Shakespeare, A Lover's Complaint, and John Davies of Hereford (review)

Can Brian Vickers repeat his refutation of a generally accepted assignment of authorship to Shakespeare, as he successfully did with A Funeral Elegy for Master William Peter in his "Counterfeiting" Shakespeare (2002)? The case for Shakespeare's authorship of A Lover's Complaint has aroused little controversy until now, with important exceptions, notably in the analysis of J. W. Mackail (1912; see Vickers, 124–27). The poem was, after all, published in 1609 in the Quarto volume containing Shakespeare's Sonnets. The publisher, Thomas Thorpe, ascribed the poem to "William Shake-speare" in its title heading (sig. K^v). To be sure, Thorpe's authority for making such a claim should not be given too much weight: he evidently published the 1609 Quarto without the author's authorization. Still, the poem was never assigned to any other author during Shakespeare's lifetime, and no convincing alternative candidate has been put forth — until, perhaps, now.

To me, Vickers's case against Shakespeare (against Thorpe, really) is stronger than his case in favor of John Davies of Hereford. That, I suppose, is reason enough to consider removing the poem from a Complete Works, but still leaves the poem in limbo. Vickers probably overstates his argument against Thorpe as unscrupulous: Thorpe was, after all, Ben Jonson's publisher from 1605 to 1608. Still, Thorpe seems not to have obtained Shakespeare's authorization to publish the Sonnets (and A Lover's Complaint) in 1609, and the ascription on the title heading of that poem to "William Shake-speare" certainly could have beenThorpe's doing. The puzzling dedication of the Sonnets "To the Only Begetter of These Ensuing Sonnets, Mr W. H.," and the ensuing hope, "All Happiness and That Eternity Promised by Our Ever-living Poet / Wisheth the Well-wishing Adventurer in Setting Forth," signed "T. T.," leave us with no clear sense as to whether Thorpe can be believed in his inclusion of A Lover's Complaint in the 1609 volume, published as it was well after the vogue of the sonnet sequence had had its day. Vickers does rehearse Thorpe's occasional shady dealings, much of this information having been assembled earlier by Colin Burrow.

Vickers's book is wonderfully informative about John Davies of Hereford, and makes a case that we should be more aware of Davies as a writer. He was, as Vickers points out, personally known to many poets of the age. He was a handwriting teacher and tutor to the nobility. He had links to Oxford colleges, to the Donne circle, to the King's Men, and specifically to Shakespeare. He published twelve volumes of poems between 1602 and 1617. He achieved significant status as a religious poet. He was well-known among the witty young men of the Inns of Court. Vickers plentifully allows that Davies was a derivative poet. His argument is essentially that A Lover's Complaint is derivative also, and worthy of the author of The Scourge of Folly and Wits Bedlam. Vickers also sees Davies as influenced by Shakespeare, and this is an inherently more plausible proposition, though the parallels cited again seem to me so commonplace as to make one wonder if Davies could not have absorbed the ideas more generally.

I find myself continually coming to the defense of A Lover's Complaint as I read this book, and no more so than in the matter of womanly virtue. Vickers astutely points out how the young woman in the poem falls in love with her seducer's manly beauty, his smoothness of conversation, and so on, rather than with the bravery, generosity, honesty, and integrity that are set forth in other poems of female complaint by Samuel Daniel and others. But to see the author of the poem as "intent on exposing her superficial value system" is to make a judgment I do not share. Vickers sees the poem...