Bücher von Leo Daugherty

Lord Ferdinando Stanley was the fifth earl of Derby, a leading claimant to the throne. Considered a man who had everything, he was also the patron of the company of players which was fortunate enough to include William Shakespeare. One April Fool's Day, 1594, he was reportedly approached by a witch (one of the famous legion of "Lancashire witches") and they engaged in brief conversation while strolling outside his largest palace, Lathom Hall. Four days later, he fell violently ill. For twelve days he lingered, while four of the best doctors in the country, including the famous Dr. John Case of Oxford, labored in vain to save him.Who killed Lord Stanley and why? Historians started debating that question almost as soon as he died, and outraged gossip was to be heard everywhere in England. This second edition studies the death of Lord Derby within the immediate contexts of Elizabethan power politics, succession mania, passionate religious controversy, the records of prominent families in the North, and the cult of personality just then beginning to become a major factor in the nation's social history. The book's scope also includes subcultural contexts such as Elizabethan poetry (Lord Derby was a pastoral love poet, some of whose work survives), witchcraft, medicine, spy networks, and both approved and disapproved methods of political assassination (with poison being the most frowned upon because of its disreputable "Italianate" connotations).

The book Shakespeare s Sonnets (1609) contains a famous major section which editors and other scholars long ago dubbed the Rival Poet sequence. In these poems, Shakespeare speaks anxiously of another pastoral sonneteer who is competing with him for the love of his male addressee. Some authorities have held the view that Shakespeare is not the autobiographical I of his sonnets, and therefore that this rival poet and the male beloved of both were not real people either. Other authorities have argued that these three may have been real, but that it does not matter to us now as readers as the question is of little or no critical importance. However, most authorities over the years have believed that they were indeed real people in the real world and that it is important who they were simply because one of them was Shakespeare. The trend in recent scholarly work has been toward establishing a reliable historical grounding for all works of art including poems in cases where such a ground has not been adequately established. Shakespeare s Sonnets is such a case and is perhaps the most famous one in Western culture. This book provides the best evidence yet brought forward for that grounding. Many other books and articles have taken the position that real historical persons are represented in Shakespeare s Sonnets and have attempted to identify them. But no previous study has considered the large amount of new evidence presented here (some of it historical and some of it textual), and none has made a logical case as powerful and persuasive regarding these identifications as the one constructed here. This book is the first to argue that the Rival Poet of Shakespeare s Sonnets is the well-known young Elizabethan writer Richard Barnfield (1574 1620), long suspected to have been one of Shakespeare s private friends (as they were termed by Francis Meres in 1598), with whom (as Meres also tells us) Shakespeare shared some of his sonnets. This is also the first book to argue that William Stanley (1561 1642), sixth earl of Derby, is the young man to whom they addressed their respective sonnets and other love poems in the period c. 1592 1595. In making these identifications, this is the first book to examine in detail the dialogue between Shakespeare s Sonnets and three of Barnfield s books of poetry (all published within a little more than one year) a dialogue only known to be discussed in a conference paper and one other book. William Shakespeare, Richard Barnfield, and the Sixth Earl of Derby will likely appeal to all readers interested in Shakespeare s life and love poetry, both specialist scholars and non-specialist enthusiasts alike.