An Unnoticed Early Reference to Shakespeare

Abstract

IN a recent article in the Dictionary of Literary Biography Douglas Bruster noted that in the second edition of Thomas Vicars's manual of rhetoric, Xeipaγωγia, Manuductio ad artem rhetoricam (1624, first edition 1621), the author introduced a list of outstanding English poets.2 Following the Rhetorica of Peter Ramus's associate Omer Talon (as revised by Ramus in 1569) Vicars had divided rhetoric into an elaborate series of dichotomies. The reference to the English poets occurs in a section on poetical number (numerus poeticus), which opens the treatment of figure, the second of the two main subdivisions of elocutio (style). After having explained that poetical number is divided into rhyme and metre, Vicars baldly states that he will not treat the subject in his manual, because the quantity of syllables is part of grammar, not rhetoric. If readers would like to find out more about the subject, however, he recommends they consult Bartholomaeus Keckermann's Philippo-Ramaeum rhetoricae systema (1605)3 and especially Charles Butler's popular rhetorical manual, Rhetoricae libri duo (first printed in 1597 under the title Rameae rhetoricae libri duo). In the latter, he continues, Butler ‘lists certain poets whose measures and wit our countrymen have praised and of whom our England boasts, perhaps not without cause: Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, and George Wither’.4 Vicars then goes on to say that he personally enjoys reading Drayton most and offers two brief English poems in praise of him, supposedly written after having been inspired by Drayton's extremely popular Englands Heroicall Epistles (1597). Before continuing to the next subject, oratorical number (numerus oratorius, or prose rhythm), he also includes a poem in praise of Wither. 2 Douglas Bruster, ‘Thomas Vicars’, in British Rhetoricians and Logicians, 1500–1660, First Series, ed. Edward A. Malone, Dictionary of Literary Biography, 236 (London, 2001), 260–8 (264). 3 I have been unable to trace any surviving copies of this book, but Vicars provides full bibliographical details in the preliminaries to his book (Thomas Vicars, Xeipaγωγia, Manuductio ad artem rhetoricam (London, 1624), sig. A11r). 4 Vicars (1624), 93–4: ‘Quo quidem in loco recenset ille poetas quosdam quorum & numeros & laudavere sales nostri, & de quibus forsitan non immerito Anglia nostra gloriatur, Galfridum Chaucerum, Edmundum Spencerum, Michaelem Draytonium, & Georgium Withersium.’ In the most recent edition of his handbook, Rhetoricae libri duo (London, 1621), Butler had in fact written, in a note to his mention of the ‘best poets’, whose study will teach pupils the correct use of different metres and rhyme schemes: ‘as are with us (to be compared with Homer, Virgil, Ovid, and other ancients of great note) Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Joshua Sylvester, George Wither, and others who flower through talent and art, of which this age is so plentiful, and especially the teacher of all these poets, the only light of his dark times, Sir Geoffrey Chaucer [Quales sunt apud nos Homero, Maroni, Ovidio, caeterisque melioris notae priscis aequiparandi, D. Philippvs Sidney, Edmvndvs Spencer, Samvel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Iosvah Silvester, Georgivs Wither, aliique ingenio & arte florentes, quorum haec aetas uberrima est: atque inprimis horum omnium magister, unicum caligantis sui seculi lumen, D. Galfridvs Chavcer]’ (sig. B5v).