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Mike M replies:
I already have a few notes on Ben Wright not submitted at the time of
my first posting. Our introduction to BW, an English coachman, is his
drinking ale, probably an allusion to Jonson and Shakespeare making
merry in the Mermaid Tavern (a fairy tale). A bit later he's asleep in
his cart "under the low-hanging festoons of foliage". That reminds me
of Davenant's poem, "In remembrance of Mr William Shakespeare",
".......Each tree, whose thick and spreading growth hath made, / Rather
a night beneath the boughs than shade, / Unwilling now to grow,...."
(see below for complete poem). Jonson is in the shade, someone's shade
anyhow, maybe John's shade.
Later still he gets fired for letting "winds go free". Of course that's
all about Vere & his fart. Nabokov transposes people & the
events associated with them regularly, makes deliberate errors, etc.
For example, he says that Vere de Vere was three years older than Van,
also (I think) that Percy de Prey was three years older than Van. But
Vere Earl of Oxford was four years older than Philip Sidney (that's not
three rounded up to four, it's four and some months, so a legitimate
four).
Wright's attempted rape of Blanche is an allusion to Jonson's 'Every
Man Out of His Humour'. Nabokov here uses 'rape' for theft. In EMO,
there are long and tortuous passages about the theft of a dog, which
itself is a metaphor for a play (editors think it's about the theft of
a dog), some groom (supposed by anti-Stratfordians to be the actor
Shaksper from Stratford) who has been assigned custody of the "dog")
etc. I'm not going to do all the work, the play is extant.
There's what appears to be a nifty allusion to another of the claimants
for the authorship of the Shakespeare canon in the last sentence of
that episode: "D'ailleurs, it was Mr Ben Wright's last petard at
Ardis". In 1943 Alden Brooks wrote a book called 'Will Shakspere and
the Dyer's Hand', promoting Philip Sidney's friend/mentor Edward Dyer
as the bard. D'aiileurs = Dyer.
Petard is an anagram of depart, which is what Wright did. Too easy
though.
The only thing I can think to add is the two attempts at spelling the
name of the emissary Voltimand/Voltemand. Nobody really knows how the
first, seemingly very abbreviated first quarto of Hamlet came into
existence. One theory is that the actor who played Voltemand had
memorized parts of the play, and the most consistently accurate were Vs
own lines and those surrounding them, thus he was the 'pirate'. Come to
think of it, that's no help at all.
I do see Hamlet's advice to the players there. Just before that is what
I assume is an allusion to Bosch (Bosh). But the timing is off, since
Bosch painted around 1500, and we are now in the very late 1800s
("three hundred years later"). Is van Gogh a "poppy group pup"? In any
case, again it's the late 1800s, so ought to be 400 years. Nabokov
juggles his threes and fours sometimes, as with the disparity in Vere's
age vis-à-vis Sidney.
However, on occasion he's deadly accurate, within the parameters of his
proprietary time-shifting. On the third & fourth pages of Ada is a
report of Dan's proposal to Marina (1871), and Van and Ada's discovery;
deduct 300 years, and see how events correlate with Sidney & Vere
and the woman, Anne Cecil, to whom the former was engaged and the
latter married. Again, I'm not going to lay this out in full, the
background is readily available. You do need to make allowances for
Nabokov's mischief making. Well, ok, the bit at the end. Vere was about
16 months in Italy, was notified in his absence that his wife was
pregnant but he disavowed parentage, presumably on the basis of his
suspicion that he hadn't slept with his wife at the right time. Anne
herself was petrified, she concealed knowledge of the pregnancy for
five days, was fearful that her husband would not "pass" on her or the
child. Queen Elizabeth became involved, Burghley asked the Queen
"either to reveal it or to keep it and lose". Whatever the actual
facts, something was fishy, and Burghley was unnerved. He wrote a memo
for himself about the chronology, this part about Vere: "He confessed
to my Lord Howard that he lay not with his wife but at Hampton Court,
and that then the child could not be his because the child was born in
July which was not the space of twelve months". One Oxfordian
commentator observes: "As it stands, this is plain nonsense. The time
from the stay at Hampton Court to the birth was precisely the normal
nine months; and only a lunatic could think twelve months necessary
.... Cecil's jotting was designed to serve his own memory, and not to
give himself away...Cecil had but to insert an opportune "not" to make
the note unintelligible to others..."('Lord Burghley in Shakespeare' by
G. W. Phillips, 1936). The date of that mnemonic note was January 3rd,
1576.
MM
Complete poem by Davenant:
"Beware delighted poets when you sing / To welcome nature in the early
spring, / Your numerous feet not tread / The banks of Avon: for each
flower, / As it ne'er knew a sun or shower, / Hangs there the pensive
head. / Each tree, whose thick and spreading growth hath made, / Rather
a night beneath the boughs than shade, / Unwilling now to grow, / Looks
like the plume a captain wears, / Whose rifled falls are steeped i'the
tears / Which from his last rage flow. / The piteous river wept itself
away, / Long since alas! to such a swift decay / That reach the map and
look / If you a river there can spy, / And for a river your mocked eye
/ Will find a shallow brook."
In other words, don't waste your time looking for Shakespeare in
Stratford.
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Jansy Mello: Two more quotes for Mike M to work upon, and a question:
does "Ben" really indicate Ben Jonson? How can we interpret VN's use of
this name close to his own "Sirin" (with an added "e", like in
Botkin/Botkine, following a transliteration from the Arab).
The quote that distinguishes "puzzled Will" from a "more normal" Chekov
doesn't make any deliberate pun concerning the word "playwright,"but a
rhyme with "right"
Darkbloom's note on "petard" (aimed at Ardis) may be misleading. Petard
also means an explosive device, fireworks and, even, in soccer slang
used somewhere, a particularly strong quick to the ball.
Mike M. might be interested in the relation between Van Veen and
Voltemand (Letters from Terra) with references to Hamlet, while he
meets Lucette.
(Ada): ‘I seem to have always felt, for example, that acting should be
focused not on "characters," not on "types" of something or other, not
on the fokus-pokus of a social theme, but exclusively on the subjective
and unique poetry of the author, because playwrights, as the greatest
among them has shown, are closer to poets than to novelists. In "real"
life we are creatures of chance in an absolute void — unless we be
artists ourselves, naturally; but in a good play I feel authored, I
feel passed by the board of censors, I feel secure, with only a
breathing blackness before me (instead of our Fourth-Wall Time), I feel
cuddled in the embrace of puzzled Will (he thought I was you) or in
that of the much more normal Anton Pavlovich, who was always
passionately fond of long dark hair.’
p.316. petard: Mr Ben Wright, a poet in his own right, is associated
throughout with pets (farts).
Herr Mispel, who liked to air his authors, discerned in Letters from
Terra the influence of Osberg (Spanish writer of pretentious fairy
tales and mystico-allegoric anecdotes, highly esteemed by short-shift
thesialists) as well as that of an obscene ancient Arab, expounder of
anagrammatic dreams, Ben Sirine, thus transliterated by Captain de
Roux, according to Burton in his adaptation of Nefzawi’s treatise on
the best method of mating with obese or hunchbacked females (The
Perfumed Garden, Panther edition, p.187, a copy given to
ninety-three-year-old Baron Van Veen by his ribald physician Professor
Lagosse). His critique ended as follows: ‘If Mr Voltemand (or Voltimand
or Mandalatov) is a psychiatrist, as I think he might be, then I pity
his patients, while admiring his talent.’
.