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The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 19.0437  Thursday, 24 July 2008

From:       Sean B. Palmer <sean@miscoranda.com>
Date:       Wednesday, 23 Jul 2008 10:41:49 +0100
Subject: 19.0426 Top 10 Books on Shakespeare From the 90s
Comment:    Re: SHK 19.0426 Top 10 Books on Shakespeare From the 90s

Re: Jean E Howard's Top 10 Books on Shakespeare From the 90s

This seems to me to bear an uncanny resemblance to Thomas Nashe's favourite 
books of those other '90s with which we're so well acquainted, the 1590s:

"Amongst our English harmonious calinos, one is up with the excellence of the 
brown bill and the long-bow; another plays his prizes in print in driving it 
home with all weapons in right of the noble science of defence; a third writes 
passing enamorately of the nature of white meats, and justifies it under his 
hand to be bought & sold everywhere that they exceed nectar & ambrosia; a fourth 
comes forth with something in praise of nothing; a fifth, of an inflamed heel to 
copper-smiths' hall, all-to-berimes it of the diversity of red-noses, and the 
hierarchy of the nose magnificat. A sixth sweeps behind the door all earthly 
felicities, and makes bakers' malkins of them if they stand in competency with a 
strong dozen of points; marry, they must be points of the matter, you must 
consider, whereof the foremost cod-piece point is the crane's proverb in painted 
cloths, Fear God and obey the king, and the rest, some have tags, and some have 
none. A seventh sets a tobacco-pipe instead of a trumpet to his mouth, and of 
that divine drug proclaimeth miracles. An eighth capers it up to the spheres in 
commendation of dancing. A ninth offers sacrifice to the goddess cloaca, and 
disports himself very scholarly and wittily about the reformation of 
close-stools and houses of office, and spicing and embalming their rank 
entrails, that they stink not. A tenth sets forth remedies of toasted turfs 
against famine."

I'm glad that going into the third millennium we have a similar literary 
richness in which to conduct our affairs as was partaken of by our beloved 
Eliza-Jacobean writers. It's 2008; shall we expect a round of sonnets next year?

-- Sean B. Palmer, http://inamidst.com/sbp/

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