Part 30 (2/2)

The appellation 'Mr' was not used loosely then as now, but indicated a precise social grade Thorpe's employment of the prefix 'Mr' without qualification is in itself fatal to the pretension that any lord, whether by right or courtesy, was intended {408}

Thorpe'sthe Earl of Pembroke

Proof is at hand to establish that Thorpe was under no misapprehension as to the proper appellation of the Earl of Peless h he was, and sceptical as he was of the ainst the temptation, when an opportunity was directly offered hies of a publication with the nah official station, the literary culture, and the social influence of the third Earl of Pembroke

In 1610--a year after he published the 'Sonnets'--there came into his hands the manuscripts of John Healey, that hurated to Virginia, and had, it would seeland, had secured through the good offices of John Florio (a man of influence in both fashi+onable and literary circles) the patronage of the Earl of Pembroke for a translation of Bishop Hall's fanciful satire, 'Mundus alter et ide his book 'The Discoverie of a New World,' Healey had prefixed to it, in 1609, an epistle inscribed in garish terms of flattery to the 'Truest mirrour of truest honor, William Earl of Pembroke' {409} When Thorpe subsequently made up his mind to publish, on his own account, other translations by the same hand, he found it desirable to seek the saly, in 1610, he prefixed in his own naustine's 'Citie of God,' a dedicatory address 'to the honorablest patron of the Muses and good ht of the Honourable Order (of the Garter), &c' In involved sentences Thorpe tells the 'right gracious and gracefule Lord' how the author left the work at death to be a 'testiratitude, observance, and heart's honor to your honour'

'Wherefore,' he explains, 'his legacie, laide at your Honour's feete, is rather here delivered to your Honour's huate Your Lordshi+p's true devoted, Th Th'

Again, in 1616, when Thorpe procured the issue of a second edition of another of Healey's translations, 'Epictetus Manuall Cebes Table

Theoprastus Characters,' he supplied more conspicuous evidence of the servility hich he deemed it incumbent on him to approach a potent patron As this address by Thorpe to Peive it _in extenso_:

'To the Right Honourable, William Earle of Pembroke, Lord Chamberlaine to His Majestie, one of his ht of the ht Honorable--It e unto your Lordshi+p, out of what frenzy one of e, in the straightnesse of your Lordshi+p's leisure, to present a peece, for e, wherein great persons are so pestered dayly with Dedications All I can alledge in extenuation of so ruities, is the bequest of a deceased Man; who (in his lifeti offered some translations of his unto your Lordshi+p, ever wisht if _these ensuing_ were published they ht onely bee addressed unto your Lordshi+p, as the last Testimony of his dutifull affection (to use his own termes) _The true and reall upholder of Learned endeavors_ This, therefore, beeing left unto acie unto your Lordshi+p (pardon reat a person) I could not without soe have the bequests of the _dead_, and so obligatory they are, _ In the hope of this honourable acceptance I will ever rest,

'Your lordshi+p's humble devoted, 'T Th'

With such obeisances did publishers then habitually creep into the presence of the nobility In fact, the lahich rigorously es of peers left theed erroneous form of address in the dedication of Shakespeare's 'Sonnets'--'Mr W H' for Lord Herbert or the Earl of Pembroke--would have amounted to the offence of defamation And for thatthe dignity of peers, would have promptly called Thorpe to account {410}

Of the Earl of Peomery, it was stated a few years later, 'from just observation,' on very pertinent authority, that 'no men came near their lordshi+ps [in their capacity of literary patrons], but with a kind of religious address' These words figure in the prefatory epistle which two actor-friends of Shakespeare addressed to the two Earls in the posthumously issued First Folio of the draious address' on seeking Lord Pee for Healey's books was somewhatconspicuously in an opposite direction he , be pronounced innocent

VII--SHAKESPEARE AND THE EARL OF PEMBROKE

With the disposal of the allegation that 'Mr W H' represented the Earl of Pembroke's youthful name, the whole theory of that earl's identity with Shakespeare's friend collapses Outside Thorpe's dedicatory words, only two scraps of evidence with any title to consideration have been adduced to show that Shakespeare was at any time or in any way associated with Pe company at Wilton in 1603

In the late autumn of 1603 James I and his Court were installed at the Earl of Pe to the prevalence of the plague in London By order of the officers of the royal household, the King's coave a perfor at Wilton House on December 2 The actors travelled from Mortlake for the purpose, and were paid in the ordinary manner by the treasurer of the royal household out of the public funds There is no positive evidence that Shakespeare attended at Wilton with the co, as is probable, that he did, the Earl of Pembroke can be held no more responsible for his presence than for his repeated presence under the sa's players to Wilton in 1603 has no bearing on the Earl of Peed relations with Shakespeare {411}

The dedication of the First Folio

The second instance of the association in the seventeenth century of Shakespeare's naainst the conjectured intimacy Seven years after the dramatist's death, two of his friends and fellow-actors prepared the collective edition of his plays known as the First Folio, and they dedicated the voluy, 'To the most noble and incomparable paire of brethren, Willia's ohts of the ood Lords'

The choice of such patrons, whom, as the dedication intiious address,' proves no private sort of friendshi+p between them and the dead author To the two earls in partnershi+p nearly every work of any literary pretension was dedicated at the period Moreover, the third Earl of Pembroke was Lord Chamberlain in 1623, and exercised supree should be sought for a collective edition of the works of the acknowledged e was athat the editors should have yielded to the passing vogue of soliciting the patronage of the Lord Chamberlain's brother in conjunction with the Lord Chae in the editors' dedication that can be held to bear on the question of Shakespeare's alleged intimacy with Pembroke is to be found in their remarks: 'But since your lordshi+ps have beene pleas'd to thinke these trifles so, heretofore; and have prosequuted both the, with sohi the fate, cos) you will use the like indulgence toward thereat difference, whether any Booke choose his Patrones, or find them: This hath done both

For, so s of the severall parts, when they were acted, as, before they were published, the Volu whatever in these sentences that does more than justify the inference that the brothers shared the enthusiastic esteem which James I and all the noblemen of his Court extended to Shakespeare and his plays in the dramatist's lifetime Apart from his work as a dra's servants'

or company of players, was personally known to all the officers of the royal household who collectively controlled theatrical representations at Court Throughout Jan his plays were repeatedly performed in the royal presence, and when the dedicators of the First Folio, at the conclusion of their address to Lords Peomery, describe the dramatist's works as 'these remaines of your _Servant_ Shakespeare,'

they 's servant'

or player that they knew him to have been the object of their noble patrons' favour