THE EARL OF ESSEX AS CATILINE
FULBECKE, William.
An Historicall Collection of the continuall Factions, Tumults, and Massacres of the Romans and Italians during the space of one hundred and twentie Yeares next before the peaceable Empire of Augustus Cæsar ...
London, Printed for William Ponsonby. 1601.
4to, pp. [xvi], ‘20’ (recte 209), [7], with the initial and medial blanks *1 and A4 (often wanting); early inscription to title-page sometime obscured, title-page slightly toned; withal a fine, crisp copy in contemporary limp vellum, spine lettered in manuscript, original ties (lower tie partly lacking); contemporary annotation to a rear endpaper concerning ‘the divers and disagring [sic] opinions of histrographers … It hapineth in ye originall of Kings, as of great rivers whose mouthes are knowne, but not ther springs'.
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An Historicall Collection of the continuall Factions, Tumults, and Massacres of the Romans and Italians during the space of one hundred and twentie Yeares next before the peaceable Empire of Augustus Cæsar ...
First edition of Fulbecke’s Historicall Collection, a ‘narrative history of the last years of the Roman republic’ (ODNB), one of very few such works by a Renaissance English writer, featuring much material on the rebellion of the nobleman Catiline, undoubtedly included as a reference to the Earl of Essex.
Dedicated to Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst and published immediately following Essex’s trial and execution in February 1601 – despite the fact that ‘fourteene years are now runne out since I fully ended and dispatched this historicall labour’ (preface) – the Historicall Collection is ‘an interesting attempt to weave together such often-contradictory sources as Sallust, Dio Cassius, and Lucius Florus’ and is ‘full of the sorts of fears of unrest and civil dissension that characterize the literature of Elizabeth’s last years’ (ibid.). For Essex, contemporary comparisons to Catiline are practically a cliché, and Fulbecke took some liberties with his source here, Sallust, to overstretch the similarities between Essex and Catiline.
At around the time he originally wrote the Collection, Fulbecke was a student at the Inns of Court, and along with a number of his contemporaries, including Francis Bacon, wrote a masque, The Misfortunes of Arthur, which was performed before Elizabeth I at Greenwich in 1588; Fulbecke contributed two speeches and the conclusion.
It is plausible that Fulbecke and Shakespeare were acquainted through the Inns of Court plays, in which both were involved, and there is some evidence that Shakespeare may have read Fulbecke’s books, or have been familiar with their content.
ESTC S102772; STC 11412. Some copies (e.g. Folger and Corpus Christi Oxford) have a Latin version of the dedication on *3, and *4 excised. The work was reissued in 1608 with cancel title-page (An Abridgement, or rather, a Bridge of Roman Histories) and most or all of the preliminaries removed (presumably because of Sackville’s death in April).
