Is the poem "Shakespearean"?

Of course, the brass ring of identifying a new Oxford poem--exciting as that is--is not merely identifying a new Oxford poem. Does "The Paine of Pleasure" have anything to say about the Shakespeare authorship controversy?

We must start by asking what we can mean by "Shakespearean" in this context. As Michael D. Bristol has perceptively said, Shakespeare's readers have made Shakespeare into a myth.

Shakespeare's works, together with various ways which people have invented to interact with them, have become durable features in the cultural landscape of contemporary society. The myth of Shakespeare appears as a complex narrative that orients and guides the social activity generated by these remarkable artifacts.

Believing in Shakespeare is not altogether different from believing in Santa Claus; such belief articulates a deep sense of affiliation with a tradition of expressive forms and institutional practices. [37]

Shakespeare's finished work, published under his name, stands on a peak not only of its own quality but of its readers' mythmaking attention. However accomplished "The Paine of Pleasure" is for its time, however delightfully some of its lines may sing, however historically important it may be, it has received none of the Shakespearean attention, has not participated in that "complex narrative…[that] tradition of expressive forms and institutional practices." And in that sense it cannot be Shakespearean.

Nor does it speak in the tones of the mature poet. But no poem of 1580 could. The first datable poem in the Shakespearean canon was not published until 1593. Between "The Paine of Pleasure" and Venus and Adonis stretch all of Sidney's work, Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar and The Faerie Queene, Marlowe's plays, and the early work of Shakespeare himself. By the time of Venus and Adonis we are in the Golden Age of the new poetics; in 1580 we are barely at its beginnings.

So we cannot say it is part of the Shakespearean canon--perhaps because it was not written by the same man who wrote the known Shakespeare plays and poems; certainly because the Shakespeare plays and poems are phenomena of the 1590s and after. To draw a poem of 1580 into the Shakespearean canon would require serious alterations of the nature of the canon.

We can only consider what elements of "The Paine of Pleasure" might have similarities with later work published as by Shakespeare.

General similarities

We have already mentioned the ABABCC rhyme scheme, which Shakespeare shares with many other poets including Oxford. The rhythm of the poem is iambic pentameter, not as common as it would be later in the century, but not uncommon.

The size of the poem is slightly more distinctive. Though one may argue that the poem is essentially a collection of shorter poems, the sheer bulk and coherence of it is characteristic of a playwright or writer of long poems.

Class attitudes

Walt Whitman notoriously remarked that Shakespeare's sympathies were with "the wolfish earls." Critics have disagreed, but Shakespeare's work undeniably draws its principal characters almost exclusively from the upper classes. The peasantry provide clowns and rustics--treated with Shakespeare's generous humanity, but essentially seen from the outside. "The Paine of Pleasure" similarly sees country "louts" from the outside:

Some lusty Simon on a sunday too,

Will clime a May-pole for his Susans sake:

And on the top will hang a handkirchoo,

For him that dare, downe thence againe to take.

But if both he and handkircher fall downe,

He likes no more of climing for a crowne.

More distinctively, it has a similar sympathy with them:

Euen so in shippe, the boy that seekes to clime,

By cordes and lines, if either rope doe slippe,

Or hand or foote, as many doe sometime,

Then downe a maine he falles into the shippe.

Or in the Sea, where hundreth then to one:

He neuer scapes, ther's one young Sea-man gone. ("Climbing")

Moral attitudes

For both the poet of "The Paine of Pleasure" and Shakespeare, beauty and love are "a snare"--a shared Elizabethan commonplace. Both poets speak of spending money freely and suffering the consequences. Both live uneasily between the secular and the spiritual. Both are concerned about the efficacy of prayer. Neither is didactic or moralizing, in an age when didactic and moralizing poetry was both common and valued. Both connect good humor and a good heart, a sullen mood and an evil nature. For both, the distinction between the two is almost one of essential nature vs. intellect, "kind" vs "mind." Shakespeare prefers Falstaff's disreputable grace to Malvolio's moralizing self-delusion; the poet of "The Paine of Pleasure" distinguishes the essential grace in a man's nature from his fallible understanding.

…For wantonnes and wickednes are two:

Tis not the grace in any, but the minde,

That mooues a man, or good or bad to doe… ("Music")

Choice of content

The content of "The Paine of Pleasure" shows no inconsistencies with Shakespeare's outlook and experience, as far as these can be inferred from his work. Shakespeare appears to have had experience of the law and medicine, as does the author of "The Paine of Pleasure." Shakespeare's astronomy is educated and exact; the author of "The Paine of Pleasure" takes pleasure in studying astronomy.

Music is a common reference in Elizabethan poetry and plays, but Shakespeare shares with the author of "The Paine of Pleasure" slightly more specific preferences. Neither likes "fiddlers"[38] :

And there I stood amazed for a while,

As on a pillory, looking through the lute,

While she did call me rascal fiddler

And twangling Jack, with twenty such vile terms,

As she had studied to misuse me so.

(Taming of the Shrew, II, I)

But both men care deeply for good music; the poet of "The Paine of Pleasure" "cannot well reprove" court music even to prove his point.

Sports

Shakespeare's works contain many references to hawking and metaphors relating to hawking; the poet of "The Paine of Pleasure" not only uses the Elizabethan commonplace hawking terms (eyas, haggard) but makes educated distinctions among long- and short-winged hawks, falcons, tercels, lanners, lannerets, sparhawks, and merlins.

Both poets know the sports of the nobility. Shakespeare sets scenes on tennis courts and has casual tennis references; "The Paine of Pleasure" contains a section on tennis. Bowling was a relatively new sport in England (the first OED reference dates from the time of King Henry VIII), and, as Shakespeare indicates, it was an expensive sport played principally by rich men and nobles. But Shakespeare knows the terminology and rules as intricately as does the author of "The Paine of Pleasure."

Was there ever man had such luck! When I kiss'd the jack, upon an up-cast to be hit away! I had a hundred pound on't; and then a whoreson jackanapes must take me up for swearing, as if I borrowed mine oaths of him, and might not spend them at my pleasure. (Cymbeline, II, I)

Rare and new words, many related to sporting terms

Shakespeare is known for the size of his vocabulary and the number of words he introduced into English or first used in their modern sense. In part this is a phenomenon of Shakespeare's eminence--the compilers of the OED paid more attention to Shakespeare than to, say, Thomas Churchyard--and the popularity of the plays has made some of his words popular.

But the phenomenon is real: Shakespeare made up words, or found obscure ones around him, and used them in his poetry. So does the poet of "The Paine of Pleasure." Both poets are particularly fond of words relating to sports.

Indeed, "The Paine of Pleasure" is about words as much as about pleasure. The author revels not only in fencing and archery, but in the 'terms' one can use around them.

What sport it is to see an arrow fly,

A gallant archer cleanly draw his bow,

In shooting off, again how cunningly

He hath his loose, in letting of it go:

To nock it sure, and draw it to the head

And then fly out, hold straight, and strike it dead

With other terms that archers long have used,

As blow wind, stoupe , ah, down the wind a bow:

("Shooting")

By Fencing growes our termes of the Brauado,

Our foines and thrusts, the deadly stabbe and all:

Which some more finely call a Stabbado,

And some a blowe, a cleanly wipe can call.

And some a rake, that crosseth both the shinnes,

Now with such stuffe this ioyfull sport beginnes…. ("Fencing")

Implicitly, words are a secular pleasure. In some of the sports poems, notably "Fishing" and "Fowling", the author confesses himself to be unsympathetic to the sport itself: but, oh, the words! The author of "The Paine of Pleasure" uses every one of his terms accurately, and he takes a collector's pleasure even in listing them. From "Fishing" come trammel, drag, bow line, shotterel, weel and the early use of gentle to mean a maggot or bluebottle larva used as bait. "Fowling" produces snipe , the distinction between snipe and snite , and "shooluerd" (shovelard, a spoonbill). "Bowling" brings in bias, rub and crank,as well as an Euphuistic metaphor taken from bowling.

How some delight, to see a round Bowle run,

Smoothely away, vntill he catch a rub:

Then hold thy bias, if that cast were wun,

The game were vp as sure then as a club.

Then vpright Bowles, that neede not any banke,

And for a game, a fine throw in the cranke.

But if they markt their money run away,

Their coyne to crosse quite byas from their purse:

T'would make them leaue that costly kinde of play…

"Music" takes in a rich haul of terminology:

By Larges and Longs, by Breefes and Semibreefes.

Minims, Crochets, Quauers, Sharps, Flats, to faine:

Vt, re, me, fa, sol, la, and backe againe.

"Brick-wall", from "Tennis", is one of the more interesting examples, since it provides another possible link with Oxford. The OED quotes Cotgrave's definition, 1611: a brick-wall is "a side-stroake at Tennis wherein the ball goes not right forward, but hits one of the walls of the court, and thence bounds towards the avuerse partie." It is also used figuratively. The term existed in French and Italian before it came (briefly) into English; the OED cites Florio, 1598, who still uses the Italian term briccola. The first cited use of the English term brickwall dates from the same year as "The Paine of Pleasure," 1580, in Claudius Hollyband's Treasury of the French Tongue.[39] We can thus deduce the poet of "The Paine of Pleasure" might have played tennis in France or Italy and/or might have known Hollyband. Hollyband had appeared in The Paradise of Dainty Devices with Oxford in 1576. Oxford had spent time in both France and Italy, where he probably played tennis, which was popular among the nobility of both countries.[40]

One can go on: capri and cross point from "Dancing", swasher from "Fencing"; but it is unnecessary to pile example on example. The poet of "The Paine of Pleasure" does not coin neologisms as frequently as Shakespeare; however, like Shakespeare, he has a large vocabulary of new and modern words and of specialized terms, and he likes to use metaphors from sports.

Dramatic voices, enjambed lines, and rhythmic experimentation

Lyric poetry is thick on the ground in the Elizabethan age, but in the poetry of 1580, true dramatic voices are rare. Gascoigne can make his own voice into poetry; later, Marlowe and Webster will reach heights of pure dramatic voice. "I'll burn my books--ah, Mephistophilis!" "Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle. She died young." But the effect of transcribing the ordinary voices of human beings, in prose or verse, comes into English drama first from Shakespeare. "Put up your bright swords, or the dew will rust them," Othello says wryly to the young soldiers. It is a spare intense poetry that rises from the way men talk, from sabotaging the regular ratchet of iambic pentameter in the interest of characterization.

The poet of "The Paine of Pleasure" can--just barely--be mentioned in Shakespeare's company. Occasionally, very occasionally, we hear voices, and for a moment a character rises out of the lines. An Elizabethan fencing master instructs a pupil:

Lie heere, lie there, strike out your blow at length,

Strike and thrust with him, looke to your dagger hand:

Beleeue me sir, you beare a gallant strength,

But chuse your ground, at vantage where to stand ….

A group of women gossip about bad luck as they fly their hawks:

It is my luck, what most delighteth me

Comes to some mischief one or other way...

This taste for voices is connected with the poet's taste for enjambed lines, quantitative meter, and rhythmic experimentation.

Summary

"The Paine of Pleasure" would never be mistaken for mature Shakespearean work, but it shares important attributes with Shakespeare.  Attitudes of mind and choices of content are shared by Shakespeare and the poet of "The Paine of Pleasure." Shared favorite subjects appear not only in what they write about but in their use of metaphor and figurative language.  Both are fond of finding or making words.  Both use dramatic voices. These attributes are not common together in poetry of the time, and would be difficult to imitate.