MENU
Annotations by Gabriel Harvey in Facetie
ca.
1580-1608?

H.a.2, signature 162 recto

View Image Assets
H.a.2, signature 162 recto
Click image to enlarge

Institution Rights and Document Citation

Terms of use
Images that are under Folger copyright are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This allows you to use our images without additional permission provided that you cite the Folger Shakespeare Library as the source and you license anything you create using the images under the same or equivalent license. For more information, including permissions beyond the scope of this license, see Permissions. The Folger waives permission fees for non-commercial publication by registered non-profits, including university presses, regardless of the license they use. For images copyrighted by an entity other than the Folger, please contact the copyright holder for permission information.

Copy-specific information
Creator: Gabriel Harvey
Title: Annotations by Gabriel Harvey in Facetie, motti, et burle di diversi signori et persone private and Detti, et fatti piacevoli et gravi, di diversi principi filosofi, et cortigiani [manuscript], ca. 1580-1608?
Date: ca. 1580-1608?
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call number and opening: H.a.2, sigs. 161v-162r
View online bibliographic record

Item Creator
Gabriel Harvey
Item Title
Annotations by Gabriel Harvey in Facetie, motti, et burle di diversi signori et persone private and Detti, et fatti piacevoli et gravi, di diversi principi filosofi, et cortigiani [manuscript], ca. 1580-1608?
Item Date
ca. 1580-1608?
Repository
Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, USA
Call Number
H.a.2, sig. 162r

Institution Rights and Document Citation

Terms of use
Images that are under Folger copyright are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This allows you to use our images without additional permission provided that you cite the Folger Shakespeare Library as the source and you license anything you create using the images under the same or equivalent license. For more information, including permissions beyond the scope of this license, see Permissions. The Folger waives permission fees for non-commercial publication by registered non-profits, including university presses, regardless of the license they use. For images copyrighted by an entity other than the Folger, please contact the copyright holder for permission information.

Copy-specific information
Creator: Gabriel Harvey
Title: Annotations by Gabriel Harvey in Facetie, motti, et burle di diversi signori et persone private and Detti, et fatti piacevoli et gravi, di diversi principi filosofi, et cortigiani [manuscript], ca. 1580-1608?
Date: ca. 1580-1608?
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call number and opening: H.a.2, sigs. 161v-162r
View online bibliographic record

Heather Wolfe, "Manuscript marginalia: Gabriel Harvey refers to Hamlet and Richard III," Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/231.

Folger Shakespeare Library, H.a.2. See Shakespeare Documentedhttps://doi.org/10.37078/231.

The scholar and writer Gabriel Harvey was known and mocked in his lifetime for making copious notes in the margins of printed books. An inventor of words, friend of Edmund Spenser, and rival of Thomas Nashe, he constantly sought to improve himself through note-taking and repetitive reading. One of the writers he turned to for inspiration was Shakespeare.  

Harvey fills every available margin of these two bound-together Italian books of aphorisms with notes in English, Latin, and Italian. Turning the book 90 degrees, Harvey notes in the margins of the two pages of this opening that a good “discourser at the Table” needs to absorb a wide range of writing, including English works such as Robert Greene’s Quip for an Upstart Courtier (1592) and A notable discovery of coosnage, now daily practised by sundry lewd persons, called connie-catchers (1591), George Gascoigne’s Steel-glass (1576), and Shakespeare’s two plays, “The Tragedie of Hamlet: Richard 3.” Richard III was first published in 1597; Hamlet in 1603. Other English works he refers to include Francis Bacon's Essays (1597), Henry Butt's Dyets dry dinner (1599), John Eliot's Ortho-epia Gallica. Eliots fruits for the French (1593)--the Huntington has Gabriel Harvey's copy of this work annotated by him--John Heywood's proverbs and epigrams, and a "fresh supply" of Mensa Philosophica, possibly the English translation first published in 1576: The schoolemaster, or teacher of table philosophie

Harvey lists as well a number of works in Latin, French, and Italian as well, including Seneca's Tragedies, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Virgil's Aeneid, Sallust's Bellum Catilinae, the Satires of Persius, Juvenal, Horace, and works by Ausonius, Poliziano, Martial, Plutarch, Aeschines, Demosthenes, Julian (The Caesars, Mispogon), Diogenes Laertius. He also refers to the Mimes of Publilius Syrius, Stefano Guazzo's La civil conversazione (1574), and Ludovico Domenichi's Facetie, the first part of the volume in which he makes his notes.

Semi-diplomatic transcription

[starting in left margin of left-hand page, and continuing around the page and onto the next page]

He shall neuer be good at an extemporall descant, that hath not all Heywood, and Martiall ad unguem: with the pithiest Apothegs of Laertius, and Plutarch. Neither can a discourser at the Table want his Quintessence, and Mensa Philosophica; Mimi Publij; et Italica Prouerbia still delitia[e] humani generis: sed ad unguem. Now Domenichi, & the 4. of Guazzo, super omnes: & for miself, ante omnes. Argutissima[e] altercationes, et rotundus logismus in Seneca[e] Traga[e]d[iae]. Eliots dialogs: Gascoignes steel-glasse: Greenes quip for an vpstart courtier; & his art of Conniecatching: Diets drie dinner; a fresh supplie of Mensa philosophica: the Tragedie of Hamlet: Richard 3. Bacons Essayes. Julians Ca[e]sars, & Misopogon. Satyra[e] Persij, Juuenalis, Horatij. Argutissimi etiam Ausonius, Politianus, Morus. Excellunt aduersaria[e] orationes prudentissimoru[m] Senatoru[m], Ca[e]saris, et Catonis apud Sallust: Drancis, et Turni apud Virgiliu[m]: Aiacis, et Vlyssis apud Ouidiu[m]: A[e]schinis, et Demosthenis.

Written by Heather Wolfe

Last updated February 23, 2020