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Page 10
A rarely noted source for some of Shakespeare's knowledge regarding
curious customs has been sought in the rambling treatise on heraldry
written by Gerard Legh and issued, in 1564, under the title: "Accedens
of Armorie" (approximately, Introduction to Heraldry). This is cast in
the form of a dialogue between Gerard the Herehaught (Herold) and the
Caligat Knight, the latter term designating an inferior kind of knight
with no claim to nobility; indeed, an old writer renders it "a
souldior on foot". The writer manages to weave in much material
slightly or not at all connected with his main theme. Legh was the son
of a Fleet Street draper. He seems to have studied a variety of
subjects and gathered together many scraps of curious information. He
died of the plague, October 13, 1563. His book went through several
editions during Shakespeare's lifetime. Following the first edition
of 1562 came successive ones in 1576, 1591, 1597, and one bearing the
imprint of J. Jaggard in 1616. The author is believed to have been
intentionally obscure in his treatment of heraldic questions lest he
might earn the ill-will of the College of Arms by violating certain of
their privileges.
While both Shakespeare and his great contemporary Cervantes died on
April 23 of the year 1616, it strangely happens that Cervantes had
been dead ten days when Shakespeare expired. This apparent paradox is
due to the fact that while in Spain the Gregorian calendar had already
been introduced, the "Old Style", or Julian reckoning, was still used
in England; indeed, it was not totally abandoned until 1752, in the
reign of George II, 170 years after the first use of the Gregorian
reckoning on the Continent. In the seventeenth century the error to be
corrected amounted to ten days, so that Shakespeare's death, under the
New Style, occurred on May 3, while Cervantes died on April 13 of the
Old Style.
In commemoration of the Tercentenary of Shakespeare's death, the
Shakespearean scholar, Miss H.C. Bartlett, prepared for the New York
Public Library an exhibition of Shakespearean books, including all the
early editions of the quartos; the various editions of the folios; the
works of contemporaneous authors whom Shakespeare had consulted; and
also the early works that mention Shakespeare, or cite from his plays
or poems, including Greene's "Groat's Worth of Wit", published in 1592
by Henry Chettle and containing the earliest printed allusion to
Shakespeare under the name of "Shake-scene".
One of the contemporary books containing citations from Shakespeare's
works, shown at the New York Public Library, is "The Woman Hater", by
Francis Beaumont (?1585-1615 or 1616), printed in 1607.[11] The
citation, from _Hamlet_, Act i, sc. 5,[12] is apropos of the
disappearance of a "fish head". It is put into the mouths of two of
the characters, as follows:
_Lazarello_. Speak, I am bound to hear.
_Count_. So art thou to revenge when thou shalt hear.
[Footnote 11: "The Woman Hater, as it hath beene lately acted by the
children of Paules, London, printed and to be sold by John Hodgers in
Paules Church-yard, 1607".]
[Footnote 12: First Folio, p. 257, col. B, lines 15, 16.]
In the spacious hall of the beautiful Hispanic Museum in New York City
there has recently been displayed, in commemoration of the
tercentenary of Cervantes's death, an exceptionally fine collection
of editions of his works and of rare plates illustrating episodes from
them. Notable among the books was a first edition of his earliest
published poems, four redondillas, a copla and an elegy, on the death,
October 3, 1568, of Elizabeth de Valois, third wife of Philip II, and
sister of Charles IX of France.[13] Dark rumors were afloat for some
time that she had been poisoned by order of her husband. Among the
other treasures in the Hispanic Museum exhibition was the earliest
imprint of Cervantes's masterpiece, the immortal "Don Quixote". This
was printed in Madrid, in 1605, by Juan de la Cuesta.
[Footnote 13: The compilation containing these poems is entitled:
"Hystoria y relacio verdadera de la enfermedad felicissimo transito y
sumptuosas exequias funebres de la Serenissima Reyna de Espa�a Isabel
de Valoys nuestra Se�ora", Madrid, 1569. The opening lines of
Cervantes are:
A quien yra mi doloroso canto
O en cuya oreja sonara su acento?
(To whom will my sad song go, and in
whose ears will its accents sound?) ]
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