humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare

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PATHETICALL & RHETORICALL

Samuel Purchas, like Nashe and Jonson before
him, knew the identity of the author of the Shake-
speare works and like Nashe and Jonson, really
wanted to share his secret with us.

Famous for his plagiarism not to speak of his indis-
criminate redistribution of redactions of 'this author's'
text into 'that author's' text without caring who wrote
'this' or 'that,' Purchas also played fast and loose
with the text of A True Repertory, marking it with
tattle-tale marginalia and clumsily interpolating a
telling paragraph into the middle of the storm
scene.

In his insert, Purchas identifies the author of A
True Repertory as the author of Twelfth Night.

The first Purchas marginalia of interest prepares
us for the revelation of his 'big secret' which had
been an open secret in certain circles for the past
fifty or more years.

I note that Purchas waited for the author's death to
print that particular volume of Pilgrimes.

Purchas wrote in the margins:

A terrible
storme
expressed
in a
patheticall
and
rhetoricall
description.

The problem for modern critics is that the words
'patheticall' and 'rhetoricall' had very different
definitions in the 16th century.

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

Pathetical did not then have our sense of 'deserving
of pity.' (This may explain the title of Tchaikovsky's
'Symphony Path=E9tique -- I've always wondered why
Pyotr Ilyich would call his symphony 'pathetic').

Nor did 'rhetoricall' mean 'the rules of using lang-
uage' as it does in the current sense:

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

So Purchas is telling us that our Author is an
'eloquent orator' who knows how to move the
emotions of his hearers.

Here's Jonson's attestation that Verulam was
a very great 'patheticall' and 'rhetoricall' orator:

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.

I believe that's shamelessly ripped off from
Cicero or Horace -- Jonson was a 'terrible
plagiarist' as it goes -- but nevertheless Jonson
(or Cicero or Horace) got it right.

Verulam was a passionate orator, his orations
often turned the vote in Parliament. No one
gave the passage of his landmark Tillage Bill
a chance to get through the House of Lords
but Verulam pulled it off with an historical
oration.

Verulam was also the best rhetorician in England
after his mentor Harvey, who was recognized
as the most accomplished rhetorician in England.

Critics give Verulam the Queen's Tilbury speech.
Verulam was the Queen's dogsbody at the time,
getting paid in orts. The Tilbury speech is one
of the great speeches of all time except for a
couple of speeches in the Shakespeare works.
And Pericles funeral oration.

What are the Shakespeare works but a series of
very great speeches interrupted
by chat?