---------------------------------------------------------
Proof that Shakespeare's Thought and Imagery Dominate
Oxford's Own Statement of Creative Principles:
A Discussion of the Poet Earl's 1573 Letter
To the Translator of "Hamlet's Book"
Copyright 1946 by Charles Wisner Barrell
The Shakespeare Fellowship Quarterly, October 1946.

Introductory pages to Cardanus Comforte:

To my loving friend Thomas Bedingfield Esquire,
one of Her Majesty's Gentlemen Pensioners.

<<Thus earnestly desiring you in this one request of mine (as
I would yield to you in a great many) not to repugn the setting
forth of your own proper studies, I bid you farewell. From my
new country Muses of WIVENHOE, wishing you as you have begun,
to proceed in these virtuous actions. For when all things
shall else forsake us, virtue WILL EVER abide with us, and
when *OUR BODIES FALL INTO THE BOWELS OF THE EARTH*
yet that shall mount with our minds into the highest heavens.
.

From your loving and assured friend, E. Oxenford.>> ------------------------------------------------------------

. *OUT OF THE BOWELS OF THE harmless EARTH* -------------------------------------------------------------
. King Henry IV, Part i Act 1, Scene 3
.
HOTSPUR: God save the mark!--
. And telling me the soVEREign'st thing on EARTH
. Was parmaceti for an inward bruise;
. And that it was great pity, so it was,
. This villanous salt-petre should be digg'd
. OUT OF THE BOWELS OF THE harmless EARTH,
. Which many a good tall fellow had destroy'd
. So cowardly; and but for these vile guns,
. He would himself have been a soldier. --------------------------------------------------------
. Sonnet 146
.
Poor soul, *the CENTRE of my sinful EARTH* ---------------------------------------------------------
. Romeo and Juliet Act 2, Scene 1
.
ROMEO: Turn back, dull EARTH, and find thy CENTRE out. ---------------------------------------------------------
. Titus Andronicus Act 4, Scene 3
.
TITUS ANDRONICUS: Publius and Sempronius, you must do it;
. 'Tis you must dig with mattock and with spade,
. And pierce the inmost *CENTRE OF THE EARTH*
. Then, when you come to Pluto's region,
. I pray you, deliver him this petition;
. Tell him, it is for justice and for aid,
. And that it comes from old Andronicus,
. SHAKEN with sorrows in ungrateful Rome. ---------------------------------------------------------
. Troilus and Cressida Act 3, Scene 2
.
TROILUS: *TRUE SWAINS* in love shall in the world to come
. Approve their *TRUTHS* by Troilus: when their rhymes,
. Full of protest, of oath and big compare,
. Want similes, truth tired with iteration,
. As *TRUE* as steel, as plantage to the moon,
. As sun to day, as turtle to her mate,
. As iron to adamant, as EARTH to the CENTRE,
. Yet, after all comparisons of truth,
. *As TRUTH's authentic author to be cited*
. 'As *TRUE* as Troilus' shall crown up the verse,
. And sanctify the numbers.
.
. Act 4, Scene 2
.
CRESSIDA: O you gods divine!
. Make Cressid's name the very crown of falsehood,
. If ever she leave Troilus! Time, force, and death,
. Do to this body what extremes you can;
. But the strong base and building of my love
. Is as the *VERy CENTRE OF THE EARTH* ,
. Drawing all things to it. I'll go in and weep,-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jules VERnE: *Journey to the CENTRE OF THE EARTH*
.
<<Presently, after lying quietly for some minutes,
I opened my eyes and looked upwards.
As I did so I made out a brilliant little dot, at the extremity
of this long, gigantic telescope. It was a star without
scintillating rays. According to my calculation,
it must be Beta in the constellation of the Little Bear.>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
. _Ulysses_ p.599:
.
<<Meditations of evolution increasingly vaster: of the moon invisible
in incipent lunation, approaching perigee: of the infinite lattiginous scintillating uncondensed milky way, discernible by daylight by an
observer placed at the lower end of a cylindrical vertical shaft 5000
ft deep sunk from the surface towards the centre of the earth:>> -----------------------------------------------------------
<<KOCHAB, an obscure Arabic name that might simply mean "star," is just
barely the second brightest, and appropriately the Beta, star in Ursa
Minor, and represents the top front bowl star of the Little Dipper.
Only 15 degrees from the north celestial pole, middle northerners can
see it every night as it plies its small circular path. Together with
the other bowl star (Pherkad, the Gamma star), it makes a small
asterism called the "Guardians of the Pole," the two seeming in myth
to "protect" the pole star. Though we are quite familiar with the major
two motions of the Earth, daily rotation and annual revolution, the
third motion, precession, is more obscure. The Moon and Sun act on the
Earth's rotational bulge, and cause the axis to wobble over a 26,000
year period. The result is that the axis continually moves in a small
circle against the background stars. Polaris is thus only a temporary
pole star that will get better into the next century and then will
begin to shift away. About the year 1100 BC, the pole made a
reasonably close pass to Kochab, and there are old references
to THIS star being called "Polaris.">>

- http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/kochab.html -----------------------------------------------------------------
Prospero: Thou dost, and think'st it much to tread the ooze
. Of the salt deep,
. To run upon the sharp wind of the north,
. To do me business in the veins o' the earth
. When it is baked with frost. -----------------------------------------------------------
Art Neueneodrffer

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