The 'Oleo' Imbroglio

There are two words I hate: ‘Snapsack’ and ‘Oleo’. Not ones you think about much, I know, but for our  understanding of Guy of Warwick they may be very important.

Helen Cooper noted in Guy of Warwick, Upstart Crows and Mounting Sparrows that these two words found in Guy were 'first recorded by the OED (both editions) only in the seventeenth century'. ‘Snapsack' was 'first attested in 1632 but possibly current in dialect before that'. 'Oleo' (OED s.v. 'olio'), meaning ‘any mixture of many heterogeneous elements; a hotchpotch, medley, jumble [OED 2a]’ was 'a word frequently recorded towards the middle of the seventeenth century but unattested elsewhere in the sixteenth'.

These middle seventeenth century first dates for ‘snapsack’ and ‘oleo’ are a serious problem for the prevailing opinion, including mine, that Guy is from the 1590s. Cooper herself did not dwell too long on the issue, other than to say that the existence of ‘snapsack’ and ‘oleo’ in Guy 'tends to push' the date of the play 'forwards' i.e. later. But that’s an understatement. The earliest date for ‘oleo’, in particular, is – let’s be clear about this - over a half a century later than the 1590s. That’s too big a gap to ignore, much as we might like to.

I’m reasonably unstressed about the existence of the word ‘snapsack’ in Guy. It’s clearly related to the earlier 'knapsack', and may well have been current in dialect before 1632, as Cooper suggests. Even if it wasn't, it’s easy enough to imagine a silent or unconscious changing of 'knapsack' to 'snapsack'  during printing.

'Oleo', though, is a worry. It occurs in Time’s chorus to Act 2 of Guy:

Enter Time. Devotion and Divine Atchievments cause

Great Guy of Warwick to neglect all Lawes,

Of Nuptial League, he leaves his pregnant VVife,

Countrey and Kindred for a holy Life,

But in his progresse, makes himself a prize

To multitudes of matchlesse miseries;

By which it may be justly understood,

He is not truly great, that is not good:

In Holy Lands abroad his spirits roame

And not in Deanes and Chapters lands at home,

His sacred fury menaceth that Nation,

VVhich hath Indea under Sequestration:

He doth not strike at Surplices and Tippits,

(To bring an Oleo in of Sects in Sippits) [my italics]

But deales his warlike and dead-doing blowes,

Against his Saviours and his Soveraigns foes;

That Coat of Armour fears no change of weather,

Where sanctity and souldier go together:

So doth our Champion march up to the fight,

Sit, silent, pray, Time will bring all to light.

An ‘oleo’ (or ‘olio’/’oglio’) was  'A spiced meat and vegetable stew of Spanish and Portuguese origin. Hence: any dish containing a great variety of ingredients' [OED 1]. However, the word later took on the figurative meaning of 'any mixture of many heterogeneous elements etc', the sense in which it is used in Guy:

He doth not strike at Surplices and Tippits,

(To bring an Oleo in of Sects in Sippits)

The earliest OED example of the use of ‘oleo’ in this figurative sense comes from the Eikon Basilike, The Pourtrature of His Sacred Majestie in His Solitudes and Sufferings, a series of meditations supposedly written by King Charles I of England (the authorship is disputed) , and published very shortly after his beheading in 1649:

'Tis strange that so wise men, as they would be esteemed, should not conceive, That differences of perswasion in matters of Religion may easily fall out, where there is the samenesse of duty, Allegiance, and subjection. The first they owne as men, and Christians to God; the second, they owe to Me in Common, as their KING; different professions in point of Religion cannot (any more than in civill Trades) take away the community of relations either to Parents, or to Princes: And where is there such an Oglio or medley of various Religions in the world again, as those men entertain in their service (who find most fault with me) without any scruple, as to the diversity of their Sects and Opinions!

Hmm. Two things concern me here. First, the fact that the Eikon Basilike refers to 'Oglio or medley', rather than just 'Oglio', which suggests that the author (whoever he was) thought the use of the word 'oleo' in this sense was sufficiently new in or about 1649 that it needed to be explained as 'medley'. Second, Guy and the Eikon Basilike just happen to use ‘oleo’ in the same context i.e in reference to religious division arising from ‘sects’:

He doth not strike at Surplices and Tippits,

(To bring an Oleo in of Sects in Sippits)

And where is there such an Oglio or medley of various Religions in the world again, as those men entertain in their service (who find most fault with me) without any scruple, as to the diversity of their Sects and Opinions!

If you didn’t know any better, you’d have to suspect that Time’s lines in Act 2 of Guy are alluding to this passage in the Eikon Basilike. Truth is, I don’t know any better. I think it’s a distinct possibility. Guy was printed in 1661, shortly after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 - a perfect time to make an allusion to the Eikon Basilike. This leads to the disquieting thought that Time’s lines in Act 2 of Guy may have been written sometime during the period 1649 to 1661.

Strictly speaking, of course, we need only conclude that the couplet containing the word ‘oleo’ was written during that period, not the passage as a whole. We could then just see the two lines as late topical additions to a play that was itself much older. Though I’d like to believe this, I’ve got my doubts. The passage seems of a piece. You can’t really detach the couplet from the surrounding lines, so I think we have to accept the possibility that Time’s chorus to Act 2 in its entirety was written sometime around the middle of the seventeenth century. If so, perhaps all of Time’s choruses in Guy were written around the middle of the seventeenth century. Perhaps the whole play was.

As you can see, the implications of this single word ‘oleo’ can lead to a cascading series of possibilities, none of which are at all palatable to those who, like myself, argue that Guy of Warwick is a play from the 1590s. At this point, though, I’m going to say no more on the subject. I just don’t have the time at the moment to work through all the complexities raised by these possibilities. Maybe later.

What I'd prefer is for someone out there to tell me that I actually don't need to return to the subject, because that someone has found a usage of 'oleo' decades earlier than 1649, and therefore I have made a big issue out of nothing. I can't find a single such usage, but if you can, please let me know!

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