Guilpin’s Fuscus: Sir John Davies

Guilpin’s Fuscus: Sir John Davies

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“Man is known by the company he keeps.”

A great deal of my recent research on Christopher Marlowe has involved looking at the wider social networks of which he was a part. This can get pretty obscure by most people’s standards, but since so many amateur sleuths looking into the Shakespeare authorship question seek information with a straight forward Google search rather than mining Early English Books Online and other paid-for sources, it seems sensible to blog about an article or two I’ve had published recently.

Fuscus in Guilpin’s Skialethia (1598)

Fuscus Guilpin Skialethia Sir John DaviesFor Shakespeare authorship questioners, minor characters in obscure texts can take on a great importance, and whole theories are sometimes constructed around a single (sometimes very wobbly) interpretation.  When I was looking into the identity of someone nicknamed ‘Fuscus’ in Everard Guilpin’s Skialetheia (1598), I found various assertions that Fuscus was Marlowe, or Thomas Nashe, to add John Payne Collier’s 1868 guess that Fuscus was John Marston.

Not so, my friends.  Combining clues from the several different epigrams in which Fuscus is mentioned with the work of P.J.Finkelpearl and J.R.Brink on a certain scandalous happening at the Inns of Court at Candlemas 1598, it is now clear beyond any doubt that ‘Fuscus’ is the poet and lawyer Sir John Davies, he who had his Epigrams published side by side with Marlowe’s translation of Ovid’s Elegies. The article is here behind a paywall until December 2017, but after that you’ll be able to download a copy from the publications section of my staff page at Goldsmiths or my profile on academia.edu.  If your need is urgent, you can always get in touch and I’ll send you a copy.

Rosalind Barber, ‘Sir John Davies as Guilpin’s Fuscus’, Notes and Queries (2015) 62 (4):553-554.

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