Lewkenorian theory of Shakespeare authorship

Lewes Lewkenor
The Commonwealth and Government of Venice "translated out of Italian into English by Lewes Lewkenor Esquire"
Born	c.1560 Selsey, Sussex
Died	11 March 1627
Other names	variant spellings: Lewis; Lewkenor
Education	Cambridge University Middle Temple
Occupation(s)	Soldier, lawyer, Courtier, M.P., author, Gentleman Pensioner, Master of the ceremonies, Judge.
Known for	The Estate of English Fugitives The Commonwealth and Government of Venice

The Lewkenorian theory of Shakespeare authorship is the view that Lewes Lewkenor (1561–1627), was the true author of the works attributed to William Shakespeare. Lewes Lewkenor is one of several individuals who have been claimed by advocates of the Shakespeare authorship question to be the true author of Shakespeare's works. Lewes Lewkenor was a distant relation to Ursula St Barbe wife of Sir Francis Walsingham whose daughter Frances Walsingham married first Sir Philip Sydney, and secondly Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex and via the Sydney's to Philip Herbert, and William Herbert the 'incomparable brethren' who issued the First Folio of Shakespeare's works. William Herbert (a long-standing candidate for the Fair Youth of The Sonnets) was Lord Chamberlain and it was from his accounts that Lewkenor was paid for his duties as the Master of the Ceremonies from 1615 until 1625. Duane Pesaro, the Venetian ambassador, complained bout their relationship in 1625, Pesaro described Herbert as ‘a man of good intention,’ but one who was ‘influenced by being related to the Master of the Ceremonies’.

The theory was first proposed in 2013 by William 'Bill' Corbett in his book The Master of the Ceremonies.

Mainstream scholarship dismisses all alternative candidates for authorship of the works, but accepts that Shakespeare sometimes worked in collaboration with other professional playwrights such as George Peele and John Fletcher. Some mainstream writers have taken the view that Lewes Lewkenor had links to Shakespeare, notably Edmund Malone, Christopher Whitfield, Kenneth Muir and Malcolm Mercer.

Malone and Muir

The Irish Shakespearian scholar Edmund Malone was the first to spot the influence of Lewkenor's translation of Gasparo Contarini's The Commonwealth of Venice on Othello, in his notes he cited two examples 'officers of the night (1.i.1830) and 'double as the Duke's' (1.i.14)' which showed that Shakespeare had read Contarini's book. In 1956 Kenneth Muir delved a little deeper into this connection, noting that the book contained introductory Sonnets by Edmund Spenser and Maurice Kyffin, placing Lewkenor amongst a literary elite. Muir noted that it was from Lewkenor that Shakespeare had taken intensively as 'the translator uses the word intensive and Shakespeare's sole use of the derivative intentively occurs in Othello.' The British Library website describes his findings, 'Kenneth Muir has argued that Shakespeare must have consulted Lewkenor's book when he was writing Othello – another play exploring the complex role of a 'stranger' in Venice. Muir highlights Lewkenor's pleasure in hearing travellers' tales of 'paineful inconveniences' (sig. A1v). He sees parallels in the way Desdemona listens 'with a greedy ear' to the painful 'story of [Othello's] life' (1.3.149; 129).'

Whitfield

Lewkenor's candidacy was first raised as a possibility in 1964 by Christopher Whitfield, who identified the influence of Lewkenor's translation of The Commonwealth of Venice [1599] as an influence on The Merchant of Venice He also discovered that Lewkenor had attended the Middle Temple alongside his cousin John Coombe III of Stratford, 'at first sight there would appear to be no likelihood of any link between Lewkenor and Shakespeare, but this is not entirely true: William Combe the elder, the son of John Combe II of Stratford and Shakespeare’s friend and legator, John Combe IV, and of his brother Thomas I of the College Stratford, was not only a fellow member of the Middle Temple, but was Lewkenor’s cousin as well, a fact which has not hitherto been recognized, partly because…he was a Worcestershire and a Warwickshire man, while Lewis Lewkenor came from Sussex. ‘It is not claimed that all that has been quoted from The Merchant of Venice is an accurate version of Lewkenor’s statements, or even of Venetian law, but Shakespeare was writing a play to entertain the public, among whom were many lawyers and law students; he needed knowledge to give his play verisimilitude; and somewhere he found what he wanted. Here it is merely suggested that he obtained at least some of his knowledge from Lewkenor, particularly that relating to the situation relating to the doge vis-à-vis the law, and that he obtained it either from Lewkenor’s manuscript or from his conversation, or both. Beyond this we cannot go without letting fantasy lead us - but are we not perhaps justified in doing so in this case? “Is not this something more than fantasy? What think you on ‘t?” It is no ghost that we pursue; only ghosts of facts hidden in the shifting fog of time, which has perhaps parted for us for a moment, as we peer in to the past.’

Malcolm Mercer

The Lewkenor family established itself in Sussex where they formed part of the administrative elite serving as Justices, M.P.'s, Bailiffs and local government officers. The Historian Malcolm Mercer has written about the Lewkenor family's association with The Wars of the Roses in his article Driven to Rebellion. Mercer follows the events leading up to the death of Sir John Lewknor, fighting for the Lancastrians at the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471. John Lewknor had served Henry VI but his courtly ambitions had been thwarted by the arrival of Edward VI. Mercer sums up Lewkenor's position, 'When Lancastrian rule was restored in 1470, Lewknor had an opportunity to rebuild his fortunes and re-establish a career in royal service. In the event, however, the regime crumbled and Lewknor, with little to lose, died fighting for the Lancastrians.' The action in Henry VI, part 2 is taken from the account in the Chronicles of Raphael Holinshed which shows Sir John Lewkenor was killed fighting with the Lancastrian forces at Tewkesbury, but the play leaves the action as the battle begins but The Chronicles of Raphael Holinshed reports, 'In the winning of the camp, such as stood to it were slain out of hand. Prince Edward was taken as he fled towards the town, by Sir Richard Crofts, and kept close. In the field and chase were slain…Sir John Leukener, with three thousand others.'

Sir Thomas Lewkenor of Trotton fought alongside Henry V of England at battle of Agincourt and later served as sheriff of Surrey and Sussex, holding the post at the time of Jack Cade's rebellion which he suppressed with the help of his son-in-law, John Kemp, the Archbishop of York, who was married to his daughter, Beatrix (one source calls her Elizabeth Lewkenor). Kemp was a supporter of Henry VI of England and helped the monarch suppress the Kentish rising led by Jack Cade and when Richard, duke of York, marched on London to seize the king in 1452 he remained loyal to the House of Lancaster. Sir Thomas had two sons who served Margaret of Anjou, the 'she-wolf of France', appears in the three parts of Henry VI (play) and Richard III (play) and is assigned more lines than any other leading female role. Walter Lewkenor was a squire in her household during the early 1450's. The Sherriff of Kent, Alexander Iden, who took Cade hiding in a garden (Henry VI, p. II, Act IV, sc. x) had grown up on the Lewkenor estate at Iden.

Another Sir John Lewkenor attended Richard III of England and Queen Anne at their coronation. His cousin, Thomas Lewkenor, Lord of Goring, was made a Knight of the Bath and his brother, Richard Lewkenor of Brambletye, also adhered to Richard III while their nephew, Thomas Lewkenor of Bodiam and Trotton, took part against the Yorkists, assembling men-at-arms to assist the Earl of Richmond after his landing. Another branch of the Lewkenor family provides us with Edward Lewkenor, who served in the house of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk. Norfolk's intrigues against his archenemy, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, and his successful manipulation of the king through the introduction of his niece, Ann Boleyn, form the story of Henry VIII.

Corbett

The Estate of English Fugitives. 1595

Whitfield's suggestion was revived by William 'Bill' Corbett, who argued in The Master of the Ceremonies (2013) that linguistic similarities in Lewkenor's The Estate of English Fugitives [1595] sounded like Shakespeare, notably Lewkenor's use of the phrase 'the stings and terrors of a guilty conscience' which echoes Hamlet's 'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' four years before the play was written. Corbett also noted that Lewkenor cited the very same scene from Holinshed's Chronicles that is depicted in Richard III, Act III, sc. Vii: three years before the play is registered. Corbett cites other scholars who have noticed Lewkenor's descriptions of the soldiers he fought alongside as the basis for many of the characters found in the early history plays notably Roger Williams the Welsh soldier who is caricatured in Fluellen and Captain Jaques Francisco who is cited by Carol Enos as the blueprint for the melancholy Jaques in As You Like It. Corbett identifies Captain John Smith as the basis for the character of Falstaff. Like Sir John Fastolf Captain John Smith hailed from Norfolk but had levied his soldiers in Lincolnshire and brought them over to serve in the Low Countries, but finding the service unprofitable he had deserted his men without pay.

Falstaff makes this Lincolnshire connection clear: ‘Yea, or the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe.’ Henry IV, part I: I, ii

The matter came to a head when Smith turned up with his impoverished company at the court gates in 1587 pleading for alms, 'yesterday there came thirty to the Court gate, who said they were of the company of one Smith of Norfolk, and levied in Lincolnshire, and her Majesty hearing thereof, caused only two to be brought to the Council, who did allege the foresaid kind of misusage by their captain, adding that he had done the like to all the rest of their company. But for to stay the report of any more to come to the Court to offend her Majesty they were dismissed with sharp speeches, as being not to be believed; and the marshal ordered to threaten [them] with the stocks to depart; yet for pity of their manifest poverty, the Council made a purse with some money, and caused the sub almoner, as of his own pity, to give to every of them a portion to conduct them to their countries.'

Lewkenor describes Smith as a valiant soldier, but a drunken and violent man whose 'legs were swollen to that bigness of a man's middle, his face only was bare of flesh and miserable, and his eyes sunk into his head, in such sort, that I never remember to have beheld a more pitiful spectacle: in which misery, after he had languished well near a year and a half, he died finally in extreme calamity, as it is told me since, at Gaunt, in the year 1588.' The Estate of English Fugitives 1595.

In The Estate of English Fugitives Lewkenor was the first to record the details of Elizabeth I's famous Speech to the Troops at Tilbury of 1588.

“I cannot here omit to speak a word or two, as well of the worthiness; and loyalty of those honourable gentlemen of her majesties court, who upon the approach of the Spanish fleet, presented, not only their persons and lives for the defence of her majesty, but also a great portion and yearly revenue of their lands; as also of her majesties great benignity and gracious answer, telling them, that she accounted herself rich enough in that she possessed such subjects, assuring them, that for her part, she would spend the last penny of her treasures for their defence, rather than she would be burthenous unto them. O happy people in such a princess, and happy princess in such a people!” The Estate of English Fugitives 1595.

In his book 'Enobarbus' broken heart and The Estate of English Fugitives', Paul Jorgenson has suggested that the picture of melancholic death found in Anthony and Cleopatra is drawn from Lewkenor's The Estate of English Fugitives.

In Lewkenor's second translation The Resolved Gentleman Corbett noted the addition of several histories appended to the volume which chart the histories of Julius Caesar and his murder by Brutus and Cassius, he then recounts the story of Troilus and Cressida along with the stories of Nessus shirt, Pompey, Anthony and Cleopatra, and Pericles but then Lewkenor switches tack and heads off to The Wars of the Roses from Henry IV to Henry VI. He ends with some heroical deeds of Henry VIII and praise for Elizabeth I demonstrating that in 1595 Lewes Lewkenor was certainly in command of the facts that would later form the backbone of half a dozen of Shakespeare's plays.

Marco Nievergelt has examined The Resolved Gentleman from the perspective of Lewkenor's career at court explored in allegory, which Nievergelt describes as a "tortuous trajectory rich in false starts, byways and rather nebulous interludes...[with] slippery religious and political allegiances". Stephanie Anne Moore at UC Berkeley has written a thesis on Lewkenor's literary remnants entitled 'Allegory, Exemplum, and Lewes Lewkenor's Strange and Varied Relics'. Lewes' father was M.P. for Midhurst in Sussex in 1586, the home town of Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton to whom the two narrative poems Venus and Adonis (Shakespeare poem) [1593] and The Rape of Lucrece [1594] were dedicated and Lewes himself would serve as M.P. for the town in 1597.

Othello

In the early 1580's Lewkenor served as a Captain under the Italian general, Baptista del Monte, who would later serve as Captain General of Venice, the very role assigned to Othello in the play. Lewkenor had thanked the Del Monte brother's for their help, 'the Captain General of Venice, Baptista del Monte, a Florentine born, a notable soldier, one under whom I have served in the wars, and I am in all thankfulness to acknowledge many favours that I received both from him and his brother Camillo del Monte.'

Lewknor escorted Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud in 1600.

Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud was escorted by Lewes Lewkenor. Rowland Whyte wrote to Robert Sydney at Nonsuch Palace on 23rd August 1600,'The Ambassador of Barbary had audience upon Wednesday last...Mr. Lewkner was interpreter for the Spanish tongue; but here they departed, the Interpreter of the Embassy spoke in Italian, and desired to deliver something in private, which her Majesty granted. On which Mr. Lewkner and the Lords removed further off'.

In Act. II scene iii, Portia tests her suitors by asking them to choose between three caskets which is drawn from Lewkenor's translation of The Commonwealth and Government of Venice, which is a recognised source for The Merchant of Venice, Othello and Ben Jonson's Volpone - ‘Then the judges go unto their suffrages, for by suffrages among the Venetians all things are determined. Three pots are brought forth, by the one of which the offender is condemned: by the other he is absolved in manner without any correction, & by the third are known the opinion of those, which do seem yet to doubt whether course is to be taken: the first of condemnation is white, the second of absolution is green, the third of doubtfulness is red.’ The Commonwealth and Government of Venice, translated by Lewes Lewkenor, 1599.

In the last act of the play, as Lodovico places Othello under arrest the Moor protests, "I have done the state some service, and they know't." Lodovico is a minor character who says little, but it falls to him to tell the story, he is witness to the events and survives to relate them. Lewes Lewkenor styles himself Lodovico Lewkenor in 1597 and on the document confirming him as James I's Master of the Ceremonies for life in 1605. The closing lines are left to Lodovico, who accuses Iago of being the setter-on of Othello's tragedy.

LODOVICO: [To IAGO] O Spartan dog,
More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea!
Look on the tragic loading of this bed;
This is thy work: the object poisons sight;
Let it be hid. Gratiano, keep the house,
And seize upon the fortunes of the Moor,
For they succeed on you. To you, lord governor,
Remains the censure of this hellish villain;
The time, the place, the torture: O, enforce it!
Myself will straight aboard: and to the state
This heavy act with heavy heart relate.

[Exeunt]

Othello: V, ii.

Dr. Laura Tosi draws this conclusion, 'Lodovico’s determination at the end of the play to hide the bed and what it reveals and his announcement of his intention to “relate” what had happened to “the state” enlist “the state” in a recuperative strategy that attempts to rewrite what has happened in familiarly, manageably, and conventionally tragic terms, terms that exempt us from having to pose or cope with the harder questions the events onstage force.'

The Count Palatine of the Rhine was entertained to a play at Whitehall on 26th December 1599, in the presence Chamber. We find this visit is the subject of the conversation between Nerissa and Portia in The Merchant of Venice when it was printed the following year and it must have been a late addition as Francis Meres had mentioned the play in 1598.

NERISSA: Then there is the County Palatine. PORTIA: He doth nothing but frown, Merchant of Venice: I, ii

In June of 1599 Lewkenor was made one of the Queen's Honourable Band of Gentlemen Pensioners which had been formed under Henry VIII as an elite bodyguard, 'ordained to be Spears'. A portrait of the Queen in procession attended by the Gentleman Pensioners may contain the only portrait of Lewes Lewkenor.

The Procession Portrait of Queen Elizabeth, Unknown Anglo-Netherlandish artist, c.1600-03

In February of 1599 the Ambassador of the Netherlands, Verieken, was escorted by Lewes Lewkenor to the play Sir John Oldcastle.

Twelfth Night

The Duke of Orsino was escorted by Lewes Lewkenor to the Christmas festivities at the Palace of Whitehall on 6th January, 1601. The play opens with the character Orsino's famous speech

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.

Lewkenor was also related to the Shirley brothers mentioned in Twelfth Night and the play involves lots of illusions to contemporary courtly gossip involving Burghley, Hatton, Knollys, and William Herbert's relationship with Mary 'Mall' Fitton.

In 1600 Lewkenor's fourth and final published work appeared The Spanish Mandeville, or Garden of Curious Flowers, which was published without Lewkenor's permission, in fact he expressly asked that his name be kept from it as it was a work he would have 'consigned to the flames'. The book was published by Ferdinando Walker in 1600 and dedicated to Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset Lord High Treasurer. Walker states in his introduction that Lewkenor "keeping it by him many years, as judging it utterly unworthy of his own name, did lately bestow the same upon me, with express charge howsoever I should dispose thereof, to conceal all mention of him: wherein I should have done both him and my self too much wrong in obeying him.” The Spanish Mandeville contains a cluster of references repeated in Henry VI, Midsummer Nights Dream, The Comedy of Errors, Troilus and Cressida and Anthony and Cleopatra. If Shakespeare had used The Spanish Mandeville as a source he would have needed access to Lewkenor's manuscript before 1594, when the disastrous Night of Errors occurred at Gray's Inn. The Spanish Mandeville is a compendium of themes often repeated by the playwright. The British Library website sites the work of Lewes' brother, Samuel Lewkenor, A discourse on Foreign Universities, as a source for several Shakespeare plays, 'Samuel Lewkenor’s Discourse … of forraine Citties (1600) is a handbook for armchair travellers who wish to know distant places ‘without travelling to see them’. It contains a useful guide to the most ‘priviledged Universities’ of Shakespeare’s day – including the German city of Wittenberg (pp. 15v–16r), where Hamlet and Doctor Faustus study, and the Italian city of Padua (pp. 31r–33r) where Lucentio pursues his ambitious ‘course of learning’ in The Taming of the Shrew (1.1.9)...There are four striking references to Wittenberg in Act 1, Scene 2 of Hamlet. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet and Horatio are all ‘fellow-students’ there, but Claudius and Gertrude ask the Prince to ‘stay’ in Elsinore rather than ‘going back to school in Wittenberg’ (1.2.113)...Padua is the ‘nursery of arts’ where Lucentio goes to study and ‘suck the sweets of sweet philosophy’ in The Taming of the Shrew (1.1.2; 28). As shown by Samuel Lewkenor, the city was world famous for the ‘amazing glory of her farre renowned Academie’ with its ‘most illustrious … Emporie of good letters & ingenious artes’ (p. 31v).

In 1596 William Shakespeare had been arrested with Francis Langley the owner of the Swan Theatre, for a breach of the Peace and in 1598 Lewes Lewkenor lent Langley £50 and Lewes and his uncle Sir Richard Lewkenor were involved in a lengthy legal wrangle with Langley until his death in 1602.

The Master of the Ceremonies

1603 Lewes Lewkenor was knighted by James I and later made The Master of the Ceremonies. King James I appointed Lewkenor, a 'gentleman well languaged of good education and discretion', received a formal appointment by patent, with a salary of £200.00, on 7th November, 1605. to attend and entertain visiting ambassadors to his realm, 'At this time the King's Majesty, in regard of the great repair into this Kingdom of Foreign Princes, and their Ambassadors, from all parts of Christendom, and other places, did therefore erect an office, by the name of Master of the Ceremonies, to receive and entertain Ambassadors and Princes during their abode in England, in all honorable manner, as is used in France and other places, and by patent under the great seal ordained Sir Lewis Lukenor, Knight, to be Master of the Ceremonies' Lewknor's publications were mostly translations of courtly and political works by continental European writers. He translated from French, Spanish and Italian and is credited with coining 'Cashiering' from the Flemish Kasserren; "unnobly'; well-expressed; unrefusable. In November 1604 Lewkenor was escorting Anne of Denmark's brother Ulrik, Duke of Holstein, who had ostensibly come to London to raise troops to support The King of Hungary. The play written at this time was Measure for Measure which debuted on St. Stephen's Night, 26th December, 1604 at Whitehall.

LUCIO: If the duke with the other dukes come not to composition with the King of Hungary, why then all the dukes fall upon the king. First Gentleman: Heaven grant us its peace, but not the King of Hungary’s! Second Gentleman: Amen. Measure for Measure, Act 1, sc. ii.

In 1605 Lewes lost two wives to small pox, Corbett claims the first, Beatrice de Rota, to have been the inspiration for Shakespeare's Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing and the second, Katherine Argall, widow of Lewkenor's kinsman the lawyer Sir Thomas Argall, to have been the cause of the changes made in the two quartos of Hamlet which had appeared in 1603. In the first quarto, the clown says 'Ergo she drown'd herself wittingly', but just a few months later this has been amended to 'Argall she drown'd her self wittingly'. This is a significant pointer to the lawyer Sir Thomas Argall being remembered in the play. Lewkenor's third wife was Mary Blount.

In 1609 Sir Lewes Lewkenor borrowed the use of a summer house belonging to The Goldsmith's Company. The clerk of the Goldsmiths' Company noted, 'at this court, it is agreed that the use of the garden-house shall be lent to Sir Lewes Lewkenor to have a play there tomorrow night for the solace of himself and his friends.' Malone added his own opinion to this in volume three of his Collections, 'The records of the great Companies do not suggest that there were many occasions such as that in 1609 when the Goldsmiths' lent their garden house to Sir Lewes Lewkenor for him to entertain his friends to a play'.

During his time in London the Venetian ambassador, Antonio Foscarini, had been to the playhouse some three or four times, and his successor, Zorzi Giustinian, 'went with the French ambassador and his wife to a play called Pericles, Prince of Tyre, which cost Giustinian more than 20 crowns. He also took the Secretary of Florence. Lewknor was one of Prince Henry's circle and contributed Old Wormy Age, a humorous panegyric verse, to the preface of Thomas Coryat's Coryat's Crudities: Hastily gobled up in Five Moneth’s Travels published in 1611.

Lewknor's last official engagement was on Sunday 29 November 1626, when Charles I dispatched him to attend François de Bassompierre. 'Lucnar came to bring me a very rich present from the king, of four diamonds set in a lozenge, and a great stone at the end; and the same evening sent again to fetch me to hear an excellent English play'

King James I had read Lewkenor's translation and referred to it, although he had confused the General of Venice with The Merchant of Venice, 'in Venice, which is governed by a Republique, they do create no honors or dignities, but a Merchant of Venice, which is seldome, &c.' Lewkenor's difficulties in dealing with the ambassadors is detailed in State Papers, as well as in a book published by his assistant, John Finett. Lewkenor escorted Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, 1st Count of Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, who is the only known foreign subscriber to the First Folio. The Spanish bibliographer Pascual de Gayangos claimed to have seen a copy of the First Folio in the Valladolid palace of Count Gondomar but that the volume was later destroyed.

Other evidence

Corbett cites the references found in the flurry of pamphlets which were later prohibited under the Bishops' Ban of 1599 to contain a number of barbed references to both William Shakespeare and Lewes Lewkenor. In 1597 Joseph Hall, a student at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, published a series of satires entitled Virgidemiarum. Hall writes about the character of Labeo, a clandestine poet and playwright, whom Hall specifically accuses of authoring Love's Labour's Lost, All's Well That Ends Well and Venus and Adonis. In the introduction to the second set of three Satyres, published in 1599, Hall prefaces the work with a bold address 'The Author's charge to his Satyres' which begins with the same pun on Lewkenor's name that Ben Jonson later uses in his Epigrams to Sir Luck-Less Woo-All. In 1599 the Archbishop of Canterbury ordered that Hall's works, along with those of Middleton, Marston, Guilpin, John Davies and others should be burnt, but the order was mysteriously stayed against Hall's work.

John Davies connects William Shakespeare to Terence in his poem 'To Our English Terence Will. Shake-speare' (1610). In The Scholemaster (1570) Roger Ascham had said this about Terence, 'Because it is well known, by good record of learning, and that by Ciceroes own witness that some Comedies bearing Terence name, were written by worthy Scipio and wise Laelius and namely Heauton: and Adelphi.’ [p.285]

Two contemporary Roman historians, Suetonius, and the African slave Santra, both identified the nobleman who gave plays to Terence as the consul and poet Quintus Fabius Labeo. Terence also had an arch-enemy by the name of Luscius Lavinius, a comic poet chastised by Terence for his poor Greek translations, his inaccuracy with the law and 'for bringing on stage frantic youths, committing all those excesses of folly and distraction which are supposed to be produced by violent love'. Hall describes how Labeo hides like a cuttle-fish 'in the black cloud of his thick vomiture,' and ends this denunciation of Labeo: ‘Who list complain of wronged faith or fame, when he may shift it to another’s name?’ But his longest barrage against Labeo comes at the end of the Satyres and the gist of his thirty-six lines clearly alludes to Labeo’s authorship of Venus and Adonis,

The play that was gracing the boards at The Globe that summer was reported by Thomas Platter the Younger to be Julius Caesar, a character called Labeo appears once during the battle of Philippi but does not speak.

Cultural references

Lewkenor's translation of The Commonwealth of Venice provided source material for The Merchant of Venice, Othello and Ben Jonson's Volpone.