Meet the Peters
Abrams, Richard
Early Modern Literary Studies 8.2 (September 2002) / Special Issue 10
Abstract
Recent internal evidence makes clear that John Ford had a principal hand in the “Funeral Elegy” for William Peter (1612), signed WS and formerly attributed to Shakespeare. However, no plausible explanation has been offered of how the initials “W.S.” got attached to the poem; nor is Shakespeare eliminated as the WS referred to on the title page, in the dedication, and in the poem’s “authorial” digressions. This essay contends that the Peter elegy may be a poem about Shakespeare, if not by him. It surveys the social orbit of the Bowhay Peters, which extended to their prominent recusant kinsmen, the Petres of Essex and London. New information is offered concerning the Bowhay Peters, including evidence for their Catholic rather than merely high-church leanings. Central to discussion is William, 2nd Lord Petre, who in 1606 repaid a debt to Will Peter’s brother John. Lord Petre belonged to a social circle that touched variously on Shakespeare’s. He knew Southampton and frequented the Mermaid Tavern. Months after the Elegy’s composition, his eldest daughter married the scion of the Sheldon family of Worcestershire and Warwickshire, later becoming a patient of Shakespeare’s son-in-law Dr. John Hall. A month after the marriage, he patronized the stationer Edward Blount, close associate of the Elegy’s publisher, Thomas Thorpe (Blount’s trail is shown to cross “WS’s” in other ways as well around the time of the Elegy). Beyond these detailed explorations, the essay mentions in passing many other reasons why Shakespeare remains pertinent to study of the Elegy.
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