John Webster's handbook of model letters: a study in attribution.Introduction IN 1625 "I. W. Gent." issued a collection of letters, most with replies attached, designed both to amuse readers and to instruct them in the art of personal correspondence. This slim volume of fifty-nine pages, printed in black letter, is entitled A Speedie Poste, With certain New Letters, or The First Fruits of new Conceits, neuer yet disclosed. Now published for the helpe of such as are desirous to learne to write Letters (STC 24909). Only two copies survive--one in the British Library (10905 bb 29), the other in the library of the Princeton Theological Seminary (SCB #11914). The British Library copy contains a table of contents (sigs. A4 and A4v), which the Princeton copy lacks; but apart from the missing "Contents of this Booke" in the American exemplar, both copies are complete and differ from each other only in a few insignificant stop-press corrections. The book was entered in the Stationers' Register 15 January 1625 and printed by Miles Flesher (or Fletcher) for William Sheares. A second edition was issued in 1629 and printed "by Elizabeth Allde, for Francis Coules, dwelling in the Old Baily" (STC 24909.5), an imperfect copy of which is in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California. A Speedy Post constitutes a late addition to the popular succession of so-called letter writers or correspondence manuals that began with Angel Day's English Secretary and William Fulwood's Enemy of Idleness (both 1586) and continued well into the seventeenth century. As Jean Robertson pointed out in her useful history of the genre, such handbooks took "a new turn in 1602 with the publication of Nicholas Breton's A Poste with a Packet of Madde Letters." (1) This last volume, the instant success of which prompted the author to enlarge it a year later and to issue a second part in 1605, was closely imitated by later writers including "I.W.," who followed Breton in attempting to entertain readers as well as moralize pithily on various subjects. Like Breton, I.W. included letters of compliment, of preferment of a servant, of declaring love to a mistress, of proposing marriage, of condolence, of challenge in a quarrel, of seeking to borrow money, and of offering advice. Like Breton also, I.W. goes in for pointed satire, insistent alliteration, tireless wordplay, and other "fantasticall" or studied artificialities of style. We get the letter of a country bumpkin to his sweetheart, an exchange of letters between a courtier and a university student with much debunking of the court and praise of the scholarly life, and letters that delight in scoffing or leveling vituperative abuse at a third party or even at the recipient him- or herself. Toward the end of the book I.W. offers advice for prospective letter writers, urging them to avoid pedantry, "perfumed phrases," and the insertion of pretentious Latin mottoes or proverbs more appropriate to public orations than to personal missives. One sign that I.W. is following closely in Breton's traces is the printer's use of the same woodcut on the title page that had earlier introduced A Poste with a Packet--the figure of a galloping postman blowing his horn to announce his service. Ever since the Australian scholar R. G. Howarth ascribed it to John Webster on the basis of the title page initials ("I.W. Gent.") and a striking verbal parallel between the book's preface and the dramatist's dedication of The Duchess of Malfi, (2) A Speedy Post has languished in the limbo of Webster apocrypha. In his address "To the Courteous ... Reader" I.W. rails "against the ignorant worldlings of this iron age, who (as wormes in a Library) seeme onely to live, but for to destroy learning" (sig. A3v); Webster uses nearly identical phraseology in dedicating The Duchess to George Harding, Baron Berkely, where he refers to "the ignorant scorners of the Muses (that like wormes in Libraries, seeme to live onely to destroy learning)" (11. 19-21). It is possible of course that an unknown writer calling himself "I.W." merely lifted a quotation from Webster's work, published two years earlier (1623); but we know that the dramatist sometimes recycled sententiae or favorite images and locutions, imbedding them in fresh contexts, (3) so that, given the tempting initials and the designation "Gent." (which Webster also may have claimed as a Middle Templar), (4) an identity of authorship in the present case would not be implausible. It is interesting also that R. W. Dent, who has investigated Webster's innumerable borrowings more exhaustively than anyone else, was unable to trace any source for the reference to worms in libraries, which reads like the kind of rhetorical nugget or sententious saying that Webster liked to copy down in his commonplace book. (5) Webster's source (if he had one) was apparently obscure, so that we have reason to doubt that I.W. and Webster were drawing independently upon some now forgotten writing. In Skull beneath the Skin (1986), a book that discusses Webster's canon at some length, I wrote that I was "inclined to accept Howarth's ascription" (xi) but compelled then to defer full consideration of A Speedy Post until a later date. The present article is an attempt to present such evidence as I have since then accumulated and to argue that, such as they are, these data justify the attribution of the letter book to Webster on grounds of heightened probability. The method employed is first to show various kinds of linguistic congruency or parallelism between A Speedy Post and the dramatist's acknowledged works as found in A Concordance to the Works of John Webster by Richard Corballis and J. M. Harding (Salzburg: Institute fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1979); second, to test these parallels, many of which are elements of usage or verbal expressions common to other writers, against the Breton letter book (which I.W. was imitating) and also against other authors of the period (principally Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Dekker) for which concordances exist; and third, to inquire if A Speedy Post shows indebtedness to any of Webster's own principal sources, namely Sidney, Montaigne, Guazzo, Alexander, and Matthieu. The Webster concordance is based on The Complete Works, edited by F. L. Lucas (London: Chatto & Windus, 1927; repr., 1966); on the established Websterian sections of Westward Ho and Northward Ho by Webster and Dekker in volume 2 of The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, edited by Fredson Bowers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955); (6) and on "The Progenie of the Most Renowned Prince James, King of Great Britaine, France and Ireland," a short poem by Webster discovered later than Lucas's edition and reproduced by Bernard M. Wagner in "New Verses by John Webster," Modern Language Notes 46 (1931): 403-05. I quote A Speedy Post and the concorded works of Webster in the original spelling, normalizing only i/j and u/v. In order to save space, I also in troduce the following abbreviations for individual works cited: A & V Appius and Virginia CHARS Characters ACTR "An excellent Actor" B-MKR "A Button-maker of Amsterdame" CLK "A Puny-clarke" COM "A Worthy Commander in the Warres" COOK "A French Cooke" COW "A vaine-glorious Coward in Command" D-MAN "A drunken Dutch-man resident in England" DISTA "A Distaster of the Time" FEL "A Fellow of a House" FENC "An ordinary Fencer" FRANK "A Franklin" FTMAN "A Foote-man" GAL "An Improvident young Gallant" H-CSR "An Arrant Horse-Courser" HSKPR "A noble and retir'd House-keeper" INGSR "An Ingrosser of Corne" INTRU "An Intruder into favour" JES "A Jesuite" JUDG "A Reverend Judge" MILKM "A fayre and happy Milke-mayd" O. WID "An ordinarie Widdow" PIR "A Pirate" PTFGR "A mere Petifogger" QKSLR "A Quacksalver" RIMR "A Rimer" R. BOY "A Roaring Boy" ROG "A Canting Rogue" SEXT "A Sexton" TOBAC "A Purveiour of Tobacco" USR "A Devellish Usurer" V. WID "A virtuous Widdow" W-MAN "A Water-man" COCK "To his industrious friend, Master Henry Cockeram" DLC The Devil's Law-Case DM The Duchess of Malfi HEY "To his beloved friend, Master Thomas Heywood" MAL Induction to The Malcontent MC A Monumental Column MH Monuments of Honor MUND "To my kinde friend, Ma. An. Mundy" NH Northward Ho ODE "Ode" prefixed to Munday's Palmerin of England, Part III PROG "The Progenie of the Most Renowned Prince James ..." SP A Speedy Post WD The White Devil WH Westward Ho Matching: A Speedy Post and the Webster Canon The parallels or congruencies between SP and Webster's concorded works may be organized under the following category headings: (1) Auxiliary verb forms, prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, possessives, and contractions; (2) Characteristic idioms, locutions, miscellaneous phrases, and word collocations; (3) Vocabulary choices, frequencies, and proper names; (4) Recognizable subject matter, ideas, attitudes, image patterns, and thematic emphases; and (5) SP in relation to sources upon which we know Webster drew. Owing to a certain amount of unavoidable overlapping, these categories are not always wholly exclusive of each other and may in some cases be thought arbitrary. Because SP is a prose work intended only to be read as opposed to a work in verse or a play to be acted, we notice a disproportionate number of parallels to Webster's prose works and often to the more formal aspects of his oeuvre such as prefaces and dedications. Because of their generally conceited and highly wrought style, the prose Characters also evince a surprising number of stylistic links. Since SP is unpaginated, references to this book are to signatures; references to Webster are to the editions cited above. (1) Auxiliary Verb Forms, Prepositions, Conjunctions, Pronouns, Possessives, and Contractions
A Speedy Post
does 0
doth 9
doeth 0
doest 1
dost 1
has 0
hath 48
among 18
amongst 2
ye/yee 14
you 449
mine 24
my (before a vowel) 22
thine 8
thy (before a vowel) 5
whiles 0
while 7
whilst 0
whilest 1
whil'st 0
between 0
betweene 1
betwene 0
betwixt 4
unto 10
although 0
though 24
until 0
till 24
Webster
does 20
doth 107
doeth 1
doest 7
dost 25
has 99
hath 256
among 11
amongst 20
ye/yee 10
you 768
myne/mine 50
my (before a vowel) 86
thine 11
thy (before a vowel) 22
whiles 2
while 47
whilst 20
whilest 2
whil'st 3
between 2
betweene 33
betwene 1
betwixt 4
unto 65
although 8
though 122
until 6
til/till 88
SP agrees with Webster's usage in its distinct preferences for doth over does, for hath over has, for you over ye/yee, for while over whilst/whilest, for though over although, and for til/till over until. The playwright uses although only eight times (6 percent of his total usage) and then only in dramatic verse where metrical considerations apply and never in prose. Again, Webster's predilection for til/till over until is very like SP's since the six instances of until in Webster's oeuvre constitute only 6 percent of his total use for this detail; of the six instances, moreover, four occur in verse passages where metrical requirements account for the use of an additional syllable. Webster's favoring of dost over doest is not paralleled in SP (each form occurs only once in the collection of letters), but this datum may reflect merely a spelling difference rather than a true distinction between a monosyllable and a disyllable and so may safely be ignored as possessing any authorial significance. The high incidence of among in SP (eighteen instances as against only two of amongst) might seem to tell against Websterian authorship since Webster in the totality of his works prefers amongst to among by a ratio of 20 to 11 or 65 percent. But the apparent incongruity shrinks appreciably when we recognize that more than half of Webster's uses of amongst cluster in relatively early works (WH, NH, WD, and MC) and that nine of the eleven uses of among appear in later works (CHARS, DLC, and A & V). Also, it is worth noting that the use of among is Webster's clear choice in the prose Characters (five instances as against none of amongst) and that it is these Characters that show other stylistic links with the highly conceited prose of SP. SP uses the pronominal adjectives my and thy before words beginning with a vowel slightly less often than mine and thine (a ratio of 27 to 32 or 46 percent when we combine the two forms) whereas Webster has the contrary preference by a ratio of 108 to 61 or nearly 64 percent. However, when we compare the respective uses of the combined phrases my own and thy own (a total of three times in SP and seven times in Webster) versus mine own and thine own (a total of thirteen times in SP and thirty-six times in Webster), the two preferences agree with each other and the ratios are much closer: SP prefers mine own/thine own over my own/thy own 81 percent of the time, whereas Webster's similar preference is about 83 percent. Webster obviously prefers between (thirty-six occurrences in various spellings) to betwixt (four occurrences) by 81 percent, whereas SP has just the opposite preference, favoring betwixt over betweene by a ratio of 4 to 1 or 80 percent. SP's habit in this respect is obviously out of kilter with Webster's habit as considered in his total output. But we should note that Webster's preference seems to shift from between to betwixt in A & V, a late play probably composed very close in date to SP, by a ratio of 4 to 1, so even the apparent disparity in the use of between and betwixt can be reconciled with a theory of Webster's having written SP. Both SP and Webster occasionally use the somewhat old-fashioned preposition unto although both overwhelmingly prefer the more modern to. SP, given its epistolary context, is especially attracted to the word in the expression "write unto" (B3, B3v, D3v, G3v, Hv, H3). Webster also uses the preposition in similar contexts: compare, for instance, "a Letter ... Unto this Lady" (A & V 3.2.277-78); "send unto the Duke" (WD 2.1.87); and "entreated / Leave ... Unto a friend i'th country" (WD 5.3.263-65). It has long been known that one of the clearest markers of Webster's style is the use of contractions--especially i'th, i'th', o'th. o'th', for't. in't, on't, of't, upon't, 'em (= them), and 's (= his) in in's, for's, of's, by's, up's, on's, and upon's. None of these forms appears in SP. But again the incongruity does not rule out Webster's authorship because the poet's use of these contractions is confined almost exclusively to dramatic works, where colloquial or emotionally heightened speech is involved, or to verse where metrical considerations apply. These forms are extremely rare in Webster's nondramatic prose; i'th', for instance, occurs only seven times as against 110 uses of the uncontracted form, for't only three as against forty-seven, in't only three times as against fifty, on't only once as against thirty-nine, and in's only seven times as against twenty-eight. All these rare uses occur in the prose Characters in contexts where a satirical tone or a spirit of informality accounts for the contractions--contractions that would ordinarily be out of place in letters that claim to serve the unsophisticated as models of the craft of communication by post. (2) Characteristic Idioms, Locutions, Miscellaneous Phrases, and Word Collocations In preparation for this article I originally collected about forty single-spaced pages of verbal parallels between A Speedy Post and Webster's concorded works, extending these to minute details of phrasing and idiom. The great majority, taken individually, have little value as markers of authorship since they can be shown to have been widely used by many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authors and may be considered as part of the ordinary currency of modern English. For example, such phrases as "such as," "set out," "in the world," "for want of," "honest man," "I confesse," "have cause," "must needs," "no further," "give me leave," and so on are common to many writers of the period, and the ten examples just cited, chosen at random from my long list of SP-Webster parallels, appear also in Shakespeare and, except for "set out," also in Marlowe. Eight of the ten occur also in the poems of Ben Jonson. My only reason for assembling such a long and detailed list was to prove what I had suspected from the outset--that the number and frequency of such parallels would be substantial--and to demonstrate to myself that whoever composed SP shared many of Webster's stylistic and linguistic habits. Extracting them from my unwieldy assemblage, I list below in alphabetical order the most widely used phrases common to SP and Webster, making allowance in a few cases for alternative pronouns or verb forms, for differences between singulars and plurals, and for shifts from a definite to an indefinite article or for altered word order. a kin to a kind of a little able to acquainted with all her kindred an enemy to an honest man and then as good as I heare as if as may be as well as yet as you said asham'd of at a rate at her will at large at least at length at once bad ware be bold be content be ... himselfe be loth be rid of bee assured bee drawne bee quiet bee your selfe beholding to beleeve it beyond all bids me bold to bold with bonds of conscience but one by course of by the way by them care not caried away clip [= embrace] her come among come to be count it a cryes out description of did amisse doe good doe well doe you hurt doth not either ... or esteemes not except it be expectation of eye sight faile you fall into far from farre off feeles it find him find me find out fit for follow your for feare of for Gods sake for his owne sake for lacke of for want of for what foule one from hence full of give ... occasion give me leave giving ... notice glad of glory of goe together good company good conscience good fortune good man great man great men had rather have ... use for have cause have I ... noted height of her time high prizes [= prices] high way his owne his pace his scholler his servants his wife hopes of I ... beseech you I ... have occasion I accept I am glad I charge you I confesse I dare not I hope I know not I must confess I pray thee I pray you I rest I would you were if it be ill of him in good compasse in ... quiet in a manner in a market in feare of in hast in his behalfe in nature in our parish in particular in practice in stead of in the city in the countrey in the towne in the world in your mouth is nothing is to come it is pitie keepe company kinde of knowledge of leave him lest you let us like to like to proove little time live to long since looke on lord and master losse of love you make ... good making way many a matter of matters of meane estate meddle with mee thinkes meet with mine opinion more worth then [= than] much of must needs my affection my credit my hope is my selfe cleare my sorrowes my word neare to need not neere her neere you neither ... nor no doubt no further no lesse no longer no man no more then [= than] no such not sleepe nothing but occasion to use of late of my minde of opinion of the world of worth of your worth offer me on the lips one of the one thing onely to other countries out of it pay tribute poore man powre [= pour] out preserve me put away put you to rather ... then [= than] requite them requite you rest upon round about said to be seekes to seem to seems to send mee word sense of set out sets up shew my selfe signe of so far so great so little so many so well somewhat to ... doe sooner then [= than] speake truth speake well speaks of stands ... upon subject to such as such is sweet heart take heed take my leave talke with tell tales that can be that which the art of the better the contrary the eye of the finding the lesse the like the more the riches of the worse the worth of thinke on thinke to thus farre thy affection 'tis impossible to be feared to your hands tooke you for troubled with troubles me try ... his patience use me very ill weake praises were better what you will wise man wished for with a jest with many worthy of it your affection your betters your disposition your goodness your opinion If these presumably common phrases possess any evidentiary value, that value could consist only in their cumulative number--a total of 285 matches or near matches with phrases in Webster (707 words, not counting repetitions of a given phrase) in a document of fifty-nine printed pages or approximately 17,370 words with an estimated vocabulary of 4,782 words. (7) This may seem a goodly number, but whether the frequency of such matches (about 4 percent of the total word count in SP and 15 percent of SP's putative vocabulary) is explainable as mere coincidence or what might be predicted in the writings of two contemporary authors who both wrote a highly self-conscious prose is open to question. In the list that follows I single out 283 parallel phrases, word collocations, and thought patterns in SP and Webster that seem somewhat more likely to point toward identity of authorship. These entries are listed according to the order of their sequence in SP. In the case of a group entry where similar elements that occur elsewhere in SP are also recorded, the first element determines the sequential position.
Parallels: A Speedy Post and Webster
A Speedy Post Webster
1 "in thy sight" (A3v) "in my sight" (NH 1.1.113)
2 "under the banner" (A3v) "under wars ... banner"
(DM 3.4.20)
3 "(as wormes in a Library) seeme onely "like wormes in Libraries
to live but for to destroy learning" seeme to live onely to
(A3v) destroy learning" (DM Ded.
20-21)
4 "I commit you to" (A3v, B3) "I do commit you to" (WD
1.2.77)
5 "borrow money" (A4, A4v, B4, F2v) "borrow money" (NH 1.1.187,
5.1.155)
6 "tooke you for" (B, 3 times) "take you for" (DLC 2.1.2,
2.3.28-29)
"take me for" (DM 2.1.18;
MAL 3, 19)
7 "take ... order with" (B) "take ... order with" (MAL
35)
"take order" (DM 2.3.63)
"take order for" DLC
3.3.229, 4.2.661; WH
3.2.100)
8 "I have reason" (B) "she hath reason" (NH
1.1.126; WH 3.2.90)
9 "wit and judgment" (Bv) "wit and Judgement" (WD
3.2.129)
10 "put off" (Bv) "put off" (DM 4.2,232,
"Putting off" (A4v, twice, G, H2v) 5.2.69; WD 4.1.56; CHARS
B-MKR 11)
"put you off" (DM 5.2.214)
"put mee off" (WD 4.3.100)
11 "Art of Nature" (Bv) "Art or Nature" (A & V
5.1.83)
12 "stand amazed" (Bv) "stands amaz'd" (DM 2.1.52)
13 "onely grace" (B2) "onely grace" (WD To ...
Reader 5)
14 "earth ... heavens" (B2) "earth ... heaven" (CHARS V.
WID 15)
15 "Blame me not" (B2) "Doe not blame me" (DLC
1.1.113; WD 3.2.327)
"Blame not" (DLC 4.2.107)
"Nor blame me" (WD 5.1.220)
16 "let me ... chide you" (B2v) "I must chide you" (A & V
2.3.138)
17 "doing him ... right" (B2v) "doe mee right" (WD 3.3.3)
Cf. "doe me wrong" (No. 135).
18 "base feare" (B2v) "base mind to feare" (DM
3.5.65)
19 "in the meane time" (B3, Dv, D2v, D3, "I' th' mean time" (A & V
D4v, E4v, F3v) 3.2.351)
"in the mean time" (A & V
4.1.111; WH 1.1.126,
3.4.37)
20 "short Coats in the Cards" (B3v) "coate Card" (WH 4.1.36)
21 "square out their measures" (B3v) Cf. "squares his owne [actions]"
"squared out like a scar-crow" (CHARS JUDG 7)
(E4v).
22 "Businesse of State" (B3v) "State-businesse" (CHARS JES
5)
23 "pipe of Tobacco" (B4) "Tobacco-pipe" (CHARS R. BOY
16)
24 "fall on their knees" (B4) "Fall downe upon thy knees"
(WD 5.6.214)
25 "make fooles of" (B4) "make us fooles" (CHARS D-
"makes fooles" (D2) MAN 10)
26 "many eares" (B4) "many eares" (CHARS ACTR 4)
27 "serve my turne" (B4v) "serv'd my turne" (DM
5.4.34)
"serve her turne" (DM
2.5.13)
"serve his turne" (WD
4.2.30)
"serve mine owne turne" (WD
5.6.52)
"serve your turne" (WH
3.2.67)
28 "daies in payment" (B4v) "daies of Payment (CHARS USR
14)
29 "knowing the truth" (B4v) "knowing for truth" (CHARS
JUDG 19)
30 "grieve ... a good conscience" (B4v) "a grieved Conscience" (DLC
4.2.323)
31 "equall in the ballance" (B4v) "equall balance" (DM 5.5.53)
"equal balance" (A & V
5.2.65)
32 "beside your selfe" (C) "beside himselfe" (DM
4.2.56)
"beside my selfe" (A & V
5.1.119)
Cf. "besides his wits"
(CHARS GAL 5).
33 "afraid of your owne shadow" (C) "present to my selfe strange
Cf. Tilley S261. (8) shaddowes" (DLC 5.4.71)
34 "Newgate ... Tiburne" (C) "between Newgate and
Tyburne" (WH 3.2.23)
35 "angrie with my selfe" (C) "angry with my self" (DM
"angry with your selfe" (Cv) 4.2.351)
36 "a little breath" (Cv) "a little breath" (MC Ded.
16-17)
37 "make you whole" (Cv) "make him whole" (CHARS
See also No. 142. PTFGR 14)
38 "best welcome" (Cv) "best of wellcome" (WD
1.2.2)
39 "beare you companie" (Cv, F4) "beare you company" (WH
4.1.180)
"beare him company" (WD
5.1.12)
"beare her company" (NH
2.2.107)
"beare me company" (WH
3.3.73)
40 "a true sense" (C2) "a truer sence" (DM 3.5.83)
41 "heaven upon earth" (C2) "Heaven and Earth" (CHARS
INGSR 1-2)
42 "partner in thy happinesse" (C2) "partner in my good Fortune"
"partner in your passion" (E2v) (DLC 1.2.40)
"partner in his Bag-pudding" (E4v)
43 "an honest heart" (C3, D4v, E4v) "an honest heart" (WD
3.1.60)
44 "money bags" (C3) "monie-bag" (WD 5.3.112)
45 "run a ... course" (C3) "run on in's course" (DLC
2.1.17)
46 "the better for" (C3, D3) "the better for" (DM
4.1.156; DLC 1.2.213)
47 "wild course" (C3v) "wilde courses" (CHARS FTMAN
5-6)
48 "To conclude" (C3v) "To conclude" (CHARS D-MAN
21; WMAN 17; V. WID 25;
COOK 19; JES 22; ACTR 35)
49 "stand in your owne light" (C3v) "stands in your light" (DM
"stands in his owne light" (F4) 2.1.98)
Cf. Tilley, L276, L330. Cf. "hangs in their light"
(DLC 5.4.222).
50 "bodies and minds" (C4) "minde, and body" (DM
5.2.104)
51 "help me to [a wife]" (C4) "helpe them to husbands" (NH
2.2.79-80)
"help him to a wench" (NH
5.1.65)
"helpe you to a wench" (NH
5.1.96)
"helpe ones friend to a
wench" (NH 5.1.167)
52 "such a Creature" (C4) "such a creature" (DM
5.1.45; DLC 3.3.293)
53 "put upon you" (C4v) "put upon you" (WH 3.3.8)
"put ... upon you" (NH
2.2.16)
54 "in my conceit" (C4v) "In my conceit" (DM 2.3.47;
DLC 2.1.72)
55 "a wanton" (C4v, Fv) "a wanton" (DM 5.2.197)
Cf. "the little wanton" (DM
1.1.459).
56 "nest of beggers" (C4v) "nest of Spicery" (PROG 23)
"nest of them" (NH 3.1.74)
"nest of goblets" (NH
3.1.110)
57 "be tongue-tied" (D) "Be tongue-tide" (DLC
Cf. "tongues are tyed up" (B3). 1.2.163)
58 "looke in his mouth" (D) "looke in my mouth" (DLC
4.2.550-51)
59 "she is in a pittifull taking" (D) "you are in the same taking"
(DLC 5.1.17)
60 "to no purpose" (D, D3, twice, Fv) "to no ... purpose" (CHARS
TOBAC 7)
61 "No such matter" (Dv) "No such matter" (DLC
Cf. "no small matter" (G2). 2.3.84; A & V 3.4.7)
62 "idle words" (Dv) "wordes are idle" (WD
2.1.96)
63 "let jealousie be foolish" (Dv) "Jealousie ... makes ...
fooles" (WH 3.3.108)
64 "vertue being her honour" (Dv) "To Honour and to Vertue"
(MC 103)
"to honour vertue raises"
(DM 3.4.14)
65 "make much of" (Dv) "make much of" (WD 5.4.72;
NH 1.1.124)
Cf. "makes much to" (DLC
4.2.204).
66 "full of businesse" (D2) "full of businesse" (DLC
3.3.261)
"full of busines" (WH
3.3.23)
67 "Gay cloathes" (D2) "gay clothes" (WD 3.2.216,
5.1.164)
"gay apparell" (WD 5.1.166)
"gay ... robes" (WD 5.4.116)
"gay ones out of their
clothes" (DLC 1.1.132)
68 "Bonds with their forfeitures" (D2) "forfeited your bond" (WH
1.2.54)
"Bonds be forfeyt" (DM
3.2.205)
69 "brave fellowes" (D2) "brave fellowes" (DM 5.5.75)
"a brave fellow" (DM
1.1.154)
70 "many a man" (D2) "many a man" (WH 3.2.56,
3.2.57, 3.3.5)
"Many a mans necke" (DLC
5.4.91)
71 "Sattin Kirtles" (D2v) "silke Kirtles" (WH 4.1.115)
72 "our dunghils" (D2v) "a Dung-hill" (CHARS RIMR
7-8)
73 "in a Barne" (D2v) "in a Barne" (CHARS ROG 16)
74 "poore Tenants" (D2v) "poore tenants" (CHARS FRANK
13)
75 "laugh at their owne shadowes" (D2v) "laugh / At mine owne
shadow" (DLC 5.4.72-73)
Cf. "asham'd of your owne shadow" Cf. "present to my selfe
(F4v). strange shaddowes" (DLC
5.4.71).
76 "keepe themselves warme" (D2v-D3, Fv) "keepe him warme" (WD
5.4.95)
77 "strange sights" (D3) "stranger sights" (WD
4.1.121)
78 "runnes with the Hare" (D3) "hunts the Hare" (CHARS
FRANK 17)
79 "make sport" (D3) "make [us] sport" (WD
5.3.220)
80 "let mee entreat" (D3, E4v) "let me entreat" (DM
1.1.223; WD 2.1.24,
5.6.91)
81 "expect from you" (D3) "expect from you" (WD
2.1.148)
"expect good from you" (WD
2.1.366)
82 "make worke" (D3) "makes worke" (CHARS SEXT
16)
83 "I thought it good" (D3) "I think it good" (A & V
3.1.116)
"I thinke good" (E4) "thinkes it good" (WD
1.1.34)
84 "observe time" (D3) "observes ... time" (CHARS
SEXT 13)
85 "man in the Moone" (D3v, E4) "world i'th' Moone" (DM
Cf. "a man in it" [i.e., "the Moone"] 2.4.26; DLC 3.3.164)
(F4).
86 "in a mist" (D3v) "in a mist" (DM5.5.118; WD
5.6.260; A & V 3.2.399)
"in an ignorant mist" (A & V
4.1.88)
87 "be in better temper" (D3v) "Be best temper'd" (DLC
5.4.65)
88 "crosse carding may put a tricke "crosse trickes" (DLC
upon" (D3v) 4.2.492)
89 "put a tricke upon" (D3v) "put more tricks upon" (NH
2.2.16)
"put some notable trick ...
upon" (NH5.1.197)
90 "good opinion" (D4) "good opinion" (DLC 4.2.639;
WD To ... Reader 34)
91 "blessed ... hope" (D4v) "blessed hope" (A & V
4.1.322)
92 "a word or two" (D4v, E2v) "a Punk or two" (WH 3.2.13)
93 "passe away the time" (D4v) "passe away the time" (WD
1.2.219; NH 1.1.59)
"passe time away" (A & V
5.1.189)
94 "passe for currant" (D4v) "passe for currant" (CHARS
GAL 11)
95 "loth to" (D4v, Fv) "loth to" (DM 3.2.239; MAL
43)
"loath ... to" (B4v) "be loth to" (DLC 4.2.414;
DM 1.1.371)
"bee loath" (Cv) "you are loath / To"(DM
2.1.155-56)
"be loth" (E3) "They're loath to" (WD
5.3.16)
96 "war ... & peace" (E) "Warre or Peace" (CHARS
DISTA 13)
97 "at deaths doore" (E) "death hath ... severall
doores" (DM 4.2.225)
98 "God of peace" (E) "God ... sweete peace" (MC
213)
Cf. "peace of God" (CHARS
PTFGR 19).
99 "too tedious" (E) "too teadious" (MH 376)
100 "loving kinsman" (E, E4v, F) "loving kinsmen" (A & V
1.1.98)
101 "Ape in Court" (Ev) "great mens apes" (WD
4.2.246)
102 "a pyde coat" (Ev) "A pyde fooles coat" (DLC
3.3.210)
103 "against the haire" (Ev) "against the haire" (WH
1.1.163)
104 "a good wit [= intelligence]" "a good Citty wit" (WH
(Ev) 1.1.12)
Cf. "an admirable wit" (DM
2.1.14); "an excellent
wit" (WH 3.4.67).
105 "signe of a good nature" (Ev) "signe of a good nature"
(CHARS FENC 21)
106 "valiant ... brave" (Ev) "Brave valiant Lads" (DLC
2.2.49)
107 "a brave spirit" (Ev) "a brave spirit" (WD
3.2.144)
Cf. "gallant spirits" (A & V
1.4.91).
108 "lookes with a cleere sight" (Ev) "lookes cleare" (MH 80)
109 "live in it" (Ev, E2) "lives in't" (CHARS B-MKR 7)
110 "one foole to beguile another" (Ev) "plaid the foole ... to
beguile" (WH 3.3.98)
111 "more profitable" (Ev) "more profitable" (CHARS
FRANK 28)
112 "call thy wits in question" (Ev) "call his wit in question"
(WD 1.2.47)
113 "the Crab or the Lobstar" (E2) "Lobsters and Crabs" (WH
1.2.89)
114 "blush ... shame-fac'd" (E2)" blush for shame" (PROG 37)
"shame and blushing" (WD
1.2.325)
115 "blinde eie" (E2) "blinde the eye" (DLC
"blind eyes" (Dv) 3.3.115)
"blind of one eye" (F3v)
116 "the outside ... the inside" (E2) "His outside ... his inside"
(CHARS FRANK 1)
"the inside" (CHARS PIR 23)
117 "let me alone" (E2, E3v) "let me alone" (DM 5.2.68;
A & V 5.1.6)
118 "to determine of" (E2) "to determine of" (DM
3.4.31)
119 "my preferment" (E2) "my preferment" (WD 1.2.322)
"mine owne preferment" (WD
3.1.37)
120 "in a word" (E2v) "in a word" (DLC 1.2.261,
4.2.196)
121 "deliver my mind" (E2v) "delivers his mind" (CHARS
JUDG 18)
122 "come to that upshot" (E2v) "brought / To an upshot"
(DLC 1.2.156-57)
"brought ... to a good
upshot" (CHARS FENC 15)
123 "bargaine ... a making" (E3) "bargaines ... made" (DLC
"bargaine ... made up" (E3) 1.2.155)
124 "take paines" (E3) "Take pains" (A & V 4.1.134)
"take the paines" (NH
3.2.123)
"paines you have tane" (DLC
3.2.35)
"paynes I have tane" (DLC
1.2.187)
"thy paynes-taking" (DLC
2.1.130)
125 "knowne your minde" (E3) "speake your mind" (DLC
4.2.512)
126 "by his Troth" (E3) "by my troth" (NH 3.2.91; WH
1.1.65, 1.2.32, 1.2.57,
1.2.110, 4.1.38, 4.1.171)
127 "being a stranger" (E3) "being a stranger" (DM Ded.
1)
128 "good wench" (E3) "good wench" (DLC 4.2.431;
WH 1.2.125)
"good wenches" (NH 5.1.118;
WH 4.1.171)
"Good honest Wench" (WH
4.1.118, 4.1.125)
129 "true hearts" (E3) "true heart" (DLC 4.2.102)
130 "at such charges" (E3) "at your charges" (NH
2.2.138)
"at their owne charge" (DLC
5.5.97)
131 "'tis no matter" (E3) "tis no matter" (DLC
"no small matter" (G2) 1.2.224; NH 5.1.86)
"no matter" (A & V 5.1.88;
WD 4.2.103; DM 3.4.46; DLC
3.3.79, 3.3.105, 3.3.382,
4.2.37, 4.2.48, 5.1.44,
5.4.58; NH 2.2.19,
2.2.123; WH 1.2.12,
1.2.98)
"no such matter" (A & V
3.4.7; DLC 2.3.84)
132 "have a tricke to" (E3v) "have a tricke ... to" (WH
1.1.33)
"had the tricke ... to" (DM
3.2.223)
"Hath the tricke to" (CHARS
H-CSR 1)
"hath an excellent trick to"
(WH 1.2.89)
"hast more trickes" (WH
4.1.156)
133 "merry day" (E3v) "merry day" (A & V2.1.18)
134 "good hap [= chance]" (E3v) "good chance, (ill hap ...
(MC 170)
135 "doe me wrong" (E3v) "wrong she has don me" (DLC
Cf. "doing him ... right" (No. 17). 5.4.152)
Cf. "Did ... poor Virginius
wrong" (A & V 4.2.160).
136 "at your hands" (E3v) "At whose ... hand" (A & V
4.2.105)
137 "tell you the truth" (E3v) "tell you truth" (A & V
2.2.76; DLC 2.1.282)
"tell truth" (DLC 2.1.279)
"Thou telst truth" (WD To
... Reader 31)
"say truth" (DLC 3.2.79; WD
5.3.228; CHARS MILKM 27)
"say the truth" (WH 4.1.12)
138 "good will" (E3v) "good will" (CHARS USR 5)
139 "you wrong your selfe" (E4) "You wrong your selfe"
(A & V 1.1.32)
"You wrong your selves"
(A & V 3.2.320)
Cf. "wrongs you" (A & V
4.1.299).
140 "fall out [= happen]" (E4) "fall out [= happen]" (NH
5.1.6)
141 "spite of" (E4) "spite of" (DLC 4.2.517)
142 "made all whole" (E4) "make all whole" (NH 2.2.37)
Cf. "all is whole" (E3); see also No.
37.
143 "made use of" (E4) "make use of" (WD 1.1.60;
"make use of" (H) CHARS COM 22)
"Make use ... of" (DM
2.1.186)
"make ... use / Of (DM
5.5.135-36; DLC 5.5.99-
100; A & V 5.2.61-62; NH
2.2.94; WH 1.1.93,
1.2.135)
"use I'le make of" (WD
4.1.92)
"use some make of" (WD
4.1.99)
144 "to little purpose" (E4v) "to little purpose" (CHARS
GAL 15)
145 "betwixt Graves-end, and ..." (E4v) "betweene Graves Ende,
and ..." (WH 1.1.148)
146 "all the people" (E4v) "all the people" (CHARS ROG
5)
147 "like the one of the foure winds in a "like the foure windes in a
Map" (E4v) painting" (CHARS COW 10-
11) (9)
148 "filthy Wife" (E4v) "filthy purchase [i.e., a
widow]" (CHARS O. WID 23)
Cf. "filthy cullion [i.e.,
Achilles]" (MAL 119-20;
"filthy roague" (NH
3.1.120);
"filthy knave" (NH 3.2.36;
WH 4.1.230); "filthy
punke" (WH 4.1.224).
149 "to be short" (E4v) "to be short" (DLC 3.3.45,
4.2.234)
150 "his complexion, like his "her Complexion &
condition" (F) Conditions" (CHARS MILKM
Cf. Tilley, C580. 9)
151 "haire ... curled" (F) "curl'd-haird men" (WD
4.2.197)
152 "voice is lowd" (F) "big loude voice" (MAL 118)
"voice, tis not ... lowder"
(CHARS ACTR 7)
153 "puts all to silence" (F) "put her to perpetuall
silence" (WD 4.2.231)
154 "compasse the world" (F) "compasse of the Hemisphere"
(WD 5.4.16)
155 "fast as as a Dogge will trot" (F) "faster then a Dog trots"
(WH 4.1.8-9)
Cf. "run on, like a frighted
dog" (WD 5.1.154).
156 "come neere her" (F) "come neere her" (CHARS V.
"comming neere you" (D3) WID 22)
157 "he hath none" (F) "she hath none" (DM 5.3.71)
158 "to save charges" (F) "to save the charge" (NH
1.1.117)
159 "for [= as for] neighbourhood [ = "for Neighbour-hood" (CHARS
neighborliness]" (F) USR 43)
160 "tell you my minde" (F) "speake your mind" (DLC
4.2.512)
161 "gramercie [= grant mercy]" (Fv) "Gra'mercy" (CHARS H-CSR 17)
162 "thy next neighbour" (Fv) "our next neighbours" (DM
4.2.200)
163 "she-Devill" (Fv) "shee fooles [= female
"shee child" (F3v) fools]" (NH 5.1.180)
"she wolfe" (A & V 2.2.52)
Cf. title: The White Devil.
164 "our Ladie of Whitsontide" (Fv) "our Lady of Loretto" (DM
3.2.354)
165 "charmes in her eyes" (Fv) "Bazalisques in's eies" (DM
5.2.151)
166 "play on a Lute" (Fv) "a little fingring on the
Lute" (DM 2.4.46)
167 "set faces" (Fv) "set ones face" (WD 3.3.85)
168 "takes Tobacco" (Fv) "taking Tobacco" (CHARS R.
BOY 28)
169 "by and by" (Fv)" by and by" (NH 1.1.82-83,
3.1.7; WH 3.4.10)
170 "good cheape" (Fv) "best cheape" (CHARS USR 34)
171 "growne poore" (Fv) "growne your poore
Petitioner" (DM 5.1.28)
172 "nothing worth" (F2) "worth ... is nothing" (DLC
1.1.42)
"worth nothing" (DLC
5.4.209)
173 "in a few words" (F2) "in a few words" (DLC
4.2.189)
174 "not worth the thinking on" (F2) "not worth thinking of"
(CHARS RIMR 6-7)
175 "eyes ... of a Cockatrice" (F2) "Cockatrices eyes" (A & V
5.1.115)
176 "begger him" (F2) "beggerd me" (WD 3.2.221)
Cf. "begger the West-Inde"
(MC 294).
177 "and for her voice, it is" (F2) "and for his voice, tis"
(CHARS ACTR 7)
178 "loves ... as her life" (F2) "as you love your life" (DLC
1.2.193)
"As you love my life" (WH
4.1.109)
Cf. "I lov'd her life"
(A & V 4.2.134); "I love
my life" (A & V 4.2.154).
179 "shop ... shut up" (F2) "shut up shop" (WD 5.4.105)
Cf. Tilley, C802, S394, W68.
180 "weary of her" (F2) "weary of her" (DM 5.2.245)
Cf. "weary to thinke of him" (F). "weary of each other" (DM
2.4.72)
181 "at this instant" (F2v) "at this instant" (DM 5.1.9;
NH 3.1.109, 5.1.11)
182 "pleasure me" (F2v) "pleasure me" (DM 4.2.222)
"pleasure you" (B4v, D2v, H) "pleasure you" (A & V
3.2.165)
Cf. "pleasure a friend" (DLC
2.1.200-01); "pleasure ...
our Learned Councell" (DLC
4.2.48-49).
183 "Excuses are ... denials" (F2v) "excuse and ... denyall"
(A & V 1.1.59)
184 "the first, and ... the last" (F2v) "first ... and the last"
(CHARS COM 15)
185 "I dare presume" (F2v) "I dare presume" (DLC
3.3.321)
186 "neither a Giant, nor a Pigney" (F3) "Pigmey-Singlenes in Giant-
fights" (MUND 3)
187 "he seemes to be" (F3) "seem to be" "He seemes to be" (CHARS USR
(H2) 12)
188 "play the knave cunningly" (F3v) "Cunning knave" (A & V
3.2.337)
189 "abuse his best friend" (F3v) "abuse my best friends" (WH
3.2.94)
190 sir Dogbots [misprint for "mine host Dog-bolt" (WH
"Dogbolts"?] ... child" (F3v) 4.1.65)
191 "brave ... Babounes [i.e., lovers]" "frizzle like a Baboone"
(F3v) (CHARS GAL 12)
192 "good clothes" (F3v) "good cloathes" (WH 1.2.104)
193 "fast and loose" (F4) "fast and loose" (WD 2.2.19)
194 "make a match" (F4) "made a match" (WH 3.4.57)
"made this match" (WD
2.1.193)
195 "in earnest" (F4) "in earnest" (CHARS H-CSR
23)
196 "came in my head" (F4) "come into a mans head" (MAL
108)
197 "head ach't" (F4) "head ach" (F4v) "head-ake" (WH 1.1.222,
1.2.113)
198 "blinde man" (F4) "blinde men" (CHARS H-CSR 5)
199 "out of breath" (F4v) "out of breath" (DLC 2.3.96)
200 "Labyrinth of" (F4v) "laborinth of" (WH 3.1.35)
201 "to bring to ... perfection" (F4v) "to bring to perfection"
(CHARS H-CSR 19)
202 "farre be it from" (F4v) "far be it from" (A & V
1.1.11; WD 4.1.4)
203 "unknowne mountaines of the new "unknowne part o'th' world"
world" (G) (DM 4.2.352)
Cf. "place unknowne" (A & V
1.1.84).
204 "new world" (G) "new world" (DM 3.2.129)
205 "to your merit" (Gv) "your merit" (A & V 1.4.64)
"to our merit" (A & V 4.1.7)
206 "fine gold" (Gv) "gold ... fine colour" (DM
2.4.82)
207 "redownd to you" (Gv) "redound to you" (A & V
2.3.220)
208 "made the contract" (Gv) "makes the Contract" (DLC
1.2.97)
209 "praise in your mouth" (Gv) "wash my mouth with ...
Cf. Tilley, M476. praise" (WD 5.1.101)
210 "In conclusion" (Gv) "In conclusion" (CHARS USR
42-43)
211 "kissing yours" [i.e., "hands"] (Gv) "to kisse your ... hands"
(MH Ded. 4-5)
"kisse your hands" (G4v) "To kisse the hand" (MC 240)
"to kisse your hands" (G4v) "to kisse your hands" (DLC
Ded. 7)
"kist the hands" (DM Ded.
15)
212 "long silence" (G2) "long silence" (WD 5.6.204)
213 "cold friend" (G2) "your affection's cold" (WD
4.2.190)
214 "thus much" (G2) "thus much" (MC 27; DM
1.1.212, 5.5.38; NH
2.2.72)
215 "live happy" (G2, G4v) "be happy" (DM 5.2.150)
216 City's "ornament [i.e., a person]" "ornaments to his Majesties
(G2) Revels [i.e., actors]"
(CHARS ACTR 30-31)
217 "make civill the savage woods" (G2) "made them [i.e., "savadge
Nations"] civill" (MC 269-
71)
218 "neither ... a-whit" (G2) "Not a whit--" (DM 4.2.221)
219 "in the eares" (G2v) "in your eare" (DLC 1.2.271,
2.1.212)
"in the Dukes eare" (WD
5.1.143)
"in mine eares" (DM 3.2.89)
"in his eares" (WD 5.3.147)
220 "merit ... more censure" (G2v) "merit ... beyond our
censure" (A & V 4.1.180)
221 "throwne downe [= disheartened] ... "throwes men downe [i.e.,
me" (G2v) disheartens them]" (DM
5.2.383)
222 "any thing, but" (G2v) "any thing, but" (CHARS
W-MAN 18)
223 "heart ... of yron ... powerfull "heart of Adamant" (DLC
Adamant" (G2v) 5.4.148)
"Adamant drawes yron" (DM
3.5.66)
Cf. "heart is turnde to ...
lead" (DM 3.5.106).
224 "eyes a river of teares" (G2v) "rivers of your eyes" (MC
Ded. 12)
225 "glorious name in veneration" (G2v) "leave a living name behind"
(DLC 5.4.145)
"immortality of name" (G2v) "immortality" which
"Slander" cannot diminish
(MC 230, 245)
"keepe alive thy name" (WD
5.5.11)
226 "chiefe prize" (G2v) "best prize" (CHARS D-MAN 7)
227 "a worthy scholler" (G2v) "An excellent scholler" (WD
1.2.131)
228 "fame beinnes ... from the death of "beyond death a fame to
men" (G2v) Monarckes give" (MH 130)
229 "end ... is the beginning" (G2v) "begins at the end" (DM
1.1.366)
230 "compose ... verses" (G2v) "composed ... verses" (WD To
... Reader 29-30)
231 "brooke in this gre[a]t Ocean" (G2v) "Seas from Brookes ... rise"
(MH 199)
Cf. Tilley, R140. "Rivers ... finde out the
Ocean" (WD 1.2.342)
232 "shallow brooke" (G2v) "shallow Rivers"
(DM 3.5.156)
233 "rivers ... pay tribute [to the sea]" "Rivers pay due Tribute ...
(G2v) to the Seas" (MH 33)
234 "earthly Paradise" (G2v) "second Paradice" (WD
Cf. "paradise of the world" (C2). 3.2.72)
235 "accompanied with long prayers" (G3) "accompanied with ...
prayers, but short ones"
(CHARS MILKM 28-29)
"accompanied with" (DM
3.2.314; MC Ded. 7-8)
236 "meditate on your end" (G3) "meditate of death" (DLC
5.4.60)
"meditations of death"
(CHARS COM 33)
237 "flesh ... to rebell" (G3) "rebellion in the flesh" (WD
1.2.96)
238 "wretched and miserable" (G3) "wretched and ... miserable"
(WD 5.6.81)
239 "as it were" (G3) "as it were" (DM Ded. 5; A &
V 4.1.87; WD To ... Reader
19; WH 1.2.46; CHARS COM
32; SKPR 19; H-CSR 14;
FRANK 8)
240 "such a one" (G3) "Such a one" (DM 2.1.113)
241 "if for nothing else" (G3v) "if for nothing else" (CHARS
PTFGR 23)
242 "in respect of" (G4) "in respect of" (WD 5.4.7,
twice)
243 "extreme old age" (G4) "old doting age" (A & V
4.1.356)
244 "preserve you long alive" (G4) "preserve alive" (DM
3.5.130)
"preserve thee / From dying"
(DLC 3.2.115-16)
245 "more willingly" (G4) "more willinglie" (WD
1.2.91)
Cf. "Most willingly" (DLC
5.5.84; A & V 3.2.349; NH
1.1.157).
246 "by this meanes" (G4) "by this meanes" (CHARS FEL
11)
247 "more worthy then I am worth" (G4) "worth of that worthy ..."
(MH Ded. 3)
"worthy of worthiest name"
(DM 3.4.19)
248 "your ... excellent person" (G4) "your excellent selfe" (DM
1.1.442)
249 "most excellent" (G4) "most excellent" (DLC To ...
Reader 7)
250 "occasion is offered" (G4v) "occasion be offered" (A & V
3.1.4)
251 "excellently well" (G4v) "Excellently well" (DLC
3.2.1)
252 "propt up your hopes" (G4v) "his hopes fall" (CHARS
D-MAN 8)
253 "great goodnesse" (G4v) "greatnesse ... goodnesse"
(CHARS JUDG 1)
254 "lover ... enflamed ... makes the "Lovers dye inward that
flame" (H) their flames conceale" (WD
5.1.221)
"flaming Altar of my heart"
(WD 5.6.85)
Cf. "flames of our
affection" (WD
5.1.199).
255 "griefe ... covers my heart" (H) "grief ... so near my heart"
(A & V 3.4.38)
256 "thicke cloud" (H) "thicke cloud" (WD 5.3.46)
257 "countenance ... cleare" (H) "clearest countenance"
(CHARS HSKPR 25)
258 "so great a part" (H) "greatest part: (CHARS DISTA
3)
"A great part" (DLC To ...
Reader 12)
259 "more temperate" (H-Hv) "more temperate" (DLC
1.1.165)
260 "perfumed phrases ... Latine "fustian Lattine" (WD
sentences" (Hv) 2.2.20)
"false lattine" (NH 1.1.48)
261 "sentences, wherewith you have "a dried sentence, stuft
stuffed your Letter" (Hv) with sage" (WD 4.2.244)
262 "Out upon" (Hv) "Out upon" (DLC 4.2.156)
"Out upon't" (WD 5.4.82; NH
5.1.124)
263 "in all things" (Hv) "in all things" (DLC
1.1.196; A & V 1.4.150,
4.2.56; WD 5.1.36; CHARS
USR 19)
"all things" (DM 3.1.75,
3.4.49, 5.3.18; DLC
5.5.67; A & V 5.1.81; WD
2.1.202, 5.1.63; CHARS
MILKM 21)
264 "against your will" (Hv) "against your will" (DLC
1.1.94)
"against their will" (DLC
1.2.229)
"against her wil" (WH
3.2.88)
265 "at one instant" (H2) "at this instant" (DM 5.1.9;
Cf. "at this instant" (F2). NH 3.1.109, 5.1.11)
"in an instant" (DM 5.2.204;
NH 2.2.145)
"upon an instant" (DM
4.2.79)
266 "as well as" (H2) "as well as" (CHARS TOBAC 5)
267 "grant you long life" (H2) "wishes you long life" (DM
4.1.109)
268 "cannot satisfie" (H2) "Cannot satisfie" (DLC
2.1.315)
269 "in person" (H2) "in person" (DM 1.1.96; WD
2.1.89, 4.3.78)
270 "farre exceed" (H2v) "farre exceed" (DLC 2.1.8)
"far exceedes" (DM 2.4.85)
Cf. "Exceeding farre" (MC
155).
271 "have the confidence" (H2v) "having any confidence" (DM
5.4.32)
"had such confidence" (DLC
3.3.363)
272 "in this case" (H2v) "in the Case" (DLC 4.1.109)
"in your case" (DLC 5.4.70,
5.4.72)
"in our case" (NH 2.2.134)
"in my case" (WH 3.2.66)
273 "fruits of your ... invention" (H3) "fruit of our affection"
Cf. "fruits of new Conceits" (A2). (DLC 3.3.280)
"fruits of ... pitty" (WD
3.2.268)
"fruits of your owne bodie"
(WH 3.3.72)
274 "Beleeve me" (H3) "beleeve me" (DM 3.2.364,
5.2 360; DLC 1.1.106,
2.1.283, 2.1.329, 5.3.25;
A & V 1.3.12, 1.3.25; WD
3.2.350, 5.3.233, 5.4.53;
WH 4.1.94, 4.1.159)
275 "by chance" (H3) "by chance" (DM 2.3.60; NH
1.1.66)
"by good chance" (MC 170)
"by meere chance" (WD
5.1.109)
276 "light ... made in darknesse" (H3) "Through darknesse ...
ritchest light" (WD
3.2.305)
277 "the art of writing" (H3) "the art of words" (CHARS
INTRU 7)
278 "shadowed in" (H3v) "shaddowed in" (DLC 4.2.671)
279 "some few" (H3v) "some few" (CHARS ACTR 36)
280 "hold the touch [= pass the test for "False mettals bear the
gold]" (H3v) touch, but brook not fire"
(A & V 4.1.22)
281 "sings your praise" (H3v) "his praises sing" (MC 314)
"sing thy praises" (DM
3.4.13)
282 "accept this letter" (H3v) "accept this ... Petition"
(A & V 2.3.3)
283 "with as much grace" (H3v) "with so sweet a grace"
(CHARS MILKM 21)
As will be instantly apparent, some of these 283 resemblances are much closer than others: and even in cases where the wording is identical or nearly identical, we are often dealing with phrases, some of them quite common, that can be paralleled in a wide variety of other writings of the period. A few of the items (Nos. 33, 49, 150, 179, 209, 231) are proverbs or at least contain proverbial elements. Others involve collocations or associated ideas and images that, independently considered, are too common to point to Webster or indeed to any particular author. It is obvious that such collocations as art / nature (No. 11), earth / heaven (Nos. 14 and 41), body / mind (No. 50), war / peace (No. 96), first / last (No. 184), iron / adamant (No. 223), and light / darkness (No. 276) are natural couplings that would occur almost inevitably in anyone's thinking. What is striking, nevertheless, is the high concentration of resemblances to Webster in a work whose content fits with considerable white space onto only fifty-eight pages containing some seventy short compositions. This averages out to almost five items per page and to about four per letter. It seems unlikely that such a high density of parallels, however common to other writers a particular item may be, could have occurred by chance or at random. Fortunately, the existence of two databases available on the Internet makes it possible to provide additional evidence for linking twenty-five of these 283 parallels more closely to SP and Webster. The most important of these is Early English Books Online (EEBO), a database that includes 105,946 books published between 1473 and 1700 and embraces (in addition to other lists) about 80 percent of Pollard and Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue. A useful supplement to EEBO is Early English Prose Fiction (EEPF), a database that covers 211 works published between 1518 and 1700. In searching EEBO and EEPF it is obviously useful to limit investigation to works published before 1627, since SP was obviously composed no later than 1625 and Webster's putative final work, Appius and Virginia, although not printed until 1654, is usually dated 1625-27. Works published in 1627 or earlier, and contained in EEBO and EEPF, number approximately 21,000 books. Exhaustive searching online for specific verbal details, or for collocations of words, idioms, and ideas, in this substantial body of data is complicated by the indeterminate number of variant spellings involved, since search engines do not recognize such insignificant variants as doubled consonants or common compositorial substitutions like v for u or i for j. Nevertheless it is possible, in most cases at least, to claim that the hits disclosed represent between 90 and 100 percent of the total number of instances in the data being searched. With these limitations in mind, we may now report that nine of the twenty-five parallels singled out for special attention (Nos. 3, 75, 105, 112, 155, 159, 177, 217, and 280) appear to be unique to SP and Webster, showing no equivalents or near equivalents in the other pre-1627 items of the combined databases, and, further, that another thirteen of the parallels (Nos. 20, 30, 71, 84, 88, 122, 174, 183, 186, 189, 190, 233, and 235), although not unique to SP and Webster in the pre-1927 period, show only a statistically tiny number of exceptions. The remaining three of the twenty-five special cases (Nos. 163, 247, and 261) are somewhat more ambiguous, but would seem nonetheless to support the argument that the author of SP was probably Webster. Let us consider the apparently unique cases first. The most striking of these, as noted long ago by Howarth, is No. 3--the reference to worms in libraries destroying learning. It is surely extraordinary that Webster in 1623 and the author of SP in 1625 are the only writers over a span of more than two centuries to employ this figure, especially when we consider that a search of over 105,000 different books has been conducted. No. 75 is almost equally compelling. A search of the approximately 21,000 pre-1627 published works reveals no other uses of the idea of laughing at one's own shadow. Fighting with one's shadow, loving one's shadow, or being afraid of one's shadow are not uncommon ideas; but the concept of laughter in response to a shadow has no parallel in the databases searched apart from SP and Webster. One would expect No. 105 ("signe of a good nature") to be a common enough phrase in early modern English, but, surprisingly, the search of some 21,000 books discloses no exact parallel, and we should note that SP repeats not only the precise wording but even the spelling of the phrase in Webster's prose character, "An ordinary Fencer." Even if we count "the signe of good nature" in Robert Greene's Morando (1584) and "little signe of good nature" in T.G.'s The Rich Cabinet (1616) as near precedents for the SP-Webster phrase, these two occurrences represent only a minuscule fraction of 1 percent (.009) of the works searched. Again, No. 112 (calling wit or wits in question) would appear to be an unremarkable idea in our period, especially since the phrase "call in question" can be shown to be very common. The idea of calling wit or wits in question does pop up four times in later writers (John Dryden, Aphra Behn, and Thomas Nabbes); but the databases show no matches at all before 1627 apart from SP-Webster. References to a dog trotting ("as fast as a Dogge will trot"; No. 155) seem to be equally rare. Searches of EEBO and EEPF produce no examples before 1627. Matthew Sutcliffe in A True Relation of England's Happiness (1629) does write "as fast as a dog can trot," but Sutcliffe is the only writer other than Webster and I.W. to use the phrase before 1700. Both Webster and SP are given to the preposition for in the sense of as for, in respect of. No. 159 ("for neighbourhood" meaning "as for neighborliness") seems to be extremely rare in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Apart from SP-Webster, I have found the expression in Webster's special sense only once in both databases, and this occurrence ("For neighbourhood in France") is post-1627, appearing only in Giovanni Botero's Relations of the Most Famous Kingdoms and Commonwealths (1630). No. 177 ("and for her voice, it is"; "and for his voice, tis") not only makes use of for (= as for) but follows the phrase with "it is" or "'tis." Although "for her voice" and "for his voice" can be paralleled at least three times in other pre-1627 writers, the syntax adopted by SP-Webster seems to be highly unusual--especially so if for is restricted to the meaning, "as for, in respect of." None of the three writers (Thomas Ford, Henry Peacham, Sir William Segar) who write "for her voice" or "for his voice" uses for in Webster's sense or follows the phrase with "it is" or "'tis," so that No. 177 may legitimately be included among the items unique to SP-Webster. If the concept of making "savage woods" or "savage nations" "civil" (No. 217) seems unremarkable, we must report that a search of the approximately 21,000 pre-1627 books in EEBO and EEPF reveals not a single parallel; and even if we extend the search beyond 1627, we find only two collocations of "savage" and "civil": "savage and uncivill kinde" in Giovanni Botero's Relations of the Most Famous Kingdoms (1630) and "transformed from savage and barbarous people to civilitie" in Richard Brathwaite's English Gentleman (1630). Obviously, neither of these later examples uses the idiom, "to make civil." The final item in our unique group (No. 280) involves the notion of testing for gold in alchemy--holding or bearing the touch. The phrase from SP ("hold the touch") would appear to be very rare since the search of over a hundred thousand books turns up but a single instance--in John Locke's Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity (1697)--well beyond the dates relevant to Webster and I.W. The comparable phrase ("bear the touch") from Appius and Virginia is also rare, showing no pre-1627 matches and only three before 1700 in works by John Everard (1657), Jane Lead (1683), and John Ray (1693). The total absence of matches for all nine of these SP-Webster parallels in the pre-1627 items of EEBO and EEPF, a collection of books numbering over twenty thousand, is hard to account for on any other assumption but that the author of SP shared linguistic habits with Webster to a degree that points strongly to authorial identity. We may turn now to the thirteen rare but not unique items. Although references to "coat cards" (= face cards; No. 20) are not unknown before 1627, a search of the two available databases discloses only six instances in the 21,000 or so books published between 1473 and 1627--in John North-brooke's Spiritus Est Vicarius Christi in Terra (1577), in Sir John Harington's A New Discourse of a Stale Subject (1596), in Edmund Bolton's Elements of Armories (1610), in George Chapman's May Day (1611), in John Stephens's Essays and Characters (1615), and in Matthew Sutcliffe's Blessings of Mount Gerizzim (1625). These occurrences represent only .02 percent of the works searched. And we may note in addition for what it is worth that Webster had relations with Stephens, a competitor in the writing of prose characters with whom he quarreled in print. (10) Allusions to "a grieved conscience" or to grieving "a good conscience" (No. 30) are even rarer. A translation of Plutarch's Moralia (1603) uses the expression, "griefe in conscience," but this instance constitutes the sole match to the SP-Webster idiom in all the pre-1627 volumes contained in the two databases. The mention of satin or silk kirtles (No. 71) occurs only three times in books published before 1627--in Thomas Deloney's A Most Pleasant Ballad of Patient Grissell (1600), in Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels (1601), and in Samuel Rid's Act of Juggling (1612)--a finding that makes reference to this particular silk garment even less common than references to coat cards. The expressions "observe time" and "observe any time" (No. 84) are not quite as infrequent as most of the other items in the present category, but EEBO records only five instances of "observe time"--in Castiglione's Courtier (1561), in George Gifford's Discourse of the Subtle Practices of Devils (1587), in Edmund Gardiner's Trial of Tobacco (1610), in Gerard Malynes's Consuetudo, vel Lex Mercatoria (1622), and in Deloney's Pleasant History of John Winchcombe (1626). To be sure, the related phrase "observe the time" is somewhat more common (it occurs eighteen times before 1627), but even if we include these variations in our count, the total of such usages (23) amounts to only one tenth of a percent of all the pre-1627 books in the two databases. SP's words "crosse carding may put a tricke upon" (No. 88) would seem to be related to Webster's apparently unique phrase "crosse trickes" (the databases record no instance apart from The Devil's Law-Case); if so, the connection again makes authorial identity probable since "cross carding" occurs but three times before 1627--once in Nicholas Breton's Strange Fortunes of Two Excellent Princes (1600) and twice in Mateo Ale-man's The Rogue (1623). The idiom, "to come" or "bring to an upshot" (No. 122), seems also infrequent enough before 1627 to be a possible marker of Webster's style. It occurs eight times apart from SP-Webster--once in Thomas Bilson's True Difference between Christian Subjection and Unchristian Rebellion (1585), once in John Bridges's A Defense of the Government (1587), once in Anthony Copley's Wits, Fits and Fancies (1595), once in Bilson's Survey of Christ's Sufferings (1604), three times in Godfrey Goodman's The Fall of Man (1616), and once in Fynes Moryson's An Itinerary (1617). Considering the number of pre-1627 books in the databases (about 21,000), the eight occurrences add up to only .03 percent. An even rarer idiom common to SP and Webster, "not worth the thinking on" or "not worth thinking of" (No. 174), occurs only twice before 1627--in George Abbot's Exposition upon the Prophet Jonah (1600) and in Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations (1599-1600). Item No. 183 (the collocation of "excuse" and "denial") can be paralleled only three times in EEBO and EEPF--in Jean Calvin's A Harmony upon ... Three Evangelists (1584), in Thomas Gainford's The Secretary's Study (1616), and in Philip Massinger's Duke of Milan (1623). Although we might expect the collocation of Pygmies and Giants (No. 186) to appear fairly often, the contrast being a natural one, in fact we find only four occurrences before 1627--in Sir Thomas More's Second Part of the Confutation of Tyndale's Answer (1533), in John Marston's Antonio's Revenge (1602), in George Chapman's The Widow's Tears (1612), and in Robert Anton's Moriomachia (1613). For another phrase common to SP and Webster ("abuse his best friend" or "abuse my best friends"; No. 189), no exact parallels before the Restoration can be found in the databases. Henry Stubbes used Webster's locution twice in two medical treatises, An Epistolary Discourse Concerning Plebotomy and Lord Bacon's Relation to the Sweating-Sickness (both 1671), but earlier than 1627, the closest parallels are Nicholas Breton's "abuse his friend" in Wit's Trenchmour (1597) and an anonymous playwright's "abuse my friend" in The Merry Devil of Edmonton (1608). Clearly the phrase concerning abuse of friends, and especially of best friends, was unusual. One of the most telltale of the SP-Webster parallels (No. 190) is the satirical use of the word "dogbolt" as a proper name. SP's reference to "sir Dogbolts" (an obvious misprint for "Dogbolts") personifies a word that, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), originally referred to a blunt-headed arrow but that came to be applied to persons as a term of contempt meaning a mere tool, someone to be commanded. Apart from Webster, who in his section of Westward Ho has Luce refer to "mine host Dog-bolt of Brainford," only Nicholas Breton in Strange News Out of Divers Countries (1622) personifies the word, referring to "one Sir Dogbolt Driebread." We should recall, of course, that I.W. was deliberately imitating another of Breton's works, A Poste with a Packet, in composing his collection of model letters. The penultimate item in our category of rare but not unique SP-Webster parallels concerns the striking figure of rivers paying tribute to the ocean (No. 233). Readers familiar with Spenser's Faerie Queene may recall that a friend of the poet, one R.S., contributed a commendatory poem in 1590 that refers to "Fayre Thamis streame ... paying tribute to the Ocean seas." The metaphor, obviously, was not unknown, and perhaps to some extent it was inevitable, given the etymology of the word "tributary" as a term for a stream that empties into a larger body of water. Nevertheless, the two databases searched for the purposes of our investigation contain only seven additional references during the period 1473-1627 to rivers or lakes that "pay tribute" to the sea. These appear in Thomas Nashe's Terrors of the Night (1594), in David Murray's Tragical Death of Sophonisba (1611), in John Bowle's A Sermon Preached at Fitton (1615), in John Mason's Brief Discourse of Newfoundland (1620), in Ralph Crane's Works of Mercy (1621), in Francis Bacon's Translation of Certain Psalms (1625), and in Samuel Purchase's Purchase His Pilgrim (1625). Webster might have read any of these writers. Although there is no evidence that he borrowed from it, The Faerie Queene was too famous a poem for him not to have peered into at least cursorily, and, as for Nashe, we know that he imitated The Unfortunate Traveller. (11) The discovery of eight occurrences of the tributary figure apart from SP-Webster admittedly weakens the evidence for its being a trait of Websterian style, yet its use by eight different authors in the approximately 21,000 works printed before 1627 constitutes only .03 percent of the volumes surveyed. The likelihood of Webster's having used it in two works written within a year of each other (Monuments of Honor, 1624; A Speedy Post, 1625) seems considerable. The final item in the near unique group is No. 235--the parallel between SP's phrase "accompanied with long prayers" and Webster's "accompanied with ... prayers, but short ones" from his character, "A fayre and happy Milke-mayd." The phrase "accompanied with" is of course extremely common, but only once before 1627 is it linked with "prayers"--in Roger Ascham's Toxophilis (1545). A probable connection between SP and Webster's character of the milkmaid is considerably strengthened by the same focus on the duration of the prayers mentioned--long in the first case and short in the second. Taking into account the rarity of the idea expressed, it seems unlikely that the combination of similarities between the phrase in the letter book and that in the prose character is merely coincidental. I conclude then that the thirteen rare parallels between SP and Webster, even though they are somewhat less than unique, may serve as additional evidence for identifying the author of the letter collection with the dramatist. Three further items among the twenty-five special cases occupy a category of their own. Although more tenuous and problematic in nature than those addressed above, they seem to me to deserve discussion. The first (No. 163) involves the prefix she-in compounds such as "she-Devill," "shee child," and "shee fooles" used by both the author of SP and by Webster in Northward Ho. This prefix, considered independently, is probably too common to be of much value as a marker of authorship, but SP's "she-Devill" taken in conjunction with Webster's title, The White Devil, is suggestive inasmuch as Vittoria, the title character, could well be described as a she-devil, and SP's she-devil "lookes as like a Saint as our Ladie of Whitsontide" (Fv). Although the Anglican clergyman Thomas Adams also used "The White Devil" (the term means hypocrite) as the title for a sermon (1613), the link between "shee-Devill" and "white devil" would seem to reflect a somewhat specialized association or cast of mind. Regarded alongside the other parallels adduced, it therefore merits inclusion among the twenty-five items worth considering separately. The second item for discussion here is No. 247--the parallel involving wordplay on worthy, worthiest, and worth. In and of itself, of course, wordplay is the stock and trade of many seventeenth-century writers, but worth and its derivatives figure prominently in Webster's vocabulary (the Webster concordance lists 117 entries), in addition to which close collocations of worth and worthy and of worthy and worthiest seem to be fairly unusual. The commonness of the three words in the available databases makes an exhaustive search impracticable, but my random search of about 20 percent of the more than 1,400 books that contain at least two of the terms disclosed only a single instance of such wordplay--"the worth of that worthy Captaine" in Henry Petowe's The Country Ague (1625). The final item for discussion (No. 261) concerns references in SP and Webster to rhetorical pretentiousness--specifically to the notion of stuffing letters with Latin sentences or stuffing sentences "with sage" (i.e., learned cliches or stale formulations of canned wisdom). The general notion involved is less than startling, yet references to stuffed letters or stuffed sentences seem to be less common before 1627 than we might suppose. Again, the words sentence and stuff in their various spellings and derived or variant forms are too numerous in the pre-1627 volumes of the two databases to allow for an exhaustive investigation, but searching a random sample of about 20 percent of the available records yielded no matches at all, a reasonable indication that wordplay on worth, worthy, and worthiest is somewhat distinctive or unusual. Anyone familiar with the history of attribution studies knows that exclusive reliance on verbal parallels or on parallels of thought, imagery, and associated ideas can be dangerously misleading and methodologically treacherous. (12) Renaissance writers imitated each other regularly, whether consciously or otherwise, and drew upon a common stock of verbal and cultural materials. The force of such parallels, if they are to be taken seriously as evidence, must always depend on their concentration within a work, on the detailed closeness of the parallel passages, and on how common or unusual the items selected for comparison turn out to be. Although the great majority of the 283 items listed in this section are far from uncommon, the degree of their concentration does seem remarkable. And twenty-five items among this high concentration would seem to be either unique to Webster or distinctive enough to make association with Webster probable. (3) Vocabulary: Choices, Frequencies, and Proper Names One of the standard tests for authorship, used effectively by MacD. P. Jackson in his work on the Middleton canon, (13) is the analysis of so-called function words. This test involves counting a specific number of short, frequently used words such as articles, prepositions, and conjunctions that no author can avoid using, and then comparing the distribution of these words in the work of a known author to the distribution of the same words in the unattributed work, taking care that the samples compared contain precisely the same number of the chosen words. The theory on which the test is based is that writers tend to use function words in ways that largely exclude a consciousness of content and that mostly isolate deliberate stylistic imitation and other such considerations from the calculation. As Jackson also points out, counting frequencies of function words has the additional advantage of making the test reasonably free of "appreciable influence from scribes or compositors, though scribal or compositorial corruption may be responsible for the omission or addition of a few such words" (82). Jackson chose thirteen such words (a/an, and, but, by, for, from, in, it, of, that, the, to, and with) using samples of 1,000 function words in each of the texts compared. The point of the test was to reveal whether the degree of deviation in the compared samples fell within certain allowed parameters. His conclusion was that if this were the case--that is, if a doubtful work deviated only minimally from Middleton's known use of the same words--that work could be claimed for Middleton on grounds of statistical probability. Jackson used the chi-square formula to calculate the deviations in the distribution sets he was comparing. The following table applies the same test to SP. The first four rows show the raw count of each function word in four different samples taken from the letter book, each sample totaling 1,000 words. The next rows show similar counts from three samples of Webster's nondramatic prose, consisting of prefatory matter from WD, DM, and DLC, from MH (excluding the verse), and from the thirty-two Overburian Characters. Three additional rows present the comparable figures from a thousand-word sample of each of Webster's most important plays (WD, DM, and DLC), while the final rows show the same words counted in three samples from Nicholas Breton's A Post with a Packet of Mad Letters, a book that the author of SP was obviously imitating. I separate the samples of Webster's nondramatic prose from the verse drama samples, not only because SP is exclusively a prose work, but also because function words in speeches written for stage delivery or in verse compositions (such as MC or commendatory poems) might be thought to have a somewhat different distribution of frequencies than those to be expected in a correspondence manual. The Breton samples are included for their potential value as a control--to allow for the possibility that since the Breton volume and SP are both letter collections, the same genre represented in both cases might conceivably affect word frequencies or patterns of usage. Function Words in A Speedy Post, in Webster's Nondramatic Prose, in The White Devil, in The Duchess of Malfi, in The Devil's Law-Case, and in Breton's A Post with a Packet of Mad Letters (14)
A/AN AND BUT BY FOR FROM IN
SP: Sample 1 158 89 29 0 60 11 92
SP: Sample 2 123 144 44 5 53 23 75
SP: Sample 3 153 154 46 13 80 6 47
SP: Sample 4 87 121 34 24 58 12 83
Webster's prose: Sample 1 56 126 12 17 36 16 83
Webster's prose: Sample 2 137 121 30 26 70 9 84
Webster's prose: Sample 3 126 118 37 28 59 14 79
WD 150 94 36 24 36 16 91
DM 128 110 36 11 54 15 93
DLC 121 87 29 21 56 15 84
Breton: Sample 1 109 121 43 14 59 9 84
Breton: Sample 2 129 107 66 7 82 9 90
Breton: Sample 3 101 132 38 14 69 12 98
IT OF THAT THE TO WITH
SP: Sample 1 26 152 45 152 128 58
SP: Sample 2 40 129 53 165 116 30
SP: Sample 3 25 120 55 132 127 42
SP: Sample 4 47 116 95 136 145 42
Webster's prose: Sample 1 46 167 51 249 102 39
Webster's prose: Sample 2 48 99 63 171 111 31
Webster's prose: Sample 3 41 117 53 198 95 35
WD 63 85 66 160 132 47
DM 93 104 59 157 120 20
DLC 80 120 62 161 131 33
Breton: Sample 1 38 163 49 136 143 32
Breton: Sample 2 30 131 57 124 123 45
Breton: Sample 3 39 137 58 140 115 47
For the purposes of the chi-square calculation five different categories from this chart have been studied. These are (1) Webster's drama: 3,000 function words; (2) Webster's prose: 3.000 function words (samples 1, 2, and 3); (3) Webster's prose: 2,000 function words (samples 2 and 3 only); (4) SP: 4,000 function words; and (5) Breton: 3,000 function words. The reason for making two separate categories for Webster's nondramatic prose is that sample 1, being drawn from MH and the prefatory matter to the plays, seems to be somewhat untypical of Webster's prose habits whereas samples 2 and 3 come from the Characters and display closer stylistic affinities to the prose of SP. Separate calculations (including and excluding the anomalous sample 1) therefore seemed appropriate. It should be noted in addition that in comparing these samples, their aggregate number, whether consisting of 2,000, 3,000, or 4,000 function words, is inconsequential. Chi-square calculations are employed to determine how one set of frequencies compares to another set in terms of what statisticians call "goodness of fit." Theoretically, if differences between large samples are great enough, that is, too great to be attributable to normal variations within the work of the same author, they provide evidence that the two sets belong to different populations and are therefore probably the work of different writers. The smaller the chi-square figure when two sets of values are being compared, the closer is the "goodness of fit" of the two sets and therefore the greater the likelihood that they come from the same author. According to statistical experts, if the chi-square exceeds 21.0 in a comparison of two sets of thirteen values, there is less than one chance in twenty that the two sets were written by the same person. If the chi-square is larger than 26.2 the probability falls to less than one chance in a hundred. The numerical results of the chi-square test oriented, first, to Webster's drama, second, to Webster's prose, and, third, to A Speedy Post may be presented as follows:
Closeness to Webster's Drama
Webster's prose (samples 2, 3 only) 50.0
Webster's prose (samples 1, 2, 3) 87.1
A Speedy Post 112.9
Breton 120.1
Closeness to Webster's Prose
Webster's drama (W. prose samples 2, 3 only) 50.0
Webster's drama (W. prose samples 1, 2, 3) 87.1
A Speedy Post (W. prose samples 2, 3 only) 57.3
A Speedy Post (W. prose samples 1, 2, 3) 91.9
Breton (W. prose samples 2, 3 only) 70.9
Breton (W. prose samples 1, 2, 3) 101.4
Closeness to A Speedy Post
Breton 28.0
Webster's prose (samples 2, 3 only) 70.9
Webster's prose (samples 1, 2, 3) 91.9
Webster's drama 112.9
Because all but one of the chi-square values are high, these results are somewhat baffling to interpret. Even within Webster's known work there is considerable disparity between the dramas and the nondramatic prose (87.1), a figure that remains fairly high (50.0) even when sample 1, drawn from the prefaces, dedications, and the largely descriptive city pageant, is excluded. But Webster's prose, even if we include the anomalies of sample 1, is still a closer match to the dramas than is the anonymous prose of A Speedy Post. Nevertheless, SP's use of function words is closer to Webster, however distantly, than is Breton's Post with a Packet of Mad Letters. When the use of function words in Webster's prose rather than in his drama becomes the standard of comparison, we notice once again that the figures for A Speedy Post (91.9 and 57.3) are higher than those for the plays, regardless of whether the supposedly untypical sample 1 is included in the calculation. And this is so despite the fact that the comparison between Webster's prose and drama involves the crossing of genres and indeed even of media. Given SP's high numbers, then, it seems necessary to conclude that the function-word test, taken at face value, tells against Webster as the author of A Speedy Post. Perhaps the most significant result of the chi-square test is the comparatively low score (28.0) for the comparison of SP to Breton's Post with a Packet--an indication that Breton's use of function words is far closer to that of the anonymous collection than to that of any of Webster's sampled works, regardless of whether these be in prose or verse, dramatic or nondramatic. It is tempting to attribute the relative closeness of the two letter manuals in respect of function words to exact sameness of genre. But if this is the correct explanation, it would effectively invalidate the test as a means of disclosing authorship, at least in a case such as ours in which no known collection of letters by Webster is available for comparison. One might even speculate that Nicholas Breton, having published a popular collection of letters in 1602, to which he added a second part in 1605, chose to add yet more letters in 1625 under the title, A Speedy Post, calling himself "I.W. Gent." Breton is notorious for his idiosyncratic habit of disguising himself under at least "twelve sets of pseudonymous initials," (15) in addition to which SP employs a number of conventional epistolary phrases ("I commit you to God," "in the meane time," "I must confess," "of late," "pleasure you," "for this time," "a word or two," "to tell you the truth," "for my selfe," "in briefe," "to be short," "heare from you," "serve my turne," "too tedious," "and so I end," "in summe," "in conclusion," and the like) that Breton had used in A Post with a Packet (see appendix at the end of this essay). But even if Breton's use of function words is strikingly closer to SP's use of them than to Webster's, the relevant chi-square figure remains greater than what statisticians would consider a reliable probability of Breton's hand in the unassigned work. It seems safest then to reject the function-word test as a useful tool for establishing the authorship of A Speedy Post, whether the candidate for the ascription be Webster or Breton. As could be predicted, SP employs some words that do not appear in Webster's concorded works. This would almost certainly be the case if Webster wrote the letter manual since new subject matter is likely to require changes in vocabulary and since any writer is almost certain to introduce fresh words when shifting from one context to another or when embarking upon a new genre such as an anthology of witty letters. I list below the 298 words in SP for which I have found no duplicates in Webster. I do not pretend that the list is exhaustive or complete. Moreover the inclusion of such words as artifice (when the adjective artificial occurs in Webster), or the verb adventure (when Webster uses the same word as a noun) renders the line between Websterian and possibly non-Websterian vocabulary somewhat fuzzy. In such instances, I have tried to call attention to the overlap. I provide locations in SP (i.e., signatures) in parentheses. Words in SP That Do Not Appear in Webster's Acknowledged Works abject (n.) (B2) absolved (G3v). W. uses absolution. accommodate (G4v) accomplish (B2v) accordingly (D3) adventure (v.) (D4, F2v, H2). W. uses adventure (n.). Advertisement (A4v, G3v) affaires (E4v, Hv) agreeable (Gv). W. uses agree. Ale-scouts (= seabirds? alewives?) (B3v) amiable (G4v) Anthropophagi (G) apish (Dv). W. uses apes. Apostles (C2v) ardent (G4v) artifice (H2v). W. uses artificiall. Astronomers (B2) babish (= babyish) (Ev) Baby (D) badge (E, F4v) baffle (C) Bag-pudding (E4v) bast (= beat, bash) (E4) Bearer (B2v, B3, D3, D4v, F2v). W. uses bear. beleave (= by your leave [rustic]). (E4) Boroughs (D2v) brabling (= quarreling) (D2v) brazen (E2) breeder (C3v). W. uses breed. bridle (C2, F4v) buckle (E4) bumble (Cv) Butterflye (C) Buzzards (B3v) by-places (D2v) calmes (n.) (E). W. uses calme (adj.). carnall (D) chastisement (G3) choisest (Cv). W. uses choicer. Churle (E4v) Cicero (Hv) Cistrell (= kestrel) (F3v) clapper-claw (E3v) closest (F2v). W. uses closer. clouted (D2v) clowne (G2) Cocks-shoot (Fv). W. has cock-fights. cogges (= tricks) (E2v, E3). W. uses cogging. comelinesse (C2) comfortlesse (G3). W. has comfort, comfortable, comforter. commanding (gerund) (G3). W uses command (v.). commandment (B2v, B3v, G2, G3, H2, twice, H2v) commerce (v.) (H3) commodious (Ev) commodiousnesse (Hv) completely (H). W. uses compleat. compositure (= composition) (H2v) concerning (as prep.) (G3v). W. uses concern. concupisence (C3v) Condoling (A4v, 4 times, G2v, G3, G3v, G4) congratularie (G). W. uses congratulate. congratulation (A4v, twice, G, G4v, twice). W. uses congratulate. consolation (G3v) Constables (D2v, F) constitution (Hv) contentment (C2, Dv, Gv, G2, H3v) Contents (n.) (A4, A4v, F2v). W. uses content (adj., v.). continency (C3v). W. uses continence. continuance (Bv, B4, C3v, C4, C4v). W. uses continue. contradict (G3). W. uses contradiction. copulation (D) Craft (C2v, D, D2v, E, F, H). W. uses craftily. Cupid (E4) decipher (F) default (G3v) defraud (G2, H3v) defray (C3v) deluded (E) demonstrate (G2) desirous (A2, G4v). W. uses desire. disabling (D4) disclosed (A2) discourteous (H) disswasion (C4v) disswasive (A4, C4v) diversities (C2v) domesticall (Hv) draught (= drawing) (H3) earthly (G2v, G4v). W. uses earth. Easter (G3v) efficatious (A3) Emets (= ants) (G) enclosed (G2). W. uses inclosing, inclosures. encouragement (A4v, G2) Endlesse (F3v). W. uses end (v., n.). enflamed (H, H3v). W. uses flames, flaming. enoble (Gv). W. uses noble (adj., n.). enrich (A3v, H2, twice). W. uses rich. Enterchange (A4v, G). W. has interchangably. entire (D4). W. uses entirely. exactnesse (Hv). W. uses exactly. exalt (H2v) experimented (adj. = tried, tested) (G4v). W. has experiment. facilitie (G4v) Fairie (F3) Farme (Fv). W. uses farmer. farthing (F3v) fatherly (G3). W. uses father (v., n.). favourable (A3). W. uses favour (v., n.). feature (n.) (F3). W. has featur'd. female (n.) (D2v, F3v). W. avoids the word in all forms. Fiddle (= instrument) (F2). W. has fidlers, fidling. fleere (F3v) flush (hunting term) (Ev). W. uses flushing applied to complexion. fretting (C4v) full-bellied (D2v) furthermore (E3v) Gander-goose (proper name) (Fv). W. uses goose. godly (C3). W. uses god, godlesse. halfe-peny (Fv) Halleluiah (C2, C2v) Hamlet (= village) (Fv) hansome (= handsome) (E3) hastinesse (Ev). W. uses haste, hasty. heart-burning (C3v) heritage (E) hinder (= hindmost) (F2). W. has hinder (= prevent). Historian (H2v). W. uses history. historically (H2v) hitherto (G2, G3v) Holliday (E3v, E4) Hollidum (= Hallidom) (E3) home-spunne (D2) Horse-faire (B3v) hose (= leg covering) (E4) howbeit (G3) humanity (G2v). W. uses human, humane. Idolatrie (B4). W. has idolaters. illustrious (G4v) immortall (H, H2). W. uses immortality. impartiall (A3) implacable (C) import (n.) (E) inclined (F2). W. uses inclination. inditing (A3) inequality (C3v). W. uses equality. infirme (G3). W. has infirmity. ingrate (adj.) (G4). W. has ingrateful. injurious (F2v). W. uses injury. instructer (C2v). W. has instruct, instruction. intentive (= devoting earnest attention to) (H). W. uses intent, intentions. interlace (Hv) invitation (Gv, G3). W. has invite. jarre (n. = quarrel) (E4) jet (F2) Jewes-trumpe (F2) joy (v.) (C2). W. uses joy (n.). kersen (= Christian [dialect]) (E2v) Kill-cow (C) Kistrels (= kestrels, small falcons) (B3v) Land-Setters (= granters of land leases) (Ev) leather (E4) Lent (= season) (G3v) Leopard (H3) liberally (H2). W. uses liberall. lieu (= place, in in lieu thereof) (H2) loaves (F3, F3v) longsome (= long-lasting) (G3) Lowt (= lout) (Fv) magnificencies (H2v) make (n. = mate) (C3v) malignancy (A4v, G) manifest (v.) G4v) mannerly (F4). W. has manners. marvell (v.) (F4) Maurice-dance (F3v) mediator (G). W. uses mediate. men-eaters (G) merrier (D2v). W. uses merrie. methode (A3). W uses methodically. mid-day (G3v) Mill-horse (F4). W. uses horse. Miller (E2v) misconceit (Bv). W. uses conceit. misconstrue (D3) mislike (v.) (D). W. uses like (v.). mistrust (n.) (Bv). W. uses trust (n.). Molehill (C) noblenesse (B4v). W. uses noble. notoriously (F2). W. uses notorious. O yes (= Oyez, hear ye [a cry in court]) (F). W. uses O yes (= yes) 3 times. oblige (v.) (F2v). W. uses obligation. obliging (H2). W. uses obligation. occurrents (B3v, B4, D2, Ev) often-times (H3-H3v). W. has often. out-run (H2v). W. has out-braved, out-eat, out-go, out-live, out-vie, outlast, outshines. over-ballance (D4). W. uses balanc'd; also overburthened, over-charg'd, over-commend, over-great, over-hardned, overheare, over-praise, over-strayning, over-throw, over-tooke, over-turne, over-worthinesse, overblowne, overcome, overdone, overflow, overmuch, overpining, overplus, overreaches. overlinesse (= superiority, authority) (G4v) parentage (F3v). W. has parents. Parrat (= parrot) (F3v) Philomene (proper name) (Dv) piping (B3v). W. uses pipes. plainnesse (B2). W. uses plain (adj.) Poulterer (B3v). W. uses poulter (= poultry dealer). predicament (B4, B4v, Dv) principles (= fundamentals) (F4). W. has principall (= money). profited (G2). W. has profit (n.), profitable. prognosticate (G4v, H2) prudence (G3v) puggs (n. = harlot, punk) (F3v) reason (v.) (H3). W. uses reason (n.) rebell (v.) (G3). W. has rebels (n.), rebellion. reciprocall (H3) recollect (= remember) (H3) recreate (= give pleasure to) (H3). W. has recreation. regardfull (Gv). W. has regard (n., v.), regardant. Regions (E4) repay (G4). W. uses paie (v.). request (n.) (B4v, E4, E4v). W. uses requested. restfull (D4v). W. uses rests (v.). Rise (= rice) (F) rod (Gv) Roll (n.) (D2, D2v, D3) Rone (= roan [horse color]) (F) Russet (D2v, twice, F3) sanguine (F, F3) scar-crow (= scarecrow) (E4v) scoffe (F4v). W. uses scoffing. scumme (Cv) Sea-Crab (F3v). W. uses crab. shame-fac'd (E2) she-Devill (Fv). W. has shee fooles. shee child (F3v). W. has shee fooles. shriving (D). W. has shrifts. slacke (adj.) (Gv). W. uses slacke (v). slacknesse (H) slapt (= slapped) (E3v) sluggards (C2v) Snudge (= miser) (E4v) sodden (F3) solitary (adj.) (C3v, D) Soothsayer (H2) sorts (v.) (F3v). W. uses sorts (n.). speciously (= especially) (E3v). A malapropism; cf. Shakespeare's Mrs. Quickly (The Merry Wives of Windsor, 3.4.108, 4.5.111). spokes-man (B2) springing (= flushing prey) (Ev) Shreds (n.) (A4v, H2) stifled (Cv) stirre (n.) (E3). W. uses stirre (v.). stockes (= punishment) (B3, D2v) studious (C2, E). W. uses study (n., v.), studying. sufferance (H3). W. uses suffer. sufficiency (B2v, B3). W. uses sufficient. superfluity (C3). W. uses superfluous. sweetnesse (B2v, C2, Dv). W. uses sweet, sweeter, sweetest. tarieth (= tarries). (F3). W. eschews tarry in all forms. tell (= count) (F3v). W. uses tell (= disclose, relate). temperately (Hv). W. uses temperate. Tense (grammar) (D2) thankfulnes (Dv, G4v). W. has thanks (v.), thanks (n.). thereon (H) thriven (B2v). W. uses thriv'd. tinckle (= lute playing) (Fv) Tinker (F3v) transparent (H) trappes (n.) (B3) travailes (n.) (E). W. uses travaile (v.). treat (v.) (Hv) Truants (C2v) tuition (B3) Tully (= Cicero; proper name) (G2v) twitch (E2v) undeserved (D2). W. uses deserved. unfaithful (A4, B). W. uses faithful. unfaithfulnesse (B). W. uses faithfulnes. ungentle (F2). W. uses gentle. ungracious (F2). W. has gracious. unprofitable (G4). W. uses profitable. unreasonably (F3). W. uses reasonably. unthankfulnesse (B). W. uses thank (v.), thanks (n.). unworthinesse (B, B2). W. has worthinesse. upholder (C3v). W. uses uphold. Urchin (F3v) vanquish (G2v, H) veneration (G2v, twice) Virginitie (D3). W. uses virgin. vivacitie (G4v) vulgar (Hv) wander (A3v) wantonnesse (C4). W. uses wanton. wherewith (Hv) Whitsontide (Fv) wholsomnesse (C3). W. uses wholesome, wholsomer. whosoever (F) Wittoll (= cuckold) (E4v) wooll-gathering (Bv) worldling (A3v). W. uses world, worldly. yongster (E3). W. uses yong, yonger. These 298 "new" words represent a very small proportion of the putative vocabulary of SP--indeed only 6 percent of the writer's word store as estimated at 4,782. If we eliminate from the list most of the words that share the same roots as words used by Webster but that differ from him in being a different part of speech (a verb, say, as opposed to a noun) or in possessing a prefix or suffix (as in the case of mislike / like or mediator / mediate), the list reduces by approximately one third to about 4 percent of the total vocabulary of SP. Another way of representing this evidence, allowing of course for some degree of incompleteness, is to say that the vocabulary choices of whoever composed SP fall between 94 and 96 percentage points of being consistent with those of Webster's concorded works. Admittedly, my rules for inclusion and exclusion of words remain somewhat elastic because I have counted words as "new" that the writer of SP uses in a totally different sense from Webster. Thus SP uses hinder as an adjective to refer to the rear part of a crocodile, whereas Webster utilizes the same word as a verb in the sense of "prevent." Once again, SP employs the verb flush (used of game in hunting) while Webster has a character in Westward Ho speak of "flushing in the face" (1.1.122) in reference to a disease of the complexion. But, allowing for a certain inexactness in the determination of what words in SP would seem to depart from Webster's usual habits of vocabulary, we can still say that very few seem in any way unusual or unexpected, especially since conceited letters would have represented a fresh genre for the dramatist as well as involving him in new subject matter. To be sure, a few words such as babish, bag-pudding, disswasive, and occurrents look somewhat uncharacteristic of Webster. But three of these examples appear in the letter book that SP was consciously imitating, while the fourth shows up in another prose work by Nicholas Breton, published three years before SP came off the press. (16) And it is also worth noting that Webster had a fondness for words with the prefix over (e.g., overburthened, over-charg'd, over-commend, over-great, etc.) so that SP's word over-ballance, which does not appear in the Webster concordance, would be an entirely natural choice if the dramatist were the author. We may conclude then that in terms of its vocabulary, SP aligns quite comfortably with the writings of John Webster. Additional elements that might be taken to weigh against ascribing SP to Webster are a number of brief phrases that cannot be found anywhere in the playwright's work. Most are presumably common in the period. I list ninety-two such items below. Common Phrases from A Speedy Post Not in Webster a little way (D2v) a word or two (D4v, E2v) against the consent of (F) all is well (E2v, E4). Cf. Tilley A 153-57. all the Tide (E4v) among fooles (B4, F) among other things (E4v) are two (= are at odds) (E3v) as true as I live (E2v). Cf. Tilley L374. at ... neede (B4v) at jarre (E4) be it so (G2v) behinde with ... Rents (D2v) best worth (B2) better course (B3) by little and little (H) by these presents (E3v) by your leave (G2). Cf. beleave (E4; SP rustic form). Common Barge (E4v) common course (B4) common saying (B) dull heart (C3) evill breath (Bv) faire estate (C3) fair weather (D2) fast friend (Ev, E2) finger ends (F3v). W. has finger. for this time (B4, Cv, D4, F, F3) go(n)e away (B4, Hv) goes a wooll-gathering (Bv) great(er) measure (Bv, F2v) guesse at (H) hell upon earth (B4, C3v) hey ding (= noisy commotion) (F4) home row (reference to cuckoldry) (F). W. has horne-book. idle fancie (Bv) ill favoured (F3) ill fortune (B4). W. has good fortune. In breefe (D3v, D4v, F3) in exchange (C2, Hv). W. has exchange. in name (D2) in publique (F) In summe (D, Dv, Fv). W. uses sum. in vaine (H2v) iron age (A3v) Jacke Daw (= small crow) (F) know ... selfe (D3) leave to ... discretion (B3v) Love is ... blind (B2, C4). Cf. Tilley L506. lye in my power (B3) Lyon Key (London placename) (E4v) made of stone (= unfeeling) (G) maine chance (E3) make a stay (Bv) make an end (D3v) make no doubt (B4, D4v, G) me thinketh (Ev). W. has me thinks. meet with (D2v, twice, F3v) no helpe (Fv) none of them (B3v) not a little (E) old acquaintance (D3). W. has acquaintance. one and the same (C4, E2) out of joint (F2) out of love (C) out of square (Ev). W. has squares (v.). passe over (G3v) picking of a pocket (C) plaine truth (E2v). W. uses plaine and truth separately. put backe (E2v) Pyde Bull (bull of mixed color) (F4). W. has Bulls. Quid pro quo (F4v) rest assured (G). W. has be assured. second selfe (C3v, Dv) sets up ... rest (B2) simple heart (Bv) smal mind (E3v) Sow Pigge (F4). W. has pigs. take comfort (G3). W. has comfort (n., v.). takers up (F3v) takes ... effect (C3) tell tales (= gossip) (B4v, D2v) thinke well of (E3) Tic Tac (= early form of backgammon) (D2v) to be short (i.e., brief) (E4v) upon points (F2v) Water dogge (= dog that retrieves from water) (F). W. often uses dog. water of Life (C3) what you list (E4) with strife (= in competition) (G2v). W. has strife. with the Tide (E2) yeelded up (G3v). W. has yeeld. As will be obvious, some of these phrases are too particular and context-specific to reveal anything about an author's verbal habits. Almost any letter writer with a taste for colorful language might have cause to joke about farm animals such as sow pigs and pied bulls, to refer to dogs trained to retrieve from rivers and ponds, to use phrases referring to ocean tides, to drop London place-names such as Lyon Key, or to mention the public barge on the Thames. Nor would readers familiar with the satiric fashions of the genre be surprised by references to pocket-picking, to being in arrears with rent, to the horn rows of the schoolroom (with implications of cuckoldry), to the popular form of backgammon known as Tick Tack, to the small cackling crows named jackdaws, or to the hey ding (or comic commotion) caused by an inappropriate matchmaking. Other phrases such as "all is well," "love is blind," and "as true as I live" simply draw upon familiar proverbs and also tell us nothing about authorship. Little of Webster's distinctive style in the great tragedies could be expected to show up here. A large proportion of the phrases, however, including a good many that became virtually formulaic in letter writing, seem indebted to Breton's Post with a Packet and may therefore be regarded as evidence for the writer's conscious following of his model (see Nos. 5, 12, 14, 22, 24, 26, 29, 30, 32, 36, 44, and 47 in the appendix at the end of this essay). In fact, only about sixty-five of the phrases listed above seem to be different from what we might anticipate if Webster had written SP, a figure well within the margin of allowance for any writer undertaking a new project--especially one who might be writing to order and trying consciously to conform to an established genre with its own preordained modes of expression. What may get us a bit further is considering some aspects of vocabulary and idiom common to both SP and Webster. The table compiled below compares sixty-three selected words and word groups shared by the anonymous letter book and Webster as a means of demonstrating a number of specific ways in which the two styles are congruent. Some words have been chosen for their relatively high frequency in SP and Webster. Others are selected because they are words that most writers of the period use sparingly if at all. High or low frequency of particular words after all is one way of detecting authorial individuality. Still other word choices fall into the category of illustrating a particular stylistic habit or preference. Writers sometimes use a common word in a distinctive way, favoring the word as a verb rather than a noun, for instance, or employing it for a characteristic purpose or meaning. Authors also use common words repeatedly or at least more than once in idioms or turns of phrase that may help to identify a possibly individual stylistic feature. When an anonymous work can be shown to be consistent with the verbal traits or usages of a known writer, we have additional support for suspecting that the two writers may be one and the same. We know, of course, that the author of SP was consciously imitating the work of Breton (see appendix) and perhaps of other letter writers. But although it is impossible to avoid an element of subjectivity in judging, the kind of parallelism presented below, at least if we take it cumulatively, would seem very difficult to attribute to any writer's premeditated imitation of a model.
Selected Words Shared by A Speedy Post and Webster
Word A Speedy Post Webster Comments
a making (and "a wooll- "a-barking" (WD SP forms
other participles gathering" 5.3.96) participles in
prefixed by a-) (Bv) "a-begging" (DLC this way 3
"a making" 4.2.312) times, Webster
(E3v) "a-bleeding" (A & V 14 times.
"a milking" 5.2.103)
(E3v) "a-cheapning"
(CHARS H-CSR 22)
"a-dreaming" (WD
5.3.230)
"a-dying" (DM
2.1.19-20)
"a-Fishing" (CHARS
PTFGR 2-3)
"a-hunting" (WD
3.2.332)
"A-melting" (WD
5.3.165)
"a-pleading" (DLC
4.2.37)
"a-running" (CHARS
COW 22)
"a-speaking" (MC
248)
"a-stirring" (DM
5.2.341)
"a-wooing" (DLC
1.2.55; A & V
3.2.52)
above (= more "above desert" "above life" (DLC Frequent in
than) (B2) 3.3.322) both SP and
"above man" "above six times" Webster.
(B4v) (DLC 5.2.8)
"above ... three "above a day" (A &
weeks" (E3v) V 3.2.51)
"above the "above thought"
market" (Fv) (WD 1.2.16)
"above health" (WD
2.1.150)
"above skin-deepe"
(CHARS FENC 16)
"above two buttons"
(CHARS FENC 22)
"above ... the
rest" (CHARS
FTMAN 8)
"'bove merrit" (WD
1.2.16, 17)
assure (and assurance (B4v) assurance (twice) A word in most
related words) assure (D3, assure (16 times) of its forms
twice, D3v) assured (5 times) favored by
assured (B3v, assures (twice) both SP (12
B4v, D2, D3, assuring (once) times) and
F3, H2) Webster (26
assures (G2v) times).
assuring (B3)
banish banish (D4) banish (WD 4.3.73) A favorite
banish'd (DM word group in
3.3.79, 3.4.29, Webster (21
3.5.1, 5.1.34) instances).
banish't (A & V
1.1.53)
banished (A & V
1.1.28)
banishment (MC
162; DM 1.1.453;
A & V 1.1.79,
1.1.86; WD
1.1.39, 1.1.59,
2.1.378)
banisht (DLC
3.3.151; A & V
1.1.38, 1.1.91,
1.1.92; WD 1.1.1,
3.3.54)
bare (= minimal) "bare "bare name" (DM Four instances
Complement" 1.1.457, 3.2.84) in Webster,
(A4v, G3) "bare ... thought" two in SP.
(A & V 2.3.115)
"bare promise"
(WD 5.1.131)
beggar (and begger (n.) (B4, beg (12 times) Many forms
related words) D2v, F3v) beg'd (6 times) used by both
begger (v.) (F2) begg'd (once) SP (10 times)
beggarly (D4) beggar (once) and Webster
beggers (n.) beggarly (once) (44 times).
(B3, C4v, D2, beggars (4 times)
D2v, F) begge (twice)
begged (once)
beggar (5 times)
beggered (once)
beggerie (once)
beggarly (3 times)
beggers (once)
begging (5 times)
brave brave (D2, Ev, brave (27 times) Three times in
Fv) braveliest (once) SP; 34 times
bravely (5 times) (in various
braving (once) forms) in
Webster.
breed (= cause) "breed a false "breed ... SP uses breed
opinion" (B2v) emulation" (MC metaphorically
breedes ... 67-68) 6 times;
sorrow (C4) "breed ... enquiry" Webster 9
"breeds love" (DM 5.2.356) times. Cf.
(C2v) "breed ... delight" also SP's
"breed (DLC 1.2.317) breeds hopes
Jealousie" "breed ... with Webster's
(C4v) advancement" breed ...
"breed pride" (DLC 3.3.22-24) strong hope.
(C4v) "passions ...
"breeds hopes" changes breed"
(E2) [i.e., "breed
changes"] (DLC
3.3.211)
"breed ... strong
hope" (A & V
2.2.202)
"some ... thing ...
breeding" (NH
3.1.129)
"breeds ...
suspition" (NH
1.1.178)
"breeds envy" (WH
1.2.78-79)
colic (= pain in cholick (Fv) Collicke (CHARS H- Somewhat
the bowels) CSR 15) infrequent;
appears only
once in both
SP and
Webster.
comfort (and comfort (n.) comfort (n.) (26 Frequent in
related words) (C2, C3v, C4, times) different
twice, D4, comfort (v.) (3 forms in both
Ev, E2 G3, G3) times) SP (16 times)
comfort (v.) comfortable (twice) and Webster
(G4, H2) comforter (once) (35 times).
comfortable (C4, comforts (n.) (4
G3) times)
comforted (H2v)
comfortlesse
(G3)
comforts (n.)
(Gv)
commend (and commend (C4, commend (8 times) Frequent in
related words) D3v, twice, commendable (twice) different
D4, F3, F4v, commendation (5 forms in both
twice) times) SP (14 times)
commendation commendations (3 and Webster
(B2v, B3) times) (25 times).
commendations commendatory
(B2, B3, D3, (once)
F4) commends (6 times)
commended (E)
conscience conscience (B, conscience (27 Frequent in
Bv, B3v, B4, times) both SP (10
B4v, E2, F, times) and
F3v, Gv, G3v Webster (27
times).
content (and content (n.) content (adj.) SP and
related words) (B2v, C4, E, (twice) Webster both
E3, E4v) content (n.) use content as
content (v.) (twice) a noun and a
(A3, D3v, F2v) content (v.) (once) verb, but
contentment contented (5 times) Webster avoids
(Dv, Gv, G2, contentedly (once) contentment.
H3v)
cunning (and cunning (adj.) cunning (adj.) (22 Fairly common
related words) (A4v, C3v, times) in various
D2v, F2v) cunning (n.) (12 forms in SP (5
cunningly (F3v) times) times) and
cunningly (6 times) Webster (41
cunningst (once) times).
deceive (and deceive (F3) deceaved (twice) Common in
related words) deceives (F3) deceit (once) various forms
deceived (H) deceitful (once) in SP (3
deceiv'd (10 times) times) and in
deceive (5 times) Webster (21
deceived (once) times).
deceives (once)
desire (and desire (n.) desire (n.) (8 Frequent in
related words) (Bv, B2v, D4, times) various forms
G4v, H3v) desire (v.) (8 in SP (18
desire (v.) (B, times) times) and
Bv, C4v, desired (once) Webster (21
twice, D4, E2, desires (n.) (once) times).
E2v, F2v G2, desires (v.) (3
twice) times)
desires (n.) (E)
desires (v.)
(D4)
discretion (and discreet (B2v) discreet (twice) Fairly common
related words) discretion discreetly (twice) in various
(Bv, B2v, B3v, discret (once) forms in SP (7
Dv, E2, F4v) discretion (4 times) and
times) Webster (10
discretly (once) times).
dunghill dunghils (= dung-hill (DM A favorite
dunghill 4.1.76; CHARS word in
birds) (D2v) RIMR 8) Webster. Cf.
dung-hills (DLC SP's dunghils
4.2.133) ( = birds)
dunghil (A & V and Webster's
4.1.161) dunghill
dunghill (A & V birds.
3.2.261; WD
2.1.52 ["dunghill
birds"], 3.3.45,
5.6.210)
See also No. 72 in
the parallels
above.
excellent (and excellence (D4) excell (once) Both SP and
related words) excelled (G2v) excellence (once) Webster are
excellent (G4) excellencies (once) attracted to
excellently excellent (86 excellent as
(G4v) times) an epithet
excellencies excellently (once) applied to a
(H2v) excells (once) human being.
Cf. "excellent
person" (SP
G4);
"excellent
selfe" (DM
1.1.442);
"Excellent
Hyenna" (DM
2.5.53);
"excellent
knave" (DM
4.2.59);
"excellent
Lady" (DM
5.2.170,
5.2.208; DLC
1.1.193,
1.2.171);
"excellent
Mistres" (DLC
1.2.35);
"Excellent
Creature" (WD
1.2.202);
"Excellent
Divell" (WD
1.2.246);
"Excellent
Lodovico" (WD
5.3.215);
"excellent
Birdlime" (WH
1.1.85).
fantastical (and fantasticall fantasticall SP (4 times)
related words) (A4, A4v, D3, (twice) and Webster (6
F4) fantastic (once) times) both
fantasticks (n.) favor the
(once) adjective.
fantastique (once) Including
phantasticall (4 related words,
times) Webster's
phantastick (once) count is 11.
phantastique (n.)
(once)
filthy filthy (E4v) filthy (10 times) Both SP and
See also No. 148 in Webster favor
the parallels filthy as an
above. epithet for a
person. Cf.
"filthy Wife"
(SP E4v);
"filthy Knave"
(WH 4.1.230);
"filthy
roague" (NH
3.1.120);
"filthy punke"
(WH 4.1.224);
"filthy
cullion" (MAL
119-20).
fly (sometimes, fly (D2v) flew (twice) Both SP and
metaphorically, = flye (B3, C3v, flie (13 times) Webster are
"hurry") Gv) flies (v.) (4 attracted to
flyes (Hv) times) metaphorical
fly (v.) (10 times) uses of the
flye (13 times) verb--SP
flying (3 times) twice, Webster
approximately
37 times.
folly folly (B4, D4, follie (twice) Common in both
E, E4, Fv, follies (once) SP (6 times)
F4v) folly (7 times) and Webster
(10 times).
fool foole (C4v, foole (27 times) Very frequent
D3v, Ev, F, foolery (once) in both SP (22
Fv, F2) fooles (13 times) times) and
fooles (B3, foolish (13 times) Webster (57
twice, B4, foolishly (twice) times).
twice, C2, D2, fooles (once)
D2v, F, Fv,
F2, F3)
foolish (D, Dv,
D2, D2v)
foolishly (Fv)
fortune fortune (B4, fortun's (twice) In varying
B4v, D, D4, E, fortunat (3 times) forms, very
Ev, twice, E2, fortunate (7 times) frequent in SP
F3, F4, G4v) fortunately (twice) (12 times) and
fortunate (Gv) fortune (47 times) Webster (71
fortunes (10 times) times).
foul foule (B2v, C4v) foule (26 times) A favorite
Cf. also fowle (= foul) (7 word in
"Foulostophy" times) Webster (33
(humorous Cf. also "foule- times); used
coinage?) gutted" (once). twice in SP.
(F4).
furies furies (B2) furies (5 times) Webster often
fury (16 times) conceived of
persons as
furies (at
least 14
times). SP's
single use
("Natures
furies") is
consistent
with this
habit.
help (in idioms "help me to such "help him to A common idiom
such as "help me a Creature" clyents" (DLC in Webster (8
to") (C4) 4.1.109) times), also
"helpe you to a used in SP
private roome" (once).
(MAL 121)
"helpe my lady to a
pritty waighting
woman" (NH
5.1.168)
"helpt mee to it
[food]" (NH
3.2.73)
See also item 51 in
the verbal
parallels above.
hereupon hereupon (G4) hereupon (DM A rare word
3.2.207) used only once
by Webster and
SP; not used
by Marlowe or
Dekker, or by
Jonson in
nondramatic
verse, and
only once by
Shakespeare
(Love's
Labor's Lost,
1.2.57).
hold (= consider) "hold you an "hold it An idiom
Angell" (B2) presumption" (DM highly
"the world 1.1.20) characteristic
holdeth "hold it fit" (DM of SP (10
you ... I hold 2.3.66) times) and
you" (B2) "Hold opinion, all Webster (at
"hold you wise" things ..." (DM least 10
(B3v) 3.1.75) times).
"hold you a "I hold it" (DLC
friend" (B4v) To ... Reader 1)
"hold scoffing" "hold our
(Cv) bouldnesse" (NH
"hold a friend" 1.1.33)
(D3) "holdes it
"hold mee impossible" (WH
unwise" (D3v) 1.1.92)
"holds her ware" "holds it next his
(Fv) Creed" (CHARS COM
"hold your 7)
selfe" (G4v) "holds him a good
Common-wealths
man" (CHARS PTFGR
11)
"holds no more
sinne" (CHARS JES
12)
"holdes them no
reliques"
(CHARS FRANK 24)
howsoever howsoever (A3, howsoever (DM In most
C, Cv, C3v, D, 5.5.41; DLC writers (e.g.,
D3v, Ev) 3.2.176; MC Ded. Marlowe,
23) Dekker, and
Cf. also "howsoere" Jonson in
(DLC 1.2.176). nondramatic
verse) fairly
infrequent.
Used often by
SP (7 times);
4 times by
Webster
(counting the
contraction
howsoere).
idle (and related idle (A4v, Bv, idle (22 times) Frequent in
words) B2v, Dv, D2, idely (once) different
D2v, D3v, Ev, idley (once) forms in both
E4v, F3, idlenesse (twice) SP (13 times)
twice, F4v) idly (once) and Webster
See also No. 62 in (27 times).
the verbal
parallels above.
idlenesse (D3)
infinite (and infinite (G2, infinit (twice) A popular
related words) H2. H2v, H3v) infinite (9 times) adjective used
infinitely (twice) intensively by
infinitly (once) both SP (4
times) and
Webster (14
times
including the
adverb).
jealous (and jealous (H) jealious (twice) A favorite
related words) jealousie (Bv, jealiousie (4 word of
C4v, Dv) times) Webster (29
jealosie (twice) times
jealous (10 times) including the
jealousie (5 times) adjective and
jealousy (6 times) noun); used
also by SP (4
times).
jewel jewell (C4, Dv, jewel (once) A common word
D3, E3) jewell (15 times) in both SP (4
jewellers (once) times) and
jewells (twice) Webster (33
jewels (14 times) times). SP
uses jewel
metaphorically
(i.e., as a
synonym for
virtue or for
a wife, a
friend, or a
daughter).
Webster's use
is usually
more literal,
but he also
applies the
word to people
(cf. DM
3.2.288; DLC
3.3.11) and to
the soul (cf.
DLC 5.5.48).
learned (adj.) learned (A3, Bv, learned (9 times) Common in both
C2v, E, F3v, SP (6 times)
Hv) and in Webster
(9 times).
like (in "like "like to proove" "like to inherit" The phrase
to") (C3v) (DM 3.2.221) like to
"like to you" "like to bring" followed by a
(H3v) (DLC 1.1.83) verb (5 times)
"like to pull over" or a noun (15
(DLC 4.2.316) times) is
"like / T'incur" highly
(WD 4.2.2-3) characteristic
"like to bee" of Webster. SP
(CHARS FRANK 10) contains one
"like to a ..." (MC example of
288: DM 3.5.90, each.
3.5.121)
"like to that" (MC
306)
"like to calme
weather" (DM
3.5.34)
"like to Cassia"
(DM 3.5.89)
"Like to your
picture" (DM
4.2.33)
"Like to an ..."
(DM 5.2.112)
"like to men" (DM
5.3.19)
"like to Mushromes"
(DLC 4.2.132)
"Like to the ..."
(DLC 4.2.324;
WD 3.3.64)
"like to Cuccolds"
(A & V 3.2.265)
"like to burres"
(WD 5.1.92)
"like to this" (NH
2.2.81-82)
"like to threds"
(WH 3.4.7)
"like to clocks"
(WH 3.4.17)
like (in such "the like "the like ... Both SP (9
phrases as "the matter" (A4, meanes" (DM Ded. times) and
like matter" and Fv) 6) Webster (24
"the like") "the like "the like curtesie" times) are
censure" (Bv) (DM Ded. 17-18) much given to
"the like Cake" "The like ... phrases
(Cv) Musique" (DM involving "the
"the like 1.1.554) like" either
predicament" "The like passions" as an
(Dv) (DM2.1.106) adjective or a
"in the like" "the like lenity" substantive.
(B3, twice) (A & V 2.2.203)
"with the like" "the like pursenet"
(E2) (A & V 4.1.91)
"feare the like" "the like
(F4v) injoyment" (NH
1.1.112)
"the like patience"
(NH 2.2.65)
"the like scarcity"
(CHARS INGSR
17)
"like death" (DM
5.3.20, 5.3.21)
"like cause" (DLC
4.1.75)
"like fault" (WD
4.2.174)
"the like" (n.) (MH
47, 73, 303; DM
2.1.106, 3.2.64,
3.2.276; DLC
1.2.141, 2.1.53,
4.2.112, 4.2.230,
5.5.1; A & V
5.2.74; NH
3.2.62)
little (in the "a little chide" "rayle a little" The phrase a
adverbial phrase (B2v) (DLC 1.2.226) little, used
"a little") "a little put "Be mine a little" adverbially,
on" (C4v) (DLC 5.4.51) is highly
"looke a little "joggd it a little" characteristic
into" (C2v, D) (DLC 5.4.180) of the style
"a little to "forbear a little" of both SP (12
meet with" (A & V 1.1.39) times) and
(D2v) "Take air a little" Webster (11
"wonder a (A & V 2.2.112) times).
little" (Ev) "looke but a
"tell you a little" (WD
little" (F) 1.1.13)
"heare a little" "with-draw a
(Fv) little" (WD
"a little may 3.2.330)
pleasure me" "crying a little"
(F2v) (NH 2.2.44)
"love ... a "A little recoverd"
little" (F4v) (NH 3.2.105)
"be ... a little "plaid the foole a
discourteous" little" (WH
(H) 3.3.98)
"study ... a "kept from Towne a
little" (Hv) little" (WH
3.4.4)
melancholy melancholly melancholicke (3 Webster is
(adj.) (Fv) times) especially
melancholly (n.) melancholie (n.) (4 drawn to this
(F3, H) times) word both as a
melancholike (4 noun and an
times) adjective (35
melancholly (adj.) times). SP
(once) uses it also
melancholly (n.) (3 times).
(once)
melancholy (adj.)
(3 times)
melancholy (n.) (5
times)
melencholly (n.)
(once)
mellancholly (adj.)
(3 times)
mellancholly (n.)
(7 times)
mellancholy (n.)
(once)
mellencholly (adj.)
(once)
mellencholy (adj.)
(once)
more (in "the "the more" (A3v) "the more Both SP (5
more") "the more amplefying" (MH times) and
cruell" (G) 22) Webster (10
"the more weake" "the more approv'd" times) use
(G3) (DM 2.2.65) this locution.
"the more "the more unquiet"
completely" (DM 4.2.138)
(H) "The more
"the more rich" compassion" (DM
(H2v) 5.3.68)
"the more
patiently" (DLC
4.2.319)
"the more strongly"
(WD 2.1.144)
"the more state"
(NH 3.1.14)
"The more happy"
(WH 1.2.106)
"the more mended"
(CHARS GAL 16)
"the more
contentedly"
(CHARS FRANK 29)
nay (= indeed, nay (H2) nay (77 times) Webster is
furthermore) extremely fond
of this
interjection,
often used to
correct or
amplify what
precedes. SP
uses it once.
passion (and passion (B, Bv, passion (13 times) Counting the
related words) B2, 3 times, passionat (twice) adverb,
3 times, B2v, passionatelie Webster uses
E2v) (once) this word 29
passions (B2) passionately (5 times. SP uses
passions (B2) times) it 8 times.
passions (8 times)
power (and power (B3, C3, power (17 times) Fairly
related words) D3, F3, H) powerful (once) frequent, in
powerfull (G2v) powers (3 times) various forms,
powre (= power) (4 in both SP (7
powers (E4) times) times) and
powres (= powers) Webster (26
(once) times).
pretty pretty fellowes pretty (19 times) Webster likes
(Fv) Cf. "pretty ones" to apply
[i.e., lovers] pretty to
(DLC 1.2.273); human beings
"pretty ... piece (see the
of Law-flesh" examples
(DLC 5.2.1-2); provided). SP
"pretty babe" accords with
(A & V 4.1.118); this usage.
"pretty cousin"
(WD 2.1.7,
2.1.129); "pretty
fools" (WD
5.4.31); "pretty
wife" (NH
1.1.42).
protestation (and protestation protest (29 times) Webster uses
related words) (D2) protestation (10 protest and
protestations times) its
(F3) protested (4 times) derivatives a
protesting (3 total of 48
times) times. Like
protests (twice) Webster, SP
likes
protestation
(twice).
reverence (v.) reverence (v.) reverence (v.) Although
(G2v, H3v) (once) Webster
reverenc't (once) prefers
reverenced (C2) reverence as
a noun (6
times), he
uses it twice
as a verb. SP
uses reverence
3 times as a
noun and 3
times as a
verb.
scholar Scholler (A4v, scholer (once) A frequent
B2, C2v, G2, scholers (twice) word in SP (8
G2v) scholler (10 times) times) and
Schollers (C2v, schollers (4 times) Webster (17
F4, G2v) times)
seldom seldome seldome (20 times) Common in both
(Bv, C4, D2, SP and
D2v, E, F2, Webster.
F3, H)
shadow (and shadow (C, D3v, shaddow (3 times) Webster was
related words) F, F4v) shaddowed (once) very attracted
shadowes (D2v) shaddowes (twice) to shadow and
shadowed (H3v) shadow (16 times) its
shadowes (6 times) derivatives
shade (3 times) (28 times) as
shades (once) well as to the
See also No. 33 in related word
the parallels shade (4
above. times). SP
also likes
shadow (6
times), but
omits shade.
shun shunne (F4v) shun (6 times) A common verb
shunnes (G) shun'd (once) in both SP
shunne (once) (twice) and in
shunning (once) Webster (10
shuns (once) times).
silence (and silence (A4v, silence (19 times) Frequent in
related words) C2, F, twice, silent (3 times) both SP (12
Gv, G2, 3 silently (once) times) and
times) Webster (23
silent (B2, G2, times).
twice, G3)
somewhat (= "somewhat to "write some-what" Out of
something) read" (H3) (DM 1.1.410) Webster's 30
"somewhat" "done ... Some- uses of
(adv.) (F3) what" (WD somewhat, 16
4.1.73-74) (53 percent)
"made a Knight, or are nouns
... some-what" whereas the
(NH 3.2.41) remainder are
"there's somewhat adverbs. SP
in't" (DM 2.1.70; agrees with
WD 3.3.58) this division,
"presents me / using one noun
Somewhat" (DM and one adverb
2.2.76-77) (50 percent
"learne somewhat" each).
(DM 4.2.24)
"somewhat I will
... enact" (DM
4.2.402)
"faigne somewhat"
(DM 5.2.88)
"do somewhat"
(DM 5.2.209)
"saying somewhat"
(DLC 1.2.153)
"talke to somewhat"
(DLC 3.3.295)
"Somewhat will be
pickt out" (DLC
4.1.93)
"somewhat to doe"
(A & V 3.2.220)
"'twas for
somewhat" (MAL
41)
"revealed
somewhat" (WH
3.3.47)
spleen (= anger) spleene (B3v) spleen (twice) Webster uses
spleen's (once) this word 5
spleene (twice) times, SP
once.
strange (and strange (B, B3v, strang (once) A favorite
related words) C3, D3, Fv, strange (76 times) word in
F3, F4) strangely (5 times) Webster (93
strangely (C4) strangenesse (once) times in
stranger (D3v, stranger (5 times) various
E3) strangers (4 times) forms). SP
strangers (C4) strangest (once) also uses it
often (11
times).
sweet-heart sweet-heart (A4, sweet hart (3 Common in both
E3v, E4) times) SP (5 times)
sweet heart sweete hart (3 and Webster (7
(E2v, E3) times) times).
sweet-heart (once)
troubled (and trouble (n.) trouble (n.) (7 SP (17 times)
related words) (C2v, E, F2v) times) and Webster
trouble (v.) B2, trouble (v.) (3 (29 times) are
B4v, C2v, D2, times) both attracted
D2v, Fv, F3 troubled (16 times) to various
twice, Gv, troublesome (once) forms of the
twice) troublest (once) word trouble.
troubled (Bv, Webster also uses Both also are
F2) "trouble ... with" given to the
troubles (n.) (DLC 5.4.59; WD idioms
(Dv) 5.6.32-33) and "trouble ...
troubles (v.) "troubled with" with" and
(D3) (DM 2.1.118-19. "troubled
SP uses the 3.1.15, 3.3.53; with" (SP 8
idioms DLC 3.3.256-57; times; Webster
"trouble ... A & V 3.2.221-22; 11 times); see
with" (B4v, NH 3.2.98; WH examples
C2v, D2, Fv, 3.1.36, 3.3.82; cited.
F3, twice, G) CHARS ROG 2).
and "troubled
with" (F2).
understanding understanding understand (17 This word
(and related (adj.) (F2v) times) appears in
words) understanding understanding both SP (7
(n.) (B2v, B4, (adj.) (twice) times) and
B4v, C2, Ev, understanding (n.) Webster (28
F4v) (5 times) times). SP's
understands (4 preference for
times) understanding
as a noun
rather than an
adjective is
86 percent,
whereas the
same
preference in
Webster is 60
percent.
well Well (intj.) Well (intj.) (48 SP (once) and
(interjection) (H2v) times) Webster (48
times) both
use Well as an
interjection.
The large
numerical
difference can
be explained
partly in that
Webster's uses
all occur in
drama.
whatsoever whatsoever (B2, whatever (twice) Whatsoever is
D3v, E2, E4v) whatsoere (once) comparatively
whatsoever (4 infrequent in
times) both SP (4
times) and
Webster (5
times,
counting the
contracted
form).
Webster's
preference for
whatsoever
over whatever
is 71 percent,
while SP
avoids
whatever
entirely.
whereby whereby (G3v, whereby (once) Infrequent in
G4v, H2) Webster
(once),
somewhat less
so (3 times)
in SP.
Webster
eschews the
word in drama.
His single use
occurs in
nondramatic
prose (CHARS
PTFGR 8).
wise (and related wise (B, B3, wise (20 times) Both SP (18
words) B3v, B4, 3 wisedome (4 times) times) and
times, C4, D, wisemen (twice) Webster (30
D2v, E, E4v, wiser (once) times) use
Fv, F4) wisest (once) wise and its
wisedome (D2, unwise (twice) derivatives.
F2v) unwisely (once) Both also
wiser (Cv, F3v) Webster uses "wise apply the term
unwise (D3v) men" (A & V wise to men
SP uses the 1.3.30), "men (SP 7 times;
phrases most wise" (A & V Webster 4
"wise man" (B, 3.3.29), and times).
E4v) and "wise "wisemen" (WD
men" (B3, B4, 5.3.191; NH
twice, D2v, 2.2.130).
Fv)
repeatedly.
worth (and unworthinesse unworthily (once) A group of
related words) (B, B2) unworthinesse words very
unworthy (C2, (once) heavily used
D4) worth (32 times) by both SP (60
worth (Bv, 3 worthely (twice) times) and
times, B2, 4 worthie (twice) Webster (123
times, B3v, worthier (twice) times). Both
twice, B4, Cv, worthies (twice) are much given
twice, C2, worthiest (twice) to using
C4v, D, Dv, 3 worthily (3 times) worthy as a
times, D2, D3, worthinesse (once) personal
twice, D3v, worthlesse (once) epithet, e.g.,
twice, D4, worths (once) in SP "worthy
twice, Fv, F2, worthy (69 times) Graduate" (A4,
F3, twice, Gv, worthyes (once) Cv), "worthy
G4, twice, H2) wife" (C3v),
worthies (H3) "worthy
worthily (C2v, beloved" (A4,
twice, H3v) Bv), "worthy
worthinesse (Bv, scholler"
G4v) (G2v); in
worthy (A4, 3 Webster
times, Bv, "worthy
B2v, Cv, C3v, Knight" (MH
twice, C4v, 143), "worthy
Dv, twice, D4, Antonio" (DM
E3, F2v, F3v, 3.1.54),
G2v, G4, H2, "worthy
H3) Princesse"
(DLC 3.3.304),
"worthy
Captaine" (A &
V 2.2.208),
"worthy Actor"
(CHARS ACTR
24, 35).
We may conclude this section on vocabulary with a brief discussion of proper names. The four place-names that SP shares with Webster--references to St. Paul's Cathedral and Tyburn in London, to the northern suburb of Highgate, and to Gravesend on the lower Thames--are obviously too common to be useful for attribution study. And the same can be said for the two poets (Chaucer and Virgil), the three Roman deities (Venus, Vulcan, and Mars), and the Virgin Mary ("our Ladie") whom both SP and Webster mention in passing. (17) Unsurprisingly in a collection of letters, most of the people in SP are limited to the fictional Christian names of addressees--"Good Franke," "Honest George," "Kind Robin," "Sweet Susan," "Worthy Henry," and the like--and to the equally fictional initials of the senders. One wonders whether the "Letter to a Friend, to borrow money" and signed "Yours devoted and obliged to be commanded, W.I." (B4-B4v) might conceivably represent Webster's coded inclusion of himself in the anthology, reversing the initials on the title page, since Grosart in his edition of the analogous Breton collection suggested that at least two letters in A Post with a Packet of Mad Letters, one of which is signed "N.B.," contain autobiographical overtones. (18) But this is mere speculation. For our purposes the most interesting names in SP are satirical inventions such as "John a Nods" (E2v), "good man Churle your left side neighbour" (E4v), "Sinior Snipskin" (F3), "Whip Sir Ginny" (F3v), "sir Dogbo[l]t" (F3v), "Gander-goose of Greene-hill" (Fv), and "Tom Asse Ninny-hammer" (Fv). These are quite in the mode of the mocking appellations that turn up in the Websterian scenes of Westward Ho--"Docter Glister-pipe" (1.1.80), "Sergeant Ambush" (3.1.25), "[Sir] Gosling Gloo-worme (3.4.11), "Maister Freeze-leather" (4.1.61-62), and the innkeeper "Dog-bolt of Brainford" (4.1.65). One name, "Mistres Puscat" (F2), almost jumps off the page because the word is unusual (the OED offers only three citations before the nineteenth century). Webster might well have picked up the term from Thomas Dekker, his friend and collaborator in city comedy, who in Satiromastix (1601) has a reference to "cry[ing] Mew like a Pussecat" (5.2.325). And although Webster's prose Characters, according to the tradition of the genre, are too generalized to feature the names of individuals, several of them such as "An ordinary Fencer," "A Puny-clarke," "A Roaring Boy," "A Divellish Usurer," and "A Canting Rogue" are nevertheless imbued with the same spirit of fashionable ridicule in a context of local color that characterizes much of A Speedy Post. (4) Subject Matter, Ideas, Attitudes, Image Patterns, and Thematic Emphases A Speedy Post is a very conventional book. As such, its content is mostly prescribed by its genre and limited in large measure to the kinds of subjects seventeenth-century readers of letter manuals had come to expect. It nevertheless contains numerous elements that chime with the possibility that Webster was the author. An interest in horses, for instance, pervades SP, which contains references to a horse fair, to their behavior, and to buying, selling, feeding, sending, and stealing the animals. The Webster concordance contains over eighty mentions of horses and horse-related activities scattered throughout the canon (including the defamatory character of "An Arrant Horse-Courser"), in addition to which we know that the dramatist lived near Smithfield and belonged to a family engaged in the making and renting of horse-drawn vehicles. (19) SP contains three allusions to "wakes" or local festivals (D2v, E3) such as "the Wake in Summer" that Webster's idealized Franklin regularly attends, while SP's several allusions to youthful dancing, in one instance "upon the Greene" (E3v), again remind us of the Franklin's approval of "Countrey Lasses daunc[ing] in the Churchyard after Evensong" (CHARS FRANK 21-23). One of the letters in SP contains a satiric description of a lustful neighbor who "will tinckle with her fingers as though she would play on a Lute" (Fv), a passage that recalls the Aragonian cardinal's scornful account of his mistress as being like one that "hath a little fingring on the Lute, / Yet cannot tune it" (DM 2.4.46-47). References to lute-playing are common, of course, but the deprecatory and sexual context of these passages smacks of Webster's recognizably jaundiced outlook. Another allusion to sexual misconduct in SP involves a punning reference to a woman's playing upon "a base Fiddle" (F2), a detail not unlike the court testimony of a witness in The Devil's Law-Case that Leonora, supposedly guilty of illicit relations, accompanied ballads upon "her Violl" because her secret lover "was never well, but when he was fidling" (4.2.394-95). Antilegal satire shows up in both SP and Webster. The knavish Snipkin, scarified in one of the letters, "hath the Law at his finger ends" (F3v), knowledge that enables his fraudulence. Here we meet the same skepticism about litigation that colors the trial scenes of The White Devil and The Devil's Law-Case, certain aspects of A Cure for a Cuckold and Appius and Virginia, and perhaps, most obviously, the portrait of the "mere Petifogger," who goes fishing with the "Penall Statutes" (CHARS PTFGR 3). Mockery of juridical pomposity became chic at the Inns of Court, and Webster's apparent cynicism toward such matters may have been fostered by his probable experience as a Middle Templar. (20) A letter urging a friend to marry glances at the danger of a bachelor's being "cheated with a cunning widow" (C3v), which reminds us of Webster's exploitation of remarriage (widows who wed a second time play leading roles in all three of his most famous plays) and of the cozening widow of the Characters, who devotes herself to becoming the "filthy purchase" of some unlucky gentleman (O. WID 23). A mention of hare-hunting in SP (D3) comports suggestively with three such references in Webster, one in The Devil's Law-Case (4.2.448) and two in the prose Characters (QKSLR 24; FRANK 17), while falconry, mentioned twice in SP (B3v, F3v), is another sport that comes up in Webster--twice in The White Devil (4.1.139, 5.1.142), once each in The Duchess of Malfi (5.3.27) and The Devil's Law-Case (5.5.36). Portrait-painting clearly fascinated the dramatist, who uses it as a motif in his two best-known tragedies (WD 2.2.23-31; DM 4.2.33-34) as well as more prominently in The Devil's Law-Case (1.1.174-92) where Leonora gives an extended description of a woman sitting for an artist. The topic reappears in SP in which a letter writer characterizes "Mistres Puscat" as "the Painters Subject" (F2). (21) Although SP shares with Webster a number of references to borrowing, lending, and financial indebtedness, this subject is probably too common in Renaissance drama to serve as evidence of authorial distinctiveness. Perhaps more persuasive are the shared allusions to cannibalism: SP invokes "men-eaters" who devour their fellow humans "quicke alive" (G); three references to consuming human flesh occur in Webster--in The White Devil (4.2.65-66), in The Duchess of Malfi (2.2.47), and in Appius and Virginia (2.2.45-47). The strain of acrid derision in Webster's work reappears prominently in the anthology of letters, many passages of which are pointedly satirical or moralistic in the fashion of some of the Characters and certain speeches in the plays. Expressions of contempt for cosmetics and vanity (B4, F2, Fv), for tobacco (B4, Fv), for female garrulousness and gossip (D, D2v, F, Fv, F2, F3v, F4), for pedantry and too much study (C2v, F4, Hv), for ignorance and stupidity (B3, D, D3, D3v, F4v), for court values (Ev, H), and for pretentiousness of style (B2, Hv) can all be paralleled in Webster. (22) Webster's fondness for Latin quotations, especially in prefaces and dedications, fits nicely with one of the letters in SP that counsels the introduction of Latin "Mottos or Proverbs" that "sound better" in the ancient than the modern language (Hv). The author of the letter book is also much concerned with personal reputation or "fame" as a kind of immortality (C2, G2v, H3), a theme that sounds frequently in Webster (cf., for instance, DM 5.5.145-46; MC 123; MH 130, 362). Another striking thematic link between the anthology and Webster appears in an observation that "the death of rich men makes the Drapers harvest," allowing "prodigall Heires" to become "the Tailors good Masters" (D2). The dramatist makes the same point in The Devil's Law-Case in which Romelio says that "Funerals hide men in civill wearing, / And are to the Drapers a good hearing" (2.3.121-22). Webster after all claimed honorary membership in the Guild of Merchant Taylors, a fraternity closely allied to that of the Drapers, and his family, as providers of hearses, were professionally involved in the funeral ceremonies of the wealthy. The dramatist must have been totally familiar with the economics of the cloth trade and its vital connection to the traditions of mortuary celebration. Considering imagery, we find a substantial overlap between Webster's practice and the letter anthology. Among the birds, for instance, both the playwright and SP mention cocks, crows, cuckoos, doves, geese, larks, owls, partridges, peacocks, swallows, turtles, and woodcocks; and among the animals, apes, asses, baboons, crabs, crocodiles, dogs, elephants, ferrets, fish, foxes, frogs, hares, herring, horses, hounds, lambs, lobsters, mice, oysters, pigs, polecats, sheep, and spiders. Shadow images, notable favorites of Webster (there are at least twenty-eight instances), appear six times in SP (C, D2v, D3v, F, F4v, H3v). Angel and devil figures, which occur regularly in Webster (nine and sixty-two times respectively), have counterparts in SP--three of the former (B2, B2v, C4) and four of the latter (C3, C4, E, Fv). Webster's predilection for images of witches and witchcraft (I count at least seventeen in his work) compares with a single mention of women accused of being witches in SP (B4). Eyesight and blindness images, almost innumerable in Webster, are frequent in SP (B2, C4, Dv, E2, F3v, F4, H), and the appearance of the word "Labyrinth" (F4v), even though it may have been prompted by Breton (see No. 50 in the appendix below), is consistent with Webster, who uses it in Westward Ho (3.1.35) and in the main plot of A Cure for a Cuckold (5.1.349). Finally, Webster's famous mist imagery (cf. DM 4.2.190, 5.5.118; A & V 3.2.399, 4.1.88; WD 5.6.260) surfaces also in SP (D3v). (5) A Speedy Post and Webster's Borrowing As will be clear from the appendix below, SP's major source for rhetoric and turns of phrase was Breton's Post with a Packet of Mad Letters. (23) But if Webster was the author, given his habit of extensive borrowing in previous works, we might expect to discover the same kinds of imitation of writers whom Webster read that Dent has documented so painstakingly. As Dent shows, the diversity of writers upon whom Webster drew is formidable and impossible to canvass adequately in a study of the present scope. Moreover, the issue of specific indebtedness becomes more problematic because many ideas in SP are proverbial and in the nature of things too conventional to trace to particular sources. Nevertheless, I have attempted to make a rough beginning by examining a few works that Webster is known to have used with some frequency. These are Sidney's Arcadia (1590), Montaigne's Essays in Florio's translation (1603), Sir William Alexander's Monarchicke Tragedies (1607), the first three books of Stefano Guazzo's Civil Conversation translated by George Pettie (1581), and A General Inventory of the History of France by Pierre Matthieu and Jean de Serres, edited and translated by Edward Grimeston (1607). To these we should also add Matthieu's Heroic Life and Deplorable Death of ... King Henry the Fourth, also translated by Grimeston (1612). Unfortunately, a hasty rereading of these works, or at least the parts of them that Webster is known to have consulted, does not disclose the kind of borrowing we have come to associate with the dramatist's imitative habits--a "density of borrowings," as Dent characterizes them, "unrivaled in English literature" (10). We find a few possible echoes of Sidney's phrasing here and there. SP's "you runne your humour out of breath" (F4v) might be indebted to "run themselves ... out of breath" (Arcadia, 2.8; 1:201) or "runing himself out of breath" (Arcadia, 2.15; 1:249). (24) Similarly, the phrase "old acquaintance" (SP D3) might imitate Sidney's use of the same words (Arcadia, 3.26; 1:503); "hath given me wings" (SP Gv) might be a memory of "give him wings" (Arcadia, 1.19; 1:135); "a rod in your hand" (SP Gv) could reflect "a rod in her hand" (Arcadia, 3.20; 1:471); and "beholds them with the spectacles of affection" (SP G) could conceivably have been influenced by the related metaphor, "looked-upon thorough the spectacles of pittie" (Arcadia, 3.16; 1:447). But such resemblances may represent nothing more than coincidental uses of common ideas. What is more certain than any verbal imitation of Sidney is SP's borrowing of the distinction between the poet and the historian in Sidney's Apology for Poetry (1595). In "Putting off prayses" the anthologist writes that it is the function of one who would praise some person in a letter to play the poet and "to faine things not as they are, but as they should be," after which he advises his correspondent, "I would you were more Historian, then Poet" (H2v). Here, obviously, the author alludes to Sidney's definition of the poet as one who idealizes what he renders, offering not the "brazen" world of Nature as she is, but her "golden" world as perfected by artistic imagination, and to the historian's limitation of being "tied, not to what should be but to what is." (25) Parallels to Montaigne and Alexander appear to be of the same kind as those to Sidney. The doublet "wit and judgment" (SP Bv) shows up also in Florio's Montaigne (Essays, 1.25, 82), (26) as does the distinction between "a shadow and substance" (SP F; cf. Essays, "To the curteous Reader," sig. A5v), the expression "out of square" (SP Ev; Essays, 3.9, 568), and the proverbial phrase (cf. Tilley P304), "a Pig in a poke" (SP D; Essays, 1.42, 139). (27) Alexander uses the phrase "foolish worldlings" in his Alexandrean Tragedy (5.2; Works, 2:200), a conceivable prompt for SP's "ignorant worldlings" (A3v), although the words can also be found elsewhere; and the proverblike statement, "the longest day hath his night" (SP D4v) could be a reworking of Alexander's "Day ... gives place to night ... The evening crownes the day" (Croesus, 2.1; Works, 1:216). (28) Alexander rather than Montaigne might also be the source for SP's shadow-substance contrast mentioned above (cf. Croesus, 1.1 and 2.1; Works, 1:201, 212) and for "mistake not gold for God" (SP C3v; cf. Croesus, 1.1: "makes his gold his god" [Works, 1:207]), although Breton appears to be the likelier source (see note 23 below). The letter anthologist's use of Guazzo's courtesy book and Matthieu's contribution to French chronicles is equally dubious. Webster found in Guazzo's Civil Conversation an enthusiastic endorsement of his copybook method of composition--the commendable and "diligent industry" of gathering sentences or sayings from one's reading and "writ[ing] them in ... tables, to the intent to use them ... afterwardes eyther in speaking or writing" (2; 1:137-38). (29) A few phrases in SP might be taken to suggest that the author of the letter manual, like Webster, relied on Guazzo for verbal inspiration. One of the letters, for instance, discommends an unsavory female as "my ungentle gentle" (SP F2), which seems to echo Pettie's phrase, "ungentle Gentlemen," used in his "Preface to the Readers" (1:8). The "letter to a Brother at Court" warns against becoming "an Ape in Court," (30) which "goes me thinketh against the haire of a good wit" (SP Ev); Guazzo speaks of an unworthy recipient of courtly office as "an Ape in purple" (2; 1:211), later employing (but in a fresh context) the expression "agaynste the hayre" (3; 2:30). (31) Guazzo also writes "hath at his fingers endes" (2; 1:152), a phrase that appears also in SP (F3v); but the expression was in common use, besides which, if borrowed at all, it is more likely to have been lifted from Breton than from Pettie's Guazzo (see appendix below, No. 47). Discussing relations between husbands and wives, one of the conversationalists in the Italian work opines that a man "must accounte of his wife as his onely treasure on earth, and the moste precious Jewell the hath" (3; 2:27). SP may imitate this sentence when one of the letter writers refers to his wife as "my hearts jewell, and loves honour" (Dv). Apart from specific instances of verbal indebtedness, the author of SP may have met several of his ideas in the pages of the Italian courtesy book. SP shares with Guazzo, for example, the notion that "it is not the least art to conceale Art" (B2); Guazzo likewise recommends "skilfull art" practiced "so that the art is hidden" (1; 1:27). Like Guazzo, the writer of SP admires scholarship until its excesses "trouble the braine ... and grow hurtfull to the heart" (C2v). He could have picked up this idea from The Civil Conversation where it is said that "a scholler is well worthy to be laughed at, and reprooved, who applying him selfe altogether to studie, doeth not frame his learning to the common life, but sheweth him selfe altogether ignorant of the affaires of the world" (1; 1:40). One of the letters in SP compares choosing a wife to buying a horse (D). This notion, too, might have come from Guazzo, who employs the same analogy in the same spirit of witty practicality (3; 2:14). Both SP and Guazzo contain passages deploring the female vices of face-painting and incessant chatter, and both too contrast women who make themselves useful domestically with those who seek frivolous entertainment outside the home. In a section on the rearing of children, for instance, Guazzo's interlocutors observe that "a private Gentleman hath no neede ... of singing or daunsing" in the education of his daughters but ought rather to instruct them "in spinning on the wheele" (3; 2:78). One of the satirical letters in SP could have transformed this colloquy into a remark that "among many idle gossips, there is more reeling then spinning" (D2v). Indebtedness of SP to Matthieu (in both his continuation of de Serres's chronicle and in his memorial to Henry IV) would appear to be even more tenuous. Alluding to color-blindness in the context of the Duke of Savoy's inaccurate assessment of political reality, Matthieu refers to "eies ... so troubled, as they cannot well judge of colours" (Inventory, 902). One of the letters in SP may imitate this statement in a remark about Cupid: since he "is said to be blind, how then can he judge of colours?" (B2). In an account of the Duke of Biron's fall, Matthieu reports that certain Frenchmen "shed teares ... and wept ... for pitty" of the nobleman, not because he was innocent but because "his fortune [was] so miserably dejected," observing parenthetically that "Heavie[ness]," that is, weeping, "is more natural to a man than cold[ness]" (Inventory, 978). Although no verbal similarity is involved, this observation could have served as the source for SP's generalization on "Condoling," namely that "to wretched and miserable men, nothing is more comfortable then teares" (G3). Replying to news of a friend's death, one of the correspondents of SP writes, "if my heart had beene of yron, when I read your letter, it would have beene a powerfull Adamant, to have drawne from my eyes a river of teares" (G2v). Matthieu, describing the widespread grief in France after the assassination of Henry IV, uses a similar figure to moralize about the instability of earthly existence: the "spirits" of the king's subjects, "being touched with this death as with an Adamant, should without ceassing turne towards the firme and fixed Pole of that trueth, That what-so-ever is under Heaven is nothing but vanity" (Henry the Fourth, sigs. V4-V4v). Although conceits based on the magnetic properties of the adamant were much in fashion in the early seventeenth century, I can recall no others that use it in the context of mourning. Nor should it be overlooked that Webster employs the adamant image no fewer than eight times throughout his writings. (32) In considering Guazzo, we have already noted that SP's concern with the ill effects of too much study might have derived from the Italian work. But inasmuch as Matthieu's Henry the Fourth (sig. Qq3v) supplied Webster with the basis for Delio's account of Bosola's "fantasticall" studies at Padua (DM 3.3.50-57), we might also speculate that the letter writer's warning about too much companionship with books as a "trouble" to "the braine" (SP C2v) is also traceable to the French chronicler. As a coda to this rudimentary investigation of the "sources" of A Speedy Post, we may mention the popular Elizabethan preacher William Perkins, whom Dent twice cites (234, 255) as a possible influence on The Duchess of Malfi (4.2.27, 5.2.372). In his Godly and Learned Exposition ... upon ... Revelation (1595), this Church of England clergyman refers to "the spirituall eares of the heart" and again to "the inward eares of the heart" (95). This passage would seem to be the source for a bit of advice offered in the letter "from a Master to his Scholler," namely that the pupil should open himself to "the Poets and Orators, so that divine Oracles may always sound in the eares of your heart" (G2v). Conclusion For the most part the data presented in this essay support the assumption that John Webster is the author of A Speedy Post. The book's handling of auxiliary verb forms, prepositions, conjunctions, possessives, and pronouns accords well with what we know of Webster's practice, and even its preference for betwixt over between, which is contrary to Webster's known habit, can be accounted for by a late shift in the dramatist's usage close to the time when the letter collection was produced. A similar incongruity in the use of among versus amongst can be explained on analogous grounds, namely that a high concentration of amongst in the playwright's canon tends to be typical of works from the first half of his literary career. Although, generally speaking, SP fails to exemplify Webster's trademark contractions, this difference also can be reconciled with a theory of Websterian authorship since the dramatist normally reserves them for plays or for contexts too informal or colloquial for letter writing, especially considering that the letters are offered, theoretically at least, as models for supposedly inexperienced practitioners. Probably the strongest evidence for Webster's hand in SP remains the high density of verbal parallels and word collocations that seem to connect the handbook with his stylistic practice throughout a varied canon. Individually considered, most of these 283 items would rouse little interest since many are proverbial or common to other writers. But SP is a relatively brief work, and such a concentration of Webster-like elements in so small a compass is striking. Moreover, at least twenty-five of the parallels seem to be either unique to Webster and SP before 1627, or at least extremely infrequent in other writers earlier than that date. The evidence from vocabulary is somewhat more mixed and difficult to evaluate. Application of the function-word test, which I conducted with the expert and indispensable assistance of Professor Jackson, produces cloudy results. Certainly, at least for a proponent of Webster's authorship, these findings are disappointing, since the chi-square scores for A Speedy Post in relation to Webster's prose are much too high to suggest that the letter collection came from the same pen as that responsible for the Characters, let alone for the three dramas that we regard as the high-water mark of Webster's achievement. Although Breton's analogous collection of letters, the style of which the author of SP was patently imitating, shows a greater "closeness of fit" to the anonymous volume in respect of function words than do Webster's works, whether dramatic or nondramatic, the chi-square score in this case is still too high to make the identification of "I.W." with Breton a satisfactory or attractive hypothesis. On the other hand, my lists of words and phrases from SP not to be found in Webster fall numerically well within the margin of what we might expect if the playwright were the author because fresh subject matter and a new genre would inevitably cause most writers, Webster included, to introduce terms as yet unused and to vary the vocabulary choices of past writings. Further analysis of a selection of words and word groups shared by SP and Webster demonstrates a goodly number of similarities between the dramatist and the letter anthologist in respect of particular uses and frequencies of words and of recognizable idiomatic traits and habits. In addition, SP's invention of satirical proper names compares favorably with Webster's similar use of such names in city comedy. Although the conventionality and predictable content of seventeenth-century letter manuals limit the probability of finding profound likenesses between the literary qualities of SP and Webster's characteristic work, we can detect unexpected congruities in some of the subjects and concerns addressed as well as in the social and moral attitudes voiced. Pervasive satire is an element here as are groups of images that fit Webster's stylistic profile surprisingly well. A necessarily partial and fragmentary consideration of Webster's widely scattered sources fails to disclose the kind of borrowing in SP that students of the dramatist's masterpieces might be led to expect, although indebtedness of a minor kind to writers such as Sidney, Montaigne, Alexander, Guazzo, and Matthieu is arguable. The apparent absence of arresting sententiae, learned importations, or rhetorical treasures from Webster's commonplace book is probably due in some measure to a genre that allowed less freedom or opportunity for the idiosyncratically industrious tesselation of materials that marks the dramatist's style elsewhere. What is unmistakably clear, however, is SP's striking indebtedness to Nicholas Breton, not only in general tone and approach but also in specific verbal borrowings (see appendix below). For proponents of Webster's authorship, this heavy reliance on Breton's A Post with a Packet must obviously be attributed to the writer's conscious stylistic imitation of a successful predecessor. Although such a theory is plausible, given Webster's bent for detailed and laborious imitation in other places, the close links between SP and Breton extend well beyond the specific model in question. In fact SP draws also upon a number of other works by the same prolific author (see note 23 below); and it is worth reminding readers that, apart from A Post with a Packet, at least eight additional Breton titles have had occasion to be mentioned in the course of the present discussion. If Webster was the author of A Speedy Post, which I believe he probably was, we are compelled to acknowledge that his familiarity with, and admiration for, Breton's writings were unusually dedicated. The numerous points in SP where verbal similarities to Breton can be detected might be taken to point toward Breton's rather than Webster's authorship of the anonymous letter handbook. This is obviously a question to be pursued by a scholar more knowledgeable and qualified in Breton's voluminous writings than I am. In the interim, we would seem to be justified in adding A Speedy Post provisionally to the canon of John Webster's works. Appendix: Stylistic Parallels between A Speedy Post and Breton's A Post with a Packet of Mad Letters For ease of reference, quotations from A Post with a Packet of Mad Letters in the following table are taken from the edition by Alexander B. Grosart, separately paginated, in The Works in Verse and Prose of Nicholas Breton (1879; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1966), 2:1-55. Grosart based his text on the revised and slightly augmented edition of 1637, but the phrases cited appear also in the editions of 1602 (part 1) and 1605 (part 2). Since editions proliferated in the early decades of the seventeenth century, the publication history of the work is complex, but both parts were issued together in an undated volume, probably in 1623. If Webster was the author of A Speedy Post, he closely imitated Breton's style, apparently borrowing directly several images and verbal flourishes from the work of his predecessor (see especially Nos. 5, 27, 37, 41, 43, 50, and 54). If, as might perhaps be argued, Breton himself was the author of SP, publishing it under the initials I. W. Gent., he was clearly recycling some of his own sentences (see note 23 below). But it should be noted that Webster may have imitated Breton's collection even before A Speedy Post; see No. 147 in the SP-Webster parallels listed above and note 9 below.
A Post with a Packet of Mad
A Speedy Post Letters
1 "I commit you to Gods protection" (A3v) "I commit you to God" (7,
"I commit you to the ... Almighty" (B3) 20, 24, twice)
"I commit you to the
Almightie" (13, 21, 24,
twice, 35, 40, 4 times,
42, 46)
"I commit thee to the
Almightie" (24, 45)
2 "touching the description" (A4v, F3) "touching Play" (20)
"Touching disease (Cv) "touching your first
"touching your request" (E4) course" (35)
"touching the benefit" (39)
"touching the sale" (40)
"touching your price" (40)
"touching my purpose" (42)
"touching ... heavenly
providence" (43)
"touching Alchymistry" (54)
3 "I confesse" (B, E2) "I confesse" (44)
"I must confesse" (C, C3, C4) "I must confesse" (9, 13)
4 "take ... order with" (B) "take order with" (18)
5 "while wit goes a wooll-gathering" (Bv) "When Wit goes a wool
gathering" (34)
"when their wits goe a
wool-gathering" (43)
Cf. "let them gather
Wooll" (44).
6 "doe you good" (B2, D4) "doe you good" (14, 42)
7 "a little chide" (B2v) "a little forbeare" (12)
"a little put on" (C4v) "a little intreat" (14)
"looke a little" (D) "doe ... a little
"a little to meet" (D2v) wonder" (18)
"observed ... a little" (E) "presume a little" (35)
"wonder a little" (Ev) "goe a little" (35)
"told ... a little (E3v) "bee merry ... a
"tell ... a little" (F) little" (45)
"heare a little" (Fv) "a little to advise" (46)
"love ... a little" (F4v)
8 "heare from you" (B3, B3v, D, D3v, "heare from you" (21, 47)
E2v, E4v) "heare from thee" (8, 47,
"heare from thee" (C2, Ev) 49)
"heare from me" (C4v) "heare from mee" (21)
9 "in the meane time" (B3, Dv, D2v, D3, "In the meane time" (8, 14,
D4v, E4v, F3v) 15, twice, 18, 21, 22,
23, 24, twice, 37, 45,
47, twice, 48, 49, 50)
10 "and so rest" (B3, Cv, D2) "and so rest" (51, twice)
"and so ... I rest" (C, C3v, D, E4v) "and so I rest" (34)
"and so I rest" (E2, E3v, E4) "and so I end" (20)
"and so ... I ... make an end" (D3v) "and so ... I end" (34)
"and so ... I end" (F)
"and so end" (F3v)
11 "I know not" (B3, B4, twice, Cv, D2v, "I know not what to
D3v, F3, F4, Gv) say" (44)
"I know not what to say" (E3, F4) "I know not what" (30, 33)
"I know not what" (Cv, F) "I know not how" (33)
"I know not how" (F)
12 "a hell upon earth" (B4) "a hell on earth" (38)
"a ... Hell upon earth" (C3v) "heaven in this world" (39)
"a ... heaven upon earth" (C2)
"an Angell upon earth" (B2, C4)
13 "continuance of" (B4, C3v) "continuance of" (17, 44)
14 "for this time" (B4, Cv, D4, F, F3) "for this time" (34, twice,
39, twice, 49)
15 "serve my turne" (B4v) "serve your turne" (12)
"serve the turne" (21)
16 "loath ... to" (B4v) "loath ... to" (38)
"loth to" (D4v, Fv) "loath to" (9, 16, 39)
"be loth that" (E3) "be loath to" (16, 24, 39,
"bee loath" (Cv) twice)
"be loth" (26)
17 "pleasure you" (B4v, D2v, H) "pleasure you" (17, 19, 22,
"pleasure me" (F2v) 25, 26, 40, 42, twice)
"pleasure me" (39, 42)
18 "for [= as for] your" (C, 3 times, Cv, "for [= as for] your" (8, 3
3 times, D3v, E2, twice, E4, F4v, times, 9, 11, 12, 4
G3v) times, 41, 45, 4 times,
50, 54)
19 "best welcome" (Cv) "best welcome" (15)
20 "paradise of the world" (C2) "Paradise in this
"on earth a Paradise" (C3) world" (44)
"earthly Paradise" (G2v)
21 "what shall I speake" (C2) "what shall I say" (26, 27,
42, 53)
22 "a second selfe" (C3v) "your second selfe" (33)
"my second selfe" (Dv)
23 "to some purpose" (C4v) "to good purpose" (39)
"to no purpose" (D, D3) "to the purpose" (33)
"to little purpose" (E4v) "to little purpose" (18)
24 "In summe" (D, Dv, Fv) "In summe" (15, 18, 35, 38,
39)
25 "For [= as for] my selfe" (Dv, D2, D3v, "for [= as for] my selfe"
F, F4) (13, 22, 34, twice, 50)
26 "make an end" (D3v) "make an end" (33, 41)
27 "the man in the Moone" (D3v, E4) "the Man in the Moone" (16,
twice, 45)
28 "in a mist" (D3v) "in a mist" (48)
29 "in briefe" (D4v, F3) "In briefe" (19, 33, 37,
"In breefe" (D3v) 42, 43)
30 "not a little" (E) "not a little" (12, 22, 24)
31 "too tedious" (E) "too tedious" (24, 38)
32 "me thinketh" (Ev) "Mee thinketh" (18, 39)
33 "bashfulnesse is babish" (Ev) "weeping is babish" (46)
34 "such occurrents" (Ev) "such occurrents" (17)
"the occurrents of these times" (B4) "the occurrents of
"forraine occurrents" (D2) time" (34)
"present occurrents" (33)
35 "a word or two" (E2v) "a mis-word or two" (23)
36 "plaine truth" (E2v) "plaine truth" (38)
37 "I have gotten the Schoolemaster ... "our Schoolemaster ...
to write this [i.e., letter] for would scarce write thus
mee" (E2v) much [i.e., this letter]
for me" (50)
38 "knowne your minde" (E3) "know his mind" (24)
39 "to tell you the truth" (E3v) "to tell you the
"to speake truth" (C3) truth" (26)
"to tel you the troth" (24)
"to tell thee truth" (26)
40 "spite of your nose" (E4) "spight of your teeth" (33)
41 "if you be angry, turne the buckle of "If you be angry, turne the
your girdle behinde you" (E4) Buckle of your Girdle
behind you" (50)
42 "of late" (E4v, F3, F4) "of late" (34, 35, 44)
43 "face like the one of the foure winds" "face like one of the four
(E4v) winds" (46)
44 "to be short" (E4v) "to be short" (18, 49, 50)
45 "Religion ... he hath none" (F) "Newes we have none" (21)
46 "by this Bearer" (F2v) "by this bearer" (19, 21,
"This bearer" (B2v, D3, D4v) 22, 23, 24, twice, 34,
39, twice, 40, 48)
47 "at his finger ends" (F3v) "at his fingers end" (44)
48 "abuse his best friend" (F3v) "abuse not thy friend" (53)
49 "good fortune" (F4) "good Fortune" (34, 47)
Cf. "ill fortune" (B4).
50 "the Labyrinth of vertue" (F4v) "the Labyrinth of sorrow"
(25, twice)
51 "congratularie Letter" (G) "letter gratulatory" (31,
51)
52 "In conclusion" (Gv) "In conclusion" (50)
53 "as it were" (G3) "as it were" (35, 46)
54 "you ... count it a happinesse" (G4v) "I count it not the least
of my happinesse" (14)
Notes 1. Jean Robertson, The Art of Letter Writing (London: Liverpool University Press, 1942; repr., Folcroft Library Editions, 1973), 25. 2. See R. G. Howarth, "Worms in Libraries," N & Q, N.S. 12 (1965): 154-55; also "John Webster's Classical Nescience," in Howarth, Diary, Drama and Poetry (Cape Town: Privately printed, 1971), 39. Howarth communicated his continuing belief in Webster's authorship of A Speedy Post in a private letter to me shortly before his death in 1974 but supplied no evidence other than that already noted. 3. Webster imported the same Latin tag from Martial (Ars utinam mores, animumque effingere posset; / Pulchrior in terris, nulla tabella foret; If only art could paint his mind, his spirit as they were! / No picture in the world would seem one half so fair) into both the dedication of A Monumental Column (1613), 11. 21-22, and "The Progenie of the Most Renowned Prince James" (1624-25?), 11. 1-2. Another bit of Martial, the motto "--non norunt, Haec monumenta mori" (these are the monuments that know not how to die), appears at the end of the preface "To the Reader" in The White Devil (1612), then again on the title page of the 1615 edition of Overbury's New and Choice Characters, which contains Webster's contribution to the collection and which he almost certainly edited. Still a third use occurs on the title page of Monuments of Honor (1624). Webster's fondness for the phrase "sacred innocence" (possibly borrowed from Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois (4.1.189) is obvious from his use of it in three different places: The Duchess of Malfi (4.2.383); The Devil's Law-Case (2.1.251); and "To his beloved friend, Master Thomas Heywood" (1. 23). In The Duchess of Malfi Webster imitates a passage from Sidney's Arcadia (Book 1, chapter 17), "Why, ignorance in court-ship cannot make you do amisse, / If you have a heart to do well" (5.2.183-84), only to employ it again in his character of the "Fayre and happy Milke-mayd": "ignorance will not suffer her to doe ill, being her minde is to do well" (11. 22-23). It may be more than mere coincidence, then, that two phrases close to those in the Sidney borrowing appear in A Speedy Post: "did amisse" (Cv) and "doe well" (E2v, G2v, H3). Another borrowing from Sidney (Arcadia, Book 5) in the same scene of The Duchess, "Compare thy forme, and my eyes together, / You'll find my love no such great miracle" (5.2.174-75), reappears more literally in The Devil's Law-Case: "Compare her beauty, and my youth together, / And you will find the faire effects of love / No myracle at all" (2.1.258-60). See R. W. Dent, John Webster's Borrowing (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1960), 250-51. Antonio's praise of the Duchess, "She staines the time past: lights the time to come--" (Duchess of Malfi, 1.1.214) resurfaces in A Monumental Column (1. 278) composed at the same time. 4. See Charles R. Forker, Skull beneath the Skin: The Achievement of John Webster (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986), 31. Scholars debate what percentage of Elizabethan and Jacobean society were entitled to the status of gentleman. Stephen Greenblatt thinks the number amounted to 2 percent; Alastair Fowler puts the figure at 5 percent. See Thomas A. Pendleton, "A Review of a Review: Alastair Fowler on Greenblatt's Will in the World," Shakespeare Newsletter 54 (Winter 2004-2005): 107. 5. Dent, 174-75; for Webster's habits of borrowing, see 6-19. 6. See Peter B. Murray, "The Collaboration of Dekker and Webster in Northward Ho and Westward Ho," Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 56 (1962): 482-86; also David J. Lake, The Canon of Thomas Middleton's Plays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 47-49. 7. A Speedy Post contains fifty-nine printed pages. Quire A, consisting of the preliminaries to the book, contains 629 words. Word counts of quires B (2,576), C (2,656), D (2,512), E (2,440), F (2,976), G (1,680), and H (1,902) are based upon counting the words in a sample page from each quire and then multiplying by eight for quires B through G and by six for quire H. Adding the 629 words from quire A yields a total of 17,371 estimated words in the entire book. I round off the number to 17,370. The vocabulary of SP is based on the following calculation: The number of nonrepeated words in quire A is 238. Counting words that appear for the first time in sample pages from quires B through H produces these results: B (125), C (115), D (68), E (70), F (95), G (51), and H (65). If we divide the total (589 nonrepeated words from sample pages in quires B through H) by seven (the number of quires), we get an average of 84.14 new words per page. Multiplying this average by 54 (the number of pages in the book excluding the preliminaries) and then adding the 238 nonrepeated words from the five pages in quire A (the preliminaries), we get a grand total of 4,781.56 or an estimated vocabulary of approximately 4,782 words. 8. Morris Palmer Tilley, A Dictionary of Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1950). 9. Dent (281) notes Webster's possible indebtedness here to Breton's A Post with a Mad Packet of Letters. Dent (196, 201, 290) cites other works by Breton, not as Webster's sources, but as illustrative parallels to DM 2.1.161, 2.5.5. and to DLC 1.1.42. 10. See Forker, Skull beneath the Skin, 546-47n33. 11. See Dent, 36, 49. 12. See S. Schoenbaum, Internal Evidence and Elizabethan Dramatic Authorship (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1966), 189-95.; see also David J. Lake, The Canon of Thomas Middleton's Plays: Internal Evidence for the Major Problems of Authorship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 9-10, and Brian Vickers, "Counterfeiting" Shakespeare: Evidence, Authorship, and John Ford's "Funerall Elegye" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 80-81. 13. See Jackson, Studies in Attribution: Middleton and Shakespeare (Salzburg: Institut fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1979), 80-93. 14. The figures for the three unaided Webster plays are taken from Jackson's "Table XI" (204). The other samples from SP, from Webster's prose, and from Breton are based on my own counts. I am pleased to acknowledge Professor Jackson's substantial assistance in this section of my essay. It was he who actually did the chi-square calculations reported here and who helped me understand the statistical implications of the raw data I sent him. I am deeply in his debt. 15. See Donald W. Foster, Elegy by W.S.: A Study in Attribution (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989), 244. 16. See Breton, A Post with a Packet of Mad Letters, in vol. 2 of The Works in Verse and Prose of Nicholas Breton, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (1879; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1966): babish (46); disswasive (5, 16); occurrents (17, 33, 34). See also Breton's Strange News out of Divers Countries (1622), in Grosart, vol. 2: bag-pudding (7). Individual works in Grosart's edition are paginated separately. 17. Cf. "Pauls Steeple" (SP B3v) and "Pauls Church-yarde" (MH 90); "Tiburne" (SP C) and "Tyburne (WH 3.2.23); "Highgate" (SP C) and "Hiegate-hill" (NH 3.1.65); "Graves-end" (SP E4v) and "Graves ende" (WH 1.1.148); "Chaucer" (SP E2) and "Sir Jeffery Chaucer" (MH 99-100); "Virgill" (SP G2v) and "Virgils golden Tree" (MC 306); "Venus and Vulcan ... Mars" (SP E4) and "Venus had two soft Doves" (DM 3.2.27), "Venus cheeke" (DLC 5.5.44), "Vulcans Engine" (DM 1.1.348), "Mars" (MC 56); "our Ladie" (SP E4v), "our Ladie of Whitsontide" (SP Fv), and "our Lady of Loretto" (DM 3.2.354). 18. Grosart, 2:55. 19. See Forker, 11, 24-30. 20. Ibid, pp. 43-52. 21. Webster's interest in portrait painting may well have had something to do with the family's friendship with Robert Peake, who painted royalty, and with his son William, also a painter. See Forker, 19-20. 22. On cosmetics, cf. DM 2.1.22-41; on tobacco, cf. CHARS TOBAC; on the preference for a quiet woman, cf. WD 4.2.182-84; on loose-tongued women, cf. A & V 2.3.25; on railing women, cf. WH 1.2.71-74; on pedantry and useless study, cf. DM 3.3.50-56; on ignorance and stupidity, cf. WD To ... Reader, 8, 33, also 1.2.131-39 and DLC 4.1.37-39; on court values, cf. DM 1.1.340-42, WD 5.3.191-92, 5.6.261-62; on plain style, cf. MH 375-78. 23. The author of SP appears to have imitated Breton's phraseology or conceptual detail in a few additional works: cf. "mistake not gold for God" (SP C3v) and "I will not be with Gold, for God mistooke" (Breton, Olde Mad-cappes New Gally-mawfrey [1602], sig. B; "Monarke of a little Molehill" (SP C) and "king of a mole-hill" (Breton, A Merrie Dialogue betwixt the Taker and Mistaker [1603], 17-18); "the eye of understanding" (SP B2v, C2) and "the Eie of Understanding" (Breton, Characters upon Essaies [1615], "Wisdome," Grosart, 2:9); "a kinde of heaven upon earth" (SP C2) and "She makes a Heaven upon Earth" (Breton, Characters upon Essaies [1615], "Wisdome," Grosart, 2:5); "sweet companions" (SP C2) and "sweet Companions" (Breton, Crossing of Proverbs, Part II [1616], Grosart, 2:8); "to make a hell upon earth" (SP B4) and "to make a Hell upon Earth" (Breton, Conceyted Letters, Newly Layde Open [1618], sig. B). Most of these phrases, however, seem to have been fairly common. 24. Sir Philip Sidney, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia, ed. Albert Feuillerat, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912). Future citations are to this edition. 25. Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, ed. Geoffrey Shepherd (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1973), 100, 107. 26. Webster also used the phrase in The White Devil, probably having picked it up from Montaigne; see No. 9 in the SP-Webster parallels. The same essay, which we know Webster read, provided the dramatist with the basis for an eloquent speech of the Duchess of Malfi on the scorn of death (DM 4.2.216-18); see Dent, 238. 27. The Essayes ... of ... Michaell de Montaigne, trans. John Florio (London, 1603); facsimile edition (Menston: Scolar Press, 1969). Citations are to this edition. 28. The Poetical Works of Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, [ed. R. Alison], 3 vols. (Glasgow: Maurice Ogle & Co., 1870). Citations are to this edition. 29. The Civile Conversation of M. Steeven Guazzo: The First Three Books Translated by George Pettie, Anno 1581, and the Fourth by Barth. Young, Anno 1586, with an Introduction by Sir Edward Sullivan, Bart., 2 vols. (London: Constable & Co., 1925). Citations are to this edition. 30. See No. 101 in the SP-Webster parallels. 31. Webster uses this not uncommon phrase also in Westward Ho; see No. 103 in the list of SP-Webster parallels. 32. Cf. No. 223 in the list of SP-Webster parallels. |
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