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‘AS THE DIALL HAND TELLS ORE’: THE CASE FOR DEKKER, NOT SHAKESPEARE, AS AUTHOR by helen hackett Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/res/article/63/258/34/1553972 by guest on 28 September 2021 The manuscript poem beginning ‘As the diall hand tells ore’ (hereafter the Dial Hand poem) appears to be a court epilogue of 1599. It has provoked animated debate, with some scholars claiming it as a ‘new’ Shakespeare work; it was included as such in the RSC Complete Works (2007). Other candidates for its authorship, because of their use elsewhere of its trochaic metre, are Ben Jonson and Thomas Dekker. This investigation finds weaknesses in the case for Shakespeare, not least in the fact that there is no other occurrence of such hyperbolic panegyric of Elizabeth I in his oeuvre. Jonson’s case too is flawed. Dekker emerges as the strongest con- tender, for reasons including his recurrent preoccupation with dials and temporal cycles, his extensive composition of royal panegyric, the strong similarities between the Dial Hand poem and the epilogue to his Old Fortunatus (also performed at court in 1599), and a verbal echo of the Dial Hand poem in his Whore of Babylon (1605). The Dial Hand poem refers to Shrovetide, making Dekker’s Shoemaker’s Holiday (1599)—a play all about the inception of Shrovetide festivities—almost certainly the play to which the epilogue belongs. The manuscript poem beginning ‘As the diall hand tells ore’ has been at the centre of animated scholarly debate in recent years. (For convenience, it will hereafter be referred to as the Dial Hand poem.) Some have claimed it as that elusive and headline-grabbing find, a ‘new’ Shakespeare work. Other candidates for its author- ship are Ben Jonson and Thomas Dekker, though less attention has been paid to their claims. This investigation will explore the case for each author, and present evidence to suggest that Dekker emerges as the strongest contender. As I will explain, there are persuasive reasons to believe that the poem is in fact a court epilogue for his play The Shoemaker’s Holiday. Readers will recall that the Dial Hand poem was first brought to light in 1972 by William A. Ringler, Jr and Steven W. May, who found it in the manuscript miscellany of Henry Stanford, a tutor in the household of George Carey, Baron Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain (Fig. 1).1 I am grateful to Katherine Duncan-Jones, Michael Hattaway, Steven W. May, and Tiffany Stern for their comments on drafts of this essay. I am also grateful to Colin Burrow, the period editor for RES, and to the journal’s anonymous readers for their suggestions. 1 William A. Ringler, Jr. and Steven W. May, ‘An Epilogue Possibly by Shakespeare’, Modern Philology 70 (Nov 1972), 138–9. The manuscript is Cambridge University Library Dd.5.75, f.46. See also, Steven W. May and William A. Ringler, Jr., Elizabethan Poetry: A Bibliography and First-Line Index of English Verse, 1559-1603, vol. 1 (London, 2004), 363, EV2916. The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 63, No. 258 ß The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press 2011; all rights reserved doi:10.1093/res/hgr046 Advance Access published on 27 May 2011 ‘AS THE DIALL HAND’: THE CASE FOR DEKKER 35 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/res/article/63/258/34/1553972 by guest on 28 September 2021 FIG. 1. Cambridge University Library MS Dd.5.75, detail of f.46. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. The poem is headed ‘to ye Q. by ye players 1598’, and reads as follows: As the diall hand tells ore / ye same howers yt had before still beginning in ye ending / circuler account still lending So most mightie Q. we pray / like ye diall day by day you may lead ye seasons on / making new when old are gon. that the babe wch now is yong / & hathe yet no vse of tongue many a shrouetyde here may bow / to yt empresse I doe now that the children of these lordes /sitting at your counsell bourdes may be graue and aeged seene / of her yt was ther father Quene once I wishe this wishe again / heauen subscribe yt wth amen. Ringler and May took it that that the poem’s reference to Shrovetide referred to a court performance in that season. This would mean that the date 1598 should be read as 1599 by the modern calendar, since Shrovetide, the days leading up to Lent, would have fallen before the old-style New Year of 25 March. They found records of two court performances at Shrovetide 1599, one on Quinquagesima Sunday (also known as Shrove Sunday, 18 February) by the Lord Admiral’s Men, and one on Shrove Tuesday (20 February) by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Given Stanford’s place in the Lord Chamberlain’s household, they conjectured that the latter performance was more likely to be the one to which the epilogue belonged, and that it was likely to have been a play by Shakespeare, the chief playwright of the Lord Chamberlain’s company at this time. They also explored the possibility that the epilogue might be by Shakespeare himself, partly on grounds of its trochaic metre, which occurs in a number of songs and poems in Shakespeare’s plays. The Dial Hand poem was included in appendices to the 1974 and 1997 editions of the Riverside Shakespeare as possibly by Shakespeare.2 In 2005 James Shapiro explored the idea that it might be a court epilogue for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, on the grounds of the trochaic metre and rhyming couplets, which also 2 ‘An Epilogue by Shakespeare?’, in The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston, 1974), 1851–2; 2nd edn, ed. G. Blakemore Evans and J.J.M. Tobin (New York, 1997), 1978. 36 HELEN HACKETT occur in Oberon’s closing speech and in the epilogue by Puck (presumably a playhouse epilogue which the Dial Hand poem would have replaced for court performance).3 Juliet Dusinberre, however, favoured As You Like It, tracing in the Dial Hand poem references to the dial which Touchstone consulted earlier in the play (2.7.20–33),4 and to the large sundial at Richmond Palace, newly refurbished in early 1599, where she believes As You Like It was performed.5 Then, in 2007, the poem appeared, with some fanfare, in the RSC Complete Works. The editors, Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/res/article/63/258/34/1553972 by guest on 28 September 2021 Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, stated that the poem’s attribution is ‘absolutely secure’,6 and Bate enthused in a press article about this ‘gorgeous little court epilogue’. In seeking to engage a wide readership he even playfully suggested that anyone might find just such a lost Shakespearean gem: ‘Do check your attic ...When plays were put on at court, it was a requirement that there should be a prologue and an epilogue tailor-made for the occasion. Shakespeare was probably in the habit of dashing some lines down on the back of an envelope and then chucking them away. By chance, this one example has survived ...it’s a precious addition to the canon.’7 The poem was discussed and read aloud on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme,8 and the story spread rapidly through the media. Under the headline ‘the Shakespeare poem on the back of an envelope’, The Daily Mail reported that ‘a ‘‘new’’ poem by William Shakespeare has been published for the first time. He was our greatest dramatist, but even William Shakespeare wasn’t above buttering up his sovereign.’9 Yet scholarly opinion on the attribution of the Dial Hand poem has been far from unanimous. In 1988 May published an edition of Stanford’s anthology, and at that point felt that the verses ‘could hardly be Shakespeare’s’.10 In 2002, Brian Vickers offered the epilogue as a less unlikely candidate for addition to the Shakespeare canon than ‘Shall I die?’, a poem included in the Oxford Shakespeare and up to that time the recipient of more media attention than the 3 James Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (London, 2005), 85–6. 4 William Shakespeare, As You Like It,inThe Norton Shakespeare, gen. ed. Stephen Greenblatt (New York, 1997). All further references to Shakespeare’s works will be to this edition unless otherwise stated. 5 Juliet Dusinberre, ‘Pancakes and a date for As You Like It’, Shakespeare Quarterly 54.4 (Winter 2003), 371–405, esp. 381–5; William Shakespeare, As You Like It, ed. Juliet Dusinberre (London, 2006), 37–42, 349–54. 6 ‘To the Queen’, in The RSC Shakespeare: Complete Works, ed. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen (Basingstoke, 2007), 2433, 2395. 7 Jonathan Bate, ‘Is there a lost Shakespeare in your attic?’, Daily Telegraph, 21 April 2007, <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3664626/Is-there-a-lost-Shakespeare-in- your-attic.html>, accessed 9 January 2011. 8 21 April 2007, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/listenagain_ 20070421.shtml>, accessed 28 July 2009. 9 David Wilkes, ‘To my Queen ...the Shakespeare poem on the back of an envelope’, Daily Mail, 20 April 2007, <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-449747/To-Queen –Shakespeare-poem-envelope.html>, accessed 9 January 2011. 10 Steven W. May (ed.), Henry Stanford’s Anthology: An Edition of Cambridge University Library Manuscript Dd.5.75 (New York, 1988), xx. ‘AS THE DIALL HAND’: THE CASE FOR DEKKER 37 more quietly announced discovery by Ringler and May.