Robert Nye - The Late Mr Shakespeare

And not just a villain, of course, but a bloody, bawdy villain, a remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, landless villain. A honeysuckle villain. A villain fit to lie unburied. Even a chaffy lord not worth the name of villain.

Mr Shakespeare had a very good line in expletives, also. Here are just a few which I recall from the tennis court - William Shakespeare's tennis court oaths:

Cupid have mercy! O woeful day! What rubbish and what offal! Pluto and hell! O, vengeance, vengeance! Chops! Pish for thee! By Chrish, la! Figo for thy friendship! Bedlam, have done! Plague of your policy! Good worts! Froth and scum! By cock and pie! Divinity of hell! O blood, blood, blood! Pow-waw! Fut! My breath and blood! O curse of marriage! Fire and brimstone! Hell gnaw his bones! Goats and monkeys! Puttock! Puppies! A pox of wrinkles! Chaff and bran! Tilly-vally! God's lid! Disgrace and blows! O piteous spectacle! Let all the dukes and all the devils roar! A bugbear take you! O plague and madness! Foh! Fie! Leprosy o'ertake! For the love of Juno! O viper vile!

And so on. But his favourites, in the expletive art, were 'A pox on this gout! or a gout on this pox!' (which line he gave to Falstaff), and (if he noticed me, note-taking in the dedans) A plague o' these pickle-herring!'

As this will indicate, some of these terms of abuse were borrowed from his own plays, but there were as many or more which he had not used in his work at the time when he uttered them extempore.

All of which makes me think that William Shakespeare employed his games at tennis to put some critical part of his mind to sleep in action, and to see what words and phrases would bubble up from the depths if he lost his temper as a result. Not that he ever did lose his temper; not exactly. He would let himself go just far enough to have access to his great store of original invective. Then he would turn his fury into words. Then he would stop playing tennis. Often I thought he was playing some other game all the time.

* Cf. 'The barber's man hath been seen with him; and the old ornament of his cheek hath already stuffed tennis-balls.' Much Ado About Nothing , Act III, Scene 2, lines 45-7.

Chapter Eighty-Four What Shakespeare got from Florio + a word about George Peele

I am apt to believe that Mr Shakespeare's skill in the French and Italian tongues exceeded his knowledge in the Roman. For we find him not only beholding to Cinthio, Giraldi, and Bandello for his plots, but also able to write such a scene as that in Henry V where the princess Katharine and her governante converse in their native language quite believably. More cogent, though, to my memories of the playwright's performance on the tennis court is the very great number of Italian proverbs scattered up and down in his writings. Where did these come from if not from John Florio?

Southampton's tutor had been born in London, the son of an Italian refugee of Jewish ancestry. He was educated under the direction of the scholar Vergerio at Tubingen. He travelled through Italy and returned to England in the middle 1570s. Here he made a living from private lessons, taught at Oxford, and was authorised to wear the gown of Magdalen College. Patronised by Walsingham, he was recommended to Lord Burghley, who appointed him as tutor to his ward. This would have been at the start of the Nineties, about the time when Shakespeare was beginning that monumental work more durable than bronze or stone, the immortal sonnets, which as we have seen began as advice to the pupil Rizley.

So we have this interesting little triangle if not trinity - rich patron, learned teacher, eager poet. I think it was Rizley's wish to see some of the furnishings of Italian romance transported to England, and Shakespeare's wish both to please him and to have a certain edge over his rival playwrights by substituting for their classical scenes the much more colourful Italy of the Renaissance. As for the pedagogue, he was happy enough no doubt to have found both a powerful nobleman and a poet of genius to act as propagandists for the culture he personified.

Florio's library was magnificent. It contained more than three hundred volumes. It was this precious collection, to which Shakespeare soon had access, which provided the plot source of nearly every one of the early plays. Here he found the Novelle of Cinthio, and Luigi da Porto, and Boccaccio, and Bandello. Here he found the works of Machiavelli, and Ariosto, and Ser Giovanni, and Florio Fiorentino, and Petrarch, and Aretino, and Dante. Many of these texts were not yet translated into English, but with Florio to guide him to the treasures in the magic cavern the man from Stratford was soon rubbing lamps and releasing genii for himself. Everything he found got thoroughly turned into English in the process of his imagination, but Florio should be acknowledged as the one who gave him access to the cave.

All Mr Shakespeare ever needed to set his mind a-racing was a few words, the merest outline of a plot. Often, hearing of some such, I saw him stop his ears, covering them suddenly with his hands, rather than listen to the actual conclusion of the story. He always preferred to hear half a promising tale, and then let his own wild fancy do the rest. In this way several of his plays had their beginnings.

John Florio was a curious gentleman. The feature of him which I remember best was his little wax-like hands. When he had completed a game at tennis the smell that his body exhaled was of sweet earth-flesh, the odour of mushrooms. He had long, bristling moustaches which he would twist between his fingers and thumbs as he talked to you. As his several books show, he was a man of incontestable erudition and culture, even if he did like torturing rats.

To give you some idea of Mr Shakespeare's debt to Mr Florio, I think I will quote first from the latter's First Fruits :

'We need not speak so much of love; all books are full of love, with so many authors, that it were labour lost to speak of love.'

That saying, of course, gave Mr Shakespeare the title of one of his first plays, Love's Labour's Lost.

Among the three hundred proverbs which Florio boasted of having introduced into England from Italy, Shakespeare uses (to my count) more than thirty, and there are a few of them which the poet quotes more than ten times. It is interesting and revealing, your author suggests, to see the manner in which Shakespeare incorporates Florio's 'golden sentences' in his dialogue or fits them into his verse:

'All that glistereth is not gold ...' All that glisters is not gold Golden tombs do dust enfold ... (Florio, First Fruits , page 32) (Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice , Act II, Scene 5) 'More water flows by the mill than the miller knows ...' More water glideth by the mill than wots the miller of ( First Fruits , page 34) ( Titus Andronicus , Act II, Scene 1) 'When the cat is abroad the mice play ...' Playing the mouse in absence of the cat ...' ( First Fruits , page 33) ( Henry V , Act I, Scene 2) 'He that maketh not, marreth not ...' What make you? Nothing? What mar you then? ( First Fruits , page 26) ( As You Like It , Act I, Scene 1) 'An ill weed groweth apace ...' Small herbs have grace; great weeds do grow apace ( First Fruits , page 31) ( Richard III , Act II, Scene 4) 'Fast bind, fast find ...' Fast bind, fast find, ( Second Fruits , page 15) A proverb never stale in thrifty mind ( The Merchant of Venice , Act II, Scene 5) 'Give losers leave to speak ...' But I can give the loser leave to chide, ( Second Fruits , page 69) And well such losers may have leave to speak