Check Out the New YouTube Channel!

So I've put together a YouTube Channel to go together with the content on this blog. As of now there are nine videos:

How Unusual was Shakespeare's Signature?



Introduction to the Northumberland Manuscript (blog posts):


Henry Neville, Southampton, Humphrey Fludd, and Shakespeare (blog post)



Could William Shakespeare Write His Own Name?



The Sonnets Inscription (blog post)

 

Alibech and Rustico (blog post)



Learn to Read Secretary Hand with Henry Neville (Part 1)



Learn to Read Secretary Hand with Henry Neville (Part 2)


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Henry Neville, Shakespeare, and Boccaccio's Decameron

After the Northumberland Manuscript (discovered in the 19th century) and the Billingbear Book List debuted on this blog in August 2019), this is one of the most exciting documents in relation to the Shakespeare Authorship Question. I discovered it from the National Archives:

In 1591, Thomas Savile, the younger brother of Henry Savile, forwarded to Henry Neville a series of letters in Italian. These letters gave news updates on military campaigns and other political events taking place in Europe. On the back of one of them, Henry Neville made the above scribbles.

This document directly connects Henry Neville, in 1591, with Boccaccio's Decameron, a major source for the works of Shakespeare. All's Well that Ends Well and Cymbeline both use it as a source, as does Two Gentlemen of Verona -- a play written at that time.

These scribbles connect Neville with a specific story in the Decameron that is referenced often in the works of Shakespeare. It may also relate to the character name Petruchio/Petruccio in Taming of the Shrew, written about that time.

It demonstrates unequivocally Neville's knowledge of the Italian language and interest in Italian history, culture, and politics; this aligns perfectly with the Shakespeare plays written in that period.

In addition, this document proves conclusively that Henry Neville consciously and purposely varied handwriting styles. He also had the habit of writing and rewriting other people's names as scribbles. The exact same behaviors are displayed on the covers of the Northumberland Manuscript which has the names "William Shakespeare" and "Francis Bacon" written many times with varying letter forms. The fine handwriting and willingness to play with letter forms adds evidence to support his writing the inscription on the Rylands copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets.

This document is also important because it provides an early example of Neville's italic handwriting, confirming that the annotations in the books at Audley End are, indeed, his.

Above all else, it shows us what Henry Neville was actually interested in. Almost all of the letters we have from him are diplomatic or official correspondence from 1598-1613; this gives us an essential glimpse into the unguarded person in 1591.

Who are Alibech and Rustico

The story of Alibech and Rustico is from Boccaccio's Decameron. In the story, a young woman, Alibech, is unwittingly seduced by Rustico. This is an extremely lewd story, you can read it here.
Key takeaway: in the story, the act of seduction is called putting the devil (the man) into hell (the woman).

There are two copies of the Decameron listed on the Billingbear Book List. One was initially owned by Thomas Hoby and is currently at Audley End; read about this copy at Cambridge University. The whereabouts of the other is unknown. So, not only did Neville own two copies of this very important Shakespeare source, he referenced the work specifically in his scribbles.

(See this extensive discussion in Shakespeare's Courtly Mirror: Reflexivity and Prudence in All's Well that Ends Well by David Haley (1993) of how  the Decameron is incorporated into All's Well that Ends Well including the story of Alibech and Rustico.)

Who is Rusticuccio

After writing "Rustico" three times, Neville writes "Rusticuccio" four times. He is using the -uccio diminutive suffix in Italian to modify the name. In the same way, the name "Petruccio/Petruchio", the character name in Taming of the Shrew, is formed from the name "Pietro". There was a Cardinal Rusticci(o) at the time, so this might relate to him. There was also a Cardinal Petruccio referenced in Guicciardini's The History of Italy, a book at Audley End which Neville seems to have owned and annotated.

Note how dramatically Neville varies the capital R of Rusticuccio. Seen in isolation, one would think this is the handwriting of four different people. This habit of varying letter forms matches the variation in the handwriting on the Northumberland Manuscript -- as well as the variation we see in the handwriting in Neville's letters:

Taming of the Shrew is believed to have been written around 1591, precisely when Henry Neville was writing "Rusticuccio" on the back of this letter. It is worth noting that in Taming of a Shrew, the play published anonymously in Quarto in 1594, the main character's name is "Ferando" rather than "Petruchio". The exact relationship between this 1594 play and the First Folio version of the play is a matter of controversy. Romeo and Juliet, written around 1595, has an off-stage character also with the name "Petruchio".

Sonnet 144 and other references to devil/hell

Many scholars (KAMBASKOVIĆ-SAWERS 2007, Shore 1999, Berry 1999, Shindler 1892) have suggested that Shakespeare's Sonnet 144 seems to allude to the story of Alibech and Rustico:

Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman colour’d ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turn’d fiend
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;
But being both from me, both to each friend,
I guess one angel in another’s hell:
Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

Since Sonnet 144 was published in Passionate Pilgrim in 1599, and was likely written well before then, the timing aligns nicely with the 1591 dating of the Henry Neville's Alibech/Rustico scribbles.

Shakespeare often uses the term "hell" to refer to a woman, probably in reference to Alibech/Rustico. Here are some examples of devil paired with hell:

I say a devil. Think'st thou, Hortensio, though her father
be very rich, any man is so very a fool to be married to hell? - Taming of the Shrew (1.1)

I am sorry thou wilt leave my father so:
Our house is hell, and thou, a merry devil,
Didst rob it of some taste of tediousness. - Merchant of Venice (2.3)

Why Sir John, do you think, though we would have the
virtue out of our hearts by the head and shoulders
and have given ourselves without scruple to hell,
that ever the devil could have made you our delight? - Merry Wives of Windsor (5.5)

Who was Henry Killigrew?

Henry Killigrew was the father of Henry Neville's wife Anne. Anne's mother, Catherine Cooke, died in 1583. Above, Neville writes the last name "Killigrew" four times then writes "Sr Harry Killigrew". There isn't a lot of variation in how he writes it, unlike "Alibech", "Rustico", and "Rusticuccio" where he seems to vary the handwriting a good bit.

This habit of writing the names of people he knew, over and over, is strikingly similar to the Northumberland Manuscript, where the names of Francis Bacon and William Shakespeare are written over and over again.

Other Notes on Handwriting

See how Henry Neville varies "and" four different ways in a single document:

This type of intentional variation is characteristic of his scribbling on other documents and is similar to what we observe on the Northumberland Manuscript and in Neville's other handwriting:

How do we know this is Henry Neville's handwriting?

The scribbles are written on the back of a letter written to Thomas Savile, who along with his brother Henry Savile, was one of Neville's closest friends at the time and his travelling companion in Berkeley. The document was kept by the Neville/Braybrooke family with Neville's other documents at deposited at the archive around 1950. The handwriting is an exact match for Henry Neville's signatures and other italic handwriting. You can see samples of Neville's italic handwriting here.

Conclusions

The search for documents related to Henry Neville has really just begun, and the careful analysis of the discovered documents hasn't really even started yet. That said, this discovery  helps us to understand the annotations at Audley End, the Northumberland Manuscript, the Sonnets inscription, and so much more.

As you can see on this blog, Henry Neville research is quickly producing a steady flow of very important *real* discoveries of documentary evidence. This evidence links him directly and unequivocally to the sources used to write the works of Shakespeare. We are just getting started here, there is much, much, much more to come.

New Discovery: Dudley Digges, Henry Neville, and Shakespeare

Dudley Digges (1583 - 1639), his younger brother Leonard Digges (1588-1635), and their father Thomas Digges (1546 - 1595) had many close ties to Henry Neville. This post offers a new discovery of a legal examination of Dudley Digges that clearly demonstrates his close connection to Henry Neville.

As is well known,  Leonard wrote a poem in praise of Shakespeare for the 1623 First Folio. He also wrote a hand-written note in 1613 praising Shakespeare's Sonnets. The 1640 edition of Shakespeare's poems, published five years after Leonard's death, has another long poem further praising Shakespeare and criticizing Ben Jonson.

1615 - Dudley Digges Examination Proves His Close Connection To Henry Neville

Here is the document I discovered from the National Archives:

This is an examination from November 1615 concerning the 1613 murder of Thomas Overbury. In it, Dudley Digges describes a conversation he had with Henry Neville before the murder. Here is the calendar summary:

Examination of Sir Dudley Digges. On expressing Sir Henry Neville his fear that Rochester was desirous to be rid of Overbury, both he and Sir Thomas Mansell told him, from Overbury's own mouth, that he was confident Rochester would not dare to abandon him.

Here is the full transcription done by John O'Donnell:

The examination of Sr Dudley Digges
knight taken the 6 of nov 1615
this examinate signifieng to Sr henry nevill his dystrust that my lord of Rochester was
desirous to be ridd of Sr Tho: Ouerburie, his aunswere to this examinate he pressing
him diuers tymes, was that Sr Tho: Ouerbury was confident and said often, that my
lo: of Rochester did not dare to leave him / and further saith that Sr Robert mauncell
knight hath related so much to this examinate as from Sr Thomas Ouerburies owne
mouth And this was tould to this examinate both by Sr henry nevill, and Sr Robert
mauncell as he thinketh as well in the life tyme of Sr Tho: Ouerbury as since his
decease.
Dudly Digges

This is new and absolute and incontrovertible evidence of Henry Neville's close relationship with Dudley Digges. Of course, the following is equally strong proof:

1614 - Dudley Digges Defends Henry Neville in Parliament

In 1614 a controversy erupted in Parliament over the 1612 Advice Henry Neville gave directly to King James. John Hoskins and Dudley Digges, among others, stood in defense of Neville. Here is what Digges said (Proceedings in Parliament, 1614 -House of Commons):

Sir Dudley Digges said he thought that a private man might go and move the King for the good of the country, uncalled, and did instance his father who projected divers things to Queen Elizabeth and yet was a parliament man after, without being excepted against.

Dudley Digges and the Virginia Company

Dudley Digges "joined the board of the Virginia Company in 1609, and became one of the three principal backers of Hudson’s last voyage in search of the North-West Passage" (History of Parliament) Dudley's son Edward later became governor of Virginia. Henry Neville, too, was on the governing board of the Virginia Company. You can see the full list here, which also includes the Earl of Southampton (dedication of Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece) and William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke (dedication of First Folio and perhaps Sonnets).

Thomas Digges and Henry Neville - Connection with Henry Savile and John Chamber

Astronomer, mathematician, and military theorist Thomas Digges (father of Leonard and Dudley) died in 1595. Thomas Digges was on a commission with Henry Savile and John Chamber in 1583 to decide whether to change England over to the Gregorian calendar. Savile had just been on a four year trip with Neville to Europe. Savile and Chamber were both from Merton College, where Neville attended, and all three men remained close friends their whole lives. Chamber traveled with Neville to France in 1599;  Savile and Neville were executors of Chamber's will. So Henry Neville and Thomas Digges almost certainly knew each other from this connection.

The Family Connection between Henry Neville and the Digges Family

Thomas Digges' wife, and mother of Dudley and Leonard, was Anne St. Leger. She was the daughter of Ursula Neville, wife of Warham St Leger. Ursula was Henry Neville's father's first cousin.

Anne St. Leger married Thomas Russell after the death of Thomas Digges. So Russell was the stepfather of the Digges brothers. Thomas Russell famously was the overseer, along with Francis Collins, or Shakespeare's will.

Thomas Russell was also the half-brother of Maurice and Henry Berkeley. Maurice was one of Neville's closest friends and was one of the executors of his estate. Henry Berkeley married Henry Neville's daughter Elizabeth.

So Henry Neville had close family ties both to Anne St Leger (Anne Digges) and Thomas Hall, the mother and stepfather of the Digges brothers.

Thomas Digges, Dudley Digges, and the works of Shakespeare

There is a vast literature connecting the Digges family with the works of Shakespeare. Othello. Coriolanus, Hamlet, and Troilus and Cressida have all been linked to Thomas and/or his son Dudley. Here is some detail on Coriolanus from Lee Bliss of the Cambridge edition of Coriolanus:

It has been suggested that the character Cassio in Othello might have been partly modeled on Thomas Digges, Oxford Othello 2008:

Hamlet is also thought to reflect Thomas Digges' view of an infinite universe ("O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.")

Dudley Digges and Ben Jonson and Coryate's Crudities

According to "Ben Jonson's Library and Marginalia: An Annotated Catalogue," by David McPherson,  Studies in Philology, Vol. 71, No. 5, 1974, Ben Jonson had a copy of A Geometrical Practical Treatise Named Pantometria with this inscription: "I am Ben Jonson's book from the gift of my very dear Dudley Digges, son of the author." Digges also contributed a commendatory poem to Jonson's play Volpone.

Dudley Digges also wrote a poem for Coryate's Crudities. So did Ben Jonson and Hugh Holland, both of whom contributed poems to the First Folio.

Conclusion

There is a strong connection between the Digges family and Henry Neville. The evidence above demonstrates clearly that Dudley Digges, though about 20 years younger than Henry Neville, was a friend and close political ally. This connection was multi-faceted but likely was due in part to a previous relationship Neville's family had with Dudley's father and mother. This is an important area for further research as we try to trace the facts surrounding the works of Shakespeare.