Hank Whittemore's Shakespeare Blog

Visitors to this blog site will surely correct me if I am wrong (and believe me, I’d like to be wrong), but it appears to me that Wikipedia’s entry for Palgrave’s Golden Treasury (1861) omits Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford from its list of authors in Book One!  Here is the list of poets on the Wikipedia page:

William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling – Richard Barnefield – Thomas Campion – Samuel Daniel – Thomas Dekker – Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex – John Donne – Michael Drayton – William Drummond – W. Drummond of Hawthornden – Richard Greene – Thomas Heywood – Thomas Lodge – John Lylye – Christopher Marlowe – Thomas Nashe – William Shakespeare – Sir Philip Sidney – Edmund Spenser – The Shepherd Tonie – Joshua Sylvester – John Webster – Sir Thomas Wyatt

And here is the actual entry in Palgrave’s Treasury, Book One, on page 30 — opposite the name of “W. Shakespeare” facing it on page 31! — as printed by A.L. Burt Company, Publishers, under the heading The Golden Treasury: The Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language; Selected and Arranged with Notes by Francis Turner Palgrave, Late Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford; with a dedication by Palgrave to Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate:

(CLICK ON THE IMAGE OF THE PAGES TO ENLARGE IT):

I have long thought that Palgrave, who is considered the founder of the Public Record Office, either knew or suspected that Edward de Vere and Shakespere were one and the same poet.  In any case, this is an important entry for Oxfordians, since the earl’s poem in the Treasury is the very piece of evidence that started J. Thomas Looney on the trail that led to his landmark book “Shakespeare” Identified in Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford in 1920.

If anyone can report back that I’m in error about Wikipedia’s omission, please do so!  I cannot say that I’m shocked, because Wikipedia has been blatantly hostile to the Shakespeare authorship question and to the Oxfordian view in particular; but, well, it’s pretty shocking!

A cover page for the Golden Treasury

The poems in Palgrave’s Treasury [See  the Project  Gutenberg] are listed as numbers 41 and 42 as follows:

41. A RENUNCIATION.

If women could be fair, and yet not fond,

Or that their love were firm, not fickle still,

I would not marvel that they make men bond

By service long to purchase their good will;

But when I see how frail those creatures are,

I muse that men forget themselves so far.

To mark the choice they make, and how they change,

How oft from Phoebus they do flee to Pan;

Unsettled still, like haggards wild they range,

These gentle birds that fly from man to man;

Who would not scorn and shake them from the fist,

And let them fly, fair fools, which way they list?

Yet for disport we fawn and flatter both,

To pass the time when nothing else can please,

And train them to our lure with subtle oath,

Till, weary of their wiles, ourselves we ease;

And then we say when we their fancy try,

To play with fools, O what a fool was I!

E. VERE, EARL OF OXFORD.

42.  MADRIGAL

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man’s ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly:

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:

Then, heigh ho! the holly!

This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

That dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot:

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend remember’d not.

Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly:

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:

Then heigh ho, the holly!

This life is most jolly.

W. SHAKESPEARE. 

[Note:  The Wikipedia entry does manage to include — and virtually bury — Oxford’s name within a huge list of poets in a 1994 edition.  The important question is how and why the name of Edward de Vere was omitted from the list of poets in the original 1861 edition.]