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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
For the past thirty years the ingenuity of Shakespeare scholars has been challenged by a series of libellous publications, the principal contribution to which is a book called Willobie his Avisa, or the true picture of a modest Maid and of a chaste and constant wife. It was published in 1594 and contains the first mention of Shakespeare:
1 Willobie his Avisa, 1594 “The Bodley Head Quartos” xv (London: John Lane The Bodley Head Ltd., 1926).
2 Arthur Acheson, Mistress Davenant, the dark lady of Shakespeare's sonnets, 1st ed. (London: B. Quaritch, 1913); Shakespeare's Sonnet Story, 2nd ed. (London: B. Quaritch, Ltd., 1933).
3 G. B. Harrison, “An Essay on Willobie his Avisa,” Willobie his Avisa, Bodley Head Quartos, xv.
4 It is Mr. Acheson's theory that Avisa represents a woman by the name of Anne Sackfielde of Bristol, who became the first wife of John Davenant, innkeeper, of Oxford. There is no record that John Davenant married twice. Indeed, nothing is known of him between 1589 and 1602, when the birth of his child by Jane Shepherd is registered at Oxford. The circumstantial evidence adduced by Mr. Acheson in support of an earlier marriage is very tenuous. See Shakespeare's Sonnet Story, chapter v.
5 Banners, Standards and Badges from a Tudor Manuscript in the College of Arms, De-Walden Library (London: J. Foster, 1904), p. 257.
6 For the Queen's use of this name for Oxford see B. M. Ward, The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, 1st ed. (London: John Murray, 1928), p. 34.
7 Speculum Tuscanismi, 1550.
8 The allusions to Harvey's libel on Oxford will be found in The Complete Works of John Lyly, R. Warwick Bond, ed. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1902), iii, 400; The Works of Gabriel Harvey, A. B. Grosart, ed., i, 178–184; The Complete Works of Thomas Nashe, R. B. McKerrow, ed. (London: A. H. Bullen, 1904–10), I, 295, 300, 315; iii, 38, 50, 69, 78; and McKerrow's summary of the affair, ibid., v, 65–110.
9 Rocester Parish Registers, Staffordshire Parish Register Society Publ. (1906–09), i, 4.
10 Josiah C. Wedgwood, “Staffordshire Parliamentary History,” William Salt Archaeological Society Collections for a history of Staffordshire (1919), I, 364.
11 Arthur Collins, Peerage of England, Ed. by Sir E. Brydges (London, 1812), iii, 421.
12 A reproduction of the Trentham arms will be found in “The Visitation of Staffordshire, 1583,” William Salt Archaeological Society Collections for a history of Staffordshire, iii, part 2 (1882–83), facing p. 140.
13 For a description of the Wriothesley arms see C. C. Stopes, The Life of Henry, third earl of Southampton, 1st ed. (Cambridge: University Press, 1922), p. 485.
14 It was his modest demeanor which recommended him to the judges when he was on trial for his life with the Earl of Essex eight years after the events we are now considering.
15 Sampson Erdeswick, A Survey of Staffordshire, 1593–1603, Harwood edition (London: J. B. Nichols & Son, 1844), p. 492.
16 Harrison, op. cit., p. 198.
17 Willobie his Avisa, with an Introductory Essay by Charles Hughes, Hughes ed. (London: Sherratt & Hughes, 1904), p. xiv.
18 Wedgwood, op. cit., i, 364.
19 The exact date of Elizabeth Trentham's birth is not recorded. The Rocester Parish Register was not opened until 1565. The first child of Sir Thomas Trentham to be entered there is Catherine, August 15, 1569. He had had at least three children before that date-Elizabeth, Francis, and Dorothea—a fact which is recorded in the visitation of Staffordshire made by Robert Glover in 1583 (op. cit., p. 141). There Francis is named as the oldest son and heir, aged nineteen. This places his birth in 1564. Dorothea is mentioned as the second daughter and Catharine as the third, Elizabeth being set down as a lady in waiting. This indication that she was the oldest daughter is confirmed in her father's will. (Wedgwood, op. cit., i, 365). Since she was already a maid of honor in 1581, the chances are that she was also older than her brother Francis, who was only seventeen in that year. Her name suggests that she was born after the accession of Queen Elizabeth, November 23, 1558. Since her parents were married about 1557 (Wedgwood, op. cit., i, 364), it is quite likely that she was born in 1559, or shortly after. The liaison with Southampton of which she stands accused in the libel occurred, if at all, in 1592, as will appear in what follows.
20 The earliest mention of Elizabeth Trentham as a maid of honor occurs in connection
with the festivities arranged in honor of the Duke of Anjou during the winter of 1581. See Violet Wilson, Queen Elizabeth's Maids of Honor, 1st ed. (London: J. Lane, 1922), p. 134.
21 B. M. Ward, op. cit., p. 353.
22 Oxford sold his town house in 1589. (See B. M. Ward, op. cit., p. 49.) When his son was born in the spring of 1593, he was living in Stoke-Newington. (See William Robinson, History and Antiquities of the Parish of Stoke Newington, 1st ed. (London: John Bowyer Nichols & Son, 1842, p. 190.) In 1596 he bought a house in Hackney. (See Ward, op. cit., p. 353.) He continued to live in the suburbs'until his death in 1604.
23 John Stow, A Survey of London, edited by William J. Thomas (London: Whittaker & Co., 1842), p. 349 and note quoting from the 1598 ed.
24 London and its environs described, 1st ed. (London: Printed for R. & J. Dodsley, 1761), iii, 196.
25 London County Council, Survey of London, 1st ed. (London, 1922), viii, “The Parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch,” 177.
26 London County Council, Indication of Houses of Historical Interest in London, 1st ed. (London, 1915), Part xliii, 3.
27 Charles W. Wallace, “The First London Theatre,” University Studies (Lincoln, Neb., 1913), xiii, nos. 1–3, 9–17.
28 It was because of this quarrel that the Admiral's Company with Edward Alleyn left Burbage and joined Henslowe, who had erected a theatre in the south suburbs. They said they thought Burbage meant to treat them as he had treated his sister-in-law. (Wallace, op. cit., pp. 17–19).
29 Rocque's Map of London and Environs, 1746, when compared with the map of the Theatre and its neighborhood plotted for the London County Councils' Survey of London and reproduced in Vol. viii, p. 177, shows that the well of St. Agnes was about three hundred yards northwest of the Theatre.
30 S. Baring-Gould, Lives of the Saints, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1914), i, 320.
31 J. O. Halliwell-Phillips, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 11th impression (London & New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1907), i, 353.
32 Henry Thew Stephenson, Shakespeare's London, 1st ed. (New York, H. Holt & Co., 1905), pp. 291–292.
33 Halliwell-Phillips, op. cit., i, 368.
34 Ibid., p. 371.
35 Hawwell-Phillips, op. cit., i, 352.
36 Wallace, op. cit., p. 26n.
37 R. Warwick Bond, ed., The Complete Works of John Lyly, i, 24, 30–31, 37; E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 1st ed. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1923), ii, 99–102; W. J. Courthope, A History of English Poetry (New York & London: Macmillan & Co., 1895–1910), ii, 211, 312, 388; B. M. Ward, The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, 1st ed. (London: John Murray, 1928), 178–205, 264–282, additional dedications, pp. 23–24, 30–31, 50, 55, 77–78, 84–87, 298–299, 300–301, prefaces to the works of other writers contributed by Oxford, pp. 80–83, 87–90.
38 Bond, op. cit., i, 51; Chambers, op. cit., ii, 17–19, 39–40, 497.
39 Arthur Acheson, Shakespeare, Chapman and Sir Thomas More, 1st ed. (London: B. Quaritch Ltd., 1931), pp. 46–47.
40 Chambers, op. cit., ii, 101–102; iv, 334–335.
41 B. M. Ward in a letter to the writer.
42 Ward, The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, pp. 337–338.
43 Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586–1592, 1st ed. (London: B. Quaritch, 1920), p. 193.
44 Ibid., p. 186.
45 Mistress Davenant, the dark lady of Shakespeare's sonnets, pp. 23–24.
46 Op. cit., p. 221.
47 A. E. M. Kirwood, “The Metamorphosis of Aiax and its sequels,” Library, ser. 4, xii (1931), 208–209.
48 Ibid., pp. 216–217.—Harington's letter to the Lady Dowager Russell, asking her to intercede on his behalf with Burghley, who had the first sheets of the Metamorphosis, shows that Harington felt that he needed influential support in his venture. His preface also indicates fear of censorship. Under these circumstances, an appeal to Burghley's literary son-in-law would not be unlikely.
49 Wallace, op. cit., p. 26n.
50 Ibid.
51 Violet Wilson, op. cit., p. 193.
52 C. C. Stopes, op. cit., p. 3. Southampton is referred to as “Harrye, Lord Wriothesley,” in his grandmother's will.
53 Mistress Devenant, the dark lady of Shakespeare's sonnets, pp. 161–163.
54 Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586–92, p. 164. See also Stopes, op. cit., p. 93. Harrison adds the information that seven of the Italian mottos used by H. W. are from Florio's Giardino de Recreatione, published in 1591. Op. cit., p. 219.
55 Stopes, op. cit., pp. 39–40.
56 Ibid., p. 50.
57 Stopes, op. cit., p. 306.
58 See extract from the Parish Register of Stoke-Newington in William Robinson, History and Antiquities of the Parish of Stoke Newington, p. 190.
59 Ward, op. cit., pp. 126–127.
60 Ibid., p. 347.
61 S. L., “Henry Willoughby,” Dictionary of National Biography (London: Oxford University Press, since 1917), xxi, 506. Charles Hughes, op. cit.
62 Op. cit., p. 225.
63 DNB, ii, 711.
64 Ibid., 704.
64a In 1597, Lady Penelope was one of the ladies of the bedchamber. See Violet Wilson, op. cit., p. 232.
65 English Reprints, Edward Arber, ed. (Westminster: A. Constable & Co., 1895), No. 20, p. 47.
66 The identity of the men who were guilty of this libellous attack, their motive and the immediate provocation will be considered in a subsequent paper.