Shakespeare’s Patron: Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke

Birth of Shakespeare Part 5

Were that fair body of the sweetest Venus in Print, as it is redoubtedly armed with the complete harness of the bravest Minerva. - She shall no sooner appear in person, like a new Star in Cassiopeia, but every eye of capacity will see a conspicuous difference between her and other mirrors of Eloquence.

Gabriel Harvey,  Pierce’s Supererogation; a new praise of the olde Asse, April 27, 1593

In previous posts I have considered the likely connection between Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis and the person and writing of Philip Sidney, and the largely unsuccessful effort to establish Henry Wriothesley as Shakespeare’s patron based on the dedications of Venus and Rape of Lucrece. In this, I want to tie those threads together by proposing that Shakespeare was writing for a patron in 1592-1594, not Wriothesley but Sidney’s sister Mary Sidney Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke.

The first official document associating William Shakespeare with the theater is a record of payment to Richard Burbage, William Kempe and William Shakespeare as representatives of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men for performances at court during the New Year celebrations of 1594/95. Lord Chamberlain’s is the name most often encountered for the playing company, but in fact they did not start out that way and changed patrons and therefore monikers several times before finally becoming the King’s Men after the ascension of James in 1603. The core of the company began as Leicester’s Men under the direction of James Burbage more than a decade before Shakespeare joined them in the early 1590s. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and Elizabeth’s long-time favorite, was the primary patron of adult playing companies during the 1580s (Edward de Vere maintained a children’s company that competed for coveted slots to perform at court and performed at an indoor venue at Blackfriars). After Dudley’s death in 1588 arrangements become somewhat confused, Burbage’s troop appears to have become the Queen’s Men under Walsingham until he died in 1591, then merged briefly with the Lord Strange’s Men associated with Ned Alleyn and the Rose theatre before splintering again with the arrival of Plaque in London in 1592. For attempts to trace the evolution of these companies and the movements of their actors, see Andrew Gurr’s The Shakespearian Playing Companies or somewhat more speculatively, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Shakespeare an Ungentle Life. Unfortunately, no records exist that document William Shakespeare’s participation in the theatre during this period.

Whatever the path, it is agreed that the company which performed the plays of Shakespeare and with which Shakespeare might have performed as an actor formed as Lord Pembroke’s Men just before plague closed the London theaters in 1592. Henry Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, by then in declining health and occupied with administering Wales as Lord President, was not known to be a great patron of the arts, but his wife the Countess, Lady Mary Sidney Herbert was, and it is likely under her direction that James Burbage assembled a troop around his son Richard and the remnants of Leicester’s Men after an argument with actor Edward Alleyn in May 1591. The 1592 will of actor Simon Jewell indicates that he is owed money by the Countess, there is some debate about whether this is for a performance of the Queen’s Men in that year at Wilton or whether it indicates he had moved to Pembroke’s before his death. Early Shakespeare quartos identify this company as the first to perform Shakespeare’s plays, although they would not be connected to the author in print until 1598. They continued as Pembroke’s Men until the fall of 1593, when they returned to London seeking new patronage. According to a note in Philip Henslowe’s diary, they were by then so impoverished they had to sell off props and costumes to relieve their debts.

It is not clear why the wealthy Herberts did not prove better patrons. It is possible they were put off by the violent ends met by playwrights Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlow. Kyd was arrested on May 12 of 1593 in connection with "divers lewd and mutinous libels" against Dutch immigrants posted about London. He was imprisoned and apparently tortured, and though he was eventually released, his health never recovered and he died at just 35 the following year. While imprisoned he made accusations against Christopher Marlowe (they had lived together and according to Kyd shared a noble patron, not yet conclusively identified) that led to charges against him for blasphemy and atheism. On May 30, Marlowe was killed in a brawl in Deptford involving known government agents in what appears to be an extrajudicial execution. After his release Kyd wrote to Sir John Puckering, Keeper of the Great Seal and titular head of the Privy Council imploring him to intercede with Kyd’s patron, who had abandoned him as a result of his imprisonment. In Beyond the Spanish Tragedy:  A Study of the Works of Thomas Kyd (2001) Lukas Erne argues that both Kyd and Marlowe were in the employ of the Pembroke household during the period from 1591 to 1593 based on details contained in Kyd’s letter, particularly a reference to a play by Marlowe for the Noble’s company of players which Erne contends can only refer to Edward II written for Pembroke’s Men.

After Pembroke, it appears the company was briefly sponsored by Henry Radclyffe, the 4^th Earl of Sussex until his death in December 1593 (and somewhat after as they are recorded as the Countess of Sussex’ Men). They appeared to have combined with Alleyn’s company for performances of the Henry VI plays which required larger casts for Christmas performances at court. By rhis time, Ferdinando Stanley, their prior patron as Lord Strange, had became Earl of Derby on the death of his father in September 1593. Derby, a potential heir to the throne, died himself under suspicious circumstances only a few months later. Finally Henry Carey, Baron Hunsdon and Lord Chamberlain chartered the company as part of a duopoly for public performances in London in 1594, as reflected in the 1595 payment.

Whatever the details, we have reason to believe there was an association between Shakespeare and the Countess of Pembroke during the year before the appearance of Venus and Adonis when Shakespeare’s earliest plays were performed by Pembroke’s Men. There is also considerable literary evidence in support of this association. In 1592, Abraham Fraunce followed his two-part Countess of Pembroke’s Ivychurch, an epyllion which told the story of Amyntas and Phillis (translated from the contemporary neo-Latin poem  by Thomas Watson, whom he controversially did not acknowledge) with a third part, a sort of Ovidian ramble through mythology, prefaced by way of introduction as a memorial to Philip Sidney (identified with Amyntas) to which Mary summoned writers to offer tales of transformation from mythology in tribute to her brother. (Ivychurch, a converted nunnery south of Salisbury formed part of Mary’s dower. She often lent it to writers as a retreat near to Wilton)

Now that solempne feast of murdred Amyntas aproached:
And by the late edict by Pembrokiana pronounced,
Yuychurches nymphs and pastors duely prepared
With fatall Garlands of newfound flowre Amaranthus,
Downe in Amyntas dale, on Amyntas day be asembled.
Pastymes ouerpast, and death's celebration ended,
Matchles Lady regent, for a further grace to Amyntas
Late transformd to a flowre; wills euery man to remember
Some one God transformd, or that transformed an other:
And enioynes each nymph to recount some tale of a Goddesse
That was changd herself, or wrought some change in an other:

It is not established whether there was an actual gathering to share these stories, or to what extent the other epyllia produced in the period were responses to Sidney’s request (including Marlowe’s Hero and Leander, Clapham’s Narcissus and Watson’s Amyntas amongst many), but Venus and Adonis is a pretty literal fulfilment of the charge as specified by Fraunce.

The earliest printed references to Venus and Adonis, by Gabriel Harvey in 1593 (more on this in a moment) and William Covell in 1595, specifically associate the work with the countess. There is evidence from Shakespeare’s dramatic work as well, beyond the quarto claims that they were “plaied by Pembroke’s Men”, the Henry VI plays which also date to this period contain specific references to Samuel Daniel’s Civil Wars which were still in manuscript at the time. Daniel was Mary Sidney’s secretary and tutor to her boys in 1592. Marlowe was identified in 2016 as the author of much of the Henry VI plays, and Kyd is considered the most likely author of earlier versions of Hamlet and Lear, while his Spanish Tragedy heavily influenced Titus Andronicus and other Shakespeare tragedies.

Philip’s sister, Mary Sidney, was born in 1561 at Tickenhill palace in Bewdley just west of Birmingham (only 30 miles from Stratford) on the edge of Wales where her father was serving as Lord President.  She didn’t attend Shrewsbury school with Philip, nor did she accompany him on his customary tour of Europe, but she did receive a proper noble’s education alongside her younger brothers, and was therefore fluent in Classical languages, could play instruments and dance, and was well-versed in literature and philosophy. At thirteen she joined the Court as maid of honor (a term she appears to have invented). Two years later she married Henry Herbert, the widowed forty-two-year-old Earl of Pembroke, one of the richest and most powerful men in England; at the age of just 15, she was the Countess of Pembroke. She was eighteen and with child when Philip arrived following his altercation with Oxford; he entertained her with stories and poems that would later become the sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella and The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia during her laying in (the customary period of isolation during late pregnancy). Mary’s son William provided the childless Herbert the heir he desperately wanted, and was followed by two daughters (Katherine and Anne) and another son, Philip, within the next four years. Tragically the elder daughter Katherine died of illness on the day Philip was born, the first of a string of calamities that would soon beset the young Countess; she would have no more children.

Overjoyed by the beautiful young wife who had given him two sons so late in life Herbert indulged her wide-ranging interests. Wilton became a second Court where Mary and Philip gathered an entourage of writers including Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton and Samuel Daniel, now collectively referred to as the Wilton Circle, perhaps the most important literary salon in English history. Pembroke sponsored a company of players, Pembroke’s Men, and hired the foremost alchemist in England, Raleigh’s cousin Adrian Gilbert. Philip continued to work on his sonnet sequence and wrote a critical essay, the Defence of Poesy, that would shape English literature for centuries. Together they began a joint translation of the Psalms from the Geneva Bible.

It was not to last. In May of 1586, Mary’s father succumbed to illness, her mother followed a few months later, and in October, Philip who was leading the Protestant defense of Zutphen in the Netherlands as Governor of Flushing, took a bullet in the thigh. Twenty-six days later he died of gangrene at the age of 31. Returned to England, he was given a hero’s memoriam and was the first non-peer accorded a state funeral mass in St. Paul’s. As a woman Mary was neither allowed to participate in the ceremony, nor to contribute to the memorial volumes published for the occasion. Instead, she would spend the next decade ensuring that Philip would live forever as an icon of the Elizabethan Age.

Mary remained in mourning at Wilton for two years; during this time, she translated Phillipe de Mornay’s A discourse of life and death (published in 1591) and Petrarch’s The Triumph of Death (not published during her lifetime but discovered in manuscript and available in modern editions of her work). She also completed the translation of the Psalms she had begun with her brother. In a dazzling display of poetic virtuosity, she wrote each of the remaining 107 verses (Philip had completed 43) in a different verse form. Mary’s psalms were described in period as “a school of English versification” providing examples of how by varying the rhythm and meter to express tone and emotion the complexity of the English language could become a poetic asset. We see echoes of Sidney’s psalms in the way Shakespeare uses prosody to invoke magic or agitation or alignment of characters in his later plays.

In November, 1588 Mary made a triumphant return to the Court in London as part of the Ascension Day celebrations for the defeat of the Armada. Accompanied by seventy men wearing Sidney, not Pembroke, livery, she rode in a procession fit for a Queen.

From Baynard’s Castle, the Pembroke estate on the bank of the Thames in London, Mary resumed the political and literary leadership left by Philip and Leicester. She also continued the quarrel Philip had begun with Oxford which had extended to their respective circles of writers. Oxford’s men embraced a florid style termed Ephuism after Euphues, The Anatomy of Wit published in 1578 by Oxford’s secretary John Lyly. Sidney’s followers including Edmund Spenser, Gabriel Harvey, Edward Dyer and Abraham Fraunce declared themselves Areopagists after the hill on which the judicial council of Athens met. They made their own judgements on the excesses of Euphuism and developed their own distinct styles and genres for English vernacular poetry and prose.

After Leicester’s death, a religious controversy reignited the dormant rivalry and led to one of the great literary conflicts of the Elizabethan age, the Nashe/Harvey pamphlet war. In the late 1580s, an anonymous wit publishing under the name Martin Marprelate issued a series of satirical attacks on the Episcopacy of the Church of England. This cause aligned the strict puritans who opposed hierarchy in church matters with members of the Sidney Circle who simply despised Archbishop Whitgift. Lacking the satirist’s gift, Whitgift’s attempts to respond directly to Martin failed miserably. Promising a “great Reckoning” for those responsible he and his ally William Cecil decided to fight fire with fire and commissioned professional writers to take up the fight. The first of these was Pappe with an Hatchet in September 1589, by John Lily, aforementioned author of Euphues and secretary to Oxford. Other pamphlets appeared under the name “the reknowned Cavaliero Pasquill” after the talking statues of Rome that had long served as billboards for satirical tracts. These are generally assigned to Thomas Nashe, but the identification is not unanimous and other Oxford circle writers including Robert Greene, Anthony Munday even de Vere himself are suggested. The next year Gabriel Harvey’s brother Richard responded with an attack on anti-Martinists in a tract called Plain Perceval (1590), and with an epistle prefixing his sermon the Lamb of God which savaged both Martin and the anti-Martinists. After the Marprelate press was discovered and destroyed and the printers arrested in September 1589 and no new Marprelate pamplets appeared in 1590 it appeared the matter was finished. (for details of the Marprelate controversy see https://people.umass.edu/marprelate/marprelatecontroversy.html)

Lingering resentments flared anew in June of 1592 when Richard Harvey attacked the Anti-Martinists in a letter affixed to his Philadelphus. Robert Greene replied with A Quip for an Upstart Courtier in July broadening his attack to all three Harvey brothers including the youngest, John. As John died just as the pamphlet was going to print, Gabriel was incensed, and a flurry attacks and responses followed. Green’s posthumous Groatsworth of Wit, famous for the reference to the Upstart Crow, long identified as the first mention of William Shakespeare is part of this exchange, Harvey’s disparaging the dead Greene in turn inspired his friend Nashe to ratchet the rhetoric even higher. Unfortunately, neither Harvey could match Nashe’s gift for satire, the learned Gabriel’s attempts to put down the younger Nashe come off as awkward and pedantic.

Pierce’s Supererogation - Image Steve Mentz

In Pierce’s Supererogation; a new praise of the olde Asse, Harvey summons his Gentlewoman Patroness and Champion to enter the fray, describing her in terms that can only refer to the Countess of Pembroke.  Pierce’s Supererogation includes three sonnets ostensibly written by this gentlewoman excoriating Nashe and his patron (who she apparently identifies as the Earl of Oxford). The significance of Harvey’s gentlewoman is heightened by Harvey’s tantalizing suggestions that she is preparing to release “that fair body of the sweetest Venus in Print, as it is redoubtedly armed with the complete harness of the bravest Minerva. - When his necessary defence hath sufficiently accleared him, whom it principally concerneth to acquit himself: She shall no sooner appear in person, like a new Star in Cassiopeia, but every eye of capacity will see a conspicuous difference between her and other mirrors of Eloquence.”  The bravest Minerva was the martial avatar of the goddess Pallas Athena, the Spearshaker who was patron of the dramatic arts in ancient Greece and Rome.

The identification of the Countess with Harvey’s gentlewoman remains somewhat controversial, largely on the grounds that it was beneath the dignity of the Pembroke’s to get into the mud with the likes of Thomas Nashe (the evidence is summarized by Matthew Steggle on the Folger website). However, no other suitable candidate has ever been proposed. Nashe himself offers the most widely held alternative in Have With You to Saffron Walden: “I am of the minde that, for all the stormes & tempests Haruey from her denounceth, there is no such woman, but tis onely a Fiction of his.”. In fact, it is the presence of Nashe which drew the fracas with Harvey into a conflict more directly involving the Countess, 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.

Continue reading here.