Originally published 1598 | ||
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Similar The Passionate Pilgrim, Greene's Groats‑Worth of Wit, The Rape of Lucrece, The Phoenix and the T, Early texts of Shakesp | ||
Palladis Tamia, subtitled "Wits Treasury", is a 1598 book written by the minister Francis Meres. It is important in English literary history as the first critical account of the poems and early plays of William Shakespeare. It was listed in the Stationers Register 7 September 1598.
Palladis Tamia contains moral and critical reflections borrowed from various sources, and included sections on books, on philosophy, on music and painting, as well as the famous "Comparative Discourse of our English poets with the Greeke, Latin, and Italian poets" that enumerates the English poets from Geoffrey Chaucer to Meres' own day, and compares each with a classical author. While Meres is considerably indebted to George Puttenham's earlier The Arte of English Poesie (1589), the section extends the catalogue of poets and contains many first notices of Meres's contemporaries.
The book was reissued in 1634 as a school book, and was partially reprinted in the Ancient Critical Essays (1811-1811) of Joseph Haslewood, Edward Arber's English Garner, and George Gregory Smith's Elizabethan Critical Essays (1904).
Context
Palladis Tamia translates from the Greek literally as "Pallas' Housewife". "Tamia" is the Greek word for a female slave in charge of a household, but it is more likely that "tamia" as used by Meres in this case is a form of "tamias", a dispenser, steward or treasurer, and here used to suggest, by metonymy, the "Treasury" of Meres's subtitle. "Palladis" is the Latin genitive of "Pallas," another name for the goddess Athena, who in Greek mythology was the goddess of wisdom and statecraft. Thus, Palladis Tamia becomes the "dispenser" or "treasurer" of Pallas Athena, or "wisdom".
Palladis Tamia was the second in a series of four volumes of short pithy sayings with the generic title of Wits Commonwealth, the first of which was Politeuphuia: Wits Commonwealth (1597), compiled by John Bodenham or by Nicholas Ling, the publisher. The third volume was Wits Theater of the Little World (1599), dedicated to Bodenham and variously credited to him, Robert Allott, or Ling, and the fourth and last was, Palladis Palatium: wisedoms pallace. Or The fourth part of Wits commonwealth (1604), with no author named but attributed to William Wrednott in the Stationer’s Register.