William Shakespeare and John Salusbury:
what was their relationship?

by JOHN IDRIS JONES

Let us begin with the fascinating and resourceful Catherine of Berain. Berain is a fine house and extensive farm situated some three miles west of St Asaph, between Llansannan and Llanefydd. She was buried beside her first husband in the parish church at Llanefydd during August of 1591 although no indications are shown in the church or in the graveyard. She was born to a distinguished lineage c1540, according to Enid Roberts,[1] to a family who owned extensive holdings, from the Tudor heartland of Penmynydd in Anglesey, through the Conwy Valley to the fertile acres on the shoulder of the Vale of Clwyd. She was the grand-daughter of Sir Roland de Velville (1474-1535), Constable of Beaumaris Castle and reputed natural son of Henry Tudor (Henry VII) by an unknown Breton lady. She was a cousin of Elizabeth I.[2] An elegy written on Sir Rowland's death in 1535 by Dafydd Alaw says, '... gwr o lin brenhinoedd, ag o waed ieirll i gyd oedd' (he was from a line of kings, with the blood of an earl). It is not surprising that Catherine viewed the even richer acres on the floor of the valley to the east of Denbigh as a suitable extension to her family's holdings. She married  four rich north Wales landowners. Her marriage to John Salusbury (born c.1542) of Lleweni - a mansion some two miles east of Denbigh, on the floor of the fertile Vale of Clwyd -  was finalised in February 1558. Her first son Thomas was born in 1561or 1564 (accounts vary)  and her second son John in 1566.[3] John Salusbury died in early summer1566 before his second son was born, but his father, Sir John Salusbury, knight, lived on in Lleweni with his wife Kate until his death in 1578. He, his wife and issue, are commemorated with an alabaster tomb inside the nearby St Marcella's church. After his father's death, John became a ward to the Earl of Leicester, who in 1563 had received from the queen extensive holdings in Denbighshire and in the following year gained the earldom and lordship of Denbigh. To finance his Netherlands expedition of 1585-6, the Earl of Leicester remortgaged Denbigh Castle. The building of Lleweni ('place of the lion'), with its three wings built five feet above ground in case of flooding of the nearby River Clwyd, is likely to have proceeded through the middle years of the sixteenth century, and gained momentum from when the two families and their estates combined.

[1] See Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Katheryn of Berain, gentlewoman.

Salusbury was a man of distinguished lineage, as a direct, though illegitimate, descendant of Henry V11.'[1] In her later Shakespeare's Poems, co-edited with H R Woudhuysen, she allocates a section 'Shakespeare and the Welsh' in her Introduction and writes, '... there is reason to believe both that Shakespeare was familiar with some of the printed works dedicated to Salusbury in the late 1590s, and that he may have encountered the man himself.' [2]
After many decades of dynasty-building, in 1586 the Salusbury family of Denbigh suffered a catastrophe. The eldest brother, Thomas, was arrested for complicity in the Babington plot and on 21 September 1586, was executed at Tyburn. This was, '... to the terror and great grief of his family'.[3] On the scaffold he asserted, 'I have lived a Catholic, and so will I die.'[4] The Salusburys' carefully-constructed allegiances to king, queen, religion and country are all called into question. However, it seems that John did not espouse his brother's Catholicism, and for the rest of his life earnestly avowed his allegiance to Queen Elizabeth and her Protestantism. However, as Daniel Huws point-out, '..he was thick with those recusant Lancashire families, Robert Parry was a Catholic, Thomas Williams, his physician, was one. And, tellingly, I think, he was buried at night, as were many Catholics (not to draw attention to the Catholic rites). So perhaps a closet Catholic, or one who reverted at the end of his life.'[5]

Thomas and his wife had no male children, so the Lleweni estate passed to his brother. A commission was sent to enquire into Thomas's estate, but it (remarkably) remained intact. John, anxious to restore his family's reputation, moved quickly, and three months later married Ursula Stanley, an illegitimate but acknowledged daughter of Henry Stanley, fourth Earl of Derby (West Derby, then in Lancashire).[6] Henry was said to be the second richest person in Britain, after the monarch.

According to this theory, he would have spent most of the 1580s in these two houses, working as a scribe, teaching the children, acting as singing-master and musician and working on theatricals.[1] In this same period he was, also, in Stratford, visiting his parents, marrying Anne Hathaway and fathering children.

Knowsley is some forty-five miles by road from Denbigh; and Hawarden, close to Chester and the River Dee, is en route. Coming on horseback westwards from Knowsley, it would be convenient to stay the night at Hawarden. It is possible that the young Shakespeare, putatively a Derby family retainer, would have met Ursula and Dorothy at Lathom and also at Hawarden Castle. Ursula  could have attended the funeral of Thomas. Some three months later she was the key part of the marriage of the squire of Lleweni.

Moving back to the Stanleys in Lancashire, in the autumn of 1587 (some nine months after Ursula's marriage to John Salusbury) Henry the fourth Earl of Derby held a theatrical festival which went on for many weeks.[2] On Friday 14 July 1587, the Earl of Leicester's players put on a play before Henry and Ferdinando, their families and invited guests. The Earl of Leicester died in September 1588 and his players (including Phillips, Kemp, James Burbage, Heminges, Condell and Beeston) combined with those of Henry. So a great playing group was born, which went on to become the core of the Chamberlain's Men after the death of Ferdinando in 1594. Among the guests at this 1587 festival was 'Mr Jo. Salesbury', who was John Salusbury of Denbigh[3] . He is noted as a guest of the family a number of times, so it is clear that he (with his wife Ursula) was on good terms with the important Henry.  Given the 'Lancashire theory' it is possible that John Salusbury could have met the young Shakespeare at this point.

Henry Stanley ran a company of players in the 1570s and 1580s. His son Ferdinando, in the eighties, had a group performing 'sundry feates of Tumbling and Activities'[1]. In 1588 there was a reorganisation. In November 1589 Strange's Men were in London, playing at the Cross Keys. In 1591 Strange's were at the Curtain theatre and in the winter of that year they gave six court performances. From 19 February to 23 June 1592 Strange's played at Henslowe's Rose theatre in a repertory of 23 plays, which included 'Harry the VI', almost certainly the first part of Shakespeare's Henry VI. It was first performed on 3 March 1592. This is an important date; it was when a play by Shakespeare was first performed on the public stage (but not under his name)[2].

The chronology is clear. We propose (following the Lancashire theory) that Shakespeare worked for Henry Stanley and his son Ferdinando as scribe and teacher from say 1582; and that from c.1587 started to write plays for their combined  playing troupe, helping to organise the new larger troupe for touring and performance. That it was a history play that Strange's first put on in London, part of a series of plays placing the Tudors in favourable positions and delineating the Lancastrian line of kings, which Henry was connected to in blood, is no surprise if Shakespeare was employed by the Stanleys. On 25 September 1593, Ferdinando Stanley succeeded his father as Earl of Derby, so that Strange's became Derby's Men until the new Earl's death (believed poisoned) on 16 April 1594.

John Salusbury, owner of the huge Lleweni estate and a mansion of some two hundred rooms (according to Hester Piozzi, the last of the Salusburys, when she accompanied Dr Samuel Jonson there in 1774)[3] was, around 1594, spending more time in London. He had not known his father; he had lost his grandfather, brother and mother. Perhaps life in Denbigh was proving somewhat dull for him. He seemingly became a London 'man about town', enjoying the public theatre, Inns of Court with their dinners and private theatrical performances, and moving closer to the queen's circles.

His acceptance as an esquire to the court in March 1595 signalled his acceptance in thisestablishment, putting the disgrace of his brother's treachery well behind him. It is not too fanciful to believe that that he may well have met and spent some time with the emerging men of the theatre during this period. He was spending over his income.

After Ferdinando's death on 16 April 1594, his playing company was briefly run by his widow, Alice. They found a significant new patron in Lord Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain, and so the Chamberlain's Company was formed. The first official record of this company occurs in March 1595, when Kempe, Shakespeare and Richard Burbage were paid for two performances at Greenwich Palace (one of the queen's residences) on 26-7 December 1594. In the next twenty years, Shakespeare wrote over thirty plays, all contributing to his financial success as one of the sharers in the Chamberlain's Company.

All things theatrical in London would have proceeded smoothly were it not for the plague. Because of this pestilence, the theatres were closed and opened again numerous times. Deaths from the plague caused the London theatres to be closed for most of the time between June 1592 and May 1594. Theatre people spent much of their time outside London, touring, putting on plays in makeshift locations in town centres or in the yards of inns. Patronage by the nobility was eagerly sought. Their country houses offered a refuge from the plague; here there was comfortable accommodation, the food was good and water clean. Private performances of plays in country houses became fashionable and numerous. Their libraries came in handy as sources for new plays. An edition of Halle's Chronicle was used by Shakespeare as the source of many plays.[1]

The country house, Lleweni, in the clean air of the Vale of Clwyd, became the setting of an extended Christmas festival during December of either 1593 or 1595. Sally Harper identifies the year as 1595, but it could be 1593 because a handwritten inscription of the year in Bangor MS Gwyneddon 4 has a tail running to the left at the base, suggesting that the date was originally written 1593 and later changed to 1595. 

Her article in The New Welsh Review (Summer 2002) details the elaboration of the event,attended by harpists, crwth players and poets from many parts of Wales. Feasting was extensive and generous. A list of tunes played has survived; this shows that 24 of the Lleweni items were registered with the Stationers' Company in London. Five of the Lleweni tunes are mentioned in Shakespeare's plays. The emphasis in the selection of tunes was towards the English taste.[1]

In the library of Christ Church, Oxford, protected by a vault with a timed lock, is a large casebound volume some two inches thick. It contains papers connected with the Salusbury family. MS 183 and MS 184 contain verses in English, Welsh and Latin in praise of the Salusburys and Sir John in particular; other materials all relate to the household at Lleweni. It has sometimes been called a 'commonplace book' because of its miscellaneous content. Daniel Huws, manuscript expert, notes, 'The 'Danielle' poems were once both folded, like Ben Jonson's, like a couple of the Welsh poems. This implies that they were delivered 'by post' and were written by persons unable to be present at Lleweni. They were not copied directly, by the poets, into a house book of JS, as were most of the poems in MSS 183 and 184. They were delivered and sewn or pasted into a book which was probably already bound.'[2] The last date in the miscellany that can be identified is in 1606.[3]

The first section of bound-in leaves is folios 34-41, which includes folios by Ben Jonson, in his hand (fol 41r-v). The second section comprises folios 82-84. These contain a poem in English, beginning, 'Sweet mvses come & lend your helpinge handes', followed by the line 'finis quoth Danielle' (fol 82r-v); two poems in English in the hand of Sir John Salusbury, initialled JS (written in the inner and outer margins of folio 82r); an English poem beginning 'But stay a while thou hast forgot they parte', followed by a swerving line scribble under which there is a severe over-scoring, underneath which, again, is a neat italicised 'finis quoth Danielle'.

[1] See New Welsh Review, 56 (Summer 2002), 45-52. Also Music in the Welsh Household, c1580-1620, reprinted from the Welsh History Review, 21, No 4 (Dec 2003).

[2] Letter to the present writer, 18 September 2004.

The author of the two poems is therefore said to be Danielle, but who is this? The possibility that this is the author Samuel Daniel has been widely rejected on account of the incompatibility of handwriting and of literary styles.

The handwriting of what I have called 'The Denbigh Poem' does not occur elsewhere in the volume. The paper is of a very high quality, of the 'laid' type. The size of the sheet is slightly larger than what used to be called 'folio'. This size of leaf was widely used by playwriters in the Elizabethan period because of its length. The writer has penned his small, bold, clear script, in 'copybook' style (which Shakespeare would have learned at school) such that 54 lines are on one page. All the proper names are in italics, which was a convention of the period. The sheets have deep creases, indicating almost certainly that the leaves had been folded small enough to be carried in a pocket or purse. The suggestion is that the writing was done in, say, London, then carried by person to Denbigh and later bound.

On folio 83, the second stanza begins: 

 ffrom princely blood & Ryale stocke she came

 of egles brood natcht in a loftie nest

 The earle of derby & the king of manne

 Her father was her brother now possest 

This clearly points to a putative time of writing. Henry died on 25 September 1593 and his son on 16 April 1594, so the poem was penned between these dates. In addition, the last two lines of the 72-line first poem read:

 And thus in myddest of all this mirth & glee

 I'le take my leaue of courteus Salusbury 

'Mirth & glee' suggest a celebration, as do the many references to singing and dancing. The second line in the last stanza of the first poem reads, '… to lend ye help with all their siluer strings', which suggests the presence of harpists. The writer has clearly been a guest at Lleweni and is preparing to depart. A Christmas celebration is seemingly invoked. Given that this event is at Christmas 1593-4, the most likely period of its composition is during January of 1594. During this period, the London theatres were closed, but they were to re-open (for a short period) in February, so this could be the reason for the writer's urgent desire to leave. Shakespeare's long poem The Rape of Lucrece was entered in the Stationers' Register on 9 May 1594, so if the guest at Lleweni was William Shakespeare, his completing and entering this poem (dedicated to the wealthy potential patron, the Earl of Southampton) would have been a priority.

The text of the Denbigh Poem reveals an entire piece written in a disciplined, structurally-regular stanza form. Each stanza has six lines, rhyming ABAB, with a final couplet CC. This is the same structure as Shakespeare's long poem Venus and Adonis (entered in the Stationers' Register, 18 April 1593). The meter is Shakespeare's familiar iambic pentameter. References to nymphs and dances ( Roundel/ roondelays) echo A Midsummer Night's Dream. The poem has a number of classical allusions. In his flattery of the Salusbury couple, the writer invokes the Helen of Troy/Paris story. He signs off the poem 'vale' which is from the Latin valere, 'to be well'. He invokes the obscure Greek story of Admetus, King of Pharae, in flattery of Ursula especially. The writer is well versed in classical literature. The Denbigh Poem's use of the word 'greekish' is echoed in Troilus and Cressida, 'I'll heat his blood with Greekish wine tonight.' 'Beauteous' is also in Venus and Adonis, 'This beauteous combat ...'. The poem repeats the term 'ten'; Shakespeare's Sonnet 38 has 'Be thou the tenth muse'. The writer knows of John the Strong's physical prowess: 'His manlike arms ffrom of the greekish wales/ would tosse downe pilleres like to tennis balls.' The reference to '... sweete philida & corydon' in stanza eleven is intriguing. These two appear in A Midsummer Night's Dream as a pair of lovers, originating in a tale by Virgil, where the two do not even meet. The spellings in the poem and in the play show distinct similarities.

Stanza nine of the first poem is of particular interest: 

 Hence mvst I goe but mvses stay you heare

 I mvst departe yet shew you my goodwill

 When I ame gon see that you doe not feare

 To shew your masteres fruites of simple skill

 Ffor while he lives where e're he doe or ride

 Sweete John Salusburys name shall in him bide. 

The writer presents himself as 'your master' with possession of 'simple skill'. This master has created 'fruits': so he is a writer with a number of works created. He says that muses should stay; that they should stay with John, who is a poet. But the writer presents himself as a much superior writer - therefore 'master'. He flatters Salusbury in the last line by saying that he will not forget his friend. Looking at A Midsummer Night's Dream, (Act V, Sc 1) we have: 

 PROLOGUE If we offend, it is with our good will.

 That you should think, we come not to offend,

 But with good will. To shew our simple skill,

 That is the true beginning of our end 

Here, Shakespeare (perhaps punning on his own name) is speaking from the viewpoint of the practical writing man. When he expresses himself in writing, he is doing it with a skill; he is practised and he is good at it. This self-confidence, this quality-through-experience is clear in the writer of the Denbigh Poem. He knows that John Salusbury is inferior to him as a writer but, through friendship, he metaphorically leaves his muses behind, now that he is leaving, in expectation of improvement to his writing. It is the statement of a particular kind of individual: the writer of the Denbigh Poem presents himself as a serious, skilled writer who is not reluctant to recognise his own quality.

The thirty-five lines of the second part of the Denbigh Poem are addressed to Ursula. She is flattered and thanked for her hospitality. The author is '... bound in harte / in humble duty for to recompence ...'. Does 'humble duty' suggest someone who has worked for her family? He says he is staying a while, 'thou hast forgot thy parte / returne againe …'. So he dramatises a leaving, then a turning back, and uses the language of the theatre - 'forgott thy parte'.

The last two lines of the poem read: 

 God keepe your troope both high & low degree

 tho last not lest vale m[istress] Ane stanley 

The final line is a puzzle. He turns to another woman in this final line, where the previous metrical pattern is abandoned, so modifying his encomium. The Anne Stanley we know of is the youngest daughter of Ferdinando, Lord Strange, Ursula's niece. She would be aged fourteen in 1594. Could the author have addressed her because he had a special relationship with her, having been her family's retainer/servant and possibly 'master', that is schoolmaster/teacher? 

In the sixth stanza of the poem's first section is the line, 'His manlike armes ffrom of the greekish wales ...' contains two peculiar characteristics. Firstly, the double consonant in 'ffrom'. According to Eric Sams[1] this is a characteristic of Shakespeare's scripting: in our text it occurs many times, including 'putt', 'forgott', 'penne' and 'tenne'. Another characteristic is the use of 'e' for 'ea': here we have 'perle' and 'egles'. Another is that 'our' and 'u' are interchangeable: here we have 'retourne'. Also that c, s and z are interchangeable, so 'practize'. Additionally, the 'from of' is peculiar. Quiller-Couch in his 1924 edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream [2] identifies 'from off' (Act 2, Sc 1, 183) as a 'Shakespearian spelling'.[3] These characteristics seem to point to the supposition  that the handwriter of this document is also the author. A copyist or scribe, asked to copy the work, would be very unlikely to have included so many spelling peculiarities or 'errors'. He would also, in all probability, not have added hand-drawn lines between each stanza.

[1] Eric Sams, Shakespeare's Edward III (London, 1996), 192-3.

[2] Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and John Dover Wilson (eds), A Midsummer Night's Dream (Cambridge, 1924).

We do not know what is underneath the heavy overscoring under the final line of the poem. It may be that investigations using the new type of procedures used on old paintings would reveal it. The original subscription appears to have been on two lines; the upper one has been blotted-out more severely than the lower one. The ink appears to be identical with that used for the body of the poem. The addition 'finis quoth Danielle' to both parts of the poem is in the same hand as the poem, according to Jeremy Griffiths.[1] He points to the common use of the Greek 'e' in this 'formal' or italic script. The text begins with the word 'Sweet' including an elaborate S with a spur at the head, very like the signature on the third page of the will.[2]

A probable interpretation of the above is that the author wrote out his poem in his best copybook style, wrote a note or signature at the end, changed his mind, scribbled over it and wrote 'finis quoth Danielle' underneath. This could be an indication that the text he had written had links with the work of Samuel Daniel. This could also be a joke, based on the story of Daniel in the lion's den. He had stayed at Lleweni: 'llew' in Welsh is lion; so he had been staying in the lion's 'den'. The feminised 'Danielle' may be a nudge  at his own expense, carrying a hint of his sexuality.

Professor David Crystal, the eminent linguist, has subjected what he calls the Danielle Poems to analysis. His discussion is available on his website.[3] He divides Shakespeare's work into Corpus A and Corpus B. The former is work written before the end of 1595, being twelve works including The Taming of the Shrew, Venus and Adonis, etc, but not (surprisingly) A Midsummer Night's Dream. He writes (page 1), 'Of the 274 words analysed, 266 are found in Corpus A. The vocabulary of the Danielle poems is thus very much (97 percent) within what we know S to have used at the time ...'. He refers to in midst as a usage which 'seems to go against S's normal style', although it was used by Spenser in 1590. Crystal concludes, 'I have to take a view. On the lexical evidence, it is certainly possible that the texts could be by S, for only a small number of usages fall outside his lexical range in 1593/4; but in midst, malikest, courteous of and (less certain) unlike to suggest it is not. Are these few problem cases enough to outweigh the general finding that the lexical range of the Danielle poems corresponds to S's other usage?'

[1] See The New Welsh Review, 25 (Summer 1994), 52-7, which also includes a faithful copy of the original script.

[2] See Charles Hamilton, In Search of Shakespeare: a Study of the Poet's Life and Handwriting (London, 1985). See reproduction [a], p 78.

We now turn to the Parry volume, Sinetes Passions (1597). Robert  Parry (1540-1612) was a Denbigh man who had travelled widely: he visited London repeatedly and in 1600 made a six-month journey to Italy. His brother Richard married Blanche, daughter of Edward Thelwall, Sir John Salusbury's stepfather. Their son, John Parry, married Oriana Salusbury, daughter of Sir John. So Robert Parry mixed in aristocratic circles.

The title-page of the Parry volume is headed by the odd word 'SINETES' ('sere'/'scentless'?) and underneath it, arranged in a decorative form, is the following: 'Passions vppon his fortunes / offered for an Incense at the / shrine of the Ladies which gui / ded his distempered / thoughtes. / The Patrons patheticall Po / sies, Sonets, Maddrigals, and Roundelays. Together with / Sinetes Dompe ...', followed by details of the printer and selling-point in London, with the date 1597. On a following page is the dedication: 'To the right worshipfull John Salisbury of lleweni Esquier for the Bodie to the Queenes most excellent Maiestie'. The main contents of the book are in three sections. The first is a group of seven brief commendatory poems indicated by the writer's initials, The second group are forty-six poems by Parry, headed 'PASSION 1' etc. The third group are  introduced by the following: 'THE Patrone his pathetical Posies, Sonets, Maddrigalls, & Rowndelayes…' Firstly there are thirteen Poesies, many featuring the name Dorothy Halsall.  Following are thirty-one 'Sonettos': the line initials of Sonetto 3 gives us 'I.S. HIS VALENTINE', clearly marking John Salusbury's authorship. Brown says that the entire series of Sonettos, as well as the Madrigals and Roundelays which follow, are John Salusbury's work.[1]

Hard by a running streame or crystal fountaine,

Wherein rich Orient pearle is often found,

Enuiron'd with a high and steep mountaine,

A fertill soile and fruitful plot of ground.

   There shalt thou find true Honors louely Squire,

   That for this Phoenix keeps Prometheus fire.

His bower wherein he lodgeth all the night,

Is fram'd of Cedars and high loftie Pine,

I made his house to chastice thence despight,

And fram'd it like this heauenly roofe of mine:

   His name is Liberall honor, and his hart,

   Aymes at true faithfull seruice and desart.

Looke on his face, and in his browes doth sit,

Bloud and sweet Mercie hand in hand vnited,

Bloud to his foes, a president most fit

For such as haue his gentle humour spited:

   His Haire is curl'd by nature mild and meek,

   Hangs carelesse down to shrowd a blushing cheeke.

Giue him this Ointment to anoint his head,

This precious Balme to lay vnto his feet,

These shall direct him to his Phoenix bed,

Where on a high hill he this Bird shall meet:

   And of their Ashes by my doome shall rise,

   Another Phoenix her to equalise. 

This poem is composed by a much more composed and skilful hand than that of the remainder of the main text. It is clearly an allegorical account of John Salusbury in the Vale of Clwyd, with his wife Ursula. There is the row of hills to the east, the river Clwyd (which runs past Lleweni), the fertile ground and the numerous trees (which when sold by the Hughes family in 1817 raised a substantial sum). The phrase 'Liberall honor' is explainable, according to Brown, when you take the Latin equivalent 'Honos liberalis'. The letters can be made to spell IOHON SALLSBERI. This is an ingenious explanation and quite convincing. The Turtle-dove has his home in 'Paphos Isle', which associates with the rich and fertile Vale. The subject's long curled hair is consistent with that seen in a painting of John Salusbury at Lleweni, copied by Moses Griffith in the late eighteenth century. The Ointment/Balme is reminiscent of the juice made from the flower 'Love-in-Idleness', described by Oberon in Act 11 of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Brown has difficulty with explaining the circumstances of the first meeting of the Turtle (John Salusbury) and his wife (Ursula Stanley). The poem says that the Phoenix lives on the top of a 'high hill'. This (in the present writer's explanation) corresponds with the hill which supports Hawarden Castle, the home of Ursula and Dorothy. We can imagine John climbing up this hill when he goes to meet his future wife, in the year 1586, before they were married in  December.[1]

The circumstances behind this poem are apparently similar to those behind Shakespeare's poem, now called The Phoenix and the Turtle, which was printed in the later section of Love's Martyr. In both cases the main setting is Denbigh, the Turtle is John Salusbury, the Phoenix is Ursula née Stanley, and (in the Phoenix) the second Phoenix is Jane, their first child, born in October 1587. There is the possibility of an alternative reading - that the second phoenix is Dorothy, Ursula's sister, with whom (see above) John Salusbury had a documented passionate relationship through the 1590s. This relationship is seen as the core of Shakespeare's A Lover's Complaint.

We now move forward to consider two of Shakespeare's productions, the Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint, both published in a single volume in 1609. John Kerrigan writes: '… A Lover's Complaint. Though few indeed have heeded them, the stylistic tests agree that this beautiful and neglected poem - in which a young woman is overheard lamenting her seduction by a lovely but heartless youth - was written by Shakespeare after 1600, probably in 1602-5.'[2] 

[1] See Carleton Brown, Poems by Sir John Salusbury, 36-7: XXV11 'A Posie presented in a masque at Berain' 29 Dec 1586. It includes the line 'For to delighte hys doulfull mynde', which is reminiscent of the 'funereal' The Phoenix and the Turtle. A second 'Posie' for a masque is printed, beginning, 'The Lyon Rampinge for his Praye / A princlye byrde heed yd Assaye.' [2] John Kerrigan, William Shakespeare, The Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint (London, 1999), Introduction, 12.

The poem contains:  … images of doubleness - 'reworded', 'sis'tring', 'this double voice', 'breaking rings a-twain' enacted in the syntax ('wind and rain', 'spent and done', 'Whereon the thought might think', 'all that youth … youth all quit') simultaneously announce the subject and the strategy of the tale …. As the text proceeds, and its images of doubleness proliferate, the title 'doubles' in significance because the Danielesque maiden recounts, within her complaint,

the plaint which has wrought her downfall … the 'fickle maid' recalls the seductive words of the young man who slept with her and then abandoned her … communicating to her immediate auditor ('A reverend man that grazed his cattle nigh'), and beyond him the poet (that further 'reworder'), and beyond him the reader, the deceitful pleadings of her duplicitous lover.[1] 

My suggestion is that 'sis'tring' is the key - that the poem involves two sisters, one of whom is the complaining maid. Each sister lives separately, one in a residence on a hill next to a valley with a river, the other in a separate valley (so 'doubleness' drives the poem because it features two sisters involved with the same man). The man who is being complained about seduced the 'fickle maid full pale' some time ago, leaving her unloved and unmarried: he, even when he did this, was married, with children (one, illegitimate). The 'double voice' represents the voices of both sisters, who are both complaining of the seducing man, John Salusbury, one because he did not leave his wife and marry her, the second because he was unfaithful to her.

I suggest that Hawarden Castle is the setting for this poem. This, as previously stated, was owned by Henry, the fourth Earl of Derby. He had a 'second family' here, including 'natural' daughters Dorothy and Ursula.[2] We know that Ursula married John Salusbury in 1586 and that he had a passion (see Sinetes Passions) for his wife's sister Dorothy which lasted many years. Dorothy I see as the complaining woman of the poem - the 'fickle maid'.

The first two lines of the poem set the scene: 

From off a hill whose concave womb reworded

The fact that both the Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint  were published together in the same volume suggests some circumstance which we have not through scholarship been made aware of. Did Shakespeare himself hand the papers to the printer or were they in the possession of another person who was asked to pass them to the printer? If so, who was this other person? He must have been then in London in 1609. The eccentric and unsuitable dedication to the volume by printer/publisher Thomas Thorpe suggests that Shakespeare had not the opportunity to check the work in proof before it was issued to the public (in which case he would almost certainly insisted on its removal): this adds weight to the supposition that he may have been acting through an intermediary.

Frances Keen, wife of Alan Keen, author of The Annotator, made her own researches into the life of William Shakespeare and came up with some unusual observations. She says that John Salusbury of Denbigh is one of the shadowy figures behind the Sonnets and that Sonnet 33 is an account of one who spent time staying at Lleweni. Here is the sonnet in full: 

 Full many a glorious morning have I seen

 Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,

 Kissing the golden face the meadows green,

 Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy,

 Anon permit the basest clouds to ride

 With ugly rack on his celestial face, 

And from the forlorn world his visage hide,

 Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace.

 Even so my sun one early morn did shine

 With all triumphant splendour on my brow;

 But out, alack, he was but one hour mine,

 The region cloud hath masked him from me now.

     Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;

      Suns of the world may stain when heaven's suns staineth. 

The setting is clear. The poet has woken up in a house and seen the sun rise over mountains; nearby is a river. All is sunny and attractive. Then, in another place, the imagery changes to something miserable, ugly. The poet hides his face from the world. He is in disgrace. We do not know why. He recalls his friend (who lives over to the west) in his fine life-setting and regrets that the last time he saw him they were only together for an hour. The poet is some distance away, doing his work in the ordinary world, which can 'stain', while his friend (symbolised by sun imagery) enjoys a life of ease and beauty. It may be that simply making a living in the theatre is enough for him to feel in 'disgrace'; once again, Shakespeare is sensing the class structure. To the other extreme, it may be that this disgrace was the result of his homosexuality. Although, Kerrigan points out, 'Elizabethan England lacked that linguistic means: its legal codes and religious discourses could not accommodate the vice they abhorred. The age was, to that extent, neither sympathetic nor antagonistic towards inversion, but pre-homosexual.'[1]

The topographical references do not seem to correspond with the home of the Earl of Southampton at Titchfield, Hampshire: it does not have a row of hills close by to the east behind which the sun rises in the morning, although it does have hills to the far west.

Sonnet 34 continues the same theme. Clouds and bad weather surround him but the image and memory of his friend are as the sun which sometimes breaks through: ' ... 'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break / To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face ...'. Not enough because the poet wishes urgently to be with his friend. Sonnet 144 uses the light/dark imagery, again connecting his friend with the sun: '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 coloured ill ...'.

That the bulk of Shakespeare's Sonnets relate not to one man but a number of attractive young men is a proposal that is gaining ground with literary scholars. Stephen Greenblatt's biography Will in the World presents the notion in two questions, 'Could Shakespeare have, as some scholars have proposed, been addressing both young men in succession, cleverly recycling the love tokens? Could some of those same love tokens have originated as poems addressed to other young men or women whom the poet was wooing?' [2] John Kerrigan writes, in his excellent edition of the Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint, 'It is, however, a premise of this edition that, in reading Shakespeare's Sonnets, biography need not impinge. This is not to deny that lived experience lies behind the text. Yet there may have been two, three or more young men involved in Shakespeare's idea of the friend; in one sense, indeed, there must have been many young men involved in the production of that single image.'[3] The lack of close physical details of locality and appearance adds to the argument that these poems were used as tokens of admiration and 'love' by the poet in his quest for support and patronage from one and then another wealthy, comfortably-housed, physically attractive young man. 

The first eight lines of Shakespeare's sonnet 94 reads as follows: 

 They that have power to hurt and will do none,

 That do not do the thing they most do show,

 Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,

 Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;

 They rightly do inherit heaven's graces

 And husband nature's riches from expense;

 They are the lords and owners of their faces,

 Others but stewards of their excellence. 

Duncan-Jones spends some two pages discussing this in relation to John Salusbury.[4] She notes that 'POSSE ET NOLLE, NOBILE' ('To be able to do harm and refrain from doing so is noble') is the Salusbury family motto.

She notes, 'Shakespeare was to make half a dozen adaptations of the saying, the most extended and conspicuous being Sonnet 94, which opens, 'They that have pow'r to hurt, and will do none.' Though the aphorism is moderately familiar, it is tempting to wonder whether the speaker's claim in Sonnet 94 that the true 'lords and owners of their faces' are those who 'do not do the thing they most do show' (7, 2) - that is, eminent noblemen who refrain from 'pulling rank' - may be connected in some way with the well-born but submissive John Salusbury. Whether or not Shakespeare knew the motto earlier, he certainly encountered Salusbury's use of it in 1601, for it appears as the epigraph at the head of Robert Chester's epistle dedicating Love's Martyr to him. Given the presence at the Middle Temple of so many of Shakespeare's known associates, it seems quite possible that Shakespeare encountered John Salusbury there either in 1595 or later. At some point Shakespeare may also have got to know Robert Chester of Royston, whom we believe likely to be the prime author of Love's Martyr. Chester was admitted to the Middle Temple on 14 February 1600, retaining lodgings there until November 1601. His residence there neatly encompasses the period within which Love's Martyr was prepared and published.'[1] Professor Duncan-Jones writes, 'Links between Sinetes and sonnets by Shakespeare … suggest the possibility that Shakespeare himself was acquainted, in or after 1597, both with Parry's book and with Parry's patron.'[2] 

   Grosart, in his Introduction to his edition of Love's Martyr in 1878,[3] refers to Isabella's pleading in Measure for Measure: 

      O it is excellent

   To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous

   To use it like a giant.[4] 

   Interestingly, there are a number of references in Shakespeare's sonnets to a book or notebook containing his friend's poems, which was gifted to Shakespeare then given away by him. This becomes emblematic of his friend's presence in his mind. His friend is a poet: 

Had my friend's muse grown with his growing age,

A dearer birth than this his love had brought

To march in ranks of better equipage.

But since he died, and poets better prove,

Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love. (S 32) 

He comes back to the poetry book in sonnet 122: 

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain

Full charactered with lasting memory…

Of thee, thy record never can be missed.

That poor retention could not so much hold,

Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;

Therefore to give them from me was I bold

To trust those tables that receive thee more.

 To keep an adjunct to remember thee

   Were to import forgetfulness in me. 

He has given his friend's book away. But the greater flattery is that he did not need it because his friend's words are within his brain. Is this book Parry's Sinetes Passions? The comment '…since he died…' in sonnet 32 could be a later emendation intended to point to Ferdinando,(d.1594) who wrote verse - apparently published in a 1610 anthology titled Belvedere; or the Garden of the Muses.

There are a number of references to a picture of a 'beauteous and lovely youth' in the early sonnets, particularly in 24 and 47. In the first, we have a meditation on the image the painter lays down, on the real person and on the memory of the real person ('They draw but what they see, know not the heart', Sonnet 24, line 14). Similarly in sonnet 47: 'With my love's picture then my eye doth feast, / And to the painted banquet bids my heart.'). Is there a connection here with a large oil painting of John Salusbury, inscribed 1591, that hung in Lleweni in the 1590s onwards, showing him boldly in a white ruff and yellow buttoned doublet? If Shakespeare was in Lleweni during Christmas of 1593 or 1595, he would have seen it. The picture copied by Moses Griffiths has since disappeared.

Finally, a topographical detail. In the discussion of A Lover's Complaint the reference to 'a sacred nun' was explained with reference to the story of St Winefride of St Winefride's Well, Holywell. This is only a few miles from Hawarden, the proposed mis en scene of the poem. It is a noted point of pilgrimage for Catholics due to its alleged healing waters. The story, seemingly, is invoked in Sonnet 153: 

 Cupid laid his brand and fell asleep.

 A maid of Dian's this advantage found,

 And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep

 In a cold valley-fountain of that ground;

 Which borrowed from this holy fire of Love

 A dateless lively heat, still to endure,

 And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove

 Against strange maladies a sovereign cure…

 I,sick withal, the help of bath desired, 

And in Sonnet 154: 

                                                         … hot desire ...

 ... This brand she quenched in a cool well by,

 Which from Love's fire took heat perpetual,

 Growing a bath and healthful remedy

 For men diseased; but I, my mistress' thrall,

 Came there for cure … 

This has strong overtones of venereal disease and a hot bath treatment. The healing waters of the city of Bath are sometimes mentioned as a source of this imagery, but there is no religious significance there, no story of a 'sacred nun'. The Bath waters are largely recreational or in the nature of a 'tonic' whereas the waters described here are for serious medical conditions - so, for healing. As the holy well of St Winefride is en route from Knowsley, in southern Lancashire, to Denbigh, and very close to Hawarden, it is not improbable that Shakespeare visited there, especially as a part of the building was financed by Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby, wife of Thomas Stanley, descendant of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and Henry Tudor's mother.

The final scholarly comment in this essay will come from the late Dr Eric Sams. In his posthumous book, The Real Shakespeare 11, Appendix 4 is headed 'The Denbigh Document 1593-4'.[5] He writes:         

The New Welsh Review has recently published an account of putative verses by   Shakespeare which had supposedly survived in his handwriting (Lloyd-Roberts 1993-4). The penmanship was certainly very like that of Edmund Ironside, already certified as holograph by a New York document expert (Hamilton 1986); and the identity of the two hands was independently confirmed by an experienced palaeographer … If Shakespeare had spent some of his own Catholic boyhood as a tutor or actor-musician in the service of the recusant Houghtons and Heskeths of Lancashire (Honigmann 1985, RSI 36-38), enjoying and profiting from their aristocratic amenities, including their libraries, it would be natural to seek further stage employment with Derby's Men, Ferdinando Stanley's company …

 There is in fact, finally, more evidence of Shakespeare's Welsh than of his Lancastrian connections … It would thus be entirely unsurprising if Shakespeare's formative accommodation in great houses had included sojourns with the Salusburys in North Wales. But the ascription to him of the verses in question, and a comparative study of their handwriting, are recent topics which have as yet scarcely been touched upon. The essential data and comments recorded in numbers 23 and 25 of The New Welsh Review will no doubt be expanded and elaborated in due course; the purpose of this section is to attract further informed interest and expertise.

The relationship of William Shakespeare and John Salusbury has been the subject of these pages. They contain many details, some taken from history, some from literary commentary, some from literature, arranged in such a way, along a thread of narrative, as to suggest a significant relationship between the two. The reader is invited to consider John Salusbury as one of the inspirers of Shakespeare's Sonnets, as well as a central character in his poem A Lover's Complaint. Thomas Parry's Sinetes Passions is presented as a seminal text along with the content of Love's Martyr, especially Shakespeare's poem The Phoenix and the Turtle. That a relationship existed is practically beyond question. But it seems closer, warmer and deeper than at first appeared. The possibility that the image of John Salusbury of Denbigh as a 'beauteous and lovely' youth who moved our major poet to such lengths of soul-searching in sublime sonneteering is a consideration that Denbighshire residents can take special pride in.[1]  

[1] The writer dedicates this paper to his late mother, Margaret Maude Jones, who was a keen supporter of the Denbighshire Historical Society.

He also wishes to thank the following for their help: James A Jones, the late Eric Sams, Christopher Williams, Jane Brunning, Beryl Evans, Derrick Bentley, Prof John Barrell, Rachel Bowen, Dewi Roberts, Robert Owen, Prof Park Honan, Daniel Huws, Prof E.A.J. Honigmann, Sir William Gladstone, Prof Michael Scott. All errors and omissions are my own.