This appendix to Poem No. 4 is part of the website presentation of early poems by Edward de Vere. See the Introduction.
Appendix A: Further Notes to Poem No. 4
The pioneering 1920 book by J. Thomas Looney (157-60), Joseph Sobran’s 1997 book (238-39), and Robert Prechter’s 2012 article have each explored the numerous and startlingly powerful Shakespearean parallels to No. 4 — notwithstanding that some critics have belittled it as the weakest known de Vere poem. Indeed, as Prechter noted (148), it has been singled out for especially vituperative ridicule, as supposedly making a mockery of the very idea that Oxford could have written the works credited to “Shakespeare” (e.g., Elliott & Valenza 2010, 138, 142-43, 151).
No. 4 was likely inspired by de Vere’s traumatic experience at age 13 — having lost his father just the year before in 1562 — of being unjustly accused of illegitimacy by his elder half-sister in an apparent effort to divest him of his inheritance. It may well have been written that same year, 1563 (Ogburn 190, 431; Anderson 24-25). It certainly has an angry, self-pitying, and freshly wounded ring — expressed, as Anderson aptly noted, “in an adolescent voice given to tub-thumping meter and alliterative excess” (25). As discussed in the Introduction (Oxford’s Known Poetry as Juvenilia), it seems likely that de Vere wrote most of these poems when he was still only in his teens or 20s.
False and unjust defamation of character, often leveled against women, is of course a pervasive theme in Shakespeare. Oxfordians have often, very properly, linked that theme to de Vere’s apparent remorse over accusing his first wife of infidelity (see, e.g., Anderson 220-21). No. 4 reminds us that his own much earlier experience, as victim of a false accusation himself, may already have seared an obsession with that theme deeply into his psyche. Do not many of us recall with unusually persistent clarity the hurts and embarrassments of adolescence? Shakespeare dwells repeatedly on the theme of loss of good name. E.g., parallels to line 6 (“loss of my good name”) and lines 7-8 & 10-11 (“my mind, my wit,” etc.).
In this much-mocked poem, lines 10-11 & 13-15 (especially those hyperventilating “howling hounds of hell”) have aroused particular ridicule. Could Shakespeare have written such stuff? Well, as an emotionally distraught 13-year-old, why not? Perhaps he was practicing a recently learned lesson in alliteration. Even great artists find their way by early experimentation. In seemingly insisting that Shakespeare, no matter how young, could never have written anything of less than high quality, critics have been distracted from noticing the striking thematic, structural, and word-choice parallels between those very lines and several Shakespeare plays.
Prechter astutely noted the risk — which we acknowledge and take very seriously — that apparent textual linkages may sometimes reflect “commonplace[s] or data-min[ing]” (154), or as Sobran put it, “coincidence and poetic convention” (232). It is important to avoid confirmation bias or cherry-picking of weak or strained parallels, as best we can.
Prechter’s preliminary diagnostic comparison of No. 4 to Christopher Marlowe’s corpus, however, yielded notably “barren result[s]” (155), suggesting that No. 4’s rich vein of parallels to Shakespeare cannot easily be brushed aside — even, strikingly, in what may be de Vere’s weakest and earliest poem, the raw cri de coeur of a traumatized pubescent boy. Sometimes a distinctive and telling crop of fruit really is there to be picked, and should not be left to rot.
The intriguing reference to “salt sea soil” in line 16 merits particular attention. Prechter argued that “salt-sea,” used here as a compound adjective, “is a very rare construction” (154) (but see update below). Eric Sams, a Stratfordian scholar apparently unaware of this de Vere poem, argued that the similar compound adjective “sea-salt” is a “rare and imaginative” construction and “is surely a highly individual idea embodying a new epithet specially invented by Shakespeare for his own personal intellectual and expressive purposes” (313).
The compound adjectives “salt-sea” and “sea-salt” appear only once each in the Shakespeare canon (Spevack 1081, 1097). See Macbeth (4.1.24) (“salt-sea shark”) (Sobran 238; also noted by Prechter 154) and Titus Andronicus (3.2.20) (“Drown the lamenting fool [thy heart] in sea-salt tears”) (Sams 313). See also, however, Henry V (1.2.210) (“As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea”) (Sobran 238), Henry VI, Part 2 (3.2.96) (“With tears as salt as sea”), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (3.2.391-93) (“the eastern gate, all fiery red, Opening on Neptune … Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams”), Romeo and Juliet (3.5.133-35) (“For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea, Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is, Sailing in this salt flood”) (Sobran 238; expanded here), and Hamlet (3.2.147) (“Neptune’s salt wash”) (Sobran 238).
As Sams noted (313), the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) (14: 808) identifies the adjective “sea-salt” as both “rare” and originating in Shakespeare, citing the above-quoted line in Titus Andronicus. OED also cites Richard Linche (Diella, 1596) (“sea-salt tears”) and Theodore Watts-Dunton (Aylwin, 1897) (“sea-salt lips”).
OED does not explicitly identify the adjective “salt-sea” as “rare,” but cites only the above-quoted line in Macbeth for its appearance as a compound adjective before 1798 (14: 407; also citing William Wordsworth, Peter Bell, 1798, “salt-sea foam”). OED states that “salt sea,” along with similar compounds like “salt flood,” “salt foam,” and “salt stream,” were “frequent phrases for the sea” in Middle English poetry. OED does not, however, seem to clearly distinguish between compound nouns (with only “salt” or “salty” as the adjective) and compound adjectives in the form “salt-[blank]” modifying some other noun. The only other example in OED of “salt sea” before 1798 is from Geoffrey Chaucer, a Middle English writer. In that reference it is a compound noun with only “salt” or “salty” functioning as the adjective (as, of course, it commonly does) — not a compound adjective like “salt-sea” as used in No. 4 (OED 14: 407, citing Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women, c. 1385, “So longe he seylith in the salte se”).
(Update: As discussed in Professor Stritmatter’s published study, the compound adjective “salt-sea” turns out not to be as rare as suggested above. OED missed its usage in No. 4 itself, first published in 1576 in The Paradise of Dainty Devices, and probably written as noted around 1563, so it is certainly possible that OED, and we, have missed other usages.)
It appears, in any event, that young Edward, barely a teenager, in one of his weakest and most-mocked poems, made use of an “imaginative” and “highly individual” turn of phrase (Sams 313), one echoed later by renowned poets like “Shakespeare” and (two centuries later) Wordsworth. Sams was referring to “sea-salt,” the variant compound adjective (less poetically evocative) that Sams felt sure was “specially invented by Shakespeare for his own personal intellectual and expressive purposes” (313).
We might add that line 16 (“fowl that flocks and feeds upon the salt sea soil”) seems overall the most creative and satisfying instance of alliteration in No. 4. The bracing natural image it conveys makes for perhaps the most pleasing line in the poem, one hinting (as all these echoes to all these de Vere poems do) at the future Shakespeare.
If a teenager had written No. 4 after the works of Shakespeare were published — instead of, in all probability, thirty years before the first work to appear under the “Shakespeare” nom de plume — we might well have supposed he was clumsily imitating the master.
Which is more likely? That Shakespeare drew heavily upon a weak and obscure poem by another poet, written in 1563 and published in 1576, a full generation before his career supposedly hit full stride? Or that, as corroborated by much additional circumstantial evidence, he was that poet as a boy, and consciously or unconsciously recycled words, images, and phrasing from his youth — spinning dross into gold?
Return to Poem No. 4 or return to the Introduction.
[published June 22, 2018, updated 2021]
