British Renaissance Re-Attribution and Modernization Series Published

Volumes 15-17 are from “Part II: Attribution Mysteries” of the series that provides evidence to re-attribute the “William Cavendish”-bylined Variety comedy to Benjamin Jonson, the “Samuel Brandon”-bylined Virtuous Octavia tragicomedy to Gabriel Harvey, and variedly-bylined (including pieces from “Shakespeare”, “Raleigh” and “Dyer”) verse in an anthology to William Byrd. And Volumes 18-20 are from “Part III: The Self-Attributed Texts of the Ghosts” that translates and introduces texts that prove these ghostwriters’ style or writerly patterns match those of the other bylines in their groups. Part III covers Richard Verstegan’s first Old English dictionary and Anglo-Saxon mythology-foundation, A Restitution for Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities (1605), Gabriel Harvey’s Latin (and now translated into English for the first time) satire about pseudonyms, Smith: Or, The Tears of the Muses (1578) and Josuah Sylvester’s first and only verse English translation of the Book of Job and the absurd fantasy Woodman’s Bear (1620). Each of these books is designed with questions for discussion, synopses, contextual introductions, and other components to assist teachers and casual readers.

This series is cataloged in the World Shakespeare Bibliography and in the Play Index (EBSCO). A few sections out of BRRAM have been published in scholarly journals. “Manipulation of Theatrical Audience-Size: Nonexistent Plays and Murderous Lenders” was published in Critical Survey, Issue 34.1, Spring 2022. “‘Michael Cavendish’s’ 14 Airs in Tablature to the Lute (1598)” was published in East-West Cultural Passage, Volume 22, Issue 2, December 2022. The Journal of Information Ethics published two articles on Faktorovich’s re-attribution method: “Publishers and Hack Writers: Signs of Collaborative Writing in the ‘Defoe’ Canon” (Fall 2020) and “Falsifications and Fabrications in the Standard Computational-Linguistics Authorial-Attribution Methods: A Comparison of the Methodology in ‘Unmasking’ with the 28-Tests” (Spring 2022). BRRAM is also mentioned on Wikipedia and there have been over 1,741 comments about it on LibraryThing. The computational data, handwriting comparisons across bylines, diagrams and other content to assist further research is publicly accessible at: https://github.com/faktorovich/Attribution. The individual newly-released BRRAM volumes are described below.

Benjamin Jonson’s The Variety (1649): Volumes 15: Softcover: 224pp, 6X9”, $22: 979-8-375805-12-2; Hardcover: $27: 979-8-375806-34-1; Kindle: $9.99; Overdrive EBook: 978-1-68114-571-6; LCCN: 2023932017; Nonfiction—Drama—European—English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh. Release: February 8, 2023. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV1DDSKW

A fragmentary comedy about the corruption of the judicial and monarchical systems in charge of granting aristocratic titles based on appearance instead of merit.

This comedy includes several devices that are uniquely typical of Jonson’s authorial style, including the extraordinary number of five marriages in the resolution, and the intricate descriptions of the significance of outward appearance (in dance, clothing, makeup and gossip) in distinguishing anybody in Britain as superior or inferior. At the onset of the plot, Sir William is hoping to marry the wealthy-widow, Lady Beaufield, to gain access to her fortune. In parallel, Simpleton’s wealthy-widow Mother is hoping to marry a knight so she can gain the aristocratic title of a Lady. Meanwhile, Simpleton is courting Beaufield’s daughter, Lucy, who clearly favors her other suitor, Newman. Simpleton devises several schemes to win an advantage by hiring jeerers to ridicule Newman, as well as hiring Voluble to give Newman a false prophecy to manipulate him toward whoring and drinking. By the end, Simpleton even attempts to kidnap Lucy to force her into marriage. In the background of these various courtships, the French dance teacher, Galliard, is tutoring his wealthy students in dance. And Voluble and Nice are teaching proper manners, dress and other outward signs of aristocratic breeding in their Female Academy. These seemingly silly and pretty tropes are clouding the fact that Galliard confesses he has escaped being executed for attempting to overthrow the French King in 1632, and Voluble is repeatedly accused of witchcraft. More importantly, the narrative explains the corrupt process that was involved in bribing judges and administrators into allowing a wealthy gentry landowner, like Mother, to purchase her way into the aristocracy through a vacant baronet title. Mother merely has to choose between going through the ladyfying schooling herself, or completely negating her burden by hiring an actress, such as Nice (the chambermaid), to pretend to be her in public appearances. The dialogue refers to several people who were granted aristocratic titles by this corrupt process, starting with the 1st Lord of Lorne of Scotland in 1439, and as late as the Duke of Buckingham in 1623. Many of the contextual references mention the Percys’ Northumberland estate’s Scottish neighbors, as well as other Percy-associated places and people in the Buckingham Palace and Newcastle; thus, this play is likely to have been closeted by Percy until after his death because Jonson was criticizing the Percys’ involvement in these title-purchasing schemes. Percy (as the primary ghostwriter) and Jonson (as the secondary) had written about knighthood-purchasing and James I’s trade in titles to his Scottish and Scottish-adjacent comrades in Eastward Ho! These frank confessions about corruption in the monarchy led to Jonson’s temporary imprisonment in 1605. This volume includes translations of all of Jonson’s authentic letters. These include the letter he wrote in 1605, during this Eastward imprisonment, wherein Jonson asks Percy to help free him from being implicated in seditious remarks that he claims were Percy’s portion of the composition. The annotations across Variety provide a myriad of scholarly revelations, supported with precise evidence. One of these is new proof for the misdating for several antique-like forgeries of broadsheet ballads. Introductory sections explain why this play has been mis-attributed to “William Cavendish”, and the complex biographical overlaps between the Jonson and “John Donne” bylines and handwriting styles. The historical introduction to the types of dance-instructors Variety is satirizing is assisted by the translation from French into English of fragments from Apologie de la Danse or Apology for the Dance by “Par F. de Lauze” (1623).

Gabriel Harvey’s The Tragicomedy of the Virtuous Octavia (1598): Volume 16: Softcover: 250pp, 6X9”, $23: 979-8-375807-88-1; Hardcover: $28: 979-8-375808-09-3; Kindle: $9.99; Overdrive EBook: 978-1-68114-572-3; LCCN: 2023932029; Nonfiction—Drama—European—English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh. Release: February 8, 2023. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV2RRKG7

The first English self-labeled “tragicomedy” about Octavia’s failed attempts to win back her inconstant husband, Antony, from his Egyptian lover, Cleopatra, and to prevent her brother, Octavius, from waging retaliatory war on Antony and Cleopatra.

This volume presents overwhelming evidence for the re-attribution of the “Samuell Brandon”-bylined The Virtuous Octavia (1598) to Gabriel Harvey. The introduction raises questions about potential attribution leads and revealing relevant sources, which are answered with the evidence in the “Primary Sources” section that includes: three letters exchanged between William Byrd and Harvey while both were teaching at Cambridge, the “Octavia to Anthony” poetic epistle from the Arundel Harington Manuscript, and fragments from Plutarch’s “Mark Antony” chapter. The “Exordium” includes sections that present revealing clues in seemingly mundane details, such as this play’s typesetting. Another introductory section explains how Gerard Langbaine created the first “Brandon” biography solely based on the evidence presented in the Virtuous play, and without any evidence to support that “Brandon” was indeed a real author, and not merely a fictitious pseudonym. The imaginative process Langbaine used to manufacture “Brandon’s” biography is used to explain how scholars have communally arrived at the erroneous current attributions for the texts of the British Renaissance. A section on Harvey’s literary style explains how the texts Harvey ghostwrote differ from the patterns seen in the other Workshop ghostwriters’ texts. Another section presents visual examples of Harvey’s handwriting in his signed annotations on Domenichi’s Facetie, on “J. Harvey’s” A Discursive Problem Concerning Prophesies, and on Nicolai Machiavelli Princeps, and matches these to the handwriting styles currently assigned to two bylines Harvey ghostwrote under: “Edmund Spenser’s” poem on a copy of Sabinus’ Poëmata and “Elizabeth I’s” letter in Italian to Don Ferdinando de Medici, Grand-Duke of Tuscany. Another section explains how the two dedications to “the virtuous… Mary Thynne” and “the virtuous Lady Lucia Audley” are subversive clues that explain Virtuous Octavia as Harvey’s rebuttal to Percy’s at first anonymous and later “Shakespeare”-bylined Romeo and Juliet (1597). Romeo’s plot has long been suspected to be grounded in the contemporary story of Mary Thynne’s marriage to a member of a rival family, as well as the subsequent violence and litigations over this star-crossed-marriage between Mary’s mother, Lady Audley, and other members of their two clans. And a section on imitation-clusters explains that Virtuous Octavia falls into several sub-genre clusters that turn into an original formula when they are mixed together. These clusters include imitations and translations of the French dramatist Robert Garnier; adaptations of historical plotlines from Plutarch’s Lives; and imitations of Seneca’s tragedies. One of the latter tragedies by Seneca is also called Octavia, and it is about Emperor Nero’s wife of this same name, which had been translated into English by “T. N.” back in 1581. There are also explanation for the seemingly deliberately misdated historical details, such as the mixed references to events that involved M. Marcellus (270-208 BC; 5-time Consul) and G. Marcellus (88-40 BC; 1-time Consul; first husband of Octavia). And sections summarize Virtuous Octavia’s critical reception, give ideas to directors on approaches to its staging, and present an extensive synopsis of its narrative. This verse tragicomedy begins after the Treaty of Tarentum has been signed, renewing the power-split of Roman territories between three Emperors: Octavia’s brother Octavius is awarded the West, Octavia’s husband Antony is awarded the East, and Lepidus receives Africa. Octavia receives news that Antony is living with Cleopatra. When Octavia attempts to bring military reinforcements and to speak with Antony to convince him to return to her, Antony refuses to allow her to come near him. The news of this infidelity enrages Octavius, who decides it is an affront on his own honor, and uses it as a pretext to wage war against Antony, despite Octavia’s continuing petitions for peace and reconcilement. Civil and foreign wars are raging in the background, but most of the play focuses on Octavia’s philosophical and emotional struggle to comprehend why Antony has chosen to sin, and how she is stoically determined to remain constant and virtuous. In a brief mention in the resolution, Cleopatra causes Antony’s tragic death by tricking him into believing she has killed herself, before indeed killing herself. In the forefront of this conclusion, Octavia explains why she continues to be committed to virtuous conduct, despite all that has happened, and to take care of Antony’s children, even when she has to do so outside of Antony’s house (from which he has forcefully evicted her).

A Comparative Study of Byrd Songs: Volume 17: Softcover: $27, 380pp, 7X10”: 979-8-375810-38-6; Hardcover: $32: 979-8-375810-63-8; Kindle: $9.99; Overdrive EBook: 978-1-68114-573-0; LCCN: 2023932225; Literary Collections—European—English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh. Release: February 8, 2023. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV1KB38Q

A comparative anthology of all of the variedly-bylined texts in William Byrd’s linguistic-group, with scholarly introductions that solve previously impenetrable literary mysteries.

This is a comparative anthology of William Byrd’s multi-bylined verse, with scholarly introductions to their biographies, borrowings, and structural formulas. The tested Byrd-group includes 30 texts with 29 different bylines. Each of these texts is covered in a separate chronologically-organized section. This anthology includes modernized translations of some of the greatest and the wittiest poetry of the Renaissance. Some of these poems are the most famous English poems ever written, while others have never been modernized before. These poems serve merely as a bridge upon which a very different history of early British poetry and music is reconstructed, through the alternative biography of the single ghostwriter behind them. This history begins with two forgeries that are written in an antique Middle English style, while simultaneously imitating Virgil’s Eclogues: “Alexander Barclay’s” claimed translation of Pope Pius II’s Eclogues (1514?) and “John Skelton’s” Eclogues (1521?). The next attribution mystery solved is how only a single poem assigned to “Walter Rawely of the Middle Temple” (when Raleigh is not known to have been a member of this Inn of Court) in The Steal Glass: A Satire (1576) has snowballed into entire anthologies of poetry that continue to be assigned to “Raleigh” as their “author”. Matthew Lownes assigned the “Edmund Spenser”-byline for the first time in 1611 to the previously anonymous Shepherds’ Calendar (1579) to profit from the popularity of the appended to it Fairy Queen. And “Thomas Watson” has been credited with creating Hekatompathia (1582), when this was his first book-length attempt in English; and this collection has been described as the first Petrarchan sonnet sequence in English, when actually most of these poems have 18-line, instead of 14-line stanzas. Byrd’s self-attributed Psalms, Sonnets, and Songs (1588) includes several lyrics that have since been re-assigned erroneously to other bylines in this collection, such as “My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is” being re-assigned to “Sir Edward Dyer”. The Byrd chapter also describes the history of his music-licensing monopoly. The “University Wit” label is reinterpreted as being applied to those who completed paper-degrees with help from ghostwriters, as exemplified in “Robert Greene’s” confession that “his” Pandosto and Menaphon were “so many parricides”, as if these obscene topics were forced upon him without his participation in the authorial process. “Philip Sidney’s” Astrophil and Stella (1591) is showcased as an example of erroneous autobiographical interpretations of minor poetic references; for example, the line “Rich she is” in a sonnet that puns repeatedly on the term “rich”, has been erroneously widely claimed by scholars to prove that Sidney had a prolonged love-interest in “Lady Penelope Devereux Rich”. Similarly, Thomas Lodge’s 1592-3 voyage to South America has been used to claim his special predilection for “sea-studies”, in works such as Phillis (1593), when adoring descriptions of the sea are common across the Byrd-group. Alexander Dyce appears to have assigned the anonymous Licia (1593) to “Giles Fletcher” in a brief note in 1843, using only the evidence of a vague mention of an associated monarch in a text from another member of the “Fletcher” family. One of the few blatantly fictitiously-bylined Renaissance texts that have not been re-assigned to a famous “Author” is “Henry Willobie’s” Avisa (1594) that invents a non-existent Oxford-affiliated editor called “Hadrian Dorrell”, who confesses to have stolen this book, without “Willobie’s” permission. Even with such blatant evidence of satirical pseudonym usage or potential identity-fraud, scholars have continued to search for names in Oxford’s records that match these bylines. “John Monday’s” Songs and Psalms (1594) has been labeled as one of the earliest madrigal collections. 1594 was the approximate year when Byrd began specializing in providing ghostwriting services for mostly university-educated musicologists, who used these publishing credits to obtain music positions at churches such as the Westminster Abbey, or at Court. An Oxford paper-degree helped “Thomas Morley” become basically the first non-priest Gospeller at the Chapel Royal. The section on “Morley’s” Ballets (1595) describes the fiscal challenges Morley encountered when the music-monopoly temporarily transitioned from Byrd’s direct control to his. “John Dowland’s” First Book of Songs or Airs (1597) is explained as a tool that helped Dowland obtain an absurdly high 500 daler salary from King Christian IV of Denmark in 1600, and his subsequent equally absurd willingness to settle for a £21 salary in 1612 to become King James I’s Lutenist. And the seemingly innocuous publication of “Michael Cavendish’s” 14 Airs in Tablature to the Lute (1598) is reinterpreted, with previously neglected evidence, as actually a book that was more likely to have been published in 1609, as part of the propaganda campaign supporting Lady Arabella Stuart’s succession to the British throne; the attempt failed and led to Arabella’s death during a hunger-strike in the Tower, and to the closeting of Airs. “William Shakespeare’s” The Passionate Pilgrim (1599) has been dismissed by scholars as only containing a few firmly “Shakespearean” poems, in part because nearly all of its 20 poems had appeared under other bylines. Passionate’s poems 16, 17, 19 and 20 are included, with an explanation of the divergent—“Ignoto”, “Shakespeare” and “Marlowe”—bylines they were instead assigned to in England’s Helicon (1600). Scholars have previously been at a loss as to identity of the “John Bennet” of the Madrigals (1599), and this mystery is solved with the explanation that this byline is referring to Sir John Bennet (1553-1627) whose £20,000 bail, was in part sponsored with a £1,200 donation from Sir William Byrd. “John Farmer’s” First Set of English Madrigals (1599) is reinterpreted as a byline that appears to have helped Farmer continue collecting on his Organist salary physically appearing for work, between a notice of absenteeism in 1597 and 1608, when the next Organist was hired. “Thomas Weelkes’” Madrigals (1600) is reframed as part of a fraud that managed to advance Weelkes from a menial laborer £2 salary at Winchester to a £15 Organist salary at Chichester. He was hired at Chichester after somehow finding around £30 to attain an Oxford BA in Music in 1602, in a suspicious parallel with the Dean William Thorne of Chichester’s degree-completion from the same school; this climb was followed by one of the most notorious Organist tenures, as Weelkes was repeatedly cited for being an absentee drunkard, and yet Dean Thorne never fired him. “Richard Carlton’s” Madrigals (1601) also appears to be an inoffensive book, before the unnoticed by scholars “Mus 1291/A” is explained as torn-out prefacing pages that had initially puffed two schemers that were involved in the conspiracy of Biron in 1602. The British Library describes Hand D in “Addition IIc” of Sir Thomas More as “Shakespeare’s only surviving literary manuscript”; this section explains Byrd’s authorship of verse fragments, such as “Addition III”, and Percy’s authorship of the overall majority of this censored play; the various handwritings and linguistic styles in the More manuscript are fully explained. “Michael Drayton’s” Idea (1603-1619) series has been explained as depicting an autobiographical life-long obsession with the unnamed-in-the-text “Anne Goodere”, despite “Drayton’s” apparent split-interest also in a woman called Matilda (1594) and in male lovers in some sprinkled male-pronoun sonnets. “Michael East’s” Second Set of Madrigals (1606) is one of a few music books that credit “Sir Christopher Hatton” as a semi-author due to their authorship at his Ely estate; the many implications of these references are explored. “Thomas Ford’s” Music of Sundry Kinds (1607) serves as a gateway to discuss a group of interrelated Jewish Court musicians, included Joseph Lupo (a potential, though impossible to test, ghostwriter behind the Byrd-group), and open cases of identity-fraud, such as Ford being paid not only his own salary but also £40 for the deceased “John Ballard”. “William Shakespeare’s” Sonnets (1609) are discussed as one of Byrd’s mathematical experiments, which blatantly do not adhere to a single “English sonnet” formula, as they include deviations such as poems with 15 lines, six couplets, and a double-rhyme-schemes. The poems that have been erroneously assigned to “Robert Devereux” are explained as propaganda to puff his activities as a courtier, when he was actually England’s top profiteer from selling over £70,000 in patronage, knighthoods and various other paper-honors. “Orlando Gibbons’” or “Sir Christopher Hatton’s” First Set of Madrigals and Motets (1612) describes the lawsuit over William Byrd taking over a Cambridge band-leading role previously held by William Gibbons, who in retaliated by beating up Byrd and breaking his instrument. This dispute contributed to Byrd and Harvey’s departure from Cambridge. Byrd’s peaceful life in academia appears to be the period that Byrd was thinking back to in 1612, as he was reflecting on his approaching death in the elegantly tragic “Gibbons’” First songs.

Richard Verstegan’s A Restitution for Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities (1605): Volume 18: Softcover: 506pp, 7X10, $31: 979-8-375813-50-9; Hardcover: $36: 979-8-375814-03-2; Kindle: $9.99; Overdrive EBook: 978-1-68114-574-7; LCCN: 2023932018; Nonfiction—History—Europe—Great Britain. Release: February 8, 2023. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV3VB35X

The launch of Britain’s “Anglo-Saxon” origin-myth and the first Old English etymological dictionary.

This is the only book in human history that presents a confessional description of criminal forgery that fraudulently introduced the legendary version of British history that continues to be repeated in modern textbooks. Richard Verstegan was the dominant artist and publisher in the British Ghostwriting Workshop that monopolized the print industry across a century. Scholars have previously described him as a professional goldsmith and exiled Catholic-propaganda publisher, but these qualifications merely prepared him to become a history forger and multi-sided theopolitical manipulator. The BRRAM series’ computational-linguistic method attributes most of the British Renaissance’s theological output, including the translation of the King James Bible, to Verstegan as its ghostwriter. Beyond providing handwriting analysis and documentary proof that Verstegan was the ghostwriter behind various otherwise bylined history-changing texts, this translation of Verstegan’s self-attributed Restitution presents an accessible version of a book that is essential to understanding the path history took to our modern world. On the surface, Restitution is the first dictionary of Old English, and has been credited as the text that established Verstegan as the founder of “Anglo-Saxon” studies. The “Exordium” reveals a much deeper significance behind these firsts by juxtaposing them against Verstegan’s letters and the history of the publication of the earliest Old English texts to be printed starting in 1565 (at the same time when Verstegan began his studies at Oxford). Verstegan is reinterpreted as the dominant forger and (self)-translator of these frequently non-existent manuscripts, whereas credit for these Old English translations has been erroneously assigned to puffed bylines such as Archbishop Parker and the Learned Camden’s Society of Antiquaries. When Verstegan’s motives are overlayed on this history, the term “Anglo-Saxon” is clarified as part of a Dutch-German propaganda campaign that aimed to overpower Britain by suggesting it was historically an Old German-speaking extension of Germany’s Catholic Holy Roman Empire. These ideas regarding a “pure” German race began with the myth of a European unified origin-myth, with their ancestry stemming from Tuisco, shortly after the biblical fall of Babel; Tuisco is described variedly as a tribal founder or as an idolatrous god on whom the term Teutonic is based. This chosen-people European origin-myth was used across the colonial era to convince colonized people of the superiority of their colonizers. A variant of this myth has also been reused in the “Aryan” pure-race theory; the term Aryan is derived from Iran; according to the theology Verstegan explains, this “pure” Germanic race originated with Tuisco’s exit from Babel in Mesopotamia or modern-day Iraq, but since Schlegel’s Über (1808) introduced the term “Aryan”, this theory’s key-term has been erroneously referring to modern-day Iran in Persia. Since Restitution founded these problematic “Anglo-Saxon” ideas, the lack of any earlier translation of it into Modern English has been preventing scholars from understanding the range of deliberate absurdities, contradictions and historical manipulations behind this text. And the Germanic theological legend that Verstegan imagines about Old German deities such as Thor (Zeus: thunder), Friga (Venus: love) and Seater (Saturn) is explained as part of an ancient attempt by empires to demonize colonized cultures, when in fact references to these deities were merely variants of the Greco-Roman deities’ names that resulted from a degradation of Vulgar Latin into early European languages. Translations of the earlier brief versions of these legends from Saxo (1534; 1234?), John the Great (1554) and Olaus the Great (1555) shows how each subsequent “history” adds new and contradictory fictitious details, while claiming the existence of the preceding sources proves their veracity. This study also questions the underlying timeline of British history, proposing instead that DNA evidence for modern-Britons indicates most of them were Dutch-Germans who migrated during Emperor Otto I’s reign (962-973) when Germany first gained control over the Holy Roman Empire, and not in 477, as the legend of Hengist and Horsa (as Verstegan satirically explains, both of these names mean horse) dictates. The history of the origin of Celtic languages (such as Welsh) is also undermined with the alternative theory that they originated in Brittany on France’s border, as opposed to the current belief that British Celts brought the Celtic Breton language into French Brittany when they invaded it in the 9th century. There are many other discoveries across the introductory and annotative content accompanying this translation to stimulate further research.

Gabriel Harvey’s Smith: Or, The Tears of the Muses (1578): Volume 19: Softcover: 250pp, 7X10”, $24: 979-8-375816-71-5; Hardcover: $29: 979-8-375817-17-0; Kindle: $9.99; Overdrive EBook: 978-1-68114-575-4; LCCN: 2023932026; Nonfiction—Biography & Autobiography—Criminals & Outlaws. Release: February 8, 2023. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV1DDMNN

A poetic satire of ghostwriters being hired to write puffery of and by patrons and sponsors, who pay to gain immortal fame for being “great”, while failing to perform any work to deserve any praise.

This volume shows the similarities across Gabriel Harvey’s poetic canon stretching from his critically-ignored self-attributed Smith (1578), his famous “Edmund Spenser”-bylined Fairy Queen (1590), and his semi-recognized “Samuel Brandon”-bylined Virtuous Octavia (1598). This close analysis of Smith is essential for explaining all of Harvey’s multi-bylined output because Smith is an extensive confession about Harvey’s ghostwriting process. Harvey’s Fairy Queen is his mature attempt at an extensive puffery of a monarch, which has been (as Harvey predicted in Smith and Ciceronianus) in return over-puffed as a “great” literary achievement by monarchy-conserving literary scholars across the past four hundred years. The relatively superior in its condensed social message and literary achievement Smith has been ignored in part because the subject of its puffery appears trivial from the perspective of national propaganda. Smith: Or, The Tears of the Muses is a metered poetic composition that can also be performed as a multi-monologue play. The central formulaic structure is grounded in nine Cantos that are delivered by each of the nine Muses; this formula appeared in many British poems and interludes after its appearance in “Nicholas Grimald’s” translation of a “Virgil”-assigned poem called “The Muses” in Songs and Sonnets (1557). The repetitive nature of this puffing formula is subverted not only by the satirical and ironic contradictions that are mixed with the standard exaggerated flatteries of “Sir Thomas Smith” (Elizabeth’s Secretary), but also with several seemingly digressive sections that puff and satirize other bylines, including “Walter Mildmay” (King’s Councilor) and “John Wood” (“Smith’s” copyist and nephew). The central subject of the satire in Smith is Richard Verstegan’s career as a goldsmith, who forged antiques, and committed identity fraud that included ghostwriting books under multiple bylines, including passing himself (as Harvey points out) as at least two different “Sir Thomas Smiths”. The introduction to this volume includes matching handwritten letters that were written by Smith #1 (who died in 1577) and Smith #2 (who died in 1625) and by Verstegan under his own byline. In Smith’s conclusion, Verstegan responds with ridicule of his own directed at Harvey. This is the first full translation of Smith from Latin into English. The accompanying introductory matter, extensive annotations, and class exercises hint at the many scholarly discoveries attainable by researchers who continue the exploration of this elegant work.

Josuah Sylvester’s Job Triumphant in His Trial and The Woodman’s Bear (1620): Volume 20: Softcover: 202pp, 6X9”, $22: 979-8-375822-54-9; Hardcover: $27: 979-8-375822-67-9; Kindle: $9.99; Overdrive EBook: 978-1-68114-576-1; LCCN: 2023932025; Nonfiction—Bibles—Other Translations—Text. Release: February 10, 2023. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BVCXJHFH

The first verse English translation of the Book of Job, and a fantasy epic poem about the woeful love between the Woodman and the Bear.

Computational, handwriting, and other types of evidence proves that Josuah Sylvester ghostwrote famous dramas and poetry, including the first “William Shakespeare”-bylined book Venus and Adonis (1593), the “Robert Greene”-bylined Orlando Furioso (1594) and the two “Mary Sidney”-assigned translations of Antonie (1592) and Clorinda (1595). Sylvester is also the ghostwriter behind famously puzzling attribution mysteries, such as the authorship of the anonymous “Shakespeare”-apocrypha Locrine (1595), and behind controversial productions such as the “Cyril Tourneur”-bylined Atheist’s Tragedy (1611). All of the famous texts that Sylvester ghostwrote have previously been modernized and annotated. In contrast, most of Sylvester’s many volumes of self-attributed works have remained unmodernized and thus inaccessible to modern scholars. This neglect is unwarranted since under his own name, Sylvester served as the Poet Laureate between 1606-12 under James I’s eldest son, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales. This volume addresses this scholarly gap by translating two works that capture Sylvester’s central authorial tendencies. As “John Vicars’” poetic biography argues, Sylvester was a “Christian-Israelite” or a Jew who converted to Christianity, which caused his exile from his native England and his early death abroad. Sylvester’s passion for his Jewish heritage is blatant in the percentage of texts in his group that are based on books in the Old Testament, including the “George Peele”-bylined Love of King David (1599) and the “R. V.”-bylined Odes in Imitation of the Seven Penitential Psalms (1601). This volume presents the first Modern English translation of the only verse Early Modern English translation of the Book of Job. The original Hebrew version’s dialogue is in verse, so that it can be sung or recited during services, and yet there still have not been any scholarly attempts to translate the Old Testament, from versions such as the Verstegan and Harvey-ghostwritten King James Bible, into verse to better approximate this original lyrical structure. Sylvester precisely translates all of the lines and chapters of Job, adding detailed embellishments for dramatic tension and realism. In the narrative, God is challenged by Lucifer to test if Job would remain loyal to God even if he lost his wealth and other blessings; God accepts the challenge and deprives Job of all of his possessions, his family, as well as his health. Job is devastated, but he remains humble and continues to have faith in God. Job’s faith is further challenged by extensive lectures from his friends, who accuse him of suffering because God has judged him to be sinful and in need of punishment. Sylvester also specialized in dreamlike rewriting and remixing of myths from different cultures, as he does in Orlando Furioso, where the narrative leaps between Africa and India, and warfare leads Orlando to go insane. The title-page of Sylvester’s Woodman’s Bear warns readers of a similar trajectory with the epithet: “everybody goes mad once”. In this epic, Greco-Roman-inspired, mythological rewriting, a Woodman has proven to be uniquely resistant to Cupid’s love-arrows, so Cupid disguises himself in a Bear and makes both the Bear and the Woodman fall into desperate love for each other, out of which the Woodman only escape with a magic potion. Woodman’s Bear has been broadly claimed to have been Sylvester’s autobiographical account of a failed courtship, but the analysis across this volume reaches different conclusions and raises ideas for further inquiry.

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