Anonymous SHAKE-SPEARE. Kurt Kreiler
if not Shaksper, could have written the Shakespearian works? Was it the sharp-minded Bacon; the dead poet, Marlowe? the much-travelled Earl of Derby? the sensitive Earl of Oxford? or perhaps the linguistically talented Queen Elizabeth?
In order to establish a profile of the missing author (Six hundred Characters in Search of an Author), we have to know what he read, what he quoted, what historical events he did refer to. Furthermore we have to work out from which social position he was writing.
Since I am not the first to question the authorship of Will Shaksper, I have meticulously gathered all the facts that have survived the passage of time. I have only allowed hard facts to be part of my theory and I have left speculation to those who enjoy parlour games.
3.1 Titus Andronicus
As the first pale eerie light dawns over the grave yard the story teller relates of blood baths of the ghosts of murdered children, of how the Duke of Cornwall had both eyes gauged out of his head on an open stage and how his tormentor stamped on the eyes with the heels of his shoes like a flamenco dancer; of the daughter of a Roman general whose tongue is cut out and whose hands are cut off, after she has been raped; of how everything comes to a head with a banquet where an offended, one armed father-the other arm having been hacked off by his wife’s lover- disguised as a cook, serves a pie made of the flesh of her children, skewered like pigs at a village wedding, to the Queen of the Goths.
Alejo Carpentier, Concert baroque
“Titus Andronicus” is generally regarded as being Shakespeare’s first drama, or at least one of the first. Anything that could help us to date the piece would be of great interest. This very date is indeed available to us; not in the usual way as a date on a copy of the first edition but on an illustrated publication of extracts from Titus Andronicus signed and dated by the artist, a certain Henricus Peacham.
Henricus Peacham, Tamora pleading for her sonnes
This document from Henry Peacham (Harley Papers, Marquess of Bath at Longleat, Vol. 1. f.159) throws up difficult questions for the experts. The first question being: Who did it? Was the illustration done by the learned curate Henry Peacham (1546-1634), author of “The Garden of Eloquence conteyning the figures of Grammar and Rhetorick” (1577), or was it done by Henry Peacham, the younger (1578-c.1643), a learned writer, author of “The Complete Gentleman, The Truth of Our Times, and the Art of Living in London” (1622) ?
T.M. Parrott writes in 1950: „There is a temptation to identify this Henricus with Henry Peacham the Younger.” Speaking of the illustrations, he goes on to say: “These, however, are in the opinion of good judges so different in style from and so inferior to the Titus picture, as to make a common origin unlikely if not impossible.” Joseph Quincy Adams remarks in his foreword to the facsimile edition of the first Quarto of Titus Andronicus: „The faces in Peacham’s work [Emblemata Varia] are entirely without character, the details often clumsy in execution, and the whole drawing lacking in vitality.”
Peacham, the Younger: Emblem
Eugene M. Wraith, another editor of “Titus Andronicus”, says of Henricus Peacham’s title page: „Someone has written in what resembles Renaissance handwriting ‚Henrye Peachams Hande 1595’, but this may be a forgery by John Payne Collier, and is, in any case, only a guess. Among other pencilled annotations in a relatively modern hand is one above the figure of Tamora: ‚Written by Henry Peacham – author of the Complete Gentleman.’ This too may be by Collier.” (Adams point out that another pencilled annotation opposite the lines from Act 1 ‚So far from Shakspear Titus Andronicus Sc.2’ refers to a scene-division which Collier adopted in his edition of the play.)
John Payne Collier (1789-1883) was one of the most competent and unscrupulous forgers of all time. Before his career as a Shakespeare researcher and publisher of old English literature took off, he was a journalist and literary critic. Collier didn’t forge for the money; he did it for the fame and the recognition. He felt that he could reap the most fame by filling in empty spaces in old books and manuscripts with home-made “discoveries”, mostly stories and anecdotes that suited his own purposes. He fabricated and “discovered” emendations in the famous “Perkins Folio”. Later he used these so-called discoveries in his own Shakespeare edition of 1853. Collier also “enhanced” the Revel’s account of 1605, the diaries of John Manningham, and the “Book of Plays” from Simon Forman.
The author and illustrator “Henricus Peacham” quotes three passages from Titus Andronicus: The plea for mercy made by the Goth Queen Tamora for her first born son, blunt reply from the Roman military comander Titus (Act 1, Scene 1) and finally the famous confession of Aaron-the-Moor for the most vicious and malevolent deeds. (Act 5, Scene 1). The text crowns a small drawing of Tamora, Demetrius, Chiron and Aaron. Peacham’s copy is more precice than the first quarto edition published in 1594. (E.g. as pointed out by Sir E. K. Chambers: The text that we see below Peacham’s illustration uses the word “haystackes”, this is in agreement with the First Folio edition of 1623. The first quarto edition (1594) speaks of “haystalkes”. )
“Henricus Peacham” takes the liberty of adding his own words when quoting passages from the play. He even has Alarbus deliver a speech long after the man died.
The biggest mystery however is the way Peacham wrote the date.
“Henricus Peacham Anno mo qo g qto“.
mo stands for millesimo (in the 1000th year), qo stands for quingentesimo (in the 500th year) and qto for quarto, in the fourth year. Peacham’s renaissance-shorthand poses no problems, at least not yet. (In his book Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries (1598) Richard Hakluyt mentions a communication from the Turkish Vesir Sinan Bassa to Queen Elizabeth wherein Roman numerals and modern english date specification stand side by side: “IESU vero Anno millesimo quingentesimo nonagesimo” and “in the yeere of Iesus 1590”.)
Only the small g in the third position of the date, doesn’t want to reveal its secret. Why does Peacham stray from his system with the Roman numerals at this point? Why doesn’t he write “nonagesimo” as we would expect (in the 90th year) = mo qo no qto?
What is that small g doing in the third position?
After pondering over this annoying problem for some time, the mathematician and literature theorist David L. Roper came up with the solution. The date that “Henricus Peacham” wanted to write down wasn’t in the fifteen ninetees; it was either in the sixtees, or the seventees of that century. He wished to avoid confusion between “sexagesimo” and “septuagesimo”, both of which would have been abrieviated to so. So he used a different system and wrote a small g, the seventh letter of the alphabet. The date stated here is 1574. (At this point in time Will Shaksper the actor was 10 years old.)
The usage of the small letter “g” for the number 7 was not Henricus Peacham’s own idea. It comes from a method of writing dates that was in common usage by the Greeks (and the Hebrews as well). The Greeks didn’t write numbers, they designated numbers to letters according to their position in the alphabet I.e. 1=α (roman: a), 2=β (roman: b) ... 7=ζ (roman: g). Therefore Peacham used a small g in the third position. He did not write octogesimo = oo or nonagesimo = no because that would have meant that he was his own sixteen years old son. (In 1594, when Henry Peacham Jr. was sixteen years old, the Roman numerals had become unfashionable; only a Turkish Vesir might use it.)
A comparison between the handwriting of Peacham the elder and Peacham the younger confirms this.
Henricus Peacham Anno mo qo g qto