Shakespeare's sonnet CXI and John Davies of Hereford's Microcosmos (1603)

Modern Language Review

Volumn 102, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 1-10

  Jackson, MacDonald P ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND   (New Zealand)

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EID: 34347306876     PISSN: 00267937     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (28)

1. The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W B. Yeats, ed. by Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach (New York and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1957; repr.1966),p. 603. I am grateful to Warwick Gould for pointing out to me Ycats's borrowing from his reviewers
2. MacD. P. Jackson, 'Francis Meres and the Cultural Contexts of Shakespeare's Rival Poet Sonnets', Review of English Studies, 56 (2005), 224-46
3. Quoted by G. Blakemore Evans in his edition of The Sonnets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 222
4. E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), II, 213-14
5. A. K. Hieatt, C. W. Hieatt.and A. L. Prescott,'When Did Shakespeare Write Sonnets 1609?', Studies in Philology, 88 (1991), 69-109
6. supported and modified by MacD. P. Jackson, 'Vocabulary and Chronology: The Case of Shakespeare's Sonnets', Reviezw of English Studies, 52(2001), 59-75
7. See also MacD. P. Jackson, 'Rhymes in Shakespeare's Sonnets: Evidence of Date of Composition', Notes and Queries, 244 (1999), 213-19
8. and 'Dating Shakespeare's Sonnets: Some Old Evidence Revisited', Notes and Queries, 247 (2002), 237-41
9. Colin Burrow summarizes and accepts the vocabulary evidence in bis edition of The Complete Poems and Sonnets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 103-11
10. Compare Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, with John Jowett and William Montgomery, William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), PP-69-144
11. The Sonnets and'A Lover's Complaint', ed. by John Kerrigan (Hamondsworth: Penguin, 1986), p. 111
12. Sonnets, ed. by Evans, pp. 216-17
13. Shakespeare's Sonnets, ed. by Katherine Duncan-Jones (Walton-on-Thames: Thomson, 1997), pp. 21-26
14. Alan Stewart, The Cradle King: A Life of James VI (London: Chatto & Windus, 2003), pp. 172-73; but Stewart accidentally gives the date of the coronation as 11 July, instead of the correct 25 July
15. James Doelman, 'The Accession of King James I and English Religious Poetry', Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 34 (1994), 19-40. Doelman notes (p. 38 n. 55) that 'Wriothesley is addressed as earl of Southampton, a title which he received on 21 July, but Lord Mountjoy is not addressed with the title of earl of Devonshire that he gained on 27 July.' Doelman's 'received' is misleading: Southampton's title, inherited from his father at the age of seven, had been stripped from him because of his role in the Essex rebellion, but was restored on 21 July
16. Sonnets, ed. by Kerrigan, p. 325
17. Sonnets, ed. by Evans, p. 222
18. The Sonnets, ed. by Hyder Edward Rollins, 2 vols (Philadelphia and London: Lippincott, 1944), 1, 280-81
19. See Katherine Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare: Scenes from his Life (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2001), pp. 91-103, for Shakespeare's struggle for recognition as a gentleman
20. Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, pp. 172-73
21. However, Park Honan, Shakespeare: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), notes that the King's Men 'put on at least one play' at Wilton House in 1603, though this was 'not necessarily As You Like It' (p. 302; see also p. 301). If the argument offered in this essay for the chronological precedence of Microcosmos over Shakespeare's Sonnet CXI is found unpersuasive, then Davies must have seen the sonnet in manuscript and the relationship between Shakespeare, Davies, and the Pembrokes would bear careful reinvestigation
22. Shakespeare's Sonnets, ed. by Duncan-Jones, pp. 3-6
23. The History of King Lear, w. 162-3
24. The Folio text replaces 'do' with 'to', which is surely the one and only correct reading: The Tragedy of King Lear, 1. 4. 150-51
25. Grosart says of the man 'Made once a king': 'I like to think that this "man" was Shakespeare' (1, p. lv), but there is no good reason why. we should share his fancy. Grosart is inclined to see Shakespearebehindall Davies's references to playing kings (I, pp. liv-lviii), and is followed by John Southworth, Shakespeare the Player: A Life in the Theatre (Stroud: Sutton, 2000), pp. 129-33
26. Jackson, 'Francis Meres', pp. 237-38
27. Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (New York: Cape, 2004), explores, in illuminating fashion, Shakespeare's concern with social advancement -his determination to repair the collapse of the family's status when his father suffered financial difficulties around 1577 and his consciousness, as a poet and dramatist, of lacking an Oxford or Cambridge education (see especially, pp. 54-86)
28. And since this article was accepted for publication, Katherine Duncan-Jones, 'A Companion for a King? Shakespeare's Status Anxiety', Times Literary Supplement, 14 April 2006, pp. 14-15, has considered some of the passages by Davies that are cited here, as well as allusions by other writers, and suggested that Burbageand Shakespearehad hoped for knighthoods under King James. A similar idea had occurred to Chambers, 11, 214, in relation to Davies's Scourge of Folly lines