Some-body, No-body, John Davies of Hereford, and The Tempest
Lead Draft lead packet
Topic: Some-body, No-body, John Davies of Hereford, and The Tempest
1. Verified Sourced Facts
- The existing John Davies of Hereford packet covers Davies's 1603 Microcosmos dedication to Henry Neville.
- The current book draft cites Davies's The Scourge of Folly for epigrams addressed to "No-body" and "Some-body."
- The local Twitter layer argues that the Some-body / No-body material is necessary background for Davies's Shakespeare references and for a possible Tempest allusion.
- This packet has not yet extracted the Davies text directly from EEBO/TCP, so the Shakespeare connection remains lead-level.
2. Ken Feinstein Twitter and Blog Information
- Ken's John Donne / Davies thread says Davies knew who wrote Shakespeare and points to the sequence: 1603 Microcosmos dedication to Neville, 1611 "English Terence" / Some-body / No-body material, and 1616 "too worthy for a counterfeit" language.
- Ken argues that Davies's "near, dear, well-known friend: some-body" with "much adoo" may point toward Much Ado About Nothing.
- Ken also states that Shakespeare specifically references Some-body and No-body in The Tempest.
- The Twitter thread treats this as a coded early reception problem, but direct text extraction is still needed.
3. Quoted Source Text
Local Twitter / book layer
- "To his most constant, though most vnknowne friend, No-body."
- "To my neere-deere wel-knowne friend, Some-body."
- "near, dear, well-known friend: some-body"
- "much adoo"
4. Citations
- Davies, John, of Hereford. The Scourge of Folly. London, 1611. EEBO/TCP witness to be extracted.
- Feinstein, Ken. Local Twitter material preserved in twitter_John_Donne.md and twitter_Windsor_Forest.md.
- john_davies_of_hereford_microcosmos_and_henry_neville.md, related Davies/Neville packet.
- play_the_tempest.md, related play packet.
5. Notes on Access
- This topic should be handled carefully: Davies's wording can be directly verified, but the Tempest and Much Ado readings are interpretive until the relevant dramatic passages and EEBO context are compared.
- The next step is a direct EEBO extraction of Davies's Scourge of Folly epigrams 160-161 plus the surrounding sequence.