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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 30/05/16, SPi
No Hamlets
No Hamlets
German Shakespeare from Nietzsche
to Carl Schmitt
An d r e a s H ö f e l e
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp,
United Kingdom
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It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Andreas Höfele 2016
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2016
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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For Gabriele
Preface
As a German Shakespeare scholar, I never felt much drawn to the subject of

Shakespeare in Germany. Apart from a few occasional papers I stayed clear of it.
What changed my mind—apart from a brief but intense encounter with a
Nietzschean passage on Shakespeare while working on a previous book—was the
resurrection of Carl Schmitt’s all but forgotten Hamlet essay from the 1950s in
English translation in 2009. Schmitt’s Hamlet or Hecuba: The Intrusion of the Time
into the Play, though remarkable enough in itself, was made even more remarkable
to me by its modern Anglo-American readers’ inclination to detach—or ‘reclaim’—
it from its author’s political history, notably his involvement in the Third Reich.
This struck me as a problematic effort to occlude ‘the intrusion of the time’, the
very thing which Schmitt makes the sine qua non of tragedy itself and Hamlet in
particular. There was, I felt, a need to supply what was being occluded: the ‘form
and pressure’ of the time (Ham. 3.2.22) which had shaped Schmitt’s essay and
mindset.
From this grew the larger project of this book, the plan to explore the role of
Shakespeare in the writings and thought of right-wing intellectuals from the
founding of the German Empire in 1871 to the ‘Bonn Republic’ of the Cold War
era. Despite its obvious relevance to Germany’s calamitous twentieth-century
history, this strand of German Shakespeare reception had not been treated in a
sustained book-length study before.
Beginning with Friedrich Nietzsche, the chapters that follow trace the trajectory
of the rightist engagement with Shakespeare to the poet Stefan George and his
circle (which included such critic-scholars as Friedrich Gundolf and Ernst
Kantorowicz), to the literary efforts of the young Goebbels during the Weimar
Republic, to the Shakespeare debate in the Third Reich and its aftermath in the
controversy over ‘inner emigration’. I proceed from there to Carl Schmitt’s Hamlet
book of 1956, and finally to the end of the post-war period and its Shakespearean
epilogue: Heiner Müller’s grand-scale production of Hamlet/Machine at the
Deutsches Theater in East Berlin in 1989.1
But can we, in this day of postmodern diffusion, still usefully employ the blunt
old distinction of ‘left’ and ‘right’? More specifically, can we apply the label ‘right’
to a figure as elusively multifaceted as Nietzsche, or to Carl Schmitt, whose largest
support group in recent years would no doubt define its own position as ‘left’ (or
at least ‘leftish’)? I would argue that indeed we can, so long as we do not overcharge
the term with essentializing assumptions.
As I use the term here, ‘right’ serves for orientation and is not meant to reduce
a variety of individualities to a single essence. Across their very pronounced
1 Müller clearly does not, in any sense, belong to an intellectual tradition of the Right. For his
inclusion in this book see Introduction, section IV, and Chapter 9.
viii Preface
ifferences, the authors discussed here do share a common set of views and atti-
d
tudes that is recognizably rightist, i.e. anti-egalitarian, anti-democratic, and anti-
liberal. Without exception, they condemn Western modernity and mechanized
mass civilization, upholding in its stead an ideal of organic culture. The roots of
the latter lie in an idealized past associated with the notion of Abendland (the
Occident), the ‘old European’ heritage rooted in classical antiquity. Hostile to the
rationalist Enlightenment and its universal humanism, these authors endorse hier-
archical, authoritarian models of state and society and strong, charismatic leaders.
They are elitist, although theirs is not an elitism that fawns on the aristocracy,
which they often despise almost as much as the philistine bourgeoisie. In this sense
they are not ‘conservative’; they do not seek to bolster or restore the old upper
classes.2 Rather, they tend to see themselves as radicals—radically opposed to the
status quo but often harking back to a lost past for their vision of the future. When
they speak positively of ‘the people’ (das Volk), they generally mean the supposedly
homogeneous ethnic group that constitutes ‘the nation’, although the degree of
their national fervour varies considerably.
As late as 1981 it was still possible to maintain that the study of German
Shakespeare reception continued to be dominated by Friedrich Gundolf ’s
Shakespeare and the German Spirit (1911), a teleological narrative that saw the
Bard’s inspirational power culminate in the twin peaks of Goethe and the Romantic
Schlegel–Tieck translation.3 The rest of the nineteenth century was dismissed as a
period of decline. As Rudolf Sühnel noted: ‘[T]he eighteenth century continues to
be ploughed’ while German Shakespeare reception in the nineteenth century
‘remains terra incognita’.4 Although this assessment no longer holds today, it is still
true that for the late nineteenth and early twentieth century no narrative has
emerged of similar consistency to that of Gundolf. His influence remains palpable
even where (and precisely because) it is rejected.
I do not propose to offer an alternative grand récit here. Such narratives—more
performance-focused or dedicated to the study of political appropriations of the
left, for example—are not only possible, but do in fact exist.5 The interest of the
one unfolded here is to probe Shakespeare’s cooptation into the siren songs of
ideas and ideologies that proved disastrously attractive in German history. ‘[T]he
sheer extent and pervasiveness of Shakespeare’s influence in Germany’, writes
2 Political scientists have therefore objected to the term ‘conservative revolution’ as applied to
radical right-wing intellectuals in the Weimar Republic. For a summary of the discussion: Stefan
Breuer, Anatomie der Konservativen Revolution (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
1993), 1–7. In everyday usage, of course, ‘conservative’ is often used in a looser sense, as a synonym
of ‘right-wing’.
3 See Werner Habicht, Shakespeare and the German Imagination (Hertford: International Shakespeare
Association, 1994); Roger Paulin, The Critical Reception of Shakespeare in Germany, 1682–1914: Native
Literature and Foreign Genius (Hildesheim: Olms, 2003), 488–95.
4 Rudolf Sühnel, ‘Gundolfs Shakespeare. Rezeption—Übertragung—Deutung’, Euphorion 75
(1981), 245–74 at 255.
5 Wilhelm Hortmann, Shakespeare on the German Stage, vol. 2: The Twentieth Century (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998). Cf. also Simon Williams, Shakespeare on the German Stage, vol. 1:
1586–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Preface ix
Roger Paulin, allows us to speak of, ‘in Harold Bloom’s terms, a “Shakespeare-haunted”
culture’.6 I do not map this haunting in all its ramifications and heterogeneity. My
specific, narrower focus is on the extent to which a ‘Shakespeare-haunted culture’
informs the right-wing German intellect.
Central to my inquiry is the identification of Germany, the German national
character, or more specifically the German intellectual, with Hamlet. It is in this
recurring motif, born from the frustrations of the liberal-nationalist opposition of
the 1840s, that the supposed special relationship of Germans with Shakespeare,
their proprietary claim to ‘our Shakespeare’, found its most personal and at the
same time highly political expression. Identification with Hamlet by no means
waned in the decades after the revolution of 1848 but maintained a cultural and
political force well beyond the turn of the century. Yet there are others beside
Hamlet—Julius Caesar, for example, and Brutus. And there is also, quite unex-
pectedly, Othello.
Othello is something of a gatecrasher in this book. Originally uninvited, he now
takes up a whole chapter. This is due to the help I received from Gerd Giesler, the
editor of Carl Schmitt’s diaries from the 1920s. He not only alerted me to the fact
that the diaries contained dozens of references to Othello; he also most generously
furnished me with the complete unpublished transcripts of Schmitt’s journals,
thus enabling me to present here, for the first time, Carl Schmitt’s obsessive engage-
ment with the Moor of Venice. Chapters 5 and 8 have greatly profited from Gerd
Giesler’s expert advice.
Invaluable advice also came from Dieter Schulz, who read the whole book in
manuscript, and from Werner Habicht, Robert Weimann, and Ina Schabert, who
read and commented on several chapters. Before her much-lamented death, Ruth
von Ledebur accompanied the early stages of my work in progress with critical
support. I will always be grateful to her.
I am greatly indebted to Bastian Kuhl for his bibliographical research and his
untiring commitment in preparing the text for publication. My particular thanks
go to Kay Henn and Tom Minnes for their excellent language advice.
The time for this book to materialize was provided by an ‘Opus magnum’ Grant
from the Volkswagen Foundation and sabbatical leave from the University of
Munich. I am deeply grateful for both.
I received helpful advice and support from Ruth Morse and Peter Holland,
Maik Hamburger, Wilhelm Hortmann, Andreas Kablitz, Peter Marx, Heinrich
Meier, Oliver Primavesi, Peter Strohschneider, Friedrich Vollhardt, and Wolfgang
Weiss. Bettina Boecker provided a highly conducive working environment at the
Munich Shakespeare Library. For opportunities to present work in progress I am
grateful to Brian Cummings, Paul Franssen, Dominique Goy Blanquet, Ton
Hoenselaars, Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, and Richard Wilson. Three draft chapters
benefited from the scrutiny of the ‘Kränzchen’, a circle of my Munich colleagues
and friends.
6 Paulin, The Critical Reception of Shakespeare in Germany, 1.

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x Preface
Jacqueline Baker and Ellie Collins of Oxford University Press gave me their
fullest support throughout. My thanks also go to Matthias Meusch and his staff
at the Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, Abteilung Rheinland, Düsseldorf, for
facilitating my research in the Carl Schmitt papers, and to Jürgen Becker, trustee
of the Schmitt estate, for kindly granting me permission to quote from the unpub-
lished materials in the Düsseldorf archive. I am also grateful for the help I received
from the Bundesarchiv Koblenz in my research on the Goebbels papers.
An earlier version of Chapter 8 appeared under the title ‘Hamlet in Plettenberg:
Carl Schmitt’s Shakespeare’, in Peter Holland, ed., Shakespeare Survey 65 (2012),
378–97, © Cambridge University Press, reproduced with permission.
Part of Chapter 7 draws on my ‘Reeducating Germany: BBC Shakespeare
1945’, in Shakespeare and European Politics, ed. Dirk Delabastita, Jozef De Vos,
and Paul Franssen (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008), 255–77. An
earlier version of the final section of Chapter 4 appeared as ‘The Rebirth of Tragedy,
or No Time for Shakespeare (Germany, 1940)’, Renaissance Drama 38 (2010),
251–68.
I am indebted to Rebecca Faber and Anna Katharina Lauber for assistance in
preparing the text for publication.
Above all, I thank my wife to whom I dedicate this book.
Contents
List of Illustrations xiii

A Note on Texts and Translations xv
Introduction1
1. Highest Formula: Nietzsche’s Shakespeare 26
2. Shakespeare in the Master’s Circle: Stefan George and
the ‘Secret Germany’ 54
3. In the Master’s Circle (II): Ernst Kantorowicz 91
4. Millions of Ghosts: Weimar Hamlets and the Sorrows of
Young Goebbels 121
5. Little Otto: Carl Schmitt and the Moor of Venice 160
6. Third Reich Shakespeare 192
7. ‘But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue’:
Hamlet in Inner Emigration 227
8. Hamlet in Plettenberg: Carl Schmitt and the Intrusion of the Time 249
9. Epilogue: Welcome to the Machine. Berlin 1989 276
Bibliography 293
Index 321
List of Illustrations
2.1. Stefan George 55

2.2. Friedrich Gundolf in 1899 62
3.1. Stefan George and the Stauffenberg brothers, Claus (left) and
Berthold (right), in 1924 95
3.2. Stefan George as Dante, Munich Artists’ Carnival, 1904 117
4.1. Asta Nielsen as Hamlet 127
4.2. Leopold Jessner’s Hamlet: play within the play 133
4.3. Fritz Kortner as Hamlet 135
4.4. Fidus, ‘Durchbrechender Michael’ 151
4.5. Manuscript page from Goebbels’s Judas Iscariot158
5.1. Carl Schmitt in 1930 164
7.1. Gustaf Gründgens as Hamlet, 1936 231
7.2. ‘Caliban’ by Alfred Kubin on the cover of Prisma (1947) 245
8.1. Carl Schmitt in the mid-1950s 250
8.2. Carl Schmitt’s Hamlet-Curve 269
9.1. Ulrich Mühe addressing the demonstrators at Alexanderplatz,
4 November 1989 277
9.2. Ulrich Mühe as Hamlet 283
9.3. Heiner Müller and Ulrich Mühe during rehearsals 285
A Note on Texts and Translations
All Shakespeare quotations, unless otherwise stated, are from The Norton Shakespeare,
3rd edn, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (New York: Norton, 2016).
Whenever possible, I have used published English translations of German texts.
Where no published translation is referenced, the translations are mine.
Introduction
I NO HAMLETS!
This book takes its title from a decisive moment in German history, the moment
when Germany ceased to be Hamlet. The moment is commemorated in the dedi-
cation which Horace Howard Furness wrote for the two Hamlet volumes of his
New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare in 1877:
To the
‘German Shakespeare Society’
of Weimar
Representative of a people
whose recent history
has proved
once for all
that
‘Germany is not Hamlet’
these volumes are dedicated
with great respect
by the editor.
Furness, an American well-versed in things German,1 was responding to the famous
opening line of a poem by Ferdinand Freiligrath, published thirty-three years
earlier: ‘Deutschland ist Hamlet!’2 The line, which quickly became a political
slogan,3 turned Shakespeare’s hesitant prince into the tortured self-portrait of a
nation that, in the words of Freiligrath’s poem, ‘broods and dreams and knows not
what to do’ instead of actively striving for freedom and national unity. But since
their victory over France and the subsequent foundation of the German Empire in
1871, the Germans were Hamlets no more. Under Prussian leadership, a nation of
self-doubters had risen to major power status and the identification with
Shakespeare’s pensive procrastinator had lost its foundation—‘once for all’.
1 See James M. Gibson, The Philadelphia Shakespeare Story: Horace Howard Furness and the New
Variorum Shakespeare (New York: AMS Press, 1990), 8.
2 Ferdinand Freiligrath, ‘Hamlet’, in his Ein Glaubensbekenntniß (Mainz: Zabern, 1844), 253–7.
3 See Walter Muschg, ‘Deutschland ist Hamlet’, Die Zeit, No. 17, 24 April 1964, and No. 18,
1 May 1964. <http://www.zeit.de/1964/17/deutschland-ist-heimat> [sic] and <http://www.zeit.
de/1964/18/deutschland-ist-hamlet-ii>, accessed 10 August 2015; Manfred Pfister, ‘Germany is
Hamlet: The History of a Political Interpretation’, New Comparison 2 (1986), 106–26; Heiner O.
Zimmermann, ‘Is Hamlet Germany? On the Political Reception of Hamlet’, in New Essays on Hamlet,
ed. Mark Thornton Burnett and John Manning (New York: AMS Press, 1994), 293–318.
2 Introduction
My interest is in what this happy closure leaves unclosed: the continuing impact
of a political Shakespeare in Germany’s history of ideas and ideologies, an influ-
ence whose scope, though centred on Hamlet, extends far beyond the gloomy
Dane. Germany may have ceased ‘to be Hamlet’ for those who thought the nation
to have reached its historical telos in the Wilhelmine Empire—among them
Freiligrath himself, whose former republican sympathies, not untypically, gave way
to a clamorous patriotism in poems like ‘Hurra, Germania!’ which celebrated the
victory over France.4 But those repelled by this new national self-aggrandizement
could find in Hamlet, the brooding outsider at the raucous court of Denmark, a
mirror for their disaffection. If Germany was ‘officially’ no longer Hamlet, discon-
tent with the official Germany could still vent itself in a spirit of Hamlet-like
loathing.
This split between the official Germany and its discontents is already implied
in Freiligrath’s poem. His simple equation ‘Germany is Hamlet’ actually marks a
division, not one but two Germanies: the Germany of the reactionary rulers and
the Germany suppressed by their rule. What the poem identifies as Hamlet is only
the latter, the ‘true’ but suppressed Germany, whose opposition to the status quo
makes it the nucleus of an other Germany. This other Germany recurs, time and
again, in the writings and thought that will be discussed in this book, most prom-
inently in the ‘Secret Germany’ of the poet Stefan George and his followers
(Chapters 2 and 3). For Freiligrath in 1844, this other Germany was the liberal,
democratic nation state, the state that was born and died in the failed (or ‘incom-
plete’) revolution of 1848. For the writers that will concern us here the ‘true’
Germany was different: certainly not liberal, certainly not a democracy, though
perhaps even more Hamlet-like for that very reason. Mourners all, they sought the
lost realm of a ‘noble father in the dust’ (Ham. 1.2.71). The ghost that stalks the
battlements of their dreams is a messenger from a past that promises salvation for
the future. This ghost speaks not of a liberty that goes with brotherliness and equal-
ity, but of one that bristles with claims of distinction, superiority, and the right of
the stronger. In 1935, a century after Freiligrath, when the nightmare version of
this dream was reaching its apogee, the dramatist Gerhart Hauptmann returned to
the old Hamlet equation, at once denying and confirming it:
Germany, thank God, is not Hamlet the inactive figure as he was formerly misunder-
stood, but Hamlet the problematic, richly emotional man of action. In youth, suffering,
growth, defeat and victory, Hamlet has a much more universal Germanness than Faust
and is inseparable from Germany’s great spiritual destiny.5
My title, No Hamlets, tries to capture both the denial and the negation of that
denial. It signals a continuing identification that is no less powerful when hidden
or disavowed. A case in point is the squabble over Shakespeare that arose during
the First World War. Addressing the German Shakespeare Society in 1915, Gerhart
4 Ferdinand Freiligrath, ‘Hurra, Germania!’ (1870), in Freiligraths Werke, 2 vols, ed. Paul Zaunert
(Leipzig and Vienna: Bibliographisches Institut, 1912), vol. 2, 146–8.
5 Gerhart Hauptmann, Letter to Wulf Leisner, 9 December1935; quoted in Peter Sprengel, Der
Dichter stand auf hoher Küste: Gerhart Hauptmann im Dritten Reich (Berlin: Ullstein, 2009), 100.
Introduction 3
Hauptmann said that, even if England was where Shakespeare was born, Germany
was where he was truly alive.6 The English counter-thrust, in time for the 1916
Shakespeare tercentenary and shortly before the battle of the Somme, was delivered
by the playwright Henry Arthur Jones. He refuted Hauptmann’s proprietary claim
to Shakespeare, and especially to Hamlet, by associating Germany with Macbeth
instead: ‘What evil angel of their destiny tempted the Germans to choose Macbeth
for their anniversary offering to Shakespeare, in this year of all others? It is the very
picture of their own character marching to its ruin.’7 The identification of the
Germans with Macbeth was made all the more forceful by the implied message that
they were certainly no Hamlets.
But how did Germany come to be Hamlet in the first place? Before entering
into my subject proper, it will be necessary to offer a brief account of its prehistory:
first, an outline of Shakespeare reception in Germany up to Freiligrath’s poem;
second, a résumé of Germany’s political history from the end of the ‘Old Reich’,
the ‘Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation’ in 1806, to the founding of a new
one in 1871, the opening moment of this study.
II GERMAN SHAKESPEARE
By 1916, when Henry Arthur Jones wrested the Bard from the clutches of the
Hun, Shakespeare had long ceased to be a foreigner in Germany. The story of his
appropriation (or ‘nostrification’, as one of the founders of the German Shakespeare
Society called it8) has often been told. Its most popular version begins with an
‘inflammation’: ‘For a genius’, wrote Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in 1759, ‘can only
be inflamed [entzündet, also ignited or kindled] by another genius.’9 The genius
who was to do the inflaming was the English Shakespeare, of whom Lessing knew
precious little at the time, the genius to be inflamed as yet nowhere in sight. The
ten-year-old Goethe had just survived the smallpox; Schiller had eight months to
wait before being born. German literature had, of course, the acknowledged genius
of Klopstock, but his forte was the religious epic à la Milton. Lessing’s sights were
trained on drama. To be good, plays in the mid-eighteenth century had to observe
6 Gerhart Hauptmann, ‘Deutschland und Shakespeare’, Shakespeare-Jahrbuch 51 (1915), vii–xii.
On Shakespeare and the First World War: Balz Engler, ‘Shakespeare in the Trenches’, Shakespeare
Survey 44 (1992), 105–11; Nicolas Detering, ‘Shakespeare im Ersten Weltkrieg’, in Shakespeare unter
den Deutschen, ed. Christa Jansohn (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2015), 175–96.
7 Henry Arthur Jones, Shakespeare and Germany (London: Wittingham, 1916), 22. Jones’s stri-
dency is far in excess of Hauptmann’s provocation. The dominant tenor of Hauptmann’s speech is not
proprietorially nationalistic, but pacifist and cosmopolitan: Shakespeare is a common ‘treasure of
humanity’ (Hauptmann, ‘Deutschland und Shakespeare’, viii).
8 ‘Nostrifizierung’: Franz von Dingelstedt, Studien und Copien nach Shakespeare (Pest, Vienna,
and Leipzig: Hartleben, 1858), 5. A magisterial History of Shakespearean Drama in Germany
appeared as early as 1870. Rudolph Genée, Geschichte der Shakespeareschen Dramen in Deutschland
(Leipzig: Engelmann, 1870). The most recent study of the subject is Jansohn, ed., Shakespeare unter
den Deutschen.
9 ‘Denn ein Genie kann nur von einem Genie entzündet werden’. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing,
‘17. Literaturbrief ’, in Lessing, Werke und Briefe in zwölf Bänden, ed. Wilfried Barner, vol. 4: Werke,
1758–1759, ed. Gunter E. Grimm (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker-Verlag, 1997), 499–501 at 500.
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4 Introduction
the French neo-classical rules laid down for German emulation by the influential
Leipzig professor of poetics Johann Christoph Gottsched. ‘No one’, Lessing wrote,
‘would deny that the German theatre owes a great deal of its improvement to Herr
Professor Gottsched.’ And he continued with palpable relish: ‘I am that no-one.
I deny it outright.’10
When the ten-year-old Goethe, the as yet unborn Schiller, and other literary
hopefuls of the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) generation reached their
twenties, the inflammation predicted by Lessing did indeed take place. Discarding
French regularity in favour of English ‘Nature’, the young hotspurs of the 1770s
and ’80s made Shakespeare their idol. And although Goethe and Schiller in their
riper years returned to a more ‘regular’, neo-classical agenda, the Shakespearean
inflammation was crucial in releasing the creative energies that propelled German
letters from parochial obscurity to European fame within a mere generation.
Shakespeare, the catalyst of Germany’s classical canon, was in time annexed to that
canon as ‘our third classic’.
In the German Shakespeare story, or Shakespeare myth,11 the seventeenth of
Lessing’s Letters on the Most Recent Literature (1759–65), from which the quota-
tions in the previous paragraph are taken, assumes ‘a kind of status akin to Luther’s
ninety-five theses’.12 Lessing’s polemic is less than fair to Gottsched, and much of
what he said about Shakespeare was derived from Voltaire and other French sources
and ‘told the world nothing about Shakespeare it did not already know’.13 This
may be so, but it hardly matters. Whatever its shortcomings, Lessing’s ‘17th Letter
on Literature’ marks a new departure: the decisive inaugural push for Shakespeare’s
German canonization.14
The single most important individual inflammation with the Shakespeare virus
is recorded on six handwritten pages and was not published until 1854. This was
the speech which the 22-year-old Goethe delivered on Shakespeare’s (German)
name-day, the name-day for Wilhelm, on 14 October 1771. Its critical substance
is slight. But as the expression of an enthusiasm that was to shape the course of
German literature it can hardly be overrated:
We honour today the memory of the greatest of wanderers and thus honour ourselves.
We bear the seeds within us of the merits that we cherish. Do not expect me to write
much and tidily; tranquillity of soul is no garment for a feast day; and as yet I have
thought too little about Shakespeare; only sensed and felt at most, this was the best
that I could do. The first page of his that I read made me his own for life, and when
I was finished with the first play I stood like someone born blind whom a magical
hand had suddenly given sight. I realized, I felt most vividly my existence expanded by
10 Lessing, ‘17. Literaturbrief ’, 499.

11 Cf. Habicht, Shakespeare and the German Imagination, 1. The German enthusiasm for
Shakespeare, it should be noted, was not entirely uncontested. The chorus of approval was recurrently
challenged by the dissonant voices of anti-Bardolators. See Chapter 6, section IV.
14 Paulin concedes as much when he states that Lessing’s ‘Letter’ ‘effectively silenced the last
authoritative anti-Shakespearean voice [in Germany]’. The Critical Reception of Shakespeare in
Germany, 90.
Introduction 5
an infinity; everything was new, unknown to me, and the unaccustomed light hurt my
eyes. [. . .] I jumped high in the air and felt at last that I had hands and feet.15
The young Goethe’s encounter with Shakespeare was an awakening, and thus
much less about Shakespeare than about Goethe himself: his way forward, his new
sense of empowerment, his rebellion against the literary establishment. Like Keats
‘on first looking into Chapman’s Homer’, Goethe feels ‘like some watcher of the
skies / When a new planet swims into his ken’.16 But unlike Keats, the epiphany
does not arrest him in awestruck wonder; instead it makes him burst with restless
energy.17 His sense of liberation is boundless. Instead of Keats’s self-effacing ‘nega-
tive capability’, Goethe is unstoppable in his assertion of the self and its power to
achieve: the ‘egotistical sublime’ at the peak of its youthful dynamism.
For the young Goethe and his Sturm und Drang contemporaries, Shakespeare
was the exemplary ‘genius of pure subjectivity and individuality’,18 most fully
expressed in Hamlet. While Shakespeare’s dramaturgy became the model for
Goethe’s unrestrainedly ‘irregular’ history play Götz von Berlichingen (1773),
Hamlet was the model for Werther, the hero of ‘pure subjectivity’ who propelled
Goethe to European fame. The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), which churchmen
condemned as a lure to suicide and Napoleon confessed to have read no less than
seven times, turned Shakespeare’s melancholy prince into a contemporary man of
feeling. Straining against the whips and scorns of a time too narrowly conventional
to accommodate his ideals and aspirations, he finds all that life is otherwise lacking
when he meets Lotte, a young woman who is unfortunately engaged to, and then
marries, another man. After many heart-rending encounters with her, Werther sees
the hopelessness of his passion and ends his agony by putting a bullet through his
head. Both his trademark outfit—a dark blue tailcoat over a yellow waistcoat,
yellow breeches and top boots—and his suicidal end found imitators. A veritable
Werther-fever took hold of Goethe’s impressionable readership.19
Werther was a crucial step in the integration of Hamlet into German culture.
‘Hamlet-fever’, writes Walter Muschg, could only catch on in Germany ‘because
there already was a Werther fever’:
One intensifying the other, the two maladies were basically one and the same. The
shattered Hamlet was seen as a brother of the suicidal Werther, and even Goethe
15 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ‘Zum Schäkespears Tag’ (1771), first printed in Allgemeine
Monatsschrift für Wissenschaft und Literatur, April 1854. For part of the translation I draw on Williams,
Shakespeare on the German Stage, vol. 1, 18.
16 John Keats, ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’, in Major Works, ed. Elizabeth Cook
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 32, ll. 9–10.
17 See Williams, Shakespeare on the German Stage, 18: ‘The most striking aspect of Shakespeare’s
impact is the limitless energy Goethe considered he gave him.’
18 Jochen Schmidt, Die Geschichte des Genie-Gedankens in der deutschen Literatur, Philosophie und
Politik 1750–1945, 2 vols (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1988), vol. 1, 167.
19 On the reception of Goethe’s Werther: Klaus R. Scherpe, Werther und Wertherwirkung: Zum
Syndrom bürgerlicher Gesellschaftsordnung im 18. Jahrhundert (Bad Homburg: Gehlen, 1970). The
Werther craze provoked many sardonic comments, a particularly succinct one from the aphorist Georg
Lichtenberg: ‘Werther—a heart with testicles’; quoted in David E. Wellbery, ‘1774, January–March:
Pathologies of Literature’, in A New History of German Literature, ed. David E. Wellberry, Judith Ryan,
and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 386–92 at 389.
6 Introduction
himself succumbed to this misunderstanding. From early on, Hamlet must have
eclipsed all other works of Shakespeare for him. [. . .] In the year following the
Hamburg performance [of Hamlet by the famous actor manager Friedrich Ludwig
Schröder] Goethe began writing Wilhelm Meister’s Theatrical Mission (1796) in
which he meant to show his calling as the German Shakespeare and to make the
engagement with Hamlet the turning point in Wilhelm’s career. [. . .] That Wilhelm
himself plays the lead character and the staging of Hamlet changes his life [. . .]
underscores the fateful significance for his own development which Goethe ascribed
to the play.20
For T. S. Eliot, Goethe’s intensely personal investment in the play, or rather in the
prince, makes him a prime example of ‘that most dangerous type of critic, the critic
with a mind which is naturally of the creative order, but which through some
weakness in creative power exercises itself in criticism instead’.
Such a mind had Goethe, who made of Hamlet a Werther; and such had Coleridge,
who made of Hamlet a Coleridge [. . .]. The kind of criticism that Goethe and
Coleridge produced, in writing of Hamlet, is the most misleading kind possible. For
they both [. . .] make their critical aberrations the more plausible by the substitution—
of their own Hamlet for Shakespeare’s—which their creative gift effects.21
For Goethe’s contemporaries in Germany, Wilhelm Meister’s reading of Hamlet
was a revelation, the ‘authorized version’ which later readings could either follow,
modify, or reject—but never ignore. The key passage reads like this:
[I]t is clear to me what Shakespeare set out to portray: a heavy deed placed on a
soul which is not adequate to cope with it. And it is in this sense that I find the
whole play constructed. An oak tree planted in a precious pot which should only
have held delicate flowers. The roots spread out, the vessel is shattered. A fine,
pure, noble and highly moral person, but devoid of that emotional strength that
characterizes a hero, goes to pieces beneath a burden that it can neither support nor
cast off.22
20 Muschg, ‘Deutschland ist Hamlet’.

21 T. S. Eliot, ‘Hamlet and His Problems’, The Athenaeum, 26 September 1919, 940–1 at 940.
Eliot’s initial underestimation of Goethe is most baldly apparent in his statement: ‘Of Goethe it
is perhaps truer to say that he dabbled in both philosophy and poetry and made no great success
of either; his true role was that of the man of the world and sage—a La Rochefoucauld, a La
Bruyère, a Vauvenargues’ (‘Hamlet and His Problems’, 940). Twenty years later, Eliot said this: ‘It
is an interesting sentence; interesting because it enunciates so many errors in so few words
together with one truth: that Goethe is a sage.’ In the same essay he writes: ‘The wisdom of a great
poet is concealed in his work; but in becoming aware of it we become ourselves more wise. That
Goethe was one of the wisest of men I have long admitted; that he was a great lyric poet I have
long since come to recognize; but that the wisdom and the poetry are inseparable, in poets of the
highest rank, is something I have only come to perceive in becoming a little wiser myself.’
‘Goethe as Sage’, in Eliot, On Poetry and Poets (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957), 256
and 264.
22 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Collected Works, vol. 9: Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship
(1795/6), trans. and ed. Eric A. Blackall (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 146 (Book
IV, Chap. 13). For a well-informed account of Goethe’s evolving views on Hamlet, see Stephen
Fennell, ‘Johann Wolfgang Goethe’, in Great Shakespeareans, ed. Adrian Poole and Peter Holland, vol.
3: Voltaire, Goethe, Schlegel, Coleridge, ed. Roger Paulin (London and New York: Continuum, 2011),
44–91 at 61–72.
Introduction 7
The Romantic August Wilhelm Schlegel was enthusiastic: with the Hamlet theme
in Wilhelm Meister Shakespeare had ‘risen from the dead and walks among the
living’.23 Goethe had made Hamlet a contemporary.
He remained a contemporary throughout the next century.24 The nineteenth
century’s ‘speculative genius’, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, ‘is a sort of living
Hamlet’.25 Little wonder that in Germany, where this speculative bent flourished
most unrestrainedly, Shakespeare’s pensive Dane should prove an irresistible figure
of identification. A nation of Hamlets, the Germans, in the words of Madame de
Staël, ‘abandon themselves, each separately, to all the impulses of an unrestrained
imagination’; their ‘eminent faculty of thought [. . .] rises and loses itself in vacuum,
[. . .] penetrates and vanishes in obscurity [. . .] [and] confounds itself by the force
of analysis’.26 De Staël quotes the idiosyncratic Romantic humorist Jean Paul who
‘said that the empire of the seas belonged to the English, that of the land to the
French, and that of the air to the Germans’ (35).
The satire in Jean Paul’s remark and the critical edge in Madame de Staël’s are
unmistakable. But the Hamlet of Wilhelm Meister was first and foremost a posi-
tive figure: ‘[a] fine, pure, noble and highly moral person’. In this view, he was
absolved of any blame for his inaction. Indeed his failure to act, far from being
morally reprehensible, was the very proof of his ‘highly moral’ nature. Hamlet’s
virtue was inseparable from the scrupulous hesitancy that isolated him in a world
of his own thoughts and disabled him for the world of action.
This reading of Hamlet was particularly accommodating to the mentality of the
Bildungsbürgertum, Germany’s bourgeois intelligentsia of the nineteenth century.27
The social habitat of this class was emphatically private, its grasp on public affairs
at best tentative in a country predominantly still governed by absolutist rulers. The
emergence of a public sphere deserving of that name was effectively prevented by
the fragmentation of the country. ‘This division of Germany, fatal to her political
force, was nevertheless very favorable to all the efforts of genius and imagination’,
23 August Wilhelm Schlegel, ‘Etwas über William Shakespeare bei Gelegenheit Wilhelm Meisters’
[Something on William Shakespeare on the Occasion of Wilhelm Meister], Die Horen 4 (1796),
57–112 at 58.
24 This is particularly true not only of Germany, but also of Russia. When Russian intellectuals of
the 1880s found in Hamlet the mirror image of their own inner strife, their ‘predominant interpret-
ation’ was still ‘shaped by Goethe’s view’: Ekaterina Sukhanova, Voicing the Distant: Shakespeare and
Russian Modernist Poetry (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2004), 52. On Hamlet in
Russia, see Eleanor Row, Hamlet: A Window on Russia (New York: New York University Press, 1976);
also Boika Sokolova, ‘Between Religion and Ideology: Some Russian Hamlets of the Twentieth
Century’, Shakespeare Survey 54 (2001), 140–51, and Mikhail P. Alekseev, ed., Shekspir i russkaya
kultura [Shakespeare and Russian Culture] (Leningrad: Nauka, 1965). At the height of Russian
Hamletism William Morris made the much-quoted remark: ‘Hamlet […] should have been a Russian,
not a Dane.’ Letter to Georgiana Burne-Jones, 17 March 1888, in The Collected Letters of William
Morris, ed. Norman Kelvin, vol. 2, part B: 1885–1888 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1987), 755.
25 Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘Shakespeare; or, the Poet’, in Representative Men, in Emerson, Essays and
Lectures, ed. Joel Porte (New York: Library of America, 1983), 710–26 at 718.
26 Anne Louise Germaine de Staël, Germany, by Madame the Baroness de Staël-Holstein, ed.
O. W. Wight (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1859), 33 and 35. References to this edition are given
in brackets in the text.
27 This point is persuasively argued in Pfister, ‘Germany is Hamlet’.
8 Introduction
de Staël wrote in 1810 (32). But however favourable it may have been, the situ-
ation also entailed very real disadvantages:
As there is no capital city in which all the good company of Germany finds itself
united, the spirit of society exerts but little power; and the empire of taste and the
arms of ridicule are equally without influence. Most writers and reasoners sit down to
work in solitude, or surrounded only by a little circle over which they reign. (32)
Germany lacked what France and, of course, England too, so abundantly and con-
spicuously possessed: ‘Society’, a metropolitan sphere of communication where
issues of the political, moral, and aesthetic Zeitgeist were defined and negotiated by
an articulate public. The lack of ‘society’ made Germany’s intellectual elite so quix-
otically unworldly. Intellectuals simply had no access to the world of affairs in the
German states and statelets: ‘The nobles’, de Staël notes, ‘have too few ideas, the
men of letters too little practice in business’ (34). ‘Understanding is a combination
of the knowledge of men and things’; society the only place where such knowledge
can be acquired and exercised. But such a place was not to be found in Germany,
and thus ‘[i]t is imagination more than understanding that characterizes the
Germans’ (34–5).
Madame de Staël’s generalizations may be somewhat broad-brushed and Goethe,
a busy minister to the Duke of Saxe-Weimar as well as Germany’s undisputed
‘poet-prince’, posed an obvious exception to her rule. But she is right in marking
as characteristically German a profound alienation between the intellectual and
political spheres, an alienation that the bourgeois intelligentsia turned into a
matter of principle: a fundamental gap between Geist and Politik, between a
‘higher’ sphere of the mind, a sphere governed by ‘the true, the beautiful and the
good’ and a ‘lower’, ‘corrupting’ sphere of politics. The Hamlet of Wilhelm Meister
has his place in this setting. Those who acquiesced in the situation could find their
acquiescence ennobled by his nobleness.
But this positive view of Hamlet is, of course, open to question, if only because
Hamlet so insistently questions himself. For Hegel, this was the defining trait
of Hamlet, the trait that made him at once paradigmatically modern—meaning,
for Hegel, ‘romantic’—and deeply irritating. In his Lectures on Aesthetics (given
between 1817 and 1829, published posthumously 1835–8), Shakespeare’s Hamlet
epitomizes Hegel’s essential distinction between ancient and modern or ‘romantic’
tragedy, and he makes no bones about his preference for the former. The heroes of
classical tragedy are single-mindedly dedicated to the one aim that defines them:
‘Throughout they are what they can and must be in accordance with their essential
nature.’28 In modern tragedy, by contrast, ‘the principle of subjectivity’ gains sway:
‘Therefore it takes for its proper subject-matter [. . .] the subjective inner life of the
character’ (1223). Hamlet exemplifies the specific qualities, but also the pitfalls, of
this modern bent. ‘[I]n the portrayal of concretely human individuals’, Hegel
28 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, 2 vols, trans. and ed.
T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), vol. 2, 1194. References to this edition are given in
brackets in the text.
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That women hold in full great reverence.
Now will I turn again to my sentence.
A col fox, full of sly iniquity,
That in the grove had wonned yearés three,
By high imagination forecast.
The samé night throughout the hedges brast
Into the yard where Chanticleer the fair
Was wont, and eke his wivés to repair,
And in a bed of wortés still he lay
Till it was passed undern of the day,
Waiting his time on Chanticleer to fall,
As gladly do these homicidés all
That in await liggen to murder men.
O falsé murderer! rucking in thy den,
O newé Scariot, newé Ganelon!
O false dissimuler, O Greek Simon!
That broughtest Troy all utterly to sorrow.
O Chanticleer, accursed be the morrow
That thou into thy yard flew from thy beams
Thou were full well ywarnéd by thy dreams
That thilké day was perilous to thee:
But what that God forewot must needés be,
After the opinion of certain clerkés,
Witness on him that any perfect clerk is,
That in schoolé is great altercation
In this matteré, and great disputision,
And hath been of a hundred thousand men:
But I ne cannot boult it to the bren,
As can the holy Doctor Augustin,
Or Boece, or the Bishop Bradwardin,
Whether that Godde’s worthy foreweeting
Straineth me needly for to do a thing
(Needely clepe I simple necessity)
Or elles if free choice be granted me
To do the samé thing or do it naught
Though God forewot it ere that it was wrought,
Or if his weeting straineth never a deal
But by necessity conditional.
I will not have to do of such mattere;
My Tale is of a Cock, as ye may hear,
That took his counsel of his wife with sorrow,
To walken in the yard upon the morrow
That he had met the dream, as I you told.
Womenne’s counsels be full often cold;
Womenne’s counsels brought us first to woe,
And made Adam from Paradise to go,
There as he was full merry and well at ease:
But for I n’ot to whom I might displease
If I counsel of women wouldé blame—
Pass over, for I said it in my game.
Read authors where they treat of such mattere,
And what they say of women ye may hear,
These be the cocke’s wordés and not mine:
I can none harm of no womán devine.
Fair in the sand to bathe her merrily
Li’th Partelote, and all her sisters by,
Against the sun, and Chanticleer so free
Sang merrier than the mermaid in the sea,
(For Phisiologus sayeth sikerly
How that they singeth well and merrily).
And so befell that as he cast his eye
Among the wortés on a butterfly,
He was ware of this fox that lay full low,
Nothing he list him thenné for to crow,
But cried anon, “Cok! cok!” and up he start
As man that was affrayed in his heart,
For naturally a beast desireth flee
From his contráry if he may it see,
Though he ne’er erst had seen it with his eye.
This Chanticleer, when he ’gan him espy,
He would have fled, but that the fox anon
Said: “Gentle sir, alas! what will be done?
Be ye afraid of me that am your friend?
Now, certes, I were worse than any fiend
If I to you would harm or villany.
I am not come your counsel to espy;
But truély the cause of my coming
Was only for to hearken how ye sing,
For truély ye have as merry a steven
As any angel hath that is in heaven;
Therwith ye have of music more feeling
Than had Boece, or any that can sing.
My Lord, your father (God his soulé bless!)
And eke your mother of her gentleness,
Have in my house ybeen to my great ease,
And certés, Sir, full fain would I you please.
But for men speak of singing, I will say,
(So may I brouken well my eyen tway,)
Save you, ne heard I never man so sing
As did your father in the morrowning:
Certés it was of heart all that he sung:
And for to make his voice the moré strong
He would so pain him, that with both his eyen
He musté wink, so loud he wouldé crien,
And standen on his tiptoes therewithal,
And stretchen forth his necké long and small.
And eke he was of such discretion,
That there n’as no man in no región
That him in song or wisdom mighté pass.
I have well read in Dan Burnel the ass
Among his Vers, how that there was a cock,
That for a Priestés son gave him a knock
Upon his leg when he was young and nice
He made him for to lose his benefice;
But certain there is no comparison
Betwixt the wisdom and discretion
Of youré father and his subtilty.
Now singeth, Sir, for Sainté Charity:
Let see, can ye your father counterfeit?
This Chanticleer his wingés ’gan to beat,
As man that could not his treason espy,
So was he ravished with his flattery.
Alas! ye lordés, many a false flatour
Is in your court, and many a losengeour,
That pleaseth you well moré, by my faith,
Than he that sothfastness unto you saith.
Readeth Ecclesiast of flattery:
Beware ye lordés of their treachery.
This Chanticleer stood high upon his toes
Stretching his neck, and held his eyen close,
And ’gan to crowen loude for the nones;
And Dan Russell the fox start up at once,
And by the gargat henté Chanticleer
And on his back toward the wood him bear,
For yet ne was there no man that him sued.
O destiny! that mayst not be eschew’d,
Alas that Chanticleer flew from the beams,
Alas his wife ne raughté not of dreams!
And on a Friday fell all this mischance.
TO MY EMPTY PURSE
To you, my purse, and to none other wight,
Complain I, for ye be my lady dear;
I am sorry now that ye be so light,
For certés ye now make me heavy cheer;
Me were as lief be laid upon a bier,
For which unto your mercy thus I cry,
Be heavy again, or ellés must I die.
Now vouchsafen this day, ere it be night,

That I of you the blissful sound may hear,
Or see your colour like the sunné bright,
That of yellowness ne had never peer;
Ye be my life, ye be my heartés steer;
Queen of comfórt and of good company,
Now, purse, that art to me my livés light,

And saviour, as down in this world here,
Out of this towné help me by your might,
Sithen that you will not be my tresór,
For I am shave as nigh as any frere,
But I prayen unto your courtesy,
BALLAD OF WOMEN’S DOUBLENESS

This world is full of variance
In everything; who taketh heed,
That faith and trust, and all Constance,
Exiléd be, this is no drede,
And save only in womanhead,
I can ysee no sikerness;
But, for all that, yet as I read,
Beware alway of doubleness.
Also that the fresh summer flowers,

The white and red, the blue and green,
Be suddenly with winter showers,
Made faint and fade, withouten ween;
That trust is none, as ye may seen,
In no thing, nor no steadfastness,
Except in women, thus I mean;
Yet aye beware of doubleness.
The crooked moon (this is no tale),
Some while isheen and bright of hue,
And after that full dark and pale,
And every moneth changeth new,
That who the very sothé knew
All thing is built on brittleness,
Save that women always be true;
The lusty freshé summer’s day,

And Phœbus with his beamés clear,
Towardés night they draw away,
And no longer list t’ appear,
That in this present life now here
Nothing abideth in his fairness,
Save women aye be found entere,
And devoid of all doubleness.
The sea eke with his sterné wawés

Each day yfloweth new again,
And by the concourse of his lawés
The ebbe floweth in certain;
After great drought there cometh rain;
That farewell here all stableness,
Save that women be whole and plein;
Fortunés wheel go’th round about

A thousand timés day and night,
Whose course standeth ever in doubt
For to transmue she is so light,
For which adverteth in your sight
Th’ untrust of worldly fickleness,
Save women, which of kindly right
Ne hath no touch of doubleness.
What man ymay the wind restrain,

Or holden a snake by the tail?
Who may a slipper eel constrain
That it will void withouten fail?
Or who can driven so a nail
To maké sure newfangleness,
Save women, that can gie their sail
To row their boat with doubleness?
At every haven they can arrive

Whereat they wot is good passáge;
Of innocence they cannot strive
With wawés, nor no rockés rage;
So happy is their lodemanage
With needle and stone their course to dress,
That Solomon was not so sage
To find in them no doubleness.
Therefore whoso doth them accuse

Of any double intentión,
To speaké rown, other to muse,
To pinch at their conditión,
All is but false collusión,
I dare right well the soth express;
They have no better protectión,
But shroud them under doubleness.
So well fortunéd is their chance,

The dice to-turnen up so down,
With sice and cinque they can advance,
And then by revolutión
They set a fell conclusión
Of lombés, as in sothfastness,
Though clerkés maken mentión
Their kind is fret with doubleness.
Sampson yhad experience

That women were full true yfound
When Dalila of innocence
With shearés ’gan his hair to round;
To speak also of Rosamond,
And Cleopatra’s faithfulness,
The stories plainly will confound
Men that apeach their doubleness.
Single thing is not ypraiséd,

Nor of old is of no renown,
In balance when they be ypesed,
For lack of weight they be borne down,
And for this cause of just reason
These women all of rightwisness
Of choice and free electión
Most love exchange and doubleness.
L’ENVOI
O ye women! which be inclinéd
By influence of your natúre
To be as pure as gold yfinéd,
And in your truth for to endure,
Armeth yourself in strong armúre,
(Lest men assail your sikerness,)
Set on your breast, yourself t’assure,
A mighty shield of doubleness.
Chaucer was called the Morning Star of Song, and his immediate
followers proved to be satellites of far less magnitude.
John Skelton, an early Poet Laureate, was of a buffoon type of
humor, yet thus speaks of his own verse.
Though my rhyme be ragged,
Tattered and gagged,
Rudely rainbeaten,
Rusty, moth-eaten,
If ye take well therewith,
It hath in it some pith.
One, at least, of his whimsical poems is not without charm.

TO MAISTRES MARGARET HUSSEY
Mirry Margaret
As midsomer flowre,
Gentyll as faucon
Or hauke of the towre,
With solace and gladnes
Moch mirth, and no madnes,
All good and no badnes,
So joyously
So maydenly
So womanly
Her demeynynge
In every thynge
Far, far passynge
That I can endite
Or suffice to write
Of mirry Margaret
As mydsomer flowre
Gentill as faucon
Or hawke of the towre.
As pacient and as styll
And as ful of good wil
As faire Isiphyll
Coliander
Sweete pomaunder
Good Cassander;
Stedfast of thought
Wel made, wel wroght,
Far may be sought
Erst that ye can fynde
So curteise so kynde
As mirry Margaret
This midsomer flowre,
Gentyll as faucon
Or hauke of the towre.
The Troubadours and Minstrels were followed by a type of

entertainer known as the Fool or the Court Fool, who took the place
of the satirist in the great households.
Soon various jests were collected, and attributed to these
domestic fools, whose garb began to take the form of the cap and
bells, accompanied by the jester’s bauble.
As printing became more widespread, the jestbooks multiplied,
and many collections were published in England.
Skelton seems to have been quite as much Court Jester as Poet
Laureate under Henry VII and Henry VIII, and a volume of Merie
Tayles of Skelton is one of the earliest of the Jest Books.
Yet, since this was published some forty years after Skelton’s
death it is assumed that but few of the tales are really of the poet’s
origination.
Likewise, Scogin’s Jests and the stories attributed to Tarlton and
Peele are considered unauthentic as to authorship and merely the
work of the hack writers of the period.
These Jestbooks as well as the C. Mery Talys, or Hundred Merry
Tales, which, with its companion volume, Mery Tales and Quicke
Answeres, was, we are told, used by Shakespeare, are now found in
many reprints, and only a few bits of their witty or humorous lore may
be given here.
As an example of the sharp satire of Skelton, the following shows
how he regarded the prevalent practice of obtaining letters patent of
monopoly from the crown, and also is a hit at the fondness for
drinking among the Welsh.
HOW THE WELSHMAN DYD DESYRE SKELTON TO AYDE HIM IN HYS SUTE
TO THE KYNGE FOR A PATENT TO SELL DRYNKE
Skelton, when he was in London went to the kynge’s courte,

where there dyd come to him a Welshman saying, “Syr, it is so that
many dooth come upp of my country to the kynge’s court, and some
doth get of the kynge by a patent a castell, and some a parke, and
some a forest, and some one fee and some another, and they doe
lyve lyke honest men, and I should lyve as honestly as the best, if I
might have a patent for good drynke, wherefore I dooe praye you to
write a fewe woords for me in a lytle byll to geve the same to the
kynge’s handes, and I will geve you well for your laboure. I am
contented sayde Skelton. Syte downe, then, sayd the Welshman and
write. What shall I wryte? sayde Skelton. The Welshman said wryte
“dryncke.” Nowe sayde the Welshman wryte “more dryncke.” What
nowe? said Skelton. Wryte now “A great deale of dryncke.” Nowe
sayd the Welshman putte to all thys dryncke “A littell crome of
breade, and a great déale of dryncke to it,” and reade once again.
Skelton dyd reade “Dryncke, more dryncke, and a great deale of
dryncke and a lytle crome of breade and a great deale of dryncke to
it.” Then the Welshman sayde Put oute the litle crome of breade, and
sette in all dryncke and no breade. And if I myght have thys sygned
of the kynge, sayde the Welshman, I care for no more as long as I
lyve. Well, then, sayde Skelton, when you have thys sygned of the
kynge then will I labour for a patent to have bread, that you wyth
your dryncke and I with the bread may fare well, and seeke our
livinge with bagge and staffe.
Here Begynneth Certayne Merye Tales of Skelton, Poet Lauriat

HOW SKELTON CAME LATE HOME TO OXFORD FROM ABINGTON
Skelton was an Englysheman borne as Skogyn was, and hee was

educated & broughte up in Oxfoorde: and there was he made a
poete lauriat. And on a tyme he had ben at Abbington to make mery,
wher that he had eate salte meates, and hee did com late home to
Oxforde, and he did lye in an ine named ye Tabere whyche is now
the Angell, and hee dyd drynke, & went to bed. About midnight he
was so thyrstie or drye that hee was constrained to call to the tapster
for drynke, & the tapster harde him not. Then hee cryed to hys oste
& hys ostes, and to the ostler, for drinke; and no man wold here hym.
Alacke, sayd Skelton, I shall peryshe for lacke of drynke! what
reamedye? At the last he dyd crie out and sayd: Fyer, fyer, fyer!
when Skelton hard euery man bustle hymselfe upward, & some of
them were naked, & some were halfe asleepe and amased, and
Skelton dyd crye: Fier, fier! styll, that everye man knewe not whether
to resorte. Skelton did go to bed, and the oste and ostis, & the
tapster with the ostler, dyd runne to Skeltons chamber with candles
lyghted in theyr handes, saying: where, where, where is the fyer?
Here, here, here, said Skelton, & poynted hys fynger to hys moouth,
saying: fetch me some drynke to quenche the fyer and the heate and
the drinesse in my mouthe: & so they dyd. Wherfore it is good for
everye man to helpe hys owne selfe in tyme of neede wythe some
policie or crafte, so bee it there bee no deceit nor falshed used.
The Jests of Scogin

HOW JACKE BY SOPHISTRY WOULD MAKE OF TWO EGGS THREE
Scogin on a tyme had two egs to his breakfast, and Jack his
scholler should rost them; and as they were rosting, Scogin went to
the fire to warme him. And as the egs were rosting, Jacke said: sir, I
can by sophistry prove that here be three egs. Let me se that, said
Scogin. I shall tel you, sir, said Jack. Is not here one? Yes, said
Scogin. And is not here two? Yes, said Scogin; of that I am sure.
Then Jack did tell the first egge againe, saying: is not this the third?
O, said Scogin, Jack, thou art a good sophister; wel, said Scogin,
these two eggs shall serve me for my breakfast, and take thou the
third for thy labour and for the herring that thou didst give mee the
last day. So one good turne doth aske another, and to deceive him
that goeth about to deceive is no deceit.
This is a very common story. It is, in a slightly varied form, No. 67

of A C Mery Tales, and Johnson has introduced it into The Pleasant
Conceits of Old Hobson, the Merry Londoner, 1607.
HOW SCOGIN SOLD POWDER TO KILL FLEAS
Scogin divers times did lacke money, and could not tell what shift
to make. At last, he thought to play the physician, and did fill a box
full of the powder of a rotten post; and on a Sunday he went to a
Parish Church, and told the wives that hee had a powder to kil up all
the fleas in the country, and every wife bought a pennyworth; and
Scogin went his way, ere Masse was done. The wives went home,
and cast the powder into their beds and in their chambers, and the
fleas continued still. On a time, Scogin came to the same Church on
a sunday, and when the wives had espied him, the one said to the
other: this is he that deceived us with the powder to kill fleas; see,
said the one to the other, this is the selfe-same person. When Masse
was done, the wives gathered about Scogin, and said: you be an
honest man to deceive us with the powder to kill fleas. Why, said
Scogin, are not your fleas all dead? We have more now (said they)
than ever we had. I marvell of that, said Scogin, I am sure you did
not use the medicine as you should have done. They said: wee did
cast it in our beds and in our chambers. I, said he, there be a sort of
fooles that will buy a thing, and will not aske what they should doe
with it. I tell you all, that you should have taken every flea by the
neck, and then they would gape; and then you should have cast a
little of the powder into every flea’s mouth, and so you should have
killed them all. Then said the wives: we have not onely lost our
money, but we are mocked for our labour.
From Mery Tales of the Mad Men of Gottam

THE SECOND TALE
There was a man of Gottam did ride to the market with two
bushells of wheate, and because his horse should not beare heavy,
he caried his corne upon his owne necke, & did ride upon his horse,
because his horse should not cary to heavy a burthen. Judge you
which was the wisest, his horse or himselfe.
THE THIRD TALE
On a tyme, the men of Gottam would have pinned in the Cuckoo,

whereby shee should sing all the yeere, and in the midst of ye town
they made a hedge round in compasse, and they had got a Cuckoo,
and had put her into it, and said: Sing here all the yeere, and thou
shalt lacke neither meate nor drinke. The Cuckoo, as soone as she
perceived her selfe incompassed within the hedge, flew away. A
vengeance on her! said they; we made not our hedge high enough.
From Mother Bunches Merriments

HOW MADDE COOMES, WHEN HIS WIFE WAS DROWNED, SOUGHT HER
AGAINST THE STREAME
Coomes of Stapforth, hearing that his wife was drowned comming

from market, went with certayne of his friends to see if they could
find her in the river. He, contrary to all the rest, sought his wife
against the streame; which they perceyving, sayd he lookt the wrong
way. And why so? (quoth he.) Because (quoth they) you should
looke downe the streame, and not against it. Nay, zounds (quoth
hee), I shall never find her that way: for shee did all things so
contrary in her life time, that now she is dead, I am sure she will goe
against the streame.
The Pleasant Conceits of Old Hobson

HOW MAISTER HOBSON SAID HE WAS NOT AT HOME
On a time Master Hobson upon some ocation came to Master
Fleetewoods house to speake with him, being then new chosen the
recorder of London, and asked one of his men if he were within, and
he said he was not at home. But Maister Hobson, perceving that his
maister bad him say so, and that he was within (not being willing at
that time to be spoken withall), for that time desembling the matter,
he went his way. Within a few dayes after, it was Maister Fleetwoods
chaunse to come to Maister Hobson’s, and knocking at the dore,
asked if he were within. Maister Hobson, hearing and knowing how
he was denyed Maister Fleetwoods speach before time, spake
himselfe aloud, and said hee was not at home. Then sayd Maister
Fleetwood: what, Master Hobson, thinke you that I knowe not your
voyce? Whereunto Maister Hobson answered and said: now, Maister
Fleetewood, am I quit with you: for when I came to speake with you,
I beleeved your man that said you were not at home, and now you
will not beleeve mine owne selfe; and this was the mery conference
betwixt these two merry gentlemen.
FROM CERTAINE CONCEYTS & JEASTS; AS WELL TO LAUGH DOWNE OUR
HARDER UNDIGESTED MORSELLS, AS BREAKE UP WITH MYRTH OUR
BOOKE AND BANQUET. COLLECTED OUT OF SCOTUS POGGIUS, AND
OTHERS
A certayne Poore-man met king Phillip, & besought him for
something, because he was his kinsman. The king demanded frō
whence descended. Who answered: from Adam. Then the K.
commaunded an Almes to be given. Hee replyed, an Almes was not
the gift of a king; to whome the king answered: if I should so reward
all my kindred in that kinde, I should leave but little for myselfe.
A certaine conceyted Traveller being at a Banquet, where

chanced a flye to fall into his cuppe, which hee (being to drinke)
tooke out for himselfe, and afterwards put in againe for his fellow:
being demanded his reason, answered, that for his owne part he
affected them not, but it might be some other did.
A certaine player, seeing Thieves in his house in the night, thus
laughingly sayde: I knowe not what you will finde here in the dark,
when I can find nothing my selfe in the light.
WIT AND MIRTH. CHARGEABLY COLLECTED OUT OF TAVERNS,
ORDINARIES, INNES, BOWLING-GREENES AND ALLYES, ALEHOUSES,
TOBACCO-SHOPS, HIGHWAYES, AND WATER-PASSAGES. MADE UP,
AND FASHIONED INTO CLINCHES, BULLS, QUIRKES, YERKES, QUIPS,
AND JERKES. APOTHEGMATICALLY BUNDLED UP AND GARBLED AT
THE REQUEST OF JOHN GARRET’S GHOST
Taylor the Water-Poet was one of the favourite authors of Robert
Southey, who has given an account of his life and writings in his
Uneducated Poets, and has quoted him largely in his Common-
Place Book.
John Garret, at the request of whose ghost the Water-Poet
professes to have formed the present collection, was a jester of the
period, mentioned by Bishop Corbet and others. Heylin, author of the
Cosmography, speaks of “Archy’s bobs, and Garrets sawcy jests.” In
his dedication of the Wit and Mirth, Taylor alludes to Garret as “that
old honest mirrour of mirth deceased.”
Taylor, to forestall possible cavils at his plagiarisms from others, or
adoption of good sayings already published and well-known,
expressly says in the dedication: “Because I had many of them [the
jests] by relation and heare-say, I am in doubt that some of them
may be in print in some other Authors, which I doe assure you is
more than I doe know.”
One said, that hee could never have his health in Cambridge, and
that if hee had lived there till this time, hee thought in his conscience
that hee had dyed seven yeeres agoe.
A Judge upon the Bench did aske an old man how old he was. My
Lord, said he, I am eight and fourscore. And why not fourscore and
eight? said the Judge. The other repli’d: because I was eight, before
I was fourescore.
A rich man told his nephew that hee had read a booke called
Lucius Apuleius of the Golden Asse, and that he found there how
Apuleius, after he had beene an asse many yeeres, by eating of
Roses he did recover his manly shape againe, and was no more an
asse: the young man replied to his uncle: Sir, if I were worthy to
advise you, I would give you counsell to eate a salled of Roses once
a weeke yourselfe.
A country man being demanded how such a River was called, that
ranne through their Country, hee answered that they never had need
to call the River, for it alwayes came without calling.
One borrowed a cloake of a Gentleman, and met one that knew

him, who said: I thinke I know that cloake. It may be so, said the
other, I borrowed it of such a Gentleman. The other told him that it
was too short. Yea, but, quoth he that had the cloake, I will have it
long enough, before I bring it home againe.
OF THE WOMAN THAT FOLLOWED HER FOURTH HUSBANDS BERE AND

WEPT
A woman there was which had had iiii husbandys. It fourtuned

also that this fourth husbande dyed and was brought to chyrche
upon the bere; whom this woman folowed and made great mone,
and waxed very sory, in so moche that her neyghbours thought she
wolde swown and dye for sorow. Wherfore one of her gosseps cam
to her, and spake to her in her ere, and bad her, for Godds sake,
comfort her self and refrayne that lamentacion, or ellys it wold hurt
her and peraventure put her in jeopardy of her life. To whom this
woman answeryd and sayd: I wys, good gosyp, I have grete cause
to morne, if ye knew all. For I have beryed iii husbandes besyde this
man; but I was never in the case that I am now. For there was not
one of them but when that I folowed the corse to chyrch, yet I was
sure of an nother husband, before the corse cam out of my house,
and now I am sure of no nother husband; and therfore ye may be
sure I have great cause to be sad and hevy.
By thys tale ye may se that the olde proverbe ys trew, that it is as
great pyte to se a woman wepe as a gose to go barefote.
A C. Mery Talys
OF THE MERCHAUNTE OF LONDON THAT DYD PUT NOBLES IN HIS
MOUTHE IN HYS DETHE BEDDE
A ryche covetous marchant there was that dwellid in London,

which ever gaderyd mony and could never fynd in hys hert to spend
ought upon hym selfe nor upon no man els. Whiche fell sore syke,
and as he laye on hys deth bed had his purs lyenge at his beddys
hede, and [he] had suche a love to his money that he put his hande
in his purs, and toke out thereof x or xii li. in nobles and put them in
his mouth. And because his wyfe and other perceyved hym very
syke and lyke to dye, they exortyd hym to be confessyd, and brought
the curate unto hym. Which when they had caused him to say
Benedicite, the curate bad hym crye God mercy and shewe to hym
his synnes. Than this seyck man began to sey: I crey God mercy I
have offendyd in the vii dedly synnes and broken the x
commaundementes; but because of the gold in his mouth he muffled
so in his speche, that the curate could not well understande hym:
wherfore the curat askyd hym, what he had in his mouthe that letted
his spech. I wys, mayster parsone, quod the syke man, muffelynge, I
have nothyng in my mouthe but a lyttle money; bycause I wot not
whither I shal go, I thought I wold take some spendynge money with
me: for I wot not what nede I shall have therof; and incontynent after
that sayeng dyed, before he was confessyd or repentant that any
man coulde perceyve, and so by lyklyhod went to the devyll.
By this tale ye may se, that they that all theyr lyves wyll never do
charyte to theyr neghbours, that God in tyme of theyr dethe wyll not
suffre them to have grace of repentaunce.
OF THE SCOLER OF OXFORDE THAT PROVED BY SOVESTRY II CHYKENS III
A ryche Frankelyn in the contrey havynge by his wyfe but one

chylde and no mo, for the great affeccyon that he had to his sayd
chylde founde hym at Oxforde to schole by the space of ii or iii yere.
Thys yonge scoler, in a vacacyon tyme, for his disporte came home
to his father. It fortuned afterwarde on a nyght, the father, the mother
and the sayd yonge scoler
5 lines wanting.
I have studyed sovestry, and by that scyence I can prove, that
these ii chekyns in the dysshe be thre chekyns. Mary, sayde the
father, that wolde I fayne se. The scoller toke one of the chekyns in
his hande and said: lo! here is one chekyn, and incontynente he toke
bothe the chekyns in his hande jointely and sayd: here is ii chekyns;
and one and ii maketh iii: ergo here is iii chekyns. Than the father
toke one of the chekyns to him selfe, and gave another to his wyfe,
and sayd thus: lo! I wyll have one of the chekyns to my parte, and
thy mother shal have a nother, and because of thy good argumente
thou shalte have the thyrde to thy supper: for thou gettyst no more
meate here at this tyme; whyche promyse the father kepte, and so
the scoller wente without his supper.
By this tale men may se, that it is great foly to put one to scole to
lerne any subtyll scyence, whiche hathe no naturall wytte.
OF THE COURTEAR THAT ETE THE HOT CUSTARDE
A certayne merchaunt and a courtear, being upon a time together

at dyner having a hote custerd, the courtear being somwhat homely
of maner toke parte of it and put it in hys mouth, whych was so hote
that made him shed teares. The merchaunt, lookyng on him, thought
that he had ben weeping, and asked hym why he wept. This curtear,
not wyllynge it to be known that he had brent his mouth with the hote
custerd, answered and said, sir: quod he, I had a brother whych dyd
a certayn offence wherfore he was hanged; and, chauncing to think
now uppon his deth, it maketh me to wepe. This merchaunt thought
the courtear had said trew, and anon after the merchaunt was
disposid to ete of the custerd, and put a sponefull of it in his mouth,
and brent his mouth also, that his eyes watered. This courtear, that
percevyng, spake to the merchaunt and seyd: sir, quod he, pray why
do ye wepe now? The merchaunt perseyved how he had bene
deceived and said: mary, quod he, I wepe, because thou wast not
hangid, when that they brother was hangyd.
OF HYM THAT SOUGHT HIS WYFE AGAYNST THE STREME
A man there was whose wyfe, as she came over a bridg, fell in to
the ryver and was drowned; wherfore he wente and sought for her
upward against the stream, wherat his neighboures, that wente with
hym, marvayled, and sayde he dyd nought, he shulde go seke her
downeward with the streme. Naye, quod he, I am sure I shall never
fynde her that waye: for she was so waywarde and so contrary to
every thynge, while she lyvedde, that I knowe very well nowe she is
deed, she wyll go a gaynste the stream.
OF THE FOOLE THAT THOUGHT HYM SELFE DEED
There was a felowe dwellynge at Florence, called Nigniaca,

whiche was nat verye wyse, nor all a foole, but merye and jocunde.
A sorte of yonge men, for to laughe and pastyme, appoynted to
gether to make hym beleve that he was sycke. So, whan they were
agreed howe they wolde do, one of them mette hym in the
mornynge, as he came out of his house, and bad him good morowe,
and than asked him, if he were nat yl at ease? No, quod the foole, I
ayle nothynge, I thanke God. By my faith, ye have a sickely pale
colour, quod the other, and wente his waye.
Anone after, an other of them mette hym, and asked hym if he
had nat an ague: for your face and colour (quod he) sheweth that ye
be very sycke. Than the foole beganne a lyttel to doubt, whether he
were sycke or no: for he halfe beleved that they sayd trouth. Whan
he had gone a lytel farther, the thyrde man mette hym, and sayde:
Jesu! manne, what do you out of your bed? ye loke as ye wolde nat
lyve an houre to an ende. Nowe he doubted greatly, and thought
verily in his mynde, that he had hadde some sharpe ague; wherfore
he stode styll and wolde go no further; and, as he stode, the fourth
man came and sayde: Jesu! man, what dost thou here, and arte so
sycke? Gette the home to thy bedde: for I parceyve thou canste nat
lyve an houre to an ende. Than the foles harte beganne to feynte,
and [he] prayde this laste man that came to hym to helpe hym home.
Yes, quod he, I wyll do as moche for the as for myn owne brother. So
home he brought hym, and layde hym in his bed, and than he fared
with hym selfe, as thoughe he wolde gyve up the gooste. Forth with
came the other felowes, and saide he hadde well done to lay hym in
his bedde. Anone after, came one whiche toke on hym to be a
phisitian; whiche, touchynge the pulse, sayde the malady was so
vehement, that he coulde nat lyve an houre. So they, standynge
aboute the bedde, sayde one to an other: nowe he gothe his waye:
for his speche and syght fayle him; by and by he wyll yelde up the
goste. Therfore lette us close his eyes, and laye his hands a crosse,
and cary hym forth to be buryed. And than they sayde lamentynge
one to an other: O! what a losse have we of this good felowe, our
frende?
The foole laye stylle, as one [that] were deade; yea, and thought
in his mynde, that he was deade in dede. So they layde hym on a
bere, and caryed hym through the cite. And whan any body asked
them what they caryed, they sayd the corps of Nigniaca to his grave.
And ever as they went, people drew about them. Among the prece
ther was a taverners boy, the whiche, whan he herde that it was the
cors of Nigniaca, he said to them: O! what a vile bestly knave, and
what a stronge thefe is deed! by the masse, he was well worthy to
have ben hanged longe ago. Whan the fole harde those wordes, he
put out his heed and sayd: I wys, horeson, if I were alyve nowe, as I
am deed, I wolde prove the a false lyer to thy face. They, that caryed
him, began to laugh so hartilye, that they sette downe the bere, and
wente theyr waye.
By this tale ye maye se, what the perswasion of many doth.
Certaynly he is very wyse, that is nat inclined to foly, if he be stered
thereunto by a multitude. Yet sapience is founde in fewe persones:
and they be lyghtly olde sobre men.
A few further bits are added, being witty sayings from Camden,
Bacon and the Jest Books and manuscripts of the period.
Queen Elizabeth seeing a gentleman in her garden, who had not

felt the effect of her favours so soon as he expected, looking out of
her window, said to him, in Italian, “What does a man think of, Sir
Edward, when he thinks of nothing?” After a little pause, he
answered, “He thinks, Madam, of a woman’s promise.” The queen
shrunk in her head, but was heard to say, Well, Sir Edward, I must
not confute you: Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.
A certain nobleman sold a gentleman a horse for a good round

sum, which he took upon his lordship’s word, that he had no fault.
About three weeks after, he met my lord; “Why, your lordship told
me,” says he, “that your horse had no fault, and he is blind of an
eye.” Well, Sir, says my lord, it is no fault, it is only a misfortune.
A doctor of little learning, and less modesty, having talked much at

table; one, much admiring him, asked another, when the doctor was
gone, if he did not think him a great scholar? The answer was, He
may be learned, for aught I know, or can discover; but I never heard
learning make such a noise.

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As a German Shakespeare scholar, I never felt much drawn to the subject of

6 Paulin, The Critical Reception of Shakespeare in Germany, 1.

List of Illustrations xiii

2.1. Stefan George 55

A Note on Texts and Translations

10 Lessing, ‘17. Literaturbrief ’, 499.

20 Muschg, ‘Deutschland ist Hamlet’.

Now vouchsafen this day, ere it be night,

Now, purse, that art to me my livés light,

BALLAD OF WOMEN’S DOUBLENESS

Also that the fresh summer flowers,

The lusty freshé summer’s day,

The sea eke with his sterné wawés

Fortunés wheel go’th round about

What man ymay the wind restrain,

At every haven they can arrive

Therefore whoso doth them accuse

So well fortunéd is their chance,

Sampson yhad experience

Single thing is not ypraiséd,

One, at least, of his whimsical poems is not without charm.

The Troubadours and Minstrels were followed by a type of

Skelton, when he was in London went to the kynge’s courte,

Here Begynneth Certayne Merye Tales of Skelton, Poet Lauriat

Skelton was an Englysheman borne as Skogyn was, and hee was

The Jests of Scogin

This is a very common story. It is, in a slightly varied form, No. 67

HOW SCOGIN SOLD POWDER TO KILL FLEAS

From Mery Tales of the Mad Men of Gottam

THE THIRD TALE

On a tyme, the men of Gottam would have pinned in the Cuckoo,

From Mother Bunches Merriments

Coomes of Stapforth, hearing that his wife was drowned comming

The Pleasant Conceits of Old Hobson

A certaine conceyted Traveller being at a Banquet, where

One borrowed a cloake of a Gentleman, and met one that knew

OF THE WOMAN THAT FOLLOWED HER FOURTH HUSBANDS BERE AND

A woman there was which had had iiii husbandys. It fourtuned

A ryche covetous marchant there was that dwellid in London,

OF THE SCOLER OF OXFORDE THAT PROVED BY SOVESTRY II CHYKENS III

A ryche Frankelyn in the contrey havynge by his wyfe but one

OF THE COURTEAR THAT ETE THE HOT CUSTARDE

A certayne merchaunt and a courtear, being upon a time together

OF HYM THAT SOUGHT HIS WYFE AGAYNST THE STREME

OF THE FOOLE THAT THOUGHT HYM SELFE DEED

There was a felowe dwellynge at Florence, called Nigniaca,

Queen Elizabeth seeing a gentleman in her garden, who had not

A certain nobleman sold a gentleman a horse for a good round

List of Illustrations xiii

2.1. Stefan George 55