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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| 6. Purple corners A careful eye can also see where manuscripts have experienced damage. Tears, holes and worn-out bindings are often problems that come with use. One of the worst things that can happen to a manuscript is mould caused by leaving it in a damp place. This can clearly be seen in this manuscript from Leiden University. |
I think we're at the University of the Bleedin' Obvious.
| Professor Kwakkel wrote: | | "On nearly every page the top corner shows a purple rash from the mould that once attacked its skin,” Kwakkel explains. “It is currently safe and the mould is gone, but the purple stains show just how dangerously close the book came to destruction; some corners have actually been eaten away.” |
It came dangerously close to someone saying, "Why don't we carbon date the mould, that would be interesting to know." But, alas, this would mean carbon-dating the manuscript and discovering it was a relatively modern forgery. So it wasn't.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| 7. Expandable books Some manuscripts just did not want to be simple folio after folio. There were books where the pages folded outwards giving it an ‘accordion’ look. Then there was a fad in the early 15th century where scribes were creating folding almanacs. This example, found in the Wellcome Library, was originally created in England between 1415 and 1420. (Wellcome Institute, Archives and Manuscripts, 8932 – English folding almanac in Latin. Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Source: Wellcome Collection) |
Ah, the Wellcome Library. We must get our hands on that some day.
| Some historians refer to specimens like this as ‘bat books’, in part because the pages stretch out like wings, and also because the user would typically carry them upside down, hanging from their belt. |
We're now dealing with relatively modern manuscripts, i.e. from the late medieval period, which might well be genuine.
| There are several dozen surviving examples of these works, which usually consisted of calendars with diagrams and tables. |
'Several dozen'. Not quite enough to be a genre, more than enough to be a scam. Unless 'bat books' have a market all their own. Still, we know they are 'usually' for works of reference. Perhaps we might found out what the other bat-books were used for. Something that requires it to dangle upside down from your belt is your start point.
Kwakkel offers some thoughts on why these books would be created:
These bookish objects are especially interesting from a material point of view. During production, folding almanacs looked very much like a regular book: the scribe filled regular pages with text. However, in a completed state, when the binding was added, the pages were folded in a very clever way, giving them an “unbookish” look. |
It would be nice to have a carbon date for the bindings. Why anybody would want unbookish books is not clear to me. Perhaps Erik will explain
| The two different states (a small package when closed, irregular dimensions when unfolded) were chosen with care: closed, it was a portable book that could dangle from the owner’s belt, while in its extended state the reader was provided with expansive information at a glance. |
Perhaps one of youse guys can explain. A book is easy to consult, a concertina of pages is difficult to consult. But anyway that does it for the seven things to look out for with medieval manuscripts. We prefer to do it a bit more sceptically here but then we don't have mortgages to pay explaining it all to readers and students.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Here's a little gold mine (as in "Are you interested in purchasing shares in my gold mine") I came across yesterday. It's a series put out on the BBC World Service a long time ago but still available here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p033dmzb/episodes/player This is the full list with BBC comments and my own in italics
Elizabeth I Why didn't Queen Elizabeth l marry? A handwritten speech offers clues as to why
If it's the Tilbury speech, it's definitely a fake; it it isn't, it's probably a fake.
Sumer Is Icumen In How did a secular song end up being written and preserved by medieval monks?
The only one I've listened to so far, I'll write about it anon.
The Tracking Satyrs The recovery and restoration of Sophocles' lost play
I'll bet
Diamond Sutra The remarkable discovery of the world's earliest printed book
When it's a world record, hold on to your hats
Leonardo da Vinci Why were Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks written backwards?
Probably to disguise they weren't written by Leonardo
The Lindisfarne Gospels The history of one of the most beautiful medieval books in Britain
They mean late medieval, not early medieval. And not from Lindisfarne.
Codex Sinaiticus The text of Codex Sinaiticus, a hand-written ancient copy of the Greek Bible
We've had a lot of fun with this threadbare hoax
Beowulf The history of the epic
But even more with this one.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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A hilarious exchange between Hatty and an old sparring partner of hers. It all concerned a Roman bust in the Metropolitan, New York [she might put up a pic if she is technically able, I'm not]
| Hatty wrote: | | My complaints were the lack of provenance (it was bought by the Met in 1930 from a private collection), no verified findspot or documentary records, and that the only criterion for dating seems to be the hairstyle |
| Chapps wrote: | | Harriet, what is your point? Yes, the hairstyle dates it. But you seem to think that everything is a fake, so...� |
| Hatty wrote: | | The point is a hairstyle is not a scientific dating method. Any sculptor in any period can reproduce a hairstyle. According to the Met's listing, there is no provenance, no documentary refs and findspot unknown. Whether it's even Roman is a moot point. |
| Chapps wrote: | | Harriet, women's hairstyles are regularly used to date Roman portraits. No, a patrician woman would not want to be portrayed in the hairstyle of a bygone empress, so it's a pretty solid dating method. Surely you know this. I'm not sure why you always want to do this... |
So we've reached the stage when forgers doing the basics is a sign of authenticity.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Here's a technical exercise. We beg, borrow or steal the Met bust and ask a sculptor to make an exact copy, colouring and all -- or better still a 3D computer to make it -- and then we invite Shapps to say which one is the Roman one. He can consult art historians, museum experts and connoisseurs in any profusion. All they will be told is that neither has a provenance going back further than 1930.
Presumably no-one will be able to identify the Classical one. In fact, unless they are aware of the Met piece, it is doubtful if any of them would claim either of them was Roman. We can then give them both to the Met, ask them to put on the card
| A representation of how Roman matrons reputedly styled their hair in the third century AD. |
and ask them to send the other one back for display in the AEL vestibule. Remind me to get (1) and (2) carved on the underneaths.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Felix Lope de Vega y Carpio (25 November 1562 - 27 August 1635) was a Spanish playwright, poet, and novelist who was a key figure in the Spanish Golden Age Wiki |
According to Radio 4 -- they were doing a modern update -- Lope de Vega wrote eighteen hundred plays of which five hundred are still extant. Sorry, but I don't buy it. Judging by the one I listened to (for the first twenty minutes anyway) they are not small affairs. Nobody writes eighteen hundred plays (and that only a proportion of their total literary output).
Lope de Vega might be the pen name for an entire tradition. You might put plays on under his name (though not between 1562 and 1635 when he was around to object). But Felix Lope de Vega y Carpio did not write no two thousand plays.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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No, a patrician woman would not want to be portrayed in the hairstyle of a bygone empress...
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Either Hats is not a patrician, or I can date her to around 1370 - 1330 BC. She is lasting well.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | Lope de Vega might be the pen name for an entire tradition. |
Now to Georg Friedrich Haendel.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Don't tell me. We have to do all the work.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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But I might as well put up the full Medium piece
------------------
Coming to a radio near you
| Drama on 3: Dog in the Manger Lope de Vega's Spanish Golden Age comedy in a new version by David Johnston, starring Olivia Poulet. |
BBC Radio 3 Presenter: Lope de Vega was the Spanish Shakespeare?
David Johnston: Yes, but there were significant differences. Women playing women's parts on stage for a start. Lope knew who the audience were coming to see. In fact women were paid more than men in the Spanish theatre at that time.
Olivia Poulet: Fair play!
Mick Harper: Not really, Olivia. Fair play means equal pay, men and women.
While we're on the subject, was the play written by Lope de Vega? He reputedly wrote eighteen hundred plays of which five hundred survive. To judge by Dog in the Manger, rather meaty plays at that. This was in addition to a vast output of novels, novellas, sonnets and epic poems. No wonder Cervantes said Lope was a 'monster of nature'.
No wonder I say this is all complete piffle. There is not a man born of mortal woman who has ever written eighteen hundred stageable plays. Enid Blyton might have been able to knock out eight hundred children's books but a play takes a wee bit longer. I know, I've written a few. Though none have reached the stage. Early days of course.
The likeliest explanation is that Spanish playwrights, seeking to get round the censorship, presented their plays as being 'by Lope de Vega' and hence an adornment of the Spanish Golden Age. It would take a bold censor to censor that. It didn't do any harm at the box office either.
Oh, yes, and Don Quixote wasn't written by Miguel de Cervantes but we won't go into that at this time.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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A recent reply to Hatty on Facebook shows the way ahead:
| There are many dating techniques apart from carbon dating, (which has its limitations), but when you have an ancient artefact that has been in, say, a monastic or university library for the last eight hundred years, and that is made of recycled materials that are much older, then you know that the underlying text must be at least as old as the book coming into the library. |
We have now reached the situation where subjective but academically respectable dating techniques are 'many' but the only one that actually gives the date 'has its limitations'. The main one being they never have it carbon-dated.
But we also have a new ne plus ultra test. You don't bother with the artefact at all, you simply ask the age of the institution it's in. If they say they are eight hundred years old, and if they say the artefact has been in it all that time, the artefact is at least eight hundred years old. Nobody's going to argue with that, they're the experts on both. Lots of experts, I shouldn't wonder, they've got a priceless artefact on their hands. If there's writing underneath... the sky's the limit, price-wise and age-wise. Thank ke-rist carbon testing has its limitations.
N. B. They may use the document to date the institution later.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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On the matter of playwrights, my attention was snagged by mention of Philip Henslowe's Diary which has long been historians' main, if not only, source of information about Elizabethan theatres
| Henslowe’s Diary is a manuscript written by Philip Henslowe between 1592-1609 detailing his many financial matters, including the day-to-day operation of his theatrical business. The manuscript is the single greatest illuminator of the history of English Renaissance theatre. |
Statements that juxtapose 'single' and 'greatest' are potential red flags, even more so given the relationship between Henslowe and a familiar name, Edward Alleyn
| The diary survives today due to Edward Alleyn, Henslowe’s business partner and stepson-in-law. Having made a fortune on the stage, Alleyn founded the College of God’s Gift at Dulwich. |
and reinforced by the account of the Diary's appearance, disappearance, reappearance
After Henslowe’s death in 1616, Alleyn inherited and deposited Henslowe’s papers into the library at Dulwich College, where they lay unmolested until their discovery in 1780 by Edmond Malone, a scholar preparing a variorum edition of Shakespeare. Before Malone could make academic use of the diary, it was mislaid. In 1790, it was re-discovered; Malone prepared a transcript of thirty-eight pages from the original manuscript, and hastily published these excerpts in his Variorum Shakespeare. Malone kept the original manuscript in his possession until his death in 1812, though whether he acted in the role of protector or the role of coveter is greatly disputed.
The controversy over Malone’s guardianship stems from the discovery that he clipped autographs from the original manuscript for his own use. Malone left the pages of his transcript to his associate, James Boswell the younger, who published them and more in his own Variorum Shakespeare of 1821. The transcript appears in a sale of Boswell’s books in 1825 and in the Heber sale, when it was sold to Sir Thomas Phillips. It was reclaimed for Dulwich College by George F. Warner upon Phillip’s death in 1895
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It seems Edward Malone, heralded as an "editor and pioneer in efforts to establish an authentic text and chronology of William Shakespeare's works", was as chary as the Vatican Library when it came to granting access to the 'original' manuscript of Henslowe's Diary. Oddly, or maybe not, Shakespeare's name doesn't appear anywhere in the Diary apart from a hoax entry dated '18 May 1595' inserted by the scholar-forger John Payne Collier in the nineteenth century.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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The evidence as such points to Henslowe's Diary being the work of Edward Malone. Either way, Dulwich College, where Alleyn's papers were kept, is supposed to have been where Diary had been hidden/ lost for the intervening couple of centuries
| The diary was first discovered at Dulwich College by Edmond Malone, who retained possession of it, though it is unclear whether it was given to his care or kept without permission. The circumstances of its return are also in dispute. According to Peter Martin’s biography of Malone, Malone was contracted by the Dulwich governors to possess the manuscript (and its associated documents) while he prepared his Variorum Shakespeare and was allowed to keep them after the 1790 publication as long as he paid for the privilege. Malone’s method of discovery is also under suspicion. While at Dulwich College, he never made even a rudimentary catalogue of his discoveries, thus giving no recourse against the forgeries and uncertainties in the years to come. |
https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/HENS2.htm#:~:text=The%20manuscript%20is%20the%20single,of%20God's%20Gift%20at%20Dulwich.
| The transcript appears in a sale of Boswell’s books in 1825 and in the Heber sale, when it was sold to Sir Thomas Phillips. |
The appearance of Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872) seems apposite. Phillipps, owner of "the most significant collection of manuscripts ever assembled by a collector", is reputed to have collected 40,000 printed books and 60,000 manuscripts
From his private press at his estate at Middle Hill, Broadway, Worcestershire, England, Sir Thomas Phillipps issued Catalogus librorum manuscriptorum in bibliotheca d. Thomae Phillips, Bt., listing the most significant collection of manuscripts ever assembled by a collector. According to A.N.L. Munby, this catalogue of Phillipps's manuscript collection, published in fascicules, or parts, over more than thirty years, was issued in only 50 copies, of which only three surviving copies may be considered complete.
The fascicules were printed by a variety of printers, only some of whom worked at Phillipps's estate, and Phillipps bound up copies from both corrected and uncorrected sheets, resulting in copies that are exceptional in their bibliographical complexity. The catalogue includes 23,837 entries, which, for various reasons outlined by Munby, describe a considerably larger collection that may have comprised about 60,000 manuscripts. |
A few years after Phillipps' death the estate was in financial difficulties and his daughter and son-in-law, Rev. Thomas Fitzroy Fenwick, unable to maintain the library, tried to sell the collection. It must have been piecemeal (against Phillipps' instructions) as the sale of the collection lasted more than a hundred years.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| There are many dating techniques apart from carbon dating, (which has its limitations), but when you have an ancient artefact that has been in, say, a monastic or university library for the last eight hundred years, and that is made of recycled materials that are much older, then you know that the underlying text must be at least as old as the book coming into the library. |
It's a weird/false example but does raise the important issue of absolute and relative dating. I guess, from this paragraph alone, the author currently favours relative dating (bit difficult to say). If so I agree. Relative is a better way to start than absolute.
They really need to do a lot of work on carbon dating finds from well-excavated sites where the stratiography (relative dating) is clear. These need to be sent to multiple labs, and done double blind.
As it is you have a non-scientific approach of combining various dating methods, often both absolute and relative, with an allowance for sea food diets, all to fit "current thinking" and a sacred chronology........
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Seems to Wiley
The entrepreneur Philip Henslowe’s unique “Diary,” or account book, of his extensive theatrical enterprises records the titles of over 325 plays from 1592 to 1604, including two, perhaps three, plays written in part or whole by Shakespeare: Henry VI Part 1, Titus Andronicus, and The Taming of the Shrew.
Henslowe and his son-in-law, the great actor Edward Alleyn, built and expanded several London public playhouses, including the Rose, the Fortune, and the Hope (the foundations of some of which have recently been discovered or excavated by Museum of London staff). Named by King James I as joint “Masters of the Royal Game of Bears, Bulls and Mastiff Dogs,” Henslowe and Alleyn also staged such blood sports as bull-, bear-, and lion-baiting at the Bear Garden and other venues, including royal palaces. Henslowe and Alleyn also commissioned plays from dramatists and ran several of the most successful acting companies of the time, including the Lord Strange’s Men and the Lord Admiral’s Men, for which Alleyn performed such famous roles as Dr. Faustus and Tamburlaine. |
Not much evidence of Shakespeare in his diary/account book. Maybe it is the genuine thing, Shakespeare is the later made up bit.
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