John Florio, Thomas Nashe and the Battle over the Legacy of Philip Sidney

Birth of Shakespeare Part 6

I ended my previous post with the intervention of Mary Sidney identified as Harvey’s Gentlewoman Patronesse in his literary pamphlet war with Thomas Nashe as part of a battle over the right to publish and interpret the literary works of her deceased brother Philip, which were initially brought to print through the agency of ex-Pembroke secretary John Florio. I consider that conflict now, as part of a broader political division of the Leicester-Pembroke-Sidney faction which would come dominate the Elizabethan politics in the 1590s.

Properly titled The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, Sidney’s sprawling romance started in 1580 as entertainment for his sister while he was exiled from court and she was pregnant with her first child. Philip would bring pages each day to read to Mary and her ladies during her lying in, the period of confinement prescribed noble women as the birth of a child approached. These circulated in manuscript and have come to be known as the “Old Arcadia.” In the years that followed, Philip decided to correct some errors of composition that rendered the work imperfect in light of the critical theory he developed in his Defense of Poesy, also written during this time. By his death in 1586 he had completed revision of the first two books and left notes for the remainder, but the work remained unfinished. In 1589 Philip’s friend Fulke Greville arranged for publication of the partially revised manuscript then in his possession, relying on his Italian secretary John Florio to edit the text and adding introductions to each section which aligned Philip’s work with the Tacitean views of Greville’s new patron, Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex. Essex was the stepson of Philip’s uncle and mentor, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, by virtue of his marriage to Lettice Knowles Devereaux dowager Countess of Essex. On Philip’s death Essex inherited his best sword and shortly after married his wife Frances nee Walsingham. After Leicester’s death in 1588, the anti-Spanish, protestant coalition he headed fractured as Essex tried to assume leadership but the earlier generation headed by Mary’s husband Henry Herbert broke ranks. The Earl of Pembroke viewed Essex as rash, impulsive and encouraged by a dangerous sense of entitlement which led him to imprudently antagonize the much more subtle Robert Cecil, heir and successor to the powerful Lord Treasurer. Essex’s attempts to garner support to be named President of Wales while Pembroke still held the position may have triggered the break or simply confirmed it and underscored Devereux’s narcissism and lack of judgement. Eventually Pembroke’s assessment would be proven correct as Essex was manipulated into disgrace and ultimately the rebellion which led to his execution for treason. In the meantime, the political division became a literary battle as the two factions contested the political legacy of the apotheosized Philip Sidney.

Mary would not have others lay claim to the work her brother had done “onely for you, only to you,” entrusting it to her, “if you keepe it to your selfe, or to such friends, who will weigh errors in the ballance of good will, I hope, for the father’s sake, it will be pardoned, perchaunce made much of, though in it selfe it haue deformities.” In 1593 with the help of her secretary, Hugh Sanford, she produced her own revised edition of the Arcadia, clearing away the editorial contributions of Greville and restoring the missing three chapters with material reworked from the Old Arcadia. The prefatory address which disparaged the previous work of Greville and Florio bore Sanford’s initials H.S. added fuel to the feud with Florio that echoed through the literature of the decade:

The disfigured face, gentle Reader, wherewith this worke not long since appeared
to the common view, moved that noble Lady, to whose honor consecrated,
whose protection it was committed, to take in hand the wiping away those
spottes wherewith the beauties therof were unworthely blemished. But as of
in repairing a ruinous house, the mending of some olde part occasioneth
making of some new; so here her honourable labour begonne in correcting the
faults, ended in supplying the defectes; by the view of what was ill done guide
to the consideration of what was not done.1

Florio responded in his World of Words with a barrage of insults constructed on Sanford’s intials,

And might not a man that can do as much as you (that is, read) find as much matter out of H.S. as you did out of I. F.? As for example H. S. why may it not stand as well for Haeres Stultitiae, as for Homo Simplex? or for Hara Suillina, as for Hostis Studiosorum? or for Hircus Satiricus, as well as for any of them? And this in Latin, besides Hedera Seguace, Harpia Subata, Humore Superbo, Hipocrito Simulatore in Italian. And in English world without end. Huffe Snuffe, Horse Stealer, Hob Sowter, Hugh Sot, Humphrey Swineshead, Hodge Sowgelder.

Mary’s version of the Arcadia supplanted the earlier printing, something she assured by using the same printer, William Ponsonby. In 1591, before she completed her Arcadia, another of Philip’s works, the sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella was printed by Thomas Newman. According to recent scholarship, the source was once again John Florio. And in 1595 Florio managed to get Philip’s Defence of Poesy published even though it had already been registered by Ponsonby. Eventually the rights to all of these works were acquired by the Countesse’s publisher and released in a unified edition in 1598.

It was the 1591 edition of Astrophel and Stella that brought Thomas Nashe into the conflict. The volume included a dedication to the Countess written by Nashe and an assortment of verses by other poets including sonnets from Samuel Daniel’s Delia and a poem attributed to E.O. long read as Edward Oxenford, but more recently attributed to Fulke Greville instead. The apparent inclusion of de Vere in an unauthorized edition of her brother’s work would have been an additional provocation to the Countess who perceived the enterprise as a trespass against herself and her family. Nashe’s dedication didn’t help, particularly as it echoed Florio’s justification that in publishing Philip’s works he was liberating them from Mary’s selfish imprisonment:

Quid petitur sacris nisi tantum fama poetis. (What is required of the sacred but only the fame of the poet?) Which although it be oftentimes imprisoned in Ladyes casks, & the president bookes of such as cannot see without another mans spectacles, yet at length it breakes foorth in spight of his keepers, and vseth some priuate penne (in steed of a picklock) to procure his violent enlargement.

Nashe’s direct address to Mary provides the connection to Venus and Adonis to which Harvey alludes. Nashe characterizes Mary as Pallas Athena, guarding with her lance the Laurel Garland of her brother Philip (Phoebus) and protecting the Castalian springs mentioned in the title quote taken from Ovid.

Fayne would a seconde spring of passion heere spende it selfe on his sweet remembrance: but Religion that rebu∣keth prophane lamentation, drinkes in the riuers of those dis∣paireful teares, which languorous ruth hath outwelled, & bids me looke back to the house of honor, where frō one & the selfe same roote of renowne, I shal find many goodly branches deri∣ued, & such as with the spreading increase of their vertues, may somwhat ouershadow the griefe of his los. Amongst the which fayre sister of Phoebus, & eloquent secretary to the Muses, most rare Countesse of Pembroke thou art not to be omitted: whom Artes doe adore as a second Minerua, and our Poets extoll as the Patronesse of their inuention; for in thee, the Lesbian Sap∣pho with her lirick Harpe is disgraced, & the Laurel Garlande which thy Brother so brauely aduaunst on his Launce, is still kept greene in the Temple of Pallas. Thou only sacrificest thy soule to contemplation, thou only entertainest emptie handed Homer, & keepest the springs of Castalia from being dryed vp. Learning, wisedom, beautie, and all other ornaments of Nobili∣tie whatsoeuer, seeke to approue themselues in thy sight, and get a further seale of felicity, from the smiles of thy fauour.

Nashe pointedly did not receive “the smiles of (her) favour,” and abandoned attempts at conciliation with two works parodically also dedicated to Southampton. In the first, Nashe’s picaresque novel The Unfortunate Traveler published in 1594 which engages Philip’s Arcadia and his critical theory, Nashe makes clear the connection by naming the protagonist Jack Wilton. The second is a flamboyantly pornographic poem, the Choice of Valentines or Thomas Nashe’s Dildo in which he tells the story of a prostitute, who, left unfulfilled by a client, turns to an alternative to find satisfaction.

Newman’s Astrophel has historically been considered a pirated or unauthorized work based on evidence that it was “called in” by the Stationer’s Guild. Astrophel and Stella was the subject of a pair of articles in Textual Culture in Spring 2023 by John Pitcher and Mark Bland who contend that Mary had no legal claim on Philip’s work and that it was properly authorized by the publisher and printer, save that they included sonnets from Samuel Daniel’s Delia, which had previously been authorized but not registered by Daniel’s printer, Waterston. They further claim that the Delia sonnets reveal how the work reached the printer: Daniel had shared a copy of Astrophil and Stella given him by the countess with his friend John Florio, who having already broken with Pembroke with the publication of Arcadia and the shift with Greville to Essex, was determined to bring Philip’s work to popular attention in service of his new patron. It would have been no solace to Mary that publication of the work did not break any rules of the Stationer’s Guild and was therefore beyond her ability to recall or influence.

Daniel was in Europe during all this, traveling with his patron Sir Edward Dymoke. When he returned his claim that his sonnets had been published without his consent and in violation with his agreement with Waterston provided the pretext for calling in the already printed but not yet sold volumes. Daniel wrote a effusive apology to the Countess for unwittingly contributing to the usurpation of her brother’s work; by the end of 1591 he was employed in the Pembroke household as secretary and tutor to Mary’s sons, William and Philip. When his sonnets were published in 1592 they included several previously unpublished poems that identified his Delia with Mary Sidney and declared his allegiance to her. The most notable of these was Sonnet 48:

None other fame mine unambitious Muse 
Affected ever but t'eternise thee; 
All other honours do my hopes refuse, 
Which meaner prized and momentary be. 
For God forbid I should my papers blot 
With mercenary lines with servile pen, 
Praising virtues in them that have them not, 
Basely attending on the hopes of men. 
No, no, my verse respects not Thames, nor theatres; 
Nor seeks it to be known unto the great; 
But Avon, poor in fame, and poor in waters, 
Shall have my song, where Delia hath her seat. 
Avon shall be my Thames, and she my song; 
No other prouder brooks shall hear my wrong.
Samuel Daniel 
Delia, Sonnet 48

Venus and Adonis then fulfills Mary’s agenda as revealed by Harvey on multiple levels. She wanted to honor her brother, to fulfill his vision of an English vernacular literature that would “delight and inspire,” defying the Puritan impulse to ban poetry and theatre. She harbored grudges against the Queen and Oxford whom she blamed for Sidney’s tragic death and also against those, particularly Greville, Florio and Nashe that would claim his political and literary legacy to their own ends. That nearly all of these appeared to have cooperated in the publication of Philip’s writing against his expressed desire and without her consent represented a galling provocation. That Florio had taken a position as secretary and Italian tutor with Henry Wriothesley, the young Earl of Southampton who was himself aligned with Essex and Oxford made the precedent of Clapham’s stodgy Narcissus an opportunity to target the literary response with the dedication to Southampton.

Shakespeare’s follow up narrative poem, The Rape of Lucrece published a year later primarily concerns the ability of literature to express truth amongst conflicting claims, and specifically to the silencing of the female voice which can be reclaimed only by the death of the speaker.