WHO WAS
HALL'S LABEO AND JONSON'S POET-APE?
The identity
disguise popular in Elizabethan works complicates their
interpretation. Meanings become fuzzier still with the use of verse,
metaphor and analogy, as is generally the case in the satires of
Joseph Hall and John Marston. A full understanding of these works
requires familiarity with classical myth, ancient history,
contemporary writing fashions and the minutiae of the social scene in
Elizabethan London. Most of the detailed allusions in these satirical
verses are now obscure to us.
Nevertheless, it is
possible to discern their broader themes. In his satires of
1597/8, one of Hall's principal targets is a contemporary author,
whom he labels variously as Labeo and The Cynic. This
Labeo-Cynic is portrayed as a newly practicing poet, writing under a
pseudonym. Hall berates him for the poor quality of his poetry,
its pornography and the hiding of his true name. He criticizes
Labeo-Cynic's use of another poet's inspiration and, in this context,
refers to a "thirsty swain" - most probably an allusion to
Shakespeare (via the Ovidian quote on thirst for poesic waters, in
Venus & Adonis).
Within
his own biting satires, Marston responds to Hall, berating the
latter's carping attitude and defending Labeo. In a separate
passage he professes amazement that even "mediocria
firma" is unsafe from Hall's spite.
With this reference to the heraldic motto of the Bacon family,
Baconians perceive an unveiling by Marston of Labeo's identity.
Labeo-Cynic must be Francis Bacon, who has been castigated by Hall
for writing the pornographic poem, Venus &
Adonis, under the name of another - the
actor, William Shakespeare.
This hypothesis is dependent on
each and all of three key assumptions:
Marston intended
"mediocria firma" to represent Francis Bacon;
This representation
was also alluding to Hall's Labeo;
Labeo's unskilled, pornographic poetry, berated
by Hall, was Venus & Adonis.
However, not one of these assumptions can be
substantiated. In fact, not one is remotely sustainable, based
on an objective reading of the satires.
In reality, Marston's
"mediocria firma" points unwaveringly to Sir Nicholas
Bacon, then head of the Bacon clan (and the eldest surviving
half-brother of Anthony and Francis). In his first collection,
Hall savagely satirizes an unnamed person, whose unusual profile
exactly captures Sir Nicholas, in a poem which has nothing to do with
Labeo or the subject of authorship. This fully explains
Marston's response, which is also unrelated to authorship or Labeo
...... except that the latter was evidently Marston himself, who,
under a pen-name, had written a pornographic poem which imitated the
style of Venus & Adonis!
As to the author of the latter and its accomplished, serious-themed
follow-up, Lucrece,
both published some years before, all we can reasonably conclude from
the evidence of the satires is that he was not Hall's emerging and
unskilled pornographic poet, Labeo.
Those who are interested
in a fuller account and the underlying evidence will find it in my
essay, Flavours of Bacon. Here I also give some
details of Marston's history, including his tendency to feud with
other authors. After his quarrel with Hall he went on to clash
with Ben Jonson, both physically and in print. Each caricatured
the other scathingly in his plays, with Jonson portraying Marston as
the plagiaristic, unskilled poet-scholar-satirist of his Poetaster.
Such history makes Marston easily the leading candidate to be the
similar subject of Jonson's dismissive poem On
Poet-Ape, whose unnamed target is depicted as
a plagiaristic, self-important poet-playwright.