DeVereBooks.org

Explore the rich history of Edward de Vere's contributions to literature through dedicated research, reproduction, and analysis of his marginal annotations.

“Shakespeare’s Small Latin and Less Greek”

Lines from Ben Jonson's 1623 First Folio encomium (poem of praise) for Shakespeare, misinterpreted in keeping with prejudice as stating that Shakespeare had "small Latin and less Greek."

Findlay, Alison and Vassiliki Markidou, Shakespeare and Greece . Bloomsbury-Arden, 2017.

Showerman, Earl. Shakespeare’s Greater Greek: An Exploration of Greek Drama, Epic & History in the Works of Shakespeare, 2025.

Burrow, Colin. Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity. Oxford University Press, 2013.

Stritmatter, Roger. “‘Small Latin and Lesse Greek’: Anatomy of a First Folio Misquotation” (part I), The Oxfordian (2017), 9-44.

“Ben Jonson’s ‘Small Latin and Lesse Greek’: Anatomy of a First Folio Misquotation” (part II), The Oxfordian 20 (2018), 83-104.

Ben Jonson’s Unorthodox Poetics:  Rhetoric, Proportion, and Authorship. Brief Chronicles: 2025. An Anthology of “post-Stratfordian” essays on Ben Jonson and the First Folio.

The 1623 Folio: A Shakespearean Enigma. Brief Chronicles for the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship, 2023.