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€ Li ? Abetl ) an S Pring 1 9 9 8 ^ Ol . 6 , M O €li?abetl)an Spring 1998 ^ol. 6, Mo. I ®Ije €li?abetljan 3Rebielu Spring 1998 Letters A Poetic Tribute to Lady Susan Vere Isabel Holden 3 Elizabethan Handwriting and Education Francis Edwards 3 Monograph Occulist Influence on the Authorship Controversy Roger Nyle Parisious 9 Book Excerpt The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespere Unfolded: King Lear Delia Bacon (ed. Elliott Baker) 46 Article Why Was Venus and Adonis Published Richard Lester 67 ^ Semiannual f ournal Clje Cli^abetljan a^ebieto Cbitorial poarb Patrick Buckridge Griffith University Ross Duffin Case Western Reserve University Francis Edwards, S.J., F.S.A., F. Hist. Soc. Ernest Ferlita, S.J. Loyola University Warren Hope Rosemont College Jules Janick Purdue University Felicia Londre University of Missouri Anne E. Pluto Lesley College Dr. L.L. Ware Lincoln's Inn, London Gary B. Goldstein John C. Mucci Joseph R. Liccardo Editor Associate Editor Art Director The Elizabethan Review (ISSN 1066-7059) is published twice a year by Gary B. Goldstein, 8435 62nd Drive, #T41, Middle Village, NY 11379. Tel 718-458-5675, fax 718-457-6602, e-mail G61954.aol.com, Web: www.elizreview.com. Unsolicited manu­ scripts must be accompanied by self-addressed, stamped envelopes. Individual sub­ scriptions are $35/year U.S., $45/year overseas. Institutional subscriptions are $45/year in the United States; $50/year overseas. Student rates are $20/year. Back issues are available at $20.00 per copy. Copyright 1998 by Gary B. Goldstein. All rights reserved under International and Pan American Copyright Conventions. Reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission from the publisher is prohibited. The Elizabethan Review is indexed and abstracted by the MLA International Bibliography, the World Shakespeare Bibliography, and the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature. Selections from previous issues can be accessed on the Web at www.elizreview.com i:etterg to tfje Cbitor To the Editor: To the Editor: Warren Hope's article on "Lear's I read with interest Dr. John Cordelia, Oxford's Susan, and Baker's comment (see ER 5:2) on my Manningham's Diary" (ER 5:2) sugestion that the celebrated brought The Poems of Lady Mary Monteagle letter, which gave the first Wroth to mind (Josephine A. Roberts, official intimation to the English gov­ ed. Louisiana University Press, 1983). ernment of the Gunpowder Plot, "was Lady Mary was a good friend of almost certainly written by the Earl of Susan Vere, Countess Montgomery. Salisbury." As he says, Dr. Mark One of the poems is called "The NichoUs "suspects that Thomas Percy Countesse of Montgomery's Urania." wrote the letter," but NichoUs, a care­ In the preface of the book, there is a ful scholar, admits, "It was widely little epitaph written at the time of believed at the time that Percy had Lady Susan's death in 1629 by Will­ written the letter to Monteagle. Just iam Browne of Tavistock (the Dowa­ why the conviction was so strong is ger Countess of Pembroke was his now a littie difficult to say, but we pationess): have seen how in King's Book, Monteagle no sooner heard Thomas Though we trust the earth with thee.Percy' s name mentioned in connec­ We will not thy memory. tion with the Westminster vault than Mines of brass or marble shall he suspected, by reason of Percy's Speak nought of thy funeral. 'backwardness in religion' and their They are verier dust than thee old friendship that the letter had come And do beg a history. from him" (Investigating Gunpowder In thy name there is a tomb Plot, p. 175). If the world can give it room. There is no good reason for sup­ For a Vere and Herbert's wife posing that Percy wrote the letter; not Outspeaks all tombs, outiives all if we take the handwriting of the letter life. into account, which is still extant in the Public Record Office in London, Sincerely, like most of the records in the case Isabel Holden which have survived, or more cor- Northampton, Massachusetts rectiy, been allowed to survive. The most lucid treatment of this subject first appeared on page 17 of the Ob­ server magazine, a London-based Sunday newspaper, in its issue of November 5, 1967. The late Colin Letters- Cross, the journalistprimarily respon­ Paris, he admitted in what could only sible, took along to the Record Office have been a moment of inadvertence Joan Cambridge, a leading grapholo­ that Monteagle's letter was written gist whose expertise is in the solution "in a hand disguised" (see F. Edwards, of legal problems arising from dis­ Guy Fawkes, the Real Story of the puted handwriting and signatures. He GunpowderPlot?, London, 1969,188; insisted on my absence lest the con­ quoting from Winwood' s Memorials, clusions of the lady be in any way n, 171). So it was. But how could he prejudiced. Having no personal inter­ know? There was no problem if he est in the settlement of the problem, had written it himself. Cecil was very she was asked to compare the hands of coy about references to whoever might the principal suspects as writers of the have written it. When he gave the letter—Francis Tresham, Henry Gar­ instructions to the Attorney General, net and Robert Cecil, all of whose Sir Edward Coke, as to how he should hands bear a certain resemblance. conduct the trial of the plotters, he Examples of the hands were given in warned him to stay away from any the article together with an enlarge­ mention of the authorship of the letter. ment of two words, "frend" and "Absolutely disclaim that any of these "frends," taken from Cecil's normal wrote it, though you leave the further writings and the Monteagle letter, re­ judgement indefinite who else it should spectively. One cannot reproduce here be" (ibid, 210; quoted from PRO, all her reaons, but Ms. Cambridge London, SP 14, vol. 19, f.222 r/v). concluded, "examination of original As for the assurance, "there is no documents written and signed by Rob­ need to accuse Salisbury of hypocrisy ert Cecil shows that his natural graphic in these letters," I agree that hypocrisy movement, normal pressure pattern is not perhaps the best or most precise and character of stroke allow of the word to use as a simple judgment in possibility that he wrote the Monteagle connection with the activity of either letter. Further to this, examination of Cecil, William the father or Robert his spontaneous letter-forms, particu­ the son. The Cecils were completely larly "h," "s," and "e," indicate defi­ and utterly sincere in their determina­ nite similarities with those in the tion to keep theirpolitical ascendancy, Monteagle letter... So on aggregate and while they made a good thing for there is sufficient evidence to support themselves out of this, it would be an opinion that in all probability Cecil unjust to suppose they did not believe himself wrote the Monteagle warn- they were serving the country's inter­ ing. ests as well. But to get rival influences NichoUs indicated further candi­ out of the way, they would stop at dates on page 214 of his book but does nothing. So William Cecil got rid of not take the evidence given here into the good Anglican Thomas Howard, consideration. When Cecil wrote his fourth Duke of Norfolk, by implicat­ dispatch of November 9 to to Sir Tho­ ing him in the Ridolfi Plot (see my The mas Parry, English ambassador in Marvellous Chance, London, 1968) -Elizabethan Review- and son Robert did as much for Henry lished by the Folio Society can stand Percy, the ninth Earl of North­ as a scholarly aid in its own right. Both umberland, not as convinced in his NichoUs and Eraser made use of it. I Anglicanism as Howard, but certainly have in preparation a larger work on not a papist. (The sincerity of the the subject since nothing published so Cecils was proved at its most savage, far is adequate, although I am not of course, in their treatment of papists, naive enough to suppose that any­ especially priests.) thing I shall write will end all contro­ On this and the whole subject, the versy. Too much of the evidence is work of an American scholar, George missing for anyone ever to be able to Blacker Morgan, deserves to be better claim absolute certainty—unless some known. Unfortunately for its wider dramatic discovery is made in the dissemination, The Great English cellars of the solicitors or behind the Treason... was printed privately in a paneling somewhere, as in the case of limited edition at Oxford in two vol­ the Clarke-Thornhill manuscripts. umes in 1931 and 1932. Morgan This is sufficientiy unlikely but the thought the plot was genuine but his unlikely can happen. Nevertheless, book was by no means a whitewash many of the difficulties not resolved job. He comments on Robert Cecil, by Dr. NichoUs's book, or for that "although Salisbury completely sup­ matter the latest work on the subject pressed that information about [Tho­ by the Lady Antonia Eraser, have al­ mas] Percy's embezzlement, yet he ready been taken up in my article made a most cleverly unscrupulous published in Recusant History, "Still and deadly use of that letter and of Investigating The Gunpowder Plot" others which the earl wrote to his (vol. 21, pp. 305-346). Perhaps I should steward, in regard to the money, so add by way of footnote that I enjoy that they formed, without being pro­ good personal relations with both duced in any court, the earl's chief scholars, for nothing is more foolish condemnation in the Star Chamber: or unprofessional than to entertain though Salisbury knew that the weak animosity toward those who disagree earl was as innocent as a child in the with one.
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