Escapist history

JOEL HURSTFIELD

Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton G. P. V. Akrigg (Hamish Hamilton 50s) History has always been considered a branch of the entertainment industry. The biblical chronicler, like his mediaeval successor, recog- nised a good story when he saw one—and improved it if necessary. If the singer didn't sing a good song he died for want of bread. However, the historian now has the learned journals and the university presses : he can write as a specialist for specialists, he works independently of popular interest and demand. Yet history, etymologically and by long tradi- tion, means the telling of a story; and some of my friends, who are not in the profession, have complained that historians, with some dis- tinguished exceptions, have given up telling history as narrative.

There is, in fact, a deep and widening gap between academic history, rapidly developing a technology of its own, and the history which finds its way into most books in the shop and the public library. I deplore this gap and I do not regard it as unbridgeable, even without the sacrifice of expertise. This has nothing to do with good writing. Some of the best writing to- day is being done in articles for...journals, though of course others are written in the tor- tured, prose the ,computer, the servant threat- ening to tiecoer the master. The gap is not one of style but of matter and aim. Academic history is the hisrolry of the nrtisguni; record office, the seminar. Its primary tq# is to ;dis- cover the origio and nature .ot.siogiety, to ,dis- cover the roots of political, economic and cul- tural change. It is an aspect of:social analysis.

But this is not 'popular' history or, as I would prefe.!-- to- call it, escapist history. gor am I. using this word in any disparaging sense. Its primary object is entertalrinultii,-(refeeSh- ment, escape from our present 3orldhinto a (sometimes fictitious) past. For tINSthere.seems to be an insatiable demand;. and the volume of publication has reached staggering dimensions. The books flow in to literary editors of news- papers and journals in torrents which threaten to sweep away all before them like a Sep- tember flood.

The two books tinder review, each with, merits of its own, come into the category of escapist history. Mrs Luke's is an attempt to portray Henry's luckless first queen, Catherine of Aragon. To write about her requires know-

ledge, compassion and imagination. What

equipment, then, has Mrs Luke for this pur- pose? Her earlier years were spent in study at New York and Columbia Universities and later ones with a documentary fill"' team in New York and as a publicist_ in Hollywood. What emerges in fact is an imaginative study in both senses of that word.

All biography involves a creative act of the imagination. The sources for ;the sixteenth cen- tury are, in the main, fragmentary. We know virtually nothing of the inmost thoughts of the leading figures of the period; yet a skilful and faithful piecing together of such sources as are available breathes life into these parched fragments. The best historical biographies imagine the past—i.e. restore it from the avail- able evidence; but they do not invent. Certainly there are passages in this book which evoke something of the life of a Spanish princess exiled to the early Tudor court and caught up in the greatest social upheaval in England since the Norman Conquest. But Mrs Luke is im- aginative in another sense also. Here are some examples. 'Catherine confronted the duenna and in a steely voice ordered her to leave. Doda Elvira departed in the black, foggy night. . Or again, 'Catherine remonstrated, her face flushing'; or again, "Such words are not worthy of your Grace," she said in a choked voice. Burning with the inward humiliation of a proud spirit, . . ' and so on, and so on. This, I am afraid, was not learned at Columbia Univer- sity but in a publicity office in Hollywood. Nor, indeed, did she learn at Columbia University that Joan' _Of Arc was burnt at the stake in 1465. But Mrs Luke disarms. criticism. In her preface .she- write: 'However, any statement that all events and persons this work are absolutely authentic would be both impossible and presumptuous.' We agree.

This book belongs to the borderland between fact and fiction and, of its kind, has its own distinctive merits. When we come to Dr Akrigg's work we are on different ground. Dr Akrigg is a distinguished Canadian scholar who works in the field of English literature but has also special interests in the history of Elizabethan and early Stuart England. This volume reflects the two aspects of his studies. The first part is a biography of Henry Wriothes- ley, third Earl of Southampton, and is an in- teresting, well-presented narrative of his life. The second part deali with the claims put for- ward on the earl's behalf to be Mr W. H., the `onlie begetter' of Shakespeare's sonnets. Over forty years ago Mrs C. C. Stopes—famous mother of an even more famous daughter- wrote a pioneer study of the earl which, in spite of its uncritical approach, still has a charm and a use for scholars. The first part of Dr Akrigg's book is more sober and more scholarly. It is also very thorough. Moreover, to discover whether Wriothesley is pronounced Rye-ose-ley, Risley, Rosely, Wresley, Wrisley, Rizly, or Wreesley a friend of his went through the tele- phone directories of the entire British Isles.

It is when Dr Akrigg leaves the telephone directories and the documents that we enter upon a marvellous world of the imagination, what he himself optimistically describes as 'probability not certainty.' Let us look at some of these probabilities, always remembering that the object is to show that many of the sonnets were addressed by Shakespeare to Southamp- ton. I quote: 'Finally we must note one passage that seems to point directly to Southampton:

"You had a father. Let your son say so." You had a father! That unequivocal past tense can be accounted for by the death, years earlier, of Southampton's father.'

Here is inothei Clue: "Nor [mayeit] thou with public kindness honour me, Unless thou take that honour from thy name." The "honour" of the friend's name may be a quibble upon "The Right Honourable Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton." Shakespeare may also be playing upon an actual title in Sonnet 26 when he salutes the friend as "Lord of my love." ' Dr Akrigg has other strings to his bow. The end of Sonnet 96 repeats the end of Sonnet 36. How does Dr Akrigg explain this?

'Presumably Thorpe [the printer] found the original ending of Sonnet 96 more bitter in its denunciations than anything that had appeared up to this point. fudging the lines too dangerous to print, be struck them out and lifted the final couplet from Sonnet 36 to make up the neces- sary number of lines.

Thus two 'dangerous' lines have had to be in- vented in order to be struck out by Thorpe. 'This explanation,' Dr Akrigg tells us in a foot- note, 'has not to my knowledge been suggested before.' We are not surprised.

This brings us finally to Sir Walter Ralegh's cloak. Every schoolgirl knows that Ralegh first attracted Queen Elizabeth's attention by putting his cloak down for her to walk upon. Every Tudor scholar knows that there is not a shred of evidince to support this improbable story. Its first known appearance is in the work of that arch-romancer, Thomas Fuller, writing some forty years after Ralegh's death. But Dr Akrigg'refers us to some evidence recently presented from Love's Labour's Lost about Armado (alleged by some scholars to be Ralegh). He goes on: 'And Southampton and his friends must have laughed when Ralegh's gallant gesture in spreading his cloak to protect Queen Elizabeth's foot from the mud became matter for a bawdy jest: Armado: I do adore thy sweet Grace's

slipper.

Boyer [Aside to Domain]: Loves her by

the foot.

Domain [Aside to Boyet]: He may not by

the yard.'

If anyone, other than its discoverer and Dr Akrigg, can see in this passage evidence about Ralegh's cloak then he should certainly be promoted to a managerial position in the Anglo- North American Sonnet-Dating Combine, a long-established firm with worldwide branches.

But behind these trivia there lurks a larger question. Does it matter whether Ralegh put doWn his cloak for Queen Elizabeth? Does it matter whether Mr W. H. was William Herbert, William Harvey, William Himself, or indeed Wriothesley, Henry, as Dr Akrigg believes? Could it be that none of these guesses is correct andthat Mr W. H. is an anticipatory reference by Shakespeare to Mr Wilson, Harold? It is strange that no scholar hitherto has found the numerous references in the sonnets to the de- valuation of the pound. For example, Sonnet 89 begins: Farewell! thou art too dear for my posse. ssing.'

I fancy that in a hundred years' time roman- tic biographies will still be written about Catherine of Aragon and there will still be books about the dating and dedication 'of Shakespeare's sonnets. There will always be a demand for escapist history and escapist litera- ture. In a free society such as ours it is good that men should write as they please, on any subject that they choose. The tragedy is that, meanwhile, large questions about Tudor history —and about Shakespeare—are not being asked or even thought of, and most general readers know nothing about the absorbing and funda- mental historical problems at the roots of our present social revolution under whose influence they will pass most of their lives.