"Palladis Tamia"

What a playful title! As a name of a fairytale creature in a ”honey-tongued” comedy or ”sugared sonnets” by a Shakespeare; an enchanted haze ascended out of a Midsummer Night's Dream!

Francis Meres' “Palladis Tamia” (1598) celebrates Shakespeare - in a way - as a renewer of the English language; it almost seems as if he is out in a nationalistic rave and using Shakespeare as a figurehead, as to assert the English against the rest of Europe (read France); it is as if Mr. Meres was inspired by Shakespeare's King Henry V's famous St. Crispin's Day Prayers before the Battle of Agincourt against the French Court, "We few, We happy few, We band of brothers."

While reading this ”Palladis Tamia” - notes by Francis Meres who highly estimates the work of Shakespeare’s tongue and creative writing by comparing and referring to ancient writers as Homer and others, I start more wondering about who this Mr Meres was, what kind of book this is and the origin of it's title – as the novice I am regarding Shakespeare and his time!

All of a sudden I wake up out of my metropolitan slumber and realize how coloured playwrights and literary scenes of this Elizabethan era must have been of ancient dramas and tragedies, just because an ex rural minister (!) as Meres uses a latin influenced phrase (well, every 16th century man of classical education did so, I suppose) which strongly recalls the southeastern Europe's historical heritage, claiming the greatness of native writers mention them alongside men of ancient genius.

In the light of the comparison ascends also the names of some of Shakespeare's characters, especially those in his comedies; as Mr Meres wants to pay tribute to their ancient masters by honouring them with giving trace of their greatness and importance to William's own development as a playwright.

After only 10 years as a playwright this Francis Meres considers Shakespeare's language and transformation arts comparable to classical masterpieces. The fact is that when ”Palladis Tamia” was published, both Francis and William were at the same age, around 35 years old – now, if the sources about their date of births are correct. Which playwrights would similarly be honoured today at such a young age? If we are to believe that Francis Meres pen is an expression of what the literary elite in London in general think - or is it his very own assessment dusted off much later, by a stratfordian?

Maybe Will & Francis earlier were companion at school at the King's New School in Stratford, or just educated during the same decay when the grammar school curriculum was standardised by a royal decree and provided both of them an intensive education in Latin grammar based upon Latin classical authors, and thus a little fragment of the origin of the source of their respective - if comparable - authorship.

Regarding comedy and tragedy Francis Meres accentuates Shakespeare in solitary majesty as ”the most excellent in both kinds” amongst the English playwrights and poets, even concerning the muses, the goddesses of the inspiration of literature, Mr Meres highlights that they ”would speak with Shakespeare's fine-filed phrase, if they would speak English” without comparison to any other English author of the time.

Palladis Tamia” is a commonplace book – a note pad - which some modern writers of today look upon as an analogy to nowadays blogs, consisting discrete entries; which scholars today would regard web pages out of flashback.org as a relevant source of tracing, let us say, Lars Norén?

Maybe we are dealing with Francis Meres lost “Ipad”!