Connections between Shakespeare‘s ,"The Merchant of Venice" and Pyott‘s „The Orator“.
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| The Second Booke of Amadis de Gaule (1595) |
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| The Orator: Handling of hundred severall discourses(1596) |
In 1963 C.T.Wright presented the case that Anthony Munday has to be identified with his pseudonym "Lazarus Pyott," (L.P.) whom most scholars regard as a separate unknown writer.-From Encyclopedias you learn that highly prolific Munday (born 1560!! [not 1553]) seminary student, actor, nobleman's page, government spy, poet, playwright, translator, traveller, hereditary member of the Drapers' guild, "servant to the City," wrote ballads, dialogues, moral treatises, a Mirrour, pamphlets, pastorals, a travel book, plays, pageants, a chronicle, additions to the Survey of London, chivalric romances etc..
In 1596 a highly interesting book "The Orator" translated from the French Book "Epitomes de Cent Histoires..."(1581) of Alexandre Sylvain (van den Busshe) "englished by L.P." appeared with 100 "legal" discourses "in forme of Declamations: Some of the Arguments (...) of the Authors own invention: part of which are of matters happened in our [his] age.
Declamation Nr.95 interestingly deals with the Trial Scene of Shakespeare's "The Merchant [The Jew] of Venice"
For several reasons Shakespeare scholars agree that "The Merchant of Venice" has been written in 1596, at the time when the translation of the "Declamation nr 95"
by Lazarus Pyott was published,
by Lazarus Pyott was published,
Wouldn't it be too much of a coincidence if there were no intrinsic connections between Shakespeare, the author of "The Merchant of Venice" and Lazarus Pyott [seen as a penname of Anthony Munday]?
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