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Eric Sams (3 May 1926 – 13 September 2004) was a British musicologist and Shakespeare scholar.

Life

Born in London, Sams was raised in Essex. He studied at the Westcliff High School for Boys, where he performed well and earned a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge at the age of sixteen. His lifelong passion for puzzles and ciphers stood him in good stead in his wartime service in British Intelligence (1944–47). After the war he read Modern Languages at Cambridge (French and German), 1947–50; upon graduation he entered the Civil Service. In 1952 he married Enid Tidmarsh (died 2002), a pianist. Their elder son, Richard, is a Japanese scholar and chess master working in Tokyo; their younger son Jeremy Sams is a composer, lyricist, playwright, and theatre director.

Musicology

In music, Sams wrote on and studied a range of subjects and genres, though his specialty was German lieder. He wrote volumes on the songs of Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Hugo Wolf. His theory of song-motifs is one of the 20th century's most important contributions to the research in the field of German song studies. From 1965 to 1980 he was a regular contributor to The Musical Times with essays and reviews. Most notably, he wrote on Schumann's and Brahms's ciphers and music codes (the "Clara-Theme", among others), on Elgar's Enigma and on Schubert's and Schumann's pathologies. His New Grove articles include Schubert and Schumann work-list, "Wolf" and Wolf work-list, "Mörike", "Hanslick" and "Musical Cryptography" (also in Grove 6). He reviewed opera performance for the New Statesman and wrote record reviews for Gramophone, both of these between 1976 and 1978.

Shakespeare

In the field of Shakespeare studies, Sams specialised in the early phases of Shakespeare's career. He published over a hundred papers on the subject and wrote two books, The Real Shakespeare: Retrieving the Early Years, 1564–1594 (New Haven & London 1995) and The Real Shakespeare: Retrieving the Later Years, 1594–1616 (unfinished at the time of Sams' death, an edited text being published as an e-book by the Centro Studi "Eric Sams", 2008) .

Building on the work of W. J. Courthope, Hardin Craig, E. B. Everitt, Seymour Pitcher and others, Sams' thesis was that "Shakespeare was an early starter who rewrote nobody's plays but his own", and that the young playwright "may have been a master of structure before he was a master of language". Far from being a plagiarist, Shakespeare found accusations of plagiarism (e.g. Greene's "beautified with our feathers") offensive (Sonnets 30, 112). Trusting the early 'biographical' sources John Aubrey and Nicholas Rowe, Sams re-assessed Shakespeare's early and 'missing' years, and argued through detailed textual analysis that Shakespeare began writing plays from the mid-1580s, in a style not now recognisably Shakespearean.

In full critical editions of the two plays, he defended the attributions of the anonymous Edmund Ironside and Edward III to Shakespeare, and in an appendix argued that the "powerful drama" Thomas of Woodstock, or The first Part of the Reign of King Richard II was also Shakespeare's work. The so-called 'Source Plays' and 'Derivative Plays' (The Taming of a Shrew, The Troublesome Reign of King John, etc.), and the so-called 'Bad Quartos', are (printers' errors aside) his own first versions of famous later plays. As many of the Quarto title-pages proclaim, Shakespeare was an assiduous reviser of his own work, rewriting, enlarging and emending to the end of his life. He "struck the second heat / upon the Muses' anvil", as Ben Jonson put it in the Folio verse tribute. Sams dissented from 20th-century orthodoxy, arguing strongly against the concept of memorial reconstruction by amnesiac actors, which he called a "wrong-headed" theory. "Authorial revision of early plays is the only rational alternative." The pirated copies referred to in the preamble to the Folio were the 1619 quartos, mostly already superseded plays, for "Shakespeare was disposed to release his own popular early version for acting and printing because his own masterly revision would soon be forthcoming".

Sams believed that Shakespeare in his retirement was revising his oeuvre "for definitive publication". The "apprentice plays" which had been reworked were naturally omitted from the Folio. Sams also rejected 20th-century orthodoxy on Shakespeare's collaboration: his view was that, with the exception of Sir Thomas More, Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry VIII, the plays were solely Shakespeare's, though many were only partly revised. By Sams' arguments for the dating and authorship of plays, Shakespeare wrote not only the earliest "modern" chronicle play, The Troublesome Reign, c. 1588, but also "the earliest known modern comedy and tragedy", A Shrew and the Ur-Hamlet (substantially = the 1603 Quarto).

• Sams also argued, more briefly, that "there is some evidence of Shakespearean authorship" of A Pleasant Commodie of Fair Em the Millers Daughter, with the loue of William the Conqueror, written before 1586, and of The Lamentable Tragedie of Locrine written mid-1580s and "newly set foorth, ouerseene and corrected, by W.S." in 1595.

Critical reaction to Sams' 1995 book was largely favourable. "Much of what is postulated for boyhood years seems convincing," wrote Jonathan Keates, "including a background in Catholic recusancy and a schooling interrupted by family financial crisis. Neither is the idea of the poet as a reviser of his own early work implausible, and Sams is a persuasive salesman of his big idea that so-called 'bad quartos' represent valuable first thoughts." "His unwillingness to collude with academics against actors", wrote Professor Stephen Logan, "springs from a deep respect for the past. He would sooner trust eyewitness testimony, however informal, than the authority of consensus."

Selected works

• The Songs of Hugo Wolf, 1961 (rev. 1983).
• The Songs of Robert Schumann, 1969 (rev. 1993).
• Brahms Songs, 1972 (rev. 2000)
• Shakespeare's Lost Play, Edmund Ironside, 1986.
• The Real Shakespeare: Retrieving the Early years, 1564-1594, 1995.
• Shakespeare's Edward III: An Early Play Restored to the Canon, 1996.
• The Songs of Johannes Brahms, 2000.
• Essays and reviews on music, Shakespeare, and cryptography, 1966-1998, online edition in the web-pages of the Centro Studi "Eric Sams"
• The Real Shakespeare II: Retrieving the Later Years, 1594-1616, 2008, e-book published by the Centro Studi "Eric Sams"
• Opere complete in 15 volumi. Collana diretta da Erik Battaglia e Valentina Valente. Traduzione e cura di Erik Battaglia. Asti, Analogon Edizioni, 2007- (Vol.1, Il Tema di Clara, 2007; Vol.2, Variazioni con Enigma svelato, 2008; Vol.3, Introduzione ai Lieder di Brahms, 2008; Vol.4, Hugo Wolf. Introduzione alla vita e alle opere, 2008; Vol.5, Tabù or not tabù, 2010; Vol.6, I Lieder di Robert Schumann, 2010; Vol.7, Robert Schumann, Jean Paul: Papillons, with an Introduction and a Commentary by Eric Sams, 2010; Vol. 8, Musica e codici cifrati, 2011; Vol. 9, I Lieder di Hugo Wolf, 2011; Vol. 10, I Lieder di Johannes Brahms, 2013; Vol. 11, L'opera lirica è perfidia e passione per paranoici, 2015)

References

• Gerald Moore, Preface to The Songs of Hugo Wolf, see above.
• id., Preface to The Songs of Robert Schumann, see above.
• Graham Johnson, Preface to The Songs of Johannes Brahms, see above.
• Anthony Burgess, "Cygnet of Avon", The Observer, 2 February 1986, p. 29
• Erik Battaglia, "The application of thought to musicology. A Tribute to Eric Sams Archived 2012-02-24 at the Wayback Machine", in SSUSA (Schubert Society of the USA) Newsletter, Vol. 3, n.l 1, 2005; reprinted in The Lyrica, newsletter published by the Lyrica Society for Word-Music Relations, Harvard, n. 26, Spring 2005.
• Andrew Lamb, "Elgar, Shakespeare, and A Little Light Music", Essay for the Centro Studi Eric Sams, 2007
• Ron Rosenbaum, "A visit with an avenging angel" in The Shakespeare Wars, 2008, pp. 66–75.
• Francis J. Sypher, "Two Essays on Eric Sams", written for the Centro Studi Eric Sams, 2009 and 2011 (also a numbered pamphlet edition, New York 2009-2011)

Notes

1. Sams 1995, p.146
2. Sams 2008, p.342
3. Sams 1995, pp. 182–183: "The early Hamlet, A Shrew, The Troublesome Reign, The Famous Victories of Henry V, King Leir ... were performed in Shakespeare's heyday, by actors and companies well known to him; he must have known who had written them. On any objective economical appraisal, he had."
4. Sams 1995, p.169: "1598, Love's Labour's Lost, 'newly corrected and augmented'; 1599, Romeo and Juliet, 'newly corrected, augmented and amended'; 1599, 1 Henry IV, 'newly corrected by W. Shakespeare'; 1599, The Passionate Pilgrim, containing early versions of Sonnets 138 and 144; 1602, Richard III, 'newly augmented'; 1604, Hamlet, 'enlarged to almost as much again as it was'; 1608, Richard II, 'with new additions of the Parliament Scene, and the deposing of King Richard'; 1616, The Rape of Lucrece, 'newly revised'; 1623, the First Folio, where each of the eighteen plays already published now has textual variants (Titus Andronicus has a whole new scene)."
5. Sams 1995, p. 160
6. Sams 2008, p. 271
7. Sams 1995, p. 171
8. Sams 1995, pp. 185–188
9. Sams 2008, pp. 117–118
10. Sams 1995, p. 152
11. Sams 2008, pp. 149–150, pp. 198–211
12. Sams 2008, p. 269
13. Sams 2008, pp. 302–312
14. Sams, Shakespeare's Lost Play, Edmund Ironside, 1986
15. Sams, Shakespeare's Lost Play, Edmund Ironside, 1986
16. Sams 1995, pp. 120–135
17. Sams 1995, pp. 146–153
18. Sams 1995, pp. 136–145
19. Sams 1995, p. 171
20. Sams, Shakespeare's Lost Play, Edmund Ironside, 1986, p. 43
21. Sams, Shakespeare's Lost Play, Edmund Ironside, 1986, p. 30
22. Sams 1995, p.164
23. Sams, 2008, p. 449
24. Sams 2008, p. 117, p. 164
25. Sams 2008, pp. 114–125
26. Sams, Shakespeare's Edward III: An Early Play Restored to the Canon, 1996
27. Sams, Shakespeare's Edward III: An Early Play Restored to the Canon, 1996
28. Sams 1995, pp. 154–162
29. Sams 2008, p.151
30. Sams 1995, pp. 154–162
31. Sams 1995, p. 115
32. Sams 2008, p.69
33. Sams 1995, p. 185
34. Sams 2008, pp. 159–164
35. Sams 1995, pp. 103–113
36. Sams 2008, pp. 61–67
37. Sams 2008, pp. 73–80
38. Sams 1995, p.116
39. Sams 2008, pp.183-197
40. Sams 2008, p.176
41. Sams 2008, p.176
42. Sams 2008, p.150
43. Sams 1995, p.101
44. Sams 2008, p. 71, pp.165-174
45. Sams 1995, p.xv
46. Sams 2008, p.247
47. Sams 2008, pp.234–242. (Chapter relating this to The Weakest Goeth to the Wall, c.1586, appears unfinished. Sams 2008, pp.221–223.)
48. Sams 2008, pp.234-242
49. Sams 2008, pp.261-267
50. Sams 2008, p.199
51. Sams 2008, p.200
52. Sams 2008, p.199, p.224
53. Sams 1995, pp.163-166
54. Sams 2008, pp.117-118
55. The Observer, Review, 5 March 1995
56. The Times, London, 9 February 1995

External links

• "Centro Studi Eric Sams" Online Publication of all his essays and reviews on music, on Shakespeare, on cryptography (with letters, lectures and interviews)
• Obituaries from The Independent, The Guardian, The Times

• People educated at Westcliff High School for Boys
• Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
• Shakespearean scholars
• 1926 births
• 2004 deaths
• 20th-century British musicologists
• MI6 personnel
• British people of World War II
• Scholars of Romantic music
• Brahms scholars
• Elgar scholars
• Schubert scholars
• Schumann scholars
• Wolf scholars