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Rev. Francis Meres (MA Cantab and Oxen) is famous for his Palladis Tamia (1598),1 often described as a "commonplace book" or collection of useful quotes and information. The title is a nonsense Latin phrase, though Palladis vaguely translates as Athena (Pallas Athena, goddess of wisdom) while all Latin words prefixed with tam- have the sense of continuing, thus, ongoing, etc. So Wits Treasury is both an approximate translation and a subtitle. While the book is what it says, an anthology, it may also be described as a middle-brow dissertation with a great number of examples and references. Palladis Tamia1 s thesis is that in its writers and literary greatness England, especially under Elizabeth I of course, equals and even surpasses the glories of ancient Greece and Rome. Meres ensures that everything fits by listing numerous forced analogies:
As Greece had three Poets of great antiquity, Orpheus, Linus and Musaeus, and Italy other three auncient Poets, Livius Andronicus, Ennius and Plautus: so hath England three auncient Poets, Chaucer, Gower and Lydgate.
As Homer is reputed the Prince of Greek Poets; and Petrarch of Italian Poets: so Chaucer is accounted the God of English Poets.
As Homer was the first that adorned the Greek tongue with true quantity: so Piers Plowman was the first that observed the true quantitie of our verse without the curiositie of Rime.
Along with everyone else who ever shook an English quill, Meres mentions Shakespeare several times. He also offers an interestingly incomplete and ambiguous list of his works to 1598, including a still-undiscovered Loves Labours Won and The Troublesome Reign of King John, since ascribed by Vickers to George Peele.2
Even more intriguing, Meres has apparently heard of Shakespeare's private and as yet unpublished sonnets. These he remarkably describes as "sugred" and "privately circulated" among his "friends," a phrase whose implications are rarely explored. Does Meres really know what he's talking about? The words "sugred" and "privately circulated" and 'friends" hint both at the...