Through the glass darkly In Act One of Shakespeare’s Merry Wives
of Windsor, a play, so legend has it, Queen Elizabeth personally
commissioned because she so enjoyed the character of Sir John
Falstaff in Henry IV, 1& 2, we meet Master Abraham Slender who
has come to court the young and lovely Mistress Anne Page. As he
hesitates at the door, he laments, “I had rather than 40
shillings I had my book of Songs and Sonnets here.” The joke
here, for Shakespeare’s audience, concerns the name of the book
Slender mentions – Songs and Sonnets. In 1557, Richard Tottell
(d.1594), a London publisher and printer with an office in Fleet
Street, published a small volume of 280 poems under the title
Songs and Sonnets by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Sir Thomas
Wyatt, the Elder, Nicholas Grimald and Uncertain Authors.
Reprinted nine times between 1558 and 1587, it is considered the
most influential and important poetic collection of the 16th
century. In the character of Master Abraham Slender, Shakespeare
was slyly poking gent