George Tashe, Anagrammatist

This article introduces the seventeenth-century writer George Tashe (fl. 1613–1635), who was known in his day for manuscript anagrams and epigrams but has been almost entirely overlooked by modern scholarship. Tashe’s varied oeuvre—which includes panegyric and potentially also devotional verse, as well as transcriptions of contemporary elegies, William Austin’s Parasceve for Good Friday, and James VI and I’s aphorisms—offers a uniquely valuable case study in manuscript publication, intellectual life around the Stuart court, English use of cultural resources from continental Europe, and how literary texts were used to manage social relations. The first section of this article reviews what we know about Tashe’s life, focusing on evidence that he was born in the West Riding of Yorkshire not later than 1557 and as a young man served Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. The second section outlines five manuscripts that appear to be written in Tashe’s autograph hand. The third considers eight further textual witnesses to Tashe’s work in English and Latin: a substantial manuscript compilation that may be associated with John Newdigate III, five other scribal copies, and two printed texts. The penultimate section situates Tashe’s anagrammatic writing within the vogue for anagrams and epigrams in Stuart England, and a conclusion identifies questions that would merit further investigation. An Appendix offers a catalogue of Tashe’s works as an aid for future research.