humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare

"lackpurity" wrote:
>
> Elizabeth wrote:
> >
> > Nashe is accusing the author of Hamlet of working
> > with or having worked with, a faction of poets. Nashe
> > would know this well, he was targeted by Mary Sidney
> > Her Ladyshippe who wrote a verse making fun of his
> > name, she calls him something like 'Gnashadoccio'
> > (McCarthy).

> MM:
> Preface To Greene's Menaphon
>
> An excerpt:
>
> It is a common practice now-a-days amongst a sort of
> shifting companions, that run through ever art and thrive
> by none, to leave the trade of noverint whereto they were
> born and busy themelves with the endeavours of art, that
> could scarcely Latinize their neck-verse if they should
> have need; yet English Seneca read by canlelight yields
> many good sentences, as Blood is a begaar, and so forth,
> and if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will
> afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of trag-
> ical speeches.
>
> MM:
> I'd like you to explain your POV more clearly. This
> paragraph by Nashe seems to fit well with William Shake-
> speare of Stratford, Elizabeth. It also seems congruent
> with what Jonson wrote of Shakespeare, "small Latin and
> less Greek."

Nashe's words are widely if not universally believed to
be referring to Thomas Kyd, a playwright known to be born
to "the trade of noverint" (scrivener), his father having
been warden of the Company of Scriveners.

Nashe continued:

But O grief! *Tempus edax rerum*, what's that will last
always? The sea exhaled by drops will in continuance be
dry, and Seneca, let blood line by line and page by page,
at length must needs die to our stage, which makes his
famished followers to imitate the kid in Aesop,

Another clue?

who, enamoured with the fox's newfangles, forsook all
hopes of life to leap into a new occupation, and these
men, renouncing all possibilities of credit or estimat-
ion, to intermeddle with Italian translations...

Kyd (unlike Nashe) did not go to university, but did go to
Merchant Taylor's school, where he learnt both French and
Italian, and later used this ability to translate works of
both Robert Garnier (his Senecan play *Cornelie*) and
Tasso (*Il padre di famiglia*).

The reference to Hamlet is therefore usually taken to be
an earlier version of the play (the 'Ur-Hamlet') written
by Kyd. Isabelle Kittson Brown, cited by Elizabeth, is
I think very much in the minority on this one.


Peter F.