincoln's Inn.
("A' must" means "He must".)

Notes on the Sonnets

[1] It would be almost impossible, of course, to determine that Derby (or any other candidate) was not lame. Even given some extraordinary development such as that we unearth a letter that for some reason takes pains to point out Stanley's lack of lameness, we would still have to show that it applied to the entire period during which the sonnets were written. The only real hope is to find some reference, presumably in a letter in some dusty archive, to Stanley's lameness. It is probably reasonable to add that lameness was undoubtedly more common then than now, given medical advances in the interim.
(See also my note on some lines of Marston where he apparently refers to Shake-speare as a Knight of the Garter and lame.)
[Don't know why the darned thing does a line break after "See also my"!]

[2] I've been recently reading about some research on the dating of the sonnets, and it seems that they can be dated in groups corresponding to their word usage as paralleled in the plays. Assuming that the dates of the plays are more or less correct, the thinking is that the dates of the sonnet groups can be stated more or less exactly. Of particular interest to me in this dating business is Sonnet 2, beginning "When forty winters have beseiged thy brow" because, as many have noted, if the "thy" is emphasized, the author seems to be saying he is forty years old. This research, by a prominent Shakespeare scholar, (I cannot find my notes at the moment), indicates that the group of sonnets including Sonnet 2 were written "shortly after" 1597. This is getting very close to William Stanley's 40th birthday around 1600.