[Rarebooks] FS: 1631 Shakespearean, Funeral-Monger, Penner of Dirty Ditties...

Mon Aug 20 16:59:19 EDT 2007

Weever, John.  "ANCIENT FUNERALL MONUMENTS WITHIN THE UNITED MONARCHIE OF
GREAT BRITAIN, IRELAND, AND THE ISLANDS ADJACENT, with the dissolved
Monastaries therein contained; their Founders, and what eminent Persons
have beene in the same interred..."

London; Thomas Harper: 1631.

   "As also the death and burial of certaine of the
    Bloud Royale; the Nobilitie and Gentrie of these
    Kingdomes entombed in forraine Nations...
    whereunto is prefixed a Discourse of Funerall
    Monuments...".

Despite its over-reaching title, Weever's study covers the Diocese of
London, Canterbury, Rochester and Norwich -other volumes may have been
planned, but this one took the author 30 years to research, and he died
just a few months after it was published. Although Weever's transcription
skills have been criticized, he also offers the only extant record of many
stones and monuments now obliterated, so this remains as an important (and
heavy) record.

As a history of Medieval monuments and eminent personages, Weever has been
used as a reference source by many historians and writers, amongst them
the famous boy forger of Bristol, Thomas Chatterton. Weever himself was a
graduate of Queen's College and a most interesting fellow- Ian Wright
describes him in an essay on the Queen's College website as

    "an extraordinarily interesting and eccentric
     character - connoisseur of graveyards, tobacco-
     enthusiast, sycophant, satirist, dwarf, penner
     of dirty ditties, egotist, pugnacious Lancashire
     man and proud of it... (the book) testifies to
     the breadth of his literary interests- it is
     packed with literary allusions and quotations".

Weever was in fact also a poet and traveled in literary circles; he was an
ardent admirer of Shakespeare, and wrote the earliest known poem addressed
to Shakespeare. In his essay Wright delves into the Weever-Shakespeare
connection at some length, making a good case not only that the two were
acquainted, but that Weever's own life and works may throw new light on
Shakespeare's "lost years", through a connection with the prominent
Houghton family, that ends up with Shakespeare having been a tutor at
Houghton Tower.

He also points out that Weever's "Faunus and Melliflora", written in 1600,
"has a section with close verbal echoes of the nunnery scene in Hamlet".
Now the date Hamlet was written remains controversial, but most scholars
have fixed it at 1601. That, however, is a year after Weever's "Faunus".
Wright continues-

     "Either - as I believe myself - the experts
      are wrong about the date of Hamlet or it was
      Shakespeare who borrowed from Weever, not
      vice versa!"

But all of this has strayed quite far from the book at hand- "Ancient
Funerall Monuments" remains a fitting monument to the memory of this
incredibly interesting antiquary. The book was handsomely printed with a
variety of typefaces, ruled margins, woodcuts and decorated initial
letters.

Hardcover. 8"x11.5", [viii] + [ii] + errata leaf + 871 + xiv pages;
portrait frontispiece and decorated title page, with 5 additional
full-page woodcuts and 15 woodcuts in the text; numerous decorated initial
letters. Contains the portrait frontispiece of the author, the extra
engraved title page, and the original index, some or all of which are
often lacking. Bound in 19th century polished calf with gilt rules and
corner emblems; gilt dentelles; marbled endpapers; a fine and stately
binding. Covers with light rubbing and a little darkening; hinges cracked
at the outer gutters and wobbly. Included are two airmail letters from the
mid 1950s concerning the book from noted English bookseller David Low, to
an American collector. The first praises the copy as “spanking”, and
offers to send it, which he apparently did. The second expresses dismay
that the hinges were “broken” in transit, and offers to have them
repaired.  [09562]  $1,500.00

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