Matthew Steggle

Who Is Mrs. Shakspaire? What Is She? | Charles Nicholl On a summer’s day in 1978, Frederick Charles Morgan was at work as usual in the ancient library of Hereford Cathedral. He was a hundred years old but

www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

With customary precision and elegance (how does he make it look so bloody easy?) Charles Nicholl writes about Mrs Shakspaire for the New York Review of Books.

But I love even more the image of him in a frock coat, sat on the sideines at the Royal Toxophilite Society, turning the pages of this book while arrows hiss and thwack into the targets.

I love that this thing, after thirty years, can suddenly take you somewhere completely unexpected, to the worlds of Charles Dickens and Buffalo Bill. It’s great that you can read some of Zouch Troughton’s writing and hear some of his voice.

What’s more – this obit explains precisely why Haines gave him the book that’s now on my shelf.

Fred T. Follett, ed., The Archer’s Register for 1889-1890 (London: Horace Cox, 1890), 78.

The key is another obituary from 1889, this one from The Archer’s Register:

But then – double plot twist – the obituary is wrong. Gosse says he didn’t know Zouch at all, only his work, but has seen a death notice for him. Actually the notice was for Zouch’s grandfather, also called Zouch. I am more relieved by this than I should be.

The academy

But then after some hours of getting to know my new friend Zouch, I found an obituary, written by Edmund Gosse, which indicated that he had actually been dead for ten years at the point this inscription was written. www.google.co.uk/books/editio...

He collected Renaissance art; he was even, briefly, a correspondent of Dickens (!) dickensletters.com/letters/rich....

Source: https://archive.org/details/BP_TRHM_0004; see also https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Nina_Sforza/sh0OAAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22richard+zouch+troughton%22&pg=PP5&printsec=frontcover; also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_Katherine_Clemmons

Google will quickly tell you a lot about a Zouch Troughton. He wrote a blank-verse tragedy, Nina Sforza (1841), acted by Helena Faucit (!), well regarded in print and on stage, and staged in 1893 by Buffalo Bill (!) as a vehicle for his girlfriend (It bombed that time).

A. R. Haines’s name is a bit too common – suggestions welcome. But who on earth is Zouch Troughton? And why did Haines think he would be interested in Roger Ascham’s treatise about archery?

Inscription on front endpaper

Thirty years and many house moves on, you find it again and start to wonder - who are these people who have been on the front endpapers all this time?

Cover of Arber's edition of Ascham's Toxophilus (1868)

Cover of Arber's edition of Ascham's Toxophilus (1868)

I bought this book about 1992, probably from the 50p box of some charity bookshop. It was long before you could read anything you wanted on a phone, and I was trying to build up a library of Renaissance texts, one spectacularly dog-eared book at a time. It was very Jude the Obscure. (1/11)

I see that picture of the cathedral is quite persuasive… and my morning has been brightened by looking at Drayton's fabulous image of Herefordshire to see what a "yarringle" even looks like.

Pic from https://spinoffmagazine.com/about-drop-spindle-spinning/

Which looks a bit like the picture - you hold the narrow top in your hand, and then there’s an expanding cone of wool below it
- Our artist has drawn one, but it has looked really confusing and they’ve tried to turn it into a pillar

Hi Andrew! A crazy guess for your files:
- Norwich and Norfolk most famous at this date for woollen thread and cloth
- Emblematised in, for instance, Brome’s The English Moor by the drop spindle

Here’s one for early modernists: what is Norwich holding in this 1622 map (from Drayton’s ‘Poly-Olbion’)? Yes, Norwich had a big cathedral spire, but not two (and these maps usually indicate spires in the figure’s headdress). I’ve been tossing this about, and asking experts, for months. Stuck!

Had a lot of fun talking to Cassidy Cash www.cassidycash.com mainly about Mrs Shakspaire, with an excursion to a desert island at the end. Apologies in advance to the seagulls.

Thank you! Forthcoming again in the Oxford Works of John Marston, this time with actual receipts courtesy of - well, you probably know the scholar in question.

Edinburgh University Press Journals - Table of Contents - bjj: Vol 32, No 1

I have two things in the new Ben Jonson Journal! A short piece on the early reception of Marston’s Malcontent, and a review, open access, of Tom Harrison’s great new(ish) book on Jonson and the classics.

www.euppublishing.com/toc/bjj/32/1

In which case, perhaps “pour” after – that’s so cool! Thank you, thank you!

A bit of grubby manuscript with what might be letters on

A long shot, but can anyone make anything out in this bit of binding waste found in a book printed in England in 1608? I can’t even tell what language it’s in.

Stunned from prolonged exposure to ideas at #RenSoc25 today. Chairing panel 5.7 tomorrow at 9 on Adaptation and Reception: specifically Bengal, Mexico, and the inside of Thomas de Quincey’s head.

Not Just the Tudors <p>Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks about everything from the Aztecs to witches, Velázquez to Shakespeare, Mughal India to the Mayflower. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definite...

Thanks to @sixteenthcgirl.bsky.social for having me on the Not Just The Tudors podcast on Shakespeare’s Women: podfollow.com/not-just-the...

Photo (by David McInnis) of Australian artist Jimmy C’s famous mural of Shakespeare in Clink Street near the Globe. It depicts Shakespeare as known via the Chandos portrait, holding a skull like Hamlet does, and a quill, in front of a psychedelic swirl of colour.

📣 CFP: Shakespeare Quarterly special issue

Shakespeare’s Twenty-First Century / The Twenty-First Century’s Shakespeare

This will be Vanessa I. Corredera, Arthur L. Little, Jr. and my first issue as Editors! Please submit your finest!

More info: networks.h-net.org/group/announ...

Fabulous stuff!

Matthew Steggle on X: "Another quite fun story about the trail of a second-hand book – longish thread (1/17). https://t.co/2EARNhRPnd" / X Another quite fun story about the trail of a second-hand book – longish thread (1/17). https://t.co/2EARNhRPnd

I envy you being at the Morgan. You can feel the wealth from here. Though o did find a book in Truro with some Morgan associations… x.com/matthewstegg...

That’s beautiful!

In the company of Good Mrs Shakspaire - 27/06/2025 19:00:00 A talk by Dr Matthew Steggle Thursday 27 June

Just to give a plug for this talk I'm giving, in Hereford Cathedral, on 27 June!

www.herefordcathedral.org/Event/in-the...

That’s horrible. And best wishes to your dad, who is an absolute gent.

Maybe William Shakespeare had a happy marriage after all? - The World from PRX For centuries, experts have believed William Shakespeare’s marriage to Anne Hathaway wasn’t a particularly close one. But a new piece of evidence is throwing that assumption into question. The World’s...

theworld.org/segments/202...
Thoughtful, connected reporting from @sbirnbaum.bsky.social for @prx.org. With contributions from @kscheil.bsky.social, me, and some chap called Stephen Greenblatt.