CASE FILE 9

Hello and welcome back to Tracing Shakespearean Mysteries. In the last episode we were investigating Othello and came up with several surprises, particularly regarding a small town north-west of Venice, Bassano. In the other Case Files, we have seen the author’s familiarity with Verona, Milan and Venice too, and we should not forget the island of Ischia which appeared in the first Case File about The Tempest. There’s no avoiding the fact that Italy and the Italian language played an important role in our author’s life, but in what way exactly, we have yet to discover.

Leaving this geographical question aside for a moment, in this episode we’re going back to the earliest work to bear William Shakespeare’s name, the poem Venus and Adonis. We’ll be looking at the origins of this narrative poem and its distinctive and unusual female perspective, which first emerges in this work and recurs throughout the Shakespearean canon.

Let’s briefly recall the storyline of this witty and sensuous poem. The goddess Venus ardently pursues the handsome young hunter Adonis. He disdainfully resists her advances, and her lengthy, passionate and at times richly erotic appeals fail to divert him from his obsession with the hunt. Ignoring Venus’s warnings about its dangers, he sets out with his companions and is fatally gored by a wild boar. Overcome with grief, Venus mourns Adonis’s death as his body dissolves like vapour before her eyes, and from his blood, still on the ground, a flower is born.

Although the story derives from Book X of Metamorphoses by Ovid, our author radically alters its tone, transforming a tale of mutual passion into one in which a reluctant youth is pursued by an intensely passionate goddess. In Ovid’s version, Adonis is a willing lover; in Venus and Adonis, he clearly is not. Likewise, in Ovid Venus falls in love after being scratched by Cupid’s arrow, whereas in the poem no reason is given for her predatory and openly lustful behaviour. Finally, while Ovid tells how Venus sprinkles nectar onto Adonis’s fatal wound so that an anemone grows in memory of their shared love, the poem describes a purple-and-white flower springing spontaneously from the dead youth’s blood—one that Venus plucks and places upon her breast in a striking gesture of possession.

But where might this idea of the predatory Venus and the disinterested Adonis have come from? Perhaps we don’t have to look too far. In a contemporary poem about another pair of lovers, Hero and Leander, similarly based on a tale by Ovid, its author, Christopher Marlowe describes Hero’s gown with its wide green sleeves

... and bordered with a grove

Where Venus in her naked glory strove

To please the carelesse and disdainfull eies

Of proude Adonis, that before her lies.                                      (11-14)

In other words, Venus is trying to attract a proud and disdainful Adonis with her charms when he is not interested, or today we might say, he couldn’t care less, which is exactly the spirit of the Shakespearean poem!

While Ovid’s version of the story in the Metamorphoses is relatively brief, Venus and Adonis expands the tale to 199 six-line stanzas of iambic pentameter. The poem is rich in imagery detailing three types of hunt: Venus chasing Adonis, his horse chasing a lusty young female jennet - a small Spanish horse, and Adonis himself chasing a boar. The poem contains elaborate descriptions of boars, hares, hounds and particularly of Adonis’s horse, to which our author devotes ten stanzas explaining that itexcelled a common one

in shape, in courage, colour, pace and bone.                         (293-294)

All these descriptions certainly do not appear in Ovid’s original narrative, so where do they come from? To answer that question, I believe we need to turn to a book written by one of the first women writers in English - Dame Juliana Berners - who was the Benedictine Prioress of St. Mary of Sopwell Abbey, near St. Albans. In 1486 she wrote “The Book of Saint Albans: on Hawking, Hunting, and Blasing of Arms” that’s to say, Heraldry. It was essentially a manual on field sports for gentlemen, but it also contained passages written in verse and, perhaps most entertainingly for us, a list of fashionable collective nouns. Some of these are wonderfully imaginative, such as a superfluity of nuns, an eloquence of lawyers, and a blast of hunters The list also includes terms for animals, such as a charm of goldfinches, a pride of lions, and a murmuration of starlings. Unfortunately, only the last two of these have survived in today’s usage!

The book was still very popular in the 16th century, and of particular interest to us is Dame Berner’s amusing description, which I have slightly modernised, of what a perfect horse SHOULD HAVE - two words to bear in mind. So,

A good horse should have fifteen properties and conditions.

That is three of a man, three of a woman, three of a fox, three

of a hare and three of an ass. Of a man bold, proud and hardy

Of a woman fair breasted, fair of hair, and easy to leap upon.

Of a fox, a fair tail, short ears, with a good trot, of a hare, a

great eye, a dry head, and well running. Of an ass, a big

chin, a flat leg, and a good hoof.

All of these characteristics, except for the big chin, appear in the long description of Adonis' horse in the poem, from which I’ll just read you a short extract:

Round-hoofed, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long,

Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide,

High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong,

Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide

Look, what a horse should have he did not lack,

Save a proud rider on so proud a back.               (295-300)

Beyond the many similarities between the two descriptions, the phrase "should have" appears to provide the clearest—and perhaps definitive—clue to the textual origin of the verse.

Similarly, there is an extended description of the boar, which unfolds over six stanzas. For its likely source, I believe we must turn to George Turberville’s The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting. Published in 1576, it is a manual for gentlemen on what he calls “fifteen sundry chases” - that is, the hunting of fifteen different kinds of animal, including various species of deer, as well as the wild goat, fox, hare, and boar. Alongside detailed accounts of animal behaviour, the book also offers guidance on the breeding and medical care of hunting hounds, and sets out the proper etiquette of the hunt.

As regards the boar, Turberville cautions against hunting this dangerous animal - much as Venus does in Venus and Adonis - and explains how in combat it employs its deadly tusks:

Tuskes or Tusches, whereof the two highest do not hurte when he striketh, but serue onely to whet the other two lowest: but with those lower Tuskes, they stryke maruelously and kill often tymes.

The passage underscores how deadly the boar can be: its upper tusks merely sharpen the lower pair, which deliver the true, often fatal, blow. We can observe a clear parallel in the poem when Venus warns Adonis against hunting the boar, repeating the terms tusches, whet and kill:

O, be advised! Thou know'st not what it is

With javelin's point a churlish swine to gore,

Whose tushes, never sheathed, he whetteth still

Like to a mortal butcher bent to kill.                               (615-618)

Turberville also describes how the boar hides in deep, thorny thickets:

[...] a Bore wyll abyde the baye before he go out of his denne,

and they lie moste commonly in the strongest holdes of Thornes, and thicke Bushes:

In Venus and Adonis we read:

The thorny brambles and embracing bushes,

As fearful of him, part, through whom he rushes.                    (627-630)

Turberville also notes that such bushes and thickets are used by the boar as sites of ambush. During the chase, it can lure an entire pack of hounds into dense, thorny cover and there gore several of them with its tusks. A similar detail appears in Venus and Adonis, where two stanzas are devoted to the fate of Adonis’s hounds, which Venus encounters while searching for him. The first wretched creature she comes upon is cowering in a thicket:

Here kenneled in a brake she finds a hound

And asks the weary caitiff for his master,

And there another licking of his wound,

'Gainst venomed sores the only sovereign plaster,

And here she meets another, sadly scowling,

To whom she speaks, and he replies with howling.

When he hath ceased his ill-resounding noise,

Another flapmouthed mourner, black and grim,

Against the welkin volleys out his voice;

Another and another answer him,

Clapping their proud tails to the ground below,

Shaking their scratched ears, bleeding as they go.         (913-924)

Turberville also describes how boars root up meadows, looking for roots and worms:

When a Bore rooteth in a hedge for a roote, then may you perceiue the greatnesse and length of his head, by the depthe and largenesse of his rooting. So may you also knowe the soft places where he wormeth...

Venus is terrified that the boar will treat Adonis in the same way - attacking his soft places - his hands, sweet lips and crystal eyes - saying that the beast would root these beauties as he roots the mead. And later she uses the image again when she describes how the boar has trenched Adonis’ soft flank.

Although Turberville advises against hunting the boar and suggests that other animals, such as the hare, are less dangerous, he nevertheless concludes his section on hare-hunting with a sad song voiced by a hare:

Are mindes of men, become so voyde of sense

That they can joye to hurte a harmelesse thing?

A sillie beast, whiche cannot make defence?

A wretche? a worme that can not bite, nor sting?

If that be so, I thanke my Maker than.

For makyng me, a Beast and not a Man.

Similar sympathy is expressed in the six stanzas of Venus and Adonis devoted to the hare, where it is described in phrases such as the timorous flying hare, the poor wretch and poor Wat, which was another word for a hare in the Early Modern period.

Turberville writes about how the hare dislikes running into the wind, and how, when pursued, crosses back and forth, doubling back on itself in order to confuse the hounds:

the female will not willingly runne into the winde, but will runne vpon a side wynde, or else downe the wynde...

And then:

For a Hare maketh sometimes so many doubles, crossings etc. that a hounde cannot well tell where he is, nor which way to make it out...

The poem rephrases these ideas about the hare and refers to the musets - the gaps in hedges, which he uses to escape:

How he outruns the wind and with what care

He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles.

The many musets through the which he goes

Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.         (681-684)

Turberville then describes how a chased hare hides in flocks of sheep to cover its scent or goes underground like rabbits:

And I haue seene Hares oftentimes runne into a flocke of sheepe in the fielde when they were hunted, and woulde neuer leaue the flocke. [and] I haue seene that they woulde take the grounde like a Coney, when they haue beene hunted.

In the poem we read:

Sometimes he runs among a flock of sheep

To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell,

And sometimes where earth-delving conies keep

To stop the loud pursuers in their yell. (685-688)

Then Turberville describes how the hare tries to avoid dew as it returns home to its ‘form’,

When she goeth to her forme, she will not let the dewe or wet touch hir as neare as she can, but followeth the highe wayes and beaten pathes, and breaketh the highe stalkes as she goeth with hir teeth. She will not willingly goe into any hiding place, because of the dewe and wet that hangeth vpon the lowe twigges.

This is echoed in the poem but emphasises that the hare, exhausted from indenting - all its crossing and doubling back - becomes covered in dew:

Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch

Turn and return, indenting with the way. (703-704)

And finally, Turberville writes:

And yet some Hares there be, that will sit vntill you treade vpon them before they will rise, and some will be taken in their Forme...

Then ends with a touch of sympathy for the animal:

Now although I haue so much spoken in praise of trailing of a Hare from the relief to the Forme, yet me thinks it is more payne than needeth.

The word “relief” here refers to the open meadows - so chasing the hare from the meadows to its form likely causes unnecessary suffering. A similar sympathetic sentiment is expressed in the poem, playing on the word “relief,” and re-using the verb “to tread”, in its past participle form, ‘trodden’:

Each envious brier his weary legs doth scratch;
Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay;
For misery is trodden on by many,
And, being low, is never relieved by any.                                      (705-708)

In summary, the poem’s descriptions of the animals - the horse, the boar, the hounds and the hare, reveal striking parallels with the works of both Berners and Turberville. The sheer number and specificity of these correspondences make it highly improbable that they are merely coincidental. Moreover, these are clearly texts one would expect to find in the library of a gentleman rather than in the possession of a struggling playwright and actor, which raises our first question: how would our author have gained access to them? Any ideas?

But let’s now turn our attention to another mystery. When the poem was first circulated, many remarked on its unusual female bias - a poem about a woman seducing a man had not been seen before, nor had a poem in which a woman spoke much more than a man, in fact Venus is given 539 lines, in stark contrast to Adonis’ 89. Perhaps unsurprisingly, upon publication in 1593, it proved very popular with female readers and a second edition soon followed in 1594.

This female element in Shakespearean works is intriguing. In the Case Files so far, we have encountered many examples of strong women. Juliet appears to drive the action in Romeo and Juliet; in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Julia demonstrates determination and initiative by disguising herself as a pageboy to pursue her faithless lover and ultimately drives much of the play's action; whereas in the classical legend Lucretia is presented primarily as the exemplary Roman wife and the catalyst for the founding of the Republic, Lucrece in the poem is a far more psychologically complex character; the Princess in Love’s Labour’s Lost, possesses intellectual wit superior to that of the king and his friends; Portia in The Merchant of Venice is the intelligent woman who ultimately saves Antonio’s life; whereas in Othello, Emilia is the character who openly challenges inequality between the sexes, saying:

[...] Let husbands know
Their wives have sense like them. They see, and smell,
And have their palates both for sweet and sour,
As husbands have. What is it that they do
When they change us for others? Is it sport?
I think it is. And doth affection breed it?
I think it doth. Is’t frailty that thus errs?
It is so too. And have not we affections,
Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?       (Othello, 4.3.104–113)

From these examples of strong women, of which there are many more in the plays, as well as of wronged women, we might be tempted to conclude that William Shakespeare held progressive views about the female role in society. Yet this impression is complicated by what we know of his own domestic life. He spent long periods away from Stratford, rarely visiting his wife, and it is more than probable that neither she nor their daughters were able to read or write. If so, they would not even have been able to read the works through which their kinsman achieved fame and fortune. Of course, they may have seen a few of the plays, perhaps performed by the occasional troupe of touring actors in Stratford, but family visits to the playhouse in the capital were certainly not part of 16th century rural life. How do we explain this somewhat contradictory state of affairs?

To those who argue that it was normal for girls to be illiterate at the time, one might respond that the daughters of gentlemen were generally taught to read, if not always to write. William Shakespeare himself was clearly intent on securing the status of a gentleman, as evidenced by his successful procurement of a coat of arms for his father in 1596. At that point, his daughters Susanna and Judith Shakespeare were only thirteen and nine years old, still young enough for their education to be shaped.

Moreover, the first seventeen of the Shakespearean sonnets repeatedly urge their addressee to have children, so that his beauty (that is beauty of the mind - as specified in Sonnet 69) might be preserved. What, then, of Shakespeare’s own daughters? Had he no interest in passing on his own gift? Or, instead, did he wish to conceal his work and achievements from his family? If so, why? Essentially, there seems to be a fundamental contradiction - a huge gap - between the progressive feminine ideas in the plays and the reality of Shakespeare's own life. That’s another question we need to address.

Finally, although William Shakespeare's will makes careful provision for property, money, and personal possessions—not least the famously bequeathed second-best bed—it makes no mention of books. Given the breadth of learning evident in his works and his deep engagement with literature, one might reasonably expect him to have owned a substantial number of volumes—indeed, a small but valuable private library. Even in our brief investigation so far, we have encountered a number of source books, so it would not be unreasonable to assume there were many more. What became of them?

During our investigation, you will no doubt have noticed that rather than use the name of William Shakespeare, I have preferred the terms ‘playwright’ or ‘our author’. There is, of course, a reason for that - I’m struggling with the question of authorship.

Given all the mysteries we have come across so far in our Case Files - particularly the writer's extensive knowledge of the Italian language, Italian stories, Italian culture, Italian art and Italian geography (vital components of at least a third of his works) - we discover that in no way do they correspond to information that is known about William Shakespeare. In fact, he appears to have been an extraordinarily elusive figure. The personal lives of great geniuses can usually be traced through more than a handful of tax records and legal documents bearing shaky signatures and multiple spellings of their names. But not so with William Shakespeare. Unlike other playwrights, there is no record of him searching for a patron - usually a necessity for writers with no wealth of their own, particularly in the early stages of their career. The dedications to the Earl of Southampton in Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, which differ markedly in tone, fail to provide reliable evidence regarding the nature of Shakespeare's relationship with the Earl. And we have no certain knowledge even about his schooling and education, only that jarring comment in Ben Jonson’s Eulogy in the First Folio stating Shakespeare had ‘small Latin and less Greek’. And yet the works in the Folio are flooded with classical references. How can this be explained? Many scholars view Jonson’s line not as an insult, but as a compliment framing Shakespeare as a natural genius whose innate talent allowed him to surpass the ancient classical masters despite lacking a strict university education. We might be inclined to ask ‘but how could he do that without books?’ Remember the old adage that many a true word is spoken in jest. Jonson was an accomplished writer and satirist, so either he expressed himself with surprising clumsiness and impropriety - an unlikely possibility in so important a work - or he harboured genuine suspicions and intended to communicate them. It was, after all, a characteristic device of sixteenth-century satire to disguise criticism by recasting it as praise, in this case by ranking Shakespeare alongside the great Latin and Greek dramatists.

So, what are your thoughts? Are you experiencing a little inner turmoil too? If so, it may intensify in the next episode - the final instalment of the Case Files - as we examine a work that I believe contains several important clues to the identity of the true author. Then, drawing on the evidence we've gathered, along with much more besides, we'll begin piecing everything together in the Reconstruction episodes. I hope you'll join me, because there's still plenty left to investigate - and, I think, some fascinating discoveries ahead.