Peacham's Silence about Shakespeare

In the time of our late Queene Elizabeth, which was truly a golden Age (for such a world of refined wits, and excellent spirits it produced, whose like are hardly to be hoped for, in any succeeding Age) above others, who honoured Poesie with their pennes and practise (to omit her Maiestie, who had a singular gift herein) were Edward Earle of Oxford, the Lord Buckhurst, Henry Lord Paget; our Phoenix, the noble Sir Philip Sidney, M. Edward Dyer, M. Edmund Spencer, M. Samuel Daniel, with sundry others; whom (together with those admirable wits, yet liuing, and so well knowne) not out of Ennuie but to auoid tediousnesse, I overpasse. Thus much of Poetrie. (96)

With one exception:

That exception is a drawing attributed to Peacham that has generally been taken to depict Titus Andronicus. Peacham was thought to have seen the play in production or rehearsal, and to have sketched a scene from it. The problem is, there is no scene in Shakespeare's play that corresponds to the action in Peacham's drawing. There have been suggestions that Peacham is simultaneously depicting action from different parts of the play, but it has recently been strongly argued that Peacham's drawing is not of Shakespeare's play at all, but of another play of the period.

June Schlueter in her essay "Rereading the Peacham Drawing" argues that

the Peacham drawing depicts a sequence from Eine sehr klaegliche Tragaedia von Tito Andronico und der hoffertigen Kaeserin (A Very Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus and the Haughty Empress), a play performed in Germany by English actors which survives, in German, in a volume published in 1620 as Engelische Comedien und Tragedien. (Schlueter, 171)

Schlueter's argument is a strong one, but it will take some time before we see whether it gains broad acceptance in the field. At the very least, her article serves as a useful reminder that there may have been several different Titus plays during the period, and that the relationships between them are not clear; and her "rereading" of the drawing creates considerable doubt whether what Peacham drew was based on anything Shakespeare wrote.

Remember that Peacham never refers to Shakespeare or names any of the works. If the Peacham drawing is not based on Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, then there is no connection whatsoever between Peacham and Shakespeare. What then of the first of Dickson's "crucial, solid pieces of evidence ... Peacham's personal knowledge of and association with the real Shakespeare dating back to the 1590s"? Apart from the drawing, there is no evidence that Peacham had any "personal knowledge of" or "association with" Shakespeare at all. Even if the drawing were of Shakespeare's play, Peacham's once having seen a play by Shakespeare would not establish the strong relationship between the two that Dickson imagines and that his argument requires. It isn't just that Peacham never mentions Shakespeare or his works: nobody who knew Shakespeare listed Peacham among the playwright's associates.

Alan R. Young in his study Henry Peacham tells us that Peacham wrote epigrams

to men and women whom Peacham may not have known personally but yet admired, among them Michael Drayton, William Byrd, and Alice and Ann Dudley. The epigram addressed to Ben Jonson may serve as an example: "Since more cannot be added to thy Fame
Enough tis onely to expresse thy Name". (96)

Although Dickson cites Young's book, he nevertheless imagines that Peacham "cultivated [a] relationship" with Jonson; indeed, Dickson lists Jonson among Peacham's "close friends." Peacham's epigram is the only "evidence" of this supposed close friendship, but Peacham says nothing about knowing Jonson personally; for his part, Jonson wrote no poems to Peacham and, as far as we know, never mentioned him. We can, however, be sure that Peacham read and admired Jonson, and was influenced by his writings, even if he never met the man, which is far more than we can say of any presumed Shakespearean influence on Peacham. If Peacham could write epigrams on poets such as Drayton and Jonson whom he may not even have known, where is his epigram on Shakespeare, whom, Dickson imagines, Peacham had known since the early 1590s?

Thus, like Dickson's misreading of Peacham's Minerva Britanna, this "crucial solid piece of evidence" proves to be without foundation. Except for the Titus drawing, there is no evidence that Peacham knew Shakespeare's works (let alone the man himself), and the Titus drawing cannot be considered a solid piece of evidence even for that, since it may well depict a sequence from a non-Shakespearean play.

Dickson argues that since work may have been proceeding on the Shakespeare First Folio at the time The Complete Gentleman was being produced, Peacham must have known about the great project, yet Dickson gives us no evidence that Peacham was aware of the First Folio project at all, or any reason to think that if he had heard of it he would have been interested. Peacham never mentions the First Folio, either in 1622 or later. He never mentions having been aware of it before it was published. Nobody else mentions his having been aware of it. There is, however, one book that was in press at the time that Peacham does direct the reader's attention to, at the close of his chapter on blazonry:

If you would proceede further in blazonry, and the true knowledge of the descents of our English Nobility, I refer you to that exact, just, and elaborate work of my singular and learned Friend Master Augustine Vincent, Rouge-croix, very shortly to be published; which let it be unto you (of all that have written in that kinde) instar omnium. So I refere you henceforward to your private reading and observation. (176)

In the sixth chapter of The Compleat Gentleman Peacham recommends another work that had not yet been published. He names several historical works by John Seldon including "his Mare clausum, though not yet printed" (51n). Seldon's work did not appear in print until 1635, but in 1622 Peacham knew of this work by "the rising Starre of good letters and Antiquitie." Thus Peacham could indeed mention books that had not yet been published. If Peacham had known about the First Folio (and there is no evidence that he did), and if he had cared (although he mentions neither Shakespeare nor any other authors who wrote for the public theaters), and if he had thought it worth mentioning to his readers (although he elsewhere cautions his gentlemen readers not to have anything to do with the public theaters) he could have said something about it -- but he did not. Despite Dickson's confidence about what Peacham should have known, we have no evidence that he in fact knew about the First Folio or that he would have mentioned it in The Complete Gentleman even if he had known.

Of these, by far the most important is "the King of Latine poets, whom nature hath reared beyond imitation, and who above all other onely, deserveth the name of a Poet: I mean Virgil" (82). The longest section of the chapter is devoted not to Elizabethan English poetry, not even to English poetry at all, but to Virgil, and Peacham not only reports Scaliger's praise of the poet but offers his own translations of several passages (he could not assume that a young would-be English gentleman was proficient in Latin). The extra detail and labor, beyond the mere transcription of Scaliger, strongly suggest that Peacham's admiration for Virgil was genuine.

Then comes a discussion of lesser classical authors before Peacham moves closer to home:

But while we looke backe to antiquitie, let us not forget our later and moderne times (as imagining nature hath heretofore extracted her quintessence, and left us the dregges) which produce as fertile wits, as perhaps the other, yea and in our Brittaine. (91).

Peacham's commentary on Latin poetry is heavily indebted to "the Prince of all learning and Iudge of iudgements, the diuine Iul[ius] Caes[ar] Scaliger" (91), whom he mentions frequently, while his remarks on English poetry are substantially taken from George Puttenham's 1589 Arte of English Poesie, a work that he never acknowledges. It is not just the list of Elizabethan poets that is filched from Puttenham, but practically the entire discussion of poetry in English, from the time of Chaucer on, has been lifted from the older work. Peter Dickson, however, believes that there is some special importance in the presence of Oxford's name and the absence of Shakespeare's. We will consider Shakespeare's absence from Peacham's list in a while, but let us here consider the question of Oxford's presence on that list. In order to do so, it will be well to consider Peacham's style of composition in his brief discussion of English poetry, which is essentially a modified plagiarism.

Peacham himself knew that he was open to the charge of plagiarism, but seems to have thought that if he plagiarized just so much and no more, then he was all right. In a chapter added to the 1634 edition of The Compleat Gentleman, Peacham quotes Lipsius on deciphering abbreviations in classical inscriptions, and then breaks off, saying, "and so for the rest which I leave that I may not be a plagiary verbatim" (Heltzel, 124). His use of Puttenham seems to have followed the same pattern. He plagiarized from Puttenham extensively, changing things just enough so that he might seem to escape the charge of being a "plagiary verbatim." If this was his intent, he failed, as his debt to Puttenham is pervasive and unmistakable in his discussion of English poets, while his departures from Puttenham and from verbatim plagiarism lead him several times into careless errors.

Here is the complete section on poetry in English from Peacham's tenth chapter (pages 94-96 in the 1622 edition). I have broken Peacham's prose into small pieces, and have added parallel passages from Puttenham's 1589 Arte of English Poesie:

To repeat: Peacham never mentions Puttenham, but as one can see, almost everything he says in this section derives from The Arte of English Poesie. Let us examine a few peculiarities of his borrowings.

We find Peacham adapting Puttenham's personal opinions as his own as his own -- reporting, for example, both that Skelton was poet laureate and that Peacham/Puttenham could not see why Skelton was so honored. The reader unfamiliar with Puttenham might have thought the idea was fresh with Peacham rather than borrowed from Puttenham.

But Peacham sometimes goes beyond this, taking what was a surmise in Puttenham and, in rewriting so as not to be a "plagiary verbatim," presenting it as a fact. Thus he states as a fact that both Chaucer and Gower were knights (Puttenham had merely thought they were), but in fact neither Chaucer not Gower was ever knighted, and thus Puttenham's false surmise is hardened into an absolute blunder. Of course, it's no surprise that Peacham would wish that such famous poets had been of higher social rank. Peacham's mistake was not rectified in later editions.

If deliberately departing from Puttenham's text can lead Peacham to error, so can a clumsy attempt at faithful transcription. Peacham, even when he tries, is not wholly successful as a "plagiary verbatim." Thus, copying Puttenham's remarks on Lydgate, he drops the words "& that nameles," and therefore falsely credits Lydgate with the authorship of Piers Plowman. This mistake was not rectified in later editions. Note, there is no reason to think that Peacham has looked freshly at the evidence for attribution and come to an independent judgment; rather, his plagiarism is hampered by his faulty technique.

He made another mistake in his plagiarism of Puttenham's discussion of Phaer's Aeneid. The "other doctor" who finished Phaer's Aeneid was Thomas Twynne, not Arthur Golding. Peacham seems once again to have missed some of the words in Puttenham, and as a result of his sloppiness makes a false attribution (which was not corrected in later editions), while neglecting to mention the translation that Golding was most admired for, his Metamorphoses. Peacham's departure from Puttenham does not mean that he has made an independent investigation of the Phaer-Twynne Aeneid and discovered that Golding and not Twynne was the actual completer of what Phaer began; rather, the carelessness with which he plagiarizes has caused yet another mistake.

In the list of Elizabethan poets, Peacham has the same first four names, in the same order, as Puttenham. The names are in strict social rank in terms of the status held by the poets as of 1589, the date of Puttenham's book, and the titles given the poets are those that they held in 1589, even though some of the poets were later awarded higher titles. Thus Peacham lists Thomas Sackville as "the Lord Buckhurst" rather than "the Earl of Dorset," the title Sackville had been awarded in 1604. He refers to Dyer as "M[aster] Edward Dyer," which would have been the appropriate title in 1589, but Dyer had been knighted in 1596, and Peacham should have been referred to him as "Sir Edward Dyer." Peacham was acting as a "plagiary verbatim" once again, and so he did not update the titles in Puttenham's list. Though doubtless caused by sheer carelessness, Peacham's getting the titles wrong for Sackville and Dyer was not a trivial error in the kind of work The Compleat Gentleman was meant to be. Peacham adheres in the work to the general principle that "the greater Honour must ever extinguish the lesse" (161). Thus, it would have been correct to refer to Sackville as "Thomas, Earl of Dorset" or even "Thomas Sackville Baron of Buckhurst and Earl of Dorset" (he refers to Thomas's grandson, the inheritor of his titles, as "Richard Sackvill Baron of Buckhurst, and Earle of Dorset" on page 159) but to mention the lesser honor without the greater was a considerable faux pas in a book such as this, as was listing Dyer as a gentleman rather than a knight. The only plausible explanation is that Peacham listed them by the titles that would have been appropriate in 1589 because he was merely copying them out of Puttenham, as he had already copied his discussion of English poetry since Chaucer.

Peacham lists Oxford and Paget, whose names also appear in Puttenham, but he never in The Compleat Gentleman or any of his other writings shows any familiarity with any of their verse. He does not quote either poet, he does not characterize any of their work, he does not draw examples from it, he does not seem influenced by it, so far as we can tell. In the case of Paget this is almost certainly because he was completely unfamiliar with Paget's poetry. Not one line of verse by Paget has survived, that we know of, and Puttenham seems to have been the only person to have reported having known any of Paget's verse (none of which, alas, he quotes). I know of no reference to Paget's having written verse that is independent of Puttenham, and it is most likely that his name appears in Peacham simply because it appeared in Puttenham, and Paget was of sufficient rank to be worth noting.

A number of Oxford's poems could, I suppose, have been seen by Peacham (one is quoted by Puttenham, and others had appeared in print), and it is possible that Peacham knew and admired Oxford's work, but he never mentions it elsewhere in any of his writings, he never quotes so much as a line of Oxford's verse, he never draws on it, and it does not seem to have had any influence on him. Again, the most likely reason for Oxford's appearing on Peacham's list is that he appeared on Puttenham's. Peacham, of course, never suggests that Oxford or Buckhurst or Paget or any other poets on his list was responsible for any works of Shakespeare.

Peacham's particular additions to what he stole from Puttenham are probably signs of his own taste in English poetry. Thus, although he has nothing to add to Puttenham's mentions of Oxford, Buckhurst, Paget, and Dyer, he graces Sidney with the phrase "our Phoenix," and he adds the names of Spenser (Spenser is not named by Puttenham, but he did admire The Shepheardes Calender, although he does not seem to have known the author's name) and Daniel . Elsewhere in the volume (and in his other works), Peacham mentions these three poets, but nowhere else does he mention Oxford or his writings. In his description of Mary Wroth's heraldic device, he says that she "seemeth by her late published Urania an inheritrix of the Divine wit of her immortal Uncle," i.e., Philip Sidney (161-62). In the chapter on history, Peacham recommends to his gentleman readers "the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney, whome Du Bartas makes one of the foure columnes of our language." (53). On the same page he also recommends "that first part of our English Kings by M. Samuel Daniel." In the epistle to the reader in Minerva Britanna, Peacham noted "Mr. Sam. Daniell," whose first published work had been a translation of an Italian emblem book. While Peacham knew and admired works by Sidney and Daniel, Spenser seems to have been his favorite English poet. The great majority of the marginal annotations in The Compleat Gentleman are to works in Latin and Greek, but the very first one in the first chapter is to "Spenser in his Fairy Queene" (1). For Peacham, Spenser is a classic, perhaps the only classic English poet, and his own verse is heavily indebted to Spenser.

While Peacham adds Spenser and Daniel, he also omits some names that appear in Puttenham. It is possible, I suppose, that he dropped the names out of sheer carelessness (as he dropped crucial words and lines elsewhere), and it is also possible that he dropped them merely on the principle of trying to avoid being a "plagiary verbatim," but most of the omissions make sense as deliberate rather than accidental deletions. Fulke Greville and Nicholas Breton were still alive in 1622, and Peacham says he omitted those "yet living," so perhaps that is why they were dropped. Raleigh had been executed a few years before, and perhaps it was more tactful to omit his name.

The one principle Peacham seems to have followed is the removal of every Elizabethan listed by Puttenham who was not at least a gentleman. Since Puttenham's list was in strict order of social rank, this was easy to do: it would appear that for Peacham the last three poets -- Gascoigne, Breton, and Turberville -- were of insufficient social rank to be listed in a book for would-be gentlemen. Breton, as I have said, was still alive, and perhaps was dropped for that reason as well, but Gascoigne's poetry was by any standard (other than that of social standing) of higher quality and greater importance than that of some of the names that Peacham kept, and Turberville's contributions to Elizabethan literature were certainly greater than Paget's.

Dickson finds it strange that Oxford's name is on Peacham's list, but is no stranger than the presence of Paget's name. Peacham does not say either in The Compleat Gentleman or anywhere else that Oxford or Paget wrote anything that we now attribute to Shakespeare. In fact, he has nothing at all to say about either of them, so far as I have been able to determine. His only mention of them is in his copying their names from a list in Puttenham, yet for Dickson this copying of Oxford's name out of Puttenham represents strong evidence that Peacham must have thought that Oxford, who is never mentioned again in Peacham's works, must have written the plays of Shakespeare.

When we compare the section on English poetry to other parts of The Compleat Gentleman we find a notable absence of the personal touch Peacham is capable of. Consider this famous passage from the chapter on painting:

Painting is a quality I love (I confesse) and admire in others, because ever naturally from a child, I have been addicted to the practice hereof; yet when I was young, I have been cruelly beaten by ill and ignorant schoolemasters, when I have beene taking, in white and blacke, the countenance of some one or other (which I could do at thirteen and fourteene yeares of age: beside the mappe of any towne according to Geometricall proportion, as I did of Cambridge when I was of Trinitie Colledge, and a Junior Sophister,) yet could they never beate it out of me. (107)

As has been noted, Peacham must make occasional changes that may prevent his seeming a "plagiary verbatim." One change is his introduction to the list of Elizabethan poets. He alters the tense from Puttenham's present to the past, and he calls the Elizabethan period a "golden age," but in this he is only paraphrasing a comment he had quoted earlier about a previous reign: "the daies of Henry the 8. (Which time Erasmus calleth the Golden Age of learning, in regard of so many famously learned men, it produced more than ever heretofore)" (92). When Peacham discusses the "golden age" of Henry VIII's reign he goes on at considerable length, praising several particular Latin works by More and others. For the Elizabethan "golden age" we get a bare list with no individual works named, and almost no particular praise. If we can judge by his attention and interest, Henry's age was more golden to him than Elizabeth's.

Peacham's words contradict Dickson's suggestion that Peacham meant to provide a comprehensive list of the finest Elizabethan poets. Peacham tells us that the bare list is incomplete: there are "sundry others" he could have but does not name among the Elizabethan poets who have died; if we wish to believe he was fond of Shakespeare's verse, we can imagine Shakespeare was among this group. Peacham also omits those yet living. His list is in strict order not of poetical merit but of social rank of 1589, when Puttenham wrote. Peacham tells us that he omits names not because those unnamed were less deserving, but merely to avoid tediousness -- even his reason for not listing more names is plagiarized from Puttenham. Peacham keeps every lord mentioned by Puttenham, even though it is highly unlikely that he could have known any of Paget's work, and jettisons everyone who was not at least a gentleman. Far from demonstrating what Dickson takes to be a "determination in 1622 to list the greatest Elizabethan poets," Peacham's list bespeaks incompetent plagiarizing and deliberate incompleteness.

Dickson makes much of the fact that although The Complete Gentlemen was published in three editions while Peacham lived, the name Shakespeare was never added. Yet neither were the names of any other poets, including Drayton, who had been a notable Elizabethan poet, and whom, unlike Shakespeare, Peacham is known to have admired, making him the subject of an epigram. Nor were Peacham's errors in this chapter corrected. While Peacham added material to the book, including a chapter on fishing, and rewrote some existing material, the English section of the poetry chapter continued through successive editions pretty much what it had been from the first: a fine example of Peacham's (not quite verbatim) plagiarism.

We should not expect to find polls or "top ten" lists of the best poets, but we do come across many references to the best poets as those who compare favorably to the ancients, or those who have particularly graced the language. Often such lists would appear as part of a poet's lamenting his own unfitness for the task at had (e.g., "If I were a Spenser, then this would be a great poem.") Spenser, of course, was THE poet, and it was high praise to list another poet in such company, but Daniel was often listed with Spenser where Shakespeare was not.

I have scanned the Spenser Allusion Book for lists of fine poets that include Spenser and Daniel but not Shakespeare (there are, of course, some that include all three, but almost none that include Spenser and Shakespeare but not Daniel). Here are twenty examples, beginning in 1595; I have stopped with 1521, the year before The Compleat Gentleman appeared. Page numbers are from Spenser Allusions.

• In 1595 Thomas Churchyard in his Praise of Poetrie says,

  In Spenser morall fairie Queene
  And Daniels rosie mound
  If they be throwly waid and seen
  Much matter may be found. (41)

• In 1595, Anthony Copley in Witts Fittes and Fancies asked the great poets of the day to go easy on his poem Loves Owle:

  I desire M. Daniel, M. Spencer, & other the Prime Poets of our time, to pardon it with as easie a frowne as they please, for that I give them to understand, that an University Muse never penned it, thouigh humbley devoted thereunto (41).

• Also in 1595 Joshua Sylvester in the Epistle Dedicatory to The First Day of the Worldes Creation said of Du Bartas that he deserved a better translator, and that he

  might have been naturalized amongst us, either by a generall act of a Poeticall Parliament: or have obtained a kingly translator for his weeke (as he did for his Furies:) or rather a divine Sidney, a stately Spencer, or a sweet Daniell for an interpreter thereof (44).

• In 1596, John Davies in his Orchestra similarly bemoaned his own lack of skill compared to the great poets:

  O that I had Homers aboundant vaine
  I would heerof aother Ilias make,
  Or else the man of Manutas charmed braine [i.e., Virgil]
  In whose large throat great Iove the thunder spake.
  O that I could old Gefferies Muse awake, [i.e., Chaucer]
  Or borrow Colins fayre herike style, [Spenser]
  Or smooth my rimes with Delias servants file. [Daniel]

• Charles Fitzgeffrey in Sir Francis Drake (1596) summons the greats:

  SPENSER whose hart inharbours Homers soule,
  If Samian Axioms be autenticall:
  DANIEL, who well mayst Maro's text controule,
  With proud Plus ultra true note marginall:
  And golden-mouthed DRAYTON musicall,
  Into whose soule sweete SIDNEY did infuse
  The essence of his Phoenix-feathered Muse: (48)

• Thomas Lodge in Wits Miserie (1596):

  Divine wits, for many things as sufficient as all antiquity (I speake it not on slight surmise, but considerate iudgement) to you belongs the death that doth nourish this poison: to you the paine, that endure reproofe. LILLY, the famous for facility in discourse: SPENCER, best read in ancient poetry: DANIEL, choice in word, and invention: DRAITON, diligent and formall: TH. NASHE, true English Aretine. (50)

• Charles Butler in his Rhetoricae Libri Duo (1598):

  Quales sunt apud nos Homero, Maroni, & Ovidio merito aequiparandi, Edmundus Spencer, Samuel Daniel, & Michael Drayton (58).

  [There are with us such as may be rightly compared to Homer, Virgil, and Ovid: Edmund Spenser, Samuel Daniel, and Michael Drayton.]

• In 1598, Richard Haydocke translated Lomazzo's Tracte Containing the Artes of Curious Paintings. Lomazzo said,

  I hold it expedient ... to read the Poets, who in similitudes and examples touch them generally, as we may find in Homer, Virgiel Ovid, Horace, Catullus & all which the worthy Ariosto hath imitated in that his incomparable Furioso.

  Haydocke adds a note of his own:

  Our English Painters may reade Sir Ph: Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, &c.

• Thomas Cutwode in Caltha Poetarum: or The Bumble Bee (1599), lists ancient and modern greats:

  For Homer, who imitated none, and Archilochus, who is compared with Homer, only because they finished their workes in their life. And Virgil, the curious Ape of Homer. Ovid the Amorous, Martaill the Lycentious, Horace, the mixt betweene modest & Satirique vaine. The flower of our age, sweete pleasing Sidney. Tasso the grave. Pollished Daniel the Historick Spencer the Truthes Faith (64).

• Anthony Gibson, in "To the Honorurable Mistresse Margaret Ratcliffe" (1599) lamented his own relative lack of skill compared to the greats:

  Had I a Spencers spirit, a Daniels powers:
  Th'extracted quintessence were only yours. (66)

• From the 1599 First Booke of the Preservation of King Henry VII:

  I confesse and acknowledge that we have many excellent and singular good Poets in this age, as Maister Spencer, that was, Maister Gowlding, Doctor Phaer, Maister Harrington, Daniell, and divers others... (68).

• John Harrington in a epigram from 1600 distinguished good taste from bad:

  So Linus praises Churchyard in his censure,
  Not Sydney, Daniel, Constable, not Spencer (71)

• R.R. in his 1605 commendatory poem to Sylvester's Bartas:

  Foole that I was; I thought in younger times,
  That all the muses had their graces sowne
  In Chaucers, Spencers, and sweet Daniels Rimes; (99)

• "Threnos" in a Cambridge University manuscript, c. 1606, lamented his unsuitability as a poet in his Funerall song or Elegie for the Countess of Rutland

  O! that I could as I would aeternize her,
  It rather fitts the Faerie Queenes deviser,
  Or him who made his Delia of such fame
  Or English Bartas Silvester by name
  Or: haut fitz:Gefferie worthy Drakes Learnd Honor
  Or if Mellifluous Drayton would bemoane her:
  Your Siluer Penns can best depaint her honer
  Yee Phenix feathered Muses of our Time
  Eternise her: with your eternall Rime;
  O! shame o! greif vertue in oblivion lyes:
  Els had Eliza had her diue Eligies
  Trye elegies which should the skies have Peirst
  Had DANIEL, Drayton, Siluester them verst
  Or els Fitz: Geffereie whose muse coelestiall
  Would penetrate Heaven, Hell, Sea, Earth, and all. (101)

• John Stradling in his 1607 Ad Edm. Spencer

  Ad Spencer & Daniel, celeberrimos Poetas.
  Dividitis primas inter vos, atque secundas;
  Tertius a vobis quisquis erit, sat habet. (116)

  [To the very famous poets Spenser and Daniel.
  You divide the first between you, as well as the second;
  The third will be for whichever of you has enough.]

• 1616: Robert Anton in The Philosophers Sixth Satyr of Mercurie

  I admire
  The most judicious Beaumont, and his fire:
  The ever Colum builder of his fame,
  Sound searching-Spencer with his Faerie-frame:
  The labor'd Muse of Johnson....
  Greeke-thundring Chapman ...
  And Morrall Daniell with his pleasing phrase.

• 1617: Henry Fitzgeffery in Satyres: And Satiricall Epigrams

  Be there a Citty show: or sight at Court:
  Of Acts Heroicke: or of Princely sport:
  (which right to write of, or in Type to tell:
  Might taxe a Daniels or a Spencers quill.)

• 1621: John Lane in Tritons Trumphet

  So forth she made through the satiric route
  fr Lidgate Spencer Daniel quite lost out
  Through soaringe on that high ideal spirit.

• 1621: William Slayter in The History of Great Britain

  Yet faine I doe admire you, and
  Ee'n beg this boone as Phoebus hand,
  To rest where in th'Elisian plaines,
  Faire fields, I may heare your sweete straines,
  Our Ennius, Chaucer, with old Line,
  Or Orpheus, where, Sidney deuine
  Sits with Musaeus; Iohnson, Spencer,
  Drayton, Daniel, English, Horace, Homer,
  Maro, Ovid.

• 1621: John Taylor in Taylor's Motto

  Old Chaucer, Sidney, Spencer, Daniel, Nash,
  I dipt my finger where they us'd to wash.
  As I have read these Poets, I have noted
  Much good, which in my memory is quoted.

• Peacham dropped everyone from Puttenham's who was not at least a gentleman;
• the two he added (Spenser and Daniel) he did consider gentlemen; but
• Shakespeare's works were not the works of a man Peacham would have considered an Elizabethan gentleman.

None of the poets named by Peacham wrote for the public theaters; the only nontheatrical Elizabethan works of Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, were written before he would have been considered a gentleman. One might reasonably argue that if Peacham were deliberately confining his list to Elizabethan gentleman poets, then Shakespeare would not have qualified, as his Elizabethan poetry was published before he became a gentleman. After a grant of arms to his father in 1599, Shakespeare was entitled to style himself a "gentleman," and we find him so described in a number of documents. His name sometimes appeared as "M." or "Master" Shakespeare, another sign that he was considered a gentleman.

Yet even after the grant of arms to his father, it seems clear that Peacham would never have considered Shakespeare a true gentleman. We know that Peacham considered both Spenser and Daniel gentlemen -- he referred to them using the title "M.", and both of them, unlike Shakespeare, had attended the university; in Peacham,'s eyes, education was a mark of the true gentleman in the "genuine sense":

in the genuine sence, Nobilitie is the Honour of blood in a Race or Linage, conferred formerly vpon some one or more of that Family, either by the Prince, the Lawes, customes of that Land or Place, whereby either out of knowledge, culture of the mind, or by some glorious Action performed, they haue beene vsefull and beneficiall to the Common-wealths and places where they liue. (2)

Neither must we Honor or esteeme those ennobled, or made Gentle in blood, who by Mechanicke and base meanes, haue raked vp a masse of wealth, or because they follow some great man, weare the Cloath of a Noble Personage, or haue purchased an ill Coat at a good rate; no more than a player vpon the Stage, for wearing a Lords cast suit: since nobilitie hangeth not vpon the aiery esteeme of vulgar opinion, but is indeed of it selfe essentiall and absolute. (3)

Sixt and lastly, touching Mechnicall Arts and Artists, whosoever labour for their livelihood and gaine, have no share at all in Nobilitie and Gentry: as Painters, Stage-players, Tumblers, ordinary Fidlers, Inne-keepers, Fencers, Juglers, Dancers, Mountebancks, Bearewards, and the like (12-13).

As has been noted, Peacham listed nobody who wrote plays for the public theaters -- not even Marlowe, who was not an actor or other "mechanical artist," and who had a university education. Peacham seems to have shared something of the antitheatrical prejudice of the day. In The Art of Living in London (1642), he cautions,

so many are the occasions here offered that are ready every hour to pick your purse: as perpetual visits of vain and useless acquaintance; necessitous persons ever upon borrowing hand with you, clothes in the fashion; this or that new play, etc. (Heltzel, 245)

with all diligence follow your business. Let not vain and by-occasions take you off from it, as going to taverns, seeing plays, and now and then to worse places -- so lose your time, spend your money, and sometimes leave your business uneffected. (Heltzel, 248)

If the mature Peacham warned young gentlemen against the theaters, Peacham himself had seen some plays when he was young. As we have noted, he may well have seen a Titus play, although we cannot say that he saw Shakespeare's; and when he was a schoolboy, he once saw Richard Tarlton in a play (Heltzel, 210; Peacham was born in 1578 and Tarlton died in 1588). But Peacham does not advise would-be gentlemen to see plays, to write plays, or to act in plays in the public theaters. The public theaters -- the very places where Shakespeare acted and for which he wrote plays -- were not places for gentlemen, according to Peacham.

Would the grant of arms to Shakespeare's father have persuaded Peacham that this stage-player should nevertheless have been considered a gentleman? Based on what Peacham has to say about the awarding of arms to the undeserving and the buying of titles, we would have to say "no":

Having discoursed of Nobilitie in Generall, the division, and use therof: give me leave in a word, to inveigh against the pitifull abuse thereof, which like a plague, I think, hath infected the whole world. Every undeserving and base Peasant ayming at Nobilitie: which miserable ambition hath so furnished both Towne & Country with Coats of a new list; that were Democritus living, hee might have laughing matter for his life. (The Compleat Gentleman, 15).

But the most common and worst of all, is in all places the ordinary purchasing of Armes and Honors for Money, very prejudicaill to true Nobilitie and politique government.... The French man is so bold, as to term such intruders Gentil-villaines; but I dare not use that word, lest some that challenge the first part of it, should returne me the latter. (16).

It is important to remember that Peacham here is inveighing against what he considered a general abuse in the awarding of arms, and is not singling Shakespeare out. He never singled Shakespeare out for anything in any of his works. He may not have admired Shakespeare's works (if he did, he kept quiet about it). So far as I have been able to determine, Peacham never uttered any opinion about any of Shakespeare's works, and he certainly never commented on their authorship. The point of this section is that even if he had known and admired Shakespeare's works (and there is no evidence that he did, with the possible exception of the Titus drawing), there was no reason for him to add a stage-player's name to those of the Lords, knights, and gentlemen named by Puttenham.

As for Peacham's overlooking Shakespeare, he himself tells us that his list is not complete, and his omitting Shakespeare is no extraordinary lapse for the time. We have seen twenty other instances in which Spenser and Daniel were listed as fine poets but not Shakespeare. Despite what Dickson seems to believe, Peacham is not known to have been personally acquainted with Shakespeare: he never mentions the man, and the only possible reference to any of his works is a drawing that may well be of some Titus play other than Shakespeare's. It may be that Peacham had no particular affection for Shakespeare's works, if he knew them at all, but Dickson's argument requires that Peacham must have admired those works (which Peacham nowhere mentions or quotes) above all other writings, and he must also have thought their author was Edward de Vere, whom Peacham mentions only once, in a passage transcribed from Puttenham.

As we have seen, Peacham purged the list of Elizabethan poets that he plagiarized from Puttenham of all poets whose rank was less than "gentleman." He added Spenser and Daniel, both of whom were gentlemen, but he added no names of any poet of lower social rank. Peacham lists nobody who wrote for the public theaters, and he explicitly states that stage-players cannot be gentlemen. In any event, none of Shakespeare's works were the product of someone Peacham would have considered an Elizabethan gentleman. Peacham's mentioning Oxford but not Shakespeare in The Compleat Gentleman thus provides no justification for our stripping the credit for Shakespeare's plays from their actual author and awarding them to Oxford.

Works Cited