A N L Munby on Ben Jonson's Books

The discussion about ‘Shakespeare’s Dictionary’ prompts the question of whether many books known to have been owned by eminent literary figures from the 16th and 17th century do in fact survive. The answer is provided in a fascinating paper by A.N.L. Munby, on ‘The Libraries of English Men of Letters’.

This was originally a lecture given to the Library Association on 29 October, 1964: it was collected in his Essays and Papers (1977). Munby was the author of what might very well be regarded as one of the best collection of antiquarian ghost stories written in emulation of M.R. James, The Alabaster Hand (1949). But he was also the distinguished Librarian of King’s College, Cambridge, and a devoted book-collector, bibliographer and antiquarian, with a particular interest in unexplored literary byways.

Munby’s bookish explorations around the country were assisted by a half-ownership in a 1925 Bugatti, acquired from selling two medieval manuscripts he had found. He related in another paper in his collection, ‘Book Collecting in the 1930s’ (originally published in the TLS of 11 May 1973), that “one of the gaskets, which kept on blowing, was finally found to be responsive to vellum, and a thick leaf from a water-stained and ruined Antiphonal was cut up for the purpose”. When admirers asked him the car’s age, he was able to reply, with studied nonchalance: “parts of it date back to the fifteenth century.”

In his paper on writers’ libraries, he first notes that there are no extant books known to have been owned by any English literary figure from the Middle Ages, such as Chaucer, Gower, Langland or Skelton. The earliest books relevant to his theme that he has noted do not start until the early 16th century: for example, a few survive with the signature of Nicholas Udall, the author of Ralph Roister-Doister.

But soon survivals start to become more frequent, even if these are uneven, and quite an array belonging to Shakespeare’s contemporaries can be identified. The most notable of these are the books of Ben Jonson. Munby notes that Jonson’s books “are readily identifiable since they normally bear his name upon the title-page and the motto ‘Tanquam explorator’” (approximately, “[I go] as an explorer”) . He further observes that “additional books from Jonson’s library turn up continuously.” As a keen collector himself, he then relates rather wistfully a couple of anecdotes about how he narrowly missed acquiring Jonson books himself.

The researches he cites, by Percy Simpson, had up to that point identified over 200 books with Jonson’s ownership marks in them. Munby explains that Jonson’s library was known to his contemporaries as impressive, helped by an annual gift of £20 on New Year’s Day, from his patron Lord Herbert, to buy books. Many of Jonson’s books are copiously annotated, with very characteristic marginal comments.

What sort of books did Jonson have? Munby provides an outline. As well as Greek and Latin classics, his library included “belles lettres, science, history and antiquities and, as might be expected since Jonson himself was the author of a grammar, there was quite a substantial section of books on languages.” Further, there were editions of poetry, plays, essays and courtly romances. He also owned five medieval manuscripts, one of them a magical treatise, Opus de arte magico (etc), attributed to King Solomon.

The other Shakespearian contemporaries whose books Munby's survey shows have survived in some measure include Sir John Harington, John Donne (and one of his had also once belonged to Jonson), Robert Burton and Francis Bacon, whose volumes are embossed with the armorial emblem of a boar. The probability is, of course, that there are other books that once belonged to men of letters of the time that have not yet been identified, since they do not have the clear signs of ownership adopted by Jonson or Bacon. Attributing those will always involve an element of conjecture, and sometimes the slenderest of clues.

Mark Valentine

Picture: Ben Jonson. After Abraham van Blyenberch, 1618.
©National Portrait Gallery, London.
Via www.luminarium.org.

The Laughing King Lear

About thirty years ago or more, I spent a great deal of time “under the Dome” of the British Library, housed then in the British Museum in Great Russell Street, where I would, before entering through the black wrought iron gates, pass the quarters where Arthur Machen once lived. I was in quest of rare decadent poetry. To get books, readers went to the great green directories listing the library’s holdings, which stood like ancient holy books in niches around the room. They hefted them out, turned their vast pages, and found the elusive title they wanted. They then copied out the particulars, including the all-important shelfmark, onto a white slip of paper, which manifested these also onto several carbon copies. These requests were then placed in a receptacle at a central desk.

Some time later, which might vary from fifteen minutes to several hours, the desired book might arrive on a wooden trolley, pushed with hushed ponderousness by an official in a grey tunic. Occasionally, instead of the book, the slip itself would waft on to the reader’s desk, informing them that the volume had been “destroyed by enemy action”, or, with less drama, that it was frail and must only be viewed in the North Gallery. In this ceremonial manner, which seemed always like the solemn ritual of some arcane sect – the Sandemanians, perhaps, or the Irvingites –I was able to handle such rare relics as the verses of Count Stenbock, the phantasmagoria of John Barlas, the chiaroscuro poems of Arthur A Piggot, or the pierrot plays of Eric Lyall. And provided that one could show the work was out of copyright, it was also possible to order photocopies of at least some of the pages in these delicate volumes. The copies would be posted to you, arriving perhaps a fortnight or so later.

This service was usually provided with considerable efficiency. But on one occasion, I received from the British Library an envelope which proved to contain a mystery: a copy I had not ordered. It had no doubt been mixed up with another reader’s request: they were perhaps puzzling at around the same time over the swooning effulgences that I must have been expecting. What I got instead was the final scene of King Lear.

I thought this was odd. Why would anyone need to order a copy of that, when the plays of Shakespeare may easily be found in countless editions? However, keen readers can rarely stop themselves from perusing any reading matter whatever, that happens to stop in front of them (I am myself an inveterate reader of notices). So I had a look at what I had mistakenly been sent. And then I was still more mystified. It all seemed rather amiable. The King, Gloucester and Kent exchanged cheery compliments and were apparently all set to wander off into the sunset together, arm in arm. I was not then as well-versed in Shakespeare as I might be, but I had formed the hazy impression that King Lear was a tragedy. Yet this didn’t seem all that melancholy.

What I had been sent, of course, was the finale of the “happy” version of the play composed by Nahum Tate in an adaptation of 1681 that rather bravely mingles his lines with Shakespeare’s. With a mind full of Machen’s theory of improbable coincidences, as evinced most notably in The Three Impostors, I naturally supposed that receiving this unexpected document must have some secret significance. Perhaps, I reflected, it was not after all just a mix-up. Maybe there was a furtive Tate admirer embedded among the staff of the great Library, who made it his business to send tantalising glimpses of the happy Lear to random readers. If so, they had found their mark. I am sorry to say that the sentimentalist in me found it rather touching. And there are worse watchwords for life than Lear’s last line.

Glost.

Now, gentle Gods, give Gloster his Discharge.

Lear.
No, Gloster, Thou hast Business yet for Life;
Thou, Kent and I, retir'd to some cool Cell
Will gently pass our short reserves of Time
In calm Reflections on our Fortunes past,
Cheer'd with relation of the prosperous Reign
Of this celestial Pair; Thus our Remains
Shall in an even Course of Thought be past,
Enjoy the present Hour, nor fear the Last.

Edg.

Our drooping Country now erects her Head,
Peace spreads her balmy Wings, and Plenty Blooms.
Divine Cordelia, all the Gods can witness
How much thy Love to Empire I prefer!
Thy bright Example shall convince the World
(Whatever Storms of Fortune are decreed)
That Truth and Vertue shall at last succeed.

(from the online text edited by Jack Lynch of Rutgers University, Newark, with thanks)

Mark Valentine

Was this Shakespeare's Dictionary?

Henry Wessells at The Endless Bookshelf is one of the first to review a beautiful and fascinating book that may also reveal one of the most remarkable literary discoveries of our time: Shakespeare’s Beehive: An Annotated Elizabethan Dictionary Comes to Light by George Koppelman & Daniel Wechsler, Axletree Books (2014).

The authors acquired a copy of an Elizabethan folio dictionary, An Alvearie or Quadruple Dictionary, containing four different tongues, namely English, Latine, Greeke and French Newlie enriched with varietie of Wordes, Phrases, Proverbs, and divers lightsome observations of Grammar (etc) by John Baret (1580), annotated in a contemporary hand. Its marginalia, they argue, relates closely to phrases found in Shakespeare’s plays, some of them unique to him, others rarely found elsewhere. They weigh plenty of other options, and objections, but advance an astonishing conclusion: this copy must have belonged to Shakespeare. Those are his annotations, in his hand.

Short of finding Cardenio, or a note from Baron Verulam admitting to a celebrated alias, this has to be, if sustained, the ultimate Grail of Shakespeare studies. The analysis and debate it will occasion is only the beginning. If it comes to be accepted, it will tell us much about Shakespeare’s literary practice, sources, and ways of thinking, and add to our understanding of the man. But even for those who doubt the attribution, the relationship between the dictionary and the plays will require some explanation, and raise many questions. One result will surely be, as Henry notes, to send many people back to read the plays anew, and wonder at a vocabulary and phraseology suddenly requickened.

And Henry also notes, “on grounds of original content and beautiful design, and for launching ideas that will resonate where ever English is remembered”, the book should certainly be one of the most memorable of the year.

(George Koppelman ran the literary imprint Seven Woods Press, and became a rare bookseller as Cultured Oyster Books. Dan Weschler is also the editor of Strange & Wonderful: An Informal Visual History of Manuscript Books and Albums, from his own Sanctuary Books imprint strangeandwonderfulbooks)

Update: Michael Witmore and Heather Wolfe of the Folger Shakespeare Library discuss the book here.

Mark Valentine