Francis Meres

Francis Meres (1565 – 29 January 1647) was an English churchman and author.

He was born at Kirton in the Holland division of Lincolnshire in 1565. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he received a B.A. in 1587 and an M.A. in 1591. Two years later he was incorporated an M.A. of Oxford. His relative, John Meres, was high sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1596, and apparently helped him in the early part of his career. In 1602 he became rector of Wing in Rutland, where he also ran a school.

Meres is especially well known for his Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598), a commonplace book that is important as a source on the Elizabethan poets and more particularly because its list of Shakespeare's plays. The Latin title of Meres work means "Servant of Pallas Athena."

Palladis Tamia was one of a series of such volumes of short pithy sayings, the first of which was Politeuphuia: Wits Commonwealth (1597), compiled by John Bodenham or by Nicholas Ling, the publisher. It contains moral and critical reflections borrowed from various sources, and included sections on books, on philosophy, on music and painting, as well as the famous "comparative discourse." This chapter enumerates the English poets from Geoffrey Chaucer to Meres' own day, and compares each with some classical author.

Meres has been an important source for both sides in the Shakespearean authorship controversy. In addition to being often cited as evidence for the chronology of the Shakespearean plays, his Palladis Tamia is regarded by orthodox Shakespearean scholars as an important witness to the traditional view of Shakespearean authorship. However, Meres also mentions Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, as among several who are "the best for comedy amongst us." This fact has been cited by both sides in the authorship question; to the Oxfordians it has signified that Oxford was known as a prominent comic writer, and they wonder, if this is so, why none of his comedies survive, at least under his own name. To orthodox scholars, on the other hand, it has seemed that Meres' double reference to both Shakespeare and Oxford means that he knew that Oxford could not have been the author of the Shakespearean works. A possible solution to this enigma was proposed by Robert Detobel and K.C. Ligon in a 2009 Brief Chronicles article which employs a detailed numerical analysis of the structure of Meres' "comparative discourse" to argue that while Meres pays lip service to the distinction, on a closer view he actually suggests the identity of Shakespeare and Oxford.

The book was reissued in 1634 as a school book, and was partially reprinted in the Ancient Critical Essays (1811-1811) of Joseph Haslewood, Edward Arber's English Garner, and Gregory Smith's Elizabethan Critical Essays (1904). A sermon entitled Gods Arithmeticke (1597), and two translations from the Spanish of Luís de Granada entitled Granada's Devotion and the Sinners' Guide (1598) complete Meres' list of works.

References

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

• Allen, Don C. “The Classical Scholarship of Francis Meres” PMLA, XLVIII: 1 (March 1933), 418-425.* Meres, Francis. Palladis Tamia. Wits Treasury. Printed by P. Short for Cuthbert Burbie. 1598. Facsimile Reprint of the Church copy in the Henry E. Huntington Library. Introduction by Don C. Allen.
• Bentley, Gerald Eades. “John Cotgrave’s English Treasury of Wit and Language and the Elizabethan Drama” Studies in Philology, Vol. XL, 1943.
• Detobel, Robert and K.C. Ligon, "Francis Meres and the Earl of Oxford,"Brief Chronicles I (2009), 123-137.

External links

• text of "Comparative Discourse"