Comments On AEP: Willis, A Lack of Scholarship

March 6, 2006
Dear Albert,

In one of your last communications you asked for my impression of Charles M. Willis’s “The Printing of AEP and the Earl of Oxford”—which article you sent me in the last batch. As you know, I, too, have an interest in AEP and have credited the work to Lord Oxford in my “Complete Poems of Ignoto,” which was dedicated to you. Know that I am completely amenable to withdrawing my claim that Oxford was the author of AEP (and, of course, the poetry claimed by it’s author in the book itself, i.e., The Partheniads, etc.) if I am persuaded that I have not made a sustainable claim. I am aware that Steven May (in the latest edition of the DNB) credits AEP to Puttenham, that Hess considers May’s work caps the case, and that other newly published works do the same, the work of Willis being one of them. The question arises: do I just dogmatically persist in my claim, despite the evidence and the opinions of scholars and commentators (what else can I call them) alike, or am I justified in my attribution?

Before I made my claim and published in MS “Ignoto: Complete Poems”, I made a fairly detailed investigation of the matter. I was lead to my opinion, when no one else had even suggested that Oxford was its author or had anything to do with it, so far as I knew, and I did so primarily on the basis of my analysis of AEP and the fact that the work was contemporaneously credited to “Ignoto” by Sir John Harrington, only a year or so after its publication and contained many apparent Shakespearean allusions and paraphrases. (You yourself provided me with a copy of the “Partheniads,” Sir John Harrington’s Preface, the introduction of Gladys Willcock and Alice Walker, and other materials to assist me). I carefully read and reread AEP and heard so many “Shakespearean” bells in the prose and poetry of “Ignoto,” and found so little evidence that Puttenham was its author, that I was persuaded to my analytical conclusions. (You will recall that there was—and still is—a long a decades long debate whether it was George Puttenham or his brother who was the alleged author).

Then, about three or four years after producing the MS (i.e., “Ignoto: The Complete Poems”), about a year ago now, I discovered on Ron Hess’s postings the announcement of Willis’s book allegedly establishing the premise of the authorship of Puttenham as a fact. I read the entire first chapter of Willis’s book which was posted on the internet. I was not convinced. (To date I have yet to read Steven May’s piece in the DNB). Now, I have read another piece from Willis—and I am even more unconvinced than before. Whether or not I am right in my attribution of Oxford as the ­author of AEP, Willis’s work, as judged by these two pieces, is fraught with all sorts of frailties.

The first fatality for Willis’s thesis is the fact that (in both pieces) he observes or quotes others who observe that Puttenham eschewed literary circles, and influenced no one. Indeed, as I recall there is not even any evidence that he was reputed to be a poet—a point, I add, which is not discussed at all by Willis. Willis does quote an unpublished PhD Harvard dissertation which he regards as “essential” to the debate. The first line of which reads:

“Dating the composition of the Arte, however, is most difficult because Puttenham avoided debates, avoided literary circles, and influenced no critic before publication of the treatise in 1589.” 

But, we have it from Sir John Harrington that “Ignoto” was apparently notoriously well known, a clever poet who had many followers. He speaks of “Ignoto” the author of AEP as “making himself and manie others so cunning in the art. . .” Although Harrington, peevishly says that Ignoto has a “slender talent” for poetry he confesses he was able to make himself and “many others” very cunning in the art. The implication is obvious; Ignoto of AEP is a cunning poet with many followers. This is hardly the portrait of someone who avoided literary circles had no reputation as a poet and influenced no critic—he influenced Harrington we can see, to oppose him!

Further reading into Harrington reveals that Ignoto was apparently the leader of a school of poets who were at odds with the Sidney school or poetry, with whom Harrington aligned himself.

Both Willis’s statements and the “essential” materials of Stanley Doherty’s unpublished PhD dissertation tend to be rather “wacky” in my view, there are so many self-contradictory and illogical statements and claims made. It would be a bore to point all of them out, but I will note a few in passing. 

Doherty, with no evidence at all, other than his own unfounded speculations makes statements like this:

“The ‘decorum’ treatise refers to no texts or events after 1565. . .the text (as Field prints it), reveals disparate layers of composition and development spanning forty years. This would indicate that Puttenham was writing (and most likely using the work for teaching purposes) between 1560 and 1575.”

What a ridiculous statement. One has to accept totally, on faith, that Doherty is correct in his wild speculations and that from them flow the certainty that he was using his text, as Field prints it, he says (we know of no other text other than what Field printed and have no way of knowing if it was different from the original) “most likely using the work for teaching purposes.” So, from knowing nothing, we now allegedly know that Puttenham, who was not known as a writer at all, on any front, was using his alleged work as a tool for teaching—and, if you can believe that, he is now going to tell us when all this happened, it happened “between 1560 and 1575”! 

Ye, gods. This is just the kind of thing that I cannot tolerate. One would think that Ron Hess wrote it. Fabricating out of whole cloth an entire history, including dates, when some totally speculated event happened. And, of course, the irony, if one can call it that, is that Doherty himself tells us in the first sentence that Puttenham was the sort that avoided debates, literary circles, or attempted to influence critics. But, he is fast at work supposedly teaching an hypothecated early version of his book to unknown students between the certain period of 1560 and 1575. If I was back at my old profession I’d immediately file a motion with the court to quash the claim as being frivolous, without foundation in fact. And I would win.

Next Doherty tells us that “Fields [the printer’s] primary motivation in printing the AEP” was “recognition and further employment”—not from Puttenham, but from the Queen and Burghley. Now how would he know what Fields “primary motivation” was is beyond me; he knows nothing about it at all. These are just more words. Maybe Fields got paid for printing the AEP, maybe that was his motivation—as it almost invariably is of every printer for every printing job. After all he was a professional printer. 

And here is Willis himself at work. He writes of Puttenham:

“It would seem [to whom?] that Puttenham had deliberately decided to ‘disappear’ or conceal himself from public affairs after writing the Justification, most likely because this highly sensitive political document made him many additional enemies among the Catholic supports of Queen Mary.”

As I recall it is conjecture that Puttenham wrote the Justification, in the first place, but to characterize a motive to ‘disappear’ as an explanation of why we can’t track Puttenham because he wrote a track against Queen Mary seems peculiar in itself. It may be the first time in history that anyone wrote a track to benefit a Monarch and then decided to ‘disappear’ because it would make him enemies of the enemies of the Monarch. To whom does such a scenario “seem”—to Willis and no one else is my guess. And in typical fashion Willis would take this hypothetical absurdity and use it as the factual stepping stone to another absurdity. If you accept the first one maybe you’ll swallow gullibly the second one, until we have an unbroken set of wild speculations all of which confirm each other and mystically enter into the realm of facts.

Willis continues with the statement that “It is also essential [apparently Willis would have us believe his ‘It would seem’ is an ‘essential’ and accepting one we must ‘also’ accept the other] to examine another work. . . by William Rushton (1909).. .” He then quotes not Rushton, but Lisak quoting Rushton, to the effect that Rushton identifies “no less than thirty-five possible links” to Shakespeare. The key word here is “possible.” This 35 possible links in his quotation turns into, within a few paragraphs “hundred of parallels in the Shakespeare plays to Puttenham’s AEP. . .”

The man has a multiplication machine in his mind! But, of course, the fact that there are a great many “Shakespearean” links in AEP is the reason I concluded that the book was written by Oxford, in the first place, I have indicated a number of these links in my MS which is a commentary of “Ignoto: The Complete Poems. As I can get to it, I would be very interested to see what Rushton has to say about the Shakespeare connections in AEP—he may have a lot to add that I overlooked—but I doubt I will be much more interested in anything that Doherty or Willis has to offer on the subject. That Rushton, without my previous knowledge, also arrived saw many Shakespearean flourishes in AEP is most interesting. So, far as I know no Oxfordian had previously detected the same or even came close to the idea that Oxford may have written it.

And, finally, Willis added, apparently as an afterthought, the idea that Oxford may have had anything to do with publication of AEP.  With no argument or evidence Willis states that “The most likely person who was responsible for the unauthorized printing of Puttenham’s manuscript of the Arte in 1589, was the 39-year-old Earl of Oxford who had already patronized writers and poets such as Gabriel Harvey, Edmund Spenser, John Lyly and others.” How does Willis know that the printing of AEP was “unauthorized”—does he have a magic ball that he looks into to find these truths? Why does he choose Oxford for “patronizing” the “unauthorized” printing of AEP, because, Willis says, he knew the printer. And what were the circumstances of this alleged unauthorized printing? Well, Willis tells us, Puttenham might have fled England, to escape the enemies he made after publication of Justification and Oxford “might have decided” that he would win the favor of the Queen and Burghley by printing it.

After imagining that, Willis turns his imagination to another facet of this fascinating “history” and he conjures that Oxford was actually a student of Puttenham, “it is equally possible” we are told. How about equally “impossible”? Indeed, Willis tells us when Oxford became a student of Puttenham, Indeed, Oxford “if he had been Puttenham’s pupil between 1560 and 1570” probably or “may have had parts of the manuscript of the Arte in his possession”—of course, this is “if he had been Puttenham’s pubil.” Willis invents this hypothetical history at 1560 to 1570 because that was “when much of the Arte was written.” And how does he know that, and upon what evidence? He doesn’t know it and there is no evidence is the simple fact of the matter. But, this is how he “explains” the close connection between Puttenham and the Shakespeare plays. “He had been taught all the lessons” contained in Puttenham’s book.

For one who has made his living for the last 20 years (before my semi-retirement) analysis is a profession not a game of “what ifs”—as it is for all these amateur literary sleuths. I was responsible for rigorous analysis of complicated accounting scenarios for investments up to $1,000,000,000. Millions of dollars were invested or not invested on the basis of my analysis. I may seem intolerant of the “what ifs” “it seems,” “may haves” but it grates against my background.

Now, however, I am aware of the specific contents of AEP and the historical record that gives rise to the speculation that Puttenham wrote AEP. As I recall, there is an issue of corrupt records and, what seems most persuasive that Oxford did not write AEP if specific statements which seem to be recollections of the author going back before Oxford’s time. I have no problem assuming that, as Willis charges, that the author of AEP was very clever and may have specifically planted those recollections to conceal his true identity. It is also possible that Puttenham or someone else actually had a hand in the writing of AEP. There is evidence in the record that Martin Marprelate writings (his first tract only I believe was probably written by Oxford), for example, tells contradictory biographical information—claiming at one time to be married and another time not to have ever been married, etc. So, my suspicion that Oxford could plant intentional lies into a text is not beyond my belief.

All in all, on one hand we have Harrington’s published testimony that Ignoto wrote AEP,-- that Ignoto was a leader of “many” other poets and was very “clever”—all of which applies to Oxford and not to Puttenham. On the other we have, in a private letter, a request from a writer that he wanted typeset for his book to be the same as “Puttenham’s”—and that typeset is the type used for AEP. I have always considered that Field may have published another book, other than AEP that also used the same typeface, also that there was more than one Puttenham in England and it there is no evidence that “George Puttenham” was conclusively the person to whom the reference referred. And, of course, it may be that to Harrington he knew of Oxford’s part in the book, but did not know of Puttenham’s role. Still, I can easily imagine, as said, that Harrington read the book very closely and knew that Ignoto was putting in text to conceal his identity—or considered Puttenham’s part, if such was the case, to be minimal and Ignoto’s to be the main role. We cannot deduce these things to a certainty. Personally, I find Harrington’s “outing” of “Ignoto” to be the more persuasive and the said letter mentioning “Putteham” quite possibly a fraud—there were other frauds involved in this very matter.

In any case, I have written more on this matter in my MS, tracing the history of the “Puttenham” claim but I need to refresh myself on the matter before I can say anything more with a modicum of confidence.

I may have given you more than you wanted by way of response to the piece by Willis, especially considering how busy you are.
Best,
Eric

Added 10/30/2015: This letter created and sent in a single session, without re-read or edit, has not edited the above save that: quotation marks, clearly indicated by text as quotations but without the quotation marks in three places and a slip where “Ignoto” was mistakenly typed instead of “Willis” as clearly indicated by context. Otherwise, the reader sees exactly what was written and sent 3/6/2006..