Commonplace Reading and Writing in Early Modern England and Beyond (Material Readings in Early Modern Culture) [1 ed.] 1032629215, 9781032629216

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Material Readings in Early Modern Culture

COMMONPLACE READING AND WRITING IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND AND BEYOND Hao Tianhu

Commonplace Reading and Writing in Early Modern England and Beyond

Approaching from bibliographical, literary, cultural, and intercultural perspectives, this book establishes the importance of Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden, a largely unexplored manuscript commonplace book to early modern English literature and culture in general. Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden is a seventeenth-century manuscript commonplace book known primarily for its Shakespearean connections, which extracts works by dozens of early modern English authors, including Shakespeare, Bacon, Ben Jonson, and Milton. This book sheds light on the broader significance of Hesperides that refashions our full knowledge of early modern authorship and plagiarism, composition, reading practice, and canon formation. Following two introductory chapters are three topical chapters, which respectively discuss plagiarism and early modern English writing, early modern English reading practice, and early modern English canon formation. The final chapter further expands the field to ancient China, comparing commonplace books with Chinese leishu, exploring Matteo Ricci’s cross-cultural commonplace writing, and re-reading Shakespeare’s sonnets in light of Ricci’s On Friendship. The solid book will serve as a must read for scholars and students of early modern English literature, manuscript study, commonplace books, history of the book, and intercultural study. Hao Tianhu is a Qiushi Distinguished Professor at Zhejiang University, China. He works mainly in early modern English literature and comparative literature.

Material Readings in Early Modern Culture

Series editors: James Daybell, Plymouth University, UK and Adam Smyth, Balliol College, University of Oxford, UK

The series provides a forum for studies that consider the material forms of texts as part of an investigation into the culture of early modern England. The editors invite proposals of a multi- or interdisciplinary nature, and particularly welcome proposals that combine archival research with an attention to theoretical models that might illuminate the reading, writing, and making of texts, as well as projects that take innovative approaches to the study of material texts, both in terms of the kinds of primary materials under investigation, and in terms of methodologies. What are the questions that have yet to be asked about writing in its various possible embodied forms? Are there varieties of materiality that are critically neglected? How does form mediate and negotiate content? In what ways do the physical features of texts inform how they are read, interpreted, and situated? Reading Mathematics in Early Modern Europe Studies in the Production, Collection, and Use of Mathematical Books Edited by Philip Beeley, Yelda Nasifoglu and Benjamin Wardhaugh Elizabethan Diplomacy and Epistolary Culture Elizabeth R. Williamson The Circulation of Poetry in Manuscript in Early Modern England Arthur F. Marotti Playbooks and their Readers in Early Modern England Hannah August Practices of Ephemera in Early Modern England Edited by Callan Davies, Hannah Lilley and Catherine Richardson Commonplace Reading and Writing in Early Modern England and Beyond Hao Tianhu For more information on this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Material-Readings-in-Early-ModernCulture/book-series/ASHSER2222

Commonplace Reading and Writing in Early Modern England and Beyond

Hao Tianhu

Supported by the International Publishing Program of Zhejiang University and the National Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation, China (authorization: 19ZDA298). First published in English 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Hao Tianhu The right of Hao Tianhu to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. English Version by permission of China Renmin University Press. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hao, Tianhu, author. Title: Commonplace reading and writing in early modern England and beyond / Hao Tianhu. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2024. | Series: Material readings in early modern culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2023033420 (print) | LCCN 2023033421 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032629216 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032635729 (paperback) | ISBN 9781032635699 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: English literature--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism. | Commonplace books--History. | Manuscripts, English--History--16th century. | Manuscripts, English--History--17th century. | Garden of the Hesperides (Greek mythology) | LCGFT: Literary criticism. Classification: LCC PR421 .H25 2024 (print) | LCC PR421 (ebook) | DDC 820.9/003--dc23/eng/20230804 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023033420 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023033421 ISBN: 978-1-032-62921-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-63572-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-63569-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781032635699 Typeset in Times New Roman by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

For David Scott Kastan

Contents

Foreword viii DAVID SCOTT KASTAN

Acknowledgments x Prologue

1

1 The Static Shape of the Written Page

5

2 Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition

27

3 Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England

54

4 Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice

75

5 Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation

101

6 Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing

125

Epilogue

149

Works Cited 152 Appendix I: Catalog A (Folger MS V.b.93) 166 Appendix II: Catalog H (Folger MS V.a.75) 176 Appendix III: Pages and Headings of Halliwell 183 Appendix IV: Plays, Poems, Prose 186 Appendix V: Titles Published or Possibly Published by Humphrey Moseley 189 Appendix VI: Classification of the Titles (351 + 5) 190 Appendix VII: The Halliwell-Phillipps Cuttings of Hesperides from Stratford-upon-Avon 193 Index 196

Foreword David Scott Kastan

In a television interview in 1979, Mary McCarthy notoriously said of the playwright Lillian Hellman that “every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.” Hellman brought a defamation suit against McCarthy for $2,500,000, though Hellman died before the case could be decided. I trust that I will not be at any financial risk if I begin here by saying that every word of the title of the academic subfield commonly known as The History of the Book is a lie, including “The” and “of.” But it is. Some Stories about Some Books might be better, but obviously it is not nearly as institutionally compelling. Pluralizing the nouns helps a bit, even it is now a predictable academic tic, usefully signaling a resistance to totalizing narratives, while “stories,” which etymologically is merely an aphetic form of “histories,” registers a useful discomfort with, if not always an escape from, the positivism of “history.” This is not to suggest that accuracy is unachievable or irrelevant, but only to say that which facts (and I am happy to admit that there are facts) get considered and how they are arranged as evidence are inevitably functions of non-historical concerns. The problem with “book” is not merely the perversity of the word’s odd singularity, but also its opposite: the capaciousness the word has come to assume in referring to many things that are not in any obvious sense books at all. “Book” now functions as a collective noun for any of the many substrates of writing: from oracle bones to online blogs. And even “of” seems problematic to my skeptical mind, as so much of the important work in the field is not a history of any book or books, but might be about a reader, or a printer, or a typeface, or a paper supplier, or about Protestantism, or about the nation, or about … well, you get the point. It is a field, known by whatever name, that has flourished precisely in its bold commitment to this reach. Its proper genre turns out to be microhistory–or micro-story, as I might prefer. Hao Tianhu (as in China his name would be ordered) has written an ambitious microhistory of an unpublished mid-seventeenth-century commonplace book: John Evans’s Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden. It isn’t well known, and it is largely unstudied. In large part that is because Evans’s book never found its way from his manuscript versions into print, although it had found (or perhaps Evans successfully sought out) the most important literary publisher of the day, Humphrey Moseley, who repeatedly advertised the book as forthcoming. The book is intriguing on its own terms, and Hao has done an extraordinary job in unraveling its

Foreword ix curious and complex manuscript history, as well as in tracking down the sources of its thousands of extracts (a task he began even before there was a fully functioning version of EEBO). But perhaps of greater consequence is that Hesperides has provided Hao with the opportunity to think rewardingly about commonplacing itself, as it reveals a common habit of early modern thought, a common focus of early modern education, a common practice of early modern “discontinuous” reading, giving rise to a popular genre of English book, which itself was a factor in the development of an idea of English literature as a discrete and consequential cultural achievement. Commonplacing, as Hao makes clear, is the activity where reading and writing intersect, revealing it as the extreme limit of the intertextuality that is the condition of all writing. But also, and not least in importance for Hao, the commonplace book is a form that permits his fascinating cross-cultural investigation linking the European genre with Chinese leishu, but that, unlike so much comparative scholarship that can only compare, here has an actual point of contact: the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci’s On Friendship: One Hundred Maxims for a Chinese Prince, written in China where Ricci would live for almost thirty years. In these various ways, Hao ensures that we come to see Evans’s commonplace book as a decidedly uncommon object fully worthy of our attention. His microhistory turns out to be a remarkably rich cluster of fascinating microhistories, bound together, I suppose we should say, just like a book.

Acknowledgments

The small book is revised on the basis of my Columbia dissertation (2006). First and foremost, it is my pleasure and honor to utter a deep and hearty appreciation of my advisor, Professor David Scott Kastan, for his invaluable guidance and generous care of me through the many years of study and research, particularly for his help in the writing and rewriting (sentence by sentence) during the completion of this book. Professor Kastan first suggested to me the present topic; his learning, judgment, devotion, wisdom, and above all, wonderful generosity, are forever my model. I dedicate this book to David, trying to hint at my immense gratitude, though such bounty can never be repaid in full. David’s timely and thoughtful Foreword adds much splendor and status that’s necessary for the “microhistory’s” preservation. Of course, all the remaining errors and deficiencies are my own. I am equally grateful to many professors at Columbia University and Peking University for their teaching: David Wang, G. Thomas Tanselle, Alan Stewart, Gayatri Spivak, Wei Shang, John Rosenberg, Anne Lake Prescott, Jean Howard, Ursula Heise, Robert Hanning, Andrew Delbanco, David Damrosch, and Julie Crawford; Wang Shiren, Wang Ning, Shen Hong, Shen Dan, Greg Maillet, Liu Yiqing, Kong Xianzhuo, Hu Jialuan, Han Jiaming, Ding Hongwei, and Cheng Zhaoxiang. (Sadly, Professor John Rosenberg and Professor Hu Jialuan have passed away, but their virtuous souls live like “season’d timber.”) I sincerely thank my colleagues and graduate students at Zhejiang University; the financial support provided by the International Publishing Program of Zhejiang University makes the publication of this book possible, and my writing has benefited from the favorable intellectual environment fostered by the university and the school. I am greatly indebted to Professor Laetitia Yeandle for having taught me paleographical skills and initiated me into the field of manuscript study. I acknowledge the Folger Shakespeare Library’s grant-in-aid, which enabled me to attend the paleography seminar there in 2002. While doing research in the libraries on three continents over two decades, I have accumulated debts to the staff of the Folger Shakespeare Library, particularly Heather Wolfe; of the Shakespeare Centre Library, Stratford-upon-Avon, especially the late Marian Pringle; of the Huntington Library; of the Newberry Library; of the Columbia University Library, the Peking University Library, and the Zhejiang University Library.

Acknowledgments xi Among all the scholars I have cited, whose work I appreciate and acknowledge in the notes and bibliography, my special thanks go to Dr. Peter Beal, who graciously passed an article that opposes his views concerning the manuscripts of Hesperides. I thank Professor Adam Smyth and Professor James Daybell for their kindness to accept my small book into their distinguished series. The following short list attempts to record some of the great help and support I’m lucky enough to have received in the past quarter century: Tiffany Jo Alkan, William Baker, Richard Beadle, John Bird, Piero Boitani, Gordon Campbell, Leon Chai, Stephen Dobranski, Michael Dobson, Stephen Greenblatt, Lorna Hutson, Andreas Huyssen, David Jeffrey, Edward Jones, Carol Kaske (she’s in Heaven now), Yoshiko Kawachi, András Kiséry, Nicholas Koss, Yaochung Li, Eun Kyung Min, Sunyoung Park, Julie Peters, Tom Rendall, John Rumrich, James Shapiro, Clifford Siskin, William Weaver, Matt Zarnowiecki, and Zhang Longxi; Chen Ming, Cheng Wei, Cong Cong, Du Zexun, Li Tie, Liu Jianjun, Denise Wang, Wang Xin, Wu Fen, Xie Guixia, Yang Lingui, and Zhang Yan. I’m thankful to the editorial team and production team at Routledge for their efficient and careful job, particularly Sun Lian, Ashraf Reza, Nicole Schlutt, Shabir Sharif, and Feng Xiaoyin. I acknowledge the following journals, especially the kindness of their editors, for permitting me to reprint in a revised form the earlier published articles:

• “Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden and its Manuscript History.” The Library, 7th ser., 10.4 (Dec. 2009): 372–404. (Part II, Chapter 1)

• “‘Pearls of Eloquence’: Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden as a Herald of Canon Formation.” Tamkang Review 43.2 (June 2013): 83–106. (Chapter 5)

• “Commonplace Book Compilation and Early Modern Reading: The Case of

Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden.” DramArt: Journal of Theatre Studies 8 (2019): 97–112. (Part II, Chapter 4) • “The Readers of 17th-Century English Manuscript Commonplace Book Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden.” Multicultural Shakespeare vol. 23 (38) 2021: 197–209. (Part III, Chapter 4) Last but not least, the constant love of my family, especially my mother, my wife, and my kids, is indispensable in the arduous but rewarding journey of (re) writing. They are with me summer and winter. Hao Tianhu June 2023 Hangzhou

Prologue

In the Stationers’ Register, there is a curious (to use James Orchard Halliwell-­ Phillipps’s favorite word) entry by Humphrey Moseley, who was arguably the most important literary publisher in seventeenth-century England, dated August 16, 1655: … a booke entituled Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden stored with the choicest flowers of language and learning, in philosophy, history, cosmography, intermixed with the sweets of poetry, wherein ye ceremonious courtier & passionat amorist may gather rarities suitable to their ffancies being upon twelve hundred heads alphabetically digested by John Evans,1 Gent. (Eyre, II.8; also qtd. in Beal 1980, 450 and Reed 127) Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden is obviously a commonplace book, an important genre that has caught considerable scholarly attention in recent decades. It was eventually unpublished for some unknown reason and remains in manuscript. According to Peter Beal (1980), there are two versions of it. One is now collected at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC (MS V.b.93), a folio of 900 pages. The other exists in bits and pieces, now scattered at the Folger (MSS V.a.75, V.a.79, V.a.80) and the Shakespeare Centre Library at Stratfordupon-Avon, England (James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, “Notes upon the Works of Shakespeare,” 128 volumes). John Kerrigan noted in 1996, “The study of commonplace books has hardly begun” (118). Tianhu Hao wrote in 2006, after listing four book-length studies and a handful of articles on the commonplace book, “On the whole the study of this important subject is still incipient” (Hao 2006, 1). In 2013, Victoria Burke was able to state: “In recent years interest in the field of commonplace books has blossomed” (172). The favorable trend of development has sustained in the recent decade. In the standard database MLA International Bibliography (accessed on June 15, 2023), a search with the subject word “commonplace book” produces 222 results, about three quarters of which (166) have been published since 1996, a testimony of Kerrigan’s observation.2 Research books and articles in the domain of manuscript study have been numerous, but only 31 results are related with both the commonplace book and manuscript study; further, most of these (26) have DOI: 10.4324/9781032635699-1

2 Prologue appeared since 1996. It is clear that the present study of Hesperides, a largely neglected manuscript commonplace book, is timely and necessary. There are interesting stories to tell about both versions of Hesperides. Briefly, one has been expanded, and the other reduced. An anonymous, late-eighteenth-­century owner of Folger MS V.b.93 added three Shakespearean and four contemporary dramatic excerpts to it, thus expanding the coverage of Hesperides. (The importance of these additions will be discussed in Chapter 4.) James Orchard Halliwell-­ Phillipps, the preeminent Shakespearean scholar in Victorian England, produced his 16-volume edition of Shakespeare from 1853 to 1865. Seemingly to aid his editing work, he cut a version of Hesperides in his possession into pieces, for John Evans had quoted numerous Shakespearean passages in the commonplace book he hoped would be published. Halliwell-Phillipps provided facsimiles of Evans’s extracts in his edition of Shakespeare as evidence of Shakespeare’s reputation. His scissor, however, permanently turned an entire copy of Hesperides into fragments. Are the two versions of Hesperides identical? Certainly not. Chapter 1 studies the genealogical relationship between the two versions and successfully dates each of them. My conclusions differ from Beal’s or Halliwell-Phillipps’s or Gunnar Sorelius’s, who is the only other scholar that has studied the manuscripts of Hesperides. My investigation has been challenging and rewarding. I do not claim the results of my study to be definitive, but I will leave it to the reader to judge. Short as it is, the Moseley entry cited above is pregnant with meaning. Not only can it facilitate our exploration of the provenance of the manuscripts, but it functions as a key to our understanding of Hesperides. The language of the entry allows us to identify crucial issues for the manuscripts’ study and may be usefully summarized: —What is a commonplace book? The familiar apiarian metaphors (garden, flowers, sweets, gather, digested), reveal its nature. Particularly noteworthy here is the selectiveness of the selection (choicest, rarities). These are mainly the issues addressed in Chapter 2. Ann Moss’s indispensable Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought is probably the best book on the topic of the commonplace book, but it is unsatisfactory at least in one aspect. Moss is not sufficiently mediasensitive. “Printed” accurately defines her scope of study, but the commonplace book has a long (and prior) tradition in manuscript as well as in print. By 1655, the genre actually lay at the intersection of manuscript and print. By ignoring the medium of manuscript altogether, Moss, as it were, ties her own feet; naturally she cannot always dance well. With a primary focus on France, less on Germany, Holland, and Italy, and a sketchy account of English practices, Moss provides a sweeping narrative of commonplacing in “Western Europe.” As a result, the larger picture is at once clear and blurred. The decline of the commonplace book in the seventeenth century, for example, is less true in England than it is in France. The claim of the title, “the Structuring of Renaissance Thought,” is alluring, but is something of an oversell: it is only one way in which Renaissance thought was organized and presented, and arguably one that in some sense comes at the expense of thinking. And like all books making large, comprehensive claims, local details

Prologue 3 get overlooked or oversimplified. When she discusses the birth of comparative literary criticism, obviously an important subject for “Renaissance thought,” she arrives too swiftly at her conclusion to make sense (1996, 200–1). She rushes through “some implications for theology and preaching,” and then dismisses the subject because the “scope of the present study forbids further investigation in these fields” (1996, 131). But Moss has established the central terms for the study of commonplace books and has provided a wealth of important information. —What is the nature of commonplace writing (digested)? How do we distinguish between legitimate borrowing and illegitimate stealing from other commonplacers, as well, of course, from the texts that are commonplaced? These are crucial questions fundamentally connected to the ideas and rights of authorship in an era before modern copyright, and they are the issues with which Chapter 3 deals. Unsurprisingly, there has been some work that has considered these matters (see Kewes 2003, 8), but my treatment breaks some new ground for further discussion. —The intended readers of Hesperides, we are told by Moseley’s entry, are “ye ceremonious courtier & passionat amorist.” The subjects of decorum and amor are pertinent ones in the commonplace book. What does “ffancies” mean? Taste, or imagination, or caprice? Or all of the three? To put it another way, for what purposes do the intended readers read Hesperides? How do Evans’s “ffancies” dictate his reading and compiling? What is the relationship between the reader’s gathering and the compiler’s digesting, both being readerly activities? These issues will be explored in Chapter 4. Earlier book historians like H. S. Bennett had focused mainly on what early modern readers read and neglected how they read. By studying what Sorelius calls “spontaneous editing,” I join with other recent scholars in concentrating on how at least one early modern reader (in this case Evans) reads. —“Language” comes before “learning.” Adrian Marino comments, “[T]he first concept of ‘national literature’ is linguistic rather than literary” (114). For example, Tottel’s Miscellany (London, 1565), arguably the most important collection of sixteenth-century English poetry, is published “to the honour of the Englishe tong” (“To the Reader”). As a vernacular commonplace book (vernacular heads, vernacular extracts, translations), how does Hesperides contribute to the construction of national literature? The word “literature” never appears in Evans’s book or Moseley’s entry. What is Moseley’s concept of “poetry”? Does it mean a collection of poems, the art of making, or a combination of “Poems, Plaies, Romances”? In other words, is “poetry” here roughly equivalent to the modern conception of literature? If not, what are the differences? Does poetry occupy a central place in the garden? These are the questions of Chapter 5. Among other things, I argue that Hesperides constitutes a milestone in early modern canon formation. —The interplay of media. Hesperides itself straddles the media of manuscript and print. Both Chapter 2 and Chapter 5 address the coexistence and inseparability of manuscript and print, complicating the easy replacement story too often told. Therefore, this book offers to deal with commonplace reading and writing in early modern England mainly with the case study of Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden. Along the way, other commonplace books are also discussed. Moreover, to broaden the scope of the study, I shall move in the final chapter (Chapter 6)

4 Prologue beyond early modern England and into the Far East, particularly China, by performing comparative and cross-cultural studies of commonplacing. I shall compare and contrast commonplace books with Chinese leishu (roughly, encyclopedia), define and explore Matteo Ricci’s cross-cultural commonplace writing in his classical Chinese treatise On Friendship, and reinterpret some of Shakespeare’s sonnets from the fresh angle of Ricci’s On Friendship. Notes 1 All Evans in this book, unless otherwise specified in Part III, Chapter 6, refer to John Evans, the compiler of Hesperides. 2 By contrast, at the end of July 2013, a search with the subject word “commonplace book” produced 117 results, nearly 60% of which (68) had been published since 1996 (Hao 2014, 3). The rate of increase in the recent decade is staggering.

1

The Static Shape of the Written Page

There are two extant versions of Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden, a manuscript commonplace book compiled in the seventeenth century by a certain John Evans—whose identity remains uncertain.1 One version was discovered by Gunnar Sorelius in 1973, who linked a group of apparently unrelated manuscripts in collections on both sides of the Atlantic and established their cognate relationships. The manuscripts include certain cuttings pasted in James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps’s Shakespearean scrapbooks, now preserved in the Shakespeare Centre Library, Stratford-upon-Avon, the United Kingdom, and three manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, the United States (Folger MSS V.a.75, V.a.79, V.a.80). These bits and pieces constitute what we see today of a version of Hesperides (referred to as Halliwell henceforward), which was once whole and intact before Halliwell-Phillipps’s scissor work in the nineteenth century.2 The other version (Folger MS V.b.93, referred to as V.b.93 henceforth), together with the fragmented version, has been discussed by Peter Beal in his Index of English Literary Manuscripts.3 More recently, Beal draws attention to how little work has been undertaken on these interesting manuscripts since their discovery and encourages further investigation (Beal 2002, 16–9). In this chapter, I offer the first stage of the suggested reconsideration: the first step toward appreciating the manuscripts’ significance. V.b.93 is a book of 900 folio pages measuring 7 ½ × 11 ¾ inches. Pages 1–4, 379–80, 667–8, 715–20, and 785–8 are missing. The pagination ends at 892, and the five-page index at the end is unpaginated. Halliwell-Phillipps’s Shakespearean scrapbooks, or “Notes upon the Works of Shakespeare,” consist of 128 volumes, which are arranged by play. Of the 128 volumes, 70 contain pasted cuttings from Hesperides.4 I provide a list of the 70 volumes and page numbers in Appendix VII, so that all the Hesperides cuttings in the 128 volumes can be conveniently located. MS V.a.75 has four leaves, including a six-page “Catalogue of the Bookes from whence these Collections were extracted.” Concerning MSS V.a.79 and 80, Sorelius writes, after introducing the Halliwell-Phillipps scrapbooks at Stratford-upon-Avon: Two manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library are perhaps even more puzzling although they have attracted less attention. They are shelfmarked V.a. 79 and 80 and described in the catalogue as ‘Shakespeare, William, Commonplace Book ca. 1660’. The first consists of fifteen folios DOI: 10.4324/9781032635699-2

6  The Static Shape of the Written Page measuring 7 ½ × 8 ¾ ins. and the second of eighteen folios measuring 4 ¾ × 7 ½ ins. Both are made up of cuttings containing Shakespeare quotations in ink. Like those in the Halliwell-Phillipps collection at Stratford, they are just under four inches wide. In V.a. 80 the cuttings have been pasted on the pages so as to leave free space between them (except in the case of folio 16). In V.a. 79 they follow each other without gaps. (294) Beal describes these similarly: MSS V.a.79 and 80 are “of fifteen leaves and eighteen leaves respectively” (ShW 114). According to my examination, however, MS V.a.79 contains sixteen leaves and MS V.a.80, seventeen, and on leaf 15 rather than 16 in MS V.a.80 the cuttings have been pasted without free space in between. Can Sorelius and Beal both make such an obvious error? That a folio leaf originally in MS V.a.80 has been removed to MS V.a.79 might account for the numerical discrepancies perfectly, but how could that happen? Possibly this is just a familiar story of human error on Sorelius’s and Beal’s part, with Beal merely following Sorelius’s misstep (although it is not impossible it was the other way around). Both Sorelius and Beal treat Hesperides in connection with Shakespeare; the former does not even hesitate to call it “An Unknown Shakespearian Commonplace Book,” though that is a misdescription of what Hesperides is. The manuscripts indeed were largely “Unknown,” but it isn’t a “Shakespearian Commonplace Book.” Shakespeare is merely one of the authors who are commonplaced in it. In the forthcoming chapters, I shall argue that in addition to its association with Shakespeare, Hesperides is significant for our knowledge of early modern writing, early modern reading practices, early modern canon formation, and early modern culture in general. By doing so, however, I do not wish to ignore or underestimate the importance of the connection to Shakespeare, but to point out that “Shakespeare” has worked to distract us from many of the manuscripts’ particulars and much of their significance. What I am hoping to provide is a comprehensive and objective evaluation and appropriation of an early modern artifact, which has been imperfectly understood, insufficiently explored, and unfairly neglected.5 Before moving on to the larger issues, it is possible to answer some basic questions about the manuscript. For example, in addition to Shakespeare, which authors are extracted in Hesperides? How many titles are cited? When did Evans compile this commonplace book? In what ways was Humphrey Moseley—a most prominent literary publisher in seventeenth-century England—involved in the compiling? What is the genealogical relationship between the two versions? Sorelius and Beal provide some answers to these questions, but their answers are often partial, misleading, or erroneous. In order to clear the ground and pave the base, I need to reinvestigate the problems to reach more considered and more reliable solutions, which demand a full and critical use of electronic databases, unavailable to Sorelieus and incompletely available to Beal, while each was doing his work on Hesperides, and a variety of original documents. The critical mind (or perhaps better, multiple critical minds) is the central figure of our story.

The Static Shape of the Written Page 7 I. When the digital meets the manual; or, who’s in, who’s out From where are the tens of thousands of extracts in Hesperides taken? At the end of V.b.93, there is a five-page list,6 roughly in the alphabetical order, of books and titles and their abbreviations (see my transcription in Appendix I; henceforth referred to as Catalog A). In MS V.a.75 appears “A Catalogue of the Bookes from whence these Collections were extracted” (see my transcription in Appendix II; henceforth referred to as Catalog H). When the two largely similar catalogs are taken together (the reason why we should do so will become clear later in the chapter, when the genealogical relationship of the two versions is established), we can get a more complete index of the works cited. All of them are printed books, as far as we know. Concerning the two catalogs, Beal writes: The index in MS V. a. 75 [i.e. Catalogue H] lists 302 titles (from which, as Dr Sorelius noted, the works of Beaumont and Fletcher are conspicuously absent); the index in MS V. b. 93 [i.e. Catalogue A] (less neatly written but more consistently arranged) lists 358 titles, including all those found in V. a. 75 and, among other works, 39 titles for Beaumont and Fletcher. (1980, 450) Beal, as Sorelius, is right about Catalog H, but he is almost entirely wrong about Catalog A. The latter, less neatly written and less consistently arranged than the former (I shall address the significance of this fact in Part II), lists 353 titles, which are actually 351, for no. 97 and no. 311 refer to the same play by Ben Jonson, and no. 124 is crossed out by John Evans, owing to its repetition of no. 104. Four titles in Catalog H—no. 74, “Dodona’s Grove”; no. 239, “Roman Antiquities”; no. 243, “Saint Lewis ye King”; and no. 289, “Virgils Æneis”—are not found in Catalog A. Catalog A includes 41 titles for Beaumont and Fletcher, 2 of which are also present in Catalog H: “Monsieur Thomas” and “ye Woman Hater.” Beal’s unexpected inaccuracies might be explained away by a careless confounding of the two catalogs (353 + 4 = 357, 41 − 2 = 39), but that is surprising from such an appropriately respected scholar. Beal’s Index is the standard work on English literary manuscripts and is regularly cited in the card catalogs of outstanding research libraries such as the Folger Shakespeare Library. The updated version of his Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450–1700, or CELM, has, following the publication of some of my research in The Library (Hao 2009), now corrected these errors, generously citing my article.7 Yet the corrections do not end the many problems posed by the manuscripts. First, works excerpted in the commonplace book are sometimes overlooked in the catalog. For example, passages from Thomas Goodwin’s Roman Antiquities appear in both versions of Hesperides, but the book itself is listed only in Catalog H. Its appearance in the fragmented version occurs on the opposite side of a HalliwellPhillipps cutting in a Henry IV, part 1 volume: rence, and meeting in the vertex, did easily kindle any combustible matter put into it. Roman Antiquities. (1H4, viii.94)8

8  The Static Shape of the Written Page The same extract is found under the commonplace heading “Fires” in V.b.93. The immediate context runs as follows: …so yt ye beames being collected within ye circumference & meeting in the Vertex did easily kindle, any combustible mattr put into it. R A. (Evans 303) Thus, we know the word cut off by Halliwell-Phillipps is “circumference,” and the abbreviation “R A,” though absent from Catalog A, must be “Roman Antiquities.” Citations from “R A” appear many times in V.b.93, e.g., one under the heading “Rings” (672), three under “Yeares” (888), and seven under “Funeralls” (329). Therefore, the item “Roman Antiquities. by Tho: Godwyn. B D.  R A” should be inserted into the section of R of Catalog A. Similarly, Dodona’s Grove and Virgil’s Æneis (sic) are cited in V.b.93 and should be added to Catalog A. The former is abbreviated as “DG” and occurs on pages 373, 582, 592, 791, 827, 831, 883, 892, etc. The latter is abbreviated as “VÆ” and occurs on pages 517, 670, 756, 824, 890, etc. In both cases, Evans gives not the full citation, but only the shortened title and the page number. With the help of the commonplace heading and EEBO (Early English Books Online), it is possible to locate the exact passage that Evans intends to quote. For instance, “VÆ 245” under the heading “Vnexpressible” (824) directs us to the following lines: Had I a hundred mouths, as many tongues, A voice of iron, to these had brazen lungs; Their crimes and tortures ne’re could be displaid. “VÆ 207-1. VÆ 209” under “Swift” (756) leads us to: Swifter then tempest, or wing’d shaft he glides (207, first line) Like a swift showre, and at the goal they aime. First Nisus gains the start of all by far, Not swifter winds, nor wings of lightning are. (209) Besides VÆ, VE also appears, e.g., “VE 2. VÆ 212” under “Youth” (890), “VE 43” under “Winter” (875). Our check in EEBO indicates that VE refers to the non-Æneis sections of the same book: “VE 2” Virgil’s Bucolicks, “VE 43” Virgil’s Georgicks.9 Both of these titles are listed in Catalogs A and H. Evans might derive the abbreviation VE from the running title in the section Bucolicks: “The first Eclog,” etc. and use it loosely to refer to Georgicks as well as Bucolicks.10 The fourth item present in Catalog H but absent from Catalog A, Saint Lewis the King, I have not yet found extracted in MS V.b.93. It is a section in Du Bartas’ Divine Weeks and Works, translated by Joshua Sylvester, from which Evans cites many sections. More likely than not this section is also quoted but missed in the compilation of Catalog A.

The Static Shape of the Written Page 9 Moreover, books cited in the text might be missing from either catalog. Albingenses is a case in point. Under the heading “Sects” on page 693 of V.b.93, there are six extracts from Albingenses, including the following one: Reinerius, a Iacobine monke &c sd [i.e. said] they liued iustly, beleeved well &c all ye articles of ye creed &c only blasphemed ye Roman church. Albingenses. Albingenses is the second part of Luther’s fore-runners by Jean Paul Perrin, translated out of French by Samson Lennard (London, 1624). The cited extracts provide information on various religious sects such as Waldenses, Albingenses, Merindolites, and Pastorelli and their doctrines and beliefs.11 “&c” signals an omission of the text. The item “Albingenses. by I P P L, trans: by Samson Lennard” should be inserted into Catalog A.12 By now, we have a more complete list of Works Cited for Hesperides, which consists of at least 356 titles: 351 from Catalog A, 4 from Catalog H, plus Albingenses. This critical catalog best represents John Evans’ final intention. In terms of accidentals,13 any critical edition of the catalog should follow Catalog H, because—as we shall see soon—Catalog H is a fair copy intended for print publication. I refrain from constructing the critical catalog for two reasons: first, the task lies outside the scope of this book; second, the interested reader can do so without much trouble on the grounds of my transcriptions and discussions of the two catalogs. The second, and more frustrating, factor complicating the situation is that it is not always easy to identify the titles cited by Evans, especially when the available information is scant. For example, Sorelius fails to identify “Poems, by M.L.L.” (299). The combination of the common title and the unusual acronym creates the difficulty. Fortunately, with the aid of searchable databases, it becomes possible to identify the item as Men-Miracles. With Other Poemes by Martin Lluelyn (Oxford, 1646). The mystical manual yields before the oceanic digital. My working procedure has been mainly as follows: first, find a quotation from the unknown or uncertain title in Hesperides; then search the quotation in LION and obtain its source; third, double-check the text and bibliographic information in EEBO (and ESTC,14 if necessary); fourth, check the author’s biographic information in the DNB (and other reference books, if necessary). The first three steps must be repeated with other citations (if they exist) from the same title to ensure that the identification is correct. Let me illustrate the procedure with “Poems, by M.L.L.” An extract from this title appears twice, under “Drunke” (240) and “Face” (281), respectively: No rubies shine No ieweller shall keep shop in my face Nor drinke I so much to disclose By fresh pimples yt rise Where ye reckoning lies That ye bar boy may point

10  The Static Shape of the Written Page Out ye quart and ye pinte And make up his score by my nose. Ps. We must be patient to search “Texts” in LION using the “Keyword in Work” function and try to enter different groups of words from the quotation. There are limits of functionality and reliability in all of these databases, but all scholars must be grateful that they now exist. Here we may find that searches for “no rubies shine” and “shop in my face” yield no results. It does not matter; enter “so much to disclose” and we get Martin Lluelyn.15 The quotation is from “Master W. H. his Song to his Wife at Windsor” in Men-Miracles (1646), with some omissions and alterations. Very good; but we cannot stop here, for the text in LION is sometimes unreliable,16 though convenient to use. Search the book title in EEBO, select the 1646 record, Wing L2625,17 and go to the document image. Look at the title page. “MenMiracles. With Other Poemes. By M.LL. St: of Ch Ch. In Oxon.”18 The acronym “M.LL.” suggests strongly that this is the book we have been searching for. Look further on, and our quotation occurs on pages 51 and 52 (sigs. E3r-v). LION is right. Who is Martin Lluelyn? A student of Christ Church in Oxford. The DNB has an entry on him; so does Anthony à Wood’s Athenæ Oxonienses (London, 1691), which spells the poet’s Welsh name as Llewellin and gives the variants Lluellyn and Lluelyn.19 The DNB describes its subject as retaining “powerful royalist and high-church sympathies” (Doyle), whereas the acquaintance Wood’s tone sounds curiously matter-of-fact: “In 1636 he was elected a Student of Ch. Ch. From Westm. School, took the degrees in Arts, that of Master being compleated in 1643, at which time he bore arms for his Majesty, and was at length a Captain.” We can nearly be sure of our identification, yet a check of more quotations may further corroborate it. Another citation on page 240 (“Turnes wit into barme…”) is from “Song against Ale”; the one on page 496 (“As wealthy swanes…”) and the one on page 684 (“Wise merchants thus…”) are from “Two and Twentieth Miracle. Of Pigmies”; and the one on page 882 (“Clouds wrought so nicely…”) is from “To my Lady Ch.” All come from the same collection Men-Miracles. There is no doubt about the identity of M.L.L. and his Poems as Evans’s source in Hesperides. With the aid of databases, we may also identify authors extracted in Hesperides but whose names do not appear in the Catalogs. According to my statistics there are 56 original authors (excluding translators) in the two Catalogs (see Appendix VI). Yet extracts excerpted in the text are sometimes, when they are part of the front matter of a book (or preliminaries), authored by people other than the 56. These authors of the preliminary prose and verse augment the number of authors extracted. I shall give two examples. The first one is William Cartwright’s collection of poems. Resigne proud dust wt powr entitles thee To this? wch we account or legacy. CPs. Nature must needs pine away To see her master piece but clay.

The Static Shape of the Written Page 11 Sing on blest soul! be as yu wast below A more than common instrument to showe Thy makers praise. Hadst yu not bin, so good so virtuous Heaven had never bin so covetous. C.P. (183) As ye great world, built in a weeke, shall lye fflat at one blow. CPs (724) Except for the fourth one, the first three excerpts on page 183 are by someone other than William Cartwright, though they are all drawn from the edition of Cartwright’s work: the first one by T. Baines, “Vpon Mr. Cartwright’s Poems, published long after his death”; the second by F. Palmer, “Upon Mr Cartwright and his Poems”; and the third by Izaak Walton, “On the Death of my dear Friend Mr William Cartwright.” The extract on page 724 is by J. Berkenhead, “In Memory of Mr William Cartwright.” My second set of examples comes from the 1647 folio by Beaumont and Fletcher. The following one is by Henry Mody, Baronet, “On Mr John Fletcher, and his Workes, never before published.” —These sullen daies When scorn, & want & danger, are ye Bayes, That crown the head of merit. Laudat. to Beau. & Fl. (570) The next one is by James Shirley, “To the Reader,” an author already included in the Catalogs. Shirley is usually regarded as the editor of the folio. Whose birth & quality made them impatient of ye sowrer wayes of education. Epist. to Beaum & Fl. (86) Still another one is from the epistle dedicatory, “To the Right Honovrable Philip Earle of Pembroke and Mountgomery etc,” signed by John Lowin, Richard Robinson, Joseph Taylor, and seven others. Here we observe multiple authorship. Your family, whose Coronet shines bright with ye lustre of its owne iewells. Epist. to. Beaum & Fletch. (286) Interestingly, Ben Jonson and Francis Beaumont write laudatory poems to each other in the 1647 folio and elsewhere: The least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth.

(H8, iii.21 opp.)

12  The Static Shape of the Written Page This is also from the preliminary matter of the 1647 folio, by Ben Jonson, “To Mr Francis Beaumont (then living).” On page 395 of Hesperides, a poetic extract (“Words that haue bin” etc.) is from “Beaum Lttr to B. Iohnson.” But, of course, both of these authors already appear in the Catalogs. In short, databases help us establish authorships beyond the coverage of the two Catalogs. LION does not always work, however. Its coverage is immense, yet still limited. The limitations of LION manifest themselves when I attempt to identify citations from Palingenesia. My research experience is worth a brief narrative as it alerts us to what these databases can do for us and sometimes cannot do. Sorelius identifies the title as “first translated by Barnabe Googe and published in 1565” (299). The book can be found in EEBO: The zodiake of life, by Marcello Palingenio Stellato, translated into English verse by Barnabe Googe (London, 1565). Why does Evans call the book “Palingenesia”? Almost certainly it comes from the name “Palingenio” (although it might be a transliteration of a Greek word that means “regeneration”). One might let it go at that and accept Sorelius, as I did for a while. Then, when I located extracts from Palingenesia, I searched them in LION. It turned out that my repeated attempts were all futile, although the text of The zodiake of life is covered in LION. Then I did the other way around: search the full text of The zodiake of life for key words in Palingenesia; for example, “concenter” on page 436 of Hesperides. In vain, again. It seemed certain that Sorelius’s identification is wrong.20 And misleading, too. Yet what is “Palingenesia”? The reference librarian could not help. When I sat in the microfilm reading room (in that dark age before digitization), scrolling through the seemingly impossible Caroli tou makaritou palingenesia (London, 1649),21 I knew I would give up if this did not work. The slenderest hope, nevertheless, was fulfilled. This high-sounding panegyric elegy by Thomas Pierce on the “rebirth” of the blessed Charles following the beheading of the King is indeed Evans’s “Palingenesia.” Nil desperado. LION and EEBO sometimes work, but sometimes do not work. A third situation is trickier: The database suggests a source, and this source seems to be right, yet its acceptance would create some new problem for the dating of the manuscript. For example, the reverse of a Halliwell-Phillipps cutting in a Romeo and Juliet volume reads: O powerfull Negromantick eyes Who in your circles strictly pries, Will find that Cupid with his dart, (Rom. v.25) Search for it, and you come up with James Howell, “Upon Black Eyes, and Becoming Frowns,” Poems on several choice and various subjects (1663). Doublecheck the title in EEBO and ESTC, and we learn that the 1663 Poems is the first edition. Then must we say that the fragmented version of Hesperides (or Halliwell) had to be completed no earlier than in 1663? From other evidence we know that this version should not be so late (see Part II below); but if we cannot account for the appearance of this excerpt otherwise, we seemingly must accept 1663 as the

The Static Shape of the Written Page 13 terminus ad quem of Halliwell. True, Howell’s Poems is listed in neither catalog, yet it might be another case like that of Albingenses. However, the said poem appears also in James Howell’s Familiar Letters (London, 1650; sig. Kk8v), a work mainly in prose as its title suggests and a work frequently extracted by Evans. The 1663 Poems recycles materials from an earlier printed book, and Evans must have quoted from the earlier Familiar Letters rather than Poems. LION covers Howell’s Poems, but not his Familiar Letters. LION proves unreliable and its usefulness is limited. (In the happy time of 2023, EEBO has both Familiar Letters [1650] and Poems [1663] in full text searchable, so our work is made easier. Still, LION is useful in supplying the tentative source for the quotation initially.) On the other hand, had Halliwell-Phillipps not cut Hesperides into pieces, we could see Evans’s note of source Familiar Letters, and there would be no problem at all. As a conclusion of this section, I shall reflect and comment on the ongoing media debate. I do not regard the rise of the electronic media as a crisis for the traditional media of print and manuscript, and I do not view them either with nostalgia or alarm. The new media offer new opportunities to contain, digest, and reform artifacts in the old media. EEBO, that now-familiar and much-depended-upon database, encompasses photographic images of the pages of hundreds of thousands of early printed books and their bibliographic information, digitizing the holdings of scores of rare book libraries all over the world and in many cases even full text searchable. Never before has a scholar had such an easy and relatively reliable access to so many rare books. Claims of revolution often turn out to be exaggerated, but it is no exaggeration to say that the digital revolution creates a revolution in the way of scholarly investigation. Without LION and EEBO, my research on Hesperides would be unimaginable. In spite of all its mischief and unreliability, LION was necessary for my research. If Halliwell-Phillipps had had a Canon S50 and Adobe Photoshop, he would not have cut the fragmented version of Hesperides into pieces, and I would have been spared a lot of labor. Technological progress may be irresistible, but, in so many (but not all) regards very welcome. For scholars, of course, it is almost impossible any more to think of our work without it. On the other hand, I cannot (and probably need not) overemphasize the importance of preserving and studying the original documents. Digital media should not and must not substitute for the original documents.22 Like Sorelius, I held the pages against the light to read the reverse sides of the pasted cuttings. As we shall see soon, the words on the hidden sides proved crucial for establishing the genealogical relationship of the manuscripts. Yet, of course, the opposite sides are entirely absent from the digital version or the print that might be made from it. Only when we read the original document can we make use of the verso evidence to detect the often significant traces of the process of making the book. Even with early printed texts, where normally recto and verso can both be individually digitized, it is important to remember that these usually exist in multiple copies, but what has been digitized is usually only a single copy or occasionally two, although every individual copy of a book from the hand press period is in some significant ways unique. Technological reproductions, however advanced, cannot replace the physical artifacts (MLA). This is so essentially because “every element of the physical

14  The Static Shape of the Written Page book conveys meaning and thus contributes to our understanding of the work as a whole” and the physical artifact bears evidence of its own making (McKenzie 259) and often of its use. In the computer age, bibliography must adapt accordingly, as McKenzie argues; yet we must always recognize the primary value of the physical book and the codex form itself. Whatever media we face, critical acumen informs all our investigations. For our purpose here, we need it to resolve the genealogical relationship between and the dating of the two versions of Hesperides. II. The story of a book; or, which is before, which is after Since the physical book inevitably bears evidence of its own production, perhaps we can solve the following problems by examining the physical evidence: When was Hesperides compiled? Of the two versions, which was earlier, and which later? What was the nature of Humphrey Moseley’s involvement in the project? Scholars have suggested various dates for the compilation of the manuscripts, ranging from 1640 to 1670. The three scholars who have spent the most time with the manuscript hold different opinions: 1 James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps seems to be uncertain about the dating of the fragmented version now associated with his name (Halliwell). His dates for different parts of the manuscript vary from “about the year 1640,” through “about A.D. 1660,” to “about A.D. 1670,” or “the time of Charles the Second” (1660–1685). More often, he safely designates Hesperides as a manuscript commonplace book “of the seventeenth Century” or simply as “old” or “early.”23 Gunnar Sorelius interprets the varied datings as a sign that “at some stage somebody [i.e. Halliwell-Phillipps] wanted to give the impression that they [referring to Folger MSS V.a.79 and 80] were unrelated” (297). I disagree; it is characteristic of Halliwell-Phillipps to waver in the matter of manuscript dating. For another example, he initially dated the “only known manuscript of Shakespeare’s plays,”24 an early manuscript copy of the Merry Wives of Windsor, as “written during the time of the Commonwealth” (1843, 6). Later (1852, 73–4) he became agnostic about the date, stressing the small chance of “discovering the date of the manuscript.” Although his own impression is that “it was either written before or not long after 1660,” he cites vastly different opinions, “some thinking it as early as 1630, and others possibly as late as 1690,” or “written long before the Restoration.” If the dating of one manuscript may vary by 60 years, why may another not vary by thirty? In volume 1 of The Works of William Shakespeare (1853–1865), Halliwell-Phillipps dates an extract from Folger MS V.a.80 around 1640, yet he also dates V.a.80 about 1660. The relevant facsimiles and notes in the first eight volumes of the Works obviously refer to the same manuscript, yet Halliwell-Phillipps’s datings differ from about 1640 to the time of Charles the Second. The varied dates assigned, I believe, should be read as indicative of the uncertainties of an antiquarian mind in dealing with an artifact from the past and his unfailing zeal to pursue the matter tenaciously; suggesting the genuine difficulties of dating a hand solely on paleographical grounds, they

The Static Shape of the Written Page 15 do not represent any intention of misleading the reader about the relationship between the manuscripts. Having said that, we should point out that HalliwellPhillipps’s attempts for dating are not always successful, convincing or systematic; rather, his contradictory assignments may cause unnecessary confusions about the matter. 2 Gunnar Sorelius dates Halliwell from the years around 1660 on the basis of the publication date of the titles in Catalog H. He writes, “None of the books listed in the ‘Catalogue’ was first printed later than 1658 (Suckling’s ‘Letters’ in Fragmenta aurea of that year). We can be reasonably certain that the original collection ‘Hesperides’ dates from the years around 1660, but the collection of the material may have taken several years” (297). Whether we agree with Sorelius or not, his method is intrinsically praiseworthy: compared with the difficulty of accurately dating paleography, the titles in the catalogs seem to offer a more reliable way of dating the material. And his judgment that the compilation of the commonplace book may have lasted over a period of several years is a sensible one. However, it is not true that Suckling’s “Letters” in Fragmenta aurea were first printed in 1658. The section first appears in Fragmenta aurea of 1646 (see Wing S6126A). According to EEBO, the text for “Letters” is the same in the 1646 and 1658 editions.25 Based on such significantly inaccurate bibliographic information, Sorelius’s conclusion becomes less persuasive. 3 Peter Beal dates both versions of Hesperides c. 1655–1659 (ShW 113, 114, 115). His dating is based on the entry of the book into the Stationers’ Register by Humphrey Moseley on August 16, 1655, as well as on Moseley’s advertisement of the book in the publisher’s list which can be dated no earlier than 1659 (1980, 450). As we shall see, Beal confounds the two versions and the evidence he relies on is partial; therefore, his conclusion is not entirely convincing, although it has been accepted by many, not least because he is Peter Beal and the Index of English Literary Manuscripts is a standard reference work. Nevertheless, Beal’s effort opens up a new way of investigating the matter. The Moseley connection is undeniably important and suggestive. Neither Halliwell-Phillipps nor Sorelius had knowledge of the other version of Hesperides (V.b.93); Beal did, but in dating Hesperides, he does not take care to distinguish the two versions. Although he writes that “both are written in the same scribal hand, though possibly at different periods” (1980, 450), he still dates the two versions from the same period. Here he is not completely consistent with himself, though it is, as we all know, very difficult to date hands with much precision. As for the genealogical relationship of the two versions, Beal implies that V.b.93 derives from Halliwell: “The Folger MS (V.b.93) would appear to be the same work as the fragments but probably in an enlarged version” (1980, 450); V.b.93 is “apparently a duplicate, with additions” of Halliwell (1980, 463). On the surface, this theory looks right: Catalog A has dozens of more titles than Catalog H; presumably these—including 39 Beaumont and Fletcher titles—are added on top of the 302 in Catalog H to produce an “enlarged version.” But after a careful examination and consideration of the available evidence, I propose a new theory. I think that V.b.93

16  The Static Shape of the Written Page is not a duplicate or an enlarged version, but Evans’s master copy of Hesperides on which Halliwell was based. After the compilation of the eventually fragmented version, the copy which was intended for print publication, Evans continued to add extracts into his master copy, so V.b.93 contains more than its derivative, possibly anticipating additional editions. Obviously this theory bears upon the problem of dating; for, according to this theory, V.b.93 was necessarily compiled over a longer period than Halliwell. To be brief, the latest first edition in Catalog H is the fourth volume of Artamenes, 1655; Halliwell may have been finished in 1656, when Humphrey Moseley first advertised the book in the category “These Books I do purpose to Print very speedily.” The latest first edition in Catalog A is Sir William Killigrew’s The Siege of Vrbin, 1666; therefore, John Evans completed V.b.93 no earlier than 1666. It took over a decade to compile V.b.93, while the compilation of Halliwell might have taken only several months or a year. Let me elaborate. It is clear that the two versions of Hesperides are closely connected. The connection demonstrates itself in three aspects: the catalog, the headings, and the extracts. With just four exceptions, all the titles in Catalog H can be found in Catalog A. As I have discussed above, those four titles are extracted in V.b.93 but absent from Catalog A. The same is true for some of the titles present in Catalog A but absent from Catalog H. For instance, Sir John Suckling’s The Goblins is excerpted in Halliwell (Halliwell-Phillipps’s “Notes,” Rom. v.24 opp.), but Catalog H does not list it. Similar cases might be Sir William Davenant’s Poems and Milton’s A Mask. Catalog H looks neat and regular, arranged according to a more strictly observed alphabetical order than Catalog A. Malvezzi’s “Coriolanus” is moved from letter A to letter C (17 to 60); “ye Cid” from letter B to letter C (34 to 51); “ye Two Damsells” from letter D to letter T (83 to 280); “ye Two Gentlemen of Verona” from letter G to letter T (131 to 279); “For the honour of Wales” from letter H to letter F (149 to 103); “ye Tragedy of Marcus Tullius Cicero” from letter M to letter T (218 to 270); Du Bartas’s “Poems on war & peace” from letter D to letter P (87 to 223). If one compares the order of the titles under any letter, one quickly sees that Catalog H is more consistently arranged, contrary to the opinion held by Beal. For example, in Catalog A the titles under A start with “Astrophill & Stella” and end with “Albumazar,” with “an Account of Religion by Reason” in between; whereas in Catalog H each title assumes its proper place, with “an Account of Religion by Reason” at the very beginning. Beal’s statement that Catalog A is “more consistently arranged” is simply untrue. Other errors in Catalog A are corrected in Catalog H. For instance, the authorship of “Bussy D’Ambois” is changed from Ben Jonson to George Chapman; “an Execration of Vulcan” to “Execration upon Vulcan”; the repeated item (97, 311) appears only once; the four omitted titles are included. Overall Catalog H is more neatly written, more consistent and more reliable. The comparison strongly suggests that Catalog H is derived from Catalog A. If this is so, however, a question immediately arises. It is puzzling why the 53 titles, including those by Beaumont and Fletcher and Sir William Killigrew, which appear in Catalog A, are absent from Catalog H. Are they all overlooked in the listing like

The Static Shape of the Written Page 17 “The Goblins”? Perplexing as it may be, I believe I can answer this question by analyzing the ink evidence (see pp. 21–22), but this will come later. The headings of the two versions are also closely related. I collect all those headings with page numbers from the fragments cut by Halliwell-Phillipps (see Appendix III). Normally the page numbers appear in pairs because they are found on both sides of a cutting. My list can serve as a first step in a critical reconstruction of Halliwell. Most of the headings can be found in V.b.93. Some pages are missing in V.b.93, so the headings “Abasement,” “Abilities,” “Revolting & Revolts,” and “Slander & Slanderers” are not found in it. Instead, their appearance in Halliwell allows us to know about the content of the lost pages in V.b.93. When a Halliwell heading does not appear in V.b.93 as a regular heading (i.e., a heading with an extract or extracts listed under it), the cross-reference may help us locate it. Thus, “Abbridgments & Abbridging” appears on page 87 of V.b.93, “Breefe in abbridgmt;” and “Attendants” on page 663, “Retainers in Attendants.” “Forbearing,” “Mediocrity,” and “Spirits of man” are listed in the cross-reference to another commonplace book. Only one Halliwell heading with a page number, “Prates & Prating,” can be found by no means; it must be a new addition. Therefore the headings of Halliwell generally follow V.b.93 and the cross-references in V.b.93, with some additions. Further, the extracts on the cuttings of Halliwell are frequently found in V.b.93. For example, H5 iii.71 244 Courting Will you vouchsafe to teach a souldier terms, such as may enter at a Ladies eare, and plead to his love sute to her gentle heart. Henry 5. Opp. Courting 243 court be past, but for a single penny. English Gentleman. The fidelity of Courtiers, followes fauourites no further then26 The extracts on both sides can be found in V.b.93 (168–9). The two incomplete extracts are found under the heading “Courtier.” For another example, the extracts on pages 1025–8 of Halliwell can all be found in V.b.93 (see Appendix III). The one on page 1027 is found via cross-reference on page 414. The above cuttings are all from the Stratford-upon-Avon fragments. Let us examine the Folger ones. The notes in square brackets indicate the corresponding place in V.b.93. The two versions of Hesperides correspond with each other in all headings and extracts examined. MS V.a.79: 1 Extract 6, page 8: If thou linger in our territories, longer then the swiftest expedition, will give thee time, to leave our royall Court, by heaven my wrath shall far exceed—2 Gent: of Verona [55, “Banish”] Opp. Balme or Balsome [heading]

18  The Static Shape of the Written Page It grew most plentifully in the valley [neere Iericho] and on the sides [54, “Balme”] 2 Slip 2, page 2: I sweare to thee by Cupids strongest Bowe, by his best Arrowe with the golden head, by the simplicity of Venus [s inserted] Doves, by all that which knitteth Souls and prospers love. Midsomer N: [532, “Oathes”] Opp. it. Holy War. It matters not to whom, but by whom we sweare. Eod. [532, “Oathes”] God was glorified by an oathe, because thereby there was a solemn con- [532, “Oathes”] 3 Slip 1, page 2: Opp. … Artamenes Vol.3. Vnknowne [heading] Wrapt up from all humane sight In th’obscure mantle of eternall night. Du Bartas first weeke. [831, “Vnknowne”] The rest belonged to Astrologie. Arcadia Whether such as you expect Sr, or the contrary, resides not in the confines of my knowledge. ye Bastard. [These two items in “Know not,” via cross-reference. The first also in “Future” via cross-reference.] MS V.a.80: 1 Slip 3, page 15: Opp. the shadow of a Sun diall that shewes the houre, or a weather Cock that declares the wind. Lives & Elegies. [856, “Warneing,” from cross-reference “Predictions”] See Adviseing. [all items marked, probably not copied a second time, just cross-reference.] Warr [heading] 2 Slip 2, page 17: Sully the purity and whitenes of my sheets, which to preserve is sleep. Win: Tale [14, “Adultery”] Opp. See Courteous, … [must be “Affable”] Affecting [heading] 3 Slip 3, page 7: If it be so, we need no grave to bury honesty, there’s not a graine of it to sweeten the face of the whole dungy earth, Winters Tale [underlining cut off; 285, “False”] Opp. long, and appears only in the Spring, But faded Roses retaine still a good odour. ye Gallery of heroick women. [285, “Fame”] MS V.a.75: With writers of short hand, wee must set a prick for a letter, a letter for a word, marking only the remarkables. Hol: War.

The Static Shape of the Written Page 19 May as well seeke Pauls steeple in Hondius his Maps of the world; for abbridgments of Histories, are Nets of a larger wash, which only enclose greater fishes. Cy: Acad. To apparell any more, in these paper vestments, I should multiply impertinents, and perhaps displease. Felt: Resolvs To draw the designe of it in little, and to teach it by Epitomie. Gall: of hero: Wom It is so large a field, as in a discourse of this Nature and brevity, it is fit rather to use choice, of those things which wee shall produce, then to embrace the variety of them. Adv of Lear: Tis ye short reproof, that stayes like the stab in the Memorie; and many times three words do more good, then an idle discourse of three houres. Felt Resolves. Cf. V.b.93, p. 87: ⊕ Breefe ly nes vity in abbridgmt With writers of short hand wee must set a prick for a letter, a letter for a word marking only ye remarkables. HW. May as well seeke Pauls steeple in Hondius his map of ye world, for abbridgments of histories are nets of a larger wash, which only enclose great fishes. CA To apparell any more in these paper vestments, I should multiply impertinents; & perhaps displease. Rs To draw the Designe of it in little, and to teach it by epitomie. GhW It is so large a field, as in a discourse of this nature & brevity, it is fit rather to use choice of those things, which we shall produce yn to embrace ye varierty of them. A of L Surely Princes. pt. Speech. BE. Tis ye short reproof, yt stayes like ye stab in ye memory; & many times 3 words do more good, then an idle discourse of 3 houres. Rs. Thus, in each of the three cases—catalog, headings, extracts—Halliwell seems to be a fair copy and V.b.93 a draft. The catchword evidence also proves Halliwell to be a fair copy. The two pages of the text of Halliwell left intact in MS V.a.75 both have a catchword on it: “in” and “it.” On the Halliwell-Phillipps cuttings, we occasionally come across a catchword: “folly” on the opposite side of slip 4, page 8 of MS V.a.80, and “we” on the opposite side of the cutting on page 21 of volume 2 of Cymbeline. It seems that the original pages of Halliwell each have a catchword on it. In contrast, no catchword ever appears in V.b.93. The presence of the catchword in Halliwell conveys a clear sense of ending of the present page and continuation on the next, while the absence of the catchword from V.b.93 is dictated by an open ending, an unceasing expansion into the blank space. With the catchword, the text of Halliwell flows from column to column, page to page, in the manner of the codex form. Without the catchword, each column of V.b.93—which normally contains a commonplace heading—continues in the up-down direction until the bottom of the page, where a cross-reference may lead the reader or the compiler to another commonplace book. Thus in V.b.93 the verbal text of each column is

20  The Static Shape of the Written Page not connected, but independent of each other; only the alphabetical order of headings threads the separate columns into a loose whole. The catchword transforms a draft into a fair copy, a notebook into a real book, a work in process into a finished product. So far we see that the two versions of the manuscript commonplace book, V.b.93 and Halliwell, are closely connected, despite the fact that V.b.93 is untitled.27 The genealogical relationship between the two is unmistakable in the catalog, in commonplace headings, and in the text; the same secretary hand is responsible for both. The distinctive letter q, which looks like the modern g, is found in both versions of Hesperides.28 Further, V.b.93 is a master draft, and Halliwell a fair copy, which may be intended as the copy for print publication. But which is earlier, which later? There are only two possible answers. Let us first assume the opposite of my theory and see how it works out. If V.b.93 were based on Halliwell, great difficulties would arise. It is difficult to imagine how Catalog A deliberately breaks the alphabetical order of Catalog H and puts in wrong places titles such as “ye Cid” and Malvezzi’s “Coriolanus”—such an act would be nothing less than extreme carelessness or perversity. It is equally difficult to explain why V.b.93 gets most of the Halliwell headings in order but chooses to banish some, like “Forbearing” and “Mediocrity,” to another commonplace book and refer to them via cross-reference. Contrarily, if Halliwell is based on V.b.93, these problems are instantly solved, and everything becomes clear. Only one question remains: Why do the 53 titles disappear from Catalog H? These 53 titles can be divided into three groups: Group 1: The Goblins, Sir William Davenant’s Poems, Milton’s A Mask. Group 2: 39 Beaumont and Fletcher titles, including the 1647 folio, 35 plays in the 1647 folio, and three non-folio plays: Cupid’s Revenge, Tragedy of Rollo, Elder Brother. Group 3: The Amorous War, Albumazar, The Fatal Union, Merry-Tricks, A Mad World my Masters, The Opportunity, The Rebellion, and four Killigrew titles: Ormasdes, Pandora, Siege of Vrbin, Selindra. As I have discussed above, the three titles in Group 1 are or may be (as some pages are missing) excerpted in the text of Halliwell but are missing from the catalog. Alternatively, Sir William Davenant’s Poems and Milton’s A Mask might have provided no excerpts and were therefore duly omitted in Catalog H. Either way, they should belong to the coverage of Catalog H. The 50 titles in the other two groups are different: they are beyond the coverage of Halliwell, because the extracts from them were not entered into V.b.93 until after the compilation of Halliwell was complete. That is why Gunnar Sorelius is surprised at the absence of Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays from Catalog H: “The most unexpected feature of ‘Hesperides’ is its comparative neglect, intentional or unintentional, of Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays, a large number of which would have been available in the 1647 folio” (300). The 1647 folio is exactly the collection from which John Evans cites 35 Beaumont and Fletcher plays in Catalog A.

The Static Shape of the Written Page 21 The fact that the 50 titles are the last ones excerpted in V.b.93 can be revealed by the material evidence of the ink. The excerpts are not entered at one time; although by the same hand, extracts entered at different times using different ink— and perhaps different quills—look different. By examining the original artifact at the Folger, we can distinguish one group of extracts from another according to the ink. For example, the 28 extracts under “Acknowledge” (p. 7) may be divided into four groups: 1–8; 9–10; 11–27; 28. The strokes in the first group are thinner, sharper, lighter; those in the second and third groups are thicker, a little bit more clumsy, and less distinct. Extracts 10 and 11 are both from The Winter’s Tale, but the latter has stains; it seems that there is a new dip of the pen happening here. Extracts 14–16 are all from Henry VIII, but the latter two have thinner strokes; there may be a sharpening of the pen with a knife after the copying of Extract 14. Within the third group, Extracts 21–27 might be copied at another time, or a second sharpening of the pen might have happened with Extract 21. The division and description are, admittedly, rough and speculative; the real situation could be more complicated, for it is unlikely that John Evans entered all the extracts under one heading before he continued to the next. Rather, the more likely procedure was that he distributed extracts from the same title under different headings at one time. For instance, I believe that after a dip of the pen and the entry of Extract 11, Evans might have returned to the previous column (“Accuse,” p. 6) and entered Extract 7 there, which is also from Winter’s Tale. The heavy strokes of s, t (in most) and d (replenish’d, world) in Extract 7 suggest this procedure. With a constant move between different headings, it is unwise and unnecessary to make too much of the ink within each of the headings.29 One thing is certain, though. The ink in the first three groups looks brown, while Extract 28 uses a distinctly different ink, which looks blue-black. This ink I name Ink Z, to distinguish it from the regularly used ink or inks. Extract 28, the last one in the column, is from The Custom of the Country, a play in the 1647 folio. It seems likely that if the 50 titles are all excerpted in Ink Z, then when Halliwell was compiled, they had not yet been entered into V.b.93. That would naturally account for their absence from the text of Halliwell and Catalog H. The investigation proves the truth of this hypothesis. I examined MS V.b.93 page by page, column by column, and noted down which extracts are written in Ink Z. (To save space, I do not provide my list of extracts in Ink Z as an appendix.) It turns out that these extracts include but are not limited to all 11 titles in the third group above, 27 of the plays in the 1647 folio, plus Cupid’s Revenge, The Tragedy of Rollo, and The Elder Brother. I have not found extracts from the other eight plays (including a mask) in the 1647 folio, although they are listed in Catalog A: Beggars bush; ye Coxcomb; Four plays, or moral representations in one; ye Laws of Candy; ye Maid of ye Mill; ye Mask of ye Gent of Graies Inn; Women Pleased; Wit at several weapons.

22  The Static Shape of the Written Page On the other hand, no extracts from any of the 50 titles are written in the regular ink(s). It is clear that the 50 titles were the last ones entered into V.b.93. Halliwell was based on a certain stage of V.b.93, which is not the V.b.93 as we see today. The stage of V.b.93 on which Halliwell was based, before the 50 titles were excerpted, I call A1. A1 provides not only a large portion of the text for Halliwell, but also cross-references and instructions for compiling. The production process of the commonplace book Hesperides (A1, Halliwell, V.b.93) will be a topic of the next chapter. The English Treasury of Wit and Language, a commonplace book published by Humphrey Moseley in 1655, sheds a new light on the issue why the Beaumont and Fletcher titles are largely absent from Halliwell. The book, an endeavor similar in nature to Hesperides, cites from 40 Beaumont and Fletcher plays,30 25 of which can be found in the 1647 folio. Since Moseley already published a commonplace book of verse drama, particularly of Beaumont and Fletcher titles, it is reasonable for him to have requested Evans to omit the Beaumont and Fletcher plays from Hesperides to save time and space, which Evans obeyed and produced Halliwell accordingly. Yet a question still remains. In Catalog A, the 353 titles are listed on five pages or ten columns in alphabetical order. Titles under each letter constitute a discrete section; there is almost always blank space left between sections, only sections E and F have no space in between. It seems reasonable to speculate that the 50 titles were added to the Catalog in the blank space. This is true for the 11 titles of Group 3 and the three non-folio plays by Beaumont and Fletcher. They almost all appear at the end of a section (see Appendix I),31 while the “The Elder Brother” is the last item of the Catalog, a section in itself. It makes up an independent section because there is no blank space available in section E. But the 35 folio plays and the 1647 folio itself mostly appear at or near the beginning of a section. They do not seem to be entered later. How shall we explain this? To answer this question, let me pause for a moment to introduce the role of Humphrey Moseley in the project of Hesperides. As we have seen, Moseley entered Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden into the Stationers’ Register on August 16, 1655. The entry specifies that the book is made up of “twelve hundred heads alphabetically digested by John Evans, Gent.”32 Which version of Hesperides does this entry refer to? V.b.93 has about 1,600 headings, not 1,200. Halliwell contains about 1,100, obviously closer to the “twelve hundred” the entry promises.33 But was Halliwell completed by 1655? In a publisher’s list dated 1656 by Sir W. W. Greg, Moseley advertises Hesperides as the first item in the category “These Books I do purpose to Print very speedtly [sic]”: 222 Hesperides, or The Muses Garden, stored with variety of the choicest flowers of Language and Learning, wherein grave and serious minds may be refreshed with the sollid fruits of Philosophy, History, & Cosmography, intermixed with the sweets of Poetry; And the ceremonious Courtier, The Passionate Amorist, with his admired Lady, may gather Rarities Suitable to their Fancies, by Iohn Evans, Gent.34

The Static Shape of the Written Page 23 It is reasonable to suppose that Halliwell, which was to serve as printer’s copy, was ready or nearly ready at the time of this advertisement. In 1655, Moseley saw V.b.93 (or rather, A1) and decided to publish it. So he assigned a title to the book, planned its size (“twelve hundred heads”), and registered it. After receiving Moseley’s commission, Evans got down to work and compiled Halliwell in several months’ time. I think Catalog A was compiled before and served as a draft for Catalog H. At the time of its compilation Evans already possessed the 1647 folio (a Moseley publication) and intended to extract the 35 Beaumont and Fletcher plays into Hesperides, but did not have time to do so; he needed to finish the commissioned compilation of Halliwell first. So he listed in Catalog A the 35 plays and the 1647 folio along with other titles actually extracted. Evidence shows that Evans entered the Beaumont and Fletcher titles first into the Catalog. The left column of page 891 has “A b” on the top (the usual place of the heading) and “ye Tragedy of Bonduca. Fl. & Beaum” (crossed out with a line) a little below the middle; the right column has “c d” on the top and “ye Double Marriage. Beaum and Fl.” (crossed out with a line) a little below the middle. The page is otherwise blank. Obviously, Evans had intended page 891 to be the first page of the Catalog and then abandoned his plan after he saw that page 892 had excerpts on it. Since they were not yet excerpted, the 36 folio titles were listed without abbreviations; and they remained so. Thus, Halliwell was indeed compiled around 1655–1656. But it remained unpublished for some unknown reason. In view of the political environment at the time, Moseley’s royalist stand might have hindered the publication of the book, but he did bring out many royalist works. The enormous volume of the commonplace book and Moseley’s own large publishing commitments were more likely factors. Bur Moseley did not give up on the book. In another publisher’s list, which Greg dates 1660, he advertises the book again, in largely similar terms: 341. Hesperides, or the Muses Garden, stored with the choicest Flowers of Language and Learning, wherein grave and serious minds may tastthe [sic] Fruits of Philosophy, History and Cosmography with the sweets of Poetry, and the ceremonious Courtier, the passionate Amourist with his admired Lady, may gather Rarities suitable to their fancies, by John Evans, Gent.35 Again, this item is listed under the heading: “These Books I purpose to Print, Deo Volente.” God, however, seems not to have been willing, and “Moseley’s death on 31 January 1660/1,” as Beal remarks, “must have sealed the fate of the work” (1980, 450). Moseley’s successor, his widow Anne, did not publish Hesperides either in the span of her business (1661–1673), perhaps recognizing that the literary interests of the Restoration audience had changed. Evans, however, remained interested in the project. The compilation of V.b.93 was finished no earlier than 1666, when the first edition of Sir William Killigrew’s The Siege of Vrbin was published in Fovr new playes (Wing K458). The watermark evidence indicates that the compilation of V.b.93 was begun in 1654 or 1655 (Pot, Heawood 3595). Three titles extracted in A1, Revenge for Honour (1654, 1659), the third volume of Artamenes, and part 1 of Cleopatra (L112, 1654; L112A, 1657;

24  The Static Shape of the Written Page L112B, 1663. L111, 1652 is not the edition cited) were first published in 1654. While a 1655 title is quoted (the fourth volume of Artamenes), three other titles published in 1655 might have been included but are not. They are the fifth volume of Artamenes (volumes 1–4 are cited), the fourth volume of Familiar Letters (the first three volumes are cited), and the third part of Cleopatra (the first two parts are cited). It seems that Evans started his project no later than 1654. The commonplace book grew quickly and took shape in 1655. After the completion of Halliwell in 1656 until 1666, not many titles were added in a decade’s time. If my dating of V.b.93 (c. 1654–1666) and Halliwell (c. 1655–1656) is reliable, John Evans was a man of high productivity and great efficiency, even if he was unlucky with his relations with his potential publishers. He nearly finished compiling two copies of Hesperides in two years’ time (1654–1656), each of which occupies the space of hundreds of pages. It would have been a daunting task. I would rather date V.b.93 earlier, like the early 1650s–1666, but however unlikely, the evidence says the reverse. Admittedly, the manuscript history of Hesperides could be even more convoluted than a story of two versions outlined above. There might have been intermediate manuscripts no longer extant (or not yet discovered), which would further complicate the transmission history. In my attempts to solve the problems of dating and the genealogical relationship of V.b.93 and Halliwell, I have sought to weigh all of the known factors: internal and external evidence, paleographic analysis, and clues derived from watermarks and ink. Whatever my findings may say about Hesperides, my study clearly reveals that, contrary to the recent alarm over “the death of the document” (Gavin 100), the primacy of the physical book and the importance of preserving original artefacts for scholarly inquiry cannot be overestimated. Quietly, the static shape of the written page tells its own important (if sometimes incomplete) story. Notes 1 See Peter Beal, 1980, 450. 2 The other fragments of this version might be located in Halliwell-Phillipps’s other literary scrapbooks at the Folger. I have examined “Literary Scraps” (W.b.137–200) and “Shakespeareana” (W.b.201–256), but in vain. 3 See ShW 113–115 and page 450. 4 Sorelius vaguely says “sixty-odd” (294) and Beal says 61 (ShW 113). 5 In addition to Sorelius and Beal, John Shawcross lists in his bibliography of Milton MS V.b.93 as item 414 for citations from Comus and the minor poems. See Appendix I, nos. 215–6. Heidi Brayman Hackel cites Sorelius’s study of the fragmented version of Hesperides to illustrate early modern reading practice (1999, 151; 2005, 180–1). See Part III, Chapter 4. 6 Beal’s description, “with a six-page index at the end,” is wrong. See ShW 115. 7 https://celm-ms.org.uk/authors/, accessed on May 30, 2023. Some other scholars, including William Baker (1042–3) and Victoria Burke (167), have spoken favorably of my 2009 article in The Library. 8 The Roman numeral is the number of the volume, and the Arabic numeral after the dot the page number. I use standard abbreviations in the MLA Handbook (6th ed.) to refer to the Shakespearean play.

The Static Shape of the Written Page 25 9 “When first my downy chin the razor shav’d” (2). “One trusting youth, best traversed his ground, / Th’other in strength and size advantage found” (212). “Winter is for rest” and “winter light” (43). 10 Alternatively, “VE” might be the abbreviation of Vergil, a common spelling of the poet’s name. But Evans spells the name as “Virgil(l)” in both catalogs. 11 The OED has entries on Waldenses and Albigenses, but does not quote Luther’s forerunners; it has no entries on Merindolites and Pastorelli. “Albingenses” is a variant form of “Albigenses.” 12 See the title-page of Luther’s fore-runners in EEBO (STC 19769). “The Authors Epistle” is signed “Iohn Paul Perrin of Lion,” which expands the acronym “I P P L.” 13 Here I borrow Sir W. W. Greg’s well-known term, differentiating matters of textual “presentation” from textual meaning. See his Collected Papers, edited by J. C. Maxwell, p. 376. “Accidentals” refer to “spelling, punctuation, word-division, and the like, affecting mainly [the text’s] formal presentation.” Later bibliographic theorists have, of course, argued that the distinction is not self-evident or fully sustainable, and that accidentals carry meaning. 14 English Short Title Catalogue . 15 Searches with all the three phrases in EEBO yield no results (accessed June 27, 2023). 16 Occasional errors—such as the confusion of the long s with f (see n. 16 on p. 98 below)—and words in incomplete forms occur in the text in LION. 17 In this record EEBO mistakes Martin Lluelyn’s year of birth as 1612; it should be 1616. Lluelyn died in 1682. By June 2023, the two copies of Lluelyn’s Men-Miracles in EEBO were not full text searchable yet. 18 I am not doing bibliographic description here, and the photographic image of the titlepage is readily available online, so I ignore the block capitals, the italicization, the line switch, and other typographic minutiae in the original and present them according to the modern custom instead. 19 See vol. 2, pp. 528–9, sigs. Ll4v-Mm. 20 Sorelius’s ignorance of the existence of a complete version of Hesperides (i.e. Folger MS V.b.93) and sole reliance upon Catalog H to identify the 302 titles necessarily result in some errors. For this reason, all his identifications, except for Shakespeare’s plays, for which Sorelius had easy access to the sources of the extracts, must be reviewed critically. 21 EEBO was not searchable until after 2010 (for sponsoring organizations) or 2015 (for the public; see Gavin 99–100), while my work on the Hesperides manuscripts had been done by 2006. My reader might want to search EEBO directly. For example, Caroli tou makaritou palingenesia is available in EEBO now, together with its full searchable text. 22 Similarly, Ian Gadd describes EEBO to be “a remarkable scholarly tool, provided it is used properly and as a supplement to the examination and handling of actual books in a library” (687–8). 23 1640: Works, vol. 1, p. 395, n. 111. 1660: MS V.a.80. 1670: MS V.a.79. Charles II: Works, vol. 8, p. 81, n. 54. 17th century: Works, vol. 2, facing p. 177; vol. 3, facing p. 51, facing p. 133, p. 133, n. 30; vol. 4, facing p. 184; vol. 5, facing p. 308; vol. 6, facing p. 471; vol. 7, facing p. 128. Old: Works, vol. 2, p. 177, n. 10; early: Works, vol. 4, p. 184, n. 3. 24 This isn’t quite true; there is a seventeenth-century manuscript copy of Davenant’s adaptation of Macbeth at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. 25 “Letters” appear on document images 32–55 in S6126A (1646) and on 28–51 in S6128 (3rd ed., 1658) in EEBO. 26 See Hao Tianhu, 2009, 378, Fig. 1. 27 It is likely that Humphrey Moseley provided a title for the commonplace book: “Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden.” See below, pp. 22–23. 28 This paleographical detail is not idiosyncratic. In a Huntington manuscript (HM 1728) we also find the letter q looks like the modern g: requisite (14), equale (16v), question (18v).

26  The Static Shape of the Written Page 29 See Hao Tianhu, 2009, 381, Fig. 2. 30 See Gerald Eades Bentley’s study of The English Treasury, esp. 195–6. 31 In section M, “Merry-Tricks” and “A Mad world my Masters” appear at the beginning, for the space at the end of the column is used up. 32 Eyre, II.8; also qtd. in Beal 1980, 450 and Reed 127. 33 See Appendix III below, which indicates that on average one heading occupies the space of one page in Halliwell; according to V.b.93, four score headings come after “Vsurpation & Vsurping,” which appears on page 1028 of Halliwell. 34 Attached at the end of M1985 (Middleton sig. b2). See EEBO. The catalog is Greg’s Separate List VIA, 1656 (III, 1178-9). 35 Attached at the end of Edmund Waller, Poems 1645 (Scolar Press, 1971). This catalog is Greg’s Separate List VIB, 1660 (III, 1179-81).

2

Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition

Little known in China, the idea of the commonplace book emerged in classical Greece and Rome, adopted by Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, Seneca, and others (Moss 1996, 2–13; Havens 2001a, 13–4). The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “A book in which ‘commonplaces’ or passages important for reference were collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement.” Originality was not the main point, but the fact that these were topics of general interest and ideas held in “common.” The form became familiar and influential in the West, particularly in early modern Europe but continuing to the present. Major figures of English literary history, such as Ben Jonson, Milton, Aphra Behn, George Eliot, Wilde, Hardy, E. M. Forster, and Auden, have left their commonplace books behind, offering unique windows for a study of the authors’ life and writing. In the twenty-first century, the commonplace book remains a living phenomenon (e.g., Bouwsma and Guinness), although the digital world has taken its toll on the popularity of the form. For example, Wikiquote may be regarded as a digital commonplace book, less individual than communal in its production and its use. Traditional commonplace books are diverse in content and form. Normally they are organized by topic, but, as the OED says, they exist “with or without arrangement.” What might be more commonly thought of as “miscellanies” can also be included in the category (see, e.g., Hobbs). Czech educational reformer John Amos Comenius wrote in Orbis sensualium pictus (1658): “The Study is a place where a Student, a part [sic] from men, sitteth alone, addicted to his Studies, whilst he readeth Books, which being within his reach, he layeth open upon a Desk and picketh all the best things out of them into his own Manual” (qtd. in Grafton 146). The “Manual” here is an alternative name for “commonplace book.” Even recipe books can be commonplace books. The commonplace book, by whatever name, was a fundamental educational tool in the Renaissance (Moss 1996, Chapter 6; Grafton), a crucial part of what was fundamentally “an educational revolution” (Havens 2001a, 25).1 For the Renaissance, in various aspects of its cultural history—education, society, history, literature, autobiography, religion, law, politics, music, information management, natural sciences, etc.—the commonplace book has been significant and noteworthy.2 In looking back, it offered a way forward. DOI: 10.4324/9781032635699-3

28  Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition Attempting to understand the relation of Hesperides to the tradition of the commonplace book, this chapter is divided into three parts. The first part locates Hesperides within a group of manuscript commonplace books and emphasizes its vernacular nature. The second part traces the Erasmian influences on the commonplace book tradition, particularly on John Evans, and situates Hesperides in the context of printed commonplace books. Part III discusses the making of Hesperides, especially in terms of what I call “space economy” and the cross-reference system. I. Manuscript commonplace books The manuscript commonplace book was, no less than its printed counterpart, a common phenomenon in the early modern period. Now consulted mainly in the rare book rooms of research libraries, manuscript commonplace books were familiar objects of everyday life in their historical moments. As Earle Havens says, “Indeed, it is the case that the commonplace books have been kept throughout the ages for eminently practical, even mundane, purposes” (2001a, 13). David Allan similarly observes that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the commonplace book was a common form of “everyday practice” when lawyers and many other readers engaged themselves with printed texts (45). A Huntington manuscript commonplace book (HM 60413, Yorkshire, c. 1600) records practical recipes for a variety of things: “To make a redde coloure for the face” (20); “To make hare as yelow as gold” (21); “To make incke” (29v); “for a legge that is swolne with a fall,” “to make red inke” (35v); “A medicine for Infected Cattle” (42); “ffor the doloure of the stomake” (73). HM 60413 is not unique of its kind. Henry Oxenden’s commonplace book (Folger MS V.b.110) contains recipes “To make excellent Inke” (8), “for a cold and a cough” (8–9), “To make excellent Beere” (11), and a record of taxes from 1642 to 1667 (394–5). Other recipes are found in British Library (abbreviated as BL henceforward) Add MS 28273: “ffor the Consumption” (144) and “To make black ink” (153v)3 and BL Add MS 35342: “To Stewe a Rumpe of Beefe” (10), “To Bake a Carpe” (11), “To make a good Quince Pye” (12), “To make an Almond Custarde” (18v), “To Boyle any kinde of Fresh Fish wth out Water” (32v),4 etc. BL Add MS 61490 is an account book, a record of daily transactions, bills, and charges. HM 41536 is Sir Edward Dering’s diary, and on 22v he records: “A note of my sheep.” HM 55603 is the journal of Sir William Drake. HM 1338 records “Newes from Court,” “Country Newes” (84), “Newes from bed,” “Newes frō Ship-board,” “Newes from the Chimney corner” (84v). Religion and literature were also parts of everyday life. HM 60413 lists “The differences betwixt the Roman Catholiques & the Protestants” (74) and also includes extracts from Shakespeare’s Othello (80). While Elizabeth Hastings, Countess of Huntington’s commonplace book (HM 15369) is purely religious, like the anonymous commonplace book (HM 1338) treating “Genesis to the end of ye old testament” (104–5v), “The new Testament” (106–7v), and “Apocrypha” (109–10), some other commonplace books in the Huntington collection are largely literary (such as HM 116, HM 198, and

Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition  29 HM 30309). But the physical books were themselves parts of daily life and might also be gifts for family members and friends, and bequeathed for future descendants (Allan 31–3). The commonplace book thus carries the emotional weight of interpersonal and intergenerational relationships, as well as the cultural weight of its entries. Some commonplace books are specialized. As Ann Moss explains, “More advanced commonplace-books…might be specialist repertories of excerpts relevant to specific disciplines” (1996, v). BL Add MS 38482 is devoted to geometry, BL Add MS 56279 to music, and BL Add MSS 57555 and 62540 to geography. Sir Thomas Egerton’s commonplace book now in the Huntington collection (EL 496) is an exhaustively detailed legal one, which was used by him as he rose to the positions of Lord Chancellor and Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal. The commonplace book of the brother of Thomas Calverly (HM 46323)5 is also mainly legal, containing “Instructions for Justices of the Peace,” arranged under commonplace heads in alphabetical order like “Abjuration,” “Forcible defence is lawfull,” “Theft,” and “Usury.” HM 202 is about history, HM 1728 is about politics, and HM 102 is a collection of political letters. BL Add MSS 37719 and 43410 contain a collection of sermons, and BL Add MS 449636 includes many poems and a play, Adelphe (probably by Roman dramatist Terence, on the education of the young, performed in 160 BC). It is clear that the content of commonplace books can be rich and diverse. Most often, however, commonplace books are eclectic, touching upon the various aspects of daily life, from the material, like financial receipts and property settlements, to the spiritual, like prayers and devotional poems. Adam Smyth provides two such examples: Anne Southwell’s and Thomas Medcalf’s commonplace books (2010a, 98–9). Both the content and the format of manuscript commonplace books are usually influenced by print culture, although some items in manuscript commonplace books originate from oral communication. For instance, Isaac Casaubon records in some of his notebooks the ghost stories his friend told him (Grafton 146); Elnathan Parr pointed out in the early seventeenth century that commonplacing from what one “readeth or heareth” is conducive to the production of proper prayers (Allan 43). Often, extracts in a manuscript commonplace book are taken from other manuscripts. For example, in HM 55603, we come across “Notes taken out of a mascript written by Sir Robert Cotton” (11); part of BL Stowe MS 1047, “Of the Kinges of manne,” is “taken out a copie…wche he copied from an olde written copie” (17). One of Edward Pudsey’s commonplace books excerpted Othello from a manuscript notebook prepared during the play performance (Schurink 465). Most often, however, the extracts come from printed books, as in the example of John Evans’s Hesperides, with its 356 titles all from printed texts. BL Lansdowne MS 638 is copied directly from A Brief Method of the Law (London, 1680). Part of BL Add MS 4821 is taken “Out of the Cowps Chronicle printed 1560,” i.e., Coopers Chronicle (London, 1560). BL Add MS 45154 contains “Obseruations gathered out of Sr Francis Bacon’s Naturall Historie. wch History was published after ye Author’s death by W. Rawley Dr in Diuinity one of his Maties Chaplaines” (55). Sir John Gibson’s prison notebook

30  Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition (BL Add MS 37719) includes fourteen images borrowed from contemporary books and engravings.7 Part of HM 1338 derives from The Peace of Rome (1609, STC 12696), and another part from Bacon’s Apophthegmes (1625, 1626, STC 1115, 1116).8 Thomas Grocer’s manuscript commonplace book, Dayly Obseruations both Diuine & Morall (HM 93), deliberately models itself upon the format of a printed book, with a table of contents, a title page, a running title, and a catchword on each page.9 BL Add MS 27419 has two section title pages and running titles. HM 1340, a manuscript collection of speeches, poems, and letters owned by Sir Nicholas Bacon, the Tudor statesman and father to Francis Bacon, has “The table to this booke.” More than one manuscript commonplace book has a running title, like BL Add MSS 42118 and 63075. In the incunabula period,10 the manuscript influenced printed books in many aspects; as time went on and the print culture matured printed books influenced manuscripts, as Havens has said (2001a, 78–9).11 The interaction between the old medium and the new medium applies to today’s world as well, yet the new medium now is the digital, and print has (d)evolved to become the old one. Manuscript commonplace books can be either thought of as personal or imagined for circulation. Aphra Behn’s commonplace book and her published writings provide a neat contrast of opposed attitudes towards the same figure. For example, Behn and Dryden send admiring regards to each other in print, yet in her commonplace book (“Astrea’s Booke”), Behn wrote in her own hand (probably copied) a series of poems attacking Dryden’s conversion to Catholicism (O’Donnell 296–300). HM 15369 are “Certaine Collections of the right honble: Elizabeth late Countesse of Huntingdon for her owne private vse. 1633” (1). Sir John Strangways’s commonplace book is “A Collection of some notes for my owne private use, gathered out of severall authors as they have bin read by me, JStrangways: wherof most in the Tower—1645. during the Tyme of my sad imprisonment ther” (Olsen 55). The circulation of private manuscripts is restricted to the individual owners and their family members. For example, in Dr. Anthony Scattergood’s commonplace book from the 1630s when he was at Trinity College, Cambridge (Smyth 2010a, 101) is noted not only “Anthony Scattergood His booke” but also “Elisabeth Scattergood her Boke 1667/8” (BL Add MS 44963), his daughter. As Herbert J. Davis comments, this commonplace book remained in the family’s hands in the seventeenth century (86). Yet, sometimes manuscript commonplace books pass out of the family’s hands. For instance, on the cover of one of Henry Sturmy’s commonplace books is noted “Susanna Hayward her Booke” (BL Add MS 63075). After his death, Milton’s commonplace book went to Daniel Skinner, his last amanuensis, and then Skinner presented it to Sir Richard Graham, Viscount Preston (Mohl 1953, 344). Nonetheless, other manuscript commonplace books were intended to be public. John Evans’s Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden was, of course, intended for print publication. Sir John Gibson’s prison notebook (BL Add MS 37719) is said to have been produced “as much for his children as for himself” (Sherman 2001), but I would argue that it was intended for a wider public. In addition to catchwords and a table of contents, Gibson also writes a preface “To the Reader” (6), perhaps a witty

Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition  31 address to his children, but more likely a sign of his interest in wider readership. Moreover, Gibson prepares the errata: “Reader/Pardon my Errors, both of wit, and pen,/ffor wee must err, soe long as wee are men” (160). It seems likely that Gibson is not just mimicking the form of printed book for the pleasure of his family but intending (preparing?) it for print and public circulation. Both Evans’s and Gibson’s commonplace books exist somewhere at the intersection of manuscript and print. Regarding Milton’s extant commonplace book, since James Holly Hanford (1921), most scholars have taken it as a “private compilation” for self-formation (Sauer 450–1). More recent scholars, however, have recognized the “public dimension” of Milton’s commonplace book (Sauer 451–3). Therefore, it is private and public at the same time, though it seems almost impossible to imagine that Milton ever imagined (or desired) that it might reach print. Many manuscript commonplace books are in Latin or mostly in Latin, e.g., BL Add MS 41068A (c. 1500), BL Royal 12 A XXXIV (c. 1560), BL Add MS 6038 (c. 1570–1636), and BL Add MS 72544A (1670s–1680s). Some are bilingual or trilingual, e.g., BL Harley MS 1735 (sometime before 1485, Latin and Middle English; Myers 1), BL Add MS 44963 (c. 1660–1687, Latin and English), BL Add MS 42118 (c. 1666–1685, Latin and English), BL Add MS 72544B (1670s– 1680s, Latin, English, French), and BL Add MS 28728 (c. 1680–1715, Latin, English, French). CKS MS U1475/Z1/11, a folio commonplace book associated with the Sidney family is in four languages (c. 1593, English, Latin, Greek, French; Schurink 458). Others are in the vernacular, including French (e.g., BL Add MS 39214, c. 1637) and English (e.g., HM 198, c. 1588–1685). Evans’s Hesperides is consistently in English. The significance of this fact will be more obvious when we discuss canon formation in Chapter 5. II. The commonplace book tradition since Erasmus The Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus is considered to be one of the two (the other being the Protestant reformer Philipp Melanchthon) most influential proponents of commonplace books during the Renaissance, for he “delivered the commonplace book to the Renaissance world as a full-fledged, coherent, and sophisticated educational tool” (Havens 2001a, 28).12 Called the “Prince of Humanists” (Sowards 123), Erasmus’s influence on early modern commonplace book culture is unmistakable. This can be seen in the many editions of the Adagia, which appeared in over 130 editions in the sixteenth century and about 24 editions in the seventeenth (Sowards 129, note 8). As a practical educational reformer, Erasmus encouraged young students to “keep notebooks for vocabulary, apt illustrations, quotations, and points of grammar” (Sowards 129). He himself uses the “famous ‘notebook’ method of compilation” (Cave 53) in writing the Adagia and De copia. According to Betty Knott, “Erasmus appears to write with the appropriate text open in front of him; he reads it over, then paraphrases it, not always accurately, sometimes reproducing the material in a different order or picking out salient points in hasty compression” (146). He frequently says in De copia that he is only writing notes (Knott 147). Erasmus is not only a zealous proponent

32  Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition of commonplace reading, but also an outstanding practitioner of commonplace writing. Erasmus’s theory of the compilation of commonplace books is based upon his experience of commonplacing. In its collection of proverbs, each followed with detailed explanations citing extensively, Erasmus’s Adagia is a commonplacing book, if not a commonplace book. For example, I iv 85 Vento loqueris You are talking to the wind …It means ‘in vain’ because the wind blows everything away and makes it disappear. Virgil spoke of ‘commands scattered on the breezes’ which had vanished in oblivion. Plautus, Mostellaria: ‘The only word he knows to cry to the wind is “interest.”’ In Athenaeus we read, with a similar metaphor, ‘to call on heaven and earth.’ (Erasmus 1982–, 31: 375) Here Erasmus collects three relevant extracts, from Virgil, Plautus, and Athenaeus, and he organizes them around the center of the proverb: “You are talking to the wind.” This is a typical process of commonplacing. Erasmus refers to his Adagia as “my notes” (31: 18), which betrays his understanding of commonplacing. It is worth mentioning that the last excerpt is a cross-reference, for “To call on heaven and earth” turns out to be an independent entry and under it he notes: “This is close to the phrase we have quoted elsewhere, ‘You are speaking to the wind’” (I v 75; 31: 451). “Elsewhere” refers to I iv 85, “You are talking to the wind.” One more example may confirm the status of the Adagia as a commonplacing book. Under the proverb In vino veritas (Wine speaks the truth),13 Erasmus collects over a dozen quotations to explain the adage (32: 75–7): the Bible, Pliny, an unidentified Persian, Horace (three citations), Athenaeus, Plutarch, a Greek saying (“What is in the heart of the sober man is in the mouth of the drunkard”), Theognis, Athenaeus citing Aeschylus and Ephippus, Anacharsis, Theocritus, Plato, a similar contemporary proverb (“You never hear the truth from anyone, save only from three kinds of person: children, drunkards and madmen”), still another proverb (“A slip of the tongue is wont to tell the truth”), plus quotations from Ovid and Cicero. Here, too, the Greek saying is a cross-reference: to II i 55 (33: 49). Some new material gets added in later editions; Erasmus revises his 1512 work continually. Athenaeus citing Aeschylus and Ephippus is inserted in 1517/8, Anacharsis and Theocritus are added in 1528, and Plutarch is inserted in 1533. Erasmus’s commonplacing is an ongoing process. If the Adagia is commonplacing in operation, then De copia reveals what commonplacing is with illustrative examples. For instance, It is easy to modify related ideas and adapt them to neighbouring concepts…. One can even twist material to serve the opposite purpose. If you were praising a man for all seasons, endowed with a versatile and dexterous mind, you could dip into your ‘inconstancy’ cupboard and bring out the polyp which

Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition  33 changes colour according to the surface beneath it, and then the Euripus,14 saying that this sea is not so versatile as this man’s mind. You could bring out the flame which cannot stand still, the sky which constantly presents a different face, the reed bending according as the breezes blow, and say that it is the mark of a wise man to change his views and his way of life according to events, circumstances, places. Only senseless rocks and the brute earth do not move. Of living creatures, those that are most impressive are the most mobile…. (1978, 24: 647) To praise the versatile and dexterous mind of a man, Erasmus enlists the polyp, the Euripus, the flame, the sky, and the reed as supporting evidence under the heading “inconstance.” Manifestations of seeming inconstancy are twisted to become illustrations of versatility. Erasmus is interested in how to make use of commonplace materials in the process of writing. It is a spur to creativity rather than an anchor to tradition. As Ann Moss remarks, Erasmus moves the emphasis of the commonplace book “from reading and memorizing to production” (1996, 103); in other words, he reorients its importance from the commonplace itself to the act of commonplacing. He not only gives detailed suggestions on how to make a commonplace book, but also on how to make use of the commonplace book in the act of writing. Erasmus knew the technique of making a commonplace book when he was young. He says, “I only wish I had carried it out long ago in my own youth (for it occurred to me even then), as I see how much my first efforts at writing would have gained in weight had I done so” (24: 635). Erasmus’s point that the commonplace book would be beneficial to writing indicates his concentration on production. He continues to suggest the method of organizing a commonplace book: Having made up your mind to cover the whole field of literature in your reading (and anyone who wishes to be thought educated must do this at least once in his life), first provide yourself with a full list of subjects. These will consist partly of the main types and subdivisions of vice and virtue, partly of the things of most prominence in human affairs which frequently occur when we have a case to put forward, and they should be arranged according to similars and opposites. Related topics naturally suggest what comes next in the list, and one remembers opposites in the same way. (24: 635–6) He gives an example of effective commonplace headings: Suppose for the sake of example that the first heading is ‘Reverence and Irreverence.’… The next heading could be ‘faith,’ which you might subdivide into faith in God, human faith, faithfulness to friends, of servants to masters, good faith towards enemies; and ‘Faithlessness’ could be likewise subdivided.

34  Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition Then could come ‘Beneficence,’ and, after you have listed its subdivisions, ‘Gratitude,’ which is not a subsection of beneficence, nor its opposite, but its consequence and naturally associated with it. … But each person should draw up a list of virtues and vices to suit himself, whether he looks for his examples in Cicero or Valerius Maximus15 or Aristotle or St Thomas. (24: 636) The arrangement of commonplace headings can be “alphabetical” (24: 636) as well as relational; either way is fine, offering different ways for the material to be engaged, though he seems to think the relational is more interesting, though less easy to navigate. After the preparation of headings, one should add “examples” and “commonplaces” under each topic. Erasmus explains in detail what “examples” and “commonplaces” are (24: 636–7). The “examples” and “commonplaces” should be entered under an appropriate heading: For example, under ‘Liberality’ one could include things like these: He gives twice who gives readily; Nothing costs more than the thing for which you must beg; A service given to the worthy does a service to the giver; No gift is wasted as much as one bestowed on the ungrateful; The value of a kindness is destroyed if it is made a ground for reproach. … …whatever you come across in any author, particularly if it is rather striking, you will be able to note down immediately in the proper place, be it an anecdote or a fable or an illustrative example or a strange incident or a maxim or a witty remark or a remark notable for some other quality or a proverb or a metaphor or a simile. (24: 637, 638) Thus, in De copia, Erasmus “gave the idea of the commonplace book its final, decisive shape” (Grafton 144), and articulates its value. This has the double advantage of fixing what you have read more firmly in your mind, and getting you into the habit of using the riches supplied by your reading. Some people have much material stored up so to speak in their vaults, but when it comes to speaking or writing they are remarkably ill-supplied and impoverished. A third result is that whatever the occasion demands, you will have the materials for a speech ready to hand, as you have all the pigeonholes duly arranged so that you can extract just what you want from them. (24: 638) The purpose, then, of a commonplace book is clearly commonplacing, the application of commonplace materials to writing. Erasmus emphasizes time and again his

Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition  35 focus on production. His image of a commonplace reader is that of a busy bee— the traditional metaphor for commonplacing since the classical times—flitting “through the entire garden of literature” (24: 639), which includes even mathematics and natural science. Eclecticism of material is a salient characteristic of the Erasmian advocacy of the commonplace book. John Evans’s Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden draws from a wide array of subjects: philosophy, history, cosmography, science, topography, geography, literature, religious works, etc. Significantly, his subtitle, the “Muses’ Garden,” is equivalent to Erasmus’s “entire garden of literature.”16 There were nine Muses as early as Homer’s Odyssey: Calliope: Muse of heroic or epic poetry. Clio: Muse of history. Erato: Muse of lyric and love poetry. Euterpe: Muse of music or flutes. Melpomene: Muse of tragedy. Polymnia: Muse of sacred poetry or of the mimic art. Terpsichore: Muse of dancing and choral song. Thalia: Muse of comedy. Urania: Muse of astronomy. (Encyclopædia, “Muse”) In Greek, “Hesperides” means “daughters of evening.” In Greek mythology, Hesperides refers to clear-voiced maidens who guarded the tree-bearing golden apples that Gaea gave to Hera at her marriage to Zeus (Encyclopædia, “Hesperides”). Evans’s—or rather, Moseley’s—title equates the garden of the Hesperides with the Muses’ garden, the garden of the entirety of human knowledge. An earlier book, Bel-vedere, a commonplace anthology of modern English poetry (London, 1600), is entitled “The Garden of the Muses.” Moseley and Evans might have borrowed this earlier title for the full name of Hesperides. Evans displays an Erasmian understanding and ambition for the range of his commonplace material, and much of his commonplace-book practice is similarly Erasmian, though neither is necessarily dependent on direct influence. Erasmus’s influence had been fully absorbed by the tradition and was inescapable. Although he adopts an alphabetical principle of organizing topics, Evans, like Erasmus, will list the same extract under different headings, or cross-reference the material (Erasmus: “Some material can serve not only diverse but contrary uses, and for that reason must be recorded in different places” [24: 639]). Evans, also like Erasmus, abbreviates references, such as “The crime HP 200” (Hesperides 539; Erasmus: “…sometimes it will be sufficient to indicate the contents by a word or two accompanied by a reference to the source, especially if it is something that cannot be set out properly in a few words” [24: 642]). The most prominent sign of the Erasmian influence, however, is Evans’s commitment to copia. De copia was perhaps the most influential textbook in the sixteenth century. First appearing in 1512, by 1536, the year of Erasmus’s death, at

36  Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition least 85 editions of De copia had appeared (Callahan 102); by 1572, it had appeared in over 150 editions (Locatelli 44). Copia, from its original Latin etymology, has two major meanings: abundance (copiousness) and imitation (copy) (Locatelli 44). The means of imitation and emulation is translating and paraphrasing, first and foremost from Greek, but also from Latin. The student should rewrite verse in prose and bind prose into meter. As we shall see in the next part, Evans does exactly that: the conversion of verse into prose. Only Evans’s conversion functions as a way of commonplace reading (see Chapter 4) and does not aim at imitative composition. For Erasmus, copia denotes “both a loose set of procedures and, more importantly, a living process of composition” (Cave 57). Erasmus’s emphasis is on imitation, composition, and production. Most meaningful to Evans, however, is copia as abundance, both richness of expression and richness of subject-matter. If De copia conforms consistently “to Erasmus’s own method of achieving variation through an assiduous ‘digesting’ of the thought and language of the best classical authors” (Callahan 105), then Evans achieves variety in Hesperides through a diligent “digesting” of the thought and language of the best modern authors. In his selections, Evans displays copiousness both in verbal expression and in subject-matter. If an important function of the Adagia is to supply an anthology of the Greek poets (Phillips 55), then Hesperides serves to supply an anthology of the best modern authors. The purpose of De copia is to cultivate a readiness in speech and writing; similarly, like England’s Parnassus and The English Treasury of Wit and Language,17 Hesperides has as its objective the cultivation of eloquence through an immersion in verbal abundance. Despite the many and obvious influences of Erasmus upon Evans, there is one clear demarcation between the two. Erasmus employs the Latin language, the lingua franca, one might oddly say, of European humanism; Evans’s extracts are all in English. For Erasmus, “the old was the new, much newer than the products of more recent centuries” (Phillips 51); whereas Evans cites, instead of the Latin originals, English translations of classical authors like Virgil and Ovid. Most of the writers extracted in Hesperides are modern English authors. Evans’s vernacular edition parts company with Erasmus’s Latin allegiance and reveals its different understanding of its intended audience. Using an old bottle to hold new wine, Evans promotes vernacular literature, English vernacular literature, in his commonplace book, continuing the nationalistic emphasis of England’s Parnassus and The English Treasury of Wit and Language, confident about the language, as well as the literature and the taste of a nation of readers. The long tradition of compiling and printing commonplace books in early modern England begins with the first dated book printed in there, Dictes or Sayengis of the philosophhres (Westminster, 1477). A collection of proverbs and sayings of ancient Greek philosophers, the book was originally compiled in the eleventh century by an Arab scholar, Abu al-Wafa’ Mubashshir ibn Fatik. Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers translated from a French version by Guillaume de Tignonville into English. William Caxton, the father of English printing, revised and edited the work and published it himself. The first sentences of the text read: “SEdechias18 was the first

Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition  37 Philosophir by whoom through the wil and pleaser of oure lorde god Sapience was vnderstande and lawes resceyued. whiche Sedechias saide that euery creature of good beleue ought to haue in hym sixtene virtues.” Thus runs the text continuously, without a commonplace heading. The book is without a title page. The translator seems to claim the authorship with his preface, but the portrait of the printer with his initials “W.C.”19 preceding the preface makes a bolder claim. The commonplace book reached the zenith of its popularity during the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (Havens 2001a, 9). The Protestant martyrologist John Foxe (1516–1587) published a massive skeletal commonplace book entitled Pandectae: Locorum communium (Basel, 1557; London, 1572, 1585). This is a printed blank commonplace book with headings in Latin. The commonplace headings are organized according to the Erasmian principle. The relational headings could be synonyms, such as “Diligentia. Industria. Assiduitas” and “Silentium. Taciturnitas.” Or the remaining words explain the content of the first word, such as “Deus. Pater. Filius. Spiritus sanctus” and “Scriptura. Verbum Dei. Scripturæ authoritas, eius sufficientia, veritas.” Or the remaining words are classifications of the first word, such as “Aduersitas. Miseria humanæ vitæ. Res aduersæ. Calamitates. Ærumnæ. Iacturæ. Pericula. Labores.” In the first edition (1557), the headings are not arranged alphabetically, but appear “in a deliberate theological sequence” (Beal 1993, 137). Later editions follow the alphabetical order in the arrangement of headings. In each edition there is an alphabetical index at the end of the book. Many leaves in the copy in the Cambridge University Library contain manuscript entries, one of the many surviving examples of the printed blank commonplace book giving evidence of its use. Sir Julius Caesar fills his copy of the 1572 edition of Foxe’s Pandectae with Latin extracts (British Library Add MS 6038, c. 1570–1636), and its index combines the printed matter with manual additions.20 In 1581, John Merbecke published in London a religious commonplace book in the vernacular, A Booke of Notes and Common Places. English extracts are listed under English headings alphabetically arranged, and the book extends to 1,194 pages. Even seemingly neutral headings are made religious in nature. For example, under “Adde,” the extracts explain “What it is to Adde or take awaie from the word of God” (14); under “Against,” the extracts are about “Who is against Christ, and who not” (20); under “Children,” the extracts explain “How children are not forbidden to come to Christ” (173). This commonplace book is Christ-centered. Against Roman Catholicism and the “Romish Antichrist” (“The Epistle Dedicatorie”), the book is also Protestant. As a Protestant “Concordance” (“The Epistle Dedicatorie”) in the vernacular, the book participated in the ongoing cause of the English Reformation. Both Foxe and Merbecke were influenced by Philipp Melanchthon (Kolb). Melanchthon’s representative work Loci communes rerum theologicarum (Basel, 1521) divides theology into appropriate commonplace headings and subdivisions and collects under them illustrating passages from authoritative sources. Its classifications reveal Christian doctrines, particularly the “deep structures of Lutheran theology,” and the book therefore exerted an enormous impact “both within the

38  Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition Protestant sphere of influence and beyond” (Moss 1996, 130). Loci communes rerum theologicarum had a great influence in England as well, partly because Queen Elizabeth I “virtually memorized it so she could converse about theology” (Encyclopædia, “Melanchthon”), thus setting an example for the nation. In the hands of Englishmen Foxe and Merbecke, as in the hands of many other Europeans (Catholics as well as Protestants), the commonplace book became a convenient tool for theological controversies. Even Luther’s opponent, Johann von Eck (1486–1543) resorted to the means of the commonplace book, though his Catholic usage was clumsy (Moss 1996, 132). What role did the commonplace book play in the Reformation? What impact did the organization of commonplace books have on the thinking mode of theological controversies in the Reformation? Ann Moss raises these intriguing questions, but she provides only a brief discussion. These questions deserve further study, although this is not the place for that.21 Less controversially, in the late sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries John Bodenham sponsored a “Wit” series of printed commonplace books: Politeuphuia. Wits Common Wealth (1597), Palladis Tamia. Wits Treasury (1598; though commonplaced Shakespeare had appeared before 1598 [Kastan and James 10–11], this book is valued by scholars for its earliest list of Shakespeare’s works22), Wits Theater of the Little World (1599),23 and Palladis Palatium: Wisedoms Palace (1604). Edited by others, the books are dedicated to John Bodenham. Of the four, the first one was particularly influential, for within a hundred years (1597–1699) it was published in 28 editions, according to ESTC. Politeuphuia. Wits Common Wealth remained in print until the early eighteenth century (1707, 1722), and earlier had even attracted a verse imitation: Nicholas Breton’s Wits Private Wealth (1607). The books in the “Wit” series are each organized in a similar way: the headings begin with “Of God” and end with “Of Hell,” stretching over theological extremes. After the heading follows a brief definition of the subject, and then run the extracts one by one (the editor’s words are also present). At the end of the book is an alphabetical index of commonplaces. (The fourth book is different: with a distinct typeface and the headings in the alphabetical order A to Z, rendering an index unnecessary.) In addition to the Bible, the sources are either classical (Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Cicero, Ovid, Seneca, etc.) or modern (Martin Luther, John Lyly, John Harington, Richard Hakluyt, Robert Greene, Sidney, etc.). The series may be said to be a union of the classical and the modern mainly for a didactic purpose. Publisher and possible editor Nicholas Ling’s description of Wits Common Wealth applies to the series: “newe in this forme and title, though otherwise old, and of great antiquitie, as being a methodicall collection of the most choice and select admonitions and sentences, compendiously drawne from infinite varietie, diuine, historicall, poeticall, politique, morrall, and humane” (sigs. A2r-v). In 1600 John Bodenham published his own commonplace anthology of modern poetry, Bel-vedere or the Garden of the Muses (mentioned above). The headings are similar to those in the “Wit” series, starting with “Of God” and ending with “Of Death,” the alpha and the omega. The sources are not specified in the text, but the editor lists the poets he cites in his preface addressed “To the Reader.” Sidney,

Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition  39 Spenser, and Shakespeare are on the list, as well as Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, and Joshua Sylvester. Medieval English poets, like Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate, are deliberately excluded (235, “The Conclusion”). Bel-vedere is a project similar in nature to Englands Parnassus, which came out in the same year, both being anthologies of modern English poetry.24 In the thick of the English Civil Wars, James Shirley published Wits Labyrinth (London, 1648), “A briefe and compendious Abstract of most witty, ingenious, wise, and learned sentences and phrases. Together with some hundreds of most pithy, facetious, and patheticall, complementall Expressions” (title page). The extracts are not methodically digested, but piled one upon another in no apparent order, perhaps as an image of the political chaos of the times. The collection is dedicated to the “Illustrious and Generous, the Nobility and Gentry of the Kingdom of England,” in “these distracted and confused times,” “in this unnaturall age,” “when scarce the iron hand of Warre is ceast: but like a fearefull and prodigious Commet stil hangs over us, threatning ruine and destruction to this royall Kingdome” (sig. A3). By identifying the audience as the English nobility and gentry, Shirley the royalist opposed the destruction of the “unnaturall” age with the gentle rites “in our Halcyon dayes, when blest peace and prosperity reigned in our happy Albion” (sig. A3). The looking back, and the sharp contrasts of the two ages, war versus peace, ruin versus prosperity, chaos versus order, madness versus rites, bespeak Shirley’s conservative royalist stand. The commonplace collection of “complementall Expressions” resists the Puritan ethos and the revolutionary ideology. Attention to the development of printed commonplace books after Erasmus and Caxton helps situate Hesperides properly in its cultural context. Both in form and content, Hesperides belongs to a recognizable tradition of printed commonplace books, even though it remains in manuscript. The familiar presentational norms of commonplacing that had been developed over time have been adopted by Evans’s manuscripts, which is what will be considered next. III. The making of the book: space economy and the cross-reference system Evans’s frequent and heavy employment of abbreviations, Arabic numerals, and ciphers to save space when he drafts Hesperides is an unmistakable characteristic of its production process. In the making of Hesperides (V.b.93) there are numerous abbreviations. In the following extracts, the abbreviated forms are expanded in the parentheses. …It is sd, yt of purpose to make him one day Martiall, they gaue him a Masculine brave Nurse… HC (531; sd=said, yt=that) I sweare to thee by Cupids strongest bow, by his best arrow wth ye golden head, by ye simplicity of Venus doves, by all yt wch knetteth soules & prospers loue. MnD (532; wth=with, ye=the, wch=which, &=and)

40  Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition God was glorified by an oath, because thereby, there was a solemn confession & acknowledgmt of gods omnipresence… (532; acknowledgmt= acknowledgment) The anger yt ye foolish Sea doth shew, wr it do’s brave it out, & roare against a stubborn Rock yt still denies it passage, is not so vaine & fruitless as my prayers. Aglaur. (532; wr=where) Whē Cæsar sayes, do this, it is perform’d. IC. (533; whē=when) Ore my spirit ye full supremacy yu know’st, & yt thy beck might from ye bidding of ye gods command mee. AC (533; yu=thou) Yor many favours Sr, haue so much obliged me beyond all others, that yor commands (wt ere they be) shall make me happy. Selindra (533; yor=your, Sr=Sir, wt ere=whatever) Thus low shrubs, growing on high hill or crooked thorntrees set by ye high way side, are more conspicuous in the eye, & frequent in the mouths of travelers, yn straighter & fairer trees, wch are obscure in the midst of the wood. PS. (535; yn=than) In the presence of such a one, as even wth her eye only, can giue ye [cruell] punishmt. LM (539; punishmt=punishment) If men should pull ye sun out of heav’ every time tis eclips’d— NS (539; heav’=heaven) As much as so unfortunat a man, fit to bee ye spectacle of misery can do you service, determine you haue made a purchase of a slaue (while I liue) nevr to fail you. A. (540; nevr=never) My hart hath bin bred up under Platonicks, & know’s no other way of being pd for service, than by being commanded more. SL (540; pd=paid) Will yt sweet beauty take delight To heare thee cough a prverb in ye night? A (542; prverb=proverb) ffortune do’s offer heere, wt time perchance cannot agen, a handsome opportunity to shew— G (546; wt=what) Winds lose their strength, when they do empty fly Vnmet of woods or buildings; great fires die, That want their matter to withstand ye’: so It is or griefe, & will be or loss, to know Our power shall want opposers. Se (546; ye’=them, or=our) Seneca speaks of some Orators, wose Orations pronounced by themselves, seemed excellent, & at ye very first, gained applause, but being read and Examined, were of no worth. Alcib: (547; wose=whose) When I see new beauties, I will thinke they are pictures (like imgges of a saints prfections) poorly counterfeiting thee. A&S (550; prfections=perfections) The use yt I shall make of yt sex & now will be no other then that which the wiser sorte of Catholicks do of pictures; at ye highest they but serve to praise my devotiō to you. SL (550; devotiō=devotion) As wn ye Harvestr (wth bubling brow Reaping ye int’rest of his painfll plow)

Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition  41 With crooked Sickle now a shock doth sheare, A handfll here & yn a handfll there, Not leaving, till he nought but stubble leave; Here lies a new fal’n rank, & yre a sheafe; Even so ye Persian host— Hadassa. (551; wn=when, Harvestr=Harvester, painfll=painful, handfll=handful, yn=then, yre=there) The sadde oftentimes is not set on the right horse, bec: his back is too high to be reachd. (559; bec:=because) She takes her selfe asunder still w’ she goes to bed, into some 20 boxes; and about next day noone is put together againe. SW. (555; w’=when) Ld, if ye peevish infant fights, & flyes Wth unpar’d weapons, at his mothers eyes, Her frownes (halfe mix’d wth smiles) may ^chance^ to show An angry loue trick on his arme, or so; Where if ye babe, but make a lip and cry Her ht begins to melt, & by & by She strokes [coakes] his dewy cheeks, her babe shee blisses, And choakes her language wth a 1000 kisses: I am yt child— QE (558; Ld=Lord, ht=heart) Now Charon sweated wth plying his oars, now Cerberus feared to admit so many of Rs rebellious subiects, least— Cypr. Acad. (551; Rs=Romulus) In order to better understand manuscript abbreviations, it is probably useful to explain the spelling characteristics of early modern English. The late Chinese scholar Li Funing has discussed this issue; in particular, he notices the abbreviated forms that regularly appear in early printed books (1991, 205–8). Unsurprisingly, abbreviation in manuscripts is more common, as it is usually less formal and often for the use of the author alone. In terms of sequence, it is the manuscript that influenced print, just as it did in the development of early type fonts. For this reason, a study of manuscript spelling may be of special importance. As Li Funing points out, the letter y in ye (usually this is the definite article the; sometimes it denotes thee, second person pronoun singular objective) and yt (that) is not the modern y, but þ in Old English and Middle English, equivalent to th in modern English (208). Two other features are also specified by Li Funing (208). One is that - or ~ above the vowel letter indicates the omission of n or m immediately after the vowel, e.g., whē=when, devotiō=devotion; in the manuscript the omission of one or more letters can also be indicated with a colon or apostrophe, e.g., bec:=because, ye’=them, heav’=heaven, w’=when. The other is that letters u and v are used interchangeably, irrespective of the distinction of vowel or consonant. Customarily v appears initially in a word (such as vntill, vnmet, vpon), and u in other positions (giue, slaue, liue, loue), whether in manuscript or in print. But this rule is not uniform, because early modern spellings are not fixed, but very flexible. For example, in the above quotations, we also find unfortunate and unpar’d.

42  Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition In addition to the three characteristics above, spellings of early modern English words are distinctive in the following aspects. First, not only letters u and v, but also i and j, are used interchangeably, e.g., subiects and ioye. According to The Cambridge History of the English Language, this is possibly influenced by Latin orthography, for in classical Latin, u and v were orthographic variants of consonantal and vocalic [w], [u]; i and j were orthographic variants for [i] and [j] (Salmon 39). Second, many content words—including nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs—in early modern English are spelled with an additional e. Examples include: arme, frownes, griefe, noone, sheafe, sorte, soules, summe (nouns); bee, addeing, flyes, roare, sayes, sweare, thinke (verbs); blacke, plumpe, vaine (adjectives); againe, soone (adverbs). Third, vowels might be entirely omitted in manuscripts, e.g., sd, pd, w’. Fourth, in early modern English, the apostrophe often denotes omission, and the possessive case is the same as the plural form. On the other hand, the apostrophe sometimes signals the plural; see: “These empty Folio’s onely please the Cooks” (quoted in Chapter 5). Folio’s and Cooks are both plural forms. Apostrophes can indicate omissions: do’s, eclips’d, heav’, know’s, perform’d; while their presence is not necessary for the possessive case: Cupids strongest bow, Venus doves, gods omnipresence, her next nights glory. To sum up, flexibility (irregularity) and the acceptability of abbreviation are two salient features of early modern English spellings, especially in manuscript. In Li Funing’s view, the distinction between English spelling and English pronunciation started with early modern English, as printers, striving for standardization and fixity, adopted medieval manuscript spellings as normative, instead of striving to establish a correspondence between spelling and pronunciation (1991, 205–6). This opinion is sound (Cf. Salmon 53), but early modern English is characterized by spelling flexibility for two additional reasons. First, the standardization of orthography needs a process. After Caxton’s irregular orthography of the late fifteenth century (Salmon 23–4), a normalized orthography took hold only in the later seventeenth century, and perhaps it was not until Johnson’s Dictionary in 1755 that spelling was more or less standardized (Li Funing 323). Second, early modern English orthography was heavily influenced by social factors such as regional dialect, local pronunciation, and individual differences of education, occupation, social status, and gender. The same word might be spelt differently by different people, on different occasions, at different times. And the same person might spell a word in various forms, including his/ her own name. For instance, in 1550–1563 a London merchant’s diary spells the same word in six ways (Salmon 30). After the Restoration in 1660, the history of English orthography entered a new era. For printers and compositors “the ability to spell and punctuate now becomes a matter of professional and technical expertise, while the scholar and gentleman is still free to use, within reason, his own spelling system” (Salmon 44). In my opinion, such a distinction not only exists between social classes, but may also be regarded as something produced and reinforced by the differences between manuscript and print. As a gentleman

Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition  43 John Evans compiled his commonplace book in manuscript around the Restoration, so his flexible orthography can be expected. Despite general tendency to standardization, early modern English orthography was, in Li Funing’s phrase, “extremely unfixed” (323). In the manuscript of Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden, the variety of abbreviations occur in part as a residue of medieval manuscript spelling, but mainly because of spatial needs; the words are shortened to suit the space. In early modern England, paper was a scarce resource. Vellum or parchment, previous writing materials, was “both slow to prepare and expensive” (Kastan 2002, 83); paper was cheaper and more readily available, but still a substantial expense. It is estimated that by 1600 printers in England “probably used six million sheets of paper a year” (qtd. in Kastan 2002, 83). However, the papermaking industry in England was backward, and the early English printers like Caxton had to import their paper from the Low Countries. Wynkyn de Worde (active 1492–1535), Caxton’s assistant and successor, was the first printer to use English-­made paper, produced at John Tate’s mill in Hertfordshire, the only English paper maker for half a century. Not until the 1670s could the native supply satisfy most of English paper needs; before that de Worde and later publishers regularly purchased paper from the continent, usually from mills in Normandy (Kastan 2002, 86–8). It is because of the high costs of paper and the consequent desire to save space that “when” might be abbreviated to “whē” or “wn” or even to the single letter “w’,” the ambiguity of all which can be overcome by the context. This phenomenon—common in the manuscript medium— of abbreviating words for spatial needs I call “space economy.”25 Very little is incomprehensible. Nevertheless, in the second to last example above (p. 41), one would be hard pressed to figure out that “ht” represents “heart.” In the final example “Rs” (Romulus) is even more obscure, and could never be determined from the immediate context. The abbreviations here interfere with meaning and must be duly expanded in print. Numbers offer additional opportunities to save space, even at the cost of the elegance of the page. The word “thousand” is written as “1000,” as in the preceding example, “twenty” as “20.” Rather than the spelt-out word, Arabic numerals occur again and again, another demonstration of space economy. O Seneca, wre, where couldst yu enroll Those many 100 words (in Prose or Verse) Which at first hearing yu couldst back rehearse? Where could great Cyrus yt great Table shut Wherein ye pictures, & ye names he put Of all ye souldiers, yt by 1000s wander’d After ye fortunes of his famous Standard? DB (486; wre=where, 1000s=thousands) It lies in you to turne these silver haires to a fresh black againe, & by one favour cut 40 yeares away from the gray summe. IL (542)

44  Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition If I had Medea’s charmes, to boyle an aged Ram in some enchanted caldron till he start up a lamb, I would recall your youth, & make you like ye aged snake cast off this wrinkled skin, and skip up fresh as at 15. IL (542) No wonder if ye cold water quickly quenched, those few sparkes of naturall heate left in him at 70 ys of age. (542; ys=years) But when wth hands outstrech’d & head thorn bound A cursed spear his blessed side shall wound: ffor which abortive night for 3 houres space Shall midday mask: to mans affrighted race, The Temple then shall yield a dire ascent: He shall to profound hell make his descent And shew ye dead a way to life – His name thus covertly expressed. (548) Sicinus Dentatus, fought in an 100 battells, 8 times in single combat he overcame, had 40 wounds before, was rewarded wth 140 Crowns, triumphed 9 times for his good service. Anat. of Melan: (551) Augustus got a friend of Cinna, by giuing him a 2d life, whereas his death, could at best but haue remov’d an enemy: Rs (558; 2d=second) It is important to notice that abbreviations and Arabic numerals occur in the master draft of Hesperides only; they do not appear in the fair copy Halliwell. The phenomenon that space economy does not work in all manuscripts shows that the cost of paper is not the major motivating force behind it; the limitation of space is. Evans intends to put into the columns as many words as possible. On the other hand, the fair copy for print demands a reliably legible and uniform presentation, for the purpose of which abbreviations and Arabic numerals are undesirable. The attention to space economy in V.b.93 and its absence from Halliwell reinforces the idea that the former is a draft and the latter a fair copy. A third demonstration of space economy is the use of some ciphers, such as +, ⊙, and ♀. The + ye plaine + I take to bee ye mother of all ye rest… (39) An army as glorious as ever ye ⊙ behold. HW (38) He shakes ye mountaines, & ye ⊙ he bars ffrom circling his due course, shuts up ye stars, He spreads ye heavs & rideth on ye clouds. IM (544) Where art yu ⊙ while yus ye blindfold day Staggers out of the east, loses her way Stumbling on night rouze yee illustrious youth And let no dull mists choake ye lights fair growth. (747) The ⊙ makes proud ye ruddy porches [Ruby portalls] of the east. (747) Shine out sweet ♀ yu canst soone Transcend ye taper of ye moone. [B] (53) Kiss’d his (Adonis) pale lips as if &c & breath into him another soule fit for her (♀) love. CA (439)

Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition  45 Come Syren sing, & dash against my rocks thy ruffin galley, laden for thy lust, sing, & put all ye nets into thy voice, wth wch yu drewst into thy strumpets lap ye spawne of ♀. BdA. (666) + means “cross,” ⊙ “sun,” and ♀ “Venus.” The latter two ciphers are borrowed from alchemy and astrology and also appear in almanacs.26 In the following excerpt, ⊙en means “golden.” The palefac’d lady of ye black brow’d night ffirst tips her horned browes wth easy light, Whose curious traine of spangld Nymphs, attire Her next nights glory, wth encreasing fire; Each evening ads more lustr & adornes The growing beauty of her grasping hornes: She sucks, & drawes her brothers ⊙en store Vntill her gluttd orb, can suck no more. QE (504) Evans’s use of the above ciphers is unusual but not idiosyncratic; we find the same ciphers in other manuscripts and printed books. For example, in British Library Lansdowne MS 695, the commonplace book of South (c. 1650), we read: “The time given to find in the Zenith of what place of the earth the ⊙ is….then number the declination of the ⊙ in the meridian from the Æquator to the North, then make a mark there that is the place over wch the ⊙ directly is al the time” (74). In his copy of Paracelsus’s Chirurgia magna (Argentorati, 1573), the Tudor scholar-statesman Sir Thomas Smith writes in the margin next to a note about Venus its astrological symbol (Sherman 1995, 76). In a Huntington manuscript (HM 31191) we find: Sol Venus ♀ (1). The cipher for the sun (Sol) is a little bit different. HalliwellPhillipps used ⊙ to indicate a point of reference—like an asterisk—in his “Literary Scraps” (Folger W.b.137–200, passim). Still another manifestation of space economy is the transformation of poetic lines into prose. Is like a sieve, yt do’s alone reteine ye grossr substance of ye worthless bran. QE (486) Cf. Is like a Sive, that does, alone, retaine The grosser substance of the worthlesse Bran. When I see new beauties, I will thinke they are pictures (like imgges [sic] of a Saints prfections) poorly counterfeiting thee. A&S (550) Cf. What if you new beauties see, Will not they stir new affection? I will thinke thy pictures be, (Image like of Saints perfection) Poorly counterfeiting thee.

46  Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition Nature sweats wth care for her darlings fate knowing ye world shall pass ere shee can find enough of such heauenly stuff, to cloath so heauenly a minde. A & S. (568) Cf. Nature with care seeks for hir darlings sake, Knowing worlds passe, ere she enough can finde Of such heaven stuffe to cloath so heavenly minde. The rewriting of verse into prose minimizes the occupation of space. This phenomenon is common in medieval manuscripts, when writing materials were even more scarce and costly. In the process of converting verse into prose, lineation disappears, and the original is altered freely. The compiler is not only copying, but is also rewriting; he becomes an author, or a collaborator, or at least a reviser, as well as a reader (see Chapter 4). Some principle of space economy can be seen to function in many manuscript commonplace books. Abbreviations appear in them, such as Dr (HM 93, 193), Mr (HM 198, 1: 28), ₽son (BL Add MS 35983, 20), Sr (HM 198, 1: 37), St (BL Add MS 35983, 20), whē (HM 1338, 64), wt (HM 41536, 5v), wth (HM 198, 2: 49), ye (passim, BL Add MS 35983), yen (HM 31191, 19), yor (HM 46323, 13v), etc. In particular, shortened words often occur in titles, like “Dedicated to the La: L: B:” (HM 198, 1: 42), “To ouer blessed St Eliz: of famous memory ye Humble Petition of her now most wretched & most Contemptable ye Comons of England” (HM 198, 1: 62), and “On ye Death of q. Anne by K. James” (HM 116, 94). K. or k. for “King” appears in Milton’s commonplace book (BL Add MS 36354), and q. for “Queen” in Sir Edward Hoby’s commonplace book (BL Add MS 38823). The pages of HM 198 usually have a single column; when there is a double column, abbreviations frequently appear demanded by the limitation of space: or: ease ouer thrift, or Homor, & ouer day (1: 65) pride is ye inbred flattery yt lends (1: 65) as all yr verteous powers wch: are (1: 69) We also find Arabic numerals in the manuscripts: that Hellen was admired for thirty things … 3 white, 3 blacke, 3 red, 3 short, 3 Tall 3 large, 3 thin, 3 round, 3 plumpe, 3 small (“Vpon A faire woeman,” HM 198, 1: 52) “of ye 10 Commandements” (HM 93, 50) Kinge Henry the 4th Emperour fought 52 pitcht Feild battles (HM 93, 77) where they left 7000 men (BL Add MS 4821, 13v) after hee raigned 29 years (BL Add MS 4821, 15) If any one thinke these 100 classes too few…he may by addeing the 2d: vowell of each word increase them to 500. (BL Add MS 28728, 60)

Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition  47 A caveat is of force for 3 Months onely; & after ye end of 3 Months, one may safely present as if no Caveat had been. (BL Add MS 72544A, 81v) Shorthand appears in BL Add MS 35983 (96v, 109, 110). The ciphers (sun) and ☽ (moon) appear in BL Add MS 63782 (17), and the ciphers ∆ (triangle), ⊙ (circle), and □ (rectangle) regularly appear in BL Add MS 38482. ⊙ appears— not as the sun or circle—but as the capital letter O most prominently in BL Add MS 43410, but also in BL Add MSS 28273, 52800, and 63782. From the above evidence, we may say that the exercise of space economy is a normative rule in manuscripts. We should add that space economy often functions as a writing habit, not because of the limitation of space, as when “the” is invariably written as “ye” in some manuscripts. In V.b.93, the sources are indicated with abbreviations like HW, IL, Alcib: (see Appendix I) for two purposes: first for the sake of convenience (sources appear repeatedly), second to save the precious space. These abbreviations are duly expanded in Halliwell. Similarly, this fact again evidences the fair copy status of Halliwell. Very occasionally the indication of source is wrong. “A ioye able to make man forget hee could bee miserable. SyS” (Evans 429). The quotation is not by Sidney, but occurs in James Shirley’s The Wedding. In other cases, the source is unspecified. “Are you so barbarous to set iron nipples, upon ye brests yt gaue you suck?” (Evans 563), but the sentence can be found in Thomas Middleton’s The Revengers Tragedie. The opposite of compression is expansion, which occurs from time to time in V.b.93: You may cut her throate safely; shee hath no bloud left yt will bee spilt, ’twill only make another passage for her wind. S. (Evans 542) Cf. Sure you may do it safely; she hath no Bloud left that will be spilt; ’twill only make Another passage for her wind. When hee (K Richard) & ye ffrench K passed over ye bridge at Lyons, on ye fall of ye bridge, this conceit was built, that. (Evans 543) Women [we] thinke there wants fire, where they find no sparkles at least of fury. (Evans 561) The first example is also one of the transformations of poetry into prose. The words “cut her throate” expand “do it” from the context, explaining what “it” is. Similarly, “K Richard” is inserted in brackets to indicate who “hee” is, and “Women” replaces “we” in the original to designate what the pronoun refers to. The clarification of meaning seems to be a higher principle than space economy; or rather, the opposite of space economizing can happen when the context demands, while space economy is the principle as long as it does not interfere with the clarification of meaning. Since Hesperides was intended for print publication, would the features of compression discussed above be kept in print? From the examples of Arabic

48  Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition numerals, it would seem the answer is “no.” However, when a passage has been transformed from poetry into prose in the master draft, it might remain in prose form in the fair copy, and hence would have appeared in print (if Hesperides had been printed). Most features of space economy would disappear in print, though some features might be kept. Nonetheless, the printed book makes its own demands of space economy, as when the compositor abbreviates some words to fit them into a single line in the printing of poems or plays. For example, a line in The Faerie Queene is printed as “For trũpets stern to change mine oatê reeds” (I.0.1.4, 1609, STC 23083). The words “trumpets” and “oaten” are abbreviated to fit into the space (Hao 2008, 259). Similar cases occur in the printing of plays. See, for instance, Shakespeare’s King Lear as it appears in the First Folio (1623): Lear Are you our Daughter?                                 (dome Gon. I would you would make vse of your good wise- (I.iv.239–40) That going shalbe vs’d with feet.                            (time. This prophecie Merlin shall make, for I liue before his (III.ii.93–4) I thinke our Father will hence to night.           (with vs. Reg. That’s most certaine, and with you: next moneth (I.i.284–5)27 The half word, word, or two words at the end of a long line is moved (often along with the punctuation) to the end of the previous line, indicated with a bracket, in order to avoid the spatially inefficient turnover, saving typographical space and hence saving paper. Such compositorial practice is actually parallel to the use of abbreviations in manuscript. Along with space economy, the system of cross-reference in V.b.93 is also noteworthy, because it may reveal the production process of the master draft. On the top of each column of V.b.93 (each folio page has two columns), there are three horizontal lines, which form two horizontal boxes. On the bottom of the page there is a third horizontal box. In the first horizontal box appear cross-references to Books A and B, like “A108” for “Accidents,” “B272” for “Arts,” and “A 258. B119” for “Attempts.” “A” is self-referential, i.e., V.b.93. The commonplace heading and the page number appear in the second horizontal box, with cross-references to other headings, e.g.: access 6.               Accident s [heading]               5 [page number] Accessary. 89. The lowercase word “access” refers to the heading in the same book on page 6, and the uppercase word “Accessary” most likely refers to the heading in a third commonplace book, which we can call C for the sake of convenience. On some pages, when the extracts fill the vertical column, a number often appears in the third horizontal box at the bottom of the page. The number may refer to the pagination of a fourth commonplace book that continues the copious quotations. This possible fourth book we can call D. Thus, the compiling of V.b.93 not only draws

Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition  49 on hundreds of printed books, but also on a number of commonplace books in the compiler’s possession (B, C, D). B has at least 273 pages, for “Shewe” has a cross-reference “273B.” C has at least 548 pages, for we have the cross-reference “Oracles 548.” D is even bigger, for we find “636, 336” under “Wonder.” These four commonplace books could be Evans’s own. It was not uncommon for an early modern reader to keep more than one commonplace book at the same time. John Morris, Henry Sturmy, and Sir William Trumbull all kept two or three commonplace books, now in the collection of the British Library. Sir Robert Sidney, First Earl of Leicester owned four commonplace books (Warkentin 31–42), and Edward Pudsey and Francis Bacon also kept multiple commonplace books (Beal 1993, 133, 145). Abraham Hill was an early reader of Milton and a member of the Royal Society. He had 11 commonplace books (Poole 2004, 88). Milton himself also owned more than one commonplace book, including the extant one and the missing Index Theologicus (Fulton 16; Poole 2009, 368, 374). Isaac Casaubon possessed almost 60 notebooks, now in the Bodleian Library (Grafton 146). In his commonplace book (Folger MS V.b.110, c. 1642–1670), Henry Oxenden writes under “Atheisme” on page 516: “See concerning this in my large thin paper booke, & in my little booke.” Obviously Oxenden kept at least three commonplace books simultaneously.28 Nehemiah Wallington, a London wood turner, kept 50 volumes of notebooks—at least 20,000 pages—over four decades (Smyth 2016, 63–4, 70). Wallington thus describes his volumes: “A black cover Book,” “A Book with Clasps,” “A Book with a red cover and clasps,” “A Book with a black cover, yellow Leaves & Clasps,” “A Long Book,” and “A thin paper book with a parchment cover” (qtd. in Smyth 2016, 64). We might note that Oxenden and Wallington refer to their books not with the titles or shelf-marks but in very physical terms: covers, colors, clasps, long, large, little, thin, paper, parchment. The practice of commonplace book keeping in early modern England is physical as well as intellectual, sensuous as well as sensible. The compilers live with their books, opening, touching, and feeling them every day. A seventeenth-century academic and educational theorist, Obadiah Walker, prescribes in Of Education: Especially of Young Gentlemen (Oxford, 1673): “These note-books, if many, are to be distinguished by A, B, C, &c” (qtd. in Havens 2001a, 30). The anonymous writer of “Of Common Places, or Memorial Books” (c. 1681) also recommends marking the different books with (A), (B), (C), (D), etc. (Havens 2001b, 4). On the first page of British Library Add MS 61903, the owner notes “Liber A,” indicating that it is the first commonplace book of his. Evans follows this practice with his distinction of A and B. We are certain that A, B, and C are different books, because A and B appear together (e.g., “Attempts”), A and C appear together (e.g., “Accidents”), and B and C appear together (e.g., “Faithfull”). When books appear together, there exists a distinction between them. Is D the same book as any of A, B, and C? We know that D is not A. Since “B.1.54.” appears in the third horizontal box, the usual position of D, under “Eminent,” D cannot be B. The only remaining possibility is that D and C are the same book, which is possible. In any case, Evans kept at least three commonplace books at the same time.

50  Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition The cross-referencing in Hesperides is often signaled by the cipher ⊕. For example, we find  After ye  If Hercules   Chance 5, “Accidents” Whatsoever   If you  While this   Thus God  Entertain   Happines  Opportunity 12, “Advantage”  To pick  As a boat  The Vigilant 

(

)

(

 As if  It had  Letters 632, “Receave” Honoured 

(



)

)

The cross-referenced extracts, which are represented with the initial words (usually one or two, occasionally three), are all marked with ⊕ under the corresponding head: the four extracts under “Chance,” the seven extracts under “Opportunity,” and the three extracts under “Letters.” Under “Avoid” we notice Shunning 9 & 11 All Away The commonplace head “Shunning” does not appear in V.b.93 (or A), but in C, page 146 of C. The ninth and eleventh extracts under “Shunning” are cross-referenced to “Avoid.” “All Away” means that all the extracts—in this case, only one—under “Away” (in the same book) are cross-referenced to “Avoid.” Under “Breefe” on page 87, we see: ⊕ Breefe ly nes vity in abbridgmt. Thus, all the extracts—except for the BE one (Bacon’s Essays)—under “Breefe” are copied to “Abbridgmt” (see Part II, Chapter 1). Though the head “Abbridgmt” is absent from V.b.93, evidence indicates that it must appear on the first page of V.b.93. On the first page of Folger MS V.a.75, there is the head “Abbridgments & Abbridging,” and “Shorte” in V.b.93 has a cross-reference to “A1,” which must be “Abbridgments.” Thus, from the cross-reference, we may infer the content of an absent head. All the cross-references discussed above are instructions for compiling the fair copy of Hesperides. “Amiable all” under “Comly” means that all the extracts under

Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition  51 “Amiable” are cross-referenced to “Comly.” Still another category of cross-references are: Yor life. Cle 5. (100, “Care”) He that CN 210 (123, “Clemencie”) Having a HP 29 (165, “Counterfaite”) The pattern is: initial words + source title + page number. This pattern is Erasmian, as discussed above. With the help of the commonplace head it is easy to locate the exact quotation in the book. This cross-reference to a printed book has been discussed in Chapter 1. All the three categories of cross-references—cross-references within the book, cross-references to other commonplace books, cross-references to printed books—give instructions for the compilation of Halliwell. The crossreferences reveal the production process from V.b.93 to Halliwell. The commonplace book is primarily a Renaissance genre, but it is not a dead genre of the Renaissance. In the current century, the commonplace book evolves into the electronic species. John Evans’s Hesperides is a living specimen of early modern writing, early modern reading practice, and early modern canon formation. These will be the topics of the next three chapters. Notes 1 See also Mary Thomas Crane, Chapter 4; Thomas Fulton, 56–7. For more literature on the subject and some limitations of the commonplace book as an educational tool, see Victoria Burke, 157–8. 2 For related literature on the topic, see Victoria Burke, 156–63. 3 Adam Smyth points out that ink-making recipes are “extremely common” and even “countless” (2010a, 105). 4 In his commonplace book in the late fifteenth century, BL Harley MS 1735, John Crophill collects 69 culinary recipes in Middle English (Myers 3–15). So, recipes already appeared in manuscript commonplace books in the Middle Ages. 5 The “Contents of Reels” for the collection of “Renaissance Commonplace Books from the Huntington Library” (1994) designate the manuscript as an anonymous poetical miscellany. This designation is problematic, not only because the internal evidence indicates the owner of the manuscript, but also because poems only appear on pages 2–19. On the last page the poem “A new years guift presented to my father and Mother by my Brother Thomas Calverly” seems to be written in the same ink and by the same hand as “Instructions for Justices of the Peace.” Therefore, I infer the owner of the manuscript to be the brother of Thomas Calverly. But this poem might have been copied from elsewhere. 6 This is the commonplace book of Anthony Scattergood, with a different hand at the end. The other two Scattergood manuscripts, BL Add MSS 42121 and 44964, in Reel 6 of the microfilm collection of “Renaissance Commonplace Books from the British Library, London” (2002), are not Renaissance commonplace books, but nineteenth-century productions. For this reason, they should be excluded from the collection. Likewise, BL Royal 12 C XV, a manuscript dated from the thirteenth century, should also be excluded from the collection. The 2007 microfilm collection of “Renaissance Commonplace Books from the Sloane Collection, British Library, London” is also prefaced by William H. Sherman.

52  Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition 7 Adam Smyth discusses Gibson’s commonplace book from the perspective of autobiographical writing (2010b, 130–58). 8 On p. 26 of HM 1338, the anonymous compiler writes “No peace with Rome,” indicating his or her Protestant position. The Bacon item extends the dating of the manuscript to at least 1625. The “Contents of Reels” for the collection of “Renaissance Commonplace Books from the Huntington Library” date the manuscript c. 1614–1620. 9 According to Peter Beal, a table of contents is a “common feature” of early modern printed books, “sometimes adopted for manuscript volumes;” title pages are “not entirely unknown in medieval manuscripts,” but rare, for the title page is “an innovation gradually introduced by early European printers, from about 1463 onwards (from about 1490 in England);” running titles (or running heads) can be found in medieval bibles and treatises, but they are usually a part of printed books; catchwords “have been used in manuscripts since early medieval times and were later adopted as useful devices also by printers, English printed books commonly bearing them from about 1500 to 1800.” See Beal, 2008, 408, 418–9, 353, 65. 10 Incunabula (incunabulum sing.) refer to printed books in the West before 1501, or in the earliest period of European typography. 11 Beal also says, “Whereas the publishers of incunables originally imitated manuscripts, some of their innovations—including title-pages—began to be imitated in turn by scribes in the production of manuscripts” (2008, 419). 12 Beal, too, regards Erasmus as the “most influential writer of all” in the compiling of commonplace books (1993, 137). 13 In the nineteenth century, W. A. P. Martin cited the Latin proverb in his A Cycle of Cathay (390). 14 The Euripus is a narrow strait in the Aegean Sea, between the island of Euboea and the mainland Greece, known for its strong tidal currents that reverse directions for multiple times a day. “Aristotle, for that he could not giue a reason of the flux and reflux of Eurypus, drowned himselfe” (Allott, Wits Theater of the Little World, 1599, sig. Mm2v). 15 Roman historian (flourished 30 AD), who wrote Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri ix, an important book of historical anecdotes for the use of rhetoricians that was popular especially in the Middle Ages. 16 There is, of course, a long tradition of “garden” (sylva) and gathering vocabularies for anthologies. In Greek “anthology” originally denoted a collection of the “flowers” picked from a “garden” of verse by various authors. The medieval commonplace book was called “florilegium.” See Randall Anderson 248–61 and Li Yaochung 148. 17 For a more detailed discussion of these two books, see Chapter 5. 18 Identity unknown. In the Old Testament, Zedekiah ascended the throne of Judah at the age of 21, and reigned in Jerusalem for 11 years. His misbehavior and betrayal led to his overthrow by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, who blinded Zedekiah and carried him in chains to Babylon, imprisoning him until death. See Jeremiah 52, 2 Kings 24–25, and 2 Chronicles 36. 19 For a brief introduction to William Caxton, see Kastan 2002, 81–8. 20 See Sherman 2008, Chapter 7, for a discussion of Caesar’s Foxe. 21 Possible topics include: commonplace headings and systematic theology, the commonplace book and popular theology, commonplacing Protestant theology, the different uses of the commonplace book by Protestant reformers and the Jesuits (see Part II, Chapter 6). 22 See Ernst Curtius 263. Palladis Tamia contains a section comparing English writers with Greek, Roman, and Italian ones, which mentions Shakespeare repeatedly (leaves 279–87). One of the paragraphs is often quoted for its list of Shakespeare’s early works: “the sweete wittie soule of Ouid liues in mellifluous & hony-tongued Shakespeare, witnes his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his priuate friends” (281–2). Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies are also enumerated (282).

Hesperides in the Commonplace Book Tradition  53 23 From “To the Reader:” the great world is the universe or heaven and earth, and the little world is man (in Aristotle’s terms); the greater world was made for man. In “the theater of the little world” we may see “the inward and outward parts of man, liuely figured in hys actions and behauiour” (sig. A3). 24 Gunnar Sorelius’s implication that the sources for Bel-vedere are classical is wrong. See 298: “In comparison with the early printed commonplace books, Wits commonwealth, 1598 [sic], Palladis tamia, 1598, Wits theatre of the little world, 1599, Belvedere, 1600, and Wits labyrinth, 1648, ‘Hesperides’ strikes a modern note. Its sources are almost exclusively modern rather than classical.”   Two poetical miscellanies in a series sponsored by John Bodenham are also noteworthy: Englands Helicon (1600) and Englands Helicon. Or the Mvses Harmony (1614). 25 To be fair, previous scholars have taken note of this phenomenon, e.g., Bernhard Bischoff’s “economy of writing” (2). 26 See Illustration 57 in Visual Analogy (Stafford 101), and almanacs published by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia in the eighteenth century Poor Richard Improved (1747, 1750, 1752, 1754, 1762). 27 I am using the facsimile edition introduced by Doug Moston (Routledge, 1998). 28 British Library Add MS 54332 (1630–1668) may be owned by the same Oxenden.

3

Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England

By examining two contrasting cases of plagiarism—an actual one and an ostensible one—this chapter studies commonplacing as a method of composition in early modern writers, whose invention is achieved through imitation. Rather than stealing, the “felony of wit” is oftentimes legitimate borrowing. Hopefully, the discussions in this chapter will add to our understanding of the nature of plagiarism and of the manner of early modern writing. I. Joseph Browne’s plagiarism The modern notion of plagiarism originates in connection with the Copyright Act of 1710. The 1709 Statute of Queen Anne, the first English copyright law that went into effect in 1710, stipulates that the author, not the publisher, has the right to duplicate works; the author has a monopoly in the publication of his/her works for a period of 21 years (M. Salzman 16–7; Lindey 103; J. Anderson 2). After the expiration of the period the perpetual right granted to the author by common law still continues.1 Once the authorial right is established legally, plagiarism constitutes a violation of copyright and becomes a legal offense. Religiously, plagiarism goes against the Christian commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.” Joseph Browne (active 1700–1721)2 steals. In his “The Burning of the Ch— of En—d Memorial,” State Tracts (1715), over one quarter (65/244) of the lines are plagiarized from Thomas Pierce’s Palingenesia (London, 1649), a work cited in Hesperides (no. 257 in Catalog A, no. 208 in Catalog H; see Appendices I–II). Browne’s plagiarism conforms with its modern definitions: OED: “The action or practice of plagiarizing; the wrongful appropriation or purloining, and publication as one’s own, of the ideas, or the expression of the ideas (literary, artistic, musical, mechanical, etc.) of another.” MLA: “Derived from the Latin word plagiarius (‘kidnapper’), plagiarism refers to a form of cheating that has been defined as ‘the false assumption of authorship: the wrongful act of taking the product of another person’s mind, and presenting it as one’s own’ (Alexander Lindey, Plagiarism and Originality [New York: Harper, 1952] 2).” (Gibaldi 66)3 DOI: 10.4324/9781032635699-4

Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England 55 From his borrowing we may also explore the creative process of poetic composition. 1 Many lines are lifted directly from Palingenesia, with no verbal change, e.g. Sure all things thus into Confusion hurl’d, Make, tho’ an Universe, yet not a World. (174–5; 33–4)4 Lines in this category are 38 in total. They are: 1, 3, 5–7, 9–10, 14, 51, 168–70, 174–5, 180–4, 186, 188–9, 191, 194, 196–7, 199, 202–4, 206–10, 212–4. 2 The change of punctuation. In line 10, the original question mark is corrected to a comma; in line 8, the original question mark is wrongly changed to a period; in lines 179–80, the question mark is wrongly removed from the second line to the first line. In the latter two cases, the original punctuation should be kept. 3 Others are copied with the substitution of a key word or two to fit better into his occasion. Example 1: The Styrrup hold, while Faction mounts the Steed? Is not Religion, Providence besides, (171–2) The Stirrop hold, whilst Treason mounts the Steed? Is not Gods Word, and’s Providence besides. (30–1)5 Example 2: How to their Haven shall Ch— Pilots steer, ’Twixt the Wh—g Statesman, and the P—sb—t—r? (178–9) How to that Heaven did this Pilot steer ’Twixt th’Independent, and the Presbyter, (157–8) Example 3: There Pop’ry stands, here the Geneva Gulf; (185) There the Ægæan, here the Venice-gulfe, (164) Example 4: The Frogs and Lice, we our D—ss—nt—rs too; (205) The Frogs and Lice, and Independents too. (280) 4 Some places are altered for metrical reasons. Sometimes the lame meter is rectified. Example 1: Vast Stocks of Mis’ry, which his Guardian Rage, (200) Vast stocks of misery, which his Guardian-rage. (275) Example 2: Oh for a Jeremy to sing our Woe! (13) O for a Jeremy to lament our woe! (293) Sometimes regular meter is destroyed. Example 1: The unequal Match of Semele and Jove. (2) Th’unequall Greete of Semele and Jove. (2)

56  Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England Example 2: Being fairly seated in the Chair of Scorn, (198) Being fairly placed in the Chaire of scorne. (273) 5 Some substitutions are largely insignificant: Example 1: Our Sorrows with a dismal Gaudiness. (16) Our sorrows with a dreadfull gaudinesse! (296) Example 2: Is it not just t’expect, that he who dares Mount above Midas, shou’d wear longer Ears. (7–8) Is it not just t’expect, that He, who dares Higher then Midas, should wear longer Eares? (7–8) Example 3: Just like that busy Youth, whose daring Pride (11; repetition of dares in line 7) Just like that busie Elfe, whose vent’rous Pride (11) Example 4: Will scarce be read amidst the Works of Fame, (215) Will scarce be legible i’th’leaves of fame, (290) Some substitutions make the line sound weird or ridiculous: Example: Like Pigmy Swimmers writ in Time’s Black Book. (211) Like Pygmy-Sinners writ in Times black-booke. (286) In one case, Browne’s ignorant substitution reverses the original meaning and betrays himself: I come; but come with trembling, lest I prove The unequal Match of Semele and Jove. As she was too obscure, and he too bright, My Theme’s too heavy, and my Muse too light. (1–4) In Pierce’s original, the word “Match” is “Greete,” meaning “weeping, lamentation; also, a cry of sorrow” (OED). The OED cites from, among others, Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar (1579): Per. Well decked in a frocke of gray. Wil. Hey, ho, gray is greete [Gloss. weeping and complaint]. Greet in this sense also functions as a verb: Say shepherd’s boy, what makes thee greet so sore? (Lodge, Rosalind [1590], 127)

Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England 57 Apparently, Browne does not understand the meaning of the word in Pierce and changes it to “Match” without much thinking. As a result, Browne’s lines say that Semele and Jove are worthy models of lamentation; actually, Pierce disapproves of the weeping of Semele and Jove, for one is “too obscure,” and the other “too bright,” and neither is equal to the poet’s subject. Browne’s ignorance reverses the original meaning and betrays his plagiarism. 6 Very occasionally Browne reorganizes the idea of the original lines but keeps the rhyme. A typical example is: Hence we’ve a Ch— that’s not our Choice, but Fate, Since it is rul’d by Interest of State. (176–7) Hence his Religion was his choice, not Fate, Rul’d by Gods Word, not Interest of State. (95–6) Another example: See hov’ring Judgments, which will surely fall (17) For next those hovering judgements, wch the fall (297) These two examples may be called “quasi-plagiarism.” Are they reinterpretations in Harold Odgen White’s sense?6 At most, they are superficial reinterpretation, not real transformation. Browne’s downright plagiarism may be an extreme case of commonplacing, which teaches us something about the process of early modern poetic composition. When he does not plagiarize, he borrows or imitates the rhyme to make his lines. The rhyming words thus borrowed or imitated are too many to enumerate. Let me suffice with one list. The left column in the following is from Browne, and the right Pierce. 88–9 own/Throne 90–1 Head/stead 96–7 save/Grave 100–1 Wills/Ills 104–5 about/out 120–1 groan/Throne 126–7 Throne/own 132–3 Rape/Escape 134–7 Eye/high/lies/rise 140–1 stand/Hand 148–9 Name/Fame

113–4 Throne/owne 175–6 tread/Head 197–8 have/Grave 203–4 skill/Will 205–6 about/out 217–8 escape/rape 229–30 eyes/rise 255–6 stand/Land 289–90 name/fame

We may see how Browne takes the rhymes from Pierce: he either copies directly or merely reverses the order of the pair or substitutes one word. The borrowing of rhymes is not plagiarism, but a method of poetic composition.

58  Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England When Browne does not borrow from Pierce, he borrows from himself: 102–3 Sway/Day          108–9 away/Prey          124–5 Day/Prey 192–3 lay/Sea           217–8 way/Sea The rhyme or near-rhyme is produced on hints from previous lines. Besides loaned rhyme and imitated rhyme above, we have a third category here: selfpropagated rhyme. The following is a mixture of borrowed and self-propagated rhyme: 22–3 Eyes/Obsequies      34–5 Eyes/rise      70–3 flies/lies/Eyes/Disguise 78–9 Eyes/Skies           134–7 Eye/high/lies/rise          241–2 Eye/Memory Imitation and self-propagation are seeds of creation. In the borrowing of rhyme, Browne is not entirely slavish. A study of the production of rhyme leads us into the creative process of the poet based on commonplacing. II. Commonplace writing: The cases of Dunton, Felltham, and Burton As a contrast, we can also learn something about the process of early modern composition from John Dunton’s seeming plagiarism. The following fragment appears on the reverse of a Halliwell-Phillipps cutting: Sometimes a failing and return, is a prompter to a surer hold. Saint Ambrose. (Tro. i.82, 3rd of 7 cuttings) According to LION, the quotation is from Dunton’s A Voyage round the World, published in 1691. The text is confirmed in EEBO, which describes the book as “largely autobiographical.” John Dunton (1659–1732) was a prominent bookseller in London, a man of great energy, most famous for his editing and compiling of the journal The Athenian Mercury (1691–1697). The excellent biography in the DNB calls A Voyage round the World “a precursor of Sterne’s Tristram Shandy;” “His search after novelties led him to experiment with new literary forms” (Berry). The only trouble is that the Voyage was written in 16897 and the citation in Hesperides cannot be as late as that. “Saint Ambrose” is a section in the Holy Court, a book which Evans cites but which is not covered in LION. Holy Court (1650) is full text searchable in EEBO, yet the quotation cannot be found. Quite accidentally, I found the following excerpt in Hesperides (V.b.93): Sometimes a failing, & a returne, is a prompter to a surer hold. St Ambrose observes yt Peters faith was stronger after his fall, ya’ before. Rs. (565, “Penitent”) So, Evans is excerpting Owen Felltham’s Resolves, not John Dunton’s Voyage.8

Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England 59 Then, does Dunton plagiarize Felltham? Let us look at Dunton’s sentence in its context: He that repents is well near innocent. Nay sometimes a failing and return is a prompter to a surer hold. S. Ambrose observes, that S. Peter’s Faith was stronger after his Fall than before, so as he doubts not to say, That by his Fall he found more Grace than he lost. A Man shall beware the steps he once hath stumbled on. And thus we see often that the Devil cosins himself, by plunging Man into deep offences. (vol. 3, sig. B3v) We can hardly distinguish which sentence is original, which derivative. A comparison with Felltham will show immediately that none of the sentences is original: He that repents, is wel-neer innocent. Nay, sometimes a failing and returne, is a prompter to a surer hold. Saint Ambrose observes, that Peters Faith was stronger after his fall, then before: so as he doubts not to say, that, by his fall, he found more grace, then he lost. A man shall beware the steps hee once hath stumbled on. The Devill somtimes coozens himselfe, by plunging man into a deepe offence. (sigs. T3r-v)9 Apparently, John Dunton plagiarizes Owen Felltham: the first four sentences are copied almost verbatim. In the last sentence, “somtimes” is turned into “often” and “And thus we see” is added, “a deepe offence” assuming the plural form. Here Dunton could have made a footnote indicating his source, as he does with his citation from Montaigne’s Essays (vol. 3, sig. B6), but he does not do so. The result is flagrant plagiarism in modern terms,10 but even in an age with different notions of originality, it is an act the more exasperating from a writer who condemns theft eloquently in The Athenian Mercury.11 The thief cries thief, one might say. The interesting thing is that Dunton anticipates accusations of his plagiarism and defends himself accordingly. The passage is worth quoting at length: Montaigne says, That nothing can be so absurdly said, that has not been said before by some of the Philosophers. And I am the more willing to expose my Whimsies to the Publick, forasmuch as though they are spun out of my self; and without any Pattern I know they will be found related to some ancient humour; and some will not stick to say, See whence he took it! ’Tis true, I cannot deny but in this Book there are many things that may perhaps one day have bin made known to me by other Writers; but if they have, I have utterly forgot by whom. But say, they were all Collections: Is the Honey the worse because the Bee sucks it out of many Flowers? Or is the Spider’s Web the more to be prais’d, because it is extracted out of her own Bowels? Wilt thou say, the Taylor did not make the Garment, because the Cloth it was made of was weav’d by the Weaver?

60  Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England Therefore let no body insist upon the Matter I write, but my Method in writing. If I have borrowed any thing, let them observe in what I borrow; if I have known how to chuse what is proper to raise or relieve the Invention, which is always my own,; [sic] for if I steal from others, ’tis that they may say for me, what either for want of Language or want of Sence I cannot my self express. ’Tis true, I have always an Idea in my Soul which presents me a better form than what I have in this Book made use of, but I cannot catch it, nor fit it to my purpose. I can neither please nor delight my self, much less ravish any one. The best Story in the World would be spoyl’d by my handling. If therefore I transplant any of others Notions into my own soil, and confound them among my own, I purposely conceal the Author, to awe the temerity of those precipitous Censures that fall upon all sorts of Writings: I will have my Reader wound Plutarch through my sides, and rail against Seneca, when they think they rail at me; I must shelter my own weakness under these great Reputations. (vol. 3, sigs. C4v-C5) An extremely self-conscious writer who cares constantly about his own writing and the reader’s response, Dunton is certainly aware of his borrowings or thefts, but he both “utterly [forgets] by whom” and “purposely conceal[s] the Author.” It is not the self-contradiction that is mainly of interest, but the set of questions raised by Dunton’s self-defense: Where does the writer’s authority originate from? Is the modern definition of plagiarism applicable to the early modern situation? What texts can ever be thought to be truly original? What are the implications of a culture of commonplacing upon the idea of originality, as Paulina Kewes began thinking about 20 years ago (2003, 8). Both Dunton’s sentences that he plagiarized and his metaphors in his own defense are commonplaces, and the commonplaces (loci communes) are “a universal possession” in the Renaissance (Love 2003, 153), so cannot be stolen since they are common property. In any case, he first sentence plagiarized, He that repents is well near innocent, is not original even with Felltham either, who cites “the Tragedian”: Quem pœnitet peccasse, pœnè est innocens. “The Tragedian” is Seneca,12 and the work cited is Agamemnon. Felltham derives his authority from a classical writer; although he does not give the name directly, he cites the Latin original and refers to its author in the Renaissance way, presumably information enough for recognition in his reader versed in ancient Greek and Roman learning. Dunton “purposely conceal[s] the Author” in his borrowing to confound his critics: “I will have my Reader…rail against Seneca, when they think they rail at me.” Dunton’s prediction comes true literally, in the twenty-first century, in me—amazing indeed. Amusing indeed. And ye why not just enjoy the pleasure of the text, the fun of intertextuality, the ingenuity of the writer, rather than condemn or merely frown at his alleged “plagiarism”? Dunton knows his

Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England 61 misdemeanor and makes a clever use of it, creating a good joke with his reader, both of the seventeenth century and today. All of this is more important, more vibrant, and immensely more interesting than an indignant prosecution: see whence he took it. And, in any case, where is the text that we can safely say it is original? The common trait of Felltham and Dunton is that they both obtain their authority from others; one more explicitly, the other covertly. “I must shelter my own weakness under these great Reputations,” confesses Dunton (my emphasis). He cites Augustine, Montaigne, and Bunyan directly,13 but withholds Seneca’s name in order for his joke to work. Arguably, the authority of the Seneca sentence comes not from its author, however great his reputation, but from its status as a proverb and a commonplace. Further, the plagiarized passage takes its authority from its status as a commonplace, not from the plagiarized author Owen Felltham (as likely as not by Dunton “utterly forgot”). The commonplace in the Renaissance is not just “a universal possession,” but it is also a source of authority. By borrowing the commonplace authority wisely, the early modern writer invents his own authorship. Along this line of argument, John Dunton does not plagiarize at all; he is the only real author of those sentences. We must take seriously Dunton’s claims of originality and authorship. The early modern plagiarism presents, when we take into account the widespread culture of commonplacing, a more complicated picture than first meets the eye or can be contained in the hard-and-fast MLA definition (though I am unsure how I would respond to something like this in a student paper). We say that the sentences under scrutiny are commonplaces not just because Evans cites them in a commonplace book and Dunton cites them again, but also because of the popularity of Felltham’s book and the nature of the sentences themselves. As many as 12 editions of Resolves Divine, Moral, and Political came out in the seventeenth century.14 Stanley Stewart calls the book “[w]ithout doubt the most popular work of its kind in the period, and one that retained its popularity throughout most of the century,” and even “perhaps the most popular work of the period” (7, 31). It is a collection of 20015 essays in the manner of Montaigne’s or Bacon’s Essays,16 though inferior: with commonplace titles (e.g., “Of Contentment,” “Of Humility,” “Of Lyes and Vntruths”), pedantic, aphoristic sentences, moralizing all the time.17 Naturally, such materials gain easy entry into the commonplace book. Evans also cites Bacon’s Essays, but Resolves stands presumably as the most frequently extracted title in Hesperides. Among the thirteen extracts under “Penitent,” seven are from Resolves, four of which come from “Of Repentance,” the essay from which Evans and Dunton borrow the sentences. The content of this essay—­ particularly the second of the sentences under discussion—is also indexed in the “Alphabeticall table” under the head “Repentance” by the printer of the book, R. L. Repentance:…Repentance after Failing, is a Prompter to a surer hold, 277, 278. (sig. Ii) Both Evans and Dunton draw on the sentences to illustrate the theme of penitence. In a word, the sentences in question are intended by the author, presented by the printer,

62  Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England and accepted by readers to be illustrations of the commonplace head of repentance or penitence, and, like pictorial illustrations of a head, they are its representation. The suspected sentences demand closer attention. The first, as we have seen, is a proverb, a commonplace, originating from a classical writer. Erasmus has long noted the persuasive power of the proverb in the Adagia: For if…the power to carry conviction, holds the first place in the achievement of persuasion, what could be more convincing, I ask you, than what is said by everyone? What is more likely to be true than what has been approved by the consensus, the unanimous vote as it were, of so many epochs and so many peoples? There is, and I say it again, in these proverbs some native authentic power of truth. (1982–, 31: 17) The second and fourth sentences sound like proverbs too; they may be regarded as quasi-proverbs.18 Felltham develops the idea in the second sentence from the two Seneca quotations immediately preceding it: Sayes the Tragedian: Remeemus illuc, unde non decuit prius abire— Return we, whence it was a shame to stray: And presently after, Quem pœnitet peccasse, pœnè est innocens. He that repents, is wel-neer innocent. Nay, sometimes a failing and returne, is a prompter to a surer hold. (sig. T3) Felltham’s “surer hold” is equivalent to Seneca’s innocence recovered, the place to return to after straying. The means of transformation is repentance. Here we see how a Renaissance writer makes his invention (inventio) on the basis of imitation (imitatio). But Felltham Christianizes the pagan teaching, conjoining it to the biblical motif of paradise lost and regained. Naturally he proceeds to quote the saying of Saint Ambrose. The authority of this third sentence, again, derives from something outside the author. Felltham’s word choices and metaphors in the five suspected sentences can be divided into two groups: the Devil, failing, lost, fall, stumbled, offence; man, return, found, surer hold, stronger faith, grace. In addition to a visible semantic connection with Seneca’s opposites of stray vs. return, shame vs. innocence, these counterpoints have a Christian commonplace underlying them: the fall of Adam and the rise of the second Adam. None of the five sentences goes beyond the domain of the commonplace; Felltham employs commonplace materials in the service of a commonplace theme. From the above analyses, we may see that the commonplace derives its authority from tradition, orthodoxy, and the established religion. The commonplace represents a fixed cultural form under certain historical conditions, although it

Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England 63 operates not without its own internal dynamics and dialectics. Nonetheless, these always work in a unilateral way: the construction and maintenance of the commonplace value necessarily entails the repression of other values. For example, repentance represses unrepentance, return straying, innocence offence. The act of circulating and repeating the commonplace strengthens its normative status while tacitly acknowledging its authority. For, as soon as it has borrowed authority from outside forces, the commonplace becomes a force of power and source of authority in itself. Dunton, then, in his repetition of Felltham (and Seneca, and Saint Ambrose), gains his own authority while paying silent tribute to the authority of the commonplace. Authority is precisely what he needs to serve his triple purposes: to forestall malicious critics, to justify the confession of his youthful follies, and to educate the reader (“Edification” is his word [vol. 3, sig. B1v]). See the three sentences immediately following the suspected passage: …How base a part then is it to twit any with their former Iuvenile Crimes, if they themselves are reform’d; … And therefore now in hopes of a candid Construction from my honest Readers, I will here record the Follies that attended the servile part of my Life. And if by divulging my defects (for I have not so little Man in me as to want my Faults, nor so much Fool in me as to think it) I fairly bring thine to remembrance, it will not only compensate my labour in writing, but thine in reading. (vol. 3, sig. B3v)19 The three purposes—forestalling, justification, edification—follow closely one upon another with a deepening logic. After forestalling the malicious reader, he will record his young follies in expectation of a frank interpretation from the honest reader; by discovering his faults he edifies his reader. The ground of the three-story building is a syllogism, the simplified form of which would be: Major premise: He that repents is well near innocent. Minor premise: I repent and am reformed. Conclusion: I am almost innocent, and it would be very base to tease me with my juvenile crimes. Dunton’s whole reasoning is constructed on the authority of a universal axiom; he makes excellent use of the commonplace and its solid authority. I detect only one defect in his reasoning: The last of the suspected sentences is actually unnecessary and interrupts the flow of the argument. In terms of logic, “And thus we see…” does not follow from the previous sentence (“A Man shall beware…”); “How base a part then…” does. The last suspected sentence should be deleted for more consistency and better logic. In spite of his generally good logic, the “borrowing” Dunton does not think clearly in this particular place.

64  Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England The remaining question is: Where does Dunton’s originality lie? What is his desert of authorship, if he does not plagiarize? Dunton insists upon not the matter, but the method of his composition. “If I have borrowed any thing…I have known how to chuse what is proper to raise or relieve the Invention, which is always my own.” In other words, Dunton claims originality and authorship for his invention and his choice and arrangement of the borrowings in the service of his invention. The key word here is “proper.” He does not claim as his own the gathered flowers, but the honey produced thereof. The bee is a favorite metaphor for commonplacing, such a long-standing one as to become a commonplace itself. When Seneca writes, “We should imitate bees,” he is imitating many who have said it before him (Moss 1996, 12). Over many centuries numerous writers follow Seneca’s suit. Evans’s citation of the bee metaphor under “Omitt,” “I pass over it [i.e., this subject], as bees over Hemlock without any stay” (544), emphasizes the selective nature of the bee-like gathering. Dunton also speaks unfavorably of the spider’s web, similar to Joshua Sylvester’s translation of Du Bartas cited by Evans: Let not thy lawe be like ye spidars web Where little flyes are caught & kill’d but great Pass at their pleasure, & pull down ye Net. ye M. (559, “Partiall”) Or George Gascoigne: “Wherevnto I must confesse, that as the industrious Bee may gather honie out of the most stinking weede, so the malicious Spider may also gather poyson out of the fayrest floure that growes” (The Posies, 1575, sig. ¶¶3v) or Robert Burton: “some as Bees for Hony, some as Spiders to gather poison” (14).20 Therefore, Dunton’s originality is embodied not in the commonplace metaphors of the bee and the spider, but in the neat contrast between the sweet honey made out of many flowers and the spider’s web extracted out of her own bowels, expressed in the powerful form of rhetorical questions. The three question marks—including the tailor metaphor—effectively reply to and overwhelm the exclamation mark in the accusation (See whence he took it!). Dunton’s idea is that not the material, but the making and the design, determines the quality of the product. It is a strong defense against accusations of plagiarism. Creative borrowings can be much better than uninspired creation or slavish plagiarism. Dunton’s invention is not created out of nothing. “Nothing will come of nothing.” King Lear’s words utter a universal artistic principle: The individual talent always works in its relations with tradition. Without tradition, the individual talent simply could not be.21 Even Shakespeare borrows things from others. Lear’s sentence is in fact a proverb,22 and Shakespeare relies here on commonplace wisdom. The more we read, the more debts we find Dunton owes. For one thing, his anticipation of accusations of plagiarism and self-defense is not new; it has appeared in both Owen Felltham and Robert Burton. The two writers both borrow authority from others. In the epistle dedicatory, Felltham obtains “Honest Authoritie” (3rd ed., 1628, sig. A3v) from his dedicatee, Lord Thomas Coventry. Besides, his

Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England 65 authorities are many and diverse. Like Dunton, Felltham significantly claims that he does not steal, but borrows. I Am to answer two Obiections, One, that I haue made vse of Story, yet not quoted my Authorities; and this I haue purposely done. It had beene all one Labour, inserting the matter, to giue them, both the Author, and place. But while I am not Controuersiall, I should onely haue troubled the Text, or spotted a Margent, which I alwayes wish to leaue free, for the Comments of the man that reades. Besides, I doe not professe my selfe a Scholer: and for a Gentleman, I hold it a little pedanticall. He should vse them rather, as brought in by Memory, raptim, and occasionall; than by Study, search, or strict collection: especially in Essay, which of all writing, is the neerest to a running Discourse. I haue so vsed them, as you may see I doe not steale, but borrow. If I doe; let the Reader trace me, and if hee will, or can, to my shame discouer; there is no cheating like the Felony of Wit: Hee which theeues that, robbes the Owner, and coozens those that heare him. (“To the Readers,” 3rd ed., 1628, sig. A4; my underlining) Like Dunton, Felltham claims that he has “purposely” concealed his authorities. While Dunton conceals to spite the malicious critics, Felltham acts out of a gentlemanly dilettantism. Inserting the sources is easy work, yet Felltham leaves the margins blank for the reader’s comments. He puts premium on memory rather than study; memory entails digestion of the products of study—here again the bee metaphor comes in. Not “strict collection,” not mere gathering, makes honey, but digestion and processing. Rejection of the pedantic scholar and keen moral consciousness characterize Felltham’s self-defense. While the young Felltham—at the age of eighteen—eagerly seeks “kinde Censure” from the reader,23 he gradually becomes disillusioned and his tone increasingly bitter.24 In the preface to the 1661 edition, the last edition published during Felltham’s lifetime, Felltham25 writes: …for, the Multitude, though they be the most in number, are the worst and most partial Judges….The truth is, He hath not the vanity to expect from others, any great applause….[The author] yet will be best pleas’d, if any man by them shall finde but any benefit; and admit him (though but tacitely) in the number of those friends he prayes for. (sigs. A2r-v; my underlining) It takes nearly four decades for Felltham to learn a commonplace, i.e., to expect little or nothing from the general reader. Here, Felltham resembles Burton, who understands that harsh censure is inescapable. I must abide the censure, I may not escape it….I have layd my selfe open (I know it) in this Treatise, turned mine inside outward, I shall be censured, I doubt not… ’Tis the common doome of all writers, I must (I say) abide it, I seeke not applause…As the barking of a Dog, I securely contemne those

66  Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England malitious and scurrile obloquies, flowts, calumnies, of Railers and Detractors, I scorne the rest. (13, 15–6) In particular, Burton expects accusations of plagiarism: If ought bee omitted or added, which he likes or dislikes, thou art mancipium paucæ lectionis, an Idiot, an Asse, nullus es, or plagiarius, a trifler, a trivant, thou art an idle fellow; or else ’tis a thing of meere industrie, a collection without wit or invention, a very toy. (13) “Plagiarism” derives from the Latin word plagiarius. As Alexander Lindey explains, “In Roman law, plagium was the stealing of a slave from his master, or the stealing of a freeman with intent to keep him or sell him as a slave….the wrongdoer was called plagiarius” (95). In short, a plagiarius is a kidnapper. Burton uses the word in Martial’s figurative sense of literary thief. Against this accusation of literary theft, Burton replies that he is a scholar: …’tis all mine and none mine. As a good hous-wife out of divers fleeces weaves one peece of Cloath, a Bee gathers Wax and Hony out of many Flowers, and makes a new bundle of all, Floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia libant,26 [as bees in flowery glades sip from each cup] I have laboriously collected this Cento out of divers Writers, and that sine injuriâ, I have wronged no Authors, but given every man his owne…I cite & quote mine Authors, (which howsoever some illiterate scriblers accompt pedanticall, as a cloake of ignorance, and opposite to their affected fine stile, I must & will use)…The matter is theirs most part, and yet mine, apparet unde sumptum sit [it is plain whence it was taken] (which Seneca approves) aliud tamen quàm unde sumptum sit apparet [yet it becomes something different in its new setting], which nature doth with the aliment of our bodies, incorporate, digest, assimulate, I doe conquoquere quod hausi [assimilate what I have swallowed], dispose of what I take. I make them pay tribute, to set out this my Maceronicon,27 the method onely is myne owne…we can say nothing but what hath beene said, the composition and method is ours onely, and shewes a Schollar. (11; my underlining)28 Burton’s scholarly stance contrasts sharply with Felltham’s gentlemanly dilettantism. David Renaker establishes a direct connection between Burton and Felltham (416–7): based on the coincidence of the word “pedanticall” (underlined by me in the quotes) he argues that Burton refers to Felltham by “some illiterate scriblers.” Like Dunton, Burton maintains that not the matter, but the method is his own and original. Both employ the metaphors of the bee and the tailor. Dunton’s indebtedness to Burton is very obvious. The recurrence of the trope (anticipation of

Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England 67 accusations of plagiarism and self-defense) in Felltham and Burton suggests that it almost becomes a literary commonplace. Dunton grounds his renewed expression deeply on previous literary models. In addition to contemporary precedents, Dunton also has models for his anticipatory act in classical times. Harold Ogden White lists three examples: Terence laments the necessity of having to employ his prologues in answering “malignant rumours” and “the abuse of a malevolent old playwright” and his supporters, whose “use of their critical faculty show[s] that they are no critics,” for all their “murky accuracy.” He confidently appeals to his audience “to decide whether the line he has taken ought to redound to his honour or to his discredit.” Phaedrus nonchalantly forestalls attacks from the “jealousy” of those who are “unable to do anything except carp at their betters,” from the “envy” that “cannot imitate,” from the “malice” which will say that whatever it likes in his Fables is Aesop’s and that whatever it dislikes is his own work. Finally, Macrobius fears that his commendatory paralleling of Virgil with his sources may “furnish the ignorant or the malignant with the opportunity of accusing so great a poet of theft.” (14–5) Therefore, the anticipation of accusations of plagiarism or theft is a classical as well as Renaissance trope. Felltham, Burton, and Dunton model themselves on Terence, Phaedrus, and Macrobius. The three early modern authors write in accordance with the classical principle that “invention is achieved through imitation” (White 28).29 As White remarks, Burton’s preface to The Anatomy of Melancholy “seems to indicate that he was even more firmly convinced of the propriety of imitative composition than were most of his contemporaries” (172–3). Burton and others freely imitate the classical models and each other. Originality is guaranteed through reinterpretation—“To reexpress an old idea in the spirit of one’s day, to give it the impress of one’s individuality, to supplement it with the results of one’s experience and observation” (White 9). “The writer need not blush about stealing if he makes what he takes completely his, if he alchemizes it into something that is, finally, thoroughly new” (Mallon 25). The matter is common, yet the manner is individual. We can distinguish without difficulty Burton’s laborious scholarliness from Felltham’s moral dilettantism, or Dunton’s triumphant vibrancy. The distinction of matter versus manner is also a classical one. In the classical belief, the subject matter of literature is common property, and “what is common to all belongs equally to each” (White 7). When somebody writes on subjects already treated, Seneca insists, “he is not pilfering them, as if they belonged to someone else,…for they are common property” (qtd. in White 7). The distinct manner of utterance and the supplementing of material, or “combining old material with new and expressing the combination in an original manner” (White 8), constitute classical originality. The classical theory of literary production “encourages imitation” and “avoids independent fabrication” (White 18), deeming innovation hazardous. As Thomas Mallon puts it, “The great critical cry of classical literature was not an Emersonian call to ‘trust thyself’ but

68  Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England a Horatian exhortation to follow others” (3). The creation of Felltham, Burton, and Dunton is saturated in the classical spirit. Each and all of them invent by means of imitation; their originality stands out in comparison with their predecessors. As a result of humanist schooling, the Renaissance invention is regularly based upon imitation via the tool of the commonplace book. In the history of commonplace books, Erasmus represents, according to Ann Moss, “something of a watershed” and “moves the emphasis from reading and memorizing to production” (1996, 102–3). The pupil is to be trained in production by exercises in composition on themes and exemplars excerpted by the teacher from his own reading [in his florilegium]: historical episodes, fables, quotations in the form of apophthegms, proverbs (like those collected and elaborated in Erasmus’s own Adagia), pithy remarks (‘sententiae’), rhetorical figures, such as graduation, similitude, allegory, metathesis, and merismos.…The assistance of the teacher is only a temporary stage. The student is soon launched, ‘swimming without a support’, steering for himself a course plotted on the twin co-ordinates of rhetorical formulae and collected excerpts. (Moss 1996, 103–4) We recall to mind Milton’s Prolusions I-VII in his Cambridge years, which must be composed in the method of commonplace imitation. The companion poems, L’Allegro and Il Penseroso, may be interpreted as commonplace opposites. In the writing of these two poems, we can trace the influence of the commonplacing method of imitation on Milton, who famously kept commonplace books. Dunton’s contrast of the bee and the spider is also a pair of commonplace opposites, similar to the fable of the spider and the silkworm in the Holy Court quoted by Evans (Evans 554). Only the spider symbolizes worthlessness in the former, verity in the latter; the bee quintessence, the silkworm vanity. Different master minds put to different uses the method of commonplace opposites. Harold Love’s comments are more relevant than the above to Dunton’s or Felltham’s method in writing: The Humanist would encourage another kind of derivativeness based on the close imitation, shading over into direct appropriation, of revered ancient models. If Plutarch or Pliny had already given perfect expression to what one wished to say, it was almost an act of rudeness not to employ their words or, alternatively, a sign of ignorance, suggesting one did not know where the perfect enunciation of a particular topos was to be found. And hadn’t Seneca ruled ‘Quidquid bene dictum est ab ullo, meum est’? (2003, 150) “If it is well said, I said it.” This is exactly Dunton’s position in his defense. I would argue that Dunton entitles his book “A Voyage round the World: Or, A Pocket-Library” for two reasons. First, he thinks his book contains “every thing” (vol. 1, sig. B8v; vol. 2, sig. B4v) and qualifies to be a library. Second, the variety

Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England 69 and abundance of his borrowings qualify his book as a “Pocket-Library.” If this Pocket-Library is not a commonplace book, it is a commonplacing book to a great extent. Commonplacing is Dunton’s basic method of composition. For limits of space, I shall discuss his uses of proof by example (i.e., to prove a point with concrete examples) only.30 To illustrate the point that “It is no shame to confess our Crimes,” Dunton cites a historical anecdote: When a lascivious Youngster, slinking out of an unreputable House, started back, being espied by Diogenes, the Philosopher advertised him, That his recess, his withdrawing thence, need not put him to the blush or damp, but his entrance thither. (vol. 3, sig. B3) To illustrate the virtue of diligence, he enumerates a dozen examples: Seneca wou’d have a Man do something, though it be to no purpose. The Turks enjoyn all Men, of what degree soever, to be of some Trade: The Grand Signior himself is not excus’d. Mahomet the Turk (he that Conquer’d Greece) at the very time when he heard Embassadors, did either Carve or Cut wooden Spoons, or Frame something upon a Table. This present Sultan makes Notches for Bows. Cunus the Noble Roman was found by the Fire-side seething of Turnips when the Samnite Embassador came for Audience. Iulian the Emperor was ashamed any Man should see him Spit or Sweat, because he thought continual labour should have concocted and dried up all such Superfluities. Artaxerxes made Hafts for Knives, Bias made Lanthorns, Homer sung Ballads, Aristotle was a Corn-cutter, and Domitian the Emperour (having no Rambles to write) spent his time in killing Flies with a Bodkin. Nicias the Painter was often so intent on his Trade, as to forget Food, and omit the reception of Nature’s support. Alexander never slept save with his Arm stretcht out of the Bed, holding in his Hand a Silver Ball, having a Silver Bason by his Bedside, that lest he slept too securely, the falling of the Ball might awake him to Battle. (vol. 3, sig. C4) Dunton’s use of proverbs in the suspected passage is also proof by example in the Erasmian sense. A Voyage round the World is permeated with the commonplacing method; commonplacing makes it “A Pocket-Library.” Dunton’s commonplacing method of composition is not uncommon in early modern writers. Felltham uses it; so does Burton. The latter confesses, As Apothecaries we make new mixtures every day, poure out of one Vessell into another, and as those old Romans rob’d all the Citties of the world, to set out their bad sited Rome, wee skim off the Creame of other mens Wits, pick the choyce Flowers of their tild Gardens to set out our owne sterill plots…. They lard their leane bookes with the fat of others Workes. (9) …here and there I pull a flower… (18)

70  Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England Burton is keenly aware of his predecessors. For instance, he enumerates as his “honourable Presidents” Anatomy of Popery, Anatomy of Immortality, Anatomy of Antimony, Anatomy of Wit, in addition to Democritus (6). Burton also makes use of proof by example. For him, one prominent example of Seneca suffices. ’Twas Seneca’s fate, that Superintendent of Wit, Learning, Judgement… How is he vilified by Caligula, Agellius, Fabius, and Lipsius himselfe, his chiefe propugner?…If Seneca be thus lashed, and many famous men that I could name, what shall I expect? (15) Since even Seneca cannot please all or escape censure, being censured is “the common doome of all writers” (Burton 15). Burton thus carries out a swift induction— quick, yet firm and effective. In another place, which Evans extracts in Hesperides, Burton cites two examples—Dion and Tiberius—to prove the thesis that milk alters minds and molds character: Are [sic] more evident example, yt minds are altered by milke, cannot be given then that of Dion, wch hee relates of Caligula’s cruelty; it could neither be imputed to father nor mother, but to his cruell Nurse alone, that anointed her Paps with blood, still when she suckled, wch made him such a murderer—And yt of Tiberius, who was a common drunkard because his Nurse was such a one. A of M (Evans 531, “Nurses”)31 In view of all these facts it is no exaggeration to say that the commonplacing method of composition is a basic one in the early modern period. Erasmus’s expounding of the bee metaphor in Ciceronianus (1528) best summarizes Dunton’s or Burton’s commonplacing method from gathering various materials, through digestion and transformation, to the unique product (since he says it well, I borrow it): Do bees collect the substance for making honey from just one shrub? Or do they not rather fly busily round every species of flower, grass, and shrub, often roaming far afield to gather material to store in their hives? And what they bring back is not honey to start with. They turn it into a liquid by the action of their mouths and digestive organs, and having transformed it into themselves, they then bring it forth from themselves, in a form in which it is impossible to recognize the taste or scent of any flower or shrub from which the bee has sucked: what we have now is the product of the little bee itself, a compound of all that has gone to make that product up. (qtd. in Moss 1996, 105) “And what they bring back is not honey to start with” is the key sentence to guard against undiscriminating denunciation of all borrowings as plagiarism. Honey is the yardstick to judge plagiarism or not. If honey is made out of the gathering,

Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England 71 wonderful; if no honey is produced, damn it. All that matters is the work of the bee. Dunton usually makes sweet honey; the only impurity is his lapse of logic in the last of the suspected sentences, for he does not cease borrowing at the proper point. This is an instance where borrowing interferes with his composition. Dunton’s direct appropriation of other writers causes in him anxieties about plagiarism, which are demonstrated in his masking of authorship as well as in his defense of originality. On the title page, John Dunton’s name does not appear; instead, the book is presented as a translation, “Done into English by a Lover of Travels.” Dunton disguises himself as the fictional rambler of Don Kainophilus.32 The fictional and the autobiographical, the original and the translation are intentionally confounded. In one of the “Panegyrick Verses” in the front matter, however, a university wit declares that “The AUTHORS NAME when anagrammatized is Hid unto None.” By calling the author’s first name (“I say Print it John!”), the wit actually discloses his full name (i.e., Iohn Dunton). “Tho’ Veyl’d to some, He’s quite hid unto none.” Dunton displays himself through the mouth of a friend and celebrates the “AUTHORS NAME” with a grand typographic display (bigger size, block capitals, the exclusive space of a whole line). Yet paradoxically “Hid unto None” is itself a hiding. Dunton’s self-display in hiding and self-hiding in display suggest simultaneously his desires for authorship and anxieties about plagiarism. Finally, the agent of responsibility is slippery. To the READER. Instead of the ERRATA. The Author hath his Faults, the Printer too, All Men whilst here do err, and so do You. (vol. 1, sig. B6v) The author errs, the printer errs, and the reader errs, too. So, when plagiarism surfaces, whose responsibility is it? Has the author made a mistake? Or has the printer missed a footnote? Or has the reader misfired? The unusual errata33 seem to be an apology for authorial and typographic errors, but it also serves as a hidden counterattack against the critic. Before the Introduction begins, the author is already edifying his reader. Ultimately the slipperiness of responsibility problematizes the issue of plagiarism into something ambiguous and indeterminate. Therefore, commonplacing greatly complicates the matter of early modern plagiarism. Plagiarism and authorship are two sides of the same coin, in the early modern as in any other period.34 The commonplace as a source of authority and commonplacing as a method of composition are two conditions that may enable early modern authorship. Originality, not ownership, is the key to the determination of this kind of early modern authorship. Other writers might be the original owner of the borrowed words, and the publisher might own the copyright of the book in which those words appear (by paying sixpence and entering the book into the Stationers’ Register), but as long as the writer’s originality transforms the borrowed words into his/her own, we should exercise caution in raising accusations of plagiarism. Dunton’s multiple layers of self-protection—masked authorship, overt

72  Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England defense, and slippery responsibility—are symptomatic of his deep concerns and anxieties about authorship and plagiarism, though his claims to originality are bold and unmistakable. In addition to the passages we cite above, the title page says that “The like DISCOVERIES in such a Method [is] never made by any Rambler before.” Again, Dunton puts emphasis on his method in writing. In his claims to originality, rather than ownership, Dunton grasps the key to authorship. Milton says in Eikonoklastes (1649): “For such kind of borrowing as this, if it be not better’d by the borrower, among good Authors is accounted Plagiarie” (Hughes 1962, 547; qtd. in Shen 2010, 222). How true it is! In conclusion, by examining the issues of commonplacing and plagiarism, we delve into the creative process. Our discussion reveals that Renaissance creation is intricately and intimately involved in imitation. Early modern readers enjoy tremendous liberty with the text they read. When Albert Cook III, a modern scholar, accuses Dunton of “heavy-handed, widespread” and “out-and-out” plagiarism in The Pilgraim’s Guide (27, 25), he denies the possibility of commonplacing and chooses to see the borrowing as black and white. But there is the gray zone of commonplacing. For example, on Cook’s list of accusations, “Formalist and Hypocrisy [in Bunyan] become Dissimulation and Deceit [in Dunton], Timorous and Mistrust are Fearful and Disbelief, the Palace Beautiful is renamed Delightful, Faithful is Trueheart, Evangelist is Theologue, and Doubting Castle is changed to Disbelief” (24). Actually, paraphrasing is a legitimate readerly act. Dunton is not copying or thieving here, but commonplacing. Moreover, Cook under-evaluates Dunton when he says, “No book that Dunton wrote or published has anything more than curiosity value” (28). A Voyage round the World certainly has its merit and deserves the care and attention of a critical edition.35 Like Evans, Dunton borrows; unlike Evans, Browne steals. Both Dunton and Browne, however, imitate, and create through imitation. As a seventeenth-century writer, Obadiah Walker comments, “Invention is bettered by practice, by reading, by imitation, and by common-places” (qtd. in Havens 2001a, 30). Commonplace writing is not limited to prose. Layamon’s Brut, a verse chronicle of the Middle English period, and Chaucer’s narrative poem Troilus and Criseyde both employ the method of commonplace writing. The major source for the former is Wace’s Roman de Brut (Shen 2001, 46), and that for the latter is Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato (Barney). He Qixin has paid attention to the phenomenon, though not the name, of “commonplace writing” in his survey of Chaucer (Li and He 162). George Chapman’s tragedies and poems are described as “a mere mosaic of ideas, examples, figures even, taken directly from one of Chapman’s favorite classic authors, Plutarch” (Schoell 199). Moreover, Chapman’s practice of commonplacing is deeply influenced by Erasmus (Ibid.), like John Evans’s. Therefore, commonplace writing is visible in medieval and Renaissance poetry, drama, and prose. Notes 1 But in 1774, the House of Lords reversed the Parliament’s judgment of 1760 and decreed the termination of right forever after the 21-year period. See Maurice Salzman 17. 2 As ESTC notes on State Tracts (1715) (accessed June 29, 2023), “Attributed to Joseph Browne; formerly attributed to William Oldisworth (Foxon).”

Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England 73 3 K. R. St. Onge provides a variety of definitions of plagiarism (55–8); his own definition appears on p. 101. 4 The numeral before the semicolon is the line number in Browne, and the numeral after the semicolon the line number in Pierce. 5 I quote Browne first and then Pierce for comparison; I also highlight the key altered parts with underlining. 6 See below, esp. p. 67. 7 “I am but just peept into the Thirtieth year of my age” (vol. 3, p. 11, sig. B6). In the Introduction to vol. 1 Dunton describes himself as “being now arriv’d to the precise 30th Year of my Life” (p. 1, sig. B7). Therefore, Dunton wrote his Voyage in 1689. Paul Salzman, following Stephen Parks, points out that the Voyage “has its origins in an unsuccessful periodical of 1689, A Ramble Round the World” (299). The DNB, confusing the writing date with the publishing date, records that “In 1691 Dunton wrote the Voyage round the World.” 8 If we search “prompter to a surer hold” directly in EEBO now, we find: Ros Coeli. Or, A Miscellany of Ejaculations, Divine, Morall, &c. (London, 1640). So EEBO may be misleading too. By June 2023 only the first edition of Resolves (1623) is full text searchable in EEBO, but it does not contain the passage in question. 9 The cited text is substantially the same since the second edition (1628A) on. In this chapter I quote from the 1647 edition of Resolves unless otherwise noted. 10 Paul Salzman discusses Dunton’s plagiarism in the third volume of the Voyage and holds that “This does not detract from its undeniable originality, but simply emphasizes its eclectic nature” (307). Salzman’s stand is close to mine; see below. 11 Vol. 7, no. 12, Saturday, May 7, 1692. Quoted in Kewes 2003, 223n. 12 Cf. In a Huntington manuscript (HM 30309, c. 1670, p. 4, verso) a contemporary hand annotates “the Tragedian” in The Progress of Learning as Seneca in the margin. 13 Montaigne: vol. 3, sigs. B2v, B6; Augustine: vol. 3, sig. B5v; Bunyan: vol. 2, sig. C1. 14 The 12 editions appeared in 1623, 1628 (two editions), 1629, 1631, 1634, 1636, 1647, 1661, 1670, 1677, and 1696. See Ted-Larry Pebworth, 25–6. The 1629 edition is in ESTC, collected in the English Faculty Library, University of Oxford, but is not covered in STC or discussed by Pebworth. 15 The first edition (1623) contains 100 untitled resolves; the second edition (1628A) adds a second “century;” in the eighth edition (1661), the last one published in the author’s lifetime, Felltham makes major revisions: the 1628 century remains intact, but the 1623 century is replaced by 85 lengthy personal essays. So, the second (1628A) through the seventh (1647) editions only contain 200 essays. See Ted-Larry Pebworth, 25–6. 16 Both Laurence Stapleton (83, 77) and Ted-Larry Pebworth (27, 57–8) compare Felltham with Montaigne and Bacon. The former observes, “Without doubt he owes something to Bacon, as a literary model. But the range of his observation, as well as his constitutional temper, is different” (77). For an interesting assessment of Felltham’s relationship with Bacon and Montaigne, see Stanley Stewart: “Young Feltham is…a humanist in the Baconian mold…By 1661, Feltham has switched allegiances. His misanthropy shares more with the ‘counter-Renaissance’ of Agrippa, Greville, and Montaigne than with the humanistic optimism underlying The Advancement of Learning” (31). 17 Laurence Stapleton defines Felltham as “a conscious moralist” (74). Douglas Bush comments on Felltham’s Resolves, “the commonplaces of religion and morals are his staple article” (qtd. in Pebworth 29). As Ted-Larry Pebworth usefully analyzes (29–70), Felltham’s style changes in his successive revisions of Resolves: “The various stages through which Resolves passed during Felltham’s lifetime saw a shift in genre from the resolve formula of 1623 [through the excogitations of 1628] to the personal essay of 1661. The style also shifts from the Senecan aphorism of 1623 [through the more expansive and adorned excogitation of 1628] to the more nearly conversational prose of 1661” (29); and “the progressive stages of Resolves mirror their author’s maturation in both spirit and intellect” (35).

74  Commonplace Writing in Early Modern England 18 For English proverbs, see John Heywood, A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the englishe tongue (London, 1546; STC 13291) and Morris Palmer Tilley, Dictionary of the Proverbs and its updating by Richard Dent. For Latin and Greek proverbs, see Erasmus, Adagia. 19 Construction: interpretation put upon conduct (OED). 20 For further examples, see John Heywood, The Spider and the Flie, London, 1556, STC 13308, and Sir Philip Sidney, Arcadia, in which he fears his work will be swept away “like the Spiders webbe” (1590, STC 22539, sig. A3). 21 See T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” Selected Prose, 37–44. 22 Cf. ex nihilo nihil fit. See Kenneth Muir (ed.), King Lear, 9n. 23 “In what thou shalt heere meete with, vse the freedome of thy natiue opinion: Et Lectorem, et Correctorem liberum volui. I shall euer professe my selfe his debtor, that greets me with reprehensions of Loue. The noblest part of a friend, is an honest boldnesse in the noti[fyi]ng of errors. He that tells me [of] a fault, ayming at my good; I must thinke him wise and faithfull: wise, in spying that which I see not: faithfull, in a plaine admonishment, not tainted with flattery” (“To the Pervser;” 1st ed., 1623, sigs. A6r-v; the text is corrected according to the errata). The phrase “kinde Censure” appears on A5. 24 Cf. “What you finde heere, if you please, like: But remember alwaies, to censure a Resolue in the middle, is to giue your Iudgement a possibility of erring” (“To the Readers;” 3rd ed., 1628, sig. A4v). 25 Scholars generally agree that Felltham himself—instead of the printer—speaks in this preface (“To the Reader”), writing in the third person. See Pebworth 56 and Stewart 13. 26 According to the edition of Dell and Jordan-Smith (1:19), this line is from Lucretius. 27 Macaronicon in Dell and Jordan-Smith (1:20). 28 I add the English translation in square brackets. 29 W. H. Auden comments on Virgil’s imitation of Homer, “[It] is, of course, not due to a lack of invention; indeed, it is often precisely when he copies most closely that the novelty of his vision is clearest” (qtd. in Lindey 66). 30 For a discussion of the Erasmian proof by example (“example” in its widest sense), see Ann Moss 1996, 108. I mainly mean “example” in the narrow sense. 31 See Robert Burton 328–9 for the original. Some words are altered, and some others omitted in the commonplace book. 32 Burton, who influences Dunton, also assumes in the preface to The Anatomy of Melancholy a fictional identity, Democritus Junior. The title page likewise declares the author to be Democritus Junior. But Burton adapts from Praise of Folly, where Erasmus assumes the role of Democritus, as Samuel Wong points out (12). 33 It is not unusual in the errata to remind the reader that he also errs and to urge him to mend his faults. Preceding the errata at the end of Resolves (1st ed., 1623), for example, we find: When thou view’st this, mend faults,           that heere are showne; And when thou view’st thy selfe,           then mend thine owne. Dunton’s “errata” are unusual in that the reminder totally replaces and displaces the customary errata and usurps their function. 34 Cf. “Plagiarism and originality are not polar opposites, but the obverse and reverse of the same medal” (Lindey 14). 35 Katherine Ann Larsen has done the critical edition as her dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, 1996. Paul Salzman discusses the Voyage in his book English Prose Fiction 1558–1700: A Critical History (299–307). Stephen Parks produces an excellent biography of Dunton, John Dunton and the English Book Trade.

4

Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice

As the compilers of the First Folio, John Heminge and Henry Condell, write in “To the great Variety of Readers:” “From the most able, to him that can but spell… the fate of all Bookes depends vpon your capacities” (Shakespeare 1623, sig. A3). This sentence is often quoted as evidence both of the range of early modern literacies and of the commercial imperatives of the Folio itself. (“Capacities” is a pun referring both to the intellectual abilities needed to appreciate the book and financial resources necessary to buy it.) Almost never noticed is that the sentence itself is an example of commonplace writing, for “the fate of all Bookes depends vpon [the reader’s] capacities” is a literal translation of Terentianus Maurus’s Latin aphorism cited by Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy: Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli (Dell and Jordan-Smith 1: 21). It is the commonplace that interests me here. Its use in the Shakespeare Folio demonstrates how common, one might say, the use of commonplaces may be. In this chapter I want to think more rigorously about Evans’s commonplacing practices, but by way of a detour via John Milton. I. Milton’s commonplacing, or how a writer works Milton’s Commonplace Book is the source and spring of his eloquence. It offers us a record of his diligent reading, providing what Thomas Fulton has called “a rare window into a writer’s private intellectual history” (50) and Ruth Mohl, “a kind of map of [Milton’s] mind” (1969, 33). The book was discovered in 1874 by Alfred J. Horwood among the papers of Sir Frederick Graham.1 Several editions of the Commonplace Book have appeared, the most recent by William Poole for the Oxford University Press Complete Works of John Milton (gen. ed. Thomas N. Corns and Gordon Campbell), which has been critically acclaimed as an “essential resource” for Milton studies (Chapman 780).2 From Milton’s only extant commonplace book, we learn, for example, that Milton’s liberal views concerning marriage and divorce as demonstrated in his divorce tracts are already present in his Commonplace Book, under the headings “Marriage (Matrimonium),” “Divorce (De Divortio),” “Concubinage

DOI: 10.4324/9781032635699-5

76  Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice (Concubinatus),” and “Adultery (Adulterium).” The following entry is perhaps the most poignant: The reason why it [i.e., divorce] ought to be permitted is because, as physicians and almost all others acknowledge, ‘[sex] without love’ is ‘cold, unpleasant, unfruitful, poisonous, bestial, disgusting.’…Therefore it is an affront that either one, or at least the innocent one, should be bound unwillingly by so monstrous a fetter. (Poole 2019, 181)3 Phrases in Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, like “our undeserved thraldom” and “a loathed and forc’t yoke” (Coolidge 339, 348), are obviously transmuted from this commonplace entry. In contrast to the “monstrous…fetter” of loveless marriage, the phrase “conjugal affection” in the Commonplace Book (Mohl 1953, 400; Poole 2019, 162) “seems to sum up Milton’s ideal of true marriage” (Mohl 1969, 101), for it or some variant of it appears nine times in the divorce tracts, Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes. The recurrence suggests the importance of the idea to Milton. Additionally, the word “bestial” in the list of negative adjectives in the passage quoted above is echoed in several of Milton’s writings, as Mohl points out, citing, among others, two passages from Paradise Lost (1969, 106–7): [Raphael to Adam] But if the sense of touch whereby mankind Is propagated seem such dear delight Beyond all other, think the same voutsaf’t To Cattel and each Beast… In loving thou dost well, in passion not, Wherein true Love consists not; Love refines The thoughts, and heart enlarges, hath his seat In Reason, and is judicious, is the scale By which to heav’nly Love thou may’st ascend, Not sunk in carnal pleasure, for which cause Among the Beasts no Mate for thee was found. (8.579–94)4 Hail wedded Love, mysterious Law, true source Of human offspring, sole propriety, In Paradise of all things common else. By thee adulterous lust was driv’n from men Among the bestial herds to range… (4.750–4) Milton consistently makes a distinction between beastly copulation and human love. Human beings are not beasts and aspire to “heav’nly Love,” rather than “carnal pleasure.” This idea of hierarchy, itself a commonplace idea in the Renaissance,5

Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice  77 is found in Milton’s Commonplace Book. But it is important to note that these ideas in the Commonplace Book were theoretical for Milton. As William Poole correctly remarks, Milton “was already collecting texts on marriage before his first, initially disastrous marriage, and his decision to defend conjugal liberty, therefore, indeed involved reflecting on previous reading as well as simply lamenting an over-hasty marriage and collecting material on divorce” (2009, 381). But the importance of this is not merely that it demonstrates the ways in which Milton’s reading and his life get woven together, but that what Poole calls Milton’s “governing ethical principle” (2009, 378) originates from one of the earliest entries in his Commonplace Book: Why does God permit evil? ‘So that reason may correspond to virtue.’ For virtue is made known, is illustrated, and is exercised by evil, as Lactantius argues [in Divine Instructions,] book 5, chapter 7, that reason and prudence might have something by which they may discipline themselves in choosing good things and fleeing evil things. Lactantius, On the Anger of God, chapter 13—however much these arguments fail to satisfy. (Poole 2019, 114)6 Virtue “is exercised by evil”; in other words, good emerges from its moral struggle. This is indeed an idea that runs through Milton’s prose and poetry. Poole notes that it supplies the moral structure of A Maske, a key sentence in The Reason of Church-Government, the central idea of Areopagitica, and also God’s argument on free will and obedience in Book 3 of Paradise Lost (2009, 378–9). I may add three more examples: the Son is as firm as the rock in his confrontation with Satan’s temptations in Paradise Regained; the titular hero in Samson Agonistes overcomes his inner weakness and despair (both are demonstrations of evil) and destroys his enemies in his heroic suicide;7 in his famous sonnet on his blindness Milton moves from dark despair to the bright order in heaven, from discontented complaints to patient standing, from questioning God to restored faith: the poet regains his “calm of mind” (SA, l. 1758) after violent moral struggles. But the point is that the Commonplace Book is where this all begins. Authors that Milton cites there often appear in his other writings. It is the storehouse of his reading. For example, he cites Jean Bodin’s De Republica Libri Sex (Mohl 1953, 409; Poole 2019, 174) in the Commonplace Book, and he quotes from the same book in Reason of Church-Government (1642): …if Bodin the famous French writer though a papist, yet affirms that the Commonwelth which maintains this discipline will certainly flourish in vertu and piety, I dare assure my self that… (Haug 834)8 In Tetrachordon, Milton cites “Emperor Leo the Philosopher” at length on the necessity of divorce, a writer he mentions although not quoting in his Commonplace Book (Mohl 1953, 401; Poole 2019, 163). Selden is one of his favorites. “Few of

78  Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice the writers from whom Milton took his notes received more praise from him than did John Selden,” as Mohl comments (1969, 40). In Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce Milton mentions “that noble volume written by our learned Selden, Of the law of nature & of Nations, a work more useful and more worthy to be perus’d, whosoever studies to be a great man in wisdom, equity, and justice, then all those decretals, and sumles sums” (Coolidge 350).9 In Areopagitica, he praises Selden again: …one of your own now sitting in Parlament, the chief of learned men reputed in this Land, Mr. Selden, whose volume of naturall & national laws proves, not only by great authorities brought together, but by exquisite reasons and theorems almost mathematically demonstrative, that all opinions, yea errors, known, read, and collated, are of main service & assistance toward the speedy attainment of what is truest. (Sirluck 513) The title of the “noble volume” is immortalized in a line in Samson Agonistes: Dalila’s betrayal of her husband Samson is “Against the law of nature, law of nations” (l. 890). Sometimes a kind of paraphrasing occurs. Compare the following sentences: In such cases, me thinks, it were not amisse to consider that the high God himselfe permitted some things to the Israelites, rather in regard of their naturall disposition (for they were hard-hearted) than because they were consonant unto the ancient rules of the first perfection. (History of the World, qtd. in Mohl 1953, 411–2n) questionlesse this were a hardheartednesse of undivorcing, worse then that in the Jewes, [whom God did not expect to obey] a law out of Paradise giv’n in time of original perfection. (Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce; Coolidge 311–2)10 The verbal echoes (hard-hearted/hardheartednesse, Israelites/Jewes, rules/law, first perfection/original perfection) make it obvious that the second sentence is derived from the first. We know from the Commonplace Book that Milton read Raleigh. In particular, the above Raleigh sentence, signaled by “&c” in the Commonplace Book, immediately follows the one cited by Milton. The whole idea is restructured, and here we see a creative mind in process, how Milton transforms the reading material into a new creation. Such paraphrasing of sources is also common in the composition of Paradise Lost. For instance, Milton varies his descriptions of hell in a dozen ways: “fiery Deluge,” etc.11 Milton’s wording is based on the Bible: “The devil…was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone” (Revelation 20:10). Complex intertextualities occur between the Bible, Milton’s Commonplace Book, and his other writings. In his Commonplace Book, Milton refers to marriage and divorce as it is understood in different religious faiths in three entries

Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice  79 (Mohl 1953, 398, 399, 408). In Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Milton discusses this subject in several places, such as Chapter viii of Book I and Chapter xix of Book II (“mis-yoking with a diversity of nature as well as of religion:” Coolidge 339). In Chapter x of Book I, he writes: The sixt place declares this prohibition [of divorce] to be as respectles of human nature as it is of religion, and therefore is not of God….Thou shalt not sowe thy vineyard with divers seeds, lest thou defile both….Yea the Apostle himself…forbid[s] mis-yoking mariage…yet next to that, what can be a fouler incongruity, a greater violence to the reverend secret of nature, then to force a mixture of minds that cannot unite, & to sowe the furrow of mans nativity with seed of two incoherent and uncombining dispositions. (Coolidge 270) The words “as it is of religion” are added in the 1644 edition, indicating Milton’s insistence on the legitimacy of divorce even in terms of religion. The sentence in italics is from Deuteronomy 22: 9. But the metaphor of seeds is not only biblical, as we can see from the following passage from André Du Chesne’s Histoire D’Angleterre (Paris, 1634), cited by Milton in his Commonplace Book: [A]s you have approached the Catholic King in Spain, with the desire to ally yourself with the House of Austria, we have wished to commend your plan, to testify openly in the affair that you are one who sees the chief need of our Prelacy. For since you desire to take in marriage a daughter of Spain, we can easily conjecture from that that the ancient seeds of Christian piety can grow green again in your soul. (qtd. in Mohl 1953, 399n; Cf. Poole 2019, 161n) Pope Gregory XV is, here, addressing Prince Charles of England in a 1623 letter. Milton’s entry clarifies the context: [marriage] with one of a different religion dangerous. for hence Gregory the 15th is so bold as to count Prince Charles a favourer of the Catholick cause, as he terms it, and of the Roman prælacie, because he sought in marriage a daughter of Spain. (Mohl 1953, 399; Poole 2019, 160) The striking metaphor of “the ancient seeds of Christian piety grow[ing] green again in your soul” must have left an impression in Milton’s mind. Therefore, his “seed of two incoherent and uncombining dispositions” is the more powerful because it is a mixture of the biblical and the commonplace. Milton creates his own metaphor through a loan from his extensive readings. As William Hazlitt comments, “Milton has borrowed more than any other writer, and exhausted every source of imitation, sacred or profane; yet he is perfectly distinct from every other writer” (qtd. in Kerrigan, Rumrich, and Fallon 277).

80  Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice These examples are sufficient to illustrate Milton’s commonplacing. He reads widely and attentively, to learn, of course, but also to write. His Commonplace Book not only allows us an insight into the relationship between the two and can help us answer the question “how Milton became Milton,” but also allows us to refine our thinking about commonplacing itself. It might be said that, except for outright plagiarism, there are three kinds of quotation: the scholar’s quotation, the writer’s, and the commonplace book compiler’s.12 The scholar has the responsibility to quote verbatim and accurately, with full respect for the content and form of the original. The writer often cites out of memory and without checking the original, e.g., Milton or Robert Burton quoting Chaucer, Joseph Addison quoting Abraham Cowley, or William Hazlitt quoting Milton, Shakespeare, Dryden, and Coleridge.13 Addison and Hazlitt are much like Milton and Burton, productively transforming the original into something that is their own. For them, citing and writing are two aspects of one process. While scholars copy first and then analyze, writers create after digestion. The third kind, the commonplace book compiler’s quotation, sits somewhere between the scholar’s and the writer’s, faithful to and deviating from the original at the same time, usually faithful to its language but creating a new context in which it will exist. The degree of faithfulness of the commonplace quotation is less than that of the scholar’s quotation, and its degree of deviation is less than the writer’s. Evans’s commonplacing can help us understand this intermediate practice that brings together a unique relationship of reading and writing. II. Evans’s commonplacing: spontaneous editing and segmental reading Gunnar Sorelius writes concerning the manuscripts of the fragmented version of Hesperides: “Their greatest value…consists in the light they shed on the nature of what may be called spontaneous editing, containing as they do the earliest extant examples of a number of emendations, and, in fact, anticipating several cherished improvements of Shakespeare’s text” (298). While the notion of “spontaneous editing” perhaps has implications for the practice of scholarly editing, my interest here lies in spontaneous editing as a way of reading. Early modern readers characteristically take liberties with and make various alterations of the text they are copying. Perhaps this is unsurprising in an era when two copies of a single impression of a printed book were likely to differ. What factors govern the alterations? Are there any patterns perceivable in them? The alterations, intentional and unintentional, are a significant expression of the reading habits of early modern readers and their relationship with the text/author. Is spontaneous editing a corruption of the quill or an improvement of the mind? What does it mean to be a commonplace reader? Like modern theorists of reading,14 I shall argue that early modern commonplacing is a usually unremarked example of how reading in the period challenges “the reader’s subordination to the author and the text,” as William Sherman has said, “positing the reader as more of an equal partner in the creation of meaning and value” (1995, 54).

Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice  81 Presciently, Marshall McLuhan defined media as “the extensions of man.” Further, he distinguished a hot medium (with “high definition”) from a cool one (with “low definition”) (22). Hot media are “low in participation,” and cool media are “high in participation or completion by the audience” (23)—film, for example, as opposed to TV. Print is a hot medium, McLuhan insisted, while orality and the manuscript are cool (319). While McLuhan’s terms have now been contested and complicated, they remain useful. Compared with print culture, manuscript culture provides opportunity and space for readerly participation, with little concern for the intentions or private lives of authors, and, indeed, author’s role in it is vague and uncertain (161, 177, 318). “The manuscript is a cool medium that does not project the author, so much as involve the reader” (318). With whatever reservations about the absoluteness of his distinctions, McLuhan offers a possible theoretical framework for our treatment of commonplace reading.15 This section first makes a classified discussion of various examples of commonplace reading in the cool medium of manuscript, and then summarizes the general features of early modern reading practices. The early modern reader is not the passive receiver of meaning, but its active producer. There are at least 11 types of spontaneous editing discernible in Evans’s commonplacing:16 1 Change of word order. Let mee beare with mee ye knowledg of my fault [the knowledge of my fault beare with me],17 if with my selfe I hold intelligence, or haue acquaintance with mine owne desires, If yt I do not dreame, or be not frantick, (as I do trust I am not) then deere unkle never so much as in a thought unborne, did I offend your highnes. AL (540) Command it as yor owne thoughts [as your own thoughts, command it]. RfH (540) 2 Change of verb form. Thy promises are like Adonis garden, yt one day bloom’d & fruitfull was [were] ye next. H6. (568) Shall common beauties, & meaner faces enioy these ioyes wch yor selves deny unto yor selves, no, let yor gentle harts embrace ye sweets due to so faire deserts: yor liberall features were bestow’d on you by liberall nature, to be enioy’d, & twere a sin to be niggardly, where shee hath [have] bin so free of her best graces. CA (571) 3 Change of diction. My body budding now no more, cold [seer] winter hath seal’d yt sap up, at ye best & happiest I can but be yor infant: you my nurse. MT (542) As gentle oyle upon ye stormes [Streams] doth glide Not mingling wth them, though it smooth ye tide. CP (553) Vnarme yor [her] noble hart of yt steely resistance against ye secret [sweet] blowes of loue. A. (571)

82  Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice 4 Paraphrase. With silence & patience (like a faire gorgeous armour, hammered on by an ill favourd smith) shee abode her pittiless dealing [their pittiles dealing with her]. A (563) ffie, fie, how wayward is this foolish loue, yt like a testy babe will scrach his nurse and by and by [presently] all humbled kiss ye Rod. 2 G of V. (565) K Lewis ye 12th beeing throughly informed &c bound it with an oath, that they were better men then hee or his people. (693) Cf. King Lewis the twelfth…this good king being informed…and bound it with an oath, that they were honester men then himselfe, or the rest of his Catholike people. (Perrin, Luthers fore-runners, sig. Oo2r-v) Another early modern reader, the Warwickshire magistrate Sir John Newdigate makes both “verbatim quotations from, and summaries of, authors he has read” (qtd. in Sherman 1995, 65). In his Commonplace Book, Milton also often paraphrases the passages he reads in Latin, French, Italian, or English (Mohl 1953, 350). 5 Clarifying the reference. When hee (K Richard) & ye ffrench K passed over ye bridge at Lyons, on ye fall of ye bridge, this conceit was built, that: (543) Teutonicks] They were more cordiall to ye Christian cause, then ye templers, who somtimes to saue their owne stakes, would play booty wth ye Turke. (549) The Turks] haue an order of Monkes, who are called Dervises who will often dance in their Mosques on Tuesdayes & ffrydayes many together, to ye sound of barbarous Musick, dances yt consist of continuall turnings, untill at a certain stroke they fall upon ye earth; & are thought to be rapt in spirit unto celestiall conversation. ST. (549) 6 Slips of the pen, or rather, of the quill. How ever great we are, honest and valiant, are herded wth ye vulgar; & so kept, as we were only bred to consume corne; or weare our [out] wooll, to drinke the Citties water; ungrac’d, wthout authority or marke; trembling beneath their rods, to whom (if all were well in Rome) wee should come forth bright axes. Ca. (547) A captain called Hares—enioyning his souldiers some labour upon his fortifications, & seeing they undertook it coldly, because they feared to mar their garmts, wch were handsome enough, he presently commanded they should uncloath, & every one take ye apparell of his fellow. That done & all ye souldiers being perswaded yt Cassocks would not be spared by those who put them on, they wrought in good earnest, & very quickly imposed ye task imposed upon them. Max. (559) King Lear, 1448:18 blindning (“This spelling may be a scribal error caused by attraction to the preceding ‘lightnings’”). (Sorelius 308; Halliwell-Phillipps’s “Notes,” Lr., i.35)

Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice  83 The first “imposed” in the second example is an error, which should be “finished” or “completed.” The scribe makes this error because his eye jumps to the following word “imposed.” The error is similar in nature to the crossed-out “perswa” (i.e., “perswaded”), where the eye wrongly lingers at a preceding word. Only the scribe immediately realizes the error in the middle of the word and corrects it, whereas “imposed” remains an error. We may see that slips of the quill result from slips of the eye. 7 Metrical revision. In the following stanza, words are omitted to make the iambic pentameter right. As when a pile of food prparing fire The breath of artificiall lungs embraves, The caldron prison’d waters strayte conspire And beate ye hot brass wth rebellious waues, He murmurs, & rebukes their bold desire; Th’ impatient liquor frets & foames & raues, Till his oreflowing pride suppres ye flame, Whence all his [high] spirits & hot courage came: So boyles ye fired Herods [blood-] swolne brest Not to bee slak’d but by a sea of bloud. StT. (561) 8 Expansion. You may cut her throate [do it] safely; shee hath no bloud left yt will bee spilt, ’twill only make another passage for her wind. S. (542) 9 Omission. Would you be deafe wth coughing? Wouldst see a nest of [new] roses grow In a bed of reverend snow? (542) Had her sad oration inscribed in pale characters upon her [tristfull] countenance. CA. (556) Those damask roses yt did strive wth white, both fade upon my [sallow] cheekes. QE (556) In the last example, we can also observe a slip of the quill: the phrase “her damaske roses” is written and then deleted. 10 The conversion of verse into prose. Nor ranke nor file unless when wee goe a maying, all in a row, or play at course a parke, or tell a tale, to ye rank’d lasses at a Whitson ale. CA (564) Cf. Nor ranck, nor file, lesse when we go a maying All in a row, or when we be a playng At Course a Parke, or telling of a tale To the Ranck’t Lasses at a Whitson ale.

84  Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice What needed such high spirits build such mansions? or what do they heere obtaine wrap’d in flesh, but ye glorious name of wreched humane kind, balls to ye starres. A (568) Cf. What needed so high sprites such mansions blind? Or wrapt in flesh what do they here obtaine, But glorious name of wretched humaine-kind? Balles to the starres,19 The transformation of verse into prose saves space, in conformity with the principle of space economy.20 One of the consequences of such a transformation is an elimination of stylistic characteristics, and poetry is poetry no more. But the opposite of the conversion of verse into prose also happens. For example, in John Cotgrave’s commonplace book The English Treasury of Wit and Language (London, 1655), about “four or five percent” (Bentley 187n) of the entries are disguised prose. This commonplace book is a collection of verse drama, and the compiler has rewritten what was prose to make it verse.21 Obviously, early modern readers did not regard all formal features of poetry (i.e., lineation) as inviolable, especially in a context in which the relevance of the citation to the topic was more important than the compiler’s fidelity to the source. Even some diction is malleable. It is familiar in commonplace books, for example, to see that the gender of the monarch in an excerpt will have been changed to that of the monarch on the throne when the manuscript was produced from the gender in the source. Evans also turns plural verb forms into singular (or vice versa) for grammatical reasons; he omits (or adds) certain words for metrical reasons; he clarifies references and expands the original for contextual reasons. He changes the diction and paraphrases in order to serve his commonplacing purposes rather than those of the author. Except for slips of the quill, all the variations are intentional. John Kerrigan writes that “The level of textual variation in seventeenth-century manuscripts is too high for us not to conclude that what was transcribed was often corrected in the sense of ‘improved’” (118) or, if not actually improved, at least adjusted to make it more immediately relevant to its new context. The text is not the sovereign property of its originator but lies at the mercy of its reader, who claims the text as their own by reworking it. It might be argued, however, this freedom may be realized at the expense of literary forms. Rather than re-create, at times the early modern reader seems to de-create, re-forming (de-forming?) the text to fit new purposes, although almost all acts of reading reveal something of the reader’s authority over the words that are read. Readers read inattentively, as often as not, or tendentiously, or perversely, or just stupidly; and sometimes they just put the book aside. The keeping of a commonplace book, however, is a particular kind of reading and of writing. Evans seems to have put very few books aside, but, in the last example cited above (What needed so high sprites such mansions blind?), Evans has misread Sidney’s text. He emends Sidney’s “blind” to “build,” seemingly misled by “mansions,” but Sidney’s metaphor is for the human body, the “flesh” in the following line, as he mourns the gap between the spiritual and the physical, even as he acknowledges that humankind is both “glorious” and “wretched,” a reflection of our divine creation and fallen state. It is clear that not all of Evans’s emendations

Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice  85 are good or right. John Kerrigan cautions, with regard to editing Thomas Lodge, that “The editing reader should be prudent, lest he multiply error” (117). Emendation is the eleventh type of spontaneous editing, and perhaps the most important type. In Sorelius’s “List of Variants” (301–8) in Hesperides, we find many emendations of Shakespeare’s texts made by Evans, some of which, Sorelius claims, anticipate “several cherished improvements of Shakespeare’s text” (298). Measure for measure, 1111: had. Sorelius notes that “There have been various attempts to emend this line. The compiler’s solution agrees with Knight’s.” Much ado about nothing, 2094-5: beard, bid sorrow go, cry. Sorelius notes that “the compiler anticipated an interpretation which has won wide acceptance.” A midsummer night’s dream, 484: chill]22 chinne. Sorelius notes that the compiler “anticipated Grey’s emendation.” The winter’s tale, 641: drank. Sorelius notes that “Stevens’s Variorum likewise emended to ‘drank.’” King John, 1190: chafed] cased. Sorelius notes that “Theobald likewise emended to ‘chafed.’” Henry V, 1090: summon] commune. Sorelius notes that “Rowe likewise emended to ‘summon.’” Coriolanus, 3418: candied] curdied. Sorelius notes that “Daniel and Schmidt conjectured ‘candied.’” Romeo and Juliet, 881: vast shore wash’d. Sorelius notes that “The compiler here hit upon the form adopted by modern editors.” Macbeth, 2037: catch] latch. Sorelius notes that “Rowe also substituted ‘catch’ for the obsolete or dialectal ‘latch.’” Hamlet, 3858: infernall] eternall. Sorelius notes that “The 1676 Quarto and some later editors have also preferred ‘infernall.’” Cymbeline, 1399: Rocks] Oakes. Sorelius notes that “Seward and others (including Peter Alexander) have also changed ‘Oakes’ to ‘Rocks.’” Spontaneous editing seems here to be an improvement from the reader’s mind rather than a corruption of the writer’s quill.23 The precise nature of Evans’s alterations to Shakespeare’s texts is clarified by Sorelius’s identification that Evans uses the First Folio. His proofs are the following variants: As you like it, 1801: If ever you meete in some fresh cheek the power of fancy, then shall you know the invisible wounds that Loves keene arrowes make. (Folger MS V.a.79, page 15. meet F1; met F2-3) All’s well that ends well, 654: They move under the influence of the most receaved star: and though the Devill lead the measure, such are to be followed. (Folger MS V.a.79, page 12. and moue F1; and more F2-3) Henry VIII, 163: wishes you (wishes towards you F1; wishes towards your F2-3)

86  Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice Henry VIII, 2041: requite (F1; require F2-3) Romeo and Juliet, 2726: this day an (thisan day an F1; this winged F2-3) Julius Caesar, 1878: appoint (point F1; print F2-3) Macbeth, 300: Wing (F1; Wine F2-3) Cymbeline, 788: defended (F1; descended F2-3) Those examples in Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth are particularly persuasive. Still another variant in Romeo and Juliet can be cited as telling evidence. In line 672, “My lips to blushing Pilgrims did ready stand,” Evans emends “to” (F1) to “like,” while the obvious reading “two” (F2-3) escapes him. Were he using F2 or F3, he would have no reason to emend “two” to “like.” This is evidence confirming Sorilius’s claim that Evans uses F1 (1623) rather than F2 (1632).24 According to my dating of Hesperides, F3 (1663) and F4 (1685) were both too late for Evans to use. If we study the above passages more closely, we find that the changes severally fall into the ten types we have discussed. For example, the first passage examined above (from As You Like It) reads in F1 as: If euer (as that euer may be neere) You meet in some fresh cheeke the power of fancie, Then shall you know the wouuds [sic] inuisible That Loues keene arrows make. A quick comparison tells us that Evans converts verse into prose (including a change of word order) and omits the words in the brackets, in addition to the correction of a Folio typo. Some modernization also occurs, for Evans spells “fancie” as “fancy.” More examples are found as follows: 1 Modernization. 3 Henry VI, 755: recount] F3; tecompt F1; recompt F2. Sorelius notes that “The reading of F1 is a compositorial error. The compiler seems to have modernized the word in the same way as the editor or compositor of F3. According to the O.E.D. ‘recompt’ was current in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.” 3 Henry VI, 1663: lave] lade. Sorelius notes that “The verb lade ‘To empty by “lading”’ (O.E.D. ii.6) had become obsolete by the time of the compiling of the Commonplace book. ‘Lave’ was used here in the sense ‘to ladle’ (O.E.D. 3).” Troilus and Cressida, 571: would] Should. Sorelius notes that “‘Would’ is the more modern usage here.” 2 Change of word order. Sorelius does not record the “simple changes of the word-order of the original verse to prose word-order” (302). As you like it, 1776 (Folger MS V.a.79, page 15; Folger MS V.b.93, 735): be sterner. Troilus and Cressida, 551: evill Planets. Sorelius notes that “Q likewise has the normal word-order.” This line is quoted twice, both with the same change.

Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice  87 3 Singular or plural forms of verbs, nouns and pronouns. King John, 523: do. Sorelius notes that “Rowe likewise emended ‘doth’ to ‘do.’” 2 Henry VI, 2047: turne. Sorelius notes that “Pope likewise corrected to ‘turn.’” Henry VIII, 2260: these] This. Sorelius notes that “Pope likewise emended to ‘These.’” Troilus and Cressida, 1653: Pallat tastes. Sorelius notes that “Modern editors also put ‘palate’ in the singular.” Coriolanus, 2639: seeme. Sorelius notes that “The subject is plural.” Macbeth, 723: Sea] Seas. Sorelius notes that “Pope likewise preferred the singular here.” Cymbeline, 2314: were] Was. 4 Change of diction. The tempest, 652 (Folger MS V.a.80, page 11): lock’d] bound. The two gentlemen of Verona, 1276: dull] dumbe. Sorelius notes that “‘Dumbe silence’ may have seemed tautological to the compiler.” Measure for measure, 436: Virgins] Maidens. The comedy of errors, 1585: favour] grace. As you like it, 1034: purge] Cleanse. Romeo and Juliet, 673 (“Notes,” Rom., i.21): gentle] tender. This is perhaps a scribal error caused by attraction to “gentle” in a preceding line. 5 Omission. Measure for measure, 2767: Whole line omitted. The comedy of errors, 519, 523: Whole lines omitted. The merchant of Venice, 14: Whole line omitted. All’s well that ends well, 62-64: Ll. 62-63 plus first half of l. 64 omitted. 2 Henry IV, 1432: Whole line omitted. Sorelius notes that “Perhaps because the compiler did not understand this line which is very obscure in F1 (and F2). F3 is clearer.” Hamlet, 784-6: Records—that. Sorelius notes that “The compiler inserted the dash to indicate the excision he made in the text of the Folio.” 6 Slips of the quill, or scribal errors. Measure for measure, 1027: throng. Sorelius notes that “This seems to be a slip. The context requires the plural.” Measure for measure, 1837: thousands. Sorelius notes that “This seems to have been a slip, perhaps caused by attraction to the preceding ‘millions’ and ‘volumes.’ On the other occasion this was quoted the Commonplace book agrees with the Folio.” 3 Henry VI, 430-1: chains, it, could. Sorelius notes that “The second comma seems to be a slip.” Henry VIII, 671: on] One. Sorelius notes that “This seems to be a scribal error in the Commonplace book.”

88  Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice  he compositorial mistake may be included in this category. Paleographical T knowledge helps us resolve a textual crux. Henry VIII, 2940 (“Notes,” H8, ii.12): precipice. Sorelius notes that “The compiler’s emendation supports the theory that ‘Precipit’ in F1 was a compositorial mistake, t and c being alike in secretary hand and sometimes confused.” 7 Change for metrical reason. In line 672 of Romeo and Juliet, Evans omits the word “did” to rectify the iambic pentameter. “My lips to blushing Pilgrims did ready stand” (F1) “My lips like blushing Pilgrims ready stand” (“Notes,” Rom., i.21) 8 Changes for contextual reasons. When entered into the commonplace book, passages undergo a process of decontextualization. The new context, or the lack of context, demands some necessary textual changes. Instances of this category are many. A midsummer night’s dream, 1214: who more engilds the night (F1) You more enguild the night (Evans) Sorelius notes that the changes are “caused by the lack of context.” All’s well that ends well, 64: May thy] thy. Sorelius notes that “The addition of ‘May’ was made necessary by the omission of the preceding lines.” The winter’s tale, 107: think] seek. Sorelius notes that “This change seems to have been made to adapt the line to the heading under which it was included.” 1 Henry VI, 2030: Which] Who. Sorelius notes that “This change was caused by the lack of context in the Commonplace book.” Richard III, 397 (“Notes,” R3, iii.100): my finger] F2-3; thy Finger F1. Sorelius notes that “This quotation is found under the heading ‘Presenting & Presents.’ The compiler may have had in mind a situation in which the wearer of the ring was going to present it to somebody.” Henry VIII, 3371: I wish all comfort and joy. Sorelius notes that “‘I wish’ was needed because of the lack of context in the Commonplace book.” Sorelius contends that Evans’s changes are “very small” and “occasionally of interest” (301). I think that the readerly alterations, though small, are interesting everywhere, for they vividly reveal early modern reading practice. Sorelius’s list records substantive variants only and omits accidental changes.25 From the angle of scholarly editing, the latter have no authority; yet from the perspective of early modern reading practice, every readerly alteration matters. Taken together they define the characteristics and assumptions of early modern reading practices, which include the fluidity of the text, the subjectivity of the reader, and the multiplicity of authorial intentions. The early modern notions of the text, the reader, and the authorial intention are inevitably plural, not singular. The reader takes an active part in the production of texts, and different readers read the same text differently. Even the same reader reads the same text differently at different times. Sorelius provides

Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice  89 many examples where the compiler copies the same extract differently on different occasions. Sorelius only studies the fragmented version Halliwell, although sometimes the readings vary from one version of Hesperides to another. For example, “A marble to her tears” in V.b.93 (Measure for measure, 1450; Evans, 532) changes to “A Marble to my teares” in Halliwell (Folger MS V.a.79, page 11); “for every pelting officer” in V.b.93 (Evans 735) changes to “for every petty pelting officer” in Halliwell (Folger MS V.a.79, page 7; “petty” is inserted in different ink), while the original in F1 reads “For euery pelting petty Officer” (Measure for measure, 869). Evans seems not to follow authorial intention closely, or to assume that the Folio accurately represents it, and his practice has a strong scent of casualness and plurality. The production of the text and the materialization of the authorial intention both vary with readerly practice. The manual corrections in the manuscripts themselves reveal the processes of reading and pondering on the part of Evans. Examples are as follows: Twelfth night, 2382-84 (Folger MS V.a.79, page 13): O my deare Anthonio! how have the howres rack’d and tortur’d me since I lost thee? (“You” is first written, and then crossed out, replaced by “thee,” the reading in F1.) The two gentlemen of Verona, 212: his] the. Sorelius notes that “This line is quoted twice. In the second instance the scribe first wrote ‘his’ but corrected to ‘the,’” the reading in F1. 1 Henry VI, 2030: Which] Who. Sorelius notes that “‘Which’ is the first word in the compiler’s quotation. He first wrote ‘He’ but crossed this out.” Coriolanus, 3418: candied] curdied. Sorelius notes that “The compiler first wrote ‘curdied’ but deleted it and wrote ‘candied’ over the line.” Macbeth, 247: “seated” omitted. Sorelius notes that “This line is quoted twice. In one of the quotations the compiler first wrote ‘seate’ and then crossed out the word. The second quotation agrees with the Folio.” Whether he agrees with his copy (F1) or not, Evans the compiler shows himself as an intelligent reader, intelligent and alert. In the last example, for instance, he decides to delete the word in the middle of writing it (seate-seated). These fascinating traces of reading and thinking would be lost without the evidence preserved in the manuscript. We see how an early modern reader exercises critical judgment by deleting one word and inserting another. It could be argued that the critical reader gradually emerges through the practices of spontaneous editing and commonplace reading. Critical reading necessarily involves the use of the pen/pencil/quill and the medium of manuscript, as it is still often the case today. Modern readers underline the words they are reading and write marginal comments on them, either on paper or on the computer screen, while an early modern reader might draw a pointing hand or an asterisk at the place worthy of notice (Hao 2008, 258).26 An author might make corrections of the text in the margin when reading a printed book; a familiar example is Milton’s autograph correction of Lycidas. It amounts to a logical necessity, then, that critical reading entails the medium of manuscript.

90  Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice Because of the critical judgment involved in it, the commonplace book may be said to facilitate the invention of the modern critical reader. First, to decide which text to commonplace and which extract to enter under what heading, a reader must exercise critical judgment. Like reading and writing, selection and evaluation are inseparable activities. Behind the selection and arrangement of commonplace headings lies the organizational form of early modern knowledge and literature. Commonplace headings also foreshadow or anticipate thematic studies of literature. Second, as a spontaneous editor, the compiler of a commonplace book uses critical judgment to determine the verbal form of his/her excerpts. A commonplace reader not only reads, copies, edits, and compiles, but also selects, judges, evaluates, and writes. Thomas Fulton gives the revealing example of Milton’s selective use of Bacon: in Areopagitica Milton as a commonplace book compiler and a commonplace writer, alters Bacon’s expressions at will, depending on their usefulness for his respective purposes in different contexts (78–9). Clearly this is not Bacon himself, but Miltonized Bacon. Third, the plenty of examples Sorelius and I collect indicate that the commonplace reader makes changes in various aspects: textual editing, intellectual content, and linguistic style, which are the three basic areas of modern criticism. Commonplace reading makes a fundamental contribution to the invention of the modern critical reader, for its high degree of readerly participation trains constantly the reader’s critical sensitivity in these areas. The commonplace reader participates actively in the production of meaning. He or she writes a commonplace mind; he or she also writes an early modern literature and culture in the mirror of the commonplace mind. As Ann Moss comments, “Indeed the commonplace-book may be said to have invented the critical reader, in a modern sense” (1993, 56). However, the early modern critical reader is of a segmentalized mind, for commonplace reading is what Robert Darnton calls “segmental reading,” in contrast with the modern sequential reading. The rise of the novel encourages “the habit of perusing books from cover to cover” (Darnton 2000, 86), whereas Evans reads the romance, the precursor of the novel, in small chunks, as I shall argue in the next chapter (Part II). Darnton thus describes segmental reading: “Unlike modern readers, who follow the flow of a narrative from beginning to end, early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then they reread the copies and rearranged the patterns while adding more excerpts. Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities” (2000, 82). In the early modern segmental reading, readers drag fragments out of their original contexts, impose their own patterns on them, and write their own book by “jump[ing] from book to book.” In the process the plot is sacrificed; the concept of the organic whole does not hold; the only sequence that works is the alphabetical order of headings. While it may be argued that the heading and the various extracts listed under it create a new context—what David R. Parker calls “manuscript context” (164)—for each of the excerpts, a commonplace reader reads essentially in decontextualized fragments. Some say that a man is what he reads; I say: a man is how he reads. The culture of the commonplace book cultivates a commonplace mentality, which saturates every aspect of early modern English literature and culture.

Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice  91 III. The readers of Hesperides, actual and hypothetical Before moving to the readers of Hesperides, it is helpful to examine Evans’s attitudes toward reading and writing, which are reflected in his extracts under “Readeing” and “Writeing.” Evans often talks metaphorically of writing: Never were words more slowly married together. A Most blessed paper, wch shalt kiss yt hand, to wch all blessednes in nature is a servant. A. Not hauing opportunity personally to kiss her hands: he sent this letter as his paper deputy to doe it for him. CA —As when Ioves braine With Pallas swell’d, not to bring forth was paine. CPs But like to Durers pencill, wch first knew The lawes of faces, & then faces drew The [sic] know’st ye air, ye colour, & ye place The Symetry, wch giues ye poem grace. Parts are so fitted unto parts as do Shew thou hadst wit & mathematicks too. CPs (887) Writing is compared to marriage, kissing, Pallas’s birth, and Durer’s drawing. The images associated with writing include bays (honor), muse (inspiration), and brass and marble (immortality). Bee his owne lines his bayes. HW My greene muse, wch hath scarce yet displai’d her vernall blossoms. CA O for a muse of fire, yt would ascend the brightest heaven of invention. H5 —This booke When brass & marble fade, shall make thee looke ffresh to all ages. [L. Digges, front matter, the First Folio] (887) As for the famous Chinese novelist Cao Xueqin, who writes an elegy on the miserable fate of maidens in feudal times with tears and blood, tears and blood can become ink for Western writers. What though ye muses springs are almost dry? Each ht may finde a fountaine in his eye Wherein to dip it’s quill, & ’tis most fit To mourn, since death hath ovrmastred wit. CPs His passions can not be written of mee without flouds of teares (wch would wet the paper, & obliterate ye relation) nor reade of you without griefe. CA Write till your inke be dry, & with yor teares moist it againe: & frame some feeling line yt may discouer such integrity— 2 G of V. Ile write, but in my bloud yt he may see These lines come from my wounds but not frō me. BdA (887)

92  Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice It is paramount for Evans that the heart guides and governs writing and reading. If I should not teach my pen which is guided by my hart, to affirme. CA (887) Gently reade This mourning in inke in wch my ht doth bleed. Let thy ht take acquaintance of this stone. StT (628) Reading should be combined with meditation. As Confucius says, “To learn without thinking is labor lost; to think without learning is perilous.” Who readeth much, & never meditates Is like a greedy eater of much food, Who so surcloyes his stomack wth his cates That commonly they do him little good. Q of P (628) Evans himself unites reading with thinking, as we can see from the alterations he makes of his texts. He not only takes a lot of food, but also digests it. If there is good reading, then there is bad reading too, which is equated with murder and violence. Philoxenus, passing by, & hearing some Masons, missensing his lines, with their ignorant sawing of them, falls to breaking their bricks amaine: They aske ye cause, & he replies, They spoile his worke, & he theirs. Rs (628; 1634 ed., sig. P4) It was a speech becoming an able Poet of our owne, when a lord read his verses crookedly, & he besought his lordship, not to murder him in his owne lines. He yt speakes false Latine breakes Priscians head, but he that repeates a verse ill, puts Homer out of joynt. Rs (628; 1634 ed., sig. P4) The misreading here refers to the performance of reading aloud. What are the purposes of reading? Owen Felltham answers with classical commonplaces: delight and instruction. Some men reade Authors, as our Gentlemen use fflowers, onely for delight and smell: to please their fancy, & refine their tongues. Others, like ye Bee extract only the honey, ye wholsome precepts, and this alone they beare away, leaving ye rest, as little worth of small value. Rs (628; 1634 ed., sigs. Aa1v-Aa2) The familiar metaphor of the bee pops up again. Felltham emphasizes moral instruction, though he cares for both. The opposition between instruction and delight, or res and verba, or matter and expression, or in Felltham’s own words, “conceit” and “words” (1634 ed., sig. P3), is dialectical. The best reading and writing unify both. As Felltham describes, “A good stile, with wholesome matter, is a faire

Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice  93 Woman with a vertuous soule” (1634 ed., sig. Aa2). Finally, reading and writing are inseparable. Such as accustome themselues & are familiar wth ye best Authors. Shall ever & anon, find somewhat of them in themselues: and in ye expression of their minds even when they feele it not, be able to utter somthing like theirs, wch hath an Authority aboue their owne. Dis. (628) Here, Ben Jonson argues that for a man to write well, he must read the best authors. Where suitable, he can quote books as a higher authority. The process of reading and writing is a process of self-discovery. Evans’s citation, “His worth commandeth my pen to waite on him” (887), implies that the authors he quotes are worthy ones, if not the “best Authors.” The readers of Hesperides generally combine reading and thinking, or reading and writing. Though few, Hesperides is not without its “fit audience” (Milton, Paradise Lost, 7.31). In addition to the few modern scholars who have looked at the manuscripts,27 the actual known readers of Hesperides include Humphrey Moseley the publisher, J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps in the Victorian period, and a lateeighteenth-century anonymous reader.28 The last of this group is identified through internal evidence based on paleography, for he/she writes in the manuscript. The late-eighteenth-century hand in Hesperides foregrounds the central place of the play in the Evans-Moseley canon (to be discussed in the next chapter), for the four extracts it adds are all dramatic: Oh twas a sight that might have bleached joys rosy cheek for ever, and strewed the snows of age upon youths auburn ringlets—Cas Spec (17, “Afraid”) Never trifle with the feelings of a woman nor act so unmanly a part as to become a Persecutor, when Nature meant you should be a Protector.— Shipwreck (23, “Advise”) It is not always that the eye that pities is accompanied by the hand that bestows, some there are who can smile without friendship and weep without charity.— (40, “Appearance”) Etherial loveliness informs her frame And beams in living Glory from her eyes Yet oer these charms sublime meek modesty Draws a transparent veil of wandering Grace As fleecy Clouds flit oer the noonday Sun—(63, “Beauty”) The first extract is from Matthew Gregory Lewis’s The Castle Spectre (1798), the second from Samuel James Arnold’s The Shipwreck (1797), the third from Richard Cumberland’s The Wheel of Fortune (1795), and the fourth from Sophia Lee’s Almeyda; Queen of Granada (1796). All the four plays were performed at the

94  Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice Theatre-Royal, Drury Lane. We might imagine a theater-lover who frequented the Theatre-Royal, Drury Lane toward the end of the eighteenth century; he/she recognized the importance of Hesperides as a commonplace collection including plays and added dramatic extracts to it bringing it up to date. With his/her acts of reading and extracting, this late-eighteenth-century anthologist—presumably an owner of the manuscript of Hesperides—reminds us of the nature of Hesperides as a largely dramatic anthology. More important, the anthologist extracts in the fourth excerpt a tragedy by a woman playwright, thus expanding the canon into a new domain of authorship, for Evans does not cite a single work by a woman writer.29 A second hand that adds to Hesperides emphasizes Shakespeare’s central status in the canon, although it is an eighteenth-century one. To morrow & to morrow & to morrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To ye last Syllable of recorded time And all or yesterdays have lighted fools The way to sluty [dusty] death. Shakesp: Macb: (184, “Death”) Out, out, brief candle Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts & frets his hour upon ye stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing. Shakesp: Macbeth. (460, “Life”) But reckning Time whose million accidents Creep in twixt vows, & change decrees of kings, Tan sacred beauty, blunt ye sharpst intents, Divert strong minds to th’ course of altring things. Shakespears Poems. p. 176. (775, “Time”) From the page number in the last extract, it is possible to identify the source book as The Poetical Works of Shakspeare. With the Life of the Author. Cooke’s Edition. Embellished with Superb Engravings (London, 1797). So, this hand is also from the late eighteenth century at the earliest. By this time, Shakespeare’s status as the national poet had been established. His renewed appearances in an old commonplace anthology might have been influenced by the flourishing book trade,30 but Shakespeare’s manuscript presence from a zealous reader certainly corroborates and strengthens his canonical position. One is tempted to think that it is the same hand as the above one, which is paleographically possible, i.e., the Shakespearean quotations are in the italic of the same hand. Life, death, and time—arguably, these are three most important universal subjects. No doubt, the additions are significant ones. This anthologist quotes from two genres: drama and poetry. Shakespeare

Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice  95 occupies a central position in the eighteenth-century literary canon. In the Victorian age, James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps’s act of cutting a version of Hesperides into pieces for the Shakespearean extracts also recognizes the centrality of Shakespeare. Admittedly, this is a historical hindsight; for Evans himself, the Shakespearean center is only latent and incipient.31 By the end of the eighteenth century, Shakespeare emerged triumphantly as the national hero of English literature; before then he was well known but often only as “Old Shakespear,” as the advertisement in the 1679 Beaumont and Fletcher folio puts it (sig. A1v). If the anonymous reader seems likely to have been an amateur one, Hesperides has several scholarly readers, who base their scholarly writings on their research of the commonplace book. Among them, the Victorian Shakespearean scholar James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (1820–1889) occupies a special place. Halliwell-­ Phillipps was born Halliwell, who adopted the additional surname Phillipps in 1872, following the death of his father-in-law, Sir Thomas Phillipps. This was, however, “an ironic tag, after a lifetime at bitter variance” between the two men (Freeman and Freeman). Halliwell-Phillipps is now most widely known by that name, so I use it here. We do not know how the Halliwell version of Hesperides came into HalliwellPhillipps’s possession. As Sorelius has pointed out (295), as early as 1843 Halliwell-­ Phillipps mentioned a few extracts from Shakespeare’s plays that John Payne Collier had found in “an early manuscript common-place book” and thought of some importance,32 but it is not certain whether this is Hesperides. Yet it is possible that it is and Halliwell-Phillipps acquired the commonplace book from Collier. In any case, once he had it, he dismantled it, cutting the manuscript into pieces for the Shakespearean extracts. These he mounted into his scrapbooks, which are now held respectively in the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Shakespeare Centre Library. In his 1859 publication, A brief hand-list of books, manuscripts, &c., illustrative of the life and writings of Shakespeare; collected between the years 1842 and 1859, Halliwell-Phillipps mentions the three Folger manuscripts: no. 133 (V.a.75), no. 173 (V.a.79), and no. 313 (V.a.80). Thus, we know for certain that what we are calling Halliwell somehow came into Halliwell-Phillipps’s possession between 1842 and 1859. Halliwell-Phillipps, however, did not know the existence of V.b.93. Why did Halliwell-Phillipps cut manuscripts and books into pieces? Samuel Schoenbaum thinks that the behavior “reflects a deep-seated aberration of character” (286). J. A. B. Somerset gives evidence that “other [nineteenth-century] researchers indulged in the practice” (14). Marvin Spevack defends Halliwell-Phillipps’s conduct: “The charge [of vandalism] is modern and myopic since it was not an unusual procedure in its time and none of Halliwell’s friends and colleagues (who received gifts of single leaves) or enemies for that matter seemed to have objected. Besides, it is difficult to believe that Halliwell’s passion for books was so unruly as to cause him to destroy anything but relatively worthless or defective copies” (2001, 590). Nonetheless, it seems harsh to call the once intact Halliwell version of Hesperides “relatively worthless or defective.” But from the perspective of rarebook collectors I suppose it was both. Giles E. Dawson, former Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library, was able to identify an otherwise-perfect

96  Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice volume, the first edition of Raleigh’s History of the World, from which a leaf is pasted in a Halliwell-Phillipps scrapbook (Schoenbaum 303n). Then, Peter W. M. Blayney’s work proves that Halliwell-Phillipps cut over 3,600 scraps from over 800 books (some of them very rare) printed before 1701, many of which were not defective before Halliwell-Phillipps’s scissor-work (A. Somerset 225). Whatever the motive, it is clear that the interest was not in the manuscript but in Shakespeare. Halliwell-Phillipps cut Hesperides into pieces as part of his effort to edit his multivolume edition of Shakespeare in folio (1853–1865).33 He consistently recognizes the value of early manuscripts of Shakespeare for philological reasons: “It is reasonable to suppose that persons contemporary, or nearly so, with our great poet, were more likely to alter advisedly than modern editors, because they probably had a better knowledge of his language and allusions, if they were not so competent to judge of his excellencies.”34 Early manuscript extracts can, claims Halliwell-Phillipps quoting Collier, “now and then throw light upon difficult and doubtful expressions” (1843, 23). But Halliwell-Phillipps is sensible enough to add that he does not claim for the manuscript “any additional value” (1843, 23). He uses facsimiles of the cut pieces of Hesperides in this way in his folio edition of Shakespeare: “curious, and worthy of notice,” but “generally of no real authority.”35 He usually calls the manuscript readings “unauthorized alterations,” “unauthorised and useless,” or even “corrupted.”36 The facsimiles illustrate early modern adaptations of Shakespeare, but have no real textual authority. Unlike Edwin Wolf II, who advocates the textual importance of manuscript commonplace books, Halliwell-­Phillipps acknowledges their existence, correctly saying that they have no more authority than the suggestions of any other reader, though they do have the advantage of being closer in time to Shakespeare than modern readers. The emendations are conjectures rather than corrections, as are so many of the emendations of editors today. Later editors, as Halliwell-Phillipps points out, alter the text of Shakespeare “to suit their own fancy.” Sometimes they alter “capriciously and absurdly.”37 A mid-seventeenth century commonplace book has the chance to be more reliable. There is a generosity in his recognition that they might have some useful bearing on the state of the Shakespearean text, but he does not recognize the significance of those variants for early modern reading practices or commonplacing in particular. His only interest was in Shakespeare, so why not take his scissors to an unpublished manuscript commonplace book? But the most important early reader of Hesperides was perhaps its first: Humphrey Moseley. As we have discussed (Part II, Chapter 1), Moseley entered the book into the Stationers’ Register in August 1655, and Hesperides appears in his publisher’s catalogs twice, in 1656 and 1660, respectively. The three are presented in similar terms; the last reads: Hesperides, or the Muses Garden, stored with the choicest Flowers of Language and Learning, wherein grave and serious minds may tastthe [sic] Fruits of Philosophy, History and Cosmography with the sweets of Poetry, and the ceremonious Courtier, the passionate Amourist with his admired Lady, may gather Rarities suitable to their fancies, by John Evans, Gent.

Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice  97 Moseley properly regards Hesperides—the title seems likely to have been provided by him—as a commonplace book, though the genre is described rather than named (“being upon twelve hundred heads alphabetically digested”), a genre familiar to a man who had already published The English Treasury of Wit and Language (May 1655).38 As a commercial publisher and commissioner of the project, Moseley stipulates the ideal readers of the book: “grave and serious minds,” and “the ceremonious Courtier, the passionate Amourist with his admired Lady.” The bipartite readership constitutes a neat contrast: grave and serious minds Learning Philosophy, History and Cosmography tast[e] Fruits

the ceremonious Courtier, the passionate Amourist with his admired Lady Language Poetry gather Rarities suitable to their fancies

The dominating metaphor of the book’s title is, familiarly, the garden, and the two kinds of readers are both implied to be bees, “tasting” and “gathering,” pointing to the characteristic discontinuous reading which is particular to the genre. Moseley imagines a wide audience for his planned publication. Nearly every reader, serious or light, male or female, would be interested in this book.39 Appealingly, Moseley promises that the reader’s taste and fancy will be satisfied. We have a feel of the fashionable language of the mid-seventeenth-century book market. The advertisements show Moseley’s commercial acuity and compositional style. For seventeenth-century readers, the literary anthologies were at least in part how-to books, providing material to learn how to speak and write well from the literary models they made available.40 Edward Vaughan suggests in Ten Introductions (London, 1594) that the reader keep multiple commonplace books of the Bible, “and then you shall be able readily and roundly, to speake artificially and diuinely of all things necessarie to saluation” (sig. K5). As Rudolph Agricola advises, the commonplace book “gathers together whatever can build up the resources of the future speaker or writer” (qtd. in Sherman 1995, 61). It seems to be a commonplace in Renaissance culture that the commonplace book aids speaking and writing.41 Eloquence and social grace are based upon learning and imitation. Equipped with the material in the commonplace book, a variety of readers can discourse freely and fully on all subjects, including love. Thus, in its modest way, this chapter responds to Robert Darnton’s knotty question from the specific angle of commonplacing: “Reading remains the most difficult stage to study in the circuit followed by books” (1982, 74). Commonplacing has two related senses: commonplace writing (e.g., Milton’s commonplacing) and commonplace digesting (e.g., Evans’s commonplacing). These can be distinguished but not separated. There is in the composition of a commonplace book, as Adam Smyth writes, “an intimate connection between reading and writing; a sense that ‘neither writing nor reading can be identified as the “primary” activity’”

98  Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice (2010a, 94; 2010b, 128). Milton’s and Evans’s commonplacing both demonstrate that “reading generates writing,” in Smyth’s phrase (Ibid.), though obviously for each it generates something different. Milton of course holds pride of place, but Evans’s commonplacing should not be ignored; in its digestion Hesperides unfolds the richness, abundance, and variety of early modern reading practices. Notes 1 See Mohl 1953, 344 and 1969, Chapter 1. 2 Alfred J. Horwood produced two editions of the Commonplace Book (1876 and 1877), in addition to a complete autotype facsimile (1876). The third printing, edited by James Holly Hanford, appeared in 1938 in Volume XVIII of the Columbia University edition of The Works of John Milton. Ruth Mohl translated and annotated a very useful edition published by Yale University Press in 1953. The original manuscript is now in the British Library (Add Ms 36354), acquired in 1900. I cite the two recent editions (Mohl 1953, Poole 2019) in this book. 3 The first pair of square brackets is mine, and the second is in the original. The last sentence, according to Mohl (1953, 414n; 1969, 105), is Milton’s own comment. 4 For the text of Milton’s poems, I use Merritt Y. Hughes’s edition (1985). 5 The hierarchy is implied, for instance, in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis (1594): “Call it not loue, for loue to heaven is fled, / Since sweating lust on earth vsurpt his name” (ll. 793–4). 6 Also cited in Poole 2009, 378 with a somewhat different translation. 7 After September 11, Samson is sometimes viewed as a terrorist; see John Carey. 8 Ralph A. Haug notes that the reference here is to Six Livres de la République (1577), VI, i. Milton reads a Latin text, not the English translation of 1606 done by Richard Knolles. 9 Mohl gives a wrong reference for this citation in his note. It comes from Chapter xxii, not xx, of Book II. 10 Again, Mohl’s note gives a wrong reference for this quotation. It is from Chapter ix, not viii, of Book II. 11 “fiery Deluge” (1.68), “fiery Surge” (1.173), “fiery waves” (1.184), “burning Lake” (1.210, 2.169), “flames…In billows” (1.222–4), “liquid fire” (1.229, 701), “Lake of Fire” (1.280), “inflamed Sea” (1.300), “Cataracts of Fire” (2.176), “fiery Tempest” (2.180), “boiling Ocean” (2.183), “waves of torrent fire” (2.581). 12 St Bonaventure, a thirteenth-century Franciscan, distinguishes four ways of making a book: scribe, compiler, commentator, and author. J. A. Burrow adds the translator (31). 13 In his Commonplace Book, Milton cites Chaucer: no poverty but sin, but the original in the Wife of Bath’s Tale is: Uery pouert is sinne properly (Poole 2019, 182). For Burton quoting Chaucer, see Dell and Jordan-Smith 2: 656; the Latin quotations in Burton are often inaccurate products of memory (Dell and Jordan-Smith 1: x). For Addison, see Hu Jialuan 49; for Hazlitt, see Hu Jialuan 169, 173, 174, 176. 14 For a brief summary of modern theoretical approaches to reading, see Sherman 1995, 54–9. 15 An alternative theoretical framework is reader response criticism. 16 The letter long s and the letter f are easily confused. In the following two instances LION makes mistakes in printing the words as “sire” and “sorms” (a word non-­existent); Evans is right. Heate not a furnace for yor foe so hot yt it do sindge yor selfe. Wee may outrun by violent swiftnes yt which [we] run at, & lose by overruning: know you not ye fire [sire] yt mounts ye liquor till it run ore, in seeming to augment it, wastes it? H8 (Evans 553)

Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice  99 When will my sufferings, make my attonement with my angry goddes? do you celestiall formes [sorms] retaine an anger eternall as yor substance? IL (Evans 553) 17 I put the original text in square brackets. 18 The line numbers are those found in Charlton Hinman’s edition of the facsimile of the First Folio (2nd ed.), the so-called Through Line Number(s), or TLN. 19 In this instance, change of word order also happens: “Or wrapt in flesh what do they here obtaine” becomes “or what do they heere obtaine wrap’d in flesh.” 20 For more examples and a discussion of space economy, see Part III, Chapter 2. 21 See Part I, Chapter 5. 22 The reading of F1 is given after the lemma. 23 For annotating readers, see Sonia Massai, esp. pp. 14–30. 24 Sorelius explains that “In cases in which the Commonplace book agrees with F2 or F3 rather than F1, the compiler independently seems to have made the same, usually obvious, emendation as the editors or compositors of the later Folios” (301n). 25 But Sorelius is not consistent with himself when he records the variant “yu” for “thou” (Cymbeline, 1103). The former is merely an abbreviated spelling of the latter. 26 In the medieval manuscripts, the poet might signal with his nose or male organ (Y. Li 218). 27 These scholars are Gunnar Sorelius, Peter Beal, John T. Shawcross, Heidi Brayman Hackel, Steven N. Zwicker (187n), Arthur F. Marotti and Laura Estill (65), and me. As far as I know, Laetitia Yeandle also was a likely reader of Hesperides as the former Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library. 28 Similarly, Milton’s commonplace book lacked readers other than the compiler himself until the late nineteenth century (Sauer 457). 29 But see Part II, Chapter 5. Female dramatists before 1666 include Elizabeth Cary, Jane Lumley, Mary Sidney Herbert, Katherine Philips, and Margaret Cavendish. See Wilcox (ed.), 267–90. Early modern women poets include Mary Wroth, Mary Sidney Herbert, Anne Bradstreet, Aemilia Lanyer, Katherine Philips, and Margaret Cavendish. See Wilcox (ed.), 190–208. 30 See Emma Depledge and Peter Kirwan (eds.), Canonising Shakespeare, esp. Peter Kirwan’s contribution, “Consolidating the Shakespeare Canon, 1640–1740,” 81–8. 31 In his An Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668), Dryden describes Shakespeare as “the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets” (50). Dryden wrote about the time when Evans had completed the compilation of Hesperides (1666). 32 J. O. Halliwell, 1843, 22–3. 33 In 1876, Halliwell-Phillipps produced his facsimile edition of the First Folio. Spevack notes in his Classified Bibliography, which is “really a chronological rather than a classified listing” (A. Somerset 225), that the edition is “A reduced facsimile of the earlier one made by Staunton in 1866” (1997, 132). The information is inexact; according to Charlton Hinman, the Halliwell-Phillipps facsimile is based upon the No. 33 First Folio in the Folger collection, “and upon it alone, throughout the Comedies and from the beginning of the Histories through part of 1 Henry IV. But from about the middle of 1 Henry IV, throughout the rest of the Histories and all of the Tragedies, the facsimile is based exclusively upon the Staunton reproduction of 1866” (1954, 396). 34 Halliwell, 1843, 5–6. The same sentence appears in Halliwell, 1852, 74–5 with the ending word “excellences.” 35 Works, vol. 1, p. 395, n. 111. 36 “Unauthorized alterations:” Works, vol. 2, facing p. 177; vol. 3, facing p. 51, facing p. 133; vol. 4, facing p. 184; vol. 5, facing p. 308. “Unauthorised and useless:” vol. 2, p. 177, n. 10. “Corrupted:” vol. 7, facing p. 128. 37 Works, vol. 1, p. 395, n. 111. Vol. 3, p. 133, n. 30. 38 For the publication date of The English Treasury of Wit and Language (no later than May 1, 1655), see Reed 111.

100  Hesperides and Early Modern Reading Practice 39 Moseley’s inclusion of the “Courtier” in the intended readership of Hesperides may be interpreted to be indicative of his flamboyant royalist rhetoric. 40 For a discussion of the Renaissance trope of the library, see Sherman 1995, 62–3. Cf. David Parker: “If the commonplace book is indeed a private library in parvo, then the texts within are analogous to the books in the library” (164). 41 See, for example, Folger MS Add. 774, a manuscript commonplace book originating in the early modern university environment with heavy signs of Erasmian influences; it was directed towards speech as well as writing (Schurink 460–4).

5

Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation

The two extant versions of the manuscript commonplace book Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden (Folger MS V.b.93 and its related manuscripts at Folger and in Stratford-on-Avon) were compiled by John Evans in the 1650s and 1660s under the commission of Humphrey Moseley (Hao 2009, 383–4), the most prestigious literary publisher in seventeenth-century England (Potter 20). Moseley planned and attempted to publish Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden in his late years, but in vain. This chapter connects this commonplace book with the canon formation of early modern English literature. Canons, we know, are formed and eventually reformed. “[T]he so-called ‘literary canon’, the unquestioned ‘great tradition’ of the ‘national literature’, has to be recognized as a construct,” Terry Eagleton has insisted, “fashioned by particular people, for particular reasons at a certain time” (2008, 10). In Authorship and Appropriation: Writing for the Stage in England, 1660–1710, Paulina Kewes writes: In the later seventeenth century the interaction of a number of developments made possible the formation of a canon of English drama. There was the expansion of the market for printed plays. There was the growing respect for the drama both in performance and in published form. There was the emergence of a body of critical writing on the drama. There was the increasing consciousness of the distinctiveness and individuality of authors. To those processes, which this book has charted, we can add another, a growth in England’s sense of its cultural identity and in the nation’s pride in its literary achievements. Those developments were not all new, but none of them had hitherto been strong enough for a hierarchy of esteem to form. (1998, 180) Significantly, Kewes dates the formation of a dramatic canon in “the later seventeenth century,” a date much earlier than many discussions of canon formation, which often pinpoint the inception at the middle of the eighteenth century.1 Trevor Ross agrees with Kewes, for he recognizes “a prestigious author-centered royalist canon” established by Humphrey Moseley (134). David Scott Kastan argues for the centrality of the book trade and even of its formatting in allowing a conception DOI: 10.4324/9781032635699-6

102  Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation of literature itself to form, wittily claiming that “English literature was invented early in the winter of 1645” (2007, 105)2 with Moseley’s publication of Edmund Waller’s Poems. I argue that under the commission of Moseley, John Evans established a textcentered, reading-oriented, socially functional, all-inclusive canon—primarily a dramatic one—in Hesperides around the middle of the seventeenth century. The role of the commonplace book in canon formation has been underestimated. Displaying literature in commonplace forms (that is, as worthy of being commonplaced) and reading literature in a commonplace manner (that is, as important for its thought as well as its style), Hesperides demands to be recognized in the history of canon formation. It is not, it must be said, a comprehensive canon or a disinterested one that forms. The Evans-Moseley canon is distinctively masculine and royalist, an ideological construct, one might say, of the Civil Wars. The chapter falls into three parts. I shall discuss in Part I the rise of the play, in Part II the rise of the romance, and in Part III the central place of literature and the politics of the canon. What is a “canon”? The ancient Greek word kanōn originally means “any straight rod or bar” (Gorak 9) and later comes to mean a list, or a catalog of authors (Ross 23). A canon as rule, as implied in the property of straightness, defines a standard of excellence and authenticity. “In an early Christian context, ‘canon’ refers both to a set of ecclesiastical practices and to a list of inspired texts” (Gorak 29). The Catholic Church regularly canonizes people, i.e., admits them to the list of saints. The early Church authorities distinguished between “authentic” Scripture and apocrypha; thus, the concept of “canon” as a body of writings arose in connection with the Bible. Ross suggests that we consider literary canons “as lists as much as standards of excellence” (23). This suggestion is useful in destabilizing the idealization of the canon, but is susceptible to misunderstanding, especially if we are being asked to think of the canon as simply a list. That is precisely what it is not, or, at least it is someone’s very exclusive list. Rogers and Ley’s Catalog, “An exact & perfect Catalogue of all Playes that are Printed,” includes 505 titles, listed alphabetically. Other similar catalogs include even more titles.3 Obviously, we cannot say that these catalogs represent critical efforts of constructing dramatic canons. These are lists designed to be as comprehensive as possible avoiding all questions of value or prestige, an indication only of what is for sale: “all these Plaies you may either have at the Signe of the Adam and Eve, in Little Britain; or, at the Ben Jonson’s Head in Thredneedle-street, over against the Exchange.”4 Such a list, with whatever its inclusiveness, may constitute a specialized, uncritical enumerative bibliography, but certainly not a canon, which cannot be characterized apart from an idea of exclusiveness and a presumption of excellence. There may be a rule but there must be more than a list. In that sense, we may say that Hesperides constructs—or at least participates in the construction of—an early modern canon, for Evans’s list and his extracts are selective, and the selectiveness suggests a standard of excellence. From Chapter 1 we learn that Humphrey Moseley commissioned the compilation of Hesperides. He registered the book officially, assigned it a title, planned its size, and advertised it twice in his publisher’s lists. For several years (1656–1660),

Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation  103 Hesperides was the first priority for the books, listed first in both of his advertisements of forthcoming publications. Nonetheless, it remained unpublished for unknown reasons. Moseley’s deep involvement with the project is undeniable and suggests his important role in constructing the early modern canon that becomes visible in Hesperides. Evans cites from no fewer than 356 titles.5 As Appendix V indicates, a considerable portion of the titles extracted in Hesperides were published (or possibly published) by Moseley (97/356), so to some extent the Evans-Moseley canon is commercially driven. But unquestionably it is driven by a commitment to literature. Nearly 90% (87/97)6 of the Moseley titles are fictional, and can be divided into three categories: Plays (49): Beaumont and Fletcher: 1+35 (the 1647 folio and the works therein); 348, 353 William Cartwright: 187, 243, 277, 292 Sir John Suckling: 10, 36, 132 James Shirley: 320 John Milton: 216 Henry Glapthorne: 282 Pierre Corneille (trans. Joseph Rutter): 34 Romances (11): 33, 74, 6, 163, 245, 68, 58, 7, 20, 21, 23 Poems (28): Francis Quarles: 11, 14, 94, 120, 146, 164, 258, 298, 299 Robert Heath: 56, 91, 92, 247, 294 Translations: 245, 90, 55, 331 James Shirley: 238, 293 Richard Crashaw: 77, 291 William Davenant: 82, 228 James Howell: 330 Sir John Suckling: 295 William Cartwright: 50 John Milton: 2157 Plays, poems, and romances (which might be considered the generic forerunner of the novel) are the generic distinctions employed by Moseley in his publisher’s catalogs: “Poems lately Printed”; “Plaies lately Printed”; and “New and excellent Romances” (Reed 117).8 It is mostly literature that had been recently printed. But he advertises other books, and his catalogs usually open with “Various Histories, with curious Discourses in Humane Learning” and sometimes end with “Several Sermons” (Greg, III, 1170–81). Moseley was not alone. There were other printers with similar interests, although William London in his catalog puts “Divinity Books” first and “Romances, Poems and Playes” last. What is taking place in the publicity of the mid-seventeenthcentury book trade is what Marino calls the “laicization of literature” or the “humanization of literature” (149). While marketability is apparently London’s motive for his inclusion of the most vendible literary genres, Moseley’s interest in literature is

104  Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation also “clearly driven by concerns beyond market logic” (Kastan 2007, 115), or at least the market logic is indirect. He is of course interested in selling individual titles, but primarily interested in promoting the category of literature itself, and particularly in having plays recognized as a fundamental part of it. I. The rise of the play In volume one of Giles Jacob’s Poetical Register, a two-volume biographical collection published in 1719–1720, “a miniature portrait of Shakespeare is ringed by smaller ones of Jonson, Fletcher, Wycherley, Dryden, Otway, and Beaumont, as representing a canon of English drama” (Terry 5). In this early-eighteenth-­ century dramatic canon the triumvirate—Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher—occupies a prominent place. The 1647 folio makes Fletcher one of the triumvirate, in two senses. First, the folio format and its stature parallel those of Jonson and Shakespeare (for size matters; see below), and the three dramatists form the triumvirate. Second, the commendatory verse in the 1647 folio calls Fletcher one of the “Triumvirate.” When JOHNSON, SHAKESPEARE, and thy selfe did sit, And sway’d in the Triumvirate of wit— Yet what from JONSONS oyle and sweat did flow, Or what more easie nature did bestow On SHAKESPEARES gentler Muse, in thee full growne Their Graces both appeare… (John Denham, “On Mr. JOHN FLETCHER’S VVorkes,” sig. b1v) Francis Kirkman similarly writes in his “Epistle Dedicatory”: “I am vers’d in Forraign tongues and subscribe to your opinion, that no Nation ever could glory in such Playes, as the most learned and incomparable Johnson, the copious Shakespear, or the ingenuous Fletcher compos’d.”9 This description was reiterated by drama critics later in the century. Iohn Fletcher, one of the happy Triumvirat (the other two being Iohnson and Shakespear) of the Chief Dramatic Poets of our Nation, in the last foregoing Age, among whom there might be said to be a symmetry of perfection, while each excelled in his peculiar way… (Edward Phillips, Theatrum Poetarum [1675], p. 108, qtd. in Markley 90)10 Thus, the idea of the dramatic triumvirate became a commonplace in the last third of the seventeenth century. Contemporary literary figures such as John Dryden and the Earl of Rochester are among the many critics/poets promoting the widespread idea.11 Plays, especially those by Shakespeare, Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher, represent a remarkable proportion of the titles excerpted in Hesperides. Half of the titles extracted are plays.12 Among the 177 play titles are 45 by Ben Jonson, 36 by Shakespeare, and 41 by Beaumont and Fletcher. The “happy Triumvirat,” thus,

Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation  105 accounts for nearly 70% of the play titles (122/177). It is possible to identify the sources for Evans’s excerpts. Evans extracts from F1 of Shakespeare (1623; Sorelius 301). The Beaumont and Fletcher titles are mostly excerpted from the 1647 folio, an edition published by Moseley. The Ben Jonson collection has three volumes: 1616 folio or vol. 1 of Works (1640): 95, 96, 60, 259, 300, 116, 97/311, 15, 61; 62, 133, 147, 166, 194, 195, 220, 221, 222, 248, 262, 275; 99, 260; 98, 122, 261. Vol. 2 of Works (1640): 81. Vol. 3 of Works (1641): 301, 323, 227; 64, 65, 123, 149, 197, 223, 224, 225, 226, 240, 241, 263, 264, 322, 334; 174, 196; 148, 333, 63, 100, 101, 102; 80, 103.13 Vol. 3 of Ben Jonson’s Works also has a Moseley connection: on November 20, 1658 Thomas Walkley transferred the right of “A booke called Ben Johnsons Workes ye 3d volume…” to Humphrey Moseley, but neither published the work (Reed 122; L. B. Wright 79n). Other books in Catalog A entered by Moseley in the Stationers’ Register but never issued by him are: George Chapman, Byron’s Conspiracy, 30; Byron’s Tragedy, 31; Bussy D’Amboys, 32; Beaumont and Fletcher, Cupid’s Revenge, 75; Monsieur Thomas, 217 (Reed 119–24). Thus, the Moseleyrelated play titles are increased from 97 to 130, more than one third of the total (130/356) of all titles excerpted by Evans. The triumvirate playwrights were all published in folio, which served itself as part of the process of legitimizing plays. As Gary Taylor remarks, “Of the pre-­ Restoration dramatists, only Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Jonson were honored by folio collections of their plays in the late seventeenth century. Such editions testify to the cultural prestige of those dramatists; but that cultural prestige itself resulted in part from the publication of collected editions of their work in the first half of the century” (31–2). The abuse of the prestigious folio format would cause remorseless ridicule. In his witty poem, “Upon Aglaura printed in Folio,” occasioned by the publication of the play in 1638, Richard Brome jokingly comments on Suckling’s choice of format: By this large margent did the Poet mean To have a Comment wrote upon the Scene? … Ink is the life of Paper, ’tis meet then That this which scap’d the Presse should feel the pen. … This great voluminous Pamphlet may be said To be like one who hath more haire then head: … Should this new fashion last but one halfe year, Poets as Clarks would make our Paper deare. … Give me the sociable pocket books, These empty Folio’s onely please the Cooks.14

106  Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation Suckling’s decision to publish his play in folio is regarded as improper and even ridiculous. The gibes aimed at him, as Kastan remarks, “were not prompted by any aspect of Suckling’s dramaturgy but rather by the presumption of presenting it in folio. Size obviously does matter, at least in some contexts” (2001, 51). In the early modern period plays had been constantly condemned by some on religious and moral grounds. For Stephen Gosson, plays were “consecrated to idolatrie, they are not of God[;] if they proceede not from God, they are the doctrine and inventions of the devill” (1582; qtd. in Barish 89). In Histrio-mastix (London, 1633), William Prynne uses a syllogism to prove that plays are un-Christian.15 He deplores the fact of “there being above forty thousand Play-books printed within these two yeares,” and he complains that plays are “now more vendible than the choycest Sermons” (sig. *3r-v). “Shakespeare’s plays,” he notes scornfully, are now being printed on “farre better paper than most Octavo or Quarto Bibles” (sig. **6v). Prynne wonders rhetorically: “And may wee then read or write these sinnes and vices which we ought not to name? or study or peruse such wanton Playes and Pamplets, which can administer nought but gracelesnesse, lust, prophanesse to the Readers?” (sig. 6B3v). Notoriously, when Thomas Bodley established the library at Oxford that now bears his name, English plays written for the commercial theatre were among the very few categories of books that were not collected, for fear that some “scandal” would attach to the library were they there. “The more I thinke vpon it,” Bodley wrote to his librarian in 1612, “the more it doth distast me, that suche kinde of bookes, should be vouchesafed a rowme, in so noble a Librarie” (Wheeler 222). Ben Jonson demonstrated his high-brow uneasiness with the impermanence of plays and masques, which were largely forms of popular entertainment in early modern England.16 He committed his plays to the 1616 folio, a more lasting medium than ephemeral performance, making the printed play a higher authority than the live performance, as part of the process by which, as Jonas Barish has written, “the play moves formally into the domain of literature” (138–9). Unlike Shakespeare, Jonson took an initiative to elevate the play to the status and prestige of what we now call “literature,” by including his plays written for the commercial stage among his Workes in the Folio, which also include poems and other “entertainments.” Moseley’s publication of Beaumont and Fletcher’s 1647 folio seems a natural continuation of what began with Jonson’s folio in 1616 and continued with the Shakespeare folio in 1623. Large folios are complicated, expensive, and timeconsuming,17 and the Beaumont and Fletcher folio was no exception. Its publication was collaborative work, and, interestingly, work in which women played an important and often overlooked part. In order to avoid delay in getting the book on the market, Moseley had the folio produced through simultaneous printing, dividing the work among several printers. Among them were Susan Islip and Ruth Raworth, who printed a dozen plays or so (Turner xxix and xxxiii). Raworth had collaborated with Moseley in bringing out Milton’s 1645 Poems, serving as the printer of the volume. Obviously the two had established a good working relationship, because Moseley asked for her assistance again in the printing of the 1647 folio. In a sense the 1647 folio is at least in part a book printed by women and

Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation  107 also in part for women. Its intended readers include “Ladies and Gentlewomen,” who “in Workes of this nature must first be remembred,” as Moseley styles it in “The Stationer to the Readers” (sig. A4). In the male collaboration between the two Humphreys (the other is Robinson) who were the volume’s publishers, Moseley at least claims that he did most of the work, insisting that “though another joyn’d with me in the Purchase and Printing, yet the Care & Pains was wholly mine” (sig. A4v). We do not, however, know the full extent of his “Care & Pains.” “Whether Moseley also means that he had a part in editing the texts,” Robert Turner wonders, “is unknown” (xxxiv). But, certainly, Moseley took “pains” with the visual aspects of his publications. His octavo publications of contemporary authors were designed so that they might be imagined as a series with their shared design features, in his editions of Milton, Waller, Carew, Shirley, Suckling, and Cartwright (Lindenbaum 1992, 451; 1996, 180). He also published octavo editions of selected plays— for example, James Shirley, Six New Playes, 1653; Richard Brome, Five New Playes, 1653; Philip Massinger, Three New Playes, 1655; Lodowick Carlell, Two New Playes, 1657; Thomas Middleton, Two New Playes, 1657—that also were identically designed. Paulina Kewes summarizes the series’ style: “First, the title-pages invariably observe the same formula: the number plus the words ‘New Playes’, and a highly standardized typographical layout. Second, each volume presents the reader with an engraved portrait of the author. Third, each book contains plays only. Fourth, all the plays are ‘new’, i.e. never published before.” In addition, as Kewes notes, Moseley would continue to publish “single-play octavos of the authors whose collections he had previously brought out (or was going to bring out) in that format so that the new volumes could conveniently be bound with the old” (1995, 9–10): James Shirley, The Politician, 1655, quarto and octavo James Shirley, The Gentleman of Venice, 1655, quarto and octavo Lodowick Carlell, The Passionate Lovers, 1655, octavo Lodowick Carlell, The Deserving Favourite, 1659, octavo Thomas Middleton, No Wit, No Help, 1657, octavo.18 Moseley published single plays in a variety of formats, folio, quarto, and octavo, recognizing the variety of readers’ desires. Thus, Moseley issued The Wild Goose Chase (1652) in folio so a reader could bind it with the 1647 folio; Shirley’s The Politician and The Gentleman of Venice were issued “concurrently in quarto and octavo so as to enable the owners of both Shirley’s earlier quartos and the 1653 octavo collection to enlarge their respective volumes” (Kewes 1995, 10). Obviously, Moseley’s primary motive was to encourage the sale of books, but a secondary effect was that drama was increasingly recognized as a literary form; his publications were significant contributions to the establishment of a canon of English drama. “Moseley’s octavo play collections of the 1650s,” Kewes insists, “supplemented the canonical hierarchy of literary reputation and esteem which had been mapped out by the three folios of 1616, 1623 and 1647….Furthermore,

108  Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation Moseley’s collections effect authorization of the playwrights they feature and initiate the establishment of their individual canons” (1995, 10).19 Begun, not without controversy, by Jonson,20 the process of canonization continued with the expansion of the market around the middle of the century, but was not fulfilled until later in the century when critical commentary on drama was developed (Kewes 1998, 10). In 1691, Gerard Langbaine would maintain that only the older playwrights, Jonson, Shakespeare, and Beaumont and Fletcher were truly first rate,21 as their publication in folio confirmed. The distinction of quality is signaled and maintained by the distinction in the format of their playbooks. Size does matter. Nonetheless, in a time when the theater was closed between 1642 and 1660, Moseley’s publications were forced to satisfy the desire for plays, and in the process they established drama as a literary genre by promoting the reading of plays. From 1642 to 1660, the London theater was for the most part closed, owing to the actions of a Puritan-dominated Parliament. During, or rather, due to, the closure of the theater, the stage gave place to the page. As James Howell remarks, …since we cannot have Thee trod o’ th’ stage, Wee will applaud Thee in this silent Page. (qtd. in L. B. Wright 82) Plays could no longer be seen, but could be read. Former theater-goers now had to go to the bookshop for the enjoyment of dramas. These historical circumstances create the play as a literary genre or a genre of print instead of a theatrical genre or a genre of performance. As David Scott Kastan comments, “plays became literature precisely as they left the stage and found their way into print” (2003, 180).22 It was in print that Evans came to the plays he excerpts for Hesperides, though his compilation never achieved the printed form that was intended. Nonetheless plays had long found their way into commonplace books. John Marston refers to the practice of some playgoers to keep books of memorable quotations from the plays they had seen. In his Scourge of Villanie (1598), Marston satirizes one such playgoer: “Now I haue him, that…H’ath made a common-place booke out of playes,/ And speakes in print” (sig. H4). But printed dramatic commonplace books do not appear until John Cotgrave (English Treasury of Wit and Language, 1655) and John Evans, around the middle of the seventeenth century. It must be stressed that in addition to the closure of the theaters, the commonplace book plays a considerable role in the rise of the play as a literary genre.23 The combined forces of the theater closure and the tool of the commonplace book give birth to the play as a literary genre. Another Moseley publication, The English Treasury of Wit and Language (London, 1655), perhaps could be said more directly to inscribe a canon of English drama. “Collected out of the most, and best of our English drammatick poems; methodically digested into common places for general use” (title page), it is presented in the form of a printed commonplace book, in some ways not unlike that which Evans and Moseley must have imagined for Hesperides. The extracts are taken from the verse drama; all of them are printed in verse form, although a slight proportion—“not more than four or five per cent” (Bentley 187n)—are disguised

Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation  109 prose. The compiler, John Cotgrave, however, does not provide the sources of any of the passages. Fortunately, in the British Museum, there is a copy of The English Treasury of Wit and Language in which “manuscript ascriptions of nearly all the passages have been made” (Bentley 188). Several hands, “perhaps even four,” are responsible for the ascriptions, which are “remarkably accurate” in their identification (Bentley 189, 188). More recently, Joshua J. McEvilla in Cotgrave Online (rev. Aug. 2020) has updated and corrected Bentley’s work. According to Cotgrave Online, at least 38 copies of the Cotgrave collection are now known to have survived, six of which contain extensive manuscript identifications, including the British Museum (now British Library) copy consulted by Bentley; sources for approximately 1,686 of Cotgrave’s 1,701 extracts have been identified; Cotgrave copies passages from 239 works by 58 dramatists, and eight authors are added to Bentley’s lists; in addition to Middleton’s manuscript play Mayor of Quinborough, Cotgrave also includes excerpts from the lost texts of Richard Brome’s The City Wit and Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Coxcomb. The five dramatists that receive the most extracts are as follows: Shakespeare Ben Jonson John Fletcher John Webster George Chapman

160 123 123 121 120 (McEvilla, Cotgrave Online, Tables)24

The dramatists who have the most plays extracted are: John Fletcher Francis Beaumont Shakespeare James Shirley George Chapman Thomas Dekker Ben Jonson Philip Massinger

40 34 29 23 12 12 11 11 (McEvilla, Cotgrave Online, Facet Search)25

Clearly, the excerpts have drawn from the best known of the dramatists from before the theaters were closed, and, as Bentley had said, “a goodly proportion of the ‘best’ plays are represented” (188). What might be said about the interests and instincts of the two anthologists? A comparison of the two is instructive. Let us look at the topic “youth.” Most obviously, Cotgrave excerpts exclusively from verse drama, while Evans extracts from various genres: poetry (e.g., Virgil and Francis Quarles), drama (e.g., Hamlet), and prose (e.g., Arcadia and The Holy War). Second, Cotgrave does not indicate the source of his passage, while Evans does. They often use the same headings,

110  Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation but insert different examples, though not always determined by the dissimilar archive of their commonplacing. Of Youth.

1. Youth restrain’d, straight grows impatient, And in condition like an eager Dog, Who, nere so little from his game with-held, Turns head and leaps up at his Masters Throat. [Ben Jonson, Every Man in His Humor]26 2. Young and handsome, Have made acquaintances in nature still, So when they meet, they have the least to do. It is for age or ugliness to make Approaches, and keep a distance. [Sir John Suckling, Brennoralt] 3. The love that lightens from a young desire, Fickle and feeble, will not long hold fire; It is so violent it will not last, Th’bless’d, whose lovers love when youth is past. [Barnabe Barnes, The Divils Charter] (Cotgrave 310)27 Youth

Do you see how ye spring is full of flowers, decking it selfe wth them, & not aspireing to ye fruits of Autumn. A. A touch of yt stampe, maketh an impression on yt waxen age. HW. Nature cressant do’s not grow alone in bulke: but as his temple waxes, ye inward service of ye mind & soule growes wide withall. H. Now sanguin. Age VE 2 VÆ 212          (Evans 890) [Now sanguine Venus doth begin To draw her sanguine colours in. QH. When first my downy chin the razor shav’d. VE 2 One trusting youth, best traversed his ground, Th’other in strength and size advantage found. VÆ 212]28 Third, both Cotgrave and Evans transform their quotations in certain ways. Disregarding the spellings, the former changes two words plus the lineation of the Suckling passage above, which originally reads: Young and handsome Have made acquaintances in nature:

Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation  111 So when they meet, they have the lesse to doe. It is for age or uglines to make approaches And keep a distance. (Suckling, Brennoralt, sig. C1v)29 In the latter, the verse lines of Hamlet are cited as prose. Fourth, both employ a figurative language to describe youth. This fact emphasizes the literariness of the canon. In Cotgrave, “youth restrain’d” is like “an eager Dog” (simile; Jonson); in Evans, youth is the “spring full of flowers,” unlike age, or the “fruits of Autumn” (metaphors; Arcadia). Fifth, Cotgrave and Evans quote different authors under the same heading; they are complementary to each other. Now we understand why Moseley commissioned two books of similar form and subject: individual taste dictates the selection of each commonplace book, so the two books can be thought of as supplementing one another. The absence of ascriptions in Cotgrave emphasizes the point that for him the early modern canon is text-centered, as it fulfills the purpose of commonplacing topics. That multiple readers of The English Treasury of Wit and Language assign the sources of the passages in six copies suggests the widespread interest in authorship and the important role of the reader in the construction of a literary canon, whether early modern or modern. On the other hand, the conspicuous presence of the author, which to us seems obvious and unsurprising, in the Evans-Moseley canon demonstrates how the commonplace book fosters the notion of authorship in a text-centered canon. Evans, of course, constructs a canon of much wider coverage than Cotgrave, as for him, romances and poems stand together with plays. II. The rise of the romance “The Rise of Romance” is the title of a once well-known book by Eugène Vinaver, exploring the rise of the genre prior to the advent of print. By “the rise of the romance,” I am referring to the popularity of the genre on the book market around the middle of the seventeenth century, especially the French heroic romances translated into English. In addition to publishing drama, Moseley either published or advertised twenty romances.30 All are translations, mostly from French.31 He might be said to be responsible for the popularity of the form in England. Of the 15 French heroic romances published in seventeenth-century England (P. Salzman 360–1), 10 are associated with Moseley, who had been interested in the form, or at least in the market he thought existing for it for his entire working career. The first book that Moseley published after being admitted to the livery of the Stationers’ Company, October 28, 1633, was a romance, Biondi’s The Banished Virgin (1635). The last book that Moseley published in his lifetime was also a romance, the second folio edition of Cassandra (1661).32 Moseley’s French heroic romances include the following: Ariana, The History of Polexander, The History of Philoxypes and Polycrite, Cassandra, Cleopatra, The Grand Scipio, The Romant of Romants, Artamenes or The Grand Cyrus, Clelia, and Ibrahim or the Illustrious Bassa. And his continental romances are: La Stratonica, Nissena, Dianea, The History of Don

112  Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation Fenise, and The History of Astrea. Moseley’s romances are usually printed in folio or octavo, or in folio and octavo (Cassandra); only one, La Stratonica, is printed in quarto. There are four kinds of romances among those extracted by Evans, using the distinctions of Paul Salzman (355–78): 1 Sidneian romance: Sir Philip Sidney, Arcadia; Giovanni Francesco Biondi, The Banished Virgin; Richard Beling, Sixth Book to the Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia, 1628 ed. of Arcadia; Francis Quarles, Argalus and Parthenia. [Biondi attempted to translate Sidney’s Arcadia for Prince Thomas of Savoy, but he did not know the language well, “So as not translating but rather paraphrasing it, I made him speake what he never meant.” Finally he wrote The Banished Virgin and besought the Prince to accept it “in discharge of the Arcadia” (“The Authors Epistle Dedicatory”). Quarles’s poem Argalus and Parthenia is based on the Arcadia.] 2 Political/Allegorical romance: Robert Baron, Erotopageion, or the Cyprian Academy;33 James Howell, Dodona’s Grove. 3 French heroic romance: Gauthier de Coste de la Calprenède, Cassandra and Cleopatra; Madeleine de Scudéry, Artamenes or The Grand Cyrus. 4 The novella: Miguel de Cervantes, Exemplarie Novells, trans. James Mabbe: “A Storie of Two Damsells,” “The Ladie Cornelia,” “The Liberall Lover,” “The Force of Blood,” “The Spanish Ladie,” “The Jealous Husband;” Choice Novels and Amorous Tales; Aurora, Ismenia, and the Prince, with Oronta the Cyprian Virgin, trans. Thomas Stanley. Obviously, Evans’s interest is eclectic, not restricted to Moseley’s French heroic romances or the native leading romance writer Sidney. Both romances produced by the Sidney family members, Arcadia and Urania, are intended for lady readers. Sometime around 2005, the English novelist Ian McEwan famously said, “When women stop reading, the novel will be dead.” Humphrey Moseley apparently thought that the same could be said about romance and tried to make sure it wouldn’t happen. He conceives of and markets the form to women, recognizing that already it had been recognized as a feminine genre. Examples include the following: Clelia is dedicated by the author to Mademoiselle de Longueville; Ibrahim is dedicated by the translator to Lady Mary, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox; Cleopatra is dedicated by one translator (John Coles) to Mrs. Alicia Lea, and by another (James Webb) to Jane, Viscountess Claneboy; similarly, The Grand Scipio, Dianea, La Stratonica, Exemplarie Novells, The Banished Virgin, and Elise, or Innocencie Guilty are all dedicated by the translator to a lady; Artamenes is dedicated by the publisher, Moseley, to Lady Anne Lucas. Both Ariana and Clelia are presented “To the Ladies,” and The Cyprian Academy addresses “Bright ornaments of the British nation,” or the “Ladies and Gentlewoemen [sic] of England.” Only three are dedicated to men: Cassandra is dedicated by the translator to Charles II, The Banished Virgin is dedicated by the author to Prince Thomas of Savoy, and The Cyprian Academy is dedicated by its author to James Howell.

Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation  113 Women are supposed to be the primary audience of romances. The commendatory verses prove this point well. Me thinks I see the world thy booke admire; And Ladies dandling it with much desire To see that hand;                              William Beversham, “On his beloved friend the Authour” Each gallant here may have his fill34          Each Lady please her eye Such are thy streames of eloquence          Such is thy poesie. Robert Brounrigg, “To his much respected and learned friend Master Robert Baron on his Booke” (Baron, The Cyprian Academy, sigs. A4, a1) Whoever is reading, the romance should be read in quietness and seclusion: “Take her each of you apart into some retired place, and then giving her attention and silence…She cannot love noise, or assemblies, since repose and solitude gave birth to her” (Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, Ariana, sig. A2v). The form itself is gendered female, although most romances were written by men. Nonetheless romance fiction by women does occur. In England, Margaret Tyler translated The Mirror of Knighthood out of Spanish (London, 1578); more consequentially, Mary Wroth wrote and published Urania in 1621. Artamenes, Ibrahim, and Clelia are, in their English translations, identified as having been written by Monsieur de Scudéry, Governor of Notre-Dame de la Garde, although all three seem to have been written by his sister, Madeleine de Scudéry, who served as his ghostwriter. The two collaborated, although “[t]heir literary partnership was very one-sided. Madeleine did the actual writing and Georges would then ‘correct’ it by changing the color of this one’s hair and that one’s eyes” (Backer 189). But the translations were obviously popular and praised even though they were translations. The commendatory poems insisted, for example, that John Coles’s English translation of La Calprenède’s Hymen’s Preludia (1658) was even better than the French original. John Crosbie wrote in his “To my worthy friend Mr. John Coles”: you so bravely in this your translation Have Cleopatra cloath’d in such attire As even the French-man may himself admire To see her English habit to surpasse The mode in which in French before she was. (sig. A2) Anthony Prissoe, in his “To his most ingenious Friend Mr. John Coles,” wrote: When Cleopatra in her French attire I first beheld, ne’re did I more admire

114  Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation A forreign beauty, but I now professe She’s yet more lovely in thy English dresse. (sig. A2) The English translation is superior to the French version, allowing it to become part and parcel of English literature. Moseley regularly groups poems and translations together (often also with plays) in his publisher’s catalogs (Greg, III, 1170–80). The transformation of “French attire” into “English dresse” registers a literary transplant, which enriches the store of native English literature and contributes to an English canon. There are other revealing metaphors. Both Sidney and Robert Baron refer to their romance as a “child” of their brain. Yet Sidney requests his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, to keep the Arcadia “to your selfe, or to such friendes, who will weigh errors in the ballaunce of good will” (22539, 1590, sig. A3v). Obviously, the aristocratic Sidney, aware of the so-called “stigma of print” (J. W. Saunders), prefers a restricted manuscript circulation of his work, whose chief safety “shalbe the not walking abroad” (sig. A4). Sidney is obliged to acknowledge “this child, which I am loath to father” (sigs. A3r-v), nearly denying his authorship. In contrast, Baron boldly claims his authorship in his dedications, and the book was printed as soon as it was composed. As William Beversham says in his commendatory verse, “Noe sooner in our Inne, but out in Print!” (sig. A4) Within a half century or so the stigma of print (if there was one) is overcome and the book market triumphant. The rise of the romance benefits from or perhaps is in part responsible for this historic change. When the first volume of the English translation of Artamenes was published in 1653, “the Author had not finish’d his own Originall French” (Reed 96). When he brought out volume two, Moseley promised that the remaining three volumes “shall be dispatcht with all possible Expedition, for I purpose to be ready with One every Tearme” (Reed 96). There is a sense both of urgency and of confidence. To create demand Moseley emphasizes time and again that he intends no second impression, but he also reminds readers that each of these is, as he said of Artamenes “a noble usefull Work,” written with “Wit and noble Passion” (Reed, 95, 93–4). The commercial bookman’s serious gesture towards “noble” literature contrasts sharply with the attitude of the actually noble-born Sidney, who calls the Arcadia “this idle worke of mine,” “being but a trifle, and that triflinglie handled” (sigs. A3, A3v). While Sidney’s position may be read as a modesty topos,35 it is an undeniable fact that the romance is a genre that had long been denigrated by Renaissance humanists for its immorality. In The Schoolmaster (1570) Roger Ascham regards the older chivalric romances as celebrating “open mans slaughter, and bold bawdrye;” the “bawdie bookes” of romances are designed “to intice the will to wanton living…to carry yong willes to vanitie, and yong wittes to mischief, to teach old bawdes new schole poyntes” (qtd. in Hackett 42). Juan Luis Vives, the Spanish humanist, condemns romances as being “fylthe and vitiousnes…playne and folysshe lyes” (qtd. in Hackett 10). Even down to the middle of the seventeenth century, Margaret Cavendish disdained the reading of romances as “an unprofitable study,” which ought to be “shunned as foolish amorosities and desperate follies” (qtd. in Hackett 184).

Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation  115 Yet the climate for the evaluation of romances did change around the middle of the seventeenth century mainly as a result of the market force, when, as Annabel Patterson remarks, “romance itself came to be redefined as serious” (160). Moseley analyzes Artamenes in literary terms: “the Plots are deeper, the Turns and Changes much more frequent, the Disputes and Arguments farr stronger, than in other Compositions” (Reed 95). He also defends the structure: “Some may possibly quarrel with the Beginning, as too Sudden and Abrupt, rushing on Sinope as all on fire without any Introduction. But such may know, our Author professedly did it on purpose, for the subsequent Story clears it up to be so” (Reed 95), and it is, of course, a well-known epic technique to begin in medias res. In Moseley’s characteristic commercialized literary-critical discourse, Artamenes emerges distinctively as a work of literature, no longer immoral or foolish. Even the form’s insistent but preposterous assertion of its historicity prepares the way for it to be taken seriously. As Scudéry (brother or sister) says: amongst all the rules which are to be observed in the composition of these workes, that of true resemblance is without question the most necessary…I have observed the manners, customes, Religions, and inclinations of people: And to give a more true resemblance to things, I have made the foundations of my work Historical. (Ibrahim, sig. A3v) The groundwork of a romance is “generally some excellent piece of Ancient History, accurately collected out of the Records of the most eminent Writers of old” (Vaumorière, The Grand Scipio, “The Epistle Dedicatory”). Scudéry’s Clelia promises that it “shall by the Truth of History and Illustration of Fiction satisfie both your Curiosity and delight” (vol. 1, sig. A2v). The “Truth of History,” which is primary, comes before the “Illustration of Fiction.” Moseley will even say that “Designs of War and Peace are better hinted and cut open by a Romance, than by downright Histories” (Reed 94).36 No doubt the prestige of Sidney’s Arcadia also lent itself to the elevation of the romance to literary status. Francis Meres in Palladis Tamia (1598) called The Arcadia Sidney’s “immortal poem…in Prose” and Sidney “our rarest Poet” (G. G. Smith 2: 315–6).37 In 1634(?), Sir William Alexander would say that the Arcadia is “the most excellent Work that, in my Judgement, hath been written in any Language that I understand, affording many exquisite Types of Perfection for both the sexes…” (qtd. in P. Salzman 111). Even before it reached print, Sidney’s Arcadia had been excerpted along with classical writers such as Homer and Virgil in Abraham Fraunce’s Arcadian Rhetorike (1588).38 Sidney unwittingly lent his prestige to the canonization of romance forms of which he might well not have approved, but the applauded Arcadia helps the Evans-Moseley project of canonizing the romance in Hesperides. When the romance is extracted in the commonplace book, a sea change happens. For instance, “O wth wt a gracefull dexterity! A” (Evans 9). Originally in the Arcadia, the sentence describes Dorus dancing a Matachine dance in armor. In the

116  Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation commonplace book, both Dorus and the Matachine dance disappear. The quotation is lifted out of its context, or decontextualized, to reside under the commonplace head “Active.” One result of decontextualization is timeless, immortal literature. Another is that the excerpt turns into a description of action and activeness applicable to many contexts. The organic body of the romance is anatomized into fragmented limbs, scattered under the commonplace heads, to be employed in a new situation. Having undergone the process of commonplacing, the extracts are hardly recognizable and achieve their function only in potential new uses. What are the effects of commonplacing on the project of canonization? Commonplacing fractures and fragments the literary text, transforming it into rhetorical bits and pieces, and in the process, the romance loses much of what it is, the character and the plot, for example. Commonplacing chooses to view literature as units of words and reduces literature to language. This linguistic and rhetorical reduction annuls generic characteristics and the underlying ideology. Literality replaces and displaces literariness; yet at the same time, much literariness is retained in literality. In the final analysis, the rise of the romance in Hesperides is rather ambivalent. The early modern canon of the romance—and those of the play and the poem—is a canon commonplaced and rhetoricized. III. The place of literature and the politics of the canon In a commendatory poem to The Banished Virgin, we learn about “Learning,” that …the best kinde Is Poetry, ’cause that doth move the mind To Vertue more, yea and doth teach it too More winningly than any else can doe. …… all other Arts must downe And homage doe to’th’ Poets Lawrell Crowne. (Biondi, sigs. a1v, a2) The claims are familiar enough, if sometimes disputed. Poetry (which here means literature) is a better teacher than history or philosophy, as Sidney had said.39 But they are also the tacit claims of the Evans-Moseley commonplace book. On the first page of Hesperides (Folger MS V.a.75), a seventeenth-century hand refers to the commonplace book as a “new Parnasus” (Sorelius 298n).40 The reader locates Hesperides in the tradition of England’s Parnassus, compiled by Robert Allott, 1600, and allows a comparison of the two. Both England’s Parnassus and The English Treasury of Wit and Language are printed commonplace books, and Hesperides is a commonplace book intended for print. If England’s Parnassus establishes a poetic canon41 and The English Treasury of Wit and Language a dramatic canon, then Hesperides establishes an all-inclusive canon of various kinds of learning, although primarily a dramatic one. Allott collects his passages from the works of over 50 Tudor poets ranging from Sir Thomas Wyatt to Ben Jonson; of his 2,350 quotations, a predominant portion are from non-dramatic poems, and

Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation  117 only 7 or 8 percent are taken from plays (Bentley 187). The five poets cited most frequently are: Edmund Spenser Michael Drayton William Warner Thomas Lodge Samuel Daniel

387 226 171 144 141 (Crawford xliii)

All these five names are absent from Hesperides. The five original poets that have the most works extracted in Hesperides are (translations are disregarded): Francis Quarles Ben Jonson Joshua Sylvester Robert Heath John Quarles

11 9 8 5 4 (Appendix IV)

Of these five names, only Sylvester and Jonson appear in England’s Parnassus; 123 and 14 quotations, respectively. The point should be obvious. The two books are complementary: England’s Parnassus, by necessity, covers poets of the sixteenth century, and Hesperides covers those of the seventeenth century. England’s Parnassus, it must be said, includes a lot of bad poetry (Crawford ix), while Hesperides admittedly ignores some very good seventeenth-century poets like John Donne and George Herbert (from which we might infer a lack of interest in metaphysical poetry around the middle of the seventeenth century or perhaps a more pointed resistance to a certain form of Protestant poetics). Hesperides excerpts Christopher Harvey’s imitation of Herbert, The Synagogue, or, The Shadow of the Temple, but ignores Herbert’s The Temple. Among Moseley’s English Poets series (Lindenbaum 1992, 451; 1996, 180), Milton, Shirley, Suckling, Crashaw, and Cartwright are present, but Waller and Carew are absent. Both Francis Quarles’s and George Herbert’s poetry collections sold well in the seventeenth century (Liang 553, 564); John Evans valued the former but ignored the latter. In his poetic selections, Evans perhaps reveals some lack of taste, but they seem more likely to be an indication of what his taste is. According to Moseley’s advertisements of the book, Hesperides contains not only literature, but also philosophy, history, cosmography, etc. It is stored with “the choicest Flowers of Language and Learning” (see p. 23 above). Language comes before learning; it is what enables it. And literature is the first of the disciplines, providing the major source of what is to be learned. In no small part the commonplace book serves as a resource for thought and expression. In its most pragmatic use, Hesperides resembles a complement-school, as in James Shirley’s play The Schoole of Complement (1631, also known as Love Tricks), for pupils who desire “to suck the hony of [its] eloquence” (sig. E4). The complement-school is a

118  Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation “Schoole of generous education” and a “place of generous breeding” that can make its scholars “Courtiers” (sigs. F2v, F4), although Shirley mocks the idea of such superficial and self-interested eloquence. Hesperides indeed might function as a complement-school and provide the skills for upward social mobility. There was, however, an actual “School of Complements.” It was a book, however, rather than an academy. It was the subtitle of a genuine book of complements, compiled by William Elder, and usually known as Pearls of Eloquence (1656), “wherein,” as the title page says, “Ladies, Gentlewomen, and Schollars, may accommodate their Courtly Practice with Gentile Ceremonies, Complemental, amorous, and high expressions of speaking, or writing of Letters.” The book is a series of quotations, of “Choice and fair Flowers, selected out of the Garden of Eloquence, to adorn our Language with variety of Expressions upon severall occasions” (27). Hesperides in one sense is no different, also capable of performing the function of a complement-school. In spite of Shirley’s suspicions, such education can be valuable. As Philomusus, the pseudonym of the compiler of The Academy of Complements (which Moseley first published in 1639 and which then went through at least thirteen additional editions before 1700), asserts, “There is no question but eloquence is a principall part in a well qualified man.”42 The “pursuit of eloquence,” as the historian Hanna H. Gray says, is “the identifying characteristic of Renaissance humanism” (498; my italic). In Erasmus’s concept of humanism, “right reading” which involved commonplacing, was “an ethical practice” training virtue and cultivating citizenship in a Christian commonwealth (qtd. in Sauer 451). But it also was a political practice. “Right reading” in the vernacular was a form of linguistic nationalism—and The Academy of Complements, for example, was designed explicitly “for the honour of our Language” (“The Avthors Preface to the Reader”). Both in The Academy and Hesperides, Moseley demonstrates a conscious effort to promote vernacular English literature, the literature of an English nation, though admittedly a nation that seems on the evidence of the Civil Wars hardly to be unified. Much of the strain is evident in the royalism of Moseley’s tastes, if not also in Evans’s. Evans’s extracts under “Kings” and “Rebells” demonstrate his royalist and anti-rebellion tendency. Not to rise but drop into a throne Π. How did those rayes of Mty wch were Scatter’d in other kings concenter heere? [Π.] Not all ye water in ye rough rude sea can wash ye balme from an annoynted King. KR2. No hand of bloud & bone, can gripe the sacred handle of our scepter. [KR2.] (436, “Kings”) Will you imitate ye viper & teare and dilacerate; ye entrailes of yor owne greate parent yor countrey? [CA] Were there a resurrection of yor Ancestor, they would blush at yor insolencies, & run to kiss their graves yt haue hidden them, from beholding such rebellion. [CA]

Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation  119 Enterprizes again’t princes prosper not… [CA] Vnthred ye rude eye of rebellion, & wellcome home againe discarded faith. KJ. Mercy bestow’d on those yt do dispute wth swords, do’s lose ye Angells face it has, & is not mercy Sr, but policy, wth a weak vizor on. Br. (630, “Rebells”) To the seeming rhetorical question Who would not bee a rebell when ye hopes are vast ye feares but small? Br. (630) The answer is: “Why, I would not. Nor you my lord, nor yon, nor any here.” It is clear that Evans consistently condemns rebellion. Kingship is sacred and rebels should be punished without mercy. The sign “Π” refers to “Palingenesia,” a work that has been studied in connection with plagiarism in Part I, Chapter 3. This work, Martin Lluelyn’s MenMiracles, and James Howell’s The Vote, or, A Poeme Royall are staunch royalist works published during the Civil Wars. Palingenesia, which came out soon after the regicide in 1649, praises King Charles as “The Last of Christians, and the First of Kings” (l. 22). Howell’s poem, presented to his Majesty as a new year’s gift, was published by Humphrey Moseley. We read in it: Once in a Vocall Forest I did sing, And made the Oke to stand for Charles my King The best of trees… …… For the chief glory of a people is The power of their King, as their is His. (H3128A, sigs. A4v, B3) “Vocall Forest” alludes to Dodona’s Grove, a political allegory also extracted by Evans. Evans’s inclusion of these three poems in Hesperides are unmistakable signs of his royalist politics, if not of an unwavering literary judgment. Two of Moseley’s other publications, the 1647 Beaumont and Fletcher folio and Cartwright’s Comedies, Tragi-Comedies, with Other Poems of 1651, embody the royalist aesthetic as well. The volumes are retrospective and nostalgic. A poet thus describes the present times in his commendatory verse “To the Memory of the most Ingenious and Vertuous Gentleman Mr Wil: Cartwright, my much valued Friend”: Such horrid Ignorance benights our Times, That Wit and Honour are become our Crimes. Moseley writes in “The Stationer to the Reader” of the 1647 folio: “I should scarce have adventured in these slippery times on such a work as this, if knowing persons had not generally assured mee that these Authors were the most unquestionable Wits this Kingdome hath afforded.” A sense of the contrast between past and present clearly informs the passage: wit versus ignorance. Moseley dedicates the Cartwright

120  Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation collection “To the most renowned and happy mother of all learning and ingenuitie, the (late most flourishing) University of Oxford.” The words in the brackets are significant, “for in those daies Oxford was a Vniversity” (“To the Reader”). Implicitly, Oxford is no longer a university now. As Kastan observes, “For Royalists in the vertiginous world of the Civil War and following… ‘Wits’ became a code word for those of not only talent and taste but also shared Royalist sympathies” (2007, 122). And the size of the party of these not-so-secret sharers is suggested by the magnitude of the section of prefatory verse: the 1647 folio has over 40 pages of commendatory poems (34 poems), and the Cartwright collection over a hundred (52 poems). But other social strains are also visible. If it is a largely royalist canon, it is an almost exclusively masculine one. There is only woman writer with works extracted in Hesperides, Madeleine de Scudéry; but her role was not yet known, and the book is credited to her brother, Georges, “that famous wit of France, Monsieur de Scudery,” as he is identified on the title page and in its various advertisements. The early modern canon that Evans and Moseley construct is a masculine one. The only woman writer in that canon is unidentified; the putative author is a male, and the identified translator is also male, as the romance, which in so many ways was a female genre, is masculinized. I suppose it doesn’t necessarily follow that Hesperides’s apparently complete dependence on male writers is simply another version of misogyny, a textual antifeminism. But it may be hard to avoid that view in an examination of his extracts under the head “Woman” (Evans 879). Some extracts obviously give voice to the commonplace theme of women’s frailty. I, as the glasses where they view themselus which are as easy broke as they make forms: women? Helpe heaven! Mm Call us 10 times fraile, for wee are soft as our complexions are & credulous to false prints. [Mm] Of wt fraile temper is a womans weakenes! Words writ in waters haue more lasting essence, then our determination. RfH. Others condemn more virulently and attack women as dangerous and deceitful: Can the name of woman pass without fell execrations through these parched lipps? henceforth I will evade them as the infectious scum of pestilence. To Troy (once famous) one base Hellen brought a finall ruine; faire Persepolis, had still stood Asia’s glory, had not Thais (yt obscene Thais) by her wichcraft made fond Alexander to consume’t by fire: B Men with ease can find Natures obscurest reaches, overreach ye craft of serpents, tame wild beasts, & bring all things to their subiection, only woman wth her deceit surpasses man, confounds his best capacity. B The sentence immediately following the “Can the name” extract—“Each woman is a plague”—summarizes the idea of the quotation. Eve and Helen are two archetypes of deception and ruin.

Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation  121 Some extracts condemn women, yet acknowledge that they may be redeemable through love (although inconveniently) and seem to be indispensable to men. Woman’s ye cowardliest & coldest thing ye world brings forth, yet love, as fire workes water makes it boyle ore, & do things contrary to its proper nature. Br. Women are ye baggage of life; yey [=they] are troublesom, & hinder us in ye great march, & yet we cannot be without them. Br. One extract is more agnostic, describing women as complicated and mysterious, although their inscrutability is itself problematic: All woman is a labyrinth, we can measure ye height of any star, point out all the dimensions of ye earth, examine ye sea’s large wombe, & sound its subtle depth, but art will not bee able to find out, a demonstration of a womans hart. W. A few extracts acknowledge women’s excellence and their equality to men. I am not come to yt degree of wisdom to think light of yt sexe, of whom I had my life. A. Woman is ye gem of heaven, in wch nature hath carv’d ye universe in less characters. LE That I am a woman cannot take of from vertuous deedes: there’s no sexe in the minde. S The Image of ye creator shines as cleerly as in them as in men, & I beleeve there are as many female saints in heaven as male. 2FL The omitted sentence in the third extract here—“my soul’s as Male as yours”—is a declaration of equality of the sexes, though in obviously masculinist terms. It isn’t quite right, it seems, to conclude from these quotations that Evans is misogynistic, but neither can we say that he seeks to counter the prejudices of the age. Perhaps the best that might be said is that his extracts range from the hostile to the laudatory. If not exactly a neutral in the querelle des femmes, Evans at least recognizes the complexity of the woman question, though he knows from other civil wars how difficult it can be to maintain one’s neutrality. The three literary genres—plays, romances, poems—account for a majority of the 356 titles in Hesperides. Evans’s exclusion of sermons and his obvious literary inclination mark Hesperides as a herald in the history of canon formation, or at least in the effort to articulate in the commonplace book, by the commonplace book, a category of the literary. The publisher and the compiler, Moseley and Evans, work together for the foundation of a largely seventeenth-century literary canon, which is text-centered, reading-oriented, socially functional, and politically loaded. Certainly, as Earle Havens has written, “The literary commonplace book… contributed significantly to the invention and consolidation of ‘national’ vernacular literatures during the Renaissance” (2001a, 34). David Kastan expresses the sound

122  Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation view that English literature does not have “a single history and a single point of origin; it has many histories” (2007, 124). This chapter serves as an attempt to add a part to a history of the invention of English literature, and also serves to demonstrate that studies of the manuscript commonplace book, which will enrich our knowledge of early modern canon formation and early modern literary culture, must be performed in greater depth and on a larger scale. Notes 1 For example, Jonathan Brody Kramnick argues that the English canon received its definite shape during the mid-eighteenth century. Shakespeare’s canonical status was not achieved until the mid-eighteenth century (Kastan 2001, 30). According to Wellek, who devotes a whole chapter to Thomas Warton in his Rise of English Literary History (chapter VI), the first history of English literature “in form” was Warton’s three-volume History of English Poetry (viii), published a little later than the mid-eighteenth century (1774–1781). 2 This dramatic claim might seem less sensational if we remember that in the late seventeenth century critics, including Francis Atterbury (1690), Thomas Rymer (1693), Joseph Addison (1694), Sir Thomas Pope Blount (1694), and John Dryden (1700), generally agreed that Waller represented the perfection of English poetry; indeed, one of them went to such an extreme as to identify the poet as the “parent of English verse.” See René Wellek 20, 35, 36, 40. 3 Archer’s Catalogue includes 622 titles, and Kirkman’s Catalogues 685 (1661) and 806 (1671) titles. See Greg, III, 1320–56. 4 Archer’s Catalog, see Louis B. Wright 77. 5 Catalog A actually lists 351 titles; Catalog H lists 302 titles, 4 of which are absent from Catalog A. In addition, J. P. Perrin’s Albingenses (trans. Samson Lennard) is extracted but included in neither catalog. Therefore, Hesperides cites no less than 356 titles. 6 The other 10% are non-fictional prose works: 5, 9, 16, 17, 112, 118, 119, 270, 296, Dodona’s Grove. The numbers are from Catalog A, Folger MS V.b.93. 7 The list is based on Appendix V. No. 245, “Oronta, the Cyprian Virgin,” a translated romance in verse, counts twice. 8 William London, a contemporary with Moseley, classifies “Romances, Poems and Playes” as a distinctive category in his A Catalogue of the Most Vendible Books in England (London, 1657). London’s criterion is usefulness; “Romances, Poems and Playes” are “least usefull of any” (sig. C2) but among the most vendible. Marketability is London’s motive for including the fictional genres. Moseley grouped poems and plays together since 1650 in his publisher’s catalogs: “Choyce Poems, with excellent Translations, and Incomparable Comedies and Tragedies, written by severall Ingenious Authors” (Greg, III, 1170–5). When he first separated the comedies and tragedies from the poems and translations, he introduced a heading for romances. See Moseley’s Separate List V, 1654 (Greg, III, 1176–8). It is tempting to think that Moseley would have classified poems, plays and romances together in a catalog like London’s. 9 Francis Kirkman (trans.), The Loves and Adventures of Clerio & Lozia, London, 1652, sigs. A2v-A3. 10 The same passage appears in Sir Thomas Pope Blount, De Re Poetica: or, Remarks upon Poetry (London, 1694), “Characters and Censures,” sig. D3v. Blount is quoting William Winstanley, The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (London, 1687), p. 128, who cites, in his turn, Edward Phillips without indicating his source. 11 In his An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dryden discusses Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher as the major English dramatists (48–50). The Earl of Rochester writes in “In Defence of Satyr:” “When Shakespear, Johnson, Fletcher, rul’d the Stage, / They

Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation  123 took so bold a Freedom with the Age…” See his Poems on Several Occasions (Antwerp, 1680), sig. C7. The lines are cited in Sir Thomas Pope Blount, De Re Poetica, p. 44. In the nineteenth century, Halliwell-Phillipps cut the Blount page and pasted it in one of his literary scrapbooks (Folger W.b.150, p. 162). 12 As a contrast, about half of the titles listed in London’s Catalogue are “Divinity Books.” 13 For bibliographic information of Jonson’s collections, see Greg, III, 1070–82, and Kewes 1998, Appendix B. 14 Abraham Wright, comp. Parnassus biceps. Or Severall choice pieces of poetry (London, 1656), Wing W3686, sigs. E5r-v. Partly cited in Kewes 1995, 12, and Kastan 2001, 51. 15 “Those Playes which are usually accompanied with amorous Pastoralls, lascivious ribaldrous Songs and Ditties, must needs be unlawfull, yea abominable unto Christians. But Stage-playes are usually accompanied with such Pastorals, Songs, and Ditties as these. Therefore they must needs be unlawfull, yea abominable unto Christians” (sig. 2L3v). 16 Many scholars hold this opinion. For example, David Kastan resembles the role of the drama in early modern England to that of the movie in today’s society (2001, 21). See also Hugh Craig 15. 17 See, for example, Peter Blayney’s remarkable account of the 1623 Shakespeare Folio (1991). 18 For a list of plays issued or registered by Moseley, see Greg, III, 1530–3. 19 In his edited volume, The Culture of Collected Editions, Andrew Nash argues that the collected edition is one of the main determinants of the English canon. For instance, the First Folio helped establish Shakespeare as the central figure in the canon of English literature (3). 20 Unsurprisingly, contemporary satiric response arose to Jonson’s decision to publish plays as Works; see Kastan 2002, 115. 21 See Gerard Langbaine’s Account of the English Dramatic Poets (Oxford, 1691). Discussed in Paulina Kewes 1995, 10, 20, and 1998, 207–18. 22 Or, in Louis B. Wright’s phrases, “The focusing of attention upon the reading of plays, a natural result of the prohibition of acting, tended to increase the prestige of drama as literature” (107–8). 23 Admittedly, judging from the evidence available, Shakespeare’s presence in manuscript circulation was rather limited in the Renaissance period. For a brief summary of manuscript commonplace books that contain extracts from Shakespeare’s plays, prominently Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden, see Arthur F. Marotti and Laura Estill, esp. 65–70. 24 Please compare with Bentley’s earlier statistics: Shakespeare, 154; Beaumont and Fletcher, 112; Ben Jonson, 111; George Chapman, 111; Fulke Greville, 110 (Bentley 199). In Bentley’s working copy, about 157 passages are unassigned; McEvilla counts individual dramatists, and Francis Beaumont has 101 extracts. 25 Please compare with Bentley’s earlier statistics: Beaumont and Fletcher, 40; Shakespeare, 27; James Shirley, 22; Ben Jonson, 11; Philip Massinger, 11 (Bentley 195–8). It is significant that McEvilla adds two more plays by Shakespeare: Love’s Labor’s Lost and The Tempest. 26 The extract is from the quarto. Compare the version in the folio: …for that [i.e. youth], Restrain’d, growes more impatient; and, in kind, Like to the eager, but the generous grey-hound, Who ne’re so little from his game with-held, Turnes head, and leapes vp at his holders throat. (Jonson 1616, 10) 27 The other four passages on youth are, respectively, from Sir William Davenant, The Wits; Thomas Middleton, A Mad World, My Masters; Shackerley Marmion, A Fine Companion; and Thomas Heywood, The English Traveller. 28 From the page numbers we may infer, with the aid of EEBO, that Evans used the 1650 edition of Virgil translated by John Ogilby (Wing V609).

124  Hesperides and Early Modern Canon Formation 29 The same passage is also found in The Discontented Colonell (sig. E3), with only one variant, “Or” for “And.” The Discontented Colonell (1642) is the earlier name of largely the same play. 30 For the list, see “Other Excellent Romances Printed for Humphrey Mosley at the Princes Arms in St. Pauls Church-yard,” on the last page of Cassandra in folio (La Calprenède 1661, Wing L107). Among the titles advertised (but not published) by Moseley, John Pyper published The History of Astrea, and Thomas Walkley published Ariana, The History of Polexander, and The Romant of Romants. 31 This should not blind us to the large amount of original fiction in the century. Of the 450 new titles published in England during the century, 213 were translations. Of the 213 translations, 164 were from French; only 22 from Spanish and 13 from Italian (P. Salzman 114). 32 See John Curtis Reed 104, 114. 33 Erotopageion comes from the title of Laevius’s poem; Laevius was Varro’s (116–27 BC) contemporary. Cyprus worshiped Aphrodite (or Venus), the goddess of love and beauty, so the Cyprian Academy refers to the school that teaches the art of love. 34 Men are also the audience of romances. 35 Sidney calls his An Apologie for Poetrie, a forensic defense and a serious work, “this incke-wasting toy of mine” (G. G. Smith 1: 206). 36 But critics such as Charles Sorel criticize the lack of verisimilitude in the heroic romance and condemn its “falsification of history, geography and chronology” (Ratner 35). Paradoxically, this criticism confirms the principle of verisimilitude in the genre. 37 Meres’s position is similar to Sidney’s, who argues in his Apologie for Poetrie that “there haue beene many most excellent Poets neuer versified” (G. G. Smith 1: 160). 38 A frequent presence in Renaissance commonplace books, Sidney’s Arcadia, of all vernacular prose fiction, joined the company of the esteemed classical works. See Heidi Brayman Hackel’s discussion of Folger MS Add. 774 (2005, 176–80). 39 See Sidney, An Apologie for Poetrie, in G. Gregory Smith 1: 148–207, esp. 164–72. 40 John Cotgrave’s Wits Interpreter (London, 1655) is also entitled “The English Parnassus.” Other books entitled “Parnassus” are Josua Poole’s The English Parnassus (London, 1657), Abraham Wright’s Parnassus Biceps (London, 1656), and Richard Walden’s Parnassus Aboriens (London, 1664). 41 Ann Moss comments that England’s Parnassus “replace[s] the ancient canon of authors and rewrite[s] commonplaces in the language of a new canon of modern poets” (1996, 210). 42 “The Avthors Preface to the Reader,” in STC 19883.5 (1640).

6

Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing

Commonplacing reaches beyond the bounds of Europe. In East Asia, for example, the long tradition of leishu 类书 embodies a certain species of commonplacing. This “beyond” chapter has three sections. First, I shall make a comparative, parallel study of commonplace books and Chinese leishu, in the hope that the two genres can mutually illuminate one another. Second, I will use Matteo Ricci to establish a genuine point of interconnectivity between late Ming China and Renaissance Europe. I explore Ricci’s cross-cultural commonplace writing in his classical Chinese essay On Friendship with a more detailed treatment of the essay’s sources, based on current scholarship. Finally, I attempt to read some of Shakespeare’s sonnets on friendship from the special angle provided by Ricci’s treatise On Friendship, bringing us back to where the book began in early modern England, but the treatise can shed fresh light on Shakespeare’s friendship sonnets. I. A comparative study of commonplace books and Chinese leishu In the English world leishu is usually translated as “encyclopedia” (e.g., Owen 42, 46–7, 157). Granting some similarities between the two genres, the translation conflates genres that do not neatly overlap. Chinese scholars are well aware of the need for clear-cut distinctions, as evidenced in Jiang Chunfang’s book title From Leishu to Encyclopedia (1990). In 2007, Florence Bretelle-Establet and Karine Chemla co-edited a special issue for Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident that was entitled “Qu’était-ce qu’écrire une encyclopédie en Chine?” (What did it mean to write an Encyclopedia in China?). “Encyclopedia” is the Western counterpart of leishu as it exists in the Chinese bibliographic and cultural tradition. The two editors, however, recognize that the translation is deeply problematic, though it is the term that has generally been used since the nineteenth century (9). The title of Jean-Pierre Drège’s opening contribution, “Des ouvrages classés par catégories: les encyclopédies chinoises” clarifies the basic meaning of the Chinese term leishu: works classified by categories: Chinese encyclopedias. It is significant that Drège and other contributors to the volume, such as Ann Blair and Benjamin Elman, employ the pinyin form leishu to refer to the distinctive genre. Blair tackles “the old question of ‘Chinese encyclopedias’” and advocates “studies which, rather than importing a concept already problematic in Europe (that of ‘encyclopedia’), DOI: 10.4324/9781032635699-7

126  Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing establish their own categories of analysis” (2007, 197). I agree with Blair, and the first step of such precise studies is to abandon the confusing term “encyclopedia” or “Chinese encyclopedia” and simply adopt leishu instead.1 In a recent comparative study of the book worlds of East Asia and Europe, 1450–1850, Peter Burke and Joseph McDermott only use leishu, even though they note that its most common translation is “encyclopedia” (268–79). Once, however, it is clear that “encyclopedia” is a misleading translation, and that there may not be an exact Western equivalent for leishu, it becomes possible to see the form’s similarities to the commonplace book. Ann Blair is the only scholar who has noticed this: “For several centuries (between the eleventh and seventeenth centuries) and entirely independently, Chinese leishu and European florilegia have thus developed in parallel, and handling in a similar way the selection and arrangement of excerpts from authoritative authors” (2007, 197). Bretelle-Establet and Chemla provide a minimum definition of leishu: “un livre réunissant un ensemble de connaissances classées par catégories et composé d’extraits de textes préexistants” (9; “a book bringing together a body of knowledge classified by categories and composed of extracts from pre-existing texts”). Like Bretelle-Establet and Chemla, Zhang Chunhui lists three basic conditions for the identification of leishu: classification, extensive coverage, and compiled data (180), and leishu also normally provides cross-references, as do many commonplace books. Starting with the imperial commission of the compilation of Huanglan (Imperial reading, compiled 220–222 AD, lost), Chinese leishu has a long and distinguished tradition. According to Burke and McDermott, over 800 leishu are recorded, of which 200 survive and 10 to 20 are still regularly consulted by scholars (268). Other scholars offer different accountings. In Zhang Chunhui’s estimation, for example, over 700 leishu are recorded, of which over 500 survive (183).2 In view of Zhang’s more carefully articulated criteria for leishu, I believe his statistics are more credible. Quickly leishu spread from China to neighboring countries such as Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, becoming a cultural phenomenon in East Asia (Bai and Wang). Beijing Erudition Digital Technology Research Center has developed the Database of Ancient Chinese Encyclopedias 中国类书库. The first series of the Database is now available for subscriptions, and it contains 300 leishu. By December 2022, 18 libraries from China, Europe, and America have subscribed. The second series is scheduled to be launched in 2025, which will digitize 700 Chinese leishu. The database eventually aims to include 1,000 Chinese leishu, obviously adopting a very broad definition of the term. The number is close to Zhang Dihua’s statistics of 1,035 recorded leishu (42–109). The database will allow a much more systematic study of leishu than has been possible before. Burke and McDermott distinguish three types of Chinese leishu, particularly of the post-1400 period: “the imperial commissioned work, the compilation assembled by and for officials and would-be scholar-officials, and more popular anthologies covering a wide range of subjects” (268). Of the first type, Yongle dadian (Great canon of the Yongle reign, completed in 1408) of the Ming Dynasty is the largest one; actually it is the largest among all ancient leishu, produced by royal commission. Yongle dadian has about 370 million Chinese characters, 22,937 chapters

Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing 127 (juan), including 60 chapters for the table of contents, bound in 11,095 volumes (ce). Never printed, the book existed in three manuscript copies, but now less than 4% is extant, though this preserves over 800 chapters (Encyclopædia, “Yongle dadian”). Gujin tushu jicheng (Collection of texts and illustrations old and new), with 64 copies printed in copper moveable type in 1726, is the largest complete ancient leishu extant (Pei 191): it has 10,000 chapters.3 A third leishu, Chuxue ji (Entry into learning, c. 725) was commissioned by Li Longji, an emperor of the Tang Dynasty, for the education of his princes, to aid their writing with quick reference (D. Hu 95). Created mostly for elite educational purposes, the royal commissioned compilation of comprehensive leishu, typically undertaken at the beginning of a feudal dynasty, also serves to demonstrate imperial cultural richness and sophistication, exercise bibliographic control, and, not least, occupy the often-discontented literati. It is a literary and political project, a cultural repository and an apparatus of state governance. Some specialized leishu are overtly political in nature, Chinese equivalents, perhaps, of the English mirrors for magistrates. For example, Qunshu zhiyao (Gist of books for governance, c. 627) functioned as a convenient conduct book for Li Shimin (reigned 626–649) and other emperors (G. Tang 4). Burke and McDermott’s third type refers to riyong leishu, or encyclopedias for daily use, in Shang Wei’s term. Zhao Yi reminds us that riyong leishu was not intended for the masses (many of whom, in any case, were not literate), but for a middle, gentry class (178, 185), which insured that the social life indirectly reflected in riyong leishu is partial and often distorted (188, 190). But late Ming leishu exerted enormous influence on various written forms, novels and plays eventually, though in the earlier periods leishu mainly influenced the composition of poetry and official documents. Parallel to the commonplace book’s instrumental function in literary production, leishu bears an intimate connection with poetry writing. In his monograph The Poetry of the Early T’ang, Stephen Owen demonstrates, with the example of Yü Shih-nan’s 虞世南 quatrain “The Cicada,” how a Tang courtier poet makes use of leishu for poetic composition. Owen cites four authors collected under the entry “cicada” in Chuxue ji to prove that “almost every element in Yü Shih-nan’s poem is a convention” (49). The Cicada, by Yü Shih-nan Dipping its proboscis, it drinks clear dew; Its floating echoes emerge from the sparse wu-t’ung. It dwells high, its voice naturally goes far, And it need not depend on the autumn wind. (Owen 47) The matching of singing with dew-drinking, the dwelling high, the wu-t’ung tree, the remote voice, the autumn wind—all these elements can be readily found in traditional cicada literature. Replacing the conventional willow with the autumnal wu-t’ung, Yü praises the cicada’s high position and its independence from the autumn wind. With the cicada’s high dwelling the poet implies metaphorically “a pure

128  Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing and noble nature” (Owen 49). A leishu compiler himself, Yü’s poem is “not truly original but possess[es] a certain novelty when set against the tradition of cicada lore” (Owen 49). This “novelty” is grounded upon the variation of literary tradition, with no visible fusion of individual experience. Owen strengthens his point with a further example of border poetry writing: many border poets have never visited the frontier or passes, but view the border scene with the filtered angle of existing border poetry (49–50). Yet Yü Shih-nan could not see Chuxue ji at the time of writing, and the replacement with the earlier Yiwen leiju (Anthology of art and literature, c. 624) would suit Owen’s purpose better (D. Hu 103; Wang and Zhou 8). The emperor as well as the courtier wrote poems with the assistance of leishu. For instance, Li Shimin was good at poems on things, e.g., a cicada poem drawing on Yiwen leiju (Wang and Zhou 17, 46). His son Li Zhi’s (reigned 649–683) two poems on the Double Seventh Festival4 are shown to be a mere pastiche of conventional motifs and images available in different collections including Yiwen leiju (G. Tang 196–202). Such poems—or verbal exercises—rely on reading and lack originality. Many Tang poets, like Wang Bo 王勃, Bai Juyi 白居易, Han Yu 韩愈, Yuan Zhen 元稹, Li Shangyin 李商隐, Wen Tingyun 温庭筠, and Pi Rixiu 皮日休, compiled their own leishu (one or more) to help with their writing; Song poets Huang Tingjian 黄庭坚 and Qin Guan 秦观 did the same thing (G. Tang 10; Wang and Zhou 41; D. Hu 19). Still another Song poet Yan Shu 晏殊 compiled Leiyao (Major categories) from the whole range of his reading in his lifetime. Leiyao cites over 700 books, of which more than 600 are lost; 15 leishu are cited, of which seven are lost (W. Tang 91, 323, 230–7). Among others, Wang Changling 王昌龄 confesses, “All verse writers copy for themselves the quintessential parts of ancient poetry, the so-called ‘vademecum,’ to prevent vain fumbling. When inspiration fails at the time of writing, a look at the vademecum can offer help” (qtd. in G. Tang 9–10). According to the report of a Song book, Bai Juyi ordered thousands of ceramic bottles with topics inscribed on them and then arrayed them on a seven-tiered shelf in the study. The scholars would gather anecdotes and excerpts and put the scraps in the relevant bottles. Finally, the emptied bottles supplied the raw data for the editing of Bai’s famous leishu, Baishi liutie (Bai’s collection in six tablets), which has 1,367 subheads. The story explains why the accumulated materials are deficient in chronological order (D. Hu 103; Wang and Zhou 306). Yuan Mei 袁枚, a Qing writer, compares books to doors and windows and leishu to cabinets and cupboards (Wang and Zhou 294). There exists a manifest affinity between the methods of editing leishu and compiling the commonplace book. In both China and Europe, the reference book renders assistance to literary writing. Poetry writing became part of the civil service examination after 705 AD in China (Wang and Zhou 25). Few exam topics for poetry writing are extant; among these, 11 topics (745–892 AD) are taken from leishu, either Chuxue ji or Yiwen leiju (Wang and Zhou 40). Leishu as examination aids belong to the second type of Burke and McDermott’s leishu. The Tang emperors promoted the national fashion of poetry writing, and the imperial examination system fueled the booming of leishu. The classification schemes of leishu range “from various topical arrangements (e.g., heavens, earth, man, ceremonies, and so on) to phonetic ones (like the Yongle

Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing 129 Dadian in which the headings were sorted by rhyme and initial syllable)” (Blair 2010, 30), though this is true of European commonplace books as well. For example, in his De formando studio in quolibet artium et sacrarum et prophanarum genere consilium (A plan for the formation of study in every kind of arts, both sacred and profane; Frankfurt, 1550), a German scholar, Jodocus Willichius, suggests headings that represent the world of literature and natural things, listing them “in descending order from ‘names of gods, muses, heroes, angels, or spirits (both good and bad), feast-days, hymns, ministers of the church’ by way of the liberal arts, man, his physical parts, ills, and social organization, down to animals of all kinds” (Moss 1996, 145). Such categorization roughly follows the hierarchical organization of the Great Chain of Being. As intellectual historian Ge Zhaoguang says, “classification is the order of thought” (408), and this is true in both East and West, even though the thought and its order unsurprisingly differs. The common order of categories in leishu like Yiwen leiju represents the normalization of knowledge and thought by mainstream ideology, namely Confucianism. Heaven and earth (with “seasons and festivals” in between) precede emperors, humans follow emperors, then various aspects of human society, and finally natural things. Such an order reveals hierarchical structures that are central to ancient Chinese thought.5 Leishu, with its classification and content, defines normalized (that is, Confucian) thought and contributes to a stable literary tradition and a stable society. Within any individual topic, leishu cite authors “in descending order of authority, with the Confucian classics in first place” (Blair 2010, 31). The sources are often, but not inevitably, duly given: Baishi liutie contains no notation of sources originally, but Chao Zhongyan 晁仲衍 of the Song dynasty took care to add all the sources for the reader’s convenience (D. Hu 102). Admittedly, not all leishu are serious. The poems collected in riyong leishu in the late Ming, for instance, are comic, obviously meant to be comic, though of different varieties: doggerel; word play; laughing poems (which may make a modern reader uncomfortable): at the lame, at the blind, at the near-sighted, at the hunchbacked, at the penis, at the vagina, at the monk, at the nun, etc. The items cater to the vulgar taste of the consumer society by poking fun at marginalized groups in these lowbrow genres. The existence of such books undercuts the idea that the Confucian approach to literature characterized by social responsibility and moral teaching is exclusive. Whatever one makes of the humor, the book complicates the conception of leishu, and reveals the diversity of the actual literary history.6 Like their counterpart in the commonplace book, the extracts of leishu, in whatever mode, often undergo a process of “spontaneous editing.” Lin Xiaoguang’s case study of Yiwen leiju compellingly reveals such a process. For example, Shen Yue’s 沈约 “Jiaoju fu” (Fu on suburban living) is shortened from 2601 to 633 characters. Whole passages are deleted without indication; the original work is abridged or adapted freely. The stylistic signals are ignored, so that the generic identity of the cited work might be mistaken. Quotations are decontextualized, dehistoricized, and rhetoricized. In some cases, we are unable to detect the alterations, for the original has been lost. The abundance of variants may be regarded as a norm in manuscript culture, whether in China or Europe, and Lin usefully reminds

130  Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing us that the selected passages in Yiwen leiju cannot be automatically assumed to be the original. At best Yiwen leiju presents a distorted image of the Six Dynasties literature. How to remove the layers of changes to reach the pristine form is a great scholarly challenge, which may be impossible to achieve.7 Nonetheless, a better knowledge of the tradition of the commonplace book and its “spontaneous editing” may be valuable for conjecturing the originals of excerpted literary specimens in leishu, if only by analogy. If the textual condition of leishu is similar to that of the commonplace book, so are its intended functions. These include reference, for the emperor and courtiers, poets and scholars, gentry and merchants; education, civil service examination manual, aid to writing; and preservation of books and texts, collation, recovering scattered or lost writings. Ann Blair has noted that “the role of leishu in exam preparation and the place of exams in intellectual and cultural life in China are unparalleled in medieval or modern Europe” (2007, 193). But leishu played many other roles, perhaps more similar to the role of the commonplace book in Europe. Like the commonplace book, it was a reference book, a style manual, and a book of quotations that might be enjoyed for its own sake.8 The bibliographic functions of leishu and commonplace books have been what modern academics have usually been most interested in. Yiwen leiju quotes from 1431 books, of which less than 10% are extant (D. Hu 79). The Siku quanshu (Complete books of the Four Treasuries) compilers in the eighteenth century gathered as many as 515 long-lost books from Yongle dadian (D. Hu 26). In quotation and collation, caution, of course, must be exercised with the use of leishu, whose texts are often problematic or even erroneous (Du 240; D. Hu 30), but leishu themselves do need to be collated in the effort to produce optimal texts (D. Hu 31). John Cotgrave’s commonplace book English Treasury of Wit and Language (1655) quotes 58 dramatists, and the works cited include Thomas Middleton’s manuscript play Mayor of Quinborough (12 passages), the lost text of Richard Brome’s The City Wit (9 extracts), and a lost fragment of Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Coxcomb (2 quotations; see Part I, Chapter 5). For this reason, English Treasury of Wit and Language is listed as a source for the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Lost Plays Database. Despite its many merits, leishu also has some obvious weaknesses or disadvantages. According to Zhu Xi 朱熹, the leading neo-Confucian philosopher in the Song Dynasty, “leishu encouraged fragmented, careless, and cursory reading, whereas true learning required slow reading and deep understanding of the classics and memorization of passages with attention to their original context” (Blair 2010, 32). It is no doubt true that the shortcut to knowledge made available in leishu cannot substitute the close, intensive reading of classical works, but it is useful to be reminded how common the practice of discontinuous reading was. In terms of poetry writing, the abuse of leishu might result in the piling up of fancy phrases and the overload of obscure allusions. Wen Yiduo 闻一多 labels mockingly such uninspired, superficial poems as “poems a la mode leishu” (8). Song poets Yang Yi 杨亿 and Qian Weiyan 钱惟演 write riddle-like poems “Tears” by imitating their literary model Li Shangyin (Wang and Zhou 179). The poems are an enumeration of allusions related with tears, but the word tear never appears. While Li

Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing 131 Shangyin’s skillful poem is a tour de force, his imitators usually fail to touch the reader with their inferior poetry. But the faults of leishu are not born with them, but are caused by their abuses. Well used, quality leishu are an enormously valuable resource, both for what it preserves and what it represents. Like the commonplace book, leishu can play an important role in the process of canon formation (Wang and Zhou 36, 258), because leishu not merely collect texts but arrange them, determining what texts are worth reading and placing them in relation to one another. William Poole reports a previously unnoticed seventeenthcentury commonplace book, Exeter University Library MS 40, which contains four citations from Spenser’s Faerie Queene alongside numerous extracts from Greek and Roman writers such as Homer, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid (2016, 554–5). The juxtaposition, which allows Spenser to exist in the company of the best classical writers, if maybe not itself responsible for the canonization of Spenser, reveals that the English poet can hold his own in very illustrious company. Another of the effects of the two commonplacing forms is that both help cultivate, perhaps for better and worse, thematic studies of literature and give rise to comparative literary criticism. Qian Zhongshu’s 钱锺书 intertextual, intercultural criticism of classical poetry savors strongly of the impact of leishu and commonplace books.9 As Ann Moss comments, “the commonplace-book could provide not only a model for the writer, but a method for the critic” (1996, 200). Wu Chengxue argues that the connection between leishu and literary criticism is embodied in two primary aspects: establishing the classification system and embodying, if not always articulating, principles of selection (Wang and Zhou 261). The relationships between leishu and literary reception, dissemination, criticism, and canonization await to be further studied, especially from a comparative and cross-cultural perspective, but it is obvious that this will prove of value. II. Matteo Ricci’s Cross-Cultural Commonplace Writing It is perhaps a mere truism that Burke and McDermott assert: “As the practitioners of histoire croisée or ‘connected history’ urge their colleagues, both comparisons and contrasts need to take account of possible links between the items compared” (281). Fortunately, for this study, the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci’s 利玛窦 (1552–1610) Chinese treatise Jiaoyou lun (交友论, On Friendship) supplies exactly such a link of interconnectivity. It was the Jesuit mission of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that connected China with Europe, as the Jesuits visited for the purpose of spreading Christianity in the late Ming Dynasty. Among these Jesuits, Matteo Ricci was unquestionably the most influential, and is still remembered today as a prominent precursor of Sino-Western cultural exchange, remaining an object of diligent scholarly study. The present section attempts to deal with Ricci’s first book written in classical Chinese, On Friendship: One Hundred Maxims for a Chinese Prince, thinking about it from the angle of commonplace writing. Ricci’s translingual practice defines a new species of commonplace writing, which I would like to call “cross-­ cultural commonplace writing.” This accounts—at least partially—for the appeal

132  Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing of On Friendship to feudal Chinese intellectuals.10 Ricci’s deliberate choice of cross-cultural commonplace writing enacts and exploits the very chord of sympathy between China and the West, which has allowed his book to echo sonorously since the late Ming. The Chinese readers’ familiarity with leishu helps with the smooth reception of Ricci’s On Friendship, in which the Chinese and European species of commonplacing meet and merge. Ricci was born in Macerata, Italy, in 1552. In 1561, he became a pupil in the Jesuit school in his hometown. In 1568, he went to Rome to study law (Spence xiii). According to Jonathan D. Spence, “The culture that [Ricci] brought to China and slowly learned to translate and reinterpret was essentially that body of knowledge he learned during a year at the Jesuit college in Florence—from late 1572 to October 1573—and subsequently in the faculty of arts in the Roman college, where he studied between late 1573 and 1577. In broadest terms, this consisted of moral philosophy on the one hand and the mathematical sciences on the other” (140). In his biography of Ricci, Spence adopts memory as the structuring thread of his book and emphasizes the central importance of mnemonic skills to Ricci, but he fails to mention the commonplace book as an educational tool in sixteenth-century Europe, with which Ricci must have been very familiar from his early years. Erasmus explicated the advantages of keeping a commonplace book in distinctive architectural metaphors (firmly in your mind, stored up, vaults, pigeonholes, etc.),11 which are meant to be literal. Cicero’s time-honored concept of loci communes (common places; Beal 2008, 82) reveals that the extracts are common property for recycling and also that these extracts are stored in certain places in the keeper’s mind. The lasting tradition of training memory through precise placement can be traced to the Greek poet Simonides, whose story Ricci narrates in his Treatise on Mnemonic Arts (Xiguo jifa 西国记法) (Spence 2–3). Ricci’s extraordinary memory of Chinese classics impressed the late Ming literati so much that the governor of Jiangxi, Lu Wangai 陆万陔, requested Ricci to teach his magic mnemonic art to his three sons (Spence 4). Ricci elaborated on the Western memory art as applied to the Chinese characters and presented his classical Chinese treatise to Governor Lu as a gift. In essence, Ricci’s theory of memory palace accords well with the theory and practice of commonplace book keeping. In fact, Ricci’s memory palace, made up of various memory locations in the mind, may be understood as a metaphor for the commonplace book. In 1582, Ricci arrived in Macau. From 1583 until his death in 1610, Ricci lived and worked in mainland China. In November 1595, Ricci composed his treatise On Friendship in classical Chinese, presumably at the request of the Prince of Jian’an Commandery, his hospitable host in Nanchang. The Prince is reported by Ricci to be saying: “The nations of the Far West are nations of virtue and righteousness. I wish that I could hear what their discourses on the way of friendship are like.” In response, Ricci “compiled this Way of Friendship in one volume” “from the sayings of old I had heard since my youth” (Billings 89). It seems as if Ricci was working out of his legendary memory. In 2000, a British Library manuscript in the North collection (formerly owned by Frederick North, the fifth Earl of Guilford, acquired by the library in the early

Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing 133 nineteenth century) was identified as an early draft of On Friendship in Ricci’s autograph, which contains 76 maxims in Chinese accompanied by Ricci’s own Italian translations (Billings 14–5). Later, Ricci added more maxims and brought the number to the perfect hundred. Ricci’s process of rewriting—both translation and compilation—deserves closer scholarly attention. He does not identify the sources of his gathered aphorisms, but accumulated scholarly work12 indicates that the major source for Ricci’s On Friendship is Andreas Eborensis’s Sententiae et exempla (Paris, 1590), which is a standard Latin commonplace book. Ricci’s Chinese rewriting should be understood as a rich cluster of 100 maxims under the single commonplace heading “Friendship (amicitia in Latin).” The “seemingly haphazard collection of axioms” (Liu 170) or “a mere pastiche of common authors” (Billings 54) is actually a miniature commonplace book. Timothy Billings, On Friendship’s first English translator, points out that Ricci took three quarters of his maxims from Sententiae et exempla, “using not only the section on amicitia (friendship), but also the sections on inimicitia (enmity), pax (peace), and affinitas (relation)” (157). I may supply more commonplace headings utilized by Ricci, e.g., societas et conversatio (fellowship and association), all of which, maybe paradoxically, confirm the book’s actual genre as a commonplace book, though one that in fact does have only a single heading. 66. The true flavour of the friendly relations between good friends become[s] more palpable after they are lost. Amicitiæ consuetudines, & vicinitates, quid habeant voluptatis, carendo magis intelligimus, quàm fruendo. (Cicero) But as for the habits and affinities of friendship, what’s pleasurable in them we understand more by its absence than by its fruition.13 As Cicero’s Latin original shows, this maxim, although drawn from the heading societas et conversatio, is indeed about friendship, and it is fit and proper for Ricci to select it. In other cases, nevertheless, Ricci distorts the Latin original to suit his purpose of friendship discourse. 53. If you do not help a friend in urgent need, then when you are in urgent need you have no one to help you. Qui sociis periclitantibus non succurrit facillimè deseritur. (Demosthenes) The one who fails to come to the succour of his pals will easily be deserted himself. 55. One can guard against other kinds of people, but as for friends, how can one guard against those? For if one is suspicious of one’s friends, then one greatly offends against the way of friendship. Tecti ad alios esse possumus, socium verò cavere, qui possumus? quem etiam si metuimus, ius officii violamus. (Cicero) Guarded against others we surely can be, but who of us has it in him to guard against his own associate? And indeed, if we should beware of him, we would offend the duties of our office!

134  Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing 89. If someone else is not a friend but he is in good faith with you, you should not deceive him. If you deceive him, this is as if you go as far as to hate him. In rebus minimis socium fallere turpissimum est. (Cicero) In trifling matters, to cheat on an associate is a most ugly thing to do. (my italics) In these three maxims, which also belong originally to the topic societas et conversatio, Ricci appropriates the Latin expressions in the same way: He tacitly makes the substitution of socii (associates) with friends, not trying to deceive his Chinese friends, which he knows to be “a most ugly thing” that he should not do (maxim 89 above). But the proverbs on fellowship and association are plausibly recast as ones on friendship. Ricci is adapting rather than translating, though of course, as we have seen earlier, that is a familiar commonplacing procedure.14 The Italian Jesuit rewrites extracts under other commonplace headings in a similar manner. 85. The idea of a doctor is to use bitter medicine to cure the diseases of others. The tendency of the sycophantic friend is to use sweet words to manipulate the assets of others. Sicut finis oratoris est, dictione persuasisse, & medici, medicina curasse: sic adulatoris est finis suauiloquio decepisse. (Dio Chrysostomos; Plutarch) Just as it is the final aim of an orator to come to have persuaded with his speech, and that of a medic to have cured by the use of medicine: so it is the ultimate aim of the flatterer to have deceived through honeyed speech. 45. Good faith in relation to an enemy can still not be deviated from. How much less [sic]15 good faith in relation to a friend. Showing good faith to friend goes without saying. Fides etiam perfidis prætanda. (Ambrose) Good faith is to be shown even to the perfidious. Fides etiam hosti seruanda. (Augustine) Even to the enemy good faith is to be preserved. (my italics) In Eborensis, maxim 85 is placed under adulatio (flattery), and maxim 45 under fiducia et fidelitas (confidence and fidelity) and fides et fidelis (faith and faithful).16 The flatterer becomes the sycophantic friend, and in Ambrose’s and Augustine’s Latin adages, the concept friend does not appear at all. Ricci’s translation is not faithful, but rather flexible; he exercises the freedom of a commonplace writer, though a freedom that commonplace writers had often assumed. Ricci employs the commonplace technique of paraphrasing to organize his extracts. For example, he rephrases one of Cicero’s axioms in three different ways. 5. When for the time being one is facing peace without trouble, it is hard to point to a friend being true or false. The moment one faces difficulties, then the true feelings of a friend come out into the open. In fact, when matters are critically difficult, the true ones of one’s friends become closer to one, the false ones take more and more distance to one.

Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing 135 14. When one has only tested at points where one was in good luck, the friendship may not be trusted. 26. As for the firmness of friendship, it is in the infirmities of oneself that this is tested so as to come out clearly. Christoph Harbsmeier renders Cicero’s Latin original—Amicus certus in re incerta cernitur—also in three different ways, corresponding respectively to the above three quotations: A certain friend may be recognized in an uncertain situation. A stable friend will be recognized under conditions of instability. A friend in need is a friend indeed! “A friend in need is a friend indeed!” This idea frequently recurs in Ricci’s essay, though the source is not limited to Cicero. 41. If one is constantly in good luck and suffers no disasters, how will one ever know whether one’s friends are real or false? (Quintilian) 64. When one is flourishing he will come and visit only when asked; when one is in trouble he will come uninvited. Such a person is a friend indeed! (Demosthenes) 25. If with a view to wealth or power one befriends others, then, when the wealth or power disappears then one will withdraw (from the friendship) and be separated. This means that since one does no longer see that through which the friendship took shape, the true nature of the friendship evaporates, as a result. (Cicero) 83. The friends one has got to make through one’s affluence one is bound to avoid when one is suffering disaster. (Plutarch) Maxims 25 and 83 make similar points, though deriving from different authors. True friendship is tested through adversity, and superficial friendship might evaporate when faced with disaster: this idea also occurs in maxims 53, 63, and 74. These ten aphorisms are scattered throughout the treatise, with no apparent order or rule.17 But rather than ineptness, this seems an example of the Erasmian principle of copia. Ricci is interested not only in the subject but in its expression and his ingenuity in writing may also be demonstrated in his cross-cultural emulation of Plutarch. 67. If you stay near a dyeing factory, you have close relations with dyers, and you will get close to the colorings used in dyeing, then it is difficult [not] to have your person defiled. When you mix with bad persons, and you

136  Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing constantly watch and listen to their ugly deeds, then your mind gets used to this and you will defile your mind in this way. In the Latin commonplace book, the Plutarch quotation appears under the heading societas et conversatio, “If you will have walked about next to a lame person you will learn to walk about like a lame person.” The negative impact of a bad association is expounded, but no dyeing is mentioned. Performing his writing by analogy, Ricci transforms the example from a physical one (perhaps not believing it is true) to one that is seemingly uncontestable: the metaphor of dyeing and dyers to explain the mind-defiling consequences of bad company. Ricci’s preference for the literary (Cf. the popular Chinese phrase “dye vat,” referring to the contagious environment) to the theatrical conforms to the Chinese cultural tradition. In another example of how to avoid corruption, there is the well-known story of the mother of Mencius moving three times to find good neighbors to facilitate the moral growth of her son. Ricci’s treatise On Friendship stems from the European humanist training he received in the Jesuit educational program, which is briefly described by Yu Liu (175). Yu Liu is, however, unimpressed by the essay’s philosophical rigor. In my view, this feature is less a function of Ricci’s intellectual limitations than of On Friendship’s commonplace source and commonplace structure. Instead of aiming for intellectual precision Ricci seeks a common ground for Sino-Western communication. His ingenuity lies rather in his capability for cultural adaptation for covert evangelistic purposes. Ricci’s writing strategy is a cultural practice consistent with the Jesuit policy of missionary accommodationism.18 Initially, the Jesuits tried to convert the Chinese locals in Macau “into not only Christians but also people with Portuguese names, clothes, and customs,” but failed (Liu 168). A different policy needed to be developed for the Chinese mainland, and Ricci’s writing experiment became part of what was their new and successful stage of missionary accommodationism. Maxim 16 is a case in point of Ricci’s manner of smuggling religious content into classical teachings: 16. Each person cannot complete every undertaking. Therefore the Lord of Heaven has ordered them to make friends so as to help each other. If one removed the Way from the world, mankind would disintegrate and be ruined. Quia non possumus per nos omnia agere (alius enim in alia re est magis vtilis), idcirco amicitiæ comparantur, vt commune commodum mutuis officiis gubernatur. (Cicero) Since we cannot do everything through ourselves (everyone has his uses in his own different areas), therefore friendships are arranged in such a way that the common good be governed by mutual duties. Cicero’s Latin original has no God or the Lord of Heaven; Ricci adds “Lord of Heaven” 天主 to his essay. In the early printed editions (Billlings 96; Zhu 145), we find the variant 上帝 (God), which Billings translates as “the Lord on High.” The variant “Lord of Heaven” is noticed by Christoph Harbsmeier, but is missed

Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing 137 in Billings’s otherwise careful collations. Ricci’s silent addition of the Catholic God19 changes the nature of the aphorism radically: Cicero’s emphasis on the “crucial concept” (Harbsmeier 183) of public good (commune commodum) disappears from Ricci’s adaptation; instead, the divine command assumes the place. “If one removed the Way from the world, mankind would disintegrate and be ruined.” This sentence reminds the reader of the Babel story in the Bible, so that “the Way” sounds more like the Christian divine Way than the Way of Friendship. In a word, Ricci Christianizes the classical humanist teaching. Isn’t this a demonstration of Christian humanism? The absence of the source note grants the compiler the advantage of transforming the Latin original for his own missionary purpose, though it should be noted that the phrase, the Lord of Heaven or the Lord on High, appears only twice among the 100 maxims (maxims 16 and 56). 56. The Lord of Heaven supplied man with a pair of eyes, a pair of ears, a pair of hands, and a pair of feet, and he wished that they aided each other like a pair of friends do and only then will one’s undertakings reap success. Ipsi quoque homini duplices manus, socias aures, oculos geminos Deus tribuit, vt robustius perageretur officium, quod, duorum fuerat societate complendum. (Cassiodorus) To man himself the God attributed two hands, a pair of ears, a pair of eyes, so that man should fulfill his duties, which duty was to be fulfilled not by one thing but by two. Under each commonplace heading in Sententiae et exempla, there are usually three parts: Ex Græcis, Ex Latinis, Ex Sacris. The above excerpt from Cassiodorus is the first one in Ex Sacris under societas et conversatio. The word Deus is indeed there, and Ricci plausibly translates it as the Lord of Heaven or the Lord on High (again, we have variants here in On Friendship). Ricci’s real addition is “a pair of friends,” which is absent from the original. He brings three things together into an analogical whole: human physiology, the way of friendship, and the divine creation. Both maxims (16 and 56) can be used to argue for the necessity of human marriage (or the pairing of man and woman), which is found in Genesis. Here it is unsurprising that Ricci the missionary uses them as a rationale for human friendship, but Ricci’s “friendship” is part of his “Christianizing” project. A Chinese reader of Ricci, Wang Kentang 王肯堂 quotes maxim 56 in his collectanea, but he changes Ricci’s “Lord on High” or “Lord of Heaven” to the naturalistic “Heaven” (tian 天) (Billings 64), showing his resistance to the Western religion. According to my statistics, around 20% of the maxims are Christian in nature. While the majority of the extracts (nearly 80%) are from Greek and Roman authors such as Aristotle, Cicero, Plutarch, Quintilian, and Seneca, the church fathers are also present, like Augustine, Ambrose, Cyprian, and Jerome. Ricci admits in a letter of 1599 that “…where it was necessary, I changed several things in the sayings and sententiae of our philosophers, [and] some things I took from our Christian writers” (qtd. in Billings 9). The religious percentage is perhaps surprisingly low, which might suggest Ricci’s wariness in his experiment, or perhaps his desire not to make his Christianizing too obvious, or possibly, as Augustine himself knew,

138  Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing that some classical sources anticipated and confirmed Christian teachings. Some recent scholars have, however, denied that On Friendship conveys the Christian humanism of the European Renaissance. Sun Qi, for example, argues that most of the hundred maxims are merely the Sinicization of Greek and Roman sayings, but she ignores so much that is decisive evidence corroborating Ricci’s Christianization of classical heritage. The religious content of On Friendship is not merely in maxim 56, as Sun misconceives (30), but extends to at least 20 maxims. It would be strange if a Jesuit missionary merely Sinicized classical proverbs for his Chinese friends with the minimum amount of religious expression. The truth is that Ricci grasped the opportunity to write a commonplace book—a genre somewhat familiar to those readers of leishu—that would in part serve to advance his proselytizing mission, cautiously but determinedly. It is noteworthy, as Pasquale D’Elia has pointed out, that Erasmus is the only contemporary author cited in On Friendship (in maxim 24). Erasmus, of course, is the most influential of the Christian humanists and also a committed commonplacer. Jonathan Spence also notes the importance of this singular attribution: “All that startles us now is that this phrase [referring to maxim 24] comes from Erasmus” (150).20 Sententiae et exempla provides “Erasm. in Epist.” as the source for the Latin original of maxim 24, and Ricci follows his source. This seems straightforward, except for the fact that maxim 24 in fact is not from Erasmus, as both Billings and Harbsmeier have noted, but from St. Augustine. The truth might be that Erasmus quoted Augustine, or that Andreas Eborensis misattributed his passage. But Ricci indeed “was happy to use Erasmus,” as Spence says (150), happy to invoke his prestige and with no reason to doubt the attribution. And two other maxims in Ricci’s essay indeed spring from Erasmus: 29. Things, among friends, are all common among them. 95. This refers to the fact that the property of friends is always in common. Billings and Harbsmeier both list three sources for the saying: Aristotle, Pythagoras (quoted in Diogenes Laertius), and Erasmus, but the latter is puzzled about the exact location in Erasmus’s Adagia. Actually, this is the very first proverb in the Adages: Amicorum communia omnia. Between friends all is common. (Barker 28) Ricci’s concise Chinese version comes much closer to Erasmus than to Aristotle, “The commonality of benefits is a necessary part in friendship.” Eventually a collection of over 4,000 proverbs, the constantly-growing Adages was published in over 130 editions in the sixteenth century (Sowards 129, note 8), but this proverb always remained first in the numbered sequence in the editions from 1508 onwards (Barker 28). As William Barker comments, “Friendship is a central theme in the Adages; the work begins with ‘Between friends all is common’ and the topical index in the 1536 edition lists over sixty other proverbs on this same subject” (359). Why did Erasmus attach so much importance to this old saying? Because it

Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing 139 appealingly demonstrates a convergence of classical and Christian thought, as well as a fundamental social desideratum. As Erasmus explains, this proverb ultimately originated in ancient Greek and many writers in antiquity had quoted it: not only Aristotle and Pythagoras, but also Euripides, Terence, Menander, Cicero, Plato, Martial, Theophrastus (quoted in Plutarch), etc. Plato argues that “the happiest condition of a society consists in the community of all possessions” (Barker 29), granting to the proverb a political potential. Moreover, “nothing was ever said by a pagan philosopher which comes closer to the mind of Christ,” for the sharing of life and property is “the very thing Christ wants to happen among Christians” (Barker 29–30). As Erasmus sees it, “an ocean of philosophy, or rather of theology, is opened up to us by this tiny proverb” (Barker 28). Erasmus is not a mere pedant; he makes a trenchant social criticism with the apparently harmless collection of and commentary on the common property of proverbs. Erasmus’s Adagia is “a central text in the European tradition;” “As a synthesis of classical and Renaissance proverb lore the Adages has never really been superseded” (Barker xxv). It was “among the most learned and widely circulated of Latin books during the early modern period” (Barker i). The problem is that Ignatius of Loyola had criticized the proto-Protestant writer Erasmus and “in the late sixteenth century [Erasmus] was not normally considered proper fare for Jesuit readers” in the Counter-Reformation Europe (Spence 150). Nevertheless, censored editions of Adagia were published in the later sixteenth century in Florence, Venice, and Paris, which were cleverly dedicated to Pope Gregory XIII (r. 1572–1585) for protection, and “these editions allowed the free circulation of most of Erasmus’ text in Italy after his work had been placed on the Index in the 1550s” (Barker xxiv). All in all, it was possible for Ricci to access Erasmus’s extremely influential Adagia during his years of education in Italy. I endorse Spence’s sensible judgement: “That Ricci was happy to use Erasmus suggests that he was seeking the fullest range of significant quotation, not just the narrowly orthodox” (150). That Ricci’s treatise Sinicizes the Greek and Roman sayings is just one side of the truth; Christian humanism lies at the core of the commonplace writing in On Friendship. Ricci follows Erasmus’s steps with his trans-historical commonplace writing, as the Jesuit missionary brings the tradition to China. In Ricci’s compilation, Augustine’s merging with classical writers is another prominent case of the fundamental intellectual procedures of Christian humanism. Let us look at the typical example of maxim 1, which serves as the epigraph of On Friendship, placed after the proem and immediately before the title of the treatise. 1. One’s friend is nothing else than this: he is one’s (other) half. That is to say he is another “oneself.” And so one must look upon a friend as one looks upon oneself. Amicus, animae dimidium. (Augustine) Amicus se debet habere ad amicum tamquam ad seipsum, quia amicus est alter ipse. (Aristotle) Both Augustine and Aristotle are cited in Sententiae et exempla (61v and 55r respectively). In Confessions 4.6.2, Augustine regards the friend as “half soul”

140  Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing (animae dimidium); in Nicomachean Ethics 9.4, Aristotle defines the friend to be “another oneself” (alter ipse). By combining the two, Ricci achieves a synthesis, in subject and in form, a Renaissance encomium on Friendship in the Chinese language. With this epigraph he intends to combine his own identity as a foreigner into the native Chinese self. Other proverbs mixing the Christian and the classical include: Augustine and Cicero (maxims 32 and 72), Augustine and Valerius (maxim 36), Augustine and Seneca (maxim 86). Nonetheless, the combination is not so easily achieved. As Billings notices, Jiao Hong 焦竑 (1540–1620) misunderstands Ricci’s epigraph dictum: “In the European tradition, the notion of identity indicated by the ‘second self’ carries a sense of equality and mutual respect between friends: it has nothing directly to do with a reliance on friends for the cultivation of virtue” (27–8). The misunderstanding arises from a cultural ignorance on the part of early Chinese readers, for behind Ricci’s proverb is “the famous myth attributed to Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium of an imaginary origin for humankind in which all people had four arms and four legs and were later split into two halves, forcing them to spend their lives in search of their missing half,” in Billings’s succinct phrasing (28). This should not be seen as criticism but only as the reality of the inevitable gaps and misunderstandings between heterogeneous cultures, usually harmless and mostly overcome as the contact continues. Ricci’s diligently acquired expertise in traditional Chinese culture enables him to indigenize the Western proverbs for a better acceptance among the Chinese literati. Erasmus’s idea that “Between friends all is common” harmonizes with the Confucian notion that “Among friends there is the righteousness of sharing wealth” (see Zhu Xi’s commentary on the Analects, qtd. in Billings 33). And, of course, the commonplaces themselves become part of what is shared. Ricci employs the Confucian concepts of junzi (君子, the honorable man) and xiaoren (小人, the dishonorable/petty man) skillfully, as Western commonplaces are Sinicized. 70. How magnificent the honorable man is! How magnificent the honorable man is! Sometimes even without the use of speech, and even without the show of indignation, his virtuous authority can prevent immoral actions. (Billings 121) 28. The dishonorable man makes friends like a usurer: he merely calculates how much the interest is. (Billings 103) 62. The honorable man makes friends with difficulty; the petty man makes friends with ease. What comes together with difficulty comes apart with difficulty; what comes together with ease comes apart with ease. (Billings 117) Ricci merges Chinese commonplaces with Western ones, as the European commonplace tradition had merged Christian commonplaces with classical ones. Cultures, no doubt, “come together with difficulty,” but that difficulty is precisely what will allow the differences to be transcended.

Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing 141 Ricci’s principle of yi (义, rectitude) for friendship is similarly transformed from the idea of Western classical religious obligation: 46. The obligation of friendship goes as far as rectitude permits, and no further than that! Amicis vsque ad aras vtendum est. (Plutarch quoting Diogenes the cynic) Friends are to be relied upon–until it gets to the religious business of the altars (at which point friendship must yield to religion). Ricci’s rewriting Confucianizes the Greek and Roman saying. In maxim 32, the classical (Cicero), the Christian (Augustine), and the Confucian (rectitude) meet together. Similarly, in maxim 54, the contrast between “vulgar friends” and “justand-true friends” embodies a Confucianization of the Western thought. Billings argues that Ricci’s brilliant fusion of Plutarch and Zhu Xi in maxim 54 creates “a truly transcultural textual moment” (63).21 Like rectitude, Ricci’s other principles for friendship are all familiar Confucian notions: de (德, virtue): “making friends only on the basis of virtue” (maxim 30), “Enduring virtue is the bait for enduring friendship” (maxim 90); ren (仁, benevolence): “My friends must needs be GOOD, and then they understand what it is to love others, and then they understand what it is to hate others” (Ricci’s commentary on maxim 52; cf. Mencius’s definition of ren in The Book of Mencius: “The benevolent man loves others”); xin (信, good faith) (maxims 45, 89); and cheng (诚, sincerity) (maxim 58). Ricci’s sophisticated command of classical Chinese matches his sensitive understanding of Confucian culture. His Sinicization of Western classical and Christian commonplace aphorisms is primarily a Confucianization of the material; and yet it should be pointed out that Ricci’s representation of Confucian culture has unsurprisingly been Westernized. For instance, concerning the Confucian concept of ren, Ricci emphasizes hating others as well as loving others. His dialectical thinking is also evidenced in maxim 86: 86. If you cannot be a friend to yourself, how can you be a friend to others? Befriending oneself is made a prerequisite for befriending others; hospitality begins at home. Here, Ricci is following Seneca and Augustine; the Roman and Christian thoughts work together to renew Chinese views of friendship. But the kernel of the maxim is also Confucian: in the Analects we find the dictum “Do as one would be done by others” 推己及人. The art of befriending others starts with self-befriending. In the late Ming period, the Yangming School of Mind reconsidered the nature of the traditional “five cardinal relationships” (wulun, 五伦). Wulun refers to the five Confucian relationships between ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife, brothers, and friends. Although Shakespeare describes friends as those “Whose soules do bear an equall yoak of love” in The Merchant of Venice (3.4.13, cited in Cotgrave 113 under Friendship), friendship, the only egalitarian relationship, is placed as the last of the wulun in traditional China. In the pervasive

142  Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing friendship discourses in the late Ming,22 however, Li Zhi 李贽, a zealous reader of Ricci’s On Friendship (Zou 53), openly discards the first four relations and retains only the relation between friends (Billings 46). In other words, Li Zhi subverts the order of wulun entirely, even to the degree of annihilating the four hierarchical relationships. A call for equality starts to supersede the Confucian hierarchical social order. Ricci’s On Friendship, with its frequent references in the writings by late Ming literati, along with other Jesuit writings, are what allow friendship to become the first of the cardinal relationships (Billings 52). It is Ricci’s cross-cultural extension of commonplace writing in On Friendship that determines its continued importance for understanding the genre, and allows it to take a place along with Montaigne’s essay “On Friendship” (91–105) and Bacon’s essay “Of Friendship” (2012, 77–83) as among the most consequential considerations of what friendship means, even as Ricci’s work in accommodating his commonplaces to a new audience itself demonstrates the principles as they might shape lives and cultures. His fusion of the alien and the familiar, the ideal and the practical, the individual and the state, makes the miniature commonplace book an extraordinary piece of writing that serves as an image of what it hopes can be achieved in the world. III. A Riccian reading of some sonnets by Shakespeare Friendship and love are two salient themes in Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609). These two words are often synonyms in Renaissance England. Editors of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, such as Stephen Booth (126.4), G. Blakemore Evans (31.10), and Stephen Orgel (31.10), have regularly pointed out this. As G. B. Evans says, “‘Lover’ was frequently used as a term for ‘friend’, either male or female, though more often male, without any necessary sexual implications” (143); or Orgel: the word “lovers” “had a broad range of meaning, from ‘dear friends [of either sex]’ to ‘seekers or recipients of patronage’ to ‘sexual partners,’ or everything in between” (34). This scholarly understanding can be traced back to Edmund Malone in the eighteenth century (Booth 432). As I see it, the gloss of “lover” as “friend” may be strengthened by Matteo Ricci’s On Friendship: 50. Friends surpass family members in one point only: it is possible for family members not to love one another. But it is not so with friends. If one member of a family does not love another, the relationship of kinship still remains. But unless there is love between friends, does the essential principle of friendship exist? (Billings 111) Here, Ricci draws on Cicero’s Laelius, 5.19. Let us compare the saying with James Shirley’s dramatization of friendship in Maid’s Revenge (1639): Indulgent Parents brethren, kindred tyed By th’natural flow of blood, allyances, And what you can imagine, is too light To weigh with name of friend; they execute

Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing 143 (At best) but what a nature prompts them to, Are often less then friends, when they remain Our kinsmen still, but friend is never lost. (Cotgrave 112–3) This passage has been quoted in John Cotgrave’s commonplace book The English Treasury of Wit and Language (1655), under the heading “Friendship.” It is not a mere coincidence that both Ricci and Shirley prioritize and valorize friendship over family relations. Both understand that you choose your friends, but you are born into your family. Family ties exist without love; real friendship does not. But Ricci’s On Friendship in its commonplacing allows a sustained exploration of the complexity of the idea of friendship that may be useful in a reading of Shakespeare’s sonnets and which, understandably, has rarely if ever been brought to bear. In 1595, when Ricci was compiling his treatise On Friendship in China, Shakespeare was writing sonnets, most of which, according to scholars, were written in the 1590s, though they may have been later revised. The sonnets addressed to the “young man” clearly seem to be poems of the early and mid-1590s (C. Burrow). Shakespeare and Ricci were historical contemporaries and shared a cultural heritage. Both were familiar with Cicero’s De Amicitia (On Friendship; Hadfield 593). Therefore, it is reasonable to grant the Englishman and the Italian a free space of encounter to mutually illuminate each other. Our present task is to reinterpret some of Shakespeare’s sonnets from the unexpected perspective of Ricci’s On Friendship. In Sonnet 29, the lone, miserable speaker envies everyone around him and laments his own unfortunate fate. No obvious comfort offers itself. The only relief comes from his friend, or rather, from the thought of his friend. “For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings/That then I scorn to change my state with kings’.”23 The sonnet raises the question: What is real “wealth”? In some sense, this is the same question tackled in Ricci’s On Friendship. The poet speaker is “in disgrace with fortune,” “wishing me like to one more rich in hope…like him with friends possessed.” O poor me! “I all alone beweep my outcast state.” In the parable of the talents in the Bible the “unprofitable” servant that hid his one talent was “cast [by his lord] into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 25:30).24 The desperate speaker appears to be either a social outcast (“in disgrace with…men’s eyes”) or a self-isolated malcontent (“With what I most enjoy contented least”). The multiple objects of his envy include someone “with friends possessed,” which may be glossed with two of Ricci’s proverbs: 98. According to the custom of the Scythians (name of a northern state), only when someone has made many friends, they call him rich. Ubi amici, ibi opes. (Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 5.11.41) Where you have your friends you have your true wealth. (Harbsmeier 211) 61. If you see that someone’s friends are like a forest, then you know that this is a person of flourishing virtue; if you see that someone’s friends are as sparse as morning stars, then you know that this is a person of shallow virtue. (Cicero, Laelius, 27.100) (Billings 117)

144  Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing Obviously, Shakespeare’s phrasing accords well with the conventional idea that the large number of friends denotes both richness and virtue. Conversely the speaker’s lack of friends shows his poverty and “shallow virtue.” Ricci and Bacon both end their commonplace-writing essay on friendship with the striking image of the pomegranate, which is “full of many kernels” (Bacon 2012, 82), both referring to the necessary aid of many loyal friends. Quintilian’s and Cicero’s sayings, along with Herodotus’s story of opening a pomegranate, cross-culturally rewritten in Ricci’s On Friendship, provide us with a rich cluster of new intertexual information, or several subtexts via which to better grasp the Shakespearean speaker’s profound discontents and instant salvation. In Ricci’s account, friendship is not only important for individuals, but also for the state. In maxim 94, one is using up one’s family property for generosity to friends. When questioned: “All the things in your assets you give away to friends, what are you keeping for yourself?” he replies: “The aura of being a generous friend.” In maxim 93, a similar story is credited to Alexander the Great, clarifying the public implications. Alexander believes that the national treasury lies in “the hearts and minds of friends,” to whom he has freely distributed all his assets. These two stories are narrated by Plutarch, moving elegantly from the individual, to the family, then to the state, in conformity with the Confucian spheres. Amicitia vincit omnia. Cicero also makes the connection in maxim 77: “A state can survive without a treasury of assets, but it cannot survive without friends.” How to make friends with other nations is part and parcel of state governance. In the concluding couplet of Sonnet 29, however, the speaker is so satisfied with the great wealth brought by “thy sweet love remembered” that he would not even exchange his state with kings. Such is the power of love, or friendship. The “wealth” is more spiritual wealth than physical wealth. Please compare Ricci: 37. The good that friendship does in the world is greater than that of physical wealth. Amicitia melior est diuitiis. (Aristotle) Friendship is better than riches. The immense emotional and spiritual wealth equips the speaker’s “state” (not merely “condition; status, rank” as in Booth, but also “nation, country”) splendidly, which far surpasses the kings’ state (again, in triple senses). While the octave imprisons the speaker in a claustrophobic and self-pitying hell, the third quatrain beginning with “Yet” initiates the speaker’s movement beyond despair as his spirits are raised like “the lark at break of day” who “sings hymns at heaven’s gate”; and the final couplet reaffirms the autonomy of the private world with a triumphant rejection of the royal pomp. As Helen Vendler says, the poet eventually “rediscovers an integrated mental state” (1997, 163), and the “sweet love” between the friends, seemingly exclusively imagined by the speaker, is more valuable than a king’s wealth and power. Cicero’s republican ideals of friendship “cut across hierarchical boundaries” and function as a means of liberating the individual from the tyranny of ordinary life and public existence (Hadfield 588). The friend becomes the speaker’s world, perhaps something like Donne’s claim in “Elegy 19. To his Mistress

Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing 145 Going to Bed”: “O my America, my new found land,/My kingdom…my empery” (A. J. Smith 125), though Shakespeare’s speaker never feels that much control. Here, the friendly relation and the erotic relation are united into one body. Stanley Wells is careful enough to note that Sonnet 20 “implies that their relationship is not sexual” (2). Still, we cannot but discern the erotic warmth of such a relationship. I endorse Booth’s argument that in the sonnets lover, love, lovely, etc. “appear in contexts that carefully, constantly, and ostentatiously echo the manner, diction, and concerns of love poems about sexual relationships between men and women,” so the “effective meaning” of these words is a “dynamic and witty conflation of both meanings” (432). It is “logical but foolish” (Booth 432) to understand “love” as “friendship” only. I read Booth’s “foolish” as “naïve,” about the interpersonal relation and about the poetic art. Shakespeare uses the conventions of love poetry to portray the complexity and intensity of the friendly relation. It is homosocial if not homosexual, but the erotic energy in the sonnets to the young man does need to be acknowledged. Shakespeare’s version of “sweet love” is at least Platonic in its characteristic distinction between the many and the one. Being “possessed with friends” is seeming wealth and an apparent signal of virtue, but what really matters is the one soulmate, as in Wordsworth’s “She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways”: “Fair as a star, when only one/Is shining in the sky” (Hunter 69). Ricci’s maxim 61 (the few friends are “as sparse as morning stars”) gives the other side of the star image, with the ominous association of Lucifer, the fallen morning star, and maxims 15 and 43 reveal the truth that the thought of dead friends makes them still alive: friendship (or love) is not to be conquered by death. In Shakespeare’s sonnets, the “precious friends hid in death’s dateless night” (Sonnet 30) all lie buried in “Thy bosom” (Sonnet 31). The living one friend represents the sum total of “all those friends which I thought buried” (Sonnet 31). “Their images I loved I view in thee,/ And thou, all they, hast all the all of me”—the concluding couplet of Sonnet 31 distills the connection between the one and the many: thou art the concentrated substance, whereas the many other friends are but images of the substance (Booth 224); for this Platonic reason I devote all of myself, my entire self, heart and soul, to thee, who art the embodiment of all friends. The relationship between the speaker and his “dear friend” (Sonnet 30) is reciprocal, at least in the speaker’s thought, if not in actuality. Ricci is conscious of the truth that true friends are few and far between: 40. If one has many close friends, then one has no close friends. Amici multi, amicus nemo. (Aristotle) If you have many friends you have none. (Harbsmeier 192) 8. Even a wise person will estimate his friends to be more than what they are. (Pliny the Younger) (Harbsmeier 179) 62. The honorable man makes friends with difficulty; the petty man makes friends with ease. (Aristotle, Valerius) (Billings 117)

146  Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing True friends cannot be many, and the soulmate may be only one. “Trying to make friends with everyone is complicated” (maxim 88; Billings 127). The choice of friends reflects the taste of the chooser, and that is why it is difficult for the honorable man to make friends. Mo Zhi, a female Chinese commentator on Shakespeare’s sonnets, is correct in her sense that Sonnet 29 is similar to Emily Dickinson’s “The Soul Selects her Own Society” (Mo Zhi 66). In her sharp contrast between the rejected many and the settled one, in her “Unmoved” response to an “Emperor kneeling/Upon her Mat” (Vendler 2010, 187), Dickinson’s poem may be interpreted as a determined rewriting of Sonnet 29 with female pride. In Mo Zhi’s mind, Sonnet 29 ends in fiery passion and impulse, whereas Dickinson’s poem in lasting tranquility and indifference (66). Both poets are equally discriminating in their choice of soulmate, and both demonstrate an anti-monarchical inclination. Male or female, the two poems point to the republican potentials of friendship. There is also a religious dimension to Sonnet 29. As Brian Cummings wonders about the first two lines: “Is this a Catholic bemoaning persecution and suppression?” (676). Along this line of thinking, the speaker’s isolation could be religious in the uncertain age of the Reformation. The distinction between material and spiritual well-being is a Christian one (Booth 180). While commenting upon the final couplet of Sonnet 31, Booth states that “images” are “symptoms of the pagan idolatry deplored by Protestants,” and the couplet “suggests a conversion to monotheism” (185). The religious language and the friendship/love discourse merge, which feature also marks Ricci’s On Friendship. According to Vendler, Sonnet 31 resurrects the “precious friends hid in death’s dateless night” in the preceding sonnet, and the revival models itself on the resurrection of Christ (1997, 170). Bao Huiyi supplies the related references in 1 Corinthians (15:21–22, 12:12–13, 26–27) and argues that Sonnet 31 deifies “thee” as a Christ-like figure (2: 321–22). I must add that the key word “remembered” (Sonnet 29, l. 13) has a religious meaning as well: “To think of and mention (a person, a person’s circumstances, etc.) in one’s prayers” (OED, 6c), although the basic meaning is clearly “To think of, recall the memory of (a person) with some kind of feeling or intention” (OED, 5a). The usually unglossed word “remembered” may be more complicated than commonly taken. In fact, it serves as a metaphorical comment on Shakespeare’s friendship and Ricci’s On Friendship in multiple ways. The speaker’s sudden and fond memory of the young man brings himself life and ecstasy, or immense “wealth”; but the young man’s resurrection also depends on the poet’s act of re-membering (“To put together again, reverse the dismembering of”: OED). In other words, the poet-speaker not only resurrects his friend from oblivion, but also reassembles or reintegrates in thought and prayer his beloved friend that has been so often dissected and dismembered in Petrarchan sonnets (including some of Shakespeare’s sonnets). His thoughtful prayer grants a renewed intact form to the once forgotten or heavily reduced friend; by doing so, he saves himself from hell-like despair. The act of remembering seems to serve as a much-needed bridge in the relationship between the poet-speaker and the young man. Similarly, Ricci’s act of remembering (in multiple senses) in his smart, learned assembling of a miniature commonplace book also serves to bridge the seemingly insurmountable gap between himself and

Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing 147 his Chinese friends, between harsh reality and ultimate objective. So much depends on remembering, though it is human to forget.25 To sum up, Ricci’s intercultural collection of proverbial wisdom sheds some new light on Shakespeare’s “young man” sonnets. But perhaps the most important point raised by the phenomenon of commonplacing from an intercultural perspective is that question of its possible universality. The issue needs further investigation, although it would demand linguistic skills and knowledge of literary traditions that no single scholar could have. Nonetheless, Matteo Ricci’s successful practice of cross-cultural commonplace writing and the long-standing production, consumption, and recycling of Chinese leishu in East Asia at least suggest that commonplacing indeed might be universal. The necessity of commonplacing seems to be deeply ingrained in the human mind, and the commonplace inevitably a part of how so many cultures have tried to codify and transmit the wisdom that seems so central to shared questions of what it means to be human. Notes 1 Encyclopedia Sinica (3rd, online edition) translates leishu as “subject reference book” or “subject reference work,” which is not a good solution. See “leishu” (2 entries). 2 Zhao Hankun’s amount of Chinese leishu reaches over 1,600, including 125 doubtful ones. 3 While studying at Columbia University I consulted a copy of Gujin tushu jicheng at the C. V. Starr East Asian Library; it is said that the copy was presented to the University by Dowager Cixi. 4 On the night of the Seventh Day of the Seventh Month in the lunar calendar, legend has it that the Cowherd and the Girl Weaver can eventually, after a yearlong separation across the Milky Way, meet each other for a single night on the Magpie Bridge. The Double Seventh Festival is popularly known as the Chinese Valentine’s Day. 5 As Ge Zhaoguang argues, heaven and earth or the universal time and space in ancient Chinese consciousness pave, through symbol and analogy, the cornerstone for the traditional Chinese thought mansion, and the emperor-centered extended-family-like state, together with its hierarchical system of rites and music, is naturally and indisputably right (421). 6 This paragraph distils the major ideas of Liu Tianzhen’s article in Wang and Zhou’s collection (210–9). 7 This paragraph summarizes the main ideas of Lin Xiaoguang’s article in Wang and Zhou’s collection (51–71). 8 For leishu as the school textbook for pupils and beginners, see Wang and Zhou 43–5. 9 See Jiao Yadong’s insightful article in Wang and Zhou’s collection (291–302), but Jiao does not mention commonplace books. 10 For the popularity and influence of Ricci’s On Friendship, see Billings 2–5 and Zou 53–4. 11 See Erasmus 1978, 24: 638; cited in Part II, Chapter 2. 12 Timothy Billings acknowledges the contributions of Pasquale D’Elia (1953) and Sofia Maffei (2005) in identifying the sources (157). To Billings’s (2009) and Christoph Harbsmeier’s (2018) recent good work, I can add a little bit more: more maxims can find their sources in Andreas Eborensis’s Sententiae et exempla, e.g., maxim 5, Cicero, 61r; maxim 14, Cicero, 61r; maxims 29 and 95, Aristotle, 59v, and Erasmus, Adagia, I.i.1 (see below). 13 There are at least three English translations of Ricci’s On Friendship: Timothy Billings (2009), Xu Dongfeng (2011, Appendix, 380–400), and Christoph Harbsmeier (2018). I use Christoph Harbsmeier’s translation in this book, unless otherwise noted.

148  Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies of Commonplacing 14 Christoph Harbsmeier has noted Ricci’s deception (maxims 53, 55), but he does not take care to specify the shifted commonplace head, in which resides the reason for adaptation. 15 This is a slip on the part of Christoph Harbsmeier, for “How much less” should be “How much more.” 16 Ricci must have drawn from more additional commonplace heads in Andreas Eborensis’s Sententiae et exempla, because some maxims (81, 92, 96) are originally in vol. II of Eborensis. 17 Filippo Mignini remarks that Ricci’s several groups of maxims follow the same order as in Eborensis’s commonplace book (qtd. In Billings 66–7). Commonplace book keepers often write down their extracts in the natural order of their reading. 18 As Billings correctly remarks, “Thus one way of understanding the motivation of Ricci’s essay on friendship is as an effort to accommodate in the broadest sense—to establish a common ground for cross-cultural understanding, respect, and goodwill; or, as we might also say, to make friends—in order to pave the way for proselytizing” (12). 19 It should be noted that in the late Ming the notion of God was in the process of making, in which were involved complicated factors including the problem of translation and the clash of ideas between East and West. For this reason, Ricci’s “Lord on High” or “Lord of Heaven” ought to be understood as God-in-the-making. See Lancashire and Hu (trans.), The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven for Ricci’s cross-cultural expounding. 20 Sun Qi quotes an unreliable Chinese translation of Spence’s biography of Matteo Ricci, which mistranslates this particular sentence as expressing “All aphorisms come from Erasmus” (Sun 24). The glaring error makes Sun’s argument shaky. She should have checked the English original. 21 See also maxims 59 and 96. 22 As the historian Martin Huang puts it, “the late Ming might be considered the golden age of Chinese male friendship” (qtd. in Billings 22). 23 For the text of Shakespeare’s sonnets, I use Stanley Wells’s edition (1985). 24 G. B. Evans cites the story of Job as a parallel (141). 25 For an exemplary treatment of remembering and forgetting in Hamlet, see Chapter 5 of David Kastan’s A Will to Believe (2014).

Epilogue

Commonplacing lives in the twenty-first century. In 2001, Jane Armstrong compiled for the Arden Shakespeare six little books of quotations on life, love, death, nature, and the seven ages of man, and from songs and sonnets. Except for songs and sonnets (which is obviously not a commonplace heading), all these headings appear in Hesperides. A late-eighteenth-century reader of Hesperides adds two Shakespearean extracts under the headings Death and Life. Thus, we can see a continuous tradition of commonplacing Shakespeare from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first. Through commonplacing, Shakespeare enters the domain of proverbial wisdom. He becomes common property. The burgeoning of electronic/ digital/online commonplace books further testifies to the continued presence of the genre, which is made possible by the resiliency and adaptability of the form, a form particularly suited to the digital environment, which in some ways is more like manuscript than like print. Unlike Halliwell-Phillipps’s interest in Hesperides, which was partly antiquarian and partly an exercise of bardolotry, my interest in Evans’s commonplace book was largely an interest in the form and the reading and writing practices that gave rise to it, which turn out not to be habits that have been abandoned. There are increasingly more scholars who have recognized what the genre can tell us both about the past and our present. For me, Hesperides offered a way of understanding not only the particulars of a fascinating and largely overlooked book (largely because of the accident of it not ever appearing as the printed book that had been several times promised), but also, and perhaps more importantly, fundamental habits of mind and cultural practices of early modern England. In December 2005, during the History of the Book conference at Princeton University, Robert Darnton raised a question: What shall we make of all those publisher’s catalogs and the commonplace books? These are questions I had been trying to answer for years, and I think this book provides some answers to them and suggests areas where more work can and should be done. The tradition of the commonplace book creates what might be called “commonplace mentality.” It seems reasonable to suppose that constant exposure to the commonplace would create a commonplace mind. Can we imagine a mind compartmentalized like a commonplace book? I think so. Shakespeare’s works have DOI: 10.4324/9781032635699-8

150 Epilogue often been commonplaced, but perhaps there is a sense in which even he has a commonplace mentality, as he absorbs and transforms the common texts of his culture in his own works, inventing almost nothing, except, of course, for the things that make him Shakespeare. Admittedly, this may be a stretch, though it makes the important point that commonplacing in its early modern sense is not negative; and it is worth thinking about how the original sense has been degraded from its role at the center of an early modern culture that formally or informally shaped the best minds of the age to its modern sense of being ordinary or humdrum, not just familiar but overly so. Less controversial would be the claim that John Evans has a commonplace mentality, embracing a traditional culture of reading and writing that values topical aptness over authorial creativity. One of the greatest twentieth-century Chinese scholars, Qian Zhongshu, also possesses a commonplace mind. His masterpiece, Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters (Guan zhui bian), classifies and discusses bits and pieces from world literature, both Chinese and Western, under appropriate subject categories. Qian makes a segmental reading of world literature. Some people call him “a big Google.” This epithet admiringly recognizes Qian’s amazing linguistic and literary capabilities, yet he finished his masterpiece in 1979, long before the appearance of Google, even before the birth of World Wide Web. Qian’s mind belongs to a previous age and is fit to be called a commonplace mind, or, more precisely “an uncommon commonplace mind.” Qian’s achievements represent what a commonplace mind can do at its best. Behind his masterpiece are piles of handwritten notebooks accumulated through the decades. In China, the traditional genre of leishu also evolves and survives in the new century. About four decades ago, at the advocacy of leading Chinese intellectuals including Qian Zhongshu, the national project of The Grand Chinese Canon was officially approved and launched. It is a reformed leishu of unprecedented size. A library in itself, the Canon is expected to include over 30,000 ancient Chinese books before 1911 (1999–2018, gen. ed. Ren Jiyu). Consisting of 24 canons in various subjects of learning such as literature, arts, history, philosophy, religion, politics, law, mathematics, astronomy, biology, medicine, agriculture, industry, and transportation, the Canon has a classified content of more than 700 million characters! It is primarily a reference work for consultation, not for any through reading. The Grand Chinese Canon proves leishu to be a living genre in the twenty-first century; furthermore, it may be regarded as a celebration of the prosperity of the Republic as well as a retrospective look at the faded imperial glory, a monument erected in fond memory of the commonplace mentality1 and in homage to the human capacity for endless knowledge. I believe that a new paradigm of cultural and intercultural studies of commonplacing is emerging. Some of its understandings are now clear enough. Adam Smyth has provided a capacious definition of the commonplace book culture as “the sum of expectations, textual practices and approaches to language that the commonplace book—as theory, process and text—created or encouraged” (2010a, 94; 2010b, 127). But this is a “culture” that is international and intermedial, and its study is only in its infancy. Here, the quintessential commonplace metaphor of the

Epilogue 151 bee is instructive and inspiring. Scholars are just like bees: in Erasmus’s apt phrasing, they do not “collect the substance for making honey from just one shrub,” but rather “fly busily round every species of flower, grass, and shrub, often roaming far afield to gather material” for honey production (qtd. in Moss 1996, 105). Pioneers from Matteo Ricci to Qian Zhongshu have exemplified such practice for us to follow, and strive to emulate. Note 1 There were many outstanding commonplace minds in the past, both in East and West. Erasmus, Matteo Ricci, and Qian Zhongshu are some of the names that immediately come to mind.

Works Cited

I. Manuscripts The United Kingdom British Library, London Add Mss 4821, 6038, 27419, 28273, 28728, 35342, 35983, 36354, 37719, 38482, 38823, 39214, 41068A, 42118, 42121, 43410, 44963, 44964, 45154, 52800, 54332, 56279, 57555, 61490, 61903, 62540, 63075, 63782, 72544A, 72544B Lansdowne Mss 638, 695 Royal 12 A XXXIV, Royal 12 C XV Stowe Ms 1047 Shakespeare Centre Library, Stratford-upon-Avon Halliwell-Phillipps, James Orchard. “Notes upon the Works of Shakespeare.” 128 vols. The United States of America Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC Folger MSS V.a.75, V.a.79, V.a.80, V.b.93, V.b.110, W.b.137-256 (Evans, John. Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden. Folger MS V.b.93. Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC) Huntington Library, San Marino, CA EL 496 HM 93, 102, 116, 198, 202, 1338, 1340, 1728, 15369, 30309, 31191, 41536, 46323, 55603, 60413 II. Early Printed Books (up to 1800) Allott, Robert. Wits Theater of the Little World. London, 1599. STC 381, 382. ———. England’s Parnassus. London, 1600. STC 378, 379, 379.5. Anonymous. A Brief Method of the Law. London, 1680. Wing B4605. Anonymous. Ros Coeli. Or, A Miscellany of Ejaculations, Divine, Morall, &c. London, 1640. STC 13219. Arnold, Samuel James. The Shipwreck. London, 1797. Ascham, Roger. The Schoolmaster. London, 1570. STC 832.

Works Cited 153 Azpilcueta, Martín de. The Peace of Rome Proclaimed to All the World. London, 1609. STC 12696. Bacon, Francis. Apophthegmes New and Old. London, 1625, 1626. STC 1115, 1116. ———. Sylua Syluarum: or a Naturall Historie. London, 1627. STC 1168. Baron, Robert. Erotopaignion or the Cyprian Academy. London, 1648. Wing B890. Beaumont, Francis, and John Fletcher. Comedies and Tragedies. London, 1647. Wing B1581. ———. Fifty Comedies and Tragedies. London, 1679. Wing B1582. Biondi, Giovanni Francesco. The Banished Virgin. London, 1635. STC 3074. Blount, Sir Thomas Pope. De Re Poetica: or, Remarks upon Poetry. London, 1694. Wing B3347. Bodin, Jean. The Six Bookes of a Common-weale. Trans. Richard Knolles. London, 1606. STC 3193. Browne, Joseph. “The Burning of the Ch— of En—d Memorial.” State Tracts. London, 1715. Vol. II, 337–49. Camus, Jean-Pierre. Elise, or Innocencie Guilty. London, 1655. Wing C413. Cartwright, William. Comedies, Tragi-Comedies, with Other Poems. London, 1651. Wing C709. Caussin, Nicolas. The Holy Court. London, 1650. Wing C1547. Cervantes, Miguel de. Exemplarie Novells in Sixe Books. Trans. James Mabbe. London, 1640. STC 4914. Cotgrave, John. The English Treasury of Wit and Language. London, 1655. Wing C6368. ———. Wits Interpreter, the English Parnassus. London, 1655. Wing C6370. Cumberland, Richard. The Wheel of Fortune. London, 1795. Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, Jean. Ariana. London, 1636, 1641. STC 6779, Wing D1194. Du Chesne, André. Histoire D’Angleterre. Paris, 1634. Dunton, John. A Voyage round the World. London, 1691. Wing V742. Eborensis, Andreas. Sententiae et Exempla. 5th ed. Paris, 1590. Elder, William. Pearls of Eloquence. London, 1656. Wing E325AB. Felltham, Owen. Resolves a Duple Century. London, 1634. STC 10760. ———. Resolves Divine, Moral, Political. London, 1647. Wing F654. Foxe, John. Pandectae: Locorum Communium. London, 1572, 1585. STC 11239, 11239.5. Fraunce, Abraham. The Arcadian Rhetorike. London, 1588. STC 11338. Fuller, Thomas. The Historie of the Holy Warre. Cambridge, 1639. STC 11464. Gascoigne, George. The Posies. London, 1575. STC 11637. Googe, Barnabe, trans. The Zodiake of Life. Marcello Palingenio Stellato. London, 1565. STC 19150. Harvey, Christopher. The Synagogue, or, The Shadow of the Temple. London, 1647. Wing H1045. Heywood, John. A Dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of All the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue. London, 1546. STC 13291. ———. The Spider and the Flie. London, 1556. STC 13308. Howell, James. The Vote, or, A Poeme Royall. London, 1642. Wing H3128A. ———. Familiar Letters. London, 1650. Wing H3072. ———. Poems. London, 1663. Wing H3103. Jonson, Ben. The Workes of Beniamin Ionson. London, 1616. STC 14751, 14752. Killigrew, Sir William. Fovr Nevv Playes viz: The Seege of Vrbin, Selindra, Love and Friendship, Tragy-comedies, Pandora, a Comedy. Oxford, 1666. Wing K458.

154  Works Cited Kirkman, Francis, trans. The Loves and Adventures of Clerio & Lozia. London, 1652. Wing L3260. La Calprenède, Gaultier de Coste, seigneur de. Cleopatra. London, 1652. Wing L110A. ———. Hymen’s Preludia. London, 1658. Wing L117. ———. Cassandra. Trans. Sir Charles Cotterell. London, 1661. Wing L107. Langbaine, Gerard. An Account of the English Dramatick Poets. Oxford, 1691. Wing L373. Lanquet, Thomas. Coopers Chronicle. London, 1560. STC 15218. Lee, Sophia. Almeyda; Queen of Granada. London, 1796. Lewis, Matthew Gregory. The Castle Spectre. London, 1798. Lluelyn, Martin. Men-Miracles. With Other Poemes. Oxford, 1646. Wing L2625. London, William. A Catalogue of the Most Vendible Books in England. London, 1657. Wing L2849. Marston, John. The Scourge of Villanie. London, 1598. STC 17485. Melanchthon, Philipp. Loci Communes Rerum Theologicarum. Basel, 1521. Merbecke, John. A Booke of Notes and Common Places. London, 1581. STC 17299. Middleton, Thomas. No Wit, [No] Help like a Womans. London, 1657. Wing M1985. Mubashshir ibn Fatik, Abu al-Wafa’. The Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophhres. Westminster, 1477. STC 6826. Perrin, J. P. Luthers Fore-runners. London, 1624. STC 19769. Philomusus. The Academy of Complements. London, 1640. STC 19883.5. Pierce, Thomas. Palingenesia. London, 1649. Wing P2165. Poole, Josua. The English Parnassus. London, 1657. Wing P2814. Prynne, William. Histrio-mastix. London, 1633. STC 20464. Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl of. Poems on Several Occasions. Antwerp, 1680. Wing R1754B. Saunders, Richard. Poor Richard Improved. Philadelphia, 1747, 1750, 1752, 1754, 1762. Scudéry, Madeleine de. Ibrahim. London, 1652. Wing S2160. ———. Artamenes or The Grand Cyrus. London, 1653–1655. Wing S2144, S2162. ———. Clelia. 5 vols. London, 1655–1661. Wing S2151–2155. Shakespeare, William. Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. London, 1623. STC 22273. ———. The Poetical Works of Shakspeare. With the Life of the Author. Cooke’s Edition. Embellished with Superb Engravings. London, 1797. Shirley, James. The Schoole of Complement. London, 1631. STC 22456. Sidney, Sir Philip. Arcadia. London, 1590. STC 22539. Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene. London, 1609. STC 23083. Suckling, Sir John. The Discontented Colonell. London, 1642. Wing S6125. ———. Brennoralt. London, 1646. Wing S6122. ———. Fragmenta Aurea. London, 1646, 1658. Wing S6126A, S6128. Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of, et al. 1565. Songes and Sonettes Written by the Right Honorable Lord Henry Hawarde Late Earle of Surrey, and Other (Tottel’s Miscellany). London, 1565. STC 13864. Tyler, Margaret, trans. The Mirrour of Princely Deedes and Knighthood. London, 1578. STC 18859. Vaughan, Edward. Ten Introductions. London, 1594. STC 24599. Vaumorière, M. de. The Grand Scipio. London, 1660. Wing V162. Virgil. The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro. Trans. John Ogilby. London, 1650. Wing V609. Walden, Richard. Parnassus Aboriens. London, 1664. Wing W290. Winstanley, William. The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets. London, 1687. Wing W3065.

Works Cited 155 Wood, Anthony à. Athenæ Oxonienses. 2 vols. London, 1691–1692. Wing W3382, Wing W3383A. Wright, Abraham. Parnassus Biceps. Or Severall Choice Pieces of Poetry. London, 1656. Wing W3686. Wroth, Lady Mary. The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania. London, 1621. STC 26051.

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156  Works Cited Bischoff, Bernhard. Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Trans. Dáibhí ó Cróinín and David Ganz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Blair, Ann M. “Le florilège latin comme point de comparaison.” Extrême-Orient, ExtrêmeOccident 1 (2007): 185–204. ———. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. Blayney, Peter W. M. The First Folio of Shakespeare. Washington, DC: Folger Library Publications, 1991. Booth, Stephen, ed. Shakespeare’s Sonnets. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Bouwsma, O. K. O. K. Bouwsma’s Commonplace Book—Remarks on Philosophy and Education. Ed. and Intro. Ronald E. Hustwit and J. L. Craft. Studies in the History of Philosophy, vol. 58. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen, 2001. Bretelle-Establet, Florence, and Karine Chemla. “[Introduction]: Qu’était-ce qu’écrire une encyclopédie en Chine?.” Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident 1 (2007): 7–18. Burke, Peter, and Joseph McDermott. “The Proliferation of Reference Books, 1450–1850.” The Book Worlds of East Asia and Europe, 1450-1850: Connections and Comparisons. Ed. Joseph P. McDermott and Peter Burke. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015. 237–81. Burke, Victoria E. “Recent Studies in Commonplace Books.” English Literary Renaissance 43.1 (Winter 2013): 153–77. Burrow, Colin, ed. The Complete Sonnets and Poems. The Oxford Shakespeare. Gen. ed. Stanley Wells. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Burrow, J. A. Medieval Writers and their Work: Middle English Literature 1100–1500. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Burton, Robert. The Anatomy of Melancholy. Ed. Thomas C. Faulkner, Nicolas K. Kiessling, and Rhonda L. Blair. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon, 1989. Callahan, Virginia W. “The De Copia: The Bounteous Horn.” DeMolen 99–109. Carey, John. “A Work in Praise of Terrorism? September 11 and Samson Agonistes.” Times Literary Supplement, September 6, 2002, 15–6. Cave, Terence. “Copia and Cornucopia.” French Renaissance Studies, 1540–70. Ed. Peter Sharratt. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1976. 52–69. Chapman, Alison A. Review of William Poole (ed.), The Complete Works of John Milton: Vol. XI: Manuscript Writings. The Review of English Studies 71.301 (2020): 780–1. Cook, Albert B. III. “John Bunyan and John Dunton: A Case of Plagiarism.” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 71 (1977): 11–28. Coolidge, Lowell W., ed. Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Vol. II of The Complete Prose Works of John Milton. Ed. Ernest Sirluck. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959. 217–356. Craig, Hugh. “Authorship.” Kinney 15–30. Crane, Mary Thomas. Framing Authority: Sayings, Self, and Society in Sixteenth-Century England. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Crawford, Charles, ed. England’s Parnassus. Oxford: Clarendon, 1913. Cummings, Brian. “Religion.” The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare. Kinney 663–79. Curtius, Ernst Robert. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Trans. Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Darnton, Robert. “What Is the History of Books?.” Daedalus 111.3 (1982): 65–83. ———. “Extraordinary Commonplaces.” New York Review of Books 21 Dec. 2000, 82–7. Database of Ancient Chinese Encyclopedias 中国类书库. Beijing Erudition Digital Technology Research Center北京爱如生数字化技术研究中心. http://www.er07.com/home/ pro_8.html. Accessed June 2, 2023.

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Appendix I: Catalog A (Folger MS V.b.93)

In transcribing, I generally follow the list of “Certain conventions used in transcribing manuscripts” distributed by Laetitia Yeandle when I attended her seminar on Renaissance paleography in England at the Folger Shakespeare Library in the fall of 2002: [ ]     To enclose editorial additions < >     To enclose legible deletions      To enclose illegible deletions apostrophe     To indicate any mark of abbreviation when the abbreviated word has not been extended carets     To indicate interlineated letters and words, but not superior letters In one case, however, I depart from Professor Yeandle’s guideline: underlining     To indicate letters omitted in an abbreviated word Instead of expanding the abbreviated word, I retain the original abbreviated form. Take item 101 in the Catalog. Epithalamion, celebrating ye Lord Weston’s sons. nuptials. ^Ben Ionson^ Epith. (Yeandle’s transcription would be like this.) Epithalamion, celebrating ye Ld. Weston’s sons. nupt. ^B.I.^ Epith.   (My transcription) Abbreviations not only reflect the handwriting practice in Renaissance manuscripts, but also are part and parcel of the Catalog. Keeping the abbreviated forms and the superior letters presents a more intimate and more faithful appearance of the original manuscript. Dozens of extended forms of “Ben Ionson” would look clumsy and redundant. Most of the abbreviations are easily recognizable through its context or decipherable after a check in EEBO; with a convenient list (see below) clarity should not be sacrificed with unexpanded forms. On the other hand, the extending of certain obscure abbreviations constitutes a task of scholarly inquiry

Catalog A  167 in itself, which demands more attention than a mere transcription deserves. For example, item 255 (“Poems, by M.L.L.”) remained a mystery for Gunnar Sorelius, which I succeed in identifying as Men-Miracles. With Other Poemes by Martin Lluelyn (Oxford, 1646). For convenience of reference, I add the marginal numbers and the page and column numbers. For example, “1a” means the left column of the first page of the Catalog. In the headings, the letters that are not in bold are written in pencil in the manuscript, while the bold letters are written in ink. The following is a list of abbreviations with superior letters: Deckr Entertainmt(s) Fletchr Ld Messengr Mr Philosophr Propht prsented pt seignr Sr St ye

Dekker Entertainment(s) Fletcher Lord Messenger (i.e., Massinger) Master, Monsieur Philosopher Prophet presented part seigneur, seignior Sir Saint the

[1a] a b Astrophill & Stella. Sr Phil. Sydney: As you like it. W. Shaksp. All’s well that ends well. Will Shakspear. ye tragedy of Anthony & Cleopatra. W. Sh. Additionall Letters of a fresher date. Ia. H. Aurora ^transl^ Tho. Stanley Esqu. Artamenes, or ye Grand Cyrus, by Mr de Scudery, engl. by F. G. gent. Amanda, ye Conceited [sic] Curtezan, or ye Reformed Whore by Tho. Cranley. Gent. Account of Religion by Reason. Sr Io. Suckl. Aglaura. Sr Io. Suckling. Argalus & Parthenia. Fra. Quarles. Amyntas, or the Impossible Dowry, pastorall. by Tho. Randolph. M.A. Aristippus, or the Ioviall Philosophr. T. Rand. An Alphabet of Elegies, ffr. Quarl. ye Alchemist. Ben. Johnson. Alcibiades, & Coriolanus, trans out of Sp. by. R. Gentil. Coriolanus. Malvezzi’s. trans. by R Gentilis. ye Angell of Peace, to all christian Princes. N. Caus. Attick Antiquities. Fra. Rous. of Mert. Ox. ye continuation of Artamenes. M Scudery. Artamenes, ye 3d Volume. Trans. by F. G. Esqu. ye Advance of Learning. Sr Fra Bacon.

A.S. A.L. A.W. A.C. A.l. A.I. Ar. R.W. A.R Ag. A.P. Am. Ari. A.E. Al. Alci. Co. A of.P. A.A. Ar.2. Ar.3. A of L.

5

10

15

20

168  Catalog A Artamenes, ye 4. Volume. eng. by F. G. Esq. ye Ark. Du. Bartas. ye Anatomy of Melancholy. Burton. ye Amorous Warr. Albumazar. B Beggars bush. Beau. & Fl. ye Bird in a Cage. Iames Shirley. Byron’s Conspiracy. Geo: Chapman. Byron’s Tragedy. Geo. Chapm. Bussy’ d’Amboy’s. B. Iohnson. ye Banished Virgin. in Ital. by Gio. Francisc. Blondi [sic], & translated by Iames Hayward. Gent. ye Cid, trans. out of French by Mr Rutter. ye Bastard Brennoralt. Sr Io Suckling. ye Book of Honour. Fra. Markham. Capt. Babilon. Du Bartas. Bethulia’s Rescue. D B. Ios. Syl. ye Battell of Yury. D. B. Ios. Syl. a Boulster Lecture. Bucolicks. Virgill. trans. by Io. Ogilby. ye Tragedy of Bonduca. Fl: & Beaum. [1b] c d Comedies & Tragedies, written by Francis Beaumont & Iohn Fletcher, gentlemen. 1647. ye Custome of ye Countrey. Fr. Beaum & Io Fletcher. ye Captain. Fr. Beaum. & Io Fletcher ye Coxcomb. Fr. Beaum. & Io. Fletch. ye Chances. Fl. & Beaum. ye Countess of Pembrooks Arcadia. Sr. P. Sydney. Cartwrights Poems. ye Cyprian Academy. Ro Baron. Esqu. ye Comedy of Errors. Will. Shakspeare. ye tragedy of Coriolanus. W. Shaksp. ye tragedy of Cymbeline. W. Shaksp. Cupid Crucified trans. by Tho Stanl. Esq. Clarastella. Rob. Heath. Esq. Charron of Wisdome. Cassandra, ye fam’d Romance. Ld Geo. Digby. ye Conceited Pedlar. Tho. Randolph. M.A. Cynthia’s Revells; or ye Fountain of Self love, by Beniamin Iohnson. Catalines Conspiracy. B. Iohns. a Challenge at Tilt, ^at^ a Marriage. ^B. Ioh.^ a Celebration of Charis. Ben. Iohns. Christmas’s Masque. Ben. Iohns. Chloridia. Ben. Iohns. ye Christian Diary. N. Causs. Sr T. Hawk

Ar.4. ye.A. A.of.M.

B in C. B s. C B s. T Bd A.

25

30

B.V. B Br. B.of.H. Ba. B. R. B.of.Y. B.L. V.B.

35

40

45

A. C.Ps. C.A. C of E C Cy. C.C. Cl. C.W. Cas. c.P. C.R. Ca. C.at.T. c.C. Cs.M. Chlo. C.D.

50

55

60

65

Catalog A  169 ye Command of Reason. over ye passions. N. Caus. Cassandra in folio, trans. by a person of quality. of ye Colours of Good & Evill. L Bacon. ye Colonies. Du Bartas. ye Columns. Du Bartas. ye Captains. Du Bartas. a Christians Conflict. Geo. Goodwin. I.S. Choice Novells Cupids Revenge. Fr: Beaumont. Io Fletcher.

C.of.R. C.in.f. G.&E. ye.C. Col. ye Ca. C.c. C.N.

ye Defence of Poetry. Sr. Phillip. Sydney. ye Delights of ye Muses. Ro Crashaw. Daphnes. Io. Tatham Gent. Dorastus & Faunia. Discoveries. Ben. Iohnson. ye Divell’s an Ass. Ben. Iohnson. Sr Will Davenants Poems. ye 2. Damsells, in Sp. by D. Miguel de Cer. Saavedra. Divine Meditations. Io. Quarles. Du Bartas’s first week. Ios. Sylv. ye Decay. Du Bartas. Du Bartas Poems on peace & war ye Double marriage. Fl: & Beaum.

d of. P. D of M. D. D & F. Dis. D.A. D.P’s. 2 D. D.M. B.B. ye D. P. w. p.

[2a] E f. g Eastward Hoe. Geo. Chapman. Europa. trans. by Tho Stanley. Esqu. Elegies. by Rob. Heath. Esqu. Epigrams by. R. Heath. Es. Emblems. by Fra. Quarles. Eleven Pious Meditations. Fr. Quarles. Every Man in his Humor. B. Ionson. Every Man out of his humor. Ben. Ions. Epicoene, or the Silent Woman. B. Ions. Epigrams, by Beniamin Ionson. Entertainments. B. Ionson. an Execration of [sic] Vulcan. B. Ions. Epithalamion, celebrating ye Ld. Weston’s sons. nupt. ^B.I.^ Eupheme. Ben. Ionson. ye English Grammar. B. Ions. ye English Intelligencer. Elegies. by Io. Quarles. ye English Gentleman. Rich Brathwait. ye English Gentlewoman. R. Brath. Essay’s or Counsells of. Fr. L. Verulam. Vic.St.Al. Eden. Du. Bart. Ios. Sylv. Elegies, Epistles, & Epitaphs, by Ios. Syl. England, Wales, Scotl. & Irl. desc. & abbridg’d by I. S. Englands Tears, for ye present wars. Ia. Howell. ^vide in cale libri.^

E.H. E. H.E. Ep. Q.E. P.M. E. in H. E o.H. S.W. Epi. En. E. V. Epith. Eu. E Gr. E.int Ele. E.G. E.g. B.E. Ed. E.e.e. S.A. E T.

70

75

80

85

90

95

100

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110

170  Catalog A F ye False one. Beaum & Fl. ye Faire maid of the Inn. Fl. & Beaum Foure Playes, or Morall representations in one. Fl. & Beaum ye Fox. Volpone. B. Iohnson. ye Family of Love. Familiar Letters. Ia. Howell Esqu. a new volume of Familiar Letters. Ia. Ho. a Feast for Worms. Fra. Quarles. Fons Lachrymarum a fountain of tears. Io. Quarl. ye Forrest. B. Ionson. ye Fortunate Iles & their union. B. Ions.

ye Force of blood. Saavedra Fortunate Piety. N. Causs. ye Furies. Du. B. ye Fathers. Du. B. ye Fatall Vnion or Sicily & Naples. S.H. A.B.e C. Ex. ye Gratefull Servant. Ia Shirley. ye 2 Gentlemen of Verona. W. Shaksp. ye Goblins. Sr Io. Suckling. ye Golden Age restored. Ben. Ionson. ye Gallery of Heroick women. Peter le Moyne, trans. by ye Marques of Winchester. Good thoughts in bad times. Tho. Full. B.D. Good thoughts in worse times. Th. Full B.D. Georgicks. Virgills. Io Ogilby. [2b] h i H ye Humorous Lieutenant. Fl. & Beaum. ye Honest mans fortune. Fl. & Beaum. ye Holy War. Tho. Fuller. B. D. Henry 6th. ye.1.part. W Sh. Henry 6th. ye 2.pt. W. Sh. Henry 6th. ye 3d. pt. W. Sh. ye tragedy of Hamlet. Hamlet. W. S. Hieroglyphicks of the life of man. Fr.Qu. Hadassa, ye History of Queen Hester. Fr. Qu. Hymenæi, or ye solemnities of Masque & Barries [sic]. ^B.I.^ Horace his Art of Poetry. eng. B. Ions. for ye Honour of Wales. B. Ions. Humane Poems. Rob Herrick. Esq. Herricks noble numbers. ye Holy Court. Nich. Caussin. S.I. Sr T.H. Historicall observations, upon the 4 principall passions. N. Causs. Sr Tho. Hawkins ye History of ye World, Sr Walt. Raleigh. ye Handy-crafts. Du. Bart.

F. F.of.L. FL. 2.F.L. F.W. F.T. Fo. F.I.

F.of.B. F. P. Fu. Fa.

G.S. 2.G.V. G. G.a.r. G.h.W. G.T. g.T. V. G.

H.W. H. 6 2H.6. 3H.6. H. Q.H. Had. Hy. H.a.P. F. h. W. Hes. N.n. H.C. H.O. H.of.W. ye H.

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Catalog A  171 ye History of Iudeth. Du. B. a Hymn of Alms. Ios. Sylvest. Honors farewell. Ios. Sylv. Hymens Præludia. Loves M’piece, the first part of Cleopatra, englished by Ro. Loveday. History of Henry. 7. by Fra. Ld Verulam.

H.P. H.7.

ye Island Princess. B. & Fl. ye tragedy of Iulius Cæsar. W. Shaks. Ismenia ye Prince. D. Iuan Perez. Tho Stanley. Iob Militant. Fra. Quarles. ye Iealous Lovers. Tho. Randolph. ye Irish Maske at Court. B. Ions. Ieremiahs lamentations. Io. Quarles. ye Iealous Husband. I [sic] ye Imposture. D. Bart. Iob Triumphant. trans. by Ios. Syl.

I.C. Pr. I.M. I.L. I.M.C. I.La. I.H. Im. I.T.

[3a] k l K m ye Knight of Malta. King Henry.4th. ye.1.part. W. S. King Henry.4th. ye 2d.part. W. Sh. ye Kings Entertainmt at E. of Newcastles. Welbeck. ^B.I.^

H.4. 2.H.4. K.e.W.

Lachrymæ Lachrymarum. Ios. Syl. Little Bartas. trans. by. Ios. Syl. ye Law. Du. Bar. a Ladies Love Lecture. Ri Brathwait. Esqu. ye Little French Lawyer. Beaum. & Fl. ye Loyall Subiect. B. & Fl. ye Lawes of Candy. Beaum. & Fle. ye Lovers Progress. B. & Fl. Love’s Cure, or the Marshall Maid. Loves Pilgrimage. Beau. & Fl. ye Lady of the May. Sr. Ph. Sydn. Love Changes, or Love in a Maze. Ia. Shir. ye Lady Errant. Will Cartwright. Loves Cruelty. Ia. Shirley. Loves labour lost. Will. Shaksp. ye Life & Death of k. Richard ye 2d. W. S. ye Life & Death of K. Iohn. W. Sh. ye Life of Henry ye 5th. W. Sh. ye Life of K. Henry ye 8th. W. Sh. Love freed from ignorance & folly. B. Ions. Love Restored. Ben. Ions. Loves wellcome. Ben. Ions. Loves Tryumph through Callipolis. ye Lady Cornelia. Saavedra

H.of.I. H.of A. H.F.

L.l. L. B. Law. L.l.L.

160

165

170

175

180

L.of.M. L.in M. L. E. L. C L.l.l. K.R.2. K.I. H. 5. H. 8. L. f. L. R. L. w. L. T. l. C.

185

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172  Catalog A ye Liberall Lover. Saavedra. ye Lady. N. Causs. Sr Tho. Hawkins. ye Lives & Elegies of illustrious Courtiers. N. Causs. Merry-Tricks. a Mad world my Masters. by T. M. Gent. Mottoes. by Ios. Sylvester. ye Mad Lover. Beaum & Fl. ye Maid in ye Mill. Beaum & Fl. ye Mask of ye Gent of Graies Inn, & ye Inner Temple, performed at ye Marriage of ye ill. Fred. & Elizab. Fl Beaum. Gent. ye Merry Wives of Windsor. W. Shaksp. Measure for Measure. Will. Shaksp. Much adoe about Nothing. W. Shaksp. a Midsommer nights Dreame. W. Sha. ye Merchant of Venice. W Shaksp. ye tragedy of Macbeth. W. Shaksp. ye tragedy of King Lear. W. Shaksp. Mr Io. Miltons Poems. A Mask. by. Mr Io. Milton. Monsieur Thomas. Fr. Beau. Io Fletch. ye tragedy of Marcus Tullius Cicero. ye Muses Looking-glass. Tho Randolph. ye Maske & Nuptialls, at ye Ld Vic. Hadingtons. mar. ^B.I.^ ye Mask of Queens, celebrated from the House of Fame. Ben. Ionson. Mercury vindicated from ye Alchymists of Court. B.I. a Mask prsented at ye Ld Hayes, for ye entertainment of Mr Le Baron de De Tour. Ben. Ions. ye Metamorphosed Gypsies. Ben. Ions. ye Maske of Augures. Ben. Ions. ye Mask of Owles. Ben. Ions. ye Magnetick Lady. Ben. Ions. Madagascar. Sr W. Davenant. Moses & Aaron. Tho Godwyn. B. D. Maxims of ye Holy Court. ag. ye profane. C. N. O. ye Magnificense Du B. ye Miracle of Peace. Du B. ye Map of Man. Mr Henry Smith. trans. by Ios. Syl. ye Maidens blush, Fracastorius. tr. by Io. Syl. Memorialls of Mortality. Pierre Mathieu. Ios. Syl.

LL. ye.L L&E.

Mot.

M.w.W. M.m. M.a.N. M.n.D. M.o.V. M. L. M.P. M.M. M.T. Cic. M.L. H.M. M.Q. M.V. M.pr. M.G. M.of.A. M.o. O. M. La. Ma. M.&A. Max. ye M. M.of.P. M.of.M. M.B. M of m.

[3b] N. o ye Noble Gentleman. Fl. & Beaum Northward Hoe. Tho Decker, & Io Webson. Narcissus or ye Self Lover. Ia. Shirley. ye Noble Souldier. a tra. by S. R. Newes from ye new world in ye Moon. B. Ions. Neptunes Triumph. B. Ions. New Ierusalem. Ios. Syl.

N.H. N. N.S. N.n.W. N.T. N.I.

ye Ordinary. Will. Cartwright.

O.

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230

235

240

Catalog A  173 ye Tragedy of Othello ye Moor of Venice. Oronta, ye CyprianVirgin, seignr. Girolamo ^Th. Stan^ Preti. Ostella, or ye faction of love & beauty, Io. Tatham. Occasionall Poems, by Rob. Heath. Esqu. Oberon, the Fayry Prince. B. Ions. Ovids Metamorph. by Geo. Sandys. ye Opportunity. Ormasdes, or Love & Friendship. Sr Will Killigrew [4a] P ye Passionate Madman. Beau. & Fl. ye Prophetess. Beau. & Fl ye Pilgrim. Beau & Fl. Poems, by M.L.L. ye Phenix. Palingenesia Pentelogia. Fra. Quarles. Poetaster, or his arraignment. B. Ions. Part of the Kings entertainment, in passing to his coronation. Ben. Ions. a Panegyre. Ben. Ions. Prince Henry’s Barriers. Ben. Ions. Pleasure reconciled to Vertue. Ben. Ions. Pans anniversary, or ye shepherds holiday. B.I– a Pisgah sight of Palestine & ye confines thereof. by Tho Fuller. B. D. ye Prelate. N. Caussin. S. I. Sr T. Hawk. a Paradox against liberty, Odet de la Nove. Sylv. Panoretas. trans. by Ios. Sy ye Penitent, or entertainmts for Lent. Causs. ye Preeminence of Parlament Pandora or ye Convert. Sr Will’ Killigrew ye Queen of Corinth. Beaum. & Fl. Queen Elizabeths troubles. ye Queen of Arrogon. ye Queens Masks. B. Ionson. ye Quadrans of Pibrac. Ios. Syl. trans. ye Royall Slave. Will Cartwright. ye Rape of Lucrece. Tho Heywood. ye Revenger. a tragedy. ye tragedy of Richard ye 3d. Shaksp. Romeo & Iuliet. Will Shaksp. Revenge for Honour. Geo. Chapman. Randolph’s Poems. Tho. Rand. Resolves, by Owen Feltham ye Rebellion. Th. Rawlins. ye Tragedy of Rollo. Io: Fletcher.

O.M.V. Or. Os. O.P. Ob. O.M. Orm:

245

250

Ps. P. П Pen. Po.

255

Pt.E. Pan. P.H.B. P.r.V. P.A. P.S. ye P. P.a.L. Panor. ye pe. P. of. P. Pand.

260

Q. E. t. Q. A. Q. M. Q.of.P. R.S. R of L. R R. 3. R.&I. R.f.H. R. P. R s.

265

270

275

280

285

174  Catalog A [4b] s S ye Spanish Curate. Beaum & Fletcher. ye Sea Voyage. Beaum & Fl. Sydney’s Sonnets. ye School of Complements. Ia. Shirley. Steps to the Temple. Ri. Crashaw. ye Siege or Loves Convert. Will Cart. Shirley’s Poems. Satyrs. Rob. Heath Esquire. Sr Iohn Sucklings Poems. Sr Iohn Sucklings Letters. ye Synagogue, or ye show of ye Temple. Sions Sonnets sung by Solomon ye King. Sions Elegies wept by Ierem ye Propht. F.Q. Seianus his fall. B Ionson. ye Sad Shepherd. Ben: Ions. ye Spanish Lady. Saavedra. ye Souldier. Sr Tho. Hawk. ye Statesman. Causs. Sr T. Hawkins. a Survey of ye Signieury of Venice. Ia. How. Sandys Travells. Mr Geo. Sandys. ye Schism. Du. Bart. Seeming is not the same. Ios. Sylvest. Spectacles. Ios. Syl. Sylvesters Remains. Ios. Syl. Silent Woman. Ben. Ions. ye Siege of Vrbin. Sr Will Killigrew Vice Chamberlain to ye Qu Selindra. Sr William Killegrew.

S.S. S.ofC S.t.T. S. S. P. Sa. S. p. S.L. Sy. Si.S. S.E. Se. S. S. Sp.L. ye S. ye St. S of.V. S.T. Sch. S.n.s. Spec. S. R. S. W. S.Vrb. Sel.

ye Tempest. Will. Shakspear. ye Taming of the Shrew. Will Shaks. Twelfe Night, or What you will. W. Shaks. Troylus & Cressida Will. Shaksp. ye tragedy of Titus Andronicus. W. Shaks. Timon of Athens. Will Shaksp. ye Triumph of Beauty. Ia. Shirley. Tathams Poems. Io. Tath. gent. Time vindicated. Ben. Ions. a Tale of a Tub. Ben. Ionson. ye Turtles Triumph. Ri. Brathwait. ye Trophey’s. Du. Bart. Ios. Syl. ye Triumph of Faith. Du. Bart. Ios. Syl. ye Tropheys of Henry ye Great. Pierre Matthieu, trans. by Ios. Syl. Tobacco battered. Ios. Syl.

T. T.o.S. 12.N. T.C. T.A. T.of.A. T.B. T.P. T.V. T.of.T. T.T. ye T. T.of F. T. of H. T. b.

[5a] V w ye tragedy of Valentinian. B.& Flet. ye Vote, a Poem Royall, Ia. Howell. Venus Vigills. Tho Stanley. ye Virgin Widow Fra. Quarles. Vnderwoods. Ben. Ions.

V. V.V. V.W. Vn.

290

295

300

305

310

315

320

325

330

Catalog A  175 ye Vision of Delight. Ben. Ions. ye Virgin Martyr. Phil. Messengr. Tho. Deckr. ye Vnhappy Polititian. Nic. Causs. Sr T. Hawk. ye Voyages & Adventures of Fernand Mendez Pinto Portugal, trans. by Henry Cogan. ye Vocation. Du Bart. Ios. Syl. Vrania. Du Bart. Ios. Syl. ye Womans prize, or ye Tamer Tamed. Beau. & Fl. Women Pleased. Beaum & Fl. a Wife for a Month. Beaum. & Fl. Wit at several weapons. Fl. & Beaum. a Woman will haue her will. ye Witty Faire One. Ia Shirly. ye Wedding. Ia. Shirley. ye Whore of Babilon. Tho Decker. ye Woman Hater. Fr Beaum. Io. Fletchr. Westward Hoe. Tho. Decker. Io. Webson. ye Winters Tale. W. Shakspeare. ye Wonder of a Kingdome. Tho. Decker. ye Woodmans bear. Ios. Syl. [5b]     x     E:     y      z The Elder brother. Iohn Fletcher.

V. D. V.M. V.P.

335

V.&A. ye V. Vr. 340

W.w.w. W. F. W. W.of B. W. H. W. h. W. T. W. K. W. b.

345

350

353

Appendix II: Catalog H (Folger MS V.a.75)

As in Catalog A, I add the marginal numbers and the page and column numbers for convenience of reference. In transcribing, I omit the running title within double lines at the head of the column: “A Catalogue of the Bookes &c” [1a] A Catalogue of the Bookes from whence these Collections were extracted an Account of Religion by Reason. by Sr Iohn Suckling. Additionall Letters of a fresher date. by Iames Howell Esquire. ye Advancement of Learning. by ye Ld Bacon Aglaura. by Sr Iohn Suckling. ye Alchemist. by Mr Ben: Ionson Alcibiades. by Marques Virgilio Malvezzi, englished by Robert Gentilis, Gent. All’s well that ends well. W Shakspeare. an Alphabet of Elegies. Mr Fra: Quarles Amanda. by Tho: Cranley Gent: Amyntas or the Impossible Dowry. by Tho. Randolph Master of Arts. ye Anatomy of Melancholy. by Mr Burton. ye Angell of Peace. in French by N Caussin, translated by Sr Thomas Hawkins Anthony and Cleopatra. Mr W Shakspeare Arcadia. by Sr Phillip Sydney. Argalus and Parthenia. Mr Fra: Quarles Aristippus or the Ioviall Philosopher. Mr Thomas Randolph. ye Arke. by Du Bartas, translated by Ioshua Sylvester. [1b] Artamenes or the Grand Cyrus. by Mounsieur de Scudery, englished by F G Esq ye Continuation of Artamenes. Artamenes the third Volume. translated by F G Esquire. Artamenes the fourth Volume. Astrophil and Stella. Sr Phillip Sydney As you like it. Mr William Shakspeare Attick Antiquities, by Mr Francis Rous Aurora. translated by Tho: Stanley Esquire Babilon. DuBartas, trans: by Ios: Sylvester ye Banished Virgin: translated by Iames Hayward gentleman ye Bastard. ye Battell of Yury. Du Bartas, trans: by I S. ^Bethulia’s Rescue Du Bartas^

5

10

15

20

25

30

Catalog H  177 ye Bird in a Cage. by Mr Iames Shirley ye Booke of Honour. Fra: Markham Capt: ye Boulster Lecture. Brennoralt. by Sr Iohn Sucklin [sic] Bussy D’Ambois. by Mr George Chapman Byrons Conspiracy. by Mr George Chapman. Byrons Tragedy. by Mr George Chapman. Mr Cartwrights Poems. Cassandra in 8°, trans: by ye Ld George Digby Cassandra in folio ye Captains. Du Bartas, trans: by Ios: Sylv: Catiline’s Conspiracy. Mr Ben: Ionson a Celebration of Charis. Mr Ben: Ionson. a Challenge at Tilt. Mr Ben: Ionson Dr Charron, Of Wisdome [2a] a Christians Conflict, trans by Ios: Sylvester ye Christian Diary, by N Caussin, trans: by Sr Thomas Hawkins. Christmas’s Masque. By Mr Ben Ionson Chloridia, by Mr Ben: Ionson Choice Novells. ye Cid. translated by Mr Rutter. Clarastella. by Robert Heath Esquire Cleopatra. englished by Mr Robert Loveday. ye Colonies. by Du Bartas, trans: by I Sylv. of ye Colours of good and evill. Ld Bacon ye Columns. Du Bartas, trans: by Ios: Sylv: ye Command of Reason over the Passions. by N Caussin, trans: by Sr Thomas Hawkins. ye Comedy of Errors. by Mr Will: Shakspeare. Coriolanus a Tragedy. by Mr W Shakspeare Coriolanus by Marques Virgilis Malvezzi. englished by Mr Robert Gentilis. ye Conceited Pedlar. by Mr Tho: Randolph. Cupid crucified. ^trans^ by Thomas Stanley Esquire. Cymbeline, by Mr William Shakspeare. Cynthia’s Revells, by Mr Ben: Ionson ye Cyprian Academy. by Rob: Baron Esquire. Daphnes. by Iohn Tatham Gent: ye Decay. Du Bartas, trans: by Ios: Sylvester ye Defence of Poetry. by Sr Phil: Sydney. ye Delights of the Muses. by Mr R Crashaw Discoveries. by Mr Ben: Ionson ye Divell’s an Ass. by Mr Ben: Ionson Divine Meditations, by Mr Iohn Quarles. Dorastus & Faunia, by Mr Greene Dodona’s Grove. by Iames Howell Esquire [2b] Du Bartas’s first weeke. trans by Ios: Sylvest: Eastward Hoe. Eden. by Du Bartas, trans: by Ios: Sylvester.

35

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45

50

55

60

65

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75

178  Catalog H Elegies. by Robert Heath Esquire Eleven pious meditations, by Fra: Quarles Elegies, by Mr Iohn Quarles. Elegies, Epistles, and Epitaphs, by Mr Iosuah Sylvester. ye English Grammar. by Mr Ben: Ionson ye English Intelligencer. ye English Gentleman. by Ri: Brathwait Esquire ye English Gentlewoman by Ri: Brathwait Esq: England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, described and abbridged by Iohn Speed. Englands teares for the present Wars. by Iames Howell Esquire Entertainments. by Mr Benjamin Ionson Epigrams by Robert Heath Esquire Epigrams by Mr Benjamin Ionson Epithalamion. by Mr Ben: Ionson ye Essaies of Francis Ld Verulam &c Every man in his humor. Mr B Ionson Every man out of his humor. Mr B Ionson Eupheme. by Mr Ben: Ionson Europa. translated by Tho: Stanley Esquire Execration upon Vulcan. by Mr B: Ionson. ye Family of Love. Familiar Letters. by Iames Howell Esquire A new Volume of Familiar Letters. I H. ye Fathers. Du Bartas, trans: by Ios: Sylv: a Feast for Wormes. by Mr Fra: Quarles. For the honour of Wales. by B: Ionson. [3a] ye Force of Blood. trans: out of Spanish ye Forrest. by Mr Ben: Ionson. ye Fortunate Iles and their Vnion. by Mr Benjamin Ionson. Fortunate piety, Part of ye Holy Court. A Fountaine of teares. by Mr Io: Quarles. ye Foxe. By Mr Benjamin Ionson ye Furies. by Du Bartas trans: by Ios: Sylv: ye Gallery of heroick Women. by Peter Le Moyne, trans: by ye Marques of Winchester. ye Golden age restored. Ben: Ionson Good thoughts in bad times. by Thomas Fuller, Batchelor of Divinity. Good thoughts in worse times. by T: Fuller ^&c^ ye Grateful Servant. by Mr Iames Shirley. Hadassa. by Mr Francis Quarles ye Tragedy of Hamlet. by W: Shakspeare. ye Handy-crafts. by Du Bartas, trans: by I S. ye Life of King Henry the fourth. W: Shaksp: ye Death of King Henry 4. by Will: Shakspeare ye Life of Henry ye 5. by Mr Will: Shakspeare ye First part of Henry ye 6. by Mr W Shaks ye Second part of Henry ye 6. by W Shaksp: ye Third part of Henry ye 6. by W Shakspeare. ye Life of King Henry ye 8. by W Shakspeare. ye Humane Poems of Robert Herrick Esqu: Herricks noble numbers.

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90

95

100

105

110

115

120

125

Catalog H  179 Hieroglyphicks of the life of man. by Fra: Quarles. Historicall observations upon the foure principall passions. part of ye Holy Court. [3b] ye History of the World, by Sr W Raleigh. ye History of Iudith. by Du Bartas, englished by Thomas Hudson ye History of Henry ye 7. by ye Ld Bacon ye Holy Court. by Nicholas Caussin, translated by Sr Thomas Hawkins. ye Holy War. by Tho Fuller B of Divinity. Honors Farewell. by Iosuah Sylvester. Horace’s art of Poetry. eng: by B: Ionson Hymenæi &c. by Mr Benjamin Ionson a Hymne of alms, by Iosuah Sylvester ye Iealous Lovers. by T Randolph. M A ye Iealous Husband. trans: out of Spanish Ieremiahs Lamentations, by Mr Io: Quarles ye Imposture. by Du Bartas, trans: by Ios Sylv: Iob militant. by Mr Francis Quarles Iob triumphant. trans: by Ios: Sylvester. ye Irish Masque at Court. by B Ionson Ismenia and the Prince. trans: by T Stanley Esq: ye Tragedy of Iulius Cæsar. by W Shaksp: ye Kings entertainment at Welbeck. B Ionson ye Lady of the May. by Sr Phillip Sydney. ye Lady Errant. by Mr Will: Cartwright. Lachrimæ Lachrimarum. by Ios: Sylvester. ye Lady Cornelia. Translated out of Spanish ye Lady. part of the Holy Court. a Ladies love lecture. by Ri: Brathwait Esq: ye Law. Du Bartas. trans by Ios: Sylvester. ye Tragedy of King Lear. W: Shakspeare. Letters by Sr Iohn Suckling. ye Liberall Lover. trans out of Spanish. [4a] ye Life and death of King Iohn. W Shaksp: Little Bartas. trans: by Mr Iosuah Sylvester Lives and elegies of the most illustrious persons of ye Court. by N Caussin, trans by Sr T H. Love in a maze. Mr Iames Shirley. Loves cruelty. Mr Iames Shirley. Loves labour lost. by Mr Will Shakspeare Love freed from ignorance and folly. by Mr Benjamin Ionson. Love restored. Mr Benjamin Ionson Loves wellcome. by Mr Ben: Ionson Loves tryumph through Callipolis. Ben: I ye Tragedy of Macbeth. Mr W Shakspeare Madagascar. by Sr W Davenant. ye Magnetick Lady. by Mr Ben: Ionson ye Magnificence. by Du Bartas, trans: by I S ye Maiden blush. by Fracastorius, trans: by Mr Iosuah Sylvester. ye Map of man. by Mr Henry Smith, translated by Mr Iosuah Sylvester. ye Masque and Nuptialls at the Ld Vicount Haddingtons marriage. by Mr Ben: Ionson

130

135

140

145

150

155

160

165

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180  Catalog H ye Masque of Queenes. by Mr Ben: Ionson a Masque at the Lord Hayes, for the entertainment of Monsieur Le Baron de Tour. ^B I^ ye Masque of Augures. by Mr Ben: Ionson ye Masque of Owles. by Mr Ben: Ionson Maxims of the Holy Court, against the profane Court. by N Caussin, trans by Sr T H. Measure for measure. by Mr W Shakspeare Mr Miltons Poems. [4b] Memorialls of mortality, by Pierre Mathieu, translated by Mr Iosuah Sylvester ye Merchant of Venice. by Mr W Shakspeare Mercury vindicated from the Alchemists of Court. by Mr Benjamin Ionson. ye Merry Wives of Windsor. W Shakspeare. ye Metamorphosed Gypsies. Ben: Ionson: Midsomer nights dreame. W: Shakspeare. ye Miracle of peace. trans: by Ios: Sylvester. Moses and Aaron. by T Godwyn, B of Divinity. Motto’s. by Iosuah Sylvester. Much ado about nothing. W Shakspeare. ye Muses Looking-glass. by Mr Tho: Randolph. Monsieur Thomas. by Fletcher & Beaumont. Narcissus or ye Self Lover. by Ia: Shirley Neptunes triumph. by Mr Ben: Ionson New Ierusalem. by Iosuah Sylvester News from the new world. Ben: Ionson ye Noble Souldier. by S R. Northward Hoe. by Thomas Decker. Oberon ye Fairy Prince. Mr Ben: Ionson Occasionall poems, by Robert Heath Esquire. ye Ordinary. by Mr W Cartwright. Oronta ye Cyprian Virgin. by Seigneur Girolamo Preti, trans: by Thomas Stanley Esquire. Ostella, by Iohn Tatham gentleman Othello. by Mr William Shakspeare Ovids Metamorphosis, trans: by Palingenesia Panaretus. translated by Mr Iosuah Sylvester. [5a] a Panegyre. by Ben: Ionson. Pans anniversary. by Mr Ben: Ionson a Paradox against liberty. by Odet de la Nove, translated by Mr Iosuah Sylvester. Part of the Kings entertainment, in passing to his Coronation. by Mr Ben Ionson ye Penitent. N Caussin, trans: by Sr Basil Brook. Pentelogia. by Mr Francis Quarles. ye Phenix. a Pisgah sight of Palestine, by T Fuller B D. Pleasure reconciled to Vertue. Ben Ionson Poems. by M L L Poems. by Mr Iames Shirley Poems. by Sr Iohn Suckling Poetaster, or his arraignment. by Ben Ionson.

180

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190

195

200

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215

220

Catalog H  181 Poems on war & peace, by Du Bartas, translated by Iosuah Sylvester ye Preeminence of Parlement. I Howell Esquire ye Prelate. by Nicholas Caussin, translated out of french by Sr Thomas Hawkins. Prince Henry’s Barriers. by Ben: Ionson. ye Quadrains of Pibrac. trans by Ios: Sylvestr. Mr Francis Quarles’s Emblems. ye Queene of Arragon. Queene Elizabeths troubles. ye Queenes Masques. by Mr Benjamin Ionson. Mr Randolph’s Poems. ye Rape of Lucrece. by Thomas Heywood Resolves. by Mr Owen Feltham ye Revenger. Revenge for honour. by Mr George Chapman The life & death of King Richard 2d. Shakspeare [5b] ye Tragedy of Richard the 3. by W Shakspeare Roman Antiquities. by Tho: Godwyn. B D. Romeo and Iuliet. By Mr W Shakspeare ye Royall Slave. by Mr Will: Cartwright. ye Sad Shepherd. Mr Ben: Ionson Saint Lewis ye King. trans: by Mr Iosuah Sylvester Sandy’s travells. by George Sandys Esqu Satyrs by Robert Heath Esquire ye Schisme. by Du Bartas, trans: by Ios: Sylvester. ye Schoole of Complements. by Mr Iames Shirley Seeming is not the same. by Iosuah Sylvester Sejanus’s fall. by Mr Benjamin Ionson ye Siege. by Mr William Cartwright. ye Silent Woman. by Mr Benjamin Ionson Sions Elegies. by Mr Francis Quarles. Sions Sonnets. by Mr Francis Quarles. ye Souldier. part of the Holy Court. ye Spanish Lady. translated out of Spanish Spectacles. by Iosuah Sylvester ye Statesman. part of the Holy Court. Steps to the Temple. by R Crashaw a Survey of Venice. by Iames Howell Esquire Sr Phillip Sydney’s Sonnets Sylvesters Remaines ye Synagogue, or ye Shadow of the Temple. a Tale of a Tub. by Mr Benjamin Ionson ye Taming of the Shrew. by Mr W Shakspeare Mr Iohn Tathams Poems ye Tempest. by Mr William Shakspeare. Time vindicated. Mr Benjamin Ionson Timon of Athens. by Mr William Shakspeare. [6a] Titus Andronicus, a tragedy, by W Shaksp: ye Tragedy of Marcus Tullius Cicero.

225

230

235

240

245

250

255

260

265

270

182  Catalog H ye Triumph of Beauty. by Mr Iames Shirley ye Triumph of Faith. Du Bartas, trans: by Mr Iosuah Sylvester Tobacco battered. Mr Iosuah Sylvester Troylus & Cressida. by Mr W Shakspeare ye Tropheys. Du Bartas Trans: by Mr I Sylves: ye Tropheys of Henry ye great. by Pierre Mathieu, translated by Mr Iosuah Sylvester. ye Turtles Triumph, by Ri: Brathwait Esq Twelfe night. by Mr Will Shakspeare ye Two Gentlemen of Verona. W: Shakspeare ye Two Damsells, translated out of Spanish. Venus Vigils. trans: by Tho: Stanley Esquire . by Mr Benjamin Ionson ye Vnhappy Politian. part of ye Holy Court. ye Vocation. Du Bartas, trans: by I Sylves. ye Virgin Widow. by Mr Francis Quarles ye Virgin Martir. by Phillip Messenger and Thomas Decker. Virgils Bucolicks. trans by Mr Iohn Ogilby. Virgils Georgicks. by Mr Iohn Ogilby. Virgils Æneis. trans: by Mr Iohn Ogilby. ye Version of delight. by Mr Ben Ionson ye Vote or a Poem royall. by I Howell Esqu. ye Voyages and adventures of Fernand Mendez Pinto, trans: by Henry Cogan. Vrania. by Du Bartas, trans: by Ios: Sylvester. [6b] ye Wedding. by Mr Iames Shirley. Westward Hoe. Thomas Decker & I Webson ye Whore of Babilon. by Thomas Decker. ye Winters Tale. by Mr Will: Shakspeare ye Witty Faire one. by Mr Iames Shirley. a Woman will have her will. ye Woman hater. by Beaumont & Fletcher. ye Wonder of a Kingdome. by Tho: Decker. ye Woodmans Beare. by Iosuah Sylvester.

275

280

285

290

295

300 302

Appendix III: Pages and Headings of Halliwell

Collected from the Halliwell-Phillipps cuttings, this appendix includes explicit regular headings and the headings mentioned in cross-references; headings inferable from the information extant are excluded. Sources are noted in the brackets, normally for the pair of headings immediately preceding the bracket. The corresponding page number in V.b.93 where the same heading appears is given under “place in V.b.93”; “1–4 missing” means pages 1–4 are lost from V.b.93, and “87 c-r” means the heading is found in the cross-reference on page 87. For those headings with no page numbers available, sources and places in V.b.93 are omitted. Headings not found in V.b.93 are italicized. page number

heading

place in V.b.93

1 1–2 2

Abasement (V.a.75) Abbridgments & Abbridging (V.a.75) Abilities (V.a.75) Abuses, Accomplished & Accomplishments Acknowledgments Acquaintance (H8 i.23) Adversitie, Advice & Adviseing, Affecting, Affliction Afraid & Affrighted Ages (Cym. i.45) Alluring, Alterations & Altering, Amazed, Amazons, Ambition, Angry Attempts & Attempting Attendants (Tro. ii.83) Balme or Balsome, Batheing, Betraiers Challenging, Changing, Comfortles, Comlines & Comly Commendation (R3 iii.68) ill Company Conceit (R2 ii.88) Confederates Conspiracy Constancy (Mac. ii.30) Constant, Continency, Contrition, Contriving, Courteous

1–4 missing 87 c-r 1–4 missing

13 14 29 30 75 76

177–178 201–202 215 216

7 8 17 18 49 663 c-r

134 141 154 155

184  Pages and Headings of Halliwell 243–244 296 297 307 308 309 310

387 388 427 428 431 432 447 448 459 460 515 516 547–548 569–570 623 624 635 636

681–682 727 728

Courting (H5 iii.71) Curtizans Danger, in Danger, Degenerate, Degree, Deniall Deposeing Departing (Cym. i.47) Descent, Despaired Despiseing Destiny or Fate (2H6 ii.54) Destroying & Destruction Detraction & Detractors (Jn. iii.35) Discontented, Discourse, Discoursing, Displeased, Dispraising, Disputing, Disquiet, Divorce, Dreames, Duty Earthquakes, Effeminacy, Election, Employing & Employment, Encourageing, Endeavours Enemies Engaged (H8 i.85) Enterprizes, Entertaining & Entertainment, Evening, ill Examples, Excelling others, Excusing Faithfull Faithfullnes (H5 i.32) Faithless False & Falshood Fame (Cym. ii.81) Feare, Feasting Fighting Fires (JC 16) Forbearing Forbiding (Ham. ii.77) Forboding, Forgive me, Forgiving, Friendship, Fruites Graves Grieving Grotts (R2 ii.43) Happines, Helping, Hindered & Hindering Honour (1H6 ii.88) Hands (Cym. i.63) Imitating, Impartiall, Injured, Innocent, Inquiring & Inquisitive, Interrupting, Inundations, Iustice Kneeling Knights (Cor. ii.24) Laborious & Labour, Lamentations Late Laughing & Laughter (2H6 ii.32) Likenes, Longing, not in Love, Loyall & Loyalty, Luxury Mad & Madnes Mediocrity (Cym. ii.88) Meeting, Melancholy, Merry & be Merry, Modesty Never, bad Newes, ye Night long or short Nights No (H8 i.86) Offensive Pacification, Pacifying, Patient sufferance

168 199 198 204 204+c-r 205 206

259 260 283 283 285 285 302 303 314 c-r 314 353 355 382 363 440 440 447 447

484 c-r 526 527

Pages and Headings of Halliwell  185 771 772 793 794 807 808

841 842 845 846 861 862 885 886 911 912 929 930

1025 1026 1027 1028

Perswading Perverse & Perversenes (V.a.80 6) Plotts, Praise & Praised Praising or not Prates & Prating (1H6 ii.97) Presenting & Presents, Prisoner Privacy & Private Prodigies (JC 59) Provocation & Provoking, Punishing Railing, Recovered & Recovering, Rejoyce & Rejoyceing Relate & Relating Releefe & Releeving (H8 i.56) Remedies Remembring (Ham. viii.76) Reproving, Resolute, Respect & Respecting Revolting & Revolts Rewarding or not (Jn. i.71) Ruined Sanctification, Sea & Sea-tides, Seasons Secrecy & Secret Secrets (Tro. ii.58) Secure, Seduced & Seducing, Self-Killing Sinfull & Sinners (Cym. i.49 opp.) Singing Slander & Slanderers (Cym. i.49) Slaughter, Sorrowfull & Sorrowing, Souldiers Speed & Speedily Spirits of man (Cym. i.89) Storms, Succeeding & Succession, Succouring, Suffering, Sun-rise, Sun-setting, Superstition Tempestuous, Thanks, Treacherous, Trifles & Trivialls Vicissitude of things, Vnable, Vnchaste, Vnknowne, Voluptuous & Voluptuousnes Vowes & Vowing or not Voiage (2H6 ii.7) Vpstarts Vrgeing Vsurpation & Vsurping (Jn. ii.54) Warning, Warr, Wrongs

571 571 593 not found 605 605

643 644 646 647 667–668 missing 669 692 692 714 715–720 missing 730 731 c-r

849 849 850 852

Appendix IV: Plays, Poems, Prose

The numbers are from Catalog A, MS V.b.93. Plays (177 titles, 31 playwrights) Shakespeare: 36 as in F1, not including The Two Noble Kinsmen Beaumont and/or Fletcher: 1 + 35 + 5 Ben Jonson: 45 (97 = 311) 14 plays: 95, 96, 60, 259, 300, 116, 97/311, 15, 61, 89 (with Chapman), 301, 81, 323, 227 (32 attributed to Chapman now, corrected in V.a.75) 27 masques: 62, 64, 65, 123, 133, 147, 149, 166, 194, 195, 197, 220, 221, 222, 223 Lovers made men, 224, 225, 226, 240, 241, 248, 262, 263, 264, 275 Blackness and Beauty, 322, 334 4 entertainments: 99, 260, 174, 196 James Shirley: 9 29, 130, 186, 188, 290, 250, 320, 345, 346 Thomas Randolph: 5 12, 13, 59, 165, 219 Thomas Dekker: 5 237, 349 (both with John Webster), 335 (with Philip Massinger), 347, 351 Sir William Killigrew: 4 251, 271, 312, 313 Thomas Middleton: 4 117, 203, 256, 279 George Chapman: 4 30, 31, 32, 89 (282 attributed to Glapthorne now) William Cartwright: 4 187, 243, 277, 292

Plays, Poems, Prose  187 Sir John Suckling: 3 10, 36, 132 Thomas Heywood: 2 273, 278 Lording Barry, 202; Richard Brathwait, 104?; Pierre Corneille: 34 (trans. Joseph Rutter); Henry Glapthorne, 282; Fulke Greville, 218; William Habington, 274; Samuel Harding, 129; William Haughton, 344; Cosmo Manuche, 35; Jasper Mayne, 26; John Milton, 216; Francis Quarles, 332; Thomas Rawlins, 285; Samuel Rowley, 239; Sir Philip Sidney, 185; Thomas Tomkis, 27. Poems (103 + 2) Du Bartas: 24 + 1 85; 109, 169, 127, 155; 24, 38, 70, 71; 338, 128, 177, 72; 325, 231, 307, 86; 339, 326, 232 The Miraculous Peace of France, 39, 40, 87, 156 + Saint Lewis the King (V.a.75, 243) Joshua Sylvester trans. 13 From French: 235, 327, Pierre Matthieu; 267, Odet de la Nove; 276, Guy de Faur, Lord of Pibrac; 176, Du Val From Latin: 73, George Goodwin; 233, Henry Smith; 234, Fracastorius. 170, 204, 242, 268, 328 (according to Roman R. Dubinski, English Religious Poetry Printed 1477–1640: A Chronological Bibliography with Indexes) Joshua Sylvester: 8 308, 175, 158, 309, 352, 310, 110; 157 Francis Quarles: 11 120, 94, 258, 146, 164, 298, 299, 14; 11, 93, 145 Ben Jonson: 9 98, 122, 148, 261, 333 (63, 100, 101, 102) Robert Heath: 5 56, 91, 92, 247, 294 Thomas Stanley trans. 4 90, 55, 331, 245 John Quarles: 4 84, 105, 121, 167 John Tatham: 78, 246, 321 Virgil: 42, 137 (trans. John Ogilby) + Æneis (V.a.75, 289) Richard Crashaw: 77, 291 William Davenant: 82, 228 Robert Herrick: 150, 151

188  Plays, Poems, Prose James Shirley: 238, 293 Sir Philip Sidney: 1, 289 William Cartwright, 50; Thomas Cranley, 8; Christopher Harvey, 297; James Howell, 330; Martin Lluelyn, 255; John Milton, 215; Thomas Pierce, 257; Thomas Randolph, 283; Sir John Suckling, 295; Ovid, 249 (trans. George Sandys) Prose (71 + 3) Nicolas Caussin: 14 152: 266, 303, 304, 200, 230, 67, 153, 201, 66, 269; 126, 336, 18 Cervantes: 6 83, 125, 168, 198, 199, 302 (trans. James Mabbe, STC 4914, 1640) James Howell: 6 + 1 118, 119, 5; 112, 270, 305 + Dodona’s Grove (V.a.75, 74) Richard Brathwait: 5 106, 107, 178, 324 (Wing B4262, 1641); 41 Artamenes: 7, 20, 21, 23 Francis Bacon: 22; 108, 69; 160 Thomas Fuller: 135, 136, 140, 265 La Calprenède, Gaultier de Coste: 58 (trans. George Digby), 68 (trans. Sir Charles Cotterell), 159 (trans. Robert Loveday) Ben Jonson: 80, 103 Sir Philip Sidney: 49, 76 Sir John Suckling: 9, 296 Thomas Stanley (trans.): 6, 163 Virgilio Malvezzi: 16, 17 (trans. Robert Gentilis) Thomas Goodwin, 229 + Roman Antiquities (V.a.75, 239) Robert Baron, 51; Biondi, 33 (trans. James Hayward); Robert Burton, 25; Pierre Charron, 57 (trans. Samson Lennard); Owen Felltham, 284; Robert Greene, 79; Francis Markham, 37; Pierre le Moyne, 134 (trans. Marques of Winchester); Pinto, 337 (trans. Henry Cogan); Sir Walter Raleigh, 154; Francis Rous, 19; George Sandys, 306; John Speed, 111 74, Choice Novels J. P. Perrin, Albingenses (trans. Samson Lennard) 356 titles in total. Half of them are plays.

Appendix V: Titles Published or Possibly Published by Humphrey Moseley

The numbers are from Catalog A, Folger MS V.b.93. Translations: 33, 74; 6, 163, 245, 90, 55, 331; 34, 16, 17, 58, 68, 7, 20, 21, 23 James Howell: 5, 112, 118, 119, 270, 330, Dodona’s Grove Francis Quarles: 11, 14, 94, 120, 146, 164, 258, 298, 299 Sir John Suckling: 9, 10, 36, 132, 295, 296 William Cartwright: 50, 187, 243, 277, 292 Robert Heath: 56, 91, 92, 247, 294 James Shirley: 238, 293, 320 Richard Crashaw: 77, 291 William Davenant: 82, 228 John Milton: 215, 216 Henry Glapthorne: 282 Beaumont and Fletcher: 1+35; 348, 353

Appendix VI: Classification of the Titles (351 + 5)

The numbers are from Catalog A, Folger MS V.b.93. There are four overlappings: 22, 34, 73, 89. I Translations (83 + 3) From French: (25 + 14 + 21 = 60) Du Bartas: 24, 38, 39, 40, 70, 71, 72, 85, 86, 87, 109, 127, 128, 155, 156 trans. Thomas Hudson, 169, 177, 231, 232, 307, 325, 326, 338, 339; Saint Lewis the King (V.a.75, 243) Nicolas Caussin: 18, 66, 67, 126, 152, 153, 200, 201, 230, 266, 269, 303, 304, 336 7, 20, 21, 23, Artamenes 34, The Cid 58, 68, Cassandra 134, The Gallery of Heroic Women 159, Hymens Præludia 235, 327, Pierre Matthieu 267, A Paradox against Liberty 276, The Quadrains of Pibrac 57, Charron of Wisdom Albingenses, 2nd part of Luthers fore-runners, by J. P. Perrin, trans. Samson Lennard Joshua Sylvester trans. 170, 176 (Du Val), 204, 242, 268, 328 From Spanish: (11) 16, 17, Virgilio Malvezzi, Robert Gentilis 6, 163, 245, Thomas Stanley Cervantes: 83, 125, 168, 198, 199, 302 From Latin: (10 + 1) 22, Bacon 42, 137, Æneis (V.a.75, 289) Virgil, John Ogilby 55, Cupid Crucified; 331, Venus Vigils: Thomas Stanley 148, Horace, Ben Jonson

Classification of the Titles  191 249, Ovid, George Sandys 73, 233, 234, J. Sylvester From Greek: 90, Europa, Thomas Stanley From Italian: 33, 74 From Portuguese: 337 II Original Works (272 + 2 titles, 56 authors) Ben Jonson: (55; 97 = 311) 15, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 80, 81, 89 (co-author), 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 116, 122, 123, 133, 147, 149, 166, 174, 194, 195, 196, 197, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 240, 241, 248, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 275, 300, 301, 311, 322, 323, 333, 334 Shakespeare: (36) 2, 3, 4, 52, 53, 54, 131, 141, 142, 143, 144, 162, 172, 173, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 244, 280, 281, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319, 350 Beaumont and/or Fletcher: (41) 28, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 75, 88, 113, 114, 115, 138, 139, 161, 171, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 205, 206, 207, 217, 236, 252, 253, 254, 272, 286, 287, 288, 329, 340, 341, 342, 343, 348, 353 Joshua Sylvester: (8) 110, 157, 158, 175, 308, 309, 310, 352 Francis Quarles: (12) 11, 14, 93, 94, 120, 145, 146, 164, 258, 298, 299, 332 James Shirley: (11) 29, 130, 186, 188, 238, 250, 290, 293, 320, 345, 346 James Howell: (7 + 1) 5, 112, 118, 119, 270, 305, 330; Dodona’s Grove (V.a.75, 74) Richard Brathwait: (6) 41, 104?, 106, 107, 178, 324 Thomas Randolph: (6) 12, 13, 59, 165, 219, 283 Sir John Suckling: (6) 9, 10, 36, 132, 295, 296 William Cartwright: (5) 50, 187, 243, 277, 292 Thomas Dekker: (5) 237, 349 (both with John Webster), 335 (with Philip Massinger), 347, 351 Robert Heath: (5) 56, 91, 92, 247, 294 Sir Philip Sidney: (5) 1, 49, 76, 185, 289 George Chapman: 30, 31, 32, 89 Thomas Fuller: 135, 136, 140, 265

192  Classification of the Titles William Killigrew: 251, 271, 312, 313 Thomas Middleton: 117, 203, 256, 279 John Quarles: 84, 105, 121, 167 Francis Bacon: 22 (Latin), 69, 108, 160 John Tatham: 78, 246, 321 Richard Crashaw: 77, 291; Thomas Heywood, 273, 278; William Davenant: 82, 228; Robert Herrick: 150, 151; John Milton: 215, 216; Thomas Goodwin, 229, Roman Antiquities (V.a.75, 239) Robert Baron, 51; Lording Barry, 202; Robert Burton, 25; Pierre Corneille, 34; Thomas Cranley, 8; Owen Felltham, 284; Henry Glapthorne, 282; George Goodwin, 73 (Latin); Robert Greene, 79; Fulke Greville, 218; William Habington, 274; Christopher Harvey, 297; William Haughton, 344; Samuel Harding, 129; Martin Lluelyn, 255; Cosmo Manuche, 35; Francis Markham, 37; Jasper Mayne, 26; Thomas Pierce, 257; Samuel Rowley, 239; Sir Walter Raleigh, 154; Thomas Rawlins, 285; Francis Rous, 19; George Sandys, 306; John Speed, 111; Thomas Tomkis, 27.

Appendix VII: The Halliwell-Phillipps Cuttings of Hesperides from Stratford-upon-Avon

James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, “Notes upon the Works of Shakespeare,” 70 of 128 vols. Coriolanus              2 vols. i 8, 11, 27, 32, 48, 52, 58, 61, 74, 126 ii 24, 26, 109, 112, 116, 118, 125, 126 Cymbeline           3 vols. i 5, 14, 27, 28, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 56, 59, 63, 83, 89, 90, 93, 96 ii 3, 4, 7, 12, 17, 21, 43, 59, 69, 75, 81, 82, 88, 95 iii 17, 22, 34, 37, 39, 46, 49, 52, 53, 56, 58, 59, 60 Hamlet           9 of 12 vols. i 15, 48, 98 ii 2, 77 iii 21v, 98, 100 iv 41, 62 v 35, 59 vi 14, 16, 24, 29, 37, 40, 43, 45, 46, 63, 76, 80, 87 vii 16 viii 31, 34, 36, 41, 51, 56, 59, 61, 67, 76 xii 3 Henry IV, I           5 of 9 vols. iv 34, 59, 95 v 73 vi 62 vii 17 viii 12, 35, 68, 76, 94 Henry IV, ii           i 8, 13, 75, 93, 98 ii 53, 68, 75, 77, 86v

6 vols.

194  Halliwell-Phillipps Cuttings of Hesperides iii 3, 53, 61, 72, 79, 99 iv 25, 32, 59, 76 v 75, 96 vi 37, 89, 99 Henry V           6 vols. i 32 ii 50, 68, 74, 84, 86, 89, 93 iii 33, 71, 81 iv 32 v 35, 37, 87 vi 12, 34, 52, 54, 78, 96 Henry VI, i           i 7, 27, 40, 50, 66 ii 32, 52, 81, 88, 90, 97

2 vols.

Henry VI, ii           3 vols. i 16, 59, 93 ii 7, 22, 27, 28, 32, 35, 45, 50, 52, 53, 54 iii 21 Henry VI, iii           2 vols. i 23, 33, 91v ii 5, 7, 9, 12, 13, 15, 20, 21, 38, 48, 74, 85, 86, 96 Henry VIII           3 vols. i 14, 23, 25, 32, 56, 58, 64, 70, 74, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88, 91, 97 ii 2, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 17, 21, 23, 25, 27, 30, 33, 35, 40, 42, 44, 45, 50, 54, 55, 58, 60 iii 21, 22, 27, 46, 48, 49, 53, 62, 63, 64, 86, 96, 99 Julius Caesar           1 vol. 7, 8, 9, 16, 23, 25, 33v, 36v, 38v, 43, 44, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 59, 60, 75, 78, 79, 80v, 82, 85, 95, 98 King John           3 vols. i 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 28, 32, 35, 39, 40, 44, 45, 46, 47, 54, 58, 59, 71, 76, 81, 96, 99 ii 36, 54, 59, 68, 88 iii 16, 18, 21, 35, 37, 48, 87v King Lear           i 35 ii 11 iii 49, 49v iv 94



4 vols.

Halliwell-Phillipps Cuttings of Hesperides  195 Macbeth           i 13, 32, 35, 81, 87 ii 2, 14, 22, 30, 48, 66 iii 9, 13, 22, 93, 94, 95 iv 19, 22, 41, 65

4 vols.

Richard II           2 vols. i 26, 36, 56, 79, 87 ii 11, 14, 17, 18, 22, 33, 42, 43, 50, 51, 52, 75, 77, 86, 88, 92, 94, 96 Richard III           3 vols. i 14, 92 ii 7, 13, 37 iii 20, 56, 57, 63, 66, 68, 77, 91, 92, 98, 100 Romeo and Juliet           5 vols. i 21, 41, 57, 83, 88, 96 ii 44, 64, 80, 99 iii 17, 23, 31, 35, 37, 51, 64, 70, 83 iv 20, 21, 40, 70, 74, 76, 95 v 3, 17, 24, 25, 33, 43, 46v, 92 Timon of Athens           2 vols. i 7, 11, 14, 34, 40, 59, 60, 93 ii 6, 17, 25, 35, 41, 44, 53, 54, 69, 72 Titus Andronicus           2 vols. i 27, 65, 98v ii 45, 98, 99 Troilus and Cressida       2 vols. i 33, 45, 46, 48, 62, 73, 76, 82, 83 ii 3, 5, 6, 8, 24, 25, 27, 42, 58, 67, 72, 73, 83 Winter’s Tale           1 of 4 vols. iv 18

Index

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” refer to end notes. The Academy of Complements (Philomusus) 118 Addison, Joseph 80, 98n13, 122n2 Adelphe 29 Aeschylus 32 Agricola, Rudolph 97 Albingenses 9, 13, 25n11, 122n5 Alexander, Peter 85 Alexander, Sir William 115 Alexander the Great 69, 120, 144 Allan, David 28–29 Ambrose, St 58–59, 62–63, 134, 137 Analects 140–141 Aristophanes 140 Aristotle 27, 34, 38, 52n14, 53n23, 137–140, 144–145, 147n12 Armstrong, Jane 149 Arnold, Samuel James 93 Ascham, Roger 114 Athenaeus 32 Athenæ Oxonienses 10 Atterbury, Francis 122 Auden, W. H. 27, 74n29 Augustine, St 61, 134, 137–141 authorship 11–12, 16, 37, 54, 61, 64, 71–72, 94, 111, 114 Authorship and Appropriation (Kewes) 101, 108, 123n13, 123n21 Bacon, Francis 29–30, 49–50, 52n8, 61, 73n16, 90, 142, 144 Bacon, Sir Nicholas 30 Bai Juyi 128 Baines, T. 11 Baker, William 24n7 The Banished Virgin (Biondi) 111–112, 116 Barish, Jonas 106

Barker, William 138–139 Barnes, Barnabe 110 Baron, Robert 112–114 Beal, Peter 1–2, 5–7, 15–16, 23, 24n1, 24n4–24n6, 26n32, 37, 49, 52n9, 52n11–52n12, 99n27, 132 Beaumont and Fletcher 7, 11, 15–16, 20, 22–23, 95, 103–106, 108–109, 119, 122n11, 123n24–123n25, 130 Beaumont, Francis 11–12, 109, 123n24 bee (metaphor) 35, 40, 59, 64–66, 68, 70–71, 92, 97, 151 Behn, Aphra 27, 30 Beling, Richard 112 Bel-vedere (Bodenham) 35, 38–39, 53n24 Bentley, G. E. 26n30, 84, 108–109, 117, 123n24–123n25 Berkenhead, J. 11 Beversham, William 113–114 Bible, the 32, 38, 52n9, 78–79, 97, 102, 106, 137, 143 bibliography 1, 14, 24n5, 99n33, 102 Billings, Timothy 132–133, 136–138, 140–143, 145–146, 147n10, 147n12– 147n13, 148n17–148n18, 148n22 Biondi, Giovanni Francesco 111–112, 116 BL Add MS 4821 29, 46 BL Add MS 6038 31 BL Add MS 27419 30 BL Add MS 28273 47 BL Add MS 28728 31, 46 BL Add MS 35342 28 BL Add MS 35983 46–47 BL Add MS 36354 46 BL Add MS 37719 29–30 BL Add MS 38482 29, 47 BL Add MS 38823 46

Index  197 BL Add MS 39214 31 BL Add MS 41068A 31 BL Add MS 42118 30–31 BL Add MS 42121 51n6 BL Add MS 43410 29, 47 BL Add MS 44963 29–31 BL Add MS 44964 51n6 BL Add MS 45154 29 BL Add MS 52800 47 BL Add MS 54332 53n28 BL Add MS 56279 29 BL Add MS 57555 29 BL Add MS 61490 28 BL Add MS 61903 49 BL Add MS 62540 29 BL Add MS 63075 30 BL Add MS 63782 47 BL Add MS 72544A 31, 47 BL Add MS 72544B 31 Blair, Ann 125–126, 129–130 Blayney, Peter W. M. 96, 123n17 BL Lansdowne MS 638 29 BL Lansdowne MS 695 45 Blount, Sir Thomas Pope 122n2, 122n10, 123n11 BL Royal 12 A XXXIV 31 BL Royal 12 C XV 51n6 BL Stowe MS 1047 29 Boccaccio 72 Bodenham, John 38–39, 53n24 Bodin, Jean 77 Bodley, Thomas 106 Bonaventure, St 98n12 A Booke of Notes and Common Places (Merbecke) 37 book trade 74n35, 94, 101, 103 Booth, Stephen 142, 144–146 Bradstreet, Anne 99n29 Bretelle-Establet, Florence 125–126 Breton, Nicholas 38 Brome, Richard 105, 107, 109, 130 Brounrigg, Robert 113 Browne, Joseph 72, 73n4–73n5; plagiarism 54–58 Bunyan, John 61, 72, 73n13 Burke, Peter 126–128, 131 Burke, Victoria 1, 24n7, 51n1–51n2 Burrow, Colin 143 Burrow, J. A. 98n12 Burton, Robert 58, 64–70, 74n31–74n32, 75, 80, 98n13 Caesar, Sir Julius 37, 52n20 Calverly, Thomas 29, 51n5

The Cambridge History of the English Language 42 canon formation 3, 6, 31, 51, 93–95, 101–122, 131 Cao Xueqin 91 Carew, Thomas 107, 117 Carey, John 98n7 Carlell, Lodowick 107 Cartwright, William 10–11, 103, 107, 117, 119–120 Cary, Elizabeth 99n29 Casaubon, Isaac 29, 49 Cassiodorus 137 Catalog A 7–9, 15–16, 20–23, 54, 105, 122n5– 122n6, 166–176, 186, 189–190 Catalog H 7–9, 15–16, 19–21, 23, 25n20, 54, 122n5, 176–182 Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450–1700 (CELM) 7 catchword 19–20, 30, 52n9 Cavendish, Margaret 99n29, 114 Caxton, William 36, 39, 42–43 Cervantes, Miguel de 112 Chao Zhongyan 129 Chapman, George 16, 72, 75, 105, 109, 123n24 Charles I 12, 79, 119 Charles II 14, 25n23, 112 Chaucer, Geoffrey 39, 72, 80, 98n13 Chemla, Karine 125–126 China 4, 27, 125–126, 128–132, 139, 141, 143, 150 Chuxue ji 127–128 Cicero 27, 32, 34, 38, 70, 132–137, 139–144 civil service examination 128, 130 Civil Wars, English 39, 102, 118–120 CKS MS U1475/Z1/11 31 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 80 Coles, John 112–113 Collier, John Payne 95–96 Comenius, John Amos 27 commonplace book 1–7, 14–15, 17, 19, 22–24, 27–28, 43, 45–46, 48–51, 51n6, 61, 68–69, 95–97, 99n24, 101–102, 108, 111, 115–117, 121–122, 132–133, 136, 138, 142–143, 149–150; and Chinese leishu 125–131; and Erasmus 31–39; daily use 28–29; Evans’s 80–90; florilegium (florilegia pl.) 52n16, 68, 126; manuscript 28–31; Milton’s 75–80; printed 2, 28, 38–39, 53n24, 108, 116

198 Index commonplace book culture 31, 150 commonplace mentality/mind 90, 147, 149–150, 151n1 commonplace reading 3, 32, 36, 81, 89–90 commonplace writing 3–4, 32, 58–72, 75, 90, 97, 125, 144, 147; Ricci’s crosscultural 131–142 Condell, Henry 75 Confucius 92 Cook III, Albert 72 Coriolanus (Malvezzi) 16, 20 Corneille, Pierre 103 Cotgrave, John 84, 108–110, 143 Cotgrave Online (McEvilla) 109 Cotton, Sir Robert 29 courtier 1, 3, 17, 22–23, 96–97, 100n39, 118, 127–128, 130 Coventry, Lord Thomas 64 Cowley, Abraham 80 Crashaw, Richard 103, 117 Crosbie, John 113 cross-reference 17–20, 22, 28, 32, 35, 48–51, 126, 183 Cumberland, Richard 93 Cyprian, St 137 Daniel, Samuel 117 Darnton, Robert 90, 97, 149 database 1, 6, 9–10, 12–13, 126, 130 Davenant, Sir William 16, 20, 25n24, 103 Davis, Herbert J. 30 Dawson, Giles E. 95 Dayly Obseruations both Diuine & Morall (Grocer) 30 Dekker, Thomas 109, 167 delight 31, 60, 92, 115, 129 Demosthenes 133, 135 Denham, John 104 Dering, Sir Edward 28 Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, Jean 113 Deus 137 Dickinson, Emily 146 Digges, L. 91 Dio Chrysostomos 134 Diogenes Laertius 138 DNB 9–10, 58, 73n7 Dodona’s Grove 7–8, 112, 119 Donne, John 117, 144 Dowager Cixi 147n3 Drake, Sir William 28 Drayton, Michael 117 Drège, Jean-Pierre 125 Dryden, John 30, 80, 99n31, 104, 122n2, 122n11

Dunton, John 58–72, 73n7, 73n10, 74n32–74n33 Durer, Albrecht 91 Eagleton, Terry 101 Eborensis, Andreas 133–134, 138, 147n12, 148n16–148n17 Eck, Johann von 38 editing 2–3, 58, 80–90, 107, 128–130 education 27, 29, 31, 33, 42, 49, 51n1, 63, 118, 127, 130, 132, 136, 139 EEBO 8, 12–13, 15, 25n21–25n22, 73n8 Egerton, Sir Thomas 29 Elder, William 118 Eliot, George 27 Elizabeth I, Queen 38 eloquence 36, 75, 97, 113, 117–118 encyclopedia 4, 125–127, 147n1 England’s Parnassus 36, 116–117 The English Treasury of Wit and Language (Cotgrave) 22, 36, 84, 97, 108–109, 111, 116, 130, 143 Erasmian principle 37, 135 Erasmus, Desiderius 31–39, 52n12, 62, 68, 70, 72, 74n18, 74n32, 118, 132, 138–140, 147n11–147n12, 148n20, 151; Adagia 31–32, 36, 62, 68, 74n18, 138–139, 147n12; Ciceronianus 70; De copia 31–32, 34–36; Praise of Folly 74n32 ESTC 9, 12, 25n14, 38, 72n2, 73n14 Estill, Laura 99n27, 123n23 Euripides 139 Evans, G. B. 142 Evans, John 1–3, 5, 7–8, 13, 16, 20, 22–24, 28, 30–31, 35–36, 39, 43, 45, 51, 64, 68, 80, 102, 117–121; commonplacing 80–90; emendations 80, 84–85, 88, 96, 99n24; on kings and rebels 118– 119; on reading 92–93; on woman 120–121; on writing 91–93 Evans-Moseley canon 93, 102–103, 111, 115–116 Felltham, Owen 58–69, 73n15–73n17, 74n25, 92–93 First Folio (F1), Shakespeare’s 48, 75, 85–89, 91, 99n18, 99n22, 99n24, 99n33, 105–106, 123n17, 123n19 Fletcher, John 7, 11, 15–16, 20, 22–23, 95, 103–106, 108–109, 119, 122n11, 123n24, 130 Folger MSS W.b.137-256 24n2, 45, 123n11

Index  199 Folger MS V.a.75 1, 5, 7, 18–19, 50, 95, 116 Folger MS V.a.79 1, 5–6, 14, 17–18, 25n23, 85–86, 89, 95 Folger MS V.a.80 1, 5–6, 14, 18–19, 25n23, 87, 95 Folger MS V.b.110 28, 49 Forster, E. M. 27 Foxe, John 37–38 Franklin, Benjamin 53n26 Fraunce, Abraham 115 Fulton, Thomas 49, 75, 90 Gadd, Ian 25n22 Gascoigne, George 64 Ge Zhaoguang 129, 147n5 Gibson, Sir John 29–31, 52n7 Glapthorne, Henry 103 Googe, Barnabe 12 Gosson, Stephen 106 Gower, John 39 Graham, Sir Frederick 75 Graham, Sir Richard 30 Greene, Robert 38 Gregory XIII, Pope 139 Gregory XV, Pope 79 Greg, Sir W. W. 22–23, 25n13, 26n34–26n35, 103, 114, 122n3, 122n8, 123n13, 123n18 Greville, Fulke 73n16, 123n24 Grocer, Thomas 30 Gujin tushu jicheng 127, 147n3 Hackel, Heidi Brayman 24n5, 99n27, 124n38 Hakluyt, Richard 38 Halliwell 5, 12–17, 19–24, 44, 47, 51, 95 Halliwell-Phillipps, James Orchard 1–2, 5–8, 12–17, 19, 20–24, 24n2, 26n33, 44–45, 47, 51, 58, 82, 89, 93, 95–96, 99n33–99n34, 123n11, 149, 152, 183–185, 193–195; Shakespearean scrapbooks 5–6 Hanford, James Holly 31, 98n2 Han Yu 128 Harbsmeier, Christoph 135–138, 143, 145, 147n12–147n13, 148n14–148n15 Hardy, Thomas 27 Harington, John 38 Harvey, Christopher 117 Hastings, Elizabeth 28 Haug, Ralph A. 77, 98n8 Havens, Earle 27–28, 30–31, 37, 49, 72, 121 Hazlitt, William 79–80, 98n13 Heath, Robert 103, 117 Heminge, John 75

He Qixin 72 Herbert, George 117 Herbert, Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke 39, 99n29, 112, 114 Herodotus 144 Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden 1–3, 5–7, 9–17, 20, 22–24, 25n20, 28–31, 35–36, 39, 43–44, 47–48, 50–51, 54, 58, 61, 70, 80, 85–86, 89, 91–98, 101–104, 108, 115–121, 149; dating 14–24; production 39–51; readers 93–97 Heywood, John 74n18, 74n20 Heywood, Thomas 123n27 Hill, Abraham 49 Hinman, Charlton 99n18, 99n33 Histoire D’Angleterre (Du Chesne) 79 history of the book 97, 149 HM 93 30, 46 HM 102 29 HM 116 28, 46 HM 198 28, 31, 46 HM 202 29 HM 1338 28, 30, 46, 52n8 HM 1340 30 HM 1728 25n28, 29 HM 15369 28, 30 HM 30309 29, 73n12 HM 31191 45–46 HM 41536 28, 46 HM 46323 29, 46 HM 55603 28–29 HM 60413 28 HM EL 496 29 Hoby, Sir Edward 46 Holy Court 58, 68 Homer 35, 38, 69, 74n29, 92, 99n31, 115, 131 Horace 32, 68, 131 Horwood, Alfred J. 75, 98n2 Howell, James 12–13, 103, 108, 112, 119 Huang Tingjian 128 Hughes, Merritt Y. 72, 98n4 humanism 36, 118; Christian 137–139 Ignatius of Loyola 139 imitation 36, 38, 54, 58, 62, 67–68, 72, 74n29, 79, 97, 117 incunabula (incunabulum sing.) 52n10 ink 6, 17, 21–22, 24, 28, 51n3, 51n5, 89, 91–92, 105, 167 instruction 92 intercultural study 125–142, 147, 150 Islip, Susan 106

200 Index Jacob, Giles 104 Jerome, St 137 Jiao Hong 140 Johnson, Samuel 42 Jonson, Ben 7, 11–12, 16, 27, 93, 102, 104–106, 108–111, 116–117, 122n11, 123n13, 123n20 junzi 140 Kastan, David Scott 38, 43, 52n19, 101–102, 104, 106, 108, 120–122, 123n14, 123n16, 123n20, 148n25 Kerrigan, John 1, 79, 84–85 Kewes, Paulina 3, 60, 101, 107–108 Killigrew, Sir William 16, 20, 23 Kirkman, Francis 104, 122n9 Knolles, Richard 98n8 Knott, Betty I. 31 Kramnick, Jonathan Brody 122n1 La Calprenède, Gaultier de Coste de 112–113, 124n30 Lactantius 77 Laevius 124n33 Langbaine, Gerard 108, 123n21 Lanyer, Aemilia 99n29 Larsen, Katherine Ann 74n35 Layamon 72 Lee, Sophia 93 leishu 4, 125–132, 138, 147, 147n1–147n2, 147n8, 150; and canon formation 131; and commonplace books 125–131; and emperors 126–130; and intellectual history 128–129, 147n5; and literary studies 131; and poetry writing 127–128, 130; compilation 128; daily use 127; database 126; definition 125–126; extracts 129–130; functions 130, 147n8; The Grand Chinese Canon 150; number 126, 147n2; sources 129–130; term translation 125–126, 147n1; three types 126–128; weaknesses 130–131 Lennard, Samson 9, 122n5 Lewis, Matthew Gregory 93 Li Funing 41–43 Li Longji 127 Lindey, Alexander 54, 66, 74n29 Ling, Nicholas 38 LION 9–10, 12–13, 58, 98n16 Li Shangyin 128, 130–131 Li Shimin 127–128 Li Zhi (Ming thinker) 142

Li Zhi (Tang emperor) 128 Lluelyn, Martin 9–10, 25n17, 119, 167 Loci communes rerum theologicarum (Melanchthon) 37–38 Lodge, Thomas 56, 85, 117 London, William 103, 122n8 Lord of Heaven 136–137 Love, Harold 60, 68 Lowin, John 11 Lucas, Lady Anne 112 Lumley, Jane 99n29 Luther, Martin 9, 37–38, 82 Lu Wangai 132 Lydgate, John 39 Lyly, John 38 Mabbe, James 112 Macrobius 67 Maid’s Revenge 142–143 Mallon, Thomas 67–68 Malone, Edmund 142 manuscript culture 81, 129 Marino, Adrian 3, 103 market 97, 101, 103–104, 106, 108, 111–112, 114–115, 122n8 Marmion, Shackerley 123n27 Marotti, Arthur F. 99n27, 123n23 Marston, John 108 Martial 39, 66, 139 Martin, W. A. P. 52n13 Massinger, Philip 107, 109, 123n25, 167 McDermott, Joseph P. 126–128, 131 McEvilla, Joshua J. 109, 123n25 McEwan, Ian 112 McKenzie, D. F. 14 McLuhan, Marshall 81 Medcalf, Thomas 29 media (medium sing.) 2–3, 13–14, 30, 43, 81, 89, 106 Melanchthon, Philipp 31, 37–38 memory 65, 80, 98n13, 132, 146, 150 Menander 139 Mencius 136, 141 Merbecke, John 37–38 Meres, Francis 115, 124n37 Middleton, Thomas 26n34, 47, 107, 109, 123n27, 130 Mignini, Filippo 148n17 Milton, John 16, 20, 24n5, 27, 30–31, 46, 49, 68, 72, 75–80, 82, 89–90, 93, 97–98, 99n28, 103, 106–107, 117; Areopagitica 77–78, 90; commonplace book 75–80; Doctrine and Discipline of

Index  201 Divorce 76, 78–79; Eikonoklastes 72; Il Penseroso 68; L’Allegro 68; Lycidas 89; A Mask 16, 20, 77; Paradise Lost 76–78, 93; Paradise Regained 77; Poems 106; Prolusions I-VII 68; The Reason of Church-Government 77; Samson Agonistes 76–78; Tetrachordon 77 misogyny 120–121 Mody, Henry 11 Mohl, Ruth 30, 75–79, 82, 98n2–98n3, 98n9–98n10 Montaigne, Michel de 59, 61, 73n13, 73n16, 142 Morris, John 49 Moseley, Anne 23 Moseley, Humphrey 1–3, 6, 15–16, 22–23, 25n27, 35, 93, 96–97, 100n39, 101–108, 111–115, 118–120, 122n8, 189 Moss, Ann 2–3, 27, 29, 33, 38, 64, 68, 70, 90, 124n41, 129, 131, 151 Moston, Doug 53n27 Mo Zhi 146 Muses, the nine 35, 91, 129 Nash, Andrew 123n19 Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon 52n18 Newdigate, Sir John 82 New Testament 28 North, Frederick 132–133 Ogilby, John 123n28 Oldisworth, William 72n2 Old Testament 52n18 Orbis sensualium pictus (Comenius) 27 Orgel, Stephen 142 Otway, Thomas 104 Ovid 32, 36, 38, 52n22, 131 Owen, Stephen 127–128 Oxenden, Henry 28, 49 paleography 14–15, 24, 25n28, 88, 93–94 Palmer, F. 11 Pandectae: Locorum communium (Foxe) 37 paper 43–44, 48–49, 89, 91, 105–106 paraphrase/paraphrasing 31, 36, 72, 78, 82, 84, 112, 134 Parker, David R. 90, 100n40 Parks, Stephen 73n7, 74n35 Parr, Elnathan 29 Patterson, Annabel 115 Pearls of Eloquence (Elder) 118 Pebworth, Ted-Larry 73n14–73n17, 74n25

performance 29, 92, 101, 106, 108 Perrin, Jean Paul 9, 25n12, 82, 122n5 Phaedrus 67 Philips, Katherine 99n29 Phillipps, Sir Thomas 95 Phillips, Edward 104, 122n10 Philomusus 118 Philoxenus 92 Pierce, Thomas 12, 54, 56–58, 73n4–73n5 Pi Rixiu 128 plagiarism 54–61, 64, 66–67, 70–72, 80, 119 Plato 32, 38, 139–140, 145 Plutarch 32, 38, 60, 68, 72, 134–137, 139, 141, 144 Poetical Register (Jacob) 104 Poole, Josua 124n40 Poole, William 49, 75–77, 79, 98n2, 98n6, 98n13, 131 print culture 29–30, 81 Prissoe, Anthony 113–114 Prynne, William 106 Pudsey, Edward 29, 49 Pyper, John 124n30 Pythagoras 138–139 Qian Weiyan 130 Qian Zhongshu 131, 150–151, 151n1 Qin Guan 128 Quarles, Francis 103, 109, 112, 117 Quarles, John 117 quasi-plagiarism 57 Quintilian 27, 135, 137, 143–144 Raleigh, Sir Walter 78, 96 Raworth, Ruth 106 recipes 27–28, 51n3–51n4 Reed, John Curtis 1, 26n32, 99n38, 103, 105, 114–115, 124n32 reference book/work 9, 15, 128, 130, 147n1, 150 Reformation 37–38, 146; CounterReformation 139 Renaker, David 66 Restoration, the 14, 23, 42–43, 105 Ricci, Matteo 4, 125, 131–147, 148n14, 148n16–148n20, 151; cross-cultural commonplace writing 131–142; On Friendship 4, 125, 131–134, 136–140, 142–144, 146, 147n10, 147n13; Treatise on Mnemonic Arts 132 Robinson, Humphrey 107 Robinson, Richard 11 Rochester, Earl of 104, 122n11 Roman Antiquities 7–8

202 Index romance 3, 90, 102–103, 111–116, 120–121, 122n7–122n8, 124n30, 124n34, 124n36; French heroic 111–112; novella 112; political/allegorical 112; The Rise of Romance (Vinaver) 111; Sidneian 112 Ross, Trevor 101–102 royalism/royalist 10, 23, 39, 100n39, 101–102, 118–120 Royal Society, the 49 running title 8, 30, 52n9 Rutter, Joseph 103 Rymer, Thomas 122n2 Salzman, Paul 73n7, 73n10, 73n35, 111–112, 115, 124n31 Scattergood, Anthony 30, 51n6 Scattergood, Elizabeth 30 Schoenbaum, Samuel 95–96 The Schoolmaster (Ascham) 114 Scourge of Villanie (Marston) 108 Scudéry, Madeleine de 112–113, 115, 120 Scudéry, Georges de 113, 115, 120 Selden, John 77–78 Seneca 60–64, 66–70, 140–141 Shakespeare, William 5–7, 52n22, 64, 104, 123n23, 141, 143, 149–150; All’s well that ends well 85, 87–88; As you like it 85–87; The comedy of errors 87; Coriolanus 85, 87, 89; Cymbeline 19, 85–87, 99n25; Hamlet 85, 87, 109–111, 148n25; Henry IV 7–8, 87, 99n33; Henry V 85; Henry VI 86–89; Henry VIII 21, 85–88; Julius Caesar 86; King John 85, 87, 119; King Lear 48, 64, 82; Love’s labor’s lost 123n25; Lucrece 52n22; Macbeth 85–87, 89, 94; Measure for measure 85, 87, 89; The merchant of Venice 87, 141; A midsummer night’s dream 85, 88; Much ado about nothing 85; Othello 28–29; Richard III 88; Romeo and Juliet 12, 85–88; Sonnets 142; sweet love 145; The tempest 87, 123n25; text 85, 96; Troilus and Cressida 58, 86–87; Twelfth night 89; The two gentlemen of Verona 16, 87, 89; Venus and Adonis 52n22, 98n5; The winter’s tale 21, 85, 88 Shawcross, John T. 24n5, 99n27 Shen Yue 129 Sherman, William H. 30, 45, 51n6, 80, 82, 97

Shirley, James 11, 39, 47, 103, 107, 109, 117–118, 123n25, 142–143 Sidney, Sir Philip 112, 114; An Apologie for Poetrie 124n35, 124n37, 124n39; Arcadia 74n20, 112, 114–115 Sidney, Sir Robert 49 Siku quanshu 130 Skinner, David 30 Smith, Sir Thomas 45 Smyth, Adam 29–30, 49, 51n3, 52n7, 97–98, 150 Somerset, Alan 99n33 Somerset, J. A. B. 95–96 Sorelius, Gunnar 3, 5–7, 9, 12–15, 20, 24n4–24n5, 25n20, 53n24, 80, 82, 85–90, 95, 99n24–99n25, 105, 116, 167 Southwell, Anne 29 space economy 28, 39–48, 84, 99n20 Spence, Jonathan D. 132, 138–139 Spenser, Edmund 39, 56, 117, 131 Spevack, Marvin 95, 99n33 Stanley, Thomas 112 Stapleton, Laurence 73n16–73n17 Stationers’ Company, the 111 Stationers’ Register, the 1, 15, 22, 71, 96, 105 Stellato, Marcello Palingenio 12 Stewart, Stanley 61, 73n16, 74n25 Strangways, Sir John 30 Sturmy, Henry 30, 49 Suckling, John 15–16, 103, 105–107, 110–111, 117 Sylvester, Joshua 8, 39, 64, 117 Tate, John 43 Taylor, Gary 105 Taylor, Joseph 11 Terence 29, 67 Theatre-Royal, Drury Lane 94 Theocritus 32 theology 3, 37–38, 52n21, 139 Theophrastus 139 title page 25n18, 30, 37, 52n9, 52n11, 107 translation/translator 3, 8–9, 12, 36, 64, 71, 74n28, 75, 98n2, 98n6, 98n8, 98n12, 103, 111–114, 117, 120, 122n7–122n8, 123n28, 124n31, 125–126, 133–134, 136–137, 147n1, 147n13, 148n19–148n20, 190–191 Tristram Shandy (Sterne) 58 Trumbull, Sir William 49 Turner, Robert K. 106–107 Tyler, Margaret 113

Index  203 Valerius 34, 140, 145 variant 10, 25n11, 42, 76, 85–86, 88, 96, 99n25, 124n29, 129, 136–137 Varro 124n33 Vaughan, Edward 97 Vaumorière, M. de 115 V.b.93 5, 7–8, 15–17, 19–22, 24, 47–49, 183 Vendler, Helen 144, 146 Vere, Edward de, Earl of Oxford 39 Vinaver, Eugène 111 Virgil 7–8, 25n10, 32, 36, 67, 74n29, 109–110, 115, 123n28, 131 Vives, Juan Luis 114 A Voyage round the World: Or, A PocketLibrary (Dunton) 58, 68–69, 72, 73n7 Wace 72 Walden, Richard 124n40 Walker, Obadiah 49, 72 Walkley, Thomas 105, 124n30 Waller, Edmund 26n35, 102, 107, 117, 122n2 Wallington, Nehemiah 49 Walton, Izaak 11 Wang Bo 128 Wang Changling 128 Wang Kentang 137 Warner, William 117 Warton, Thomas 122n1 watermark 23–24 Webb, James 112 Webster, John 109 Wellek, René 122n1–122n2 Wells, Sir Stanley 145, 148n23 Wen Tingyun 128 Wen Yiduo 130

White, Harold Ogden 57, 67 Wikiquote 27 Wilde, Oscar 27 Willichius, Jodocus 129 Winstanley, William 122n10 Wits Common Wealth (Bodenham) 38 Wits Private Wealth (Breton) 38 Wolf II, Edwin 96 woman 7, 18, 21, 47, 93–94, 99n29, 106–107, 112–113, 120–121, 137, 145 Wordsworth, William 145 Wright, Abraham 123n14, 124n20 Wright, L. B. 105, 108, 122n4, 123n22 Wroth, Lady Mary 99n29, 113 Wu Chengxue 131 wulun 141 Wyatt, Sir Thomas 116 Wycherley, William 104 xiaoren 140 Xu Dongfeng 147n13 Yang Yi 130 Yan Shu 128 Yeandle, Laetitia 99n27, 166 yi 141 Yiwen leiju 128–130 Yongle dadian 126–127, 130 Yuan Mei 128 Yuan Zhen 128 Yü Shih-nan 127–128 Zhao Yi 127 Zhu Xi 130, 140–141 Zwicker, Steven N. 99n27