SOURCE: "'Shall I Die' Post Mortem: Defining Shakespeare," in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 1, Spring, 1987, pp. 58-77.

[In the following essay, Foster maintains that both internal and external evidence indicate that the ascription of "Shall I Die?" to Shakespeare is wrong. Foster notes that the verbal parallels cited by Taylor (above) are inconclusive; he also attacks Taylor's dating of the poem.]

John Fletcher's tragedy The Bloody Brother was first printed in 1639 by Richard Bishop for John Crook. Included in the text is a song of two stanzas which was possibly written (at least in part) by William Shake speare:¹

Take, Oh take those lips away
that so swetly were forsworne,
And those eyes, like breake of day,
lights that doe misleade the Morne,
But my kisses being againe,
Seales of love, though seal'd in vaine.

Hide, Oh hide those hills of Snow,
which thy frozen blossome beares,
On whose tops the Pincks that grow
are of those that April weares.
But first set my poore heart free,
bound in those Ioy chaines by thee.

The opening stanza appears also in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure—first printed in 1623, sixteen years earlier than Fletcher's Bloody Brother—but whether Shakespeare indeed wrote stanza one, stanza two, or both, or neither, is a mystery.

If stanza one was sung as early as 1604, then Fletcher probably had no hand in writing it. A better case can be made for Fletcher's hand in the second verse, since it was printed as part of Fletcher's play, was omitted from Shakespeare's, and employs images found elsewhere in Fletcher. Yet in John Crook's Quarto of The Bloody Brother, stanza two (presumably Fletcher's) is more corrupt than stanza one. Then, too, the entire song is ascribed to Shakespeare in John Benson's Poems. Written by Wil. Shakespeare (1640). Because Benson is unreliable, few scholars have credited the attribution; yet Benson's text of the song is clearly superior to Crook's. As external evidence, then, Crook's testimony is no better than Benson's (Crook, in fact, wrongly ascribes the play to "B. J. F."). Nor does Benson lack an endorsement in assigning the entire song to Shakespeare. A commonplace book preserved in the British library (MS. Harleian 6057, fol. 36^v) contains a fairly good text of both stanzas, where they are subscribed "W. S." The Harleian attribution (which has not, to my knowledge, been previously noted) might, therefore, lend added credibility to Benson's ascription—especially since the Harleian manuscript also contains a song from Troilus and Cressida, subscribed, with presumed accuracy, to "W. Sh."²

The Harleian volume, like Benson's edition of the Poems, may be dated only months after Ql of The Bloody Brother. Yet Crook's inferior text of "Take, O, take" cannot have supplied copy for either Benson or the Harleian scribe. Nor does the Harleian scribe depend on Benson, or vice versa; rather, both men appear to have found their texts in earlier manuscript copies, of uncertain venue, in which the entire song was ascribed to Shakespeare (or at least to "W. S.").

The easiest way to negotiate these competing claims is to assign the two stanzas to Shakespeare and Fletcher, respectively. It does seem likely, after all, that the verses were written for different occasions, and perhaps by two different poets. Stanza one, as it appears in Measure for Measure, is sung to console the abandoned Mariana. The unfaithful lover, by implication, is a man. The second stanza, in which the forsworn lover is unmistakably female, was probably never a part of Shakespeare's play.

A closer reading yields still other evidence, previously overlooked: for example, the phrase "hills of snow" suggests a later date of composition than 1604, when Measure for Measure was performed and, presumably, written. "Hills of snow" is a poetic cliché of the 1620s, and is found nowhere in the Shakespeare canon and rarely elsewhere during his lifetime. Nor do we find poets urging women to hide their "hills" (breasts) and "pinks" (nipples) until after 1610, when (as we shall see further along), the bare-breasted look became fashionable. The apparent disunity of the two stanzas of "Take, O, take" may yet be explained as intentional, to indicate something of the betrayed lover's indecisiveness, but it points more probably, in this case, to composite authorship.

There is no room here for dogmatism. Borrowed songs, or (more often) snatches of them, appear repeatedly in the plays of both Shakespeare and Fletcher. It is therefore quite possible that neither poet had a hand in composing this particular lyric. This, then, may leave us approximately where we began; yet we at least have no obligation, after inspecting the evidence, both old and new, to alter the editorial tradition that has assigned the first verse to Shakespeare and the second to Fletcher.

There remain hundreds of doubtful attributions in surviving manuscripts and printed texts of the seventeenth century, many of which, like "Take, O, take," are ascribed to major poets. These invite further discussion. One such—a lyric beginning "Shall I die, shall I fly"—has been the subject of recent controversy. It is ascribed to "William Shakespeare" in Bodleian Library MS. Rawl. poet. 160, a fairly typical commonplace book of the mid-seventeenth century. The volume was compiled c. 1637 by an unknown scribe and is similar in many respects to the Harleian commonplace book that ascribes "Take, O, take" to "W. S."

The text, transcribed from the Rawlinson manuscript in which it appears, is as follows:

1

Shall I dye, shall I flye
lovers baits, and deceipts sorrow breeding
Shall I tend shall I send
shall I shewe, and not rue my proceeding
In all duty her beawty
Binds me her servant for ever
If she scorne I mourne
I retire, to despaire Ioying never.

2

Yet I must, vent my lust
and explaine, inward paine by my loue breeding
If she smiles, she exiles
all my moane, if she frowne all my hopes deceaving
Suspitious doubt, oh keepe out
For thou art my tormentor
Fly away, pack away
I will loue for hope bids me venter

3

T'were abuse to accuse
my faire loue, ere I prove her affection
therefore try her reply
gives thee Ioy or annoy or affliction
Yet how ere, I will beare
Her pleasure with patience for beawty
sure wit not seeme to blot,
her deserts wronging him, doth her duty.

4

In a dreame it did seeme
but alas dreames doe passe as doe shaddowes
I did walke, I did talke
with my loue, with my dove through faire meadows
Still we past till at last
we sate to repose vs for o^r pleasure
being set lips mett
armes twin'd & did bind my hearts treasure

5

Gentle wind sport did find
wantonly to make fly her gold tresses
As they shooke, I did looke
but her faire, did impaire all my senses
As amaz'd I gaz'd
On more then a mortali complection then that loue, can prove
Such force in beawties inflection

6

Next her haire forehead faire
Smooth and high next doth lye without wrinckle
Her faire browes vnder those
starlike eyes win loues prize when they twinckle
In her cheekes, whoe seekes
Shall find there displaid beawties banner
Oh admiring, desiring
breeds as I looke still vpon her

7

Thin lips red, fancies fed
with all sweets when he meets and is granted
There to trade, and is made
happy sure, to endure still vndaunted
Pretty chinne, doth winne
Of all thats cald comendatious
Fairest neck, noe speck
All her parts meritt high admiracõns

8

A pretty bare, past compare
parts those plotts (which besots) still asunder
It is meet, nought but sweet
should come nere, that soe rare tis a wonder
Noe mishap, noe scape
Inferior to natures perfection
noe blot, noe spot
Shees beawties queene in election

9

Whilst I dream't, I exempt
for all care seem'd to share pleasures in plenty
but awake care take
for I find to my mind pleasures scanty
Therefore I will trie
To compasse my hearts cheife contenting
to delay, some saye
In such a case causeth repenting

William Shakespeare3

The various attributions made by the Rawlinson scribe have been a subject of study for many years;⁴ "Shall I die" was itself put on public exhibition as early as 1916.⁵ But no one took much interest in the poem until November 1985, when the editors of the Oxford Shakespeare announced their discovery of a lost work by our greatest poet. Gary Taylor has asserted that "this poem belongs to Shakespeare's canon and, unless somebody can dislodge it, it will stay there."⁶ "The onus," says Taylor, "is on people to prove that it isn't Shakespeare."⁷ S. Schoenbaum, American Adviser for the Oxford Shakespeare, goes a step further, arguing that "Shall I die" is "authentic until proved otherwise."Both Taylor and Schoenbaum stress the "prima facie" evidence of the Rawlinson scribe's own testimony.⁹ Therefore, despite widespread skepticism, "Shall I die" is included in the Oxford edition of The Complete Works of Shakespeare.¹⁰ The editorial decision to include the poem raises the spectre of a lyric that will not die after all, but that will return to haunt all future editions of Shakespeare, as has been the past case with the doubtful lyrics in Jaggard's Passionate Pilgrim.

For our text of "Shall I die" we have two sources, both c. 1637—the Rawlinson volume, and a second commonplace book owned since 1972 by Yale's Beinecke Library. The Yale volume—compiled in 1637-39 by Tobias Alston, a Suffolk teenager—bears a close relationship to the Rawlinson manuscript.¹¹ Fifty-seven of the 159 poems in Rawlinson appear also in the Yale miscellany, an unusually great overlap for manuscripts of this sort. Furthermore, the two miscellanies share numerous variant readings, as well as entire poems, that I have found nowhere else. It is clear that Alston and the anonymous Rawlinson scribe were linked (perhaps indirectly) to the same circle of friends, either at Cambridge or at the Inns of Court. Alston, however, does not assign an author to his text of "Shall I die."

At this late stage, I doubt that we will find an authoritative source in which "Shall I die" is assigned to someone other than "William Shakespeare." If, then, we are to reject the attribution, we must have better cause than a vague (and vaguely bardolatrous) impression that the poem is simply "bad." We need precise evidence that the ascription is, in fact, wrong. There exists, I contend, both internal and external evidence to that effect. Let us begin with the "internal evidence," which includes such variables as diction, prosody, imagery, word frequencies, and authorial voice. Such evidence cannot, by itself, produce a convincing attribution for an anonymous text, but it can at least help us to confirm or to discredit a doubtful ascription (as is the case here); for every text contains at least a few clues to its own authorship, however vague or contradictory those clues may sometimes appear. By looking more closely at "Shall I die" than has been done heretofore, we may yet learn a great deal about the poem, about its origin, and perhaps, too, about how to evaluate other dubious attributions.

To be credited, internal evidence in an attributional study must consist of data more reliable than mere verbal parallels, which are altogether worthless as evidence unless it can be shown that the examples cited are distinctive of a particular poet—a chore that is easier (and oftener) said than done. Unfortunately, verbal parallels continue to provide the substance of most attributional investigation. Gary Taylor's work on "Shall I die" is an example. The following words and phrases from the poem are submitted by Taylor as among the "more interesting" echoes of William Shakespeare:

all the world	in all duty	so rare
but alas	keep out	some say
fair love	my dove	star-like
fly away	naught but	to my mind
gentle wind	seeks . . . find	win . . . prize

Shakespeare, like the "Shall I die" poet, praises a "high" forehead, "red" lips, and a brow without a "wrinkle" in it. The "Shall I die" poet rhymes "love" with "dove"; Shakespeare does, too. Both poets speak of "doing" one's "duty." All these are submitted by Taylor as evidence that Shakespeare wrote "Shall I die, shall I fly."¹²

The presentation of such unremarkable parallels is, I suppose, relatively harmless, but in the absence of solid supporting evidence, echo-chasing leads us nowhere. Fluellen's "Salmons in Both" strategy will solve neither this attributional problem nor any other.¹³ Indeed, given the size of the Shakespeare canon, one should not be surprised to find Shakespearean "echoes" in almost any piece of poetry or prose written in English.

Nor is Shakespeare the only poet whose work contains an occasional phrase or metaphor that appears in "Shall I die." "Star-like eyes," for example, can be found in John Harington, Phineas Fletcher, William Strode, and Thomas Carew (to name but a few), though nowhere in Shakespeare. Or to select just one of these poets, I find in a hasty perusal of Carew's verse a great many parallels with "Shall I die," including several that appear nowhere in Shakespeare (e.g., "my fair love," "if she frown," "beauty binds," "queen of beauty" [twice]). "Twin'd" or "entwin'd" souls, thighs, arms, and hearts are a favorite image for Carew. "Beauty" (including inflections) is among the most frequent words in "Shall I die," as is often true of Carew. A typical instance is Carew's "Persuasions to Love," in which we find beaut-appearing eight times in only eighty-four lines; and Carew, like this poet but unlike Shakespeare, has often, relative to other English poets, a low frequency of the definite article.¹⁴ But then, even if we could find in "Shall I die" a single distinctive Shakespearean phrase, it would tell us only that the author of the poem may have read or heard something by Shakespeare. Carew, for example, echoes Shakespeare quite often (e.g., "You are the bright pole-star, which in the dark / Of this long absence, guides my wand'ring bark").

I have noted Carew only as a cross-sample, by which to judge the relative merits of the Shakespearean "verbal parallels" in "Shall I die." I choose him because the Rawlinson volume contains more poems by Carew than by any other two poets put together. At least four of the six poems preceding "Shall I die" in the Rawlinson volume, and at least three of the eleven poems succeeding (all but one of them assigned no author), were written by Carew. I do not think it possible that Carew wrote "Shall I die," but to judge from "verbal parallels," he is as likely a candidate as William Shakespeare.

In all, Taylor finds that "The Shakespeare canon supplies 107 quoted parallels for 52 phrases in the poem"—including the appearance in Shakespeare of the unremarkable phrase, "all the world."¹⁵ As I have noted elsewhere, the phrase "all the world" appears nowhere in the original texts of "Shall I die."¹⁶ This is a conjectural emendation, supplied by Stanley Wells, for "all thats cald" (stanza 7, line 8, in the Rawlinson text). In other words, the editors' own revision of the poem is submitted as evidence that Shakespeare wrote it. The emendation is not even necessary.¹⁷ The word "sue" and the rhyme pair sue:rue are presented as further proof that Shakespeare wrote "Shall I die." But when we turn to the original texts (stanza 1), we find that "sue," likewise, is a conjectural emendation, though not indicated as such in Taylor's edited version.¹⁸ Nor is "sue" a necessary emendation. The only obvious justification for the change is that the shew:rue rhyme conflicts with Shakespeare's known practice and quite possibly with Taylor's early date for the poem as well.¹⁹ But it will not do to use the hypothesis of Shakespearean authorship to amend a rhyme, and then to use the altered rhyme as evidence of Shakespearean authorship.²⁰

"Shall I die" contains seventy-two different rhymes, two of which (beauty:duty and love:prove) appear twice. Twenty-four of these different word-pairs find identical counterparts in the poems and plays of William Shakespeare (or twenty-five if we match breeding: proceeding in stanza one with a-breeding:proceeding in Love's Labor's Lost). But such words as die:fly, not:blot, love:dove, and wind:find were pronounced more or less the same throughout England. As noted by Robin Robbins, these rhymes appear in other poets of the period with a frequency comparable to that of Shakespeare.²¹ They can tell us nothing of the poem's authorship.

In addition to the twenty-four word-pairs common to Shakespeare and the "Shall I die" poet, there are forty word-pairs in this poem that do not appear in Shakespeare but that might have been used by him without greatly altering his usual practice. This is a liberal estimate, for several in my list are unlikely.²² That still leaves us with eight rhymes that appear nowhere in Shakespeare and that, in addition, conflict with his usual practice (breeding: deceiving, tresses:senses, shadows:meadows, banner:upon her, retire:despair, shew:rue, plenty:scanty, and moan:frown). Breeding:deceiving is possibly a corruption (the Yale text has bred:dead), and need not trouble us; and we may dismiss tresses:senses as a fluke not likely to be found anywhere else. But the rest conflict with Shakespeare's habitual manner, as for example in shadows:meadows and plenty:scanty, which suggest a merging of ME ă into ME ě or vice versa. This is a phenomenon found in Shakespeare only in the usual exceptions (especially than:then) and perhaps in a few examples of North Country dialect, as in Captain Jamy's "by the Mes" (Henry V, III.ii.114, Fl) and Hotspur's "exle tree" (1 Henry IV, III.i.130, Ql).

We may turn next to the date of "Shall I die." To accept the poem as Shakespeare's we need, at the least, some evidence that it was written during the years that he was alive. Yet, as noted earlier, both manuscripts in which the poem appears were compiled more than twenty years after his death. If "Shall I die" is indeed Shakespeare's, its sudden emergence in 1637 is unexpected: neither the Yale nor the Rawlinson volume is known to contain a single poem earlier than 1620 that has not survived in some text earlier than these. As it happens, the majority of datable items in both volumes are from the 1620s and 30s. The latest are four poems in Rawlinson, and four in Yale, from 1637-39.²³ I find only twelve items in Rawlinson earlier than 1612, and four of these are from the same work (John Hoskins, The Parliament Fart, 1607); the earliest datable poem was written in December of 1600. It appears in both texts, though the Rawlinson scribe gets the author's name wrong.²⁴

There are many indications that both texts of "Shall I die" are derived from another commonplace book, one compiled no earlier than 1624 and perhaps as late as 1637. The two surviving texts of "Shall I die" contain twenty-three variants between them. Neither text is directly dependent on the other; it appears rather that both versions are descended from a common source, one that was itself already corrupt in a few particulars, as at the end of stanza 3 and top of stanza 9.²⁵ It is possible, moreover, to form some idea of the date and probable contents of the original source. Rawlinson contains eight distinct clusters of poems that appear also in the Yale volume.²⁶ Each of the eight groups contains errors or variants that, I believe, are unique to the Yale and Rawlinson volumes; and each contains at least one entire poem or selection that is unique to these two manuscripts or that is found in only one other source before 1640.²⁷

Of the seventeen shared items in these clusters that can be precisely dated, eleven are from the single two-year period, 1623-24. The earliest is from 1604; the latest, from 1637. Of those items that can be dated with less precision, most are from the 1620s. It appears likely, then, that an earlier text of "Shall I die" appeared in a commonplace book compiled c. 1624; and the appearance in these same clusters of a few later poems, including two from 1637, suggests that there was at least one intervening commonplace book that was compiled shortly before the lines of transmission separated into the two branches that produced the Rawlinson and Yale texts of "Shall I die" (along with some forty additional poems). To put it more simply, we have no reason to believe that the Rawlinson text of "Shall I die" was copied from a source close to Shakespeare, or, indeed, from a source earlier than c. 1624.

Taylor has concluded nonetheless that "Shall I die" was written by Shakespeare between the poet's fourteenth and thirty-first birthdays. His impression is that the poem "bears every hallmark, stylistically, of belonging to the sixteenth century, and more particularly to the period between the publication of The Shepherd's Calendar (1579) and the growing influence of Donne."²⁸ To test this hypothesis, he isolates what he calls "rare" words in "Shall I die"—that is, words that appear in the Shakespeare canon at least once but no more than ten times. He lists fifteen such words, which occur a total of "73 times in the Shakespeare canon."²⁹ Taylor then notes the date of each occurrence and by this means concludes that "Shall I die" was written before 1596, since, "Of these links with the rare vocabulary of Shakespeare's works, 52 (74 percent) occur in plays earlier than the 1596 watershed."³⁰

There are two problems with this method: first, there is a curious circularity in using the hypothesis of Shakespearean authorship as a means of dating the poem, and then in using an early date as evidence of Shakespearean authorship. The second problem is with the statistics themselves. In fact, the fifteen words cited appear in Shakespeare only thirty-three times "in plays before the 1596 watershed," not fifty-two times as stated by Taylor.³¹ Then, too, Taylor neglects to count words that do not fit the desired result. For example, fancy's ( = fancy is) appears only twice in Shakespeare, once in Henry VIII and once in Othello; wronging (n.) appears only once, in The Winter's Tale. Neither word appears in Taylor's list. Shakespeare uses venter (v.) four times, three times after 1596 and only once before; Taylor alters "venter" (stanza 2) to "venture" without indicating the emendation and omits it from his count as well. This apparently selective and inconsistent procedure is responsible for what Taylor describes as a "clustering of evidence" along a "sliding chronological scale," a scale that confirms, simultaneously, his working hypotheses of Shakespearean authorship and of an early date.³²

"Shall I die" is certainly later than Taylor wishes to date it. To begin, we find is contracted five times in a poem only 429 words long: (1) "all my hope's deceiving" (or, as in the Yale text, "all my hope's dead"); (2) "fancy's fed"; (3) "all that's called"; (4) "She's beauty's queen"; and (5) "pleasure's scanty." This would have been unthinkable for any English poet in 1579 and quite unlikely even as late as 1595 (Taylor's lower and upper limits). John Lyly's use of "that's" (1584) is the OED's first recorded instance of 's for is. By the time Shakespeare began writing for the stage, that's was fairly common (at least for such informal purposes as play-scripts), as is true also of here's, there's, where's, what's, how's, he's, she's, it's, and who's. All other contractions with 's may be described as nonce words, and it is the appearance of these in "Shall I die" that conflicts with Taylor's early date. It is possible, though doubtful, that "hope's" is a corruption of "hope is" in the original. This still leaves "fancy's fed" and "pleasure's scanty," neither of which may be easily explained as a corruption, for the anapestic meter resists the extra syllable produced by expanding the contraction.

Nonce contractions are quite rare in Shakespeare. Excluding the ten standard contractions, Shakespeare in his entire non-dramatic verse (totalling 44,713 words) contracts "is" only four times—three times in the Sonnets (love's, work's, worth's), and once in "A Lover's Complaint" (man's). Turning to the drama, I find no examples in such early works as Comedy of Errors, 1 Henry VI, or Titus Andronicus, and only one or two each in 2 Henry VI, Love's Labor's Lost, Richard III, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and King John.³³ The highest frequency found anywhere in "Shakespeare" is in the first two acts of Pericles (1.8/1000 words), but Pericles I-II are uncharacteristic of Shakespeare. The second highest frequency is in Timon of Athens (1.3/1000 words), another problematic text. Of the nineteen nonce contractions in Timon of Athens, eighteen are found in the portion identified by David Lake as the work of Thomas Middleton (I.i-ii, III.i-vi, and IV.iii). The nineteenth is all's (V.i.184), which Shakespeare uses fairly often (in fact, given its ubiquitous appearance elsewhere, all's might well be added to my list of standard contractions).³⁴

The frequency of contractions in "Shall I die" would seem to rule out an early date, no matter who the author. That piece of evidence when taken by itself may perhaps be dismissed as a fluke. But the diction appears to be Jacobean or Carolinian in other respects as well. Though earlier examples may doubtless be found in a careful search, the OED offers no instance of "besot" as an active verb prior to 1615, and no instance of the sense of "besot" used in "Shall I die" prior to 1637 (the year in which the Rawlinson manuscript was compiled). "Scanty," too, is quite rare prior to 1637. Though it is commonly found in the Restoration (Dryden, for example, uses it seventeen times in the poetical works alone), the editors of the OED find no examples earlier than 1660. I find antecedents only in Thomas Lodge's Margarite of America (1596), sig. A2^r, and in Phineas Fletcher's Sicelides (1631), sig. F3^r. "Scanty" does not appear in the concordances to Shakespeare, Wyatt, Kyd, Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, Donne, Jonson, or Herbert.³⁵

The extraordinarily high frequency of gerunds in "Shall I die" (proceeding, wronging, admiring, desiring, contenting, repenting) likewise points to a date later than 1595. As already noted, Shakespeare uses wronging only once, in The Winter's Tale. He uses repenting only once, in Much Ado.³⁶ Nor does Shakespeare ever use admiring, desiring, or contenting as a gerund (nor, for that matter, do any other of the above-named poets). The first recorded examples of admiring as a noun are both Jacobean, the first by John Florio, the second by Phineas Fletcher.³⁷ Fletcher, beginning about 1610, employs admiring, desiring, and contenting with great regularity, often using them a half-dozen times or more in the same poem, unlike any known Elizabethan poet.

Phineas Fletcher is noteworthy in another respect, for the "Shall I die" poet may be directly indebted to him. It is even possible, I suppose, that the poem was written by Fletcher, though I find this doubtful.³⁸ The extraordinarily high percentage of feminine endings, the diction (especially the gerunds), the imagery (beauty's queen, wind-blown tresses, and so on), the fascination with a besotting female bosom, all may indicate a conscious imitation of Phineas Fletcher's verse. The descending catalogue of a woman's parts—hair, brows, eyes, cheeks, mouth, chin, neck, and breasts—may show Fletcher's influence as well, as this was a favorite device with him.

If "Shall I die" registers a debt to Phineas Fletcher, it cannot be dated earlier than 1610-16, the period in which Fletcher composed most of his secular verse. And while "influence" can prove slippery ground on which to date any literary text, the evidence in this case is underscored by what appears to be a generic influence as well. From 1610-25, there flourished a vogue for lyrics beginning "Shall I [do this or that]?" in which the poet questions either the worth of his mistress or the best strategy for winning her. The genre may, perhaps, be traced to John Dowland's "Shall I sue, shall I seek for grace," in the Second Book of Songs or Ayres (1600).³⁹ "Shall I sue" was followed eight years later by "Shall I look to ease my grief," in Robert Jones's Third Book of Ayres (1608). The same lyric was used by Alfonso Ferrabosco in his Ayres (1609) and by Henry Lichfield in The First Set of Madrigals (1613). It was at about this time that the mode became fashionable: "Shall I strive with words to move," another Dowland composition, first appeared in A Pilgrims Solace (1612). In the same year, William Corkine published "Shall I be with joys deceived" in his Second Book of Ayres. Thomas Campion followed suit with two songs in the same vein, "Shall I come sweet love to thee" and "Shall I then hope" in his Third Book of Ayres (c. 1617). It is George Wither, however, who is usually credited with popularizing the genre. His well-known lyric, "Shall I, wasting in despair," which appears in the Yale manuscript (p. 174), was first printed in Fidelia (1615), then in his unauthorized Works (1620) and again in Faire Virtue (1622). An expanded version of nine stanzas, retaining part of Wither's original, was printed as a broadside in 1615 ("A New Song of a Young Mans Opinion"), where it is accompanied by an eight-stanza parody. Another expanded version (to the same tune) appears in Richard Johnson's Golden Garland of Princely Pleasures (3rd ed., 1620). Other imitations include a stanza-forstanza parody, possibly by Johnson, which appeared with Wither's original poem in A Description of Love. . . . And Also Mast. Johnsons Answere to Master Withers. This brief octavo, first published c. 1618, was printed five times by 1621, and at least four more times thereafter. Another parody of four stanzas appears in The Second Part of Robin Good-Fellow (1628). Still other poems inspired by Wither's lyric include an imitation by his friend, William Browne, in Britannia's Pastorals ("Shall I tell you whom I love" [1616; rpt. 1625]); the broadside "Jone is as good as my Lady" c. 1620, beginning "Shall I here rehearse the story";⁴⁰ and perhaps also a ballad c. 1620, not extant, which began "Shall I lie beyond thee." Manuscript poems of the same vintage include "Shall I thus dying in despair" (subscribed "Mrs. H." in Bodleian MS. C.C.C. 327, fol. 26^v) and one that begins "Shall I like a hermit dwell" (Bodleian MS. Don. c. 57, fol. 36^v). In addition to these, the Bodleian and British libraries contain several kindred lyrics from the first half of the century that cannot be dated with precision.⁴¹ "Shall I die" appears to belong, quite self-consciously, to the same popular genre.

That "Shall I die" was written later than 1595, and probably after 1610, is confirmed by another clue that the Oxford editors overlooked, or perhaps simply misunderstood. Taylor speculates that, in "Shall I die," the woman's besotting plots, parted by a "pretty bare past compare," may be a reference to her thighs.⁴² But the poet refers almost certainly to the woman's bosom: a "pretty bare" follows a "pretty chin" and "fairest neck" in the descending catalogue of stanzas 6-8. Like many English maidens of the seventeenth century, the woman described in "Shall I die" wears her breasts bare. "Plots," according to the OED, could denote birth marks, age spots, or any relatively darker patch of skin, but the besotting plots mentioned here are the woman's nipples, exposed by a low-cut bodice. Many English virgins displayed their upper bosom in the 1590s, and some may have worn low-cut French doublets that exposed the nipples as early as 1595.⁴³ But it is in the Jacobean era that the style becomes topical. From about 1610, naked breasts are a frequent concern of English ministers and moralists.⁴⁴ And while Elizabethan poets rarely mention bare bosoms except in a context of undress or disarray, the bare-breasted style is a frequent poetic theme from 1610-40, as in familiar lyrics by Herrick to his "Julia" or of Carew to his "Celia." Early examples may be found in Henry Parrot's Epigrams (1608) and in Phineas Fletcher's Purple Island (c. 1610).⁴⁵

Bare bosoms figure repeatedly in both the Yale and Rawlinson manuscripts, though never in a poem that can be dated earlier than 1615. An example is "Madam, be covered, why stand you bare," written c. 1620 and sometimes ascribed to Richard Corbet. It appears in both volumes (Yale, pp. 45-46; Rawl., fols. 156^v-157^r). This is one of several bawdy, satirical sermons in verse on the subject of bare bosoms of the later Jacobean period. Also noteworthy is a lyric in the Yale manuscript called "Love's Queen" (p. 179), for it contains phrasing strongly reminiscent of "Shall I die," unlike any poem by Shakespeare. For example:

Bosom bare
Her other parts commend it,
Which were so rare and past compare
No lady's could transcend it.

(11. 12-15)

Like "beauty's queen" in "Shall I die," "Love's Queen" has a "pretty bare, past compare."

The precise dates of the bare-breasted style, and its relative popularity from year to year during Shakespeare's lifetime, are uncertain. The evidence is incomplete and inconsistent. Fynes Moryson, writing between 1605—17, describes the fashion as appearing only "lately" in both France and England.⁴⁶ Nor do I find an example of the breasts fully displayed, in either English portraiture or popular woodcuts, before 1608. But it seems clear from a few Elizabethan texts that some women, at least, wore their breasts bare as early as 1595. "Shall I die" may, then, have been written before the turn of the century. But unless the poet has anticipated a conventional theme of a much later period, a date of 1610—25 again seems more likely for "Shall I die."

The meter must be considered as well. "Shall I die" is written in continuous anapests, a form almost never used by Shakespeare. So far as I am aware, Shakespeare never wrote five anapestic feet in a row. His longest line of uninterrupted anapests—"With a hey, and a ho, and hey nonino"—appears in a song that is thought by many to be a folk song not actually written by Shakespeare, but merely adapted for his use in As You Like It (V.ii.17 ff.). Except in scattered folk songs, anapestic verse is rarely found in English literature prior to 1610. I count eighteen different poems in the Yale and Rawlinson volumes in a prevailing anapestic meter. Of the thirteen that can be dated, one is from 1615, ten are from 1621-24, one from 1627, and one from 1634. A survey of Margaret Crum's First-Line Index of Manuscript Poetry in the Bodleian Library suggests that most of the datable anapestic verses from 1500-1650 were written during a relatively brief period, from 1610-30 (and most of these from 1620-25).

It is yet possible that Shakespeare wrote "Shall I die" between 1610 and 1616, but this seems unlikely. As Taylor himself has noted, "Few people would be willing to credit the attribution if it forced us to place the poem alongside The Tempest, ox Antony and Cleopatra, or even Twelfth Night"⁴⁷ For if "Shall I die" looks unlike the early Shakespeare, it looks still less like the late Shakespeare. Taylor yet concludes from his own research that the poem's "vocabulary, imagery, style—everything which scholarly jargon lumps together as 'internal evidence'—is at least compatible with Shakespeare's authorship, and at most independently suggestive that it could hardly have been written by any other known poet."⁴⁸ Such a conclusion seems to be entirely unjustified.

There is much more that one could say of the internal evidence in "Shall I die," though nothing, I think, that needs to be said here. Let us turn instead to the external evidence. This consists chiefly of the attribution itself, made by an unknown scribe working from an unknown source. Such attributions are worth our consideration, for we have relatively few ascriptions to Shakespeare among surviving seventeenth-century manuscripts, and few of those are disputed. But the Oxford editors have placed undue faith, I think, in the scribe's infallibility. Taylor reports that forty of the fifty-four attributions are "demonstrably right," that none is "demonstrably wrong," and that "only two are even dubiously ambiguous ('J. D.' and 'E. M.')."⁴⁹ But let us take as our sample just the middle third of the manuscript. Folios 57-168 contain fifteen attributions. These fifteen include "Shall I die" (by "William Shakespeare"), plus six others that are probably wrong: "Give me my scallop shell of quiet" (fol. 57^r) and "Our passions are most like to floods and streams" (fol. 117^r) are ascribed here to Sir Walter Raleigh; both ascriptions have been rejected by modern scholarship. The first was published in 1604 as the work of "An. Sc, gent.," on the occasion of Raleigh's conviction. The second is a conflation of two poems; perhaps the first six lines are by Raleigh, but the thirty-two lines following were written by Sir Robert Ayton.⁵⁰ "Disdain me still" (fol. 103^v) is one of two consecutive poems ascribed in Rawlinson to "J. D.," the second one correctly (Donne's "Autumnal," fols. 103^v104^v); but I find no other text in which "Disdain me still" is ascribed either to John Donne or to anyone with these initials. "From one that languisheth in discontent" (fols. 117^v-118^v) is ascribed here to George "Radnor," an error (unique to the Rawlinson volume) for Sir George Radney. "Divided in your sorrows" (fols. 118^v-119^v), a companion piece, is given here as a reply to "Radnor" by the Countess of Hertford, though it appears to be Radney's as well. And "King Oberon's Apparel" (fols. 168^v-169^v), though ascribed in Rawlinson to Sir Simeon Steward, is almost certainly by Herrick. Several of the remaining eight attributions are at least doubtful.⁵¹ And this is in addition to the "dubiously ambiguous" "E. M."⁵² Only five of the fifteen ascriptions in this middle third of the Rawlinson volume are well established.⁵³

How Shakespeare's name became linked to "Shall I die" cannot be said with certainty. One possibility, suggested by Peter Beal, is that "Shall I die" was originally a song, and that it was performed onstage with a Shakespeare play.⁵⁴ (This might likewise explain how "Hide, O, hide" came to be identified with Shakespeare's name in Benson's edition of the Poems and in the Harleian manuscript discussed earlier.) Taylor replies, "Even if other songs of such length can be found—and I would welcome examples—this one seems clearly too long for a play. . . . Beal's conjecture is implausible, untestable, and irrelevant."⁵⁵ But it seems quite likely that "Shall I die" is, indeed, a song lyric—as are virtually all surviving anapestic verses of the Jacobean era.⁵⁶ Nor is the length unusual; for "welcome" examples of songs longer than "Shall I die" we need turn no further than to the Rawlinson and Yale manuscripts, which contain at least thirteen examples between them.⁵⁷ Nor is "Shall I die" too long for a seventeenth-century dramatic audience. Dryden's "Chronos, Chronos, mend thy pace," written for a revival of Beaumont and Fletcher's Pilgrim, is a full fifty percent longer than "Shall I die" (642 words versus 429). William Davenant's song, "Ladies, who fine as fi'pence are" (in The Man's the Master), is thirty percent longer (at 557 words). Examples can be multiplied. I mention these two—both later than 1637—only because both Dryden and Davenant are known to have produced adaptations of Shakespeare's plays. It is true, however, that Shakespeare himself has no dramatic songs as long as "Shall I die." If this was a dramatic song, it reflects the taste of a later generation of theatre-goers, when music (and dance) came to play a more important role in stage entertainment.

Another possibility is that the Rawlinson scribe (or any scribe before him in the same manuscript chain) worked from copy-text in which "Shall I die" was subscribed "W. S." and that he simply expanded the initials. The Rawlinson copyist, 135 pages earlier, had entered into his commonplace book the Elias James epitaph, which was assigned to Shakespeare (fol. 41^r). Upon coming sometime later to a poem subscribed "W. S.," it would be Shakespeare's name, not that of William Strode or of some other W. S., who would first come to mind. It has been noted by Strode's editor, Bertram Dobell, that another Oxford manuscript—one with unusually close ties to the Rawlinson volume—contains a Strode poem subscribed "W. Sh."⁵⁸ The Rawlinson scribe may have found a similar error in his own copy-text. If so, it is an error that did not find its way into Alston's book.

"Shall I die" is quite unlike Strode's manner. But just as we find poems by William Strode that are ascribed in these manuscripts to other poets, so do we find Strode's initials attached to poems he did not write. A striking example may be found in Bodleian MS. Rawl. poet. 142 (fols. 15^v-16^r). Immediately following a wellknown song by Thomas Carew ("In her fair cheeks two pits do lie"), in darker ink and a different hand, we find a note that reads,

Spend that nick of time upon my
father. Last, to subscribe myself
most affectionate to serve you

W. S.

It would appear from this that "W. S." has claimed the poem as his own—and one can hardly ask for more reliable external evidence than a copy signed by the author himself. But, in fact, the poem immediately preceding Carew's is by William Strode ("Oft when I look I may descry"). "W. S.," presumably Strode himself, has taken the first available space to autograph the manuscript (since there was no room available between his own poem and Carew's). To add to the confusion, Strode's poem ("Oft when I look") somehow found its way into the posthumous edition of Carew's Poems (1640). Such are the vagaries of seventeenth-century manuscripts. One learns not to depend too heavily upon their unproven testimony.

No one knows, finally, who wrote "Shall I die, shall I fly." The principals are dead and cannot be consulted. We have only the second-hand report of an unknown scribe, one who seems not to have known much more than we do about the poems in his commonplace book. If the attribution were sustained by compelling internal evidence, it might yet be credited. But the external evidence is not by itself enough to carve a lasting place for this lyric among the poems of William Shakespeare.

The central issue of canonical study in recent years has been the continuing dispute over the proper role to be played by "internal" versus "external" evidence in the identification of authorship. At one extreme stand various advocates of stylistic analysis. The "basic premise" of Arthur Sherbo, for example, is that "internal evidence deals with essentials while external evidence deals with accidentals." "Short of an unequivocal acknowledgment by the author himself," writes Sherbo, "the value of internal evidence outweighs any other."⁵⁹ At the opposite extreme stands S. Schoenbaum, who argues that "External evidence may and often does provide incontestable proof; internal evidence can only support hypotheses or corroborate external evidence."⁶⁰

We shall do well, I think, in forever laying to rest that futile debate. The canon of our best authors has never depended upon a precise ratio of internal to external evidence, or on a certain measure of either. What matters finally is not the ratio but the quality of the evidence and the manner in which it is produced. When new questions arise (as with "Shall I die") or new testimony (as with the Harleian text of "Take, O, take those lips away"), we must present our data responsibly, truthfully, and with humility, that is, with a recognition under whose jurisdiction the verdict properly belongs: it belongs to all informed readers, to all those who have come to know William Shakespeare through the words he left behind. No one can add to the canon a single word, even by way of emendation, by personal fiat; for there is no individual, whether stationer or scribe, editor or scholar, who can speak for that larger community of readers who will exercise their communal authority regardless. The wise editor is therefore sensitive not just to the integrity of the text but to the integrity of shared opinion concerning what constitutes "Shakespeare."

There are, of course, many points at which "shared opinion" has proven elusive, and it is here that we may find the cutting edge of future attributional research. Various lyrics and epitaphs, ascribed to Shakespeare either in the seventeenth century or in modern scholarship, have yet to be examined with the kind of precision necessary to reach even a tentative verdict. Questions remain concerning the extent of Shake speare's hand in at least a dozen plays, not just in Edward III, Pericles, and The Two Noble Kinsmen (none of which appears in the First Folio), but in such "canonical" plays as the Henry VI trilogy, Timon of Athens, and Henry VIII Thanks to the painstaking labor of such careful scholars as David Lake and Cyrus Hoy, we have begun to tackle these problems, but there remains much unfilled ground.

In the years ahead we are unlikely to discover much that is new in the way of external evidence for any Shakespearean text (or for works by any other major Elizabethan poet). We have now about as much external documentation as well will ever have. Yet dozens of questions remain. We must therefore rest content in our ignorance, or else seek to refine our methods for evaluating style and content. The latter alternative seems to me far preferable. Indeed, the day may yet come when we shall resolve formerly insoluble problems simply by tracing the poet's stylistic fingerprints with the help of carefully controlled statistical analysis. That day seems a long way off. If and when it comes, we shall still have to weigh the evidence as we have always done—according to our best collective judgment. Arriving at a verdict, in some cases, may require a labored and tedious deliberation. At times our investigation may amount to little more than groping in the dark. But if we value the author of Hamlet and King Lear, it is imperative that we continue to explore the fragmented edges of what we have learned to call The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

Notes

¹ John Fletcher, The Bloody Brother, Ql (London, 1639), sig. H4^v; Q2 (Oxford, 1640), sig. I2^r-^v. Other texts that contain the song, entire or in part, are William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, in Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, First Folio (London, 1623), p. 75; John Benson, ed., Poems. Written by Wil Shakespeare. Gent. (London, 1640), sig. K6^r; MS. Harleian 6057, British Library (c. 1640), fol. 36^v; John Wilson, Select Musical Ayres and Dialogues (London, 1652), p. 24. In the collations below, these are denoted, respectively, as Ql, Q2, Fl, Ben., Harl., and Wils. The song also appears in three Bodleian manuscripts that are not at my present disposal: Ashmole 47 (fol. 130^v); Mus. b.1 (fol. 19^v), with music by John Wilson; and Rawl. poet. 65 (sig. 26^v). The text as given here follows Ql.

Variants:

2 that] which Q2

3 like] the, Fl, Ben., Harl.; that Wils.

3 day] days Wils.

4 lights that] Harl.; light that Wils.; Lights which Ben.

5 being] bring Fl, Q2, Ben., Harl., Wils.

5 Fl: bring againe, bring againe

6 F1 : but seal 'd in vaine, seal 'd in vaine

6 seal'd] seals Wils.

8 which] that Q2, Ben., Harl., Wils.

8 blossome] bosome Q2, Ben., Harl.

10 Aprii] Aprils Ben.

10 Are of] Are yet of Q2, Wils.

11 Ben.: But my poor heart first set free

12 in those Ioy] in those Icy Q2, Wils.; in ivory Harl.

²Troilus and Cressida, III.i.115-26, beginning, "Love, love, nothing but love" (British Library MS. Harleian 6057, fol. 36^r).

³ Printed with the kind permission of the Keeper of Western Manuscripts, the Bodleian Library (Bodleian MS. Rawl. poet. 160, fols. 108^r-109^v). This transcription attempts to represent the text exactly.

⁴ See, for example, J.A.W. Bennett and H. R. Trevor-Roper, The Poems of Richard Corbet (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), pp. lx, 82-84, 171; E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), I, 550-51; Margaret Crum, First-Line Index of Manuscript Poetry in the Bodleian Library, 2 vols. (New York: MLA, 1969); C. B. Gullans, "Ralegh and Ayton," Studies in Bibliography, 13 (1960), 191-98; C. H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson, Ben Jonson, 10 vols., VII, VIII (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925-1952); Agnes M. C. Latham, The Poems of Sir Walter Raleigh (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951), pp. 115-17, 140-42; Falconer Madan, Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, 7 vols., III (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895-1953), 317-18; Edmond Malone, The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, 16 vols. (Dublin, 1794), I, 107-8; L. C. Martin, The Poetical Works of Robert Herrick (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), pp. xxx, 404-18, 492-95; Claude M. Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1966), pp. 778-94. My own students at the University of California considered the "Shall I die" attribution as early as 1984, and rejected it.

⁵ See Sidney Lee, et al., A Catalogue of the Shakespeare Exhibition Held in the Bodleian Library (Oxford: Hall, 1916), pp. 58-59.

⁶ Joseph Lelyveld, "A Scholar's Find: Shakespearean Lyric," The New York Times, 24 November 1985, p. A40.

⁷ Simon Freeman, "Oxford Find may be Lost Shakespeare Love Poem," Sunday Times, 24 November 1985, p. Al.

⁸ Herbert Mitgang, "Two U.S. Experts Excited by Find," New York Times, 24 November 1985, p. A40.

⁹ Gary Taylor, "Shakespeare's New Poem," New York Times Book Review, 15 December 1985, p. 11; Mitgang, p. A40.

¹⁰ William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, eds. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986), p. 883.

¹¹ The Yale manuscript (MS. Osborn bl97) is an octavo miscellany of about 250 pages, containing some 270 poems. For a detailed description, see Peter Beal, "Letters," Times Literary Supplement, 7 March 1986, p. 248. Bodleian MS. Rawl. poet. 160 and Yale MS. Osborn bl97 bear also a close relationship to Bodleian MSS. Ashmole 38 and C.C.C. 328, which contain many of the same items.

¹² Taylor, "Shakespeare's New Poem," p. 12.

¹³ See Ephim G. Fogel, "Salmons in Both, or Some Caveats for Canonical Scholars," Evidence for Authorship: Essays on Problems of Attribution, eds. David V. Erdman and Ephim G. Fogel (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1966), pp. 69-101.

¹⁴ Shakespeare's use of the definite article is remarkably consistent, varying only slightly in relative frequency from one work to the next. Yet "Shall I die" contains no occurrence of "the." Thomas Pendleton, in an unpublished essay, reports that "if we treat the occurrence of the as a random event in Shakespeare's language, the mathematical probability of its not appearing in 429 opportunities is .000000569—a little better than one in two million."

¹⁵ Taylor, "Shakespeare's New Poem," p. 12.

¹⁶ Donald Foster, "Letters," New York Times Book Review, 19 January 1986, p. 4.

¹⁷ If I read the Rawlinson text correctly, the woman's "Pretty chin doth win / Of all that's called 'commendatious.'" This is arguably the cleverest line in the poem, if indeed the woman's chin—one of many such feminine "baits and deceits"—is both commendable and mendacious. To commendatious may be compared such words as disputatious, execratious, flirtatious, ostentatious, and vexatious, along with such seventeenth-century coinages as commendatitial (1601), commendatory (1611), and commendate (1625). Taylor concludes that the Rawlinson scribe intended to write "commendations," as in the italic hand of the Yale text, and he may be right; but, as Taylor himself has noted, "all thats call'd commendations" makes no sense. Since u and n are identical in the secretary hand, we must judge from the context which of these was intended: the Rawlinson scribe, in writing admirations, uses the old orthography for the suffix, thus: "admiracõns." To this may be compared "suspitious" in stanza two. The scribe thereby differentiates between -tions and -tious. Moreover, if I am right in thinking that the Rawlinson text reads "comendatious," and that the original version read thus as well, it explains the unusual plural that follows ("admirations") as an attempt by the poet to modulate an imperfect rhyme. In the Oxford Complete Works, "all that's called" is again emended, but differently, to read "all their culled."

¹⁸ According to Taylor, "'shew' .. . is a contemporary spelling of sue, which makes better sense and rhyme. The sh- form of the word is very rare, but occurs at L.L.L. 3.1.204" (Taylor, "A New Shakespeare Poem? The Evidence," TLS, 20 December 1985, p. 1447). But the editors of the OED, in surveying one thousand years of the English language, do not locate a single example. Ql and Fl of Love's Labor's Lost read shue, not shew, which is a different matter altogether, for shue was a standard phonological spelling found in non-Shakespearean texts as well.

¹⁹ Early Modern English usage varied considerably in the pronunciation of such words as sew (or sow), shew (or show), shrew (or shrow), strew (or strow), as noted by Fausto Cercignani in Shakespeare's Works and Elizabethan Pronunciation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 208-10. For some Jacobean and many Carolinian poets, shew:rue was a perfect rhyme. It was not until about 1610 that the spellings shew and show, formerly interchangeable, came to denote different pronunciations. Thus, for example, Herrick, Strode, and Phineas Fletcher, who wrote shew for rhymes in -ue and show for rhymes in -ow. Shakespeare, a typical Elizabethan in this respect, rhymed shew it:bestow it (Sonnet 26, 11. 6-8); strewn:thrown (Twelfth Night, II.iv.61-63), and shew:know (many times); to which may be added other examples.

²⁰ Other emendations that are not indicated as such in Taylor's edited text (as printed in The New York Times, 24 November 1985, p. A40) are fend for "tend" (stanza 1), venture for "venter" (stanza 2), and seems for "seemd" (stanza 9); but perhaps these are simply mistakes in reading the manuscript. Ten new emendations appear in the new Oxford edition. These changes include six variants from the Yale text, plus four unnecessary conjectural emendations, as follows: conceiving for breeding (stanza 2); neat for next (stanza 6); all their culled for all that's called (stanza 7); and misshape for mishap (stanza 8).

²¹ Robin Robbins, "And the Counter-Arguments," TLS, 20 December 1985, p. 1149. Robbins considers Daniel, Drayton, Sidney, and Spenser. As my only cross-sample I have checked Phineas Fletcher and Thomas Carew. I find twenty-five of the "Shall I die" word-pairs in Fletcher, eighteen in Carew, despite a much smaller sample than is provided by the Shakespeare canon.

²² I have of course included all those word-pairs that (like brows:those and near:rare) would not have been extraordinary in a Shakespeare poem even if they sound odd to a modern ear. In addition, I have counted the following as "possible" Shakespeare rhymes: baits:deceits (though Shakespeare rhymes bait:state, bait:straight, and deceit:repeat); complexion:inflexion, perfection:election and affection:affliction (though rhymes in -ction are rare in Shakespeare, and -ection:iction rhymes, non-existent); scorn:mourn (though Shakespeare seems to have distinguished between - orn and -ourn); how e'er:bear (though how e'er is rare in Shakespeare before 1604, appearing only three times); and away:away (though Shakespeare generally eschewed redundant rhymes, including this one). Lastly, I have counted seven pairs that contain eight words foreign to Shakespeare's manifest vocabulary.

²³ "I hate a lie and yet a lie did run" (Rawl. poet. 160, fol. 23^r; Yale MS. Osborn bl62, p. 130). [John Jeffries], "Fair piece of angel gold" (Rawl., fol. 41^r). "We lived one and twenty years" (Rawl., fol. 162^v; Yale, p. 33). "Old Paul's steeple fare thee well" (Rawl., fol. 164^r). "At Delphos' shrine one did a doubt propound" (Yale, p. 39). All these are from 1637. The Yale volume contains one poem, at the end, from 1639 (p. 241), the year of Alston's death. It is followed by only two more entries in Alston's hand.

²⁴ Sir George Radney, "From one that languisheth in discontent" (Rawl., fols. 117^v-118^v; Yale, pp. 206-8), ascribed here to George Radnor.

²⁵ In both surviving texts, the last stanza begins, "Whilst I dreamt, I, exempt for all care, seem'd to share . . ." (my punctuation). The source from which the Yale and Rawlinson texts both evolved undoubtedly read thus, but (as noted by Taylor) "exempt from all care" seems necessary here.

²⁶ These are found in folios 13^v-25^v, 33^v-36^v, 45^r-48^v, 55^v-76^r, 106^v-109^v (including "Shall I die"), 156^v-159^r, 165^r-170^v, and 171^v-175^v.

²⁷ The fourth cluster, in which "Shall I die" appears, contains "You'll ask perchance wherefore I stay," by Thomas Carew (Rawl., fol. 106^v; Yale, p. 237); an anonymous poem, possibly unique to Rawlinson ("It is not long since I could see," Rawl., fol. 107^v); "Thou sent'st to me a heart," by Robert Ayton (Rawl., fol. 107^v; Yale, p. 38); "Shall I die" (Rawl., fols. 108^rr-109^v, Yale, pp. 135-36); and "You violets that do first appear," by Sir Henry Wotton (Rawl., fol. 109^r-^v; Yale, pp. 44-45); all these appear to date from the 1620s.

²⁸ Taylor, "Shakespeare's New Poem," p. 13.

²⁹ [A]nnoy (n.), bare (n.), besot (v.), exempt (adj.), exile (v.), impair (v.), inferior (adj.), mishap (n.), repenting (n.), scape (n.), star-like (adj.), suspicious (adj.), tresses (n.), twine (v.) and wantonly (adv.); Taylor, "Shakespeare's New Poem," p. 13.

³⁰ Taylor, "Shakespeare's New Poem," p. 13.

³¹ As follows: annoy (n.), 3x; exempt (adj.), 6x; exile (v.), 5x; impair (v.), 2x; inferior (adj.), 6x; mishap (n.), 4x; scape (n.), lx; suspicious (adj.), 4x; and tresses (n.), 2x. This count presumes that Taylor's 1596 cutoff includes Err., 1H6, 2H6, 3H6, R3, LLL, Tit., Shr., TGV, Rom., R2, MND, and Jn. But we can extend the sample to 1599, including MV, 1H4, 2H4, H5, Ado, and JC, and the figures remain essentially the same, with only one more instance of scape (n.), in MV. Though excluded from Taylor's count, the early poems contain seven additional occurrences, and the later poems, six: Venus and Adonis: annoy (n.), 2x; mishap (n.) and twine (v.), lx each. Lucrece: annoy (n.), 2x, and scape (n.), lx. Sonnets: annoy (n.), impair (v.), inferior (adj.), tresses (n.), and wantonly (adv.), lx each. "A Lover's Complaint": bare (n.), lx.

³² Taylor, "Shakespeare's New Poem," p. 13.

³³ If we divide Shakespeare's dramatic career chronologically into four periods of approximately equal volume (Err.-Rom, MND-JC, TN-AWW, and Mac-TNK), we find a gradual increase in contracted "is" with the passing of years, but never, even after 1605, does Shakespeare approach the "Shall I die" poet (Fletcher's portion of TNK and H8 have been omitted from the count). . . .

³⁴ David Lake, The Canon of Thomas Middleton's Plays (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 279-86.

³⁵ Herbert S. Donow, A Concordance to the Poems of Sir Philip Sidney (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1975); Stephen L. Bates and Sidney D. Orr, A Concordance to the Poems of Ben Jonson (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1978); Homer C. Combs, A Concordance to the Poems of John Donne (Chicago: Packard, 1940); Charles Crawford, A Concordance to the Works of Thomas Kyd (Louvain: Uystpruyst, 1906); Charles G. Osgood, ed., A Concordance to the Poems of Edmund Spenser (Washington: Carnegie Institution, 1915); Marvin Spevack, A Complete and Systematic Concordance to the Works of Shakespeare, 9 vols. (Hildesheim: Olms, 1968); Louis Ule, ed., A Concordance to the Works of Christopher Marlowe (Hildesheim: Olms, 1979).

³⁶ Unlike the author of "Shall I die," Shakespeare often avoids the participial forms: he prefers admiration, content, desire, repentance, and wrong for substantive use.

³⁷ Michel de Montaigne, The Essayes, trans. John Florio (1603; rpt. London, 1634), p. 492; Phineas Fletcher, "Piscatorie Eclogs" [written c. 1610], III.xii.7, in The Purple Island (Cambridge, 1633), p. 17.

³⁸ Though a date of 1610-15 is possible for "Shall I die," 1620-24 seems a more likely date, by which time Fletcher had forsworn all but religious verse. Nor is anapestic verse characteristic of Fletcher. Other features that conflict with Fletcher's practice include the scorn:mourn rhyme; Fletcher rhymes mourn with -urn, scorn with -orn. It is perhaps worth noting, however, that Fletcher is linked to a "W. Sh.," William Sheares, who published his Sicelides in 1631; and to poet/playwright William Sampson, another "W. S.," with whom Fletcher resided from 1616-21.

³⁹ I find only a few "Shall I—" poems earlier than 1600, none of which is as strikingly similar to "Shall I die" as Dowland's "Shall I sue." The earliest is "Shall I thus ever long" in Tottel's Miscellany (1557), sig. T2^r.

⁴⁰ Sung to the tune of "What Care I How Faire She Be," a name derived from Wither's refrain.

⁴¹ See, for example, Margaret Crum, First-Line Index of Manuscript Poetry in the Bodleian Library (cited in note 4), II, 259-60.

⁴² Taylor, "Shakespeare's New Poem," p. 14.

⁴³ Stephen Gosson in 1595 mentions "naked paps" among the "newfangled" snares of gentlewomen. This, I believe, is our earliest mention of the fashion, but his meaning is not altogether certain. Other writers, Fynes Moryson, for example, mention "naked breasts" or "bare bosoms" while making it clear that the breast was sometimes "naked" under a pinner of lace or cobweb lawn. Stephen Gosson, Pleasant Quippes for Vpstart Newfangled Gentlewomen (London, 1595), sig. A4^r; Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary (1617; rpt. New York: Macmillan, 1908), pp. 220, 235. Illustrations of the fashion may be found in Valerie Cumming, A Visual History of Costume in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Drama, 1984); C. Willet and Phillis C̀unnington, Handbook of English Costume in the Seventeenth Century (London: Faber, 1966); and in William Chappell and J. W. Ebsworth, eds., The Roxburghe Ballads, 8 vols. (1875; rpt. New York: AMS, 1966).

⁴⁴ See, for example, Joseph Hall, "Righteous Mammon" (1618), Works (London, 1628), p. 720; Samuel Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrim. Microcosmus (London, 1619), pp. 255-59; Hic Mulier (London, 1620), and Haec Vir (London, 1620), both anonymous, rpt. in Katherine Usher Henderson and Barbara F. McManus, eds., Half Humankind (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1985), pp. 265-89.

⁴⁵ Henry Parrot, Epigrams (London, 1608), sig. Gl^v; Phineas Fletcher, The Purple Island (Cambridge, 1633), II.viii.1-7 and X.xxxvii.1-7.

⁴⁶ Moryson, pp. 230, 235.

⁴⁷ Taylor, "Shakespeare's New Poem," p. 13.

⁴⁸ Taylor, "A New Shakespeare Poem? The Evidence," p. 1447.

⁴⁹ Taylor, "The Evidence," p. 1447.

⁵⁰ See C. B. Gullans, "Ralegh and Ayton," Studies in Bibliography, 13 (1960), 191-98.

⁵¹ "Psalm 79," like "Shall I die," has survived in the Yale and Rawlinson volumes and apparently nowhere else; it is ascribed here to "Jno. Rayment" (fol. 76^v) and in the Yale manuscript to "Ja: Raynalls" (p. 108). They cannot both be right. This psalm is followed by two others ("Psalm 91" and "Psalm 104," fols. 77^r-78^r), ascribed here to Thomas Carew (and elsewhere to Carey), though neither appears in Carew's posthumous Poems (1640). Two others are ascribed to "G. H." ("To the Queen of Bohemia" and "L'Envoy," fol. 84^r-^v), which George Herbert's editor, F. E. Hutchinson, classifies as "doubtful" Herbert poems.

⁵² "Love, that great workman" (fol. 103^r_v) is ascribed elsewhere to other poets, though not to anyone with the initials "E. M."

⁵³ "Who would have thought" (fols. 85^v-86^r), by "Dr. Brooke"; three poems by Herrick (fols. 165^r-168^v); and Donne's "Autumnal" (fols. 103^v-104^v), by "J. D."

⁵⁴ Peter Beal, "Letters," TLS, 3 January 1986, p. 13.

⁵⁵ Gary Taylor, "'Shall I die?' immortalized?" TLS, 31 January 1986, p. 123.

⁵⁶ Between 1610 and 1630, a great many anapestic lyrics were written to the popular tune "Whoop! Do Me No Harm" (the song is mentioned in The Winter's Tale, IV.iv. 198-200). Other popular anapestic tunes include "Packenton's Pound," "The Corranto," "I'll Go No More A-Wooing by Night," and "Fiddler in the Stocks," for which sundry lyrics were written during the same period.

⁵⁷ The longest, "To the Tune of 'Bonny Nell,'" is 940 words long (Yale, pp. 68-72). Another immediately follows of 740 words. Still another, a song in anapestic verse to the tune of "Whoop! De Me No Harm," appears in both miscellanies. This song of 609 words, which begins "When the king came of late with his peers of state," was written in December 1624 or shortly thereafter. It was printed at Cambridge by William Smart (another "W. S."). Numerous other songs in the Rawlinson and Yale volumes are from 500-750 words, including "The Huntsman's Song," which was written for a masque (Yale, pp. 235-37).

⁵⁸ MS. C.C.C. 328, cited by Bertram Dobell, The Poetical Works of William Strode (London, 1907), p. 31. C.C.C. 328, like the Yale manuscript and Bodleian MS. Ashmole 38, has exceptionally close ties to Rawl. poet. 160, consisting largely of the same items.

⁵⁹ Arthur Sherbo, "The Uses and Abuses of Internal Evidence," Evidence for Authorship: Essays on Problems of Attribution (cited in note 13), p. 7.

⁶⁰ S. Schoenbaum, Internal Evidence and Elizabethan Dramatic Authorship (Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1966), p. 150.