At any rate, Castara is a miscellany, containing a great many sonnets and much else. Here's the volume's reference to Shakespeare (I quote the entire poem, although Shakespeare's ghost pops up early on, in line 7):
May you drinke beare, or that adult’rate winePrynne drinks a toast/to Shakespeare's ghost. The allusion here is to William Prynne’s Histriomastix ('The Scourge of Actors', 1632) 'for the publication of which,' (to quote 19th-century scholar Sir Charles Abraham Elton) 'the author was sentenced by the iniquitous court of star-chamber to pay a fine to the king of five thousand pounds; to be degraded from his profession of the law, and to lose his ears in the pillory.' Prynne's famous book is a thousand pages of anti-dramatic spleen, attacking the theatres as dens of iniquity and sexual immorality, and, unfortunately for the integrity of Prynne's ears, it contains the phrase 'Women actors are notorious whores'. Since King Charles' wife, Queen Henrietta Marie of France, was fond of acting, this landed Prynne in grave trouble.
Which makes the zeale of Amsterdam divine,
If you make breach of promise. I have now
So rich a sacke, that even yourselfe will bow
T’ adore my genius. Of this wine should Prynne
Drinke but a plenteous glasse, he would beginne
A health to Shakespeare's ghost. But you may bring
Some excuse forth, and answer me, the king
To day will give you audience, or that on
Affaires of state you and some serious don
Are to resolve; or else perhaps you’le sin
So farre, as to leave word y'are not within.
The least of these will make me onely thinke
Him subtle, who can in his closet drinke,
Drunke even alone, and, thus made wise, create
As dangerous plots as the Low Countrey state;
Projecting for such baits, as shall draw ore
To Holland all the Herrings from our shore.
But y’are too full of candour: and I know
Will sooner stones at Salis’bury easements throw
Or buy up for the silenc’d Levites all
The rich impropriations, than let pall
So pure Canary, and breake such an oath:
Since charity is sinn’d against in both.
Come, therefore, blest even in the Lollard’s zeal,
Who canst, with conscience safe, ’fore hen and veale
Say grace in Latine; while I faintly sing
A penitentiall verse in oyle and ling.
Come, then, and bring with you, prepar’d for fight,
Vnmixt Canary; Heaven send both prove right!
This I am sure: my sacke will disengage
All humane thoughts, inspire so high alrage;
That Hypocrene shall henceforth poets lacke,
Since more enthusiasmes are in my sacke.
Heightned with which, my raptures shall commend
How good Castara is, how deare my friend.
Three things. The first is the obvious reading: Habingdon is telling his lady-love, Castara, that he has some Dutch wine so good it would persuade even so notorious an anti-theatrical Puritan as Prynne to toast the ghost of the famous playwright. If we constellate this with the tradition that Shakespeare famously played the ghost of Hamlet's father in his own play, the reference may be more pointed: Prynne lost his ears; Old Hamlet was murdered via his ears. If we want to be really far-fetched, we might suggest that Habingdon is here recording, obliquely, the knowledge that the play Histriomastix (1599), anonymously published but generally attributed to John Marston (or perhaps the so-called ur-Histriomastix scholars sometimes talk about as existing behind Marston's version) was written by Shakespeare himself. Now that's an intriguing possibility, don't you think?
"...and his argument was followed and elaborated by Philip Edwards (who nevertheless accepted the revision hypothesis)"
ReplyDeleteI never!
The internet never lies, Philip.
ReplyDelete