The Readers of 17th-Century English Manuscript Commonplace Book Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden

Tianhu Hao

doi:10.18778/2083-8530.23.12

Authors

Tianhu Hao Zhejiang University, China https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7077-1818

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.23.12

Keywords:

William Shakespeare, Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden, commonplace book, readers, Humphrey Moseley, James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, manuscript study

Abstract

Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden is a 17th-century manuscript commonplace book known primarily for its Shakespearean connections. The readers of Hesperides generally combine reading and thinking, or reading and writing. Though few, Hesperides is not without its “fit audience.” In addition to the few modern scholars who have examined the manuscripts, the actual known readers of Hesperides include Humphrey Moseley the 17th-century publisher, James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps in the Victorian period, and a late-18th-century anonymous reader. The last of this group copies Shakespearean and dramatic extracts into the commonplace book and is identified through internal evidence based on paleography. The intended readers of Hesperides, including the Courtier, would make use of it as a linguistic aid, to learn how to speak and write well from literary models. They take the commonplace book as a reference library.

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Author Biography

Tianhu Hao, Zhejiang University, China

Tianhu Hao (PhD, Columbia) is a professor of English and comparative literature, and director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in the School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. He specializes in early modern English literature and comparative literature. In addition to quite a number of Chinese and English articles, his has published two Chinese monographs: “Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden”: The Study of an Early Modern English Commonplace Book (2014) and Milton in China (2020). His translations include David Kastan’s Shakespeare and the Book (2012) and Hao Ping’s book John Leighton Stuart and China, the last published by Routledge in two volumes (2017). He is the editor-in-chief of three book series for Zhejiang University Press: Medieval and Renaissance Translation Series, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and Renaissance Studies. He currently serves on the executive committee of the Milton Society of America and the editorial board of Milton Quarterly and Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appopriation and Performance. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7077-1818

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