A study of the works of William Baldwin with special reference to his connection with 'The Mirror for Magistrates'

Abstract

Many causes have been suggested to account for the poverty of the literary output between 1450 and 1550 - Among these the chief are the Civil war and the evils, political and social, consequent thereon; the resultant exhaustion of the nation; the lack of interest displayed by the leisured and moneyed classes in literary work; and the gradual decay of the monastic system. Into this age was William Baldwin born: of his life we know, definitely, very little, and though we can piece together a fairly satisfactory history aided by our imagination, we can be no more certain of its accuracy than of the legends ascribed to Shakespeare. According to Wood, a 'William Baldwin' supplicated Oxoniensis the congregation of Regents for a master's degree in the year 1532 (though we do not know if his supplication was successful). Seeing that a man went up to College at about fourteen, and spent from four to seven years there, Baldwinwas probably bom between 1511 and 1514. As to his birth-place, we have only the evidence of his own words' in the fore link to the tragedy of Owen Glendower in the 1555 edition of the "Mirror for Magistrates' "Because he is a man of that country whence (as the Welshman bear me in hand) my pedigr?e ?s descended----"between the years 1532 and 1547 we know nothing of him out can imagine him busy

over his books preparing the "Treatise of Moral Philosophy"published on Jahuary 20th, 1547. Two years later he is a "Server aunte with Edward Whitchurche" as we learn from the edition of "The Canticles of Ballades of Solomon" printed by Baldwin himself in 1549, and from the theological learning embodied in the paraphrase we should presume that if he had not already become a minister, he was studying with that end in view. When Whitchurch retired from the Signe of the Sun", Baldwin stayed on as hack to John Wayland, and under his instigation edited the "Mirror for Magistrates". He aided George Ferrers in the produc tion of interludes and masques at court in the winter of 1552-5 and some where about this time_ before the contribution of Churchyard's legend of Jane Shore to the Mirror for Magistrates -he became a clergyman, for Jane Shore says "and making more haste than good speed, % appeared first to one Baldwine, a minister and preacher;whose function etc." Since it is considered by some that the lines in "Twelfth Night spoken be Dike Orsino to Viola"Let still the woman take An elder than herself" are sufficient proof that Shakespeare was unhappy with his wife, it may be fgxssk that Baldwin's constant references to the evils which arise from women are due to the fact that he too was unhappily married, but not one personal reference of this kind is to be found The date of his death is quite uncertain. The last edition of the M. for M. with which hewas certainly connected was issued in 1563; there is an entry in the Stationery's? Register of the printing of "Beware the Cat" in 1568-9 and a further edition of the M. for M. was published in 1571, with which Baldwin had, apparently, nothing to do; therefore we may conjecture that he died between 1569 and 1571. Of his character we may speak with greatscertainty, for, unlike Shakespeare, he reveals himself in his. works, and we find him to have been pious, learned, zealous for reform of religious and social evils, and charitable.to most crimes save the one of being a Roman Catholio priest. His life presumably had stretched through four reigns,and he had certainly, as a thinking man, followed the evils of religious strife from his boyhood and had become imbued with a hatred for the persecutions of the $pirian age, and for the religion which instigated them. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)