The Modell of Poesye: Earliest literary criticism of Shakespeare

William Scott’s The Modell of Poesye, a treatise on poetics, includes the earliest literary criticism of Shakespeare. Although Shakespeare is not mentioned by name in the manuscript, two of his works are. When discussing lyrical poetry that expresses emotion, Scott quotes line 1330 of Rape of Lucrece, “For sorrow ebbs, being blown with wind of words” (fol. 16r) as an example of a virtuous aphorism. In another section he quotes line 935 of Lucrece in a less-than-complementary way:

Again, you must not have idle attributes only to fill up your meter (saith Scaliger): "The endless date of neverending woe," a very idle, stuffed verse in that very well-penned poem of Lucrece her rape. (fol. 31r)

He also mentions Lucrece in passing while discussing the Elizabethan short epic, as an example of "solemn verse (not fit for music)" that treats "the misfortunes of some unhappily raised or famous person, through error, vice, or malice, overthrown, such are the Mirror of Magistrates, Rosamond, Lucrece's Rape, Peter's Denial, first in Italian, now imitated in English" (fol. 11r). 

Scott alludes to and quotes from Richard II in four places, twice referring to the play by name, but never mentioning its authorship. In a section discussing how one might depict the sorrow of a character, he quotes from Richard II, Act 3, Scene 3, line 169:

Sometime the person shall be so plunged into the passion of sorrow that he will even forget his sorrow and seem to entertain his hardest fortune with dalliance and sport, as in the very well-penned tragedy of Richard the Second is expressed in the King and Queen whilst "They play the wantons with their woes." (fol. 26r)

In a discussion of the representation of pastoral figures in literature, he includes Shakespeare's gardener in Richard II: "The gardener, in like sort, is with a passing good decorum brought on the stage in that well-conceited tragedy of Richard the second" (fol. 12r).

In a section on "perspicuity," that is, "when our words are, as it were, thorough clear and transparent, to convey the meaning or conceit to our understanding," he criticizes an ambiguously worded passage in Richard II, Act 1, scene 2, lines 27-28:

the contrary to this may be seen, in him that thus lays down ambiguously a good conceit--"That when the searching eye of heaven is hid / behind the globe that lights the lower world"--One would take it by the placing his words that he should mean that the globe of the earth enlightens the lower hemisphere.

He cites an extended passage by John of Gaunt in Richard II (act 1, scene 3, lines 232-8) as a good example of describing an emotion in multiple ways to amplify the effect:

Sometimes our amplification is by heaping our words, and as it were piling one phrase upon another of the same sense, to double and redouble our blows, that by varying and reiterating may work into the mind of the reader: 

Shorten my days thou canst with sullen sorrow,

And pluck nights from me but not lend a morrow.

Thou canst help time to furrow me with age.

But stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage;

Thy word is current with him for my death,

But dead, thy kingdom cannot buy my breath. (fol. 39r)

William Scott was born in Kent around 1571, wrote the Model while at the Inner Temple in around 1599, and entered Parliament in 1601, placing him in London while Shakespeare’s plays were being performed. The manuscript is in a scribal hand with some corrections in Scott’s own hand. Scott’s work differs from other works of Elizabethan literary criticism in that he looks not only to classical authors, but to contemporary English writers as well, including Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser. In his edition of the manuscript, Gavin Alexander notes that while the use of Sidney is not surprising, "that of Shakespeare was unprecedented" (Alexander, lxi).

Scott dedicated his manuscript treatise to Sir Henry Lee, a favorite of Elizabeth I. For over 400 years, it remained in Lee's family, first at Ditchley Park, seat of the Lee and Dillon families, until 1932, and then passed by descent in the family of the Viscounts Dillon. It was acquired by the British Library in 2005 through Maggs.