Thorpe’s mode of addressing the Earl of Pembroke.
Proof is at hand to establish that Thorpe was under no misapprehension as to the proper appellation of the Earl of Pembroke, and was incapable of venturing on the meaningless misnomer of ‘Mr. W. H.’ Insignificant publisher though he was, and sceptical as he was of the merits of noble patrons, he was not proof against the temptation, when an opportunity was directly offered him, of adorning the prefatory pages of a publication with the name of a nobleman, who enjoyed the high official station, the literary culture, and the social influence of the third Earl of Pembroke. In 1610—a year after he published the ‘Sonnets’—there came into his hands the manuscripts of John Healey, that humble literary aspirant who had a few months before emigrated to Virginia, and had, it would seem, died there. Healey, before leaving England, had secured through the good offices of John Florio (a man of influence in both fashionable and literary circles) the patronage of the Earl of Pembroke for a translation of Bishop Hall’s fanciful satire, ‘Mundus alter et idem.’ Calling
his book ‘The Discoverie of a New World,’ Healey had prefixed to it, in 1609, an epistle inscribed in garish terms of flattery to the ‘Truest mirrour of truest honor, William Earl of Pembroke.’ [409] When Thorpe subsequently made up his mind to publish, on his own account, other translations by the same hand, he found it desirable to seek the same patron. Accordingly, in 1610, he prefixed in his own name, to an edition of Healey’s translation of St. Augustine’s ‘Citie of God,’ a dedicatory address ‘to the honorablest patron of the Muses and good mindes, Lord William, Earle of Pembroke, Knight of the Honourable Order (of the Garter), &c.’ In involved sentences Thorpe tells the ‘right gracious and gracefule Lord’ how the author left the work at death to be a ‘testimonie of gratitude, observance, and heart’s honor to your honour.’ ‘Wherefore,’ he explains, ‘his legacie, laide at your Honour’s feete, is rather here delivered to your Honour’s humbly thrise-kissed hands by his poore delegate. Your Lordship’s true devoted, Th. Th.’
Again, in 1616, when Thorpe procured the issue of a second edition of another of Healey’s translations, ‘Epictetus Manuall. Cebes Table. Theoprastus Characters,’ he supplied more conspicuous evidence of the servility with which he deemed it incumbent on him to approach a potent patron. As this address by Thorpe to Pembroke is difficult of access, I give it in extenso:
‘To the Right Honourable, William Earle of Pembroke, Lord Chamberlaine to His Majestie, one of his most honorable Privie Counsell, and Knight of the most noble order of the Garter, &c.
‘Right Honorable.—It may worthily seeme strange unto your Lordship, out of what frenzy one of my meanenesse hath presumed to commit this Sacriledge, in the straightnesse of your Lordship’s leisure, to present a peece, for matter and model so unworthy, and in this scribbling age, wherein great persons are so pestered dayly with Dedications. All I can alledge in extenuation of so many incongruities, is the bequest of a deceased Man; who (in his lifetime) having offered some translations of his unto your Lordship, ever wisht if these ensuing were published they might onely bee addressed unto your Lordship, as the last Testimony of his dutifull affection (to use his own termes) The true and reall upholder of Learned endeavors. This, therefore, beeing left unto mee, as a Legacie unto your Lordship (pardon my presumption, great Lord, from so meane a man to so great a person) I could not without some impiety present it to any other; such a sad priviledge have the bequests of the dead, and so obligatory they are, more than the requests of the living. In the hope of this honourable acceptance I will ever rest,
‘Your lordship’s humble devoted,
‘T. Th.’
With such obeisances did publishers then habitually creep into the presence of the nobility. In fact, the law which rigorously maintained the privileges of peers left them no option. The alleged erroneous form of address in the dedication of Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnets’—‘Mr. W. H.’ for Lord Herbert or the Earl of Pembroke—would have amounted to the offence of defamation. And for that misdemeanour the Star Chamber, always active in protecting the dignity of peers, would have promptly called Thorpe to account. [410]
Of the Earl of Pembroke, and of his brother the Earl of Montgomery, it was stated a few years later, ‘from just observation,’ on very pertinent authority, that ‘no men came near their lordships [in their capacity of literary patrons], but with a kind of religious address.’ These words figure in the prefatory epistle which two actor-friends of Shakespeare addressed to the two Earls in the posthumously issued First Folio of the dramatist’s works. Thorpe’s ‘kind of religious address’ on seeking Lord Pembroke’s patronage for Healey’s books was somewhat more unctuous than was customary or needful. But of erring conspicuously in an opposite direction he may, without misgiving, be pronounced innocent.
VII.—SHAKESPEARE AND THE EARL OF PEMBROKE.
With the disposal of the allegation that ‘Mr. W. H.’ represented the Earl of Pembroke’s youthful name, the whole theory of that earl’s identity with Shakespeare’s friend collapses. Outside Thorpe’s dedicatory words, only two scraps of evidence with any title to consideration have been adduced to show that Shakespeare was at any time or in any way associated with Pembroke.