Robert Earle of Essex his Ghost, Sent from Elizian
Subtitle: To the nobility, gentry, and communaltie of England
Publisher: Richard Bale?
Published: 1624
Place of publication: London?
Language: eng
Number of pages: 50
Description: <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">Small 4to. pp. [2], 18, [2], 11. Signatures: A-B4 C3 D⁴ E².  Half morocco. ‘Second Part’ has separate pagination and title page with same imprint as the first page; register is continuous. Bookplates of Louis Silver and Robert S Pirie.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">First edition of an implicit denunciation of the proposed ‘Spanish Marriage’ by the gadfly Thomas Scott, formulated as an autobiographcal sketch of Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex (executed 1601), as spoken by his ghost inhabiting ‘Elizian’, followed by his dire warnings about Spanish malice and treachery. The ‘Second Part,’ entitled ‘A Post Script, or, a Second Part of Robert Earle of Essex his Ghost,’ rehearses other ‘cruell Plots, as were practised in my time on earth, by the King and State of Spaine, against the Queen and State of England,’ including the reports by Las Casas of brutality against ‘poore naked Indians in America,’ the bull of Pius V excommunicating Queen Elizabeth (promulgated in 1570, ‘when I was but an infant’) and her own (imaginary) ‘Answere unto the sayd Bull,’ in 68 lines of rhymed verse – provided here by the ghost ‘because you have not else-where seene it,’ the assassination conspiracies of Throckmorton, Parry, Babington, Dr. Lopez, and Yorke and Williams (1595), and of course the Armada of ’88, mercifully routed. The ghost of Essex concludes by calling to mind the most garish treason of all, ‘since my time on earth,’ the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, ‘hatched in hell,’ but ‘consulted on and approved of in the Spanish King’s court.’ Two further sonnets in the text, one attributed to King James VI of Scotland and ‘received’ by Essex, another (in ‘excellent’ translation) to Theodore Beza, are probably impostures as well.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">See STC 22084, and STC 22084A, issue with line 10 on A2r ending ‘partici-.’</span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://catalyst.library.jhu.edu/permalink/01JHU_INST/1lu78g9/alma991009110259707861" rel="ugc nofollow">Click here to view the Johns Hopkins University catalog record.</a></span></span></p>