SHAKESPEARE, THE EARL AND THE JESUIT

AS ANY ACKNOWLEDGMENT PAGE TESTIFIES, "NEMO SOLUS SATIS SAPIT" ("no one is sufficiently wise on one's own"). I have particular and compelling reasons to thank friends, colleagues, and scholars whom I have never met or known for breaking into my isolation, for helping me as best they could to seek useful knowledge when the discovery of wisdom was never a realistic goal.

My largest and most longstanding debt has been to Gwynne B. Evans, one of the great quiet Shakespeareans of our times, whose death before this work was completed has brought sadness to a time of gratitude and relief. Gwynne oversaw this project with an exquisitely proper balance of criticism, questioning and encouragement. His learning was not always able to overcome my ignorance and stubbornness, but readers should accept my word that this study is much better for his attention to it than it would have been had he never offered me his advice. My obligations are also great to John Tobin, expert on Shakespeare's sources and many other things, whose sane and candid suggestions about every aspect of my text have pushed it, by continual emendation, in truth's direction. I came to know Patrick Martin when I was well into the writing process' but he has helped me considerably by sharing with me his historical and archival work, and his thoughts on what of mine he has kindly read. My colleagues Fred Keener and Craig Rustici have also offered helpful suggestions about content and presentation.Tom Merriam has given me the gift of new eyes, after the work has been completed. All of the scholars whose names appear in my text and bibliography I thank for their unwitting contributions to this enterprise.  

A research fellowship from The National Endowment for the Humanities gave me the time to begin this study; research leaves granted by Hofstra University have helped to bring it to completion. I am grateful to Harry Keyishian, Director of the Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, and the Press's readers for believing in a work that may be, to say the least, controversial, and to Julien Yoseloff and Christine Retz of the Associated University Presses for their thoughtful attention to producing it. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Gerard Ledger, who has made my text available on his Oxquarry Books website. 

I thank Routledge/Garland publishers for permission to make use of, with some emendations, materials of mine on Titus Andronicus that first appeared in Shakespeare's Sonnets: Critical Essays, edited by James Schiffer (1999).

This book is dedicated to two strong, brilliant and loving women, Tricia Hill and Amanda Klause, my wife and daughter. They inspired me in the writing of it, and I hope they will never regret having done so.