FAQ - DeVereBooks.org

Didn’t Ben Jonson say that Shakespeare Had “Small Latin and Less Greek?”

Not really.

In fact, contemporary opinion suggests that Jonson’s words have long been misconstrued.

A national suspicion of things “Greek” in this case combined with nationalist pride in a purely English Shakespeare and with the need of Stratfordian orthodoxy to sell an uneducated author to the world. Their biography was of a bookless small businessman with illiterate children. Genius was all!

One recent contribution to this reassessment is Alison Findlay and Vasiliki Marikidous Bloomsbury Arden volume, Shakespeare and Greece. The collection also includes essays by Kent Cartwright, Liz Oakley-Brown, Efterpi Mitsi, Nic Panagopoulos, John Drakakis, and Mara Yanni.

Drawing on Colin Burrow’s 2013 analysis in the OUP Shakespeare and the Classical Antiquity— a book that demolishes the “”Small Latin” aspect of the problem by showing in detail Shakespeare’s intimate familiarity with Latin sources from Ovid to Seneca — Findlay and Markidou confirm Burrow’s analysis that “the whole passage of Jonson’s poem is hypothetical.”

It is also, Marikidou and Findlay confirm, counterfactual. It means something like “even if you had small Latin and less Greek (which you do not), I would still praise you in comparison with the ancients.” Post-Stratfordian scholars such as Alexander Waugh, Roger, Stritmatter, and Earl Showerman have set forth similar, even more detailed arguments supporting this conclusion.

Bibliography here.

What is the evidence that Shakespeare knew Greek and Latin?

The evidence supporting this conclusion is, ultimately, overwhelming. As just noted, Colin Burrow in his 2013 OUP book, drawing from a century of previous scholarship as well as his own deep insight, shows Shakespeare’s intimate relationship with Virgil, Ovid, Roman Comedy, and Seneca.

But where Burrow in 2013 was more reticent to consider the impact of Greek literature on Shakespeare, a vigorous if “banned by authority” tradition, going all the way back to Joseph Churton Collins, has long suggested Shakespeare’s knowledge Greek sources was on a par with the results shown by Burrow for the Latin authors in his book.

Most recently, the Bloomsbury Shakespeare and Greece book (see previous FAQ) and Dr. Earl Showerman’s Shakespeare’s Greater Greek: An Exploration of Greek Drama, Epic & History in the Works of Shakespeare, have continued to supply dense corroboration of Shakespeare’s knowledge of Greek sources.

What Languages are the de Vere Annotations Written in?

The vast majority of the notes so far discovered in de Vere’s handwriting in the margins of books are in Latin or Greek, with Latin strongly predominating. There are also notes in English (in the Geneva Bible), Italian (Guiccardini), French (Discourse Politiques), German (Seneca), and Anglo-Saxon (Archaionomia). In all, he appears to have written in the Roman, Greek, Anglo-Saxon, and Gothic scripts in at least seven languages.

How do we know Edward de Vere is the annotator of these books?

The Following resources are currently available on this question:

On the de Vere Geneva Bible: 1) Summary; 2) Extended Report
On the Audley End Annotations: Journal of Forensic Document Examination
On the Senate House Seneca “Report”