humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare

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In one sense, Purchas is no different
than Nashe. He's caught up in the same
game, he knows that Pilgrimes will be
famous for centuries, he leaves posterity
a series of clues to the authorship of the
'True' series not to speak of clues to the
Identity of Shakespeare but living in the
16th century, Purchas doesn't anticipate
the Strats.

In this post, Purchas is going to identify
Our Author by his ability to arouse passion
through rhetoric.

Purchas writes . . .

A terrible storme expressed in a
patheticall and rhetoricall description

=2E . .in the marginalia, clues which may
have been missed because 'patheticall'
and 'rhetoricall' then had quite different
definitions.

In 1598 the word 'patheticall' meant
the same as the Fr.path=E9tique; moving,
exciting the passions, affecting the
emotions.

(Etymological Dictionary).

Pathetical did not then have the sense of
'pitiable.'

And this author knows rhetoric:

Purchas' 'rhetoricall' from O.Fr. rethorique, from L.rhetorice, from
Gk. rhetorike, meant
the 'art of an orator," from rhetor (gen. rhetoros) 'orator, in 1476
it was equivalent
to 'eloquent.' Ibid.

According to Jonson, Bacon was the
greatest orator of his time.

His language (when he could spare a
jest) was nobly censorious. No man
ever spake more neatly, more pressly,
more weightily; or suffered less emptiness,
less idleness, in what he uttered. No
member of his speech but consisted
of his own graces. His hearers could
not cough or look aside from him with-
out loss. He commanded where he
spoke and had his judges angry and
pleased at his devotion. No man had
their affections* more in his power. The
fear of every man that heard him was,
lest he should make an end.

That's mostly cribbed from Cicero or Horace
but Jonson writes elsewhere of Bacon's
unstoppable wit (as do others) but it
at least gives some idea of the force
of Bacon's orations, i.e., no one believed
that Bacon could get the Tillage Bill (which
slowed enclosure) through the House of
Lords but in a famous oration (now lost of
course) Bacon's oration won the day.

So here Purchas is giving us two clues
to the identity of the author, there will
be more.

* The word 'affections' then meant
'emotions.'