Shakespeare and Cambridge by Peter Farey

Way back in 1916, the Master of Cambridge's Jesus College, Arthur Gray, pointed out something very strange.¹  Shakespeare's plays seem to display a surprising familiarity with Cambridge University jargon. Illustrating this he explained the following.

From the earliest days to times comparatively recent a candidate for a degree at Cambridge was required to maintain a syllogistical dispute in the schools, which disputation was called 'the Act '. If he was successful and admitted to the full privileges of a graduate he was said 'to commence' in Arts or a Faculty, and the ceremony at which he was so admitted was, and is, called at Cambridge 'the Commencement'. If the candidate went on to a higher degree he was said 'to proceed'.

He then referred to a passage from a speech in Timon of Athens (4.3) in which Timon is addressing Apemantus, and the words 'proceeded', 'degrees' and 'commence' all appear in quick succession:

Hadst thou, like us from our first swath proceeded
The sweet degrees that this brief world affords . . .
Thy nature did commence in sufferance, time
Hath made thee hard in't.

Gray also pointed out how the words 'act' and 'commence' seem to be associated in Shakespeare's mind, citing the following examples:     

Learning is a mere hoard of gold till sack commences it and sets it in act and use.

(2 Henry IV, 4.3.24-26)

I from the orient to the drooping west,

Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold

The acts commenced on this ball of earth.
(2 Henry IV, Prologue 3–5)

When he to madding Dido would unfold
His father's acts, commenced in burning Troy!
(2 Henry VI , 5.2.117–8)

That the combination of 'acts' and 'commencement' was a peculiarly Cambridge thing is given support in Erasmus's Praise of Folie (tr. Thomas Chaloner, who was not a Cambridge alumnus), which has "At their Actes and Comencements ye dooe see theim swadled in with so many cappes, coyues, and furde hoodes as they weare." Erasmus spent five years (1510 to 1515) as Professor of Divinity at Queen's College there.

Making it clear that 'the Acts' were a peculiarly Cambridge procedure, Thomas Nashe, who was a contemporary of Marlowe at Cambridge also (according to the OED) wrote in his Strange Newes (p.279)

Acts are but idle wordes, and..Pumps and Pantofles...therefore do no Acts ... onelie ... to Oxford they trudge,..and there are confirmed in the same degree they took at Cambridge.

 

We should be careful not to jump to conclusions about the simple juxtaposition of the words 'act' and 'commence,' however, since 'commencement' was also used for the coming into force of some legislation, regulation, treaty or Act of Parliament.

Rather more interesting, therefore, is Gray's comment that the clearest evidence that it was from Cambridge, not from Oxford, that Shakespeare learnt University phrases is in Lear's complaint to Regan of his usage by Goneril: 

 'Tis not in thee ... to scant my sizes. 
(King Lear,  2.2.346–8)  

As Gray puts it, quoting Minsheu, Guide into Tonges (1617), a size "is a portion of bread and drink; it is a farthing [i.e. a small amount] which schollers in Cambridge have at the buttery." He continues, saying that "The 'abatement' of sizes was a College punishment, alternative to 'gating', to which there seems to be allusion in Lear's next words 'to oppose the bolt against my coming in'."

In 1923, Frederick Boas repeated Gray's observations, with approval, in his book Shakespeare and the Universities.²

Interestingly, however, there appears to be one bit of Cambridge jargon which was dismissed by Gray and ignored by Boas. It was the use of the word 'keep', in the sense of 'dwell'. Gray claimed that this was "common enough in Elizabethan English," but this is an opinion which I have so far been unable to substantiate. 

Quite the opposite in fact, as was argued by William Stanley Melsome in 1945.³ He noticed that the use of the word 'keep', meaning to live, lodge, dwell, or reside is purely a Cambridge University term and was "not used elsewhere in the British Empire." He claimed that it was not used in that sense at Oxford, and that it occurs in Shakespeare in one form or another nineteen times. Here are some of them. 

    Knock at his study, where they say he keeps

     To ruminate strange plots of dire revenge.

     (Titus Andronicus, 5.2.5–6)

    
     This Armado is a Spaniard that keeps here in court,

     (Love's Labour's Lost, 4.1.97)

 

     That his chief followers lodge in towns about him,

     While he himself keeps in the cold field?

     (3 Henry VI, 4.3.13–14)

 

      ... all the skyey influences

     That dost this habitation where thou keep'st

     Hourly afflict.

     (Measure for Measure, 3.1.8–11)

 

     Enquire me first what Danskers are in Paris,

     And how, and who, what means, and where they keep,

     (Hamlet, 2.1.7–8)

 

     I will see you hanged like clodpolls ere I come

     any more to your tents. I will keep where there is wit

     stirring, and leave the faction of fools.

     (Troilus and Cressida, 2.1.118–120)

 

     My Lord Ulysses, tell me, I beseech you,

     In what place of the field doth Calchas keep?

     (Troilus and Cressida, 4.4.16–2)

 

     We learn no other but the confident tyrant

     Keeps still in Dunsinane,

     (Macbeth, 5.4.8–9)

 

     ... it is in Gloucestershire.

     'Twas where the madcap Duke his uncle kept –

     (1 Henry IV, 1.3.241–2)

 

     It is the most impenetrable cur

     That ever kept with men.

     (Merchant of Venice, 3.3.18–19

We may also note that it is a usage familiar to Marlowe too.

 

     And more. Of my knowledge, in one cloister keep

     Five hundred fat Franciscan friars and priests:

     (Massacre at Paris, 1.2.84–85) 

 

The Oxford English Dictionary supports this specifically Cambridge usage of 'keep' (intransitive) as "To reside, dwell, live, lodge." It is noted that it is still used in this sense colloquially at Cambridge, and the quotations they give are helpful.

1504   in S. Tymms Wills & Inventories of Bury St. Edmunds (1850) 102,   I wyll yt he or they shall keep at Cambryge at scoole.

1601   P. Holland tr. Pliny History of the World I. 127   Among the mountaines of this tract, the Pygmæans, by report do keepe. [Philemon Holland was at Trinity College, Cambridge.]

1633   P. Fletcher Purple Island v. xxv. 53   Here stands the palace of the noblest sense; Here Visus keeps. [Phineas Fletcher was at King's College, Cambridge.]

1719   in R. Willis & J. W. Clark Architectural History of the University of Cambridge. (1886) II. 214   In ye Room where Mr Maynard keeps there was acted..a Pastoral.  

Although Shakespeare's use of such Cambridge terms has been known about for many years, subsequent biographers have not had much to say on the subject. In fact, a quick look through a dozen or so of the more recent ones revealed nothing at all. Boas himself hazarded a guess as to how it might have happened, derived from Gray's original suggestion. 

Kempe and two of his fellows in the first folio list of players were Cambridge graduates, while many of Shakespeare's dramatic predecessors and contemporaries – Marlowe, Greene and Nash, among others – had come from the same nursery of arts. This probably accounts for the curious fact that the dramatist shows familiarity with certain distinctively Cambridge terms.  

Perhaps, if they knew about it at all, other biographers have found this explanation unconvincing, and preferred to remain silent. Non-Stratfordians, on the other hand, have naturally been less reticent. Knowing that William Shakespeare of Stratford didn't go to university at all, let alone Cambridge, how do the main alternative authors fair?

According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, attended St John's College, Oxford (1572–6?), so no points for him. 

According to the Oxfordian Ramon Jiménez,⁴ Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford "matriculated at Cambridge at age eight, and was later awarded Masters’ Degrees by both Oxford and Cambridge," but this is slightly misleading. In fact Oxford matriculated as an impubes (immature) fellow-commoner of Queens' College, Cambridge, in November 1558, remaining for only one academic year and taking no degree. In August 1564, however, he accompanied the queen on progress to Cambridge, and to Oxford in September 1566 and, like others in the queen's retinue, was granted an unearned MA on both occasions. Being a fellow-commoner meant that he had the privilege of dining at the Fellows' table, and was therefore probably untroubled by the size of his 'sizes'.

Francis Bacon and his elder brother Anthony, being the sons of the Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, were also fellow-commoners. They went up to Cambridge on 5 April 1573 and matriculated from Trinity College on 10 June. According to the ODNB, they stayed there until December 1575, although their period of residence was twice interrupted when plague broke out in the Cambridge area. Venn⁵ tells us that Francis "resided for two years." In 1594, on a trip north on behalf of the Queen, illness prevented him from getting any further than Huntingdon, so he took this opportunity to visit Cambridge and take his MA degree.

Bacon is certainly likely to have been familiar with the terms discussed here, but Christopher Marlowe, with six and a half years 'keeping' at Cambridge as a pensioner, is by far the most likely to have a Cambridge vocabulary in his blood. He went up to Corpus Christi College in late 1580, and left early in 1587. There is also, of course, very copious evidence of his being a regular customer at the buttery, from which those 'sizes' were privately ordered.

Of the other authorship 'candidates' with any sort of following these days only Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland (although he was another privileged fellow-commoner) seems able nearly to match Marlowe for time spent at Cambridge.⁶

© Peter Farey, September 2013 

Peter Farey is a founding member of the International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society and twice joint winner of the Hoffman Prize for "a distinguished publication on Christopher Marlowe."

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¹ Gray, Arthur (1916) "Shakespeare and Cambridge," in A Book of Homage to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, p.262.
² Boas, Frederick S. (1923) Shakespeare and the Universities. Blackwell, Oxford.
³ Melsome, W. S. (1945).  The Bacon-Shakespeare Anatomy.  G. Lapworth. p.188.
⁴Jiménez, Ramon. The Case for Oxford Revisited.
⁵Venn, J. & Venn, J. A., eds. (1922–1958). Alumni Cantabrigienses. Cambridge University Press.
⁶Venn, as above. Jarmusch Swinton 
  
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The Bassano Fresco by Peter Farey

In the comments on her essay "Marlowe and the Dark Lady" (September 2011), Maureen Duff mentioned a fresco in the town of Bassano del Grappa in Italy, some forty miles north-west of Venice, which appears to have been referred to in Othello. This connection was first suggested by Roger Prior in his article, "Shakespeare's Visit to Italy," ¹ where he argues that Shakespeare (whom he assumes is the man from Stratford-upon-Avon) must have visited Bassano at some time, so detailed is his apparent knowledge of the fresco itself and of the town's inhabitants. 

This suggestion seems to have been ignored by Shakespearian scholars, but has been picked up by some non-Stratfordians, such as John Hudson,² who proposes Emilia (Bassano) Lanier as the true author, and the Oxfordian Richard Whalen. Surprisingly, Richard Paul Roe's book ³ makes no mention of it, and although it gets a mention in Ros Barber's The Marlowe Papers (p.431) no Marlovian has as far as I know written about it in any detail.

The particular passage in Othello which apparently contains the "fresco" references is when Iago – having planted the idea of Desdemona's infidelity with Cassio in Othello's mind, thus driving him into a jealous rage – reacts to Othello's demand for proof. (3.3.405-411)

It is impossible you should see this,
Were they as prime as Goats, as hot as Monkeys,
As salt as Wolves in pride, and Fools as gross
As Ignorance, made drunk. But yet, I say,
If imputation, and strong circumstances,
Which lead directly to the door of Truth,
Will give you satisfaction, you might have't. 

This is a speech which clearly rankles in Othello, as later, having insulted and dismissed his wife in front of Lodovico, he exits with the words "Goats, and Monkeys." (4.1.265)

According to Prior, the fresco was on the front of a house in the "Piazzotto del Sale" – "the little square of salt." It was painted in 1539 by Bassano's most famous painter, Jacopo dal Ponte, usually known as Jacopo Bassano, having been commissioned by the Dal Corno family, whose house it was and who were the official sellers of salt in Bassano.⁴  
Before looking at this fresco, however, it is perhaps worth noting that in the main square of Bassano there were two apothecary's shops. The owner of one of these had been known as "the Moor" after the sign of a Moor's head which hung outside his shop and, although this particular apothecary had retired by 1585, his family carried on the business for many years. The other was part-owned by someone called Giovanni Otello, a familiar surname in Bassano at the time. Although Cinthio's Hecatommithi, the main source of Othello, concerned both "the Moor" and "Disdemona" (sic), it was Shakespeare who introduced the name Othello for the main protagonist.

Not having seen the fresco itself, which has now been transferred to the museum in Bassano, I have to rely on the descriptions given by Roger Prior and John Hudson. They explain that it is divided into four horizontal bands, the second highest of which is a frieze depicting animals and musical instruments. Two of these animals are a goat with a monkey sitting beneath it. On the third band, roughly underneath them, is a large painting of a naked woman – Truth – who stands between two arched windows, and beneath her, on the lowest band, is a painting of the Drunkenness of Noah. The windows were fitted with slatted blinds, called "jealousies," which when opened appeared as doors partly concealing the naked Truth. The juxtaposition of the goat, the monkey, salt, drunkenness, jealousy, and the "door of Truth" seem to be far too obvious to be only coincidental.

If so, when might the author Shakespeare have visited Bassano del Grappa? To establish this, we need to look at the Bassano family, of which Emilia Lanier was a member. This family originated in Bassano, specializing in the manufacture and playing of musical wind instruments. Probably of Jewish origin, they had left the town by 1515, however, because of the anti-semitic policies of the town council. They settled in Venice, but five (of six) brothers emigrated to England in 1540, becoming members of Henry VIII's King's Music, and founders of the first recorder consort at the English court. By 1590, all of these brothers were dead, but their offspring, including Arthur, Edward, Andrea and Jeronimo, sons of the late Anthony Bassano, continued as instrument makers and court musicians. Emilia Lanier (née Bassano), daughter of Anthony's brother Baptista, was their cousin.

In August 1593, three of Anthony's sons – Arthur, Andrea and Jeronimo – received from the Crown a surprising and lucrative grant, a licence to export an average of over 100,000 calf-skins a year over a period of seven years. In fact, it was a licence the family held until 1621, with Edward also being included in 1607. It is therefore hardly surprising that neither Arthur nor Andrea (nor Edward, in fact) collected their quarterly payment as court musicians in person for the next three quarters and appear to have been away from London for seven months or so. The brothers had inherited a house in Venice, and Bassano was an important centre of the leather-working industry. As it happens, the Otello family had been prominent among the leather handlers of the town, and possibly still were.

Roger Prior suggests that the brothers must have invited Shakespeare to accompany them, having picked up an expert knowledge of the leather trade from his father, who was a glover. We, however, might consider the alternative proposed by Maureen Duff – Christopher Marlowe.  His father was a shoemaker who had at one time actually been a "searcher" (inspector) of leather for the Shoemakers Company, the guild which covered virtually all leather-working trades. Was it in fact suggested by "the Crown" that they knew just the man for the job?

One thing we may still wonder is why the author of Othello seems to associate the fresco in Bassano so much with sexual arousal ("as prime as Goats, as hot as Monkeys, / As salt as Wolves in pride"). John Hudson, thinking that the author was Emilia Lanier, suggests that the brothers took their cousin on the trip with them. If, as is popularly believed, she was the "dark lady" of the Sonnets, perhaps he is right!

© Peter Farey, August 2013

Peter Farey is a founding member of the International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society, and twice joint winner of the Hoffman Prize for "a distinguished publication on Christopher Marlowe."

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¹ Roger Prior. "Shakespeare's Visit to Italy," The Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies, Vol. 9 (2008). The University of Malta. 
² John Hudson. "Goats and Monkeys" (accessed 12 August 2013). 
³ Richard Paul Roe. The Shakespeare Guide to Italy (2008). Harper Perennial.
⁴ The member of the family who probably had most influence on the fresco's symbolism and design, Lazzaro Dal Corno, had been awarded the title Conte Palatino by the Emperor Charles V, and the "County Palatine" was, of course, one of Portia's suitors in The Merchant of Venice.

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As You Like It by Marlowe and Shakespeare

Alex Jack grew up amid the authorship controversy. His grandfather, Rev. David Rhys Williams, was a pioneer Marlovian and introduced him as a child to Calvin Hoffman, author of The Murder of the Man Who Was ‘Shakespeare.’ Alex has written on Renaissance art and literature and edited Marlowe and Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which Mark Rylance invited him to introduce at the Globe Theatre in London in 2005. A teacher and authority on diet, environment, and the healing arts, Alex is the president of Planetary Health. His other books include The Mozart Effect with Don Campbell, The Cancer Prevention Diet with Michio Kushi, and Buddha Standard Time with Lama Surya Das. He lives in western Massachusetts and is on the faculties of the Kushi Institutes of America and Europe. 

The following excerpt is from Alex Jack’s just published As You Like It by Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. It includes an annotated edition of the play and commentary setting the historical and literary context. The book is available on the author’s website www.christophermarlowe.org. 

The charges and accusations against Marlowe, retailed in the gossip, theologically freighted, and fragmented accounts that followed his reported slaying in Deptford in 1593, reflect the religious ignorance, bigotry, and hypocrisy that he wrote about in his early works and later shook his lance at in the Shakespearean plays. As Sonnet 140 puts it: “Mad slanders by mad ears believed be.”

By referring to the “Dead Shepherd,” invoking his powerful “saw of might,” and quoting one of his most famous lines from Hero and Leander, As You Like It silhouettes Marlowe’s brilliant life and tragic “death.” The couplet, delivered by Phoebe, the dark lady of the Arden forest, shines a revealing light on the play’s subtext: What happened to the Dead Shepherd? Did he really die or was his end feigned? Why is his name besmirched, and who is the real author of the sublime poem and plays attributed to Shakespeare — a question parodied in the scene in which Touchstone (representing Kit) vies with William (the country bumpkin channeling Will Shakespeare) for the hand of Audrey (representing the Elizabethan theatre audience)?

There are three or four widely recognized references to Marlowe’s death in the play, several more equivocal allusions, and many hitherto unrecognized glances.  Let's examine these briefly.
 

1. Dead Shepherd 

Phoebe. “Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might:

Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”  (3.5.82-83) 

Phoebe’s invocation of Marlowe’s memory and quotation from Hero and Leander are universally regarded as Shakespeare’s affectionate tribute to an admired predecessor. As You Like It is suffused with themes and imagery drawn from The Passionate Shepherd and Hero and Leander. The shepherdess’s apotheosis of Marlowe and his muse is but the crowning example. There is an element of immortality in Phoebe’s words that echoes the tributes of England’s literary fraternity, which recalled Marlowe as “kind,” “divine,” “the muses’s darling,” “an elemental wit,” and other paeans of the highest praise.

2. A Great Reckoning in a Little Room

Touchstone. I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most
capricious poet, honest Ovid was among the Goths.
Jaques. [Aside] O knowledge ill-inhabited, worse than Jove in a
thatched house! 
Touchstone. When a man’s verses cannot be understood, nor a man’s
good wit seconded with the forward child understanding, it
strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.
Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical.
Audrey. I do not know what ‘poetical’ is. Is it honest in deed and
word? Is it a true thing?
Touchstone. No, truly; for the truest poetry is the most faining,
and lovers are given to poetry; and what they swear in poetry may
be said as lovers they do feign. (3.3.1–17)

This is the key passage in As You Like It alluding to the circumstances surrounding Marlowe’s death. The Coroner’s report, composed in Latin, stated that Marlowe and Frizer exchanged words over “le recknynge,” or bill for refreshments and use of the room. The “little room” refers to the upstairs chamber in Mistress Bull’s establishment where Kit and three associates reportedly met over the course of eight hours, dined, and came to blows . . . .

To order Alex Jack's As You Like It by Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, click here.