‘My Beloved the AVTHOR’: The Subtext of Ben Jonson’s First Folio Encomium to William Shakespeare

Abstract

This paper examines the ingenious hidden allusions and double meanings that Jonson embedded throughout his famous tribute ‘To the Memory of my Beloved the Author Mr William Shakespeare’, shedding new light on misunderstood phrases such as ‘Small Latine and lesse Greeke’, ‘Sweet Swan of Avon’, ‘my gentle Shakespeare’ and ‘Shine forth, thou starre of Poets’, which reveal by number, pun, innuendo and learned literary allusion, that Jonson was alive to the fact that “William Shakespeare” was the pseudonym of one of the Age’s most revered literary patrons and concealed poets – Edward de Vere 17th Earl of Oxford.