Why so quiet here?

Edited by author 17-08-2007 19:56
[edit] Found it! And it is in the mail.

I desperatly searching for a copy of the Hyder E. Rollins variorum of the sonnets (2 vols). If you know anyone or anywhere who would be willing to sell me one, please send a mail to prikken.overien@gmail.com
Thanks

Could anyone please direct me to sonnets, if any, that treat letter writing or passing of notes?

Dear Stefan,

I am confident that A Lover's Complaint was written by Mary Fitton, (but imagining herself an old Lady to disguise identities). It was written between 1601 and 1609 after her affair at Court with William Herbert in 1600. She was born in 1578 and W.H. was born in 1580. She describes her seduction by Herbert

However, when writing it I think she also had in mind a previous infatuation with Henry Wriothesley, Southampton, whom I am again confident she addresses in V&A & Lucrece's Dedications. I think V&A was written by Mary Fitton with help from Richard Barnfield whereas Lucrece was written as a collaboration. Her name is clearly embedded in the second verse of V&A.

The stray Sonnet "Phaeton" was probably written by her in 1591.

Best Wishes,

Ben Alexander
www.maryfitton.com

Dear David and Ben!
Just wondering were A Lover's Complaint is fitting in with the Sonnets in your views?
And any one else, really, views and comments on the Complaint is welcome.
Stefan

I desperatly searching for a copy of the Hyder E. Rollins variorum of the sonnets (2 vols). If you know anyone or anywhere who would be willing to sell me one, please send a mail to prikken.overien@gmail.com
Thanks

Ben Alexander's synchronization of the plight of William Herbert and Mary Fitton with the writing of the first 17 of the Sonnets is interesting but hardly evidence that there is a connection between the two.

As I have argued, the Sonnets are allegorical. The first 17 sonnets in my interpretation concerns a soul that aspires to a higher life above earthly, terrestrial interests. The voice is the poet's middle level soul addressing his higher soul and urging him to get with life or otherwise he will waste his gifts as well as the human race if everyone was so idealistic like him, wanting to shun the urges of the lower soul that would bring him to earth and enable him to care about this connection.

Dear Stefan,

Just to demonstrate my findings consider the first 17 sonnets.

Mary Fitton, seven months pregnant with William Herbert's child is writing them to William Herbert who was born in April 1580. It is February-March 1601. She is asking him to marry and have children; he has already turned down four suitable prospective wives. She is under house-arrest in London.

William Herbert is in the Fleet prison, sent there by the Queen because he has refused to marry Mary Fitton. He is not yet 21 so the Queen can make him a ward of court and determine his future, but (I think) his famous mother, Mary Sidney Herbert, who is a friend of the Queen, intervenes and prevents this happening. On 19th January, on the death of Mary Sidney Herbert's husband, William's father, the second Earl of Pembroke, William became the third Earl of Pembroke.

Given this background you are now in a positon to be able to enjoy these 17 sonnets written by Mary Fitton to William Herbert (Mr W H) at this time.

Yours sincerely,

Ben Alexander
www.maryfitton.com

I'm sorry Ben, but your theory do not help me in understanding the sonnets as poetry. It is the stuff for a novel or maybe a movie, but not literary criticsism. My favourite book on the sonnets must be Helen Vendlers massive and impressive book, where the sonnets are read as poetry. And poetry is my concern.

Dear All,

More evidence that the sonnets were written by Mary Fitton & William Herbert (Harbert).
S122 TThy gift,, thy tables, are within my brain

I had worked out that the TT was the monogram of Mary Fitton (Fit-T-on); what I did not understand was the two commas after "gift", I sensed it was a signal from Mary to her lover, but could not understand what. The following sounds fantastic, but these two lovers were exceptionally clever.

Take the first TWO letters of each of the following words TH TA AR WI MY BR and rearrange and one gets "MY WI HARBART". The word "gift" has FIT for Fitton and a "g". There is a poem by Richard Barnfield, who was a friend of Mary Fitton's, which ends
If thou from glove do'st take away the g
Then glove is love and so I send it thee.

S123
No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change
Thy Pyramyds built up with newer might

NO T
THY PYRAM

The above letters spell MARY PHYTTON which is how Mary Fitton signed her name in a letter to her sister.

The first letters of the rest of the lines are TT O W A T T N F M T I This makes M-A FITTON and W-T, W-T being the first and last letters of William Herbert (I have seen exactly the same anagram in one of William Herbert's own poems published in the 1650s.

S124

Yf my dear love were but the child of state

Yf My I had identified as short for May Fy(tton); what I missed when I published my "Darling Buds of Maie" was the very subtle "were but" is phonetically w(william) (h)erebut.

Venus & Adonis

In Venus & Adonis verse #2 we have "to all nimphs" which is an anagram of Mall Phiton's, she was known as Mall (Mistress Mall - Twelfth Night) - at Court.
Spread the word!

Sincerely,

Ben Alexander

The Dedication matrix that I sent to this list gets distorted by the fact that the font used on it is proportional. The original of the matrix I sent was in a font in which all letters have the same width. If anyone copied the matrix and changed the font into a uni-width font, the matrix would appear as it was sent.

Concerning the theory that Mary Fitton wrote the Sonnets, I don't think one swallow heralds the Spring. There may seem to be parallels to real lives in connection with the Sonnets but this does not show that that is what the Sonnets is about.

I presented my own case, which shows a different essence to these poems, which is allegorical. The young man and the young woman in these poems are allegorical representing man's good and bad angels. Other sonnets, like 30, 31, and 105 address God and the poet's deep love for Him.

I even found Shakespeare's cipher code in the Sonnets which further confirm facts about what the intention of the poet is and what his beliefs are. Apparently, these findings are so stunning that no one will even bother to check them out publically, preferring to hold his own thoughts than to let new light in.

I did show the presence of the Equal Letter Skip code in the Dedication and the use of steganographic codes in the vertical alignments of letters. These show such things as Shakespeare's full name, the Latin motto of Christopher Marlowe, and transliterations of the Tetragrammaton, the four letter name of God in the Pentateuch. I invite everyone to check out the downloads on my website at

  http://www.ziplink.net/~entropy/ and at
  http://www.ziplink.net/~entropy/codes.htm

Which contain further information.

Dear David,

My conclusion, through thorough research, is that the Sonnets were written by Mary Fitton and William Herbert.

Having put my money where my mouth is and published my findings, it later occurred to me that Mary Fitton could have written Venus & Adonis. It was only a passing thought, but my logic told me that, if she did, she would embed her name, not in the first verse, but in the second or third. She was known as Mall Fitton but she spelt her surname starting Ph.
Her name is indeed embedded in the third line of the second verse and consecutive letters, rearranged, spell out Mall Phiton's. The conclusion being that the then 16 year old Maid of Honour could have had a crush on the 20 year old Henry Wriothesley. HR, however, made another Maid of Honour, Elizabeth Vernon, pregnant and had to marry her.
There are a number of parallels between HW and HW, the pressure to marry, both being put in prison, both being young earls. They are like two very similar jigsaw pieces but HW does not quite fit, and WH fits perfectly - he was also born in April and had a famous mother. WH was younger than MF by two years.

There is no doubt that Mary Fitton was highly literate and wrote copiously. Mary Sidney Wroth tells us so in her allegory "Urania". William Herbert teases MSW, who was a very accomplished writer in her own right, that she did not match up to Mary Fitton's ability.
But I still have to keep an open mind about any Wriothesley connection to the sonnets so I wonder exactly how the reader of the Sonnet's dedication would know that it contained a coded name, how s/he would know where to start, and what number skip(s) to work on. I cannot see the Dedication being some sort of puzzle for the general public to solve. Perhaps you can respond to this?

When I first read the Dedication I wondered whether the "setting forth" was an indicator to 4-skip indication but rejected this. I settled on counting the number of printed characters in each line and saying 17=A, 18=B etc.

My research has an integrity to it. I have not used conventionial analysis even when it supports me. For instance, I have read authoritively that Samuel Daniel (Pembrokes Household tutor) and John Florio (Southampton household tutor) were bothers in law, and that Florio and Francis Meres were also brothers in law. There is also a supposed connection with Thomas Lodge's Rosalynd and Spencer's Fairie Queen. It would be so convenient to accept all these connections as it would explain how Francis Meres was able to list and identify Shakespeare works before they even bore the Shakespeare name.
Regards,

Ben Alexander
www.maryfitton.com

The way Quick Topic presents material does not
properly show this material. I am trying this again
below since the columns didn't come out aligned in
the last printing. I hope it looks better this time.

(18 letters wide)

x x x x x x x x x x x x x T O T H E
O N L I|E B E G E T T E R O F T\H E
S E I N|S V I N G S O N N\E T S M r
W H A L|L|H A P P I\N E S S E A N D
T H A T|E|T E\R N I T I E P R O M I
S E D B|Y|O V R E V E R L I V I N G
P O E T W|I S H E T H T H E|W E L L
W I S H I N G A D V E N T V|R E R I
N S E T T I N G F O R T H T T


        E H
        S E
        L H N
        E T R
        Y O
          I W
                            R

I sent a message noting that the name of Henry Wriothesley,
the Earl of Southampton, is contained in an Equal Letter
Skip (ELS) code in the Sonnets dedication. For those who
have not seen this before, here is a matrix that reveals
how this was done.

Letters of the Sonnets dedication are shown below in
sequence in a matrix 18 letters wide. This displays all letters in columns that are 18 letter skips apart. The
name Wriothesley was broken into three parts: WR IOTH ESLEY but each is presented at an ELS of 18 letters, though IOTH runs backwards.

The first row of the matrix
was advanced in order to enable the name HENRY to be
displayed in this matrix. This name, which is at a 15
letter skip, shows up in this matrix on a diagonal
slanted to the left. Note that the "Y" of HENRY is the
same as the "Y" of ESLEY, the only letter "Y" in the
dedication. Letters noted with a minus (-) skip are
read upwards.

   (18 letters wide)

x x x x x x x x x x x x x T O T H E
O N L I|E B E G E T T E R O F T\H E
S E I N|S V I N G S O N N\E T S M r
W H A L|L|H A P P I\N E S S E A N D
T H A T|E|T E\R N I T I E P R O M I
S E D B|Y|O V R E V E R L I V I N G
P O E T W|I S H E T H T H E|W E L L
W I S H I N G A D V E N T V|R E R I
N S E T T I N G F O R T H T T


        E H
        S E
        L H N
        E T R
        Y O
          I W
                            R


 HENRY @ SKIP OF 15 LETTERS marked with
 WR @ SKIP OF 18 LETTERS }
 ESLEY @ SKIP OF 18 LETTERS } marked with |
 IOTH @ SKIP OF -18 LETTERS }

For those interested in the Sonnets, here is some discussion
about the Sonnets, featuring information on the name
embedded in the Sonnets Dedication, and the equal letter
skip code found in Sonnet 148. It ends with news about
a cipher code found in Sonnets. More information on these
topics can be found at the site,
www.ziplink.net/~entropy/codes.htm , including for downloading the Introduction to my book, The Shakespeare Codes.

Louis W. Thompson makes a good point that some things that look like encoding are really accidental, like the IOCCOCA acroynym that happens to emerge in connection with the name of his company. Though this is accidental, it calls to attention that we must check out alleged instances
of things that appear to be codes to see if they pass a test of validity.

This test is passed with flying colors for Henry Wriothesley's name in The Sonnets Dedication since it is virtually impossible for a long name like
this to have arrived in the Dedication unescorted by the intention of the writer. John Rollett and others calculated the possibility of chance here as 1 in many billions. On the other hand, when we do establish this ELS
presence, there remains the problem of interpreting its significance.

For example, while I don't think so, it is possible as Dan Decker theorizes that it was T.T., the one who signed the Dedication, and not the poet that placed Henry Wriothesley's name in it. But notice how Dan misses the big picture, that this presence proves that the Equal Letter Skip (ELS) device was known and used at the time. To establish this fact may be the reason the writer presented this name that was so hard to miss. Hence, if someone later finds further ELSs in sonnets, which are texts of only about 500 letters, the finding should not be summarily dismissed as impossible but ought to be investigated for authenticity.

Lengths of ELSs longer than 3 letters are a good beginning toward suspicion of authenticity. ELSs of four, five, and more letters are noteworthy enough to warrant
this, especially if some of these are found twice.

Consider the two ELS strings, W-I-L-L, found in Sonnet 148. Mathematically, the two together have a 1 in 13 chance of being in this sonnet accidentally. This calculation takes into account the total number of letters in the sonnet and the number of its "W"s, "I"s, and "L"s. While 1/13 is not a strikingly low probability, when this is considered in context with the fact that the sonnet opens with the words, "O Me!", and that the acrostic "I-W-I-L" appears on lines 5 to 8, and the full name of the poet shows up in vertical/diagonal configurations abreast of one another as follows:

  [10] eare
  [11] ake i
  [12] selfe h eere
  [13] l s p
  [14] w s

(and note that the the vertical w-l-l is embedded in the telltale word "selfe"),
the presence of the two ELSs "WILL" takes on added significance, telling of deliberate contrivance.

I notice that B.A. in a note to the list tried to discredit the fact that an ELS of Wriothesley's name appeared in the Dedication, alleging that it is only made to seem so as a result of a misleading matrix I presented. But this matrix is standard procedure for investigating ELSs. All I did was to write out the Dedication in sequence, letter by letter, piled up in lines 18 letters long. This displays in vertical columns all letters that are 18 letters apart. "HENRY" showed up in this matrix on a diagonal slanting to the left since its letters are spaced 15 letters apart. To deny that this name is in the Dedication is to be a candidate for membership in the Flat Earth Society.

B.A. also misleads by obscuring the fact that I stated in my posting that it was a "cipher code" that I discovered in The Sonnets about 8 years ago, not Rollett's ELS code, which I learned of about a year ago. The discovery
of the cipher code was the result of luck and my having a cultural background critical to its recognition, not any superhuman brilliance on my part. As a result of this discovery, I was in effect guided by the poet in many things that I later came up with, not through any superior imaginative faculty.

Hi there! I know this is kinda off topic, but what the heck, it's my board. I want to know if there is any modern single editions of "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece".