In his 1616 epigrams Ben Jonson honors Horace Vere, the Protestant military hero and cousin to the 17th Earl of Oxford, in epigram XCI (91)
WHich of thy Names I take, not only bears
A Roman Sound, but Roman Vertue wears,
Illustrious Vere, or Horace; fit to be
Sung by a Horace, or a Muse as free;
Which thou art to thy self.
The pun on “Vertue” in line 2 is one of several word plays on the Vere name in the poem, but Jonson was also interested in Sir Horace’s first name, since it chimed with his own alter ego as a born-again early modern remake of the Roman poet Horace (65-8 BC), an identification underlined by the deep role Horace plays as an influence on Jonson’s poetics (See Moul). Both Horace Vere and Jonson, then, are by their names or namesakes, privileged recipients of Hamlet’s appeal to Horatio to “report me and my cause aright to the unsatisfied.”
Jonson dedicates epigram C I V (104) in the same volume To Susan Countess of Montgomery (1587-1629) the youngest daughter of the 17th Earl and wife of First Folio dedicatee Phillip Herbert, but there is no epigram to Oxford, a lacunae that will be taken up in a future blog entry.
The Feature image confirms a closeness between Jonson and the de Vere family. The inscription to the 1578 Plato, in Jonson’s hand, confirms the gift from of the book from the 18th Earl of Oxford.
In our first post on Ben Jonson, we saw that he defines a poet as one who “feigns” a fable. This, I would submit, already suggests that the orthodox confidence in Jonson’s allegedly “unambiguous” testimony about Shakespeare is misplaced. In this post we’ve seen evidence that Jonson not only was patronized by the de Veres but held the family in high regard.
Why, then, did he not dedicate any of his poems to the memory of the literary 17th Earl? A question to be asked!
June 21, 2022 at 9:23 pm
Thank you very much Roger. It is doubtful whether “we’ the Dutch nation under Spanish oppression, would have survived timely, without the fighting Veres. I recently read their exploits and brave attitude, the many wounds Francis sustained – why he has no statue in the Hague. Francis wrote ‘commentaries!” When on leave or recovering, they must have had long conversations in Hackney, not unlikely with Ben Jonson present as weĺl.
June 21, 2022 at 10:30 pm
I believe that Jonson DID dedicate a poem to de Vere. The ode he wrote in the First Folio “To Memory of My Beloved the Author Mr. WIlliam Shakespeare and what he hath left us” has no less than 28 numerical references to de Vere beginning with the title which has 17 words. He does so again in line two of the title which reads as follows (all capitalizations are intact): The AVTHOR. The 23 letter Latin alphabet gematria values of the upper-case letters in this line add to 98, which is a digit-sum number that adds to the earl’s succession number.
Along the left-hand side of page 1 of the ode is an example of what I call a “number-gram” which is an adding puzzle that uses homophones of numbers and Roman numerals (in other words upper-case i’s and v’s) to create another numerical allusion to the earl’s number. The first homphone is “For” on line 7, the next is “I” on line 17 (another hidden reference, I would presume), the third is the “I” on line 26, followed by “For” on line 27, and another “I” on line 28, next is another “For” on line 33 (a sacred number in Christianity since it was how many years Christ was alive), finally there is a “To” on line 36. Adding up these homophones gives us 17.
A last example is simply that the name Shakespeare is the first and 17th poet in Jonson’s list of poets. (I will not include that the poem “officially” begins on line 17 with: “I, therefore will begin…” that would be too easy.)
Given just these three examples, it is clear to me at least that there are numerical allusions to de Vere in the poem and the ode’s title seems to be a hidden dedication to the real author of the plays contained within the First Folio, Edward de Vere.
September 10, 2022 at 6:20 pm
Ron, just wondering if you ever considered READING the poem, which alludes to the writer’s talent as an actor (in buskins) and as a comic actor (when thy socks were on) and says that he has ‘small Latin and less Greek’. It also addresses him quite specifically by name and rank. And of course, he is the ‘sweet Swan of Avon’.
Yes, I’ve heard Waugh’s tortured argument that the Avon is actually Hampton Court. Absolute hogwash, and if he’s the sweet swan of Hampton Court, what the hell is a swan doing in Hampton Court, unless killed, cooked and displayed on a dining table.
He couldn’t have been more plain that he is writing about the actor and writer William Shakespeare. Find another conspiracy theory to worry about.
September 10, 2022 at 7:12 pm
” I’ve heard Waugh’s tortured argument that the Avon is actually Hampton Court. Absolute hogwash.”
Martin, you must be quite a beginner to make a gaffe like this. There is no question at all that Avon was a nickname for the site we call Hampton Court. This is very well established in the documents of the period, e.g. by an early annotator of John Leland’s Cygnea Cantio (Song of the Swan, 1545):
The note, written in a mid-16th century hand, reads “Hampton Court,” and is a gloss on Leland’s Latin phrase “Altae ad conspicuas domos Avonae”/towards the conspicuous towers of high Avon.” Many other sources make the same identification.
My site will not be used for invidious attacks on Mr. Waugh, who is a gentleman and a fine scholar. And if you peddle nonsense here, you’ll be called out. Please try to mind your ps and qs a bit better.