Palladis Tamia: Wits Treasury; Being the Second Part of Wits Commonwealth is a 1598 commonplace book written by the minister Francis Meres. It is important in English literary history as the first critical account of the poems and early plays of William Shakespeare. It was listed in the Stationers Register 7 September 1598.[1]
Palladis Tamia contains moral and critical reflections borrowed from various sources, and included sections on books, on philosophy, on music and painting, as well as the famous "Comparative Discourse of our English poets with the Greeke, Latin, and Italian poets" that enumerates the English poets from Geoffrey Chaucer to Meres' own day, and compares each with a classical author. While Meres is considerably indebted to George Puttenham's earlier The Arte of English Poesie (1589), the section extends the catalogue of poets and contains many first notices of Meres's contemporaries.
The title refers to Greek Πᾰλλᾰ́δος (Pallados, "of Pallas," a name of Athena), and ταμεία (tameia, "treasury"). There is also probably a pun on Tamia, a Latin name for the River Thames.[2]
The book was reissued in 1634 as a school book, and was partially reprinted in the Ancient Critical Essays (1811-1811) of Joseph Haslewood, Edward Arber's English Garner, and George Gregory Smith's Elizabethan Critical Essays (1904).
Shakespeare references
Excerpt from Palladis Tamia (1598) listing 12 of Shakespeare's plays
In the "Comparative Discourse" section Meres lists a dozen Shakespearean plays, identified by him as six comedies and six tragedies (Comedies: Two Gentlemen of Verona, Comedy of Errors, Love's Labours Lost, Love Labours Won, Midsummer Night's Dream, and Merchant of Venice; Tragedies: Richard II, Richard III, Henry the IV, King John, Titus Andronicus, and Romeo and Juliet), establishing their composition before 1598.
This passage has sometimes been taken to indicate that only those Shakespeare plays had been written by 1598. However, there is no way of knowing how complete Meres' knowledge of the published plays actually was or whether he even intended to produce a comprehensive list of all the plays; at the very least, it is generally agreed that Meres neglected The Taming of the Shrew (1590–91), and all three parts of the Henry VI trilogy, which most scholars believe were written by 1591, seven years before Palladis Tamia.
Marlowe references
In the "Comparative Discourse" section Meres describes the "tragicall death" of "our tragicall poet" Christopher Marlowe who "was stabd to death by a bawdy seruing man, a riuall of his in his lewde loue." This passage implied that Marlowe had been killed in a fight over a lover, though the word "rival" can also mean "companion", perhaps implying that the serving man himself was the lover.[3] It was the second published reference to Marlowe's death, following Thomas Beard's Theatre of God's Judgements (1597), which states that Marlowe was stabbed in self-defence by a man he attacked in the street. The full details of Marlowe's death in 1593 were only finally uncovered by Leslie Hotson in 1925.
Context
Palladis Tamia translates from the Greek literally as "Pallas' Housewife". "Tamia" is the Greek word for a female slave in charge of a household, but it is more likely that "tamia" as used by Meres in this case is a form of "tamias", a dispenser, steward or treasurer, and here used to suggest, by metonymy, the "Treasury" of Meres's subtitle. "Palladis" is the Latin genitive of "Pallas," another name for the goddess Athena, who in Greek mythology was the goddess of wisdom and statecraft. Thus, Palladis Tamia becomes the "dispenser" or "treasurer" of Pallas Athena, or "wisdom".
Palladis Tamia was the second in a series of four volumes of short pithy sayings with the generic title of Wits Commonwealth, the first of which was Politeuphuia: Wits Commonwealth (1597), compiled by John Bodenham or by Nicholas Ling, the publisher. The third volume was Wits Theater of the Little World (1599), dedicated to Bodenham and variously credited to him, Robert Allott, or Ling, and the fourth and last was, Palladis Palatium: wisedoms pallace. Or The fourth part of Wits commonwealth (1604), with no author named but attributed to William Wrednott in the Stationer’s Register.
↑ Wells, Stanley, and Gary Taylor, with John Jowett and William Montgomery (1987, 1997), William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN0-19-812914-9, p. 90.
↑ Stephen Orgel, The Authentic Shakespeare and Other Problems of Early Modern Theatre, Routledge, 2002, p.22.
Bibliography
Allen, Don C. “The Classical Scholarship of Francis Meres” PMLA, XLVIII: 1 (March 1933), 418-425.
Bentley, Gerald Eades. “John Cotgrave’s English Treasury of Wit and Language and the Elizabethan Drama” Studies in Philology, Vol. XL, 1943.
Meres, Francis. Palladis Tamia. Wits Treasury. Printed by P. Short for Cuthbert Burbie. 1598. Facsimile Reprint of the Church copy in the Henry E. Huntington Library. Introduction by Don C. Allen.
Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe, was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Based upon the "many imitations" of his play Tamburlaine, modern scholars consider him to have been the foremost dramatist in London in the years just before his mysterious early death. Some scholars also believe that he greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was baptised in the same year as Marlowe and later succeeded him as the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright. Marlowe was the first to achieve critical reputation for his use of blank verse, which became the standard for the era. His plays are distinguished by their overreaching protagonists. Themes found within Marlowe's literary works have been noted as humanistic with realistic emotions, which some scholars find difficult to reconcile with Marlowe's "anti-intellectualism" and his catering to the prurient tastes of his Elizabethan audiences for generous displays of extreme physical violence, cruelty, and bloodshed.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) wrote sonnets on a variety of themes. When discussing or referring to Shakespeare's sonnets, it is almost always a reference to the 154 sonnets that were first published all together in a quarto in 1609. However, there are six additional sonnets that Shakespeare wrote and included in the plays Romeo and Juliet, Henry V and Love's Labour's Lost. There is also a partial sonnet found in the play Edward III.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1598.
Francis Meres was an English churchman and author. His 1598 commonplace book includes the first critical account of poems and plays by Shakespeare.
Henry Chettle was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer of the Elizabethan era, best known for his pamphleteering.
Anthony Munday was an English playwright and miscellaneous writer. He was baptized on 13 October 1560 in St Gregory by St Paul's, London, and was the son of Christopher Munday, a stationer, and Jane Munday. He was one of the chief predecessors of Shakespeare in English dramatic composition, and wrote plays about Robin Hood. He is believed to be the primary author of Sir Thomas More, on which he is believed to have collaborated with Henry Chettle, Thomas Heywood, William Shakespeare, and Thomas Dekker.
Love's Labour's Won is a lost play attributed by contemporaries to William Shakespeare, written before 1598 and published by 1603, though no copies are known to have survived. Scholars dispute whether it is a true lost work, possibly a sequel to Love's Labour's Lost, or an alternative title to a known Shakespeare play.
Robert Wilson, was an Elizabethan dramatist who worked primarily in the 1580s and 1590s. He is also believed to have been an actor who specialized in clown roles.
John Bodenham, an English anthologist, was the patron of some of the Elizabethan poetry anthologies.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Valentine Simmes was an Elizabethan era and Jacobean era printer; he did business in London, "on Adling Hill near Bainard's Castle at the sign of the White Swan." Simmes has a reputation as one of the better printers of his generation, and was responsible for several quartos of Shakespeare's plays. [See: Early texts of Shakespeare's works.]
The Rival Poet is one of several characters, either fictional or real persons, featured in William Shakespeare's sonnets. The sonnets most commonly identified as the Rival Poet group exist within the Fair Youth group in sonnets 78–86. Several theories about these characters, the Rival Poet included, have been expounded, and scholarly debate continues to put forward both conflicting and compelling arguments. In the context of these theories, the speaker of the poem sees the Rival Poet as a competitor for fame, wealth and patronage.
Cuthbert Burby was a London bookseller and publisher of the Elizabethan and early Jacobean eras. He is known for publishing a series of significant volumes of English Renaissance drama, including works by William Shakespeare, Robert Greene, John Lyly, and Thomas Nashe.
Peter Short was an English printer based in London in the later Elizabethan era. He printed several first editions and early texts of Shakespeare's works.
Mathew Roydon was an English poet associated with the School of Night group of poets and writers.
William Gager (1555–1622) was an English jurist, now known for his Latin dramas.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Christopher Hunt was an Exeter bookseller and stationer.
Thomas Achelley, also Achlow or Atchelow was an English poet and playwright of the Elizabethan era. Though little of his work survives, in his own time he had a considerable reputation.
John Cotgrave was an English anthologist whose works included Wit's Interpreter, notable for containing the earliest detailed descriptions of card games in English.
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